Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Jan 20 2023
Dead Giveaways Dept.
Sometimes laughter isn’t just the best medicine, it’s the only medicine: Bringing cake into the office should be seen as harmful to your colleagues in the same way as passive smoking, the chairwoman of Britain’s top food watchdog has said. Professor Susan Jebb, of the Food Standards Agency, speaking personally and not …
Jan 20 2023
A Giant Mound Of Infant Corpses
I know of no way to verify this, but I tend to trust the source: [T]hough all such numbers are a bit uncertain, roughly 55 million people die, globally, every year. And numerous public health organizations intensely scrutinize the slightest increase or decrease in mortality, in a laudable effort to identify what factors …
Jan 20 2023
How Shall I Proclaim Thee “Not All There?”
Let me count the ways… His elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. His bread isn’t done in the center. The lights are on but nobody’s home. His oil doesn’t reach the dipstick. He’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. He’s a nugget or two short of a Happy Meal. …
Jan 19 2023
The Process Observed
Every now and then, a case of the Left’s victimism-power tactic is played out where we can see it. You know the sequence: An “oppressed group” pleads for tolerance. Once tolerance has been obtained, the plea changes to social acceptance. Once acceptance is in hand, the group presses for mandatory inclusion. Inclusion having been …
Jan 18 2023
Sadly, The Other Shoe Will Drop
I’m sure you’ve read about the handful of schools in Virginia – government-run schools, of course – that suppressed announcements that several of their inmates students had won National Merit Scholarships. These days, it would hardly seem out of the ordinary. “Equal Outcomes For Every Student!” shrieks the mission statement of the Fairfax County …
Jan 18 2023
National Security, Or Job Security?
If I remember correctly, Eric Adams got the Democrat Party nod for the mayoralty of New York City because he was once a cop. However, there are quite a lot of former NYC cops: more today than ever before, in fact. I have no idea what makes Adams special…unless it’s that he’s black. At …
Jan 18 2023
“But It Was In A Good Cause!”
Every now and then, the Left’s claim of immunity to the law due to its moral superiority is revealed in the light of day. We have a fresh example in connection with the infamous Hunter Biden laptop: Last summer, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that House Republicans would demand answers from the …
Jan 18 2023
This Requires Explanation…
…though it comes as no surprise: The Justice Department considered having FBI agents monitor a search by President Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his homes but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were …
Jan 18 2023
It’s Not News…
…but at least someone else is willing to say it: One overriding principle of the new Democratic Party is asymmetry—or the notion that the Left’s moral superiority earns absolute exemption from the very methods they employ against their opponents. You would think that in a nation in which fairness is one of …
Jan 17 2023
Budget? What Budget?
About three decades ago, a reporter for Reason magazine asked a sitting Congressman of conservative inclination, “Will Congress ever pass a budget that’s even one dollar less than the previous year?” The Congressman replied flatly “No.” Well, at least he was candid. And as the years since have demonstrated, he was a realist …
Jan 17 2023
Money Laundering 101
Money is like matter and energy. That is, it obeys a law of continuity. Every dollar must come from somewhere and go to somewhere. Yea verily, even if the destination is an incinerator. He who attempts to “launder” ill-gotten gains must respect that law. He must prepare to be called to account – …
Jan 17 2023
Charles Manson Might Have Called It Accurately
You have to be fairly old, and have an unusually good memory for atrocities involving celebrities, to remember the details of the Manson Family murders. One that tends to slip recall is the prophecy Charles Manson laid upon his followers: Manson believed in what he called “Helter Skelter”, a term he took from …
Jan 17 2023
Statist In A Cleft Stick Dept.
Men of good will should celebrate every event that compels the evil-minded to show their true colors. This is nowhere more important than when an individual right is under threat. An episode of this kind occurred just yesterday in upstate New York: That’s all the specific information I have on this incident. The …
Jan 16 2023
Allies And Enemies Of Nature
A dynamic is a tendency powered by natural needs and drives, and the incentives that pertain to them. Of course, there’s quite a bit of static thrown about concerning what’s natural and what isn’t. However, the people who claim that drives built into our bodies and minds are merely the consequences of our upbringing …
Jan 16 2023
BRRRING!
Good morning, Gentle Readers! Today is a very special day, for several reasons. For one thing, it’s Martin Luther King Jr, Day. On the third Monday of January each year, we commemorate the life and achievements of that famous icon of plagiarism and philandering that helped to make the Sixties a decade to be …
Jan 15 2023
Courtesy Of A Brave And Forthright Colleague
…by the moniker of the Feral Irishman: Read and reflect. You may not have a lot more opportunities.
Jan 15 2023
Necessities
Not that the count was a drone. At last reports, he had been involved in some highly esoteric tampering with the Haertel equations—that description of the space-time continuum which, by swallowing up the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction exactly as Einstein had swallowed Newton (that is, alive), had made interstellar flight possible. Ruiz-Sanchez did not understand a …
Jan 14 2023
Crisis!
Help, Gentle Reader! I’m in a crisis. Yes, a new one. It’s not categorically new — I’ve been here before — but it’s unprecedentedly intense. You see, I don’t know what to fear. The choices are too many. The fear-peddlers have overwhelmed my ability to apportion my fear energy. I’m starting to “thrash” …
Jan 13 2023
Those Stubborn Things
Among the many campaigns being conducted all around us, I deem this one to be critical: the war against immutable facts. You don’t have to be an intellectual giant like Thomas Sowell, one of the most important public intellectuals of the century behind us, to understand that facts trump any and all theories, …
Jan 12 2023
Tales From The Bearded Spock Universe
There’s no point to writing satire any longer. As soon as a satirist produces a fresh item, our crazies decide to make it happen in real life: “The world is facing a looming existential threat caused by exploitative habits and intentional human negligence.” That is how Brandon Edwards-Schuth and Marco Cerqueira, a …
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