Francis W. Porretto

Mount Sinai, NY USA

Author's posts

Unreality And Lethality

     I have no idea how much attention John C. Wright’s impassioned essay, which I cited yesterday, has received. I hope the answer is “enormous,” as it deserves that much, but in the main people are averse to confronting their own sins. And let’s be candid here: just about all of us are complicit in …

Continue reading

Impassioned And Accurate

     With a small number of exceptions, I find the fictions of John C. Wright not to my taste. However, as a general commentator, the man ranks with the best. Yesterday, he let fly with a jeremiad that Jeremiah would have envied. Have a brief taste:      All of our current society, as embodied in …

Continue reading

Mysteries, Not Complexities

     Just yesterday, I encountered this touching essay at The Catholic Thing. It starts with the mention of a recent wedding. However, its true import is expressed in this segment:      I’d converted to Catholicism from atheism in my mid-20s (I’m 39 now). This wasn’t news to anyone, but few expected the faith to take …

Continue reading

Presented For Your Edification

     It happened in Texas:      Videos posted to social media show a mob of young Black men, teens and children violently attacking a Hooters restaurant in Plano, Texas on Thursday, according to posters of the videos. Customers and staff were attacked at the entrance and windows were smashed. A woman inside the Hooters can …

Continue reading

What, Again?

     PayPal must be run by people with really short memories. The threat to fine PayPal users for saying things PayPal dislikes is still in force, except that the “misinformation” clause has been dropped.      It won’t work. PayPal is going down. After all, these days just about anything anyone says can be castigated as …

Continue reading

The “Oopsie! We Didn’t Mean It” Edition

     The PayPal version of a Kinsley gaffe, about which I posted Friday, has angered users widely. Apparently, the backlash has been voluminous – too great for PayPal’s managers to withstand and keep their annual bonuses. So they’re trying to walk it back:      A red-faced PayPal walked back a shocking new policy announcement that …

Continue reading

Progressions

     Time was, anyone with a high school diploma could be relied upon to know at least a little about mathematical progressions: arithmetic (additive), geometric (multiplicative), and others. If you had a little awareness of limits, you might even be able to work out how an open-form progression can be reduced to a closed-form expression. …

Continue reading

URGENT NOTICE 2022-10-07

     Thanks to Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane, I have just become aware of utterly unacceptable changes to PayPal’s Acceptable Use terms: You may not use the PayPal service for activities that: 1. violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation. 2. relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a …

Continue reading

TEOTWAWKI Stuff

     I don’t write a great deal on this subject, but lately I’ve been getting the sense that the time has come to confront some harsh realities and some ugly possibilities. If you’re not in the mood for the subject this fine Friday morning, I promise that I’ll understand…but I am. ***      The following …

Continue reading

Brokers And Their Biases

     Our economy knows many middlemen: persons and organizations that stand between the original producer of a good and the ultimate purchaser. These past few years, certain categories of middlemen have come under pressure, owing to the rise of the World Wide Web as a retailing tool. Consider how difficult it is for conventional travel …

Continue reading

Conversations

     They say laughter is the best medicine. I try not to argue with They; it tends to rebound unpleasantly. At the very least, laughter is an analgesic of sorts. It provides temporary relief from the ever-strengthening feeling that…well, that the only thing left to do is unpack the sniper rifle and the emergency stash …

Continue reading

Placer Mine

     [A short story for you today. Max Feinberg needs a breather. His laundromat business is lucrative but boring. His marriage is sound but irritating. His body is slowly turning to sludge. So he’s headed to Las Vegas for some restorative gambling and professional sex. The bonus he’ll receive will exceed his imagination. It will …

Continue reading

Targets

     When the lead is flying, the number-one priority is not to be a target. But sometimes there’s no way to avoid it.      I have a difficult topic to address today for two reasons. The first is the terror inherent in the subject: a potential nuclear war. The second is that the indicators suggest …

Continue reading

Hatred Of Children

     If you think for a living – I do – you’re constantly on the lookout for unities: themes that make comprehensive logical sense of what’s happening around you. You desperately want to find such themes, because without them, there’s little chance of making sense of the balls of chaos we call society and politics. …

Continue reading

Learned Soullessness

     I scratched around for quite a while, looking for a title for this piece. The above is the best I’ve got, and not very good at that, so please bear with me.      This is “Respect Life” weekend at my parish. We have the annual drive for funding for the local crisis pregnancy center, …

Continue reading

Day Off

There’s a lot going on here, and not enough of me to keep up with all of it and produce an essay. See you tomorrow.

“In What Way Are We Wrong?”

     Stephen Kruiser: The Republican party will never be able to accomplish anything significant until it purges what I like to call its “Romney Wing.” There is progress being made in that regard, but the wing’s namesake will eventually have to go.      Fran Porretto: What makes you think Republican legislators sincerely want to accomplish …

Continue reading

A Kinsley Gaffe From The Vegetable-in-Chief

     Whoever is writing Biden’s speeches is letting the truth show through the propaganda, and no mistake:      Well, folks, you know — and I mean this sincerely; you’re going to think this is a little out of whack what I’m going to talk about — but, you know, democracy is at stake. Literally, there’s …

Continue reading

Overtime

     [I can’t remember if this has ever been posted, here or at Liberty’s Torch V1.0. It makes a point that deserves emphasis, and anyway, I have more to do today than will permit me to write another of those furshlugginer essays — FWP.] ==<O>==      “And now with the sports news,” intoned the anchor …

Continue reading

A Heroine For Our Time

     I can’t get enough of this incredibly courageous and forthright woman:      Europe has waited far too long for her like.

Load more