Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Jun 25 2022
Concerning Yesterday’s Citation
A lot of people would like to disbelieve that statement by Mac Stipanovich. Some will say “There must be some missing context;” others, “Maybe he was just funnin’ us.” After all, the man was a Republican political consultant. By flapping his yap the way he did, he’s “given the game away” and endangered Republican …
Jun 24 2022
A Little Confirmation
Now and then, we get a “Kinsley gaffe” – i.e., when a politician accidentally tells the truth – that tells us more than we ever knew. (Sometimes it’s more than we wanted to know, but that’s a subject for another tirade.) We have one before us today: For decades, the Democratic Party had …
Jun 23 2022
Even When The News Is Good…
…it’s unwise to rely on the honesty or candor of the political class. A few hours ago, the Supreme Court struck down New York State’s “may issue” handgun-permit law: The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a restrictive New York gun law in a major ruling for gun rights. The justices’ …
Jun 23 2022
What Alternatives?
That’s the question on millions of Americans’ minds after the utter, protracted betrayal of Republican officials – federal and state – to represent the preferences of the voters that elected them. Their most recent defection is on the subject of greatest importance to social stability: the right to keep and bear arms. Fourteen GOP …
Jun 22 2022
A Useful Observation
As I’ve written before, some of our most urgent problems are “connectedness problems.” Andrea “Bookworm” Widburg comments on one in her latest American Thinker essay: [The Senate compromise ‘gun safety’ bill] promises to expand mental health services, including in schools; open juvenile records for gun customers under 21; stop illegal trafficking in firearms; …
Jun 22 2022
War Of The Cablecasters
If you don’t watch Tucker Carlson’s nightly “openings,” you’re missing some of the best and most entertaining commentary available: Ridicule, Alinsky tells us, is the unanswerable weapon. Ridicule of a self-described comedian who no longer even tries to be funny – the last time Stephen Colbert even made an attempt at humor was …
Jun 22 2022
A Trio Of Pic Grabs
In my current state of screaming, frothing fury, the following graphics speak more eloquently than I can manage: I may be back later, but don’t bet the rent money on it.
Jun 21 2022
Presented With Brief Comment
Would any Gentle Reader care to suggest that it’s white African migrants perpetrating these horrors on Italy and Europe generally?
Jun 21 2022
Peak Absurdity Chronicles
Happy Summer Solstice Day. Have a mood lightener, just the sort of thing to remind you that it’s not you who’s crazy: An anti-police Black Lives Matter protester who was hit by a car in a horrific accident as she and fellow Summer of Love activists blocked a freeway is now suing those …
Jun 20 2022
On Being Left Alone
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” Thank you, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche! How many times have we heard that or some equivalent? It was the central theme of both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. (The similarities …
Jun 20 2022
“Why Vote Republican?”
Jack Kerwick asks us, directly and plainly. Here’s the Sunday Punch: How exactly is voting Republican a matter of “fighting the Left,” or “fighting for the heart and soul of America?” Notice that GOP politicians and conservative media personalities are always glaringly vague on this point. They just treat as axiomatic that a …
Jun 19 2022
For Corpus Christi 2022
The Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, is a supremely important one throughout Latin America, and in parts of Europe and Africa as well. I wrote an essay about its significance some years ago. The feast strikes me as particularly significant today, owing to the steadily tightening food shortages here: …
Jun 19 2022
For Fathers’ Day: The Husband Shop
It was a new establishment. Jane had only heard about it, but at the conclusion of her Saturday bachelorette’s shopping for the week, she decided to give it a look. After all, at age thirty a woman’s prospects have thinned considerably. It wasn’t that she could hear the biological clock ticking, but she was …
Jun 19 2022
Connections: A Quickie
A reminder: there is more than one sort of tyrant. Not all aspiring tyrants are motivated by a conscious ideology. Yes, the most famous tyrants of the century behind us rose with the aid of a superficially attractive ideology – socialism, in every case – but history goes back more than a single …
Jun 18 2022
No More, It’s Too Much!
Too much to write about, that is. *** The recent reports of violent assaults on crisis pregnancy centers, and the announcement that more are coming, have had me worried. It was heartening to learn that the operators of such centers are staunch in the face of such threats: I began my conversation …
Jun 17 2022
Concerning Yesterday’s Tirade
A great many well-meaning persons in the Right stoutly resist the suggestion that the only guaranteed way to end racial strife is to separate the races. I know a number of such persons. One for whom I have great respect commented here just yesterday evening. It’s the most commonly expressed sentiment among Americans of …
Jun 16 2022
Reality, Not Realities
Perhaps the reason for our current plague of cognitive dissonance lies in all the “multiverse” movies and TV shows we’ve been watching. Ultimately it won’t matter. In this reality, where the speed of light in a vacuum is a generous 299,792,458 meters per second and Planck’s Constant is a steady 6.62607×10-34 Joule-seconds, the facts …
Jun 15 2022
Do You Really Think…
…that we can share a country with savages like these? The U.S. Marshals Service arrested three men accused of fatally beating a 17-year-old high Ethan Liming outside the high school founded by LeBron James. The three men beat Liming to death and later bragged about it to friends. The murderers: …
Jun 15 2022
Pandora’s Last Gift Versus The Gospel Of Despair
I’m in an odd mood this morning (“So what’s new?” come the mutterings from the peanut gallery), in part owing to two pieces I recently stumbled over: The tireless pursuit of mediocrity “Thou shalt have no other gods before Us, the Establishment.” My reaction to these stories might have been different had I …
Jun 14 2022
The Requirements Of Civil Debate
Just a quickie this morning, as I have a powerful need to unshackle myself from this electronic ball and chain and do something that will have a true effect on the world, even if it’s only to mow my lawn again. We know that genuinely civil debate is impossible today. Most Americans have …
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