All Purls. No Swine.
Because, for some unfortunate reason, it seems sadly necessary. The Republican-majority United States House of Representatives passed a bill on September 19, 2025, to continue previously-voted-upon business as usual while negotiations about future budget changes went forward. That bill subsequently went to the Senate, where it failed to pass because it didn't get 60 votes… Continue reading Just Correcting the Record, on the So-Called US Government Shutdown…
I can take it from the Commentary podcast people, because they're unabashed Jews. That's who they are. That's what they do. And I listen to them almost every day because--in spite of their acknowledged bias--they often have really interesting things to say. I can take it from Dan Senor, because his podcast is incredibly even-handed… Continue reading Newsflash for Meandering or Ambivalent Gentiles: Yammering at Inordinate Length about Israel Doesn’t Usually End Well for You
Honestly, there are days when the tsunami of news is so overwhelming that I can’t but do other than reflect on the words of the late Mr. Right's Aunt Sophie, who served as a real-life Rosie the Riveter in one of Pittsburgh’s munitions factories during World War II, and who was well known in the… Continue reading On Cotton Bolls and Dancing Queens
A little poem from my childhood: Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today I wish, I wish he'd go away... When I came home last night at three The man was waiting there for me But when I looked around the hall I couldn't see him… Continue reading “I wish, I wish, he’d go away”: Trump and the escalator wishcasting from the Left
Over the past eight or nine days, I’ve repeatedly heard those on the Right use the phrase, “They just can’t help themselves.” Most often, its use follows the telling of yet another story about those on the Left, those who seem able, with extraordinary precision and clarity, to identify and cull from the sea of… Continue reading Please, Do Help Yourselves!
The term "gerrymander," which has come to mean manipulating the boundaries of electoral districts in order to guarantee the supremacy of one political party or another, is named after Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a "hard G" as in "game" or "gun." Elbridge Gerry was--believe it or not--an American Founding Father, and the fifth Vice-President of… Continue reading Was There a Real Gerry Mander, and if so, Who Was He?
There’s a lot of buzz over in Old Blighty at the moment over the news that the French have agreed to “loan” the Bayeux Tapestry (which most scholars believe was embroidered somewhere near Cambridge, England) to the British Museum for display during the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. The conclusion as to its provenance is… Continue reading The Great Norman Stitch Up
It took place 50 years ago today. I was twenty years old, and in college. I don't pretend to an exhaustive understanding of the history, but I remember it as the end of the Vietnam War, and as what has become, in the popular understanding, the largely undeserved disgrace of the United States. I knew… Continue reading The Fall of Saigon
Well, no, actually, it isn't. But the following post, which was first published quite a few years ago on Ricochet, seems germane again, given the situation in the city of my birth, which would be Birmingham, (historically--at least in part) Warwickshire, The United Kingdom. Lord. There hasn't been a "bin" (garbage) collection in Britain's second… Continue reading It’s National “Hug A Rat Catcher Day!”
She was a star in the Republican party, beginning with her speech (while she was the Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah) at the 2012 Republican National Convention. That year, she lost her first bid for Congress, by fewer than 1000 votes. She tried again, and was elected, two years later, and then again two years… Continue reading Grace and Love: Rest in Peace