Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
My father, alev ha-shalom, had forgotten more about English — his third language — than most people will ever know. In addition to reading novels and non-fiction for pleasure, he would amuse himself reading dictionaries, grammar books, and stories about the English language. (In that last genre, my favorite was one
Continue readingPeople in Marin have been extremely upset about the decision Ken Salazar (Secy of the Interior) made to shut down Drakes Bay Oyster Co. The oyster company is a fixture in Point Reyes, and has been sustainably harvesting oysters for decades. It is insufficiently pure for ObamaWorld, though, so it’s
Continue readingAlthough constrained by the vapid, politically-correct curriculum coming out of California Department of Education, Marin County manages to have very good schools that produce students who are as well educated as is possible given the constraints of a union-controlled system. A distinguishing characteristic of most Marin County schools is the
Continue readingAs every Jew will tell you, in the traditional Jewish calendar Hanukkah is not big deal. It reached its present status because it happens to fall at the same time as Christmas. Jewish parents, therefore, turned it into a gift-giving holiday so that their children didn’t feel completely left out
Continue readingThe one good thing about bad news is that it sparks the creative juices in those who obsessively follow the political scene. No wonder, then, that the Watcher’s Council submissions this week were so good, and the winners so deserving of that honor: Council Winners *First place with 4 votes!
Continue readingMy number-one daughter just sent me a translation of the proposed new Egyptian Constitution. Comments? It certainly doesn’t seem to conform to press reports that I have read in regards thereto.
Continue readingI’m still reading scattered posts castigating Mitt Romney for being a bad candidate or running a bad campaign. I understand the need to analyze failures to identify remediable errors, but we’re making a huge mistake focusing on the end of the campaign, rather than the beginning. One could say the
Continue readingThe generation that experienced the attack on Pearl Harbor is fading away, which makes it all the more important that we remember Pearl Harbor. Regular readers know that we’ve always taken the attack on Pearl Harbor very seriously in my family, because it marked the beginning of Japan’s assault against
Continue reading(I find that I’m too thrifty not to get the most mileage out of my writing. People who get my newsletter — and if you don’t, you can fill out the subscription form to the right — will have seen this post already, but I couldn’t resist a slightly wider
Continue readingI don’t have the time (or, frankly, the inclination) to do full posts on each of these links, but they are all worthy contenders for your attention: John Steele Gordon compares Obama’s contempt for Congress with LBJ’s respect for that institution and willingness to collaborate with it to achieve his
Continue readingI have to admit that I’m enjoying have a newsletter. Blogging is like a bulletin board, while writing a newsletter feels like sending mail to a friend. It tickles different parts of my brain. I’m also trying to make the newsletter somewhat different from the blog. My goal is for
Continue readingUniversities have long been the incubators of climate change hysteria. They teach anthropogenic climate change there with the same certainty that they teach accounting principles. There is no room for debate. Students graduate as true believers. But what happens when the students discover that their teachers are hypocrites? They go
Continue readingObama’s Cairo speech first tipped me off to the fact that he’s probably a misogynist. He may have a couple of powerful women upon whom he relies (Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama), but his instinct is to avoid women and hide them away. The Cairo speech got my antenna up
Continue readingA lot of people who showed up at the polls this past November actually had very parochial concerns. They weren’t worried about the economy, or national security, or illegal immigration. Blacks were concerned with racial solidarity, unions were concerned about union strength (and to hell with the economy on which
Continue readingI grew up deathly afraid of guns. This wasn’t like my fear of snakes and spiders, which seems to be pretty atavistic. Instead, this was a learned fear: Guns kill people. Guns also kill innocent animals that should, instead, die nice clean deaths in factory farms, before being sliced up
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