A couple looking for a place to stay in cold weather in a strange city on Dec. 24……….. we see it portrayed everywhere. The governor (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
The Link Between Autocracy and Conservatism
10/20/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe link is authority, the principle of authority. Conservative writings are replete with the citing of authority as essential to order and order they consider (Continue Reading)
Make-up of SCOTUS along originalist lines
08/14/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentI note that only one signer of the Constitution was Roman Catholic. So do the Catholic originalists on the SCOTUS now contend that less than (Continue Reading)
Time to replace the top leadership of the Democratic Party
08/05/2022 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsToday on the Bulwark a piece was written by Charlie Sykes quoting Josh Barro. Neither Charlie nor Josh care much for leftie-talk and Josh put (Continue Reading)
Is this something we should encourage?
06/30/2022 Pat Barrett 1 Commentfully half of Republicans in the former Confederacy (plus Oklahoma) support secession. Where’s my old blue uniform? – recent poll
Guess what, Clarence.
06/25/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentBreaking news from SCOTUS: As Clarence Thomas was compiling his list of targets for the next session, all dealing with marriage and sexual behavior, Roberts (Continue Reading)
Have You Ever Noticed….. (warning: sex)
04/18/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentHave you ever noticed that the big issues in the GOP have to do in some way, no matter how great a stretch, with sex? (Continue Reading)
You gotta feel sorry for them…….
10/26/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThose poor guys who attacked the Capitol trying to overturn a free and fair election are just running into all sorts of problems. One dropped (Continue Reading)
The Trump Presidential Library
07/25/2021 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsThe Trump Presidential Library is not yet in the offing but it might be on the horizon and what will it look like?A long wall (Continue Reading)
How are those leeches workin’ for ya?
01/29/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe need to revamp our concepts of just desserts. For example, when Todd Aikens said, “Doctors tell me that women have a way of shutting (Continue Reading)
Up to here
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett 8 CommentsMaybe we felt bad about Trump supporters and Trump voters being ridiculed by the leading-lights of the major culture, esp for thinking they are the (Continue Reading)
Bring your bullhorn to Trader Joe’s
01/14/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAnti-maskers showed up at a Trader Joe’s to demand entry sans mask. The manager said no. They argued, saying they were there just to shop, (Continue Reading)
The Trumper in 1950s America
12/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis is the day after Christmas (went well incl. one grandson on leave from USMC with boot camp behind him) and it has been a (Continue Reading)
FDR finesses Pearl Harbor a la Trump
11/21/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe are often reminded that the Corona Virus is an assault on America, every bit as serious as 9/11. The death rate is climbing to (Continue Reading)
What is a conservative?
10/25/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentSomeone who wants to conserve things the way they are. Why does he want to do that? Because he is comfortable with that way and (Continue Reading)
Poll Worker
09/25/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI signed up to be a poll worker. Special to working in the East Valley of Maricopa County Arizona: I get to carry an AK47. (Continue Reading)
Two Kinds of Conservatism
09/24/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIgnoring for now the variety of ideologies, policies and crank ideas that make up the so-called conservative movement (Paleoconservatives. Reactionaries, Libertarians, Movement Conservatives, Old Guard, (Continue Reading)
RBG imitators
09/23/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentSeeing pictures of adorable young girls dressed as Ruth Bader Ginsburg made me think of the dangers of little girls wanting to be like RBG, (Continue Reading)
Do we have to hold together?
09/22/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI usually don’t combine Basics and Politics but a book just came out surveying empires across the world and suggesting the collaps of the Roman (Continue Reading)
What else could go wrong?
08/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentTicker tapes running out of tape recording the lies at the RNC, another murder of a Black man by the police followed by a deranged (Continue Reading)
It’s All So Vague
08/22/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAnne Applebaum writes in Twilight of Democracy of the feeling tone of her days working for the British Tory press – Tory here meaning conservative (Continue Reading)
I’ve got my answer!!
08/01/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor some years I’ve been cudgeling my brain and writing about the two tiers of what Americans call conservatism. There are the rank and file (Continue Reading)
Two paths when we are at loggerheads
07/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen you are loggerheads politically with someone there are two paths to take:you can try to persuade the other that you are right and vice (Continue Reading)