Dry leaves tumble in the breeze, Red and yellow and brown, And then slowly come to settle, A crunchy covering o’er the ground. The Equinox is upon us, Winter is just around the bend, Soon the weather guessers will tell Just what all this portends. But their forecasts might as well be dice, Their records […]

Here are two more amendments to chew on (you have only one more week to suffer through this). I repeat my earlier comment, none of this is definitive. Rather, these are the starting points for discussion. We need to fix a few points, and to fix them we first need to discuss them. The words […]

Author’s Note: As promised – the first of, I think, 4 amendments… – Arrias To Amend I have a good friend, a very smart good friend, who suggests that we as a nation are unlikely to amend the Constitution simply because too large a block of folks, people on the far left, no longer agree […]

Gentle Readers: This is the first in a series in which Arrias explores how we might make all this actually work in a way that is better for us all. Stand by as we barrel forward. – Vic “Shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread that it has earned…” You’ve all read […]

Eisenhower was Right (About more than the Military Industrial Complex) During World War II, US defense spending peaked at $83 billion per year (1945), which doesn’t seem like a lot these days. But in 1940, the US GDP was $101 billion and total spending of the Army and Navy for 1940 was about $2 billion. […]

Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the man who led the planning and execution of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 (among other things) was quoted as saying that “Errors in tactics can be corrected in the next battle, but errors in strategy can only be corrected in the next war.” His point, accurate then […]

I just finished an eight-day trip during which I drove a tad more than 2,700 miles and, for what it’s worth, here are some comments and thoughts on life in general and life in America… The trip was to attend the funeral Mass, and then the burial, of a dear friend, a Marine Colonel, named […]

The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… but that’s the way to bet. – Hugh Keough (and Damon Runyon) The attempted assassination of former President Trump has now had a chance to settle in just a bit, and in capitals around the world I would suspect that there are […]

Author’s Note: Very gray very humid (Weather Underground says it 93% humidity… – Arrias Another Storm The wood is still, not a breath of air, Thick clouds, dark gray on gray, Dawn is still an hour off When the first raindrop falls today. One lone songbird greets first light, In the distance a dog barks, […]

Author’s Note: I wrote this after reading some accounts from Ukrainians who are getting ground down – they want their independence but they also fear their country is being destroyed, literally and politically, and there seems to be no way to, in practical terms, split the difference. The public face is very patriotic but there […]