GUILAIN writes from France:

Reading my recent description here of French women and their terrible fashions, one could think that I had never come across a beautiful, feminine woman.

Actually I have. It happened during my first year in college (six years ago). There was a young woman who always paid great attention to makeup, grooming and clothes. Her outfits were modest, but truly elegant. Most of the time she wore pants (I wish she hadn’t), but a few times she exhibited delightful skirts. I admired particularly that she never, ever appeared with androgynous shoes, but always with nice women’s shoes. She stood out thanks to the way she dressed, but that’s not all.

She also was full of feminine grace which one could admire in her movements and smile. And she was a Catholic. One of the last thing she told me before she moved to Paris (four years ago) was: “I like France.“

This one sentence was arresting. Why was it important? (more…)

SINCE the election, citizens from 20 states have filed for secession on the White House website. The petitions from two states, Louisiana and Texas, are close to the number (25,000) needed for a formal response from the White House under a petition program started by Obama last year. These online petitions obviously do not mean much formally, but they are encouraging nevertheless. More and more people appear to be thinking and talking about partitioning America.

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JOHN writes:

This front page AP story about the trial of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is how our hometown newspaper, the Cortland Standard, chose to observe Veteran’s Day .

We are truly a disoriented society.  God have mercy.

To all of you who have served this nation, I salute you.  I am grateful for your service.

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THE indignities to which the Holy Eucharist has been subjected since Vatican II are enough to make one physically sick. They make me nauseous and slightly dizzy, as I would feel if I saw, say, a small child slapped across the face. But things are getting worse. As reported at Tradition in Action, some parishes have instituted self-serve Communion.

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IN A COMMENT at VFR,  Henry McCulloch writes:

JAMES P. writes:

You wrote,

“Men, it seems, have lost all of their instincts when it comes to keeping their wives away from other men. I have a hard time feeling sorry for Broadwell’s husband. What was he thinking when he allowed her to go off every day? Why did he marry someone so unsuited to loving him? I guess he too was bowled over by Broadwell’s decadent vitality and attractiveness. Also, he might have liked the fact that she was going to earn big bucks. Life in Washington, or wherever else they lived, is very expensive.”

I couldn’t agree more. To permit your woman to travel overseas in close proximity to a powerful other man is nuts. Of course, that’s exactly what happens whenever a married woman deploys. Thus, marrying a woman who serves overseas is nuts. (more…)

PAUL writes:

Petraeus is a victim of his own policy: encouraging men and women to serve privately, lengthily, and closely with one another. I can’t speak for a married man, as he is, but I can speak as a single man. If I had been placed in as private, lengthy, and close contact with a married woman as nice looking as the General’s paramour, I think it extremely unlikely I could have resisted the temptation. This is a major reason I oppose women (and analogously homosexuals) in the military.

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EXPATRIOT writes:

For someone like me living abroad, the most galling aspect of the recent election debacle is having to deal with foreigners who assume that any right-thinking American must have supported Obama, and that since yours truly is obviously a right-thinking person who happens to be an American (by birth anyway), congratulations are in order. The Japanese are so childishly naïve in these matters, mindlessly absorbing liberal media propaganda with the same credulous assiduity they would apply to college entrance examinations, that it’s pointless to get upset with them or even try to set them straight. It would be like trying to argue political and economic theory with a bright six-year old who had been taught to recite the Communist Manifesto by heart.

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  SEE Bartholomew's comments in the most recent entry about race and the election. He responds to Jesse Powell's claim that race is not as significant a factor as many have suggested. Bartholomew writes: Mr. Powell's argument amounts to simply one more Non-racial Theory of Racial Voting Patterns. How many times are people like Mr. Powell and, apparently the strategists at the Republican Party, going to commit the same logical fallacy? And how many more lifelong Democratic voters are we going to import before they stop? There is certainly a problem with "conflict among conservatives," namely with those conservatives who refuse to acknowledge racial realities.

MARY writes:

Conversion is like stepping across the chimney piece out of a Looking-Glass world, where everything is an absurd caricature, into the real world God made; and then begins the delicious process of exploring it limitlessly.

               —– Evelyn Waugh

Waugh’s words seem especially fitting this week of all weeks – they cut to the heart of the matter so beautifully even though they were written decades ago. I see many parallels to today’s America: our own “absurd caricature” in which no one’s happiness is supposed to be hindered in any way, a world of health and youth and endless pleasure, with limitless entertainment pumped right into our homes, where it is believed that suffering has no value and can and should be completely eliminated, with many good minds actively promoting this philosophy in our colleges and universities. A world where men can marry men, and women can marry women, and anyone with the aid of science can defy nature and produce children. (more…)

MR. TALL writes:

Like many others, I’ve not been feeling very chipper the past couple of days. My gloom was deepened yesterday morning when reading through some news headlines on The Daily Mail site. It occurred to me that in many contexts the only place you will now see the word ‘husband’ used is to identify a homosexual man’s ‘mate.’ A heterosexual woman’s mate is always a ‘partner.’ How very far we have progressed.

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  DON FEDER has a very good column on the election results. He argues that Romney's exclusive focus on jobs, his failure to fight aggressively on many other issues and his overall mushiness were decisive. He writes: [W]hen the campaign began in earnest after Labor Day, it was all jobs, jobs, jobs, deficits, deficits and deficits. (The high cost of energy got an honorable mention.) Romney was maniacal about staying on message. When Benghazi exploded in the president's face, the Romney camp outsourced the issue to talk radio. That's not leadership. Incredibly, exit polls showed more voters trusted Obama to handle a foreign crisis than Romney (by 57% to 50%). That's what comes from the GOP nominee's refusal to speak frankly about the fiasco. The whole piece is worth reading.

PROPH writes:

Behold Tammy Duckworth, Democratic Congresswoman elect for Illinois’ 8th district and a relatively comprehensive symbol of the sickness of the present age.

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  BRENDA writes: My husband Daniel wrote this out the morning after the election and shared it with me. Some of it forced a bit of wry laughter out of me, but in truth, it really is no laughing matter: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Banana Republic for which it has become, one nation, under siege, indefensible, with liberalism and social justice for all."

  COMMODITIES trader and blogger Dan Norcini makes some predictions. He writes: An energy rich nation, blessed by Providence with an abundance of oil, will see its federal lands shut off to any drilling. Any hope for a pipeline delivering Canadian crude to the lower 48 has now withered and died on the vine. China - enjoy that Canadian oil because we are not going to see any of it. The Dollar, while getting a respite today due to the fact that a near panic has seized upon the investor class, is destined to further weaken, resulting in higher prices for the basics of life such as food and energy. The fiscal cliff is drawing ever nearer with the very real possibility, nay strike that, probability, that the rating agencies will further downgrade the U.S. credit standing. ..... If you have any doubt as to what the markets believe the result of this election is, take a look at the following chart of the S&P 500, the broader measurement of the US stock market. The collapse in the equity markets tells us everything that we need to know about the election results as far as the impact on the economy goes.

ALL of Romney’s arguments about the economy did nothing to impress the black voters of Philadelphia, where the unemployment rate is about 11 percent. According to Philly.com, in some wards Obama received MORE THAN 99 PERCENT of the vote. There was as little disagreement or dissension as if, say, an armored truck had shown up in the neighborhood and started handing out cash.

In the Fourth Ward, Obama received 9,955 votes and Romney, a total of 55. Black resistance to homosexual “marriage,” which Obama supports, is non-existent in these places. Blacks don’t think when they vote. They follow. There are few black rebels and many, if not most, blacks have probably never met someone who dissented from the prevailing view. Ideologically, they are the most conformist people on earth. And yet their conformism is considered a virtue by liberals, who secretly think so little of blacks they are not surprised at their herd-like behavior. (more…)