Volume 271 | No. 5

Necessary But Not Sufficient

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On Election Day, our finely-honed political instincts led us to expect that the Democrats would win the House of Representatives by a respectable margin. A slim win on the Senate side seemed possible, but a prolonged period of uncertainty seemed equally likely. So, caveat lector, i.e., reader beware. On Wednesday, obviously, we had to re-assess our forecasting skills. That sobering moment aside, the day seemed to have been scored by Louis Armstrong: “What a Wonderful World.” After waking up four thousand times in a row in a nation dumber than it was the day before, suddenly things were different. Obviously, nirvana is not yet here. …

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Ewing’s Last Stand

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To the Editor: For the safety, prosperity, and healthcare of your loved ones, Republicans must be elected to control our governments. Democrat leniency with criminals, defunding of police, sanctuary policies, etc. lead to avoidable rapes, murders, and other harm to millions of people. Republican enforcement of our criminal and immigration laws saves lives (e.g., a 75+ year low murder rate), many billions of dollars, and reduces the suffering that Democrat policies cause. Democrats don’t care about affordability when they control government. e.g., Biden’s 21 percent overall inflation drove prices sky-high; Obama’s and Biden’s (higher than today’s) gas prices; or that Obamacare increased, not lowered, healthcare …

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Running Out of Missiles Has Never Been So Profitable

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by Richard M. Balzano An inconvenient message recently landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk: the United States may be running short of the materials required to fight the many wars it has volunteered for. The warning came from the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force, joined by four-star commanders overseeing various portions of the globe. Prolonged operations against Iran, they warned, could leave American forces dangerously stretched elsewhere. Hegseth—the living embodiment of Axe body spray, gas station ED pills, and testosterone replacement therapy—claims reports of military depletion are overblown. This reassurance was accompanied by the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Everything …

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Half Full or Half Empty?

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by W.D. Ehrhart As far back as high school, and I’m now 78, I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy. Looking at the world that way means that I’m almost never disappointed. And every now and then, I get to be pleasantly surprised. One of those pleasant surprises—and a very pleasant surprise it was—came with the recent U.S. mid-term elections. Only a few weeks ago, I wrote an essay called “It’s Election Time Again” in which I warned people not to get too excited about some anticipated Big Blue Wave this time around. We’d been here before, most recently with Hillary Clinton in 2016, …

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Volume 271, No. 5

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Once again, thanks in large part to our small team of dedicated volunteers, thousands of copies of our conveniently-sized paper—small enough to pocket and pass on to another reader—are now available, for free, here in Portsmouth and environs. If you click here, our latest issue—the whole thing—in digital form, will appear more or less miraculously on the glassy face of whatever gadget into which you’re now peering.