InstaPunk Returns

   Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Had to read him in school. In the original French. And be prepared to give what my polymath French teacher (Naval officer, intelligence analyst, 6 radar patents, art connoisseur, kind but demanding pedagogue) called a “literary translation” when called upon. Meaning no stumbles, no poor word choices, no errors of any kind. He graded from 5 to 10, each instant decision delivered in a phrase that never varied: Silence = 5, “Just passing” = 6, “Fair” = 7, “Very Good” = 8, “Very Good Indeed” = 9, and “Top Drawer” = 10. Two slight stumbles for an 8, one for a 9, and none at all for a 10. His tone of voice reflected the grade from whisper on up to hearty congratulation. We did this every day, first thing before we discussed the material we’d been assigned. Why I still remember the French for “Man is a reed, the weakest in all nature; but he is a thinking reed.” Which I memorized just 56 years ago. Thank you Mr. miller, who also taught us that Pascal was ...

  The Escalator Compiled all this yesterday and today, initially because I was looking for Pelosi posts dating back to her first tenure as Speaker, which. I thought you might enjoy. But as I continued hunting during the speech I began to realize that I revisiting a truth far too few people seem to remember if they ever knew it. Our nation is cut in half as if by a monster meat cleaver, on the one side the representatives who stood and cheered and wept at a little boy dying of cancer getting a wish come true, and on the other side an equal number of representatives who sat on their hands and rolled their eyes at the same little boy. It was not Trump who wielded the cleaver. It was the subset of Americans represented by the Democrat representatives in Congress who sat on their hands for everything Trump had to say. Early surveys of the television audience that watched Trump’s speech indicate that more than 75 percent of viewers approved of what the President of the United States had ...