The talking heads were a-buzz yesterday concerning a NYT opinion piece by David Litt: Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?  It is being heralded as the Left finally admitting they were wrong and opening the door to political detente.  I was anxious to read it.  I shouldn’t have been.  It’s nothing but arrogant condescension from start to finish.  The opening paragraph drips with it:

I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license.

That was the title of one of Garth Brooks’ greatest hits. It invokes our deepest fears and concerns about our faith and our worries about God’s presence in our world.

Tonight, at my Knights of Columbus meeting, there was a communal prayer where we mentioned people who needed help but also celebrated prayers that seemed to have been answered. I mentioned that I have been helping many friends and family with health issues lately, and have begun to worry that I have neglected my own health. I had extensive medical testing in the past week and it all came back very normal. Halleluia!

This Epstein list madness on the right is our version of the mask madness on the left. I think the left knows that and keeps stirring the pot and laughing at us. How do they stir the pot? By implying that Trump is hiding the list to protect himself. This snares those who hate Trump and those who want something to take down the Democrats they loathe. It is Russia, Russia on our side. 

• If there was anything to take down Trump, the Dems would have used it instead of making up stuff.

• If there was anything to take down fellow Dems, they destroyed it before leaving office.

• Epstein is dead, and he died far quicker than our justice system would have punished him. His punishment is in God’s hands, and the guilty living ones will soon join him in God’s judgment.

• Epstein didn’t need a “list.” A contact list of phone numbers proves nothing. Can anything Maxwell says be trusted? She is an immoral lowlife with her own agenda.

Trump and his team have higher priorities to tend to, and time is short. Dems will do anything to trim off his support and win enough seats to stop him. They have a history of trying to destroy anyone who works for him. Why is our side trying to destroy those willing to work in his administration?

Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself.

The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small.

So now we know precisely what Californians mean when they talk about needing illegal immigrants to cut their grass.

And, as that particular job is done by trafficked illegal immigrant children as slave labor, and as Californians really, really need their grass cut, they are not only right that Americans won’t do that work for the wages offered, but they seem willing to go to war for their right to cheap (but high quality, like all California produce) cannabis.  No wonder Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom are so upset. ICE is interfering with the profits of one of their most avid donors, one for whom the governor has done great favors in exchange for maximum campaign contributions. Will California secede over their “right” to have their grass cut by illegal immigrant child slave labor?  I wouldn’t be surprised. After all, Democrats were willing to go to war to preserve their right to have their cotton picked by slave labor, and that was a less profitable and sought-after commodity.

There’s a lot of buzz over in Old Blighty at the moment over the news that the French have agreed to “loan” the Bayeux Tapestry (which most scholars believe was embroidered somewhere near Cambridge, England) to the British Museum for display during the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. The conclusion as to its provenance is based on the particular style of embroidery and an analysis of the dyes and materials used to construct it, all of which point to the area around Cambridge, and “somewhere in the last half of the eleventh century” as its likely origin.

Of course–fiber maven pedant alert–the Bayeux Tapestry isn’t really a tapestry at all. A tapestry is a piece of cloth in which the “picture” is woven into the whole by the weft  (horizontal) threads, in what can be an incredibly complex exercise.  This is a portion of one of the world’s most famous tapestries (The Hunt of the Unicorn, c 1500):

What should never be hard is being a sceptic. I sometimes get confused about the difference between the two. Earlier this year, after Mrs. Pessimist’s annual physical and lab evaluation, she found that all of her blood work was suddenly and totally out of whack. We were both stunned. She was the picture of health and exercised three hours a day. Her cholesterol levels were now in the stratosphere, her fasting blood sugar should have had honey bees circling around her, and her renal function was barely above dialysis levels.  Her internist scheduled a cardiology appointment for her and we went together to that visit. The cardiologist was much older than I am, and my last name is Dirt. He ordered a slew of tests, some of which were fairly invasive. I became skeptical. After we left his office, I told my wife that maybe she should repeat the blood tests before she had any other tests.

DUH?……?