Conservative Conversation + Podcasts

Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator

| May 7, 2020

9 COMMENTS

Just a few weeks ago, life would reveal itself as if I were playing a leading role in a technicolor movie. My movie would have surprises, delights and friends of all kinds. We’d all go out to colorful restaurants—Mexican, Asian, American—enjoying bright murals on the walls and savory dishes. My husband and I also had […]

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Testing… Testing…

By Midget Faded Rattlesnake

Midget Faded Rattlesnake

Bio: Other rattlesnakes make fun of the Midget Faded Rattlesnake because even though it's a rattlesnake, it's both midget and faded (how embarrassing). Mainly it puts up with this, because it's fairly even-tempered (for a rattlesnake), though it's surprisingly venomous for such an unprepossessing creature. The Midget Faded Rattlesnake hibernates from time to time, but is usually back within a few months. The M: The M stands for “Moderator”. For more info on what Moderators o… [more]

| April 5, 2020

10 COMMENTS

If I were a certain sort of woman, I’d blame it on The Patriarchy. If I were another sort, I’d blame it on A Culture Insufficiently Supportive of Life. (And, if I were a very specific sort, I’d do both.) Instead, it was the understandable result of The Powers That Be in our neighborhood hospital system not having leeway to make more fine-grained distinctions in a crisis. Which is how pregnant women, who aren’t permitted to receive any in-person prenatal care right now if they have the least little sniffle but no negative lab result for Covid-19, must go through a lengthy, frustrating, and high-exposure screening process to see if they qualify for Covid-19 testing, while the nonpregnant may simply waltz – or rather drive – through safer, low-exposure Covid-19 testing in about 15 minutes.

If you’re pregnant, though, the screening process might take hours, during which you hear, at each step along the way, that you may be ineligible for the lab anyhow – and that’s just your time spent at the walk-in screening center. It doesn’t count the hours (days) you may have spent trying to find a walk-in screening center that hasn’t run out of swabs for the day, and finding out whether you’re even eligible to visit it.

By Susan Quinn

Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator

| November 4, 2019

3 COMMENTS

To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone. Reba McEntire More

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Life and Death: A Balancing Act

By Susan Quinn

Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator

| June 17, 2019

34 COMMENTS

Death, or the specter of death, has been weighing on my life lately. It feels like a weight that I am able to carry, but one that is sometimes oppressive.

I first noticed it around D-Day. Normally I try to take these events in stride. After all, life and death are inextricable partners, no matter how difficult they may seem. But the thought of soldiers dying in huge numbers, and their leaders knowing that they would likely be sacrificing their lives, was a sad awareness that still lingers.

By Susan Quinn

Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator

| May 6, 2019

33 COMMENTS

After being in Indianapolis for two days for a wonderful seminar by Hillsdale College, I was going to write a post on the pluses and minuses of our trip. I have about twelve complaints about Delta Airlines in Atlanta just for our return trip, including their not asking local passengers to stay in their seats so the rest of us could try to make our connections; about sending us to a gate where the next flight to Orlando would be leaving, only to find out it was full; about giving us boarding passes that had red streaks that prevented the bar code being read the next morning at TSA. I’m not going to complain anymore than that, although there are lots of other annoying, stupid and inconvenient occurrences. (Did I say we were told to get to the airport at 5:30am for an 8:00am flight??

Okay, now I’ll stop—or I will completely destroy my premise for this post.

By Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Coolidge

Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Once I was out hunting on the frozen wastes when I slipped and fell into a crevasse. Later I was discovered by some scientists and thawed out. I then went to law school and became . . .

| April 2, 2019

13 COMMENTS

I was thinking about all the stuff everyone says these days about the loss of community over the last few decades, and about this article I had just read (tl;dr: even the coasty lefties at Vox agree, the Midwestern model works better for people), in which a millennial expresses gratitude for having found community, as exemplified by her neighborhood coffee shop where “everybody knows her name”, so to speak. I (very belatedly) started watching Cheers, curious to see what insights it might offer. I thought back to my own experiences as a busboy and waiter at a restaurant, where it was deeply important to the regulars to know and be known.

I wondered why I didn’t feel that way about any of the local coffee shops I’ve gone to.

By Melissa Praemonitus

Melissa Praemonitus

Seriously believe in the power of social connections and community as well as the importance of translating ideas into conservative action. Founded and managed the 100 piece mid-Michigan Youth Symphony from 2005 until 2008, then switched to political activism. A graduate of the Leadership Institute in D.C., I have assisted several political campaigns and am currently a publicist and marketing manager for two-time Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist MichaelP. Ramirez, National Review artist Roman G… [more]

| March 21, 2019

11 COMMENTS

Hollywood is a place of endless stories.

Part of what @davesussman does at Whiskey Politics is cover movie premieres when we get the chance, and the other night Dave and I met at the TLC Chinese 6 (formerly Grauman’s Chinese theater in Hollywood) for the red carpet premiere of Unplanned. The film opens with an emotionally shocking gut punch, then unravels the true story of Abby Johnson, the young director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas. UPDATE: Dave Sussman talks about the emotional impact of the movie on radio.

By tigerlily

tigerlily

| March 13, 2019

9 COMMENTS

Well, he’s at it again. Gavin Newsom, California’s newly elected Governor, has once more decided his moral sensibilities take precedence over the duly enacted law. Today, March 13, 2019, Governor Newsom, with a stroke of the pen, signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions. As per Article 5, Section 8 of the California […]

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Member Post

By Brian Watt

Brian Watt

Brian Watt is a humorist, writer, designer, and marketing professional.

| February 4, 2019

1 COMMENTS

After the horrific developments of the recently passed, expanded New York abortion bill signed into law and celebrated by <cough> Catholic Governor Andrew Cuomo and Virginia Governor Northam’s matter-of-fact infanticide remarks, this video with Dr. Taylor Marshall, his wife, Joy and Timothy Gordon and his wife, Steph is nothing less than a testament to life. […]

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Member Post

By Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Coolidge

Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Once I was out hunting on the frozen wastes when I slipped and fell into a crevasse. Later I was discovered by some scientists and thawed out. I then went to law school and became . . .

| January 19, 2019

16 COMMENTS

(1) Sit less. (2) Eat less. More

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Why I Don’t Have a Smart Phone: Five True Stories

By Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Coolidge

Unwoke Caveman Lawyer

Once I was out hunting on the frozen wastes when I slipped and fell into a crevasse. Later I was discovered by some scientists and thawed out. I then went to law school and became . . .

| January 14, 2019

37 COMMENTS

1. I was carpooling with some people on a six-hour trip (to Urbana), but before we could start, we had to get on the highway. Our GPS navigator took us right past the highway on-ramp we all knew, down some other road, then on a crazy four- or five-mile detour through other neighborhoods and odd side streets, finally coming full circle, back to the same on-ramp where we had started, which, this time, we took.

2. For the next six hours, an extroverted older guy (maybe in his sixties) sat next to a younger guy (early twenties) and tried to make polite conversation. Even though they didn’t know each other previously, the older guy was friendly and full of energy, and it was clear that he really valued human interaction. The younger guy sometimes engaged, but his talking and even his listening eventually trailed off, as he lost interest in the conversation and paid more and more attention to reading whatever was on his phone. Perhaps unintentionally, the younger guy’s visible boredom sent the message loud and clear that he wasn’t interested in talking to the older guy. I ended up feeling bad for the older guy, and spending a lot of the trip engaging with him, even though we were sitting in different rows and had to crane some to make it work.

By Susan McDaniel

For the better part of 30 years I was a Caretaker for my parents. For the last 13 years I took care of Mom 24/7. During that time, I wrote 2 blogs; Voice of a Patriot and The Determined Christian. Both blogs were removed from the internet last year. I am focused on writing cultural commentaries to provoke thought that may lead to positive action on the part of the reader. I write from a Christian/Conservative point of view, and look forward to productive conversation about many subjects. Find me… [more]

| September 17, 2018

27 COMMENTS

The last couple of months have been full of learning experiences and tests. The most recent test has to do with technology, and I am failing. After almost 10 years of using Windows Vista on a wonderful computer, my system crashed; dead as a doornail. So, after my initial meltdown I went on the journey […]

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Mus Ex Machina

By Henry Racette

Henry Racette

I'm a fifty-something father of six who divides his time between writing industrial automation software and opining cantankerously about the precariousness of western civilization and the enemies, many unwitting, arrayed against it. I'm fascinated by words, evolution, emergent behavior, the challenge of Islam, the absurdity of the trans movement, and saving the most successful nation and culture in history. I'm a climate empiricist: I'll believe in global warming when I see evidence of global… [more]

| September 4, 2018

19 COMMENTS

I recently spent $511 on long-overdue servicing for my ride-on mower. Then I got busy with work for a couple of months, spent a lot of time out of town, and finally got around to mowing this weekend. The mower didn’t start. I briefly entertained the idea of pushing it up onto the trailer and hauling it back to the service center, but decided to first disassemble it and see if I could figure out what was wrong. The problem seemed simple enough: the starter clicked but wouldn’t turn the engine. I’m not mechanically adept (my engineer clients worry whenever I pick up a screwdriver, and with good reason), but I thought it was worth a quick look since the machine had worked when I drove it into the garage just a few weeks before.

By CB Toder aka Mama Toad

CB Toder aka Mama Toad

A cradle Catholic, I live in Toad Hall in New Paltz, NY with my Toad Prince and six tadpoles. We homeschool and run our own business. We wage unceasing war on dust, shoddy thinking, and grumpiness.

| May 29, 2018

42 COMMENTS

Toad Hall is situated on a hill overlooking the beautiful Swartekill, or Black Creek, Swamp. Usually around Memorial Day, we have an influx of snapping turtles, and occasionally other types of turtles like painted turtles, coming up out of the swamp to lay their eggs in our warm flower beds and compost piles. Turtles, being reptiles, lay eggs that must be kept warm to incubate and hatch. My fluffy, sunny flower beds are apparently irresistible.

Yesterday, we saw several turtles in the yard. One mama got out on top of an old stone barn foundation, about ten feet high, and then fell. Fortunately she is a sturdy reptile and she landed in a flower bed, so she was fine. Here is a picture of her at the bottom of the wall. Her shell was probably about 15-18 inches or so:

By Susan McDaniel

| May 24, 2018

33 COMMENTS

(The following is a commencement address that I will never give, because I will never be invited to) Dear Graduates, More

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Alfie and the Failure of Medical Ethics

By Pradheep Shanker

Reagan

Pradheep Shanker

Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D. M.S., is a practicing Diagnostic Radiologist and Managing Partner of his radiology group based in Ohio. Outside of Medicine, he has been focused on promoting various efforts on public policy regarding health care and education on both the state and national levels. An active conservative commentator on social media, he has also spent time advocating for advances in health care and education across the globe, primarily in India and the Caribbean. His outside interest pri… [more]

| April 25, 2018

42 COMMENTS

The case of Alfie Evans once again brings to light the ethical and moral landmines that are promulgated as governments intrude further and further into the personal lives of its citizens.

Young Alfie suffers from a so-far unknown and undiagnosed congenital ailment that has left him in a near-vegetative state since late 2016. As such, the officials of the UK’s National Health Service have brought it upon themselves to hasten the death of the child … for his own well-being.

By Susan Quinn

Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator

| March 29, 2018

6 COMMENTS

“. . . one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.” –Rilke More

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By Susan McDaniel

| March 26, 2018

6 COMMENTS

The village I grew up in had a population of about 850 (not including livestock). It was a peaceful little place, nestled next to mountains, and far away from the hustle and bustle of any city. In winter, I played outside in the snow; in summer, I played outside on the lawn (or in the […]

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By Susan McDaniel

| March 17, 2018

8 COMMENTS

If your life is so pathetic you have to get drunk to have a good time; that is on you. Others shouldn’t have to pay the price for your problems. Get a life. Get over it. Realize that you are not the center of the universe. Get a designated driver. You can’t fix your life […]

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The Love of Dangerous Things

By Henry Racette