The current inevitable post-election punditry has, perhaps also inevitably, gotten it mostly wrong. The Democratic defeat is attributed to President Barack Obama's elitist intellectual style, his tactical error in focusing on health care, his ultra-liberalism, his failure to fight for liberal goals, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's harshness, Senate Majority Leader...

Thankfully, this proposal from my friend, Whistler (short for Whistleblower) lacks the paranoid features of his last two communications ("A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy", May 5, 2010; and "The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy: Update", July 12, 2010)). Indeed he contends that his proposal should appeal to the left wing as...

A couple of months ago, I posted a piece called "A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?", sent to me by my friend "Whistler" (short for whistle-blower). I noted that I disagreed with it, but found it interesting. He has now sent me a note updating his allegations. Here it is.

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Provencal pizza is different from Italian-become-global pizza. The international delicacy is one source for Provencal pizza; direct from Italy across the border is another; but so is Provencal tradition. Pissaladiere, an onion/olive/anchovy tart from Nice (which until the 19th century had been Italian much longer than it had been French)...

The following was received from a friend who insisted on anonymity. He uses the nom de plume "Whistler", as in whistleblower. I do not agree with him but I believe his discussion to be of interest. The title is his.

A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy?

The evidence...

It is an unfortunate fact that "necessary" and "impossible" are not antonyms. When both adjectives apply to the same requirement, the result is disaster. This is embodied in a joke I have told before.

Interviewer: What would you do if you saw two trains three miles apart headed toward

This article appeared in the French newspaper Libération on November 12, 2009. I strongly disagree with most of it, but I think it expresses an important point of view. The translation is mine, corrected by the writer, Olivier Debouzy. Mr. Debouzy is a graduate of France's elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration,...

Bankruptcy happens. Default on paying the bills happens to people, to corporations, to cities and other governmental entities. It happens to sovereign states with weak economies in the less developed world, but in the developed world of Europe and North America it has happened only to the losers in world...

One frequent response to President Obama's political disaster in Massachusetts has been: "Well, he should have focused on jobs, jobs, jobs instead of health care and other extraneous efforts."

Maybe so. But. From a political point of view, the Democrats in 2010 and the president in 2012...