The Tricky Exceptions to the ‘A’ vs. ‘An’ Rule

 Word Smarts

"We’re taught in grade school to use “a” before words beginning with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels. But this simple grammar rule is more complex than it seems." 

"Some grammar rules are as straightforward as can be — at first glance, at least. We’re taught in grade school to use “a” before words beginning with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels. That means you could plant “a herb garden,” right? Then why does “an herb garden” sound slightly better to our American ears? It’s because this simple grade-school grammar rule is more complex than it seems.

What Are Indefinite Articles?

'The English language has two types of articles: definite and indefinite. They identify whether a noun is specific or generic. “The” is a definite article — the only definite article in English, in fact — and it indicates that we are referring to a particular noun. For example, “John bought the car” refers to one very specific car.

'“A” and “an” are indefinite articles, and they can refer to any person, place, or thing. For example, if “Tom will bake a cake,” it could be chocolate, vanilla, or lemon. We don’t know what Tom has planned, based on the language used.

'When To Use "A" or "An"

'If “the” is the only definite article in English, why are there two indefinite articles? The simple answer is that they’re used in different situations, namely in regard to the letters that follow in the next word. Use “a” if the word that follows begins with a consonant:

They’re adopting a cat.

Did you wear a raincoat?

I’m eating a strawberry pie.

'Alternatively, use “an” if the following word begins with a vowel:

She needs an eye exam.

I gave him an umbrella.

Can you get an avocado from the store? More...

 

Bill Gates throws in the towel on climate change

Don Surber Substack  

"Adaptation makes more sense than ditching gasoline cars for electric vehicles or replacing perfectly good nuclear power plants with windmills. Mankind adapts. It always has and always will."

In 1973, Meathead told Archie the world would freeze to death. In 2001, Al Gore told the media the world would go up in flames. Both Meathead and Al Gore were pushing the end of capitalism and the industrial age. Both men were wrong.

"The stupidity continues because there’s gold in them thar lies.

"But the mines are tapping out.

"Bill Gates caused a little stir by calling for a new approach to using the ecology to end capitalism. He wrote, “Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

"Gates is not a genius. He is stating the obvious. He also called for diverting climate change money to other liberal causes. He does this one step ahead of the law of con men eventually being caught.

"Climate change alarmism is dying because none of Al Gore’s over-the-top predictions came true. Polar bears are thriving. It still snows. People aren’t starving

"In fact, obesity rates in the world have tripled in the past 32 years, rising from 4.8% for men in 1990 to 14% in 2022. Among women it rose from 8.8% in 1990 to 18.5% in 2022.

"The world is not merely surviving, it is thriving. Carbon dioxide makes plants grow. It is a great time to be alive.

"His new approach is to stop making predictions. Think long-term. Replace Eve of Destruction with In the Year 2525. That way, no one can ever prove you wrong.

"By the way, both songs suck.

"Gates pulling back from climate alarmism because the failure of its predictions have discredited it. As Nobel physicist Richard Feynman said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

"The public knows this intuitively." . 

Cruz Calls for Judge Boasberg’s Impeachment for ‘Abusing His Power’

 Judge James Boasberg is the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011. He previously served on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and has been involved with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Recently, he has been in the news . . . 

Daily Signal

. . . “Arctic Frost was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus. Contrary to what [Jack] Smith has said publicly, this was clearly a fishing expedition,” the Iowa senator said at the press conference. 

"The subpoenas, sent to 34 separate people and 163 businesses, were given to the Senate Judiciary chairman through whistleblower disclosures.

“Judge James E. Boasberg, that radical leftist judge who is out of control, who has been issuing nationwide injunctions one after the other trying to stop President Trump from carrying out his mandate for the voters,” Cruz said, alluding to complaints over the federal judge’s handling of the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal aliens. " . . .

Judge Boasberg Keeps Getting Assigned Trump Cases. Lawmakers Want to Know Why. | House Judiciary Committee Republicans    Townhall

"Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has repeatedly been assigned cases to do with President Donald Trump's second term, as Townhall has been covering. Congress has taken notice, and the House last month passed a bill to rein in rogue judges like Boasberg and others. Questions still remain, though, and on Monday, Townhall obtained a letter from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Darrell Issa (R-CA), and Chip Roy (R-TX) regarding such concerns. The letter was sent to Angela D. Caesar, the Clerk of the Court for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

"As the letter begins in part by mentioning, the second Trump term has been hit with over 30 nationwide injunctions, with the term having started just over 100 days ago. 

" 'Many of these nationwide injunctions have raised concerns that Article III judges are exceeding their constitutional authority by replacing the policy decisions of the duly elected President with their own preferences, eroding public trust in the integrity and fairness of our judicial system. Many high-profile cases challenging policy decisions of the Trump Administration have been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (District Court)," the letter mentions early on, referencing a key concern as well as previewing how Congress may look to be doing more. "As Congress considers potential legislative reforms to address the abuse of nationwide injunctions and adjust the national distribution and local assignment of cases challenging Executive Branch policy decisions, we write to request information about the District Court’s assignment of cases."

"Among the cases that Boasberg has been assigned include not only the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) for deportations, but also to do with administration officials' handling of the Signal app. The letter notes that Boasberg was assigned such "high-profile" cases less than two weeks apart. He was also assigned cases to do with the Department of Government of Efficiency and federal funding for programs that violate civil rights laws. While the latter was dismissed, this was due to the plaintiff's request.

"The DC District Court’s local rules are used

 to assign cases, but again, questions still remain. As the rules mention:00000The Clerk shall create a separate assignment deck in the automated system for each subclassification of civil and criminal cases established by the Court . . . . The decks will be created by the Liaison to the Calendar and Case Management Committee or the Liaison’s backup . . . . The Calendar and Case Management Committee will, from time to time determine and indicate by order the frequency with which each judge’s name shall appear in each designated deck, to effectuate an even distribution of cases among the active judges.

"Effectively, this process is like 'drawing from a deck of cards, in which each judge is their own suit, with a number of cards equal to the number of cases they can draw before the case-assignment deck is reshuffled and reloaded,'" the letter went on to explain, still citing the rules. "Moreover, the likelihood of a case being assigned to a particular judge 'depends on how many cases the judge has already drawn from the deck and how many more cases the judge is required to draw that cycle.'" . . . More...

Do Californians Realize How Badly They’re Getting Ripped Off?

  Issues & Insights 

  "So, the question I have for every Californian is: “What is wrong with you? Why do you put up with this? Why are you content to let California be a one-party state?”  Most of your leaders should be in jail, not winning reelection."

"Let’s say you paid top dollar to go to a fancy, five-star restaurant, and the waiter served you warmed-over McDonald’s. Would you ever go back?

"Maybe, if you didn’t know any better.

"I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%.

"Over the course of the year, I will pay California $2,115 more than I’d been paying in Virginia, which is hardly a low-tax state (Virginia has the 14th highest income tax burden in the country). Not only are income taxes higher, California’s sales tax is 66% higher, and the gasoline tax is almost double Virginia’s. Those are just the ones I know about.

"So, I decided to look into what exactly I’m getting for the five-star cost of California’s government for basic services governments are expected to provide.

""It’s infuriating. California is ripping off its taxpayers big time. Consider:

"Crime: Despite having roughly the same number of police officers per capita, California has a “crime index” that is 47% higher than Virginia’s, and California has the sixth-highest rate of violent crime of all 50 states. Virginia has the 14th lowest.

" 'Education: If you’re a teacher, California is a great place to live. They are the highest paid in the nation and have the fourth-lowest student-to-teacher ratio. But if you’re a parent? Your children are getting screwed. Eighth-grade reading, math, science, and writing scores are significantly below the national average, while Virginia’s are significantly higher. Virginia ranks 7 in average SAT scores, and California comes in 23rd.

"Infrastructure: Despite having the nation’s highest gasoline taxes, California ranks in the bottom three when it comes to road conditions, with more than 25% of its roads in serious need of repair. In Virginia, just 9% of its roads are in poor shape.

"Opportunity: How much economic opportunity are California’s sky-high taxes buying? None. The state ranks dead last in U.S. News and World Report’s “opportunity” ranking. And it ranks 47th in the Rich States, Poor States ranking of economic outlook.

"It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%, the most people on welfare, and the most homeless people.

"It has the most progressive income tax yet is the fifth-worst state when it comes to income inequality. (Virginia comes in 29th on tax progressivity and 22nd on income inequality.)

"It is the least affordable state for housing. Virginia is 35th." . . More...

Cleaning up after Democrats in Dearborn

“DEARBORNISTAN” FBI averts potential ISIS (Islamic State) linked Halloween terrorist attack  Video

Douglas Murray stands with the state of Israel inside a country that has become very anti-Israel: Canada.   Video...   "Thousands rose to their feet for Douglas Murray’s blistering speech, and for good reason.

"He delivered a simple, unvarnished message to the Palestinian-Muslim leadership and to the world: the Jews in Israel will defend themselves, whether the Muslim-Arab world, the West, the UN Show more" . . .

  https://twitter.com/i/status/1982039473736085575

Townhall's Mamdani art gallery

 Townhall's Mamdani art gallery

Mamdani's old posts come back to haunt him; here's why   "New York City's Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has found himself in controversy over his past social media posts.

"The controversy was sparked by his old tweets and a recent visit to a Brooklyn mosque during the campaign trail.

:One of the resurfaced tweets shows him giving the middle finger to a Christopher Columbus statue in Astoria, demanding its removal." , , ,

New Yorkers Will Pay the Price for Mamdani’s Hubris 

. . ."Ask yourself: ‘Who would hire me if they had to pay $2,030 an hour?’ There are a few superstars worth millions a year, but most of us aren’t. Sadly, the same result applies to numbers less than “2,030,” including “30.” Good intentions notwithstanding, the sad consequence of the minimum wage is to render the most vulnerable amongst us unemployable." . . . 

Democrats are letting their crazies off-leash because they're afraid of them

D. Parker 

"It can be quite amusing and disturbing at the same time when someone who has lost the plot openly states that "... we are not the crazy ones. They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane."

"But there she was the other night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself, making that claim.  

Because it's the same as someone claiming he is patriotic – if you have to speak up and say it, no one believes you are.

"The good news is the violent left is coming apart at the seams; the bad news is that they are still coming after us, the pro-freedom right.

"The violent commie-fascist far left are supplanting the sane people in the party, because the latter are afraid of their crazies like everyone else.  

"Violent leftists are still full of rage against freedom, the country, and President Trump in particular.  

"It's to the point that left-leaning publications are openly warning them that they are going overboard and driving away normal, sane voters.

"But that's the problem for them in general, and because of this, they're openly splitting themselves apart in a leftist cold civil war, but the far-left end of the party is increasingly embracing threats and violence.  

"And these always have a chilling effect on some.  

"So, read what their saner voices are saying, and then listen to their new threats.  Because while they might be destroying themselves, leftists seem to always like to burn things down in the process when they don't get their way.

"For some reason, the violent commie-fascist far left isn't listening to their saner voices." . . .

Below: Victor Davis Hanson knows exactly where this is headed: The Fresh, New ‘Jacobin’ Faces of the Democrat party.

D. Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites.  Find him on Substack.

Obama supports the Brothas, but the Sistas....um...

 

Spanberger: I Won’t Work with Trump on Creating Jobs, ‘You Don’t Work with the Arsonist’  

Democrats are letting their crazies off-leash because they're afraid of them 

"It can be quite amusing and disturbing at the same time when someone who has lost the plot openly states that "... we are not the crazy ones. They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane."

" 'But there she was the other night, [teeny-bopper] Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself, making that claim. 

"Because it's the same as someone claiming he is patriotic – if you have to speak up and say it, no one believes you are.

"The good news is the violent left is coming apart at the seams; the bad news is that they are still coming after us, the pro-freedom right.

"The violent commie-fascist far left are supplanting the sane people in the party, because the latter are afraid of their crazies like everyone else. 

"Violent leftists are still full of rage against freedom, the country, and President Trump in particular. 

"It's to the point that left-leaning publications are openly warning them that they are going overboard and driving away normal, sane voters.  

"But that's the problem for them in general, and because of this, they're openly splitting themselves apart in a leftist cold civil war, but the far-left end of the party is increasingly embracing threats and violence.

"And these always have a chilling effect on some. " . . . More...

Didn't the worse-than-useless de Blasio teach New York anything?

 

Bill Kristol Endorses Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor Despite Him Being ‘Against Israel’ 

 “He’s a very impressive politician. I don’t know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He’s 33 years old, he’s never run anything. They’re good people who could work for him though, in New York,” Kristol said. “So, who knows? I don’t know.” . . .

Let Commie Mamdani Take New York City   . . . "Everything went downhill with Democratic Bill de Blasio. For whatever reason, New Yorkers welcomed a communist to take the mayor’s mansion. And yes, he was a communist, a sympathizer of Central American drug lords and dictators. What were New Yorkers thinking? Not much, apparently, as they willfully endured de Blasio’s unprecedented permission of crime, corruption, and, of course, communism. And when you allow collectivism of any kind, you see crime and corruption come together in one big conniption of crap.

"After Mayor Blah Blah, Gothamites seemed to have learned their lesson, and they elected a former police officer and state senator—and former Republican!—named Eric Adams. He put more emphasis on fighting crime, and he pushed back on some of the wokeness, although not enough. After all, he was still a Democrat when he served as mayor, and he still promoted a whole bunch of the Democrats’ major progressive talking points to stay in good graces with the generally liberal hoi polloi. While de Blasio was unkind and contemptible, Adams was personable but relatively incompetent. Of course, corruption issues dogged him, too, but New Yorkers were willing to give someone who was a little less crazy a better chance at governing the city.

"Still, Democratic politicians running (or rather, ruining) New York City inevitably unleashed a long subway of failures. They run on pragmatic platforms, but they will cower to all the progressive lobbying and donor groups really running city political machinations." . . . More...

‘Self-involved narcissist’: Douglas Murray blasts Mamdani over ‘fictitious’ aunt story

Comment to this video: "3,000 Americans burned alive or were crushed by thousands of pounds of bricks, Thousands of families torn apart, Thousands suffering TODAY from the health affects of the dust.

"Mamdani: A moment of silence for my aunt who I later admitted was my dads distant cousin who feared taking the subway afterwards. Who wasn't even here (Confirmed thanks to him giving the cousin's name and the media researching it).

"REAL New Yorkers know and better get out and vote."

When Foreign Policy Meets Rare Earth Reality: Did Xi Really Miscalculate?

 Rare Earth Exchanges

Video: What are rare earth minerals? AP explains   "U.S. President Donald Trump has been making headlines this week as he spends time in Asia signing trade deals with different nations in many areas, including rare earth minerals. So what are they? (AP Video by Mike Householder)."

Highlights

• China’s export restrictions on rare earths function as data-gathering tools, mapping global demand and downstream dependencies rather than representing a strategic miscalculation.
• Despite U.S. tariffs and stockpiling efforts, China maintains 90% control of magnet alloy production while gray-channel exports through Vietnam and Myanmar sustain trade flows.
• Western allies remain unlikely to join anti-China coalitions due to their dependence on Chinese rare earth intermediates for EVs, turbines, and robotics manufacturing.

---

In his Foreign Policy column(opens in a new tab), Carnegie Endowment fellow Alasdair Phillips-Robins argues that Chinese President Xi Jinping “may have miscalculated” by tightening export rules on rare earths, inadvertently handing U.S. President Donald Trump a strategic opening. The narrative is tidy, almost cinematic: Beijing overreaches, Washington rallies allies, and global markets reward American resilience. But the reality, when viewed through the hard geometry of the rare earth supply chain, is far less linear—and far more inconvenient for Western assumptions.

What's Inside" . . . More at the link above.

Trump says ‘we have a deal’ with China’s Xi Jinping — calls South Korea summit meeting ‘12’ out of 10

. . . "Many of the topics of discussion were known in advance after US and Chinese negotiators hammered out a “framework” understanding during discussions earlier this week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"Trump did not say whether the pending deal to transfer control of Tiktok to American owners was discussed or finalized during the talks, but did confirm that the status of Taiwan — which Xi longs to annex — was not discussed.

"The president added, however, that the leaders did talk about working together to end the Russia-Ukraine war." . . .

Tell me again: how Trump is a Nazi.

 Do people like this get their opinions from MSNBC/NOW?

New: West Midlands Police (WMP) has requested that supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv not be allowed to attend the Europa League game vs Aston Villa. Talks have taken place & remain ongoing among WMP & other relevant parties. Story @TheAthleticFC #AVFChttps://t.co/22Ey8dHgNo

— Jacob Tanswell (@J_Tanswell) October 16, 2025