Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Do Democrat Voters Really Believe This Stuff?

Dr. Bastiat
By Dr. Bastiat
Dr. Bastiat Member
I grew up on a hog farm in Ohio. I practice concierge medicine in Hilton Head, SC. I'm a bleeding heart conservative - I hate statism because it is heartless - it suppresses the potential of its subjects, it focuses on equal distribution of misery rather than maximizing potential for joy, and it tends to make liars and thieves of nearly everyone. I'm much more of an ideological conservative than a political Republican. I find the heterogeneity of the right stimulating, and the homoge… [more]
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47 COMMENTS
 

In a cynical ploy to capitalize on our current hysteria over the video of George Floyd’s death, Democratic Reps Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) announced the BREATHE Act last week. This proposed legislation seeks to radically transform America’s criminal justice system through a wide variety of actions:

  • Eliminate life sentences
  • Retroactively expunge drug crimes
  • Permanently shut down multiple federal agencies
  • Permanently close many prisons and detention centers
  • End gang databases
  • Establish pilot programs for universal basic income
  • Give voting rights to all illegal immigrants
  • Give voting rights to all incarcerated criminals
  • Give free lifetime education to all illegal immigrants
  • Give free lifetime education to all incarcerated criminals

This sweeping legislation brings up two groups of questions in my mind.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Mae Mae’s Cooking Up More Than Food for Your Belly

Clifford A. Brown
By Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown Contributor
Retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Colonel after 30 years of active and reserve assignments. M.A. Political Science, M.S. Strategic Studies, Army War College, JD. Served in 1st Armored Division in West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down, in 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea during the regime of Kim Il Sung, and commanded a logistics battalion in Iraq 2003-2004. Wide-ranging public policy interests. Occasional home brewer and infuser of alcohol spirits.
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6 COMMENTS
 

Mae Mae’s Happy Table brings home cooking and home-spun wisdom to YouTube. Mae Mae, with her husband Tuck on the camera, has recently added a weekly meal video, with each item explained and likely detailed in a separate video. This week, we got even more. Mae Mae had been visiting relatives and live-streamed a meal at a restaurant. This prompted Karens to attack and Mae Mae responded in the strength of the Lord. Never mind The Rock, do you smell what Mae Mae’s cooking?

Here is a delicious, homely meal of green beans from Tuck’s garden, rolls from the store, sweet tea (naturally), and a delicious pot roast.

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Guests: Heather Mac Donald & Shermichael Singleton
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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. End ‘Inclusiveness’ Training Now

Rodin
By Rodin
Rodin Member
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44 COMMENTS
 

The only systemic racism of which I am personally aware involves diversity and inclusiveness training. These are mandatory programs within the federal government (and many if not all state governments) and federal contractors. I am old enough to have experienced some of the initial training back in the 1970s and 1980s. Well-intentioned no doubt, but over time it has become the province of the Karenwaffe — hectoring people over immutable characteristics or, in the case of gender fluidity, the belief in immutable characteristics.

Two stories highlight how malignant this has become: the Seattle “whiteness” training, and the Army’s “inclusiveness” initiative. This is politics, not human rights. This is raw power, not reasoned education.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Bullying and ‘Social Justice’

Kephalithos
By Kephalithos
Kephalithos Member
I am a mustachioed bas-relief sculpture wearing some sort of bivalve as a hat. I used to spend my days (and nights) glowering at the n’er-do-wells who shuffled, handcuffed, into Fremont, Ohio’s jail. But the jail closed long ago, so I now glower at n'er-do-wells of a very different sort — the bureaucrats.   Just kidding.   I am, in fact, a newly minted Hillsdale graduate with hopes of becoming an architectural historian. (Post)modernity is my foe; the archaic, my muse… [more]
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48 COMMENTS
 

I was never bullied. Somehow, I survived thirteen years of public schooling without suffering that particular indignity — despite being, in some ways, a prime target. Over the years, I’ve developed a theory about why I managed to avoid the usual adolescent social drama, and I think it has some relevance to the current political situation.

My first realization: Bullying almost always occurs within cliques. Inter-clique bullying is rare, but intra-clique bullying is universal. At my school, the greatest victims and victimizers alike were the “popular” kids — the cheerleaders and athletes — who treated each other like animals while the rest of us looked on in disgust. Other cliques had similar (though less dramatic) dynamics. But I, curmudgeon that I am, made my radical indifference to the high-school social scene known to all, and it worked. I didn’t care about belonging, and that made me all but immune to the harms which proceed from the desire to fit in.

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Ricochet Podcast #503

Everything Is Broken

25 COMMENTS
Hosted by Bethany Mandel, James Lileks, Rob Long
With guests Heather Mac Donald & Shermichael Singleton

We’re back after our 4th of July break (well, most of us are back — we have Ricochet Editor Bethany Mandel sitting in for the vacationing Peter Robinson) and we’ve got another super-sized episode to make up for our time off. First up, the always great Heather Mac Donald, who speaks truth to protestors like nobody else. Then, meet Shermichael Singleton, former political strategist, a former Deputy Chief of Staff at HUD, and a former member of the GOP. Shermichael tells us why he’s left the latter two organizations and it should be required listening at the RNC. Luckily for us, Shermichael is a current Ricochet podcaster and if you have not listened to the Speak-Easy podcast he co-hosts with Antonia Okafor, we highly recommend it. Also, a bit on the Harper’s free speech letter, the triumphant return of the Lileks Post of The Week, and Bethany has a new Twitter friend.

Music from this week’s show: Everything Is Broken by Bob Dylan

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. “T”

dajoho
By dajoho
dajoho Member
"I'm a donkey on the edge..........." -Donkey from Shrek
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33 COMMENTS
 

“The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost

I love that quote. It rings of all the things we learn across life that are basic and true – finish what you started, just keep going, don’t quit, get up, endure, just keep swimming – just keep swimming. I’ve seen a fair amount of non-quitters in my time. I’ve seen some seriously tough soldiers; I know a guy who’d die before he’d quit. We all know lots of people say that but he’s the one who’d actually do it. He left the Army, became a missionary in the mountains of Burma and now he’s in the middle east saving kids in war zones. I saw guys swim underwater knowing they were going to pass out; no swimming for the side or trying to stay on the surface, they’d just go limp and start to sink. I have seen it across all walks of life well outside my military world too. Oftentimes one does not get a choice in what happens but they can choose to get through it. 10 July 1961 is a date that would affect my life forever despite not even being born. That was the day my sister arrived on the planet.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Supreme Court Says Oklahoma Indian ‘Reservations’ Are Real

Bucknelldad
By Bucknelldad
Bucknelldad Coolidge
Retired food company executive, but not really retired, currently based in the Philadelphia region. Former Secretary of the U.S. Senate, trade association executive, congressional chief of staff and press secretary, and a recovering newspaper editor. Worked for the Republican Party on some 35 Senate and House campaigns in 25 states over a 25 year period. Also served in the Bush 41 Administration at the Department of Transportation. Serving on bunches of non profit boards, and occasional guest on… [more]
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17 COMMENTS
 

Well, this is interesting. Especially if you live in eastern Oklahoma, including the state’s second-largest city, Tulsa.

While much of the media will focus on the two US Supreme Court decisions involving whether 1) Congress or 2) Manhattan prosecutors may access President Trump’s tax returns, I find the McGirt v. Oklahoma State Appeals Court decision of greater interest. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court’s four “liberals” in what read to me like a walk through history, except the parts he glossed over (like, the post-Civil War treaties in 1866, which were described in great detail in Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent).

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Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger #248

Being John Bolton

1 COMMENTS
Hosted by Jay Nordlinger
With guest John Bolton

John R. Bolton – who has served in every Republican administration from Reagan on – has kicked up a fuss with his memoir of the Trump White House: “The Room Where It Happened.” With Jay, he talks about the president, the world, and himself.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Dressed Right for a Street Fight

Doug Watt
By Doug Watt
Doug Watt Moderator
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31 COMMENTS
 

The hits just keep on coming for the Portland Police Bureau, and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. The usual whiners, their attorney’s, and Governor Kate Brown wants law enforcement in Portland to deescalate their response to violence, arson, and looting from the self-absorbed and entitled rioters in Portland.

From the Oregonian:

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LadyBrains #166

How to (Really) Study History

1 COMMENTS
Hosted by Bethany Mandel, Emily Zanotti

WWII historian Emily Zanotti teams up with homeschool mom (and lover of books) Bethany Mandel to lay out the best ways to study and learn from history—for adults and kids.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. New York’s Intelligence Suffers the Unintelligent

HerrForce1 Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member
By HerrForce1
HerrForce1 Coolidge
HerrForce1 is a member of Ricochet.
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21 COMMENTS
 

On June 30th New York’s city council voted to cut nearly $484 million from the NYPD’s annual $6 billion budget and shift funding to other agencies as well as youth and social services programming.

According to a USA Today summary, “the changes will cancel a nearly 1,200-person police recruiting class set for next month (though another class in October is scheduled to go forward), curtail overtime spending and shift school safety, crossing guards and homeless outreach away from the NYPD.” (emphasis mine)

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Not Cut Out to Be a Cop

Anthony L. DeWitt
By Anthony L. DeWitt
Anthony L. DeWitt Coolidge
I am a practicing attorney who works remotely.  I am a conservative and I believe the Second Amendment means what it says.
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9 COMMENTS
 

There are several YouTube channels that show police activity, and they’ve had a lot of content recently with the riots and such. I had often thought if I had not gone to law school that I might have enjoyed being a police officer, but I now know that would have been a terrible idea. I grew up in a military family and I served in the military. I have stark views of right and wrong; I believe, for example, that people who pull and point weapons at police officers earn every Darwin Award they get.

Sometimes, however, I just watch these interactions and I’m thinking “why aren’t you guys kicking the stuffing out of that creep” as they holler and scream for the camera while they are being detained. Watch the Portland riots or Baltimore, or really any of these BLM orchestrated fiascos; they’re out there. If you’ve never interacted with a police officer but feel privileged to criticize them, watch some video and learn the other side of the story.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. PTSD and the Coronavirus

Susan Quinn
By Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn Contributor
Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator
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56 COMMENTS
 

The other day I invited two friends over for a visit. We formed a woman’s group that usually meets monthly, but we hadn’t come together in months. All of us are seniors and they are both more cautious than I am regarding the coronavirus. So, I suggested we could sit either outside or inside (not having checked on the late morning temperature).

When they arrived, one friend (call her “E”) came to the front door and told me that my other friend (“R”) was walking around the side of the house to enter by the lanai side door. Clearly, she had decided she preferred to sit outside, in spite of the early morning Florida heat and humidity. We moved our chairs into three spots of shade we found and visited for 1.5 hours.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Slavery: The ‘Best’ Form of Socialism

Richard Fulmer
By Richard Fulmer
Richard Fulmer Member
Mechanical Engineer turned computer jockey.  My hobby is economics.
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18 COMMENTS
 

In an 1864 address, Abraham Lincoln argued that:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different but incompatible things, called by the same name liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Shameless Self-Promotion

Jason Obermeyer
By Jason Obermeyer
Jason Obermeyer Member
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5 COMMENTS
 

Today, the Scott Circuit Court (Kentucky) entered a Temporary Restraining Order against the Governor, preventing him from enforcing his Emergency Orders against my client, Evans Orchard and Cider Mill, LLC.

My Client was joined by the Commissioner of Agriculture and the Attorney General of Kentucky, who were represented by Joe Bilby, General Counsel for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Barry Dunn, Deputy Attorney General, and Chad Meredith, Solicitor General.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Quote of the Day: Arguing with the Other Side

Susan Quinn
By Susan Quinn
Susan Quinn Contributor
Retired consultant, avid biography reader and meditator
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35 COMMENTS
 

“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” — Edmund Burke

We can look at Burke’s statement through the lens of our own lives. I’ve met all kinds of people who either hide from those who disagree with them, or look for people to fight with. In many ways, both attitudes can be unhelpful because their underlying goals are not productive.

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. ACF PoMoCon #21: Dan Mahoney

Titus Techera
By Titus Techera
Titus Techera Contributor
Executive Director, American Cinema Foundation. Contributor: National Review, Law&Liberty, American Conservative, The Federalist, Modern Age, University Bookman.
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0 COMMENTS
 

So here’s the fifth interview in my series in remembrance of Peter Lawler — today, I talk with Dan Mahoney, America’s foremost authority on the thought of Solzhenitsyn, and the author of several other important books, especially on the greatest French thinkers and statesmen of the last two centuries, some of whom he’s translated. (You can find his books on his Amazon page.) We talk about American individualism, the troubles of democracy, and Peter’s Christian reflection on what it means to be a person — both individual and relational, both homeless in this world and at home, in community, with that homelessness…

https://soundcloud.com/user-77539699/acf-pomocon-21-dan-mahoney

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. When J.K. Rowling Got Cancelled for Tweeting Me

Bethany Mandel
By Bethany Mandel
Bethany Mandel Editor
Bethany Mandel is a part-time editor at Ricochet and columnist at the Jewish Daily Forward. She is a stay-at-home mother of four kids, six years old and younger. She also is a co-host of That Sethany Show and LadyBrains Podcast.
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25 COMMENTS
 

I had a definite fangirl moment yesterday when one of my favorite writers, J.K. Rowling, tweeted in response to my support for her position on free speech and defense of feminism:

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Another Dispatch from Seattle… You Add the Adjective

RushBabe49
By RushBabe49
RushBabe49 Thatcher
Born & raised in WA, work in aerospace industry. I play violin.  I'm Business Survey Chair of ISM-Western WA.
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34 COMMENTS
 

Two very interesting stories today about what goes on in the “Emerald City” by Elliott Bay. It seems that, while a subset of Seattle residents was occupying a portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood (CHOP, or if you prefer CHAZ), the City of Seattle was running some training for their employees. Specifically, their White employees, on how to move forward, and respond correctly in the “new normal” of the Black Lives Matter (and White lives don’t) City. Chris Rufo, of City Journal, through an Open Records request, reported on some of the handouts at those training sessions. Here are some quotes from the training materials. Emphasis mine.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Brooks Brothers Blues

Southern Pessimist
By Southern Pessimist
Southern Pessimist Member
I am a retired physician who recently moved from Charleston SC to Florida. I use a pseudonym because my son is also a physician with a prominent online presence who shares my name but would like to protect his reputation.
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39 COMMENTS
 

The men’s clothing company, established in 1818, filed for bankruptcy today. I have two short anecdotes about that company that create for me the nostalgic sweet pain that comes from life as you age.

When I was a teenager my Dad had a prescription to Esquire magazine that I perused each month. I found a few articles that held my interest because they were avant- guard but mostly I looked at the ads. It was the Vanity Fair for metrosexual males long before that concept took birth. When I was about fourteen I was captivated by a Brooks Brothers ad featuring a bright blue blazer; not a navy blue blazer, but bright blue. I had to have it. I cut out the ad and begged my mother to buy me a blazer that color. Amazingly enough, she found an inexpensive sport coat the same color from a K-mart or similar store and replaced the white plastic buttons that came on the coat with brass buttons and I was as happy as I had ever been. Unfortunately, this happened in the midst of my adolescent growth spurt or I would still have it today.

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. My Kid’s School Re-opening Plans

iWe Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member
By iWe
iWe Reagan
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46 COMMENTS
 

The prep school for #4 son (#2 and #3 graduated from there, attending High School after homeschooling) had a big webinar on all the things they are doing to re-open, including following all CDC suggestions: masks, distancing, the works. I could not watch much. Instead, I wrote the below to the headmaster:

Dear [Headmaster]

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Shor Thing

Richard Fulmer
By Richard Fulmer
Richard Fulmer Member
Mechanical Engineer turned computer jockey.  My hobby is economics.
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58 COMMENTS
 

I still can’t wrap my head around the “canceling” of David Shor. Shor is the progressive data analyst who tweeted a link to a research paper written by Omar Wasow of Princeton that showed that peaceful protest moves public opinion toward protesters, while rioting moves opinion in the opposite direction.

Progressphiles kicked Shor off its LISTSERV and released a statement that said, in part:

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Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Americans Are Hungry for the Fight

JennaStocker
By JennaStocker
JennaStocker Member
Left a DC research job to be a Marine Corps Officer. Now I’m back home where four rescue dogs have the run of the house. Wife of a USCG veteran. Baseball enthusiast & still believes in the virtue of First Principles.
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45 COMMENTS
 

Patton“Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.”
— General George S. Patton, May 1944 in a speech constructed by soldiers and recorded by historian Terry Brighton.

Americans do love to fight. And when we fight, we fight to win. Right now we are in a war for the survival of a nation. And right now we are in this fight without the overt support of our elected leaders and public figures. America’s enemies are my enemies. We are in this fight against people who would rather destroy a statue of Frederick Douglass than listen to his words that became a defining moment in the fight to end slavery. This is a blatant example of erasing history to cast it in the darkness of evil from which there can be no comparison. The present is the oppressive. The past is privilege.

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