It’s the Henry & Harry Happy Hour this week, as CNN’s Harry Enten drops in with his irrepressible pizzazz to talk political data. First, the two discuss Harry’s findings on the dramatic swing of immigrant citizens’ growing hawkishness on illegal immigration. There’s some chatter on Trump’s abiding approval ratings and speculation on how events (from unrest in LA to elections in NY and NJ) will determine the best course for the parties. Then the gents consider the qualities that make a pro in their line of work. And, naturally, there’s some speculation on the upcoming Bills season from a fella who bleeds red, white, and royal blue.

Celebrate America250: Day 53

 

June 10, 1775. John Adams proposed to the Continental Congress that the colonial troops besieging the British regulars in Boston should be considered a Continental Army.

After the Massachusetts militia had driven the British regulars back into Boston on April 19, 1775, and inflicted heavy casualties, they proceeded to take over the British works around the city and extend them. Under the command of General Artemas Ward, the colonials seized the only land exits from Boston, the Boston Neck and the Charlestown Neck. More militia troops from surrounding towns and provinces joined them, leading Gen. Thomas Gage to write, “The rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be.” The British suffered from a lack of supplies since they were dependent on their control of the harbor and on importing supplies from Nova Scotia.

It’s June, Trump is back in office, so it must be Riot Season. On one side is the President, ICE, active-duty and reserve service members, and a majority of the American people. On the other side are elected Democrats in California, illegal aliens, and Antifa. It’s getting ugly out there.

Then we follow up on our coverage of Wall Street shenanigans of naked short selling and the dereliction of duty of government regulators.

Sly, Then Brian, and Now Gary England

 

For a long stretch, Seiling, Oklahoma’s Gary England was the most famous meteorologist in the world. If you saw the movie “Twister,” you saw him at work. You might have seen one of his four books or a program he was involved in. For weather issues, he was THE dude. Three Emmys to boot! And a marriage of 63 years.

If you lived in Oklahoma from 1971 until his retirement in 2013, Gary England was an understood part of your life, your meteorological north star. He was the country boy (and Navy man) with the Doppler and all the coolest new weather toys. He was the guy who talked like you and knew his stuff. He taught us all how to cope with tornadoes. (Lowest level, center of the house, and get down.) My favorite bit of advice I heard one night: “You kids, if you’re home alone,  put on your football helmet.” He was calm and reassuring.

Calendars are a Riot

 

Many years ago, when my sister-in-law had just joined our family, I got her a calendar for Christmas. As she opened it, under the tree, she exclaimed, “Oh, good, ours was just running out.” My brother, her husband, responded, “That always seems to happen this time of year.”

Paper calendars are not passé, of course, appearing on those social media surveys that say, “Give yourself a point if you ever used…” along with rotary phones and floppy discs. We still have a paper calendar on the fridge, but we’re pretty old school.

Many of us used to choose between pocket calendars: Month at a Glance or Week at a Glance. And there were, of course, the calendars that had just one day at a time. But they also had a Far Side cartoon or a Bible verse or something else to keep us tearing off the sheets to get to the next day.

MN man leads team to girls H.S. softball championship

 

Champlin Park High School won the Minnesota Class 4A high school girls softball state title last week, with a six-foot-tall, 17-year-old man who identifies as a girl pitching three dominant complete games in the state tourney.  What bravery!

Just another toothpick of insanity on Tim Walz’s bonfire of a state.  The Minnesota Star Tribune and the other state legacy media have completely hidden the trans-component of the story, but everyone in the softball community was well aware of the cheating.  Glad Outkick has been providing some coverage.  And in Minnesota, all you have to do to change your gender is amend your birth certificate–no surgery or drugs required.  You can keep your genitalia and hang out in the opposite sex’s locker room, all while dominating on the field.  Title IX no longer applies here.  You’ve come a long way, baby!

Celebrate America250: Day 54 Battle of Machias

 

June 11, 1775. The Battle of Machias was the first naval engagement of the Revolution and resulted in the local militia capturing the British sloop HMS Margaretta.

Gen. Gage needed lumber to build barracks for the increasing British regulars arriving in Boston, which was under siege by colonial militia. He commissioned a Loyalist merchant named Ichabod Jones to sail with two ships to the port of Machias, now in Maine but at that time part of the Massachusetts Bay Province. Gage also sent the Margaretta along under the command of Midshipman James Moore to protect the merchant ships and to recover the eighteen guns aboard the HMS Halifax, which a Machias pilot had intentionally run aground in the port the previous February.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Alisha Searcy interview Amanda McMullen, President & CEO of the New Bedford Whaling Museum (NBWM). Ms. McMullen explores NBWM’s remarkable mission, collections, and economic impact on the Southcoast of Massachusetts. She discusses NBWM’s historical roots in the 19th-century Yankee whaling industry that made New Bedford the wealthiest city in the world per capita. She highlights the museum’s iconic exhibits, including five full whale skeletons and the Lagoda, the world’s largest model whaling ship. Ms. McMullen touches on the whaling industry’s close relationship with Quaker abolitionists, the museum’s unparalleled collections of scrimshaw and whale ship logbooks, as well as Herman Melville and Moby-Dick’s literary legacy in New Bedford and beyond. In closing, she shares how NBWM reaches 140,000 people annually and contributes to the regional economy, while offering a preview of summer plans and exciting future projects under her leadership.

Celebrate America250: Introduction

 

I’ve been disappointed at the lack of celebration of the 250th anniversary of important events that led up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775 got only a small mention in the media, although several of our members made excellent posts. I was only five years old for the Bicentennial, but even so, I remember the great celebrations that went on in 1976.

I propose that we at Ricochet make a small contribution to remedy the situation. We’re already on Day 53 of the Revolutionary War, counting from April 19; so we’ve already missed some important events. But we can start from here. I will endeavor to make a daily post with a note on the historical events of that day 250 years ago. I suppose that there will be some slow news days on which little of note happened 250 years ago, so I may have to fill in with patriotic songs, poetry, sermons, as well as important events of the Revolutionary era and American history in other years. Some days may only be a sentence, while others may be an essay.

Americans have faced, unfortunately, a number of movements and moments in our history where free speech – especially of a political nature – has been challenged and even quashed. Power-wielding opponents of free expression and debate have often sought to prevent debates and discussions from happening, in order to protect their interests. In this week’s episode we explore a lesser-known example of this, in how slaveholders before the Civil War deliberately worked to deny free speech to both whites and African-Americans, enslaved and free.

Dr. Cara Rogers Stevens, our host this week, is joined by Dr. Jonathan W. White to discuss his recent article on the topic. You can reach Jonathan and find his books at the links below.

Greek Mythology and Judaism

 

I am listening to the incomparably wonderful Stephen Fry read his own brilliant and entertaining summary of all Greek myth and legend, Mythos. It is an experience both informative and deeply revealing about the nature – and failures – of pagan cultures.

For starters, I think we can all agree that myth satisfies the deepest human intellectual need to try to understand how we got here, and why, and what, really, life is all about. No thoughtful person is immune from these deep-seated questions. The answers we have available to us are impossible to prove, either way – which is why it comes down to faith. And even though it is fashionable to suggest that the Greeks didn’t really believe in all that silly Pantheon stuff, it still did not stop them from sacrificing children to the gods.

Trump Can Help Investors by Banning ‘Naked Shorts’

 

President Trump has issued more than 150 executive orders during the first 130 days of his second term (to May 29), covering everything from new tariffs and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens.”

Now one of the most important of these orders may be at hand: a bold measure to curb “naked” short selling (“naked shorts”), by which market makers sell short vastly more shares in a company than are available for sale.

It’s a highly questionable practice which, oddly, has flourished.

Is Atheism Dead?

 

At a time when secularism appears to dominate our culture, hatred for the Judeo-Christian ethic is advocated, and the belief in God is ridiculed, I came across an insightful and encouraging book by Eric Metaxas entitled Is Atheism Dead? Metaxas offers hope that the belief in God will be resurrected and that atheism is dying a slow death (if it’s not on its last legs). He is honest and direct about his intention in writing this book:

I can certainly hope and even expect to convince any rational person that atheism is no longer an option for those wishing to be regarded as intellectually honest.

You Load Sixteen Tons And What Do You Get?

 

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is a huge disappointment to those Republicans who want smaller government, less spending, and shrinking debt.  But apparently fiscal conservatism is dead.  Debt doesn’t matter.  From a fiscal perspective, Republicans are now just Democrats with different spending priorities.   Both now believe in big government.  The public Treasury is the black bag, spewing bribes to voters; maximizing chances of reelection.  It’s a sad commentary on the contemporary Republican Party that one has to look to Bill Clinton for the most recent example of fiscal sanity.

Root Causes

 

Doug Watt again provides insightful observations, this time about anti-Catholic bias in his post about the infamous and imbecilic Richmond Memo.

We can get some insight into the mindset of the memo’s author by reflecting on who is and who is not a perceived enemy. Why, for example, would one feel visceral hostility to orthodox Catholics (and almost certainly also against pro-Israel Jews) but not Hamas or Antifa?

Nullification

 

I have always seen sanctuary cities and states as manifestations of nullification: states or localities defying federal law. The original nullification had to do with tariffs, of which we are currently awash, but this is a different nullification issue. In Andrew Jackson’s administration, his own Vice President was a supporter of the nullification of federal tariff laws; the South was harmed by them, whereas the North perceived itself to benefit from them. Jackson famously said that he would personally lead 40,000 federal troops into South Carolina and hang the first man he caught promoting nullification, even though he was a Southerner and opposed the tariffs. The issue then was fraught, but a compromise was worked out that more or less satisfied all and kept the nation intact.

Venues that enforce sanctuary status are in overt violation of federal law. This has been the case for many years; in fact, many decades. Neither party, and certainly not both parties together, has reached anything approaching a compromise since Reagan was rolled by the Democrats after having accepted a deal in which amnesty for those already here would be exchanged for enforcement of the borders to prevent further illegal immigration. The amnesty was granted; the border enforcement never materialized. That has so poisoned the well that nothing has been possible since. Democrats want both illegal immigration ad libitum and citizenship for all.

The conflict between the practical and the ideal (Ramesh Ponnuru and the Big Beautiful Bill)

 

Forest Whispers shows the difference between realistic photography and expressive painting in a creative way.

The current spat between Trump and Elon takes me back to a central moment in my political formation. It had to do with George W. Bush’s proposed reform of Social Security. Like most policies, he had an outline of what to do and left the specifics to Congress, but it was an outline based on reason and decency. Needless to say, I was a big fan.   

At the Core of Infidelity

 

Today’s upside-down world has created and showcased a victim known as a “trans widow” – a woman who has to deal with the fact that her husband has “discovered himself.” His new self magically no longer involves his wife. This is somehow seen as legitimate because it is about a person “being true to himself.” In a nutshell, the husband has decided that he is simply more important than his marriage. His relationship takes a back seat to self.

One does not have to indulge in sexual confusion to act in this way. Most classically, this kind of selfishness was displayed by those who chose to be unfaithful to their spouses.

Conquered by Dependency

 

Suppose you were an evil genius who decided to create a permanent underclass out of a particular race. What provisions would you make to ensure that they remained permanently poor and outcast?

Here are some ideas. First, physically separate them from the rest of the population. Give them room to live, but make sure the land is not owned by individuals who could grow their net worth but by the collective, each tribe with its own sovereign government within the national government.

Massachusetts’s First American-Born Governor

 

William Phipps (or Phips) was the first Royal Governor of Massachusetts to be born in the state. He made his fortune in an improbable way, through successful treasure hunting. Controversial during his life in Colonial Massachusetts, he is largely forgotten today.

William Phipps and the Diving Bell Bubble: Sunken Treasure, Witches and the Route to Empire, by Leon Hopkins, tells his story. It is a biography of the man.

Phipps was born in 1651 on a frontier plantation in today’s Maine, on the Kennebec River. His father arrived in the New World during the Great Migration of 1620 to 1640 as an indentured servant. He became a gunsmith, moved to the frontier with his family and a partner, but died when Phipps was a child.

The Richmond Memo, Every Knee Will Bow

 

There appear to be two acceptable prejudices in the United States, acceptable by both the elite and the not-so-elite statists. Jews and Catholics have been targeted as a danger to the collectivists. There is a long history of this bigotry that began with ire aimed at the lower classes, and included the more refined Ivy League schools as well as higher education across the US.

This bigotry still exists today, and some in the FBI decided that they needed to act to protect the country from traditional Catholics.