Month: January 2016

Member Post

By Brandon Phelps

My wife and I raise a growing family of 4 kids in the place where they say you can't do it: California! I have an engineering job that pays the bills so that kind of helps.

| January 31, 2016

0 COMMENTS

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) wrote some pretty good short stories, and The Shadows is no exception. While he sometimes got a little flowery for my tastes, more often he just took it to a whole new level, and the difference between those things is sometimes miniscule. Here we have a story of a man absconded […]

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Member Post

By James Gawron

Thatcher

James Gawron

| January 31, 2016

6 COMMENTS

Fabulous new smartphone apps are out from Kantech. These two new apps work together and they are awesome! The Manifold of INTUITIONS app connects the smartphone’s camera and microphone to a sophisticated AI program called the POSSIBILITY synthesizer. When all of the raw data is processed the resulting file is called the ACTUALITY file. Version […]

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Member Post

By EB

Thatcher

Born and raised in Atlanta, graduated from Auburn, worked in North America and Europe as a financial software consultant, married an Englishman (now American), and now living in Florida.

| January 31, 2016

31 COMMENTS

of the posters and commenters here that continue to beat up Rubio over the Gang of 8 (and most of them only over the Gang of 8). Preview Open

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So, Should I Caucus?

By Belt

Member

Belt

| January 31, 2016

50 COMMENTS

The Iowa caucuses will come to their tumultuous conclusion Monday. I live in Sioux County, here in the northwest corner of the state, and from what I can tell, Cruz, Trump, and Carson are the candidates of choice here. Carson will probably do very well, as this area is both very conservative and very religious. The various precincts will have large public rooms or gyms assigned for meeting, and the Democrats will probably gather in someone’s basement. My pastor encouraged everyone this morning to participate in the caucus and make their voice heard. I do believe in fulfilling one’s civic duty, and my vote and advocacy (primarily against Trump) would have some non-zero value.

Problem is, I’m not a Republican.

I dropped out of the GOP about a decade ago, because they failed in their responsibilities too often. They simply didn’t seem to be worth supporting any longer, and the party pays only the barest lip service to my values and beliefs. To paraphrase Reagan, it’s not so much that I left the party, but they left me. I’m officially declared as “No Party” in the voter rolls. (Not that this has in the least dissuaded the GOP from sending me stacks of junk mail.)

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Member Post

By Beatrice Campbell

Inactive

Beatrice Campbell

Live in the South now but spent my formative years in NYC so I insist upon referring to myself as a native of the city.

| January 31, 2016

16 COMMENTS

Spoke with a fellow New Yawker today (GOP affiliated) who is hoping Sanders wins the Democrat nomination forcing Bloomberg to run on a third party ticket. She will vote for Mike. Why? Preview Open

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Live! It’s Television!

By EJHill

Podcaster

EJHill

Thirty years in television production. Living in a midwestern city in the productive custody of his wife and four children (Baby Girl, Marine, Future Tony Winner & Xerox). Unrelenting, unrepentant conservative. Needs a better temperament that equals his photoshop skills. Will probably die broke but believes more in freedom than the welfare state.

| January 31, 2016

32 COMMENTS

A glimpse inside the production truck during Fox’s presentation of *Grease.*

America seems to have a new fascination with live television. NBC has found ratings success by presenting Broadway musicals such as The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, and The Wiz.

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Member Post

By Canadian Cincinnatus

Member

Canadian Cincinnatus

| January 31, 2016

13 COMMENTS

Given our hypersensitive times, I first have to get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way. No, I am not making the claim that Donald Trump is morally equivalent to the violent psychopath who tried to take over the world. Furthermore, I would vigorously oppose anybody who made such an obscene claim. In a time […]

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Member Post

By drlorentz

Member

drlorentz

drlorentz is a member of Ricochet.

| January 31, 2016

80 COMMENTS

The following YouTube video was censored by German authorities, presumably because it is hate speech. Yet it is not at all hateful or extreme. It is a fearful 16 year old girl asking her government to offer her the protection from intimidation by some immigrants to Germany and to adopt a sensible immigration policy. She […]

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Member Post

By Luke

Thatcher

Luke

I was born in East LA in 1985. Never knowing a time where I didn't understand the "Luke, I am your father" Joke, maybe stunted my joke telling abilities. I'm just a guy with a real job, a newborn boy, and a baby girl, that looks out over the horizon and sees tyranny's clouds rolling in slowly. I play guitar for fun, I've been reading voraciously since I discovered non-fiction(Post K-12). Some of my favorite authors include: T. Sowell, R. Roberts, J. Goldberg, W. Voegeli, M. Steyn, G. Gutfeld,… [more]

| January 31, 2016

13 COMMENTS

This Soundcloud clip from the buck sexton show (guest host: charly Harary)serves as a preface for my piece which continues below. It’s about trump. But, I wanted to be as honest as I could about this to try and provide a small bit of elucidation. Preview Open

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Member Post

By True_wesT

Member

True_wesT

Living behind the green curtain.

| January 31, 2016

7 COMMENTS

This is what I have been muttering to myself lately about the election: President Trump Will Fail: Donald Trump is great at what he does. There is a good reason why his opponents have not gone after his career in business. The problem is that his skills don’t transfer. Trump is the head of his […]

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For President: Donald J. Trump

By Peter Robinson

Founder

Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson, former Reagan speechwriter, wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!" Peter Robinson is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and hosts the interview program "Uncommon Knowledge." Peter is a co-founder of Ricochet.

| January 31, 2016

60 COMMENTS

I’m not endorsing the man, obviously, but to provide a touch of balance here at Ricochet I thought I’d offer a few words from a man who does: the Canadian media mogul and author, Conrad Black.

In fact, Donald Trump is reasonably conservative …
In straight policy terms, consider his proposals to stop illegal immigration, his tax and health-care suggestions, and his general foreign-policy outline of defining the national interest and maintaining it (neither an over-extension such as George W. Bush attempted nor a bunk disguised as a “pivot,” as Obama has tried to effect). None of this is offensive to a reasonable conservative except the bravura about making Mexico pay for the wall along the border or the absurd and impractical call not to allow any Muslims into the country except accredited diplomats….

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My Iowa Poll Methodology

By Claire Berlinski, Ed.

Editor

Claire Berlinski, Ed.

Since earning her doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, Claire Berlinski has lived and worked in Britain, Thailand, Laos, Turkey and now France as a journalist, academic, editor, translator and freelance writer. She is the author of Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too and There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. She has also written two spy novels. Her writing has been published in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Th… [more]

| January 31, 2016

13 COMMENTS

Albia1 So, sort of feels like the 300,000-odd folks who are apt to caucus in Iowa tomorrow hold the fate of seven billion people in their hands, doesn’t it?

Come on, Iowa, don’t blow this!

I figure this is one of those rare days when it makes perfect sense for me to spend the whole day thinking about Iowan politics. After all, tomorrow we’ll know: Has our country formally gone insane? Or maybe everyone’s just been bored and yanking our chain? Is Ann Selzer, the best pollster in the world, going to emerge from this with her reputation unscathed?

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Member Post

By Lance

Inactive

Lance

| January 31, 2016

1 COMMENTS

I am a huge Matt Berninger fan and love to track down all the side efforts he does outside of his frontman work with The National. His distinct baritone voice serves as the perfect destination for the instrumentation’s long lead-in. Preview Open

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Member Post

By Jeff Ditzler

Member

Jeff Ditzler

I have a personal blog here, which has all my Ricochet stuff plus some things that are just of local interest or a little too edgy for Ricochet.

| January 31, 2016

6 COMMENTS

Noted rapper and pretentious liberal Macklemore recently released a track called “White Privilege”. You’d think such an exquisitely politically correct subject would please the social justice crowd, but since Macklemore is a white guy, and therefore cannot do anything right, his track is problematic. Fortunately, the kind souls at Everyday Feminism have a list of […]

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Immigration Idiots and Amnesty Maniacs

By Jon Gabriel, Ed.

King

Jon Gabriel, Ed.

Jon Gabriel (a.k.a., @ExJon on Twitter) is the Editor-in-Chief of Ricochet. He is a political writer and marketing consultant, contributing articles to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and USA Today among others. Until 2012, he served as Director of Marketing for the free-market Goldwater Institute, where he converted policy initiatives into compelling stories. In the private sector, Jon led marketing efforts for Cold Stone Creamery, Honeywell, and several technology companies. In his… [more]

| January 31, 2016

33 COMMENTS

Comedian George Carlin asked, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot … and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” Something similar is going on in the GOP’s immigration debate.

After a decade of failed — and often deceptive — Republican and Democratic efforts to enact comprehensive immigration reform, nearly everyone distrusts everyone else on the issue. A divide between the parties is expected, but more damaging is the intraparty battle within the GOP. Once President George W. Bush went all-in for an immigration package that proposed amnesty that wasn’t called amnesty and a fence that wasn’t actually a fence, conservatives understandably no longer assumed good faith in their party leaders.

Immigration and border enforcement have long been divisive issues, but there are a few areas of common ground. Nearly all voters believe we should expedite the processing of passports, and most believe that, say, a successful, America-loving businessman from Manila shouldn’t have to wait two decades to become a US citizen. But popular reforms like these have been consistently buried within 1,000-page omnibus bills that overhaul border security, the H1B visa program, and college financing for children of illegal immigrants.

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Member Post

By Boss Mongo

Member

Boss Mongo

Retired Army guy. Still trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up.

| January 31, 2016

14 COMMENTS

I’m shocked. I don’t like Trump. I like the effects he is generating. Tucker Carlson nails it. That’s why I’m shocked. I thought he was kind of a squish in a bow tie. Nothin’ but net on this one. Oh, and, being an article about Trump, be advised there’s a little bit of vulgarity in […]

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Member Post

By John H.

Member

John H.

I make a point of wearing T-shirts with nothing printed on them but if I did wear one with something printed on it, it would probably read “Be Kind To Plants By Not Eating Them.” There is no record of my ever having used the word “alas,” not conversationally anyway. I feel that freedom from the press is at least as important as freedom of the press. I like being able to say “Ankara” and “Manaus” in the same sentence (hotel clerks in both cities remembered me from visits months ea… [more]

| January 31, 2016

2 COMMENTS

Science fiction seems as if it should interest me, but it hardly does. Then again, science itself doesn’t much either. In any case, I do get some cool ideas now and then for stories, and here’s one. (If someone’s already thought of it, that is all right by me: so out of touch am I […]

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