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A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Andru Volinsky, a Democrat, announced this morning that he will seek the Democrat nomination to run for governor of New Hampshire against incumbent Chris Sununu, a Republican. New Hampshire Journal, run by friend of Ricochet @michaelgraham, naturally wanted to get a comment from the candidate, but noticed that Volinsky has blocked New Hampshire Journal’s twitter account.
Volinsky is engaging in unconstitutional “view point discrimination” according to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled unanimously this past July in upholding a lower court’s decision in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump:
This case requires us to consider whether a public official may, consistent with the First Amendment, “block” a person from his Twitter account in response to the political views that person has expressed, and whether the analysis differs because that public official is the President of the United States. The answer to both questions is no. …blocking of the plaintiffs based on their political speech constitutes viewpoint discrimination that violates the First Amendment.
This summer, Rep. Rashida Tlaib blocked Steven Crowder on Twitter. However, after Crowder’s attorney threatened the congresswoman with legal action Crowder’s account was unblocked.
Now, whether you agree with the court ruling or not (I don’t), we can all agree that everyone should be held to the same standard. Andru Volinsky must immediately unblock the NewHampJournal twitter account (and all other he has blocked). If he doesn’t, then he should be sued for violating the Constitution.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
This “whistleblower” complaint is pure garbage. (Read it here yourself.) Who in the hell is this person? We don’t know. We certainly didn’t vote for him for anything. What gives him the right to interfere in US foreign policy? And that’s what this is about. It is an attempt by a deep state swamp creature, with the aid of the fake news, Democrats, and of course NeverTrumpers, to prevent Donald Trump from performing the normal duties of the office of the president. These people still haven’t gotten over the fact that their preferred candidate lost in 2016. They have not accepted that Trump is president.
The leaker, not whistleblower, writes in his complaint that he did not listen to the July 25 phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy and had not seen the transcript. So he knows nothing about the call, at all. But he describes it as having happened “early in the morning,” a totally unnecessary description for a call that started at 9AM. Is that early? Not really. But describing it as “early in the morning” somehow makes it sound suspect, shady, suspicious. He then goes on to cite, for several pages, various news items about Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s tweets, and appearances by both Trump and Guiliani on Fox News. In other words, he has no knowledge of anything and is using publicly available information.
The so-called complaint also states that President Trump supposedly conveyed to Ukraine that he wouldn’t meet with Zelenskyy, who was sworn in as president on May 20, 2019, “until he saw how Zelenskyy ‘chose to act’ in office.” Seriously. This is considered whistleblowing? Who in the hell is this swamp monster who thinks he gets to control how the president — any president — of the United States acts with foreign leaders? It’s up to him whether a president meets with a new foreign counterpart sooner or later? He gets to decide what criteria the president uses to initiate a meeting?
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is testifying before Rep. Pencil Neck Schiff’s committee this morning. In his opening statement, Maguire said that the “complaint” did not meet the statutory requirements of the Whistleblower Protection Act because it was about the president, who is not in the intelligence community, and did not cover anything else (such as funding for intelligence gathering) that the DNI has authority over. Maguire nevertheless, sadly, stated he believed the “whistleblower” acted in good faith, and claimed, hilariously, that the intelligence community has honor and integrity and would never leak anything. Ho, ho, ho.
Maguire seemed to me to be an honorable man with integrity (he served in the Navy for more than 30 years) who’s unprepared to handle the deep corruption within our intelligence services. It seems to me that he should soon enjoy a well-deserved retirement. Trump needs a DNI who not only has personal honor and integrity, but is not blind to the scurrilous abuses of power that have gone on in the intelligence agencies.
We should start by exposing the leaker, firing him, and prosecuting him. He did not act in good faith and did not file a legitimate whistleblower complaint.
It would be a very dangerous precedent if any employee of the executive branch could abuse the Whistleblower Protection act to file bogus complaints based on publicly available information over policy disagreements.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
President Trump has declassified and released the transcript of his phone conversation in July with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy (See our post here.) The transcript is a complete nothingburger when it comes to the loony Left’s (and NeverTrumper’s) insane desire to remove President Trump from office. Trump did not, as had been alleged by partisan hacks in the Fake News, threaten to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless they gave him dirt on Biden. (Why this would have been an impeachable offense is not clear to me, in any case.)
Some people are suggesting that, like a Rorschach test, the transcript reveals different things to different people. Those who hate Trump will use it against him, those who love him will use it to defend him. Sure. Absolutely. This has been the case with many things over the past three years. But here’s the thing: Some people have a track record of being wrong, and other people have a track record of being proven right by the facts. The people who told you yesterday the transcript would show Trump had corruptly threatened Ukraine with withholding military aid in exchange for opposition research on a potential rival were wrong.
On the face of it, one would assume that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement last night that she had authorized “formal impeachment inquiries” was foolish and premature. But that’s only if one assumes her intent was to actually impeach Trump. It’s not. Despite her pronouncement, the Speaker has not so far scheduled any floor vote on the matter. Without a vote, there is no “formal” House investigation, no matter what she calls it. So what’s going on?
What did the transcript actually reveal? Trump has reason to believe Ukraine has Hillary Clinton’s email server with the 30,000+ deleted emails on it. Zelensky is appointing a new national prosecutor, this month, who is going to reopen the corruption probe into the company that was paying Hunter Biden $50,000 a month, presumably in exchange for favorable treatment by the Obama Administration.
And don’t forget: The Justice Department Inspector General report on FISA abuse is expected to be released to the public in the near future.
Another thought: Sadly, Ruth Ginsburg has had two bouts with cancer just since last November. It is quite possible that she may pass away before the 2020 election. While none of us wish her death, you can be sure the rabid pro-abortionists on the Left are already concocting whatever false accusations they will lob against any nominee of Trump’s.
The Democrat leadership does not actually want to impeach Trump in the House. First of all, they simply don’t have the votes, not even in their own majority caucus. Even if they could pass articles of impeachment, they know that the Senate would not convict. Even if the Senate did convict, what then? President Mike Pence? No, the Democrat leadership doesn’t want to impeach. They want to create a cloud of illegitimacy around Trump. That has been their strategy all along. The risk of impeachment is so high that they may be sabotaging their own chances of winning the election, which means they don’t believe any of the Democrats running can win anyway. (Also why they’re willing to stick a knife in the back of Joe Biden, supposedly the front-runner.)
The “whistleblower” frenzy of the past week has been about distracting from the actual crimes committed in 2016 by Hillary Clinton, her presidential campaign, and the Obama Administration (soon to be revealed in the IG report, presumably) and from the actual corruption of the Bidens. And the not-formal “formal” impeachment inquiries are to cast a pall on any potential Trump Supreme Court nomination. (“The Senate must not vote on a nomination made by a president under formal impeachment inquiry!”)
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
The Democrats and the NeverTrumpers are hoping that we’re all too stupid to notice that they’ve merely swapped out “Russia” for “Ukraine.” Once again, they’re weaponizing the Deep State against their political opponents. And once again they’re accusing President Trump of doing the exact thing they did.
In 2016 it was Hillary Clinton who colluded with foreign powers to interfere in the presidential election. The Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign, and used Russian lies, paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign, to try to sabotage the transition and even the administration of President Trump. Now the same people who tried to convince us that Trump had colluded with Russia are the ones salivating at the idea that Trump did something (no one knows, or cares to find out) with… Ukraine! Except that it was Joe Biden, as Vice President, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Ukraine fired the national prosecutor who was investigating the company at which Sleepy Joe’s son, Heroin Hunter, was being paid $50,000 a month. The elder Biden bragged on video about forcing the Ukrainians to do his bidding (using your money as leverage). It’s not speculation. It happened.
According to Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News, the Senate Intel Committee is seeking to interview the so-called “whistleblower,” who’s really just a leaker, who alleges that Trump might have said something or other to the Ukrainian president. If Isikoff’s name sounds familiar, it’s because Christopher Steele leaked the dirty “dossier” to him in September, 2016, and then the FBI used Isikoff’s Yahoo! News article to claim to the FISA court that they had more evidence than just Steele’s dossier. (You didn’t know the FBI uses Yahoo! News articles in order to spy on American citizens?)
The Committee has sent a letter to the leaker’s attorney, Andrew P. Bakaj. Bakaj is also affiliated with Whistleblower Aid, a “non-profit law firm” that was launched in 2017 with the aim of providing financial assistance to federal workers if they come forward as whistleblowers. According to Bakaj’s bio at Compass Rose Legal Group, he is a former CIA officer and “has Capitol Hill experience having served three United States Senators: Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Charles E. Schumer, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
So we have someone who is being paid by a former Clinton and Schumer aide in exchange for his “whistleblowing.” We have the reporter linked to Fusion GPS getting the scoop about the Senate Intel Committee.
And now we have Nancy Pelosi saying she’s going to launch impeachment efforts, even though no one has seen any evidence whatsoever that Trump did anything worthy of impeachment.
The Russia Hoax successfully created chaos for more than two years. But now we all know that it was garbage from the beginning. Who is going to be gullible enough to believe the Ukraine Hoax, after all that?
By the way, the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, is about to release his report on FISA abuse. You do realize that this is what this whole Ukraine thing is most likely about, right? The Democrats, the NeverTrumpers, and the media are trying to distract us.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Today, September 17, 2019, is the 232nd anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In honor of that great document, and our great nation, here is the text of the Constitution. The amazing thing is that it can be read in one sitting.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (more…)
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Democrat Valerie Plame released a very slickly produced but factually inaccurate video today in her bid for Congress in New Mexico’s open 3rd congressional district. In the video, Plame claims, “I was an undercover CIA operative… then Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff took revenge against my husband and leaked my identity. His Name? Scooter Libby. Guess who pardoned him last year?” A picture of President Trump is then displayed in the video.
Plame is lying. Scooter Libby did not leak her name. Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell, leaked her name. This is not a theory. Armitage admitted that he leaked her name. This has been public knowledge since at least September 8, 2006, when the Washington Post published an article titled, “Armitage Says He Was Source of CIA Leak.”
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said yesterday that he believes he was the initial source for a 2003 newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that disclosed the CIA’s previously secret employment of Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent critic of the U.S. war in Iraq. … Armitage also acknowledged making a similar offhand remark about Plame earlier in 2003 to Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the decision to invade Iraq.
Both Robert Novak and Bob Woodward testified under oath that Armitage, not Libby, was their source. Woodward even had an audio tape, which was played in court, of Armitage telling him about Plame. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel appointed to investigate the leak, discovered that Armitage was the source almost immediately after starting his investigation at the end of 2003. However, he never charged Armitage with divulging classified information and instead engaged in a witch hunt against Dick Cheney, ultimately charging Libby, not with leaking Plame’s name, but with lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters.
If Fitzgerald’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is one of James Comey’s “personal attorneys.” Comey, the disgraced former FBI director, leaked classified information to Fitzgerald and others after he was fired by President Trump in 2017.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) — U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from a probe into the leak of a CIA officer’s name, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
James Comey, deputy attorney general, said at a Washington news conference that he would now be the “acting attorney general for this case.” Comey said Ashcroft had suggested the appointment of a special counsel for the case. To fill that position, Comey choose U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald.
Plame is betting that New Mexico Democrats in the 3rd District are too dumb to know how to use Wikipedia. Let’s hope she’s as wrong about that as she is about basic historical facts.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Endgame was released about ten years ago (er, in April), but I didn’t watch it until this week. I don’t really see movies in theaters anymore, partly because the nearest theater is a 45-minute drive from my house. Also, it’s so damn expensive for tickets, and I can’t pause the big screen when I need to go to the bathroom. Anyway, I don’t think it was that great of a movie.
Obviously, this post is going to have some spoilers in it, but if you haven’t seen the movie yet, then tough. I mean, it did come out like ten years ago.
OK, so, there was time travel. Time travel is stupid. It never makes sense. The screenwriters tried to get around this by making jokes about Back to the Future. All that did was confuse things even more. I thought that Smart Hulk said you can’t change the past because you’re already your past self’s future. But then the Ancient One told Bruce Banner that if he changed the past it would create alternate realities. So Bruce’s brilliant plan was to return the stones back to the exact moments they’d been taken out of the timeline so that the timeline would stay the same. But then 2012-Loki stole the Space Stone (the “Tesseract”) due to 2023 Tony Stark losing hold of it when Angry Hulk knocked him over. And that definitely didn’t happen in the old timeline, obviously.
So then Tony and Captain America time-jumped from 2012 to 1970 (by the way, without any explanation of how they could do that without the platform thing that they used in 2023 to enter the quantum realm), and stole the Tesseract from Tony’s father Howard (and maybe Loki was sitting on a bench in the background when Tony hugged Howard). So that created a third reality, right? Or no? Because Cap returned the Tesseract to 1970 later. But there’s still the 2012 divergence when Loki escapes.
Speaking of Steve Rogers, after returning the stones throughout time (and space) he goes and marries Peggy Carter in what looks like the 1950s or early ’60s. So that really is a third reality, since in the original timeline Peggy married someone else and had children, believing that Steve was dead. (In one of the scenes from an earlier movie when Cap visits Peggy in a nursing home, she has a picture on her bedside table of a family.)
So, anyway, the time travel stuff is a mess. Oh, yeah, 2023-Nebula kills 2014-Nebula. How does that work? There’s a fourth reality. Oh! And Iron Man dusts 2014-Thanos along with his entire army. So there’s a fifth reality (a good one; Thanos never dusts half of all living beings in that timeline). Oh, I forgot that 2023-Cap fought 2012-Cap and told him that Bucky was still alive. That had to have opened up a sixth reality.
But enough about the time travel. Here are some of my other gripes:
What happened to 2014-Gamora? She switches sides with the help of 2023-Nebula, Starlord kisses her, and she kicks him in the nuts. That’s it. We don’t see her again. She’s out there, somewhere, in 2023, having time jumped past her own death. (A seventh reality/timeline, by the way — 2018-Gamora is killed by Thanos in order to get the Soul Stone.) She’s not present with the other Guardians at Tony’s funeral.
Speaking of Tony’s funeral, who was that random guy standing by himself?
OK: Captain Marvel. Uh. Dud. I did not see that movie, but boy does Brie Larson suck the energy out of every scene she’s in. She has anti-charisma. She’s the anti-Robert Downey Jr. Anyway, apparently she’s superpowered and whatnot. She can fly and travel between planets in outer space without a spaceship. So, you know, she might be useful to take along on the time-travel mission. Nah. Let’s not even bother to contact her before we risk the very fabric of reality. It’s not like there was any great pressing need to go now. They’d already killed Thanos. They could have waited for her to come back to Earth.
In fact, she did show up, totally out of the blue, for the final battle. And, if you follow the timeline, you’ll realize that the final battle in 2023 is like, 20 minutes after they start their time travel mission. They’re only “gone” for like 10 seconds! They all leave 2023 at the same time to various times and then no matter how long it takes them to complete their mission, they all come back at the same time. So, for instance, Ant-Man comes back earlier with the Mind Stone (Loki’s scepter), and Tony and Cap take an extra day or two to recover the Space Stone, and they all return at the same moment, right after they all left initially. Again, like ten seconds later. They come back and they’re sad that Natasha sacrificed herself on Vormir, and then Smart Hulk brings back all the dusted people from 2018, but to 2023 not retroactively to 2018, because they don’t want to create an alternate reality (because they’re super concerned about that for some reason all of a sudden). And then 2014 Gamora brings Thanos through the time hole and the battle begins. Maybe it’s more than 20 minutes. At the very least, it’s the same day. Boom! Captain Marvel is there. Why didn’t they wait for her in the first place?
OK, so then there’s the big battle. I have no idea why Howard the Duck is there, but I guess he has to be to fulfill Dr. Strange’s prophecy. (????) Whatever, that’s just an Easter (Duck) Egg. Apparently Ant-Man can now be giant man for extended periods of time without falling asleep? Cool.
One of the most annoying scenes in Avengers: Infinity War was when the alien woman told Scarlet Witch that she would die alone and then Black Widow and Black Warrior Lady show up and say “She’s not alone!” Ooooh. Womyn power. This was described by one of the movie’s executive producers in a bonus feature about the Battle of Wakanda as “one of the most powerful moments in the movie.” Well, it wasn’t. It was stupid. So they decided to double-down on stupid in Endgame when Spider-Man hands off the gauntlet to Captain Marvel and says, “I don’t know how you’re going to get through them” (the alien army), and then all the women show up and say, “don’t worry, she’s not alone.” So stupid. So forced, so fake, so agenda-driven. Like, absolutely dumb level.
What else? Thor’s like, oh, I can’t be king anymore because I’m a drunk. I know, I’ll make Valkyrie the Queen, since it’s not like she’s a drunk or anything. 🤦♂️
Why is Peter Parker going back to high school? He just missed the past five years. Was his buddy also dusted that’s why he’s also still in high school? (I guess these questions are probably answered in Far From Home, but I haven’t seen it yet.)
Was Wong dusted? Because the Avengers probably could have used some magicians on their mission, too. But they don’t seem to have had any association with them 2018-2023.
Tony solves time travel in about 15 minutes. Gee, that’s convenient. 🙄
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
In his Impromptus column at National Review today, Jay Nordlinger closes with a photo, taken by my wife, of the bee balm and daylilies in our front yard.
I saw a photo the other day and thought — and said — “Magazine-worthy.” It was snapped by our Molly Powell — National Review’s Molly Powell — who lives in New Hampshire. With her permission, I share it with you. A bit of New Hampshire on a late afternoon, with bee balm and daylilies gracing the stage:Afternoon in New Hampshire (beebalm and daylilies), by Molly Powell
I can’t take too much credit for the flowers, that’s outside my purview, to quote the God-Mueller. I just dig holes where I’m told to so that Molly can plant the flowers. (It’s the granite state, after all, so there’s a fair amount of rock-removal required when digging holes.)
However, I do claim credit for the backyard and the table in the photo below.
Afternoon in New Hampshire (light refreshments), by Max Ledoux
I cut the grass, and I made the table. Oh, and I took the picture. It’s not the best table ever made, but it’s the best table I’ve made. I used leftover boards from our barn, which we recently renovated. The barn is what you might call “George Washington’s Barn.” It was originally built around the same time as our house, the original cape part of which was built in 1791. (That’s when George Washington was president, in fact!) The barn’s been rebuilt so many times over the years, it would be hard to say whether there are many original pieces left. (As the saying goes: this is George Washington’s ax; the handle’s been replaced, and so has the head, but it’s his original ax.)
Show us your one most magazine-worthy photo in the comments below. Make sure to display them in the “large” size so that we can all enjoy them without peering.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
President Trump oversaw a signing ceremony Friday in the Oval Office between Guatemala and the United States for a “safe third country” agreement on asylum seekers. The New York Post reports:
The “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in that country instead of at the southern border [of the United States]. … The two countries had been negotiating an agreement for months, and Trump threatened Wednesday to place tariffs on Guatemala if it didn’t cut a deal.
The agreement, signed by Guatemalan Minister of Interior and Home Affairs Enrique Degenhart and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, means that Guatemalans who want asylum in the United States must apply for asylum while still in Guatemala. In addition, foreign nationals who pass through Guatemala must seek asylum in Guatemala, not in the United States. This is significant because it is not possible to get to the United States by land from Central and South America without passing through Guatemala. Practically speaking, as I understand it, the agreement means that when U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agents apprehend aliens crossing the border illegally who then make claims of asylum, the aliens can be deported to Guatemala.
Last fiscal year (2018), CBP apprehended 116,808 illegal aliens from Guatemala, 77,128 illegal aliens from Honduras, and 31,636 illegal aliens from El Salvador. There were 404,142 apprehensions of illegal aliens in total (see page 34 of linked PDF).
Even the liberal PolitiFact had to admit last year that President Trump’s statement that there’d been a “a 1,700 percent increase in asylum claims over the last 10 years” was “mostly true” (i.e. true).
Also Friday, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision that had blocked President Trump from using $2.5 billion in military funds for building a wall along the southern border.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
I’m watching the Mueller testimony this morning (live feed embedded below). I do not think it’s going well for the Democrats, the Media, and NeverTrumpers. Here are some highlights (lowlights?) so far:
Mueller’s answers are halting and doddering. He appears confused at many times and not familiar with many aspects of the report. For instance, Mueller stated that he was not familiar with Fusion GPS and couldn’t recall whether he had met with Rod Rosenstein in May of 2017.
Rep. Ratcliffe forced Mueller to admit that the “not exonerated” standard does not exist, is not authorized by any DOJ policy, and has never been applied to anyone other than Trump. Mueller’s defense in this regard was that Trump is “unique.” I.E. Orange Man Bad.
Rep Gohmert asked Mueller who wrote the statement that Mueller read in his infamous press conference at the end of May. Mueller replied he wasn’t going to get into that. Gohmert replied, “that’s what I thought. You didn’t write it.” Mueller made no reply (I.E., he did not dispute that he did not write his own statement.) Gohmert then cited numerous news articles that have identified Mueller and James Comey as friends and asked Mueller if he and Comey are friends. Mueller replied that they were work colleagues who started at the DOJ at the same time. Gohmert replied to the effect, “That’s not my question. Were you friends? You can work together and not be friends. You were friends.” To which Mueller admitted, “We were friends.”
The Democrats keep on breathlessly discussing the report’s claims about the ways that Trump supposedly obstructed justice, such as that he called White House Counsel Don McGahn on a weekend to discuss Mueller. The fact that Trump called McGahn at home on a Saturday is apparently quite important. In addition, several Democrats have cited the Report’s finding that Trump tweeted his displeasure about the investigation.
Even Chris Wallace of Fox News, who is a registered Democrat who has often bought in to the Russia Collusion Hoax, thinks that the testimony is a “disaster.”
“This has been a disaster for the Democrats and a disaster for the reputation of Robert Mueller.” Chris Wallace @FoxNews
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
The national media, both the liberal and squishy NeverTrump varieties, are all aghast that President Trump tweeted recently that if certain unnamed Progressive Democrat Congresswomen dislike America so much then why don’t they leave. And then he said they should come back and tell us how to fix America, if they’re such experts. But most people are ignoring that part of the tweet because it doesn’t match their prejudices. No, instead, all we hear about is how racist Donald Trump. Racist, racist, racist. Blah, blah, blah.
I’m an immigrant to my small, rural town in New Hampshire. That is, I was born about 90 miles away, in Maine. (This is just how things are in New England. I’ll always be “from away.”) A couple of years ago I attended a hearing held by the town zoning board on whether to allow a self-storage facility to be built on a property previously zoned residential. The particulars aren’t important, but I spoke out against the special exception to the zoning ordinance that the property owner was seeking. During a break, the property owner’s brother-in-law approached me and loudly informed me that I “should wait until [I’d] lived here longer before opening [my] [expletive] mouth.”
I replied that I was a taxpayer and I had an equal right to voice my opinion, and perhaps he’d like to get bent. The chairman of the board asked if we wouldn’t mind stopping yelling at each other so he could restart the meeting.
My profane interlocutor and I fumed but sat down. Now we smile and wave at each other whenever we meet around town. This is, I think, how normal people react to such matters. He was mad that I was new to town and had an opinion about zoning that he didn’t share, and I didn’t appreciate getting yelled at. And also, maybe I was wrong about the particulars of the zoning ordinance and whether an exception was allowed. In any case, the self-storage facility got built, and it’s super ugly.
The point is, we got over it and I don’t mind that he swore at me. I don’t call him a xenophobe or racist for having a different opinion about the application of local ordinances. He probably doesn’t even know that I’m a member of an ethnic minority here in New England. (As my name suggests, I am Franco-American.)
In National Review, David French (not a Franco-American, as far as I’m aware!) wrote Tuesday that native-born Americans should be more grateful than Naturalized Americans, because those of us — David and myself — who were born here “did exactly nothing to become citizens of the greatest nation in the history of the earth” whereas Naturalized Americans have “done more to become citizens than I have.”
David mentions that his National Review colleague, Charlie Cooke, is an immigrant from England who “left his home and family, built an impressive professional life here in the United States, passed his citizenship test with flying colors, and swore an oath most Americans haven’t sworn.”
Citizenship is a privilege, asserts David (I agree), “but somewhat-earned privilege is different from unearned privilege, and I think it’s worth acknowledging that reality.”
David concludes:
Nothing I’ve said excuses anything that Ilhan Omar has said or believes. Many of her views are repugnant. But they’re not especially repugnant because she’s an immigrant. And we should not hold immigrants to a higher standard of gratitude than we apply to the people who did nothing to earn their place in this land.
Why? Why are Omar’s views not more repugnant given the fact that she was born in Somalia, a completely failed state, spent a few years as a child in a refugee camp, and then was rescued by the magnanimity of Americans? Why are her views not more disgusting? She should be grateful. She might well be dead right now if her family hadn’t escaped Somalia. She certainly wouldn’t be one of the 535 most powerful people in the world.
David says that “we should not hold immigrants to a higher standard of gratitude than we apply to the people who did nothing to earn their place in this land.” (Emphasis added.) How is this attitude different from Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren saying “you didn’t build that” to hard-working Americans (both Natural Born and Naturalized)? But fine, let’s say for the sake of argument that immigrants shouldn’t be held to a higher standard of gratitude, and that native-born Americans are a bunch of “ingrates,” as David’s post title labels us. How about an equal measure of gratitude? How about a little bit of gratitude?
We all know the expression, “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Omar’s not just looking at America’s teeth, but lecturing the rest of us about how awful and racist we are for not buying toothpaste for illegal aliens. She compared ICE agents to Nazi concentration camp guards, refused to condemn an Antifa terrorist attack on an ICE facility over the weekend, infamously said that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack by al-Qaeda was merely “some people did something.” Her dismissal of 9/11 was by way of accusing Americans of being horrible, racist Islamophobes, by the way. She also wondered why people are afraid of al-Qaeda but not the US Army.
“If you don’t like it, then get out,” is more popular with ordinary Americans than the national media are willing to admit. It’s a concept that people understand, viscerally. People are proud, want to be proud, of where they’re from and where they choose to live, whether that pride is for their country, their state, or their town. And they don’t appreciate other people, particularly outsiders or newcomers, denigrating their country, state, or town.
Ilhan Omar seems to daily remind us how low her opinion of America is. So if America is so awful, why doesn’t she leave? Seriously. Goodbye, Ilhan.
N.B. My wife is an associate editor at National Review. Also, Ricochet has a close relationship with National Review, particularly in the podcast department. I hope your reading of my disagreement with David was as mild and professional as I intended it to be. Charlie also had some disagreement with David’s overall “gratitude” argument, although Charlie was responding to a different post of David’s than I am.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Many of you will have noticed that the site has been acting oddly since Friday. We’ve been having problems with our server configuration and unfortunately there has been some down time when the site was unavailable. I’m working on it and I apologize for the inconvenience.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
The second debate of the 2020 Democrat primary race is tonight. (The first one was last night. Sorry, you missed it.) If for some reason you want to watch it, and want to chat with fellow fellow Ricochet members while you do so, then come on over to the Ricochet Live Chat. I can’t even identify three of these candidates.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
The first debate of the 2020 Democrat primary race is tonight. (The second one is tomorrow.) If for some reason you want to watch it, and want to chat with fellow fellow Ricochet members while you do so, then come on over to the Ricochet Live Chat. Extra points for anyone who can tell me who the bald guy is, who the guy with glasses is, and who the guy I thought was Blasio (until I saw Blasio) is. (Blasio is the one behind the peacock. Ha.)
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
President trump signed an executive order yesterday to implement new sanctions on Iran. The order comes after Iran has attacked several oil tankers as well as an unmanned U.S. drone, all within international waters.
The order directly targets Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khameini. In addition, the order applies to anyone working for Khameini, anyone appointed as a state official of Iran, as well as anyone (whether in Iran or not) who is determined to “have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services” to anyone covered by the executive order. That last one will affect foreign (third country) companies that want to do business with Iran, particularly because the order allows the secretary of the treasury to sanction foreign banks that provide services to anyone affected by the order.
In addition, the order also suspends the immigrant and non-immigrant entry into the United States by anyone affected by the order.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Today Special Counsel Robert Mueller gave a statement in which he begged Congress to impeach President Trump: “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse the president of wrong doing.” Please impeach, in other words.
I think Mueller is a disgrace. Take for example his insistence that Trump is guilty until proven innocent rather than innocent until proven guilty. “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” he said during his statement, repeating a line from the written Mueller Report. This is a direct assault on the entire American idea of justice, which is that the accused do not have to prove their innocence. Rather the government must prove their guilt. Mueller did not spend some $30 million trying to prove Trump “clearly did not commit a crime.” His mandate was to prove Trump’s guilt.
Accordingly, Mueller spent two years trying his hardest to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. He hired partisan Democrat donors. One was the former legal counsel to the Clinton Foundation! Another attended Clinton’s election night party. He used police-state tactics, such as sending dozens of over-armed agents to break down doors at 5AM. He issued 2,800 subpoenas and interviewed 500 people. But because there was no crime, and no collusion, he failed in his goal. There was no reason for his investigation and he likely knew it from the start.
Mueller claims that the only reason he didn’t indict Trump is that a memo from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, issued in 2000, states that a sitting president can not be indicted. The real reason Mueller didn’t indict Trump is that Trump did nothing wrong. Trump’s only true crime has always been that he was elected president.
To Mueller and other deep state goons, that is an impeachable offense.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Yesterday the New York Times confirmed what many of us who don’t rely on the New York Times for news have known for a long time: The Obama Administration spied on the Trump presidential campaign.
WASHINGTON — The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?
The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.
Some will still insist pathetically that “a government investigator posing as [someone she is not]” is not a spy. Those people are partisan hacks and should not be taken seriously. As Attorney General Bill Barr stated in testimony before the senate this week, “spy” is a perfectly good English word that means exactly what it means and there’s no reason to use any other word. Senator Sheldon Boofhouse (D-RI), just a day before the New York Times revealed to its uninformed readers that Obama spied on Trump, attempted to pretend that “authorized surveillance” is somehow different than “spying.” It’s not. The Obama administration spied on Trump’s presidential campaign.
The New York Times could have published its article, titled “F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016,” at any point in the last few years, but its editors chose to wait until all hope of salvation from Robert Mueller had been dashed before revealing the truth.
In fact, the point of the article is not to reveal truth but to launder information, to soften the blow, ahead of what the New York Times and others believe is coming: a reckoning. The Department of Justice’s Inspector General, Michael E. Horowitz, is widely expected to be near releasing a report on how the FBI defrauded the FISA court in 2016 in order to get the warrant to conduct its spying on the Trump campaign. “Authorized surveillance” (spying) isn’t so “authorized” if the court that authorized it was lied to in the process. In additional, Attorney General Barr has stated his intention to investigate whether the spying of the Trump campaign by the Obama Administration was “adequately predicated.”
Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt, and Mark Mazzetti are the three named writers on the New York Times article, but the real author is the deep state, which is attempting to shape the narrative ahead of Horowitz’s report and Barr’s investigation.
The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims.
You see, the FBI was so alarmed that they just had to lie to the FISA court and throw George Popadopoulos’s Rights out the window. Picayune things like the Constitution and the laws of the United States don’t matter when unelected deep state apparatchiks are alarmed that someone they don’t like might become president. It’s too bad that this proof that Obama spied on Trump will give Trump ammunition to say that Obama spied on him.
What we are going to find out, I predict, is that the spying started much sooner than the “official” date of July 31 (2016), that Trump’s was not the only presidential campaign spied on, that Obama was fully aware of it, and that several foreign nations were involved in the effort (colluded, you might say).
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
It brings me no pleasure, as a member of the GOP base® and resident of MAGAville, to tell you that Donald Trump today is a total loser. A real dummy. Trump got completely steamrolled by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. In the Rose Garden this afternoon he announced that he has agreed to a temporary deal to end the (partial) government shutdown until February 15. Then some trained seals who were in attendance clapped. In exchange, Trump gets nothing. America gets nothing: The deal apparently includes no funding at all for the wall.
What a loser. I thought we sent Trump to Washington to do things different. Today it appears he cares more about giving a speech to Congress next week (the State of the Union Address) than he does about securing our nation’s border. Now that the government will “re-open,” he can give the speech. Whoop-de-doo.
I am extremely unhappy with this so-called deal. Trump is, apparently, giving the Democrats one more chance to compromise. But they probably won’t. Because they want open borders. Democrats do not want to secure the border. Neither, of course, does the GOP Establishment (otherwise they would have done so already).
The swamp views the shutdown as the problem and therefore the re-opening of the government as the goal. The shutdown is not the problem. The lack of a wall is the problem.
The wall is the central campaign issue that got him elected. He can not give in on it. He says that if no long-term deal is reached during this temporary retrieve, that he will issue an executive order declaring a national emergency and build the wall on his own. At which point, some Leftist judge in Hawaii will issue a national order blocking Trump’s executive order. Then the House will probably impeach him.
Now that I’ve expressed my displeasure, here is the caveat: I have no idea what Trump’s plan is. So let’s see what happens. Trump has proven a lot of people wrong over the past three years. But this is the first time that I’ve thought he’s made a major mistake.
I wrote this post immediately after listening to Trump’s speech. I haven’t listened to much commentary in the aftermath. I am somewhat irate.
Trump can’t mess around with his base. We know that politicians have been lying to us for decades about border security. We want a wall.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Dear Madam Speaker:
Thank you for your letter of January 3, 2019, sent to me long after the Shutdown began, inviting me to address the Nation on January 29th as to the State of the Union. As you know, I had already accepted your kind invitation, however, I then received another letter from you dated January 16, 2019, wherein your expressed concerns regarding security during the State of the Union Address due to the Shutdown. Even prior to asking, I was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Secret Service to explain that there would be absolutely no problem regarding security with respect to the event. They have since confirmed this publicly.
Accordingly, there are no security concerns regarding the State of the Union Address. Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union.
I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!
Sincerely,
DONALD TRUMP
And Nancy Pelosi’s response:
Dear Mr. President:
When I extended an invitation on January 3rd for you to deliver the State of the Union address, it was on the mutually agreed upon date, January 29th. At that time, there was no thought that the government would still be shut down.
In my further correspondence of January 16th, I said we should work together to find a mutually agreeable date when government has re-opened and I hope that we can still do that.
I am writing to inform you that the House of Representatives will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the President’s State of the Union address in the House Chamber until government has opened.
Again, I look forward to welcoming you to the House on a mutually agreeable date for this address when government has been opened.
A Maine native, Max now lives in New Hampshire with his wife, who is an editor at National Review, and their three cats in a c. 1790 house built by an American Revolution war veteran. Max was pretty liberal in college, but then moved to New York City, which, though it's the most liberal city in the world, ironically made him into a conservative. Max does a number of things for Ricochet, including maintenance, project management, customer service, and some writing from time to time.
Fred Cole (@fredcole) thinks the best rock song is “White Room” by Cream for some reason. Jon Gabriel (@jon) said he’d only ever heard The KLF song titled “White Room.” I listened to both and now I want to go BASE jumping without a parachute.
I say “Unforgiven” by Metallica is much better, although it’s not even necessarily my favorite Metallica song (“Whiskey in the Jar” is high on my list). You see, Fred and I obviously have a difference in opinion when it comes to music. He seems like easy listening soft rock, while I prefer to listen to good music.
What do you think is the best rock song ever? Or, at least, share one of your favorites. And don’t forget to casually insult anyone who disagrees with you. That’s the fun part of asserting one’s own subjective preferences as being objectively true.
“White Room” by Cream (😴):
“Unforgiven” by Metallica:
Another favorite of mine is “Cochise” by Audioslave:
If you’d like to post a video of your own favorite rock song in the comments, all you have to do is paste the YouTube or Vimeo URL onto a new line by itself. The video will automatically appear after you publish your comment.
Andru Volinsky, a Democrat, announced this morning that he will seek the Democrat nomination to run for governor of New Hampshire against incumbent Chris Sununu, a Republican. New Hampshire Journal, run by friend of Ricochet @michaelgraham, naturally wanted to get a comment from the candidate, but noticed that Volinsky has blocked New Hampshire Journal’s twitter account.
The second debate of the 2020 Democrat primary race is tonight. (The first one was last night. Sorry, you missed it.) If for some reason you want to watch it, and want to chat with fellow fellow Ricochet members while you do so, then come on over to the Ricochet Live Chat. I can’t even identify three of these candidates.
The first debate of the 2020 Democrat primary race is tonight. (The second one is tomorrow.) If for some reason you want to watch it, and want to chat with fellow fellow Ricochet members while you do so, then come on over to the Ricochet Live Chat. Extra points for anyone who can tell me who the bald guy is, who the guy with glasses is, and who the guy I thought was Blasio (until I saw Blasio) is. (Blasio is the one behind the peacock. Ha.)
