Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Decapitation Strategy

 

My first spiritual mentor was a recent seminary graduate serving as the youth pastor of my first church. He spent a lot of time with our little youth ministry team teaching us how to study scripture, introducing us to the great classics, and challenging us with intellectually difficult homework assignments.

He had an affair with one of the high school counselors.

He was out.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Sid Hartman, the Past, and How We Write History

 

Ten days ago, Minneapolis StarTribune sports writer and journalist Sid Hartman passed way at the age of 100. He started in the newspaper business when he was nine years old in 1929. 1929! He went from his start at a downtown news run for the Minneapolis Tribune to weekly columnist with over 21,150 bylines. It wasn’t a surprise that a centenarian passed away, rather, it was a cause of unexpected disquiet. Sid was a Minnesota institution, as reliable and ever present as a Minnesota sports fan’s disappointment. Even on the morning of his death, his column ran. And I’m sure, just as every Sunday, my dad had his copy of the Star, flipped to Section C, read Sid, and promptly folded it with a stout grumble. Sid was never flowery, rarely so elegant in his writing to overshadow that he was more reporter than columnist.Illustrative

I appreciate that Sid valued the facts, hard and cold though they may be. Living through a World War, economic booms and busts, a man on the moon, and the internet age, he undoubtedly had a unique perspective on the human condition related to history, even if reported through the lens of sports. But I wonder how, in the era we live in now and the immediate future, our history will be written by the next generation?

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. COVID Theatre Kills

 

Today the New York City Mayor’s Office announced that like it’s doing with restaurants, soon storefronts will be doing business outside. Just in time for the balmy months of winter, famously temperate and mild in the Northeast United States.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Play Along, Gentlemen…

 

… And ladies, too!

It’s not even Halloween and Hallmark has started their yearly Christmas movie orgy. (As if it really ends!) So to keep your sanity and interest going, print out the following Bingo cards and play along. Send along your suggestions and we could have a set of 30 or so before you know it!

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Primary Reason Polls Are Wrong in 2020

 

Yes, there are ‘shy’ Trump voters who either don’t respond to polls at all, or perhaps even lie to pollsters, but that doesn’t affect poll results as much as the over-sampling of Independents for Biden.

How do Independents and non-affiliated voters get over-represented in every poll?

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Adventures in ‘Journalism’

 

Here is the opening sentence of a story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Wednesday. (The paper is owned by and the story is sourced from USA Today, but still…)

Bucks forward Kyle Korver discussed the backstory and emotional locker room prior to his team’s decision to boycott a playoff game in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting in Milwaukee in late August. [emphasis added]

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Hell, Yes!

 

Over at National Review, Conrad Black has posted a column explaining why he supports Trump in the upcoming election. His first sentence explains the difficulty in writing this column: “It is a squeeze to reduce the number of logically indisputable reasons why President Trump should be reelected to a single column, but I will attempt it.” And a heroic attempt it is.

He lists one reason after another after another and on and on and on. Reading his column, and trying in vain to come up with effective counter-arguments to his positions, I wonder about Biden voters. What, exactly, do they want?

I think I’d be happier if I didn’t think about that too much. But Trump’s list of accomplishments is impressive indeed. His behavior can be off-putting to conservatives like me, but it’s difficult to argue with the job he’s done. Which everybody would know if we had a media in this country. But we don’t. So lists of Trump’s accomplishments can be surprising even for news junkies like myself.

Welcome to Dissed, a new podcast from Pacific Legal Foundation. Dissents have it all: brilliant writing, surprising reasoning, shade, puns, and sometimes historic impact. Although they are necessarily written by the “losing” side, they’re still important: they can provide a roadmap for future challenges or persuade other justices. Sometimes they’re just cathartic. In Dissed, attorneys Anastasia Boden and Elizabeth Slattery dig deep into important dissents, both past and present, and reveal the stories behind them.

The Supreme Court will hear its 7th challenge involving Obamacare this term. We sat down to talk about the first Obamacare case, NFIB v. Sebelius, with Randy Barnett, Todd Gaziano, and Josh Blackman and to look for clues about whether the joint dissent actually began as the majority opinion. And will this newest challenge be the one that brings down the whole law? Tune in to find out!

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Defunding the Police

 

Defunding the police, the new fad among city councils around the United States, that will magically reduce violent encounters between police officers and violent offenders is not going to end well. The latest police encounter with a mentally ill, knife-wielding man has led to more rioting and looting in Philadelphia.

The family has stated that they wanted an ambulance not police officers to respond to their 9-1-1 call. I’m not aware of a metric on how many EMT’s must be injured or killed before police officers can be called to secure someone so they can be transported for a psych-hold.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Soft Intellectuals

 

In her essay “Stop Being Shocked” published October 14 on Tablet, Bari Weiss listed troubling anti-Semitic trends taking place in the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. She brings up multiple true-life examples reinforcing her assertion. She then goes on to say that she, like the majority of American Jews, is “disgusted by Trump and Trumpism”; a movement which in her words “normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society.”

In his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, published in 2009, Jonah Goldberg highlights penetrating methods and tools used by progressive Democrats to vilify their opponents. Nevertheless, today, Goldberg is a member of the #NeverTrumper community. He finds members of the American Left like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris less offensive than the intrepid, braggadocious, and proud American patriot Donald J. Trump.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Endowed By The Creator: Ayaan Hirsi Ali And Peter Berkowitz On Our Unalienable Rights

 

Hoover Fellows Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Peter Berkowitz discuss the final report recently issued by the US State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, of which Berkowitz was the commission secretary. Together they discuss the findings of the report, why Secretary of State Pompeo felt the need for the commission and the report, and the controversy that surrounded both. They compare and contrast the report to the US Constitution, which also prominently mentions unalienable rights, as well as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. Finally, they discuss how US foreign policy should employ our belief in human rights to improve the human condition.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Missing Person Alert for Presidential Candidate…

 

With the avalanche of evidence coming out about Joe Biden’s corruption, I wondered how CNN would attempt to put a positive spin on such negative information about their candidate. I went to CNN.com, and found the home screen pictured at right. (I love the neutral, non-partisan, nothing-but-the-facts headline.) I then scrolled all the way down through their entire homepage, and I found Trump’s picture seven times, all in negative stories like, “New York Times: Tax records show Trump had over $270 million in debt forgiven after failing to repay lenders” and “Acosta asks Trump: Did you blow it on COVID-19?” and “Anderson Cooper: We are witnessing dishonesty the likes of which no one has seen before” and so on and so on. There is a picture of an angry Barack Obama (“Obama slams Trump…”). There are also stories about wildfires, Borat, Jamie Foxx’s sister, the Supreme Court, the former king of Belgium, matte lipstick, BLM protests, and so on and so on.

And absolutely zero stories about Biden. There are no pictures of and no articles about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris anywhere on the home page of CNN. Mr. Biden is running for president of the United States. Leader of the free world. The election is in six days. You might think that he might be in the news. No. He’s not mentioned. Nothing positive. Nothing negative. Just nothing. Nothing at all. CNN apparently feels that there is only one person running for president. And he is very, very bad. And that is all you need to know.

This is surreal.

Welcome to Madison’s Notes, a new podcast from the James Madison Program at Princeton University. The show is hosted by Antonin “Nino” Scalia (he’s his grandson). Give it a listen!

Could totalitarianism take root in America? What does it mean to “live not by lies”? Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative and the author of several books, including The Benedict OptionHe joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Donald Trump Makes the GOP Cool

 

A bit of correspondence from a young friend:

Several years ago you asked Peter Thiel on Uncommon Knowledge if conservatives could ever be attractive to another generation. If I recall correctly, you showed a classic Thatcher clip. Implicit was the question — Could we be “cool”? Could we attract, not just interrupt or yell stop?

It strikes me that DJT has done just that. President Trump and Amy Coney Barrett can make even Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham look like the coolest guys in the room.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. So Joe Biden Told Us He Didn’t Know Anything About Hunters Business With China

 

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Amend This!

 

A recent meme on social media about the Constitution and now Justice Amy Coney Barrett got me thinking about the progressive-leftist view of the Constitution and the central role the Supreme Court takes in their belief system. The meme showed an image of Judge Coney Barrett with a quote from Representative Jackie Speier that read: “Under and original reading of the Constitution, Judge Barrett and I could not vote, own property, or enjoy the full protection of the law. Senator Harris would not even be considered fully human. The Constitution is a living breathing document meant to evolve with the times.”

My progressive friend posted it with the statement “So true!”

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. 2020 Social Life Is Sad

 

The lockdown life has not been easy. Since March, work (when there is work) has been from home. My kids’ school went remote so they are home too. The wife was a substitute teacher so, once the school closed she was home with the rest of us. We still can’t go to church. All in all, it has been way too much time at home and very little interactions with the outside world.

Today, however, my wife had a chance to get out of the house. She got to meet new people. A chance to talk with strangers, joke around, and laugh. In other words, she had a somewhat normal pre-COVID-hysteria day. When she came home she said, “I had fun today,” and that made me laugh. It struck me as funny but on second thought her statement was very sad.

The King of Stuff welcomes Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative, and formerly of the New York Post and National Review. He has authored several books including the best-selling The Benedict Option and How Dante Can Save Your Life. His new book is titled Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.

For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod they see telltale signs of “soft” totalitarianism cropping up in America–something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can’t happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Florida Ballot Return/Early Vote Numbers

 

Confirmation bias is a real thing. I understand that. I try to behave rationally and look at all the data, but it amazes me how people often look at things as black or white and in particular as it relates to this election. I do not see anything as black and white. I think people who look at bare numbers, without understand nuance, get bad results. But, I also understand that what I want to believe is often not what reflects reality.

I’ve seen pundits on both sides of the debate discussing the early voting and vote-by-mail numbers from Florida. As of this morning, here they are:

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Jackals

 

Sadly, I disagree with Kevin Williamson. That doesn’t happen much. It is not so much that I disagree with him about Trump. I don’t. I vehemently disagree with this statement: “So, now that I am a swing-state conservative, am I going to hold my nose and pull the “R” lever if only to put up a roadblock in front of the Democrats?”

Only? Does Kevin think the Democrats are just a bunch of moderates and can’t be bothered to “put up a roadblock”?

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Jews For Trump In NYC

 

Jews for Trump rally was attacked in New York City. Don’t be fooled by the news report: The Jews for Trump were peaceful, were attacked, and were defending themselves. Wish I could have been there.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Watch the Polls Magically Tighten

 

Pollsters hate to be wrong. And they knew their thumbs have been on the scale all along. The time for theater and posturing is over: now they are going on the record, and no longer are fooling around.

Rasmussen yesterday showed Trump up by one point. As the election looms, watch ALL the pollsters adjust, and quickly. They each want, in hindsight, to be shown to be the most accurate company. So even if the actual support levels have not changed much, the polls are now showing strong swings for Trump.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. A Rare Event

 

This is a truly rare event. I realized last night watching the swearing-in of our new supreme court justice, that this was the first time in my 72-year life that the Supreme Court had a recognizable conservative majority. Not the sometimes, maybe we will follow the constitution if the moon is blue type of the last several years, where O’Connor, then Kennedy, then Roberts voted conservative if it really didn’t matter in an existential manner that they were, but failed on some big cases.

I have hope the nominal 6-3 majority may actually follow the constitution most of the time, if one or more justices don’t “grow” in office, or the Dems don’t with both the Presidency and Senate and pack the court. For a conservative, the last time this might have been the case was prior to 1936 when Roosevelt started winning court decisions.