Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Quote of the Day: Winston Churchill on Socialism

 

In 1925, Churchill officially rejoined the Conservative Party in Britain. In a speech in 1926, in “strongly working-class Bolton”, he says:

Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous, fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality upon the efforts of all the different forms and different classes of human enterprise, they will increase the well-being of the world.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. An Epidemic of Credulousness

 

Over the weekend, we saw more reporting about the unbelievable stories that some medical professionals on the front lines in red states are telling mainstream news reporters:

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Racism, White Guilt, and Academia: My letter to the President of Washington State University

 

I receive the Washington State Magazine from my (former) Alma Mater, Washington State University. Due to a phrase in the President’s Letter in the most recent issue, I sent the following letter to the President, because I don’t think that sentiment should go unremarked.

Mr. Kirk Schultz, President

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. A Week of Gratitude: Day 7 – A Clever Wife

 

My wife loves Halloween. She adores it. She has an actress inside of her and loves playing a new character each year. She starts talking to us in October about the next year’s costumes. This gets debated off and on until something feels right or time picks the costumes for us. She likes us to dress up in themes and over the years we have been ladybugs, the Incredibles, Doctor Who, Star Wars, and this past Halloween, Dia de los Muertos skeletons. From as early as June through Halloween she squirrels away bits and pieces of costumes until a large push at the end gets it done. I like Halloween, but being busy with work I find it hard to muster the time she needs for me to help her. Our children love Halloween too but they hate doing the work to get ready for it and sometimes resist going as a theme because, well, they are teenagers. Each year my wife works really hard to make each of us a wonderful costume while getting variable amounts of help in return. Often there is grumbling about the effort when we want to do something else. Unfortunately, I occasionally add to the discontent.

This past year was a little different because of the lockdowns. We weren’t sure how much Halloween would happen so my wife delayed costume preparation until it started to look like there would be some Halloween after all. Our costumes consisted of gaiters to cover our mouths that had Dia de los Muertos skeletons printed on them. She added some pretty impressive face paint and dark, formal clothes to finish it out. The attached photo is my daughter in her costume. To her credit, my daughter put a lot of effort into her costume while my wife did most of the work for the rest of us.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. COVID-19: ‘Et Tu, Sweden?’

 

Many of us held out hope that Sweden with its contrarian approach to COVID-19 would validate our beliefs that you give people information, give them the freedom to make decisions, and survive the pandemic as best you can. There were early hopes that Sweden had made it through and that its approach would be deemed superior to authoritarian government responses to the pandemic.

Now, that is no longer clear. There are reports that the Swedish government is becoming restive with the laissez-faire approach of chief heath officer Andres Tegnell. My understanding is that under the Swedish constitution, Tegnell operates with unusual independence. This has allowed politicians to absolve themselves of responsibility and avoid electoral consequences for Tegnell’s action (or inaction). But now that the death toll is rising in Sweden associated with COVID-19, politicians are getting worried. So there is pressure for Sweden to get in line with authoritarian responses to COVID-19 practiced elsewhere in Europe.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Robinson’s Rescues

 

This is about a World War II Navy Chaplain, Charles Robinson, who helped free the first Allied POWs in Japan. I’m posting this on Ricochet partly because I was irritated by the recently discovered comments by the Democrat candidate Raphael Warnock in the Georgia special election for Senate, who orated from the pulpit that people cannot serve the military and God. I didn’t find this to be true during my Navy career, whether one was serving as a Chaplain or just an adherent of a religion. Some of the people I respected the most were men of the cloth and I still value their friendship and the time we served together.

The essay is unrelated to the politics of the moment, so if you’d like a break from news about the election, the essay is safe to read. I doubt any of you have heard about Father Robinson, but his story is one that is worthy of sharing and, I believe, undercuts the narrative that Reverend Warnock peddles. Father Robinson pursued studies in theology that led him to become a Jesuit Priest almost 100 years ago, and he went overseas to Japan for his first posting. What he learned while in Japan ended up helping hundreds of prisoners of war in the Tokyo area who had been tortured or were starving at the end of the war.

The full essay is based on a research project for a history class I completed earlier this year. The professor described how Father Robinson had accomplished a mission of mercy for the Jesuits at the Jesuit Sophia University in Tokyo, and due to my Navy background, she suggested I research it for the term paper. My research determined that he had done a lot more of consequence before his rescue mission to Sophia. At the war’s end, he was stationed onboard the Battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), which arrived at the entrance to Tokyo Bay a few days before it would host the surrender ceremony on 2 September 1945. Of the tens of thousands of sailors who came to Tokyo Bay and were present for the surrender ceremony, Father Robinson had a skill that ended up being critical for rescuing hundreds of prisoners of war (POW) languishing in Japan’s numerous POW camps. He used his knowledge and abilities with distinction, in ways that helped smooth the process of quickly freeing the first group of POWs and saving other lives.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Post of the Week Created with Sketch. R.I.P. Dave Prowse, Darth Vader

 

It remains one of my most thrilling visits to the movies. I had seen clips for this upcoming science fiction film, Star Wars, on Creature Features (in the San Francisco Bay Area, KTVU). I wasn’t impressed. It was just a little scene inside a space ship and that ape creature’s make-up wasn’t nearly as impressive as what was done for Planet of the Apes.

But our family took a vacation to see relatives in Colorado and one of my cousins told me I had to see this film. He had already bought the soundtrack album, which I thought was a rather strange thing to do, not knowing I’d soon do the same. Soon, I was sitting by him in a movie theater in Colorado Springs. As that John Williams surged, words drifted over my head and soon huge spaceships. I had never experienced anything like it. And I love it.

Soon the camera took us inside that rebel ship. It was being invaded. A huge masked man, all in black including a grand black cape boarded the ship. “Scary” didn’t begin to describe him. In the film, he was an underling to greater forces, but it was difficult to imagine who Darth Vader could possibly answer to. Who could be even more dreadful than this Sith Lord? When Vader escaped the explosion of the Death Star, it was frustrating and exciting. Multiple viewings of the film led to discussions with friends, “Will there be a sequel? Darth Vader has to come back.”

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Murder and Mystery By the Ohio River

 

Piper Blackwell is an ex-GI. She saw service in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, seeing combat as an MP. Instead of serving her planned 20 years, she separated at the end of her hitch to look after her father, Paul Blackwell, ill with cancer. Her father, then sheriff of rural Spencer County, Indiana urged 23-year-old Piper to run for sheriff in his place. To her surprise, she won.

“The Dead of Jerusalem Ridge: A Piper Blackwell Mystery,” by Jean Rabe, is the fourth book in this mystery series. Blackwell is into her ninth month as sheriff. She has shaken up the sheriff’s department, mostly for the better. Even her election opponent, Chief Deputy Sheriff Oren Rosenberg, who would like for her to be inadequate so he could replace her, grudgingly admits her competence.

This book opens with Piper taking a three-day Labor Day weekend in Kentucky, with several ex-army buddies. They are playing paintball on land owned by one of them when tragedy strikes. They get attacked by an armed, active shooter. Several of the participants are killed, including the shooter. Others including Piper are badly injured.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Radar Wars: a Case Study in Expertise and Influence

 

In today’s WSJ, David Mamet writes about expertise and influence, pointing out that experts who get important things wrong, sometimes causing great harm to millions of people, often pay no personal price whatsoever. One example he mentions is the pre-WWII secret British debate on air defense technologies and especially the role played by Churchill’s scientific advisor, Professor Frederick Lindemann.

It is an interesting and important story, and is discussed by the scientist/novelist CP Snow in his 1960 book Science and Government…which, he says, was inspired by the following thought:

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. A Week of Gratitude: Day 5 – Parents

 

On Thanksgiving Day, I have to express gratitude for my parents. When you’re young and stupid it’s easy to take for granted how much your life is shaped for good or ill by your Mom and Dad. The food magically appears, problems get solved with little effort on your part, and there is always someone there to make things better. When you leave the nest, you learn quickly how much work goes into making all of that possible. If you are lucky, and I was lucky, you had parents who modeled the behaviors you will need when you are the one who has to make food appear, solve the problems, and be there to make things better.

Dad is a retired high school teacher and Mom is still a homemaker. With ten of us children running around the house, it took a lot of love and patience to keep things working smoothly. My Dad has a very different personality from mine. He will talk to anyone, which is the worst thing an introverted teenager wants him to do. But I have seen so many people warm to his greeting when I’d have been perfectly content to let them keep having a bad day. He also loves to laugh and to help others. My older son is a lot like him.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Covid Deaths Are Real: Rebutting Dr. Briand

 

I write to rebut the claims of Dr. Genevieve Briand, a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins who holds a PhD in Economics and recently released a study questioning the Covid death statistics. The paper was subsequently withdrawn by Johns Hopkins, quite properly in my view. Dr. Briand’s analysis is deeply flawed.

Misleading and erroneous analyses like these have serious effects. It led our friend iWe to author a post yesterday titled Covid – Just A Big Hoax?, which cited Dr. Briand’s study as supporting the assertion “that the total death rates HAVE NOT CHANGED.”

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. A Week of Gratitude: Day 3 – Keeping My Mouth Shut

 

My son recently locked all the keys inside the car. We didn’t have a spare key or valet key at home so I decided to tow the car to the dealer where they would be able to open it and retrieve the keys. At the time, my son would drive to his boss’s apartment complex, pick up a company van, and go do his work so the car was parked in the common parking area of the complex. I drove over after work to wait for the tow truck and to wait for my son who would drive my car home.

When I drove into the parking lot, I had a hard time finding a place to park. There were several generations of line paintings visible with overlapping visitor and reserved signs painted over the parking spots. I guessed at what I thought was a visitor spot and waited. After an hour I noticed a woman in a car behind me in the parking lane of the complex. It looked like she was waiting for someone to come out and join her.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Quote of the Day: True Wealth

 

“Despite the synergine the Count’s eyes were going shocked and vague. He pawed at the little plastic oxygen mask, batted away the medic’s worried attempt to control his hands, and motioned urgently to Mark. He so clearly wanted to say something, it was less traumatic to let him than to try and stop him. Mark slid onto his knees by the Count’s head.

“The Count whispered to Mark in a tone of earnest confidence, ‘All . . . true wealth . . . is biological.'” — Lois McMasters Bujold, Mirror Dance

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Quote of the Day: GK Chesterton from ‘The Whole Modern World’

 

There is nothing new about the current state of affairs in the United States.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. School Stuff You Still Use

 

Tonight, I had to log onto a career resource and resume template website. I made an account my freshman year of high school; the teacher warned us to create a username and password we could remember because we would be using this website for a long time. The student teacher mentioned he was using it.

I was skeptical. There are many things teachers will tell you will be long-term things that you will use later in your education, or perhaps into your career. As it turned out, a few of these predictions were right, and many were wrong. Not that I think the teachers were universally wrong: Some students probably did go on to use those things, but not me.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. A Week of Gratitude: Day 6 – Silver Linings

 

A few years ago I was driving with my daughter to her first year of college. We had bought an old Honda Accord that she was going to use so we drove up together and then I flew home. Her college has a system where students can start their year in August and finish in April or start in January and finish in July. She was on this second track, so we were driving from Texas to Idaho in late December.

A few miles west of Green River, Utah, you get off I-70 and head north on Highway 6 toward Price. Snow had fallen sporadically during the day and left a light coating on the ground. The wind was blowing the fallen snow, which made it hard to see the road and it was getting dark. She was driving at the time, but we decided (or I did, more likely) that I should do the driving since I had spent several years in Michigan and she had never driven in the snow.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Thankful for the Beach

 

“The beach is a place where a man can feel
He’s the only soul in the world that’s real
… Crazy days. Crazy days”
— Pete Townsend, “Bellboy,” Quadrophenia

The lovely Mrs E and I spent most of Wednesday and today on the beach at Sandy Hook, NJ. No matter how insane things are out in the world, everything is better with the sound of the surf and your toes in the sand. Though it’s late November, the ocean is still relatively warm. We did eight or nine miles each day, barefoot and ankle-deep in the surf. It’s just splendid.

I love the off-season best of all. Wednesday we had the place to ourselves. Today there were a couple of fishermen, and the surf was ok so there were some surfers. But still large swathes of beach with no footprints but ours. Not what you’d ordinarily think of when you think of the Jersey Shore.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. They Write Reviews, So You Don’t Have to Suffer

 

Thank you, Douglas A. Jeffery for your article in the Claremont Review of Books. I read it earlier this week and rolled my eyes so hard, they still hurt a little. Good grief! It’s amazing the incredible vitriol that some so-called “educated” people maintain for Pres. Trump.

“One sure sign,” Frum writes, “is when the president tries to bypass the executive branch that exists to serve him.” This is a Catch-22 worthy of the British sitcom Yes Minister: an elected leader trying to bypass the bureaucrats thwarting him is proof he needs thwarting.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Quote of the Day: Life Changes

 

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu

It’s fall-ish here in SC. There are a few colored leaves hanging on but our oaks are still full with green leaves. Yesterday it was 70 degrees, next week it will be below 30.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Thanks for Excellence

 

November 2020 offered two shining public examples of humans “being best:” one on a racecourse in Turkey, the other racing up from Cape Canaveral to meet the International Space Station. Formula 1 went racing in Turkey on Sunday, November 15, in the rain. The unworldly talent, Lewis Hamilton, started in sixth position and stayed there for much of the race. Then the unexpected happened, as might have been expected.

Closer to home, in all the ground clutter of Democrats trying to steal our republic, you might not have noticed that Space X Crew Dragon roared off the launch pad with four astronauts aboard on November 16. We can be thankful for the individuals and entire systems that produce such amazing achievements while noting that they are gravely endangered by the global leftist movement, to which they at least pay lip service.

Space history:

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Returning to the Draft Is a Mistake

 

Greetings, fellow Ricochetti – I have a letter published in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.

Comments are welcome. If you hit a paywall, let me know. (Shout out to @henryracette for providing the link in clickable form here.)

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. The Scouring of the Shire

 

If you haven’t read The Return of the King in a while you might be surprised how relevant the chapter “The Scouring of the Shire” is to modern-day America. When the hobbits Merry, Pippen, Sam, and Frodo return to the shire after their adventures abroad, they’re shocked to find their brethren (most of them, anyway) bowing to the petty dictates of power-hungry usurpers, and they decide to do something about it.

I was going to write a post about it, but Mrs. Guerra beat me to it.

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. I really wish I wrote this piece

 

Copied and pasted from someone on FB who copied and pasted

Me AT GROCERY STORE:
Why is there plastic on the payment keypad?
Cashier: to protect people from Covid.
Me : but isn’t everyone touching the plastic keypad the same way they would the regular keypad?🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️
Cashier: no words. Confused look. 👀
Me : Why don’t you pack the grocery bags anymore?
Cashier : Because of covid 19. We must reduce the spread of catching or spreading the virus.
Me : But a shelf packer took it out of a box and put on the shelf, a few customers might of picked it up and put back deciding they don’t want it, I put it in my cart then on the conveyer belt, YOU pick it up to scan it.. But putting it in a bag after you scan is risky??
Cashier : no words, confused look 👀

Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Dispatch from Washington State: Doubling Down on Failure

 

Here are some news items from the State of Washington and the City of Seattle; please note that the state and city are run by Leftists through and through.

First, items relating to the pandemic. Two weeks ago, our Dictator closed all state restaurants for inside dining, closed gyms, and reduced capacity allowed at all indoor retail establishments, including grocery stores for a 4-week period. This was a response to “surging coronavirus cases” in the state. Please also note that the Dictator is issuing these rules from his desk, with no input from the elected state legislature.

Congratulations—you’re pregnant! Now… what are you supposed to wear when you don’t even want to put on pants? Especially when you don’t really have a FULL ON bump? Fashion guru and mom of 3 Emily Zanotti tells the very overwhelmed and pregnant Lyndsey Fifield what to wear when you’re expecting.

Special shoutout to LadyBrains listener Jenna Stocker, the guest of honor this week on The Half Percent Podcast. Listen to Jenna’s episode as she shares her experience as a Marine Corps officer or subscribe to The Half Percent Podcast in your favorite podcast app.