Ricochet

Several years ago, not long before my dear Auntie Pat died, she sent a few things (at great expense) through the mail, for me to hold onto, or distribute, among the small contingent of family that’s here in the US. One of those items was a very old copy of Kings and Queens (pictured here) by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon, early twentieth-century British siblings with a knack for churning out reliably popular children’s stories, poems, and songs. Eleanor is best known outside the UK for the hymn “Morning has Broken,” which put Yusuf Islam (AKA Cat Stevens) on the map in 1972. Oh, well. It’s a pretty song.

Kings and Queens covers every monarch since William the Bastard with a historically accurate and easy-to-memorize little poem. Pat’s copy of the book was given to her by her parents at Christmas in 1936, and covers every monarch from William through George V (Charles III’s maternal great-grandfather). The book was originally published in 1932, and Pat’s copy appears to be a first edition.

I am enjoying the recent widely shared reports of discoveries by visitors to the United States coming for World Cup games. As these visitors explore our country, they have been reminding us life-long residents of the United States that we take much for granted.

There have been for several years YouTube channels by visitors traveling the United States that I have found encouraging by reminding me of the wonders of the United States and its people – wonders I often overlook and assume are universal. One way to find some of these is to look for a foreigner’s reaction to Buc-ee’s (this is a gas station?!) or to Walmart or to a modern American supermarket. 

Peptides are amino acids that are used to issue instructions to the body’s various systems. Ozempic, Mounjaro and Retatrutide are all peptides. These GLP-1s have a ridiculous number of things they do in terms of measurable results of reduction: cancer rates, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, even aging. Some countries are considering making GLP-1s available to all (not just the obese or diabetic) because of these benefits.

There are a host of other things that “biohackers” are injecting. I am posting this here because I think anyone with knee or joint pain would do well to check out BPC-157. I have personal knowledge of people who have cured chronic knee pain with 1-3 injections of the peptide. Old muscle pain? Totally fixable with a trivial injection.

Please permit me to tell you the legend of Howard Beale. Howard was a renowned national news anchor. One night the insanity of the world became too much to endure, and Howard completely lost it on air.  He urged all his viewers to go open a window and scream out, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Well, because Howard was a fictional character in a movie called Network, Howard’s rant went viral years before the internet and the phrase “went viral” was invented.

Beginning on June 14, we celebrate National Flag Week in this country. Our flag has 50 stars to represent our 50 states.

But when the flag was first created, it resembled the British flag, and our Founders wanted the flag to make a statement about our independence and our freedom:

The Renaissance painter, whose Italian name is Raffaello Sanzio, has his first ever comprehensive exhibition in the United States at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, 522 years after his death.  The above picture shows the Met on Tuesday of this past week when my wife Caryn and I visited the show.  This is only a small view of the enormous museum, whose front steps are more than 150 feet wide, providing leisurely seating for hundreds of New Yorkers who were just hanging out and enjoying the beautiful afternoon.

We almost didn’t make it to the show when our car’s alternator died at 10 PM in the middle of nowhere on Interstate 80 in New Jersey.  By the grace of God, the car was able to creep along the berm at low speed, lunging and lurching the whole time, with no working lights except for the hazard, for two miles until we reached a miraculous highway rest stop.  Getting weaker all the time, the car literally died right at the entrance to the parking lot.  I immediately jumped out and found three illegal aliens who had coincidentally driven their own disabled car into the rest stop for safety only minutes earlier.  They generously helped me push our car into the lot since it was blocking the entrance.  To make an originally distressful but ultimately successful story short, the tow-truck driver knew exactly what was wrong with the car and who to take it to for a fast repair. He dropped us off at a hotel, the car was fixed by 10:15 the next morning and we were on our way!

In April 1941, a pro-Nazi coup occurred in Iraq. Believing Britain was losing World War II to Germany, Iraqi Pan-Arab nationalists ousted Iraq’s pro-British monarch. The Golden Square, a military junta, replaced the monarchy. It invited in the Germans and Italians, who sent in Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica aircraft.

1941: Thirty Days in May, a novel by JD Wood, tells of the six months preceding the coup and the subsequent thirty-day Anglo-Iraqi War. It follows events through three participants.

Maddie Miller is an American. She is an English tutor in Baghdad, teaching the children of Iraq’s elite. Yet she is also an operative for British intelligence. She has her pulse on the pro-Nazi movement within the Iraqi Army.

Nathan Pinkowski has a great essay in the Claremont Review of Books on what has only become clear with the passage of time, based on the release of old information under FOIA about then-associate director of the FBI, Mark Felt, coming out as “Deep Throat” in 2005.

Though the Ervin Committee praised J. Edgar Hoover’s resistance to the Huston Plan, the committee failed to mention that the plan described activities in which the FBI was already engaged and continued to be engaged. As was finally revealed in 2005, “Deep Throat” was Associate Director of the FBI Mark Felt, who had overseen some of the bureau’s more controversial domestic spying operations. He appeared to be Hoover’s natural heir, but after Hoover died, Nixon twice passed him over in order to appoint an outsider to lead the bureau instead, which enraged Felt. For Yale historian Beverly Gage, “Felt cooperated with Woodward not to preserve the American Constitution or to limit the imperial presidency, as the standard Watergate myths would suggest, but to protect the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover.”

I posted the other day about gambling, which led to people sharing Las Vegas stories. So, I thought I’d share one as well.

Ten years ago, my wife and I took a year to visit every state. We documented the trip with a blog and later a book.

Here’s one of our first posts about how the year began in Las Vegas (Tuesday, January 5th, 2016):

We have too many people who are credentialed rather than educated, and too many people who think their education creates an automatic entitlement. The problem isn’t with “merit” rising to the top, the problem is that we have a false and destructive idea of what constitutes merit.
– Glenn Reynolds

One of the most amusing accusations against Spencer Pratt was that he had no experience in government, no training in government, and no credentials in government. What made it risible was the patently poor performance those with experience, education, and credentials have displayed in governing Los Angeles. A Spence Pratt could almost certainly do no worse than they have done.

Gad Saad grew up in Lebanon, a paradise at the time of his birth that would be converted by Islam into Hell.

The Lebanese war taught me early about the ugliness of tribalism and religious dogma. It likely informed my subsequent disdain for identity politics, as I grew up in an ecosystem where the group to which you belonged mattered more than your individuality. With that in mind, let us return to my homeland in the Middle East.

On the recent occasion of the anniversary of D-Day, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, while in France, delivered a very J.D. Vance-like address that questioned the wisdom of current European leaders who seem cluelessly bent on the self-destruction of their own civilization.  As you may recall, Vance made a provocative speech in Munich in February 2025 which chastised European leaders not only for their increasingly authoritarian bent, but also for the utterly senseless mass immigration they were foisting upon their own unwilling citizens.  Naturally, Hegseth also touched on the topic of mass immigration and its potential consequences, which are, as we all know, if something doesn’t change, that Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot and that will essentially be the end of Western civilization, at least as it exists on the continent.

Woke European leaders are no doubt growing tired of such speeches from Trump administration officials.  Lost in their self-loathing, white/colonial guilt and the fantasies of their diversity ideology, they simply cannot be reasoned with or convinced of the foolishness of their current path.  Nor is their Trump Derangement Syndrome conducive to their comprehension of what to the rest of us is as obvious as the nose on Charles De Gaulle’s face.

It’s just James and Charles to recollect and swap rants about the goings-on of the land of the free and the home of oddball. The cast of characters includes the world’s first billionaire, an Angeleno who lost an election for common sense, a lunatic posing as a model working man, and the deeply flawed judgment of Democratic voters about guys like these. Lileks and Cooke also delight in watching Europeans share their newfound love for America, and find something to embrace in Trump’s alacrity on public beautification.

Sound this week: CNBC announces the world’s first trillionaire, Jimmy Kimmel recoils, and Graham Platner continues to gaffe.

June 25, 1876. The Battle of Little Bighorn. Custer’s Last Stand. Everybody knows the story. But not everyone knows that 12 years earlier — almost to the day — Custer had his first Last Stand. On June 11, 1864, “the Boy General” and the Michigan Cavalry Brigade almost got the chop in a place called Trevillian Station, Virginia, at the hands of Custer’s West Point roommate and then Confederate Brigadier General Tom Rosser.  

After weeks of fighting, Union General Ulysses Grant was still hemmed in on the Peninsula, like McClellan before him. He needed to bust out. Grant planned to slip the Union army away from Lee and steal a march towards Petersburg before Lee even knew he was gone. To do this, he needed to distract Lee.

Grant and his cavalry commander, General Phil Sheridan, planned one of the largest cavalry raids of the war, deep into Virginia, to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad. This would cut Lee’s army off from its supply larder in the Shenandoah Valley and provide cover for Grant’s move to Petersburg.

This week’s episode, which finds Steve over in Japan but still with a hoarse voice, ranges widely from exonerating John Yoo from being implicated in a major whiskey heist, to what the prodigious drinking habits of the Founding Fathers has to say about constitutional law today. Justice Neil Gorsuch reminds us that “John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn’t much of a user of alcohol—he only had three or four glasses of wine a night.”

Ah, the great ones.

The current problems for the Democrats can be summarized in four words.

You won’t lose your favorite doctor due to Obamacare.

We’ve got Senate runoffs in the Deep South next week, and that means we already know what’s in the bag… right? Wrong! Jessica Taylor, Cook Political Report’s Senate and Governors Editor, returns to update us on a couple of surprisingly close Republican primaries. Tune in to hear about an Alabama outsider’s formidable challenge to the Trump-endorsed candidate and the Republicans hoping to unseat a relatively strong John Ossoff in the increasingly purple Peach State. The duo also looks ahead to the next big Democratic Senate primary in Michigan.

Plus, Henry jets around the far corners of the country for a rant on Graham Platner’s win in Maine, Spencer Pratt’s loss in Los Angeles, and how ranked-choice voting might leave Congressional control uncertain if races in Alaska and Maine remain tight. And we take a look at a trio of uber-expensive ads for a California gubernatorial candidate you may not have even heard about.

I liked the one-armed bandits. I liked putting the coin in the slot and pulling the lever. Usually, three mismatched images came up (playing cards, stars, animals, whatever) and nothing would happen, but sometimes two of a kind – even three of a kind – would come up. Coins came clinking down into the tray, and that was pretty cool. 

Occasionally, I’d see someone else hit a jackpot. A gusher of coins would flood over the tray onto the floor, and that was very cool.

Should employers have to verify or confirm the legal status of their workers before offering them a job? That’s a contentious issue, along with the question of immigration, and we have many views within the conservative movement on it.

To debate the issue this week: Daniel Kishi, senior policy analyst at American Compass who will argue in favor of mandatory employer legal status verification, and David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who will argue against it.

Too often, the therapist’s own need to feel important, agreed with, or in control overshadows what the patient needs. When the provider-patient dynamic becomes this muddled, you have to wonder: Who is really the patient? The true purpose of therapy—teaching people to face life head-on and grow stronger—is being drowned out by wallowing, grievance, and fear. This isn’t just bad for patients. It’s bad for the profession. And it’s bad for America.  –Jonathan Alpert, Therapy Nation

 We live at a time when we’re realizing that the mentally ill are a genuine concern in this country. We have people who are not only brainwashed by the Leftist agenda, but they also seem incapable of making rational decisions about dealing with controversy. Unfortunately, according to therapist Jonathan Alpert, many in his field are making the situation even worse with their patients. The therapists, too, are immersed in the Leftist agenda and are encouraging their patients to follow their guidance. Instead of helping them to heal, they are debilitating their patients, who often become even more helpless, victimized and incapable of living a productive life.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush joins Freedom to Learn to discuss the Florida teachers union’s latest lawsuit targeting the state’s education freedom programs and why he believes it is destined to fail. Governor Bush reflects on the bold reforms that transformed Florida from one of the nation’s lowest-performing education systems into a national leader in student achievement and parental choice. He also makes the case for returning more authority from Washington to the states, tackles persistent myths about school choice and accountability, and shares the philosophy that guided his work for the last three decades: “Success is never final. Reform is never complete.”

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It was Napoleon who famously said that an army marches on its stomach.  And it’s true.  While nobody pens epics about the Quartermaster Corps, without the tools necessary to do the job, victory is nigh impossible.  Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest perhaps said it best… Victory goes to him who “Get(s) there firstest with the mostest.”

One of the reasons Normandy was not more stoutly defended, and that even after the landings had begun the invasion was thought to be a diversion, is that there are no adequate port facilities nearby to support a massive invasion.  A reinforced infantry division in WW2 consumed between 600 and 700 TONS of supplies daily.  The first day of the Normandy Invasion called for five reinforced infantry divisions on the beaches.  That’s a minimum of 3,000 tons of supplies needed on D+1 and every day thereafter.  Plus, the needs of the three Airborne divisions once they hooked up with the beachhead units.  That’s now about 4,800 – 5,000 tons daily…just for the original units.  A total of 46 divisions were earmarked for Operation Overlord.  And that’s just basic stuff…food, ammunition, equipment and fuel.  Add to that the required stream of replacements and follow-on forces coming in and wounded going out, and the numbers quickly get mind boggling.

From Lincoln’s letter to Henry Pierce on April 16, 1859:

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms.  The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools and Jake Tawney of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education speak with Dr. Snezana Lawrence, an independent scholar affiliated with Middlesex University London, about the origins and development of mathematics across human civilizations. Dr. Lawrence reflects on her work, including her book A Little History of Mathematics, tracing early counting systems and artifacts such as the Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian mathematical practices. She explains how Greek thinkers like Pythagoras and Euclid shaped mathematics, geometry, and logical reasoning, while highlighting India’s development of zero and the later adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. She connects these mathematical traditions to modern science through Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and the Newton–Leibniz calculus controversy, underscoring mathematics as the language of science and discovery across time and diverse human civilizations. In closing, Dr. Lawrence reads a passage from her book, A Little History of Mathematics.

Harry Enten made a strong argument on CNN that no one had an incentive to cheat in the LA mayoral election. He points out that Bass would beat Pratt by 18 points in the general but would beat Rahman by only 4, according to an LA Times poll. The argument is that the Democratic establishment would prefer a Bass-Pratt matchup to Bass versus Rahman. Thus, the party establishment had no incentive to cheat.

He also looked at the favorability ratings of all three candidates. Rahman is +5, Bass -22, Pratt -32. He argued that based on favorability, Rahman has a decent chance of beating Bass. Again, the Dem establishment would not want Rahman to advance to the general.