Author Archives: Administrator

I am encouraged by the comments on our Radio Free Ricochet post.  I go back and forth on some of the overarching issues on how to handle things at times.  This website well pre-dates its function as a relief valve or safe harbor for Ricochetti.  That is not its manifest purpose, but it is a welcome opportunity to take care of friends.  As such, we’re not founded here on complaining about others.  This is not verizoneatspoop.com, which was a real website years ago.

One thing that most of us do have in common is a set of viewpoints or an approach to discourse which is not exactly welcome over there.  This is more than an accident — we are largely self-selected for this trait.  Yet it is not … Continue reading →

Well, here it is.  Claire Berlinski, an editor-at-large over at Ricochet.com, has written a post describing her dissatisfaction with Trump, and detailing the reasons why she won’t discuss her book.  But she won’t discuss the reasons for her dissatisfaction with Trump, arguing that it takes a book.  That’s right, no way to summarize the argument in a way that preserves its essence.  You’ll just have to read the book to find out what’s in it. Fair enough — this is book sales, not legislation.  At the same time, I think that discussing a book too much can discharge the creative tension, essential in non-fiction just as much as in fiction.  So there are good reasons to shut up about one’s book, even to financial backers.

Yet she takes … Continue reading →

I haven’t seen the tax bill, haven’t even read any facts about it, so I am just responding to Rush Limbaugh’s opening bit on his Friday show.  He describes the structure of the tax in question as this: the first $45,000 of income gets taxed at a very small relief rate.  Then money after that gets taxed at a higher, normal rate.  More rates may ensue, I don’t know, and then when you are above a certain threshold, your tax rate is 39.6%.  That is the top proper bracket.  Then a funny thing happens: your millionth dollar of income, however that may be defined, will be taxed at a penalty rate which is 6% higher, so 45.6%.  Let’s call these 40 and 46 just for convenience.  You … Continue reading →

Please use the media library here to post images, even in comments. Hotlinking is using an image from another site without the common courtesy of stealing it proper. Hotlinking not only uses somebody else’s property without their permission (let’s call it fair use), but then steals bandwidth by calling the image from their site every time a visitor here loads the local page (minus cache, etc). Nobody here profits from such use, and I assume fair use by all posters here, an assumption which I also graciously extend to myself. Thank me. I’m welcome. I still reserve the right to do Amazon links or some such thing, but even then I won’t profit from the presence of somebody else’s images. “Money” posts will be squeaky clean. Note that … Continue reading →

O ye! O ye!

It’s that time of the week again, when we connect for another town hall meeting in the Village of the Darned.

Jam a topic in the comments below and let people read up if you like.

If the software tells you that you’re the only caller, don’t you believe it!  Press on with the access code and you’ll probably find us in there!

US: 515-604-9908

Access Code: [see chat in “BDB Chat” tab above]

Select International Local Dial-in Numbers

Japan +81 3-5050-5104
Switzerland +41 43 550 70 62
United Kingdom +44 330 998 1256

If you need a different number (calling from Botswana, say), let us know in the BDB Chat.

Dig:

Continue reading →