Speaker 1: Well, whiskey, come and take my pain, the honeys, my ry,
Speaker 1: oh whiskey. Why think alone when you can drink it
Speaker 1: all in with Ricochet's three whiskey Happy Hour.
Speaker 2: Join your bartenders, Steve Hayward, John U.
Speaker 1: And the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia, where.
Speaker 3: They lapped it up.
Speaker 2: It'll David, ain't you easy on the soul taps?
Speaker 4: Got a give me Well, this is a crazy three
Speaker 4: whiskey happy hour. We've got John Yu in an undisclosed
Speaker 4: location on the California coast. I Lucretia. I'm in my
Speaker 4: usual bunker way in the midst of the desert somewhere.
Speaker 4: But Steve is somewhere unknown, on a huge ocean liner
Speaker 4: traversing the globe, supposedly between Japan and Vancouver.
Speaker 1: Eventually eventually Vancouver by way of Alaska.
Speaker 4: So okay, and so Steve is trusting Elon Musk to
Speaker 4: keep Starlink going, even if he's not going to do
Speaker 4: anything about the McDonald's ice cream machines, even though we
Speaker 4: all know he could best meme of the week if
Speaker 4: you ask me anyway. Welcome everybody, Welcome Steve. I hope
Speaker 4: you having a good time. Welcome John.
Speaker 1: Oh, how can you not have a good time when
Speaker 1: you have you know, you don't have to do your
Speaker 1: laundry and housekeeping. And when you have, you know, three
Speaker 1: square meals a day, plus bartenders at your beck and
Speaker 1: call on every deck.
Speaker 3: Steve, that just sounds like being married to a good woman.
Speaker 1: Oh, be glad I'm listening through this trough headsets and
Speaker 1: not broadcasting through the spouse sitting not far away.
Speaker 4: She would laugh.
Speaker 3: I was trying to get Allison to come over and
Speaker 3: hit you with a frying.
Speaker 4: Pan, saying there aren't many of those in your cabin.
Speaker 2: And you're suite no, but I have this.
Speaker 1: I have this huge suite and I have my own
Speaker 1: really lavish bar supplied every other day with a fresh
Speaker 1: bottle of tankaaye gin for martini.
Speaker 2: So it's great.
Speaker 3: What are you drinking in the morning?
Speaker 4: She writes?
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 3: Are you any one of those fancy cruise ships where
Speaker 3: you can drink as much as you want?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh wow. And I don't think it.
Speaker 3: Was just like Carnival Cruise Lines or something for the
Speaker 3: extra package. I didn't know like that was for real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you drinking? John? Steve it's eight in
Speaker 4: the morning, so he's probably drinking mimosas.
Speaker 3: Actually five pm here, I'm still working, so I was
Speaker 3: just drinking coffee.
Speaker 1: But I do have some wild I have crossed four
Speaker 1: time zones in the Pacific so far, so it's actually
Speaker 1: one o'clock in the morning one o'clock in the afternoon
Speaker 1: where I am presently, so I'm not that far away
Speaker 1: from you, guys.
Speaker 3: I'm going to break this so I'll break out the
Speaker 3: world Turkey Rare.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you might need it for today's Three Whiskey Happy Hour.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of crazy things on the menu today
Speaker 4: on the agenda, but I'm going to start with what
Speaker 4: was my second favorite meme of the week, which from
Speaker 4: the Babylon B getting ahead of myself starting off the
Speaker 4: show with Babylon B that it was a big announcement.
Speaker 4: Just so you guys know, we have a long running
Speaker 4: three way chat between the Three Whiskey Happy Hour co
Speaker 4: hosts and sometimes it's very serious. Sometimes it's a little
Speaker 4: lesson serious, but it almost always has the latest news
Speaker 4: about McDonald's, and the latest news about McDonald's happened to
Speaker 4: be that they were for the two hundred and fiftieth
Speaker 4: anniversary they were going to be bringing back the fried
Speaker 4: apple pie. John's response is exactly mine, although I didn't
Speaker 4: write it, which was I never knew it was gone.
Speaker 4: But the Babylon b posted one at their memes saying
Speaker 4: the McDonald's is bringing back the fried apple pie with
Speaker 4: real cocaine. Why reminds me of that meme where the
Speaker 4: little girl asks her mom how come it is it?
Speaker 4: Grandma always got so much more than you done in
Speaker 4: a day than you do mom, and her answer, when
Speaker 4: your grandma was my age, they had cocaine in the
Speaker 4: coca cola, and anyway, there you go.
Speaker 3: So so here's two observations about the return of this wonderful,
Speaker 3: wonderful dish. Is one, what's your record for how many
Speaker 3: you've eaten in one sitting? Minus three.
Speaker 4: Half half and not even because I'd burned the roof
Speaker 4: of my mouth, just because you know.
Speaker 3: See the key is you got to eat them from
Speaker 3: the middle, break it open, eat the filing, don't eat
Speaker 3: the crusts at either end, so that preserves more stomach space.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing I really loved about it
Speaker 3: is a was that the you know came in this
Speaker 3: really interesting plastic paper holder which sleeps like kind of
Speaker 3: like a gun holster to me, And I was like,
Speaker 3: I wonder if you could repurpose it as like a
Speaker 3: BB gun holder once you were done eating the apple pie.
Speaker 4: But I think you actually could have done what you said, John,
Speaker 4: break it in half and use the apple pie itself
Speaker 4: as a weapon to shoot. You shoot that hot apple
Speaker 4: pie filling into somebody's face. Good, it's good as a handgun,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the McDonald's that hot apple pie is with
Speaker 1: the sleeve you mentioned, John, I think they gave birth
Speaker 1: to the hot pockets, which I think are one of
Speaker 1: the worst frozen food inventions of all time when newsed properly.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, keep it that way, that's my advice.
Speaker 4: Why why do you consider it the worst? I mean,
Speaker 4: I know it's just a package of chemicals and I'd
Speaker 4: never eat one today, but I used to like them.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not much that, it's that when you actually
Speaker 1: cooked them properly in their sleeve, they are they will
Speaker 1: earn your mouth. And who has the discipline to wait
Speaker 1: two minutes from the cool off I certainly don't, right,
Speaker 1: It's an instant gratification.
Speaker 2: Food and well you're just smarter than the rest of us.
Speaker 4: But I don't know about smarter. I just don't want
Speaker 4: my mouth.
Speaker 2: And then I'm trying to think of it. It's Jim Gaffigan.
Speaker 1: He's the comedian who does a wonderful routine on hot pockets.
Speaker 1: I recommend interested listeners look it up on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I will you know. The other thing about this Elon
Speaker 3: Musk ice cream machine meme is I don't know why
Speaker 3: Elon Musk just doesn't buy McDonald's, Like he doesn't have
Speaker 3: to fix the ice cream machines. He's enough money now
Speaker 3: that he could just buy McDonald's, probably with a few
Speaker 3: weeks of interest on his massive stockholdings. Is Bicex now
Speaker 3: the fifth largest country company in the world, and he
Speaker 3: could just buy McDonald's close throughout all the ice cream
Speaker 3: machines or so.
Speaker 4: Like he should.
Speaker 3: He could he reached a partnership with what is it
Speaker 3: cold Stone Creamery and have then come in and run
Speaker 3: all the ice cream I don't know why they need
Speaker 3: to make ice cream machines, although I we'll say, when
Speaker 3: we were in Italy together, I did get one of
Speaker 3: the soft serve ice creams for just two euros and it.
Speaker 4: Was great at McDonald's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, yeah, McDonald You did what we've been to too.
Speaker 4: Many gelatto places. You went to McDonald's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I got the soft serve because it was
Speaker 3: only two euros. Everything over and then in Europe is
Speaker 3: so expensive. I don't want to pay everybody's social welfare
Speaker 3: benefits every time I buy something, so I thought i'd
Speaker 3: go to McDonald's to get something cheap.
Speaker 4: You live in California, you live in everybody's benefits everywhere
Speaker 4: you go.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: Oh, anyway, I do have. These guys didn't list it
Speaker 4: as something they wanted to talk about, but I'm still
Speaker 4: reveling in it. So the two hundred and fiftieth Birthday
Speaker 4: celebration with UFC at the White House was the most
Speaker 4: incredibly successful patriotic event of probably the last half century,
Speaker 4: I would argue. And it was amazing. Why Why? Because
Speaker 4: it was manly, it was it celebrated warriors. They gave
Speaker 4: away four thousand tickets to members of our military, not
Speaker 4: to rich, hoity toity people that could pay like they
Speaker 4: did for the nixt tickets. And there was this did
Speaker 4: you see the flyover? This amazing flyover, And there were
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand people who came through the Ellipse over
Speaker 4: that weekend. I mean, it was just it was a wonderful,
Speaker 4: patriotic expression of what it means to be an American.
Speaker 4: America is so back, baby, I saw that all our
Speaker 4: conservative commentary. Now, on the other hand, the decided they
Speaker 4: needed counter programming. Did you watch any of that, John.
Speaker 3: Steve, No, But I didn't. I really, I didn't want
Speaker 3: to watch the UFC. I don't really like UFC. I
Speaker 3: think it's a little too brutal for me. I didn't
Speaker 3: watch the counter programming either, but gosh, I don't know
Speaker 3: some of it. And we were just in Sicily where
Speaker 3: we saw this amazing mosaic depicting the gladiatorial games and
Speaker 3: all the wild animals they were capturing to throw in
Speaker 3: with the with the people in the coliseum, and I
Speaker 3: don't know the UFC. It's so outrageously brutal. I know,
Speaker 3: I got the feeling where we're like in the late
Speaker 3: Roman Empire or something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: You say that, John, but actually, if you were to
Speaker 4: look at UFC permanent injuries versus say, football permanent injuries,
Speaker 4: even well, I mean soccer pretend permanent injuries oh, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, it does seem brutal. I don't like watching it,
Speaker 4: I'll be honest with you, but but I celebrate it.
Speaker 4: Do you see the difference. I'm a mom, so mom's
Speaker 4: never liked seeing these things. I actually watched my son
Speaker 4: when he was he shouldn't have been fighting. He was
Speaker 4: hurt anyway, and I almost ran into the ring and
Speaker 4: pulled the guy the guy off of him. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's hard for moms to watch those things. I'm just saying,
Speaker 4: but I try to put myself back from it and
Speaker 4: say this is awesome, but really quickly steve and break in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if my connection holds up an observation, you know,
Speaker 1: the New York Times bestseller list never includes best selling
Speaker 1: novels by say Christian authors, like the old Tim Lahay books,
Speaker 1: which I thought were not very good books.
Speaker 2: But C. S. Lewis's books sell huge numbers. He just exclude. Really,
Speaker 2: they just ignore them.
Speaker 1: And likewise, on sports, you know UFC and also professional wrestling,
Speaker 1: they're massively popular, but you'll never see them discussed on
Speaker 1: the sports pages of the elite media. And it was
Speaker 1: the late John von Cannon, you know, it was the
Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation for years. He pointed this out to me,
Speaker 1: that professional wrestling, you know, we know it's all fake,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's a morality play. You have good
Speaker 1: guys and bad guys people for the audience to cheer for.
Speaker 2: They're like old.
Speaker 1: Fashioned scripted melodramas. And of course everyone knows they're fake.
Speaker 1: But and you know, I've never excited me, but John
Speaker 1: used to go to them because he said they're a
Speaker 1: conservative phenomenon. So it's sort of like the National Acquirer newspaper,
Speaker 1: which is a conservative newspaper in some ways, even when
Speaker 1: it's reporting on you know, UFOs and crazy stuff. So
Speaker 1: you know, that's and that's the thing that Trump understands.
Speaker 1: He's playing not to the elite media. He's playing to
Speaker 1: the broad cross section of the American population that likes
Speaker 1: these kinds of spectacles.
Speaker 3: So that's why, I mean, it's a little Brendon for me. No, No,
Speaker 3: it's like Brendan circuses during the Roman Empire. And you know,
Speaker 3: when we were texting about this, I think stever Lucretius
Speaker 3: said it's just like the golden era of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: But I was like, are we really in the age
Speaker 3: of Marcus Aurelius here or are we in the age of
Speaker 3: his son comtists who started the decline and fall of
Speaker 3: the empire with excessive fascination with glad It's communists. Was
Speaker 3: I think he did train as a gladiator. I think
Speaker 3: that was actually a true thing that they put in
Speaker 3: the movie Gladiator. Yeah, I mean, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Some of the spectacle of it is reflected kind of
Speaker 3: blood thirst. Now, I'm not saying we should go back
Speaker 3: to the days where like John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy,
Speaker 3: you know, had Robert Frost and you know, people like
Speaker 3: this to sort of pretend that there was high culture
Speaker 3: at the White House. I don't think it needs to
Speaker 3: be that. But God, this this UFC seems but can't
Speaker 3: we just have the Philadelphia Eagles play the Dallas Cowboys
Speaker 3: on the White House lone he kicked the crap out
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Watch.
Speaker 4: No, it wouldn't. But anyway, again, it's no less brutal
Speaker 4: in this case. Anyway, the reason what John is mentioning,
Speaker 4: I just have to put this one out there too.
Speaker 4: Again from our text message stream, I sent these guys
Speaker 4: this thing from X and it was I love all
Speaker 4: of this happened on Saturday Sunday. I love that we're
Speaker 4: the new Rome, peace with Persia in the afternoon and
Speaker 4: a gladiator fight in the evening, all on the Emperor's birthday,
Speaker 4: another thousand years. And my response to that was, Steve
Speaker 4: loses his title to analogy.
Speaker 2: Man oh man, I am crushed. This is what happens
Speaker 2: when I, you know, leave the country, When you leave.
Speaker 4: The country take place. I do last comment from me
Speaker 4: on this, and that is you. If you have not
Speaker 4: seen the leftist programming on this, you've you've got to
Speaker 4: spend five minutes Google, Rise Up, Rise Up, and whatever
Speaker 4: the hell it, rise up and sing out. And it's
Speaker 4: Jane Fonda. And you're right, Steve, she is just man
Speaker 4: oh man, She's just a sort of a a grotesque,
Speaker 4: you know. It's just as in the noun, yeah, like.
Speaker 2: A waxwork nightmare.
Speaker 4: It's amazing, awful and that. But here's the crazy part.
Speaker 4: Bete Midler. I remember when Bette Midler was a talented singer,
Speaker 4: right right, and she sings this off key with these
Speaker 4: old fat ladies strumming their stupid fake instruments or not
Speaker 4: even like banjos, and they're singing I don't even know.
Speaker 4: It's just like the ones you would see at protests,
Speaker 4: off key and the most cringe worthy thing you've ever seen.
Speaker 4: And of course then Robert de Niro accuses us of
Speaker 4: and all of us who actually still love our country,
Speaker 4: of being abused wives because our country has abused us
Speaker 4: so badly by electing Donald Trump. It was just awful.
Speaker 4: And they charged quite a bit of money for people
Speaker 4: to show up at the at the Theater in New
Speaker 4: York to do this, and then they put it online
Speaker 4: and it got more. It got more views online from
Speaker 4: people who got on to make fun of it than
Speaker 4: it did originally. So anyway, that makes me happy because
Speaker 4: I'm with John. I don't like watching UFC. I don't
Speaker 4: even like watching my kid when he fights MMA. But
Speaker 4: it's but but I celebrate it, and I celebrate the
Speaker 4: people out there that Trump was appealing to you by
Speaker 4: doing it, so I'm all in favor of it. Well,
Speaker 4: kind of leads us into moving things around a little bit.
Speaker 4: The next topic, which is the Iran deal. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: let you guys talk on that because I've got my thoughts,
Speaker 4: but you guys are the experts. John tell us what's
Speaker 4: in the deal you neo con.
Speaker 3: Steve Steve Steve posted a critique of it, I believe
Speaker 3: in a minute, But I actually am maybe more favorable
Speaker 3: to the overall conflict than Steve was, and I think
Speaker 3: some of our friends are going overboard and attacking it.
Speaker 3: I've heard some friends of mine at the National Review
Speaker 3: podcasts comparing this work to Vietnam in terms of its
Speaker 3: setback for American foreign policy, which I think is completely wrong.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think if you take the agreement out
Speaker 3: of it, and a lot of the agreement is temporary
Speaker 3: and hinges on negotiations over thirty or sixty days, look
Speaker 3: at what the United States achieved. So here, I'm putting
Speaker 3: on my neo con helmet here, Linda. We don't put
Speaker 3: on tenfoil hats in the neocon and we put on
Speaker 3: real helmets, by the way, So you know, So one,
Speaker 3: we've destroyed Iran's anti aircraft defenses. We've destroyed its air force,
Speaker 3: its navy, a lot of its military assets. If you
Speaker 3: believe what the Southcom commander said when he testified to
Speaker 3: Congress a few weeks ago, he said, we've destroyed the
Speaker 3: industrial base that was necessary for Iran to build the
Speaker 3: the drones and missiles with which to threaten its neighbors.
Speaker 3: Of course, we've destroyed large, large stocks of those, and
Speaker 3: we've buried its nuclear program under mountains of rubble. That
Speaker 3: in itself is an achievement because if you think about
Speaker 3: where the world was before October seventh, no American president
Speaker 3: would dare attack Iran. Right. They were worried about the
Speaker 3: attacks on Israel that would occur. They worried about the
Speaker 3: straits of Hermose closing, But they were all worried about
Speaker 3: Iran firing off all these missiles and destroying everywhere other
Speaker 3: of them and didn't turn out that way. I think
Speaker 3: in many respects Iran was a military paper tiger. Think
Speaker 3: about this, they get attacked, what does Iran do. They
Speaker 3: fire missiles at civilians in the neutral countries all around it,
Speaker 3: and they closed the straits before moves. That is not
Speaker 3: a response of strength. So I think we uh. But
Speaker 3: what I think, what the people who are critical and
Speaker 3: what Americans often want is just outright victory. And what
Speaker 3: we're doing is we're containing a problem. We have knocked
Speaker 3: the Iranians back I think five years at least in
Speaker 3: the terms of rebuilding. All this military industrial capacity. So
Speaker 3: I think that is we are better off I think
Speaker 3: now than we were before. I think what people are
Speaker 3: upset about is the idea that we would trade sanctions,
Speaker 3: relief and money in exchange for Iranian promises to allow
Speaker 3: the Straits to reopen. That's all I think that is.
Speaker 3: I think that's a short term problem. We are apparently
Speaker 3: allowing Iran to sell oil, and we are lifting some
Speaker 3: sanctions temporarily pending this longer term permanent deal. I would
Speaker 3: be amazed if we actually reach a long term permanent deal,
Speaker 3: and if we don't, then what we're going to have
Speaker 3: is a kind of stalemate like we did with a
Speaker 3: rock after the first Persian Gulf War, where we might
Speaker 3: need to keep a somewhat permanent air presence around Iran
Speaker 3: and periodically bomb when it tries to rebuild its nuclear
Speaker 3: program and it's missile stocks if they don't cooperate, And
Speaker 3: that to me is a neo con is not such
Speaker 3: a bad outcome in the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm actually more favorable to it than might
Speaker 1: have seen from what I wrote a couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: and in fact I just posted a piece before we
Speaker 1: got on here together a few minutes ago by this
Speaker 1: guy named Clayton Wood, who I don't know, but he
Speaker 1: writes really interesting stuff. And Mac owens up at the
Speaker 1: you know, retired from Naval War College, who of course
Speaker 1: we all know and love.
Speaker 2: He likes this.
Speaker 1: Guy because I asked Mac, I said, you know, give
Speaker 1: me your thumbs up on his sky.
Speaker 2: Mac thinks this, well, he.
Speaker 1: Hasn't set himself at least if he has, I missed it,
Speaker 1: but he thinks this Clayton Wood guy's account is pretty good.
Speaker 1: This guy added one detail onto my analysis a couple
Speaker 1: of days ago, which was apparently, and I guess this
Speaker 1: is confirmed in reliable reporting, the Saudis were not cooperating
Speaker 1: with our blockade and we're making.
Speaker 2: It difficult for us to suit right.
Speaker 1: And so that was one factor. The other factors right,
Speaker 1: And the other factor I pointed to, and I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this before, is you know, the oil people
Speaker 1: I know who really know the world market said we're
Speaker 1: you know, four or five weeks away from running out.
Speaker 1: I mean the storage tank said Cushing, Oklahoma are getting
Speaker 1: down to the bottom. And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve you
Speaker 1: know that we have that, you know, Biden foolishly depleted
Speaker 1: some and didn't refill. It's nearly empty, and storage units
Speaker 1: around the world which were designed after the oil crises
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies precisely for this moment, which is
Speaker 1: why this war has had minimal economic impact. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, gas prices, we know, we don't like it,
Speaker 1: but it's nothing like the crises of the seventies, even
Speaker 1: though this is a bigger disruption to the Middle Eastern
Speaker 1: oil trade.
Speaker 2: So it's a.
Speaker 1: Different world now, but it's still we were looking at
Speaker 1: some potentially you know, Trump said I wanted to avoid
Speaker 1: an economic catastrophe.
Speaker 2: He's possibly right about that.
Speaker 1: Finally, this Clayton Wood guide doesn't say this, or Abe does,
Speaker 1: but I did, Which is we still don't know or
Speaker 1: if our Cia does know, and I doubt it. The
Speaker 1: internal dynamics are among the Iranian fact actions these days.
Speaker 2: You know, who are we dealing with? We don't know.
Speaker 1: And you know, I posted the picture of the Iranian
Speaker 1: minister who signed the deal. He doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: happy guy, unlike the guys ten years ago who were
Speaker 1: grinning from ear to ear with Obama's deal. Right, And
Speaker 1: so I don't know, Maybe this flushes out that and
Speaker 1: causes a bigger problem to run. No way to know,
Speaker 1: but I do think we should withhold judgment. And the
Speaker 1: last thing I said was, it's echo what you said,
Speaker 1: John is the beat. Well, first of all, we know
Speaker 1: the media is going to dump all over this deal
Speaker 1: because it's Trump and the Democrats. I've saw a few
Speaker 1: of them on TV, on the cable international cable news,
Speaker 1: and they're all suddenly hawkish.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Iron has won this war. It's terrible,
Speaker 2: what a terrible deal.
Speaker 1: It's a you know, the same deal and in some
Speaker 1: respects as Obama's deal, and they don't even have the
Speaker 1: witness say, gosh, you know, Obama looks pretty good in retrospect.
Speaker 2: No, they don't.
Speaker 1: Instead, they just they sound like the hawkish neo cons
Speaker 1: at least for ten minutes. And you know that tells
Speaker 1: me that I'm going to withhold judgment because of all
Speaker 1: the din of all the critics of this.
Speaker 4: Who are judged. I don't see the I don't see
Speaker 4: the Obama deal. But anyway, go ahead, John, I think
Speaker 4: that's not sense.
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing about the Obama deal really it
Speaker 3: really depends on what happens with the sanctions. So there
Speaker 3: is a temporary thirty In the agreement, there's a temporary
Speaker 3: thirty degree thirty day lifting of some sanctions in order
Speaker 3: to sell oil, and there is discussion of allowing frozen
Speaker 3: funds to start being accessed by iron. If it turns
Speaker 3: out that the sanctions are completely lifted and Iran gets
Speaker 3: access to all of its money that's frozen, then I
Speaker 3: think that would be a cave, similar in kind to
Speaker 3: Obama's JCPOA everybody where we're pushing out about palace of
Speaker 3: cash out the C one thirties. But but that's not
Speaker 3: called for yet, right, This is all pending the deal.
Speaker 3: In fact, the somewhat sanctions really for oil exports is
Speaker 3: only for good for thirty days, and so at the
Speaker 3: agreement pushes a lot of these hard decisions off to
Speaker 3: this kind of final deal. And look, I mean, have
Speaker 3: we been able to agree with the Iranians on anything
Speaker 3: within thirty days or sixty days? The odds are really
Speaker 3: high we don't come to an agreement. But if we do,
Speaker 3: if it does contain this kind of relief, then I
Speaker 3: think that is a cave. But it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 4: Okay, So first of all, all, you can't even say
Speaker 4: all the right people are against this because it seems
Speaker 4: like everybody's against it practically, which leaves me to wonder,
Speaker 4: you know exactly what's going on here. It's I think,
Speaker 4: more than anything, there's a lot of Trump arrangement syndrome
Speaker 4: that no matter what happens, no matter what Trump does,
Speaker 4: there are going to be people who on both sides
Speaker 4: of the aisle who are going to, you know, just
Speaker 4: trash it, no matter what might happen. By the way,
Speaker 4: did you guys see the continuously denied report that fun
Speaker 4: I think it was soon admitted that the Save Act
Speaker 4: isn't going to pass even because it's good, even because
Speaker 4: the voters want it, even because particular senators constituents want it,
Speaker 4: just because they hate Trump so much. Now Thune is
Speaker 4: denied that's true. But it supposedly happened at a big
Speaker 4: Senate Republican meeting, and I think it's probably true. I
Speaker 4: think it certainly explains Cornin, It probably explains Soon. But anyway,
Speaker 4: back to the randal, Rand didn't get much of what
Speaker 4: it wanted because it can't demand that anymore. That is
Speaker 4: not what happened with Obama. This idea that everybody's throwing
Speaker 4: that out there that he you know, we just lost
Speaker 4: so much treasure in thirteen lives and blah blah blah,
Speaker 4: just to come back to where we were with Obama.
Speaker 4: That is the stupidest thing. And the other thing was
Speaker 4: all of the people who came out before the actual
Speaker 4: MoU was released based upon things that were leaked. Those
Speaker 4: things have remained somehow still credible, even though they're not.
Speaker 4: Like the three hundred billion dollars in American taxpayer dollars
Speaker 4: that we are supposedly giving to Iran. None of that
Speaker 4: is there, and Iran didn't get what it wanted. Last
Speaker 4: thing I'll say about it, Let's remember who Trump is.
Speaker 4: He's not a neocon, he's not a realist. He's a
Speaker 4: deal maker, and so he's not going to be restrained
Speaker 4: or constrained by the same kinds of diplomacy problems that
Speaker 4: many of the presidents have been in the past with
Speaker 4: respect to Iran. I'll say that first. But secondly, so
Speaker 4: it's sixty days we're at June eighteenth, Are you guys
Speaker 4: getting ready to celebrate the fake virtue signaling holiday tomorrow? Anyway,
Speaker 4: June eighteenth, when we're recording this because of our schedules.
Speaker 4: That so two months from now is August eighteenth, And
Speaker 4: as I think John said it, I agree with him
Speaker 4: one hundred percent that they're probably not going to get
Speaker 4: this done in sixty days. You extended another sixty days.
Speaker 4: Where are we. We're right there at the midterms. The
Speaker 4: price of gas has already fallen nationwide to below four dollars,
Speaker 4: lowest it's been since the start. The economy's way up,
Speaker 4: jobs are way up. There's all of these great things happening.
Speaker 4: Trump can do his negotiations, keep them quiet on the side,
Speaker 4: and go back to talking about affordability and everything that's
Speaker 4: wrong with the Democrats. I will say that concessions to
Speaker 4: i RAN, even if they did happen, would have been
Speaker 4: more important at this stage than taking a greater chance
Speaker 4: of losing both houses in the midterms, because that will
Speaker 4: be catastrophic for this country in a way that any
Speaker 4: deal with the WRAN never could be. That's how oh,
Speaker 4: I sort of look at the whole thing again. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of details. John, I think spelled it out perfectly.
Speaker 4: We don't know what's going to happen. We know we
Speaker 4: can't trust the Iranians. I know Trump knows he can't
Speaker 4: trust the Iranians, but he has put them, I think
Speaker 4: back on their heels, and I'm going to be cautiously optimistic.
Speaker 4: That's what I said before and say it again.
Speaker 2: Comments No, I'm good with that.
Speaker 3: I think the war. If you look at the overall war,
Speaker 3: Iran is definitely worse off than they were before. I
Speaker 3: think they did better in the deal than they had
Speaker 3: a right to expect. But yeah, for people to say
Speaker 3: this is a loss for the United States, if you
Speaker 3: just look objectively at the measures of Iranian power, they
Speaker 3: are far worse off than they were before they and
Speaker 3: their allies attacked Israel on October seventh. And I'm just
Speaker 3: sorry that we stopped so early, because we could have
Speaker 3: really finished them off, I think. But Trump's a deal maker.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to wipe out the Iranians Iran, and
Speaker 3: he wants to have someone to negotiate with who can
Speaker 3: keep their promises, because he does think that there can
Speaker 3: be an agreement with him where everyone's better off. I
Speaker 3: just don't think that's possible with the Iranian regime, and
Speaker 3: so we'll end up with a kind of cold war
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which just fine with me. There is you mentioned
Speaker 2: John stopping the attack.
Speaker 1: I mean there's one thing here that also I put
Speaker 1: my piece here today that I think is a really
Speaker 1: serious worry, and I think we're trying to fix it fast,
Speaker 1: but fast as a relative term, and that is they
Speaker 1: I think had more capacity to attack than we thought
Speaker 1: they did with their drones and missiles, and more willingness
Speaker 1: to attack all the Gulf States and not just Israel.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, what's the line. We were
Speaker 1: shooting down one hundred thousand dollar drones with five million
Speaker 1: dollar missiles, and that's a bad exchange rate. And whether
Speaker 1: we seriously depleted our stocks or not, I think they're
Speaker 1: not going to tell us, and they shouldn't because you
Speaker 1: don't want to tell the Chinese that, oh, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: down fifty percent. But I think that at some point
Speaker 1: we reached the point of diminishing returns.
Speaker 2: Possibly. I mean I would like to have continued also,
Speaker 2: but I.
Speaker 1: Think there's a serious calculation there, maybe behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: that we can't keep up doing it this way. Let's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason I won't stall for times
Speaker 1: not quite the right phrase, but I think Lucreatia's right
Speaker 1: about put off until after.
Speaker 2: The midterms and then you can go back at it.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll be restocked, we'll have redar stations rebuilt, and
Speaker 1: then we'll see where Iran is. And one under detail
Speaker 1: does bother me that we haven't talked about, which is
Speaker 1: apparently John and I haven't read the whole darn thing yet.
Speaker 1: Are we supposedly restraining Israel and defending itself against Hesbla
Speaker 1: and Lebanon? Because I don't like that much. Rather, yeah,
Speaker 1: I much rather say it.
Speaker 3: Says that all fightings shall stop, and it specifically includes Lebanon,
Speaker 3: And you would sit there and say, well, why does
Speaker 3: any agreement between the US and Iran include this third country?
Speaker 3: But I believe Israel, which is not a party to
Speaker 3: the agreement, has said they're not going to obey it,
Speaker 3: so that part of it is I think.
Speaker 4: So think that some of that is a little bit
Speaker 4: of gainsmanship on the part of the Trump administration doing
Speaker 4: Israel is so unpopular in weird sorts of ways and
Speaker 4: has become such a bogeyman for all sorts of other
Speaker 4: kinds of issues that I'm guessing that netnya Who and
Speaker 4: Trump are really not at loggerheads about this. I'm guessing
Speaker 4: that there's a little bit more going on behind the
Speaker 4: scenes than Trump is just effing mad and d da
Speaker 4: da da da oh.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think that could all be disinformation,
Speaker 1: And I think there's an easy out. The first time
Speaker 1: the Iranians don't live up to some part of their bargain,
Speaker 1: it could be two weeks from now, two months from now,
Speaker 1: I think, you say, well, then Israel doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be bound by us anymore either, So I think there's
Speaker 1: an easy out there. And yeah, we've seen this dance before.
Speaker 1: We heard their tensions between Trump and and not Netanyah
Speaker 1: who last year when we know that we were planning
Speaker 1: possibly to join in in the June attack on Iran,
Speaker 1: which we did, right, So yeah, I don't believe in
Speaker 1: anything that I read about all of that. It could
Speaker 1: be true, but I'm not going to believe it necessarily.
Speaker 4: And supposedly the Israelis were not happy about the deal either,
Speaker 4: but that could also be a little bit of disinformation.
Speaker 4: They're really good at it, Okay, So moving on, we'll
Speaker 4: see what happens. We'll just have to see what happens
Speaker 4: with the Iran deal. I want John to explain to
Speaker 4: us a little bit about what's going on with the
Speaker 4: failure of the Senate. It's just the Senate at this point, right, John,
Speaker 4: to enact an extension of section seven oh two. Well,
Speaker 4: let me you explain. I could give our listeners a
Speaker 4: history going all the way back to the beginning of
Speaker 4: signals intelligence and the government's ability to collect data anonymously
Speaker 4: without anybody knowing about it, and what's happened. But you're
Speaker 4: the expert here, so tell us what's going on.
Speaker 3: One reason I think you're saying I'm the expert is
Speaker 3: because I was involved with the creation of the program
Speaker 3: which section seven oh two essentially codified into statutory law.
Speaker 3: And let me explain the problem we face. So we
Speaker 3: had on nine to eleven there was this gap in
Speaker 3: our ability to surveil our enemies. And you know, this
Speaker 3: is one of the great advantages that we have in
Speaker 3: the fight against foreign countries like China or Iran or
Speaker 3: terrorist groups, is that we have I think unparalleled ability
Speaker 3: to intercept and analyze the electronic communications of our enemies,
Speaker 3: which is what Lucusia called signals intelligences as a military
Speaker 3: term for it. And so at the time of the
Speaker 3: nine to eleven attacks, it was thought that in order
Speaker 3: to intercept communications that might involve an American abroad, you
Speaker 3: had to have a warrant, even if you might unintentionally
Speaker 3: capture it, you needed to get a warrant. And to
Speaker 3: try to savel say Osama bin Laden, you would need
Speaker 3: to a warrant. And this is the problem. This is
Speaker 3: the way the prosecutors think, which is different than the
Speaker 3: challenge we face. Prosecutors want to go to court get
Speaker 3: a warrant, and to do that you have to have
Speaker 3: the name of the person and you have to show
Speaker 3: evidence that they're engaged in the legal activity. That's what
Speaker 3: the Fourth Amendment requires. That's not the way you deal
Speaker 3: with foreign enemies and the military, because often you don't
Speaker 3: know the names of the people you're trying to catch,
Speaker 3: and you don't have any evidence yet that they're going
Speaker 3: to do something right. The criminal justice system looks at
Speaker 3: things backwards. It says, these people already did things, that's
Speaker 3: why we want to surveil them. So on nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: think about the one thing you would want to search
Speaker 3: would be every electronic communication in Afghanistan, not just the
Speaker 3: ones in Afghanistan, the ones that would be the most troublesome,
Speaker 3: worrying to you would be things from Afghanistan into the
Speaker 3: United States. Right, those would be the communications you would
Speaker 3: really want to look at. Those are the ones before
Speaker 3: nine to eleven we thought needed a war. The military
Speaker 3: they just want to intercept all the communications and try
Speaker 3: to search them to find about information about pending attacks.
Speaker 3: So after nine to eleven, President Bush created this program
Speaker 3: to do exactly that. This was not There was no
Speaker 3: statue passed by Congress that allowed that. When that program
Speaker 3: became public, Congress approved it in section seven oh two.
Speaker 3: That's essentially what seven oh two does. It allows the
Speaker 3: mass capturing of electronic communications abroad to search through them
Speaker 3: to find information about attacks that are going to occur
Speaker 3: against the United States. Can I ask you to think
Speaker 3: it's a dereliction of duty to allow that to lapse
Speaker 3: which has happened, and not renew that because I think
Speaker 3: of all the electronic communications, surveillance, signals, intelligence we engage with,
Speaker 3: that is the one that cost of communications is the
Speaker 3: one that would have the highest probability of finding out
Speaker 3: information about an attack on the country.
Speaker 4: So when John came to speak to my students at
Speaker 4: the university, we had a lovely talk about a related issue,
Speaker 4: and that is the difference between what law enforcement wants
Speaker 4: to do with this information and what intelligence wants to
Speaker 4: do with that information. And so you have some protections.
Speaker 4: Of course, you've got the fize of court. So if
Speaker 4: you actually find evidence of a crime being committed or
Speaker 4: potentially committed by an American citizen or a US person
Speaker 4: is actually the term that they use, not so much
Speaker 4: a citizen, then protections protections then step in, and the
Speaker 4: Fourth Amendment. I don't know if the Fourth Amendment is
Speaker 4: fully stepping in. The question is whether the kinds of
Speaker 4: protections that are left for American US person, sorry, when
Speaker 4: their data are being looked at by intelligence agencies, the
Speaker 4: protections that keep them from being prosecuted for any potential
Speaker 4: crime are there. But the fact that the intelligence agency
Speaker 4: can look for evidence of a crime reeks of a
Speaker 4: general warrant. Can you speak to that for just a moment.
Speaker 3: So I think the key for this program and its
Speaker 3: justification is that's not really there to build prosecutions. It's
Speaker 3: not there to assemble information that will lead to someone
Speaker 3: being thrown in jail. The main point of it is
Speaker 3: to find out if there's going to be a pending
Speaker 3: attack and try to stop it. That's why you look
Speaker 3: in the database. That's why you have signals intelligence. That's
Speaker 3: why the military exists, is to protect the country from
Speaker 3: an attack. And so, yes, if you're going to start
Speaker 3: using this database, because what happens is all these emails,
Speaker 3: text phone calls are put into a database which you
Speaker 3: can search by name or not, just named by the AI,
Speaker 3: very well, yeah, yeah, And in fact, there's an interesting
Speaker 3: legal constitutional question, which is, if AI is doing this searching,
Speaker 3: have you really lost your Fourth Amendment rights at all?
Speaker 3: Or is it when a human being looks at it
Speaker 3: that your privacy is lost. This is a very The
Speaker 3: Supreme Court has never said one way or the other
Speaker 3: about that, and that's an interesting question in itself. But
Speaker 3: so there are all these protections built into it, as
Speaker 3: Lucretius says, for if you start searching for Americans in
Speaker 3: that database specifically. But I don't see why we can't
Speaker 3: use it to search to find what Osama bin Laden
Speaker 3: or the son of the Iraqi Supreme Leader talked about.
Speaker 3: They have no Fourth Amendment rights at all. They're foreigners
Speaker 3: of foreign land. I don't see why we shouldn't use
Speaker 3: these surveillance powers to the maximum. They have no privacy
Speaker 3: rights against the United States government. And that's really what
Speaker 3: we want to be searching for. Is right Iran and
Speaker 3: we know Iran try to kill President Trump during the campaign.
Speaker 3: Those are the kinds of right. That's the conversation. What
Speaker 3: are Iranians doing? Are they trying to get agents into
Speaker 3: the country who are then can we stop them?
Speaker 4: That's an interesting phenomenon, John, because on the one hand,
Speaker 4: remember Trump actually himself or at least some of his
Speaker 4: aides or campaign people I forget the guy's name, now
Speaker 4: you know who I'm talking about, were drawn up in
Speaker 4: a FISA court, drawn up in this whole data collecting thing,
Speaker 4: and prosecuted by a corrupt Justice department. Trump himself suffered
Speaker 4: a bit under that. But Trump is the one pushing
Speaker 4: for this. Trump is the one pushing for the Senate
Speaker 4: to pass Section seven oh two. I do want to
Speaker 4: and I want you to comment on that, but let
Speaker 4: me get this last point out there. The two points.
Speaker 4: One is that there are claims claims made in the
Speaker 4: Washington Post that during this long period of time before
Speaker 4: the last renewal, I think in twenty twenty four of
Speaker 4: section seven oh two. There were sixteen roughly sixteen thousand
Speaker 4: some prosecutions of people for drug related activities and sixteen
Speaker 4: for terrorism based upon this large collection of data coming
Speaker 4: in you know, foreign persons communicating with the people in
Speaker 4: the United States with US persons. That's thing one, and
Speaker 4: then the second thing finally, sorry, the commercially available information
Speaker 4: aspect of this. So you now have one of the
Speaker 4: arguments and you never almost never see this reported in
Speaker 4: any stories about the section seven of two renewal. So
Speaker 4: you have the ability of both the government and private entities,
Speaker 4: private commercial entities who can take these data or who
Speaker 4: get these data and sell them, and the government itself
Speaker 4: has For instance, I'll give you an example. If you
Speaker 4: have traffic cameras and surveillance cameras, you know, in your town,
Speaker 4: all of that's constantly collecting data on you, so that
Speaker 4: there are many towns that know if you drive into town,
Speaker 4: they know where you go and how long you're there
Speaker 4: and when you leave. And those data are collected by
Speaker 4: private entities, commercial entities and sold in ways that the
Speaker 4: government itself is not monitoring. They buy a great deal
Speaker 4: of it, but they're not monitoring it. And they're not
Speaker 4: even collecting or you know, they're not cataloging what's happening there.
Speaker 4: So that's another issue supposedly being considered by you know,
Speaker 4: the column the stronger Fourth Amendment advocates who are opposed
Speaker 4: to the extension of seven oh two.
Speaker 2: What do you think of?
Speaker 3: No, please do there's a Supreme Court case that is
Speaker 3: going to address some of this this term next week
Speaker 3: because the argument is a lot of the information that
Speaker 3: Lucretia is talking about that's available commercially or that's available
Speaker 3: to the communication providers may not be protected by the
Speaker 3: Fourth Amendment at all because it's in Plaine view right,
Speaker 3: it's like the traffic cameras plant or you have voluntarily
Speaker 3: given it to AT and T or to Google, and
Speaker 3: once you do that, the traditional understanding had been you
Speaker 3: lose your privacy rights on things you voluntarily hand over
Speaker 3: to a third party. So there's this case called geo
Speaker 3: fencing that's come up, where can the government use data
Speaker 3: that you've given up about your location and try to
Speaker 3: track you with that? And it is a strange paradox
Speaker 3: if the court says no, the Fourth Amendment still protects it,
Speaker 3: which would be that Google or Facebook are going to
Speaker 3: know far more about you than the government could in
Speaker 3: trying to stop a crime. That really doesn't make a
Speaker 3: lot of sense, it seems to me.
Speaker 4: But is that not the natural follow up from the
Speaker 4: president set in Carpenter versus US, So you can explain
Speaker 4: to this really quickly.
Speaker 3: So no, So this is very interesting. So Carpenter is
Speaker 3: a five to four decision of the Court which said
Speaker 3: that the information and a smartphone, and in this case
Speaker 3: it's location, we're protected by the Fourth Amendment.
Speaker 2: And it's weird.
Speaker 3: Like Chief Justice roberts Worth the opinion, he went on
Speaker 3: this kind of strange. I think analogy, no offense, steam,
Speaker 3: but an analogy comparing like the smartphone to like the
Speaker 3: eighteenth century version of your papers and your diaries. And
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure it's the same thing. I'm not
Speaker 3: so sure that case, you know, lizan as precedent, giving
Speaker 3: the changes in the Court's personnel since Carpenter was decided,
Speaker 3: it's about ten years ago now. But also I think
Speaker 3: the government does need to have this kind of information
Speaker 3: for national security purposes. So maybe this is what I
Speaker 3: always thought was the compromise was that the government should
Speaker 3: be able to use this information for national security purposes,
Speaker 3: to stop and attack, to unravel a terrorist organization from abroad,
Speaker 3: and maybe the trick is, but you can't enter it
Speaker 3: into court to use it for a prosecution. That was
Speaker 3: actually what the government used to do before PISA showed up.
Speaker 3: I always thought FISA was a big mistake. And instead
Speaker 3: what would happen is that presidents would go out on
Speaker 3: their own. Presidents from Lincoln on, Washington on would do
Speaker 3: signals intelligence. What they never tried to do is enter
Speaker 3: it into court and use it in a prosecution. And
Speaker 3: that preserved the ability to make sure it didn't contaminate
Speaker 3: our domestic legal system, and it was a way to
Speaker 3: make sure it really was for national security purposes.
Speaker 4: Is there anybody on the court actually recognizing that sort
Speaker 4: of high wall of separation between the two and saying
Speaker 4: that privacy does there is not necessarily an element of
Speaker 4: privacy said that is divorced from the idea that you
Speaker 4: that it applies to prosecuting you for a crime.
Speaker 3: Right, see this, We'll see this in the Geofencing case.
Speaker 3: It'll be very interesting. I bet you won't see the
Speaker 3: same lineup you saw in Carpenter. And by the way,
Speaker 3: in Carpenter. Again, it was a five to four case.
Speaker 3: I mean, you had very strong descents. It was not
Speaker 3: It was not the lineup, for example, where you saw
Speaker 3: in some of the previous cases like GPS trackers or
Speaker 3: the image you know, thermal imaging case where Scalia and
Speaker 3: Thomas were in the civil libertarian majority in Carpenter. There
Speaker 3: you did see this or usual conservative tougher on crime
Speaker 3: justices other other than Roberts saying maybe we shouldn't keep
Speaker 3: expanding privacy rights in this era of the new digital era,
Speaker 3: because you're really going to constrain the ability of the
Speaker 3: government to protect us from foreign threats if we keep
Speaker 3: expanding this willy nilly and just make simple analogies and
Speaker 3: stuff a saying, oh, smartphones are like diaries.
Speaker 1: Well, can I bring up a case from ten years
Speaker 1: ago that presents related issue that hopefully can help disentangle
Speaker 1: a little bit. And that was the you know, the
Speaker 1: San Bernardino shooters, the Metems whatever the name was, and
Speaker 1: you know they had Apple smartphones iPhones, and I don't
Speaker 1: quite remember how this ended, but I know that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure brought on Apple. You got to
Speaker 1: help us break into this, They said, we can't. And
Speaker 1: then the next step was, well, then you need to
Speaker 1: build in a backdoor feature so we can get into
Speaker 1: these phones in a situation like this where national security
Speaker 1: is on the line. Never mind criminal enforcement. The ME
Speaker 1: teams were dead, they weren't going to be tried for anything,
Speaker 1: but you could see the intelligence function of it, like
Speaker 1: the seven or two things you're talking about. Do I
Speaker 1: remember that some Israeli hackered to manage to get into
Speaker 1: the phone.
Speaker 2: So it ended up was that I happened to say this.
Speaker 3: It's like one thing I learned when I was working
Speaker 3: in the national security world is that, uh, yeah, the
Speaker 3: United States is really good, but when we can't crack something,
Speaker 3: we just ask Masad to do it. Right, Right, So
Speaker 3: the Israelis broke into the phone for us, right, That's right,
Speaker 3: That is what I remember.
Speaker 1: But that's still it raises the issue about It's one
Speaker 1: thing to say, you know, we have all these apps
Speaker 1: the track where we are and what we're doing, and
Speaker 1: it's another thing to say that the phone itself should
Speaker 1: be invulnerable to or be immune from Fourth Amendment protections.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Let me let me just revenge. Like the carpenter. You
Speaker 3: know it's the majority is Chief Justice Roberts wrote the
Speaker 3: opinion and had Ginsburg, Briar, Soda, Mayor, and Kagan. Two
Speaker 3: of them are gone. The dissenters were Kennedy, Thomas, Alito,
Speaker 3: and Gorsach. Wow, so you could easily see, right, you
Speaker 3: could easily see Carpenter going the other way with Kavanaugh
Speaker 3: and Barrett.
Speaker 4: Now, oh yeah, although to be fair, there have been
Speaker 4: a lot of abuses that have come to light since then,
Speaker 4: but censorship by Google and so on, I mean, the
Speaker 4: whole idea, that was it. It was Cats, that right,
Speaker 4: the Cats versus us where the idea of the third
Speaker 4: party doctrine first came up. If any information you voluntarily
Speaker 4: released to a third party is no longer considered private. Yes,
Speaker 4: that was it Cats.
Speaker 3: And I remember it's a case called Maryland, Maryland, which
Speaker 3: is called can Register. The Cats is what starts it
Speaker 3: all because Cats remembers Cats. Is the case about, Uh,
Speaker 3: do you have privacy in a phone booth? I mean
Speaker 3: that's so antiquated and so right, what's a phone booth?
Speaker 4: Listeners won't even know?
Speaker 3: Superman? Remake right, Superman? Would you know? In the first
Speaker 3: the super Maria shows up and it's one of those
Speaker 3: phone boots with outdoors, and he like doesn't know what
Speaker 3: to do because in the old days, right Superman going
Speaker 3: the phone with and changed clothes there and then Clark
Speaker 3: Kent would be super.
Speaker 4: Well, it'll be interesting because remember now Trump is Trump
Speaker 4: has been very much behind the extension of seven oh two,
Speaker 4: but he's now tying it to passage of the Save Act.
Speaker 4: So we'll see what happens. Maybe by next sex never
Speaker 4: again happened, Hardball.
Speaker 3: I think actually Trump's taking the So I think the
Speaker 3: right approach is not to limit the power of the government.
Speaker 3: It's to reform the intelligence agencies because it was it
Speaker 3: wasn't that the power. It's because the intelligence agencies just
Speaker 3: abused their powers to use FISA to spy on Trump
Speaker 3: and his campaign. Narrowing the powers isn't going to stop
Speaker 3: that because they would have still broken the law anyway.
Speaker 4: Actually, it's funny when I asked mister Lucretia about this
Speaker 4: extension of what he thought about them failing to extend
Speaker 4: section seven oh two, he said, they're just going to
Speaker 4: do it anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they would just do it if you're if you're
Speaker 3: out to get Trump, right, like FISA, and where you
Speaker 3: draw the line, wasn't going to stop them. So why
Speaker 3: harbor our ability to protect the country from attacks to
Speaker 3: prevent another Russia hoax? Instead, I think the very thing
Speaker 3: is to attack the administrative state that allowed this kind
Speaker 3: of abuse in the first place.
Speaker 4: So, speaking of five four decisions, we actually had one
Speaker 4: of those rare unanimous decisions on a major issue actually
Speaker 4: today in US versus HARMANI and both Steve and John
Speaker 4: really liked this decision because of the constant reference to
Speaker 4: what's the term alcohol alcoholism? No, not just a bit,
Speaker 4: but but there's what's the actual term. I have it
Speaker 4: here somewhere. Actually it's not free, I'll find it. But
Speaker 4: so nine to zero the case written by Gorsic, who's
Speaker 4: the one who brings back the fact that our founding
Speaker 4: fathers were indeed.
Speaker 3: Let's just say, none of them would have been able
Speaker 3: to pass a d W d UI breathalyzer test today.
Speaker 4: Yes, So explain to us a little bit quickly about
Speaker 4: the case, John, So.
Speaker 3: First of all, this is extraordinary that the government, the
Speaker 3: United States government lost nine to zero and had a
Speaker 3: major criminal statute struck down. That doesn't happen, and very
Speaker 3: often particularly under the Roberts Court. What happened and it
Speaker 3: shows that the Second Amendment case of Bruin, which promised
Speaker 3: a more vigorous protection of gun rights, is actually going
Speaker 3: is actually serious. There were some people who thought and
Speaker 3: Bruin's not that serious. The court is not going to
Speaker 3: strike down that many laws infringe on the right to
Speaker 3: bear arms. I think those people have been proven wrong.
Speaker 3: So this is a case that the facts are important
Speaker 3: here because this is a case of a guy in
Speaker 3: Texas who has a gun and he tells the police
Speaker 3: officers that he also has marijuana and smokes it regularly.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 3: He was not. I know, it's like, why is it
Speaker 3: every other day rather than every day? Like how do
Speaker 3: you pick every other day? But this is the interesting
Speaker 3: is important though, is that he was never tried and
Speaker 3: convicted for marijuana use. He was not a drug felon.
Speaker 3: And that's important to the court because what the court
Speaker 3: says is, you know, all you have to do to
Speaker 3: throw this guy in jail for ten years and take
Speaker 3: away his right to own guns is that he voluntarily
Speaker 3: tells you he uses marijuana. And the government said, yes,
Speaker 3: that's all we need. We don't need to actually convict
Speaker 3: them of drug uses.
Speaker 4: This mode case drunkards that that's it. That's what they're
Speaker 4: referring to as the historical precedent that allows them to
Speaker 4: do exactly what you just said.
Speaker 3: Now, since you criticized Steve all the time for being
Speaker 3: analogy man, Steve's height, the height of Steve's powers comes
Speaker 3: about in the Second Amendment context, because what the Court
Speaker 3: has said is, we will only allow restrictions on the
Speaker 3: right to bear arms that have some kind of analogy
Speaker 3: to the kind of limits that existed in seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: seventeen ninety one, actually, to be precise. So the government said, well,
Speaker 3: this is like there were no drug laws per se
Speaker 3: back at the time of the Second Amendment. So this
Speaker 3: is like restrictions on junkerds, restrictions on the ability to
Speaker 3: have guns if you want, because that was the drug
Speaker 3: of the day. That was the drug of the day.
Speaker 3: So the fun part of the opinion is that Justice
Speaker 3: Corsich goes through some of the drinking habits of our
Speaker 3: leading founders, and so it turns out that James Madison,
Speaker 3: who drafted the Bill of Rights, apparently liked to have
Speaker 3: something like three glasses of whiskey a day, but then
Speaker 3: as he became president, he switched to wine because it
Speaker 3: was healthier, but he was still having three to four
Speaker 3: glasses of wine every day. He recounts Jefferson, of course,
Speaker 3: a big fan of Madero wine, as was Washington, and
Speaker 3: he recounts the amount of liquor drunk at the President
Speaker 3: Washington's farewell party, General Washington's farewell party in Philadelphia. I
Speaker 3: think something like a the casks of wine were drunk
Speaker 3: at his dubipractic. But I think that says more about
Speaker 3: Philadelphia than about the founders out there. At that tidbit,
Speaker 3: I would have dropped a footnote there for Justice Gorsicic.
Speaker 3: I've seen statistics about the amount of liquor consumed by
Speaker 3: the founding generation, and something like three barrels of rum
Speaker 3: per person per year in the United States, an incredible
Speaker 3: amount of liquor was drunk. So this is Gorsich's view
Speaker 3: is people were allowed to drink a great deal, and
Speaker 3: just being intoxicated was not grounds enough to take away
Speaker 3: your right to bare arms. It had to be something
Speaker 3: more like that not only were you drunker, but that
Speaker 3: you were a public danger because of your drinking. And
Speaker 3: that usually there was a court finding or a sheriff
Speaker 3: or someone intervened and found you were a danger. Their
Speaker 3: point was just smoking marijuana or using drugs per se
Speaker 3: is not dangerous, does not itself make you a threat
Speaker 3: to have got Well, this is actually a quite incredible
Speaker 3: victory I think for gun rights. Yeah, it's weird the
Speaker 3: media coverage of the decision has not been that extensive,
Speaker 3: but I think this could lead to the questioning of
Speaker 3: a lot of other drug I'm sorry, gun restrictions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's why they're not covering it. I think
Speaker 2: they right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, I mean, you know, I haven't read
Speaker 1: the opinion did Justice course it's mentioned nineteenth century consumption figures.
Speaker 1: You know, the Temperance movement was not wrong about the
Speaker 1: problem of you know, alcohol abuse in nineteenth century. Well,
Speaker 1: not just I mean in general, I mean the per
Speaker 1: capita consumption figures were just off the charts. And you
Speaker 1: know prohibition well, I mean I was like will Rogers line,
Speaker 1: at least prohibitions better than no liquor at all.
Speaker 2: But prohibition that you know, fifteen years we had it.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, did actually lower the sort of the
Speaker 1: practices of alcohol consumption in America and noticeable. But the
Speaker 1: point is is, I don't think there are any restrictions
Speaker 1: on gun ownership on use in the nineteen century when
Speaker 1: the problem really was significant.
Speaker 3: S Your guys are like this, as I remember when
Speaker 3: I study this period in American for American History, that
Speaker 3: temperance was another mistaken aspect of the progressive movie, this
Speaker 3: idea you could control all human behavior. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: this was just one of yet another one of the
Speaker 3: great failures of Woodrow Wilson at all.
Speaker 4: Still I'm interested, though, But you think about Tom. You
Speaker 4: won't know this Steve, but Thomas's concurrence all of everybody
Speaker 4: again unanimous. Thomas wrote a concurrence, Katine. She wrote it
Speaker 4: because saying we need to get rid of the historical
Speaker 4: analogy test, the Steve Hayward test for gun rights and
Speaker 4: replace it with them what does she call it?
Speaker 3: The means, the means ands balance.
Speaker 4: Means balance. Leave that aside. Thomas argues that there is
Speaker 4: absolutely nothing in Congress's interstate common powers that allows them
Speaker 4: to make this regulation in the first place.
Speaker 3: Now it's very interesting, yeah, because he mentioned this in
Speaker 3: his case called Lopez, which he where he wrote the
Speaker 3: same a similar concurring pin when this is the year
Speaker 3: I clerk for him, where he said the commerce clause
Speaker 3: power should only give Congress the ability to regulate commerce
Speaker 3: that crosses state borders. And he said, and you can
Speaker 3: have arguments about when the transaction starts and when it ends,
Speaker 3: but he said, at some point, you're no longer regulating
Speaker 3: the buying and selling of the gun. You're just regulating
Speaker 3: the possession. And his view is possession of something is
Speaker 3: not inter state possession does not fall within the commerce clause.
Speaker 3: So you remember he also voted to strike down the
Speaker 3: drug laws because right, you can get people for trafficking
Speaker 3: and drugs, but just having the drugs possession itself doesn't
Speaker 3: cross state borders. At some point, it's not commercial anymore,
Speaker 3: and so that should be outside the interstate commerce clause.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean states can't regulate it. States of course,
Speaker 3: could regulate possession, but not the federal government. So right,
Speaker 3: this is a long term project of his. He's had
Speaker 3: some successes. The Court, for example, struck down the Violence
Speaker 3: Against Women Act under this theory. It struck down the
Speaker 3: gun possession law in Lopez itself. We'll see if it
Speaker 3: can really go farther and strike down the federal drug laws.
Speaker 3: That's where the court has not gone. There's a case
Speaker 3: called Gonzales versus Reisch, which of course occurred in Berkeley,
Speaker 3: where these two Berkeley people, one person gave marijuana to
Speaker 3: another person, didn't even sell it. It was a gift for
Speaker 3: the treatment of cancer. Allegedly it was a painkiller for cancer,
Speaker 3: and the court six' three In gonzales upheld the federal drug. Laws,
Speaker 3: GOSH i would have thought if the court was going
Speaker 3: to agree With, hamis that would have been the case
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 4: It, Yeah i'll, See we'll, See, Okay STEVE i Promised
Speaker 4: STEVE i would end on. Time So i'm going To
Speaker 4: i'm going to read Some Babylon. Bees BUT i have
Speaker 4: to tell you that The Babylon bees are probably worse
Speaker 4: Than Elizabeth warren when it comes To trump and this
Speaker 4: ran deal. Out about ninety percent of The Babylon bees
Speaker 4: over the last week have been about The iran, deal
Speaker 4: and they are all just scathing Against. Trump so some
Speaker 4: of them are still funny because that's the way they.
Speaker 4: Are i'll start with this. ONE ufc fight ends abruptly
Speaker 4: As trump broker's peace deal between the. Fighters, yeah it's,
Speaker 4: yeah it's, well here's a non non randal. One it's
Speaker 4: a picture Of Keem jeffries And Chuck schumer And Elon
Speaker 4: musk in the, corner and it Says democrats vow to
Speaker 4: keep fighting until nobody In america can be. Successful, yeah For,
Speaker 4: elon it is nice to be a trillion ERE i would.
Speaker 4: IMAGINE i don't even know how you wrap your head around.
Speaker 4: That oh back To. Iran oh, No trump negotiates deal
Speaker 4: With england and now they have the colonies back.
Speaker 2: THAT i.
Speaker 4: Know, okay so this, one you, know you guys heard
Speaker 4: that The jdvans went on the view and then makes.
Speaker 4: Figure but doing on the, view it says to sell his,
Speaker 4: BOOK i. Guess and The iran The iran. DEAL Jd
Speaker 4: vance makes contact with tribe of illiterate feral. Women that's pretty.
Speaker 4: Good world breathes a sigh of relief as terrorists promise
Speaker 4: to be. Good Poor, trump they should give him a,
Speaker 4: break don't you. Think at one point or? Another, okay last,
Speaker 4: one not a rand. One Al gore explained that while
Speaker 4: an inconvenient truth did not prove, accurate it did make
Speaker 4: him incredibly.
Speaker 2: Rich, yeah see.
Speaker 4: Why didn't you get incredibly rich from your inconvenient what
Speaker 4: is it called? Again?
Speaker 1: Inconveniation you, know my little counterdocumentary that got me in
Speaker 1: The New York times style pages was made for a
Speaker 1: mere twenty four thousand, dollars unlike his six million dollar
Speaker 1: film whatever it.
Speaker 3: Was so, YEAH i know that you could make it
Speaker 3: for twenty four.
Speaker 2: Bucks NOW i know you.
Speaker 4: Could, OKAY i have to one last. One world leaders
Speaker 4: lineup to Ask trump to bomb their countries for a
Speaker 4: while and then give them a few hundred billions.
Speaker 2: That not quite. ACCURATE i don't think that's.
Speaker 3: Good So steve.
Speaker 4: Managed to stay on this whole. Time So, john.
Speaker 3: So always drink your, whiskey, meat buy more. Books And,
Speaker 3: steve who is floating off the peninsula, cheka come check
Speaker 3: it because he is determined to visit every territory on
Speaker 3: the risk game. Board you have to say for your sign.
Speaker 2: Off, Well i'll just say. This this.
Speaker 1: Summer you, Know i'm gonna be In germany next, month
Speaker 1: So i'm doing all the axis. Powers this summer is
Speaker 1: In italy with you, guys and you Know japan last
Speaker 1: week And germany next, month so uh and then, uh,
Speaker 1: Yeah i'm Hopefully i'm.
Speaker 3: Not forgetting the means you have to go Visit romania
Speaker 3: and all the guys who signed up on the invasion Of.
Speaker 1: Russia, now, yeah that could, be and that could, be
Speaker 1: But i'll just end us this. Way uh, well this
Speaker 1: is an ad free episode because the algorithm that that's
Speaker 1: plugged into our platform in the middle Of, Pacific i'm
Speaker 1: not sure what ads would give.
Speaker 2: Us it might give us ads In japanese And, chinese
Speaker 2: Or russian or none at. All it could be.
Speaker 1: Weird so you have been listening to a special ad
Speaker 1: free edition of The Three whiskey app The hour sponsored
Speaker 1: by The Cimitas, institute hosted by and produced by ricochet dot.
Speaker 2: Com and we'll be back next.
Speaker 1: WEEK i Think i'll be back on land and will
Speaker 1: be more normal by Everybody.
Speaker 2: Ricochet join the. Conversation