Speaker 1: No guests were guests go oh I'm the guest. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: but I'd finally been elevated to host.
Speaker 2: You could be the host. I can be the guest.
Speaker 1: No, no, ask.
Speaker 3: Not what your country can do for you, Ask what
Speaker 3: you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: Mister garbach Off, Tear down this wall.
Speaker 4: Hits the Ricochet podcast where the brother Rob Long he's back,
Speaker 4: and John.
Speaker 2: You he's back as well, and James Lenox that we're.
Speaker 4: Going to talk about everything that's going on. So what's
Speaker 4: that results a.
Speaker 3: Podcast on this vote. The a's are two hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty two. The a's are two oh nine. The bill
Speaker 3: has passed, the motion is adopted.
Speaker 5: We're placing a two trillion dollar deficit.
Speaker 1: So I don't think we're gonna.
Speaker 4: Get out of this annual deficit.
Speaker 1: By taxing people.
Speaker 4: Now, the tariffs are out there, the presidents saying tariffs
Speaker 4: are his favorite word.
Speaker 1: He loves tariff's.
Speaker 2: Replace the word tariff with tax and you would think.
Speaker 4: Oh my God, and his Republicans love Jackson's.
Speaker 5: Welcome everybody.
Speaker 4: It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and sixty five.
Speaker 4: I'm James Lilax here in Minneapolis. Rob Long is back.
Speaker 4: Brother Rob is amongst us. I don't know where he is.
Speaker 4: We'll find you in the second. And also joining us
Speaker 4: is Schrodinger's pundit, John You.
Speaker 5: Is he a host? Is he a guest?
Speaker 2: Is he alive?
Speaker 5: We don't know exactly.
Speaker 4: We're going to consider him a host because after all
Speaker 4: of these years, it just seems ridiculous not to grant
Speaker 4: him that honorific.
Speaker 5: So welcome John, Welcome Rob.
Speaker 1: It's okay about damn time.
Speaker 6: Granting John Henny honorific if this comes down.
Speaker 1: Although I feel like this is the last week of
Speaker 1: the major league season, this is when they pull all
Speaker 1: the people up from Triple A.
Speaker 4: Indeed, well, here you are, and we're glad to have you.
Speaker 4: And there's so much to discuss today. We haven't had
Speaker 4: Rob on for a while, and so we'd like to
Speaker 4: get Rob's take on things as they have been I
Speaker 4: this topic comes up an awful lot.
Speaker 5: I know it's important, but I cannot gin up the.
Speaker 4: Passions exactly to discuss the before, the after, the during,
Speaker 4: whatever of the shutdown, because the shutdown just seems like
Speaker 4: such theater and I tire of it. But you know
Speaker 4: you can't do that with this This is the Ricochet podcast.
Speaker 4: We've got to have an opinion, we've got to set
Speaker 4: forth what we believe. So government's back forty three days.
Speaker 5: Wow, I don't know. We made it.
Speaker 4: President signs of funding bill late Wednesday, fund the government
Speaker 4: through well through January thirtieth.
Speaker 5: So yeah, you know, here we go again.
Speaker 4: The agreement reverses the mass federal layoffs, and I seem
Speaker 4: to remember that there was something brooded about that this
Speaker 4: would be the opportunity to just decap well not decimate,
Speaker 4: but decimate plus large sections of the federal government by
Speaker 4: just saying, oh, we're going to zero you out.
Speaker 5: You can't come back. That didn't happen. What do you think, guys,
Speaker 5: win loss? Let's look at it this.
Speaker 4: Two ways, the actual winners and losers and what are
Speaker 4: now being thrown to us as the perceived winners and
Speaker 4: losers in the spin game.
Speaker 5: Robi, you go first, it's been a while.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, you know the reason you're sick of
Speaker 6: it talking about these is we have them every year practically,
Speaker 6: I mean, we should start to number them because like
Speaker 6: World War one, world War two, so so we give
Speaker 6: them track.
Speaker 5: No give names like given names like hurricanes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: This is a shutdown, you know, Charlie birth or something,
Speaker 6: and I am baffled by them.
Speaker 2: I'm baffled by why they keep happening.
Speaker 6: The really the political rule of thumb is and I
Speaker 6: could be wrong, but I sort of like did.
Speaker 2: Some very fast research on this last week.
Speaker 6: The party not in the party in the White House
Speaker 6: during a shutdown almost always wins politically or comes out
Speaker 6: slightly ahead. Doesn't matter who that person is, doesn't matter
Speaker 6: who the president is. But usually the president comes out
Speaker 6: ahead politically. Everyone else loses because, of course, it's never
Speaker 6: an opportunity to cut government, and it's never an opportunity
Speaker 6: to rethink priorities, and it's never an opportunity to cut
Speaker 6: the budget and all the things that all the levers
Speaker 6: that people use, and the jeopardy they put into it
Speaker 6: never quite comes true. And what it really does is
Speaker 6: it's forty three days of just these hysterical dramatics, often
Speaker 6: from the party in Congress in this case, the Democrats
Speaker 6: or the party you know, not in the White Housers
Speaker 6: to say complain predicting all sorts of disasters. Planes are
Speaker 6: gonna fall out of the sky and children that go
Speaker 6: hungry and I mean, whether we're losers or not, we
Speaker 6: have we must at some point confront the fact that
Speaker 6: as a culture, as a people, we love the dramatics
Speaker 6: of this. We seem absolutely dead set on having these
Speaker 6: dramatic confrontations about nothing every couple of years. And I
Speaker 6: think that if you're a normal American, you just tune
Speaker 6: it out. You tune it out. You know that things
Speaker 6: that it's never going to be a disaster, but you
Speaker 6: also should know it's not going to lead to anything better. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And that that I think is the sort of the
Speaker 6: exhausting part of it.
Speaker 2: James, Well, try to explain why you're exhausted to clarify there.
Speaker 4: You said we love it, and then you said the
Speaker 4: American people tune it out. If by we you mean
Speaker 4: those who are obsessively following politics and the rest of it,
Speaker 4: I don't. I find it all a bunch of tiresome nonsense.
Speaker 4: And I think the we in the general national sense
Speaker 4: is that people. Yeah, that people tune it out because
Speaker 4: if anything, there's a lesson to be learned about exactly
Speaker 4: how much impact the federal government has on you in
Speaker 4: a day to day basis. I know it is funny
Speaker 4: because we talk about the you know, the the heavy
Speaker 4: hand of the state is.
Speaker 5: Always pressing down upon us. In Menion goes away for
Speaker 5: forty three days, We're like.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, yeah, John.
Speaker 1: I put my thinking in military terms, tatics, operations, and strategy. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, when it comes to naming, I'm surprised
Speaker 1: Rob didn't say we should name them like professional wrestling meets, right,
Speaker 1: don't they always have some clever name like Lola Palooza
Speaker 1: fat guy rolling around on other people number seven? But
Speaker 1: that would be ZBC and would be in fitting with
Speaker 1: this administration's favorite sport. It seems so. I think technically
Speaker 1: what happened here is I agree with Rob. The Democrats
Speaker 1: in Congress won because they juiced to turn out for
Speaker 1: the elections, and I think that's what this was all about,
Speaker 1: which is why the deal was reached right after the
Speaker 1: elections are over. They made their base angry. They got
Speaker 1: them to the polls. They won huge margins in places
Speaker 1: like New Jersey and Virginia, way more than two years
Speaker 1: ago or four years ago. That might go blow back
Speaker 1: on them because now their base is really angry because
Speaker 1: they had heightened expectations. I think at the higher level.
Speaker 1: What this shows is how Congress as an institution has
Speaker 1: failed because the reason why you do shutdowns, and I
Speaker 1: was around for the first one. I was actually working
Speaker 1: in Congress during the Gingrid shutdown, and so I remember
Speaker 1: the very first shutdown. The reason why is because everything
Speaker 1: now that gets decided by Congress is folded into gigantic
Speaker 1: spending bills. You don't have any individual bills anymore. There
Speaker 1: are no more individual appropriation bills. There's very few authorizing
Speaker 1: bills like the Voting Rights Act, which we'll talk about later.
Speaker 1: All legislation gets rolled up into these spending bills. And
Speaker 1: so if the spendingbles weren't as important, you know, if
Speaker 1: you didn't have everything in one omnibus bill, then it
Speaker 1: wouldn't cost as much to have the blocked. But now
Speaker 1: everything shuts down because Congress as an institution doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It's too easy to get it to stop. The larger
Speaker 1: thing is an American citizen, you know, taxpayer. This is not,
Speaker 1: as Rob said, is not going to solve the budget deficit.
Speaker 1: You could shut down the operations of the government for
Speaker 1: years and never solve the budget deficit because the budget
Speaker 1: deficits being produced by one thing. Which is entitlement programs,
Speaker 1: and those are on automatic spending no matter what happens.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you could have the government could have been
Speaker 1: shut for the next decade probably, and still we would
Speaker 1: have this enormous budget. That's it because Medicaid and Medicare
Speaker 1: and Social Security of what driving the country bankrupt?
Speaker 4: Doing my part, Well, is there any hope ever, at
Speaker 4: any point, at getting rid of these blob debus crs,
Speaker 4: these continuing resolutions, these massive things that contain universes and
Speaker 4: multitudes and going back to this dare I say an
Speaker 4: archaic method where you actually have a bill that is
Speaker 4: about a thing and there's a debate about the thing,
Speaker 4: and then there's another bill that is about a thing
Speaker 4: and we have a debate.
Speaker 5: About the thing.
Speaker 4: Is there any appetite for that in either party or
Speaker 4: are they just simply too comfortable with tucking all the
Speaker 4: stuff that they love into this thing and not scratch
Speaker 4: my back all scratch yours it goes through. I think
Speaker 4: it's hopeless. I don't think there's a chance in hell
Speaker 4: of ever going back to something where we're voting on
Speaker 4: individual bills for everything.
Speaker 6: Well, the reason we don't do that is because we
Speaker 6: can't afford too. We can't afford it. It's a shell
Speaker 6: game for the federal budget and for chet government expenditures
Speaker 6: in general. And so the more complicated you make something
Speaker 6: the harder, the easier it is to ignore the problems. Right, so,
Speaker 6: the more ornaments you put on the building, the easier
Speaker 6: it is. To easier it is to realize that to
Speaker 6: discover that the building isn't, you know, sound, And so
Speaker 6: it's kind of this like general understanding that we all
Speaker 6: have that you know, eventually the music's going to stop,
Speaker 6: but it hasn't stopped yet, that well, we'll fix this later.
Speaker 6: We'll kick this cant down the road. And at a
Speaker 6: certain point that makes some sense, you know that sort
Speaker 6: of the Reagan Bush even Clinton years kind of you
Speaker 6: could kind of do the math and say, well, you know,
Speaker 6: we could maybe grow out of if we hold the
Speaker 6: line on spending kind of, we can kind of grow
Speaker 6: out of our deficit and lower the debt.
Speaker 2: That's sort of happened.
Speaker 6: But it's essentially a demographic problem because there are more
Speaker 6: old people taking Social Security than there are young people
Speaker 6: kicking into it, and it's been a pay as you
Speaker 6: go program pretty much forever, so what the people have
Speaker 6: to decide. And this is sort of where I put
Speaker 6: the blame is that they they recognize it, accept that
Speaker 6: there is no such thing as a free lunch, and
Speaker 6: that that they are going to have to give up
Speaker 6: the free lunch, and that none of the people they hire,
Speaker 6: these sort of craven publicity hounds and attention seekers in
Speaker 6: Congress and the Senate and in the White House, none
Speaker 6: of those people is going to have the courage and
Speaker 6: the probably I think, and the truth to tell you
Speaker 6: the bad news, which is we can't can't, we can't
Speaker 6: afford to do and promise what we've been promising the
Speaker 6: way we've been raising money.
Speaker 2: And it's I mean, I mean, this is a horrible
Speaker 2: thing to say.
Speaker 6: Right, I'm a Republican basic, well not anymore, but basically
Speaker 6: a Republican, right, and I would say, you're either going
Speaker 6: to cut titlements, as John says, or are you going
Speaker 6: to raise taxes? And if you're a liberal Democrat, that's
Speaker 6: a perfectly fine outcome. Like if you talk any liberal Democrat,
Speaker 6: they don't think we have a problem.
Speaker 2: If they think it's an.
Speaker 6: Accounting problem the government has as far as they're concerned.
Speaker 6: One hundred percent access to one hundred percent of your
Speaker 6: net worth at any given time. So, yeah, you just
Speaker 6: raise taxes is seventy and debt to eliminated. It's only
Speaker 6: conservatives who believe that that would be a huge, huge mistake.
Speaker 2: So and that number is dwindling.
Speaker 6: The number of people who believe that is dwindling smaller
Speaker 6: and smaller and smaller to a tiny remnant of people
Speaker 6: who believe that actually taxes and fees are bad.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a moral case there to be me.
Speaker 1: You're the moral expert problem I've heard of you. No, definitely,
Speaker 1: I'm just a simple utilitarian, evil utilitarian.
Speaker 2: You're just sure you've got a law clerk.
Speaker 1: I'm sure in your seminars you have an effigy of
Speaker 1: a utilitarian you whee allowed on salt Verrgin.
Speaker 2: It's a picture of you.
Speaker 1: Two things about what what Rob said. One is there's
Speaker 1: a morald case to be made that I think you're
Speaker 1: hinting at, Rob, which is, why does the government have
Speaker 1: the right to do that? Why does the government have
Speaker 1: the right to take money out of one person's pocket
Speaker 1: and use it to pay for the healthcare for another person?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And Reagan used to be so good. Now. Reagan's forty
Speaker 1: years ago, but he was the last leader I remember
Speaker 1: who really made against this. Well, for you, Rob, everything's eternal,
Speaker 1: that's the marble. This is all just, this is all
Speaker 1: just passing moments on the way to a big time
Speaker 1: the show. And so but here's the other thing. I
Speaker 1: was just giving a talk in Arizona at the University
Speaker 1: of Arizona. I talk with some undergraduates there. They are angry.
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing this shows is that they're
Speaker 1: pissed at the Yeah, you guys, I'm not in your
Speaker 1: guys generation, the baby boomers. They are so angry because I.
Speaker 2: Think my friend excerpt, I think that they.
Speaker 1: Understand that Social Security, Medicaid, the Medicare, these are all
Speaker 1: just massive transfer programs from them. Right, the young people
Speaker 1: are taking their money's being taken away from them. All
Speaker 1: their opportunities are being narrowed to pay for the Baby
Speaker 1: boom generation's retirement because they didn't save, because they didn't
Speaker 1: take care of their own health care. I think they're
Speaker 1: very aware of it. That's why you have other eruptions
Speaker 1: like the election of a socialist in New York City,
Speaker 1: even though he's an anti semi the anger that you
Speaker 1: see is there, and I think the Democrats you saw
Speaker 1: some of that. Now that's why they're getting so much
Speaker 1: blowback on caving on the shutdown, because that generation thought
Speaker 1: actually something big was going to happen, and they're ticked off.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the opportunity for conservatives now they're going
Speaker 1: to have this debate about Obamacare subsidies is why should
Speaker 1: we still give out healthcare subsidies that were designed to
Speaker 1: take care of the COVID emergency and make them permanent.
Speaker 1: Why is it okay to take money from young people
Speaker 1: and to narrow their resource their opportunities in life. Seventy
Speaker 1: five and eighty year old people can you know, have
Speaker 1: their healthcare paid for and have a comfortable retirement. It
Speaker 1: should go the other way around. The old people should
Speaker 1: be the pre way for the young people.
Speaker 2: And you know what I mean. I this is not
Speaker 2: a digression.
Speaker 6: It is a digression. But what you just you said
Speaker 6: two really important things. One just always triggers me, is
Speaker 6: this talk about Obamacare, because Obamacare was a failure from
Speaker 6: the DNA of Obamacare does not work, and we knew
Speaker 6: it didn't work, and everybody who could do math, those
Speaker 6: it wasn't gonna work, in the same way that people
Speaker 6: knew Social Security wasn't gonna work either, because you can
Speaker 6: look at actuarial tables and you look at the way
Speaker 6: you look at the population growth.
Speaker 2: Right, you just know, right. But what I what was
Speaker 2: so dishonest about Obamacare?
Speaker 6: At least with the Social Security people, they kind of knew, well,
Speaker 6: this is you know, in fifty sixty, seventy eighty years,
Speaker 6: it could be a problem and we'll solve it. Then
Speaker 6: with some magic we'll be living on venus or something
Speaker 6: with jet packs. Right, Obamacare, they knew it wasn't gonna work,
Speaker 6: and the lies were so deep.
Speaker 2: Do you remember.
Speaker 6: It's the famous picture of the little the boy in
Speaker 6: pajamas and he's like, yah, a boy, when you pajama boy,
Speaker 6: when you go home to your parents, you remember, you
Speaker 6: should talk about health care.
Speaker 2: And it was this idea.
Speaker 6: Somehow it was so inverted that the that the solution
Speaker 6: for America's healthcare crisis was getting old people and your
Speaker 6: parents to sign up for Obamacare.
Speaker 2: That is a total falsehood. It was backwards.
Speaker 6: They should have had a picture of an old man
Speaker 6: in pajamas saying, when your kids come back for the holidays.
Speaker 6: Make sure the kids sign up for Obamacare, because it's
Speaker 6: the young people who are going to support this program
Speaker 6: because they don't use health insurance and they don't actually
Speaker 6: they don't get sick mostly they don't need to. They
Speaker 6: don't have all the problems that old people have. Old
Speaker 6: people like John's like, you know, you look at it.
Speaker 6: He's like, I don't know how. I don't know how
Speaker 6: you're hanging on.
Speaker 1: They don't have a Korean skin cosmetics, my friend.
Speaker 6: I mean, health insurance of the kind that we have
Speaker 6: designed only works if we make sure that young people
Speaker 6: pay a lot of money for it and they don't
Speaker 6: need it, and that that this honesty was baked in.
Speaker 6: And I do think that there is that. I mean,
Speaker 6: I think the larger issue is you're starting to see
Speaker 6: this the socialists being elected in Manhattan or New York.
Speaker 6: I think you're seeing a lot of young people on
Speaker 6: the right who are really, really angry and furious at
Speaker 6: the lies they've been told and are continuing to be told.
Speaker 2: And I at some point.
Speaker 6: As I said, I gave a talk the other day
Speaker 6: and I just said to a bunch of young people,
Speaker 6: said that the only solution for you.
Speaker 2: Is you got to take the car keys away from Grandpa.
Speaker 6: You got to you got to kick the generate, the sclerotic,
Speaker 6: large generation at the top that refuses to leave, and
Speaker 6: you got to kick them out. And that's the only
Speaker 6: way this is going to change, because old people are
Speaker 6: never going to sit there and vote to raise their
Speaker 6: They're they're to lower their their entitlement check. It's always
Speaker 6: going to be bigger.
Speaker 4: Well, they had the opportunity in New York to do that,
Speaker 4: and they they took it. The Cuomo guy to the
Speaker 4: curb Mandami, they got him in. And even though you
Speaker 4: said before that we all know that eventually this thing
Speaker 4: is unsustainable. It's a paraphrase Heinland that there's no such thing.
Speaker 5: As a free bus ride. Yet there it's going to be.
Speaker 5: There's all of these.
Speaker 4: Things that they're going to be given free or heavily
Speaker 4: subsidized because they're good, shiny things and they want theirs,
Speaker 4: and somehow the money will come out.
Speaker 2: Of the air.
Speaker 4: But it is strange to me that we say that
Speaker 4: we are supposed to tell the young people that they
Speaker 4: we have to get rid of this generational transfer whereby
Speaker 4: you are paying into social Security, that you never see
Speaker 4: in medicare that will be probably too expensive, and we're
Speaker 4: going to get we're taking money from you and we're
Speaker 4: giving it to the old people. And then at the
Speaker 4: same time say, but don't go for socialism. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's exactly supposedly what should what should be along their
Speaker 4: credo where the money is pooled and given to those
Speaker 4: in the most need and those in the most dire straits.
Speaker 2: Et cetera.
Speaker 5: You'd think that they'd before it, but they're not.
Speaker 4: And the reason that they have this as you point
Speaker 4: as John was pointing, oh no is rob which one
Speaker 4: of you are pointing about the people that you talk
Speaker 4: to who are mad, the young folks who are mad.
Speaker 5: I think people both talk to me, Okay, we're mad.
Speaker 1: For because I was in Tucson, Arizona, and I would
Speaker 1: just be pissed to be there.
Speaker 2: So the mad for a variety of regions, and one
Speaker 2: of them is Arizona.
Speaker 4: One of them is that yes, one of them is
Speaker 4: that indeed, yes, why am I paying for this in
Speaker 4: these programs? But the other has to do with a
Speaker 4: sense of stagnation, of cultural immobility of the idea, perhaps
Speaker 4: that they've done all the right things they went to school,
Speaker 4: they got the degree, they have the credential. But yet somehow,
Speaker 4: if you're in Brooklyn, you're paying four thousand dollars for
Speaker 4: a two bedroom house. You're on some bs job that
Speaker 4: really doesn't do anything. The consist of shuffling emails around
Speaker 4: or running grants or something. Are if you're of the elite,
Speaker 4: and the whole access and upper mobility and the rest
Speaker 4: of it seems to be denied to them. They don't
Speaker 4: think they're ever going to have a house. They're going
Speaker 4: to be stuck in a flat forever. So they hate
Speaker 4: the boomers for a variety of reasons. One of them
Speaker 4: is that they're having to pay for Social Security too.
Speaker 4: They think that somehow all the boomers squatted on the
Speaker 4: houses and grow the prices up, and that the boomers
Speaker 4: just look at them and say, well, don't have your
Speaker 4: avocado toast and you can afford it. That we're clueless
Speaker 4: and not of touch. And also because generally the collapse
Speaker 4: of the very institution's credibility that they want to be
Speaker 4: part of. They want to be part of the credential
Speaker 4: important class, the technocratic managerial class. At the same time
Speaker 4: that we've just seen the whole reputation of that class
Speaker 4: dissolve after five ten years of of COVID and everything else.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you can understand them being mad, But the
Speaker 4: solution is not free bus rides. The solution is not
Speaker 4: what California is proposing now, which is a new billionaire's tax.
Speaker 4: Of course, they want a billionaires tax. They want to
Speaker 4: tax five percent. I think of the net worth and
Speaker 4: they qualify that's land stocks, art everything. Liquidate your stuff,
Speaker 4: pay it off and this will generate supposedly a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of money which will then be used.
Speaker 5: To go to healthcare for illegals. And that's not going
Speaker 5: to I mean, if you can try that once and.
Speaker 4: Then everybody's gone, if everybody isn't gone from California already.
Speaker 4: So none of their ideas are sustainable. But rob is
Speaker 4: right the basic idea that everything that you own actually
Speaker 4: already blown belongs to the government and we can just
Speaker 4: continue to print money through magical quantitative easings or modern
Speaker 4: monetary theory or whatever.
Speaker 5: The only thing we lack is will. The only thing
Speaker 5: that really is holding.
Speaker 4: Us back is a will to socialize absolutely everything and
Speaker 4: go full Nordic country on you, you know, to apply
Speaker 4: the lessons that worked for a while for a country
Speaker 4: of six million people to somehow translate that to a
Speaker 4: nation of three hundred and fifty. Well, the affordability issue
Speaker 4: is big. Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham recently and
Speaker 4: was talking about the whole affordability thing. Apparently, the stats
Speaker 4: say that the voters blame Trump, not Biden, to the
Speaker 4: state of the economy.
Speaker 5: Which some people regard is more perils than I do.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I drift farther and farther from these things,
Speaker 5: because what do I care. I got my fixed income
Speaker 5: checks coming in.
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 4: But I did notice the other day at Trader Joe's
Speaker 4: that the bananas, which had been nineteen cents forever their
Speaker 4: version of the Costco hot dog, were all of a
Speaker 4: sudden twenty three cents, which used to be the price
Speaker 4: of the organic bananas.
Speaker 5: I noted that.
Speaker 4: I noted that the meatballs that I used to get
Speaker 4: that I would put into my spaghetti that used to
Speaker 4: be six dollars in ninety nine cents are now ten
Speaker 4: dollars in ninety nine cents. And I'm thinking, well, we
Speaker 4: don't import a lot of pork. I'm noticing these things
Speaker 4: I'm wondering why exactly this is still a problem. I'm
Speaker 4: kind of sort of blaming tariffs, and I'm pretty damn
Speaker 4: sure that if this is not feeling better by nest
Speaker 4: next election cycle, it will.
Speaker 5: Be a bad of blood.
Speaker 1: Can I be baby economists? Baby baby economist? Is that
Speaker 1: this is inflation? So inflation is under control? Right, it's
Speaker 1: below I think just below three percent, and it was
Speaker 1: right hitting nine percent ten percent under Biden, which is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean the prices go back down to the
Speaker 1: way they were in twenty twenty or twenty nineteen. It
Speaker 1: just means they grow more satily.
Speaker 5: They did with eggs eight they did with eggs.
Speaker 4: Everybody was telling me when eggs were five ninety nine
Speaker 4: or four ninety nine for a back of twelve that
Speaker 4: they're not They're never going back down, that this was
Speaker 4: the new standard.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, but they did. They're a buck ninety nine.
Speaker 5: Now do go on, God, useless?
Speaker 1: Are you are you buying those old eggs where you
Speaker 1: open it up and there's like a baby chicken inside?
Speaker 1: I mean, eggs aren't that cheap. But I'm in California
Speaker 1: where you're sight that Gus had fallen to four dollars
Speaker 1: a gallon, so I was like, wow, I gotta take
Speaker 1: a picture of the pump. It's four dollars a gallon.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, I guess, you know, I guess
Speaker 5: is going up though, don't you.
Speaker 1: Actually it's going down California. But that's because people. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. Actually why it's gone down. I think
Speaker 1: because there's more oil being produced by the United States
Speaker 1: and coming onto the market, which is great.
Speaker 4: Well, there's been a thirty thirty Well there's been a
Speaker 4: thirty cent jump recently. Part of that may be do
Speaker 4: switching over to different blends, part of that may be whatever.
Speaker 4: But what the instability in the oil market because of
Speaker 4: Russian production is a whole interesting asset we can get
Speaker 4: to later anyway. So no, yes, gas is not where
Speaker 4: it was. Eggs have come down, and I'm not buying
Speaker 4: the discount dollar store eggs.
Speaker 2: I'm buying them farm fresh.
Speaker 4: Your be more expensive because California has laws to say
Speaker 4: that each chicken has to have seventy five yards in
Speaker 4: which to walk or something like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's more space than a studio apartment in
Speaker 1: San Francisco.
Speaker 5: These eggsactly, exactly right, exactly right. But it doesn't feed
Speaker 5: does it. It's a feel thing.
Speaker 4: It's whether or not people feel that things have gotten better.
Speaker 4: And apparently this you know, the polls are showing that
Speaker 4: they don't, which I don't think is actually a reflection
Speaker 4: of reality.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think. I think it's hard for political
Speaker 1: leaders to plane that you can get inflation under control,
Speaker 1: but that just means prices are going to grow most
Speaker 1: more slowly and that your salaries would keep up. The
Speaker 1: thing and Biden never was able to handle this is
Speaker 1: that wages did not go up as fast as prices,
Speaker 1: So people were getting real wage cuts throughout the Biden
Speaker 1: presidency and it may be going on. We still might
Speaker 1: be living with the overhang of that during the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration, just like remember Reagan, we were
Speaker 1: around for that. Reagan had to take drastic measures to
Speaker 1: kill off inflation. He got clobbered in the eighty two
Speaker 1: elections because it took, yeah, three years basically for the
Speaker 1: real results of those tough measures to come into effect. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem is, I don't see Trump and anyone in
Speaker 1: Congress wanting to reduce spending and so right, that's going
Speaker 1: to still keep inflating the economy. Inflation might be just
Speaker 1: under three percent now, but you could see it continuing
Speaker 1: to get worse, and you could see these measures just
Speaker 1: being short term unless they take some, you know, dramatic
Speaker 1: structural changes. Because look, if you reduce them on supply
Speaker 1: lower interest rates the way Trump wants, and you keep
Speaker 1: engaging in humongous deficit spending, inflation is going to still
Speaker 1: keep going up. It's going to be worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two plus two is always going to be four.
Speaker 6: And it doesn't help matters if you're going to send
Speaker 6: everybody a two thousand dollars check. But you know, whatever
Speaker 6: you want to call it, that's that's basically Bidenomics again.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless unless you get it in McDonald's gift
Speaker 1: cards like the students gave me in Arizona. See I
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 6: Those nice they know you, they know you're you are
Speaker 6: literally definition of cheap date. If I look at my
Speaker 6: dictionary under cheap date, I see a picture of John,
Speaker 6: I hear.
Speaker 1: The mcribs back man, everyone knows where to take me.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing that if you if you wait a second, Rubb,
Speaker 4: if you order that make rib in some selected restaurants,
Speaker 4: you'll notice, of course, you're not going to talk to
Speaker 4: a human being.
Speaker 5: You're going up to a.
Speaker 4: Kiosk, right, and you're using that that incredibly germ flecked thing.
Speaker 4: I always love to see people punching the kiosk thing
Speaker 4: with their index finger that they will then later use
Speaker 4: to strack the French fry and eat it. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm not a germfull but no, use your knuckle, buddy,
Speaker 4: use your knuckle. But I saw a great story about
Speaker 4: New York, which has of course instituted all kinds of
Speaker 4: high wages for people who stand behind the counter and
Speaker 4: punch things into a computer into a pad. That some
Speaker 4: of these places are no longer using actual cashiers. They
Speaker 4: have a video screen, and behind the video screen is
Speaker 4: somebody from the Philippines who's paid about eighty cents an hour.
Speaker 5: So they get around the whole high cost.
Speaker 4: Of things by putting in a video screen that pipes
Speaker 4: a person from Manila in there and volah.
Speaker 5: It's almost like it's an unintended consequence of raising the
Speaker 5: cost of doing business a great deal, and then people
Speaker 5: complain that the jobs have fled anyway, So that's my
Speaker 5: thing about McDonald's Robbi. You're going to say about it, well,
Speaker 5: I just could.
Speaker 2: Go back for a minute. I mean.
Speaker 6: I I because you when you mentioned the productivity gains,
Speaker 6: the productivity gains that we experienced for fifteen twenty years
Speaker 6: slowly from somewhere around late nineties, mid to late nineties
Speaker 6: to two thousand and something, that were brought upon by
Speaker 6: computing and the Internet and all sorts of a decentralized,
Speaker 6: distributed sort of thinking. We had a hard time digesting them.
Speaker 6: In many ways, we have not yet digested them. But
Speaker 6: the productivity gains that are going to happen are are
Speaker 6: happening now with AI, are happening massively and measured in months,
Speaker 6: and so they are measured in a time in a
Speaker 6: time frame that we have never experienced before, and a
Speaker 6: workforce has never experienced before.
Speaker 2: And that is not.
Speaker 6: That is not a recipe for stability. And the strangest
Speaker 6: thing about American politics for the you know, I don't know,
Speaker 6: since nineteen ninety four, we'll say, just because since since
Speaker 6: New gingriche won that historic house you know, midterm and
Speaker 6: the Republicans took back took control of the of the
Speaker 6: House of the House for the first time in half
Speaker 6: a century. A Marion Popkins has been incredibly volatile that
Speaker 6: it swings back and forth. We've had like speakers of
Speaker 6: that more Speakers of the House in the past decades
Speaker 6: than we had before we had growing up it was
Speaker 6: just Tip O'Neil, right, And that volatility was not necessarily
Speaker 6: reflected in a cultural volatility. I mean, Americans still kind
Speaker 6: of went to work and you know, things were changing,
Speaker 6: but it did not reflect it would seemed to be
Speaker 6: this weird circus going on in DC. And I think
Speaker 6: that's going to change, and unfortunately, I think I don't
Speaker 6: think we're ready for it. I think right at the
Speaker 6: time that we need sort of sort of sober, thoughtful, compassionate,
Speaker 6: but realistic leadership where we're going to have real volatility
Speaker 6: in the workforce and real volatility in our economy.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's anybody in d C right now
Speaker 2: who has the character, really.
Speaker 6: Two or the credibility to speak to the American people
Speaker 6: as a whole and tell them the truth, which is
Speaker 6: going to be that the future is going to be
Speaker 6: a little rougher than the past. And that's a new
Speaker 6: concept for Americans, not necessarily forever. But I don't think
Speaker 6: that we're prepared as a nation, as a modern nation,
Speaker 6: for this kind of change. I really don't, and you
Speaker 6: just see it all the time. There's radical, radical changes
Speaker 6: in the workforce because of AI. And you can't pass
Speaker 6: a law to repeal the future, and you can't build
Speaker 6: a wall to keep technology out. It's just going to
Speaker 6: come in and we just have to be prepared for it.
Speaker 6: And I don't think we are.
Speaker 4: If only there was some smart, charismatic tech guy who
Speaker 4: understood AI down to the bones and was launching his
Speaker 4: own effort in that way, who was in government somehow.
Speaker 5: Oh, we had one of those, and he gave a
Speaker 5: Nazi salute.
Speaker 4: So never mind that, Johnny, you were about to say something,
Speaker 4: But I have to tell you that as long as
Speaker 4: we have you here, we.
Speaker 5: Got to ask you actual point of law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had get our moneys were that No, you
Speaker 2: know what that.
Speaker 4: We do because I've been told I'm to ask you
Speaker 4: about equal protection versus v R.
Speaker 5: And I have no idea.
Speaker 4: I have no idea A big important case school is
Speaker 4: all Professor, you can I.
Speaker 1: Just say one last thing about what Rob was saying
Speaker 1: first before I answer your question. Just one real is
Speaker 1: that's what connects all this to the guys in DC,
Speaker 1: this humongous intra conservative fight about Kevin Roberts and heritage
Speaker 1: and Tucker and you know Nick fuent Days and whether
Speaker 1: there's Nazism in the Conservative movement. These are all the
Speaker 1: same responses you saw the last time there was this
Speaker 1: huge change, this revolution that Rob's talking about, which was
Speaker 1: nationalization of the economy in the Industrial revolution the turn
Speaker 1: of the last century. And you saw a huge changing economy,
Speaker 1: and you saw populism rise, and you saw right exactly
Speaker 1: this anti semitism, and you saw and there were even
Speaker 1: religious leaders like Fatherlin, which it will not be Rob.
Speaker 1: Rob could be the next Father Cofflin, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: he might go a different direction. But you saw these
Speaker 1: q long, these populous leaders FDR who responded to this
Speaker 1: and figured out how to appeal to people who are
Speaker 1: dislocated from out of work, from dislocated comedy. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the law, this is a huge Supreme Court term. Now
Speaker 1: I know every time you have me on, I go
Speaker 1: this is a huge Supreme Court term. But this is
Speaker 1: really a big one. The last case from last week,
Speaker 1: just the tariffs, we may not even remember that case
Speaker 1: by the time this term is over. So one of
Speaker 1: the big cases you've asked about is this case called
Speaker 1: Louisiana versus Calais, which is about whether a very important
Speaker 1: part of the Voting Rights Act is constitutional anymore. And
Speaker 1: it does involve the California redistricting and all these other
Speaker 1: redistrictings that are going on right now to increase House
Speaker 1: delegations for Republicans or for Democrats, because the Voting Rights
Speaker 1: Act basically says there should no longer be barriers to
Speaker 1: people to vote based on race. That's basically what the
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act is about. And you can see after
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow South engaged in all kinds of ridiculous
Speaker 1: things to try to prevent blacks from voting or diluting
Speaker 1: their votes, the government responded with measures that would never
Speaker 1: normally be allowed. One of them was struck down about
Speaker 1: ten years ago, which said that any Southern state that
Speaker 1: wanted to change any voting rule, anything involving elections, that
Speaker 1: had to get an approval from a federal court or
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. That's incredible. There's nothing like that in
Speaker 1: any other area. Law that got struck down by the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Much whaling and rending of garments. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: in the language that Rob understands.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And then but still, what the Justice Department courts have
Speaker 1: been forcing southern primarily Southern states to do, but it
Speaker 1: applies to the states all over the country, is to
Speaker 1: try to draw congressional districts in states to maximize the
Speaker 1: number of minorities that get elected. That I think is
Speaker 1: offensive to minorities because the thing, like, I'm a minority.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like all Asians vote the same way.
Speaker 1: If we did, I'd be really worried if we did
Speaker 1: all vote the same way. I don't think blacks all
Speaker 1: vote the same way, or you white guys, you guys
Speaker 1: just definitely don't vote all the same way. But that's
Speaker 1: the theory underlying this part of the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: is oh compact all the blacks into one district in
Speaker 1: the South, and then they'll elect a black member of Congress.
Speaker 1: Why that's the purpose of the constitution or should be
Speaker 1: the point of federal law is beyond me. All that
Speaker 1: I think the law says is stop any barriers to
Speaker 1: people voting. So this law, this case that you mentioned, James,
Speaker 1: asks whether that part of the Voting Rights Act or
Speaker 1: the way it's being enforced, at least should be thrown out,
Speaker 1: which would overturn Yeah, about sixty years of president if
Speaker 1: going back all the way to practice, all the way
Speaker 1: back to the civil rights movement. But that's just the
Speaker 1: first of a whole series of huge, blockbuster cases coming
Speaker 1: down the road, which could do a lot to determine
Speaker 1: the success of the Trump administration, for example, for the
Speaker 1: rest of the next two years, three years.
Speaker 5: Rob or just no more can be said.
Speaker 6: You know, they say unto you, truly, truly, I tell you, John,
Speaker 6: I think you're correct. I mean, it's funny about the outcome.
Speaker 6: Basing your legal philosophy on outcomes and using outcomes as
Speaker 6: the metric for whether it's true, fair, or true or not.
Speaker 6: It's such a strange way to think, and it only
Speaker 6: comes from people who believe that they're always going to
Speaker 6: be in charge. And it's surprising to me is that
Speaker 6: the history of American politics is if there's anything you
Speaker 6: can say about it is that you're not always going
Speaker 6: to be in charge. And the reason that we have
Speaker 6: the rules is because you're not always going to be
Speaker 6: in charge. And I think that we have this. Certainly
Speaker 6: we do this. I mean you get any college class,
Speaker 6: certainly the most college classes all was I went to,
Speaker 6: and I'm sure what they try to tell you is
Speaker 6: that there's some systemic evil that's permanent.
Speaker 2: It started in sixteen nineteen. I'm just to use a number,
Speaker 2: and it's it's and it's always going to be there.
Speaker 6: And so it's okay to bend the rules and twist
Speaker 6: the rules because we're never going to be in charge,
Speaker 6: and we're not in charge now, We've never been in charge,
Speaker 6: and the system is always the way it is. And
Speaker 6: the problem is that then you have moments like the
Speaker 6: court cases that the John was citing that seemed to
Speaker 6: just simply respond to seem to just reiterate the fact
Speaker 6: that you can't you can't make a law based on
Speaker 6: an outcome, and the people who have been living that
Speaker 6: way go absolutely bananas. So you read, if you read
Speaker 6: the New York Times, the headlines are always a Supreme
Speaker 6: Court sets back civil rights. Sure, the conservative Republican Department
Speaker 6: of Justice turns the clock back on civil rights. And
Speaker 6: then you get you know, you read the third paragraph
Speaker 6: and you realize it's not true. But this apocalyptic need
Speaker 6: to make even your tiny little adjustments or even your
Speaker 6: major adjustments that are not legal somehow not only legal,
Speaker 6: but imperative, not only imperative, but morally important, not only
Speaker 6: morally important, but if not happened, but a return to
Speaker 6: Jim Crow, if not enforced, you know, first of all,
Speaker 6: exhausts everybody. So those that language no longer has any power,
Speaker 6: it creates a reaction formation, which we're seeing now on
Speaker 6: the right and I think parts of sort of the
Speaker 6: extreme left, and it just it corrupts the currency of
Speaker 6: the law, the currency of the language, which we're you know,
Speaker 6: that's that's all we have at the end of the day, right,
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean, John, I'm sure I would get
Speaker 6: an F in your class. But what I'm always struck
Speaker 6: by the Supreme Court is that the Supreme Court decided
Speaker 6: it had the power to review legislation in Marbury versus Madison.
Speaker 6: It just it chose that for itself and it made sense.
Speaker 6: And so that's what it's got. And if we sort
Speaker 6: of let the language be sort of debased and the
Speaker 6: way we talk about rights and civil rights be debased
Speaker 6: like that, I think, you know, we end up where
Speaker 6: we are now, which is that people screaming at each
Speaker 6: other about essentially nothing and certainly not the law. I
Speaker 6: mean that was a very rambling way of agreeing with John,
Speaker 6: which I'm sure he would.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I can first of all, Rob, yeah
Speaker 1: you get f I don't because I would suspect you
Speaker 1: of using AI to do all your exam answers anyway, that.
Speaker 2: Is a concern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh no, I don't know. We don't know how
Speaker 1: to fix it. Actually, actually you know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're bringing back blue books written exams.
Speaker 2: That's what I've been saying.
Speaker 1: Yes, we have, we have been. We have been bringing
Speaker 1: back the blue book exam and timed examed sessions. And
Speaker 1: you're in the room with everybody else and writing in pencil.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: So AI has forced us back to the educational stone age.
Speaker 1: But can I just make that point what the Rob
Speaker 1: actually makes a very important point about judicial review, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, the courts don't have any power to back
Speaker 1: up what they say. So right, the President has the sword,
Speaker 1: as Hamilton said, and the Congress has the purse. What
Speaker 1: does the court have. It can't compel any of us
Speaker 1: to bay it. It only has This is Alexander Hamilton's
Speaker 1: famous words. It says, it only has reason. It can
Speaker 1: only persuade us that it reached the right answer, and
Speaker 1: we voluntarily obey the courts. And I think Rob's right.
Speaker 1: The left has been on this campaign to devalue the
Speaker 1: meaning of language and to make everything relative, and the
Speaker 1: more they succeed, then the more force becomes the way
Speaker 1: our society governs itself, not persuasion and argument, because the
Speaker 1: words don't mean anything.
Speaker 4: Well, if the system does not provide the desired results,
Speaker 4: then the system is illegitimate, must be changed, ignored, or.
Speaker 5: Done away with.
Speaker 4: Also on the docket or maybe coming up, I should
Speaker 4: say there's another strike.
Speaker 2: I think it's twenty strikes now.
Speaker 4: And the guys who are driving boats out of Venezuela,
Speaker 4: I think the New York Times did a profile and said, well,
Speaker 4: they're not cartel members. I mean they don't have they
Speaker 4: don't have cards, right the tattoo.
Speaker 2: They don't. They don't get benefits, but you know they're
Speaker 2: just working for friends.
Speaker 4: Say that, yes, he moved a lot of drugs from
Speaker 4: here to there, but you know he just had to.
Speaker 2: He loved bowl, he was a fan of.
Speaker 4: Okay, fine, so they've whacked about twenty of these things,
Speaker 4: and the Democrats are appalled and I'm sure the fig
Speaker 4: leave is that they are appalled by the extra what
Speaker 4: they perceive to be the extra legality of it. But
Speaker 4: I think it's just the general idea of what they're
Speaker 4: doing is, you know, we're being mean to these guys.
Speaker 4: And there will be a court challenge, John, won't There
Speaker 4: will there not be some something that floats up some
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't imagine the survivors of one of
Speaker 4: the Venezuelan power Vot's be an outstanding, but what can
Speaker 4: we expect on this fraud?
Speaker 1: So, James, eventually, I think you're right, there will be
Speaker 1: a case. It probably will work its way to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Remember, we have faced a similar issue. I
Speaker 1: was at the Justice Department on nine to eleven and
Speaker 1: we had to make a similar decision. Can we have
Speaker 1: war against the terrorist group not a state. We've always
Speaker 1: had wars against other nations. And in nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: the last thing people would have thought of is, well,
Speaker 1: two years from now, will there be a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: case that will challenge all the decisions we make? But
Speaker 1: there was because we captured somebody and that person wanted
Speaker 1: to be released and brought a case that made it
Speaker 1: always Supreme Court. You could see that happening here. There
Speaker 1: could be survivors that will be brought on board and
Speaker 1: then they'll file to be released. Or the family members
Speaker 1: are the people who are killed, they could sue and
Speaker 1: that could get to the Supreme Court. And this is
Speaker 1: actually was a subject of my talk at the University
Speaker 1: of Arizona this week, which I gave unusually not at
Speaker 1: a law school, not at the school at Divinity, but
Speaker 1: in the engineering department.
Speaker 2: The division school guaranteed.
Speaker 1: That why wouldn't be rolled out and attacked? Does the
Speaker 1: resident utilitarian come.
Speaker 2: Ond, Well, you've struck by lightning.
Speaker 1: So the this is a really difficult but very important question,
Speaker 1: but I think it has actually a straightforward, simple answer.
Speaker 1: In the end, we can't be at war with every
Speaker 1: drug cartel, drug gang, drug runner, right drug seller on
Speaker 1: the street corner. There's a line between what's war and crime.
Speaker 1: Crime is governed by the Bill of Rights and all
Speaker 1: the protections that the courts have, you know, labored to
Speaker 1: build for every criminal suspect. When Rob gets pulled over
Speaker 1: speeding between New York and Princeton, you know, back and forth,
Speaker 1: you have all these protections. The government can't say, oh,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are killed by speeders on the highway,
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna use military force on speeders, right,
Speaker 1: Just because something causes harm to the country doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's war and that you can use military force. It's
Speaker 1: reserved for enemies. So I don't think that drugs strikes
Speaker 1: just on every drug boat are actually legal. I don't
Speaker 1: even But here's why I think there's a straightforward answer.
Speaker 1: I think we're really at war with Venezuela. We're at
Speaker 1: war with another nation, Venezuela. We're not war with drug dealers,
Speaker 1: because if we were, we would be bombing fedinol factories
Speaker 1: in Mexico. That's where the real harms come from. The
Speaker 1: drug boats. Apparently these drugs are headed for Europe. They're
Speaker 1: not even headed for the United States. If we really are, though,
Speaker 1: at war with Venezuela and the yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: one hundred percent terror right, And the head of the
Speaker 1: head of Venezuela's also head of one of these drug cartels,
Speaker 1: and the drug cartels are like an arm of the
Speaker 1: Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan intelligence. Then actually, legally this
Speaker 1: is very simple and straightforward. Where we're in Venezuela, and
Speaker 1: we're attacking elements of the Venezuelan government and armed force,
Speaker 1: which is totally legal.
Speaker 2: In a way.
Speaker 6: It just it's nice that we have somebody here on
Speaker 6: this podcast who is part of this argument. So it
Speaker 6: in just to go back to two thousand and one,
Speaker 6: two thousand and two in a way. So Venezuela, the
Speaker 6: government of Venezuela, is in your argument like the government
Speaker 6: of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: It is, yes, it is.
Speaker 6: The large, it is the it is the organizational name
Speaker 6: for a bad actor, and it is their bad luck
Speaker 6: that they can't they can't legally define blowing up a
Speaker 6: Venezuelan boat or invading Afghanistan as a police action, right,
Speaker 6: because that was the big question.
Speaker 2: Then was it a action as a military action? Well?
Speaker 1: I think also the reason they're doing this is that
Speaker 1: they don't politically want to say to the American people,
Speaker 1: we're at war, right this president doesn't want to start
Speaker 1: any new wars, so we are conducted. We have the
Speaker 1: most modern American aircraft carrier that gerald Ford is sitting
Speaker 1: offshore of Venezuela right now. Like we have a huge
Speaker 1: military force that's trying to coerce them to get rid
Speaker 1: of Modera Maduro. That is, you know, Joe Ford is
Speaker 1: not going to be helpful chasing little outboard boats, you know,
Speaker 1: like Rob's pleasure craft from his you know, prep school
Speaker 1: days around the lake because they might have drugs in it.
Speaker 2: I mean, just for the record, it definitely did.
Speaker 1: Right. It's not it's not you know, for you know,
Speaker 1: it's good at you know, attacking other countries armed forces
Speaker 1: and overthrown regime maybe, but not for chasing down you know,
Speaker 1: small pleasure crafts concealing drugs. So yeah, I think your
Speaker 1: work exactly are we we It is a war, but
Speaker 1: politically the president doesn't want to call it the war.
Speaker 1: But when you look at all the elements of what's happening,
Speaker 1: it looks to me like a war. And that's legal,
Speaker 1: so he has a legal problem.
Speaker 6: Let me let me let me ask you this as
Speaker 6: a law professor, I'm your student getting an f and
Speaker 6: I'm just trying to make you like me again. Is
Speaker 6: the question is do I have I am my summing
Speaker 6: up the situation accurately or something accurately what we're really
Speaker 6: talking about? And I believe this is also the case
Speaker 6: in Afghanistan and definitely an interact. But uh and in
Speaker 6: Venezuela's what we're talking about is is in fact an
Speaker 6: international but still a police action. The there is no
Speaker 6: legal legal ability for the president to do this, so
Speaker 6: he is calling it a police that he's keeping it
Speaker 6: murky because he can't call it a police action because
Speaker 6: that's illegal. If he called it a war, that'd be
Speaker 6: perfectly legal, But he can't call it a war because
Speaker 6: politically that's untenable for this process, and so he's in
Speaker 6: this weird he can't call it anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, how about special military operation? Right? Right?
Speaker 6: But I mean you have to invent some kind of
Speaker 6: weasel word so that you can thread the needle between
Speaker 6: the thing that you can't do politically and the thing
Speaker 6: that you can't do legally.
Speaker 2: Is that a fair assumption? Is that a fair and
Speaker 2: that's yes.
Speaker 1: And because of that, that's what's causing all these legal
Speaker 1: doubts and will cause right soldiers and agents to say,
Speaker 1: you know, and I am I allowed to do this? Right?
Speaker 1: And that's in fact happened after nine to eleven there
Speaker 1: were soldiers and agency said, are we allowed to legally
Speaker 1: fight al Caeda? Or you know, is this like pre
Speaker 1: nine eleven where we would, you know, catch suspects and
Speaker 1: bring them back to the US for trial, not shoot
Speaker 1: them with drones. And so part of what Trump's not doing,
Speaker 1: which we had to do then, was we went to
Speaker 1: Congress and explained it all and got Congress to pass
Speaker 1: a law authorizing it. So that when we all this
Speaker 1: got challenges in court, that became extremely important. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's not going to second guests the President and Congress
Speaker 1: in wartime when they agree. But here this might not happen.
Speaker 1: So this might be legally more problematic unless, as Rob says,
Speaker 1: the President comes out in public and says we are
Speaker 1: at war with Venezuela.
Speaker 6: And admits what And I'm just thinking the analogy here,
Speaker 6: the comparison to me right now, because we brought it
Speaker 6: up earlier and I'm still mad about Obamacare, the Obama administry.
Speaker 6: You kept saying, this is not a tax, this is
Speaker 6: not a tax, this is not a tax, and I
Speaker 6: think this is what happened and to the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: and they said, oh, by the way, it's a tax,
Speaker 6: because I know we can't do that.
Speaker 2: And then the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6: Agreed with them, said yeah, it's a tax, and then
Speaker 6: they could they could do it because.
Speaker 2: They argued in court that it was. They argued in
Speaker 2: court that it was.
Speaker 6: A thing that they absolutely denied it was in public exactly.
Speaker 6: And so in this case, we're going to have a
Speaker 6: president arguing in court if it gets there, that he's
Speaker 6: doing a thing that he's allowed to do because he's
Speaker 6: the president of commander in chief and it's a war.
Speaker 6: But that he but publicly he won't say that.
Speaker 1: Is that I hadn't thought of that parallel, But that's
Speaker 1: exactly true. That, yes, that happened in Obamacare. Politically, they
Speaker 1: said it wasn't a tax, but when they got to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, they argued that the Obamacare system was
Speaker 1: all built on this coercive tax to force people to
Speaker 1: buy health insurance. And the Supreme Court, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: Rob's favorite Chief Justice Justice, Chief Justice and squish John Roberts,
Speaker 1: agreed with Rob. Greed with Rob, and yes, uh ull
Speaker 1: Pell's time, and yeah, that's that's unfortunately happening here. I
Speaker 1: think you're right Rob, that he doesn't want to politically
Speaker 1: call it a war. All the things he's doing are
Speaker 1: warlike actions. And if it goes to court, that's the
Speaker 1: first thing the administration is going to say, and in fact,
Speaker 1: this is already happening. Remember we talked about this earlier
Speaker 1: months ago, the case of the Venezuelan right deportes who
Speaker 1: are sent to El Salvador. That's being litigated right now
Speaker 1: and in court right now under oath that Trump administration
Speaker 1: is saying we are at war with Venezuela, and that
Speaker 1: we are and Maduro is the head of a drug
Speaker 1: cartel and the head of Venezuela, and because of that,
Speaker 1: we can trigger something called the Alien Enemies Act, which
Speaker 1: applies only in war time, and kick every Venezuelan out
Speaker 1: of the country.
Speaker 5: Well, we also have.
Speaker 4: The administration today or yesterday or recently declaring Antifa to
Speaker 4: be a terrorist organization and also declaring a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of Antifa adjacent organizations in other countries to be foreign
Speaker 4: terrorist organizations. Does this mean then that we can use
Speaker 4: the Venezuelan example and start using military force to go
Speaker 4: after them or is that bright dividing line still in
Speaker 4: place Domestically?
Speaker 1: I think that's another species of what Rob was just
Speaker 1: talking about, but in the other direction here, I think
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is rhetorically over promising when the law
Speaker 1: doesn't allow it. It doesn't make any difference for our
Speaker 1: domestic law whether the President wants to call Antifa a
Speaker 1: terrorist group or not. The criminal laws just apply to
Speaker 1: them normally. Whether what they did was they also designate
Speaker 1: all these foreign Antifa groups as terrorist organizations. That does
Speaker 1: give the government a lot more power against them abroad,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it really changes what's going on domestically.
Speaker 1: I mean, still, the question is can the president call
Speaker 1: out right the National Guard to restore order in these
Speaker 1: cities where Antifa is using violence to attack federal officers
Speaker 1: or block the execution of federal law. Calling them terrorist
Speaker 1: organizations or not doesn't change that fundamental question, which also
Speaker 1: is another one you start all this up with the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. That question is heading steadily to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court too, and may be decided in this term because
Speaker 1: you've got two appellate courts that disagree. Strangely, the one
Speaker 1: out here in California says that the government can deploy
Speaker 1: the National Guard to the cities that there is sufficient
Speaker 1: unrest violence domestically in our cities to use military protection
Speaker 1: of the federal government, whereas Chicago, the courts there have
Speaker 1: blocked President Trump so far and not allowing deployment. So
Speaker 1: Rob happens to live in the mid and I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: James happens to live in the Midwest, where I guess
Speaker 1: chaos will continue to be rampant.
Speaker 4: That's exactly what I'm experiencing at this very moment, looking
Speaker 4: at the flaming mobs coming down the street now here
Speaker 4: in Minneapolis. Actually it's been quite nice for the last
Speaker 4: few days. But still where you mentioned fundamental questions, there's
Speaker 4: no more fundamental questions and the things that brother Rob
Speaker 4: grapples with a divinity school. So we're going to ramp
Speaker 4: up by asking him a few things there. First of all,
Speaker 4: how are the people in your school viewing what seems
Speaker 4: to be a resurgence of anti Semitism in new places,
Speaker 4: which are of course the same old places.
Speaker 2: But is this much of a discussion? Does this come
Speaker 2: to the fore?
Speaker 4: Are they aware of it or are they just so
Speaker 4: isolated in their in their you know, theological bubbles up
Speaker 4: there in the Ivory Tower that the vaggaries of methy
Speaker 4: daily politics haven't penetrated up there yet or are they
Speaker 4: all next foy inties fans.
Speaker 2: Oh are you asking me? I thought you were asking John.
Speaker 4: Yes, of course I would ask a series of questions
Speaker 4: about things in the theological institution.
Speaker 2: Well, for a minute, I thought you'd have a students.
Speaker 6: In general, the benefit of Divinity School, certainly Princeton is
Speaker 6: that everybody here has a purpose. Like it's either your
Speaker 6: I mean, sometimes the purpose is you're just a you know,
Speaker 6: an ancient language nerd or an archaeology nerd, and you
Speaker 6: just want to like look at Cuneiform and old Akkadian.
Speaker 6: And sometimes you're just a theology a theologian, and you
Speaker 6: just this is a wonderful system and you want to
Speaker 6: like write you know, long multi volume essays on a
Speaker 6: you know, call bart and people like that. But the
Speaker 6: rest of us just are there because we have a purpose,
Speaker 6: and so everything is seen through the lens of what
Speaker 6: we want to do with this learning, and that does
Speaker 6: kind of keep things on the rails.
Speaker 2: So there's a general you know, and also what we're studying.
Speaker 6: Mostly is everybody everybody who's a student is a professed Christian.
Speaker 6: Is that we struggle with more more more than we
Speaker 6: struggle with societal problems and culture problems, although some people do.
Speaker 6: We struggled personal things and your your personal relationship and relationships,
Speaker 6: and that I think also kind of keeps can can
Speaker 6: order the mind and keep people from.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, sit.
Speaker 6: In encampments and a lot of noisy and you know,
Speaker 6: incredibly aggressive behavior. It's a smaller community, and there isn't
Speaker 6: any benefit. There isn't any philosophy that encourages that kind
Speaker 6: of behavior.
Speaker 2: So but you know, it's.
Speaker 6: Interesting because just just because you mentioned Nick Quente's anti semitism,
Speaker 6: it is a.
Speaker 2: It's something that we all have to think about. Certainly.
Speaker 2: I just came.
Speaker 6: I mean, I have my morning class here on Friday.
Speaker 6: Mornings is next to Jesus a John. Gospel of John,
Speaker 6: and John has been used in Good frid A liturgies
Speaker 6: and beyond and and it has been used as a
Speaker 6: text John, especially although Matthew too, as a text to
Speaker 6: justify incredible anti semitism and unpacking that and sort of
Speaker 6: like trying to un untease the strands of that is
Speaker 6: really really hard and very very difficult.
Speaker 2: And and and and you can lead you down the
Speaker 2: wrong way.
Speaker 6: And so I don't know, if anything, what we're experiencing
Speaker 6: today in the culture or what we what we or
Speaker 6: the evidence of the the evidence that people are pointing
Speaker 6: to I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not. Maybe I'm not quite ready to call it
Speaker 2: a giant crisis.
Speaker 6: It may be, but I'm not sure it's there yet
Speaker 6: or it's gonna get there.
Speaker 2: I still have hope that people will, of course correct.
Speaker 6: But all of those things are things that people have
Speaker 6: been struggling with forever and and failing at in many ways,
Speaker 6: in many instances in history.
Speaker 2: But it is a This is not new, and it's not.
Speaker 6: And it's not something that people haven't been thinking about
Speaker 6: and struggling with for forever.
Speaker 2: I mean, since the you know, since the beginning, since.
Speaker 5: Paul right, not new.
Speaker 4: And I can't imagine that theological institutions are known for
Speaker 4: turning like a dime. They're fairly stately organizations, right, That's
Speaker 4: it's it's like getting the Titanic to do a full circle.
Speaker 2: Depends depends on which one you're talking about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the invocation at Yale Divinity School last year apparently
Speaker 6: was a wick In prayer.
Speaker 2: Oh well that's novel, okay, yeah, yeah, so yeah really yeah.
Speaker 6: And one of the most popular classes I hold at
Speaker 6: Union Theological Seminary, and apparently it's a really good class,
Speaker 6: is witchcraft. But but you could do a concentration in witchcraft,
Speaker 6: which is very strange thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, your enemy yet, I mean, but it does
Speaker 4: seem to be drifting from the central eye is But
Speaker 4: I'm not surprised every institution in the West seems to
Speaker 4: have forgotten why I was founded in the first place,
Speaker 4: which was to protect and advance the West, and instead
Speaker 4: turns on a critique of it, often banal, often juvenile,
Speaker 4: or usure.
Speaker 5: But that's how they get there.
Speaker 4: You know, the eternal post nineteen sixties shock, mom and Dad,
Speaker 4: everything sucks has become the dominant cultural theme, and until
Speaker 4: we get away from that, we are going to have
Speaker 4: a difficult time of preserving and reviving this great republic
Speaker 4: of ours. On the other hand, if you want to
Speaker 4: talk about these things more with actual human beings, you
Speaker 4: the listener, can take a Ricochet cruise. That's right, there's
Speaker 4: going to be a meet up December thirteenth of the
Speaker 4: twenty Ricochet at Sea Hall in America. Lion is going
Speaker 4: to cruise through the Eastern Caribbean. I've taken it many times.
Speaker 4: I absolutely love it. I'd be there if I I'd
Speaker 4: be there if I could. But alas I'm going to
Speaker 4: be elsewhere and also Florida Centric February sixth through the
Speaker 4: eighth Florida Space Coast Space Coast.
Speaker 2: Don't you love the sound of it. They're going to
Speaker 2: have a meet up at Cape.
Speaker 4: Canaveral and I'm will have to remember when Cape Canaverl
Speaker 4: was the actual name.
Speaker 2: Of the thing.
Speaker 4: And I love the fact that we went back to it. No,
Speaker 4: no slight intended JFK. But Cape Canaverl is just just
Speaker 4: baked into the bones and a lot of us that's
Speaker 4: you know, that's it's it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that I'm just looking at my cat because
Speaker 6: I was, I was so spacing on looking at my calendar.
Speaker 2: Oh, that'd be great. Why do I can make that?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try to make that one. I am too,
Speaker 2: because by February.
Speaker 4: I think I'm gonna need someplace warm to be with
Speaker 4: what with all that's going on here and ending as well,
Speaker 4: also ending this podcast. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go
Speaker 4: to Apple Podcast and give us five stars.
Speaker 2: Boy, we'd appreciate that. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to
Speaker 2: Ricochet dot com. You should.
Speaker 4: You can read the front page for free to listen
Speaker 4: to the podcast, but if you sign them for just.
Speaker 2: A few meager minor coins.
Speaker 4: You're gonna have access to the member feed, which is
Speaker 4: a whole different community, and it's where friendships form.
Speaker 2: The things that we discussed there, there are no limits.
Speaker 4: Go there, see what I mean, and and and well
Speaker 4: all see you there. Because I frequently write a Ricochet,
Speaker 4: John you, I know, reads it, and Rob along as
Speaker 4: well as one of the founders of this institution. So
Speaker 4: between the three of us, if that's not three good
Speaker 4: reasons to go to Ricochet, don't know what it is.
Speaker 4: I'd asked Charles C. W. Cook if we were here today,
Speaker 4: what version of Ricochet we're off. It's probably four point
Speaker 4: six point zero seven, always improving, always tinkering, new stuff coming,
Speaker 4: and uh, no matter how much it changes, the basic
Speaker 4: idea mission of Ricoget will always be the same people
Speaker 4: there who have skin in the game, as Rob used
Speaker 4: to say a long time ago, and it keeps the
Speaker 4: conversation civil and polite and interesting that it's like no
Speaker 4: place else on the web.
Speaker 2: I mean, James, I think this has been fun. I
Speaker 2: think John, you, I think brother
Speaker 4: Rob for joining us today, and we'll see everybody in
Speaker 4: the comments said Ricoget four point oh Bye bye bye DIA.