1
00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:02,520
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's just distracted by the dog right now, who

2
00:00:02,560 --> 00:00:06,440
is trying to bite a builder. I think Tara's femeral

3
00:00:06,519 --> 00:00:10,560
arterory out. No don't. I don't have a tourniquet. Oh damn,

4
00:00:10,640 --> 00:00:11,039
he's dead.

5
00:00:11,199 --> 00:00:17,679
Speaker 2: Anyway, go on, guys, ask not what your country can

6
00:00:17,719 --> 00:00:21,480
do for you, Ask what you can do for your country,

7
00:00:22,199 --> 00:00:26,039
mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

8
00:00:27,199 --> 00:00:29,879
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and

9
00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:32,479
Steven Hayward. I'm James Lilyax, and today we talk about

10
00:00:32,560 --> 00:00:36,799
get this absolutely everything in the world. So let's ever

11
00:00:36,880 --> 00:00:37,640
So it's a podcast.

12
00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:45,719
Speaker 3: No more identity months, dei offices, dudes in dresses, no

13
00:00:45,799 --> 00:00:50,359
more climate change worship, no more division distraction or gender delusions,

14
00:00:50,679 --> 00:00:55,399
no more debris. As I've said before and we'll say again,

15
00:00:56,439 --> 00:00:57,439
we are done with that.

16
00:00:58,359 --> 00:01:01,479
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode number seven, one

17
00:01:01,560 --> 00:01:04,439
hundred and sixty. You can join us at ricochet dot com.

18
00:01:04,480 --> 00:01:05,920
By the way, if you wish, take a look at

19
00:01:05,959 --> 00:01:07,519
the site and you'll say, hey, where's this been on

20
00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:10,799
my life? I'm James Lilex in Minneapolis, where it is hot,

21
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,879
I mean it's hot, and Stephen Hayward is somewhere in

22
00:01:14,879 --> 00:01:18,760
the world, and Charles CW. Cook, I imagine is in Florida, gentlemen,

23
00:01:18,760 --> 00:01:20,760
Are things clement and pleasant for you on this fine

24
00:01:20,799 --> 00:01:21,439
October day?

25
00:01:22,439 --> 00:01:24,519
Speaker 4: Very much so. I'm back in California and it's a

26
00:01:24,560 --> 00:01:26,480
glorious fall day here out on the coast.

27
00:01:26,879 --> 00:01:29,439
Speaker 1: There's nothing like a Minnesota fall. I couldn't believe it

28
00:01:29,439 --> 00:01:31,200
when I saw the tempts and I looked, what last

29
00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:32,560
year did we have? Was it forty eight?

30
00:01:32,599 --> 00:01:32,680
Speaker 5: On?

31
00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:34,799
Speaker 1: Last year? It was eighty two? Oh? Well, what was

32
00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:37,040
it two years ago? Two years ago was eighty nine?

33
00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:40,400
I thought, if I completely rethought my missed my October

34
00:01:40,439 --> 00:01:44,200
paradigms completely, No, this is still anomalous. And of course

35
00:01:44,319 --> 00:01:47,799
I blame well, I blame climate change. And that's why

36
00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:49,480
I'm happy that Bill Gates has come up with a

37
00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:51,640
synthetic butter that will help us save the world. But

38
00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:54,239
we'll get to that in a while. Charles, how are you.

39
00:01:54,719 --> 00:01:58,200
Speaker 5: I'm doing well. It's very rainy here. Then it's rainy late.

40
00:01:58,760 --> 00:02:01,079
It's not supposed to be rainy season, but it is

41
00:02:01,120 --> 00:02:04,120
doing that delightful Florida thing of raining.

42
00:02:04,159 --> 00:02:07,200
Speaker 1: While Sonny, yes, we used to call that the devil

43
00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:09,560
is beating his wife when we were kids. You know,

44
00:02:10,280 --> 00:02:12,039
it would rain in the sun. I don't know what

45
00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:13,400
that meant or why we said it, but had been

46
00:02:13,439 --> 00:02:17,039
passed down for generations. While speaking of the devil, we

47
00:02:17,120 --> 00:02:19,280
have the federal government, which is at the moment inert

48
00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:21,960
It has been shut down, doesn't exist. I don't know

49
00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:24,159
if you guys are looking around and seeing the complete

50
00:02:24,159 --> 00:02:27,159
absence of commercial and social activity as a result, but

51
00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:32,599
here we are. The question is, gosh, why did this happen.

52
00:02:33,520 --> 00:02:35,199
I'll let either of you jump in and tell me why.

53
00:02:36,280 --> 00:02:38,159
Speaker 4: Well, I'll happy to jump in on this first, because

54
00:02:38,159 --> 00:02:41,120
I'm very cranky on this whole subject. Now. First of all,

55
00:02:41,159 --> 00:02:43,680
I like to point out governments shut down. Oh my god,

56
00:02:43,719 --> 00:02:45,240
it's the end of the world. That's how the media

57
00:02:45,360 --> 00:02:47,680
like to treat it. But I always like to ask people,

58
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:51,000
are your local police still patrolling? Are your local schools

59
00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:55,520
still open? Is your local city government processing building permits

60
00:02:55,879 --> 00:02:58,520
and business license applications? Well not in California, they don't

61
00:02:58,560 --> 00:03:01,240
do that anyway. But you get the point. We have

62
00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:05,560
I think in around numbers about fifty thousand government units

63
00:03:05,560 --> 00:03:08,000
in this country. When you go in a nurse, federalist

64
00:03:08,039 --> 00:03:09,840
system if you go all the way down to the

65
00:03:09,879 --> 00:03:14,039
local mosquito abatement district in Duluth, and they're all still functioning.

66
00:03:14,439 --> 00:03:16,439
And that, of course is the government that is closest

67
00:03:16,439 --> 00:03:18,240
to the people in their day to day lives. So

68
00:03:18,759 --> 00:03:20,879
government shutdown is one level of government.

69
00:03:20,919 --> 00:03:21,000
Speaker 2: Now.

70
00:03:21,039 --> 00:03:24,120
Speaker 4: It is the biggest and spends the most money, but

71
00:03:24,159 --> 00:03:27,439
for the vast majority of Americans does not really come

72
00:03:27,439 --> 00:03:29,680
close to their day to day lives very often, unless

73
00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:31,680
you're trying to get into a national park when Obama

74
00:03:31,719 --> 00:03:34,800
shuts them down and so forth. The second thing is

75
00:03:36,080 --> 00:03:38,719
it's not even really a complete government shutdown on the

76
00:03:38,759 --> 00:03:42,240
federal level, right We're still sending out Social Security checks

77
00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:45,240
and Medicare payments as I understand it. The military is

78
00:03:45,280 --> 00:03:49,000
still getting paid and still on patrol. And I don't

79
00:03:49,039 --> 00:03:50,680
quite know how this happened, but this has been the

80
00:03:50,719 --> 00:03:53,560
case for many years now in their government shutdowns that

81
00:03:53,599 --> 00:03:57,439
we seem to exempt the things that would really bite people, right.

82
00:03:57,520 --> 00:03:59,520
I mean, if we really had a thirty day government

83
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:03,360
shutdown and social Security checks didn't get delivered, I think

84
00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:06,560
you would see mass marches of citizens at their local

85
00:04:07,039 --> 00:04:09,919
congress quitter's office and so forth. So we exempt a

86
00:04:09,960 --> 00:04:11,960
lot of things that would make it really bite and

87
00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:15,080
really hurt a broad swath, and so this has become

88
00:04:15,159 --> 00:04:18,800
kobuki theater. I think there would be much less interest

89
00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:22,720
in either party of having a government shutdown if it

90
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:26,240
really involved truly shutting down the federal government, and so

91
00:04:26,639 --> 00:04:29,279
it allows this kabuki theater to go forward for both parties.

92
00:04:29,319 --> 00:04:32,120
And so there's some kind of sinister bipartisan agreement there.

93
00:04:33,040 --> 00:04:33,759
Speaker 1: And those are my.

94
00:04:33,759 --> 00:04:35,800
Speaker 4: Opening bids about how cranky I am about all this,

95
00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:37,879
although on the other hand, I was kind of like it.

96
00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:41,680
I like Phil Graham's remark after the ninety six government

97
00:04:41,720 --> 00:04:44,079
shutdown where he said, I thought our only mistake was

98
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:47,160
opening it back up again. And you can almost see

99
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:50,120
the Trump people have kind of that disposition, with Russ

100
00:04:50,160 --> 00:04:52,879
Voyd going around saying, let's start firing people and closing

101
00:04:52,920 --> 00:04:55,439
up programs because they're not funded well.

102
00:04:55,439 --> 00:04:57,879
Speaker 1: I think in the last Obama shutdown they closed the

103
00:04:57,959 --> 00:05:00,480
road going to Mount Rushmore. I think this time they're

104
00:05:00,519 --> 00:05:02,839
letting people go through, but they have to wear extremely

105
00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:04,800
dark glasses and they give them a white cane and

106
00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:07,160
they can't actually see it, or they're draping a tarp

107
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:09,920
over the faces. I can't remember exactly which one it was. Charles,

108
00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:12,480
Are you as cranky as Steve about this or have you?

109
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,319
Are you looking forward to the blood letting that is

110
00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:19,240
supposed to come when people are laid off all mass

111
00:05:20,279 --> 00:05:24,560
rif not just furloughed, and agencies are zeroed out during

112
00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:28,079
this opportunity, because apparently there's some mechanism by which vast

113
00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:30,560
swaths of the federal government can be deemed hey, don't

114
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:33,920
need it, and they can take they can zero them

115
00:05:33,920 --> 00:05:34,800
out legally.

116
00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:40,279
Speaker 5: Yeah, Steve is more depressed about it than I am.

117
00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:43,000
In the last couple of days, I've committed so many

118
00:05:43,079 --> 00:05:46,199
federal crimes. It's been glorious. Just one.

119
00:05:46,399 --> 00:05:46,680
Speaker 1: I know.

120
00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:52,399
Speaker 5: I don't particularly care about it, except in so far

121
00:05:52,439 --> 00:05:55,279
as it illustrates that we have far more federal employees

122
00:05:55,399 --> 00:06:01,000
that we need. I don't think that it has been

123
00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:04,480
reported particularly honestly. For once, it's not Republicans who are

124
00:06:04,519 --> 00:06:07,600
shutting down the government. And what's really weird about this

125
00:06:07,720 --> 00:06:11,560
from my perspective is I remember all of the shutdowns

126
00:06:11,959 --> 00:06:14,519
since I moved to the United States in twenty eleven

127
00:06:14,519 --> 00:06:19,319
because I have had to cover them, and it's odd

128
00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:21,879
to see the Democrats shutting down the government, which is

129
00:06:21,920 --> 00:06:24,079
what they did. It's not a value judgment, it's just

130
00:06:24,079 --> 00:06:28,959
a statement of fact. The filibuster requires sixty votes for

131
00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:32,399
this to go through. Republicans have fifty three of those votes,

132
00:06:32,399 --> 00:06:35,319
and they need seven Democrats to join them, and those

133
00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:41,560
seven Democrats haven't yet shown up. But having debated allowed

134
00:06:41,680 --> 00:06:43,680
for eight months whether they were going to shut down

135
00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:47,680
the government, and having then decided to shut down the government,

136
00:06:47,839 --> 00:06:50,040
the Democrats are now pretending that they didn't shut down

137
00:06:50,079 --> 00:06:52,800
the government. And all of the Democrats' friends in the

138
00:06:52,879 --> 00:06:58,720
media and in NGOs are greatly offended by the claim

139
00:06:58,839 --> 00:07:01,279
that the Democrats shut down the government, whereas all of

140
00:07:01,319 --> 00:07:03,639
the times that Republicans have shut down the government in

141
00:07:03,680 --> 00:07:06,279
the last decade and a bit, which is a lot,

142
00:07:07,120 --> 00:07:08,879
they were the ones running out in front of the cameras.

143
00:07:09,079 --> 00:07:11,879
I did that, I was made I did that. It's

144
00:07:11,879 --> 00:07:14,439
not as if Ted Cruz pretended that he didn't shut

145
00:07:14,439 --> 00:07:16,839
down the government. He would shut up about it. Republicans

146
00:07:16,879 --> 00:07:19,240
when they do this, they go on and on and

147
00:07:19,279 --> 00:07:21,360
on about it, and the base is even louder, and

148
00:07:21,399 --> 00:07:24,240
they get angry with the people in the Republican Party

149
00:07:24,279 --> 00:07:27,560
who suggest that the government should not be shut down forever,

150
00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:30,319
or perhaps that the government's shut down isn't going to

151
00:07:30,399 --> 00:07:32,519
yield the results that they want. So it's just very

152
00:07:32,519 --> 00:07:35,360
funny to me to watch Democrats having done this because

153
00:07:35,399 --> 00:07:38,279
Trump is a dictator and it's not normal, and we

154
00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:41,600
can't go back to the status quo, and we have

155
00:07:41,759 --> 00:07:46,000
to gain the extra health spending that we want, not

156
00:07:46,079 --> 00:07:48,920
a continuing resolution extra health spending, And then to say,

157
00:07:48,959 --> 00:07:51,600
how dare you suggest we had anything to do with it?

158
00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:55,079
It does betray a certain level of insecurity.

159
00:07:55,839 --> 00:07:58,519
Speaker 1: Well, Tim Wald's governor here tweeted out to that, you know,

160
00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:00,839
the Republicans control all the branches of government, yet they

161
00:08:00,879 --> 00:08:03,920
can't get this thing Through's that's on them, of course,

162
00:08:04,120 --> 00:08:08,000
showing either willful or otherwise ignorance of the Senate procedures.

163
00:08:08,439 --> 00:08:13,160
He also noted that he's being contacted by several politicians

164
00:08:13,199 --> 00:08:15,920
and figures in Europe who are concerned about what's going on.

165
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:18,399
And I just have a hard time thinking that mccron's

166
00:08:18,439 --> 00:08:21,120
got Tim Woltzon his speed dial and is calling up

167
00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:27,480
to say are the reports in the Express true? Very so? Yes,

168
00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:30,040
so there we are, but what is it over?

169
00:08:30,279 --> 00:08:30,600
Speaker 5: Really?

170
00:08:30,639 --> 00:08:33,000
Speaker 1: Do you think that people are understanding that the issue

171
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:36,799
here is the funding of care for people who are

172
00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:38,960
not citizens. And they tell us that's not the case.

173
00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:41,600
It's never been the case. They can't be funded. But

174
00:08:41,679 --> 00:08:44,519
what we're talking about, aren't we as the reimbursement to

175
00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:48,480
hospitals who take care of people who walk into the er, etc. Etc.

176
00:08:48,960 --> 00:08:51,639
Is that not part of this which sounds to me

177
00:08:51,799 --> 00:08:54,559
like funding of people who are not citizens. Yeah.

178
00:08:54,720 --> 00:08:57,799
Speaker 4: So, I mean, the political strategy here is pretty clear.

179
00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:01,440
If you look at the polling on issues. Republicans lead

180
00:09:01,480 --> 00:09:04,039
on almost everything, even education, which used to be a

181
00:09:04,080 --> 00:09:08,159
democratic issue that they had slight favorability ratings on. But

182
00:09:08,200 --> 00:09:11,000
the one place where Democrats still lead Republicans as the

183
00:09:11,039 --> 00:09:14,840
party better able to handle the issue is healthcare. And

184
00:09:14,879 --> 00:09:16,639
so they're going to push that and they think that

185
00:09:16,879 --> 00:09:19,519
and apparently there are a lot of nervous Republicans, and

186
00:09:19,559 --> 00:09:22,240
according to some press reports, even some people in the

187
00:09:22,279 --> 00:09:26,159
Trump White House worried about this vulnerability. Now, what I

188
00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:29,000
see here is yet another example of what's been famously

189
00:09:29,039 --> 00:09:33,639
described as the ratchet effect. Democrats use COVID and then

190
00:09:33,679 --> 00:09:37,679
the spending blowouts under Biden to ratchet up essentially the

191
00:09:37,679 --> 00:09:39,879
welfare state. They want to lock us into a higher

192
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,759
level of spending for healthcare, and the Republicans quite rightly

193
00:09:43,879 --> 00:09:46,960
scaled that back with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and

194
00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:49,840
so the Democrats want to restore that upward ratchet of

195
00:09:49,879 --> 00:09:52,879
spending because it always establishes a new higher baseline for

196
00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:56,080
social spending. I do think it really reveals the failure

197
00:09:56,159 --> 00:09:59,679
of Obamacare. It was supposed to solve this problem, supposed

198
00:09:59,679 --> 00:10:01,840
to reduce cost. We remember all that flim flam from

199
00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:05,279
fifteen years ago, and Republicans so far have not been

200
00:10:05,360 --> 00:10:07,879
very effective in arguing about it. I think their best

201
00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:10,919
argument is the fact that Democrats. There's this video is

202
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:14,000
going around from the twenty twenty primary campaign of Democrats

203
00:10:14,039 --> 00:10:17,559
every candidate raising your hands saying their healthcare plans would

204
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:23,000
include coverage for illegal immigrants undocumented immigrants, right, and because

205
00:10:23,039 --> 00:10:26,440
now they're running away from that, but I think Republicans

206
00:10:26,440 --> 00:10:28,720
hold a high hand on that. So I don't know,

207
00:10:29,440 --> 00:10:31,480
we're only what forty eight hours into all this, and

208
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:34,559
you're already hearing rumors or Republicans saying, well, maybe we

209
00:10:34,600 --> 00:10:37,720
can make some kind of deal on Affordable Care Act funding.

210
00:10:37,759 --> 00:10:41,240
And I sure hope they don't. But that's you know,

211
00:10:41,759 --> 00:10:44,840
Republicans always, not always cave, but they tend to cave

212
00:10:44,919 --> 00:10:47,879
on these things because, as Charlie points out, they're usually

213
00:10:47,879 --> 00:10:50,080
the people who started. Well, this time, they aren't the

214
00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:51,799
ones who started it, and I think they should sit

215
00:10:51,879 --> 00:10:54,600
back and increase the pain on the Democrats.

216
00:10:55,320 --> 00:10:59,919
Speaker 1: Well, Charlie, do you think that the healthcare for on

217
00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:03,279
documented citizens is an electoral winner for do they believe

218
00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:05,919
that it is or what is the dynamic here, because

219
00:11:05,960 --> 00:11:07,840
surely they have to look at poles. Surely they have

220
00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:10,000
to look at studies that are most Americans ualla generous

221
00:11:10,039 --> 00:11:14,240
people and believe in immigration, are draw the line at

222
00:11:14,279 --> 00:11:16,799
being obligated to take care of the medical bills of

223
00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:19,879
anybody who walks through the border illegally. That can't be

224
00:11:19,919 --> 00:11:22,039
an electoral winner for them. And then surely they have

225
00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:22,480
to know that.

226
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:25,440
Speaker 5: Well, they do know that, which is why they're denying

227
00:11:25,840 --> 00:11:29,480
that would be the consequences of their policies and describing

228
00:11:29,480 --> 00:11:31,639
anyone who suggests otherwise it's a liar. And of course

229
00:11:31,679 --> 00:11:34,759
it is true because money is fungible. It's quite difficult

230
00:11:34,759 --> 00:11:37,360
to explain this to someone who's not that interested in politics.

231
00:11:37,399 --> 00:11:40,080
But Obviously, if the federal government sends the states money

232
00:11:40,120 --> 00:11:42,080
and then gives them flexibility how they use it, and

233
00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:43,960
then they use it on illegal immigrants, and then they

234
00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:45,919
get more money from the federal government and they can

235
00:11:46,039 --> 00:11:47,960
replace one set of money with the other, and we're

236
00:11:47,960 --> 00:11:52,159
spending federal money on illegal immigrants. It's worth saying, though,

237
00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:55,480
that this is the Republican charge. It's true, but it's

238
00:11:55,519 --> 00:11:58,720
a Republican charge the Democrats are denying. What the Democrats

239
00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:02,480
are saying is that they want to keep Obamacare subsidies high,

240
00:12:02,519 --> 00:12:06,559
and they pretend that the increase in subsidies will keep

241
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:09,559
the cost of Obamacare plans low. Well, of course it

242
00:12:09,600 --> 00:12:12,440
won It will make them lower at the point of use,

243
00:12:12,759 --> 00:12:15,840
but that doesn't actually keep healthcare costs low because taxpayers

244
00:12:15,840 --> 00:12:18,440
are still picking it up. What I find the annoying

245
00:12:18,519 --> 00:12:21,559
about this is that the Republicans for once have a

246
00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:25,720
completely unimpeachable case. They have presented a continuing resolution that

247
00:12:25,840 --> 00:12:29,039
is clean. Their view is we're not asking for changes

248
00:12:29,120 --> 00:12:31,399
in the federal government, even though they have majorities in

249
00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:36,759
both chambers and rather the presidency. They just want to

250
00:12:36,759 --> 00:12:39,159
continue at the current rate and then deal with any

251
00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:41,840
changes to the budget afterwards, and as the Democrats who

252
00:12:41,840 --> 00:12:44,360
are saying, no, we wish to use our position to

253
00:12:44,600 --> 00:12:47,639
make changes. Now, that's fine. I like the filibuster, and

254
00:12:47,720 --> 00:12:50,480
I have been on record over and over again saying

255
00:12:50,639 --> 00:12:54,000
you are allowed from the minority to demand changes. Congress

256
00:12:54,360 --> 00:12:56,039
works like that. I don't want there to be a

257
00:12:56,080 --> 00:12:59,240
structural change here. But the reason it annoys me is

258
00:12:59,279 --> 00:13:03,080
that Republicans have been really admirably consistent on the filibuster

259
00:13:03,159 --> 00:13:05,519
now for a long time. In the first Trump administration,

260
00:13:05,639 --> 00:13:08,159
despite Trump suggesting a couple of times they should get

261
00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:11,360
rid of the filibuster, Republicans didn't. They then got about

262
00:13:11,360 --> 00:13:13,879
thirty six Senate Democrats on record saying that they like

263
00:13:13,919 --> 00:13:16,399
the filibuster. Then the Democrats took over the Senate and

264
00:13:16,399 --> 00:13:18,120
they said, we've got to get rid of the filibuster.

265
00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:21,320
And it's only because Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema said

266
00:13:21,360 --> 00:13:24,799
no that the filibuster survived. Now Republicans are back with

267
00:13:24,919 --> 00:13:28,360
unified controller government. They confirmed yesterday they have no intention

268
00:13:28,399 --> 00:13:30,919
of getting rid of the filibuster and the Democrats are

269
00:13:30,919 --> 00:13:34,159
the ones using it. So having gone from we like

270
00:13:34,240 --> 00:13:37,000
it when the Republicans are in power to we need

271
00:13:37,039 --> 00:13:38,360
to get rid of it because it's a relic of

272
00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:40,720
Jim Crow. They're now back at We will use it

273
00:13:40,759 --> 00:13:43,960
when the Republicans are in power. The second reason they're

274
00:13:43,960 --> 00:13:46,799
annoying me, James, is that although the details that we

275
00:13:46,960 --> 00:13:51,080
just mentioned are important, this actually is not a shutdown

276
00:13:51,120 --> 00:13:55,200
over an issue. They haven't really shut down the government

277
00:13:55,279 --> 00:14:00,519
over healthcare subsidies to illegal immigrants or increased subsidies for Obama.

278
00:14:00,600 --> 00:14:04,120
They are cross with Trump. It's a general thing. Their

279
00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:07,879
base needs some action, and this is it. They are,

280
00:14:08,240 --> 00:14:10,559
in the case of Chuck Schumer, trying to avoid a primary,

281
00:14:10,600 --> 00:14:12,720
in the case of the Democratic Party in general, trying

282
00:14:12,720 --> 00:14:15,840
to show that quote unquote they fight, and this is

283
00:14:15,919 --> 00:14:17,799
just not a good reason to shut down the government.

284
00:14:17,799 --> 00:14:19,960
If they had an actual demand, that's fine with me.

285
00:14:20,039 --> 00:14:22,600
I'm pro Filibusta, I'm pro minority rights in the Senate,

286
00:14:22,639 --> 00:14:25,080
go for it. But I don't think anyone really believes

287
00:14:25,080 --> 00:14:27,919
this is anything other than an attempt to show that

288
00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:29,240
they aren't supine.

289
00:14:29,799 --> 00:14:33,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, fighting, because there's nothing more. There's no stronger proof

290
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:37,279
that we live in an authoritarian Hitler regime than allowing

291
00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:44,440
the opposition to just completely shut everything down without consequence. Well,

292
00:14:44,480 --> 00:14:50,919
speaking of hardball, the OMB director has decided that, well,

293
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:53,519
we should make a while sunshines, never let a crisis

294
00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:57,559
go to waste, etc. And preparing for a lot of cuts,

295
00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:01,399
including some infrastructure cuts to chicag Go and to New York.

296
00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:04,600
I believe that there's a tunnel in New York that

297
00:15:04,639 --> 00:15:08,159
will not get funded, and I believe that there's infrastructure

298
00:15:08,159 --> 00:15:10,120
projects in Chicago as well. And a lot of this

299
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:13,200
is saying that you have not eliminated your DEI programs,

300
00:15:13,279 --> 00:15:16,240
and since you're going to character you're going to carry

301
00:15:16,240 --> 00:15:20,639
on allocating spoils by a racial nature, we're not going

302
00:15:20,679 --> 00:15:22,600
to fund it. And some people regard this as more

303
00:15:22,799 --> 00:15:28,600
examples of the punitive overreach of the authoritarian state. Again,

304
00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:32,679
not spending money on infrastructure does not sound a lot

305
00:15:32,759 --> 00:15:35,000
like the guys who built the autobah, but do go on,

306
00:15:35,559 --> 00:15:38,519
So what do you make of this? Is this just

307
00:15:38,840 --> 00:15:43,159
more political punishment from a vindictive regime or is this

308
00:15:43,360 --> 00:15:46,080
using the opportunity to trim things that ought not to

309
00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:47,320
be spent on in the first place.

310
00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:51,360
Speaker 4: Charls, you go first on this one.

311
00:15:51,559 --> 00:15:55,000
Speaker 5: Well, I think both. I think there's no doubt that

312
00:15:55,039 --> 00:15:59,200
this administration and the last one wants to will use

313
00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:03,360
its power ways that I would rather they didn't. I

314
00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:06,519
think that we have entered into a period in which

315
00:16:06,559 --> 00:16:09,919
the enormous latitude that is given to the executive branch

316
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:16,159
is abused. At the same time, if the specific complaint

317
00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:20,159
is that there is racial discrimination, then it is entirely

318
00:16:20,200 --> 00:16:23,080
reasonable for the federal government to say not on our watch.

319
00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:26,679
Not only does the Fourteenth Amendment quite clearly prohibit that,

320
00:16:26,919 --> 00:16:28,919
and if it doesn't, the Civil Rights Act does. But

321
00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:32,759
we've now had Supreme Court decision after Supreme Court decision

322
00:16:32,799 --> 00:16:36,919
that has made that clear. And I understand that progressives

323
00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:41,879
seem truly, in many cases to earnestly believe that racial

324
00:16:41,879 --> 00:16:45,600
discrimination of the sort that they like isn't racial discrimination,

325
00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:51,720
but it is affirmative action. Is racial discrimination. Granting particular

326
00:16:52,320 --> 00:16:56,919
distributions of public money to particular groups because they are

327
00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:00,679
of that particular group is racial discrimination. So if that

328
00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:02,879
is the proximate cause of it, I am on board.

329
00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:05,880
I do think though, that we have got far too

330
00:17:05,920 --> 00:17:09,799
comfortable in America with Congress writing laws that are vague,

331
00:17:09,839 --> 00:17:12,799
and then with the executive branch using the power that

332
00:17:12,839 --> 00:17:17,920
it's been given to help its friends and hurt its enemies. Right.

333
00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:20,400
Speaker 1: I agree with you, you know, and I think a lot

334
00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:23,559
of Americans would be okay with some affirmative action if

335
00:17:23,559 --> 00:17:25,599
they actually felt that it was efficacious. But I think

336
00:17:25,599 --> 00:17:27,200
a lot of people suspect that in New York and

337
00:17:27,200 --> 00:17:29,200
in large cities that the money goes to cutouts, and

338
00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:32,039
there's this incredible amount of corruption and cronyism that's actually

339
00:17:32,119 --> 00:17:35,240
going on. But it is illustrative to say the administration

340
00:17:35,680 --> 00:17:39,039
is going to withhold funds because you are racially discriminating,

341
00:17:39,039 --> 00:17:41,079
which sounds like the sort of thing that Americans ought

342
00:17:41,079 --> 00:17:43,359
to get to behind, and the previous administration would say,

343
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:46,799
we're going to withhold funds unless you adjust your title

344
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:51,039
nine athletics to include men who believe that they are women.

345
00:17:51,640 --> 00:17:54,119
The balance on those issues and the popularity of them,

346
00:17:54,119 --> 00:17:56,240
I think is striking, Steve. And you've now had enough

347
00:17:56,240 --> 00:17:58,480
time to come up with your response, and.

348
00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:01,039
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean what I do like about it?

349
00:18:01,079 --> 00:18:04,640
I mean, I agree with Charlie in the abstract. In practice,

350
00:18:04,759 --> 00:18:08,200
I kind of liked the scene we're seeing the Trump

351
00:18:08,240 --> 00:18:13,279
administration using the tools liberals devised against the left. I mean,

352
00:18:13,359 --> 00:18:16,240
I mean, the left in power especially has used all

353
00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:19,200
these civil rights tools to bully people public and private

354
00:18:19,279 --> 00:18:22,880
alike for decades now. And this is some old history,

355
00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:26,400
but you know, the reg administration won a very big

356
00:18:26,640 --> 00:18:28,640
Supreme Court case, I think in nineteen eighty eight or

357
00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:30,920
maybe in the eight nineteen eighty nine, the Adoran case,

358
00:18:31,319 --> 00:18:33,839
saying that we can't have quotas and timetables and all

359
00:18:33,880 --> 00:18:37,440
these things for federal contracting. And what happened. The Republicans

360
00:18:37,480 --> 00:18:40,559
immediately crumpled under the charge that this was racist, and

361
00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:43,000
they signed on to under the first President Bush, the

362
00:18:43,039 --> 00:18:47,519
Civil Rights Restoration Act, which essentially nullvied the progress that

363
00:18:47,559 --> 00:18:49,680
the Supreme Court was moving by inches to where they

364
00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:53,039
are today. So not this time. The Trump people, and

365
00:18:53,079 --> 00:18:55,640
I think Republicans have learned their lesson, are not only

366
00:18:55,680 --> 00:18:57,720
saying no to that, but are saying, we don't care

367
00:18:57,759 --> 00:19:01,400
about you. The racism charge has lost its sting. And

368
00:19:01,559 --> 00:19:03,359
one last point, James is, I don't know if it's

369
00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:05,400
on your list of topics you want to bring up today,

370
00:19:05,759 --> 00:19:08,359
but an example of how people are fed up with

371
00:19:09,079 --> 00:19:12,519
affirmative action out of control is this extraordinary story out

372
00:19:12,559 --> 00:19:15,519
of Iowa where what a school district hired as a

373
00:19:15,519 --> 00:19:19,240
superintendenty at three hundred thousand dollars a year, an illegal

374
00:19:19,279 --> 00:19:22,839
alien who had a deportation order and a criminal record

375
00:19:23,240 --> 00:19:26,119
and a false CV claiming he had a doctorate when

376
00:19:26,119 --> 00:19:28,839
he didn't, and they hired him anyway, knowing some of

377
00:19:28,880 --> 00:19:32,720
those things, not everything about him. And you know, it's

378
00:19:32,759 --> 00:19:35,119
pretty clearly now that the Left has been running a

379
00:19:35,200 --> 00:19:38,440
racial spoils racket for a long time. And so while

380
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:40,559
I also agree in the abstract that you can make

381
00:19:40,599 --> 00:19:43,319
a case for affirmative action, and I think, Charlie, I

382
00:19:43,359 --> 00:19:44,960
don't know if you brought this up on law talk,

383
00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:48,240
but someone who actually defends affirmative action and college admissions

384
00:19:48,319 --> 00:19:54,519
is Richard Epstein amazing. But I've also listened to why

385
00:19:54,559 --> 00:19:56,960
he thinks that, and he makes the only cojin case

386
00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:00,839
I think for it. Nonetheless, I think now it's such

387
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:03,440
a corrupt racket that we want to be done with

388
00:20:03,519 --> 00:20:06,480
it once and for all. Kill it by any means necessary.

389
00:20:06,680 --> 00:20:08,720
And by the way, all the Supreme Court cases that

390
00:20:08,799 --> 00:20:10,640
Charlie referenced are going to make it hard to bring

391
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:14,160
it back under a democratic administration, although they will certainly try.

392
00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:16,680
Speaker 5: I have to say, just as a quick aside, I

393
00:20:16,799 --> 00:20:21,480
love being called a racist for opposing decisions made based

394
00:20:21,519 --> 00:20:24,680
on race. I think this is the most extraordinary thing

395
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:28,519
that happens. When affirmative action was finally overturned, eighty percent

396
00:20:28,559 --> 00:20:32,319
of the American public said great, and the left set

397
00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:36,480
that's racism. So a you think that it's racism to

398
00:20:36,799 --> 00:20:39,160
say that you can't discriminate based on race, and be

399
00:20:39,319 --> 00:20:41,839
your position is that eighty percent of the American public

400
00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:44,759
is racist. It is just an extraordinary example of how

401
00:20:44,759 --> 00:20:46,200
they've lost their minds on this.

402
00:20:46,480 --> 00:20:48,240
Speaker 1: Well, I do believe that eighty percent of the population

403
00:20:48,359 --> 00:20:51,680
is racist. And what's more, you know, the idea somehow

404
00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:54,440
that affirmative action is racist is nonsense, of course, because

405
00:20:54,440 --> 00:20:56,880
you cannot be racist against white people. You need to

406
00:20:56,880 --> 00:21:02,160
have power. There's this whole complicated and rather you know,

407
00:21:02,799 --> 00:21:05,839
two clever by half definition of what racism is and requires,

408
00:21:05,839 --> 00:21:07,359
and it has to do with the measures of power

409
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:08,920
and ability and privilege and the rest of it. And

410
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:11,000
it's a carefully calibrated to make sure that only this

411
00:21:11,039 --> 00:21:13,960
group can be racist. These people are not. So I

412
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:16,319
get what you're saying, Charlie, But of course I wouldn't

413
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:21,400
you know if the word is thrown about so much

414
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:25,680
and applied to so much that it is rapidly becoming

415
00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:27,640
meaningless and we'll have to come up with another one.

416
00:21:27,759 --> 00:21:29,920
Used to be bigoted, I remember back in the Archie

417
00:21:29,960 --> 00:21:33,519
Bunker days you would say bigoted, which I think we

418
00:21:33,599 --> 00:21:35,759
ought to return too, because frankly, if they want to

419
00:21:35,759 --> 00:21:38,519
do the whole power imbalance thing with racism, fine, but

420
00:21:38,559 --> 00:21:42,200
anybody can be bigoted. The Iowa story is fascinating. I mean,

421
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:46,039
because this guy was caught, you know, speeds off his car,

422
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:50,279
runs away, hides in the tall grass. Everybody rallied to

423
00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:53,079
him because he was a charismatic and wonderful person, because

424
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:55,759
the kids loved him. And when you look the fact

425
00:21:55,759 --> 00:21:57,920
that he had gun charges and I know, Charlie, this

426
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,079
is where your ears per c Cup had gun charges

427
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:03,640
in the past, and he had a gun charge pending

428
00:22:03,839 --> 00:22:05,839
right there and then because as a citizen with a

429
00:22:05,839 --> 00:22:08,440
deportation order, I don't believe that he was allowed to

430
00:22:08,079 --> 00:22:09,160
have that firearm.

431
00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:11,799
Speaker 6: But even if he was, if it was in his car,

432
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:15,319
doesn't that mean that he had taken the gun to school?

433
00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:18,480
And so if that's if that's all true, then you

434
00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:20,960
have people waving away a law.

435
00:22:21,559 --> 00:22:23,400
Speaker 1: Now when you have a horrible thing happened. And then

436
00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:25,440
they pass a law you can't bring guns to school,

437
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:28,079
and there, we've done something. It's it's a law named

438
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:31,000
after somebody who died, it perished, and and you know,

439
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:33,359
mission accomplished. We've passed a law. And then you have

440
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:35,839
a guy who literally breaks the thing and they wave

441
00:22:35,839 --> 00:22:38,319
it away and they don't care because they actually personally

442
00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:41,000
like him. It's almost as if the whole process of

443
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:42,839
getting the law in the first place is Kabooki theater.

444
00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:45,400
And secondly, it's almost as if the applying the laws

445
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:48,240
equally to all doesn't matter if you like him and

446
00:22:48,279 --> 00:22:50,359
the kids like him, and he and he has an

447
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:53,759
engaging smile, but he's going back. I mean, if you

448
00:22:53,759 --> 00:22:55,559
looked at his vita. One of the things I think

449
00:22:55,559 --> 00:22:58,039
he claimed in his biography his autobiography was that he

450
00:22:58,079 --> 00:23:01,160
was a hired killer for the gan and military, you know,

451
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,359
sort of a special Forces green beret type who was

452
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:08,400
a security guard print for Queen Elizabeth. And I kind

453
00:23:08,400 --> 00:23:11,119
of doubt that, I kind of do. It sounds like

454
00:23:11,160 --> 00:23:14,680
one of those fabulous resumes you get from the sociopaths

455
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:16,960
who will tell anybody any story in order to get attention.

456
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:20,240
Speaker 4: Can I add the cherry on top that we neglected

457
00:23:20,279 --> 00:23:23,039
to mention is he was registered to vote as a

458
00:23:23,079 --> 00:23:26,839
Democrat in Maryland. We're told that never happens. But okay, all.

459
00:23:26,759 --> 00:23:28,759
Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna have a guy with gun charges who

460
00:23:28,799 --> 00:23:31,039
was registered to vote and probably getting medical care and

461
00:23:31,039 --> 00:23:32,559
all the rest of it. But it doesn't happen. But

462
00:23:32,599 --> 00:23:34,920
it does. Even if it's true, it doesn't matter because

463
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:36,519
he was a great guy and he's a contributor to

464
00:23:36,559 --> 00:23:38,920
the society. Well, one of the other things that's being

465
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,480
cut in addition to the infrastructure, we were talking about

466
00:23:42,759 --> 00:23:46,079
a whole batch of green deals, a whole lot of

467
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:51,440
energy programs, and I generally applaud this because I don't

468
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:54,319
regard them as particularly useful or necessary, and I think

469
00:23:54,319 --> 00:23:57,119
they're all predicated on a hysteria, which itself is sort

470
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:58,880
of a scientific and I don't buy it. I don't

471
00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:04,480
buy it. No cirtain, So I guess that's me. I'm hopeless.

472
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,680
But what do you guys think we need energy? And

473
00:24:08,759 --> 00:24:13,480
without a concombinant rise in fossil fuel production and crack

474
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,519
crack effort to get more nuclear online, aren't we shooting

475
00:24:17,519 --> 00:24:20,559
ourselves in the foot by not building vast solar farms

476
00:24:20,559 --> 00:24:22,920
and putting those wonderful windmills up in the.

477
00:24:22,839 --> 00:24:27,400
Speaker 4: Countryside, well, not a bit. I mean I would volunteer

478
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:29,799
to help take some of those down, or to block

479
00:24:29,839 --> 00:24:32,480
the whatever, block the trucks going there to put up

480
00:24:32,519 --> 00:24:35,400
new ones. I am worried about one thing, though, and

481
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,480
I hope the Trump administration is on top of this,

482
00:24:38,559 --> 00:24:40,559
and I think they might be, and that is with

483
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,279
the growth of all the AI data centers, which are

484
00:24:44,319 --> 00:24:48,279
going to use fabulous amounts of electricity. I mean, some

485
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:50,519
of the comparisons are, you know, one data center, it's

486
00:24:50,559 --> 00:24:53,720
something like this, one data center will use more electricity

487
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,720
than the entire city of Columbus, Ohio, or things like that.

488
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:00,960
It's truly staggering. And already we've seen electricity rates all

489
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,480
over the country spike very sharply the last few years.

490
00:25:04,039 --> 00:25:07,279
And that's part because we're dishonest about how supposedly cheap

491
00:25:07,319 --> 00:25:10,559
wind and solar are and and a lot of these

492
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,079
data centers, you know, they're in a pretty good position

493
00:25:13,119 --> 00:25:16,039
to negotiate utilities for fixed price contracts, probably at a

494
00:25:16,079 --> 00:25:21,119
higher price, but nonetheless that they can outbid other consumer

495
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:23,960
facing utilities. And I do worry that there could be

496
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:27,880
a electricity shortages in the next two three years and

497
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,920
or price spikes, and that's not going to be popular

498
00:25:32,079 --> 00:25:35,599
with the American people. And the remedies right now are

499
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,680
well from the Greens. It's let's build more battery storage,

500
00:25:38,839 --> 00:25:41,160
and that really doesn't work. It doesn't pencil out if

501
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:43,960
you do the math on it very well. And so

502
00:25:44,079 --> 00:25:45,640
you really do need to do is build a whole

503
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:48,359
lot of natural gas plants. They can be built quickly,

504
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,200
they can be turned on quickly, they're very efficient, they're

505
00:25:51,279 --> 00:25:55,759
very blow polluting. The problem is is that there is

506
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,480
enough demand for the just the equipment that apparently there's

507
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:02,000
like a tour for your backlog to get turbines from

508
00:26:02,279 --> 00:26:05,119
General Electric and the other Semens and the other manufacturers

509
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:08,319
of gas turbines. So we could be in for a

510
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:11,200
real problem here coming down the road at US. And

511
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:13,759
it really is the fault of the green energy mania

512
00:26:13,799 --> 00:26:16,039
of the last decade. But when you're in office, you

513
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:16,920
own the problem.

514
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to be sitting in the dark

515
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:21,079
with a brownout because hell nine thousand up the street.

516
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,359
It requires the Jews to do some cogitating and tell

517
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:27,279
somebody some fabulous story. I read the other day a

518
00:26:27,279 --> 00:26:29,000
story of the BBC that there are people who are

519
00:26:29,079 --> 00:26:33,079
using AI to generate vacation itineraries and they get there

520
00:26:33,079 --> 00:26:35,519
and they find out that the place does not actually exist,

521
00:26:35,799 --> 00:26:38,359
that it was just dreamed up by a combination of things.

522
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:42,519
I mean, honestly. It discussed a couple in Peru who

523
00:26:42,519 --> 00:26:44,079
had gone to this place, and they were looking at

524
00:26:44,079 --> 00:26:46,799
the map and sitting in a cafe somewhere, and some

525
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:49,839
local guide had to come over and tell them, no, no, no,

526
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,519
that road up there will leave you nowhere at an

527
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,640
altitude of four thousand with no self. You're gonna die,

528
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:00,559
so don't. Yes, I'm not as thrilled AI as I

529
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:04,440
used to be, and I never particularly was. Charles, What

530
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:07,200
do you think a lot of this as we know

531
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:10,480
we have this? There was this feeling in the seventies,

532
00:27:10,519 --> 00:27:12,279
of course, when we had the oil shocks, there was

533
00:27:12,279 --> 00:27:14,680
a feeling of impotence. There was nothing really we could do.

534
00:27:14,839 --> 00:27:18,200
They weren't good alternatives. We were pretending that they were.

535
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:21,200
There were stories in the newspaper and the Time magazine

536
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:23,799
about well, maybe tar sans will do it, maybe synthetic

537
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,599
oil will do it, maybe even twenty years, but there

538
00:27:26,599 --> 00:27:29,240
wasn't any sense that there was an imminent solution. We

539
00:27:29,319 --> 00:27:32,559
know now that there are imminent, workable solutions such as nuclears,

540
00:27:32,559 --> 00:27:35,319
such as gas that Stephen talked about. It's a failure

541
00:27:35,319 --> 00:27:38,000
of will all of the prak as with so many

542
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:39,559
of the other things we have. It's not a failure

543
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,160
of ability. It was a failure of will by our

544
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:44,599
political class to make sure that we didn't that we

545
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:46,480
won't find ourselves in a brownout situation.

546
00:27:46,759 --> 00:27:49,640
Speaker 4: Well, now, Jame's gonna I just offer one slight modification

547
00:27:49,759 --> 00:27:53,079
to your otherwise completely correct litany, which is we did

548
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:57,559
have one solution in the late seventies and it was coal. Yeah,

549
00:27:57,559 --> 00:27:59,920
people have forgotten that. Jimmy Carter said, I remember the

550
00:28:00,279 --> 00:28:03,039
we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. And it was

551
00:28:03,279 --> 00:28:05,839
the late seventies and into the eighties that we vastly

552
00:28:05,839 --> 00:28:09,880
expanded our coal fired capacity for electricity on purpose, and

553
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:11,839
that got us all. You know, we used to starty

554
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:14,759
to be a nerdy policy wonk geek on this, but

555
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,799
when all this oil shocks started, when we were young pups,

556
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:21,680
we got twenty percent of our electricity from oil. From petroleum,

557
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:23,519
and then when it got expensive, we said we got

558
00:28:23,559 --> 00:28:25,440
to stop that in a hurry, and now it's close

559
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,559
to zero percent from petrol. Occasionally there diesel generators are

560
00:28:28,599 --> 00:28:31,640
turned on here and there. But and what replaced it

561
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,440
was coal, And of course then fifteen years later, oh no,

562
00:28:34,599 --> 00:28:39,160
coal is the devil because of clients range right, acid right, Well,

563
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,240
that was a turned out to be a phony and

564
00:28:41,279 --> 00:28:44,640
overestimated problem, as they so often turned out to be anyway,

565
00:28:45,599 --> 00:28:47,359
So we did actually have one, and it turned out

566
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:49,160
to be the one that is the most hated by

567
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:50,519
all enlightened people today.

568
00:28:51,319 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, next to nuclear coal first, then nuclear right, Charles,

569
00:28:56,039 --> 00:28:58,640
I don't know. Do you have many turbine wind turbines

570
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:00,559
in your neighborhood You are.

571
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 5: Thankfully not. And we bury the power lines too because

572
00:29:03,759 --> 00:29:04,480
of hurricanes.

573
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,079
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a great idea.

574
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 5: I have just one thing to add to this, which

575
00:29:10,039 --> 00:29:13,039
is this is not a solution that will fix the

576
00:29:13,039 --> 00:29:17,920
whole problem. But I do think that we ought to encourage,

577
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:22,319
where possible, those who are building enormous server farms that

578
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:28,880
will be used to make profit for them to build

579
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:31,839
their own power plants as well. And we've seen this

580
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:37,599
in I think Pennsylvania with Microsoft, where it's reopening the

581
00:29:37,759 --> 00:29:41,640
three Mile Island nuclear facility in order to power an

582
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:46,319
absolutely enormous data center. I like this sort of thing

583
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:52,839
without re litigating the question of Rhondascentis and Disney. I

584
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,720
differed on this in some respects from many conservatives. The

585
00:29:56,839 --> 00:30:01,799
original reason that Disney in nineteen sixty eight was given

586
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:07,920
control over that massive, two county wide tractive land that

587
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,920
it built Disney World on was that both Orange County

588
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:16,079
and Osceola County were very poor and they simply could not,

589
00:30:17,039 --> 00:30:20,759
via taxation or any other means, pay for the infrastructure

590
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:26,240
that was necessary to support Disney World, which required an

591
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,279
enormous amount of energy production, among other things. In fact,

592
00:30:29,319 --> 00:30:31,880
it's very interesting if you look through the original grant

593
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,920
from the Florida legislature in nineteen sixty eight, it gave

594
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,759
Disney the ability the authority to build a nuclear power

595
00:30:39,839 --> 00:30:42,279
plant there in case that's what it needed to run

596
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,920
Disney World. That was because the locals in Oscila and

597
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:48,519
Orange Counties, which at that point were rural or land

598
00:30:48,559 --> 00:30:51,359
that didn't really exist, they didn't want to be on

599
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:53,759
the hook. They didn't want some bonds drive for the

600
00:30:53,799 --> 00:30:57,240
private profit of the Disney Corporation. So I understand that

601
00:30:57,279 --> 00:31:01,480
this won't work for everything, but it's not unreasonable for

602
00:31:01,559 --> 00:31:07,319
our states and counties to say to open AI or

603
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:10,720
Microsoft or Apple or whoever. You know what, if you

604
00:31:10,759 --> 00:31:13,920
want to build seven million servers and use so much

605
00:31:14,119 --> 00:31:17,480
energy that it will start to affect everyone around you,

606
00:31:17,519 --> 00:31:19,599
put in your own system. Now you have to at

607
00:31:19,599 --> 00:31:24,680
that point deregulate. You have to allow the process to unfold.

608
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,920
You can't say and you can't do it. But I

609
00:31:28,359 --> 00:31:30,960
think this is an underrated development that we've seen with

610
00:31:31,039 --> 00:31:34,079
Microsoft and nuclear power, and I hope it happens more elsewhere.

611
00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:38,599
Speaker 1: Are we sure that Disney didn't build a quire actor, Well,

612
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:40,599
as far as we know, they didn't. Well, if you

613
00:31:40,599 --> 00:31:43,079
look at the some of the early drawings in Disney World,

614
00:31:43,319 --> 00:31:45,680
it wasn't Splash Mountain, it was scram Mountain.

615
00:31:45,839 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 5: So you know exactly.

616
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: I leave with this. The last experience that I had

617
00:31:50,759 --> 00:31:54,079
with AI, I'd learned that there was a massive new

618
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:58,440
development going in in north of Fargo, North Dakota, a

619
00:31:58,599 --> 00:32:01,839
huge industrial facility, and I want to know where it was,

620
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:05,559
because Fargo was making noises about annexing the land up there.

621
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:07,880
And our family farm is up there, and I wanted

622
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,319
to know if our family farm was going to survive this,

623
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:13,720
and so I asked AI about the location of this.

624
00:32:13,799 --> 00:32:15,920
I asked GROC, and when it came back with the location,

625
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,000
it put a square in Trollwood Park, and I don't

626
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,599
think that was the case. And I told GROK, no,

627
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:25,480
you're wrong. You put this massive industrial facility in a park.

628
00:32:25,599 --> 00:32:28,119
Control what that's not it, And of course it apologized

629
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:30,440
and apologized, I'm very sorry. Of course, I'll go back

630
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:33,480
and look at the PDFs. And it took four runs

631
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,920
at it, and it kept putting this thing in parks

632
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:38,400
all over town until I finally gave up and said,

633
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,680
you were absolutely useless. You were giving me absolutely wrong information,

634
00:32:42,079 --> 00:32:44,759
and it apologized again. The amusing part of it is

635
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:47,240
for me, is that the industrial facility that I was

636
00:32:47,279 --> 00:32:51,160
asking GROC to find is a proposed AI server farm.

637
00:32:51,759 --> 00:32:54,799
So maybe it was just trying to hide the fact

638
00:32:54,799 --> 00:32:58,480
that it was done at all, or it was regarded

639
00:32:58,519 --> 00:33:00,440
it as its enemy and didn't want to tell about it.

640
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,920
Speaker 5: James Sky is building itself and it doesn't want you

641
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:04,279
to know.

642
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: That's that's precisely it. And you know the more you

643
00:33:07,400 --> 00:33:10,279
think about that, it really is stupid. That an awful

644
00:33:10,319 --> 00:33:13,480
lot of that is just very very dumb, like Aliens

645
00:33:13,519 --> 00:33:17,279
two movies and the rest of it. Forget it. Speaking

646
00:33:17,319 --> 00:33:20,000
of movies, one of my favorites, of course is Full

647
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,640
Metal Jacket for the commanding first half of it were

648
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:27,079
our Ley Army gives the definitive performance next to Jack

649
00:33:27,119 --> 00:33:30,680
Web of course in di I as a drill instructor

650
00:33:30,759 --> 00:33:34,319
who just absolutely embodies for any of us, what that

651
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,440
role with that job, what that personality is. Heg Seth

652
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,279
did that too. We think he gathered eight hundred generals

653
00:33:40,279 --> 00:33:42,920
in Virginia, which at first was sort of rooted about

654
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,359
in the Internet as oh, this is worrisome, what's what's

655
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:48,559
what's going on? Is something planned? Is the balloon about

656
00:33:48,599 --> 00:33:50,920
to go up? But no, it turns out he was

657
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,119
going to tell them they're all fat and they need

658
00:33:53,279 --> 00:33:55,759
they need to lay off the jelly donuts because they

659
00:33:55,799 --> 00:33:58,039
are discussing fat bodies, and that we're not going to

660
00:33:58,079 --> 00:33:59,880
have the long hair, we're not gonna have eyelashes, we're

661
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:01,480
not can have men addresses, and we're going to go

662
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:04,880
back to a warrior. Ethos and I have heard wildly

663
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,440
diverse opinions about the speech, partly because of the man

664
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,719
who gave it, but partly because well, I'll just you

665
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:16,920
guys are Sivyes, tell me how it struck you, Stephen.

666
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:18,320
Speaker 5: All right.

667
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:20,599
Speaker 4: So I did not see it. I've read about it,

668
00:34:20,639 --> 00:34:24,079
and of course that's point number one is the mainstream

669
00:34:24,079 --> 00:34:27,360
media is going berserk about how terrible it was, and

670
00:34:28,119 --> 00:34:30,760
the general rule that whatever the mainstream media is reporting,

671
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:33,880
you want to believe the opposite I did. By the way,

672
00:34:34,000 --> 00:34:36,119
just see a headline for a survey out in the

673
00:34:36,159 --> 00:34:39,119
last few days saying that public trust in the mainstream

674
00:34:39,159 --> 00:34:41,280
media is down to twenty eight percent. I haven't actually

675
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:42,920
looked a thing up to see if it's a quality

676
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,239
survey or not, but I can believe that that high.

677
00:34:45,559 --> 00:34:48,519
And yeah, yeah, right, yeah, it's really a bad survey

678
00:34:48,559 --> 00:34:49,280
if it has that high.

679
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:49,519
Speaker 5: Yeah.

680
00:34:49,559 --> 00:34:54,039
Speaker 4: Good point. I do wonder sometimes, I do wonder, lads,

681
00:34:54,079 --> 00:34:56,960
and so many other things Trump administration does if they

682
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:01,159
deliberately calculate some of their spectacular events like this to

683
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,079
drive the wedge wider between the American people and the

684
00:35:05,119 --> 00:35:07,559
media and the you know, for the establishment that they hate.

685
00:35:08,519 --> 00:35:10,800
You know, I know some people in the military and

686
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,119
you know, I have a hunt. First of all, remember

687
00:35:13,119 --> 00:35:15,199
that the rank and file of the military lean Republican

688
00:35:16,519 --> 00:35:18,960
by I think a fairly substantial amount. I mean it's

689
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:21,440
not eighty twenty, but I think it's like sixty forty.

690
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:25,159
And I think an awful lot of them have probably thought, yeah,

691
00:35:25,159 --> 00:35:27,599
we went too far with the woke military, and all

692
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:30,719
I do hear anecdotes over the last couple of days

693
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:34,079
of a lot of serving men and women saying, you know,

694
00:35:34,159 --> 00:35:36,599
this is long overdue and we really like what we heard.

695
00:35:37,199 --> 00:35:40,119
That will not be reported in the media. How many

696
00:35:40,159 --> 00:35:42,000
people in the mainstream media have ever served in the

697
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:45,559
military at all? I think the number is as symptotically

698
00:35:45,679 --> 00:35:48,960
close to zero as you can get without some calculus

699
00:35:49,039 --> 00:35:53,159
derivative for the tiny gap. So anyway, I kind of

700
00:35:53,199 --> 00:35:55,039
like the I mean I wouldn't have done it, but

701
00:35:55,079 --> 00:35:58,440
I kind of like the way everyone has, as usual,

702
00:35:58,519 --> 00:36:00,199
have got their knickers in a twist about.

703
00:36:02,119 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: Charles.

704
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:09,360
Speaker 5: The event was classic Trump in that it was an

705
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:13,960
innovative thing to do in the first place, most presidents

706
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:17,639
don't convene all their generals in one place, and then

707
00:36:17,679 --> 00:36:24,039
it featured both flowering of common sense that eighty to

708
00:36:24,119 --> 00:36:27,239
ninety percent of the public must agree with, coupled with

709
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,639
a few completely insane comments that didn't need to be

710
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:36,440
made and probably won't be acted on the substance of

711
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:42,360
what Hexas said was not only correct but should be obvious.

712
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:48,440
That is that the military exists to fight, and that

713
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:54,960
people who are charged with fighting should be fit and

714
00:36:55,119 --> 00:37:02,000
healthy and strong. This is only controversial on college campuses

715
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,079
and in those parts of our political culture that don't

716
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:09,960
like the fact that people are different from one another,

717
00:37:10,159 --> 00:37:13,840
whether that's men and women, or fat people and thin people,

718
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,960
or tall people and short people, or strong people and

719
00:37:17,039 --> 00:37:21,079
weak people. I am still astonished that we have ever

720
00:37:21,119 --> 00:37:25,239
got into a position in which this backslid to the

721
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:29,760
extent that it did. Then you had Trump saying terrible

722
00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:34,239
things about using the cities as testing grounds HEXIT as well,

723
00:37:34,599 --> 00:37:38,960
and promising to go into this that or the other

724
00:37:39,039 --> 00:37:41,559
part of the United States with the federal government or

725
00:37:41,639 --> 00:37:44,119
possibly with the military. Now it has to be said

726
00:37:44,159 --> 00:37:47,440
Trump has not done this. He has done two things.

727
00:37:47,519 --> 00:37:50,039
One is that he sent the National Guard into d C,

728
00:37:50,199 --> 00:37:52,960
which is absolutely entitled to do. It's a federal district.

729
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:57,400
It's no different than the Northwest Territory. Constitutionally, and he has,

730
00:37:57,639 --> 00:38:00,159
especially on the West coast in California and Ore and

731
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:04,760
sent troops out to defend federal employees, which is also justified,

732
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:07,599
whether or not one thinks it's a good idea legally.

733
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:11,559
So if he did start using Chicago as training for

734
00:38:11,639 --> 00:38:14,440
the next Fallujah, that would be very bad. But he

735
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:17,599
hasn't done it. I just wish that he had focused

736
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:22,599
on the substance of Hexas' remarks. I wish that were

737
00:38:22,639 --> 00:38:24,360
the thing that had come out of this, because then

738
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:27,480
you would have had an absolutely beautiful juxtaposition between people

739
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,000
who said, oh my god, all off the generals have

740
00:38:30,039 --> 00:38:33,159
been summoned, this must be the beginning of Nazi Germany,

741
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:37,920
and this guy who is obviously fit himself, the Secretary

742
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:40,280
of Defense, Pete Hexath, saying I think it would be

743
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,679
good if in the military we've focused on being the military.

744
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,000
The juxtaposition would have been very, very good for Trump

745
00:38:45,039 --> 00:38:46,760
because people would have said, so, not only did we

746
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:48,880
not get Nazi Germany, we got the thing that we've

747
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,519
wanted all along. Unfortunately, they have to do the stray voltage.

748
00:38:52,559 --> 00:38:55,199
I wish they would stop, but do I worry that

749
00:38:55,199 --> 00:38:57,480
they're actually going to start going door to door in

750
00:38:57,519 --> 00:38:58,079
Des Moines.

751
00:38:58,159 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't either, but I think it's into

752
00:39:00,559 --> 00:39:02,599
For the first time in my life, it's like the

753
00:39:02,639 --> 00:39:07,440
Third Amendment suddenly seems to be relevant. But you know,

754
00:39:07,840 --> 00:39:12,800
they don't have to some of the generals to you know,

755
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,079
to one room and make them swear allegiance to the leader.

756
00:39:15,519 --> 00:39:17,599
To be Nazi Germany. All you have to do to

757
00:39:17,599 --> 00:39:20,079
get that Nazi thing going for people is to insist

758
00:39:20,119 --> 00:39:22,840
that everybody drill correctly and be fit and have a

759
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:25,679
haircut and march in order that to that that very

760
00:39:26,079 --> 00:39:30,239
manifestation of the most basic facts of military behavior is

761
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:34,360
enough to make people worry. If you go back to

762
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,199
the seventies again, and I hate to keep bringing it up,

763
00:39:37,559 --> 00:39:39,679
there was this notion that the Navy was the place

764
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,079
where you know, guys that mustaches and long hairs and

765
00:39:42,079 --> 00:39:43,599
they smoked a lot of dope. And I mean that

766
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:46,079
was kind of the feeling I got from the guys

767
00:39:46,119 --> 00:39:47,800
I knew who went into it and came out of it.

768
00:39:48,159 --> 00:39:50,519
And we don't want that. Charles absolutely right, There's there's

769
00:39:50,519 --> 00:39:54,039
nothing fascistic about insisting that there'd be discipline and comportment

770
00:39:54,079 --> 00:39:56,039
and the rest of it. I mean, the number of

771
00:39:56,079 --> 00:39:58,679
times I've watched a TikTok of somebody who was spilling

772
00:39:58,719 --> 00:40:01,079
over their uniform looks like the michelin man has been

773
00:40:01,079 --> 00:40:04,400
put into BDUs and is complaining about something, and they've

774
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:06,639
got long hair and a piercing and the rest of it.

775
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:09,320
It doesn't really strike you as being particularly and you

776
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:13,079
just wonder, why don't these people go into the military anyway.

777
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:14,519
Speaker 5: David, can I just complain about something?

778
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:16,800
Speaker 1: Yes? Here For.

779
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,760
Speaker 5: When I was in high school taking exams, there was

780
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:25,719
a guy in my class who got given extra time

781
00:40:26,639 --> 00:40:31,119
because he wasn't good at exams, and I remember thinking,

782
00:40:31,599 --> 00:40:34,360
hang on a minute, though, the purpose of the exam

783
00:40:34,599 --> 00:40:38,079
is to test what you do in the circumstances of

784
00:40:38,119 --> 00:40:42,599
the exam, which can then be extrapolated out into your

785
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:45,800
life or other academic work. If you give him extra

786
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:47,719
time because he's not good at exams, you don't get

787
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:54,480
a good example of his abilities or lack thereof. And

788
00:40:54,559 --> 00:40:57,320
I think the same thing is true of the military.

789
00:40:57,639 --> 00:41:00,559
And I would draw a distinction between that and say trials.

790
00:41:00,599 --> 00:41:03,159
If someone is on trial but they can't hear, it's

791
00:41:03,159 --> 00:41:06,840
totally reasonable to say, well, we'll present them with a signer.

792
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:15,800
If somebody is in a job that requires them to

793
00:41:16,039 --> 00:41:18,880
get around and they can't walk, it's totally reasonable to

794
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:22,079
give them a ramp. But there are certain circumstances in

795
00:41:22,119 --> 00:41:25,079
which the other side is never going to give you

796
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,559
the leeway. And I think the biggest thing for me

797
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:31,519
that I took away from Hex's speech is the sheer

798
00:41:31,639 --> 00:41:34,079
number of people in the press, and unfortunately it seems

799
00:41:34,119 --> 00:41:35,639
to be in some of the upper echelons of the

800
00:41:35,639 --> 00:41:39,199
military as well, who have forgotten that the enemy gets

801
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:44,480
a vote, that they get to impose their will on us.

802
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:47,159
And if you give people extra time or you give

803
00:41:47,199 --> 00:41:49,920
them special leeway, they don't care. They'll just shoot them

804
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:53,239
in the face. And I worry that we've forgotten about it.

805
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:56,239
And I just mentioned that because I didn't see that

806
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,559
anywhere in the coverage, any acknowledgment of that. Every New

807
00:41:59,679 --> 00:42:02,639
York Time Times article on this that it was controversial,

808
00:42:03,199 --> 00:42:06,800
but they never explained the pro argument for it, which

809
00:42:07,519 --> 00:42:11,000
to me to be really self evident and crucial.

810
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,199
Speaker 1: Well, they are all notions of humanity and empathy, and

811
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:17,840
they have nothing to do with preparedness. Switching our gaze

812
00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:20,280
to the other side of the Pond, Britain is going

813
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:24,079
through one of his periodic convulsions. There was a geod

814
00:42:24,119 --> 00:42:27,000
attack in Manchester. Two Jews were killed at the synagogue

815
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:29,679
on a high holy day for being Jews. We may

816
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:31,880
never know the note of motive of the man, whose

817
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:35,719
name was literally Giod, I think, but this was celebrated

818
00:42:36,679 --> 00:42:41,760
with spontaneous rallies in all sorts of cities waiving the

819
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:46,280
Palestinian flag such as it is demanding that Israel be

820
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:48,760
destroyed river to the sea. That's what it means. Don't

821
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,920
tell me otherwise. Not a great day for Blighty, would

822
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:53,840
you say? Or is this completely irrelevant?

823
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,519
Speaker 5: And I think it matches. I don't think it's nothing.

824
00:42:57,639 --> 00:43:00,280
And I based that in part on the realc action

825
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:03,320
that I've seen from my family and friends in England

826
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:06,679
who are appalled by it and seem to think that

827
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:12,800
what happened is more indicative of certain attitudes than should

828
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:16,199
be the case in a Western country. And this guy's

829
00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:23,400
name was Jihad al Shamey. Is that right? Yeah? How

830
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:27,480
could you possibly have expected that you would see a

831
00:43:27,599 --> 00:43:30,480
terror attack on a synagogue from a guy called Jihad

832
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:35,679
al Shamey. I don't know what to do about it.

833
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,559
I mean, if I were dressing this in the United States,

834
00:43:39,599 --> 00:43:42,039
where it has happened, I would say that people who

835
00:43:42,039 --> 00:43:44,960
go to synagogue ought to start arming themselves, as many do.

836
00:43:45,119 --> 00:43:47,960
But you can't do that in England. You apparently can't

837
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:51,960
complain about it, or you get visited by the police

838
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:55,119
and prosecuted for hateful speech.

839
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 1: One of the things the protests had was I believe

840
00:43:59,559 --> 00:44:03,440
the full fate of Greta Thunbergen or flotilla. Steve, you've

841
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,840
been following this story minute by minute is unfold.

842
00:44:07,159 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 4: Well only from the semi period interest of watching a

843
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:16,679
total farce unfold, and so actually it's too ridiculous to

844
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:20,079
waste too much time on what Charlie said though about

845
00:44:22,159 --> 00:44:24,480
I mean, first of all, I think the easy prediction

846
00:44:24,599 --> 00:44:27,079
is is Nigel Faraj's poll numbers just went up by

847
00:44:27,079 --> 00:44:28,000
another five percent.

848
00:44:29,079 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 5: Second, and that's.

849
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 4: Because the British government's response has been so weak, and

850
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:36,679
you know, well, Britain now looks to me to be

851
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:40,039
the most flaccid of the major European countries. Even the

852
00:44:40,039 --> 00:44:42,760
French and the Germans are performing better on this issue,

853
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:46,159
not very well, but better than the British are. And

854
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:48,719
that's why I think that Faraja is most likely to

855
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:51,800
win the next election of things if nothing changes at all.

856
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,679
And this Labor Party certainly does not look like it's

857
00:44:55,679 --> 00:44:57,679
going to change course in any meaningful way. And so

858
00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:01,000
question back to Charlie. One thing to keep hearing from

859
00:45:01,039 --> 00:45:05,320
Afar ears as well. This is really just localized to

860
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:09,519
some of these heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Manchester and Birmingham

861
00:45:09,599 --> 00:45:14,400
and certain parts of London. But A, I mean is

862
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:18,599
that reasonably accurate? Or B how much longer you think

863
00:45:18,599 --> 00:45:21,199
that will remain true? Is this spreading very fast?

864
00:45:21,519 --> 00:45:24,119
Speaker 5: So that is true, and that's something I've said quite often.

865
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:27,199
If you go to the vast majority of England, you

866
00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:30,480
won't notice any difference between now in nineteen eighty or

867
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:33,559
really eighteen eighty or seventeen eighty in my parents' village,

868
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:38,639
maybe sixteen eighty where my parents live. But I'm not

869
00:45:38,679 --> 00:45:43,199
sure that that is particularly reassuring. A for those who

870
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:48,480
live in the regions that have become dominated by what

871
00:45:48,679 --> 00:45:52,639
is an ideology that in many ways is incompatible with

872
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:59,440
traditional English law, And B if you have an archipelaga

873
00:45:59,519 --> 00:46:03,280
of activists who will do anything to protect the bad

874
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,679
actors and I will say this till I am blue

875
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:09,920
in the face. That's the biggest threat in Britain. There

876
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:12,719
is this conception out there that what has happened in

877
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:16,159
Britain is that people since the nineteen fifties have moved

878
00:46:16,199 --> 00:46:19,480
in from other parts of the world, predominantly from the

879
00:46:19,519 --> 00:46:22,719
Third World, and they have brought with them a preference

880
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:26,039
for censorship. But that's not true, or at least that's

881
00:46:26,079 --> 00:46:28,280
not the important part of the story, because they're still

882
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:32,119
massively outnumbered. What has happened is since the nineteen fifties,

883
00:46:32,639 --> 00:46:34,960
Britain has imported a lot of people from the Third

884
00:46:35,039 --> 00:46:38,239
World who don't, shockingly enough, carry with them a copy

885
00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:42,119
of the First Amendment, and then a massive number of

886
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:48,719
powerful British people in elite positions have determined that those

887
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:51,960
people must be protected by the law, and so they

888
00:46:52,039 --> 00:46:55,519
have passed all sorts of laws making it illegal to

889
00:46:55,679 --> 00:47:00,440
criticize anyone based on what is falsely deems to be

890
00:47:01,119 --> 00:47:06,760
their immutable characteristics, but actually is their political preferences or ideology.

891
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:12,199
And that's the problem. If the British wanted to pass

892
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:15,039
a whole bunch of free speech laws, make it clear

893
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:19,880
that they will not tolerate grooming gangs, surveil people who

894
00:47:20,039 --> 00:47:23,440
say allow that they hate Jews or want to kill

895
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:26,559
people who are different. They could do that, but the

896
00:47:26,599 --> 00:47:30,159
British government, for goodness sake, is full of people who

897
00:47:30,159 --> 00:47:32,559
don't want to do that, and who recoil in horror

898
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,440
the minute anybody says, I don't think that this is

899
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:40,679
all positive and look, I am a squish guys, I

900
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,440
am a small l liberal. I am a pluralist. But

901
00:47:44,599 --> 00:47:48,400
pluralism only works when you insist on the culture of

902
00:47:48,519 --> 00:47:54,159
pluralism that predated the need for pluralism. And America does

903
00:47:54,199 --> 00:47:56,960
that really well in most but not all places, and

904
00:47:57,039 --> 00:48:00,519
Britain and Europe too have got really bad at doing it.

905
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,400
You can't have a pluralist society that doesn't insist on

906
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:07,880
pluralist values. And that's the problem in Britain. It's not

907
00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:10,280
that it has been taken over or that anywhere you

908
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:14,119
go you will see foreign language spoken. That's not true.

909
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:16,960
It's the British have given up. They're terrified to say,

910
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:18,800
you know what, we had a pretty good thing going.

911
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:20,760
You're welcome to come here. We don't care what the

912
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,079
color of your skin is or what gods you worship,

913
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:25,719
but here are the goddamn rules. They won't do it,

914
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:26,800
and they're suffering from it.

915
00:48:29,159 --> 00:48:31,119
Speaker 1: Well, this will all be mood very soon, because of

916
00:48:31,159 --> 00:48:35,119
course they've had a Palestine has been recognized, and b

917
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:38,079
there's a new ceasefire proposal on the table, which they

918
00:48:38,119 --> 00:48:39,760
no doubt will accept it because the idea that the

919
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,440
Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity is

920
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:44,679
our chaic old thought. They will accept it, of course.

921
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:47,239
In Hamas will then disarm and release the hostages and

922
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:51,920
everything will be fine, or they will say no and

923
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:54,639
the war will continue. And Donald Trump said that I

924
00:48:54,679 --> 00:48:58,440
think the deadline is Sunday afternoon, Sunday. And what did

925
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,880
he promise? Hell? He promised, Hell like no one has

926
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,119
ever seen before will break out. Hell. Mind you, if

927
00:49:05,119 --> 00:49:07,320
they turned this down, that this is their last chance,

928
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:11,199
and I think they will. I believe that they will.

929
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:13,800
And I don't know what's going to happen after that, Steven,

930
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:14,679
do you have any ideas?

931
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 4: No, except I think you're right. I think Hamas would

932
00:49:19,559 --> 00:49:22,039
rather go down in what they think is a blaze

933
00:49:22,039 --> 00:49:24,400
of glory and kill all the hostages and be wiped

934
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:27,039
out themselves. Than give in at all because they're you know,

935
00:49:27,159 --> 00:49:30,159
Nihilis fanatics. That's actually too mile to turn for them.

936
00:49:30,599 --> 00:49:33,159
I do think, though, that this is very typical Trump.

937
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:36,679
He's set things like this before about Iran, although in

938
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,599
that case he did follow him by bombing the nuclear facilities.

939
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:42,159
He set things like this about Hamas, but then another

940
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:44,079
time saying, gosh, this is what needs to make peace.

941
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:45,480
Speaker 5: Now.

942
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:48,760
Speaker 4: You know, I've often credited the crazy man theory of Trump,

943
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:51,000
and that does have its use as in international affairs

944
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:53,079
now and then, oh, couple this by the way of

945
00:49:53,119 --> 00:49:55,199
this statement a week ago at the UN that oh,

946
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:58,119
maybe Ukraine can win back all its territory, which is

947
00:49:58,119 --> 00:50:01,599
a real uphill order. So at some point I think

948
00:50:01,639 --> 00:50:04,239
you get diminishing returns from the crazy man Trump and

949
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:08,280
from his erratic pronouncements, because you could see, I don't know,

950
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:11,840
the Israeli operations, something going wrong, you know, a hospital

951
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:15,800
getting bombed by mistake for real instead of the Hamas propaganda,

952
00:50:16,159 --> 00:50:18,519
and then Trump could go all squishy on it. And

953
00:50:18,639 --> 00:50:22,880
you know, I think that the inconstancy of Trump's pronouncements

954
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:24,920
at some point gets to be a problem.

955
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:28,559
Speaker 1: The Ukraine situation is interesting, by the way, because they

956
00:50:28,559 --> 00:50:31,760
are having what the end result of a long campaign

957
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,880
of targeting infrastructure and now petroleum infrastructure is seeming to

958
00:50:35,559 --> 00:50:40,400
pay off. Was it last week where I sin I

959
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:42,480
think that Russia said they're not going to export any

960
00:50:42,519 --> 00:50:45,480
gasoline and diesel for a while because they've lost something

961
00:50:45,519 --> 00:50:47,199
like I don't know, twenty eight to thirty percent of

962
00:50:47,199 --> 00:50:50,280
their refining capacity. I see all of these videos now

963
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:54,000
on Telegraph about lines and lines and lines and lines

964
00:50:54,039 --> 00:50:56,280
of cars outside of stations, as if we're trying to

965
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,559
become California. Yeah. Yeah, well we've gone back to the

966
00:50:59,599 --> 00:51:02,119
nineteenhi with that reference too. This whole podcast, it's just

967
00:51:02,159 --> 00:51:06,000
saturated and studded with nineteen with references to that horrible decade.

968
00:51:06,159 --> 00:51:07,559
It's a good thing we're not going to talk about

969
00:51:07,599 --> 00:51:09,719
the days when, like in the seventies, there were people

970
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,920
roaming the country in armed bands, killing cops and banks

971
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:16,239
and the rest of it for to fund the glorious

972
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:20,320
communist revolution. Oh wait a minute. Assana Shakur, who was

973
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:24,760
hiding out in Cuba, died and the Chicago Teachers Union

974
00:51:25,599 --> 00:51:29,880
put out a memorial tweet, rest in power. I hate that,

975
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:33,159
rest in peace, and applotted her for all the things

976
00:51:33,199 --> 00:51:35,239
that she did for marginalized people. Now you may me ask,

977
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:38,440
what is the organization devoted supposedly to instructing the children

978
00:51:38,519 --> 00:51:41,360
of Chicago doing wasting their time on this? Why is

979
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:44,159
the mayor of Chicago noting this? Well, it's off a piece,

980
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:47,559
it really is. I mean, it just tells you that basically,

981
00:51:47,559 --> 00:51:50,480
these people are the worst sort of old school nineteen

982
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:54,400
late sixties, early seventies radicals who wanted nothing more than

983
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:57,199
in the destruction of this order and its replacement with another.

984
00:51:57,920 --> 00:51:59,800
But hey, give them a lot of money, give them

985
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:02,880
fabulous pensions, and have them teach your children. Did you

986
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:04,960
guys see that tweeted? If so, I don't think it's

987
00:52:04,960 --> 00:52:07,639
surprised you, given what we've seen from the Chicago Teacher's Union,

988
00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:09,719
which I think the last tweek they had misspelled the

989
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:11,280
word Chicago.

990
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 4: Talk about pattern recognition. I'd never heard of this person

991
00:52:14,599 --> 00:52:17,599
until this week. And oh, I know, yeah, Well, I

992
00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:21,559
keep thinking I'm stealing myself now, James, for when who's

993
00:52:21,559 --> 00:52:23,639
that guy's wing in jail in Pennsylvania forever? That's a

994
00:52:23,639 --> 00:52:26,920
big cause of the left, Mumia Jamal s Yep, yep,

995
00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:30,719
you know there are universities that have either wanted to.

996
00:52:31,519 --> 00:52:33,960
I know one case actually in the state of Washington,

997
00:52:34,039 --> 00:52:37,239
where that crazy Evergreen State College wanted to have Mumia

998
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:40,679
as their commencement speaker about ten twelve years back by video,

999
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:45,280
of course, couldn't come live, and the Democratic governor called

1000
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:47,519
the president and said, look, you have a First Amendment

1001
00:52:47,599 --> 00:52:50,360
right to have this person, but I cannot stop the legislature,

1002
00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,639
a Democratic legislature, from cutting your funding if you do

1003
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:56,079
something this stupid. And they changed their mind over it.

1004
00:52:56,159 --> 00:52:58,840
But the point is, when that guy dies, it's going

1005
00:52:58,920 --> 00:53:01,119
to be ten times bigger. I think, can see such

1006
00:53:01,119 --> 00:53:02,559
a cost celeb another call.

1007
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:05,039
Speaker 1: Every every time I see those posters, I think, free

1008
00:53:05,079 --> 00:53:06,679
moumea with qualifying purchase.

1009
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 4: But I mean this is now, I mean, this is

1010
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,599
not news, except you know, let's remember that for a

1011
00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:18,840
while there, maybe still today, the prime qualification to get

1012
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:22,000
a job at elite university is to have been some

1013
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,760
someone like Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dorn, who's the who's the

1014
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:28,159
lady down the street from you in Minnesota, James who

1015
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:28,679
went to.

1016
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:33,119
Speaker 1: Princess in Salaiah, Kathleen Jenials enerals right, and.

1017
00:53:33,079 --> 00:53:35,559
Speaker 4: Then you know she got a university job after she

1018
00:53:35,639 --> 00:53:38,880
finally served her sentence. I am waiting for and maybe

1019
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,000
it's already happened. I just missed it. But I can't

1020
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:44,320
wait for some universities to establish the George the George

1021
00:53:44,320 --> 00:53:47,840
Floyd Chair of Racial Studies, because that's surely coming at

1022
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:48,119
some point.

1023
00:53:48,159 --> 00:53:50,039
Speaker 1: Well, there's a piece by Thomas Chatterson today, I think

1024
00:53:50,039 --> 00:53:52,079
it's in The Atlantic talking about how you know the

1025
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:54,400
writer has been looking for their own George Floyd and

1026
00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:56,679
founded and Charlie Kirk, and I think the amount of

1027
00:53:56,679 --> 00:54:00,199
conversation that topic requires is absolutely zero. The only I

1028
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,280
want to end with and we will end with this here,

1029
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:04,519
and it's because it's on the rundown. And I should

1030
00:54:04,559 --> 00:54:06,920
note that these podcasts are made possible by the tireless

1031
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,360
and extraordinary work of our producer, who does prepare for

1032
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,360
us a framework for discussion. Now we go off it,

1033
00:54:12,519 --> 00:54:15,000
we say it around it, we sometimes trash it up

1034
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:19,360
and ignore his questions entirely, but it's absolutely essential and

1035
00:54:19,679 --> 00:54:21,960
gives us the framework for our chat. And he ended

1036
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:25,840
with this. He ended with the Screen Actress Guild condemning

1037
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:31,440
Tillie Norwood, an actress who does not exist. Somebody ginned

1038
00:54:31,519 --> 00:54:34,800
up an AI actress and gave her a voice and personality,

1039
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:39,320
and now apparently she's available for movie roles and television

1040
00:54:39,519 --> 00:54:41,679
and commercials and the rest of it. And they don't

1041
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:44,239
like it, No, sir, they don't like it at all.

1042
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:46,519
And I just think it'd be fascinating if in the

1043
00:54:46,519 --> 00:54:50,400
future you have somebody who's so obsessed with an AI

1044
00:54:50,519 --> 00:54:54,960
generated actress that they storm an AI data center desperately

1045
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:57,239
looking for the speeding hard drive and what she resigns,

1046
00:54:57,559 --> 00:54:58,920
or they hate her someon us that they blow up

1047
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:02,360
the data center and cut the power. I'm not particularly

1048
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,639
worried about this with my list of AI things to

1049
00:55:05,679 --> 00:55:13,320
worry about, simply because I don't know any stars really

1050
00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:16,039
that I care if she replaces. I mean, I think

1051
00:55:16,159 --> 00:55:17,800
Tom Cruise is one of the few people in movies

1052
00:55:17,840 --> 00:55:20,719
I can actually point to a name, because he seems

1053
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:23,360
to understand the role of what an old star should be.

1054
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:27,559
Are you guys worried about this exactly? Or are you

1055
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:34,880
you do you fear creeping AI saturating our entertainment until

1056
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:39,159
the line between reality and fiction is utterly completely lost.

1057
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:43,039
Speaker 5: Well, my problem with Tilly Nord is she's a racist.

1058
00:55:43,559 --> 00:55:46,440
Why would that be in high school, she said all

1059
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:47,119
sorts of times.

1060
00:55:47,199 --> 00:55:49,800
Speaker 1: All right, yes, yeah, well that's true. We probably have right,

1061
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:52,159
they probably have read kind of backstory that No.

1062
00:55:52,199 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 5: But this is what I would do if I were

1063
00:55:54,159 --> 00:55:58,159
a cynical actor on the left who didn't like Tilly Nord,

1064
00:55:58,159 --> 00:56:01,599
I would spread rumors about her and then try and

1065
00:56:01,639 --> 00:56:04,320
cancel her and see how many people went for it,

1066
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:07,559
because I think there would be a non zero percentage

1067
00:56:07,559 --> 00:56:09,880
of the population that was, oh yeah, Tillian, Yeah, I

1068
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:14,000
heard that Tillian Norwood was a terrible, terrible anti semi

1069
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:17,039
in school and she used to buildy the other girls

1070
00:56:17,039 --> 00:56:20,000
in the locker room. I reckon you could get twenty

1071
00:56:20,039 --> 00:56:22,119
to thirty percent of the American public to believe this

1072
00:56:22,199 --> 00:56:23,159
if you just said it enough.

1073
00:56:24,039 --> 00:56:26,519
Speaker 1: Would do you think it'd be possible if somebody found

1074
00:56:26,519 --> 00:56:29,199
out something about the people who programmed her found if

1075
00:56:29,199 --> 00:56:31,920
people found wrong think about her programmers, whether or not,

1076
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:36,719
that would spill over as some sort of guilt by association. Steve,

1077
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,239
and I know that you're a big movie fan, and

1078
00:56:39,519 --> 00:56:43,280
are you Are you worried about I think I'm not

1079
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:45,800
worried because I find what people respond to these days

1080
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:47,480
are things that have an element of truth to them,

1081
00:56:47,519 --> 00:56:50,800
that actually feel as though they occupied, they ought they

1082
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:53,119
were shot in real places, that there's a feeling of

1083
00:56:53,159 --> 00:56:56,079
reality to them. We are so tired in Avenger movies

1084
00:56:56,079 --> 00:56:58,159
and the rest of the marvel stuff, seeing this baffling

1085
00:56:58,239 --> 00:57:00,480
nonsense on screen, none of which meant any thing, all

1086
00:57:00,519 --> 00:57:03,400
of which we knew was false. We're no longer. We

1087
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,079
don't have the ability anymore to be wowed by what

1088
00:57:06,119 --> 00:57:10,320
they can do. I think maybe Tron I'm actually thinking

1089
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:13,280
of seeing this Neutron movie in Imax because it makes

1090
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:15,960
no pretenses to be real. It is, of course the

1091
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:18,119
tronoverse or whatever they want to call it. But I

1092
00:57:18,159 --> 00:57:21,599
think the desire for real, for authenticity is the killer

1093
00:57:21,639 --> 00:57:23,960
app that humanities have, and that will fly to fiction,

1094
00:57:24,039 --> 00:57:26,760
that will apply to movies, that will apply to arts

1095
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:29,159
and all of these things once we get past this

1096
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:32,159
AI craze. I mean today, I think open AI was

1097
00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:34,519
valued at half a trillion. I think it hit five

1098
00:57:34,559 --> 00:57:38,320
hundred billion. Its valuation hasn't made a dime, hasn't made

1099
00:57:38,519 --> 00:57:41,840
a dime. So we have a bubble about to pop,

1100
00:57:41,880 --> 00:57:45,400
and if it takes you know, a lot of Avatar

1101
00:57:45,519 --> 00:57:49,760
type movies with it, I'm not sure I necessarily care. Stephen.

1102
00:57:50,639 --> 00:57:53,039
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if our founder Rob along with with us,

1103
00:57:53,039 --> 00:57:55,159
I think he would be skeptical in the future for

1104
00:57:55,199 --> 00:57:57,880
a couple of reasons. Now maybe special pleading on his

1105
00:57:57,960 --> 00:57:59,840
part because he thinks a I can't write a joke,

1106
00:58:00,079 --> 00:58:03,360
z said on this show several times. But I also

1107
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:06,320
think that, uh, you know, for an awful lot of cinema,

1108
00:58:07,159 --> 00:58:09,719
certain things I think AI probably can't replicate, which are

1109
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:12,519
the subtleties that really skilled actors bring to a role

1110
00:58:12,559 --> 00:58:14,280
and the interpretations.

1111
00:58:13,559 --> 00:58:14,039
Speaker 1: Of a role.

1112
00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:16,440
Speaker 4: And maybe AI might get good at that in the

1113
00:58:16,480 --> 00:58:18,519
fullness of time. But I also think that this has

1114
00:58:18,559 --> 00:58:21,199
been coming for a very long time. Yeah, if you

1115
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:22,639
go all the way back to I'll think of just

1116
00:58:22,679 --> 00:58:25,599
two movies in particular. First Zelling from you know, the

1117
00:58:25,599 --> 00:58:26,280
mid eighties that.

1118
00:58:26,239 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: Was right, absolutely all with film stock and treatment of

1119
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:30,360
that that was.

1120
00:58:30,559 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 4: Right, and and actually the the the that wasn't yet

1121
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:36,079
CGI A lot of that note well, I will skip

1122
00:58:36,159 --> 00:58:37,840
over that except to say that some of the way

1123
00:58:37,920 --> 00:58:40,360
to render a film looking you know, with Woody Allen

1124
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:42,440
standing next to Calvin Coolidge, they take the film that

1125
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:45,320
they shot and composited together and stomp on it. In

1126
00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:47,800
a dirty floor of the studio that was there. That

1127
00:58:47,920 --> 00:58:51,280
was their technique for trying to make it authentic film.

1128
00:58:51,639 --> 00:58:53,880
And then of course for us Gump was when you

1129
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:56,880
began to see uh a cgi to you know, put

1130
00:58:56,880 --> 00:58:58,840
words in the mouth of Lyndon Johnson and John F.

1131
00:58:58,920 --> 00:59:02,239
Kennedy and so forth, John Lennon on the Cavit Show

1132
00:59:02,320 --> 00:59:04,320
one with Forrest Gump and all that was very amusing,

1133
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:07,840
and then you could really see it was obvious what

1134
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:10,119
was happening. But now the technology is getting so good

1135
00:59:10,159 --> 00:59:12,559
that it'd be it's much less obvious. So but I

1136
00:59:12,559 --> 00:59:15,880
think I probably share rob skepticism that although and of

1137
00:59:15,920 --> 00:59:18,840
course the movie and TV business being about making money,

1138
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:21,519
this is a cheap way to put out product that

1139
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:24,920
will generate some revenue. It's gonna happen, but I don't

1140
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:26,280
think at the end of the day, and it might

1141
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,440
nick the salaries of people like Tom Cruise down to

1142
00:59:29,480 --> 00:59:31,880
ten million dollars for picture instead of twenty or whatever

1143
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:35,719
he charges. But I don't I don't know. I think

1144
00:59:35,719 --> 00:59:37,320
I'm with Rob. I don't think it's going to replace

1145
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:38,440
human beings completely.

1146
00:59:39,119 --> 00:59:42,039
Speaker 1: No, to end it all, not to end it all

1147
00:59:42,159 --> 00:59:46,840
something I'm considered When I tired of asking the AI

1148
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:49,280
exactly where the AI server farm in North Dakota was

1149
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:50,920
going to be and I couldn't come up with an answer,

1150
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:53,880
I did something that was very human. I texted my

1151
00:59:54,039 --> 00:59:57,039
brother in law, who is there, and I said, where's

1152
00:59:57,079 --> 00:59:58,280
it going to be? Is it going to be on

1153
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:00,719
our land? And he texted back and said, no, it's

1154
01:00:00,719 --> 01:00:02,679
going to be on the other side of the freeway,

1155
01:00:02,519 --> 01:00:06,519
by the road by the grain elevators, which I knew exactly.

1156
01:00:07,039 --> 01:00:10,199
And AI would never know that I knew that particular intersection,

1157
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:12,159
or that describing it as on the other side of

1158
01:00:12,199 --> 01:00:15,079
the road by the elevators would describe precisely where it

1159
01:00:15,079 --> 01:00:17,519
would want to be. Maybe it will someday. Maybe one

1160
01:00:17,599 --> 01:00:19,400
day you'll tune into this podcast and all of us

1161
01:00:19,400 --> 01:00:21,280
will be dead and we'll still be nattering away here,

1162
01:00:21,599 --> 01:00:23,800
and won't that be fun? But we have to teach it,

1163
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:25,960
like Rob how to interrupt the segue, and we have

1164
01:00:26,079 --> 01:00:29,039
to do a variety of other little fine tuning things.

1165
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:31,119
In the meantime, I think we'll be able to get

1166
01:00:31,159 --> 01:00:34,440
one thousand podcasts with still one hundred percent authentic human

1167
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:37,880
beings here taking up your time. And I appreciate you

1168
01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:39,760
taking the time to listen to us. By the way,

1169
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:41,599
we were brought to you by ricochet dot com. You

1170
01:00:41,599 --> 01:00:44,679
can support the site, the podcast and all the other

1171
01:00:44,719 --> 01:00:47,119
things we do by going there and not just looking

1172
01:00:47,159 --> 01:00:51,119
at it, but signing up. It's cheap, lot, it's cheap,

1173
01:00:51,119 --> 01:00:54,199
and what you get as a member side that is

1174
01:00:54,239 --> 01:00:56,159
the communities I keep saying you've been looking for all

1175
01:00:56,239 --> 01:00:59,239
these days on your Internet. It's not Facebook. It's not

1176
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:02,119
as banale that, it's not as crazy fire hose of

1177
01:01:02,239 --> 01:01:05,880
nonsense as Twitter next can be. It is a sane, civil,

1178
01:01:06,360 --> 01:01:09,079
center right conversation. And we love all those sibilings because

1179
01:01:09,079 --> 01:01:11,039
they are important. If you can leave us a five

1180
01:01:11,079 --> 01:01:13,599
star review at Apple Podcasts, we'd like that very much.

1181
01:01:13,679 --> 01:01:16,559
Thank you. And that's about all I have to say

1182
01:01:16,679 --> 01:01:18,920
except I'm out for a couple of weeks. I leave

1183
01:01:18,960 --> 01:01:22,760
you guys to your own devices and I will see. Oh, Charles,

1184
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:24,880
you know what I'm gonna ask, don't you or don't you?

1185
01:01:25,159 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 5: I looked it up.

1186
01:01:26,440 --> 01:01:30,360
Speaker 1: Okay, So uh, this is Ricochet Podcast, the Ricochet and

1187
01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:31,480
number version.

1188
01:01:31,599 --> 01:01:37,039
Speaker 5: What four point fourteen point fourteen point two? That's what

1189
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:39,079
that last week you said you knew you were going

1190
01:01:39,159 --> 01:01:41,119
to ask, and I thought I did know that, and

1191
01:01:41,159 --> 01:01:43,440
I didn't look it up so this week, and then

1192
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:45,639
you nearly didn't ask, and I thought, wow, I've got

1193
01:01:45,679 --> 01:01:48,159
it wrong both weeks, but now I haven't.

1194
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:50,400
Speaker 1: That's where we are four point and then a whole

1195
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:52,760
bunch of fourteen's. That's where we'll see you at ricochet

1196
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:55,000
dot com. See later, guys, Goodbye,