Speaker 1: Sorry, it's just distracted by the dog right now, who
Speaker 1: is trying to bite a builder. I think Tara's femeral
Speaker 1: arterory out. No don't. I don't have a tourniquet. Oh damn,
Speaker 1: he's dead.
Speaker 2: Anyway, go on, guys, ask not what your country can
Speaker 2: do for you, Ask what you can do for your country,
Speaker 2: mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. Cook and
Speaker 1: Steven Hayward. I'm James Lilyax, and today we talk about
Speaker 1: get this absolutely everything in the world. So let's ever
Speaker 1: So it's a podcast.
Speaker 3: No more identity months, dei offices, dudes in dresses, no
Speaker 3: more climate change worship, no more division distraction or gender delusions,
Speaker 3: no more debris. As I've said before and we'll say again,
Speaker 3: we are done with that.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode number seven, one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty. You can join us at ricochet dot com.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you wish, take a look at
Speaker 1: the site and you'll say, hey, where's this been on
Speaker 1: my life? I'm James Lilex in Minneapolis, where it is hot,
Speaker 1: I mean it's hot, and Stephen Hayward is somewhere in
Speaker 1: the world, and Charles CW. Cook, I imagine is in Florida, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Are things clement and pleasant for you on this fine
Speaker 1: October day?
Speaker 4: Very much so. I'm back in California and it's a
Speaker 4: glorious fall day here out on the coast.
Speaker 1: There's nothing like a Minnesota fall. I couldn't believe it
Speaker 1: when I saw the tempts and I looked, what last
Speaker 1: year did we have? Was it forty eight?
Speaker 5: On?
Speaker 1: Last year? It was eighty two? Oh? Well, what was
Speaker 1: it two years ago? Two years ago was eighty nine?
Speaker 1: I thought, if I completely rethought my missed my October
Speaker 1: paradigms completely, No, this is still anomalous. And of course
Speaker 1: I blame well, I blame climate change. And that's why
Speaker 1: I'm happy that Bill Gates has come up with a
Speaker 1: synthetic butter that will help us save the world. But
Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a while. Charles, how are you.
Speaker 5: I'm doing well. It's very rainy here. Then it's rainy late.
Speaker 5: It's not supposed to be rainy season, but it is
Speaker 5: doing that delightful Florida thing of raining.
Speaker 1: While Sonny, yes, we used to call that the devil
Speaker 1: is beating his wife when we were kids. You know,
Speaker 1: it would rain in the sun. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that meant or why we said it, but had been
Speaker 1: passed down for generations. While speaking of the devil, we
Speaker 1: have the federal government, which is at the moment inert
Speaker 1: It has been shut down, doesn't exist. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys are looking around and seeing the complete
Speaker 1: absence of commercial and social activity as a result, but
Speaker 1: here we are. The question is, gosh, why did this happen.
Speaker 1: I'll let either of you jump in and tell me why.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll happy to jump in on this first, because
Speaker 4: I'm very cranky on this whole subject. Now. First of all,
Speaker 4: I like to point out governments shut down. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: it's the end of the world. That's how the media
Speaker 4: like to treat it. But I always like to ask people,
Speaker 4: are your local police still patrolling? Are your local schools
Speaker 4: still open? Is your local city government processing building permits
Speaker 4: and business license applications? Well not in California, they don't
Speaker 4: do that anyway. But you get the point. We have
Speaker 4: I think in around numbers about fifty thousand government units
Speaker 4: in this country. When you go in a nurse, federalist
Speaker 4: system if you go all the way down to the
Speaker 4: local mosquito abatement district in Duluth, and they're all still functioning.
Speaker 4: And that, of course is the government that is closest
Speaker 4: to the people in their day to day lives. So
Speaker 4: government shutdown is one level of government.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: It is the biggest and spends the most money, but
Speaker 4: for the vast majority of Americans does not really come
Speaker 4: close to their day to day lives very often, unless
Speaker 4: you're trying to get into a national park when Obama
Speaker 4: shuts them down and so forth. The second thing is
Speaker 4: it's not even really a complete government shutdown on the
Speaker 4: federal level, right We're still sending out Social Security checks
Speaker 4: and Medicare payments as I understand it. The military is
Speaker 4: still getting paid and still on patrol. And I don't
Speaker 4: quite know how this happened, but this has been the
Speaker 4: case for many years now in their government shutdowns that
Speaker 4: we seem to exempt the things that would really bite people, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we really had a thirty day government
Speaker 4: shutdown and social Security checks didn't get delivered, I think
Speaker 4: you would see mass marches of citizens at their local
Speaker 4: congress quitter's office and so forth. So we exempt a
Speaker 4: lot of things that would make it really bite and
Speaker 4: really hurt a broad swath, and so this has become
Speaker 4: kobuki theater. I think there would be much less interest
Speaker 4: in either party of having a government shutdown if it
Speaker 4: really involved truly shutting down the federal government, and so
Speaker 4: it allows this kabuki theater to go forward for both parties.
Speaker 4: And so there's some kind of sinister bipartisan agreement there.
Speaker 1: And those are my.
Speaker 4: Opening bids about how cranky I am about all this,
Speaker 4: although on the other hand, I was kind of like it.
Speaker 4: I like Phil Graham's remark after the ninety six government
Speaker 4: shutdown where he said, I thought our only mistake was
Speaker 4: opening it back up again. And you can almost see
Speaker 4: the Trump people have kind of that disposition, with Russ
Speaker 4: Voyd going around saying, let's start firing people and closing
Speaker 4: up programs because they're not funded well.
Speaker 1: I think in the last Obama shutdown they closed the
Speaker 1: road going to Mount Rushmore. I think this time they're
Speaker 1: letting people go through, but they have to wear extremely
Speaker 1: dark glasses and they give them a white cane and
Speaker 1: they can't actually see it, or they're draping a tarp
Speaker 1: over the faces. I can't remember exactly which one it was. Charles,
Speaker 1: Are you as cranky as Steve about this or have you?
Speaker 1: Are you looking forward to the blood letting that is
Speaker 1: supposed to come when people are laid off all mass
Speaker 1: rif not just furloughed, and agencies are zeroed out during
Speaker 1: this opportunity, because apparently there's some mechanism by which vast
Speaker 1: swaths of the federal government can be deemed hey, don't
Speaker 1: need it, and they can take they can zero them
Speaker 1: out legally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Steve is more depressed about it than I am.
Speaker 5: In the last couple of days, I've committed so many
Speaker 5: federal crimes. It's been glorious. Just one.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 5: I don't particularly care about it, except in so far
Speaker 5: as it illustrates that we have far more federal employees
Speaker 5: that we need. I don't think that it has been
Speaker 5: reported particularly honestly. For once, it's not Republicans who are
Speaker 5: shutting down the government. And what's really weird about this
Speaker 5: from my perspective is I remember all of the shutdowns
Speaker 5: since I moved to the United States in twenty eleven
Speaker 5: because I have had to cover them, and it's odd
Speaker 5: to see the Democrats shutting down the government, which is
Speaker 5: what they did. It's not a value judgment, it's just
Speaker 5: a statement of fact. The filibuster requires sixty votes for
Speaker 5: this to go through. Republicans have fifty three of those votes,
Speaker 5: and they need seven Democrats to join them, and those
Speaker 5: seven Democrats haven't yet shown up. But having debated allowed
Speaker 5: for eight months whether they were going to shut down
Speaker 5: the government, and having then decided to shut down the government,
Speaker 5: the Democrats are now pretending that they didn't shut down
Speaker 5: the government. And all of the Democrats' friends in the
Speaker 5: media and in NGOs are greatly offended by the claim
Speaker 5: that the Democrats shut down the government, whereas all of
Speaker 5: the times that Republicans have shut down the government in
Speaker 5: the last decade and a bit, which is a lot,
Speaker 5: they were the ones running out in front of the cameras.
Speaker 5: I did that, I was made I did that. It's
Speaker 5: not as if Ted Cruz pretended that he didn't shut
Speaker 5: down the government. He would shut up about it. Republicans
Speaker 5: when they do this, they go on and on and
Speaker 5: on about it, and the base is even louder, and
Speaker 5: they get angry with the people in the Republican Party
Speaker 5: who suggest that the government should not be shut down forever,
Speaker 5: or perhaps that the government's shut down isn't going to
Speaker 5: yield the results that they want. So it's just very
Speaker 5: funny to me to watch Democrats having done this because
Speaker 5: Trump is a dictator and it's not normal, and we
Speaker 5: can't go back to the status quo, and we have
Speaker 5: to gain the extra health spending that we want, not
Speaker 5: a continuing resolution extra health spending, And then to say,
Speaker 5: how dare you suggest we had anything to do with it?
Speaker 5: It does betray a certain level of insecurity.
Speaker 1: Well, Tim Wald's governor here tweeted out to that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republicans control all the branches of government, yet they
Speaker 1: can't get this thing Through's that's on them, of course,
Speaker 1: showing either willful or otherwise ignorance of the Senate procedures.
Speaker 1: He also noted that he's being contacted by several politicians
Speaker 1: and figures in Europe who are concerned about what's going on.
Speaker 1: And I just have a hard time thinking that mccron's
Speaker 1: got Tim Woltzon his speed dial and is calling up
Speaker 1: to say are the reports in the Express true? Very so? Yes,
Speaker 1: so there we are, but what is it over?
Speaker 5: Really?
Speaker 1: Do you think that people are understanding that the issue
Speaker 1: here is the funding of care for people who are
Speaker 1: not citizens. And they tell us that's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's never been the case. They can't be funded. But
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, aren't we as the reimbursement to
Speaker 1: hospitals who take care of people who walk into the er, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: Is that not part of this which sounds to me
Speaker 1: like funding of people who are not citizens. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, the political strategy here is pretty clear.
Speaker 4: If you look at the polling on issues. Republicans lead
Speaker 4: on almost everything, even education, which used to be a
Speaker 4: democratic issue that they had slight favorability ratings on. But
Speaker 4: the one place where Democrats still lead Republicans as the
Speaker 4: party better able to handle the issue is healthcare. And
Speaker 4: so they're going to push that and they think that
Speaker 4: and apparently there are a lot of nervous Republicans, and
Speaker 4: according to some press reports, even some people in the
Speaker 4: Trump White House worried about this vulnerability. Now, what I
Speaker 4: see here is yet another example of what's been famously
Speaker 4: described as the ratchet effect. Democrats use COVID and then
Speaker 4: the spending blowouts under Biden to ratchet up essentially the
Speaker 4: welfare state. They want to lock us into a higher
Speaker 4: level of spending for healthcare, and the Republicans quite rightly
Speaker 4: scaled that back with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and
Speaker 4: so the Democrats want to restore that upward ratchet of
Speaker 4: spending because it always establishes a new higher baseline for
Speaker 4: social spending. I do think it really reveals the failure
Speaker 4: of Obamacare. It was supposed to solve this problem, supposed
Speaker 4: to reduce cost. We remember all that flim flam from
Speaker 4: fifteen years ago, and Republicans so far have not been
Speaker 4: very effective in arguing about it. I think their best
Speaker 4: argument is the fact that Democrats. There's this video is
Speaker 4: going around from the twenty twenty primary campaign of Democrats
Speaker 4: every candidate raising your hands saying their healthcare plans would
Speaker 4: include coverage for illegal immigrants undocumented immigrants, right, and because
Speaker 4: now they're running away from that, but I think Republicans
Speaker 4: hold a high hand on that. So I don't know,
Speaker 4: we're only what forty eight hours into all this, and
Speaker 4: you're already hearing rumors or Republicans saying, well, maybe we
Speaker 4: can make some kind of deal on Affordable Care Act funding.
Speaker 4: And I sure hope they don't. But that's you know,
Speaker 4: Republicans always, not always cave, but they tend to cave
Speaker 4: on these things because, as Charlie points out, they're usually
Speaker 4: the people who started. Well, this time, they aren't the
Speaker 4: ones who started it, and I think they should sit
Speaker 4: back and increase the pain on the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Well, Charlie, do you think that the healthcare for on
Speaker 1: documented citizens is an electoral winner for do they believe
Speaker 1: that it is or what is the dynamic here, because
Speaker 1: surely they have to look at poles. Surely they have
Speaker 1: to look at studies that are most Americans ualla generous
Speaker 1: people and believe in immigration, are draw the line at
Speaker 1: being obligated to take care of the medical bills of
Speaker 1: anybody who walks through the border illegally. That can't be
Speaker 1: an electoral winner for them. And then surely they have
Speaker 1: to know that.
Speaker 5: Well, they do know that, which is why they're denying
Speaker 5: that would be the consequences of their policies and describing
Speaker 5: anyone who suggests otherwise it's a liar. And of course
Speaker 5: it is true because money is fungible. It's quite difficult
Speaker 5: to explain this to someone who's not that interested in politics.
Speaker 5: But Obviously, if the federal government sends the states money
Speaker 5: and then gives them flexibility how they use it, and
Speaker 5: then they use it on illegal immigrants, and then they
Speaker 5: get more money from the federal government and they can
Speaker 5: replace one set of money with the other, and we're
Speaker 5: spending federal money on illegal immigrants. It's worth saying, though,
Speaker 5: that this is the Republican charge. It's true, but it's
Speaker 5: a Republican charge the Democrats are denying. What the Democrats
Speaker 5: are saying is that they want to keep Obamacare subsidies high,
Speaker 5: and they pretend that the increase in subsidies will keep
Speaker 5: the cost of Obamacare plans low. Well, of course it
Speaker 5: won It will make them lower at the point of use,
Speaker 5: but that doesn't actually keep healthcare costs low because taxpayers
Speaker 5: are still picking it up. What I find the annoying
Speaker 5: about this is that the Republicans for once have a
Speaker 5: completely unimpeachable case. They have presented a continuing resolution that
Speaker 5: is clean. Their view is we're not asking for changes
Speaker 5: in the federal government, even though they have majorities in
Speaker 5: both chambers and rather the presidency. They just want to
Speaker 5: continue at the current rate and then deal with any
Speaker 5: changes to the budget afterwards, and as the Democrats who
Speaker 5: are saying, no, we wish to use our position to
Speaker 5: make changes. Now, that's fine. I like the filibuster, and
Speaker 5: I have been on record over and over again saying
Speaker 5: you are allowed from the minority to demand changes. Congress
Speaker 5: works like that. I don't want there to be a
Speaker 5: structural change here. But the reason it annoys me is
Speaker 5: that Republicans have been really admirably consistent on the filibuster
Speaker 5: now for a long time. In the first Trump administration,
Speaker 5: despite Trump suggesting a couple of times they should get
Speaker 5: rid of the filibuster, Republicans didn't. They then got about
Speaker 5: thirty six Senate Democrats on record saying that they like
Speaker 5: the filibuster. Then the Democrats took over the Senate and
Speaker 5: they said, we've got to get rid of the filibuster.
Speaker 5: And it's only because Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema said
Speaker 5: no that the filibuster survived. Now Republicans are back with
Speaker 5: unified controller government. They confirmed yesterday they have no intention
Speaker 5: of getting rid of the filibuster and the Democrats are
Speaker 5: the ones using it. So having gone from we like
Speaker 5: it when the Republicans are in power to we need
Speaker 5: to get rid of it because it's a relic of
Speaker 5: Jim Crow. They're now back at We will use it
Speaker 5: when the Republicans are in power. The second reason they're
Speaker 5: annoying me, James, is that although the details that we
Speaker 5: just mentioned are important, this actually is not a shutdown
Speaker 5: over an issue. They haven't really shut down the government
Speaker 5: over healthcare subsidies to illegal immigrants or increased subsidies for Obama.
Speaker 5: They are cross with Trump. It's a general thing. Their
Speaker 5: base needs some action, and this is it. They are,
Speaker 5: in the case of Chuck Schumer, trying to avoid a primary,
Speaker 5: in the case of the Democratic Party in general, trying
Speaker 5: to show that quote unquote they fight, and this is
Speaker 5: just not a good reason to shut down the government.
Speaker 5: If they had an actual demand, that's fine with me.
Speaker 5: I'm pro Filibusta, I'm pro minority rights in the Senate,
Speaker 5: go for it. But I don't think anyone really believes
Speaker 5: this is anything other than an attempt to show that
Speaker 5: they aren't supine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fighting, because there's nothing more. There's no stronger proof
Speaker 1: that we live in an authoritarian Hitler regime than allowing
Speaker 1: the opposition to just completely shut everything down without consequence. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of hardball, the OMB director has decided that, well,
Speaker 1: we should make a while sunshines, never let a crisis
Speaker 1: go to waste, etc. And preparing for a lot of cuts,
Speaker 1: including some infrastructure cuts to chicag Go and to New York.
Speaker 1: I believe that there's a tunnel in New York that
Speaker 1: will not get funded, and I believe that there's infrastructure
Speaker 1: projects in Chicago as well. And a lot of this
Speaker 1: is saying that you have not eliminated your DEI programs,
Speaker 1: and since you're going to character you're going to carry
Speaker 1: on allocating spoils by a racial nature, we're not going
Speaker 1: to fund it. And some people regard this as more
Speaker 1: examples of the punitive overreach of the authoritarian state. Again,
Speaker 1: not spending money on infrastructure does not sound a lot
Speaker 1: like the guys who built the autobah, but do go on,
Speaker 1: So what do you make of this? Is this just
Speaker 1: more political punishment from a vindictive regime or is this
Speaker 1: using the opportunity to trim things that ought not to
Speaker 1: be spent on in the first place.
Speaker 4: Charls, you go first on this one.
Speaker 5: Well, I think both. I think there's no doubt that
Speaker 5: this administration and the last one wants to will use
Speaker 5: its power ways that I would rather they didn't. I
Speaker 5: think that we have entered into a period in which
Speaker 5: the enormous latitude that is given to the executive branch
Speaker 5: is abused. At the same time, if the specific complaint
Speaker 5: is that there is racial discrimination, then it is entirely
Speaker 5: reasonable for the federal government to say not on our watch.
Speaker 5: Not only does the Fourteenth Amendment quite clearly prohibit that,
Speaker 5: and if it doesn't, the Civil Rights Act does. But
Speaker 5: we've now had Supreme Court decision after Supreme Court decision
Speaker 5: that has made that clear. And I understand that progressives
Speaker 5: seem truly, in many cases to earnestly believe that racial
Speaker 5: discrimination of the sort that they like isn't racial discrimination,
Speaker 5: but it is affirmative action. Is racial discrimination. Granting particular
Speaker 5: distributions of public money to particular groups because they are
Speaker 5: of that particular group is racial discrimination. So if that
Speaker 5: is the proximate cause of it, I am on board.
Speaker 5: I do think though, that we have got far too
Speaker 5: comfortable in America with Congress writing laws that are vague,
Speaker 5: and then with the executive branch using the power that
Speaker 5: it's been given to help its friends and hurt its enemies. Right.
Speaker 1: I agree with you, you know, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans would be okay with some affirmative action if
Speaker 1: they actually felt that it was efficacious. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people suspect that in New York and
Speaker 1: in large cities that the money goes to cutouts, and
Speaker 1: there's this incredible amount of corruption and cronyism that's actually
Speaker 1: going on. But it is illustrative to say the administration
Speaker 1: is going to withhold funds because you are racially discriminating,
Speaker 1: which sounds like the sort of thing that Americans ought
Speaker 1: to get to behind, and the previous administration would say,
Speaker 1: we're going to withhold funds unless you adjust your title
Speaker 1: nine athletics to include men who believe that they are women.
Speaker 1: The balance on those issues and the popularity of them,
Speaker 1: I think is striking, Steve. And you've now had enough
Speaker 1: time to come up with your response, and.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean what I do like about it?
Speaker 4: I mean, I agree with Charlie in the abstract. In practice,
Speaker 4: I kind of liked the scene we're seeing the Trump
Speaker 4: administration using the tools liberals devised against the left. I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean, the left in power especially has used all
Speaker 4: these civil rights tools to bully people public and private
Speaker 4: alike for decades now. And this is some old history,
Speaker 4: but you know, the reg administration won a very big
Speaker 4: Supreme Court case, I think in nineteen eighty eight or
Speaker 4: maybe in the eight nineteen eighty nine, the Adoran case,
Speaker 4: saying that we can't have quotas and timetables and all
Speaker 4: these things for federal contracting. And what happened. The Republicans
Speaker 4: immediately crumpled under the charge that this was racist, and
Speaker 4: they signed on to under the first President Bush, the
Speaker 4: Civil Rights Restoration Act, which essentially nullvied the progress that
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court was moving by inches to where they
Speaker 4: are today. So not this time. The Trump people, and
Speaker 4: I think Republicans have learned their lesson, are not only
Speaker 4: saying no to that, but are saying, we don't care
Speaker 4: about you. The racism charge has lost its sting. And
Speaker 4: one last point, James is, I don't know if it's
Speaker 4: on your list of topics you want to bring up today,
Speaker 4: but an example of how people are fed up with
Speaker 4: affirmative action out of control is this extraordinary story out
Speaker 4: of Iowa where what a school district hired as a
Speaker 4: superintendenty at three hundred thousand dollars a year, an illegal
Speaker 4: alien who had a deportation order and a criminal record
Speaker 4: and a false CV claiming he had a doctorate when
Speaker 4: he didn't, and they hired him anyway, knowing some of
Speaker 4: those things, not everything about him. And you know, it's
Speaker 4: pretty clearly now that the Left has been running a
Speaker 4: racial spoils racket for a long time. And so while
Speaker 4: I also agree in the abstract that you can make
Speaker 4: a case for affirmative action, and I think, Charlie, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you brought this up on law talk,
Speaker 4: but someone who actually defends affirmative action and college admissions
Speaker 4: is Richard Epstein amazing. But I've also listened to why
Speaker 4: he thinks that, and he makes the only cojin case
Speaker 4: I think for it. Nonetheless, I think now it's such
Speaker 4: a corrupt racket that we want to be done with
Speaker 4: it once and for all. Kill it by any means necessary.
Speaker 4: And by the way, all the Supreme Court cases that
Speaker 4: Charlie referenced are going to make it hard to bring
Speaker 4: it back under a democratic administration, although they will certainly try.
Speaker 5: I have to say, just as a quick aside, I
Speaker 5: love being called a racist for opposing decisions made based
Speaker 5: on race. I think this is the most extraordinary thing
Speaker 5: that happens. When affirmative action was finally overturned, eighty percent
Speaker 5: of the American public said great, and the left set
Speaker 5: that's racism. So a you think that it's racism to
Speaker 5: say that you can't discriminate based on race, and be
Speaker 5: your position is that eighty percent of the American public
Speaker 5: is racist. It is just an extraordinary example of how
Speaker 5: they've lost their minds on this.
Speaker 1: Well, I do believe that eighty percent of the population
Speaker 1: is racist. And what's more, you know, the idea somehow
Speaker 1: that affirmative action is racist is nonsense, of course, because
Speaker 1: you cannot be racist against white people. You need to
Speaker 1: have power. There's this whole complicated and rather you know,
Speaker 1: two clever by half definition of what racism is and requires,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with the measures of power
Speaker 1: and ability and privilege and the rest of it. And
Speaker 1: it's a carefully calibrated to make sure that only this
Speaker 1: group can be racist. These people are not. So I
Speaker 1: get what you're saying, Charlie, But of course I wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know if the word is thrown about so much
Speaker 1: and applied to so much that it is rapidly becoming
Speaker 1: meaningless and we'll have to come up with another one.
Speaker 1: Used to be bigoted, I remember back in the Archie
Speaker 1: Bunker days you would say bigoted, which I think we
Speaker 1: ought to return too, because frankly, if they want to
Speaker 1: do the whole power imbalance thing with racism, fine, but
Speaker 1: anybody can be bigoted. The Iowa story is fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 1: because this guy was caught, you know, speeds off his car,
Speaker 1: runs away, hides in the tall grass. Everybody rallied to
Speaker 1: him because he was a charismatic and wonderful person, because
Speaker 1: the kids loved him. And when you look the fact
Speaker 1: that he had gun charges and I know, Charlie, this
Speaker 1: is where your ears per c Cup had gun charges
Speaker 1: in the past, and he had a gun charge pending
Speaker 1: right there and then because as a citizen with a
Speaker 1: deportation order, I don't believe that he was allowed to
Speaker 1: have that firearm.
Speaker 6: But even if he was, if it was in his car,
Speaker 6: doesn't that mean that he had taken the gun to school?
Speaker 6: And so if that's if that's all true, then you
Speaker 6: have people waving away a law.
Speaker 1: Now when you have a horrible thing happened. And then
Speaker 1: they pass a law you can't bring guns to school,
Speaker 1: and there, we've done something. It's it's a law named
Speaker 1: after somebody who died, it perished, and and you know,
Speaker 1: mission accomplished. We've passed a law. And then you have
Speaker 1: a guy who literally breaks the thing and they wave
Speaker 1: it away and they don't care because they actually personally
Speaker 1: like him. It's almost as if the whole process of
Speaker 1: getting the law in the first place is Kabooki theater.
Speaker 1: And secondly, it's almost as if the applying the laws
Speaker 1: equally to all doesn't matter if you like him and
Speaker 1: the kids like him, and he and he has an
Speaker 1: engaging smile, but he's going back. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: looked at his vita. One of the things I think
Speaker 1: he claimed in his biography his autobiography was that he
Speaker 1: was a hired killer for the gan and military, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a special Forces green beret type who was
Speaker 1: a security guard print for Queen Elizabeth. And I kind
Speaker 1: of doubt that, I kind of do. It sounds like
Speaker 1: one of those fabulous resumes you get from the sociopaths
Speaker 1: who will tell anybody any story in order to get attention.
Speaker 4: Can I add the cherry on top that we neglected
Speaker 4: to mention is he was registered to vote as a
Speaker 4: Democrat in Maryland. We're told that never happens. But okay, all.
Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna have a guy with gun charges who
Speaker 1: was registered to vote and probably getting medical care and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. But it doesn't happen. But
Speaker 1: it does. Even if it's true, it doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: he was a great guy and he's a contributor to
Speaker 1: the society. Well, one of the other things that's being
Speaker 1: cut in addition to the infrastructure, we were talking about
Speaker 1: a whole batch of green deals, a whole lot of
Speaker 1: energy programs, and I generally applaud this because I don't
Speaker 1: regard them as particularly useful or necessary, and I think
Speaker 1: they're all predicated on a hysteria, which itself is sort
Speaker 1: of a scientific and I don't buy it. I don't
Speaker 1: buy it. No cirtain, So I guess that's me. I'm hopeless.
Speaker 1: But what do you guys think we need energy? And
Speaker 1: without a concombinant rise in fossil fuel production and crack
Speaker 1: crack effort to get more nuclear online, aren't we shooting
Speaker 1: ourselves in the foot by not building vast solar farms
Speaker 1: and putting those wonderful windmills up in the.
Speaker 4: Countryside, well, not a bit. I mean I would volunteer
Speaker 4: to help take some of those down, or to block
Speaker 4: the whatever, block the trucks going there to put up
Speaker 4: new ones. I am worried about one thing, though, and
Speaker 4: I hope the Trump administration is on top of this,
Speaker 4: and I think they might be, and that is with
Speaker 4: the growth of all the AI data centers, which are
Speaker 4: going to use fabulous amounts of electricity. I mean, some
Speaker 4: of the comparisons are, you know, one data center, it's
Speaker 4: something like this, one data center will use more electricity
Speaker 4: than the entire city of Columbus, Ohio, or things like that.
Speaker 4: It's truly staggering. And already we've seen electricity rates all
Speaker 4: over the country spike very sharply the last few years.
Speaker 4: And that's part because we're dishonest about how supposedly cheap
Speaker 4: wind and solar are and and a lot of these
Speaker 4: data centers, you know, they're in a pretty good position
Speaker 4: to negotiate utilities for fixed price contracts, probably at a
Speaker 4: higher price, but nonetheless that they can outbid other consumer
Speaker 4: facing utilities. And I do worry that there could be
Speaker 4: a electricity shortages in the next two three years and
Speaker 4: or price spikes, and that's not going to be popular
Speaker 4: with the American people. And the remedies right now are
Speaker 4: well from the Greens. It's let's build more battery storage,
Speaker 4: and that really doesn't work. It doesn't pencil out if
Speaker 4: you do the math on it very well. And so
Speaker 4: you really do need to do is build a whole
Speaker 4: lot of natural gas plants. They can be built quickly,
Speaker 4: they can be turned on quickly, they're very efficient, they're
Speaker 4: very blow polluting. The problem is is that there is
Speaker 4: enough demand for the just the equipment that apparently there's
Speaker 4: like a tour for your backlog to get turbines from
Speaker 4: General Electric and the other Semens and the other manufacturers
Speaker 4: of gas turbines. So we could be in for a
Speaker 4: real problem here coming down the road at US. And
Speaker 4: it really is the fault of the green energy mania
Speaker 4: of the last decade. But when you're in office, you
Speaker 4: own the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to be sitting in the dark
Speaker 1: with a brownout because hell nine thousand up the street.
Speaker 1: It requires the Jews to do some cogitating and tell
Speaker 1: somebody some fabulous story. I read the other day a
Speaker 1: story of the BBC that there are people who are
Speaker 1: using AI to generate vacation itineraries and they get there
Speaker 1: and they find out that the place does not actually exist,
Speaker 1: that it was just dreamed up by a combination of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly. It discussed a couple in Peru who
Speaker 1: had gone to this place, and they were looking at
Speaker 1: the map and sitting in a cafe somewhere, and some
Speaker 1: local guide had to come over and tell them, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that road up there will leave you nowhere at an
Speaker 1: altitude of four thousand with no self. You're gonna die,
Speaker 1: so don't. Yes, I'm not as thrilled AI as I
Speaker 1: used to be, and I never particularly was. Charles, What
Speaker 1: do you think a lot of this as we know
Speaker 1: we have this? There was this feeling in the seventies,
Speaker 1: of course, when we had the oil shocks, there was
Speaker 1: a feeling of impotence. There was nothing really we could do.
Speaker 1: They weren't good alternatives. We were pretending that they were.
Speaker 1: There were stories in the newspaper and the Time magazine
Speaker 1: about well, maybe tar sans will do it, maybe synthetic
Speaker 1: oil will do it, maybe even twenty years, but there
Speaker 1: wasn't any sense that there was an imminent solution. We
Speaker 1: know now that there are imminent, workable solutions such as nuclears,
Speaker 1: such as gas that Stephen talked about. It's a failure
Speaker 1: of will all of the prak as with so many
Speaker 1: of the other things we have. It's not a failure
Speaker 1: of ability. It was a failure of will by our
Speaker 1: political class to make sure that we didn't that we
Speaker 1: won't find ourselves in a brownout situation.
Speaker 4: Well, now, Jame's gonna I just offer one slight modification
Speaker 4: to your otherwise completely correct litany, which is we did
Speaker 4: have one solution in the late seventies and it was coal. Yeah,
Speaker 4: people have forgotten that. Jimmy Carter said, I remember the
Speaker 4: we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. And it was
Speaker 4: the late seventies and into the eighties that we vastly
Speaker 4: expanded our coal fired capacity for electricity on purpose, and
Speaker 4: that got us all. You know, we used to starty
Speaker 4: to be a nerdy policy wonk geek on this, but
Speaker 4: when all this oil shocks started, when we were young pups,
Speaker 4: we got twenty percent of our electricity from oil. From petroleum,
Speaker 4: and then when it got expensive, we said we got
Speaker 4: to stop that in a hurry, and now it's close
Speaker 4: to zero percent from petrol. Occasionally there diesel generators are
Speaker 4: turned on here and there. But and what replaced it
Speaker 4: was coal, And of course then fifteen years later, oh no,
Speaker 4: coal is the devil because of clients range right, acid right, Well,
Speaker 4: that was a turned out to be a phony and
Speaker 4: overestimated problem, as they so often turned out to be anyway,
Speaker 4: So we did actually have one, and it turned out
Speaker 4: to be the one that is the most hated by
Speaker 4: all enlightened people today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, next to nuclear coal first, then nuclear right, Charles,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do you have many turbine wind turbines
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood You are.
Speaker 5: Thankfully not. And we bury the power lines too because
Speaker 5: of hurricanes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is a great idea.
Speaker 5: I have just one thing to add to this, which
Speaker 5: is this is not a solution that will fix the
Speaker 5: whole problem. But I do think that we ought to encourage,
Speaker 5: where possible, those who are building enormous server farms that
Speaker 5: will be used to make profit for them to build
Speaker 5: their own power plants as well. And we've seen this
Speaker 5: in I think Pennsylvania with Microsoft, where it's reopening the
Speaker 5: three Mile Island nuclear facility in order to power an
Speaker 5: absolutely enormous data center. I like this sort of thing
Speaker 5: without re litigating the question of Rhondascentis and Disney. I
Speaker 5: differed on this in some respects from many conservatives. The
Speaker 5: original reason that Disney in nineteen sixty eight was given
Speaker 5: control over that massive, two county wide tractive land that
Speaker 5: it built Disney World on was that both Orange County
Speaker 5: and Osceola County were very poor and they simply could not,
Speaker 5: via taxation or any other means, pay for the infrastructure
Speaker 5: that was necessary to support Disney World, which required an
Speaker 5: enormous amount of energy production, among other things. In fact,
Speaker 5: it's very interesting if you look through the original grant
Speaker 5: from the Florida legislature in nineteen sixty eight, it gave
Speaker 5: Disney the ability the authority to build a nuclear power
Speaker 5: plant there in case that's what it needed to run
Speaker 5: Disney World. That was because the locals in Oscila and
Speaker 5: Orange Counties, which at that point were rural or land
Speaker 5: that didn't really exist, they didn't want to be on
Speaker 5: the hook. They didn't want some bonds drive for the
Speaker 5: private profit of the Disney Corporation. So I understand that
Speaker 5: this won't work for everything, but it's not unreasonable for
Speaker 5: our states and counties to say to open AI or
Speaker 5: Microsoft or Apple or whoever. You know what, if you
Speaker 5: want to build seven million servers and use so much
Speaker 5: energy that it will start to affect everyone around you,
Speaker 5: put in your own system. Now you have to at
Speaker 5: that point deregulate. You have to allow the process to unfold.
Speaker 5: You can't say and you can't do it. But I
Speaker 5: think this is an underrated development that we've seen with
Speaker 5: Microsoft and nuclear power, and I hope it happens more elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Are we sure that Disney didn't build a quire actor, Well,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, they didn't. Well, if you
Speaker 1: look at the some of the early drawings in Disney World,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Splash Mountain, it was scram Mountain.
Speaker 5: So you know exactly.
Speaker 1: I leave with this. The last experience that I had
Speaker 1: with AI, I'd learned that there was a massive new
Speaker 1: development going in in north of Fargo, North Dakota, a
Speaker 1: huge industrial facility, and I want to know where it was,
Speaker 1: because Fargo was making noises about annexing the land up there.
Speaker 1: And our family farm is up there, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to know if our family farm was going to survive this,
Speaker 1: and so I asked AI about the location of this.
Speaker 1: I asked GROC, and when it came back with the location,
Speaker 1: it put a square in Trollwood Park, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that was the case. And I told GROK, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. You put this massive industrial facility in a park.
Speaker 1: Control what that's not it, And of course it apologized
Speaker 1: and apologized, I'm very sorry. Of course, I'll go back
Speaker 1: and look at the PDFs. And it took four runs
Speaker 1: at it, and it kept putting this thing in parks
Speaker 1: all over town until I finally gave up and said,
Speaker 1: you were absolutely useless. You were giving me absolutely wrong information,
Speaker 1: and it apologized again. The amusing part of it is
Speaker 1: for me, is that the industrial facility that I was
Speaker 1: asking GROC to find is a proposed AI server farm.
Speaker 1: So maybe it was just trying to hide the fact
Speaker 1: that it was done at all, or it was regarded
Speaker 1: it as its enemy and didn't want to tell about it.
Speaker 5: James Sky is building itself and it doesn't want you
Speaker 5: to know.
Speaker 1: That's that's precisely it. And you know the more you
Speaker 1: think about that, it really is stupid. That an awful
Speaker 1: lot of that is just very very dumb, like Aliens
Speaker 1: two movies and the rest of it. Forget it. Speaking
Speaker 1: of movies, one of my favorites, of course is Full
Speaker 1: Metal Jacket for the commanding first half of it were
Speaker 1: our Ley Army gives the definitive performance next to Jack
Speaker 1: Web of course in di I as a drill instructor
Speaker 1: who just absolutely embodies for any of us, what that
Speaker 1: role with that job, what that personality is. Heg Seth
Speaker 1: did that too. We think he gathered eight hundred generals
Speaker 1: in Virginia, which at first was sort of rooted about
Speaker 1: in the Internet as oh, this is worrisome, what's what's
Speaker 1: what's going on? Is something planned? Is the balloon about
Speaker 1: to go up? But no, it turns out he was
Speaker 1: going to tell them they're all fat and they need
Speaker 1: they need to lay off the jelly donuts because they
Speaker 1: are discussing fat bodies, and that we're not going to
Speaker 1: have the long hair, we're not gonna have eyelashes, we're
Speaker 1: not can have men addresses, and we're going to go
Speaker 1: back to a warrior. Ethos and I have heard wildly
Speaker 1: diverse opinions about the speech, partly because of the man
Speaker 1: who gave it, but partly because well, I'll just you
Speaker 1: guys are Sivyes, tell me how it struck you, Stephen.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 4: So I did not see it. I've read about it,
Speaker 4: and of course that's point number one is the mainstream
Speaker 4: media is going berserk about how terrible it was, and
Speaker 4: the general rule that whatever the mainstream media is reporting,
Speaker 4: you want to believe the opposite I did. By the way,
Speaker 4: just see a headline for a survey out in the
Speaker 4: last few days saying that public trust in the mainstream
Speaker 4: media is down to twenty eight percent. I haven't actually
Speaker 4: looked a thing up to see if it's a quality
Speaker 4: survey or not, but I can believe that that high.
Speaker 4: And yeah, yeah, right, yeah, it's really a bad survey
Speaker 4: if it has that high.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Good point. I do wonder sometimes, I do wonder, lads,
Speaker 4: and so many other things Trump administration does if they
Speaker 4: deliberately calculate some of their spectacular events like this to
Speaker 4: drive the wedge wider between the American people and the
Speaker 4: media and the you know, for the establishment that they hate.
Speaker 4: You know, I know some people in the military and
Speaker 4: you know, I have a hunt. First of all, remember
Speaker 4: that the rank and file of the military lean Republican
Speaker 4: by I think a fairly substantial amount. I mean it's
Speaker 4: not eighty twenty, but I think it's like sixty forty.
Speaker 4: And I think an awful lot of them have probably thought, yeah,
Speaker 4: we went too far with the woke military, and all
Speaker 4: I do hear anecdotes over the last couple of days
Speaker 4: of a lot of serving men and women saying, you know,
Speaker 4: this is long overdue and we really like what we heard.
Speaker 4: That will not be reported in the media. How many
Speaker 4: people in the mainstream media have ever served in the
Speaker 4: military at all? I think the number is as symptotically
Speaker 4: close to zero as you can get without some calculus
Speaker 4: derivative for the tiny gap. So anyway, I kind of
Speaker 4: like the I mean I wouldn't have done it, but
Speaker 4: I kind of like the way everyone has, as usual,
Speaker 4: have got their knickers in a twist about.
Speaker 1: Charles.
Speaker 5: The event was classic Trump in that it was an
Speaker 5: innovative thing to do in the first place, most presidents
Speaker 5: don't convene all their generals in one place, and then
Speaker 5: it featured both flowering of common sense that eighty to
Speaker 5: ninety percent of the public must agree with, coupled with
Speaker 5: a few completely insane comments that didn't need to be
Speaker 5: made and probably won't be acted on the substance of
Speaker 5: what Hexas said was not only correct but should be obvious.
Speaker 5: That is that the military exists to fight, and that
Speaker 5: people who are charged with fighting should be fit and
Speaker 5: healthy and strong. This is only controversial on college campuses
Speaker 5: and in those parts of our political culture that don't
Speaker 5: like the fact that people are different from one another,
Speaker 5: whether that's men and women, or fat people and thin people,
Speaker 5: or tall people and short people, or strong people and
Speaker 5: weak people. I am still astonished that we have ever
Speaker 5: got into a position in which this backslid to the
Speaker 5: extent that it did. Then you had Trump saying terrible
Speaker 5: things about using the cities as testing grounds HEXIT as well,
Speaker 5: and promising to go into this that or the other
Speaker 5: part of the United States with the federal government or
Speaker 5: possibly with the military. Now it has to be said
Speaker 5: Trump has not done this. He has done two things.
Speaker 5: One is that he sent the National Guard into d C,
Speaker 5: which is absolutely entitled to do. It's a federal district.
Speaker 5: It's no different than the Northwest Territory. Constitutionally, and he has,
Speaker 5: especially on the West coast in California and Ore and
Speaker 5: sent troops out to defend federal employees, which is also justified,
Speaker 5: whether or not one thinks it's a good idea legally.
Speaker 5: So if he did start using Chicago as training for
Speaker 5: the next Fallujah, that would be very bad. But he
Speaker 5: hasn't done it. I just wish that he had focused
Speaker 5: on the substance of Hexas' remarks. I wish that were
Speaker 5: the thing that had come out of this, because then
Speaker 5: you would have had an absolutely beautiful juxtaposition between people
Speaker 5: who said, oh my god, all off the generals have
Speaker 5: been summoned, this must be the beginning of Nazi Germany,
Speaker 5: and this guy who is obviously fit himself, the Secretary
Speaker 5: of Defense, Pete Hexath, saying I think it would be
Speaker 5: good if in the military we've focused on being the military.
Speaker 5: The juxtaposition would have been very, very good for Trump
Speaker 5: because people would have said, so, not only did we
Speaker 5: not get Nazi Germany, we got the thing that we've
Speaker 5: wanted all along. Unfortunately, they have to do the stray voltage.
Speaker 5: I wish they would stop, but do I worry that
Speaker 5: they're actually going to start going door to door in
Speaker 5: Des Moines.
Speaker 1: No, No, I don't either, but I think it's into
Speaker 1: For the first time in my life, it's like the
Speaker 1: Third Amendment suddenly seems to be relevant. But you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have to some of the generals to you know,
Speaker 1: to one room and make them swear allegiance to the leader.
Speaker 1: To be Nazi Germany. All you have to do to
Speaker 1: get that Nazi thing going for people is to insist
Speaker 1: that everybody drill correctly and be fit and have a
Speaker 1: haircut and march in order that to that that very
Speaker 1: manifestation of the most basic facts of military behavior is
Speaker 1: enough to make people worry. If you go back to
Speaker 1: the seventies again, and I hate to keep bringing it up,
Speaker 1: there was this notion that the Navy was the place
Speaker 1: where you know, guys that mustaches and long hairs and
Speaker 1: they smoked a lot of dope. And I mean that
Speaker 1: was kind of the feeling I got from the guys
Speaker 1: I knew who went into it and came out of it.
Speaker 1: And we don't want that. Charles absolutely right, There's there's
Speaker 1: nothing fascistic about insisting that there'd be discipline and comportment
Speaker 1: and the rest of it. I mean, the number of
Speaker 1: times I've watched a TikTok of somebody who was spilling
Speaker 1: over their uniform looks like the michelin man has been
Speaker 1: put into BDUs and is complaining about something, and they've
Speaker 1: got long hair and a piercing and the rest of it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really strike you as being particularly and you
Speaker 1: just wonder, why don't these people go into the military anyway.
Speaker 5: David, can I just complain about something?
Speaker 1: Yes? Here For.
Speaker 5: When I was in high school taking exams, there was
Speaker 5: a guy in my class who got given extra time
Speaker 5: because he wasn't good at exams, and I remember thinking,
Speaker 5: hang on a minute, though, the purpose of the exam
Speaker 5: is to test what you do in the circumstances of
Speaker 5: the exam, which can then be extrapolated out into your
Speaker 5: life or other academic work. If you give him extra
Speaker 5: time because he's not good at exams, you don't get
Speaker 5: a good example of his abilities or lack thereof. And
Speaker 5: I think the same thing is true of the military.
Speaker 5: And I would draw a distinction between that and say trials.
Speaker 5: If someone is on trial but they can't hear, it's
Speaker 5: totally reasonable to say, well, we'll present them with a signer.
Speaker 5: If somebody is in a job that requires them to
Speaker 5: get around and they can't walk, it's totally reasonable to
Speaker 5: give them a ramp. But there are certain circumstances in
Speaker 5: which the other side is never going to give you
Speaker 5: the leeway. And I think the biggest thing for me
Speaker 5: that I took away from Hex's speech is the sheer
Speaker 5: number of people in the press, and unfortunately it seems
Speaker 5: to be in some of the upper echelons of the
Speaker 5: military as well, who have forgotten that the enemy gets
Speaker 5: a vote, that they get to impose their will on us.
Speaker 5: And if you give people extra time or you give
Speaker 5: them special leeway, they don't care. They'll just shoot them
Speaker 5: in the face. And I worry that we've forgotten about it.
Speaker 5: And I just mentioned that because I didn't see that
Speaker 5: anywhere in the coverage, any acknowledgment of that. Every New
Speaker 5: York Time Times article on this that it was controversial,
Speaker 5: but they never explained the pro argument for it, which
Speaker 5: to me to be really self evident and crucial.
Speaker 1: Well, they are all notions of humanity and empathy, and
Speaker 1: they have nothing to do with preparedness. Switching our gaze
Speaker 1: to the other side of the Pond, Britain is going
Speaker 1: through one of his periodic convulsions. There was a geod
Speaker 1: attack in Manchester. Two Jews were killed at the synagogue
Speaker 1: on a high holy day for being Jews. We may
Speaker 1: never know the note of motive of the man, whose
Speaker 1: name was literally Giod, I think, but this was celebrated
Speaker 1: with spontaneous rallies in all sorts of cities waiving the
Speaker 1: Palestinian flag such as it is demanding that Israel be
Speaker 1: destroyed river to the sea. That's what it means. Don't
Speaker 1: tell me otherwise. Not a great day for Blighty, would
Speaker 1: you say? Or is this completely irrelevant?
Speaker 5: And I think it matches. I don't think it's nothing.
Speaker 5: And I based that in part on the realc action
Speaker 5: that I've seen from my family and friends in England
Speaker 5: who are appalled by it and seem to think that
Speaker 5: what happened is more indicative of certain attitudes than should
Speaker 5: be the case in a Western country. And this guy's
Speaker 5: name was Jihad al Shamey. Is that right? Yeah? How
Speaker 5: could you possibly have expected that you would see a
Speaker 5: terror attack on a synagogue from a guy called Jihad
Speaker 5: al Shamey. I don't know what to do about it.
Speaker 5: I mean, if I were dressing this in the United States,
Speaker 5: where it has happened, I would say that people who
Speaker 5: go to synagogue ought to start arming themselves, as many do.
Speaker 5: But you can't do that in England. You apparently can't
Speaker 5: complain about it, or you get visited by the police
Speaker 5: and prosecuted for hateful speech.
Speaker 1: One of the things the protests had was I believe
Speaker 1: the full fate of Greta Thunbergen or flotilla. Steve, you've
Speaker 1: been following this story minute by minute is unfold.
Speaker 4: Well only from the semi period interest of watching a
Speaker 4: total farce unfold, and so actually it's too ridiculous to
Speaker 4: waste too much time on what Charlie said though about
Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, I think the easy prediction
Speaker 4: is is Nigel Faraj's poll numbers just went up by
Speaker 4: another five percent.
Speaker 5: Second, and that's.
Speaker 4: Because the British government's response has been so weak, and
Speaker 4: you know, well, Britain now looks to me to be
Speaker 4: the most flaccid of the major European countries. Even the
Speaker 4: French and the Germans are performing better on this issue,
Speaker 4: not very well, but better than the British are. And
Speaker 4: that's why I think that Faraja is most likely to
Speaker 4: win the next election of things if nothing changes at all.
Speaker 4: And this Labor Party certainly does not look like it's
Speaker 4: going to change course in any meaningful way. And so
Speaker 4: question back to Charlie. One thing to keep hearing from
Speaker 4: Afar ears as well. This is really just localized to
Speaker 4: some of these heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Manchester and Birmingham
Speaker 4: and certain parts of London. But A, I mean is
Speaker 4: that reasonably accurate? Or B how much longer you think
Speaker 4: that will remain true? Is this spreading very fast?
Speaker 5: So that is true, and that's something I've said quite often.
Speaker 5: If you go to the vast majority of England, you
Speaker 5: won't notice any difference between now in nineteen eighty or
Speaker 5: really eighteen eighty or seventeen eighty in my parents' village,
Speaker 5: maybe sixteen eighty where my parents live. But I'm not
Speaker 5: sure that that is particularly reassuring. A for those who
Speaker 5: live in the regions that have become dominated by what
Speaker 5: is an ideology that in many ways is incompatible with
Speaker 5: traditional English law, And B if you have an archipelaga
Speaker 5: of activists who will do anything to protect the bad
Speaker 5: actors and I will say this till I am blue
Speaker 5: in the face. That's the biggest threat in Britain. There
Speaker 5: is this conception out there that what has happened in
Speaker 5: Britain is that people since the nineteen fifties have moved
Speaker 5: in from other parts of the world, predominantly from the
Speaker 5: Third World, and they have brought with them a preference
Speaker 5: for censorship. But that's not true, or at least that's
Speaker 5: not the important part of the story, because they're still
Speaker 5: massively outnumbered. What has happened is since the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 5: Britain has imported a lot of people from the Third
Speaker 5: World who don't, shockingly enough, carry with them a copy
Speaker 5: of the First Amendment, and then a massive number of
Speaker 5: powerful British people in elite positions have determined that those
Speaker 5: people must be protected by the law, and so they
Speaker 5: have passed all sorts of laws making it illegal to
Speaker 5: criticize anyone based on what is falsely deems to be
Speaker 5: their immutable characteristics, but actually is their political preferences or ideology.
Speaker 5: And that's the problem. If the British wanted to pass
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of free speech laws, make it clear
Speaker 5: that they will not tolerate grooming gangs, surveil people who
Speaker 5: say allow that they hate Jews or want to kill
Speaker 5: people who are different. They could do that, but the
Speaker 5: British government, for goodness sake, is full of people who
Speaker 5: don't want to do that, and who recoil in horror
Speaker 5: the minute anybody says, I don't think that this is
Speaker 5: all positive and look, I am a squish guys, I
Speaker 5: am a small l liberal. I am a pluralist. But
Speaker 5: pluralism only works when you insist on the culture of
Speaker 5: pluralism that predated the need for pluralism. And America does
Speaker 5: that really well in most but not all places, and
Speaker 5: Britain and Europe too have got really bad at doing it.
Speaker 5: You can't have a pluralist society that doesn't insist on
Speaker 5: pluralist values. And that's the problem in Britain. It's not
Speaker 5: that it has been taken over or that anywhere you
Speaker 5: go you will see foreign language spoken. That's not true.
Speaker 5: It's the British have given up. They're terrified to say,
Speaker 5: you know what, we had a pretty good thing going.
Speaker 5: You're welcome to come here. We don't care what the
Speaker 5: color of your skin is or what gods you worship,
Speaker 5: but here are the goddamn rules. They won't do it,
Speaker 5: and they're suffering from it.
Speaker 1: Well, this will all be mood very soon, because of
Speaker 1: course they've had a Palestine has been recognized, and b
Speaker 1: there's a new ceasefire proposal on the table, which they
Speaker 1: no doubt will accept it because the idea that the
Speaker 1: Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity is
Speaker 1: our chaic old thought. They will accept it, of course.
Speaker 1: In Hamas will then disarm and release the hostages and
Speaker 1: everything will be fine, or they will say no and
Speaker 1: the war will continue. And Donald Trump said that I
Speaker 1: think the deadline is Sunday afternoon, Sunday. And what did
Speaker 1: he promise? Hell? He promised, Hell like no one has
Speaker 1: ever seen before will break out. Hell. Mind you, if
Speaker 1: they turned this down, that this is their last chance,
Speaker 1: and I think they will. I believe that they will.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what's going to happen after that, Steven,
Speaker 1: do you have any ideas?
Speaker 4: No, except I think you're right. I think Hamas would
Speaker 4: rather go down in what they think is a blaze
Speaker 4: of glory and kill all the hostages and be wiped
Speaker 4: out themselves. Than give in at all because they're you know,
Speaker 4: Nihilis fanatics. That's actually too mile to turn for them.
Speaker 4: I do think, though, that this is very typical Trump.
Speaker 4: He's set things like this before about Iran, although in
Speaker 4: that case he did follow him by bombing the nuclear facilities.
Speaker 4: He set things like this about Hamas, but then another
Speaker 4: time saying, gosh, this is what needs to make peace.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: You know, I've often credited the crazy man theory of Trump,
Speaker 4: and that does have its use as in international affairs
Speaker 4: now and then, oh, couple this by the way of
Speaker 4: this statement a week ago at the UN that oh,
Speaker 4: maybe Ukraine can win back all its territory, which is
Speaker 4: a real uphill order. So at some point I think
Speaker 4: you get diminishing returns from the crazy man Trump and
Speaker 4: from his erratic pronouncements, because you could see, I don't know,
Speaker 4: the Israeli operations, something going wrong, you know, a hospital
Speaker 4: getting bombed by mistake for real instead of the Hamas propaganda,
Speaker 4: and then Trump could go all squishy on it. And
Speaker 4: you know, I think that the inconstancy of Trump's pronouncements
Speaker 4: at some point gets to be a problem.
Speaker 1: The Ukraine situation is interesting, by the way, because they
Speaker 1: are having what the end result of a long campaign
Speaker 1: of targeting infrastructure and now petroleum infrastructure is seeming to
Speaker 1: pay off. Was it last week where I sin I
Speaker 1: think that Russia said they're not going to export any
Speaker 1: gasoline and diesel for a while because they've lost something
Speaker 1: like I don't know, twenty eight to thirty percent of
Speaker 1: their refining capacity. I see all of these videos now
Speaker 1: on Telegraph about lines and lines and lines and lines
Speaker 1: of cars outside of stations, as if we're trying to
Speaker 1: become California. Yeah. Yeah, well we've gone back to the
Speaker 1: nineteenhi with that reference too. This whole podcast, it's just
Speaker 1: saturated and studded with nineteen with references to that horrible decade.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing we're not going to talk about
Speaker 1: the days when, like in the seventies, there were people
Speaker 1: roaming the country in armed bands, killing cops and banks
Speaker 1: and the rest of it for to fund the glorious
Speaker 1: communist revolution. Oh wait a minute. Assana Shakur, who was
Speaker 1: hiding out in Cuba, died and the Chicago Teachers Union
Speaker 1: put out a memorial tweet, rest in power. I hate that,
Speaker 1: rest in peace, and applotted her for all the things
Speaker 1: that she did for marginalized people. Now you may me ask,
Speaker 1: what is the organization devoted supposedly to instructing the children
Speaker 1: of Chicago doing wasting their time on this? Why is
Speaker 1: the mayor of Chicago noting this? Well, it's off a piece,
Speaker 1: it really is. I mean, it just tells you that basically,
Speaker 1: these people are the worst sort of old school nineteen
Speaker 1: late sixties, early seventies radicals who wanted nothing more than
Speaker 1: in the destruction of this order and its replacement with another.
Speaker 1: But hey, give them a lot of money, give them
Speaker 1: fabulous pensions, and have them teach your children. Did you
Speaker 1: guys see that tweeted? If so, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: surprised you, given what we've seen from the Chicago Teacher's Union,
Speaker 1: which I think the last tweek they had misspelled the
Speaker 1: word Chicago.
Speaker 4: Talk about pattern recognition. I'd never heard of this person
Speaker 4: until this week. And oh, I know, yeah, Well, I
Speaker 4: keep thinking I'm stealing myself now, James, for when who's
Speaker 4: that guy's wing in jail in Pennsylvania forever? That's a
Speaker 4: big cause of the left, Mumia Jamal s Yep, yep,
Speaker 4: you know there are universities that have either wanted to.
Speaker 4: I know one case actually in the state of Washington,
Speaker 4: where that crazy Evergreen State College wanted to have Mumia
Speaker 4: as their commencement speaker about ten twelve years back by video,
Speaker 4: of course, couldn't come live, and the Democratic governor called
Speaker 4: the president and said, look, you have a First Amendment
Speaker 4: right to have this person, but I cannot stop the legislature,
Speaker 4: a Democratic legislature, from cutting your funding if you do
Speaker 4: something this stupid. And they changed their mind over it.
Speaker 4: But the point is, when that guy dies, it's going
Speaker 4: to be ten times bigger. I think, can see such
Speaker 4: a cost celeb another call.
Speaker 1: Every every time I see those posters, I think, free
Speaker 1: moumea with qualifying purchase.
Speaker 4: But I mean this is now, I mean, this is
Speaker 4: not news, except you know, let's remember that for a
Speaker 4: while there, maybe still today, the prime qualification to get
Speaker 4: a job at elite university is to have been some
Speaker 4: someone like Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dorn, who's the who's the
Speaker 4: lady down the street from you in Minnesota, James who
Speaker 4: went to.
Speaker 1: Princess in Salaiah, Kathleen Jenials enerals right, and.
Speaker 4: Then you know she got a university job after she
Speaker 4: finally served her sentence. I am waiting for and maybe
Speaker 4: it's already happened. I just missed it. But I can't
Speaker 4: wait for some universities to establish the George the George
Speaker 4: Floyd Chair of Racial Studies, because that's surely coming at
Speaker 4: some point.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a piece by Thomas Chatterson today, I think
Speaker 1: it's in The Atlantic talking about how you know the
Speaker 1: writer has been looking for their own George Floyd and
Speaker 1: founded and Charlie Kirk, and I think the amount of
Speaker 1: conversation that topic requires is absolutely zero. The only I
Speaker 1: want to end with and we will end with this here,
Speaker 1: and it's because it's on the rundown. And I should
Speaker 1: note that these podcasts are made possible by the tireless
Speaker 1: and extraordinary work of our producer, who does prepare for
Speaker 1: us a framework for discussion. Now we go off it,
Speaker 1: we say it around it, we sometimes trash it up
Speaker 1: and ignore his questions entirely, but it's absolutely essential and
Speaker 1: gives us the framework for our chat. And he ended
Speaker 1: with this. He ended with the Screen Actress Guild condemning
Speaker 1: Tillie Norwood, an actress who does not exist. Somebody ginned
Speaker 1: up an AI actress and gave her a voice and personality,
Speaker 1: and now apparently she's available for movie roles and television
Speaker 1: and commercials and the rest of it. And they don't
Speaker 1: like it, No, sir, they don't like it at all.
Speaker 1: And I just think it'd be fascinating if in the
Speaker 1: future you have somebody who's so obsessed with an AI
Speaker 1: generated actress that they storm an AI data center desperately
Speaker 1: looking for the speeding hard drive and what she resigns,
Speaker 1: or they hate her someon us that they blow up
Speaker 1: the data center and cut the power. I'm not particularly
Speaker 1: worried about this with my list of AI things to
Speaker 1: worry about, simply because I don't know any stars really
Speaker 1: that I care if she replaces. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is one of the few people in movies
Speaker 1: I can actually point to a name, because he seems
Speaker 1: to understand the role of what an old star should be.
Speaker 1: Are you guys worried about this exactly? Or are you
Speaker 1: you do you fear creeping AI saturating our entertainment until
Speaker 1: the line between reality and fiction is utterly completely lost.
Speaker 5: Well, my problem with Tilly Nord is she's a racist.
Speaker 5: Why would that be in high school, she said all
Speaker 5: sorts of times.
Speaker 1: All right, yes, yeah, well that's true. We probably have right,
Speaker 1: they probably have read kind of backstory that No.
Speaker 5: But this is what I would do if I were
Speaker 5: a cynical actor on the left who didn't like Tilly Nord,
Speaker 5: I would spread rumors about her and then try and
Speaker 5: cancel her and see how many people went for it,
Speaker 5: because I think there would be a non zero percentage
Speaker 5: of the population that was, oh yeah, Tillian, Yeah, I
Speaker 5: heard that Tillian Norwood was a terrible, terrible anti semi
Speaker 5: in school and she used to buildy the other girls
Speaker 5: in the locker room. I reckon you could get twenty
Speaker 5: to thirty percent of the American public to believe this
Speaker 5: if you just said it enough.
Speaker 1: Would do you think it'd be possible if somebody found
Speaker 1: out something about the people who programmed her found if
Speaker 1: people found wrong think about her programmers, whether or not,
Speaker 1: that would spill over as some sort of guilt by association. Steve,
Speaker 1: and I know that you're a big movie fan, and
Speaker 1: are you Are you worried about I think I'm not
Speaker 1: worried because I find what people respond to these days
Speaker 1: are things that have an element of truth to them,
Speaker 1: that actually feel as though they occupied, they ought they
Speaker 1: were shot in real places, that there's a feeling of
Speaker 1: reality to them. We are so tired in Avenger movies
Speaker 1: and the rest of the marvel stuff, seeing this baffling
Speaker 1: nonsense on screen, none of which meant any thing, all
Speaker 1: of which we knew was false. We're no longer. We
Speaker 1: don't have the ability anymore to be wowed by what
Speaker 1: they can do. I think maybe Tron I'm actually thinking
Speaker 1: of seeing this Neutron movie in Imax because it makes
Speaker 1: no pretenses to be real. It is, of course the
Speaker 1: tronoverse or whatever they want to call it. But I
Speaker 1: think the desire for real, for authenticity is the killer
Speaker 1: app that humanities have, and that will fly to fiction,
Speaker 1: that will apply to movies, that will apply to arts
Speaker 1: and all of these things once we get past this
Speaker 1: AI craze. I mean today, I think open AI was
Speaker 1: valued at half a trillion. I think it hit five
Speaker 1: hundred billion. Its valuation hasn't made a dime, hasn't made
Speaker 1: a dime. So we have a bubble about to pop,
Speaker 1: and if it takes you know, a lot of Avatar
Speaker 1: type movies with it, I'm not sure I necessarily care. Stephen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if our founder Rob along with with us,
Speaker 4: I think he would be skeptical in the future for
Speaker 4: a couple of reasons. Now maybe special pleading on his
Speaker 4: part because he thinks a I can't write a joke,
Speaker 4: z said on this show several times. But I also
Speaker 4: think that, uh, you know, for an awful lot of cinema,
Speaker 4: certain things I think AI probably can't replicate, which are
Speaker 4: the subtleties that really skilled actors bring to a role
Speaker 4: and the interpretations.
Speaker 1: Of a role.
Speaker 4: And maybe AI might get good at that in the
Speaker 4: fullness of time. But I also think that this has
Speaker 4: been coming for a very long time. Yeah, if you
Speaker 4: go all the way back to I'll think of just
Speaker 4: two movies in particular. First Zelling from you know, the
Speaker 4: mid eighties that.
Speaker 1: Was right, absolutely all with film stock and treatment of
Speaker 1: that that was.
Speaker 4: Right, and and actually the the the that wasn't yet
Speaker 4: CGI A lot of that note well, I will skip
Speaker 4: over that except to say that some of the way
Speaker 4: to render a film looking you know, with Woody Allen
Speaker 4: standing next to Calvin Coolidge, they take the film that
Speaker 4: they shot and composited together and stomp on it. In
Speaker 4: a dirty floor of the studio that was there. That
Speaker 4: was their technique for trying to make it authentic film.
Speaker 4: And then of course for us Gump was when you
Speaker 4: began to see uh a cgi to you know, put
Speaker 4: words in the mouth of Lyndon Johnson and John F.
Speaker 4: Kennedy and so forth, John Lennon on the Cavit Show
Speaker 4: one with Forrest Gump and all that was very amusing,
Speaker 4: and then you could really see it was obvious what
Speaker 4: was happening. But now the technology is getting so good
Speaker 4: that it'd be it's much less obvious. So but I
Speaker 4: think I probably share rob skepticism that although and of
Speaker 4: course the movie and TV business being about making money,
Speaker 4: this is a cheap way to put out product that
Speaker 4: will generate some revenue. It's gonna happen, but I don't
Speaker 4: think at the end of the day, and it might
Speaker 4: nick the salaries of people like Tom Cruise down to
Speaker 4: ten million dollars for picture instead of twenty or whatever
Speaker 4: he charges. But I don't I don't know. I think
Speaker 4: I'm with Rob. I don't think it's going to replace
Speaker 4: human beings completely.
Speaker 1: No, to end it all, not to end it all
Speaker 1: something I'm considered When I tired of asking the AI
Speaker 1: exactly where the AI server farm in North Dakota was
Speaker 1: going to be and I couldn't come up with an answer,
Speaker 1: I did something that was very human. I texted my
Speaker 1: brother in law, who is there, and I said, where's
Speaker 1: it going to be? Is it going to be on
Speaker 1: our land? And he texted back and said, no, it's
Speaker 1: going to be on the other side of the freeway,
Speaker 1: by the road by the grain elevators, which I knew exactly.
Speaker 1: And AI would never know that I knew that particular intersection,
Speaker 1: or that describing it as on the other side of
Speaker 1: the road by the elevators would describe precisely where it
Speaker 1: would want to be. Maybe it will someday. Maybe one
Speaker 1: day you'll tune into this podcast and all of us
Speaker 1: will be dead and we'll still be nattering away here,
Speaker 1: and won't that be fun? But we have to teach it,
Speaker 1: like Rob how to interrupt the segue, and we have
Speaker 1: to do a variety of other little fine tuning things.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I think we'll be able to get
Speaker 1: one thousand podcasts with still one hundred percent authentic human
Speaker 1: beings here taking up your time. And I appreciate you
Speaker 1: taking the time to listen to us. By the way,
Speaker 1: we were brought to you by ricochet dot com. You
Speaker 1: can support the site, the podcast and all the other
Speaker 1: things we do by going there and not just looking
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Speaker 1: Thank you. And that's about all I have to say
Speaker 1: except I'm out for a couple of weeks. I leave
Speaker 1: you guys to your own devices and I will see. Oh, Charles,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna ask, don't you or don't you?
Speaker 5: I looked it up.
Speaker 1: Okay, So uh, this is Ricochet Podcast, the Ricochet and
Speaker 1: number version.
Speaker 5: What four point fourteen point fourteen point two? That's what
Speaker 5: that last week you said you knew you were going
Speaker 5: to ask, and I thought I did know that, and
Speaker 5: I didn't look it up so this week, and then
Speaker 5: you nearly didn't ask, and I thought, wow, I've got
Speaker 5: it wrong both weeks, but now I haven't.
Speaker 1: That's where we are four point and then a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of fourteen's. That's where we'll see you at ricochet
Speaker 1: dot com. See later, guys, Goodbye,