Speaker 1: There's James who sounds like he's the shower running behind
Speaker 1: him or something.
Speaker 2: That's for the special subscriber edition that we released later
Speaker 2: for money.
Speaker 3: Make it a few seconds, and I'm gonna go upstairs
Speaker 3: to my office and plug in and will be good.
Speaker 4: To go Only Fans studio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure I didn't catch that one.
Speaker 2: Well, we were saying it sounded to Sevier in the shower,
Speaker 2: so I said, you were going to go upstairs to
Speaker 2: your only fans studio.
Speaker 3: Well, I am retired. I've got to make money wherever
Speaker 3: I can.
Speaker 4: There you go retired, Yeah, not really.
Speaker 3: Get my dongle, so to speak. Can't do only fans
Speaker 3: without a dongle. Ask not what your country can do
Speaker 3: for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister gorbach Off, Tear down this wall. It's look to
Speaker 3: Say podcast with Charles W. Cook and Stephen Edward and
Speaker 3: James Lilacs. Today Alligators bed for Them, Natz to jeens.
Speaker 3: Oh my, let's let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 1: Jans are passed on from parents to offspring, often determining
Speaker 1: traits like her color, personality, and even eye color.
Speaker 4: My chans are blue. You know.
Speaker 3: The stakes are best, but alligator is a maglunatician. How
Speaker 3: to run away.
Speaker 2: From an alligator?
Speaker 3: Okay, if they escaped prison.
Speaker 1: How to run away? Don't run in a straight.
Speaker 3: Line, run like this and you know what, Your chances
Speaker 3: go off about one percent. Welcome everybody, This is the
Speaker 3: Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and fifty one. Join us
Speaker 3: at ricochet dot com, where you two can prepare yourself
Speaker 3: for the next seven hundred and forty nine until we
Speaker 3: hit fifteen hundred for some reason, then there will be fireworks,
Speaker 3: I guess. But anyway, you should go to ricochet dot
Speaker 3: com and sign up. You can read the front page
Speaker 3: and it's great. It's awesome. You can listen to the podcast,
Speaker 3: but there's a member feed where all sorts of interesting
Speaker 3: things happen. It's the place you've been looking for on
Speaker 3: the internet all your many many years. James LILYX from
Speaker 3: Minneapolis at the moment, and I joined by Charles C. W.
Speaker 3: Cook in Florida and Steven Hayward, who I presume is
Speaker 3: in his I was gonna say Italia or Amatour or
Speaker 3: wherever you have to be at California. Gentlemen, how are
Speaker 3: you making it through? Well? Well, good, what what's are
Speaker 3: you you? You sound a little stressed, as though you
Speaker 3: are still processing the horrible message of the Sydney Sweeney commercial.
Speaker 2: I didn't regard it as a horrible message, and just
Speaker 2: to make sure James that it wasn't a horrible message,
Speaker 2: I watched it one hundred and six times.
Speaker 3: I did too. I was looking for a little nuances year.
Speaker 3: What I love is the fact that that if this
Speaker 3: this is an this is an opportunity in opening for
Speaker 3: Hugo Boss. I thought to come out with their own
Speaker 3: line jeans and have somebody standing there in a long
Speaker 3: black leather jacket saying when you put on your jeans
Speaker 3: in the morning, do you find it difficult? Is it
Speaker 3: my struggle to put them on?
Speaker 4: Do you want?
Speaker 3: Do you want the pansta more evens around in the back?
Speaker 3: I mean if they did that and somebody said, you know,
Speaker 3: that's kind of Nazi, you'd say, you know, you said
Speaker 3: that about this, You said that about they have no
Speaker 3: room left for Nazi anymore, Sidney Sweeney, either inn thing
Speaker 3: talking make you a stupid wordplay about jeans is Nazi? Yes,
Speaker 3: but go ahead, go ahead, if that is the hill
Speaker 3: on which you wish to die, we will be there
Speaker 3: with the grave figures, the shroud and the tombstone. Elsewhere
Speaker 3: in the world we have a tariff's deal, or do
Speaker 3: we not? Apparently something with you, something with Japan. From
Speaker 3: what I understand, Chuck Schumer got up on the floor
Speaker 3: of the Senate, the well of the Senate, and said, no,
Speaker 3: it's all about none of it is real. So what
Speaker 3: is going on? What happened? I hear everything from man,
Speaker 3: he took them to the cleaners to absolutely nothing's going
Speaker 3: to happen whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Well, who can say? I mean, it's still in my
Speaker 1: mind and mystery of whether Trump really believes in tariffs,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's been saying for years tariff is
Speaker 1: a beautiful word. I love tariffs. Or whether this is
Speaker 1: and or it could be both. The second possibility is
Speaker 1: this is all his real estate. Negotiating practices of the
Speaker 1: last forty years apply to international trade. And you know,
Speaker 1: I have some sympathy with the view that Trump has
Speaker 1: articulated since the eighties that we've been Patsy's on trade.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been going for years to these international
Speaker 1: negotiations and saying, pretty please, could you lower your tariffs
Speaker 1: and occasionally making a little bit of progress or getting
Speaker 1: some concessions, and I think Trump's decided to blow the
Speaker 1: whole thing up because he's been saying that, as we say,
Speaker 1: as we know, since the early eighties. In any case,
Speaker 1: I think the really big question is whether his legal
Speaker 1: authority to do all this improvising is going to survive
Speaker 1: the DC's Circuit Court of Appeals Supreme Court, because it
Speaker 1: sounds like the argument before the court this week went
Speaker 1: very poorly from all the news accounts I read.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't have a great deal of sympathy for
Speaker 2: tariffs or the means by which they've been implemented. Those
Speaker 2: are two separate things. Of Course, I didn't think we
Speaker 2: need more protectionism. We're a rich country. We do that
Speaker 2: than everyone else. I agree some other countries can often
Speaker 2: be silly, but it's usually to our advantage. But if
Speaker 2: we're going to have tariffs, so if there's a good
Speaker 2: reason for it, and there is, in a military context,
Speaker 2: for example, often a strong argument for making sure that
Speaker 2: we keep control of supplies that are necessary to our survival,
Speaker 2: we certainly should not be doing it via presidential edict. Now, Steve,
Speaker 2: you said you didn't know whether or not this was
Speaker 2: true whether Chuck Schumann was right. And that's because we
Speaker 2: don't have a debate in Congress that we should have
Speaker 2: over what is in the same position in the Constitution
Speaker 2: as taxes. But the whole thing is being made up
Speaker 2: by Donald Trump on the fly. And even if you
Speaker 2: love tariffs, which is fine, I don't, but that's fine,
Speaker 2: that's a problem because it creates instability, it creates uncertainty.
Speaker 2: It means that even people who follow politics aren't quite
Speaker 2: sure what is happening. It's also very odd because not
Speaker 2: only has Trump introduced these new tariffs, but he has
Speaker 2: walked away from a whole bunch of trade deals that
Speaker 2: were negotiated through Congress. These have superseded congressional law, and
Speaker 2: that means that if you in the future are negotiating
Speaker 2: with the United States, you're reasonably going to ask the question, well,
Speaker 2: is this going to last or is the next president
Speaker 2: whoever that is going to just get rid of it
Speaker 2: on the fly. And the last thing I would say is, again,
Speaker 2: if you like tariffs, that's fine, if you want to
Speaker 2: make the case for them, I know a lot of
Speaker 2: smart people do. But the idea that what we are
Speaker 2: doing here is the exercise of an emergency power is
Speaker 2: just ridiculous, don't You don't invoke emergency powers bit by
Speaker 2: bit on and off over six months in response to
Speaker 2: what you claim has been a problem for forty years.
Speaker 2: That's nobody's definition of emergency. So I'm I'm not a
Speaker 2: tiriff guy. I'm absolutely happy to debate it with people.
Speaker 2: It's a normal political question. It's been in there since
Speaker 2: the founding. But the mechanism here just makes this so difficult.
Speaker 2: And by the time that this podcast goes up, even
Speaker 2: if it's up in fourteen minutes, it's possible that the
Speaker 2: whole thing could have been changed or delayed or revoked,
Speaker 2: which is bizarre.
Speaker 3: So it goes well, here's the counter argument then, And
Speaker 3: I don't like terrors either, mostly because I learned way
Speaker 3: back in the junior high that Smooth Hawley made everything
Speaker 3: very bad for a long time. So I mean, that's
Speaker 3: the sort of deep historical analysis that I'm dealing with.
Speaker 3: A lot of people would say that, okay, we conduct
Speaker 3: a trade deal with China, everybody sits down negotiates our
Speaker 3: site is probably corrupt because they're probably beholden whatever to
Speaker 3: Chinese interests for whatever reason, and even if we do
Speaker 3: sign something, China is going to break it at every
Speaker 3: possible opportunity because they're not good faith players. They steal.
Speaker 3: So what's the point then, you know, we can crack
Speaker 3: these treaties, make better ones with people that we like
Speaker 3: and promise to do good. But just the very idea
Speaker 3: that while we talked to them, we all sat down,
Speaker 3: we negotiated, we had a treaty, doesn't necessarily mean it's
Speaker 3: something that accrues to America's interest would be the other argument.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that I kind of understand that as well,
Speaker 3: simplistic as it may be. But yeah, so it's I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think it was a big hurrah that China
Speaker 3: was losing some of its manufacturing to India. Look, Apple's
Speaker 3: moving some of their production from China to India. That's great.
Speaker 3: And then a month later twenty five percent tariff on
Speaker 3: things coming from India. That seems to be a little
Speaker 3: counterproductive as well. But to the point that you made
Speaker 3: before about strategic tariffs, about making sure that we actually
Speaker 3: have the capability to build the things we build, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure that a lot of people would say, you know,
Speaker 3: I may end up paying more for athletes foot cream
Speaker 3: and antibiotic. But it's going to be coming from America,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to be reasonably sure that it is
Speaker 3: as it's a genuine product. I mean, I bought some
Speaker 3: antibiotic from on Amazon that came from China. I'm convinced
Speaker 3: it's just vasoline. I have no idea. I have no
Speaker 3: trust in any of the products whatsoever. Again, so that's
Speaker 3: that's that's well true.
Speaker 2: But you wouldn't mind if the antibiotic could come from Germany. No,
Speaker 2: Sidney Sweeney's face on it, No, die.
Speaker 3: No, because I would trust presistent, precision German engineering and
Speaker 3: their sense of honor and duty in the rest of
Speaker 3: it to put out a quality antibiotic. But to China,
Speaker 3: I just know it's probably got you know, it's got
Speaker 3: hand of virus eggs in it from from all.
Speaker 2: I just think that that is a totally fair objection.
Speaker 2: But my preference would be if we don't think that
Speaker 2: other countries are making products that are what they say
Speaker 2: they are, that.
Speaker 4: We should ban them. It should put tariffs on them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: This is a strange response.
Speaker 2: To say, well, I don't think this antibiotic cream is
Speaker 2: actually antibiotic cream.
Speaker 4: I think it is ground up beetle.
Speaker 2: But if you pay an extra fifteen percent to the
Speaker 2: US government, you can.
Speaker 3: Have a You can have something made in the United
Speaker 3: States under the United States inspection. Is all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would rather if I had my Druthers.
Speaker 3: I just had to buy an air frier because the
Speaker 3: old one with the Italian name, which was made in China,
Speaker 3: fell apart. I had to buy another one. The choice
Speaker 3: of domestic manufacturers is bad. Now you can say it's
Speaker 3: great that we don't as a country have to make
Speaker 3: air friers anymore. It's assembly line work. It's miserable. It's
Speaker 3: the meaning, it's the rest of it. I don't agree.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be
Speaker 3: able to buy an air fryer that came out of Akron, Ohio,
Speaker 3: that was made by guys who had a pretty good
Speaker 3: wage and a pretty good life. While that is I
Speaker 3: understand the old model before computers in the Internet and
Speaker 3: the information society and all that stuff broke everything, I
Speaker 3: don't think it's something that is we should just completely
Speaker 3: abandon attempting to duplicate or revive when plausible, when feasible.
Speaker 3: Would I spend ten dollars more in one if it
Speaker 3: come from America, you damn right it would have.
Speaker 1: Well, part of the problem is not fake product necessarily
Speaker 1: ground up beetles or whatever. It's actual real products or
Speaker 1: that are counterfeit. But there's two kinds of this. I
Speaker 1: used to know someone who fifteen years ago was tracing
Speaker 1: the problem of counterfeit pharmaceuticals from overseas, and what he
Speaker 1: discovered was, in some cases, like in Mexico, for example,
Speaker 1: you'd have a plant that was contracted out by one
Speaker 1: of our pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the day shift to make
Speaker 1: whatever they were making would close down, and then an
Speaker 1: hour later a night shift would open off the books,
Speaker 1: producing legitimate product, but under a generic label, you know,
Speaker 1: to sort of get around our patents and so forth.
Speaker 1: So there's that problem. And then the other problem with China,
Speaker 1: which now goes back at least twenty years or more.
Speaker 1: As I've talked a couple of patent lawyers about this,
Speaker 1: and this has been in the press, their copies of
Speaker 1: things like Hermes handbags or Gucci handbags are so good
Speaker 1: that the manufacturers can't tell without practically using electron microscope.
Speaker 1: I think they've now included some tracers and authentic bags,
Speaker 1: and they can find it. But to the even the
Speaker 1: trained eye, you can't tell there're so the knockoffs are
Speaker 1: so good, and that's just straight out piracy, and that's
Speaker 1: a big problem. I don't know if tarif is a
Speaker 1: way to fix that. I don't think so. But the
Speaker 1: spectrum of the problem is even worse than you think.
Speaker 4: I think my.
Speaker 2: Criticism of some of these arguments it's not that I
Speaker 2: disagree with them, but that whenever Trump does this, everyone
Speaker 2: who favors what he's doing or at is just sympathetic
Speaker 2: to it. Talks about China, and I agree with the
Speaker 2: criticisms of China. I had Tom Cotton on my podcast
Speaker 2: a few months ago. I read a great book about China,
Speaker 2: really eye opening, an alarming book about China. But Trump
Speaker 2: didn't just put tariffs on China. I mean, if Trump
Speaker 2: could come out and said I'm dealing with the China
Speaker 2: problem three months ago, I'd probably have said, fine. But
Speaker 2: we've got tariffs now on India and Indonesia and Vietnam,
Speaker 2: which are countries that we've tried to move manufacturing to
Speaker 2: to get out of China. And we've also got tariffs
Speaker 2: on France and Italy and Germany and Britain, in Brazil
Speaker 2: and Canada. And this is the bit that I just
Speaker 2: find astonishing is that in so far as these tariffs
Speaker 2: make a great deal of sense, it is with countries
Speaker 2: like China communist dictatorships that steal our stuff, make subpar products,
Speaker 2: flood our market. I think sometimes flooding the market is
Speaker 2: fine because then it gives us the chance to buy
Speaker 2: cheap things. But sometimes it's not because the aim is
Speaker 2: to destroy our industry. They want to make sure that
Speaker 2: our factory is closed. But Germany doesn't do that. Britain
Speaker 2: don't do it, you know, Brazil doesn't do that. India
Speaker 2: doesn't do that. So this is the sort of what's that?
Speaker 2: What's that weapon a blunderbus. The blunderbus attitude is a
Speaker 2: longing to me.
Speaker 3: Well, I think then we all know where we are
Speaker 3: on this and need not to be labor it anymore.
Speaker 3: Charles mentioned the UK, and I wanted to get to that.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of attention focused right now in the
Speaker 3: scepter dial probably outside given it's importance in the rest
Speaker 3: of it, but the place from which freedom supposedly one
Speaker 3: of the well springs of is going through this shuddering
Speaker 3: contraction of what appears to be online rights and access.
Speaker 3: Thanks to their Online Safety Act, it made it very
Speaker 3: difficult for people to go to sites that have adult content,
Speaker 3: and by that I mean anything that be interesting to
Speaker 3: somebody over the age of eight. I mean movies that
Speaker 3: are a scene from a description of a scene from
Speaker 3: a movie that sounds a little violent. Naturally, everybody who
Speaker 3: was opposed to this is being called a pedophile or
Speaker 3: a pedophile enabler, which is always great coming from the BBC.
Speaker 3: Jimmy who Jimmy, Great coming from them, But it fits
Speaker 3: in with the two tier policing idea, with the Bobby's
Speaker 3: knocking at your door because you wrote something mean and
Speaker 3: nasty on Facebook or Twitter. The general idea that anybody
Speaker 3: who shows up to protest a whole bunch of guys
Speaker 3: who's just landed on a boat being given a mobile
Speaker 3: phone and a set of clothes and being stashed off
Speaker 3: in the local luxury hotel, that all of these things
Speaker 3: are now outside of the boundaries of civilized discussion. We
Speaker 3: can't have them, and they've got to be something has
Speaker 3: to be done about them, and it all seems rather sudden.
Speaker 3: Maybe so because the Online Safety Act is finally hitting
Speaker 3: and the repercussions are being known, and other countries are
Speaker 3: looking at it. But it seems as if there's this
Speaker 3: sort of excel And Charles tell me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: there's an accelerating deliberalization of the UK that comes as
Speaker 3: something of a surprise, even for those of us who've
Speaker 3: been seeing certain things happen in the last few years.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you're absolutely right. I don't know how
Speaker 2: surprised I am. When I was at Oxford, I was
Speaker 2: there at the time that a fellow student was put
Speaker 2: in a jail cell over night for telling a police
Speaker 2: officer that his horse was gay. Yes, so we've talked
Speaker 2: about this before, I think so. I'm not sure how
Speaker 2: surprising it is. What I find infuriating is exactly the
Speaker 2: response that you adam rated, which is, oh, well, I
Speaker 2: suppose you're in favor of This reminds me of a
Speaker 2: law that California passed, which was enjoined by the Ninth Circuit,
Speaker 2: which said that if you in any way wrote about
Speaker 2: or advertised firearms in a way that could be appealing
Speaker 2: to a minor, he could be fined twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And the problem with this in practice was immediately high
Speaker 2: school clay sports teams shut down and magazines were unable
Speaker 2: to write anything that could be plausibly deemed to be
Speaker 2: addressed to somebody under a and so on. In other words,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. Leave aside the First Amendment questions.
Speaker 2: Britain doesn't have one. You can't do things like this
Speaker 2: without affecting everybody. And so to turn around when people
Speaker 2: complain and say, oh, and I suppose you want small
Speaker 2: children to watch pornography, then it's just extremely annoying. The
Speaker 2: problem is, James, is that while there are people who
Speaker 2: are complaining about this, the sort of reaction that you
Speaker 2: have instinctively had to this simply does not exist in Britain.
Speaker 4: They are just.
Speaker 2: Much more comfortable with this sort of thing, and it's
Speaker 2: going to take some really stupid prosecutions to make them
Speaker 2: realize that they've got it wrong. Last thing, I'll say,
Speaker 2: there was a law that has been amended but not repealed,
Speaker 2: called Section five. I think it's Section five of the
Speaker 2: Public Order Act, and this law was put into place
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties. I think Margaret Thatcher was on
Speaker 2: board with it, she was quite bad on speech sometimes,
Speaker 2: and it eventually met its demise or diminishment when comedians,
Speaker 2: most notably Rowan Atkinson, started complaining that it was being
Speaker 2: used to shut up people who were making jokes, who
Speaker 2: were being funny about, say Islam or different racial characteristics,
Speaker 2: or Christianity or atheism. And there was a campaign and
Speaker 2: at that point the British got it because they saw
Speaker 2: the way that.
Speaker 4: It was being used.
Speaker 2: But I do worry that there's no reflexive hostility in
Speaker 2: the way you would encounter in the United States, so
Speaker 2: this sort of thing they have to see it practically fail.
Speaker 3: I have talked about this with my friends in England,
Speaker 3: and I tend to do so more. I'm a little
Speaker 3: bit hesitant to say anything in the radio noown next less,
Speaker 3: the next time I go through I get scanned by
Speaker 3: the Interpol computer and they say, oh, this fellow, this
Speaker 3: fellow said some problematic things. I mean, I I I
Speaker 3: hear what you're saying, but I don't think that the
Speaker 3: docility that you have described before remains in the same
Speaker 3: percentage I think that. I mean, was it a Telegraph
Speaker 3: columnist who had to who was brought up by charge
Speaker 3: brought up on charges recently for tweeting out something like this.
Speaker 3: I think there are there are more and more instances,
Speaker 3: and again you may have the Telegraph audience self segregating
Speaker 3: on that one and not spilling over into the Times audience.
Speaker 3: But but but the the other portion of it was,
Speaker 3: if I'm trying to remember here was the was the
Speaker 3: banter laws? Stephen, do you know what the banter laws are?
Speaker 1: I do not.
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, in addition to the Online Safety Act and
Speaker 3: the two tier policing and the government actually being caught
Speaker 3: trying to do something with social media about getting rid
Speaker 3: of or deep platforming people who talk about two tier policing,
Speaker 3: there was a law that's passed and being called the
Speaker 3: banter Law because it criminalizes pub talk essentially. Now that,
Speaker 3: of course there's nonsense. There's no one's going to criminal Well,
Speaker 3: what it does is it says that the owners of
Speaker 3: a pub are responsible for maintaining a non threatening, inclusive,
Speaker 3: friendly work environment. So if it's possible that your server
Speaker 3: who's coming over to give you your ail, here's you
Speaker 3: making a joke that offends them, than the pub owner
Speaker 3: I believe, is responsible for not policing the banter or
Speaker 3: making it known that certain things are not to be
Speaker 3: discussed that and that's met with derision from every quarter,
Speaker 3: except of course, those who say, oh, so you want
Speaker 3: to sit in the corner of the snug that and
Speaker 3: make jokes about Islam. Maybe maybe they do.
Speaker 1: Maybe it seems to me that soccer hooligans in the
Speaker 1: pub are now Written's best hope for recovery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, you, me and Julia looking out
Speaker 3: the window saying the pearls is you know that the
Speaker 3: pearls will be our hope. That's what they thought in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four as well. I'll tell you what it's
Speaker 3: going to take. I've said this before and i'll say
Speaker 3: it again. I think that Brexit happened when everybody opened
Speaker 3: up their paper and story that the EU was going
Speaker 3: to impose new green requirements on tea kettles and that
Speaker 3: the EU was going to dictate that they boiled a lot,
Speaker 3: took a lot longer to boil in order to save
Speaker 3: the planet. And I think that's what everybody said. I've
Speaker 3: had it right up to here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a very very quick point on this, you know,
Speaker 2: exactly right. And the thing that always baffled me about that,
Speaker 2: James Is. People who hated the EU, myself included, would
Speaker 2: always point out how stupid their regulations were, straight bananas
Speaker 2: and so forth. And then those who liked the you
Speaker 2: would say, why do you always bring that up? That's
Speaker 2: not important? And I would think, why doesn't the EU
Speaker 2: stop it?
Speaker 3: Then? Right? Well, no, absolutely, because there is somebody whose
Speaker 3: job depends on making a yearly report on the average
Speaker 3: diameter of Swiss cheese bubbles. Right, it simply is, and
Speaker 3: he makes one hundred and forty thousand euros a year
Speaker 3: doing this to ensure uniformity in conformity to the Swiss standards,
Speaker 3: of course that's why. Yeah, all right, well I had
Speaker 3: none of that. Speaking of pubs or whatever, the Russian
Speaker 3: equippal is Medvedev caught dolphins said something the other day,
Speaker 3: did he did you? Did you hear this?
Speaker 4: Well, this is a really crazy thing to say, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll just go over to America in New.
Speaker 3: Q Yeah, well he says an awful lot of stupid
Speaker 3: and crazy things. And so what do you do in
Speaker 3: response to that? You short off and you say he's
Speaker 3: drinking again? Or do you say, you know, fine, we're
Speaker 3: can move a couple of subs around, Well, take your
Speaker 3: best shot.
Speaker 2: What interests me about this is that I am actually
Speaker 2: a devotee with Trump of the Madman theory, which is
Speaker 2: to say that I think one of Trump's greatest characteristics,
Speaker 2: and I mean this very genuinely. It sounds like I'm
Speaker 2: being silly.
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 2: One of his greatest characteristics is he says crazy stuff
Speaker 2: and people aren't quite sure if it's true. And he
Speaker 2: did it with Kim Jong In, and he does it
Speaker 2: with Putin, and he does it with Iran and so on,
Speaker 2: and it works. I think there is a genuine you
Speaker 2: in confusion and alarm in the world when Trump talks
Speaker 2: that works to the benefit of the United States in
Speaker 2: nise circumstances. I thought when I heard this that it
Speaker 2: doesn't work from verte no, because I didn't look at
Speaker 2: this and think, oh no, I sort of thought, oh no,
Speaker 2: they're not going to do that. You shouldn't say that
Speaker 2: unless you're actually going to scare people, and it didn't.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm to desensitize to it, but this just made
Speaker 2: me think, you're a silly, backwards petro state losing a
Speaker 2: war and you're trying to talk in a way that
Speaker 2: would have been scary ever to come out of the
Speaker 2: mouth of Joseph Stalin, but is not now. So the
Speaker 2: madman theory, I thought, only works for some.
Speaker 3: It's told by getting everybody the table to negotiate something
Speaker 3: about Ukraine, which I can't imagine anybody doing. But let
Speaker 3: me offer this suggestion. I think the best way to
Speaker 3: get Russia to the table is to tell Russia that
Speaker 3: the United that the entire world community recognizes as legitimate
Speaker 3: its occupancy of the eastern portion of Ukraine, just the
Speaker 3: same way it worked as Europe or England and France
Speaker 3: recognizing at Palestinian state, which is we all knew. Brought
Speaker 3: Hamas right to the table.
Speaker 2: Happy to have Yeah, I mean I thought you were
Speaker 2: serious for a second. Then I did too, trying to
Speaker 2: read your eyes.
Speaker 1: Right, I did too, Chargie. I mean, well, so the
Speaker 1: backup half a step. So Charnie, you said a minute ago,
Speaker 1: I think you said this that Russia is losing the war,
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite sure that's right, or if you
Speaker 1: mean it literally and comprehensively. They are grinding out gains.
Speaker 4: At great just lost so many people.
Speaker 1: Yes, no, at great Colot. You have to think how
Speaker 1: long can they sustain that? And maybe they're playing for advantage.
Speaker 1: You want to grab as much territory as we can
Speaker 1: until we have to end this because it's too costly
Speaker 1: or there's sufficient new pressure from the West. But I
Speaker 1: also think that Putin has made a the crazy man theory.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, you know, Putin ought to be
Speaker 1: smart enough to know that one way to get along
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump is to give him a little something
Speaker 1: flatter him. And Putin has given Trump nothing. And so look,
Speaker 1: this is not rocket science or deep psychology. Trump has
Speaker 1: been offended that, you know, Trump says these crazy things
Speaker 1: few months ago, I'll end the war on day one.
Speaker 1: And he's been in a certain way humiliated by Putin.
Speaker 1: And Trump doesn't like that. And so Trump said, okay,
Speaker 1: I said sixty days to reach a deal. What a
Speaker 1: few days ago he said, I'm going to make it
Speaker 1: twelve days, right, We're going to shorten a timeline. And
Speaker 1: that may have been part of what provoked Medvedev to say, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just send some submarines over, like the Red October
Speaker 1: or something. And it seems to me it would have
Speaker 1: been easy for the Russians to have thrown some kind
Speaker 1: of bone to Trump to put him off for another
Speaker 1: month or two. But they've done nothing. I mean, they
Speaker 1: talk nice on the phone apparently, but you know, no,
Speaker 1: even even a ten days cease fire would probably be
Speaker 1: the Russia's advantage militarily because they'd move people around and whatnot, right,
Speaker 1: But instead it's nothing. And I don't quite understand that,
Speaker 1: except that they think they're going to win this war
Speaker 1: or that Ukraine is on the brink of collects. The
Speaker 1: other thing is we don't get much good reporting on this,
Speaker 1: I don't think. But I think that there maybe at
Speaker 1: the point of collapse politically and economically and otherwise. But
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 3: Sure going to that a little bit more because we
Speaker 3: all know, I mean, it's been years. It grinds on
Speaker 3: the map of the line goes back and forth, drones
Speaker 3: go this way, drones go that way. The one thing
Speaker 3: that we can take away from this is that the notion,
Speaker 3: the image is the reputation of the Red Army, and again,
Speaker 3: who cares what it is if they can get the
Speaker 3: job done on the end of what he cares about
Speaker 3: their rep But just the whole notion of the Russian
Speaker 3: military strength, which those of us who grew up in
Speaker 3: the seventies and eighties, the Russian army consisted exclusively of
Speaker 3: either drunks who would go out there and get slaughtered,
Speaker 3: or Evandrago characters who would be standing dispassionately in their
Speaker 3: uniforms over a glittering computer console. It's revealed now the
Speaker 3: incompetence of their organization. It's reliance on brute force and
Speaker 3: horrific discipline, if you want to use that word. It's
Speaker 3: lack of equipment, it's lack of material l the way
Speaker 3: that their whole system is dependent on Western interaction for
Speaker 3: things like, oh, I don't know, roller bearings, The way
Speaker 3: that now an enemy can be seen to fly missiles
Speaker 3: far afield and destroy their prize bombers and the rest
Speaker 3: of it. They look pathetic. They just absolutely do. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that they can't. They can't force the
Speaker 3: Craine to the table a next all of that land
Speaker 3: that they have, which is at this point parched, useless, demilitarized,
Speaker 3: claim a victory and go home. But that requires Ukraine
Speaker 3: to say, all right, you will seed this to you,
Speaker 3: and now we are going to stop the war. Nobody believes, however,
Speaker 3: that if they did do that and sat down and
Speaker 3: said to Russia, all right, all right, you got these,
Speaker 3: it's yours, get out of here, that they wouldn't be
Speaker 3: back ten years later attempting to take Keev and bring
Speaker 3: little Russia back into the fold. Nobody in your grain
Speaker 3: believes that. So what are they to do?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. That's you know, that's sixty four
Speaker 1: billion dollar question.
Speaker 2: At least it is wild though. The casualties, that's why
Speaker 2: I say they're losing. You're absolutely right, Steve, your characterization
Speaker 2: is absolutely right. But I just finished watching The World
Speaker 2: at War, the twenty six part series on World War Two,
Speaker 2: and something I had, for some reason not internalized is
Speaker 2: that World War One was far more deadly for the
Speaker 2: British than World War Two. The British numbers of dead
Speaker 2: in World War Two about three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: excluding the Empire, and the casualties are about three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand.
Speaker 4: Twos.
Speaker 2: You've got seven hundred thousand, eight hundred thousand British casualties.
Speaker 2: The Russian casualties in the Ukraine War are a million,
Speaker 2: with a quarter of a million dead. That is if
Speaker 2: you think about that, that is astaushing. How many Americans
Speaker 2: died in what will say, three hundred thousand?
Speaker 4: I think I think.
Speaker 1: It's four something, three or four something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is just it is ridiculous. But the Russian react,
Speaker 3: the Russian attitude toward war has I has been Jay
Speaker 3: Leno's toward Dorito's you know, show your life, we'll make
Speaker 3: more right. But what's interesting in this respect is before
Speaker 3: you had all the peasants and the serfs coming off
Speaker 3: the farm to grab a broomstick and go fight for
Speaker 3: the czar. Now what you have is this indiscriminate use
Speaker 3: of talented people, of specialists, just throwing them into meat
Speaker 3: waves and meat assaults. So like, what do you do, Well,
Speaker 3: I actually designed, build, operate highly sophisticated drones. Great, okay,
Speaker 3: here's here's your whole go join the assault. At least
Speaker 3: of course, if what I'm reading is correct, and I
Speaker 3: read a lot of sources about this, So maybe yes,
Speaker 3: they've lost a tremendous amount of people, but it's also
Speaker 3: the kind of people that they have lost that puts
Speaker 3: them in a bad shape. But do you think that
Speaker 3: anybody is Here's two things to and the Ukraine question,
Speaker 3: do you think a anybody is going to in the
Speaker 3: West in Europe is going to want to get back
Speaker 3: to the old naturalized ways of companies interacting and they
Speaker 3: get our brands and we buy from them, and we're
Speaker 3: going to pretend that we're kind of see them on
Speaker 3: the same civilizational plane. Do you think that there's going
Speaker 3: to be an appetite for that, or will the native
Speaker 3: European avarice and selfishness return and they will strike deals
Speaker 3: with the terroristic gangster gas station?
Speaker 1: I bet on the ladder, if only because the European
Speaker 1: economies are so weak compared to ours. I mean, they
Speaker 1: really do have a big problem with economic growth. And
Speaker 1: as much as they all like to say we're all
Speaker 1: good members of the EU, I think they are going
Speaker 1: to look out for their own advantage at some point
Speaker 1: each country. And I think it'll be easy for Russia
Speaker 1: to pickoff in China as well.
Speaker 2: Charles, you Agreen, I totally agree, and especially on energy,
Speaker 2: because the EU is full of hypocrites who on the
Speaker 2: one hand say we're saving the world with our green policies.
Speaker 2: Now you can't create any energy here in Germany or
Speaker 2: what you will, and on the other hand, turned around
Speaker 2: and buy.
Speaker 4: It from Russia.
Speaker 2: And they need to keep doing that because otherwise they're
Speaker 2: going to end up unable to power that countries.
Speaker 3: Second question, how about if, at the conclusion of the
Speaker 3: agreement whatever is reached between Ukraine and Russia, that we say,
Speaker 3: and just to make sure that Russia conforms and lives
Speaker 3: up to its end of the bargain, we're going to
Speaker 3: give Ukraine two nice, beautiful, shiny nuclear.
Speaker 1: Weapons, or you know, we'll just give you back the
Speaker 1: ones that we took from you thirty years ago, which
Speaker 1: I think have probably been destroyed. But never mind, we
Speaker 1: can still say something like that, yes, yeah, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think we will. You know, in a non proliferation age,
Speaker 3: I can't anybody saying, you know, you don't have them,
Speaker 3: you want them? Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is my criticism of the way Biden
Speaker 1: approached this whole business from the very beginning with three
Speaker 1: years ago. Now is it was repeat in some ways
Speaker 1: of our Vietnam strategy. You gave Ukraine just enough force
Speaker 1: to not lose, but not enough to seriously threaten Russia
Speaker 1: with any real damage or to make them really worried
Speaker 1: that they might face some real damage. And so it
Speaker 1: was always start stop, you know, where Ukraine would say, gosh,
Speaker 1: we'd like some tanks, We'd like some F sixteen's, we'd
Speaker 1: like this missile system, and we'd say, no, you can't
Speaker 1: have that, and then three or four months later say, okay,
Speaker 1: you can have them. And what are the are the
Speaker 1: right weapons or not? I don't know. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: the m one abrams tanks have ever been used in
Speaker 1: the field, or if they have, whether they've been very effective.
Speaker 1: People say the age of the tank is over now
Speaker 1: now that we have these drone swarms and so forth.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, there was a clear signal there that the
Speaker 1: United States is committed to Ukraine not losing, and that
Speaker 1: meant if we stick it out like the North Vietnames,
Speaker 1: eventually will win. Ye Trump, I then go back to
Speaker 1: the previous point, Charlie, mate, Trump is the ideal person
Speaker 1: to up end that assumption that the Russians have made.
Speaker 1: You know, he just might give them more serious weapons.
Speaker 1: Maybe not nukes, but you know, he might give them.
Speaker 1: And I think Trump has said a couple of times
Speaker 1: maybe we will give them missiles that can strike deep
Speaker 1: into Russia. So you know, who.
Speaker 3: Knows switching gears to domestic events. Charles, I know that
Speaker 3: as somebody who has had young children in the house
Speaker 3: for a while, you no doubt are deeply steeped in
Speaker 3: all the wonderful lore. Sesame Street and Elmoan, all those
Speaker 3: are the things that the Republicans hate. I mentioned that
Speaker 3: only begins the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a Nonstan Friday
Speaker 3: that shutting down the New story says, the CBP is
Speaker 3: a private nonprofit. But somehow, I guess when the government
Speaker 3: takes their money away, this private nonprofit just just blows
Speaker 3: up and dries away, dries up and blows away. Do
Speaker 3: you think that the it would be possible for people
Speaker 3: in rural areas to find out what the heck is
Speaker 3: going on? Because this is what I've been. There are
Speaker 3: people who are sitting around their wireless sets, and they're old,
Speaker 3: and they barely have the strength anymore to wind the
Speaker 3: thing up to you to get the current so they
Speaker 3: can listen to it. And then they just move that
Speaker 3: little dial until they can find the only one spot
Speaker 3: in the dial that tells them out in Bumpspeck, North Dakota,
Speaker 3: what's going on in the rest of the world. So
Speaker 3: this means a veil of ignorance, rawsy and sort of
Speaker 3: dark knight falls over rural lands as the station's shudder
Speaker 3: and fall silent. How are you dealing with this knowing
Speaker 3: that this is what you've voted for?
Speaker 4: Well, No, that's the key, isn't it. This is what
Speaker 4: you've voted for. Argument.
Speaker 2: This is why I hate this argument because rather than
Speaker 2: just make the case for themselves, the left always has.
Speaker 4: To do this.
Speaker 2: They always have to end up with And that's why
Speaker 2: getting what you want is going to be bad for
Speaker 2: you and your voters.
Speaker 4: They always do it.
Speaker 2: Well, you say you want tax cuts, but if you
Speaker 2: do them, it'll be bad for you and your voters.
Speaker 4: No, it won't.
Speaker 2: Well, if you reform entitlements, then it will be bad
Speaker 2: for you and your voters.
Speaker 4: No, I won't. Well, if you get rid of NPR,
Speaker 4: it'll be.
Speaker 2: Bad for guys. No, it will be bad for you.
Speaker 2: That's why you are unhappy about it. The argument about
Speaker 2: the only source of weather forecasting rural people being NPR
Speaker 2: is so stupid that it just doesn't even need Dwelling
Speaker 2: on the Sesame Street. One is slightly more complicated, but
Speaker 2: it is the case that for a long time. Now
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years, Sesame Street has been primarily accessible
Speaker 2: through HBO or Netflix or add on packages that you
Speaker 2: get if you have a TV service or Amazon Prime.
Speaker 2: My kids never liked Sesame Street, but they do like
Speaker 2: some PBS programs, as a show called Wildcrats about these
Speaker 2: brothers who go out and look at animals. Well, you can,
Speaker 2: if you time it just right, get a few Wildcrats
Speaker 2: episode on the local free TV station in Jacksonville that
Speaker 2: broadcasts broadcast did. But if you want to actually watch
Speaker 2: them outside of weird times, or watch more than one
Speaker 2: every month, then you just have to get the four
Speaker 2: dollar bolt onto Amazon Prime, which gives PBS kids. It
Speaker 2: must have been the case for a very long time. Also,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of them on YouTube. So I just
Speaker 2: think these talking points are rooted in people's conception of
Speaker 2: how television works in the eighties, as well as being
Speaker 2: deeply cynical.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely correct, yours. Most of these people do have
Speaker 3: internet access. We're not living at a time when there's
Speaker 3: one copper wire that extends out to these distant rural communities. Actually,
Speaker 3: there's a big push back in the day to get
Speaker 3: fiber to the barn as they called it, huge infrastructure.
Speaker 3: They would run the fiber optic cable everywhere in the
Speaker 3: rural areas, superseded by things like STARLIK. So, now, if
Speaker 3: all these people who are worried so much about the
Speaker 3: Corporation for Public Broadcasting meaning no information goes to people
Speaker 3: in rural areas, take that money, raise it yourself, and
Speaker 3: offered to buy starling packages and dishes receivers for the
Speaker 3: people in these places who need them. There's a great
Speaker 3: charity they could set up. Are they doing it? Nope,
Speaker 3: because that's supposed to be the government's job.
Speaker 1: Steven, Well, I mean, their lives get more and more pathetic.
Speaker 1: I mean, for thirty years, the main lie would be, well,
Speaker 1: you know, really the federal money is not that it's
Speaker 1: a tiny portion of the budget for PBS and the
Speaker 1: Corporation Public Broadcasting. It's really for our stations out and
Speaker 1: you know across America. There may be an element of
Speaker 1: truth to that. And so they'd say why bother, you know,
Speaker 1: And you'd say back, well, if it's so a little,
Speaker 1: why not, what's the problem of giving it up? And
Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, they'd come up with something. And so
Speaker 1: now they're saying this ludicrous idea that people in rural
Speaker 1: areas won't get. You won't get any news anymore, proper reports.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's always bothered me is that PBS
Speaker 1: and NPR for that matter, but especially PBS has been
Speaker 1: a vehicle for some people to get very rich, like
Speaker 1: Bill Moyer's became a multi millionaire through a PBS show
Speaker 1: that he could then piggyback and get corporate sponsors for
Speaker 1: his own foundation and whatnot. Book deals burns the same way.
Speaker 1: Uh and Sesame Street that was you know, Children's Television Workshop,
Speaker 1: my next door neighbor who's passed away, but he was
Speaker 1: the head writer for Children's Television Workshop and later the
Speaker 1: Muppet Show would come over and have Martinez with my
Speaker 1: dad before jetting off to London in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: which is where they filmed The Muppet Show. They were
Speaker 1: making good money doing that and selling it to PBS,
Speaker 1: and so this, you know, this sort of the artisanal
Speaker 1: were just a bunch of gosh, We're like, we're at
Speaker 1: the level of associate professors at a little university. It's
Speaker 1: just ridiculous, and it striven me crazy for years, and
Speaker 1: we've gotten nowhere until you got enough mean Republicans finally
Speaker 1: in office to do something about it, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember last comment. I remember in the nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: the Reagan people tried this and failed. The Newt Gingrich
Speaker 1: and Republican Congress wanted to defund it, and they that's
Speaker 1: what they were saying, you want to kill big Bird.
Speaker 1: And Newton would say, big bird makes money. What do
Speaker 1: they need to harm money for? And you know, but
Speaker 1: it's still Republicans were always too timorous to pull the
Speaker 1: trigger and do it.
Speaker 2: But now they have, so you know the other thing
Speaker 2: that was funny about this was that they hit on
Speaker 2: this idea that they would say, but we put George
Speaker 2: Will on PBS. But George Will has been in favor
Speaker 2: of defunding NPR and PBS for twenty years. When this
Speaker 2: came up with Romney, George Will record columns say if
Speaker 2: you can't get rid of that funding, you can't get
Speaker 2: rid of anything. So the person that they were using
Speaker 2: as the avatar of why their balance wants to get
Speaker 2: rid of it too.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yes, indeed, Well maybe we should end with
Speaker 3: this because I saw this news story the other day.
Speaker 3: I knew exactly how he was going to be played,
Speaker 3: but it also brought back a memory, a deeply conflicted
Speaker 3: memory of my youth. Washington Post is reporting that Pump
Speaker 3: Trump is reviving the presidential fitness test. Now, when you
Speaker 3: add this to the Sydney Sweeney bruhaha or kerfluffle or
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it, what we have here is,
Speaker 3: of course, strength through joy. Cue the old newsreels from
Speaker 3: the thirties of young arians with their close cropped hair,
Speaker 3: smiling in the sunshine as they perform calisthenics. But this
Speaker 3: is going to be seen as an example of that.
Speaker 3: It will be seen as quasi fascistist, if not outright so.
Speaker 3: And it will also be seen as absurd because Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: Pip's also a fabulously unhealthy man. It started under Ike
Speaker 3: this thing.
Speaker 1: When I thought I thought it was a Kennedy thing, Sorry,
Speaker 1: so did I.
Speaker 3: But when I researched it, it was Ik who started
Speaker 3: the thing. And you can imagine why. It was part
Speaker 3: of that whole sort of mid fifties panic about youth,
Speaker 3: which plays into the juvenile delinquency, which plays into all
Speaker 3: that stuff that must have just mystified the people coming
Speaker 3: back from the war looking at these kids sitting around
Speaker 3: being complaining and sneering with their switch plates, like what's
Speaker 3: the problem. But we were worried about them not being
Speaker 3: able to read. We were worried about them not having
Speaker 3: science because we're being lapped by Sputnik, and we were
Speaker 3: worried about them becoming sort of physically degenerous and soft.
Speaker 3: So I comes up with this thing where you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to figure out how to do some pullups, You're
Speaker 3: gonna have to do some sit ups. Now, Kennedy I
Speaker 3: think may have surfaced it more and come out with
Speaker 3: a medal for this, that and the other thing, because
Speaker 3: he was all about the vega, even though we know
Speaker 3: that he was fabulously unhealthy himself too, with the backs
Speaker 3: and the pills and the rest of it. But I
Speaker 3: grew up during this period when we were made to
Speaker 3: do these things, when we were humiliated on the stage
Speaker 3: of the grade school gymnasium. My gym teacher was a
Speaker 3: man named ed Gorilla. Mister Gorilla, I wasn't spelled that way.
Speaker 3: It was spelled with an A, but and he had
Speaker 3: a brother named Harold, so there actually was in Fargo
Speaker 3: a Harry Gorilla. But mister Gorilla who sort of in
Speaker 3: my mind is now sort of like this Ed Sullivan
Speaker 3: with a coach's whistle. That's how I imagined him. Was
Speaker 3: tremendously disappointed in me and my inability to do the
Speaker 3: most basic of things. That I would break my neck
Speaker 3: if I show me to the top of the pole
Speaker 3: and touch this. I mean, it's just Jim was a nightmare.
Speaker 3: But the one thing that will never ever ever go
Speaker 3: away is the commanding voice of Robert Preston singing chicken Fat. Charles,
Speaker 3: you know not of what I speak, Stephen, you may.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, very much so.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I remember the presidential fitness test from the first grade,
Speaker 1: and I vaguely recall, you know, folders or literature that
Speaker 1: the presidential seal on it. And it was one of
Speaker 1: my early humiliations as a late blooming athlete, I mean
Speaker 1: very late blooming.
Speaker 3: But we had to do the fifty yard dash timed.
Speaker 3: I wasn't scared of that. It was the six hundred
Speaker 3: that killed me. But go on, oh yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: All I remember is that I still remember my humiliating
Speaker 1: time in the fifty yard dash in the first grade.
Speaker 1: It was eight point five seconds, which is really slow
Speaker 1: even in the first grade. I mean, the best athletes
Speaker 1: in my class. They were doing it in six point
Speaker 1: five seconds and they became you know, wide receivers in
Speaker 1: high school football and whatnot. And anyway, no, I remember
Speaker 1: that that was a very big deal. And plus I've
Speaker 1: always been a Robert Preston fan from The Music Man
Speaker 1: and other great films of that era.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that song done done, touch your toes ten
Speaker 3: times every morning, every morning, not just now, and then
Speaker 3: go you chicken fat. None of us could actually figure
Speaker 3: out what chicken fat was, because when you look at
Speaker 3: the chicken, it seems to be pretty much tightly packed
Speaker 3: with the things that chicken needs and that we would
Speaker 3: later subsequently eat. But chicken fat, I guess was this?
Speaker 3: So I mean, if that was that somehow is now
Speaker 3: seen as this wonderful new frontier. Kennedy asked Camelot thing
Speaker 3: where everybody happily doing their calisthenics in the morning, because
Speaker 3: that's what JFK wanted us to. But now I guarantee
Speaker 3: you it's going to be seen as strength of joy
Speaker 3: and not our camp.
Speaker 1: And you know step one is setting up the camps, right, the.
Speaker 3: Camps have already been set up where Charles is right,
Speaker 3: How close are Charles? How close are you to alligator alcatraz?
Speaker 4: Oh? Quite a long way.
Speaker 2: It's in southern Florida, right in the middle in their
Speaker 2: alligator alley.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, I'm up north near Georgia.
Speaker 3: There have been no confirmed eatings prisoners yet.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Well, I obviously took Trump's advice when he explained how
Speaker 2: to run away from an alligator.
Speaker 3: Oh did he I did? I didn't hear that was
Speaker 3: so funny.
Speaker 2: Well, he went into an extended disquisition about how the
Speaker 2: old conventionalisdom used to be that you should zig zag,
Speaker 2: and if you zigzag, it tries to follow you, and
Speaker 2: its tail is heavy and so it can't catch up
Speaker 2: with you. But now people have realized that you should
Speaker 2: just run in a straight line away from it. So
Speaker 2: he was explaining how to do it if someone escapes.
Speaker 3: I missed that part. I just liked the idea of
Speaker 3: the tail going back and forth and becoming unbalanced certrifically,
Speaker 3: centrifically as it zigs and zags, so that the tail
Speaker 3: exactly you know, moves so fast in an oscillating fashion
Speaker 3: that makes it impossible for the alligator to move forward.
Speaker 3: Does this work with crocodiles, though you know the distinction,
Speaker 3: So does that work with crocs as well?
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think it works with alligats.
Speaker 2: As was the point Trump has realized, apparently at this
Speaker 2: point in his life, that this is a myth.
Speaker 4: It's this thing that is so.
Speaker 2: The number of people who have died in Florida from
Speaker 2: alligator attacks in the last seventy years is fifty. They're
Speaker 2: all the same. They're all the same when you read
Speaker 2: about them. They're sad, but they're also avoidable. Here is
Speaker 2: how you die in an alligator attack in Florida. Step one,
Speaker 2: you have a small dog. Step two, you walk that
Speaker 2: small dog near too near a body of water that
Speaker 2: has alligators in it. Three, an alligator comes up, sees
Speaker 2: the small dog, thinks it looks tasty, and bites it.
Speaker 3: Four.
Speaker 2: Rather than running away and thinking, well, it's very sad,
Speaker 2: that was a nice dog. I'll get another one, you
Speaker 2: think I'll fight the alligator and get Fido back. And
Speaker 2: that's the point of which you die from alligators in Florida.
Speaker 2: Read any story in seventy years, and they're all that.
Speaker 2: There's this conception out there somewhere that people just minding
Speaker 2: their own business having a martini in Florida turn around
Speaker 2: to be four an alligator, and it's just not true.
Speaker 3: So it's walking along with a bond, bond and a leash.
Speaker 3: I get it. Isn't there some sort of basic alligator
Speaker 3: repellent that you could wash your dog in that would
Speaker 3: make it unpalatable? You would see.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, But did you know that about
Speaker 2: an alligators? The reason that they're so dangerous but also
Speaker 2: easy if you're Steve Owen to fight is that the
Speaker 2: muscles that they bite down with are incredibly strong, three
Speaker 2: thousand pounds worth of pressure. But the muscles that they
Speaker 2: used to open their mouth are tiny. They're almost non existent.
Speaker 2: And that's why you can stop an alligator opening its
Speaker 2: mouth with your finger and your thumb. But once it
Speaker 2: bites down on your say your leg, for example, you're done.
Speaker 2: There's no way you could navigate it off. It's like
Speaker 2: being a hydraulic mechanism.
Speaker 3: So the good part then is that you can clam
Speaker 3: its mouth shut with your hands. The bad part would
Speaker 3: appear to be what follows after that.
Speaker 4: That's about right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So people in Florida then carry bungee cords that
Speaker 3: they can just wrap around the snout clip it to.
Speaker 2: If you the alligated guys when we see them sometimes
Speaker 2: because they come out here. Because people see alligats and
Speaker 2: call them in and you're not allowed to kill them,
Speaker 2: and that's you're really in danger. I have to go
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, no, you call them in and then they
Speaker 2: end up in a restaurant. But people use electrical tape.
Speaker 2: That's how weak the alligator is. One wrap round of
Speaker 2: electrical tape on an alligators snout and a can open it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Coming in California, I don't think there's any equivalent to this.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, I think that there is, yeah,
Speaker 3: an era hold over that ought to have gone extinct
Speaker 3: and awful long time.
Speaker 1: It's not a lizard, But so out here in California
Speaker 1: where I live in a remote area and a central coast,
Speaker 1: I'm very close to a public ranch land with trails
Speaker 1: through the forest that was closed yesterday by the fire
Speaker 1: department because of a mountain lion site. And I've always
Speaker 1: been told that if a mountain lion attacks you, you
Speaker 1: will not know it until it's over because they're quiet.
Speaker 1: They you know, jump at you from out of the
Speaker 1: bushes or trees.
Speaker 3: Or something.
Speaker 1: So my normal walking or jogging route is close to
Speaker 1: me right now. So not quite an alligator, but still
Speaker 1: something to worry about.
Speaker 3: They at least seem to evolved a little bit beyond
Speaker 3: the pond dwelling reptilian nightmares that are alligators and crocodiles.
Speaker 3: But I mean, in everybody's mind, they only exist in Florida.
Speaker 3: No other state app no whether state has them. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure how far they go, but you know, at
Speaker 3: least they're at least they're there. We know where they
Speaker 3: are there, they're well contained, gentlemen. Anything else before we go,
Speaker 3: I can't think of what. Oh yeah, Pentagon's going to
Speaker 3: try the Golden Dome sometime this week and get back
Speaker 3: to me on that. Remember being told that missile defense
Speaker 3: was absolutely pointless. Do you remember in the eighties when
Speaker 3: SDI was going on the very idea was technologically impossible
Speaker 3: and also highly highly provocative to do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love pump on this stuff. This is
Speaker 2: the kind of stuff Trump does that no one else
Speaker 2: does that. I admire the space Force in the first term.
Speaker 2: It was a terrific idea that got mocked because of
Speaker 2: its name or for a lack of imagination. But it's
Speaker 2: a really good idea and golden Dome. This is what
Speaker 2: I want the federal government to do. Like, if we're
Speaker 2: going to have a federal government, I have.
Speaker 4: To pay for it. This is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: I agree. Do you know what the most anti ballistic
Speaker 3: missile defense movie ever made might be? If I recall
Speaker 3: correctly Raised the Titanic. Oh, I haven't seen it. You've
Speaker 3: never seen Raise the Titanic. You've probably you've probably seen
Speaker 3: the ship go down a few times. You owed upon
Speaker 3: yourself to see it come back up. It's a very
Speaker 3: interesting movie, broke the studio, it was extremely expensive, rather
Speaker 3: inert in parts, and has one of those long attenuator
Speaker 3: John Berry scores. Oh but I repeat myself, but I've
Speaker 3: always had a soft spot in my heart for it,
Speaker 3: except for the ending, because the whole point of the
Speaker 3: thing is, My God, we can't have strategic defense initiative,
Speaker 3: and we can't have ballistic defense. That would the worst
Speaker 3: thing in the world. It's a strangely, oddly deflating way,
Speaker 3: but it's of a time of the seventies and the eighties,
Speaker 3: with a sort of that what are you gonna do? Nilism?
Speaker 3: Pessimism and civilizational exhaustion that you saw at the times,
Speaker 3: which I'm happy to say, does not seem to be
Speaker 3: animating the right side of the creative world. At this time.
Speaker 3: There seems to be actual interest, passionate support Western seven.
Speaker 3: If the other guys want to be at and moan
Speaker 3: about it, go ahead and make that case to the public.
Speaker 3: We have made our own case from ricocheta at the
Speaker 3: public for the last hour and now are declining to
Speaker 3: do anything. But thank you Charles, thank you Steven, Thank
Speaker 3: you the listeners for listening. Go to ricochet dot com
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Speaker 3: That's why it's one of the best comment sections on
Speaker 3: the internet. You'll find Rica dot com. Head there, gentlemen,
Speaker 3: it's been a pleasure as ever. We'll see everybody in
Speaker 3: the comments at Ricochet four point oh and goodbye.