Speaker 1: We're just getting a couple of scratchy notes when you're
Speaker 1: especially emphatic or loud.
Speaker 2: I promise not to be emphatic. This entire pod.
Speaker 1: Not what your country can do for you and what
Speaker 1: you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister gorbitchaw tear down this wall.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast, but Steve Hayward sitting in for
Speaker 1: James Lilac, joined by Charles C. W Cook and Rob Long,
Speaker 1: and we're going to kick around the news ahead of
Speaker 1: Christmas week.
Speaker 3: Let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 1: They're a five hundred plus pages related to healthcare policy,
Speaker 1: which doesn't.
Speaker 4: Have anything to do with keeping the government open.
Speaker 2: There's a one hundred billion dollars of disaster relief in here,
Speaker 2: which is desperately needed, by the way, but should be
Speaker 2: its own standalone bill.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: As you know I'm in the final weeks of my presidency.
Speaker 3: You don't have to clap for that.
Speaker 4: You can if you want.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast, Episode seven one. This is Steve
Speaker 1: Heyward substituting for the usual dulcet tones of James Lylyax,
Speaker 1: who's not with us today.
Speaker 3: But I'm joined by Charles C.
Speaker 1: W cook and some wandering stranger named Rob Long wandering
Speaker 1: past right, wandering mendicant, and so welcome, gentlemen.
Speaker 3: We don't have a guest today.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be us kicking around some holiday thoughts,
Speaker 1: going over some news of the day. But I do
Speaker 1: I think want to start by saying, Rob, you have
Speaker 1: just finished your first semester in seminary on your way
Speaker 1: of taking fully orders, and I'm interested in that. This
Speaker 1: is this venture, this quest of yours in general terms.
Speaker 1: But also I sort of remember my first semester in
Speaker 1: graduate school a long time ago now, and how much
Speaker 1: more intense it was than being an undergraduate.
Speaker 3: So I don't know how's it gone. Are you done yet?
Speaker 3: Are you learning? Ara Maic? What are the highlights for us?
Speaker 2: I have learned. Here's what I've learned. I've learned it's
Speaker 2: been a lesson of humility, right, which is good, right,
Speaker 2: because that's the sort of the especially an advent. He's
Speaker 2: good to remember that. And the humility comes from two things.
Speaker 2: One the humility of stepping away from politics for a
Speaker 2: while and then being humbled by the fact that I
Speaker 2: had to shell out one thousand dollars from a bet
Speaker 2: I made two years ago saying there's no way Trump's
Speaker 2: gonna win.
Speaker 3: Was that with Anne Coulter?
Speaker 2: No, I think Ann Culter actually, I think she actually
Speaker 2: agreed with me two years ago. And it is like
Speaker 2: constant cycles and is like always iterating. She's like a
Speaker 2: you know, kind of a web app. She's always getting better.
Speaker 2: I just thought it's just not gonna happen. And also
Speaker 2: just that I discovered that, you know, I'm I'm a
Speaker 2: man of a certain age, and at a certain point,
Speaker 2: your brain, the human brain, my brain anyway, cannot understand
Speaker 2: how to memorize biblical Greek. Oh, I just can't do it.
Speaker 2: And I'm old enough to know I can't do it,
Speaker 2: old enough also to be mad about it, not at myself,
Speaker 2: but the idea that I'm supposed to because I because
Speaker 2: I can't do it. I mean, I just been a
Speaker 2: giant disaster for me. I kind of feel like, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, I have a book. Just give me a
Speaker 2: class where you teach me how to look this crap up.
Speaker 2: I'll look it up. That and Hebrew. Just give me
Speaker 2: cocktail party Greek and cocktail party Hebrew. And I'm sad.
Speaker 2: There's always a book I'm well enough for every When
Speaker 2: people said to me when in math class, well, you're
Speaker 2: not always going to have a calculator, Well, no, I
Speaker 2: get I literally always have a calculator. There's always a
Speaker 2: I got this. There's an app for Biblical Greek is
Speaker 2: an app for Hebrew. I don't need to memorize anything.
Speaker 2: I can't memorize anyway. So that that is the that
Speaker 2: that has been very humbling. On the other hand, what
Speaker 2: I discovered is that it's really fun that that I
Speaker 2: recommend it to people. If you've ever had this sort
Speaker 2: of sense that wouldn't it be great if my job
Speaker 2: today was to read do it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Anybody tell you you're too old, because you're not too old.
Speaker 2: You're too old probably to memorize Greek, but you're not
Speaker 2: too old to do a lot of other great things.
Speaker 2: So that's money.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I am. They're still saying that youth
Speaker 3: is wasted on the young.
Speaker 1: I've I've well, I've long ago concluded that education is
Speaker 1: wasted on the young in many cases too are uh
Speaker 1: and uh, you know I well, so you're I'm guessing
Speaker 1: probably the oldest person in your graduate class.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, back off, buddy, I am one of them.
Speaker 3: Okay, but uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that my observation as an undergraduate,
Speaker 1: and I had a lot of you know, older Vietnam
Speaker 1: war vets who had come back to college, they were
Speaker 1: always that this is in the seventies. They were always
Speaker 1: the most interesting people in class, always the best at
Speaker 1: drawing things out of both the faculty and us fellow
Speaker 1: students who were just right out of high school and stupid.
Speaker 1: Uh and and and and then you know, now that
Speaker 1: I'm a classroom teacher again myself, I observe the same thing.
Speaker 1: The older students are always the ones who have it
Speaker 1: together more. Just a little bit of real world experience
Speaker 1: makes a ton of difference in educate facial venture. One
Speaker 1: quick question then I'll see if Charlie has any theological
Speaker 1: increase for you.
Speaker 2: I'm available Charlie to be your spiritual guide.
Speaker 1: Is there any one particular aspect of this is too broad,
Speaker 1: I wish I could do more specific, rob But is
Speaker 1: there any one particular thing that has caught your attention?
Speaker 1: You weren't anticipating or that's a surprise.
Speaker 2: Studies, you're just the idea of being a student.
Speaker 3: No, in the studies such a matter.
Speaker 2: As a Christian, there's just a tendency. You know, obviously
Speaker 2: it's a you know, come you can get, you come
Speaker 2: to it in good faith. But there's a tendency to
Speaker 2: read the Hebrew Bible as like a preview of coming attractions. Ah, right,
Speaker 2: are they okay? This is a spoiler alert. It's a
Speaker 2: giant drum roll. And anytime I'm confused or I am
Speaker 2: reacting in a weird way to something in the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 2: I can say, well, you know, here's the problem. You
Speaker 2: all need Jesus, that's the problem, and he's on his way.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a that's a mistake. And I
Speaker 2: you know, I luckily I have two professors in Old
Speaker 2: Testament ex Jesus, who are you know, fairly devout Christians.
Speaker 2: One is the fact of practicing minister. And I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say this can sound horrible and racist in one of
Speaker 2: those Korean churches that I just can never keep straight right,
Speaker 2: And they've both been really great about never doing that.
Speaker 2: And it's amazing when you never do that, and you
Speaker 2: just that's the thing that's a tendency you always fight
Speaker 2: how much the whole thing kind of explodes this. There's
Speaker 2: a really there's a reason. I know, I'm going on
Speaker 2: and on and on. Although it's ad event, there is
Speaker 2: no reason in Western political social thought that can explain
Speaker 2: the explain the persistence of the Hebrew Bible and the
Speaker 2: New Testament and their persistence. There is no reason for it.
Speaker 2: There should be no Jews in the world if we
Speaker 2: believe in the patterns of history crushed by empires to
Speaker 2: the Egyptian Empire and the Syrian Empire and the Babylonian Fire,
Speaker 2: and the Persian Empire, then the Greeks and then the Romans.
Speaker 2: And nobody's going to worship Raw or Jupiter or Zeus
Speaker 2: or Zoraster or anybody like that. Well, yeah, very few.
Speaker 2: And there's how come there's going to be a reason.
Speaker 2: And I think the reason is, you know, that's why
Speaker 2: the Hebrew Bibles so fascinating that the reasons.
Speaker 3: Well, funny story for you on that, Rob.
Speaker 1: I remember remarking some years ago now that the Florida
Speaker 1: two thousand election was so close that any group could
Speaker 1: claim to have been the swing vote that put Bush
Speaker 1: over the top, Theoroastrian vote. And the young lady I
Speaker 1: was telling us to says well, actually I'm sorrow Astrian.
Speaker 3: It turned out I met the only she was from
Speaker 3: that part of it.
Speaker 1: Rod and themmigrants, who is now now a federal judge
Speaker 1: by the way, appointed by President Trump.
Speaker 3: Will just add that little detail for the fun of it.
Speaker 1: Charlie, do you have any theological curiosity you want to
Speaker 1: draw out of Rob?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to win back the fire worshiping. Wow.
Speaker 3: If he's going to find the grayil for us or something.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing I would say is I would
Speaker 4: strongly advise Perry against using the pull quote from your
Speaker 4: last there should be no Jews in the world. You
Speaker 4: paused after you said it, and I thought, O, where's
Speaker 4: this one go?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I get accused of two positions on religion that I
Speaker 4: don't hold. It's a strange existence. One is I'm reflexively
Speaker 4: accused of being an evangelical because I'm pro life. The
Speaker 4: other is that I'm accused of hating religion or being
Speaker 4: annoyed by it or opposed to it in some way,
Speaker 4: which just isn't true. I just don't have it. I'm
Speaker 4: a very literal atheist. I'm married to it about Catholic
Speaker 4: My children are being raised Catholic. I like religion. I
Speaker 4: wish I had it, but I don't, and I'm not
Speaker 4: going to say I do until I do, out of
Speaker 4: respect for myself and others. I was raised culturally Christian.
Speaker 4: I'm pleased about that. I had a guy on my podcast,
Speaker 4: Catholic Priest, and we talked about the existence of God
Speaker 4: a few months ago. It was very good. And someone
Speaker 4: said to me recently, you know there was a good
Speaker 4: conversation because you didn't scoff, And I said, well, I
Speaker 4: didn't feel tempted to scoff. I'd have to scoff at
Speaker 4: my own wife. I think that'd be bizarre, and most
Speaker 4: of my colleagues. So I don't know if I have questions,
Speaker 4: but I'm certainly interested. And also, you can't escape, and
Speaker 4: I don't use that word to imply that I want to.
Speaker 4: You can't escape the poll of this time of year,
Speaker 4: even if you don't believe in the metaphysical parts of it.
Speaker 4: If you were raised with it, which I was, and
Speaker 4: the schools I went to were Christian and the culture
Speaker 4: was Christian, you just can't escape the power of it.
Speaker 4: So I just wanted to throw that in there, because
Speaker 4: even though I don't believe that it is Troo, at
Speaker 4: least not yet. My friends keep telling me, Ah.
Speaker 1: The.
Speaker 4: Power of the story is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll just two quick observations and then we'll press
Speaker 1: on to some of the current headlines. One is, Charlie,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that people assume you must be a religious
Speaker 1: fanatic because your pro life. You know someone who is
Speaker 1: strongly pro life, although it didn't seem to come up
Speaker 1: that often in discussions, was Christopher Hitchins. It was not
Speaker 1: just an atheist, but very hostile to organized or even
Speaker 1: disorganized religion.
Speaker 3: Right, he was very strongly. He's not the only one,
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: The late nat Hentoff was also pro life. Yeah so,
Speaker 1: and by the way, they both said it on logical grounds.
Speaker 3: Human life has to begin.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, well the most logical places, added in your conception, okay.
Speaker 1: And Hitchins was blunt about that whatever came up, as
Speaker 1: he was on all things.
Speaker 3: Second, you know, I think I'm with you on you know,
Speaker 3: organized religion.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's an oxymoron, maybe not, But I do sometimes
Speaker 1: like to draw people's attention to something. C. S. Lewis
Speaker 1: wrote in his book Surprised by Joe, which tells about
Speaker 1: him becoming a Christian, and in there he really does
Speaker 1: confess that, gosh, I really don't like organized religion. I
Speaker 1: don't often like going to church. I find it sort
Speaker 1: of stuffy and clunky. And so even someone as pious
Speaker 1: and metaphysically inclined as Lewis has some of your disposition
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: So you're not so much aboutwire. I'll just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just can I make a pastoral note, Charlie, Sure,
Speaker 2: I go to church because of something that I need,
Speaker 2: not something that I have, So you don't have to
Speaker 2: have it to go.
Speaker 4: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: I mean I feel like that there's something there that
Speaker 2: I need, and I probably need it more than once
Speaker 2: a week, and that's why I go. I don't go
Speaker 2: as a There's a whole there's an argument now, sort
Speaker 2: of a big debate, and I'm sure we don't have
Speaker 2: to get into this theological debate here, because there's like
Speaker 2: as important politics to talk about. There's a department of
Speaker 2: the Second Day of the Interior or whatever. But the
Speaker 2: big debate is who gets to who gets to receive
Speaker 2: the Eucharist at a church, And the traditional word is
Speaker 2: you have to be baptized and confirmed or baptizing coff
Speaker 2: in some way, so you'd have to be not so
Speaker 2: that church, but sort of very conservative. And I'm cerifically
Speaker 2: talking about the American Episcopal Church, Anglican slice. I don't
Speaker 2: really know any other denomination. The argument as well, okay,
Speaker 2: well if you don't have to be if you haven't
Speaker 2: been confirmed, maybe at least you have to have been baptized.
Speaker 2: And they say the phrase they use is font to
Speaker 2: table baptism, font to the altered table, to the Eucharist table.
Speaker 2: That's the direction you're supposed to go in. And there's
Speaker 2: a bunch of other like Lucy Goosey, progressive weirdos like me,
Speaker 2: who think no anybody can come and receive because it's
Speaker 2: not our feast, it's not our table, it's not our invitation.
Speaker 2: We're just the caterers, and the invitation doesn't come from us,
Speaker 2: and the person the invitation comes from famously had an
Speaker 2: open door policy. So sometimes you go, and sometimes I go,
Speaker 2: and I and I feel absolutely nothing, and I simply
Speaker 2: sit there in the pew and I organize my week.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I go and I think, why am I here?
Speaker 2: I had a bunch of reading to do, and I'm hired,
Speaker 2: I'm going to homegoing to take a nap, or I'm
Speaker 2: hungry or whatever. I wish I had had that third
Speaker 2: glass of wine last night. And sometimes I go and
Speaker 2: I get close to experiencing what I'm supposed to experience
Speaker 2: or what is what is? What is what I've been
Speaker 2: invited there to experience, whether I've been there or not.
Speaker 2: So you know, that's why I go. I go for something.
Speaker 2: I don't go as an expression of faith. I go
Speaker 2: because I need it. So that's a different way to
Speaker 2: look at it. Just that way be my pastoral note
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 4: But doesn't it you know, well, I do, and so
Speaker 4: I go with my wife and kids. And then there
Speaker 4: are parts of it that are not canonical, if you will,
Speaker 4: but nevertheless powerful. For example, the music I grow up
Speaker 4: that too, So that's partly a matter of reminiscence. The
Speaker 4: thing that really matters to me is whether or not
Speaker 4: I believe the claim at the heart of it, And
Speaker 4: you mentioned C. S. Lewis. He is pretty big on that.
Speaker 4: So I can do what you just described, although I
Speaker 4: don't get the experience that you described unless I'm confusing
Speaker 4: it for music sometimes I suppose. But it matters to
Speaker 4: me that I don't believe the core claim that it's
Speaker 4: being made in the sermon or in the texts. Does
Speaker 4: it matter too much? Do you think? Do you think
Speaker 4: I'm over thinking?
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people feel that way. I
Speaker 2: think that's that's legitimate. I mean these are hard things
Speaker 2: to believe, right, I mean it's filled with miracles and
Speaker 2: weird events, right, so yeah, that should be very hardly.
Speaker 2: I don't I'm not. I don't think that's a problem.
Speaker 2: I just want to I want you to. I went
Speaker 2: to Israel a little while ago, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: before before October seventh, but I went. It was in Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: and I spent the first few days doing this kind
Speaker 2: of thing where I looked around and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: well I had a guide and the guide was like, okay,
Speaker 2: here around here is probably where this or that happened.
Speaker 2: And so I spent at least three of the days
Speaker 2: that I was there just doing this kind of like
Speaker 2: CSI Jesus, right, there any evidence? You're like, of course,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence, right, because it's like what happened twenty
Speaker 2: feet below whatever? You know, it happened. You know, Jerusalem
Speaker 2: has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. And then I
Speaker 2: stopped doing that, and I said, Okay, what if I
Speaker 2: just didn't worry about that part? And what is the
Speaker 2: faith that this what is this faith actually asking me
Speaker 2: to do? And I think we are stuck sometimes in
Speaker 2: the idea that the faith is asking us to believe
Speaker 2: a set of principles. We have a nice in Creed,
Speaker 2: we have apostles Creed. It's interesting with nice in Creed.
Speaker 2: It lists the very very specific aspects of Christ's birth,
Speaker 2: the very specific aspects of his death, the very specific
Speaker 2: aspects of Chris Christology, which people been fighting over for years.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really say anything about the stuff he did
Speaker 2: or said or taught. It's like you're getting a sandwich
Speaker 2: with just the pieces of bread and no meat inside.
Speaker 2: And I think it's kind of easy, actually not easy,
Speaker 2: but it's easier to believe or convince yourself, or convince others,
Speaker 2: or believe even truly believe in all of those events.
Speaker 2: It's much easier to do that than it is to
Speaker 2: actually live the way he told you to live. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons why we well, we
Speaker 2: focused on them.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a reason that's called faith.
Speaker 1: Charlie and Rob and I some other time, you and
Speaker 1: I can argue about salvation by grace alone or other
Speaker 1: aspects of it.
Speaker 3: And for the listeners who haven't chased away, who came to.
Speaker 2: We're just don't you know, hot.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to extend the metaphor divine intervention because
Speaker 1: maybe the House Republicans could use some divine intervention right now,
Speaker 1: having completely flobbed the continuing resolution to keep the government open.
Speaker 3: And I mean there's a whole lot to be said
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 1: The usual people in the chattering classes are aghast that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and Twitter may have whipped up the mob
Speaker 1: to prevent the House from passing a resolution. Other people
Speaker 1: in the grassroots are pointing to a lot of a
Speaker 1: technical term is crap that was in the bill.
Speaker 3: We could list some and you know, Charlie may one
Speaker 3: list a few of these.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I make about this, Charlie, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're following this, probably more closely than I am.
Speaker 4: I have a big problem with the tactic that we're
Speaker 4: now seeing, which is to wait until the end of
Speaker 4: the year, throw everything into one bill against the deadline,
Speaker 4: then focus in on one part of it that you
Speaker 4: think is the most politically popular and claim that those
Speaker 4: who don't want to pass the bill as is are
Speaker 4: opposed to that. They do this every time, they push
Speaker 4: it and push it and push it, and then they
Speaker 4: come up with this behemoth of a bill, one section
Speaker 4: of which is the Saving Kittens Act. And then you say,
Speaker 4: I don't think we should do this because of all
Speaker 4: of the other things that are in the bill, and
Speaker 4: they say Representative Cook opposes the Saving Kittens Act or
Speaker 4: is blocking the Saving Kittens Act. And now they've added
Speaker 4: on to this blame for Elon Musk. Now it's Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's billionaire friends are blocking the Saving Kittens Act. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, Congress could right now, literally right now, on Thursday,
Speaker 4: December nineteenth, take that part of the bill, bring it
Speaker 4: to the floor, and vote on it. The argument here
Speaker 4: is that there are portions of this continuing Resolution that
Speaker 4: have overwhelming bipartisan support that would never be fit lebusted.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't even need a full chamber in either part
Speaker 4: of the legislature.
Speaker 3: So do it.
Speaker 4: If it is imperative that we have disaster Aid, which
Speaker 4: is this year's Saving Kittens Act. I think there's a
Speaker 4: lot of pork in there, and a lot of problems
Speaker 4: by the way that it's been structured. But if that
Speaker 4: is imperative right now for North Carolina, for Florida, for elsewhere,
Speaker 4: go do it. Just pull it out, do it, and
Speaker 4: then keep arguing about the rest of the stuff. But
Speaker 4: of course they don't want to do it. Now. You
Speaker 4: are going to have some degree of that in any
Speaker 4: democratic system because people horse trade and they should. You
Speaker 4: can't have politics without it. I would love it if
Speaker 4: every single part of every bill were voted on separately,
Speaker 4: so we could see who voted for what. But you're
Speaker 4: never going to get that. You are going to get
Speaker 4: quote pro quote, but this there has to be some
Speaker 4: space right between every part of every bill being voted
Speaker 4: on independently and yes or no at the end of
Speaker 4: the year. So I really object to this tactic, and
Speaker 4: I think it is a good thing. Irrespective of the
Speaker 4: motivations or whether or not there's a plan. I think
Speaker 4: it is a good thing. That's someone has finally said no,
Speaker 4: just to make the argument against it. Even if we
Speaker 4: end up with a bill that looks very much like
Speaker 4: this continuing resolution and then we have to have the
Speaker 4: same fight next year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, oh gosh.
Speaker 1: I could go on all day about the incompetence of
Speaker 1: this whole scene.
Speaker 3: The fact that it doesn't follow the law, which.
Speaker 1: Is now almost fifty years old, about how Congress is
Speaker 1: supposed to pass the budgets every year. And then second,
Speaker 1: I mean, but even if you're saying, oh gosh, we've
Speaker 1: once again fritted away an entire year and we have
Speaker 1: to do a continuing resolution to keep the government going,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that if you had any wit
Speaker 1: about you, you would pass a budget resolution that reduced
Speaker 1: spending by even a small amount.
Speaker 3: Spread the pain around. Second, I don't understand why.
Speaker 1: Somebody is an alert to all the things being snuck
Speaker 1: into this bill so or another one.
Speaker 3: I take some hostages.
Speaker 1: What I've said was is, look, if I was a
Speaker 1: member of the House and unhappy about things, you can.
Speaker 3: Have my vote.
Speaker 1: If you gave me five budget cuts, cut funding the
Speaker 1: Planned parenthood, cut funding, the NPR cut the State Department
Speaker 1: grants to leftist NGOs around the world that are essentially
Speaker 1: subsidies for left wing activism.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't amount to much money.
Speaker 1: But you take it this time, then you go and
Speaker 1: do it again the next time, and that would be
Speaker 1: some progress. Oh there's also some definitional changes. Some people
Speaker 1: have flagged this on Twitter, where the language in the
Speaker 1: bill says, for like the appropriation for the Justice Department,
Speaker 1: They're want to change the definition of defending.
Speaker 3: To justice involved individuals.
Speaker 2: It's always, you know, woke euphemistically involved individuals.
Speaker 3: I mean, how in the world, how do Republicans run
Speaker 3: the House? Let this slip through. No one's reading this,
Speaker 3: no one's paying attention.
Speaker 1: I have theories about why the capacities to do that,
Speaker 1: even mentally have an atrophy to almost nothing.
Speaker 3: But now I'm with you, Charlie. I'm delighted they're turning
Speaker 3: it down.
Speaker 1: And by the way, last point, government shutdown we always
Speaker 1: hear well as we know, if you pay attention, social
Speaker 1: Security checks still go out, Care and Medicaid still get paid.
Speaker 1: The military is still on watch and getting paid. Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, is your local police department still patrolling
Speaker 1: the streets? How about your local public schools? Is Governor
Speaker 1: Newsom sadly still on the job. In California, we have
Speaker 1: something like thirty thousand governmental units in this country, and
Speaker 1: only one is partially interrupting its business for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. This is Washington media theater is what's going on.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think most people wouldn't notice. I
Speaker 1: don't think maybe in some small ways you know the mails,
Speaker 1: but even the mail gets delivered. So this whole government
Speaker 1: shutdown to what's the end of the world has become
Speaker 1: a real farce, and I can't believe we haven't figured
Speaker 1: that out by now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's the feature of it, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: if I just have cut out the date of the
Speaker 2: newspaper and just started reading articles about the eminent government
Speaker 2: shutdown and the budget sealing debate, you would know what
Speaker 2: year we were in. You would know you were in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. I think that we were in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five for that matter, because we had this conversation
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. This is actually the way it gets done,
Speaker 2: and it's the worst way possible, and we sort of
Speaker 2: can't bestir ourselves to fix it. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: what you do when you put everything off the last minute.
Speaker 2: You then can't be blamed for the fact that it's
Speaker 2: all crap, because of course it's crap. We did it
Speaker 2: in forty eight hours before we all want for Christmas.
Speaker 2: The downside of a government shutdown is the shutdown. The
Speaker 2: downside is what it turned when they eventually turn it
Speaker 2: back on. And when they turn it back on, they
Speaker 2: pay everybody in the arrears. Everybody gets paid and they
Speaker 2: get paid even more. It costs more to shut the
Speaker 2: government down. That's the problem. The other problem, I think
Speaker 2: is that we don't we don't have a real sense
Speaker 2: of what it is we want this federal government to do.
Speaker 2: And it was much easier when we thought, here's what
Speaker 2: we want them to do. We want them to make
Speaker 2: sure the Soviets know we're going to obliterate the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union if they try to obliterate the United States. That
Speaker 2: was the goal. And if without that then we're kind
Speaker 2: of a drift. And so I'm always I'm always surprised
Speaker 2: when I read the America First Crowd, which is, by
Speaker 2: the way, a philosophy that I find very compelling a
Speaker 2: lot of ways, but also arguing to make the military bigger.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, wait a minute, we're not going to
Speaker 2: have those wars, so we're not going to fight them.
Speaker 2: We let other people fight them. We should just be
Speaker 2: protecting our borders. We it's a much smaller we need
Speaker 2: a much smaller military. We're going to do that. So
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of big decisions we just don't want
Speaker 2: to make, notwithstanding the fact that it still is about entitlements,
Speaker 2: it's still about Medicare and social security, and it's not
Speaker 2: it's not going to change until we have a big
Speaker 2: I mean it may it may end up that we
Speaker 2: all look at each other and say, you know, that
Speaker 2: president that we didn't really like very much that got
Speaker 2: us into a stupid war in Iraq, George W. Bush
Speaker 2: turns out he was right about social security, and we
Speaker 2: pass social Security reform when we had a chance, we
Speaker 2: would be in a much different fiscal place than we
Speaker 2: are now.
Speaker 4: So can I give you the devil's advocate on that?
Speaker 4: Because I agree with you? So I just want to
Speaker 4: steal man this. I I agree with you. If you
Speaker 4: think about where we would be now if social security
Speaker 4: had been privatized, if you look at the gains of
Speaker 4: the stock market over the last twenty years, it would
Speaker 4: have fixed the problem. Here's the one worry that I
Speaker 4: have with the counterfacture two thousand and eight. We know
Speaker 4: this now, yeah, but in two thousand and eight, when
Speaker 4: all of the markets crashed. Bush would have gone from
Speaker 4: approval eighteen twenty eight percent to two. The Republicans would
Speaker 4: have been wiped out in greater numbers than they were,
Speaker 4: and the Democrats would have renationalized Social security. I just
Speaker 4: can't see any other outcome. They would have looked at
Speaker 4: it and said, not only do we have all the
Speaker 4: problems that we had in two thousand and five, which
Speaker 4: is when they would have changed this, we're now in
Speaker 4: the hole. The outlook for it is impossible. That's the
Speaker 4: problem I've got. I just don't think it can sustain.
Speaker 4: Maybe now it could because you'd have had twenty years
Speaker 4: agains back COVID. It would have been another one you
Speaker 4: remember that day in the stock market where it went Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I mean there's there are ways. There were solutions
Speaker 2: to that. They may may may may have been a
Speaker 2: danger zone in the early days of it. But the idea,
Speaker 2: what look, if you if you could, if you can
Speaker 2: convince the lenders, all the lenders, not just worldwide but
Speaker 2: in markets every day, that in thirty years, in forty years,
Speaker 2: this won't be a problem. You will feel the effects
Speaker 2: today in the economy. Positive effects. We're talking about fifteen
Speaker 2: thirty year notes section. So there's there are ways around it.
Speaker 2: The problem is you just you you. Nobody really wants
Speaker 2: to do it because everybody likes big government. Even people
Speaker 2: who say they don't like big government, they just don't
Speaker 2: like your big government. They like their big government. Now
Speaker 2: you are I remember that great. I saw what once.
Speaker 2: This is a million billion years ago. I was driving
Speaker 2: through a town, a small town in California and Central Valley,
Speaker 2: and it was a tea party rally. This is before
Speaker 2: the tea parties became sort of a basically a political
Speaker 2: grip based in Washington, when it was still a bunch
Speaker 2: of old people marching around with signs, and one of
Speaker 2: the signs said say no to socialism, hands off my.
Speaker 3: Medicare medicare right.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'm not sure these are all right.
Speaker 4: I'm going to defend that too. Yeah, I'm serious.
Speaker 3: No, I get agree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree that there is a complete paradox in
Speaker 4: the way a lot of people think about big government.
Speaker 4: I agree that we have big government because we want it.
Speaker 4: I agree that nobody wants to fix it. It hasn't gone
Speaker 4: a miss on me that the Republican who has won
Speaker 4: the last two times has explicitly run against fixing entitlements,
Speaker 4: so totally agree. Here's why I'll defend that sign. The
Speaker 4: Obamacare debate was in full flow. Obamacare took money out
Speaker 4: of Medicare, which annoyed people. The Democratic Party, since Social
Speaker 4: Security was passed and then thirty years later Medicare was passed,
Speaker 4: has told people erroneously and dishonestly that it is just
Speaker 4: an insurance program. There was actually Supreme Court case about
Speaker 4: this where Social Security was taken to the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: and the government had to admit that it was not
Speaker 4: in fact an insurance program, that it was a welfare program.
Speaker 4: The reason that I have some sympathy for the person
Speaker 4: who held up that sign that thought some of the
Speaker 4: mockery was unfair, was that that person has been told
Speaker 4: over and over and over and over again that they
Speaker 4: have paid in to an insurance program for their retirement
Speaker 4: fund and for their retirement healthcare, that it's their money
Speaker 4: that they're not getting out anything they didn't put in,
Speaker 4: and that it's unreasonable for people to take it away,
Speaker 4: and they believed it. What trolled me about that incident
Speaker 4: was that those people who have been told this at
Speaker 4: that point for seventy eighty ninety years then turned around
Speaker 4: to the Democrats who were trying to change this with Obamacare,
Speaker 4: and said, hands off my Medicare. I paid into it's
Speaker 4: an insurance program. And the Democrats started mocking them for it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I just thought that was sort of deeply unfair. Of
Speaker 4: course it is silly, but for the Democrats, not Europe,
Speaker 4: for the Democrats to do what they did when they
Speaker 4: saw that science, I just thought it was.
Speaker 1: Like, come on, well, the important thing is I think
Speaker 1: the case you're referring to charity, if I remember, right,
Speaker 1: is hel Ring v.
Speaker 3: Davis from a long time ago. And what it means is.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about social security, medicare as, entitlements.
Speaker 3: That case means it's not an entitlement.
Speaker 1: Strictly speaking, it can be taken away from you by
Speaker 1: the legislature.
Speaker 3: You don't own anything now.
Speaker 1: I think an additional difficulty is a lawful lot of people,
Speaker 1: probably a majority of Americans, are risk averse. If you
Speaker 1: tell them we will guarantee you, quote unquote guarantee you
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars a month, or we can have this
Speaker 1: private account system where you have a seventy five percent
Speaker 1: chance of having thirty five hundred dollars a month, and
Speaker 1: you retire a lot of people are going to opt
Speaker 1: for the first one because it's certain and the other
Speaker 1: one has And then add in, as Rob points out,
Speaker 1: a couple of crashes. Now, I'm a contrarian. Every time
Speaker 1: the market tanks like I did this week. Not so
Speaker 1: much this week, but the supervious ones, I get greedy
Speaker 1: and I buy like crazy, handover fists and yes, but see,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're contrarian thinker about these things, you
Speaker 1: do very well on markets like that you bought the day,
Speaker 1: if you bought an October twenty, nineteen eighty seven, you
Speaker 1: did really, really well. And you know, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to brag about my I mean, I'm not Warren Buffett,
Speaker 1: but I've done very well by being You got.
Speaker 2: An nice house in the you got an nice house
Speaker 2: on the coast.
Speaker 3: I knew.
Speaker 1: I'm looking out the ocean right now out my window.
Speaker 1: So there's that problem. And I do think that even
Speaker 1: if you have some shock absorbers, a robort of suggest
Speaker 1: that you could solve this problem by sort of reinsurance.
Speaker 1: In a certain way of it, I still think the
Speaker 1: mass psychology of a crash and the uncertainty would make
Speaker 1: it politically fraught to try and maintain it.
Speaker 3: I would see the government would regulate it today.
Speaker 2: I would also say that probably our and I think, Charlie,
Speaker 2: that's a very good distinction, because I think even our
Speaker 2: language of calling them entitlements is wrong, right, Because there's
Speaker 2: a retirement savings, old age savings, rainy day fund, which
Speaker 2: is sort of what SO security is in general. It's
Speaker 2: a rainy day fund for some people. It's got disability
Speaker 2: insurance associated with it, it has early retirement, has like you know,
Speaker 2: dependent and orphan widow stuff, and it also has retirement
Speaker 2: fund all wrapped up. And that's a financial instrument essentially,
Speaker 2: or more than one about three different financial insurance. And
Speaker 2: then there's health Insurancehreich is Medicare, which is not a
Speaker 2: financial instrument by any means, and isn't really insurance in
Speaker 2: any meaningful way. It is simply an account with which
Speaker 2: we as a culture and a country, fund each other's
Speaker 2: health in some ways. And we often, and this always
Speaker 2: bugs be when people say things that, well, you know,
Speaker 2: Americans spend x percent of this on that I they
Speaker 2: shouldn't spend that much, Like, well, what on earth you're
Speaker 2: spending your money on. If you're not spending your money
Speaker 2: on your health, actually, what are you spending it on? Well,
Speaker 2: we don't have the same outcomes. We have worse outcomes
Speaker 2: than they do. That's because we do more, and maybe
Speaker 2: we do too much. Maybe people are going to the
Speaker 2: doctor too often, or maybe they're taking antibe autist when
Speaker 2: they shouldn't, and that may be another problem. But we
Speaker 2: actually have a very very very aggressive and innovative and
Speaker 2: incredibly flexible health system in this country. And if you'd
Speaker 2: said ten years ago that I would be able to
Speaker 2: go on my zoom and go to a doctor and
Speaker 2: get my you know toe looked at, and get a
Speaker 2: prescription at the and the CBS would down there around
Speaker 2: the corner would send me a push alert telling me
Speaker 2: that the prescriptions ready for me and within ten minutes.
Speaker 2: That's an amazing thing. You don't have that in any
Speaker 2: other country. And so I always think of like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we're not spending enough on help, Maybe we don't
Speaker 2: need to keep the cost of health insurance down. What
Speaker 2: we what are you going to spend it on? I
Speaker 2: can spend it on that.
Speaker 4: One reason that we spend so much is that Americans
Speaker 4: simply won't put up with the outcomes that you get
Speaker 4: in say, Britain. My parents are experiencing this at the moment.
Speaker 4: My dad had a knee operation recently before they had
Speaker 4: a hip replacement. Get to go private because the hip
Speaker 4: replacement would have taken three and a half years. Americans
Speaker 4: won't accept that. And so both within the government spending
Speaker 4: and the private spending, we don't have the rationing that
Speaker 4: we have in other systems, which means we spend more money.
Speaker 4: We're also a lot richer, and as you say, when
Speaker 4: you're rich, you spend money on healthcare, because why wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think that's absolutely true. But I think
Speaker 2: also just in terms of how we just the accounting
Speaker 2: for outcomes, you don't have a bad outcome for hip replacement,
Speaker 2: you didn't yet, and you don't have a bad outcome
Speaker 2: for a procedure that you will get somewhere else. So
Speaker 2: in France you don't have these bad outcomes because they don't.
Speaker 2: You don't get it. Same thing in Britain or in Canada.
Speaker 2: You're in line. You don't get it.
Speaker 4: When you come to America, you're really sick, Yeah, come
Speaker 4: to America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get and you may and that outcome mean. Look, look,
Speaker 2: spending more on health, health insurance or health care doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that you're not going to die of a disease.
Speaker 2: It just means that we're going to probably spend a
Speaker 2: whole lot of money making sure that trying to make
Speaker 2: sure that doesn't happen. Well, and that's gonna mean, that's
Speaker 2: gonna that's going to mean your outcomes aren't as good.
Speaker 2: But but I still say, like, I hate it when
Speaker 2: people say, well, we should be spent we should not
Speaker 2: be spending as much as we spend on healthcare, and
Speaker 2: I don't know, well, what else are you going to
Speaker 2: spend it on.
Speaker 1: Well, we might be able to spend it better, But
Speaker 1: that's uh, well, I'd be two things here. At least
Speaker 1: one is I thought Obamacare fixed all this right, and
Speaker 1: this has been conspicuously missing, uh amst for gun control
Speaker 1: out of this terrible episode of assassinating the head of
Speaker 1: United Healthcare. And then the second one is you still
Speaker 1: hear people like aoc I guess saying we ought to
Speaker 1: have Britain's National Health service here. But Charlie, my understanding
Speaker 1: is I mean you and I know and people are
Speaker 1: informed know that it's dreadful service. But I understand it's
Speaker 1: widely unpopular in Britain right now. People are mad about it.
Speaker 1: It's a huge political issue for whatever parties in government.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, a couple of things on the health service.
Speaker 4: First off, the British have a very odd relationship with
Speaker 4: the National Health Service, which is that they hate it,
Speaker 4: but also it's a national treasure.
Speaker 2: And these two things very British response. By the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you're an American then you criticize it,
Speaker 4: they will immediately get their backs up and say no,
Speaker 4: it's the end of the world. But between themselves they
Speaker 4: will accept that it's not good. The American left's love
Speaker 4: for the British National Health Service is and I think
Speaker 4: many Americans don't understand this. It is extreme even in
Speaker 4: world terms, because the National Health Service is usual within
Speaker 4: Europe in that it is a government organization that is
Speaker 4: run directly by the government. Every single hospital is owned
Speaker 4: by the government or the doctors and nurses work for
Speaker 4: the government. It is quite literally a nationalized health care system.
Speaker 4: Both the funding and the provision are the government. That's
Speaker 4: not how most systems, even those with single pair work.
Speaker 4: France does not work like that. France has a system
Speaker 4: of private health insurance and private hospitals and doctors and
Speaker 4: so forth that is mostly, although not all, funded by
Speaker 4: the government. The same is true of Germany. The same
Speaker 4: is true in most prosperous countries in the East. The
Speaker 4: British model was contrived in nineteen forty eight, and I
Speaker 4: will try not to go on here, but I think
Speaker 4: this matters when the Labor Party that had won after
Speaker 4: World War Two had a huge mandate and mistook the
Speaker 4: public's desire for much more equality economically for a desire
Speaker 4: for nationalization. If you look back at the election of
Speaker 4: nineteen forty five, it is true that people wanted a
Speaker 4: national health service. It's no point pretending otherwise. What they
Speaker 4: mostly wanted was two million new houses built because we've
Speaker 4: just been bombed to Smithy, inspy the Nazis. That was
Speaker 4: the main thing that got that government elected. But the
Speaker 4: national health service was popular. But the popular part was
Speaker 4: the payment. People said, I don't want to go broke
Speaker 4: if I get sick, I don't want to pay to
Speaker 4: go to the doctor. I don't want to pay if
Speaker 4: my children need an operation. That was the principle that
Speaker 4: people liked. No one cared how it was done. They
Speaker 4: didn't say I need the government to run all of this.
Speaker 4: But because the Labor Party of nineteen forty five was
Speaker 4: extremely left wing, was quasi Marxist patriotic. That was a
Speaker 4: good thing about that party, patriotic, but quasi Marxist. It said,
Speaker 4: we have a mandate to nationalize everything. And so when
Speaker 4: Winiston Churchill comes back in nineteen fifty fifty one, the
Speaker 4: Conservatives reprivatize quite a lot of industry. They just can't
Speaker 4: do it with the National Health Service for a couple
Speaker 4: of reasons. First off, the footprint of the NHS in
Speaker 4: the fifties was actually quite small, in that it really
Speaker 4: was covering doctor's appointments and glasses and that sort of thing. Second,
Speaker 4: by that point you had a whole bunch of infrastructure
Speaker 4: that had been placed into the government, that had its
Speaker 4: own interest groups, and it was very, very difficult. But
Speaker 4: I just wanted to point out that when AOC says this,
Speaker 4: what I always think is, no, you want France's system,
Speaker 4: that's what you want. You don't want Britain system where
Speaker 4: the government literally runs everything, or at least I assume not.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean and we have we do have templates
Speaker 2: for this. I mean, not that we want to recreate this,
Speaker 2: but the government issues food stamps. They didn't think go
Speaker 2: out and yea farms. They didn't go into the food
Speaker 2: making business. I said, here, use these little stamps and
Speaker 2: go you buy food. You can go to supermarket. They
Speaker 2: didn't open a supermarket. There's ways to do this. And
Speaker 2: I just kind of my general point on about healthcare,
Speaker 2: just separated from retirement and other financial instruments, is that
Speaker 2: what do you spend it on. I think it's great
Speaker 2: that rich people are spending a lot of money on healthcare.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic. This is good. The innovation trickles down, everybody
Speaker 2: makes it cheaper. That's good. First the first adopters always
Speaker 2: make it cheaper for everybody else. We should encourage that.
Speaker 2: But what does it matter to us that A that
Speaker 2: a that A that a hospital. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter to me at all. I mean, I think this
Speaker 2: is something that we should be encouraging. And I don't
Speaker 2: think the expenditure on health insurance or health care is
Speaker 2: by defect, by definition, something that we need to stop.
Speaker 1: So you know, Charlie, I'm going to file away Rob's
Speaker 1: argument here, which I understand, but I think it could
Speaker 1: also be misinterpreted along with his.
Speaker 3: Remark on Jews earlier here today. Charlie, Right, but look,
Speaker 3: this is you know.
Speaker 1: Now for the for the for the listeners that we
Speaker 1: didn't lose with theology and now haven't lost with health care.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're hitting all the hits today.
Speaker 1: Look the other I mean this is all absurd, not
Speaker 1: the theology part, but the other thing that happened this
Speaker 1: week that I think a lot of people might have
Speaker 1: missed because it went by really fast. It was Kirsten Gillibrand,
Speaker 1: the Senator from New York, demanding that President Biden direct
Speaker 1: the Archivist of the United States to enroll the Equal
Speaker 1: Rights Amendment, defeated forty years ago by the States. But
Speaker 1: for this quirky reasons, demand of the archimist enroll the
Speaker 1: Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution and deem it ratified.
Speaker 1: And this is a backdoor way of trying to revive
Speaker 1: Roe versus way without having to pass it through Congress
Speaker 1: or a constitutional amendment. And the Archimist, to her credits
Speaker 1: a woman now said.
Speaker 3: We can't do that. Sorry.
Speaker 1: The law, this is very clear legal opinions are very clear,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to do that. Charlie, I know
Speaker 1: you've been following this and related matters. Do you want
Speaker 1: to add to that minoritive which is very brief and
Speaker 1: whatever GLOSSI want, because I have a few of my own.
Speaker 4: But well, you say it's illegal. That's why the archivist
Speaker 4: said no, this is yet another attempt to circumvent the Constitution.
Speaker 4: The era is in a strange way that as well,
Speaker 4: because if she say the aim of it is to
Speaker 4: resuscitate Roh, it always has been, which is why Ruth
Speaker 4: Bedagins both liked it so much. She thought that if
Speaker 4: you could get the ra in they even though it
Speaker 4: doesn't explicitly mention abortion, then the court could say, while
Speaker 4: we have this equal right to memdment, men and women
Speaker 4: have to be equal. Women can't be like men unless
Speaker 4: they have abortions. Therefore, but this, irrespective of whether or
Speaker 4: not that would happen, is just an attempt to circumvent
Speaker 4: the rules. And the original rules for the ratification process
Speaker 4: were that the ratification had to succeed by nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: nine or nineteen eighty two, depending on which version of
Speaker 4: the rules you pick up. But either way, I mean,
Speaker 4: the nearest one is forty two years ago. Then it died.
Speaker 4: If it wasn't done by then, it died. And it's
Speaker 4: just a fact that not enough states ratified it. In fact,
Speaker 4: since then, although others have ratified it outside of the timeframe,
Speaker 4: other states have rescinded their ratification. The thing that I
Speaker 4: find the most instructive about this is that no one
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty three said, aha, we can keep going.
Speaker 4: It was universally understood by the advocates of the era,
Speaker 4: by the opponents of the era, by the Senate, by
Speaker 4: the States, by neutral observers, by everyone that this was dead.
Speaker 4: So what this is now is law fair. But this
Speaker 4: time the Constitution is the victim.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's another lesson to me that when the progressives
Speaker 1: want something, they'll get it by any means necessary.
Speaker 3: But by the way, I mean, I was surprised.
Speaker 1: I didn't see people coming on as there seems a
Speaker 1: four on their logic that the ERA would revive abortion
Speaker 1: because we now know that men can have babies, right right,
Speaker 1: The bi deministration now refers to birthing persons, and so
Speaker 1: it seems to me that the ERA would be no bar
Speaker 1: to prohibiting abortion since it applied to all fifty seven
Speaker 1: genders equally.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean we laugh at this, but this is
Speaker 3: what the left also thinks at the same time.
Speaker 4: Right, So, yeah, but that went out of the window
Speaker 4: and row was overturned. Do you remember the day before
Speaker 4: Row is overturned, men could have babies. The day after
Speaker 4: Row is overturn, if men could get pregnant. The day
Speaker 4: before Row is overturn, men and women are interchangeable. Everyone
Speaker 4: is on some fluid spectrum. The day after over you, right,
Speaker 4: this is an attack on women which we can now
Speaker 4: conveniently define.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Suddenly, well that's why. Yeah, I think that always
Speaker 2: happens after these watershed political events. Suddenly suddenly everything's recalibrated,
Speaker 2: And it sounds a lot like the argument that we
Speaker 2: were making all along, I say saying this before that.
Speaker 2: If you ever want to know what's really happening in America,
Speaker 2: just read the newspaper two weeks after a Republican has
Speaker 2: been elected, because that's when they print the news.
Speaker 4: Of that I used to write in my head. The
Speaker 4: New York Times news reports, the Associated Press news reports
Speaker 4: about inflation. If the president were a Republican because you
Speaker 4: could see them in front of your eyes. Literally. You know,
Speaker 4: Manny Hernandez is a construction worker in the Bronx. All
Speaker 4: he wanted is to live the American dream, but inflation
Speaker 4: has been killing his family. I can't afford conflicts, many said,
Speaker 4: I am so angry. But they didn't run it.
Speaker 2: They didn't run it.
Speaker 4: Instead, they pretended it wasn't happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but can you imagine it? Am I jumping the
Speaker 2: gun step? Just today in the Wall Street Journal there
Speaker 2: is this riveting and i'm an astonishing article about everything
Speaker 2: that you knew already, which was that Joe Biden was
Speaker 2: an adult, out of it president, surrounded by a bunch
Speaker 2: of sort of alice guards who kept his own cabinet
Speaker 2: from calling him directly, who reshaped and rescheduled crucial national
Speaker 2: security meetings during a time in which there are there's
Speaker 2: a there's a war with half a million casualties raging
Speaker 2: in Europe and a war with I don't know how
Speaker 2: many thousand casualties raging in the Middle East. And some
Speaker 2: days he is a bad day for him. Can we
Speaker 2: reschedule to tomorrow?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it's something that we all knew was happening, and
Speaker 2: they and they probably knew was happening, and they just
Speaker 2: didn't want to print it. And it seems to be
Speaker 2: no sense of the lack of the lack of surprise
Speaker 2: in the part of most Americans.
Speaker 3: Well, can I add rob that the I mean, the.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most startling thing of that story was the
Speaker 1: clear implication. It's worded very softly, but the lead of
Speaker 1: that story in the opening made clear that the problem
Speaker 1: of Biden was a parent of the people around him
Speaker 1: during the twenty twenty campaign. This didn't start in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. And then one of the telling details was
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the House Democrat, but it
Speaker 1: was the chair of the Foreign Relations or Intelligence going
Speaker 1: to me, and he said, I tried to call the president.
Speaker 1: This is before the bug out in Afghanistan. I tried
Speaker 1: to call to express my concerns about what they were
Speaker 1: saying they thought was going to happen, and why I
Speaker 1: thought there were things they weren't thinking about. He said
Speaker 1: he could not get through to Biden. They wouldn't let
Speaker 1: him talk to the president. And he said, I've always
Speaker 1: was able to talk to Obama, was easy to get
Speaker 1: a hold of him.
Speaker 3: I can talk to.
Speaker 2: The House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now is this has ought to be a scandal
Speaker 3: for the media.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're now being told that the Politi factory,
Speaker 1: the lie of the year is Trump and uh uh
Speaker 1: and Jade Vance saying dogs and cats are getting eaten
Speaker 1: in Springfield, Ohio. Okay, that was sort of a ridiculous exaggeration,
Speaker 1: I suppose, But it seems to me the lie of
Speaker 1: the year is the media covering up what they had
Speaker 1: to have known was true about Biden and the White House.
Speaker 1: And this is my hypothesis. I want to spring on
Speaker 1: Charlie see what he thinks. I actually think a sycophantic
Speaker 1: media is the worst enemy of the Democratic Party. They
Speaker 1: want to blame Biden for sticking around too.
Speaker 3: Long and not getting out of the way. But if the.
Speaker 1: Media had done its job and reported on this, Biden
Speaker 1: would have dropped out a year sooner than he did,
Speaker 1: and they would have been a whole, whole different circumstance.
Speaker 1: And oh all that had one other thing. Chris Silizza,
Speaker 1: formerly of CNN and The Washington Post. Today he posted
Speaker 1: on x an apology just one sentence. As a journalist,
Speaker 1: I should have pushed harder on the very real questions
Speaker 1: about Joe Biden's physical and mental health as president.
Speaker 3: Well, I would like to.
Speaker 1: Ask you why didn't you Is it because you're a
Speaker 1: coward or an idiolog which.
Speaker 2: Isn't, because the implicit question from that administration would have
Speaker 2: been to any reporter who asked that question who wasn't
Speaker 2: already aligned with a conservative outlet have been like, hey,
Speaker 2: whose side are you on?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it was that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even yeah, but Charlie I pitched a question
Speaker 1: to you and then rambled on pitched to Rob But
Speaker 1: you know, is it the media the Democrats worst enemy?
Speaker 3: And what are they going to figure that out? Probably never?
Speaker 4: I think it is, and it isn't. There's clearly a
Speaker 4: problem for the Democrats here in that they lost the
Speaker 4: last election in part because of the media. As you say,
Speaker 4: their ability to debate the Constitution as atrophied because of
Speaker 4: the media. Conservatives got busy building the Federalist Society, and
Speaker 4: the Democrats in the media just talked about consequences and outcomes,
Speaker 4: and they're now absolutely outmatched where it matters. And I
Speaker 4: think much of the failure of the Biden administration was
Speaker 4: attributable to the media in that the press absolutely loved
Speaker 4: that American rescue plan so called. We've spent two trillion
Speaker 4: dollars and it led to the worst inflation in forty
Speaker 4: years and Biden never recovered from it. Where I think
Speaker 4: the media is not good for conservatives or not bad
Speaker 4: for Democrats is that on the average issue, I think
Speaker 4: it's probably responsible for three to five points to the left.
Speaker 4: Timothy gross Close has written about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, his work is terrific.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is very good. And Ricochet member Timothy Grok
Speaker 2: was a contributor for a long time.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was interesting. Well, his book on this is fantastic.
Speaker 4: I think, for example, about the first presidential debate where
Speaker 4: Trump ended up arguing not only against Kamena Harris but
Speaker 4: the media. Now you could say what he won, he did.
Speaker 4: But because the press behaves like that, it makes it
Speaker 4: quite difficult to make progress on issues in a way
Speaker 4: that I wish were not the case. All issue debates
Speaker 4: seem to get corrupt and waylaid by a press that
Speaker 4: is invested in helping the Democrats or the progressive side
Speaker 4: of it. And if the point of politics is to
Speaker 4: advance issues and policies and not to win elections, that's
Speaker 4: got to matter. Yes, when you put people in the
Speaker 4: sanctity of the voting booth, they will say, screw it,
Speaker 4: I'm voting for who I want to. But does that
Speaker 4: happen in quite the same way at work? Does it
Speaker 4: happen in quite the same way in social situations? If
Speaker 4: people are constantly being told only widows, think that that's
Speaker 4: a minority position. You're insert ist here. I worry that
Speaker 4: the press corrupts our society in that sense. So I'm
Speaker 4: a half yes, I suppose yeah.
Speaker 3: And I agree with all that.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually been meaning to reach out to Tim
Speaker 1: Grows close to see if he's updated his estimates of
Speaker 1: these matters in light of the way the media is
Speaker 1: fragmented in the rise of social media and Twitter and.
Speaker 3: Muscle and so forth, And maybe you should do that sometime.
Speaker 1: I made okay, last subject, since we have Rob here,
Speaker 1: a couple of things from the Hollywood world. And though
Speaker 1: even though you may not be following it day to day,
Speaker 1: you know you'll have obviously some insights on this one
Speaker 1: a quick story, and then the two news items. It's
Speaker 1: a couple or three years ago now. I was talking
Speaker 1: to a young screenwriter. I know a closet conservative in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: It's actually written for National Review Online a couple times
Speaker 1: under a pseudonym, And he said, it's a little like
Speaker 1: you hear about New York Times editors. Everybody in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: all the suits are terrified of the young Wolkesters they've hired.
Speaker 1: But everybody really wants to get back to writing stories
Speaker 1: with pretty women in short skirts and boy meets girl
Speaker 1: because that's what people want. And I know this guy
Speaker 1: has sold it, you know, a few scripts shows here
Speaker 1: and there. But then the news items out in the
Speaker 1: last few days is that Disney apparently has a disaster
Speaker 1: on its handles to the remake of Snow White, and
Speaker 1: it have been extensive reshoots. The budget has belonged to
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty million dollars. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, I don't know if you saw this, but
Speaker 1: Justine Bateman, you know everyone remembers from Family Ties in
Speaker 1: the eighties, has come out as a very ferocious anti Wolkester.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, maybe she's going to be our first woman
Speaker 1: president elected some day. I don't know, but I don't
Speaker 1: do you get the sense that that Hollywood, like some
Speaker 1: other precincts are starting to shake off their torpoor and say, boy,
Speaker 1: we really made a mistake with all the wokeism.
Speaker 3: What do you hear? What do you think? What are
Speaker 3: your instincts on this?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: I mean there's two ways to look to some two
Speaker 2: separate tracks for Hollywood, right There's there's their own HR problem, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then there's the content problem and the content and
Speaker 2: they were linked in this case. But I think the
Speaker 2: tide is turning slightly, mostly because there are fewer people
Speaker 2: working at these studios. They've had massive layoffs they're going
Speaker 2: to continue to have. I mean, twenty twenty four was
Speaker 2: actually not as bad as twenty twenty three, but twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five I think it's going to be going to
Speaker 2: be worse than twenty twenty three. And that is actually
Speaker 2: a good thing. I mean, I hate to be a
Speaker 2: total free market conservative or a libertarian, but the truth
Speaker 2: is that Hollywood is never better than when it's broke.
Speaker 2: When it's broke and against the wall and falling apart,
Speaker 2: which it does to itself about every thirty forty fifty years.
Speaker 2: For the forty years, at least it gets good. It
Speaker 2: figures it out, figures out what the problem is. And
Speaker 2: usually what it figures out is, oh, oh oh right, right,
Speaker 2: I forgot people like movies where the bad guys are
Speaker 2: clear and they get taken care of and then the
Speaker 2: people the romance gets together and I can project myself
Speaker 2: onto one of those two people on screen. I'm either
Speaker 2: carry Grant or I'm you know, even Recaint. And that's right.
Speaker 2: When they figure that out, you know, they still you know,
Speaker 2: what's that the regions say is like, do not attempt
Speaker 2: to grow a brain. This is Hollywood. You don't need
Speaker 2: a roadmap. This is what just a simple movie, like
Speaker 2: a simple show. We need a beginning, middle, and the end.
Speaker 2: And the end's got to be something somewhat satisfying and
Speaker 2: so people like and and it'll get back to that.
Speaker 2: What needs to happen is what's kind of happening. What
Speaker 2: needs to happen in Wall Street is that Wall Street
Speaker 2: needs to start having you know, tough earnings calls with
Speaker 2: these studios and say you're in big trouble. Uh. What
Speaker 2: needs to happen is a lot of private equity people
Speaker 2: need to go broke, which is gonna happen probably next year,
Speaker 2: who have invested a whole lot of money in these
Speaker 2: ridiculous valuations of these ridiculous production companies that have done nothing.
Speaker 2: That's going to collapse, and then there's gonna be no money.
Speaker 2: And when there's no money, you gotta fire people. When
Speaker 2: you fire people, you get smaller. When you get smaller
Speaker 2: than there's enough, not enough people to start overthinking whether
Speaker 2: in fact we should have whether one of the kids can't,
Speaker 2: can't one of the kids be trans like you. That's
Speaker 2: a conversation you have only when you have plenty of
Speaker 2: time to think about it. So I suspect that that's
Speaker 2: all gonna that's all gonna change, because what people don't
Speaker 2: want to see is revenue and revenue which does not matter.
Speaker 2: It has not mattered in Hollywood for ten years. With
Speaker 2: interest rates at zero and everybody trying to spend money
Speaker 2: just to build up this their streaming library, that's gonna
Speaker 2: it's like going broke is embracing mind, focusing back to basics,
Speaker 2: kind of zesty feeling for Hollywood. It's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Last time Hollywood really really really went broke was in
Speaker 2: the late was in the sixties late sixties and ushered
Speaker 2: in one of the greatest years in entertainment in American
Speaker 2: entertainment ever, which is the seventies, which are incredible, incredible
Speaker 2: box office years, TV years, amazing that could happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one little data point on this that
Speaker 1: I noticed and just recalled is I've been watching this
Speaker 1: Netflix series with Kerrie Russell called The Diplomat, and it's
Speaker 1: very lavishly produced and very well shot. And Carrie Russell
Speaker 1: is compulsively watchable. She was always she plays this sort
Speaker 1: of hard as role. So that's all fine. But the
Speaker 1: first season they had a conspicuous trans character who was
Speaker 1: only there to plant the rainbow flag, had no real
Speaker 1: plot point and conspicuously missing if you're paying attention, from
Speaker 1: the second season, which just wrapped, so that was quietly
Speaker 1: dropped from the from the production.
Speaker 3: So you know, maybe that's one.
Speaker 2: I will still tell one story, and I want to
Speaker 2: tell you who said it to me, because he eventually
Speaker 2: had me too trouble, so that you know, I'm already
Speaker 2: deep in the hole here in this podcast by I
Speaker 2: uh like easily missed the street comments. Uh, we were
Speaker 2: casting a show. Uh it was the head of the network.
Speaker 2: We're casting a show, and there were two two actresses
Speaker 2: were testing the Usually they come and they test in
Speaker 2: front of all of us. So we would do all
Speaker 2: the additions, and we bring two choices to the network
Speaker 2: in the studio and we'd say, look, here's where we are,
Speaker 2: here's kind of who we like, here's who we you know,
Speaker 2: here's what you like. But we got to decide in
Speaker 2: this room together. And it was an actress. She's really good.
Speaker 2: She went on to do great stuff. She was incredibly good.
Speaker 2: She's very talented, and and she was just a little
Speaker 2: prettier than the other one. And and there was silence
Speaker 2: in the room and like nobody wants to say that
Speaker 2: because it's like it's like it's you know, you don't
Speaker 2: want to say that. So I but I said, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I kind of like her. I just feel
Speaker 2: like she's more she's more appealing in some way. You know.
Speaker 2: It's got to wheel the wording it, you know, and
Speaker 2: she feels like she's like, I don't know, I could
Speaker 2: kind of like feel it. I gotta feel this vulnerabiling
Speaker 2: it just it was just it was just nonsense words
Speaker 2: just to not and the pad of the network. It
Speaker 2: was sort of an old style guy who like he
Speaker 2: was alone at that point, even a rare character. Then
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, you know, it's never a bad idea
Speaker 2: to put a pretty girl on TV.
Speaker 3: Rob.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, that's that's really true. Let's just that's
Speaker 2: just you said it. Let's go. I like that that
Speaker 2: these seems it seems very simple and everybody watching it knows,
Speaker 2: but people making it don't often know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, all right, We've got about maybe two minutes
Speaker 1: of slack time to see if either one of you
Speaker 1: want to say anything about ABC's settlement. ABC News settlement
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump over the libel case, which I think
Speaker 1: is hysterically funny but also significant in a number of ways.
Speaker 4: Charlie, I think that there was a conversation that was
Speaker 4: probably recorded in some way, likely over email that would
Speaker 4: have come out during discovery. ABC was told by its
Speaker 4: insurance company settled this now or the jury will give
Speaker 4: some Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we went through discovery in the Fox
Speaker 1: News dominion lawsuit, and that settlement ended up costing seven
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty million dollars. So ABC got off easy.
Speaker 1: But you do hear these stories that there's mayhem inside
Speaker 1: of ABC. Stephanoppholops is very upset and so forth. There
Speaker 1: was a little tidbit as gets the legal geeking men.
Speaker 1: There was a little tidbit in the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: account of the dissension in ABC saying Disney's lawyers, remember
Speaker 1: Disney owns ABC. Disney's lawyers were worried that with the
Speaker 1: current Supreme Court, this might reopen the New York Times
Speaker 1: versus Sulliban libel standards, and they were afraid this might
Speaker 1: happen and be open season on the media. But you know,
Speaker 1: Trump is, he's not sick everybody else in sight.
Speaker 3: By the way, a little slat tangent here.
Speaker 1: This talk of investigating Liz Cheney, I think is a
Speaker 1: psy o patrolling operation. I think what Trump wants to
Speaker 1: do is provoke Biden into giving a pardon to Liz
Speaker 1: Cheney and faut cheat everybody else, and then Trump can
Speaker 1: say pardons for it. They didn't do anything wrong, cleterally,
Speaker 1: they're guilty. You know how this is gonna play out? Right?
Speaker 3: Something like that? Is that the storyline? You're right?
Speaker 2: Rob? Yeah? I mean I don't. I mean, I would
Speaker 2: like I'm an as you know, I'm an optimistic pessimist, right.
Speaker 2: I would like the House Republicans and the President and
Speaker 2: the House and the Senate Republicans to get clear on
Speaker 2: how American politics works, which is that you really don't
Speaker 2: have a big window at this moment. You really don't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way. There's gonna be another electually,
Speaker 2: gonna be a midterm. Someone's gonna mess up, there's gonna
Speaker 2: be trouble. You got a moment, you have some runway here.
Speaker 2: Pick five important things. Just do those five things right.
Speaker 2: Do not attempt to boil the ocean. Just do five things.
Speaker 2: Do not get distracted with all of your little Twitter
Speaker 2: maga stuff. We're gonna get Liz Cheney in prison and
Speaker 2: all that stuff. Just do the five big things you
Speaker 2: need to do and live to fight another day. What
Speaker 2: often happens with these these sort of moments is that
Speaker 2: the reprobagans go in all different directions and decide what
Speaker 2: they really want to do is they want to have
Speaker 2: fights on Twitter and on Hannity and on Tucker, and
Speaker 2: those never get you what you want. And then you
Speaker 2: end up after four years of a Trump administration in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, without a wall and with a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff that he promised. Because you
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time just talking nonsense and you
Speaker 2: want to put Liz Cheney in prison, go right ahead,
Speaker 2: but make that number one hundred and ninety seven on
Speaker 2: your journey. Don't have that much time.
Speaker 1: Well, well, there's the Rob Long of hope and forgiveness
Speaker 1: at the Advent season. Charlie, I don't forgive, Charlie, you
Speaker 1: are not politically agnostics.
Speaker 3: Certainly, I'll give you the last word before we have
Speaker 3: to get out for the day.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say Merry Christmas, which I celebrate with
Speaker 4: my family and love.
Speaker 1: Oh excellent, All right, Well, this podcast was brought to
Speaker 1: you by ricochet dot com and as James likes to say,
Speaker 1: and I will try to do it as well as
Speaker 1: he does and will fail at it. Please help the
Speaker 1: keep the podcast going in twenty twenty five by joining Ricochet.
Speaker 1: It's the best place for civil center right conversation. See,
Speaker 1: we don't even make fun of Rob for being the
Speaker 1: rhino squish that he is.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm diversity, I'm the d hied here.
Speaker 1: That's right, right, And as always, please, if you have
Speaker 1: a minute, leave.
Speaker 3: A five star review for us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: It turns out that's really an important metric.
Speaker 1: It you know, it boosts the podcast brings us more listeners,
Speaker 1: which brings us more sponsors. We are sponsored free this week,
Speaker 1: but this helps us keep the show going and so
Speaker 1: we will see you in the comments. Everyone at Ricochet
Speaker 1: four point zero. I think that's what we call it, Charlie,
Speaker 1: I think it is right all right. Next week, guys, Merry.
Speaker 2: Christmas, Ricochet, ye
Speaker 3: Join the conversation.