Speaker 1: Ask not what your country can do for you and
Speaker 1: what you can do for your country read my lips?
Speaker 1: Pretty excuse me? And are people are still talking about discount?
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles C. W. You Cook
Speaker 1: and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lylyax. It's July and we're
Speaker 1: just going to talk amongst arcels. Shallis led zeversos a podcast.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
Speaker 1: forty eight. Hey, why don't you? Yes, you go to
Speaker 1: ricochet dot com join up, sign up and be part
Speaker 1: of the most stimulating conversations in community on the web.
Speaker 1: I'm James Lenox in Minneapolis downtown in a tall, beautiful
Speaker 1: skyscraper for the very last time, and I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Charles C. W. Cook in Florida and Stephen Hayward, who,
Speaker 1: as we know, is a parapatetic soul and might be
Speaker 1: ware at the moment. Don't say californ Yeah, well.
Speaker 2: I'm at home. I see the ocean. I won't say
Speaker 2: where though, So.
Speaker 1: All right, well, so once again we span the nation. Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: what is on your minds? Of the more? There's so much.
Speaker 1: We've got the big beautiful bill of course, which people
Speaker 1: are still chewing through. And according to my Twitter feeds
Speaker 1: and the tiktoks that I get, I am under the
Speaker 1: understanding that the debt are going to be heaped like
Speaker 1: cordwood on the street corners because of the cuts that
Speaker 1: are being made in various programs. I could point out
Speaker 1: that maybe I've heard before that every time somebody tries
Speaker 1: to cut something, it's always going to be that people
Speaker 1: are going to die. I think we discussed last week
Speaker 1: or the week before, the incalculable fatality right after net neutrality.
Speaker 1: But is this different? Was this actually a change in
Speaker 1: programs and going forth there might be some difficulty of
Speaker 1: aidable bodied people to get what they had got before.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I think a unifying thread right now,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of issues. Who someone our rundown some
Speaker 2: not is the exhaustion of the Democrats in the left.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you mentioned that neutrality, but we also
Speaker 2: heard the same thing about the twenty seventeen Trump tax cuts,
Speaker 2: that people would die from those tax cuts, right and
Speaker 2: the flash flooding in Texas. They want to blame it
Speaker 2: on Doge, but there was also they're trying to run
Speaker 2: the Katrina playbook. Right, you remember Katrina twenty years ago now,
Speaker 2: and you know Bush made some mistakes. They didn't present
Speaker 2: themselves very well, but it wrecked Bush's second term and
Speaker 2: they thought, oh, well, rerun that playbook. So they keep
Speaker 2: trying to rerun these old playbooks. But I think they're
Speaker 2: less and less persuasive. And I'll give you one more
Speaker 2: of several I could do. I've noticed a conspicuous silence
Speaker 2: from Democrats about all the cuts to green energy that
Speaker 2: were in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, And you would
Speaker 2: think they would be saying, we're going to die because
Speaker 2: we're cutting all the green energy because now we're not
Speaker 2: fighting climate change instead. Apparently, the latest figure I saw
Speaker 2: that Politico reported five House Democrats have joined in endorsing
Speaker 2: President Trump's plan to get rid of California's electric car mandate, which,
Speaker 2: of course that's spread across the country. And so that shows,
Speaker 2: as some people have been saying, is that the green
Speaker 2: mania is in retreat at the moment. And so what
Speaker 2: have Democrats got, Well, they've got Mondani running in New York. Boy,
Speaker 2: isn't that.
Speaker 1: A great story for it? Indeed, I think California is
Speaker 1: shutting down some refineries as well, under the belief that
Speaker 1: perhaps they will be able to power their cars the
Speaker 1: old Flintstone way, and that's the most ecologically safety Charles,
Speaker 1: what have you taken away from the followed from the BB.
Speaker 3: Well, there's an enormous amount. It's such a big bill.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it's beautiful, but it's such a big
Speaker 3: bill that it's quite hard for serious people to take
Speaker 3: a unified approach to it. Now that doesn't include those who,
Speaker 3: of course a demogogueing people were discussing. But there's a
Speaker 3: lot in that to alike. And then there's arts in
Speaker 3: there not to like. For example, if you had told
Speaker 3: a physical conservative two or three years ago, not only
Speaker 3: will all of the twenty seventeen tax cuts be renewed,
Speaker 3: but we'll get full expensing, I would have just jumped
Speaker 3: for joy. Some of the rest of it less so,
Speaker 3: but they shouldn't undermine the achievements. The Democrats are in
Speaker 3: a very weird position here because although they are pretending
Speaker 3: that everyone's going to die from medicaid, not even cuts
Speaker 3: slowed growth. And although they are upset that the Inflation
Speaker 3: Reduction Act, which had nothing to do with inflation has
Speaker 3: been partly rescinded. They also agreed that the vast majority
Speaker 3: of the cuts to taxes in the twenty seventeen should remain.
Speaker 3: They're glossing over that, but that is a huge hypocrisy
Speaker 3: something I've observed over the last few years. James's conservatives
Speaker 3: often don't give themselves enough credit, especially on taxes. We
Speaker 3: get all of this, or what if you were concerned
Speaker 3: were conservatives were conserved? Well, here is a change. When
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton ran for president twenty sixteen, she said that
Speaker 3: nobody who made more than less sorry than two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand dollars a year would see a tax increase.
Speaker 3: When Kamala Harris ran for president in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: that number was four hundred thousand dollars. Now, if you
Speaker 3: go back thirty years, no Democrat would have promised that.
Speaker 3: The reason I mentioned that is we don't even have
Speaker 3: to say, well, of course Democrats wanted to keep a
Speaker 3: lot of the tax cuts. They said they wanted to
Speaker 3: keep most of the tax cuts. And yet they're again
Speaker 3: pretending every single statement that they put out that this
Speaker 3: was a tax cut for billionaires. So that's all this
Speaker 3: did was cut the taxes of billionaires. So it's very frustrating.
Speaker 3: It's also a reason why we shouldn't legislate by this
Speaker 3: like this. We really should actually have lots of smaller
Speaker 3: bills and actually debate things and not have physical clefts
Speaker 3: and so on. But my takeaway from this is there
Speaker 3: are of course disagreements of America, and there are disagreements
Speaker 3: over the Inflation Reduction Act, but most of the stuff
Speaker 3: that is in this bill is actually stuff Democrats wanted
Speaker 3: and they got their sole deduction back. So the idea like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the worst bill I've ever seen, which I've
Speaker 3: seen some Democrats say there's the worst bill in American history.
Speaker 3: It's an astonishing thing to say. The fugitive slave access.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 3: It's just another reason why a lot of our politics
Speaker 3: are so silly, because it's nothing of the sort.
Speaker 1: I agree that I would like to see smaller bills.
Speaker 1: It would be nice to see all of these things
Speaker 1: in individually enumerated, delineated, and then voted up and down
Speaker 1: so we have a clearer view of who's believing what
Speaker 1: and what they say and do. I agree. I also
Speaker 1: don't think there's any way back to that, at least However,
Speaker 1: we have a bill that somebody voted on as opposed
Speaker 1: to continuing resolutions to just roll everything over into the
Speaker 1: blob that just rolls and rolls on. So there's that.
Speaker 1: Stephen mentioned the green energy, but it's curious read a
Speaker 1: tweet the other day that somebody said, after twenty years
Speaker 1: of green energy, you have better lamps and better appliances
Speaker 1: and better home stuff and all this stuff. My electricity
Speaker 1: costs is twice what it was before, which means it
Speaker 1: me entirely accurate. But you get that feeling. I outfitted
Speaker 1: my house with all of the finest and greatest LEDs,
Speaker 1: I have my Energy Star compliance appliances and the like,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen a reduction whatsoever could possibly be
Speaker 1: because rates go up because of a push to make
Speaker 1: the grid earth friendly, etc. That's losing it. That's that's
Speaker 1: that feels like a dead issue now. It just it
Speaker 1: feels like after the Green New Deal of you know,
Speaker 1: the AOC years, there's no enthusiasm for that anymore. And
Speaker 1: it seems that the Democrats find themselves in a position
Speaker 1: where all of the things that they all the standards
Speaker 1: that they held so high are tattered and the flagpoles
Speaker 1: have have have wilted in the in the hot sun
Speaker 1: of disapproval and indifference. And yeah, Steven said, what do
Speaker 1: they have they got this guy in New York. Is
Speaker 1: that the future then of the party an appeal to
Speaker 1: the people who absolutely want their communism and they want
Speaker 1: it now, fresh and hot.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we've talked about this before a couple
Speaker 2: of times. At the same time, you have this enthusiasm
Speaker 2: among some of the progressive thinking class, like you know,
Speaker 2: Ezra Kline for the abundance agenda, and a few politicians
Speaker 2: gingerly putting a toe in the water. Even Gavin Newsom
Speaker 2: for half an hour said yeah, I think I'm for this. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: I just picked up the latest New York Review of
Speaker 2: Books because I read it so you don't have to.
Speaker 2: And there's a long review of several books about the
Speaker 2: whole de growth agenda, and one of them even is
Speaker 2: called de growth communism. I mean, talk about putting it
Speaker 2: all out there in playing view without any euphemisms, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is perfect. Right, So you know that
Speaker 2: old religion dies hard, but I think, yeah, the practical
Speaker 2: politicians realize that this has been a vote loser for democrats.
Speaker 2: But the main point the abundance people. They just say
Speaker 2: one thing sensible, which is, can't democrats somewhere pick a
Speaker 2: city and run it well and you know, make the
Speaker 2: schools work, clean up the streets, produce crime? How about that?
Speaker 2: And you would think there'd be least there weren't in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties a few Democratic mayors like you know, North Quistan, Milwaukee,
Speaker 2: and a couple others who ran their cities in a
Speaker 2: sensible way. And so that might be a place to start.
Speaker 2: But I let me start in New York.
Speaker 1: Let me start, let me stop you right there. That's
Speaker 1: a great idea. It depends, however, on an electorate that
Speaker 1: is willing to be comfortable with some uncomfortable things. After
Speaker 1: my recent experience as a I don't want to say
Speaker 1: a victim of crime because I hate the sound of that.
Speaker 1: As a non enthusiastic participant in the rearrangement of my
Speaker 1: personal property, let's put it that way. I talked to
Speaker 1: an awful lot of people because I was walking up
Speaker 1: and down on the boulevards of several blocks trying to
Speaker 1: find one of the air pods because the carjacker had
Speaker 1: thrown my aarpods out at three locations, which is just
Speaker 1: really devious, just evil. So I have to go to
Speaker 1: each one and get down on my hands and knees
Speaker 1: and look into the boulevard and the gutter and the
Speaker 1: rest of it. And I would explain to people why
Speaker 1: I was on their lawn looking, And once everybody heard
Speaker 1: what had happened to me, everybody had their own story.
Speaker 1: Now they weren't necessarily carjacking, but it was thievery, it
Speaker 1: was miscreens in the neighborhood, it was bad stuff. Everybody
Speaker 1: had a story, and everybody was equally convinced that nothing
Speaker 1: was going to be done to any of the people
Speaker 1: who had done these things. And as long as they
Speaker 1: keep voting in the same people that they do, and
Speaker 1: I presume that they do because they all want to
Speaker 1: be thought of as good people and somebody who votes
Speaker 1: for those you know, nazis, nothing will change. So I mean,
Speaker 1: it takes a mayor to say that we're going to
Speaker 1: do the broken windows and squeegee guys things, But it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be that that's from their side. There, No,
Speaker 1: I should correct myself. I read the other day that
Speaker 1: Eric Adams is actually trying to do like real mayor
Speaker 1: stuff like they used to do to make lives better
Speaker 1: for his constituencies, which is what mayors is supposed to do.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what's in it for them necessarily if
Speaker 1: they are getting rich and their friends are getting rich
Speaker 1: on the graft and everybody else in their party is
Speaker 1: doing okay, what's in it for them to go all
Speaker 1: doge on their own fiefs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good question. By the way, back up a step, James,
Speaker 2: you were carjacked. I mean yeah, at gunpoint nine point.
Speaker 1: I mean he didn't see a gun. Tail didn't happen
Speaker 1: that it happened too fast. They were in my car
Speaker 1: before I could notice it.
Speaker 2: More than one person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they traveled in too is they followed me
Speaker 1: home and then one of them stayed in the car.
Speaker 1: The other jumps out, and I assume there's a gun
Speaker 1: because I mean, you have to have some persuasive means
Speaker 1: to relieve somebody of you know, their of their auto.
Speaker 1: And the gun was not produced while I was hanging
Speaker 1: on the side of the car swinging into the car
Speaker 1: trying to hit the guy. Although it may have been
Speaker 1: you know, half a blockdown, you never know. So no,
Speaker 1: I didn't see one, But Charles helped me out here
Speaker 1: because a lot of people have said, this is why
Speaker 1: you always carry And I'm trying to think of a
Speaker 1: situation in which I could have produced the weapon fast
Speaker 1: enough while moving a lawnmower, you know, had it strapped.
Speaker 1: I don't live my life with the idea that I
Speaker 1: should put on my I should strap on my pistol
Speaker 1: to go get a lawnmower out of my garage in
Speaker 1: the middle of the afternoon. I just don't. But you,
Speaker 1: but you may have some other ideas on the thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although I do think I would be careful in
Speaker 3: Minnesota in the situation that you were in, if my
Speaker 3: life weren't being threatened, which is of course the question,
Speaker 3: right because you don't want to end up being prosecuted.
Speaker 1: No, that's what you worry about. I mean the cerea
Speaker 1: is basically this, I see him coming towards me, I
Speaker 1: can produce my pistol. If he then makes a motion
Speaker 1: to indicate that he's about to pull one out himself,
Speaker 1: I think at that point I got every right to
Speaker 1: put a hole in him. But if he takes my
Speaker 1: car and runs away, I can't shoot him. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean all these little calculations that go through your head. Unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but yes, I know, go on.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to make a comment about de growth communism.
Speaker 3: So when I was at Oxford, I saw a debate
Speaker 3: at the Oxford Union. I can't remember the topic of it,
Speaker 3: but there was this absolutely hilarious moment where the guy
Speaker 3: on the other side from my friend made some concession,
Speaker 3: rhetorical concession. My friends did up and he said he said, no, no,
Speaker 3: in mock helpfulness, he said, no, no, you don't understand.
Speaker 3: He said, you just said what I am here to
Speaker 3: get you to say. You don't say that. You say
Speaker 3: anything you can to avoid saying what you just said,
Speaker 3: which loses you the debate. And I spent my time
Speaker 3: trying to get you to say what you just said,
Speaker 3: but you came out and said it at the beginning.
Speaker 3: It was just hilarious and it was just a brilliant
Speaker 3: rhetorical trick. When someone says I'm for de growth communism,
Speaker 3: that reminds me of that. No, no, you don't say that.
Speaker 3: We we say that, that's our criticism of you being
Speaker 3: a communist, that it's you don't say that at the outset.
Speaker 3: Where's the fun in that it's a fit like the
Speaker 3: Monty Python haggled properly from Life for Brian.
Speaker 1: Uh well, they say, they say, because they believe it to,
Speaker 1: not that it's it sounds good to people. Those are
Speaker 1: those are absolutely attributes of which they witched trumpet.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Steve, well here I've actually got the I've
Speaker 2: looked up the actual titles. Charlie, it's even better. It's
Speaker 2: even better than you thought. The title of one of
Speaker 2: the books is Marx in the Anthrops Scene towards the
Speaker 2: Idea of de growth Communism. Now, is this book published
Speaker 2: by Island Press or some little obscure Greenee publishing house. No,
Speaker 2: it's published by Cambridge University Press. By the way, a
Speaker 2: mayor one hundred and ten dollars for the hardback. That'll
Speaker 2: generate a few communists. It's amazing. You can't make this up.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you're inculcated to believe that that
Speaker 1: capitalism and is the roots of is the most evil
Speaker 1: system ever combined, ever created on the planet, then yes,
Speaker 1: of course you would want all manifestations of it to
Speaker 1: be removed. There was a little video floating around on
Speaker 1: Twitter a couple of days ago of a University of
Speaker 1: Minnesota professor who's talking about the need to decolonize and
Speaker 1: dismantle America. And they say this as though America is
Speaker 1: some so of is this object that once removed, nothing
Speaker 1: but goodness will happen, That the systems that immediately and
Speaker 1: effortlessly flow into place will empower all, will cause abundance,
Speaker 1: will make everybody absolutely just jack Dandy happy. When what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, if it comes about, is a state
Speaker 1: of nature. And it's remarkable. It's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: you know that you only hear. It's so stupid you
Speaker 1: could only hear it from an academic according to the man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's the classic human nature problem. We see
Speaker 3: this a little bit on the right at the moment.
Speaker 3: There are some people who believe that the entire modern
Speaker 3: world is corrupt and that when you really wanted to
Speaker 3: live with, say the Roman Empire or the Aztecs or something.
Speaker 3: And most funny about them is that in that Twitter
Speaker 3: avatars or that general esthetic preferences, they have pictures of
Speaker 3: statues of Caesar because they think they would have been Caesar,
Speaker 3: when actually they wouldn't. And it's the same with these
Speaker 3: common sides. They all think that if there was some
Speaker 3: revolution and then we entered into communism, they'd be the artist, right,
Speaker 3: They wouldn't be the guy who cleaned the latrines. They
Speaker 3: would get the plumb allocation. They would get to a
Speaker 3: bunch of paints, and they would get a ceiling to
Speaker 3: spend their days using them on. And this is of
Speaker 3: course absolute nonsense, and the ceiling would collapse on them,
Speaker 3: hopefully quickly before they knew it. But they don't think that.
Speaker 3: They think that they would. They would be given all
Speaker 3: of the best choices.
Speaker 1: Well, but not necessarily so, because I followed the same accounts,
Speaker 1: or they pop in my stuff too, and they all
Speaker 1: want to return, and the U in return is always
Speaker 1: spelled like A like a Latin V. And while they
Speaker 1: sometimes will say, you know, yes, I realized the class distinctions,
Speaker 1: being I probably wouldn't be a senator. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there was a simplicity to life. There was
Speaker 1: a sturdiness, there was an honorable quality to it. A
Speaker 1: man knew his place, and uh, well, if you look
Speaker 1: at some of these studies, peasants worked actually less than
Speaker 1: people do in America today. I know, I know, you
Speaker 1: see this all the time, and it's nonsense on its face.
Speaker 1: But conversely, I think there are things to learn from
Speaker 1: the past. There are some details motors operendez, motors vivendi
Speaker 1: that that that bear consideration, and perhaps modernizing, integration and
Speaker 1: the rest of it. I like studying the past, but
Speaker 1: a clear eyed view of it means that you're probably
Speaker 1: going to die at twenty six of an abscess tooth.
Speaker 1: So while while yes, having these sorts of cultural solidity
Speaker 1: and national identification in the so that's that's that's good,
Speaker 1: and we can learn. But yeah, you're you're going to
Speaker 1: be in the fields ten hours a day, and you're
Speaker 1: not going to own the land, and you're going to
Speaker 1: be strung up for a tree if you shoot a
Speaker 1: deer that belongs to the to the local laird. So
Speaker 1: you're right, Charles. It is ridiculous. It certainly is. But
Speaker 1: at least it's not as ridiculous as the Tartarians who
Speaker 1: believe that a giant mud slide wiped away traces of
Speaker 1: an advanced civilization at the turn of the century, and
Speaker 1: we've been lied to ever since. Well, that went there,
Speaker 1: and here I'm kind of glad that it did. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to interrupt, except of course I did, which
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Speaker 1: the X is gnashing and whaling of teeth over the
Speaker 1: Epstein file not existing. I think the most interesting piece
Speaker 1: I read by this was Ace over an Ace of spades,
Speaker 1: who said, you know, I don't think there was a file.
Speaker 1: I don't think he kept a file. And he makes
Speaker 1: the point that rather than being part of some ingenious
Speaker 1: masade directed black male compromont operation, he was just a
Speaker 1: guy who called in favors all the time to make
Speaker 1: himself rich, brought people to the island, got some backgrounds
Speaker 1: from some cute girls. Everybody knew what had happened. And
Speaker 1: when Epstein calls you on the phone and asks for
Speaker 1: a stock tip, you remember the fact that you were
Speaker 1: at his island and you want to be buds, and
Speaker 1: sure you tell them a little of this, a little
Speaker 1: of that. That seems more enlightened with human nature than
Speaker 1: some vast, you know, tentacular careful blackmail operation. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm just influenced by the last thing that I read.
Speaker 1: So there's that. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I went on record here a month
Speaker 2: ago saying I didn't think there was ever a list,
Speaker 2: or if there had been some kind of list constructed,
Speaker 2: say by investigators, it was long ago destroyed because you
Speaker 2: don't want to have a list like that hanging around.
Speaker 2: But let's remember that there were also rumors a few
Speaker 2: years ago or claims that there were videotapes they found
Speaker 2: videotapes of Epstein's island, and you know when that all
Speaker 2: comes out, well that I haven't heard another word about that,
Speaker 2: because I think that didn't exist either. Look, I mean
Speaker 2: assume the worst speculations that he was running a blackmail
Speaker 2: operation or some kind of genteel shakedown. You know, he's
Speaker 2: not going to keep a list. He would have long
Speaker 2: ago cleaned up and made it all go away. He
Speaker 2: was a pretty smart guy. Pretty twisted guy, but obviously
Speaker 2: a pretty smart guy. I still wonder who's the guy
Speaker 2: was Wexler. Wexner, one of those guys who paid Epstein,
Speaker 2: has claimed something like one hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: for tax advice. That doesn't seem right. Even the most
Speaker 2: expensive law firm doesn't charge that much by the hour,
Speaker 2: So it had to be something else, And you know,
Speaker 2: I've never heard that explain in a detail. It had
Speaker 2: to be some kind of partnership of some some crazy
Speaker 2: equity thing. It can't have been tax advice. So this
Speaker 2: whole thing has been built on rumors and crazy stuff
Speaker 2: from the very beginning. I'm afraid.
Speaker 3: I never believed in the list either. I also think
Speaker 3: that the racy theories don't make much sense. So we
Speaker 3: have a president Donald Trump, who has I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say, been victimized by the intelligence services. At
Speaker 3: least they haven't been nice to him. We have an
Speaker 3: FBI director, Cash Patel, who dislikes the intelligence services. He
Speaker 3: dislikes the organization he runs. He thinks it's been a
Speaker 3: malign force in American history. I agree with him on that.
Speaker 3: And we have Dan Bongino, who is very much in
Speaker 3: touch with the base, especially the sort of people who
Speaker 3: think that there's a list or that this has been
Speaker 3: covered up under the Biden administration. And those people are
Speaker 3: all saying, actually, there is nothing here now. The only
Speaker 3: reason that I can think of, rationally that they would
Speaker 3: lie about that, because I think announcing it would be
Speaker 3: pretty good for them. I think they'd enjoy doing that
Speaker 3: is if Donald Trump were in some way implicated. But
Speaker 3: that's got to be absolute nonsense too, because first off,
Speaker 3: Joe Biden would have said something. Biden went after him
Speaker 3: in any way he possibly could. They tried to prosecute him,
Speaker 3: as did the state of New York, which has an
Speaker 3: access to Jeffrey Epstein. And even if Biden hadn't done that,
Speaker 3: for some reason, a person in the federal government would have.
Speaker 3: There would have been a leak or a whistleblower or
Speaker 3: a guy who came forward. Of course there would that
Speaker 3: person would have had he had the goods made fifty
Speaker 3: million dollars from a book deal. So you've got the
Speaker 3: people who already profoundly dislike the intelligence services on the
Speaker 3: right side of the aisle are saying there's nothing there,
Speaker 3: And then you have the only reason that they wouldn't
Speaker 3: want to do that being absolutely ridiculous. The most investigated
Speaker 3: man in the world is Donald Trump. Doesn't it make
Speaker 3: more sense just to say Jeffrey Epstein was clearly an
Speaker 3: evil man who did evil things, but he didn't write
Speaker 3: it all down.
Speaker 1: It strikes me as utterly reasonable. I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: get past the fact, and I've never been able to
Speaker 1: eye bleach this out of my brain, and that Epstein
Speaker 1: had a big oil painting of Bill Clinton in a
Speaker 1: blue dress and red heels. Yeah, the audacity of the
Speaker 1: audacity of that, and the fact that Clinton probably saw
Speaker 1: it and yucked and said that's a good one. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody would see it when they walked into his place
Speaker 1: just sort of tells you the type of individual character
Speaker 1: that we're that we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: But yeah, who needs who needs a list when you
Speaker 2: could have made that painting public Clinton?
Speaker 1: So I don't believe that that the the island had
Speaker 1: that little temple, there had secret elevators that went down
Speaker 1: to operating rooms where they removed the adrena chrome or
Speaker 1: whatever that is from the brains of infants. That that
Speaker 1: that whole common pizza ping punk pizza thing, the madness
Speaker 1: of that, whatever happened, by the way to Q has
Speaker 1: has the storm finally blown itself out? Because you don't
Speaker 1: hear an awful lot of people talking about Q anymore.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering what has replaced it in the space
Speaker 1: of in the mind space of those people who fervently
Speaker 1: believed that the revelations were about to drop.
Speaker 2: I have no idea I've wondered that too, and I've
Speaker 2: got no clue what may have replaced it.
Speaker 1: I don't think they need it anymore. To be frank, well,
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the news this last week. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the fourth of July and normal, but stuff did happen.
Speaker 1: We had, you know, I have a feed that I
Speaker 1: have a news feed that was that was. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I don't want to talk about Shawn Combs,
Speaker 1: John Puffy Combs. I want to talk about Sean Duffy shoes.
Speaker 1: Apparently there's a new now. I always said that when
Speaker 1: you take off your shoes at the airport to go
Speaker 1: through the security line, that there should be a statue
Speaker 1: of the shoe bomber at the end of the line
Speaker 1: that you can throw your footwear at, just just to
Speaker 1: get your anger out of that. That bastard for doing
Speaker 1: what he did, that made everybody take off their shoes
Speaker 1: for twenty years. But now apparently we don't. We don't.
Speaker 1: Do you know why? And do you think that these
Speaker 1: guys are going to be less safe now that their
Speaker 1: shoes will not be examined by X Ray's.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think we ever needed to do it
Speaker 2: in the first place. Supposedly the new scanners and technology
Speaker 2: can pick up a doctored shoe. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't think the Europeans. Charlie helped me out on this.
Speaker 2: I don't think the Europeans ever went in for the
Speaker 2: shoe removal business.
Speaker 3: Well, the British did, but they abolished it last year.
Speaker 2: Last Okay, yeah, anyway, I mean I was joking for
Speaker 2: the last twenty years, and I'd vote for the first
Speaker 2: presidential candidate who said we could keep our shoes on
Speaker 2: at the airport. And then, of course I got signed
Speaker 2: up for pre check several years ago, so I've been
Speaker 2: able to skip the getting the laptop out and the
Speaker 2: and taking my shoes off. I did like the last comment.
Speaker 2: The Babylon Pee had one of their classic headlines saying,
Speaker 2: you now can keep your shoes on before TSA gropes you.
Speaker 3: Well, I was wondering, Steve, how if I don't have
Speaker 3: to watch other people take their shoes off, I'm going
Speaker 3: to feel better than the other passengers who don't have
Speaker 3: TSA pre I'm going to need a new form of
Speaker 3: separate now, I'm kidding. I never thought this would happen.
Speaker 3: I never thought it would happen, not because it ever
Speaker 3: made any sense that we did this, but because the
Speaker 3: incentives in a democratic system all line up against repealing
Speaker 3: bad ideas like this, because if in the tiny chance
Speaker 3: that somebody was wearing shoes when they blow it blow
Speaker 3: up a plane, the president or agency that rescinded that
Speaker 3: order would be blended. If you look. For example, we
Speaker 3: haven't touched on it, but at these horrendous floods in Texas,
Speaker 3: they are quite clearly nothing to do with the fact
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump is president, the Greg Abbott is governor
Speaker 3: of Texas. The doge existed, but that is the line.
Speaker 3: So I always assumed, well, presidents are smart enough to
Speaker 3: know that, and although this is theater, they don't want
Speaker 3: to be the guy whose decisional tenure happened to intersect
Speaker 3: with a terrorist attack. And I'm so so happy that
Speaker 3: I'm wrong. It never occurred to me.
Speaker 1: No, we did it because the encroachment on freedom only
Speaker 1: goes one way. We think. Our shower heads will never
Speaker 1: be more powerful, our dishwashers will never wash like they
Speaker 1: did before, our toilets will not flush with a robust
Speaker 1: capacity that they did twenty five years ago. We will
Speaker 1: never be able to not wear a shit. But you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like now if I went into a coma
Speaker 1: and woke up in twenty years and went to the airport,
Speaker 1: I started taking off my belt and my shoes, people
Speaker 1: would be appauled. What are you doing? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Just it's TSA, isn't no? You just walk over to
Speaker 1: the plane here, have a cigarette. I mean they was
Speaker 1: reverting back to Nay teen sixty seven when I last
Speaker 1: was overseas in London and in the Roman airports. I'm
Speaker 1: pleased to note that the scanning detection that they have
Speaker 1: is remarkable. They make these three D models, these image,
Speaker 1: these three D models that they can then examine from
Speaker 1: every angle blow up go into. I should have said
Speaker 1: blow up and it's it's remarkable. But I always hate
Speaker 1: it because I'm always the guy whose bag goes on
Speaker 1: the dreaded second to shoot because and I'm glad that
Speaker 1: they are, because I my bag looks dangerous. My bag
Speaker 1: looks like I am a maniac. I should be in
Speaker 1: a black hair shirt with bag with bushy hair holding
Speaker 1: a you know, a boris bad enough bomb in my
Speaker 1: hand because there's so many wires and batteries and they
Speaker 1: have you know, they're just paging. Why do you need
Speaker 1: so many cords? Well, I'm traveling with my wife and daughter.
Speaker 1: Each of them has their own dedicated uh accessory battery
Speaker 1: cord that we that I that I provide for them
Speaker 1: so they're you can see their color coded here and well,
Speaker 1: these large batteries are for on the on the train.
Speaker 1: Smaller ones are for an ex. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: explain everything to them. But I'm glad. And it's also this.
Speaker 1: They also see your face and they got always all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways to see your face as you're in
Speaker 1: line and walking up the minute you walk into the airport, uh,
Speaker 1: and they know your face and they know who you are.
Speaker 1: And I would love to know which face of mine
Speaker 1: they have. I'd love to know where it is. But
Speaker 1: I walk into a Roman airport and the Roman airport
Speaker 1: says oh James Loleax Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rivederla. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why we can, that's why we can keep our shoes on.
Speaker 3: This would never happen to their return people who would
Speaker 3: be the ones making that determination.
Speaker 1: Right, No, No, it wouldn't. But of course since everybody
Speaker 1: lived probably about you know, spent their entire life five
Speaker 1: miles from their birth. They wouldn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: security checks when they go to some other places you
Speaker 1: mentioned the floods. The floods they tried to blame on
Speaker 1: cuts to the NWS, They tried to blame on abbot,
Speaker 1: they tried to blame on understaffing. In other words, the
Speaker 1: whole idea that the government, if not funded at current
Speaker 1: levels and then more so, results in imminent death. And
Speaker 1: also what they love about these is the fact that
Speaker 1: it's weather and having the sort of paganistic fear of
Speaker 1: Guaya that they do. They believe that this is caused
Speaker 1: by somebody starting up in suv in nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 1: and contributing the fatal amount of carbon dioxide that her
Speaker 1: monoxide or dioxe, whatever, the greenhouse gas that's going to
Speaker 1: kill us all. But as we were saying before, these
Speaker 1: claims are falling on deaf ears. Everybody's been hearing them
Speaker 1: for twenty years, and the earth is okay. But yet
Speaker 1: we're still supposed to believe that these ones once in
Speaker 1: a one hundred year life events are magnifying and increasing
Speaker 1: and getting more deadly. But none of that is sticking.
Speaker 1: All this stuff is like putting a post it note
Speaker 1: on a sweating man just it just isn't working. And
Speaker 1: the ghouls who would populate social media right away and
Speaker 1: gleefully blame this one. The editorial cartoonist of legitimate newspapers
Speaker 1: blame it on the people who deny climate change or
Speaker 1: the people who voted for immigration reform, and the rest
Speaker 1: of it is off putting extreme to the normies, as
Speaker 1: they say, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think people are suffering from apocalypse fatigue
Speaker 2: at this point. And this is li isn't brand new.
Speaker 2: I mean I filed away. I think way back around
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, when an
Speaker 2: unexpected person it was Nick Christoff, the liberal minded columnists
Speaker 2: of New York Times wrote an article saying, gosh, I
Speaker 2: wonder for being too apocalyptic with this environmental business, because
Speaker 2: my perception is environmental alarms are now like car alarms,
Speaker 2: something blaring in the background that we're starting to tune
Speaker 2: out and ignore. Well, I think now we actually have
Speaker 2: the op polling data in on this is it's now
Speaker 2: the fact that you actually had the Democratic analyst David
Speaker 2: Shore a year ago telling Democrats from his very careful
Speaker 2: survey work shut up about electric cars. My findings say
Speaker 2: that talking about electric cars loses votes for Democrats, and
Speaker 2: lo and beholders starting to not talking about electric cars
Speaker 2: as much, so it's become a stone cold loser for
Speaker 2: them and it's about darn time.
Speaker 1: Well the Charles. Before you get to that, I want
Speaker 1: to note, I don't know what it's like in Florida.
Speaker 1: It's probably soupy there, right, And Stephen, if you're in California,
Speaker 1: we know the California is clement and beautiful, but July
Speaker 1: is hot. I'm here to tell you in Minnesota that
Speaker 1: it has been absolutely well, extraordinarily hot, drenching rains and
Speaker 1: the rest of it, which is fine. It's good it's summer.
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Speaker 1: responsing this the Ricochet Podcast. Let's see, so we have
Speaker 1: pretty much set the world at rights here going down
Speaker 1: the list of things about which the concern is mounting,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, what what hit today? Well, Friday in
Speaker 1: the summertime is about the last time is about the
Speaker 1: most the deadest thing you can imagine. Right, So there's
Speaker 1: not a lot left. So I'm gonna ask you, guys,
Speaker 1: what is something that you have been watching that you
Speaker 1: don't think that enough people are paying attention to? But
Speaker 1: as consequential nevertheless, Well, James.
Speaker 2: I was expecting you to bring up the new Superman movie, which, uh,
Speaker 2: well I almost did. Well, well, now I'll make you
Speaker 2: because it sounds like it's going to be a bomb
Speaker 2: at the box office. We'll see about that. But you
Speaker 2: know they've changed it from truth justice in the American
Speaker 2: way to truth justice and the human way.
Speaker 1: Uh huh?
Speaker 2: And what the director is? A James Gun or somebody
Speaker 2: Gun says, well, you know Superman was an immigrant. It's
Speaker 2: an immigrant story and like wait a minut, no, he
Speaker 2: was well from another planet, right, he was raised in America.
Speaker 2: To try and politicize this movie in even such a
Speaker 2: hamheaded way, seems like a real blunder. And so I
Speaker 2: noticed this morning that this White House that should never
Speaker 2: have blundered this way, this White House, not the White House,
Speaker 2: should have blundered, but Hollywood shouldn't have blundered. They put
Speaker 2: out an AI drawing Trump in a Superman suit. I
Speaker 2: stand for truth, Justice and the American Way. It's an
Speaker 2: epic troll on all this. And so I'm gonna watch.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna watch the box office and see what the
Speaker 2: word of mouth is on the movie. It's getting mixed
Speaker 2: reviews so far.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. James Gunn was loved by some for the quirky,
Speaker 1: quippy tone that he brought to Guardians of the Galaxy.
Speaker 1: And I love the first Guardian. It had a great
Speaker 1: charm to it. Walking through listening to you know, hooga
Speaker 1: Shaka at the beginning, he thought, oh, this is new.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately quippiness is one of those things that infected
Speaker 1: all the Marvel movies, which gave made them a sort
Speaker 1: of weightless. People don't say these things after they've just
Speaker 1: saved the world. And then of course it was swamped
Speaker 1: by also darkness and complexity in the rest of it,
Speaker 1: and Marvel movies became almost unwatchable. They seemed like homework,
Speaker 1: and I fell away from them. I've never been a
Speaker 1: Superman guy, because what's the interest there. He's Superman, He's vulnerable,
Speaker 1: he can't you know, Oh yeah, Krypton brings him down.
Speaker 1: I thought as a kid that the Superman books were stupid,
Speaker 1: because in every other one of them it was what
Speaker 1: if Superman actually had a peg leg and it would
Speaker 1: be one of those stories, or Lois Lane and Lana
Speaker 1: Lang would be catfighting in the right. Well, that actually
Speaker 1: was a pretty good episode, but there's nothing about him
Speaker 1: interested in me. The only thing, however, that you maybe
Speaker 1: can take away from the sixty Superman's was that they
Speaker 1: did do PSAs and which Superman would tell a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids not to be prejudice that everybody's an American here.
Speaker 1: We're all born in America, roll citizens. Your national origin
Speaker 1: doesn't count. And you could say that was him being
Speaker 1: woke back then, but no, that was the usual good
Speaker 1: citizenship stuff that they used to do all the time.
Speaker 1: What Gun has done with the statements that he's made,
Speaker 1: is indicated that he doesn't realize the nature of the
Speaker 1: complaints about illegal immigration. Nobody's talking is it is not
Speaker 1: anti American to be against anti illegal immigration. We love
Speaker 1: our immigrants, right, Charles, You should do. We do, and
Speaker 1: we would be less without them. But there's a process,
Speaker 1: there's legality, there's a number of people. There's the question
Speaker 1: of dumping fifteen thousand people into a community of fifty
Speaker 1: thousand without thinking that the culture was going to go
Speaker 1: under stresses and the rest of it. It's this complex argument,
Speaker 1: and if you want to reduce it down to your
Speaker 1: stupid comic book terms, then you're an idiot. And I'll
Speaker 1: presume you're an idiot, and I'll watch the movie with
Speaker 1: that in mind. That said, everything I've read about it
Speaker 1: makes this thing sound weightless and jokey and quippy. And
Speaker 1: let's redo it and rethink it. And while there's room
Speaker 1: for that, and a competent director and a they could
Speaker 1: do it. I trust Kyle Smith when he says, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't think they did it.
Speaker 2: Let me give you one little footnote to it, James,
Speaker 2: that will amuse you. The New York Times has a
Speaker 2: story out today. The headline is Superman's other secret weakness
Speaker 2: journalism ethics. Subhead writing the Daily Planet about his heroic
Speaker 2: alter ego raises thorny issues for Clark Kent. Lois Lane
Speaker 2: has her conflicts too. Now, I mean, I haven't read Peace.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to. I've got to think that maybe
Speaker 2: this is a lame of tempet satire. But I'll bet not.
Speaker 2: I'll bet this is somebody that really thinks that there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with this depiction of Clark Kent.
Speaker 1: I hear me, hope there is way do they learn
Speaker 1: about a guy named Peter Parker who would set up
Speaker 1: his camera to take pictures of this spider man fellow.
Speaker 1: There's another questionable set of ethics for you. I just
Speaker 1: like the idea. I mean, I'm keen to see if
Speaker 1: this movie takes place in an actual newsroom, because if
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be a newsroom of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: and there's more than five people in the office, I'd
Speaker 1: be surprised if it's one of those places full of
Speaker 1: clattering keys and people shouting copyboy and wreaths of cigar smoke.
Speaker 1: You know, that's nineteen forty seven Daily Planet. That isn't
Speaker 1: that isn't here. And even though we have a globe
Speaker 1: in our lobby that looks like something you would have
Speaker 1: in a classic newspaper. The whole idea of the paper
Speaker 1: as it was in the Daily Bugle is gone. Charles.
Speaker 1: Were you a comic book reader growing up? Did you
Speaker 1: have any favorites of your own?
Speaker 3: I wasn't and I'm still not, and mostly I'm disinterested
Speaker 3: in comic book movies, although I thought the Christopher Nolan
Speaker 3: Batman trilogy was spectacular, and I liked the Iron Man
Speaker 3: movie with Robert Danney Jr.
Speaker 1: The first one I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the quippiness, oh and you mentioned got
Speaker 3: into the guy because that was good to the quippiness
Speaker 3: does bother me. Though. I saw someone on Twitter the
Speaker 3: other day showing the scene in Jurassic Park where the
Speaker 3: two paleontologists first see the dinosaur, and they said, you
Speaker 3: know that movie had been made now by someone other
Speaker 3: than Spielberg, they would have made a quip to show
Speaker 3: how cool they were, rather than been overalled. And I
Speaker 3: thought that that was a fair point. My problem with
Speaker 3: the Superman movie, aside from things the director have said
Speaker 3: which have irritated me too, for all the reasons you outlined,
Speaker 3: it's just that I just don't think it looks very
Speaker 3: good and okay, I'm obviously not the target audience because
Speaker 3: I'm not a big superhero movie so stipulated, but I
Speaker 3: really actually wanted to be excited to go and see
Speaker 3: this because I have two boys, right seven and nine,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, when I was ten, I loved
Speaker 3: the Superman series with Terry Hatcher and Dean Kane, and
Speaker 3: I thought, well, they would probably love to go to
Speaker 3: the movie theater, which they love going to the movie theater,
Speaker 3: and to see the Superman movie. And I've watched the trailer,
Speaker 3: and I tried so hard with the first couple of
Speaker 3: trailers that I sought to get excited about going to
Speaker 3: see it, and I just don't think it looks right now.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's amazing, but everyone who has seen whose opinion
Speaker 3: I respect, says it's not so. Between that and the
Speaker 3: trailers that didn't excite me at all and the director
Speaker 3: being annoying, I think I'm going to skip it right.
Speaker 1: The whole business about going from truth justice in the
Speaker 1: American way to the Human way fails on two levels. One,
Speaker 1: the human way is actually not that good. It is
Speaker 1: not something that we if I had a choice to be.
Speaker 1: Here's a society full of humans and here's a society
Speaker 1: full of Americans. I'm going to go with the one
Speaker 1: that's got the concepts of law and order in individuality
Speaker 1: and personal responsibility as opposed to the ones that are
Speaker 1: that are basically blood maddened, you know, resource expropriating feral humans.
Speaker 1: I mean, the human way, unmediated by law and by
Speaker 1: tradition and culture is bad. And America is a law,
Speaker 1: tradition and culture. So he's stupid in that way again
Speaker 1: to think that there is something human that is on
Speaker 1: a plane above evil of Americanism. But also Superman has
Speaker 1: done this before. I think you were in one. He
Speaker 1: renounced his citizenship and became a United Nations ambassador or
Speaker 1: something like that. I mean, they love to do this,
Speaker 1: and they love to point out exactly that. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got roots as an immigrant. He's a reflection of
Speaker 1: the Jewish immigrant experience and all that stuff. And hey,
Speaker 1: you know, Clark Kent didn't have his papers when he
Speaker 1: landed in Smallville. And these are all tedious, small, little,
Speaker 1: anal retentive details that forget the basics of the story
Speaker 1: that he landed here a blank slate and his and
Speaker 1: by being raised by two loving people in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Midwest. He grew up to embody these characteristics,
Speaker 1: and that says something about the culture that we'd like
Speaker 1: to think. And even if we don't think it's true
Speaker 1: all the time, it's something that we should strive to
Speaker 1: incorporate into our national mythology. No harm in that. But basically,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a guy who you know, bullets bounced
Speaker 1: off his chest and he's got laser beams out of
Speaker 1: his eyes. So let's not take all that too seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will see. I'm disappointed. But again here and here's
Speaker 1: the other thing, though, when are we going to get
Speaker 1: past this idea that well, what I'm going to do,
Speaker 1: and it's very brave, it's very edgy, is I'm going
Speaker 1: to subvert the audience's expectations about this long standing cultural institution.
Speaker 1: How long have we been doing this?
Speaker 3: You know what? What movie didn't do it? Top gun Maverick?
Speaker 3: Right to start with some exposition about how planes actually suck?
Speaker 1: Right, you know what sucks?
Speaker 3: Planes? Planes suck and pilots pilots suck too, And who
Speaker 3: cares whether America wins all the nameless enemy? Iran uh?
Speaker 3: And do that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: And for this f one movie that people seem to
Speaker 3: like as well, does not seem to subvert the expectations
Speaker 3: that cars that go very fast are cool.
Speaker 1: Well. I wrote about the F one movie in my
Speaker 1: blog the other day because I ran across a piece
Speaker 1: that said, we need to talk about female representation in
Speaker 1: F one. Oh, And I thought, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: We don't know. If anybody says we need to talk
Speaker 1: about this, you look at your watch and you say,
Speaker 1: I gotta I got a red canal, I gotta go
Speaker 1: to We don't need to because, first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be a talk, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a lecture. But the problem is is that the
Speaker 1: F one audience is getting more and more female, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough representation in the movie. So that's a problem.
Speaker 1: But you know, movies that are straight ahead and appeal
Speaker 1: to that old style American movie going, people adore them.
Speaker 1: People respond to them with huge waves of gratitude. And
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, as good as I know
Speaker 1: that they are, I have a real problem with Mission
Speaker 1: Impossible movies because of something they did in the very
Speaker 1: first one. They may spoiler alert for a movie it's
Speaker 1: been off for twenty years. They made Jim Phelps into
Speaker 1: a trader. And I remember sitting there and thinking, I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to say childhood ruined and the rest of it,
Speaker 1: but I grew up admiring the hell out of Jim Phelps,
Speaker 1: and to do this to that character, just just for
Speaker 1: a twist, Oh, he was evil all along. Look at
Speaker 1: that Captain America's actually hydra. I hate this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: the most boring, predictable trope you can get these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think I recall reading that it was
Speaker 2: a greg and I think maybe Peter Graves was still
Speaker 2: alive and hated the movie and walked out of it
Speaker 2: and wouldn't have anything to do with it. And I
Speaker 2: quite agree with you about I.
Speaker 1: Think for that reason. I think for that reason, and
Speaker 1: if Martin landa who had been alive, and Barbara Bain,
Speaker 1: that's right, Martin Lando and Barbara Bin I think. And
Speaker 1: then of course Spock joined the show a little bit later, right, yes, right,
Speaker 1: I just I absolutely loved that show very much.
Speaker 2: But now the other thing, James that I think here
Speaker 2: I want to prompt Charlie that happened this week is
Speaker 2: I thought we were all done with the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: for the summer right, Oh, you know, the term ended. Instead,
Speaker 2: we have all this new commotion happening, including the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court say no, we really meant it about district courts
Speaker 2: doing universal injunctions. And there was the amazing spectacle I
Speaker 2: never would have predicted of Sonya Sotomayor hectoring Katanji Brown
Speaker 2: Jackson to say, you don't really know what the law is,
Speaker 2: do you? And over to you, Charlie, because you wrote
Speaker 2: wonderfully about this.
Speaker 3: Well, it was you don't really know what the law is,
Speaker 3: do you? But also I think the broader message was
Speaker 3: you don't really know what your job, yes is do you?
Speaker 3: I wrote about this because we love the rule of
Speaker 3: three in journalism. If you have three examples of something,
Speaker 3: your golden ah, that's the column. And we have three
Speaker 3: examples now. The first was I'm going in reverse water.
Speaker 3: Katandi Brown Jackson herself in an ABC interview, saying that
Speaker 3: she loves being on the Supreme Court because it gives
Speaker 3: her the opportunity to share in her opinions what she
Speaker 3: thinks about the issues. She also said she likes to
Speaker 3: share her feelings, and she said that she likes to
Speaker 3: talk about how the country should work and this bothered
Speaker 3: me because judges are not supposed to talk about how
Speaker 3: the country should work. Citizens are supposed to talk about
Speaker 3: how the country should work. Congress yes and state legislatures.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to talk about how the country should
Speaker 3: work within his limited realm. The president's supposed to talk
Speaker 3: about how the country should work. But judges are not.
Speaker 3: Judges are supposed to talk about how the country does
Speaker 3: work and what the law is, not what it should be,
Speaker 3: and there's certainly not supposed to share their feelings. And
Speaker 3: it struck me that I'm not the only one who
Speaker 3: thinks this. Clearly, Sonya sort of my all thinks this,
Speaker 3: of all people to be chastised by, imagine being chastised
Speaker 3: for not being good enough at your job by Sonya's
Speaker 3: sort of my own who told Justice Jackson a few
Speaker 3: days ago that sure, she also agrees that the president
Speaker 3: must follow the law, but that they hadn't actually got
Speaker 3: to that case yet, and the questions that were raised
Speaker 3: in Jackson's descent hadn't actually been raised by the side
Speaker 3: of the dispute, and that she should jump the gun.
Speaker 3: And before that we had Amy Cony Barrett, who was
Speaker 3: careful and judicious as a writer and as a justice
Speaker 3: New King Jackson frankly for her descent, pointing out that
Speaker 3: it was not connected to the Constitution or any statute,
Speaker 3: or any doctrine or any canon of construction, and that
Speaker 3: it was odd to hear a Supreme Court justice complaining
Speaker 3: about legal ease, which is an actual talent that Jackson used.
Speaker 3: And it was odd to hear a Supreme Court justice
Speaker 3: complaining that both the majority opinion and the principal descent
Speaker 3: were obsessed with that complicated and boring legal question, which
Speaker 3: is again the nature of the job. And I just thought,
Speaker 3: and I wrote this in the piece you refer to.
Speaker 3: I just thought that having listened to Jackson talk about
Speaker 3: her role, she'd be much better. Are off starting a substag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right, because we're about another term
Speaker 1: away from her releasing a descent that consists of the
Speaker 1: dog in a fiery room saying this is fine, alas, alas,
Speaker 1: and a lack. Hey, listen, folks, it's a short week
Speaker 1: this week for us, because, frankly, you got other things
Speaker 1: to do, and we thank you for listening to us.
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Speaker 1: expanse of January July January July still stretches ahead. I've
Speaker 1: got another hour and a half in the building where
Speaker 1: I've worked for these many years, and just a couple
Speaker 1: of hours left in a in a job I've been
Speaker 1: at for twenty seven years, and I'm retiring today. Well,
Speaker 1: not retiring. That implies that I'm sort of hanging it up,
Speaker 1: and I'm not. As a matter of fact. You can
Speaker 1: find me at lilax dot com and James Lilacott substack
Speaker 1: dot com, as you can find Charles C. W. Cook
Speaker 1: at the National Review and Stephen where can people pick
Speaker 1: up the latest thing that you've written?
Speaker 2: I have a substack these days I call political Questions.
Speaker 2: But if you do Steve Hayward at substack, it pops up.
Speaker 1: There you go. So there's your reading for the weekend. Folks.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to hop on that cozy earth sail and
Speaker 1: we'll see you at Ricochet, and we'll see you in
Speaker 1: the comments at Ricochet for point zero. Bye bye, guys,