Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: The First Tangle Congressional Draft

Episode Date: June 9, 2024

On today's episode, Isaac and Ari hold the inaugural Tangle Congressional Draft. Each of them take turns selecting sitting members of Congress to make their own dream team Congress. discussing their reasoning behind each pick. And as always, they finish strong with the Airing of Grievances.YouTube comments are usually a place to find complaints, anger, and division. But on our latest video — my interview with Haviv Gur — I’ve been humbled to find overwhelmingly positive feedback. If you haven’t gotten the chance to watch, click the link and see what everyone is talking about, and leave some of your thoughts too.Catch up on episode 3 of our podcast series, The Undecideds, where our focus shifts from Donald Trump toward President Joe Biden. Much has been made in the media about his age and memory and whether he’s cognitively capable of handling another term. But an unanticipated performance at the State of the Union reignited his base and left many questioning that narrative. And while Donald Trump faces a jury of his peers in court, the court of public opinion continues to weigh in on the effectiveness of Biden’s foreign policies, with an eye to the conflicts between Israel and Palestine, Ukraine and Russia, and our own protracted clash at our southern border. Our undecided voters share their observations on the current commander in chief and how his decisions on the world stage affect their decision in the voting booth. You can listen to Episode 3 ⁠⁠here.⁠⁠ A brand new episode is coming this week.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Coming up, Ari and I draft a new Congress. That's right. We got 15 picks on the board, and we're going to make the best Congress we possibly can. And then we both spend some time complaining about Google. This is a good one. Something a little different. I think you guys are going to like it. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm here today with Tangle Managing Editor Ari Weitzman for our Sunday pod. Ari, I'm excited for this one, man. How are you doing? It's great to be here. I'm excited to be sort of co-GMs with you today for our special assignment that you've got for us. Yeah, I've come up with a concept,

and I think it's going to dominate this entire podcast. And this is basically my idea. I want to draft a Congress. So my framing here is that the United States government has been dissolved. We did it. We did it. Thank God. Finally. Ari and Isaac are elected as We did it, thank God, finally Aria and Isaac are elected

As we'll call us, interim presidents To rebuild our government from the ground up And in this hypothetical We've been asked to make a Congress With 11 people to run the country I was thinking about this before I think maybe we should make it 15. How do you feel about that? Oh, okay. Well, explain why, and then I'll ask my other questions

about that. Because I'm presuming that you will draft probably... I have 20 people on my board and I'm thinking you're going to draft at least a couple that I have. And there's just going to be a lot of people who I want to talk about. I'm not going to get to. Great. Yeah. I've got 40 on mine. I think I'm really trying to span a pretty wide group of people. And that's one of the things that I have here is just thinking about frameworks and relative to that. Are we drafting a bicameral Congress here? Are we trying to think of building out a Senate and a House? And follow up, if so, can we draft House members into our new Senate, vice versa? I think we are not drafting a bicameral Congress. We are drafting one Congress that will serve as the dominant chamber passing every piece of legislation

and working together. So we're sort of a first continental Congress, if you will, for the new world. Yeah, I like that. A first continentaltime mayoral congress. We'll call it 15 people. If you have 40 people on your draft board, we should be able to do that. It's a snake draft. We're going to rock, paper, scissors shoot for first pick live on the podcast. I think every pick comes with a little bit of justification, explanation for why you picked this person. Then we'll discuss a little bit and I'll try and keep it so we don't spend more than a two or three minutes or four or five minutes, I guess, on each pick. And the overarching rule is that you can only select sitting members of Congress.

So people who are currently in the House or Senate, no presidents, no state representatives. We do not need an even amount of Senate or House members or an even amount of Democrats and Republicans or men and women or representative, whatever. You're just picking. And if someone picks a person that one of us has in our top board, then that person's just on the board. That's great. We have some consensus. Maybe we'll talk about that. And then we just move on. So we're going to see if we can do 15 picks. We're going to rebuild the United States Congress from the ground up with only sitting members of Congress. Any questions before we get into this? I'm going to volunteer something and I'm going to ask for your opinion too. So I want to give

you my framework for decision-making here and I'm going to ask for yours. Or we can just say, you know what, we'll figure it out as we go. As we talk through our reasoning, we can sort of suss out each other's frameworks. I don't have an overarching... I think in building out my draft board, I realized the things that I really value, which sort of became my overarching framework. But I think we should talk about individual picks versus talking about broad. Maybe at the end, we can talk about how we decided. Because I think if you explain your framework now, it'll sort of maybe be leading and foreshadow a little too much. Give away some potential prospects.

And maybe bias your decision-making. Okay, I'm going to talk through my decision-making as I make it then. And we can then compare and contrast our processes at the end. All right, great. Let's rock, paper, scissors, shoot for first pick. Can you see my my fist are you ready yeah rock paper scissors

shoot wow we both threw paper okay damn that's sick actually alright let's go again rock paper scissors shoot Ari threw paper again and I got him with the scissors.

Let's just do one out of all. Let's not do best of three. Let's just go. Yeah, I agree. Although in real life, you should always do best of three and rock, paper, scissors, shoot for all you plebs out there who are best of one people. Do you know that I looked this up beforehand cause Phoebe always throws scissors first when she does rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

It's like her big weakness when I'm, when I'm in a jam and we can't decide on something, I just say, let's just rock it out. And like 90% of the time she throws scissors and I beat her and she can't figure out why I always win. Wow. Yeah. So you just cue her? Yeah.

I'm just like, oh, we'll just rock it out. And then one day I told her that, and now she's totally in her head about what to throw first. And I just sort of play off of that. But I looked it up and it turns out that women actually tend to throw scissors more. There's been a bunch of studies about it. They don't know why. It's sort of considered some sort of defensive measure where rock is the most common thing among men and also the most common thing to be thrown, I guess. 35.4% of people throw rock first and papers slightly after. I thought that was interesting. I looked that up because I was thinking about what you'd throw first. Wow. I just like that we talked about what we might do as an intro

and you said, you know, I don't know if we have time. I think this is just going to take the whole thing. So the intro ended up just being you talking about rock, paper, scissors, advanced strategy. Yeah. And I won and I've got the first pick. Yeah, so it worked out well for me. That's perfect because I wanted the second pick.

I want to see where you're going. All right. The first pick in the first ever Tangle News draft of Congress, maybe a somewhat controversial pick. I don't think so. Susan Collins, Republican Senator from Maine, off the board. Some people are Susan Collins haters. I am not. Genuine moderate, statistically the most bipartisan legislator in the Senate, according to a lot of recent studies about this. studies about this. She works in Maine as a senator, which is just like really beautiful, awesome state with a lot of political diversity and a lot of different, I guess, I'm trying to think of the right word, a lot of different industries and interests to sort of satisfy

that she navigates. There are are some, some kind of urban areas like Portland, and then there's like the fishing industry. And then there's these really rural areas and it's in new England. So it's sort of got some of the new England liberal undertones, but the rural areas are very conservative. She's a Republican who wins statewide races there. Um, great legislator, super smart, knows how the government works uh yeah i just like i i'm i'm a susan collins stan i think and if i'm building a government with 15 people i want her in it sort of working across the aisle helping meet people in the middle um and yeah i looked it up i tried to do a little bit of like what, what are my biggest red flags or

concerns about people? And mine for her was just that she's married to a lobbyist, which is kind of all I've got. I don't love that. It gives me a little bit of an icky feeling, but lobbyist is also kind of a dirty word for just somebody who works for a company and lobbies legislation. I also did learn when I was looking stuff up about her that she's one of six children and her great, great, great grandfather started a lumber business in Maine in 1844 that her family still operates, which I thought was kind of sick. So there you go, Susan Collins, what do you think? Susan Collins was somebody I had on my draft board too. So I went a little less in depth and a little bit broader with the way that I looked for people. And I tried to get some

measurables as if we're drafting athletes here. So the tale of the tape that I have on Susan Collins, because she's a person I researched as well, is she is a 27-year vet of Congress. She's 71 years old, graduate of St. Lawrence University, a member over the course of her career of five committees and chaired two of them and was a vice chair of one of them. So she's been a leader. She scored the second highest that I could find on the bipartisan ranking. I'm curious, maybe we're using different bipartisan rankings, just behind Maggie Hassan out of New Hampshire. So for Congress, the most bipartisan person that you can find other than Maggie Hassan and a bona fide bridge builder,

a person who's hard to say is a pure firebrain ideologue, a solid pick for sure. Something that kind of makes me a little upset about it is it makes it harder for me to choose Angus King out of Maine, who has interesting measurables too. So I'm going to be taking him off my big board now. But I like it. I will say, Susan Collins also not, you know, not a really spicy pick, not like a, she doesn't have like the, the flair of a, the number one overall draft pick you might want in like, you know,

an NFL or NBA draft. But I think for functioning government, um, she's just the right kind of even keeled normal person without a ton of baggage. All right, Susan Collins off the board. Ari, you're on the clock. All right. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I'm thinking that there's a couple people that we're probably going to get to regardless. And I'm trying to think that I shouldn't be picking those people in round one. I have a person who I was thinking this is my first round draft pick, but I was going to flex that depending on if you went with the generalist bipartisan, which I think you did. So I'm going to flex to an ideologue instead.

I think we need to have some ideologues in order to build a Congress. I agree. I also came to that conclusion. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, great. I'm curious to talk more about that. People who are not just attention seekers, but legislators of principle who are predictable in that way. So somebody who scored a 0.82 on my ideologue scale from zero to 100 or from zero to one where one is most conservative you can get zero is the most liberal you can get uh but also scored a near um like nearly a positive score on bipartisan index and that person is republican lawyer out of byYU, Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho. He is a member of three committees in the Senate. He's on two chairs.

25-year vet in Congress. So that leadership is something that's, I think, important. Religious conservative out of BYU. 49% approval rating sounds low in his state, but that's actually higher than average for most Congress people. So he's a person who I think you can trust to be a leader as well as somebody who's going to represent a point of view pretty fairly. And he's, I think, a person you want when you're building a continental Congress that's going to look out for the viewpoints of everybody ideologically. And I think he'll also be a person who cares a lot about the history of the Constitution.

And I think moving forward, you need to have some people who are idea people who are going to be shaking things up, but you also need some conservative people who respect tradition. So I think Krapa is a great choice in that regard. What do you think? I love the pick, mostly because he was not somebody who was on my board, and he is somebody who I am familiar with as a senator. It's funny, even as a politics reporter, there's 530-something members of Congress, So there are people who I don't know, you know, but I think I know basically every senator and know a little bit about each senator. But when you get to the House, it gets a lot harder. Very interesting pick.

Love the rationale behind it. I can tell already that you took a much more sort of statistical measurables approach to how you're picking people, which I think is going to be great because I'm a lot more like... We complement each other. Yeah. Vibes. I read, thought of some people, who comes to mind, look up some news articles, read some profiles, scour the Wikipedia page type stuff. That was sort of my approach versus trying to find a standard way to quantify people. Throwing this out there, Mike Crapo, he apparently got a DUI in December 2012, even though he's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pretty interesting. I didn't

know this, but I just looked up some stuff while you were, I, I, another thing I did was I typed in the politician I wanted to draft and then the word controversy and then filtered for news articles and just read about, you know, the, the red flags to vet my people. Um, just an interesting note because he is a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that he would get caught for drinking, but also an Eagle Scout, has five children, that's a good bit, and beat prostate cancer. So good for him. Love all that. Very interesting pick that I did not have. Love the justification. Also came to a similar conclusion that we need some ideologues. Okay, cool. All right. So we've got our first two picks on the board. How old was he?

Did you have that in front of you? Yeah, 73. 73. Okay, cool. I'm going to keep track on my big board of who we pick, where they're from, and how old they are, just because I think that'll be an interesting thing to run through at the end. Okay, very interesting. All right, well, this changes who my third pick was going to be. Or who my second pick was going to be. I'm up next anyway.

Oh, right, Snake Draft. Yeah, yeah. Good point. All right, go ahead. Oh, right. Snake draft. Yeah. Good point. All right, go ahead. So as far as I'm looking at it, I think on the board now we have two, what I would consider generalists, people who are in several different committees and who are bridge one. It's like one of them's a bridge builder, but they're both old hands, old pros in Congress. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for somebody who's a little bit more ideologically to the other side of the spectrum, somebody who's more of a specialist and a little younger. I'm also going to pick a bridge builder though. So I'm going with a member of the House's Problem Solvers Cauvers caucus i'm sure you've got one or two of those on your board as well this is a so democrat out of nevada uh background in education went to cmu

not a whole lot of experience in congress but young at 57 we'll definitely get younger than that but i'm going with Susie Lee. Susie Lee? Member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. 1.6 on the bipartisan score, which is pretty high. The highest that gets for me is a 4, which is an outlier. Other than that, it's a 2.7. So she's 1.6, which is fairly high.

0.32 on the ideologue scale. So that pretty much balances Crapo, but not as far over to the left. And as a person who is a member of two committees, chairs none of them, a person who I think he could count on to be valuable in discussions and bring a liberal ideology with a bridge-building philosophy to what she does. Susie Lee, Nevada. Very interesting. I like the pick. Your second pick in a row that was not on my board. All right. Like the justification, my quick stress test of Representative Susie Lee controversy, not a great result for you. I'll say that. Reported that Lee failed to properly disclose over 200 personal stock trades worth more than $3 million. Oh, one of those.

Yeah, one of those. Kind of hard to avoid, honestly, in this Congress. I've been following that, what's it called, like Big Whales or something. There's that unusual whales, that awesome Twitter account that basically just every time a member of Congress makes a stock trade, tweets out an update about it, and then you follow along and they like 95% of the time, the trade turns out remarkably well for the member of Congress. A little bit alarming. Love it.

Love somebody from the Southwest, a little geographical diversity. I think that's also important. Cool. That's a good one. Another one, like I said, not on my board. Makes me think that we can move in a little bit of that bipartisan direction and get those people on the people on the board and in. You said she was 57 years old? That's right. All right, cool. All right. So we've got Senator Susan Collins, Senator Mike Crapo, Representative Susie Lee, and that's S-U-S-I-E, not Z-Y as my grandmother spelled it. Your grandmother's just here writing things down for you, taking notes. Yeah. Grandma Susie. Uh, okay, cool. I think this is a good setup for my next pick. I'm also going to the house. Um, I wanted to get some, yeah, I wanted to take it to the house. Uh, this is a Homer pick. It might, my biggest concern, I guess... I know it is. I already got it.

Just in the interest of... I don't think we need the same number of Republicans and Democrats, but this is going to put a third Republican on the board in our first four picks, which is Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, who is from Levittown, Pennsylvania. I grew up in Bucks County, PA. I obviously talk about that a lot, probably too much in Tangle. And Levittown is the next town over from where I grew up. All my friends from high school grew up in Levittown. The schools were kind of split between Levittown, Morrisville, Yardley, which is where I grew up. So love Brian Fitzpatrick just because he's a hometown guy. Disagree with him on plenty, honestly, but he's got a lot going for him. First of all, he's a Republican voice that's super outspoken and very conservative, but also wants to address climate change and

wants Republicans to do more about climate change, which is an issue that I think is a real issue that we need to think really pragmatically about. And he's somebody who cares about this stuff in a state where energy and the energy economy matters a great deal. So he's not going to come up with solutions or propose stuff that's like pie in the sky BS. He's deals with the realities on the ground of, you know, what the energy economy means to people in Pennsylvania. Um, my biggest pro is about him. And again, there are some things I disagree with him pretty strongly about, which, you know, that happens of course. Uh, he is one of the most bipartisan members of Congress,

basically all the studies. Yeah, the most by some measures. I saw this Maryland Matters article. The University of Maryland did a big study about this. He's urged the Supreme Court to limit gerrymandering. He even lobbied Republicans to vote against this. I'm sorry. He even went as far as refusing to join a lawsuit with Republicans against Democratic gerrymandering because the goal of the lawsuit was ultimately to get Republicans a chance to redraw this map. So he's like so opposed to gerrymandering and so wants limits on gerrymandering that he wouldn't even join Republicans in a lawsuit that probably would have helped his party in Pennsylvania. And he does not want political parties of either side drawing maps. He wants independent commissions, which is what I think should happen also. Um, he's also tried to impose term limits, which I've written about this before. I think there are lots of pros and lots and cons. I think I'm a little bit more for, for members of the Supreme court. I'm pretty in on term limits for members of Congress. I think it's a little more complicated,

but he went to bat with Donald Trump, tried to get him to back a constitutional amendment for it. Not many members of Congress are doing something to limit their own terms. Love that. You know, people where I grow up have strong feelings about him. A lot of Democrats really hate him, but he still manages to reach across the aisle and he wins in Bucks County because he is genuinely somebody with a really mixed political background and political view. He's on the younger end of the spectrum. I actually don't remember exactly how old he is, but he's somebody, 50 years old. All right, great. Yeah. So my pick is Brian Fitzpatrick from Pennsylvania. Great. Yeah. Co-chair of the Problem solvers caucus with josh gotheimer from new jersey

uh got a four he's the outlier on the bipartisan scale for me um 0.45 in ideology so that's very very near the center and a little bit to the liberal end actually which is weird interesting um yeah i think that's odd i think it's just because of the way the house sort of moves the um the center in terms of how this is rated i'm getting these ratings by the way from the ideology ratings from the luger center and a lot of the uh background information from gov track.us it's really but i mean if if you look at his issues really quick, I'll just run through them. Anti-abortion, believes climate change is a real problem that we have to address. Against gerrymandering, very moderate on gun control, tried to help pass a bill endorsed

by Gabby Gifford's organization. So he wants to expand background checks definitely to the left on gun policy, kind of to the right on healthcare, to the right on immigration, pro-Israel, support same-sex marriage, supported Donald Trump, but also is a very outspoken person against Russia and, you know, kind of more on the, I would say, Democratic establishment side of some of the things happening overseas. So very interesting politician. Surprised that the ratings come out a little left, but yeah, he's pretty much as centrist as they get, especially for House Republicans these days.

I had a former FBI agent, which I thought was interesting. I wanted to add that before you move on. Yeah, former FBI agent. That's a good one. All right. Wait, so snake draft. Do I go again? I go again now.

You got it. Yeah. Let's see what you got. You ready? I think I have it. I think it's actually the next person on my board. Great. So I'll preamble this by saying that I'm looking at our government right now. And we've got three, I think, pretty bipartisan, you know, work-aisle type people, moderates. We have one very ideological person in Senator

Mike Crapo, and he's a Republican. We've got three Republicans out of our four picks on the board. So I'm going to bang us left here in a big way. I think this could be maybe one of the most controversial picks of the draft. And I'm going to take Senator Elizabeth Warren. Damn, that was mine. All right, good. That's good. Now I can do other things. Okay. All right, great. We can talk about it. So first of all, on my big board, the first two people I had were Republicans. It was Susan Collins and Brian Fitzpatrick. So as I made my big board, I kind of felt like I needed to tack left a little bit. Here's what I'll say about Senator Elizabeth Warren, because I know she's a very controversial stuff. The biggest flags, again, I did all this,

the red flag downside are honestly just personality stuff. I mean, she has very leftist politics, obviously, but like the Native American heritage claim, she's hated by a lot of people in politics and outside politics. That's a problem. Like if you're building a Congress of 15 people and she has some radical policy positions. people. And she has some radical policy positions. That being said, though she has a very hard progressive tag, she has shown herself to be an incredibly pragmatic politician. She's a policy wonk, fantastic legislator. If you are going to decide that you're making a bill law, she is a great person to have on your team. I think the sort of caricature, whatever you want to call it, like the way the press kind of fawns over her,

I actually think in this case, it's sort of genuinely well-earned. She's interested in governing. She is not like bombastic, distracting, social media star politician. She's kind of head down, does work. And I think genuinely, earnestly concerned about the working poor and the working class. So even if her policies are extreme on addressing that issue, I think that it's a very, very sincerely held view that she wants to make life in America easier for a lot of people who are struggling. And I admire her for that. I think that that's like something she should be admired for. Really complex foreign policy positions,

much less predictable there than I think people might give her credit for. For instance, she's outspoken, opposed of U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which is kind of a standard-bearing progressive lefty thing, but also was very critical of plans to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan. And that situation felt like the U.S. should keep its presence there. So yeah, I don't know that it needs a ton of justification. I think there's a reason she's a household name, but that's sort of how I thought about it and why I put her on my board.

Great. So tail of the tape on Elizabeth Warren before I go in on why I wanted to add her next. Actually, I'll do that first. Same reasons that you said. I think we needed a lefty ideologue. I think we needed a person who is a policy wonk, especially if we're thinking about a first continental Congress. We need a person who can think critically about how to build policy and craft government. And I think Elizabeth Warren, 11-year pro out of Massachusetts,

is a good choice for that. She's 74 years old, former lawyer, member of two committees, chair of two committees in her career anyway. 50% approval. Again, that's pretty decent. A 0.06 on the ideologue scale, where again, zero is the lowest. And I think we're kind of on the same page with a lot of this stuff. So just as a fun side quest, who do you think is the lowest in ideology? Like who gets a zero where zero means most left in the Senate? I mean, it's got to be Bernie, right? It's Bernie. Yep. That guy knows his politics. No surprise. But a negative 1.3 on the bipartisan index there's really no limit to how far that goes down i did pull the person who is the lowest on the bipartisan index out of

everybody in congress who's a person i was previously unaware of named mary miller she's a rep out of illinois a republican farmer um who is a three-year uh three-year pro from Congress. So hers is the lowest bipartisan score, negative 2.1, which means for Elizabeth Warren at a negative 0.08, there's room to play with there for sure. So great pick. I think that's really, it really had threw me a curveball. So now I had to kind of think on my feet for what I wanted to do next. And I think I know what two I'm going to do. I'm going to, I think, set the table for us to go on a run of really young people by adding one more old head first, another person on the left. This person was going to be my first overall pick because I wanted somebody who was going to be kind of a bridge

building generalist in the middle. I went with a senator who I think hits this interesting target of being elected from a state that has one ideological slant in one direction, but is a member of a party from the other ideology. I know who it is. Can I guess? Why don't you tell me? Guess. Because he's on my board too, and he's very high up. Senator Sherrod Brown. No. Fuck. Damn it!

Brown's also on my board, but I'm talking about the Democrat out of Montana, John Tester. Oh, John Tester, yeah. John Tester is interesting. I think he is a person who has an interesting background. He's a former music teacher, a former farmer, I think actually still a farmer. His family had a butcher shop. He's lost three fingers on his left hand from an incident when he was younger. He has a 50% approval or 48% approval rating as a Democrat in Montana, which I think is pretty good. 1.5 on the bipartisan scale, which is again, really good.

0.38 on the ideology scale, where 0.5 is in the middle. A member of three committees in his career has chaired two of them. 17-year pro in the Senate, 67 years old. He had a full life before he joined the Senate, which reminds me a little bit of this line from the Ballad of the Green Mountain Boys about the militiamen in Vermont around the Revolutionary War era, which was, our leaders themselves are our own fellow men who can handle the scythe and the sword and the pen. And John Tester can handle the scythe and the sword and the pen. He's a real man's man from Montana who's bucked the trend of a conservative state by being elected to the Senate again and again and again as a Democrat. And I think that proves that you have the ability to

work with people when you have that kind of career bona fide. So John Tester's my guy. What do you think? Love that. I blew my Sherrod Brown cover because I was just very confident in that. They're pretty different politicians. They're very different. So it's interesting that the things that you said made that go off in my head. Fun fact about John Tester, which I remembered and just looked up to confirm before I said it, is that he's a Freemason, which is hilarious. And a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints. Yeah. Freemasons, that's like something I'd like to learn more about. Just, you know, people who are in like a fraternal organization for stonemasons. That's just

badass. I also saw on his Wikipedia page, he has this great quote about that he butchers and brings his own meat with him to Washington, which is the most Jon Tester thing I've ever heard. He said, taking meat with us is just something that we do. We like our own meat period. And then it just, and then it just says Tester is a Freemason. Yeah. It's a great quote. Um, okay, cool. I'm in on John Tester. Funny enough, he was on my board, but I had like zero bio stuff written for him. I was just going to kind of riff on the things I know about him, um, in a really tough race this year. I'll be curious if he's in the Senate come 2024, but, uh, cool. I'm with it. Yeah. I mean, that's about as conservative of a Democrat as you can find in the Senate right now. And in a state where he's got a, you know, be, be a regular old

American country boy, which I love. We need some of those people in our Congress for sure. So now I'm going to go the completely, completely opposite direction, almost as opposite as you can get while still being a Democrat. Do you want to take a guess with that statement? I already told you I'm going young. Yes. With that statement, I already told you I'm going young. I have no idea. All right. So I'm going with AOC. I think we, I've got some picks coming up that I think are going to countervail. Also, I think a lot of the Democrats that we have so far are pretty moderate with Warren notwithstanding. I think we need young people for sure. AOC is one of the youngest members of Congress at 34 years old.

She is already a five-year pro. She's already on two committees in her short career. She also, I think, is a person that has those working class bona fides. So she went to Boston University. She was a bartender. She's pretty upfront about that. She is somebody who's high on the buzz scale, which I kind of wanted to limit. But I also think you need some of, I think you need some pot stirrers. Not a lot. I'd rather the Congress, I think we just have to shift the ratio for what we have in our current actual Congress to what we're going to have in our new world Congress.

I think we're really, really centering on bridge builders. But I think we need people who are ideologues, like I said, and I think we need young people. I think we need people who are ideologues in a way that is both buzzy, but also I think, sincerely help. And I think for all you can criticize about AOC, I think she's sincere in her leftist policies. And like I said, I'm going to be countervailing this. But some more measurables about her. She's a 0.1 on that ideology scale, where a zero is as far left as you can get. And she's a negative 1.5 in bipartisan, which is not very high. It's pretty low, but I see you making faces. So I know that you've got a lot to say, but I think, I think you need people like this in the Senate. I think you need people who are going to like provoke.

What do you think? I, yeah, I hate this pick. I don't want her in my Congress. She's there. I, yeah, she's there now. That's, this is how democracy works. I hate this pick. I don't want her in my Congress. She's there. Yeah, she's there now. This is how democracy works, I actually looked up, uh, like members of Congress who didn't have college degrees because that's a really big ideological divide. Um, unfortunately one of the people, they all, the only person in the Senate who doesn't have a bachelor's degree is, is Mark Wayne Mullen, who's actually a fucking idiot. Um, so I was pretty disappointed by that outcome because yeah, he's the guy who, uh, challenged the teamsters guy to a fistfight in the middle of a congressional hearing and just like totally, but clowned himself. And I was just, and I, and I

was very interested in him. I was open to him as a human being and, you know, irregardless of his politics. But I saw that and I was just like, this guy, this guy sucks. So, yeah, I value that too. And certainly I'm invested in the fact that there are today, and this wasn't always true, but in today's Congress, it's very overrepresented by overly educated, kind of wealthy, out-of-touch politicians. I just think AOC, I just think she's kind of a know-nothing. I really feel that way. I watch her get interviewed. feel that way. I watch her get interviewed. I mean, it might be because I get more exposure to her than so many other politicians and that biases me. And maybe if somebody like Senator Mike Crapo or Representative Susie Lee or whatever was all over the news and all over my feed and I saw so much of their views and so much of their beliefs, I would feel the same way.

But she talks authoritatively about stuff that I understand really well. And when I listen to her talk, I often leave feeling like she has no idea what she's talking about. And I can't think of a single, I mean, do you have any accomplishments that she's had in Congress to hang her hat on? I mean, I don't know. I feel like I struggle to know, I struggle to think of a bill or a piece of legislation or something that she worked really hard on or that she championed or that she campaigned on that she, you know, got across the finish line. And maybe, and maybe again, that's just like the, the bias of the media about her that I've taken. But, um, yeah, she was not on my board. She'd not be somebody that I would pick. I don't think she'd be in my top hundred picks of the 500 plus people in Congress, to be honest. Top hundreds, pretty

strong. I, I, yeah, I just, and again again, I say all of that totally recognizing the fact that I've had an unbelievable amount of exposure to her because she's such a media darling. And maybe even four years ago, I was a lot more sympathetic to her because she came in, I think she was elected in 2018. And it was middle of the Trump era. She got so much attention. She was young and new and a freshman member of Congress and didn't really have a bunch of political experience. And I was like, just give her a chance, you know, like, and I valued the stuff that you're talking about. But now I'm just, it's like, you know, she's got three terms. It's been six years and I'm like, show me the goods.

So I don't know. I guess that's kind of my position. Okay. Let me respond quickly. So I was looking up some article that would give me a great pitch on AOC's accomplishments. I found one from Jacobin because that's where you're going to find it. And it says, well, before I get into that, actually, do you have anybody from the House Freedom Caucus on your list? I do. He's my next pick. Well, he was, but yeah, that's coming. of the House Freedom Caucus on my list as well. And I think it's ideologically countervailing and makes sense to try to balance with members of the squad. And I think as far as members of

the squad go, AOC is not even the most ideological of them in terms of the ratings that I found. Cori Bush actually is from Missouri. She was even lower on bipartisanship. So I think that was a little telling. Anyway, with that out of the way, from Jacobin, this is what they say about AOC's record, quote, one successful 2019 amendment cut $5 million from the Drug Enforcement Administration budget and redirected it to treatment programs for the opioid crisis. A year later, she managed to get her repeal of the 1998 Faircloth Amendment passed through the House, a landmark vote, and a longtime priority for affordable housing advocates. Continuing, another from 2022 mandated the Pentagon study the therapeutic uses of MDMA and hallucinogens. Sometimes Ocasio-Cortez and

the squad have made contributions by blocking legislation instead of passing it. So that's the pitch from Jacobin. I know you made a couple of faces there. I do think that the focus on redirecting opioid treatments as well as focusing on affordable housing is good. But then again, to your point, those are amendments. Those aren't pieces of legislation she drafted and sponsored. So as far as bridge building goes, maybe not. As far as leadership goes, maybe not. As far as leadership goes, maybe not. But I do think you need people that are going to add on and push back to those who are kind of at the forefront.

I'm with that. And I agree, an amendment to take $5 million for opiate enforcement from the DEA and put it towards treatment is probably money well spent. I don't know what the DEA's budget is off the top of my head, but I imagine it's hundreds of times more than $5 million. So I would say if a friendly news outlet that is clearly in the tank for you and your policies is writing an article about your accomplishments, and the third thing they mention is an MDMA study proposed to the Pentagon, that you probably have not done very much. So

I don't find that particularly compelling. I think the argument that like you want to create some ideological tension is interesting. I think the kind of like her background, she was a bartender, a regular girl who made it to Congress. Like I get all that. And I think that's the appeal of her as I think it's why she was kind of the media darling that she was. Um, but yeah, I would, I would not have picked her. Um, that's the only pick that I've been upset about so far though. So that's pretty good. I thought that was going to happen a lot sooner. Um, that would be my happening. I don't want to be too buddy, buddy here. Yeah, me either. I think it's good. We're

going to have to, we're going to have to deal with each other's Congress that we're building. Okay, cool. Well, that's a good segue. And I wasn't sure if I was going to do this pick next. I get the next two, right? This is going to be tough. Okay, so how long do you think it'll take for me to figure out how a snake draft works? You think I'm going to ask you if I get the next two the next time I go again? Charitably, in my head, I thought, you know, he's just saying this. He's feigning misunderstanding so the audience can be cued into what we're doing. Let's just say that's what you're doing. Yeah, no, it's not.

I immediately reject the olive branch. Yeah, several times in a row. Okay, my next pick is a member of the House Freedom Caucus. And he was on my board because I just think we're building Congress for the country and we need the representation, which I think is a good case to make for AOC and the progressive left. which I think is a good case to make for AOC and the progressive left. But we also like definitely have to have the kind of populist quote unquote Trump, right. If that's how you want to describe it. And it's, it's Mike Johnson, speaker of the house, who is a member. Is he classified as a member of the house freedom caucus?

Oh yeah. Member of the house freedom caucus, not, not been ousted. There was some talk about ousting him from the House Freedom Caucus, if I remember correctly. And unless that happened, I don't think... Oh, actually, I can find... I see an article right now, Freedom Caucus won't seek to oust Mike Johnson, at least not right now. Many of them have been furious with kind of how he has acted as House Speaker. By the time this comes out, you guys will have gotten my Friday edition on the things that I got wrong. And one of them is that I thought Mike Johnson was going to be a bad speaker. And I think he's actually done a really good job. I mean, I don't have a ton to say here. I think he has incredibly strong conservative values. You have to have the kind of pro-Trump contingent to unite the country in our new Congress.

his sort of ideological worldview represented. He is the Speaker of the House, so he's one of the most powerful Republicans there is in the country right now. And you know what? By all indications, he's actually a really good guy, which is not something I can say about a lot of people who work in Congress. I mean, it usually takes me about five minutes to sort of come across some sort of sleazy whatever or people trashing him from the other side. But I read a few profiles of Mike Johnson in the last few months because we didn't have a ton of media exposure on him before he became House Speaker. And one of the recurring themes was that people from across the political spectrum respected him and they trusted him. And the universal thing they said was that he was honest, that if he said he was going to do something, he did it, and that he was ideological,

which made him predictable and easy to work with because it's easy to understand what he wants and there aren't these kind of moving goalposts where you know one day he believes one thing and the next day he believes another which was the kevin mccarthy curse you know i mean he promised everything to everybody he had no backbone he didn't have an ideological center or core he was just kind of like doing whatever he had to do to gain power and making a bunch of promises that were not compatible with each other. So yeah, Mike Johnson, also for what it's worth

on the younger side of things, now has a ton of experience being in the room for some really big decisions. And since you picked AOC, a great counterbalance to her as well. So yeah, that's my pick. You know, I would go so far as to say not counterbalancing enough, honestly. I think I was, when you were describing a member of the House Freedom Caucus, I did not think that you would go here. I also, I still am not sure if he's a member of the House

Freedom Caucus. I've been looking up different lists to try to find something authoritative. The best I can find to support you here is something from Pew listing allies, members and allies of the House Freedom Caucus. Looking at legistorm.com, I don't see his name. Looking at Wikipedia, I don't see his name. I'm wondering if maybe one of us is gaslighting the other here, but at least as far as I'm sure that you're looking up some other source right now while I'm speaking. So I'm going to talk a little bit about why I think Mike Johnson's kind of centrist. He's a.69. Really quick, just before you do that, I'll just say it's totally possible he's not a member of the House Freedom Caucus. I was operating off that off memory.

And when you were talking about your pick and saying that you think, you know, to balance AOC, I was already going to pick him next. And I thought that I remembered him being a member of the House Freedom Caucus. It's definitely possible he's not. I would say he, and the article that I read from House Freedom Caucus not seeking to oust him was not about ousting him from the House Freedom Caucus. It was about him. I just saw that headline. It was about him as speaker. I would say he has been allied with them and ideologically um I think is in their tent in a lot of areas I but I am I'd love to hear your uh the day the data the metrics that you've been using because that that's very curious to me I'd agree with you with him as a as an ally. So moving on from that, as an ideologue, he's a 0.69, which is not as far as

they get, but it's definitely on the right side. I think there are other people on my board who are farther right, like Crapo's much farther right, for instance. This is the interesting thing I think about Johnson. Bipartisanship is negative 1.9, which seems questionable. I think this metric was probably taken before he was Speaker, because a lot of people would look at what he's done in his tenure and say the things that you've been saying, which is he stepped up, he's led in a way that's predictable and honest, even when you disagree with him, you know where he's coming from, and he's done a good job bringing Democrats into the fold, according to some Republicans, too good of a job. He isn't on any committees, which is interesting, especially somebody who's in leadership in several different roles. He's on a committee. Are you sure? Yeah. He was on the Judiciary Committee. I mean, he's probably not now because he's Speaker of the House, but he was on the Judiciary Committee. I have that. Also, I'm looking at the caucuses that he's a member of. It does not look like he's a member of the House Freedom Caucus, so I'm wrong about that. But he's listed on like 20 different caucuses.

There are some caucuses in Congress that I did not know existed. I'll just read the Congressional Caucus on Long Range Strike. I would like to learn more about that. The Congressional Prayer Caucus, didn't know that was a thing, not surprised. Congressional Prayer Caucus. Didn't know that was a thing. Not surprised. The Congressional Rice Caucus. Unclear if that is the university or the food. The Congressional Taiwan Caucus. The Congressional Fire Services Caucus. There was one other really good one. Value Actions team. I don't know what that means, but, uh, oh, and the natural gas caucus. Love that. Um, so yeah, the rice caucus is about the food. I did. Okay. I figured that was today. Yeah. I figured it was food, but there was the, the sort of in the back of my head,

I thought maybe there's a bunch of members from the university. Okay. Mike Johnson is a graduate of LSU, in fact. Oh, interesting. Very cool. All right, great. So even taking out the Alistair McCauley thing aside, I think he's conservative bona fides endorsed by Trump, advances Trump's agenda in a lot of ways, and also seems to be a really decent dude. So yeah, I'm putting Mike Johnson on the board as the eighth pick. We're now over halfway there, by the way. It's a great pick. I think it's a great pick. Even though I classify him differently in my mind, I think it's a good addition to our first Continental Congress. Love it. Wow. This next one is really, really tough. Okay. This guy's in my top 10. He's on my big board, my big, big board, the top of my big board. And he's in a really tough race and i'm going back to the senate

and he's a democrat i think is it is it sherrod brown it's not sherrod brown but i'm keeping we were both circling the sherrod brown train oh for two on sherrod brown uh it's senator gary peters the democrat from michigan Not on my board at all. Here's what I'll say. Gary Peters and Senator Mike Braun, who is a Republican, have, I think they're in a tie or they're one and two. I forget who's first and second. For most sponsored bills signed into law in Congress. So productive, people who get behind kind of winning issues. Gary Peters is boring. I mean, like bone dry boring. He is very rarely in

the news. There's a whole Michigan, a bridgeichigan.com story about how in this chaotic political time, this is like the boring senator running in one of the most competitive seats in Michigan. He just sticks to the issues. Before he came into Congress, he worked for over 20 years as an investment advisor, comes kind of from the private business background. He worked for over 20 years as an investment advisor, comes kind of from the private business background. He worked for like 60 grand a year as a college teacher teaching finance. He's a Democrat gun owner who motorcycles annually all throughout Michigan. He's like an avid motorcyclist.

And so he goes on one Michigan motorcycle road trip every year that he's super famous for. Also an Eagle Scout, which I don't know why that just makes me trust him more. I think he is low key, one of the more important members of Congress, obviously, as you know, just like the way that his legislation has succeeded and the rate with which it succeeded. the way that his legislation has succeeded and the rate with which it succeeded. And then also, I was really moved, I think, by a story that I read about him. I'm losing track of time. It could have been a year ago, maybe six months or something. But his wife, and I looked this up because I wanted to remember it, has this really traumatic abortion story that he has kind of made the center of his position on abortion, which I think is like I've seen him talk about it and how he's interviewed about it, he does it in a way that's not sort of, he's not sensationalizing this really difficult story. He's not necessarily using it as like a wedge issue or kind of mediifying his wife's story. He's just saying like, this is what, this is what informs my position,

which is basically that her, she was pregnant. Her water broke four months into her pregnancy. The doctors told her basically, you're going to have a miscarriage and we should just like, let it happen organically. And then she got really sick and never had the miscarriage. And so she needed an abortion basically to save her life. And he, they like couldn't get it at, from the care provider where they were and they had to like travel and jump through all these hoops and it like endangered his wife's life. And he was just like, this is why I think, you know, we should not have really strict government regulations on abortion. So super boring in a lot of ways, sticks to the issue guy, but I think also a moderate,

really, really smart, tons of experience in private industry, private space, which I think is really important you know loves motorcycle trips so i kind of just like them for that uh and you know yeah we just did a we just had a uh a elizabeth warren aoc mike johnson run so i think a little bit of boring back on the board would be would be good for me that's what i want is some people who are doing work. So yeah, Senator Gary Peters from Michigan, that's my pick. Interesting pick. I really like it. I think he was so boring that I didn't even see his name as I was looking at the list of most bipartisan senators. He's a 2.2 on that scale, which is really, really high for the Senate. It's behind only Maggie Hassan, I think, depending on which metric you're using.

A 2.2 on which scale? Bipartisan scale? Yeah, 2.2 on bipartisan. So that's where I had Susan Collins too. So that's pretty remarkable. I knew I liked it as far as the uh partisan scale goes he's a 0.36 for partisanship for ideology that is so um about like in the middle on the left like kind of the middle of the left and didn't really know anything about him before he started talking. So I think that's super interesting. Gary Peters. Okay. Yeah, boring at a time when we need it.

One last thing I'll just say about him. People, if those of you listening to this while you're at your computer, just Google Gary Peters, Senator Gary Peters. The first picture that comes up is like a picture of the most boring person you've ever met in your entire just like how he looks and then but recently he's been doing this thing he grew out his beard he's got this gray beard that's totally changed his entire aesthetic in a way that i think is very interesting i think so i think he looks way less boring now um but his the picture of him with no facial hair is um yeah like the spitting image of

somebody who might be just like a dorky bland person you don't want to get caught in a conversation with and i say that with great love to senator gary peters if he's listening to this. He is a former Navy reservist. He had reserve duty in the Persian Gulf, it seems like. He's a graduate of Alma College, a local to Michigan. So I really respect the people who stayed in the state that they're from and then ended up representing that state in Congress. So he's a Michigan guy through and through. And I like that. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

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Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. all right we are uh we're coming up on pick 10 this will put us two-thirds of the way there on our 15 person congress i'm glad we're not doing 11 because this would this would have felt like it was ending too soon i think uh all right you're up you've got two more picks this is tough so this is you said this is pick 10 so

i'll have pick 10 11 you'll have 12 13 and then i'll have the remaining two so i have four left to play with here yeah so i have to be a little strategic now i had a list of um like some metrics that i want to make sure we hit we have at least one in all of my categories now so i can be a little bit more playful but at the same time i do think we need more young people i think we need somebody who's a little bit more on the right in the buzzy way so i think i want to make sure we have two shit stirrers in here and we have one in aoc and i want to put one on the right i see you're like preemptively grimacing um but i think this is i think this is a good pick i think you're gonna like it i'm going with elise stefanik so the reason good you've got you got

something to say no i no go ahead you first i'm i want to hear i'm hear. I'm actually open to this. Okay. So Elise Stefanik has been in the House for nine years already. She's on or has served on four committees. She's a chair of one of them, and she's 39 years old. That's very productive in terms of getting to leadership for that age. She obviously likes media attention. She's good at that. But she also is somebody with a lot of conservative bona fides. She has a pretty high bipartisan score for somebody who's as ideological as she is. So she's a 0.78 on the ideology scale, whereas anything over an eight is pretty far right. So that's pretty far, but she's a 0.05 in bipartisanship. Anything over zero here indicates to me that this is a person who

kind of works across the aisle. So I think she's a little interesting. She's a person who is definitely a media darling on the right, but I think she's also a person who's interested in really getting things done for the agenda that she cares about. She is a graduate of Harvard, which is one of the reasons why I think we know about her and her appearance on the hearings for the presidents of the schools who were having protests that were pro-Palestinian that a lot of people saw as not being safe for Jews. She was a person who stood up for that side, seeing these protests as creating spaces that weren't safe for Jews and pushed back a lot to these presidents of universities, got her 15 minutes of fame. But before that, she'd been in the house for a good

bit. So I don't think she's a person who's just there for attention. I think she really believes in the stuff that she's doing. I think she is a really good countervail to AOC. And with this board built out, I think it allows us really to go in more on the bridge builders. Though I do think there's an argument to be made that at least Stefanik is a growing leader on the right. And I think you want to have people that are going to be not just amendment adders and shit stirrers, but ideological leaders. And I stefanik fits the bill i i get i guess my perspective is like we have an opportunity to not deal with these people so why don't we just not like we can start anew without aoc and at least stefanik let's just

need them i just i think there's just the proportions off. I know I said this before, but why? Because I think you have to- Okay, that's an argument. If it's two of 15 people versus what we have now where it feels like it's 30 or 40 or 60% of Congress or whatever it is, I hear that. Okay, my argument against Elise Stefan, I mean, first of all, she has something that I don't think anybody else I'm going to pick has, which is she has pretty vociferously fought against the 2020 election results, which is kind of a red line for me. And for those of you listening, I don't know how long people have been listening to this podcast. I just to briefly state my position because I always have to do this throat clearing about

it. Election fraud happens. Voter fraud happens. I'm very aware of it. I've done an unbelievable amount of reporting on election fraud and voter fraud and the 2020 election was not stolen. And I just, just like, I've lost patience for people that are still kind of pushing that in order to win Trump's favor. And she is one of those people. And I have also lost patience for Democrats and liberals who still think, you know, the 2016 election was

the result of Russia's interference and yada, yada, yada. I just like, there's something about that that I have a hard time letting go of. So I'll say that just like, I wouldn't pick her because that's a red line for me, but she is smart. She does seem like she knows how to operate in Congress. I respect the kind of like, let's have a couple of shitsters just to keep things active and make

sure like certain voices are represented she's younger love that she has an intelligence background i believe which i also like is that true i think that's what i remember about her well let me say this as you're gathering your thoughts. Because you said, why can we just leave these people behind, like the people who are just bombasts? And I think it kind of reminds me of like the crazy cousin, quote unquote. Everybody in their family has somebody who's a bit of a problem child or someone who you kind of have to put up with. But I think that's what makes you family. And I think in the US, we have a lot of people who are vociferous and are bombasts. And I think this is representative of that. I don't think we can build a Congress just of people in the middle, and just the people that are looking to I think I'm not crazy, you're crazy, and you all have to meet me where I am. Because being able to, like, those are our cousins, that's our family, that's who America is. And I think as much as we want to be high-minded about trying to build a Congress that's going to create a future that's the ideal future, I think we have to know that I don't want to leave that, like, full fervor behind. I think there needs to be an acknowledgement of we have to know that I don't want to leave that full fervor behind. I think there needs to be an acknowledgement of we have to make sure we're talking to these people that have

these far concerns because every once in a while, I think they have good points. And I think it's important that those points are represented, even if the hit rate is small. That's a good argument. We don't want to fall into the kind of establishment trap. And these are people that kind of rock the boat and keep keep us honest. I think that is that's a powerful argument. Maybe I'm just an establishment shill. But yeah, I accept your argument. I'm not sure I'm happy about having to deal with her in our Congress. And I think you as co-president with me might regret this fairly quickly. But your rationale is clear and I suppose sensible too. So I'll give you that. She's 39 years old.

I didn't know that. That is younger than I even thought. That's one of my points too is the only people that I have on my list who are under 40 are Stefanik and AOC. I think it's just really hard to find people that are quote unquote effective, whether it's in legislation or in managing the media side under 40 who aren't more like in that vein of being ideologues so if we want to try to get people who are quote-unquote effective legislators who are younger that might just be part of the deal

yeah otherwise we can pick people that are more obscure um and like there's no reason not to i i have a couple obscure people on the board too i i would say well it's the age thing's interesting too i mean just as like a brief interlude before your next pick i i was actually gonna i was actually gonna pick max frost uh who's the representative from florida he's the youngest person in congress just to be like pure i and and in my rationale that i wrote down on my board was just pure transparent identity pick like i he's i think he's he's young he's african-american i think maybe he's um of spanish descent in some regard hispanic uh you know gen z like emphasizes all that stuff and i was just like we just just need, like, that.

Like, we just need to make sure there's some, like, 28-year-old kid in Congress who's, like, explaining how cell phones work to the other members because that's really important. I think with AOC and Elise Stefanik on the board, I'm taking him off my board. But I had a similar inclination and we'll see, maybe I'll, maybe I'll pick him late, but I had a similar inclination to like inject some youth and make sure we had some sort of like all not establishment, more obscure, uh, representatives. So I'm, I think we both sort of came to that organically, which is interesting. Okay. So I think from here on, I've got three picks. I'm going to be picking people kind of not entirely informed by that point of view of looking for identity and representation, but at least somewhat informed by that. That said, I'm going back to the Senate and I'm picking somebody who isn't a minority, but is somebody who is in that sort of center left, I think maybe a little

bit, definitely a little bit more liberal, but not in the AOC school of liberalism, more in like an old school establishment liberalism. Somebody who has a surprisingly high approval rating, I found, 56% approval, has been in Senate for 17 years, which I think is a long time, has chaired two committees, and has a 0.13 score in ideology. Again, where zero is the lowest, that's a 0.13, which is pretty decently far left, but isn't a person that I think comes to mind when I think of far left politics in the Senate. Can you guess who I'm thinking of here? No. Amy Klobuchar, Senator from Minnesota. Again, 17 years in the Senate. Now, I don't think that she's

a shit stirrer. I see you smiling a little bit, but I think she's a real legislator. She, 56% approval out of Minnesota has been elected back by the people of her great state time and time again. I think getting that experience is really important. Background from law, graduate of Yale, those things aren't super important to me. But I think I was really just kind of floored by the approval rating. The people who get elected back to Senate time and time again, John Tester notwithstanding, are people who generally have a solid ideology

from a state that also has that solid ideology. So we kind of have to buck the trend to find people that don't. And the only person in the Senate, there are only two people in the Senate that have a higher approval rating than Klobuchar amongst her constituents. One is Bernie Sanders, and the other is John Barrasso, who's sort of very similar to Mike Crapo to me as a right-leaning conservative politician. So I was really looking for somebody who their constituents put back to the Senate again and again and again. And I'm thinking I have a couple buckets left, and experience and approval rating was one of them. And that's why I went with Klobuchar. What do you think? I think it's a, I laugh because every time I just hear her name or think about her,

I just think about the story of her eating a salad with a comb because her aide didn't bring her a fork and she was freaking out about it. It's just like, I haven't heard that story. she was freaking out about it. It's just like, I haven't heard that story. Oh really? Oh, this is, uh, when she was running in the primary, oh my God, I think it's the 20, I think this came out during the 2020 race. I mean, there's a story that she's just notoriously awful to her staff. And like, there have been so many reports about it, like insider politico type reports. It's just like she's famously insane with the people that she works with. And there's a very famous story that the New York Times reported that in 2008 or something, some aide was on a trip with her and got her a salad.

some aid was on a trip with her and got her a salad. And once he gave her the salad and they were on the plane, he realized that he had not brought her utensils to eat the salad. And so she berated him and freaked out and then just pulled a comb out of her bag and started eating the salad with a comb as like uh this is what you've made me done um and then told the told the staff member to clean the comb after she was done eating it which is one of those stories that's so detailed and bizarre that you're just like oh this actually happened this is totally true because nobody could come up with a story that ridiculous. Whatever, she denied it, I'm sure. And I actually don't even know if she denied it, but I'm assuming that she did. Anyway, oh no, actually, I just pulled this up. It says, the moment an abridged version of which Ms. Klobuchar recounted herself in a speech to

fellow Democrats at the time. She sort of sold it as like, you know, I work my staff hard. Good rationale. I think is genuinely a really smart person and a good legislator. Love the idea of finding people who have high approval ratings. You know, as a senator, she's serving the whole state. Minnesota is definitely a blue state, but maybe on the map for, for Trump this year, um, because of all the, the kind of anti Biden over war war in Israel stuff, there's some talk that the Trump administration might make a run at it. I don't think there, you know, I think it's like Democrats trying to win Texas. But yeah, I can live with that. I would say way more comfortable with a Clovercher pick than Stefanik or AOC.

So in that sense, comparatively, I'm happy about it. Do you have her age on hand? I want to get that down. I do. She's also, while I have the opportunity to speak, a very prolific legislator. So she's sponsored or signed on to a lot of laws that have ended up passing. And I know that was a knock on the other ideologue. So I just want to make sure that was added because I don't think I said that.

Yeah. So she's 64 years old. She's been serving in the Senate since she was 47. And how old is AOC now? Do you know that? Do you have that in your stats? AOC is 34. 34 years old. Okay, cool. So she's been serving since she was 29. Wow. Yeah. So, okay. So I was right. 2018 is when she got elected.

Oh man. All right. I'm up. I've got two picks. I have three people I really want to draft. Interesting. Because I think I've locked in my next two. So maybe I won't work with you, but I'll try. Let's see. I think we should come to a consensus on the 15th pick. So we have an even number of people each. Okay. Normally with snake drafts, the person who goes second gets the bone at the end by getting the opportunity to get the last pick. But I'll say I kind of wanted to go second because I wanted to react to what you did. So I'm okay with that. Yeah. I reserve the right to change my mind. That's a good point. that's the third time a snake draft has had to be explained to me since we started this um and a good i in my head i was

like this sucks already gets an extra pick uh but yes i did go first um i'll i'll put you on the 15th pick and you can have the ultimate decision about what you want to do. If we don't, if I don't, if I feel like I want to give my, uh, my pitch, I think that's the fair way to do it. What I'll do is I'll say, this is the person I'll pick. Tell me why yours is better. Okay. I like that. Um, all right. I'm going to do something a little bit bizarre here. I have this and I'll, I'll give my justification here. I was thinking about like, how do I want to make this Congress? What are all the things we need? And, you know, we talked a lot about legislative abilities

and like, you know, ideological diversity, people who have a demonstrated record of working across the aisle, diversity and, you know, youth and all that stuff. I mean, all very valuable in my opinion. I had this like, towards the very end of doing this exercise, it just occurred to me, like, we need like one genius, like somebody who's just like really, really, really smart, like, like weirdly smart, you know,

smarter than Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. Just like like like dumb smart and that that like it occurred to me that like if we have this i'm talking like the aliens show up you know and we're like oh god we have to figure out how to like destroy their spaceship like we need somebody who can like do physics basically like jeff goldblum from independence day style and that this and i got really stuck on this just this idea that that like we better have one person who's like making stuff happen who can do like a really hard math equation so i went down this rabbit hole of the smartest members of Congress, and I started reading a bunch of articles and doing research on who the smartest members of Congress were. And I was

reminded that this guy, Rush Holt, who retired, I think, a while ago, like in 2010, I think, I remember reading about him when I was in college. I don't think he's been in Congress for a long time, was very, for a very long time considered the smartest member of Congress. And I found this old article that was about like, who's going to replace him as the new smartest member of Congress. And they had a representative who I did not know a ton about. Um, he's, uh, a physicist, which was exactly what I was looking for, who got his PhD in physics from Harvard in 1983, when it was like still hard to go to Harvard. I'm just kidding. That's a joke. And, um, and he started this business when he was 19 years old that manufactures lighting,

like theatrical lighting that is now the leading manufacturer of theatrical lighting in the world or something like he, so he just like did that when he was 19 and he wrote a whole thesis paper about some decay formula or something. This is the guy that I want. This is the guy that we need in our Congress. I saw physics at Harvard and I was done. somebody who's way, way, way smarter than me that I can't even explain what he's doing. He's a Democrat from Illinois. If any readers out there are in Illinois' 11th congressional district, I'd be very curious to hear your impressions of him.

I said at the top, I don't know. I just candidly do not know all 500 plus members of Congress. He is one of the people whose name I'd never come across before, um, or, or at least didn't have any memory of anything he had done off the top of my head. Uh, so yeah, that, um, that's my pick. There is nothing to it except that I literally think that this guy is like borderline genius and would be the smartest guy in the group and totally unrelated to his politics, who he is, whatever.

I just, I want this dude. Some honorable mentions for what it's worth. Terry Sewell from Alabama. She went to Princeton, Harvard, and Oxford and worked as a securities lawyer. She's the first African-American woman ever elected to Congress in Alabama. And then the Republican Tom Cole, who is actually Native American, unlike Elizabeth Warren, has a master's degree from Yale and a PhD in British history. He was a Fulbright fellow. He was another person I came across.

I read an interview he did with the New York Times eight years ago or something. It was 2013, actually, so 11 years ago. And I read the interview and I was like, oh, this guy is transparently brilliant, but not as smart as the physicist from Harvard. So Bill Foster, that's my pick. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about Bill Foster, who is a person you're introducing to me today. So Foster is 68 years old, born in Madison, Wisconsin, went to University of Wisconsin in Madison for undergrad before going to Harvard to get his PhD. Worked at Fermilab for at least a couple decades, 22 years. Boo-yah, dude. That's sick. He is on the committee on financial services. So, maybe we'd want him to be on a more scientific committee, but that's probably way beneath him. He'd be in kindergarten there. He, on the ideology

scale that I've been using, is a negative, sorry, on the bipartisan scale, is a negative 0.8. So not super bipartisan. On the ideology scale is a 0.2, where zero is most liberal so pretty partisanly liberal um that's what i can find out the stats tell us about bill foster and yeah interesting so you initially said republican but he's another democrat so he's a democrat yeah i thought i thought he was a republican um which for everybody out there is just proof that party affiliation means absolutely nothing to me, especially when you're a physicist who went to Harvard. Great. Okay. Bill Foster. All right. This is my last pick. This is really tough. I have three people left. I have four people left who I would really love to pick.

You keep adding to it. Okay. Yeah. I'm just looking at the board. Oh, man. I'm going to use the pick on a little bit of an obscure politician that I'm excited to justify. obscure politician that I'm excited to justify. And then before we go, I'll just give some honorable mentions on the people that I left out, or maybe try and argue for one last. Juan Sisco Mani, representative from Arizona. He is the first Republican Latino to be elected in Arizona. I first heard about him

in 2023. So last year, he caught my attention because he did the Republican response to the 2023 State of the Union in Spanish, which I thought was super interesting. Just very telling about the political moment we're in, where he's a member of the Republican Party, and they are very obviously courting Latino voters. Super interesting personal story, because he came here as an 11-year-old, immigrated from Mexico, and is broadly in support of a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, but also has some kind of draconian border policies where he wants to restrict the flow of migrants across the border, the flow of migrants across the border, which, you know, transparently, I think, is fairly aligned with some of my views about the balancing act of how to deal with the immigration crisis. But yeah, I just love the story of this guy who's kind of lesser known. He's fresh,

new face. He's got a really compelling personal story. I'm looking at our list. We've, you know, again, I typically really don't care about identity politics, but in this case, I think there's some identity politics stuff that's like really related to experiences that are important to have. And we've got a fairly white and crusty group of members of Congress here. And I think some immigrant stories, some people who are sort of betraying stereotypes, you know, again, a Mexican-American Republican who came here as a kid and became a citizen and now has found himself very aligned with conservative Republican politics, serves in a border state. Yeah, I like him. He hasn't been around for a long time. I'd be curious if you find any, what kind of results you get on the legislative stuff. But I read a couple

articles about him. I didn't see any big red flags. And so I jumped in putting him on my board and it just occurred to me, I was like, who is that guy who gave the Spanish state of the union response? And yeah, looked him up. And so that's my pick, Representative Juan. And I believe it is Cisco Mani. Okay. Interesting. So not somebody that was on my radar before, so you're right about that. He, looking at the score for bipartisanship, he scores 0.74. Pretty good. So anything over zero, I would call good. So as a conservative-minded person, to be in any way that's partisan, anybody who's partisan scoring that high in bipartisanship, I think, bodes pretty well. I'm still trying to pull up the cards for ideology. He's a new rep, you said? Is he a new rep, you said?

Yeah, he's a new rep. I can't remember off the top of my head when he got elected, but I think it was 2020. Oh, no, it was 2023. Yeah, so I don't have an ideology score on him, actually, because they were made in 2022. So pretty new. 41, so also really young. Went to community college. That's probably a first for all our people. Big on that. I think that's great. Okay. I mean, I don't have a lot of information about him to add other than it looks like he's been fairly bipartisan so far and he's young and our first representative from Arizona in this list.

I love it. I just found that Politico reported that some establishment Republicans were encouraging him to enter the race to replace Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which is one. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Oh, they were encouraging him to enter the U.S. Senate race in 2024, which is also equally insane, but still pretty interesting. A sign of some people who believe very strongly in his political abilities. All right, cool. I'm done. You've got the last two picks. I will give you my pitch on your final 15th pick, but this one's all you and I can't do anything about it. Yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty torn right now. Um, because right now what we're looking at in terms

of representation is seven Democrats and six Republicans. So I did that organically. That's pretty nice. That's good. I think we kind of had a mind of trying to balance things out as we went. So that's, that's a good thing. I think it almost ties my hand to want to pick another Republican because I don't want to immediately make it a Democrat and then have our last pick need to be a Republican. I'd like it to be seven, seven when we go into that final one. And there's a Republican who's been on my board this whole time, who's been pretty high up. There's actually two, and I'm kind of torn. So I'm going back and forth on both of them. They're both women.

Now, this is set. I have it. I was considering Nicole Maliotakis out of the House, who's a representative from New York. She's a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which was important to me. Went to Seton Hall, 43 years old, fairly young, a member of three committees, which I think is pretty good. And the only thing that kind of was curious about her to me was she was negative in the bipartisan score as a member of the problem solvers caucus and kind of a centrist and ideology. So that confused me. Um, but the reason I'm not picking her is we already have two people from New York and I'm not going to add a third. So I'm going, I will say I like her a lot. I'm familiar with her politics. Um, she seems like a pretty legit person. And I'm fairly sure her district

had parts of Brooklyn in it because I remember when I was voting or living in Brooklyn that I would see some of her campaign stuff around. So yeah, that's a good, a good, a good, would have been a good option. Sorry to cut you off. You're just about to give your pick. So that's fine. No, I cut myself off by saying that. Honestly, I'm going to cut to the chase. I'm going with a Republican out of the Senate, an older person. I know that we're talking, we're already old and white and crusty, but I'm going with Lisa Murkowski, who is a senator, pretty centrist senator from Alaska. She's been serving for 12 years. She's 67. She has served on four committees. She was a chair on one of them. Her approval rating is pretty low out of Alaska,

41%, but her bipartisan score is pretty high, 0.9. On the ideology scale, she's 0.47. One of the reasons why she's unpopular, she has been not too shy about tussling with Trump on various things, one of them being her re-election, where they attempted to primary her from the right, failed. She got elected in a state that has a pretty unique voting structure, I think. Alaska has a ranked choice primary system. So she was able, I think we've talked about before how that sort of benefits people who are less extreme. And I think Murkowski is a beneficiary of that. She has served in the Senate Energy Natural Resources Committee, which is one of the reasons why I had her circled towards the end, is that I don't think we've had anybody who

specializes in that. And coming from Alaska, which is an oil-rich state, somebody who that's their primary focus, I think is important. And I, again, really, I know that I've oscillated between young and experienced, but somebody keeps getting sent back to the Senate from their home state, even with an approval rating that's somewhat low. That's meaningful to me. able to work with people across the aisle, but does seem to have a moderate conservative approach that's predictable to her politics, which I like. I know she's floated before in the past running as a libertarian. I don't think we have a lot of people that have those libertarian backgrounds. I considered Rand Paul as somebody who was going to be an ideologue who was a libertarian. So this is my olive branch to the Rand Paul fans. I'm going

with Murkowski, not as far to the right, but somebody who I think you can count on to be libertarian in Congress. I love it. No arguments from me. I'm a fan of her politics. I'm a fan of the way she approaches legislating Alaska, unbelievable state, so much going for it. They seem to be, they're, they're getting stewarded by, I think a good group of politicians. So, um, literally zero objections. Um, I'm all in, uh, all right, cool. Last pick of the first ever, probably, I guess we can't really do this. We'll probably have to wait like five years to do this again. So we have some more members of Congress. I can't really say first ever because I think this is maybe going to be the only draft we ever do. But the second ever first Continental Congress, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So here's a thing that is really, really on my mind. There are two categories that we haven't represented at all. One of which is less important, sorry, but it's Californians. We don't have any Californians on this list. I have a couple, but I'm not really enthusiastic about them. So I'm going to not select a Californian to our first Continental Congress. I'll tell you, we have a lot of Westerners. We have Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Montana. I think, let's just hope they represent you.

Sorry. The other group that I think we have to represent is the Black Caucus. I don't think we have any Black member of Congress here from the House or Senate. So that's something that I think is important for our last pick. There are two people that are pretty different that I'm deciding between. One of them is kind of, I would consider almost a bailout, which is Hakeem Jeffries. I'm not super enthusiastic about voting for Hakeem Jeffries. I know that he's in a position in leadership, but I don't know what his accomplishments are really.

So I'm really straying away from that. He's also from New York, just for what it's worth. And that's another New Yorker. Just a good point. New York, just for what it's worth. And that's another New Yorker. Just a good point. So the person that I'm leaning towards is Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is out of the house. She represents D.C., and D.C. doesn't have a huge congressional delegation.

I think she's the only one. And she's been in Congress for 33 years which is insane she has extremely extremely convincing activist bona fides and as a graduate of antioch college small college 86 years old has been on three committees chair is one of them 86 86 i think for me i would just punch it right away and say no no contest i'm going with eleanor holmes norton i think she's going to be looked at retrospectively when she retires as a legend but she's a zero in the ideology scale where zero is as liberal as you can get so that said i think that that comes from I don't know how these things are scored. I've been using this as a guideline. But she's an alumnus of the civil rights movement. I think that is important. And she has a low bipartisanship score too, a negative one. But I think she's the person I'm putting forward, And I'd like to hear you argue for another person. Okay.

Appreciate the rationale. I'm thinking. So I'll just say, I'll just tell you the two people that were like really serious people on my board that I think I wanted to draft. And then a third person who I'm surprised has not come up yet. But yeah, the first one is Tammy Duckworth, senator from Illinois. And we're talking about how Alaska's got a good leadership group.

Illinois has got a pretty good leadership group there too. Yeah, a democratic senator, but really breaks the mold in a lot of ways. First of all, I've interviewed Tammy Duckworth, super duper impressive person. Anybody who knows anything about her, for those who don't, war hero, first female double amputee in the war in Iraq. Her helicopter was shot down. She survived. Immigrant, born in Thailand, total patriot.

Just like incredible story, her recovery in Walter Reed. And she's just like a badass. And I think her experience in that war has informed her in like some non-traditional ways about how she thinks about conflict from a um just like a policy perspective so i had her really high up and kind of regret that she didn't get worked in. So that's one. The other one was Don Bacon, who's a Republican and sort of in the mold of some other people. I think he'd be a little bit maybe redundant at this point with like the testers and the Murkowskis on the board,

but moderate centrist, 12th in bipartisanship, problem solvers caucus, represents Nebraska and grew up on a farm and just has some of the flyover country bona fides that I like, voted against the removal of McCarthy, but voted to remove George Santos. Some evidence that he just sort of does what he thinks is right. Had an awesome quote I saw when I was doing research on him about opposing marijuana legalization on a personal level, but supporting decriminalization at the federal level because he thought it was good policy and because of his ideology wants states to be the ones who make the decision. Just like being able to separate

what he wants from what he thinks is good policy or good for the country. My only red flag kind of is that he got wrapped up in some of the impeachment inquiry stuff into Biden that I think ended up being a little bit bogus. But, you know, he didn't say anything like crazy. He just voted to advance the inquiry while also saying that he wasn't sure there was evidence of Biden, you know, doing anything slimy, which is, I don't love that. Uh, but yeah. And then the last one I'll just throw out there and then you can make your pick, um, is Jeff Jackson. Who's our guy. Oh yeah. I love love Jeff Jackson. I can't believe I didn't even have him on my list. Oh, you know why? Because I removed anybody who was outgoing, who wasn't going to come back. And that's not really his fault, though, because he got gerrymandered out

of his district. Jeff Jackson's probably the representative who gets the most play of any representative in the Tangle Slack channel. And it's purely because he did this brilliant thing, which I don't know why it doesn't get more attention, but he writes his own sub stack newsletter just about what Congress is like. And it's so good. It's so good. I don't know what it is. This is again, he, I think he's, I don't even know. He's a Democrat. He's a Democrat. He's a Democrat from North Carolina. He's going to lose his seat because he got gerrymandered and he got drawn out of his seat. So he's running, I think, for state attorney general or something now.

Totally irrespective of his politics, he just writes this newsletter that's like, here's what it was like on the House floor when they voted Kevin McCarthy out with all these little details about things that reporters would never get and stuff that he hears behind closed doors. And he has this really simple, straightforward way of writing that is just really interesting and easy to read. It's like reading a trashy beach book or something. And I say that in the most complimentary way possible. He just like knows what would be interesting to like people who don't aren't in Congress and writes about that. Um, anyway, highly recommended. He's been talking about how, like how he's

pivoting and what he's doing to campaign and his thing. And, you know, every time there's a big moment in Congress, he blasts a newsletter out about what happened. And yeah, I mean, I don't know that him writing a good newsletter is a good reason to draft him into our Congress, but I just love the transparency element of that and was surprised his name didn't come up because we do literally talk about him so much. Yeah, I think it was just a bad filter on my part. Anybody that I knew wasn't coming back, I just discarded, which, yeah, Jeff Jackson's great. Here's an example of his prose. He is extremely careful about never naming names, even when it's obvious, which I think

is funny. And he was talking about the effort to remove the speaker when it was McCarthy. And here's an example of his writing, quote, the reason it had been uneventful was that the vote to fire the speaker hadn't happened. The leader of that effort, a congresswoman from Georgia, had announced last week that she intended to call the vote to fire the speaker when we all returned to DC this week. And I think that's just, it does feel like that beach prose style that you're talking about, but I just love that he's very respectfully saying a congresswoman

from Georgia could be anybody. But I think, yeah. All I'll say is when his newsletter comes out, I literally stop what I'm doing and I read it immediately and I just devour it. And even if it's like 2000 words or something, I find myself reading it in like two and a half minutes. And I just don't understand why other members of Congress don't do this. It's like such a brilliant way to communicate with people. But again, maybe so those would be my three that I'd throw out there. Tammy Duckworth, Jeff Jackson, and Don Bacon for very different reasons. I think I have to discard Don Bacon because the way that you spoke about him was pretty uninspired. And I think you did a better job arguing against it. We do have people that

kind of check those boxes already. So I appreciate the idea, but I think I'm going to no for that. Tammy Duckworth, such a good idea, such a good pick. We already have somebody from Illinois. It's the thing that just keeps needles at me. There's no reason why we can't have two. I think it'd be good to have somebody from DC, which I'm kind of stuck on. I don't know if there's a good enough reason to vote out Norton. I love Jeff Jackson. I think maybe this was just served as a eulogy to him not being in our Senate or our Congress, but we don't have anybody from North Carolina. You know what? I was going to say we don't have anybody from the Southeast at all, I was going to say we don't have anybody from the Southeast at all, except for Johnson from Louisiana. But we do maybe over-represent the Northeast. But it's another white man. I think that's an issue. or really racial diversity in the surface level sense. I think the experiential sense is really important. And the Eleanor Holmes Norton experience

of being like a civil rights activist and stuff. I definitely, like if somebody, if like John Lewis was still alive, I think I probably would have drafted him just for like how people respected him and all the things he had done and kind of walking in the walk. So from that perspective, I think I understand that.

So that's why I think I'm going with Norton ultimately. I think racial diversity is not the primary consideration, but when we get to the end, I think we should make sure that we were checking some boxes. Otherwise, maybe there's a blind spot there. But diversity of background and experience, there's a lot of bleed over, obviously. And I think we need to have somebody with that experience. We did make sure we're going young for a lot of people. We have a couple older, old heads in here. But I think there's a really good, I think there's a better argument for me to include Norton than there is to include other people. And there are a lot of others on this list. Duckworth was high on mine too, where I think if I could have gotten two more, I think I would have definitely

had Duckworth there. Yeah, I think it's going to be Norton for me. Yeah, I think it's going to be Norton for me. Senator Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine, 71 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Mike Crapo, the Republican from Utah, 73 years old, picked by Ari. Representative Susie Lee, the Democrat from Nevada, 57 years old, picked by Ari. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, the Republican from Pennsylvania, 50 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, 74 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator John Tester, Democrat from Montana, 74 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat from Montana, 67 years old, picked by Ari. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat from New York, 34 years old, picked by Ari.

Representative Mike Johnson, Republican from Louisiana, 52 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Gary Peters, Democrat from Michigan, 65 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Gary Peters, Democrat from Michigan, 65 years old, picked by Isaac. Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican, New York, 39 years old, picked by Ari. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat, Minnesota, 64 years old, picked by Ari. Representative Bill Foster, Democrat from Illinois, 68 years old, picked by Isaac because he's a physicist. Representative Juan Siscamani, Republican, Arizona, 41 years old, picked by Isaac. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican, Alaska, 67 years old, picked by Ari. And a delegate from Washington, D.C. You know what? That does round it out nicely. A delegate from Washington, D.C., Eleanor Holmes Norton, 86 years old, picked by Ari. That's pretty good. That's way better than our Congress right now.

I'd much rather have these 15 people running the show. Yeah, no surprise, huh? They're just handpicked by the experts or an expert and his friend. All right, we're coming up on two hours. Before we get out of here, we have to continue the tradition of airing our grievances. The airing of grievances. You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe. I lost my train of thought. I saw in our grievance doc that we're both going after the same major company today, which I love. Do you want to go first or second? Yeah, this one's been eating at me. So

Google Docs, a little bit of a spoiler for your grievance too, because it's Google. But this is a little wonky, admittedly, but Google Docs is a tool that we use every day for collaboration. It's the best tool out there for synchronous editing. So we have people in the doc leaving comments at the same time, often about the same pieces of text. It's really good at threading those comments and tracking suggestions.

It's just a really good tool. So we use that. They made a change four months ago that's a little hard to describe, but I'm going to do my best. When you're editing this document, anytime somebody responds to an edit you made, or if you're the author of the document

and somebody's leaving a comment, you'll get a notification in the top right. It's a little bell with a number on it telling you how many notifications you haven't responded to or seen. When you click notifications, what used to happen is there'd be a drop down of comments and responses all on the same list. The ones that you hadn't seen would be at the top. You click that comment. It navigates you to the spot in the document where that comment is and focuses on it. So if I made an edit, Isaac responded to my edit and said, I'm not so sure about this. I could click it, go right to that

thread type response. We'd have a conversation easy. They made this change where instead of dropping you right to where the comment was, now when I click my notifications, it drops down a new sidebar of comments to respond to. When I click on that comment, it doesn't navigate me directly to where I was. I have to close out that sidebar and then navigate back to it. And then I can interact in the doc. So where there once was a sidebar that I would navigate it to directly. Now a sidebar

goes over that sidebar and I have to click on something in that sidebar and click out of it and then click into something else and then make sure I'm typing the right box. The number of times that I've started replying to a comment and I type something out, but I hadn't focused on a text box, so I just typed nowhere. It's not a lot. It doesn't add a lot of time in and of itself, but I do that action dozens of times every morning. And when I get tripped by it, it's just adding these little seconds that really just grind at the efficiency gears. And I'm not the only one who's annoyed about this on our team. Will will back me up on this. This is such a pointless change that Google rolled out. We've left comments to their tech teams. We've responded and given

them feedback multiple times now. No responses yet. All I keep saying is I'm really eager for the day that you roll back this change, which helps nobody or can respond to me to explain why you did it because there's really no reason that I can see. So I know it's not a very relatable thing, but if there's something that you do every day and a little one of those tasks just takes a second longer every time you do it, like imagine you're driving your car and every time you turn your wheel, you have to like flip a switch just every time. Why? Why would you need to? Just take that switch away. That's how I feel when I'm editing this document. Google, change it. I can't believe that Google didn't respond to your messages about this very urgent issue.

I'm shocked that they haven't run this up the chain and prioritized it. Me too, man. I've been really civil. I think it's a really important thing to address in their document. I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but I assume that you're being sincere. I'm not being sincere at all. No, thank you. Your sincerity is appreciated because I do think this is one of their better products.

And they made a decision just to ruin it a little bit. Why not ruin it zero bit? It's a good product. Just let it be. Look, I'm in. I'm so upset with Google right now. My Google grievance is that we have been trying for basically a year to boost our YouTube videos. This is really standard practice in the industry. Just give Google money to help advertise our YouTube channel, to boost it in certain places. And every time we do it, we get flagged for like an election interference, like electioneering, campaign finance. We posted the Haviv Gur interview that we did on this podcast published on YouTube. Fantastic interview. We tried to put a little money into just promoting

it on YouTube so it would pop up in more people's feeds. And Google flagged us for Israeli election interference and rejected the advertisement. It's totally insane. And I've tried to do everything Google is telling me. I'm submitting all these tax forms. I'm registering myself, registering the organization, even though we're not a political organization, like jumping through every hoop imaginable. And yeah, still doesn't work. We just, just today I got, got the, my application, second application got rejected because they said like the name of the organization didn't match the name on the application or, it's just like, I've just, I've totally lost my patience with them. And they're so big. It's such a massive organization that talking to a real person is just, it's impossible that you

just don't even have, yeah, you have no prayer. So, um, cool. We're out on Google. Google's in the dominating our grievances today. I'm about it. Um, sweet. All right, man, we're at two hours. We got to get out of here. That was awesome. I'm very interested to hear some responses to our draft. I enjoyed doing that. That was a great thought exercise. Yeah, I thought that was, that was fun. I liked the way that we had different ways of approaching it. You went really deep and I went really broad. I think you focused a lot on legislative accomplishments and lack of red flags. And I focused a lot on bipartisanship and ideology. And I think those different approaches ended up

sometimes going to the same place and other times going to wildly different places. So that was interesting. Yeah. And I learned about a couple of new members of Congress, who I didn't really know anything about. So I like that. All right, man. Well, I'll see you in five minutes when we start doing work together again after this podcast ends. Oh, really? All right. See you soon.

Take care. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to

readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.