The Ricochet Podcast - Boys In The Hoodies

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

As always, we’ve got everything you could ask for before starting your weekend. From global “warfare” to matters of taste, Ricochet’s got it all. First we reconvene with Congressman Mike Gallagher, who shares his take on American defense, energy and the spectacularly bad priorities that have left our armed forces helping our enemies in their propaganda efforts. Then we bring on the one, the only... Source

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apply. I was about to erupt in clearly, not even audible, just understandable obscenities, and I decided to to eject. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Because it's easy, it has a low bar of entry. All you have to be is sort of full of baloney and shake a lot of hands. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Roberts. I'm James Lallex.

Today we talk to Congressman Mike Gallagher about the world and Vince Guerra about movies. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody, I'm James Lileks, and this is the Ricochet Podcast, episode 581. Peter Robinson, of course, is with us. Rob Long will be along in a second, and of course, he will tell you to join Ricochet.com, because that'll make you part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web. Unlike usual shows where we blather along for a little while, we're going to get right to it. To our guest, Mike Gallagher. He serves as

Wisconsin's 8th District in Congress, where he's the ranking member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee and the co-chairman of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. He served seven years on active duty as a U.S. Marine Corps officer, including two deployments to Iraq. He's a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in international relations from Georgetown University. Welcome back, Mike. Ph.D. in international relations.

We always go to the eggheads when we want to figure out what's going on in the world, so here you are. Okay, stuff happening. Lots of speculation putin g what are they going to do uh g you know maybe just saying to putin hey why don't you hold off on the invasion until after my olympics are over i don't want you to steal my thunder and then go ahead so i can do what i want with taiwan let's take putin first a lot of people are saying it's a big bluff a lot of material for a big bluff i don't think it's a bluff. I mean, a bluff implies you're playing a weekend, right? And

he's clearly not, at least relative to the Ukrainians. And I think more to the point, he's taken the measure of this administration and concluded that there's a lot he can get away with. In fact, I've already I already think he's shifted the conversation such that you hear statements coming out of Ukrainian politicians saying, well, maybe we'll give up any future bid to join NATO in order to de-escalate. And by the way, I don't think it should be explicitly part of our policy at present to encourage NATO enlargement. Part of, I think, one category you have to satisfy when you apply to NATO is to have all your territorial disputes settled. That's obviously not the case in Ukraine. I don't think there's any prospect of NATO joining Ukraine in the meantime, but we shouldn't allow Putin to dictate that to us, right? Like he

doesn't get a say in NATO policy. So I don't think he's bluffing. I think this whole thing 72 hours ago that he was withdrawing was a complete head fake. I think he's just looking for some sort of thing where that he may manufacture where he can blame the Ukrainians and then invade. What we don't know is whether this is going to be a partial invasion, whether this is going to be the east of Ukraine, whether it's going to be some sort of move on Kyiv, it could be a coup in Kyiv, whether they're just going to take sort of the coastal areas, basically turn Ukraine into landlocked power and therefore economically irrelevant. I don't know. I'd be guessing if I could speculate, but I think he's going to do something. And the fact that the Biden administration has basically said we're only going to impose sanctions after the fact, and we've all we've ruled out entirely any military response has completely undermined our deterrent posture. And so just to connect that quickly to Xi,

I think you're right. I think, well, one, we had this 5000 word statement that Putin and Xi signed based on a meeting they had last week, wherein they talked about, you know, this friendship is ripe for endless cooperation. No areas are off limits. This is very interesting and troubling. After all, these are these are very strange bedfellows. They were during the second half of the Cold War, very antagonistic. They have territorial disputes that are temporarily resolved, but their interests that don't align. But I think they found they are aligned in undermining the West. And I think she

is in the very enviable position of being able to sit back and not only watch Putin divide the West further, but also really go to school on the type of warfare that we're seeing play out in Ukraine. And you can think about this as sort of the world's best laboratory for hybrid warfare right now. And as we know, Xi's legacy issue is the forceful reunification of Taiwan with the mainland. And so he gets to sit back and basically assess how the West responds to this crisis, take notes. And I think, if anything, this expedites his timeline for making a move on Taiwan. I think we've entered the decade of maximum danger.

And I think particularly after the elections in Taiwan, which are in January of 2024, I think we really enter the window where this could become more likely. Well, we have 47 questions after what you just said. So, but I'm- I talk too much. I'm sorry. No, no, it's just great stuff. Before I hand it over to Peter and Rob, let's just stick with Ukraine and Putin. What he recently said, basically, is it's not only that he doesn't want Ukraine to join

NATO, he wants states that have been admitted to NATO to be kicked out. Right. So he's demanding even more. Well, I think of I mean, just think of the what he's already done to Germany. Right. A cornerstone of NATO is basically supplicating that Putin's energy altar right now. I mean, it's astounding to see how far, and incidentally, and I don't mean this to be like a, you know, Trump versus the anti-Trump forces thing. But remember, one of the chief criticisms of the Trump administration was just how far they were driving our European allies in general and Germany in particular away from us. Right. And this was a core thing that Biden campaigned on. It was restoring our alliances, particularly those with Europe. This whole situation has driven Germany further away from certain Western

European countries, particularly the Brits. If Nord Stream 2 is allowed to go forward, as the Biden administration opened the floodgates for it to go forward, I see that process continuing. And that is a massive dilemma for the stability and strength of NATO going forward. And we've given Putin so much leverage because of our own counterproductive energy policy in America, which started in week one with the cancellation of Keystone Pipeline. I can't think of something better designed to give Putin a geopolitical gift than us waging war on our own domestic energy production. The whole thing doesn't make sense to me, not just from a conservative perspective, but from a pure geopolitical realpolitik perspective that makes no sense to me at all. And I'm left to conclude

that what's driving those decisions in the Biden administration is the enormous pressure from the left when it comes to climate change. And you see that same pressure screwing up what should be a bipartisan China policy right now, which we can get into if you want, but I'll pause for now. Congressman, by the way, our listeners should know that we're recording this on Zoom and we can see something that they should be told about, which is that despite this Princeton degree and PhD from Georgetown, a distinguished military career, and now a big shot in Washington. Mike Gallagher is at home speaking to us wearing a hoodie. He is a man of

Wisconsin, and it's winter in Wisconsin. Mike, there is a strategic debate playing out in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Elbridge Colby wrote a piece the other day saying, China is the whole game. Do not be distracted. The Europeans are rich enough and powerful enough to handle Russia on their own, and they must, because if we send even a small force over there, the attention, the mind space that that takes in the Pentagon, the support, the ships, the way that all our forces have to be rejiggered to support guys on the ground, even a very few relatively small... All right. And then John Bolton answered yesterday saying, wait a minute, these two go together. Any weakness in Europe will only strengthen Xi's hand. We don't have the choice to play only China.

We have to face Russia and China at the same time. All right. You have the credentials I just named. You're on one of the committees that's receiving intel briefings, that's in close touch with the administration. Where do you come down? Well, in true political fashion, I would suggest you could add Bolton to Bridge, divide by two, and the right policy is probably along those lines. But here's where I think,

first of all, let me say, I think Bridge's book, Strategy of Denial, is exceptional. I recommended it in the Wall Street Journal as the best book of the last year. I think it's really an achievement. And full disclosure, I'm friends with Bridge. However, I disagree with him on this specific issue. I think in the same way that we saw the fiasco in Afghanistan and the embarrassing, humiliating surrender in Afghanistan undermined our deterrent posture in Europe, in the Indo-Pacific. I don't think you could sort of neatly divorce deterrence in Eastern Europe from deterrence in Indo-Pakom. And I think history shows that when we don't aggressively confront small problems, they devolve into bigger problems. And perhaps the best way to undermine our readiness in our priority theater, which to Bridget's point,

is the Indo-Pacific. And I agree that China is our biggest threat. And I agree that Taiwan is our most important and most stressing defense priority, and that most of our resources should be focused on that problem. So I agree with him in part. However, if we don't use American power in a smart way to lead our allies in Eastern Europe and prevent this crisis from devolving into a broader conflict, I think, ironically, it could end up consuming more resources, the very resources that Bridge wants to save. And I just would say it should be possible to do this on the cheap because and this is where Bridge is the evangelist of deterrence by denial, which at its heart is a defensive strategy. We're not seeking to overturn the status quo in Ukraine. No one's proposing to go back into Crimea and take it from the Russians. We have a fundamentally defensive

strategy, which has inherent strengths. And we should, if we were smart and if our bureaucracy wasn't broken, we could have armed the Ukrainians to the teeth to allow them to better defend themselves. We could have not allowed the Germans to Finlandize further towards Russia. We could have moved naval assets to the Black Sea. We could have gotten Turkey's permission. There's this weird treaty that we could have gotten around it. We could have put in place a lot of things, I believe, that would have forced Putin to back down or not even try this in the first place. And I fear sometimes people bridge this unfair to bridge, but people that are advocates for not getting involved at all are offering us this false choice between full scale war with Russia or doing nothing. There are plenty

of options in between. For example, this is not going to be a cakewalk for the russians i mean i said earlier i said he's not bluffing he has a good hand to play but i don't know of any other time in modern history where a great power or we could disagree of whether russia's a great power but a a a military a true military power in a conventional sense is going to go up against uh armed uavs uh like the russians are i mean this is going to go up against armed UAVs like the Russians are. I mean, this is going to be an interesting military problem. And at a minimum, we could have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Putin to achieve his objectives without deploying battalions and battalions of our soldiers, sailors or airmen that bridge wants to use in the Pacific,

if that makes sense. Yeah. Hey, Congressman, it's Rob Long. Thanks for joining us. So can I just take, I have a couple of questions. I want to start with that. It seems to me, and I, you know, what do I know? I'm just a writer, that Putin has a terrible hand that we've allowed him to turn into a winning hand or a near winning hand. There is no scenario in which I think in which American forces after disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to go to defend Ukraine. There is a huge possibility that American money and arms could end up in Ukraine to defend or to participate in what will be an incredibly disastrous quagmire for Putin. Isn't it possible that the American president, wherever he is,

should say to Putin, we can't stop you, go ahead and do it. We can't stop you. You know we can't stop you. Go ahead. Here's the penalties you're going to suffer, sanctions, no Nord Stream, et cetera, et cetera. Enjoy your war in Ukraine. It will be a disaster, and you will end up, like many Russian leaders before you, disappearing in the night. I mean, and the comparison between Russia and China, Russia is a dream scenario for us. We're talking about one pipeline. That's really one pipeline. We could pull the plug on Swift.

It's over, right? China is a complicated five-dimensional chess game for us that is not going to be easy. If they decide they want to take Taiwan, that is going to be enormously disruptive to the American economy in a way that they have much more leverage on us. It just seems like we have a very easy tinker toy version here with Ukraine and a very complicated, probably losing hand in China. Part of the game should be for us to win in Ukraine, to win that bluff, to show that we are willing to go to the wall even though putin and germany and uk and all of our nato allies know that we're absolutely not going to send troops there you know if i if i believe the biden administration had the the creativity and the the the stones for i'm i don't i'm not allowed no don't what i'm allowed to say

i understand you may be wearing a hoodie but not all our listeners are here's in a very sophisticated library and i'm just bringing the this has become it's a virtual background he's in his bedroom yeah um uh if i if i had confidence in their ability to deliver that message as well as actually deliver on the promise post-invasion on both Swift and Nord Stream, which I'm actually not 100 percent convinced, despite this administration's rhetoric, that that they'll shut down the pipeline and kick the Russians off Swift. I'm not convinced. OK, I could see that argument. I'd be willing to play out the real polity. And if it were married to a either a covert or an overt strategy of turning this into a complete quagmire for Putin, I could see that. is winding up with the worst of both worlds, right? They're having all this happy talk about defending the Ukrainians and the West stands in solidarity against Putin. And Putin's going to get disinvited to Davos, and he'll face another strongly worded statement from the State Department.

It's like these people, like they're living in some model UN conference, right? This is not how Putin operates. Or sort of mirror imaging that sort of our value structure onto the Russians. I'm just not confident in that. And I don't think he's, he's, he could implement such a strategy effectively. And then more to the point, I think a lot of the, the voices on the right that are saying, oh, we, we shouldn't get involved at all. And I think prudence is a healthy impulse when it comes to matters of grand strategy. I get it, right?

But I think they're misunderstanding a few things. One, they're suggesting that we could somehow work with the Russians to balance them against China over the long term. If that were possible, sign me up, and then you could really play out the realpolitik. And there'd be a lot you'd be willing to compromise on that. It's just not possible in the short term i see no evidence of you want you want i just i want one more i know that jace wants to get in um anyway my my pride my priors are this that we're not going to send troops to ukraine you're right that we're not going to send troops i mean this is no hypothetical i think we're probably getting a little ahead of ourselves to defend taiwan there's a whole bunch of places we're not going to send troops i mean this is no hypothetical i think we're probably getting a little ahead of ourselves to defend taiwan there's a whole bunch of places we're not going to send

our troops um we spent a whole lot of money on defense we have the biggest armed forces next to the next six right um are we spending the money wrong i'm not saying are we spending too much money are we spending it the wrong way Are we spending it in the wrong way? Are we spending it on the wrong things? If, you know, there was that gruesome message from Russia saying we will have to look at it for military and technical response to these issues. Technical response meaning cyber war, a land war with a nuclear power, China, a strategic partner, economic partner, China. Are we arming ourselves for the war that we're not going to have and not arming ourselves for the war that we are going to have? Great question. The question. And by the way, on cyber, and speaking of a laboratory of modern warfare in Ukraine,

I think this is sort of the first conflict in which cyber operations and electronic warfare will really be fully integrated into conventional kinetic conflict. Obviously, these weapons are in use every day, but sort of really married to a Russian unit crossing this bridge and then using cyber to shut down the power facility to nearby. I think it's going to be really interesting. We are spending money on the wrong things in at least a few ways. One, just like the rest of society, the costs that are driving up the DOD budget are largely personnel costs, their health care and retirement costs.

If you compare the Reagan buildup in real terms to the Obama drawdown, we spent more on the Obama drawdowndown and it wasn't because our ships got more expensive or our missiles got more expensive though they did and that's a problem of bureaucracy and sort of the ossification of the defense industrial base which we can get into um it is it is it is the cost of health care and retirement the military is at risk of becoming a massive retirement and healthcare organization with some guns thrown in the mix. That's what they said about GM. The end of GM, that's what they said, was 80% of it was just healthcare and retirement benefits.

And Arnold Punaro, retired Marine General, wrote a great book recently on this subject that I would commend to everyone. The second thing, and this is where I'm a bit of a Luddite, if you believe a conflict over Taiwan is likely within this decade and the timing, your assumption, the timing is everything. And this really gets to the core of the Secretary Austin's defense strategy right now. Then we're spending money on the wrong things because they're adopting this divest to invest strategy. We're going to divest of legacy platforms in order to invest in all these fancy new technologies that won't become operational until the 2030s at the earliest, right? There's an earlier version of this in

the Obama administration called the third offset strategy. I think it represents a naive religious faith in some technological offset that's going to save us from actually having to invest in hard power, specifically missiles and subs and autonomous underwater vessels and forcing the Taiwanese to mine their port facilities and having long-range missiles to blow up the amphibious assault vessels, the robo-ferries when they get into that. I don't want to go on, but I think we are, we need to put hard power into these places in the next three years and not invest in fantastical technology that won't be operational for another decade. And that's why this whole concept of integrated deterrence, which is going to be the new national

defense strategy, it's malarkey. It's a fantasy. It's a buzzword designed to justify cutting money for actual things that we need, like missiles, guns, bombs, and ships. I don't know if any of that made sense. No, no. Missiles, guns, bombs, ships make it very, very difficult and costly for the invasion, right? That's the whole idea. Make it cost on day one. And I think this is a core difference with this administration. I think hard power gives life to our diplomacy and our soft power.

They don't seem to get the connection. I sort of think they're engaged in diplomacy for diplomacy's sake, disconnected from hard power realities, which is really the variable that Putin and Xi care about at the end of the day. They're not worried about the condemnation of the UN, not that they would, because they corrupted the UN, right? Congressman, true or false, if Israel can remain an independent country with a vibrant democracy and a really hot with it economy, then so can Taiwan. And it's a question ultimately of political will.

I completely agree with that. I completely agree with that. This has been the problem. You know, it's not just political will. I mean, it's political polarization and infighting between the parties in Taiwan. I just introduced a bill that would basically condition U.S. assistance to Taiwan on them investing in asymmetric capabilities. So a lot of the problem with Taiwan is not only that they've been infiltrated and in some ways compromised by the CCP, but they're investing in these platforms that don't make sense to counter an invasion force, where if they were to invest in mines, in missiles, in key defensive capabilities, I actually think they could defend the country. That's also not an easy defense problem for

the PLA to solve. And clearly, in terms of economic ingenuity, the success and unparalleled dominance of TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor, shows that this is a country, this is an amazing story of a country with a ton of economic power and economic ingenuity. But that's also what makes them an attractive target for the CCP. And imagine the economic leverage we give General Secretary Xi Jinping if he controls effectively, if you add theirs to China's semiconductor, it's like 80% of the world's production capacity right there. It's a disaster. You mentioned underwater autonomous vehicles, which are handy for making things go oops on pipelines like Nordstrom, which brings us back to gas. And speaking of gas, by the way, yes, your gut and what's in your gut, your microbiome.

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PendulumLife.com to get 20% off all your products. That's P-E-N-D-U-L-U-M-L-I-F-E.com. Promo code RICOSHAY for 20% off. And we thank Penn Dillon for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. One of the things that we have in our toolkit is Nordstrom, Nordstrom sanctions. But Germany doesn't want that. Germany rolls their eyes when that subject comes up and says, oh, look at everything. But they need that. Now, the United States, as I understand, is the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

Now, it's different to put it into, you know, into cans and ship it across the ocean. But how much capacity does the United States have to make up for those shortfalls if indeed something happens to the pipeline, either diplomatically or by other means? So I actually convened a group of LNG nerds recently to help me answer. I don't remember the answer, the actual like sort of quantitative way in which they answered this. But the rough math is that if you had it like a concerted strategy where America was going to supply Europe and other regions around the world. We were just going to totally weaponize this massive domestic gift. It's unfair to call it a gift because it's a product of innovation in America. It would still take three to five years before you would see an actual impact. I mean, maybe that's a conservative estimate. So I don't think you could just plug American energy into Europe right now and solve Germany's problem.

And throughout Europe, they've had a massive energy crisis over the last year. But I do think if we had a national strategy for this, this is something that we could solve over the next decade for sure. You know, part of the problem, too, is the way in which the euros have disinvested in certain forms of energy, particularly nuclear energy. We've done the same here in America. And you talk about things like nuclear micro reactor technology. That's something that's that's something the Chinese want to corner the market on right now. We have to invest more in that. That's also a useful thing to take certain military bases off the grid. Right. So they're not vulnerable to cyber attacks. But to answer your question, I still think it would take a little bit. But I worry this a little bit of time. I worry this administration was prior to this considering even more foolish policies like reinstating a ban on exporting LNG.

I mean, you could you could see that in a second democratic administration i actually went back and examined obama's energy policy i mean it wasn't bad compared to the biden administration it wasn't like actively hostile uh in the way the biden administration is and i just fear we're shooting ourselves in the foot right now yeah right well france has announced they're going to have 12 new nuclear reactors so they might be a position to export something there but right we i mean we I mean, our export infrastructure is better. We've got more port facilities now to get it. But to hear that we're still years away from doing this,

and you don't see any indication that there is this idea, that there is a recognition of this as a strategic asset. Well, at least on the Republican side. I mean, I would expect this to be a core plank of every 2024 contender on our side of the aisle. You've seen Secretary Mike Pompeo has been talking about this a lot on TV. You know, who else among the 2024 contenders? You know, the other guy who's really good on these issues, connecting defense geopolitics to energy is Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan. I mean, he really is a very eloquent spokesman on these

issues and cares passionately about them. He's actually thought deeply, too, about how we can leverage our energy dominance and innovation in order to shore up certain alliances in Asia, particularly the Quad with Japan and India and Australia. There might be might be a play there as well. Mike, you just mentioned our contenders in 2024. Yeah. 2022 comes first. What are you hearing? How many seats are we expecting to win in your chamber? I see no reason to disagree with the conventional wisdom that we are going to win the House very handily, unless something crazy happens. Because it's not only that the environment favors us. And it's not only that I think the Democratic Party has gone so far in the direction of of radical identity politics.

You talk about, you know, what are we spending? Are we not spending on the right things in the military. Well, one of the things that worries me the most is the way in which a lot of the woke identity politics is now infecting the military and the growth of the DEI bureaucracy in the military. It's a very real thing, and people are getting off active duty because they're turned off by this. It's a huge, huge problem. So I think... How long would it take to fix that? How bad is the military? You gave a speech about this the other day. I read excerpts of the speech. Some of the DEI intrusions into military life that you mentioned, that you cited, not just what might happen, but what is happening, classes on so-called white privilege at West Point. I was shocked. I had no idea it had become that bad that fast. How quickly can that be fixed? I think with the right secretary of defense, it could be the core DEI bureaucracy could be uprooted in a matter of months. the pentagon because all of these services in part because they feel pressure from their political overlords right now are are saying nonsensical things that are completely on unsupported by by data right the navy's new mantra is diversity is our strength diversity is our strength okay on some level we all get okay we live in a ships are exactly what aegis systems are ours i know in this ageist systems are i know in this speech in

this speech i said in this speech i said uh and i'm offended you only read excerpts peter you really got to read the whole thing repeatedly every night i said strength is our strength as in physical strength actual and strength is our strength oh that's a better line what is the motivation for these people going to this because if it seems like we're going to teach you what an awful, rotten, historically corrupted society this is, so you'll be all the more encouraged to fight on its behalf. That is the essential point. How are you going to convince young men and women to die for their country if you're telling them the country is evil? evil and oh by the way in the process validating the primary propaganda attack of our foremost adversary if you follow these wolf war so-called wolf warrior diplomats yeah on twitter all they do is promote antifa and blm rhetoric and and and foster this narrative that america is a racist hellscape where cops are constantly shooting people because they don't like the color of their

skin it's absolute nonsense go ahead yeah he put i want to reiterate just peter's question if the core motivation of the military is being hollowed out or attempted to be hollowed out and our chief by dei and our chief leverage point which is natural gas and our own energy production is being hollowed out in the sense that you we can't build uh we can't frack and you can't build a get natural gas pipeline in the united states we can certainly endorse one for putin is this surrender this feels like surrender to me well i i think there's good reason to believe that a country such as ours actually won't um collapse due to some external threat that it will that it will be to do due to internal uh

decay though the two things are are connected i would say what what astounds me is that we we've kind of had multiple i know this metaphor is overused and misused but multiple sputnik moments and we just haven't had that galvanizing moment where we're like, hey, you know, we need to beat the commies and the fascists. Like, you know, they're trying to destroy us. Like, let's all let's all you know, we can disagree on stuff, but let's all work together on that basic point. But yeah, I'm very worried. And honestly, I was not inclined to to pay much attention to this. I thought it was just sort of a very fringe left ideology. And even initially when when Secretary Austin did his 60 day stand down to confront extremism, I thought, OK, you're going to force some people to watch dumb PowerPoint

presentations and waste an hour out of a Marine stay. Not great, but not an existential threat for the military. The more I dug into this and the more I saw the same ideology destroy higher education and K through 12 education in America, the more I've become convinced that it is a massive problem for the military and we should not tolerate any of it. By the way, it's just based on garbage social science. Read these studies that the Navy is citing to not only justify, but quantify the assertion that diversity is our strength. They're garbage. I know we're out of time. Can I just give you a flavor of one? I've just become obsessed, obsessed with this. Uh-oh. Wait a minute. It's your staff. We're going to enter the weekend already

pre-irritated by this. I'll hear my wife yelling at me. I could probably get away with a few more minutes, but okay. So they say, let me pull this up here. So they have this report that came out after the death of George Floyd called Task Force One Navy. And in it, they say that diverse teams are 58 percent more likely than non-diverse teams to accurately assess the situation. So it raises a question. What type of diversity are you talking about? Well, they're talking about racial diversity. They're never talking about intellectual diversity. The one type of diversity that might actually improve combat performance or intellectual performance. It's all based on this one study from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

where they took 180 people trained in business or finance. They had a diverse group and they defined the diverse group as giving giving as making white people interact with black people for like five minutes. And then they and then they had just a group of just white people. And then they sent everyone to individual computer terminals by themselves where they made bets on in a fake stock market. It was all about price bubbles in a fake stock market. And then they tried to say that the diverse teams outperformed the non-diverse teams. So it's not even clear to me that that study is generalizable to the world of finance, let alone to the specific business of killing people, right? I mean, it's an offense to common sense. And it goes way further than that. The more you dig into this. So and honestly, because of that, it obscures what what is an interesting question that I would want an answer to.

I'm actually interested in the in the question of what how do teams perform best under pressure, specifically the pressure of combat? But you're bringing us further away from understanding this and you're bringing us further away from understanding this, and you're bringing us further away from the truth. Because I can tell you, not only based on my own experience, but on the experience of just thousands of people of my generation that served in the military, this lie that the left is pushing, and make no mistake, they're pushing it, that the military is endemic with extremists from the right is just that. It's a total lie. Are there racists in the military? I'm sure there are. And we should not tolerate that. We should not tolerate any discrimination. But this idea that the U.S. military's top problem is domestic extremism, there's no support for that argument at all. The military led the way for racial integration in 1948. Read the memoirs of

the Korean War, right? There's a great one called Colder Than Hell, where he talks about this. And he says, yeah, we had some people from the South that were uncomfortable with this, but the politicians had hollowed out our military and the overwhelming thought was black or white, a Marine was a Marine. We needed everybody we can fight with. That's the same sentiment in the Marine Corps today, I'm telling you. So the politicians are trying to concoct a narrative to justify the expansion of the woke DEI bureaucracy. Ironically, they're stoking racial tension that didn't exist before in the military. So sorry, I went on a diatribe there. I don't even remember the initial question. I have to ask one last question, and I need to get you on the record on this.

You just said we're going to retake the House, and that means that Speaker McCarthy is going to name you chairman of some big-time committee. And I can't wait, because the service secretaries and the secretary of defense and all the top brass are going to have to sit up when you tell them things like you just told us. Terrific. But here's the question. When you become a real big shot in Washington and everybody starts referring to you as Mr. Chairman, will you still remember us peasants here at Ricochet? Well, I may at that point even afford to dress in things that aren't hoodies, right?

I could wear a suit and actually look at suit and actually the answer is no, Peter. I will say, cause I would, I right now I'm the ranking member on the military personnel subcommittee. So that's why I dig into these issues. I did ask the head of Navy personnel, uh, these questions, uh, two weeks ago, and this is the guy who suggested that we need to bring back photos for promotion boards so we can enforce diversity, i.e. judge people by the color of our skin. And I asked him, so what evidence do you have for the claim that diversity is our strength? And he's like, well, there's been some private sector studies, but it was clear to me he was unaware of the very things he had cited in this study. So I actually think we need help from people in academia who really understand methods to expose the craziness

that's going on here. I mean, there's a lot of numbers being thrown around that are just totally absurd. So I do look forward to further oversight of this if I'm lucky enough to be a subcommittee chairman. And we all know that that's where the real power lies in Washington. That's true.

That's true. Subcommittee chair. That's right. We power lies in Washington. That's true. That's true. Subcommittee chair. That's right. We want to hurry up. We don't have much time. According to the math that I'm looking at, we've got encroaching on the, in the,

in the East and encroaching on the West. We need a little, we need a helmsman right this point. Well, 20, I just wrote, sorry, I'm in shameless self-promotion on your podcast,

but the speech I gave at Hillsdale and it should be available somewhere on the interwebs. We'll post it. Oh, cool. The other thing I just published yesterday with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was something called Battle Force 2025, where I tried to answer this question of what, if you believe that a Taiwan invasion is more likely at some point this decade and is not a distant threat, what could you actually do to prevent that from happening without completely screwing up your long-term investments? So I assume that's on the FDD website. It's called Battle Force 2025. So you want my thoughts on how we solve this Taiwan problem in the next few years? I try to write them all down. Do we want your thoughts on the

most important strategic diplomatic question of the day? Yeah, I think we would like your thoughts on that. Thank you. So don't forget us. When you're Secretary of Defense in the DeSantis administration, we want to see you, of course, in your full suit, but we also want to see a wedge of styrofoam cheese on your head to let us know that you haven't forgotten your roots. What about turning cheese curds into ethanol, Mike?

Have you looked into that? Hey, the center of gravity in America is at Lambeau Field. Everything east of Detroit is just strategic depth, my friends. I wish you'd won. I wish you'd won because if you won, we beat you at some point. So if you won the Super Bowl, it would be like us winning the Super Bowl because we're better than you. We'll just leave you with that and the thought that you said before. It was great when we had national self-determination national self-realization that we had to defeat the fascists and the communists the problem now it seems is that too many people believe that they have to defeat the fascists at home so that we all then can ourselves become communists that seems to be the way it's flipped now that's well so

with that in mind thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great pleasure. And thank you guys. Look forward to coming back. Bye. Take care, Mike. Yeah, it's a scary future out there. And you want your child to be prepared for the best of it, no matter what may come. You know, that depends on a good education. And even in the best schools, you know, your child probably isn't getting the one-to-one teaching that they need to reach their full potential. In a classroom with dozens of kids, teachers just don't have the time to customize their approach. Well, at ByJuice Future School, students receive personalized attention and world-class learning experience completely online to supplement their in-person school education. With small group and one-on-one

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up for your first class. Absolutely free. Give it a look. See if it's for you. Be impressed. Be amazed at buyjuice.com slash podcast. And we thank BuyJuice for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast, Vince Guerra. He's an author. He's an Alaskan. He's a father of eight, but none of that matters. What really counts about Vince, most importantly, he is a Ricochet member. And he's the godfather of Ricochet's Movie Fight Club, where members, and might I add, only Ricochet members, duke out their picks for the best and sometimes the worst that Hollywood has to offer. You know how much people love to talk about politics? You know, that's piker stuff compared to the arguments and disputations people

can get into when they talk about movies. of course everybody's taste is correct and it's a great place to read and hash out and think about movies and just right so we asked we asked vince to come on and uh tell us a little bit about this uh movie fight club and why it's one of the things that makes ricochet so great because there's so much more to life than politics all right yeah good morning guys so we started it in 2020, summer 2020, when everything was going crazy, just as an opportunity to spend some time on a Saturday and not talking about riots and not talking about elections and not talking about politics and just do something fun. So we started off movie fights by Andy.

That's kind of what it was based on. It was just an opportunity for members who love movies to talk about movies. What we did is, the way it works is we post a question about movies, end up fighting about it for a week, and in the comments, and everybody has an opinion. So by the end of the week, by that Friday, whoever's got the most likes on their answer for that movie question, then they choose the next question. And so we've been doing that for two years now.

We're up to fight number 99. We're starting tomorrow. And yeah, it's been great. Wow. 100 fights. Okay, so just so I understand it, because the most recent one was about best tearjerkers, right? That was a couple ones ago last week. The one we're actually doing tomorrow is

the best makeup or the best, most transformative actor without using extensive makeup and CGI. Yeah, and I've got to say, I've already cast my vote, just so you know.

I don't remember who I'm voting for, but it's Gary Oldman, without a doubt. I'm pretty sure. It's Gary Oldman. For Churchill? I think it was Churchill, Gary Oldman, and the Darkest Hour. I'm pretty sure she's got that nailed. I think that was the brilliant one. But I thought you said without extensive makeup.

Is that not considered extensive makeup? He had padding and... No? I'd say John Heard in Elephant Man was a brilliant job, but that's very extensive makeup is that not considered extensive makeup he had padding and no i would i'd say john heard an elephant man was a brilliant job but that's very extensive makeup so that's out of extensive makeup got it got it yeah i went with uh tilda swinton and grand budapest hotels because they made her look really old and yeah you couldn't recognize that they didn't do crazy cgi and all that yeah because like crazy yeah well so like um what i love about this is that you kind of like it's a it's a workaround obviously there's probably a plug

in that we could figure out at ricochet to like make this easier but i do like the idea that everyone has to like uh you get to like everybody gets to talk and argue and then you pick your official answer and that's that's your official nomination and that's what you that's your official nomination. And that's how you measure the likes on the official designated thing. Is there anybody who's like, sometimes when I get talking about movies with people, I'm willing to sort of listen to their political beliefs that I may disagree with. And I understand how to do that respectfully. But sometimes when people say, oh, I didn't like a movie, or I did like a movie, and i didn't like a movie or i did like a movie and i didn't like it or i liked it i get really mad like are you they're empirically incorrect yes yeah like um they're not just mistaken they're evil yeah like how could you you know uh does it ever come up i mean you know we obviously we have rules here

ricochet above civil discourse but like you talk about people's favorite movies sometimes you do that's that's third rail stuff. Yeah. It's kind of the good and the bad, because at some point at one level, there's people that I completely disagree with on the site on everything when it comes to medical stuff or politics or whatever, but in movies where I can lock stuff and then the opposite people who I get

along with, and we can argue all week about something and be on the same side. And then all of a sudden, like Drew in Wisconsin, he and I are complete opposites when it comes to movies lc and i would get along pretty well on both um myth white male and i we can go back and forth and in both categories so just you get a completely different perspective but somebody you've been arguing with all week and you're kind of frustrated with them on the politics stuff by the time you get to saturday

you guys are in the same side talking about just movies, and it's just way to just relax. Can you name an instance when you changed your mind? Or when the Fight Club changed your mind about a movie? Actually, that movie, I better go watch that one again. No, my opinions are always spot on.

Who's the reigning champ right now? The reigning champ is actually, i am fine so all right okay he's got i think eight wins and then i used to see scrub and lc are both up there as well wow okay we should have a crossover with a dispatch so that the people who think that david french is wrong about everything can agree that he's wrong about everything in movies as well yeah i actually yeah david i think is one of those people that i kind of i i often read him i would no surprise to you i agree with him uh on a lot of stuff but then the movie sometimes i'm thinking what are you talking about um we've got plenty of that it does make me

call it a question other things right i i so yeah i think david would burn the original master of citizen kane if it'd be meant he had a 4k version of aquaman so yeah that's right exactly right um so what what are your like um i was gonna say like what are your favorite movies but what are the movies that you find you go to right i don't mean the ones that that intellectually you put in the top 10 but there's some movies for me when when i had back when i had direct tv when people had just had such a thing and there was a grid and i'd flop myself on the sofa and flip around and just watch every channel for 10 seconds there are certain movies that if they were on i would stop yeah i've got a bunch of those i'm a child of the 80s so you know empire strikes back

was one of the first movies i saw in the theater when i was like five years old and so that's when i used to go to oh my god know every line it's just a comfort movie when you're sick or whatever, but as I've gotten older, a little bit more mature, um, I just enjoy completely different aspects. So every genre, I probably have a favorite movie,

but probably the one I go to most is you can't take it with you. Jimmy Stewart, Jean Arthur, hilarious. It's fun. The whole family loves it. So I find myself gravitating to that if I just want to have a good time.

That movie is... Well, that script, by the way, is massive. Flawless. I saw a revival of the play here in New York four years ago, maybe five years ago. It was astonishing. It's perfect. And that movie is perfect, too.

It's just a tight little thing. And Jimmy Stewart who who really doesn't have that part in the play um that is not as not as big in the play um it's fantastic in that role yeah i love all things yeah me too me too man the man who shot liberty valence and probably up there as well yeah it's george kaufman moss heart script yeah yeah so rob you find this as um as a reason that people might do something with their money i feel like the in addition to talking about movies um what i'm glad what i'm really pleased that we have been to talk about something else that's happening on Ricochet that's not politics and that people are sort of forming little groups together. You don't have to just want to duke it out over, you know, you know who and you know what. You can talk with friends about civilly, about stuff that's really important, like movies. And so that's why we're saying to you,

if you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we are thrilled, all four of us thrilled that you are a member with us. And if you are not a member, this is a perfect reason and time to join. And you can join now for a ridiculously low price during our winter membership pledge push. You can connect with some amazing people like Vince and his

team is like co-competitors there in the Olympics of movies. You can debate big issues of the day and small issues and just tell stories and all backed by the simple code of conduct that keeps things civil and polite and not a swampy mess um and for our winter membership drive you can join us and we'll give you 14 days free of charge so 14 days try it out kick the tires uh meet the people um join in a couple conversations decide if you like it we know will. That's why we can make that offer. We keep growing, and we really want

you to grow with us along for the ride. You can post your own articles, comment on podcast posts, and even join groups focused on special areas of interest like this one. And we have some pretty cool members-only gatherings that are coming up. We are planting our flag in this, the end of declaring

victories. Jay Bhattacharya tells us on COVID, we are getting back together in person. And as a member, you can also watch all these expanded webcasts with leading conservative figures. I call it No Dumb Questions because we're kind of asking them simple stuff. And, you know, I'm not embarrassed to ask a dumb question. And that gives you FaceTime, some of the biggest newsmakers of the day. So join us for live events. Join us for conversations online. Join us for conversations about movies or anything else.

There's tons of that. This is just one slice of what's going on on the site every day, all day. And you can join a large and happy and civil club. We want you. Sign up today at ricochet.com slash join. That's ricochet.com slash join. That's ricochet.com slash join. And just before we go, a couple of things I want to say that in addition to doing more personal

stuff and more, you know, in, in person stuff because the declaring COVID over I'm going to be, I don't know if you're in the East coast or in Connecticut, I'm going to be speaking at Yale at the William F Buckley program next month on March 16th. Uh, the program is six to 8 PM. I don't know if the program's open, but afterwards, if you're in, you know, New England central, we'll, we'll figure out a place to meet, um, uh, in new Haven for a drink, uh, maybe even a smoke. Cause there's a,

there's a great, uh, the owl shop is actually kind of cool place there to have a smoke. And then, the smoke and then um and then maybe if anybody's interested we should actually talk about this in the member feed about getting together uh in new york um because that would be kind of fun too no for no other purpose other than getting together um eventually we're gonna have more you know we have more events coming up with people and stuff but i think right now just to plant the flag in the we declare covid now officially over you know come raise a drink like a human being.

I think that's going to be a big part of it. May I add one thought? If you won't join Ricochet for Rob. Yeah, sure. Join Ricochet for Vince. The man has eight kids. He has eight kids in Alaska. That means that at this time of the year, the kids are spending a lot of time writing.

He needs to be able to get to his computer. He needs to meet people. You've got 20 minutes of daylight out there. So think of this as an act of charity. It's your good deed for the day. Join Ricochet for our friend Vince. Join the movie Fight Club and he'll be in your corner like Burgess Meredith. Every one of those Rocky movies, which I'm sure you've seen all 17 events thanks we'll see you at ricochet of course and everybody

else join up so you can you can fight as well see you later thanks so much thanks all right thanks no disrespect to mike gallagher but the center of the universe actually starts in arrowhead nice that's right take a shot when the guy's gone. All right. So maybe you are listening to this podcast and thinking, as Rob and Peter have told you, that you ought to join. But also, if you're listening to this podcast, what are you listening to it on? That's a good question, right? You got headphones on?

Are you on your treadmill thumping along? Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. And you find yourself having to keep putting your bed in because it gets sweaty and it falls out. And maybe your resolution was, I've got to find a better way to listen to things than using these things that slip out of my ears. Well, if that was your resolution, you didn't follow up. And I understand we all make these resolutions, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't find a way to shake things up. The year is still new, whether it's by switching up that workout routine or by going someplace new. Well, listen, however you challenge yourself this year,

if there's no better way to do it than with a pair of Raycon wireless earbuds in your ears, give you a soundtrack for the life you want to lead. Raycon wireless earbuds are the best way to bring audio with you because no matter how much you shake things up, literally, I mean, no matter how much you shake, they will not fall out of your ears. Their everyday earbuds look and feel and sound better than ever. There's also something called the awareness mode for when you need to listen to what's around you. So you can take your Raycons wherever you happen to go. You're on a street that feels a little dodgy,

switch to awareness mode so you can hear them crunching up behind you in the snow. With optimized gel tips for the perfect in-ear fit, these earbuds are so comfortable that they will not budge. Trust me on this one. And you know why I like that? This is gonna sound really stupid,

but with those white earbuds, if they fall out of my ears and I'm walking along the streets of Minneapolis, they go into a snow bank. They're gone. I'm not going to find them. They're gone. The blue Raycons, if they fell out of my ears and they don't, I can see them in the snow. That's just perhaps one of the least important reasons you want. But when you compare it to the sound and the fit, yeah. So Raycons offer more. Of course, eight hours of playtime and a 32-hour battery life. And the price, just right. Get quality audio at half the price of the other audio brands.

So it's no wonder that Raycons, every year you're about to have over 48,000 five-star reviews. And right now, Ricochet listeners, which would be you, can get 15% off your Raycon order by buyraycon.com now ricochet listeners which would be you can get 15 off your raycon order by by raycon.com slash ricochet that's by b-u-y-r-a-y-c-o-n.com slash ricochet to save 15 on raycons by raycon.com slash ricochet and we thank raycon for sponsoring this the ricochet podcast well gentlemen before we, a couple of things. There's Canada, and there was PJ. PJ O'Rourke died this week, and at first it seemed like this was the sort

of thing that he might have written a great piece about because nobody was actually sure it was him. They thought it was some Irish gardener whose obituary had surfaced. That's what I thought, and I had this little hope because it couldn't be true it shouldn't be true it ought not to be true but it was and a wonderful guy i mean a brilliant humorist gold standard you can't get funny it is it is clinically and empirically impossible to be funnier than pj o'rourke was even rob stands in awe and and realized that you know rob you couldn't steal his stuff because everybody would say that's's PJ Quaul. That's PJ Quaul right there. But the other thing is that he was, and you want to be remembered as thus, was a great guy to be around.

He was a great guy to talk with. That smile, that light in his eyes, and the observations and remarks that he made, it was a pleasure to make his company, to make his friendship and be in his company. Rob Long was brilliant. And Rob, the day that... Thank you. Good night, everybody. We're going to link to a brief appreciation of PJ that Rob and I recorded the day PJ died.

You had some great interviews with him. Well, all you have to do is ask a question and then get out of the way when pj or work is your guest what struck me this is my 10 seconds on pj i've already had what chance to say what i wanted to say on that little appreciation and we'll link to it but looking at twitter going around the i pj was friends with every journalist in America. Yeah, right. I mean, everybody, generation unto generation unto generation, everybody had had a drink with PJ or a cigar with PJ or had had a compliment from PJ on their own work. He just had, honestly, a bigger capacity for friendship than, of course, I'm in California, so I lost touch with the East Coast circles, but he was every journalist's friend.

Yeah, I mean, he was, I mean, I think also people forget that one of his secrets was that he did the research. You know, he did the work. He did the homework. He did the reading. It seemed like he was sort of the bad kid in class, you know, the naughty kid. He did the reading. He went to the places. He knew what he was talking about and so when he wrote he wrote from a position of great intelligence and and and background um and that was sort of the the

foundation of everything he said that was funny was that it was all so true and it was all so reflected his um his hard work uh and i think we might have lost that now i mean i you see people on all these news channels and they and what do you like i think the beginning of the republican analyst or republican strategist democratic analyst and all these people who don't know anything really haven't done the reading haven't done the research don't even know and they're just their job is i'm a commentator yeah i remember seeing somebody once apply for a job and saying one of the things they've done is they i'm a keynote speaker and what i thought well what what about what it's like no about nothing i don't i don't know anything i just talk and pj uh he knew stuff

and i think that really yeah and a stark contrast to hunter s thompson who also wrote in rolling stone i mean hunter s thompson just showed up places drunk and then made stuff up. You're right, PJ did the research. And I remember reading him. I remember him being a destination read in these places. And you wonder if there's a journal like that again, if somebody like him could flourish again. Well, we had him and that's what counts. So rest in peace, PJ.

Toast him. I toasted him on the bookshelf with the Jameson's the other night, which I believe was his whiskey of choice. Yeah. Sadly it was doers, but no, it was, well,

I've got doers in the house too, as well. He had terrible taste. Doers is not that bad. I mean, you drink a lot of it. You want the cheapest you can get. I think what he,

I think what his, his point was, if you're buying, he's got good taste. If he's buying, it's going to be a doers. So before we go, San Francisco, apparently the which is now filled with white supremacist racists who are were due to the same old, well-funded, dark money, right-wing apparatus that is bent on drawing a call of ignorance over the heads of young men. Or maybe they've gone so far that the people of San Francisco say, no, I'm sorry, you're not going to rename a school, take away Washington's name, and put some flavor of the month in there. No, you're not this much,

but no more. What do you think it is? Rage, rage, rage. This is the second event of its kind. Conservative Republicans took over the Greenwich Town Council in Greenwich, Connecticut, of all things. And my friends in Greenwich say it's because the mothers in that town were furious that their kids hadn't been able to go to school. And here in San Francisco, these people are still liberal. I'm sure they're still, they subscribe to every screwball ideology, but they know what's good for their children and keeping their kids out of school is bad. Three members of the school board were up for a recall and three members of the school board got voted out by a margin of three to one. It was just an eruption of rage. This is a good thing.

Yeah, it's a great thing. And I think we just need to, those of us who believe in school choice, need to take to grab this moment. School choice is a very hard thing to get people to implement. It's not hard to get people to agree to on a poll or in a survey because it sounds fine. It sounds right. It makes sense. Right. But then when you tell parents, okay, we are, we're going to change your school system tomorrow. Thanks to this initiative, parents balk at that. And they're like, well, I figured my school out. I figured that where I, I, I figured it all out.

This is the moment I think where a school choice advocates can say, you see, they don't care about your kids. And you've been teaching them almost on your own for two years when the schools have been closed. I mean, San Francisco schools were closed forever. And now it's time for you to take the power back. And when you see that, that's essentially why you have a Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. That's what happened in three points in the country it is a trend um and i think the school choice advocates who are kind of exhausted after 25 years of fighting the battle kind of the wrong way maybe um this is the time to sort of uh this is the time to make real progress i mean we could have we could have school choice ballot initiatives in maybe a dozen states in the next 12, 18 months.

Make hay while the sun goes nova. I just like the fact that Peter Robinson ripped off the genial mask and revealed the true anger at the heart of the entire conservative movement. Rage, he says, rage. But he's absolutely correct. And that'll play out over and over and over again. Or so we like to think. So we like to think that actually the overplaying of the hand, that all of the things, all the concatenated miseries that we have gone through in COVID are going to result in some sort of upending of the Etch-a-Sketch and a good firm shake thereof.

But we'll see. And of course, one of the ways you'll be able to see what's happening or listen is by tuning into this podcast and its perpetuity will be assured if you joined today. And of course, one of the ways you'll be able to see what's happening or listen is by tuning into this podcast and its perpetuity will be assured if you joined today. And also, we want to thank our sponsors, Pendulum, Byju's Future Schools, and Raycon. Support them for supporting us. Join Ricochet. Give us those five stars at Apple Podcasts for some strange reason that I keep mentioning. You're going to do it right.

Yes, you are. And that's it for us. We'll see you next week. Peter, Rob, see you next week. Next week, boys. Now, at this very moment, as a matter of fact, in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Do you want to dance? Yeah!

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Come on now, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now wait a minute Ricochet Join the conversation I feel alright Now that I've got my woman I feel, hey, alright

You've been so good to me You've been so good to me You know you make me wanna Lift my head up and throw my head back in Come on now, come on now, come on now, come on now Take it easy, take it easy, take it easy, take it easy A little bit softer now, a little bit softer now A little bit louder now Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey

A little bit louder now A little bit louder now A little bit louder now A little bit louder now 좀 더 괜찮나 좀 더 괜찮아 좀 더 괜찮아 좀 더 괜찮아 좀 더 괜찮아 좀 더 괜찮아 I'm a chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap, chap