The Ricochet Podcast - Enforce The Law

Episode Date: June 27, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file This week, Peter Robinson returns with tales of the east, a fervent debate on the complications of the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling, North Dakota Senator John Hoeven joins to discuss immigration (and is later abruptly cut off due to technical difficulties), and a raucous debate on the issue amongst the podcasters. Also, are we willingly giving up too many rights or are they... Source

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It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson, who's freshly back from hobnobbing with the Gotham Elite. I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis, and our guest today is Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota. So as you might imagine, there's going to be some immigration talk. Joyful and contentious, though it may be. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, and this is the podcast that we're having. Number 173 brought to you by Ricochet and brought to you, of course, by Audible.com,

which modestly says it's the leading provider. We think it's the biggest and the best and the finest of spoken audio information and entertainment. Listen to audiobooks wherever and whenever you want. Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. That's right, audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet for a, what? Yes, of course, a free audiobook and a free 30-day trial. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec, but first of all, we have to, this is a momentous moment. It's the joining once again of the founders of Ricochet after a brief summertime hiatus. Peter and Rob back together again.

Hi, guys. How are you doing today? What's his name again? Rob Long. Rob. Rob. Rob. Peter, welcome back from your –

How are you? I'm fine. So we said – originally we said that you were out camping and we had these images of you kind of walking in the wilderness with a scarf tied around your neck. And then I see photographs of various places of you hobnobbing with I can only describe as major celebrities. Tom Wolf? You did Tom Wolf? Yes, yes, yes, Tom Wolf. Boys, when I take a vacation

rather like Barack Obama, I never really stop working. You have so many responsibilities. So you put on the mom jeans and the bicycle helmet and you went to talk to Tom Wolfe. Isn't he the most gracious, courtly man you ever met in your life? Oh, he's such a sweetheart. He's such a sweetheart.

And his wife, I have to say it was a lucky bounce because Sheila Wolfe was kind enough to permit us to shoot this in their apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Oh, you shot at Manhattan. For some reason I thought – because I know he goes there for the summer. Oh, you shot at Manhattan. For some reason I thought, because I know he goes there for the summer. I thought you shot at East Hampton or something. No, no, no. They decided not to go out to the Hamptons quite as early as originally had been thought. And so in we went to Manhattan. And of course, as you know, Rob, very well, as you know, James,

setting up one of these shoots, even a small shoot with a couple of cameras, lights everywhere. And Sheila was even more gracious in the event than she had been in the prospect. So but and we had we were dealing with a crew that sort of a pickup New Yorker. Wonderful people, lovely, competent, wonderful. But they weren't quite down with all the shots and angles that Scott Immergut, our magnificent producer, usually arranges for. Yeah, right. To shoot my open, they said, stop, stop, stop.

And the cameraman said, Mr. Wolfe, while he's doing his open to that camera, would you mind leaning to the left? Good Lord. Good Lord. Tom was a wonderful sport about it. He is, we talked about Back to Blood. We talked about his writing technique.

I almost kissed him because even Tom Wolfe finds writing difficult every single day. Even Tom Wolfe has to play little mind games with himself such as saying, I will not get up from this desk until I have produced 10 pages of triple-spaced text, and I don't care how long it takes. And Tom said really the only thing that has changed over the years as he's become recognized as one see a row of books on the bookshelf with his name on the spine and say to himself, Wolf, you've done it before. You must be able to do it again. Is he doing that now? I mean he's – I mean last time we – He's in his ninth decade. Back to Blood was published last year, his – another 700 and some odd page novel, which was set in Miami.

And I can't remember whether this was on tape or off tape, but I said, what are you working on now? And he is working on evolution, not as he put it, the story of evolution, but the story of the story of evolution. And it's clear that he's been drawn to this by the rough treatment that people who raise questions here or there about evolution are receiving from the priestly caste of evolutionists. So he smells another big, glorious, bumptious fight,

and he's moving right toward it. I'm excited. Good for him. It's interesting the way in which the establishment does, and I say the literary establishment, the elites, if you wish, does their best to diminish Wolfe. Once it finally got to them, maybe he wasn't on their side completely, but he's almost undiminishable as a stylist.

And the reviews I read of Back to Blood were straining to figure out exactly how to thoroughly castigate him. I remember that. And you – I'd say you, James, really liked it and kept talking about it. Yeah, I did. It led me to – I had it on the Kindle and it led me to finally start it and read it. And it is wonderful. It's very, very – I mean it's great. Anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Go ahead. No, that was my point. It's very difficult to look at that book and find out why it shouldn't be taken seriously for a variety of reasons, the mores, the prose, the overall meta observations, the comments. It's a great book and to come from somebody – I don't want to diminish him because of his age but to say this is not somebody who sat inside the ivory tower looking out a keyhole and remembering musty days gone by. This is the feeling of somebody who was on the ground looking around and taking copious notes. It's a wonderful piece of work. So if he writes about evolution and dares to drop a pebble in that pond, that will be the final excoriation of Mr. Wolf. I can't wait to read that interview, Peter, or to see the interview, Peter.

See the interview. So you must have done something else. When you were out there in Manhattan, did you feel the buzz on the streets as people anticipated the variety of Supreme Court decisions coming down? You know, I have to say, we got back home late last night. I am dimly aware that there were some news that got made over the last few days. And I have the feeling that it's bad news from my point of view, but I don't know enough to know whether it's irritation or I should feel total despair. At the beginning of the trip, I did an interview with Rand Paul, and then I interviewed Tom Wolfe. But aside from that, it really was a family vacation wandering over the Northeast.

My daughter graduated from Dartmouth. We began there several days in New Hampshire, weekend in Manhattan, and then about 10 days out, way out on Long Island, on beautiful beaches, way out on Long Island. And I scarcely opened a newspaper. So you're dealing with someone who is totally blissfully ignorant. What I did, Manhattan, you know, the weather was lovely. The real humidity and heat hadn't kicked in, but the sun was shining. Manhattan was spectacular. It is a safe town now. It is by and large a clean town.

We took the kids to the museums, the Met, the Museum of Natural History, the Frick, and I'd forgotten how – oh, my goodness, what it is to stand in front of Holbein's Thomas Moore and just look at this painting. So it was New York. And then of course, the other thing that you realize that's instructional for the kids is, hey, dad, how come we're not spending more than two days here? Well, have you noticed the way the meter has kept running? Every time you sit down to get kids French fries, it's 180 bucks. So Manhattan remains extremely expensive. All of this was a lesson for the kids. But I had – I did not talk politics with anybody until I got to you boys. Until you got here.

Blissful. Well, Rob, in your bubble of hardcore conservatism out there – It was a little bit of a bubble last week but yeah. You mean the Supreme Court decisions? Yeah. It's funny because the full disclosure as being the rhino squish here, I found it easy to say to people the truth for me, which is that while I'm – I am a Scalia partisan. I read – I didn't read the whole thing. I read most of the excerpts of his opinion, his dissent, and I agreed with it. But I – and I am somebody who's in favor of work who are passionately in favor of gay marriage and also mostly passionately partisan democrats. throw the drink in my face, but I found the Scalia appeal to a more mature republic to be compelling to everyone.

But what Scalia basically said is we can't keep shining up the bat signal and asking for unelected judges to come down and solve all the difficult stuff for us that we don't want to legislate and wrangle over. That's what the country is.

It's a legislating and wrangling body. That's what a republic and a democracy means. Yes, but if the republic and the democracy do not yield the desired social outcome, then the republic and the democracy must be swept aside in favor of the desired social outcome. That's the lesson that we have to take away from this. Well, but it's not really because the day before – no, the shoe is on the other foot now. But I mean once you start the precedent saying, OK, well, all this difficult stuff, we just go to them. We just go to daddy. Daddy will solve it. And the day right before the Supreme Court, before the Prop 8 DOMA ruling was the Voting Rights Act ruling, and there was enormous garment rending and fury on the part of the left for that. And the idea is that – I think Scalia's argument should appeal to people both on the left or the right, which is you really shouldn't be coming to us for all this stuff.

You passed a law. You don't like it. Pass another law. Let these things be worked out. But the progressives are not interested in that approach because that approach does not yield the desired effect of heaven on earth today. For example, you put in place a mechanism that allows people to have initiative and referendum, and they come up with something and they say this is what we wish and then the permanent political class says no you can't have that and we're going to do everything we possibly can to not give it to you we are not going to enforce the law we do not like and that is what you have to take away from a lot of this

that is a very good summary of what just took place in california and i haven't read the decisions yet but here's what i know coming back know coming home to California last night is that the people of California voted to make part of the state constitution. The definition of marriage, which as far as anyone can tell, has prevailed ever since there was civilized society and probably for tens and tens of thousands of years before then. Although, of of course there was no formal definition of marriage before there was writing in civilized society but one man and one woman and let me stop you right there peter what they decided to do was enshrine bigotry into the constitution that's the other view so and what happened the california state constitution's got plenty of that anyway

yeah anyway so peter go on and then and then there was a court case in california and now there's been a court case of the supreme court and as i fly home to California, I'm landing in a state in which two things are true. One, the people by a large majority voted to outlaw gay marriage. Two, gay marriage is now in effect. Something pretty wrong went bad with what is supposed to be a democracy. That much is just clear, right? I believe I would argue this with my friends who are in support of gay marriage. In fact, I have. All I have to do is go out and pick up my newspaper

in the driveway in the morning, see another neighbor and get into it. Even people who are in support of gay marriage ought to be at least a little bit sheepish about how all of this came about. That's a very good point. Millions of Californians are going to say, I don't know about the issues, but we just got rolled. Something wrong. That's a very good point. And there's nothing to hold back another proposition to repeal that proposition. And Scalia's point is, if you don't like DOMA, that's fine.

DOMA was passed by a Congress and signed into law by a president in the Rose Garden. President Clinton, you don't like it, pass another law. That's the job of the legislature, to reflect the will of the people and pass the laws. Don't keep appealing – I mean this is a version of the Roe v. Wade argument. Don't keep appealing to nine unelected people to sort of come in like the League of Superheroes and solve all the big problems so that the little underling, you don't have to bother your pretty little head over it. You can go about your business.

That is a disturbing trend, and I found myself making that argument to people who, as I say, were very in favor of gay marriage and are definitely partisan lefts, and they agreed with me. Now, partly they agree with me because I'm the boss, but partly they agree because, yes, I see your – I see i see yeah but they'll take it they'll yeah they'll take it of course they'll take it they'll take they'll take it and tug it in their back pocket and move along and whistle and the next time something like this comes up they will be no less offended if it works in their favor they will be infuriated if it ever works against them but i don't see

exactly when that's going to happen because we don't have an institutional government right now that's in the business of saying, you know what, we're going to do less and you people are going to do more. Yes, but we also don't have a people. We don't have a populace who says to government, you do less, we'll do more. Well, when you have the people pass a law

such as they did in California and the law is then not enforced and then ignored, the people have to wonder what conclusion they should draw from this. Whether or not it's just their place to shut up and go along and pay their taxes and get a few goodies in exchange and hope that it doesn't all come against them someday or form

a group that does something about this and finds themselves investigated and targeted by the government. That's right. That's exactly right. James touches on the way all of these targeted by the government. That's right. If you're a rational person – That's exactly right. That's exactly right. James touches – That's exactly right.

On the way all of these pieces fit together, the theme here is don't trust the bastards. Here in California, in particular California, Texas, Arizona, everybody knows that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a law that did – well, actually people are aware that it did one thing, which is grant amnesty to three million people who were then in the country illegally. But there was a second piece of that law and the second piece of the law was much sharper, stricter enforcement of immigration law than on the book. So there would be no more illegal immigration. From 1986 to the present day, the federal government, under Republicans and Democrats alike, has signally, catastrophically, willfully failed to enforce the law. On the IRS, we all know what's going on. Now we have serious matters such as gay marriage and the national security.

And a fundamental poison has now entered into the American body politic. And the poison is you can't trust these people. Aside from the merit of the merits on the issues, you cannot trust them to support and obey the popular. Right. Right. That is corrosive. That is true is corrosive. But there's there's another more I think a more seriously corrosive angle to this, and that's that there's no particular desire – I mean the fact that the Supreme Court or that a – what is it? The Ninth Circuit Court or a federal court overturned a constitutional amendment voted on by the people of California foolishly in my view but nonetheless voted on in a fair and free election. The fact that they did that didn't inspire any outrage i mean it didn't that what scalia said which is it is i mean he's

he writes very well but let's be honest it's it's it's what it's got to be at any any other time 100 years ago it would be the most blandly um completely boilerplate for uh for democracy to say yes we should work these things out in in in our um legislative houses and our and our executive branch um that that is now seen as a sort of a shocking and an incredibly fresh thought and it isn't it isn't that i don't really think the government has taken i mean this is maybe a i should be thinking about this before i say it but i don't know I don't really think the government has taken – I mean this is maybe – I should be thinking about this before I say it. But I don't really think government is taking any rights away from us that we have not offered up. Oh, oh, oh.

I don't know if I can – I think I see what you mean that we ought to be angrier than we are. Fine. I can see all of that. What? Forty years, 50 years. I think – I see what you mean that we ought to be angrier than we are. Fine. I can see all of that. No, no, no. What? 40 years, 50 years. We voted. Here in California, we voted for Prop 8 and that did get taken away from us.

It just got taken away by an elite operating through the legal justice system. But they've been doing that for 40 years. They have been doing it, which by the way – And we have ceded to the government so many parts of our lives and so many parts of our choice and so many parts of the things that matter to us. They happen to, which by the way – Unelected judges are going to overturn or uphold or simply refuse to comment on a federal court usurping the right of the California voters to vote whatever nonsense they want to vote. That seems at this point almost abstruse. They take money from your paycheck and force you to save it. You can say that you're ceding it. But when something is taken from you

by force, it's not exactly a willing concession. You are simply picking perhaps the battles that you will fight. When the EPA comes to you, to your business and hands you a bill for something because you have done this wrong or you haven't done this right enough, you have a choice. You can pay the fine or you can go to jail and they will come and take you and your business and put you in jail if you don't pay the fine. what do you do exactly like everybody else and when you then look at the whole large apparatus of the epa and realize that instead of having a government that deliberates these things and comes up with the regulations by consensus about the kind of cleanliness of the world that we want you have an organization that simply sets them as it wishes

and a president with a flick of his rich wrist commands these things to be done. But they didn't do that yet. They didn't start doing that last night. They didn't start doing that yesterday. Barack Obama did not invent the bureaucracy. That came out because we decided as a people. I did not decide to let them do that. What happened was a society decided that these things would be tolerated because of a great, wonderful, soft, gauzy feel that everybody had about an Indian

who cried by the side of the dirty stream. Who wasn't even an Indian. He wasn't even an Indian. There is no way you can stand up in this culture and say, excuse me, the overreach of environmental regulation is killing industries and jobs and people, et cetera. People will look at you and say, do you not know that little kids get asthma because of a particular level?

Why do you hate children? Why do you hate your – That's exactly right. So when you have everything – the entire culture devoted to this – to carbon negation and Gaia worship, you are starting from way back in the blocks, OK? So I didn't see this. I haven't exactly sat around and said wait i didn't either but we have to say over 40 and 50 years this country has drifted willingly slowly to the nanny state we like it when our superheroes and black negligees solve things for us when daddy does it it's much easier we don't

have to think about it it hurts our head we have become a very weak nation filled with people in the majority who would prefer to like to know the government is going to take care of us in a whole bunch of different ways. James, I put to you – It's part of us. Well, then. James, I put to you two presidential candidates. Rob Long for president and his slogan is it's too late. No, my slogan is do it yourself. It's already over. it's too late. No, my slogan is do it yourself. It's already over.

It's too late. Versus Rand Paul, who says, let's fight back. Have you had enough of this? Let's fight back. I mean, to me, as I'm listening to the two of you talk, I'm thinking to myself, wow, the interview that I did with Rand Paul three weeks ago. First of all, he's clearly running for president. And second of all, all of the frustration that we feel, that millions of Americans feel, whether they're a majority or not is a very good question. But we'll find out that all of this frustration, all of this anger, all of this distrust is going to help as far as I can tell one candidate disproportionately and that candidate is Rand Paul. We had this conversation I think.

Maybe Ted Cruz. But the point is the Republican Party, if you look in the Senate, the Senate has shifted. The sort of soft center actually we'll have on Senator John Hoeven in just a few minutes. We can ask him about this. But the soft center of the Republican Party in the Senate is no longer a soft center. You've got Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, half a dozen others who've had it and want to fight back. Well, I'm not as sanguine about you about whether Republican senators are going to fight back. That's not I don't think this is the dawning of a new era.

What I do think is interesting is that the outcome of the various surveillance scandals, I should say, strictly speaking, you know, this sort of snowden business and nsa and all that stuff does seem to have given the libertarian uh civil liberties wing of the youth vote that kind of flirted with ron paul uh another look at ran paul and that that might be that that might be the beginning of the conversation you the salesman makes when he's trying to get you to you know to buy something that you don't want to buy for our side which is okay okay we you don't like big government doing that well what else what else and that might be the beginning who knows but it's going to be a very long process walking back what is in fact been a uh a very uh complacent

population whether i agree whether when you talk when you talk about when you talk about Rand Paul, of course, and his philosophy, you can't not think of Ayn Rand, and you can't not then think of, hmm, were there any computer games ever based on Ayn Rand's work? And why, yes, there was. There was something called Bioshock, and you think, gosh, was there ever a book written spinning

off from the computer game based on the work of Ayn Rand? And yeah, there is a novelization of Bioshock. Is there an example of somebody reading that out loud to you? I don't know. But if you are curious, you can go to audiblebot.com and find out. You go to the search box. You type in what you want. It could be at Rand Paul.

If you want to talk about the soft center of the American right, you can put in Hershey or Mars or candy or whatever you're interested. Put it in the search box. See what pops up. And you've got 30 days free to listen to it. Now, in addition to it, Audible's got that incredible whisper sync technology that syncs to your Kindle, your audio device. So wherever you leave something on one device, you open that up on another and you're right where you were before. Astonishing. But that's Audible. We thank them for sponsoring the podcast, and you can go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet today.

So, gentlemen, I believe we have a guest, and we're – You don't want my Audible pick? Oh, I desperately want your Audible pick. Oh, I will give it to you. I'm now for some reason – well, I take a French lesson every Saturday morning. I have a little French tutor come. He's a great guy. He's a hilarious character, a former complete radical communist in Paris in 1968.

So we talk a lot about de Gaulle, and he told me some great stories, some great de Gaulle assassination attempt stories, which I think there really are. You could do a movie. You could do a full-length movie. I mean they did. Well, Day of the Jackal was one of them. But the actual de Gaulle assassination attempts that he lived through were pretty amazing. And so I've been reading that. And now I got Savage War of Peace, which is the history of the Algerian wars.

Oh, yes. On audiobook. Really? Wars. Oh, yes. On audiobook. Really? Yes, it's fantastic. And you know, especially if you have the book, because there's some maps and stuff, and it gets a little confusing. There's three big cities where this all

takes place, but it's fantastic. The Savage Wars of Peace, 1954 to 1962, the fall of colonial Algeria. And of course, De Gaulle is big in that. Do you ever irritate your French friend by speaking in a Clouseauian accent and asking him if he has a license for that minky? Well, of course, I'm speaking in a Clouseauian accent, but I'm speaking in French. So it's one of those things where you – everyone in French sounds like Clouseau.

Rob, does the book make you think more or less highly of de Gaulle? More, weirdly. Just for his sheer – I don't think – as necessarily as an iconic figure of brightness. But his sheer surviving instinct, his political instincts are amazing. I mean this is all post-war stuff for me i'm not not that interested yet in his in the beginning of his life and the war but the post-war stuff is really interesting and also just the total chaos of europe people just forget it's like complete chaos 47 48 50 52 the governments were falling all the time and they were right after the street

the thing was just a barely holding together right right right and the street. The thing was just barely holding together. Right, right. And the Soviets had occupied the east. I have a friend across the street, a retired professor here at Stanford, René Girard. And René Girard is one of the 40 immortels in the Académie Française. So he's a big-time Frenchman. And René argues very seriously that French history ended when Charles de Gaulle left office.

Up until that moment, you could still believe that France would represent an option for the rest of the world, that France could still expand its power, its cultural influence. And the moment Charles de Gaulle left office, it became a lesser country.

If indeed it remained a country at all, it became subsumed to the European Union. And Charles de Gaulle ends French history from Louis whatever. Well, from the Capetians to Charles de Gaulle. Well, I'm not sure that's true. I think you'd have to say that maybe it was – Well, if you love cooking as much as you do, it's not true. But aside from that. It's a tactical error maybe or a series of decisions. but you know they pull you know they all pulled out of nato um the french partway

out of the military yeah right it's always been the french have always had a hard time uh joining you know they've been it's much easier for the french to sort of take over um joining has been very difficult for them but uh that that But that's how Europe pulled itself out of its doldrums was the construction, whether they joined it or not, the idea that we were going to have these sort of entangling, complicated trade. Oh, no. Europe pulled itself out. No, Rob. That's true. That's absolutely true.

No, no, no. Well, if you're talking about the common market. Yeah, yeah. In the 60s and 70s, they gave up – What happened was the United States protected it. The United States took the defense of Europe off the table. They didn't have to spend money on it or worry about it. But the story –

And then their economies grew. But the story of Europe for 2,000 years wasn't that it was being invaded by people from the east. It was that it was killing itself. We stopped that. We stopped that. Right. We protected it killing itself. Right. We stopped that. We stopped that. Right. We protected it from itself. And they gave up a lot of their sort of strange nationalism

that had caused them a lot of trouble. I mean this is a good story. This is a story of sort of American ingenuity and American might. I'm trying to head you off before you get to the current European position, which is that our regulations of 27 pages for how you make a sausage and in other words, this proliferation of a new super government in Brussels, that's not how Europe revived after the war. It revived economic growth and diplomacy based on national units still.

But diplomacy also based on shared economic interests, which they didn't have for a thousand years before that. But I would argue that while we – and to go back to what we were talking about before, while we make fun of the European Union and their insane bureaucrats in Brussels measuring the size of a camembert, it's not – they are becoming more like us and we are becoming more like them. We have a federal bureaucracy that does almost exactly the same thing and almost exactly the same degree of absurdity. They have looked to smoke and somebody who's making pizza, that's called the California OSHA or the national OSHA, federal OSHA. We have that already. The difference is that we still have a national culture and distinct regional cultures. exercise now seems to be to extirpate any sort of national identity whatsoever in favor of a very large, bland and smothering quilt of multiculturalism, which allows the people with the most specific and shall we say aggravated individual social … Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Multiculturalism is going to be a success. That's what we should be going for is multiculturalism.

Right now, it's becoming entirely Muslim. Peter Robinson, Jr.: Another good point. But Dugall, it's becoming entirely Muslim. Another good point. But de Gaulle, it's hard for me to suppose. I could be wrong. You may have an argument against this, Rob. But as I think out loud here, it's hard for me to suppose that Charles de Gaulle would be happy with Europe today. Yeah. All kinds of complicated reasons why but we only need to name one and that is that day by day, week by week, the decision about whether

the European Union will continue in its current form is made in Berlin. The Germans are the ones who will decide whether the European Union continues or not. The French, the Spanish, of course, the entire southern tier, Greece, Italy, Spain is on its back. And the French are pretty nearly irrelevant. Everybody needs the German money. So it has become a – Right. I mean 50 years later, the Germans have taken over and this time they didn't even want to. But it's part of – I mean it's a great example of the difference between people who are basically conservative and people who basically aren't and de Gaulle basically wasn't.

Was not? No. Conservative temperament in a – I guess in a you know just because he's french culturally i guess you can convince yourself if you're not or i think if you're not a you know an actual you know deeply held conservative you can convince yourself that there's a strategy and a plan and a mousetrap you can build that will circumvent what actually is going to happen naturally or the natural order of things or the most obvious solution. And all France really, when they moved forward to the EU, their theory was France plus Germany equals a stronger France. Right. Meaning that Germany would be kind of like they tiptoe around the French.

The French would sort of boss them around and be sort of – Exactly. Their theory was the Germans would end up working for them. Right. That if you're dealt a weak hand, who do you form the alliance with to sort of amplify your power 3, 4, 5x? And it didn't turn out – it's not turning out that way. It probably won't turn out that way. But it really is the idea that like just too clever by half and that's almost – I mean that's where you can get – almost every liberal or progressive or crackpot idea that comes down the pike from smart people is too clever by half. I agree. The other – the bit about de Gaulle on which I feel unambiguous. I mean during the Second World War, Churchill famously said that of all the crosses he bore, the heaviest was the cross of Lorraine, putting up with Charles de Gaulle. But during the Cold War, as my friend Rene has insisted to me in

argument after argument, at the end of the Second World War, and for some years thereafter, maybe a decade or a decade and a half thereafter, there were really only two choices for France, only two, communism or de Gaulle. And de Gaulle would not brook Soviet domination, even Soviet influence. He was a patriot. Now, he was an extremely difficult ally, but he was part of the Western project, not part of the communist project. And boy, did that matter a lot.

As you noted, Rob, what people tend to forget is how chaotic even the bits of Europe that had always been on the right side were after the Second World War. Strong communist parties in Italy and France, economic disarray everywhere. There's a great story which may or may not be true. It's one of these great old spy stories where we came super close to having a communist Italy. We became super close to not having a guest at all, but we are lucky that that's how it's going to turn out. Excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator John Hoeven,

born in Bismarck, grew up there perhaps, so I'll have to ask him about that. Listen to KFYR as a young man. He earned a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1979 and a master's in business administration from Northwestern University in 1981. Now, on January 5th, 2011, he was sworn in as North Dakota's 22nd U.S. senator, following 10 years of service as the state's governor. And as a native North Dakotan, pleased to welcome to the podcast Senator John Hoeven. Senator Hoeven, James Lilac's here. I'm

a native North Dakotan. It's a pleasure to speak with you today. James, how are you? I'm just fine. Now, I live in Minnesota. Now, before we get to the heavy lifting stuff here, I've got to ask you, North Dakota has billboards all over Minneapolis here telling us to visit North Dakota for the summer vacation. It's a great idea, but the billboards say, arrive a guest and leave a legend. I have to ask you, sir, what does it take to become a legend in North Dakota? It's already so full of so many. Well, the theme for the tourist department is legendary, North Dakota legendary. And that goes back to Teddy Roosevelt and Dick Custer and the whole Western experience.

So I think they're playing on that. But I think you've got to come. It would be a great time. You'd love it. Peter, go ahead. Sure. Senator Peter Robinson here. How are you, Peter?

John, I'm fine. I was explaining while we were waiting for you to pick up the line, I'm the only person on this podcast who has performed with you on stage in leotards. Now, stop that. Stop that. We explained that we were in some music. We were in the chorus. No, stop that. Hey, so, Senator, two questions on immigration. Here's one, and this is – in many ways, this is the underlying question. As best I can tell, it's what you worked on to address particularly. Reagan signs a bill in 86 which grants amnesty to those who were in the country illegally then but also imposes new, much stricter – a new, much stricter enforcement regime. And from 1986 to the present, the federal

government under presidents of both parties catastrophically fails to enforce the law at the border. And so there are a lot of people, and you're talking to one of them, who say, I have nothing against immigrants, but I want the rule of law enforced at the border, and I don't trust the feds to do it because it's been more than two decades and they haven't. How do you address that argument, Senator? That's exactly what I'm working to address. If you look at the amendment that I put forward with Bob Corker, Senator from Tennessee, that's exactly what we try to do. We try to provide tough border enforcement, and we try to set that in place up front so that there is not green cards or permanent lawful resident status provided before the border is in fact secured. And we do that with five triggers. The first is a $4.5 billion high-tech plan that puts everything from radars

and sensors and drones, helicopters, planes, personnel, powers, everything on the entire southern border all the way from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego. And so we know, so that we have control, we see and video and record anyone trying to come across. And so we know, so that we have control, we see and video and record anyone trying to come across. And so we have actual metrics and know who's trying to come in here illegal with all this high-tech equipment. That must be in place, must be deployed and operational. Complete the 700 miles of fence that was called for earlier, 20,000 more border patrol agents in addition to the 20,000 that are there, so we double it. You know, Senator Cornett talked about 5,000 more.

Senator Cruz has talked about 40,000 more. Well, with the 20,000 we'd add, that'd be 40,000 on the border. Mandatory national e-verify system, so you take away the incentive to come across illegally because you wouldn't be able to get a job if, in fact, you do get across. And then having an electronic entry-exit at all international airports and seaports. All those things have to be in place, and 10 years have to elapse before anyone would get a green card. So illegals in the country would come forward. They would have to do a background check.

They would have to pay fines. They'd have to pay back taxes. And then they would have a provisional status. But nobody gets green card status, let alone citizenship. And, of course, they'd have to go through naturalization after green card. But for 10 years and all five of those triggers have to be in place. So, Peter, that is exactly what our amendment, you know, does, is it makes sure that we get the border security before there's any green cards.

So, Senator Peter here again. I know Rob Long wants to jump in here, but I've got you for one more question. And so you enforce the border. You wait some period of time to prove to the American people that we have gotten control of the border. There are all kinds of stringent measures. People have to agree that this is measures. People have to agree that this

is working. They have to see that this is working. And even at that point, it simply starts a clock ticking that will tick for 10 years before the folks that were here without documents now can apply for citizenship. That's a correct summary, right? Yes, Peter, that's exactly right. Some people say, oh, well, we won't know. Of course we'll know. Four and a half billion dollars worth of high tech equipment on the border

from border to border, you know, from Brownsville to San Diego, 100% of the border, and that, it's just like if somebody gets picked up for DUI now, the whole thing's on video. You see the whole rest, you see everything. Right. If we can find terrorists in Pakistan. Right. Okay. So here's the next question, Senator.

For 10 years before anybody could get to a green card. I interviewed Jeb Bush about a month and a half ago, and Jeb said what I hear again and again from folks on the Republican side. Jeb Bush said, and I think this is an exact quotation. If it's not, I've only got one or two words out of place. The Republican Party needs to put immigration behind it. And his argument was that we, Hispanics, should be a natural constituency for the Republican Party. They're conservative. They value family. They're forming small businesses, but they won't even listen to our side if they think we're anti-immigrant. Okay, fine. That strikes me as plausible. But when you say we're going to have a 10-year-long process, what I think is that's 10 years during which the Democrats will say over and over and over again, we need to shorten the process. Everybody already understands that it's already worked. The Democrats for 10 years will make the Republicans look as though they're reluctant. They're anti-immigrant.

The Democrats will say, let's provide these people with benefits right now. Why wait 10 years? For 10 years, they'll bash Republicans and bind Hispanics even more tightly to the Democratic Party. Isn't that what's likely to happen? Well, yeah, obviously that could happen, Peter. But remember, you're putting all those resources on the border, including electronics. So you're going to have metrics. You're absolutely going to know whether you've secured that border or not.

That's why I use the analogy to somebody getting picked up now by the police and everything's on video. You get to see it. You know exactly what happened at that arrest, and that's what you're going to have on the border. And so people are going to know whether it's secure or not, and that's going to be a big factor. Also, we require the Department of Homeland Security to enforce visa overstays in our bill, in our amendment.

Right now, 40% of the problem is visa overstays in our bill, in our amendment. Right now, 40% of the problem is visa overstays. And we put right in there that they must prosecute those visa overstays, which they're not doing now, and report to Congress on it like every six months. Point being this. I understand that what you're saying is, yeah, people will be pushing for different things, but at least you'll have the resources on the border to enforce it and demonstrate whether you're getting results or not. And compare that to what we have today, a porous border and

de facto amnesty. And, you know, we've got it. We've got to solve this problem. Furthermore, I would make this point. This is not the end of the process. This is the start of the process. Now we've got to work with the House. If we can make it better, let's do it. But we can't just keep ignoring the problem. Yeah. Hey, Senator, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles. How are you? Thanks for joining us. Good, Rob. Can I keep an eye on Robinson? Keep an eye? Yeah, not really. He runs a pretty rough shot up and down the Golden State. Here's what I hear from a lot of conservatives. Say, Rob, he tells me he's kind of a big deal over there at the Hoover Institute.

Yeah, he kind of swans around. You should see him kind of strutting around. He rides a bicycle, but everybody gets out of the way. He's sort of like the Chinese emperor. He only acts like he's one of the people. The scarf is knotted tightly around the neck. Put it this way. Well, so I was going to say, one of the things that the bedrock problems with almost anything you seen as utterly incompetent or a totally malevolent IRS, EPA, and those kinds of things.

They just don't think this – they think this is naive, and they no longer have faith in government, and they no longer have – We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stay tuned. Look out! Quick, get it back up! Hurry! Hurry! Well, I hope that there was some musical interlude there, a little hold music, or perhaps Blue Yeti used that scratching needle effect that for some reason still in this digital age means that there was some sort of error or something happened because we just lost everything,

including the senator, which is a pity because Rob was asking some tough questions, and I had something along the same line. Guys, if you go around the web and take a look at the criticisms of the bill, you're not talking about people who say, they're letting infernars, wrong color of skin. That's not, you know, what you're finding is a rational approach to another enormous wad of legislation saying, A, the previous laws

you didn't follow, and B, this thing is riddled with all kinds of escape clauses that are guaranteed to be employed by somebody who doesn't want to, A, build a fence, or B, spend a lot of money on drones. I mean, there's this long, long list of all the things they're going to do from the towers and the infrared cameras and the drones and the walkie-talkies and the patrols. And then there's a little clause that says, but, you know, if they don't want to do it, they don't have to do it.

At the discretion of the secretary of something, yeah, exactly. Right, and we've got 700 miles of fence, 300 on the other hand, if the secretary says that it doesn't need to be happening because there's some alternate technology, then it doesn't have to be done. Nobody believes that we're going to get a fence out of this. And you would have so many people on board saying, let's path to legalization, pay your taxes, whatever, if we just had the bleepity blanking bargain fence. I'd even be willing to take it a little bit farther.

John was saying, look, we know we can do this. We have the technology to do it. Do we ever know that we can do it. Probably you don't have as much need to do this in Minneapolis as Rob and I do in California, but you can Google to find out what the traffic is on the 405 between LA and San Diego or here on the 101 between San Francisco and California. We could put drones in the air and put online for every American to see the entire 3,000 mile border. The entire question is, is the federal government serious? And that, in my judgment, needs to be proved. I am still convinced that the person who has the most elegant, persuasive solution to this problem is our friend, no conservative, Mickey Kaus. Yeah. And Mickey's formula is first control the border, pass the legislation, include in the legislation the amnesty international every legal challenge to the controls of the border have been overcome then we'll consider right amnesty and that just strikes me as every

american would say fine i can live with that it does feel tone deaf doesn't it it just feels tone deaf i mean even if even if i and i think it's a problem with all of the all people who i really do admire in the conservative party, especially Jeb Bush. I mean he's – you cannot challenge his credentials as an effective conservative leader. You really cannot. You can't. It's like – it's crazy. If Jeb Bush is not conservative enough for you, you're going to have trouble winning a national election or even a statewide like

that. He's a very conservative guy. But he still is arguing the result and most Americans – I don't know most Americans but certainly most of the people on our side instinctively, as we said before, just don't believe that result is going to happen. And so instead of continuing to hammer on the result that's not going to happen, persuade me that you've taken into consideration my objections and concerns and speak to me as if my objections and concerns matter and convince me that you've heard me and that you understand that – and you're not going to caricature me some kind of crackpot and then present legislation to me and that what always surprises me is enforcement first and then as james said and afterwards all the cupcakes and goodies it could be candy cane land but our side really just

wants enforcement first and it didn't seem that hard and every time they come up with something that's too clever by half again uh it sounds to us like you're lying to us and you're trying to cheat us. Well, our side looks at the people who supposedly are putting across the aisle and to come up with something bipartisan as though the guys across the other aisle aren't snickering into their sleeves because once again, they've completely managed to make our side sell out generally's foundational principles. I mean the very idea that something like this would have broad bipartisan support makes me nervous because the essential thing that we want, which is border security, is antithetical to the end result of their project, which is giving away all that nonsense to you. To your point exactly, to your point exactly, James. I said a moment ago I didn't read any newspapers. Well, I did actually look over the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. And the opinion maker interview, the Saturday interview within the journal this past Saturday was with Lindsey Graham, major figure, Republican from South Carolina, close ally of John McCain. And Lindsey Graham was talking about doing business with Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York. And Lindsey Graham said, as if Chuck Schumer had filled the shoes of Ted Kennedy.

No one did more damage to the Republican Party and the Republic itself during his career in the Senate than Ted Kennedy. Those are wet shoes. Those are really wet shoes. The notion, Ted Kennedy, of course. The lion of the Senate. Don't get me started. The lion of the Senate, meaning, and I couldn't agree more. There is this, it's almost pathological that Republicans feel they have to find some way to do business with these people. Well, all right, on we go. So, because Ted Cruz, who is in the position of needing Hispanic votes when he runs for re-election six years from now or indeed if he runs for president two years from now, Ted Cruz just will not have this legislation.

So there is an argument. Anyway. Well, Cruz has been valiant about that. got up and made a long, long peroration that was quite convincing if anybody cared to listen about exactly how the bill, in its very curious form, because once you jam all this stuff together, you get these unexpected catalytic reactions. And it turns out that somebody who's got a hamburger stand or a hamburger chain, which is the example he uses, profits from hiring people who just came here illegally as opposed to American citizens, that it's actually in their best interest, their rational economic self-interest to fire

everybody they got who was born here and hire people who weren't because of the Obamacare thing, which is remarkable. But on the other hand, I don't see this necessarily bothering anybody on the left, first of all, because they don't believe it would happen. People never really act in their own rational economic self-interest, do they? No. And secondly, well, what is really the distinction between somebody who was born here and somebody who came here? There really shouldn't be a distinction in the mind. Because as the president tweeted, I think on Columbus Day or one of those days back in the early part of the year,

unless you're a Native American, you came here from someplace else, which I found a profoundly insulting concept to be told of me by POTUS, frankly. Well, I don't mind that. I do mind that, damn it. And unless you're from Shepard's, you'd be sprang out of the ground like maize. They came here across the Bering Strait or up from

Mesoamerica. Do I have to have been here 500 years? The point is to sort of argue with your original statement, which is that it shouldn't matter what kind of citizen you are, whether you were born here or not born here, or you immigrated. As long as you do it legally and within the proper channels, that seems to be perfectly legitimate. You're just as much a citizen as anyone else. I agree with that. And that's it. But it's keeping the notion

of citizenship separate and prized as opposed to just diluting it and saying that it's a meaningless intellectual construct. It isn't. It is necessary for the definition of a nation and how that nation sees itself

and has the ability to define who is and is not a citizen. They seem like meaningless philosophical concepts, but they're not. No, no, no, which is one of the reasons we have a big argument about it because – a big national argument about it because if you're not a citizen, you're not a citizen. You're something else, and we have to know what that something else is. You can't just be – well, I'm just kind of here sneaking around. You can't have that. You have to have status. You have to have status.

There has to be a system here in place and a system that's enforced, which is – to me and I think to a lot of people who think about immigration sort of on our side, it just doesn't seem that complicated. It really doesn't seem like this is – why is this so hard for us to understand unless you've got some other plans and you're not sharing them with us? I'm not sure that's true. The plans are 11 million voters of course for the democrats. OK.

So let me push back on three points. I'm pushing back on the argument on which all three of us agree. Item one, the Mexican economy, news about Mexico tends to be dominated by drug wars which are violent and horrors. All of that. We grant all that. It turns out however that the underlying Mexican economy is modernizing and growing at a pretty good pace.

The birth rate has dropped very sharply over the recent couple of decades. And so the pressure from Mexico to get into this country is shrinking. Point two, the American economy apparently seems to be growing more slowly and maybe is going to grow more slowly permanently. Put those two together and what you get is what we've seen over the last couple of years where some demographers think that immigration actually has been on balance negative. More Mexicans have been leaving to return to Mexico than have been coming into the country. Third and final point is one that Jeb Bush made, which is don't fixate on this number of 10 or 11 illegal immigrants.

Some very large number of those folks don't even want citizenship. They're here to make money. They're going to go home. And of course, it's true. We know, for example, that in the late 19th to the mid of the 20th century, about half of Italians who came to this country went right back to Italy. They wanted to make money and go home. So, boys, you're worrying too much about border control.

That problem is already solving itself. Robert? Well – Or James, whoever. Well, I'll take them off one by one. Rob, do you mind? Go ahead. One, yeah, the Mexican economy is getting better and good for them.

I hope they improve and I hope that more than at least 50 percent of that improvement isn't due entirely to Carlos Slim. But that doesn't mean that you don't have a problem with people from below Mexico, from countries that have a more depressed down, there are benefits and boons to coming here, a slightly more lawful society, safer perhaps, communities into which you can blend. So there's still a social advantage to coming to America. And third, as far as Jeb Bush is talking about, that's true. There are people who come here. They want to make money. Then they want to go home. what I would like to see in place, and tell me if this sounds completely irrational, is that if somebody is stopped for a DUI, say their second, and they've hurt somebody before, is it possible that the police will be allowed to look at their, oh, dare I say it, their papers?

That sounds so communist. That sounds so Nazi. And perhaps refer them for deportation if indeed they are here illegally driving around drunk and killing people, which has been known to happen. In other words, the fact that somebody just came here to make money doesn't necessarily mean that we have to shrug our shoulders and say, fine, whatever. We don't care. We've got in this bill now provisions and counsels on this that maybe – it was the number of DUIs actually that was a sticking point in some early negotiations. Is that true? Yeah, because apparently there's a cultural thing that kept some advocates for the bill from saying,

you know, we got a lot of good, decent people here who are not going to be able to get citizenship because they got a DUI. So we're being told on one hand by Matt that it's the absolute worst possible thing that you can do. Then we're told on the other hand by the government that it's a little, eh, you get one, you get two. It's not going to make a big deal.

You can still stick around. Yeah. So those would be my points. There's immigration from other countries. There's a social advantage to coming to America that's not going to disappear. And three, if there are people here who are just hanging around to make money, is it OK to deport them if they are criminals? Rob? Yeah.

It always seems like a false choice to me. I mean – and part of it is the communication. One of our members wanted us to talk about Senator Rubio's speech on the Senate floor where he sort of addressed conservatives' concerns about this. And I like Marco Rubio, and I think he did a pretty good job doing it. I don't know whether he assuaged any fears, but it was – and it's also entirely too late. You can't – just politically, it's a political problem. You can't be sort of writing these things and adding thousands of pages and not reading it and passing it I mean it is true that illegal immigration has plummeted in this country. A lot of that is – maybe most of that is economic. Maybe part of that is the growing Mexican economy, which is a good thing for everyone. What we want is we want a nice, rich neighbor. I would much rather have a rich neighbor than a poor neighbor. That's good, right?

And immigration is good i'm all for it i love it it's fantastic more the better as but there's no real reason why all of these things cancel each other out strict we we have we have driving laws we have a lot of laws that that celebrate freedom that also have harsh punishments for breaking them and this it's the it's the gray area the murkyky zone where we come into trouble. And that's where – traditionally put it this way. Traditionally, you would expect somebody living in this country without documentation, living illegally, 50 years ago, that person would be in danger of being treated more harshly and with fewer rights.

Now, 50 years after the Great Society and all sorts of liberal nonsense, that person has an exalted status. They're almost a protected class. Now, I don't think that we should go back to the time when they were in a truck and being whatever horrible life it was to be a migrant, illegal immigrant. But at the same time, it doesn't seem too much to ask that there be border control and a process for you if you want to come and be a guest worker. And we have a citizenship process in this country that works for people who don't happen to have come from a contiguous landmass but happen to get stepped off of an airplane or a boat. That seems to be a perfectly fine system. Let's use that system for everyone else. Instead, we've created a protected class. Our senators in – our side senators in Washington seem to be unable to frame that argument in

a way that I think focus groups well for their presidential ambitions. And the other side just sees 30 million new votes. One more question for both of you. It's a quotation. Marco Rubio, June 13th, that is about a couple of weeks ago, at something called the Faith and Freedom Conference, quote, the essence of our immigration policy is compassion, close quote. Does that strike you as the right essence, James?

No. No. By the way, I love the way you just said no. That was perfect. And it's not because I don't want to be compassionate. It's not because I don't see compassion as a virtue. It is. However, I prefer to ground everything in coldly rational calculations of law that themselves are not subject to interpretation by people whose passions may differ.

When you have emotions undergirding these things, then you end up with nonsense like we get where bills simply by being stamped DREAM as their acronym are sufficient to encourage a lot of people to go along with them because it sounds nice. And when newspapers then multiply the effect by referring to people who got executive ordered into school by the president as DREAMers, calling them DREAMers in a headline without quotations, because we all know that that's what it is, right? Somebody who came here, the aspiration, the hopes for the future, they're dreaming.

How can you not be compassionate towards them? You have to be compassionate to everybody who faces themselves in a difficult situation in this country because they came here illegally or because their parents did. You must, as a human being, look at the human cost of this and calculate that into what you finally believe. But when you craft a law, when you craft a bill, compassion is not the thing that you have to put first and foremost as the definitional quality, because compassion is going to be interpreted by judges and lawyers and people and everywhere in a million different directions. And

it's a kaleidoscopic interpretation that nobody will ever be able to grasp because there is nothing there to grasp. Law based on reason. Thank you. And you and rhetoric please undergirded by the same okay yeah no i know i agree with you so i see no one else's uh uh i uh yeah i it's true the the problem is that that it doesn't these things don't fit together because the truth the truth is there's nothing really compassionate about an immigration policy. It actually is by definition exclusive. We can't take everybody. Everybody has got to wait in line.

The line is hot and long. Other people are going to get pushed in front of you. They're going to have some weird thing. I mean no matter how much we try to rationalize the immigration process for everybody, it's still going to be slightly irrational. You're still going to – well, this company, we wanted more engineers and whatever it is. It's never going to be entirely fair. It's not about compassion. It's just simply about border security, which is something that seems perfectly legitimate and also the limited resources of a country and the culture that we have and that we kind of want to keep. So the word compassion, you're right, is kind of – it's an umbrella term to describe everything I want to do to undermine this rule in the next 10 years. And it also isn't – no one is buying it. I think that's the problem that the conservatives are having right now. No one is buying it.

We are passing an immigration bill, an immigration reform at a time when that is not a big controversy, when illegal immigration really has tapered off. And this is a perfect time to do something that doesn't require a crisis, emergency, we must get this bill done atmosphere. It's a perfect time to tackle the problem that is not right now a pressing problem. You can really do it. You can do a good job of it. But compassion has nothing to do with it. Beaut not right now a pressing problem. You can really do it. You can do a good job of it, but compassion has nothing to do with it. Beautifully stated, in my humble opinion.

Hey, boys, I think even after the drone strike on the Los Angeles grid that caused us to lose John Hoven, I think we've talked pretty, we've given them their money's worth this week. I think so.

Oh, yeah. We've soldiered on without you, Peter, but we're glad that you're back. The last thing perhaps that we should do – Actually, no, it was kind of fun. It wasn't a joke. We had to be Troy and I. Yeah, you're right. All right.

I'm off on vacation again. I will be taking a vacation myself in July. I'm going out to Massachusetts to interview an aged lady who was a radio star in her day, and that's going to be lots of fun. But her program was listened to by millions and millions and millions of people, which is not a number that you could stick on Mad Men.

Yet, it's the most reviewed and lauded show, again, of the year. Rob, I'm wondering, you're a television guy. How do people in television exactly look at something like this and say, okay, right, it's a great show, but're a television guy. How do people in television exactly look at something like this and say, okay, right, it's a great show, but nobody's watching it. How about this one over here, which people actually do? What did you think of the Mad Men season?

Well, I hated the whole season this season. I was very against it. I thought it was ridiculous nonsense. I thought it was terrible. And then the last episode, I thought, okay, they're back. Do more of that, but you wasted my time. The weirdest thing about Mad Men – I don't know if anybody else notices this, but this is awards season right now. So this is when Emmy Awards are coming up.

So you see all these ads in newspapers here in the variety. For your consideration. For your consideration because we're all going to vote for Emmy nominations and they kind of want to put it in front of your mind madman has so few viewers and those viewers are all so connected to the tv industry it runs for your consideration ads during the broadcast yes it's it's so bizarre watching and i thought are they just doing this just for la but no it's it's actually cost effective for them to do it on the show because not that many people are watching. Good lord.

I'm on the opposite side. I enjoyed the season. My expectations are low. What I enjoy more than anything, however, about this is that thisams and reams of possibilities for plots and meaning and all that. All they have to do is stick a copy of Dante's Inferno in Don Draper's hand in the very first scene of the very first episode in which we see Don. And the next thing you know, everybody is going to be usingante's work as a template for every possible action that comes next are we in greed now sloth or envy and none of it happened none of the conspiracies that they thought of were going to happen just things went on as life does and it cracks me up that people spin what

they spin out of this series as if there's something there when there actually might not be. I just – I like – I'm more into the zombies. I want a zombie attack. You want Walking Dead, huh? I want a zombie attack. We're going to be back to – well, there's going to be no Walking Dead and Mad Men crossover unfortunately. But I wonder if you could – if you were a zombie and you ate Don Draper's liver, whether or not you would actually get drunk.

That is something we'll have to wait for the next podcast when Lord knows who we're going to have and technical difficulties will not probably – it was that, right, Blue Yeti? Even when we have them, we won't have them. We didn't have an EMP strike on DC or something like that. Well, listen, folks, glad to have you back, Peter. Good to talk to you, Rob. Welcome back, Peter. Thanks for listening, everybody. If you made it this far, thanks also, of course, to audible.com.

Go there and claim your free 30-day trial and your free audiobook and listen to one of Rob's suggestions or Peter's suggestion from next week. I believe Peter is on book number 142 of the Master and Commander series. I'm James Lylex from Minneapolis. Thanks for listening and we'll see you all in the comments.

Take care. We'll be right back. You know that they'll never let me through. Cause it's no fun being an illegal alien. No, it's no fun being an illegal alien. Stand at the office at the fill of the phones. A pink one, a red one, the colors you choose. Up to the counter, you see what they think they said. I don't trust anybody at least not around here cause it's a no fun being an illegal alien

I tell you it's a no fun being an illegal alien. I tell you, it's no fun. We are an illegal alien. No, no, no, no. It's no fun. We are an illegal alien. I mean it when I tell you that it's no fun. We are an illegal alien. An illegal alien. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Thank you. For your fellow man Would not hurt anybody

But you're fixing with my plan But it doesn't change the fact that we're happy with our agency. Are you? You're happy with 50%. You're on top and you don't have enough. You're happy because you're successful, for now. But what is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness. I won't settle for 50% of anything. I want 100%. successful for now. But what is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness.

I won't settle for 50% of anything. I want 100%. You're happy with your agency. You're not happy with anything. You don't want most of it. You want all of it. And I won't stop until you get all of it.