The Ricochet Podcast - Get Me My Glasses

Episode Date: July 11, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file This week on the world famous Ricochet Podcast, City Journal editor Brian Anderson on the state of California and his new book The Beholden State: California’s Lost Promise and How to Recapture It) , immigration, the Zimmerman trial, the worst President ever, and, Rob is aging, and live on the air, Lileks gets some coffee! Now, this is podcasting Music from this week’s... Source

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Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie. James, why don't you take it from the top? Let's just take it from the top. All right, taking it from the top. All right, coming down.

Let's see, what did I say again? Okay, coming down in three, two, because I have no script here, you know. One. Activate program. This bill, 24 pounds, 1,000 pages of a rushed job of a bill that literally was rushed through. Pelosi, Pelosi, Pelosi, Pelosi. This is nonsense.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Arthur Laffer, Troy Sinek, Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, and Andrew Klavan. Well, not really, but they're all in a book that was assembled and edited by City Journal editor Brian Anderson, and Brian is here to talk about it. And, of course, Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Well, whether you're making hash marks on the wall of your cell or engraving Roman numerals into the side of tree bark,

this is Ricochet Podcast number 175, and it's a special one because it's brought to you by audible.com. And you know who they are because we've been telling you for weeks, but in case you don't, of course you know they're the leading provider of spoken audiobooks.

And of course you know that you can listen to audiobooks wherever and whenever you want thanks to this whisper-sync technology we'll tell you more about. And of course you know that you can go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet,

audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, and get your free audio book and 30-day trial. So why am I bothering to tell you? Well, I will tell you about it again a little later. But first we have to ask the burning question of the day of Peter Robinson and Rob Long, and that is immigration, IRS, HHS, fast and furious, so many things. What do you guys think the mainstream media will try its best to ignore next? Peter? I can tell you the story they're ignoring right now and that I bet they'll continue to ignore all of next week.

And that is on immigration, the Senate bill is dead. The media is still playing it as if it were a big question because I think it's the only story they have right now. Will Boehner, will Cantor, will Paul Ryan, will the House leadership somehow revive the Senate immigration bill, that over 1,000-page document that the Senate sent over to the House? Well, it's the only story they have because it's the only one that they like because it involves gouty old white men trying to keep helpless brown people. Precisely. Precisely. And in fact, that thing was passed with only 14 out of 45 Republican votes in the Senate. It was dead the moment it went to the House. I have to say it took me a couple of days to work that out because the press just wasn't reporting it.

The House Republicans have stopped it. It's over. It's over. It's done. The question now is whether there will be this piece of immigration reform or that piece of immigration reform. But the House Republicans already decided that they will only enact individual, rational, smaller measures, not some sweeping, catastrophic, I say catastrophic, sweeping reform like the one the Senate sent over, and the press knew that a week ago. Well, Rob, the American people are crying out for comprehensive immigration reform as the type put forward by the Senate. Isn't this a dangerous thing to do politically for the GOP?

Yeah, it's terrible. It's always number one on every list of voter issues. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. It's never number one. It list of voter uh voter issues oh wait oh wait it's never number one it's not like it's even number five um i i i think it's gonna be what issue the press ignores it's gonna be uh what issue what the big story the press to cover we're gonna pause right there and let and let us call back rob on a phone that is underwater and auto-tuned.

And I can barely hear you. So while we get him connected, we'll continue to talk because he makes a great point there, Peter. Do you detect, for example, that there are just certain things that don't pop up in the mainstream media's radar because they just simply aren't interested in this crazy stuff or they're just not aware of it in the first place the story that's been going around that i find fascinating is that doj actually was spending some money on some rallies connected to the zimmerman case right doj was spending money on rallies connected to the zimmerman case i just i just said that there's no need to repeat i said it quite concisely. I think people understood. But go on. If you heard the case too, then explain.

I'm vaping for time. I repeat things, James, when I'm thinking. Out here in California, we know, for example, that as Obamacare is being implemented, there was a story out here in California that a piece of what the state government intends to use federal funds for is an informational campaign, which of course means effectively rousing voters on behalf of the Republican Party, using Obamacare money to identify and corral and bring people into the system, which in effect means marrying them to the Democratic Party. The notion that the federal government is now actively using taxpayer funds in what are effectively political campaigns is not one that the press is going to be reporting. Well, the notion that the president is using campaign funds effectively to bind the people – I'm trying to repeat what you said too. It's not an easy sound.

No, but it – You think – you not only talk faster. You think faster sounds. No, but it goes – You think fast. You not only talk faster. You think faster than I do, James. I doubt that very much. Just bear with me. It goes to what we've seen in the last year or two or five, which is the utter and complete political implications of – everything gets politicized. Everything.

The IRS becomes politicized. HHS becomes politicized, HHS becomes politicized, teachers, librarians, every aspect that – everything that bumps up against the millipede of the federal leviathan all of a sudden becomes turned into an apparatus designed to expand the statist glories of these people on every one of us. As if no possible area in your life can be without the influence, the baleful wind of the government. And that's the – so when you see stuff like, for example, the DOJ, an FOIA request was made to find out whether or not these guys are popping some money to pay for rallies connected to the Zimmerman case. And it turns out, well, they were. Now, they'll say that they weren't actually designed to call for justice for Trayvon,

but what they were doing, they're trying to, what was the term they used, facilitate some sort of dialogue about the proper role for community watch directors, et cetera, et cetera, and that they're trying to get around the problem of violence by getting their arms around it so the big beast can't twitch. Do you buy that for a second? Do I buy that for a second?

I mean, no, of course not. The press will take Eric Holder's explanations at face value even when anyone can see that, again, on the very face of their nonsense. Here's a story that is in the front pages, but there's no follow-on story. There's no story that the New York Times, as the New York Times so often does, puts up. It's their opinion, but it's labeled as news analysis. A huge law, we think a terrible law, a really bad law, but it's enacted. It's enacted legally, constitutionally. It passes the House.

It passes the Senate. The president signs it. It's enacted legally, constitutionally. It passes the House. It passes the Senate. The president signs it. We call it Obamacare, the patient care and affordable, whatever it is, Obamacare. And then the president of the United States says all by himself, oh, you know, I don't quite like the way this legislation is playing out. I'm going to delay the employer mandate. And there is no news analysis on the front page of the New York Times in which a reporter calls constitutional lawyers and says, by the way, is this constitutional? And at a minimum, as we know, because our own John Yoo put up a magnificent post, I think it was the day before yesterday on Ricochet saying this,

no, it's not constitutional. The question of the constitutionality, whether the president of the United States just engaged in a lawless action, is a huge and important question, and the press isn't even addressing it. I believe that Rob is back with us. Yes. Oh, excellent. I was just nodding. I thought I was nodding audibly, but I guess you can't do that. Peter, to me, those are the two most interesting twists in the summer political night for our side and for their side. The first side is the almost Hugo Chavez-ization of Obama, right? Yes. This is the Obamacare.

Beautifully put. He gets to choose. He gets to pick. It's entirely his thing. He gets to pick when it's enacted, how it's enacted. It really quite literally is Obamacare, right? It's like an Obama phone.

He gets to choose what he's going to do with it and when he's going to give it out. And then the second thing is the Zimmerman trial, which I dread. I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that this he's going to do with it and when he's going to give it out. And then the second thing is the Zimmerman trial, which I dread. I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that this thing is going to go horribly, horribly south for Miami, almost no matter what happens, and that there's going to be this kind of sick, complicit behavior on the part of the partisan media, which is to say that the entire media, to turn it into one of their creepy, teachable moments to sort of misdirect our attention from the disastrous failure of this terrible president and start talking about the big issues that I talk about. Let's have a national conversation about something big rather than a smaller conversation about this terrible president.

Right. Or a smaller conversation about whether the prosecution should even have brought this case against Zimmerman. Let's have a large – the nation needs to have a conversation about race. We can almost write the script, can't we, right now? Well, the conversation inevitably ends up being one-sided. It's a lecture. And the other side of the conversation consists of nodding as much as possible as the lessons are imparted to you. Listen, you want to talk about the previous bad example of this we had with the OJ case and the riots there and what that did to L.A. It makes you wonder exactly whether or not there's some virus of California that has spread all the way to the other side of Florida or whether or not it's just in the national. There is a slight difference.

The slight difference there is that even the policemen, I mean, our own Jack Dunphy, if you talk to him, and I'll try to get him to post on this in Ricochet, you know, there was a sense, even in the LAPD, that that was excessive force. And there was a sense among the LAPD that even before, during the beginning of the riots, that that was a choice made by a very angry and vindictive chief of police not to respond to the early, to let the riots escalate, right? This seems to be to be, we are pre-writing the dialogue that exonerates the behavior. You know, the articles talking about how it's okay are like currently being drafted to describe and to exonerate the riots that occur when a guy who was mischaracterized

racially for convenience to the liberal media, for an event or an assault that was mischaracterized for convenience by the liberal media, and for a trial it never should have happened, but happened anyway, for the convenience of the liberal media narrative. Wow, James, you got me to use the term narrative. I can't believe it. All of this is just happening because they want to write that because there's a convenient story they want to write that has now been written. Right. Well, it's necessary.

It has to. Just for that. Just so that they can play at. Right. It has to happen because that will show everybody that nothing in this country has changed at all, ever, particularly since Rodney King. The 25 however many years that have elapsed to that, nothing has changed,

and in fact everything has gotten worse despite everything the Democrats have done and because of everything the Republicans do. And they have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed today. But I can't help but think that if Barack Obama wasn't such a lousy president, that lick-spittle press wouldn't feel the need to do this. Good point, actually. In a weird, twisted, perverted way that I know makes me sound like a right-wing kook,

it's almost like this is Barack Obama's fault. If he wasn't so lousy, they wouldn't feel the need to like search around for the what was in fact a tiny little confusing incident as all these kinds of incidents are all over the country they happen all the time every thirty minutes something like this happen somebody

does something and we're not there and there's no picture and there's always some kind of confusing back story actually see that you not there and there's no picture and there's always some kind of confusing backstory. And actually these two guys knew each other and there was history. We'll never know what happened here. We'll never really know, right? And when you turn the national spotlight, media spotlight on this thing, everyone walks away thinking, well, I'll tell you what happened. We have no idea, right?

When this is all done, we're going to find the court documents that shows actually that the two of them were married. Listen, when I was talking before about California, it was a brute force attempt to make a segue to the fact that California is the subject of our – Can I interrupt you? Sorry. Oh, boy. Yeah, twice. Absolutely. And I was just about – So I don't – it's the audio. That's difficult. I was about to bring in Manhattan as well because our guest has a connection there. And for that matter, you can talk about any city and there's a connection because Brian Anderson is the editor of City Journal, one of the greatest magazines ever, period.

It is indeed. Cultural and political quarter. You can get it on your iPad as well. And I just love it. It's so smart. And everything that they write about are things that I'm interested in. And it's pitched at my intellectual level. So naturally it flatters me. I just love it. It's so smart. And everything that they write about are things that I'm interested in. And it's pitched at my intellectual level, so naturally it flatters me. I just love this magazine.

Anyway, he was a senior editor of City Journal before, research associate at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's the editor of The Beholden State, California's Lost Promise and How to Recapture It, a collection of essays about California and what it means for the country in the future. We welcome to the podcast Brian Anderson. Hello there. Thanks for waiting. Thank you very much for having me on.

My pleasure. You've got Rob Long listening and Peter Robinson as well. Let's set the stage on this book. It's got chapters by a lot of writers people may have heard about, may not have heard about. Give us the general summation of what you were trying to do in putting this book together. Well, the book was really an attempt to... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football.

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Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Document this incredible negative public policy story where you have a state that a generation ago everybody was praising as dynamic, as the driver of the 21st century American economy. One of our writers, Joel Kocken, wrote a book at the time called California Inc. The American Future was California. And you take that state, which has these incredible natural advantages, booming economy, and in a generation, turn it into, if not a failed state, then a state that is certainly struggling mightily in recent years,

where you have out-m you know out migration of people in businesses uh... you have school for once among the best in the country that are now second to worst uh... you have uh... you know june i think the fourth or fifth highest unemployment rate now in the country in california which is just crazy when you think of of the advantages that the state has

and into the public policy story so over the last several years at City Journal, we set out to describe in detail what happened and make some prescriptions for how to fix the situation. And this book collects all of that and updates the story. Brian, Peter Robinson here. I haven't read the book, but I bet I've read if this is adapted articles from City Journal, I bet I've read most of the articles. In any event, I haven't read the book yet. It sounds magnificent. Let me ask an obvious question because this is a matter that's in the air as we speak, immigration. When Ronald Reagan was governor of this state in 1970, the census showed that the population of California was 90 percent white.

That's slightly tricky because it didn't break down the population the same way it does today. But still, it was settled largely from the interior of the country. So Ronald Reagan was governor of a state that was in some ways Iowa on the Pacific. Since then, the demographics have changed dramatically. Many Asian immigrants, many, many, many immigrants from the Latin world, Latin America, most from Mexico, and the white population, according to the last census, is now down to 50% or a little lower than 50%. Now, what role did that play in California's difficulties? Well, I think it played a significant role in putting pressure on the schools. That is one of the places where, you know, some of the decline in schools has to be

attributed to the shifting demographics. You have a lot of kids coming from families that are not educated, coming from south of the border. They don't necessarily have the right attitudes and values to succeed in school. And then you've had a lot of family breakdown among the Hispanics in California, as Heather MacDonald chronicles in her book and that's you know that put pressure on the welfare system and and the schools as well and uh... the crime problem in the state so you know there's there's no question that that's been an issue but you you look at a state like texas which is doing very well right now economically and they've had a similar demographic shift and things seem to be going a lot better there

so i think what you've seen in california is is a lot of challenges posed by the demographic transformation of the state, but the policy environment has made things a hundred times worse. I apologize, Brian, because I'm asking leading questions here. Let me just make the point myself so you can agree with it or disagree with it or adjust it any way you'd like. As best I can tell, after reading City Journal and pondering things and living in California for 20 years, the notion that uncontrolled immigration is responsible for California's troubles, which you hear a lot out here in California, is just mistaken.

If the state's politics had worked, immigration would have been much, much, I'm not saying that I disagree with all the points you made, but it doesn't strike me as the central problem. Is that fair? That's fair. And that, that would be our position at the magazine. Certainly. You know, we, we have people with different attitudes and different positions on the issue. But I think certainly the spirit of the book is that the primary problem is a public policy problem, but that the, you know, the massive demographic transformation has put a lot of challenges on the system that it wasn't ready to handle.

So here is the central problem, as Robinson sees it. And again, I'm putting this very crudely so that you can adjust it and react to it and disagree with it. California has been run for too long by the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party in California has been run for too long by the public employees unions. Fair? Yeah, well, that's absolutely fair when we describe the beholden state

in the title and in steve malanga so sort of opening chapter uh... you know it's it's exactly that phenomenon were describing this uh... this capture of the state's politics and political economy broadly uh... by by special interests of municipal unions unions, and three big ones in particular, the teachers' unions, the public safety workers, which is a problem California has that really doesn't exist in New York, where we have similar union issues, and the service employees

international union, which I think now has something like 350,000 government workers it represents. These are all huge, huge powers now in the state, and they basically have been able to elect their own bosses by controlling the political process. Hey, Brian, it's Rob Long also. Hey, Rob. In California. Are you in California? Not presently, although we're going to be out there next week doing several events surrounding the book. Okay, so, I mean, I know Troy's here and Drew Clay, but a lot of the authors are really... Yeah, I would say most of the authors in the book are actually California residents.

So we have a lot of of the authors in the book are actually California residents. So we have a lot of writers who live in the state. Yeah, and Ricochet members, too. So we interact with a lot of them. When we get together, all we do is complain. But that's what we do. That's what we do in California. Those of us on our side, we get together and we complain.

What are the prescriptions in the book? I mean, I don't want to give it away, give the secrets away, but is there a roadmap to the future there? Oh, yeah, sure. And again, California has advantages that most other states could only dream of. There are abundant recommendations in the book on how to fix things, but I think there's probably four big ones. One, which is recommended by troy senate uh... in detail is is to create a commission that would subject all new government regulations in the state to cost-benefit analysis so that any regulation that you know failed to

more generate more social benefits than um you know the not uh... should require some kind of legislative supermajority to enact or or should not be enacted at all you know the the not should require some kind of legislative supermajority to enact or should not be enacted at all. You know, the state is just a regulatory morass, which is a bigger problem for businesses in the state than the taxes, they say. And California comes in dead last year after year after year in surveys of business owners as a place to invest. That's just not a prescription for the future.

So that's one recommendation. Another is, you know, just this is the huge crisis on the horizon. It's actually happening now in the municipalities in the state. It's the pension and health care benefits of government workers. You just have to renegotiate those going forward so that retirement ages go up and you have higher contribution levels to health care premiums in particular. And, you know, ultimately our position is that government worker retirements need to be paid for in defined contribution plans rather than defined benefit ones.

You know, that would make them a lot more like private sector pensions. Right. And then no more tax increases, and then develop the damn natural resources. Right. You know, California is sitting on billions of barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale. It could be the Saudi Arabia, you know, economically of America. And while the state still is an energy producer uh... it's not anywhere near what it could

where did you go to california description of it like uh... elective scott walker rights yeah yeah it's you know in this point for the problem in a way the the solutions are very straightforward you know victor davis hanson latham not very nicely at the end of the book. The problem is the political logjam in a state where you do have this mix of special interests, very powerful democratic special interests, municipal unions in particular,

and on the one hand, and then sort of idiotic left-wing ideology on the other, which manifests itself in a kind of ridiculous politics sometimes, especially when it comes to environmental issues. Right. Brian, James Light looks here in Minneapolis. We have sort of the same culture that they have in California. Not the sun and the surf, but the same sort of political class. However, there's a certain amount of Scandinavian-German sensibility that keeps us from being complete and utter lunatics

as we seem to have in California, at least when we look at it from a distance. When we look at the political class of California, we don't see anybody who's willing to exploit those natural resources that you talk about because the party is beholden to a philosophy that's anti-growth that considers carbon to be the great sin of the world that that doesn't want to expand industry for heaven's sakes because that pollutes and makes polar bears cry that essentially the point of government is to carve up the pie into smaller and smaller constituent

groups all these solutions are great but don't they require people to actually want them to happen and vote for people? I do think there is at least a small number of Democrats in the state, particularly in the economically depressed areas of the Central Valley, that would be open to a pro-growth economic platform. People in those areas just can't love the idea of 22% unemployment forever. that would be open to a pro-growth economic platform uh... you know people people in those areas just can't love the idea of twenty twenty two percent unemployment forever and especially when it comes to the energy issue developing the natural resource mistake a pool a lot of those people to work in decent paying jobs and sometimes very very uh... high-paying jobs so you know, I think that a movement of sensible Democrats could start countering,

you know, over time this foolish anti-growth agenda. And, you know, my hope is that the Republican Party eventually develops some kind of presence in the state again, but it's, you know, it's certainly at its weakest right now, perhaps, in modern history. Can I ask you another question? I mean, we're here, Peter and I are Californians. I've lived in the state for, oh, I mean, 25 years. Wow. Peter's lived here for almost that long.

20, 20. I actually lived, I grew up here for a few years before I came back. So I know why we're talking about California, because I live here. Why should anyone else in the country give a damn? Why should James Lilacs wake up in the morning and think, oh gosh, I hope California gets its act together. Why don't people in North Dakota and Minnesota and Texas and New York and Virginia and South Carolina and Nevada just say, you know what, go to hell?

Well, you know, there is a bit of that attitude for sure. Why are you wrong? California has, you know, they're losing people to other states and losing businesses to other states. So there is a kind of flight from California going on. Yeah, I guess the philosophical question is why should anybody in the rest of the country care? And it's because California is a huge asset to the country potentially. You know, it's a place, again, with the most abundant natural resources of perhaps any place in the world

in terms of its agriculture, in terms of its oil and natural gas. These things could be redound to everybody's benefit. Plus, it's California. It's a major state. It's the biggest state in the country. You just don't want to see it go down the tubes. But, you know, you're right in terms of the attitude many people will have. They'll say, go to hell. Now, they probably shouldn't say that because the federal government's going to wind up continuing to bail out California.

So in a way, everybody in the country will be on the hook for the fiscal irresponsibility of the state. That's already happened. Before we let you go, I'm going to get to run. How has that already happened? Could you just give me two examples for the way, if I'm in one of those other states, before I say, go to hell, all you fruits and nuts and flakes. Well, it's going to happen when the federal government bails out municipalities. Now, that hasn't been a big problem yet, but they've been doing it through backdoor means in the state.

And, you know, a lot of the stimulus money the federal government spent was spent in California. And, you know, you can be sure that if the state continues to run into financial problems, you know, if it's a Democrat in the White House, they're not going to let the state go, get into too big a problem. Well, we know you have to go,

and we thank you for being with us. Yes, I do. And the book, of course, is The Beholden State, California's Lost us. And the book, the book of course is the beholden state California's lost promise. And it ends with Victor Davis Hanson with the chapter saying, California, here we stay. So it's not all gloom and doom.

There are things to be taken from this that we can all bear as we watch California and hope that its problems don't happen to our own state. I speak of course of mine, Peter, Rob, you're right, Peter. I don't care.

You're on your own. Thanks a lot, Brian. Thanks a lot. And thanks for, Brian. Thanks a lot. And thanks for seeing me, Gerald. It's gorgeous. By the way, it is physically gorgeous. It's a beautifully designed product, let alone that the content is

always splendid. Thanks, Brian. Thanks a lot, guys. Bye. And I didn't want to take from his time, but Rob, I can't At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing.

Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie. Answer your question as to why I would care about California.

It's why, for example, I care about New York, even though I don't want to live there. It's why I care about any part of the country that is essentially one of the definitional elements of this nation. There's so much about America that is contained in the notion of California that A, I want it to thrive, and B, I also want it to fail as it's doing now because the failure of its institutions would be an illustrative lesson to the rest of us or at least or so I hope.

It's like you could almost say that Californiaia today to choose a metaphor would be like that set in day of the locust where everybody gets up staged dressed as napoleonic soldiers and they have this great battle in this horrible scene in nathaniel west's book where the scaffolding underneath starts to fall and the entire rotten edifice of the movie industry, and by connotation, California society itself, starts to fall. All these costumed actors playing at mayhem, actually getting hurt. It's one of the great moments of a really disturbing book.

And Nathaniel Rest only wrote really a couple of them. And you can get them both at audible.com. So go there and sign up right now at audible.com where you can get your 30-day free trial and then you can get an audio book and listen to it however long it takes you. Use the WhisperSync technology in order to hear it on all your various devices, which is pretty cool. We thank them for supporting this podcast and you can show them that you love them by going to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. And the fact that nobody's interrupted me makes me really worried that nothing I'm

saying is being heard. I almost did. Because I still am confused by whisper sync. Since when is syncing so loud? Is syncing loud? I don't get it. You're right. No, syncing is not loud.

What is loud are the lamentations of people who expect their technology to – I was thinking about this last night. I was downtown. I was getting a whole bunch of photos of this, that, and the other. And I came home, and I turned on my phone, and I opened up my laptop, and I'm sitting here waiting for these photographs to sync via iCloud to my laptop, right? There's no quartz plugged in. That's like torture.

There are no – It's all that first world problem? There's no quartz plugged in. That's like torture. There are no quartz plugged in. It's all going through the ether. Five years ago, the fact that I could take pictures like this, let alone movies with my phone, was just miraculous. And now I'm sitting here drumming my fingers, glowering at this technology because it's not happening instantaneously. So yeah, it's pretty wonderful. Hey, there was somebody down at my door ringing my bell.

I'm going to let you guys talk amongst yourselves while I go see if it's... If I could mention briefly that years ago, I'm so old now, and Peter, you have seen this firsthand that I now when I look to read anything, I need to wear a pair of reading glasses. I have

to wear the two and a quarter times reading glasses that you buy. It's not only that, it's not only that you need to wear the glasses, Rob, and since I have to do this myself, I was very heartened to see that you too have fallen into this practice. It's that you've bought half a dozen and leave them different places because you know you can never remember where you set them down. Carry on. One of my colleagues at work told me you go to Costco and you buy them in blister packs of three. And they're light and you just – and they're like – it was like 18 bucks for three or 18 bucks for four. It wasn't that bad. And they come in all different strengths.

And so I'm two and a quarter or one and a quarter. I'm the lowest you can get. One and a quarter, I think you said. One and a quarter, yeah, the lowest you can get right now. And I also did go to the eye doctor, and she told me that the actual eye doctor, I don't go to the optician because they're just trying to sell you glasses. So I went to an actual doctor, and she said, you're not going to ever need glasses. Your eyes are fine.

At my age, she could tell you that. But she said, you're going to need, you're going to be moving up the ladder of these glasses for the rest of your life to get used to it. Of reading glasses. Of reading glasses for the rest of your life to get used to it. So I now have to wear those things. And this is a little milestone in my life, but the second milestone in my life was that we were shooting a show on Tuesday. It's our second to last one.

Our last show we shoot for the season is next week. And I had my Diet Coke at my little – I usually sit next to the script supervisor's little stand, and I had a little Diet Coke there, and it was next to these tiny little boxes. And I kind of pushed the boxes to the side, and then our post-production supervisor came running up, and she said, oh, I'm so sorry, and she moved these little boxes away. And I said, what was in those boxes? And she looked at me, and she said, the show. I said, what's in the box? And she looked at me. She said, the show. I said, what? The show. And she's true.

Those are the little tiny little tapey disc things that we now see the show on. I knew, but in my whole career, you know, I started. It was these giant magazines of 12 minutes of 35-millimeter film that these huge teamsters carried around, and you'd stop every few minutes, reload, and they'd put new 35-millimeter magazines on top of these cameras, Panavision cameras. And now it's a tiny little thing. And I'm shooting a pilot for FX in New York in September, just to alert all the Rikishi members that we'll have a couple meetups in September.

And we're trying to do the national meetup, too, so we need to get into that. We've got to have a Ricochet. We've got to have a podcast about that at some point. Let's have it in the center of North America. We should. I think that's fair. Rugby North Dakota.

We should. I think we should. Or someplace that's slightly more easy to get to, but it should be someplace central. I can think of Dallas or a hub, an airport hub somewhere. Before we depart completely. So I'm talking to the director, and we're talking about cameras and all that stuff. And I'm pretending like I know.

I mean, I'm supposed to know this stuff. I'm like the executive producer, right? So I'm like, oh, yeah, well, camera, back. And he says he's going to, you know, he shoots the show for them already. He goes, I shoot it on this camera. And I mentioned the camera that sounds suspiciously like, I think he said

a Nikon. And it sounds like he said a Nikon still camera. Yeah, exactly. Probably a Canon. And I got, and I kind of asked, what? And he said, yeah, it's a still camera. I shoot it on a still Canon. And I kind of asked, what? And he said, yeah, it's a still camera.

I shoot it on a still camera. And that's what he shoots it on. Yes, that's what we do with the paper. I'm going out to shoot my show in a couple hours here, and it's always unnerving for some guests when they come in and sit down, and they're looking at a three-camera setup that consists of three still cameras. And they think, are you going to take a lot of still pictures and then put them together like a flip book exactly? No.

You put in a 32-gigabyte little card in these things, and you get extraordinary quality, and you don't need those big honking cameras anymore. Yeah. I mean, no offense, James, but this is – I mean, I know your show is great, but this is broadcast – I think he puts it on FX. This is a broadcast quality, cable quality, HD quality. Right. Yeah, it's 1080 HD. I tried to pretend that I wasn't. Oh, yeah, of course, of course.

But in fact, internally, I go, whoa, man, I am so old. That freaks me out. Well, you know, get used to it because eventually, Rob, what's going to happen is that you, the producer and or director, will actually have little retinal implants themselves, which will be capable of 1080. And they'll be streamed wirelessly to a little pack on your side. And in a couple of years, it'll actually be a physical implant in your body itself to replacing a kidney. And you will record the show simply by staring at it which will just freak everybody i've always been honest my career goal is to go home my career goal to not leave the

house right so if i could somehow do this job and not have to leave my house or put on pants um i would gladly devote a wall of my house to just some kind of screen that I could sit and watch or run through or interact with writers or just do everything I could do in my underwear from, say, 9 to 2 p.m. with a cup of coffee and then from 2 to 7. You mean the way we record the Ricochet podcast every week? Yes, and speaking of which, I don't know if we're allowed to say anything, but we have a new sponsor coming. Hold that thought. I just wanted to say that you sound very Hitchcock-y in that respect, that sitting down and storyboarding everything out

is the fun. Making the actual movie is the tiresome part of it all. I love the making of it, I just don't like the getting in the car and going to the set and the sitting and the thing. If I could. Hold on. Hold on.

Hold on. James. James. Now I have to tell one Rob long story about the way Rob's life works. I had to breeze through Los Angeles for a day and a half, 10 days ago, and I stopped on Rob to say hello. In fact, we were fortunate enough to be able to get a drink and have a bite to eat together. But I met him at his studio at his office at Warner Brothers. And it's the whole scene.

Somebody looks at your ID to clear you into the studio. And then Rob's assistant. You barely made it, by the way, at Rob's. Yeah. And then Rob's assistant comes up on a golf cart and drives you past sound stages to the office building where Rob has his office. And then this is what you discover when you are shown into Rob Long's office. On his desk, and for all I know, he may have inherited this from Cecil B. DeMille himself. On his desk, Rob has a button.

And when he presses that button, the door to his office opens. And when he presses it again, the door closes. So Mr. Long doesn't have to stand up from his desk and walk to his door. You'll never get that at home, Rob. No, no. I had to stand up in a tiresome and wearying fashion and cross over to the door. Actually, it doesn't open, Peter. It just closes, which is a much more Bond villain thing.

Come in, sit down. And then I press the button and the door shuts behind you. It freaked me out, I can tell you that. What you need is a small little bridge that goes over a pool that is frothing with piranhas, which would be more honest for the industry. Do you need it so soon, Mr. Lilacs? I'm afraid I must insist that you stay. Have you admired my fish?

You know, I'm like Rob, too. I go to the office. I drive down the highway at non-peak hours. It's seven minutes there. It's seven minutes back. It's a perfect city. I love it. But I also love in the summertime sitting outside and working and reading Ricochet to bring this back to something vaguely relevant to the podcast.

And yesterday they were taking out a huge tree next to my house. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen around here because the tree was inaccessible in a backyard, immense, on a hill. And the only way they could get to it was to bring this enormous, enormous crane that had 16 wheels, had to be braced in seven, eight spots to keep it from rolling down the street. And this huge crane goes up and they winched pieces of the tree over my house. And It was just a little masterpiece of what guys can do when they set their minds to it. Somebody said, you know, how are we going to get trees out from inaccessible locations? We've got to build a very large crane that we can rent out to people for vast sums of money. And I was watching this and thinking how much fun it is to write at home

instead of going to a soul-killing office. I got up to go get some coffee, and as I turned around, I saw a little branch spiraling down from the part that they'd cut, and it went right through the roof of my gazebo. And if I'd been sitting a few inches over, it would have actually touched my noggin. I would have been kissed by this branch, which had been up there for decades. And I thought, the hazards then, you know, every workplace has its own hazards. But at least at this one, I don't have to pay for coffee. At the office, it's a buck a cup and no thanks.

And it's brackish swill. Now, there are many times in this show, actually, where I will say at the bottom of the hour, I will type in going to get coffee BRB and you guys will chat amongst yourselves and I'll come back with some coffee and unfortunately by this point in the day getting to the end of the pot and even at the house the good coffee that I make it's a little sour and oily by the time it's 10 30 or so so this time I did not go down to get coffee I went down because I heard the doorbell ring and when I went down to the doorbell and opened it up there was a package sitting on the steps and you know what it is guys can I say say this? Because it's coffee. I went down not to get coffee, but to get the package.

And the package was coffee. And I believe that there's something we can say about this coffee that affects each and every member of Ricochet, because this is a big deal. Can I say it? Can I say it? Yes, yes. I'm hearing a yes. What I'm looking at here is a little box

called tonks tonks is the maker of a new idea in coffee and it's going to be one of our sponsors and we're going to discuss it of course in in detail elsewhere um i i can't wait to try this stuff tonks t-o-O-N-X. I'll bet if you Google that, you guys will get a head start on what we're going to be talking about with our new sponsor. And oh, the ways in which we can work this into the spots. Don't you just – can't you just wait to step on something that I've carefully crafted in advance? I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled.

I think it's great. Me too. I'm thrilled and I'm thrilled. I think it's great. Me too. I'm thrilled and envious, Mike. It's also, I mean, man, I do remember this about you and your reading your blog, James, before we even met. I was always astonished that I'd read it and you'd be working at night and then you'd say, I stopped to put on a pot of coffee and I'd think, good Lord, this guy is weird. He would put on coffee at 9 p.m. No, generally I'm off coffee by 9 p.m.

I start the post-dinner pot, yes, but I've generally moved on to something of a more soothing and adult nature by 9 p.m. That's good. But we start here on the West Coast, we start these podcasts at 8 in the morning, sometimes 7. And I do get my morning coffee at 7, and it will be welcome to have a special kind of ricochet brew. Well, that's the extraordinary thing is you actually will be performing under the influence of a sponsor. I can't wait uh oh

James did James go off did James go he's fallen Lord we've had trouble listen okay so let's just continue because I know James even if we find him again there you are

accidentally hit the mute button I was just going to say that there are a couple of things we do have to address. But Peter, you were spooling up something, so go. No, no. So I'm delighted that you've received your talks, and I'm slightly miffed that I haven't yet received mine, because I'm very much looking forward to it. I haven't received mine either. But I would like to raise one final sort of housekeeping point, which is that Ricochet members continue to post requests for features that they would like to see in Ricochet 2.0, which is underway.

Money is being spent on a first class design shop in Los Angeles, which is working on Ricochet 2.0. And Das Motorhead put up a post just the other day saying, what about a like count? What fun is it joining the conversation if we don't have the ability to see how popular we are? If you're listening to this podcast, you haven't read that post. We will link to it. There's an extremely funny joke in, I think, number three or or fourth comment. It's number two, and I'm about to read that joke.

Wouldn't that be a lovely thing? We're close to closing. Hold on, wait. James, if there's more housekeeping to do, do it, because this is the way to close the show on the joke. Yes? No, actually, I was going to bring up relevant matters of politics, because I think that's what people are listening for. No, no.

We've been flapping our gums, but before you go, and it is fun because I never get to flap my gums with you guys, and it's great to do it in public here, is that this is entering the silly season, right? Isn't this the time where we get all the ridiculous stuff that doesn't matter, the wieners, the spitzers, and the rest of it, which seems rather odd, given that there are matters of great import at the moment flying around Washington, D.C., and nothing but utter irrelevant incompetence in dealing with them. We didn't even get around to Egypt, never mind Syria, which is apparently not going to get our weapons, or is, or isn't,

or Egypt might not get our money, according to Rand Paul or John. The amount of really big stories right now floating out there like massive, gaseous planets astonishes me. This ought to be just a complete delight for people in the news business. Everything. So much to choose from. And what are we getting? We're getting waiting for Trayvon, for the Zimmerman trial. And we're getting two, three guys talking about coffee.

Anyway, Peter, you were saying about the joke. Ray Khan and Linda Khan put up this joke under the request for Ricochet 2.0. By the way, on the like count, I don't quite know. I want to make sure that everybody understands. I don't quite know how the redesign

will come out. Some features like that will be there. I'm not promising exactly the kind of likes that Das Motorhead is asking for. However, Das Motorhead will be pleased. Raycon puts up the following joke. Three ladies get together for coffee. The conversation turns intimate.

One woman says, my husband works in the coal mine at the end of 12-hour shift. He's hot, filthy, frustrated, and on it goes. The second woman says, my husband is an accountant. When he comes home, he's frustrated after dealing with people who are concerned. They're paying more in taxes than he earns in a year. And she tells what happens. And then the third woman says, quote, my husband is the Blue Yeti.

When he gets home, he takes me upstairs. We sit on the bed, and he tells me how good it's going to be once Ricochet 2.0 is online. Lovely, no? Oh, that's dandy. Gentlemen, even better than that. While you were taking me to say we just just so are, you know, we say to our fellow members that we hired this fantastic company. They have done sites for other conservative websites. We checked around. They are very, very good.

They get us. They get what we're trying to do. They get what we want to build. More than they get what we want to build, they get how big we want to grow. They get that we want to give everybody on the site, every member of the tools that they want to sort of expand and network and reach out. So they're not just building 2.0,

they're sort of laying the groundwork for 3.0, which I think is important for us. Very important. James? I'm here. I'm sorry. very important james i'm here i'm sorry i was just stunned because i've opened up my box of tonks and i'm looking at the packaging here packaging is everything packaging is everything okay i will try a mediocre coffee if the packaging is good i won't try twice but uh and this isn't mediocre coffee either.

I'm just looking at the presentation of this thing here. First of all, the font selection, it's very interesting. They've used a handwritten sans serif that's very tall, but also has a narrow weight to it. And I think I know which it is. I'm trying to, I think it may actually be Penelope, but I'm not sure. Anyway, so the design of this thing is great.

Well, James is shut down for the day while he identifies the font in the design of this thing is... Well, James is shut down for the day while he identifies the font in the packaging of the coffee. But these things are absolutely crucial. And what you get when you open this up... It's not Rain Man at all, James. Don't worry about it. No one's gonna try to medicate you. Don't worry about it.

Alright. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk to FX and say, when Rob Long gets his pilot done, make sure that you do the opening credits in Hobo and Comic Sans. Because those are two fonts that are really going to connect with that prized younger demographic. Anyway, Tonks is going to – we'll be talking more about Tonks. We'll be drinking more about Tonks. And I've got the feeling that this stuff might show up served at the diner at some point in the future.

So I've got my fingers crossed. All right. I'm not going to bring back the big story of the week, but I've got to ask you both as we close looking out at the next week, what do you think? Do you think it's going to all be Zimmerman, or do you think that there will be, I don't know, something about the rest of the world intruding into the bubble of D.C.

during these hot summer days? Peter? The House GOP, I am more and more proud of the House GOP because they stopped. It's as if they have enacted a rule that any piece of legislation that's over 1,000 pages, they just will not approve. They killed the farm bill. Huge advance to do that and show the farm lobby who's who.

They are not going to go for the Senate immigration bill. And the story, which the press will ignore, is that the House GOP, Barack Obama having delayed the employer mandate, is going to propose and possibly even enact legislation that would delay the individual mandate. So both pieces of Obamacare would be delayed indefinitely. That will be a huge story. The press will ignore it. The moment the Zimmerman verdict comes down, we've got a week of nothing but Zimmerman.

Rob? I agree with Peter. I think it's seven days of Zimmerman, unfortunately. Yep. Well, there we go. And then comes August when everything, as they always say, completely stops happening, except for things like the Gulf War. August actually turns out to be a lot more interesting than people seem to remember. But we'll get there

eventually and we'll talk about it in a ricochet. We'd like to thank everybody for showing up today and we will see you down in the comments where you can fire away at what we said, what we shouldn't have said, what we did say, what you wish we'd say, and what you're tired of us saying. And we love you too. Peter, Rob, have a great weekend. We'll love you too. Peter, Rob, next week.

We'll see you all down the road. I'm feeling mighty lonesome. Haven't slept a wink. I walk the floor and watch the door. And in between I drink Black coffee Love's a hand-me-down brew I'll never know a Sunday In this weekday room

I'm talking to the shadows One o'clock to four And Lord, how slow the moans go When all I do is pour Black coffee When all I do is pour black coffee Since the blues caught my eye I'm hanging out on my day My Sunday dreams to try Now a man is born To go a-lovin'

A woman's born To weep and fret To stay home And tend her oven and drawn her past regrets in coffee and cigarettes. Ricochet. Join the conversation. and low as the ground It's driving me crazy you