The Ricochet Podcast - It Smells Better Here

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

Some weeks, we have to hunt hard for topics. Other weeks, well, they rain down like a monsoon. The latter describes this week and to provide an umbrella we’ve got the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s White House correspondent Debra J. Saunders on the political topics (and a bit on San Francisco) and The Skeptical Environmentalist himself, Bjørn Lomborg, who at this moment, is the world’s second most... Source

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston Telephone Directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food. That's a good thing. First of all, I think he missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with me, Peter Robinson, and my co-host, Rob Long. James Lilacs is off this week.

Our guests, journalist Deb Saunders in Washington, D.C., and Bjorn Lomborg to think about climate change. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. This is number 466, which now the numbers are kind of meaningless. They're just up there in the three digits, the high three, mid-high three digits, I would call it. I am Rob Long, co-founder of Ricochet.com, and I am joined, as always, by Peter Robinson in Palo Alto. My fellow founder, Peter, how are you? I'm fine. Impeach, Rob. Impeach him. Oh, is that – sorry. That's why we need that comma.

Well, I guess we're going to get into that. We are missing James Lilacs this week. He's off this week. We're hoping that he'll call in and give us the post of the week. That is his responsibility here. Ours is to sort of blather around. And, you know, there are some weeks, Peter, where we get together and we're like, well, you know, the dog days, and suddenly it all happens. So we are joined today by two great guests, Bjorn Lomborg, who of course wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist, and he will be here to talk about a certain young lady from Scandinavia. And Deb Saunders is going to try to sort out what's going on in Washington for us, because we always get the straight scoop from Deb. But in the meantime,

all right, Peter, I know your routine. You actually read the newspaper thoroughly all the way through. Well, I'll let that stand. I'll skim the newspaper pretty thoroughly. I'm a little, I am confused. And I doim the newspaper pretty thoroughly. I'm a little I am confused. And I do read the newspaper, but but sometimes I just go right to the food session. I am I I feel I mean, I understand the I understand. Well, OK, impeachment. We are going there.

There are two things to think about here. One is the just the sheer politics and political theater of it. That's one area of consideration. And the other area of consideration is whether it is on balance, taking the large view of American history, whether it is justified. And then the third view for me is more whether or not this just proves once again that as a culture, we as Americans have a hard time keeping things straight and unconnected. So let's start with the politics. Yes.

The politics. Go ahead. They seem misplaced to me. This seems like bad politics for the Democrats. I agree that they're misplaced. I have a feeling our thinking will be a little bit different, even if our conclusion is the same. So say on. How do you reason it? It seems to me that the thing to do is like, it's like any trial lawyer will tell you, you never ask a question of a witness on the stand when you don't know the answer.

Correct. You never go on a fact-finding mission or announce the fact-finding mission until you really do have all the facts. There was no need to open an impeachment inquiry now. The need was to find enough facts and enough evidence so that when you launch it, you're already past the 50-yard line. That would have been smart politics. The problem is that if you feel like if you dig deep, you don't find anything or you don't find enough or it's another Mueller report 2.0, then you're in trouble

because you've basically emptied, you've fizzled, your ammunition's wet. Right. So I suspect. And I don't and I don't know. I mean, none of us knows really what they'll find. The danger to me is that they find nothing or they find something that's so weird and kind of obscure and hard to figure out that it allows Trump to to skate, which he's going to. Anyway, that's my theory. Well, when you say the politics of it, as far as I can tell at the moment, there is nothing but politics to it. To move an impeachment inquiry, as I understand it, picture a couple of hundred House Democrats, at least three-fifths and maybe closer to four-fifths of whom would have been baying at her that unless they move

forward on impeachment, they're going to get a primary challenge from someone on the left. They've got to do this. Meanwhile, before going into the caucus meeting, she would also have taken, oh, say 10 or 20 or 30 telephone calls from major Democratic contributors. The money people and the activists loathe Donald Trump. That's where all the energy in the party is. Nancy Pelosi, of course, understands that it's that remaining one-fifth or so of her delegation, I beg your pardon, of her caucus, who come from districts that are more moderate. 20 or so Democrats come from districts that Donald Trump carried, and they are the margin between control of the House and going back into the minority. So what did she do? She's tried,

up until now, she's tried to have it both ways rhetorically. This man, of course, is impeachable. He's a catastrophic president, and Nagel should go forward with his hearings, but she has refused to do anything formal to endorse impeachment proceedings. Now she's taken this strange game a step further, but still all we have is a press conference from the Speaker of the House saying that she's now in favor of some sort of impeachment inquiry. She still has not put a vote to the floor of the House to begin the proceedings in a formal way. So, we do not even now have the beginnings of formal impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. We have had a press conference. That's it. It's high tension politics, but so far it's just politics. As for what Trump did in the phone conversation, I'll sketch out my own view

really quickly. You can read that conversation and a lot of it is ambiguous, meaning there's no obvious or direct listen buster. I'm holding up X billion dollars in aid to Ukraine or a hundred million. And unless I hear that you found dirt on Hunter Biden, you ain't get, there's nothing even approaching that. It's even possible that, that, that the, that the government of the Ukraine had no idea aid had been withheld. That's possible. And when Trump asks for a favor, he's not asking for an investigation into Hunter Biden or Joe Biden. He's asking the president of the Ukraine to go back to 2016. He's not asking for interference or help with the coming election. He's going to go back to 2016. Trump is still trying to figure out what part Ukraine may have played in this whole Russian collusion story. That's perfectly legitimate. Crudely done, maybe, but perfectly legitimate. It's the president of Ukraine who

first mentions Rudy Giuliani. And that's how we get into this question concerning Biden. It's the president of Ukraine who raises the topic. So there's nothing. It's all these scandals have some kind of, oh, they always have weird details, right? I mean, you always expect everything to be worked out, but it's always these strange details of a phone call that 97 people are on and that sometimes they don't even understand each other. And it's some strange country, Ukraine. It's all, it's always these, I mean, the theater of it seems to be of a piece. But part of what I've noticed is the problem is that the Democrats and Republicans aren't fighting about anything, really.

Anything of substance? Well, I mean, remember like Reagan and Bush, they fought about stuff. And the Democrats would go out and say, Ronald Reagan is trying to destroy Social Security. Or the Republicans would go out and say, the Democrats want to give everything over to the Russians. Or somebody would say, even under George W. Bush, he wants to privatize Social Security. Those were policy issues that got dirty and ugly. But you sort of understood what the battle was. Here, it seems to be entirely who gets to stamp executive actions.

And the Democrats' problem is that since they don't have an agenda, a lot of it is because they're in the middle of a primary fight, but if they had an agenda, they'd be able to talk about specific issues. But they can't. They don't. Republicans can't either. They can't. They can't. So, on the substance of this thing, it's just Donald Trump yakking. It's crude. It's maybe ill-judged. I think it is ill-judged. But there's nothing in there that strikes me as even remotely impeachable. What is serious

is that a fairly detailed transcript or rather paraphrase of the conversation seems to have been passed all around the intelligence community because the whistleblower complaint is nine pages long. It's clearly been lawyered. It's essentially a piece of hearsay. The whistleblower's complaint says, listen, I wasn't there, but I hear this. And a well-placed official told me this, and somebody else told me that. And the thing is drafted in a quite lawyerly way. So he's been talking to people all through the intelligence community. He's had this thing lawyered up, very likely, or at least had someone who's very familiar with the IG process, go through it. It is yet again, and this is a private conversation

between the President of the United States and another Chief of State. Well, it's not private. We now, what do you mean it's not private? Well, it's not private. I mean, he's President of the United States, acting as President of the United States. It's not private. So you mean that the President of the United States is not permitted to, this is, that's the precedent they're setting now, but I'm a little surprised to hear it escaping from your lips. No President of the United States is entitled to private conversations

with foreign leaders. No, I would just say that it's not, first of all, it wasn't private specifically because there are a lot of people on the call. It could be classified. It may be top secret. Oh, I see what you mean. No, no, it's not personal it's not personal yeah i mean it's it's not personal it can be it can be designated anything he wants to designate it but it can't be eventually it's going to be in the in the donald trump presidential library wherever that might be and the ordinary yeah in the ordinary course of events the reagan stuff is still being declassified. It would be classified for some good number of years to come. And the intelligence community.

But it's owned. I mean, essentially, it's owned by the people. That's the National Archives Act, right? I mean, it's owned. The people of the United States own this. Yes, yes, yes. But the intelligence community, of course, but there are all kinds of legal protocols that protect these things and keep them classified for years to come. And the intelligence community has enough discipline to know exactly who has access to this information, exactly who was present for the telephone call.

And it goes so far and no farther. This thing has been all over Washington. To me, again, this whole every time Donald Trump gets attacked, every time the Democrats start raising a question of impeachment, I look at the role being played by professionals in the intelligence community. I have to say I find that much more alarming. We are now establishing a precedent where within a matter of weeks after a conversation between a president and another foreign leader, the opposing party in Congress gets to say, oh, we want the transcript. We'd like everybody to see that. That's bad for the country. Donald Trump will be gone in either a year or five. What's happening now is bad for the country because it's bad for his successors. It's bad for all of us. That's what concerns me more. I find that almost persuasive.

Which is as far as I've ever gotten with you, Rob, in all these years. I'm just not ready to be persuaded one way or the other. I suspect that it's all true. I definitely agree with the politics of it. The politics seems silly to me. And we're going to be getting Deb Saunders in here to talk about that. The rightness, wrongness of it seems complicated, but mostly I guess my concern is that we are now talking about five different things as if they're all the same thing. And it seems

to me that what we now have, we've devolved into, I was flipping around the news channels the other day just to sort of catch up on what everybody's screaming about. And one of the things you always hear from people on the news, it really doesn't matter who it is, it doesn't matter whether it's Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, is they decry the partisanship. The partisanship that's tearing America apart. As if partisanship exists the president of the Ukraine. And it seems what they're setting up is the idea that all of the things cannot be true. That 2016 cannot have been, or I should say the Mueller investigation could not have had its origin in a piece of opposition research purchased overseas.

Right. And abetted research purchased overseas. Right. And abetted by overseas agents. Right. If that is true, then Trump is innocent. Correct. If that is not true, then Trump is guilty. But we already know that it is true, right? Yeah, but all these things, of course, are completely, they're not related.

Trump could easily have pressured the president of the Ukraine. Joe Biden, the Clinton campaign could easily have relied upon foreign intelligence to attack a political adversary. And Hunter Biden could easily be a giant sleazebag. All these things can be true. They're only not true if you insist that everything is sort of a positive, negative, zero-sum, partisan game, which is what, you know, which is what, I don't necessarily hear that in America, the various parts of America I go to, but I definitely hear it on news. I definitely hear the stupidity of American culture, the cretinization of the American people and American politics doesn't happen in America.

It happens on TV amongst people who think they're smart. And that's why ultimately I find this all so depressing is because it is kind of complicated. But we have to accept that all things can be true or all things can be untrue. It's perfectly possible that Donald Trump crossed the line and needs to be punished. It's also perfectly possible, in fact, highly likely, in fact, I think we know this now for a fact, that the Clinton campaign used foreign intelligence to attack and the Obama Justice Department to attack a political rival. It's not either or. Both those things can be true. Well, it could be. It's just so far there's no evidence at all that Donald Trump crossed any line. He was the usual, he talked too much, he was unwise, he was more than imprecise in what he said,

but there's nothing in that transcript that crosses any legal line, certainly nothing that crosses any line toward high crimes and misdemeanors. But yes. Well, I guess the question here, Peter, is how many lives do you think Donald Trump has? Nine? I mean, he might have nine, in which case he's got a few left. You and I do not have nine. We only have one.

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slash ricochet. So one more time, visit ethoslife, E-T-H-O-S-L-I-F dot com slash ricochet and know that we sent you. Our thanks to Ethos Life for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. That's it. They're a new sponsor and we are very thrilled to have them here. We are joined right now by Deb Saunders. She's calling us in from Washington, where I guess everything's exploding and there's chaos in the streets. You know Deb. She joined the Review Journal's White House correspondent in December 2016. Good timing. After 24 years of writing a usually conservative opinion page column for the

San Francisco Chronicle, she's got a B.A. in Greek and Latin from UMass Boston. I did not know that, which may or may not prepare her for covering Trump. I don't think you're prepared for covering Trump by a thorough grounding in the classics. You can follow her on Twitter. I don't think anybody is prepared. Okay, well, you can follow her on Twitter at Debra J. Saunders. We'll put that on the show notes. You should follow her. She's got it all. All right, I'm going to just kick this off. Is it just madness in the White House? Is it just 24-7 Ukraine impeachment? Well, of course, the president was in New York earlier this week, and I was there covering him

when he was speaking at the United Nations General Assembly. And you could just see the specter following him wherever he went. And when he gave his press conference Wednesday night, well, that was, of course, on everyone's mind. And he didn't get back until Thursday. The White House has sort of got this hollowed-out feeling these days. When you go over there, you're not seeing as many people. Obviously, the briefings don't include the press secretary anymore. The way you talk to people is either by phone or catching Kellyanne Conway or Larry Kudlow on their way to or from an interview on Pebble Beach with one of the cable stations. And I don't think it's going to change.

You don't think it's going to change until this is over, or you don't think it's going to change until November 2020? Yeah, this will never be over. Oh, man. Oh, come on. It's too depressing. All right, well, I know Peter wants to jump in here, so I'm going to ask a frivolous question before we go. What are we calling this? Is this Ukraine-gate?

Ukraine? Do we have a name yet for this? Is this UkraineGate? Do we have a name yet for this? I have heard UkraineGate, but I think that this calls for an original name. And I think that if we can come up with something during this talk, that would be great. So, Deb, Peter here. I'm in California, and I have been traveling some, but I've been in California throughout the whole present controversy. And here is what I notice. This is subjective. I can't prove it to you, but I'm telling you what I notice on the Stanford campus and in Palo Alto at Starbucks in the senior lounge here at the Hoover Institution. Nobody cares this time.

People are shrugging it off. And I contrast that mood with what I see when I type into Drudge Report or any news outlet in the country online, and Washington has gone, well, either, I suppose, I was about to say Washington has gone mad, but that shows my prejudice that there's really nothing in this story. But Washington, it's either gone mad or it has become utterly consumed with the story of the century. I just don't get, so, are you, do you feel this disconnect between the country, which is already numb, and Washington. And then I guess the second question is, why wouldn't this one end? They released the transcript. People can read it for themselves. Charlie Cook, we know which side he's on. He's a centrist, but he's far more favorable

to Democrats than to Republicans. Charlie Cook, the dean of political analysts, went on Twitter the other day to say, I've read this thing. There's nothing in it. This will not move voters. Why isn't it over before it begins? I don't understand why Washington is so wrought up when you can just read the transcript for yourself and the rest of the country is shrugging. Well, it's because Nancy Pelosi announced that there will be informal impeachment hearings. That's why. I mean, I think that the fact, and of course, she did it before the transcript of the call was released. Right. And so we know that they're going to take this all the way. And that's why I say that this will never end. This is going to be something that Washington is consumed with for the rest of the year. Because of that, for that very reason.

And what happens, so she gave a press conference, she comes from a caucus meeting where everyone is baying at her that they've got to do something, all our supporters, all the money, everybody wants impeachment. She gives a press conference, there still hasn't been a vote on the floor. Nadler's committee was holding hearings already. What actually changes aside from the feverishness in the press? Well, I mean, I think the fact that we know that there's going to be, that this impeachment thing is not going away is the one thing that's changed. And let me tell you, I read the transcript, I read the whistleblower letter, and it's a problem what happened here. It's a problem for, it's also a problem, by the way, for Joe Biden.

Yes, yes. Because this story completely reminds everybody that Joe Biden bragged about getting this prosecutor fired. And nobody can, as a prosecutor, had been looking at the Ukraine Energy Company that had his son on the board. And nobody understands how Hunter Biden was worth $50,000 a month. Right. No one. So that's a problem. But also, you know, this is just one of those, you know, the White House knew there was a problem.

And I'm just sort of shocked that Donald Trump would say what he said on the phone, knowing that this is going to be that all these people are listening. Note takers are right. Go ahead. Exactly. Note takers are there. We know that he believes that there are people who work for the government who are out to get him.

And he just hands him this ammunition. And the other problem, of course, is he withheld aid. So he withholds aid. He's on the phone. Now, do I think that this is the first time a president has ever leaned on another country to help him in an election? No. in 2016. Trump believes that there's a connection. And also, maybe people want to know about Biden, but that's really not something he ought to be doing. So I get that people, I think there is a lot of fatigue. We went through two years of Russia and nothing happened. And there was no collusion. And folks know that. But I think this is a little bit different for that very reason. Hey, Deb, it's Rob again. So are we going to be hashing out and talking about and parsing the pages of this transcript for the next forever?

Or are there more shoes to drop? Should we be – what are we looking at ahead? What are the milestones ahead that are going to make this somehow even more compelling, if there's anything else coming down the pike? Democrats will be looking to see who were the sources for this whistleblower, who the New York Times reports is a CIA guy. And that means that they can try to subpoena people who work in the White House. Everybody always wanted to know who was the person who wrote that anonymous op-ed piece about being part of the resistance inside the administration.

We may find out who that person is. That person may be one of the people who is feeding this information. So I think you're going to see, I think you're going to see, of course, two things going on here. Democrats trying to prove that Trump was corrupt, and then the White House trying to prove that there were people who were working against the president all this time. Right. So eventually we're looking at some dramatic face-to-face hearings when they find the whistleblower, they find whoever, they subpoena whoever helped compile that transcript.

But I don't know if there are any more shocking documents, do you think, to be discovered? I mean, I guess here's my we all only have the one model for impeachment, and that was Clinton. And one of the things that happened during the Senate trial was senators went into a room and they saw a lot of evidence that was not based on perjury, whether he perjured himself, was not based on what happened with Monica Lewinsky, it was based on a pattern of behavior. And they came out of that room and they said, my God, I didn't realize

it was this bad. And that was one of the things that made, that actually gave Clinton a real, he got very close to being removed. Is there anything like that, do you think? I mean, if you were on a fishing expedition, where would you go fishing? Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani, because it just doesn't make sense that you make, I'm sorry, Rudy Giuliani just seems pretty unhinged when you watch him talk these days, right? And so in the fact that the president's private attorney, he's acting like he's a U.S. emissary. And the fact that he went and he talked to people from Ukraine and Madrid, I think these are things that people will be looking at. What other things has he done? So, you know, this is, and of course, as I said, they're going to try to find out who said what, oh, they're going to ask for the first

phone call that Trump had with Zelensky. That's another transcript. So, I mean, it's going to be one of these things that just... Deb, here's, I still push, I can see why, I guess I have a couple of questions here. I can see why the Democrats now having committed themselves to holding this theater are going to continue. Now they're trapped into it. They've got to pursue it, hold hearings and so forth. impeachment proceedings. I'm thinking back to what happened during the Nixon impeachment proceedings when in the middle of a hearing in the Senate caucus room, Alexander Butterfield said, oh, by the way, the president's been keeping tapes. Huge revelation. In this case, we start with the tapes. Here's what I said. Read it for yourselves. And he's a loud mouth. It's ill-judged. But when the president raises the subject, it's asking for, could you help us figure out what happened in the past? Not, and when Zelensky, or I can't pronounce his name, but the president of Ukraine is the one who

raises Rudy. In other words, it seems to me that people will read this, fair-minded people. I'm talking about the malleable voters. That was Charlie Cook's phrase. The people in the middle who are just trying to figure out what's going on here. And it's just Trump yakking. Go after Rudy if you want to. It's just Rudy realizing that this is the last chance for him to have any influence and present himself as an important person. It's Rudy kind of grasping and climbing.

But again, it's not illegal. It's just scuzzy behavior. So I don't think we start with the knowledge, right? I think a lot of people feel that way, that they're not shocked by what they're hearing here. Right. And that there are a lot of people who think all you want to do is get him. And that's what Trump is banking on, that most voters will be turned off by this just as voters were turned off by Republicans going after Clinton. And that easily could happen. But I'll tell you, Democrats are not going to go gently. And let me add one other person.

They're going after Bill Barr. They're going after the attorney general because Trump said, he said to Zelensky, he said, I want you to talk to Bill Barr. Now, Bill Barr's people say they never talked. Not only did they never talk, but Trump never asked him to talk to Zelensky. So this is just, you know, I'm sorry, it's sort of annoying the way this president will say things like that and then never follow through. Right. But he has to live with what he said. And what he said is on the record forever. So, last one on this, because then I want, I live here in Northern California and I read your column and I love it when you write about California.

I want to get to your column on San Francisco. But here's my last question. The Nixon proceedings moved people. They moved Republicans. There were Republicans who voted to impeach. There were Republicans in the Senate. James Buckley, Bill Buckley's older brother, was the first Republican who said, I believe the president needs to resign. And we know, certainly, it moved the American people.

Nixon's forced to resign. And in 1974, okay, who moves? Mitt Romney already loathes Donald Trump. We know that Mitt Romney's the Republican who's going to be criticizing the president throughout this. Anybody else? Does the public move? I just don't see, we're subjected to this theater, but I don't see much prospect that it'll move the nation's politics. Wrong? I guess I could. Of course I could be, who knows? Peter, we'll find out. But you know, if you watched that hearing yesterday with Adam Schiff talking the way he was, and he kept, I mean, the way he's grilling McGuire, saying, don't you agree with me on this and that, they look awful. So if people watch the hearings, I think Donald Trump comes out ahead, right? No question.

And we know that all of these other hearings have been disasters for the Democrats. They haven't gotten anything. What are they going to do, bring back John Dean again? Right? It's pathetic. So they've done a horrible job and they ease it i think it's more likely than not that they blow it and they lose the public but they're sort of committed to this path and that's the way it's going to go the thing the thing is are we going to find other

things i mean it was inappropriate for trump to say that um i'm reading this thing thinking you you should know better in fact he even tweeted do you think I'd be dumb enough to say this? Yes, we do. Yes. Yes. So, I mean, I think there's a fatigue with Republicans in Washington who are just sick of having to defend him when if he showed a little more discipline, they wouldn't have to. Right. So that's an issue.

All right. San Francisco, you wrote a piece about San Francisco. You wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle for almost a quarter of a century. Of course, you started at the age of 13 and you wrote for almost a quarter of a century. You left that paper in 2016 to go to the Las Vegas paper. They sent you to Washington and God bless them for so, because we get you for this podcast. But you wrote a piece last week on homelessness and poverty in San Francisco that just, well, out here in Northern California anyway, everybody read it. Tell us what your argument was. Well, I mean, first of all, Donald Trump is so right about San Francisco.

It's painful, right? He's right to target San Francisco and homeless. It's going to be a great campaign issue. And everybody knows that San Francisco is a pit. It stinks. It's not clean. You see needles everywhere. I've seen people publicly defecate on Market Street.

I mean, it's disgusting, right? I don't think it's gotten any better since I left. Has it, Peter? It's gotten worse. It's gotten worse. So here are the two things that have happened. San Francisco has gotten richer. The Salesforce Tower has been added to the skyline. A magnificent, glowing, beautiful building. And at street level, it has gotten even cruddier. This is what I don't understand, how San Francisco can have such leftist politics, and you see the results on the streets of homeless people, cops who are afraid to act,

needles everywhere. I took a friend who was visiting from Germany, this is six months or so ago. It was a beautiful, one of those creamy skies in San Francisco. You could look down this street, that street, out onto the bay. Spectacularly beautiful. Except that we had to keep stepping around. Human excrement. Discarded needles. It was disgusting.

How can both of these things be true? That it encourages enterprise. That the city is getting richer almost minute by minute, that the skyline is becoming more beautiful, and that it has the largest per GDP homeless population in the nation? How can they both be true? Because there's no will in San Francisco to tackle this problem. Law enforcement is handcuffed, and City Hall really won't do much of anything. And here's an example of the craziness. I went to a needle exchange program years ago, and I thought it was a smart idea, because you've got people who are users. They'd bring in their

used needles. They'd get new ones. Obviously, they weren't littering with the needles. It was healthier for everyone. And they would see a nurse if they had any sores or things to look at. It was, I thought it was just a great idea to do that. Well, they got, now, since then, by the way, it was, it became legal for anybody to buy needles, right? You don't, at the time you couldn't buy hypodermic needles. But what do they do in San Francisco? They make it so you don't have to exchange needles, and so they just give them out. And I walked into a clinic, and I walked out with a 20-needle starter kit. By the way, we should make it clear that you're doing these things as a reporter. Well, yeah, that's correct.

You don't have to answer to Peter. You don't tell him what your business is. When I lived in Venice Beach, they had a needle exchange program in the old Christmas tree lot. And then they sold the old Christmas tree lot and they put up an apartment building. And the neighbors, the progressive neighbors were complaining, where are we going to do the needle exchange then? These people are neighbors. They need their needle exchange. I have no idea where the needle exchange went. Everybody kind of looked away and let the building be built. Primarily because in that part of the city, no matter how rich you are, you're still close to the street. But in San Francisco,

those rich people don't see what Peter saw. They don't see what you saw. They're not on the street. They go from a Chevy Suburban or an Escalade into the Twitter offices and out of the Twitter offices into the Escalade and then to a farm-to-table tasting menu for $1,000. Rich people don't see the street because they're not on the street. Only middle class people and actually upper middle class people see it. And they are bound by this kind of reflexive liberalism. Is there any sense, I guess I should, this is the question, is there any sense from those people that these are the wages of progressivism? Or is it just, well, you know what, we need more of it?

I can tell you, when I was writing about this, in fact, I did a series called Stench in the City about how much the city sank. Soon to be a five-part miniseries. And I heard from so many San Franciscans who were just furious. Furious at you or furious at the union everywhere? Well, of course, there are people who thought I was horrible and called me a millionaire. That was just a day at the office. But there are a lot of people who, and people are moving. People are moving out.

People are leaving California. People are leaving San Francisco. Because why would you want to spend, I guess it would probably be now like $1.2 million on a condo, and if you try to go out your front door, you've have to demand it of everybody to say, we're not going to take this anymore. You go to New York, you don't see that. Washington, I didn't know this one. So I read this report from the White House on homelessness, and Washington has the highest per capita rate of homelessness in the country. You don't see homeless people.

Washington, D.C. does? Yes. Yes, it does. I was shocked. And so why You don't see homeless people. Washington, D.C. does? Yes, yes it does. I was shocked. So why don't you see homeless people here? There's a right to shelter law, which I can't imagine San Francisco could possibly afford. And the police do things to make sure that people do not set up huge encampments. I mean, the encampments, I've been to encampments in San Francisco where it's just a long, I mean, the encampments, I've been to encampments in San Francisco where it's just a long, I mean, you know, like, you know, 50, 60 people were living under a bridge and they found a way to hook up to electricity. They had TV sets.

They found a way to get water in. I mean, it's astonishing how ingenious people can be who the city has decided are too helpless to be told that they have to follow the rules and not live like this. Right. Right. So I've been trying to decide which beat made you feel ickier, covering the homelessness problem in San Francisco or impeachment in D.C. You don't have you're not covering glamour there.

I got to say you're. It smells better here. It's a swamp, but it smells better here. Yeah. And I am not. I mean, there are times when San Francisco would feel so lawless when you're walking in a public space during daylight hours. It would be scary. I'm not afraid.

Deb, I have to ask the question that I ask every time we speak. Are you still having fun? Yes, I am. That's great. All right. Well, listen, thank you for joining us today, Deb. And we are thrilled to hear from you all the time, but especially when things are at their craziest because you make it all kind of seem like, well, you know what? We'll get through this. Deb, thank you.

Thank you for having me. Thank you. I always love doing this. Well, the great thing about impeachment is it's red meat to our listeners, Peter. Speaking of meat. I don't believe you said that is beneath you. I mean, it's beneath even you. Nothing's beneath me.

When it comes to meat, quality matters, but there's more to it than texture and taste. I mean, talk about the hidden costs with low-quality meat. Off-flavor, cost of the environment, that sort of thing. But why is high-quality, humanely raised meat important to you? Because it's better for you. It's better for the animal, and it's better for the environment that sort of thing but why is high quality humanely raised meat important to you because it's better for you it's better for the animal and it's better for the environment and luckily you can have that with butcher box butcher box believes everyone deserves high quality humanely sourced meat never be without something to cook for dinner because there's always meat in the freezer one trip less to the grocery store and a better more affordable

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course alaska and hawaii but you knew that right now butcher box is offering new members ground beef for life that's two pounds of ground beef in every box for the life of their subscription plus twenty dollars off their first box so go to butcherbox.com slash Ricochet or enter promo code Ricochet at checkout. That's ButcherBox, B-U-T-C-H-E-R-B-O-X dot com slash Ricochet and enter promo code Ricochet at checkout. We thank Butcher Block. They've been a sponsor for a long time. And we thank them for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast. Our next guest is a frequent guest here at the Ricochet podcast, Bjorn Lomborg. He is the writer of The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I remember reading when it first came out,

and it sort of blew my mind. It was fantastic. Also prioritizing development. In 2004, he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People for his research on the smartest ways to help the world. You can follow him on Twitter at Bjorn Lomborg. We'll put that in the show notes. He is a visiting professor of the Copenhagen Business School, a director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. But, you know, honestly, there's another little Scandinavian girl who's a lot more famous than you, Bjorn. And I hope you're prepared to do battle. But before we do, I thought we should play a little clip so she can yell at you. This is all wrong.

I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you? Were you one of those people applauding?

I wasn't there. I wasn't there. I wasn't invited. But look, I think there's two things to be noted here. One is that she's actually putting words to something a lot of people now believe, that global warming is not just a big problem, but that it's potentially the end of the world. A new survey showed that 38% of all Americans believe that because of global warming, humanity will go extinct. On a global level across, I think it's 22 countries, the average is 48%. And this is just crazy. Look, global warming is a real problem. But the UN Climate Panel also tells us that by the 2070, so in 50 years, the impact will be equivalent to each person losing somewhere between 0.2%

and 2% of her income. That's a problem. Remember, by then, we will be somewhere between 300% and 500% richer. So it's simply ludicrous to say, this is the end of the world. It's a problem and we should fix it. But screaming and scaring people witless is not actually going to fix it. And that's why, um, uh,

it was Greta Thunberg, we just heard that her very clear worry tells us both that a lot of people become alarmed. And, and I understand why you get alarmed if you only read the sort of mainstream press. But actually, that's not what the science tells us. And if we keep being panicked, we're very likely to make very bad judgments. So, Bjorn, before I give the people a chance to answer a question.

Go ahead, go ahead, Bob. Sure, sure, sure. But people are dying because of the weather, right? Well, yes. Look, hurricanes and earthquakes and all kinds of other things have always been a significant killer. If you just look at the weather-related deaths, so that's floods, droughts, and storms and extreme temperatures, we actually had good data back for about 100 years. And what it turns out is that 100 years ago, on average, every year, about half a million people died from weather impacts. Today, that number has been declining down to about 20,000. So you're right, there's

still people dying, but there's actually 95% fewer people dying. This has got nothing to do with climate change. It's got everything to do with the fact that we've lifted people out of poverty. We've made societies much more resilient. That's why you don't see hundreds of thousands of people dying when a hurricane hits Bangladesh, but tens of people dying. But she's fundamentally wrong in saying that this is killing more and more people. No, it's killing fewer and fewer people, and dramatically so. I got one more question before I let Peter come in. If we play that clip again, and just as a thought experiment, we play that clip, and then right after we cut, we just keep playing it. And then she says, and that is why I'm here at the UN to demand more fracking.

More natural gas exploration around the world. Do you would that be would that be would that be logically and intellectually consistent argument? Obviously, it's very, very surprising. But yes, in the short run, that is actually one of the best things that we can do. If you look at who has caught the most CO2 in the world over the last 10 years, surprisingly, it's the U.S. I mean, you're both a big country, but also because you had the fracking revolution. You basically switched 10, 15 percentage points of your electricity generation from coal to gas. That's good because gas emits about half as much CO2 per energy unit. So you basically out-competed everyone else with all their good intentions, mostly because you just found a cheaper, smarter, easier way to generate electricity.

Now, this is not totally green. It's not 002, but it's certainly a move in the right direction. And again, I think your point is if we could get China and India and everybody else to do the same thing, that's the most realistic way in which we could imagine cutting significant amounts of CO2 over the next couple of decades. Bjorn, Peter here. I have just three questions, but I think they're pretty good questions. And so let me fire them at you. Question number one, how is the German experiment going? Angela Merkel, what was it now, three or four years ago, we're going to close all our nuclear plants and progressively get ourselves off coal, and we're going to build a lot of windmills.

How's that experiment going? Well, it's certainly been incredibly expensive and possibly costing upwards of 3% of the German GDP now. And at the same time, they have seen fairly low reductions in CO2. So remember, they still get about 80% of their energy from fossil fuels. So in some sense, it's a good experiment in saying, look, you put in an enormous amount of money and get very, very little climate benefit. They have done something, but not very much. And it shows you if you try to solve this problem by just simply saying, we've got to do everything right now. And that's, of course, what happens when you panic.

You say, we've got to do everything right now. You end up spending lots of resources doing fairly little good. And if you really care about the world, I'm surprised that you want to spend a lot of money doing very little good instead of trying to spend less money and actually do a lot more good in the long run. Right. All right. So that leads to my second question, which runs as follows.

In this country, at least, you travel constantly. So this may differ from country to country. But in this country, at least, well, Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for the presidential nomination, has said, first of all, she's going to sign an executive order if she becomes president, making fracking illegal. But she has also said, we will not have nuclear power, period. That's the way she put it. We will not have nuclear power. Now, out here in California, I'm aware of in the range of two to three dozen quiet startup companies that are being funded in nuclear energy. They're calling it modular nuclear, much, much smaller reactors, much safer.

Why isn't the world, if we are reaching this moment when we face a mass extinction event, as little greater Thunberg would have us believe, doesn't that just show a lack of real seriousness that they're not willing even to talk about nuclear energy? Or am I just mistaken about that? No, you're definitely right. So look, there's a number of things. Let me just try and unpack this. Fundamentally, you really, really worry about global warming. I'm so surprised that almost everyone would suggest, but I'm going to make it harder to actually get to the solution. I'm going to make it just with silly and ineffective solutions that we've shown over and again don't really work. If you're really concerned, you'd obviously try to get the smartest approaches. So we just talked about that with fracking. That's the only realistic

short-term way to cut emissions dramatically. Why on earth would you outlaw that? When you look at nuclear power, by any standards, it's the only scalable baseload energy source that we know of that can actually dramatically replace fossil fuel-driven energy with low or zero carbon emission energy. So saying you don't want to do that, you also mentioned the German example earlier. You know, they dropped out nuclear power plants because they were basically worried after Fukushima that, you know, that, I don't know, a flood wave could hit German nuclear reactors, which is just silly. The point, of course, is you're basically closing yourself off from solutions.

Now, the reason why I'm not actively backing nuclear is not because it's unsafe, because it's not, but it's simply because so far it's actually been pretty costly. And to your point about the fourth generation nuclear power plants, these modular generators and many others, and Gates is also investing in them, is basically saying, let's try and make them even safer and much cheaper. I would love that. And let's see if that happens. But we're not there yet. But certainly, it's one of the places we should look. And I think it speaks to the general point that if we're going to solve global warming, we're not going

to succeed with the current technologies. I mean, for a lot of reasons, one good example, we need to invest a lot more in research and development in nuclear, the fourth generation nuclear, in better battery storage for renewables, in lots and lots of other ideas across the world. Lots of smart people are coming up with ideas that could solve this problem. They are not cost-effective right now, which is why they're not taking over the world. But we could help one. We just really only need one or a few to take over the rest of the world and basically power the 21st century.

So if we want to do this well, we've got to invest a lot more in research and development. And because we're so scared, because we have this, you know, the bread and tomb birds of the world telling us this is the end and we've got to act right now, we've actually consistently failed to do so. Since the 1980s, we've seen a decline in investment in research and development of about 50 percent. And I'm suggesting, and we've suggested together with three Nobel laureates and some of the world's top climate economists, to say you should increase this about sixfold. We should get up to about $100 billion a year instead of the $15 billion we're spending right now. That is the way that you fix climate change by making technology so cheap that eventually everyone will switch to green energy.

Right. So, Bjorn, here's my last question. I'm going to contrast two Scandinavians. One is my friend Bjorn Lomborg, who says, I'll take the report, the various United Nations reports on global warming. I'll take them. I'm not a climate denier. I will accept that as the consensus view of what we're in for. But I will take it seriously. And let's not become hysterical. Let's reason our way through the correct approach. That's Scandinavian one, and that's you. Here's Scandinavian two, Greta Thunborg, however it's pronounced.

And Greta says, no, no, no, whatever we do, let's not use reason. Let's become hysterical right now. And she says, I should be in school back on the other side of the ocean. And that is obviously correct. This 16-year-old child should be in school on the other side of the ocean. And yet it is she who gets invited to address the UN and not my friend Bjorn, and she who is applauded. Doesn't that indicate to you, Bjorn, that the climate change, that it's become, it's moved from the realm of reason into the realm of, I want to say faith, but that's not almost, it's almost the same intellectual approach. It's an anti-intellectual approach. Hysteria is being valued for its own

sake. People somehow feel good permitting themselves to get all whipped up over this. And what that means is if they're not going to be thinking carefully, then all the work of Bjorn Lomborg is in vain. How do you handle that, Bjorn? People just aren't listening. They're not reasoning. Well, I think, I mean, there's obviously a couple of things to say to this. I think you're somewhat right in your analysis of this. And I think there is some, you know, there's some climate porn, the indulgence in this end of the world sense.

But I think it's also, look, bread is just a product of a lot of people who are really, really scared because we've constantly been hearing these stories. This is the end of the world. Very often, they have certain elements of truth, but they're also dramatically exaggerated. Often, they leave out the fact that we're going to adapt and we're actually going to tackle these things much better. That is why the UN tells us the total impact is going to be 0.2 to 2% of GDP by the 2070s instead of this, well, it's 100, you know, we're going to go extinct by 2070s. So we've got to listen and sort of pull ourselves a little bit back from this end of the world. I think you're right in some sense that this shows that climate has always

had this element to it that's really just about virtue signaling. Politicians will promise you things they know they can't deliver, and everybody will applaud and reelect them. And that's, of course, a cozy sort of setup for politicians. But if you actually care about climate change, you are letting it go. And we've done that for the last 30 years. We have made promises and then repeatedly broken them because those promises were unrealistic in the first place. So in reality, we're ending up in a world where we're still spending quite a lot of money. We're probably spending somewhere between $200 and $400 billion a year on basically not doing anything about climate. I would like us to spend less, but spend it much smarter and actually fix climate.

And then also, of course, remember that there are many, many other issues in the world. And yes, that is always going to be a somewhat losing proposal because it's way too rational and it's way too simple and way too obvious. And it doesn't get a lot of politicians to say, I'm going to save you, reelect me. But at the end of the day, I think we will have to confront the fact that our current policies are not working, that the Greta Thunberg, you know, the screaming is not working either. And so I think more and more people will want to come back and say, well, actually, is there a smart way? And the answer is yes, fortunately. So it's certainly not in vain. There's just a lot more powerful players out there that are essentially working on the virtue signaling and getting politicians reelected.

So, Bjorn, you remain optimistic. I mean, you wrote your environmentalist is now over 15 years old. And in that 15 years, people haven't gotten more rational about this issue, have they? They've gotten less. Well, you could also say that there's, you know, if you look across the world, in pretty much all ways, we're getting better. We actually have a situation where we have more people in the middle class. We've lifted more than a billion people out of poverty.

We live longer. We have better education. We, you know, we even in many ways, we're reforesting the world. We have certainly in the rich world, we have many, many positive indicators. And what you could say is, in some ways, global warming is that outlier that we're not tackling well. And that, I would argue, is very much because we're getting scared, witless, and we're demanding action right now. And we've been doing that for 30 years and doing it badly. But look, the world is a resilient place, and we're actually doing really

well in many indicators. So yes, I would love us to be rational on global warming as well. But I think the fact that we're rational in most places, that we're actually doing pretty well, that the world is moving forward in many ways that are incredibly good, I think is mostly a good outcome. Yes, we still need to get it right. And we still have the opportunity to really screw it up and spend money on not doing it very well. But, you know, I think what we're also seeing is those policies don't last very long. You know, France and the Yellow Vest being a good example. Right. So you are sort of the anti Greta Thunberg. She's saying it's all falling apart. You're saying it was stay tuned. It's actually doing OK. And you, if I was being told all that she's being told, I'd be scared weightless, too.

I don't think she's a symptom, if anything. But there's a lot of people out there scared. So we both need to tell people that's actually not the reality. Here is the reality. It's 0.2% to 2%. It's not the end of the world. And the second part is, look, there's a lot to be hopeful for. We're still not doing it right in climate. But maybe if you stop screaming so much and start realizing that things are actually doing pretty well, but they could go even better.

We can actually manage to find smart solutions that will work. Also, climate change out. I like that. I like that. That's a very good philosophy. Hey, Bjorn, thanks for joining us and for not yelling at us, as some environmentalists would do. That's not what I mean. You are in your own way a heroic figure. You are standing up, speaking of bad weather, you are shouting into a hurricane, and what you're shouting is, calm down, be reasonable. I'm actually just, you know, I'm whispering it.

But fortunately, a lot of people are still listening. And I think, you know, I think there's a lot of people out there who feel somewhat uncomfortable about this whole setup. Because, you know, the science is not telling us this is the end of the world. The science is not telling us that the right way to do this is to put up ineffective solar panels right now. What it is telling us is we need to do something about this problem. We need to focus on adaptation. We need to have a carbon tax. We need to have much more innovation in research and development. And then we also need to remember that most of the problems on this planet are still much bigger. If we get this right, we can actually help make this planet a lot better one. I think that's a hopeful answer, and I think a lot of people want to actually listen to what

the reality itself is. Well, we'll leave it there at the hopeful answer. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. It's always good to have some positivity. It is good to have some positivity, even if you have to stop to get rid of the guest. Oh, there's a good answer. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Well done. That's right. I don't want him to keep going because it may turn dark. We don't want you to turn dark again. I don't want to turn dark again. Speaking of turning dark, we are joined now by a

Midwestern reporter and columnist and writer who is – I believe he's been a guest on the podcast before. James – is it Lilix? It's Lilix, Mr. Lilix. Oh, Lilix. Thanks a lot. Well, Jim, I know you go by Jim. You're here to tell us the post of the week. Goodbye.

Thank you very much. Oh, we're breaking up. I can't hear you. I'm sorry. Was that, was that Jim? You were not talking to me. I am in the Aegean stables of my father's house, which for me as it is requires at least 25 heavy duty trash bags to get rid of the things that need to go before the house can be shown to be sold. And there's no internet here at all,

which means when I had to file my column this morning, I went to Hornbacher's grocery store where I sat next to the flower counter and wrote my column and submitted it as the overhead speakers played Alley Cat by Bent Fabric, the original, mind you, which of course was a song that played in my house when I was growing up. And I just sat there and whistled it out loud to bring back whatever remnant ghosts had been haunting me for the last couple of days or so. Wow, that's amazing. But in the meantime, you do have a post of the week, do you not? Yes. Cut the on-scene reporting from the heartland, kid. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Is Peter there? Peter's right here. Peter is here. Peter is here. Oh, good. All right. Why would I want to get in the way of a Bob and Ray act that the two of you are doing?

Wally Ballou here. I prefer to do a pirate bit. Good content for the millennials, fellas. They're going to love this stuff. Ali Ballou here in front of North Dakota. Yeah, they're going to get that. They should, though. That just shows what sort of literacy that they're lacking.

Perhaps it's because I'm casting about it in a nostalgic mood being here in my childhood city. But one of the posts of the week that I liked was called How Soon Was Then by Kevin Crane. And the reason that I highlight it is not because, you know, you go to Ricochet member feed, regular feed, you're going to find all sorts of stuff on Ukraine. You're going to find all sorts of stuff on politics and the rest of it. But as we all know, Ricochet is much more than just that. What is pleasurable about it and always an endless delight is the diversity, to use the word,

which you find when you go to the member feed where people talk about absolutely anything and the cultural commentary, the scientific commentary, the historical commentary, the little writing prompts

that people have make it an endlessly fascinating place that you could scroll and scroll and read and read. Well, one of the things that I liked was Kevin Creighton's post, How Soon Was Then, because it dealt with a couple of things that I like,

music and the past in particular. He starts out like this. All of a sudden, it's 1989, and I'm hanging out with Chrissy at an art and fashion event at some nameless club in Scottsdale. We don't dress right. We don't talk about our new cars and where to find the hottest new restaurant. We talk about Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe and how the release of Green proves that REM really have sold themselves out to the man. First of all, when I saw that in 1989 hanging out with Chrissy, I thought, Chrissy Hind and the Pretenders? Who

knows? It's a little bit of a mystery. When he talks about how you are not like everybody else and dressing a little bit different and talking about angular music and mopey stuff. I can understand that, too. There were two different cultures in the 80s, and those of us who had our eye on the stuff that was a little darker and more electronic and the rest of it felt apart. But what really made the post sing for me was that everybody else started talking about not just the music of the time,

but what it meant about the nihil not just the music of the time, but what it meant about the nihilism of the youth of the 80s and whether or not Alan Boone's closing the American mind had to do more with his animus towards Mick Jagger than it did towards what the kids were listening to at the time. In other words, in typical ricochet fashion, it ricocheted on in a dozen different directions, each of which was erudite and thought-provoking. So if you wanted to just talk about 1980s music, there was. If you wanted to talk about cultural literacy and Alan Bloom and the closing of the American mind, there you go in that direction. And as usual, people posted clips to great songs.

People remembered something that they'd liked. They brought back a little bit of the 80s, and it just was this little typical 20 reply swirl around something that gave you something to think about before you went on to the next post. So it's not that it's the most brilliant thing ever to be on Ricochet, though it was pretty good, but it's indicative of what Ricochet provides on an absolutely hourly basis. That's pretty good. That's better than... Yeah, I guess i should just say um listen to james and join ricochet if you're not a member you should join um if you are a member

we thank you you already know how great it is but if you're not a member and you've been putting it off please um listen to james and um and and join sign up james i i have one more question when you were growing up in fargo and you would use a, as you just did a couple of times now, like erudite, what did people do to you? Well, what they did was they picked me up by my ankles and dipped my head in the rain barrel there, Peter. What do you mean, what did they do in Fargo, for heaven's sake? I was just talking, I got a realtor, right? And I asked him how he got into this business and whatnot. And more than that, he was from Fargo.

And actually, he grew up in a little place called Mayville to the north of here. And he lived out of Dodge as soon as he could. And he went to the big city and he got himself a degree in conducting and a degree in choral conducting. And went to a career in music and then found himself in Oregon working in software and then came back here to take care of his aging parents and lived at the farm and worked the farm for a little while before he got himself back into the realtor business. But now he still has his hand in with the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, which is a pretty good damn caliber and quality. So, yeah, I mean, scratch a realtor, find a guy who conducted Berlioz's choral symphonies, and yeah, so take that there. But then again, of course, I'm the guy who was happily whistling Alley Cat at the Hornbacher's grocery store this morning, so we contain multitudes.

Yeah, you keep the traditions alive. Hey, James, thanks for joining us. But what we are now, I know it's like missing one of our hosts. Well, you know, he's our third guest. You know, you missed some good stuff, by the way, James. You have to listen to this. I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did. What's the next spot? Well, John, I did the spots. I tried to do them in an efficient way. Yeah, I did them. I only had two. You only had two? That's ridiculous. There's a third spot. What's the third spot? There's no third spot. You're not around, but you don't do three spots.

Okay, well then let me give you one little spot here. If you would like to have an extraordinary collection of china, glassware, dishes, silverware, come to the Lilacs estate sale. And save me from wrapping up 648 little humble figurines in the paper that I will then put into a box and pretend that I'm not throwing away.

I appreciate your patronage. And we'll talk to you guys next week on Let's End Back Here again. Next week? Next I'm Back Here Again. Next week? Next week. Thanks, James. Now that we've dispensed with James' post of the week, we should do the long poll question of the week. These are getting really interesting.

Before we do that, I'm taking a page. James, are you still here? Oh, okay. I'm taking a page from James's brilliant audience management. And I'm going to say that this podcast was brought to you by Butcher Block and Ethos Life. So support them for supporting us, especially Butcher Block. It's been a really super loyal sponsor for a long time. And Ethos Life, which is a new sponsor, and we're thrilled to have them. Also, if you enjoy the show, take a minute and leave a review on iTunes. I know it seems silly, but it actually really, really, really matters,

and it gets us new listeners and helps us sort of get to the top of the rankings so people find us. Meanwhile, please join Ricochet, not only so you can enjoy posts like the Post of the Week, James' Post of the Week, but also you can participate in the poll question. We are doing these polls. People are actually looking at these polls. I mean, I know it's not scientific, but it really is kind of an interesting snapshot. And the poll this week requires a sort of a thought experiment, a hypothetical. Some of our members will not like this hypothetical, but allow your mind

to drift to this hypothetical just to see what we might say. You live in a state with a Republican senator. After the long process of impeachment hearings and evidence review, he or she votes to remove the president. When that senator is up for reelection, will you A, vote the bum out, B, vote for the Democrat opponent to punish the party or C shrug, let it go. Vote for the bum again. Yeah.

Three choices. Um, what Rob, you have to distinguish choice a and choice B for me. They sound like the same thing. Are you talking about no matter what you're not going to, you'll primary the guy you'll kick him out during the primary challenge. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Uh, and B is B is, you'll primary the guy, you'll kick him out. Probably during the primary challenge. Got it, got it, got it.

Okay. And B is sort of maybe the nuclear option where you not only vote the bum out, but you're going to vote for the Democrat to punish the Republican Party as a whole. And there's also just shrug, let it go, vote for the bum again. You know, search your soul and, and you know enjoy the hypothetical uh we are so much more fun searching your soul so much more to find a room all right that actually is an excellent that's an excellent question i think well it's it's it is the question that every republican senator would like to know the answer to yes Yes. So really, this is a poll that has, I don't know, 50 something interested parties. And so you as a as a ricochet member could I guarantee I can name three Republican senators

right now I know will look at this poll. Who's the third? I won't I won't name them. Because I know for a fact they'll look at it. You could, but you won't. I could, but I won't. You can figure out who they are. So if you're a Ricochet member, you get to have your voice heard by a couple dozen, three dozen, four dozen people who matter. So, join. Peter, this was fun. It was a lot of fun, actually. We needed James at the end, though, I think. We did need James. Yes, yes, we did.

Can you imagine? Really? I feel for him, but he was there's the upbeat end of the show. Bring James on. But I've been through this. I know you may have been through a bit of it. But closing up a house after you lose a parent is emotionally, it's not in some basic sense that hard, but every object, every item of clothing, everything comes associated with memories. It is emotionally draining. And there's James, just as brilliant and upbeat and happy

as ever. Yeah. Well, we can all learn a lesson. Next week, Peter. Next week, Rob. I am the sun and the air All the shine is what is criminal in Baltimore I am the sun and air And nothing in particular You shut your mouth How can you say

I know about things the wrong way I am human And I need to be loved Just like everybody else does Diolch yn fawr. of nothing in particular. You should know how can you say I don't think the wrong way. I am human

and I need to be loved just like everybody else does Ricochet. Join the conversation. How dare you?