The Ricochet Podcast - It’s Still A Damn Free Country

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

Every so often, we dispense with the guests and just let the hosts riff on whatever comes to their minds. That’s what we did for this week’s show, as Peter, Rob, and James jam about Joe Biden entering the race, the politics of impeachment, the new found popularity of socialism, including Medicare For All and cancelling student loans (in certain sectors of the culture), and finally, Rob’s (somewhat... 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 you missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and our guests today are, well, we don't need no stinking guests.

We got Rob Long and Peter Robinson. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 445. I wish it was number 444 because the fours are important. They're really important and I'm going to tell you why at some point here in the podcast. I'm joined as usual, as ever, by Rob Long and Peter Robinson. Gentlemen.

James. How are you guys? I'm dealing with fungoo. Peter's got the allergies. So we're all in a cranky, surly mood, but probably not as cranky and surly as the people who are behind Joe Biden's campaign at the moment, because it's not open arms and all love for old Joe. It seems to be that hanging around the public stage for as long as he has, you build up a backlog of things that people can use to criticize you. And I, frankly, am delighted because it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

It's just spectacular to see somebody who is saying, well, remember those good old normal days? I represent those good old normal days. And we're going back to those good old normal days to people say, no, I'm sorry, those days were horrible, sexist, rotten, homophobic, cis-centric, etc. You are old and out, go away. Will it work? I thought you were talking to me.

I'm talking to you, I am. Throwing that out there. Do you think Joe is going to be able, I mean, we know he's going to withstand this initial barrage, but how is this going to play out, do you think? You know, it all depends on whether Democratic primary voters can do math. And it is not entirely evident that they can. But I suspect that that's it. I mean, look, he could – I mean, they could bloody him up and he could implode. He could do all sorts of things. He's a pretty good campaigner, although he's a pretty good loser at presidential campaigns too. So there's like a double-edged sword.

But there's a certain – there is an appeal to a candidate who says to the 12 percent he needs to get, hey, I'm not really that liberal. I'm kind of moderate and I'm not gross and I'm not going to tweet horrible things and I'm not going to give you this rollicking kind of variety hour you've been getting. But at the same time, I'm also not going to like freak you out a little bit. I mean there is an argument to be made that that would be a winning strategy. I don't think he's capable of doing it. At least he hasn't started doing it yet. Instead, he's making a lot of – he's bringing up stuff like Charlottesville that feels a little like the old man.

Hey, fellow kids, the old man trying to sort of get in know, get in with the kids and talk about the Democrats have already processed that. They don't need to reprocess it. They're on to new outrages. So it just feels a little belated, a little slow, a little tired. And I mean, you know, maybe even a little doomed. He in my opinion, the Biden campaign so far is based on a false premise. And by the way, I agree with everything Rob said. The false premise is this, that there is still a basically commonsensical, fundamentally centrist Democratic Party, that Nancy Pelosi represents the middle of the party, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren represent a fringe and that all Joe Biden has to do

is placate the fringe, show that he understands their concerns and the middle will come to him and dominate the party and carry him to the nomination. I believe that premise is false. They don't represent merely a fringe. The Democratic Party is engaged in a civil war for control of the party. And Joe Biden, who thinks he can paper over the differences, that won't work. The party is going to go one way or the other. And trying to hold on to a center that no longer exists is just not going to work, in my opinion. We shall see. I agree if the Democrats were purely doing the math

and asking themselves the single question, who would be the best opponent against Donald Trump? There's a very good argument, probably the best argument that it would be Joe Biden. The polls show already that he leads Trump by high single digits. Okay, that's not the question. The question is how do you get to the nomination? And you have to do that by choosing one side or the other in a Democratic Party that is engaged in a civil war, I think. old style Clinton era Democrats tweeting out things that would be absurd to them 10 years ago. But they feel it's necessary to latch onto these things in order to show that they are in the vanguard. And so, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people out there who, you know, and those people will vote for Joe Biden anyway, because you just absolutely hate the orange man but i i i'm i'm with peter it's good i can't wait for the debates i mean the debates are going to be absolutely wonderful uh especially if donald

trump starts running again on we had a preview i think today of his campaign slogan for 2020 did you hear it i did not what did you read something well no he's talking to the nra and maybe i've just missed this maybe maybe he said it before but he gave the speech at the end before the nra and and used the phrase keep america great uh as opposed to make which is sort of which is sort of a right sort of a mission i mean keep america great again doesn't quite work but it's sort of a mission accomplished thing that goes on. And so Biden is talking about going backwards and Trump is talking about going forwards and building on the gains that we've had. So by the way, the the the debates will be fun because you get all the Democrats up on the stage watching Joe Biden, of all people, all of a sudden have to embrace and uh and and and subsume these new ideas i it's it's

gonna be yeah and he'll be a johnny he'll be a johnny come lately who didn't come who didn't come up with them before in the zone right the the the cliche is always that um you know you want to be the party of ideas right the party of ideas you want to have ideas and the party of ideas is the party that wins so you know even going back to the reagan in 1980 was that the republicans are the party of ideas um even and i think you could say that that was probably the then the 96 92 i think when clinton ran he was the party of ideas he had all these great ideas it is also possible to have too many ideas and too many crazy ones so it's also possible in a country that actually moves kind of slow right you know the american politics is sort of like when you hit a certain age which i have hit and you get up in the morning and you're just i'm gonna it's gonna

be i'm i'm taking it a little slow my feet i to stretch. That's American politics, right? It's like a little creaky in the morning. And you have a bunch of people, a bunch of Democrats promising all sorts of huge changes, including bizarrely free college, all this free stuff to a population, a lot of whom have just paid a heftier tax bill than they have ever paid in a long time. And they're not going to be as receptive to that. So the idea of it, the party of ideas, I think definitely just in sheer quantity of ideas, you have to say it's the Democrats now. I think we're seeing where the limit of the party of ideas being a positive

attribute is at because there's just too many ideas. I was trying to like parse them all and try to see who I thought was kind of a comer. It seems like they have the – and one of them I think is Pete Buttigieg because he's a mayor and he's young, but he doesn't seem angry and he seems positive and he's got some kind of like Obama kind of qualities to him that the other people seem – they seem like really pissed. But then he says some stuff that I think is like classic down-the-middle Democratic Party stuff. But then he says crazy things things like gotta throw out the electoral college that's right he is not moderate and you think oh man or speaking of the uh you know the the capitalism stands in the way of democracy i mean there's very strange parsing the other day when somebody's asking if he was a capitalist and it's too busy being trying to be

somebody else or more likely he's too busy cowering well well it's as if almost the floodgates were opened and the impatience for all of these things is finally just just just going to deluge the culture because they act as if having stated this yet the idea the green new deal or free call or medicare for all as if that's done and now we get we need a new idea they seem impatient to just gather up all of these these society changing ideas and dump them on us at once. You know, I if I were Joe Biden's campaign manager, if I were Joe Biden, if Joe Biden ever thought about this stuff, by the way, I actually read his campaign book. And you magnificent. He's really not. I reviewed it for for believe it or not for a

catholic magazine in england how i got talked into that one i do not know in any event it's pretty clear that he doesn't really view the big think stuff policy stuff as part of his job he's writing about policy papers and then my advisor suggested this and then my advisor suggested that and then i walked into a room and patted backs and brought the deal off he feels himself as a deal maker he's quite self-consciously a back slapper glad hander and so forth if i'm right and who knows whether i am but if i'm right that the democratic party is in a civil war and you need to choose sides joe biden could could should go on the attack. Oh, okay. Let him spend the first two weeks apologizing, letting the left side of the party know that he understands them, that he wishes that he's wrong about this, of course, but he wishes

the Anita Hill hearing had gone blah, blah, blah, blah. But about two weeks into this, he ought to go on an attack and say, I represent the Democratic Party and Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton and, yes, Barack Obama. And it is not the party of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is the party that passed civil rights. This is the party that has looked out for the little guy, for the working man and woman in America. This is the party that has advanced women's rights. Look at all that we have accomplished.

It remains the party of the center of the country. We have nothing for which to apologize. We are not socialists. We believe in temper. Blah, blah, blah. He should go right on the attack and take it right to them and bolden his own side, cheer the rest of the country. fight excuse me the other side would have a fight on their hands because he would control one half of the party so to speak and leave the other half to 16 17 18 27 different candidates to scrap over we will does he have the wits and the guts to go on the attack i we are the party we are the party that reforms national health service we are the party that nationalized the trains we are the party that nationalized the coma i'm quoting that i'm good i got neil kinnick again yeah you're onto something right i mean when was the last time a huge field of candidates um all of whom had you know certain had a had a strong base and bona fides um elbowed each other

and then a guy came in and ran against the party itself oh you're so transparent we can see where this is going and won the nomination and the president of course it was four years ago of course and if biden is smart he'll say to himself republican primary voters are not that different from democratic primary voters in this instance. And in fact, in some states, they are identical, right? Maybe that's the key. Maybe I run – as a primary, I run as a reformer and a moderate in a Democratic party, unashamed, unabashed, loudmouthed moderate. Exactly, yes. And then every time I talk about the Republicans, I just – I trash Trump hard.

So I look like I've got the fight in me. Yes. And that is a you know, we that is we know that's a winning strategy because that's how the president of the United States current president of the United States won. Vote for me. I'll save you from the rest of my party is a very interesting strategy. But you're right. It could work. It works. It could work it it worked it could it has worked well i mean trump wasn't going to save us from the depredations of the of the of the swamp in the in the gop establishment i mean they they essentially were just going to do what they continued to do at l ad nauseum etc but what biden would be doing would be saving us from the active intrusions into our life by the people whose ideology he has generally gone along with for his entire life. I mean, so that'll be an interesting thing to see if he pulls it off. Well, he could easily say his argument can easily say to easily be to look to Democratic primary voters and say, you know, this is Mondale territory and, you you know this is McGovern territory.

We already know how to lose this and we know what wins. What wins is Bill Clinton. What wins is Barack Obama, right? Barack Obama turned out to be an extreme leftist, but a lot of people, 53% of Americans voted for him and they didn't vote for his far left agenda. They voted for him because he presented himself as sort of a centrist and a moderate. And he has an argument to make,

and he has an argument to make and he has an argument to make that the democratic party in itself is kind of um you know in disarray and moving too far left and i think a lot of democratic party voters kind of know that yeah but the the primary is where you go hard right i mean the primary voters don't want to be told that you can't have all that you want. You're going to get a quarter a cup of warm milk as opposed to the, you know, the full strong draft that you want. I mean, is that a winning primary message to say, don't don't mind? Well, in a certain sense, for Joe Biden, it's a simple calculation. It's the only chance he has. He is not. And this is what I'm not sure he's grasped or his campaign has grasped, he is not going not good enough to say you're sorry for the way Anita Hill got treated.

You need to apologize to her personally. You need to say, I'm sorry for the way I treated you. And Joe Biden wouldn't quite do that. He was uncomfortable. His formulation is, in other words, nothing he can do or say will satisfy the left wing, the radical wing, which I now think is about half of the democratic party because they know he's not really one of them he comes from an older tradition it doesn't matter what he says or he's just not one of them he's not going to be able to win them over his only chance is to is it is in effect to say to everybody else in the party let's take back this party

so he's jebed trying to be trying i'm talking myself into this more and more i'm going to volunteer i think all these are possible but i just i mean i i'm not whether he'll do it i don't i don't think i just don't think he'll do it i think the i guess the weird thing is i believe that he likes to be like every and i and i know this is a tautology right but every single one of those candidates running right now thinks he or she is going to win and that's i mean to us that seems that's the madness of presidential politics but yes yeah you really think you're going to win arlen specter thought he was going to be president united states and that's just you know bizarreusional, but that's what an American politician

is mostly. It's two parts bizarre and one part delusional, or the other way around. But if you're really looking at that field, and I think if you're Biden, you're saying, okay, I'm going to be, I don't think he's going to do that. I think he's going to say, too risky. I've got all the name ID I need. I'm going to be a little bit of column going to say too risky um i've got all the name id i need i'm going to be a little bit of column a a little bit column b i'm going to preside and preside over this fight and sort of stand there and say well you know look at one's got a great point hey you know a p buddha judge has got a great point and just be the number two basically uh so he'll be

everybody's second choice right and that is a very, very, very good way to get all the way to South Carolina and Florida. It really is. What a field. Buttigieg, Biden, Beto, Booker. That's four Bs. And four is a very important number here in the Ricochet podcast this time. But I'm going to tell you about that a little bit later. May 4th is coming up. And a few days after May 4th, it will be the day that you should have a big red X on your calendar saying it's Mother's Day because you don't want to forget your mother. Do you? No. But what do you get her? You know, the days when you could just glue some macaroni letters to a piece of wood in a homily, those days are gone, frankly, and mom really doesn't need that. It was precious then, but now, no,

not so much. What mothers love are flowers. It doesn't have to be the only thing that you give, but if you're going to give her flowers, you want to give her the best, right? And you want to make it all so easy because frankly, you got a busy thing going on yourself. So here's what you do. Your mom was a pro at what she did. Why don't you go to the pros when it comes to giving flowers? And that's pro flowers i got a package the other day um from pro flowers showed up the door and it was astonishing i mean i've gotten flowers from mail order places before and they've been a little bit bedraggled and they might have been a tad elderly when stuff falls out and we get the box open the pro flowers experience

you don't even have to worry about this thing being wrapped because it is a gift. Literally, you open it up and inside is a beautiful, well, the flowers are inside a beautiful wrapper and they're attached to a vase. It comes with a vase. So you don't have to worry about whether or not she's got a hundred round for something to put it into. And these were roses and the quantity of roses that I got was astonishing. It's like, wow, this is great. All these colors, fresh, and it comes with the little packets that you have where you put in the water so they stay fresh as well. In other words, you know, right then and there, you had the best, most wonderful floral gift.

And my wife came home and saw it and was astonished and wondered what exactly the occasion was. What had you done? Yeah, I know. What had I done? It was me. I was apologizing for interrupting him exactly the occasion was. What had you done? Yeah, I know. What had I done? It was me. I was apologizing for interrupting him on the last podcast. So now I have to come up with something else for Mother's Day.

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It's an extraordinary deal. And one click does it, and you've got Mother's Day covered. ProFlowers.com. Click the microphone in the upper right corner and enter the code RICOCHET. That's ProFlowers.com. Click the microphone in the upper right corner and enter the code Ricochet. That's ProFlowers.com. Click the microphone, code Ricochet. Mother's Day is, well, I guess it's not the 7th, it's the 12th. May 12th. Don't wait. Order like a pro. Get this amazing rose deal to thank all the moms in your life. And our thanks to ProFlowers for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, the next issue on the table, of course, is everything in the Mueller report essentially demands impeachment. It has to be done. I think I was

listening to a Chris Cuomo interview, a former attorney general, about how he was disappointed that Barr had not indicted and that now Congress had to step up and indict as if Congress has the power to indict. They don't. It doesn't matter. Legalities don't matter. We got to do this right. So is this really the fight that Donald Trump wants? Sure.

Sure. Why not? That's why I asked the question. Of course it is. Yeah, of course. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton's poll ratings went up, not the Republicans. Trump's in a position – by the way, we talked a moment ago – we talked for quite a few moments a moment ago about Biden and the Democratic campaign. bigger fan of Deborah Saunders than I used to be. Deb was for many years the only conservative at the San Francisco Chronicle and therefore the only reason I subscribed to the newspaper. She has now moved to a Las Vegas paper and she reports she's a White House correspondent.

We've had her as a guest, Peter. Yes, we've had her as a guest. And she writes straight reporting. In the last couple of weeks, one piece by Deb Saunders shows how professional the Trump campaign is. The campaign organization has been set up. They've out-raised the Democrats in the last couple of months. They've hired one professional after another. This is not the Donald Trump of two and a half years ago, just winging it. This is a thoroughly professional operation. The White House itself, another piece by Deb, contrasting current chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with his predecessor, John Kelly. Turns out when you have a very skillful and highly intelligent politician, former politician, Mick Mulvaney was three terms in Congress, running the White House, it runs at least as smoothly. And this is not wild careening Donald Trump organization.

The organization, the White House and the campaign are buttoned down and organized. Peter, doesn't that terrify you though? I mean we've gone from the random – we've gone from the beer pooch people to the ones who can organize a rally in the street and pack them into Nuremberg. This just shows how authoritarianism has coalesced around this man into a frightening apparatus, et cetera. Well, it is true to say that the 2016 campaign was a chaotic nightmare, pure chaos. But also, I mean, this is when Trump is at his strongest, right? And I would argue even despite his sort of the softening numbers now, but today, but at his most appealing is when he is not in charge, when he is beleaguered, when he is fighting back. Yes, yes. You know, in a thought experiment, Republicans retain the House. In the in the 2018 midterms, you know, Trump, I think, would be in the 20s in terms of popularity.

That's just, not just because of him, I mean, he's just an amplifier, but the president at that point, who had run a unified government for two terms, I mean, two congressional terms, is going to just tank. And Trump starts low

to begin with. So this is like, they're giving him yes like vitamin b shots this is a fantastic fantastic gift is to is the is the personal insults which he actually excels at returning it's the the sense that is growing i think in the country even from people who you know, even from those people who may actually be on the podcast right now and sitting in the chair that I'm sitting in who are not big fans of the president, it is it does look like this insane unwillingness to accept the fact that he won fair and square, took the oath of office fair and square is president united

states has an agenda has not only an agenda but as a mandate to lead and i can constitutional responsibility to lead and instead of beating him on the battlefield of ideas and thoughts and policies they're meeting him in some strange way of like trying to audit his 1997 tax returns, which I think to a lot of people seems like pure politics and pure revenge and without a dollop or a leavening agent of policy or concern for the voter. And that's trouble. I mean, there are people who want to go for impeachment because it's, it, it accrues well to them because it shows that they're on the right side. They're resisting. There are those who sincerely to go for impeachment because it accrues well to them because it shows that they're on the right side. They're resisting.

There are those who sincerely want it because they believe that we live in an authoritarian, dystopian hellscape and that Donald Trump has to be – I mean they do. They do. They look at this country and they see – what they see is – well, they'll throw it right back at you all the hate crimes that have increased since donald trump was elected all of which can be a screen can be you know these fraudulent numbers from the southern poverty law center and the you know the rise in anti-semitic attacks and all the rest of it these conflated numbers that convince them that there's actually a sea change that people were emboldened by donald trump that they went out there and hiled um and i don't think that's something that most people actually sense as well but that he was going to shred the Constitution. I mean, they can't ever – and I was one of the –

Every president shreds the Constitution. Well, I'm raising my hand here too because I – there were things about Kelo. There were things about opening up the libel law. There's a lot of loose talk there that led me to believe that this guy doesn't necessarily hold this thing deep to his – hard clutch to his breast. But I was wrong. And the Democrats have shown themselves to be the party that wants to go contrary to constitutional norms. You got, you know, the first amendment. No, we're going to make a carve out for hate. Second amendment. Don't even talk to us about that. Well, I 10th amendment, 10th amendment. Don't even talk to us about that. Electrical college, get rid of it and the rest of it.

Right. So all of the unmanned, the dismantling and authoritarianism and statism is coming from their side but they're still in the back of their heads convinced that they're living under the reign of hitler that that that hitlerism redux is right around the corner it's madness but those are the people who demand and press that they get rid of this guy because otherwise there's no turning back a second trump turn would mean the end of america and biden practically put it himself that way that the character of the nation would irrevocably changed after another four years this is the party that rode in with barack obama promising to fundamentally transform america a phrase that they loved and showed and held up there as a sign you know and the thing about it

what they learned is that when you when you say that amer America bites back. America reacts, and then maybe America overreacts, but they react. And that is part of, I think, what the Democratic calculation is, is that the people are going to be so fed up with this circus act in the White House that the pendulum's going to swing right back and we're going to elect Daniel Ortega.

That is unlikely to happen. Here's an anecdote. It means nothing and probably has no value. But the scatter graph of voters is really interesting. Patrick Ruffini developed it, I think, and put it up there. It's really interesting. And what it suggests is that there are, there's a huge number of Americans, maybe even a preponderance of Americans that are kind of in the quadrant that we didn't think they were in. Cause we traditionally think that Americans are basically economically conservative, socially liberal. That's what they are. Right. And it turns out

when you really do sort of a psychographic, you know, deep dive into, um, the graph, it turns out that there are a whole lot of americans maybe even a plurality of americans who are economically liberal and socially conservative and the question you have to ask yourself is did they were they always there or did they change and i suggest that they change that people that americans are seeing even the conservative even the liberal ones are seeing rapid, kind of unreflective, radical social change, and they're freaking out a little bit. And part of the freak out is we're going to vote for Trump because he seems like he's no nonsense. He seems like he sees things clearly.

Or somehow he'll stand. Okay. Sorry. That he will somehow stand against these cultural changes by presenting a, an ultra, he does. I mean, he doesn't present an alternative.

He just represents a mindset that refuses to, to, um, accept certain fundamental changes in what we talk about. And, and you're right, Rob, I mean,

people get pushed a little bit too hard when the other side gets emboldened. I mean, it's what America had the long conversation about gay gay marriage and at the end of the day said, okay, all right, fine, all right. And then the very next minute they're being told, this guy who now is a woman can beat your girl

wrestler in high school. And if you don't like it, you are the worst sort of hater that encourages and abets the suicide of youth. I mean, that's the argument. One little anecdote and then the state sort of hater that encourages and abets the suicide of youth. I mean, that's the argument. Yeah. I, I, well, one little anecdote and then I'll, and then the state of Colorado, the state of Colorado is really fascinating, right?

Cause state of Colorado has got a little bit of everything, Rocky mountain libertarians, uh, you know, uh, gun nuts, um, weird, crunchy boulder types, you know, people who, uh, you know, burn sage and worship, uh, animal, animalistic deities. And, and then it's got oil money and it's got a pro-energy business. And it's got a little bit of everything in the sort of big soup of American culture. They were – Colorado as a state was in favor of gay marriage, in favor over Obergefell. The minute Obergefell was decided, some people in Colorado decided to sue this baker and make him, you got to bake a cake.

Right. And he was, he was in Colorado. And so they sued him and it turns out he didn't have to bake the cake according to the Supreme court. And most people in Colorado who were in favor, people, you know,

majority were in favor of gay marriage were also in favor of this baker's right to not bake the cake and then a few cycles later they elect the first gay governor in this you know in america um so that's kind of where america is like yeah it's okay but we're not going to make the guy bake the cake. And there's a huge part of the left and Democratic Party. No, no, no. We are going to make the guy bake the cake. Yeah. People feel a little weird about that. That's the critical point.

And this question that columnists at the Bulwark can't seem to understand, but strikes me as perfectly straightforward. The question is, how is it that evangelicals can support a man like Donald Trump with his third marriage and – OK. And of course the answer is pretty obvious. He's not a champion of traditional values. He's not going to push back. But what the evangelicals see in Donald Trump is that he's not going to go after them. Barack Obama sued the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The Little Sisters of the Poor. The Little Sisters of the Poor. And they didn't find a better Catholic charity. Exactly. The Sword of the Saints government were, for the first time in history, deployed decisively against traditional Christian, Judeo-Christian moral values. And it was only the beginning, but you could see the trajectory. Anybody could see the trajectory, including evangelicals. Donald Trump doesn't care if you golf on sunday but he also

doesn't care if you go to church he will leave you alone that's so it's not quite the same thing he drinks his little wine he eats his little cracker but here's an anecdote here's the so i had people over for um sunday brunch on easter sunday? The last Sunday brunch in Venice? No, it was in New York. So in the West Village, very eclectic crowd, young people, older people, a few avowed and very, very some well-known political liberals and some closeted Trumpites.

And it was after the – I think –olence and concern and sort of the general outpouring from a huge portion of Americans, America's democratic politicians said. What a terrible thing to happen to the Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka. They use the term Easter worshiper. And you're a snowflake for noting that. That's been the pushback. Yeah, yeah. It was Easter. They were worshiping.

Everyone noticed it, even people who are never going to vote for Trump, even people who are avowed Democrats, at least that were in my orbit. They all thought that was weird. And if that's the case, then there's a tin ear problem deep, deep, deep within the organization of the left that needs to – that will continue to ring hollow to a lot of Americans. And it just seemed to me that what was interesting was that nobody said, oh, no, come on. That's just a phrase. Everybody said, yeah, it does seem weird. That's because they're uncomfortable with Christians, believing Christians, cultural Christians, whatever. But believing Christians are uncomfortable with it.

And they're not brave enough yet to repudiate it and to say that it's nonsense and they don't believe it and it is some sort of strange cult. They're just very, very queasy about it. They don't have the same problem. Well, yeah. I mean, it's just Christians are weird now because Christians can possibly be Islamophobes, homophobes, all the other phobes and the rest of it. So it's the idea that it's a group in America

that they have to automatically pay a little deference to out of the Christian culture and history of the country. No, it's just like let's not – the word is kind of icky. The word has all kinds of connotations. They don't like – Islam doesn't because they don't see Islam as a creed. They see Islam as a racial group, which is not in a press group, which it is not. But they never, ever, ever, ever talk about the precepts and the ideas of Islam. But they're more uncomfortable with Christianity than they are with the precepts of Islam.

I think you're right. I think also the underlying problem with people when they report the news or when they talk about the news or when they make a public statement is the first thing they think about is not what do I want to say or what do I want to convey? But the first thing to think about is, OK, what don't I want you to think when you read this or what do I want you to think when you read this? And they're very strict about that stuff. So you can easily see it in that you can see it in the front pages of almost every newspaper in America. The idea that we're not going to report this this way because we don't want you to draw the wrong conclusion. Well, Peter, perhaps you saw the Washington Post the very next day saying how the bombings in Sri Lanka had angered the

alt-right. The people who were angry about it were the alt-right. You know, I wanted to mention something to go back to California. We pounced on it. Yes, absolutely did. Go back to something that you were saying about, you know, Colorado and the baker. You're right.

They believe that, you know, if the baker doesn't want to bake the cake, that he doesn't have to. And it'll be interesting to ask Bernie Sanders a question like that. I mean, because Bernie Sanders would probably say, and I'm not even going to try to do the Bernie voice because it's hard, that he doesn't believe that the problem here is that the state should own all the bakeries. Yeah, right. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks, well, why are you eating so much, you know, sugar and, you know, carbs? Maybe you shouldn't be eating that. Right. And you shouldn't be driving to the bakery because that consumes too much resources.

It's enough to drive you nuts. And if you get stressed out, by the way, he said, segueing. Oh, I forgot. Before Rob could even notice. Stress, you know, it's a worldwide epidemic. We're working longer hours. We're inundated with a constant news cycle. Lord knows we do our part here at Ricochet. And we're more connected than ever before.

Stress, it's part of life. But it can very easily affect our overall well-being. And that's why we're partnering with Calm, the number one app to help you reduce your anxiety and stress and help you sleep better. More than 40 million people around the world have downloaded it. You can too. If you head to calm.com slash ricochet, you'll get 25% off a Calm premium subscription, which includes guided meditations on issues like anxiety, stress, and focus, including a brand new meditation every day. There are also sleep stories, which are bedtime stories for adults, frankly, designed to help you relax.

You can head off to the magical lavender fields of southern France with Stephen Fry or explore moonlit jungles of Africa with Leon Lewis. They even have soothing music and more. I believe, Rob, you're a calm kind of guy, right? I am indeed. And I've never done the ones that are like they have people talking and the stories and stuff. But the actual sort of feedback stuff is very good. And I'll tell you when I really, really like it.

When I have gotten on an airplane and I bought my ticket late and I am in a middle seat. There is nothing that makes the middle seat okay like the Calm app, I got to tell you. I believe we have a new ad campaign for Calm themselves. I expect to see that in the banner image of their website soon. Calm.com is the website. Ricochet listeners get 25% off a Calm premium subscription at Calm.com is the website. Ricochet listeners get 25% off a Calm premium subscription at Calm.com slash Ricochet. That's C-A-L-M.com slash Ricochet. Calm.com. Unlimited access to all of their content. Get Calm and stop stressing. And our thanks to Calm for sponsoring this,

the Ricochet podcast. We got a little bit more here to come, of course. But you know, one of the things that I know, sometimes people will say, you know, I patronize your products because they're fine. I listen to the ads. But what I really, really listen for and enjoy is the subtle twist that Rob puts every week on his 445th pitch, I believe, now to get people to sign up for Ricochet. So, Robert, let's pretend that the Etch-a-Sketch has been completely turned over and shook, and that you have to start absolutely fresh without any of your preceding

precepts, and get people to join. Remember, you cannot use any argument that you've used before. Go. I have not used any argument before. I will say this, that the strength of the center-right is in its civility and in its community. And the great, great cacophony of ideas that we have can be shared on Ricochet on the site if you become a member. And we need you to become a member because these podcasts reach a whole lot of people.

And there are a whole lot of people who listen to these podcasts who think to themselves, you know, I'd like to become a member. I'd like to sort of maybe contribute and be part of that community. Some people just say, I'd like to be a member because I know that what they're trying to do is really, really hard. And it's got to grow. And we don't have a bunch of institutional, um, advantages like, you know, people who may have started podcast companies who come from public radio, um, or other left-wing sort of organizations. We are kind of our own, so we got to support our own in the same way we support our own in the community. We got to support Ricochet. And so please go to ricochet.com slash join and join at the podcast level if you want to, or at the higher level if you'd like to.

And I know there are many people that – there are many people who have made – have already decided they're going to join and they just haven't done it. If every single one of those people right now follows through on the decision they've already made, Ricochet can grow in leaps and bounds in the next three, four, five months. So I'm asking you to do that. And also just take a look at the site because we've got a redesign, which I think is really good. It's subtle, but I think it's cleaner and easier to read. It's certainly easier to read on mobile, and we're really proud of it.

So please go to the ricochet.com slash join and become a member. Exactly. And if you are a member and you can post, that means you can go into the comments and say, you changed it, I hate it. Which people do, but most people don't. And that's the interesting thing for people who think that conservatives are just automatically gainsaying anything anybody else does. We redesign the world on Ricochet and we acclimate. We note what's good and what's bad and we carry forward the things that we learned from the past.

So Ricochet 4.0, that was the four that I was mentioning. Well, Peter, I know you've been sitting here listening fascinated as Rob and I just blather on. I have been fascinated. By the way, may I, on the membership pitch, the naming and shaming works. You may recall that two or three weeks ago, I shamed my friend Tommaso. He has joined up. He has joined up.

And so it's your turn. I know you both know by name people who are listening right now for free. I just encourage you to think if you can't find it within yourself to do it now, pray on it. Yeah. And come prepared with a couple of names next week. It works. I can. And the last time I talked to her, I told her I was going to comp her.

So I can't really do that at that point. We will let us now, class, talk about socialism because it's been in the news again and again. And we're never going to have this go away until we find it repudiated at the polls hard. Medicare for all megan mccardle we love um said had a tweet storm the other i don't know if this was a tweet storm or just simply a threaded tweet difference for her when she does a tweet storm it's just this great 14 15 set out pieces of the argument but she said something that's quite succinct medicare for all three big stinking stumbling blocks to selling anything universal to the public.

One, higher taxes because people have to know that, of course, their taxes are going to go up. Two, losing the insurance you already have, which people are mostly satisfied with. And three, lower pay for health care workers. I would say that third one isn't quite known yet. And I would add to the second one, losing the insurance you already have, was that I think even if people don't work in the insurance industry, the idea of the government waving a wand and changing that industry completely is, again, out of character with the American experience. I'm not sure which polling numbers Megan is looking at. Megan

McArdle being Megan McArdle, I'm sure she has data. But number two, losing the insurance you already have, which most people are mostly satisfied with. It's my understanding, it's not just the insurance that most people in America are satisfied with. Over 80% of Americans, when asked if they're satisfied with their health care, say yes, they're either satisfied or very satisfied with their health care. The system doesn't not work in the way that the left is always trying to persuade us that it doesn't work. And so the fourth point is health care in this country, the actual substance of health care that most people receive would get worse. If evidence in Canada or the Great Britain

or anywhere where socialist, a single payer, why are we even giving them the credit of calling it single payer? Socialist, where a state-operated healthcare system dominates the entire healthcare delivery system, healthcare is not as good as it is right here. That's item number four. That's true. But I think in that statistic of people's satisfaction with their healthcare is the problem with discussing healthcare in general. People, when you ask how's their healthcare, most of them are talking about their doctor and doctors you know doctor's offices etc have gotten better and more efficient over time especially especially the past five years technology's gotten better it's been easier to get your prescriptions been easier to get

prescriptions sent to you it's been easier to i mean i can face i mean for i don't know i don't think i pay a hundred dollars a year or something i can facetime a nurse 24-7. And when I had a sore throat a year ago, she sort of like listened to me talk and then I opened my mouth and she's like sitting in a room in her house. I mean she's in Ohio. And she's like, okay, yeah, you need this. You need cough medicine. Here it is. I've just sent it to your pharmacy.

You can pick it up this morning. Now that is healthcare. That is my connection to healthcare, my experience with healthcare. That's what I would talk about. The idea that we have a healthcare system in this country that is a coherent thing you can talk about is just idiotic. We don't. It's all different stuff. If you are in a horrible car accident, God forbid, and you're choppered to the shock trauma center, the nearest – the accident, you are in the healthcare system.

If you go and you FaceTime the nurse practitioner at 11.30 at night, you're also in the healthcare system. Those two systems have zero to do with each other and american people the consumers they understand that but policymakers especially ones that want it all under one umbrella right they don't understand that and that is a problem and it is a the idea of having everybody working in concert in for your health care is a terrible terrible idea the idea of having a paid a doctor that you trust and care about and cares about you as your advocate and guide if you need and i'm thinking specifically about my dad like his doctor was great and his doctor was a in many ways an advocate for him as he sort of was contemplating cancer treatment which then turned out to be unnecessary or pointless.

But it wasn't as if the system itself was all part of one overarching umbrella, even though Medicare is part of it. The idea that it's all one thing is only a policymaker's idea. The consumer, the person, doesn't have that idea. they understand the difference and the subtleties and the subtle differences and the way all of these little constituencies in in the health business as a whole can can be in conflict with each other which is good which what you want um and i think that's ultimately the problem that is ultimately the problem for the the single payer people and the socialized medicine people is they really – it feels like a power grab and not like consumer empowerment. That was me being – I'm done now.

No, I was just taking that on. I think I do agree with that. I do agree. There are all kinds of pieces of healthcare as it stands that need to be improved. Above all, I mean the coordination in healthcare, correct. It's not all one system. In Britain where they have the National Health Service and it is all one system, it just doesn't work very well no matter how much they spend on it. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is this hodgepodge we have right now isn't all that bad. The point you're trying to make is people understand it's a hodgepodge. That's the way most of life works.

That's the way most of the economy works. And they can find their way through it. They like it. The one point – this is a Milton Friedman. This goes way, way back. The healthcare system, unlike the rest of the economy, doesn't do a very good job of naming prices. It doesn't let people know what things cost. And if that could be solved, you'd get greater coordination just because human beings respond to price signals.

Anyway, now we're getting deep into – I actually think that's really an important point because whenever people talk about healthcare reform, certainly on the left, and the market is brought up, they always say, oh, the market. So what if you can't afford whatever it is, right? The market is not going to help you pay for that. And that is fundamentally not understanding what a market does. A market does not help people pay for things. A market does not make things affordable. All the market does is price discovery.

That's all it does. It tells you what something is worth in the marketplace. Now, we could say if you can't afford it, we'll pay for it. I mean it doesn't matter as long as it's a market price that is set and we have a big, a giant system in this country that works that way and it's called food stamps and you know conservatives always complain there's the waste and fraud and abuse and there probably is but the truth is that all it is is a voucher you go buy your food now liberals hate it because like well they're buying the wrong kind of food they shouldn't be buying that food

they should buy the food you want them to buy but truth is, it has worked so well in this country that our poor people in America are fat. And they weren't fat 50 years ago. So something's working, right? The government didn't have to buy a farm, didn't have to buy a supermarket, didn't have to open the corner grocery store, didn't have to distribute food. All it gave is a little piece of paper, a little card said, here, you're not going to go hungry and problem solved on the poor people being fat. I wouldn't want to open this into a long discussion, but I'm just curious to know whether either of you have ever read up on this. You in particular, Rob, because you're such a foodie.

James, you because you just interested in such an eclectic grab bag of who knows what that you may have read up on it at some point. I never have. But there is in the air an argument, and I suspect it's pretty good. And I suspect it deserves a greater airing than it's ever received, which is as follows, that the reason we have such problems with obesity in this country, and particularly among poor people, yet again not because the market is failing but because the government is screwing stuff up and in particular the vast the billions of dollars of subsidies each year to corn and corn products so we get the price of corn fructose all kinds of fat high high carbohydrates highly highly processed foods. All of these foods, we drive the prices down through government subsidies. People overeat them because, of course, the packaged food companies are extremely good at figuring out taste combinations, texture combinations and so forth to make these foods as addictive as possible.

But the fundamental problem is that the government is hugely oversubsidizing people who grow corn. Have you gone into that? Is there something to it? Yeah, a little bit. I mean that is true about corn and it is true in some instances about dairy. But it's also I think – I mean it's all true about processed food. It's got cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. But in order for it to be processed, it has to be more and more uniform and bland.

So you have to make what they call hyperpalatable so you have to add stuff to it you know cheesy sauces and things so that like it's a little bit more it got a little more going on it's also like this i think it you know i my blame for it is entirely the federal government and their nanny statism the department of agriculture telling you what to eat so all these people are suddenly eating boneless chicken boneless skinless chicken breast which you might as well eat my shoe. There's no taste to that. And it is nothing that – no one's grandmother ever made that, right? I mean it doesn't really matter what part of the world you came from.

It doesn't matter whether you snuck in across the border or you came in through a JFK or you were born here and you come from a long line of pilgrims. Like nobody ever made a boneless skinless chicken breast. JFK or you were born here and you come from a long line of pilgrims. Nobody ever made a boneless, skinless chicken breast. That is a ridiculous, ridiculous item. So a lot of that is just, but the government told you to eat it, right? And told you to eat more bread. And told you to eat more pasta. That's what they told you to do for 20

years, the food pyramid. And everybody got fat. So I think it's the federal government just trying to get into you, being wrong and then being insistently wrong. I don't think that anybody adjusted what they ate based on the food pyramid. I think just people compared what they did normally to the food pyramid and said, yeah, I'm okay. There may be some people who looked at that chart and said, I have to arrange my life and my taste patterns around that. But most people eat bread because bread's delicious. Most people eat pasta because pasta's great. Most people eat the chips and the

rest of it because it's not because it's addicting. You're not addicted to it. You just like it a lot more than celery. And we're rich. We're a rich nation. Right. I mean, in a lot of the processed foods we have today were seen originally as improvements because they were shelf stable. You know, sliced bread was miraculous. If you look at the first breads that came out and were nationally syndicated and advertised, it was Wonder Bread. I mean, we joke about Wonder Bread. But that was a good thing. Yeah, right.

And the fact that it was dependable and it was consistent across the country, it had a character to it that normal bread didn't, that it came sliced, that it came with all of these vitamins at a time when you were actually worried about your kid getting enough stuff and whether or not they're going to turn out to be scurvy. Here's bread that keeps you from getting scurvy. What an age of miracles upon which we live. Exactly. I'm sure – I'm thinking now by own upbringing. The mothers around – I'm a little older than you guys.

The mothers around when I was a kid, their frame of reference was the depression. Right. And the idea that you could go to the A&P and get sliced bread and it was enriched with vitamins and you could afford it. Exactly. You could afford, you were taking better care of your children by giving them this stuff. So what I don't understand is that when we see when it comes to something as elemental as what we eat, that the government was wrong. And the government periodically says, oh, eggs. Oh, OK. Yeah, about that.

OK. You know, you can eat some eggs. That's OK. And then they'll flip back and forth and back and forth. And we get all this contrary advice that somehow we're supposed to take that and then take, for example, the science says about this or, you know, climate change and the rest of it and assume that right now they got it right today. They're absolutely correct today. That the technocratic attempt to massage and manipulate our lives over the last, for our own benefit, and the people involved weren't doing so out of some weird power trip.

They actually wanted people to be healthier. I mean, if you go back and look at the history of how nutrition labels got put on, if you look at the, you know, the struggles that they went through when it came to something as simple as peanut butter to make sure that the new homogenized smooth peanut butter actually was all peanuts and not 99% peanuts. I mean, these were people who were actually concerned about doing something right. But the general effect is to give you a deep suspicion of the technocrats who think that they got it all this time and we ought to listen to them about how to live our lives and i just i just i just muted they muted i'm sorry i interrupted there i muted you quickly because my dog i think is is detecting the grim reaper stalking around the house and he's doing his part to keep him from getting in with the scythe so do go on

what you start um down the road of consumer protection which i'm in favor of not against that um it's you cross this invisible line between letting people know all the information they need to make a decision and you cross an individual kind of an invisible line into helping them make that decision and then telling them what the decision should be. So it's one thing to be transparent about what's in the food you're making and selling. And it's another thing for the government to be saying you should or should not be doing this. And it feels – always feels to people, certainly feels to me that policymakers cross that line a lot. It's less about letting me as a grown-up make a grown-up decision and more about making sure I make the decisions officially approved.

Couldn't agree more. Yep, but it's not just food. I mean it's everything. It's where you live. It's how you drive. It's what you drive, what kind of light bulb you use, how much water comes out of your showerhead. And they can say each of the people involved in these decisions has their own bailiwick. And they say, well, my deal is water consumption, so I'm just going to be concerned about showerheads. That's my deal. And there's

somebody else completely unconnected that's thinking, well, urban policy depends on diversity, so we have to zone differently. No more single-family houses, more fourplexes. When it comes time to build those, of course, the showerheads will have to be low-flow because I heard from this guy over here who knows about that. So none of them think that the aggregate effect of all of this is to feel that there's a group of people who are not coordinated. We're not working together in some century 21 UN plan to control your life. But because they're of a certain ideological dispense, predilection about how technocrats know better, the end result is that you feel hemmed in when you move and less free than you were. Still a pretty damn free country. I'm not trying to say that there are jackboots ready to kick down

my door and make sure that my toilet doesn't use more than 2.1 gallons per flush. Not yet. But still, it's the accumulation of all of these things that at some point you just feel – I mean you take a – you can immobilize a rhinoceros with enough dental floss is what I'm saying. Can I just – Or bury a giraffe. Yes, go on. A friend of mine who lives in an extremely, extremely progressive part of LA County was redoing his house, and this was an older house. And when you redo the house, you have to like go to the city and you have to say we got to – we want to redo it, and it's a house that has a certain age to it

and so you get that the city hires a historian and the city historian looks at your house and decides whether you can make any changes or not and so the city historian came back and said no this house is not historic there's nothing to preserve here

there have been too many modifications over the past hundred years so it is not an historic site not a historic house and the city said thank you we are still demanding that it be um a remodel according to historic standards wow he had to hire his own historian to to appeal to the city and say no no you don't understand your historian said it's not and the city said yes but we're but it is so then why did you hire the story in the first place it's like because we we thought he was going to say you know it's crazy right and the only way they could get there and by the way the plan itself was really you know it wasn't the irony was

had he decided to tear it down he could have done that that would have been okay but actually trying to fix it up was was the problem so the and the only way they got their design passed was to say that if you don't let us put in the garage you don't let us basically lift the house up a little bit and build because they didn't have any part you didn't have a garage and park and create an underground parking area then there is no way that the owners of this home could ever have an electric car oh because you can't charge our the street. You have a shrewd friend. Yeah, and they were instantly caved. Oh, well, of course.

You're right. Go ahead. And when he told me that story, I said, so do you have an electric car? He goes, no way. I have a big SUV. Right, and the urbanists will find the whole story absurd because nobody in five years will have a car, period. They'll all be ride-sharing. That's right.

Think of the future. You have to wonder how much regulation, for example, adds to small things, the fees that you pay, the price of the stuff that you pay at the grocery store. For example, I mean, you've got a broker who deals with your stocks and your investments and the rest of it. How much of that little stuff, that little commission that he takes apart, how much of that has to cover what he's got to pay somehow, somewhere to comply with a regulatory state. Well, you know, when you're thinking about it, commission-free sounds pretty good, doesn't it? And that's why Robinhood is something we want to tell you about. Robinhood, an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos, all commission-free. Other brokerages will charge you up to 10 bucks for each trade, but Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees. So you can trade stocks and keep all of your profits. All of your profits. Plus,

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there's a lot of explanation there if you're wondering, okay, well, commission-free, how do they make their money? It's incredibly easy to use and transparent. And if you are not fiscally savvy, like, you know, all the ins and outs, you will find everything explained to your satisfaction. And it's like, whoa, when can I start? You can start now. Ricochet.Robinhood.com. And thanks to Robinhood for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. The gentleman have asked me for my thoughts on Ricochet 4.0. I like it very much. So I like the colors, the rest of it, but I'm going to reserve everything that I say until next week because I

want people to go there and look and not, you know, be colored by, you know, who cares? What am I, a design expert or something like that? I'm more interested in something that I think does affect everybody and that's where Rob Long lives. Yes. In a macro sense,

maybe so because the depredations of his neighborhood may be coming to a neighborhood near you. How does it feel to be living, to be moving from Venice, Rob? Well, it feels good. I mean, I was, you know, I've been in, I have been a permanent, I've been a consistent, I should say, Southern California and Los Angeles resident for 30-plus years. And I've been bouncing back and forth between here and New York. And I suddenly realized, what am I doing? This is crazy. I like it in New York, so I should just live in New York. And if something happens and I have to come back to L.A., if there's a show that's being produced in L.A., which more and more seems like not the default setting for television, I can just rent a little apartment somewhere or an Airbnb and live that way.

But I am sitting here in my bedroom surrounded by books and possessions that I'm working through, and I'm not taking everything. I'm not moving everything. I'm doing the – I can't actually call it the Marie Kondo thing because I think she's a little more ruthless than I'm being. But I'm trying to be ruthless, as ruthless as I can be with my possessions and books. I will say this, that last night as I was rapidly sorting through books and trying not to think too hard and trying not – like I'm not – I'm trying to remind myself as you're going through books thing am i really going to take this book across the country and the question isn't does this book do i want to reread this book or am i going book shopping in a bookstore because that's kind of how it feels the question is do i want to have this book around me this specific particular edition of this book and um i have to say and i and i don't mean this i

mean i i this should be no surprise but all of the peter robinson books maybe there you go there you go good hey may i this is more than a sad i don't think i mentioned this to rob years ago i don't i care not to count them up although anybody may but sitting in the in my office in the reagan white house reading rob long in national review watching cheers every what was it thursday night what what night was cheers thursday night i still remember after all these years, Thursday night watching Cheers. I thought Rob Long was the coolest guy I knew. And of course, that California was the golden land for everybody with any even remotely creative impulse.

Of course, a part of this was the Ronald Reagan story himself. He moves from the middle of the country out to California and his whole life – his love of California was so – one of his favorite jokes was, of course, if the pilgrims had landed in California, nobody would have bothered to discover the rest of the country. And there was Rob Long and Rob and I became friends and I think of that study, that book line study, the amount of time I spent looking at the spines of those books, looking at books that Rob had read and think, oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's interesting. The parties that Rob has held there over the years, Andrew Breitbart hanging around the pizza oven out in back, Andrew's father-in-law, Orson Bean. I was in awe of Orson Bean because when I was four years old, I watched him on to tell the Truth, Orson Bean at Rob's house, Dinner in the Dining Room with Ann Coulter, an unbelievable kitchen with implements. I don't know, antique French cooking device,

but I couldn't even work out what half of the implements in that kitchen were. Rob, you have for all of these years, to me, that house has represented the culmination of a particular kind of aspiration. And now you're tossing it all over the side. You're just turning your back on it all. This is, I can't tell you how wounding that is. You can't live in the past. You got to like move on.

It's been a long time. What will you miss the most? About L.A. or the house? The house. I will miss. Both? About L.A. or the house? The house. I will miss. Both questions. The house first. Well, they were kind of inextricably linked, but this is true.

I will definitely miss Saturday afternoons with the doors open. Yes. And me falling asleep on the sofa. With the California breeze blowing through the house. Ocean breeze, yes. And L.A.? The town? You know, it's a town.

It's fine. I mean, I won't miss it. I've been here a long time. So, I mean, it's also changing. It should be for some other people i i like i just i for me the the um the the lack of isolation and the the the the busyness of new york and the fact that there's just so many people and i bump into people on the street um that i know or that i i almost know or whatever it that's a that's a very very very good trade for me i couldn do it. As much as I like New York, after about four or

five days, I tire of the noise and the horns and the honking and the rest of it and the people in the street. And it's fun and it's great and it's enlightening, but I want to get back to a place where I can stretch. I want to get back to a patch of ground that is my own. And I couldn't quite make that change that Rob is making because I like the fact that

there's nobody above me or below me or on the other side of the wall. And that may be a Midwestern thing, but, uh, that's how it is. It's a California thing too. I know. And I will miss Rom's house in the sense of memories as well. Ah, when the toilet paper was hanging from all of the branches, thanks to Roman, Roman and Doc J at that party. That was what Mary, what Mary, what merry great fun we had there. But no, I mean it's hard. To part with these things is good.

To do this sort of purging and cleaning is good. And in one sense also to leave a house where you've been for an awful long time is something that I dread. When I moved in here, I thought my last move, I want to be carried by two stout gentlemen on a stretcher down the steps, cold and blue, because I don't want to go. So it's brave of Rob to do this, and I admire it, I guess. But I'm sad for you. I found a portfolio I bought the other day at the postcard show for a buck of Venice, California in its early days after it had been platted out and they built the canals. I mean, as Rob, you can tell the story better than me. The guy who came up with this idea for this city, right?

And it was going to be this place of bungalows for ordinary folk. Literally. And it wasn't going to be for the rich and the hoity-toity. And it had this big entertainment pier and it had this ballroom. What I love the most about it was right next to the ocean, they built a natatorium so that people could actually go swim in a building next to the sea. Yeah, and the heated seawater was always being pumped into things, always heated seawater. And there are pictures of – I guess of like – maybe – I mean my house was built in 1904.

And on a street – it was not on a street. It was on a canal originally called lion canal but then they was one of the first ones they filled in um when when the when the land you know when the when the enterprise went broke um and and la at that time was like filled with enterprises like this was this and then hollywood land was one of them right so that's why we called hollywood right and uh the part of it was uh so they filled it in and then these became houses. But there's still that weird little bungalow feeling to everything. And and there was this idea that that that these were going to be the people's resorts is very much modeled after what they were doing in New York and Coney Island and places like that. The idea that you're going to have public bathing and heated seawater and for for working men men and women on their days off including there are

some i don't know if you have them in your packet there's some fantastic early like late victorian or you know before the 20s what they call bathing conveyances or what's these little boxes that women would go go in and they would carry the box basically down to the ocean, because they were always surrounded by a box, which always sounded very Sharia law kind of. And miniature trains and fanciful architecture, to give the idea that you were on some sort of romantic adventure. The architecture, a lot of the buildings were designed by the same fellow

who used a local girl of extraordinary fetching beauty by the standards of the day and put her face in the capitals of many of the arcades. So even though Venice is not what it was at all, and even though those great attractions are gone and what was once this unique little place has been subsumed into the larger city, you can still find the face of a girl from 1910, 1915 in plaster painted over a dozen times but still visible. Oh, it's still there. If you just crane your neck up and look. But don't crane your neck up and look because then you'll step in some poop or get a hypodermic needle. Yeah. Sadly, a little bit – that is on the increase here, which has only accelerated my departure. Well, we'll talk about that next week.

Are you going to drive yourself to New York? Are you just going to do the sensible thing and fly? Because it almost feels time for another Rob Long in his car across America. It does, actually. I'm going to do the sensible thing and fly this time. But there's going to be a couple road trips this summer for sure. Can't wait. Summer awaits us all.

Peter, Rob, it's been a pleasure. I remember, guys, ProFlowers, ProFlowers.com, Calm.com, and Robinhood. Make some money. Make yourself calmer. Make your mother happier. See all the wonderful things we do for you here? Support them for supporting us. If you enjoy the show, as we always say, please take a minute

or two or 30 seconds. I don't care. A review on iTunes would be nice because it lets more people discover us, which of course keeps the podcast going. And the more people who sign up, the less likely it is that Rob Long will ever have to have done you again. I'm kidding. He'll do it

in podcast number one every week. In the meantime, thank you for listening. I'm James Lomax, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. I was converted to the other side From the day I'd gotten there I met a girl who took me on a ride

I was young, I had no cares When I moved to California California I don't care When it moves to California California He gave me records I had never heard But we talked on purple hairs We set the needles, kissed the rolling stones But we played guitars in the air When it moves to California California We'll see you next time. Thank you. We'll be right back. And we really are a pair When it moves to California

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