The Ricochet Podcast - Modern Men

Episode Date: May 2, 2013

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (visit his site, Gingrich Productions) stops by to discuss disruptive technology, rail against big government, celebrate the rise of the states, examine the future of education, and suggest how to get Congress to promote entrepreneurs. And, of course, he also has a few thoughts on where the party goes from here. Then, National Review’s Bob Costa on the Ted... Source

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Innovate. The for two people. Relax before you fly and leave the rest to us. Book now at corkinternationalhotel.com. Activate program. This is nonsense. This is punishing the American people. The president, I think, has to decide. He actually is serious about entitlement reform, and he's willing to take on the left wing of his party.

We have no evidence of any of that. This is nonsense. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs and our guests today include Newt Gingrich. And we're feeling pretty good because Newt accepted the premise of several of our questions. Yes. We also have Bob Costa from National Review.

Quite the lineup. Let's have ourselves a podcast. This is nonsense. Yes, indeed, this is the Rookie Pay Podcast. What else would it be? And it's brought to you by Audible.com, the leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment on the internet. You can listen to audiobooks whenever, wherever, however you want.

That's right, however, you can use anything connected to the Amazon Whisper, WhisperNet system to get it all synced. It's easy. Just go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and get a free audiobook and a 30-day trial. And you know the great thing about audiobooks is when somebody misspells something on an audiobook,

you can't tell because it's being read. You're not seeing it. Isn't that right, Rob? Yes. So I suppose you saw that on the member feed. Somebody corrected your spelling. Yeah, I had a typo on the cover of the book that I did myself. That's the perils of it.

But as Rob is about to point out, and I'll do it for him, Tiny Lies is just $1.25. Cheap, right? And it's 150 pages, so that's less. I would like to say, yes, the Ricochet podcast is brought to you by Audible.com, but I also like to say, and by – because I like saying that. And by – you know, the old game show. And by Tiny Lies. Tiny Lies is a hilarious book by our own James Lilacs who is on the line right now and is too shy to do so.

But Tiny Lies is a wonderful book about those little classified ads that appeared in magazines and newspapers and I think comic books too, promising all sorts of cures and miraculous solutions to things. Very funny stuff. It's kind of in the vein of – James, kind of your other books, sort of unearthed artifacts from the past to remind us just how – Right. But since it's not in color, I can't charge $16 for it. Yeah, you can't charge $16 for it. It's a buck and a quarter, which is, I think, what I would call

a disruptive price economically, and you're sponsoring the podcast too, and I think, I know that the sense of humor on Ricochet and the sense of humor in the James Lylek brain are fully aligned and you'll all enjoy it. They're congruent and I thank

you for that. But you know, you gotta note that in these, when you sent away for things from these little lads in the back, oftentimes you would get on lists and they would send you things over and over and over again which bothered some people, which brings me we are talking also to Peter Robinson who I believe, old

chap you admitted yesterday, you were actually paying some coves to intercept your mail and to screen out that wretched junk mail. So I have to ask, do you have the microphone in your own hand today or do you have Jeeves there with the white gloves holding it for you? There is a marvelous scene from the biography of William Paley, the founder of CBS. Paley married one of three very glamorous sisters. And another of the sisters... A Gabor? Was it a Gabor? No, no, no, no, no. Much more glamorous.

Much more glamorous than that. Much more glamorous. And one of the other sisters married Jock Whitney, a member of one of the great rich oer wasp families of New York. The Whitney Museum is based on Whitney money. So Bill Paley, thinking that he had arrived and watching television one evening at the home of Jock Whitney, said, oh, Jock, by the way, I don't have to get up to change the

channel. I have something new at my home, a remote control. And Jock Whitney turned to Bill Paley and said, I don't have to get up to change the channel either. Whereupon he rang the bell for the butler to come in and change the channel for him. A lovely moment. I'm guessing that's

second or third generation wealth, though, right? Oh, at least. Andrew Carnegie's make their pile by being the guy who gets out of the chair. At least second generation. Actually, Rob, somehow that seems more like your line. Where did the Whitney's make their pile by being the guy who gets out of the chair. At least second generation. Actually, Rob, somehow that seems more like your line. Where did the Whitney's make their money? Was that steel, railroads? Steam, I think.

I think it was steam. Oh, as far back as the Vanderbilt. I think so, yeah. I do think I remember there's another version of that joke that occurred on a cooking show on a Mississippi, local Mississippi channel, where sort of a well-bred Jackson, Mississippi woman was cooking. She had her little housewife cooking show, and she looked at the camera and she said, now a lot of y'all have food processes, know it's funny dalestine is my food processor and it sort of pulled back and there was a um you know a dignified um older african-american lady doing all the shopping and

preparing so sort of the same idea but um slightly to to junk mail to junk mail, to junk mail. You are quite right, James, that last weekend I came home and found a staggering thing, to me at least. I had received, wrapped in plastic, one, two, three, four, five, six large, glossy catalogs from Restoration Hardware. Where as far as I can retell, I bought about two items, towel hangers for the kid's bathroom six years ago. And I've never been back since because the prices are – strike me as just too high. I'm not that kind of person. I can't afford it. And this package was so large that I thought, can it be? I got on the scale holding the package and then I got on the scale without the package.

And the difference was six pounds, six pounds of junk mail. If a kid in the neighborhood had dumped six pounds of garbage on my front lawn, I would have been within my rights to call the cops. I've just, I've had it with the United States Postal Service. But because the federal government subsidizes postal rates, so that the federal taxpayers are on the hook for this and people like Restoration Hardware can force me to tote me and who knows how many tens and hundreds of thousands of other Americans who happen to live in this or that zip code or fulfill this or that demographic requirement force us to tote six pounds of junk mail out to the – So I put up a post saying all this and I heard from a young fellow in Texas called Evan Baer, who is a founder of Outbox. And Outbox is supposed to scan your mail and let you choose online what you actually want delivered and not. I say supposed to. He was kind enough to give me the opportunity to sign up as a tester of the service, and I will do so later today.

We'll see how it works. Well, by all means, keep us posted. I looked at that service too. And the idea of having somebody actually interdict my, yes, having somebody interdict my mail and, and, and judge it for me and categorize it seems to be one of those things that I ought to be able to do myself. But I understand the frustration with restoration hardware, dumping six to seven pounds of these ghastly, awful catalogs where all color has been drained from the world, where people are living in a post-electrical, post-industrial ruins with the desaturated colors and no electricity and just nothing but candlelight and a wan, dispirited world. I hate those things. Restoration Hardware used to be a really cool place where they had lots of interesting things. And it actually was sort of a hardware store with a strange aesthetic dimension as well.

Now they decided, hmm, what the world needs is a place that sells sofa and paints more than anything else. So all of the cool little stuff that you went through for originally is gone. Forget about it. And you're just left with overstuffed things and pre-rotted wood furniture for that nostalgia of the mud look that the bourgeois... Imitation wormholes, exactly. Who needs it? So, Rob, I've got to ask you. Go on.

But I still don't get it. How do they scan it? Where is it? I don't know. No, they get it first. They intercept your... You are paying somebody to get your mail for you, to walk to the box, to take it,

and then to open it up and to look at it and judge it and send scans to you so that you need not they send scan so they they get your mail and they kind of take a picture of it and they scan it that's weird i mean i'm i'll sign me up i'm perfectly happy to do that but well i mean it means you're gonna come outbox.com just go look at the website explain what they do then on your ipod or on yourself on your smartphone or on your computer you can see you can look what you have. You can say, I don't want this, this, this, and this. Oh, and that item, that's an important legal document.

With Rob, of course, there are all those important legal documents arriving, this contract, that contract. And you can say, I'm going on a cooking tour of Mississippi. I don't want it delivered until such and such a date. You tell them when you want it delivered and they deliver it then and not before. Well, I have a P.O. box and I find that right around the corner. I find that that satisfies my problems.

Nobody sends junk mail to a P.O. box, do they? They do. But I actually managed to toss it on the way out of the post office. So I do triage really in 20 feet from my p.o box to the that's what i do i get everything at the mailbox and by the time i walked into the house i have passed judgment on all of them and they go to and they go to where they need the one thing i like

about the service that peter's describing and no they're not a sponsor guys that's not why we're talking about this yet i one of the things i like is that it gives you scan copies of everything because the more digital, the more paperless my particular work is, the happier I'm going to be. Also, what I like about it is that it is bringing a free market innovation. Yes. To a horrible, rancid, monopolistic government behemoth. Exactly. I'm a government behemoth. This idea that I have to get something just because somebody wants me to get it. Some advertiser is paying the government some subsidized rate to sort of deliver six pounds of nonsense to my front door. It's outrageous.

They scratch a certain itch, right? So with the telephone, it used to be the case that anybody could cause you to get up out of your chair in front of the television watching Rob Long's latest sitcom just by ringing the phone. No kidding. So now, of course, we have caller ID. We have various voicemail services. I don't – furthermore, the only person who gets phone calls at our home phone anymore is my wife. I haven't picked up my home phone, and I don't know how long, and I like it just that way.

I do not answer the... When my home phone rings, I do not answer it. That's the new... I know. Actually, that's my outgoing message, is I do not answer this phone. It's the opposite of what life used to be. I remember when the phone rang,

it was this imperative stabbing through the entire house, and everybody had to run towards the one unit that was bolted to the wall, When the phone rang, it was this imperative stabbing through the entire house. Right. And everybody had to run towards the one unit that was bolted to the wall and answer its cries, minister to it. I still have that instinct in me. And 90% of the time when I pick up the phone nowadays, it's, hello, this is Rachel. I'm calling about your credit card. There's nothing wrong. Exactly. Listen, I know that credit card. There's nothing wrong. Exactly.

Listen, I know that we have a very important guest coming. And I know that, you know, everybody knows Newt Gingrich is going to join us very soon. A brilliant, brilliant conservative Republican thinker, strategist, political guy. But he also is a brilliant thinker about this very stuff that I know we've been, you know, doing our pre-check kind of trivial stuff. I actually would like to have him – I would like to know what he would think about this stuff, too. So when he's on and we're talking to him, he's on. He's here. Oh, well, go ahead. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome, sir. Hello. How are you all doing? We're fine. Mr. Speaker, it's Peter Robinson here on with James Lilacs in Minneapolis and Rob Long down in Southern California. I'm in Palo Alto, as you know, at the Hoover Institution. Here's what we were just

talking about. There's a new service called Outbox.com. I'm signing up for it today that scans your mail. You look at it online and you decide what's junk mail and they don't deliver it. And if there's an important document and you're going to be out of town, you tell them when to deliver it and they deliver it then. And we were just saying, hallelujah. It seems as though it's been a while now since there's been a genuinely disruptive new technology. Peter Thiel, who's a friend of several of ours, very wealthy, very successful investor, one of the first investors in Facebook, but he has been saying for 18 months now that real innovation seems to be flattening out. What do you make of that, Speaker Gingrich?

Well, I think real innovation comes and goes in cycles, and I think it depends on which industry you look at. At Newt University, which is an online project that we have at Gingrich Productions, We recently spent, for example, 30 minutes on driverless cars. Google has a car now, as you know, in California, Peter, that has driven over 500,000 miles on public highways. A driverless car, if it succeeds, and there are 14 different companies working on it, would represent about $2 trillion a year in savings and about 31,000 or 32,000 lives a year in savings. Now, that would be a pretty disruptive technology. If you look at 3D printing, which is in its infancy,

3D printing is absolutely going to be a disruptive technology of enormous proportions. And the F-35, for example, our most modern fighter, has parts in it that are built by 3D printing that couldn't have been done 15 years ago. I have a good friend who is the chief paleontologist at the University of Texas, Ted Rowe, or Tim Rowe, rather. Tim has been deeply involved in a project

to use a CAT scan to get the accurate data on fossils. He's now put 4,000 fossils online at digimorph.com. Any student anywhere in the world can go to digimorph.com and, using a 3D printer, can print out their copy of the fossil, and it is 100% accurate. Wow. This is the kind of stuff. So I would say that Peter's right about Silicon Valley, which is in the lull, but it's in a lull after all, let's be clear,

which has been just an enormous wave of over 30 years of innovation. But in other parts of technology and other parts of the economy, we're just seeing a whole new wave start. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all. Installing, managing, supporting, and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters. Growing your business. Whether it's communications or security, Innovate has you covered.

Visit Innovate today. Innovate. The IT solutions people. Hey, Mr. Speaker, it's Rob Long in LA. How are you? I've got a question. The normal American consumer right now expects a certain level of efficiency. We have UPS and FedEx, and we've got these iPhones, and we expect the web to be working all the time. And we have this very high level of expectancy for the technology in our lives and all these sort of free market services that we use.

Why do we expect and why do we expect the large government services like healthcare and education? idea of one size fits all, big behemoth, uncustomizable, kind of retro Soviet-style delivery. I mean, how can we as conservatives convince the American people to demand the same level of service and responsiveness and efficiency from those things that we get from our, you know, smartphone? Well, you raise a question that Jim Pinkerton and I have been talking about since the 1980s, and something which The Economist wrote on almost 25 years ago when they pointed out the difference in productivity and the difference in consumer expectation between the private and public sectors. And I think part of the problem, frankly, is the Republican Party. The Republican Party has been intellectually a remarkably boring and timid institution

with people who aren't prepared to go out. It ain't enough to be anti-Obama. It's not enough to be anti-government because, in fact, you're going to have government. Even the toughest budget that Paul Ryan has been able to write has a multi-trillion dollar budget. And yet there is no political movement in America dedicated to the idea of modernity and government, of breaking out of the civil service straitjacket, breaking out of the unionized straightjacket, breaking out of the intellectual expectations of the left. And yet what I'm seeing happen, I wrote a piece, I do two free newsletters a week at gingrichproductions.com, and a couple of weeks ago I wrote about pioneers of the future versus

prisoners of the past. And what I see happening is in the private sector, outside of government, although frankly sometimes funded by government, you're seeing breakthroughs that are going to offer a quality choice so enormous that it's clearly going to break down government institutions. Udacity, which was created by Sebastian Thrun, who was the head of the Google driverless car project. Udacity is a company dedicated to reducing tuition by 90%. They just signed their first contract with San Jose State for 300 students as an experiment. The University of Wisconsin system has now announced that they're going to offer an online four-year course, a degree with no requirements for being on campus. You're going to see a revolution of disaggregation, decentralization, personalization, and stunningly high levels of capability. Sadly, or ironically, if you will, the best single book on this topic is by a liberal Democrat who, Peter, I know you know well,

the former mayor of San Francisco, current lieutenant governor of California, Gavin Newsom. I mean, anybody listening to us, go get a copy of Citizenville. Gavin and I just read deeply about social policy, but on this question of modernity and the potential of the internet

to recreate total citizen-based society and move power out's the conservatives, the Republicans who stand for this new idea? How do we identify this transformation of education with the GOP? Well, part of what I'm trying to do is actually reach out to new universities. We just posted a 75-minute interview with Mitch Daniel about innovation in government at Newt University, which is a terrific introduction to the concept. I'm working with a number of people, Dr. Mike Burgess, for example, who is a medical doctor, member of Congress, who's going to do a special short course for us on the importance of innovation

in medicine and why the Food and Drug Administration is a major inhibitor of better health in America. And I think, you know, I'm trying to reach out as rapidly as I can, both to the Republican Governors Association and Republican National Committee and the House and Senate membership to get folks to understand this is a new language. It requires a new way of thinking. It's not just anti-government. It's not just anti-government, it's not just

cheaper. For example, I don't think austerity is ever going to work as a political movement, because austerity means a level of sacrifice. People don't hire political leaders to cause them pain. But I think frugality could work as a remarkable political movement combined with modernity, and you could really have a new conversation by 2014. But it's going to take a number of people willing to spend serious time developing the language and thinking it through.

Speaker Gingrich, Peter here once again. What do you say? There's so many of them here in Silicon Valley. I know you know this. Peter Thiel is an exception by the way. He's very engaged in public life. But I meet a lot of the young engineers and their fundamental attitude is forget about government. Forget about politics. It's old-fashioned. It's stuck.

It doesn't work. I am just going to turn my back on that and dedicate myself entirely to what is that we may be headed in the direction of, say, for example, Britain, where Mrs. Thatcher's revolution of 30 years ago succeeded halfway in the sense that there's about half of Britain is a free private economy. And if you want to enter that and lead your life in the private sector, you can do so and you can do well. The price you pay is a heavy rate of taxation for the other half, which is old-fashioned and lives in a giant welfare state that even Mrs. Thatcher never really changed much. And it seems as though that in some ways where we've got this huge old-fashioned government sector and it's growing even though we live in the 21st century. So what do you say to the young engineer here in Silicon Valley who says, oh, don't even talk to me about politics? Well, look, I think if they don't get involved in politics, I'd say, fine,

go invent a competitive replacement. I mean, the thing I like about what Sebastian Thrun has done is that Udacity isn't lobbying to change government. Udacity is saying, we're going to deliver a better education at 10% of the cost. Now, there is a moment where the gap in cost and convenience becomes crushing. And I think sometimes we should think about transitions and growth rather than immediate sharp turns. If you go back and study the origin of Walmart and the origin of McDonald's, they both start fairly small and they both grow by simply out-competing

all of their rivals. And I think that you could easily have a very similar pattern here and it's something that I would, you know, I think we should be looking at very, very seriously. And what's the political analog to that? Is that, is that, would that be what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin?

He has one or two big battles. It's a piece of it. Yeah. Look, there's dozens of people doing smart things. And that's, that's the other thing is that the Washington press corps, the political press corps is totally focused myopically on the president and the Congress. You go out to the States, and this is why we did the 75-minute interview with Mitch Daniel. You go out to the states and you look at a Bobby Jindal.

You look at what's happening with Scott Walker. You look at John Kasich. I was just down with Nikki Haley's folks and the things that they're doing in South Carolina. There is a lot of innovation at the state level. Governor Deal in Georgia is doing some very innovative things. Governor Scott in Florida is doing very innovative things. So I think it's important to understand that many things are starting to change. They just may not be changing at the level of the National Press Corps. And one of my goals, frankly, is to get members of Congress and Republican

governors to create links where they don't ask the entrepreneur to become the politician. They ask the entrepreneur to educate them and to show them what the entrepreneur is capable of. And I think we can have a lot of success in that kind of approach. One more question from Peter here, Speaker Gingrich. I know Rob and James want to ask another question or two as well. Reince Priebus, chairman of the RNC, and the RNC released a report about how the Republican Party needed to modernize itself. I had lunch – actually, I've had lunch a couple of

times out here. As you know, Bain Capital is a large presence here in Northern California. So I know a number of people who knew Mitt Romney and a number who worked on his campaign. And what you hear over and over and over again, and it seems reflected in the Reince Priebus report, is that the primary process is broken. And what I hear from folks who worked for Newt Gingrich, I mean, for Mitt Romney, is that they had to spend so much money during the primary process slowing down Newt Gingrich that it bled them. So what's your view on that primary process in which you played such a central role? Was that thing just a kind of malfunction of American politics? The fact is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had one fewer debates than

Republicans had in 2012. The fact is that the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign waged all the way into June. The fact that we nominated somebody who wasn't sure what he believed, wasn't capable of communicating it, alienated 47% of the country, and then alienated Latinos and Asians. It's not the problem of the primaries. And I think we ought to quit trying to pretend that it's a mechanical problem. You have a Republican consultant culture that would not have understood this conversation at all. You have a desperate desire to run negative, mean-spirited campaigns.

And you have a party which is technologically a generation behind the Democrats. So all those are going to get fixed, and I think that Ryan's previous is doing an amazing job working on it. We have a project at Gingrich Productions working on it, but I think we ought to recognize that when we consist in nominating, as we have since 1988, candidates who are inarticulate, either because they're not sure what they believe or because they don't think communicating is important, you're not going to win.

You lead a free people by language that is clear, ideas that are compelling, and such confidence in your own thinking that you're not afraid to go on The View or to go on Jay Leno or to go anywhere and talk about your ideas. Hey, Mr. Speaker, it's Rob again. So just to be practical, one of the things that's happening right now in Ricochet, our community keeps sorting out and keeps sort of thrashing out. It's probably a very simplistic formula. So I kind of like you to ring in on it because I'm sure you have a sort of a more multidimensional

way to think about it. Just do we move left? Do we move center? Do we change the message? I think you go to modernity. I'd urge everybody to go to Gamer's Productions and read the little paper I wrote. It's one of my newsletters on pioneers of the future versus prisoners of the past. And I think this can be a forward-past fight

rather than a right-left fight. And I think we're vastly more likely to win a forward-past fight because the Democrats are trapped by their interest groups and trapped by their ideology into a rigid defense of a world that doesn't work. But how would you apply that to things that the sort of current problems like immigration or gay marriage or the wedge issues that the left or certainly the media use against Republicans and conservatives? Well, I'll just give you one example, and then I've got to run a test for an airplane.

I would focus very – if you want to talk about social issues, I would talk about Dr. Gosnell in Philadelphia. How many Americans are comfortable in our country with a mass murderer like that? And that the state government, for political correctness reasons, has rigidly avoided looking at it. Right, right. And let the left defend Dr. Gosnell. Okay. Thanks so much. Good talking to you guys.

Great to talk to you. Well, you know, we're clear. Whenever I hear him speak, I always think, man, why isn't he running? And then he runs, and then I think, well, why can't he win? It's always the same cycle with Newt Gingrich. He's a very, very impressive thinker, very impressive speaker, very impressive strategist. And so I guess we got to link to Gingrich. I'm here.

I'm here. I just, I had to go. I have a workman coming, so I had to go check the door. And in such, I missed signing off to Newt. You're absolutely right, Rob. But the problem is, is, you know,

a lot of the electorate looks at Newton says, well, he doesn't like me because, um, because he, because I'm not as smart as he is. And they can, they can feel they, they, they intuit that. I mean, they, they infer it. It might not actually be there, but that's what they get. They don't want to be lectured. They don't want to be, uh, they don't want to be told hard truths, doled out with the hard tech that Newt usually cooks up. He doesn't really give you the bad news. I mean, he gives you, I mean, I really do think

that you can distill his vision into backward versus forward, past versus future. I think that's correct. I really do think that he's been consistently saying or analyzing and projecting a vision of American-American politics and American political policy consistently that way

since 1994. Whether it's been kind of, sometimes it's been a little wacko, sometimes it hasn't been, but it's always been pretty consistent. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business? At Innovate, we are the IT solutions people for businesses across Ireland. From network security to cloud productivity, we handle it all. Installing, managing, supporting and reporting on your entire IT and telecoms environment so you can focus on what really matters, growing your business. Whether it's communications or security, Innovate has you covered. Visit Innovate today.

Innovate, the IT solutions people. And I think if you go back to 1994, and I certainly say, I mean, I met him in 1993 in January. I was walking through the halls of the Mayflower Hotel at a National Review Institute conference. And I met this very intense congressman from Georgia with a shock of white hair who approached me and we talked and he told me he had a plan to retake the house in 1994 and he gave me his card. And I remember walking away from that thinking to myself, well, the Republican Party is doomed because they clearly have a lunatic in charge. And in a way they did, right? Because you have to be audacious and you have to believe these things. But I suspect that if in 1994 you went back and you listened to all his things that people said and rolled their eyes about and said even as a futurist, we're going to come to pass, you'd find that those things have happened. I mean it is astonishing just technologically how we started this podcast talking about all the things that have changed since 1994.

And he was talking about a lot of those things. So in a way, I think we as a party or certainly we as a movement or even we maybe as a country ignore him at our peril. He is saying something valuable. a country. Ignore him at our peril. I agree. I agree absolutely. And I love him not just for the ideas, but for the fact that he doesn't accept the premises that are put to him by the mainstream media or by the liberal establishment when it comes to phrasing these issues. You mentioned the old days when Gingrich

was just up and coming and became the evilest man in America, the Grinch who stole Christmas. But Wired magazine at the same time thought, hmm, you know, this guy is smart and futuristic and technological and all that stuff. And they ran a cover story on Newt Gingrich, which had him looking very, very doubtful and suspicious and somebody you might not want to trust. But it pointed out that this guy actually is apprehending the future in the broad technological

terms that geeks like Wired loved. And one of the reasons I love Newt is that he will look at something and say that there is a clear answer, there is a technological answer, and half the time it will involve space-based anti-gravitational platforms. I mean, he's thinking that far ahead, which is great. On the other hand, though, he came up with something, there's a term that he kept using, modernity. And I love the idea of somehow managing to portray, which we know is the case, the Democrats as the party of, well, these ideas were progressive a hundred years ago. I mean, I can almost see Jon Hamm standing in a madman's suit with a Pepsi in one hand and saying, you know, these ideas were progressive a hundred years ago, but it's time for a modern party. I like the idea of the GOP just deciding we're going to be the modern party. But, of course, everybody does think they're modern, don't they?

I remember when I was watching the Master and Commander movie and Russell Crowe unveils a model of the new French ship that is going to change naval warfare. It says, gentlemen, the modern world. Everyone always thinks they live in the modern world. And if you want that – What's bananas to me – I keep going back to this. What's bananas to me is just how weirdly retro this administration is.

Every single one of their proposals, really, I think down to the – I can't think of one that isn't, is right out of the 1972 playbook. This guy went and just drank up whatever nonsense they were selling in his graduate seminars. You know, the people who taught him were the hippies of 72 and 68. So they believed all this big government nonsense, right? Yes. That's who that's who he learned from. And that that was those are the policy prescriptions they had. And and it's all about single payer. It's all about all this nonsense.

It's all about all this kind of crackpot early post-60s radical political movement. Since it was modern to them at the time of their intellectual adolescence, it is perpetually about almost 50 years ago, at least 40 – legitimately a 40-year-old policy prescription at a time when a computer that – a calculating power of an iPhone had to be – fit into a room. It had to have a room for it. Right. Univac system that required drums and tubes and the rest of it. You know, when I mentioned the master and commander, that was my desperate attempt to segue over the chasm to get us to Audible. I know, I know, I know. But, you know, the other thing that I could have done is to point out,

he mentioned a book by Gavin Newsom. And whenever he says Gavin Newsom, I picture Gavin McLeod and Tommy Newsom, the old band director from The Night Show, somehow fused into one small, bald, smiling guy. But Gavin Newsom's book, if you want to talk about educational reform, if you want to talk about reshaping technology, et cetera, you can go to audible.com, do search terms on any of these things, and something's going to pop up. It could be a fictional story about old schools, like Up the Down Staircase, perhaps, or it

could be one of these new books by Newt or others that predict where we should go and where we ought not to. Audible, of course, audible.com is a proud sponsor of this podcast, and they're happy to give you, you, a free audio book of your choice. It wouldn't be any fun if it was somebody else's. In a 30-day free trial, there's 100,000 titles. You're going to find something, and it's got that incredible whisper-sync technology that automatically syncs your Kindle to your audio device. By Kindle, of course, I mean anything that's running the Kindle app, which is just about every one of those magnificent, marvelous technological computational systems you've got in your back pocket.

You've got to hear it to believe it, and you've got to see it to believe it as well. Well, I've given my pick, of course, which is The Master and Commander by Gavin Newsom. And I'm going to go to Rob and Peter. And quickly, guys, is there a book that you would like people to listen to and or read? Yeah. I ran into – this is the time of year when there are all kinds of school events, end of school events, graduation events and so forth. They have a son graduating from high school. And I ran into someone that I hadn't seen in a couple of years and she was listening to a book of mine, lo and behold.

And I thought to myself as she described it, you know, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. So I would like to recommend how Ronald Reagan changed my life, read by me, of all people. There you go, a little self-promotion. And by the way, I don't get any royalty. It's been long.

I haven't, there's no money in it. I'm just doing it for the fun of it. I thought, hmm, you know, that wasn't quite a... That was a pretty good book. All right, Rob, over to you. I am going to recommend anything by Newt Gingrich. For sure. There you go. That's a great idea, Peter.

I should do an audio book, not of my picture books, because that would be difficult. Okay, you're looking at a really rotten piece of jello here. Imagine that it's kind of, you know, that's a great idea, Peter. I should do an audio book, not of my picture books because that would be difficult. Okay, you're looking at a really rotten piece of jello here. Imagine that it's kind of lime green. I can't do that. I should do the last novel except I was at dinner on Tuesday night, the Freedom Forum dinner here in Minneapolis, and the woman next to me had read my last novel. I said, well, did you like it?

She said, for the most part. You just want to crawl under the chair, under the table and say, let's not go any further with this. Turns out she had no fellow feeling for the setting or the time. So 1980s Minneapolis meant nothing to her. But after we got done speaking, we listened to somebody who, in my estimation, is up there with Newt as far as clear thinking. And that was Steve Forbes. He came to town and gave an exceptional talk. We have got to get him on the podcast because here's a man who's got great confidence in the clarity and the necessity and the inevitability of things that will reshape and transform America. He's a tremendous optimist and just a great guy to listen to.

But when it comes to the particulars of the normal daily American scene, the scrum of Washington, the bitter politics, the backstabbing, all that stuff. You've got to go to somebody who's there on the ground and to one of the keenest political observers and damn his eyes, one of the youngest as well, making us all feel like old goats. And that, of course, would be National Review's Bob Costa, Washington-based political reporter for National Review. He covers the White House, Congress, and campaigns. You can follow him on Twitter at RobertCostaNRO. That's uppercase R, uppercase C, N-R-O. And we are happy to have him on the podcast and tell us what is going on in Washington today.

Robert, welcome. Great, great to join you. Bob, Peter, Peter, Rob, oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to ask, the big thing everyone's talking about is whether or not President Obama is indeed a lame duck and whether that means both legs are halting firm or just one wing. I think the way this is moving is pretty slow. I mean I'm hearing that the House is going to take its sweet time and the Senate may get 70 votes, 80 votes on immigration. But moving forward, Bob Goodlatte, head of the Judiciary Committee in the House, he's not in any rush, and there's still a real reservation to have this path to legalization. So fair to say that it might get through the Senate but can't get through the House.

I wouldn't say, Peter, that it can't get through the House. When you look at what John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy, the top three, have said publicly, they've been very wary of saying it can't get through the House. And even Bob Goodlatte, judiciary chair, has been hesitant to say it can't get through the House. But it's going to be much more of a rocky climb, and there's really a sense among conservatives in the House – I was just over there the other day talking to some aides and they said that they want to fix the current system. They don't see the need to rush this and they don't buy the political argument that is necessary to do this now. Hey, Bob, Peter here again. Ted Cruz, a member of the United States Senate for what, three and a half months, 42 years old, seems to have annoyed – he's infuriated the press and raged the Democrats and also, truth to tell, as best I can see, annoyed a lot of his own Republican colleagues. And now Bob Costa says he's running for president of the United States.

Explain this one to us, Bob. Sure, I know. It sounds odd, someone who just got elected to the Senate. Ted Cruz, a year ago, people were wondering if he could win a primary for Senate in Texas against David Dewhurst. And it does seem a tad rushed to have this kind of presidential chatter. But let me tell you why it's real and why some of my most trusted sources tell me that this is very real. It's because Ted Cruz has had such a bombastic start to the Senate, the way he went after Chuck Hagel, John Brennan, being called a wacko bird by John McCain. And though he hasn't passed any major legislation, he's really become the darling of the right. And there's a sense in the Senate, at least, among conservatives and

conservative leaders that Rand Paul on immigration, Marco Rubio on immigration, Paul Ryan, and so many other 2016 contenders are moving to the center right on immigration. And they think Cruz is their champion to be against what they think is amnesty, against the Gang of Eight plan. So he really has a sweet spot now of being the favorite of the right. He gave this keynote speech at CPAC. And so here's what's been playing out behind the scenes, Peter and James, is that you have a lot of big-time donors are frustrated with National Republicans. They can't stand the RNC autopsy, and so they're looking for some kind of new horse that they could ride ahead of 2016. And so they've been inviting Cruz to these private events. They've been inviting him to South Carolina. Cruz was just in Palm Springs over the weekend with the Koch brothers.

It sounds like some liberal fantasy, huddling with the Koch brothers, but that's where he was. And they've been asking him to consider running for president. A lot of conservative grandees have been doing this. And instead of brushing them aside and saying, oh, no, I just got here, from what I hear from people I know and trust is that he's very serious listening to them. He's open to the idea, and some of his top friends and advisors are also open to the idea. So nothing's being built. There's no campaign operation in Des Moines. But this is someone who I think you have to count it in the equation of 2016. And so just because I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm stupid here. He was born in this country. I thought he was born in Canada. He was born in Calgary. But he he actually is already. Remember, Ted Cruz considers himself. He'll tell you he's a brilliant constitutional lawyer, Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law grad. And he he's summa cum laude in everything.

And he thinks that he can make a real argument on being a natural-born citizen because though his father was a refugee from Cuba, Rafael Cruz, came to the United States with a $100 son in his underwear, his mother was a U.S. citizen at time of birth in Canada. So though he was born in Calgary, he thinks because his mother was a U.S. citizen, he could be considered a natural-born citizen. And when you talk to his confidants, they say that behind the scenes, Cruz has often talked about how the case law on natural-born citizenship is very weak. It's never been taken to the Supreme Court, and he thinks he could win that fight. So the other side could be birthers. That would just be wonderful. So, Bob, so what we have to the extent that the Republican primary is already underway, and let's face it, in some basic way, it is already underway when it comes to fundraising, the attentions of people like Bob the last time around in that, whereas last time around it was the right that was crowded and the center that Mitt Romney had more or less to himself.

I'm oversimplifying it here, but you get the picture. This time around, the feeling is that the center is crowded and Ted Cruz has the right to himself. Fair? I think that's part of the fluid dynamic that is emerging here. I mean it's so early, but you're right. That is part of the – because you had guys like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio. They already – when you talk to their teams, they consider themselves to be Tea Party favorites, to be the darlings of the conservative movement.

So they think they have this room to move to the center on certain issues and not lose that favor from the right. But the calculation of Cruz and others who are supporting him is that that's the wrong strategy for 2016, that in fact, the Cruz calculation is the party does not want to really change. Conservatives aren't eager to move to the center, and they want to move farther to the right in 2016, especially since they feel they were burned by McCain and Romney and other moderates. Bob, do you have sources near – close to Rubio? I am just wondering if it is yet happening. It seems to me it has to happen if not today, then tomorrow and if not tomorrow, then two weeks from now that Marco Rubio says to himself, immigration, what have I done?

Politically, he was the darling and now it's just complication after complication. The bill is 800 pages long. The House isn't saying it can't be passed, but they're not enthusiastic about it. It's just a well, just spent a lot of time with Rubio last week. And there's a lot of different balls in the air for Marco Rubio, because even if immigration reform fails, because he tries, he knows he's going to be feted by the national press as someone who took a political risk. So that's very helpful to him to be considered a national contender, because the left and the mainstream press goes weak at the knees when anyone tries to do bipartisan compromise. So he wanted to get something like that on the table. And as much as he wants it to pass, it doesn't kill him if it doesn't pass. And at the same time, his staff – and he really believes in this.

Cesar Conda is his chief of staff. Cesar Conda, longtime conservative activist, was a Cheney advisor. But back in the 90s, Cesar Conda was a congressional staffer who was working hard to get immigration reform passed with, of all people, Paul Ryan, who was then a congressional aide. And so Rubio's staff is full of people who are presidential-level contenders. He has Tim Polanyi's top aide, Alex Conant, as his communications director, Cesar Conda, Terry Sullivan helping with fundraising, longtime Republican strategist. And so Rubio thinks – look, he's on the cover of National Review this week. It just came out today, Rubio's folly on immigration. But he doesn't think he's so badly burned that he can't almost re-woo those people he won over in 2010 because he needed to get something on the table.

Just like Obama tried to do something with Dick Lugar on nukes to say like he had some kind of gravitas. This is Rubio's stab at gravitas. Fail or win, he gets some gravitas here. OK, Bob, so far, Peter here, one more time. Rob is going to want to ask you some questions. James is going to. But I've got you for one more question. And here it is. We just had on Speaker Gingrich, and he said, put Washington aside.

The interesting action, I'm paraphrasing him. But the interesting action here is out in the states. And we've just been talking about Cruz is making his move this way. Rand Paul has this support. Rubio thinks that that's all the senate. It's all Washington. What about a Scott Walker who's actually – by contrast with Ted Cruz who God bless him, his total public record is as attorney – deputy attorney general I believe in Texas. He's argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. Scott Walker has reformed a state. Sam Brownback in Kansas just cut taxes the most deeply that they've ever been cut in Kansas history.

Jeb Bush, whom I myself interviewed 10 days ago, he'll make up his mind next year, he said, about whether he's running for president. But he was governor. Governor, the man who does things rather than talks about doing things. Governor of the fourth biggest state for eight years. Democrats outnumber Republicans by half a million in Florida. For every year, for eight years in a row, in a state with no income tax in the first place,

he cut taxes. He proved so compelling that he won even the non-Cuban Hispanic vote. And after eight years in office, he left with approval ratings of 63%. Where do the governors and former governors stand as the jockeying for 2016 proceeds? It's mixed. I think it's a great question about the governors. But Jeb Bush, I mean, remember, he hasn't been on a ballot since 2002, and so all the statistics you just reeled off are accurate, and they really – he's old. And if you talk to people in their 20s and 30s in the Republican Party, the type of people who are so excited and enthralled by Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, they don't know who Jeb Bush is. In fact, they know him as this guy who gave a wishy-washy speak at cpac and who wrote an immigration book that didn't really change the debate and so national conservative people have

been following the movement and the party for years they love and respect jeb but he doesn't have the base and and i'll give you a little scoop here i was talking to someone who knows him quite well yesterday and said what is jeb he doesn't think jeb is going to run because jeb in his gut doesn't have the ambition to do it, to really mount the national campaign. I agree with that. And in fact, it's George P. Bush, his son, who's running for land commissioner in Texas, who Jeb thinks is the next Bush to run. And there's no appetite in Jeb to do this. In fact, I hear Jeb was really disappointed and frustrated with how his book was received.

He didn't want it to be considered a 2016 testing operation. And he wanted to be considered a policy guy. And he's just sick and tired of always being touted as a presidential contender when he really just wants to be a wonk. And Brownback, though, fizzled when he tried to run for president a few years ago. Not the most charismatic guy, doing a lot of interesting things in the states. Gingrich is right. The most interesting things in policy are happening in the states. But Walker is someone to write. I broke the news about a month ago that Walker's working with Mark Thiessen, a former Bush chief speechwriter, on a book about the Wisconsin recalls. But of course, Thiessen's very well versed on everything, domestic, but especially foreign policy. So when you have Mark Thiessen as your writer for your book, that shows me that you care about national politics and foreign policy.

And Walker, if he wins reelection in 2014, he will be a top-tier contender. But my only fear with Walker is that it could be like George Allen losing in 2006 and never being part of the 08 conversation. Winning in Wisconsin is going to be very tough. He won in a summer for the recall election, different kind of campaign there. But winning in 2014 will be difficult, especially when you see someone like Tammy Baldwin got elected to the Senate there last time. Yeah, but I mean, hey, hey, Bob, it's Rob Long in L.A. How are you? Hey, how are you? Just to finish the Scott Walker thing. But I mean, Scott Walker has accomplished amazing things, probably more than anyone, right? Yeah, more than anyone. I mean, I think Scott Walker is a genuine hero for the movement.

So, I mean, he may I think he's different from George Allen in that respect. George Allen was sort of an apparatchik, but Scott Walker is a guy who broke the unions. But I got a question, sort of a 30,000-foot view. Is Barack Obama at this point a zombie president? Because it doesn't seem to be much of the policy drive there. We seem to be fighting kind of a urban sort of trench warfare

based on popularity numbers. I don't really see an agenda there. I don't really even see that kind of a drive there. He seems exhausted. Is he kind of keeping his powder dry for the summer, for the autumn? What's the next big move for him? I mean just put yourself in his position for a minute. I have a hard time figuring him out right now.

I think it's quite easy to figure him out. He's someone who's looking ahead to January 2015. His entire legislative agenda has no chance in the next two years in divided government. House Republicans are not eager to do anything with him. He tried on guns, failed. Immigration, stumbling. What's next on his agenda? The debt stealing? Even that's up for grabs. No one knows how that's going to play out later this summer. So for 2013, 2014, Obama, I think it's just going to be very much focused on message politics, focused on playing blame game on guns and immigration, trying to get these suburban Republicans who are in purple districts to get nervous because if he can pick off 10, 20 seats, he could be in a real different position in 2015 for the final two years of his term.

So he's almost kind of a strange lame duck. He's a lame duck now in a lot of ways for policy and divided government. That doesn't mean, though, he's always going to be a lame duck in the second term. But that requires a certain amount of passion. I mean it requires caring. And when Rob used the term zombie president, that's sometimes the feeling that you get. He's standing, he's walking, he's talking, but there's no life there. There's no interest anymore. I mean, this happens with every guy in a second term. And I always thought that in the Oval Office where the president sits, they should engrave on the other

side of the wall so he sees it at all times. Second terms suck. So they realize what they're up against. But there doesn't seem, the passion, the spark seems to be gone, right? Or is this just what we're getting by watching a little bit of a news conference? No, I mean, I have one anecdote I can share that I think kind of highlights that. So I spoke to a U.S. senator after, this was about two, three weeks ago – after he had dinner with the president with a small group of Republican senators. I said off the record, on deep background, what was Obama really like? And he said, when I had dinner with Clinton – this is the senator talking – Clinton really tried to engage me. He knew my wife's name. He knew my kid's name. He had done his research. He had found out what sports team I liked. He was asking about

sports scores. He did all the little things team I liked. He was asking about sports scores. He did all the little things that matter as you move towards a larger legislative goal, those personal relationships. He said Obama, very pleasant fellow, actually smarter and kinder behind the scenes than most people realize, but doesn't have the level of engagement of a Clinton. And I think that has hurt him not only with Republicans, but with Democrats. And that hurts his entire agenda because Washington is a town of relationships. Well, Clinton was a user and a schmoozer, right? And there seems to be something remote and professorial about Obama that LBJ, he ain't. Well, that's why the other day when Maureen Dowd wrote that column about he should have been like the American president, he should have been doing this and that on Capitol Hill.

People just laugh at that here in Washington because what's going to change five years in? This guy has been aloof. He's been disengaged from the legislative process since he got elected to office. So this idea that Obama is suddenly going to change and have some kind of second-term epiphany, it's scoffed at in Washington. That's true, Bob, but you have to realize that the bright side to this is that now everybody really completely and totally agrees that Marine Dowd is a useless idiot when it comes to talking about these things. Indeed. Indeed. One last question for you from Peter Robinson. Dan Kessler here at the Hoover Institution had a piece in the Wall Street Journal the day before yesterday on the rollout of Obamacare. And he pointed out that for large segments of the population,

Obamacare is going to mean quite a sharp increase in insurance premiums. Max Baucus, the now retiring senator, Democratic senator and supporter of Obamacare from Montana, said, what was it, a week ago, 10 days ago, that the implementation of Obamacare looks like a train wreck. Is there a sense, you mentioned that President Obama's looking to the 2014 elections. Is there a growing sense that the rollout of Obamacare will prove decisive in favor of Republicans in 2014? Is there a sense that the country is about to get really angry about this? Publicly, they say that. Privately, not so much. There's a real fear in the Republican Party, at least among senior leadership, that they want to make Obamacare the issue of 2014.

But there's a fear that the country is kind of warmly accepting Obamacare. They're not ready to rally against it yet. Yes, implementation is going to be a train wreck. The costs are going to go up for many people. But will there be an uproar? Will there be a Tea Party-type movement against the implementation of Obamacare? Republicans are trying to stoke that enthusiasm. But when you look at the polls from 2012, Obamacare didn't help the president but didn't exactly kill him either. And so whether the nitty-gritty details of implementation really give Republicans a rallying point just remains to be seen. Well, when that happens, we of course will turn to you at National Review and on Twitter and elsewhere. Mr. Costa, are you going to be on the National Review cruise this summer?

I will. We'll be going frolicky in the fjords. That we will do actually. I'm doing that too. James, are you doing that? Absolutely. Absolutely. I can't.

And you're excited about it, right? Of course I am. I've been on this ship about 19 times. I wish it would be a different vessel. Well, it starts in Amsterdam now instead of Florida. So it's quite a different kind of trip. I'm showing up a day early in Amsterdam because you just have to investigate the horrible moral decay that's going on and figure out what we can do to stop it.

It's going to require some sampling of the various fleshpots, but I'm sure I can expense it. Jack will not mind. Thanks, Bob. We'll see you again down the road. We welcome your input as ever at Ricochet, and we'll look forward to seeing you at the corner. Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it, guys. Big fans.

Thanks a lot. Well, you know, we – Can I just say something? What happened to – you know, I had to – when I was reading NR and are when I was when I first started writing for National Review in 1993. That's how old I am. January of 1993 or February of 93 was my first column. And it seemed kind of stuffy. I mean, in a good way.

Right. And you know what I mean? Like, that's what it was. It was a stuffy thing. And I always felt like, OK, the people writing for it, you know, they were sort of elevated in some way. And I don't mean that necessarily as a good thing. But Costa and a bunch of – Hold on.

Let's just be clear. You mean stuffy as a compliment and elevated as a term of denigration. Isn't that weird? Yeah, I do. I know how strange that sounds, but I do. Snooty and clubby, perhaps, is what you mean. Yeah, a little bit, but also from a position

of great intellectual what would the word be? Intellectual grounding, I would say. And then they let you and me in, right? Yeah, exactly. But what I love about it now is that people like Costa are there and Costa – Garrity, you know, Garrity and Costa and a few others like that are just like super whip smart and know stuff. And I don't know.

Maybe, Peter, maybe you and I are roughly having the same impression. There was a certain kind – and I kind of – god damn. Man, I sound like an old man. But there used to be a certain kind of young guy in politics or in political reporting who was kind of a callow, moron, know-it-all, pain in the butt. That would be Maureen Dowd really. Well, I mean the old days, yeah. But like just a callow kind of fool who you just had to put up with and listen to and didn't really know anything. And somehow – and NR to really do some serious,

not just reporting but thinking and fact-gathering and analysis that – I don't know. I'm just – I'm kind of in awe. I think they're really great. They're really great. The one place I might differ from you is the way you put it when you said not just reporting. Just reporting when it's well done and Garrity and Costa do it really well is a beautiful thing to behold. That's right. That's very true. NR had a lot, has always had a lot

of opinion and analysis, but reporting, I talked to so-and-so yesterday. I was on the Hill the day before you, I was with a Republican Senator and talking to him off the – that is invaluable. It's just invaluable and they do it beautifully. They're hardworking guys who know the town and have sources. There's just no substitute for that. You know when you report on actual things and you report actual facts, some people will accuse you of not really being conservative at all. Yeah. Because everything has got to have the right slant elsewhere. Otherwise, you are a rhino.

You are somebody to be cast out. You've got to prove constantly these people sometimes by these people. I mean, a certain core element of the Conservative Party that believes there's no variation from standard basic bedrock ideas. Peter, for example, is a total rhino. We all know that. But Peter, if you had to tattoo something on your body in order to prove to these people, these moss-backed dinosaurs, that you are indeed a conservative, what would it be? That was the topic of a threaded ricochet, and all sorts of people chimed in. The winner, I believe, gets a $10 Amazon gift certificate. And Peter, which of the tattoo suggestions and their locations did you like the most?

Well, here's to you, Mrs. Robinson. I've heard that a lot over the years. My own – a full tattoo of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Paul II in action. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? By the way – I don't think – they didn't have the one I would want. I was looking through it the other day. Maybe somebody added it later, but they didn't have the one I thought would –

I think the one you'd want on your back, a full-back tattoo, Reagan and Gorbachev at the limo in Reykjavik when Gorbachev looks – has been defeated and he looks at Reagan and says, Mr. President, what could I have done? And Reagan looks at him with his steely gaze and says, you could have said yes. Yes, yes. With that dialogue also tattooed on him. All this.

Yes. Roger Stone. Roger Stone. No, you're going to put a little microchip in the back, Peter, so that when somebody slaps you on the back, you hear the entire dialogue. You could have said yes. Roger Stone, an old friend from the Reagan days. Roger, a political activist.

He now lives in Florida. Roger actually did. This is true. Actually did have Richard Nixon tattooed between his shoulder blades. So it's not quite as – yes, it is as crazy as it sounds. I would do Maggie Thatcher in a grass skirt under your bicep and then like a sailor, you can flex it and make her dance. OK, Rob. So what would Rob – it wouldn't be a rhino you'd have tattooed.

What would your tattoo be, Rob? Yeah, question mark. We'll see. We'll see. The Chinese character for – I don't know. We'll see. I wish – for, I don't know, we'll see. For I'm 60% with you. I wish that when I was 25 years old,

I had gotten a full body tattoo of myself. Because then I would just never age. I'd always look exactly like I did in a youthful era. I don't know why I never thought of that before. I'm generally not in favor of them personally, myself. I don't like them and done everything I possibly can to tell my daughter not to, not to, ever,

ever. No, I've never seen the value. But the kids, the young people like it. You know, the young, young whippersnappers like Costa and Garrity, I'm sure, are covered head to toe in them. Well, they like all manner of things. And frankly, there are days, you know, and I don't want to sound like Grandpa Simpson here, but I can't stand going to the grocery store and the guy who's bagging your stuff has got a ring an inch around in both of his eardrums

and a metal barbell through his tongue. It's called a gauge. They're called gauges. Very hip. Come on. The tongue studs? Okay. The tongue studs are kind of the thing in your ear that goes around.

Okay. I don't know why you would put something in your tongue that made you sound like a LeBron Webster for the entirety of your life. I mean, what is this? This is cool. I know. Come on. When you see those big holes in the ears, though, you're just tempted to wait until

they fall asleep and then padlock them to something. But there was a disputation done at my local grocery store where the management said, we don't mind if you have tattoos that go to your wrists, but we would prefer that you cover them up with an article of clothing. And the staff apparently took this to be an insult to their right to freedom of expression and said, no, we're going to wear short sleeves.

That's why we got the full sleeve tats, man, so people can marvel at the artistic ingenuity. You know, but if everybody's tattoo was their own artwork, I could understand. For me, it's like walking around and constantly quoting somebody else's great literature. But they all look the same.

They all look the same. That's the thing. It's like children's art, you know. Whenever you like horrible parents make you look at their horrible kids, horrible art, you have to go, oh, God, they're so artistic. All children draw alike. All tattoos look alike. That's the thing. It's like all tattoo artists went to the same school. Show me something I haven't seen. It's not like, oh, I went to the Rembrandt of tattoo artists and, oh, I went to the Matisse of tattoo artists where you could actually, oh, yours is different. They all look the same. That's true. Absolutely true absolutely so well then the case may be to

be is to have a tattoo and then have somebody just sort of press into it some acid compound that makes it more expressionistic or impressionist idea the acid compound you sold me when you said acid compound acid compound you can always get rob's approval when acid compounds well listen he has to go peter has to go i have to go everybody has to go and the podcast as all good things must end but i got to remind you that audible.com, of course, you know this, is where you can get your free audio book. Any of the things that we've discussed here, any of the authors,

the people, the idea, you can go there, pick it up. 30-day free trial. Thank them for supporting this podcast. And Rob, something about Tiny Lies by Jim Lillix. I really want to do this. I like saying it because and by Tiny Lies by James Lilix, which is a buck and a quarter. Tiny Lies, over 150 small ads from the back of old magazines, newspapers, and comic books.

You've seen them annotated and commented on by our own James Lilix in his brilliant, affectionate, snarky, lacerating, and hilarious way. It's a great book. It's disruptive publishing. So it's the free market making something better. It's going around the gatekeepers. It's put together. It's got the great sensibility that we at Ricochet love. It's super, super hip, speaking of tattoos.

So once again, it makes the point that just because you're in favor of a free market and an American economy and the American experiment and you believe that this country is the best – last best hope for people on earth doesn't mean that you're not smart and hip and modern and have a great sense of humor. Buck and a quarter at lilacs.com, L-I-L-E-K-S.com. Go buy it. Couldn't have said it better myself, and of course, that's why Rob is the author behind so many of the great television shows of this era and other. Peter, we wish you well. Rob, enjoy California. Me, I'm in hell because it's the

2nd of May, and of course, it's 35 degrees and snow is on the way. So, if you don't talk to me next week, it's because I just absolutely gave up. I rumbled, stilled, myself, grabbed my ankles and tore myself in half. Otherwise, we'll see you down the road and at

Ricochet.com. Bye, guys. Next week. So I'll wait my turn I'm a modern man And the people behind me They can't understand Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

So I wait in line I'm not a man And the people behind me They can't understand Makes me feel like something don't feel right. Like a record that's skipping, I'm a modern man. And the clock keeps ticking, I'm a modern man And the clock keeps ticking, I'm a modern man Makes me feel like Makes me feel like

My dream was almost there And you pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere They say we are the chosen few But we're wasted And that's why we're still waiting On a number from the modern man Maybe when you're older you will understand Why you don't feel right

Why you can't sleep at night now Ricochet Join the conversation I'm alive for a number but you don't understand Thank you. I realized the red light doesn't mean anything to you because you're the front runner. But can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?