The Ricochet Podcast - Saddled In for Pain

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Democrats have been worked up this week over congressional redistricting in Texas. But, hypocrisy aside, could this be a low priority for a party well into the double-digits in favorability? To get a sense of what the left ought to be doing instead, we welcome Ruy Teixiera back to the podcast to discuss the now-endangered liberal patriot. (Be sure to subscribe to his Substack of the same name!) Plus: James, Charles and Steve suss out the raid on John Bolton's house, have their voices heard on mail-in ballots, and collectively grimace at the Cracker Barrel rebrand. Opening sound this week: Sen. John Kennedy (R - LA) on the Democrats ( via Fox News) and John Bolton on Trump (CNN)Please visit our fantastic sponsor for this week's show: Get a FREE report with all the details at Bank on Yourself.com/ RICOCHET

Make sure that I get it right. It's Rue Tishara. Rue Tishara. Tashira. It says Robin Allen on the screen, but whatever. Ruby Tashira. All right. I will change that.

That's how it's pronounced. One. And now we're welcome back to the podcast. Rui Tushierre. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev. down this wall.

It's the Rikishay podcast with Charles C.W. Cook and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lilex, and today we talk to Rui Tashara, Liberal Patriot. How did we get here? Because the mainstream wing of the party is scared to death of the moon wing.

They won't speak up. And they don't stand for anything anymore. All they stand for is against whatever President Trump stands for. This is I think typical of Trump the man. This is the kind of character or lack thereof who's now president. Welcome, everybody. It's the Rikoshae podcast episode number 5754. Ah, not just kidding. 754. Join us at ricochet.com. You can be part of the most stimulating conversations and community

on the web. It's the place you've been looking for ever since they plug this thing in. I'm James Lolleck's in Minneapolis, cloudy, misty, and I'm joined by Stephen Hayward in California and Charles C.W. Cook in Florida. As I say, we have the entire country covered. Gentlemen, how are you? Good. Good. How are you? Could be better. Last week, I had absolutely no opinion about Cracker Barrel whatsoever

and never had to one, never set foot in one, had no desire to set foot in one, but now I've got an opinion about Cracker Barrel. We'll get to that in a second. Last week, I wasn't really thinking very much about over-the-road truckers and exactly what problems some of them may face. And now, of course, first and foremost in my mind. Both of these things are things that have been bubbling around on Twitter for the last week

and have yet to really hit the news. But I think they will now because Marco Rubio has made a statement that the government is going to suspend all renovation of the Cracker Barrel restaurants. No, I'm sorry. They're going to suspend the people coming in to get driver's licenses from other countries, CDLs. And I wonder what you guys think about this, because what's interesting to me about it is the speed between this issue's surfacing and actual government action seems to be new, but also a defining characteristic of our age. Before, we would have a blue ribbon commission that would turn out a white paper at the end of it, and recommendations would be made, and it would work its way through dot, and eventually there would be something, and nothing would change.

but now it's sort of like well look long haul truck driving actually any truck driving but especially those longer haul the bigger trucks which require a different classification of license that's not an easy job and you know my brother was a teamster he drove one of those trucks for a while

and he used to say and my perception when I drive out on say interstate five in California is that you know there's I'm not sure if it's the bell curve for truck drivers is the right phrase for it but they are short of good qualified Almost every truck, especially independent line or even the big Jains, like Hunt Brothers or something,

they'll have big banners on the truck saying, drivers wanted, call 1,800, get paid, right? And a lot of those jobs pay six figures pretty fast. For whatever reason, I think because it's a lonely job, you know, you're away from your family. They're under a lot of pressure to get your destination and time. On the other hand, they now all have GPS widgets in them, and so your maximum hours are capped. And so anyway, I think it's kind of a miserable life. And I'll bet that a lot of trucking companies pick a lot of people at the margins who are, shall we say, iffy drivers. And my observation is the quality of truck drivers I see on the road, some of them.

It's not what I remember when I was younger and putting a lot of miles on the road. But there's more of them. The other thing, if you ever want to see, I should take a video sometime. If you take Interstate 5 out of Los Angeles north up toward what we used to call the grapevine, And there's a couple of very steep hills, and the truck's all bunch up there going up the hill at about 25 miles an hour and low gear. And it's amazing. And, of course, you know, we know Long Beach is one of the leading ports in America, and a lot of that ends up on trucks going all over the country. But the truck traffic is just enormous these days.

And I've never looked for data to see how much it's grown, but I'll bet it's been quite substantial in the last 20, 30 years. My father was a truck driver. I mean, he owned the oil company gas business in Fargo. But he drove dry. He loved to drive semi. He could find, I mean, he could climb into a cab and look at that, you know, 16 years, and he could find the right one. He could back up a double tanker to a loading dock to get product filled. I mean, it's just amazing.

So I respect that. But at the same time, one of his drivers had a diabetic episode back in the day and actually started driving the wrong way on the other side of the highway with oncoming traffic with a full load of number two in the back. Oh, boy, that was a disaster reverted. So, yeah, it's always been a dangerous job, but it seems to be, yes, they aren't getting enough. So we have more accidents. We have more guys who are going down hills, just jamming on the brakes and letting the engine throttle it. Charles, we would have to ask you about your opinion about Lori drivers, wouldn't we? You would.

You were. You know, I actually said that word on my trip to Pigeon Ford, Tennessee, and my wife said, don't say Lori, like that. Normally, she likes my accent and linguistic foibles, but this time I think that one was not attractive. So she said, don't say Lorry. Don't say. But I did say Lorry. Anyhow, yes, this story which happened in Florida is horrible. A family was wiped out.

I think there are some obvious government interests here. One of the problems beyond truck driving proficiency, about which I know very little, is English speaking. That is the complaint that I have heard from people over the last three or four years. It's always poo-poohed. I submit that it won't be from now on. But I've heard it said over and over again that we have a big problem in America because there are a bunch of illegal immigrants who do not speak English, who drive trucks,

and they can't read the signs on the road. And that's very important if you're expected to know where the runoff lane is, or look at the gradient information or see where the way station is located. So I do think that that's a problem. And I say this having come fresh off speaking at a naturalization ceremony here in Jacksonville yesterday, I was the featured speaker at the big citizenship ceremony.

It was very moving. But of course, everyone who went through that and followed the rules has to display a proficiency in English. And there's a good reason that we have. these expectations. So I don't know enough about it to give you a white paper answer, but I do think reform is in the cards because that was a horrible thing that happened, and it's not something that came out of the blue. It's an odd thing to have been told about, but I have been told about this problem for years. People have brought it up, and now we have

this tragedy. Well, one of the things that came out of the blue was the rating of John Bolton's John Bolton, of course, a man who possesses the best mustache since Wilford Brimley. I think he bought it from him, actually. Or actually, no. I think it's more he's up there with a Sam Elliott quality. At any case, Bolton got rated. Now, the FBI director, Kash Patel said on Twitter, of course, because that's where we say these things, is that no one is above the law, FBI agents on the mission.

We're hearing that phrase an awful lot. Trump said, I don't know anything about it. What's going on here? I have no idea. I don't know if it's some kind of payback by some people in the Trump administration. We know that Biden was sloppy about keeping documents and, you know, Trump likewise. You know, I know John a little bit. My office was right next door to his at AEI way back when. And he always struck me as someone who was not sloppy. I mean, he always had a neat desk. He was always worked long hours. It was always very precise about things. So I'd be surprised if he was sloppy about keeping documents.

but I don't know. I mean, who knows? I'll be curious to see if we ever find the affidavit behind the warrant at some point. His persistence in the national political theater is something of a mystery to me. But I gather that he's getting more currency lately because he's not exactly a fan of Donald Trump. And Charles, what do you take of this? Is this more authoritarian payback or is this as somebody said, well, look, if you're going to take on the deep state in all of its manifestations, it doesn't hurt to go after people in your own party first. just to show that it's not partisan, although, you know, well, that one, I'm not sold on.

I don't think Donald Trump thinks they're in the same party. Right. How long have you got? This is a really complicated issue. The answer is there is a steelman case for this, which goes something like this. John Bolton did it. He is not the president, therefore is not protected by his ability to declassify information and all the Supreme Court case.

for United States, we do and should prosecute people who violate the rules surrounding classified information. No one is above the law. That's the steelman argument. That might be completely irrelevant in this case, because this could be political payback. The worrying possibility is that the Trump administration simply hates John Bolton, is still smarting at having been targeted by Joe Biden and wanted to make somebody who it doesn't like pay. The broader thought that I have, given that I don't know any more details than you do, is that the original sin here was James Comey's treatment of Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was guilty of violating the law.

Now, I am open to the idea that that is a bad and in some sense unconstitutional. law, the Wilson era espionage act, and that it was not in the public interest to prosecute her. But James Comey found a loophole, and he used it to let her off the hook. And then that loophole was not applied equally to everyone. Joe Biden got the advantage of it, although there was another excuse with him. Donald Trump did not. And I don't think you can run a country like this. So when the Biden one broke, my view was you can't touch Biden.

because you didn't touch Hillary. And when the Trump one broke, my view was you can't touch Trump because you didn't touch Biden and you didn't touch Hillary. And I still hold that. So if we are talking here about equal crimes, alleged crimes, which I don't know,

then my view will be the same here. You can't touch Bolton because you didn't touch Trump and you didn't touch Biden and you didn't touch Hillary. I think James Comey did something really, really bad. was that rather than try and establish a rule of prosecutorial discretion that was broad and clear and could be applied to everyone, he simply made up the law. And when you make up the law, you create really difficult scenarios for your successes. And that could be what we're looking at here. So I am, in a sense, giving you a non-answer, James. I'm all the way from, could be steel manned,

could be complicated, or could be tyranny. It's one of the three. There's more no touching in that last thing you said that in a lot. of Fargo Lutheran Church in 19662. So is there anything more to say about this, or should we move along to other things, such as the Trump fine being tossed? Half a billion? Guess not. Well, before we do that, James, or maybe after, I don't care of it.

I thought Trump was going on a ride along with the D.C. police or National Guard last night, but I haven't heard anything about it. I mean, my joke was Trump has gone from just trolling the left to patrolling against the left. Yeah, no, I mean, there was an MSNBC or an MS now. person who was saying the other day that before he decided that he said he was going to go on the ride along. They said that when it came to D.C. crime, Trump thinks he's Batman. And I thought, that's not a very good argument to make. People like Batman. You want to make the case that he thinks he's Bain. That's something else. But people kind of like a rich guy with lots of tools who

goes around at night and keeps the bad guys and throws him off roofs. Anyway, so the fine has been tossed. And what is that? I mean, everyone is still going to call him a felon. 34 counts, et cetera, but now the fines tossed, does that indicate that there might be success on the appeal? Because it's still appealing. Yeah, it looks to me like it's going to fall apart like the Georgia case against him did. And I don't know, I kind of expected this all along. The one question is, what took the court so long? The New York Court of Appeals, whatever their high court is called, it usually works with great dispatch. So, and apparently it's a split ruling. I haven't chased it down yet, but my guess is this is the first big step to the whole thing going away.

Well, speaking of going away, one of the things you hate to have go away is your money. You know, inflation takes it away, bad investments take it away, but listen to me about this. Yeah, when it comes to your money, you want to be told the truth. And you've got to ask yourself, are you being lied to? You know, they tell you to defer paying your taxes by saving in a 401k or an IRA because then you'll retire it all over tax bracket. But if that's true, why are so many retirees in the highest tax bracket of their lives? Look, it's time to get the truth and discover a better way to grow and protect your money. Bank on yourself.

It's the proven retirement plan alternative that banks and Wall Street desperately hoping you ever hear about. Why? Well, because it gives you one, guaranteed predictable growth and retirement income. With bank on yourself, your plan doesn't go backwards when the market tumbles. Your growth and your principal locked in. Two, tax free retirement income. Beautiful words. You'll know that your tax rate in retirement is zero under current tax laws, which protects you from the upcoming tax tsunami. It's going to hit everybody. Three, built-in inflation protection. Your money is guaranteed to grow by a larger dollar amount every year in both the good times and the bad. And finally, you get peace of mind. You'll know the minimum guaranteed value of your retirement savings on the day you plan to tap into them.

and at every point along the way. So what is this? How does it work? Well, you can get a free report that tells you how Bank on Yourself works and how you can enjoy tax-free retirement income, guaranteed growth and control of your money. Just go to BankOn Yourself.com slash Ricochet

and get your free report. That's bankonyself.com slash ricochet. Bankon yourself.com slash ricochet. And we thank Bank on Yourself for sponsoring this, the Rikershay podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast. Rui Tichera. He is a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, co-founder and politics editor of a substack newsletter, The Liberal Patriot. He was a founding fellow of the

Center of American Progress and co-authored the emerging Democratic majority in 2002. More recent publications have included the optimistic leftist and where have all the Democrats gone. Welcome. Well, thank you. Glad to be here. A lot of talk this week about how the Democrats are losing some of their customary support that they are polling horrible. with young men. As a matter of fact, there seems to be a move from young men to the Republican party. As somebody else was pointing out this morning that they got a Karen problem and they refuse to acknowledge it. The problem is that Karen's are their base and Karen's vote and all the rest of these things. So the change in their appeal seems to have been rather seismic and

tectonic and it shifts due to a variety of reasons. So I'm going to ask you if indeed you see that big of a shift. And if you do, if you share what the writer pinning as the reasons for it, mainly a sense of cultural disdain and looking down being scolds and no fun and all the rest of that stuff. Right, right. Yeah, no, I do think they're in a, they're in a bit of a pickle. I mean, I think the data's pretty clear in this. Obviously, we all know what happened in 2024 and what so many Democrats kidded themselves could never happen that Trump would actually do better in this election they'd ever done before. And there would be these huge shifts among working class Hispanics, Hispanic, Hispanic men, young men.

You know, there was even shifts among women. They were just smaller than among men. So it was generally an all-around, you know, clock cleaning by Trump. Since then, we've seen Democrats fail to really break out despite all the vulnerabilities that Trump has evidence and a lot of the things he's done that just aren't very popular. the overreach on a variety of different issues. People don't have much faith in the economy, even despite the fact they elected Trump to some extent to fix the economy.

None of that has elevated the Democrats who have historically low favorability ratings. They don't have much of a lead in the generic congressional ballot. When, if you compare it to 2018, they were already far ahead at this point. And just recently, of course, there was a huge, I mean, and people who follow these data kind of knew a lot of the stuff anyway. There's a big data, deep data dive in the New York Times about voter registration trends over the last period of time, both up to 2024 and even since 2024. And it's all bad, bad, bad news for the Democrats. I mean, they're just losing ground everywhere to Republicans, particularly in important states.

Somebody actually crunched the data and looked at, for example, what's happening with young men and young women. I was just looking at this today. And among young women, those willing to register as Democrats has declined only slightly. But among young men, it's just cratered. It's now under 30%, whereas it was close to 50%, not that long ago. So something's going on here. You know, it's Dylan said, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Democrat? I think some of them suspect it, but I do think that they're quite reluctant to really embrace it,

understand it, actually try to fix it. They think if they just change the subject, or they turn up the volume on economic issues, or they talk about abundance or what have you, this will do it. And I do not think that's true. I think the critique that they're culturally out of step with the median working class voter and indeed the bulk of the population is just true. I mean, you know it's true in a variety of issues. We know it's true from voting behavior.

We know it's true from where they're losing ground. I mean, this is a party whose national profile and the people who run it and the people who are associated with it are simply not the same type of people who they want to vote for them. And they have a series of cultural attitudes that, in fact, does translate into disdain for the great unwashed of these United States.

And I think, you know, people aren't dumb. They sense this, they know this. And they realize not only was that true leading up to 2024, and this is what I just wrote about on the liberal patriot, there's not a lot of change since then, right? I mean, basically, they've only backtracked

very slightly on some issues where people have tried to break from the PAC, they've been immediately slapped down by the activists and other politicians. And where the real action is in the Democratic Party now is basically amping up your resistance cred. And that's why Gavin Newsom, the dreadful, dreadful Gavin Newsom, has actually like broken out of the pack. I mean, they sent these polls mean anything at this point. He's clearly benefited from his willingness to do anything and say anything to maximize his resistance profile. So I think that's what plays within the Democratic Party now. But

But I think it's actually not what would play with the broad electorate as we move, you know, toward 2028 and beyond. I mean, one way to, one way I summarize it is they still, we're at a populist moment, a populist age, right? And they still don't get it. They still are not willing to be in touch with it, to acknowledge their weaknesses, which go far beyond not having, you know, the best economic program or something. So I think that's where we're at. And again, like I see little evidence that they're changing their tune very fast.

In the piece I was just alluding to, I called it two, three, many sister soldier movements. Soldier moments. That's what the Democrats need. And I think that's true. They need to profile themselves as a different kind of Democrat. And to do that, you have to break ostentatiously and directly with the forces in their party and specific individuals and groups who are pushing this literacy. Well, really, let me jump in right here.

First of all, it warms my heart as an inmate of Gavin Neu. some stand that you call him dreadful. I heard Mark Halpern yesterday saying he right now in Mark Halpern's judgment is the frontrunner for 2028. But you know, when I read your piece yesterday, one to many sister soldier moments, I had a flashback because it seems to me the Democratic Party has been there before. And I'm thinking of that time after George H.W. Bush won in 1988. I don't know if you remember the book by Peter Brown, the reporter. I do indeed. I even right well there's a one quote from here to share with you and listeners and it's of the young democratic governor of arkansas and it's a long passage about how you know jesse jackson who

younger listeners may not know was a real contender for the nomination in 1988 and panicked a democratic establishment as much as bernie sanders did twice and he quotes bill clinton here saying i have never believed democrats need to distance themselves from jesse jackson i think the democrats need to disagree with him. And, of course, that's what Clinton did three years later, right? Well, I think, you know, it's like kind of a semantic distinction. I mean, I think he really did distance. So he did his intervention with Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

I mean, it wasn't saying I hate Jesse Jackson, but the message couldn't have been clear. So, I don't know. Well, my question is, I don't think that person is Gavin Newsom, but is there somebody out there and more to the point, if you strip away all the sort of social and cultural baggage the drowning Democrats right now. And they get back to an economic message. What is that message? I mean, I'm a fan of the abundance, people,

but I think there's some limitations to that. I can't make their conference next month, unfortunately. I know you'll be there. In any case, that looks very promising to me as a policy wonk that I am. But beyond that, what is the message? What could work for a sensible Democrat, say a Rahm Emanuel, who, you know,

if he gets out of the witness protection program for disagreeing about the transgender, your business. What's the message going to be? Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a, you know, it's an excellent question. I mean, I do think that even a better economic program is merely a necessary but not sufficient condition to rehabilitate themselves without the cultural shift. I think even that won't go anywhere, no matter how good it is. But they do need to say something about, and what's their plan for the economy, what's their plan for national development, what's their plan for moving the country forward economically? And I think right now,

the abundance people are having a moment that's clear but whose moment is this right i think this is a moment within the elite democratic discourse i think it's a moment within you know those who control the commanding heights of cultural production right they're willing to countenance the idea democrats have screwed up some things there's too many regs need more housing even our sacred clean energy commitments, you know, are falling under the sway of all these regulations which are holding it back. That's a really bad thing because then we're all going to die if we don't have more clean energy. So I think that's real. I think it's happening. But what is its cachet among normie voters who might be interested in voting for the Democrats? What is its cachet with

the working class? Both those who are still in the Democratic Party and those who have left it? I don't think it's really high. I mean, I think this is an elite discourse. I mean, even though I support various aspects of it, I do think that it's kind of problematic in a lot of ways. I use that terrible term. It's just, it's not focused on the working class. It's not focused on abundances most people would define it who are not coastal liberals who live in big metropolitan areas, right? That's what they care about. Infield housing, you know, 15-minute cities, moors, wind, and solar, blah, blah, blah. This is not what people care about. People care about more stuff, being richer, having a big-ass truck, living in the suburbs. They want more. And when you say abundance to a normal person to

extent they even understand the words, that's what they think, oh, great, you're going to, there's going to be more stuff. Tell me how do we do this. And let's say, well, we have to change to zoning regulations. And then we have to make sure that this, you know, this wind and solar project goes through and, you know, much less time than it used to. And that'll totally do, I don't think people are, say, what? You want, what? I mean, in a way, it reminds me of the reformacons back in the day. Well, an interesting set of ideas, which certainly could have been an improvement in where the Republicans were at the time, but it was, again, it was part of the elite discourse. It never really percolated down to Normie voters. Yeah, I was one of them, by the way. And when we get run over by

the Trump train in a hurry. You did. You did. The tired tracks are still on your back, man. Hi, Rui, it's Charles Cook. Nice to speak to you again. So I have a question about how you get from where the Democratic Party currently is to where you would like it to be. I use you in the VU form. I don't think it's your responsibility. Right, right.

On the right, we have a certain autoimmune deficiency in that for understandable reasons, we don't like the media and we also distrust a bunch of institutions, health institutions, for example. But sometimes that leads us to believe nothing that is said by a figure in authority or of expertise. And sometimes that can lead to really bad outcomes. And so if those who know what they're talking about are opposed to something, then that just gets discounted. And it can be quite difficult to advance reforms within that framework. On the left, it seems to me that the autoimmune deficiency is a sense that compromise is allowing in evil or bigotry or racism or whatever.

And if you look at, for example, immigration, you see this all the time. For most of modern American history, at least since the 1930s, 40s, it was accepted that we have debates over who comes in. And sometimes the consequences were ugly and sometimes they weren't. And sometimes we wanted more and less and different. But that was something we debated. And in the 90s when Clinton was president, you had Barbara Jordan who was in the same party.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. People who were more in favor of open borders, right? But now the idea in a lot of the party, and certainly culturally, is that any immigration enforcement whatsoever, forget Trump, any enforcement is racism, xenophobia, bigotry, whatever. And that's a sort of autoimmune deficiency in that it prevents compromise or moving forward. And my question is, how do the Democrats as a party get past that? Because the average Democratic voter doesn't seem to me to be of that view at all. But no politician seems to be

able to stand up and say, well, we need to compromise on this, this, that, and the other, or debate this and the other, because they get called names and they're terrified of being called names. Yeah, no, obviously there's a lot to that. I mean, who are the, who are the, who are the, Democrats these days. Certainly, if you just look at everybody who votes for a Democrat in any race or even people who's party ID, at least lean's Democratic, I mean, there's certainly a lot more diversity than you see among the people who seem to be calling the shots in the Democratic Party. I think that's true. But I think the farther up you go in the food chain, right, from the activists to the people who run party organizations, to the people in the NGOs, to the people in the

foundation, to the people who control the media discourse, who lean Democratic, the people who contribute the most money, the people have the loudest megaphones, the biggest voices. In other words, the upper middle class professional liberals who really set the tone for the party. They're just way more of them than they used to be, and they're way more liberal than they used to be. And they are the ones who make the trains run on time. They're the ones who are in the institutions that really are responsible for giving the Democratic Party the cultural legitimacy it has. And why should they change? I mean, they feel these things are moral commitments. Plus, they owe their position to some extent from reading chapter and verse

from the Bible we currently have. So again, why should they change? It may not be optimizing for the Democratic Party as a whole, but, you know, they don't see it that way. And they're really optimizing, to some extent, their own individual position in the labor market or in the cultural discourse. So I think, yeah, I mean, it's a long-winded way of saying, I think it's really going to be hard to change, because I think the people who could most directly change the discourse are not going to do it willingly. And then, you know, it would really come down to since it's not going to be upswelling from the ground up of more moderate Democrats. I just don't think that's going to work. I think you would have to have in the context probably of the

presidential contest moving into 2028, someone who's willing to break the crockery and thereby shift the discourse who's willing to take a chance. I mean, I think the most probable outcome is all going to be herded toward, you know, who's the biggest resistance fighter? I mean, I already see it happening. I mean, look at even someone like Andy Bashir, right, the big moderate from Kentucky. What is his big applause line? It's because he vetoed hateful bills against the LGBTIQI plus population. I mean, this tells you a lot

about where even moderates feel they have to go at this point within the Democratic Party debate. So, yeah, you brought up the issue of immigration. It's really quite extraordinary. I mean, they got totally hammered on the issue. Everybody thought it was a massive failure. But now that Trump has actually shut down the border, there's no support for that.

whatsoever other than even maybe even there's not even a lot of acknowledgement that it's happened because the real concentration is on the ice raids the pickups the deportations i mean people uniformly democrats and democratic activists are apoplectic about this this is a police state this is completely unjustified there's nothing good about it well there are obviously stuff that's happening that's kind of noxious but in the other hand what is their program for deportation So they would believe in deportations. Obviously, if someone can come here, and if they stay for three weeks, they can stay here forever, that's not a viable strategy, right?

That's not a—the incentive structure's all wrong. So—and this is one reason why people don't trust the Democrats, because even though they may pick up on some things that are happening that people are viscerally opposed to and seem cruel, they don't trust the Democrats to, you know, sort of move on from that to an actual workable immigrant. program that would, as you say, decide who gets in and who doesn't, and would stick to the rules. I think voters have no faith in the Democrats for that at this point. And I think, again, breaking out of that will be really hard for all the reasons we've just been discussing. So, Ray, can I ask you a different question about, and not about economics and populism?

In addition to that amazing New York Times story about the voting problems, there was also this week The latest in the series of headlines I can go back to and feature stories in the Times, I want to call it up here about, oh, shoot, I'm having a trouble here. No, here it comes. Here's the headline. Abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. Pack the court. Why the left can't win without a new constitution. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong? These are great ideas. Right. Well, yeah, aside from the merits or I think demerits of all those ideas, I have a simple question, which I have. various answers, both psychological and philosophical for it, but I want to hear yours. Okay. My question is, well, wait a minute. The Democratic Party dominated American politics for 50 years in the New Deal era. They did just fine under those rules. So why do we need to change

them now? Well, because they're not dominating politics anymore. They're actually losing elections. Sure. And so, I mean, you know, the partisan, conservative, Republican will say, and I join them half the time is, gee, now that you're losing, what's your answer? Change the rules rather than change your message or adapt to it. I mean, is that a, is there some merit to that objection? I mean, I want to hear from a smart, you know, social Democrat like you about how we should think about, by the way, I've got a whole file of Times articles like that. The Constitution is obsolete. We should get rid of it. It's an obstacle to change and so forth. Now, wasn't there someone who wrote an op-ed in the Times a while ago? I think this was before the 24 election that advocated turning D.C. into 728 different districts, all of which would have their own senator or something.

I mean, there's been a lot of, right. There's been a lot of wacky stuff. Here, sorry, here are four more headlines that I've collected. All from the last two years, the Constitution is broken and should not be reclaimed. All New York Times, elections are bad for democracy. Now, that one was just. Who could argue with that? Right.

And then, but another more serious one is the Constitution is sacred. Is it also dangerous? In other words, I'm an old-fashioned person who reads the Federal's papers that said, you know, Madison, Hamilton, saying, And, you know, if the rule of law is going to replace the rule of men, that means our fundamental legal document must be an object of reverence by the people. They use that word reverence, right? Now, I'm kind of old-fashioned devotee on the founding, but I'm kind of seeing a loss of reverence for the Constitution among many progressives.

I'll stop there. Yeah, okay. Obviously, that's true. And I think your point earlier about, well, why would they be saying this now? And they really did just fine with the rules and, you know, long years of American politics. It really isn't that complicated. It's like you say, the wrong people now have too much influence, and the wrong people have too much influence

because of the way our Constitution, or institution, therefore we need to change that. So the right people will have more influence. So this is, I mean, this is basically insane, I think. I mean, the very fact that Democrats, progressives would toy with this stuff is just an indication they're running out of Rome. They're running out of, they're desperate, they're flailing, right? I mean, this is what you do, and you can't think of anything else to say.

Let's just change the friggin rule. See, I know the guy who wrote that op-ed you were mentioning earlier. You used to write for the New Republic, the first one you mentioned. Look, I mean, this is a kind of wild, you know, progressivism, unhinged-type stuff that plays very well in significant sectors of the party. And it's playing better now as the Trump administration goes on because, you know, people are in full resistance mode, how could this terrible thing have happened?

I mean, there was like a window of maybe two months where Democrats seemed a little chastened. Well, maybe we did screw it all up. Maybe we really do need to change a lot. And then they say, nah, we don't need to do that. We need to change the Constitution. We need more people like Zora and Mandani. You know, that'll totally solve the problem.

So I just think that all the indicators are now flashing red, as it were, on their ability to reinvent the party. So I don't expect anything to happen anytime soon. And, you know, we may have to go through another presidential cycle where they do even worse. I could easily see that happen. That was the story arc of the 80s into the 90s, right? As you finally lost enough elections by a lot that a talented person like Clinton came on. By the way, I just have to say, then I'll shut up.

I like the way you framed the beginning of your answer about, you know, the right people, the wrong people. It reminds me of that great yes minister scene where Sir Humphrey Appleby says to Bernard says, you know what happens when the right people don't get power? The wrong people get it. That was such a great show. Yeah. I am interested in patriotism. Oh, that's my question.

That's my question. No, go to James. We're all dying to ask this, right? Because the term liberal patriot warms my heart. When I was a liberal in college in the 80s, Democrats, New Republic-style Democrat, I suppose. We're all patriotic. We loved America. It was, you know, the phrase that,

Rush Limbaugh would later use the greatest country on God's Green Earth. We would not along, too, because we understood a little bit of history and a little bit of American exceptionalism. It could see exactly why this was a great endeavor. What people get, I think, nowadays, not from the, you know, from the Democrats who may work, you know, in their city, you know, in various civic roles, but from the intellectual heavyweights of the party is 1619, is the original sins of this country that make it uniquely bad, and that to be a patriot is to align yourself with an enterprise that it is,

has caused all manner of horrors on humanity because of the isms, the colonialism, the sexism, the homophobia, all of this stuff, this is a bad place. You can be patriotic about an ideal to which we might ascribe should it happen, but the idea of accepting this flawed structure, this crooked timber as something great and being proud of, seems to be lost in the party. And when they try it, it's not authentic.

Because how much of the ideological energy comes from colleges and comes from the people who come, you know, who have their degrees and the books and the, you know, all that stuff, which is a little use and seems to ignore history. Liberal Patriot, how many of you are there? Well, I would not say we're a majority at this point in left of center circles, but, you know, we're growing slowly, I think, I hope. But I do think you're right that the whole issue of patriotism and its identification of lack there of with the left has become like a mega problem and it wasn't really so long ago i mean obama was really pretty different than the

way the center gravity of the democrats certainly clinton you know there's nothing wrong with america that can't be fixed by what's right with america that stuff is like borderline uh you know problematic racist and all that's kind of stuff so um it's funny you bring this up though because i just put out a big report with rick callenberg at a i called bobby Kennedy Liberal Patriot, where we basically make a big deal in this report, and there should be an article about this coming out in the free press, that, you know, Kennedy is just so different from the way Democrats comport themselves these days. He was unabashedly, you know, patriotic, you know, pro-family, pro-working class, work over welfare, against crime, for law and order.

you know i mean he was he was just a different cat than we have nowadays running around in the democratic party uh and he was unapologetic about it he was trying in a sense to rescue the party from its evolving trend away from a lot of those values and bring black and white working class voters back together in the parties tragically of course that was cut short and who knows who it would work but i think he's an interesting model and you know he he suffused a lot of what he did on his various policy positions with the fundamental idea of patriots, even the way treated poverty was patriotic. Like in a great country like this, you know, the United States of America, we should, you know, be able to, you know, have a decent standard of living for everybody. And people should pay their

fair share because it's patriotic. He always, that was kind of his touchstone. And I think that's totally lacking now. I mean, you brought up the 1619 project, because to me, that was a bit, that really was a bit of a cut point to me when it came out. I mean, I know a lot of people went gaga over to liberal circles. So my first reaction is, are you kidding me? This is terrible. And you can't believe you're doing this. This is going to alienate us from normie voters.

And it's not even true. I mean, this is a terrible way to, this is a terrible way to conduct yourself. But it was the New York Times, the official arbiter of, you know, civilized discourse that was like foisting this on the American public, at least the American educated public. And I was appalled. I could not believe it. I said, oh, man, we're in for it now. This is, this is, I mean, things had already been going south on a lot of this stuff, but I just thought not only the peace, but who promulgated it and the rapture with which

it was greeted in most educated, you know, left-leaning liberal circles. So it's just, just amazing. I was like, oh, well, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. Wow. Those of us in the right, take a look at things like the 16-9 project. Take a look at the way that the culture has shifted in the overclass and what their ideas are. And we see, to use all the cliches, the results of the long march through the institutions, where now you have colleges, museums, and the rest of them are ascribed to a particular set of ideological precepts.

And now when we try to push back on that, such Trump is trying to do with the Smithsonian, that's regarded as trying to change an objective reality to fit the criteria of dear leader. When a lot of us are looking at this and saying, no, it's rewriting. the plaque under the picture of Valley Forge so that it doesn't say that the result of the victory was the expansion of the country and the exclusion of the India. I mean, in other words, investing absolutely everything in the left's narrative. I mean, do you guys see it that way? I mean, you're rational, sensible man. Do you sometimes see these things and say, why must this suffuse absolutely everything? And it's not wrong to get back to a more positive sort of counting

of these things without having to rub people. noses in the filth of American history every second. Of course, I'm not making a question. I'm just ranting. Right. No, I mean, I agree with that. I mean, I think it's become a huge problem. I mean, we're just talking about the 1619 project, which is the exemplar of this. And I gets back to Charles' point about the sort of autoimmune disorder or something. I mean, you cannot in Democratic Party or liberal circles admit that there might be something to what Trump is doing, you know, to the universities, to an institution like the Smithsonian. because by definition, what he's doing is nothing but a drive for white supremacy and authoritarianism.

I mean, there's no gray areas, right? I mean, it can't be like he's overreaching in some ways. This happened, you know, he went too far. But, you know, there was a lot of stuff that needed to be corrected. I mean, a lot of this stuff is crazy how they're rubbing people's noses. And, you know, they want you to think about the terrible stuff before you can think about the good stuff. And in the process, people's sense of, you know, a country that is worth identifying with gets lost. And I think, you know, Robert Bella, I think, once talked a long time ago about the civil religion that's America, right?

That's important to unifying our country. And it's, you know, attached to various symbols, to various holidays, to various stories and myths. I mean, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That civil religion needs to be revived. then one thing that's peculiar about the democratic party today is they're adamantly 150% opposed to anything like that they do not want people to feel good about their country they do not want people to buy into you know a glorious vision of their country that because that's what maga does man

that's right wing you know so many things are right coded now that again if you are a democrat and you raise some of these issues say well clearly a lot of this was bullshit basically that the left was doing what people in the universities did or was it i mean you are persona non grata immediately you are just you know you're just basically shilling for trump you're trump enabling so who in elected office is getting this right you said even andy bashear is anyone getting this right in the democratic party do you see any clintonian figure on the horizon who can pull the party back? I'd say no at this point.

I think they'll have to emerge. I think there are people out there clearly who probably have a view that is fairly, might be fairly close to reality of what's going on, but they're afraid to say it. I mean, you think preference, false vacation is a problem for people in bureaucracies or corporations or whatever. I mean, on politicians, it's huge. They hide a lot of what they think frequently. And, you know, because they think it's impolitic to say it.

So there probably are people out there, Ruben Gallego, for all I know, there might be others who are like, realize, you know, we're lost. We really have to be out front about that we stand for something different. There are different kind of Democrats, but they're afraid to go through the sister soldier moments that I outlined in my piece that might actually underscore that. You know, the person who comes closer to it, oddly enough, is Federman. I mean, Federman has been willing to say, this is crazy. You know, we can't be for this. You're nuts. But he's a, you know, realistically, he's a marginal figure in the Democratic Party universe,

even though I get a kick out of him. But, you know, Josh Shapiro is the other guy from Pennsylvania, right? And Josh Shapiro is a perfect example of someone who probably has reasonably sensible instincts and a lot of stuff, but is way too measured, way too cautious to really get out there and do it at least I think needs to be done to get out of the ideological prison they're in now. I think he will cautiously try to feel his way to the nomination. And I think in the process, he, like the rest of him, will be herded toward noosomism, right? You know, but nuisism is really opposed to Trump.

I'm opposed to Trump, you know? So I think, realistically, that's where we are. I mean, it pains me to say it, but that's how it looks to me. Folks, you can find more of this often at the Liberal Pantry, at the Substact Newsletter that Roy is one of the co-founder and the politics editor of, and you should, and you should subscribe because you will find interesting ideas counter to your own and sometimes intersecting with. And it's important to understand the smart liberal patriots on the other side of the political aisle

so that we can figure out what we can do down the road together. And, of course, you know, in slight conflict over some of the things we'll never do. Because you guys are just wrong. That's for another podcast. That's another podcast. That would be fun, but I've enjoyed this very much listening to what you have to say. And it's been great to talk to you, Roy. And good luck with a substack, and we hope to have you next time you come up with a book.

Absolutely, happy to do it. Thanks for having me. Bye-bye, Roy. Okay, bye. And that was indeed a pleasure. But here's the thing, folks. We've got to figure out is that there's conflict and then there's football conflict, and we have football conflict to tell you about Charles.

Tell them. It's of the virtual variety. Don't worry. You don't have to be drafted into the NFL, sign up for a college team, enter the transfer portal or any of that. But if you are a ricochet member, and then you can take part in this year's fantasy football extravaganza. And if you do, here's if not the best part, at least a good part. You might even win some money. You might win 50 bucks if you win the league. If you go to ricochet right now, you'll see on the right-hand side of the site there is a link. It looks like

A football. It says fantasy football on it. You can't really miss it. And that will explain everything. The draft is going to be not tomorrow, but the Saturday after that. The time is on there. So are all the rest of the details. There is an address that you can email expressing your interest. So go do it. You have eight days to sign up and take part. Grand. Well, do that. And while you're at ricochet there, by the way, if you haven't been there before, signing up just to scrape some cash out of us. It's fine. You might take a look at some of the other things that we have.

It's great when a piece from the member feed, which is for paying members only. And by paying members, I mean, it's not going to break the bank. Don't worry. And you get more, you get a lot. When the member feed stuff goes to the main feed, just to show you what ricochet is all about, yes, there's politics, there's podcasts on intellectual property.

There are pieces about motherhood. There's a post about a guy who's accusing his power company of maybe stealing his juice. There's my diner. There's, of course, and then there was a boast that I absolutely loved by Gary McVeigh, one of our great writers on the site, who's talking about the rarity of television moving to film and spends a lot of time talking about Jack Webb. And 100 comments later are all talking about the sprockets and the frame rates of kinescopes in 35.

It's nerdy. It's wonderfully pop culture in a way that you haven't seen before. And it's just so ricochet to me. to see something like that where you can talk about what happened yesterday and also the fact that Jack Webb was not a stupid man. He hired Julian London.

So go to ricochet.com and you will find everything there. In addition to meetups, of course, because that's the great thing. If you are a human being, not a bot, you can put out a little call and ricochet members will come to you and you can sit around and drink and have hamburgers and enjoy yourselves and if my memory serves,

probably talk about everything except politics. When we get together, we talk about all the other wonderful things in lives. Well, what is left to go? Let's see, Trump's going to go. He's going to put an end to mail-in ballots, which I think is a good idea. I don't like them.

I think they lead to harvesting. I think this trend where we just have all kinds of loosey-goosey stuff for, oh, voting is going to be over seven days. Oh, it's going to be ranked voting. Oh, you can mail it in. No. you go to a place, you show them your ID, you sign a piece of paper, you go into a little hacked off porta potty, and you make your marks in the Oval like the Iowa Basics test.

That's how you vote. Now, maybe that makes me a boomer. But I think that, I think Trump's right here. No mail-in voting. Here, here. One little trivia point that I always like to bring up is, I don't know, it's 25 or maybe even 30 years ago now, that Jimmy Carter and I think, James Baker got together. It did some kind of commission on voting. And one of their findings was

we shouldn't have mail-in voting. It's just too prone to fraud and manipulation, all the things you just said. And that was the saint of Jimmy Carter putting his name to that report. That always gets forgotten in these debates about it, that even the St. Jimmy Carter of Plains Georgia was skeptical of mail-in voting. One reason for that, by the way, is that he nearly lost his first race with the state senate, I think, in 1962 or 60, because of some fraudulent vote. in his district and he had to go to court to get them invalidated and so he won by 50 votes or something. So he has a long memory of what voting fraud can do. Can we must, I think we split up the beginning of Trump's tweets and the middle. The beginning is correct. I also dislike mail

in voting, although I will note that it works fairly well in Florida. I dislike all voting that is an election day voting in person and would apply exemptions. only four military overseas. So on the merits of it, I basically agree with you, James, and you, Steve, and Donald Trump. But the mechanism Trump suggested for implementing this was catastrophically unconstitutional. And he did use the phrase, the states have to obey the federal government as represented by the president. Now, hang on a minute. So I am a conservative.

and one of the things that I like about the federal government is that it is a charter of enumerated powers and the states retain pretty much all control over everything that the federal government has not been given. Another thing I like about the federal government as contrived by James Madison et al is that decisions about what the federal government is allowed to do

are made by Congress. not by the president in most cases. So in one fell swoop there, having gone from a very sensible position, which is male in voting as bad, Donald Trump has articulated a view of power that would have made Woodrow Wilson blush. And I don't want that power to be in the hands of anyone.

I don't want it to be in the hands of Donald Trump, and I don't think anyone who likes Donald Trump wanted to be in the hands of the next Democratic president. We saw what even Congress tried to do last time around under Biden. which was abolished the filibuster to take over the entire electoral system to permanently advantage Democrats. And it is just worth pointing out that, yes, he's right on the merits, but if he were to try to do that, it would be and should be struck down by the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas presumably would write a coruscating opinion of the sort that he has written before

when this was presented to him. So, yeah, correct idea. When he says he will lead a movement, that's how he starts. I'm with him. I hope Trump does lead a movement against it. I hope he persuades the country to change how it votes, but he can't do it on his own. Problem is, problem is, is that you're absolutely right. But with almost everything, it seems to me, that Trump is doing,

I mean, we can begin again this show by saying, this is a wise, this is a good thing to be done. It should have been done a long time ago. The fundamentals are sound. But I don't like how he's going about it. Most people don't care because nothing was done. and now something's being done. That's the normal erosion that I worry about.

Sure. But on the other hand, I mean, you go back and forth on this and say, well, I mean, sort of, you might be, come. How bad of an apologist for a post-constitutional United States might be coming here because I say that I'm glad it's being done. I grapple with these things. But a lot of people don't grapple because they're happy to see ICE doing what they should have been doing all of these years before,

which is enforcing the border and getting criminals out of the country, et cetera. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's reasonable. I would just say that one of the things that has slightly disappointed me over this one, right, is that if Joe Biden had said on Twitter or elsewhere, the states have to do what the federal government says through me, the representative of the federal government, your president. I mean, we'd have gone and flicked the safety off our rifles.

Come on. Stephen, last question before we go here. Have you ever been to a cracker barrel? You know, I don't think I ever have. They don't have very many of them out here in California. I'm not sure I've ever seen one out here. I know I've seen them elsewhere. But, you know, I'm worried now about the slippery slope.

We've lost Aunt Jemima. We've lost the, you know, the Indian lady on Landlake's Butter. I'm worried about Cracker Jack. That could be next. Well, he's attired in sort of early 20th century naval uniform. So there's a militarism there. And, you know, that was the time when the great white fleet, oh my gosh, the white fleet was, you know,

was doing bad things in the Philippines. So, yeah, I think get rid of him and just keep hugged the dog, whatever the dog was named. I do know how Cracker Barrel can turn it around, and this is obligatory. Well, they need to obviously start an ad campaign with Sidney Sweeney, you know, just because. Cracker Barrels. James, yes. I want to know what you think of Cracker Barrel, because you are the great collector of Americana. So you must have a take on this.

No, well, I mean, I have no Cracker Barrel stuff. I, as I said before, I've never been into one, never had a particular desire to do one. I find suicidal brand changes to be fascinating because they took rid of the guy in the rocking chair. He has a name. He's part of their whole corporate mythology. They got rid of him in favor of a bland logo with a words cracker barrel are too small. Tries me nuts. But what they're doing there is they're sort of getting away from basically, you know, explicit, chatty iconography

from the 80s and the 90s and the rest of it would work. But it's dated to them. Everything is dated. Everything's brown. They don't like their clientele because they're old. And so they want to bring new people in. But the people that will be brought in by a brightened up place are not the people are going to go to Cracker Barrel in the first place.

I mean, they're in a difficult position. They have to satiate the desires of the old clientele at the same time bringing some new people to look around and say, I feel somewhat hip now. This is a modified look at what my grandma's kitchen used to. I'm just fascinated how chains die. Chili is having a moment at present because they've just done very well with their ads. They've come up with some price points that hit the right spot. And all of a sudden, Chili's is just big and it's booming.

And then you look back and you say, what was across the street from Chili's? Well, TGIF with that explosion of an antique store in the wall motif that they had. And TGIF now expires and dies. What happened to Roy Rogers? What happened to Shoney's? What happened to Big Boy? What happened to driving out on an American street and there was a fighting chance you would see a fiberglass statue of a boy in a red and white checked overalls holding a loft? Why did these things die?

Why did they change? And it's an almost spiritual question when it comes to commercial America. So I think that Cracker Barrel is in a hard position. I understand what they did, what they did. I find it interesting that however that this fed instantaneously into the whole. go broke thing. Because Cracker Barrel at one point, post-2020, when companies were obliged to have a position on the major issues of the day, you remember back in the 80s, Charles, Stephen, do you remember what the slogan was from the AIDS activists? Silence equals death, right?

Right. And that was a way of politicizing every corner of America, demanding that if you don't say anything about a particular issue, then we are going to assume you're on the wrong side of it. And Cracker barrel, which is supposed to be rural and middle America and all the rest of it, put out rainbow rockers on the porches of their place to show that everyone was welcome. So that sort of inclusion, if you want to call it that, sends a message to people who previously had never, in a million years, wondered what the position of Cracker Barrel was on gay rights. And now they're looking at a rocking chair as they walk in to have their hotcakes and thinking well does that mean that cracker barrel is in favor of puberty blockers for minors

because if they are i've got a problem with that and so when they did that uh that was part of the first problem and then the stripping down on the modernization and getting rid of the old guy and the rest of it just just sorry my mic fell down uh they got a problem that's not only going to say nothing i'm just repeating myself at this point so would either of you like to repeat yourself or would you like to call it a day and let people get on with their lives or whatever they're doing right now, vacuuming, gardening, just sitting on the porch, watching the world go by?

I have a one minute take, if I can delay people watching the world go by. Here's my take. I don't think it's woke. I think it's crap. And I think that it's crap because we have systematically removed creative people from corporations

and replace them with those who know how to play the game who don't actually have any talent. And this is true in the movie industry and it's true in the restaurant industry. That woman is probably not some hyper-progressive lunatic who is trying to destroy crackabower because she thinks anything associated

with the South or rural America or America's past needs to be obviated. She's probably just incompetent and bland and she looked at those designs and says, yes, I love that because everything in her life looks like that. And people who aren't like that, which is most people who can't,

played the corporate game that she has played are looking at this and saying that's crap and now their stock price is going to go down even further than it has over the last five years and she's going to get fired and instead of replacing her with somebody who's actually talented they were replaced her with the next person in line who has said all the right things for the last 23 years and has no personality very good I agree with you completely my daughter's in advertising though and so I'm here to tell you there is hope there is hope for imagination and true creativity and the rest of it. On the other hand, when you mentioned movies and television, all being crap more or less, I was paging through the pain the other day and then the pain of the

streaming channel and then the other streaming channel desperately trying to find something to watch that didn't seem formulaic or had stunt casting or a historical casting of the rest of it. And I decided that I would give another chance to this highly touted, highly weighted, highly apparently desirable idea, aliens, earth. I don't know if you've heard about this, right? finally they do in a television series what they should have been in the third movie which is take the xenomorphs and put them on earth but let me tell you something guys

stop me if you've ever heard of this idea it's actually turning into a philosophical disquisition on the differences between humans and synthetic people I mean what does it mean to be human what does it mean to be mechanical I'm stunned that this is only the 47th iteration

that I've seen of this in the last 10 years or something like that. I want to take Westworld scripts, roll them up like Ash in the first movie, and jam them down the throat whoever wrote this thing. I'm just not there. All right, that's enough. I'm ranting. Too much coffee. Too much fun. I love talking to you guys, and it's been great to do so today. This has been the Ricochet podcast. You can join us, of course, at rickashet.com, where also you'll find links to bank on yourself. Support them. Support yourself.

Great idea. And if you could leave a fight... I was going to say, it wasn't it. I was going to say you could leave a five-star review. I don't know why I bother, but I got to tell you it's in the contract. If you could leave a five-star review for us on an Apple podcast, we would be very, very happy about that. There, I've fulfilled my contractual obligation, and I now commend you all to the rest of your day,

and we'll see everybody in the comments at Rickshaw 4.1, Charles, because, man, have you been tweaking? Oh, I think it's 4.12.7 right now. Wow. That's spoken like a man who knows his business. It's been great, guys. Bye-bye.