The Ricochet Podcast - Sasse In Nebraska, Long In Cuba

Episode Date: May 4, 2017

Never let it be said that the Ricochet Podcast does not scour the world looking for the best guests and conversation to elucidate the issues of the day and make you muy contento. This week, we’ve got Senator Ben Sasse direct from the backroads of Nebraska talking about his new must-read book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis–and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. Source

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We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. Comey doesn't get invited to many parties on Capitol Hill. He's about as popular as cholera. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and John Gabriel.

I'm James Lollix, and today from Nebraska, Ben Sass. From Cuba, Rob Long. Let's have ourselves a podcast. It's the Ricochet Podcast, everyone, and it's brought to you by the fine people at ProFlowers. You know, Mother's Day, just around the corner, ProFlowers is offering a special 100 blooms for mom bouquet, and it's just $19.99 plus shipping and handling. But you have to go to proflowers.com, click on the microphone in the top right corner,

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and it's still 100 still under 300 for 20 off a suitcase you can go to away travel.com slash ricochet and use that promo code what would it be ricochet during the checkout and also if rob were here and rob's not rob's in cuba right i was going to go to cuba with myself but i just decided to put 50 bucks in an envelope and mail it to raul uh but rob might be joining us later to tell us what it's like what i will tell tell you is what Rob will tell you, is that we have a special deal for the podcast listeners like you who aren't members but kind of feel a little guilty about freeloading, frankly.

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$2.50 a month for this tier. Step up, go to Ricochet, and you'll find more details there. And as I said, Rob's in Cuba. We've got John Gabriel with us. John, how are things in Arizona? They're a lot better than how they are in Cuba, I would assume. I imagine so. And Peter, you're in California, sunny California, where I imagine the weather is beautiful and clement. it is beautiful and clement as a matter of fact got

hot yesterday almost 100 degrees but today it's 20 degrees cooler beautiful climate sunny lovely everything everything that it could possibly be to torture men in minnesota no no no it's a beautiful robin's egg blue sky today. The flowering tree outside my window is in full bloom. The tulips are out. It's gorgeous. Monday, it snowed. It did, actually. A few evil, mean, taunting flakes that didn't accumulate.

But that's the thing about spring. When it finally comes to the upper Midwest, A, it is beautiful. And B, everyone feels he's earned it. We Californians, it's the same sort of syndrome of people who are born rich. It's just you feel slightly, at least you do if you grew up in the Northeast as I do, it feels all just unearned. Yes, if you've had somebody put figs in your mouth every day for the entirety of your life, one more fig doesn't really make you feel any more grateful. Here we feel renewed, and it is extraordinary. It's too short, but it's wonderful. Speaking of extraordinary, $1.1 trillion is an awful lot of money.

And we were under the impression, perhaps, that the budget, when it did finally make its way through, would have a few things that you would expect under a Republican-led government. Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican President. We're going to get some stuff. We didn't get anything. things that you would expect under a republican-led government republican house republican senate republican president we're gonna get some stuff we didn't get anything well we got some military spending but uh uh john peter what say you about this uh this latest act of uh deal making and negotiation to be expected to be expected look, this is first, the first thing that happens is that

Donald Trump finds himself surrounded by reality, the constraints that the constitution imposes, that the current, the current national mood imposes. He just, he's beginning to adjust to that. Now, the next thing that happens is that his supporters have to begin to do so. That's, that's, it's as simple as that. We have to begin to do so. It's as simple as that. We have to adjust to the reality that democratic priorities must always be funded and can never be cut. Is that the reality that you're talking about? Because that's what it seems like to a lot of people. Here's the reality. The reality runs as follows. For seven, no, closer to eight decades now, since Franklin Roosevelt introduced entitlement programs.

They have only been moderated, almost never cut, with only one really signal exception to that, which is when Newt Gingrich and the House Republicans passed welfare reform three times and Bill Clinton on the third time finally felt he had to sign it. That was the one real reform of the welfare state. And, of course, very soon Congress began nibbling away at that. Even our own people, Donald Trump himself has said, I'm not going to touch the big entitlements. No, no social security, none. I'm not touching any of that until later, if then. So is it any surprise that even Republicans have their own? Let me put it this way. Friend of mine, known him since we were in high school together, John Hovind, Senator of your beloved home state of North Dakota, James. Very simple. John spent almost a dozen years as governor of North Dakota, and then he got elected

to the Senate. Excuse me, I shouldn't call, Senator Hovind, to be respectful here. And the first year after he was elected, I said to him, well, John, what's the difference between being a governor and being a senator? And he said, well, as a governor, you get to get stuff done. And as a senator, here's what happens. My good constituents, all of them good people, come to me and say, listen, we're as conservative as you are. We've got to cut the federal government, except for this program that we really depend on back home and that happens all day long that's the way it goes so what's the point uh try to slow it down uh the donald trump budget is different certainly different from the hillary clinton budget

but the government moves right he's he's able to he's uh reducing the federal uh cutting the state department putting pressure on spending in a number of domestic programs yeah increasing the defense budget but the entitlement programs make up something some huge between the entitlement entitlement programs are what 60 65 of the entire budget now right but i'm guessing i'm guessing that the the 160 over time even if you're donald trump you can't swing a chair through the a plate glass window you change things over time that's true except i'm not saying i'm happy about this i'm just saying this is the way it works this is reality but in order to change things over time you have to begin to change them you have to want to change

them and it seems to me as though the party of reagan has just conceded that is the role of the government ever to grow ever to expand and never to contract when the republicans go along with schumer's desire to take 160 policy policy writers off the bill um there is there's nobody there to speak for limited or reduced government there's nobody there to make the case for it they're not interested in making the case for it seems to me they me. They like the power that they have. They like to spend. And they are now the party that is just of less growth of government. Yeah, well, that's right. That at a minimum. That at a minimum. Yes, yes. But I mean, it's like the Republicans just strike me as somebody who's going 65 miles an hour down the road, and then they enter a town, and the town has a speed limit of 30 and for the duration of driving through that town

is like the duration of republican control of congress they will slow down to 30 but they won't stop they won't back up and they'll just keep going lest the democrats pull them over and give them a ticket and then the minute that they're out of town all of a sudden then the government expands again the minute the democrats are back it the Democrats won't have to take a year or two years to get back up to the funding levels that they bemoaned and bewailed that they lost under Republicans. They will have lost nothing. They'll simply accelerate the growth of spending and accelerate the penetration of the government into the lives of individual citizens in their pocketbooks. John, I'm done. Go ahead. Well, they could rename this the Re-Irrigate the Swamp program.

There's a nice extra palm fronds they added in the back, maybe an alligator. Yeah, this is how Washington works, as Peter said, of course. And those of us who are thinking, maybe Donald Trump won't be the best rock-ribbed conservative during the primary times. Well, this is kind of what was expected. And as many of his most ardent fans say, hey, at least it isn't Hillary. And I would definitely agree with that. It would be far worse if it was her. But it is maddening for those of us limited government types who see Planned Parenthood funded yet again.

You know, it should not be a very difficult place to start the cutting, but we can't even have that, it looks like. So I'm not surprised. I am disappointed. By the way, so, oh boy, do I hate to be put, look what James has done. Look what I've fallen for. Here I am in the position of defending the welfare state. I don't want to be put, look what James has done for, look what I've fallen for. Here I am in the position of defending the welfare state. I don't want to be in that position. But just to point something out, this, the action that was taken was simply to keep the federal

government operating for a brief period of time. This is not the final be all end all budget. This is what they had to do to get the votes together to keep the federal government operating. This is the theory, and I'm willing to say that there's an argument here. And now they've got the bad idea to force a crisis on the economy all of a sudden. You fund the federal government, you maintain the status quo while you work at undermining and rearranging the status quo well that's an argument i can tell james is impressed by that don't we have some sponsors to oh it's an argument i'll grant that and indeed how did i let james get the moral high ground right from the get-go i am in a hole and I will spend the rest of this podcast digging myself out. Yeah, well, I got the mohigro as we used to

call it back in the 80s. Yeah, it's an argument and if indeed there is, you detect a great deal of sympathy and desire and enthusiasm to work behind the scenes at this strange, long Machiavellian process by which the termites are sent into the edifice

until it finally collapses. Mwahaha. If that's the case, great. I don't see it. Absolutely. There's no evidence that I can see that there's any desire to do so because it makes them feel unpopular because it makes them feel mean because they're called mean when they do these things.

Because the minute that you say we're going to cut community development block grants then all of a sudden somebody's saying you're cutting meals on wheels and and and starving liver spotted old ladies with cats and blue hair wigs are going to die and then they have to spend all their time talking about how we really don't want to kill the elderly well maybe not all of them uh the argument's lost the argument is there's just there's no joy in it for them to be able to make the argument that there should be less government and there is everything in the culture that rewards them for saying that we're going to be generous and give more from this magical pot of money excreted from the fundament of the unicorns they have in a stable there on capitol hill so yeah no here is here is, that is correct. There is a quotation. I think this is exactly, I think I have it memorized.

This is Lyndon Johnson campaigning in 1964. I think the site was Connecticut. He actually uttered these words. We're in favor of a lot of stuff and against mighty little. Perfect. And that sort of sums up what that's the earth that's what you want to find yourself saying if you're a politician because that is that for sure those are the incentives those are the incentives listen so to one serious point here there is no chance that congress even

if congress is controlled by republicans no chance zero zip nadailch, that they will be able to affect any lasting change in the budget without a president of the United States making a consistent and principled argument, A, to give them political cover, and B, actually to move those portions of the country that are paying attention and care about following public policy, care about what a president says. So is Donald Trump doing that? I don't think he's doing that. Let's put it this way. He's not doing it quite as well as he could. Is Donald Trump consistent and principled? I leave that to you to answer, James, because you've already placed me in the position of defending the welfare state. I will not now attack our chief executive. Yeah, I'm just an NRA editorial board shill. I'll give it to John. John, I mean, there are many attributes, positive and negative,

that can be ascribed to Donald Trump. Do you think that principled and consistent are such words? Let me put it this way, and I am straining mightily to be diplomatic about this, but one of the frustrations, well, it wasn't a big frustration, I guess for me, but maybe for a few Democrats who voted for him. Obama, when dealing with Congress, especially early on with the stimulus and Obamacare, he led from behind, as is his style. We're seeing Donald Trump doing the same thing.

We're seeing him saying, why don't you figure out this health care replacement legislation? Why don't you figure out this budget stopgap measure we can get through to get us by for a few months? And he is just kind of reclining, issuing executive orders when he can, and he's letting Congress handle it. And much to the chagrin of many of us, leaning to the right is Congress apparently has not spent the past eight years plotting and planning and being Machiavellian about how they can reduce the administrative state once they have the right of powers again. They seem to be caught flat-footed by their victory, and it's very disappointing. I don't see Donald Trump going out there and risking being un... 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. Popular with, he doesn't mind being unpopular with a few people in the media, but if people are just steadily mocking him, if it is coming from the right and the left, he does not take a shine to that.

Yeah. I don't think we're going to see what FDR called that bold persistence period of innovation, right? We're going to try everything. I think the old playbook came, the swamp-soaked playbook came right back to the fore. Now, of course, you know, there's the FDR approach, the bold, persistent experimentation. There's the Mao approach where, for example, you can ram down exactly what you want to do under the guise of letting a thousand flowers bloom. But I prefer to think about a hundred flowers because who can imagine a thousand flowers delivered to your house? You can't.

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defend themselves we've got senator ben sass the junior senator from the great state of Nebraska, and the author of a new book, The Vanishing American Adult, Our Coming-of-Age Crisis, and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance. You can preorder it right now on Amazon, and you can follow him on Twitter as well, at Ben Sasse. And we welcome him to this, the Ricochet Podcast. Welcome, Senator. Hello. Hello.

Senator, we understand at the moment you're actually driving through the great state of Nebraska. And as a planesman myself, I can only imagine how beautiful the site must be today. It is gorgeous. You should be here. And if the cell tower drops, I'm blaming you. Well, before we get to what's going on in Congress right now, you have a book, The Vanishing American Adult, and you're looking at a generation that seemed, well, failure to launch, as they say about them and other North Korean ICBM programs, kids who are

delaying adolescence, taking longer to get there. This has great ramifications for the future of the country. What do we do to make the next generation more self-reliant? Well, one of the first things we need to do is we need to recognize that historically, adolescence is a really special gift, right? Childhood is special and to be treasured and cherished and protected. Adulthood done right is a way to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful and love your neighbor and all the heights of human potential are there. And yet transitioning between the two in a way that's a little bit protected is a pretty special gift over the last two and a half millennia that if you're in a place that's not war-torn or that's not abject poverty, to have this little greenhouse

phase where your body hits puberty and you're physically, biologically an adult, and yet you don't have to be morally, financially, educationally, household structure-wise, all independent, it's a pretty special thing. As long as you understand it's a means to an end, it's not a destination. You don't want to be stuck in Neverland. Peter Pan is a dystopia. And people don't understand that. Disney has remade Peter Pan for us. And so we have a whole bunch of generations that now kind of think that being unable to distinguish 10-year-old from 17-year-old and 17-year-old from 24-year-old is normal. It's not. It's really abnormal. But it's more our fault than theirs. We're not helping

them get the kinds of coming-of-age experiences where they would understand why adulthood is the destination. Senator Peter Robinson here. Listen, I haven't read the book yet. I have pre-ordered the book, but Amazon still isn't shipping it yet, as best I can tell. So May 16th, they don't ship, but you're a good American for pre-ordering. Thank you, Peter. Right, not at all. So here's my little, tiny, creeping fear about it. I know you love your state of Nebraska. I know because I follow you on Twitter that you are very proud that your kids are Nebraskans and they've worked on ranches. You call them ranches in Nebraska, not farms. So my creeping little worry is that Senator Sasse is going to say to the whole country, in effect, you know what?

You need to raise your kids the way we do here in Nebraska. And in Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York and Philadelphia, that just won't work. I have to be wrong because I know you intend this book for the whole country. Why am I wrong? Great and fair question. So I do think that it is important to do hard work and be engaged in nature, but that's not what the book's about. So I think, Melissa, my wife and I, we don't in any way want to hold our family up as a model because we stumble and fall every day. We should have a shared national understanding that a republic requires self-reliance and perseverance and a destination of independence. And a huge part of being 13 to 15 to 17 is understanding that there are these coming-of-age markers and experiences that are different than just grade progression in school. And so work ethic is one of the chapters in the book. The book is about one-third cultural critique and about two-thirds constructive, so what can we do about it? But things like being aware of the need for limited consumption. There is a virtue to understanding the distinction between need and want.

And healthy people can understand what their needs are and not confuse the limitless yearning of our wants as actual fundamental needs. If you get your denominator of needs and wants so big, you'll never ever fulfill all of it. You end up always dissatisfied. So there's a chapter on limited consumption. There's a chapter on the work ethic, but that's not necessarily agrarian work, though that's a lot of what our kids experience. But travel is a huge part of what coming of age should mean for people who are going to actually develop empathy. That doesn't mean you're wealthy enough to do the Grand European Tour.

This could be as simple as being 10 miles away from the neighborhood that you live in and see different ways that people organize their lives. It's about becoming self-consciously literate because the disciplines of mind that are involved in sort of the active pursuit of reading as opposed to what's often the passive pursuit of screen time and video games. There are a bunch of different virtues and disciplines about coming of age, but this is not at all constrained to an agrarian environment. And frankly, Teddy Roosevelt could have given speeches that are real similar to a whole bunch of these chapters at a time when America was going through mass urbanization, and it'd be no less relevant.

One more question for me. I know James wants to get back in for sure. John Gabriel wants to ask a question or two, but one more question for me, Peter Robinson, the book, again, the vanishing American adult officially published on May 16th, but pre-order on Amazon or other places right now, the vanishing American adult by Senator Ben Sasse. So if I were a kid, I might be tempted to say, oh jeepers, this just sounds like another generational, he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand this iPhone. He doesn't understand the new elect. We millennials are different. And what makes us different is that we have been raised in an age in which technology is omnipresent. And he's saying, yet again, we hear it all the time, put down your phone and pick up a book. And that's about what it comes down to. He may be a young old fogey, but Senator Sasse is an old fogey. Again, that cannot be right because of all the members

of the United States Congress, as best I can tell, the one who's best at actually using social media is senator ben sass so what do you have to say about social what it your argument cannot be as simple as put down your your phone it is not uh the the digital natives uh are going to have anxiety about exactly the kind of question we're talking about here um but there's no uh old man get off my lawn screaming in this book. It's actually quite the opposite. By the way, I still remember 1988 driving way too fast when I was a 16-year-old through some neighborhood to pick up my girlfriend, an old Doc Anderson, within the street screaming at me.

I couldn't stand that guy. You know, 25, 30 years later when I had kids, I actually went back and found that old doctor and thanked him for getting me to slow down so I didn't run over a kid in his neighborhood. So there's natural maturation that happens for all of us. This is about something different than that though. And it's about the fact that these folks, these digital natives, these kids, the millennials and today's teens, they're entering a world where job disintermediation is going to happen at a faster pace than ever before in human

history. So much of the economic productivity and output and curve of total global economic production is going to go up, up, up over time. And yet it's not at all clear that if you're 40 and 45, 50 and 55, and you get disintermediated out of a job, it's not clear that our grandparents would have known how to navigate this world the way a lot of these digital kids are going to have to do it. That doesn't mean just because I do affirm lots of the new digital world, that doesn't change the fact that we're actually incarnate bodily creatures. And climbing the actual mountain is still a different thing than just going there on Instagram from when your friends did it.

We are made to be active people that go out and pursue and persevere and conquer. And right now, when you have 18 to 24-year-old males, some substantial plurality of which spend about half of their waking hours eyes tied down and sedentary in front of their phones, there's data that shows they're not actually satisfied after that. There's a cotton candy-like experience where we get sort of a dopamine loop that I want to stay there and hit another round of the video game, and it may feel right for two minutes and seven minutes from now, but two hours and seven hours from now, I wish I had

more diverse and actual physical embodied experiences. We need both. Well, and Senator, this is John Gabriel, and you recently served as the president of Midland University, and so you have recent experience dealing with millennials, dealing with these digital natives, as you say. One word that I keep picking up in your comments is virtue. I've been doing a lot of reading of the classics, which I completely avoided during

my youth when I should have been reading this stuff, trying to keep up with my kids in the local charter schools. But dealing with millennials, do they know what virtue is? That's kind of the question that I have, these enduring virtues. And I've worked with a lot of millennials, and they are, the stereotype of millennials is very, very wrong in most of their cases that I've ended up meeting. But what are their thoughts about virtues? Do they even think in these terms? Do they look at virtues as something other than the transient social justice meme of the moment? Yeah, I think that's a great question. Obviously, the word, which we think of as having a highly moral tone, and surely it does, but its root, of course, is actually strength. And I don't think we're doing a good enough job of self-consciously helping them recognize that scar tissue is a good thing, that you can overcome lots of hard stuff in life, and we don't want to bubble wrap our kids.

Melissa and I use the metaphor a lot with our kids, that a huge part of our responsibility, our kids are 6, 13, and 15, and helping them go from 6 to 10 and 10 to 13 and 13 to 15 and beyond, is that we actually love stitches at our house. You know, if you get stitches the right amount, I mean, it's no fun on Saturday night at 11.30 to have to wait extra hours at the ER, but if we get them in the right amount and we didn't actually do some sort of permanent damage to

the spine, if we have long-term consequences, we think we got away with something, and we want to be pushing that limit a lot. And I think that we are doing a poor job, and again, there's nothing, the book, the purpose of the book is not to blame anybody. It's one-third cultural correct, but the two-thirds that I care about are the constructive parts., there's nothing, the book, the purpose of the book is not to blame anybody. It's one third cultural crit, but the two thirds that I care about are the constructive parts. If there is blame to be laid somewhere, it's at us parents and grandparents level that we have

allowed the material surpluses of our age to insulate our kids from a lot of the stuff that actually makes life meaningful. But I do think we need to have a self-conscious conversation with them about when you overcome those hardships, that scar tissue produces strength in the future. And the looping of that back to virtue isn't just good for them, it's necessary for us. Because a republic only works. There's nothing about this book that's political.

I mean, it's really about the people and the polity, but there's nothing about it that's D.C.-centric or about policy or about current political actors. But when you hear cultural commentators talking so much about their worry about soft authoritarianism, the way you actually get authoritarianism 15 and 20 and 25

years down the road is if people think they're too weak to solve problems themselves and they need someone to come in and promise them lots of daddy in public life. And I don't think that's what America has ever been about. We believe in a Tocquevillian America, not just rural Tocquevillian, but the rise of cities and neighborhoods where there's a lot of debt. 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. Social capital, where people believe in neighborliness, that stuff is about volunteerism. It's about persuasion.

It's about resilience, and it's about all the innovative and entrepreneurial projects that Americans can build because of the great potential in our people. But we need to actually tell that story again together, because right now we're not doing that. Well, when you talk about installing virtue in a group of people who are keenly and perhaps preternaturally aware of their popularity, it brings to mind Congress. And we should probably talk about what's going on nowadays.

So much to discuss. I'd like your thoughts on the first hundred days. It's a ridiculous marker, but everybody's using it. How do you think it's gone so far? I don't think you can net it out to sort of one takeaway. I think you have to go sort of issue by issue and say there are a whole lot with you that the marker is silly and FDR used it for troubled reasons uh he was often batching together things that had been latent from from the previous administration and from the rise of what was then becoming understood as the great depression and batching it in ways that would

enable him to have special unique executive bully pulpit powers thank you senator ben says for a Thank you, Senator Ben Sasse, for just in passing a nuanced appraisal of FDR's record that almost never happens. Sorry. Thank you for that. I almost don't care what you say on the rest of your answer. That was so good. Go ahead. If we want to go bigger picture swinging bats about FDR, let's use him to hit LBJ. Because one of the fundamental things that bugs me about the way we talk about the growth of entitlement society and dependency is not recognizing that

FDR did have a lot of noble ambitions to get through a crisis, but he wasn't trying to create permanent dependency. LBJ actually tried to replicate an FDR model and create permanent dependency. So the bad guy between the two is LBJ. But anyway, back to 100 days. I think it's not a useful way to think of it. And yet, at any point, you can pause and say, so how are things going? I think there are some things that the president's doing that we should really applaud him for. Top of that list is Neil Gorsuch.

He's a wonderful pick to fill the particular vacancy of the moment, but also as a way to have a civic conversation about what the role of the justice is. It's wonderful that the guy was such a Boy Scout through so much of his life that nobody could distract it with some random scandal. We got to actually debate jurisprudence and what the purpose of the judiciary and the third branch of government is. So kudos to the president on an incredible pick. His national security team, also really, really strong. And I think they're getting battle rhythms with McMaster as head of NSC. I think there's a decision-making process

in the White House about external global facing things. And I think we should all be thrilled that a guy like James Mattis, who's arguably the most impressive person at the Pentagon in half a century, is not just there, he's there in a kind of humble posture where he wants to be a part of a national security team. When Rex Tillerson's confirmation early on seemed like it might be in doubt,

I think one of the most underreported stories of the president's national security nominations was that Tillerson had this huge advocate in his quarter. There's really impressive team play in the president's national security team. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff where you just wake up every day and you're like, what in the world is happening? I don't think they have any clarity in the decisions right now, which is why it's like kiddie soccer, where people race around to be in every photo and on every plane and at every Mar-a-Lago dinner, because you never know when a decision might randomly be made.

For people who've never been around the White House before, you sort of have an understanding of why the chief of staff's job is both so important and so hard, because you have to get exactly the right people in the room to serve the president well. The most valuable limited resource in Washington, D.C. is the president's mind share. And if the president is going to make a decision, you need to be sure that that decision has been refined and vetted and everything that can be solved by delegation below him should. And and everything that can be solved by delegation below him should. And if it needs to be solved by the president and there need to be seven people in the room, then there need to not be three people in the room. There need to be seven and

there need to not be 13 people in the room. There need to be seven. And it's hard. And they're clearly not doing that yet. They don't know how to do it. And in some places, I got to admit, I'm a little happy, not happy, but I guess I'm sort of, I feel a little bit of relief because their policies, their stated policy objectives are so horrible on things like trade that I'm glad they look like the Keystone Cops and can't get their act together. Unbelievable. Senator Peter Robinson here again. You've been in the Senate almost two years now. You just answered a tricky political question with zero spin. You have so much to learn. There's no doubt that's true.

I mean, I'm popular with almost everybody some of the time, which is a pretty good sign that I don't know how to do politics yet. But I do know how to care about the future of the country and not spend much time on my own political fortunes. I don't really care. No spend is what I want to do. So listen, listen, one more question from me. And then I know John Gabriel wants to get in and I get your phone battery is holding up and Nebraska is still unfolding before you as you drive. We'll we'd love to keep chatting. But here's Robinson's question. 100 days, you've just given us your evaluation of the Trump administration. You've written a book. You've given wonderful speeches. We know that you have discovered that one of the virtues of the United States Senate is that it gives you a platform to say good and important things. Got

that. But after these first 100 days, what is it that you as a member of the Senate, what is it that the other 99 members of the Senate can actually do to be productive, to try to help this administration? I mean, my reading is exactly the same as yours. Gorsuch, thank goodness, magnificent. Foreign policy team, terrific. They're in place. We can sleep well at night. But that leaves a fair amount of space here called the United States of America, where they don't quite seem to convey the notion that they know what they're doing. What can the Senate do to help? Well, the Senate fancies itself the greatest deliberative body in the world. It obviously isn't that now. There are 12 not-for- profits that I could name in the next

seven minutes in my little town of 25,000 farmers that deliberate far more effectively than the United States Senate right now. Because people in my town honestly distinguish between deliberation and action. What problem are we trying to solve? Let's agree on that before we start screaming at each other about competing solutions. It might be that we don't even know what we're talking about. And that's clearly the case in the Senate, and that's clearly the case in the country right now. before we start screaming at each other about competing solutions, it might be that we don't even know what we're talking about. And that's clearly the case in the Senate, and that's clearly the case in the country right now. So there are legislative things we should talk about in response to your good question.

But before that, we should admit that we're going through a period of massive economic upheaval and the shortening of the duration of jobs. And there are all sorts of blips we can argue about post-200 eight financial crisis but in a macro level world goal we're entering the fourth phase of global economic history from hunter gatherers to and agricultural and federal farmers in the right to know just

to industrialization in the right to cities now we have this new thing mobile economy the digital economy that he'd probably service economy post-industrial economy is the sociologist's shorthand, which is a way of throwing in the towel saying we don't know what it is. But mobile living and exurbia is going to create a crisis of loneliness and neighborliness because people have as one of the fundamental anchors of our identity, our work, and the neighborhoods that flow from the work and the communities and the particular people that we serve. And right now, people know

fewer and fewer neighbors, and people whose jobs are shrinking are worried that their lives and their work and their hours don't matter. That crisis can't possibly be solved by politics. So one of the things that the Senate ought to be able to do is clarify the actual problems people face and then distinguish between things that are amenable to governmental solutions versus not. And if there's a governmental need, which things must be done at the federal level versus which things our founders and their wisdom in the ninth and tenth amendments would say should be done at the state and local level. We don't do any of that type of distinguishing right now. And so we talk, and national media elites talk about political polarization,

and it's partly true. But the real problem is that there's political disengagement because there's such a vacuum in America about deliberation, about big and important things. And so politics fills the void because there aren't other contexts and venues for that meaningful sort of textured local Tocquevillian living right now. And so I'm happy to talk about policy, but the first thing we should admit is that we're going through massive disruption in the nature of work and that there's nobody smart enough among the

535 I work with or a president of this one, but any of them, who's going to be smart enough to centrally plan and fix all this. We need to see lots of flowers blooming, and those are local, voluntrous flowers. And we have to have a conversation about what gives people's lives meaning first. Then we figure out the very small subset of that that is governmental. And Senator Sasse, this is John Gabriel with one more quick question. You were present when James Comey came down to the Hill, testified, and most of the headlines, of course, were about the 2016 election. But you had an excellent question. I think many of our listeners have been wondering, why isn't Julian Assange in jail? Were you happy with Comey's answer on that?

Well, I don't want to be too quippy because Robinson will beat me up for trying to be salacious with something for Twitter bait. But I do want to claim credit as the first guy in U.S. history who's ever gotten an FBI director testifying before the Congress to use the term intelligence porn. I did that. Comey, I wanted him to distinguish among a lot of debates that some reasonable people will have. There are Assange and WikiLeaks defenders that are nuts and that are just fundamentally anti-American. But there are people who can ask a very thoughtful, reasonable question. How is this not First Amendment protected speech, what Weakly Leaks does to harm American interests and actually harm American intelligence assets around the world?

Why is that not just journalism? Why is that not just free press? And it is. Assange should be in jail. Assange should be charged with and prosecuted for actual crimes against America. But there are reasonable people who would they will help me understand why and so i asked director call me to unpack a little bit

the distinction between leaking of classified information by u s intelligence officials which is a criminal act and the journalist who want to learn as much as they possibly can so washington post omaha world heralds uh... chicago tribune new york times to learn as much as they possibly can. So Washington Post, Omaha World Herald, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, those folks who are writing about national security, when they're asking someone from the intelligence community how to understand what's going on in North Korea and what's chess move three, four, and five for us, if this nutty guy, what's McCain call him, Kim Jong-un, he calls him that crazy

fat kid with dupes. If Kim Jong-un does something and we have to intervene, what's chess move three, four, and five? You get into classified stuff very quickly. It is not the journalist's job to parse out what questions they can and can't ask. And so the act, the responsibility to guard carefully classified information that could put American intelligence assets at risk, that's the job of people in the IC. It's not the responsibility of the reporter to police that. And so that's First Amendment protected for them to be asking hard questions.

It's a completely different thing to be WikiLeaks, which is functionally a front for foreign intelligence services. And so I thought Comey did a pretty nice job of teasing out the distinction along that continuum from our ICC assets to journalists asking questions to fake journalists that are really just something that's connected to another country's intelligence assets and propaganda campaign. Senator Sasse, we release you now to the great grain-filled ocean of Nebraska as you drive along. Have you actually had to turn in the last 20 minutes or so? I actually haven't had my... I've been in the backseat.

I'm in the car alone. I'm in the backseat. I just set cruise. My car's well aligned. The roads are smooth. I know it well, going through North Dakota, there's one little spot where you kind of got to nudge it a little bit, but otherwise it's a straight shot from Fargo to Montana. We thank you for joining us today. The book is The Vanishing American Adult, Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.

Thank you so much, sir, and we hope to have you on the podcast again soon. Thanks, fellas. Thank you. Thanks, Senator. Yeah. One thing we should have probably got along to uh around to in the in the comey discussion i love this that the comey said uh if i can remember the quote what are these sayings that he said he was mildly nauseous over the idea that he might have swayed the election

which promptly spurred discussion on twitter not outrage not quite getting up to the level of it, but outrage, but interest, the difference between nauseous and nauseated. You can't be nauseous. You can be nauseated. Something is poisonous and you have been poisoned. That's the difference. And then of course, people were pointing out that actually the word has just come to mean that. So let's see over time. And Kevin Williamson made a very interesting point it's handy to have specific words for different things and he's quite right wouldn't you say guys but you're not going to change are you going to say i feel nauseous right wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute so i am nauseated i feel nauseated by the object that so the uh that particular smell that's upsetting my stomach that's nauseous but i'm nauseated is that correct that's how it works

right thank you thank you so much and you two can be you two can be a pointless pedant on the It's upsetting my stomach. That's nauseous, but I'm nauseated. Is that correct? That's how it works. Right. Thank you. Thank you so much. And you too can be a pointless pedant on the internet. But I mean, really, it's one of those distinctions that, you know, I love the idea of the senator sitting in the backseat of the car while the car is on cruise. That's just absolutely perfect. And that's what driving in the plain States is like.

And I'm going to be going up to Fargo, of course, because we have a family graduations and I got to go to see my dad and all these other wonderful things. And I'll be throwing some, Rob isn't calling in from Cuba. Is he, we were expecting Rob to call in from Cuba.

Cause this, so this, cause this would be the point where he would do it, where he would just. Okay. All right. So we didn't tell him when to say it. Looking for reliable IT solutions for your business?

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suitcase. We thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we go live to Cuba. Rob Long is being one of those guys in Cuba. Rob, what's it like? Yeah, so I'm calling you from someplace in Havana. I'm not quite sure where. Do go on, as they say. Oh, do go on?

Well, so I'm here in Havana. I'm on a research trip, as you know. This is entirely tax deductible. I don't want to make, there'll be no mistake about that. And Peter, I have some bad news for you. What's that? I don't think you're, I don't think Mrs. Robinson's getting any of her property back.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Yeah, I don't think it's that's getting any of her property back. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Yeah, I don't think it's that, but I have to say this. First of all, you know, I've been to a lot of these countries that are sort of emerging or not emerging or whatever you want to call them. And it's always the optimistic part of me wants to see, you know, things changing. Right. And I think things are changing here slowly. We had a great dinner last night with a young woman who runs her own sort of online news agency.

Wow. And it's sort of, she's hassled constantly by the authorities, and of course they spy on her and do all sorts of things, but she was a Neiman Fellow for a year at Harvard in journalism, and her brief, her personal brief, is to tell the truth, which is a hard thing to do in a country like this. But it's something she's doing. Also, there's a whole, you know, it's not entirely closed. It's what they call the paquetas, which they get once a week,

which are sort of a collection on the thumb drive of the best of basically American culture. I mean, best in quotes. A lot of it is Judge Judy. And some of it is, you know, movies. You know, the Fast and Furious movie that opened last week is also already in the parquet this year. You know, that's piracy, but okay. But here's what I've noticed.

I've noticed by its absence there's no construction there. There are no cranes. There's no small building. There's no people. This is not Vietnam when I visited Vietnam in the very early 90s. It's not India in I visited Vietnam in the very early 90s. It's not India in the late 80s or

mid-90s. It's not China, certainly. It's not going to be that. It's never going to be the Caribbean tiger because they don't have anything. That's just the absolute

fallacy of centralized planning. If you ever wanted to the absolute fallacy of centralized planning. If you ever wanted to see the fallacy of centralized planning, it's here. So that city is not being rebuilt. There's no capital investment. There's no got that. What's the general look and feel of the place? I mean, if you go online, as I do from time to time, to see what Havana looks like today, it still looks to me as though the old, beautiful, colonial-era parts of Havana are continuing to crumble.

Is that so? Are they at least— Yeah, it looks like a post-apocalyptic version of what Havana would look like. You know, nothing's been repaired or built here since 1958. I'm staying in an apartment, which is right on the Maracanã, which Malacon which is right on the seashore but Malacon is this extraordinary wall seaside wall that is really

the largest sofa in the world and it's a living room for habaneros to go and walk along the Malacon that's where you have your first date that's where you have your clandestine trip. That's where you go with your friends to sit and drink beer.

It's sort of where all of Havana, rich and poor, if they're, you know, writ large, would go. And it's not built there. It was a crumbling, if you can call it a sports arena that people use. Uh, but most of the, all the apartment buildings were built in 19 in the fifties. Right. And there was one next to the one we're staying in that,

uh, it has been empty since 1958 and unfinished. Uh, you know, they didn't have, didn't get a chance to finish it before the revolution and they didn't finish it. They simply did not finish it.

Madness. It's a shortage of peek in the windows and see unfinished ceilings and exposed plumbing. And it's just that nobody, they don't have the material. So their argument is we don't have any of these things because of the embargo. Right. Right.

That it's only the Americans would lift the embargo. We would have all these things that we would get to build. And there is some truth to that. But all of these sort of more, I'd say, progressive Cubans, or I should say, citizens of Havana, that's different, you know, it's a big city, different from the countryside, but all of those people, the ones who are you know what Peter be the old days we would call liberal meaning free market right they all say the same thing which is that it doesn't really matter what happens to the embargo the

American side of the embargo the crucial part of it is the Cuban side of the embargo but even if all these things were available cranes and dump trucks and backhoes and building materials and car parts and radiators and all sorts of things, even if they were all available, the Cuban government wouldn't allow their import. So it's really an embargo of two sides, and only one side is really crucial, and that's the Cuban side. Because, of course, you know, they make cars and trains and planes and engines and parks all over the world. They're not just American.

Of course they do. They trade with Mexico. Right. They trade with Mexico, Spain, Canada. They trade with everybody except us. They could have everything they needed if the government—anyway. So what about the people? So traffic?

Are we still talking about 1950s Chevys? Oh yeah. I drive around in a 1948 Chevy. A 1948 Ford. Unbelievable. And what about the people? Well fed? Well clothed? The 1948 Ford, I should say, the 1948 Ford has a late 1970s

Toyota engine in it. So it's been upgraded. Alright. That's alright then. There's a certain practicality to it. So it's driving upgraded. That's all right then. Yeah, so it's thriving. There's a certain practicality to it all. But look, traffic isn't that bad because gas is expensive and people don't have cars, but there's taxis and buses.

And on the plus side, there's a very strong community feeling here. There's a very strong feeling of unity. I mean, you don't have a strongman dictator taking care of you for that many years and not feel some kind of cultural connection to each other. There is almost... Only the pettiest of crimes. Murders are really rare.

It's cohesive, the society. They don't have anything but their own unity. There is really no cult, picture cult, iconic cult of Fidel here. It was sort of not his taste for whatever reason. He didn't like that. It's mostly Che and Jose Marti and people like that that are sort of icons on the side of buildings. Weirdly, I'm not quite sure I know why, Fidel was against that.

He doesn't want a monument built to him. He asked for it. He asked that it not be done. It was in his last will and testament, no monument. There are quotes from him everywhere, but those iconic pictures of him that I personally expected to see everywhere, you don't see.

It's a very unique place. But you can't come here It's a very unique place, but it means you can't come here and not think two things. One, it was probably a lot of clumsy American foreign policy for the first 20 years before the Revolution, the 20 years after the Revolution. That's

certainly true, but also that at no point in history and no point in human endeavor does a planned economy ever work, does a centralized bureaucracy ever work, does anything other than free at no point in history and no point in human endeavor that the plant economy ever work right with the centralized bureaucracy ever work with anything other than free enterprise ever work you know Cuba the tragedy of Cuba is they're not looking right now I mean even the people I been who are really optimistic, they're not looking for like the Chinese were or the Indians were for an explosive enterprise, for opportunity. They're looking for another

Padron. They're looking for another big brother. They lost a big brother in the 90s, so the union collapsed. They went through a period of incredible deprivation, starvation, and now they're looking for somebody else to take care of them. This is learned helplessness. This is a country that behaves the way certain counties in West Virginia might or certain neighborhoods in the inner city might. Rob, this strikes me as the sort of typical approach you get from Western tourists. Sure, it's collapsing. Yes, the cars are old.

Nobody makes any money. There are shortages. There is learned helplessness. There is an adolescent infantilization of the population. But, Rob, their literacy rate has got to be spectacular. Do you see people just standing around reading things? Yeah, you think. I mean, I had

a really interesting drink and dinner with a professor at the University of Anaheim here who's a very smart guy. Very, very smart. And certainly orthodox. Right? You know, your system's not that good either.

What about your system? All those things. Right. They're very friendly, but like, you know, he had the answers, the approved answers. But, of course,

every now and then, like, the human being will drop analyses like, well, you know, those are the people who are less educated or the people from the country who don't read.

Right. So, you know, you have an urban culture here that prizes, in many ways, which, I mean, maybe I'm just sort of always seeing the unities and all these things, but what's remarkable is how similar. I mean, Cuba is a country that is the product of the highest best practice academic intellectual progressivism from the 1950s. It resembles exactly that. It resembles the bad neighborhoods where they taught dance and the arts and poetry and graffiti and didn't teach

auto repair and woodworking and basic accounting and the things that people need. Right. Rob, put it here with one last question. If you talk to Cubans in this country, and of course it's been a long time now since they were in touch with with the home island but you'll hear a couple of you'll hear actually two different analyses one analysis is everybody back at home and everybody here in miami was waiting for the so-called the biological solution meaning when fidel died everything would change fidel is dead nothing has changed raul is in place raul is going to find somebody to succeed him. And so there's this feeling that back in the home island,. I don't even know how to ask the question without making it sound almost ridiculous, but if there were a vote held today, do you suppose that the regime would win? Is it in some fundamental, if screwy way, a popular regime?

No, I think it is. I think if there were a vote today or a protest like today, they would be returned, absolutely. You know, there's an attempt here to do what cannot be done, which is to negotiate your way out of a command socialist economy with an enormous amount of centralized control, both economic and otherwise, and to lift the economic controls, lift the planning, the constant planning in the organization and the sort of top-down control, and preserve the specialness, unity, and social safety net that they like there. And that can't be done. Individuals operating under the individual freedom aren't going to really march in the same lockstep. That brings a lot of chaos and disunity as we can see in our own country, right? People just live very differently from each other in America.

And that, for a traditional society like this, for a very sort of socially conservative society like this, that seems rather alarming to them. Even the progressives, even the, you know, what you and I would call liberals, they don't,

they want to liberalize the country, but they always speak of it in terms of economics. They never speak of it in terms of pre-expression or openness. They don't, it's just not,

I mean, even the journalist I spoke to last night, who's a very brave young woman, she really, you know, she spent time in the United States, but last night, who's a very brave young woman, she really, you know, she spent time in the United States, like she loves, you know,

she's not anti-American in any respect, but she wants to preserve Cuba for Cuba's sake. But, I mean, I think that's what's sad about it, is that it can't be done. And it won't happen that way.

And they are optimistic. Everyone I spoke to is very optimistic. They feel like the, not because she's keto dead, but just because, you know, the world's turning, they're no longer starving. And so they feel like things are growing, there are tourists walking around,

and that's a good thing. And so they have an optimism that I don't think is, I don't think is well-placed or well-advised. And I've never said this in a country like... I've never been to a country like this, and I've been to a lot of them, where I felt that way, except in certain former Soviet republics that were run by lunatic strongmen. This one is not really anymore they have

a lot of personal freedoms here they travel you can get the money together you can go to the United States you can stay they're familiar with Miami they're familiar those places but they just I think they believe that there's a rabbit in the hat and there's not. Rob, before I let you go, one of the things we're always hearing is just the appalling quality of consumer goods. For example, how are their pens? Or let me ask you this question. When people want to shave, are the razors in the stores any good?

How expensive are they? Unbelievable. We have a man on the phone from Havana, and James is doing something. I think I'd like to answer that, James, this way. Is that all of the innovations that we enjoy, especially in the shading realm, would be so welcome here. But unfortunately, they can't enjoy them because they don't have the technology or the systems or the entrepreneurial zeal that some of our, I don't know who you're thinking about, some of our sponsors have. If a couple of guys wanted to start up a factory to sell blades, I mean, they wouldn't go to Cuba.

They'd buy an old factory in Germany that supplied a really high quality material, but that culture doesn't exist in Cuba is what you're saying. Right. We're going to have to let you go. Can I interrupt you for a minute? I'm not even interrupting you because I want to interrupt your segue. Have you already done the Casper spot or have you not done a Casper spot on this one? Not on this one.

No. Okay. But I would just say I've been getting a little extra Casper, a little extra. My idea of the best practical joke would be to come into Cuba with six Casper mattresses in their box and have the customs people open them up. That would be my idea of a great scene in a movie. That is. But that said, a healthy society has young men who say, here's something that I can improve on, and they come up with a better product, and they get it to you in a more efficient way. And that's the story of Harry Shave, but alas, that is not the story of post-revolutionary Cuba. Well, thanks for looping it back to me so I can continue the ad.

Have fun. We'll talk to you next week. Take care. Because really, you know, the thing about it is when Fidel came in, you know, with his prominent flowing luxuriant beard, that sort of set the cliche, right, for the Latin American communist upstart, the gorilla, the guy with the beard. I mean, previously, you'd had a Cadeo. You had the guy with the epaulets and the patches and the gold braid and the medals and all these fancy false aspects of military culture. But then it shifted to the guy in the drab khakis with the big beard and all the rest of it. That became the dominant strongman model. And you can just imagine that in a country where you couldn't get a good razor blade, it would be fine for people to emulate the leader's beard and say, I am very patriotic in my prominent facial hair.

Not in America. And even if you were one of those people who had prominent facial hair and wanted to denude yourself of such, the best choice you could possibly get would be Harry's. As we mentioned, an entrepreneurial culture spawns guys like these who look around at the dominant model and say, we can break that and we can do it better and cheaper and they did got the hundred year old factory in germany to make the blades started their own company and you know they sell them online and ship them directly to you for one half the price of the leading brand now harry's razors include everything you need for a close and a comfortable shave you got the five german engineered blades you've got a

lubricating strip a flex hinge for a comfortable glide, a trimmer blade for those hard-to-reach places, such as in your dimple, if you are such dimpled like me, and a weighted ergonomic handle. It's just a joy to use. It's a joy to look at. And when you see it in your shower or in your bathroom,

you're proud to like an object of this beauty. Now, $2 a blade compared to $4 or more you'll pay at the drugstore. Harry's is so confident about the quality, they're going to want you to try it for free. The trial set for free. Razor handle of your choice, five-blade cartridge, shaving gel, free when you sign up. Just pay a small fee for shipping. And you will find yourself saying, as I do when I glide that Harry's across, that from start to finish, it gives a smooth and comfortable shave.

I've never nicked myself. They've never tasted blood. Negotiating the jaw, the dimple under the chin, it's just such a fine quality. And it's helped along by the emollients that they also package, the shave gels, the aftershave balms. It's a total experience. Less money, better quality. Why wouldn't you go there right now? Harrys.com slash Ricochet that's harrys.com slash ricochet guys we gotta get out of here i suppose but uh before we do uh any last note john i could just imagine uh rob swanning about uh the malacone wearing his guayabara he really needs a uh fidel or at least a Hemingway-style beard after his rigorous research schedule, I must add.

Yes, with a big cigar, sockless, and all the rest of it. Right, right. I actually, I would like to go to Cuba, but I don't. I mean, I don't want to go. I want to go there because it's interesting. But they aren't ruined by Starbucks yet, James, don't you think? Yeah, I got to get in there before that Starbucks goes and changes the whole culture. Peter, would you like to go to Cuba?

I'm sure you would. It's complicated in our family because, as you know, my wife is Cuban. Her father is still with us. We lost her mother about two years ago. be very upsetting to her father to think to to think of any even one dollar of tourism money being spent by his family that might in one way or another support that regime they lost everything and in fact he on the way out he gave the key to his house to the ambassador of venezuela and the latin american tradition is that an embassy is effectively foreign territory. So word got around that his house had become in effect

Venezuelan territory and people climbed over the garden wall to camp out in his backyard. And he heard afterwards that a Jeep pulled up with a machine gun in the back. And I don't think it mowed down the people, but it shot up the garden and the wall to scare them and get them out of there. You know, you hear that happening about a home that you lived in for years and had to leave. You just don't want your family to go back and see that. So in our case, yes, we'd like to go, but it's complicated.

I imagine. Well, as Rob said, there's very little crime. But on the other hand, the whole thing is a crime. Yeah. And I, I dread falling into a coma, waking up in 50 years and saying,

what's the world like? Well, Iran is ruled by the mullahs. North Korea is still pretty much the same. And Cuba is exactly as it was 50 years before, except it's fallen down a bit more. I'd be falling down if I didn't tell you that this was brought to you by Away Travel, Pro Flowers, and Harry's Shave.

Please support them and you support us. You can also go to iTunes and leave a review about this little podcast. It helps surface the podcast and gets other people to enjoy it. And maybe those people will be like you are going to be very soon, like now, when you go and join the new tier, $2.50 a month. Cheap. Absolutely cheap. You can hear the podcast. You can comment on the podcast, and you can read the member feed. What a deal. Five bucks too much. We got another tier just for you. Thank you, everybody. Thank

you, John. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Rob. And we'll see everyone in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week. Thanks, guys. De Andocero voy para Martanet, llego a Puerto, voy para Mayadín. El cariño que te tengo no te lo puedo negar Se me sale la babita, yo no lo puedo evitar Ricochet Join the conversation si no puedo llegar de alto cero voy para Marcané llego a Puerto voy para Mayaví de alto cero voy para Marcané How am I doing? Am I doing okay? I'm president. Hey, I'm president. Can you believe it, right? I don't know. I thought you needed a little bit more time. They always told me more time,

but we didn't. you you you you