The Ricochet Podcast - Stick With Us

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

This week we’re talkin’ midterms and one very short term. England has been especially interesting these last few months, and we’re always happy to have Toby Young with us. He has much to say about the lightning-fast deterioration of Liz Truss, and the Conservative Party that may go down with her. Then Jim Geraghty returns to breakdown this peculiar midterm cycle. He gets into Fetterman, Oz, Walker... Source

Okay, then, so we are. Three, two, one, let's do it live! I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Everything they propose, or are proposing, will make inflation worse. Everything will make inflation worse. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Lund, Steve Hayward, the significant Peter Robinson,

I'm James Lylex. Today we talk to Toby Young in Britain about that mess and Jim Garrity about the elections. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! episode number 615. Why don't you join us at Ricochet.com? Would it just kill you to join? Well, I mean, don't. That's really a bad way to put it. We'd love for you to come to Ricochet.com and be part of the most stimulating conversation and community on the web. Go there, and you will say,

where's this been all of my life on the internet? Well, waiting for you. We're patient, and welcome. I'm James Lilex here in Minneapolis. Beautiful day. Snow on Monday. 70s today. Rob Long is in, I believe, New York. I am, in fact.

Sitting in for Peter Robinson, who I believe now is never coming back and is probably in some Estonian prison, is Stephen Hayward. Stephen, welcome. Hi, James. Hi, Rob. Good to be back with you guys. Good to have you. Estonian prison doesn't sound so bad, actually. No, it really doesn't. It sounds very civilized. Estonia, more and more, sounds like a good country. We ought to be more Estonian, I say. And one we want to keep in the orbit of the West, as opposed to being under the boot heel of the Russians. But going to the other side of the world, where a communist or authoritarian government holds sway, interesting news this week about China and technology.

The Biden administration had this comprehensive strategy they built to move us, the U.S., forward to offshore and in the process seemingly decapitating the entire Chinese semiconductor and AI industry overnight by telling everybody there, okay, you can stick around and work if you want, Americans and green card holders, but you're going to lose your citizenship, so you might want to quit, and they all quit. Gentlemen, have you heard this story, and what do you think of it? Well, I guess I'll go first, James. Yeah, because I'm staring at you, Steve. I want you to first. Right. Well, I mean, first, a general point, and then the specific. You know, I think the one thing

you can say that Donald Trump really changed decisively was a bipartisan dislike of China. And by the way, that's international. I saw some public opinion data a while ago now that showed that the world opinion of China among Europeans and everywhere else has plummeted in the last five, six years. And I think Trump is largely responsible for that. And one area of continuity with the Biden foreign policy is being tough on China. So you do that, score that one for Trump. Now, on the chip business, China clearly wants to dominate technology. And they're our workshop, right, for iPhones and everything else. And we're finally getting serious saying we're not going to let them take control of the chip industry and get ahead of us. And there are lots of news reports the last month or two that China's heavy investment

in trying to develop their own homegrown chip industry has fallen short. I mean, maybe this is an overstatement, but China tends to just copy and steal our technology. And actually, with a few exceptions, hasn't gotten very far ahead of us. I don't think in very many areas. Well, that's a big sweeping statement to say, and I'm sure some listeners will point out 10 exceptions. So the one question this raises, the troubling one is, the big chip manufacturer, one of the most important nodes, is on Taiwan. And does this creeping, deliberate isolation of China increase the odds that China is going to finally move against Taiwan?

That's not a new question, but that has to be raised in all of this. Rob, how much do you think, as Stephen pointed out correctly, that Trump was one of the reasons that people started to look at China askance without the usual rose-colored glasses? How much do you think this has to do with china itself you mean oh you mean that it's a totalitarian dictatorship uh thing you mean the fact that it's a a deadly regime a genocidal regime or or just the fact that it has a billion and a half people in the and until 30 years ago they were uh 200 300 million of them were starving the the actions of the government itself they could get away with being all the things that they are if they didn't seem to be what they are now which

is worse and i know that is exactly the most comprehensive and detailed geopolitical analysis but chinese behavior in the last two or three years um has shifted has it not yeah it's shifted it's come a little bit more desperate a little more concerned i mean part of the problem with china is that there's a lot whole lot of chinese people but a lot of them are old um and so the chinese have a demographic problem they have the opposite problem or they don't have they have the opposite situation as india which has a huge population but is younger so his famous indian finance minister i think at one point said china is going to get old before it gets rich. And that's sort of an interesting analysis. The second problem with China really right now is that the thing that they excel in, in manufacturing electronics, is something that is slowly and irrevocably becoming more automated. I mean, there is a future in which the three of us on this podcast will live to see

where when you buy your new iPhone, you go to the iPhone store and you buy it and you come back an hour later and they've printed it. Fabricated it. Fabricated it in the back. That's what I want to see. Just like lens crafters. You get your iPhone in about an hour. So you can say, and it'll say designed in California,ia built in minnesota yeah built in the built it behind the apple store into the mall of america um those are things that are happening right and they're happening very quickly and china made a bunch of you know a bunch of i think tactical and strategic errors if you're a dictatorship early on one of them was i mean look in the old days if you're a dictatorship here's what you did the east german stasi police did it the russians the soviets did it you go around and you break up

and bash with hammers printing presses that's what you do like no printing presses if the stasi found an unauthorized typewriter they would get real you'd be in big big trouble right so what are the what does the chinese dictatorship do about 30 years ago it decides to go into the business of manufacturing printing presses about 20 million billion a day uh for the entire world including china and now they have to fight a rear guard action of trying to keep their people from using this technology to sort of complain which is very very hard to do um one of the reasons I think they like lockdown so much isn't because they believe in a zero COVID policy,

although they do. It's also because they kind of like the fact if they could, they would want everybody to stay home and off the streets. They like that too. So we tend to obsess, I think, in this country on how we're going to lose, how it's going to fall, how the Chinese are better and smarter

and going to just overtake us. And I think we need to start actually preparing to win, because the winning is really challenging, as we found out in the Cold War. Winning requires an enormous amount of effort and strategy. Go ahead. Sorry. And you're right. And that's good. If only the winning doesn't resemble in so many ways adapting a lot of the basic underlying ideas of the people that we're trying to fight. In other words, are we going to have a social credit system where people are unable to get jobs or houses or apartments or something like that because they have the

wrong political opinion? I don't think so. But. Definitely English departments. In fact, in university faculties, we already have that. Right.

I really mean that. But there is a creeping tendency. And it's not official. It's soft. It's not hard. There's not a code that comes up on your phone that says you are now red politically and ergo you cannot do this, that, or the other. But on the other hand, there is a sort of soft enjoyment of these things by our Davos WEF technocratic elite. I guess. Maybe. we have technocratic elite i guess i guess maybe but because it were it's a it's a good idea to

poke and prod the recalcitrant masses toward doing the right thing which is saving the planet and living in boxes needing bugs etc i i guess i'm in the position of being the pollyanna today because i have to say the republicans who are um you know completely unworthy of of this i mean i think in sense that they're a political party in amer and all both political parties in America, the big ones are utterly unworthy of their stature. The Republicans are probably, if all the polls show, going to actually do not terribly in the midterms. They may even get the Senate back, barely. I don't think they'll get the House back, but they'll do pretty well. They should be absolutely, of course course they should be doing much much better

the the truth about the republicans is they're not going to do as well as they should because it's they're an incompetent political party and the democrats are are going to do a considerably worse than they than they needed to because they're an incompetent political party the truth is that the american people are incredibly incredibly pissed and quixotic and unpredictable and that alone is going to be our strength and it's going to keep us from you know falling into some kind of chinese uh uh social credit system we're just we're just unruly and ungovernable, which is what I like. We are just a bunch of pains in the butt. And sometimes it bugs us, and sometimes it bugs the other side. I don't think we're in a great position right now culturally, but I think that is going to ultimately – our way out of this is exactly our orneriness and our love for some of uh our love for some reason of political chaos

champing at the champing at the bit of steven who has yeah well i'm just gonna say there you go again rob uh you've gone so far this time that i'm thinking we're gonna have to take your rhino card away from you um i mean i'll skip the political science lessons about of course parties are big and sprawling and confident in this country that's in certain ways ungovernable on purpose. The thing that's worrisome that both parties have these vague complaints about but nothing concrete on the table is that some of that, I guess I'll use the current phrase, the space that parties are supposed to fill is being taken over by, you know, big tech. I mean, I'm thinking of, you guys have talked about this a lot in previous episodes, you know, the tech. I mean, I'm thinking of, you guys have talked about this a

lot in previous episodes, you know, the censorship by Twitter and Facebook and all the rest, search engine results skewed by Google and other tech companies. And that becomes a political force of its own, unaccountable to voters. And, you know, that's very worrisome. I'll just mention, by the way, I keep testing and getting myself deliberately thrown in Facebook jail, not on political grounds and, you know, doing COVID misinformation and other things that they jump all over. They have a policy against dangerous individuals. That's completely incoherent. So, you know, right now the big show on, is it Netflix, about Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer? Well, I like to post Jeffrey Dahmer memes on Facebook, and I get thrown in jail for 30 days for doing it

because he's a dangerous individual. One that got me 30 days in the Who Scout was Jeffrey Dahmer saying, if you run out of food, we'll still have each other. And I posted ads for the Netflix show when I got reinstated. They don't take those down because they can't, or I posted youtube

videos of norm mcdonald going off on jeffrey the point is there's an unaccountable power here and when it gets beyond things like dangerous individuals and worrying about uh you know copy cat killers or something like that and it gets on the politics as we saw with uh you know the new york post and the hunter biden laptop then we've got a real problem. How is Dahmer still a dangerous individual? I think it would be copycats is the theory, James. And my rejoinder is, okay, what about putting up, what's his name from Silence of the Lambs? You know, an image of Hannibal Lecter or Dexter.

But the idea that Twitter would ding you for putting out a picture of somebody who's just had a nine or ten episode hb or a netflix special in addition to the jeffrey dahmer tapes for those people who want to listen to it also i mean you know i don't really mean this but it's a copy if you're gonna copycat jeffrey dahmer i mean i don't i don't think a tweet is like you're already if that's're already... If that's among the choices for your life, legitimate possible choices for your life, I don't think Steve Hayward's tweet is going to push you over the edge.

It seems like it's a high bar to meet. You're already like, well, I could do this, I could be a cannibal, or I could... I guess, God, Steve Hayward's tweet was pretty persuasive. Maybe I'll be a cannibal. That doesn't seem likely see hayward's tweet was pretty persuasive maybe i'll be accountable it doesn't seem likely um look i think all those things are true but i i actually feel like um you know i kind of felt like this way in the 2016 um uh election when it was we don't win anymore we don't win anymore republicans don't win anymore and republicans seem to be winning they had we're running against a very very popular democratic president and they got

the house and the senate back and they basically stopped a very very liberal president from enacting a whole bunch of socialist policies and took the uh the fangs out of obamacare or whatever it was so they did pretty i mean considering the other side is going to win every now and then you have to do what you have to accept um they did pretty well our problem in america in general is that we have a really hard time winning the peace. We either do it Marshall Plan style, which just costs a bajillion trillion dollars. And by the way, we've in 1990, we had an incredibly bloody, terrifying war in civil war in the Balkalkans which we kind of forget and we now have another war of conquest in the ukraine like it's not like europe is behaving so um anyway so what i what i feel like is is that we just have to be prepared uh just just we have to be prepared for russia

and ukraine and we have to be prepared in china for what happens um when those places become unstable by their own hand uh but because they have nukes because they have a lot of power it's going to be a problem that we're going to have to solve or have to plan to solve and i i would just think i would spend more time planning not the successful takeover of taiwan by china but i would spend more time planning the just the disastrous chaos that erupts when china falls apart or has an interior um you know revolution which by the way has about every 60 70 years anyway uh it's not like i'm inventing something that the chinese don't do they go a biggo bananas in that country about every 75 years we are due we are late in fact for another uh solipsistic uh self-centered

chinese meltdown and an extension level event meteor and the caldera it will yell us we're all overdate maybe it'll happen in the same news week and that'll be interesting time on twitter i don't know i think the breakup of russia is more likely and i should be doing my part by packing on more calories so that when food supplies become disrupted, I have the chance to use my own reserves. But no, me, I started going to the gym this week. And the strange thing is, after a long absence, is that it becomes instantly addictive. Well, I have to go back there tomorrow and do better and get better. And you get into it. I do not have that problem.

Well, I do. And now I'm back into it. And so I have another thing to add to the daily stuff. But routines like that are what keep you healthy. Good health starts with good habits. Quip. Quip makes it easy to get those good habits out. Well, by delivering all the oral care essentials you need to care for your mouth. The Quip electric toothbrush. You heard of that, right? Of course you have. It's loved by over 7 million mouths. And what does it have? It has timed sonic vibrations. They're great. 30-second pulses guide you on a dentist-recommended two-minute clean. It goes bzzz, bzzz, bzzz, and you switch your quadrants. It's great. Lightweight, sleek design for adults and kids. No wires, no bulky charger to weigh you down. A multi-use travel cover that doubles as a mirror mount for less clutter in

your bathroom. And reusable handles in a range of sleek metal hues. They're cool. You can just see somebody in Miami Vice using these, including the best-selling all black and all pink, as well as bright plastic colors to make sure you got a pop on your bathroom counter. So are you on top of your brushing? Well, you can upgrade your Quip with a new smart motor, a new smart motor that tracks and improves your brushing with a free Quip app. That's right. Your toothbrush talks to your phone, a new smart motor that tracks and improves your brushing with a free Quip app. That's right. Your toothbrush talks to your phone, a sentence we never would have said 20 years ago. You can even earn amazing rewards like free refills and products and target gift cards and more

because your toothbrush talks to your phone. Beyond the brush, the Quip has everything you need to build a complete routine. Try their sugar-free refillable gum. Yum. Has a long-lasting mint flavor and it comes with a dispenser. And you can try their refillable mouthwash. That's a four times concentrate. Plus, it's good for you, and it's good for the planet.

It's not a lot of extra waste. Quip delivers it all. Every three months from $5. That's it. Shipping is free, so you can save money and skip the hustle and bustle of in-store shopping. With stylish and affordable electric brushes starting at just $25, you will not be paying through the teeth for better oral health. If you go to getquip.com slash ricochet right now, this very moment, you will get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet,

spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash ricochet. Quip, the good habits company. And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Toby Young, founder and director of the Free Speech Union. He runs the Daily Skeptic. He is associate editor of The Spectator and co-host of the London Calling podcast. It's his third appearance in the podcast in the last couple of months because stuff is happening in England in the latest. Toby, over here, those people who walk by the television and look at the headlines, apparently Truss, their coalition went away because of tax cuts and energy and something or other. We're not quite clear. Explain it for us, what happened? Yeah, I'm not sure I'm terribly clear myself. Events have been moving very quickly um here in the uk um but liz truss was

elected leader of the conservative party about six weeks ago um after a protracted three month long leadership contest um and uh she's already resigned making her the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history. And things started to go wrong almost from day one. The turning point seemed to be the mini budget she announced, or rather her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced, in which not only was the government offering up to 200 billion pounds of support to help people pay their energy bills because energy prices are skyrocketing over here in Europe but in addition 45 billion pounds of tax cuts and no proposal to cut public expenditure or no real idea seemingly in the mini budget of how the

British government was ever going to pay back all this additional money it was going to have to borrow to fund these tax cuts and fund this energy support package and given that the British government borrowed about half a trillion to stop people to pay people not to work and to stay at home during our three lockdowns over an 18-month period. I think the bond markets and the currency markets got a little bit spooked. The pound started to plummet against the dollar. Guilt yields started to increase. And she suddenly began frantically U-turning. So she'd announced that the top rate of tax was going to be cut from 45p in the pound to 40p in the pound.

That was reversed. Then she fired her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and appointed a zero-Covid zealot and sort of one-nation conservative centrist called Jeremy Hunt, whose surname people often get wrong, whether consciously or unconsciously. But that didn't seem to do the trick either. He announced, he essentially disavowed almost every measure announced in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget in the hope of restoring Britain's credibility with the bond markets and the currency markets. And he did seem to stabilise things for a bit. And then she got into a row with her Home Secretary,

Suella Braverman, over immigration levels. Part of the government's pro-growth strategy was to be a bit more relaxed about immigration when, you know, a lot of the former Labour voters that switched to the Conservatives in 2019 switched because they're fed up with the current levels of immigration. And Suella Braverman thought that was a betrayal of those voters and a betrayal of the Conservative manifesto. So she resigned or maybe she was fired, it's not terribly clear. But people began to think, good lord Liz Truss, you've lost your Chancellor, you've now lost the Home Secretary, the markets don't seem to like what you're doing, you've reversed almost every policy you've announced, the Parliamentary Party began to rebel, there were chaotic scenes in the

House of Commons on Thursday, it was a vote to, the Labour Party were trying to scupper to rebel there were chaotic scenes in the house of commons uh on thursday uh they were gonna it was a vote to um the labour party were trying to scupper the conservatives decision to lift the fracking ban um and uh liz trust didn't want them to scupper it so she initially said that the vote on it was going to be a confidence vote which meant that any tories not voting her way would lose the conservative whip and then she and then and then and then she said no no I've changed my mind it's not going to be a confidence vote after all at which point the Chief whip and the Deputy Chief whip resigned in disgust and then there were chaotic scenes when Liz Truss was chasing the Chief whip and the Deputy Chief whip around

the parliamentary estate begging them to reconsider she couldn't didn't think she could survive if there was another high profile resignation from her cabinet and in the course of chasing the chief whip she herself abstained from this critical vote on fracking so was she going to take the whip away from herself was it a confidence vote wasn't it complete chaos in the house of commons and uh by by the following day by friday i think it was clear that the game was up and she made a very brief, less than 90 second resignation speech on the steps of Downing Street with her husband standing in the background with his fists clenched, looking very dour and unhappy and she's going to go as soon as a new Prime Minister is in place

and thank the Lord, the next leadership election is not going to take three months it's all going to be over within a week and we should have a new prime minister at the very latest by next friday and if it isn't boris johnson and we'll talk about that in a second i'm sure it will be i think our third prime minister um in uh less than two months which uh which isn't a great look but there is a very italian look the ital Italian fashions are coming to England. So, all right, I got a bunch of questions, Toby. First, this is going to be the most complicated episode of The Crown. I can only imagine.

You're going to have to set a little brochure so we can follow it. All this sounds like a chaotic first couple months of a say the biden administration it doesn't sound to american ears it just sounds like well you know they weren't prepared a lot of crazy stuff happens usually when somebody gets into office the first time there's a lot of mistakes she didn't really have that she wasn't um she hadn't clawed her way to the top so she didn't have a lot of broken glass behind her she She didn't already have a lot of people. There were a lot of heads on sticks, as we say in politics, behind her, right? The politicians who seem to be the most powerful or the most effective when they get into the top job are the ones that have committed the most atrocities and stabbed the most people in the back and climbed a mountain of skulls to get to the top spot. She didn't seem like she's that person. But, I mean, you know, are you telling me she couldn't have held on? I mean, the American style is just to hold on, just to power through this period,

and you trust that in three weeks, four weeks, it'll all be forgotten. But for some reason, I mean, does that not work at the UK? Well, it doesn't work. You've had three prime ministers in two weeks. Yeah, the reason that doesn't work in the UK, Rob, is that the prime minister is dependent upon the support of his or her parliamentary colleagues. You know, we have a kind of intermingling of the executive and legislative branch of the government so unlike in your presidential system where a president can cling on even if he's lost the senate and lost the house of representatives over here if a prime minister loses the confidence of

the house of commons it's very difficult for them to continue. I think the problem was that Liz Truss had lost the confidence of her own party in the House of Commons. And one reason for that is because the Conservatives are doing so badly in the polls. We're seeing record polling numbers. It looks like, you know, not only will Labour on the current prognosis win an absolute majority at the next general election but the Conservatives will win so few seats that they'll that the SNP the Scottish Nationalist Party will have more seats than the Conservatives and become the official opposition which is a shocking development and deeply humiliating for the Conservative Party and I think a lot of Tory MPs thought my god if we don't get rid of this, we're all going to lose our seats at the next general election.

And many of these people, Rob, are absolutely unemployable in any other capacity. No, I'm familiar with that. We have that over here, too. So I guess I mean, I know she wants to get into, but I just did a couple more. So, you know, in the United States, the the the the smart set you know you know the clever people when they're pushed when usually when it's a president's elected they don't like they say things like well you know a parliamentary system it's so much better parliamentary system is so much fair parliamentary system whatever all those things and i always think well that's dumb i think our i think they're i think the parliamentary system's dumb, and that's my sophisticated analysis. We're smart, they're dumb. But I kind of always thought, fractious time like this when the uh the traditional

guidelines or traditional borderlines between conservative and liberal that you have liberals who are very against immigration and you have some conservatives that are really thinking hard about why we are sort of reflexively free market you have all these sort of crisscross sort of you know cross-pollinations of these parties that you know uh... cross pollination so these parties that uh... both eight presidential system chief executive system and a parliamentary system are extremely difficult to get things done

so i guess my next question to you is if that's the case of a looking for a blue me and a lot of volatility in the big democracies america and in the world united states britain uh... stuff some of the democracies in America, in the world, United States, Britain, some of the democracies in Europe. What would you suggest for the next, if you had to go into a lab and create the next prime minister,

what would that prime minister be? Who would that person be? What would they be like? What do they need to keep this from happening again and and don't say boris because we're going to talk about force in a minute i know you love boris yeah well um yeah it's a good point rob because um one of the benefits of our parliamentary system as well as our first past the post electoral system is it's supposed to deliver clear majorities, clear results, so we can have stable government for at least a five-year period. And that doesn't seem

to be the case, at least not at the moment. And I think the reason for that is that most political parties are coalitions of different groups with different ideological agendas and they put aside their differences and come together to win elections and can usually paper over those differences you know to maintain the illusion of unity and stability. Well that hasn't been possible in the Conservative Party. Really ever since the Brexit referendum the Conservative Party and before that has been split between the kind of euro skeptic and europhile factions the kind of uh patriotic merry england faction and the kind of globalist faction and um the globalist faction lost when um uh boris won in 2019 but they were pretty unhappy

about that and have been plotting his demise almost from the day he won an 80 seat majority in 2019 they saw their chance when he got embroiled in various scandals got rid of him but then the borisites um uh didn't want to see rishi sunak who's very much a sort of standard bearer of the other team even though he actually did vote for brexit nonetheless he's very much in the globalist pro-european mold they didn't want to see him ascend to the throne so they chose liz truss instead because she at least was a brexiteer even though she voted for remain in the 2016 euro referendum um european referendum so um i think, and so they, when she began to kind of falter and misstep, they saw an opportunity to defenestrate her. But the problem is whoever wins,

it's likely, the battle is likely to continue. The civil war won't be over. If, and, you know, someone called Penny Mordant, who sort of comes from nowhere. I love the name of it. It sounds like a Ben Johnson play. Yeah, well she's very much trying to pitch herself as the unity candidate in the current leadership contest. Somehow a middle way between Boris on the one hand and Rishi Sunak on the other. The only person who can unite the party. But I don't think she has much, I don't think that's a particularly credible pitch and i can't see her winning and whoever who so in all likelihood

i think this time around if boris does come back then the other faction rather than kind of um grin and bear it and wait their chance to depose him again may break away and form a new liberal conservative party, just like what happened in 93 in Canada. Toby, it's Steve Hayward out in California sitting in for Peter today. You know, at first I was enthusiastic about trust because she said Margaret Thatcher is back. And then I was very dismayed when the government did the U-turn on the tax cuts and the mini budget, as it was called. My mind ran back briefly to 1981 because I'm an old guy. And at that time, both in the U.K. and in the U.S., the economies were tanking, inflation remained high, and stock markets went down.

And a reporter asked Ronald Reagan, gee, Wall Street doesn't seem to think much of your economic program. And Reagan's response was perfect. He said, well, you know, I've never found Wall Street to be a very good source of economic advice. And at the same time, you know, almost exactly the same time as when Thatcher gave that famous speech to the party that was divided, as the party is today, where she said, the lady's not returning. Well, that was a big signal that she was going to master this subject and like Reagan was going to see it through. Reagan's slogan then became, stay the course through the difficult times. My first thought when the government backtracked here a couple of weeks ago was, well, that's just

blood in the water and the sharks are now going to eat her alive. The question is, not so much the question is, she's clearly not the same spine that Thatcher had. She's not the Iron Lady too. But are the circumstances different? Did she really have no choice? Is this the revenge of the city, as you call Wall Street over there? And if that's true, that seems very ominous to me. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's an interesting question because certainly she didn't display the backbone of Margaret Thatcher when her first budget was met with almost universal condemnation, both in the City of London from various senior economists, the IMF, the Bank of England.

They all seemed to absolutely hate it, just as they hated Margaret Thatcher's budget in 1981. And Margaret Thatcher, she used to like to say, there is no alternative, Tina. That became one of her catchphrases. But with Liz Truss, it became quickly clear that her catchphrase was, there are many alternatives, tamer, which obviously suggests she's not made of the same stuff but you know she may have had I mean one of the advantages Margaret Thatcher had over Liz Truss is that Margaret Thatcher had five years in opposition she had an opportunity to forge her legislative program to roll the pitch in

preparation for that program in her party she didn't initiate Thatcherite policy straight away she bided her time she initially had a cabinet of many talents, uniting the different factions within the party, whereas Liz Truss seemed to want to hit the ground running. She'd done no pitch rolling. She had no opportunity to develop her legislative programme in a period of opposition. She didn't put anyone in her cabinet from the other side.

They were all kind of die-hard Liz Trust loyalists. She almost kind of revelled, her team almost revelled in kind of being politically intransigent and not compromising in any way. So she found herself very isolated when things started to turn. And then, as you say, she then immediately began to U-turn, make concessions, try to calm the markets and win over her critics, at which point she just looked weak. It was blood in the water. The sharks began to circle. And it wasn't long before she was ripped from limb from limb. Toby, last question. James Lawless here. I was talking with a friend in Suffolk this morning, and she was in a completely foul mood. A tree had fallen and taken down the internet. The dog had the shivers. Her husband had COVID, and

she didn't want to turn on the kettle because the price of energy was so damned high. When you mentioned that the Labour Party is poised to come back, what are their energy policies? And aside, I assume, from nationalization and getting magic energy out of the golden goose, are they any better when it comes to dealing with the problems that Britain faces with a consistent energy supply? No, I don't think anyone seriously believes that Labour would do a better job at solving our energy problems. They've gone all in on net zero. They don't want to lift the fracking ban. They're big on sustainable energy, green energy, which, as we know, is not going to meet the needs, the energy needs of the British people or British industry. Yes, they will probably nationalise

various energy companies, gas and electricity providers, and they intend, I think, to impose windfall taxes on private companies. So if they do well one year, they have to pay more tax, which will, of course, mean that they'll get the hell out of Dodge and go and relocate somewhere else. So I don't think anyone has much confidence that Labour will be able to address this crisis. It's a long-term crisis and the only real solution i think is to go nuclear but that's not a quick solution that takes about 10 years before

you begin to see the benefits and politicians tend not to think uh 10 years ahead it's more like 24 hours ahead so god knows if we're ever going to solve the problem well one of the reasons we like to have you here is we feel better about our own situation in america after hearing how it's going over in finally on the scepter dial uh but great toby is ever a pleasure we feel smarter for having had you on here and it had it all explained to us good luck uh good luck toby aren't you uh you're technically eligible to be the next pm is that is that correct no um you have to be a member of the parliamentary conservative party okay to be a contestant in the leadership election so regret like bad planning on your part bad planning all right toby thanks i'll talk to you later thanks toby uh yes ah but you know the thing of it is talking to my friend just being reminded of what it's like in england it

may be a little bit drizzly and cold and clammy and fall like but that's just when the seasons change you like that and it is a beautiful place to be it's beautiful here it's like in England. It may be a little bit drizzly and cold and clammy and fall-like, but that's just when the seasons change, you like that. And it is a beautiful place to be. It's beautiful here. It's beautiful there. I love fall. There's not enough of it. One of the things I love about fall though is, you know, getting into bed at the end of a cool day and snuggling into warm sheets, nothing better. And you say, I have sheets. Are there other sheets I should buy? Yes. Yes, when you're ready to hop into a soft, cozy bed, your sheets make a big difference. And that's why Bolden brand sheets use only the best 100% organic cotton threads on the earth. You know, as I say, week after week, they get softer with every wash. Now, I'm not here to tell you that every single square inch

of my epidermis is so finely calibrated that it can tell the difference, but it's a general impression that you get over time. It's like, these sheets just get better and better. My bed gets worse and worse, but my sheets get better and better. Signature hemmed sheets, that's the one. They're best-selling for a reason. They're made from the highest quality threads for a superior softness and a better night's sleep. They're buttery, cozy, super breathable, so they're perfect for this season and all the other ones, frankly. You'll feel the difference the moment you lie down on them for the first time, and they just get better and better as you wash them. But don't take my word for it. No, why would you?

No, you can find more than 25,000 rave customer reviews and counting. So try the sheets that will make this fall the coziest season of the year. Get 15% off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use the promo code ricochet at bolandbranch.com. That's bolandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com, promo code ricochet. And we thank Boland Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now we welcome back to the podcast, and it's been way too long, Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent of the National Review. His morning jolt newsletter and the Three Martini Lunch podcast are must-subscribes. Go there, do that.

It's midterm season, so we thought that we'd bring Jim on since he is the guy to talk about these things. So, Jim, if I remember correctly, there was first, ah, it's going to be a landslide for the Republicans, and then Democrats making strange new surges in progress. And now it's back to, they're hitting the wall. They can't, they've hit their upper limit. And give us a read on how you see it in particular, how you see Pennsylvania turning out. Because the last thing, the last shot I saw of Fetterman was the strangest bit of political imagery that i'd seen in some time honest to god this huge enormous hulking man with his tie askew saying nothing and looking mutely about like some character in um in in in a computer generated movie i mean he's got the physique of grew from i i mean i i shouldn't make i shouldn't make comments like but the guy

is a peculiar visual the to say the least he is it is really good to see you guys um and i'm glad you guys had me on because i feel like in the last three days or so there's just been a barrage of new polls day after day that are all pretty much breaking the way the Republicans would like them to go. Not necessarily leading all of them, but almost every race the Republicans would want to have competitive and in the ballpark appears to be in there. And Pennsylvania is one of them. The last one, which was done by the local Fox station out in Pennsylvania, showed a tie race. And if you want to say, OK, I don't know if I trust that one, fine. But the three of the last four polls had had Fetterman up by two.

So about two percentage points. So you look at that and you're like, OK, that's a close race. Oz certainly seems to have picked up a heck of a lot of momentum. I was making fun of him earlier this year, calling him the Ford Pinto of Republican Senate candidates. And I stand by that because he wasn't doing a lot of events. I jokingly had said he'd been a Republican for about 20 minutes. This was a guy who stepped into the Senate race with really no history of being associated

with conservative causes or past Republican efforts. A whole bunch of people just said, oh, he's running for Senate and just assumed he was a Democrat and rather surprised to see that. And so, you know, won a very hard-fought primary by the skin of his teeth, had a lot of work to do to reunite the Republicans. It was interesting, for a while, the number of Republicans who were voting for him, self-identified Republicans in polls, was higher than the number of self-identified Republicans who said they felt favorable towards him. Like the clearest example of people holding their nose and choosing to vote for you. But then I kind of feel like particularly, you know, Fetterman had his stroke in mid-May. And I kind of feel like as spring turned to summer and it

turned to fall, people noticed, hey, we're not seeing a lot about this guy. And oh, by the way, you know, Oz was running wave after wave of ads hitting Fetterman for his record on crime. And crime rates in Philadelphia are significantly, are really high up there. This is on people's minds. And people started noticing that this is when you would usually see a candidate out on the campaign trail doing a whole bunch of events a day and, you know, trying to crisscross the state. And Fetterman was doing one or two events, speaking for maybe 10 minutes. I've seen, you know, watched videos of him having perfectly normal presentations where you really wouldn't tell there's all that much wrong with them. Chances are you've probably seen some of the ones that went viral where it's pretty clear he's having a hard time getting those words out. And so I don't think the issue for Fetterman so

much is the fact that he had a stroke, although I would remind people he had the stroke the Friday before the primary election, didn't put out a statement till Sunday. And then five hours before the polls closed, they announced that he was having additional surgery. So I think you can raise the question of just how much he was open about what was going on in those last couple of days before the primary, when Democrats might have decided, hey, let's go with one of these other options. They had a congressman and a state representative running. Betterman won the primary by a wide margin. But I kind of feel like the question for Pennsylvania is, well, you weren't really honest about this in the beginning. Are you being honest with it now?

They debate on October 25th. I think if Fetterman goes out and, you know, if he goes out and he has a fine night, people will say, okay, this is much ado about nothing. What was all that about? But if he goes out there and has trouble getting his words out or looks confused or something like that, I think it could be Katie bar the door and you could see Oz win this, maybe not by such a close race. Jim, it's Steve Hayward out in California. I'll give you a prediction. I'll bet Fetterman drops out of the debate next week. There'll be some excuse for a claim. Mark it down for now. Two questions for you. With all the data and all the chatter breaking so one-sidedly in one direction, the first question I have for you is, what are some of the long shots you think we should pay attention to that may well surprise us on election night? And the second question is one

that I think you'd have a good handle on. Obviously, DeSantis is going to be reelected in Florida, and Greg Abbott is going to be reelected in Texas. Is there an over-underline where if, for example, if DeSantis wins by 10 or 12 points, that that automatically propels him up as arguably ahead of Trump for the 2024 nomination? So I'm glad you asked that because just this morning, two new polls came out, one in Florida, one in Texas. And for some reason, they're keeping it simple. They both have a Republican up by 11. Now, I think we all knew Greg Abbott was going to be at minimum heavily favored to win reelection in Texas. I think everybody knew Ron DeSantis was heavily favored and the Democrats would need some

sort of, I shouldn't use the term perfect storm in the context of Florida, but just kind of this idea of a really perfect sequence of events to knock these guys off. And I think you're right. I think the margin of victory for DeSantis will have a great deal about the perception of momentum if he decides to run for president. I don't know if I see a scenario where DeSantis is the favorite against Trump, at least as of November of this year or December of this year. But I think that will create a lot of momentum. And something on par with that 11-point lead in the poll out this morning would be a statement. Trump won Florida by one percentage point in 2016. He won it by about three, three and a half points in 2020.

It is a Republican-leaning state, but it's not by a huge margin. People forget Rick Scott won the governorship by the skin of his teeth two years in a row. DeSantis last time only won by about one percent against Andrew Gillum. So yeah, Republicans do well in Florida, but they usually don't win by a huge margin. So winning by 9, 10, 11 points, that's a landslide by Florida standards. Greg Abbott doesn't have that. I haven't heard too many people really seriously speculating about him as a presidential candidate. I like the guy a lot, and I wouldn't mind seeing that, but he doesn't seem to be all that interested in it, at least at this stage of his life. But what I find that interesting is that I feel like

I've been writing, if not the same piece, than many similar pieces about Beto O'Rourke going back four years now. And I marvel at how Democrats talk themselves into saying, this is the year, this is good. And every time I write about it, the Twitter and the comment section, there are people who are absolutely convinced

that this is it. And the example I just spotlighted in the corner at National Review earlier today, it's a San Antonio local paper. I'm not saying this is a major voice, but they're writing a profile of the thing, and they talk about how they really think Beto O'Rourke's got momentum

because they were at a concert series in Austin, and people were saying, hey, let's go, Beto. And they even heard some profanity in reference to Greg Abbott. Well, a concert series in Austin. You have a very well-educated audience. I assume they know that Austin is, as Rick Perry characterized it, the blueberry in the bowl of tomato soup. This is where all the Democrats in Texas live.

Not all of them. You get the idea. And i went back and i looked travis county last time around when got abbott was winning re-election pretty handily he lost it two to one this is a democratic stronghold this is a democratic at a concert series do you think you get lots of hardcore republicans at these austin you know texas republican at the austin city limits um yeah i think right jim's rob along in new york so i think thanks for joining us i think when you hear someone talking about i got the momentum the momentum you know they've lost right it's like that's not you don't want you don't win by momentum you win by actual votes so in your vast knowledge and historical perspective have um the polls ever overstated republican support

yeah i feel like it's rarer um i mean i guess i should say since i mentioned a bunch of the you know poll numbers and all that stuff i understand after 2020 i understand after 2016 a lot of people ah the polls they're, they're always nonsense, all that stuff. If you look at them in aggregate, if you look at them, occasionally you'll see a wild, crazy, how the hell did that happen? And probably like exhibit A would be last year or last cycle, Senate race in Maine, everybody had Susan Collins losing. Everybody thought Sarah Gideon, the Democratic nominee, was going to win and win by like eight nine ten points not necessarily a close one and collins won handily i mean i i've campaigned friends who work in campaigns for years and years and years they always kind of roll their eyes and say yeah the free polls that you all look at that you don't pay twenty thousand dollars a night for

yeah they may be a little bit inaccurate but we pay a lot of money for them you know put it this way nobody in the trump campaign in 2020 uh was saying they were surprised by the outcome in uh uh in wisconsin or pennsylvania or arizona they knew what the outcome was going to be because their polls were incredibly accurate um all right so so the benefit is okay so is it possible that we're looking at an election i mean here are my my uh my assumptions one you have a an unpopular president of a party that controls the House and the Senate in a time of high inflation, economic, near recession, if not recession, and deep, deep uncertainty. They should go down in flames. Yeah. You have an opposition party that has you know just numerically more

opportunities to pick up seats they should win in uh it should be a giant red wave to me if i was going to predict it looks to me like republicans kind of eke out the senate a little bit and not the house but but basically make a little bit of make some gains but not nearly what they should democrats uh lose but not nearly what they should everybody everybody turns in a d plus that these two parties are so incompetent that they can't even succeed at things that they should be able to succeed at they are these are d plus parties am i am i being too hard you don't know okay i think you could look at a bunch of the republican candidates and as of as of like a month ago i would have said um you know oz oz is doing better

than he was but he's not going to win and now i think it's probably a jump ball uh herschel walker yeah it's less than ideal when an allegation of paying for an abortion comes out about a month before the election. And let's face it, Herschel Walker was not the most eloquent candidate to begin with before he had this accusation thrown at him. Blake Masters. Do you think he's going to win? You think he's going to win? I'll tell you what. I think Walker keeps Warnock below 50 below 50 which puts the race in a runoff

that goes down december 6th and i think if the senate comes down to that then i think herschel walker wins if it's if republicans already have 51 votes and the cons the the who controls the senate isn't at stake i think that maybe you get some georgia republicans who pulled who held their nose and pulled the door open for him. I think they might stay home in the runoff a bit. But you also might have Democrats who wouldn't be as motivated. So I think that's still kind of a jump ball. What's the difference between – I know we've got to run, but what do you think the difference is between Brian Kemp's vote total

and Herschel Walker's vote total. You know what I'm saying? How many Georgia Republicans are enthusiastic enough to go and re-elect Brian Kemp and love it and are just not going to vote for Herschel Walker, not going to leave that blank in Wisconsin style?

It's 5-10. And if it's 5, I think Walker does okay. If it's 10, it's five to ten and if it's five i think you know walker does okay if it's 10 it's probably not okay uh in addition to being an incumbent kemp has the advantage of running against stacy abrams who i think republicans really don't like georgia republicans and who i think georgia republicans whatever they feel about the 2020 election and trump claiming it was stolen and it was venezuelan hackers and bamboo and the all the kind of crazy stuff they know that you know two years earlier uh what stacy abrams was saying was not that far from it that issue she too was claiming that votes

were thrown out and that she was the real winner etc etc and i think that just sticks in the craw of georgia republicans so they're they're really motivated. And I think also Georgia independents who might have voted for her in 2018 kind of look at her as a bit more of a wacko now. Don't feel as warm and fuzzy about her in addition to losing the All-Star game and various other factors that have happened since then. Jim, sadly, out here in the People's Republic of California, the red wave or tsunami is looking more like a ripple. Ironic for the state that gave us the Beach Boys, and there's a big surf spot. The one exception, I think, to pay attention to, and I think you have a bit, is the L.A. mayor's race, where some recent polls show it close. And Rick Caruso, the Republican turned independent or whatever he is, possibly winning against Karen Bass, who's really quite left.

And, of course, as people know, there's this recent scandal about the Hispanic members of the L.A. City Council, shall we say, lots of racist tropes about Blacks. And I think this will be an interesting test of the general backlash against soft on crime urban governance. And so I don't know. Keep your eye on that. Do you have any other possible urban areas that may surprise us but lanhee chen uh running for state controller out there i know

look it that's that's way down on the ballot but that is a job in which you're basically looking at the state spending picking out waste and mismanagement and fraud and bet you know bet uh that's that's something the perfect role that's where you want a republican californians that's that's a good job. Yeah, he's the only Republican that I know, statewide candidate, who's up on TV with some good ads. And, I mean, he's a lifelong Californian, and Rob spent a lot of time here. In statewide races, the Republicans often do better in the controller's race because they're enough voters to say, oh, they're the people who actually watch the pocketbook. And, you know, right, the people who say they're socially liberal, fiscally conservative. So, yeah, they're the people who actually watch the pocketbook and, you know, right.

The people who say they're socially liberal, fiscally conservative. So, yeah, I'm bullish on Lonnie also. With your point about the Los Angeles mayor's race, you know, they had this odd primary system and there was a chance that Caruso was going to win it outright back in the spring. A couple of percentage points short, you know, look, he's got more money than god and he's got tons of of resources that help um karen bass is undoubtedly the candidate of the democratic establishment uh and you know obviously you you guys out in california know the situation in los angeles crime and homelessness are really just off the charts that is something like that perfect storm to get a guy again caruso says he's not a republican now he's still on the reagan library board which i think is kind of a good useful indicator of what kind of guy he is

um but you know so these are near ideal circumstances now it's one of the things there was the last poll i think it was by the los angeles times or it was reported in los angeles times that had him within three which is good you know you can clearly make up a margin like that on election day but it was one of those weird situations that was amongst likely voters and if you expanded it to registered voters bass was actually ahead which is not what you usually like it's kind of an oh interesting so if if turnout got higher that actually might work in bass's oh by the way turnout in los ang Angeles elections are traditionally really, really low because usually they're not held on election day

with everything else. So this is a little bit of a whole new world where people aren't exactly sure what the makeup of the electorate is going to be. So obviously, I would not overlook him. I don't think... It's been interesting to see because I don't think there's as many...

It's not the New York City mayor's race that's on the ballot know it's not the new york city mayor's race is on the ballot it's not like um i mean i haven't paid attention to uh the district of columbia i believe they banned republicans uh two or three years after i after i left that's right the advantage of being a republican in the district of columbia used to be like when i voted for george w bush and they're showing the updated vote totals in the bottom of the screen it would go from five to to six. I'd say, hey, that's my vote. That's mine. Well, Jim, I'd ask you how you feel about the upcoming election of the sewer board commissioner in Minot, North Dakota. I'd be terrified to find that you actually have some information on that.

It's like Michael Barone territory. Michael Barone level of granularity here. know i have to trust that you are actually talking about real people and not just making up candidates from some sort of mad lib board that you have on the other side of your microphone uh but no you know he knows this stuff and that's why the morning jolt and three martini lunch are so much fun uh jim garrity thank you for coming back uh we'll talk to you uh after the election to find out exactly why you were right about absolutely everything i hope so all right good always good to find out exactly why you were right about absolutely everything. I hope so.

All right. Good. Always good to see you guys. Take care. All right. Thanks, Jim. Bye. And go Jets.

I had to spoil it there, I guess. Here's the thing, though. I wonder if it's possible because, you know, you have you have your television. I don't know if you guys do what you want. Rob, you're a football guy, right? You watch lots of football. No, he's muted himself. I think he's swearing extensively. And Stephen, I don't know if you guys do what you do. Rob, you're a football guy, right? You watch lots of football. No, he's muted himself. I think he's swearing extensively.

And Stephen, I don't know about you. I do. I do. I tend to watch it. I don't have a broadcast here, so I have a hard time finding it in my home. But I definitely watch it with other people drinking. Well, I enjoy it, of course. And we get the Vikings game.

But, you know, you think there are other games going on that I'm never going to see because they're in other markets. And it's like that with an awful lot of television and streaming content as well. Yeah, there's lots of content everywhere. But you think, oh, that's an onerous responsibility to seek it out. I'm terrified of the energy it would take to go find that content elsewhere. Well, yeah, it is October. It is terrifying, spooky season. It's a perfect time to visit haunted houses, you know, and discover the secret passageways in those houses. Look through all the hidden, scary surprises they got there in those places. I've been there. But just like you wouldn't go to a haunted house and skip all the good stuff, you know, run right through would you pay for a monthly subscription but skip 90% of the good stuff that's out there?

Luckily, with ExpressVPN, you can just tap one button to access all the best hidden shows on Netflix. If you didn't already know this, Netflix has different content in every country. The shows, the movies we get in the U.S. are just a fraction of what they actually have on the platform. But with ExpressVPN, you can change your online location to make it look like you're in a different country. ExpressVPN has nearly 100 different countries to choose from, so you can watch any Netflix library you want. Wow. You can explore ExpressVPN and find Top Gun in French. What do they say? Parasite on the Canadian Netflix and the whole Lord of the Rings series on Turkish Netflix. Convinced the Turks have already made their own version of it. And that's probably there too. Who knows?

Here's the best part. It's not just for Netflix. ExpressVPN works with pretty much all the streaming services. Disney+, Shudder, BBC Player. So you can access so many more shows and movies. ExpressVPN has apps for your devices as well. Your phone, your tablet, your TVs. Make it easy for you to watch shows however you want.

So get your money's worth and get three extra months of ExpressVPN for free when you go to expressvpn.com slash ricochet. That's expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Expressvpn.com slash ricochet. And we thank ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Before we go, a couple of things. Rob, as ever, has to remind you that ricochet is not

just this sort of floating thing in the cloud where people get together no it's an irl experience james irl experience that's what we're into ricochet or irl uh and we actually we we are absolutely enthusiastically jumping into the irl world. When you join ricochet.com, you'll know what we're talking about. We have meetups. Our members get together. Speaking of racing a glass and watching football, where are they getting together?

Here's some hints. We're going to get some people together in Kilmarnock, Kilmarnock, Virginia on Sunday, the 23rd of this month. So that's actually in a couple of days. There's also a group meeting on the national review Institute cruise November. That's what Jim referred to.

It won't be us, but it'll be some Ricochet members and some young guys from NR. We have one scheduled in Pittsburgh in December. There are meetups in Sarasota, Vacaville, Sarasota, Florida, Vacaville, California in January, and in New Orleans next April during French Quarterfest. That's going to be a blast. You've got to make

plans for that. Now, if these things are too far away or you can't make it or for whatever reason the schedule doesn't match there is a solution you're not doomed to live a lonely sad existence you just have to join ricochet then you give us a place some time and i guarantee you ricochet will come to you that's what our members want to do more than anything is get together so for details on ricochet meetups go to ricochet.com slash events or look on the sidebar on the site. The only thing you got to do to join Ricochet and join this community is join Ricochet and join this community. Ricochet.com. We want you to join.

Wise words. Rob, we know you have to leave, but I hope you've got time to stick around for this one. And I want Steven, your input as well. We've been seeing lately the thing to do to change people's minds is no longer to stand in front of traffic and keep the ambulances from getting to the hospital. No, it's to glue your hands to things, which seems to me to be unwise, because if you have a policeman, a gendarme, somebody who is unlikely to indulge you, the ripping off of that hand from said object involves a small amount of pain. Unless, of course, you're dealing with civilized people who know how to get the message across. In Germany, we had some green activists

who glued themselves to cars and to the floor at a Volkswagen plant because they are dead absolutely serious about Volkswagen committing to decarbonization now. Well, here's the problem. They've tweeted out the following. Volkswagen told us they support our right to protest, but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in in a decent manner while we are glued. And they have turned off the heating.

People in support can't get out of the building. So surprisingly, in a decent manner to give these people the bowl, a pot to, you know, is this the, is this the proper approach? Are we going to see more of that going forward? And it's the, it's the arrogance of these people in their white coats and their logos and their neatly trimmed beards and their arrogant stares of certainty who've glued themselves to things.

Ergo, you have, since they have glued themselves to the floor in a car we are obligated to dump the entire foundation of a mirror of western prosperity and comfort and ease in order to exceed to their demands so what do we say is is a bowl too much is a bolt is lack of a bolt inhumane well the uh you know my first thought thought was I reminded one of Rob's old stories. The only thing missing from the tweets from the people gluing themselves with petroleum-based superglue, by the way, is the tweet says it's just like – this is just like Auschwitz. Right, right.

I can't imagine any tactics more designed to alienate the broad swath of ordinary people in the world than doing this? It's not just this is the newest tactic, you know, throwing tomato soup on Van Gogh painting and gluing yourself to the wall. But a lot of these folks, you know, when I was in England this summer, I was on a train from Glasgow down to London and we stopped. I forget where we had to get off the train because of one of these Extinction Rebellion protests had blocked the tracks for all the southbound trains heading to London, and it disrupted everybody's day and all the train schedules. This is not a way to win friends and influence people. So, am I right in thinking this happened in Germany? Yes.

Yes. You know, I don't know what happened to germany recently but i i suspect we have um vladimir putin to thank i mean they're going to rearm they're turning on uh their nuclear power plants at least three of them apparently and they refuse to give it to the greens at a vw plant i mean who, who's the president of Germany? Is it Ron DeSantis? This seems like a very welcome turn of events. And we're cheering it. That's the funny part.

Look, Germany's got its spine back. They're rearming. Well, that's okay. Take your point there. But if they're standing up to the Greens, to activists who glue themselves to stuff and then say, now you've got to take care of me, which is all you need to know about socialism. Right. I'm going to do these terrible things to myself and my family.

And then you have to take care of me and clean me up like I'm an infant. Right. I don't even I don't even they didn't even wear diapers. Right. They just assumed that you take care of them. This is a welcome attitude um this is a welcome attitude this is a welcome there's a couple of good signs here one is that they're they're just turning off the heat in the building and letting them just sit their own filth you glued yourself to the floor you pay the price another is that little kind of like crackpot little girl greta thurnberg whatever you know god you know you know i can't believe i'm saying something nice about

her but she's the one saying no we need we need more nuclear power plants. Don't fire up the coal plants. I mean, what I mean, I guess it goes right back to the beginning. It's like, we need to learn as a people, as a movement, how to take yes for an answer. When we're winning, we got to win. We got to press the success. We're too busy focusing on the people we're against. We got to march forward with a bunch of... I'm to the barricades with Greta Thunberg. I'll march for a nuclear power with her. I mean, it won't be much fun. She doesn't seem like she's a fun kind of person, but I'll do it if it means they're going to turn on the nukes in Europe. And God willing here, let us hope.

Yeah, I think the biggest slow motion story right now is that the climate change movement is dying in front of our eyes. And Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin are the two people doing it. It's too long to lay out now, but Biden's climate business and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is actually a strategic defeat for the climatistas, as I call them. It takes a while to explain that, but we're going to waste half a trillion dollars, but we didn't get a price on carbon, which has always been object one.

We didn't get a big regulatory scheme that the climatistas also always wanted. All we're going to do is build a lot of wind and solar we don't need that locks in natural gas as a perpetual backup for it. So in the meantime, the administration has a new three part plan, though, to solve this energy crisis. One, they're going to release an afternoon's use of gasoline from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And two, they're going to refill it when the price gets right. And three, they're strongly encouraging energy companies to to lower their prices. So that ought to refill it when the price gets right. And three, they're strongly encouraging energy companies to to to lower their prices. So that ought to do it. What the Republicans can and should run on is the fact that when Trump tried to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve a couple of years ago, the Democrats were very happy about blocking it. And Schumer made the announcement

that they had they turned down a windfall for big oil. OK, all all right let's let them let's let them run on that and also the idea that when the republicans tried to ban the sale of spr uh fuel to china it was the democrats who said no no absolutely not for whatever reason just simply because the republicans wanted to do it they were automatically gainsaying things like that tell you exactly who's serious about this stuff and yes the fact that uh we're going to have a bunch of wonderful little windmills. You know, I hate to think that I'm going to go back to Britain after the labor rights take power and there'll be a big, big windmill spinning at the top of Big Ben. But I hope not. Right now, I'm just gratified by the sight of this picture, this tweet of the protesters gluing themselves to the floor without their buckets. And I note that one glued his left hand to the floor and the other glued his right hand to the floor,

which presumes to me that they glued their hands with foreknowledge of which ones they might need in a defecatory situation. And now we're having to deal with the fact that they're not going to get their pot. They might as well have glued both hands to the floor or to a car. I wonder if they're kicking themselves, except they probably glued their feet as well. That's it for us. We thank our sponsors, ExpressVPN, Bowling Branch and Quip and the rest of it. Thanks Steven for sitting in for Peter. Someday he'll be back,

but in the meantime, we got you and it's great. Join Ricochet. Why don't you leave us that five-star review? Why don't you? And come back next week and see what we got then. Why don't you? Gentlemen, it's been fun. And we'll see everybody in the comments at ricochet 4.0 next week fellas ricochet join the conversation