The Ricochet Podcast - The Fishing Expedition

Episode Date: June 10, 2015

This week, the New York Times thinks a fishing boat is a yacht — luckily, we have fishing and GOP politics expert (and Florida native son) Rick Wilson to get us back on course. He also gives us (that includes Troy Senik, sitting in for Rob Long) a high-altitude overview of the 2016 race, including Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, and Carly Fiorina. Also, are we going back into Iraq? And finally... Source

Hello, everyone. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. What it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast. Rob Long is swanning around somewhere. Troy Seneca sitting in. Peter Robinson is here. I'm James Lileks, and our guest is not any Rick Wilson, but the Rick Wilson. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Welcome, everybody, to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 263, I do believe.

It's brought to you by a new friend of the show, The Great Courses. For a limited time, The Great Courses has a special offer for Ricochet listeners, and that would be you, wouldn't it? Order any of these four business and presentation courses for just $9.95. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash Ricochet, and Peter Robinson will be telling you a little bit more about that later. And, of course, we're brought to you by Harry's Shave, because overpaying for drugstore razor blades is a really bad habit. You've got to leave it behind, break it easily by making the smart switch to Harry's. And, of course, we have a coupon code coming up.

I wonder what that might be. We're also brought to you by Ricochet.com. Since Rob's not here, I'm going to say what Brother Rob would, that Ricochet, look, there's a whole bunch of you people listening to this thing. And if Ricochet got to 10,000 members within the next 45, 50 seconds or so, life would be great and everybody would be happy. Might not happen, but if we could get to 10,000 by the end of the month, end of the week, everybody would be pleased that this enterprise would continue to flourish. Now, if you were ever a previous member, you can go to Ricochet.com membership. Of course, there's a slash in there, you know. And use the coupon code REJOIN.

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That way, you make sure that this enterprise founded on civility and a way of talking to each other without talking past each other will endure, not just in the next presidential cycle, but the one beyond that. Ricochet is unique. Ricochet is an oasis of civility with some of the smartest people you'll find on the web and the best writers. So why wouldn't you want to support it? Of course you do. Go to Ricochet.com and get that 30 days free, after which, of course, you'll be happy to pay as well. Rob is gone. He had a birthday, so I think that he's probably sprawled somewhere in the gutters of Venice. And that leaves us with Troy Seneca, who we're happy to have with us, and of course, Peter Robinson. Gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever people may

happen to be when they're listening to this. Gosh, what's in the news? What did Marco Rubio do while I slept to bring this nation closer to anarchy? Troy, you want to take that one? Well, let's see. In the last week, we've had him speeding and him buying a boat. Those are the two things that the New York Times apparently thinks disqualifies him from being president of the United States. I kind of wonder if your Marco Rubio – do you take this as a compliment? I think I probably do. I mean if they are this desperate to get you and giving us the sort of hard-hitting, conceited analysis that you'd expect here on the Ricochet podcast, my takeaway from the whole story was this. For people who are not in Florida or who are not political junkies, I'm guessing that most people were not familiar with – I believe former first lady in American history if Marco Rubio ends up ascending to the White House and everyone who could follow. I'll just say that.

That's a tough act to follow. What was it? I can't remember the numbers now. But on him, first of all – I think it was four for him. He's the one who's running for president of the United States. Four tickets over the last two decades. That averages one every five years and two of them had been voided or expunged essentially admissions of error on the part of the cops. His wife, listen, I feel for her because my wife is in the same position as Marco Rubio's wife or was.

We're sort of getting past those years. A minivan full of squirming kids as you drive. His wife had, I think that was a higher number, was into the low double digits parking tickets over the same period. And eight of those had been vacated or voided so we put that against hillary clinton who is the candidate and her what we what we already know about her we're going all the way back to her time as first lady of arkansas when she accepted a trade by a man as i I recall, his name was Red Bones,

who took $10,000 of her money and turned it into $100,000 trading in pork barrels, pork bellies. It was a clear laundering operation to give the First Lady effectively a bribe. We have that on her. And if you want to get started on her spouse, Bill Clinton, there's a little bit more to talk about than 17. It's unbelievable that the New York Times put this on the front page. And then yesterday, his financial indiscretions, he took out a student loan. Oh, he paid it off. He bought a house in Florida at the top of the market and then sold it for an $18,000 loss.

He and his buddy who bought it to use when they were state legislators, I think neither of them – well, certainly not Marco. But I think the buddy also is not a state legislator. Somewhere along the line, they missed five mortgage payments. They made good on the missed payments. They sold the house for $18,000 less than they paid for. Welcome to Florida real estate. And then, oh, yes. And then he bought – this was – I mean why anyone would trust the New York Times anymore?

I simply do not know because the Times referred to it as a luxury speedboat. And then pictures came out. It's a motorboat. It's what anybody in out it's a motorboat it's what anybody in florida would call a motorboat what turns it into a luxury speed boat is simply that a republican owns it it was what forty thousand dollars fifty thousand dollars eighty thousand dollars eighty thousand dollars that's right it was one-tenth of a windfall he received an eight hundred thousand dollar advance for writing a book he spent most of it on paying off loans, getting himself squared away, and then he spent one-tenth having a little fun, but modest fun. By comparison, who was it?

Somebody. Was it our own? Somebody posted a picture of John Kerry's sailboat. Right. With something like $7.2 million alongside Marco Rubio's motorboat, not luxury speedboat, ordinary Florida motorboat. If you think I'm a little ticked off with the New York Times, I am. Kerry had to earn that money by laboring in the fields with Ms. Kerry. So I don't begrudge him a penny of what he got out of that deal. But as far as Rubio goes, a couple of things. One,

yes, the luxury ox that he uh that he now is accused of having when you look at that boat most people who come from states like minnesota or wisconsin who are aware of lake culture look at that and say i'm sorry what luxury no if anything he's one of us because that's the kind of thing that people yearn to have to aspire to and would go and get if they too had that sort of money fall in their laps and they done other irresponsible things like pay off their loans and set up trust funds for their kids but here's the beauty of it and and and you can't help but think that that doesn't appeal to people that

since Miss Clinton mrs. Clinton has not had a driver's license or driven herself since 1996 that means that if you put her in a modern car where all you have to do is to wave the fob in the general direction of the steering column and it will start, she will startle back, shriek, and ask what sort of sorcery be this. If the only way that she has beheld America is

dimly through a tinted glass in the back of a limo when she rose her head from the position papers that State had given her, that's all she sees as opposed to somebody who's out there signaling, turning, sweating, honking, driving for the

American experience that we all know. What this is about is equalizing all of the scandals. Marco has this house. See this house? See this house here that he spent, this big expensive house? Well, the Clintons, they got a loan too when they got out of the White House because they were dead broke. So it all evens out.

House all evens out. Boat evens out with – I don't know what. Plane maybe for Clinton going to Pedophile Island or something like that. Oh, boat, boat. $80,000 ordinary motorboat. That equals out with $25 million that the Clintons made on speaking fees, at least $25 million in the last 18 months alone. Right. And you know what, Peter? That's just as cynical as I expected out of you because that was money that went directly to a foundation. And what is that foundation therefore? Why it's to take 99 cents of every dollar and personally invest it in the reconstruction of Haiti, which is why the Haitian GDP right now is higher than Hong Kong.

If you say it, perhaps it's true. Yeah, you're right. The Clintons are just taking bribes and Marco is – so anyway. So anyway … But that's the beautiful irony of this whole thing though is that the people pushing these stories out of for the fact that he's proud of the fact that he spent a dollar on a sweater at Kohl's. I mean would you rather be the couple that got – for pure purposes of political framing, would you rather be the couple that got a dozen speeding tickets over the course of a couple of decades or the candidate who hasn't driven a car since the mid-90s? This is not hurting these people. No, I don't think so. Not at all. Yeah, the – I'm sorry. James, that image was so beautiful of her just sort of a – at the next debate, don't – there should be a moment where instead of asking the candidates a question, the curtain should open.

Please start this vehicle. a question, the curtain should open and there should be a recent Model 4. And each candidate should be tossed the keys and to ask – like a spot on Letterman, right? That's right. They should be walked out to the parking lot and asked to drive a figure eight around some cones. And what would Hillary Clinton do? Just exactly as you suggested, James. She would shriek in horror and lack of recognition.

Now, remember what they did to George – go ahead. Back up a Ford pickup on the right side of the street without using the little screen. A pickup. That's exactly right. You were saying about Bush. OK. Well, no. I'm just – do you remember back in whatever year it was when George H.W. Bush was running for reelection?

He eventually lost to Bill Clinton. And do you remember what they did to him and how long they – it went on and on, the simple story that he was going through a checkout counter in a grocery store in New Hampshire. Troy will remember this, I'm pretty sure, although it was his president's father, not his president. The grocery scanner. Yeah. And George H.W. Bush stopped and said, oh, interesting technology, the barcode scanner. And it turned out we now know that of course he was perfectly familiar with barcode scanners. But this was a newer version which he hadn't seen.

And like an interested person, he said, oh, he's looking for conversation. Tell me about – and he was – I'm tempted to quote Mayor Daley. They have vilified me. They have crucified me. And yes, they have even criticized me. It went on and on and on. Hillary Clinton hasn't – she's been in limos for – it's unbelievable. All right.

Well, the grocery scanner thing works because it conforms to the narrative. These people are stupid. They're out of touch and they never get anywhere where the common people have to go. When was the last time, for example, that Marco Rubio saw two women slapping each other into unconsciousness in a Walmart? Never, I'm telling you. So what does he know? The scanner thing is fascinating. But again, anybody who has been as insulated as long as Hillary Clinton is so far away from the basic experience of most people.

When was the last time she paid with something? When was the last time that Barack Obama actually had to install a software update on his phone? Right. Right. When did these people last pump their own gas? And I'll tell you the reason. I think that Barack Obama probably had to install a software on his own phone last week. And that's why he's starting to smoke again. I noticed that as well. And I say good for him. I do too. If he can smoke in his own house, then, then my respect

for him goes up a little bit. If he has to go outside for God's sake, then yeah, put on the mom jeans and put on a little purple My Little Pony biking helmet and go out there and tell Putin that he's got a lot to fear about. Peter, when it comes to fear in the world, a lot of people are afraid that there's information out there to which they will never have access because it's held and locked towers and IVed institutions and there's no way really for them to get the good information that they need. But I'll bet that's wrong. I'll bet there's something, Peter Robinson, you can tell these people about that will enhance their life and make them smarter. James Lilacs, you are a marvel, a beautiful segue.

Even when at the end of the segue, you're flipping it to me. Yes. Amazing. You announced a few moments ago that we have a new sponsor for this podcast, The Great Courses. I am particularly pleased to have The Great Courses sponsoring the Ricochet podcast because I've been listening to various great courses for years now. Most of you listening to this podcast are like Troy and like James and like Rob who's on vacation or recovering from his birthday celebrations. And that is to say that you enjoy learning for the sake of learning, that it's just fun to learn stuff. And that is the motivation behind The Great Course is a company that's now celebrating its 25th anniversary.

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No spaces. No underlining. Thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Remember the slash ricochet because that's how the good people at The Great Courses will know that you came to them through us. TheGreatCourses.com slash ricochet. James? Bravo. You've got a future in this. I think you've been listening to the how to successfully sell online courses tape.

It's a great one. And that slash, the way you say that with such civility, reminds us, of course, why you don't do marketing for horror movies. But speaking of horrors, if you're on the left and you become the subject of one of Rick Wilson's perorations in Twitter, then you know what it's like because he's really good at that. Let me read you Rick's bio.

And this has that whimsical quirkiness that suggests to me it's taken right from his Twitter page. GOP media guy, dad, pilot, hunter, amateur epistemologist, cognitive engineer, cutter of brush, fake 45th president, scourge of the unrighteous. You just need something after that that's kind of quirky and fun like dark beer aficionado exclamation point or something like that. You can tell him about that on Twitter. Follow him at Rick Wilson. Here he is. Welcome, sir.

John Kasich. John's tapped two senior McCain people. This means he's going to be our next president, right? It's almost an assertitude at this point that a little over two years from now, we'll be looking at at the glory that is that is President Kasich also in the scale of likelihood monkeys, prosteriors, et cetera. But listen, I get that there's a certain demo that likes the John Kasich idea, middle class, Midwestern guy. But honestly, the market's pretty much bought out Scott Walker at this point for that particular character in the presidential pageant. I'm stepping away here for either Troyer or Peter to leap in. Well, Rick, I'll ask you the operative first question for anybody in Florida. How many speeding tickets have you and Jeanette Rubio combined for? I believe if you add Jeanette Rubio's speeding tickets to my speeding tickets, it's somewhere around 150.

So actually a serious question here about Florida because I mean we're focusing on Jeb and Rubio. I assume that at some point down the line – I mean you already see it in the press. There's going to be a suggestion that, hey, you got a republican candidate in both of these cases, biggest swing state in the country. It's going to matter, which might be true. But my question is how that plays out for Jeb. I mean by the time we – let's assume for the sake of argument that Jeb is the nominee next year. It's almost what, 15 years, 2002 since the last time that he won an election in Florida. I would imagine that you guys have to have a huge demographic churn in that state just based on the population. Has Jeb Bush's currency declined in that time?

The turnover of voters in Florida since that time is roughly 80 percent. Wow. Okay? There are not a lot of people who are voting in this election who voted for Jeb Bush still left. I mean, remember, we have a tremendous amount of older voters in the pool.

Right. And they do flip. They do turn. I mean, if the... They die. Go ahead. Just say it. Well, I'm trying to be discreet about it, guys. They end up we end up with an awful lot of with an awful lot of former voters who have gone to the life everlasting, et cetera. But look, Jeb's name is still very, very prominent in Florida Republican circles.

Remember, this is a Republican primary. But the reality is they voted for Marco Rubio in 2010 as the hero who defeated Charlie Crist. And so when you get down to it, you really have four Floridians on the ballot right now since Huckabee lives in Seaside and since Ben Carson lives in Palm Beach. But obviously the battle in Florida will be between Jeb and Marco Rubio.

And it's going to be a very interesting turn of events in terms of how it frames out as a contest between the old and the new, between two men who have different political brands at this point and two men who have different spaces they occupy now on the ideological spectrum, where 10 years ago you would have thought that they were virtually on the same song sheet ideologically, but now it certainly looks to be that Jeb is occupying a more moderate space in the party. Peter here, I'd just like to ask you a couple of just impressionistic subjective questions. Rick Perry, I'd like on Rick Perry and Jeb Bush, if I may, Rick Perry, I thought the speech he gave, the announcement speech he gave was a very good speech. So good that it moved him from joke. Are you kidding?

To, Hmm, way back in the pack, but plausible, which is a big jump to make on the basis of just one speech. Right? Wrong? I have to agree. And I tweeted something about this the day of the speech is that this is a guy who has clearly been born again hard. And he has come out of the 2012 experience, recognizing he had to go to school and to get much more fluent on the policy questions that tripped him up last time, recognizing that he has to have a selling proposition in this field that will move him from the watch list in the back of the pack to where he ought to be as a serious contender. Because if Rick Perry brings nothing else to this equation, he has the most

stellar economic record to talk about of any candidate in the field, bar none. He is the guy who can talk comeback story and job creation and a lot of the things that are strongly resonant. You know, once we get outside of our little bubble of conventional wisdom about what matters in the party, those things still matter a lot. Okay, Rick, let me ask you this then. Who does he take oxygen from? It seems to me that Walker has got the great story as well, but Walker is fighting government. Perry is this sort of pro expansion, look how great we've done story that I think, is that going to play better than Walker's perhaps more narrowly tailored anti-union speech? And does he have gravitas that young, fast-talking Marco Rubio doesn't? Well, look, I think Marco is an extraordinary talent and a friend. And so

he is a guy that you cannot underestimate Marco in this except at your peril. But I do think that Rick Perry gets another look. And I think if he starts to get traction, it is going to come out of Scott Walker. And it is going to come out of the rest of the guys in the field who aren't quite right now viewed as top tier candidates. Those folks will start losing some oxygen and harder for them to make a case. I think it also comes a little bit out of Jeb, because here's a guy who can say, yes, I'm a former governor too, a recent former governor. Here's my economic record. Let's have a look. Let's post up against one another on that question. And look, while Jeb had a tremendous economic record in Florida, it now is over a decade ago.

And so Perry gets a chance to make that case. Again, he knows that he is one slip away from the media doing their silly, you know, their silly little game they're going to play. They're always on watch for Perry to commit the one gaffe they believe will kill the campaign. But I do think Perry gets a second look and he gets another turn at bat here and God bless him, I think the guy's tremendous I agree that anybody who underestimates Marco Rubio is doing so at great peril

I'm just wondering when this starts to penetrate the consciousness of the low information people, whether or not that's the evaluation that they make but what have they got now exactly on Perry they've already found the painted rock with a racist message from 1912. Troy? Well, Rick, here's my question. If these candidates in the presidential field are stocks, who are you buying right now? Who are you selling?

By which I mean not necessarily who's going to be the nominee but who is sort of undervalued in the conventional wisdom and who's overvalued? I'd go long on Carly Fiorina. I'd go long on Rick Perry. Both of those two are underpriced stock right now. When I met Fiorina, I got to tell you guys, I do not easily fanboy. But when I met her, I was impressed as could be. Yeah, same thing. Exact same experience.

She has poise. She has command of the issues. She has a clearly thought out theory of the case for her against Hillary ending in the field. And she is tremendously impressive. You know what? Here's what I agree entirely. And we've had Carly on this podcast a couple of times. She is more than impressive.

In fact, there was one – I think one of us asked her the question, look, your pitch is roughly the same as that of Mitt Romney. You've been successful in business. You know how to run things. You're going to take those principles to the government. What's the difference between you and Mitt? And Carly said instantly, Mitt pulled his punches. I will fight. I almost fell off my chair. That beautiful but you know what here in silicon valley and who was it politico or somebody did a story about this

the other day they telephoned as many of her staffers as they could find who had worked for her when she ran for the senate in california my experience people who knew her at Hewlett-Packard have not everyone but a lot of them have the same comment to make on Carly Fiorina as the former staffers made on Carly Fiorina, former staffers in her Senate campaign made on her. They will never work with her again. She is rough on staff. That seems to be becoming clear. And those of us, James has not worked on a political campaign and God bless him, but all three of the others of us have. And you know what? It says something about a candidate, how they treat the people who work with them and for them. issue. The press won't really be able to get at it beyond a few more hinky dinky interviews. It's not Marco Rubio speeding tickets. It's worse than that, but it's harder to get at because they've got to get, they've got to talk to knowledgeable people on the record and nobody really wants to give those kinds of interviews. Are you hearing that as well? You know, I've

actually talked to a couple of people who are working for her now, um, who thinks she's tremendous who are having a ball working with her now. Good. Maybe that's one of the 10,000 things she's changed. Yeah. Look, her Senate campaign was a pretty rough go. That was a pretty hard race to be in for her, I'm sure. And so those things tend to reflect at the staff level in a way that sometimes comes out in some complaints post hoc. Everybody remembers the happy, good, winning campaign and forgets all of the painful slog. Victory has a thousand fathers and all that stuff. But I think she and Perry are underpriced right now in the market.

I think Ted Cruz is wildly overvalued in the market. In fact, if you saw the Politico thing today, he's already starting to pull the – well, we're not going to win any early states. So he's already gone to some sort of bank shot. For states that go in March, right? Isn't that what he's focusing on now? Yeah. Yeah, and it's just not – I just don't think it's necessarily a – I think he's an overpriced stock. I've always been – So Jeb Bush, can I ask everybody on the line right now a question?

Do you not have the – wouldn't you short Jeb? Wouldn't you short him right now before he even formally announces? Do you not have the feeling that nothing is working for this guy? There's just, he can't give a speech that enthuses. He can't answer a question that advances his cause. Look at it. It looks like it's just not working. Look at all.

And look at, and I hate to say, and Rick will correct me here. I hate to, I hate to say, take the temperature from blogs and talk radio. But if you look at everything that's going on in the excited part of the base on social media, on blogs, and yes, on talk radio, nobody's talking about Jeb. Nobody is interested in him whatsoever. It's all Rubio. It's all Walker. It's all Perry. Rick, I'll let you have that.

Why are we – is Jeb still a thing? And if so, why? Is it just because of establishment and money? Jeb has a large fundraising operation running right now that while they may not reach the $100 million goal that they stated or that someone leaked early in the process, he's still going to have what we refer to in politics as a metric ass ton of money. And that's going to be something that does start to change the debate at some

point. However, and Jeb's folks are my friends, and Jeb is tremendous respect for Jeb, but there are certain things that he has decided he's going to, certain hills he's going to die on, including Common Core,

that have caused a lot of difficulty for him in the base and that have caused a lot of folks to question whether he is the right choice. I think he could get beyond these things. And I think he is one of the most impressive thinkers in the field. But that's not necessarily working right now to enthuse core conservative voters to the degree he needs to break out of where he's at. To the contrary, he is insulting the base by insisting on that issue. As governor, he instituted what was at that time by far the most dramatic charter school program anywhere in the nation. The base loves that part of it. Frankly, the base loves all his

record. He's running for president of the United States. ISIS is taking over big parts of the Middle East. China is rising. He is going to fight and die on a hill called Common Core. It makes no, it's, it's unserious. Listen, I've, I've pulled Common Core repeatedly. They're aware of this. They understand it. It is poison. Everyone hates it. Democrats hate it. Everyone hates Common Core. It is a bafflement to me that he is stubborn on this issue. I have expressed it to his people in, in, in, in the greatest of friendships saying, this is poison. You are, you are consuming more of it. Stop this. This is ridiculous. But you know what? They're going to stay dug in on Common Core until the last dog dies where he should recognize that occasionally as a politician, you have to say, I made a mistake. I's interesting to me that some of the names that we're not discussing. The hypothetical, I put you, Rick Wilson, in Trenton, New Jersey right now. What are you telling Chris Christie? Wait until Menendez is indicted, run for U.S. Senate.

Yeah. He has no traction in the presidential race whatsoever. They're pretending he does. They're putting up a good front. This guy has been dead for two years. He's just too dumb to lay down. When I talk to base voters and I've talked to folks in the last couple of weeks, you know, making my rounds with my friends and acquaintances and people I've worked with in New Hampshire, in Iowa and South Carolina, and certainly my friends here in Florida, I can't find a single person who's not on Chris Christie's payroll who is enthusiastic about him. And it is it is this is a guy I've called in this for a while now. He is the accele Republican that all the people, all the bookers in New York and Washington

know this guy. And they're the only constituency he has right now. There is no there's no desire or demand. There's no groundswell for Chris Christie by any activist, by any political person out in the field that I've talked to for, and it's not just the bridge, guys. It's because Chris Christie is a blue state governor who, while he's conservative on a couple of issues, is completely wrong on a lot of others. So same basic advice for Bobby Jindal? Just get ready to be HHS secretary? Yeah, you know what?

Bobby's having a great time. He and Lindsey Graham are patently not running for president. They're building their name ID. I mean Lindsey Graham is running for secretary of defense, and I get it. I the joke. But but it is a joke. It's not a serious effort. You know, and the rest of the guys in that in that, you know, the Ben Carson tier, he's beloved by certain parts of the base. But he's just not able to mount a serious national campaign effort. And that's just a fact. You don't think Carly's running for vice president? I think she is one of these people that's actually going to swing for the fences

and and like the right politics will emerge from doing this as hard as she can yeah yeah i've got it got it got it right or considered about wanting those cabinet gigs right right hey could one more thing one more question about Jeb Bush. This is to me the deep puzzle. I really can't figure it out and it strikes me as the fundamental problem, the reason things aren't working for him. He's doing a reverse Romney. Romney presented himself – I set aside the question of who Mitt Romney may be in his innermost soul because that's impenetrable. But Romney presented himself. It is a matter of public record. He called himself a progressive and a moderate when he was running for governor of Massachusetts. When he was running for the Senate, he lost that campaign. But when he was running against Ted Kennedy, he attacked Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and said, I will not take America back to the days of Reagan and Bush. And then when he ran for president, suddenly he's the deepest,

this most severe conservative since Ronald Reagan. So he presented himself as something, who knows? I had friends who said, no, no, you don't understand. He was lying then. He's really conservative. Oh, who knows? All you can say for sure is that he presented himself one way and it changed, flipped. And now Jeb Bush was a conservative governor of Florida for all eight years. He cut taxes every year. The charter school reform, he built up the conservative – not only did he help Republicans take firm control of the legislature, he helped the conservative caucus within the republic. I mean it was a bravura conservative performance and now here he comes along and presents himself as a moderate. The cognitive dissonance is just wild. What is he doing? It is wild. And if you go back and look at the newspaper coverage of Jeb Bush when he was governor, particularly the St. Petersburg Times, he was described in a million different times as a foaming at the mouth, rabid, insane, far right wing extremist, the most dangerous conservative in America.

They described him in a way that was that made him or attempted to make him a terrifying figure because he was a guy who would pursue conservative economic policies, conservative education policies, pro-life policies that are that were that were far beyond almost anyone else in the field in terms of actually trying to implement policy. And you're right. Now he has cast himself as this establishment, more moderate, more centrist character. And here's the thing. At the end of the day, the Democrats are going to, if it's Jeb Bush as the nominee, they're going to turn him into the rabid red meat foaming at the mouth, red blooded conservative crazy person. Right. That they always do. So you lose either direction on it if you're not if you're not, you know, embracing what you've been. And it's always tough to walk away from your record in politics.

And as Mitt Romney found going the other direction, and if Jeb's the nominee, he's going to find it difficult to walk away from the fact that he was a real conservative. I mean, which is why embracing it would have been the smart play at the very top of the game, rather than, you know, rather than having to go and post hoc play cleanup on it. Let me ask you this. One of the things the Bush name has to its benefit is a strong position on American security. In other words, if we get hit again, people will recall 9-11 and they'll recall the Bush posture. But Jeb doesn't seem to have inherited any of that attribute, does he? People don't see him as a strong military guy

in the way that they did his brother, right? No, I don't think they do because as a governor, his purview was entirely domestic. I mean, you know what I'm saying. But his persona, his persona is not that. His persona is a bit reserved, steeple-fingered thinking. It doesn't have the same sort of cowboy swagger that we came

to excoriate, but that in times of crisis, you kind of like. Yeah. I mean, he definitely comes across as a guy because legitimately he is a guy who likes to think about, talk about, consider policy questions with a great deal of granularity and a great deal of intelligence and a great deal of rigor. And so, you know, if Jeb were confronted on foreign policy questions, I'm certain that, you know, the guy is a fairly iron-willed character in a lot of ways. I'm certain that he would surprise people who think he's, you know, a squish across the board. And you can see a little preview of that on some of the NSA stuff that he's talked through in the recent couple of weeks, where the popular easy position is the Rand Paul,

the Rand Paul position of, of nevermind, you know, nevermind listening in on the bad guys. Let's just, let's, let's, let's end the, the, the NSA's listening ability. So, you know, it's, I think he is, he would have the ability to talk about those things very fluently, but he hasn't been presented with them in any of his political challenges to date. Rick, we're going to go long on Carly and Rick Perry. We're going to short Chris Christie with some sadness because we're all so fond of him. We're going to short Jeb Bush.

Marco Rubio is a hold, right? We hold on to the stock because we've already bought up a lot of Marco. Now, because as as he starts spending more time in Iowa, the underlying question is going to be, gee, you're inspirational. Gee, you're intelligent. Turns out, you know more about policy than we might even have supposed. I've heard from several people now who were at the Council on Foreign Relations event in New York where he fielded questions, not easy questions from Charlie Rose and handled himself beautifully. The underlying question about Marco Rubio is going to be, young man, you've never run anything. Scott Walker has and Rick Perry has and Jeb Bush has. How does Marco answer that question?

Marco answers that question very simply. Marco was the Speaker of the House of the third largest state in the country and engaged in issues and policy questions during a time when Charlie Crist was governor of the state and attempting in every possible manner he could to drive it into the ditch. Marco was one of the people that not only expanded on the conservative successes we'd had during Jeb, but also ran this enormous organization, a $75 billion budget that came through primarily through the House, and that his efforts in the Florida House to shape policy questions constitute a pretty strong executive leadership resume. Now, look, was he the guy in the chair? No. But the guy in the chair was a wastrel and a nut job.

And Marco and the Republicans in the House served as the adult supervision during the excesses and insanity of the Christ era. So, and look, I'm not going to make the Barack Obama never ran anything else argument because I always thought it was kind of weak. It was not that Barack Obama wasn't a good manager. It's that his fundamental philosophies and ideas have been catastrophically bad. And the best manager in the world with those ideas would still be a catastrophically bad disaster. Rick, Rubio is not running again next year. What are the prospects for Republicans to hold that seat? Well, I'm conflicted in this matter because my good friend Carlos Lopez-Cantera, the lieutenant governor, is looking very seriously at the race.

He is a Jewish Cuban from Miami who's won a Dade County wide race. He's the current LG, just came off the statewide ballot in the last election. He is smart. He is incredibly capable. He is charismatic. He is a guy who I think is exactly the right fit for that seat. There are some other candidates considering the race or in the race right now. I think a lot of them will have difficulty translating out beyond their regional bases. But I think we've got a very good chance of holding that seat, either against Patrick Murphy, who is a Democratic congressman from southwest or southeast Florida, who's about 15 years old, has a record of basically a granddaddy's lemonade stand. Or Alan Grayson, who has a – he's clinically insane.

And I would love Alan Grayson. Believe you me, if Alan Grayson is the Democratic nominee, they will truly have a progressive that they can be proud of and that they can rally around. And I truly look forward to Alan's considered and rational dialogue and discourse with the people of Florida when he's not screaming at the top of his lungs at the demons in his head. Last question, Rick. I don't know if you've heard, but in the next season of The Simpsons and the Treehouse of Horror, Sideshow Bob is actually going to kill Bart Simpson. Now, given that Sideshow Bob is voiced by Kelsey Grammer, noted Republican, is it possible that The Simpsons here is reflecting some sort of cultural shift? Well, I believe that it will be more important that Marge Simpson will discover that she's been living a lie and is actually a man. Can't wait for your Twitter commentary on that.

Go follow him, everybody. Rick Wilson on Twitter. An absolutely delightful, amusing, incisive, and never nothing but entertaining Twitter feed from a smart guy. And we thank him for being on the podcast today. Talk to you later, Rick. All right. And I look forward actually to that episode. I haven't watched The Simpsons in 15, 20 years or so,

but it might be nice to go back and revisit the Treehouse of Horror once. I just don't know how they're going to do without Harry Shearer. I just don't know how they're going to do it without Harry Shearer doing the voices. But the problem is if you're wondering yourself, I myself happen to be Harry and I'm in need of Shearing. Well, that's where you will want to go. Next level. Oh, boy. Next level.

You know, I set that one up so deep back there expecting that I could get away with it without Rob Long-esque, you know, elbowing his way in. But you caught me doing it. Yes, indeed. I was getting around to Harry's as you knew I would. Now, if you're first to the podcast and you've enjoyed this show so far, well, let me tell you, they're all like this. They're all this sparkling and witty and insightful and amazing. But they don't make themselves. It requires sponsors. And those sponsors are guys we like.

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There was a piece of received wisdom. I heard this. I've never worked on Capitol Hill, but I've heard this from people who do, that one of the ways that you sort of filter out who you want to apply to work for and who you don't is you go online. You can look up. They have these resources that show who's on whose payroll, et cetera, et cetera. You look for the people with the highest turnovers and you never apply to those offices. Michelle Bachman was famous for that when she was in the House. She was very tough on staff. The woman – who's

the African-American woman from Texas, the democrat who's clinically insane? Sheila Jackson Lee, same thing. I can't hold on to staff for more than three or four months at a time. So that's worrying. That's the first negative thing because I will completely echo what Rick said. I got to know Carly a little bit during her 2010 race for the Senate in California, which was remarkable on the merits just for how good of a candidate she was at that point without having any previous experience. But also because remember she was also coming back from breast cancer at the time that she was running for that race. Everybody sort of expected her to drop out, and she just kept working. So I was very impressed by her at that time. But that is – that can be kind of a warning sign.

Yeah. And also, to be fair to her, it may be something – I mean, there is no doubt that if you talk to people who were at HP when she was there, she ended up a not at all popular figure at HP at almost any level with ordinary employees. And of course, the board finally threw her out. However, the board also, Meg Whitman, now the current CEO at HP, is fundamentally, not exactly, but fundamentally pursuing the strategy that Carly Fiorina worked out. And I had lunch not long ago with somebody who worked with Fiorina when she was a kind of independent advocate for John McCain during the McCain campaign. She did not make herself popular with this person and this person is a good guy.

So that record is mixed at best. On the other hand, people can make decisions, including decisions to start treating staff better and maybe it's a matter that Carly fiorina was used to treating staff one way when she was in business and didn't make the adjustment you know in politics people are there not purely to advance their careers in fact seldom to advance well let's put it this way if there's a ratio of the extent to which you're doing something because you are purpose-driven because you believe in the cause that's's – in politics, that's always a large component, larger than it tends to be in business. You have to treat people differently when they're helping you because they believe in what you're trying to accomplish and are willing to give up their time, take a flyer on your campaign even though it's likely to be over in six months.

You're probably – you may – you have to treat those people well, not badly. But it probably also bears noting too that from the outside, when you're just getting this stuff secondhand, it's difficult to determine sometimes whether somebody gets a reputation like that because they're a jerk or whether they get a reputation for something like that because they just expect a lot out of staff. Not that those two things are necessarily mutually exclusive because you can work for people who are extraordinarily nice. There are some of them in politics. A good example of this is a guy I didn't work for him, but I've met him several times.

Tim Pawlenty, one of the nicest men in politics, one of the most normal men in politics you could meet, and somebody who I think because of that niceness probably lacked a little bit of a critical instinct when he ran for president. If you remember, the Pawlenty campaign foundered on that moment in the early debate where the phrase that he had been using, Obamacare, to tie Barack Obama and Mitt Romney together. He had been using that repeatedly. He got asked about it on stage with Mitt Romney standing right there, got pressed on it three or four different ways and refused to commit to it. At that point, people thought, well, he's not going to throw a punch. All of which I think comes from a very decent place in Tim Pawlenty's heart, which is that he's not a flamethrower. So these things, the virtues that you might want in somebody as a private citizen don't always translate to the debate stage or to the heat of a campaign.

I agree completely. Pawlenty exemplified Minnesota nice and he is – and that's genuinely who he is and would that some of it had rubbed off on Mr. Franken. But going back to Carly, I don't think you guys have to worry because let's say that it comes out that she doesn't suffer fools gladly and that she did you know hash out a problem with a staffer who was late with the dry cleaning look from vanity fair to the new york times editorial board to jezebel to the entire female side of the left spectrum they're going to defend her because here's a strong woman and are we to say that she's not to be called considered for this office simply because of a temperament that we would admire in a man? Why, if this is something to – well, my kid, of course.

They will choose this as just proof that she isn't a real woman. If it turns out she has speeding tickets, she's just a woman in a hurry. Lean in with a lead foot. Well, okay. Fine. Fine and dandy. What's on Ricochet this week that has piqued your guys' interest?

So many little items in the member chat that you can, I mean, if people go to Ricochet and they just see the front page post, they'll be impressed. But once you delve into the member chat, there's all of this. There's just huge quantities of stuff. And it's also a site where, of course, you get these long posts micromanaging

Claire Berlinski's emotions about home, which have in one sense nothing to do about politics, but in one sense have everything to do about politics. Because part of where we go when we vote is we've got in the back of our head sort of an imaginary American home that we want to return to as well as advance the country forward. So let's look at the field out there. Does Hillary Clinton – people are saying that Hillary Clinton will remind people of the good old days of the 90s. And that's a very superficial read on that. Do you think that that actually is the sort of emotional echo that she can pour over the electorate like a healing balm and people will say, ah, I do want to go back to that time. I really do. You think she has that? I think this has been one of the least impressive rollouts.

And if you had a press that actually was determined to get something out of her, there would be just chunks of red meat on the walls with what she already has been exposed to. But yet, I don't know. It just grinds along out there.

Is that because the press isn't doing its job? Is that because it's too early? What's going on with Hillary? Well, the interesting thing about the appeal to nostalgia for the 90s is for one thing, she's clearly not going to run on anything remotely approximating the kind of policies that Bill Clinton worked with in the 90s. For another, she's trying to replicate – this has become very clear in the past couple of days. She is trying to replicate the coalition, what they call the coalition of the ascendant that Barack Obama put together, which means you have to rely heavily on unmarried women. You have to rely heavily on young people and African-Americans and Hispanics.

Well, the young people part of that is interesting because you're talking about a demographic that probably doesn't remember the Clinton years with any sort of real clarity. So I don't know that that argument helps you much there. The other thing that's sort of interesting is whether that can work because the Obama coalition was somewhat dependent on Barack Obama. It was helpful to have a young, inspirational African-American candidate. I mean he was sort of trying to – Obama's campaign was sort of trying to convince the American people that they couldn't live without him and hers is just sort of trying to convince us – it just sort of fatigues us into submission. Like, OK, fine.

Just – all right. But are you going to get the same kind of African-American turnout? Are you going to get the same kind of Hispanic turnout when it's Hillary – when it's a woman – a white woman who's nearly 70 years old who's at the top of the ticket? I'm almost certain that they will pick either an African-American or a Hispanic as the vice presidential nominee for precisely that reason. But that's a dodgy proposition. I wouldn't want to take that bet. But it looks like they're going to. They have no choice.

They have no way out of the bet at this point unless Hillary Clinton says, oh, OK. I'll just take up gardening. Go ahead. Somebody else take the nomination. Short of that, they can't – this is like what it was. James will remember. Troy – I'm not sure Troy actually will even remember this. But this is what it felt like when Bob Dole ended up as the Republican nominee.

Just for months, you could see this slow motion catastrophe starting to – it's like watching a redwood fall in the forest in very, very slow motion. And people were screaming in slow motion and no sound. It was just horrible and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it. That's the position they were in. Do you want that? If you're a Democrat, do you want her to step aside? For who? For Lincoln Chafee?

For Jim Webb? What is the worst outcome here? I'm watching people on my Twitter feed get all excited about Bernie Sanders because he's telling the truth. He's an intellectual and he believes what he believes. And of course, Bernie Sanders got, I think, there was about a 36-hour

period there where the left shrugged its shoulders over his women want to be raped story and consigned that to the memory bin because, well, you know, back then people said that doesn't really mean anything. Which is a nice standard that we now have that we can apply to anything that it turns out that Marco Rubio wrote in his notebook when he was 12. You know what's arresting about this? This occurred to me the other day when Lincoln Chafee got in. If you look at the republican presidential field, we've got ten officially now.

It looks like we're probably going to end up with about 15. You've got former governors. You've got sitting governors, senators. The first woman who ran a Fortune 50 company. Probably one of the most distinguished surgeons that America has ever produced. Now, whether or not that's politically relevant is another thing. But still, a broad group of people from a wide array of geographical backgrounds, wide array of ages. I think there's going to be four candidates in this field in their 40s and it goes on up from there. All kinds of different experiences. A woman, an African-American, two Hispanics and the son of Indian immigrants. Now look at the democratic field. Assume for a moment that Jim Webb gets in. You have five people, most of whom are around 70 years of age with the exception of Martin

O'Malley, all of whom are career politicians with the exception of Jim Webb and none of whom – if Webb gets in, none of whom comes – this I find remarkable and it's a testimony to the past couple of midterm cycles, none of whom comes from south or west of the Washington DC suburbs. Entirely cabined to the northeast and entirely removed from where all the real dynamism is in America right now in economic terms. It's not there. It's not in Lincoln Chafee's Rhode Island. They have no bench. They have no stool. That's right. It's not in Lincoln Chafee's Rhode Island. They have no bench. They have no stool.

That's right. That's right. Well, Byron York has made the point – I mentioned a moment ago that Hillary probably picks a black or Hispanic running mate. Even the options there are pretty thin. Henry Cisneros, who used to be the mayor of San Antonio and was – he was HUD secretary under Clinton, right? Henry Cisneros said recently in the press that – probably trying to tout Julian Castro because Julian Castro is a protege of his. But nonetheless, said that the Clinton campaign is basically certain to pick Julian Castro as their running mate, who is also the mayor of San Antonio and is now also Obama's HUD secretary. And as Byron York pointed out, the only experience this guy has had – he's been at HUD for a couple of years. Prior to that, mayor of San Antonio – mayor of San Antonio is basically an entirely ceremonial position. They have a city manager who gets paid six figures a year to run the country – I mean to run the city. So you're looking at a potential vice presidential nominee who spent five years cutting ribbons

and a couple of years warming a chair at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Yes, they have a really, really thin bench. Another way of looking at that very same point is the traditional first question you ask about a vice presidential candidate and there's a very good reason you would ask it can he or she carry his own state right julian castor will not help will not carry hillary hillary clinton will not carry texas no matter who she could revive lady bird johnson and make her the long time first lady of lady of Texas as she was called for years. No, it just won't work. It will not work. Well, elsewhere in the news today, the Independent is reporting that ISIS has enough material for WMD. They got a lot of

dirty radioactive material, not the stuff that they found from weapons depots, but you crack open enough equipment and research facilities and you can cobble together some stuff and boom, you can poison a lot of people. Where are they going to blow it off? Where are they going to – good lord. What a horrifying question. We've been jabbering away about politics, which is sort of like chewing the fat, but this is – what a horrifying question. OK. So put on the foreign – Troy, over to you.

I don't know where they're going to blow it off. I do know that it concerns me that a lot of – both on the right and the left, a lot of elite opinion on ISIS seems to take as a given and I'm not sure why, that they would never bother attacking the United States. I hope that's right. But it sort of amazes me the number of people who just sort of take that for granted and I don't know why you would operate under that assumption. What strikes me in the last couple of months in particular about ISIS and the Middle East, I suppose at this point it goes without saying, although it is tragic and I do mean literally tragic when the United States of America loses its way in foreign policy.

Nevertheless, I suppose it goes without saying that the president has no idea how to confront, deal with, contain ISIS. He as much as admitted it during his press conference in Switzerland the other day, our strategy is incomplete. What strikes me is that nobody else has any idea either. Talking to Republicans here at the Hoover Institution, there are notions about you have to stand up to them. We have to support the state system. You cannot let people swamp borders, which one of ISIS's proudest claims is that it's eliminating the border between Iraq and Syria. You cannot permit them to do that. For 300 years now, diplomacy has rested on the state system. You've got Saudi Arabia pulling away from the United States and saying in effect that it's going to take more and more matters into its own hands. People I talk to are of mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, good lord, you can't have these people just starting wars at their own in the Middle East once that's – everybody wants to start a war in the Middle East.

There will be no – on the other hand, well, it's about time the Saudis stood up for themselves and stopped using us as their proxy. I mean this is extremely complicated and deeply unsettling and it's sort of the subtext I think in the Republican primary. We're going to talk as we just did talk for half an hour now about where these people stand on economic issues, tax policy, education and so forth. But the implicit question a lot of people are going to be asking of the Republican field is who seems strong and sensible and capable of figuring this out? I don't know the answer to that myself yet. Well, it'll be a question of somebody pointing to Europe and pointing to Putinism and pointing to China and pointing the ground we're seating there, or rather the water, of pointing to Mexico and the rest of the states to the south, which seem to now be given carte blanche to come north.

Because when you talk about nation states, Peter, on which all this is predicated, the Transnational Progressive Project hates nation states. It just leads to nothing but World War I. Right. What you want are these loose agglomerations in which such little trivialities like citizenship are just reduced down to the idea of paper. There's a generation that said, what's marriage, man? Marriage is just a piece of paper. And citizenship now falls into the same category.

Of course, now marriage is incredibly important because we have to redefine it. Maybe we can do the same thing culturally with citizenship, but that'll take some decision same category of course now marriage is incredibly important because we have to redefine it uh maybe we can do the same thing culturally with citizenship but that'll take uh some decision about i don't know bruce caitlin jenner applying for an international passport from with that has jerusalem as his place of sex transition i don't know it'll but it'll take something for them to love again the idea of nations and borders because right now everything is proceeding exactly as the president has planned. This is not by accident that the United States is diminished. This is not by accident that the West finds itself trying to absorb people who are antithetical to their culture.

That's the whole basic idea. And people say that's a deep, dark plot. Hell no. That's been a stated objective for an awful long time when you have the British politicians saying that actually the goal of a multicultural society is to weak – is to dissolve those things which were traditionally British, which they regarded as an impediment to human progress. Well, they're getting it. They're getting it good and hard. Sweden too. Let's go back to America and close with this.

There's a post and a ricochet. Great one. And it was done by – was it Matilda? Am I getting that right? Matide? Yeah, it's Matide Am I getting that right? Matide? Yeah, it was Matide. You people with your names, okay? I'm pretty much James Lilacs, not Lilacs.

Lilacs, but anyway. So Matide said – I think it was the – that was Matide's post. Should parents of adult children let them move back home after graduation? This is something that Yahoo News was brooding about the other day and Rush brought the issue up. About half the students expect to be supported financially by their parents for up to two years after graduation. So should they come home, would you want them to?

Peter, I believe you mentioned you had a recent graduate. I am, if this is a crime, I am guilty twice. My oldest graduated from college two years ago. A year ago, she moved from the East Coast back home. She found a job to our amazement. We were afraid, frankly, as parents can sometimes be, that we would lose her to the other end of the country, to the East Coast. Instead, she found a job not quite two miles from our house. And rent being what it is around here, we said, come on and live at home for a year or 18 months

until you get things sorted out and save some money and then go off and rent an apartment. And we have found it a pleasure. On the other hand, she did have a job. It would have been a different matter altogether if she returned from college and were watching soap operas all day long.

But so for us, that has worked. We're about to conduct the experiment a second time. Oldest son graduates from college on Sunday. He's going off to tour the world for two weeks. And then he, oddly enough, has a job two blocks from the place his sister got a job. And by the way, this is the difference between girls and boys. My daughter said, may I live at home? My son said, oh, dad, by the way, I think I'll be living at home.

But again, it seems to me – in our case, it's worked. It's worked. It's fun to have them back in the family. They have – they're so busy. We don't see them all that much. And I'd rather have them save a little bit of money for a year or 18 months than pay it out in the rents that they face around here. So all I can say is guilty twice and happy about it. Now, if you ask the question two years from now and both of these kids are still at home, I'll be guilty twice and mighty unhappy.

But so far, it's working. I think unless your kids are sociopathic narcissists who are the tendency towards pyromania, it would be nice to have your children come back. I mean, I'm looking at my daughter going away to college in three years. And as I've often said, when she goes on that plane to go away for good, I might as well just hop into the spinning blades to the jet engine myself. My work will have been done and I will feel absolutely miserable about it. I never understood those people who say, finally, got him out of the house.

I just don't understand that. Troy, I'm not aware that you have children, do you? I'm not aware that I do either, Jay. OK, good. That's supposed to get to a confirmation. Isn't this the moment where we say, hey, Troy, how are things going? Any dating going on here? Anyway, moving on.

No, I will give you – as a non-parent, so I can't speak directly to that side of it. Although I will say observationally, the families that I know where this has been an issue and I understand why it's an issue, especially over the last five, six, seven years with the job market being the way it is for people coming out of college. The situations I've seen where this has worked well for both the parents and the child who moves back is when the parents set benchmarks. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yes. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: When they say 12 months, 18 months, six months, however long or whenever you cross some financial threshold.

People get into trouble when it's open-ended because the obvious tendency at that point – we know this in the – this is true in private life as it is in the public sector. If it's sort of an open-ended grant, it's going to be consumed in perpetuity until you do something to stop it. I would say from the perspective of somebody who – not too terribly long ago. It was a decade and change but had to deal with this on the other side of it. I would encourage the kids when you're coming out of college to do everything that you can to avoid this. And granted, there are a lot of cases where that's impossible. But not because it isn't great to be back with your family because it is. Regardless of what you're doing, you should spend as much time with your family as you

can. But there is something different. You don't have to have a two-bedroom luxury apartment. You might be living in a hovel. You might be eating tap ramen. That's fine. There is still something to be said for the pride that comes with that accomplishment being your own even if it's meager but the confidence that comes with having your own place,

doing your own work and not being dependent on somebody else because even though that's an easy route if you can get it and convenient in a superficial sense. It will erode you over time. Troy, there's a little background. Is that your mom vacuuming your bedroom? And of course there's the whole sibling thing where you have one sibling saying, well, you got to live in that house. Why can't I? I don't know about Jeb Bush.

Let's thank thegreatcourses.com. You ought to go there thank thegreatcourses.com. You ought to go there, thegreatcourses.com. And as Peter told you so ably before, and I assume will be doing so for weeks to come as he steps into his new role as a pitchman, it's a great place to find information, education, edification, all that stuff at thegreatcourses.com. If I may, James, thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Remember that slash ricochet. I just wanted to hear you say slash again. So greatcourses.com slash ricochet. Remember that slash ricochet. I just wanted to hear you say slash again. And also brought to you by Harry's Shave.

You'd go to harys.com. What, Peter? Oh, you know, you were taking to this so well. Boy, gee, man. This is the secret of great advertising. I comedy is timing. H-A-R-R-Y-S.com. What, Peter?

Oh, slash ricochet. I'm sorry. There we go. There we go. There we go. And I want to know that you're making a chopping movement with your hand as you do so. And at Harry's, of course, you get five bucks off if you use that coupon code and you'll get a month's worth of shaving for ten bucks. And once you start with those blades, you will never go back to drugstore blades again. Visit the Ricochet store again, too.

Lots of swag there with the logo that you can flash about in public and people say, what's that? And you can tell them. Or they'll say, I know that. And then you'll say, are you a member? And then you can both have the secret little handshake that only you learn when you contribute to Ricochet and do so. So we're around from this year and the next year and the years to come. Thank you for listening, everybody. Thanks to Rick Wilson. And we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Next week, fellas. See you, fellas. And if I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean. And if I had a pony, I'd ride him on my boat. And we could all together go out on the ocean

and set me up on my pony on my boat Now if I were Rod Rogers I'd sure enough be single I couldn't bring myself to marry an old devil Would it just be me and Trevor We'd go riding through the moors And we'd buy a boat And on the sea we'd sail

And if I had a boat I'd go out on the ocean And if I had a pony I'd ride him on my boat And we could all go Go out on the ocean And set me up on my boat. And now the mystery masked man was smart, he got himself a Tonto.

Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free. Tonto, he was smart And one day said, Kimo Sabe Well, kiss my ass, I bought a boat I'm going out to sea And if I had a boat I'd go out on the ocean And if I had a pony I'd ride him on my boat

And we could all together Go out on the ocean, setting me up on my pony, on my boat. Ricochet. Join the conversation. But would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea And if I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean And if I had a pony, I'd ride on my boat And we could all go out on the ocean