The Ricochet Podcast - The Royals

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

We recorded this one on Friday evening, which is the reason most of you are receiving it on Saturday. We’re sorry about that, but to make up for it, we cast around for the perfect ensemble and we think we nailed it: Steve Hayward, John Yoo, and Erick Erickson. The latter joins to give us the lowdown on all of the politics in Georgia, which he knows better than anyone. After that, it’s a bit of an... Source

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Okay, trying to grab the reins. Three, two, one. 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. This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic. 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. Star-studded lineup. We've got John Yoo, we've got Peter Robinson, we've got Stephen Hayward, we've got Eric Erickson, and we've got you for the next hour and a half.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 539, the flagship podcast of the Ricochet Audio Network. And we've got tonight the two words that really mean a lot in podcast, live and on video. Of course, it means absolutely nothing. But if you were part of Ricochet, and you really ought to be, You could watch us do this live. You could see our smiling little faces here in the Zoom window as we perform a rare evening, week, night, week, day, weekend drinking, sort of, kind of what usually the podcasts aren't. I'm just kidding.

Everyone's going to be cold, stoned, sober, and fascinating to boot. I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis. We have Peter Robinson in California, freshly coming off some dental drilling. So he's going to be clutch mouth with a mouthful of Nubucki. And we've got Stephen Hayward, who's sporting a pair of Philip Johnson-like glasses today, which indicates that you've got a future career as a controversial architect ahead of you. John, you will be joining us in just a second. He is right now wiping the McRib sauce off his tie.

And you just don't want to show up with a podcast with that sort of sartorial despoilment. So, gentlemen, how are you? Peter, are you feeling better? Is the drilling done, as they say? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. John, you just popped up. I know listeners can't see this, but for our purposes, there's a video component to this.

And John, he's recording a ricochet podcast wearing a tie. Of course I am. Can you hear me? I've done that. Of course. The clothes make the man, the clothes. You were doing it because you had someplace to go afterwards.

No, I didn't. Well, yes, but I mean, John, John, were you going in your tie afterwards?

Are you going to the casino to play Pharaoh or something? I'm going to Fox. What else do you think I'm doing? Oh, there you go. Oh, I. He sleeps in a coat and tie. Don't be. That's true.

Do I sound OK and look as beautiful as always? Because you said this was supposed to be cocktail hour. I got my double of whiskey pig, whistle pig. okay and look as beautiful as always because you said this was supposed to be cocktail hour i got my double of whiskey pig whistle pig and look i got this new special from the university club shishito blistered peppers how's that for asians taking over the world we even get shishito peppers at the university club at the top of knob hill in san francisco well again if you're joining us on the podcast live, you'll see John sitting behind a desk. He appears to be some sort of a judge. I mean, you look like we should approach you and ask for a sidebar or something like that.

Anyway, well, enough of this fascinating battle. Let's get to the meat of the issues of the day. What do we take away from this week? Do we take away immigration? Do we take away Major League Baseball? Do we take away peculiar spending priorities? Stephen, what say you? Well, we learned this week that infrastructure means anything you want it to mean and everything.

Yes. Right. We also learned here late in the day, Friday, that Biden is going to appoint a commission to review the question of whether the Supreme Court should be expanded or packed, right? And the notable thing about the commission, very quickly, is that it looks very partisan. I mean, the chairman is Bob Bauer, a very smart guy. I've met him a few times, but a very partisan liberal Democrat. And previous commissions have always been bipartisan. You think of the Simpson-Bowles Commission under Obama, the Bob Kerry-John Danforth Commission under President Clinton. This one looks like a commission that either has a predetermined answer or it's possible that Biden is punting, knowing that when you give it to a commission, by the time it comes back, if it's slow about it, the midterm elections will have happened and you can't pack the court.

So this may be a way of getting the left off his back i can't tell right who knows what goes on in biden's mind they they packed the commission in order to pack the court right john do you think that they're going to try it and if so will they be successful this isn't this part of this whole uh last four years where we saw uh the left driven so crazy by Trump that they're willing to attack and pull down every institution to either destroy it, disrupt it, or politicize it. And we've seen that with the filibuster. You've seen that with reconciliation. And now you're going to see it with the courts. And look, Trump made the courts a big issue. And he did put three justices on the Supreme Court, much to the anger of liberals.

But he didn't change the institution. He didn't change the rules. He didn't actually try to assault judicial independence by expanding the size of the Supreme Court. I think it's actually a sign of how not a crazy progressives are, b also how far they're willing uh to go and remind you know those who are students of history remember that fdr right came after a smashing re-election in 1936 he tried to pack the courts too he had two-thirds majorities for the democratic party in the house and senate he still lost and this is what strikes me is that progressives who have a 50 50 tying the senate and a bare majority in the house think that they should follow the same script the same script that you usually have when you've come off a stunning re-election and the majority of the

country is behind you so i think it's i don't think biden himself cares that strongly i think he's always been a weather vane for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has been taken over by progressives who are driving the train, and they're demanding something be done about the Supreme Court. They can't stand the idea that the Supreme Court won't be their engine for social change. And so they're willing to destroy the independence of the judiciary to have their way. Well, Peter, as the New York Times would say say they're restoring the independence of the judiciary by taking it out of these partisan hands why this is just a corrective balance to bring order back to the force right right well i refer them to john can probably quote the remarks or the relevant part of the remarks i refer them to mr justice breyer who spoke earlier this week, Stephen Breyer, the senior liberal on the Supreme Court.

He is what, John and Steve? He's 82, 83? I think he's 82, 83, yeah. Okay, so what this means is that this is a man who came up through academia, through law schools in the 60s and 70s when there was still the tradition of the honorable, honest liberal. He's essentially an FDR, Great Society, LBJ liberal, which is a different matter. We have knocked down drag out fights with him over policy, but it's a different matter completely from the Elizabeth Warren AOC liberal. And Mr. Justice Breyer says that if you pack the court, of course, he didn't put it this way,

expanding the court, altering the fundamental rules of the court would undermine public faith in the institution at the very moment when public faith in the institution needs to be shored up. objecting to this doing their i don't know when stephen brier takes on the the active element in his own party it calls to mind it's the edvard munch scream the uh the honorable liberals just stop stop this stop this don't you understand what you're doing i think they do understand what they're doing and they're doing it Well, how many liberals have you heard say, don't pack the courts? One, Judge Breyer, Justice Breyer, right? He has no constituents. They may not like it, but they'll acquiesce in it because they believe that the end result will be better. Yeah, sure, you'll get an institution that's a little bit chipped and changed and mal- but on the other hand, all of the good things will be declared constitutional.

Hoorah! At least it's going to be fodder for talk radio. And speaking of which, that brings us to our first guest, Eric Erickson, editor of The Resurgent, Fox News contributor, and the host of The Eric Erickson Show on WSB Radio in Atlanta five days a week. Atlantic Magazine called Eric the most powerful conservative in America, and The Hollywood Reporter called him the most influential conservative blogger on the internet. Eric was a lawyer for six years, campaign strategist for various state and federal campaigns

prior to leading RedState.com for a decade. He started The Resurgent in January of 2016, and we welcome him to the show. Eric, how are you? Welcome back to the show, Eric, or welcome to... Have you been with us before? I swear you have. We've been doing this for so long. Of course you have. It's good to see you again. I start with a piece you just wrote.

You say, we have an even newer president than the one elected last November. How did that happen? Well, we've got this guy. His name is Joe, but he's from Virginia, not Delaware. And he seems intent on exercising his power to not change the Senate like the Democrats want, which is pretty much screwing up their entire agenda and platform from H.R. One to the Equality Act to now even reconciliation. Notice there was not a single major news story today about reconciliation after every day in the past week having one since he said he didn't want to use the reconciliation to bypass regular order. Hey, Eric, is it true? Are you the most influential conservative in America? Because

I should have been sucking up to you for a long time now. You know, they wrote that and, you know, they always write those things right before you like crash and burn. It's like a Lifetime Academy Award. Totally, yes. Question about Georgia. How are they holding up? I'm not even sure I know who I mean by they. Governor Kemp. Governor Kemp, the assault on them has been, it's been the most vicious and sustained assault we've seen in politics in this country since the assault on Donald Trump in the first two years of the administration. It's not on fire, so they've held back Sherman, so that's good.

But, you know, seriously, what they've done is they clearly orchestrated a talking points campaign, and it hasn't actually worked. The Democrats are now in damage control. Stacey Abrams, now that word has come out, she actually talked to the commissioner of baseball before he decided to pull out of Georgia, is having to say, one, that she didn't she doesn't have enough power to influence their decision. But two, she didn't call for them to boycott. What she did is she said, well, the players are going to boycott and we're going to protest politically at your event. So we would like you to come to turn into a political protest. And of course, the Major Leagueood T-shirts, passing out Planned Parenthood labeled bottles of water, encouraging people to go in and vote for pro-abortion candidates in the election. Gee, that's apparently not campaigning. Local Democrats said it was Karen feeding the voters while it was hot.

Got it. Got it. So it's your sense. I don't know whether there's been polling. Somebody must be doing polling in Georgia. Yeah, Morning Consult actually has done a poll that showed a plurality of Americans, like 47 percent supported the law and 35 percent opposed. And what about in Georgia itself? In Georgia, it looks like it's overwhelmingly popular. Even black voters in Georgia at a rate of 70 percent, according to the University of Georgia, like the idea of writing your driver's license number down on your absentee ballot.

Wow. Wow. That you have just cheered me up after a lousy rotten several weeks here. If the people of Georgia are are are rallying to Governor Kemp into this legislation, even if they merely by some plurality approve of it, that's a big deal. One more question about Georgia. If you want a sense of just how well it's helped how great it's helped brian kemp uh voters in georgia rallied i saw a poll three and a half weeks ago that brian kemp could barely eke out of a runoff against almost anyone and then lose to stacy abrams uh and now a poll has come out from the same pollster showing that he's going to crush stacy abrams which is why for three weeks the president donald trump has praised the law.

And finally, after three weeks, had to come out and criticize it is not enough and hold it against Brian Kemp because he really wants to defeat Kemp. And clearly the issue has helped Kemp. So did Coke, Delta, these are Atlanta companies. And the CEOs, I'm missing one or two prominent. Home Depot. Home Depot. Home Depot. Okay. These are, these are Atlanta companies.

Home Depot is founded by, well, we won't go into, they're some of the founders of that were pretty, yeah, pretty, pretty conservative people. What, what's your re, okay. I will reveal myself here and then toss it over to the conversation among everybody else. The Koch attack and the airline attack on the law was my lowest moment in years. And you know why? Because I thought if now American executives, these guys make money, they know how to control the, they don't get to, you don't get to the top of a big, hugely capitalized organization

like Delta or Coke, unless you pay close attention to profits and to employees, management, so forth. If the calculation for a smart executive headquartered in Atlanta is to diss the duly elected legislature and governor of Georgia, it's over. I mean, really, it's over. If business has gone woke, we're done. So make me feel better, guys. I think business has gone woke, but you've got to understand some backstory here. With Coke, Coca-Cola consolidated its outreach division to Hispanic communities. That was the title of the division, outreach division to Hispanic communities, consolidated it in its communications department. And the result is that they were already being protested by Hispanic activists from the left for daring to consolidate this division. And so they had to

do something. They actually, very much like Delta, behind the scenes were able to get rid of some of the dumb provisions of the law, and they liked the outcome. But when the left-wing Hispanic activists came out and attacked them and said, first you do this with your division for Hispanic outreach, now you're supporting this law, clearly we've got to boycott you. So they panicked and, oh, we got to do something. The Delta one's actually a little more funny. You do need to know Ed Bestain, the head of Delta, is fairly much a progressive activist. He's the guy who decided to end the discounts for NRA members for Delta. And when people complained, he said, well, we actually got a lot of fans for this, so we'll keep doing it. Ed Bastain praised the law last Friday in a statement. They worked behind the scenes,

got rid of some of the bad provisions. They said, it's not perfect, but it's better than it was. And we helped improve the law. Well, then Stacey Abrams got a hold of him. And by Monday, he had to come out and say, oh, we don't like this law at all. This is a terrible law. Both companies and Home Depot waited until the law was passed when they can't do a damn thing about it to then come out and condemn it.

Normally what happens in Georgia is they come out before the law is passed. Like with RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, these three companies have for years killed RFRA. And they come out during the law is passed, like with RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. These three companies have for years killed RFRA. And they come out during the legislative session, say, oh, this is terrible. We can't have this. Our employees hate it. And now they waited until the law was passed to virtue signal. So they're trying to have their cake and eat it, too. They're really trying to keep boycotts from happening. I don't know that they're going to now. I think that the Stacey Abrams is smart enough to know that she's being played by

these guys because they were praising the wall last week right after it was passed. Can I jump in, Peter? Eric, it's Steve Hayward up in New York filling in for Rob Long, who's gallivanting in Florida. So I'm holding down the Ricochet Bureau up here. You look much, much better than Rob. At least you're half sober. Well, I've got my, you know, I'm in the hotel rooms and I've got my hotel mini bar martini, which is, it's fine, actually. So, you know, I recall, I don't know if it was 20 years ago or when, I think it was Michael Jordan who was asked one time why he wasn't more political. And I think

it was he or another elite athlete like him who said, because I want to sell shoes to Republicans and Democrats. And, you know, if a professional athlete can get that, what we've seen, you know, he's been supplanted by, what's his name out in LA, LeBron James, unfortunately. I am not so sure things go better with woke. We'll just see. There'll be a market test about this.

And I don't know i want to go back if i can eric to the very beginning if i can change the subject slightly and back to the other president joe you mentioned which is joe mansion of west virginia uh you know i don't i don't think i share your confidence in him and and maybe you overstated that and i miss hearing you right but you know my my impression of him is he's an opportunist. And my one data point is this. He waited on the Kavanaugh nomination until after it was clear that Kavanaugh had the votes before he then came out and said he would vote for him. That's not a profile in courage. And I think if you twist his arm and put the screws to him and we already saw he voted for the uh you know the the covet bill which he made rumblings about but didn't seem to make a fuss about at the end and voted for it so i don't know i like peter on uh georgia i need to be

reinsured about him yes he's an opportunist uh but we i think we need to understand what happened from the inside washington spectacle. As everything has now happened, he's become the swing vote on everything. Right. And so every single time there's an issue in Washington, including on the filibuster and H.R.1, given what happened in Georgia and the whole protest over Georgia was to really to build a moral case for H.R.1 and getting rid of the filibuster. It's all a pressure case on Joe Manchin. Joe Manchin gets reelected in a state that's overwhelmingly Republican because he has amazing constituent services. He can't do constituent service when with every single

issue in the United States Senate, the left is running a pressure campaign against Joe Manchin. So for him to come out and say, listen, I'm not changing the filibuster. And by the way, I'm not going down the road for multiple reconciliations either. Joe Manchin, I think, contrary to popular opinion outside of the Capitol, doesn't want to be the 51st vote on every single issue because then every single issue becomes a pressure campaign targeted at him and he can't respond to the people of West Virginia. So he likes it on the big issues. Why doesn't he pull a reverse Jim Jeffords? Why doesn't Jim Jeffords, the Vermont senator who went from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, why doesn't Joe Manchin just become a Republican? Well, you know, he is a Democrat at heart on these issues and he kind of likes now being in the majority. He wouldn't get a committee chair. Now, if he flipped and yes, you can hand Chuck Mitch McConnell control the Senate, I'm sure he would get something plumb but joe manchin more than anything i think he prides himself in being the turd in the punch

what does it mean these days to be a democrat at heart i mean we would say 30 years ago we knew what that meant what does that mean today well yeah well for joe manchin it means being on the side of the working class in west virginia, he's the guy who shot a hole through the climate change bill during the Obama years. He likes the populist, blue-collar Democratic angle, which more and more is a Republican before his name is still Democrat. Can I throw in one last question? This is John Yu here in Ricochet, Berkeley. I didn't put on my tie, by the way, John. I'm very disappointed.

Well, you could wear a Lincoln-esque tie, which is just kind of like just strangling yourself. I didn't even shave for it. I know, that's why I was shocked at your appearance. But this actually goes to my point, because your appearance and Home Depot and Delta and all those guys jumping ship on the Republican Party exemplify to me, or symbolize to to me the shift of the Republican Party.

And I want to ask you whether it's a positive or negative that Donald Trump seemed to have started, which is the Republican Party is becoming a populist party. And if you're a populist, you don't want all those CEOs on your side. Maybe having the CEOs of Home Depot and Delta, maybe that's going to be good for the Republican Party. We don't want to defend Wall Street and the C-suite, do we? Don't we want to be the representative of the working man and the working woman? Don't we want to be the populist party? For listeners who can't see this, John Yoo is wearing a $5,000 suit and arguing. And I'm in my under armor eric over to you over to you i i am skeptical of populism uh in that having been in the state

where zell miller was governor populism only gets you so far you you have to have some underlying principles i do think it's somewhat hilarious to watch the democrats who for long have portrayed the republicans as a party of the rich scrambling to save the salt deduction and expanded for rich New Yorkers. There is something to be said for the Republican Party. My fear is that the Republicans overplay their hand and go too far down the class of we're for the blue collar working class people when actually if you look at the exit polling from the 2020 election, which was pretty damn good, a lot of those pro-union blue-collar voters voted Democrat. It was the Hispanic and Black voters who want to get a job and want their city safe that moved to the GOP, and the white, rich, elite people did move to the Democratic Party. There's something to be said for a

conservative populism that's grounded in cultural concerns people vote against their economic interest because they understand ultimately they can't get a job if they get fired for something they tweeted 10 years ago and that the left no longer likes so there's something to be said for the gop becoming a little more culturally uh less woke culturally non-elite these corporations certainly are becoming more and more woke, and I think it's going to be their undoing. Yeah, you don't see a lot of owners of small businesses putting out woke ideology. It's the CEOs of these major companies that need to have it in good with government, right? They need to have good relations with government. That's why

they're woke. But you don't like the the my working man is the owner of the local mcdonald's franchise that's right who brings out mcrib when even when he's not supposed to that's the kind right the people who's employing you know 100 people himself and isn't you know doesn't care what the ideology is or not he just or she just wants to you know make a healthy profit running their franchise seems to me it's better for the Republican Party to be on their side rather, even though I'm wearing the only one wearing a tie and jacket on this damn podcast, rather than be on the side of the CEO of Delta Airlines and Home Depot and Coke. I think for the Republicans, it goes back to Calvin Coolidge, who said that one of the

responsibilities of government was to level the playing field. And I think that oftentimes Republicans have taken the position that we need to protect Goliath so David can't slay him. So let's use the tax code and regulation to protect the big guy because it would be economically destabilizing if Goliath died. I think it works for the Republicans at this point, given particularly where the Democrats are with corporations and wokeness to say, you know what, David should be able to slay Goliath. Let's level the playing field, get rid of all the tax incentives for major corporations. Let's get rid of reform patent law, copyright law so that David

has a chance of becoming Goliath. There's a reason Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and all these other guys give money to the Democrats because they're protecting their interests. When Amazon comes out in favor of an increased minimum wage, in favor of Obamacare, and in favor of the corporate tax increase, it's not out of the goodness of their heart. It's because they want to screw the little guy. Yeah, it actually reminds me very much of FDR. James started out the show asking about court packing and why the Democrats were court packing. This actually really reminds me of FDR. The New Deal was not anti-business. In fact, the New Deal was, let's work with the heads of big business, keep out competition, right? And I think that's what the progressives like. They like

dealing with big companies because they can control them. What they don't like is a huge decentralized economy with lots of little entrepreneurs and business people because they can't control a million small business people. They can control five or six companies. Yeah. Well, you want to go back in time and see all the great, the brain trust coming up with a new deal, right? And conceiving these vast mechanisms that are going to bring the country back to economic health. You want to tap on the shoulder and say, by the way, this is all going to be tossed out at the Supreme Court over the issue of setting the price of chicken.

Check their poultry. I love that James. What a great reference. With the sick chicken case, which may make you wonder exactly where all the things going through the system right now, we're going to end up in the courts, Eric. We thank you so much for joining us.

I, you got Pappy in your hand, which means you probably got some Pappy off the off camera here. So we, we, we leave you to consult again with a few fingers of that. Thank you for listening. Your show's available on the internet.

So we can pick it up there and you can follow him on Twitter and have you back soon. And Eric, our regards to Georgia. Congratulations on, on your, your new, your expanded gig.

Thank you. Although I'm exhausted with six hours, I'm ready to consolidate it back into the... Just get a McRib and a shamrock shake. You'll be as good as new tomorrow. Absolutely. What the hell, John? How much is McDonald's paying you, John? The shield for the McRib on every podcast. That's exactly...

I know. Actually, I'm eating shishito peppers, shishito peppers too, because I couldn't find one downtown San Francisco. Pouring in creme de menthe to spike his to spike his uh his uh his irish shoes oh you know it's it's right it's it's true we do not want to be the party of big business but we we simply don't it's better to be the small business and small government i had a i had a lesson in big government here the other day when i came my wife sent me a

text and said um there's a green band of paint around a tree in the backyard, which I said I will take a look at it when I get home. And sure enough, when I got home, there's this little telltale band that says my ash tree is diseased. I have a diseased ash. We've had an infestation around here of emerald ash borers. So the city has the power, apparently, to just come in my backyard and examine my ash. And I don't say that freely. They crossed onto your—this was not on the street. They entered your private property?

Well, they adjudicated the health of an ash outside, and then having been emboldened, they came inside, which they are perfectly able to do, according to the law, to find diseased ash trees. And you didn't tell them to kiss your ash? All of those opportunities did not come up. So now I'm up so now counselor you is rising to your defense you have a great takings case yeah well i have to pay them to take it away that's it they got i mean i have a lot of trees in this property in the city but i have to pay them to take it away so i'm taking all these bids and i'm gonna have a hole in the ground and you know but they don't have the right to enter your property to look at your trees without your permission. Oh, that's trespass. Apparently somewhere in my mortgage

was a little clause about that exact same thing or something like that. Or in the end user, you know, licensing agreement that I scroll on my phone when I paid my taxes or something, whatever.

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It's absolutely so. Is this a real company? I am so excited about this. That segway was staggering. I mean, I have a lot of true... I did not. This is all true. It's all real. And I had to do it to get to here. And now that I'm here, let me be here.

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I do. Peter, you, of course, have been inhaling nitrous oxide today and Novocaine and the rest of it. I hope everything's fine and good. I didn't have to have Novocaine. I just had a little. It turned out. I mean, yeah, I had to have a little thing smooth. What?

Stephen, what do you do? If I may, James. No, go ahead. What are you doing in New York? Oh, well, mostly having fun. I'm doing some belated college tours with my youngest son, who's got to pick a college fairly soon. Oh, how great. And it's been hard to do during the year of COVID, right?

Which one is the least woke? Isn't that how you're picking? Yeah, that's a big problem these days. The least woke college. Yeah. Right, right. So, Steve, your youngest is a senior now and has to make decisions for next. So we have the acceptances in hand.

Yeah. By the way, congratulations for that because class sizes were smaller and applications were up by here across the country. Yeah. So this has been a very rough year for college admissions. I mean, for the kids. And so we're looking in the Northeast? We're looking all over the place, you know, geographic spread, large schools, small schools. His interests are various from, you know, science and math and engineering to also in the humanities. So we look for a place that might be good at both. Like, for example, Clemson, where we were

yesterday for the day. And Clemson's a great place and wow but it doesn't sound to me as though you've started to narrow it down much but the humanities the sciences big school small school south north it's a you know you want to you want to go and you want to talk to people and see uh what strikes the kids fancy right you right the pressure these days to fit a college with a student is really you know it's gotten pretty intense right it's changed for when you and i were going to college i think peter quite a lot yes oh for sure you know i think it was the times today or maybe the washington post had a piece well they had a piece on how cnn my favorite piece of the day was cnn's saying that some typefaces are racist there are certain asian asian influenced typefaces are racist. There are certain Asian-influenced typefaces,

the ones that you find in a 1960s marquee for chop suey that have these sort of strange little points on the rest of them. They're racist. They're absolutely so. But I think it was the Washington Post that said that, opinion piece, of course, but probably agreed to by most, what you're seeing in the anti-Asian violence is essentially institutionalized white supremacism, that the people who are doing this have absorbed the free-floating poisonous miasma of white supremacy and are acting adjacently white to the rest of it.

Which seems preposterous, because it is preposterous, but it also denies agency to people. Again, I was talking to somebody the other day about how the terms that we have used, supremacy, equity, anti-racism, again, the Kendi definition, have become the vocabulary of the workplace, the vocabulary of all these conversations without people knowing exactly, specifically what they mean. And I wonder if you found this as well in your travels around do you see people for example conflating equality with equity which is one of those little mental sleight of hands that if it was intentional was just quite brilliant i was just fascinated by the typeface i think times new roman is the most racist typeface because it has the word roman if anybody invented white supremacy it was the romans no the romans admitted to their civilization that you could be a Roman citizen

if you were from anywhere. It was not something that you didn't have to be from, you know, from the Italian peninsula. You could be a Gaul and you could be a citizen. You could be a Greek and you could be a citizen. You could be an Egyptian and be a citizen. I mean, they were fairly protean in that. I mean, but I would i would be surprised john that you wouldn't attack them on the basis of slavery which was institutionalized such a disagree okay boys may i i i was just i taped a show earlier today an episode of uncommon knowledge with hr mcmaster and matt pottinger hr was donald trump's national security advisor matt was donald trump's deputy Security Advisor. Matt was Donald Trump's Deputy National Security Advisor. And I was reading up on Taiwan. And I'm asking, the question here is, does what I'm about to read surprise you? Because it sure surprised me. I knew Taiwan is under pressure of some vague kind. And a big

question for the Biden administration is how to stand up to the mainland Chinese and protect Taiwan. But here's what I found. This is a news report from just a couple of days ago, hours ago, 72 hours ago. Reuters. China sent more fighter jets into Taiwan's air defense zone on Wednesday and a stepped up show of force around the island Beijing claims is its own, and Taiwan's foreign minister said it would fight to the end if China attacks. The democratic self-governed island has complained of repeated military activities by Beijing in recent months, with China's air force making almost daily forays into Taiwan's air defense identification zone. On Monday, China said an aircraft carrier group was exercising close to the island. Taiwan's defense ministry said 15 Chinese aircraft, including 12 fighters, enters its air defense identification zone. Taiwan's air force set up

aircraft to intercept and warn the Chinese away, the ministry added. This is serious. To me, I thought, wait a minute. That's not just vague pressures. They're being buzzed every single day. Those pilots are what, 23, 24 years old? Some kid makes a mistake in the air? This is, I, I, I, that, excuse me, that's me. Does that surprise you? Did you realize it was like that already? It does not surprise me at all. Boy, I'd sure love to be a fly on the

wall right now to see what's in President Biden's daily briefing about this from the intelligence agencies. Although I'm not sure that even if their warnings were stout, they'd believe them. I forget the date. I think it may have been September 5th or September 15th. That day is not important. 1973, the morning briefing to President Nixon from the CIA was all these little exercises the Egyptians are doing by the Suez Canal. They're just some exercises. We don't see any sign of real aggression against Israel. Four hours later, the tanks rolled across and started the 73 Yom Kippur War. So our intelligence agencies are prone to groupthink and minimizing threats. I've thought for the longest time, and I think you may have heard the stories, and maybe you talked to HR about this, that Trump himself said, if China attacked Taiwan, there's not a damn thing we could do about it except if there's an american aircraft carrier in

the way then china has got a big problem because they sure have i think if they actually fire on american forces then it becomes a world crisis and not a big regional problem so i don't know i mean it wouldn't surprise me at all if the chinese calculate you know the americans are weak this biden guy's not going to do a darn thing trump was so unpredictable you you know that was one of the great benefits of him right right, is he kept them off balance. On the other hand, you know, the Chinese can be patient. We've heard of all these cliches, and I think there's a lot of truth to. And if you look at America now under Biden, I think you can sit back and say, all we need to do is continue to be patient and things are going to move our way. Why mess it up

by upsetting the whole region? Because it wouldn't just be us you know japan south korea uh vietnam all the other eight all their countries would be very alarmed by a chinese attack on taiwan i tend to think they won't do it but maybe but i you know i wouldn't be surprised if they did no no one's come to the 2022 olympics if they do that correct but we're talking about maybe's come to the 2022 Olympics if they do that. Correct. But we're talking about maybe boycotting the 2022 Olympics because of the Uyghur business. OK, so if we do that and they do attack Taiwan, then it'll be the United States' fault. No, wait a minute. John is their expert on Asia because he flies to Seoul to get his suits cut. And eat.

Go there to eat and drink. Yeah, let me just mention Taiwan because it doesn't make any sense for China to attack Taiwan or to put up a blockade because after taking the measure of Biden, I just saw one of the Ricochet people just posted a similar thought. After that terrible disaster of a meeting in Alaska, if you're the Chinese, you sit there and go, we don't have to do anything. These guys have such lack of confidence in their own selves. We just sit around for a few years and Taiwan will just fall into our lap. This Biden guy, he's going to withdraw from Asia. He's wasting trillions of dollars on domestic spending. There's no money that's going to go

to defense. In five, it's just like Hong Kong. They didn't have to invade to take over Hong Kong. They're just patient. The West is going to collapse in on themselves. Why do we have to fight over? Also, if we fight over it, then the economic value of Taiwan becomes useless to them. So just sit and wait us out. We will, they're just, look, the United States is going through a terrible recession. They're not handling the pandemic well.

And now they're having a crisis of internal confidence thanks to these woke ideologies. We'll just pick up the pieces in 10 years. Why go to war? We're going to get it anyway. Well, Hong Kong was two systems. This is two places, two systems, so it would be different. You can't absorb it in the same way.

I understand what you mean. But the question is, what taiwan do on its own does taiwan have the military capability of saying all right we're probably gonna lose to you guys but on the way out we're gonna take down the three river gorges dam well they're not gonna do that but taiwan can why i mean taiwan has why would tai why would taiwan not do something like that i mean that's that's kind of they have to have aces in the holes that they can deploy in order to force what taiwan should do is develop a nuclear nuclear deterrent but it might be too late for that but although they try to technically do it but look they are still taiwan china they don't want to actually kill millions of people in the

civilians in the course of a war i mean i don't the chinese mainland would do that but i don't think taiwanese but the taiwanese have a very effective tough small military they could inflict a lot of casualties and here's a lesson to go back to sam huntington who started the field of civil military relations he said is any sam huntington famous professor at harvard with whom you studied and what he said has got haston, famous professor at Harvard with whom you studied. And what he said has been true ever since he said, militaries that are designed to beat up their own people, to be a police state, are actually terrible at fighting wars. And the Chinese military has not done a good job. They've been at war with us. They've been at war with Vietnam, Russia. They've

attacked most of their neighbors. They have not actually fought very well because they're not a professional military that's designed to really fight wars. There are militaries that are designed to engage in domestic repression. That's why when we fight countries like in Iraq, we go through them like sliced butter because their militaries are not really professional. I think what you would see is Taiwan's professional military would inflict a lot of casualties on a very poor Chinese mainland, which because of sheer numbers will win, but they're going to be embarrassed. That's why I don't think the Chinese mainland is necessarily interested in a war because they're going to look bad. The military's main job is to round up the people who've been posting nasty things on their version of Twitter. Then again, when you look at the UK, the police are knocking on people's doors because of things that they've said

that are hateful in nature on Twitter. It's not going to happen here. We like to think, and it sounds paranoid to say that it would, but one thing is kind of sure if you look around, and that is that conservatives on the various social media platforms aren't having a great day. You remember what happened with Parler.

You remember what happened with Amazon Web Service kicking them off. You've seen Scott Adams say, I had a video here that had nothing controversial about it, and YouTube stifled it. It gets frustrating, and you wonder exactly, why am I giving these people all my data? Why am I giving big tech all of my personal data, right? If the lines have been drawn, and they're on the other side, they've made it clear what side they're on. So maybe now is the time for you to take a stand. Protect your personal data from big tech

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Rob usually says, I need to get this off my chest. I need to say this. No, actually, of course he doesn't. I'm just saying, if you were Rob and that was your role, what would you like to talk about? Well, James, you asked me at the beginning, what did we learn this week? I want to add one more thing to the China question Peter raised and use it to pivot back to Biden for a second. Although not to beat a dead horse. Oh, gosh. and uses the pivot back to Biden for a second, although not to beat a dead horse.

Oh, gosh. So one of the things that is apparently going on is that China is apparently deep in negotiations with Saudi Arabia and perhaps other Gulf states to price their oil imports from the Gulf in Chinese currency instead of the U.S. dollar, which has always been the benchmark currency for international oil trade. Now, what's that about? Well, it could be about China wanting to, again, move to a position of

rivaling the dollar as a reserve currency for the world, which would make a lot of changes. And that brings me back to something that the Biden people did this week that seemed to slip by and all the other fusses over gun control and infrastructure week and all the rest of that. And that was Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen saying, we would like to see a global minimum corporate income tax. Oh, my effing effing God, right? So this is, you can go on all day about what that's all about, how bad it is in the World Economic Forum and so forth. But it's another indication that the Biden regime is really going for it in a much bigger way than Obama ever did. It's really quite startling.

Anyway, you put those two things together and you get nothing but bad news. And I'm not quite sure where to go from that. But those are two things happening right now that don't seem to be, I mean, the yellow announcement got a lot of press, but then it disappeared after a day. And that was an astonishing thing for America to propose to our trading partners, I think. Well, it irritates them when you have countries undercutting each other with taxes like that and going and being prosperous on their own within their own borders for their own people. How dare they? That goes against the whole idea of transnational glory and utopia we're supposed to build. Well, it has to be. That was the hardest negotiating point in Brexit when it came down to it.

Remember that? Yeah. That the French, the negotiators, I say the French. Let's face it. The negotiators were French. When it comes to diplomacy, the French dominate the European Union. And they said to Britain, okay, okay, okay. Your people voted for Brexit. You're going to Britain, okay, okay, okay, your people voted for Brexit,

you're going to do it in one way or another. But you've got to sign an agreement that you're not going to cut taxes. You can't use your sovereignty to cut taxes. Who do you think you are? That's a What do you think you're in the United States Congress? Telling states you can't cut taxes? Exactly, Exactly. Today's liberals don't like competition. Right. And they think everything can be managed by government. And so just like liberals believe in a strong Washington, D.C. with centralized power, they also want to shift power and sovereignty up to international organizations. They would love nothing more than to create some kind of international capital tax authority that would coordinate all the tax corporate and individual taxes throughout the industrialized world because it's just like that's what you do

with global warming that's what you do with problem after problem they really think that every problem in the world can be solved. That's part of the progressive way. The other weird thing about – sorry. I'll put this out and then shut up because I want to hear what Stephen James had to say. But the other weird thing about this is – Hey, what about me? No, I don't want to hear – You just had your say, John.

Yeah, John. really strange thing about all this to me is that the liberal technocrats all have degrees from John's institution, Harvard and Yale, and they think of themselves as smarter and better informed. But what they're asking us to do is to become stupider. There's a great unlearning going on. Nobody can take Janet Yellen's call for a minimum corporate tax rate seriously unless he's forgotten, he or she has forgotten all the work of Milton Friedman and Robert Mundell. We know a lot about the effects of taxes. And in particular, we know a great deal about the effects of corporate taxes. But Janet Yellen, who's taught for years at prestigious institutions, no, no, no, no, just forget, not refute it, not argue it,

just forget it. We will unlearn decades of hard work in discipline after discipline, but particularly economics. It is astounding. Well, you know, one country did squawk about this this week, and it was Ireland, which has, I think, the lowest corporate income tax rates of all the European trading partners. And that's been a popular country for the inversions, as it was called, that the liberals hate. I'm reminded that there's an old book, well, not an old book, but a book called How the Irish Saved Civilization, you know, 500 years ago. Arthur Herman. Is that Arthur's book? Okay.

I forgot it was him well guess what ireland may save civilization again or at least they may save capitalism and if i thought we'd go this way tonight i'd have had irish whiskey instead of a martini well peter's right though there's a coalition of the unlearning they're the people who like yellen decide that we're just not going to think about these things that we know to be true and try this because it furthers a progressive agenda. And then there are the people who want to disassemble the society that we have because it's evil. It's horrible. It's the worst manifestations of the worst aspects of humanity. Western civilization is uniquely pernicious and has to be dismantled. So you

have one governing class that's happy to unlearn because it doesn't do anything to their status, and you have other people who are happy to destroy because it elevates their status. That's not a combo that I want running the country into determining how the issues are going to be framed and stated. I'm with you. Can I throw in one last point about this? I don't think it's an unlearning thing. I thought Steve was going to go this way. It's just this difference between Burke and the French Revolution all over again. There are people who think, who tend to be conservative, that life, you know, there are

just certain challenges in life that recur, and we do the best we can to contain them and make them less bad. And then there are people who tend to go to Harvard and Yale, or sometimes even teach at Dartmouth. And these people, Peter, that was for you. And so these people think that, you know, human nature is malleable, it's perfectible, and we can fix all the problems if we just have the right policies. And so it's not that they forgot history, because I don't think they have, it's just that they have this enormous faith in the malleability of human beings but you can only have that you can only have that faith if you ignore all of history right i did no they just think well that was before but today we're better right like they just they just think today we figured out the secret that escaped all those

generations i wish they would share that with us exactly i wish they would share with us their wisdom and insight and ability to not only just be to make human nature more malleable than it really is but to actually eliminate human nature entirely because that's what it depends upon i mean the people who praise the french revolution and think there was just a couple of guys who got a haircut in the you know in the guillotine and then you know they emptied out the tens of thousands of artists and political prisoners who were in the bastille i think it was about six guys three of them up on perv charges. I mean, the idea that somehow that's necessarily led to this wonderful,

peaceable, egalitarian society that for some strange reason just didn't work out. How did it end? It ended with Napoleon. It ended with the restoration, for God's sakes. All right, well, we'll put that one away. Let's look at the Bolshevik resolution, because those guys really had a good thing. They really had their Marxism. They had their theory had their theory okay well how did that work out exactly i i mean i understand what you're saying john but the people who revere these these scouring

things down to year zero seem utterly incapable of realizing what that means and they're not stupid people that's the part that you just don't get they're not stupid the lessons are there for everybody to see i agree oh my gosh no it actually tends to be intellectuals because they're the ones who right you mentioned you guys great james you mentioned you know bolsheviks you mentioned french revel there are people who are consumed with theories right they're like oh we finally that's why it's academics and intellectuals that's why i would never put any of them in government even though uh obama did biden is because they really believe there's some unified theory of social science or economics whatever and if we could just put into practice this new theory we figured out then all will be better and ignore experience ignore history, ignore trial and error.

All right. Well, Peter, you were just at the dentist, right? You were just at... Right. So this is something that is like one of the great marvels of modern civilization, dentistry, antibiotics, and dentistry, right? And here you have people who, you know i i honestly expect them to start attacking the foundations of dentistry because of some because it's rooted in empiricism and study and math and the rest of it the teeth beat all of us to it we've both been at berkeley too long

and i'd like to give all of you the Rob Longstar of approval for squashing that segue well in advance of it coming because he has teeth. Eventually we're going to get around to it and the white enamel and the rest of it. But hey, teeth, teeth, right? Now, am I going to do a toothpaste commercial? I am not. And speaking of teeth.

Yes, Peter. That's precisely what I am doing. I'm not going to do a floss commercial not yet i'm gonna do a gum commercial because we all chew gum right comes great comes fun not all gum is created equal no some might come in fancy packaging but they only cover up bad breath others are loaded with sugar that can wreak havoc on your teeth some of them have these weird you know artificial sweeteners in them if you have have too many of them, it's not good for the lower digestive system. Well, listen, luckily the oral care experts at Quip have made a gum that stands out from the pack and it can help prevent cavities. It tastes great too. Listen, it was only a few short years ago that Quip reinvented the toothbrush for the modern age.

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That's a free dispenser at getquip.com slash ricochet. Spell G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash ricochet. You can also find the Quip electric toothbrush, refillable floss, and more in the Oral-Kill aisle at your local Walmart as well. Quip, a good habits company. And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, we have lost Prince Philip. habits company. And we thank Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, we have lost Prince Philip. And I had a friend in England said that she feared that the queen was not long for the world after that. That's a sad thing to think. It's hard to think of the world without the queen. And I'm not a monarchist. I'm an American. But at the same time,

you have a certain amount of remnant admiration for the lady or not. There were people on Twitter who were dancing on Philip's grave today. And I guess I missed all the reasons I'm supposed to hate him. I guess he said some things. Did he say some things? Well, I mean, look, he was known for, shall we say, speaking candidly, that's actually not even the right euphemism. He said a lot of embarrassing things over the years. But my goodness, I mean, I think, forget John, who's a youngster, Peter, James, the three of us, Queen Elizabeth was the queen when all three of us were born, I think. And I'm sort of staggered at this. You know, I've always been a sort of small R

Republican. And I've had British conservatives say to me, oh, you Americans are all wrong about that. You really don't understand it. And I'm half persuaded that they're probably right about it. And I do fear the next generation after Queen Elizabeth is not worthy of the crown. And so I'm very gloomy about that. You crypto monarchist. My God, I can't believe you're defending this leftover of medieval government i mean i really don't understand this is one thing i don't get is why do americans have so much admiration for a monarchy for another country that we rebelled against because it two seconds ago you were attacking the french revolution and

sticking up for edmund burke no i'm wrong with you i'm standing up for america i just said i'm a small r republican i put it this way. If I could have all the lords and viscounts and sirs without the royal family, I think I'd be for that. What? Really? You would be for aristocracy? Well, not really. I for a long time have advocated

that we really ought to have an American House of Lords where we stuff the obvious incompetents who get endless praise, like Robert McNamara. He belongs in the American House of Lords. The British House of Lords, most of them are sort of comic figures who are doddering old fools. And we really need that for these people who are endlessly praised in America, whose records are just disastrous. Okay, I'll stop. You want a retirement home. You just want to build a retirement home. That's all.

So think about this though here the man who died this morning bought in the british navy in the second world war was mentioned in a dispatch for heroic behavior in an in an encounter with the italian fleet in the mediterranean oh really how hard is it to be heroic against the italian fleet all you got to do is sail it towards them and you win automatic. Well, now, wait a minute. Now, hold on. That's almost as hard as going up against the French Navy. You know, OK, look, look, the man served. He's, you know, OK, so maybe the Italian Navy is a joke, but there's a larger point here. Queen Elizabeth worked on a truck factory line, putting lug nuts on truck tires. And Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth had to be lectured by what their granddaughter-in-law about what racist they are. People who fought Nazis had to be lectured by their own family members on.

That's the problem with the royal family now, which is what makes me so grumpy about things. So one aspect of the royal family is that they're like historical anchors. They keep us in touch. They keep us in touch with the notion of generations, generations, generations, extending, reaching into the past. This man himself embodied in his person the memory of the greatest conflict of the 20th century. And now he's gone. Now he's gone. Now he is pure history. And as best I can tell, I never met him. I saw him on a day when several million other people saw him. I happened to be in

the streets of London when the Royal Procession passed the day Charles and Diana were married. That didn't work out too well. But millions of people people saw him shook his hand he represented a point of he and the royal family represent a point of continuity they keep they keep uh they keep the politicians in place they get all the honors oh brother peter for the british why do americans care one wit about the but they do right with this why do people watch masterpiece theory victoria or netflix is the crown i do not understand this obsession with the monarchy of another country which is totally screwed up which does have a house of lord that had hair where they still have inherited titles of nobility i thought that's why everyone was coming to America to get away from things like that.

Hey, Buster, some of my best friends are Earl. That explains a lot. It's chiefly because we're disappointed with the Kennedy family, our royal family, that's really not very much. Whatever happened to Jefferson's aristocracy of merit in the United States? This is what I don't, I really don't understand this about conservative, look, this tends to be amongst conservatives. Conservatives in America do tend to admire the British crown and the sort of British social order. I don't understand this at all. Because it is transcendent.

And I'm with you, John. I don't like it at all. I don't watch any of those shows. I have no fascination with the nobility at all. But I have to hand this to them. They have some nice houses, and they've got good collections of art. And they have somehow, even though inbred hemophiliac gormless wonders they may be, do have some way of encapsulating and summing up a national destiny beyond the generation that's prancing about the stage now.

As a matter of fact, beyond the one that's receding. They go back and back and back. We don't have that. I mean, that's what people was talking about. About America. Yeah. I mean, the great thing about America is that we can reinvent ourselves, is that we can find new energy and we are protean. And that's great. But it also means that we're a little bit, you know, on the side of being malleable too much by the wrong people at the wrong time. Now, there's something in the American center that I think eventually snaps us back to where we ought to be. Each time the point at which we get snapped back is a little less in the middle, but we change, we change and we grow. You look back at the newspapers of this country

a hundred years ago, a hundred years ago, and they're completely understandable to the modern eye. The language, the politics, the concerns, the graphic styles, it's amazing. But yet, we're a completely different nation. You look at the royal family and you say, there's something that goes back longer than this nation has been on the earth. And you have, I mean, they'll always be in England, right? We'll always have a certain emotional bond with that country and its tradition and its pomp and its history. So it's fine to say at a distance that we admire this cultural embodiment that we ourselves lack. And it's probably good that we do or we wouldn't be who we are. But you know, it's the recognition of that difference and paying a little bit of honor to it. Last point that I'd like to trot out and to see what Steve makes of it. I don't want to hear what John has to say.

I want to see what Steve makes of it. The country that managed to reclaim its sovereignty and leave the European Union is the country with the most vivid and

I think I'll leave it at that, with the most vivid monarchy. Spain has a mon that with the most vivid monarchy. Spain has a monarchy. Sweden has a monarchy. These are civil servants in fancy dress. The Queen of England is still a queen, and I suspect these things are unprovable, but I suspect that helped Britain to retain a sense of national identity that enabled it to do what it has just done,

which is leave the European Union and, as I said, reclaim its sovereignty. Steve, is there anything in that? I think there is. Look, the defense of the monarchy or British aristocracy goes back to something Hayek wrote, of all people. He wrote somewhere in the Constitution of Liberty, he said something along the lines of, it's not a coincidence. What's that? I said, get that, John. Even Hayek was wrong from time to time. Somewhere. By the way, John, they're never going to invite us back on the show together again. That's obvious to me.

That's the way you want to leave every show. It's like I left everything on the field. I don't want to be invited back to this rickety day show. Hayward, you were supposed to dilute you, not egg him on. No, no, no. It's, oh, John, you have no idea what our evening drinks at the faculty club are like. They're like this, only five times worse. And French with French fries.

Yeah. So the sentence is this. Hayek says somewhere that it's something like, it's not a coincidence that the tradition of liberty is most robust in Britain, which also has great traditions. It's very Burkean, really uh even though heineck was otherwise you know he wasn't hostile to burke but he wasn't quite a burke anyway that's a longer subject but i think that there's something to that insight i i'm speechless i i i get that i can see why someone would say it's good to have an aristocracy or monarchy just because it means it makes it harder to change things rapidly right it's hard to be radical but that has not been true

so you want to look at the record of the royal family they have overseen the cult the end of the most powerful empire in the world at the end of the 19th century into a country that doesn't maybe they have one aircraft carrier now they're a middling power they can't mount any kind of real military operation unless we let them unless we support them they look britain punches way above its weight because somehow because of its the way it's culturally programmed, good Democrats like Peter Robinson and James Lylex and Steve Hayward into thinking about them even and caring what they think

when they are a second-rate nation with a pitiful economy. I mean, they are just living off the achievements of their ancestors. And they have not done anything good in world politics in the last 50 years. I mean, after Suezez after they gave up the suez canal i mean it's been one humiliation for the british empire i mean the commonwealth oh

i'm sorry i'm supposed to call it the commonwealth after do you think churchill would be proud to see his country in the state it is now i don't think so that's that's throwing down the throwing down oh john that is that is around with the white glove yeah you know james james you have to get us out of the slough of despot here and i'll just lay down the marker to john you and i are all at the faculty club when campus the slough of despot this pilgrim's progress has taken us straight into the ditch of of of anglo phil anglophobia and i'm not going to sit here and let john you spread the poison of anglophobia. And I'm not going to sit here and let John, you spread the poison of anglophobia over the Ricochet podcast. I will only say this, talking about it as a second rate

nation that is really deserves to be just sort of left in the ash heap of history. As Johnson said, a man who is tired of London is tired of life. And as we hear at Ricochet say, a man who is tired of you, you is tired of trying to find a segue to what I'm going to say, so I'm just going to end the show. Hey, folks, podcast is brought to you by Fast Growing Trees, by ExpressVPN, and by Quip. Join today. Support them for supporting us and get great trees that grow fast,

privacy online, and a great toothbrush with some new gum. And listen to the best of Ricochet radio show hosted by me on Radio America Network. You can check your local listings and see if it's there and catch up on a little excerpts of all the ricochet podcasts. You might've missed take a minute, if you will,

or five minutes, I don't care how long you do it. You can sit there with your tongue hanging out of your mouth as you try to form the right words, but just punch out five stars and Apple podcast. That'll do it. Reviews allow the show to get more people, more people join a ricochet.

And by the way, if you're listening to this and you haven't joined ricochet we have a special offer ricochet.com slash radio gets you three free months of the member side and once you get that you'll never quit we've got you then forget facebook forget twitter ricochet that's where you want to be thanks to john thanks steven rob we'll see him next week peter have good weekend. I'm with a tooth all filed down now, so you're no longer bothering it with your tongue and lacerating it into ribbons with a sharp point. And John, again, as the epitome of elitism

in your fancy suit and tie in a wood-paneled environment, we know that it's the McRibness of you that grounds you with the common people. So elite though you may be, you'll always be one of us, and we just really feel bad about ourselves for that. Next week, James, gentlemen, I'd like to be invited

to one of these sessions at the Berkeley Faculty Club. Peter, we would chew you up and spit you out in five minutes. You couldn't hack it. Are you kidding? No, we're going to get Dan Sargent to come. I've never seen a diamond in the flesh.

I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies. And I'm not proud of my address. In a torn up town, no postcode envy But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose Drippin' in the bathroom, blood stains, ball gowns Trash in the hotel room, we don't care We're drivin' Cadillacs in our dreams But everybody's like crystal, made back diamonds on your timepiece

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash We don't care We aren't caught up in your love affair And we'll never be royals It's a wound in our blood That kind of love just ain't for us We crave a different kind of buzz Let me be your ruler

You can call me queen bee I'll leave a different kind of buzz Let me be your ruler Ruler You can call me queen bee And baby I'll rule I'll rule Let me live that fantasy My friends in the aisle have cracked the code We count our dollars on the train

To the party And everyone who knows us knows That we're fine with this We didn't come for money But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose Drippin' in the bathroom Bloodstains, ball gowns, trash in the hotel room We don't care

We're drivin' Cadillacs in our dreams But everybody's like crystal Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash We don't care We aren't caught up in your love affair And we'll never be royals It's a run in our blood That kind of love just ain't for us

We crave a different kind of buzz Let me be your ruler You can call me Queen B And baby I'll rule Let me live that fantasy Oh, oh, oh We're bigger than we ever dreamed And I'm in love with being queen Oh, oh, oh, oh Life is great without a care

We are caught up in your love affair And we'll never be royals It's a run in our blood That kind of love just ain't for us We crave a different kind of buzz Let me be your ruler You can call me Queen Bee. And baby, I'll rule.

Let me live that fantasy. Ricochet. Join the conversation.