The Ricochet Podcast - The Spirit of Enterprise

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

This week, the Pope is in town — there’s a lot to say about that and we do, pretty much in real time as it’s happening (shout out to Ricochet member Egg Man for providing updates in the chat room). Later in the podcast, a very special announcement concerning Ricochet and Jon Gabriel (no, we’re not getting married — but close). But first, our good friend and fellow podcaster Jay Nordlinger stops by... Source

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Holiday sorted. TUI. Live happy. T's and C's apply. 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. And 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 with Peter Robinson. Mr. Norbert Shaw, tear down this wall. There you go again. Yes, this is the Ricochet Podcast, made possible by people like you. Not you specifically, but people like you with your general height and build. And by a grant from the Tucker Foundation, spending the founder's money in direct contradiction of his political wishes, the third generation. Oh, I'm sorry.

No, that's PBS stuff. No, this is naked raw cop. That was here. That was good. PBS voiceover talent. Very good. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we should have a course in that. And if there was a course in how to be a PBS announcer to be brought to you by the great courses, or is that a great enough topic? I don't know. You're going to have to go to the great courses and find out they have a special offer for ricochet listeners like you. You in particular. Order from four of The Great Masters lecture series, including The Skeptic's Guide to American History, at up to 80% off the original price.

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Ricochet itself, and here to tell you something or more about that is Rob Long, who's in his hometown, but of course he's in a hotel. That's the story. That's right. That's the kind of life he leads. Explain to us how this doesn't come out of the

Ricochet till, and we'll all be a lot relieved. Nothing comes out of the ricochet till and we'll all be a lot. Nothing comes out of the ricochet till there was a tweet. A person tweeted. We did a glop podcast a few days ago and a person tweeted at us. Hey, love it. But, you know, too many commercials for guys you like for whom this is not their their main source of income or something. We want more content, he says. And let me tell you something.

If you listen to these podcasts and you are a member of Ricochet, we thank you and we are pleased to have you and honored that you are a member of Ricochet with us. If you're listening to this podcast and you're not a member of Ricochet, all I want you to do is go to ricochet.com and check us out.

I'm not even going to ask you to join. Just go to ricochet.com, check us out. Sign up for the Daily Shot. It's free. It gives you a crib sheet of today's news. It's a very, very funny thing. It started at one of our members wrote it, Shot. It's free. It gives you a crib sheet of today's news. It's a very, very funny thing. It started – one of our members wrote it, but now it's fantastic, and we sent it out. And he wrote one of the funniest lines I've read in a while, and I'm going to steal it and use it, about the pope's visit.

This is the headline for The Daily Shot this morning. God's designated emissary on Earth meets with the Pope about the Pope meeting Obama, which made me laugh very hard. And I will steal that joke for the rest of the day. That's the point of The Daily Shot. You get to read and steal the lines and the thoughts and the debates so you can win any argument with any liberal you happen to encounter. Go to Ricochet.com. If you've been a member and you want to rejoin, just use the coupon code rejoin, get two months free. If you're a new listener, you get 30 days free.

Just go to the Ricochet.com slash membership. Use the coupon code join. You get 30 days free. You can't lose. It's a great place to have great civil conversations. If you are on the web, you know what we mean. It's a swamp out there having a conversation with people. Twitter is a morass of filth.

Every comment section is a morass of filth. If you wanted to have an intelligent exchange, you couldn't. You can at Ricochet.com. We are lighting a fire for a beacon of civility, and we need your help. We need 10,000 members. We have something short of that. If you're listening to this and you enjoy it, we need you to sign up. Look, we're capitalists.

We need to pay the bills. We have people. We have producers who produce these podcasts. We have editors. We've got a site to run. No one is getting rich, but we do need to pay our payroll. And if you're listening, enjoy it. We want you to join.

We need you to join Ricochet.com. We want to be here forever. We want to be here. We want to – here's what I really want. You know what I want, James? I want competitors. I feel like I want someone to say, hey, we're also doing the same thing you're doing because right now when I say to people like you want civil conversation on the web, there's only one place. I'd like to have a liberal.

I'd like to have a liberal site that does this. Well, Tablet, when I was reading the comments the other day, I think I had to pay to read them. I think there was a one-day rate. You could actually give them something like 37 cents and you'd have the right to access the comments for that day, which is nonsense, of course. We were having that great little Star Trek conversation last week in the member feed, and if you charge people three cents per comment,

there's always going to be that little tick in the back of your head. I was, last week, a couple of weeks ago, getting a new garage door, and the garage door installers were explaining to me how this system now hooked up to my home internet, and believe it or not, I could use an app on my phone to operate my garage door.

Wow. Wow. Incredible. And what's more, it would send me push notifications if my garage door had opened in the course somehow in the middle of the day. Now, the problem with this was that you had to sign up for a system that would charge you a couple of cents every cycle. And I'm looking at the guy saying, are you serious? You want me to sign up for something that costs me money every time I open up my garage door and then sends me false email notifications telling me it's open while I'm in Venice or something? No, thank you. That's a complex world. You don't need that. Ricochet, you sign up, you put in your credentials, and the next thing you know, it's just one long, seamless experience

of fun and contention after the other. For example, I wish we had Claire here today because Claire has been giving us the European perspective on the migrant or the refugee or the immigrant or the invasion crisis. Or the terrorist in disguise crisis. It's crowdsourcing brilliance. And that's why you should join. You also should join because you get occasional notes on matters religious and otherwise by Peter Robinson, whom we're going to bring in here because he's been silent, letting us babble away. Peter, you stirred up, you poked a hornet's nest by citing George F. Will's column on the Pope. And that's been some good back and forth. What do you think of his visit so far? And do you think that there was a missed opportunity in Cuba

that he's going to get a pass on because he believes in healing Gaia and he's not so hot about capitalism. Peter? Oh, we lost Peter. Peter's fallen asleep. This is not exactly an endorsement. Oh, there he is. I didn't fall asleep. I hit mute. I'm monkeying around here because Scott... Oh, you turned her into a mute. Yes. The pope. The pope.

We're not talking about Barack Obama now. We're talking about the pope. Tricky territory because, of course, he's the pope. I'm Catholic. Lots of Ricochet members are Catholic. Bill McGurn, I think, put it best in the Wall Street Journal the other day when Bill was writing about the pope's visit to Cuba. By the way, we're recording this on Thursday, a few hours before the Pope addresses the joint session of Congress. On Friday, he will go to Philadelphia. Friday tomorrow, he will go to Philadelphia,

where I expect, hope he will be at his best. And there he's going to address a gathering of Catholics specifically to talk about the importance of the family. I think that's where we're likely to get the fewest political comments out of the pontiff. But Bill McGurn, I believe that Bill McGurn was onto something when he said that the word he used is tragic. tragic that a pontiff who has such a heart felt such a large place in his heart for the poor. And this is just genuine. You can see it in the footage the other day of the Pope greeting the homeless people in Washington, that every time he opens his mouth to talk about economics or politics, and he does so a lot, the notion that this Pope is apolitical, he's just, that's nonsense. He's intensely political. And he and his advisors have no excuse for not understanding that that's the way he's

understood in the press and by the public at large. Every time he opens his mouth on politics, on economics, on climate change and so forth, he says something the effect of which will be to make life harder, not easier for the poor. Bill McGurn called that tragic and I think that's the right word. And over to Rob to get a laugh out of that. No, no. I mean, to be fair, the pope is – I think he just rapped or he is speaking right this minute in front of the joint session, and he did say – I'm trying to find the actual line. It's happening right this minute.

He did say that there is nobility in business. He was rather conciliatory towards – I don't think he said nobility in capitalism but in business. What's interesting about the pope though is like the pope is sort of – he's sort of everybody's – it's funny. You come to Washington, D.C., and it doesn't matter if you represent a 2,000-year-old religion. You're still going to get pushed around. People are still going to say, yeah, but what about these Planned Parenthood videos? Yeah, well, what about global warming? It doesn't really matter what else you say. We want to know what you think of today.

And the pope is sort of getting trapped in that. I don't think anybody can avoid it. Well, the Planned Parenthood videos are quite specific to his mission. They are. That's what's strange. I mean that's the thing. If they're asking him about whether or not public unions should have their money taken out of their paychecks or whether or not they should have their money taken out of their paychecks. What is the card check, Pope? That's true. is the glee and the kind of cheerful enthusiasm with which the left has grabbed onto this pope. Just because – look, his economic message is not that much different from Pope John Paul II.

Oh, no, no. Oh, well, OK. Well, I defer to you. But I believe all popes are commies basically deep down. But that's OK because there's lots in the New Testament that's essentially kind of like gift to all who ask and there's a lot of – Yes, there is. There's commie, commie and there's state commie. It could possibly be the different popes depending on where they come from, say, under the Soviet boot or Latin America may have a different attitude towards large apparatus like the state some popes some popes may be more inclined to appreciate the power of the state because they see it perhaps as a reflection of the institution in which they work right if you let people outside

of the state they make up their own morality like crazy capitalism just like if you let people out of religion they make up their own morality and come up with all sorts of unmoored ideas. Well, it's a little too early for theology. But the difference is that at no point in the New Testament, as far as I've read, does anybody say, take from everybody. And that's the difference. The state takes. The pope could say, give, give, give.

You should give more. You should do more. You should do more. You should care more. That's a proper position of a religious and spiritual leader I think. I mean I don't begrudge him that. I don't even begrudge him throwing a little guilt around for the world's richest country filled with rich people. Like, hey, come on. What did you do today to help poor?

That's fine. That's good. That's fine. Making me feel a little guilty is OK. When I say commie, I mean small c commie. I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. gas emissions and somehow kind of elide over the, I don't know, half a century of teaching or more, or I don't know, more than that, a century-long teaching on birth control and abortion and just kind of like pretend that didn't happen is kind of – talk about selective hearing.

Good lord. We have a document that dates from the first century that prohibits abortion. So that's about 1900 years, 19 centuries. In other words, the prohibition on abortion pops up right away within the first or second generation after the apostles. It is one of the first and most consistent teachings of the church. If Dan Brown, the author of the Da Vinci Code, is listening to this podcast, which I think he probably is, he now has his third book. It's all about that.

Quite so. But Peter, you're wrong. I mean, subsequent documents expanded upon that to make sure that we had a living and breathing gospel whose penumbras and inturbations and emanations and all the rest of it can be adjudicated by smarter minds to find out exactly the right idea that they want. And if that sounds sort of like a strange way to look at, you know, the Constitution, well, apply that whole idea to American history. And if you looked at it differently, how would it appear? Well, that's one of the courses, great courses, I should say, lecture series,

The Skeptic's Guide to American History. And in this one, award-winning professor Mark Stoller filters through all the myths and misconceptions about America's past to give you new perspectives on pivotal events. For example, I keep mentioning this, he has this interesting look on how certain misconceptions from World War II

shaped American policy and how issues during the 20s set the stage for the cultural shifts of contemporary America. An anecdote to some of the leftist twaddle and trite that you were taught, perhaps, or have watched your children be taught? Give it a listen. The Skeptic's Guide to American History from The Great Courses is part of their celebration of the 25th anniversary, and they've got 500 courses on topics like, ah, history, science, photography. Photography, that's right. A podcast on photography? Well, sure. You can listen or you can watch with Thank you. offer only for you, the Ricochet listener. You can get from eight of their best-selling series, including A Skeptic's Guide to American History, at up to 80% off the original price.

But be quick. Alacrity. Let that be your code. 80% savings is only available for a limited time. Greatcourses.com slash Ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash Ricochet. One of those courses, if it teaches about history, may

possibly give a little glancing notes to the family life of the various monsters. James, no, I have to break in now. I know you're doing a transition. I really do have to break in. We were just chatting about the Pope. I know that Jay is online. Jay, whom you're

about to introduce, is on the line. But I just got this from the Ricochet chat room from Egghead, Ricochet member Egghead, whom I thank because this is truly important. Transcript from the Pope's remarks. He just said this in the joint session to Congress. And to me personally, it is thrilling and to everyone it's important. The Pope has just said in what I can't help reading is something like a reversal of a great deal he's been saying. Quote, it goes without saying that although it does need to be said, there I disagree with.

In any event, it goes without saying that part of this great effort is the creation and distribution of wealth, the right use of natural resources, the proper application of technology, and the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise. Wow! From this pope, the harnessing of the spirit of enterprise are essential elements of an economy which seeks to be modern, inclusive, and sustainable. Close quote. And then he goes on, excuse me, that's not to close the quote. I open a quote, he quotes a passage

that he himself has in Laudato Si. This is one sentence more and then I'm done. Business is a noble vocation directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good. Close quote. Shout out to the job creators. That is – to me, that is breathtaking because it shows the journal – and I'll finish with this, James, and let you get right back to your introduction of Jay.

But I wanted Jay to hear this as well. I know he's online already. The journal had an unsigned editorial either yesterday or the day before hoping that as the United States listened to the pope, the pope would be paying attention to the United States and that – I think I'm quoting the editorial exactly. The learning would go in both directions. Looks to me as though it has. I thank Egghead and I thank the Ricochet chat room and I return you to our regularly scheduled program with James Lilacs.

I will do that. I will interrupt you though, Peter. It's Eggman. Sorry. Eggman. Sorry. Eggman, not Egghead. Eggman. Sorry. I know Jay is on. Let me just say a little bit about Jay. Jay is senior editor of National Review, book fellow of the National Review Institute. I've known Jay for 20 zillion years, probably since the earth was lava.

And Jay was my original editor at National Review when I was writing letters from Al, Al Gore. That's how I've known him. He's a dear friend of mine, a music savant. He's a music critic for The New Criterion. He is always – and also I should – I can't forget. Everyone who listens to Ricochet Podcast knows he and Mona Charon do a great podcast, Need to Know. He also hosts a podcast called Q&A. He's one of the two best interviewers you'll ever meet, the second being also on the podcast today, Peter Robinson. So

I don't know how the two of them are going to interview each other. But we're here to talk about his new book. It's called Children of Monsters, An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. I suspect that he's going to have – is this the Sasha and Malia chapter later? But anyway, all right. We'll get to that in a minute. Jay, welcome to the podcast and welcome – let's get into the book. So – oh, okay. The worst of the worst.

Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot. Saddam Hussein. Who am I forgetting? Could I just say forget the book? No, no. We've got to move some things. Forget the book. Could I just say I feel I've really moved on up to the east side. This is the Ricochet podcast.

This is the first time I've been on, I believe. It's finally the big leagues. Sally Field yelled out, you like me, you actually like me. I just can't. I am true. I have arrived, and I appreciate it. Hello. Okay.

All right. Hello. But let's get back to the book. Come on, man. You've got to like your publisher. Plug, plug, plug. Okay. All right. Hello. But let's get back to the book. Come on, man. You've got to like – Plug, plug, plug. Plug, plug, plug. Okay.

Right, right. Your publisher wants you here to plug a book, and we're going to plug this book. First of all, it's fascinating. It's about the kids of bad people. Did I forget any of the bad people? I think I got them all. Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot,

is what I was saying. Well, I've got 20 in there. 20. I've got a Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, that I've been saying. Well, I've got 20 in there. I've got 20. I start with World War II era dictators. So I begin with Hitler, actually, because there was a claimant to be Hitler's son. And I have Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo. I throw Franco in there.

Probably doesn't belong. He was the good one. Yes. In the Far East, we have the Kim family in North Korea and Mao. And then I go to the Caribbean. No, I go to Eastern Europe then for Hoxha in Albania

and Ceausescu in Romania. Right. And then to the Caribbean for the Duvaliers and Castro. Then I have three Arabs, Gaddafi, Assad, and Saddam. I have Khomeini in Iran. I have four Africans,

Mobutu, Bokassa, Amin, and Mengistu. And then I end with a little coda, really, on Pol Pot's daughter, who is a lovely young woman of about 30 who got married last year and who earned a master's degree in English literature of all subjects. Where does she live? She lives in Cambodia in a former Khmer Rouge readout among friends and old comrades of her parents. And they're really quite wealthy. Huh.

Is that always the case? Are these kids rich? Almost always. Yes. The dad socked plenty away and funneled plenty to them. Except for Svetlana Stalin, whom you wrote about in the current issue of National Review, and whom – this is Peter Jay, and welcome to the big leagues. Your voice is unmistakable, Peter Jay.

Oh, oh. You have to identify yourself to me for heaven's sakes. Go ahead. Try to flatter me. But never will you say of me as I heard you say in public. This took place in my hearing. That's still ranked. Jay Nordlinger on rob long

rob long is god's gift to the conservative movement close quote no i i actually i actually think i am gonna make america great again peter i think my exact words were a gift from heaven to humanity i think oh that's anyway that's what I wrote down for you to say. You may have ad-libbed. But Jay, you have a fascinating piece on Svetlana in the current issue of National Review and you call her a great,

now that I'm misquoting you, I'm doing this from memory, but I think you called her a great woman or heroic. How come? She was either great or touched with greatness. She had a lot of problems, of course. Who wouldn't? But she told the truth when it was very, very hard to do. And she saw through her father and his regime and the Soviet Union and communism when others did not. And her seeing and her telling cost her a lot. She didn't have to do it, but she did.

And that's why I call her great or at least touched with greatness. Yeah. And so remind me, when did she first break with her father? Well, she had a kind of mental break when she was in her late teens, when she had to accept things about her father that she didn't want to accept. Like that, he had offed her relatives, her beloved aunts and uncles and cousins. And her mother, by the way, committed suicide when Svetlana was six. So she had a pretty hard go. Right. And she later changed her name from stalin to her mother's maiden name alleluia

alleluia right that's what she wrote under that right that was her name she did she did did did the other kids have the i mean the other kids it sounds like it's like it's a band yeah that's what i call them yeah did do they all have was there they all – was there ever a light bulb for all of them that moment where you think, oh my good lord, my dad's a horrible dictator? I mean did little Luigi Mussolini or whatever his name was think to himself, oh my god, look at him. Look at him in those pictures. What a creep. Or are there – are they still – I mean we know Kim Jong-un. We know his position on his dad. Oh, my God, look at him. Look at him in those pictures. What a creep. Or are they still – I mean, we know Kim Jong-un.

We know his position on his dad. I don't think there's any ambiguity there. It's hard to know for sure, Rob. We can't really – we can't get into their heads and hearts unless they express themselves somehow. And most of them, most of these monster kids, as a friend of mine calls them, remain loyal, often worshipful. Some of them have doubts and publicly expressed doubts. Others of them are in between. But in the main, I think these kids are loyal to their fathers and their dictatorships and to the memories of those fathers and dictatorships. And what do we make of that? virtuous that asking everyone to become a Svetlana Stalin, that is to say to break openly with his or her father and the regime, is just asking too much? What do we make of it, Jay?

Well, JFK famously said, sometimes party loyalty asks too much. And so does family loyalty. Loyalty is honorable and right, I think, a virtue to a point. But what if your father tortures, imprisons, murders, enslaves a great many people? What if he actually persecutes you, yourself? I mean, we're in very tricky territory here. And often these children, I think, as people do, lie to themselves about what has gone on. And as I was writing this book, I passed a sign for a Broadway show here in New York, Jersey Boys. And the sign had a slogan. It said, everyone remembers it the way he has to,

or something like that. And often these kids remember it the way they have to. It's very hard for them to break, but some of them do. And many of them, I think, are, to use the modern term, conflicted. Are there any scenes in the book of father-son stuff? I mean, I know this is incredibly – this is probably the most ridiculous example. But in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil and Scott are talking, and that's part of the joke, right?

That he can't connect to his son. And I always get a feeling that there must have been some strange dynamic, some strange but yet somehow familiar dynamic between Uday – Use and Kude or whatever their names were and Saddam Hussein around the gold-plated dinner table when one of them – well, even with the old days. I mean in the movie The Godfather with Marlon Brando where he yells at James Caan. I've indulged my children as you can see. They talk when they should listen. There are moments like that where you see the disappointment in the dictator's face when he realizes his kids are – too many Ferraris, too many trips to Switzerland, too much – you didn't have it as hard as I did. I had to climb over a mountain of skulls.

None of Pol Pot's kids had it as tough as Pol Pot, put it that way. Well, you mentioned Saddam Hussein and you mentioned Switzerland. So one day, Uday— I had two favorite subjects, by the way. Saddam's elder son, Uday, killed Saddam's favorite servant. And Saddam didn't like that very much. And he had Uday in jail for a while for a few weeks I think perhaps even a couple of months time out time out and then he sent him into exile in Switzerland

where he had to hang out for a while and Uday caused much mayhem there and then he was welcomed back to Baghdad into the fold into the arms arms of the regime. And he was a very, very bad character. He's one of the worst people in the whole book, Uday. His brother, Kuse, next to him was, someone called him a relative goody-goody. And maybe I should emphasize the word relative. But these people were jackals. They were horrible people. And Uday pretty much raped and tortured and killed his way through life.

And so when they were, I mean, their end, which was ignominious and violent, no tears shed for that, right? Oh, Iraq exploded in joy. There was greater joy after the killing of the two sons than there would be when Saddam himself was captured. These two sons did much to terrorize the entire country. And in fact, Iraqis couldn't bring themselves to believe that they're actually dead. That's why U.S. forces displayed their corpses.

Critics said that this was an unseemly display of triumphalism and ghoulishness. But U.S. authorities did it mainly to try to convince Iraqis that these two menaces were, in fact, at long last dead. Yeah, ding-dong, the witch is dead. So is there a rule here, I mean, or a rule of thumb that when the children of dictators, when they're good, they're Svetlana Aleyeva's, and when they're bad, they're really bad. Well, no, there are a lot of tweeners. There are some sons, and they're always sons, who are perfect little monsters who, inu, absolutely like Vasily Stalin, like one of Mobutu's kids who is actually nicknamed Saddam Hussein. There are some in this category, and Bashar Assad hasn't done too badly in the killing department.

His older brother was supposed to be dictator, the successor to the old man. I want to talk about that for a minute. I mean, because people that I know who are sort of old sort of Syria hands are always say that one of the reasons that Syria is in such a mess right now is that Bashir Assad was the idiot brother, the younger brother. He was not the idiot brother, but the Fredo of the Fredo Corleone of the family, never supposed to take over, never supposed to be in charge. He was an optometrist. He was the – also ran – was the older brother who was groomed for power and control and he would never have let things get this far. He would have been ruthless but he would have been a lot more ruthless a lot earlier.

And he had the – he was raised with the skills of a dictator, not the skills of a dilettante. And even now – the joke in Syria was even before the civil war, the three pictures, they would always have the – they would usually have the two pictures of the father, Assad, and his son, the son who died. It was like a car accident. It was like he was a race car driver. For a long time, there's conspiracy theories about how he died, but died, it was like a car accident. It was like he was a race car driver. For a long time, there's conspiracy theories about how he died, but I think it was just a regular accident. And then there are three pictures. They call him the father, son, and the holy ghost because the older brother was sort of the ghost that people wished would take over. Do you believe that?

Do you think he was simply – it was the wrong guy in the wrong time, just not prepared for it? Well, do you know this old saying, who's the most popular guy in town? The second string quarterback, the one who's not playing. There's something like that with Basel. Basel would have been just as bad. It's true that he was groomed for leadership. He was glamorous. He was smart. He had a taste for power. He flipped his sports car. It was a foggy morning. He was glamorous. He was smart. He had a taste for power. He flipped his sports car. It was a foggy morning. He was rushing to catch a plane, a Lufthansa flight to Germany, and his car flipped and he died. And Bashar was practicing eye surgery at the Western Eye Hospital in London, and he was called home immediately. It's true that Bashar was shy and

bookish, and he never really wanted power, and he had to do it. But he has stepped in, and he has kept the family business going. And what people say, sort of in defense of Bashar, not in real defense, but an understanding of Bashar, in Syria, there's a certain element of kill or be killed, and if the Assad family fell, that would mean the massacre of the Alawites, which they can't allow. But I too have talked to people about this, and I rather doubt that Basel would have been any better, but it's comforting to think so. So if you're – who's the worst kid in this book? Well, what I say, and I go through these questions, best and worst, in my afterword, it's hard to say anyone but Uday Hussain. But then you think, can you really rank him above or below whichever of the so-called the successor sons? Yeah.

Kim Jong-il. Right. Kim Jong Il. Right. Kim Jong Un. Baby Doc, not as monstrous as the dad, Bashar. But of the non-successors, there's sort of a tie between the silly and the Mobutu kid and Niku Ceausescu. And, you know, several of the Gaddafi sons were goons, just thugs. And so is another Assad boy, Maher, who is Bashar's right hand. But Uday really, I'm afraid, takes the cake. He is almost unutterable. One last question, and then I'll let Peter jump in. If you're a kid,

a fallen regime, and you're not dead, and you're not a good person, so you're not a decent student of American literature, English literature in Phnom Penh somewhere. What happens to you? Where are Ceausescu's kids? What are they doing now? Well, Niku died very early, like the silly Stalin drank himself to death when he was in his early 40s. Valentin Ceausescu, the other boy, has lived blamelessly, as far as I can tell. This brings up the nature-nurture question.

He's a physicist, and his whole life has worked in the same institute, very quietly. A lot of these kids are in exile. Many of them run for office or compete for power. They follow in their dad's footsteps to one degree or another. Some of them write books. A few of them, the special ones, try to reconcile, try to lead reconciliation efforts. One of Idi Amin's sons

has done that in Uganda for many years. But that is exceptional. So nobody's just, you know, running a liquor store somewhere in Long Beach like a lot of the former Vietnamese generals. They're just... There are a few ordinary ones. Bokassa, for example, had dozens and dozens of children.

Amin had about 60. Mobutu had dozens. And some of them are living kind of modestly, and others are rolling in it. For example, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Hey, Jay, Peter here. What is the – all this is fascinating, fascinating group of stories. for ordinary Americans, for people who live in a democratic society that has not yet had to suffer dictators? What is the lesson for us here? Well, I'll quote you Mark Halperin, who read my book and said that one effect it had on him was to make him more grateful than ever to be an American

and live under the Constitution in an atmosphere of ordered liberty. Now, I did not aim for that effect or result, but he and two or three other early readers report this. I'm a little surprised, but that's an effect that the book had on them. Other people have said it made them more appreciative of more understanding of dictatorship, of tyranny, of the 20th century, of the nature of all this. So I think my book can be read at a couple of levels, like the cartoons, like Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Simpsons. You know, they say that kids appreciate the physical antics and so on, and there are other points for the adults. And basically, I'm telling, I think, interesting stories, often lurid stories, life stories. I don't do all that much point making and psychologizing. I do just a little of it.

But people do have their own reactions and make their own points. And it's been really interesting for me to hear them. And the book obviously raises questions of loyalty, nature, nurture, politics, and the rest of it. But if you don't care much about that, they're interesting stories and of course all too interesting for those who've had to lead those lives. Jay, this is Roman Ginn. I was talking to you on ship in Alaska about the book and you got Stalin all wrong. But, you know, I can't wait to hear more about this, especially the way that it seems to be that some of these leaders themselves were pragmatic, ruthless, who lacked complete and utter moral compass where their

fathers may have still had some because they didn't grow up, uh, you know, under the shadow of a ruthless nutcase. It makes me want to think that your next book will be the children of, uh, of great composers, because then we can see how people lived under a different kind of shadow. If their parent had created some great work of aesthetic glory, did they have that follow them around for the rest of their life? You're Rachmaninoff, son. Hey, whistle me a tune. But even though we're here to talk about the book,

there are so many other things that you bring to National Review and to the world of writing. Of course, anybody who reads your impromptus enjoys your meditations on language and politics and arts and the rest. But we understand this is actual current stuff here. I'm about to say, you've been on the trail with Carly Fiorino. And I imagine that you have a few observations

about her character, her presence, her Thatcher-esque qualities, as some are calling them. I was impressed in the last debate with the concision of her responses, that there is a rhetorical astringency to her that some find quite refreshing. How did she strike you, and how did you see people react? Well, I've talked to her a couple of times in two different interviews about language. She cares a lot about language, about words, about phrasing.

She spends a lot of time thinking about it. She's absolutely in love with words and speech. She's a very fine rhetorician, and she hones all this. It's not exactly accidental. It's her interest. She's a superb campaigner. She's one of the most natural and effective I've ever seen. I think the most astounding political personality

I've ever been around is Tony Blair. And when you are around him, you realize why he won three elections in a row. Carly is awfully talented. And it's no surprise to me now that she's running for president, because really, people tend to do what they're good at. I think that is a truism. And she's really good at campaigning, despite her loss in California, which was a pretty hard nut to crack. And I think she's doing it. I think she's enjoying it. I'm convinced that she is not running for vice president or a cabinet post. She thinks that she can win the nomination. I doubt it. But I think that in order to keep going, you have to believe it. And she certainly is an American phenomenon.

Jay, how does she handle her period as CEO of HP? It seems extremely odd to stumble into – to discover that her main talent is politics only after rising to the top of a major American corporation. And as I've said a couple times on the podcast before, everyone I know, and I mean, it's unanimous, everyone I know who was at all close to the situation at Hewlett Packard, and I know, I don't know, close to a dozen, because I live here in Northern California, they just have very little good to say about her or her tenure there. How does she handle that? And how do you handle it in thinking about her as a candidate? Well, she has her rap down pat, as you can imagine. She has every jot and tittle from her perspective on her tenures at Hewlett-Packard and Lucent.

And she is pretty compelling, I must say. I can't get too much into the facts. I really don't know them. I can't really be an arbiter on her tenure at HP. But she's so candid. She says, for example, I was fired. And she's the first presidential candidate I've heard say he was fired since Al Haig. I loved him in 1988. He was so euphemistic. He said, when the president fired me, and I admired him for that. And Carly says, I was fired in the wake of a boardroom brawl, she says, that played out over two weeks. And her spin is that when you challenge the status quo, you make enemies, which she did.

She goes on to say that some of the people against her have now come to appreciate her more. So she seems to me pretty blunt about this, and she has to handle it. She handles it head on. Plus, I've asked her about her taste for politics. She's always been interested in it. Her father, Joseph Sneed, was a well-known lawyer and judge. He was in the Justice Department for a while. He was dean of Duke Law School. He was one of the very few conservatives on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And he loved politics. And there was always discussion of what was in the newspaper and so on. She was a surrogate for McCain, liked that a lot. She helped other candidates. And she's really got the bug. You can tell a person with the bug. Also, she thinks she's been through – knows she's been through many hard things, her firing, illness, death of a daughter.

And her position is I'm not scared anymore. I have something to give. I have something to contribute and I want to do it. And if I win, great. If I don't, great. But I'm not scared of anything anymore. The world really can't do much more harm to me. That's her toad.

Right. So all that sounds extremely impressive. And you said two things that just my last question for you. You said she's as good on the campaign as anyone you've ever seen. And then you also said she believes she can win the presidential nomination, open parens, I doubt it, close parens. And then you continue. Why do you doubt it? It's not a good sign that somebody who's just spent three or four days on the trail with the candidate, even a hardened journalist such as my friend Jay Nordlinger, doesn't come away thinking, you know, maybe, maybe that looks pretty good. You doubt it even after spending that time up close with her and seeing her work campaign so effectively.

Why? Well, it would just be such a long shot, wouldn't it? She's never held office before. As Rick Rukeyser says, the presidency is not an entry-level political position unless you've won World War II or maybe the Civil War. She had that loss in California. It would just be very, very strange. But maybe these are very strange political times. Are you paying attention to 2015? It does seem like it's a strange year.

Maybe I should be more open to the possibility of her being nominated. It's just hard for me to wrap my head around right now. I think if she had been elected to the Senate in 2010, it would be Katie bar the door. But I wonder. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Jay, is there something about the candidates that we see? I'm trying to go through them in my head. Pretty much all of them that I could think of. They don't seem to have that kind of – in the past, past Republican candidates, past Republican primary voters have enthusiastically or not so enthusiastically nominated a guy, always a guy, for whom public speaking and off-the-cuff remarks were not the strong suit. And there's always been this sort of high-wire act on the debates, what's going to happen during the debates, what's going to happen in the speeches.

And we've all worried about what's the message? Who's going to help this guy get through the general? What if he says something and has to correct it? I've always longed for someone who can talk. Right. And I think we've all you know, everybody on the side has always felt like, can we just nominate someone who can just talk? And on the one hand, I mean, look at the cluster of people at the top. We have a guy who we we guy could talk so much. He he can't stop talking in Donald Trump. But say what you like about him.

His off-the-cuff remarks have not hurt him in the polls. And then we have a woman from the boardroom who can talk in complete sentences that seem like – that are spontaneous but make a point and have a beginning and a middle and an end. And sometimes they've got a zinger in there too. And then we have a sort of soft-spoken brain surgeon who speaks eloquently but also with sort of faith-based language but essentially is still speaking extemporaneously and is a professional talker at this point. Is this sort of the antidote to the past? Are we – those seem to be frontrunners. We've got some candidates who can really talk. And then there's Marco Rubio.

I think he's probably one of the top four talkers on the dais right now. We've got Carly, Marco, Ted. Oh, yeah, Ted Cruz, right. I forgot Ted Cruz. Bobby, really good talker. Lindsey sounds like Gomer Pyle, but he's fabulously articulate. He really is. There's a lot to say. I think he's disadvantaged by the accent.

We've got some really articulate candidates this time. I don't know whether one of them will be the nominee. Jeb seems to me a little less polished. I was surprised at his two debate performances. I think of him as a very good verbal and rhetorical performer. Maybe he will up his game. Maybe he's slightly rusty, as people say. But he's not bad. But we have some really marvelous talkers. And I've heard you talk before, Rob, about discipline in politics. You talk about the president standing on the same mark, taking a photo for hours on end as people come up

to have their picture taken. And I followed Carly around as has been mentioned and like all candidates she says the same thing over and over. And these lines are very polished and she has a knack for saying them as though

for the first time. As though they were just occurring to her. There's an element of theater in this. Right. For someone who's not a professional politician, she's pretty professional. Yeah, it seemed to me – that was the difference between – I mean I was disappointed this week when Scott Walker dropped out because I was always a fan of Scott Walker's record in Wisconsin. And I thought that he really had done something remarkable in this country. He had stood up to public sector unions and done something really that you could count, that you can quantify his value to the voters of Wisconsin. But I also felt like one of the problems with his campaign was that he didn't say that all the time.

But his answer should have been, well, what do you think about ISIS? Well, let me tell you about ISIS. They remind me of the unions in Wisconsin. What do you think about the Fed? I'll say that all the time. But his answer should have been, well, what do you think about ISIS? Well, let me tell you about ISIS. They remind me of the unions in Wisconsin. What do you think about the Fed? I'll tell you about the Fed. They remind me of the unions in Wisconsin. He should have been on that message all the time, especially in the early campaigns, so that people who didn't know who he was and weren't junkies knew at the end of the day,

oh, that's the guy who stood up to the unions in Wisconsin. And it surprised me that a professional politician with his gifts and his demonstrable successes at the ballot box somehow didn't know and didn't – had not internalized this lesson, the same lesson that Carly Fiorina, I think just sort of effortlessly knows. That's why I think it's a very strange year. We have these amateurs punching way above their weight and these professionals kind of floundering and having a hard time figuring out how to connect to the voter. Well, it saddens me a little.

You know, it's September, what is it, the 24th today? And this week in New York, it's going to be 80 degrees, right? We're a long way off from the snows of New Hampshire and the Iowa caucus. And Scott Walker is gone already. Rick Perry is gone already. Why does it have to be? What I keep saying is if I were running for president, which is pretty funny, I would at least let the voters vote against me before dropping.

I'd give them a chance to vote against me. I've been quoting the Samuel Barber aria, must the winter come so soon? People like Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Scott Walker, did they really have to drop out so soon after so much accomplishment? It just seems wrong to me. I think you're absolutely right. You could run a Bedouin campaign with very, very little money between now and getting trounced in New Hampshire or Iowa – or not even Iowa. I would have seen it count. But getting trounced in New Hampshire without any trouble at all. You just needed to retool and rethink your message. And I think Scott Walker has a message.

Yeah, absolutely. By the way, so did Rick Ferry. Absolutely. And John McCain was carrying his own bags in New Hampshire. He saw these famous photos. You know, he had been in a box tortured for five and a half years. He wasn't give up so easily in this presidential campaign. And he won a few modest pluralities in a few states. And the next thing I knew, I think the date was March 7th sticks in my mind. Mitt Romney, this was in 2008, was announcing his withdrawal, and the nomination was McCain's. I thought that was pretty weird.

Well, speaking of Samuel Barber, if the Scott Walker campaign's later days had had a theme, it would have been Barber's Adagio for strings, as he slowly and sadly faded out. Trump's theme, of course, would be any number of Sousa marches played simultaneously on kazoos and bagpipes with a tuba thrown in. Carly needs a good theme song, and we're going to leave it to Jay to, at some point perhaps in the impromptus at National Review Online, tell us what he thinks the signature theme song should be for the remaining candidates, a tune, a tattoo, a melody, a motif by which they would become recognizable to more. So we'll leave that to you, Jay, and we'll also leave it up to you, the listener,

to rush right out, well, not literally, I mean, you can go to Amazon and pick up Jay's book. His book is called Children of Monsters, an Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. And we thank him for finally being on the podcast. We've been begging for so long, but oh no, I've got work to do with Mona. So

good. I'm glad you swaned by as our guests do and graced us. Thank you so much, Jay. Good luck with the book, and we hope to have you on soon for no particular reason at all, except that you're Jay, and we love to have you. Thanks, James. Let me just say that that task you mentioned about theme songs for candidates, I know the perfect guy for that, one James Lilacs. Well, I'll work on it.

We'll email, and you can keep me from making some mistakes. Talk to you later. See you soon, Jay. Bye. I should do that. I should send my email suggestions to Jay and see what he thinks about them because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of music, both popular and classical, of course. You know, conversations that happen through emails sometimes can be the best talks you have in the course of a day. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's true.

Because a friend or a colleague will reach out, share a few thoughts, and you write back with a few of your own. And before you know it, you've secured a loyal fan, this person who wrote to you, or a friend, or even better, a customer, and maybe even some new ideas to share. That's right. It's an ad. It's a commercial for SaneBox, which is what exactly? It's a commercial for SaneBox, which is what exactly? It's this. You know that your mail becomes insane because after you've had those conversations with the people, the emails become 100, then they become 500, and it's not long before you've got thousands of messages and no time at all to sift through the conversations that are worth having.

Does this sound like your inbox? It sounded like Rob Long's inbox a while ago before he got SaneBox. Now, SaneBox does the sifting for you. It diverts the trivial stuff into a separate folder, so all that's left are the emails that matter. With features like one-click unsubscribe, oh, unsubscribe, or the ability to snooze some non-urgent emails, you'll save countless hours and increase your email productivity by 25%.

That's more time you can spend engaging your audience. So try it for yourself with two free weeks of SaneBox. Visit SaneBox.com slash Ricochet to start your trial. No credit cards needed. And after that, Ricochet listeners get $25 off a membership. That's the deepest discount you'll find anywhere. Again, it's S-A-N-E-B-O-X dot com slash Ricochet. And Rob, you used it.

I've been using it for like three years, I think. I was like an early adopter of this. And they came to us. I don't even think I knew that I was using it. And I've been using it. It's fantastic. There's not only Sane. There's Sane Later.

And you can just simply send an email, Sane Tuesday. It'll come back to you Tuesday. You can have an empty inbox every day. There's this fantastic thing called Sane Black Hole, and you simply drag an email through the black hole, and you will never see an email from this person or this domain again. It is incredible. Your inbox just naturally – you don't have to worry about spam or junk or anything like that. It's fantastic. It's something you use in addition to Gmail, say? Yeah. It really helps in addition to Gmail. It really actually does some of the work that Gmail doesn't do, and it also helps you schedule and put things off and have things come back. And it's great. It's great. I'm a huge fan.

It seamlessly works with Apple. That's why I used it. It really works with my iPhone and Apple Mail. So I'm a big, big, big, big, big, big fan. Sounds extraordinary. I like the black hole thing. Yeah. Because I'm always getting these Spanish language ads to buy a refrigerator.

And I would love for these to just go away for the rest of my life yeah you'll never see them again you'll never see extraordinary and they and they say there's a place where you can they send you an email like once a week or something however you want to set it you set it yourself to check make sure okay this you don't want to see these ever again and you go yeah so you never miss anything important. And also I always feel like with email, if something shows up, I kind of naturally – I don't have the willpower to be able to not respond to it. Or even if it just shows up and I know I don't want to respond to it, that still takes time. That still breaks the concentration. Yes, it does.

A lot actually. This way it just goes to the same later box and I can look in that when I want to. And then that's stuff that I could... That's not urgent stuff. Well, extraordinary. So people will have presence of mind and they'll have a little bit more time to do the things they want to do.

They'll have a great face from shaving. They'll sleep well because of the beds. They'll be smarter. I tell you, the panoply of life enhancements that Ricochet brings to you is extraordinary. And one of those enhancements, of course, are the occasional pieces, essays, short stories, comic stylings, profound observations by John Gabriel, who, of course, you know, ex-John from the site, from Twitter. Well, look who's moving on up.

Look who's been kicked upstairs. Let's see if the Peter Principle applies to Mr. Gabriel as we announce that he is now, trumpet fanfare, Ricochet's new editor-in-chief. Are we expected to bow, genuflect, kowtow, or just simply give you a manly pat on the shoulder? I'm waiting for the passing of the Ricochet editorial whiskey flask. That's what makes it official. It's an airplane miniature of – We should say just to let everybody know, Troy Sinek, who has been I think probably the founding editor-in-chief of Ricochet, is sort of moving on.

He's still associated with us. We'll still see him on our main page and we'll still see him doing some podcasts and stuff. But he's going off to Manhattan Institute, uh, full time. And, um, we are,

uh, we'll sorry, we'll be sorry to see him go from the main page, uh, on a daily basis, but we are thrilled to have John, uh, full time now kind of running the ship and,

welcome John. Thank you very much. And I, I just want to thank you guys for the opportunity and thank Troy as well. I know I'm going to be annoying him for months. Hey, how would you handle this? Hey, what do I do now? But yeah, he's

a violation of the code of conduct. Is this word? Yeah, exactly. The truth is, Rob, Rob and I so admire your work, John. James, chiming in again. We, for months, we've been trying to figure out how to get rid of Troy and we finally

engineered it. Why do you think Rob has been flying to New York to talk those guys at the Manhattan Institute into this whole thing? I sold them on Troy. So John, you're going to be tough, but fair, right? That's the new guy. He's always just only tough, but fair. But what do you want to, what do you want to do with the Ricochet.com?

Again, if you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member, go to Ricochet.com right as soon as you get – pull over because you're probably driving. And go to Ricochet.com and sign up for the Daily Shot. And you've got the new editor-in-chief on here. So what do you want to – what are your plans? Really just want to continue improving. We've been improving month by month. You kind of see that bringing in new writers. We always need to get some new writers and new voices. Love to hear new voices about talking about a couple other non-political subjects too.

Really would love a little bit of sports coverage and entertainment coverage. One post a week would of sports coverage and entertainment coverage. One post a week would be an improvement in those areas. Other than that, we're just going to be doing mostly a lot of pictures of Kate Upton and cat gifs. I really think that's my editorial direction. As a shareholder, I can only applaud. We talked a little bit about it last week. There's lots of stuff we want to do. We sort of want to reach out. There's a lot of people who... We have

100,000 listeners. We want to make sure they become members. What would you say to people who are listening who are not members? What would you say? Why should they become members, especially members under the new John Gabriel administration? It's going to be a classy administration, I tell you. Top of the line, start at the bottom. This is just – there's really nothing else like it.

My background actually, I've done a lot of marketing in my background and you're always trying to find what makes our product different. And usually there's nothing that makes it different. It just has a different name. Ricochet is not like that. Ricochet is an exceptional community. Really, any way you look at it, I've never seen a community like this on the internet where there's always the old saying for people who write for the internet, never read the comments. Whatever you do, do not read the comments. It's a sewer. It's a mess. And 99% of the sites, that's the case. It's not the case at Ricochet. And a lot of times when I write an article and I think it's brilliant and wow, I've covered everything. In a couple hours, I'll go back and read the comments. I'm like, wow, the comments are far, far better than anything that I slapped together up there. And so I start sending links to people on Twitter and Facebook

and friends and family saying, Ooh, Ooh, read comment 17. It's awesome. It's great. So, you know, you don't get that anywhere else. And just to be able to mix it up with some of the smartest, most gracious people, um, on the internet. It's really fantastic. And it reminds me, being a guy who has been in and around the internet since, gosh, since its formation, really, it reminds me of those early days when you only talked to a couple friends before it got so nasty and hostile and you could actually have an intelligent conversation. That just makes

it fantastic. Another great thing too is you can contribute stories as a member and we've had members that you've mentioned on the podcast who end up getting published in huge circulation newspapers and things like that because we just love hearing from people not just who have gone up through the Beltway echo chamber, but people from all over. It's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, that's – I mean, you know, what we try to do on the podcast, obviously, I mean, you know, have guests and talk and have a conversation and sort of talk a little bit about current events and stuff.

But we also want to make sure we have time to talk about what's going on on the site uh and you had a great uh so there's you know you had a great post about um where the tv audience went right john pittorff and jonah goldberg and i had a conversation on podcast last week about uh the emmy telecast which was lowest rated and i suggested that's because the shows that they were honoring were also low rated so who wanted to go watch them get awards and you had another thought for where did the tv audience go well a lot of people have just moved on from tv and and I know you know you swanning swanning about Hollywood um have seen that I remember um talking to a few industry folks at a um it was actually like a film writers workshop in UCLA a couple of years back and that I was graciously invited to. But the industry is just trying to figure out what the heck works now because you'll see a movie release and it will make – and I'm totally making up numbers.

It will make $100 million and then you see a video game release and it makes 800 million the first week so it's really amazing to see how content is changing and a lot of millennials are just they just don't even think to turn the TV on and that's what you're seeing or it's like oh I got my Roku box oh yeah I like that BoJack Horseman

it's on Netflix so I subscribe to that and I'll cancel that and you know if they ever get rid of that show so it's just the, so I subscribe to that, and I'll cancel that if they ever get rid of that show. So it's just the audience. It used to be atomized into 300 different cable channels. Now it's 50 different medium choices that they can choose. John, the next question here is only too obvious. Could you offer Rob a little career advice?

Well, I think he just did. That's absolutely it. Well, that's the amazing thing. I'm not in the industry and I'm trying to figure it out. And I was just looking at my personal perspective. And when we had children, my wife and I, we watched all sorts of different series. We had two children in pretty rapid succession. A year and a half after that happened, we were like, I don't even know what shows we used to watch.

We just got out of the habit. And I think a lot of younger folks like my kids, when they get home, when they want to take a break from homework, they grab the laptop and are on there. They don't even think to turn on the Disney Channel or whatever they used to watch. Oh, absolutely. There's also something I think we've been instructed – some people in the audience have been instructed as to what makes for better television. And if it smells like a network show that's been comment noted to death by a dozen executives, and you can tell that from the first 17 seconds, it feels like you're watching an inferior product. I mean, the last thing that I watched of any substance was Narcos on Netflix, which is a joint international production between who and who. I have no idea.

Freed from whatever strictures the network would place, they came up with an incredibly good show, a really, really good show. It's about Pablo Escobar. And it reminded me that all of the things that I've enjoyed have come from these other different sources. After that, I tried to watch a network show that somebody had recommended to me and in the first 17 seconds there was something about the character of it that just told me this thing has been dumbed down, watered down suppressed, changed, made into this middle of the road thing

that is going to annoy me because it's going to have quippy banter, it's going to have the requisite archetypes, it's going to have a kick bleep woman who's stronger than the others, it's going to have this kick bleep woman who's stronger than the others. It's going to have this stereotype and that and the rest of it to conform to all the boxes that they have to tick off. So while the net, I should pitch that tomorrow. Uh, yeah, yeah, that's,

well, that's, that's, that's, that is part of the problem. But, uh, but the, the other problem is that nobody's watching Narcos, but, but, but, other problem is that nobody is watching Narcos. But Netflix is in a different business. Netflix is in the business of subscribers, so not in the business of eyeballs and advertisers. I mean House of Cards, as Les Moonves, who's the chairman of CBS, said two weeks ago, House of Cards is a brilliant show. It's a great show. It's wonderful. But I think five times as many people watch The Good Wife. Well, if you're running a giant business, you need The Good Wife.

You can't really work on Netflix. And at a certain point, they're going to be – and Netflix now only has really kind of – doesn't even have any competitors really. It's going to have a few coming up, and what happens when that happens so um it's it's a competitive world out there and it's going to get more competitive and harder and harder and harder to find good stuff and i am just glad that uh i am probably two or three or four steps ahead of the sheriff because it's going to get harder to um to live live the way the way i i've become accustomed to living in this business, which is why we need 10,000 members of Ricochet so I can make this a job. And maybe that's because he's on a Casper mattress, because I know that no matter how

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Compare that to industry averages, and that's an outstanding price. Now, here is where you go. Casper.com slash Ricochet. That's $50 off on any mattress purchase if you go to Casper.com slash Ricochet and use the coupon code Ricochet. Terms and conditions apply, of course. And you might find yourself in the company of Jex Reffy in the chat room who noted a little while ago as the show began, before we had even mentioned Casper, he said, quote, I just got my Casper delivered to me last night.

Great night of sleep. An unprovoked, unprompted testimonial from somebody in the Ricochet community. So, yeah, Casper.com slash Ricochet coupon code Ricochet. 50 bucks off and start sleeping smarter instantaneously. Hey, so can we just segue quickly to some member feed stuff? Because we want to make sure we highlight some member feed posts for this week. One of them actually was by James Madison who responded to I think Peter's question to Carly, to Jay about Carly Fiorina, with a very sort of concise, I think, well-reasoned, I don't know if I agree with it yet,

because I don't know enough about it, but a well-reasoned defense of her position. He, of course, it takes the position position and i think a lot of people do that hp was in serious decline before she was a turnaround artist that needed to do big stuff to hp when she took over and the board and the culture there was timid and it needed to be shaken up and so there's naturally this reaction against that uh And so she had a couple of plans. He says she searched for options. She assessed them carefully. She crafted a strategy.

She tried to implement plan A. When that failed, she moved forward to plan B. The board was indecisive, faint-hearted, perhaps dominated by those who became captured by their own talk about paradigm shifts and disintermediation. And those were the buzzwords of the time. So it will be interesting to litigate this actual thing this this record she had at hp um and i'm glad that we're litigating it kind of intelligently on the pages ricochet yeah a fascinating piece it reminded me i sort because i because i lived here uh i was sort of watching all this play out in the pages of the local newspapers what i what rings true to me everything

james madison says here is intelligent of course and perceptive and and he's also done his research what rings true right away is the carly fiorina was the first one to come into HP who, who hadn't come up through the company. When she came on board, people still talked about the HP way. People still talked about Dave and Bill. And by the way, it was like Steve,

Steve jobs, only, only first name necessary needed. I Mr. Both of those men were still alive when I first moved out here, and it was Dave and Bill. And there is no doubt that she had to confront a culture that was not working, no longer profitable, just didn't serve the company anymore. And Meg Whitman, who is now running HB, nobody has tried to undo a great deal of what Carly Fiorina did. Meg Whitman is not trying to find her way back to the pre-Carly Fiorina HP.

There is that to be said for sure. Yeah. I mean it's sort of interesting. I mean I wish I had chimed in with that when we were talking to Jay but I didn't. So that's another great thing about Ricochet, right? The answers to all of your questions are on the member feed, right, John? Indeed, always. There was another great post that I liked.

Our longtime contributor, King Prawn, had offered some information. The Heritage Foundation had published a federal budget and pictures and they just divided up a $1 bill into where our vast pile of taxpayer money goes to and just shows how, gosh, it's just shocking how little we spend on national defense, on education, on all these things that you first think of. Major entitlements, 51% goes just to major entitlements. 19% goes to income security, what they call. So it's just the vast majority. And every year it seems to be growing with these entitlements. We get so caught in the battles of the day and worrying about a government shutdown and do we fund this

agency or that agency enough? And it is just amazing. Year after year, if anybody has read the great Jim Garrity book, The Weed Agency, just how – no matter how noble somebody's intentions are in starting a program, it just grows and grows and grows like a weed. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

And we just can only hope that the member feed continues to grow and grow and grow because – anyway, I will make another member pitch. I've done two or three of them already. And even I have some shame. Yes, absolutely. The member feed. Everybody goes there. It's so crowded. That, of course, is a perversion of the great quote from Yogi Berra,

who's wonderful. I wouldn't call them malapropisms. There's just a brilliant internal logic to all of them that makes him perhaps not just a great baseball player, but one of the more surreal prose artists of our time. I'm still chewing over my head the phrase that you should go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours. Like everything else he said, it makes its own sense.

Yeah, it makes sense. But it just has a layer of frosting of absurdity over it that makes it eminently quotable. And he died. And so we tip our hats to him. And I'm actually wearing a hat at this very moment, so I'm capable of tipping it. And Ricochet is the place where you can go, of course, and swap your favorite yogi quotes. You can talk about how much money is spent in that great dollar bill that King Prong post.

I wish the dollar bill would actually be printed to look like that from year to year so we could tell exactly what we're spending. And of course, there are people who say that there's just simply not enough spending as there is in those Medicare and income security things. And that should be 99 percent of everything. Well, that'll be Bernie Sanders. And that's another conversation for another day on a podcast. But it's a conversation we have every day because it's about the world. It's about culture. It's a conversation we have every day because it's about the world. It's about culture. It's about politics. It's about the community that we've built at this site that we're probably entirely sick of us hearing about.

But, hey, what can we say? We love the joint. And we love you. And we love our sponsors. Thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's where you can get a great deal on some wonderful pieces of erudition that you can listen to, watch, listen, stream, apps, the whole bit. Even if you're working out or driving in your car, you can learn something.

There's no excuse for not learning something new every day. And we're brought to you, of course, by SaneBox.com. A trial with no credit card and then 25 bucks off. Once you try this thing, you are going to be a fan for life. Just like Ricochet. SaneBox.com slash Ricochet. And of course, you can always visit the Ricochet store

and get lots of branded merch around that you can wear in your public square. Have your kid wear it to school. Have them get suspended for it. And then you'll have a cause celeb that we can talk about on the next podcast. And there will be one. And we'll see you there. But first, we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Welcome, John Gabriel.

Welcome, John. Glad to be here. Absolutely. See you next week, fellas. Next week. I was raging It was late In the world my demons cultivate I felt the strangest emotion

But it wasn't hate For once Just emotion, but it wasn't hate for once. Yes, I'm changing. Yes, I'm gone. Yes, I'm older. Yes, I'm moving on. And if you don't think it's a crime, you can come along with me. Life is moving, can't you see?

There's no future left for you and me. Ricochet. Join the conversation. you you you you you you you