The Ricochet Podcast - Vive La Claire

Episode Date: January 8, 2015

This week, we’re lucky to have a live report on the tragedy in Paris from Ricochet’s own Claire Berlinski, who happened on the scene of the crime moments after it occurred. Then, we return to our side of the Atlantic for a conversation with our good pal (and fellow podcaster) Larry Kudlow. Gas tax? You’ve got to be kidding. Finally, some rumination of legalizing weed, courtesy of Ricochet member... Source

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Is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. But what about us? We'll always have Paris. Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. But I am not a bully.

I'm the kingism. Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. But I am not a bully. I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Troy Sinek sitting in for Peter Robinson. Rob Long's in New York. I'm James Lileks in Minneapolis, and we're going to be speaking to Claire Berlinski in Paris. We'll also have Larry Kudlow to tell you about the economy and much, much more. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again.

Yes, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 244. We're back for 2015. Happy New Year. Well, at least it's a year that's gotten your attention. We'll get to all that in a second. We're brought to you by Harry's Shave, of course. You know, if you didn't give somebody's Harry's Shave for Christmas, that doesn't mean you can't give it to them for no reason whatsoever.

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Rob? You know, James, it's nice to hear from you. We haven't done this in a while, right? It's been a couple of weeks. No, we haven't. Happy New Year. I haven't talked to you since the New Year. Happy New Year.

And the same to you. I have so many questions and so many things about the post that you've been doing. But of course, there won't be any posts if there's no Ricochet. No. Exactly. So let me – I'm going to do this really fast. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, thank you. And I'm pleased and proud.

We're all happy to be members with you at Ricochet. If you're listening to this podcast and you're not, I don't know what else to tell you. Go to Ricochet.com. Check it out. Sign up for the Daily Shot. It's our daily blast. It comes in your email. It gives you a preview of things that happened today. It gives you some funny talking points. It gives you ways, little tips and tidbits and factoids to win every argument with a liberal. Do that. But if you're still on the fence, stay on this podcast. Here is why you should be a member of Ricochet. We're about to hear from an early Ricochet contributor, one of our founding editors really, Claire Berlinski, who is in Paris.

It was in Paris yesterday morning. And the first thing she did after – she was almost an eyewitness to the event. She was on the street a few minutes after the first attack. She went home, she was shaken, and she wrote out, I think, a really magnificent, heartbreaking account, and she put it on Ricochet. Ricochet readers heard it first.

If you are not a member of Ricochet and you are, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, freeloading, join today if for no reason other than you get really interesting stories from wonderful writers as soon as they happen here and you do

not have to read about it in the New York Times. You also get Peter Robinson most of the time. Exactly, yeah. Peter, I believe, is off with, he's working on a book, he's interviewing a fascinating person or he has the flu or the cold or all three of the above. Who knows? Peter leads a life that is a mystery to, to me, but there's Troy, Troy Sinek stepping in ably as ever to join us. Troy, I don't know where you were yesterday, but I was driving to the dog

pound or the dog park or wherever I was dropping my pooch off. And in the middle of a radio show, the emergency broadcasting system system kicked in. And I looked at the radio, cocked an eyebrow, hit another button to go to another station, and there was also the emergency broadcasting. And for a minute, I had that old feeling you had back as a child in the 70s. You're thinking, now a bright flash. You got to get under the desk. Because your antenna were up because something had happened on the other side of the world.

Namely, three men decided that the best way to appease and please their god was to kill 12 illustrators uh and so electricity but there was something different about this and it wasn't just because it was targeting journalists and that is they got away now when you heard about this didn't you expect at the end it would be all of Akbar pull the rope and boom, they got away, indicating that we're dealing with a different level of planning and sophistication here, aren't we? A different level of sophistication. Yeah, you expected them to either take themselves out or like the bloody shootout in the street kind of thing. I think the last thing that most of us expected was this chronicle of them heading off across the city and ditching a car and getting into another car. As best I know at this point, we still don't know where they are.

And yeah, it was a little bit different. The thing that is always striking to me when you look at these cases because this is obviously not the first time that we've had these kinds of situations, whether it was Theo Van Gogh being murdered in Holland or a couple years ago in the States. I mean we had the threats against the creators of South Park. There is this deep-seated sort of cultural status anxiety amongst Islamists about the fact that the glories of Islam aren't what they used to be, and it is a strange dichotomy in a way that the way that they think they are going to rehabilitate that is by being this sort of thin-skinned, having these porcelain egos about the slightest insults. These are not the marks of a great civilization. These are the kinds of offenses that give rise to violence. But Troy, I get what you're saying and I've heard that too, that it was a great civilization, a great empire, went all the way up to Spain, the gates of Vienna, all that.

But you could say the same thing about Napoleon or you could say the same thing about Queen Victoria or Julius Caesar. I mean get over it, right? I mean this is ridiculous. They're the ones who haven't let it go. They're the ones who haven't let it go. And so we're nursing a grievance that is hundreds of years old. And yet I just note with interest and I know we're going to hear from Claire and Claire tweeted yesterday a non-COC compliant tweet, which I recommend everybody go. If you don't follow Claire Belinsky, go find it. The way that the great empires fell or the great empires evolved was that they were destroyed.

The people in them were killed and they fell apart. I mean you can make the argument that the Great War, World War I is what destroyed the British Empire. Obviously Napoleon was defeated and exiled. The Roman Empire collapsed and it was – Rome was sacked. Is that what – I mean is that what we need to do? I mean to put a finish to all of this? It does seem like radical Islam is merging more and more closely with moderate and establishment islam um the the the moderate cleric that senator secretary of

state john kerry lauded a few years ago or last year um is a active supporter of these french guys so maybe you know maybe we need to finish this or am I just blabbering? Well, no. The question seems to come down to – this will be interesting to watch in the fallout from this because one of the things that we heard yesterday that we seem to hear every time this happens, that we heard after 9-11, that we heard after London, that we heard after Madrid is that this changes everything. I don't know that it ever has.

I mean to be honest with you, I don't feel like 9-11 changed everything. I feel like 9-11 changed the way we get on airplanes. That's about it. Right, and it's changing back by the way. I mean have you noticed? It's like everybody's – fill out a form in your TSA pre. Right, right. But there's this remarkable – I guess it's a good thing in a way, maybe being put to perverse ends.

But there's this sort of remarkable elasticity in Western cultures that we have kind of this public grieving process after this happens. That's the short term. Midterm, there may be some sort of quasi-serious response. And in the long term, we just kind of go back to the status quo. I mean if London didn't wake Europe up, if Madrid didn't wake Europe up, I hope this is different. I don't have a lot of confidence that it will be. One more return to the status quo with another diminution of the freedoms that we previously enjoyed. You're absolutely right, Troy. That's the sequence. First, we have the outpouring of sentimental grief where people stand in a public

place and raise candles and assume that that is going to change anything. And then you have editorial cartoons. You have stern then you have editorial cartoons. You have sternly worded editorial cartoons. One of my favorites yesterday showed a terrorist running in fear with a bunch of pens pursuing him. When the actual truth of the matter, of course, was the terrorist had shot everybody who was handling those pens. And the inefficacy of those pens was shown to be the case when dealing with people who were willing to kill. And then third in the long term, you go on as the status quo returns but you don't do that cartoon anymore you don't do that picture you don't do that thing right and in

america newspapers they don't even print it they're not even printing them no they dastardly of course not no they haven't well you know one of the things yesterday you found is that these cartoons supposedly were making all these barbed remarks at the terrorists just just daunting them, testing them to do something else. But Barb, of course, what? Oh, wow. I just got that. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Barb. Exactly, of course. Well, Barb is a French insult. And in doing it, I think you rub your chin, sort of.

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for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Back to Paris. Claire Berlinski. You know her, you love her. Back from Turkey to Paris. What Berlinski, you know her, you love her. Back from Turkey to Paris. What a relocation from one sad place where they're jailing the journalists to another where they're killing them. But nevertheless, we're happy she's in a safer place and was on the scene and was

ready to tell us what she saw and what she thinks exactly Paris and France is going to do next. Claire, welcome back. What's the mood the next day? Bad. I think I can say that quite confidently. I think I have been too busy today taking calls from journalists overseas to be asking very many people how they're feeling. But the few I've spoken to have been appalled terrified um hey you can just go to the thesaurus and and figure out all the words that might apply in this situation and then people are people are horrified hey cla, it's Rob Long in New York. Hey, listen.

So first things first, you're okay? Everybody's okay? Yeah, I am. I'm a cat in the background. That's good. Yes, there's a cat in the background. I am absolutely fine, and the concern that people have displayed has been very touching, but I'm fine, and the concern should be going toward the victims of the attack, not me.

All right. And you posted – you tweeted a link for people who want to contribute to the Victims Fund, and we will put that on the podcast. Yeah, I haven't done any research into that organization, but I see no reason to think that it won't go where it's supposed to. I think a much more important thing to do is for everyone in the world to reproduce those cartoons. Right. Well, okay, let me ask you a couple questions about that

because the news obviously is late-breaking. There's reports right about an hour ago that a French policewoman was shot. Yes. They seem to be winning every shootout with the police. This is not a good thing. No, not a good thing. So let me ask you this question

because you said people are appalled and people are terrified. What are they, in France, what are they really appalled at? Are they appalled at the attack? Are they appalled that they got away? Are they appalled that there were two policemen guarding the Charlie Hebdo offices but they were ineffective? What's the mood in – All of that but let me let me see if i can organize this in a way that makes

sense be given that some of this will not be immediately obvious to american readers um the figures there are as well known in france as say john stewart and stephen colbert and for many of the same reasons there are people who make fun of famous people. What they're best known for, for obvious reasons, is for making fun of Muhammad, but he certainly wasn't the only object of their satire. They made fun of everyone. They made fun of the Pope.

They made fun of Jews. They made fun of politicians. They were entirely tasteless. It's true. It's entirely irrelevant that they were tasteless they were also often very funny um and they would not be shut up even after being firebombed which was tremendously courageous it actually i say it's courageous but no it's it's what civilized people do they say no you will not shut us up um but it is a misapprehension to see them as specialists in Mohammed satire.

They were satirists, and they simply didn't choose to exclude that particular object of satire, because that one is more dangerous than the others. So people are appalled for many reasons. The first is that these are beloved figures, and we don't even know the names of all the victims because they haven't been replaced yet. Among them was an economist who has a weekly radio show that people have been listening to every Friday morning since the 1990s. They're household names.

So France isn't a huge country. To lose people like this, it really is the equivalent of, the best way I can explain it is... FBD doesn't stand for friendly business, ducks. Or for the freelance beatbox department. FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD stands for support. We support businesses and communities across Ireland. Visit your local branch to talk to your FBD insurance team

and see how we can support your business. FBD Insurance. Support. It's what we do. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. We'll say at the height of Saturday Night Live, when they were still funny, someone had walked in and shot them all. Right.

Shot and killed them all. I mean, it is that kind of shock. There is first that. There is second everything it implies. And it implies so much. First, probably I should start with the most important thing, which is last night Time magazine asked me to write a quick piece for them of the strict word limit. And at the time I was writing it, I felt that what I was saying was sufficiently speculative that I wasn't sure it was wise to say it as confidently as I now feel it is entirely appropriate to say.

The most important aspect of this, beyond the loss of life, is all the evidence that is now coming in from the video recordings, from the analysis of this, is that these were not homegrown loons. These were not the kinds of people responsible for a number of recent terrorist attacks in France, which are also absolutely horrifying, but this is horrifying in a different way because these were clearly professionals who had had a great deal of military training. They weren't aimlessly spraying bullets. Right. They were using the kinds of techniques that only professional soldiers use. The automatic weapons were set on semi-automatic, right?

Not only that, but they were used in a way that – well, let me – the most obvious example, I think this has made the American press as well, and it was actually treated very well by CNN. One of the shot-up police vehicles was particularly notable for the grouping of the nine holes in the window, which were all within an inch. Very difficult to do with an AK, which, as we all know, is not a particularly accurate weapon. It means that they had a lot of practice. And as of last night, it might have been irresponsible to suggest what that indicates as of today it's not whatsoever it means these are exactly what intelligence services in europe have been mourning of for years of increasing panic it means that this is the syrian war come back to europe and these people are they have managed now to win every encounter with the police.

There were many opportunities to apprehend them in every case. The police lost. They're killing them, and they're at large. This is the Schengen area of Europe, which means they could be anywhere by now. The only advantage we've got is that their brothers and their three of them, the youngest one surrendered himself to the police. So that's the only hope of being able to figure out where they are. But the ones who

are at large are the interior minister was helpful enough to remind us armed and dangerous as if we didn't know this and exceptionally exceptionally eager to kill, not just cartoonists. One of the most chilling details of this, and there are so many, is that one of them saw a wounded police officer on the ground and decided that that was a fine opportunity for a double tap, just for fun of it. And that policeman that he assassinated, he was a muslim as well we now know uh i didn't realize that that was a detail that i hadn't i hadn't noticed um i read it today the the the the point being that their object was not only to kill cartoonists who offended them it was just to kill right and uh to kill people who were no longer a threat at that and clearly what this means is a declaration of war and i don't think that could be understated but um i guess here's my let me just break it i have two questions

just about the timeline so the guys get out of the car and they go to a – go ahead. Go ahead. Excuse me. Well, they go and they ask – they don't actually know where the offices are. They know – I guess you can only assume that they know that there's an editorial meeting of the editors and the contributors to the magazine at that time every day. And so they know they're all grouped, right? Yeah. It's been two hours since i checked the news because i've been doing interviews so a lot more may be known than i knew two hours ago but

this before that i was studying the timeline quite carefully and this is what i know about it um first they did their homework they knew when the editorial meeting was going to be they obviously had the place under surveillance for quite some time before. At 8.28 a.m. yesterday, Charlie Hebdo tweeted an illustration of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And it was a mildly amusing cartoon, but not one of their best. That's not the point either. At 10 a.m., the journalists were gathered for their weekly editorial meeting. And one of the survivors told Le Monde that he believed the attackers must have been informed that the editorial meeting was taking place.

Because otherwise, it would have been unlikely that they'd all have been in the same place together. Now, I'm not quite sure what this implies, but it does suggest that they had done their homework and knew when the best time to attack would be. A lot of the rest of the timeline has been provided by the Paris prosecutor. His name is François Mellin, and I suspect it and other people at the scene were telling me that there were more of them, but I think that might've been eyewitness confusion. Two people definitely dressed in black, carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons. People of course can't recognize what,

you know, can't tell one weapon from another, but they were saying automatic faces covered. Some people were saying rocket launchers, but again, I suspect that's witness confusion because that hasn't been confirmed, and it doesn't sound plausible to me.

There are some very weird aspects of this that are being reported that suggest a lot more questions than answers, but among them are that they asked the maintenance men where the magazine office was located and for some reason despite the obvious reasons you would not say to masked men carrying automatic weapons where that office was the maintenance men told them um i don't know what to make of that certainly suggest questions they proceeded is that being is that being i mean is

that the kind of thing, the detail that is being brooded about in Paris right now? Yeah. Okay. That's a big question for here. It is being reported, certainly. Anyone with a brain

is going to be asking that question. Right now, there is so much confusion that it may not be getting the kind of analysis that it needs but i it will it will at some point okay um they proceed to the office and open fire uh they also killed the maintenance worker um so it seems unlikely the maintenance worker was was uh in any way collaborating with them or or if he was, it was quite a mistake. One of the survivors who survived... Well, hold on, before I even get to that,

there's another very weird aspect. There's a cartoonist named Corinne Ray who was returning to the office after picking up her daughter from daycare, was approached by the gunman who threatened her and demanded that she let them in the office upon which she typed in the code the security code and let them in now again i just don't understand why she thought this was a good idea and i think it's a good question to ask it's possible i'm just speculating that her daughter was with her and that might have persuaded her that um you know there there are things that

people will do if their children are involved that are are different from what they might do if it's only themselves it's unclear at this point um so they they they got into the magazine's office which was supposedly under the protection of a competent police guard, but obviously wasn't because that guard is now dead. They killed everyone there. They fired indiscriminately. They fired indiscriminately is, again, one of these things that's unclear. That report came from Christophe Deloy, who was writing this for Reporters Without Borders, and I don't know how he knows this.

The woman who allowed them in by typing in the code managed to take refuge under her desk and thus survived, and apparently the attack lasted for five minutes. Again, we're not sure how he knows this. All right, now it gets weirder and weirder after this. They left the building and drove off with a third suspect.

There was an exchange of fire with the police three times after this. So they left the office in a car and were they chased? Were they being chased? How quickly did the police respond?

I mean the outside police respond. I mean obviously there were two policemen who were supposed to be guarding the building. By the time I got there, there were at least 1,000 police, right? And you got there how many minutes after the event? This is the thing. I was not there as a journalist. I was there as someone who was going to an appointment, and the appointment I know for sure was at 11.30,

and I was probably there at 11.20. Okay, so 20 minutes after the beginning of the attack. I'm trying to figure this out, because supposedly the car pulled up at 11.30. So maybe, wait, I'm trying to figure this out because supposedly the car pulled up at 1130. So maybe wait, I'm sorry. I should, I was going to my appointment at 1230.

You can hear a little bit of confusion in this. My appointment was at 1230. So I was probably there at 1220. Okay. By this point, there were at least a thousand cops there. So they got there fast and they got there in numbers and nonetheless there were three separate incidents during a separate exchanges of gunfire

with the police and they managed to kill the police each time i'm not sure that each time is correct i know they managed to do it. But they certainly managed to evade the police and to evade being shot. Not only to evade the police, but to kill them. So we're talking about all of Paris' police force and weapon power against these two assailants who managed not only to escape, but to win. This is terrifying. This suggests, this suggests,

uh, more than just a bit of military training. And it, it also suggests that we're not safe until they're dead. Let me ask you something. Uh, in, in time magazine last night, I think that was dead. Let me ask you something. In Time Magazine last night... I think that was me.

No, no, no. I knew it wasn't you. Because in Time Magazine last night, someone posted an article. I wrote about it, and it was mis-headlined, I think. It was five facts that explain the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No, maybe I submitted a piece to them, I think, after that. I know for sure it wasn't you. Now, the headline was sort of someone, as a member pointed out to me this morning on the site, was probably misapplied to this. But here were the five contextual things that were important for us to understand, to understand the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

One, unemployment is very high. Yeah, lay it on me. I don't even know if I want to hear this, but yeah. Two, anti-Islam, anti-migrant sentiment is very high. Oh, well, I can assure you it is today. Yeah, that's right. Three, Marine Le Pen is getting more popular. By the way, this is a French national, at least one of them was. Three, Marine Le Pen is getting more popular.

By the way, this is a French national, or at least one of them was, and I'll get to that in a moment. Four, that François Hollande, the president of France, François Hollande, his approval ratings are low. And the fifth was it takes too long to become a citizen of France. Those are the five things that provide – That really does a great service to Americans in helping them to explain this. I was given a very strict word limit of – I was only allowed 700 words. I hope I have done my best to at least point out a few facts that might be more relevant, but it will take more than that to make it all quite clear. The point that is, if you want the five facts that are most important,

those would not be anywhere near the top of the list. Can I add one more thing to raise your blood pressure even higher? The New York Times ran last night with a story in which the lead – I'm going to get it wrong. The lead was basically Europe is about to enter a very dark period where anti-Islamic sentiment will be rampant. So their takeaway from this event, from the 12 dead cartoonists, was this is a tragedy, the poor Muslims. Well, first, just to make a few things clear, it's not 12 dead cartoonists. We're not quite sure how many are dead yet because many were in critical condition, but it was also economists, maintenance men, and police. In one sense, there is a real point there

in that the beneficiary of this certainly will be Marine Le Pen, who's obviously the only one who is saying exactly what must be said under these circumstances, but is not otherwise a figure of who we really want running France because her second great foreign policy idea

is a lot less attractive than her first, and that's a close alliance with Vladimir Putin. So, yes, certainly, there will be an anti-Muslim backlash. It will be a backlash that will be in many ways unfair, given that there are many Muslims in France who have had exactly the reaction to this than any civilized person would and that the consequences of this may not be the ones that ideally we wish. I'm sorry.

I've lost exactly the point that I was on the verge of making. Claire, to that point, this is Troy. Something that we were discussing before you came on is that every time that we – there's an attack like this. We had it in the United States. We've had a few in Europe, whether you're talking about London or Madrid. You see what you're seeing now. You see these signs of sort of public solidarity the day after and then there is a feeling that the half-life is pretty attenuated, that over time, you just kind of get back to something that is devilishly close to what the status quo was before. Do you think this is different? If you play this forward to like the midterm, like six months from now is france different a very good question and one in fact i was just asked uh uh i i have a feeling that yes this is different because the more we know about it the

more it it is clear that this is a different kind of attack um this is this is exactly what we've been warned about and warned in increasingly hysterical terms by intelligence officials who understand that the consequences of what's happening in Syria are going to be returnees who know what they're doing and i do think that the french are prone to a great deal of um prone to succumb to a great deal of the kind of nonsense that i hardly need to describe on ricochet but once pushed past a certain point they're also capable of a kind of brutality that even Americans aren't capable of, a CF Algerian war. And I think that this has provided the kind of shock that is apt not to pass quickly. Whether it will result in an intelligent response is not clear to me at all because so far what we're seeing is evidence of both intelligence services and police police competency

or lack thereof so appalling that I don't know whether they can pull it together it is beyond belief that the cops were not able to apprehend them and were, were killed despite having all the, what should presumably be all the U.S. at all that are really important to mention. And stop me if I need to take a break here, but this is just something people need to understand. I want to make sure I've got the chronology right here, but this is a family unit as they put it the two brothers um the koachi brothers

they've been identified now their photographs have been published um the the authorities have noted they are potentially armed and dangerous as if we needed that pointed out but the um the elder one who is a french national is also known as abu isin and he was arrested in 2008 on his en route to damascus we have probably not to um enter the shawarma business and sentenced to three years in prison 18 months suspended. He belongs to a group that's under the command of the so-called Amir Farid Ben Yattou, whose professional specialty is sending jihadists to Iraq to join the ranks of the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda, at the time headed by Zarqawi. And sometime between his arrest and yesterday,

he was released. Now this raises some obvious questions, does it not? Yes, I was unaware that Barack Obama was in charge of French intelligence. Well, it's worse, frankly. I mean, I don't even think Obama would have done it.

To let someone like that out of prison is the kind of thing that... I'm flabbergasted. You apprehend someone who is on his way to join the jihad without any doubt and under the control of someone who is a very easy candidate for the most evil man of the world.

You sentence him to an 18-month suspended sentence. Let him back out again. This happens and you're surprised? Well, the New York Times is quoting a French defense attorney today, I believe. No, in a piece a few months ago about France's new laws that attempted to keep people from going to Syria. And this French defense attorney, a member in good standing, I'm sure, of the leftist intelligentsia, is saying that all they have done is to criminalize buying a ticket, that you really can't do that because, for heaven's sakes, civil rights, human rights are going to be denied. Look, Claire, one of the things that has struck us in America is the idea of the unarmed policeman.

When we heard that the first few policemen who showed up were unarmed, it summed up everything we seem to fear about Europe. And when you mentioned – Well, the police, by the time i got there were armed plenty uh they're they're not lacking for for weaponry but they do seem to be lacking for any skill in using it um however i now this is something that is a rumor and i'm not even sure i should I'm not even sure I should repeat it because it is just a rumor, and I want to stress that it's just a rumor. But it's the kind of rumor that is so striking that I'm going to mention it anyway because someone needs to be trying to figure out at least how this rumor started and why. And that's that the police fled the scene. The ones who had been appointed to guard the office, they didn't even try. They just ran.

And if there's any truth to that, I don't know whether there is, but that rumor somehow got started, and the fact that it even has traction tells you something. Well, then there will be civil discontent with government and all of its manifestations. Whether or not people are allowed to have the conversations, what I'm interested in. You mentioned the defense and intelligence people who were warning of these things. No doubt some people would have accused them of Islamophobia and racism and thereby shut off from the start any discussion of the problem that France and Europe faces. Look, Charlie was a left-wing magazine.

The dissolution of national identity through immigration, embrace of multiculturalism, et cetera, is a left-wing progressive transnational idea, right? So they have made it difficult for ordinary, decent people to have a conversation about national identity without tarring them as Islamophobes, racists, nativists, and the rest of it. This sort of goes back to what Troy asks. Is France doomed to only be able to express a legitimate argument about national identity

through people like Le le pen or are there other options and outlets that can channel that energy let's put it this way one of the people who was invited to this morning's emergency crisis meeting as far as i understand and again i i don't want to be too confident in saying this because i i may have my facts wrong here, was Nicolas Sarkozy. And that's not an accident of the true. There are people who can say it. He might have been one of the ones who could. It is very unfortunate that Hollande is now in charge and that the term of a French presidency is seven years. I actually think that France is in a better position in this regard than Britain. I think there are

more people who are willing to say the obvious here than there are there. And I think that it does bring to mind, although Christopher Hitchens was proven wrong about this. He said there was something about September 11th that made him think, well, at least now it's clear. That didn't happen to be true. It didn't seem to have made it clear.

But in this case, if this doesn't make it clear, then it is not possible to make it clear. Right. Right? It was clear. It was clear to millions, but there was a concerted effort to drape a veil over the truth that had been revealed for fear of

discrediting certain key prized ideas and for fear of emboldening people who themselves were regarded as outside the pale because they wanted to talk about things like comparative values of cultures and the rest. Yeah. I have – again, as I said, I have not actually been going out and doing journalism today proper because I've been too busy trying to just make clear what I saw yesterday.

But I have a feeling that there aren't very many people in Paris today who are unwilling to speak about this. There have been some, of course, the usual suspects have been disgracing themselves in the usual way. There have been some people who have been unbelievably willing to commit to print the idea that somehow they had it coming, or if not, maybe that badly,

then at least they were exhibiting bad judgment. But there are, you know, it's, it's, it is quite amazing to me that there could be anyone left in the world who doesn't understand the central value of the enlightenment, that everything that makes the West what it is was attacked not just attacked but slaughtered and

that the people who did this were not your ordinary homegrown wackos i mean it was this is war it's and and and and it must be treated as such. The question is, what is the intelligent response to this? Because that is not an easy question to answer. There are ways, there are many ideas for responding to it, but not all of them are good ones. Not all of them are apt to be productive um i i know that in saying this i can say it is all too easy to come across as an absolute loon and acquire a um a reputation for lunacy that can't be undone well you know but you're you have a lot of cats. Yeah. I'm going to say this in an indirect way.

Okay. But I think my grandfather saw a lot of the 20th century. And it happened that he had a heart attack immediately after September 11th. And he was an old man who had just suffered a heart attack that was to kill him within a week. So what he said was to be taken as such. It was not necessarily that of his political insight and his prime. And his attention was not directed at the political events as closely as they would ordinarily be.

But his words were unforgettable. It was they must pay for this with the city. And I think we know what that means. Well, Carthage must be destroyed, as one particular man said over and over and over until it happened. Claire? I've thought about his comments many times, but I believe that there was a great amount of wisdom that the way you fight a war like this is not slowly over time trickling with – you don't spend 10 years bringing democracy to Afghanistan. You don't put pureed raisins in your captive's anuses. You drop a nuclear weapon immediately on a city and it doesn't matter which one. Now, I say this fully aware how that sounds and fully aware that I can't make any kind of case for this that is acceptable in utilitarian terms.

But my grandfather saw more of the 20th century than anyone else I can appeal to and saw how many things happened. Well, when it comes to understanding the news... The people who came up with the phrase shock and awe were on to something, but it wasn't quite the right something. Well, when it comes to understanding the 21st century, we're going to go to you. We hope you can get some sleep.

It's been a pleasure. Well, that's not the right word. It's been instructive and bracing to talk to you. We look forward to your next dispatch at Ricochet and stay safe in Paris. Never thought I'd say those words. Claire Berlinski, thank you again for coming to the podcast. All right. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Claire. All right. We you again for coming to the podcast. All right. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Claire. All right. We're going to grind all the gears now, drop her into neutral and then rev her up and go to economics, domestic of a sort. And when you want to talk domestic economics, who better than Larry Kudlow? You know who he is and you know where you can find him. And now he's here and we've got to ask him about some maniacal ideas that are being hatched up to ruin your pocketbook. But first, welcome to the podcast, sir. So, Larry, gas prices are low all across the country. It's a great time to start taxing gas more, right?

No, it's an absolutely terrible idea, taxing gas more. And it's amazing to me that Senator Robert Corker, who is, I don't know, kind of a leader in the party now on the Sunday news shows, you know, what are you going to do? What's your coming agenda? Oh, let's raise the gas tax. What a great idea that is for economic growth and jobs and rallying the party. No, I think it's a terrible idea. First of all, let me just give you a couple of things. The whole highway trust fund should be reformed, reordered, completely changed. The original intent under Eisenhower was for the interstate federal highway system. OK, and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with

that. But what you've got now is the Highway Trust Fund has become broader and broader and broader down through the years. And it's now covering, you know high-speed bullet trains, local commuting operations, local states, bridges, tunnels, everything. It should be devolved to the states. That's where most of it should go. Let the states decide how to finance it. Let the states decide wage policy so we don't have to use Davis-Bacon, and let the states decide policy, and let the federal government continue to fund the interstate highway system.

If you do that, if you take the commuter stuff, the commuter stuff out of the fund, it's in balance. It does not need more. Hey, Larry, it's Rob Long in New York. Nice to talk to you. Hey, so, all right, just one more second on the low gas prices, because low gas prices are fantastic. People are tweeting photographs of their gas. I mean, a friend of mine in L.A. is tweeting pictures of gas prices in L.A. that are lower than anyone's ever seen in a long time. They're almost like black and white. What are they? I got to ask you.

Three something, three, but three in 10. But it's low, right? It's low for us. But what I mean is, and so while we're all celebrating, some economists are saying, yeah, but you know what? That's going to make Keystone XL and shale oil and all the things that brought about this kind of low, one of the things that brought about the low oil prices, it's going to bring all of that investment to a skidding halt. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. What's going to happen is they will slow down investment and they will slow down production.

By the way, most of the big shale guys have already done that. The peak of CapEx and production in that business, if you look at the numbers, was actually 2013. And in 2014, we grew, but more slowly. I think 8% or 9% last year, and it was about 13% to 15% the year before. So the growth is going to slow. Absolutely. I get that. Look, that's how capitalism works.

That's how free markets work. If prices come down, that means profit margins come down, then you have to slow down. But it's not going to be a collapse. They're going to continue to produce as they are. And therefore, things like better pipelines, you know, if nothing else, it's safer than letting trucks and railroad cars do it. Our fracking guys in North Dakota would use the Keystone. It's not just Canada. But let me make this point. I don't know what's in that bill. And I've suggested to so many senators, Republican senators, they need to use that bill as a vehicle to open up federal fields for fracking and secondly, to abolish all export limits. This export thing is very important. So our producers have a worldwide market to sell their oil. That will help get rid of any overcapacity, and it will also get Europe off the hook from Russia. I'm persuaded. Thank you. Can we just change the subject briefly? Jim Pethokoukis posted yesterday on Ricochet. Headline was, the GOP said Obamanomics would kill the economy.

It didn't. Now what? And refers to Goldman Sachs projection that we're going to get a 3% growth next year, almost one percentage point above potential, further acceleration consumer spending, mainly because of the positive impact on the oil price plunge, housing recovery, above-trend GDP growth for 2015. Sounds great. That's good news for everybody? It's good news for President Obama? Is it bad news for the GOP? It shouldn't be. It should not be. I mean, look, we've had 2% growth for the last, I don't know, almost six years. So we may be shifting to a 3% trend line. May, may. I'm not 100% convinced of that, but it's quite possible.

Now, what we need is 4% to 5% growth for the next five years or so to get back to the long-term post-World War II trend line, which is, I think, 3.3 percent. We're about $2 trillion. This is what Republicans should say. We are about $2 trillion and still 7 or 8 million jobs below the long-term trend line. Okay, that's how damaging the recession was, and that's how poor the policies were. So knowing that, the GOP should have a positive message, okay, a positive message to bring down any and all barriers to economic growth. All right, that means full-fledged flat tax reform. That means limited government intervention. That means rolling back regulations.

That means keeping the dollar strong and sound. It does mean education reforms, for example, although I think that stuff should be done at the state level, not necessarily at the federal level. So we need policies that encourage work. This is something that Casey Mulligan has written so eloquently about. Right now, our policies encourage people not to work. We pay them not to work. This is something that Casey Mulligan has written so eloquently about. Right now, our policies encourage people not to work. We pay them not to work. So food stamps have exploded and disability insurance has exploded and welfare has exploded. It's gone way beyond the safety net. All right. It's gone way beyond. So we need to restructure a lot of these so-called anti-poverty programs. That should be part of the Republican package.

And we need to encourage the energy revolution. So those are all positive, optimistic agenda items. I underscore the word optimistic. USA should grow faster. Just because a couple of quarters are better doesn't mean they've lost their message. Larry, this is Troy Sinek. You mentioned tax reform in there. And while we're taking our mutual friend Jim Pethokoukis

out for a spin, let me call on him one more time. Jim has said a few times and he's not the only very smart conservative who's saying this, that there is – there's not much action to be had anymore when it comes to marginal tax rates, that republicans need to stop the obsession with just straight tax cuts. You can talk about tax reform or something like that, but that you don't need to get fixated on those rates in the way that we traditionally have and that maybe it's not even particularly politically viable in a way that it used to be. How do you feel about that?

Well, look, Jimmy is a good man, by the way. He's a very dear friend of mine and a regular on my radio show just as he was a regular on my TV show. But where we do agree completely is on slashing the corporate tax. In fact, if I had my way, I'd abolish the corporate tax altogether. I think that's the best thing. John Steele Gordon just wrote about that in the Wall Street Journal. But in any case, get the corporate tax rate down to 20, 25 percent.

Get rid of some of the deductions, allow companies to repatriate roughly two trillion dollars of cash. And it should be revenue neutral, not a trillion dollars increase in revenue, which is what Obama wants. So that's very important. The primary beneficiary of a lower corporate tax is middle class wage earners. They are the biggest beneficiaries. That's what the work shows. Second, just one other point. Small businesses, LLCs and other pass-throughs should be able to pay taxes at the lower corporate tax rate, not the 40 percent plus, but at the lower rate. That's very important. Now, regarding the personal code, I probably do disagree about the child tax credit, which Jimmy and some others are pushing very

heavily. We already have one. I regard tax credits as very inefficient. I can actually give you more money by dropping the middle class tax rate from 25 to 15 percent. But that all, you know, these are details that can be hashed out. The public hates the tax code. They hate it. It's too complicated. And they have spent too much time with accountants and lawyers. And nobody can figure out the IRS comes in and audits you. Nobody knows the tax code. That's reason enough to simplify the code. Flatten the rates as much as possible. Arthur Laffer and others want a 15 to 20 percent rate. Steve Forbes. I'm in that camp. I always have been. I always will be. I think it's a very powerful potion.

By the way, the politics here, you know, I want to argue for economic growth. So lower rates, in my opinion, would be good for economic growth and enterprise. But they're arguing that Mitt Romney lost the election because of his tax cut. I don't agree with that at all. All right. Romney's was across the board, 20 percent tax cut. He never talked about it. He never talked about it. And they bashed him. Obama bashed him for being a rich guy. And Romney did a poor job of rebutting that. One time that Romney argued strongly for his limited spending, lower tax deregulation plan was in the first debate where he slaughtered Obama. And then he started backing off in the second and third debate. So I disagree on the politics.

All I want is pro-growth, supply-side economic reforms across the board. Taxes, spending, restructuring of the welfare entitlement system, rollback regulations, and have a strong, sound king dollar. One more question from me. It seems like one of the sort of great economic anxieties right now is this idea that technology and automation is displacing workers in a way that – you can say that we've always had this and it always kind of rebounds and sort of harmonizes out. And there are a lot of people who seem to think that for some reason that this time is different, that you're seeing automation proceed in such a way that we are never going to get back a lot of these jobs. Do you think those anxieties are misplaced? Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, this

goes back to I know a lot of buggy whip makers lost their jobs 20 years ago. Okay, I get that. But the automobile combustible engine was very good for growth. Look, we're in a tremendous, almost miraculous technology era. And what we need to do, again, is remove any government barriers, be they taxes or regulations. You know, for example, can we please not make the Internet a public utility and then tax it to death? Can we please do that? And I mean, really, this is something Republicans should be talking about. We need to make it easy, easy as can be for startup companies. We're not producing the rate of startup companies that we did in the 80s and 90s. Startup companies, by the way, are better job

creators even than small businesses. The technological revolution, the march of progress, the advances in ideas and technology is always good. It's good for jobs. It's good for incomes. It's great for economic growth. And I don't buy into any of that stuff. I think it's, you know, progress is good. That's the thing. Progress is good. Hey, Larry, it's Rob again. You know, I live most of the time in L.A., in California,

and I'm going to throw a question out. I know no one's asked you yet. A little different subject, but I know you do a great podcast with Tim Pawlenty. You talk to a lot of Republican leaders and especially Republican senators all the time. Senator Barbara Boxer announced a couple hours ago she is not running for the election. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that seat is open. Wow. Who do you want in it? Oh, gosh. That's I don't't know that's a tough uh that's a

very tough call well you know it's the place of all that innovation it's silicon valley but it's got no republican uh structure there they're the most prominent republican who has a california residence who spoke eloquently as you just just now agreed, in a national presidential debate was Mitt Romney. Right. Well, look, that's an interesting question. I was whole hog for my pal Carly Fiorina when she ran. And unfortunately, it didn't work. I wonder whether Carly might want to take another look at that. I don't know. Carly is, she's a brilliant woman who's gotten even better, even better on the, you know, speaking stump. I just had her on a panel at the Heritage Foundation and she did a great job. But gosh,

I don't know. I mean, this is where, for example, a place like California is very important, Rob. Republicans have given up on it and they shouldn't. This is where a true economic growth message across the board. OK, this is where immigration reform has to come into play. This is where a big tent has to come into play. And these are things Republicans can do. If only they'll do it. To some extent, Neil Kashkari was on the right track, although I don't think he had as good a growth message, a tax message as he could have had. But Neil was on the right track, although I don't think he had as good a growth message, a tax message, as he could have had. But Neal was on the right track. So I don't know. You know the GOP out there a lot better than I do.

I mean, one of those smart congresspeople, maybe that's who they should go in. I don't know. Larry James, a little hot. Larry James Latlix here in Minneapolis. One last question, and this one's really out of left field. There's a case that people are watching because Wendy's is suing a lot of its franchisees saying they've got to rehab their stores and they have to put in a new point of sale system. The franchise operators are saying, no, we don't want to do this.

And the reason people are watching how this comes out is there's an overarching issue as to whether or not the employees of an individual franchise belong to the guy who owns the store or whether or not part of the national operation which then can be unionized this is a big way how do you think how do you think this is going to play out and what would the effect of unionization on fast food restaurants be yeah well it'd be a killer uh for one. It would be an absolute killer. Wage costs and benefit and health care costs. The margins for these franchise franchises, the profit margins are paper thin, as you may know. On the issue you're raising, which is terribly important, my view is that the franchise, the franchises and the franchisees, their small businessmen, they own the franchise and they have complete control over hiring and firing, complete control. And that must not change. That must not change.

We had this issue with McDonald's, which periodically runs up. I mean, there are some franchises that are owned by the parent company. That's different. But most of the franchises are owned by local business people. And they have full sway over hiring, firing, the setting of all wages, the setting of hours worked. You know, they have to meet other criteria. There are national criteria about the quality and the performance and the food and that kind of thing. But no to meet other criteria. There are national criteria about the quality and the performance and the food and that kind of thing. But no, no, no. The guys that put up the money are the guys that make the decision. And predominantly, that's the franchisees.

See, I knew you'd have an opinion on that because we can throw anything economic at you, you're like the economic Michael Barone. You can ask him any question about politics from 1950s, you can do the same thing with Larry Kudlow. I'm not near as smart as Mike Barone. That's a whole different level. But I am familiar with these issues because we've reported on them down through the years on CNBC and elsewhere. The one you mentioned, by the way, is a heck of a big issue. In fact, the entire one of the pro-growth measures is very important. Lamar Alexander is trying to push a bill or a set of bills that would pin the ears back of the National Labor Relations Board on every subject across the board. These guys are trying to trump all manner of laws in order to help unions organize in companies, whether it's, you know, snap elections or minimum wage or you name it. And Lamar Alexander, to his great credit, has a bunch of

bills to pin their ears back. And I think that's very important. And this franchisee business is going to be part of it. Well, unions have long ears to pin back just like a donkey. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Mr. Kudlow. We'll see you on television and around the web. Thanks for having me. Bye-bye. Thanks, Fetch. And we should just say Kudlow and Pawlenty, Larry Kudlow and Tim Pawlenty are doing a podcast together.

They've been doing one for NR for a while. We're sort of going to take over that, be part of that, the Ricochet sort of general network of podcasts. So if you are listening to this podcast and you are a subscriber to the Superfeed, you get everything, you'll get that one too. That's actually a lot of fun. They're all friends and they kind of go at it every now and then. It's really good, good audio. And of course, if you are not a member of Ricochet,

wow, you just had two great guests. Well, I love listening to Larry and Tim, especially when they start talking about things outside of economics necessarily. They had a discussion the other day about strappy-heeled shoes and as to whether or not the higher heels and the little strap in the back with the jewel is a sign of – no, I'm kidding. They don't talk about women's shoes. That's culture stuff. But if you want to talk about culture stuff from a perspective that you would recognize from Ricochet, Acculturated.com is where you want to go because that's the place that pop culture matters. Now, if ever there was a week that we saw that pop culture has an impact far beyond what you may think, you pass a magazine that's on the newsstand and you think nothing of it except that maybe the cover is a little insulting to you. Well, the next week you read that a cover of a magazine insulting people led to the death of 12th.

Pop culture matters. And Charlie was pop culture. So to get a daily scene, which is one of the things they have that scours the internet on hot pop culture topics, you'll find stuff like books, comics, culture, fashion, and Peter isn't here so we can have the why comic books are important conversation again. I think I won that one so severely that he isn't coming back this week. They talk about movies, games. Games are incredibly important.

The Gamergate culture out there is something that a lot of people are not aware of but actually represents a vanguard of social justice warriors trying to influence entertainment on computers and consoles. In other words, politics and culture are inseparable. And to learn more and be up to speed so that when your kid starts talking about something or dinner table conversation turns to something you haven't heard about, well, get your talking points not handed to you but explained in a way you'll understand and enjoy and laugh and smile about at acculturated.com every day. And Ricochet readers, if you like this show, check it out because it'll tell you what not just conservative writers, but

young conservative writers. Yes, they exist. They found six or seven of them we'll have to say on Pop Culture. Well, hell of a week, hell of a couple of conversations there, guys. There's probably a few things that we've missed.

Troy, rattling around in the back of your brain, is there something that you want to add before we head out here? I'm so thrilled by the news of Barbara Boxer. Actually, that almost counteracts the entire 40 minutes of Claire. Yeah, that's right. And I think it was very cute and very coy, Rob, of you to ask that question when clearly that was an invitation. Well, I was hoping. For Larry to make the announcement for you well you know he just does not pick up on these does not pick up on these hints we have

a market for rhinos there's a market for rhinos republicans i would probably get one vote and it would be it probably be a friend it would peter Peter Robinson would actively campaign against me. I would say that. He would be my chief. He might primary you actually. Oh, he would primary the hell out of me. You know he would. And he would probably be right too.

But I would like to just say one more time and I know I've said this before and I'll say it one more time. Claire was up all night and she's rattled and she saw this thing and she – the first thing she did was she went back to her apartment and she wrote up a post for Ricochet and for Ricochet readers and members to respond to. And that – we really have to thank her for that. I know it was hard to do and she did it and that was great. But she also came on the podcast this morning. And that's just one of the benefits of Ricochet. So if you're listening to this and you're on the fence, you think, I don't know if I really want to join. Why should I join?

Join for that. Indeed. Indeed. And Rob, you also had a post there that generated an awful lot of comments. And people might think, gosh, I get to read Rob Long. I should give him money. And when I was reading that yesterday, though, your little post, I kept laughing, of course, as I usually do when I read your stuff. I provide my own laugh track.

And I wanted to ask you on the way out here, do they still use laugh tracks in your industry well no i mean laugh track is a word that has you know a complicated meaning we record the audience that watches it so the audience is watching a half-hour comedy that's shot in front of an audience i mean we call it multi-cam and there are we suspend mics over the audience to capture their laughter and so there is always then that was referred to as the laugh track. That's the track of the sound that records the audience. But the fake stuff is what we call sweetening. Right.

And I don't think – I mean we've never done it because you don't really need to. You cut the stuff that doesn't get a laugh. We've moved laughs around. I think in Cheers we used to do that a lot because somebody would say beer and then everybody in the audience would start to laugh because they knew that norm was going to say if something funny and it was just we would lift that because it was distracting when you're watching it at home to like see people laugh and nothing happening um but you never really have to buy them um you shoot 25 minutes or 26 minutes or 30 minutes often for a 22-minute show. Seven minutes of material doesn't work.

You cut it out. So there's no sweetening here, no sweetening at Ricochet either where from the brackish to the sublime, you get all kinds of member posts. And the one this week that we wanted to highlight, either you guys want to take a crack at this idea? Well, we should say it's – Shell Gamer asked if marijuana and sort of the marijuana legalization laws are the latest constitutional train wreck. It was a very interesting question. Like there are – obviously Colorado, in Colorado, marijuana is legal and what effect does that have on its neighboring states, especially Oklahoma, the Kansas people? So Nebraska and Oklahoma are going to ask the Supreme Court to force another state to ban – re-ban marijuana in order to reduce the cost of implementing their own bans because it makes it harder for you to keep marijuana legal if the neighboring state is legal, which is a very interesting question, something I think a lot of people anticipated. It will be interesting to see how the court rules. I can't see how the court would ever rule in the post, which I think is correct, is it's Oklahoma and Nebraska that are filing suit against Colorado because they're both bordering.

So you're going to get some spillover from the marijuana legalization in Colorado. The real problem here is that you've got a suit between Oklahoma and Nebraska on the one side, Colorado on the other, and the real party that's at fault here is not a party to the suit because it's the federal government because the issue is marijuana is still regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. But we never – when we started this grand experiment, we never went in and modified the law or repealed the law. The Justice Department just said, as they've been wanting to do in the Obama administration, we're not going to – don't really worry about it. We're just not going to enforce it. So this is one more example of the prosecutorial discretion exemption that essentially swallows the original law. So the parties that are going to go to court here if they do – because this can only go at the Supreme Court because it's between states.

Supreme Court might not take it. But the parties that are combating each other here are actually not the relevant party. The real problem here is that the federal government never bothered with this because nobody in Congress – nobody in Congress wanted to take this vote. They just figured they would let the states do it on their own. Right, but we don't do that. We don't equalize taxes. We don't equalize – certainly sales taxes. We don't equalize any other difference in how states comport their affairs.

It would seem like it would be strange to do that here. Right, yeah, and we actually – we recorded a podcast with Richard Epstein on this yesterday. Richard doesn't think that the Supreme Court is going to take the case, that they're even going to wander into these waters. But again, regardless of what you think about the marijuana legalization policy, this is just – they set all kinds of terrible precedents that this is just not the way you want to run a government. If you don't want a law to apply, then you amend it or you repeal it. And everything at this point is done by fiat and is done to minimize the friction for the people who are elected to make precisely these decisions. It's a kind of civic erosion you can't come back from I don't think. Yeah, but I think in a moral stance though, from a moral plane, you have to ask whether or not a same-sex couple has the right to force a Colorado marijuana grower to cross state lines to provide the sleep. You've got to make me my wedding brownies.

Yeah. I say that because there's an SSM feed or post at Ricochet.com, the member feed I believe, that already has 9,740 answers to it. And if you're new to Ricochet and you want to revisit the glory days of interminable conversations on these things, there you go. You'll also find short stuff with a couple of comments you can dig right in. You can have your own conversations. You can make your own world on Ricochet and enjoy the stuff that other people bring to it. But you can only do that really and keep it going in the future if you chip in, if you

join, and if you visit any of our sponsors who are pleased as punch to be here and we're happy to have them too, harrys.com. Your coupon code would be Ricochet and that would get you $5 off your first shipment. And acculturated.com, go there, don't spend anything, just give them the clicks and read interesting commentary so that when you go to Ricochet to discuss matters like comics or movies or fashions or game, you've got arguments that you didn't have before because you know more than you did before. Well, at the end of this,

we know more than we did before. Thanks to Larry and thanks to Claire. I want to thank Troy for sitting in for Peter. If he's not back next week, we've got Troy again, and that's great. There you go, Robinson. You know, taking some time off. Wait, maybe he's running for Senate. That's probably why. Oh my god, you're already behind, Rob. Yeah, he maybe he's running for Senate. That's probably why.

Oh, my God. You're already behind, Rob. Yeah, he's like Huckabee. He's quit his job. That would be wonderful because the knotted sweater then could be some sort of campaign imagery that he was famous for, like, you know, the hole in Adelaide's shoe and all the rest of it. Rob, as ever, thanks. I'm sorry to hear that gas is only $3.49 where you live. It's $1.99 here in Minnesota, which is extraordinary.

But it's also five below and it's snowing. So, Troy, Rob, it's been great. Can't wait to see you all next week. And we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Thank you, Tom. See you next week. Every time I look down on this timeless town Whether blue or gray be her skies, whether loud be her cheers or whether soft be her tears, more and more do I realize that I love Paris in the springtime

I love Paris in the fall I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles I love Paris in the, every moment of the year. I love Paris. Why, why do I love Paris? Because my love is near. Ricochet! Join the conversation. ¶¶ I love Paris in the springtime I love Paris In the fall

I love Paris In the winter When it drizzles I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles. I love Paris.