The Ricochet Podcast - Vive Le Podcast

Episode Date: April 16, 2015

Bonjour auditeurs fidèles du podcasts. Cette semaine, comme vous avez demandé, monsieurs Rob Long, Peter Robinson, et James Lileks aller en solo. Ils discutent Hillary, Rubio, agitent leur baguette magique à plusieurs grandes questions, et discutent des récents messages du la Feed membres. Enfin, qu’est-ce que le problème James avec un vif intérêt en toutes choses la France? Quel dilemme! Source

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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 and Rob Long. I'm James Lileks. Our guests today, James Lileks, Rob Long, and Peter Robinson.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 257. And remember that number because it augurs a new day on the podcast with a new sponsor. We're brought to you by Casper Premium Mattresses. Did you see that one coming? No, but you will when it comes to your door. It's a premium mattress for the fraction of a price delivered to your door. And we're not talking some big box.

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to make this all very tautological, Ricochet podcast is brought to you by Ricochet. And here's Ricochet's Rob Long and Ricochet's Peter Robinson to tell you why the Ricochet podcast brought to you by Ricochet should get you to sign up for Ricochet. Ricochet, exactly. James, how are you? I would say this about Ricochet. We you to sign up for Ricochet. Ricochet, exactly. James, how are you? I would say this about Ricochet.

We are trying to do for the online community and conversation what Harry Shave is doing for shaving and the Casper's mattress is doing for mat. We're disrupting it. That's the phrase people like to use these days, James. We're disrupting it. As anyone who's ever been on an internet site knows, the comment section is a swamp. It's nasty. It's horrible. And it's completely, completely unedifying. And we just felt like that probably needed to change. And so what we wanted to create was online conversations between and among our contributors and our members across the country, across the world.

And we did exactly that. The podcast, the thing that we're doing is really kind of an example of what we hope happens on the site, which is people sort of get together and have a conversation, no monologues. So if you're listening to this podcast and you like what you hear and you're not a member of Ricochet, please go to ricochet.com. Just check it out. Sign up for the Daily Shot. It comes in once a day in the early morning in your email inbox. It gives you all the factoids and tidbits you need to arm yourself for any conversations you might have with any progressives lurking in your circle.

And you get to check out Ricochet, and we are convinced that you will want to join. If you've been putting it off, and there are, I think by our count, not scientific, there are 5,000 people listening right this minute who mean to join Ricochet and have been putting it off. Let me ask you a favor. Don't do that. Today, go to Ricochet, become a member, and you will make this a sustainable and long-lasting institution. And we would thank you and we will welcome you as a member with us and with the other members. And if you hate the podcast, give us money anyway because Rob and I will spend it on bad habits that will hasten our demise to an early grave. And it's a win-win for everybody. Peter, good morning, good afternoon, good day, whatever people happen to be listening to this.

I have to ask you a question. Do. And the question is this. As somebody who is a speechwriter, a man who observes rhetoric and the way it's shaped on the lathe of public opinion, what did you think of Mario Rubio's, there I go, Marco Rubio's initial foray into the presidential waters? Pretty good. Pretty good.

All right. Thank you, folks. That's a great show. We've enjoyed podcast. Remember to buy Casper Premium Magic. Wait, pretty good, Peter? Yeah, pretty good. From pretty good to verging on the lower range of excellent. Here's what Marco Rubio was missing. And in fact, I just made a note so that I would remember to ask the two of you about this. But since it's coming up right away, I just made a note so that I would remember to ask the two of you about this. But since it's coming up right away, I remember without the note. The humor test.

The humor test. It occurred to me listening to Marco Rubio that what everybody says about him is true. At some basic level, he's the best at giving speeches, at connecting with an audience, at inspiring people since Ronald Reagan. But there is one important quality or one important skill that Ronald Reagan possessed that Marco Rubio does not possess in anything like the same degree, but neither, as far as I can tell, does almost anyone else. And that is lightness of touch. Marco Rubio is wonderful, but he's quite earnest. Jeb Bush said at one point before declaring his presidency that one test he would impose as he

thought it over and talked it over with his family was whether he could do it joyfully. He apparently decided that he could, but I don't see much evidence of it. If you think of the great ones, I mean the politicians who really inspired, didn't just inspire us to look to the future and think of America's greatness the way Marco Rubio – although that's no mean feat. But inspired us to do something even more important in some basic way, which is to relax, to have real confidence in them that they knew what they were doing and they believed in the future of the country because whatever the problems were they could still laugh and those would include franklin roosevelt and they would include at at at in the later part of his not early when early during his senate career but they would include john kennedy who could be very funny not not joke after joke after joke funny, but sharp wit funny. And of course, they would include Ronald Reagan. And I don't see it in Jeb Bush. Rand Paul is very

tightly wound. Marco Rubio is earnest. Hillary Clinton, when she attempts humor, is clearly fake. Well, of course, the fakery just never stops. So, what about it, boys? The humor test. Am I full of it? Is the humor test worth applying? Who passes? Rob, you know a little something about it. Well, I mean, this is a complicated question because, yes, you are full of it, but I'm not sure I...

On this point. On this point. I guess. These are sort of early days. I think I see it in Marco Rubio. You do? about connecting with the working class, which is something, he's not going to be giving speeches about entrepreneurship and venture capital. That was a big knock on the door last time. And most Americans are like,

well, that's great, but I'm not going to start a small business. I just want to work at my job and I want to bring home the money that I make. And I think that was a pretty big step. I actually was much more impressed by his speech, but maybe I had diminished expectations. I thought the fact that the two big presidential candidacy launches, Marco Rubio, and I think to be fair, Hillary Clinton, Rubio wins. Coherence of message, non-defensiveness, optimism, inspiring.

That to me – I think it was successful. The humor thing is something that – I mean the stump is designed to drain that out of you, right? The stump is designed to make you hate being alive. And so the humor test is really about whether I think the reason we like it is because it shows that the guy or the gal, I suppose, on the stump has a sense of perspective that as much as they want this job and they all want it in this grasping, probably psychologically unhealthy way. I mean, look, no one who's ever run for president of the United States is all that put together properly psychologically. There's something in you that's missing if you want to do this for yourself. smile and laugh every now and then are the ones who are telegraphing to either subconsciously

or not to the voter that, oh, you know what? My life will not end if I don't get this. Right. Correct. And I suspect we – the reason we haven't seen much humor on the stump is because we haven't seen anybody for whom that's really true in a long time. So I don't know. I mean look, you got a long way to go.

What you don't want to be is you don't want to be the comedian on the stuff, right? Because then you're – No. You don't want to be the Mo Udall. Mo Udall or the guy, the Godfather Pizza guy, 999. You don't want to be that guy. Herman Cain. Herman Cain, yeah.

Right. So it's tough. I mean I'm not sure – I'm not sure any of them really don't have it. I mean, I'm trying to think that tends to lead to questions about can this person deliver a joke. No, that's not really the point. The point is a certain lightness of touch, a certain wit, a certain ability to ad lib, partly because the stump is so grinding. Somebody who can really ad lib well can wake himself up, wake the whole staff up. OK. So we shall see. So here's the next question about Marco Rubio and this is for James. somebody who can really ad lib well can wake himself up, wake the whole staff up. Okay. So we shall see.

So here's the, here's the next question about Marco Rubio. And this is for James. I dressed the, the MC ship out of your hands for a moment, James, to ask you the question. If Marco Rubio is so wonderful,

how come he's only at 6%? How come he's behind Ted Cruz or was going into the announcement? Because probably because Cruz has more of the base excited because he's behind Ted Cruz or was going into the announcement? Probably because Cruz has more of the base excited because he's been speaking to them longer and he's been more theatrical in his opposition to the other side because they don't trust Marco Rubio. Good lord. I'm sorry. I've only had 16 cups of coffee.

I need number 17 to get all my names straight because Rubio is perhaps flip-flopped in immigration, they say. And as we know that when a Republican changes position is perhaps a flip-flop than immigration, they say. And as we know that when a Republican changes position, it's flip-flopping to show their essential lack of character and conviction as opposed to a Democrat who, when they change a position, is growing and evolving. All these things will come in, but I think Rubio will increase as we see more of him because he doesn't wear on you. Cruz wears on people if they're not inclined to love his character. Rand wears on people if they're not inclined to love his character. Rand wears on people the way the sort of guy in high school that you sat next to in physics class who was smarter than everybody else. And just sat there and told you punny jokes about chemistry and was just smarter than everybody else.

He'll wear on people. Rubio doesn't do that. And I think he's got the humor. At least, he's got a little bit of self-deprecating humor when he mentions, and it's probably a stock line in all of his speeches about being thirsty and drinking and throwing back to the time when he had to gulp the bottle of water on public television.

But, what would Hillary Clinton make a self-deprecating remark about? Age? Infirmity? Your character for hip eyesight? Would she joke about her server would she joke about benzaz benghazi would she joke about saying we're going to get the video maker as she stood by the flag great coffins of dead american servicemen what does she have to be self-deprecating about so i think he comes across as as genuine and as we all say about

politics once you if you can fake that you've got the rest of it made. But I mean we've all been in the same room with a guy, right? You remember back in – there is something about the fellow that works and it works on a retail level. And I like the fact that he's talking about the immigrant experience and working a job as opposed to dad starting a bar. Dad was behind the bar. And as many times as he's told – Right, that's very powerful. As many times as he's told about the hearing the jingling of the keys as his father came home late at night, as many times as I hear that, it connects with me.

I agree. It does because I get that. That's what I grew up in. I also feel like it's a good message in general. I mean I think the other – I don't think it's something that other candidates won't have. But I think it's a good practice in general to be talking about what it's like to be poor in America, what it's like to not have a lot of money and what sustains you. Republicans or conservatives do not believe fundamentally deep down – and they're not ashamed of saying it. We know that poverty is not something that you can eradicate, that you do not eradicate poverty, not with a war on poverty, not with a nuclear war on poverty. Poverty is something that you'll always have. But OK, how do

you live in a country when you don't have a lot of money? How do you live in a country when you have to save? What's interesting, I saw this thing – I saw this thing – I guess it was on Twitter. Somebody sent it to me or it was in my little feed. Gwyneth Paltrow and a bunch of other – well, it's interesting. I know. And a bunch of other sort of progressive types have been trying to like demonstrate what it's like to live on whatever the food stamp allocation is for a family. And she did it and I guess she took a glamour photograph of her in some outfit that cost $20,000 around a bag of beans and cheese and stuff like that. And there was something so wrong about this picture, something so demeaning about it, designed to demean the people who are on assistance in a way that was only a liberal progressive could do in this

paternalistic uh pitying um totally unsympathetic uh way that also just managed to at the same time celebrate this kind of marie antoinette opulence um and it's really only something progressives in american progressives, American progressives. I mean, no progressive in Europe would ever do this. No progressive anywhere else. Only American progressives get this kind of pass where they get to swan around, to use that term that I love, like Marie Antoinette or aristocrats, while at the same time. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you.

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18plusgamblingcare.ie. Evoking all sorts of sympathy for the underclass. And of course, actual people who've been on assistance would say to Gwyneth Paltrow, actually, it's complicated and difficult to live on what we're given. And that would be great if we were given more, but it's not impossible. And it's not the hardest thing we do, but it's that weird – I don't know, this weird disconnect. And I think it's an opportunity for our side to say not just to – rich people are going to be fine, but to say to poor people, you don't understand. We are the best option for you and for your family and for your future. And I think at least Marco Rubio is trying to say that, and so I hope he continues to say it.

I know other candidates do too because I think it's an important thing. I don't think any rich person hearing that says, oh, that candidate is not talking to me. No, no. Rich people hearing that say, I'm glad somebody is saying that. So I'm – I was – I don't know. Maybe I'm still in the medium range of enthusiasm for Marco Rubio like you, Peter. But directionally, I'm with him. James just asked me what I thought of the launch. I've said for – I think it's been almost two months now that I think Rubio is the one.

I think Marco Rubio will win the Republican nomination. I could be wrong. Lord knows I've been in the past. But I just have the feeling that as between we hear over and over again, for goodness sake, let's not go with a Barack Obama, meaning a one term senator who's never had any executive position. And in theory, I couldn't agree more. And we know that Jeb Bush was a wonderful governor of Florida for eight years. Fine. But as between demonstrated competence, which is Jeb Bush, I'll come to Scott Walker in a moment, but demonstrated competence as a conservative governor, which is Jeb Bush, as between that and on the other

hand, inspiration, someone who after eight years of being on the defensive in Washington, in the culture, losing ground everywhere for eight years. And after eight years in which we, we, even the three of us, let alone anybody who's not sort of professional as a jabberer, even the three of us, let alone anybody who's not sort of professional as a jabberer, even the three of us find it difficult over these eight years to banish from our minds the thought that maybe in some fundamental way, the America that we knew is over. I interviewed Hugh Hewitt the other day for Uncommon Knowledge, and Hugh said it right there on camera.

Hugh said, well, maybe we conservatives just have to accept that constitutional governance is no longer possible as we understand it. Maybe the federal government has simply become too big and too bureaucratic. Maybe the America that we loved is simply gone. So people feel that and you get and Marco Rubio. But he didn't say he was, right? I mean, he was a really smart guy. The point is Hugh Hewitt of all people is saying maybe. And Marco Rubio comes in and says, no, it's not over and lifts aspiration as between competence and a promise to do good things beginning two years if he gets elected and someone who can deliver inspiration right now, my judgment, my suspicion is the primary voters will go for the latter.

And that means Marco Rubio will within – should, should within a matter of weeks I think whether he raises tons of money the way Jeb Bush has or not. All he needs is a microphone and within a matter of weeks we should see him right up there in the first tier with jeb bush and scott walker scott walker is the one person who holds out the promise of combining inspiration with demonstrated executive experience somehow though and this is really a question for the two of you somehow though scott walker just he's not as refreshing somehow to listen to and look. Whoa, Peter seems to have vanished. Spontaneous combustion, the first case of spontaneous combustion on a podcast, but until he reconstitutes in mortal form, just to intercede here for a

second and note that maybe it's not that the government has become too big, the constitutional government is impossible. It may be that a large segment of the population, the electorate, half of them, believe that constitutional government is an irrelevancy and an impediment to getting what they want. I mean, at Instapundit today, there's a survey of this survey, which essentially says that by about a three to one margin, progressives say that the president should should kind of ignore the Constitution and the Supreme Court if he wants to do something that's really good for the country because that's what matters, isn't it? That's what matters, intentions. And that's maybe why it's not wise for the Republican Party to put up a candidate who doesn't recognize that and says, no, there is a document there. Rob, let me ask you this before we get Peter rebuilt. Is it possible to do that thing where you're talking about the importance of constitutional adherence and not strike the uninformed, low-information voter as one of those liberty maniacs, one of those Burscher creeps who believe that the Constitution is a code word actually for putting blacks back into segregated society? I think so. But I mean look, people running for president have to – it's a hard thing to do when you're running for president is to – it's not like it's dishonorable.

But it's hard to do that, to strike sort of constitutional themes. It's much easier to strike personal liberty themes. That's the kind of thing that Reagan did really effectively. So I would stick to that, although I suspect that that is something that the American people – we are at 51 percent electorate here. You need 51 percent of the people to love you or just to think that you're better than the other person. In a 51% country, what are people worried about and what do they want their president to focus on? And I think what they're worried about, look at all the polls across, independents, liberals,

progressives and conservatives, is they're looking for a renewal of that sort of American opportunity idea, either opportunity prosperity, opportunity in education, opportunity in all those things. Now, conservatives interpret that as we want to create an economy and a society in which you can do whatever you want based on your own initiative. Progressives want that because they want the government to do it. But that's where the fight is, and I feel like that's where the fight should be. So people like Scott Walker run on administrative competence and the fact that they took their state's economy and they made it stronger and they kept it out of bankruptcy and they stood up to these kind of behemoths, government – public sector union behemoths.

And I think that's probably why. So I mean Jeb Bush will hear a lot about his success in Florida and education, which he has. That's a legitimate thing for him to run on. Marco Rubio I think you're going to find is I am the product of the American dream, not the American progressive society but the American opportunity society. And I don't know. I mean these are – I'm glad we're having that conversation. I mean I think – the other thing I thought was interesting about Rubio and I think Rubio is going to do it is he saw – there aren't that many great presidential campaigns that

we've seen – I've seen in my lifetime. Probably the best one, the most flawless campaign was Clinton in 92. That was a brilliant, brilliant political campaign. And one of the things you could see, you could see what Carville said to Begley a lot of years or Carville said to Stephanopoulos at some point in that great documentary called The War Room, which is a wonderful thing to – if you're interested in presidential politics, a really great documentary to see. You just have to get over the fact that you're watching the cheering ascension of Bill Clinton. But you get over it, right? You just got to put it aside. There's a moment when Carville is looking at George H.W. Bush on TV and he says, oh, that guy is yesterday.

He stinks of yesterday. And that's all you needed to know about that campaign. That was their whole theme was that guy is yesterday. Aren't you sick of that guy? We're new. And people really like that. I know when we're hearing it today and Carville now himself is yesterday. Carville himself might want to go back

and retrieve a few things. I mean, for heaven's sakes, just because something existed previously to this precious moment of the present doesn't mean it has to be tossed away. I sometimes, not to paraphrase the Beatles tune too much, but there's things about yesterday I'd like to bring back, for example.

Yesterday here was sunny. Yesterday was 75 degrees. Yesterday was 75 degrees. Yesterday was tax day. And for a moment there, I had a little bit more money in the bank before it was automatically hoovered out by the federal government. Yesterday there was a knock at my door and I wasn't here, and that's why I didn't get my Casper mattress. And I'm angry.

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taken and it's got the tag. You're not supposed to take off without penalty. Let me ask you this. When was the last time you really thought, I want to sleep on something that is validated and advertised by a guy standing on a suburban street spinning a big arrow around? Never. That's a very good point. Right. That's a very good point. Right.

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This is what you get for listening to Ricochet. Not only do you get Rob and Peter expounding and expostulating, but you have a great night's sleep and you get up and you shave your face. Your life is better and Casper will help. We should do one. We should do one. Just going to say go to Casper.com and use the coupon code RICSHAY and there you go. I hope to be doing segue

fastballs past Rob's head for a long time. My God, that was amazing. When my Casper comes today. When my Casper comes today. All right, guys, here's something else. Before we go past this, let me just say here's when you get me on the segues. And this is why the segues, I think in one way, I think they're – I mean obviously you're professionals.

You're a segue genius. But in the other way, I feel frustrated because you are actually making a point that then becomes the sponsor message. That's the only way I can get them past you. I know because I'm thinking about your point. I'm thinking, okay, James is making a point. What do I think of that? That's very interesting. Well, yeah.

And I'm coming up with my response to your point. And so then you go to the segue, and it's frustrating to me because now I – Let me say – My process from right now, from right now, my new theory is, my new strategy, I don't know why I'm giving it away, is to just assume that everything you say is a segue to a sponsor pitch so that I don't have to really listen to your points. All right. All right.

Well, then let me go back to yesterday and Peter can weigh in on this and you as well. I was talking about the virtues of yesterday but there's something else too. We're going back even more to Rubio's speech about and the idea of poverty and what people have to live on. When somebody who's living on Snap or food stamps gets a little money in their hand, they want to treat the kids. Where do they go? They go to McDonald's

perhaps or they go to Taco Bell because Taco Bell gives you a lot of stuff that's cheap and you can fill up. It is Taco belt. They don't take them to Chipotle. Chipotle is beloved by that certain class of people that would live in cities and want to make sure that everything is organic and locally sourced and cruelly killed or humanely killed and all the rest of it, which is why Hillary,

they want, progressives want us to be cruelly killed. That's right. Hillary, Hillary will go to Chipotle because they have cilantro. She, she Hillary will go to Chipotle because they have cilantro. She will never go to Taco Bell because they have gas. Can you imagine her and her little wonderful entourage stumbling into a Taco Bell somewhere and then asking for a churro and some nacho grande fiesta burrito? I don't think so. Well, okay. I mean, I got to stand up for Chipotle.

Chipotle is delicious, though. Yes, I agree. I mean a burrito is – I mean I don't eat the burritos anymore because it's just too much rice. I'm not supposed to eat any of that stuff. So I'll have a fajita bowl, carnitas fajita bowl. It's pretty good. I mean the great thing about Chipotle, which I think is one of – I mean besides it's – all the other stuff, which I'm sure is irritating, is that you actually get a lot of food. And you get – and you kind of get – I mean the food is pretty good. And when you want it spicy, they serve it spicy. So I don't knock her for the Chipotle.

I don't even knock her for the van. I mean I think it's sort of – I mean it's a presidential campaign. She's got to do something. I knock the credulous way – or not credulous, but I like the way, and I hate saying this, that the store... At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race that's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing cheltenham with live score bet this is total betting sign up by 2 p.m 14th of march bet within 48 hours of race main

market excluding specials and place bets terms apply bet responsibly 18 plus gambling care.ee we're now watching the movie that they're making they're making, sort of her accolades in the media are making are watch Hillary Clinton become more human instead of make her defend her policies, make her defend the events of the past eight years, make her do what we would make any other candidate do. Make her answer for her positions. Instead, we're watching a Clinton drama. And it's – I mean I hope it exhausts people because it's weird. It's a weird thing that the story in the newspaper has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton's positions in the past or her performance. It has everything to do with, hey, is she going to be more human Tuesday than she was on Monday, which is bizarre. And I think it's actually subconsciously the reporters are taking all of this time early on because they all wish they were running the Hillary Clinton campaign. They all feel like

they could do it and they could do it better. And they also want her to win. So all of this stuff – I mean when I read any – even the mildly anti-Hillary stuff in the paper I know or wherever I read it, I know that it's really a form of a campaign strategy memo from that journalist. Hey, this is what people are saying about you. Don't do this anymore. That's what they do because they – say what you like about her romp to the nomination, which she's going to have. It makes everybody on that side nervous. Yeah. Well, I see exactly what – yeah, I think I do see exactly what you mean.

They have the video. By the way, we haven't asked you what you thought about Hillary's announcement video. What did you make of that as a professional, as a video? I thought it was great. Yeah, I thought so too. Okay. So as best I can tell, the campaign – their campaign comes down to one. Really, it can be stated in about two sentences. They've created a new Hillary Clinton and she's a young ish, hip ish grandmother.

And the fundamental message is I will take care of you. I will take care of you. I will be the young grandmother, not, not so old that I just want to rock you in my lap, but kind of young and kind of with it, but experienced and non-threatening. I will take care of you. And you know what? The press is granting this entirely new total fabrication of a premise. And I agree with everything you said. They are letting to go. They are permitting that campaign with the production of one video, push down the memory hole, almost eight years as Secretary of State, eight years as First Lady who had policy responsibility, who took responsibility for trying to get health care through. And they they are simply permitting permitting that to be they're permitting that to be totally forgotten and accepting the new premise and saying okay

great how's she doing as a grandmother oh pretty well this campaign looks good so far it's just astonishing or she didn't tip at the chip or she didn't tip right which is i mean look all that stuff is i mean i don't. Who knows what drives early voter – what do they call it? Early voter impressions. I don't know. But it's just interesting to watch. And I think – look, I mean – and I don't think that we should complain about it too much. We have some really good candidates on our side and I am eager for this thing to sort of get going i mean

political junkie i'm eager for it to get started i'm eager for our guys to be on stage together thrashing it out and i know that in you know six months nine months whatever it is we'll all be saying i you know i wish they weren't so divisive that and the pieces in the new york times would be oh the republicans of disarray and the the Democrats are – they've already crowned their queen. But I don't think this is bad. I think it's good and all of our candidates will be better when they meet her in the summer. All of our candidates will be more honed. I don't know.

Right now we're talking about real stuff. So I like it. Well, I think one of the things that Hillary has done nicely, really, is to spill a little bit of the geriatric story. She's out there. She's among them, and that van is not parking in the part of the parking lot that's got the yellow stripes next to the door. Because, I mean, some people on the right, you can expect to say that she's old. She's too old. She's almost as old as a German blade factory, which would be 98 years, I do believe.

And that factory can bring you the sharpest, cleanest, most easiest, happiest shaving experience you've ever had. I've got to be honest. You what? Don't let me interrupt. But I was sort of honest. I was sort of onto this one, to be totally honest. Yeah.

Well, I'm not a criticism just just a statement i'm sorry sometimes but i feel like i feel like a minnow darting between you know large whales and i've got to just get in twixt them somehow and you call them fat well you know where i'm going with this folks don't you because uh we have to tell you this we We want to tell you about this. We should tell you about this. It's harrys.com. You've heard of them all over the place. Maybe you heard about them here first. Two guys passionate about creating a better shaving experience.

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A little act of mental ledger domain. The waving of the magic wand. This has been suggested that if we could wave a magic wand and solve something, what would it be? And I was thinking about this and I'm tempted to say I would fix the

18th century French economy before the revolution happened. To forestall the installation and the invention of state terror and tyranny and proletariat and elites operating on behalf of the proletariat.

So much of the progressive plague and the Marxism that we experience today. The Marxism that we experience today comes from that. You heard it here, folks. You heard it right here on Ricochet. James Lilac starting a campaign to bring back the bourbons. That's exactly right. Exactly right.

No, just to slap some sense into those gouty fools and forestall what had come. But I guess we're going to concentrate on the immediate tasks at hand of the country. Rob, Peter, let's see. Who goes first here? Waving the magic wand, what would you fix? Henry VIII, actually. It would have been my – I will precede you. If you're watching Wolf Hall.

I'll raise you. Exactly. If I could go back and fix something in history, I'm not sure I could. All right, Kevlar for Caesar on the Ides of March, then. I don't know. He was a tyrant. He was a tyrant.

He proclaimed himself emperor. That's how you go. Obviously, I'm a free market conservative. So I would – with my magic wand, I would probably change the way the people are taxed to support their elected government. Good point. Yeah, I would try to make it flatter and fairer. I would try to make it as simple as possible.

I wouldn't allow any – I wouldn't allow any deductions. I would probably get tossed out by a lot of Republican primary voters because certain deductions are just simply not acceptable for me. Mortgage interest deduction doesn't make any sense and it's – it takes – it creates bubbles, one thing. But just a simple flat tax with no real deduction, probably politically you'd have to start it higher than people want it. The number would have to be higher. Right now, whenever people talk about the flat tax, they always argue about what number it should be. I would just be inclined to let the other side pick a higher number than I like because I know that it's much easier to lower the number the next year because now all we have is a number.

We're fighting over whether it should be 29 percent or 16 percent. OK, that's a great political fight to have. So I think that's what I would do. today because when you simplify any regulation, you get fewer people trying to write and rewrite regulations because tax code has now got two lines in it. So a lot of people would – a lot of brainpower in DC would then have to find some other thing to do. Giant law firms would probably collapse because most of those attorneys sit there and try to lobby tax code changes so

um i feel like if i did that if i could wave my magic wand and do that i'd probably sit back and just kind of go go to chipotle for a few days and just relax on taxes i'm with you i think i have one that's even simpler see if you agree with this the simplest thing ever yeah simplest thing ever with regard to taxes this is my magic wand. See if you agree. Eliminate withholding. Just that. If people had to write checks out of money that had cleared in their own bank accounts, if they had developed the sense of ownership, if they thought it was theirs and had to write checks on that to the federal government, either at the end of the year or a quarter, whatever, just in other words, return the pain to paying taxes. In my

humble opinion, within six months, politicians would have discovered the anger in the country and everything you're talking about would be on its way to being enacted into law. Just make people feel the pain of paying taxes. I think it's probably – yeah. There was one of the Coors brothers. I think it was in the 50s or 60s who ran – I don't know if it was the brewery but a bottling factory, a big factory. He hated withholding so much that he – and in those days, you got paid in cash. And so his workers could walk to the – on payday, could walk to the cashier. They'd get the cash.

Their whatever, their weekly wages, bi-weekly wages were. And then they had to walk to another window to pay their tax. And of course, you know, it's radicalized. You had at least one Coors Brewing factory was filled with radical, radical libertarians in about two pay periods. But yeah. So, yeah, I think that would work. But in general, I feel like we probably also need to reconnect because look, the federal government is a behemoth and does all the stuff and gets into our lives as much as it does because we have asked it to. As a country, we have allowed it to create – it's like a house guest that we kind of like half the time. And so it would be good to reconnect all Americans, all of them, all 100 percent of Americans, all wage earners with what it takes to keep the federal government and the federal government's obligations and the entitlements and entitlement obligations solvent.

That would be depressing I think. I agree with you guys. A couple of things come to mind. First of all, if they did eliminate withholding, a lot of companies – I can imagine mine very well doing this saying it's no longer the law but would you like us to do this for you anyway? People would sign up for that and probably would actually pay more for the 0.5 percent service fee or convenience fee of having it automatically taken out and shifted off to the government. Secondly, if people find out how much they actually have – or secondly, the idea of running – It would be – it's exactly how they describe it, wouldn't it?

A convenience fee. A convenience fee, right. A convenience. And so what might happen then is that assuming that you did get somebody to run on a platform of deliberately bringing more pain and book work to people on an individual level, which sounds very Republican. We want you to suffer to realize exactly the truth of the world. Even if he did get that, people's reaction might not be, why am I paying so much? But how come other people aren't paying more?

So I'm not sure that that necessarily – I mean it just might end up with – please. You just don't trust democracy really no i we're back to the bourbons now aren't we this is all going back i do but i know how 18th century france i know how a lot of these things work and i know that a lot of people would find themselves um surprised at what they pay and they they wouldn't be blaming the the democrats because the democrats are the party that gives them things, not the party of people that takes it away. I think James's French brother-in-law has had a lot

more influence on him. A lot more influence than James, don't you think? A royalist living in the Midwest, that's the most dangerous kind of royalist. Don't let them eat brioche. We'll bring back the monarch, we no longer have to deal with the people. Robespierre razor erected in the public square.

That's the alternative. No, I'm just amazed that when you guys have both been handed – I was going back to Harry's there for a moment. You've both been handed a magic wand and essentially given great power. You came up with the political equivalent of saying – We're monkeying around with a tax code. I'd like everything in my closet to be dry cleaned and pressed. Thank you very much.

You have a magic freaking – you've got a genie lamp that you just rubbed and said, can you refill my coffee cup right now? How about – Every single one of those genie stories you know. All the wishes stories always end up people wishing for outlandish stuff. It's like that great, great horror story, The Monkey's Paw, one of my favorite ghost stories ever. You got to be careful what you wish for. So Peter and I are like – we're sort of rock-ribbed conservatives. Like that, Peter?

Rock-ribbed conservatives are made of rock. Mine are made of squish. But we're looking for like the thing that's sustained – that people would – that it's unlikely to happen in the politics of the day unfortunately but would be great if it could happen. Trevor Burrus Okay. All right. Let's say you're more of a micah-ribbed Republican or a schist-ribbed Republican, one of those ones that's easily fragmented and flakes. Peter Robinson Of course. I like that. Trevor Burrus All right. So I mean if I had to wave the magic wand, it would be –

I want to turn this question on James. I want to turn the wand question on James, but not yet. I have one more for – so magic wand. I think Rob feels this way too. The magic wand, the urge, the urge I feel for the magic wand is California. Over one in ten Americans live in California. I have to say I've been here 20 years. I love this state more.

The history is, it's fantastically beautiful, the talent, the energy, and it is over in the democratic column for a generation or generations to come somehow or other. What is the magic wand that could have been waved at some point that could be waved today to make all i want is for beautiful california to be politically competitive once again what one do we wave for that that i don't know because i don't know but i feel like california is a really good example of – the extreme example of the general distress in American politics. In California, the social conservatives live in the Central Valley. They are socially conservative, but they're not really economically conservative. Right now, California –

Well, they think they are, of course. They think they are, but they also get water for 10 cents an acre foot or something. They get enormously – California grows monsoon crops and it grows monsoon crops because the government subsidizes monsoon crops. Those are the people in the Central Valley who are social conservatives. The people in Silicon Valley and the few – there are some. The economic conservatives in the big city, big media markets in San Diego and Los Angeles and of course Silicon Valley, they are not social conservatives at all, but they could – they would pull the lever for a republican in the state if they felt that republican kind of represented them in some way.

The problem right now is that it's so lopsided that it's really hard to run in a blue state with all that union money as a true reform conservative, reform republican because the union money is just so outrageously huge. It's hard to get your message out. And California is a media state. So there's kind of a death spiral going on. But the Republican Party in California in many ways elected this in the 80s. They elected this kind of gradual retreat. And it's a good lesson for republicans in general. If they want to win again, they have to be a 51 percent party.

But there you go. You don't want to hear that because – I certainly don't. I certainly do not want to hear that. James, what magic wand would you wave? I mean – excuse me. No more – in the no more distant past than let us say 1850 well to solve the problem of california and the cultural differences and problems that that spasmed it in the 60s i would imprison all of the haint ashbury hippies in the

bastille for at least five years to keep the cultural confluence from spreading you'd go back no no no actually Actually, what I would do for California and other places, if I could wave a magic wand, it would be twofold. And again, we're not talking about things, we're not talking about, I'm getting to the big thing

that I hope solves something else, not the incremental steps to get there. I would wave a magic wand to the left that would somehow miraculously make it possible for small industry, for small manufacturing to thrive in inner cities.

For there to be, springing up everywhere, shops that made things and paid good wages. On the other half, when I brought the wave of the wand back to the right, I would do something that would reconnect the families of the lower classes to the right, I would do something that would reconnect the families of the lower classes, the lower, I mean, lower economic classes that would rebuild the idea that family is essential for success.

And so you would have opportunity and you would have cultural imperatives that kept people together in a situation better for raising children. If that's the one thing that I could do, that would be it because that would mean that cities and communities would thrive where now they exist on the largest of the government and the destruction of the American family in some neighborhoods is almost complete. I had something on my website today about the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Joy in Detroit, which for some reason I stumbled on on Google Street Maps.

I was looking for something else. You have a neighborhood here, ruined in the 67 riots, that is indistinguishable from a walking dead set. It is bereft of life. There are trees growing out of buildings. There are places that have not been occupied since 19—there are ballrooms that have not been occupied since 71. It looks like those pictures of Berlin in 1945.

Right. And it's not downtown. This is just a neighborhood that is dead, but yet the ruins are there and the people scurry amongst them. And the houses themselves, I mean, what used to be places for middle-class families are now cut up into seven or eight rooms. And when you look at the demographics of the area, one of the stories said that the rate of single-parent households in this neighborhood is greater than 98.3 percent of the rest of the country. I mean so there's just – there's no dads. There are no dads and there's no jobs. So my magic wand makes jobs and then tries to rebuild what makes families keep together and what keeps neighborhoods healthy and thriving and safe and wonderful places for people to live.

That would be the two strokes of my wand. But there's other things, of course, we could do. We could solve the student loan crisis either by saying, olly olly, on free. Government will take the hit. On you go, which I think would be a really bad idea. We could reform campaign spending because money is the root of all evil unless it's Hillary Clinton with $2.5 billion. But what I would really like to do with a wave of my wand is to tell people that the member feed, where you can contribute if you're a Ricochet member, has some of the most fun stuff you'll find on the page.

And if your post is good, it gets surfaced, as we like to say. Now, E.J. Hill had a great post today. Stop with the logos. I think that was yesterday. He was complaining about the Rand Paul logo, the Ted Cruz logo. He pointed out a Marco Rubio's logo is almost indistinguishable from MSNBC. I guess everybody's got to have logos now, but is that really enough? Everyone's knocking Hillary's logo.

I think people don't get there's a certain subtle brilliance to it that I think people are jumping on, but I'll open it up to you guys. Yeah, I thought this is all overdone. You know, the lack of anything else to talk about. Look, a logo looks crazy when you first look at it and then a month later, it's fine. No one likes the new thing. Everyone who's ever redesigned a website or anything like that, the first reactions are always, I hate it. This is small P politics.

It's not that interesting. But of course with Hillary Clinton, that's all you could talk about because either that or it's her trip to Chipotle because you can't talk about her record if you're in the media. So that's part of the problem. I don't know. Peter, how often – how long do you think they worked on the Reagan Bush logo in 80 or 84? I was just – I have no memory of a Reagan Bush logo. I can sort of remember that they decided on a type – on a font I guess is what we would call it now so that every time Reagan Bush appeared on the television screen after an advertisement, it would always be the same font. But I just plain don't remember it.

I may be misremembering it. But for sure, it wasn't as important in those days as it is now. I have to say, E.J.'s on to something in my opinion, particularly with regard to Hillary in the sense that this logo stuff just conveys the feel. I mean you're on to something too. Within a month, we'll all have begun to take the logos for granted. But the logo stuff just conveys the feeling that everything is packaged, that this is presidential politics by way of Procter & Gamble, that there are account executives who've done focus grouping and marketing analytics and of course none of that ever really works a long yeah but they do it right they do it

yeah yeah yeah and with hillary that's all there is with ted cruz you can say well i don't know if i like the logo or not but that's ted cruz you know what ted cruz is you know what he sounds like you know where he stands You can make up your mind about Ted Cruz with Hillary. You know what? It's just coming to me now. That Hillary video, tell me if you think of the same thing. Maybe I'm going mad. I know I'm going mad. I just remembered what the Hillary video reminded me of.

It reminded me of the Doris Day show. What? of the doris day show and the way doris day with a television show not the movies but when she was getting to be an older lady and the close-ups on doris day were always shot through some sort of slightly gauzy filter right and i have no idea what filter they used shooting hillary but you just get the feeling that there's a lot between you and the actual human being who's running for president. You're not being given a good sharp picture of the human being. You're looking at Hillary Clinton through cheesecloth right now. It's funny because I once talked to an old ad guy who worked on the Nixon campaign in 68. And he said the problem with that campaign was you had to sell this,

you know, really a terrible political product. Someone who had been sort of tossed, you know, lost. It was not very popular. It ran for governor and lost that. And then people, you know, you won't have, no one had Dignity to kick around anymore. You know, like one of those people that was a genuinely sort of, no one was excited about him.

No one really liked him. Really tough product to sell. And so you'd spend months and months and months trying to come up with a slogan. How are you going to sell Nixon in 68? What's the slogan for this? And they finally decided, how about no slogan? Just get in, get out. Just say what it is.

And so their slogan for the first part was Nixon in 68. That was the slogan. And I feel like eventually it's going to be Hillary in 16. It's just like – none of this is going to work really. People will make a more sophisticated or less sophisticated or more cynical choice. Yeah. These are the people who later came up with the worst possible title for an organization ever, the committee to reelect the president. Because the alternative was the committee to reelect the president removing one E, which would be KREP, which sounds like some Russian swearing.

It's KREP. Or you could move an E to after the P and then we'd be back in James Lilac's land. It would be KREP. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny though because we used to go around and when you see something really terrible, ask yourself, how many meetings did it take to get something that bad? And you'll get those never, oh, they just did it late night one night. They had to do it in 20 minutes. No, for something that's truly awful, it needs an enormous amount of meetings and a huge amount of money. No organization ever fails because they just kind of dashed it off.

They failed because they worked too hard on it. You may remember at some point that the Hillary campaign slogan was simply Hillary with an exclamation point. Remember? Just to encapsulate the sweeping tsunami of enthusiasm. And then we got – I saw a bumper sticker the other day, ready for Hillary, as though it's up to us. It's up to us to construct this condition. What's interesting, yeah, right. We're preparing the, well, what's interesting about that is that you also see in New York City and some cities, I see it in LA too, if you're in a sort of a Hasidic, you know, Orthodox Jewish part of town, you'll see bumper stickers usually from the Lubavitcher.

Lubavitcher is right, right? Yeah. And a bumper sticker will say, ready for Moisach. I know it. Yeah. It's like – so we're ready now. It's a great part of just that particular sect that when they want the Messiah to come, they're yelling at him. Another bumper sticker they have, we want Moisech now with two exclamations.

Like, yeah, like he's going to come if you really yell at him loud enough. What do we want? Messiah, when do we want it? Now. I remember one of those guys tried to convert me on the street in New York when I was walking along. And I had to admire the chutzpah because a Lutheran from North Dakota is not exactly the target market, but bless him. Speaking of Russians saying things

like krep, Oblomoff, one of the fine scribblers in the member feed, asked a question and I should note that this is a web headline trend that I'm starting to notice a lot, and that's asking a question as opposed to

making an assertion. You see it a lot. I'm just asking questions here. But he asked a good question. Is the culture war worth fighting? And I tend to believe that when people ask a question like that, they're probably about to say no. It's a skeptical view. Let's quote what Oblomov said in his post. We must fight because our adversary's mask has slipped off and we have seen his true face. We now know what we have long suspected. The other side is not interested in tweaking this policy or nudging that one. They're not interested in a compromise, accommodation, or negotiated peace. They mean to wipe us out.

Upon this fight depends the survival of our civilization, our institutions, and our way of life. So he seems to say the culture war, yeah, it is worth fighting. But is this a polarizing thing that's going to sink whoever gets there? Because we know they're never going to ask Hillary a question like, hey, how many genders are there? That's Ace of Spades' great question. Nobody will ever ask Hillary a question that question. But they will ask Marco Rubio or they will ask anybody who's the Republican nominee on some wedge issue to get him to say something that will make the rest of the party look like John Birchers who want to return to lunch counters with blacks and whites only.

So the culture war. I know Rob loves this subject. Well, it's an umbrella term, so it really depends on – I think it really depends on which issue you're talking about. I suspect that – you can't win a culture war, right? You can't win it. It's not like people vote. You have to provide other culture for them to choose and a reasonable explanation for why the other choice is terrible. I'm always uncomfortable when presidential candidates talk that way because I really – I don't think they're very good at it.

I don't think they're very good at winning or waging a culture war. That's sort of – that's kind of what brought us to this place – brought us here in the first place I think is this kind of idea that some – there's a culture administration somewhere and they're supposed to provide us with culture. And over the past 30 years, that administration has been filled with progressives and now we want to elect a president to what? To fire them all? To fire every university president? Well, in France, there is a ministry of culture. Yeah, right. Back to France.

Back to France. You know, James, you're not transgendered but you are you're the guy who you are a frenchman normative are a frenchman in a north dakotan's body you were the guy who yeah 20 podcasts ago wanted to be a certain dame edna on a stage in burlesque wearing a dress and doing a Monty Python. That's my magic wand. Exactly. That's your magic wand. I thought, first of all, this – to me, this is an example of why the member feed on Ricochet is just so wonderful. Also so important in some way. Oblomov is not one of our professional – professional. I say professional as if we pay people.

But he's not a professional – he or she. I don't even know that – he is not a professional chatterer the way we are. Um, an ordinary ricochet member in my judgment, this post is very powerful. I just loved it. I have a feeling like a lot of things I could be wrong about this, but I have a feeling that 50 years ago, if we look back at the Barack, if, if things continue to slide in the wrong direction in this country, people will look back at the Obama administration and what will stand out will not be healthcare. It'll be, this is the moment when we lost the fight to contain nuclear weapons, that Iran got permission to get a weapon, which meant everybody else began scrambling. disassemble the fundamental, taken for granted for more than two centuries, tenets of Judeo-Christian culture on which our civilization, I'll use the word,

Oblomov used it, I think it's a correct use of the word, on which our civilization rests. The federal government was moved from neutral, it wasn't all that long ago before it was in one way or another supportive, as in my judgment a correct reading of the constitution would lead it to be to neutral toward judeo-christian values to openly hostile right and i'll tell you what many people would understand and and do we need to fight it i don't know how to fight it well i agree with rob that it's tricky but it needs to be fought kids who grow up with single parents if the dissolution of traditional marriage on and there are serious reasons why the attack on culture is grave. What will eventually do it in is the collapse of the ironic, empty, snarky, smirky expressions of the millennials, which have been encouraged and inculcated by the trailing late boomers of which barack obama is a prime example the people who inherited a wonderful civilization and decided

that a posture of sophisticated derision was the mark of a true intellectual and in the end what they did was to disassemble every single little piety that they had handed to them and replace it with nothing but threadbare little utopian notions of which there was no manifestation in the real world and so all they have is emptiness ha ha-ha, finger pointing, slouching, and posturing. And if there's something that I saw on the member feed today or in Ricochet today, and I couldn't read it because I'm writing about it for today, it's the reaction of these people to the Sizzler commercial. Somebody unearthed, for some reason, a four-minute Sizzler infomercial,

which is designed to get people to invest in this company. It's not a commercial for television. It's a series of images that are saying we want you to hand over $300,000 of your money so you can open a sizzler somewhere. And the reason you want to open a sizzler is because it appeals to these kind of people. Now, everybody's happy in this

infomercial. Everybody's really pleased. But what's interesting is that they tick all of these boxes of America. It's the little girl swinging the baseball bat. It's a cowboy, by gum cowboy, in the back of a pickup truck with his best gal, and he's got his hat. It's a sailor with a girl, and he's on leave. It's a sea captain with a traditional cap and white beard. It's all of these cliches, and they cannot refrain from hooting and hollering like a bunch of apes at the

silliness of it all. Listen, what you have here, if all that we had today was taken away by an EMP or a cultural collapse or a war or something like that, in a hundred years, people would look back on this four minute silly little happy face sizzler infomercial and regard this correctly as the apex of human civilization

because everybody in there is free doing what they want to do happy with what they do and the and they have available a bounty which the entirety of human civilization would be unable to conceive at all the idea that you can walk into this place and get a steak and you can get fried shrimp as much as you want until you hold up a hand and say stop i can eat no eat no more. At which point the waitress will say, are you sure? And then she will bring you more. Most people, and even today, most people would crawl over barbed wire with open guts in their intestines on spooling out to get to a sizzler because that really is some achievement that's remarkable. The infrastructure behind it, the capitalism behind it,

the individual initiative behind it, everything about it, you can say, is encapsulated in this four-minute ad. And, of course, all these people on the Internet are hooting about it because look at all those stupid white people eating salad. When that attitude dies, when that attitude dies and people again start to realize that there's something remarkable about this, that's when the cynicism starts to evaporate and the culture war starts to turn around. Okay, maybe. All right.

Let me respond to that because part of the problem is that a bunch of people on the internet, it's not everyone. And we seem to – what we do is if people on the internet don't like something, we then fly into some kind of weird panic like, oh my god, these values are completely – are mocked. There are always – the internet is a flame that attracts – I'm trying to come up with the right COC-compliant word – unsavory characters, cranks and troublemakers, right? That's what it does. So yes, people watching that franchise promo video from 1990, whatever it's from, there are going to be a bunch of people who roll their eyes and hate it. There'll be a bunch of people who think it's racist or whatever it is. But that doesn't necessarily – that's not really a data point for the end of American

civilization because we don't – because people actually still do live normal lives in this country. What we probably need to do is to remind them that there's a reason why living a normal life, which I'm sure is – that's a problematic phrase for progressives. But living a normal life in your own little – however you can live it is a good thing and good for society. So part of the problem is I think that the internet has simply exposed more people to more jerks. And so you begin to think that the world is filled with jerks because they're the ones – Oh, yeah. … on your Facebook feed or on your Twitter feed.

But like these are not – this is not – these are not a genuine conversation. I remember talking to somebody about it and saying, yeah, I've been battling on Twitter all day. Like who cares? I know. Completely irrelevant. Welsh people don't care about that stuff. and saying, yeah, I've been battling on Twitter all day. Who cares? Completely irrelevant. Welsh people don't care about that stuff. Rob, you're right. You're right and you're wrong.

And you're right in the extent that, yeah, I mean, I was just having a little fun there. But also wrong in the sense that increasingly, to use a real weasel word that people oughtn't, these things tend to characterize the larger debate. I mean BuzzFeed, the way BuzzFeed frames things and the way BuzzFeed writes their headlines starts to seep into everything else. And the internet snark and chatter starts to define the national dialogue as the people from that generation get more and more power and exposure. Okay. A contrary argument.

Millennials, when they do surveys, have attitudes about money and saving and the future that more closely resemble the attitudes of Depression-era generations than they do for their parents or their grandparents. Well, all right. But so I mean, it's not all bleak. Certainly millennials are not all bleak. The divorce rate in this country is actually going down. It's not going up and it's going down because the children of divorce, the children of the

libertine boomers are rethinking that attitude and are and I think in some ways are fighting that attitude. Now, obviously pockets in Detroit, people who are the wards of the federal government in many ways have the worst of it because the federal government has designed itself for the past 50 years to destroy the family and destroy the building block of economic stability. But that's not – I don't think that's a generational issue. If anything, I find more millennials more skeptical about the government and its ability to solve problems than my contemporaries were in college and the generation just underneath me. And that's great. And that's great.

I don't think it is all bleak. I don't think it is all bleak. I don't think it is all lost. I'm just saying that the skepticism that you're talking about often curdles into cynicism and that curdles into a general cultural pose when that's when that's one of the things that characterizes american society again top to bottom uh then i think we're going to be in better shape the only reason i brought this up was so i would have something for ej hill to do okay because now he's going to put us all in the sizzler ad he's going to use the cheesecloth filter and he's going to make it all gauzy and orange and yellowy like the time. That was the whole thing because, you know, who sits around and waits for us to start flapping our lips? Really, on Thursday, they're waiting for E.J. Hill's Photoshop.

E.J. He's got three pictures and he's got to make something out of them. E.J., I'm begging you, no sizzler ad. Put James, dress James as Louis XVI. That does seem more appropriate. And rob has to be rich of course with my i think i should be uh i think i should be a beggar of some kind you know the 47 percent yeah exactly right it's like 87 percent there but yeah uh who was the french finance minister who actually uh necker was that it the guy The guy who tried to reengineer the currency and then was sent off packing.

It's one of the reasons that they had the revolution. So yes. No, see, if you know French finance ministers from the 18th century, you know too much French history, James. This is really – I'm starting – first it was amusing. Now I'm starting to become deeply alarmed. We don't know he's actually doing this from Minneapolis. How do we know that? Minneapolis. You can't

understand. You're in Portland. You can't understand the history of the West without understanding the French Revolution. I mean, what did Chow and Lai say when they came and they asked him what he thought about the French Revolution? He said, it's too early to tell. That's actually a brilliant line. Rob Rhodes

is what I understood. I don't think it's – yes, that's right. Mr. Louis Couture has teared down the spistil. I don't think it is too early to tell. I think that we've now gotten a pretty good clue how that stuff turns out. But I'll tell you this. I think we also have a pretty good clue how this podcast has turned out. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

And it's time to wrap it up because as you know, as much as I'd love to do another couple hours about this stuff, I have to go outside, sit on the stoop and make sure that when UPS comes, I'm there to get the box. And here's the deal. The box is a mattress. And I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be able to pick that thing up and carry it upstairs. Not because I've been working out with Harry Reid branded elastic bands, but because you don't get a huge, big, enormous slab that looks like the box the 2001 model came in. But that's something we'll tell you about a little next week when we have Unboxing Tales from Casper. That's right. If you want to get your mattress and you want to just do it now so that next week when we talk about the mattresses, you can say, oh, I know about that.

You don't have to tell me. Well, I'm telling you now, if you go to Casper, Casper mattress, um, that's Casper.com. Of course,

Casper.com. Use the code coupon code ricochet. You will get 50 bucks off your first mattress purchase. And to do so incidentally, and realize this is not an impulse purchase, uh, but you got a hundred days to sleep on it. If you don't like it,

send it back. It's America. Uh, we also've got 100 days to sleep on it. And if you don't like it, send it back. It's America. We also thank Harrys.com. Harrys.com. Coupon code Ricochet gets you five bucks off the best shaving experience you'll ever have delivered to your door at a fraction of the price of what you pay at those ridiculously marked up drugstore prices. We thank everybody who's been listening to us, everybody who's going to be chattering away about the innumerable topics raised here. We thank, of course, the glory that is France. We thank Rob Long, whoever you happen to be, and Peter Robinson.

The glory that is Rob. The glory that is Peter. And gentlemen, I wish you best for the weekend. And by the next time we talk, I will have addressed the Minnesota Mensa Association, where I'm due to give a speech on Sunday, and I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. Give it in a weird code. Let them figure it out. Or no, just give it in gibberish and tell them it's a weird code

and watch their heads explode as they can't figure it out. I'm tempted to just show up with a drink in my hand and just lean over the podium and say, you think you're so smart. Let it all go downhill from there. Thanks to E.J. Hill, of course. Thanks to you who are going to be listening to this and commenting. And for joining Ricochet. You did, didn't you?

In the middle of this, you did, didn't you? Good. See you next week. Thanks, guys. We'll see you in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. J'aime. J'aime. Au revoir.

Jusqu'à la semaine prochaine. Au revoir, mes amis. Au revoir. Au revoir. A tout à l'heure.... free Do you hear the people sing Singing the song of angry men It is the music all the people Do and must be saved again

When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start And tomorrow comes With every kid all you can get There is a life about to start with tomorrow brought. If we may begin, all you can give, so that our banner may advance. So the fallen song will live, will you stand up and take your chance? The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of Christ. ¶¶ Ricochet. Join the conversation.