The Ricochet Podcast - You Can't Touch This

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

This week, the audacity of grope — can Uncle Joe survive the woke warriors? We (along with Bethany Mandel who sits in for Peter) ponder that question with our guest, Commentary’s Christine Rosen. Also, have the Democrats gotten too far out over their skis with the Mueller Report? Survey says…YES. And what the heck is going on across the pond with Brexit? We call on Quillette’s Toby Young to... Source

Are you sure that was sounding okay? I'll be honest, fellas, it was sounding great, but... I could have used a little more cowbell. I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston Telephone Directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University. As government expands, liberty contracts. It's funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because people are lining up for food.

That's a good thing. Personally, I think we missed his time. Please clap. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Bethany Mandel sitting in for Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilex and today we talk to Toby Young about Brexit again and Christine Rosen about Joe and his tropes. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 442. I'm James Lilex with Rob Long and Bethany Mandel is taking time out to join us today as our co-host,

which means that probably she'll only be tweeting 15 to 17 times this hour. You may know this at some point in the future. Hey, Bethany. Hey, how's it going? Well, it's going fine here. It's Friday. Whenever people may listen to this, it could be Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but whatever day in the future they do listen to this, I'm sure that they're troubled that the Mueller

team, they're saying that the report is more damaging than it was actually revealed. And all of a sudden, everything's falling apart and the Democrats are pouncing and seizing and the Republicans are panicking. Or is that just something that The New York Times sourced poorly and wants us to think so they can keep this ginned up? Yeah. I mean, ask yourself this question. I mean how do you feel – how do you feel in your heart, in your chest, even in your head when you see the words Mueller investigation, Mueller report? that is wrong to say that this entire sort of episode and mania is exhausting and exhausted and over and done with. I think all the shoes that are going to drop have dropped, and I think that every time people read this headline or see these words together, they're just going to fuzz right through them like names know names in a russian novel just not pay any attention to it um that's that's my i mean i say this is somebody who's i'm glad that we had one i'm glad we sort of figured it out i'm glad there's

no lingering concern about this or that but um it is dead yeah i'm i'm completely exhausted i don't understand why after the last two years of being told that this was going to be a bombshell that the New York Times thinks that a completely anonymous piece who honestly, like, I don't think I believe anything anymore about or from this White House, I think, or anything related to the White House, I think that it's like the kid who gets coffee for the Mueller team. Like, unless he approved otherwise, I'm just going to assume it's the intern who gets some coffee. Yeah. Well, I mean, actually, the intern who gets some coffee probably has less of an axe to grind. But what's weird about this all is that it's that it seems – I mean the smart move is after being completely humiliated by sort of zero findings, the smart move is to run away.

When you made a mistake like this, you run away from it. You disappear it. You make it – you bury it in the memory hole. You don't refer to it ever again. You don't keep trying to resuscitate it and hooking it up to the jumper cables and saying clear like they do. You call it. You look to the nurse and you say time of death, and you write it down, and then you run away. This is so strange to me, and I think it's – the idea I guess is to continue to sort of work on the lingering energy that exists from some people who will never believe otherwise that there's something here, right?

It's like to keep smelling smoke. I get it. I get that. But the most amazing thing about Trump and Trump administration is that no one has moved. Everyone who hates him still hates him. Everyone who loves him still hates him. Everyone who loves him still loves him. No one who believes that Putin put him into the White House is ever going to be convinced of otherwise. I mean there's absolutely no new ground. organs of the press for what they are which is entirely self-interested they've been humiliated and now they desperately desperately desperately need to make something happen they're not even carrying water for the democrats in this case it may not be that people moved in their opinion of trump but there may be people who moved in the direction of being less tepid trump supporters

than they were before um i think they're all there will be people who you know were considering the grim inevitability of having to vote for Trump. They didn't like him the first time. They didn't vote for him. It's going to be Bernie or it's going to be some other socialist. There's no way I guess I'll have to. But I mean there's a group of people there in the middle who are looking at this and saying, well, I'm more – my emotions are stirred more by the actions of the people on the other side than they are by the blatherings of this guy, which I have taken into account because you see character revealed. Yeah, but right now it's a perfect time because what the news cycle seems to be obsessed with now – and this is only because they never report facts, right?

What they seem to be obsessed with now is the 2020 race is sort of the democrat the skirmish on the democratic side so there's plenty of stuff to talk about if what you if what you want is to not face up to your utter humiliation in the mueller report by anticipating something the mueller report that was not delivered um there's plenty of other stuff to like talk about and yet it just seems like there's some people who can't let this go well they're going to talk about the economy are they going to talk about the economy? Are they going to talk about – Well, you can't talk about that. There are very few issues on the table that they can say that things are definitely going wrong. I mean they believe that there are.

They believe, for example, if I was listening to National Public Radio this morning and everybody was talking about the sundered relationship with NATO. It's never been worse. Nobody cares about foreign policy though. That's true. That's true. That's true. But as the host said, that NATO continues to pull well among the American people, because in the back of our heads, there's still Eisenhower with a corncob pipe. And I know you're leading the whole thing. But if it comes down to the point that Trump was making about the Europeans stepping up and meeting their own defense obligations, that's not an unpopular point. So what exactly do they have? Bethany, what do they have?

They don't have anything. The NATO stuff, I always think about the jaywalking series when people poll about NATO. Do you think that the average American even knows what NATO is, let alone has an opinion on it? It's ridiculous. Whenever any side polls

polling about that kind of stuff, I'm like, nobody actually cares. Their tax bill is okay. Isn't NATO that guy who's running from Texas who was going up against Cruz? It's an old, old wooden ship from the Civil War era. Nobody knows what NATO is. Everything is okay. We're okay.

And if you don't pay attention to Twitter, which is 98% of America, Trump really isn't doing that badly. And they saw a witch hunt for the last two years, and they saw person after person, pundit back to this well because they thought there was water in it and they're having a hard time recalibr like him, not like him, face facts, he's unpopular. So if any bad thing happens, I mean if a bad thing happens between now and 2020, it's going to probably really hurt Trump and may end up sweeping a Democrat to victory. On the other hand, in which case – oh, by the way, in which case an ultra-left-wing, ultra-liberal candidate could actually become president. That's a very, very likely – a very, very possible scenario. It's very plausible. On the other hand, what if nothing bad happens? What if we get a wall and he can say he gave us a wall? I mean he's going down there right now to point to parts of the wall being built.

What if unemployment stays really low? What if the economy keeps kind of humming along? What if he does manage some kind of new trade agreement means, which is increased immigration, legal immigration quotas. More immigrants from – legal immigrants from other countries are allowed to come in, but a crackdown on the border. That's what he said in the State of the Union. What if he follows through on that? Where do you run? What do you run on?

You run on ideas that are antithetical to the american experience okay yeah well that's good i mean you run on socialite you run on socialized medicine where the government destroys an insurance industry puts all those people out of work and gathers into its own bosom those powers you run on the idea that border enforcement is itself inherently xenophobic and racist and that the idea should be that anybody who wants to come here is actually a more american than the people who are actually already here. You erode the distinction between citizen and non-citizen. And then you also push for things like more egalitarian natures in our voting structures so that we no longer have Wyoming with the same voice as New

York, God forbid, and so that you'd be able to run the entire country from a sliver of coastal sections. I mean, when Obama said we're going to fundamentally transform the country, there was a project in mind there, and they didn't get as far as they would like to. But those ideas run against the grain. But isn't that weird? It's petting a cat the wrong way. Don't you think that's weird? Yes. For a political party that in many ways is actually very adroit, managed for 30, 40 years to move the country leftward, whether Republican in the White House or not. I mean the Democrats were incredibly smart for 30, 40 years.

Assuming for a minute that the vital signs of the nation are green, are good, which is entirely possible. It doesn't mean you have to love Trump. You can blame somebody. You can give it to anybody else you credit you want. But assuming the vital signs are green, couldn't you just run somebody who says, listen, I'm not an insane lefty. I'm basically a moderate. You know, Bill Clinton, DLC, a moderate center, and say, here's the difference between me

and Trump. I believe in border security. I believe in immigration. I believe in growth. but i'm not gross so if you if you find him unpleasant if you're exhausted by the tweeting and the low rent like you know a low rent sleazy awful piggish behavior you can vote for me if you just want a normal president that seems to me to be a winning strategy that they refuse to take it's like it's such an easy strategy and they just – no, we want to run Trotsky. I think that was the message two years ago.

I think that that boat has sailed. If things are going okay, they can't run someone who's so vanilla anymore. I think that that should have been who ran instead of Hillary. But now I think people are desperate. And that's why Trump was elected. I think that there's, there's polling out there that indicates that a lot of Bernie voters actually went to Trump instead of Hillary. And it's because they wanted something desperately different. And if that tears apart the American experiment, then it tears apart the American experiment. But they got that. Nobody knows. knows what nato is and so if in two years they run someone who's crazy crazy leftist they'd be

like you know what sure let's go for it my health insurance premiums are really high i'm down for anything and that's the part that scares me it's not it's not the moderate it's going to work at three percent unemployment and the gdp growing and um a board of security being put into play you think it's really going to work? I mean – I don't know. We'll find out. I mean the number of people who think that things are good and their own lives are fine but nevertheless spend too much time on Twitter and believe that we're marinating in a cesspool of misogyny, patriarchal, cis, you know, the rest of it.

We are on this side. Those people believe that the world is 12 years away from extermination. And even if things are going okay for you, you still have stress in your life, right? Those people would be really nervous. What did you say, Rob? Yeah, tons of stress. But unfortunately, there's literally zero you can do about stress, James. Well, I know that Rob is working longer hours.

He's got his pitches coming up. And, you know, Bethany, you're inundated with the constant news cycle and, of course, the demands of children and that, you know, layabout husband that you have. And also, you know, we're on social media and things are making us twitchy. And so even if life is going pretty good, there's stress in your life. Stress is a worldwide epidemic if you want to think about it that way. It's part of life, though. But it can very easily affect your overall well-being. If you're stressed, you're not particularly happy. And that is why we are partnering with Calm,

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That's C-A-L-M dot com slash ricochet. Get unlimited access to all of Calm's content today at calm.com slash ricochet. Get calm and stop stressing. And our thanks to Calm for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast Toby Young, British journalist, author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which is a tale of a stint in New York as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Served as a judge in seasons five and six of the television show Top Chef

and co-founded the West London Free School. He's currently the associate editor in London for Quillette. And if you remember the last time we spoke to him, the victim of a crazy Torchlight online mob. We're glad to have him back. And, oh, by the way, you Game of Thrones fans, Toby and James Dellingpole will be doing a podcast on Game of Thrones when the show starts back up in two weeks.

Welcome, Toby. They figured out Brexit by now, haven't they? It's all clear sailing from this point on yes yes uh we had a little bit of difficulty but now we've cracked that nut we're moving on to better things that's a very english way to put it little touch of difficulty everything's fine spot a bother unfortunately we still seem to be in quite choppy waters and um uh the storm shows no signs of passing. The latest is that Theresa May has pivoted away from the Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party and towards Jeremy Corbyn

and the Labour Party in the hope of securing enough votes in the House of Commons to get her deal through Parliament. One of the difficulties with this strategy is that until now, the Conservatives have been painting Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, as an anti-Semitic terrorist sympathising Marxist who no one in their right mind could possibly do business with. Correctly so. He's trying to strike a deal with him. Well, that's what's strange from over here when I heard that she was going to Corbyn. I mean, we like to think of it perhaps because we don't know better that the conservatives are those who are nationalistic and more inclined to British independence and that the Labour Party, the leftists, would be more transnational. But it turns out that there's a schism in both parties and that the Labourites themselves have remainers.

What is the left justification for exiting? What is the left's justification over in England for leaving the EU? Why don't they like it? a Brexiter. And Jeremy Corbyn is a Brexiter pretending to be a Remainer. And the reason he's actually a Brexiter and not a Remainer is because he sees the EU as a neoliberal institution designed to strangle socialism in Europe at birth. And he would like secretly to leave the EU, even though he doesn't dare disclose this to the public because most Labour supporters are pro-EU. He would like to leave because there would then be no restrictions on what a socialist government could do. They wouldn't be constrained as they would be presently under EU law. So, for instance, one of the things Jeremy Corbyn would like to do is nationalise the railways, that is, take the railways into public ownership. You can't do that under EU law. If you're an EU member state, if you're going to

take contracts away from existing private companies, you have to offer them to other private companies, including French private companies. And so if we leave the EU, then his programme of state nationalisation of various private industries, of confiscation of property essentially, would be easier. So that's why he would secretly like to leave. Got it. The train thing is interesting because the last time I was in England, everyone was complaining about the train. And it may be that they're just complaining about their particular route, but they're complaining about service, about rolling stock equipment and the rest, and they feel that privatization was maybe a mistake. Is there a grand national consensus forming that perhaps the trains would be better in the hands of the government?

Or is this just a sort of regional bitch of people in Norfolk? I think opinion polls indicate that actually nationalizing the railways would be popular. But it's only because people have got quite short memories and don't remember just how bad British Rail was. It's a kind of grass is greener philosophy. But I remember just how bad the British Railways were when they were publicly owned. And even though they're pretty poor now, they were even worse about 25 years ago. So is that is that actually going to happen, though? Like, are they going to just let them nationalize and sort of learn that the grass is actually not greener? I don't follow British politics that much, so I'm a little bit confused, like, why anyone would want to nationalize anything while Venezuela is burning to the ground.

Yes, I mean, that's a very good point. And until very recently, Jeremy Corbyn has been a huge cheerleader for Venezuela. And some of his lieutenants even went over there during the last Venezuelan elections, but one, I think, to act as sort of referees to ensure that the elections were being conducted properly. They now don't mention Venezuela quite as often as they used to, as you might imagine. But no, communism has, you know, it isn't just Teen Vogue, I'm afraid to say. It's also the United Kingdom. A committed Marxist has captured the Labour Party, one of our two mainstream political parties. It's as though,

you know, not a million miles away from if Bernie Saunders got the nomination to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. But, you know, it's extraordinary how communism has sort of revived. You know, no one would dare proclaim themselves a fascist or a Nazi, even though, you know, under communist regimes, 100 million plus people have died unnecessarily, far more, in fact fact than under the Nazis. But nevertheless, it has made this extraordinary comeback, not just in America but here too. Hey, Toby. It's Rob Long in New York. Thanks for joining us again.

So we have you on all the time, and it seems like we have had you on in this horrible kind of no-exit existentialism kind of thing where we ask the same question about Brexit, and you say, no, no, it's – look, the deadline is – and then you pick a deadline. And then that deadline passes, and then, well, the deadline is another time. It feels to me like England could be in the throes of Brexit for the next 10 years. Yeah, I think that's a very depressing thought, Rob. I'm good at those. But, well, Theresa May's latest plan has been to try and reach out to Jeremy Corbyn in the hope of striking a compromise and thereby persuading Corbyn to whip his MPs to support the withdrawal agreement. But she doesn't appear to be willing to compromise. She's offered the Labour Party precisely nothing. So it just seems like actually a charade. And in any event, it's extremely

unlikely that the Labour Party is going to offer Theresa May any help in getting the Brexit deal through Parliament because the Conservatives will benefit electorally if she gets her deal through, and Labour will suffer electorally if she gets her deal through, whereas Labour will benefit if it's just indefinitely postponed or if we crash out with no deal. I think her current thinking is that she's gone to the EU and she said, can I have an extension until March the 30th? The current deadline is May 22nd. No, the current deadline is April the 12th. So she's written this letter to the EU Council today asking for that deadline to be extended to June 30th. And she's

going to the EU next Wednesday to try and thrash this out. Everyone expects the EU to come back and say, no, it's not long enough. You're going to have to extend for at least a year, probably until June 2020, if you want an extension. I think she's then going to come back to the House of Commons and say, look, either you vote for my deal or we'll be stuck in the EU for another year and a bit. And one of the downsides of that, one of the many downsides, is that we'll then have to participate in the European parliamentary elections, which are due to take place on March 23rd. That's why the EU gave us the May 22nd deadline. They want us to be out, not participating in those elections. If they give her an extension, we then have to participate. So that's a big

downside. I think she's hoping that enough MPs will be so horrified at the prospect of having to contest the European elections when we've already voted to leave the European Union and horrified at the prospect of being stuck in the European Union for a year or more that they will finally vote for her deal. But I think in that respect, she's probably mistaken and they still won't vote for it. And we have to participate in those elections and we will be stuck in the European Union probably for at least another year. One thing, Rob, is that I myself, that there's a new party formed by Nigel Farage, formerly leader of Brexit. The new party is called the Brexit Party. If we do have to contest the European elections,

the Brexit Party is going to field candidates and they will slaughter the Conservative Party who are in high dudgeon for having failed to extract us from the Conservative Party. You're in high dungeon for having failed to extract this one. Will you be one of those candidates? I'm standing as a Brexit Party candidate. Okay. Well, of course, as you know, you have our emotional support. I mean, I don't know whether I'd have to study the issues,

but, you know, I always vote for my friends. That's how I do it. But let me ask you something. Let me ask you a harder question, or maybe harder depending on how patriotic you are today. Can't you say that. The European Union and the European bureaucrats and the European strategists have played Britain and its electorate and its politicians like fiddle, since the moment Brexit was voted for? Yes, I think they have. And I think that's not just because they are better at this than us. I think it's also because Theresa May has been a spectacularly hopeless negotiator,

mainly because she has always been a remainer and always saw this as a damage limitation exercise and never thought through how to extract the most benefit from Brexit. Who could have done it better? So who would you pick? Well, I think Michael Gove, who was one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, the referendum in 2016, and is currently in the cabinet as the environment secretary, I think he could have done a better job. I mean, there was this terrible mess when David Cameron, when the EU referendum was lost by the Remainers, David Cameron, who was essentially the leader of the Remain campaign, stood down as prime minister. And then Boris emerged as the Brexit prime ministerial

candidate in the Tory leadership election. And initially, Michael Gove backed Boris, supported him, and was going to be his campaign manager. But then three days later, he changed his mind, stabbed Boris in the back and decided that he wanted to be a contender in the leadership election, too. And so they effectively cancelled each other out. Boris withdrew from the race. Michael then lost. He was seen as this kind of terrible, treacherous betrayer. And they both essentially neutralised one another. And Theresa May came up through the middle, had either of them, but I think in particular, Michael Gove, been the prime minister after David Cameron. I think they could have done a much better job. They wouldn't have prig triggered Article 50, which set the ball rolling. As soon as you trigger

Article 50, you then have to leave within two years. That effectively stacked the deck against us in the negotiation. They wouldn't have triggered Article 50 until we'd made adequate preparations for no deal. And then when we'd made those preparations so we could leave without a deal, we then could have said to the EU, look, here's the deal we want, but if you don't give it to us, we'll leave without a deal. And we've made the necessary preparations. Instead, she triggered Article 50 almost immediately to try and persuade people that in spite of being a Remainer, her Brexit credent, she was now a convert to the cause, you know, a born again Christian, as it were. And that completely put the UK on the back foot.

She never made adequate preparations for no deal. So there was never really a convincing, credible alternative to whatever the EU decided to present us with. So she's essentially had to swallow the whole package. Toby, for the last question, I'll switch to the culture. I read the other day that one of your princes, can't remember who, said that Fortnite, a very popular game in America, should be banned in england we read of worries over knives the way that the left obsesses over guns here we read of people who make a tweet that does not comport to the latest standards of dialogue on transgender issues being rung up by the police and asked to come in for an interview we see all the conservatives have this strange bifurcated view of britain we love you intensely and we also think the culture is unbelievably nanny-statish and getting worse.

Is that accurate to say or is there sort of a large silent majority, to use the old 60s American term, of people who regard some of these things that we see in London and in the culture and the rest of it with astonishment and say that's not Britain? That's a good question. I mean, I think I think the country is divided on these issues, but the elite, including, I'm afraid to say, Prince Harry, seem to be embroiled in this moral panic. So we've seen a number of suicides and mass shootings and that sort of thing, which have been blamed on social media, video games. You know, it was out of us. And people take this kind of causal link seriously, even though the social science research backing up such a causal link is almost non-existent. And so there's more and more calls in this kind of panicky way to regulate video games and social media.

So on Monday, the British government is going to be unveiling its proposals for a new social media regulator, which I've taken to calling iPLOD. PLOD is our nickname for the police. And it looks like this new regulator is going to threaten to fine the owners of social media companies if they publish harmful material, which will, of course, include things like misgendering transgendered people. And all regulators are staffed by people who are on the left for the most part. So inevitably, the first people who'll suffer are people with right of centre opinions like me. And also the other problem with trying

to regulate social media and regulate video games is that it's quite easy for companies like Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has actually welcomed the British government's proposals to regulate social media. Because, of course, you know, if you own a $67 billion company, you can afford to comply with this kind of bevy of new absurd draconian regulations. but it's the new entrance into the marketplace, the smaller companies that can't. So effectively, this will just entrench the monopoly of people like Facebook and Twitter. But Prince Harry, I mean, it's a disaster. It's because he's married one of you. That was my question. She's brought all this kind of Hollywood baggage with her, and he's become the woke prince. It's a complete disaster.

So here's my, here's my question. First of all, do y'all hate us because we gave you Meghan Markle? I sincerely apologize for our side of the pond, but is this going to lead to the royalty? Is she just completely destroying the monarchy? What's going on here?

Well, it's, it's, it's, it's a disaster in the making. So far, there've only been a few kind of alarm bells going off, and it hasn't become a kind of fully fledged disaster. But here's an example. She recently visited a university and was told about the plans to decolonize the curriculum at this university, which is a kind of, you know, it's part of the kind of roads must fall,

pull down statues of slavers, rename cities and rooms because they're named after people with dubious social histories and so forth. And she endorsed the decolonizing the curriculum movement. I mean, it was an extraordinary thing for a member of the royal family to do. But, and so, you know, I think, I think, I think it's a disaster in the making. We will soon have a woke royal family. Is she ever going to take her hand off her belly? Ever? I like, I can't handle it. Every single picture of her for the last eight months has had her hand on her belly i i can't it makes me cringe yeah is it driving everyone over the over there crazy uh i at the moment she's still quite popular as is prince harry but um i can see the worm turning in due course

well wait a minute toby and i don't get to let you go, but she's not more woke than Prince Charles. Yes, she is. Prince Charles is woke in a kind of old-fashioned, slightly eccentric way, talking to plants, believes in kind of organic vegetables. That's pretty harmless, I think. But decolonizing the curriculum, that's toxic. I expect Charles to be swanning around the palace in Lawrence of Arabia robes and talking about architecture, but this is entirely different. If he does that, he'll be accused of cultural appropriation by his daughter.

So it's actually becoming – it actually really is becoming an episode of The Windsors, the TV show. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could the first person to write the biography charting Meghan Merkel's attempts to make the royal family work. We'll have an absolute fielder. Well, I hope we see articles on that effect in Quillette written by you, Toby. Thanks for joining us today, everybody. Thanks, Toby. Bye bye. You know, if you really I mean, if you're an American, though, and you want to do the whole decolonizing project, England really is the place to go. I mean because if you've got decolonizing to do, they've got some colonizing behind them. I mean you can just – there's an entire life's work there. We just don't have as rich a history as they do. Oh, man, I tell you, right now, as I was saying before, we're obviously talking about the period of time in which the Mueller report is being hashed over.

So that sets us at a particular point in the calendar. I'd like to think that everything we talk about is evergreen. The fact of the matter is, is that right now it's tax time and people are thinking about their taxes. If you listen to this past tax time, it's gone and you're happy and you're great. But it's going to come around again. And you know the laws have changed and you're always wondering what you can do to get ahead of the game. Well, a lot of us doing our taxes realize the new tax law reduced many of the deductions that you used to take. You can argue whether or not this is good or bad or whether or not the reform is necessary.

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That's DonorsTrust.org. And our thanks to DonorsTrust for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we welcome to the podcast, Christine Rosen. She's the senior editor and Zarina in Waiting, a commentary magazine and one of the stars of the world famous commentary podcast. Previously, she was managing editor of the Weekly Standard, and she's one of the founding editors of the New Atlantis, where she writes about the social and cultural impact of technology, as well as bioethics and the history of genetics.

Christine, welcome. We have a clip to play for you. Roll it. And I always tried to be, in my career, I've always tried to make a human connection. That's my responsibility, I think. I shake hands, I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, you can do this. And whether they're women, men, young, old, it's the way I've always been. It's the way I've tried to show I care about them and I'm listening. And over the years, knowing what I've been through, the things that I've faced, I've found that scores, if not hundreds of people, have come up to me and reached out for solace and comfort, something, something, anything that

may help them get through the tragedy they're going through. Christine, I come from a culture of North Dakota Lutherans who are loathe to administer CPR because it's so, you know, to touch somebody like that is just, and I know a lot of guys and a lot of generations who are not huggers and touchers and gropers and strokers and hair snippers and the rest of it. But let's just even give them that and say that his brand of tactile politics, as they're now calling it, is just – that's just Joe. Isn't he sort of petard-wise made his own situation here for years

in telling everybody what they can and cannot do in supporting the Title IX, dear colleague, and the rest of it? Isn't, in other words, the schadenfreude here just a little bit too delicious it it kind of is i mean poor uncle joe and his euphemisms for you know unwanted non-consensual touching human connection is is a fun one that he said in that clip but you're right i mean he's he's gone to college campuses and told you know college-age men you must absolutely never touch a woman without her permission and yet you know he wants to be he wants a different set of rules for himself because and told college-age men, you must absolutely never touch a woman without her permission. And yet he wants a different set of rules for himself because he's administering solace to the masses.

But nowadays, especially with social media and with the 24-7 news cycle and the constant scrutiny of candidates, you can't get away with that anymore. So he wants to be grandfathered in by the old rules, but he was one of the most vigorous and I think misguided enforcers of the new ones. So yes, it's a little bit of hypocrisy there. So I'm kind of conflicted though. Hey, this is Bethany. How are you? Hi, Bethany. So I'm kind of conflicted because I do feel like he is a good guy and there are not that many good guys left but your point is incredibly valid if he do you feel like he has sort of been on the offensive about this me too

stuff previously and now it's just coming to bite him or was he was he sort of more quiet i i don't remember hearing him sort of go after people for the stuff that everyone has known that he does. I mean, the pictures of him smelling women's hair have been around forever. Right. No, I think that's a good point because he you're right that he hasn't been a real Me Too warrior, but he's getting attacked by the Me Too moment. Because I think there's almost more policing of the left among their own right now with some of this stuff than there was in the past. But, I mean, I wonder because today he gave a speech to one of the major unions, and he's already joking about his tactile politics, which I think is not smart for him. Like he needs to kind of shuffle around in shame for another two or three news cycles at least before they're going to – now that he's just going to anger that same group that initially came after him. Like he he needs to kind of shuffle around in shame for another two or three news cycles,

at least before they're going to now that he's just going to anger that same group that initially came after him. You know, I'm not sure, though. Do you think that they have as much power as they think they have? Or is he kind of putting them in their place right now? Oh, it's a good question. I guess we'll know in a few days, because I think Lucy Flores overplayed her hand. The fact that she's a, you know, supporter and all of her political motivations for coming forward are suspect. And the other women who came forward, you know, again, the stories were not – this was not Harvey Weinstein. I mean, this was a very different kind of situation. And I think it has – I've actually been heartened to see that some of the public reaction to this has been let's not equate this with assault or rape right let's make some distinctions here and if you recall you know

not that long ago nobody wanted to make distinctions so that at least might be a silver lining to the whole biden fiasco hey christine it's rob long thanks for joining us so um i mean biden seems to be you know uh cleverly or maybe cleverly or with foresight realizing that if he's going to run, he's going to be running against Donald Trump. And so whatever Biden has done, it's nothing compared to what Trump has done. But do you think he's going to make it out of New Hampshire? I mean do you think the Democrat – do you think the working class Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire, and I would say even the working class Democrats in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and maybe Pennsylvania. Do you think they care about this at all? No, I don't.

And I don't think that I mean, that those core Democratic voters. He also, by the way, has still has a lead. Correct me if I'm wrong among African-American Democratic voters. I mean, he is still the front runner. And I think that's why the younger generation, the ones who supported Bernie last time and really felt that they got cheated by the establishment, of which Biden is, of course, you know, he's the exemplar of the establishment. That's why they're coming after him now. But I don't think that, you know, in terms of knocking him out of the running, no, not at all. And I agree. I think especially with those early primary states, it's not going to be a problem for him. But if you're Donald Trump and you're

sitting there probably during your executive time in the morning in the White House and God knows what you're doing, you're watching Fox and Friends on every possible TV there is. And you're thinking to yourself, OK, so Bernie Sanders writes dirty books. Joe Biden can't keep his hands off the girls. Amy Klobuchar eats salad with a fork and is a furious boss. How am I the weird one? Doesn't he have a point?

He does, but unfortunately, as Trump is want to do, he's going to overplay his hand with this, right? He's already started mocking Joe Biden. And he retweeted that, admittedly, hilarious video of Biden being molested by Biden. Yeah. But so he can't help himself. So it's that kind of toddler like impulse control issue that that, you know, his supporters always say, ah, he's just keeping it real. But actually, most grownups in the room say, no, he has impulse control issues. If he would just keep his mouth shut, he would look better. Well, that's, yeah, that's true. But frankly, that's true of all of us.

But it's also true, especially true of him. So, but I guess I'm just trying to understand the landscape of the Democratic Party, because the landscape of contenders for the presidency of the Democratic Party is always interesting and always revealing. So the last time we had a field like this was probably – I'm old. So it was 1988, and everybody was lining up to take over right after Reagan's second term to beat George H.W. Bush, and yet we had – they called them the seven dwarves or the eight dwarves. This group seems so nutty in so many ways that the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is I think the – definitely the first gay presidential candidate with any shot and who actually has a pretty good shot and is impressing audiences left and right he's the most mainstream

well i know the fact that the guy named budaj is the like kind of normal candidate is interesting but the reason is that he's one of the few Democrats so far, and this might change if Biden officially announces and gets in the race, but he's one of the few who's actually selling a mainstream Democratic Party message. Right. I mean, he's not talking about socialism. He's one. He and Klobuchar are the only ones who've said, you know, college probably can't be free because we can't the government can't afford to pay for free college for everyone. He's obviously quite smart. He graduated from Harvard, a Rhodes Scholar, et cetera, et cetera. But he doesn't have that, you know, terrible condescending way of talking to people that Al Gore did. He's, you know, he's been so far pretty vague on immigration. He hasn't said, you know, walls are immoral or any of the other nonsense that we've been hearing from Democrats. So his message is actually mainstream. But the party itself, and particularly its younger, more mediagenic new members has been pushing it to the left. And Sanders, obviously, has been pushing it

to the left. So I think it's it's it is fascinating to the issue about him being homosexual is really, really a good sign for this country, because it should be taken for granted. Like it's not his identity. He doesn't run. He's not running on that. He's I mean, it's just it just happens to be something he is. And he's like, yeah, you know, that's what I am. And it's not a big deal.

And that that's the one thing about his candidacy. I really have a lot of respect for how he's handled that issue. And the fact that he's also handled the criticism from LGBTQ activists who said, basically, you're not gay enough. Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah, you're not gay enough or the fact that you're gay does not make you diverse enough. Right, because he's still a white dude. He's still a white dude married to a white dude. Yeah. But so my question, I guess, is like in a constellation of that, I mean, do you think – I mean just being a political watcher for so long. Do you think that the Democratic Party is going to sort itself out?

These are the natural strains and kinks and bumps on the way to being a sort of a smooth glide path to a nomination and to maybe even winning? Or do you think these are deep fault lines for which there are really no obvious bridges? I think there are some fault lines here because and that's Bernie Sanders and the socialism message. So whether or not the party is going to put forward as its representative someone who has been an avowed socialist, I think if Bernie wins the nomination, that's a totally different party. I fear that someone like Buttigieg or even someone like Biden, whose message is pretty mainstream, Buttigieg, unfortunately, I think, will not be seen by the vast majority of Democratic primary voters as tough enough to take on Trump. I think they see that, I think many believe Biden is capable of that. And that's why he's been in polls leading for so long. We'll see once he actually throws his hat in the ring. But, you know, if they choose Biden, I think it'll be an interesting

race, but it won't be a huge transformational moment for the Democrats. If Sanders wins the nomination, that's a different Democratic Party. That is a party that has thrown itself far to the left of what most even mainstream Democratic voters want. So that battle is interesting. I mean, and Bernie's numbers are not bad. I mean, he's right behind Biden in a lot of places. He's ahead of Biden among younger voters. According, you know, just there was a poll out of Harvard's Institute of places. He's ahead of Biden among younger voters. There was a poll out of Harvard's Institute of Politics. Among 18 to 29-year-olds, he was at 31 percent and Biden was at 20 percent.

So that's, I think, the race between those two in some ways is the one to watch. It says something about the intersectional politics of the day when the person at the bottom of the intersectional pyramid is the white guy married to the white guy because he doesn't have any of the other attributes i mean going after him for being insufficiently queer was just one of the strangest things to see because it it tells you that there's a ravening group on one side that is determined as we keep talking about to yank the whole party over but on the other hand if they say we can't have this guy because he's too – he's cis-normative, presentative and all the rest, so we're going to go with the 78-year-old groper.

I mean how does that work exactly? I mean if it's Bernie versus Trump, all I can think of is some Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with Larry David yelling at Jeff Garman in a booth at Denny's. But when you mentioned Biden is the best, they may have to go with him because they think he's the best to go up against Trump. And that anybody who remembers the debate performance against Paul Ryan, where he was just an absolute snake, can see that he can be pretty good in the close knife fight.

But you mentioned Amy Klobuchar, and I'm here in Minnesota where Amy is generally loved. People on all sides respect her. But nothing, bupkis she's got going for her. What happened to her? Well, I think she did not do a good job right out of the gate crafting her message and responding to this idea of her as a wild-eyed boss, you know, chucking things at her staff and screaming at them to get, you know, she tried to quell that narrative, but that narrative took off and it hasn't stopped, right? I mean, the idea is that she might just be, you know, too, I mean, again, and look, as a caveat, let's just say,

I think in some way she's being judged unfairly by standards that wouldn't apply in the same way to a man. I do think there's something to that. But she just has not been able to make a dent. And part of that is that if the candidate field were smaller, I think she would be. I think there's she's her main competitors, Elizabeth Warren, in terms of messaging. She's just not she's just not breaking through. And Buttigieg is like the cute, shiny new object like Beto was a few weeks ago. And she's also harmed by the fact that these shiny new people keep entering the race and they have interesting – they have stories that aren't as straightforward as hers, right?

I mean the stories are a little bit more interesting, at least for the media. Yeah. If you got Kennedy teeth and you're standing on a bar, that gets some attention. What we found out, though, is something that all the candidates are going to have to learn going forward. And the moment you become a meme,

all of a sudden, you got a problem. And it wasn't so much the stuff about how she treated her staff, and I was always curious exactly who started floating that. But I think it was the fork. The moment the story leaked that she had eaten a salad on a plane with a comb, all of a sudden there's something memeable. And once that happens, you're frozen Alinsky-like, and people can just reduce you down to a simple meme and your history. Anyway, Bethany, you had a question.

Yeah, I'm just wondering – so I just Googled the ages of Sanders, Biden, and Trump. Is there any concern that they are all in their late 70s starting into this campaign? I think that Trump might get sort of a grandfathered in pass. But is there any concern, I guess, on the left that their two best candidates could, you know, not be super healthy in a year's time, even before a campaign starts? By the way, I'm sorry, that's my dog barking in the background. Everybody, I'm sorry about that. No, I think that is one of the most fascinating things about this race, right, that the candidate, the old dude is the one energizing the youthful base of the party. I mean, it was weird last time around when Bernie had all his Bernie bros and all the, you know, look, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you know, volunteered for Bernie's campaign. I mean, he's the hot new thing, even though he's, you know, very old.

But I do wonder about the fitness aspect. I mean, there were some questions about that, obviously with Hillary and certainly with – there are some with Trump and his – And rightfully so. Yeah. So I know it's a really good question. I'd love to hear their answers. Well, we'll hear them, and we'll turn to you to read what you say about them. Christine, thanks for being with us on the podcast today thanks so much um the dog barking problem there i think

everybody should have a dog who does a podcast because it just adds a little note of it humanizes everybody doesn't it right i mean you always wonder what the dog looks like what it's bothered by is there some problem? Mine right now is being very nice and I'm very happy. And he's just sitting on his little, sitting on his little pillow there and there's nothing, nothing in the world that he wants. But if he knew about weighted blankets, my dog would be one of those adorable dogs you see on YouTube videos that go and pull the weighted blanket out of the box and put it over themselves because it's just one, once you learn about them, you can't really sleep in any other way. And that's why I'm here

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Promo code RICOCHET for your special discount today. And our thanks to Calming Comfort for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Rob, before we go to our last question, our last issue, we're going to throw something at Bethany. I've got to think about what that's going to be. You had something to say to everybody. You were going to guilt them. You were going to harangue them. I'm not going to guilt them or harangue them.

I'm going to say only this, is that if you're listening to this podcast and you enjoy this podcast, we would love to have you become a member of Ricochet. It is important to us. Sometimes I try to convince people who just don't want to do it that they should. And all I can say to you is that we desperately need your help. And if you like what you hear, join Ricochet and you can either – you can mix it up on the pages of the site. You can talk. You can comment. You can start your own conversation.

You can do it all in an atmosphere of civility and mutual respect. Or you can just say, hey, listen, I don't really ever want to do that, but I do want to keep you guys going. So I will join Ricochet at the podcast level. You get all the benefits of it, but it's just a slightly lower price. But there are a whole bunch of people who say to me, oh, you know, I've been meaning to do this. Oh, yeah, I was going to do it. I just haven't done it yet.

I run into people all the time, and they say, oh, yeah, you know what? I'm not a member, but I'm going to do it. I kept meaning to do it. It wasn't like they didn't want to. It's just they never got around to it. I'm going to have to ask you this weekend, please get around to it. It really matters to us. So if you've been putting it off, now is the time.

Please join Ricochet.com. Ricochet.com slash join. Any level you like. Obviously, we'd love to have you at the highest level, the Reagan level. But if you want to be at the podcast level, that's fine too. The most important thing is that you do it. It's the most important thing for us because we want to keep our doors open. And we want to make sure that this stuff and this kind of conversation and this kind of atmosphere thrives and grows.

Exactly. And do it now before we launch our VR-enabled 3D hologram version of Ricochet because then Rob will be actually leaning his head out of your screen and cocking an eyebrow. We'll do it. Literally reaching into your wallet. Yeah. Peter, of course, his hands will come out and tie the sweater around your neck. But I don't know exactly what mine will do. Bethany, are you still there?

We understand you had a child who awoke. Yes, I had two children who woke. But I think that they're going to let me continue. We'll see how this goes. Just throw them a rawhide. So you had a piece in The Times about just tell everybody what it was about and what the reaction has been. So it was about sort of homeschooling in an environment where probably half of homeschoolers don't vaccinate. And I mentioned very briefly at the end of our last episode of Lady Brains, which is a great podcast and everyone should listen to it, that I am expecting. We're having another baby in like three months.

Whoa. Yeah. And we sort of as a family have been talking for a while now about what we're going to do next year with co-ops and stuff because the baby can't, so she's coming in July and she can't get vaccinated for MMR for at least nine months. I mean, if these outbreaks continue, we're going to have her vaccinated early as we did. We had our youngest also vaccinated early, which isn't an optimal situation because he had to have it again a couple months later. But we were going to San Francisco, which has the vaccination rates of less than a third world country so we got them for the measles um but we're sort of trying to decide what to do because if we if these outbreaks continue at the rate that they've been going i i'm scared to to

bring her to a situation where half of the kids are maybe not vaccinated. In a first world country. Yes. You live in the D.C. area. Yep. And I would say, I mean, the number of conversations that I've accidentally walked into at homeschooling groups where people are talking about, like, have you found a pediatrician who will take you? Have you?

Like, what can we do? And this is sort of the reality in the homeschool community. And now I'm kind of like, I don't know. I don't know if we can continue going to these groups next year, which stinks because my oldest especially is a super social kid. And the fact that she doesn't have as active a social life when we're homeschooling is the number one sort of downside for homeschooling as far as we're concerned. And it might have to unfortunately isolate her a little bit more, but it's funny, you know, we had this conversation with her and we said like, you know, this is, this is the conversation that we're having. These are the concerns we're having.

And we've talked to her a lot about how great shots are, even though they're obviously not great. And she said, you know, well, if, if these people can make my sister sick, then we won't go to the co-op. Of course, like they should get their shots. I'm like, I agree. So my five-year-old gets it. But yeah, so I think that the solution we've kind of come to, unfortunately, is that we're probably going to drop out of the homeschooling community for the next year. But what's strange to me, to me, I guess only you can

say this, is that I've always because I was living in Venice in California, everyone I know who was against vaccines was kind of a crackpot progressive. They were just against the science.

I don't know. I don't trust the science. They were anti-science. They were science deniers. It science – I don't know. I don't trust the science. They were anti-science. The same thing. They were science deniers. Science deniers. And I would say – It's pretty nonpartisan. I would say to them – well, I was going to ask. I would say to all my progressive friends who – so which is worse, somebody who believes that the earth is 4,000 years old or somebody who believes that they shouldn't vaccinate their children?

So I don't think that it's necessarily a Christian thing on the right side of it. I think that the folks on the conservative right, Republican side, whatever you want to say, I think that the disbelief in vaccines comes from not trusting the CDC and not trusting the government. So there's a little bit of intellectual consistency there, and I understand not trusting the CDC, but I don't understand not trusting your child's pediatrician when you trust them for literally everything else under the sun. I had a recurring cough, and I went to my doctor, my very liberal West Side L.A. doctor, very progressive guy.

I like him a lot, but it's very clear, big Obama signs and everything. And I had whooping cough. Oh, my god. And I said to him – this was a couple of years ago. I said, why do I have whooping cough? Is it because of people not vaccinating their kids? And he said, that's exactly right. These awful, liberal, progressive parents, and I just wish they would just get the shots.

And he was so mad. Even he was surprised. I could see on his face like, wow, did that just come out of me yeah but um you know i thought well maybe maybe this is a you know maybe this is one of those transformational events that it turns a lot of people everyone is conservative about the thing that they know the best everything else they can feel free to weigh in and opine on and just if i can say people who believe that the that the earth is 4 000 years old there's no herd immunity problem there where you have vulnerable people intellectually all of a sudden against their will believing that. Bethany, you were going to say?

Yeah, I mean, that whooping cough vaccine also, there's just not enough information about it out there. It expires after 10 years. It's the tetanus shot. And so when you compare the adults who are not, I mean, there's some responsibility also not putting the blame on you because it's not a perfect vaccine and you might have had a tetanus shot in the last 10 years. I have not. I've alleged to this.

Oh, okay. So there's – I mean, there's blame sort of in the medical community also that people are just not educated about the fact that they need to up that tetanus booster every 10 years and that there's more reasons to do it than just tetanus. I've known that all my life, for heaven's sakes. Really? Yeah. But more than just tetanus, though? James is very organized. No, I'm not very organized, and I hate anything related to these things, but I just remember

when I stepped on something back in 1986, I thought, it's been a while. And ever since then, in the back of my mind, I've got my tetanus and my pneumonia and the rest of it. And here I am still standing without the problem. So there's no way out of this, though. I mean, the people there's there's no way to convince the people who are anti-vaxxers that they should get vaccinated. It can't be done. It just it isn't. It just there has to be some sort of separation that protects people from those who decide that they're simply not going to do it for the children. Yeah. I mean, there has been some indication that if there's continuing education

at a pediatrician's office or at a school, if you make people sit down and have a conversation about it every single time, there is eventually a slow slide because there's sort of the extreme people. And then there's the people who have heard some things online and they've never seen anyone get whooping cough. They've never seen anyone get polio, for God's sake. And so they're like, you know, better err on the side of caution. And measles doesn't look so bad. But gosh, I've heard such awful things about autism. And people aren't following the science very carefully.

And so they're sort of casual anti-vaxxers, which I would say is a lot of them. And then there's sort of the hardcore people. And the hardcore people, you're not going to sway one way or the other. But the casual people I think can be talked into it if you spend enough time and throw enough stuff at them. Well, that's good to know, but that's heartening. I just keep thinking of all the places. I mean, before Facebook, there was really no place for people like this to congregate, was there?

I mean, they didn't go in the Usenet. They didn't get in a listserv, but all of a sudden, Facebook is going to pot. Mommy Facebook groups are the thing that will destroy our society. They're so bad. They make me really scared for the future of our society when I see people asking questions and posting things. I'm like, talk to a doctor. Please, for the love of God, stop posting pictures of your kids' injury or pus and just call your pediatrician's hotline. That is what it is there for. And it's free to call your pediatrician's hotline. I do it. I did it today. Just do it. I don't understand.

And the people who like misspell their kids' names. I was once in a, my cousin had a baby 10, 11 years ago, whatever. And they were sitting around and they were like, yeah, let's call her like Elizabeth. And they were trying to figure out how it was spelled. And then they just kind of like gave up and it was misspelled. And they're like, yeah, well, you know, and I'm like, you have a phone in your pocket. Just Google how to spell Elizabeth for Christ's sake. It's not hard. And people just like, they just like, didn't care enough to Google how to spell their kid's name. Okay. Well, they, what it is is they want the kids to have a unique name. No.

So they name the kid – It's laziness. Well, there are others though. They want their kid to be named Elizabeth, but they want the kid to go through their life telling people who fill out forms, it's Elizabeth with an A. Yeah, yeah. It's Elizabeth. Yeah. And therefore, they will be differentiated from the lowing herd of other people, but they'll just be marked with that.

Say the Robs are the James and the Bethanys. Right. Well, Bethany. I mean, for me from North Dakota, somebody named Bethany, that's fairly exotic. That's bordering into ethnic there. That's not a compliment, Bethany. I was named after my dad's drug dealer's girlfriend, so I'll pass that message along to the original Bethany. Well, folks, we're going to wrap it up here.

I've got to get ready to go to see Blue Oyster Cult tonight because why wouldn't I? And Bethany said – Bethany, what is – This is painful. This is really painful. Who is Blue Oyster Cult? Is that like related to the Blue Man Group and the Blue Oysters? No, it's not.

The Painted Blue? The greatest rock bands ever, and they had their heyday with a song that Don't Fear the Reapers. What's the song? Why don't you sing it? Why don't you just sing us out? Oh, we can't. And I'll tell you if it sounds familiar. Don't Fear the Reapers is the name of the song, and you probably only know it.

Why don't you sing a couple bars? We made a member pitch, Bethany, to keep people, not drive them away. We could do a poll at the end of it. Would singing help you join Ricochet? That's a really good idea. That's a really good idea. The only poll I'll get on is one attached to the floor and the ceiling, and you don't want to see that routine. Oh, my God.

You know the reference, more cowbell, don't you, on the Internet? That's a very popular thing for people to say. It's been divorced absolutely from the Saturday Night Live skit that spawned it, and it was based on the Blue Oyster Cult in the studio with Christopher Walken. It's a great bit, but where do your cultural memories begin? About 1993? Are you one of those people? Okay. All right.

So in the cradle, you were doing the Macarena, and there's no point. That's my Okay. All right. In the cradle, you were doing the Mac. In the cradle, you were doing the Macarena. Yes. Yes. No point. That's my generation. Like I said, I have to get to the show, which starts early because the audience has to get to Denny's at 5.30 the next morning for that Grand Slam special, but I had dinner last night with a guitarist who's a

fine fellow and his wife and they're members of Ricochet and enjoy the podcast. They're members along with us. Absolutely. If you'd have told me when I was in high school, holding my Bic lighter up saying, yeah, and making the devil horn salute as Blue Oyster Cult hit the stage that 40 years plus later, I would be sitting there talking about Victor Davis Hanson with a lead guitarist in a Minneapolis cafe. I would have been delighted.

That would have told me that things were going to turn out okay. And they have. But if they don't, there's Calm.com where you can find soothing ways to lead your life. There's the Calm Weighted Blanket, of course. It's under the blanket. And there's Donor's Trust as well where you can sleep knowing that your money is doing something good. So we're here at Ricochet to make your life happier, calmer, and easier.

So go out, get there, go to the website, go to the comments, get spun up about this and that, and then come back and we'll have another calming session again next week. So we thank all our sponsors. Thank you, Bethany, for sitting in for Peter. And also, go to iTunes, leave us a review. I know you haven't, but now that you felt so guilty over what Rob said, maybe I can make you use some of that guilt to go leave us a review. More people discover us, and Ricochet goes ever on to the 2012 election and beyond. Thanks, guys. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week. But now they're gone Seasons don't feel the reaper Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain

We can be like they are Come on baby Don't feel the reaper Baby take my hand Don't feel the reaper We'll be able to fly Don't feel the reaper Baby I'm your man.

La, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Valentine is done Here but now they're gone Romeo and Juliet Are together in eternity 40,000 men and women every day 40,000 men and women every day Thank you. You'll be able to fly, don't feel the reef, but baby, I'm your man. La, la, la, la, la.

La, la, la, la, la. Ricochet! Join the conversation.