Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This week, noted author Rob Long (come on, buy his book!) is back on the big show, so we booked a guest he’d have a lot to chat about with, California Congressman Devin Nunes. We talk collusion, Russia, Mueller, all the good stuff. Also, Bush the elder says the President “is a blowhard,” are entitlements bad for the nation’s health?, and Steve Martin’s King Tut is racist. Well, at least at Reed College it is.
Music from this week’s podcast: King Tut by Steve Martin
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Harry's Shave
Use Code: ricochet
Harry’s produces high-quality razors for 1/2 the price of drugstore brands. Get $5 off your first purchase by using coupon code “RICOCHET” at checkout.
Was a strict time-limit with Nunes agreed to in advance, and is that why James dropped the hammer so abruptly? He sounded game to go on, and I wish he had.
He actually stayed on much longer than the agreed upon time (10-12 minutes). We’ll have him back on again soon.
What does “take Washington on mean?” Basically, sending Washington elites routinely violating laws to enrich themselves to jail. By enriching, I don’t mean necessarily through money – power can be just as addictive as money.
Right now there is the belief among many in the heartland there are two sets of laws: one which apply to the regular Joes and Janes and the second which apply to the coastal elites. A veteran accidentally carries an empty magazine into DC and he is facing hard time. A journalist brandishes an illegal magazine on a television show filmed in D.C. and the chief of police laughs off the idea of bringing charges.
We want the elite to suffer under the same laws as the “normals” do, the laws they have passed. We have Mueller looking to bring technical charges against Republicans while ignoring substantive corruption and lawbreaking by Democrats. We have Progressives Hodgkinsoning Republicans and the press and political class ignoring these actions. We want the law applied evenly.
Seawriter
I was walking my dog listening to your opening discussion of the comments on Trump from the Presidents Bush. (Fortunately, it’s a chilly day and not many people could see me ranting walking down the street.)
What all of you are leaving out of the discussion is context.
Forget Bush 41. Calling Trump a “blowhard” is stating a simple fact. Like Trump or hate him, “blowing hard” is what he does.
The comments of Bush 43, however, are quite disappointing.
All through his years in office, he was the political gentleman. Working with Teddy Kennedy to give us the Common Core educational debacle. Working across the aisle to implement the Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization Act. He never vetoed a single bill his entire eight years in office.
Throughout that time, the Left was gripped with Bush Derangement Syndrome, almost as feverish as it is with its current anti-Trump hysteria. Bush never answered back. He never defended himself. He was always the gentleman. I didn’t see where it was going, and I admired him.
Once out of office, he did oil painting through eight years of Obama. He was following the time-honored tradition of presidents getting out of politics. Fine.
And now he leaps into the fore to say that Trump doesn’t know how to be president? He should go home and paint his toes some more.
He had a chance to show how a gentleman fights. How a seasoned politician fights. The president is in some ways the people’s champion, particularly in a life-or-death struggle like the one we’re fighting with the Left. What should a president do? He seems to think he knows all about it. Why didn’t he?
That’s how we got Trump. He wasn’t my first choice. Possibly my 15th. I didn’t even vote for him in the election. But if it came down to him and George W. in the primary, today, I’d vote for Trump, unless there were someone in the race who knows how to fight like a seasoned politician.
Our gentlemanly Presidents Bush didn’t stand up to the media, didn’t even make an attempt to drain the swamp, never let out a peep as the Washington bureaucracy ran all over us under Obama. They closed their eyes to the Clintons’ money laundering and influence peddling beginning in the ’90s, with never a word of gentlemanly protest.
Trump is an imperfect advocate, a “blowhard,” but at least he’s goading the Left to reveal what a mass of slathering insanity they are. I hate to say it, but “at least he fights.”
I love you people, but I felt that you left out important context.
Rob says Obamacare is free? Really? Please come to my hometown and try to afford covering my family with reasonable premiums and reasonable deductibles. My definition of “free” and his definition of “free” is wildly different.
Yup. Right now over half my income goes to pay for health insurance. It is 250% of my mortgage. If you are self-employed or working for a small business it is a killer.
Seawriter
Rob’s characterization of the popularity of Obamacare is not helpful at all in my opinion. The whole thing is set up as what is effectively regressive taxation via “cross subsidization.” Richard Epstein has said this on his own show here. It’s socialism regressively funded. People on group plans are sometimes sort of insulated, but the producers in ths country are getting shafted by it. The Cadillac tax will screw everyone eventually.
What people really want is an intelligent version of what they do in Switzerland, that makes sense for us. All prepaid medicine should be funneled through direct primary care, not premiums. Premiums should reflect catastrophic risk only.
People are too broke and scared to go full free market on this stuff. Our Rulers are too stupid and corrupt to pull it off anyway. Employment based insurance and Medicare absolutely destroyed this country. Terrible.
The reason “we are all socialists now” is because Murkowsky, Collins, and the whole damn GOP never thought ahead one whit about what they would do if Trump got elected.
FWIW, I never thought Steve Martin’s song King Tut was funny, not then as a teenager and not now.
I love the Yale part. Higher education will be completely atomized after the bond market collapses.
So now we are supposed to back to using Harry’s Razors? After several months of DollarShaveClub sponsoring Ricochet podcasts?
On a more serious note:
At the end of the podcast Peter said the left protests were all about virtue signaling not about persuasion. I object to that idea. It is not about virtue signaling, it is about coercive enforcement of their doctrine. They are protesting in front of the Dartmouth crowd as a threat to their own side. “Keep on our good side, or you will get much worse.” There is no more ardent anger than that levied against heretics.
I agree with Jan Bear’s post 100%.
Also, Byron York
I love this.
Last comment. @claire should listen to Devin Nunes on this podcast.
These podcasts would be a lot more interesting and informative (to say nothing of enjoyable) if Peter Robinson would quit interrupting the others and going on his 5-minute monologues*. Generally, they last so long, that whomever he has interrupted is never able to pick back up the thread and finish the point they were trying to make. Maybe that’s his plan. Peter, saying “Excuse me,” as you bulldoze your way across someone’s comments does not actually excuse you.
* Monologue: a long and typically tedious speech
My Obamacare premium went up 21% this year over last year. It will go up 43% next year. This is the mother of all financial bubbles.
I was honored for you to repeat my comments on the value of a Ricochet Membership and for being respected as one of the NeverTrump parts of our family.
Gary Robbins
The people who received expanded medicaid might be happier; wasn’t there a study out of Portland that said those receiving the coverage were more comfortable having it although they might not really have better access to healthcare due to limits of medicaid providers?
Those receiving huge subsidies are happy although now they are now bound to not making too much income lest they go off a premium cliff.
People in the corporate market are relieved that immediately after passing the bill the powers that be decided to not enforce the part where the rest of the country was forced onto to this monstrosity, probably in an effort to push negative effects out of Obama’s term in office.
The people actually affected by Obamacare hate it.
Let’s not pretend people like Obamacare; voters consistently polled against it and put republicans in charge all over the map.
So what happened? People, when faced with the reality of a disorganized GOP replacement effort and the howling of the MSM, preferred the devil they know in polls that were probably horribly leading or biased.
Had the GOP put actual thought into what to do had they won, we’d all be in much better shape.
Bingo.
Another good show.
Regarding the dust-up between Peter and Rob in the beginning, I think it was, in spirit, similar to Zito’s literally-but-not-seriously/seriously-but-not-literally contrast, with Peter channeling what Trump’s supporters hear (a patriotic brawler who will take on the bloated D.C. establishment on behalf of the little guy), while Rob rationally observes that Trump, literally, endorses Leviathan as readily as any Democrat.
I think it’s hugely important, in terms of what it implies about America, that Trump supporters believe this about Trump — just as it’s hugely important that Obama voters mistook him for something less destructive than he actually was.
PS I’ll second the first comment on this thread: James Lileks, justly famous for his smoothly satisfying transitions (which sounds kind of like a cigarette ad, right?), could have used one as he wielded the hook and ushered Rep. Nunes off stage.
Re: Tut. Surely you’re joking, Mr. Lileks.
A lovely little satire about Tut-mania, which really was insane. And musically, a nice parody of the tropes of 70’s milquetoast-soul-pop-funk.
Funny then, funny now. Thanks for playing it on the outro . . .
@henryracette
And I think you still don’t get it.
Ted Cruz was a candidate that had both the will to fight and the government savvy to make it happen without crazy tweets. But he got his legs cut out from under him by the GOP “gentlemen” Mitch McConnell and John Boehner (thanks, guys!). Nobody in an official position was willing to stand up and say that the shutdown panic was a sham: the Obama Administration was spending extra money to send government employees on paid furlough and harassing citizens and tourists in outdoor parks.
The ever-so-noble “Knights of the Round Table,” such as Mitch McConnell, are still loathe to use the parliamentary methods everyone knows the Dems will use the first minute they’re in charge. Jeb! Bush, who thought he was entitled to the presidency, and that other guy, whose name I have thankfully forgotten, thought he could win with only Ohio, and then he couldn’t even win Ohio. But they were gentlemen!
And then comes this brash knight in gold-plated tin armor. I know what he said before the election. I’m still mad that he accused Ted Cruz’s dad of killing Kennedy. I’m embarrassed that he didn’t know how many cars Japanese companies make in the United States. He’s got a lot of dents in his armor.
But aside from his tweets and his factually questionable statements, he’s governing a lot more conservatively than we had any right to expect.
And the “Knights of the Round Table” are still too “gentlemanly” to get horse manure on their shoes.
“Got a condo made of stone-a…”
I’m going to have that song in my head all day now
Quite possibly.
But my point was that I would rather America were a place (as I believe it is) where the people are still basically American in their values, but gullible and inclined to vote foolishly — rather than a place where we’ve jettisoned any concern for our traditional values and so voted for two men (Obama and Trump) both of whom represent, in different ways, a rebuke of those values.
(I have my own theories about the what, why, and how of Trump, but I’ll save those for another post.)
I hope so, too. But if I can compare it to WWII, we didn’t become a people who randomly and carelessly went around dropping atomic bombs on everybody we don’t get along with. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
I also appreciate how the arguments against atomic weapons helped steer us away from them.
So I don’t mind hearing Rob point out Trump’s craziness, and he does acknowledge when Trump is not crazy, which I also appreciate.
But when Bush 43 started going on about what a bad president Trump is, I wanted to point out that Bush 43 and Jeb! and a number of others who pride themselves on their “civility” are part of the reason we got Trump.
The struggle is real.
He gave his life for tourism.
I got to say I was disappointed once again with another round of But Trump on the main show. We have Donna Brazille publicly gutting Hillary Clinton. The FBI endictments looking more and more ridiculous by the second and Poland doubling the size of its army.
Can we like get some actual breaking news that Conservatives want to hear. Its been a year. He won. Get over it.
As to George W Bush, he is one of the most incompetent Presidents who ever lived and is directly responsible for why we are still stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq all these years later.
I could write 2000 words on why he was awful and still have more to say. But look up Airlift of Evil sometime.
When he was President, I used to refer to George H.W. Bush as “Ineptoman” and “The Clueless One”.
Consider how H.W. canceled out his chance to influence the Supreme Court in a conservative direction by nominating Clarence Thomas and David Souter, who immediately came out as the most liberal member of the Court. (Yes, I’m sure Souter lied to him, but H.W. fell for it.)
A 1988 Supreme Court decision presented H.W. with a ruling that Republican and independent union members couldn’t be coerced into paying dues that went to the Democratic Party. He did nothing to enforce this ruling for about 3 1/2 years, and Bill Clinton almost immediately reversed his last-minute actions.
In 1988, H.W. chose Dan Quayle as his VP, who proved such a drag on the ticket that they left his name off the bumper stickers. Nonetheless, refusing to admit an error, H.W. kept Quayle in 1992, instead of finding somebody new to help the ticket.
When H.W. visited Somalia, shortly after his defeat, a young soldier asked him what he planned to do, now that he was out of office. He answered that he didn’t know, because he had expected to win — probably the last person in the United States who still expected that, by Election Day!
On the subject of so-called entitlements: it should be illegal (or unconstitutional) to create programs that spend money without limit (just as the Defense Department has to live within its budget). If ceilings were required, of course, politicians would place them so insanely high as to never be reached. And then they would be reached, nonetheless, in 10 or 20 years …
nothing was going to save Bush after that “Read my lips” ad. The irony of course being people voted for an administration that went on to raise their taxes