In this special Thanksgiving long weekend edition with John Yoo sitting in the rotating host chair, the 3WHH bartenders share some wine, whisky and food pairings from the big meal. Steve supplemented his usual fare with popovers, washed down with some 2015 Trump Meritage red, expecting that it was likely past its prime, and although it had indeed lost its fruit, the depth and complexity surprised nonetheless, suggesting perhaps some staying power. Make of that what you will.

We also reflected further on our recent expedition to Italy, offer some final post-mortems on the mid-term election aimed at debunking popular media themes about what explains the unexpected result, and why the FTX scandal illustrates some aspects of contemporary liberalism that the breathless media accounts are missing.

Finally, we explore the meaning and significance of the decision of several elite law schools to discontinue participating in the rankings games of U.S. News and World Report, with considerably disagreement among us about the whole business of academic rankings.

Who doesn’t love some good Thanksgiving popovers?

P.S. Listeners with exceptional music knowledge may recognize the cover of a classic Thanksgiving-themed song used as our exit bumper music this week.

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  1. Quickz Member
    Quickz
    @Quickz

    Delightful popovers @stevenhayward! We used to make our Yorkshire pudding in a large cast iron pan here, but switched to a very similar pan to what you used. I enjoy the personal-sized results for sure.

    Glad that the election rules/tactics got brought up since they were surprisingly absent in @johnyoo otherwise concise opening question on the election loss reasons. I think herein lies much of the change in those “needed” areas. @lucrecia (not her username, but hey – I’ll use it until she gets one) aptly pointed out how the red wave was there – except in certain places where the needed blue surge saved the day.

    I am wondering a lot about the rise of early voting and no-excuse absentee mail in voting and how much it had to play in driving the youth and single woman vote to make that very surge happen. It is so much easier to just swing by an early voting site, or more so to just mail back what is (sometimes) mailed to you automatically or simply applied for by “clicking here” on a text from a voter advocacy group. Motor voter and other laws make those voter easy to find and target, and since there were specific places to target known, those voter advocacy groups were able to target and drive out those voters.

    Those voters, democrat-leaning single women & the youth vote, I *think* are renown for not voting as much in midterm elections (and elections in general) in much of the past 30+ years of “regular” election days. Well, with the advent of targeting, cell phones, early voting, and ease of request for a mail in ballot, it seems logical that these voters have been able to be reached and votes obtained from.

    At the same time, the very coalition that the GOP is bringing in (blue collar workers, minority, etc.) is also one of the very coalitions that often stayed home in past midterm elections for reason of interest, occupied with work/life, or otherwise not motivated to GOTV. Plus it seems the GOP GOTV was no where near the levels of Democratic outreach – and many were loathe to vote by mail or early.

    There does remain, like in AZ, a regional GOPe voting bloc that seems to cost anyone identified as MAGA/Trump-adjacent around 5% of the vote – which was the deciding factor in AZ and likely other races in the country.

    Could better GOTV make up the difference? Better voting laws? Further GOP realignment? I’m not sure but the above reasons I think more than cover what happened to the Red Wave – they used targeted GOTV dikes to shore up specific areas and drive out a sandbag line of young and single women voters, likely with Dobbs as a prime motivator. Rather clever actually, and points the finger at the GOP leaders, who well understood this emerging tactic, as to why they did not similarly engage.

    Ahh, my usual comment brevity strikes again!

    • #1
  2. Quickz Member
    Quickz
    @Quickz

    Yeah, there needs to be something done about trials brought up in places where you cannot get a true impartial trial. Any attempt to use prosecution to clean up any agency (FBI, etc.) will be met with aquittal in DC or NOVA. Could a law be passed that areas like D.C. that are so biased, as shown by rank partisanship in voting records, have automatic approval for trial relocation requests by prosecution/defense?

    If not, I don’t see how you get around automatic winning/losing of cases brought in these areas. This is borderline disenfranchisement of the right to a speedy and impartial trial by jury.

    Heck of a benefit if you are a Democratic prosecutor/defense attorney – throw me in that briar patch!

    • #2
  3. Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer Member
    Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer
    @ape2ag

    Crypto may not be money, but most money isn’t money. The overwhelming majority of financial transactions do not involve the physical exchange of dollar bills. Financial institutions extract a price from storing and exchanging ledger money. Everyone pays the price of these financial services but the system is set up to hide the costs from you. The current money exchange protocols, though now mostly electronic, are antiquated. I suspect that crypto will replace these like the automobile replaced the horse drawn buggy. Crypto is just way more secure and efficient. Consumers will still mostly transact in dollars, but accounts will be settled behind the scenes with some sort of crypto protocol. That doesn’t mean that all of the existing cryptocurrencies will be adopted by the banking system or that any of them will. The banks may create their own cryptocurrencies. Treasury may just mandate a centralized cryptocurrency which would be dystopian horror. But for now, dozens (hundreds?) of cryptocurrencies are vying for a functional place in the financial system. Buying tokens or crypto-coins is a way of capitalizing these various protocols. It’s like investing in a start-up bank with the hope that it achieves some sort of market dominance with a huge payout. It’s a big gamble with a lot of speculation involved. The simple ease of exchanging these crypto-tokens makes them seem like a “currency” in a way that equities and commodities futures aren’t. It was that accessibility that drew in a lot of retail investors without the established capital investment infrastructure collecting its typical surcharge. But also without the same level of oversite.  Now, the big boys have moved in. FTX is probably the first of what will be a string of “scandals” in which traditional investment firms, aligned with regulators and politicians, make out like bandits at the expense of small investors. There is real value potential in crypto, but, at this point, most of the value from its adoption is probably going to be captured by existing institutional investors.

    • #3
  4. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Even though it’s obvious at this point that legal tender laws do not advance human flourishing, none of the big governments are going to allow private, “harder” money to exist if it gets in their way. 

     

    • #4
  5. Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer Member
    Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer
    @ape2ag

    Quickz (View Comment):

    Could better GOTV make up the difference? Better voting laws? Further GOP realignment? I’m not sure but the above reasons I think more than cover what happened to the Red Wave – they used targeted GOTV dikes to shore up specific areas and drive out a sandbag line of young and single women voters, likely with Dobbs as a prime motivator. Rather clever actually, and points the finger at the GOP leaders, who well understood this emerging tactic, as to why they did not similarly engage.

    The problem isn’t just the mail in votes alone or the GOTV efforts.  It’s the combination.  It’s not that it’s too easy for apathetic voters to cast ballots, it’s that it is too easy for ballot harvesters to collect votes.  The Dem machines are banking votes from people who don’t even know that an election is happening.  Sure the GOP can play the game, too, and they will have too, but that empowers moneyed interests on the right and the fundraisers.  Ultimately, elections degenerate into dueling petition drives or simple demographic headcounts.  This isn’t democracy.

    • #5
  6. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer (View Comment):

    Quickz (View Comment):

    Could better GOTV make up the difference? Better voting laws? Further GOP realignment? I’m not sure but the above reasons I think more than cover what happened to the Red Wave – they used targeted GOTV dikes to shore up specific areas and drive out a sandbag line of young and single women voters, likely with Dobbs as a prime motivator. Rather clever actually, and points the finger at the GOP leaders, who well understood this emerging tactic, as to why they did not similarly engage.

    The problem isn’t just the mail in votes alone or the GOTV efforts. It’s the combination. It’s not that it’s too easy for apathetic voters to cast ballots, it’s that it is too easy for ballot harvesters to collect votes. The Dem machines are banking votes from people who don’t even know that an election is happening. Sure the GOP can play the game, too, and they will have too, but that empowers moneyed interests on the right and the fundraisers. Ultimately, elections degenerate into dueling petition drives or simple demographic headcounts. This isn’t democracy.

    1000%

    • #6
  7. Quickz Member
    Quickz
    @Quickz

    Ernst Rabbit von Hasenpfeffer (View Comment):

    Quickz (View Comment):

    Ultimately, elections degenerate into dueling petition drives or simple demographic headcounts. This isn’t democracy.

    Yes, but the caveat is that when we regain the necessary seats in these states you change election law to outlaw harvesting, limit absentee balloting, and otherwise tighten up voting rules to the proper standard they should be.

    Until then – you play by the New Rules.

    • #7
  8. Leslie Watkins Inactive
    Leslie Watkins
    @LeslieWatkins

    Thanks guys for putting out an episode during a holiday week. Great to get new content in an otherwise pretty darn empty space!

    • #8
  9. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Quickz (View Comment):
    Glad that the election rules/tactics got brought up since they were surprisingly absent in @johnyoo otherwise concise opening question on the election loss reasons. I think herein lies much of the change in those “needed” areas. @lucrecia (not her username, but hey – I’ll use it until she gets one) aptly pointed out how the red wave was there – except in certain places where the needed blue surge saved the day.

    @lucretia does have an account and has graced us many times with her presence.

    • #9
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