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.
Well, it’s crunch time now: we’re into the final lap of the election and things are going to be intense for the next 8 weeks or so. But first, some personal business: one of our intrepid cast is sending his youngest child off to college. Is his purpose in life now over? We discuss. Then Mr. Flight 93 himself, Michael Anton joins to discuss his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return and to warn everyone that if Joe Biden wins, the country will turn into California (but without the weather, the beaches, and the surfing). For those of us who live in the Golden State, it’s a weird way to sell a book (it’s not that bad here), but hey, Michael’s gotta eat too. Then, something of a departure for America’s Most Beloved Podcast® — a sports segment! And if we’re going to do a sports segment, then we’re going to get one of the best in the business to help us. That would be the great Sally Jenkins — columnist for The Washington Post. We talk about college football, political activism in sports, and what’s it’s like to enter the family business when your dad was one of the all time legends. Finally, Nancy Pelosi gets a blowout and it blows up. Perfect.
Music from this week’s show: I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair by Ella Fitzgerald
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.
ExpressVPN
Every day you use the internet without ExpressVPN, you’re putting sensitive information at risk. Don’t put this off. Protect your online data with ExpressVPN today!
Congratulations, Robinson. Keeping five kids alive til adulthood is an accomplishment in and of itself. It sounds like yours are all smart too.
Bravo!
Maybe it’s not about money, but I can’t help wondering about the olympic athletes that are competing “for” countries that they may not have previously visited or even read about.
I recall some comments/complaints in the past that were disappointed that James, especially, didn’t push back against guests that were in some cases being just nonsensical. So what’s the story there, that push-back isn’t needed if everyone knows that what the guest is saying is ridiculous?
As for the question of this podcast talking more sports, please don’t. My advice would be to add back the 6 minutes of silence and cut out the section on sports. That was a train wreck. I am going to have binge 10 hours of Clay Travis to compensate for that nonsense.
Maybe the lesson is, most bloggers shouldn’t try to talk about sports?
I suppose they can try again sometime down the road with Travis’ new business partner, Jason Whitlock (who I don’t always agree with, but who I’ve respected since he was willing to go at it against the amazingly-full-of-himself Mike Lupica on ESPN’s “Sports Reporters” show 20 years ago).
Re: which side of the Democrat party has all of the money: BLM gets billions from corporations.
Democrats want to turn the United States into California. You have to be out of your mind to vote against Trump. These people are sick. The ACA was a lie to for single payor and you’re going to get it if Trump doesn’t win. I just heard John Lott describe what is going happen to the court system and gun control if Biden wins. Too many Republicans have this simplistic and idealistic model of civics in their head that just doesn’t apply anymore. The Democrats lie to take ground and they keep it. They have a whole system for it.
It seems to me when you talk about people that want to be freeloaders, you also need to at the same time talk about how the structure of the economy is very screwed up. Michael definitely is good at that generally but I don’t think most people are.
The “Wokaratii” in the republican party are a disaster. Mitt Romney walked with Black Lives Matter. There are just enough Republicans that have screwed up ideas about institutional racism etc. that it retards power on the right.
“Avenger” This is a really important point. If you look at the IRS tax tables, the income in this country is really skewed towards the top. It truly is a mistake of policy. Democrats think that’s why you get to tax them more. If you look at the tables it’s absolutely ridiculous to use that as a solution because it’s so high already. It’s unbelievable. They think in punitive terms instead of actual solutions. I don’t think this ever gets dealt with politically.
Color blindness is defined as racism. Amen. You aren’t the crazy one here, they are.
This is a minute of a and a half of Michael describing the internal resistance to Trump. Just think of all the Republicans that think this is just swell.
I seriously don’t see the beef with the Sally Jenkins interview.
There are few things I hate more than all of the unaccountable centralized power in the NCAA and the big five etc. All of that is evil and Congress didn’t do a thing about it. Bosie State > Nick Saban.
Why do some Republicans want more of this crap?
#VoteDemocrat
I enjoyed the episode overall, but was disappointed somewhat by the Anton segment. He’s arguably the most influential writer on the Right at the moment and I hoped to hear more about his ideas.
And Rob Long spending all of his time litigating the use of the Flight 93 analogy was just <chef’s kiss>. A perfect encapsulation of how myopic NeverTrumpers are. “It’s 2020 and Republicans are in the midst of a painful once-in-a-generation political realignment and forming a new coalition, but I’m here to try to poke a hole in your analogy” was so bad it’s good. I want to imagine he and Jonah worked on that together.
Anyway, have a great weekend.
It wasn’t surprising that Rob didn’t understand the analogy but sad. It was comforting to get confirmation from the author of the article that I got the analogy. It seemed pretty obvious; the country equals the plane, Obama’s administration equals terrorists taking over the controls and working to crash it, Hillary equals terrorists staying at the controls and Trump equals storming the cockpit and wrestling the controls away from the terrorists. Trump might have caused the country to crash anyway but he might also return the plane to its original course. Another analogy at the time was that Hillary was Russian roulette with six in the chamber and Trump was one or two in the chamber. I suppose Rob would find a way to get that wrong too.
I have to disagree with Blue Yeti and Peter Robinson, the Jenkins interview wasn’t “Great”. She didn’t listen but instead quasi-lectured. Today is NOT ‘68. John Carlos held up a fist AFTER he won, not before, not during. Billie Jean King in 1968 was playing tennis. She wasn’t “out” and I recall nothing controversial about her. Arthur Ashe was black and winning some matches and that was noted as being unusual in a white dominated sport. The best and maybe only analogous example was Mohammed Ali.
I would love to ask her “What if Jesse Owens had lost?” How would the politics have changed? To me that’s a great example of sports emphasizing what was clear about Hitler and German fascism but lets be honest: Owens’ win didn’t increase the likelihood of ultimate German failure or facilitate the earlier entrance of the US into WWII. It fit a narrative and we’ve gone with it. Ironic for so long it was as much about an American winning as it was about a BLACK American winning.
As much as I like good writing I have to admit I grew tired of “great sports writers” some time ago. I’m far more interested in watching, opinionating among friends and maybe reading a little writing of how its done. I don’t need a writer to tell me how, in the grander scheme, sports is important. I can see it with my own eyes when I go to a college or professional football game or visit a local sports bar.
PS as for the Anton interview I agree that Rob perseverated on the Fl 93 analogy.
Anton got interviewed on Power Line. I’m sure that’s excellent.
I’m thinking I need to relisten to the Jenkins interview.
I think the sports writer missed the point about the NBA and China. It’s not so much their business ties, it’s how they lecture America about race relations and tamp down any criticism from their personnel. She seems to think the NBA is the victim of unfair criticism. Give me a break.
I’m very glad Rob asked Anton that question about what, if anything, Anton thought was the trade-off in voting for Trump, since that’s the impression I always got of the Flight 93 article- it ostensibly acknowledges Trump’s faults and says basically “I know, I get why it’s hard to vote for him,” but it was written by someone who doesn’t actually see many faults, and didn’t think it was hard to vote for him. It’s one of those arguments I make to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do, but which I am already perfectly prepared to do. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad argument, it just means it doesn’t even really accept its own premise- the premise was for other people to accept, not the author.
If you think the last election was a Flight 93 election, you will think every election for the rest of your life will be a Flight 93 election. And clearly Anton does.
My opinion is, this doesn’t change until the bond market starts backing up uncontrollably. When the government runs out of money, lots of good things happen for the right and libertarianism. The idealists on the right that hate Trump can actually be constructive.
You may be interested in this column by Sally from October 2019. in which she condemns the moral relativism of Lebron James, the NBA, and several other US corporations. A few key ‘graphs:
Do we still need to give you that break?
P.S. In this column she also (mildly) criticizes Milton Friedman’s theory that ” the free market was the insurer of freedom.” She’s not wrong about that (Friedman about the Soviet Union, Friedman never met Xi), but I just love that a mainstream sportswriter is quoting Milton Friedman in a column about the NBA.
Peter and James , you have the best parts ahead, weddings and grandchildren, I sometimes wish I had more kids so I can have more weddings.
Grandchildren, all the fun and no worry or responsibility, at the end of the day you leave. Everything they say makes me laugh.
What color is the sky in Rob’s world?
I suppose it depends on what he’s been most recently micro-dosing.
Okay, but what about this?
I addressed this in a previous comment. If you actually read the column (or my previous comment), you’d see that this column is not a defense of the NBA’s position, which she is critical of. Rather, the column is pointing out the hypocrisy of attacking the NBA while letting several other corporations slide on doing exactly the same thing. Try again.
I guess I missed that because I expected it to be longer.
No actually. I don’t think that came through in the Q&A stuff. Good for her.
Evidently I downloaded the original early enough to catch the extra 6 minutes – of not entirely nothing, as mine had at the very end an encore performance of Peter Robinson‘s tagline
— D. Droopalong
Gee, another lefty WAPO sports writer. How interesting. Not! We can hear the left anywhere. It would be nice to be spared here on Ricochet with your pay wall….You need to be worth it or I’m out. Rob Long about chokes to give Pres. Trump a compliment and is so quick to add in nasty comments whenever he can. Many times just sounds like a kid throwing a tantrum.
Whereas Jonah Goldberg often sounds like an adult throwing a tantrum. Not a good look.
I think we need to distinguish those companies that are simply doing business in China vs. those companies that doing business AND changing their products to the Chinese government’s liking. The NBA is in the latter camp.
They shouldn’t earn anything off of us or steal anything from us. It’s just mafia with an army. They want to rip off the whole world including their own people.
Yes, that was the stray file I was referring to in a previous comment. My apologies.
One, she’s not lefty — lefty sportswriters don’t criticize the NBA and they don’t quote Milton Friedman for starters. I do not want to speak for her, but my impression is that she is more of a Libertarian if anything.
Two, if you only want to hear platitudes when we discuss the President, well, you can hear that anywhere too. Like it or not, the opinions you hear on this show represent actual constituencies in the Republican Party. You way not want to hear them — that’s your choice. But there are millions of R voters who share those sentiments. Maybe instead of criticizing what you hear on a Conservative podcast, ask yourself why you are hearing it? A bit of political introspection might be good for a deeper understanding of current events.
P.S., the Ricochet Podcast is free and it’s in front of the paywall. Your membership fees are not used to produce it (that’s what the ads are for) and listening to it is entirely optional and not a requirement for membership. Oohrah.