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This week, it’s another round of Question Time, this week with actual (OK, former) British person Charles C.W. Cooke sitting in for Peter Robinson, We cover Florida, guns, newspapers, — an entire smorgasbord of topics (what’s British for smorgasbord?).
Music from this week’s episode: I Know There’s An Answer by The Beach Boys
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If Rob writes draft scripts etc on his phone, he relies on his phone way too much.
Thanks to the hosts for the opportunity. It really follows the great experience Ricochet as a website and community offer to members – who ask very thoughtful and intelligent questions, in my humble opinion. Messrs. Cooke, Long, and Lileks have a depth of knowledge on so many different issues, and this format made both members and hosts shine. I learned a lot, so thank you, again.
On the daily wire question, they do not just produce documentaries. Daily Wire have produced and/or created 4 feature films so far – if James and Rob aren’t aware o this, it means their reach is not that great
Here’s your “march of wealth”. Greenspan started going crazy in 1996 and we never looked back.
I’ve enjoyed the Daily Wire’s feature films so far. It will be interesting to see what the future brings.
I bought a subscription so I could watch those films. The western with Gina Carrano and Searcy is excellent.
I think shelling out for conservative media is a good idea. Breitbart News Daily is excellent.
I want to get Mark Levin off of blaze, but it seems pretty high because he’s only on there two hours a week.
Re Biden’s mental condition and his remarks regarding Israel, Britain, & Arabs in Judea & Samaria:
Irish Alzheimer’s is when you forget everything but the grudges.
Regarding the point by @roblong et al about needing to build alternate institutions and offer alternate content, the Jobs Act opened up the opportunity to combine crowd source funding with investment.
Angel Studios is a leading example of a company that has begun to tap into this opportunity to attract a large number of smaller scale angel investors via a crowd investing approach. The angel investors choose to invest in the particular projects that they want to support and they receive equity in those projects.
An early example was the series The Chosen, which has attracted viewers on a global scale.
They also started Dry Bar Comedy and other projects.
One of the future offerings coming soon is a seven season animated version of Andrew Peterson’s popular fantasy series on The Wingfeather Saga. The Wingfeather Saga broke the record previously held by The Chosen for the fastest time to raise the initial minimum funding level of $1 million. They went on to raise $4,997,423 in the course of 28 days to cover costs for the initial season.
The great majority of potential projects do not make it through an initial screening process, but the beauty of this model is that the projects that are ultimately crowd funded are those for which there is an audience that wants the content. It can bypass the old model of running the gauntlet of established Hollywood sensibilities and provide the content the people actually want to see.
For a look into some of the people and a bit of the process behind these developments…
Listening In – A conversation with Neal Harmon and Chris Wall – S10.E12 (audio & transcript)
Neal Harmon co-founded VidAngel and Angel Studios. Chris Wall is the showrunner for one of Angel Studio’s most anticipated projects, the animated adaptation of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. Both men are shaking up the Christian entertainment market with a new crowdfunding model that allows viewers to invest in projects they want to see created. In this conversation with host Warren Smith, Neal Harmon and Chris Wall talk about their work.
Yay! My question about DeSantis and Disney made it into the podcast!
I was shocked by Rob Longs response -instead of any nuance of “never Trump” caution it was DeSantis all the way! I agree that DeSantis is well read and defers to experts – something that shows an amount of humility in addressing an issue. However DeSantis doesn’t just stop there, he becomes an informed champion of the cause, where as is pointed out can school the reporters.
Thanks, Charles. I have a .44 mag lever gun, a Winchester model 94. I can shoot .44 specials for fun. I t s awesome. I have used it to hunt with .44 mag loads.
I do not see an answer to either of my questions. “ask us anything” means that no matter how dumb or boring the question, we will answer everyone.
There’s a difference between answering any question, and answering every question.
If they got 200 questions there simply wouldn’t be time.
Greatly appreciated Charlie’s answer to the gun law question. Were I a legislator, I would try to mandate an audit of registration laws already on the books before voting to add any new provisions. Why Republicans don’t make this kind of argument is beyond me.
I don’t necessarily agree with Charlie, though, that the Republican party might end up being glad it lost the presidency in 2020, given the inflation mess we’re in. He might end up being right, of course, but I see a couple of potential problems he might not have considered. For one, pillory them as much as you believe is needed, but if there’s one thing the previous administration was capable of doing, it was making viable agreements—think of the Stay-in-Mexico agreement and the Abraham Accords—and likely would have implemented a much better plan for dealing with supply chain issues than whatever Secretary Pete “Highways-Are-Racist” Buttigieg is pursuing. Finally, I think it’s likely that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had Trump been president. Not because Trump’s a great statesman, but because he was seemingly erratic and reportedly told Putin he would bomb Moscow if America were attacked. Putin did stay put between 2014 and 2022, after all.
I’m not saying all would be fine had Trump won. But I do think it’s likely we would be in much better shape, practically speaking.
when answering an AMA you start from the first question and answer them one at at time. That is the appeal of an AMA, the establishment figures on the receiving end have to read the question and give a reply. Some similarities to my question actually. The 1st amendment gives the people the right to “petition government for redress of grievances”. I read that as saying ruling officials have to set aside time to receive the people, listen to their grievance and respond.
My question: does the petition clause in the 1st amendment give people the right to protest? If it does, then does it follow that unruly behavior at the protest is not to be punished by the same statutes ( trespassing, damage to public property, disobeying police officer, … ) as non protest behavior?
I thought Charlie’s answer was pretty lame. He said both the left and the right are pro gun in that the right do not want restrictions on gun ownership and the left do not want to enforce gun laws in inner cities ( he meant areas with concentrated black populations. ) What he ignored was that the left is all about selective prosecution. For example, the left is for laws that give law enforcement the right to monitor the social media activity of gun owners. They are confident that information gathered from such monitoring will be selectively leaked to the media during political campaigns and when cancel culture targets an individual.
Let’s be realistic, all 3 co-hosts might be among the top 1% or less. How many times have YOU been to Spain in the past few years?
You couldn’t possibly have looked this up.
What is your point, general or otherwise?
That they might share some “luxury beliefs” with the left.
You really need to look up those numbers–plural– and consider the real estate factor and then do some subtraction. I don’t get any vibe like that from those guys other than Rob probably doesn’t want to think about the political dynamics of populism too much.
I’m not so sure. And it does vary by state too, you don’t need as much income to be in the top 1% in Minnesota or Florida as you do in New York. And I get a pretty strong vibe that – for example – they might all be more favorable to “red flag” laws than most regular people, because they can probably afford to get lawyers to protect their own rights. If they even worried that their own rights might ever be endangered, which is something that people with “luxury beliefs” might not even think about.
Nobody frames it this way.
Your rhetoric is overwrought and un-persuasive.
Just for the record, the income is $660,000 and the net worth is $11 million.
Top 1% of accumulated wealth might be $11 million, but I was looking just at income. Income is what someone would use to hire a lawyer to defend themselves against “red flag” actions etc. And not only is housing less expensive in Minnesota, but so are lawyers.
*** $660,000 ****
You are being imprecise and it’s unfair. There is no way in hell their views are doing as much damage as you are implying.
You don’t think Charlie Cooke writing/saying that red-flag laws might not be so bad, when most people can’t afford to defend their rights the way he can, is a problem?
When it comes to gun policy I am not going to freak out about anything Charlie Cooke says.
It’s not about freaking out, it’s about conservative pundits/commentators/etc having priorities that don’t match most people even those they would otherwise claim to be similar to. At base a lot of it is “well this wouldn’t be a big problem” which really means “well this wouldn’t be a big problem FOR ME.”
I thought Charles response was a good talking point that maybe a bit simplistic but communicated that both sides do have common ground. It’s one thing to mandate a rule but it requires enforcement for the law to have any effect.
I found this article series on how poorly the current gun laws in California are being enforced (24,000 people identified with violent crimes/mental illness still haven’t had their weapons confiscated). It is interesting that the whole system’s integrity is in question, making it less likely to be used by law enforcement.
https://calmatters.org/series/outgunned/
The NICS system is never filled up and the consequences are deadly every other year or so.
It doesn’t matter who or where, nobody is going to prosecute straw purchasers enough.
The Buffalo shooter was totally qualified to be caught by the draconian New York red flag laws.
All they can do is babble about some new law. It’s a joke. They can’t even do what they are supposed to do, now.
Regulating rifles and magazines is a complete waste of time for a variety of reasons.
Half of the gun deaths are suicide. 1% are mass shootings and like 70% of that is gang violence. Mass shootings are sort of a red herring.
The solution is more concealed carry and to outlaw gun free zones. It’s obvious.
I thought the John Lott interview with Bill Walton was really good. It was about a month ago. It’s in the CPAC network.
edit
Here’s another one. The death of children from gun accidents is 3%. What are you supposed to do about that, if you aren’t a communist that hates the constitution?
50% of the homicides are in 2% of the counties. In most of those counties, it’s confined to 10 blocks or something. When you back that figure out, we are less violent than Europe.