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This week on the Big Show, one guest: John O’Sullivan. We booked him to fact check this season of Netflix’s The Crown as he was a speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and was a witness to much of what occurred in the show (and what didn’t). But that wasn’t the only topic we covered with John. We also had a long and shall we say lively conversation about the Trump legal team’s efforts to overturn the results of the election. We think Mr. O’Sullivan represented the views of many of our members and listeners, much to the consternation of one of the hosts of this podcast (guess who?). Also, Peter Robinson discovers The Beatles forty years after the fact and then immediately proceeds to blame them for a lame Christmas song written decades after the band broke up. Also, a new Lileks Post of The Week courtesy of @majestyk and a short but thorough primer on why streaming killed the movie theater star.
Music from this week’s show: Her Majesty by The Beatles
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I am guessing that eventually the Chinese will start de facto excluding other space traveling nations from certain territories, even as they continue to mouth the rhetoric of “common heritage of mankind”.
Much like they enthusiastically pledge reductions in CO2 production, always on some future date, even as they add more and more coal-fired power plants.
What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know that Communists Don’t Lie?
Both sides have strong opinions and sometimes communicate them in indelicate ways. Personalizing every single disagreement, plus viewing it through a tribal, partisan lens leads to what I see as an oversensitivity to criticism of a third party, who, remember, doesn’t know we exist. (I mean, unless you’ve actually met him, in which case, I stand corrected.) Rob, harsh though he is sometimes, has over the years been careful to separate his criticisms of Trump from those of his supporters, but sometimes he takes issue with the reaction of certain Trump supporters, and cannot always take the time out to carefully tease out what cohort of supporters that may be, e.g. pundits, elected officials, Republican activists, campaign people, or rank-and-file voters. So some sort of “if the shoe fits” philosophy works as a good filtering mechanism, at least for me. (Though that doesn’t always work–see below.) Note also that Rob sometimes agrees with and supports Trump on certain issues and actions, and is pretty quick to note it, if sometimes through gritted teeth.
What I’m saying is that I think it’s a category error. Let me put it this way. I voted for George W. Bush twice.* There are people on this site who routinely write things about how W. was a neocon warmonger globalist failure (or the tool of same.) When I read those criticisms, I do not then leap to assume that they mean I, therefore, am a neocon warmonger globalist failure (or the tool of same,) even if they occasionally say that they can’t believe “his supporters” believe thus and so. Why? Because I know they’re talking in generalities, and because I doubt they mean it personally, so I don’t waste the mental cycles to get upset about it. (And, of course, because, annoyingly, some of their criticisms may be valid.) It’s also sometimes impossible to make an argument of such precision against something that one can’t feel rebuked for supporting that something. That’s where dispassion and bit of distancing from the topic comes in.
*And DJT in the most recent election.
@archiecampbell — I don’t object to Rob Long’s abusive language: it’s the sign of a weak argument.
I object to his filibustering, not letting his guests speak while he monopolizes the discussion with his own ignorant opinions.
I object to his constant use of straw man arguments; for example, rather than permit people to address what they think happened in this extremely peculiar election, he demands that that they defend whatever (the liberal media claim) the Trump legal team has been doing or saying lately.
I object to his “bait and switch” arguments. Whenever he realizes he is on shaky ground, he switches from defending the fairness and honesty of the election, to arguing that the courts will not reverse the election regardless.
It is, alas, all too likely that the courts will twist themselves and the law into pretzels; rather than see leftists burn the cities, if for no other reason.
The leftists have been burning the cities anyway, and I expect will continue to do so, especially since they recently seem to have taken to blaming the left for their problems as well.
Point of order: When did Bill Barr, numerous R judges (including many appointed by Trump), John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court, Fox News, the WSJ (just to name a few) join the liberal media? And bonus question — why should we not hold the Trump legal team to some (any) sort of standard? They made some very big claims and promises at the start of this thing. No one forced them to do that. They’ve not delivered on a single one of those claims and have lost almost every law suit they filed. You’re OK with that?
I’ll hang up and listen…
I applaud @functionary ‘s superb comments throughout this thread.
Rob’s shouting over John O’Sullivan was simply intolerable. Not because I agree or disagree with either one of them about the election, but because John was Rob’s guest and Rob was rude to his guest. I know they are old friends and no one probably took anything personally, but I literally (for real) could not stand to listen to the yelling and the interruptions and the crosstalk.
If I wanted that format I’d go watch some old Crossfire episodes on YouTube. Sheesh.
@blueyeti — Why on Earth would you imagine that that anyone would number Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell, etc. as part of “the liberal media” (or any media, for that matter)? It’s hard for me to figure out what point you think you’re making.
Of course, Bill Barr is a good example of why we have to be very cautious about what the liberal media say about challenges to the 2020 election. (And anti-Trump conservative media, too.) Barr was — and is — being falsely paraphrased as saying election fraud was not “widespread”. Which is a very good word to use deceptively, because it has no definite meaning and, in any case, is not what Barr said.
You seem to be reasoning something like this:
Taras: “I think the defendant was wrongly convicted.”
Blue Yeti: “But his lawyers were inept: that proves he’s guilty!”
Exactly why the Trump campaign blew off Hans von Spakovsky, the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud expert, when he warned them how the Democrats could abuse tens of millions of poorly secured mail ballots, I don’t know. It certainly helps explain why their last-minute legal challenges have been half-baked and ad hoc.
Our side often seems to assume that the left won’t stoop as low as they regularly do.
Actually, here is Barr’s quote from the original AP story:
I read that as “yeah, there was some fraud –there alway is– but not anywhere near the scale that the President and his lawyers are alleging.”
Later in the same story Barr goes into more detail:
I read that as a sub tweet to team Rudy: Sit down, you babbling idiot.
No, it only proves that he will not be President on January 21st. That was the point I was making.
It is a mystery, because I was repeatedly assured by the President himself that he only hires the best people.
The SEC investigated Madoff and found no problems. Harry Markopolos tried to warn them but he was dealing with attorneys who didn’t understand the math. How many Dominion voting machines has the Justice Department scrutinized? I would guess that the number is zero.
It actually isn’t difficult to remove your point-by-point replies from the “quote.” And that way people don’t have to spelunk for your [ ] stuff. Just new-line once or twice and you should be put to the left margin which means what you type then won’t be in the “quote,” or if that doesn’t work by itself, create a space and then “un-click” the “quote” tool in the toolbar at the top of the comment area.
I’m not defending the Justice Dept here. They can miss things as easily as anyone else can. The burden is on the Trump legal team to provide proof of the massive fraud they are alleging and convince a judge — any judge. So far, they have not done that.
If that’s the case (and I always trust Byron), then it should not be terribly difficult to prove the fraud. And yet….
I have seen others make this argument before — that judges are somehow being intimidated into making rulings because they are afraid of the public’s reaction. Judges make controversial and publicly unpopular calls all the time. But if you really feel that judges are making decisions based on mob rule, then the country is already game over. Doesn’t matter who is President.
I do not feel that way for the simple reason that I (and most others, frankly) find the evidence presented as unpersuasive and in some cases, comical.
There’s a pretty string circumstancial case that John Roberts did exactly that in the original ACA case, including some evidence that he wrote the opinion that eventually became the main dissent.
Roberts was afraid that cities would burn if (channelling my inner Richard Epstein here) he did not uphold the ACA as a constitutional exercise of the interstate commerce clause? Seems like a rather obscure way to rally people to riot…
Your words were “afraid of the publics reaction”, not “cities would burn”.
The “cities will burn” line came from the comment I was responding to. But OK, the public would for sure have had a reaction to ruling against the ACA. But so what? The public reacts to most high profile SCOTUS cases. I highly doubt there would have been large scale rioting/looting over the end of the ACA. As Republicans have been saying for years, it’s very unpopular. Seems to be a giant stretch that Roberts was somehow influenced the threat of violence.
With Roberts and the ACA, it’s not likely the threat of violence, but the threat of court packing. As the old saying from the 1930s has it, this might be “the switch in time that saved Nine”. Even if Republicans hold the Senate this time, sooner or later the Democrats will have a majority, with a Democrat in the White House.
Because we don’t know to whom the illegal votes went, the only possible judicial remedy is to rerun the election. And that the Court will not order.
Stay positive, my friend: the President has one more card left to play according to Professor Yoo at the Berkeley School of Law. We shall discuss this with him on this week’s Ricochet Podcast (also, happiness guru Arthur Brooks, which I think all of us could use some schooling on).