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The President is on the record, the WSJ’s Bill McGurn talks about Charlie Gard, The Washington Post’s Bob Costa on the mood in DC, @Lileks ponders Russian history, Long wonders who’s going to get fired, and Robinson has one last question. Or three.
Music from this week’s podcast: Charlie Don’t Surf by The Clash
The all new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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Mon dieu, @EJHIll!
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Rob is on fire tonight. You can’t tell that he’s a RINO.
So…How about that cryptocurrency?
Guys, can we stipulate that Trump is petty, narcissistic and intellectually lazy, and then move past it? Costa gives you an inside-the-room report of the utter deceit and dishonesty of the Senate GOP on Obamacare repeal — the central tenet of the GOP for 8 years — and you are fixated on irrelevant debate comments he made about the Scottish NHS nearly 2 years ago?
And to answer James’ weary question: Are we to be more focused on SCOTUS appointments, Circuit appointments, regulatory reform, tax cuts, energy production, education and justice department sanity, military preparedness, VA reforms and illegal immigration reduction than Trump’s Professor Irwin Corey confusion of Napoleons and Empires and his inept understanding of the urban planning history of the “Paris we love”?
Yes.
Oh, Rob. You’re not full of it. At worst you’re half full of it.
On the other hand, at best you’re half full of it too …
You guys are weird.
The disparagement of elites never involves trying to replace brain surgeons with bricklayers. The most moronic Tweeter ever implies that Homer Simpson ought to run the nuclear power plant. No one questions that some people are better at some things than others. There’s never a questioning of meritocracy.
Instead, the disparagement of elites always refers to Our Betters, the self-styled “elites” — people in positions of power and influence who have taken it upon themselves to boss the rest of us around — not because they’re afraid we’ll make the wrong decisions (except in elections) but because they’re afraid that they won’t be the ones who make the decisions.
That’s all: power qua power, and any claims to the betterment of society are pernicious lies.
I keep running into this weirdness with the conservative punditry — y’all act like you’re on the verge of being tossed out of your positions by a torch-wielding mob, and so you have to justify the fact that you’re the ones on the podcast and the rest of us are not.
Chill out, man. Sheesh.
Thank you for putting it at the end, @jameslileks.
Medicare Part D was a $9 trillion instant unfunded liability. To save Iraq.
Obama has jacked up Medicaid enrollment and has completely coopted idiot central planning RINO vote buyers like like John Kasich.
This is a disaster.
There is only one way to do this. You wipe all of it out including group insurance. You force everyone in. Large HSAs + tax credits to socialize who has to be socialized based on income and age. You pick your own direct care and insurance situation. Isolate the uninsurable population and let each state do it their own way. The Medicaid level people may need some planning like that as well. It’s an American Swiss system.
How else are you going to stop single payer now? The system is wrecked and is a political nightmare due to the dependency issues.
Yeah, Rob mentioned that he supports 80% of Trump’s agenda … after he reminded us in no uncertain terms that he’s not aboard the Trump train – in fact, he’s spray-painting graffiti all over it at every opportunity.
So tell us Rob, which Republican party 2016 presidential candidate had an agenda that you supported more than 80%? Did you ride that candidate’s train?
Full disclosure: I was a big Cruz backer, fully supported his cut-federal-govt-down-to-size constitutionalist agenda. I might have quibbled with his tax plan as too easily hijacked as a VAT, but I was disappointed Republican primary voters didn’t embrace Cruz as a protest candidate. But as I’ve said here and at the GLoP board, the focus today ought to be on what Trump has actually done with actual 2017 policy implementation, not on what Trump says or tweets about the daily inanery.
Sing it brother! I have been advocating since before 2004 that all federal healthcare expenditures ought to be redirected to individual HSAs. The resulting competition in the healthcare industry for those HSA funds will revitalize the entire healthcare industry.
I’m willing to accept criticism if anyone has evidence that my advocacy of government-funded HSAs has contributed to the (revival of the) Guaranteed Minimum Income promotion.
To take the last question first: because it shows that he doesn’t have an ideological objection to socialized medicine, and might well be inclined to get rolled on it.
I’m completely with you in frustration at the Senate GOP. I’d say they lack spine, but that would mean that they really wanted to repeal Obamacare but shied away once they’d have to pay a political price for it. Instead it appears that they never wanted to repeal it.
As to the “stipulat[ing] that Trump is petty, narcissistic and intellectually lazy, and then move past it?”, no. That stuff fundamentally affects how he governs, and his influence with others, especially undecideds. If we Trump skeptics have to check ourselves and accept the things he does that are good and conservative, then the Trump boosters have to accept the rest. And yes, the media fixates on these things, but I also want to talk about it. If it turns out that the story is inaccurate, or unfair to him, I am open to correction/persuasion. But I’m tired of the attitude that we should ignore the bad because It Is Damaging To the Cause. If The Cause can’t survive criticism on this front, then it is too brittle to survive anyway.
Why are some people, such as Peter here, saying that Trump became nationally famous for being on The Apprentice, a show that started in 2004?