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Welcome to the first podcast of the new decade*, the new year, and Ricochet’s 10th anniversary year! Great, we won’t have to write that again. This week, Ricochet Podcast Chief Impeachment Pundit and McRib Analyst John Yoo sits in for Rob Long to parse impeachment, the legal issues surrounding the Iran crisis, and we’ve got Luke Thompson, the Smartest Political Consultant in America in the guest slot to give us an overview on Iowa, New Hampshire, Bernie-mentum, how the Republican hold the Senate and maybe even take back the House. Finally, thanks to @gumbymark‘s post One-Hit Wonders of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s (this week’s Lileks Post of The Week winner) we choose our favorite one hitters. What’t yours? Also, Megxit is a thing and we tell you why it probably won’t happen.
Music from this week’s show: I Ran (So Far Away) by A Flock of Seagulls
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Well then, guess I better listen.
You are in for a treat.
I think the Rob Long seat should be the Rob Long Segue Interruptus Seat for future reference, such as when James is introducing the replacement.
Also, John, come on, man, you aren’t that young. You’re over half a century old, and acting like you’ve never heard of Buddy Holly? I think those McRibs are killing your brain cells.
I think it would be pretty damn funny if Bernie Sanders gets the nomination and gets Biden as his VP.
But what a way to go!
Luke Thompson has to leave?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpOGB4SkcM4
Nobody else noticed – or at least has commented yet – that this week’s closing (also supposedly one-hit-wonder) is… I RAN. IRAN???
I noticed.
Thanks to the guys for another great podcast, rich with issues and insights into them.
To go back from one-hit wonders to one wonderful hit, it is interesting to note that the late Iranian Rev Guard Soleimani was banned from international travel by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, a resolution endorsing the Obama administration’s crackbrained JCPOA on Iran’s nuke program. Soleimani (and his government) routinely defied the U.N. resolution and continued to terrorize with militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
But, hey, that’s just international law. Under U.S. law the JCPOA is a non-binding political agreement, anyway. So… Gee, what a pile of crap the Obama admin left behind! Good on Trump for clarifying and swamp-draining where he can.
it’s like that episode of silicon valley hbo season 4, episode 2:
“we had a deal but not an agreement.”
“wtf dinesh?!”
Lileks: “And as much as we like to bang heads…”
You mean like Klingons?
That John Yoo didn’t comment on that, casts serious doubt on his Trek Cred.
Re: Harry and Meghan, the Sub-Beacon guys had some good stuff on that, this week.
Can you guys help me with something? There are about a million people on Twitter that think this point is cogent:
When you search it on Twitter, there’s literally nothing except an interview with Clapper who is under suspicion for spying on Trump.
I think Trump’s point was he was mad at them for spying on him, and face it, the CIA is notorious for screwing up. There are plenty of smart people that aren’t libertarians are very dubious of the Intel community’s competence. That is just a fact.
I think it’s pretty stupid and there certainly isn’t much information about it that supports their point.
Diane Feinstein? Frank Church?
During the Cold War, thousands of leftists like Matt Lewis “would disparage our intel community” every day.
Famously, Ronald Reagan questioned the CIA’s estimates of the Soviet economy when he first entered office – and he turned out to be right.
Matt Lewis thinks he’s a conservative and anti-Trump Republicans think he’s smart. I think his only steady gig is CNN.
An anti-Trump conservative is like an abolitionist who wants the Union to lose the Civil War.
There actually were a handful of crackpots like that, I seem to recall.
And I’m sure the anti-Lincoln Democratic newspapers in the North gave them a lot of column space in the run up to the 1864 election.
This is my rule. If they don’t have genuine small government sensibilities, libertarian sensibilities, decent knowledge of government and economics, or if they fell for the Russia stuff or they are trying to get you to vote Democrat, don’t listen to them.
Having said that, I don’t think Paula white was a good choice for House Evangelical lol.
Conway is just the hook in this to get the lazy press to report on their every move. “Project Lincoln” is the baby of a bunch of GOP campaign consultants, namely Steve Schmidt (John McCain), John Weaver (John Kasich), Rick Wilson (Rubio, then McMullin) and Reed Galen (Geo. W. Bush).
Galen is the real laugher here. In 2013 he and his political consultant father, Rich, were both signees on an amicus curiae brief in Hollingsworth v Perry. So a man who publicly worked to promote homosexual marriage in America is now going to tell evangelicals what it means to be a Christian?
Or could it be that POTUS has put a big ol’ hurt on their swampcentric cash machines?
This is the main dynamic.
These people are bad for the United States of America. Joe Scarborough. Nicole Wallace. etc,
I liked him much better at his old gig:
But Reagan didn’t have “other intel sources” I expect he really just knew – instinctively? – that communism couldn’t be as successful as the CIA was claiming. That’s what he was right about. But without “evidence” the left had an easy time mocking him. Similar to the “The 80s wants their foreign policy back” from Obama to Romney about Russia.
I forget the details but there was a neocon at the University of Chicago that talked him into it. There was like one guy in the whole country that knew it if he turned up the heat the USSR would collapse.
Related to Reagan defeating the USSR.
I highly recommend the real vision interviews by Kyle Bass of Steve Bannon and Miles Kwok. You can find them on YouTube. Trump is doing the right thing with regard to China. We never ever should’ve started trading with those fascist creeps. We need to crush their economy so they can’t take over the world. They aren’t getting more democratic. They are getting more fascist obviously. If we let their economy grow, their military will be a gigantic menace.
Furthermore if you listen to war room impeachment which is Bannon’s podcast, Peter Bergen says the same thing and he hates Trump.
Any Republican that is ignorant of this is a fool. All of that CATO trade stuff regarding China is going to kill us.
The other thing is I think Trump, Bannon, Curtis Ellis, and Peter Navarro are on the right track on trade. Google those guys on the war room podcast. Every Western government has done every single thing wrong on deflationary trade since the Soviet union was defeated. Things just have to be handled a certain way because we can’t switch to totally deflationary economy. We are 30 years too late to dealing with all of the wage deflation we are importing. All of this crap about trade being good doesn’t factor in the nature of Western governments and geopolitics.
The Chicago neocon must have just “believed” it too. Where could any solid evidence have come from?
I think it was something about his opinion of their GDP numbers or what the CIA thought of their GDP numbers. Your basic bureaucrat at the CIA isn’t going to do that.
Like I said I forget the details but I’m pretty sure it’s true. It was a smart guy with a bold interpretation of data.
If Ricochet gave Steve Bannon 20 minutes on the flagship right now, the world would be a better place and I mean that.
In the 1960s you can find Reagan making the simple proposition that the Soviet economy could not be as strong as they said it was because as a totally state controlled economy it could not be efficient and productive. He was right.
It’s as if you presented a physicist with apparently ironclad proof that a perpetual motion machine works.
Similarly, when the CIA told Reagan all about the great economic growth going on in the Soviet Union, he knew enough free market economics to know there’s got to be something fishy going on.
Reagan was also listening to the refuseniks and the dissenters, where Democrats preferred to listen to Soviet government officials. If the Soviet economy was going so well, Reagan asked, why were people lined up around the block for toilet paper?
‘It’s a good thing.’ — B. Sanders