Own Goals

We couldn’t call it a year without both Founders on board, so with Rob out and about (there are rumors that he’s actually working…) we actually present our penultimate episode for the Year of Our Lord 2022.

James and Peter work a two-man booth and they go fission for clean energy, talk about the journo meltdown on Twitter and then talk a little football… or is it soccer?

We also welcome in our old friend William McGurn, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and author of the weekly “Main Street” column for the Journal each Tuesday. He is an longtime observer of the Communist Chinese Party and brings us up to date on Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai.

 

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There are 34 comments.

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  1. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Uncanny:

    • #1
  2. J Ro Member
    J Ro
    @JRo

    Poor Jimmy Lai and poor Hong Kong!

    The first time I was there I appreciated both the strong sense of familiar Britishness, but also the strange bits of Chinese culture. One could enjoy high tea at The Peninsula Hotel or watch Chinamen in the (very much wet) market fattening up their live birds by neatly feeding them some gruel mouth to mouth. Perhaps they do that in England, but I’d never seen it before.

    Riding Hong Kong’s double-decker buses, the printed guidance signs made me smile at the very British phrasing, “It is dangerous to put your arm out the window”, and cringe at the unexpected directives, “No spitting!”

    I often wondered, while side glancing certain fellow passengers, Who’s spitting on the bus? A few years later in non-British China I learned that millions of Chinese people were hocking loogies all over the country. In the parks and on the streets and sidewalks, on the floor next to my shoe on a crowded train (It was a long ride, so the shooter rubbed them thoroughly into the wooden floor with his boot), and while playing cards in a crowded coffeehouse.

    Even if many of the 500,000 Chinese students in America are taking back some secrets to the CCP, I like to hope they’re also going home and telling their family members, friends, and fellow Starbucks and McDonald’s customers, “No spitting!”

    • #2
  3. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    China = mafia. It’s 50 guys that want to rip off their own people and the whole planet. Thinking of them in any other way is a mistake.

    Trading with them was a disaster.

    Our Ruling Class has sucked ever since World War II ended.

    • #3
  4. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

     

    @jameslileks

    James, have you ever gotten into a great big private or public argument with anyone that is totally for the Met Council’s communist central planning, shoving choo-choo trains down our throats which is obviously going to be a fiscal, social, and crime disaster, centralizing everything if we want it or not etc? This affirmatively furthering fair housing thing is real and it is a menace. It’s obviously failing in the Twin Cities metro. The people that are for this on Twitter are insane. They are never going to get their way unless they get a hold of the guns. 

    I think I saw Bill Glahn go on saying that the wealthy part of Minneapolis should join a diner and then the rest of it should be turned totally libertarian. He’s completely right. They will never get enough cops to fix it before everything implodes. 

    Also, in case you haven’t seen it, the local communist public relations person needs to be talked off the ledge. lol 

     

     

    That is one wild thread.

    • #4
  5. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    The best thing that could happen in Minneapolis is, if one of our local Republican millionaires would start a Libs of Tik Tok about the Met Council and all of their communist plans to centralize everything and shove us into choo-choo trains. 

    These people have no idea that choo-choo trains and buses have less utility when you need to move families and stuff around. It’s incredible. 

    They were trying to make drive-through’s illegal for a while. lol. 

    I think Minneapolis had a guy in charge of doing nothing but making pedestrians more “satisfied” damn the side effects no matter what happens. Salaried position.

    • #5
  6. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I haven’t watched this yet, but I like listening to Kyle Bass.

     

     

     

    • #6
  7. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll have to listen to this again as there is a lot to digest, (as if I could digest it all) but outstanding discussion.   The Chinese have two years of Biden to get done what they need. We ‘d  have to get our act together after that, even with Democrats and the Chinese won’t want to let that happen.

     

     

     

    • #7
  8. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I Walton (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    I’ll have to listen to this again as there is a lot to digest, (as if I could digest it all) but outstanding discussion. The Chinese have two years of Biden to get done what they need. We ‘d have to get our act together after that, even with Democrats and the Chinese won’t want to let that happen.

     

     

     

    For those that want this on a podcast platform, it’s either going to be on block works, block works macro, or forward guidance.  Or something like that. The way they do their distribution and labeling of their distribution is confusing to me. They do good work. They get a lot of people that would normally be behind a pay wall. 

    • #8
  9. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    RufusRJones (View Comment):
    They do good work. They get a lot of people that would normally be behind a pay wall. 

    It’s been along time since I’ve watched this, but I thought it was exceptional.

     

     

     

    • #9
  10. Taras Coolidge
    Taras
    @Taras

    This has bothered me for a long time.  

    In your opening sound bites, all you give of Bush’s speech at Ground Zero is “I can hear you!”

    What actually made the speech immortal were the defiant words that followed:

    “I can hear you!   The rest of the world hears you!   And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!

    When I did a search on the quote, to check my recollection, I scrolled down several pages, but discovered that, as far as the liberal media are concerned, the whole episode never happened.

     

    • #10
  11. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Taras (View Comment):

    This has bothered me for a long time.

    In your opening sound bites, all you give of Bush’s speech at Ground Zero is “I can hear you!”

    What actually made the speech immortal were the defiant words that followed:

    “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!

    When I did a search on the quote, to check my recollection, I scrolled down several pages, but discovered that, as far as the liberal media are concerned, the whole episode never happened.

    Followed by the uproar of a righteous thirst for vengeance in blood.

    • #11
  12. Wolfsheim Member
    Wolfsheim
    @Wolfsheim

    Four comments:

    1. When in my misguided socialist youth, now long past, I assumed that austerity makes for virtue. What I find bewildering about current American culture, as I understand it, is the contradictory mélange of back-to-nature utopianism and trust in solve-all-your-personal-problems technology. Fracking is denounced as evil, but elixirs promising unending vim and vigor are somehow something we all deserve.
    2. Xi Jingping (second tone-fourth tone-second tone)’s surname is pronounced with a voiceless palatal sibilant, with the tongue farther forward than English sh, but “she” is close enough. It’s not the j of French Jacques, though many English speakers seem to render it as such, as they do the j of Jingping and Beijing. In fact, the latter is closer to English j.
    3. I don’t watch soccer, which I find utterly boring, or American football, which I don’t understand. Soccer seems to appeal to the same sort of Americans who pronounce Beijing as though it were French and coup de grȃce as though it were homophonous with (foie) gras (it isn’t), who cross their sevens, and who proudly proclaim that they have never watched FOX News.
    4. Another splendid podcast!
    • #12
  13. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Wolfsheim (View Comment):

    Four comments:

    1. When in my misguided socialist youth, now long past, I assumed that austerity makes for virtue. What I find bewildering about current American culture, as I understand it, is the contradictory mélange of back-to-nature utopianism and trust in solve-all-your-personal-problems technology. Fracking is denounced as evil, but elixirs promising unending vim and vigor are somehow something we all deserve.
    2. Xi Jingping (second tone-fourth tone-second tone)’s surname is pronounced with a voiceless palatal sibilant, with the tongue farther forward than English sh, but “she” is close enough. It’s not the j of French Jacques, though many English speakers seem to render it as such, as they do the j of Jingping and Beijing. In fact, the latter is closer to English j.
    3. I don’t watch soccer, which I find utterly boring, or American football, which I don’t understand. Soccer seems to appeal to the same sort of Americans who pronounce Beijing as though it were French and coup de grȃce as though it were homophonous with (foie) gras (it isn’t), who cross their sevens, and who proudly proclaim that they have never watched FOX News.
    4. Another splendid podcast!

    Easy there, Hoss.  I cross my sevens and slash my zeroes and use TWO SPACES AFTER A SENTENCE.

    • #13
  14. ThomasMcInerny Coolidge
    ThomasMcInerny
    @ThomasMcInerny

    BDB (View Comment):

    Uncanny:

    Nah. Faux bison look vs. Upper Midwestern Aurochs-Slaughtering Rovers. Who’ya gonna call? BUT Peter needs to take a BIKE to the game or invest in some Tommy Johns.

    • #14
  15. psmith Inactive
    psmith
    @psmith

    Wolfsheim (View Comment):

    Four comments:

    1. When in my misguided socialist youth, now long past, I assumed that austerity makes for virtue. What I find bewildering about current American culture, as I understand it, is the contradictory mélange of back-to-nature utopianism and trust in solve-all-your-personal-problems technology. Fracking is denounced as evil, but elixirs promising unending vim and vigor are somehow something we all deserve.
    2. Xi Jingping (second tone-fourth tone-second tone)’s surname is pronounced with a voiceless palatal sibilant, with the tongue farther forward than English sh, but “she” is close enough. It’s not the j of French Jacques, though many English speakers seem to render it as such, as they do the j of Jingping and Beijing. In fact, the latter is closer to English j.
    3. I don’t watch soccer, which I find utterly boring, or American football, which I don’t understand. Soccer seems to appeal to the same sort of Americans who pronounce Beijing as though it were French and coup de grȃce as though it were homophonous with (foie) gras (it isn’t), who cross their sevens, and who proudly proclaim that they have never watched FOX News.
    4. Another splendid podcast!

    Yes! If you can’t pronounce a foreign expression properly, you will sound more intelligent if you stick to English. That butchery of coup de grâce is especially annoying.

    • #15
  16. psmith Inactive
    psmith
    @psmith

    We don’t need fusion any time soon. We certainly don’t need government funding of fusion research. We could get plenty of safe, clean energy from fission if the government allowed recycling of existing nuclear waste. One company trying to get permission to do this is Curio Solutions. A very recent episode of the Heard at Heritage podcast titled “What You Need to Know About Nuclear Power” explains it quite well.

    • #16
  17. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    psmith (View Comment):

    We don’t need fusion any time soon. We certainly don’t need government funding of fusion research. We could get plenty of safe, clean energy from fission if the government allowed recycling of existing nuclear waste. One company trying to get permission to do this is Curio Solutions. A very recent episode of the Heard at Heritage podcast titled “What you need to know About Nuclear Power” explains it quite well.

    Big fan of thorium here for most applications.

    • #17
  18. Wolfsheim Member
    Wolfsheim
    @Wolfsheim

    BDB (View Comment):

    Wolfsheim (View Comment):

    Four comments:

    1. When in my misguided socialist youth, now long past, I assumed that austerity makes for virtue. What I find bewildering about current American culture, as I understand it, is the contradictory mélange of back-to-nature utopianism and trust in solve-all-your-personal-problems technology. Fracking is denounced as evil, but elixirs promising unending vim and vigor are somehow something we all deserve.
    2. Xi Jingping (second tone-fourth tone-second tone)’s surname is pronounced with a voiceless palatal sibilant, with the tongue farther forward than English sh, but “she” is close enough. It’s not the j of French Jacques, though many English speakers seem to render it as such, as they do the j of Jingping and Beijing. In fact, the latter is closer to English j.
    3. I don’t watch soccer, which I find utterly boring, or American football, which I don’t understand. Soccer seems to appeal to the same sort of Americans who pronounce Beijing as though it were French and coup de grȃce as though it were homophonous with (foie) gras (it isn’t), who cross their sevens, and who proudly proclaim that they have never watched FOX News.
    4. Another splendid podcast!

    Easy there, Hoss. I cross my sevens and slash my zeroes and use TWO SPACES AFTER A SENTENCE.

    I was attempting a little feeble humo(u)r here…I cross my sevens too…

    • #18
  19. Wolfsheim Member
    Wolfsheim
    @Wolfsheim

    Sorry…I was attempting a little feeble humo(u)r…I cross my sevens too…

    • #19
  20. randallg Member
    randallg
    @randallg

    Wolfsheim (View Comment):

    Sorry…I was attempting a little feeble humo(u)r…I cross my sevens too…

    I also cross the letter Zed  – Ƶ. Yes that is how you say it.

    And the number one has to have an upswing – 1

     

    • #20
  21. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Why would James be surprised at Peter’s reaction to the “fusion news?”  It’s the same as Peter’s opinion about space travel and research.

    • #21
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Wolfsheim (View Comment):

    Four comments:

    1. When in my misguided socialist youth, now long past, I assumed that austerity makes for virtue. What I find bewildering about current American culture, as I understand it, is the contradictory mélange of back-to-nature utopianism and trust in solve-all-your-personal-problems technology. Fracking is denounced as evil, but elixirs promising unending vim and vigor are somehow something we all deserve.

    Except for all the healthy deplorables who should be dying instead.

     

    • #22
  23. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Oh, and I always skip the Jimmy Lai stuff because it’s irrelevant to me:  I couldn’t possibly be more concerned about China than I already am.

    • #23
  24. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    I think the biggest problem with using fusion for generating electricity is to have a self-sustaining reaction.  The kind of thing done recently with lasers, isn’t really useful for anything except – hold onto your hat, Peter! – space propulsion.

    • #24
  25. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    I don’t know that most scientists are all that well-to-do, except a few like Dr Fauci.

    • #25
  26. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    So great to hear from Bill McGurn and also to get his update on Jimmy Lai. Both men are amazing!

    • #26
  27. RktSci Member
    RktSci
    @RktSci

    My iTunes is having a problem getting the feed from feedburner for this and for GLOP Culture. Anyone else seeing that?

     

    • #27
  28. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    RktSci (View Comment):

    My iTunes is having a problem getting the feed from feedburner for this and for GLOP Culture. Anyone else seeing that?

    When this happens, sometimes it works to sign up for the Superfeed temporary and it shows up there.

    • #28
  29. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    RktSci (View Comment):

    My iTunes is having a problem getting the feed from feedburner for this and for GLOP Culture. Anyone else seeing that?

     

    Connected? Also, maybe this.

    • #29
  30. RktSci Member
    RktSci
    @RktSci

    They have fixed the problem with Feedburner links for iTunes. Thanks to @bishopwash for the pointers, I commented there to get the attention of the IT staff.

     

    • #30
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