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This week, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) –soon to be Citizen Portman– stops by to discuss impeachment, working with the Biden administration (or not as the case may be), his plans for the future, why he decided to throw in the towel in terms of the Senate, and yes, how this year’s popcorn crop is looking at his farm in Ohio. Also, Rob Long is going on safari (really!), Peter Robinson is looking forward to a Rocky Mountain High, and James Lileks wants to go on a cruise, thanks to Rushbabe49’s Lileks’ Post of The Week winning missive (yes, it’s back).
Music from this week’s show: Stand On It by Bruce Springsteen
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I finished this podcast with one burning question: Which vaccine should I take? Pfizer or Moderna?
Whichever one you can get first.
Okay, Blue Yeti, who are the first and fourth people to come out of the cornfield. I do like the kinetic display.
Ray Liotta in his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, and the demonic little boy from Children of the Corn.
I was really hoping to see cat faces on all the Founders.
In case you were curious, Why We Need Mozart Now More than Ever.
When the five year treasury goes up to 2.2 interest points every single western government goes broke. Nobody cares. The economy is being goosed by debt and easy money, not real productivity. The Fed has to keep forcing it. Nobody cares.
This is why it’s happening:
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
Rural broadband is really interesting. What is really happening is, it’s non-economic where you don’t have a lot of population. It would become economic if all of the housing and most of the businesses dropped in value a ton.
In this era, rural living is less economic or something.
So they are going to subsidize it.
The political fights about this stuff in Minnesota are crazy.
But why would it be subsidized if they want people gathered in cities where they are more easily frightened and controlled?
“Traveled in Central Asia…including all the Stans…took a famous trip on a freighter over to Shanghai.” Northern Africa, Saharan Africa; now to Subsaharan Africa. Maybe Rob is the modern, Television/Writer – version of Dr. Indiana Jones. Less archeologist, more sarcastic curmudgeon. Dr. Long, I presume?
Another good podcast. Great Post of the week, @rushbabe49
Grannydude is from Maine.
Far be it from me to second-guess a wise US Senator (as opposed to the other kind), but I must say that I find it hard to believe that Joe Biden has undone the proposed restrictions on Communist China’s Confucius Institutes simply or largely because they were introduced by his hated predecessor and that he may change his mind once properly briefed. The befuddled man has become a willing tool of the left, and while I would not go so far as to say that he is equally under the thumb of the Chinese, it seems clear that he and his handlers have no intention of doing anything more than pretend to stand up to them.
As some may be too young remember, Confucianism was long reviled under the Communists, and indeed the teachings of the old master are quite antithetical to the ideology of political power coming out of the barrel of a gun. Confucius teaches yì (義) ‘righteousness, virtue’; Communism teaches virtù in the Machiavellian sense of sheer manly might.
I live in Japan, where Confucianism has had a strong influence, and have been a translator of the Analects, reading the work in both Classical Chinese and modern Japanese translation.
A Korean Christian once said that Confucius was a light unto East Asians until they learned of the gospel. I would say amen to that. How utterly cynical Beijing’s rulers have shown themselves to be in creating the Confucius Institutes!
Overall I must say that I was ever so slightly disappointed in this podcast. No one should call for wallowing in gloom and doom but it seemed to me that there was a bit too much Merrily We Rob Along. The Year 2022 is still a long way off, and the thugs out there mean business.
Good one!
For me, the senator spoke the kind of pablum we’ve come to expect from GOP politicians that gave impetus to the rise of Trump. He’s ultimately focused on words and committees and investigations and hard-hitting reports—all of which advance nothing.
He seems blind to the totalitarian he is facing. Instead, he lives the dream of bipartisanship in a world that no longer exists.
And so I think of vaccines and heavenly Mozart… anything other than the same-o same-o pointless GOP.
I subscribed to this podcast via my Downcast app, so it appeared every week automatically.
Then, after a while, I would listen to part of it and then erase the rest.
Then, after a while, I would seek out the topic discussed and, based on that, listen to it or not.
Then, after a while, I switched the subscription so that the downloads were no longer automatic. I would look at the guests or topics and choose whether or not to download the podcast.
Then, after a while, I made sure to read the comments here on the week’s podcast. Based on the comments, I have hardly ever bothered with listening. Maybe 1 out of 4 or 5.
I guess I would say that I moved from a weekly listener to a “once in a while” listener. At this point I am considering whether it is worth having the podcast in my Downcast list at all. I am simply unable to listen to more than a sentence from Lob Rong (in case mentioning his name is a CoC violation), so listening to most of the weekly podcasts – no matter how valuable the guest – is just painful.
Lob Rong is still at least frequently a good example of how NOT to think/be.
Senator Portman is a decent human being I am sure but hopelessly naive.
Infrastructure? Roads and bridges? Thanks James for bringing it up.
How symptomatic of our Congress that Senator Portman should use a certain huge, bottleneck bridge that “has been deemed to be structurally obsolete for years” as an example of infrastructure that needs urgent attention and funding. “It’s dangerous!” He probably drives across it often, eyes wide open!
According to Wikipedia, this bridge, opened in 1963 and named for Brent Spence, Kentucky’s longest serving congressman at the time, cost a whopping TEN. MILLION. DOLLARS. ($10,000,000).
The bridge has indeed been “functionally obsolete”—since 1985! That’s when emergency shoulders were eliminated, turning six lanes into eight. In other words, it has been functionally obsolete the entire 22 years that Portman has been in Congress representing the citizens of Ohio.
During those years (+2 to go) Portman has had a vote on our federal budgets, Congress has spent over $67 trillion ($67,276,400,000,000) and increased the federal deficit by almost $10 trillion ($9,869,500,000,000)*. But the bridge has been neglected.
*Using current dollars and official estimates for FY20, 21, and 22.
We can be certain that the replacement bridge, even if exactly the same size as the current one – and how likely is THAT? – is more likely to cost $10 BILLION.
The 2nd dude is Orville Redenbacher, popcorn king.
The Cremation of Orville Redenbacher,
Many thanks for this. I had been fretting: “Am I simply not getting it?” So this helps!