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As you’ll hear, there were many possible titles for this episode, but we went with the simplest and most descriptive for we spewing a fair amount of time covering both. But we also have on the supreme Supreme Court expert Adam White from the Hoover Institution (listen to his new podcast with Richard Epstein here) to discuss all things SCOTUS and the great Salena Zito (read her new book The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics) who lets us Coastal (and yes, Minneapolis) Elites® know how all this stuff is playing in the heartland we only fly over.
Happy 4th, everyone. We’re off next week. Have a safe and fun holiday!
Music from this week’s episode: MAGA Dog by Peter Tosh
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@jameslileks you have to know a chicken farmer, right?
Photo editor’s note: “The June 29th photograph of the 2-year-old Red Hen became the most visible symbol of the ongoing restaurant debate in America for a reason … Our cover and our reporting capture the stakes of this moment.
“None of us in the media who used the photo knew what had happened to the chicken after this precise moment. And I actually think part of the power of the image is that unknown. However, we are pleased the chicken and her egg were never separated. But it’s no thanks to those guys in the Podcast House.”
The Chick-Fil-A cows might be able to tell you.
Which was separated first, the chicken or the egg? All that the MSM knows for sure is that it’s Trump’s fault.
I’ve had dogs for 45 years, all of whom knew I was the Alpha. Never once did I ever “kick” a dog to let him or her know I was boss and can’t imagine ever, ever hitting a dog. The way to assert your Alpha is very simply to walk that dog on a leash every single day and teach it to stay right with you, not ahead of you. It’s best done with a harness called a “gentle leader.” Couple good leash training with lots of praise, treats and love.
My wife says the same thing about me.
Would it be out of line to suggest that perhaps Ricochet – or Ricochet members – help Salena Zito get a better phone? Or maybe even a laptop with Skype? (As much as I hate Skype.) She was almost as incomprehensible as for her latest appearance on GLoP or whatever it was.
I find discarded laptops that people have thrown out, that would be a great improvement. I could ship one wherever she might be.
James pronounces “raccoon” just like Dana Perino does! Chris Stirewalt joked about Dana’s pronunciation of it on one of their podcasts. I thought it was the influence of her husband’s British accent, but it must be a regional pronunciation. It lends the animal extra dignity.
Coyotes are increasing in the southeast, too, even in the suburbs.
Just beg people like that to use the nearest land line.
Too many people these days don’t have one, even people who really should know better.
No matter what else I might have, I will always have a wired telephone and it won’t be through the cable internet company or satellite TV company or anything like that. If the cable or satellite goes out, how would I call them to let them know? I believe in “separation of powers” as it were.
I also have a wired-in telephone at home, not all cordless. So it works even if there’s a power outage. And if I call 911, they immediately know where I am. People with children should definitely have wired home phone service, so if they go out and the cellphones are with them or not charged or the kids are too scared or too young to explain where they are, etc…
I’m getting the impression that some Lefties are not good at business.
Bad rule: Customer wearing a MAGA hat will be bounced out.
Good rule: Customer wearing anything displaying a political message must buy a round for the house.
@RobLong channels Cliff Clavin at 3:30:
I wondered about the comment that only Souter could have been confirmed. It sounds like an excuse for the poor vetting done by HW’s SC selection team.
Listening to Salena Zito on Flagship. She mentions that politics in this country has been worse in past eg Adams vs Jefferson. I just don’t remember it being this bad at the grass roots level where you can get thrown out of a restaurant for wearing a MAGA hat BY THE MANAGEMENT
Listen guys, I am all for civility even wfor people with whom I disagree. But I have a friend here in Israel who unfriends anyone who supports the people who want to kill us. To make us dead. This includes the supporters of Keith Ellison and J-Street, not just supporters of Hamas.
I think she is quite reasonable.
The most important reason to celebrate the new justice will be that that is one more person who will not be appointed by a Democrat president.
The politics of choosing a woman to replace Justice kennedy are simple. If he chooses a man now, he will have to choose a woman to replace Justice Ginsberg. I don’t like the idea of “women’s seats,” any more that I liked the idea of a “Jewish seat” years ago.
@jameslileks, the Silly Putty constitutional metaphor at 20:15 is brilliant, with an arcane reference Dennis Miller would be proud of.
And it tells me we’re exactly the same age.
@PeterRobinson , Scout welcomes young pup Friday to the neighborhood.
How can anyone not love Ricochet?
You might not have that choice, especially depending on what else you might have. In my northern Virginia suburb, Verizon is the legacy Regional Bell Operating Company that maintains the network of twisted pair copper wires that provide POTS – Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS is an actual telecommunications industry acronym).
Once I signed up for Verizon FiOS, their fiber optic service, they claim that they can never again reconnect my twisted pair POTS. I suspect that they are mostly correct. They can meet their FCC mandate to provide telephone service by providing it as VoIP – which of course they wish to bundle with video and high speed internet.
Years ago I read that coyotes are one of the very few animals to exp[and their range in the face of human encroachment. The managed to humans.
Positive tends to do better than negative stuff.
It sounds like a self-imposed technical limit to me. They might not WANT TO run both services to a single home, but I suspect they COULD.
But in any event, if true, In that case, were I a Verizon customer, I would use a different service for high-speed internet. And I would make sure Verizon knew why.
Yes, it’s a self-imposed technical limitation, but a completely understandable one. As a RBOC, Verizon is granted a (partially obsolete) monopoly by the FCC to deliver telephone service in their territory, at regulated rates. In return for that monopoly, they’re required to provide telephone service to whomever asks for it. Once they provide VoIP telephone via their FiOS system and the FiOS junction box installed in my house, they’ve met their mandated service. If I want twisted pair (reconnected), I must pay unregulated costs for the installation and service.
The FiOS fiber optic signal is outstanding. As a practical matter, bandwidth is infinite. In my neighborhood, Cox Communications offers high speed internet via coaxial cable, which is in nearly all cases just as good. Beyond that, I don’t know what options I might have other than satellite, which remains costly. I did travel several months last year with a T-Mobile WiFi hotspot that performed well for my relatively simple needs, but the scuttlebutt seems to be that new unlimited data accounts are unavailable, so I might have to wait for 5G to launch before I can cut the cord shorter.
In that situation, I would use Verizon for wired phone service, and Cox for internet. Cox is also installing fiber optic cable, but they have no capability for regular wired phone service. And I would not rely on their “cable telephone service.”
At the moment, since I got fed up with Cox “customer service” incompetence and some other problems (e.g., if a Cox technician was working on a neighbor’s service and messed mine up in the process, I had to call in and wait 2 or 3 days for someone to come back out and fix a problem that they had caused to start with!) I’m using Exede/Viasat satellite internet, which costs about $60/month. It might be more if I relied on Netflix or something, but I don’t.
(Companies sometimes have cycles of competence/incompetence. Right now, at least where I live, Cox is incompetent. If they seriously relied on quality service to satisfy customers, that might have to change or they’d go out of business. But in large areas here they have essentially a monopoly. So they might get away with being incompetent for years.)
I’ve had DSL internet before, and would still now if it was available in my area. But the wiring is too old to support it, and CenturyLink doesn’t seem interested in upgrading.
To their credit and my benefit, Verizon is aware that their point of service junction box, which includes a battery and Uninterruptible Power Supply, is a sizable investment in physical plant, and so they’re interested in keeping it productive. When I switched to Cox – during an “up” cycle in Cox’s marketing, Verizon showed up shortly after with an offer for triple play service that was better than any offers available publicly. That was a few years ago. Now that I have “cut the cord,” I pay Verizon FiOS exactly $39.99 each month for 50/50Mbps internet. I don’t know if DSL is available in this area anymore. It used to be offered by Verizon, and at one point they bundled it with a DirecTV package, but they don’t offer it in FiOS territory.
The variant on the Time cover at the top of the page is brilliant! Kudos to the responsible Photoshop artist.