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As you may be aware, we had a Presidential debate last night. The President did well, we all agree on that. Will it move the polls? Do the polls matter? We discuss. Then, Hoover’s Shelby Steele and his filmmaker son Eli Steele have made What Killed Michael Brown, a provocative new documentary about race and the impact of the events in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The film is streaming on Amazon (not without controversy — we discuss this on the show) and we implore everyone to watch it. Then, first time guest Susan Ferrechio, the Washington Examiner’s Chief Congressional Correspondent stops by to give us the low down on her mano-a-mano match with CNN’s Brian Stelter (take our advice and watch the clip) and discuss media bias the the prospects of holding the Senate and re-taking the House. Yes, we have a new LPoW courtesy of Jenna Stocker (and we remembered to add it to the description). Finally, a few thoughts on Jeffrey Toobin (we assure you that our Zoom call was squeaky clean), and we reveal why there are no pumpkins in the Robinson household.
Music from this week’s show: Susie Q by Creedence Clearwater Revival
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This was titled “Too Little, Too Late?” just moments ago. Putting this here for the record.
Honestly? I thought Trump had such a good debate last night that I pitched a little fit, more or less insisting on a new title. (Blue Yeti didn’t exactly grant the point, but he decided he’d rather start his weekend than keep listening to me.)
I appreciate that Peter. Thank you.
That title was off-putting enough to not even bother listing. Now I will.
A note of appreciation for the graphic.
Rob’s analysis of voter behavior seems to assume that a lot of people are smarter than we’ve seen they really are. When one party can scare maybe half of the overall population to believe false things, that doesn’t seem to me like a great plan for attracting voters if you’re a party that values liberty and truth.
Is the “solution” really to become as bad as the Dems are, just to “win?” I’m not sure we could lie as easily as the Dems do even if we tried.
Before starting his weekend, he should put the closing paren on “(we assure you that our Zoom call was squeaky clean”
The trouble there is that when Dems lie, the media fact-checkers call their lies true. When Republicans tell the truth, the media fact-checkers call their truth lies.
So yes, the Democrats lie easily and never face consequences. And Republican are called liars even if they tell the truth.
At least so far while listening, Peter left out something from the Michael Brown narrative, the whole “unarmed black teen” thing.
Yes, the 6′ 4″ tall, 292 lb, 18-year-old ADULT Michael Brown was shot in the course of attacking a police officer and trying to take his gun.
Even If?
There you go. :-)
It’s worse than that – they’re now “fact-checking” the future:
Thanks, Bryan. And I think you’ll enjoy the show. The Steeles are just wonderful, and Susan Ferrechio is something very rare these days: a tough, and honest, reporter.
Oh good lord.
The other issue there is that smarter people aren’t so easily deceived.
James mentions that he works at a big newsroom and is not shunned, but unless things have changed, he’s not covering major stories, either. If he was in a position where he might have a front-page story appear about the Biden Laptop And Emails etc, the lack of shunning could quickly change.
Susan Ferrechio may have been unaware, or may have just forgot to mention, that in Pennsylvania for example, their Supreme Court decided that ballots can be counted up to 3 days after election day, even without postmark.
Susan Ferrechio: a lot of people won’t get fed up with the Green New Deal etc, until it’s a least partly in place already. By which time it might be essentially too late to change their congresscreep. Like so many people thought Obamacare would be just fine, until it actually started (not) working.
Still listening but so far Rob seems to think that the election is business as usual and nothing much will change in the long term with his prime example being the Obama years – specifically the first half of the first term when with cntrol of the Hous, Senate and the White House the only thing that happened was O-care and that has been largely undone…except the left has said that it intends to change the ground rules which if even half of what they plan doesn’t happen makes VERY difficlut for the Right to have another 2010 election. PR and DC become States would mean that to regain the Senate they would have to win 4 ADDITIONAL seats to what is moderately evenly divided now as well as the House seats that would also tip the scales, packing the Supreme Court would mean it would take decades to even get close to an originalist court again – if ever, doing away with the filibuster – Does Rob even remember all the procedural maneuvers that the Republicans used to use up time and delay votes (Scott Brown being the critical vote 41 that was so important!)…not to mention the Press has now moved from being biased toward the Left to being actually partisan players in politics and last but not least the radical part of the Left is well funded (cough, cough Silicon Valley), and has an organized militant (bordering on violent and sometimes just violent) wing in Antifa and BLM. The reality on the ground would be very different from the reality just 10 years ago and to have another 2010 election year outcome is a monumentally more difficult task . Just sayin’… Most of which is what Peter apparently just said while Rob still thinks that changing the rules won’t change the outcomes…which is just being blind and unwilling to face the idea that something may be different. Blinders, just blinders…
Whether you are commenting, listening or podcasting, please keep your hands where we can see them. Thank you. – The Mgmt.
Typical Rob
I’m looking forward to this week’s analysis of “Roberta” whenever it comes.
Great film. Astaire and Rogers actually played the secondary leads. Fred’s role was originated on Broadway by Bob Hope of all people…. oh, wait. That’s not what you meant, was it?
Not really. Unless you know of someone on Ricochet who does another analysis of that film, each week.
Both interviews were very well done. I appreciate the Steele’s in-depth insight in how the BLM movement immediately exploited Michael Brown’s death – and made him a martyr – to protect the lie of systemic racism as his cause of death. Mr. Robinson’s questions, and Eli’s answer about the importance of knowing the truth, not creating movements based on lies for the cause of power. A very brave film to make. The media censorship is telling. We see a lot of white liberals talking at us about our inherent racism; almost no voices like the Steele’s, or Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, who seek solutions and truth instead of patronizing condescension and blame and victimization. I see a lot of parallels in Minneapolis with George Floyd. Ms. Ferrechio’s line about J-school turning out activists, not journalists, was gold. And a humble thanks for the kind words about my post. As always, it’s the smart people and conversations in the comments that are the real treasures here. Another great episode.
If you haven’t been seeing much of Candace Owens, you should. Here’s one of my recent favorites:
I love how she points out that the idiot Nadler didn’t even listen to what she said, and Nadler is just *shrug* and goes back to chewing his cud…
I’m not an expert on this, but something to know about Ferguson, that town had a terrible situation because they were raising critical money off of ticketing black people, basically. The police department was seen as a source of revenue and everybody that could move out, would move out, except the poor. It had something to do with the way counties and cities are organized in Missouri. There is a long article in the Atlantic or some magazine about it.
I find the topic tedious, but the concept of racial justice and social justice is really destructive.
Because of the way Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google have taken over the public square, the Constitution can’t function as intended. Republicans and libertarians are very stupid to be ignorant about that.
“Liberalism taking over the agency of our fate.” That’s the thing about empowering Democrats. You are constantly losing agency. It’s going to be worse once they start doing that MMT stuff, which most people I follow think is inevitable. They won’t call it that, but that’s what it will be. It’s very, very ignorant for Republicans to empower the left in any way. Along with that, statism has taken over so many things you really do have to do some things along the lines of American Greatness or Oren Cass.
All Journalists Are Statists™
I think James is right that there is a lot more appetite for forcing green new deal stuff right now. It’s always incremental but it never stops. They really believe that forcing electric cars will make the world a better place.
James is also right that they are a lot more ideologically motivated and that they do more things. It’s so obvious that everything moves left all of the time. The only ground we ever keep is the judges. And the next problem is, you have so much statism you have to ask how wrong is the American greatness website? Not very wrong.
It doesn’t matter that the ACA is a smoking ruin, we are well on our way to forcing single payer. People are going to give up.
I thought this was a pretty good interview that was representative of the state of the political system right now. The Democrat that is going against Joni Ernst is a total train wreck. Perfect ruling class creep. No Republican could run with her record but they are shoving all kinds of money into this race. She already screwed up a House race. Apparently she’s just some connected Democrat or something.
People still don’t understand how damaging the Obama years were to our national fabric. The man was divisive, derisive, and a complete menace. You want norm-shattering? An existential threat to the constitution? There’s your guy right there.
This evening, as I write, my wife and I watched a report on NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, on Black Lives Matter, with the focus on Minneapolis and George Floyd. It followed “the narrative” so faithfully that it might have been laughable, had it had not been so sickening. It was all elitist virtue signaling à la japonaise.
Rob Long’s opening comments at the end of the podcast were most astute, perhaps (!) making up for what, on a political note, he said at the beginning, making me feel most exasperated. Again and again he insists that this is not 2016, and, of course, he may be right. But what makes him so sure that the show is over? The polls? The blatantly biased media? Or his strangely optimistic view that things won’t be so bad even if corrupt ol’ Joe, the marionette, is victorious over Trump, whom he obviously loathes? No. This time the consequences of the presidential circus race will surely be different.
My guess is that despite the efforts of the “mainstream” media to ignore or suppress the latest Biden scandal, the story is or will be so widely known that it ought to mean Biden’s defeat. I haven’t heard anyone say that, and that may be because it’s thought that the majority of American voters won’t care, the tacit assumption being: “Hey, high political office brings perks! What’s the point of having ‘influence’ if ya can’t peddle it? Besides, Uncle Joe will give us the goodies.”
Rob Long seems to blame conservative ballot-box failures on a failure to communicate, on life in a Tucker-Carlson coccoon. I would ask: What does he want TC to say? How about this? “Thanks for tuning in. Tonight I want to reassure all of my listeners that I am not the scold you may think I am. Socialized medicine? Hey, let’s talk about it. Right to life? Well, that’s a complicated issue…Seventeen Supreme Court Justices, including AOC? Ah, my goodness! America’s such a great country, and we’re all living so well now. Best time to be alive!”
Sorry. I am older and much crankier.