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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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Maybe we should ask Paul Krugman- he was so prescient in predicting the stock market would never recover after Trump’s election in 2016.
The left will go after the Steele’s with ferocity. They will have to find a way to demonize or trivialize them. Or, if the movie doesn’t get much traction except with conservatives, I suppose they will just ignore them.
I think Rob is deluding himself about the dangers that a Biden/Harris administration with a Democrat Senate would cause. They have learned from Obama’s 8 years. They won’t make the same mistakes. A couple of Democrat Senate candidates are distancing themselves from Biden’s remarks on energy, but that is all part of the bluff. They will fall in line with whatever Biden wants if they are elected and Biden knows that. He is just keeping his loony, leftist base happy and letting Democrats in tough races pretend they are oh so moderate.
A lot of people didn’t survive the Obama presidency. Tally up the number of people killed by an emboldened Iran and his ridiculous “ending” of wars that didn’t end at all.
The economy labored under a wet blanket of regulations and get ready for Biden/Harris to double down on that.
I guess we will all have to learn to code and wait in line till we die for our free health care.
And the media will tell everyone that everything is wonderful and ask Biden what enchants him the most.
I’m mildly pleased with myself that I watched the documentary What Killed Michael Brown before it made Amazon. Ironically, while I watched using Vimeo, I also watched on an Amazon Fire Stick, since that is where I installed the Vimeo app.
Here is a question Rob Long asked both Steeles at about 29:24 of the podcast:
I’ll start out by saying I’m white, since it’s relevant to what I’m saying below (though obviously my avatar is my picture).
First Rob was very careful to limit his question to whites. And the majority of Steele’s answer was limited to blacks as well as their behavior. The one notable exception was when he mentioned white guilt and Lyndon Johnson, which was also included in his documentary.
And that is the dance we play in this kind of discussion. And to extend this, while I do have some complaints about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, in another sense, my main beef isn’t with them, but the guilt obsessed white people who enable them.
White people can’t tell black people how to live their lives, because they won’t listen to us. And as Shelby Steele implied with his reference to Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society, throwing money at the problem only makes it worse.
Shelby Steele extends this rule the other way. While Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama and others are only too happy to lecture white people, Steele doesn’t do that.
Does that mean that it’s on the rest of us white people to push back against the guilt obsessed white people, because they are doing considerably more harm than good?
What Killed Michael Brown briefly touches on this. The American South is notorious for its speed traps, administered by local police and sheriffs as a way to generate revenue. But in many of those situations, the people being ticketed are not only out of towners, but people from out of state. A prime example of that is snowbirds who drive from New York to Florida for the winter.
In that case, those localities are really collecting revenue from out of state.
In the case of Ferguson, the revenue was primarily collected from locals, not outsiders. The documentary mentions that while Ferguson itself was around majority black at the time of the Michael Brown shooting, the surrounding suburban areas had an even higher percentage of blacks, around 90%, and they all went to Ferguson to shop at the local grocery store. A lot of Ferguson’s ticketing revenue came from those blacks.
There have been some isolated cases of state legislatures ending this practice by mandating that most or all revenue from traffic tickets be sent directly to the state government. Some local governments have gone out of business as a result. It has ended some small towns altogether.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in 2010?
I the official fact checker in chief, label this Wrong. (I just made myself up that title).
How quickly we forget John Boehner, the man who killed the earmark.
@roblong
The fact that no one corrected him on that just shows how much this site is clearly a Russian disinformation source, and product of the Giuliani campaign.
Cause thats how fact checking works. Right?
I can’t understand more than some, here and there, of what Eli Steele is saying. So I wish we had a transcript of that part of the podcast. I so want to understand both of them, because I watched “What Killed Michael Brown” last night and it’s powerful.
Amazon’s recent attempt to suppress the film by keeping it off Amazon was good for all of us in that it increased our awareness of how bad “woke” censorship has gotten. (Ironic, isn’t it ? The Left keeps talking about the honest conversations we need to have about race while deliberately doing everything in their power to prevent those honest conversations from occurring.)
I have more hope today for the future of honest conversations, now that people can get “What Killed Michael Brown” on Amazon.
Why does Rob think Biden is some all knowing mensa member. He will do or sign anything that Antifa or BLM tells him. Why does Rob not know who is running the democrat show? He really is living inthe eighties.
Good luck. I tried with my daughter and she called me a monster for telling her that “Hands up don’t shoot” never happened. The brainwashing is very skillfully done.
One lesson there would seem to be, perhaps especially for the left, that you can’t run a small town with only poor people, and then ticket them for driving 6mph in a 5mph zone, in order to pay for everything.
I’ve mixed feelings on trying too. I too have relatives, who may or may not be Woke, but are definitely liberal. We stopped discussing politics with each other a long time ago (which is why I don’t know whether they’re Woke as well).
But that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss this in general.
As risky as it is for non-Woke whites to discuss this, blacks like Shelby Steele, and Thomas Sowell pay an even higher price.
The Clarence Thomas hearings on his nomination to be Associate Justice so many years ago is probably the biggest example of that.
Food for thought.
I remember Rob saying occasionally that many people in Hollywood especially, would continue to wear the same fancy clothes that they bought the last time they were successful/had a lot of money.
Rob seems to still have most of the same fancy thoughts that he probably had the last time he was successful/had a lot of money.
The 80s and early 90s, with Cheers.
I think he thinks Biden inevitable, which indeed he may be, and he is trying to be optimistic that it won’t be so bad. Or he really thinks that old Joe is either really a moderate or that the left won’t be able to do the things they want to do. Jonah does this also, to the point that I can no longer stand his podcasts.
It seems to me there’s an opportunity here.
This is not a case of “well, that’s just your opinion man.” It’s well-documented, by Obama’s own Justice Department.
If you can get your daughter to read the actual report on this incident, which *proves* that “hands up don’t shoot” never happened, it might be the start of getting her to think about what else she’s been lied to about.
I have the exact opposite opinion. I think the Left learned the lesson of the Obama administration that they’re going to get wiped out in 2022, so push hard to get everything possible through in the first two years while they can.
After all, despite all the Sturm und Drag, the ACA is still in effect.
That might work for some people. My benighted mother, if she read it at all and could comprehend it, would simply say that the Obama Justice Department back then was actually controlled by Trump.
POTUS candidates with bar cards are doing this. Exonerated by the Obama DOJ two grand juries. 1000% messed up.
DING DING DING
It’s over. Total lock. lol
And, once again the people who are saying now that it’s okay to vote for Biden because they can always flip the House if needed in 2022, will be too late.
Shelby Steele observes, at the end of the segment, that under Segregation, Democrats at least didn’t ask for the souls of Black Folks–implying of course that Leftists, Democrats, Progressives, have bought the souls of Black Folks, via Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and beyond. Which immediately led me to reconsider Biden’s statement in the Debate (and in other venues) that this election is about winning the soul of America (or, perhaps, the souls of Americans). I interpret that as meaning that Joe is interested in doing to all of us Americans, per Shelby Steele, what Leftists have done to Black Americans–acquire our souls.
I’d prefer to keep mine
(Of course, committed Leftists don’t actually believe we have souls; it’s just an impressive expression that they seem to think gives them gravitas and makes it sound like they really do care about us).
I hereby nominate Rob Long for the Dr. Pangloss award!
@wolfsheim
Oh, and Best Performance Whistling Past the Graveyard
Great job, Peter.
Rob’s point around it not mattering who gets elected, that the whole show won’t come down, misses one or two points:
The other thing is that just about everyone I know does not follow politics at this kind of daily level. They’re living their lives, they see the news, they see social media feeds, etc. Much of that won’t change a vote, keep someone from voting at all due to apathy or frustration, or cause some other action political.
Rob keeps talking about making a case to the public. OK. Half the country does not vote. Most presidential elections are split close to the middle in terms of the popular vote. So it’s a couple of percentage points in the middle. Of that middle, how many people are there would actually pay some sort of attention, and/or change their vote based on this political education platform that will magically inform voters of the issues specific to their interests that will flip a vote?
How would you reach these people specifically? How would you even identify them? Once identified, what channel would be used to inform them? How would you know if it worked?
Rhetoric and information only goes as far as the person is willing to receive it. I think there’s a magical thinking going on if we think a Republican candidate can, through sheer information upload, switch these critical voters in the middle, at the right time exactly, every four years or so. If that capability were out there, or the candidate, it would have happened already, because it’s a clear path to winning.
Or maybe Trump figured something out, brute force and vulgarity and all the rest, that the pundits have not, and he’s OK with their disparagement of himself and the people who vote for him, because not only does their disparagement not matter, but maybe the pundits don’t, either.
There is a term for “journalistic ethics in the mainstream press”: oxymoron.
James, I like hearing about your proposed costume as the October Surprise, but do not want to see it.
Not true. There are some very solid reporters like Byron York and Mollie Hemingway.