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The news cycle these days is crushing — warping time upon itself like a black hole. So how does America’s Most Balanced Podcast® respond? By booking a third guest, of course. On today’s lineup, we’ve got Casey Mattox;the Vice President for Legal and Judicial Strategy at Americans for Prosperity, a group dedicated to (among other things), getting Amy Coney Barrett through the nomination process. You can help by visiting their website UniteForBarrett.com and signing a letter that will be sent to your Senator. Do it! Then, our good friend (and fellow board member) Dr. George Savage stops by to give us an M.D.’s perspective on the President’s condition and what his course of treatment might be. Finally, Henry Olsen, he of the Horse Race podcast right here on this network visits and dispenses some punditry on how the President’s health may affect his re-election effort. No spoilers here, sorry. Finally, the Lileks Post of The Week is back and it’s a doozy: did Harry Truman actually approve the use of the use of the A-Bomb at the end of WWII or did the military just deploy like a new submarine or aircraft? We get into it and then some.
Music from this week’s show: Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) by John Lennon
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I’m not sure what your point is here. Even after the Biden/Ryan stuff, not to mention everything else Biden has done over nearly half a century in one government position or another, Trump was supposed to let Biden be rude first? And then you would have been okay with Trump being rude?
He has accomplished a great deal over multiple decades. That is plenty.
James Lileks defamed Yosemite Sam.
Clearly the spreaders are Sylvester (as correctly identified), and Daffy Duck.
Yes, but he was referring to the “next” (from Trump’s election) 4 years.
“We” have had a lot of progress and prosperity in that time, but maybe not so much for Rob personally.
Well, Yosemite Sam yells and sputters a lot. And that spreads things too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ-BOqQw_TQ
Maybe Foghorn Leghorn should be included too. But he wouldn’t be the worst.
Well, I’m not so sure about the podcast — but the comments are terrific!
The podcast did have some good moments, but overall the comments might be better, yes.
Actually this isn’t the first time, either.
I just read the article, and don’t have many quibbles with it. I do get the sense that the recall effort has stalled, as Olson states. I’m not a big fan of Olson in general. But I don’t have too much to complain about regarding that article.
Dunleavy was his own worst enemy during the budget fights, simply because the Alaska constitution gives the governorship too much power and made it easy for him to overreach.
There may be exceptions, but I think every U.S. state governor has veto powers. The problem in Alaska is that to override a veto, it has to be done with a 3/4’s vote of a joint legislative session, but worse, it’s a 3/4’s vote of the full legislature. Compare that with the federal legislature where a veto override is 2/3’s of the members present of each house.
So in the case of the Dunleavy veto fights, a legislator no-show meant the same thing as a no vote. Adding to that, the governor, who probably doesn’t like that the state capital resides in Juneau, tried to mandate that special sessions happen in a high school gym in Wasilla. That was extremely arrogant, but he seems to have that power under the state constitution. Still, the legislature successfully rebelled, and he backed down. He has further veto powers, since like other states, his veto is line item in nature.
I do agree with Dunleavy that the state government has been living beyond its means. But as we’ve seen with the Covid crisis in other states, there’s a downside with giving governors too much power without their legislature having the ability to brake him. A legislature with a touch more power could have saved him from himself.
The only way to really restrict an out of control governor is either impeachment or recall.
On the other hand, I give Dunleavy high marks with his CV response. It hasn’t been as good as South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, which I consider the gold standard. But he has only done one lockdown that lasted two months, and he has resisted pressure to go further. I count only two communities in Alaska that have mandated their own restrictions beyond Dunleavy’s, and that’s Anchorage and Juneau, probably the two most liberal cities in Alaska.
Though infections have risen in Alaska, deaths and hospitalizations have remained stable, indicating that the increased testing have revealed infection numbers that were always there but not previously detected.
#VOTE #DEMOCRAT
The @jameslileks rendition of Truman signing an order for The Bomb reminded me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XxiCaFgwcY
Great — next week, I’ll just put up a podcast of white noise and you guys can have at it. A lot less work for the four of us.
Here’s a preview of next week’s show. Enjoy!
But, sleeping people don’t comment…
James can get into his NPR voice and say “Welcome to the Ricochet ASMR Podcast“, and then nothing but white noise for the next 90 minutes. Unless Rob wants to do one of those ASMR whispering podcasts.
Depends on what Rob wants to whisper. If he wants to whisper about how Trump is doomed to lose, and he SHOULD lose, then I’ll pass.
How about sweet nothings?
I can tell by the way she’s sleeping she’s a NeverTrumper too!
Could it be…. JULIA??????
This would be a little more on point for James.
Al, I think that you were much more on point with your comments following this opening, about Trump being a symptom, not the cause of any division. As for the President setting the tone, that was set before he was elected, in the outrageous and illegal actions to destroy his presidency before it even began. That has a certain tone-setting quality to it. And who can forget the Bork, Thomas, Kavanaugh trifecta of evil, and every Republican basically being literally Hitler. No, the despicable Democrats have been in charge of tone for generations, but we are finally seeing pushback and “fight” on the right. Sadly necessary, in my opinion.
I actually ripped that vid and detached the audio, which I pipe through a speaker when napping. I FEEL SEEN as the irritating people say.
Of course you do.
Wow James, I would have thought more TOS for you. But this version isn’t exactly calming…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKJcgelw2F4
It’s like Spock left his scanner on, or something.
Maybe this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFAz_gDvgkw
Or this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnU2qn6-hz4
First, this isn’t a physical fight where you risk injury or death if you take the chance of taking the first bullet or the first punch.
I don’t mind Trump attacking Biden first. But until Biden says something outrageous about him, there’s no need to interrupt him.
I didn’t watch the whole debate, but the many first hand accounts indicate that Trump attacked him so much, he didn’t give Biden a chance to show how confused he could be.
Trump should have given Biden a chance to be Biden.
Well that’s certainly one option. Maybe that was planned for the next debate(s). I could see them figuring that Biden would be the most rested etc for the first, so it’s more likely he’ll be off his rocker later on.
At 76:18, after Peter recounts the story of Clark Clifford observing the president of Chase Bank being left waiting for two hours by President Johnson, James Lileks tosses out this bon mot:
I laughed out loud. The man is half the reason I listen. At least half.
Okay, I won’t bother then. Might not again until after the election.
Every Alaskan I know feels betrayed by Dunleavy over the way he’s capitulated to the legislature over the budget cuts and for not standing up to them in demanding they follow the statutory PFD. The special session in Wasilla was case in point. He held it there because it was within 40 miles of the home residence for 80% of thelegislature, and thus it would have cost those legislators their per diem to attend. They refused, Dunleavy refused to send troopers to bring them in and the budget battle was lost, along with $3000 out of the pocket of every single Alaskan. People were (still are) pissed since that was his #1 campaign promise.
Cont…
On Covid we’re grateful he’s been letting the individual cities make their own calls, except for the fact that by not taking a stand to declare the state open he’s allowing bush communities to be stifled by little bureaucrats, and Anchorage is completely in free fall from the tyranny of mayor Berkowitz. Businesses that have been around for decades are closing shop every week, Anchorage is literally being overrun by homeless and violent vagrants,the Anchorage assembly is unhinged in pushing through dangerous LGBTQ policies, and using CARE funds on liberal pet projects. On all of this Dunleavy has sat around watching it and done nothing, not even lifting restrictions at the airport, or calling out Berkowitz for fleecing the money. Every week he stands next to Dr. Zink and listens to her tell us that Alaska is going great managing new Covid cases instead of firing her and declaring Alaska open, and more economic devastation to the tourism industries, small businesses, and manufacturing is the result. He’s not even campaigning against the CA style voter proposition the lefties managed to get on the ballot, nor speaking up against Murkowski over the supreme court.
In other words he’s not doing anything…at all…and we’re done with that lack of leadership.
It’s been a while since I mentioned it, so this is probably a good time: it was James’ presence that got me to Ricochet, and I’d probably leave if he ever does.
Just to be clear, I’m both saying “deflation” and “wage deflation” along with job loss.
The government has to do a whole pile of things right around this or we are going to be in big trouble. This is partly how you got Trump. We never made the adjustments. The problem started around 1991 when the Soviet Union fell and computers became so ubiquitous.
Basically, our government and financial system is based on inflation. If we had switched to a deflationary system years ago we wouldn’t be in this mess. That is literally how we operated until 1914.