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This week on The Big Show®, we converse about the Kurds, talk about the limits of woke corporatism with David French, and get the low down on Kim Strassel’s new book Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America (buy it!). Also, Ricochet member @doctorrobert wins this week’s coveted Lileks Post of The Week for his two (!) posts Why We Need People Who Have ‘Too Much Money’ and Memories of the Cleveland Orchestra, 10/4/19. Well done, Doc! Finally, can Ellen Degeneres and George W. Bush be friends? Some folks insist that they cannot. Weird. Hey, speaking of friends, don’t forget to weigh in on this week’s Long Poll as it asks a similar question.
Music from this week’s show: Why Can’t We Be Friends? by War
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Looking at it, I see it. McHale had an odd body with weird shoulders. He’s the one on the left. Plus the green jerseys and white guys. No tattoos, so it’s older than fifteen years.
Or that.
Is that the last time two white guys, Americans, not to mention Danny Ainge, started for the same team? (There have probably been a few centers, but I think they make the teams due to height instead of overwhelming talent.)
You get past the top 5 or 10, and I’m lost:
1 Larry Bird, 2 Dirk Nowitzki, 3 Jerry West, 4 John Stockton, 5 Steve Nash, 6 Pete Maravich, 7 John Havlicek, 8 Rick Barry, 9 Kevin McHale, 10 Bob Cousy, 11 Bob Pettit, 12 Bill Walton, 13 Chris Mullin, 14 George Mikan, etc.
World’s greatest avatar. Well played.
And to think I used to like Steve Kerr.
I do not follow basketball at all, but I did attend a UW game in Madison at the invitation of a friend many years ago. The only thing I remember about the game is my friend at one point saying “Oh Good, our big white doofus is outplaying their big white doofus”.
President Pence would do far better.
It would be hypocritical of me to reject the foolishness of Obama (e.g disregarding wise council and pulling out in such a way as to enable the catastrophe of the Islamic State) and not also reject this utterly unnecessary and similarly foolish decision by Trump, which opens the door to a fresh genocidal assault.
Some might try to argue, “Trump might have a better chance of reelection than Pence would.” That’s highly debatable, now that Trump is adding the dead weight of loose cannon decisions that push away voters. Decisions rejected as terrible by people from all across the political spectrum. He has opened himself to the attack, “What atrocity may come next if his finger continues to control the world’s strongest military.” In 2016 that was a hypothetical concern. For 2020 it now has documentation that sways voters.
I do wonder, though, if the Trump supporters cheering on Trump for mocking Kerr remember this:
Feb. 6, 2017
Trump says he respects Putin during a Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly. Trump defends Putin when O’Reilly calls him a killer.
“There are a lot of killers,” Trump says. “Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?
Neither one of them have thought this stuff through enough.
I would suggest a new topic for the Long Poll. Is there sufficient evidence to support the convening of an Impeachment Inquiry.
This does mean that Trump should be impeached, let alone removed. The narrow question is if, especially in light of the July 25 call, there is sufficient evidence to justify a formal inquiry.
An alternative might be “Well, yes, there is sufficient evidence, but I don’t like it” or some other formulation.
Make your case, as well.
Here are my poll questions: Should Brenner and McCabe et. al. get “the chair.”?
Bill Weld and Joe Walsh are kooks. Why do the never Trumper’s support them?
If Trump is removed from office, I wouldn’t expect Pence to be (re-)elected on his own. Which means you might have, at most, 1 year – probably less – of President Pence doing things the way you think they should be done (within limits of Democrat House), before President Warren or Biden or some other loony takes over, and FLUSH! down the toilet we go.
Duh. Because they’re not Trump! :-)
I just cannot believe how many “serious” people and groups are doing this. They have probably never used The Google.
DDG
@ericb — A hypothetical or prediction should never be treated as if it were a fact.
Predictions about Obama’s Middle East policy were actually borne out and, on top of that, he was very reluctant to admit his mistakes, much less fix them.
By contrast, we don’t yet know how Trump’s policy will turn out, nor how he will react if it turns out badly.
Remember when the establishments of both parties predicted moving our embassy to Jerusalem would cause a bloodbath?
It would really help if there was no such thing as the PKK and if Turkey wasn’t in NATO.
The world powers did dozens of stupid things a hundred years ago and we keep paying for them.
I’ve been studying this stuff lately but it hurts my head.
Most people trust Andy McCarthy. Read his article.
Against Brett Kavanaugh, Mike Pence, all non-Democrats?
Don’t forget Neil Gorsuch.
And I suppose the embassy in Jerusalem needs impeachin’ too!
His critics are constantly pointing out that Trump has no coherent foreign policy. The previous four administrations (Bush père, Clinton, Bush le fils and Obama) all had, for better or worse, a real vision for remaking the Middle East. And how did that work out?
Reagan concentrated on battling the Soviets and when he did get involved in Beirut we lost 220 Marines, 18 sailors and 3 civilians. The French lost 55 paratroopers.
People who had a real Middle Eastern policy gave us the Shah of Iran and when Jimmy Carter decided he had a “human rights” problem that helped lead to the Islamic Revolution. And that worked out great, too.
But remember folks, these people who Trump seems to be ignoring are the real experts. Why wouldn’t he want to listen to them?
I had to look up whether or not she has passed.
Well, the Berlinskis are creationists, so they can be said to have departed from their senses …
There is an ideal among generals that is the same among politicians. The ideal is.. I can fix it. Everyone is dumb and nothing can be fixes.
That should REALLY make people nervous when Elizabeth Warren, for one, says “I have a plan.”
Listen to the Kirt Schlicter interview on Examining Politics.
“But we do live in a *representative* democracy–and he’s now our representative.”
Did she move back? She hasn’t lived in OUR representative democracy in decades .
Interesting discussion for those that are interested.
I didn’t reply to the Long Poll because none of the options matches my situation.
I belong to the “intellectual classes”; most of my longtime friends and relatives are still stuck in the mud of conformist leftism. They don’t resort to excommunication but rather treat me condescendingly, as though I were a harmless member of the Flat Earth Society, a medieval reactionary, who has failed to realize that there really are women with penises. They live in their bubble world, in which Donald Trump is a neo-Nazi and Elizabeth Warren is still a Cherokee warrior. It is they who avoid any and all discussion: it’s simply impolite to challenge their sense of reality.
In my experience, progressives react violently and abusively to counter-arguments because their self-esteem is so bound up in their religion.
And it is a religion, though it lacks a deity in a formal sense.* lf you point out that it conflicts with reality, you commit a kind of blasphemy.
Of course, if you really want to annoy them, point out that progressivism is a religion!
If they can’t intimidate you into shutting up, they run away. Surveys have repeatedly shown that progressives are more likely to block conservatives than vice-versa.
*It also lacks a rule against lying!