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All I Want For Christmas Is...

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It's our last show for 2018, sadly there's just not that much to talk about. Darn. Nothing going on, no controversy, no conflict. Just some old friends (and Ricochet editors Jon Gabriel and Bethany Mandel) shooting the breeze for 70 odd minutes. Enjoy and we'll see you next year.

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Music from this week's show: All I Want for Christmas Is Whiskey by Dan Rodriguez

Hosts:
James LileksPeter RobinsonRob Long
Guests:
Bethany MandelJon Gabriel

Discussion (22)

  • kedavis@kedavis

    Tom Cotton should stay in the Senate. He could serve there and do a lot of good, for years to come. But at the very best, he could only be SecDef for a maximum of 6 years. Probably less than 2. And after that, he couldn't just go back to the Senate.

    It would not be a good move.

  • OccupantCDN@OccupantCDN

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Tom Cotton should stay in the Senate. He could serve there and do a lot of good, for years to come. But at the very best, he could only be SecDef for a maximum of 6 years. Probably less than 2. And after that, he couldn’t just go back to the Senate.

    It would not be a good move.

    Yes, this should be called the Jeff Sessions Syndrome - give up a long term stable job for a cabinet position, and within a week, be threatened of being fired. Tom Cotton would make a fine Sec of Def in the Nikki Haley administration.

    President Mattis wouldnt need a Sec of Def, he'd just peel an union before every summit meeting, and everyone will be very agreeable.

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    Empire. Is it manageable?

    The local morning show had a libertarian on and he flat out said that you shouldn't start a war unless you intend to colonize the place. Make money off of it. That actually might've worked in Afghanistan. Make all of the death, destruction, and waste pay off.

  • RufusRJones@RufusRJones

    I have a new theory. For the last 100 or 300 years, someone is going to be hegemonic. And then the theory is it might as well be the United States leading the West. So we have a hegemonic government, and "smart people" wanted it run "conservatively" by "experts." I.e. Tom Nichols. The Fed, the military, all of the nonpublic goods that the federal government generates etc. Some of the stuff is international like the EU the EMU and the international monetary fund. All of the big central banks our effectively international hegemons.

    Here is a tweet storm about it.

    I say all of that stuff has gotten unmanageable and regressive, and that's why so many political systems are going haywire.

    So now Trump is doing dumb things. Macron same. Germany. The German bank is going down the drain, Deuchebank. The EMU can't stop Italy on their budget because they can't invade within army.

    Eastern Europe is going way right.

    On and on.

    Watch the Yoram Hazony lecture at Yale. He explains the stuff in plain English, but I do think financial markets in central banking drive it to, and he doesn't get into that very much.

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