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This week, Jon Gabriel sits in for Peter Robinson (he’ll be back next week –promise!) as we’re joined by two of the sharpest observers in politics. Matthew Continetti is the Editor-In-Chief of the Washington Free Beacon. We chat with him about this week’s State of The Union address, thin skinned liberals, American Sniper’s cultural impact, and the romantic genius of John Milius. Then, our old friend Mickey Kaus stops by to discuss his out of the box idea for Mitt Romney to appeal to working class voters (spoiler alert: it involves Mitt moving in to Mickey’s apartment). Also, does Barbara Boxer’s retirement herald a Kaus Komeback? Stranger things have happened…
Music from this week’s episode:
Party Line by The Kinks
The opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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Re Mickey’s comment about a Schwarzenegger type up the middle candidate competing for California Senator – are the Republicans trying to recruit anyone? I would recommend Ron Howard but any ideas would be interesting to the Ricochetti.
Is that Mark Steyn in the photoshop? Or is that Jon Gabriel? If it is Jon, I don’t know if it is a compliment or an insult.
Rob Long on last week’s podcast: “I had a conversation with a prominent Republican activist in November, who told me hands down, there’s no question about it, it’s going to cost one billion dollars to put a person in the White House in 2016. And the only Republican candidate who can raise one billion dollars is Jeb Bush”.
This “prominent Republican activist” was probably Haley Barbour. Barbour is one of the 112 people Jeb Bush is “following” on his Twitter page.
Those scumwads at the SOTU! They wouldn’t even let Justice Gabriel bring his cup into the chamber…
It can’t be Mark Steyn. Here he is with Megan Kelly concerning the French terror attacks.
Je suis
Charliemalheureux!Rob,
Getting so tired of hearing about how smart Obama is. He is smart, no denying that . No one gets to be President without being intelligent, but his intelligence is vastly overrated. I can tell you for a fact that he was not a stellar student at Columbia, having graduated with him (I have commencement program to prove it), that he almost certainly got in to Harvard based on his skin color, that despite making law review he published nothing, that as instructor (not professor) at U. Chicago he published nothing, that according to Richard Epstein Obama never engaged faculty in legal debates, that he did not sponsor one piece of legislation in Illinois or US Senate that became law, that every answer to questions that are unscripted is stammering liberal boilerplate. I have yet to hear him say anything that is original or incisive. He is no smarter that GW Bush, and a lot worse that any President in my lifetime, including JC.
And Haley is looking forward to cashing in hardcore…
Can’t remember where I saw this – Just as there are people who can attribute reading grade level from one’s writing, there are those who attribute IQ level to one’s spoken words. Taking his unscripted comments, these people have estimated Obama’s IQ to be around 105, just barely above average.
Lileks: “Esss-faah-haahn-iii”- wie man spricht!
Hey Mickey. The movie you are thinking about is Trading Places. Classic Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. Mitt Romney as the snooty commodities trader taken down to the grifter’s level and climbing back up to take on the evil Duke and Duke brothers.
And learning a valuable lesson about himself in the process.
Um, nope. I’m not at liberty to say exactly who it was. But it wasn’t Haley. (I have no idea, actually, who Haley supports right now.) But I will say this: the guy who said that to me is someone you wouldn’t expect to say it.
Well, there’s smart and there’s smart. Let’s stipulate that he’s smart. Okay, fine. But he isn’t smart. Because a truly smart liberal progressive president would be following the strategy of the most successful recent progressive president, Lyndon Johnson, who horsetraded and cajoled and charmed and bullied his way into the history books as a very effective legislative president. Agree with him or not, I just don’t understand how someone with Obama’s mission and agenda wouldn’t study LBJ hard and operate from his playbook. And that’s because Obama is smart, but stubborn. He’s smart, but arrogant and petty. In that way he’s a perfect example of what liberals like to call a “teachable moment.” Smarts + arrogance = stupidity, all the time, everytime. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican or Green or Tea Partier. No matter how smart you are, in politics, if you’re petty and arrogant and stubborn, you’re the dumber than the dumbest guy in the room.
Hey! Who does that excellent voice over at the end of that commercial?
Whoa how did I miss that?
One major flaw Obama has (no way to list them all – I’m trying to keep this brief), is that deep down he realizes that he has in no way earned one single thing he has. Being a narcissist, he thinks that anyone else who “has” anything must not have earned it either. To him, life is just a big game of chance and taking away from the successful is just a matter of hastening the regression to the mean which would have come in time anyway. As for being smart, I’ve known people who thought that I was smarter than I actually am. I did not try to talk them out of it.
I was able to listen to the whole show on my PC without a stop! HUZZAH!
Things Americans spent $1 Billion on last year:
Why are we shocked we may have to spend that electing a president? Pro-rated over four years it’s a pretty good deal.
Yeah, but those other things actually give us something desirable for our money.