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The Three Whisky Happy Hour: Channeling Admiral Ackbar? (It’s a Trap!)

Episode length: 1h 1m

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This week's episode, which finds Steve over in Japan but still with a hoarse voice, ranges widely from exonerating John Yoo from being implicated in a major whiskey heist, to what the prodigious drinking habits of the Founding Fathers has to say about constitutional law today. Justice Neil Gorsuch reminds us that “John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn’t much of a user of alcohol—he only had three or four glasses of wine a night.”

Ah, the great ones.

Speaking of the Founders, we make a nod to the tragic passing of Gordon Wood, and naturally manage to get into an argument about history and historians.

But the central topic of today is considering John's foray into grand strategy in his Civitas Outlook article this week on "America Doesn't Need to Fear a 'Thucydides Trap,'" and while Admiral Ackbar needed to fear a trap, John doesn't think so. But what was Chinese premier Xi trying to do in bringing up the subject in a public session at the recent summit with Trump? One doesn't imagine Trump being a reader of Thucydides, though one can easily see him liking the outcome of the Melian debate. In fact, maybe that's what he's up to with Iran? Who can tell?

Hosts:
John Yoo'Lucretia'Steve Hayward

Discussion (8)

  • Bishop Wash@BishopWash

    You need to let John know that Ohio does now have a Buc-ee's, outside Dayton. I went to Dayton for work at the end of April and didn't find out they had a Buc-ee's until after I returned home.

  • Bishop Wash@BishopWash

    I had a couple of songs on my mind during the show. First was Monty Python's Philosopher's Song, "Plato, they say, could stick it away/Half a crate of whiskey every day". Second was Queensrÿche's Silent Lucidity (Thucydides). Finally, Kansas' Dust in the Wind. I'll give Steve grace for having jet lag and missing So-crate's Dust. Wind. Dude.

  • Dr.Guido@DrGuido

    Not to be picky but by actual count it was the 38th or 39th time that The Donald said we were a day or two away from setting up a signing ceremony with Teheran.

    Permit me to stick my neck out but, beginning with Ike, the Persians and then the Ayatollahs have presciently given us the nickname 'Strad' since, like Stradivarius, they've played us like a violin....and still are this weekend.

    Their most recent stretch of duplicity has been just these past few weeks but since they seized the Embassy in 1979 AFTER they had funded the barracks massacre and after they said their math was simple: "1=1=0."...to wit : 1nuke dropped 1 time =Zero Israel.... as the past few weeks have shown the world, we have seen DJT seem not a lot different from Obama and his 'red line' in Syria and/or our Biden led flaccid Kabul Kaper/Kut and Run....Not too harsh from someone who voted for him 3X.

    Yes. He used the B2s and YES he hit them hard for 38 days BUT, just as we did in Viet Nam, we DID NOT FINISH THE JOB....and if the reports we read of them now demanding $300Billions in reparations and control of Hormuz are true, then Trump, despite all his great successes, will have trashed his legacy and pulled the GOP and the country down with him.

    The vanquished do NOT get to make demands on the supposed victor.

    As to the markets, after 47 pretty successful years dealing with 'The Markets' permit me to suggest that sometimes they so want to believe in a Goldilocks outcome that they will rally as we saw 2 days ago since utter failure is too terrible to trade, especially in the face of so much other good news.

    Trump and his mouth are his best and worst friend.

    This is not a great way to celebrate the semiquincentennial!

    We should know in a matter of weeks if my pessimism is warranted..

+3 more comments
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