Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Our final podcast of 2024 looks back on the top story and bottom story of the year, and you won't be surprised to see some symmetries in our answers.
But then we move on to the main event—a question from a listener (initials RW) about whether the 14th Amendment, rightly understood, actually permits the federal government to outlaw private discimination. We go several rounds (but not really enough rounds) about aspects of this issue before realizing after we finished that we didn't reach a verdict. Perhaps we'll return to it in our first episode of 2025.
The title for this week's episode is taken from Steve's nomination for the slogan of the year, which comes from a Twitter person who responded to the UN demanding that Americans give up meat to fight climate change with the phrase: "they can osculate my fundamental orifice!"
You'll just have to listen to the end to get the translation.
Announcement: We'll be back on January 1 with another special holiday midweek episode that will introduce some format changes, a review of our predictions from last year (guess who had the best record), and a fresh round of predictions for 2025 that will likely be mostly wrong.
John Yoo
'Lucretia'
Steve Hayward
Discussion (12)
CONTRIBUTOR
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Conquering Canada sounds like a good idea until you realize you end up owning Canada.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Yes, I believe if we annexed the 10 Canadian provinces, they would rank 51st to 60th in the US in per capita income, beneath Mississippi and Louisiana.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I see Lucretia is emulating the 2017-2021 White House press corps in framing of questions: "We'll let Steve give his irrelevant answer..." Hilarious!
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
On the subject of STEM employees in the United States from foreign countries, and H1B visas, let's ban wage discrimination. Mandate that H1B visa holders get the same wage as U.S. citizen engineers. That way there's no incentive for employers to hire H1B visa holders over U.S. citizens.
As far as Lucretia's assertion that U.S. engineers aren't being hired, I'm skeptical, especially if John is right that there is a shortage and the number of H1B visas aren't meeting that need.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Partial of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment (emphasis mine):
So, while this doesn't get rid of John's concern that the Vice President, and the Vice President alone, initiates this, and is required to continue this process under section 4, all it takes is a federal statute to take this process out of the hands of the cabinet.
Steve says he wants the state governors to take this role on? Or the Supreme Court? All it takes is a federal statute. No constitutional amendment needed.
And once the cabinet is out of the picture, the incentive structure for the Vice President to initiate this process changes. Probably the biggest reason that Kamala Harris didn't initiate the procedures in the 25th Amendment is she knew it wouldn't get past the cabinet, and therefore trying would not only fail, but ruin her politically.
Now perhaps she could have made promises to the cabinet that she would keep them on after she assumed the presidency, but it would be unseemly. Nor would she be bound by such a promise.
And the incentives to do something like this two years into the term were also strong, since she would have had the option, constitutionally, to serve two full additional terms.
You're seeing five of twelve comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.