A Sparking Powerline

Steve sent me a text message saying that I had to behave because you were going to ask, not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister Gorbuschoff, tear down this wall. Read my lips. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lylac's usually with Robin Peter, but they are out. But don't worry. We've got Lucretia and Stephen from Powerline and John you. So let's have ourselves a podcast. It is now the duty of my office to prove these charges in the indictment beyond

a reasonable doubt at trial. It's a witch hunt. It's just a continuation of a witch hunt. They want to silence in you. They want to silence you. I mean, this is a little sort of thing that happens in the country. Who's Who's Powerball? Jack Pott is three hundred and eighty seven, Chickens on the goat. Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast. Six hundred and fifty five, six five five. You'll like it as an area code, you'll trust it as a podcast time James Lilacs. And you

might ask where's rob Long, where is Peter Robinson? Well the founder. You know, our lineup here is rapidly becoming like a late stalln era photograph where people just drop out, airbrushed and never to appear again. It's just me. I know, I'm getting robbed back. Peter will be back and the waiting days of summer they are off on some peregrination, but we'll hear all about it when they return. In the meantime, we've got something that's going to make you say, who are those are the guys? Why don't

we even need them? Rob Woo Peter who We've got Powerline people and Rob and John Rob John, Rob John You. If I can get my mouth to work, we'll have an even better podcast. Linda from from power Line and Stephen from Powerline. Gentlemen, ladies, welcome, good morning. Great to be here. We feel like we feel like the Triple A team has made it to the show. Yeah, everybody just jump in it once here, that'll be great. I'm just gonna sit back and let you cat fight

for the microphone. I feel like the Ukrainian Special Forces guy behind the enemy lines. Yeah, look for the mines. I'm looking for the minds Peter and Rob have left for us. Well, not to worry. You're You're welcome to go ahead, right ahead, John, and hobble back as you please. But for the moment before we get to all the fun stuff, the contentious things that I'm sure will polarize the audience right down the middle.

There's what we learn about the Hawaiian fires is getting more and more interesting. And of course people say that it's climate change. It's obviously climate change. Anytime anything burns, it's climate change, as if the Sun had just focused its energy beams down and devastated Hawaiian But it turns out there might actually be man made reasons for that don't have to do with eating meat and driving cars.

Now, what people will say is, well, even if it is related to the electrical system, people should not have electricity in the first place to use their air conditioning because they will then do things like put wires where they shouldn't. What this is is just the usual example again of an energy company deferring basic maintenance on the things at work in order to pursue this new dream of sustainability, which which ain't going to do it, which just ain't

gonna do it. So there are two things to this one. What we're learning now about the crisis, and you guys can discuss that. And two. John had a piece this week in the Washington Examiner about how they're using

the courts to push more and more extreme reactions to global warming. The Montana judge who essentially ruled that the children's future was being that one of the kids his artistic endeavors were being threatened because atmospheric particular or something triggered as asthma, so he couldn't perform, and therefore, I don't know what we have to ban the internal combustion engine. So those are the two things what we learned about Hawaii, and then John's aspect on the law. So go, I'm

gonna lean back. I'm gonna pretend this is lie. I'm an am DJ and I just put I just put the record the Edmund Fitzgerald on, you know, or I can hit the head, I can go get some coffee, or I can just let it play. And so there you go have it. James, you might want to stay for this because both John and Steve promised me a long time ago that they were going to get me my own designer tinfoil hat, and they've never done so. So I can't put it on right now, and I'm really not all that serious about this.

But what you didn't mention is all the stuff that's come out on the last day or two, some of it on actual, you know, almost legitimate media sources. This morning, there was a picture of an aerial picture of the fire and it was very interesting. Fired went from house to house and didn't catch the trees in between, and it didn't get the big, beautiful

coastal houses. And there's a conspiracy theory going around that it's actually some sort of what's it called the energy blast of some kind, that this was purposeful, not just a lack of a lack of maintenance on the power lines because they're putting all of their resources into green energy, but purposeful because so much of Hawaii is the zoning rules keep these properties in the family, and what they've done is made it impossible for the families that have this inheritance to live

there forever to stay there because the insurance companies have canceled their insurance. I don't know if I believe any of it, but I figured, you know, it's time to throw something out there and wait, couple up. Well, yeah, I'm not inclined to believe in Jewish space lasers doing this in

order to change the ownership thing. It's it's you know, Ockham's Razor would have you look at just things like sparking wires on the ground on abandoned dry, tinder filled or agricultural fields, and why it skips from house to house. I saw that video too, but I don't know what to make of it. Well, I mean, you Lucretia, Southern California girl, very high winds, the flames tend to be low to the ground. I think

that's actually not that surprising. And skipping houses. I mean, in the big California wildfires, you'll often see a whole neighborhood leveled and then there's one house left standing, and that usually can be explained by they actually have better event grades and other reasons. Right, So it's weird that way. I think you made mention of it. Oh about the land tenure in Hawaii, I mean, there's the famous Supreme Court case about that back in the eighties.

I won't revisit, but it's there's the United States and then there's Hawaii when it comes to land law, and it does have some really weird features. That really clogs up the real estate market there, all right, I

think the big story is you've made reference to a James. I have from time to time talked about the climate change fantics as the climate cult and the Wall Street Journal story this week, and now they are more coming out or absolutely devastating about how all the political forces were for green energy and Hawaiian Electric despite being warned repeatedly and themselves saying we have some fire hazard problems in need, attending to spend virtually nothing on in the last five years. It's all

about green energy. And so that's why I have thrown down and said this is largely this is going to turn out to be the largest math mass death event caused by a cult since Jonestown. And I can give lots of other examples, by the way, and I can even cite one of the premier mainstream quote unquote climate scientists eight or nine years ago, James Hansen, who's

started off all this business in the eighties. He did one of those typically dense regression analysis papers in one of the scientific journals, and what he said was is the closure of nuclear power plants. He's very pro nuclear, by the way. That's the one place he departs from climate orthodoxy, but he calculated that the closure of nuclear power plants prematurely here and around the world increase the death toll from particulars and other air pollution by fifty thousand people a year.

And I say, those desks can be laid at the feet of the ridiculously anti nuclear environmental movement. So I'll just stop there because I can rant on a long time about this, because there's other examples of where this green energy mania has actually increasing risk for people, increasing prices, and leading to disasters like this one. John, Let's go to your Washington examine our article and talk about how the legalization, the illegalization of everything is going to be

a really bad idea when it comes to climate. I think a lot of people saw the story out of Montana where these kids, as you mentioned, sued against for global warming against fossil fuel companies. The surprising thing is that they're late to the game, Like everybody in Montana, they wanted to see how it turned out for the rest of the country first. So there's a bunch of lawsuits by city and countess. In fact, Hawaii, Honolulu is

one of these plaintiff cities. Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, Boulder, you can imagine New York City, you can imagine which cities are in on these lawsuits. And they claimed that global warming is what we call a public nuisance in the law. And this is a complete distortion of what people usually use these lawsuits for. This is what you usually use. For example, if say, in James's beautiful suburb of Minneapolis, suburb suburb, well, if I'm a city boy, thank you very much. It was a suburb.

It was a suburb when they laid it out in eighteen ninety. But it's it's firmly city now. Well I thought that's why I say. I thought the entire city was supposed to be a suburb. That's what it looked

like when I was there last. And then so suppose James's perfectly leafy residential area in the downtown of Minneapolis, while he's showing us his background, there's a lot of towers behind there is and somebody opened up, you know, a leather tannery right in the middle that started polluting, ruining the environment all around a residential neighborhood. Then you can kind of say, oh, this

guy is causing a public nuisance. In our neighborhood, but no one has ever said, oh, you should turn this around and use it for global problems. And if you look at it in a situation where even if you could get these fossil fuel companies to stop doing business in Montana, which they might consider now, or even the United States, who would barely make a dent because most of the global warming now is not being caused by carbon emissions

in the US or even Europe. It's coming from China and India. So

I think these lawsuits are eventually going to get thrown out of court. The problem is it's going to take years and years to get from these triald judges all the way to the Supreme Court, which I'm confident will put an end to them, and then kids in Montana will go back to, you know, their climate friendly policies like shooting animals and speed hearing them at arrows and bows and going around burning things at big pit fires, that stuff people do

in Montana for fun normally, Well it should be I think, added John. What this is based on is a clause in the Montana Constitution which was rewritten I think in nineteen seventy two, so it's recent as a modern constitution has a clause that says something like all Montana citizens are entitled to a clean and healthy environment, which means, what's in politics? I mean, we really the judge going to give an injunction against the weather? I mean,

how is this actually going to work? That would have been at the very least a political question once upon a time and a clear slam dunk. But now old fashioned liberal judicial activism lives on and they grab hold of that vague clause and say it means we can do anything. We won't. Oh, oh, Lucretia is gonna love this. Lucresi is gonna love this. This is a demonstration of the failure of the progressive vision of rights, because the

eighteenth century American vision is at rights are negative. It's just says government leave me alone right within the now. Some states, I don't know why Montana of all states would copy a European constitution, but they have positive rights that say you have the right to an education, you have the right some European constitutions say you have a right to a job, and of course they say

you have a right to a good, healthy environment. Of course, none of these governments can deliver on it, and they don't take the law seriously in these European countries, but we do in America. You stick something in the constitution in America and people want it to become the real law. Before we get to the recreation's response, and then we'll drift away from Montana. I just want to say, I just struck me that perhaps the problem is

not that we are listening to children in Montana. It's that we're not sacrificing enough of them on altars I mean the Aztecs and the mind. Yes, well, not to the climate gods, but to specific geological manifestations. I mean, because of the you know, the old Messo American civilizations believe that unless they rip the heart out of children and held it up to this guy God, the sun wouldn't come up with the rain wouldn't come with the rest

of them. Now, you know, at some point that just became ritualistic.

But it makes me wonder whether that we're kind of missing an opportunity here because studies have shown suggested that we may have global warming increased four years because of a very large volcano, an underground volcano, the Hunga tongue or something like that that that put trillions, trillions of gallons of water vapor into the air, which in a stroke shows you that the Earth is perfectly capable of doing all kinds of stuff to its own environment and its own regulatory system,

which you will eventually balance out, etc. But I mean, if we had, if these children who are so concerned about these things had willingly put themselves on altars to forestall the result of the eruption of that volcano, it would show that they're dedicated to the cause. But I think the fact that they aren't willing to do that, there, aren't willing to clamber up there and hand the obsidian knife to the priest, leads me to believe they may

not be a serious that they think. Now the little creature you were talking about, I don't even there's so much. But what I probably would say is that the only place where you're slightly wrong about that is the what we know about young people today who been frightened to death by their idiotic teachers,

etc. Etc. About the existential threat that climate change poses to them, they are deciding not to have children, which that's a good sign because they're obviously idiots, and you know, it's the whole Darwinian principle at work here. But I mean, is that good enough for you, or do you

think we really need to require child sacrifice. I think actually that the number of people who decide not to have children because of climate change, it's probably the same as the people who refuse to have children during the eighties because of nuclear winter and Ronald Reagan and all the rest of it. There's always a group of people who are so pessimistic about the future, and somehow they're concerned for the future dovetails nicely with their dislike of children in general and specifically.

So I'm not worried about that so much as I am the fact that in general people we have generations of people here now who find it difficult to define the mate, who find it difficult to set down and find it onerisks to have children, because even if they do find somebody's going to theirselves, it's going to interfere with their ability to run out somewhere with a dog and the

rest of it. I mean, I heard of them at a meeting the other day when we were talking about coming back to the office, and somebody was complaining about the fact that you know, they have pet care demands that they I think dogs and cats pretty much did, okay up until twenty twenty when people had to go to work. Anyway, I'm straying far so, gentlemen, John H. Stephen. The subject of negative rights, positive rights,

and the rest of it is that a lost cause. Has the West completely just at you know, adopted the notion that that's what the government is there for, to gret to bestow these things, to declare them rights. And there's no coming back from that. There's no there's no nobody's going to change that, or the society eventually realized it's expensive and unworkable and works its

way back to under the solution. But you want me to go first, John, because actually John is secretly unsound on Actually he's not secretly unsound on this issue. He's totally unsound on this issue. John is a grubby positivist. And by the way, I'm grumpy John, because I'm still smarting from you calling me a monarchist on Tuesday lunch. Okay, yeah, I mean that train left if the crown fits wear it anyway. Okay, Look, Steve, you should be happy. This is one of the most pro monarchist

podcasts in America. You should have heard them weeping and crying when Queen Elizabeth passed away. Oh I do remember that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, Rob Peter cried all over. Peter cried all over his ascot and is tied up sweater. That's right. Not so much for her as for the institution and for the tradition, and also for her as having provided a cultural continuity for generation for a long time and really adding to the cohesion of the

British Empire and the Aisles and the rest of it. I see the hazard of your question, James, is that John and I actually team teach a class that goes into this for at great length, and we don't want to do that in the podcast. I'll just one hint though the problem. I think a key turning point came right after World War Two when the UN gave us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And some of it was very conventional

and familiar sounding. Right to free speech, several other traditional American angle American style individual negative rights. But then I think it's Article twenty two or twenty four. A fundamental human right is a right to paid vacations. Now, I think they put that in there at the behest of labor unions for bargaining purposes. But I'm thinking, you know, a lot of parts of the world, since this is meant for the whole world be nice if people had

a job at all. You think of some poor developing country where people live on a dollar a day, and the idea of a paid who's going to pay for this paid vacation? It's ludicrous, but it's an example of now the government exists, as you put it, to bestow benefits from people, and everything becomes a human right. And this is why it should that kids coming up today, eight conservatives, it's because of you and exactly what you just said, because what they hear is that you should not have a paid

vacation. When you say, when you say, actually you don't. You don't have the right to an everhard number two pencil delivered to your house by a stork every morning, you don't have that right, to which they respond, well, it would be really great if it happened. It's like, yes, agreed, but you do not have the right for it to happen. And so when you say, you know, you know, you don't have the right to a two week pay vacation, they hear you should be

chained to your desk or the factory three hundred sixty five. And that's what's maddening about it, because put it, rights becomes good things. That's it. It just it's a synonym for great things. So my son was get reading something to me last night, some exchange, and it was I have a right to healthcare. And the answer was, well, I have a right to under the Second Amendment telling weapons. Well, you get to enjoy that right, but I want the right to have the government pay for my

guns. Well that's not a right, that's just something you want, exactly. And so I think we just have to push back on that and every single day and say no, of course, there's no right to have some lovely sort of guarantee of beautiful weather, a clean skies, clean water. Those things are really nice. Yeah, I mean it. Well, the one sentence Razor people can use is if the right claimed requires taking resources from one group of people to supply this good thing to another group of people,

it's no longer a fundamental right. Right. Well, you're describing you're describing socialism there, and of course America is I mean Americans love socialism is defended is pointed out by the fact they love social security. Therefore, gotcha, I mean, I mean, yes, you go. The problem, maybe at the heart of it is the deformation of language, the substitution of things

for things that makes them sound better. If there are two things that I could change, one would be rights and the other would be phobe, because you can attack anybody as being a blank phobe, which indicates what that they have an irrational fear that the very existence of the whatever you're phobic about makes you cruel in a corner with a racing heartbeat, palpitations and sweaty pump.

No, phobia is being used to describe disagreeing, which is again just practically Soviet in describing how an inability to mouth or agree with this set of statements is proof of mental illness. If only the mentally ill could believe such a things. If you're a phobia, so I those are the two words. Do you have any words you would like to change permanently in the American political landscape? Yes, I got one diversity. Diversity, And so I was

going to say, I'm not as pessimistic as Stephen Lucretia. I think actually, as you suggested, James this whole positive rights move and claims on everyone to fund my pet cause of starting to die. I think we've just maybe past peak wokeism, peace positive, just peak positive rights. We're just a little past it. And if I were going to trace it to some event, it would be the Harvard Supreme Court case this summer. Think about it.

One would be a classic example of what you're talking about is university's desire to manage all speech, to racially engineer all the classes, to decide what people should learn or not based on diversity rationales, and the Supreme Court said no. At some point it runs into our negative right against the government, that we all be treated equally without regard to our race. So I'd like to think that, and the Harvard case is popular. The majority of American

people don't want that's true. Where the worst there's any place this stuff goes on, it's our our three places of employment universities, except in floor where the new school is making some changes and of course being excoriated for all of them. I don't know if you've been following that Lucretia. First of all, I wanted to ask what word you would get rid of, what word

you would show. Do you ever talk to a young person and every when they mean to say I think, I believe it occurred to me that it's always I feel like I feel like they can't. And so when I grade papers from students, the first thing I tell them is I am not a psychology professor, and I couldn't give a damn about your feelings. And if you use the word feel in your paper to me, I feel like this I will fail you. And you should just see there because it's one of

those things. It's like you just pointed out, it's not just that it's a misuse of the word. It's so subjective that the only thing that matters is your feelings. And yeah, it's not an accidental conflation, it's intentional because I mean, the whole project from the Boomers on and really we would have we've been a much better state of the country if the if the greatest

generation had just beaten their children more. I swear to it. So I'm not I'm I'm now on record for for more physical discipline and the and the of course, you know, uh, sacrificing of children. So that's coming in. You're still never going to be as tough as a nation mother change. But that's true. But the idea that you that everyone must be validated, everybody must be made whole, and that your feelings have to be nurtured and cared for and no bruising can ever occur is nonsense. And that's not

how the world works. And so the idea that if you feel something, it is authentic, and authenticity is to be rewarded over correctness, over morality, over virtue or anything like that. The whole project of the boomers has been authenticity. I love my true self. I have to be who I gotta be. I gotta be me, and that results in a society of spoiled little narcissists running around with no historical or communal sense. Anyway, I agree with you, I agree feel not a Stevens. We need to get

rid of one more word. Yeah, I have a long list, but I'll just give you one. It's holistic. You know, the liberals loved us. We need a holistic approach this problem. What that means in practices, we really have no idea what to do about it and want to change the subject and spend more money. That's what holistic means. When you hear that phrase you know, somebody just has no idea. What's going on? My choice? If we had to go for like two word phrases, I

would ban I think I would ban last call. Actually that's not true because I haven't. I haven't been I haven't been drinking. I haven't not drinking for a long It's like, why do you hate the American bar? What's wrong? I'm kidding As a man of my age, I do my drinking at home where I can cause no trouble and drive no cars. But the thing of it is, you know, the older you get, it's a little tough. You might not bounce back the next day you did when you

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Or what are you thinking? Are you thinking of Georgia? I was going I've been to the Lake Como several times, but oh well, compared comparing it, but comparing it to your body is what made me go on talking about the physical, the physical sensation, the rest of it. All right, we'll shoot if you must, this old grayhead. But so we've gone through the words, We've gone through Hawaii, we've gone through negative rights. We've covered more ground, frankly than any of these podcasts usually does in

an hour, which is great. Which leads us to the press conference which was canceled. Now Donald Trump put out a truth Social meeting which and I have no idea why he engages an arbitrary capitalization like he's Samuel Johnson or something. I don't get the nineteen eighteenth century capitalization thing, but there you go.

So we put out the tweet on truths social and canceled his press conference, which had the irrefutable evidence assembled by somebody, and he said, on advice of his lawyers, he wasn't going to release it, which means he's actually listening to his lawyer. Remarkable. So between that and the not debating, tell us where you think the election the campaign starts right now, Lucretia, you're next. I know. I'm putting you up there. Tell us

what you think, what's you think? And you will be hell. You will be You will be hell to account for this in a year from now too, we will take all of you, all of you guys statements and put them up and you won't be able to deny a word of them, don't. I don't know where to start. I think that it was the

right thing to do to cancel the press conference. I think he should debate because he's good at it, and he will in fact lose some of that free media coverage that he gets even from the media, most of whom hate him. Of course, if he doesn't decide to debate, and that will be the only thing about him, I think he should go and debate. On the other hand, you know, I guess I'm probably hate to say it, one of those what is it sixty two percent of people who are

persuadable for another Republican candidate. If Trump is the nominee, I of course will vote for him. But gosh, it's I don't know. I'm torn, Honestly, I don't have an answer for you, James, because on the one hand, I want to see Trump just triumph, just to put down once and for all this nonsense that's happening to him. What is it ninety nine counts spend three hundred years in jail if he was convicted on all of them, and you know, I want to see this over with.

I don't even want to take it seriously. I don't want to look at the indictments and say there's somehow, some legitimacy to any of them. And but at the same time, why is that, Why why don't you want to study them? I mean, it isn't that I do. I just don't want to because there's three different levels here. The first one is the biased prosecution things. Trump being indicted for things that nobody else would be I saw this morning even some liberals say, well, if George is going to

indict Trump on this, when are they going to indict Stacy Abrams? But she paid a fine? I mean she did? She not? She did? She have fine to find for denying that she won. Uh, the denying that she lost the election. That's what Trump is being indicted for denying that he lost the Ellie. Not for not for denying it, but for assembling a process to overturn it and to subverted and to lie about what actually happened. I mean, you can lie about anything that that doesn't mean you

go to jail for it. There's the whole record. Well I shouldn't. I should leave this to John who's who's of course a lawyer and better at it. But he's not being he's not being charged with lying. If that was the case, every politician would be in medical is he is by Weiss. He's being charged with lying by Weiss, and that the result of his lie are not Smith. You mean I get them, sorry, thank you,

but it is the same. Okay, But you know The problem is is that what he's being indicted for, the supposed at least the part about it that has to do with them changing the slate of electors is it's all above board. It may have been dumb, but he had some reason to believe, not very much reason to believe that he might have been successful in that Georgia suit. And if he had been successful and did not have a slate of electors, there would have been nothing he could do about it.

The whole thing, if you actually look at the facts, is ludicrous. It's absolutely ludicrous across the board. You don't have to like Trump to say that this is the politics politicization. It's a tough one up every time of our criminal justice process in ugly, ugly ways, regardless of what you think about Trump. That's I'm a hand to John. Why would flip it around? And I would say, actually, it's the criminalization of politics that's the

problem. And one way to understand that is to say, look, we're using a law RICO here, Georgia's version of RICO Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, which is designed to be used against the mafia, designed to be used against drug cartels, or terrorist groups, even against an organization whose fundamental purpose is free speech, a political campaign, and so a lot of the things that and maybe we were wrong about this when we adopted these laws in the

late sixties early seventies. Maybe we supercharge the lass too much to be able to get mafia groups. And so here's one little way to explain. Remember that scene in Godfather Too, when they've got the congressional hearings, and you know, the kind of greasy looking majority Council of the Congressions is questioning Frankie Pantangially I think is his name, and they go, they go, hey, do you ever did you know when someone pushed a button on somebody,

did Michael Corleone order it? Did he do it? He goes, nah, they got what you call it buffas? Yeah, they got buffas and people and between right, he goes buffas. And so we created this law to be able to get the Michael Corleoni's of the world, who never committed

any crime, who never did anything illegal. They just always told people to do things for them as part of organizations where you could say, more than half or maybe more than half, of all the discreet things that organization did were probably innocent, but they're part of a group that does kill people,

that does extort money, does does steal things. And so but if you turn that around and apply it to an innocent group, an innocent organization, then you have, Oh, if one or two bad apples in your organization committed crime, does that mean everybody is guilty the whole organization is criminal.

That's essentially what we've done here. We said. Okay, So when I looked at the indictment, okay, I see one or two things that are obvious crimes, like trying to physically harass a Georgia election worker, like trying to steal I was like, I love the idea of crack a woman throwing a voting machine on our back and running out of a county commission office with one. But like stealing a voting machine, Okay, I could see that

being a crime. But to say, because of those kinds of actions, everyone who worked on the Trump re election campaign and thought the election wasn't over is now part of a vast criminal conspiracy that is criminalizing free speech. And I think that's that's the real problem with the indictment, and in terms of how it affects the election. You know, Trump himself said, oh, all I need to do is get in didted one more time, and I've

got the nomination wrapped up. And it sure looks like that. On the other had, I don't understand how you defend yourself in court and do a campaign at the same time, because every time he says something in public is going to be used against him in the courtroom. And the courtroom strategy would be if I was Trump's lawyer, thank god I'm not, but I would charge him five times the going rate, although he never pays his bills.

It was to say, shut up, don't say anything, stop talking, right, But Christian just put up with screenstock saying millions indicted in Georgia for voting for Trump. But I guess that's the problem. That's the problem is those two things, running for reelection and defending yourself in court are going to create incompatible strategies, and he's going to get screwed in one or the other before we get to Stephen. I have an irrelevancy. And that was when

somebody was going through the indictment. They were pointing out that one of the things that Trump was being charged for was telling people to watch oh An and watch a particular story, and people were responding to that saying, you mean it's now it's now indictable to tell people to watch something on television. And the response was, well, no, it's not, it's just proving it's

part of the setting it all up. It's probably that that just simply was an indication of him, how he was pushing the fraud narrative, etc. Etc. But I thought, that's true. I get that, but you can't tell me that we're not that every single one of these isn't the slippery little slope and the fact that you tell somebody to watch something on Newsmax or

a YouTube thing that is actually that turns out to be demonstrably false. Later he's not going to be held against you, because it will if it's convenient for them to do so. And it noticed that the criminal conspiracy starts, according to the indictment, on election day. She claims the whole thing started when Trump gave a speech saying I think I still won before there were any final voter talies to actually show that. Biden it one and then yeah,

a lot of these acts of the criminal enterprise unquota. Trump left message on Georgia State Representatives machine. That's how is out of criminal you know, criminal, they're not. It just leads up to the thing that was the reek was the thing. Now we got Roger Stone, however, on video before the election and sitting there at his desk saying, well, what you do

is you come up with another slight of electrics is what you do? And you're talking about the whole process, and they got somebody videotaping the whole thing. I would think that videotaping your own stupidity is something limited to the younger generation, but apparently not, Steven, you're joining your See once again, John is thinking too much like a lawyer and not like a political scientist. To shay John, the shame, the shame. Look, I mean I

think the trial John is another Trump opportunity. Look, this is going to be like if it ever goes to trial, which I can't imagine it really will, it'd be the oj trial times ten eighteen defendants, with the battery of lawyers, with all these different counts. It would go on forever, and every day Trump gets to come out and say about what was wrong in the courtroom that day, and the judge might try to gag him. But how do you stop Trump? And that makes me back to James's question,

how's this going to play out? I mean, I have no idea, but I'm struck by a couple of things, first a broad theme and then a couple of specifics. The broad theme is I'm gonna do this to annoy Lucretia. Trump is this world historical figure right out of the page is of hegel. I mean, he's Napoleon, which maybe not be the best comparison, but I mean he's an unstoppable force in world politics, a full stop. And the thing that strikes me is, yeah, I mean, I

think it's he's like a figure of destiny. I can't believe I'm using these terms because I usually evaluate politicians the last four years have been exile before he comes out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, I know that sounds randy ose and preposterous, but in a larger sense, I think it's kind of true. And here's the numbers behind it. Even this week, but now with the fourth indictment coming down, you have several polls from

you know, reppidable organizations showing Biden with a one point lead. You know, Biden led by three four points consistently in twenty twenty, and there's been a few polls the last few months that had Trump up by five six points. A couple of them shocked the heck out of Democrats, which is why they're panicking about Biden and Harrison so forth. I mean, the staying power of this guy is just unbelievable. And so you can point to lots of

surveys that show the people really he don't like Trump. That is true, but I think people really don't like Biden either, and it's going to depend on the circumstances. But by the way, finally, James, I'm certain Trump is going to show up for the debate next week. You don't have to wait for a year on that prediction. I think the will hear, won'ty thing is part of the whole Trump magic. You know, if he says now he's coming, well, then you know he's coming. You know,

standard storyline. If he shows up at the last minute, makes a grand inference, it's just gonna blow everything up. The media is going to be all abuzz. Oh Trump showed up, after all, He'll have some great opening line about well, I thought it was going to be indicted again today. But since I'm not, I thought i'd come here and vanquished all these pip squeaks on the stage with me. So I'm sure he's going to

show up unless there's some other very good reason not to. Well, good luck with the vanquishing, because I mean, debate wise, debate wise, he's entertaining. Debate wise. He's been stuff and says things, but he has grasp of the particular, and his ability to intellectually inhabit an argument is

diminished. It was never great, and it's diminishing now. And he also takes personal attacks on his ability and his knowledge far too much to heart and responds poorly to them and starts lashing out and has no respect for anybody. So it would be interesting to see him there. It would be interesting to see him get his clock cleaned on particulars as opposed to just gusting and venting and doing the rest of it. I mean a lot of people like the

all cap style of leadership. I get that, but I kind of like a little bit more involvement. I am waiting for the first debate where somebody calls somebody else a pos as we like to say, except not using the initials which is the weird thing about the retail world because to those of us who live out here POS means something very insulting. But if you're in retail POSS point of sales, it's your machine. I still remember when I was a waiter, we had a cash register which is called a MICROS, which

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slash ricochet. Go to shopify dot com slash ricochet to take your retail business to the next level today shopify dot com slash ricochet and we thank Spotify for sponsoring this the Ricochet Podcast. Last topic, Hunter Biden. Something was dismissed the other day, some tax charges and the rest of it, and some people were freaking out and saying, what he's not going to serve any time for anything. What what what's going on here, Lucretia, Uh, what

I said earlier, this is Ah, how did you put it? You said it was the criminalization of politics. I said it was the politicization of criminal law. It was John Drew said it and much better than me, because I would have stumbled on politicisation. But yes, but here's the point. Uh, what every American who's not a partisan, a rabid partisan hack, can see is that there are definitely two justice systems in this country.

And the vaunted Department of Justice that was once rightly or wrongly considered, you know, the most professional law enforcement agency in the world, is now shown themselves also to be rabid ideological hacks in the service of a corrupt and senile president executive. And you know, the whole getting into the whole hunter thing. In the appointment of David Weise's special counsel. Nobody can even concentrate on what's actually going on there because there's so many ins and outs, a little

bit like a ninety nine indictments. I think that what the problem is is, we know, now as long as you're a lefty, as long as you're a part of the Democratic Party, as long as you're protesting George Floyd and not writing preborn Black Lives Matter, as long as you're not ever complaining about who might have won the twenty twenty election, if you're never questioning it, one thing happens to one group of people and one thing happens to another,

and America is not supposed to work that way. I know there were problems, you know, in the post Civil War period with segregation, and that it wasn't always fair prosecutions against people of color. I get all of that, but I think the idea that we have now turned it into political persecution by using the criminal justice system on the one side, and then using the criminal justice system the ins and outs of it, the prosecutorial deals behind

the scenes to save the president's son and possibly the president himself. I mean, it's going to destroy this country. That's my belief. It's going to destroy this country. Before we get to John, I just want to applaud briefly the little note that you made about preborn Black Lives matter. It's a

reference to the case in DC where during the riots of twenty twenty. Of course, there were a lot of things scrawled, a lot of things scrawled and sprayed and stuff written on streets, and there was nothing done about it because well, the times they had it changed and that was encouraged because it was a inclusive thing to do. Recently, there was a case of a couple of pro life activists who chopped outside of an abortion provider I believe reborn

Black lives matter, and they were arrested. They were arrested for that quite promptly as a matter of fact, and lucretia, what was the outcome of the case. It was that they would finally when it went to they what happened. They were exonerated, I guess you could say, but for First Amendment issues, not for anything like And John has a lot to say about this is his commentary on It's very interesting the whole idea of biased prosecutorial actions.

I'll let him say that. But in this case, it wasn't because of any bias on the part of the district police in terms of prosecute you know, who they liked and who they didn't. It was a viewpoint problem under the First Amendment, that that whatever else the law enforcement can or cannot do, they cannot prosecute people for viewpoints and proof that all of those Black Lives matters and ANTIFA protesters were never even so much as arrested for doing the

things they did. When those abortion protesters, uh, pro life protesters were actually arrested, you know, charged, convicted of drawing the chalk, it was proof that this was a viewpoint discrimination. Again, to me, there's a deeper issue, which is of course, the the biased prosecution, because what if it's not a viewpoint matter. But anyway, I'll let you know. John's got a much more interesting commentary on how we handle politicize, do you, John, do you come on? Prove it, Let's see it,

let's hear it, come on, bring it on. Well, I'm not sure how interesting it is, but it does solve the problem, which is you're not allowed actually to second guests. In the legal system, the

decisions of prosecutors. Prosecutors have what's called prosecutorial discretion, and they are the ones who decide which cases to bring, and it's based on the idea we don't we can't prosecute every crime that occurs every moment of every day, so prosecutors have to choose which ones make the most sense in terms of the public interest. That's fundamentally political decision. I think it involves things that I think

elected politicians really know best. So that's why we elect a president, and the president is the one who takes care the laws are faithfully executed, and that president, for good or ill, under this administration, sets the priorities of what are going to be prosecuted or not. Now, because it's a political choice, though, that's how we influence it. So I quite agree with Lucretian Steve when they were beating the drama about this two tiered system of

justice. I agreed that Hunter Biden seemed to be getting a free pass while Donald Trump and his associates are under a microscope. So I thought the right answer is what the Justice Department did, which is to appoint a special counsel. The answer is not to lift the scrutiny on Trump. The answer is to increase the investigation and the Hunter. So that's of equal importance. Special

counsels of really the first step of that. Now, I would not have chosen the same guy who's been investigating Hunter and gave him this sweetheart plead. It's really bizarre plead deal. So instead, I think the next step and the reason why special counsel was pickby was really because of the political pressure being brought by the House all these revelations we've been hearing about Joe Biden's involvement in

the Hunter Biden influenced Pealing scandal. So I think the next step is for those guys in the House to keep pushing hard politically and to get a new special council appointed. People forget, I mean I was around for this stuff. People forget. Ken Starr was not the first Special Council of Independent Council to investigate Clinton. There was another guy before him, and he was doing such a bad job that everyone decided he had to go, and ken Starr

was appointed instead. And I think that's what we got to do here with the guy down in Wilmington, Delaware. Weiss bring in someone. I say, let's bring in our version of Robert Muller and get to the bottom of this. I think the most interesting story late in the week is well explain

maybe by the old management book from the seventies, the Peter Principal. You remember that one James the Peter Principal said, all right, I was the big hot book in the seventies for management circles that the Peter principal was, and help me if I get this badly wrong. That everyone sooner or later

rises to their level of in competence. YEP. That certainly explains Kamela Harris, but it also explains Biden, who for some reason had apparently an anonymous email account by which he participated in his son's scheming, and his chosen alias was Peters. There's something poetic about that, I think, and I'm not sure. I don't know what was it Richard Peter? It was it Richard Peter. Peters might have been Yeah, I forget the first name, but

I just think that was. It's Dick Peters. He is what he's going on. I know you guys did in Cursive, Minnesota. Come on, you guys are seven. I've said nothing, nothing that would violate FCC standards. Go on. That was always gonna say. I don't know yet what the content of those emails are, but it sounds like that as the next avenue of probably very damaging revelations of what was going on. You know,

and we all know what that's about, don't we. I mean the idea that Hillary Clinton was running the secret little email thing out of our server in the closet, and it was only doing so was to keep yoga appointments and

winning details private. Every Body with a brain knows that that was set up to avoid freedom of information requests, right to keep the things out of the archives, right to maybe say, okay, a little money in the Clinton Foundation, we'll see what we can do about this bill that your ambassador says he would like to maybe see down the road. I mean, the idea

that that doesn't happen or didn't happen, is absurd. If you can make the argument that it probably didn't because the Clintons were so simon pure and and built of such stern ethical timber that they would never do some things. But let's just say it's within the realm of possibility, just like it's within the realm of possibility that Joe Biden or somebody set up for him an alternate email account where he could keep things of Rosa. It's within the realm of possibility.

So I'm waiting for that one to come out, because when you lay that at people's feet and say, well, the president, here's the special email account he has people eventually, if they're on the Biden side or not, the Biden side so much as just on the left or liberal don't care. You don't care. They don't care because the basic end result of these guys, their guys being in power are the good things, and the good things are unlimited abortion, welfare, state, moving towards green energy and all

the rest of it. Diversity, don't forget diversity and diversity to which they'll add it on to an elite power elite. Well, not noisy here, you're both wrong. Yes, diversity, but diversity in by the most superficial aspects of ibe, shape and skin color, not of character, idol ideology or anything like that. And a rule by elites is not rule by elites in their mind. It is a careful steering and a wise manipulation of society

by the people who know best. And you would think that that concept had been abraided significantly in the last three years, when it's evident that we that that we haven't been and the old notions I mean, I mentioned this before. Sci fi movies in the fifties, when they find the giant ant in the deserts or the huge cricket climbing up the skyscraper, somebody phones the authorities.

They found it was not Manthra. No, I'm talking about a movie with Peter Graves called The End. I think the beginning of the End is what I'm talking about, Not Manthra, not that Japanese ridiculous stuff with men and suits throwing each other around at a Tojo Stoti studio. No, they would call the authorities, and the authorities would, as one respond into action.

Garages would open and out would stream the men on the motorcycles, and the army would come with their jeeps and the rest of it, and the police would fan out and there would be cars. It would go through the neighborhoods and tell everybody to leave for the hills, and everybody would leave for the hills. It was all very orderly because the authorities were in charge and

there was a basic trust that there is some of that still. We go back to the movies that we saw even ten years ago, and you will find in your basic action film that to consult the military will inevitably end in some ramrod guy with a buzz cut, straight neck and the rest of it, who is all business, probably chopping a cigar like Jackie Ripper and has

it together. Now we come to realize that likely the higher you go up, the more you're going to find somebody who's been in the military bureaucracy all their day is and it is more interested in producing adeis thing or or a trans friendly dance act that they're going to use for recruitment. All of the authorities and elites that we that we believed in grudgingly or in or enthusiastically turns

out to have been a misplace of our trust. So they while they still believe that in the idea of that though they still believe in the same old things to come nineteen thirties H. G. Wells idea of a white robe technocracy that can they can use science, which they believe in to solve all of our ills, and the rest of us are more content to devolve things down to the lowest possible political atomic level whatsoever, which is why we'll probably

go out with this. You have those the countries now split firmly into two camps, those who like the guy with the ginger beard singing that song and those who don't. Those who don't don't like it because whatever, it's inauthentic, it's it's ridicul it's crying, it's weeping, or as one guy, I think a National review said that you should be more grateful, and the people on the right like it because it is an authentic statement of outrage and

lamentum from an unheard, unsung, unheralded minority. That's where I will take it to Lucretia first, James really quickly on that. The problem that I have with the positive way you spin that is that the difference now, maybe between now the authorities and the authorities in the past, is that we used to believe that those authorities had to be subject to the same laws, rules

and regulations as the rest of us. And what we see now and we saw very clearly of course, and things like COVID and so on, is that they're not that there's one set of rules for them and different set of rules for us, and they lorded over us. And I think that mister Gingerbeard really tapped into the resentment about that more than anything else. The money that you know, it's it's not that things are so tough and we should

or they're not that tough when we should be grateful. It's that why do you get to do this and tell us we can't You can't go to the grocery store, but we can go to the French laundry with our masks off. John noted expert on Appalachian folk music. What say you? I gotta say that I probably wouldn't like Appalachia or folk music, so that's probably not good for me to be associate with that. But this is the thing I

think conservatives have a hard time with, is your basic question? James and me and Lucretia, I think we often disagree about this on our three Whiskey Happy Hour podcast coming soon to a station near you. How how should conservatives, I mean, we're like the borg we're taking over their resistance as feta. How should conservatives think about institutions? Because yes, we have a lot of problem with the way institutions have been run these many years. The universities

are only the you know, the beginning of the problem. Your time about law enforcement, now, corporations, Hollywood, media and so on. Military. Yeah, But on the other hand, uh, you know, institutions are you know, what maintains social stability and order and are really what's preventing us from uh you know, Hobbes's war of all against all? And so I do I do accept your diagnoses of the problems with institutions. What worries

me when I hear conservatives. I'm here right now teaching in Newport Beach, IF for the Claremont Institute, and we're studying a lot of what is going on in the conservative movement thesis, and there's a strong wing of people who want to burn everything down. And it really disturbs me because what's you burn everything down and you destroy all the institutions, because yes, many of them have been taken over by this sort of liberal blob. But what are you

going to replace it with? I mean, what's going to work? That's what really works. I don't really hear good, good explanations for that from our friends on the right, which is, what are you going to do when you burn all the institutions down? What I mean might be worry It could very well get much worse than it is now. Some cases, you build parallel institutions. I think with colleges, as they're showing in Florida,

you can come up with an alternative model and see how that works. With movies, and everybody points to the you know, the big hit this year and say it's proof that we can do this. On our own, etcetera. No Barbian, Barbie and Oppenheimer, The Child, the sex Trafficking Movie. And yeah, there's always going to be those those one offs, those indie films that do great. But I would rather inhabit and occupy and change the institutions that exist now because you have a certain I mean, yes,

it's hard to do because they're immovable. They're like, it's not like just turning the Tachanic around. It's like the Titanic, the Oceanic and the Britannic all all riveted together, and try to get them to do, you know, one eighty turn while they're going forty. Here's here's where I think Lucresia, me and Steve disagree. I think Lucretia would like to end the FBI. I think Steve would like to have the FBI moved to Wichita, Kansas.

I think you'd just change a few people and policies, but you keep the FBI pretty much the way it is now. Because if you got rid of the FBI, then we're really screwed. I think, like, who's going to protect this from terrorists and drug dealers and organized crime? Correctis despite all its faults, despite the mistakes that make getting into politics and conducting this investigation into Trump from the headquarters. Still, the FBI is mostly very good,

patriotic people, and we do need it. I agree to move to Wichita, that would be fantastic. And I think the way you do that is that you have a general declaration of esthetic atrocities and at the HAG and you have the World Court decide that the FBI building in Washington, DC is the greatest affront of civic architecture ever built in the twentieth century. And then

you tear it down. But you don't necessarily give them new place in town yet, even though there's a lot of office space not being used in DC. You just say, in Whichita we got we got a really nice new place here, So why don't you just hang out here until we build your new building. I think you just don't build a new one. That's what

I would do, if I can sum it all up. More sacrificial children boomers should have beat their young, and we should detonate large structures in DC and not tell anybody about it. And it's that kind of a reasonable thing that makes me the host that I am. I'm I'm going to leave now you mentioned it's the Three Whiskey podcast, which indeed it is. And if you're that sort of person that kind of likes that idea, that's why zbionics

is here for you. I should tell you maybe that there are some meetups coming to as well, but you know what, that's a Rob long thing. And when Rob comes back, he can he can, he can do that. You can go to ricochet dot com anyway and take a look at the list and the side panel and see where we hook up. And that by hookup I mean meet up. I don't mean that other stuff. Maybe I do. I don't know. It's been a while since I've been to one. And so go to Ricochet if you would and check it out.

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how we keep it interesting. We've got skin in the game, as found Rob said, which means you know, it's just not a bunch of anonymous randalls shouting at each other in a discus thread. There plus Ricochet five point oils coming, and you're not going to appreciate five point oh unless you get used to four point oh. I mentioned zbiotics, you'll want some and you'll

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Any case, it's been great, guys, It's been lots of fun having you and we traveled a lot and learned a lot. And this is a great, great advertisement for the Three Whiskey podcasts, which can be found where ricochet dot com starting when tomorrow morning. There you go enjoy, have a great weekend, guys, and I'll be gone next week, pulling up Peter and Rob because I'm gonna be at the State Fair. And we can we do this again? Can we just get rid of the three of you and

just take over completely? It's good. Back. Will be back next week only when you learn how to do those segues, and I'll just leave it at that. There we have it. I fade away as the parasitical organism now completely inhabits the host and flat makes it flash on and off. Great, Okay, I'm gone, I'm gone, I'm out of here. James Ricochet join the conversation.