Episode 906: Is Capitalism White Supremacy?

0:00J.D. Vance addresses his Jewish issue in his capitalism, white supremacy. We'll discuss all this more on this edition of the editors. I'm Richlory. I'm joined as always by the right honorable Charles C.W. Cook, our old friend Dan Foster and the notorious M.B.D. Michael Brendan Doherty, you are of course listening to Nashville podcast, our sponsors. This episode are there, the new book from David Bonson, profit from the profit and Catholic charity is more about all them and do course. If some reason you're not already following us on a streaming service, by the way, you can find us everywhere from Spotify to Apple Podcast. If you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review. Wherever you listen to your podcast, you don't like what you hear here, please forget. I said anything. So M.B.D., we get some statements from J.D. Vance providing a lot of grist for the mill.

1:05First of all, and Monday night, on Monday night, he's out in Las Vegas at the conference other public and Jewish coalition has a moderated discussion with Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota politician. I thought it went quite well. I thought he said almost everything you'd want him to say. At least there's certainly nothing wrong with anything he said. He sidesteped very notably the Tucker Carlson issue and Coleman mentioned Carlson, but didn't try to pin him down on it. But he said we love the Jews. He said that anti-Semitism is corrosive to the soul. He said the person who told him that was Charlie Kirk. Of course, there's been an internal war on the right over Charlie Kirk in his legacy regarding Zionism and anti-Semitism. I thought if we're talking about dog whistles, this clearly is a dog whistle. Hey guys, you're wrong. He was on the side of righteousness on this. Warmerception in the room.

2:06There've been some critiques afterwards that put his remarks up to a light and purport to find written and invisible ink, various bad things. Some of these have been quite brilliant, but I don't think very persuasive. But I'm going to split decision on JD Vance this week because I thought when he was at the White House taking questions from the press and someone asked directly about Tucker Carlson, I thought his answer was comically weak. He said I'm friends with Tucker and we have some political differences, but friendship just matters so much to me. I'm not going to let those political differences break up our friendship and this occasioned another round. I think of more persuasive from where I am criticism. I just think it would have been better, easy, I would think from my perspective, I don't know how JD's thinking about these things, to say look, we're friends, but it pains me. Some of the things he's been saying lately about the president, about Jewish influence in American life, etc. I'm not going to litigate that all those for you today because he talks two or three

3:07hours a day and I have a full time job. It suffice to say he doesn't speak for me on such matters. Next question. Yeah, I think all that would be, it would be a good way to handle this. I thought he did fine at the RJC. I think he has implicitly distanced himself from Tucker in some ways that maybe it's a little bit too subtle to read. Also for instance, one thing I noticed is that he released a book this year and even though the Tucker Carlson show still has a absolutely massive audience. He's been on it plenty of times before and he's been on podcasts with Tucker recently as the week after Charlie Kirk's death. He notably did not tour the book onto the show.

4:08He stayed away. And further at the RJC, he tried to, Tucker has been advancing this argument that Jews have some kind of theory of blood guilt that passes from generation to generation and that afflicts groups or whatever. At the RJC, Vance said the exact opposite which is that Jews and Christians share a belief in the individual's moral agency and against the idea of blood guilt which I think he kind of conflated with the idea of blood libel verbally which was confusing to some people. So I think that was an attempt in a sub-rosoated distance himself but he did say Tucker is a friend of mine and we have disagreements. I'm literally the last person who would volunteer to speak for Jewish American voters.

5:16I think this is important for him politically. I think in general, he's stick out a position that I think is basically right. He went to the Quincy Institute which was like a restraint oriented think tank a couple years ago. But that has been very critical of the US alliance with Israel. And JDM's defended that alliance on what he can see of his realist terms which is that yes, our interests diverge from time to time but we have a great partnership. And that's basically the line he articulated in Las Vegas and he was warm. The idea that he's an anti-Semite I think is just ludicrous is chief of staff until just recently for his whole career is Jewish. He works with Jewish people all the time. He's never said anything to indicate that at all.

6:20But he obviously disagreed with the war in Iran and that's brought tensions to the fore for him as far as how he's talked about the influence of the Nettanyahu's lobbying of President Trump. This is very difficult for him but I do think the Democrats are making it easier for even a Republican like JDM to thread this needle because they're nominating guys like Al-Sayed who are rabid and obsessive anti-Zionists and the Palestinianism, a kind of third world-est Palestinianism, is starting to become an orthodoxy in the Democratic Party with just a few notable dissenters like John Federman. And if that's the case then of course people are going to prepare the approach of Vance is taking over that even if they would prefer a more robust kind of like Israel and America

7:28that are, is the special relationship, our values are one and the same, their fight is our fight type of language. So that's where I think it stands now. We'll see if it becomes an issue in the primary. I don't think it will and I don't think the stuff of like he has to denounce Tucker in this or that way specifically is an issue that resonates beyond like true political obsessives. Yeah, I agree with that. I do think it's going to be an issue in the primary. I think Ted Cruz is almost certainly going to run. This is he's going to hammer him on this. And Dan, I have to say I understand the importance of friendship and not wanting to part with friends over politics, but a couple points one, anytime a politician talks about the importance of friendship, I want to reach for my wallet. Right. Second, I'm sure JD Vance has lost friends in the course of his transition and rise from

8:29the author of Hillbilly, L.A.G. to vice president of the United States and one of the most pro Trump voices in the country. Three, as a practical matter, I don't think it matters how much JD wants to preserve his friendship with Tucker Carlson. If he really does, the friendship is not going to survive the 2028 election because one, JD is going to be under pressure to go further and his criticism of Tucker to given Tucker his mindset. I mean, he's increasingly out of his mind. He's going to endorse Massey or run himself, even if JD's the nominee, I would think. Or endorse South Said for president. Yeah. You know, it's so it's interesting. I think friendship is very important, controversial, as it may be to say. And I've actually, it's interesting. Michael and I have had this conversation offline of like, I think that there's something admirable and rare about going about for your old, for your old pal and, and, and, you

9:29know, elevating, you know, real human bonds and, you know, people who've had each other's back through thick and thin over any political question. I think as a general matter, that is a good thing. I try and practice that in my own life. Some of my, some of my best friends are, you know, socialists and, and pinkos and, and far left, lives. And, you know, some of my, dear old friends got swept up in, wokeism and ways that horrified me at the time when everybody was posting absurd invasion of the body snatcher stuff on social media in 2020. And I, you know, I, I, I bit my lip and knuckle down and tried to find, reestablish the human connection that we had. So I think that's all very admirable. But a couple of things. One, it doesn't, obviate the need to give a better answer than the one he gave. I think Rich, you, you basically outlined a much better version. It's, it's, it's simply under cells, the story to say we have some political disagreement. Yeah.

10:30It makes it sound like, you know, how much are we going to spend in Texas, you know? Yeah. And that's an absurd tell. And I think it gets to just frankly, how bad vances at this slice of coalition maintenance. I mean, he's telegraphed for a year now that he considers this an important part of his coalition. But he's so, I mean, his, his, his play acting is so bad that it just reads to me as nakedly transactional. And that's, that's just the default position I take because I agree with Michael that he is not any kind of classic anti-Semite. I think there are shades. I think you cannot be anti-Semitic, but still have wrong and offensive theory of mind about the way Jewish people and voters think and act in the way Israel thinks and acts. And I would, I would, I would say that I think Vance is, I'm not going to say he's an anti-Semite, but I think Vance has bad and offensive theory of mind about the interests

11:30and behavior of Jewish people, Jewish voters in the state of Israel. But I agree he's not any kind of traditional anti-Semite. But you know, so it's, it's only that, you know, prior conviction that I have that leads me to believe that he's doing really bad and really naked transactional coalition maintenance. And the other thing that I think should be brought up is in the very same White House press briefing that he hugged Carlson tight. He basically cut loose his old Yale buddy in roommate, Tandriscoll, who got canned by Pete Hakeseth. Right? So that's an actual honest to God friend who he met before the latest incarnation of his, you know, Welton Shang, you know, who he, he's known since he was a kid doing, doing dumb things that he would want to expunge from his permanent record. That's a real friend, a friend from the civilian world, a friend from outside politics, a friend from again when you're 18, 19 years old. And he basically turned him loose and said, a lot of good, a lot of good arguments on both sides.

12:30I understand where Pete's great. This is part of, this is, this is the growing pains of, you know, returning the, the Spartan warrior culture at the Pentagon. So that just made it, I think, I think extra cringe-worthy. Yeah. I mean, he's in a business now where it's hard to maintain friendships across, you know, against your own political interests. Yeah, but come to some kind of, yeah, exactly, but come to some kind of consistent and proportionate way of defending your, you know, for your own. Yeah. No, I agree with that. And also, Dan, I think there is a contradiction as RG, RJC remarks where he, he was willing to condemn Fuente's, you know, in very harsh terms. Clearly he's kind of using him as the foil to prove, look, I'm not like those people. I hate those people without, without doing it to Tucker. Totally. And it was easy for him because, first of all, he avoided a lot. I guess he didn't avoid. But the same thing that, you know, when when when Trump went after like Ted Cruz's wife and stuff like that, it was easy for Vance to go after people who directly insulted his

13:37wife. Nobody, nobody including the people who he hopes to keep an eye on would have, would have knocked him for that. But what's interesting to me about the Fuente's thing is, I've been noticing this for a while. Fuente's is kind of secretly, I think he's a reprehensible guy, if you don't get me wrong, but he's secretly much more reasonable than his character is. He's a little bit like, a little bit like Alex Jones, not that Alex Jones is secretly reasonable, but they're both playing characters. And every once in a while you see this with the Candace Owens stuff multiple times. It's a fascinating thing to go back and look at what those two in particular have said about Candace Owens in the last since Charlie Kirk's death. Because both of them dropped K-Fade. They dropped the act various times to speak directly to Candace and say, you're going to a little overboard back it off. This is bad for business. We need to keep a road show going. And Fuente has done the same with Vance in a way that I find very interesting. He's so like reasonable. He's like a meat the press panelist when he wants to be.

14:39Yeah, yeah, political commentator. Yeah, exactly. My favorite moment from his interview with Tucker Carlson in this regard was, Fuente's are talking about this attempt to kill him, which sounds just awful and very serious and terrifying and he's going into it in great detail. And then Tucker after was like, wow, I wonder what was behind that. Why was the deep state coming after you that way? What was the agenda in front of? I just think it was a crazy guy. I'm sorry, he was more reasonable than Tucker. I can take it. Yeah, so Charlie, when I've talked to some people this week or more critical, Vance and his performance, the RJC. And I make the case, just look at what he said. There's nothing wrong with what he said. They'll say, well, a big worry here has to be if he's elected president, the people he's going to bring in with them. Because he's deep in this post liberal world. A lot of weird characters there, a lot of characters with pretty noxious ideas and the analogy of a little bit like Joe Biden wasn't a radical on the border, but everyone who

15:43came into his administration was a radical on the border. And there might be something similar going on with JD Vance. Now he'd presumably be much more in control of his administration because he's sent in it and actually smart. But I do think that's a legitimate worry. Yeah, on the 30,000 feet question we were discussing of how he should behave. I find this whole area fascinating. Perhaps I'm just less interested in having and keeping friends and other people. But the whole MAGA setup seems to me to be entirely hypocritical in that the argument in favor of Vance's having declined to condemn Tucker Carlson is that it's virtuous to support your friends and to decline to give into the media's insistence that you denounce them.

16:49But of course, as you pointed out, Dan, that doesn't run consistently. If Vance condemns or at least declines to defend his other friends, well, that's also fine. President Trump sets up a system where he lashes out at anyone. He happens to dislike while defending those he likes. That's fine. And if those are the same people at different stages in Trump's presidency, well, that's fine as well. And if JD Vance goes on Twitter and makes jokes about Mark Tisen being fat, well, that's also fine because he's got us to get this just nothing to it. There is no standard here. This isn't a consistent standard of defending one's friend. It's not a consistent standard of ignoring the media. It's nothing. What it is is what would have historically been described as the swamp where the groups

17:53of people who share an interest, whether that's personal or political, behave in ways that Vance is their career. That's what we're dealing with here. You can say that that's just the way politics works and I think to an extent that's true. But that's not new. It's not different. It's not an antidote to the status quo. What Vance is doing here is what other people who wish to maintain and secure political power, which is decide on the basis of his own preferences and his political prognostications. What he is willing to say about people he knows in public. Yeah. You're Mitch McConnell. On the specific question, yeah, this is what worries me about Vance among many other things is that he swims in weird waters. And I am, as I have said many times, very strongly of the view that the article Two Powers

18:57are vested in the president, not in a fourth branch of government or in the heads of departments or agencies. But that is never enough to completely inoculate a president or any leader from being heavily influenced by those who are around him. And we ought to distinguish here between those who are around Vance because he serves in the Trump administration and those who are around Vance because he wants to be around them. Those two groups are not the same thing. Vance has to defend a large amount really of what Trump does that he clearly disagrees with. But those views are contingent. They are being expressed because he's the vice president and he's obliged and I think he's correctly obliged to present a united front with the president.

20:03Then there's what Trump really, what Vance really believes. Then there's who Vance really likes. Then there's the ideas in which Vance is really interested and they're not the same. And I think it is absolutely acceptable to judge someone based on that. And I would point out that conservatives historically have thought this as well. I did not think that the focus on Jeremiah Wright was frivolous. I thought that was a useful piece of information. I didn't think that it was irrelevant who Barack Obama had associated with in the past, the sort of people that he praised. I think you are to a large extent the product of those with whom he associates. So yeah, that does worry me in the same way as it would for anyone else. Can I jump in on the weird waters thing in this last point?

21:03So we claim we don't want people to swim in weird host liberal waters. So we wouldn't want them associating with an intellectual who said that John Stuart Mills on liberty is dangerous and society is the right to suppress heretical opinions, like Wilmore Kendall. Or we wouldn't want anyone to associate with a group of people who employed an intellectual who said that all liberal ideology is just a mask for the exercise of power against the minority. Like James Burnham. Yeah, I didn't say anything like that. You did. That's what you just said. It's your narrow argument. It's not a response to me. Well, I'm sorry, but it's just like we are, I'm sorry, we're a national review podcast. And our intellectuals, like I think it's absurd to say like Nixon should be held to, you know, or Reagan should be held to what James Burnham said in a column or whatever. It is absurd to say it. And that's why I didn't.

22:04But I mean, these were the waters that were important for the Republican Party at one point. And we were defining them. And I just think it's a bizarre thing to be like to fearmonger about these intellectuals. I actually, you know, I just don't buy it. I don't buy that Patrick D'Nine is like Jeremiah Wright. And I don't buy that. Like our intellectual influence is dispositive. I mean, I support my intellectual candidates. And I have spoken with them. I have appeared at conferences with major political candidates. And it would be ridiculous to reflect on them my views. Yes, it would. And again, that's why I didn't Reagan constantly referred to Milton Friedman as the misstretched. It would have been entirely reasonable for anyone who profoundly disliked Milton Friedman

23:06to have judged them based on that. Now, if Milton Friedman happened to have been at a conference with Keynes, it would not have been reasonable to say, well, Reagan and thatcher loved Friedman. But Friedman used to go to conferences and argue with and write in the same newspapers as Keynes. Therefore, this is not the case. It's not the case that because people have debates on the right or because magazines host different opinions or because people have a lot of different friends that they should be condemned for that, I am saying that it matters where people end up. And it's such a strange quality of this vance movement that simultaneously vances held up as the necessary next presidential candidate because he does depart from so-called zombie Reaganism or conservatism in course. From mythical return to the Bush administration that everyone is supposed to secretly cover. And whenever it's pointed out that he has these views that are different from the mainstream,

24:10then it's cast as a conspiracy. You can't have it both ways. He is different. He does have a center of gravity that is in a different place than even the Trump. Those aren't the same things. So the argument you've just made is not the one I did. So yeah, I don't know. I would just say the weird waters too are Huey Long and weird Jewish obsession stuff and Lena Kahn. Those are the weird waters. And National View is not on board with that. And in fact, you can do the- But I was told they were the post-liberal, so I was thinking Patrick D'Nine or Chad Pecknell, people who have written for us for two. Oh, I see. But they're the minority report. We've always done that. We're a magazine and we have people who dissent in our pages because we host intramural fights on the right. But it would be ridiculous to say, therefore, Charles Cook must be a Chad Pecknell type. I'm not. We all know that I'm not. Who are the writers that I like? Of course.

25:11People that I- I literally read this week. I don't praise Huey Long in public speeches. This Dan's point. All right. But I literally, like, I mean, I read this week in the dispatch, you know, I think I don't know if it was an excerpt from her book, but Stephanie Sleed writing about Buckley's brother-in-law who went to Spain to hang out with Franco. As like a warning to the vice president because these are both post-liberals and ideas. And it's just, I think it's absurd to think that the vice president is some Don Quixote-like figure who's going to go over to Europe to like live under fascism because of- But that's clearly not what Stephanie Sleed was arguing. But it's a weird, like, it is a very weird thing to cast. The story, this story is about a warning to the vice president about the dangers of post-liberalism.

26:13And then to go up to narrate this journey. That is, it's just this weird thing where now we're conflating this habit. I know what it's about. Obviously there are people who don't want vans to be the next leader of the Republican Party, et cetera, et cetera. But this thing where we take populism, conflate it with post-liberalism, attribute to everyone, the views of like Adrian Vermeul or Chad Beckmold or whatever and promiscuously, I think it's weird. I think it's weird. I think if we did this with any other group of intellectuals, that's why I use the example of national abuse kind of founding intellectuals, people would see that it's kind of ridiculous. No, I think that's absurd. I think that what is happening here is that people are aware of the sort of people that attract the attention of JD Vans and they use them, not others, as a proxy in much the same way as if I, which I won't, ran for Senate in Florida, it would be totally reasonable

27:15to say, well, look at the sort of people that Charles Cook likes, hangs around with quotes. Look at the ideas that Charles Cook puts out there, the ones that he's willing to indulge. Look at what he does. He's been on a podcast with MBD for years. Right, but that would be the silly argument. Isn't it? Because I did on a podcast with MBD, that I'm, therefore, an MBDite. We all know that I'm not. That's the point. But if, and it would be ridiculous to say, well, MBD's been on a podcast with Charles Cook. Therefore, MBD's views are like Charles Cook's. They're not. We all know that. The fact that we work for the same magazine on the same podcast doesn't present some guilt by association, but it would be totally reasonable to say, who Charles Cook liked, who Charles Cook quoted, the waters in which Charles Cook swam. That is a totally fair hit. That's fine. I would, I would, if you ran for 30 seconds to the last word. If you ran for office, I would probably vote for you.

28:15I would probably write things, nursing you. I bet your political opponent would love to start quoting me from the past in order to try to smear you with it. And that's essentially what I think is this weird water's kind of argument is like, you know, I don't think it's one way. I don't think it's a matter of an unfair endorsement, which you do get in politics, where somebody who really doesn't want someone's endorsement gets it and is therefore tar with that brush. I'm talking about two way relationships. I'm talking about the acceptance of and sympathy toward ideas, not the fact that someone happens to vote for you or another person is tangentially associated with someone you know. I'm making a much more direct argument than that. And I will note again that it's, I'm not using you of this, but it is very strange that JD Vance is often held up as being important because he doesn't succumb to, you know, the

29:17Charles Cook con ink squishy, Reaganite view and defended on the grounds that he hasn't departed from it at the same time. I think we need to move on, but everyone clearly agrees that the other side is strange and weird or parts of them are strange and weird. Next question, you Dan Foster speaking of JD Vance percentage odds at this moment that JD Vance is the Republican nominee in 2028. I think it's like, it's of 75 or 80. I don't think it's going to go well for him, but I'm not confident in that, like the general, I'm not confident in that because as we've all noted before it, like, you know, the enemy gets a vote and the Democrats are probably going to nominate somebody insane. So he probably has a puncture's chance, no matter what, but I think, I think all the momentum is in that direction. I just think it's, he's conducting himself and it's another aspect of the White House press conference. He's conducting himself in a way that suggests he thinks it's 1988, which I just think is

30:22a horrifically stupid read of where we're likely to be in two years. But I think it's going to be hard for him not to sound like it's 1988, given that the guy, the incumbent is convinced it's 1988. I'm sure, or I don't know, he's convinced it's one of the years when FDR 1 1 1 3rd or 4th term. Charlie Cook for some jobs, JD's nominee. I think it's pretty high at the moment. I'd say 70% as well. I would just note with the usual caveat that I, in particular, I'm not particularly good at determining who will be the next nominee for each party that it is early and you never know how people play. You never know whether they're actually liked this early on. I know that Paul suggests that JD wants his popular, but he's the vice president of the Trump administration. A lot of questions at this stage get transmuted into, do you like Trump?

31:23And he is prominent. He's famous in a way that his opponents won't be. So I do think it's 70%. But there is a small posse of me that one of the foundations I made of paper. Empty. I think, you know, I would say they're very high, 75% something like that. Far larger than him living as an obscure intellectual during a foreign authoritarian, I think. The far, far better odds. He's going to run for a constitutional office in our republic and live under its restraints a few teens at. So I would say 60%. But I don't mean to meaningfully dissent from anyone else's numbers really. I would just reserve as Charlie points out the chance to just something crazy happens. And these even coronations are competitive at some point. Hillary was being coordinated in 2016, but Bernie represented a pretty serious challenge

32:27there at the beginning. Al Gore, maybe the most pure coronation we've had in recent memory and Bill Bradley, even though he lost the early contest, really challenged Gore for a while. Also in 2000, George W. Bush was the epitome of an establishment front runner. It gets tripped up by John McCain and New Hampshire and it looks dicey for a while. So there'll be, there'll be even if JD's kind of on a glide path, they're going to be moments where this feels like a real race with that. Let's go to our first sponsor this episode, our friends at Vera. We spent a lot of time this year talking about terrorists, whether it's still actually possible to make things in America more sponsor today is putting that question to the test. Vera was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission to revive the American watch industry cut to today. Vera's proud to be the largest independent watch similar in the United States building watch in the California Arizona, Rhode Island and Alabama as well as manufacturing leather

33:29straps and Illinois and Florida all of a series of theaters. I've been wearing our Vera watches for a while now. I can tell you firsthand they're truly amazing. I'm wearing mine as we speak. I wear it wherever I go. I tend to get nice comments on this watch wherever I go. It's a very handsome product and I truly love it. And so does everyone else on this podcast. Dan was missing his Vera watch for a while. But I think now he is an obtained one and is also a Vera fan. Vera makes some of the most durable well built watches on the market. They use top grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty. They've earned over 10,000 five star reviews. What's more, Vera's classic analog approach of time keeping is not only fit to get in refined. It's also welcome to parts for people who are tired of getting pinged on their smart watches all day long. If you want to support American craftsmanship and on a watch that's both rugged and refined, check out Vera. You can find them at Verawatches.com. That's V-A-E-R watches.com. So Dan, we have another resurfaced James Tauriko comment. A course from 2020 when everyone was saying completely crazy things.

34:33He was on a Zoom call, of course, in 2020 with a lot of masked people. Of course, I think these were Sierra Club activists. He was asked about climate change affecting black people or something like that. He said capitalism and white supremacy and something else. There was a third system that had to be destroyed. He associated white supremacy with capitalism. His campaign is kind of doing, I think, the only thing you can do is basically saying, okay, he said a lot of stupid things back in the past. Just to have these words pass your lips is pretty extraordinary. Yeah, it's amazing. I don't have too much to say about this. I think we've got the ground about how we're speaking of weird guys, right? Weird waters. Tauriko is a weird guy. He's malleable. He's a kind of vessel for the current thing. There's no real firm core there.

35:36It doesn't surprise me. These things are not surprising. I do think two things. One, I do think it's funny. When his campaign backed away from the, I hate capitalism and white supremacy. The third pillar might have been oil or something, maybe fossil fuels or something like that. I forget. But... Climate injustice maybe, haven't you? Exactly. They said, those comments miss the mark, which is such a funny cop. Yeah, right. It's so close to hitting the mark. It was like JD, my critique of JD at the press conference. He almost got it, but it's not quite. Yeah, just a bit outside. The mob... Yeah. But that's my immediate comment is, what was the mark precisely? What was the mark you're aiming for? But no, a miss the mark is this weird turn of phrase you hear over and over again, corporate apologies.

36:36And it's so bizarre because I immediately started thinking about great quotes from fascist and communist history and then apologies attached to those quotes. Like Mussolini saying, everything in the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state. Those comments obviously miss the mark and we apologize for them. Blood alone moves the wheels of history. That obviously missed the mark. So I think it's ridiculous. The other thing that I think is interesting is that it was, as you said, it was a Sierra club forum. There's a broader point about political malpractice to be made here. Like all of the trans stuff that they put on Kamala Harris, if you recall, was in response to some weird questionnaire that had been sent to her by one of the groups. And in a primary, these candidates just fall into the trap of telling whichever one of these interest groups they're speaking to, telling them whatever they want to hear as if none of the other sub audiences in the primary electorate, let alone the general electorate are

37:39ever going to hear about this stuff. And it's just such a weird tick. I think the fact that, like you said, that it was 2020 is doing a lot of the work for why he was so comfortable saying this stuff. But it's also just a funny and it's, and it's again, one of the core pathologies of American politics. Like a broken record on this issue, but like that the Sierra Club, which exists to protect bird habitats originally, is weighing in on white supremacy and capitalism. It's just a bizarre forum for it. It's a symptom of how everything has become everything, united front politics, nobody staying in their lane. And it's made everything worse and also made stumbles like this inevitable. Yeah, my favorite part of the Zoom was right before he issued forth with the white supremacy and capitalism thing. It's something I'm going to tell the truth about the evils of capitalism. And this masked guy looks like a total nut in the left hand corner of this zoom with

38:4020-piece. Good for you, Jim. Good for you, Jim. So, Charlie, there are people who try to make a serious argument along these lines. It was an aspect of the 1619 project, Nicole Hannah Jones, or the 1619 project at a documentary for Hulu, where she featured these Marxist economists who make this case. And it's basically that slavery was the foundation of everything. You wouldn't have the industrial revolution in Britain without a slave produced cotton and other proceeds from, it'll gotten gains from slavery. The cotton south was a basis of the American economy. And if you look at the American economy right before the Civil War, I think slave produced cotton in its derivatives, something like 5 or 6% of GDP. That's not nothing. You wouldn't want that to disappear instantaneously if it did. You'd have a problem. But it was obviously the other 94 or 95% that was much more important.

39:40And then you get the Civil War where somehow the North is much more wealthy and productive and basically grinds the south to dust because it can out produce the south. And then after it does this and totally destroys the slave system and the plantation economy, America gets richer. American capitalism is more productive than ever. And then obviously the white thing is totally ridiculous or there wouldn't be all these non-Western countries from Korea to Japan that have thrived in the postwar era by embracing markets. Yes, and there wouldn't have been an extremely long, largely non-racial history of slavery in the rest of the world prior to its adoption in the America's... Tallerico's Creepe is a weirdo, it's a freak. There is a pressure among supposedly right-thinking or intellectually honest conservatives to downplay this because his opponent is Ken Paxden and Ken Paxden is a corrupt letch.

40:46But that is a non-sequitor. The fact that Ken Paxden is unfit for office does not mean that Tallerico is fit for office and he's not. I want to echo something that Noah asked really eloquently, which is why does he think that saying, oh yes, that was wrong, is a defense. He's seeking high office in the federal government, high office that last six years Senate term is longer than any other term in any major role in American life. It is in office between elections longer than members of the House, longer than the president, longer than governors too. If Tallerico had been elected in 2020, he'd still be serving now.

41:56What we deserve, an explanation of the transition, anything, even if it's tangential, don't we deserve some sort of justification for why he said something that crazy? Because in the absence of such a justification, you have to conclude one of two things. One is that he is intrinsically geared to follow the crowd. However crazy the crowd gets. Well, this should be disqualifying for public office or that he has terrible judgment. He simply cannot evaluate facts properly, which should also be disqualifying for public office. Dan is of course right. He says whatever the groups want to hear. He did so much more recently in an interview with Charles Amaine where he said that Kamala

42:57Anthony had been badly served by the justice system. Why did he say that? He said that because he was sitting in front of someone who he thought at least wanted him to say it. Now this wasn't six years ago. This wasn't some ancient history. This was during the campaign. That shows you who the man is. And again, the fact that his opponent is a terrible person. Doesn't change that. On the specifics, the case that is made in essentially in defense of slavery's effect was oddly enough the one that was made in the south. This is really strange development that lands in American politics probably, I don't

43:59know, 15 years ago, where left wing critics of America's history become indistinguishable from Alexander Stevens. They say the declaration of independence is a lie and America was founded on racial inequality. You know who believed that? Wasn't Abraham Lincoln? It wasn't Thaddeus Stevens. It was the confederate. Likewise with this, this was the argument that the south made. This is later on lost causes. This notion that America was made great and powerful by slavery that getting rid of slavery would reduce America's standing was not the argument made by Lincoln and the abolitionist. In fact, Lincoln says precisely the opposite. It's the Confederates who make that argument.

45:00Now, I understand that the motivations of these people are very different, but it really is quite jarring to hear those who purport to be the opponents of a racial caste system and a bondage picking up the rhetoric of their supposed enemies and then condemning those of us who still hue to the Lincoln-esque view. I don't think I'll ever get over it. Of course, this has manifested itself in our politics, in the present era, in reactions to the attempts to enforce racial equality under the law, where when the Supreme Court or the Justice Department comes out and says, we have found examples of people being treated differently based on their race. It's the left that is obsessed with race that condemns it.

46:05In California recently, there was an initiative on the ballot that tried to undo the state's constitutional amendment that enforced a state-level version of the Civil Rights Act, that was there to prevent the state from discriminating on the basis of race. They tried to get rid of it. I find it utterly jarring. Aside from all of the other criticisms of Tallerika, the fact that he felt the need in front of a pressure group to sound like a Confederate is baffling to me and indicative of the many, many ways in which he's a weirdo. So, MBD Adam Smith, who of course wrote the book on capitalism, literally strong abolitionists, to go to the Civil War era and as Charlie's referring to, Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus Stephen saying, what we need is free labor. That's a system that accords with prosperity and the dignity of workers and you have the likes of George Fitzhugh, a southern writer and theorist saying, no, markets are oppressive.

47:12They're bad for workers. And what's, I think he literally is this word and quote saying that the slave system is the best form of socialism. Yeah, I was literally going to get to George Fitzhugh as well when we were discussing this topic because he argues that he is very specifically anti-capitalist and argues that the slave system is more human because it's more paternalistic. It cares for the whole worker, the capitalist supposedly doesn't care if you eat when you go home, as long as you return the next day to work, whereas the slaver owner has to take a kind of paternal care. He embarrassed the South partly because he deratialized the argument for slavery and made it applicable to poor whites as well.

48:13But yeah, this is the vision of a free society is a vision of free men that are self-responsible, self-governing and are independent of their employer in some way. And that is an uplifting vision. The problem was, you kind of fall into this ideological bilge when you talk about capitalism with this ism on it. It would be much harder to sell this kind of language in any forum if you said private property or enterprise was inherently bound up with white supremacy. Yes, of course, human enterprise is bound up with everything bad and everything good

49:15in life. Human action is a part of it. Profit is associated with every evil because greed goes along with evils. It's also associated with every good because thrift and prudence and industry are goods. So when you throw the ism on it, you can just play games forever and it just speaks to something. I tried to defend the weird waters before that intellectuals say these weird things, but when politicians spend too much time talking like they are in a graduate seminar, they tend to lose their audience. And unfortunately, Talleriko is only being saved in his race by the obvious moral defects and deficiencies of his Republican opponent. I mean, he has a real chance of real. He's got, I mean, I would say he's going to win.

50:16I mean, I used to laugh and think like when I see too many Texas Democrat signs in a Senate race in Connecticut towns, that that candidate is going to lose. Yeah. Was that the woman with the shoes, the pro-borshin? Yeah. Or like, you know, I used to see Beto or work signs, you know, like throughout Richfield Connecticut and I thought that guy's going to lose in Texas. But now, you know, Talleriko, they're basically rerunning the Beto or work thing, but they got a 10 packs and to run against a total reprobate and Republicans are going to blow it. All right. So, Charlie and other news this week, we have the release of a Trump dollar, supposed to be dollar coins, supposed to be commemorative, supposedly also though, usable as legal tender, which would not be very legal under our statue book. But this raises the extra question, what are your favorite and least favorite forms of

51:21US currency? Well, my least favorite forms of US currency is anything that isn't in my possession, whereas when I... No, I actually had a real thing for the $2 bill, which has Jefferson on it. Until I told people this and was informed in return that 90% of all of the $2 bills in circulation in the United States are in the possession of strippers. Now, I don't know if that's true, it's too good to check. And the rest are in the possession of UVA, but I've subsequently stopped telling people that I really like $2 bills because of the inference they draw. One of the great artifacts of the early internet, I don't even know how you would find it, just Google it or ask AI, but there's a blog post about a guy trying to buy a burrito

52:22at... It's burrito discourse way back in the late 90s, early 2000s, trying to buy a burrito with a $2 bill at a Taco Bell, and the manager gets involved. And they ask a passing security guard if this is legal tender. It's very, very funny. I would say my least favorite are the newest round of... For the last couple rounds, they seem to now change every few years of $100 bills. I think when the small portrait, 100 got upgraded to the big off-center portrait 100 when I was like a teenager, that was very cool, but the subsequent iterations have become progressively less cool. I think the... So I don't like those. The one I really do like is the sack of Juillet Dollar because to me, that always felt like I should have like a leather coin purse and I should pay for things at taverns and ins. That's a Juillet Dollar, so I always thought those were cool. And the day.

53:22I think my favorite is the $5 bill currently, you know, for talking current. I dislike the 100 because of the excessive security feature... I don't know if they're excessive, that's for the secret service side, maybe. But the security features more the portrait and the effect. The best currencies were the pre-deceimalized currencies in the UK and in Ireland with three pens and all those great coinages. And absolutely beautiful notes. The designs of those notes were absolutely incredible and they haven't been equal by anyone since. So I don't like any of the dollar coins, especially don't like the Susan B. Anthony dollar because it's totally indistinguishable from a quarter. I'm old enough to remember when these were first released as a kid and everyone's kind

54:24of excited. There's this cool new coin and then no one wanted to use it, just like a quarter. And this still holds true. There's a vending machine in the town where I live where it will give you dollar coins is changed, but then won't accept them if you want to put them back in, which I think perfectly encapsulates the status of these coins. And I'm very basic. I love the quarter. I think it's a great coin and I love the one $1 bill. Washington just looks great on currency. And I don't like the new fangled quarters where they mess around with the back. I dislike the traditional spread eagle, but I think that is great American currency with that. Let's go to our second sponsor this episode. Now is a perfect time to pick up the brand new book, Profit from the profit, the past, present and future of dividend growth investing from a very own David Bonson and profit from the profit. That makes the case for investors having a solid investment strategy that is connected to a defensible investment philosophy, no more idle speculation or hopeful guessing,

55:25no more participating in various fads and manias, no more getting caught in the countless bubbles that come and go and do an extraordinary damage to savers and investors of all ages and stages, profit from the profit offers chapter after chapter of readable, sensible, understandable, powerfully persuasive arguments for dividend growth investing as your antidote to the uncertainty in risks of our day from investors all in on the a i Mania worry to bubble may pop to those just looking for a way to get started. There's something in profit from the profit for everyone. Check out David Bonson's brand new book, Profit from the profit today available at Amazon or anywhere find books are sold very lucky that I can check in with David routinely over the phone to get his take on economic and financial matters. If you're not as lucky as I am, I don't have direct access to David. The next best thing is to read his products, including this new book. So Charlie, we have a proposition that's going to be on the ballot in California, a one-time

56:27wealth tax on billionaires interestingly. It is divided Democrats San Francisco Democrats don't like it seem to realize the potential damage it could do to investors and entrepreneurs there in the Bay area. What do you make of it? Well, you know what I make of the wealth tax per se and of what I make of its most prominent proponent, Rokana. So I'll limit my comments to what I make of this division. We talked last time about DSA types who were born with silver spoons in their mouths and want to abolish silver. The divide here in my estimation is between those who believe as Rokana seems to that San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Palo Alto and so forth are naturally occurring phenomenon like

57:33a mountain range or a river and those who understand that the modern Californian economy is the product of decisions that were made both at the government level and by those who chose to operate in the state. There's an arrogance underpinning this proposal, an arrogance that is married with ignorance and in the case of the unions with greed, they truly, its advocates seem to think that there is just this thing called Silicon Valley that can be infinitely plucked and that if the Californian government changes the rules then those being plucked won't go somewhere

58:38else. Are they well? We've already seen that they were, this isn't even hypothetical, this one, you could have told me prior to this that the Californian government was considering this mode and I would have said to you people will leave. They've already left. We've already seen an exodus of hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth. People who have names, who founded companies whose names everyone knows, Google being one of them, they have left because they don't want to be arbitrarily taxed but also they don't want to lose control of their companies. Now you have to assume that if this were to pass others would follow suit but probably worse than that, you have to assume that others would not set up shop in California in the first place. Why is it other than the weather which is lovely that people from all over the country

59:46and all over the world go to Northern California when they want to start a tech business? The answer largely speaking is infrastructure and most of that infrastructure is other people. There's knowledge there, there is expertise, there is physical infrastructure as well but that is also currently being developed particularly in Texas, particularly in Austin, also to a lesser extent in Miami and they have a lot of it up in Washington state as well except the government there is trying to kill that goose. I think that if you were an ambitious tech guy right now but you hadn't made any money, you think twice about going to California. You might well set up shop in Austin where you don't have to constantly consult with lawyers to see whether you have crossed or are likely to cross some threshold that will render you

1:00:50on paper rich enough to be taxed and I think that Nancy Pelosi who is one of the Democrats from that part of the country who is declined to endorse this understands that. A lot wrong with Nancy Pelosi, I'm far from being an Nancy Pelosi fan but I think that she grasps that as one of the great investors in American history. And there are other Democrats up there who grasp this as well and there is the divide. I don't expect the unions to grasp it. I don't expect Rokana to grasp it but I do expect those who have spent their lives in the area to grasp it and they seem to be raising their voices now before the disaster rather than often. So, MBD, what do you make of this Democratic division socially, politically, etc? I mean I think it's overdue and it was inevitable.

1:01:53Democrats represent both a lot of racial minority groups and they represent an upwardly mobile cast of college graduates, many of them professionals, many of them very wealthy professionals. We saw little previews of this divide in the Democratic party when Barack Obama refused to touch 529 accounts and their tax performance which belonged to that class. We're seeing it now. I think the fight is crazy in some ways because even in our last conversation I was tempted to reach for the Nor Mcdonald quip that this sounds like a lot of commie gobbledy-gook. But this tax is so poorly structured and thought out about establishing the residency requirement

1:02:54for this one-time tax, the capital measurements, etc. That even if California voters pass this and I think they might, it's not going to collect a dollar. It's going to be tied up in litigation for years. It's going to go to the Supreme Court. It's probably going to be rejected the way it's formatted. This is a joke and it's a policy but it's a serious thing as a political organizing tool of the DSA and the far left against this, you know, what they consider the neoliberal turn of the Democratic party. So I take it seriously in that way. As far as California itself, I mean, you couldn't come up with a better advertisement to capital to get out. I mean, California already has problem sustaining Silicon Valley, this golden goose because

1:03:57investors are realizing that perhaps 60-70% of their investment is just going into the pockets of landlords in Northern California, like they're paying these tremendous salaries to their employees. Because their employees are paying absolutely extortionate rents and mortgages to even live there. I mean, when you look at some of the attractive cities in California now on Zillow or any other real estate site, it actually comes across as like a foreign country or like it's like a European tax haven micro-state like, you know, Monaco. It's so divorced from the national economy. You drive through Paul Alto and someone will point out a hot and say, there's a $4 million dollar. It's so insane. So yeah, I think this is a sign of overreach and you know, Gavin Newsom, very smart.

1:05:01He's opposing it. So Dan Foster, we had an inter-I event out there just a week or two ago and we had this great entrepreneur of its started a company. And since I just know so little about this stuff, I can't possibly replicate what he said. But the basic point was, you know, he doesn't make a huge amount of income, but he has a lot of stock in this his own company. And just this tax would basically destroy, he have to give up his own company and or destroy the company or it have to move. Yeah, I mean, I think besides all of what this says about democratic psychology and psychosis or left-wing psychology and psychosis, I think what Michael said about how unworkable this is both in terms of its structure in terms of, there's like competing ballot initiatives as I understand it that would override Prop 40 and you know, there's serious, you know,

1:06:02tax foundation has a good piece about serious constitutional problems with the structure. And I think all of that adds up at the end of the day to something which cannot be enacted won't be. I just think there are too many structural problems. It's too disastrous. California Democrats may be stupid, but they're not suicidal. The split on this is indicative of how close running a thing it might be. I mean, the only thing that could let this thing get out of hand ironically is kind of populism. In other words, it's already on the ballot. The cat is halfway out of the bag and it might, you know, sneak by and that'll look, the fact that it might pass will cause a lot of problems. I don't think it'll be enacted ultimately even if it does pass. But yeah, it's an, you know, so the obvious problem is it defines residency as like January 1st, 2026. The ballot question is November, whatever it is, 3rd, 2026. And the wealth assessment is December 31st, 2026.

1:07:05So presumably you could have, you know, moved to California at the end of 2025, you know, struck out there, not made any money and decided, ah, I'll have a better run of it in Nevada. Move to Nevada in February of 2026 and struck it rich with your startup in Nevada. And be taxed on all the income you made in Nevada as California resident. So it's, it's stupid for lots of reasons. It's also indicative of just, you know, California starting to digest muscle at this point. And I think that's the real, the real sort of the death spiral of California as one of the world's great economies is, is, is nigh if this sort of thinking continues and it's hard to escape those vicious cycles when you're sufficiently far down them. You know, Hollywood is a great case study for this. People, you know, focus on Silicon Valley because it's consequential structurally for the US economy. But Hollywood is already dead.

1:08:05I mean, movie making does not exist in the city of Los Angeles anymore. To an extent, I think the Normie American doesn't realize. Everything is filmed elsewhere. There's famous examples of like game shows, for instance. There are American game shows that are on major American networks where the host, the crew, and the entire audience of Americans are flown to Ireland to film the episodes. They're going to be. And yeah, or order the UK. And so it's a huge problem. And people who care about Hollywood and people in that industry are distraught by it. And it's destroyed a lot of jobs in there. I mean, I have been some efforts, including, I think by New Sims Administration to try and reverse that that's part of what it's very, very difficult. You scare people away and it's hard to get them back. I mean, Charlie said the weather is a big factor. I think it's one of the most solid economic findings in history that had a, I should say,

1:09:06sort of political economy findings that places with warm weather tend to have very bad governance because they can afford it. And I think that's case California, but it's probably also in the long term a good thing for the United States to rebalance its economy away from California. I mean, famously California is the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world by itself. And it's probably a good thing that we'd be a little bit more diversified away from the Pacific rim there. So I guess that's a silver lining, but yeah, it's huge mass. So after the center eye event, we had a little cocktail reception on the roof of this building. It wasn't particularly fancy building, but we were up a little bit and it was kind of long along the, the, the bay, I guess it was. I'm not an expert on San Francisco geography and it was around sunset, around dusk. And it was just so you could get a nice vista down this road down along the water. And it was just golden. It just, it didn't look great.

1:10:07Just look great. It just felt great. It was just, it was absolutely. It was a beautiful place in America, possibly in the world. And it's a genuine tragedy, what is being done to it. The unions have destroyed the entertainment industry. It's down points out the SCI years trying to destroy Silicon Valley and the Sierra Club has destroyed the Central Valley's farming. So it's, if in a hundred years time, California really does has declined and Dan's right that the center of gravity moves out of California. People are going to marvel at the suicidal stupidity of what was essentially paradise. Yeah, how did you manage to do it? All right, Dan Foster, exit question to you, totally unrelated. Colin Kaepernick has peaked his head up above the parapet again. It's the 10th anniversary of his kneeling during the national anthem when he was quarterback with San Francisco speaking San Francisco 49ers.

1:11:08He has a new book coming out. He did an interview with NBC previewing this book. He clearly imagined there's going to be a vindication tour here. So the exit question to you is a big consequential hypothetical. Dan, so please, please be honest with our listeners on this one is 2017. You're the owner of an NFL team. Colin Kaepernick is a free agent coming off of some pretty subpar seasons, but he was absolutely fantastic in 12 and 13. Do you sign, Colin Kaepernick? Yes or no? I think the answer is obviously no. There's the thing I always think about with Kaepernick. It's true of any of these outspoken athletes. There's a there's a offensive chart that people can find on the internet called the crazy hot frontier or something like that. And it's how much crazy are you willing to put up with is a function of how hot the crazy person is.

1:12:10And the exact same thing is true of athletes. There's a level of crazy you're willing to put up with, for instance, with an Aaron Rogers in his career prime, that you're just not willing to put up with with a kind of fringe starter solid backup level player. It's just not worth the headache. Kaepernick style of play in particular in that whole offensive scheme, you know, is a kind of scheme and a kind of style of play that gets caught out and found out in in three years or so on average. I mean, I think of like, you know, even Cam Newton's descent. He stuck around a lot longer, but there's two reasons for it. You get caught out by defensive coordinators and you get banged up and an extremely physical style of quarterback play is not compatible. I mean, they're and he was he was getting hurt and he was getting hurt. Yeah. Yeah. So so Charlie, it was so bad that in 2015 Kaepernick was bench for Blaine Gabbart, who is a Jaguar quarterback at one point.

1:13:13I'll ignore that. I don't understand why people still talk about Kaepernick. He wasn't a particularly good quarterback and he wasn't a particularly good activist, but there is an obsession with him in the sports media. Still, he's written about in the athletic and on the other side on the New York Times such that the last Super Bowl this year in February. There was a piece saying he was the real star of Super Bowl, whatever it was 50. And he wasn't he wasn't the star of this Super Bowl. He wasn't a star five years ago. It wasn't a star 10 years ago. He's a much better quarterback than I will ever be, but there's no team in the world that absent political cajoling is going to be desperate to pick up Colin Kaepernick right now, even as a backup. I perhaps this is 38 years old.

1:14:14Yeah, I mean, perhaps this is partly because I was late to football. I became a super fan in about 2017, but this is one of the things that is genuinely baffling to if you like an alien who came down into America. That guy, why? So you wouldn't sign him in 2017. I would not sign him in 2017 now. M.B.D. You have two nose on the board. I'm a no. I mean, I said before that I have a high tolerance for crazy and the weird waters, but you know, if you're responsible for sturdying an NFL franchise, I think you're picked that year. You just can't. I mean, in the quarterback rating, I think Kaepernick was about 90.7. I think you bite the bullet and you sign case keynum, which I think Minnesota did, and they went very deep with him because they had a solid team to surround him with.

1:15:21Or maybe Jay Cutler, you know, like one of these kind of perennial. I think I think someone did sign it, Jay Cutler, instead of him as a, as their backup. I think after Cutler had actually retired, they brought Cutler back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely, I mean, that year, maybe Brock Osweiler or Matt Barkley, Ryan Fitzpatrick, those were kind of the guys. These are great names. I love names of marginal. These were the kind of guys that were out there and available and kind of perennial backups. And you know, if you have a rest of the team built, like they like case, Keenan found in Minnesota, all of the stats jumped up that year and they went to the NFC championship. So I would think about it. He was really good in 12 and 13. And one of those playoff games, I don't know, there was in 12 or 13. I ran for 181 yards.

1:16:22So it's a camera somewhere you wanted to get in front of. And I think through for 300 or something. And as prime, he was a top notch athlete and quite an impressive performer. That's just he fell off pretty quickly thereafter. So what you're faced with as Dan was pointing out is, you know, his style play is not a pocket passer. So if he's your backup quarterback to make him kind of work as a quarterback, you need the whole offensive scheme to be built around him. And you're not going to do that if he's the backup guy. Then you get the controversy. Then you get his, you know, he's just sort of being a radic. And he had a try out the NFL set up for him a couple years after this where all the teams are going to be there. And he blew it up, you know, he's supposed to be at the Falcons facility or something and say, no, we're going to do it this high school field. So I don't want to sign this form that the NFL wants me to sign. So why are you going to deal with that trouble? Because there are a lot of backup quarterbacks who are not kneeling during the national anthem. With that, let's go for to our third sponsor this episode.

1:17:25You don't have to travel far to lend a helping hand when neighbors help neighbors hope can blossom. And when help blossoms families and whole communities thrive the dedicated staff and volunteers of the Catholic Charities Network believe a neighbor isn't just someone who lives nearby or down the block. It's someone who shows up and sticks around across the distance or discomfort. It's the one who acts with compassion who falls through and carries on and moments of need for more than a century. The Catholic Charities Network with 169 agencies nationwide has served communities across the country and down the street. No matter beliefs or differences, whether through housing, food, disaster relief, job training or simply listening. Because when you faithfully serve as a neighbor, the life you change may be your own. Be the hope around the corner in your neighborhood nationwide. Learn more and volunteer at peopleofhope.us. That's peopleofhope.us. Please check it out. Let's hit a few other things before we go down Foster. You went to your first PTA meeting. First PTA meeting is good to put faces to names of all the other parents and our daughters.

1:18:30A little preschool class there and all the dynamics of any other bureaucracy obtained. I won't comment too much on those. But one interesting thing is I like to do my homework on the sort of DMV beltway region parents that I'm in this endeavor with. So I did a little internet stalking about them. A lot of what you might guess is kind of a mix of like Pentagon military, useless nonprofits and a lot of a sort of white collar, kind of political adjacent jobs. But one of the other parents, it's funnily enough, is like works for a mortal enemy of mine on a professional issue that I work on. So it's really, it's really kind of curious if that person is going to find that out at some point. So that'll be an interesting dynamic to stay tuned to as the school year progresses. M.B. even washington US open.

1:19:31Yeah, the US open is always a great event, it's a great event for New York for Queens. It's kind of funny to me that tennis players have to hang out in Queens. And you know, my nephew went down there the other day to one of those like, you know, low low fee admission days where you get to wander around. And you know, Gilmaw and fee had his kind of farewell match yesterday and or he's having farewell matches in this tournament. And it's been great to see the real tennis head supporting him and, yeah, just it's just an amazing event. Charlie, watch the movie, her dead. I've been sick this week. So I watched a few movies, one of which was her, which is a 2013 film star, so I keen Phoenix and scarlet your hands and all they don't see scarlet your hands and because she plays an AI or they say OS chat bot.

1:20:35With whom Harkin Phoenix's character falls in love, it's a fabulous movie, it's very bleak. But it's also remarkably prescient. I was a little shocked that it was 13 years old, they got so much right and of course unfortunately, although this isn't what AI is mostly used for. They did predict this. There are people now who say that the girlfriend is an AI chatbot and then becoming consultable when they have to delete the thread. And this film got a lot of that right. So you know the most prescient movie in terms of tech. I believe is minority report where they had the swipe screens. When as far as I know, no one had had thought of swipe screens yet maybe maybe they're already a thing at the frontier of innovation, but you know, it's just so we all swipe all the time now.

1:21:37And the first time I saw it was in that movie. So speaking of the non technological frontier, I drove a beater about a week or so ago, a friend very generously invited me out to kind of a beachy place very informal and I borrowed a beater car. I mean this thing, I don't know, 30 years old or something totally filthy. None of the fancy accoutrements you're used to now in a car. And there's just something so relaxed and fun about driving this thing. You know, the rear view camera and kind of the warning beeps you get when you're close to something. They've so saved me so many times my my real car driving around. So I wouldn't want to do without those routinely, but it was pretty cool to be driving around this old beater with that. It's time for our editors picks. Empty. What's your pick? My pick is from the September issue of the magazine. It's been around for a while now. It's the Infosters piece. Something's going to happen.

1:22:42Or if I remember the tutorial rate. And it's just a great kind of history spanning a survey, nervous about what this moment holds for us. I love the piece. I was very stimulated by it. And I think I totally disagree with it. But it's it's it's that worth reading. And I hope I hope to respond to it someday. Yeah, if I was to what's your pick? Thank you. I'm going to go with Arthur Herman on the homepage now about energy security as national security and our you know, apropos of that piece, Michael, our great power competition with China. Herman, I was a big fan of his book, Freedom's Forge, 10 years ago, I reviewed for the magazine about the arsenal of democracy. And his piece gets at an important point that two few people think of. And I've been on this horse for a while that the attack on American energy independence is an attack on American national security and it's great piece.

1:23:58I finally bought that book a month or two ago, Freedom's Forge is on my on my stack of things get too Charlie. I'm going to pick piece by you, Val of in pointing out that the 25th amendment is not a get out of jail free card within our Republican democracy smaller. This is a frequent call that you hear from usually people who want to get rid of Trump, but I think it was also used with a little more justification and a Biden. The when the president does something erratic, he should be 25th amendment and you've all points out the stop rate what is for the flaws procedurally with that and if we want different presidents, we're going to have to elect them. So my pick is an Andy McCarthy piece, mom Donnie's in Tafada. This is on the socialist Islamist alliance and Andy knows this material cold, but mostly this is just a sentimental pick because Andy has been gone for all of August except for occasionally writing, you know, for the website and the magazine, but the McCarthy report report hasn't been recording so I'm just desperate for for Andy.

1:25:16So that's it for us. You've been listening to a national podcast, any rebroadcast, retransmission or count of this game without the express written consent of national magazine strictly prohibited this podcast has been produced by Lauren Velhison. Thank Charlie. Thank you Dan. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to Vera profit from the profit and Catholic charities and thanks especially to all of you for listening with the editors. See you next time. .