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Episode 435: End of a Bromance · Words & Numbers

0:00
Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony and this.
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Is words and numbers brought to you by the fine people at Poly
0:10
Hymnia Ant what's new and exciting in your world this
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week? And I'm just going to warn you
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before you even start that if what's new and exciting in your
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world is also what's new and exciting in my world, we're
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going to throw down. Oh, I doubt it is.
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I'm going to talk about space. Well, there you go.
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It's never happened that we've chosen the same thing.
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We've both showed up having chosen nothing.
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Right, yes, I occasionally just forget that I'm supposed to do
0:37
this. But OK, if we have to go back to
0:40
property rights on the that word I'm not allowed to say moon,
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then OK, here, have at it. Well, before I start, I want to
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give a shout out to listeners Pat and Kathleen Park.
0:54
I got a call, as I do in my new life here, to go out to Kansas
1:00
and give a talk for my new employer on the things I talked
1:05
about. And I got note back that two of
1:09
the people involved with my talk out there are looking forward to
1:13
me coming out. They enjoy listening to the
1:15
podcast, to which I just naturally assumed it was my
1:17
employer's podcast because I do it once every three-week episode
1:21
there. And nobody enjoys that.
1:23
Their words and numbers listeners it.
1:25
Was great. That sounds more like.
1:28
So my 2 worlds collide, not that your.
1:31
Other podcast is horrible. It's just, you know, kind of
1:34
dry. Well, it's for a particular
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niche audience. It's not more general like words
1:39
and numbers. It lacks.
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Oh, what's that word? I'm looking for you.
1:44
It lacks you. James that's right.
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It lacks me. That's exactly right.
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Anyway. Though my interesting thing this
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week, and I've been watching this for a number of years,
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there's technology that's evolving that enables you to
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transmit power wirelessly. And you could, I don't know if
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you still can, but at least as of two years ago, you could buy
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these devices and you plug one in one place and one another and
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transmit energy via microwave or something.
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Apparently there's a lot of loss, but that's all beside the
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point. The interesting thing is there
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have been advances now in this technology such that researchers
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anticipate we're going to be able to put satellites in orbit
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that are basically solar collectors.
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And of course, being in orbit as a solar collector, you're
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getting two to three times as much energy as you get on Earth,
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and you're getting it 24/7 because you don't go into the
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night side of Earth, collect this energy, beam it down.
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So in effect, we would have a bunch of power generating
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stations in space, beaming the power down to earth.
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And I'm thinking about in terms of my new found life where we
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deal with rural electrification. And while I can imagine that
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upsetting power generation, I don't imagine it's going to have
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any effect on Power Distribution because beaming the power down
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is not like you're going to beam it to every individual house.
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You're going to have to beam it to some central location that
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then distributes it out to houses along conventional wires.
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That's interesting business. Yeah, this is the kind of thing
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we could be looking forward to in the next 10 to 20 years.
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The thing that revolutionizes everything is never the thing
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that people were looking for in the 1st.
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Place right. It's always something out of
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left field. That's right.
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And you know, who cares if there's massive loss from there
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to here, It was all free anyway. Right.
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So you lose, you know, whatever it is they claim it's 5% power
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loss. I'm sure that in practice it's
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going to be more than that. Oh.
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I'm sure it's way, way more than that, but nonetheless, who
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really cares, right? As long as the collection
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mechanism doesn't cost infinite dollars.
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Right, right, yo. Should work out OK.
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This takes me back to an episode we recorded maybe a couple of
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years ago with Lynn Keesling. Do you recall that?
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I remember I was just thinking about that the other day.
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Yeah, she came on and was talking about energy and what if
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the big points that she made that I hadn't appreciated up
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till then was that you shouldn't rely on a single power source.
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You need a portfolio of power sources, some nuclear, some
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wind, some solar, some whatever else, because none of them are
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going to be working 24/7 all the time.
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Yeah. If only we could extend that
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logic to the distribution service, but we're never getting
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multiple distribution networks in place given the history that
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we've got. But at all of this raises a very
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interesting question for me. When the hell am I going to be
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able to put my printer in my closet?
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Put it in your closet. Yeah, you started by explaining
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that we can beam electricity from one place to another.
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I have any number of problems in my own house, but I have to put
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things where the outlets are. Yeah.
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I don't want to put things where the outlets are, I want to put
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things where I want them. Well, isn't that interesting?
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You can imagine at some point in the future people having houses
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with these things in the wall. People say, what is this?
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Well, that's an electrical outlet.
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We used to use those. Yeah, you used to have to plug
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into the wall. Kind of like phones.
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Right. Well, that's the thing.
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I was going to say. Any listener who thinks that's
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strange. James and I grew up with the
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phone attached to the wall. Yeah.
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It would never occur to anybody that you could, you know, take
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it with you and drive down the road.
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That's just a bunch of crazy drug talk, right?
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Right, right. I mean, that was the stuff of
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science fiction. Yeah.
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Look, I'm interested where this all leads.
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I don't know, but it's interesting.
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Also interesting is that crackpot neer do well autocrat
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Javier Molay. Did you see him visiting the
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Pope? No, no, no, no.
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Now hang on. He's president of Venezuela,
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Argentina. Argentina.
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He's the one who implemented all of the classical liberal
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approaches to economic things and turned an entire country
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around, even though everybody there said it would never work.
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Yep. Well, he went and visited the
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Pope yesterday and brought him a copy of Hayek's Fatal Conceit.
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Oh, superb, superb. So not only did he go visit the
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Pope, he showed up with pretty good books.
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He brought some by DeSoto as well.
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So. Man, if I had seen that coming I
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would have sent him a dozen copies of our book.
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Just for giggles, maybe? Well, maybe we could just send
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them straight to the Pope. Well, I've tried that before, I
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get no response. You sent the Pope a book.
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Francis Yeah. Well, Francis couldn't read.
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Let's try this one. Yeah.
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Queue up the hate mail. I don't care.
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I got so much hate mail over Pope Francis.
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I don't even care. You go right ahead, fire up your
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fountain pens and let me have it good.
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Which, of course, Aunt, brings us to the foolishness of the
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week. And I try to keep the
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foolishness fresh. There's always something stupid
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going on in the world, right? Always.
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Like I always say, the politicians are the gift that
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keeps right on giving. You can't go a week without
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having something that's so incredibly stupid coming out of
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the nattering class or the ruling class.
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But today it's going to be the nattering class because I've
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got, well, it's going to 1st be the nattering class and then be
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the ruling class because I've got 2 headlines from two
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different news sources about the same story.
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Would you like to hear Fox or MSNBC first?
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Let's do MSNBC first. MSNBC says do you even vote,
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bro? Democrats should look for new
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voters at the gym. Speaking with American Men is a
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Democratic initiative to win young men, a group Democrats
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lost ground with in 2024. All right.
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I've got nothing negative to say about that.
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I mean, if you're out there courting these guys, you're
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going to have to necessarily shift your platform a bit.
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I think that's going to be a good thing.
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Well, perhaps, but our friends over at Fox and I can just hear
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the sphincters constricting out there because everybody knows
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that no matter what happens, I pick on Fox and I'm somehow a
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closet Democrat, right? We've all heard these things.
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But Fox? For their part, here's their
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headline. Dems dropped $20 million on
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bizarre American men's strategy in effort to dig out of 2024
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political hole Both of these things are talking about the
9:25
same thing. Yeah, yeah.
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On the one hand, it's let's be hip and trendy and court young
9:32
male voters by going to the gym. Do even vote, bro?
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Who the hell talks like that and why are they as stupid as they
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apparently are? But then I have to tell you,
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Aunt, I think the Fox headline much more carefully, completely
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captures the essence of this story.
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The Democrats are spending $20 million on this goofy nonsense.
10:00
The Speaking With American Men Project, or Sam as they like to
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call it, a bunch of fools to figure out why it is that men
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have no use or less use with each apparent year for the
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Democratic Party. Well, I mean, come on.
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And if they? Would like that information.
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Pennies on the dollar. They should give us a call.
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They spent the past 20 years of vilifying men.
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Aunt, you're getting much further into this than is
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necessary. They're spending $20 million to
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figure out why they're a pack of morons.
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Well, I'll tell you for almost free.
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Not free, but almost. Free 20,000,000, neither here
10:46
nor there as far as I'm concerned.
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I look at it as a good thing that they're asking the
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question. Come on man.
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We talked last episode about the need for the two parties to
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capture the center, to move more to the center away from the
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edges. And look, if they take this
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seriously, it's going to push them in that direction.
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OK, they're not taking it seriously.
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They will never take it seriously.
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They think they already know what the problem is.
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And the problem isn't them. It's American men.
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Oh, I. See.
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They're not going out asking what's the problem with us.
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They're going out asking what's the problem with you.
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Well, they are theoretically asking, but the way they behave,
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they're not looking for answers. They're looking to tell us what
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the right answer is. And the right answer,
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apparently, is Hillary Clinton. You always know what the right
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answer is, right? Because it's whatever they tried
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to accomplish not too long ago. So now the right answer would be
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Kamala Harris. Yeah, I don't know.
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I'd hold out hope that something good comes of this, frankly.
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I'll tell you the Republicans would do well to go out and talk
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to people that are voting principally Democrat and ask
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them what did the Republicans done wrong?
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You mean people who identify as women?
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There's all sorts of groups that we could point to.
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Oh no, they got hammered by women.
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College educated women especially.
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I imagine that the Republicans and the Democrats are, in this
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sense, catching up to the Libertarians.
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The Libertarians for decades have been unable to understand
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what the common voters looking for.
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So it's a race to the bottom, not to the top as is so often
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the case. And we'll see who's last to get
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there. But I do have to point out,
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Aunt, that I don't know, man, can we really take our cues from
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you? You are so out of touch that you
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don't even remember that last week's episode was Property
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Rights on the Moon. I know it was property rights on
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the moon. Why are you saying?
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Well, you just said last week we talked about the parties and the
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Democrats. Oh, that's right, it was 2 weeks
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ago. Yeah.
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Har har har anyway. For One Stop shopping for all
13:08
things James and Aunt, visit our website wordsandnumbers.org.
13:14
We give a special shout out to our Patreon sponsors who help us
13:17
keep the lights on. If you'd like to contribute, go
13:20
to patreon.com/words and Numbers.
13:24
What are we talking about today? Well, as I recall, it was
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something in the same neighborhood, right?
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Yeah. I wanted to start off by
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mentioning I was going to make this a quick hit and then I
13:34
thought maybe we could talk a little bit more about it and
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that's the debt downgrade. And First off, I want to explain
13:40
to people who maybe aren't following what's going on here.
13:44
There are three major rating agencies and one of the things
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that they do is they look at all of the bonds that are out there,
13:55
the debt, and they stamp it, it just in the same way that you
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would have a credit rating, a credit score.
14:02
These guys do the same thing for corporate bonds, for government
14:06
bonds, and you know they have, whereas for credit scores we
14:10
have numbers that go up to whatever it is, 850 I think is
14:12
the highest you can get. They have letters.
14:15
So AAA is the highest that you can get and it goes down from
14:19
that. If you recall the discussion of
14:20
junk bonds many years ago, junk bonds is one of the levels is
14:25
like AC rating or something. But nonetheless, there are these
14:29
3 rating agencies and independently they will rate
14:32
bonds, amongst them bonds issued by the US government, Government
14:37
debt, and there was a big splash in the news back when Obama was
14:42
president. 2011 Standard and Poor's, one of the three rating
14:47
agencies downgraded U.S. debt from it's the highest level,
14:53
which is a AAA down one level. I think this S and PS next level
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down was like a A+ or something. But the fact is it was a
15:01
downgrade of they were saying that the government's debt is
15:04
less safe than what it was before.
15:08
Then in 2023, just a couple of years ago, Fitch, the second of
15:13
the three, downgraded the government's debt from AAA to
15:19
the next level down. And now just a couple of weeks
15:22
ago, Moody's, the third of the three rating agencies,
15:26
downgraded federal debt. So now all three of them are
15:31
saying that of all the levels of debt safety, from the least safe
15:36
to the most safe, U.S. Federal debt used to be the most
15:39
safe. Now all three of them agree it's
15:41
one step down. And if you want to put this in
15:44
perspective, Microsoft is rated AAA by all three.
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Microsoft's debt is considered safer than debt issued by the US
15:55
government. Now, you can ask, what does it
16:02
mean practically? Well, one of the big practical
16:05
implications is the interest rate.
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Just like if you get a downgrade in your credit score, you're
16:11
going to have to pay more interest on your next car loan
16:13
or your mortgage or whatever it is.
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So to here, we're going to see interest rates tick up on the
16:18
federal government because of this.
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I remember when the first time it happened in the Obama years,
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you and I, we talked a lot about it and we said, well, it's
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clearly the harbinger of things to come that you can't go on
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with your profligate spending like this with no hope of ever
16:38
repaying back what you've borrowed in order to spend more
16:42
every year. And then everybody just kind of
16:45
forgot about it. Yeah, don't we forget about it.
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We went on borrowing more. I think that's federal debt was
16:51
half of what it is now back under Obama.
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I think roughly speaking, yeah. So, you know, where does it all
16:59
end? I mean, we keep pointing out the
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unbelievable amount of irresponsibility that we see
17:08
with government action, government spending, spending
17:12
more than it could ever hope to take in.
17:15
We've pointed out repeatedly that there's roughly a six year
17:19
lag between the government we could afford and the government
17:22
that we think we can afford. And nobody pays the least bit of
17:29
attention. And you know, it's it's getting
17:31
kind of interesting right now. And because we had all this Doge
17:37
propaganda, and yes, I know what the word propaganda means, and
17:41
yes, I know what Doge was, and we had lots and lots and lots of
17:44
Doge propaganda. What do I mean?
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Doge would say we found another X number of million people doing
17:52
X thing and now they're going to stop.
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But. Are they?
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Are they going to stop because nothing that X has done has been
18:02
codified? Did you really pull hundreds of
18:08
thousands, if not millions of people off the Social Security
18:12
rolls? If so, who were they?
18:16
Right? Can I get a list of people who
18:18
got checks last month but then Doge intervened and they didn't
18:22
get checks this month? Let's do what you did back in
18:25
COVID when there were claims of all these millions of people
18:28
dying of COVID. And you asked the question, how
18:32
many people out there listening know somebody who died of COVID?
18:36
Now, the answer today is different, but this was back in
18:39
the early days of COVID. And so I would ask that question
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as well, how many people out there listening know somebody
18:44
whose Social Security check was cut off?
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Because if indeed it's millions of people, one of us is going to
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know at least somebody. But none of us do.
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And people will respond, of course.
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Well, that's how clever the fraudsters are.
18:59
No, it's not. Social Security fraud typically
19:03
involves a Social Security card in APO box.
19:06
I mean, come on. And you know, And it goes a
19:11
little further I think, right, Because one of the first things
19:15
we heard and the right wing echo chamber had it nailed down
19:19
within minutes. Well, there are all these 120
19:22
year old people on the Social Security rolls.
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Who are they? Can I see a list?
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When was the last time any of them got a check?
19:31
Because I think it would make more sense if a bunch of dead
19:35
people were still on a list somewhere.
19:38
The really important list is how many of them got checks.
19:42
Right. Yeah, and.
19:43
We never heard an answer to that.
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Never I. Recall reading an article back
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then that said there's actually 2 lists.
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There's one of the ages which they're pointing to and saying
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here's somebody who's 120 years old.
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But then there's another list that says the following people
19:58
are dead, don't cut them checks. So my understanding is, just
20:03
because you're on the first list doesn't mean that you're getting
20:05
a. Check, check and look.
20:08
This gets interesting, right? Because I just cast aspersions
20:12
at Doge, and had I done that two months ago, the MAGA Right would
20:19
have come for me with pitchforks.
20:20
But given the tumult of the past week or so, now all of a sudden
20:30
the MAGA Right Not so convinced that Elon Musk is really good at
20:35
anything. Yeah.
20:37
Why do they think this? Well, because they're fearless
20:40
Leader and Big Toe told them to think this.
20:43
Yeah, and herein lies something interesting.
20:46
I think people talk about the power of billionaires, and you
20:52
and I have said repeatedly that the power of consumers far
20:58
eclipses the power of billionaires.
21:01
And I think we have a good example of this here.
21:05
Musk and Trump are in bed together from the beginning, and
21:10
all of a sudden Musk is distancing himself from Trump in
21:16
serious ways. I claim that what happened is
21:21
that people decided that they didn't like Musk anymore because
21:26
he's cozying up to Trump and therefore they're going to stop
21:28
buying his cars. And his stock price tanked.
21:33
It tanked so badly that his board of directors called him on
21:37
the carpet and asked outright, what are you contributing to
21:41
this company? Well, he's got another problem,
21:47
though, right? Because yes, all that happened,
21:51
but he took a tremendous hit. And now Trump is saying, well,
21:56
maybe the federal government doesn't really need SpaceX for
21:59
anything. Right.
22:02
Right, because that's how dirtbags do their business.
22:07
It's always a threat. It's a stick, never a carrot.
22:13
Let's go back to you said that that Musk took a hit.
22:16
I've actually got numbers on this.
22:19
So in January 16th, Tesla's stock was trading at $426 a
22:25
share. On April 22nd, this is the date
22:30
that Musk got called on the carpet by his board.
22:33
They had an earnings call. His stock price dropped to
22:38
$227.00. That's a 45% cut.
22:44
Consumers by saying they don't want to be associated with him,
22:48
they're not going to buy his product.
22:50
They cut his wealth in half over the course of whatever that is,
22:56
90 days, not even 90 days. Now people who are paying
23:00
attention will say, yeah, but the whole S&P 500 was down over
23:04
that period. It wasn't down 45%.
23:07
No, it was down 15% and he took a drubbing from regular
23:12
consumers who said I don't like this guy so I'm not going to buy
23:16
his product. And that is exactly how
23:19
capitalism should work. Yeah, but now he's got a
23:23
problem, right? Because the people who didn't
23:25
like him before are going to still not like him, and he's
23:31
never going to get back the MAGA right?
23:34
So now he's pissed off everybody.
23:36
Well. That's right.
23:37
And he's got more than one company, and I would point out
23:41
that they are all very much in danger right now.
23:43
Well, I'll say this from the point at which he stepped back,
23:47
so he announced he was going to step back from DOGE, he starts
23:49
to distance himself from Trump. Tesla's stock rebounded by about
23:54
10%. Now it has not gained back the
23:57
45% at lost, but again you have the market here saying we like
24:01
what you're. Doing I'm interested in what the
24:05
market tells us about Tesla, but I'm more interested in the
24:11
sales. Numbers, yeah.
24:13
I don't know what the sales numbers are, but I would argue
24:16
that the stock price numbers are more telling because what
24:19
they're reflecting is what all the analysts believe is going to
24:23
happen to the sales numbers. So you're getting that
24:26
information upfront? Yeah.
24:29
But right. And there are all kinds of
24:31
examples you can point to with companies whose share price was
24:36
wholly out of line with reality for any number of years, right.
24:42
We could talk about Solyndra if you want, or either there's some
24:45
100 others that we could probably think of right up the
24:49
top of our heads. So I mean, look, stock price
24:52
bakes in all expectations. I just want to see quarter over
24:57
quarter sales. Yeah, that'll be coming.
25:01
But here's the thing people complain about.
25:05
Well, the problem with corporations is that they're
25:07
only concerned about profit. Let me tell you, I am much more
25:12
comfortable dealing with a corporation that cares about
25:15
profit because I have the control, I have the money that
25:20
they want. And so long as I have the
25:22
ability to walk away and people like me have the ability to walk
25:25
away, we can deny them the thing that they want.
25:29
It's the entities that aren't profit oriented that make me
25:33
very nervous. I have no control over those.
25:37
Yep, that's right. And, you know, for the people
25:40
out there who've never worked in the nonprofit sector, the
25:44
nonprofits are still concerned. With profits, right?
25:47
Nonprofit doesn't mean you're not concerned with profit.
25:50
No, it's revenues in excessive expenditures, right?
25:54
And you better have a positive number there or you're not going
25:57
to stay in business. So that's not exactly it, right?
26:00
You're really talking about government and only.
26:03
Government. Yes.
26:04
Yes, the guys who make their money by holding a gun to your
26:07
head and saying give me your wallet.
26:10
That's right. And look, do I trust Donald
26:13
Trump? No.
26:14
Do I trust Elon Musk? Not particularly.
26:18
Do I think Elon Musk has better incentives to do what I consider
26:23
to be pretty good things? Yes.
26:25
Yes he does. The incentives that line up
26:28
before him all lead him to the belief that he had better make
26:35
people happy. Yeah.
26:36
Now let me give the counter argument that people are going
26:40
to say, and that is that well, but you can hold the politicians
26:43
and government accountable the same way through the voting
26:46
booth. Yeah, the same way please.
26:49
Yeah, see this is the problem. I can't hold them accountable.
26:55
Only 51% of us can hold them accountable.
26:57
So I might say, for example, I don't like what Musk is doing
27:01
and I'm not going to buy his product and that hurts his
27:03
bottom line. If I decide I'm not going to
27:05
vote for politician X, but 51% of the people vote for him
27:09
anyway, I've done nothing. In fact, he doesn't care about
27:13
me because he's got the other 51%.
27:14
Furthermore, I've got to wait at least two years to cast that
27:19
vote. I would submit that it's even
27:21
worse than that because if you don't come up with the 51% the
27:27
other side does and they elect people were, from my
27:31
perspective, exactly as horrible as the people you wanted me to
27:35
vote. For right, right.
27:37
There never seems to be a legitimate choice.
27:40
I don't have the ability to walk away.
27:42
There's just this group of Jack wagons and that group of Jack
27:46
wagons, and in the end, their Jack wagonry is all about the
27:50
same, right? It's just these little tiny
27:53
things that differentiate one side from the other.
27:56
Now, if I don't like Elon Musk, or if I don't like his cars and
28:03
I do love him, whatever, there are scores of other automobile
28:09
companies I can go to. Scores not one many.
28:16
And look, there's a couple of them out there that can do no
28:19
wrong. In my eyes, the biggest mistake
28:21
in my automotive life was made not buying another Toyota.
28:25
You know. Like an idiot, I went out and
28:27
bought a Subaru. I was convinced that that was
28:30
somehow the better thing. For God's sake, it wasn't even
28:33
close, right? You talk about walking away from
28:37
one seller to another and someone's going to say to you,
28:39
well, but if you don't like your government, you can walk away,
28:43
to which I say absolutely you cannot.
28:46
No, you can't. You need the permission of the
28:49
other country you want to move to.
28:53
Yeah, but they're all bad in exactly the same way.
28:57
Then it's a matter of degree, never a matter of kind.
29:00
Right, right. And on the great sliding scale,
29:05
the United States is, I think, as good as it gets.
29:09
And if it's not as good as it gets, it's second or third or
29:13
whatever by a slim, slim margin. But notice what's going on here.
29:18
And I think the US could be, and I agree with everything you've
29:21
said, but I think we could be way better.
29:23
And the way you get way better is you allow the people to walk
29:27
away. And we have the system set up.
29:29
All you've got to do is back off on the federal government, let
29:34
the states do more. So that.
29:37
And our friend Clark Neely said this when he was on several
29:40
weeks ago. So that life in California looks
29:43
markedly different from life in Arizona, which might look
29:47
markedly different from life in Virginia.
29:50
And you let the states take the four in terms of governing and
29:54
then let the people do in the political realm what they do in
29:58
the economic realm if you don't like what's going on where you
30:01
are. Move and we would never have the
30:06
kind of arguments that we have about Trump and Musk or Harris
30:12
and Biden. You wouldn't be that important.
30:15
What would be important? The stuff that happened close to
30:18
where you lived, right? And I'm of mind that everything
30:22
is asked backwards right now, that we put the most of our
30:27
concern at the thing that really should be the least concerning.
30:31
Yeah, and that was the way it was designed.
30:34
Federal politics shouldn't mean nearly as much as state
30:38
politics. And I think you make a pretty
30:39
good argument that state politics shouldn't even hold a
30:42
candle to your local politics. Where you live, that's where
30:47
it's important. And yeah, we all live in the
30:51
United States. But, yeah, come on, pay
30:54
attention. Take my point here.
30:56
There's a difference between saying I live in western Tucson
31:02
as opposed to saying I live in the United.
31:04
States right? Yeah.
31:06
And Western Tucson should have a lot more to do with my local
31:11
kind of everyday experience. It doesn't.
31:17
Not only different because of your circumstances, your water
31:19
rights I know are a big deal where you are.
31:21
They aren't a big deal where I am.
31:22
We have different circumstances, but you also have different
31:25
desires. It's just the case.
31:27
There are some states in which the people are going to want a
31:30
bigger social safety net and other ones in which they want a
31:33
lesser one. There's not a right answer
31:35
there. There's different opinions.
31:37
So let all the opinions exist. Let them exist, some in one
31:42
state, others in other states, rather than having wall to wall
31:46
solutions. Right.
31:48
But people whose one goal is to govern over the rest of the
31:53
people, they don't want that. Right, the guys who want power
31:56
want wall to wall solutions. And I said repeatedly prior to
32:04
Roe versus Wade being overturned, that nobody really
32:08
wants Roe versus Wade to be overturned.
32:11
What they really want is to have the final say at the federal
32:15
level, thereby obliterating every other argument by making
32:19
it all irrelevant. But that's not what anybody
32:23
actually wanted. What we ended up with, it
32:27
doesn't help anybody. Right.
32:30
Is abortion legal in the United States?
32:31
Well, it depends on where. Well, if it depends on where,
32:34
isn't it kind of de facto legal everywhere?
32:38
Yeah, kind of. Right.
32:40
But, you know, some people won't be able to afford to go from
32:42
state to state. That's going to be a very short
32:46
list given the patchwork of state laws that we have.
32:49
But it's certainly not going to be 0.
32:53
Everybody's just irked right now.
32:56
Donald Trump can't decide what his abortion policy even is.
33:00
He's never been able to decide. He thought he was doing what
33:03
most people wanted. The minute there was an outcry,
33:07
he said, well, it's up to the states.
33:08
That's all we ever wanted. No, it's not all you ever
33:10
wanted. What you said you wanted was to
33:12
make it illegal everywhere and always, and that's the kind of
33:16
authoritarian that we're dealing with.
33:19
How do I know that? Because that's always the kind
33:22
of authoritarian that we're dealing with.
33:24
Yeah, it's not particular to Trump, it's particular to the
33:26
political class. Yeah, I'm irritated with him
33:30
right now. Apparently nobody can remember
33:34
that I was exactly this irritated.
33:36
Well, maybe a little less, but damn near with Biden that I was
33:42
irked for eight years. Under Obama, it was 8 years of
33:46
non-stop complaints coming out of my mouth.
33:49
I don't like any of them and I think we'd all be better off if
33:53
no one else did either. Yeah, what can you do?
33:59
And that's all the time we've got this week on words and
34:01
numbers. Until next time.
34:03
Send us e-mail wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
34:06
Try to be nice to one person who doesn't deserve it till next
34:10
week. Can't take it easy.
34:10
See you next week, James.