Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 439: The America Party

Transcript

Episode 439: The America Party · Words & Numbers

0:00
Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers.
0:08
It's new and exciting in your world this weekend.
0:11
I went to a funeral this week, my uncle Jack Lambert.
0:17
It's not the uplifting sort of thing that we typically start
0:19
with. My uncle, Jack Lamberson.
0:22
He was. He was one of these people, I'm
0:27
sure you have them in your life as well from that generation
0:30
before us that is one of these, one of these guys that just has
0:34
it all together that, you know, if, if the shit hits the fan,
0:39
that's the guy you want to be hanging out with.
0:43
And he was always this way growing up.
0:45
And then in any event, I, you know, I, I go to this thing and,
0:49
and I'm talking to his son, my cousin John Lamberson, who's a
0:54
listener, long time listener on the road every Wednesday.
0:57
He says he listens to the podcast and complaints that it's
1:00
only half an hour. So, John, you.
1:02
We'll run. We'll run long for you today.
1:05
Right, so anyway this leads to a story which is my sister wanted
1:13
some alpaca poo which there's going to be some.
1:18
Follow up questions here. Which my cousin John has an
1:23
alpaca farm and he sells whatever one sells with alpaca.
1:28
But one of the products apparently is alpaca poo.
1:32
And my sister wasn't there. So this is all sprung on me at
1:36
the last minute, you know? So there we are at the at the
1:39
reception after the funeral and you're dressed in suit and tie
1:42
and the whole thing and they're trying to palm off a 50 LB bag
1:46
of poo on me to take to my sister, right?
1:51
And apparently my wife and John had this all arranged because my
1:54
wife had $50 from my sister to give to John for the 50 LB bag
1:59
of alpaca poo that's now going to be in my car smelling up the
2:03
place, right? And I was smartly, nobody
2:07
consulted me on this. So John turns to me and he says,
2:12
how's that for economics? I'm literally selling you poo.
2:20
You've been selling me poo for years.
2:22
But it reminded me of of a story from back in the days, first
2:28
days of the automobile, or maybe to Yeah, I guess it would be the
2:32
first days of the automobile when cities.
2:34
This was New York City. I'm thinking about it, of
2:37
course, you got all the horses in New York City prior to the to
2:40
the car and they're producing tons of manure.
2:43
And the farmers initially were paying because this is good
2:46
manure. So they were paying the city,
2:48
they could take that, the farmers could take the manure
2:51
and spread it on the fields. And over time there came to be
2:56
so much manure and it was a serious problem for for New York
3:00
City, more than what the farmers wanted.
3:03
And so the market evolved such that instead of the farmers
3:08
paying the city to take the Pooh, the city paid the farmers.
3:13
Now there are people who look at that and, and make what, what I
3:17
think are unnecessary distinctions between goods and
3:21
bads that, you know, Pooh is a bad thing and therefore you
3:25
should treat it differently than the good.
3:27
And I think it's a a cleaner way to think about it is this, it's
3:31
a good, it's a product, right? It's it's the Pooh.
3:34
And what happened was it had a price because the farmers wanted
3:38
this stuff. So they pay the city, however
3:40
much they pay the city for this stuff.
3:42
And as more and more poo becomes available, the price falls.
3:48
But the price falls far enough that it goes negative.
3:53
It actually falls below 0. And you could stop and and ask,
3:57
well, what does it mean for a price to be negative?
4:00
Well, what it means is that the farmer now comes to the city.
4:03
It's going to pay for the poo, but it pays a negative price.
4:07
That is the farmer doesn't pay the city.
4:10
The city pays the farmer. That's the negative.
4:13
So you say, for example, well, the, you know, a pound of poo is
4:15
-5 dollars. Well, that means that the owner
4:18
of the poo has to has to pay the buyer the $5.
4:22
And if you think about it that way, which I think is a much
4:25
cleaner way to think about it, it's just a good.
4:27
You don't have to distinguish being goods and bads.
4:29
It's a good that the price has fallen to negative territory.
4:32
Insurance, is that right? We think of we think of
4:36
insurance policy, but really the product that's being sold is
4:41
risk. If you're a home owner or a car
4:43
owner, you're selling the risk associated with that car, with
4:48
that house. You're selling the risk to the
4:49
insurance company. Well, here's the thing, nobody
4:52
wants risk. So the risk carries a negative
4:56
price. That is, you, the seller, have
5:00
to pay the buyer, the insurance company, to take this thing, the
5:07
risk away. Well, that that was all Clear,
5:12
concise, to the point, absolutely correct in every way.
5:16
And yet the most important question remains, what do people
5:21
want with alpaca poo? I do not know, I overheard my
5:25
wife and my cousin talking about it and apparently it's very good
5:29
for plants. I don't know, but if any
5:32
listeners are out in the North Carolina slash Southern Virginia
5:37
area and you want alpaca poo, I got you covered.
5:41
I will not deliver it. How so?
5:44
I'll make the contact for you. How's your car smell?
5:49
It's actually not that bad it it had an earthy smell because it
5:52
had been sitting around for a while, but I got it out and
5:54
things seemed to be back to normal.
5:59
Well, that was a weird, sad, strange.
6:03
I got to say poo lots of times. Lots of times, that's right.
6:07
I'm not going to say poo at all. Which is not.
6:10
Like me, but. But here we are.
6:13
I want to take us back to 1970. What were you for?
6:20
I was in kindergarten, 19701975, fifth grade.
6:24
Yeah. I I was just a wee lad of three
6:28
years at the time and didn't really know anything about what
6:32
I'm going to talk about now. But from 1970 until yesterday,
6:39
Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath have been Seminole forces in
6:46
heavy metal music and by extension the larger music
6:49
world. And, and I'm guessing that you
6:52
couldn't name 3 songs by Ozzy, Black Sabbath, or both combined.
6:58
And yet, I also bet that you know exactly who these people
7:01
are. Yeah, and, and while I couldn't
7:04
name them, even I who don't pay much attention to music could
7:07
probably recognize the songs. And I'm guessing you could pick
7:11
these guys out of a line up very quickly.
7:14
Probably. And isn't that something that
7:17
something like Black Sabbath could have lasted 55 years?
7:22
Yeah. I mean, there were long periods
7:25
of inactivity. Don't get me wrong, this is not
7:27
a a corporation that kept right on rolling, but they did OK by
7:32
any objective standard, they did OK.
7:35
And Ozzy decided one last gig was in order, a retirement show
7:41
of of sorts. And, you know, he's badly
7:43
riddled with Parkinson's and and had to perform sitting in a
7:46
chair on the stage. And yet it was still one of
7:50
those moments that just kind of stops pop culture in its tracks.
7:55
Everybody on earth, for the most part, knew exactly what was
7:59
happening and who these people were.
8:01
And that's saying a lot for four teenagers with bad attitudes
8:07
from Birmingham, England. They they really did change the
8:11
world. Is there anybody else like that?
8:14
I mean, of course you could point to things like The
8:16
Beatles, but they're, they're not extant, right?
8:18
Do these. Guys you're talking about and
8:20
The Beatles, you know, they didn't, they didn't last very
8:24
long, comparatively speaking. I mean, for, for bands as
8:27
influential as Black Sabbath, you're looking at the Led
8:30
Zeppelin's, the Judas Priests, right?
8:34
Bands like this and we don't see that kind of thing anymore.
8:39
So we're not going to see this sort of longevity anymore.
8:42
And it's kind of sad and happy all at the same moment.
8:46
Scotty in from Anthrax, a band playing on the bill, said we're
8:50
not here to say goodbye. We're here to say thank you.
8:53
And. And I thought that just captured
8:55
the spirit of the day and the spirit of a 55 year career
9:01
beautifully. Yeah.
9:02
So goodbye, Ozzy. I will miss you and won't, but
9:07
we both know who you are and what you did.
9:09
And that's that's really saying something.
9:11
And this, of course, aunt, brings us to the foolishness of
9:14
the week. And you know, the foolishness of
9:17
the week was designed to be a relatively lighthearted romp
9:22
through the idiocy that is global politics, right?
9:25
They would just find something stupid every week and say, look,
9:29
everybody, look how dumb all of these people are.
9:33
And yet this week is kind of a mean spirited foolishness of the
9:39
week. A congressional candidate in
9:42
Georgia, I don't know what district, I don't care, referred
9:48
to the Texas floods that killed all those people as as fake as.
9:55
Fake. Fake.
9:56
They didn't. It didn't happen.
9:57
It didn't really happen. It's just the news media making
10:00
stuff up again. Wow.
10:03
And it it's hard to imagine how somebody could be A, that stupid
10:08
and B that tone deaf when running for a congressional
10:11
seat. I hope she gets slaughtered.
10:14
Her name is Candace Taylor and I would vote against her over and
10:18
over and over if I could. Sadly, I do not live in her
10:21
district, so I just throw that out there.
10:25
As you know, don't take, don't close your eyes.
10:29
Everybody's still being really stupid.
10:32
And hopefully next week we get back to the funny stupid instead
10:35
of destructive stupid. We're happy to announce that
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Your support helps us continue to advocate for a more civil
12:00
society. This this weekend, I I asked if
12:04
we could talk about something that you have been talking about
12:09
a lot more over the years than I have.
12:12
And that's the desirability of the formation of a new
12:15
political. Party right, Right 1/3.
12:17
Party you talk, you talk about this all the time and I say
12:20
things like, that's crazy, that's never going to happen.
12:23
I say these sorts of things and guess what's happening.
12:28
Yeah, we're getting us the wealth.
12:30
We might be. We might be a.
12:32
Party. And and by third party, of
12:33
course there are third parties out there, but this is a, this
12:36
is a possibly viable 1. And you and I have have talked
12:42
before, we have a good episode where we discussed why we only
12:46
have two parties. And there are, it's not
12:49
constitutional as many people say.
12:51
Rather, the two existing parties, Democrats and
12:54
Republicans, have made it virtually impossible for a third
12:58
party come along unless they do it like the story you're going
13:03
to tell. Yeah, well, you know it.
13:06
It's not constitutional, but the Constitution we have yields this
13:11
outcome, right? You can bet that we're only
13:13
going to have two parties as long as we're counting votes the
13:17
way we're counting votes. Yeah, I think you're right.
13:20
We're going to have two. But what the Democrats and
13:22
Republicans have done have is to ensure that it's those two.
13:27
Those two, that's and they've done a very lovely job with
13:30
barriers to entry. Yeah.
13:32
Right. And that's why groups like the
13:35
Libertarian Party, that we've flirted with them in various
13:40
ways over the years, they they only appeal to a sliver of the
13:46
electorate and as such, they are easy to neutralize.
13:51
Well, they could appeal to a broad swath of the electorate,
13:55
but they're so busy, how should I say there is almost like
13:59
they're deliberately attempting to restrict the number of people
14:03
to who they appeal. They are very interested in
14:07
appeals to doctrinal purity and tests for doctrinal impurity.
14:12
Right? If you happen to believe one
14:14
thing that the larger group doesn't cotton to you, you will
14:20
be shown the door. And that is no way to get ahead
14:25
in politics. And yet they do over and over
14:29
and over again. And you know, look, you look at
14:30
the Libertarians, the Greens, there are all kinds of minor
14:35
league parties that littered in American politics and they never
14:39
get anywhere until they do, right?
14:41
The Republicans were a fringe party dedicated to one thing,
14:46
anti slavery. And they ran a candidate in
14:50
1856, got creamed, ran Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and won, right?
14:56
And then the political landscape was forever changed, right?
14:59
Because you're not going to have four parties like you did.
15:03
You had four major candidates in the election of 1860.
15:08
And you see how fast that disappears.
15:10
The last time we had a candidate that was interesting to anybody
15:14
as a third candidate was Ross Perot in 1980, I believe it was.
15:18
Right now. That was it was John Anderson in
15:20
1980, but it was Ross Perot later in that same stretch of
15:26
years. Yeah.
15:27
And and even then, he was noteworthy because he crossed
15:30
the double digit line. I think he got 13% of the vote.
15:34
But that was. And what happened was, I think I
15:36
believe I'm correct, the next presidential election cycle, the
15:39
Democrats and Republicans tightened up the rules because
15:44
they felt it was that having a third party get double digits is
15:47
just unacceptable. Imagine that and and you see now
15:53
Donald Trump hasn't said a thing to this point and we're
15:56
recording on Sunday the 6th at 2:00 in the afternoon.
16:01
If for those of you out there ready to send hate mails saying
16:04
no, he said lots 11 assumes he'll have something to say
16:09
about this, but it's not going to be on the top of his list
16:12
given that his term is his term, right?
16:16
He's he's not, he's not, contrary to what the hats say,
16:22
he's not running for a third term because he can't.
16:25
Right? So there you go.
16:26
Now, Musk has said something incredibly interesting.
16:31
And I think the success or failure of this project turns on
16:36
just how much fidelity people can keep to this particular
16:41
vision. They're not running candidates
16:43
all over the country, he said. We're going to run 8 or 10 high
16:49
profile congressional races, Senate races, and we're going to
16:53
limit it to that. And given how things are carved
16:58
up right now, you could make a hell of a mess if you managed to
17:03
unseat 10 people who were entrenched.
17:06
Right. And, and wouldn't that be
17:09
something? Now?
17:09
I don't know what they would hope to accomplish, because the
17:12
minute you send say, 5 representatives to Congress,
17:17
they can't do anything once they get there because the rules will
17:20
be laid out against them every time they turn around.
17:23
They can caucus with one party or the other, but that just kind
17:27
of makes them de facto members of those parties.
17:30
Well, am I correct? They could leverage this.
17:34
So, for example, let's suppose you're looking at a House in
17:37
which Democrats or Republicans are roughly the roughly equal in
17:41
number, and Musk's five can shift the vote either way.
17:46
All of a sudden, now he's got leverage to say things like, OK,
17:49
we're going to vote. Our five will vote with you,
17:51
provided we're allowed on the stage the next presidential
17:56
election cycle. Yeah, good luck with that.
17:59
Good luck with that. And, and one wonders right, if
18:02
they do in fact get a few seats, well, what are they going to
18:07
horse trade their votes for what exactly?
18:11
Because the only thing people trade votes for is pork.
18:14
More money to to my constituents.
18:18
But this party is starting with the idea that budgets need to be
18:23
balanced and there needs to be no debt.
18:26
Well, what are they going to receive in any bargain?
18:32
Because as long as they're a distinct minority, nobody's
18:36
going to slow down the spending. Right no, I I don't see I don't
18:40
see them having any effect there.
18:42
My hope is that they worm their way onto the stage the next
18:48
cycle. It's worth it's worth reminding
18:52
people you know, we, we did this episode probably several months
18:55
ago, but it's worth reminding people that the you'll have to
19:00
correct me on the name. It's the committee on.
19:03
Commission for Debate. Commission on.
19:05
Yeah, something like that. Commission for something.
19:06
Like this? Decides sets the conditions for
19:10
what candidates are allowed on the presidential stage.
19:14
And that Commission is not a governmental body.
19:16
It's a nonprofit corporation founded by the Democratic and
19:21
Republican parties. Which themselves themselves.
19:24
Are corporations. That's right.
19:27
So, yeah, when when people talk about the evil corporations, I
19:31
agree, right, In this three case, in these three cases.
19:34
Yeah, yeah. And we could take the others 1
19:37
by 1 and decide what we think. But you wonder, right?
19:41
The only winning bet here would be to send a shockwave through
19:45
the system with a couple of unlikely wins and and somehow
19:51
let it snowball from there, Right, Right.
19:54
Because the, the reason people don't vote for third parties is
19:57
because they know it's, it's just a, a show they're putting
20:02
on a show with their vote, right?
20:04
It's perform, it's performative. Well, you know, as long as it's
20:09
performative, you're not getting anywhere there.
20:12
There's no doubt here. But maybe, just maybe, and you
20:16
start to look at things like the congressional approval rating.
20:21
Which is just in the toilet. I mean, it, it's been bad for
20:25
years and it's bad now. It won't take much for a well
20:32
funded group to say, well, we're better than this hot mess you've
20:35
been voting for over here, right?
20:37
And I, and that probably resonates.
20:40
It's it's going to be very easy, I think, to predict what this
20:44
third party is going to be against.
20:46
But what it's going to be for is the more important question.
20:50
And I'm not sure I see an answer that works.
20:55
What this is all very strange if you sit back and think about it,
20:59
because because what we've got here is a situation where
21:04
there's somebody coming to the rescue of the American voter to,
21:09
to break this, this monopoly that's held by the Democratic
21:14
and Republican Party corporations.
21:16
And who is this person that's coming to save the American
21:20
voter? It's a billionaire.
21:21
And it would and it would require a billionaire.
21:24
You need those deep pockets to pull off what he intends to pull
21:28
off. So it's a very strange
21:30
situation. It is.
21:32
And I wonder if it's going to have any legs or if this is just
21:35
something that somebody said when the mic was turned on that
21:40
maybe he now already regrets, right?
21:42
I could see where that would be a possibility as well.
21:44
I haven't heard anything in the water about him putting together
21:48
a staff to to do these things, right?
21:51
And I think we would have heard something if it had gotten
21:55
anywhere down the road but in the, you know, pure talk stage.
22:00
So I don't know. I don't know what's going to
22:02
happen here. But I can tell you that both of
22:05
the parties seem to be a little frightened.
22:09
And in the chatter that the good is right, the chatter I picked
22:13
up, both Democrats and Republicans are saying exactly
22:17
the same thing, which should be a a point that everybody said,
22:23
well, hang on a second, what the Hell's going on there?
22:26
Whenever they're saying the same thing, it's pretty safe to say
22:30
that everybody's lying. And I just throw that out there
22:34
as an open possibility that you should leave open.
22:38
But they're all saying, oh, this isn't going to get anywhere, but
22:42
if it does, it'll take more votes from the other party than
22:45
it will from us. So they're already saying it's
22:49
pointless to waste your time doing this, but if you did, it
22:53
would just help us anyway. Yeah, and one of those groups is
22:58
wrong. Yeah.
23:00
At least one is wrong. They could both be wrong, but at
23:04
least one is wrong. And I'm, I can't figure out
23:09
which one. It's likelier to be right
23:12
because both parties, I, I predicted for 30 years that the
23:16
Democratic Party would, would fray at the edges and just come
23:19
apart because it's a collection of special interests bound
23:23
together with, you know, the mutual pledges of, of voting
23:27
fealty. All right, they're still that
23:30
and they're still here. And the Republicans have gone
23:33
from what I would consider to be a pretty solid ideologically
23:38
based party. And I use the term ideological
23:41
here in its non pejorative sense, right?
23:44
They believe a set of principles and they move forward with that,
23:49
win or lose. But Trumpism has put that in the
23:53
closet, and I don't know if it's ever going to come back out
23:57
again. I don't know if you're going to
23:59
have a Republican Party defined by ideals.
24:03
I think we're we're, I think well into the risk where we're
24:07
likely to have one defined by naked power grabs.
24:13
But you see, you see, there you go, right?
24:15
What do you do at that point? The the awesome power of
24:20
competition that Musk doesn't even have his forget about
24:25
winning his party isn't even really a thing yet.
24:29
But already he's got just the threat.
24:32
He's got the Democrats and Republicans rethinking how they
24:35
do things. This is I couldn't.
24:37
Competition. I couldn't wait to talk about
24:39
it. Yeah, right, Right.
24:41
I don't know if this, I don't know if this is going anywhere,
24:43
but I sure as hell hope it does. Right.
24:46
Little competition is going to make everyone a lot better, and
24:51
we haven't been a lot better for a long time.
24:55
Our our politics is in the sewer.
24:57
We despise each other for no good reason.
25:00
Right. For no good reason.
25:02
Yeah, Yeah. You know, I don't think a slight
25:04
policy difference that you might have over my batch of
25:08
preferences would be reason enough to kick you to the curb.
25:12
You know, from my life entirely. Yet this is what we hear every
25:16
Thanksgiving now, that this is how people are choosing to live.
25:20
And it's really not a great way to live.
25:23
And so will this make a difference?
25:25
And boy, I don't know. I think if it's going to make a
25:28
difference, they better win some seats real soon.
25:32
And you never know, they could, they could lay some candidates
25:36
out there that just walk to the finish line right there.
25:40
The hatred for both parties right now is pretty high.
25:45
And if you could come in above that fray, you might guarantee
25:49
yourself a win. Yeah, and this is, we've said it
25:53
before, I got to repeat it. This is the evidence that the
25:56
Libertarian Party just has no idea what it's doing that the
26:00
plurality of Americans don't want either the Democrats or the
26:05
Republicans. It's there's a chunk of voters,
26:08
a huge chunk, like 40 plus percent sitting there and the
26:12
Libertarians can't manage to capture them.
26:16
That tells me there's something seriously wrong with
26:18
libertarians. And, and I agree with so much of
26:21
their platform. It's the execution that's.
26:25
The problem Yeah, you, you and I had the pleasure of moderating A
26:30
libertarian debate, and that was a strange night for me.
26:34
A very. Strange.
26:35
Yeah, Yeah. But.
26:38
The libertarians, for how, whatever the reasons, still like
26:41
us, because I have accepted the invitation to speak to the
26:45
Western Australian libertarians. I know I saw that.
26:48
In fact, I'm I'm I was kind of trying to get my foot in the
26:51
door so that both of us get Oh, if you.
26:54
Want to be awake at 4:30 in the morning?
26:56
You go, you join Murad LON. Yeah, yeah.
26:59
But. This is one 1:30 in the morning
27:01
for me. No big deal, but I it's
27:03
interesting to me that libertarians still want to talk
27:06
to us. Right, right.
27:08
Well, I, but I think there's a there's a lot of principled
27:10
people out there who I think like us, generally agree with
27:16
with the the fundamentals that the libertarians hold up.
27:20
It's the the nonsense in fighting in purity tests that
27:25
they've got no time for. Yeah, I got to the point that I
27:27
I've stopped, I've stopped overtly using the term
27:30
libertarian because it I. Have to.
27:32
It's always carried baggage, but it carries way too much baggage
27:36
now. Yeah, no, that, that's right.
27:38
We are classical liberals. Yeah.
27:40
Fully in fully in league with Jefferson and Madison.
27:43
Right, right. Who are Republicans not too long
27:48
ago referred to as those crazy libertarian kids?
27:54
That's not exactly true, but close enough.
27:59
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28:35
That's civl.com. I got to go back to Musk for for
28:40
a moment. Let's assume for the moment that
28:43
he's serious about this. What do you think his motivation
28:47
is? Well, I think he's hostile
28:51
towards Donald Trump right now, but in fairness, he has spoken
28:57
about the deficit and the debt pretty, pretty pretty regularly
29:02
and was convinced he could do something about that.
29:06
Found out through Doge that he could not, right?
29:09
There's just no doubt about that.
29:11
He showed up, he couldn't do a damn thing.
29:13
We could have told him that it had nothing do with him.
29:17
And we did predict this, right? Doge cut nothing.
29:20
And this new big beautiful bill that just got signed, it's
29:24
really just a thing completely stuffed full of pork with an an
29:29
increase to the debt limit it well into the future, right?
29:33
We all anybody can look at this for three minutes and know what
29:37
it's all about. So can we return to a situation
29:44
in which the American people, by and large, somehow buy into
29:49
fiscal conservatism with an enhanced understanding of
29:54
individual rights, which is what classical liberalism is?
29:59
Can can we find our way back to that?
30:02
Or does everybody just want free things from the government?
30:08
Right. Because if you want free things
30:09
more than you want fiscal sanity, you'll get it.
30:12
And if you get it, you will bankrupt the country, and the
30:14
country will ultimately fail. And I, I think there's a hybrid
30:18
solution that people don't appreciate enough.
30:22
And that is, look, if you want the welfare state, fine.
30:26
Do it at the state level. Just don't do it at the federal
30:30
level. Give people the ability to pick
30:32
and choose. And those of us who want the,
30:34
the welfare state, move to California, knock yourself out.
30:38
Those who don't move to Nebraska or Montana and live with, you
30:43
know, and there are other consequences you'll have to live
30:45
with, but live with those. Let people select out.
30:48
I think the reason we're at the at each other's throats is
30:52
because both sides are attempting to impose their
30:55
vision on everybody. And that's just ridiculous.
30:57
We're we're different. We have different circumstances,
31:00
we have different preferences. Let those come out.
31:03
Let us live differently. I mean just our geography is
31:07
enough to militate against universal solutions to to all
31:10
problems. I remember the first time I had
31:13
to install a low flow toilet and a low flow shower head into
31:18
places I lived in Connecticut. Right.
31:21
Yeah. Where waterfalls free from the
31:24
sky. Right.
31:25
OK, I live in Arizona now. Different story.
31:29
But isn't it interesting how we choose to federalize these sorts
31:32
of things? Right.
31:34
And it's almost always a mistake.
31:36
Leaving it open for states would create, I think, a lot of
31:41
confusion, right? It would take years, if not
31:45
decades to sort out. People would be moving at cross
31:50
purposes probably a lot of the time.
31:52
And yet that's still the better option than what we've got.
31:57
So why aren't we doing it? And I, I don't know where the,
32:01
shall we call them the Muskies? I don't know where the Muskies
32:04
are going to fall down on this, but it's interesting to see.
32:08
They did one interesting thing, really, really shrewd.
32:12
They named the party the America Party.
32:14
Yeah, I thought that was brilliant.
32:17
Very shrewd. Yep, very shrewd.
32:19
It's a party for everybody. There's not this or that.
32:22
It's all of you, right? And you know, salesmanship
32:27
matters. Things like this matters a lot.
32:30
So will this get off the ground? I don't know.
32:33
If if I had to, if I were pressed, I would say probably
32:38
not. If I were pressed further, I
32:41
would probably give it a 20 to 30% chance of success.
32:47
I, you know, normally I'd agree with you, except this is the guy
32:53
who, you know, I would say invented, but at least he
32:57
popularized the self driving electric car.
32:59
This is the guy who who's going to Mars and making great strides
33:05
in that direction. It seems that he could pretty
33:08
much accomplish whatever he sets his mind to.
33:12
Well, I don't think anybody can accomplish whatever they set
33:14
their minds to, but he's much better at it than most of the
33:18
rest of us. And I think he probably, he
33:20
probably accomplished more yesterday than Chuck Schumer has
33:23
in his entire career. Yeah, yeah.
33:26
Just to pick, just to pick one out of the hat could have picked
33:30
a a bunch of them. But Chuck Schumer will will be a
33:33
good stand in here. This is the time, right?
33:37
The time is right. Everybody seems to hate the
33:42
Democrats, and nobody is. People are becoming less
33:46
thrilled with Trump over time, and people are starting to look
33:50
around saying, what have we done?
33:53
Well, when people start to ask that question, you have to be
33:58
able to say it's all right, here's the way out.
34:03
And then they have to believe you right now.
34:07
Whether those two things can happen, I don't know.
34:11
I hope they can because we're in a bad situation right now, and
34:15
it's getting worse every year. So is there a hope?
34:20
Yeah, I think there's a hope. Will this cause the duopoly to
34:25
behave better? Might.
34:28
Knowing that people are angry and that there's another option
34:31
out on the horizon? It really might do something.
34:35
And hey, if that's the case, color me happy.
34:40
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