Luke Ford

01:00 Obvious truths about American politics, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=157904
05:00 Media Postmortem: A conversation with veteran editors Marty Baron and Dean Baquet,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWL5sgZi5Jg
Trump’s cabinet of podcasters
21:00 Dennis Prager took a nasty fall: Aaron Prager: Life with Dennis Prager, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IUwh_rnG2s
23:00 Life is a spiral staircase, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=17292
26:30 Matt Gaetz & The Non-Binary Capitalist, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyAHRijO-I
28:20 Russia uses ICBM missile on Ukraine
31:15 When the Irish began to drink
33:00 Vibe shift preceded Trump’s victory, https://www.ft.com/content/e8d2fa11-e9c3-4509-b922-0a97e540ca1d
34:50 Serious Trump and Weird Democrats, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p1xvNBlokE
39:00 Erik Prince about threats to Donald Trump
40:00 Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156522
43:00 Morning Joe tries to restart its relationship with Donald Trump
48:00 The fall of Matt Gaetz
51:15 Ezra Klein: In This House, We’re Angry When Government Fails, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4lxJKj0I0
1:04:40 Pete Hegseth is a terrible pick for Secretary of Defense
1:15:00 YT has had to expand its Overton window to compete with X, Rumble, Substack
1:16:00 Ross Douthat: Trump Has Put an End to an Era. The Future Is Up for Grabs., https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/donald-trump-election-new-era.html
1:19:50 Comcast spinning off MSNBC, wouldn’t have happened had Kamala won
1:23:30 Understanding Elon Musk
1:26:00 HRificatio of the Democrats, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/11/democrats-are-the-hr-department-of-political-parties/680634/
1:40:00 Manliness is better than Godliness, https://gideons.substack.com/p/manliness-is-next-to-godliness
1:47:00 Personal Growth Series: The Alexander Technique, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzwDRW7-vuc
1:58:00 Claire Khaw joins to discuss sexual morality
https://www.lomez.press/p/aeneas-in-washington
2:00:30 Oskar Schindler saved 1100 Jews from the Holocaust, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler
2:07:00 Kip joins
2:40:00 The Work of Turning on Your Audience, https://oliverbatemandoesthework.substack.com/p/the-work-of-turning-on-your-audience
3:08:00 ​​Which book are you least likely to recommend to unstable people?
3:15:00 The Long Con: The Dubious Schemes That Fund Right-Wing Media, https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
3:20: 00 Retribution w/Steve Bannon, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrp11c8E6b8
43:50, 1:05:50, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9RiDPbiiUA
3:28:00 Great Rabbinic Thinkers: Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (Part 2) || Dr. Marc Shapiro, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQvjLO7ckMM
3:33:00 NYT: In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/nyregion/hasidic-yeshivas-schools-new-york.html
3:34:00 NYT: 8 Hasidic Schools Failed to Provide Basic Education, New York City Finds, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/nyregion/nyc-hasidic-yeshivas-education.html
4:14:00 The Great Controversies Of The Chofetz Chaim, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=42671
4:18:00 Is gossip good? https://www.lukeford.net/Dennis/indexp271.html

* Since 2017, Joe Biden has increasingly appeared senile in his public appearances. The same news media that shamelessly covered up for Biden and has taken zero accountability, is now covering Donald Trump.
* Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate for president of the United States, and leading Democrats including Joe Biden, Bill & Hillary Clinton and the Obamas knew she was a terrible candidate but endorsed her anyway because they were less afraid of losing the election than of challenging their party’s commitment to DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion).
* Kamala is characterized by crippling insecurity, indecisiveness and abuse of her staff.
* Kamala never had a chance in the sunbelt states (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina) and she consistently trailed in the rustbelt states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). For a year prior to the election, private polls for both Democrats and Republicans showed Trump performing about two points better in the battleground states than public polls revealed.
* Private polls are better funded and more rigorous than public polls.
* Early voting numbers indicated for a month prior to the election that Trump was positioned to win.
* If you claimed up to election day that it was a 50-50 race, you don’t know much.
* Mark Halperin is America’s best political journalist.
* Like Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump is not much interested in governance.
* Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Bobby Kennedy were unfit and unqualified for their proposed cabinet posts. It does not speak well of Trump that he nominated them.

I’ve been thinking about these questions:

>So knowing what you know about Harris and Trump, who do you think has the potential to make more terrible decisions as president?
Trump has the bigger up side and down side.

Do you think project 25 will be implemented?
About as much as any think tank plans get implemented (modestly).

Do you think some of the checks and balances on power will be dismantled by trump and his team?
They will try. Civil servants donate 99-1 for Democrats. More political appointments and fewer veteran civil servants might lead to a reduction in the competence of government. My biggest fears about Trump are incompetence and corruption, and nothing he’s done since the election has reduced these fears. Like Reagan, Trump is more interested in performance than in the nuts and bolts of governing. His cabinet picks do not indicate a preference for competence. 

Do you think Trump will place his people in DoJ and FBI to neutralize checks and balances on power?
Yes. He has some basis for believing the deep state is trying to thwart him, so I have an open mind that he might have some success here and that might lead to better governance, or it might be a disaster.

Will the lives of the working poor be better or worse on balance?
During Trump’s first term, the least educated Americans had their first substantial relative income increase in 70 years… so I think that trend will continue.  

Will he do what he has openly stated?
He’ll do some. Trump is simultaneously the biggest liar and the most honest politician ever.

Do you think increased tariffs will make inflation better or worse?
There’s a difference between the threat of tariffs and the implementation of tariffs. During his first term, Trump had low inflation. Higher tariffs will lead to higher inflation but Trump will also drive down energy costs, which will reduce inflation. 

We are entering a fascinating era in history – will we rue the day we are part of it?
Events, my dear boy, events will determine everything. 

I forgot how exhausting and exciting living under Trump can be. There’s just a water cannon of news every day. 

I’ve been pro Trump for nine years, but I acknowledge that most criticisms of him have substantial validity. A normal person could look at Trump’s behavior after losing the 2020 election, and look at January 6, and regard that as disqualifying. Trump’s behavior was horrible.

NYT: “Higher levels of news consumption track with higher levels of income and education. In big cities, where information is currency and knowledge is status, there are social costs to not keeping up.”