Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Thursday, March the 12th, and I wanted to bring you a little comfort food, a little porridge, a little ice cream, you know, whatever it is that makes you feel good inside, a little crawfish atouffee. And it is my friend and yours, the managing editor of the Bulwark, Samuel Stein. How are you doing? Good.
Every one of those is great except for porridge. I don't want to... Why did porridge come to mind? I don't know. When's the last time you had porridge, Tim? I can't recall the last time I had porridge. What's your middle name? I was going to do your middle name. It's Ignatius. No. Do we have to? Ignatius would be Catholic, so it's something Jewish. What's a Jewish I name?
I'm racking my brain for Jewish I names. There's a good story here. It's short. My middle name is Irving. It's named after my grandfather, Irving Fine, who was a famous composer in his day, tragically died at the age of 49. But look him up. Good friends with Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein. He wrote some great classical music bits. Started the music program at Brandeis.
A little Stein family history for you. Wow. It seems fake, and it seems like your parents were just big Irving Kristol acolytes, and were trying to come up with a different reason. You don't want to give Bill the credit, but that's okay. We have a lot to talk about. You said you're nervous. Yeah, well – Do you want to talk about why before we get into the news?
So I listened to the pod yesterday with Sagar, and I feel like he's like a seven-course meal type guest. He's talking about like THAAD missiles, and he's reading the front pages of the Korean press, and he's got all these analogies to – You know, World War II. He's doing general Westmoreland bits. And I'm like DiGiorno's. Like, you're going to enjoy it, but it's not good for you.
And so I'm a little bit worried. My intellect is not on the level. And yeah, I woke up a little bit early today in sweats thinking about this. Here's an important thing, Sam. There's a difference between intellect and wisdom. Well, I don't have that either. And I think that there was a shortage of the latter. But we appreciated him coming on. No, he was great. Let's talk about the news.
We're still at war with Iran. We're still climbing the mountain of conflict. We're still having a...
what did trump call it an excursion an incursion i think is what he meant yeah he means incursion i think he just doesn't either he doesn't understand the difference between the words or no one's bothered to correct him or both but he definitely means incursion and he keeps saying excursion and excursion is like uh like we're taking a short little excursion to the bayou with our porridge
Yeah, some porridge. Yeah, we're doing an incursion. Okay, so here's the latest from the incursion excursion. Yesterday, Iraq and Oman closed oil terminals after two tankers were attacked and left burning off Iraq's coast. The IEA said on Thursday that the war has caused the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
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Chapter 2: What is the current state of the war with Iran?
How could this guy of all people oppose what's going on in Iran? I just don't see that. Bill is pretty open-minded. I talk to him all the time and I've edited the newsletters he's written about Iran. I think he would be supportive of a war that was based around some principles that he believed in. And this is not that.
I think he'd be supportive of a war that was done with proper and professional execution too, but this is not that either. And just if you kind of narrowly isolate the issue of – the Iranian people and this idea that they deserve a government that is more liberal, democratic and respectful of human rights and all the things that I think Bill legitimately believes in.
I mean, what about this war has been in pursuit of that? We're going to end up with a more autocratic regime with a younger, more despotic Ayatollah. Or maybe they kill him and see what the next person is. And it's like dealer's choice. We're kind of just Well, we killed the people who we thought were going to be good. Playing go fish for new Ayatollahs. Right.
The Iranian people are seeing their capital city absolutely bombed to smithereens. They've seen schools bombed. They're seeing their water supply, their oil supply absolutely decimated. They have oil rain coming down from above. Like, is that really supportive of their –
of their rights and their hopes and aspirations, there's nothing that would give you a sense that this is being done for the purpose of helping a beleaguered Iranian populace. And I think everything indicates that this is being done, to JVL's point, by people who don't really actually pay attention to the details. I thought JVL's column was spot on.
Yeah, and I think, again, just to circle back on the Israel part of it, I do think that if you read the press there, there's not a clear end goal, but I think that the people in charge of Israel are kind of happy with any outcome. If it's a weakened Iranian regime...
with fewer missiles that could they could shoot at israel but a similar radicalism not great not the best outcome but like still an improvement if it's total chaos and they have internal fighting and warring so they're focused on each other not their neighbors that's a win right if hypothetically you get somebody who's more moderate and even the best case right like so i i don't think that they have like a plan for the outcomes for the end game though
Right. It's like, why would a failed nation state in Iran be a win for the region? I mean, what you'll end up happening is no one who can control anything. It's at least understandable, though, because they're getting rockets fired at them all the time. You know, I think the point is that Trump is just along for the ride with that. Yeah. But I hear you. And the refugee situation.
One thing I didn't get to, Sagar, I wish I'd got to more because it's something he's good on. But we're spending too much time on the stuff he's good on. I want to make sure we had a little time for me to dunk on him is the comparison to Syria. Syria is so much smaller than Iran. Just in the number of humans that live there. And the Syrian refugee crisis had ripples throughout the entire world.
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Chapter 3: How are higher gas prices justified in the context of the war?
Well, exactly. I don't respect him. So that keeps me nice and even. The cost is another thing that we have. And there have been some speculation, et cetera. Who can even trust the fucking Pentagon? Who knows? But the Pentagon tells Congress that the first week of the war, so seven days, cost $11.3 billion. So about a billion and a half a day. It's a pretty significant amount. nut there.
I think from my perspective, I'll just, can we just put on our just cliche hats here? From my perspective, it's somebody who's concerned about the 30 plus trillion dollars that we have in debt. It seems not great that once again, we're doing absolutely nothing to care about that.
Maybe from you as a former Huffington Post lib perspective, you might look at this and say, isn't that about what the Obamacare subsidy is trying to cost? $11.3 billion? If we keep going at this pace for a couple more weeks, I think it's three more weeks, it will be the cost of the Obamacare subsidies, which we couldn't afford, can't afford, too expensive. Unreal.
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is to go to join delete me dot com slash bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout that's join delete me dot com slash bulwark code bulwark got a bunch of other stuff to get to i have a section here uh titled louisiana themed fuck ups from the administration one is related to the iran war then we'll move on to some politics okay there is uh something called new orleans urea
I'm not going to pretend like I know about this. What is that? Urea is basically fertilizer. It is kind of natural gas and ammonia and nitrogen, and you get fertilizer. I was listening to the Odd Lots podcast. My favorite dork podcasts are Pod Save the World. I usually fall asleep, though. Odd Lots. which does like random economic stuff. Joe Wise and Tracy Alley, they've been on the show.
Derek Thompson's show, I had him on last week. I found a nerd out on stuff. Those are some of my favorites. I was listening to the Odd Lots show and I was like, oh, the New Orleans Jury, I should care about this. The Port of New Orleans is the primary hub for importing and storing this fertilizer. It is coming, though, from... The Persian Gulf. Shocked.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the immigration system on seasonal workers?
yeah it's a little too expensive and violent too many guns and and everything costs too much in america i'm gonna go back to south africa yeah there we go the refugees the white refugees that steven miller is bringing in look i've been raging about this administration's immigration policies from the start and i just i can't imagine anything that could have gotten me more upset about it but fucking with crawfish season i don't fuck with the final straw okay
I'm going to be talking to my Louisiana neighbors about this. Impeachment at this point. I mean, impeachment or at least, I mean, Bill Cassidy, where are you? Like Bill Cassidy, if you aren't going to save us from the measles by blocking RFK Jr.
from running Health and Human Services, like at least you could fucking ensure we have people to work in the crawfish processing plant so we can have our crawfish. At least you could do that, Bill Cassidy. Are you completely worthless? Yeah. Where's your governor? He's like too busy with Greenland. Greenland, yeah. Where are those boats, by the way? There was a big announcement.
Jeff Landry and Donald Trump made a big announcement. Oh, yeah, the medical boats. We're going to send some medical boats to Greenland. Do we have an update on those boats? Have they made it to nuke yet? We've got to do more following up on these random stories. We should just have a feature in the newsletter.
Did you have Edgar email the administration and ask them what the status is on the boats that are going to nuke? That's a great idea. I'm going to do that. I would like to know about that. Okay. I'd also just like to know generally what they think. And this was a –
strategic imperative for our safety that we take Greenland and it seems like we've got our eye off the ball now that we're like raining hellfire down on Iran and Cuba's next yeah So speaking of immigration policy, we have a new Secretary of Homeland Security. Great news for everybody. If you're getting bored with Sam, stick around at the end.
We are going to be giving you our updated cabinet rankings, which I know is the reason why Sam's on the show today. So we can't include Mark Quain, Mullen, former... Is it really Mark Quain? No, it's been Mark Wayne, Mark Wayne, Mullen, former semi-pro MMA fighter. It was three and oh, in his career, one win over huggy bear.
Uh, and then two wins over another guy, the same guy, uh, in a Tulsa semi-pro MMA. What's your fucking record, Tim? Huh? Well, I got into one fight on Thomas Circle that I think was a win back freshman year of college. And then there was another time when I was trash-talking somebody at a bar, also probably freshman year of college. I was pretty hot as an 18-year-old. Which bar?
It was a bicycle-themed bar in Denver. And I was trash-talking a guy. My friend said we should leave. The guy followed me out. And then one of my buddies was a Golden Glove boxer, and he smoked him in the face. And then I kind of just ducked. And so that's another win. I think that's a 2-0. No, that's like half a win. That's 2-0. 1.5-0. Yeah. Anyway, they're going to have to vote, I guess.
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