Category: Podcast

It’s almost all election discussion this week, as the the 2016 Presidential and Congressional elections are nearly upon us. Mike and Jay talk about the tightening polls, whether the media is overreacting (the answer to that question is almost always ‘yes’), and who they think will be President and what the balance of power in the next Senate will be.

After that, they take another look at FBI Director James Comey’s actions, and whether they constituted a violation of federal law, as Nevada Senator Harry Reid has argued. Finally, they discuss the October jobs report – what it says about the state of the economy and whether it’s likely to have any effect on the election.

Earlier in the election season, Mike and Jay took a look at the platform of Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson. This week, they examine the platform of the ‘other’ third party – the Green Party, led this year by their presidential nominee Jill Stein. The Guys look at Stein’s positions on taxes, trade, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, military spending, criminal justice, education, and – of course – the environment.

This week, Mike and Jay start off by talking about F.B.I. Director James Comey’s letter to a number of Congressional committees, in which he indicates that additional email has come to light that may be relevant to the Clinton email investigation. Although the media completely freaked out about this, Mike and Jay argue that it won’t alter the overall trajectory of the race, which they’re convinced will end in a Clinton victory.

Next, they discuss the surprising verdict in the case of the seven anti-government protestors, led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who staged an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Jay thinks it might be a case of ‘jury nullification’, where a jury returns a ‘not guilty’ verdict in spite of the evidence. Mike raises the issue of whether the same thing would have happened had the protestors been black, and if the government may have overreached in its charges, possibly forcing the jury to either acquit or put the defendants behind bars for longer than the jurors felt was just.

After that, the Guys turn to the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner. The Justice Department will look into this, which both Mike and Jay believe is a good thing, though they’re a lot less in favor of stopping the merger than many on the right and the left (including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, both of who want the merger stopped).

Then it’s a look at Obamacare rate hikes, which are expected to average 25 percent for those in mid-level plans. Mike and Jay explain why this is happening and what, if anything, can be done to save Obamacare.

This week our question comes from Julia in Hamburg, Germany, who asks whether the American political system is in a state of erosion, if America will soon be a ‘flawed democracy’, and why the heck we don’t care more about gridlock in our political system.

This week Mike was not able to be with us, so Jay was joined by special guest and Cincinnati area attorney Dominique Wagner to discuss the week in politics. Listen as they discuss the final debate, Trump’s chances of winning, whether the debate changed the potential outcomes of the Senate and House races, the official apology issued by the International Association of the Chiefs of Police to communities of color, and what John McCain’s statements about blocking Supreme Court nominations mean for the future of the Supreme Court.

Unlike Mike, Jay’s not actually running for president, but since we did a show in which Mike talked about his issue positions, we thought we’d turn things around and let Jay talk about his vision for the United States. In this episode, Jay covers economic policy, regulation, trade, immigration, and more.

This week, Mike and Jay start by talking about the disastrous Trump campaign, wondering if he’s even trying to win at this point and what will happen to the Republican party in the wake of an all-but-certain Trump loss. They also discuss more Wikileaks revelations concerning the Clinton campaign, a federal court ruling that will affect the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new push to collect police shooting data, and some great listener mail questions.

This week, Mike and Jay start by talking about the fallout from a video of Donald Trump saying some extremely vulgar and objectifying things about women. The Guys agree that it’s awfully hard to see how Trump can recover from this. After that, they discuss potential Russian hacking of the U.S. election system, the suddenly not very important-seeming Vice Presidential debate (not that VP debates are ever all that important), and Israel announcing new settlements – over U.S. objections – only weeks after the U.S. signed a massive military aid agreement with Israel.