Beer and Conversation with Pigweed and Crowhill

The boys drink a cocktail and discuss the significance of the Durham Report about Crossfire Hurricane -- aka, the persecution of Donald Trump

The Federalist put it this way.

“Imagine someone told you that in the run-up to a U.S. presidential election, the FBI tried to undermine a candidate at the behest of the opposing campaign by cooking up a false narrative of collusion with Moscow.

“And let’s say this conspiracy implicated not just the FBI but also the White House, Justice Department, and CIA — and that nearly the entire corporate press went along with it, gleefully spreading the false narrative that this candidate was a Russian agent, running story after story of fabricated nonsense in a coordinated effort to ensure the opposing candidate won.”

The first conclusion from the report is that Trump is vindicated

* It was a witch hunt (no reality – based on false information)

* It was politically motivated

* They were spying on his campaign

* It was an attempt to stop him from being elected and to undermine his presidency

* There was a deep-state conspiracy

* The FBI, DOJ, and Obama administrations were colluding, using Clinton campaign ideas

* The media was “fake news”

The media reaction was quite telling. Since they were in on the whole conspiracy, they’re not trying to cover it up. “Nothing new here.” They have no shame.

"The establishment media were so fully gulled and in the tank for the Russian collusion story for so long that they now just can't acknowledge Durham's report without also having to eat crow at the same time, something they clearly aren't willing to do," according to journalism professor Jeffrey McCall

The Durham report claims

* Clinton campaign oppo research came up with BS allegations against Trump

* FBI knew it was bogus, but acted on it as if it was serious.

* Top FBI officials (documented Trump haters) approved a full-scale investigation.

* FBI management was “pushing it so hard there was no stopping the train.”

“Grease the skids.” Make it happen.

* The Obama White House knew all these details and did not try to stop it.

* The FBI should never have launched its investigation. It never had any evidence that would authorize such an investigation.

* The FBI used completely different standards with Trump and Clinton.

Top officials at the White House and the FBI knew that the Clinton campaign was falsely claiming Russia collusion, they knew they had no evidentiary basis for this, they nevertheless launched a full-scale investigation.

But …

There were no convictions

Fallout

* “All actions are permissible” if you’re trying to stop Hitler, the devil, Trump

* Shouldn’t a hero try to fix the election?

Given that we know all this …

* Why should we trust the FBI on political questions?

* (Also remember the “51 intelligence agencies” BS on the Biden laptop.)

* If they can pull this off, the idea that the left stole the election seems more plausible

After a quick skit by the Ben Franklin players, Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review a French Toast stout, then discuss the production of EV batteries.

The story goes that the planet is heating because of carbon emissions, so we have to move to electric vehicles.

Energy drives prosperity and human flourishing. Right now, most energy is produced by fossil fuels, and agricultural relies on fertilizer, which requires fossil fuels.

But there's a big drive to move all our vehicles to electric.

The boys discuss the details about the production and disposal of electric batteries. They're not nearly as environmentally friendly as many people believe.

The boys drink and review a robust porter from Bell's, then evaluate western values.

Western values developed from three major sources.

* Classical antiquity

* The Judeo-Christian tradition

* Germanic customs

Roughly speaking, "western values" include the following:

* Democracy

* Individualism

* Human rights

* Free speech

* Free markets

* The rule of law

* Secularism

* Rationalism

* Liberalism

* Capitalism

When people object to western values, which of these do they want to discard?

"Western values" are truths, not merely preferences. We're not making this stuff up, we're progressively discovering things about the right ordering of society.

With special guest Longinus, P&C drink and review Carlsberg, then discuss Candide as part of their "shortcut to the classics" series.

The boys give a short review of his life. Voltaire was a pillar of the Englightenment.

In Candide, Voltaire employs biting sarcasim against the idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds." Candide suffers through "one damned thing after another," but continues to have the sunny outlook of his teacher, Pangloss. Everything must be for the best.

Eventually Candide meets Martin, another philosopher with a very different view, which allows Voltaire to have some debates between these two life outlooks.

Leibnitz believed that this is the best possible world, because if God is good, he must have picked the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire thought this was ridiculous, and wrote Candide as a response.

With special guest Longinus, P&C drink and review a Belgian saison, then discuss a few essays by Michel Foucault, who many people say was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

Longinus gives a brief biography, then the boys work through two essays: "What is Enlightenment" and "Truth and Power."

Foucault is considered a post-modernist. The boys try to unpack modernism and post-modernism, to put Foucault in context.

His writings are difficult to read. Sometimes it sounds like complete nonsense. But a few things do come out fairly clearly. Most importantly, he believes that all of the things we think of as rational, self-evident truths, are actually dependent on circumstances and the changing fads and customs of a particular time. Foucault would reject the idea of objective truth.

In many ways, Foucault contributed to the craziness we see all around us today, with "my truth," and the idea that everyone gets to define their own reality.

The boys drink and review Pigweed's homemade brown ale, then discuss nuclear war.

They distinguish fission and fusion reactions, and how that relates to nuclear bombs and their development.

After Word War 2 there was a mad rush to develop larger and larger stockpiles.

Today, nine countries are confirmed as having nuclear weapons. But for some strange reason we seem less afraid of nuclear war now than we were during the Cold War.

The peace seems to have been maintained by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. But how does that apply in the modern world?

Where is the biggest risk of nuclear war today? Russia vs. U.S.? China vs. U.S.? China vs. India? India vs. Pakistan?

And what about Iran?

If there is a nuclear war, will we all die? Will it end all of humanity?

If there is a remnant, could they rebuild? What about nuclear winter?

The boys do a "nooze and booze" episode about recent events at Fox news while drinking homemade apple pie moonshine.

In a matter of a week, there were several big stories in the news world. Fox News parted company with Dan Bongino, Fox News settled with Dominion Voting for an ungodly sum, Don Lemon was fired from CNN, and Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News.

The boys discuss the basics of the Dominion Voting lawsuit, but spend most of their time on theories about the Tucker Carlson issue.

Pigweed and Crowhill favor the theory that Rupert Murdoch didn't like Tucker's speech to the Heritage Foundation in which he painted modern political disputes as a fight between good and evil, and recommended that Americans pray for their country. Added to that, Murdoch may have believed Tucker wasn't a team player and was getting too big for his britches.

The boys speculate on what Carlson might do next, and how it might affect the 2024 election.

P&C also spend a couple minutes on the Bud Light fiasco, and then Pigweed springs a hard question on Crowhill.

The boys drink and review RAR's Groove City Hefeweizen, then review short selling, the Gamestop story, Sam Bankman-Fried, and FTX.

After watching the Netflix "Eat the Rich" series, the boys remembered their interest in the Gamestop story, so they consulted their financially intelligent friends, Hansel and Gretel, to get up to speed on what happened and why.

It's a fascinating story where "retail investors" who frequented the "Wallstreetbets" Reddit group stuck it to the institutional investors and caught them in a short squeeze.

The retail investors sent the stock rocketing up, which was putting the institutional investors in a bind, then Robinhood -- the platform most of the retail investors used -- shut down all purchases of Gamestop.

The story makes you believe the system is rigged for the benefit of the big, instutional investors.

Along the same lines, the boys discuss the Sam Bankman-Fried story, and how he fooled the world with his phony empire built on pretend money.

Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review an IPA from Three Floyds, then discuss whether the United States should pay reparations for the evils of slavery.

P&C agree that the concept of reparations is sound. When you harm someone, you should try to repair the wrong that's been done.

They review some of the arguments for reparations and have sympathy for many of them.

The idea is not simply that the ancestors of slave owners should pay the ancestors of slaves, but that the entire system was complicit in slavery, so the entire system should pay.

But who should be paid, and how much? What's the limiting principle? Should we also pay Native Americans, or the Chinese, who were abused in the creation of the railroads?

Can a group be held responsible for the actions of a group at some time in the past?

It's almost impossible to parse it all out and unscramble the mess. Isn't there a statute of limitations?

P&C drink and review "Level Up," an IPA from a Yard's variety pack, then discuss things "everybody knows" that aren't so.

You might be surprised at some of the answers. Here are the topics discussed.