Dale announces that he has been smoke-free for 24 hours, but declines to say whether he can actually quit smoking. We'll see. Trump picks some cabinet members, then sticks his finger in China's eye. Good thing Jim Mattis is gonna be SecDef. SJWs are ridiculous. A fantastically interesting conversation about the Gold Standard occurs. We bemoan the regulatory state. Then we notice the Democrats seem to have learned no lessons from the recent election; Nancy Pelosi retains her leadership of House Democrats, who apparently think 60 seats lost under her leadership isn't enough. The ACA is collapsing.

Both Dale and Michael are mentally exhausted, resulting in a long, rambling, disjointed podcast, beginning with a long, dull story about buying a new motorcycle. They then move to Trump's nominees for various positions, all of whom are, of course, racists as bad as Hitler, or just superannuated GOP hacks. College is increasingly useless, so *that* bubble should die already. Google safe search is your friend.

Our long, national nightmare is truly over, and the Clinton Dynasty no longer hangs over our neck like a millstone. No one saw the Trump victory coming, even though they should've. The Left is having the biggest temper tantrum ever, while Democrats have the worst electoral result since Reconstruction. Prediction: Donald Trump will not put gays and Jews into camps. Obama's response to the Trump win has been gracious and the nation should appreciate the peaceful transition of power. Who's going to pay for the big infrastructure program? Will The Wall be built (We already know who'll pay for that if it is)? In 1980, Ronald Reagan was an "amiable dunce" who'd get us into a nuclear war. In 1988, we thought of him differently. Will we think differently of Donald Trump when his presidency ends? The podcast ends on a note of, unbelievably, cautious optimism.

The presidential race is tightening. Or is it? We don't know. We don't know anything. Will Twitter die, and if so, whatever will we do? The Cubs win the World Series. Brexit? Not so fast. Google got two AI's to talk to each and built their own encryption for their conversation, and now, no one knows what they're saying to each other, which is not frightening at all. The AIs are coming. Virtual Reality is on the way, too, and you can already buy porn for your Oculus Rift. The New Puritans need to be slapped down. Thank goodness for the Obama Era's racial healing.

There's a chicken-duck-woman thing waiting for us. The FBI seems to have reopened the email investigation on Hillary Clinton, because Anthony Wiener is the gift that keeps on giving. I thought we had already established that she was above the law, so there's no need to address this moving forward. Vladimir Putin is a scary guy. The Chinese are somewhat less so. Apple's new Macbooks have no touchscreen and a shitty keyboard. On the other hand, they're 30% more expensive, so there's that. Obamacare is crashing, so expect to have single-payer health care in the next four years.

The last debate is over...FINALLY! We now cruise towards an election with Trump losing badly in traditional polls, but ahead in the tracking polls. Is there a hidden silent majority for Trump? We're not betting on it. Dale is reading a lot about Rome, and makes a lot of tendentious parallels between Ancient Rome and modern America. The Cubs may do something no Living American has ever seen. Football will disappear within 20 years. Michael talks about golf, and Dale's attempt to have fun with that goes terribly wrong, making the last five minutes of the podcast unlistenable.

Donald Trump is a boor, which we already knew. The media has abandoned any pretense of objectivity, and gone all in for Hillary Clinton. How do you fix a biased media? You dont. Not easily, anyway. Meanwhile, Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke says a riot is an ugly thing, but it's about time we had one. The US looks like it collapsing slowly, in the same way the Roman Republic did...we're just waiting to see who our Julius Caesar is. But, maybe, just maybe, we can avoid that with a Constitutional Convention. How much of the GOP's decline can be based on the Entertainment Wing? Oh, also, Russia and China are dangerous.

Donald Trump's...um...intemperate remarks about women hit the airwaves, and got wall-to-wall coverage. So, it looks like Ted Cruz picked the wrong week to release a photograph of him making phone calls for the Trump Campaign. Anyway, the disaster that is Election 2016 continues apace. With the election almost in the bag, why are Dems cheating so much? Popular culture is sending us subtle messages that are hard to pick up, but dramatically affect our thinking. Also, the educational system in this country is a frickin' disaster.

If this week's podcast had a single thread running through all our topics...it would be interesting and listenable. But it doesn't. So...Anyway, we talk about Donald Trump's inability to forego responding to criticism. We know exactly what kind of horrific disaster a Hillary presidency will be, but we don't know what kind of horrific calamity a Trump presidency would be, though we know it would be one. How can we protect Cuba's unique culture of poverty and despair from being lost to tourism and money? Dale updates us on the status of his Volvo, and tells Michael what car to buy. We then just swap car stories for an hour. We finish up by discussing how women fail to understand that men live in a world where a smart mouth can get you punched.

Ted Cruz announced his endorsement of Donald Trump, and #NeverTrump went apoplectic. Meanwhile Trump tightens the race with Hillary to a neck and neck contest, according to the wildly unreliable polls. So, the contest is now down a preference for a candidate who will start Civil War II at home, or World War III abroad. The Fed has no tools left to fix the economy or to unwind the monetary lossening they've already made. Michael went to the MRC gala, which sounds like a hoot. Dale continues to wait for an iPhone 7, and notes that innovation at Apple is as dead as fried chicken.