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If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?

Who in God's name knows what

it's all about. Hi, I'm Daniel Pletka. And I'm Mark Teeson. Welcome to our podcast. What the hell is going on? Mark, what the hell is, in fact, going on this week? Well, Danny, it feels like we're in the 1970s again. Sure does. I mean, Russia is invading one of its neighbors. A U.S. ally in the Middle East has been overtaken by Islamic radicals. Americans held

hostage behind enemy lines. There's a member of the first family who was found out to have been

doing business with Libya. And then we've got inflation, economic contraction, rising gas prices,

and the president is begging OPEC to produce more oil. I mean, it's like the second coming of

the Carter administration. And you wrote a great piece in the dispatch on foreign policy about how we're still paying the price for the Carter administration today. But, you know, what the hell is? I'll ask you, what the hell is going on, Danny? You know, it's funny. I told Mark before we started the podcast that I'm listening to Matt Contonetti's book still on Audible.

And we encourage you to go back and listen to our interview with Matt about that book.

A terrific conversation. A terrific conversation. But I mean, it is utterly remarkable how like the 70s this is.

And what is mysterious to me is...

I just came back, by the way, from California. Yeah. Gas prices are like $7 a gallon. I mean, it's insane. And higher than... I mean, that's just we were seeing as the normal prices of. In some parts of California, it's like, say, $8 or $9. Right. And we love to make fun of California. But, I mean, there are real questions about how people can afford this. Not your,

you know, work from home millennial who's still thinking about whether they want to go back to

grad school and hoping that the government is going to pay off their student loans. But like, you know,

real people who are out there working jobs, making minimum wage, just looking for a better future, $7 a gallon

gas actually takes a bite out of your budget. Then if you start at the supermarket,

let's not even talk about the empty shelves, the Soviet-style empty shelves. We've also got

the prices of things are utterly stunning. I see this because we used to have a family of five in the

house, six in the house. And then, you know, our kids grew up and they were older and they grow

older. And so we started spending less, except we're not spending less. I am spending the same today.

Are you the only family in America whose kids are not living at home or like still gouging off

the family? I know. I don't expect to be spending less on my kids for a long, long time.

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