rant · moment 7 of 17
James Baker's 'Two Types of Chief of Staff' and Dead Guests
from Gash Digital · #56
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
5 minRiffing on a wishlist of historians and journalists (Michael Lewis, Mark Bowden, Howard Zinn, Chomsky, Brzezinski), they discover many desired guests are dead, then spin out an elaborate bit about James Baker's cryptic quote about chiefs of staff who plan assassinations versus those who cover them up.
- 21:32Tim can't get Lou Rockwell from the Mises Institute on the show.
- 21:51Austrian economics advocates are a bunch of sad losers pushing unrealistic anarcho-capitalist ideas.
- 22:09Tim wants them on anyway because their foundation explains the problems the country is in.
- 22:54Nobody in media actually addresses institutionalized criminality—they either dismiss economists as cranks or fawn over them without pushback.
- 23:32Tim's guest wish list includes Michael Lewis, Mark Bowden, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn—but many of them are dead.
- 24:15The author of a book about the CIA's drug-running operation is dead, as are Alexander Cockburn and others Tim wanted to interview.
- 24:41James Baker wrote about two types of chief of staff: those who focus on the chief and those who focus on the staff.
- 25:03Tim jokes Baker's real distinction is between chiefs of staff who assassinate the president and those who ignore assassination plots.
- 25:42Baker's article taught that there are two types of chief of staff: one getting killed and one doing the killing, the velvet hammer approach.
- 26:16Tim considers getting Tom Hanks on the podcast, then questions what they'd actually do with him for an hour.
Lou RockwellJames BakerMises InstituteMark BowdenNoam ChomskyTom HanksMichael LewisHoward ZinnZbigniew BrzezinskiAlexander Cockburn