Game Change

The lieutenant braced himself and pulled out a half-pint whiskey bottle.

This is it, boys, he yelled.

Just like they do in movies, it seemed unreal.

He held the bottle out to me, but I refused.

Just sniffing the cork under those conditions might have made me pass out.

In many respects, it was more terrifying than the landing because there were no vehicles to carry us along, not even the thin steel sides of an Amtrak for protection.

We were exposed, running on our own power, through a veritable shower of deadly metal and the constant crash of explosions.

For me, the attack resembled World War I movies I had seen of suicidal Allied infantry attacks through shellfire on the Western Front.

That's a-

He got a nomination for producing Game Change, the Sarah Palin thing from 2012.

Yeah, that movie's so good.

Sarah Paulson's in it.

I don't know.

Did you watch the movie or read the book Game Change about Sarah Palin's entrance into the 2008 election? I

watched the movie.

Yes.

So, yeah, the Bryce tour continues, but only to be outdone by Tom Tillis.

You're hard-pressed to find any major national media outlet that he has not been on over the last week.

You know, he's shopping his new book around, and you have to say his PR people, his book people, they've done a good job of getting Tom Tillis in front of a lot of faces, a lot of eyes this week on various network shows.

The latest one was...

Pax Romana means the Roman peace, and this is a 200-year period in the Nerva and Antonine dynasty where, uh, some historians have called this the, the, uh, best time to be alive in all of human history, living in the Roman Empire during Pax Romana, that it was the closest to utopia that human- that humans have ever come during the period of Pax Romana.

And talked about this millions of times on this podcast, um, relating to this history because if you watch the movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe, the first movie is about the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius is the last of what is called the Five Good Emperors.

The Five Good Emperors in the Nerva and Antonine dynasty is what makes up this period of Pax Romana.

And after the death of, uh, of Marcus Aurelius, his son Commodus becomes an emperor and, uh, the emperor.

And Commo- Commodus was a buffoon.

In the movie Gladiator, Commodus is played by Joaquin Phoenix and, uh, all of that's, you know, dramatized.

But, uh, the real Commodus, who's the son of Marcus Aurelius, is a buffoon.