The Ricochet Podcast - All I Want For Christmas Is…

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

It’s our last show for 2018, sadly there’s just not that much to talk about. Darn. Nothing going on, no controversy, no conflict. Just some old friends (and Ricochet editors Jon Gabriel and Bethany Mandel) shooting the breeze for 70 odd minutes. Enjoy and we’ll see you next year. And please: if you’re not yet a member — JOIN RICOCHET! Music from this week’s show: All I Want for Christmas Is... Source

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Visit thrombosis.ie. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and James Lilacs and I'm not Rob Long. Three, two, one. We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. Help me, Clarence! Get me back! Get me back! I don't care what happens to me! Get me back to my wife and kids! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lileks. Today we talk about what's going on this week and what went on last year and what will happen in the next with John Gabriel and Bethany Mando. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast and it's number 429 and frankly i don't know how we got to 428 with so little news to discuss but here we find ourselves again looking at the vacancy of

another week and wondering what is there to talk about guys i? I mean, I'm skint. I'm fresh out. Oh, Mattis left. Oh, shutdown swirls. Oh, RBG's in the hospital. But other than that, you know, what's going on? First of all, happy holidays to both of you. Thank you.

Thank you, Jason. And Merry Christmas to you. And Merry Christmas to you. You're going to win this war on Christmas, James. Excellent rejoinder, Mr. Long. We have to say that as aggressively as possible. Speaking of wars, looks like we're out of one, though. And this is causing some heads to explode, as they say on the Internet, because a lot of people were saying, why are we involved in long, pointless wars in foreign nations?

And then we're saying, all right, we're getting out. Wait a minute. We're going to abandon all these people to very specific short wars in their in their own home country a position i understand um i got a sick feeling on my stomach when mattis left um because i had the i i you either believe that donald trump knows more than his generals and if you think that i'm not sure what you're basing that upon, unless you want to say, ah, the grand strategic vision is what he's brought to the table and he needs to find somebody to implement it. Rob, Peter, what did you think when you first heard that Mattis was on the way out?

I got the same sick feeling in my stomach that you did. I've looked at the coverage today, and although the coverage is extensive, I don't think the coverage quite gets to it. In my judgment, well, you know, Donald Trump has a number of good points. Let's put up with the stuff we have to put up with. He's shaking up the status quo. He's getting us out of a ridiculous Paris climate accord, even as the economy is such that we're roaring ahead and producing natural gas and decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions. He's calling the hypocrisy. He's enacted a tax reform, which has led to vigorous economic growth. It's one thing to say all that as long as it's premised on the safety of the republic, which in turn, to an astonishing extent, was premised on one man, and that man was James

Mattis. It's one thing to have Donald Trump saying things around the campfire, as long as you know that behind him, standing on the ramparts, is James Mattis. Is Jim Mattis indispensable? And now with Jim Mattis gone, everything is different. Republicans have all kinds of calculations to make because now it's not on the part of Donald Trump exposes the nation to danger. Now all of a sudden. That is different. Now all of a sudden, in your guts, you think he's nuts. Is that what you're saying? I was thinking it over this morning.

Jim Mattis is really indispensable. He's a friend of mine. So, of course, I have a certain regard for him, affection for him. But there are times and there are places in which certain individuals can do uniform, the 750,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department, and all of Washington, both sides of the aisle, and not just command respect, but bring to the job deep knowledge of logistics and budgeting and personal relationships with all our allies. I do not know whom Donald Trump could nominate who would be able to replace Jim Mattis in all those regards. So this strikes me as the earth,

the reason we felt sick to our stomachs is that the earth just shifted under our feet. Rob? Yeah, I mean, what is it, in your, you know he's nuts. We should say that for those – for Ricochet listeners who are younger than 50 or 60, that was a Nixon slogan. No, no, no. Humphrey, sorry. Humphrey from 68. No, no, no.

Further back, 64. LBJ used it against Goldwater. Oh, in your heart. In your guts. In your heart, you know he's right, to which the Democratic rejoinder was. In your guts, you know he is. I was trying to get to the out one or two – I think two layers, the two filtering layers. The one layer is the whataboutism layer, which I think is a legitimate impulse that a lot of us have when people – Explain that. I've heard that used so many different ways. How do you mean it? When people attack Trump,

you want to say, well, what about Hillary Clinton? What about Obama? You didn't do this when Obama pulled out of Iraq. A lot of people supporting Trump's move in Syria felt that Obama had surrendered the war

in Iraq by pulling out of Iraq, and he was lambasted for it. So the whataboutism is something. And why, when he did it, did the media not raise such a fuss, right? The whataboutism on our side is very toxic for us because we end up

obsessing about what the media does and says as if we're watching a TV show or a sporting event instead of actual real-life events that unfold, and unfold in a way that had nothing to do really with how they're reported. I mean what will happen in Syria or Iraq has nothing to do with how Syria and Iraq are covered. The New York Times can distort the reporting of events, but it doesn't create events, and we often make that, I think, really, really, really foolish error. And then the second thing we have to pursue, the first layer filtering the what about us. And then the second layer is filtering out the things that are wrong that are not wrong – are not newly wrong because of Donald Trump.

And I think this is a form of what about it, but it's slightly different. I mean, the reality is that no one probably in America can give you a very clear idea of what we were supposed to do in Syria. So the mission itself, which was kind of vague and not quite fully defined and the win of it wasn't quite fully understood. I think until Donald Trump decided to remove 2,000 troops from Syria, there are a lot of Americans who didn't know there were 2,000 troops in Syria. And I think that's a problem, and that is the kind of slightly – and I don't think it's dishonest, but I think it's a slightly underhanded way that American foreign policy has been waged probably since Clinton. The idea that people – well, our geopolitical strategy is now murky. It's not easy enough to say. It's all tied to Soviet expansionism. Everybody arguing for the war in Vietnam from the guy at a construction site to a guy at the Rand Corporation to the guy in the Situation Room of the White House said it's the domino effect, and they knew what the domino effect was. They may have disagreed that it existed. They may have disagreed that it was a reason to go to Vietnam, but they understood the underlying philosophy of being in Vietnam, and they knew that the people who sent our 50,000 troops to

die in Vietnam had a governing philosophy. Now, that may be of small comfort to people who lost loved ones in Vietnam, but it was guided by a theory, a theory that John F. Kennedy had, and that Republicans had, and LBJ had, and Richard Nixon had, that it was a general consensus in the establishment for why we were in Vietnam. But since, I think since Clinton really, or maybe even more since George W. Bush, the idea, what we're doing, what are we doing in Somalia? What are we doing in Iraq for that matter? What were we doing in Saudi Arabia? Why were there 75,000 troops in Saudi Arabia before 9-11? All those things, we kind of swept it under the rug with bromides and large kind of big think and talk that wasn't connected to any kind of success. And so that

has been what's wrong with American foreign policy, I think, not so much where we were, or why we were where we were, but why we thought we were that why we thought we were there and what we said we were there to do. And that comes to no good end. It's never a good thing for American foreign policy to be kept murky. So once you filter out all those things, then you're left with sort of an impulsive decision by a president who can't articulate a real reason for either being in Syria or being out of Syria, has claimed success over ISIS, which is not true, and has not yet articulated an actual complete vision of where he thinks American forces should be. And that is his job. That is the job description of – that is the primary job description of the chief executive of the United States of America, and he hasn't done that. So he's failed. I mean he's failed at that respect, and I think it's a big failure for him and a big problem for this administration. It's one of the reasons I think this administration is going to continue to be a disaster. But it isn't as if yesterday was great and today is terrible.

A lot of these things – I mean once you look at those three layers, two layers that i'm talking about um i i think you end up with a truer picture of why this guy is blowing it but i don't think it's just him i think there's some there's some hard work to do on on on the sort of american policy side and frankly on the american voter side too i'd agree with all of that and in fact i'd say that when trump if you read the bob woodward book which I actually wouldn't particularly recommend, it's not actually all that good a book, even by Bob Woodward standards. It's disjointed. He's clearly limited in the number of sources of which he's making primary use. Okay, grant all that. But there are a number of scenes in there that I believe Woodward intended to be alarming.

Of course he did. The name of the book is Fear, and it's Donald Trump confronting the generals and Jim Mattis and his national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and particularly with regard to Afghanistan, there's a scene in which Trump says to H.R. McMaster, you're the guys who got us into Afghanistan. We've been there for years. Tell me why we shouldn't just get out. And you know what? I read that and thought to myself, that's healthy. Pushing these guys around, kicking the premises, that's healthy. And furthermore, I discussed it with HR McMaster, and HR said, yes, actually, that was a perfectly reasonable thing for the chief of for the commander in chief to do but to make decisions based on that and just overrule that's to push the generals around in

private is is a good and healthy thing something else has just happened and right and and the and i couldn't agree more i'm thinking to myself okay syria is complicated exactly what were those 2 000 troops supposed to be in syria for anyway I on two occasions heard Jim Mattis describe Syria as the most complicated conflict he had ever had to deal with in four decades of service. hand it is the job of the president of the united states above all when it is known that he is overruling his principal advisors in the matter to explain what he's doing and he'd have nothing like that correct you can't beat something with nothing and that's i think ultimately the problem i mean look america first however you think about it that's a that's a philosophy and if carried out um you know rigorously and with you know philosophical consistency it all right it's a philosophy people voted for that i mean they you have to impose it but it's not really and i think without um without an actual uh top down

understanding of what you know ronald re Ronald Reagan came into office and turned American policy around. It was no longer about detente. It was about winning the Cold War, successfully confronting the Soviet Union in a non-lethal way with a resolve to not surrender. That took enormous, I mean, you know better than I do, Peter, that's an enormous amount of sort of, you know, brain change, the organizational, almost core spiritual change for a huge part of the American foreign policy military establishment. Had to change. They had to change their attitude. And he did it. But he did it because he had a very, very, very clear set, not that they weren't complicated and not that they weren't highly intellectual, but a set of principles that he was saying, no, be more Obama-style, which is – we all freaked out with Obama's red line. But that was nothing – that was incredibly minor compared to the weird fits and starts and forwards and reversals and lefts and rights that this administration has taken.

And I think ultimately the problem is that Donald Trump is more comfortable in his life and in his business life being the problem that someone else has to solve yes i am the problem that all my debtors have my my uh my uh uh my bet might not make my but the lenders have to solve right i'm the debtor that's the problem and all the lenders have to solve it when i walk into the room i'm donald trump and i i cannot make my debt payment this is no way i'm going to make it that's the problem, and all the lenders have to solve it. When I walk into the room, I'm Donald Trump, and I cannot make my debt payment. This is no way I'm going to make it. That's not so much my problem. It's their problem, and we all have to work together to solve the problem to save me.

And he's not really required – he's never really been required to think abstractly about a larger organization or a larger philosophy to guide a country and a people. And that I think we're seeing right now the ill effects of his shower. He did it once. There was a review about a year after he came into office. They did a review of Afghanistan, the Afghan policy, and he gave a full-dress speech on Afghanistan. H.R. McMaster wrote much of it, but Donald Trump delivered a full-dress speech on Afghanistan. H.R. McMaster wrote much of it, but Donald Trump delivered a full dress speech on Afghanistan in which he discussed previous policies. He discussed the points that he had considered with the generals, and he laid out the three or four principal points

of our new Afghan policy. You could disagree with it, but you knew where the president stood. This time around, bupkis. Well, and I think a lot of people on Donald Trump's base are going to say they don't really care whether or not there's a grand, highfalutin philosophical construct behind this. What matters is getting out of places that are pointless for us, haven't worked. There's no discernible reason to be there. So they don't care. Again, you want words? Okay, fine. Here's some words. What counts is actions, and he's done the action thing. I think beyond the base,

I'm not the base, so that's my intuition of what they may say. Beyond the base, I don't think that leaving Afghanistan at this point is going to trouble many people for the simple reason that we feel like, all right, several millennia old culture. We've given you 18 years to get your act together.

You seem remarkably disinclined to do so. We're out of here. And you can understand that position. I think we all hold in the back of our heads two things. One, the lightning victory with the Northern Alliance in 2001, and two, we think the Taliban being banished and the elections and the blue fingers and the girls who could

uncover their heads and go to school. And the hope for a moment there that there was a civil society that would flower in Kabul and elsewhere, and that all of this old pointless tribalism would be wiped away and actually you'd be able to make a country out of that. So we built roads, we put in refrigeration units that stand vacant we put in huge electrification projects all that stuff doesn't matter they don't seem to be particularly interested i mean i remember

that's just not quite so on the the i mean yes that probably probably is in general consciousness yes but i just you know i did a tape did a with H.R. McMaster and a friend of his, Janan Mazazi, who's an Afghan ambassador. And the standard of living in Afghanistan has 16 or so, has risen to something like between a third and 40%. Pretty dramatic changes. Their argument is you can't build a civil society in 20 seconds or 18 years. It takes commitment. And the American presence now, sorry, I'm recapping the argument here, but the policy on which HR worked with Trump was you only need about 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan because we've got it essentially under control, but dip much below that point and the Taliban can come rushing back. By the way, the Chinese are investing in Afghanistan. The Russians have a heavy diplomatic presence there. The argument would be it doesn't – we're not spending a huge amount in Afghanistan anymore.

And if you get weary of it and start yanking troops out, you may regret it in three or four or five years. That's the counterargument. I understand that. And that's where I was going. But the point of it is, is that from our position is, why exactly is it our responsibility at this point to continue shepherding them through this process? That's what a lot of people think. Right. I mean, if we're sending Peace Corps to help them dig latrines and get clean water, that's a charitable matter.

But this is a heavy expenditure of American military forces. We still got people who love to exploderate themselves in Kabul. And the idea that the Taliban could come rushing back in shows the fragility of what we've supposedly built. Now, I love the idea of America being able to leave behind a stable country that was once mired in Taliban cruelty and Islamic nonsense, Islamist nonsense, and have something that survives us. But I have the feeling that 36, that 18 years, no, you can't do it. 36 years, no, you can't do it. 36 years, no, you can't do it. There's always going to be a wild segment out there that is ready for fighting season to start again. And back you go. Then it's poppies, then it's opium,

then it's terrorist training camps. I mean, we can stay there for 36 years and increase the literacy and increase all of these things. And there's still going to be a hotbed somewhere where somebody is going to be plotting to come over and kill a bunch of us for the usual stupid reasons. Right, but notice how quickly we, in this conversation, went from talking about Syria, which is one thing, to talking about Afghanistan, which is another thing. We as a country and as a culture and sort of as even a sort of conversational pod right here are unclear about the motivations for everything. So we're unclear about exactly how we win or how we lose. So our primary goal in Afghanistan was simply to smash the Taliban because the Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda. And al-Qaeda, this is the morning after 9-11. That was a police action is what we did. And then we decided to stick around. We didn't have to stick around. We decided to stick around and see what we could build out of the rubble. But the rubble was the goal. That was primary goal was the rubble, to take a Taliban-controlled nation and smash its government um and we did that and and whether we did that effectively or permanently is sort of anybody's guess whether whether we could have expected to do that permanently is

anybody's guess syria is a slightly different thing because syria is essentially a a a a non um specific police action during this during a civil war in which we do not really know which side we want to win we just know we don to win. We just know we don't like Assad more than we don't like anybody else, but we're not sure about that. That could change. And we are there simply to make sure that the Russians don't make it a client state. Right. I mean, I shifted it to Afghanistan because it's a clearer situation. It's an older situation and it's more understandable, I think, for people to say, look, after 18 years, it's time perhaps that we go.

I'm not saying that's what I want to do. What I love about America is that, yes, it was a police action. We went in and we broke things. But we didn't just pull out afterwards and said, figure it out. We stayed around to help, which is what we do. You can make the point that in Iraq, after we invaded Iraq, that the mistake that we made was debathification. That actually what we should have just done is installed somebody who was as bad as Saddam, but was more beholden to us, and let the structures of their society heal themselves and knit themselves together. We might not have had ISIS at that point, but we didn't do that. And

so what we got was the mess, the Syrian war, and ISIS. And while I think that a lot of people don't have the same clarity with Syria as they did with Afghanistan, it basically comes down to this. There are really bad guys. They're chopping heads off and we should do something about them because it's bad for the region. And it is a humanitarian obscenity that perhaps we feel somewhat obligated to go in and help fix. There's one beyond that.

Beyond that. Go on. No, no. There's one specific, I grant all of that. Syria is extremely complicated, but there's one easy to understand part of Syria. And it is this, that a portion of Syria was a portion of what ISIS had effectively conquered.

ISIS, you'll recall, what distinguishes ISIS from other terrorist or Islamic groups is that they wanted territory. They wanted to establish a geography from which to extend a new caliphate. And we, under Donald Trump and under Jim Mattis, we did deprive them of that territory. We took them down to essentially no territory. The president seems to, that is what he seems to be referring to when he says, we've defeated ISIS, now let's come home. The problem is that depriving them of territory is not eliminating the organization. And in that little corner of Syria, when we pull out, there's every reason to suppose ISIS will simply roll right back in, or that Putin will use that as an excuse to expand the Russian presence in Syria. So there's one little corner of Syria where the presence of those 2,000 troops,

the reason for that is very straightforward and clear. It's land. We took it from the bad guys. You're absolutely right about Syria, and you're absolutely right about ISIS. I guess my question is that where I – I'm just trying to figure out the reasons why I'm mad at Donald Trump and I think he's failing, reasons why I think that the situation is failed and other people are at fault, and the reasons why my whataboutism, which is my natural inclination, is – it can be satisfied in another way i will say that our problem as a nation for the past since since really the invasion of iraq has been that we have not we have not been clear about our needs and our and our goals in these foreign sort of escapades and we've allowed mission creep to take over mostly in part mostly because in afghanistan it's it's a lot more

complicated and we had early success. And it's just it takes a while to build a nation. In Iraq, I think it's because we realized that the Iraq war was a mistake and that we weren't going to succeed at it and that we had to change the terms of what success meant. And then as instability and civil war was sort of spread naturally by that effect that effect we felt like well we need to have a new a new set of principles now that the obama principle has kicked the can down the road accomplish everything uh off stage with drones and and uh only occasionally make a bold statement about the region and when necessary to absolutely break and double cross that statement. And I think Donald Trump is really kind of continuing that.

He's continuing that policy, which is to sort of talk a lot and then double back and then reverse himself and then when necessary, pull out. And that to me, it's much more like the Obama foreign policy than it is anything else. But that kind of policy can only last so long. And I suspect that General Mattis believes that it can't last more than a week. And Donald Trump thinks, no, I could probably last another four years. Right. And then then I'll be gone. In which in which in which case Donald Trump is not that different from any other president and certainly not that different from Barack Obama. And what we're dealing with today is all of Washington, all of Washington, off camera, they'd all say, well, thank goodness, at least we've got Jim Mattis taking care of that. And now he's not taking care of that anymore. Yes, well, it makes one long for the relative clarity of an intervention in our own

hemisphere. It seemed a lot more cut and dried back then, didn't it? It's just nothing, but there's nothing but Merck and treacle and quicksand and the rest of it. So it shall ever be. Oh, well,

here's the thing though, is that, um, as confusing as the middle East may be, your taxes are going to be even more confusing. He said, transitioning gently into an ad because of course, all of those little details and things that they've done i mean you know you lost the salt you're living in a blue state you've got all kinds of new

deduction rules to apply oh it's confusing but there is one deduction that's still holding strong and that's the charitable deduction at the the end of the year, it's a great time to think about your charitable giving, isn't it? You're full of the holiday spirit. Why not extend that generosity to those beyond your own circle? You can minimize your tax burden at the same time and maximize your charitable impact with the Donor Advised Fund from Donors Trust. Now, if you've been with us for a while, you've heard us talk about Donors Trust before. Donors Trust works with conservative and liberty-minded donors all across the country to simplify and protect their giving in a tax-friendly way. And you've probably heard us talk about these donor-advised funds. Well, a fund acts like your own charitable savings account,

letting you support the religious or community or policy groups you love on your schedule. And it's a tool within your reach. You don't have to be a millionaire to give like one. So don't be just a giver. Be a smart giver with a Donors Trust Fund. Download your free prospectus at DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet to see how Donors Trust can help you. That's DonorsTrust.org slash Ricochet. And our thanks to Donors Trust for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, here we are at midterm, and a lot of people are saying, and I was thinking this too, for some reason last night, the more chaos you have, the more you have matters going, foreign policy by tweets, the Mueller this, you have people saying, hey, you know, the Mueller thing, the Flynn thing, it's doesn't look as good as you might have thought of. You think, is this guy going to make it out? What I thought last night, and actually did, was that it is entirely possible, not likely, what you guys tell me,

is it possible that you would have people in the Senate say, oh, the House passed impeachment well let's let's take a little look of it because they're simply so tired and want a return to a world in which you don't seem to be buffeted about every single second like a hummingbird in a typhoon donald trump would be the first president impeached for his personality and leadership style alone but i mean i i can see some of them just saying look with pants it would be so much more calm and if i'm walking the dog around the block in in minnesota and thinking yeah it'll be a there's going to be a time i don't care where it's biden or if it's pants or somebody when it's just not going to feel like this and i'm i like that i like that idea That's seductive. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm not alone, am I? You are for sure not alone. My judgment would be things started to – here's own. That is to say, there's very little evidence that Donald Trump's coattails are responsible for anyone's getting a seat in the Senate. They on the other hand, it is not that good a result either. In 1982, Reagan had the worst recession since the Second World War, and he lost 27 seats in the

House. Donald Trump had the best economy in a decade and a half, and he lost 37 seats in the House. In the states that carry Donald Trump to the presidency in the upper Midwest, his support sank. Republican support sank. And so you look at that and say to yourself, wait a minute, during the first two years, the president seemed politically invulnerable. There was a lot of good he could do, particularly getting the tax reform enacted and particularly getting good judges on the courts, justices on the Supreme Court. And we could contain and sit out and judges on the courts, justices on the Supreme Court, and we could contain and sit out and wait out the damage, particularly trade policy. Second term, surely on the basis of the election results, it looks as though it's going to be a

lot harder for this guy to get reelected. And it's very easy to imagine his going down in a catastrophe and taking a lot of good people with him. And at the same time, with all of the Mueller stuff and the impeachment talk and this, it's much higher, much, you can't see much as much good getting done. And you can see real danger to the nation now. So the whole, what do we do about Donald Trump calculus for people who are professional politicians, I'm trying to give you what I think is a fairly objective cold analysis from the Republican point of view here, has shifted pretty dramatically between the election and events of the last to introduce, but I agree with that 100 percent. But I say that our mistake, our side makes the Republicans think, I should say, is that they think it's going to be up to them. And it's not. It's like we know the Republicans no longer control that issue. They they're what they're what they do or don't do or feel or don't feel about that issue is irrelevant. It's entirely based on whether the Democrats in the house now emboldened under

you know we love to make fun of her but she is a very very smart politician nancy pelosi oh highly intelligent that is why chuck schumer is smart too these are intelligent people uh that is why she is speaker of the house again all right it doesn't happen that often she's speaker of the house again because she's smart. Whether it makes more sense to them, whether they think they're going to benefit more by impeaching the president and shoving it as a gigantic burning bag of dog poop onto the store step of the Senate, ring the doorbell and run, which is a possible, actually a pretty good strategy, or an even better strategy is to hobble and to troll and to mess with the head of

this president, which is remarkably easy to do. He's a remarkably weak person in that respect. And in that case, try to play their own game of triangulation and see how far they can get in 18 months. They may not need to impeach the president to destroy him. They may not need to impeach him to ruin his chances at reelect. They may want a big, steaming dumpster fire of Republican politicians and see how many people they can shove down with him. It's an old, I think, Celtic Navy trick, right? You get everybody on the boat. As many people can fit on the boat, you put on the boat. So you put the president on the boat, and it's a lifeboat. And you shove as many Republican senators and congressmen as you everybody on the boat. As many people can fit on the boat, you put on the boat. So you put the president on the boat and you and it's a lifeboat and you shove as many Republican senators and congressmen as you can on the boat.

And then you set the boat on fire. And that is a pretty good strategy, too. But it is entirely about what the Democrats want and what the calculation they make. It has nothing to do with any Republican senator, no matter how brave or smart he is in the Senate. There we have Rob Long, a Viking funeral for the Republican Party. I think he's right. And if you want to sum it all up, you can say that 12 years from now or 14 years from now, the Republican chances for a presidency look pretty good because there's always the two and then the third one of people get tired.

And then after 14 years, we are in the driver's seat, baby. And hey, what drives Ricochet besides the thoughtful comments of the people who contributed to it? Why? Ricochet would not be Ricochet without the amusing, thoughtful, insightful comments and pieces by John Gabriel and Bethany Mandel, who are with us now. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey. Good and well. Merry Christmas, Bethany.

Thank you so much i wish you a merry christmas in return wait wait a minute now we should probably set this is uh this isn't a response to a piece written by a journalist that's just a tweet julia a tweeter she wrote a whole article about it the whole thing yeah julia has she has more vowels than she ought to have i think and she could probably give that f to somebody less fortunate than ourselves but yeah she was people people asked her merry christmas don't ask don't don't say and she said and she made a a job astonished by because it seemed so old-fashioned but she basically the protocol i'm saying don't wish me a merry christ. I don't celebrate Christmas. And I hate having to explain it. So here's the thing that bothers me about when Jews do this, because a lot of Jews do this.

Really? Yeah. Can you imagine any Christian person getting upset if they went to, like, Teaneck, New New Jersey or Lakewood, New Jersey, or like sort of an enclave in Los Angeles or Brooklyn and getting huffy puffy, if someone wished them Shana Tova around their Shoshana, it would never happen. They'd be like, oh, what a unique cultural experience. The fact that people get upset about this, and there's so many Jews in my social circle who get upset about Merry Christmas. I'm like, you are giving all of us a bad name. You are all Scrooges. That's the Jews.

Yeah. Like we live in a Christian majority society. I am sorry to say that. You've perhaps not noticed it. You know, the only time people are selecting or celebrating Christmas. I did sort of get, well, I don't know. It was more, more of my feelings hurt. I was in Manhattan and there was a couple of guys handing out leaflets to people on the street, but they asked, I couldn't see what

they were asking, couldn't hear what they were asking until I got to them. Are you Jewish? Exactly. Are you Jewish? Yeah, they were Chabad. Is that what they were? I immediately replied, no, but I'm on your side. They just turned away and said, sorry, no Gentile, not interested. So the backstory with that is their sort of mission isn't to convert people, but it's to get more Jews doing Jewish things because it's sort of like more Jews

doing mitzvahs and doing the things that they're committed to do the closer we get to Messiah. They take you to a little van. Yeah. And then they kind of like wrap your arms, your hands in ribbon and cloth right yeah it's filling yeah yeah so it's uh that's it there was a van there i remember that but i didn't know but can we just like to just be a little bit more um honest and frank here about what happened

peter did they didn't ask if you were jewish they they knew i mean you're not you you were no one's more goyish than peter rob What was the thing? I thought that the sweater years on the streets of Manhattan is to never assume. Ever, ever, ever. Because there were people who were Jewish that he was like, I never would have guessed it. And there were some people who were like, oh, yeah, you're definitely Jewish. And they were not. So you never know. Peter Robinson.

I mean, my maiden name was Bethany Murphy, for Christ's sake, and I'm Jewish. I think L. Sharpton is probably a fair shame. You can probably make that assumption. You make an assumption, as we know, you make an ass out of you. John, Gabriel, you're there, right? Yeah, the foremost Jewish expert on Ricochet. Glad to join

you guys. Christmas in Arizona, I imagine, if I remember correctly, lights draped around cacti, which is a dangerous and prickly and blood-drawing proposition, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. And I am, of course, wearing shorts and a T-shirt today celebrating the blustery weather. It's 65 degrees in D.C.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's surprising. I remember my first couple of years in Washington being surprised at how much warmer it is than New York and North. I mean. And let me just tell you, and I speak on behalf of Rob, too, probably, who's probably got a lot more Christmas spirit because he isn't in New York. I'm looking out at the vestiges of snow that we have. We haven't had fresh snow in some time.

We've had warm weather. But we've got enough so that we can technically claim it's a white Christmas. Now, this is the worst Christmas of my life ever, period. But today, I decided that what I was going to do, instead of wallowing in grimness and glumness, was actually get out the tree, put it up, and decorate it. And I did. I feel better because of it. No, no, no, no. Get out the tree? You, of all people, in the middle of the frozen north, use an artificial tree? I have a real one in Arizona, for crying out loud. I do, too, in northern South.

I have a real one in the buttock. Bethany, do you have a real one? So I grew up with a Catholic mother, so I grew up with a tree. And I hated real trees. And I grew up in upstate New York, so it was $15 to get a tree. But the pine needles were awful. They would fall every two seconds. And it gave me allergies.

I'm like, this is the only time of year I don't have allergies. Why on earth would I inflict this upon myself in the middle of December? In June, when I am vacuuming up, I find pine needles. They never go away. But you do use a real tree then. Well, I find pine needles. They never go away. And so you do use a real tree then. Well, I have in the past. And then we decided we're going to go with this one because it's just easier.

And frankly, yes. Is it white? No. Oh, no, Peter. It is not an aluminum silver tree with a tricolor light fixture illuminating it to make it look like something from 2001 A Space Odyssey. But it is artificial i'm afraid you're going to have to post a picture of this all of us feel better i will and and gesundheit oh i just said god bless well any god all gods no only my god i only want my god to bless bethany i want that other person's god everyone else's god can't do it here's the funny thing about that julia yaffe piece she really showed her ignorance about judaism in the piece because she was talking

about the christian god and the jewish god i'm like this is not a concept i'm familiar with maybe you should have had some editors uh edit not just the words but also the content you mean she wrote the piece from the point of view of a Jew? I thought it was from the point of view of an atheist. No. Oh, I see. And the funny part is 90% of the folks in my social circle who get offended by this stuff are not super religious Jews. And I think that it's just an insecurity in their own Judaism that manifests itself in hating someone else's religion. Most actually religious Jews are like, yeah, have at it. Like we have 3000 holidays. You can have this one.

At least it's the happy time of the year when the, when the left loves Jesus and the left loves Jesus because he was homeless. He was an immigrant and all of those things. And so suddenly it's incredibly imperative and relevant that we talk about Jesus as much as possible. But what can I just say that I like to talk about Jesus for the same reasons at Christmas time, because he was a victim. His parents were victims of an enormously powerful centralized government which demanded people do something for the for the sake of paying taxes. What could be more of an overarching, overreaching, over-smothering central federal government than Rome demanding that you go to a certain

place just so that you can register just so you can pay taxes? And they had to show up for a census count as well. Any good conservative, when the census taker comes to your door, you say, am I being detained? And you slam the door in this way leave it to rob long to give us the nativity story as told by montgomery burns brilliant exactly right james why is this the worst christmas i i sidetracked

what's going on what's going on in the lilacs household well for the first time in 18 years my daughter isn't here. She's in Brazil. And she is not only in Brazil. She is with a wild, boisterous, close-knit, large family that owns a hotel on a beach. She's never coming back. So while we're once our little tender, little home, quiet, nice, lovely Christmases here, intimate and the rest of it have been replaced by this boisterous Latin thing that I simply cannot measure up to. I'm glad she's having a great time.

She's never coming back for Christmas. I'm glad she's having a fantastic time. But this is the first time in 18 years when she hasn't been here. It's been dreadful. I have to say, you're having a hard time with this because you talked about this with the crews a lot, that this is a real thing. This is a life passage that you're going through. Yes. Of seeing this.

And what's strange for me is that I think I met your daughter once, but I feel like I know her because I read your blog for so many years, and I can only imagine that this is very difficult. But I can say to you that I guarantee you as much fun as she's having on the beach in Brazil, where it's summer, I'm sure that she misses being home. The artificial tree, I'm sure she misses that above all. Above all. Maybe if you

had a real tree, she would have come home. Thank you, Bethany, for the guilt. That's good. Between the Jews and the Catholics on this show. That's what happens when you have a Jew on right before Christmas. James, the house is empty. He's got an artificial tree. He's sitting around, moping around

feeling guilty. You are one step away from a nursing home, my friend. You need to get on a plane and fly to Sao Paulo yourself for goodness sake. John and Bethany. John's been writing about this. So I think I'll go to John first, if you don't mind, Bethany. Although I live in fear of I don't want to cross you. Seth has told me never cross Bethany. So listen, we did an opening chat. Of course we did, about the resignation of Jim Mattis,

and all three of us, Lilacs, Robinson, and Long, were pretty darned anti-Trump. John, if it were your job, and I think for the next couple of minutes it sort of is your job, to put the best face on this that you possibly can, what would you say? Well, I think our new defense secretary, Stephen Miller, will do an excellent job. Yeah, it's very hard to put a good gloss on this. I write for the Arizona Republic, the local paper here, and I have to turn in my articles a week ahead of time. And the whole point was, look, it's Christmas.

I'm tired of the sky is falling reporting the world isn't ending calm down and then uh it still hasn't run yet of course and uh then yesterday happened and i was like huh okay and for the first time i feel like okay this is getting bad however this was what i thought the trump administration would be like starting two years ago so it's like well at least we got a couple good years out out of it, some good judges. But Mattis's departure, the most capable person serving in the federal government, that's going to be tough to digest. And he can't be replaced. He's one of a kind, the warrior monk chaos, and he's an amazing person. So it's going to be a pretty rocky start to 2019, I would say. Hold on to your hat.

But hopefully we will get someone competent in there. I've heard some people mention, and it might be tricky being a senator, but he's a senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. Oh, that would make me feel better right away. Yes, yes, yes. He's from Arkansas, so it should be yes so um i i think that would uh put a lot of people at ease even people who don't like tom cotton so okay bethany your turn seth is going to come home or if he hasn't already done seth is going to come home and say oh that trump you know seth has these anti-trump tendencies

anyway and you being you magazine now we're on some pro-Trump magazine now. We're good. No, it's not going to be pro-Trump. No, that's what made the whole thing so funny. I said it was crazy. Yeah, I know. It's a crazy thing. But it's now my favorite joke because he's such a never-Trumper.

So Seth comes in. He starts the never-Trump stuff. And he starts using Mattis. And you being you, there's a contrarian element in you. What are you going to say to Seth? I will not start caring about any of this stuff until it affects our daily life. I just, I don't have the brain power. I don't have the emotional capacity to get like really worked up about it.

Can you hear it? I'm sorry. He doesn if they know Bethany is that she's actually giving birth. This is number seven. And she's so good at this. She can actually do the interview while giving birth. The kids know enough to keep it down a little too. The youngest one doesn't. So I don't care until it starts affecting our daily lives. And when it does affect our daily lives, it will probably be in a nuclear holocaust,

in which case we'll be dead. So who cares? We had a good run. Merry Christmas, everyone. And the same to you, Julia. The thing is, is what your kid needs right now to give them,

to make them quiet is either a pacifier, preferably one of those, you know, the BPH or whatever that thing is supposed to, you know, something like that. Or a wet rag soaked in whiskey to chew on like that. Or if you really want to be the kind of mom that they'll remember forever, give them something delicious, sugary, and chewy, and the rest of it. And if you're saying, I haven't any of that in my house, well, that's your fault. But you can really fix that fast. Matter of fact, you can fix it fast for everybody. You can make sure that everybody in your Christmas list doesn't get some stupid piece of junk that

they don't want, an ugly tie, an ugly shirt, an ugly wine puller. No, get them cookies, but don't get them any cookies. Get them Mrs. Fields cookies. It's what they want. For over 40 years, Mrs. Fields has made delicious treats like their signature chocolate chip cookies, handcrafted frosted favorites, melt-in-your-mouth brownies. I have to do this fast because I want to get up in my chair and go downstairs and see if I have any left. Mrs. Fields gourmet gift baskets and tins make the perfect present to surprise and delight anybody on your list this season. At Mrs. Fields, their cookies and their sweets, they're baked every day and they arrive fresh because they're baked every day, fresh and flavorful to your door. If somebody else is in ordering, it's easy. They can ship your gift anywhere across the United States.

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mrsfields.com. Our thanks to Mrs. Fields for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And if you wanted to send those to Ricochet headquarters, we wouldn't say no, but you don't know where Ricochet headquarters is. That's because it's distributed. It's all over the world. It's it's it's uh it's no it's not in one place but you know what would be really great oh to build a you know like to occupy a tower in new york and have six flower floors and have them rebranded the ricochet plaza one or something like that oh i take a lot of money though rob and you know when it comes to asking for money though nobody's better than that at you you You have persuaded Hollywood executives to part with huge amounts of money. But yet you have people listening to this podcast who somehow have resisted the blandishments and the come of my life. I will just say this, that we're coming near the end of the year and really interesting stuff is happening.

You have right now on this podcast, me and Peter and James and John and Bethany, and we're all doing work for you and we're all trying to put on a great, make sure the site is interesting and lively and civil and that these podcasts are fun and addictive and varied and that you have a fun and addictive and varied and that you have a lot of choices, and we're looking for all the sorts of funding and revenue models we can. And one of them that we really like is the member model. So we want you to become a member, and I know there are –

I will go out on a limb and say there are 2,000 people listening right now who have decided in their heads that I'm going to join Ricochet, probably at the podcast listener level of $2.50 a month or maybe more. I don't want to stop you. And they haven't done it. And if you're one of them, know that you're one of the 2,000 people right now today who could radically change for the better the trajectory of Ricochet so that we can grow

a little bit in 2019. And that's what I'm really speaking to now. The people who decided to think, oh, yeah, I would probably do it and keep putting it off. I look, I'm one of those people in my life a lot. But I'm asking you between now and, say, the end of the year, now and Christmas, now and next week, just go on to Ricochet.com, click, join at the podcast level member, and join us

and join all of us here on the podcast on the site and on your pod waves. We will be eternally grateful, and you will be doing a great thing for conservative media. Excellent. Hey, before we get to the end of the year predictions, I wanted to note something before.

I'll bet all of you guys here have some traditional drink that you have this time of the year. Slim of its, Manischewitz, I don't know. John, what is your favorite thing to coif at this time of the year? A good hot toddy made with a fine bourbon. Yeah, there you go. Any particular bourbons you would like to recommend? Yeah, my favorite is Basil Hayden, but you can get away with something a little less expensive, like a Maker's Mark or something, or Knob Creek might be the way to go to make the hot toddy.

Use an actual cinnamon stick, the real stuff. Go to Penzi's if there happens to be one near you, so it's nice and fresh. But that is my go-to on Christmas Eve. After everyone's gone to bed and i'm done assembling the bicycles etc there you go toddy for john bethany what uh what does your

family enjoy this time of the year i'm so seth drinks bourbon and i'm always on the lookout for different um recommendations my my thing with him is whenever i've done something that warrants a big apology i buy him apology bourbon. So thank you for that, John. Have you thought of branding that? That would be fantastic. Apology bourbon. Yes, it's funny. When I was packing, when we were moving,

I had to pack his bourbon selection, and I was like, wow, I'm kind of a jerk. Oh, it's a lot of bourbon. There we go. Somewhere 15, 20 years from now, there'll be a kid who feels bad because they knew the other kids were planned, but they were the makeup section. They were the apology bourbon. The apology bourbon makeup section child.

Rob? Well, you know, lately in the Christmas time, I've been going to rum. I'm not quite sure I know why. I drink bourbon most of the year and drink gin in the summer. But in the winter, for some reason, I love a couple of rum drinks. I love Dark and Stormy. Traditionally, people drink it

in the summer, but I think it's a wonderful, wonderful Christmas drink. It's something about the ginger and the pepperiness I really like. Dark and Stormy, of course, is the Avenatti and his client having a confab. Yeah. Peter? like so dark and stormy of course is the avenatti and his client having a confab yeah peter you can't do that to me james that was all right sorry um eggnog with cheap whiskey

cheap whiskey because it just doesn't matter i don't have standards just dump a bunch of it in the egg something about sweet and creamy and whiskey is just the best. And if you're going to do that, remember, Peter recommends the palpable plastic bottle on the bottom of the shelf. Plan Anderson. If it's a glass bottle, they're spending too much money. If you can actually palpate the bottle, that's the brand you want. I try many things during the season. The one thing that I won't be trying is Stroop Wafel liqueur because I don't know what I was thinking.

We went to Norway several years ago and had Stroopwafels, which is this wonderful Scandinavian cookie with a caramel filling. And you put it on top of your coffee and it melts. It's just absolutely delicious. Wonderful. Well, they also, in Europe, because they are clever people like this, made a liqueur that was based on this. So, I mean, it's basically caramel and sugar and extra sugar and more caramel and I don't know what else it could possibly be. And the stuff is sweet.

You pour it over a log and the log has diabetes within five minutes. It's just not very good at all. And so I've retreated to my usual, like Rob, to the beers and the rest of it. The beers and the whiskeys. The problem is, I ran out of beer and that's my fault. That ain't Hopsi's fault. And believe me, and I am kicking

myself right now because Oh, nice transition. Well, it's the longest I've ever done. But the truth of the matter is, if you're somebody who likes beer, and really, who doesn't when it's good beer, then Hopsi, this thing, I love this thing. You know the best way to get beer. The only way to get beer're thinking, oh, wait a minute, well, I'm going to have to draw, you put a line to the wall and have to have refrigerated kegs in the basement. No, no, no, no, no. And the price tag for something like that

would be ridiculous. The price tag for Hopsi is amazing. You have your own beer at home with the sub. That's what it's called. A countertop appliance made by Krups that fits neatly in your kitchen and your bar, your living room. And it's so stylish.

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The IPAs, I might add, are very popular. My wife loves a good IPA, and that's what she was most impressed by when I got that hopsy going. They've partnered with a long list of breweries, and they ship these little mini cakes, these torpedoes to your home, to your office. It's fun. I mean, it actually is. I love popping those things in there and pulling them out it's like a an artillery gun that fires great beer and the thing is i'm not a beer expert i'm easy to please but i've had some beer experts taste these things and frankly they're flavors that you don't find around here because they're regional favorites to get the sub home draft machine two of these mini kegs of beer each of which is equivalent about well it's two mini kegs about two six six-packs, two Hopsi glasses.

They're very nice and engraved. And free membership in the monthly beer club. How much would you pay? You're going to pay $99, which when you see this machine is going to stun you. It's amazing. Go to tryhopsi.com slash ricochet and use the promo code ricochet. That's tryhopsi, T-R-Y-H-O-P-S-Y.com slash ricochet, promo code ricochet. You're going to love this thing.

If you like a little beer, if you like a lot of beer, this is going to be the coolest thing. And what a gift it would make to somebody who's a beer aficionado. Go on, tryhopsy.com. And our thanks to Hopsy for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Well, let's wind up with our predictions because the year's gone. Who cares? It's dead. It's in the history book.

What's coming in 2019? I'll let you two fight out for who wants to go first. I'll go. This is John. I'm thinking for the serious stuff, I'm thinking that Trump is going to pivot to working with the Democrats on a big infrastructure bill that conservatives will hate. I think he wants another win like the criminal justice reform, and they'll find the money somewhere. And also, I don't think the China trade war is long for this world. By the end of the year, that's going to be over because he has too many friends invested

in the stock market. And I think he's going to be declaring victory and moving out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Declaring victory and moving on or moving out? Do you mean he's not running for re-election? Oh, no. Moving on. Declaring victory and moving out.

I'm sorry. I simply got it. I'm sorry. I simply misheard. All right. All right. Got it. Sorry.

Bethany? Although that's an interesting prediction of Peter. Yes, exactly. I mean, I think we're going to see more of the same more hysteria more sort of minor bills like the the criminal justice reform bill is great but no one's going to pay attention to it ever because of all the maddest stuff i think we're just going to continue with the trump show and um trying to decide like how sort of oh i think we're going to see another supreme court justice fight i think that that's looming after the news of the last couple weeks from one of our justices i hope she feels better soon well she's unwell yeah she's 85 and i i think that

it might be time to be honest about um how serious both of these things are for a frail 85-year-old woman. I think it's going to make... You better just mention what the two things are. Oh, so she had a fall, which actually might have been a blessing. Yeah, because it seems they found some lung cancer when they were doing scans. But they found lung cancer in an 85-year-old woman, and they said that they got it all out. But that's, I don't think, the end of the story with lung cancer. It's not my experience with it.

This is, I think, her third round of cancer or her second. It's just, it's going to make the Kavanaugh fight look tame. And I think it's going to be a really nasty, awful year. And I'm looking forward to it. And Merry Christmas again to everyone. If you end that way, then everything is fine. Remember a long time ago, I talked about sandwiching. No matter what you say in the middle, as long as you sort of are really cheerful in the beginning and the end, then it's fine.

So Merry Christmas, everyone. You're so shrewd about that. I don't see why you end up buying your husband bottles of bourbon. I can't see why. Sometimes he thinks in the middle. It's volume. Yeah. My prediction.

No matter what you sandwich a turd with. My prediction is that quite a few of our listeners are going to listen to the opening of this show and say, wow, all three of those guys have gone very dark on Trump. And I am willing to grant that we did. All three of us really felt the resignation of Jim Mattis yesterday as a kind of, well, we all felt ill. Now, so I'm predicting that some of our listeners, maybe many of our listeners are going to say you're not being fair. There are things you're missing and you may very well be right. I would love to be argued out of my current despondency. So that's my prediction. And my invitation is please go to Ricochet, put up a comment on the

site. And I genuinely, I will be reading the comments particularly assiduously this time around. I'd like to know what we missed. I'm hoping we missed some good news. And I'm waiting to hear from the guy who said, I was really angered by what you said about Trump at the beginning, but I said, I'm going to hang on and listen to more of this for 55 minutes. There's an invitation at the end to be to be right one or two of those maybe uh good um i predict he says chris well like um the resumption of north korean nuclear tests in the third quarter probably it just seems like it's gonna happen right start playing with us again that's one thing the good news is that we'll all be laughing our sides off.

That's a bad image. Laughing uproariously at Rob Long's new sitcom, Dork and Stormy, about a computer genius who moves in with a prostitute. And it's set in a bar, too. I like it. I think that's the thing you ought to pitch. Very good venue um oh is that to me now is my um i i i won't make a prediction i'm just gonna make a wish what are the things that um you know is uh when bethie when you brought up uh ruth bader ginsburg you

know she's 85 my father's 83 and he's um you know and we're praying he's gonna he's a little ill right now we're hoping he gets better but but he's 83. And that's hard. But one of the things you realize is that all of these strange buffetings here and there, we tend to think – and this goes back to something we should have said when we were trashing Trump earlier. We tend to think everything is dire and everything is going to be just the worst event possible. And if – replacing Mattis is going to be a disaster. Not building the wall is going to be a disaster. All those things are going to be just the worst event possible. And if replacing Mattis is going to be a disaster, not building the wall is going to be a disaster, all those things are going to be disasters. And that's the phone ringing here in my house.

Sorry about that. And I don't think that's true. I think that we'll make it, and it'll be fine. It may not be as good as we want it to be, and then we'll just have to work harder to make it better. So we do tend to get into the dark side of things i think sometimes i think it's a very high stakes and i'm not sure that we're i think that is we are more guilty of that than we are being wrong about politics or wrong on policy and that's one of the things the

past couple weeks have taught me you know i hope i bring it into 2019 and i've been thinking that as as well too things put different things in perspective as i mentioned did i mention my daughter's gone well you know she's coming back in 2019. As I mentioned, did I mention my daughter's gone? Well, she's coming back in 2019, but she's going to go again. I mean, she's going to be around for a couple of months and then poof off to college to be indoctrinated and to have everything that I taught her

drained out of her brain. That'll be great. And she'll come back at your dinner table to tell you how wrong you are. That'll be lots of fun. Yeah. And there will be Christmases again, but I can't kid myself and say it's, it'll be like it always was because it won't be, she's gone. I got not fired from that job, but that job ended. And so after, when that happened, I just realized, okay, this is the third act I'm going to do now, whatever it is that I do. And that happy part of my life is over. And I'm kind of resigned to that and sort of thinking that I got to take the happiness where I do. And, you know, but, but I invited my dad down for Christmas.

I was going to go up to Fargo, but then he lives in a place where they don't have dogs. And what am I going to do with my dog? So I said to my dad, why don't you drive down? We'll go to the casino because he likes to go to the casino. So my dad's going to drive down on Christmas. We're going to go to, we're going to go to a casino. We're going to eat casino steaks. He's going to teach me how to play slots because I don't know how I've never had any desire whatsoever, but I'm going to set aside a chunk of money just for the fun of losing it next to my dad. And that's what we're going to do on Christmas. And I should note, he's 93.

And he loves to drive. So he's going to get in the Yukon and barrel his way down from Fargo. And then I'm going to show him some home movies. I'm going to look for the old photographs that I had that my mom left and I don't know. And I'm going to put names to all of these pictures that are just now nameless and staring out for me

in sepia and black and white from these albums. And it's small, but it's great it's not the christmas that i wanted but it's going to be great and james why are you worried about the gnats the gnats growing up and moving out as your own relationship with your 94 year old father proves it never ends it It just never ends. Oh, he's incredibly boring, and I can't stand being around him. I mean, I've heard these war stories. Somebody, yes, yes, the torpedoes were coming toward the ship. You saw them in the dark. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. No, you're absolutely right, Peter. Of course, there's always that, but relationships change. And the difference is when, and Bethany, you'll hit this point at some point, when they're not around anymore, that daily interaction, that back and forth is just, is gone and you miss it. But what was fun is when I was on the cruise and I would get this little tap on my wrist and it's because she texted me and a custom tap tapped on my wrist from Brazil. And now we're having the little conversations. I'm tapping away and talking into my wrist.

So at least it's not like it was in the old days. In one sense, she's still just around the corner, but I can't kid myself and say that that's the case. I miss her, but we're going to miss, um, the audience unless we shut up and leave them wanting for more,

right? Are we, are we finished? Is there anything more we wish to say? My baby hopes so. Says the Jew on the podcast, you want us to finish our Christmas podcast. Merry Christmas, everyone. See you in the near.

Oh, bah humbug. All right, James, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Ready? All right, well, James, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, everyone. Merry Christmas, John. Merry Christmas, Peter. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. I don't get a Merry Christmas?

I just said, Bethany, Merry Christmas. Oh, okay, fine. And as Tiny Tim said, Rob. God blesses everyone? Correct. Yeah. Let me go find my baby. Hopefully he's still alive.

Yeah. let me go find my baby hopefully he's still alive yeah well now it's here that time of year everyone is filled with cheer the snow is falling and the air is crispy every girl and boy is filled with joy as they open presents filled with toys but all I want for Christmas is whiskey Every girl and boy is filled with joy As they open presents filled with toys

But all I want for Christmas is whiskey I don't want to hear about Rudolph and his big red snout Old St. Nick or even our friend Frosty Those folks may have seen the world But they've never had their heart broken by a girl All I want for Christmas is whiskey But they've never had their heart broken by a girl. Let me free. All I want for Christmas is whiskey. Well, we three kings of everything.

Jack and Johnny and Jim Beam. Follow a star through the night so misty. They come bearing gifts to help me forget your lips. All I want for christmas is whiskey well the jingle bells can go to hell and the mistletoe can go as well and all of the light shining on this tree well you can't realize get off my lawn i don't want to hear your happy song all i want for for Christmas is whiskey. All I want.

All I need. Fill up my cup and it will set me free. All I want for Christmas is whiskey. Ricochet. Join the conversation