The Ricochet Podcast - Borderline Millennials

Episode Date: December 5, 2013

This week on the Ricochet Podcast, our own James Delingpole (buy his new book here) challenges climate change and describes why Britain is indeed nuttier that the U.S. Then, Mark Krikorian on what the GOP must do to avoid getting out of its own way on immigration. Also, is Chris Christie cool and a vigorous discussion on what it will take to bring the Obama fatigued millennial generation back into... Source

Activate program. I understand what it takes to make a bright and prosperous future for America again. I spent my life in the private sector, not in government. You do your work, and we will do our best. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs, and our guests today are James Dellingpoler from Old Blighty to talk about climate change. I'm sorry, global warming.

I'm sorry, what are we calling it now? And Mark Krikorian from National Review, among other places, to talk immigration. Let's have a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to the Ricochet Podcast, number 193. It's starting to look an awful lot like, like, no, I'm going to say it, like Christmas around here. The snow's falling. I know. Well, you should be Rob. You very well should be. And, and, and, uh, Rob stuff your mouth with some delicious, uh, berry pies and, uh, and turkey and the rest of it. And good for you that you can, because we've got a new sponsor at the podcast,

foodiedirect.com. Who are they? Very simply this, a curated regional gourmet and artisan food marketplace featuring America's most iconic foods. Think of that barbecue from Texas and Memphis and New England seafood, Maine lobster, all this stuff. Not just, you know, they don't go down the store and get it. This is from the best restaurants in the country, and they'll pick it out and ship it and send it to you

just in time for the holidays. Go to foodiedirect.com, and we'll talk about this a little bit later. We're also brought to you by Encounter Books. This week's pick is a broad side, as we like to say, about the cannon fire that takes apart the side of the ship, or the hull, as they call it. So this week, it's The Truth About the IRS Scandals by Charles Johnson. You can go to encounterbooks.com and use the coupon code RICOSHET to get 10% off this or any other title. I do believe it's still a 10%. Why?

No, it's 15%. Now, Rob, this is the point at which you usually berate people for listening and not paying. Um, you know, I,

and I will do that. I will do that. Yes. Look, it's, it, I look, this is the ricochet podcast.

If you were listening to this podcast and you were a member of ricochet, we thank you. We are, uh, pleased and honored to have you as a fellow member of Ricochet along with me and James and Peter Robinson. And we look forward to seeing you on the member feed and on the main feed. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet.com, then you are a dangerous person. You're a dangerous communist person.

This is the Christmas season. Look, Ricochet is a business. We decided to run it as a business because we wanted to leave ourselves open to market forces, which in general has been pretty positive. We're not great at making this pitch. We are not great at telling you guys how important it is that you become members. So I'm just going to say it.

We really need you to be a member. If you're listening to this, you're not a member, please join. You get all the podcasts. You get the special podcasts we do occasionally, like Dinner at My Place with Ann Coulter recently. You get to post and join in on the conversation and member feed, and you get to be a part of a growing and very influential community. I mean, it's fun to, like, for instance, the Encounter Books pick of the week. It's a broadside, The Truth About the IRS Scandals by Charles Johnson.

Now, I know Charles Johnson is sort of an acquaintance of mine. He looks 12. He's a young man, very, very, very dogged reporter, doing some great stuff for Daily Beast – I'm sorry, not Daily – Daily Caller and also for Encounter. So it's kind of nice that – we're going to have him on at some point. We'll have him sort of join in if you guys want and have him participate a little. He's a very, very smart guy, and he's going to be a rising star in the community. And if you're a member of Ricochet, you've got a connection to Charles Johnson, and that's really what we're trying to do. We're trying to link up everybody so that everybody – especially this coming year, 14, and then course, in 16, when we have some real opportunity.

Anyway, that's my pitch. Exceptional. Thank you, Robin. Of course, folks should have epidermis in the scrum, as we say. And speaking of scrum, there's Peter Robinson, the mild-mannered but yet personally vicious, I think we all know. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's a barracuda. Co-founder of Ricochet.

And I'd like to know, before we get to our first guest, whether or not you agree with the new movement in D.C., which seems to be impeachment. That's the new one on the table. The only way that we can stop the nightmare of Obamacare is to remove its titular authority. Some people are actually talking about this. Peter, you think this is a wise idea? No, although I think it's probably constitutionally better founded than even its own supporters realize. It is not a wise idea. It makes the people pushing it seem like crazies. Obama's

ratings may still be low, but he still has more support than George W. Bush did. You cannot accuse a man of high crimes and misdemeanors of whom the worst that most Americans think now is that he's less competent than he portrayed himself as being. However, the lawlessness of this administration is breathtaking.

I would consider it a high crime simply to take enacted legislation and suspend parts of it and reshape it. What Obamacare is a major piece of legislation formally enacted by the Congress of the United States and the president has already made clear that it only means what he says it means when he says it means what it means. That is lawless. But that's not the grounds really on which this impeachment is going for,

the little movement, as best I can tell. Rob, what does it say? I hate it. I hate it. It's childish. Look, yeah, I guess you can make some kind of crazy case for it if you want that he's extra lawless. I suppose that's true. But look, it just makes us seem insane.

Right. We have a moment right now where we have a very rational case we can make to the American public. It's extremely rational. Big government doesn't work. It doesn't work when it's done undercover and it doesn't work when it's done above board. I mean Barack Obama wasn't lying. He was trying to – I mean he was lying about whether he knew stuff or not. But he wasn't trying to pretend he wasn't doing what he was doing.

He was socializing medicine. That's what he was doing. So it's not as if – we have a great moment here where the American people voted for this guy and they voted for him a second time and even more emphatically. And we have a moment where we can say to them, look, you may – not – no, no, we're not going to – no, I told you so's. But we have a moment where we can say to them, look, you may not – no, no, no, we're not going to – no, I told you so's. But we have a better plan. And instead of this nonsense of this kind of crazy impeachment and we're – as if that's really going to happen. It just makes us look stupid. And we are in a unique position right now where we could actually look smart.

And so it's classically for our side, the minute we have the advantage, we blow it on nonsense. Well, whether or not we actually talk about it, not enough for anybody to notice. I mean, it'll get picked up and screamed about on MSNBC, no doubt. I'm just curious as to whether or not there's anything the president could do extra constitutionally that actually would justify doing this there, because no matter what, we're going to look like the crazies, right? And if you point out, but he just banned coal-firing plants by changing the regulations of the EPA, that's extra-constitutional.

At that point, wouldn't we be right to say that this is the only option that we have? I know. No, no. We have Supreme Court's for it. Also, the president has broad regulatory powers that's why winning the presidency is important we lost that's right that's right the way to repair right i'm just i'm just curious i'm just wondering if there's anything that he could do that would make you guys say you know what i don't care whether it looks crazy this is absolutely the right thing to do to keep the precedent from being set

well yeah i mean there's plenty of things he could do that were illegal or high crimes and This is absolutely the right thing to do to keep the precedent from being set. Well, yeah. I mean there's plenty of things he could do that were illegal or high crimes and misdemeanors. But the threshold for high crimes and misdemeanors is enormously high. And he has not approached that at all, not even close. You're allowed to fudge. You're allowed to – and you're allowed to make sweeping regulatory changes. You're allowed to fudge. You're allowed to – and you're allowed to make sweeping regulatory changes. You're allowed to do that, unfortunately. Well, speaking of sweeping regulatory changes, one of the things the EPA has been trying to do, of course, is to keep the planet from heating up.

As we all know, that the planet is just burning up. It's practically a cinder tumbling into the sun. Or not. There's actually been some questions and pushback on the matter of global warming. And gosh, if only we had somebody who could tell us about the book that he wrote on the matter itself. Oh, what am I doing? I'm sorry. I'm striking my forehead in a theatrical fashion. We've got just that guy. Yes, we've got James Delvingpool. Now, if you read Ricochet, then you know that he was born with a curse of being right about pretty much everything, which is different from

Scaramouche, but perhaps preferable. Depending on whether you're right or wrong, too, you'll either love him or hate him depending on his beliefs, which are liberty, small government, free markets, surfing, Team America, country walks. Country walks? Country walks? In the rain, perhaps?

Oh. Led Zeppelin, fox hunting in which small creatures are torn apart amidst squeals of pain. He loves his family, decent coffee, and leaf tea. He hates what? Wind farms. The EU, the EPA. And the blog at The Telegraph is one of the most popular in Britain for good reason. It's hilarious. And also informative.

He helped break and name the Climategate scandal. And the host, of course, of the wildly successful Radio Free Daily poll right here on Ricochet. We welcome him back to the podcast. Hello, James. What time is it where you are? I can't possibly live up to that fantastic introduction. It's about, I don't know, it's about 4 o'clock or something. It's already dark. Yeah, of course. It's Britain.

It's Britain in December. It's dark at 4. It's dark and wet. Well, let's begin disappointing people straight off then. Right here in Minnesota right now, I'm going to try to describe the peril that we're in. There is white stuff that is clumped together. It used to be water, but now apparently it's undergone some frozen process. It's falling from the skies and accumulating everywhere. If we get any more of it, it's going to be a severe weather event.

And from what I understand, these severe weather events are increasing geometrically, right? I've read this stuff too. And actually, that white stuff you see coming from the skies, that's what is known as global warming. Apparently, have you come across George Monbiot? George Monbiot is an environmental activist who writes for the left-wing Guardian newspaper in Britain. And he once, with a straight face, in all seriousness and honesty, wrote a piece claiming very good at cooking the data to make it look as though these apocalyptic events are happening. And it's all man's fault because we are so selfish and we refuse to amend our selfish lifestyle.

That's right. Hey, James, it's Rob calling. I actually am not in California. I'm in Maryland right now. But so let me ask you something. Every now and then I read something or I read stuff you post on Ricochet that makes me think that maybe the tide is turning just a little bit. That people are starting to start to unravel. Is that is it unraveling or is not? Yeah, it's kind of. The way I look at it, it's a bit like the Second World War in 1944. And so we've driven the Nazis back. Wait, which side are we on again?

Oh, OK. We're the good guys. OK? I just want to make sure. Yeah, we're the good guys. The Nazis are the evil, the green activists, the climate scientists, all the race-seeking corporatists, the politicians. Okay, so it's 1944, and we think, yeah, we think we're winning the war, but the Nazis have a secret plan, and it's called Operation Wacht am Rhein, otherwise known as the Battle of the Bulge. So they've got all these defenses.

They've got the Siegfried Line with their dragon's teeth, and they're about to hit us back with all this new stuff, like ocean acidification and biodiversity and species loss, and all these adjuncts to the great climate change theory, which are designed to blind us with science and make us bomb the global economy back to the dark ages in the name of saving the world for future generations. But you're already using their terms, James. I just heard you say climate change, which is the elision that they've made.

We've gone away from global warming to climate change. And you are just picking up on their lingo. Why is that exactly? Yeah, I agree. It's totally infectious. Maybe I've got Stockholm syndrome. Maybe I am about to go on a mission to the Arctic to save the endangered polar bears, which, by the way, their population has increased fivefold

in the last 50 years. James, broadly, though, I mean, it's always a surprise to me, and I think it surprised a lot of people, that, is it fair to say that Britain is, in fact, nuttier, has more nutty left-wing stuff going on than

the United States? Yeah. It's one of the hard things I have to explain to Americans. Americans look across the rest of the world and they think that things are much worse in America because obviously you have Obama and we don't. And obviously you've got the Environmental

Protection Agency and we don't. And you've got Al Gore of course and we don't. But this is a mistake. We have things far, far worse than you do. For example, we are the only economy on Earth which is committed by law to decarbonizing the economy. In other words, I think, Stan,

if our politicians do not decarbonize our economy, i.e. point back to the Dark Ages, then they are liable for prison sentences, I believe. We are adding every year 18.2 billion pounds, which I know it is a lot, 18.2 billion pounds, is going to be spent decarbonizing our economy. Things like carbon capture and sequestration, which doesn't work, by the way. But building up wind farms, which don't work unless you hate birds and bats, in which case they are brilliant. They are the Cretan arts of the sky, I think Mark Stein calls them, and rightly so.

So, yeah, we have got the environmental craziness big time here. Now, so, all right, so now, from your perspective, sort of all those thousands of miles away, how delicious has the Obamacare meltdown been? I know only, all the English people I know sort of specialize in a bunch of different things, but the universal hobby in England seems to me to be relishing other people's misfortunes and disasters. This must have been a holiday for you.

Well, look, do not forget that I wrote the last word, or rather the first word, on the Obama presidency. I wrote a book called Welcome to Obama Land. I've seen your future, and it doesn't work. And for the first time, you know, people doubted me. People were so busy admiring Michelle Obama's gloriously toned arm. And of course, he was the Messiah president. He was the healing president whose wonderful coffee-colored skin was going to send out a message to the world that from now on, America was everyone's friend. And we remember the Cairo surrender monkey speech in which he was going to

send out the healing message to the Islamic world. There would be no more war and happiness would reign. None of this has transpired, you may have noticed. And once more, in his second term, he's tanking. And for a long time, I felt like the boy who points out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. But I can tell you, if you thought you had Obama mania bad in the US, we had it even worse over here. He was like, it was like JFK doing his Ich bin ein Berliner speech. It was just, we were all over him. And so I'm loving seeing the every aspect of it i mean even even benghazi even though obviously there were some tragic losses there um i enjoyed seeing that the the presidency unravel and uh obviously i'm looking forward to

the moment when kerry's uh the the kerry obama plans to stop global warming i'm looking forward to the moment when Kerry's – the Kerry-Obama plans to stop global warming. I'm looking forward to them unraveling as well. And Obamacare is the icing on the cherry – the cherry on the icing on the cake for me, yes. I'm glad we could oblige. James Peter Robinson here. James, global – Hello, Peter. Back to global warming for one moment. Tokyo Protocol, all the good nations of Western Europe signed up for it and the United States refused to sign it thanks largely to Republican opposition in the Senate and to George W. Bush. of the nations I just named has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, and that is the

United States of America. Because, of course, of fracking. Questions. Why is fracking not celebrated? What is the current status of the fracking debate in Britain? And why is it the case? Will the Western Europeans ever sort of get together and write a note to George W. Bush saying, well, look, we still find you hard to take, but on this one at least you were right and we were wrong? Yeah.

Is it possible for the other side ever to change its mind and to admit to having done so? Over to you. No. The short answer to the question is no. And you in America have been very lucky with fracking. And I think it should be noted that fracking happened, shale gas happened despite the Obama administration rather than because of it. I think they just caught it too late to stop it, as they probably would have done. And also, of course, your mineral rights are different in the US than they are in Europe. If you've got shale gas underneath your land, you benefit from it. In Britain, for example, I believe it's the property of the crown, I think. Anyway, it's not yours if it's underneath your land. But the real problem in Europe is that, again, things are worse than they are in the US.

The European Union is one of the main, main drivers of enviro craziness. And allied with the commissars of the European Union is a very, very well-funded and powerful anti-fracking movement. I don't just mean Yoko Ono. I don't just mean Matt Damon, although, of course, they are part of the problem. But what you have to realize, and it's a terrible phenomenon, that organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, there seems to be a trajectory of American industrialists. So they make their money in dirty things like oil and mining and so on. And then they create these foundations. And the foundations get hijacked by the indolent,

spoiled children of the industrialists who acquire a social conscience. And they suddenly start adopting all these green values. And these green values are the antithesis of the capitalist values which made all their founders money. So what you have is these organizations like the Tides Foundation, all these George Soros-funded institutions, which are pumping money into the anti-fracking propaganda campaign. Now, there are various myths

that have arisen about fracking. For example, that it causes earthquakes, which are actually no bigger than a truck passing your house in the distance. They're certainly not like the thing that destroyed San Francisco at the turn of the century. Apparently, it pollutes the water table. No, it doesn't.

Apparently, it uses up more water than we can cope with. No, it doesn't. Golf courses and farms use up far more. So all these myths have arisen. And the industry has not proved up to the task of defending itself aggressively. This is the experience I've had with oil companies and energy companies across the board. I keep asking, why are these guys funding the other side? Why are they paying Dane Gelt to Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund or whatever?

Why aren't they giving their money to me? I'm doing a much better job of speaking up for these guys than they are, but they're not doing it. James, here in Minnesota, fracking is paying off very well because there's lots of sand and sand is needed for fracking. And these companies come to the farmers and say, we would like to pay you for vast sums of money for your sand. And the farmer who's been busting his ass his entire life to just to get corn out of this ground says, yes, but of course, have my sand. And so then the neighbors all complain because they're not said

their sand isn't being purchased and there are trucks going by. And so there's envy and it's all about carbon anyway. So it's not good. It it's morally tainted but then i turn on the radio as i'm going to work and i'm listening to the bbc world have your say or newsroom or something and they're talking about england where the big thing seems to be not the not the the wealth that is generated by the presence of sand under your land but the wealth that is taken away by high energy prices and that there's actually a discussion now afoot in England as to whether or not the onerous cost of energy, the high heating bills is one of those things that government perhaps should address by not taxing people so much.

Describe what's going on there and whether or not actually this is one of the first time that people in the sceptered aisle have felt the personal sting of these wonderful policies that everybody loves because they save the bears well do you remember that president obama gave us a gave a speech i think before he was he was first elected saying how energy prices would necessarily skyrocket and he was he was praising this as a desirable thing, because by increasing energy prices, people would use fewer scarce resources, thus preserving them for future generations, etc. Well, the same mentality has afflicted British politics, in that all three of our

main political parties have all submitted to the Green agenda. They've all been endorsing it for years. So what we have at the moment is this terrible democratic deficit, whereby even a nationally conservative dominated government led by Prime Minister David Cameron, my old, old mate from Oxford, who's gone to the dark side, he's become a greenie. Even even a conservative led administration, to all intents and purposes, they might as well be the Green Party. And they've all contributed to these renewables mandates, which, after all, are the reason that energy prices are really going up. It's got nothing to do with wholesale markets, as they claim, nor, by the way, has it to do with their other main excuse, the greed of the energy companies. I mean, that's weird, isn't it? To hear a conservative prime minister talking about industry greed. We know greed is good. What is a conservative doing attacking the market? Anyway, so we are

now in a difficult position in that all three parties are fully aware that there is a popular uprising against these energy prices, but they don't know what to do about it because, of course, they created the problem. So we've got the Labour Party, that's the socialist party of Ed Miliband, promising to freeze prices for two years. Well, that's a very socialist measure. You can't meddle with the markets. What signal does that send to the energy producers? It's going to be a disaster for them, a disaster for

investors. But you've got David Cameron, instead of saying, look, this is socialism gone mad, he's saying, yes, yes, we'll do something too. We'll shave this eco-tariff off the bill and we'll put it on taxes instead. So none of them are addressing the main problem, which is that the green religion has poisoned the energy market. And it has committed prices inexorably to increase year after year. People are feeling the pain. people are dying of fuel poverty. We're talking about 25,000 excess winter deaths are being caused each year now by people dying in fuel poverty as a result of all this global warming which is supposed to be happening. People dying of fuel poverty is a noble sacrifice.

If those people had been living by a coastal area, they would have drowned, of course, because of rising sea levels. So it's 25,000 one way or the other. Yes. James, thank you very much for talking to us in the middle of the night. We hope to speak to you again soon. We'll see you as ever at Radio Free. Can I mention I have a book out called The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism, which is out now in regular.

Just in time to give all your environmentalist, enviroloon friends. Wonderful. Perfect. The Little Green Book of Envirofascism. Excellent. I can't wait to read it. Put a link on the thing. Absolutely.

And you know what? Obama wants us to have conversations around the family dinner table about health care and Obamacare. Maybe we should have conversations about global warming. Yes. Well, we've had those around our family table. And let me tell you, they haven't worked very well. They've led to really, really, really angry discussions in which I have been very, very, very bad because I don't look at the night sky ablaze with light of the towers of Minneapolis are illuminated and think, what are they doing? They're destroying the planet. Turn out the

lights, turn out the lights, everybody. But before you do, however, you might want to go to the refrigerator and get something out and eat it. So without electricity, it's going to spoil. It's going to be useless. And I always think when the power goes out, which it does here from time to time, winter or summer, hmm, ice cream. Should I eat that before it spoils? I mean, everything else, no one's going to take out a steak and slap it on the grill at two o'clock in the morning because the power's out. You just trust that'll be okay. But ice cream, I always wonder exactly how does some of these places get you ice cream across, you can order ice cream online. It's like, how is it that the stuff in my fridge can melt and be useless in two to three hours when the power goes out? But yet these guys have the technology to get

it all the way across the country. Well, here's the deal. Not only do they have the technology, but that same stuff that keeps the ice cream nice and cold, keeps the barbecued ribs perfect, keeps the cake fresh and moist. And all of these places can be found at one web location. That's foodiedirect.com. It's not just another grocery store online. It's the finest restaurants in the country with mouth-watering stuff that you may remember from trips to those cities or those places or those restaurants yourself. Michigan cherry pie that Mario Batali called

a religious experience. And of course, we say that in the context of actual religious experiences. There's a California cioppino that Bobby Flay called, well, there's the best granola in the country according to Travel Channel. there's a southern coconut layer. The stuff

just is astonishing. Rob, you've seen it. You've eaten it. Peter, you have sampled these wares. Go on, gush, make us all salivate for a second. Okay, I will. Listen, I've had quite a lot of food from Foodie Direct without realizing it because I have a friend here who has a tailgate party before every Stanford

game and I was sampling. He gets in barbecue without realizing it because I have a friend here who has a tailgate party before every Stanford game. And I was sampling – he gets in barbecue. And it was the best barbecue I ever tasted. So I asked. And he had ordered it through Foodie Direct. And it turned out a mutual friend of ours founded this company. I wasn't aware – even though he's a friend of mine, I wasn't aware that he founded it. My friend is a businessman here in Northern California who was very aware of what you were just describing, James, the logistics revolution.

Amazon can deliver something to you the next day. UPS, FedEx, things are happening. You can get packages from one place to another faster and cheaper than ever before. And my friend Brad understood this. And Brad's brother has spent 20 years in the restaurant business back in New York. So Brad and his brother decided to found something and they did Foodie Direct and they have gone around the country. And when I say gone around the country, I mean, Brad and his brother have driven. For example, if you click on the tab for barbecue,

they drove all through Texas trying one barbecue after another. And the selection on Foodie Direct represents the best. My first order is going to be from Snow's Barbecue. Every one of these has a story. My friend Brad told me about Snow's. Snow's Barbecue is located in Lexington, which is an hour outside Austin. And when you get an hour outside Austin, you are in true deep Texas. It's run by folks who are working people. Snow's is not their full-time job. They have day jobs, but come Thursday and Friday, they start cooking a barbecue at eight o'clock in the morning in Lexington, Texas. Snow's barbecue opens its doors and it keeps selling barbecue until it runs out, which is usually a little before noon on Saturday. Foodie Direct enables you to order directly from Snow's Barbecue in Lexington, Texas,

and I am going to do so this week. Rob? Wow. Well, you know, I like the cioppino in a bucket. You've got a great big bucket of cioppino, which is this fantastic kind of tomatoey, garlicky fish stew with shellfish and seafood. And it's sort of a Bay Area – San Francisco Bay Area tradition. The best one you can buy at a restaurant is the Tadich Grill right there on California Street in the Financial District of San Francisco. But you can also get it for foodie direct in a big bucket from Phil's, which is at Moss Landing, I think, just down in Half Moon Bay.

Well, while you guys were talking about Foodie Direct, I went downstairs because I heard a delivery man, and there was a package, and I thought, wow, that's fast. Foodie Direct has already got my ribs here. That's private sector velocity, but no. Actually, though, when you look at what they offer, you see the Italian food, and you see this, and you see that, and you realize how much the American experience has been enriched by the immigrants that have come here and brought their additions to our palate. And therefore, immigration is so good that we should just have all of it and no border control whatsoever. Right? Not exactly.

Mark Kerkorian is our next guest. He's the executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in D.C. They promote stricter immigration control and enforcement. He's a regular contributor to the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank in D.C. They promote stricter immigration control and enforcement. He's a regular contributor to the conservative publication National Review. I heard him speak in The Cruise. He's a smart man who knows his subject inside and out, and he's a regular participant in NRO's The Corner. You can also, of course, read him right here in the Ricochet thing, and we welcome him to the podcast. Hey, Mark.

Mark, Peter here. Listen, I know because you and I exchanged a couple of emails about it that you saw my interview of what not too many weeks ago with Archbishop Gomez, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the largest Catholic diocese in the country and one of the biggest in the world with five million Catholics. is an intelligent and a good man. And what flummoxed me in that interview is that I really don't have an answer to the following point that I feel completely comfortable with, but I'm sure you do. And the following point is as follows. You are talking to a good human being who knows the barrios of Los Angeles

and says to you, look, these people, they may be undocumented, but they came here for only one reason, and that is to better the lives of their families. And really, that is not a crime. How do you answer that, Mark? There are all kinds of things people do to better their families that are illegal. I mean, you know, I don't pay my taxes. I lie on a mortgage form. I mean, there's all kinds of things that people who aren't, you know, Nazis, I mean, they're not inherently evil, but nonetheless, all of us can do things that are wrong.

And is illegally immigrating here like being a drug dealer or a murderer? No, but there are all kinds of crimes in between there, identity theft, Social Security fraud, what have you. And, you know, the fact is immigrants are adults like the rest of us, and they have to be responsible for their actions. They're not cartoon figures that we can objectify, and that's what I'm afraid a lot of this pro-amnesty adult human beings with agency into some kind of stick figure and absolving them of any responsibility for their actions.

Now, it doesn't mean they should all be thrown in jail. I mean, there's all kinds of issues and nuances that have to be discussed there, but turning them into, you know, kind of cartoon figures who don't have moral agency, I think, is as wrong as condemning them somehow as, you know, as all being morally corrupt. One more question along this line of how you deal with it. Yeah, yeah, it's the last question along the lines of – It's Peter Robinson's famous last question. So there's been 10 questions after this one. Okay. So I said to the archbishop what I'm now saying to you.

Put yourself in the – imagine you're standing at the border and you see some desperately poor Mexicans making their way toward you. And I said to the archbishop, under what circumstances could you say to those people, you must turn back, the laws of the United States prevent you from entering, and the laws of the United States are just. In this regard, they are just. What would those laws have to be? What would the circumstances have to be in which you would feel in good conscience you could turn people back? And frankly, and the archbishop just said, why are we even thinking in these terms? I'm paraphrasing him, of course. I don't want to be unfair to the man. But what do you, Mark Krikorian, say to some poor Mexican who's trying to get across the border? How do you explain why he must return to poverty? Well, there's a couple of issues here.

First, the vast majority of illegal immigrants from Mexico had jobs in Mexico. This is not an issue of people scaling the fence at Buchenwald and somehow being turned back. Mexico is an upper-mid upper middle income country by world standards that has lots of poverty, but it's not Congo, let alone some kind of concentration camp. Number two, I would say the same thing to someone knocking on my door asking to come into my house because they like my house better than where they are. Sorry. You know, maybe I can help you in some other way, but you don't get to come and move into my child's bedroom because you like it better than your own.

And, you know, saying this with no ill will and no, you know, venom or vituperation is something that people understand. Illegal immigrants get that. They're not, you know, again, they're people like anybody else. And they're going to respond to the way you respond to them. And if you say in a, you know, not in a hateful but in a firm way, look, this is our country.

That's your country. We respect your country. You need to respect ours. People get that. Well, that's just a nice that's a nice gloss for a nativist bigotry, of course, Mark. I think you're speaking about when you talk when you use the metaphor of your child's bedroom. I hear not just white privilege, but I hear property privilege talking. And these are concepts that we have to abolish to get on to the progressive transnational borderless future.

Rob, you were about to say. Yeah, I mean, you know, if we just talk about politics for a minute, Mark, because, I mean, you and I have talked about this before. So if you're the president right now and you're in trouble on Obamacare and a host of other things, on Sunday they were talking about, you know, the next steps for Obama, what he's going to do next. And someone in the Obama White House suggested, well, we've got to go out there and talk about – the State of the Union is – I think it's January 18th or something. It's going to be about immigration. He's going to demand immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform. That's coming back, right?

That's going to come back. When you're in trouble, you want to go to the old playbook, and this is a great old playbook for him. Do you think that he's going to have any more success on his goal or less success? Do you think that the Republican Congress, which probably a year ago was more inclined than it is now to sort of compromise with him, was kind of running scared? Do you think that he's in a better shape or worse shape? Or how would you play it out? If you were thinking about immigration reform from both sides between now and midterms, how would you play it out? Well, no, I don't think the president's going to do any better or change anybody's mind by giving another speech. I mean,

that's always their go-to thing is give another speech. Because the basic problem here is that nobody believes the promises that tomorrow's immigration laws will be enforced any better than yesterday's. In other words, there's actually a lot of people who would accept amnestying illegal immigrants who live here a long time, have kids, and they're not drug dealers. I mean, I can even live with that. The problem is, will we have another amnesty afterwards because we don't enforce the law? And that, from the Republican perspective, I think is the most powerful political message, as well as just in a policy sense. Look, we respect immigrants. We have differences about what policy should be but this is not by hating partners it is about

truck cropped in the political class and we don't trust the president to fulfill his promises and look at both how he violated the immigration laws but also how he simply live on all kinds of other issues we We don't trust him. How can anybody trust him? That seems to me the political message that is going to resonate. The president's going to fight against it, but I don't think there's any real answer to that. Yeah. Peter here again,

Mark, I'd agree with that completely. Listen, I heard Charles Krauthammer speak, oh, two weeks or so ago. Of course, he's talking about his book, which is number one, and God bless him, because if anybody deserves it to have a number one book, it's Charles Krauthammer speak, oh, two weeks or so ago. Of course, he's talking about his book, which is number one, and God bless him because if anybody deserves it to have a number one book is Charles Krauthammer. Question from the audience, what about immigration? And Charles Krauthammer said, this has been my position, Charles Krauthammer's position, for over a decade. And my position is amnesty, if we can be sure that this is really the last time and but he left open i mean the audience sort of went with that charles krauthammer said i think the polling shows that you'd have 80 of

americans behind it that's really the solution that is a politically unattainable solution though isn't it isn't that what the 86 uh showed us, that you can't trust even Republicans to enforce the border? today. What we need is the payment for the hamburger up front. And there are all kinds of things that, concrete things that Republicans can push that are relevant and won't necessarily even flush all the illegal aliens out and, you know, millions of people at a time in some kind of humanitarian crisis. Just two things, just off the top of my head. One, mandatory use for all new hires of an online system called E-Verify. So when you hire somebody, you have to just verify whether they're lying to you or not.

Are the social security numbers real? Does it match their name? And you check it with the government's databases you're going to send to anyway. You're sending the forms. You just check it ahead of time. That's not required now. And it was only for new hires.

It wouldn't even affect illegals who are already in jobs. Number two is foreign visitors who overstay their visas make up almost half the illegal population. And we still, after, what is it, 17 years after Congress mandated it, we still don't have a system, electronic system to actually track when people leave so we know if they've left or not. Those two things, doing them up front, is a way of earning trust by the political class to say, look, this time, unlike 1986, we're not lying to you. That's the kind of thing that has to happen. Confidence-building measures, if you will, as they talk about in Middle East negotiations.

Yes, we're done about in Middle East negotiations. Yes, we're done lying to you. What I keep thinking of is this, is if the Republicans put out both of these ideas and twin them, shall we say, with the fence, because everybody likes to have a fence in there as well, that we can talk about this and talk about this and propose these things. But once the president comes out with his wonderful all-encompassing comprehensive immigration reform, he's going to say that critics of his proposal have put forth nothing, just as he said that the people who oppose Obamacare have never come up with an original idea to solve the problem that he was supposedly going to fix.

So, I mean, good luck getting that message across. Good luck trusting the media to carry the water for that, because they won't. Well, the problem here is, yes, there's no question that the media really has started to buy into this amnesty issue as a civil rights issue. You know, they've all got civil rights envy. These are young kids who weren't around to write about Mississippi in 1963, so they're just champing at the bit to have their own civil rights issue. But the fact is, we have so many Republicans who either can't talk about it in an intelligent way,

and that's no big surprise, or they don't agree. They're Paul Ryan or some of these other guys who basically are open borders people who don't accept the legitimacy of control of national borders. So, I mean, there's a real problem within the Republican Party between immigration, basically sovereignty hawks, and people who, for a variety of reasons, either business concerns or ideological libertarian concerns, don't really think that there should

be any limits on immigration. So it's a liberty. Mark, you just put forward those two ideas. I didn't time you, but my sense is it took about 90 seconds. It was crisp. You made it clear it was no danger to immigrants who were already here. You made it clear that it was simply a matter in the second case of enforcing the law that has already been on the books for more than a decade and a half. It was crisp.

It was – I have this feeling whenever we talk to you that it's not complicated. It's simple. There are things we can do. Why can't – you mentioned Paul Ryan. I agree. I mean it seems to be clear that Paul Ryan isn't quite – as a matter of policy, he's not where you are. But there are Republicans who are. Why can't even the people who stand with you put the case? Well, I mean, some do. I think actually Jeff Sessions, Senator Sessions, is really good at this. Congressman Lamar Smith is really good at this.

But, you know, this is a problem Republicans have in communicating any kind of issues. We don't really have people who are able to articulate what we believe in any kind of constructive way that either doesn't scare people or completely befuddle them. So I don't know what to do about it. I mean, maybe I'll run for office if anybody's got any money to help me. I need to be taller, thinner, and better looking, unfortunately, and I'm not sure how much money can help that. Well, I don't know.

Who knows? Chris Christie seems to be doing very well right now, and he's done a lot. Well, that's true. That's true. Yes, maybe indeed you could be Chris Christie's vice president and run under the idea that if ever the two of you are caught in a blinding storm, you can open up Chris Christie and sleep inside like a horse or something. Oh, jeez. I'm the skinny one. There you go.

I love the idea of civil rights envy. You have these youngsters saying, all right, we got gay marriage last year. What are we going to do this year? Let's end it with this. I'm struck again by the fact that the president got up in his last immigration speech and started talking about the people who live in the shadows. We're always talking about the people who live in the shadows, the teeming huddled masses in the tenebrous darkness. And then a guy on stage starts berating him for his immigration policy. That's the new definition of the shadows, an illegal immigrant who's actually on stage with the president and interrupts his speech to yell at him.

So much fear is there of coming out of the shadows. Mark, we'll see you at the corner. We'll see you at Ricochet. I hope to see you on a boat someday in the future and keep it up. Thanks for being with us on the podcast today. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Mark. Excellent.

Yes, yes, indeed. I would like to see – I don't want to keep him for this sort of silly question. Yes, yes, indeed. who are actually on the barricades on this issue, are constantly talking about it. When it ebbs and it flows, it comes back, it goes away. We hear about it. Then suddenly we don't hear about it. These two guys are on it 24-7. And the way they – I just really want to be – I want to read the emails back and forth or maybe the IMs, their own little secret code, their secret language that only they know

while they have to explain the complications of immigration to the groundlings like me because I don't understand a lot of the specific issues. But I mean it's kind of funny that like that's the – this issue comes up and it comes up – it seems like it comes up for reasons that have very little to do with actual urgency of the problem. Precisely. Who is clamoring for this? Right. Who? Right. Obama, right?

Because he knows he can – I mean it plays well with his base. It's kind of smart actually. It's probably smart. I mean he doesn't have that many cards to play right now but seems to be the American people, and I know how painful that sounds, people would not be saying what really worries me is the immigrant situation and whether or not we've made a deal with Iran. But these seem to be the things that have fixated the administration as opposed to the economy. Has he pivoted to the economy this week? I think it was – pivot number 39 was coming this week, but we haven't seen it. Well, I think they're trying to wrap it all together.

So they're trying to say the economy, the issues with the economy are the same. You know, economic security is Obamacare, Obamacare. They're all the same. So, you know, he's trying.

He's in there swinging. And if you don't get it, if you don't have it now, you'll get it soon and you should be happy for it. And we're all moving the right direction. So it's kind of a limited,

modified hangout of his own policy. Yeah. Well, that little chin-jutting press conference he gave the other day on the successes of Obamacare and how the website's fixed and all the rest of it, I'm sure put confidence and starch back in everybody's spine. But maybe perhaps it's time to revisit another promise that he made as not the one about your health care and keeping it and your doctor and keeping it and your life and keeping it and the rest of it but uh did he say something about not allowing detroit to go bankrupt maybe he meant the industry not the city but uh sure enough this week a judge says it can happen ed schultz on msnbc uh speaking to his audience of seven said that uh it was another example of

what the republicans do that the republicans destroyed destroyed detroit uh peter what do you think about this? How does Schultz's argument even work? Yeah. The Republicans destroyed Detroit. You could find a Republican within 300 miles of Detroit. There were no Republicans in the government in Detroit. Ed Schultz has the intelligence of a damp stone, so it doesn't matter.

But I mean that's just how he's wired to say it. It's because the Republicans, those nasty business people, took their businesses out of Detroit. Oh, I see. That's the argument. They took their business out of Detroit. I see. There is a Republican governor of Michigan now who didn't destroy Detroit but is trying very hard to clean up the mess that was left behind. Oh, it's just insanity.

Just insanity. Well, it's also – but one of the interesting things about the ruling was that it said that you can – that bankruptcy and the restructuring also applies to public sector union pension funds and payouts. Yes. So if you're in there, there's – Detroit is only the most – sort of the biggest marquee name of an American city in bankruptcy. The city of Stockton in California is in bankruptcy. The city of Riverside is in bankruptcy. The city of Stockton in California is in bankruptcy. The city of Riverside is in bankruptcy. And with that ruling from that judge in Michigan, it does suggest that if you are a public sector union and if the ruling holds, there will be a wave of metropolitan and probably county bankruptcies across the country, Illinois, California, New York State, all over these insolvent states. They're going to think, well, that's the way out because otherwise you cannot do it any other way. And so that will be – this will be interesting to watch. Why isn't that a civil rights issue? The population of Detroit is – I can't recall

the numbers but it's largely African-American population. Why isn't it right to fight for them to have an adequate police force? People got the numbers wrong. Public unions shook down the city government of Detroit year in and year out for many years and burdened the city finances with debts it could not pay. Now there is an attempt to restructure the debts so that Detroit can function, so the streets can be clean. I heard the figure the other day that something like 40 percent of the streetlights don't work. The police are under force. The fire department – why is it not a civil right?

Mark was talking about this just a moment ago. I'm sure he's correct that these young reporters, oh, our grandparents had the civil rights movement. Why doesn't somebody cast this, what's going on in Detroit in civil rights terms? Because the wrong people are pointing out the problems. I guess that's right. And the wrong people have the wrong solutions. That's why. Never ever is any, are any of these bankruptcies or problems of the municipalities, a problem of governance or the philosophy behind it? It is simply a problem of the inadequate application of their ideas. If Detroit had been more to the left, if it had used the power of the state to keep these businesses from leaving, if it had used the power of government to keep people from leaving after the riots, that would have been good. If it had taken the Cuban model of top-down that egalitarianism matters most, that equality

of outcome matters most, it would have forced these people to do a certain thing. And the absence of that means that they just simply haven't applied the principles as well as they should have. So people, damn their eyes, exercise their freedom. That's the problem. I mean, you've got a libertarian sector out there that says, hey, you know, Detroit is a great opportunity. It's a laboratory. People are streaming in. Well, not streaming, but they're going into the city to start little

incubator communities here and there. And that's great. And that's always shown as an example of what the hipster American community can do and properly motivate it. But they're not doing it because they want more collectivism. They're doing it because they winnowed out a little pocket there. They figure they can get away with things and live a free life. It's a gulch. They have come up with a way to sort of carve out certain, you know, regulatory, regulation-free zones.

That's how you do it. To me, what's the most interesting, I mean, there are two things. One is that I feel like in order to make this case for our side, I really do think that the Republican National Convention in 2016 should be in Detroit. We should be there saying this is a problem that we feel we can solve. This is a problem that we care about and we have a way and our way is the free market. It's entrepreneurial capitalism. It's a small government. It's all the things that we believe in and I think we should have the guts to go there

and say that this is a problem and this is their mess and then we'll help clean it up. They're always talking about our mess that they help clean up, which should be the other way around. The second thing I feel like is there is a – I mean there's an article in the Ron Fournier, Fournier, Fournier, who writes for National Journal today said – wrote a piece about a new Harvard study that says millennials are abandoning Obama. That Obama's youth popularity is plummeting. That's huge. Yeah, it's big.

That's huge. That's huge. I'm actually going to post about it as soon as I hang up. As soon as we're done with the podcast, I'm going to post about it because I think it's really interesting stuff. And what's interesting about it is that it makes sense because these are millennials who are raised and brought up in many ways sort of unrealistically but brought up to believe that things are supposed to work, that Amazon is supposed to work, that Foodie Direct is supposed to work. These are things that are supposed to work. My Facebook is supposed to work. And when it doesn't, I get mad.

And they're confronting the behemoth of government and realizing, my god, I think entrepreneurial capitalism might be more efficient. A friend of mine was telling me a story about being at a party in San Francisco and talking to some people. He knew. He knew they were sort of lefty, kind of eco-lefty types in and they were – all they were trying to do was to start a little restaurant. Now, San Francisco is a restaurant town and they said they were 18 months. Unbelievable. Struggling with regulation. And so look, this is the thin edge of the wedge for us to reclaim that population.

I think that we could maybe do it. Well, when it becomes uncool, that's when things turn to our advantage. Couldn't agree more. When all of a sudden what you thought was the hippest, smartest, most technologically savvy president ever turns out to be like – it's like I built a website, your dad says, and you go on it and it's MySpace and it's got animated GIFs and blinking and the rest of it. And his VCR is blinking 12 and you realize, hmm, the old man isn't as savvy as I thought he was. Add to that stuff like this clueless, tone-deaf stuff that's coming out, the White House youth. They have a hashtag, WHYouth, and they send out these nice little invitations that show – I saved one. It's just creepy.

It's got eight young people, all of their heads turned, looking up at the president with a sort of beatific look of admiration. It's North Korea. When the millennials look at this and realize, hmm, this is the stuff that we make fun of. This is that clueless, tone-deaf manipulation of the culture that we're supposed to be able to see through and they're giving it to us as if we should buy it. They think we're idiots. Yeah. I mean – one more, Rob, if I may. There was something they sent out to people telling them how to talk about Obamacare over Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. And a more mortifying idea you can't imagine.

I mean if you're one of the true believers who actually gets up and gargles with a Kool-Aid every day and has a catheter installed so you can get the Obama Kool-Aid throughout the day, yeah, this would be cool. Catheters take things out. I know. So if you imagine that you're not this sort of hipster millennial with a vestigial facial hair who's just looking forward to the idea to educating people around the table, the idea that you should actually bring this stuff up and have this conversation, all of a sudden the people who are saying the personal is the political, everything is political are suddenly realizing what it's like to live in a culture where everything is political. Everything. It was just farcical. Reading that thing, it was like, hey, how are you going to talk to your Uncle Steve, the conservative one? We've all got those conservative uncles. Well, good lord.

Everyone in the holiday, the one thing about holidays, American holidays since 19-whatever, 99 or 2000 2002 or whenever whatever it was that the web just became ubiquitous they've all been internet based you have your relatives on skype and you have picture pictures on your phone and you instagram them and people like them and you facebook it i mean you know my facebook feed is filled with people taking pictures and posting them up there of their thanksgiving thanksgiving is a and in christmas these are holidays that at least in part are celebrated and and and and chronicled by technology that works and so it'd be impossible i mean i i feel sorry for the kid who went home armed with obama's talking points trying to explain to people as they're instagramming and facebooking and

everyone's using their phone and they're all having a merry old time why Obamacare is terrific. You might as well try to sell me AOL. Dial up in the old days. Crazy. Hey, so question. I agree, James, with the notion that once you become uncool, that's a serious political problem and Obama is becoming, if he hasn't already, he'd become uncool. Got it. Do Republicans have anybody who is cool? Rand Paul maybe a little bit? Is Chris Christie cool? Yes, he is. Is he, you think?

Yeah. Well, he's not cool in the same sense, but he's throwback cool. He brings to mind a set of American characteristics that have been off the political – off the national stage for some time. And in that sense, people who are – who sort of have this vague hankering in the back of their head for lounge culture and hats and Sinatra and sort of unapologetic manliness. It's hard to say – to look at Chris Christie and say there's a guy who's unapologetic manliness, it's hard to say that to look at Chris Christie and say, there's a guy who's unapologetically manly, but he is in the sense that he's not tiptoeing around other people's opinions. He's, you know, he's, he's a hugger. Yes. He's got that, but there's a certain vital force to him. It's like, um, Tony Soprano's more cheerful brother and, you know, find somebody like that when, when, when the. When the Democrats are characterized by the parsimonious, lemon-sucking misery of Harry Reid, the wide-eyed, staring incomprehension of Nancy Pelosi, who's 142, Barack Obama, who is turning gray at the temples and looking around and making speeches, sounding as if he doesn't believe his own words.

Somebody like Christie comes through with a megaphone and is a fresh, fresh application. But I don't think we need, I mean, you know, look, we have our own expression. We used to use it in the writer's room all the time, which was a Bob Hope in a hippie wig. And there was a moment in those Bob Hope specials in the 70s where he would put on a hippie wig. You know, he's a 60-year-old man,

and he put on a hippie wig and beads, love beads and stuff. And it was like, it was just wrong on every level it wasn't funny he was also making fun of uh people who weren't even around anymore uh and it was sort of like uh it was just it's just a bad choice bob hope in a hippie wig and and but it also represents a kind of a you know old people trying to act young and there's no reason to do that there's no you don't have to do that if you don't want to. Bob Hope and Hippie Wig right now is Obamacare. We can run Bob Hope. We can run an old guy.

It doesn't really matter. We don't have to be cool or act cool. We just have to have a very, very clear message to the millennials that we're not fantasizing about what government can do when we know it can't do it. Chris Christie – They won't agree with us on everything, but they'll agree with us enough to put us in the Senate and probably put us in the White House. A point about Chris Christie that sort of fits with what you were saying, Rob, about just feeling at ease with this new technology of communication. I wasn't aware of this about Chris Christie.

Maybe you guys were. There is a station in Princeton, New Jersey, which does talk all the time. And one hour a week, every week, the governor of New Jersey drives over to the station and takes questions live on the air. Just lets it roll. And you know that if he

were saying things that were politically embarrassing, we would hear them on the evening news over and over again. This guy, I mean, can you imagine Barack Obama just saying, okay, open up the lines. An hour a week, I'll just sit here and take unthinkable. Well, you know who else used to do that?

Giuliani used to do that yeah i sat in on julia and at city hall one day when he did those and near the end you know near the end of his term i mean before 9-11 people forget before 9-11 giuliani was like a despised figure in dc in in new york city but the the those radio shows were fantastic because it was like his pure weird temper unleashed. He would like yell at people. Some guy called up and said, how come I can't keep a ferret in my apartment? They allow pets but somehow they don't allow ferrets.

And Giuliani fantastically just went off on the guy. Why do you give me a ferret? That's weird. You're crazy. You should see this guy. Like the kinds of things that only a New York politician or maybe a New York area politician get away with. I sat in on one of those, Rob. I sat in on Julian.

I sat in with him once when he was recording a show. He began by talking for three or four minutes about new archaeological findings there at City Hall that went all the way back to the Dutch. And he made this wonderful historical point. He said, come on down. Sign up for the school kids. It would be a wonderful day trip if you're a school teacher. Well, we can make this happen for you, this new archaeological site here at the foundations of City Hall. And what it shows is that New York has always been a city that's all about business. Then they go to the phones and somebody calls in from Queens, as I recall,

and said, hey, you know what? My garbage isn't getting picked up. And I thought Giuliani would freeze. This is just too small a level. And he said, oh, really, darling? Where do you live? And she said, I'm in such and such a neighborhood. And he said, oh, you know, we did rearrange the routes. If you're not getting picked up, something's wrong. And he said, I'm going to put you on the line

here with Deputy Mayor so and so forth. I mean, it was just a bravura performance. New politicians who can do that, you know, on both sides. I mean it was just a bravura performance. Yeah. New politicians who can do that. Exactly. On both sides. I mean people would say that when Bill Clinton was running for re-election in Arkansas as governor, he had to run every two years. It was that kind of granularity and he had it in his head.

I'm sure Mayor Daley did the same thing. Great mayors, great local – I mean let's just be a skilled politician. I mean I think we have some on our side. I mean I would say that if you close your eyes and fantasize about whoever it is, pick any Democrat walking onto a presidential debate on one side of the stage and then whoever your favorite is. I mean I like Scott Walker. I also like Chris Christie a little bit. I mean Ted Cruz, fine. Walking out on the other side, you feel like, okay, well, these are three people at the very least who have already been under fire and kind of know how to talk and know what they believe and have accomplishments and courage. And that's sort of interesting.

And so just to bring it back to the millennials, I don't think that we necessarily need to be hip or cool or even young, our side. We just have to be right and we have to be right in the ways and be saying the things that the young people want to hear that sort of – that speak to their discomfort with this current president and this current party. We are entrepreneurial. We're for entrepreneurial capitalism. We're for opportunity. We are not for big government. We are not for cronyism, and we're not for the corrupt welfare state. I think that if you're a young person starting out, that's a good place to start. We're not going to get them all. We're certainly not going to get them all on gay

marriage. We're not going to get them all on abortion right now, maybe later. But for right now, winning those people back, it's doable. It is. And it's not just the issues. There's that charismatic quality, the desire to like yourself for liking this person, to find reflected in that person a positive evaluation of yourself, to join in something. I mean, that was the geist of the wind that filled Obama's sails twice over. People liked feeling good about themselves for feeling good about him. And if we put up somebody who says the right things but is somewhat dry and technocratic, that's not going to happen. If you put up somebody who is polarizing because of his politics and because of his style and his crassness – not crassness, bluntness.

That's not going to happen because people won't – it will be an insularity to it. And I'm not trying to oversell Christie as a politician or as a genius man of ideas that will save the country. I'm just saying personality-wise, played on a large stage, I can see him connecting to something that I don't see anybody else in the field being able to do. It has nothing to do with his policies. It has everything to do with his personality. He's expansive. There's a warmth and expansive,

and there's a knuckle in that, too. There's an edge. Anyway, we have been rambling on and on and on and on and i hope you all have enjoyed it lord knows behind the scenes yeti is going to be splicing this one together from about it's going to be like frankenstein when he finally puts the electrodes on its head oh the poor man but you know technical difficulties what are you going to do what are you going to do um what are you going to do of course go to foodie.com foodiedirect.com foodiedirect.com they foodiedirect.com.

They are a sponsor for this podcast. And you will see why when you go there, because your mouth is going to water, your chin will be on your sternum from the things that you will see there. Ribs, slabs. Remember that thing at the end of the Flintstones when they went to the drive-in theater and the waitress came along and put a side of ribs and tip

the car over. Yeah, like that. We also want to thank EncounterBooks.com. We didn't get around to them, but we're going to have their guest on pretty soon, I hope. Charles Johnson and his book about the IRS scandals. You can go there.

And if you enter the Ricochet code at EncounterBooks.com, you'll get 15% off this or any other title. Thanks for listening. Thanks, of course, for joining Ricochet. Nudge, nudge, elbow in the ribs. You did, right? Right, thanks. Thanks to ourudge, nudge, elbow in the ribs. You did, right? Right, thanks. Thanks to our guests, to Rob,

to Peter. Guys, we'll see you down the road at Ricochet.com. Next week. Tomorrow my loving eye Will sleep beneath all the burnt skies Somewhere across the border We'll leave behind my dear The pain and sadness we've found here and we'll drink

from Bravo's muddy waters where the sky grows gray and white we'll meet on the other side there across the border for you I I built a house

High upon a greasy hill Somewhere across the border Where pain and memory Pain and memory have been stilled There across the border Sweet blossoms fill the air Pastures of golden green Roll down into cool clear waters

And in your arms, neath open skies I'll kiss the sorrow from your eyes There across the border Ricochet! Join the conversation. Tonight we'll sing the songs And I'll dream of you, my little soul And tomorrow my heart will be strong And may the saints' blessings and grace

Carry me safely to your arms There across the border. No, there's a shame that attends to any...