The Ricochet Podcast - Figgy Pudding

Episode Date: December 20, 2012

This week we take on guns, super heroes, the meaning of Christmas, the people who ring the bells, and parse that darned figgy pudding song. And yes, of course we give an update on the state of Ricochet. It’s the last Ricochet Podcast of 2012 (but not the last ever, we promise). Thanks for another great year, folks. We’ll see you on January 4th. Merry Christmas, everyone! Music from this week’s... Source

Activate program. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no to have ourselves a podcast anyway. So let's give it a listen, and hey, what about some figgy pudding? There you go again. This, in case you're wondering, is podcast number 148. I think there's at least 300, 400 more to come if there's a God in heaven. And this being Christmas, we know that there is. Welcome, folks. I want to have a conversation about gum, specifically beemons. And by conversation, I mean I want you guys to listen to what I have to say and agree with me at the end of it. Otherwise, there's no point.

Now, we're going to get to that in just a second. But first, I have to remind you that if you were, for example, to say, I really want to read some interesting stuff in which firearms are used in a morally clear fashion that defends people, there's got to be something among Audible's 100,000 titles. Audible.com, the internet's leading provider of audiobooks. Like I said, fiction, nonfiction, periodicals, everything you want. You can get a free audiobook of your choice. You go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and claim it. And we mention this as much as some people say, why am I hearing ads? I'm paying for this podcast because money and the flowing in of it has been a topic of some concern over at Ricochet this week. And that's why I've got to welcome the founders again to the flagship podcast, Peter and Rob.

Hey, guys. How are you? This penultimate few – well, it can't be the penultimate Christmas days, but they're getting close. They're getting close. I'm doing very well. I just want to make sure that everybody knows it is 12 days to the fiscal cliff, 33 days to the inauguration of Barack Obama for his second term.

I guess I could have started a little more cheery. Wait, wait. Now, wait. By the way, thank you very much for introducing us as founders. Pity this is only audio because I am wearing my powdered wig this morning. Which fiscal cliff were you referring to there, Rob? The pesky, unimportant one that concerns the federal government or the dire fiscal cliff that concerns Ricochet? Just the pesky federal government one or the dire one that concerns Ricochet is something else.

Well, everybody wants it. Just the pesky federal government, the dire one that concerns Ricochet is something else. We had quite a weekend, and we already discussed it a little bit over the weekend for the weekend, sort of the big podcast. But we can still talk about that if we want. I do. I want to know. I'm out here. Even though I have 788 alerts at this very moment. I know. Amazing, isn't it? And I think about 600 are from Rob saying, really, please, you got a fiver? Can I just, you know?

Yeah, that's right. Come on, man. I just forget to get this for a sandwich. I did feel like I was panhandling, but sometimes you got to. I will pay you back Tuesday for a website today. So tell everybody, how's it going? How's it going? Well, I'll tell you. We posted, you know, we had a long series of calls last week.

And, you know, you. We posted – we had a long series of calls last week and you have obligations obviously. Everybody who's run a business here just has obligations and knows that and you're looking sort of out for four weeks and two pay periods and wondering how we're going to do that and do the things you want to do. And there are a lot of people who say – a lot of people who have said – if you Google this, I'm sure you'll find a million hits. You can't make money doing this on the web. You just can't. You can't make money or you can't break even. You can't match your costs asking people on the web to pay. They just don't want to do it. And so we were at a point where we realized that we have half a million unique visitors a month, which is huge, and only 1% of those people are members and we need 2% of those people to be members, which is not a very large figure. But it is twice the number of members we have today – or actually less than twice we have today because we – when I put up that post, we had a huge outpouring of enthusiasm and loyalty and testimonial to what Ricochet means to people, which really was incredibly moving because it was –

I don't think that Peter and I ever looked at each other when we started this and said, this is what we want. We want something that people really feel passionate about. I don't think we ever really could have articulated that and not felt embarrassed. But it was definitely where our vision in general was to create a community, and it's just very strange and gratifying and humbling to realize that you did it. But now we've got to figure out how to sustain it. That's our second problem. How to keep Bedford Falls from burning down.

You know, in the podcast that I have coming up, the diner for the show or for the site this weekend, I talk a little bit about It's a Wonderful Life, which is a great movie. I mean, sentimental and corny as all heck. But the one flaw in it, I think, is that when Bedford Falls turns into Potterville, still, nobody asks out Donna Reed. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

So, Peter, you are looking at this and feeling better as well. I mean, we've got the hard facts here from Rob. How are you feeling about Ricochet? Oh, how am I feeling about Ricochet? Listen, I actually – me being me, I was a little bit more pessimistic I think when Rob put up that post than he was, I thought this is really only fair warrant. What this is is what this is very likely maybe something like three or even four chances out of five.

This is fair notice that we're going to close our doors in about a month. I was just stunned. Actually, you just spoke about it's a wonderful life and corny as all get out. And I actually did feel – I got sort of choked up reading through the messages that began pouring in. I am hugely hopeful at this point, not that there aren't all kinds of problems to put in place to sustain this enterprise. But one, we've been caught short. We've been caught up. Our chain – the members have yanked our chain in a very healthy way. It doesn't feel good to have your chain yanked, but this does feel good.

In the following sense, there has already been a kind of, I don't know how to put it in a less pompous sounding way than this, but there's already been a kind of conceptual breakthrough. As George Savage pointed out, we've been running it too much like a magazine. The editors find material. They shove it out. You hope people read it. And much too little like a community.

We already have dozens of conversations. In addition to that outpouring of more than 800 comments, we have dozens of conversations going on on the side on how to rejigger the site technically with all kinds of Ricochet members who know websites, who know content management systems, making suggestions, offering their help, and on and on it goes. And as for a number of people have said they'd be willing to offer donations, we've received a few donations by way of PayPal, and we actually have, through this whole process, been in touch with a few people who seem to be interested in putting in large-ish sums of money. Don't stop signing up, folks. We still need members, and none of these large-ish sums of money is in the bank yet. I feel like a telethon operator here because we have to mention we just have a wonderful $1,000 PayPal gift from a member, a murder of cows.

And I hope that there's not an R that I'm missing. Wow. Murder of crows, of course, being the term for a lot of those. Murder of cows put in $1,000 to the kitty. Wow. And we thank him for that. He also adds hee-haw. I don't know what that means.

No, but for $1,000, Rob, give us your best rendition of hee-haw. Well, I, I, I'm trying to remember that, the, how that, the theme song to that show goes. No, no, no, no, not the theme song. That's the most irritating tick and it's a wonderful life. He's got the rich friend who's into plastics who always says hee-haw because it was some college. That's exactly right. Hee-haw, George.

Hee-haw. Right. Edit that out of the movie. it just bugs me every single time. That and Zazu. She's cute. You know Zazu's still alive apparently? Sure. And she does conventions, Capricons or whatever they are.

Anyway. Before you go, I just want to – that's incredibly – it's just – it's really – it's extraordinary. And I don't even have the words for it. Just the gratitude, our gratitude, my gratitude. And then the strange sense of security, I guess when I woke up on Saturday morning, Peter, thinking, you know what? We might be OK. But I think we'll only be OK if we continue to get members. So if you're listening and you're not a member somehow, I think there's a weird little wormhole.

You could somehow listen to most of the podcast without being a member. If you are, please join. We really need you. We need you to be a member. We need you to be a supporter of Ricochet. But I think the community needs you too because the more people we have, the more members we have, and obviously with more investment, we'll be able to handle the more members in a more efficient and sort of organized way. But the more members we have, I think the more influential and important Ricochet becomes. And that is only to the good, not just to our good, but to the good of the country. So, and I really believe that. I

keep saying that over and over again, but I really do believe it. I really do believe that if we can get, you know, some large bunch of members, I mean, that's my technical term for it, James. That's my financial brain working. That's a quorum almost is what I mean, a small, heavy thing on the lever that we can start to drive some conversations. My vision is that Ricochet is the first stop for people who are thinking about running for national office in 2016. That Ricochet is the first stop for people who want to nationalize the election in 2014. And that appearing on Ricochet and being here and submitting themselves to our member questions and to our member queries and to be part of that conversation, I think. That's what I really believe, that we could do some good.

So just everybody know that there's a cleaner, purer, better site coming. There's all kinds of stuff behind the scenes, and a better Ricochet is going to emerge from this. Now, as long as we're on the subject, however, of beggary and the like, I've got to ask you guys, do you have bell ringers where you are in California? Do you have the red kettle people? Or have they been banned from the public streets? Go ahead. I've seen one. I've seen one.

Outside the Safeway, there is a perfectly straightforward, orthodox, old-fashioned setup, Salvation Army. Red kettle, somebody standing next to it, ringing a bell right out in front of the Safeway up here in Menlo Park. Rob, in godless Venice. I mean, there's like obviously no street. I like that. It's California.

Obviously, there's no street. I know what you mean. You don't have anybody standing on a corner because who would be there to give money? Which I miss totally because I love walking down the street in cities. But there are bell ringers in the malls, I think. I had a park and go to some place the other day, and there was a guy ringing a bell. I don't know. The Salvation Army, they don't look like Salvation Army.

I think they are, but they don't look like it. They're not directly great. They hire a lot of people, and they don't necessarily have the Salvation Army Corps be drummed into their bones. Now, I'm going to give you guys a question, and I'm going to ask you later in the show for the answer. Do you give to the bell on the way into the store or on the way out? Discuss that in the live comment box, please, and discuss the merits of giving on the way

in versus the merits of giving on the way out. And we'll get to that. But first, there is news, and alas and alack, we seem to be having that conversation we don't want anyway over things that are scary and do bad things. We are back to a rather infantile reduction of the gun issue to, well, to terms that I just, I frankly can't believe I heard somebody the other day use the term, knowledgeably too, that the guns used in the horrible, horrible school shooting were, are you ready?

They were weapons grade. And I'm scratching my head and I'm trying to find a gun that would not be weapons grade. Now, are you guys, I know you're not particularly gun guys but oh Rob knows something about guns Rob is part of the Venice Beach Militia or something aren't you Rob

well no but I do know something I mean you went through some sort of training session or something what was it a few years ago it's the drug enforcement agencies citizens something the uh uh it's the um a drug enforcement agency's citizens something i forget what it's called uh but you actually went to you actually that you were instructed in how to handle a gun you went to a target range right you got there was a range and

um i mean it's really more for fun i mean there's a range and we stormed a crack house uh we did a mock storming of a crack house with a Glock 9. And in the Glock 9, there were kind of live rounds, but there was a detergent, a little hard pack of detergent. So it stung. It looked like a paintball, but smaller and heavier and hurt. And then we went to the range and we fired all sorts of things, you know, M16 and a big shotgun. I can't believe that they let you have those things. I mean, those little detergent pellets, did some of them have fast acting bleach?

Because if you add bleach crystals to that, again, you're talking weapons grade weaponry. When you guys hear the debate that we're supposedly having right now, are you impressed by A, the mastery of the subject by the people who want to restrict your freedoms and your rights? and B, are you that impressed actually with the efficacy of the things that they are proposing? Peter first. Peter first. I have to say when within – it seems to me a matter of mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, had gone in front of the cameras and said into the microphones that he – this is a paraphrase. But he demanded that the president of the United States take action on guns now. I felt furious.

How dare he? How dare Michael Bloomberg, completely different jurisdiction, how dare he use the horrible – the emotion of the moment to try to plead for his policy initiative? to ask questions but to wait until the facts begin to come out as even now we still don't know very much about the young man who was pulling the trigger and to try to stampede the american people in a moment of shock and grief i found and find reprehensible just reprehensible i can't think of anything that a public official in this country has done in recent years, not weeks, not months, but years that struck me as so utterly irresponsible and craven as Michael Bloomberg's attempt to use this tragedy to favor his, to promote his particular policy initiative. That said, there are all kinds of difficult issues involved in this,

including, as people have pointed out, the question of how we take care of people who are mentally ill, the great emptying out of mental institutions that took place beginning in the 1970s, why people are on the street who probably should not be on the street. That's one. And then, of course, you do get questions of gun control. How do you draw the line preserving the Second Amendment right to bear arms? Does the right to bear arms mean the right to own a tank?

No, obviously not. There are distinctions to be drawn. How do you draw those distinctions in a fair and just way? There was a piece – oh, I wish I could remember the name because I thought it was just wonderful for the Wall Street Journal to find this fellow, for him to write it so quickly. There was a piece, it seems to me two days ago, I'll find it and post a link to it on Ricochet, in which he began going through the facts. It turns out that the murder rate is down, that shootings overall are down in recent years. The one kind of shooting that has increased in frequency is this random shooting where somebody just opens fire at people

with whom he has no particular connection. And it seems likely there that the problem may be less. We don't know. I'm not making an argument, but asking an important question, the argument there may be less gun laws than the reaction of the press because what seems to be taking place is that people engage in these random shootings specifically to get the attention of the internet, of the 24-hour news cycle to pop up on Drudge and force the world to pay attention. That's a question of how the press handles matters, not of state or certainly not federal gun law. In any event, I've just given a speech. I regret that.

But the notion that we take a moment of shock and grief and legislate into it is outrageous, in my humble opinion. Rob? Well, I agree. I mean, look, it's inevitable. It always happens when these things happen. But I think Peter is correct. You look at the numbers and you say, okay, well, I agree. I mean look. It's inevitable. It always happens when these things happen. But I think Peter is correct. You look at the numbers and you say, OK, well, all right.

The argument for gun control shouldn't be it will stop crazy people from doing crazy things because I mean nobody believes that. The argument for gun control is it will stop gun deaths, right? That's the point. And if gun deaths are down, then I'm not sure we have a problem with guns. But we do have a problem with crazy people and we do have a problem with how we treat crazy people. And it is part, as Peter said, of the sort of – from the early 70s of a movement, best practice movement. Everyone was in favor of it. All the intellectuals were in favor of it. The psychiatrists and psychologists were all in favor of it, of deinstitutionalizing the insane.

And when they're deinstitutionalized, what we create is this idea that people who are mentally incapable can live. Now, this is a civil liberties problem because the ACLU and the civil liberties unions and organizations have been arguing in favor for this for years. They've been arguing – you can't – Mayor Bloomberg can't take homeless people in Manhattan who are on the street and are dangerous and cannot incarcerate them. He cannot take them off the street until it's a certain temperature, until you can prove to a judge that they are a danger to themselves and others lying on the street at night. Which is utter insanity. Insanity. I mean the – I always use homelessness, which I know a little bit about. I use homelessness as a proxy for a lot of things for the left. Homelessness was used when it first became apparent.

The number of homeless people living on the street went up in the late 70s, early 80s. Especially the early 80s was really when it hit critical mass. It was always described as an economic problem and it was always Reagan's fault. Homelessness was an economic problem because Reagan was terrible and the services had been cut and those people living on the street were living on the street because we're living in a cruel society that a Republican president brought upon us. That is simply not the case. And anybody walking down the street knew that was not the case. Homelessness is caused overwhelmingly by drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness.

That's it. Those are the problems. Reagan did not invent either one of those. So those people living on the street, everyone knows that, but we accept the nonsense and the lie we hear in the media about who those people are. It's all – no room at the inn right around now. They had TV movies about this for years. You know who's to blame for this? I just couldn't get a job, and that is simply not the case. And we kind of live sometimes in this cognitive dissonance world where we ignore problems.

We ignore what we know to be true because the truth is unpleasant we did that with aids too by the way it was exactly the same thing in the 80s that the the twin media messages for aids were one it's a serious epidemic anyone can get it uh this is a disease that knows no category and the second one was relax it's not an epidemic it's actually quite difficult to get. You have to engage in specific behaviors to get it. The newspaper, it's always a choreographer. The idea of Reagan being responsible

for AIDS as well is interesting because unless Reagan burst into people's houses and at the point of a taser or a cattle prod forced them into bathhouses against their will, no, I don't buy it. Who is responsible for this? Not Ronald Reagan, but for the homelessness thing? I put it squarely at the feet of Ken Casey and Jack Nicholson.

Because we all watched one, Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and we all thought, you know what? Those guys, they're just normal. Who's to say that they're crazy and we're not?

I mean, maybe, man, society is just like a metaphor for the institution itself. And the point where McMurdy takes all of them off on a little trip and passes them off as doctors and we're supposed to have this great little thrill when they look. They're treated like they're not mainstream because they will be outside of this really horrible place that Geraldo Rivera would make bad news about if he ever found out. And all that is true.

I know it was, but the other half of it was to get these people into community centers and make sure that they take their medication. They opened the doors, they raised the places, they relaxed the rules, and then they never followed through on the other part of it, which is why we have legions of these people. Now, what you do have, the reason that you have, I think you mentioned before, Rob, that crime is going down. The stats are going down except for this weird random killing thing and maybe they want to be on the internet. That's possible. But if you look at – for my money, and I've said this before, and it's not a hobby horse, but it's something that bugs me. In the last 20 to 30 years, the 20 years especially, we've taken a lot of strange young men who otherwise would

just be strange young men and pumped their heads full of all kinds of chemicals. And in the majority of instances, these chemicals do people wonderful things. They keep them from suicide. They alleviate depression and anxiety. I've known people who've had their lives changed by these things. But there also is a percentage of people who have their conscience erased, their brains rewired, and they become murderous little strange flesh robots. And I think that's what happens. And that's one of the reasons you look at all of these guys, and I guarantee you they've been on something and the dosage was changed or removed or something like that, that we screwed with the brain chemistry. And that essentially, I think I mentioned, what did I – who was I blathering about?

I mean we think we're so clever when it comes to figuring out the biochemistry of the human brain and we're getting good. But at times, we look like monkeys who are banging on the side of a tree with an axe trying to make a limb grow the proper direction. But for serious mental illness like this gentleman had – and I think that's another conversation to have about what's wrong with men. These are young men. Where are we failing young men? Why are so many young men crazy? I think the problem is that there are pharmaceuticals for these guys. You can't give it to people. You can't – there are

insane people on the street who need medication. The medication stabilizes their behavior. I agree. You can't make them take it. They have to want to take it. So you have this terrible cycle where you get them into treatment, you convince them to take the medication, they take the medication, they feel better, then they, because they feel better, they stop taking the medication and they spiral downwards and you can't force them to take the medication until they are dangerous. They have to be dangerous. It's crazy. It's a perfect liberal argument. It's a perfect liberal argument. It's a perfect example of

liberal solution. You have a problem, which was a very real problem, which was these state mental hospitals were terrible. And your solution is, close them. Your solution is not that we have to figure out another solution, not that there's a series of trade-offs, but that the people who are in them are therefore innocent victims, and they need to be set free. They're innocent victims. Everyone's always a victim here. First-stage thinking at its absolute best. But here's the thing, Rob, and this is the amusing part, is that while the ACLU will complain if you take somebody who is borderline insane and make them take their medication and make them be institutionalized. Supposedly, this kid who shot the school up, one of the reasons he was motivated was because he thought

his mom was going to put him into an institution. Well, you've got the ACLU lining up to say you can't do that. On the other hand, however, you have the liberals saying that the old, such as Ed Schultz, saying the only way that we can truly be safe is to confiscate every gun, which requires the government going into absolutely every single house in America and doing an attic to basement search. That's OK. But taking crazy people and forcing them to go into an institution and take medication to make them better, that's not OK. Got it.

Boys, here's my last offering on this. I found this piece that I was referring to a moment ago. It's by David Koppel, who is the director of the Independence Institute. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 17th, or yes, two days ago, just two or three sentences. The total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by half since 1980, and the gun homicide rate has fallen along with it. Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s. He points out, however, that random shootings have increased. Quote again, if you count only such crimes in which five or more victims were killed, there were six in the 1980s and 19 in the 2000s.

Still small numbers, but still an increase of some threefold. Why the increase? It cannot be because gun control laws have become more lax. And then he goes into the ways in which gun control laws have, in fact, become much stiffer. So this notion that we need gun control laws, that the country is slipping, no. There is one kind of crime. In the decade of the 80s, there were six instances of it. In the decade of the 2000s, there were 19. It is a specific, finite problem that requires thought and careful attention and deliberation, and not Michael Bloomberg standing in front of the microphones hours after a tragedy. Thank you. You're quite welcome.

Agree. Yeah. Also, Bloomberg, you know, for New York City, the whole idea of gun control is – no – I mean Giuliani was in favor of some handgun control. Yeah. It was really as a premise for arresting and detaining people for 48 hours. The gun control is that you find someone who isn't doing anything wrong, but they are carrying a gun. That's one more thing, one more way to keep somebody in jail for 48 hours who's probably a bad guy.

That was his theory. His theory was, yeah, I know it violates the civil liberties of gang members, but that's OK because if I can put them in jail for 48 hours, I could figure something else out to keep them with. So that was a very cynical thing. It is designed to restrict your civil liberties. That's the whole point of it. And you know what? Rudy Giuliani, as best I can tell – it would be lovely if we could do an interview with Rudy Giuliani.

Actually, that's something we should try to do sometime in the next few months is get Rudy Giuliani on the air to address this with us because as best I can tell, Rudy Giuliani used that as one of the tools he had for cleaning up the city of New York. And he did it. He did clean up the city of New York. And you know what? Fine for the city of New York. But the notion that the Mayor Bloomberg goes in front of the microphones and says the entire nation today needs exactly the same approach to firearms that we have right here in the most densely populated front of the microphones and says, the entire nation today needs exactly the same approach to firearms that we have right here in the most densely populated piece of the – it's just ridiculous. You know, I'm not really impressed being lectured by that prissy little busybody.

I like to think of a New York – Hey, you call him Peter Robinson. You treat him with respect. Oh, sorry. Fellas, I hate to interrupt. I have to run to do a little bit of actual real business. I know. I thought you were already gone.

What I was going to try to do was to just keep talking, let you slide out, and then at the end of the show, people say, hey, whatever happened to Rob? And then we'd make up some little story behind your back. Go off. If I can hop back on, I will. Go do business. We'll talk to you later.

You like to think of the mayor of a big city as something from a classic black and white movie, a masculine figure, glowering with great political power, screwing in a stogie in the corner of his mouth as he balances constituents. Ever since the 70s, however, New York has just had this series of limp dishrags, with the exception of Giuliani, right? I mean, starting with, what was the movie? The Taking of Pilum 123, I think, was the first movie to give us a mayor that was not the LaGuardia type, man of the people up from the streets, a scrapper, but a Ed Koch sort of dithering, what am I doing kind of guy, which continued all the way through the Ghostbuster movies to now. And I remember I was living in D.C. and I would go up to New York in the Dinkins era, and it was just not a pleasant place to be. But if Rudy was able to do something about that, why then can't we do something about the nation as a whole?

Is it a matter of identifying one issue, squeegee men, and applying it nationwide and figuring out exactly because that was it i mean the moment that people started to feel as though a corner of their life the city was being taken back that it wasn't being devolving into some feral such uh you know um soil and green world where everybody's living 40 to a room and nothing ever improved touch i lived in new york from in 1990 1991 that was the one year I've actually lived in New York. Dinkins was mayor. Everybody I knew, and I mean without exception, expected New York to continue a long, slow slide, less economic activity, real estate values slipping and sliding. And you mentioned the squeegee men. Exactly. You'd rent a car.

Well, I mean wealthy people own their cars and house them in Manhattan. But for somebody like me, if you wanted to go to the country, you'd rent a car. And as you got in line to go down into the Lincoln Tunnel, you're in Manhattan still. And of course the traffic backs up and stops because the Lincoln Tunnel was always over capacity. People would come out and they would squirt water on your windshield and soap it you often using a bar of soap and then drag a squeegee across it leaving a smear across your windshield and then knock on your window and it was clear that if you didn't hand them five or ten bucks they'd do something to your car not not not i mean it – and the cops would just ignore it. And Rudy came along and I was in New York again in a car on the way out.

What? A couple of years into the Rudy – and the squeegee men were gone. And you know what? That really did send a signal that the mayor of New York was serious. So that is actually a very good question. I toss it out for Ricochet World. What is the federal equivalent? What could the federal government do that would be the equivalent of squeegee men?

What could we do to indicate that we're serious? Oh, you're tossing that out now. This was my idea. Now it's Peter Robinson's thing. That's what I thought I'd do. Yes, exactly. So how is Ricochet losing money with accomplished thieves like this? The thing that I love about New York is that it's like what – the liberals who run it, who live it, who occupy it, who regard it as the acme of their accomplishment.

It's like who do you – what do you think built this thing? I mean, yes, government obviously did some infrastructure work. but these proud tall towers, where do these come from? Are these a manifestation exactly of socialism or collectivism or some Randian will that thrusts the spire up into the sky? And I know we've got to have a combination of the two of them, but you look around and you see New York. It's a thing crafted by giants into which ants scuttle now and then. Well, it's because of the architecture that the city is great. I mean, you can find another city elsewhere in the country that has got as many people, but it's a combination of the American spirit and a particular style of architecture between

the start of the century and about the 60s or so that made the New York that's iconic. And if you want to know why that matters, you have to go to good critics like, well, some people like Huxtable. I like Paul Goldberger. I always have. He used to write for, I think it was New Yorker, and I think he still does,

New York Times. That's what he did. He writes good books about New York architecture. But if you think, why should I care? This is why you should care. Architecture shapes

the way we look at the world, and that's why Goldberger's book, Why Architecture Matters, is probably worth a listen. And by listen, I mean audible.com. You can get it there for free. Yes, this is a commercial. We need them, okay?

It helps every bit. It helps the architecture of the show. It's built around commerce, and this is the part where I say go to audible.com and claim your free book, Why Architecture Matters by Paul Goldberger. If you have no interest whatsoever in the way things look or why they look that way, this might change your mind. And Peter, I know that you are now reading the Captain Aubrey on the Moon series, which was later done by Victor Appleton, I believe, where he extended the character's way into space. However, actually you're wrong for once. I started A Hologram for the King. I haven't finished it yet.

This is Dave Eggers' new novel. And it's – I'm not sure actually that I would care to recommend it. This is Dave Eggers writing in a new voice. The prose is much leaner, much more stripped down. The story is frankly rather odd. It concerns an American who is stuck in Saudi Arabia waiting for King Abdullah to turn up to watch the Americans team present an information technology system that they're hoping the Saudis will install in an entirely new city that they're building. And of course, the king never turns up, leading to one adventure after another. And it's a little, you know, if you read Dave Eggers,

you get the feeling, I'm beginning to get the feeling that you can have a rich and meaningful life if you live in the Sudan. But if you're an American, it's nothing but middle class anime. And so nevertheless, if you are like me and you think Dave Eggers is just so interesting, you're going to read every book he writes, A Hologram for the King. It's narrated by Dion Graham, and it runs about seven, just under eight hours. So there, James, a non-Patrick O'Brien book for you. Well, that's excellent. And I thank you for that recommendation. I hope somebody does do Aubrey in Space, though.

When I was a kid, I used to read these Tom Swift novels. I just loved them. Tom was a smart kid. I think he was about 14 or 15 or so. Right. Hung around with his pal Bud, who was a bit dumber but useful in the fight. They had a cook

too. They had sort of a slim pickens type cook who followed them around. And of course, Tom's sister and Bud's sister, so there could be mutual little romantic things going back and forth. Tom invented stuff. He would go to he invented a wonderful jungle paving machine, which is the most American thing I can,

I still have a copy of the cover. It's this huge floating thing that would go over jungles and lay down highways. It was just brilliant. I mean, lasers would clear the path. Asphalt would stream out the back. Force fields would press it into place.

This is at a time when, of course, putting superhighways through jungles was regarded as progress, which, of course, it was, but it's another podcast question there. So in every one of these books, Tom got a concussion. He and Tom and Bud got knocked on the head, and they blacked out. And I think he suffered about 30 to 35 concussions in the course of the entire series, which only made him smarter. I mean, unlike ending up like Ali, shaking all over the place, he just got brighter and brighter. But then I discovered in my grandfather's possessions after he died, I found a copy of a Tom Swift book from the 20s. Tom Swift and his philosophy.

Tom Swift and his radio bicycle. And they were by Victor Appleton. And I thought, wait a minute. Mine are by Victor Appleton Jr. That's when I realized the whole thing is just a complete machine that a variety of writers had all been enlisted under the banner to carry forth the Tom Swift stories. There was no Victor Appleton.

So that's why if somebody wants to do the Aubrey books in space, they can take the name into the future and append a junior or a second or a third to it and keep on going. What did you, you know, we could continue to discuss really heavy political issues and I'm sure we'll get back to them. I want to go to the chat room and see what questions there are. But when you were a young kid, Peter, what did you like to read? Were you a comic book guy at all? I loved comic books. I had, there was a period of time, actually two or three years when I had to go to the doctor's office every Saturday morning because I was allergic to bee stings. And the way you treated that in those days was by injecting the poor kid with a shot that contained a little bit of bee serum.

Anyway, this went on for two or three years and I used to love that because at my physician – the pediatrician's office, there were just stacks and stacks and stacks of comic books. Fantastic moment for me every morning. Well, the fantastic moment was not getting the shot, which hurt, but you had to remain, stick around for half an hour or something like that for observation. The Tom Hardy or the Hardy Boy books, I'm delighted to hear you mention Tom Swift because the Hardy Boy books I found boring. I don't know why. I don't have much memory of them, but I found them boring. But Tom Swift, I have this dim memory that Tom Swift actually rocked.

I love those books too. Well, he did. The end paper for the Tom Swift books was Tom looking out the window of his laboratory on his jet because he had a big like 727 or something that he had outfitted with a laboratory his father was a fabulously wealthy industrialist too i love that he was an industrialist in the days when you could just imagine the fellow with a little silver mustache of sorts graying at the temple's stern command of the world industrialist and his inventor son now what kind of comics though were they dc or were they marvel oh good lord i can't remember captain america the usual captain america batman the usual superman stuff seems to me i i liked i liked um batman and superman just

struck me as um on into the captain america and then then there were wasn't there somebody called thor there were some serious series of these things Big muscular guys running around swinging hammers who were all based on, as I later figured out, began to work out, they were all based on Scandinavian myths. Thor and, didn't he swing a hammer? I don't know. I can't remember in great detail. Yes, Peter, there was a guy named Thor

who swung a hammer called Mjolnir, actually. M-G-O-L-N-E-R. And he spoke, he was Norse, and he spoke in that sort of pseudo-Shakespearean style that Stanley perfected for his heroes. And he fought loci, and he was a doctor in real life. He was a doctor with a limp. That's how he hit himself, and he had a crush on his nurse, and she had a crush on him and the rest of it.

It was a great time. He joined the Avengers, and that's where you may see him. If you go to the mall, you will find people going into these large rooms on which flickering images are projected against a large white rectangle, and there's a story of that Thor guy and Captain America. The movie's called – All right, all right. Go ahead.

The movie's called what? It's called The Avengers. Anyway, there's a Superman movie coming up now, too, and this does fit to the Ricochet style because we talk politics, we talk culture as well. And if you've seen the new Superman movie trailer, it's interesting because it's gritty and it's dark. They figured this is the only way

they can possibly get people interested in a character who is the most uninteresting character of them all because he has no flaws and he has no he has there's no achilles heel except for a a green rock what they do so the the reboot of superman and i think it's the 40th reboot in the last six or seven years it shows him hitchhiking in the rain it shows him abandoned shows him questioning shows all the things that are trying to make you care about a guy, essentially, who is immortal and undefeatable.

So you, as a child, Peter, you said you weren't interested in Superman. No, I just, and I remember the Christopher Reeve that was supposed to be, that was one of the first big superhero, if not the, right? Christopher Reeve, what, way back in the late 70s, earliest, earliest 80s

maybe the marlin when marlon brando played his father and it was just boring i thought yeah it was and it was amusing if you go back and look at it because in brando's role brando could never be arsed to uh to to memorize a line so everybody would always have to show up with enormous cue cards and there's a series there's a scene in the beginning of superman where he's walking around in a circle, and you know that there's somebody walking backwards holding the enormous cue cards, just waiting to bump his head into a light pole or something.

But he doesn't, and Marlon finishes the scene. That's why the I could have been a contender scene has that searching quality. Because Brando, when he's looking up as though he's trying to summon the words out of the failure of his own past, he's actually looking at a series of index cards that are up in the taxi that he's reading the dialogue from anyway no you're right the superman stuff devolved into camp quite quickly and gene hackman flounced all over the place and it had its moments but every era gets the superman

it deserves and i'm wondering now if we have the the dark and gritty one because we're in a dark and gritty time where america needs a super and gritty time where America needs a Superman. Speaking of which, Barack Obama is man of the year again according to Time. Would you have chosen somebody else? He's man of the year? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You don't mean person of the year. You mean man of the year?

I would consider it a great step forward if Time magazine were willing to use the word man again. Probably not. Object of the year. Concept of the year. I'm looking for this. I mean I don't – if the notion is who's the most consequential figure in America this year, I guess you have to say it was Barack Obama. Consequential, not good, not salutary, not someone who's going to lead us into a better future. But yeah, he's the president of the United States.

He won a close election. Sure, I guess I would have. I confess that if you're asking me to find grounds to object, I'm groping for them. My impulse is to say, ah, Time magazine, how dare they? But I can't actually find the grounds for saying that. Probably so. Probably so. Well, casting your eye forward then to the week to come, how was the fiscalism looking to

you? Like so many people on the site, and I think you said too, after the election, I just wanted to step, I wanted to do a Sajak from it. Sajaking is now sort of a ricochet term for just leaving it because you can't take it and you need a break. I've been say jacking it when it comes to the fiscal cliff negotiations. And I just assume in the end that the Republicans are going to are going to fold and we're all going to be charged more money for less that we're all going to be poorer in the coming year. It's almost like they it's almost as if the president promised us in a way that he was running on the platform of everybody being a little poorer in the coming year. But better in an egalitarian sense and that we'd have access to more things and that the future would be shared and all the rest of that BS. How do you think it's going?

And I say that as I'm about to put down the mic and get myself a cup of coffee. So, Peter, take away the podcast. Oh, my goodness. I'm left alone. How do I think it's going? I, the underlying dynamic of this is what, of the, of the negotiations has bothered me from the troubled me, worried me, concerned me from the very beginning in that if the Republican stiff Barack Obama, we go over the cliff and why wouldn't we? The principal results of going over the fiscal cliff, that is to say of having the tax rates go up automatically and spending cuts kick in automatically, would be as follows. The real spending cuts, the serious spending cuts would take place in the military. Taxes would rise on wealthier Americans and the Republicans would get the blame. Why wouldn't Barack Obama want all

of that to happen? He would. Of course he would. So what could Republicans have used? What did John Boehner have that he could hold over Barack Obama's head? Not much in the short term. In the longer term, yes, you could cause an economic recession. This would be – I just don't think Barack Obama cares about an economic recession. In any event, I've expected trouble from the beginning. Now it looks as though we're getting some kind of slow motion concession on the part of John Boehner. It's the concession that Bill Kristol among others, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, recommended immediately after the election. Oh, come on. Let's just give the Democrats what they want. Let them raise taxes on the very richest.

John Boehner is now saying we'll raise taxes on incomes of over a million dollars a year. And then let's get this enacted, move on to next year when Republicans can get back to proposing reform legislation without having Barack Obama and the press gang up on them. I don't – I would rather they didn't have to do it but it strikes me as within the very narrow amount of political wiggle room that John Boehner has as a reasonable thing to do, I guess. I could not agree with you more. I think that's the most incisive analysis I've heard on this in a long, long time.

You heard not a word of it. Not a jot, not a phoneme. I just got myself some coffee here, fortifying myself for the final moments of the podcast. And I was thinking as I was coming up the stairs about Christmas music, because I've been listening to a lot of it lately to get myself. I'm having to. Hey, can you hang on? Hang on one second here, because something wonderful just happened. While you walked away, I was starting to run out of thoughts.

So I looked over at the live chat and there is a stream of really very good commentary. It's such a quick stream that we can't – I'm going to miss some of it. But Aaron Miller said if Republicans take the blame, it's their own fault. We should start expecting Republicans to improve their PR. Citizen of the Republic said the tax increases Glenn Reynolds have pitched sounded good. Glenn Reynolds, perhaps a week or two weeks ago, said, go ahead, go back to the Clinton tax increases, tax rates, but also enact the Clinton spending. And on and on, Don Tillman says, Don Tillman makes the very important analytical point. If Bush's tax cuts run out, expire, the poor will actually be paying significantly more in taxes.

They'll experience a greater proportional increase than the – all kinds of really perceptive points getting made over in the live chat. Boy, do I love Ricochet. OK. This is what drives me nuts about our side. It's slightly embarrassing. I'm willing to admit it. I'll just put it flat out. This is what drives me nuts about our side is that we come up with these'm willing to admit it. I'll just put it flat out. This is what drives me nuts about our side, is that we come up with these gimmicks, okay? Like, we'll do this, and then we'll do that. It's not going to work. It doesn't work with people.

What we need to do is to come up with one thing and push it, and push it. It drives me nuts about our side. Sorry, Rob's gone, so I had to do a Rob there. No, I too love it, and the chat function is great. However, following it sometimes is like standing behind a jet engine that somebody's feeding a quart of mercury into the other side. I mean, you just get blasted with this sluicing of all these great little things moving so fast. And let's archive that and send it to Boehner.

Ha! Like that'll help. But when I was talking about the Christmas music, and we really should have, well, the comments threads perhaps, I know we've had one, and after the diner is up this weekend, people can have more. I've been trying, I've been listening to Christmas music a lot because I had this great Christmas vibe going about a week or so ago. We got a storm here that was just extraordinary. It was a great, wonderful 14-inch dump of white fluffy stuff, which still maintains.

We still have it. And I was in the spirit. And then I think on a national scale, the entire country just fell, just sank, was just so heartbroken last weekend that the whole season has this stunned hushness to it that almost chastens cheer it's certainly it's certainly nobody really feels like bouncing off to the mall looking for tinsel and silver and singing rudolph songs i mean there's just a sort of a national stone in the heart that we're gradually

working our way out of um so i try so i keep listening to more and more things, not the cheerful, commercial, stupid, wacky, upbeat stuff, but the old classics reinterpreted in small little ways. And I find myself drawn more and more to little small jazz ensembles, to orchestral ensembles that take the songs and try to find the soul and the essence of them and present them as clearly and simply as possible. However, the Figgy Pudding song is not one of those. We wish you a Merry Christmas. Everybody knows it.

But the verse about the Figgy Pudding, I just don't get. Because if you listen to this, essentially these people who have come to this person's house are saying that unless they are presented with a particular confection, they are not going to leave. We won't leave until they get to the next person. Yes, that's right. Well, what if you don't have any damn figgy pudding?

What are you supposed to do exactly? Run out like Michael Jackson in the old Pepsi commercial and go to the store in the rain? No. So you're stuck there with these people who eventually look at each other around 2 o'clock in the morning and say, I don't think this guy's going to give us any figgy pudding, man. So I don't even know what the stuff is.

Nobody calls for it these days. I'm sure it's some sort of sweet confection and the rest of it. Are you a pecan pie, a pumpkin pie, an apple pie man when it comes to the Christmas feast? You know what I am? I am attempting this year to be an abstain from and be reasonable guy. What is the matter with you, man? I have a brother. I have one sibling, my brother, my beloved older brother. He's actually 11 years older than I am. And so when he gets something

right, that has to do with reversing the the the effects of gravity and eight because he's 11 years older than I am. He has 11 years worth of excuses just to say, oh, the heck with it and turn into a couch potato. And my brother in the last few months has gone on a health kick and dropped 20 pounds. And I – and he has stripped – I'm telling you, he showed up. He lives in Seattle but he showed up down here the other day. And I felt like a union worker who was being shown up. I felt as though you're laying the bricks. You're making me look.

You're making everybody else look bad. So this – I love pecan pie. I felt as though you're laying the bricks. You're making me look. You're making everybody else look bad. So this – I love pecan pie. Pecan pie is something for which I myself would be willing to commit crimes of a pretty heinous nature. But this year, I am going to try really hard not to. What about you? Everything in moderation. Absolutely everything in moderation and that includes excess.

I modified my diet a few years back. I've been able to keep my weight where it was pretty everything in moderation. And that includes excess. I modified my diet a few years back. I've been able to keep my weight where it was pretty much in college. And I simply don't buy pants anymore. If the pants begin to be tight, then I have to change what I am doing. I have to walk a little more. I have to step a little more. I really don't have a problem keeping my weight where it is. And I refuse to deny myself that. I will have a slice of pecan. I will have a slice of pecan. I will have a slice of apple.

I will have a slice of whatever they have. Because we have Christmas over here at our house. And my wife's sister married a Frenchman, which sounds like a Gerald Depardieu setup or something. And so the food that they bring is wonderful. But there's always that American camper at the end of it, some sort of really sweet, treacly pie that just can't wait. Speaking of Gerald Depardieu, I love the story that I read the other day,

that Depardieu has moved to Belgium. He has backfired on the left because they were, I mean, when you had a big fat cat from some industrial concern, one of the aforementioned industrialists when he moved to belgium right apparently the left-leaning mag said uh you know good riddance you bastard when dipper jew left however apparently the french took a long hard look at themselves because he represents a national spirit in a way that it's hard for us to oh yeah well and i mean they and they got it exactly wrong all the politicians in france after you're quite right who was it the um the first one who moved

to belgium i can't recall the name now but he's the chair ceo as i as i recall of louis vuitton the luxury goods firm so he's he's rut he You spoke French, Morticia. Say it again. He's the chairman of Louis Vuitton. And he moved to Belgium and they denounced him. And Depardieu moved to Belgium. And over, they all opened up again. There was a volley of denunciations. I put up the post on it the other day.

Hollande denounced him and the prime minister denounced him and the minister of culture. They have ministers, of course, who do things that ministers ought not to do. Minister of culture denounced him. And you know what? Dupre Dieu stood up to them. He wrote a letter to his fellow Frenchmen, which appeared in the press. And he pointed out that he's a working guy. He never finished school. He went to work at the age of 14. If I understand his history correctly, he's been, broadly speaking, a socialist fellow or traveler. He's a man of the left in France. He's been broadly speaking a socialist fellow or traveler. He's a man of the left in France. He's been with the whole socialist program his entire life. And he pointed out that he's already paid – I can't remember the number in euros.

140 million euros. A hundred and – which comes to 200 million dollars in taxes and enough is enough. Adieu. And ordinary French people said, oh, now wait a moment. That gets our attention. I say God bless Gérard Dupadieu. Good for him. Who's the American equivalent? Is there somebody so iconic, to use a word that I despise, in American culture that if that person moved to Canada or the Cayman Islands or something? That's a good question. I don't know about America. I can tell you for sure that all kinds of people are arranging their lives so that they spend six months minus one day here in California.

Oh, yes. So that they spend six months minus one day here in California. Oh, yes. And take up – I have one friend who's a businessman who's already bought land over in Nevada and sorted it all out. I talked to a fellow on the NR Cruise as a matter of fact. At my table one evening, there was someone there who was in Las Vegas real estate. And he was the one man I encountered who – actually two people I encountered on the NR Cruise who were happy about the results of the election in California. One of them was a real estate broker in Las Vegas who said that the housing market in Las Vegas had already begun to recover because of the exodus from California to Las Vegas. And the other was a man who sells moving supplies in California and business was booming.

People were buying packing materials to move out of California. So what I want to know is who's our Gérard Depardieu? Which star, which Hollywood star is going to say, you know what? I am changing my residency from California to Nevada and I want the public to know about it. I'm not going to slink off and do it quietly. I'm changing it and here's why and create a furor so let's just to do that so ladies and gentlemen peter robinson wants to know who is our gerald dipper this is the second point of mine on this podcast that you have just taken as your own i love it this is wonderful i'm gonna start looking at all you were saying you were saying for america i don't know about america for a california version what no

it's a it's a good question, Californian or otherwise. By the way, now you know. Now you understand the story of my entire life with Rob Long. 20 years of this. 20 years of being reduced to feeding a man lines. That's what it's like. But if we did, however, come up with somebody that we found was quintessentially American and perhaps in the John Wayne sense, the left wouldn't like him.

In France, somebody like Depardieu can be liked by left and right because he embodies a whole series of national aspects that they generally agree upon. The celebration of life, you know, the fact that Depardieu is a big huge guy who ate a lot of foie gras,

makes his own wine, and likes to stand out in the middle of his chalet in the pouring rain and pee. He's sort of their Jack Nicholson, isn't he? There you go. That would be a good way of doing it. Now that's the moment in this podcast that I will always remember. That is the first time

I got a pop culture reference that you actually thought was pretty good. With the exception that Depardieu is able to play a variety of characters with a kaleidoscopic nuance. Nicholson pretty much plays Jack. But no, you're right. If Jack left, that would be one of those things perhaps where left and right alike would say that we were losing an icon.

But they'd turn on him for that. Because the guys that we like as the embodiment of American virtues, those virtues to the cultural left are not virtues at all. They're deficiencies. They're drawbacks. They're things that Oliver Stone would like to point in our face as being everything that's wrong about America. I mean Oliver Stone has got this untold history of the United States thing on CBS, which is just part of this continuing orgiastic frenzy to tell everybody what a wretched nation this was. And if there is any sense of American exceptionalism,

it's that we are exceptionally bad in what we have done to this planet in our short span on it. Ah, not something I'm going to be giving to the relatives in a box set for Christmas. Before we go out, though, I should note, we asked, or I did earlier, whether or not you hit the kettle on the way in or the way out. There's an art to this. Peter, do you have a preference? At the Safeway, I hit it on the way in or the way out. There's an art to this. Peter, do you have a preference? At the Safeway, I hit it on the way in for the very good reason that the kettle is set up next to the indoors. You enter the Safeway by the indoors here.

And there just didn't the other day, at least when I was there, you go through and the outdoors are a separate set of doors at a different place. And there just didn't have to be a kettle set up there. So on the way in yes well in minneapolis uh at the cub store they're on the way in and they're on the way out too i got you coming and going and so i i hit him on the way in for the same reason that you like to do your charitable contributions before you figure out your taxes and bills you want to do the right thing so i whenever whenever i see him i take a bill and fold it up and stick it through and you the guy in the way. But I talked to them once and I asked him, do you remember people who come out and say, I hit you on the way in?

Or the people who say as they're going in, I'll get you on the way out. Do you look at them and say, yeah, sure. And the bell ringer just shrugged and said, I don't pay any attention to it whatsoever. He keeps absolutely no track. He's just standing there for six or seven bucks an hour ringing the blankety bell. Now, if I had been there, I would have said, hey, wait a moment.

Do you know who this is? This is James Lilacs. If you give him anything even remotely quotable, he'll make you famous. I'll put you in the newspaper, indeed. But actually, the quotes that he gave me were great because that's the one thing I've learned in journalism is get people to say what you want them to say so you don't have to make

it up later when you're writing the piece. It's just a little tip for you kids who are coming up in the industry. Well, I believe this is going to be the last podcast before Christmas. Rob's gone, of course, although I assume he wishes everybody in the audience the merriest of possible all Christmases and a rhino new year. And Peter, are you home or are you traveling? I'm home. We have a full house. All five kids are home right now. Turns out that this is a good time to live on the edge of a university because Stanford is deserted. All the Stanford students are gone. My kids are here, which means they have the run of the campus. They can bike anywhere, use the athletic facility.

It's a wonderful time to have five kids home. Yes, and in beautiful California. We're home as well, which is grand. And there's a little change I noticed this year. My daughter, she's 12. She's gone beyond the 10,000 000 small pink plastic toys phase which used to occupy christmas uh where there there was the one big thing that you as a dad wanted to give her so you could have something to assemble christmas morn uh moved through the harry potter phase we

had a re-spasm of that where you get the the proper scarves and the books and the stuffed owls and the wands and all the rest of it. And now we're at the point, tweenhood, teenhood, it all beckons. So it's clothes, it's appearance, it's all of those things. So that the magic, you know, Santa fell away a long time ago. So all of those little magical aspects that used to be attached to it have been replaced by a somewhat more utilitarian thing that she looks at the boxes and she knows it's blouses and shirts and pants and socks as opposed to the incredible, ineffable sense of mystery

of what do these things contain. So there's change. Every year is change, but every year the tree goes up. Every year we tell the little tales of the various ornaments and where they came from and what stories are behind them. And every year something that she probably would roll her eyes at if I bugged her about it, a little ornament from childhood. She'll still pick it out and she'll still put it somewhere.

So there's this unbroken little filament that goes all the way back through our Christmases together. And you just hope that you can continue to pull it out into the future as many years as you have. And in all of those years, we hope that Ricochet is going to be here to keep you entertained, to keep you thinking, to keep you arguing,

and to keep you coming back on a daily basis to find out what you and your friends have said and what you and your friends have written. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for bearing with this most formless and rambling podcast, which you essentially should call The Guest Cancelled. But I've had a grand time, Peter. I hope you have as well. Same here. James, you mentioned something that struck me about 10 minutes ago about the Christmas lyrics and get back to some of the old standards. There's one lyric that's been in my mind again and again over this past few, what, five days now. The holly and the ivy.

The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall. And merry bore sweet Jesus Christ for to redeem us all. That seems to me to be the lyric for this season. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to the Yeti for the wonderful work that he does, for everybody who is listening. And we'll see you at Ricochet.

Merry Christmas and a happy – do we want to say that? I mean we're conservatives, right? Shouldn't we be cautious against happiness? It breeds optimism that may not be borne out by the fallen nature. No, no, no. Merry Christmas and happy New Year. Merry Christmas. Actually, it's the liberals who think that what life really comes down to is making the best of a bad thing.

Absolutely. Yeti, pot us down and just bring us the Christmas music while we'll just continue to talk about this. You're absolutely right about that Peter I mean given man's nature what's on your shopping list James for the next we wish you a Merry Christmas we wish you a Merry Christmas we wish you a Merry Christmas

and a Happy New Year good tidings we bring to you and your kids good tidings for Christmas Happy New Year. We won't go until we get some. We won't go until we get some. We won't go until we get some. So bring some out here. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Ricochet. Join the conversation. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.