The Ricochet Podcast - Sorry, Not Sorry

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

The week, we’re not sorry. We’re not sorry for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on known terrorists (our guest, the WSJ’s Bret Stephens isn’t sorry either). We’re also not sorry for the executives at Sony, the North Korean hackers, the normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba, or for Jeb Bush running for President in 2016. We’re not even sorry for the crazy things our pets eat. Source

From big brands to local heroes, Hansenburger, Supermax, Sansab, Shupa, Grilla, Bujum and Galorella. No hassle delivery direct to your door with Just Eat. Delivery and service charges apply. See JustEat.ie for details. On your side of the egg in Just Eat. Activate program. More than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well I'm not a crook I'll never tell a lie but I am NOT a bully mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and if you want a global view today, if you want to know what you might not want to be sorry for, from the Wall Street Journal, Brett Stevens. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number 242. It's brought to you by foodiedirect.com. Listen, you know that great food makes people happy and brings them together.

Probably there's a chance some folks are going to be getting together over the next couple of weeks or so. Well, why wait for Santa to clamber down with his sack and bring you food? That's not his job anyway. Call Foodie Direct. They make any holiday feast or gift even more memorable. Click. Don't cook. How do you save $10 off your first order from foodiedirect.com? Well, you go there and use a coupon code, which we'll tell you about later.

And we're brought to you by acculturator.com, where pop culture matters. Check it out, and we'll be telling you again a little later why this is the sort of site that ought to be the thing you go to after you're done with Ricochet. But of course, you're never really done with Ricochet, are you? And here to tell you why are the founders, Rob and Peter. Good morning on this penultimate holiday week. Good morning on this penultimate holiday week to you too, James.

I just said that not to be original if I was just copying you, but to show that I could pronounce penultimate, so there. What about you, Rob? Can you? I think he's silencing his dog who we heard a little bit in the background. Rob will be along to tell you why you should pay for Ricochet. But I have to tell you this, guys. As much as we complain here about the weather and we should, Minnesota was recently ranked at the top of a survey that said we've got a right to complain about the weather.

It's snowing right now. And it lends the world that aspect that makes you feel as though you are living in a courier in Ives, Spain. And this is why you live here, so you can have the white Christmas. But you, Peter, how long has it been since you've had a white Christmas? Does it matter? I myself haven't had a white Christmas in, oh, my goodness me, at least a quarter of a century, I suppose. And it doesn't matter? Yeah, it does. It doesn't matter. When I first moved to California, every time there was news about the first big snowstorm back east, my wife and I would both

get a little bit nostalgic for the east because the day after the snow falls, you do actually sort of enjoy it. Yeah, yeah. So – but here I've had a couple of post-Christmases in the snow because you just get in the car and drive up to Tahoe. The snow is there. You just have to go to it, which means that you can leave it when you want to. All right, Rob, you're back? I am back. I had a little internet trouble.

I am here and I am ready to begin this podcast in earnest. Sorry about that, fellas. Step one of which – Well, I understand. Yeah, the internet connection in earnest is really bad. So yes, Peter, you're saying? Step one of which is to remind our listeners why every last one of them is desperate to join Christian Shea. Oh, my Lord. Can we just

reel me back to join Ricochet by Christmas? Hitting the nog early in the morning. It's late in the night, I think, for Peter. He starts late and just keeps going.

You ever done that? If you're up early on a Sunday morning and you go somewhere and you can tell there are some people who are just winding down their Saturday night. That's Peter. That's Peter. We should just – I don't know. Since I missed, I don't know whether we talked a little bit about Ricochet.com. But I would like to just say if you are listening to this podcast and you're not a member, I know I keep telling you to become a member. But look, this time, just go to the site.

Just hang out on the site. Enjoy the community there. Check out some of the conversations. See what our members are up to. And then you can click over to a post. We will put a link in the show notes to – I asked the members why they joined earlier this week. And the answer is really interesting and kind of astonishing.

And a lot of them said, listen, we listened to the podcast for a while and then I went to the site and I really liked the site and then I finally joined. So if that's you, just read that and see who your fellow members are.

And I know when you read that post, you will think to yourself, these are my kind of people. Well, you might also enjoy the other podcasts. For example, Mona and Jay. That would be Mona Charon. Oh, yeah. And Jay Nordlinger.

Their 100th episode is a, quote, a grand tour and primer of classical music, which will surprise everybody who thinks the conservative musical tastes are so philistine that they consist entirely of Oak Ridge Boys compilation CDs. They got a Cracker Barrel for $5.99. But it's true. There's great culture to be had, and we advise you to go there. And also, did you mention the meetups in real life, Rob? No, I have not mentioned the meetups, but thank you for reminding me.

Look, we never planned. When Peter and I started this thing, we didn't plan it to be anything other than just, hey, we'll create a site and people will talk on the site. And then our brilliant leader, Blue Yeti, said, no, no. You guys have to have podcasts. We did podcasts. And then our members said, well, we want to meet. And they set up meetups and then we decided, OK, well, we'll try to set some up too. The ratio is like 10 to 1.

Members set up – we had the best meetup in Fort Lauderdale. Remember that? That was awesome. And we had a terrific one in DC And we had them all over the country. So that's another great thing about being a member, is you get to meet other members in real life if you want to. And I should say, the other thing you should do,

even if you don't, if you're like, you know what, I'm not buying nothing. I still think you're going to do it, because I think the site and the community is fantastic. So I'm not even going to push you. I'm just going to say it because I think the site and the community is fantastic. So I'm not even going to push you. I'm just going to say this. Go to the site.

Check it out. Sign up at least for The Daily Shot, which is our weekly email blast. It gets in your inbox in the morning. It's very, very funny. It's written by a member actually and very, very funny stuff. And it kind of gives you a primer and a cheat sheet for the rest of the day so that if you bump into any liberals like I do constantly, you're armed with some funny stuff and some withering insight.

So sign that up. It's free. It just comes to your mailbox every day. It's a lot of fun and it's hugely popular. So, all right. I'm ending the hard sell. Well, when you guys bump into liberals, I got to ask you, this is the recent

topic of conversation, how much they're looking forward to going down to Cuba for a tropical vacation. Because according to my tweet feed, all of these people are just are really excited about the opportunity to go have a vacation in Cuba. And I tell them, you know, you can send the Castro monies direct. They will take a check. You can just mail it to them if that's what you want to do. But I find it fascinating that the very people who would sneer at anybody who does anything as de classe

as goes down to Cancun or goes to Cozumel and has themselves a Mexican Caribbean vacation. That's the sort of gross thing that people on booze cruises do. But when they do it to Cuba, all of a sudden, it's world travel. That's a really good point. But even more to the point is this, that all of a

sudden from the left, the quickest way it seems to get political freedom for people and a more open society is capitalism. Would you explain to me how the very self-same people who have been telling us that capitalism is what is crushing the society is now telling us that, well, that's the other thing, that the people are saying – Shep Fox was saying, I've got to find the exact quote, lamenting the fact that the somehow purity of the Cuban experience right now will inevitably be desecrated by the Starbucks and the In-N-Outs and the Smash Burgers and the rest of it.

What's weird about that, it's like – I don't know. What's weird about that, James, it's not even capitalism. It's exploitative capitalism. The reason these liberals like it is because it's cheap. This is another 10 years of Cuba where everything's super, super cheap. Mexico's like, well, they know you're a gringo

from up north. They're going to charge you what you can afford. They're not stupid. Same thing in the Caribbean. The Caribbean's not cheap. They know you're cold in Minneapolis and you come down and you're like oh i yes i'll pay ten dollars for a pina colada in cuba all the progressives who love this idea that love the idea that it's still so cheap they can go and the people are poor and they can exploit them it's not really capitalism it's i mean it's exploitation which but i mean i i say that as somebody who thinks this was probably the right thing to do, which I'm now saying that and I leave the stage with a hard spotlight on my partner, Peter Robinson, who is blissfully wed. Hard spotlight on the audience.

Boo. Blissfully wed uh to a lovely lovely woman who is in fact uh well i'll just i won't give it away i know she has strong feelings has she ever and so has all her family and express them with flashing eyes and hands and gestures she does she does she does she was born in this country in 1961 but she was the first of the five children to be born here. Her three older brothers were all born in Havana. And my father-in-law is a professor. He teaches economics. He taught at the University of Havana. He is the same age and was an acquaintance, not a close friend, but an acquaintance of Fidel Castro. And after the revolution, Fidel Castro invited my father-in-law to join the new

economics ministry. And the invitation was extended in such a way as many invitations were being extended in those weeks as to make it very clear that he was expected to accept the invitation. So he did. And it took him three months to figure out how to get out of the country. He did so. Now, my father-in-law and mother-in-law have never been back to Cuba. And here's one of the things they don't care to see. Their lovely home, which now is in slum-like conditions, but their lovely home was at one point, they learned from a neighbor who left after they did. As he was leaving, my father-in-law gave the keys to the Venezuelan ambassador, which made their property officially part of Venezuela. This is the Latin tradition that

an embassy is actually considered foreign territory in the country in which it's located. Whereupon, Cubans began climbing over the wall and crowding into their backyard in the country in which it's located, whereupon Cubans began climbing over the wall and crowding into their backyard in the hope that they could then travel to Venezuela to get out of Cuba. And as this was taking place, a jeep came along high enough so that the machine gun rose above the back wall, and these people were just gunned down. Now that's the man with whom that Fidel Castro, not, not a nice guy. And this is the man for, with whom we're about to begin trade. I myself am in favor of trade, even in favor of trade with Cuba. But the idea that we

know what kind of regime this is, we know, we don't know the figures because it's a secretive regime, but we know there are some hundreds of political prisoners still in Fidel Castro's prisons. We know that with the price of oil plummeting, Venezuela was not going to be able to continue bailing Cuba out. Cuba needed this a lot more than we did. And at a minimum, the idea that Barack Obama would simply give this to them without ensuring the release from prison of those political prisoners and without, in his statement, giving a brief pricey of what life in Cuba is like and what the Castro brothers have done over these last half 50 years is outrageous. There. Okay. Let me just say three things because i i don't i don't really disagree right um and i and i i don't disagree but we we have trade and normalized relationships with china correct with vietnam these are places that were and have been in the past and China is now a repressive

state. We have done that. The strategy of isolating Cuba diplomatically and in terms of a trade embargo I think was very successful. But it doesn't mean that we should have the same strategy all the time. So I think changing it is right. I agree with you that it would be – I would feel better if everyone acknowledged that it wasn't some kind of weird last-minute kind of thing. Oh, we forgot to reset our relationship with Cuba, that there still are very, very good reasons why Cuba remains a pariah state. On the other hand, I'm not – I hate doing – I mean something – in the old days under Bush, there was that – they called it Bush derangement syndrome, right? Everything Bush does is terrible. And I'm careful about that with Obama.

It is highly possible, not – I'm not betting it. Highly possible he got a lot of concessions from Cuba, not about Cuba but about their allies and the terrorists they support in South America, in Venezuela of all places and soon to be in Ecuador. So – It's highly possible he got concessions and then forgot to take credit for them in his announcement. That strikes me as close to impossible. Close to impossible. You make a good point. You make a good point.

That notwithstanding, I still think it was the right thing to do. It was time. We had to change that. The relationship has got to move off of that same footing. Well, the relationship was – We're 90 miles off of Florida. It's time to change. As I say, I'm conflicted on the question of trade.

It seems to me we should have found ways to – it hurts ordinary people in Cuba. I grant you that. I'm not opposed to trade at all. However, the idea that we needed to do something new, new things were happening. Cuba was going to be entering a new – the Castro brothers, the youngest, Raul, is now 84 as I recall and in poor health and already announced that he'll step down by 2018 at the latest. Venezuela is in free fall. People have been saying that about the Castros for 100 years. They're old. They're going to die.

Not quite 100 years. But they – it is – if they've been saying it for 100 years, then we're 100 years closer. We're 100 years closer to their ultimate demise. Within five years, they'll both be dead. Venezuela will no longer be able to bail them out the idea that we that we didn't get here's what i reach i said as i said this happened fast i haven't thought through the details i'm conflicted on the question of trade but here's what i feel i see for certain we didn't get enough out of this the cuban people this is what i mean the cuban people

several hundred of whom at a minimum are rotting in Cuban prisons because they believe in human liberty and we didn't get them released. That is a sin. Rob? I'm not going to argue with you about sin, Peter, but I know we have a guest here who may argue with you. Oh, I can't wait to hear what he says. Well, what you guys don't understand is the socialists are going to be able to have their own Cuban version of Venice, a place that's decayed,

no longer occupied a shadow of its former self, but it'll be a wonderful spot for romantic vacations. Old Havana. Well, that's a very narrow view. We need to look at things from a global perspective. And of course, when you do that,

you go to Brett Stevens, call him the global view in the wall Street Journal, and he's not sorry. If you read that piece and the excoriating castigations of it, he's still not sorry. And we're happy to have him here to tell us exactly why he's not and to discuss some other things as well. Welcome, sir, to the podcast. It's good to be on the show. So you're not sorry. Let's go back to that Global View column in which you laid out all the reasons in which you regarded the torture report, the so-called torture report, as something of an overreaction.

Do you think it's going to misfire for the Democrats or have no impact whatsoever? I think it actually already has badly misfired for the Democrats because the truth is that the argument over enhanced interrogations – and I do call them enhanced interrogations, not torture, because what happened to those prisoners is leagues away from actual torture, was on the cusp of being sort of lost, forgotten. The Feinstein report is frankly so ham-handed, so partisan, so kind of Rolling Stone-esque, if I may say, in its approach to reporting the facts, that it has reopened a conversation this country needs to have and reopened debate. And you saw it with Dick Cheney's extraordinary performance with Chuck Todd the other day. And I think a lot of other people are sort of speaking up. I've been frankly amazed. I mean, I've gotten plenty of hate mail and been called, you know, a fundamentally bad person on

Gawker. But what has really struck me is that, well, yeah, I know, a badge of honor, the hundreds of people, hundreds of people writing me to say, you've said exactly what we feel and what we think. Oh, that, I reposted your column on Ricochet with the simple headline, I'm not sorry either. And then under the column, I wrote, are you? Now, we did get some people who said you should all be ashamed of yourselves, but overwhelmingly, the comments were, no, hell no, we're not sorry either. Brett, what do you do with, here's a quotation for Peggy Noonan's column, quote, we can't use torture methods and still at the same time be the hope of the world. You're an animal like the other animals, or you're something different, something higher, and known to be different and higher. Close quote. That's a pretty good summation right there on your own pages of the argument against you. What do you do with it?

Well, I think, you know, all this speaks to the importance of precision in vocabulary. And when you give up the argument about the use of the word torture, you lose the argument. You know, a good friend of mine who is a former highly decorated Navy SEAL put it to me really well. He said, I'm against torture. I just don't think that what we did to those captives was torture. And what he was saying was he underwent every single one of the practices that people like Dianne Feinstein and so many others are screaming about. He was waterboarded, he was sleep-deprived, he was held in stress positions. All this was part of his what's called SEER training, survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training, which hundreds of thousands of American troops have gone through.

Are you going to tell me that, as a matter of fact, we, the United States, have tortured hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops over the past 40 or 50 years. Once you do that, the word loses its meaning. I mean, torture is a terrible thing. Let's use the word as it deserves to be used. And by the way, there is no comparison between what happened in Hanoi with the treatment by the Vietnamese of American POWs who were entitled to Geneva Convention protections and what was done to unlawful combatants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others who were threatening to rain mass murder on thousands of additional innocent civilians after 9-11. Hey, Brett, it's Rob Long in New York. I'm sorry I lost you earlier.

Isn't that really the issue here, the definition of torture? When the Geneva Convention was encoded into US law in the 90s, wasn't it specifically written to – I mean not specifically, but the idea was to exclude the actual techniques of waterboarding and sleep deprivation? I mean they knew about this in the 90s, right? Well, precisely. And this is what former Attorney General Mukasey wrote in our pages, the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, just Wednesday. You know, these efforts are made to give these words precise legal meanings. And so saying something that sounds to us, me, a civilian journalist, right, as a really extremely unpleasant practice that we would not want to happen to us is not torture. Look, a practice, look, numerous journalists, famously Christopher Hitchens, underwent waterboarding, okay?

You don't voluntarily undergo a treatment that you then call torture. That's simply, it's practically a contradiction. Torture is sticking a needle under your fingernail, okay? Torture is not something that you dabble in. And this is part of the problem that we have, that by having conceded the argument on the use of the term torture, because enhanced interrogation has this kind of Orwellian-sounding quality, it should be called harsh interrogation, right, or something of people in the wake of the biggest mass we get from people who are kind of against american um action in general and hate bush and all that stuff just let's just talk about the conservatives uh ricochet member marion evans is a conservative she doesn't like the idea of what we did uh rachel liu is a contributor she doesn't like the idea of it is it because they don't understand the definitions of torture have we not has not been of it. Is it because they don't understand the definitions of torture? Have we not – has it not been communicated properly? Is it because they're living in maybe a fantasy land where they don't understand you've got to get to break a few eggs? conservative movement or sort of American interests and probably were somewhat supportive

of at least of the previous Bush administration. How would you answer that? Our friends on the right, the Peggy Noonans, how would you argue to them? Look, I mean, I would say, you know, your honorable people who on this issue, in my opinion, are mistaken. I mean, I'm not I don't want to castigate anyone who takes a different view from mine as a moral ignoramus of some kind, but I do understand how easy it is to be cowed into a kind of a position of feeling sort of morally at risk if you take the view that our treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was unwarranted.

What I would argue is if you were one of those CIA officers, one of those officers tasked with interrogating Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the wake of 9-11, and you knew you had on the one hand the backing of the president, the attorney general, the office of 9-11, and you knew you had, on the one hand, the backing of the president, the attorney general, the Office of Legal Counsel, and let's face it, the gang of four, the leaders in Congress who were, according to the CIA, well-briefed on all these methods and approved of them and were urging them, right? You did your job, and now 10 years later, you are being told by Senator Feinstein, by Senator McCain, that you are a torturer. That is, I think, a profound breach of trust for people who did their duty under difficult circumstances. knew in addition to the backing of everyone that you just mentioned. The other thing he knew was that every intelligence service in the entire world had traffic indicating that there could be another terrorist strike at any moment. That's what the CIA officer also knew. Hey, Brett, there's one aspect of this debate that puzzled me when it started, when Obama was running for

office and puzzles me now that we have it on top of us all over again. You use the phrase serious distinctions. You want to draw serious distinctions between what is permissible and what isn't permissible. I think you didn't put it this way, but I'm sure you also want to draw serious distinctions between what works and what doesn't. And there is one country in the world where serious distinctions are being drawn and have been drawn for decades now. Serious legal distinctions, serious policing distinctions, serious distinctions among the intelligence community. And that country is, of course, Israel. Why is it the case that quietly our intelligence officers are learning from the Israeli experience? Why shouldn't our legal regime learn from their legal regime?

They've had cases. I'm sure some of it gets handled quietly, but there have been cases that have gone to court. There have been public trials in which the questions of where the lines must be drawn have taken place. Why doesn't that make it into our public debate? Why don't we follow that learn from their example well if you're actually right that that it showed and and uh... most famously in israel there is the the case of the taking time bomb and and and the measures that you are allowed to take uh...

uh... against a suspecting after the who may have information on a uh... impending terrorist attack. And by the way, you don't need to sort of talk to Israeli security people to understand the persuasiveness of that argument. Take someone like Princeton philosophy professor Michael Walter, who is the former, or if not still the editor of Dissent magazine, a famous magazine of the left, a famous moral scholar. I don't agree with him on many points, but certainly

a moral scholar when it comes to the theory of just war. And Michael Walter, as I understand it, endorses the notion that there are circumstances, the ticking time bomb circumstance, where all kinds of things that would not be permissible with ordinary criminal suspects become permissible because there is a higher goal to erase the sort of hard moral questions by saying, well, these methods never work anyway. By the way, this is contradicted by three past directors and three past deputy directors of CIA, one of them a Democratic appointee. So they sort of want to eat their cake and have it, too. They say, well, you know, it's evil, and by the way, it doesn't work. But the really interesting case, I mean, I just want to put this to some people and have a more serious discussion,

especially people listening in who don't agree. Let's assume for a moment that it does work, right? Well, in that case, that's a much, it suddenly becomes a much tougher case to make that you would rather not touch a hair on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's head than to prevent the second 9-11 or another terrorist outrage we just had in Peshawar

with 131 children dead. I'd like to sort of change the moral calculus so that to put these people arguing against torture on the defensive saying, okay, 130 children are killed, and you can prevent this by waterboarding someone, a conspirator, in preparing that attack. Please then, at that point, talk to me about the moral quandary. Exactly. Brett, you are the author of a book, America in Retreat, The New Isolationism

and the Coming Global Disorder. Coming as in still in the future, right? American Retreat, The New Isolationism. You have to understand, in publishing, the time frames are very long. And so when the book was conceived, it was a coming global disorder. Exactly. So American retreat, the new isolationism, and the coming global disorder. In one day, we saw a regime in North Korea cow a major American film studio into withdrawing from release a major motion picture, a comedy. A and B, we saw the president of the United States normalize relations with Cuba.

Over to you, Brett Stevens. Well, there you have it. I mean, it is this extraordinary habit of this administration to be our enemy's best friends, to concede all of our leverage as quickly as possible. I mean, look, in the case of North Korea, the capitulation was by Sony and the movie distributors. And in a fantasy world that I have, the Obama administration is going to do something serious. It's going to buy the rights to the film and distribute it for free. That would be a terrific response. But what we have here is a president who has backed away from confrontation at nearly every single turn, who has sent signals to adversaries from Northeast Asia to the heart of the Middle East, to Central Europe, that our word is meaningless, that we will not respond to their provocations,

that we will not give our allies the reassurances that they seek. That has created power vacuums around the world that are being filled by groups like ISIS, that are being filled by Vladimir Putin, and it has left our allies, especially our small allies, more nervous than they have ever been in the space of the last 60 years or 70 years. That is the essence of the disorder we're entering. Hey, Brett, it's Rob Long again. I got a question. So at the end of the Reagan administration, well, go back.

At the end of the Carter administration, there was a general feeling that that foreign policy was wrong. At the end of the Reagan administration, there was a feeling that that foreign policy, peace through strength, was correct. At the end of the Obama administration, which is not happening fast enough, but it's going to happen. According to Peter, Obama is going to leave office and the Castro brothers will be dead. What will be – what can we tie up in a bow that we've learned about the Obama foreign policy? What's the big lesson? that pretends that you can withdraw from global commitments and not suffer serious consequences is a fantasy. It's a delusion. You know, Obama would like to imagine that the United States could just be some slightly larger version of New Zealand, the kind of pleasant English-speaking country that minds its own business and doesn't want to stand in anyone's way and would

like just to be a good, responsible citizen of the world. But the truth is, that's not the United States. The United States is and will remain, I call the book American Retreat, Not America in Decline. It is and will remain the greatest power of the 21st century. We will be the number one target for terrorists. We will be the country that the Chinas and the Russ power of the 21st century. We will be the number one target for terrorists. We will be the country that the Chinas and the Russias of the world seek to harm, seek to unseat. We will be the guarantor of the security of the Estonias, Israels, Taiwans, and South Koreas of the world. And we can't pretend to be spectators when it comes to foreign policy if we want to remain a great power. I think Americans understand think Americans came out of the George W. Bush administration feeling that there are risks to overcommitment,

but they're coming out of the Obama administration understanding that a policy of supine inaction is also a recipe for disaster. So what my book is an attempt to do is to give readers and especially conservative readers a sense of what a sober, serious and politically sellable foreign policy is about. Brett, I want to sell some books here. It's Christmas time. American Retreat, The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder. You just said something that got my attention because it's a piece of your argument that I hadn't quite cottoned on to. You said just now that the United States, it's not a question of decline, but of retreat. The United States will remain the preeminent power in the 21st century.

And I immediately thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a moment there. We just learned a week ago, two weeks ago, that China now has a bigger economy than the American economy. Who knows how much they'll eclipse us in the next quarter of a century? How can you argue, by the way, I'm delighted to hear you argue it, but how can you argue that we'll remain the preeminent power? Well, I mean, I hope you're not falling prey to the statistical slate of hand that suddenly allows China to claim it has the largest economy on what's called a PPP, purchasing power basis. Which is to say that, okay, so it's cheaper to buy, I don't know, basic food staples in China than it is, say, my local Whole Foods, okay? But on the other hand, when the Chinese go to, say, Siemens in Germany to buy a new turbine, right, they're not paying for it in Chinese currency. They're paying for it in euros. So, kind of the PPP index is a kind of

a fake index that makes poor countries seem economically much more prosperous than they are. Look, the Chinese, one of the marvels of the Chinese economy is every time, you know, the Chinese economists come out or Politburo leaders come out, they say, this quarter our economy will grow at, I don't know, 7.7%, let's say. And lo and behold, three months later, it's grown at 7.7%. You know who got those kinds of returns consistently? Bernie Madoff. So if you believe in Bernie Madoff's numbers, you'll believe in China's numbers.

It's simply not the case that China is ever going to eclipse the U.S., especially as it moves up the value chain and has to start doing things like innovating. Very quick point. 20 years from now, 30 years from now, there's going to be an economic historian, and his son is going to ask dad or mom, what were the greatest innovations of the early 21st century? And that historian will say, number one, it was social media. Number two, it was the apps revolution. And number three, it was social media. Number two, it was the apps revolution. And number three, it was fracking.

And all of those were made and could only have been made in America. They didn't happen in France. They didn't happen in China. They happened nowhere else. They happened because this country has the capacity for innovation, renewal, regeneration, and experimentation that no other country possesses. And we should be aware that we are much stronger than our doubters think. Brad, James – I've got to get this one in, James. I'm married to a Cuban, Brett. Listen, in your pages this very day, you have one column by Marco Rubio, quote, Mr. Obama's new Cuba policy is a victory for oppressive governments the world over.

And you have a column by Dartmouth economist Doug Irwin, who says that trade will bring freedom. Brett Stevens cast the deciding vote. Look, you know, in theory, I'm not opposed to lifting the embargo. The problem, of course, is the practice. I mean, just look at the situation we had in Burma, because that's the right analogy here. We had this big opening to Burma, remember, three or four years ago, repressive regime that we've been sanctioning for a very long time, didn't have diplomatic relations with them.

We give up most of our leverage. We open an embassy. There's a kind of a flurry of activity. Burma becomes slightly more open to tourists. And then what does the government do? It clamps down. So once the kind of the craze for, oh, we've opened this particular country fades, the regime reasserts itself. And people, Americans, too many Americans have been so in love. I can think of a few New York City mayors that fit this description, too in love with the Castro brothers. This is one of the most wretched, vile regimes that we've seen around. It is intent on remaining in power. And

by the way, there are people under Raul Castro. It's not just the fact that he's an old guy and his brother is even older. This is an entrenched regime. If we had done this, it should have started very slow, and it should have been concession for concession to pry open this country, especially now that with the fallen oil prices, Venezuela is weak as it is. We really, for once, have a whip handed. It's amazing how this administration always seeks to preemptively abandon the leverage it could have used. It could have done it with Iran. It could have done it with Russia. It gave it all away at the beginning.

You know, as the saying goes, why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free? I think that's what the Castro brothers must be thinking. Brett James Lilacs here in Minneapolis. There will always be people, of course, who will praise the Castro brothers as be thinking. Brett James Lyle looks here in Minneapolis. There will always be people, of course, who will praise the Castro brothers as having been on the right side of history and hanging on and not having elections and doing all those wonderful things that will bring about the socialist revolution any day now. There are also those people who are somewhat craven, you might say, and they're obeisance to Chinese models. Tom Friedman comes to mind. Put him on a bullet train and take him to an absolutely empty city in the middle of nowhere and he'll exult about the wonders of social planning. But then again, the people were saying that Europe, that model was going to

take over and swamp America. Japan was going to swamp America. The one model that nobody ever said was going to be a serious competitor to America economically was the oligarchical pseudo-crony capitalism model of Russia. And now we have an example where they are apparently imploding economically and backing Putin into something of a corner. How do you think that's going to play out? And what do you think the Russia of a few years will look like? Well, the problem is that, you know, when democracies suffer from economic contraction,

we become risk averse. I mean, that's what you saw in 2008, 2009. We had this tremendous recession, and suddenly we wanted to pull out. When dictatorships suffer from economic contraction, they become risk-prone. 1980s. Terrible economic situation. So what does the regime there do? They invade the Falklands, right, to distract the people from their internal discontents. You heard just today Putin striking some of his or making some of his harshest remarks, and he hasn't exactly been reluctant to speak aggressively. I fear that now is actually a very dangerous moment for Putin, because he's going to be tempted, as his economy suffers, to carry on creating his land bridge to Crimea through carving out the Ukraine. He's going to be tempted, perhaps, into adventures in a place like Azerbaijan with lots of oil resources.

And there is also finally the temptation of one of the Baltic states, which also have large ethnic Russian populations, members of NATO. And that would be because I very much doubt this president is going to meaningfully provide military protection for those three countries. That would mean the effective destruction of NATO as a military alliance, as an alliance where the principle of if one is attacked, all are attacked, holds. And that's going to be dreadful. So yes, in the long run, Russia's in a great deal of trouble. But we don't live in the long run. We live in the here and now. We live in the very short term. Well, when that happens, we'll go to your column and read about

it. And we advise everybody to do so at the Wall Street Journal, print or online. Brett Stevens, we thank you very much for showing up in the podcast today. And we hope to talk to you down the road when everything in the world has sorted itself out and we're on the way to a very peaceful, wonderful, stable future. Talk to you in 2080. We will be. We'll win in the end. The question isn't the outcome, it's the price. Good point.

We'll let that be the subject of the book. Thanks a lot, you guys. Whenever I listen to Brett Stevens, I wonder why Tom Friedman even has a job. We should say, we'll post a link to the Whenever I listen to Bret Stephens, I wonder why Tom Friedman even has a job. That's true. Right. We should say – we'll post a link to the book.

But before we go, the book is called America in Retreat, The New Isolationism, The Coming Global Disorder. He writes beautifully. I don't know if I got cut off. He gave a very funny speech at a commentary dinner I saw in New York in October. It was very, very funny. And he was on the dais with a lot of professionals, and I think he killed. Good for him.

Good guy. Yeah, good for him. While you guys were asking questions, and I didn't want to spoil the flow. I mean, no, really, it was just great stuff, and you were asking great questions, and all I had were silly little observations and metaphors. But I was thinking during the Sony thing that somewhere rotating in hell right now, Hitler has got to be thinking that Chaplin character, if only. If only, right, right.

The Great Dictator came out in 1941. Right, and at a time when America itself was sort of kind of, you know, a little bit on the, not I wouldn't say on the fence, but we weren't gung-ho to go back to go back and beat the crowds uh and here's uh you know little charlie taking advantage of a remarkable frightening resemblance how did that picture do what was box office on that it was not great it was not great great yeah no you know because it was satire and it was a little and the ending is horrible bone-crunching preachy uh speech at the end. Hump is pretentious speech, right. But it's a beautiful movie, except for the end. It has this gorgeous scene where Chaplin, as the dictator, is dancing with this balloon globe,

which itself was a parody of a massive globe that the Fuhrer himself had. I'm sure there was probably one long, interminable, cranky, crunchy German word to describe it. Führer-globe-dance. Führer-globeitner Führung Globen Danzer but I was also thinking too that also spinning in their grave are a bunch of guys who

were taken out by drones along with the rest of their comrades and their families who were thinking if only I'd been waterboarded and yet the left gives a wonderful pass to the president for as Brett I think pointed out in his I'm not sorry column the left gives a wonderful pass to the president for – as Brett I think pointed out in his I'm Not Sorry column, the left gives a wonderful pass to the president for annihilating people from the sky, godlike, because it just seems and feels cleaner and offstage somehow. But this is the same – Just drone strike an entire village rather than waterboard a guy who can tell you who specifically you want to get. Yeah, I agree. And this is the same left that right now is saying,

I can't wait to go to Cuba because I'll bet I'm going to have really authentic artisanal Cuban Caribbean food. Yeah, I could finally have a real mojito. Right, right. And what I can't – Not just the left, James. I'm saying the same thing. I could smoke a really good cigar and I could have a –

And I can't wait for these people to sit down at these restaurants and what they're served is the most anodyne, disappointing, rote Caribbean gruel where they realize that perhaps this paradise they've been imagining in their minds isn't anything close to that. But if you don't want to – Get me down there for a media noche sandwich. The Cuban pork is so good. Oh, man. And then – I'll bet they find good pork is so good. Oh, man. And then –

I'll bet they find good pork for the tourists. But do you remember it was – it was sometime in the 1980s when Davidoff – Davidoff is a Swiss company, I think. Swiss tobacco company. Davidoff switched its sourcing on its tobacco for its high-end cigars from Cuba to Honduras. Why? Were the Cubans difficult to deal with? No, no, no. The Castros were more than happy to sell Cuban tobacco because by that point after the revolution,

the tobacco fields had been so mishandled, such a lack of fertilizer that the Castros had even ruined Cuban cigars. The tobacco was and I suppose remains inferior. There's an investment for Rob. Go buy up some tobacco land and fertilize it. I'm sure you'll have the best cigars in the world again in two years. Oh, believe me,

but a lot of those guys had left the country. So a lot of them are in Nicaragua and Dominican Republic and places like that. Right, right. Even as the Bacardis left and now Bacardi is headquartered in Puerto Rico. Sugar and tobacco. It was – oh, dear. I can't remember.

The one – in the 80s and early 90s, the CEO of Coca-Cola who took Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola was a big brand of course. Was that a – Exactly. He was a Cuban. He was a Cuban. He was a Cuban. Now, speaking of food.

Long, you may have as long a pause as you like. Speaking of food. Oh, James, where's James? He was guiding this to a transition. That was magnificent. That was magnificent. I deserve to be waterboarded. I'm sorry. We give Peter a pass because he's got a family Cuban connection. Oh, I'm sorry. But really, it's really awful to step on a Segway. The worst crime.

Go ahead, James. No, Peter, usually Rob comes into a Segway like Thor swinging his hammer in a china shop. But Peter just with his seven-leg boots walked into the Hummel factory unaware of exactly where he was going. That's perfectly fine. I don't know why you guys thought with a food-related sponsor and me talking about food after the guest had left, why you possibly

thought that I might be transitioning into an ad. I can see and understand the disappointment. That said, it will be interesting if somebody does indeed do an internet model where they sell you cigars, and it's Cuban cigars, and we're looking at Ricochet Business Model and saying, are we going to carry their ads? Am I going to be telling people six months down the road from now, you'd better buy these Cuban cigars?

After all, I've been saying about not giving money to the Castro's well that's an act of self-abasement that I'll deal with when it comes all I know now is that when it comes to the food of the Caribbean go there and have it if you like but America itself contains a multitude as Walt Whitman once said about himself and thus

every cuisine every regional cuisine every wonderful sort of food that America has produced is available to you. And you don't have to go anywhere to get it. You don't have to go to Cuba to get that mojito that Rob wants. No, you call FoodieDirect, FoodieDirect.com. Use the coupon code RICOCHET10. And what you will get is, well, whatever you want, frankly.

Their user-friendly website will allow you to click and find all sorts of stuff curated, as they say, from all over the country. Best barbecue from Memphis and Texas, New England seafood, Maine lobster, Philly cheesecakes, buffalo wings, and award-winning baked goods from New York cheesecake factories that will just ship it to you, and it's fresh. It's fun to open it up, see the dry ice, pull it out, and give it to your friends and watch the smiles spread across their face. For the holidays, who wants to spend all of that time cooking? You don't. No. Foodiedirect.com will help. Go to

foodiedirect.com slash ricochet. Use that coupon code and get $10 off your first order. And so you will probably be able to get somewhere in that bakery there. You can get a fine scone. You can get... You mean in the bakery in FoodieDirect?

Yes. Do they have scones? I imagine they do. They've got these great cakes. The southern layer cakes they have are really, really good. So – oh, you know what they should get? What? We got to send – the tres leches cake, which is this cake. It's a very famous Cuban cake, tres leches.

And there's cuatro leches, which is three milks. We got evaporated milk, some other – you can make a cake and you soak it with sweet milk. It's so good. I wish I could enjoy this myself. But of course I'm checking myself into a monastery to live on bread and water to do penance for crushing James' transition. I'll feel sorry for the rest of my life. Well, not to worry. Just bring your fist down in a scone.

They crumble easily. My daughter, as I say, likes these and they're very, very carb-rich. I try not to get her to have a daily scone. I try to do something else like if you were to change a couple of vowels around, well, just one. You'd have not a daily scone but a daily scene. One little vowel change can change the entire aspect of a word. And a daily scene actually is a feature you will find at acculturated.com where pop culture matters and where you can sit there

and snack on your wonderful foodie direct stuff and read about the culture from a perspective that makes sense to people who follow Ricochet. You don't have to go to Rolling Stone. Lord, why would you want to? You don't have to go to the idiocy of the us and the people and the rest of the sites that chatter about the Kardashians and flutter their fingers over whether or not they're

wearing new shoes. Go to an intelligent place that looks at pop culture because culture is, is it upstream from politics or downstream? I forget the Breitbart remark. It's upstream. Because the culture, how the culture is set and described to people is how eventually we end up with the leaders that we have. You know, the people who are low information voters, they say, where do they get a lot

of their messages and ideology? Well, from the culture, because it's a very, very clever way to get people to think differently. A culture where it has new posts every day that cover topics like books, of course, comics. Yes, comics are an important part of the culture. And I don't mean crankshaft. Culture, fashion, movies, games, music, sports, tech, and TV. You're behind on Gamergate. You'll be able to fill yourself in there. Writers that you know and Ricochet readers probably are there at this very moment enjoying Acculturated.com. So go there. And we're not giving you a coupon code. We're just telling you, go there, read it, and enjoy. Can we just talk about Sony for one more minute? Yes. Please, please.

I thought Brett was right. I think it's a very good point. I've heard it a lot. I first actually heard it a couple nights ago from our own Blue Yeti who suggested that Sony should just put the movie on the internet. But I also feel like the president of the United States should screen it in the theater in the White House. Any president of the united states should do that but just just just to just to set a little bit it's easy to say that sony caved and that's a nice story but the truth is they had to get the movie in the theaters and the

theater owners said we're not going to show this we're not going to show this movie right and so really wasn't a decision made at the boardroom at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Well, I guess we should pull it. It's more like no one is showing it. And so what this is – and I think why the government then had to say, hey, this is North Korea. It's complicated, but I believe it's because you need to prove contractually that this is a force majeure. It's an act of foreign enemy. Therefore, all contracts and agreements are null and void, right?

Any contract, especially in Hollywood, can be nullified by a force majeure, and the force majeure has really specific definitions. And one of them is act of foreign enemy, and this is definitely an act of foreign enemy. So now Sony has got a picture that they don't owe anybody anything on, I think. So they could actually do something really interesting with this picture. I don't think they will because they're just battered and terrified and those poor executives, some of whom I know are just – I mean imagine the past three weeks. The pulling of the movie is the least of their worries. Every single email is coming out.

It's really horrible and I'm laughing because it's horrible in a way that's just sardonically hilarious. But I wrote a column today for the Abu Dhabi English paper about it and I just say to every executive listening, these are the four words you need to remember in

2015. Call me to discuss. Stop writing things in emails. Call me to discuss. Stop writing things in emails. Call me to discuss. I learned that a long time ago from a lawyer friend of mine and it's never, never backfired. So anyway, all right. By the way, how do you translate schadenfreude into Arabic for your column? Oh, they do it. It's English language, but they do it it's english language but they do it good what a relief so okay so so i'm willing to grant then that we give sony something of a pass but as a geopolitical point north korea a two-bit tin pot sick country just invalidated contracts across the united states of america across the world right because across the world across of America. Across the world, right?

Because there's a world release. Across the world. And by the way, I thought Brett's decision, I thought to myself as he was talking about the government should at last a legitimate use for PBS. Yeah. No, I put it on the web. It should be on the web. All right.

It should be on YouTube. They should upload it on YouTube. I mean, Google should, I mean, if we do this, Google should call them up and say, all right, what did you pay for the picture? It's a $40 million picture. We'll give you $30 million for it. OK, so that's not so bad. It's just you take the loss on it. But you get – you make everybody whole kind of and you eat 10 because you're idiots.

You're idiots and you don't know how to secure your own data centers. OK, fine. We'll put it up on YouTube. Everyone in the world can see it. And then who would the North Koreans go after? Well, the reality is they can't go after anybody. If North Korea – North Korea did not do this, OK? North Korea maybe contracted it.

But until very recently, North Korea had dial-up. North Korea, there's no Silicon Valley, no Pyongyang Valley or Silicon Work Farm. They had to go to the Chinese to do this. This was a contract job. I will stake my life on it. Sure. They don't have roving bands of terrorists ready to strike the showcase 1 through 10 on the interstate. They don't – this is ridiculous.

They don't have any of those powers. These people mostly boil bark to eat. That's their – there's one fat guy in the country. They're so poor they can only afford one fat guy. But you can retaliate. There's things that you can do. For example, I mean of course course, they paid for this. They didn't do it.

They have their own little internet espionage bureau 121 or room 121 or something like that. But yeah, they don't have a tremendous amount of experience, you can imagine. We did read a recent piece about how North Korea now has a burgeoning cell phone industry. Isn't that interesting? That the elite are finally finding the advantages and joys of the cell phone, smart phone work. I hope every single thing that we sell them is so penetrated and loaded with malware and viruses and listing devices

it'd be a missed opportunity if we didn't do it. We can lock them out of the international banking system so that they all of a sudden have no more cash, which is what they need. They need cash to pay the generals. They need cash to pay everybody off. And without that, everybody takes a look at the fat boy and says, all right, it's time for you to go. But what I find interesting about this is this, is that the dad of the maniac running the country right now was a big cinephile, right?

They had their own North Korean film industry. He loved American films. And I wonder if the son feels the same way and finds this to be almost like a personal well it is kind of personal to see yourself with your head exploding on television but but but finds this to be personal in a way that we can't understand because they feel so bound up in a bizarre way with the with the american film industry and american films in general this is almost like a betrayal yeah yeah well maybe i mean, maybe. I mean, look, Team America World Police came out.

It was pretty funny. And there actually is a theater in Texas. That's a, I think it was John Gabriel, I think it was John Gabriel posted a list today in Ricochet. Maybe it was John. It could have been Tom. I can't remember.

He suggested yesterday at Ricochet, he said like, well, they should just replace that theater – that movie with Team America World Police in which Kim Jong-il is mocked. Although his head isn't blown up but he's depicted by a puppet. And one theater in Texas is doing just that shooting a missile over the Sea of Japan. None of those people care about this movie. Now, maybe the Japanese in a boardroom in Tokyo, because it's Sony, are saying, hey, I don't want to write off $120 million

or whatever it is I've got to write off. I get that, but it's different. It's not a missile. And so as far as they're concerned, this is perfect. This is a happy outcome. The Chinese, for whom the North Koreans are the biggest problem, more problem than for us or more than for the Japanese, even for the South Koreans, the biggest problem, more problem than for us or more than for the Japanese or even for the South Koreans.

The Chinese who are there, it's supposed to be their masters and guardians, are always irritated by the North Koreans. This was an easy way to make the North Koreans happy. It cost nothing. That's the problem with this is that it worked. And if you don't have to build a missile, you just have to hire some Chinese hackers of whom there are probably in a country of 1 billion, 100 million and set them to work on a very, very poorly conceived, poorly constructed corporate data center.

When you mentioned, Rob, that the Chinese have this antagonism with their charge, North Korea, doesn't that scream sitcom to you? Or perhaps it did until all of this. But they're roommates. I mean, I can just see it. Endlessly funny. Did either of you guys see Aaron Sorkin's piece in the New York Times either yesterday or the day before?

I did. I don't know if I can characterize it. In fact, I'm sure i can't characterize it fairly but fundamentally he was saying pentagon papers pentagon papers yeah that's good right publishing stolen documents and publish any stolen documents you want but not hollywood's we're different we're creatives well that's not what he said i mean to be fair i go ahead he was saying was that i can't be fair to him ahead. These are private individuals acting in a corporate capacity. There is no – they were not acting in this – I mean the Pentagon Papers are different, right? The Pentagon Papers, these are people in the government acting in the – acting instead of the citizens of the government, right?

They are empowered by the citizens that are democracy to act. They're acting in our service amy pascal the head of sony pictures the the movie movie side is not acting in our state she's a corporate she's a good movie executive um and you know he had he has a point problem with it is that it's fantastically interesting and i mean i don't i mean i don't know why anyone in america cares i don't think anyone america does care but everybody in hollywood that's all we are talking about are these emails because there we know the people and it's just fantastic. Business question. Business question. And it's also like what are they going to say next about someone famous or –

What's the actual damage to Sony? It's really bad. Well, there's a couple of things, right? Losing the movie is bad. But look, it's a force majeure, so insurance is going to cover part of it and the movie – they still own the movie. And so there's some downstream value to this picture probably. It's now notorious. It's now something everybody wants to see. A year from now, they can release it in the theaters if they want, I mean depending on what the situation is, right?

So the movie is not a total loss, although they will probably call it a total loss and then have to refigure how they pay it. So there's that. The odd thing about the company is that Sony has always said it was interested in selling the studio side. Sony Picture Entertainment has always been vaguely for sale. The problem is it doesn't have that many assets. It's not clear what its official connection to the PlayStation network is going to be. There's lots of things. I mean look, if Sony was really smart, they would release the movie on the PlayStation network right in time for Christmas.

Everybody would buy a PlayStation to watch the movie. So I don't – I mean I don't really – but the performance of the motion picture side at least and the TV side too, but it's a little different, has not been great. And so now they're in this weird position where I think the guys in Tokyo wanted to make some kind of changes anyway. They want to get rid of the studio. It doesn't really fit in their portfolio. Sony itself has been contracting as a company at some very, very bad years. So, you know, it's just kind of like the icing on the cake. It's like

in addition to all the other things that weren't going right for the studio, now comes this, you know, this is what Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, would call The Black Swan. Nobody ever thought this would happen, but it can happen. And what it does is it ruins the, I mean, the studio now is so tainted that it makes it much, much, much, much harder to sell.

And there really aren't that many people, entities that would be interested in what they're selling because they're selling a movie studio with no real connection to anything and no real reach and no real franchises. It's like it's not a great asset. How good is the picture? I saw a preview. I'm sure they will have pulled the previews now. But when I saw a movie, what, two or three weeks ago, and there was a preview for the Seth Rogen, James Franco picture. I can't remember.

The interview is the name of the picture. I have to say the preview looked hilarious. Well, has anybody seen it? Has anybody seen it? Is there word on the picture? There is word. There was some advanced sort of tracking or not tracking but like advanced screening reviewers who said it was not good. But it does not matter.

These two guys are really funny and they're really funny together and it's a funny idea. And there's a picture of them sort of with their arm around Kim Jong-un. I don't know. I bet you it's funny. You know what? I'll bet you it's funnier now yeah oh i'm sure that's the case yep well i think their hope for a road type type franchise here where they go around you know shooting shooting all the bad guys you know and eventually work

their way down young yang uh you know the road to bogoharam the road to moscow well sony's gonna have to eat 100 million on this uh which brings to mind another member post we had this week in the member feed about the strangest thing your animal has ever eaten. Speaking of consuming things. And I'm tempted to say let's combine this with another post and say what's the strangest thing your animal has ever eaten? And you might answer the necessity of a Jeb Bush candidacy. Oh. That combines the two, but you can't really bring them together. I will only say this. My dog

who's a year old and as I tweeted the other day, has unfailingly antiquarian tastes when it comes to eating things. We took him to my dad's house last month and I said, don't worry. He's fine. I'll give him some rawhide. Dog trots into the next room where there

are all of these things that he could put in his mouth. And he finds on the shelf a 100-year-old photo book of a relative of her pictures in Western. Because it was leather. And it was old. And I found, you know, chewing. And I screamed. Yeah! I walk in my room the other night.

And he'd gone in my closet and gotten out an album of 78 L 78 lps uh that i that this ancient collection that things for you from 1947 it's old it's worth money and there he is he's got it completely disassembled and he's gnawing on the covers and trying to crack the shellac it just this is perfect this is a perfect dog for you this dog hates memorabilia i know i know that's the thing i know either he finds it as fascinating as I do for canine reasons or... I don't know. I think the dog is sending you a message. I should give it up and go carpool.

Let's talk. Anyway, that's the sort of... Well, the craziest thing my dog ever ate, not my current dog, but the dog I had before him, whose name, by the way, was Cohiba. That's how excited I am about the Cuban news. He ate a live chicken. It was a class chicken that – I was in Hawaii and the dog walker took him and had him in her yard and she had him for a week.

And the first day he realized that the family next door, the kids had brought home for spring break the class chicken they were keeping for their class in elementary school. I think it was like second grade. And the chicken was kind of wandering around the yard and he i think he took note of it and then on the last day he was there he just he walked to the end of the yard he took a running leap jumped over the fence the neighbor described this whole thing she saw and cornered the chicken and then pounced and ate it and just and just in time um as his face is covered in blood and he's shaking the chicken the chicken's still not quite dead and making noise for the children to come outside to see the glass chicken be torn feathers blood everywhere oh oh god i had i wrote a letter to them and like luckily the parents were the kinds of hippies

kind of like progressive hippies who live in Venice. Circle of life. Circle of life. Yeah, that circle of life. Thank God. But I would see him, my dog, like weeks afterwards. He'd be like lying, staring into the middle distance, licking his chops. And I knew he was remembering that one minute of his life where he was allowed to behave like an actual dog.

Well, that sn nature, kid. Red in tooth and claw. But speaking of the red side of the political equation, last question before we go. And I have to run out here and let my dog in because he's barking. I'll give this to Peter and then to Rob. We've been told that Jeb is running. Can you think of a candidacy which, A, nobody has asked for, and, B, people are being told that they really should want. This is like trying to shove a cinder block sideways down the gullet of the conservative side of the party and people are not having any of it. Are they? Or is this going to change?

No, they're not having any of it. No conservatives are having any of it. I have to say, to me, Jeb Bush was a very, very good governor of Florida on just about any measure you'd care to apply. But this, he's, in my judgment, there are two things wrong with his campaign so far. One is the Hamlet Act. For goodness sake, if you're going to run for president of the United States, you go for it. You demonstrate it's something you want. You pay voters the honor of letting them know that you'd like the job. And this to run or not to run has just gone on much too long. And then the second, I keep thinking that it's the press or he's being misquoted or

there's some kind of something's being taken out of context. But three or four times in a row now, he's taken his thumb and put it in the eye of the Tea Party and not corrected himself. He said there was a discussion, I think it was at his father's library, this would be two months ago or so, on immigration when he said for Mexicans to immigrate to this country illegally was an act of love. Act of love.

Well, you can see what he means if you're trying to provide for your family, but without placing that in context, without showing that you're aware that they're displacing. Okay, that one. And then this, what was it, last week, John McCain gave an interview in which he said that Jeb Bush had just been in to see him. And Jeb Bush was asking, how do you secure the party's nomination without conservative support? And John McCain said that he told the former governor of Florida, don't worry. Just think about it. The centrist always wins the nomination.

And that and the Bush people, Jeb Bush, let that stand. That should have been there should have been some kind of correction immediately within the same news cycle. Jeb Bush should have found a reason to go to a microphone and say, by the way, I was paying courtesy calls on many members of the Senate. Including Ted Cruz. Right. Exactly. Including Ted Cruz.

My best friend Ted Cruz. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. And I'd like everyone to understand that I want support from all Republicans, including the Tea Party, who saved this country in 2010. And he's not doing that so you're right this is going this is people are swallowing this is if it were a brick okay okay it's early days rhino squish go ahead let me give you the rhino let me give you the rhino response which ultimately is not a jeb a bullish on jeb uh it's early days the moderate does always win

everything they're saying about jeff bush they said about mitt romney um who now is the front runner uh so rest your honor right but no but he's a but he's the front runner mitt romney decided to run he would probably he could easily win the nomination again yes okay oh so oh absolutely absolutely um absolutely so Oh, absolutely. I disagree. I disagree. Absolutely. So Republicans always – Do you think Ted Cruz would let Mitt Romney walk on him in debates? Excuse me. Excuse me. When was the last conservative who won in the Republican primary?

1984. McCain? OK. All right. Oh, yes. So we're going to go back to 40, 30 years. Yeah. OK.

But since then it's been – Because there's been no trouble at all. I know. But I'm talking about reality. Since then it's been – the Tea's been no trouble at all. I know. But I'm talking about reality. Since then it's been – the Tea Party, by the way, nominated – 1988, by the way. George H.W. Bush ran as a conservative. The Tea Party nominated Mitt Romney.

OK? The Tea Party is made up primarily of Republican primary voters. He was the best of a bad lot. Fine. All right. We'll have a good one. What about McCain? So all i'm

saying is this yes is that that that is that is true the republicans tend to nominate the moderate that moderate is then vilified by the press as far right that's there that's not that's never in the issue right the problem with jeb bush i think is and i like jeb bush a lot and i think he was a great governor and i think he'd be a terrific president actually. Me too. The problem with Jeb Bush is that people like me who like him, who would love to vote for him, I cannot do it because I don't think it's good for the country to have just this kind of dynasty.

The idea of Bush versus Clinton in 2016 just fills me with dread. We are not bereft of leaders in this country. We have a lot of great – especially Republican leaders. There are a lot of great candidates out there. And I just think it's the wrong message to send. What are we now? What are we like some South American backwater banana republic where the sons and the brothers of the presidents get to be the president? This is Raul Castro again?

No. We have a big country with lots of talent and a lot of talent in state houses across the country. And I think one of them should be the president. And I don't – it's no – I don't even have a political criticism of Jeb Bush. I just simply mean that as much as I like the guy and respect him and want him to be a national figure, I think it's bad for the country for him to be president. Well said. Well said. And I think that when you're a candidate and people who love you don't want to vote for

you, that's a problem. That's a fundamental flaw I don't think he can overcome. Well said. It sounds as though James just opened his closet door. Did I? How so? It sounds as though all kinds of things were falling off shelves and onto the – no? All right.

He was expressing his displeasure at the next Rhino president. No, I was dealing with my dog who was coming up with a plaintive look and putting his paw on my arm indicating the guy that wants food or to play. So either of those two options are going to have to be explored, which means we've got to get out of here. When it comes to food, though, of course, you know where to get something. Not for your dog, but for yourself at foodiedirect.com. Coupon code RICOCHET at foodiedirect.com slash ricochet. And you will find yourself a wide array of comestibles delivered right to your door. Click. Get delivered.

Eat. Enjoy. I'm also brought to you by acculturated.com, where you will find all manner of commentary that will open up your eyes to things that perhaps you might not have thought to read about before. But the culture is important and that's where they take it on. Thank our guests. We thank you, of course, the listeners. We thank everybody who's paid, who's ponied up for this thing. And I got to ask, are we on next week?

Do we have a special Christmas edition of the Ricochet podcast? Good question. I don't know. It is. Well, if we do, we should just sit and play songs and tell warm memories of sitting by the fire. I have an idea. What's that? I have an idea.

A holiday special. Okay. Nothing but lilacs transitions. Well, then how would I interrupt them? That's true. There are details you have to work out. You know what? A holiday special, a Christmas special, Lilacs transitions that I don't interrupt.

Merry Christmas, James. It wouldn't be the same. I'm putting my finger alongside of my nose and alighting now from the earth and we'll – as I go in a cloud of soot, I say to all a good week and we'll see you next week because apparently we're going to have a podcast next week. Lord knows what it will be but I imagine it'll be full of bounty and if you've heard this podcast and you are not a member of ricochet go to ricochet.com you don't have to sign up i'm not asking you to sign up just go and check click on the link to my uh to my post this week and just read why other people joined and also sign up for the Daily Shot. And I know that I'll get you eventually if you do those two things. See you in the comments, everybody, at Ricochet 2.0.

See you soon. Merry Christmas. I'm so lonely, so lonely, so lonely, real alone. There's no one, just me only. Sitting on my little throne. I work very hard and make up great plans. But nobody listens, no one understands. Seems like no one takes me seriously And so I'm ronery A bit of ronery

Or it'll be There's nobody I can relate to Feel like a bird in a cage It's kinda seery, but not really Because it's fearing my body with rage I'm the smartest, most clever, most physically fit. But nobody else seems to realize it. When I change the world, maybe they'll notice me.

And until then, I'll just be Ronery. Yeah, Riddle Ronery. Paul Riddle Me. Yeah, riddle, roanery. Paul riddle me. I'm so lonely. Ricochet. Join the conversation.