The Ricochet Podcast - Who's Mr. Right?

Episode Date: December 14, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file It’s a special Friday the 13th edition of the Ricochet Podcast! This week, Rob Long on why it’s a bad week to be an uncle in North Korea, Ricochet member Franco determines exactly who is more conservative, and NY Post film critic Kyle Smith on the best of 2013 and his favorite Christmas movies. Music from this week’s episode: Christmas Is All Around Us by Billy Mack (Love... Source

Activate program. I understand what it takes to to make a bright and prosperous future for America again. I spent my life in the private sector, not in government. You do your work and we will do our best. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lylex, and our first guest today is Ricochet member Franco, who's got some questions for the founders. And we'll talk to Kyle Smith, New York film critic,

about a controversy he got stepped into, and Rob Long will tell us what's going on in North Korea. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome everybody. We are having a podcast. Starting now, Ricochet podcast number 194 and it's brought to you, we're proud to say, by our new sponsor, FoodieDirect.com. We will be salivating over their offerings a little bit later, but I just want to tell you right now that FoodieDirect,

it's a place to discover, taste, and share amazing food from across America, from real restaurants. You can go to FoodieDirect.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at the checkout to get 20% off. Did you hear me? 20% off your first order, we'll tell you. A little bit more about that later. Also brought to you by Encounter Books, and our pick this week is a broadside, The Truth About the IRS Scandals by Charles Johnson. You might want to pick up on this because as far as I can tell, they're still going on. Go to encounterbooks.com and use the coupon code ricochet for 15% off the list price.

And Rob, I believe this is the point at which you want to extract from cash-strapped people even more money to fund your private little thing you got going on that gets you all that Hollywood cred. That's exactly right. Yeah, exactly. The thing that makes me a star here in Hollywood. this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we thank you. And we are honored to have you as a member and we are pleased to have you as a fellow part of the Ricochet community. If you are listening to this and you are not a Ricochet member, look, we really need you to join. If you enjoy this podcast, the other podcasts, you like the site, we've got some big plans

coming up. We're growing. We're fixing up the site a lot and we've got some great partnerships coming in the future. We really need to be part of this community. What we're doing here is probably trying to do something that is doing something that no one else is doing. And what we hope will happen is that the country will change direction starting in November 14 and then continuing November 16, not just to put a Republican in the White House, Republicans in the Senate.

We've all – we've had that, right? Everyone on this – listening to this podcast has experienced that. It's to actually change the direction of the country, to change the premise of the question and we'd love you to join the community and help us do that. So go to Ricochet.com and join. If you are a member, you can give memberships to people. If you want to rope them in with your own – in your own community, please do. Ricochet.com, we need you to join.

We want you to join. We'd love to have you as a member and if you're a member, we're thankful, especially around this season, for your fellowship. I like that. Change the premise of the question. The question being, what the hell is going on? Well, the question is, you can even see it now. You can see what the Democrats are doing now. The same thing is like, well, the Republicans, if they run against Obamacare, they're going to lose. What they need to do, how are you going to fix it? Ed Schultz the other day was just saying how much the Republicans are going to regret going against O'Kare when this thing really starts getting going.

I'm calling it O'Kare because to call it anything else would be racist. Peter, what is the question? See, I just threw that. I just absolutely – wait a minute. Did I actually knock him offline? You might have knocked him offline. With such a stunning – This is your chance.

There you are, Peter. There you are. Sorry. Rob was saying that we need to change the premise of the question and we also need to question the premises. So I'm asking you which question should we – whose premises are at present unquestioned should be readjusted so that the questioning is more apparent to the American people. You know what? I'm more and more impressed by the question that is not getting asked about the rights. By what right does the federal government take command of one-sixth of the economy? I would like – I totally agree with Rob that the question is already being rejiggered

for Republicans. Oh, yeah? You don't like it? So how are you going to fix that? I would like to have the question be, how do you derive from the Constitution of the United States the right to coerce physicians and hospitals and insurance companies? By what right do you – It makes the progressives happy to be able to control these people because then you get the society that you want. I'm just amazed that you actually took the nonsense of the word salad that I gave you and came up with something out of it. That's what he does. That's what Peter does.

Yes. We're going to ask you also. By the way, I should note that since we're getting to the holiday season, what we're going to do here is. Wait, wait, stop. Yes. What does that mean? We're getting to the holiday season. Yeah, that sounds like a sort of rhino. Oh, I'm the rhino. I mean, the holiday I mean specifically is Festivus, which has the airing of grievances,

which I believe is about to come. But when you want to talk about the airing of grievances, and we're going to have somebody on who's going to give all of us what for, I do believe. This has been a week of grievances, large, small, petty, and otherwise. I thought that the whole thing about shaking Castro's hand was kerfluffle of exaggerated proportions. That's what happens. You go to a funeral, you end up doing that. picture thing, the controversy, which some people scoffed at, was telling because it just seems to be one of those examples of a juvenile, infantile, and narcissistic culture that the president himself, oddly enough, isn't immune to. But the most fascinating story of the week, I thought,

was what's going on in North Korea. Who wants to handle, who wants to take a whack at that one, at what exactly we saw? And whack seems to be the operative term. Whack is the operative term, I'll take it because I'm obsessed with North Korea. I know. I'll tell you, there's about three ways to look at it. And we have no idea which way this is. It's a very, very sort of, you know, it's the hermit kingdom. One is that Kim Jong-un is consolidating his power.

He's whacking the next guy. His uncle was the one sort of – in many ways, his uncle and his uncle's wife was the regent, although she's been out of the picture for a while. She's been very sick for the past year. And so they kind of took care of stuff and he wisely as a little mini gangster would knew that the first person you got to whack is your friend because your friend is the one who's going to betray you. So that's possible. The second – it's possible. It's just sheer Jersey City-style mob politics. I mean this is an outlaw regime.

This is how that works. Power struggle going on and Kim Jong-un is not part of and that power struggle is between the hardliners and the people who want to make sort of a slightly more conciliar move to South Korea, which has been happening the past year. That's possible. We have, again, zero evidence of any of these – behind the – in the wings who is orchestrating all this and Kim Jong-un is in fact still a fat little boy is being pushed around. I kind of bet that it's number three. Could I just – hold on right there. How on earth – you've been in Hollywood for 20 years. You're a busy man. You have one show on the air

a pilot being in development on an how do you know enough about north korea to say well it's so fascinating 27 possibility how do you know all of this how could you not it's the most what else is interesting hillary yeah you know eri doesn't know that 27 possible yeah but they're just like they're interested in other stuff. You know, I just don't. To me, it's an interesting point. It is interesting. I mean, it's horrible.

And I also feel a little guilty about it because I make fun of it in NR all the time. And I, you know, I do the Kim Jong-un Twitter feed and I make jokes about having him kill his uncles. And he kills his uncle. And now he's doing it. And the truth is, it is a truly nightmare place it is absolutely evil and people like me who sometimes you know make fun of it and and make jokes about it we we need to remind ourselves and others that it is in fact a um a a a country of of killing fields well no number two who just got whacked there,

the interesting thing, there's two things interesting about this. One, he had been out of favor before in the usual shifting trends of currents of power. Right, he'd been set aside and I imagine that when this all went down and the armored guards came into the,

you know, the guys with the weapons came into the make-believe parliament and took him out, he was probably thinking, you know, I've been through this. Fine, whatever. But the execution seems to have happened rather quickly. Yeah.

And the charges made were interesting. I mean the womanizing and the being taken care of in the deluxe back rooms of restaurants is one of those things that – Yeah. So that's a hang and a fence and dreaming a different dream was an almost poetic way of saying that he uh that he wanted something i mean do you think that the north korean watchers rob you being one of them are parsing that particular statement to see what it means or whether that's that i you know the parsing goes two ways one is the parsing that he was the moderate, right? He was hanging out in the fancy – there are more restaurants.

I mean there are more hotels there now in North Korea. And so this is slightly more – as the country is re-approaching famine and economic collapse, the black market opens up and it creates rich people, right? And so there are more things to spend money on and more fancy restaurants with food in the kitchen than ever before. And people like Uncle Jang would go there. It's unclear whether that's real, that he was this debauched kind of luxury-loving guy or whether that's just what they're calling him. You never know with those guys you just never know you have to look and see what they what they're gonna what's their next diplomatic move is this really how you did the uncle look fat he didn't know look fat oh only

the little boy who runs the country is a fat boy isn't that right uh yeah you know every now and then you see pictures of fat you know generals and stuff yeah um but it is amazing the country is starving and he's an african dictator the worst time and they over it. But it is amazing. The country is starving and he's an African dictator of the worst kind. And they over – it's just – it is amazing. So what is to be done, Rob? You know all about Korea. I will only say the same thing over and over again, which is that this needs to be constantly pushed on China.

This is China's problem. They invented it. Every now and then, North Korea tries to make it about Japan or US or somebody else. But it is China. China has the leash. China owns the dog. China needs to pay the price. And every time China does something we don't like, we need to remind China, well, why don't you take care of the rabid, angry, starving dog you have chained up?

Because that's going to be your problem. That presumes that they care. They do. They do. There are 23 million emaciated North Koreans on the border between North Korea and China. And it's much more porous than the border between North Korea and South Korea. And when it all collapses up there, they're going to be streaming north into China, not south into South Korea. And the Chinese know that.

And that's a real problem for the Chinese. Right. But when I say they don't care, I mean, they don't, they care about the ramifications. They don't care about the individual. They don't care about the suffering. And when they, when they're looking, when they're looking at North Korea now,

there's probably a little bit of relief because whatever was going on, it's settled down and we're back to stability and you don't have to worry about factionalism. The thing is, we don't know. We don't know where he was vis-a-vis the Chinese, the uncle Jang. We don't know. So maybe, maybe somebody knows, or I should say I don't know. Wasn't he considered to be a

liaison, though? He's the guy who goes to Beijing and sets up the ore contracts. Yeah, but they could have hated him, too. The Chinese could want somebody else. The Chinese could be saying, look, Uncle Kim is better because Uncle

Kim is a little bit more businesslike and we can deal with Uncle Kim. I mean this could turn out to be very, very good for world peace in general for all we know. Uncle Jang's actual position is hard to fathom whether he was – who he was trying to curry favor with or which faction he controls that he was now trying to redirect. That happens too. One of these guys will rise to the top and then you have a couple of nice meals and you meet a couple of sophisticated Chinese businessmen. You suddenly think to yourself, why are we fighting so hard? Maybe it's time to relax it a little bit. And then the minute that happens, your own faction turns against you.

So that's why I love it. It's just interesting. I i mean it's terrible because it's so much like hollywood it's so much like hollywood i just figured it out you recognize that's actually very true well i recognize my own kind it is like hollywood in the sense that when somebody switches suppliers in hollywood and goes to a different caterer everybody worries that they're going to get killed it's very different than hollywood the other thing is that, Rob, you've got to be looking at the seven guys who are walking alongside the car in the funeral for Daddy. Four of them are now out of the picture. The other three guys have got to be asking themselves,

hmm, hmm, what's going to be coming in 2014? Yeah, everything's fine. You like me? I've always loved you. Yeah. I mean, let's have lunch. Let's really talk about it. I want to make sure I'm doing right. Yeah, everything's fine. You like me? I've always loved you. Yeah. I mean, let's have lunch. Let's really talk about – I want to make sure I'm doing right. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. You can see it. I mean, it's all – it's the worst kind of mob politics. It is fascinating to me when you mention, though, that a little bit more wealth brings more restaurants and that people are actually able to eat, well, a better quality of kimchi and things like that. And you would think that that would be the one thing that these people could have. What are you laughing at, Peter? Peter, what are you laughing at?

Better quality of kimchi. Kimchi is indivisible. Kimchi is kimchi. This is a new. You made a little joke. No, that's not true. That's not true. No, no, no is this is this is a new you made a little joke no that's not true and that's not true no no no this is a new state you guys actually stepped on a segue before it happened that is i mean i i've i've got to hand it to both of you that's that's sharp wow holy i knew it was happening but i but i was marveling at it i was marveling at it

although what i was eventually going to get around to of course was the fact that that Oh, holy cow. I know it's happening, but I was marveling at it. I was marveling at it. What I was eventually going to get around to, of course, was the fact that restaurant food, high-quality restaurant food, is not the sort of thing that you associate with the boxes at the door steaming with dry ice that the UPS guy leaves. But that's the great thing about Foodie Direct. What they do is they take some of America's most iconic regional restaurants and artisanal food producers and package that up and sell it to you so you can have restaurant quality meals from actual restaurants themselves. We're not

talking about Arsats places they've made up. This is the real thing. Now, what they specialize in are those regional foods you may have grown up with or experienced later in your life and your travels. The mouthwatering, smoky, slow-cooked Texas barbecue. The jumbo lumped Maryland crab cakes, which I remember from my stint on the East Coast. The incredible paper-thin New York lox and bagels sliced one micrometer thin. I mean, all of this stuff, if you don't know it, you can discover it and taste some of the most renowned foods from across America without even leaving home. Okay? Foodiedirect.com. It's new online gourmet, regional, and, dare I say, artisanal food marketplace right for you.

Now, you enter the coupon code RICOCHET and you get 20% off, 20% off your first order. And what I'm going to tell you is I discovered something there that I've got coming that I'm really keen to try because I'm a pizza guy. To me, pizza is about sauce first, crust second, cheese third. But the sauce is the heart and the soul of the pizza. And that's why New York pizza.

I scoff at it. I laugh at it. But for those who like it, I'm sure you can find it. What do I find at Foodie Direct though? But a winner of the World Champion Pizza Maker of the Year Award for 2012. And what is it? Is it Chicago style? No.

Is it LA style? No. Is it New York style? It's Detroit style. Detroit style. And it New York style? It's Detroit style. Detroit style. And it looks incredible. Big, chunky pieces of sauce. And it's rectangular, for one thing, like

Italian pizza is, like real stuff is. It's easier to ship. Right. And it's, you get it frozen, and you cook it, and I can't wait. Detroit style. Who knew there was Detroit style? It's one of the things you learn when you go to foodiedirect.com. Now, before we go to our first guest, who's going to air his grievances and we're going to have the feats of

strength where we, we push back against his baseless charges of our lack of whatever it is that we lack. Peter, I got to ask you, what's your choice for a food? Well, I'm stuck on the Snow's Deli. I made the mistake of saying last week that I intended to get Snow's Deli. And then my son, who's home from college and has a job for the six week break, heard this on the podcast and came home that evening and said, Dad, you know, I think I have some friends who are probably better suited to enjoying. He was pointing to my waist. And so I'm going to hold off on the Snow's barbecue until my son. Yeah, I am seriously

because my son talked me into holding off. But Snow's barbecue, I repeat, it is the greatest story as well as the greatest barbecue in all the great and marvelous land of Texas. An hour outside Austin, the guy who runs it is a utility lineman. That's his real job, his day to day job. And on Thursday and Friday, he starts cooking barbecue. And at 8 o'clock Saturday morning, he opens his doors and he stays open until the barbecue is sold out, which is usually before noon. I want some of that, but it looks as though

I'm just going to get the leftovers after my son Pedro has a barbecue party. I'm stunned. I think you need to crack down on this. You're right. What's that all about? You're right. I'll tell him. You earned that. You? You're right. I'll tell him.

You earned that. You earned every second of that. You tell him. Yeah. If it's a little tight in the waistline, it's because you work hard. You earned that. Thank you. Thank you.

Uncle Rob, you tell him that, will you please? I think maybe it's time for a little Justice North Korea style over in the Robinson house. You've got to crack down. Kim Jong-un has taken over. I will just say that my favorite thing from Foodie Direct is the cioppino from Phil's Fish in Moss Landing, California. Cioppino is this great spicy tomato-based soup, kind of Italian, southern Italian, and also Portuguese for some reason, but I don't know why they call it cioppino.

And it's got great, huge chunks of fish in it. It's really, really good. And it's actually a wonderful thing to eat like after a night of maybe overeating because it's spicy and delicious and it's a soup and it's great. And the other thing they have, which I thought was really amazing, is they have meat from Flannery Beef in – which is a beef raiser up in Northern California in San Rafael. And it's really delicious.

It's really delicious. And so when somebody like this puts something like this together, that's the greatest thing about the web, right? Is that you can kind of – you can conceive of something. They're selling Murray's Cheese too, which I forgot to mention. And Murray's Cheese Shop in Manhattan is one of the best cheese shops in the world, really is one of the best. So when somebody puts something like this together, they can do that because the web sort of allows these kinds of efficiencies.

And it's always great to celebrate it. I mean it's just cool. And it's a private enterprise doing something on the internet efficiently and with customers in mind unlike other large enterprises on the internet these days, which seem to – that seems to baffle them. Every time you use an internet retailer and enjoy the efficiency of direct shipping and UPS and FedEx and ice packs and all that stuff, you're striking a blow against the behemoth of Obamacare. That's what I think. That's right. Everything's politics with you, man, I tell you. Yeah, right.

That's because I'm so conservative. Yeah, exactly. Well, what I like about the fact is that you can go there at 2 o'clock in the morning and place an order. As we learned yesterday in Minnesota, the website where you can get your Minsure insurance is only open from 6 a.m. to midnight, which sums up the federal government, the state government, government period to me entirely. Even when they try to sell you something on the website, the website closes down for a few hours. It's astonishing. Anyway, whatever hour of the day, you can go to foodiedirect.com and don't forget, Ricochet is your coupon code.

That will get you 20% off your very first order. Now, speaking of people who pay money and then have the right then to complain thereafter about the product they've received, we bring you Franco. He's a longtime Ricochet member, which means he's been handing money over to this enterprise and cares deeply about it and would like to have a few things to say perhaps. He's a customer, exactly. He wrote a post, a famous post called, Are You More Conservative Than Ricochet? Part of the ongoing long attempt to figure out exactly what Ricochet politically is. Do we contain multitudes or is there something on which we can all agree? Well, let's agree that we

welcome Franco to the show. And Franco, you're on. State your case against Peter and Rob while I just sit back here and watch and giggle. Okay, well, thanks for having me on. And I'm honored. I'm glad that you're taking customers on one by one. And no, I don't have any case against Rob and Peter. Oh, against Rob. It's like North Korea. That's exactly right. Rob is dreaming a different dream. No, I do have quibbles. I have some quibbles and things that get me to tear my hair out. And then I wonder, OK, am I part of hearing this – when you guys brought up Chris Christie and it seemed like there was a lot of really positive things and what millennials might go for him and so forth. And I just don't see that.

I don't see Chris Christie as being – I don't agree with that. Yeah, all right. Well, that's a perfect way because that's the one I read and I thought – and when we knew you're having your on, I didn't want to respond to it on the page. I thought I'd respond to it here. Here's where I get frustrated. I kind of feel like anybody looking at politics dispassionately, which we all do every now and then, will have to say that Chris Christie is a strong candidate. He's the frontrunner now in all these polls. He may not win, but to say he's a strong candidate or to runs very strongly in New Jersey. He seems to be popular across these segments.

People say, how can you say that? He's not conservative. But I'm not talking about his bona fides intellectually or even his position. I'm just talking about his ability to campaign, which is very, very good, and his current popularity, which is pretty high. Why is that not conservative to talk about politics dispassionately? Oh, yes, I see that. But it's just a matter of, it's kind of like the inevitability thing. And we're all getting things from all sources of the media, which is pretty monolithic. But Ricochet, I see, is, you know, not, shouldn't be necessarily part of the mainstream. And when you

hear this kind of inevitability, it kind of becomes its own thing. And then that gives them more power. I see the opportunity to join you, to use this podcast, Franco, and your complaints to turn on Rob. This is a teachable moment for me. Which is a teachable. No, the Chris Christie, I think you're responding to a podcast or two shortly after Chris Christie won reelection. And for a Republican to win reelection in New Jersey by the huge margin is noteworthy. For the record, if I could choose the next Republican candidate right now, I can't, which is a good thing undoubtedly. But if I could, I'd choose Scott Walker or Rick Perry right now. On the other hand, Chris Christie, he's cut taxes, he's reformed the unions,

he signed legislation, gay marriage legislation, but the legislature looked as though it was going to insist that he, on passing that, he's pro-life, which is a very gutsy thing in New Jersey. Even for all that, I myself would prefer somebody, a governor from the Midwest or the West who's been more conservative than Chris Christie. Does that please you, Franco? Well, yes, but yes. However, I don't... Yes, but! I can't believe it. I'm actually trying to suck up to you, and I'm getting nothing. Go ahead.

Execute Robinson. Well, that's one of my complaints. One of my complaints, you know, being a guest, we do like to get sucked up to. Seriously, I would like to step out of who's the next inevitable person and say, what really will help? And Chris Christie being, if he does get the nomination and actually wins, which I don't think he would,

but I don't see that as moving the ball forward at all. And that's why I get really, start to pull my hair out because that's not going to do it for our nation. Nothing is going to do it right away. Nothing did it.

There was, I mean, from LBJ to Barack Obama was not a leap of one great forwardness, if I can mangle my mouth. Sorry, I'm just coming – I've got not enough coffee here. It's incremental. It was all done incrementally. It was done by incrementally invading a variety of institutions and pushing their agenda forward one step at a time. And likewise, we're not going to take it back one step at a time. But you have to change the conversation. You have to change the tone.

You have to change the questions. You have to change the assumptions. And once you get somebody in there who has a great popular installed base because you appease to people beyond ideology, you have a chance to start changing that conversation. I think, Jay, I'm not going to put words in Franco's mouth, but I feel like Franco is speaking for a lot of people who – and I think a lot of – are you a Republican primary voter? I'm sorry. Not anymore, no.

OK. Because the Republican primary voters, they always make a big noise. I mean I am technically one, but by the time I have a Republican primary to vote in, it's really all settled. But the ones that I – that bug me are the ones in the early states, Iowa, New Hampshire, places like that, where they have a chance to shake it up, right? And Republicans always nominate the next guy, the next guy in line. That's just something they've been doing for a bazillion years. And I mean on a larger scale, I agree with you that it's frustrating. On a smaller, more sort of granular scale, Chris Christie specifically, I mean, if he decides to run, I can't see how he doesn't do well.

I don't know whether he gets the nomination or not, but that's the good news for our side is that there is no clear obvious choice for Republicans. The Republican primary voter who goes in and votes for the next guy, there is no real next guy right now, which is good. I mean, good. But I still have to take the prerogative. Every now and then, I like to talk about the way things are without having to say, oh, I wish you were better or I wish there was somebody else. And I don't think we create inevitability on this podcast at all.

I mean, first of all, I would love I'd love to I'd love to have that power to convince Republican primary voters to rise up and vote, you know, automatically vote Scott Walker in. I don't think I mean, I prefer Scott Walker. He is my choice right now. I think it's going to be hard for him to run and win. It's going to be an uphill battle for him. But that doesn't mean I don't want him to win. I'm just speaking about politics unfortunately.

Is that all helpful or am I being – Yes. Well, yes. I know. I'm actually a Rand Paul guy and if there were in the context of millennials I think when you kind of mentioned his name and that but never never got to him and but and and that was what I was sort of waiting for too but it's like for millennials and I think the new the where the Republican Party can really, really pick up millennials and

its descendants is by going more libertarian, meaning more freedom-oriented. I'm not talking Ron Paul. I'm talking Rand Paul. He's a Republican. And this is a whole new direction that seems to be completely shut out by one wing of the party that labels libertarians. And I'm not personally a libertarian with a large L, just for more freedom. And I think Chris Christie isn't going to bring any more freedom, and I don't know about

Scott Walker or some of these other guys, but I think something more radical needs to be done, and we need to be thinking outside the box and not who's the next guy, and do millennials like Chris Christie, and maybe who's the next guy and do millennials like Chris Christie and maybe he's the guy, even dispassionately talking about it. Okay, I just put up my post. My post says what it says. I mean, it doesn't, I'm just asking like how many people at Ricochet, you know, there are two main issues that people go up in arms about.

One is amnesty and Chris Christie is tied to that, as I mentioned. And Coulter was saying he's dead to me because amnesty, he's for amnesty. And I'm with her. I'm with her on that because I think that that will end the Republican Party as we know it. That is a suicide pill, isn't it? I mean, that's exactly what that is, is a suicide pill for Republicans. All right. But here's a good – let me ask you this because you talked about being more freedom and you talked about being a little bit more libertarian. I mean there are conservatives now listening to this and saying you're not conservative if you're too freedom-loving. I mean I get that all the time. I mean it seems to me – it's harder for me to understand what conservatism is because it is what it – it's sort of a self-label.

So I mean I guess I'm saying that because I'm always on the – I'm always getting yelled at by Peter for being insufficiently conservative, and I think I'm pretty conservative. By the standards of North Korea, you are. Hey, Franco. Peter here. Could I ask you a couple of questions? You've got in your post, you put up something I'm just not sure I follow. In another podcast you write, there was complete silence when P.J. O'Rourke stated he was all for means testing, social security and other programs. By the way, I myself missed that podcast.

So it's a P.J. and Rob who, and I guess James was on that one. Now to continue quoting you, Franco, need I point out to the educated, loquacious and witty and charming podcasters, that certainly includes Rob, but although it leaves me out, that this is retroactive socialism. Now, why is means testing social security? Why is it to say, all right, if we're going to have redistribution programs, we ought at least to make sure we're only giving other people's money to Americans who are poor, that is to say, who really need it. Why is that socialism? I just don't follow the argument. Well, I think social security, we know that it's basically a Ponzi scheme. They stole,

they spent the money. There's not enough money. And so you're just giving license. A guy like PJ, PJ O'Rourke is just basically smart and very funny, but he's just basically giving them the license to take more money from him himself and other people. It's purely wealth redistribution already, but now he's amping it up, saying, okay, well, now we're going to means test it. And this is – I'm generous with his money.

Hold on. Means testing. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Peter, to interrupt. No, no, no. Go ahead, James. You climb in on this one. Sure.

Is the alternative – I mean we've got three possibilities. One, keep it exactly as it is. Two, means test it. One, keep it exactly as it is. Two, means test it. Three, eliminate it. The chances of eliminating it are nil. The consequences of keeping it exactly as it is are disastrous. testing, but as a middle road to pursue now, I think that's preferable to all of a sudden having the Republican Party identify themselves with what will always be characterized in the press as wanting grandma to go back and eat cat food.

Wouldn't you say? Well, I, okay, I don't really have a response to that, but it's other than, other than that, it's just, it's just caving in on, I mean, there may be no incremental, you know, this incrementalism just giving in. I mean, to take a subject I know a little bit more about, let's say amnesty, and that is basically like we don't have to do anything. We don't have to continue to cave and make these little compromises that turn our country into a socialist state, and it really is. I agree. There's not a program in place right now that we're talking about trimming to reduce the number of – I mean when you talk about amnesty, you're talking about doing something large and big. Social security is an ongoing disaster, but it's an ongoing program that we've got absolutely no chance of eliminating in the foreseeable future. So if somebody then says, let's mean to means tested and they're, they're,

they're tarred with the brush of being somebody who participates in this whole destructive redistribution element. I mean, it makes some of us throw up our hands because we can't win. Even though we understand the premise you're talking about. This is not the hill on which we, look the other way, especially the kind of cronyism, capitalism, kind of the nexus of that and the progressive wing where every – if you're running a big business, you love illegals, right? Because you can pay them a dollar a day and if they fall off the ladder and break their back, then tough luck, right? It's – I mean all the things that we think about in citizenship, they don't exist.

Illegals come and take jobs mostly from – well, this is demonstrably true, mostly from young African-American males. So that is – we are here in this mess of 12 million illegals because we allowed it to happen because we're kind of told by certain – frankly, certain libertarians that open borders was sort of the better way to do it. And we kind of looked the other way as they came streaming over the border, and now we have to fix it. But I think, Franco, would you say what – preferable for you right now in immigration is nothing, right? Just don't do anything except secure the borders. Yes. Yes.

There is no pressing. All this talk about we need to do something. No, we don't. We haven't done anything in the last X number of years. We haven't done anything. This is not the end of the world. It doesn't bother me tremendously that, you know, it's not like I see an illegal immigrant and I think, oh, something must be done about this person.

Well, not really. It's okay. It's not the end of the world, but it is the end of the world. As soon as the government starts to step in and say, oh, we have a plan to fix everything, and we're going to ID everybody, and we're going to put these people on a track to do this, and politically it's, it's a, it's ridiculous because as soon as this thing passes, if it ever does, uh, it's, it's going to be, it's moving the goalposts again. And now it's going to be Republicans don't want to,

uh, help illegals pay back their fines. I agree completely with Franco that the whole, this whole thing of, we've got to do something, we've got this whole thing of we've got to do something, we've got to do something, we've got to do something, you know where that came from? As best I can tell, it came from George W. Bush. And I am sorry to say that this is one of those matters on domestic policy. You also recall that in the beginning of his second term, he lost 18 months or two years with a determination to reform social security. We've got to do something. We've got to do something.

And all he did in that case was lose time from his own administration with regard to domestic politics. It went nowhere, social security. And the amnesty thing was much worse than going nowhere because he granted the other side's premise. This is where Rob and Franco are so correct in my judgment about talking about premises. George W. Bush is the one who granted the premise that we've got to do something about the illegals in this country.

And as a matter of fact, by the argument, I keep going back to Archbishop Gomez, who's such a transparently good man, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, whom I interviewed for Uncommon Knowledge not long ago and put clips up on Ricochet. And Archbishop Gomez says, well, you know, they just came here to better their families. Fine. In that case, their families must be better.

The status quo is not the end of the world. We don't have to do something. In my judgment, we should control the borders. We should do exactly what Mark Krikorian suggested the last time we interviewed him, which is enforce some kind of employee responsibility on employees to check that when they hire someone, the person is in this country legally. That's quite easy to do. I mean it's not cheap. It's not – let's put it this way. It's easier than Obamacare.

And then this is – this to me again is – so item one is control the borders, get control of the borders, which we've effectively done now to – it's a question of sustaining it – to some kind of verification of legal status before employers hire somebody. And then the third thing is Mark, this is the one that just drives me insane, pulling my hair out crazy. Half the people in this country illegally are here because they have overstayed visas. We don't know how to find them. The NSA, the NSA can turn on my minicam right now and take a picture of me. They know every keystroke. Don't worry. We're not doing that, but yeah. Okay. But, and then,

and then you worry, you let a similar, you let the whole thing, you let it go for 10 years. These people, and then address this question of how to make people, but first take them a step or two in favor of enforcing the law. And don't worry about the people in the shadows. If the shadows are better than they are in Mexico, then we should be happy for them. And if the shadows are that desperate, they can go back to Mexico, which, after all, has an expanding economy. I am with Franco 100%.

I was in Switzerland in 1980 going to theater school, and if I went behind on my tuition I mean I had to go in and prove that I blah blah blah and you know I'd be on the next train out of that country in no time and it's true with every country in the world and I don't understand why our side those of us who are you know don't say why aren't all these other great countries doing it why aren't they letting people in why can't I go why can't I emigrate to Switzerland if I had the money? Of course, if you have several million dollars, you might be able to do that. But generally, you can't do that in any country, certainly not Mexico.

So why do we have to be the welcome mat for the world? And just because this relatively poor country is at our borders, we're just supposed to take in their excess population. Also destroys Mexico because it takes out all of their, you know, it takes out all of their, you know, enterprising people. It's not even compassionate in the progressive term of compassion. Franco, you just said something that stopped me cold. In 1980, when I was studying theater in Switzerland, could you just, if I had to take that one point in 1980 and extrapolate to today,

I would not end up with a libertarian ricochet subscriber who's telling Rob Long he's a rhino squish. How did somebody who's studying theater in 1980 become Franco today? Oh, that's a big question, but let me take on Rhino Squish. I don't call anybody Rhino Squish because Rhino means Republican in name only,

and anyone can be a Republican, so therefore it's simply a label, so it doesn't make sense to me. But beyond that, I studied movement theater in a very small school in Switzerland, Scholar of Teatro Dimitri, Squalor Teatro Dimitri. It's in the Italian section. And it's dance, acrobatics, pantomime, and theater improvisation.

And actually, I wasn't really very good at it. So I went on to other things. I am a musician. I play violin and fiddle. And I've kind of been in the performing arts uh most of my life and i hang around a lot of people who not are not on the right let me put it that way they're all versions of ricochet except all on the left they're ass and every everything you can imagine um so i i and i in europe when i was in europe and actually before then, I lived a year in Cairo, in downtown Cairo, Egypt, which made me – turned me into sort of a conservative because that's where I saw socialism, up close and personal.

And – Well, you're just a typical conservative, non-cosmopolitan. Right. Your narrow view of the world you don't have any of the rich just another dentist in Moline exactly does it bug you?

it bugs me when everybody I know is a complete left wing nut and that's one of the reasons I don't mind being called a rhino squish because I'm secure in my conservatism. You have to be. Does it bug you when you're like – do you even bother to discuss politics with them?

No, no, not anymore. I mean I did it for years. Yeah. I did it for years, but generally I don't. No, there are some actually – and many of them are coming around. There were a lot of Obama and and most of them are quite disappointed that's not going to turn them let them vote for chris christie they might vote for man paul though many of these people actually yeah they'd also they'd also vote for bernie

sanders if if he was on the top of the ticket yes i know okay yeah there are a lot of left well the leftists i know the people in the left that I know are more enterprising. They're artists, they're creative types there and they're yeah, they're they're more enterprise oriented. So they're really not for a lot of wealth redistribution. And but they but they're all over the place. Right. But if they're if they're economically illiterate, like many people on the left, they don't believe actually it is redistribution. What it is is that the federal government simply goes to the golden goose and prints some more money and gives it to people in the name of compassion.

And they feel good about themselves for being compassionate or at least voting for somebody who says that he is. I want to end with this. We have to let you go, as we like to say in the business. You'd called me out in that post of yours where and of course that got my attention. You have awakened a sleeping giant.

We were talking about immigration. I said, who's pushing this stuff? And you said quite rightly, of course, Wall Street, multinationals, Chamber of Commerce, GOP establishment, crony capitalism, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That is, I was referring, A, to just the ordinary voter in the street who is not concerned with that at the top of his list. They're not calling up and saying, never mind income inequality, never mind the jobless rate, never mind what my city's doing. What are you doing about illegal immigration? I mean, that's what I mean. Who amongst the general electorate? And secondly, many times when we're doing these things, Rob, Peter and myself are just waking up and hence say things in order to fill the time before the next question. And that may have just been a moment where I just said something in order to say something. leave, but it is a terrifying notion that every phoneme we utter here is being parsed

because sometimes we're just slapping around. Franco, you've proved the case that Ricochet is worth every dime that people give to it because they can go there and read folks like you and hear people like you. And frankly, if we spent a year in this podcast interviewing nothing but Ricochet members as opposed to the intelligentsia. I think that'd be the best 52 podcast we could possibly do. We thank you for coming on the show, and we hope to have you back. Hey, Franco, will you play the violin for the next Ricochet Beat It? I need a band.

You don't want to hear me by myself. No, yeah, I'll even juggle for you guys okay all right ricochet talent contest we have we have we have a strings player i'm sure we we've got to have yeah we've got to have at least a a small small band i'll play rhythm guitar rob can play washboard and uh peter will get you know one of those one of those bass fiddles where he can just thump the string and that'll do. I prefer vocals. Thanks a lot, Franco.

We'll see you later. Thanks, Franco. Franco, thank you. That's extraordinary. You know what we were talking about? What a fascinating guy. Well, you know, that's just it. When we were talking about the provincial nature of Republicans and conservatives, here

you got a guy who started out in Switzerland in 1980, studying theatrical interpretive movement and then found himself in Cairo. It's such a pity. As opposed to those Europeans themselves who have passports that enable them to go to such diverse places as from Paris to Belgium and from Belgium back to Paris. They really understand that. The whole world. They understand the whole world based on what you can see out of a very fast-paced –

Well, you know, conservatives, they always live in one tooth – one snaggletooth county down there somewhere in some holler. That's right. Driving their pickup with a Confederate flag on it. Making the moon shine and worrying about the revenuers. Yep. Then again, aren't we all a little worried about the revenuers lately? Well, that's a good point. What we've been hearing coming out of the administration.

Barack Obama a little while ago when talking to Chris Matthews said was, you know, one of those ginned up things, one of those little diversions, those parades that you have in Washington, even though he himself, months before, had said that he was outraged by it. Outraged? Well, he's not outraged anymore. Anybody paying attention about this? Yes, Charles Johnson is, and he's got a broadside from encounter that you got to get. It's the truth about the IRS scandals. And here's the preces. The IRS scandals are far more complicated than it appears and more pernicious. It's roots go back to the founding modern technology

that's accelerated the harm and maliciousness of the IRS administrators. Now, just to deviate from the script for a second, as you may have heard if you go over to Ace of Spades, his nice little wrap-up of the story, a guy who had his insurance canceled and complained about it found himself, bingo, audited by the IRS. All right, it could be a coincidence. But then the guy, the lawyer who stepped up and said, I'll defend you and I will help you get insurance, found himself to be investigated and audited by the IRS. Normally, you wouldn't think much about that because this

is America. But after what we learned a few months ago about the IRS and what they did and who they targeted, all of a sudden you're thinking, is it possible? Is it actually possible that the administration could be using them as a wing to stifle this? That's madness, but, you know, read the book. This broadside will expose the tax collector conspiracy. That's the word, I guess.

It's kneecapped the Tea Party, one of the greatest citizens in rising American histories. It educates citizens about what's been done so they can keep it from happening again. Go to EncounterBooks.com and get this broadside for a special price for listeners of Ricochet. Enter the coupon code Ricochet. That's our

coupon code around the world, it seems, at the checkout, and you'll get an additional 15% off this or any other title. And if you order by midnight tonight, you get a free slab of barbecue from... No, wait a minute. Uh-oh. No. Just go there and get a Ricochet title and

you will be informed and edified. Now, we have next coming up somebody who actually found himself, like me, called out by name, whereas I was just called out in a post where Rob and Peter were also zinged. This was in the pages of a newspaper where apparently this guy had the gall not to get on the bandwagon for a movie that everybody loves for all the right reasons. Because it's bad to the Catholic Church. It says mean things about those horrible Catholic people who do wretched, wretched things.

Whether or not that movie was actually based on any truth, that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? We've got to make the larger point. So we bring to you now the reviled, publicly reviled man who is the, well, he's the film critic for the New York Post. We welcome to the podcast Kyle Smith. Welcome. Hey, thanks. Hey, Kyle.

Hey, it's Rob Long in Los Angeles. How are you? Hey, Rob. How are you doing? Good. Welcome. You got a little – it doesn't – I mean it looks like one of those sort of feel-goody movies they release at the – in the autumn, just in time for awards season. Do you think it's – I mean – and there was some pushback, but I just want to know what the fallout is. Do you think that – I mean did it – I hate to say it. I didn't check the Globes yesterday. Is it nominated for anything? Is Judi Dench nominated? Yes. Yes. They got a Best Picture? Is Judi Dench nominated? Yes. Yes, it got a Best Picture, Best Screenplay,

Best Actors nomination. And probably it's your fault, right? Because you made a big stink about it. Do you feel responsible? Well, what's interesting is the sort of 30 minutes of hate that was cooked up by Harvey Weinstein when he ran this ad in the New York Times calling me out by name, saying essentially,

you don't want to be on the same side as this horrible conservative film critic for the horrible New York Post, so go out and see this movie and give it all your awards love if they can. They should send you a basket of something, muffins or something. You are Harvey Weinstein's Oscar campaign

all wrapped up in one. Kyle, Peter Robinson. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, hi. Hey, Peter Robinson here. All right, so Philomena, I haven't seen the movie, but Philomena is the true story of a woman who became pregnant as, I think, a teenager, as a young unmarried woman in Ireland in the old days,

50s or 60s. She was placed with the nuns, as many were. She gave birth, and when the child was two years old or so, she gave it up for adoption. And then the story is how she spent the rest of her life looking for this child. And unbeknownst to her, the child who came to this country and became a prominent lawyer spent the rest of his life looking for her. He died of AIDS and they never did see each other. Okay, so it's a true story. What's wrong with it?

Well, it doesn't claim to be a true story, first of all. It claims to be inspired by true events. And if you look at the book, it's based on by Martin Sixsmith who's the Steve Coogan character in the movie. Judy Dench plays the woman 50 years later. Martin Sixsmith wrote this book on uh... i'm filming at it

written like a novel and he explained in the beginning that what those reconstructed and gaps have been filled in and you know there's like word-for-word conversations from people died fifty years ago and it's clearly you know a little bit of fact of a little bit of imagination what uh...

what got me about the movie was that it was such a clearly hokey and uh... and tried uh... excuse just a bash the catholic church and say uh... you know that it makes it uh... the irish catholic institution of these uh... of these places where women it burton uh... that you get the children for adoption of a token like the taliban Catholic institution of these places where women gave birth and eventually gave their children for adoption.

It makes it look like the Taliban. These are horrible, horrible places, according to this movie. And I just think there's a little bit more to the story than that. First of all, the convent that placed these children for adoption denied accepting any payment whatsoever. And in the movie, they say repeatedly that these children were sold to the highest bidder. Sold off. How do you reconcile that?

Right. In other words, the film takes no effort to establish the facts. It just takes the most inflammatory charge and runs with it. Through the medicines. But speaking of inflammatory charges, Kyle, I mean, the idea – do you consider yourself a conservative film critic? It just seems crazy to me. I mean I read your film stuff all the time in the post. It's great stuff if you – it's on the website if you don't live in New York and you want to read a really great critic.

It's Kyle Smith. But do you – I mean it doesn't even seem like that's a particularly political position you just took about that movie. It's really more fact-based and like, well, this didn't really happen, right? I mean I guess what I'm really asking you is it does seem like the producers of this picture seized on this as a way to cut through the clutter of the award season movies and try to move their movie to the top. Absolutely. I get hit with this charge

a lot from reader email comments saying I'm politicizing the movie. What I say is I'm just pointing out the politics of the movie. In this case, it couldn't be any more clear that Harvey Weinstein has a movie that's kind of a failure

as a feel-good, road-trip buddy comedy. It's played most of it in empty theaters over Thanksgiving weekend, and now he's trying to turn it into a political controversy. Come see what the controversy

is all about. Right, right, right. Right, right. Can we talk about a movie that I actually... What's the less controversial? Yeah, right. Can we talk about a movie

that I... What's a bit more obvious than fashion exactly exactly it's like it's it's it's it's like um you know when the brave a brave progressive writes a newspaper column that's all about how bad the uh the conservatives are hey uh so what about the other movies of this year i mean the the biggest hit in movie theaters which i i i did see, uh, slightly against my will, but I didn't, it wasn't terrible, is the Hunger Games.

Um, is Jennifer Lawrence in every movie now? Is that the rule? She has to be in every single movie? Uh, either Jennifer Lawrence or Benedict Cumberbatch has to be in every movie right now. That is the lead that has gone down. Cumberbatch is even the voice of the dragon

in the Hobbit movie. Seriously? Wow. So are you, what are your, what do you think were the top movies of 2013? And what do you think is, I mean, what do you think the big awards movies are going to be? I mean, what are we going to be talking about

the day after the Oscars and think, oh, really, that movie? I think it's going to be? I mean, what are we going to be talking about the day after the Oscars and think, oh, really, that movie? Well, I think it's going to be like 1997 where every Critics Award went to LA Confidential and everyone was like, ooh, this is the best movie of the year. But then the Oscars came out and said, no, Titanic's the best movie of the year.

They gave it, you know, 10 or 11 Oscars. I think similarly, Gravity is just such a great movie and such a great immersive experience that the Oscars are not going to be able to ignore. I've got Alfonso Cuarón down as Best Director and probably Best Picture in like about eight technical awards because it's just such a special achievement. But all the critics are going to go to things like American Hustle

and 12 Years a Slave because critics are a little skeptical of good old-fashioned storytelling, and what they really want is to kind of be knocked off guard or to appreciate the flowing camera movements of the David O. Russell movie or the sort of incendiary quality of 12 Years a Slave. And the good news, of course, is... Yeah, but Oprah got shut out, though. That's the good news, of course, is... Yeah, but Oprah got shut out, though. That's the good news.

So the Lee Daniels, the butler, nothing happened to that, right? It just kind of got forgotten? Yeah, I kind of think it'll get Oscar nominations. It's hard to say. The thing is, that's a Harvey Weinstein movie, and Weinstein has a whole bunch of movies that he's trying to promote simultaneously.

That, and Philomena, and the Nelson Mandela movie and August Osage County. So normally the Oscars give Harvey whatever he wants, but it's just unclear which of Harvey's movies they should back this year. Kyle, I'm sorry, Rob. There's just one question I just

have to ask. I haven't seen the movie because I cannot believe it's worth seeing. I just can't understand how it could be, and yet it's getting raves every time I turn around. And that seen the movie because I cannot believe it's worth seeing. I just can't understand how it could be. And yet it's getting raves every time I turn around. And that is the movie, the title of which I can't remember, All is Lost or something like that, which shows one person, one actor, Robert Redford, for whatever it is, almost two hours on a boat in the middle of the ocean. And apparently there are something like seven sentences of dialogue. I can't imagine how that could be anything other than the biggest bore in

history. And yet it's getting raves, Kyle. Well, the audience agrees with you as a total flop at the box office. I tend to think that's an instance of, of critics loving a movie just because it's so cinematic and experimental. It has like this thing,

this sort of film school thing behind it where critics can go, oh, it's a one-man show and there's no dialogue and characters defined entirely through action. But that's being too clever by half, right? It's too much of a distraction for the audience. I thought the movie was good and it was compelling. It was interesting to see how this guy survives

for an hour and a half after Yacht gets staved in and gets sort of thrown into the ocean by himself. But the fact is that without any dialogue, it's very different from Castaway because we don't really

know this character. We get to know the Tom Hanks character and we love the Tom Hanks character. We get to love the volleyball in Castaway, But that's because he talks to us. And I think it's a big mistake that Redford doesn't say in this whole movie. We really don't know the guy. Hey, one other question. This is

for Rob as well as for you, Kyle, but also related to Robert Redford. The other thing I cannot figure out about that movie is how would Rob and Kyle, how would anybody have sold the movie? What does the script look like? And if there,

if there are 12 lines of dialogue, then a storm comes up, then the shark circles, the boat, how do you sell a movie like that? I just don't understand it. What circulated to the studio? How do they raise money?

How did they get Redford interested? Nobody knows. Just a ton of, there's a ton of money. It's not really studio money per se, but there's a ton of hedge fund money and stuff floating around Hollywood. The guy who made that movie made a margin call. He got an Oscar nomination for that.

So he put himself on the map. And there's all sorts of alternative financing sources. And the studios really... I think any studio that you go to with that idea is going to say, well, we're not going to make any money off this. But if you can finance a movie, you can cobble together $5 or $10 or $20 million from all these alternative financing sources and cut the studios out.

And all that happens is you then sell it to the studio, and they just take a distribution fee or whatever, but they're not really at risk for financing the movie. There's any number of people who are just dying to be a part of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker's film. They're just throwing them under the way, usually. Okay. Robinson's last question, then I will shut up and return you to the hands of the professional Rob Long, or James Lilacs, if he wants to jump in.

James has a child. I've got a bunch of kids. Uncle Rob has godchildren scattered across America. What, between now and New Year's, what are the holiday movies that are worth seeing with families?

I thought Frozen was a really good Disney movie. So Frozen gets your recommendation? Got it. Okay. I thought it was really good. I thought it was as good as Tangled, which was a couple years ago, and better than the last couple Pixar movies like Monsters University, which I thought were good and brave. I thought it was kind of dull. And have you seen the Hobbit thing yet that gets released tonight? Yeah, I thought,

I actually thought it was better than the first Hobbit. I thought it kind of rolled along nicely. It's kind of an in-betweener movie. It's basically a space-holding thing, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense that the dragon would just let all these guys go. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun, the action scenes.

It's kind of been there, done that. There's a big scene where the spiders wrap everybody up in their webs and all the hobbits out there, the hobbits and the elves have to escape from them. But, you know, it's a fun family action adventure, sure. It's two hours and 40 minutes, though. Of course, and there'll be a director's cut, which is going to be nine hours. Yeah, it's a fun family action adventure, sure. It's two hours and 40 minutes. Of course.

And there will be a director's cut, which is going to be nine hours. Yeah, it's always the case. Hey, Kyle, I'm sorry. What do you think of the Saving Mr. Banks, the Mary Poppins movie? I thought it was good. I mean, it's schmaltz, and it kind of retells the story in a very Hollywood, Disney-friendly way. It makes Walt Disney look great.

There's one little piece of controversy, which is that Walt Disney, I guess, that one cancer died, one cancer, he's a heavy, heavy smoker, and they don't even show him smoking in the movie. There's this one scene where he's, like, putting out a cigarette as he enters the room. And, you know, the absolute worst thing they can say about Walt Disney in this Disney movie is that there's a implication that he might have smoked. That is the last taboo is smoking. The last taboo.

Yeah. It's just not allowed to do it. I keep putting that in the ratings now. Like if you look at the movie, it says PG-13 because of smoking or something. Yeah, exactly. Saving Mr. Banks is PG-13. I think it's just a there's a references to smoking um smoking is the you could do you can do a lot of things on screen

uh but you can't smoke after it i guess yeah that is a fun family movie though i would recommend that okay unfortunately there's a great walt disney biography waiting to be made and i just fear that because they did this they'll not do the one they should. And I can't see Hanks as Disney at all. I see him as Tom Hanks, America's dad. And performance, great, but I'm really looking for something good about Walt Disney's story. Maybe totally from the perspective of the frozen head. From World War I to Florida,

to building a prototypical futuristic community in Florida out on Swampland. I mean the man was a fascinating, fascinating visionary. But before we let you go, Kyle, one last question. It is Christmastime of course and everybody always has their list of favorites. It's hard to avoid the top three. Everybody loves It's a Wonderful Life for its – it's actually grittiness there towards the end. Everybody loves Miracle on 34th Street because it's happy and merry. And as Santa Claus, everyone has their choice of Christmas carol pieces.

What are your favorite Christmas films? And is it – it's okay to like the classics, isn't it? It's like saying your favorite movie is Casablanca or Citizen Kane. There's a reason. They're great. So what do you like? Sure. I love Love Actually. I can't get enough of that. My wife and reason. They're great. So what do you like? Sure. I love Love, actually.

I can't get enough of that. My wife and I watch it every year. What I love about these Richard Curtis movies is they're so quick to establish character. There's like 18 principal characters in this movie and all of them within one scene you know exactly who everybody is. That's a really fun, warm movie but it's also an R-rated kind of

slightly raunchy comedy. I think it's great fun. I think Bad Tap is a lot of fun for that matter. Well, let's go to the Scrooges. If you had to rank the Christmas carols, Bill Murray, Alistair Sims, George C. Scott, Mr. Magoo. You're forgetting Albert Finney. I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Which one?

Mr. Magoo, even better than Bill Murray. They're a eyebrow, I can tell. That was my introduction, actually. The Christmas Carol's a very young boy. I was watching that UPA animated Mr. Magoo special. He was also pimping for light bulbs, so somehow... That's right, I'd forgotten. G.E. Dickens, Jim Backus, and the strange animation style all became wrapped up in my little head and came to encapsulate Christmas before the Charlie Brown special knocked it out.

Listen, Kyle, we thank you for being on the show today, and we will check out every review that comes from your pen in this year and the next at the New York Post. And we also should note you're the author of the novels Love Monkey and A Christmas Caroline, and we didn't get to that, so we'll ask you about that next year. We'll see you then. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, Kyle. Well, gentlemen, before we go here, I want to call your attention to something in the Washington Post.

Uh-oh. It doesn't happen very often. E.J. Dionne is not happy with the budget deal. I love that. How am I going to keep going? Peter had a sigh there before we even got to what E.J. wasn't happy about. What's the problem here? Well, let me tell you, because I don't know if you guys know this, but the beginning of the fascistic takeover has just begun.

He begins, it's a sign of how far to the right Republicans have dragged governance in our country. That's the point where you just move on to the next piece. It's from a fantasy world. We should have a special feature on Ricochet called dependent clauses through history. That's unbelievable. His point is, is that because the budget doesn't do enough to redress the big problems that we have, which is income inequality, that the fact that we're not even arguing about these things shows that the Republicans have completely hijacked the conversation. Right there, right there, I am going to please Franco by saying stop. That is one premise that I am just sick of, that income inequality is for some reason

in and of itself inequitable, wrong bad a problem there is zero economic evidence that income inequality slows down the economy what difference should there's talent inequality beethoven was more talented at the piano than i would ever be right so the question go ahead it's also i mean one more one more meaningless statistic that almost needs to have its own sort of dramatic soundtrack. You know, like behind it. There's no evidence that it means anything. It's simply a – putting two numbers together and saying, look, these numbers are either closer together or farther apart, which is a meaningless distinction. It's sort of like when people say, oh, my lord, there's magnesium in your water.

Well, yes, there's all sorts of minerals in the water. That's what water is. It's a thing that's been sitting underground soaking up minerals for a thousand years. But the idea that that somehow just that number is bad, first of all, it just shows what a shill those guys are for this administration. This administration just decided two weeks ago. They're facing this horrible political implosion from their ridiculous socialized medicine scheme to talk about something else, anything else, and they seized on this. following the letter of his master, taking dictation directly from the president, decides this is the important thing and it has to be solved by a budget deal,

which is idiotic and embarrassing. If you're the Washington Post, if you're Jeff Bezos, God, you got to be reading up thinking, my, really? I paid him good money for this? Well, at least he's not paying a guy who doesn't care that there are poor people and doesn't care that magnesium poisons the water supply of the American citizenry. I mean, and they call you a rhino? Good lord, the cold, cold heart that beats in there. You'd think. You'd think.

Well, no, you're absolutely right. But it's not only the assumption that this is what we have to be concerned about. It's the built-in, baked-in concept that the government is going to be able to do something about this. And yes, it can in as much as a leveling socialistic totalitarian government that takes money from one set of people and gives it to the other so that everybody has the absolute same thing, liberty, equality, fraternity, right? Yeah, I mean, that can be done, but that's never what they do. That's never what they do. They just console themselves with their good intentions by demanding that the top rates be increased a little bit, and then thinking somehow that that's all going to trickle down. It brought to mind this piece in the Wall Street

Journal yesterday, which I advise anybody should read who's talking about the minimum wage. It's not $10, as the president says. In one part of Washington, they jacked it up to $15. And they took a look at what happened when businesses were faced with this. There was a hotel owner who said, well, I can't lay anybody off because we were already at bear staffing. And I'm just going to have to eat it. It's $400,000 a year, and we're just going to have to eat it. Which the people will say, well, that's good. That's good. He's got the money. He should give it to the people. And if he has people will say, well, that's good. That's good. He's got the money. He should give it to the people.

And if he has $400,000 left, that's exactly right. Government should force that leveling so that it's fair. But what you don't understand is a couple of things. One, perhaps the next time he buys towels, they're going to be the cheaper towels, the kind that you can never get dry with, and the cheaper toilet paper. And when he goes to buy the soap that they put in the, it won't be that nice scented stuff, hard milled. It'll be the granulated junk you used to get from gas stations.

And you know, all of these little coarsenings because he can't raise his costs to stay competitive. So that's one thing. The service will just generally gently decline there. But there was something else he said that really struck out. He said, we were going to build a fourth hotel in this area and now we're not.

So because they raised the minimum wage, the people who are there working will get more money. But the hotel that he wanted to build will never exist and nobody will ever drive past it and not see it because it won't be – nobody will ever see the job that didn't happen. The construction worker who didn't get a job, the maid who didn't get a job, the custodian. None of those things will ever be, will ever appear. So you can't miss them. And that's, that's the thing. That's what drives me crazy about this is the more the government sucks up, the less happens, but you can't point to something that didn't happen as evidence of why the

government shouldn't have done that. Anyway, $15, $10, as long as it makes us all much more equal. Well, we're equally wondering whether or not we've got a podcast next week. We'll see. We do know that next week is the opening of the Ricochet Beta 2.0. Oh, my lord. Here it comes. Here it comes.

That's right. And it will be open, I believe, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., keeping the hours of the Minnesota. What I want is I want everybody to hit this thing and hit it hard and have it not crash. And then we can say that not only are we better than the federal government, but darn it, our 834s are working too. I should ask. Are our 834s going to work? We are – I think our 834s are going to work. I think it's all going to work.

I mean – but we want people to check it in too and knock around and play around with it and spend a couple of weeks making – we believe in testing. That's our weird thing. We think that you've got to test something. So this is – we're supposed to be mentioning this right now on this podcast to say it will be fabulous. It will look better. It will work. But there will be glitches. Bear with us, folks. There will be glitches. There'll look better. It'll work, but there will be glitches. Bear with us, folks. There will

be glitches. There will be problems. When you run into problems, send us a note. We'll be fixing these things as quickly as we can. Not us. Send notes to someone who actually knows how to fix it. Send it to Franco for that. And

also, if you are in the mood, there's a diner up right now which begins the first of a two-parter about christmas songs bad christmas songs the number of bad christmas songs outweighs the number of good christmas songs by a factor of about 14 000 to one and i've found some truly dreadful stuff uh so that two-parter begins this week and of course there's ricochet in the member feed and there's everything else we want to remind you that you should go to EncounterBooks.com and get that broadside about the IRS. Enter the coupon code Ricochet, and we also need to tell you that FoodieDirect.com. Oh, just looking at what they have on the page will make you salivate.

And your coupon code Ricochet will get you 20% off your first order. You can start with just some great coffee and work your way up. I'll be reporting back on the Detroit pizza next year, and you can report back on something else, Rob and Peter. But in the meantime, we'll talk to you down the road. We'll see you at Ricochet. And gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Fellas, we'll see you next week, next week or next year. I don't know. Next week. Next week. OK. Bye, boys. See you. Bye. the feeling grows It's with the in the wind It's everywhere

I go So if you really love Christmas Come on and let it snow Christmas Come on and let it snow You know I love Christmas I always will My mind's made up The way that I feel

There's no beginning There'll be no end My mind's made up the way that I feel. There's no beginning, there'll be no end. Cause on Christmas, you can depend. You gave your presence to me, and I gave mine to you And I gave mine to you I need Santa beside me In everything I do You know I love Christmas, I always will My mind's made up, the way that I feel There's no beginning, there'll be no end

Cause on Christmas You can't eat the candy. Ricochet. Join the conversation. It's everywhere I go So if you really love me Come on and let it show Come on and let it show So if you really love me Come on and let it

If you really love me Come on and let it Now if you really love me Come on and let it show.