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This is it. folks — our very last show of 2017. To help us take a look back, we’ve enlisted NewsMax CEO (and Trump confidant) Chris Ruddy who give us the inside Mar-A-Lago POV. Also, we tackle the following questions in this show (h/t: The Commentary Podcast):
- The best thing Trump did in 2017
- The worst thing Trump did in 2017
- What you thought would happen in 2017 that didn’t happen?
- What did happen in 2017 that you didn’t think would happen?
- What will be the big story of 2018?
Agree? Disagree? Leave your answers in the comments.
Thanks for all the support and feedback this year. We’ve got some great shows planned for 2018 (including some cool live ones) so enjoy the Christmas season and we’ll see you in January.
Music from this week’s show: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love
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I am also amazed that Trump can be 71 years old, gain lots of weight, eat junk food and drink copious amounts of Diet Coke and keep on going. I can only imagine that he is on a boatload of prescription drugs!
Rob: “We are still a 51-52 nation.”
Which proves the old adage that you’ll never get 103% of the country to agree on anything.
Chris, not every kid in Germany can go to college. First, students must be in a college (university) curriculum through high school — which is 13 years — not 12. Then they take competitive tests. Only a fraction of German high school graduates go to a university.
Good show, gents. Again I say, good to have the segues back.
Best Christmas album: the Nutcracker Suite, of course.
Rob, if Democrats and the Left were in danger of making themselves irrelevant by extreme positions, Obama would not have been twice elected to the highest office in the land.
But you are correct that the biggest story of 2018 might be the continued divergence of Left and Right. Then again, remember what they said about George W Bush? Are the lies about Trump really worse?
Merry Christmas, gentlemen! Thanks for everything you’ve built here at Ricochet.
C
I never thought of “Come, Thou Fount” as a Christmas song. I’m guessing Rob was caught off guard by the question or just wanted to be unconventional. It’s a great song, with great theology, just not particularly Christmas-y.
Just a few small corrections: high school now only goes up to 12th grade (the 13th grade has been phased out over the past decade), and the competitive tests don’t so much determine whether students in the “college-track” high schools go to college, but rather which one they will go to.
But you’re right that only a fraction of high school students go to college, although it’s about the same fraction as in the US. And while it’s true in theory that any German student can go to college if they are smart enough (since tuition is a pittance and acceptance decisions are strictly merit-based), in reality the socioeconomic breakdown of German college students is nearly identical to that in the US.
The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that the German public education system offers a comprehensive barrage of post-high school professional education/training for everyone who doesn’t attend college, from 2-year degrees to vocational schools to apprenticeships.
Danke schön.
I remember those Christmas albums put out by the tire companies very well, and like James they made a big imprint on me growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. My favorite was the Firestone Christmas album with the religious, traditional Christmas carols beautifully sung by two opera singers, Rise Stevens and Brian Sullivan. I was able to get it on DVD and still think it is the best one I have ever heard. Could do without the Santa-based carols, which is all I hear on the radio these days.
OMG! Just think Democrats, Trump might actually make America great again!
Even Yeti didn’t want to end with Feliz Navidad. That is among my worst. An annoying earworm.
What? This old thing?
@jameslileks thanks for mentioning the Goodyear Christmas albums. I grew up with these two (vols. five and six). They’ve been in my possession for years now and survived countless family relocations.
Now converted to the digital realm they get their virtual spin on the iPod every year.
Merry Christmas!
Thanks, Chris. That means a lot. And Merry Christmas to you, too!
Thank you again for another great year on Ricochet. I stumbled on this site near three years ago when Googling for Mark Steyn podcasts to listen while riding my bike to work in Adelaide, Australia.
Your podcasts are outstanding and the others I’ve discovered such as Andrew Klavan and the Harvard Lunch Club etc give me something to listen to each day. I always feel like I’ve learned something. Thanks for the calm and mature way Ricochet pidcasts discuss touchy subjects like politics and religion. It just doesn’t happen in Australia. We are like spoilt children.
Merry Christmas to all on this site.
I have a few quibbles. The Democrats lost both the House and the Senate in 1994; they only lost the House in 2010.