We're just getting a couple of scratchy notes when you're especially emphatic or loud.

I promise not to be emphatic this entire podcast.

Ask not what your country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Rickusay podcast with Steve Hayward sitting in for James Lillick, joined by Charles

C.W. Cook and Rob Long. And we're going to kick around the news ahead of Christmas

week. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There are 500 plus pages related to health care policy,

which doesn't have anything to do with keeping the government open.

There's $100 billion of disaster relief in here, which is desperately needed, by the way, but should be its own standalone bill.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I'm in the final weeks of my presidency. You don't have to clap for that. You can't if you want.

It's the Rickusay podcast, episode 721. This is Steve Hayward substituting for the usual

dulcet tones of James Lillex, who's not with us today. But I'm joined by Charles C.W. Cook

and some wandering stranger named Rob Long. And that name is a

wandering mendicant. And so welcome, gentlemen. We don't have a guest today. It's just

going to be us kicking around some holiday thoughts going over some news of the day. But I do,

I think, want to start by saying, Rob, you have just finished your first

semester in seminary on your way of taking holy orders. And I'm interested in that, this is

this venture, this quest of yours in general terms, but also I sort of remember my first semester

in graduate school a long time ago now and how much more intense it was than being an undergraduate.

So, I don't know, how's it gone?

Are you done yet?

...