The Federalist Radio Hour

Since changing their menu, adding breakfast all day and fighting the fast-casual restaurant industry, McDonald’s has been made the news with ups and downs lately. Today on the Federalist Radio Hour, we discuss the future fast food franchise’s food and labor. David Freedman is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and writes on all things health, medicine and obesity. Freedman said that regulating consumer’s health through regulation isn’t going to happen because America doesn’t like regulation and it’s not what people want. “I think we should stop wasting time calling for more and more regulation and I think instead, let’s get everybody making smarter choices,” Freedman said. “Let’s help people to make the small changes that can actually make a big difference.” Besides fighting the health-crazed inspired regulations, McDonald’s is also fighting off labor groups who want labor unions for the fast food industry. Spokesperson for the International Franchise Association, Matt Haller, explains how even though franchising is a classic American success story, it’s own model is causing franchisors problems, specifically with recent action taken by the National Labor Board. “The business model is becoming a bit of it’s own success and it’s being exploited by some special interests and some policy making in Washington that’s really becoming a challenge for the individual franchisees to navigate,” Haller said. Domenech echoed that franchises feel American in the standardization that they provide. There is a larger cultural issue that lies underneath all the health regulations and it shouldn’t be layed at the foot of one organization. “The thing that I think we ought to guard against is that is something to apologize for. It’s not like McDonald’s naturally making people obese. It is a decision on their own part to become obese and to eat the things they shouldn’t,” he said.

Amber Smith, a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum and veteran, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the events coming to a head in the Middle East between Syria, Putin, ISIS and Obama’s response to it all. She said that as people start to see more of Russia’s presence in the Middle East, Americans are starting to want some results. “We spent $500 million training five Syrian fighters and look where that got us. Absolutely no where.” She said the Obama administration is just trying to bide their time for the remainder of his term. “[Obama] knows that if he wants to turn the tide it is going to require some sort of significant military involvement and that’s something he promised wouldn’t happen,” she said. Smith also explains how very little has changed since the uncovering of the VA scandal in April 2014. She asserts that change begins with the leadership at the top, and that employees still aren’t being held accountable for. “Unless a few things change at the VA there’s not going to be any significant change at all,” Smith said. “There is still a leadership crisis. [Bob McDonald] is very reluctant for any form of change. We’ve continued to see him go after his critics instead of acknowledging the changes that need to be made.” Recent news of China abandoning their one-child policy has led to conversations about forced abortion and a population crisis in China. Steven Mosher, author and journalist, joined the show show to discuss the impact of China’s decision. “The reality is if your economy is shrinking because your population is dying, you’re not going to have the wherewithal, the resources, to do anything about air pollution, water pollution, endangered species, extinction,” he said. “That all takes money and that all takes human ingenuity.”

In the midst of conversations on political correctness, cultural appropriation and tyrannical leaders around the world, one historical voice remains remains relevant: Shakespeare. Kate Havard, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Shakespeare enthusiast, gives her take on how Shakespeare fits into to American culture today. Havard shares stories of Shakespeare plays and adaptations, the good and the bad. She also suggests that despite originating in England, Shakespeare is also intrinsically American. “I think there is something very democratic about it and i think one common thread to all of Shakespeare’s writing is a particular hatred of tyranny,” she said. “There are tyrants and there are kings in Shakespeare and the Tyrants-- they don’t fair well.” Senior contributor at The Federalist and artistic director of Blue Box World, David Marcus, joins the Shakespeare conversation. With the news that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is translating its productions into present-day, modern English versions, Marcus asks what’s left of a Shakespeare play when you take out Shakespeare’s words? “We have this wonderful advantage in being able to experience Shakespeare in his original language,” he said. “I don’t understand why a theatre would want to take all of those things out of a piece and that’s why I call it a de-flavorizing machine.”

On a very spooky edition of the Federalist Radio Hour, we are joined by author and Halloween enthusiast, Mary Katharine Ham. As the “Wendell Berry of costume-making” and a grade A horror junkie, Ham shares tales of her own Halloweens past and reviews some of her favorite scary movies. Bre Payton, staff writer at the Federalist, and Aaron Mahnke, storyteller and producer of the Lore podcast, talk about why supernatural thrillers can be so frightening and why people come up with them. 

Joining the Federalist Radio Hour to recap the CNBC GOP presidential debate is Jon Ward, senior political correspondent at Yahoo. Ward and Domenech reflect on the performances of both the candidates and the moderators, and suggest that a war game or a fantasy football draft would be a better way to let the candidates debate. Ward said he thinks the RNC will use this debate to gage the short term fixes in future debates of the election cycle. “They might use this as leverage in negotiations over who will moderate,” he said. Ward also said he felt bad for Jeb Bush after his rough performance and hits taken from Marco Rubio last night. “I’ve always thought it would be Rubio or Jeb as the nominee and it looks to me at this moment it will be Rubio,” he said. “I think Jeb is going to be an interesting story because I don’t think he could get out if he wanted to because I don’t think his family would let him.” Later in the hour we are joined by Kevin Keating, long time baseball fan and collector of baseball memorabilia, to discuss the ongoing World Series. Keating said he thinks the series is an interesting match-up because both teams are so strong in so many areas. “Baseball has turned out to be exceedingly interesting with the changes that the long post-season had provided,” he said. “I think the Mets looked really good going into the post-season because of their pitching rotation,” he said. andnbsp;

Jay Cost discusses the frustration in Washington leadership in light of Obama and Boehners budget deal on today’s Federalist Radio Hour. Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of the book What’s So Bad About Cronyism? Cost said he thinks the strategy that Republicans are employing is to make as little noise as possible between now and the presidential election. “They want to give people confidence that they can vote for a Republican presidential candidate and put Republicans completely in charge of the government without things going crazy,” he said. Cost also offers his insight on the 2016 campaigns and their candidates, SuperPACs, and the Carson/Trump fight for poll numbers. He said that Donald Trump should be wary of attacking Ben Carson’s religiosity. “I think that he has not the first clue of how religiosity works among conservative Christians in Western Iowa,” he said. “That is a very dangerous play, to go after Carson for being a Seventh-day Adventist.” Tim Carney, senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner, joins the conversation on the budget deal, adding that Republican leadership hasn’t figured out to deal with Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Tea Party in a balancing way that works. Reactions are going to differ between Capitol Hill and the rest of the country. “You’re going to have the military-industrial complex caring a lot more about breaking the budget caps than you are going to have average grassroots Americans care about keeping the budget caps,” he said. Carney later suggests that the party has suffered on its foreign policy front and this plays out in the 2016 race. “The fact is there just isn’t a foreign policy infrastructure on the right that really puts forward the arguments of restraint,” he said. “I think the way presidents campaign when it comes to foreign policy, there is such little correlation to how to they end up governing on foreign policy.”

“It’s not that he’s just not that into you—it’s that there’s not enough of him.” This is the premise of Jon Birger’s book, Dateonomics. The author and journalist joined the Federalist Radio Hour today and explained how he used data, demographics, and university case studies to understand the dating dilemmas that many single, college-educated women face. Birger expected this shortage of single and college-educated men to be a big-city phenomenon, but it actually turned out to be a national trend, even in rural areas like Montana. “The research shows that both men and women have become more rigid about dating across educated lines.” This, of course, has an impact on other dating and marriage statistics. “When women are in oversupply, everybody gets married later,” he said. “Every year a man holds out, his market gets better.” The author’s research took him to two different university campuses and studying the dating culture of many across the country. He explains how the hookup culture, the dating apps and technology like Tinder, and the campus sexaul assault cases all fall under this umbrella of data, one way or another. Later in the hour, Dan Mitchell joins the show to discuss Congress’ latest budget deal and how it gives Obama almost everything he wanted. Mitchell, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said the new deal will spend more now and promises to spend less in the future. “We wound up with a kiss your sister situation, and we don’t exactly have a pretty sister in this case,” he said. Republicans were negotiating this deal out of fear and only wanted to avoid a potential government shutdown fight. “Don’t forget there is another piece to this puzzle: the debt limit has been increased,” Mitchell said. “And republicans might be scared of a shutdown fight, but they are terrified of a debt limit fight.”

Today The Federalist Radio Hour is joined by James Sherk, research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation. He explains how unions are blowing gaskets across the country, the differences between right-to-work and non right-to-work states, and the economics behind the government’s interference with employee benefits. Obama recently commented that the middle class has suffered because unions have become weaker. Sherk suggests that unions are essentially cartels. “They are cartels in that instead of controlling the supply of oil like OPEC does, they try and control the supply of labor,” he said. “A cartel is a wonderful thing if it’s a) functional, and b) you’re on the inside of it.” Neil Greenberg, sports writer and stats geek at the Washington Post, gives his predictions for the World Series and recaps the latest from Sunday’s NFL games. Greenberg said that while the Royals are returning to the world series for a second consecutive year, the New York Mets can’t be discounted and that they better hope Daniel Murphy’s streak continues.  “He was 53 times more likely to be struck by lightning than he was to hit a homerun in six straight games. He’s got the hot bat for sure,” he said. Finally, the Washington Examiner reporter Becket Adams, explains his latest interactions with multiple members of the media and their supposed coverage of the Planned Parenthood videos. He said the storyline that these videos have been selectively edited is a narrative created by PR teams and the media echo chamber. “I collected more than a dozen examples of people either giving Planned Parenthood this platform, or saying it themselves, and I contacted all of them and asked them the simple question which was, ‘Have you seen the videos?’” Adams discovered that not a single one could answer his question. As the media continues to parrot each other and moving in lockstep, “it explains why next to Congress, media as a whole (whether it’s newspaper, online, or television) is the second most distrusted institution in the United States according to PEW polling data,” he said.

Senior Editors at the Federalist, David Harsanyi and Mollie Hemingway, host today’s Federalist Radio Hour to discuss Lincoln Chafee, Paul Ryan and the political correctness movement in comedy. Lincoln Chafee has dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary race, following in the footsteps of his fellow candidate, Jim Webb. “People keep saying the Republican party is some sort of clown show as Robert Tracinski wrote on the Federalist today, but the real story is that the democratic primary is a side show,” Hemmingway said. Harsanyi noted that, “obviously with Biden not running as well, now Hillary is going to win.” After saying that he did not want the job, Paul Ryan is now in line to be the next Speaker of the House. “I’m not sure that he is going to be happy, I don’t know him personally, but it seems unlikely to me that this is a good fit for him in the end,” Harsanyi said. Hemmingway said Ryan is a great choice for Speaker and that he is a very conservative person who cares a lot about the market despite some of his dubious policy decisions. “He’s a solid conservative. He’s a unifying candidate. He understands the establishment. He understands donors,” she said. Online streaming sites like Netflix and HBO have released new shows from popular comedians like Amy Schumer and Anthony Jeselnik. These two comedians have also recently been helmed as brave in the face of political correctness. Hemmingway said she doesn’t think it’s true that political correctness is refining Jeselnik’s humor. “Jeselnik does need to be crossing any PC boundaries for me to like him, I like him as he is,” she said. As for Amy Schumer, Hemmingway said she is, “doing a good job of bringing discussion about sex and relationships into the forefront,” but that she played it safe on her newest show. Political correctness has forced into this tiny space of self deprecation that says there is no moral authority that can encroach on your space when it comes to sex. andnbsp; andnbsp;

Today is a great week for Hillary Clinton said Gabriel Malor, an attorney and writer for The Federalist. Clinton’s appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi today comes in the same week that Vice President Biden pulled his name from her race. Both which she will use to her advantage. Malor said despite the anticipation for this hearing, people shouldn’t get too excited. “Don’t look for a smoking gun here--committees don’t solve problems.” He also noted the classic “Clintonian” ways in which she will answer questions throughout the hearing, her handling of the investigation, and her relationship with Sid Blumenthal. “It’s important to listen to her exact words,” Malor said on her claims that most of her work was not done on email and that didn’t have a computer in her office. Later in the hour, Dr. Tom Nichols, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School, joins with his take on the answers Hillary had been giving Congress. “If you’re running for President of the United States you can’t stiff arm questions by saying ‘Oh the world is so complicated and my goodness I barely have time to keep up with social media,’” Nichols said. He suggests this entire investigation is being conducted like it’s 1980 as emails are slowly being shared as hard copies. Malor agreed, noting that, “when you print an email is you destroy all the metadata on the back end.” Other important news that broke the internet this week was the release of trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Malor and Domenech discuss J.J. Abrams, flawed story lines, and why Jedi might actually be the bad guys. Malor said there is a similarity between the Jedi and the Congressmen who try to hold beneficial hearings on the Hill but who fail because of the system. “When I talked about good individuals with good intentions locked in an essentially powerless institution--that’s the Jedi. It’s the Select Committee and it’s also the Jedi,” he said. andnbsp;

The conversation on Capitol Hill over the past few days has been circling around Paul Ryan and the open job for Speaker of the House. The Federalist Radio Hour was joined by Congressman Dave Brat of Virginia who said he was most interested in evaluating the process of Congress and getting back to regular order. “If you get to regular order, then you won’t have to vacate the chair,” Brat said. “If you throw the most dynamic person into a broken process, we just expect more of the same.” Brat said that Congress promises a lot of budget dollars to a lot people and that correcting it starts with transparency. “The American people are starting to finally catch on. It’s better than House of Cards, this is really going on,” he said. Bre Payton, staff writer for The Federalist, joined the show to discuss today’s new that Joe Biden will not be running for president. “I was not surprised at all,” Payton said. “If you were the Vice President and wanted to run for President your whole life but always knew that it wasn’t necessarily a possibility, I can see it being way more fun fooling everyone and then doing these backdoor passive aggressive comments.” The other big announcement buzzing on the internet this week was Netflix’s news that they are working on a Gilmore Girls revival. They plan to add four 90-minute episodes to the streaming service. Kevin Porter, co-host of the popular Gilmore Guys podcast, tells us what he expects from the series and how the shows audience helped in bringing the show back. “I think what we’ve seen in the last three or four years is when something is not on streaming services... it kind of disappears from the public conscious or at least from the conversation,” Porter said. Porter said the Gilmore Guys podcast is merely a reflection of a community that brought it back. “At the end of the day we help make the show continue to feel more current, and now the show is going to be literally more current because there is more story to tell.

Craig Shirley is an author, historian and biographer who has written four books on President Ronald Reagan. His latest book, Last Act, describes Reagan’s life post-presidency and the legacy that emerged in his final years. “Reagan is constantly evolving, constantly changing, not static,” Shirley said on today’s Federalist Radio Hour. “He was active his whole life and remained active. He was 81 years old, but he was a very good 81 years old.” Shirley describes to us the shortcomings of other books on Reagan that have been publishing, most recently Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan. “O’Reilly does not do his scholarship and it has misinformation big and small in there,” he said. “If you read Killing Reagan, you will come across things that just don’t seem right to you.” Later in the hour we are joined by another author and historian, David Pietrusza. In his book out this week, 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR, Pietrusza juxtaposes the lives of these two men from different countries. “So much is happening in 1932 and 1933, and the parallels chronologically between the careers of Adolf Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt are pretty startling,” he said.

Rebeccah Heinrichs, fellow at the Hudson Institute, joins the Federalist Radio Hour today to discuss the Iran Nuclear Deal, issues in Syria and other foreign policy issues the White House has discombobulated. Heinrichs said that even though many negative reports have come to light since the Iran deal was finalized, the administration is still deterred to keep it going. “The longer the American people have to actually see what’s in this deal, the more unpopular it becomes,” she said. Iran has demonstrated their willingness to violate UN standards of security. “The Iranians have no intention of actually proving that they are willing to be a part of the international community here,” Heinrichs said. Later in the hour, the Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg joins the conversation to give us the Monday update on the weekend’s NFL news. He explains why Peyton Manning is struggling in Denver and why the Carolina Panthers are not the team that everyone thinks they are. “The Carolina Panthers have played the weakest set of games in the entire NFL,” he said. “They’re an average team. This isn’t the team that dominates on any side of the ball.” Greenberg also gives insight on the Cubs-Mets series, specifically Daniel Murphy’s unbeatable performance. “It’s really tremendous what the Mets have been able to do,” he said. “We’ll see if they can sustain it in Wrigley, but right now the best way to neutralize Daniel Murphy is just to walk him.”

Scott Lincicome joins the Federalist Radio Hour today to discuss recent issues surrounding the U.S., particularly in the context of Hillary Clinton’s recent comments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Lincicome is a trade attorney, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and senior contributor at The Federalist. Media outlets have been fighting each other to see who could find more videos of Hillary Clinton praising the TPP, in light of her new position against it. “Unfortunately, she has a long history of not just supporting the TPP, but her husband being one of the last big free-trade democrats out there,” Lincicome said. He explains how American labor unions’ intense opposition to free trade and how Bernie Sanders is a threat to win over that opposition. “Hillary knows that for the most part, she can come out anti-TPP and she’s not going to lose many votes on the pro side,” he said. Later in the hour, Lincicome dispels common myths about trade and manufacturing in America, citing that manufacturing in the U.S. is at an all-time high and is doing quite well. Another myth out there is that free trade agreements benefit corporations at the expense of the working class. “You see corporations lobbying for these deals and advocating exports, but at the end of the day, there are significant benefits that will accrue to American consumers,” he said. “That means you and me.”

Paul Bonicelli, professor of government at Regent University, joined the Federalist Radio Hour’s conversation on Obama’s foreign policy, the mess in the Middle East, and why smart staffers are endorsing a not-so-smart Iran deal. Bonicelli also suggests issues that Hillary Clinton will face in convincing voters of her foreign policy experience and recalls a time when Republicans saw her as a competent leader. “I don’t see any benefits for Hillary Clinton in foreign policy at all,” he said. Later in the hour, we are joined by resident Canadian, Ezra Levant. The lawyer and author fills us in on the upcoming Canadian election for Prime Minister and how the media is corrupting the political process. “We have a government surplus now. We have the lowest business tax rate in the G7,” Levant said, explaining that because things are good, Canadians are willing to take a risk on a liberal, “Zoolander” of a candidate.