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((Recorded Live)) As America prepared for one of the most pivotal elections in recent history, I went live to break down the stakes, the key players, and the issues that could shape the future of the nation. Join me as we explore what's at risk in the 2024 election, from the candidates' platforms to the critical choices facing voters. Whether you tuned in live or are catching the replay, don't miss this deep dive into the upcoming election and what it means for all of us! We are live Monday through Friday! Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube! -Please consider donating to keep us on the air. -Patreon.com/WilmerLeon Announcer (00:00:07): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:00:15): Good morning. Good morning. And as most of you know by now, this coming Tuesday, November 5th will be as the Constitution states, the Tuesday next, after the first Monday in November is election day. What are you all going to do? Are you going to vote? Are you going to abstain? If you decide to vote, who are you going to cast your ballot for? Let's talk and let's talk live. We're live today. I want to welcome you all to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me. I am Dr. Wiler Leon. And here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic contexts in which they occur, thus enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. (00:01:26): On today's episode, it's just me, it's me, no guests. I'm live today. And I know this is very, very short notice, but here we are. So the issues or the issue before us is or are this Tuesday, as I said in the tease, November 5th will be as the Constitution states, the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November is election day. Folks, what are you all going to do? Are you going to vote or are you going to abstain? If you decide to vote, who are you going to cast your ballots for? And for me, here's the real important salient question, why vote or abstain? I strongly suggest voting. I don't think that you can abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out. And I firmly believe that the primary responsibility of a citizen is to participate in the electoral process to determine who you select to represent your interests in government. (00:02:48): Folks, I believe America is recklessly muddling its way through these incredibly, incredibly perilous times, very, very recklessly. As America muddles its way through these perilous times, there are too many Americans that appear to be more confused than ever. Many of us have traded our interests in for electability or anybody. But Trump, former NAACP board chairman Julian Bond, told us that in the African-American community, we have no permanent friends. We have no permanent enemies, we have just permanent interests. Malcolm called them permanent agendas. And as we look at this whole issue of America muddling its way through these perilous times, I think it's very, very important for us to understand what this really means and who is responsible for the peril that we find ourselves in. Many of you all may take exception to what I'm about to say, but I think the data supports disposition. The American empire is on the wane. It is failing. Some will say it has already failed, and what we are experiencing are the last kicks of a dying mule. I think the African proverb says the last kicks of a dying mule are or can be the most dangerous. (00:04:26): The United States started this war in Ukraine. The United States is backing the genocide that we see playing itself out right before our very eyes in the Zionist colony known as Israel. The United States is trying to provoke a fight with Venezuela by not recognizing the democratically elected president Nicholas Maduro as the president of Venezuela. The United States is trying to start a fight with China over Taiwan. So that's why I say that we are in incredibly, incredibly perilous times and most of this peril is at our own doing. And I see sister Sandra Muhammad, thank you so much for tuning in greatly, greatly appreciated. So again, incredibly reckless. Too many of us are confused more than ever again. Many of us have traded in our interests for this concept of electability and anybody but Trump. Well, we have to ask ourselves, what are our politics really all about? (00:05:53): And this question not only applies to those of us in the African-American community, but it applies to the country overall. Candidates right now are out on the campaign trail asking us for our vote. But what are they offering us? Even more important than that, even more important than what are they offering? What are we as citizens demanding from them? For the most part, I'm hearing racist diatribes of I'm hearing, I'm hearing racist diatribes. I'm hearing offers of higher taxes that are really masking themselves as tariffs on imported goods. I'm hearing anti-immigrant rhetoric, and I'm hearing a lot of ideas being floated as policy. They sound great, but they'll meet stiff opposition if they make their way to Congress. Let me just quickly jump back to the anti-immigrant rhetoric because both sides from the Trump campaign as well as from the Harris campaign, there's a whole lot of clamoring. There's a whole lot of chatter that we're hearing regarding the border immigration. (00:07:21): Oh, our country's being overrun by immigrants. I Trump tells you they're eating our pets. And Vice President Harris talks about building the wall funding for more border agents. All of this stuff about keeping people out. What I don't hear anybody talking about, I don't hear anybody asking the question, why are these people trying to come in the first place? Why are Mexicans trying to cross the border? Why are people from Honduras? Why are people from Guatemala risking life in limb, spending thousands of dollars that they've spent years saving, trying to come across this border? I don't hear anybody asking that question. Donald Trump and JD Vance made this horrifically racist, unsupportable false accusation that Haitian immigrants, who by the way, are in Springfield, Ohio legally, who by the way, salvage the economy of Springfield, Ohio. Nobody's asking the question, why are Haitians there in the first place and nobody talks about American foreign policy? (00:09:00): Do you think Mexicans just want to come to the United States because they woke up last week and said, you know what? I think I'm going to risk life and limb and go to the United States. Do you think Guatemalans, do you think Hondurans? Do you think El Salvadorians are saying to themselves, you know what, I ain't got nothing else better to do. I'm going to pay some Mule $3,000 that it took me five years to save to risk life and limb to try to sneak into the United States only to run the risk of being deported and wasting all that money. Do you think that maybe they're making these decisions because their economies have been decimated by American foreign policy and they're coming. So you don't hear the immigration czar as Donald Trump loves to call Vice President Harris. You don't hear her talking about that. You don't hear Donald Trump talking about that. They talk about failed solutions such as building the wall and all that other foolishness. They don't talk about the real crux of the problem, which is American foreign policy in their countries. What happened with Mexican corn? Well, it got decimated because of nafta importing American yellow corn into Mexico. And that brown multicolored Mexican indigenous corn got decimated through cross pollenization by the American yellow corn that was imported because of nafta, decimating agriculture in Mexico. So what are those farmers to do? Nobody's offered them any assistance. What are those farmers to do? (00:11:09): Chiquita brands, about a month ago was convicted in federal court in Florida for funding death squads in Columbia. Chiquita brands now has to pay millions of dollars, millions of dollars to families in Columbia because they were backing death squads in Columbia. So if you are a Colombian, what are you to do? Stay in your native country, running the risk of being murdered by death squads funded by Chiquita brands or do everything in your power to get out of Columbia and go someplace else. And where is that someplace else? The United States as Donald Trump is using these, I see Steve, I'm getting to Haiti right now. Steve, stay out of my head, man. Stay out of my head. Steve. I'm getting to Haiti right now. (00:12:22): As Donald Trump and JD Vance are extolling these racist diatribes about Haitians eating dogs and cats. Steve, here we go. Nobody's asking why are the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio in the first place? Nobody's asking why'd they leave Haiti and come to the United States? They should be sitting on the island drinking barbering court five star rum in Eaton Grill. No, they've left their lovely country come to the United States. Why? Here's the answer. As during the debate, you saw Vice President Harris wring her hands and twist contorting her face and showing the utter disgust for that racist diatribe that she should have shown. But nobody asked her Vice President Harris, why did you go to Racom last year and try to convince the leaders of Racom, the organization of Caribbean states to be the tip of the United States spear as the United States is trying to rein, invade Haiti, recolonize Haiti? Nobody asked her that question. And I think that's a very, very important question to ask. I call that minstrel diplomacy, black faces on Euro-American foreign policy, menstrual diplomacy. Nobody asked Hakeem Jeffries, Congressman Jeffries, why did you go as a black man? Why did you go to Caron with Vice President Harris, a black woman to convince black countries to invade another black country? (00:14:41): Nobody's asking that question. So it's not simply building a wall. It's not simply enforcing the border. It's not simply funding for more border agents. It's not simply building internment camps to house these individuals and their children. It's not simply deporting people. And by the way, I think former President Barack Obama deported more people than anybody in the last 50 years. It's about American foreign policy decimating the economies of Mexican, central American and South American countries. That's why these individuals are doing everything in their power to come to this country. Now, really quickly, I really quickly, it's also a matter of going back to Haiti. Why such a focus on Haiti? (00:16:03): A couple of reasons. One is geographic the United States is trying to do, has been trying, I think for about a hundred or so years to build a naval base in Haiti, and it has met incredible resistance by Haitians. Why does the United States want to build that naval base in anticipation of China gaining a greater foothold in the region? China right now is talking about building a canal. I believe it's through Honduras, building a canal through Honduras, which would make it easier for Chinese ships to circumnavigate the globe. And that would also be a direct challenge to the Panama Canal. (00:17:10): So you have a number of geopolitical aspects to this as the United States further alienates China, the United States is anticipating the need to replace that cheap Chinese labor with another cheap labor source, and where are they thinking of getting that labor? Haiti. So those are just two very current examples of why the United States is so focused on recolonizing Haiti. Of course, we can go back to the overarching issue of the Haitian Revolution, the successful Haitian revolution, the United States, I'm sorry, Haiti throwing out France as a result of the Haitian Revolution and the belief that no European country, we'll consider you the United States because it's founded by Europeans, would ever allow the successful revolution of a black country. So that's also part of this calculus as well. Those are just a couple of examples of what I'm talking about in terms of these politics and permanent friends, permanent enemies and permanent interests. Again, candidates they're asking us for are vote, but what in fact are they offering us? And again, more important than that is what are we demanding from 'em? (00:19:00): Where are the substantive policies that are focused on making the lives of each American better? Where's the plan to fund them and to get these ideas turned into legislation submitted, brought before Congress, passed by Congress and signed by the president. There are a lot of ideas being floated out there, but one of the things I'm not hearing, particularly from the Harris campaign is how are you going to get this stuff funded? Where's the money going to come from anyway? By failing to develop, understand and articulate our permanent interests, our agendas, we then fall victim to the problem of what I call binary politics. The simplistic either or scenario. Yes, this is a two party system, but being stuck in the mindset of binary politics, the simplistic either or scenario, continues to leave us with simplistic and deadly choices of the status quo. Do you want lead in your drinking water or mercury? (00:20:21): Do you want arsenic on your grits or baby? Do you want mama to sprinkle a little bit of strict nine on them? Grits for you, the dangers of binary politics, this rant of anybody. But Trump is a perfect example of the dangers of binary politics, especially for the African-American community. And please, please, please, baby. Please baby, baby. Please don't get this twisted. Yes, Trump is disgustingly ignorant. He's vile, he's gosh, he's racist. He's an admitted sexual predator and a convicted felon. However, following the simplistic narrative of anybody but Trump as the basis of your analysis will not ipso facto lead you to a better alternative as sporting life said in Porgy and best, it ain't necessarily. So folks, I unapologetically see the world through. We're doing live radio, so I got to every now and then check my messages here to be sure that I'm staying on course, staying on track. Okay? So anyway, folks, I unapologetically see the world through the lens of an African-American man, and I focus on the interests of the African-American community. But my analysis I applies to every demographic across the board. (00:22:09): Let me pause here and just say, Steve, you're right. We're talking about Haiti. Sandra, you said you don't know. It looks as though folks would rather remain in Lala ignorant about many issues, the Western individualism value. Oh, you're absolutely right, Sandra. You're absolutely right about that. And that really gets to the crux of my point. And as I talked about the decline of the empire, this is all part of that western individualist value. And by the way, which is a conservative construct, and Sandra, help me out here if I'm on track with this, is that too many of us in the African-American community have bought into this whole idea of I've got mine. Now you have to get yours. We have lost track of the power of the collective. We have lost track of how we as a community, as we as African-Americans with a distinct history, with a distinct culture, have been able to make it through the challenges that have been imposed upon us by the dominant culture. (00:23:41): Look, I say this all the time. Du Bois wrote The Souls of black folk, not the soul of some guy. Mrs. Hamer dedicated her life championing the right for us to vote. She did not dedicate her life simply so that she could vote. And now what too many of us are looking at, what too many of us are confused about and confused by is the progress of some at the expense of the many. I got mine. You got to get yours. That has never worked for us. It will never work for us. And then there are too many of us like Richardson down in North Carolina, and who's the brother that from Florida that appeared at that Trump race Fest 2024 in New York. He comes on stage after the dude, before him played, Dixie played, what's his name? (00:25:07): I'm drawing blank on a guy that sang it, but what kind of cery was that? A black man going to come on stage, Elvis Presley after a white cat before him, his bumper music was Dixie. And instead of coming to the mic saying, oh hell, to the na Bobby, hell to the na, I'm not going to stand here and follow that racist foolishness. He just goes along, buck dancing, cooning shining, and you know, any of you all that have spent any time listening to me, rarely will I use those types of references when I'm talking about Buck dancing coons. But that just shows you the depths and the utter depravity that our community has fallen into global insight perspectives. You ask, what do I say to African American voters who say, if you vote third party, you'll enable Trump to, ah, okay, global insight perspective. Great question. I was going to get to that a little later, but let me do that right now. (00:26:37): That gets back to my point of the dangers of binary thinking because right now we're stuck in this duopoly Republican and Democrat thinking that there are truly substantive differences between the parties when in fact it's a duopoly. They are two wings on the same bird. They are two sides of the same coin. The Democrats to a great degree, they will couch their racism, they'll couch their militarism in slightly softer language. They'll bring black faces to the forefront to sell you that bs. Linda Thomas Greenfield at the UN championing genocide, right? Kamala Harris going to Kom as I mentioned earlier, Hakeem Jeffries go to Racom, who's the head of africom. It's a black general. Lloyd Austin goes to Kenya to convince William Ruto the president of Kenya. They show him given the check to Ruto, to invade Haiti on behalf of the United States. So the Democrats, they'll roll out black faces to Barack Obama, they'll roll out black faces to sell you basically the same policies that the Republicans, they just Bogart. They go hard in the paint. They go hard in the paint. No, easy layups, hard fouls. They don't care. Democrats try to be, they try to give you a kinder, a kinder, softer militarism. (00:28:50): And Daniel dvi Du Bois said, race is not biological. It's cultural. Oh, that's very, very true. That's why you don't hear me usually speaking in the context of race. I speak in the context of ethnicity and I speak in the context of culture because there is absolutely no biological proof, scientific, empirical data to support the construct of race. Race is a eugenic construct, and I was just in London lecturing on this at Oxford and at Westminster Universities just got back Saturday. Thank you to Dr. Chantel Sherman for putting on that conference. Yeah, race doesn't exist. It just doesn't. It exists only in the warped mind of those that have been convinced that race is real. Race is an artificial construct that was created to a great degree by Christians in order to rationalize the dehumanization of enslaved Africans because they had to figure out if we can consider ourselves to be Christian, then how can we rationalize and justify enslaving other human beings? (00:30:26): Oh, here's an idea. We create this construct of race. Therefore, we can say they are an inferior group of people. And Calvinism played a very, very key part in this because one of the elements of Calvinism is predestination, predetermination. So they then were able to say, oh, these people were predetermined by God to be inferior and subservient to us, the white European. So that's where the whole construct of race comes from. Daniel, thank you so much for that. Byron Donalds. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Rell. I think that's, if I pronounced that correctly, yeah, Byron Donalds is who I was trying to think of again, folks, you have never even heard me call Clarence Thomas a coon, but Byron, Donald Coons coon, anybody that comes on stage on a stage at an event where Dixie was played. I don't care what time in the lineup, you are supposed to come on stage and shut that rascal down. (00:31:47): You're supposed to come on stage and quote that brilliant African-American, that late African-American philosopher Whitney Houston, and say, oh hell, to the Nall Bobby held to the Nall. We ain't going for this. But anyway, oh well, Daniel, excellent, excellent. Thank you. I appreciate your critique of that analysis. Okay, so let me try to move a little further here. Again, as I said, I see the world in unapologetically so through the lens of an African-American man. And please understand this my saying that my being pro me do not ever, and this is something that people do all the time. Black Lives Matter was an example of this. Never equate my being pro me with my being anti you, my being pro me is me being pro me. (00:32:50): The retort to Black Lives matter was, well, all lives matter. Yeah, that's true. But if that were a reality in the United States, if all lives in the United States actually mattered, then we wouldn't have to highlight the fact that Black Lives Matter. The reason that Black Lives mattered was developed was because we saw on our phones, on our television screens, on our computer monitors, black people being slaughtered in the street, and I'm not even going to say shot down in the street like dogs, because if I went out into the street and shot a dog in the street, I would be immediately arrested. (00:33:41): That's why I don't say shot down in the street like dogs, because in many communities, they seem to hold the lives of dogs in higher regard than they do African Americans. So anyway, I see the world through the lens of an African-American man and as a political scientist, I go back to the piece by Mac Jones, a message to a black political scientist where he says, as such, it's my obligation to develop a different wean Chung, a different worldview that I view the world through the prism of my experience, historical, current and personal as an African-American human being, and that I can never allow my analysis to deviate from that because that's what is the most relevant to my community. So vote or abstain, back to that point, I strongly suggest voting. I don't think that you can abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out. We as American citizens, we can no longer afford to leave the management and governance of this country and system to those that we have elected to represent our interests. And I think that little element, that little kernel right there, is what unfortunately is being overlooked, and I'll say particularly in the African-American community, we keep hearing vote for Kamala vote, and I'm not saying vote or don't vote for him or her. (00:35:45): I'm not going to do that. If you want me to, I will tell you who I think is going to win this. I'll get to that in a minute, but I'm not saying vote for him or vote for her, vote for them or not them. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying though is that too many of us have been bludgeoned with you have to vote for her because she's a black woman. If you don't vote for her, you hate black women. You have to vote for her because Donald Trump is the reincarnation of the devil, which by the way, he is. (00:36:21): No, no, no. I need to know. I need her to tell me what she's going to do for me and how she's going to do it. That's all I've been demanding. Kamala, vice President Harris, tell me very, I need you to come on up to stage and say, Wilmer, look. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to do it, and this is how we're going to pay for it. I need her to do that. Folks, you can't abdicate your duty as a citizen. You can't sit this one out at a campaign event. This past Thursday evening in Arizona, former President Trump said to Tucker Carlson, she, Liz Cheney, she's a radical warhawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Okay, let's see how she feels about it. When the guns are trained on her face, they're all warhawks. When they're sitting in Washington with a nice building, Trump continued. (00:37:35): What he might think that casting that in the light of put a rifle in her hand and train nine at her face is some kind of military construct. No, Donald, you're not really that smart. We understand that's the context of a firing squad, and no matter how you try to spin that one, that's just disgusting. That's just disgusting. Torito, we did a show last talking about my SiriusXM show. Yes, there was a show it was a best of because I was in London at the time. I will be live tomorrow, tomorrow on SiriusXM 1 26 from 11 to two Eastern. Hopefully that answers your question. Where am I here? (00:38:46): So Kamala had an interview on Fox. She was asked about her platform and she didn't know it. She said, go to my website and read it. Well, yeah, that one speaks for itself, and that's what I've been saying during the whole campaign is folks, politics is not about phenotype. Politics is not about skin color. Politics is about policy, policy initiatives, policy output, policy results. I'm a political scientist. Public policy is my primary area, public policy and black politics, or it was supposed to be a political economy, but that's a whole nother conversation. That's why I'm so stuck on policy. That's what I do. That's what I do. Meg, yo from Baltimore, thank you for joining us. Get me a crab cake if you wouldn't mind. How do I feel about Dick Cheney supporting Kamala Harris? Carl, how do I feel about Dick Cheney supporting Kamala Harris? Let's understand. Now, this is my opinion. I don't have any data to support this point, but this is my opinion, and I think this is fairly accurate. I don't think that Dick Cheney in the middle of the night opened his eyes as a light was shining upon him in a voice of power and majesty filled the room and said, Announcer (00:40:35): Dick Cheney, purveyor of evil war criminal, you must repent and endorse Vice President Harris. And then Dick Cheney pushed back the covers Wilmer Leon (00:40:53): And sat up in the bed and said, oh my God, I have been saved. No, didn't happen. I think the Republican elite have come to the realization that the Frankenstein monster that they have created, Donald Trump is now ravaging and pillaging their village, and they see Kamala Harris as the last ditched attempt to salvage their party as they've known it to exist. Look, you can go back and find the language from, what's it? The Senator from South Carolina. What's the dude's name? I'm drawing a blank on that. Anyway, who told us that Donald Trump was a racist, narcissistic, xenophobic, bigot. (00:42:10): The record is replete with the examples of Ted Cruz. Lindsey Graham, what's her name from South Carolina, Nikki Haley, all of these Republicans, traditional members of the traditional Republican elite telling us that Donald Trump is everything but a child of God. They created this monster. You can go back to the Tea Party and one of the founders, Tom Tan credo. Remember Tom Tancredo back in 2020 or 2016 talking about we want our country back. Tom, who had your country? Tom Tancredo. I don't have your country. I don't know anybody that does Remember that. I also believe that Sarah Palin being on the ticket with what's his name from Arizona, was the precursor to Donald Trump and Carl, this is a very long way. I'm getting to your question because she made you comfortable with stupidity. She made you comfortable with ignorance. (00:43:48): She made you comfortable, and the you is a generic general. You as the country, she made the country comfortable with an ignorant person being a heartbeat away from being the leader of the free world. She tilled the soil, she laid the groundwork for Donald Trump, and then he came in and just bogarted the whole damn game. So Carl, getting back to your point, your question. So again, Dick Cheney didn't find Jesus. What Dick Cheney realized is looking at the policies of the Biden Harris administration, particularly foreign policy, particularly militarism, because remember where he came from. Lemme see if I got the book. Remember where he came? I got over here somewhere. Oh, wait a minute. Here it is. (00:44:58): Sorry. The shadow world inside the global Arms trade. See if I can quickly, after Cheney left the defense department in 1992, his appointment as CEO of Halliburton in 1995 led us to a remarkable improvement in the company's fortunes, especially with regard to federal contracts. In the five years prior to his arrival, Halliburton received the poultry 100 million, paltry 100 million in government credit guarantees under Cheney. Halliburton received 15 times that amount, 1.5 billion. Cheney was paid well for her services for 48 months. He received $45 million from Halliburton, the shadow world inside the global arms trade, Andrew Feinstein. Okay, so Dick Cheney, again, it wasn't divine intervention. The hand of God didn't touch Cheney on his shoulder. No, he realized backing her, he, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney and all those other Republicans that are now on the Harris bandwagon, they're not on that bandwagon because they're coming closer to her. They're on the bandwagon because she has come closer to them. That's my opinion. Hopefully, Carl, that answers your question. Now is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on who your candidate is, but I think that's the reality because when you look at Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris on stage, that's not a good vibe. I don't think I've ever seen them embrace. They may have. (00:47:06): I haven't seen it. It there's a distance between them because I don't think personally they really like each other beyond politics. Again, that's my opinion. I could be as wrong as the day is long. Yes, Ramel sense. They are all war mongers and war criminals based upon the international criminal court standards. They are all, not only are they war mongers, they are also war criminals. Carl, please listen tomorrow. I think I got a hell of a show for y'all tomorrow, but anyway. Oh, okay. Who do I think will win the election and why? You know what, Fred? Hold that. I'm going to get to that in a minute. I, because I have an answer for you. So lemme go back to Trump's what I call the racist hate fest. 2024 in Madison Square Garden. This was a six hour eugenic, racist hate-filled rant, and there was one in particular, which I'm sure most of you now are familiar with this. (00:48:29): So-called comedian, I'm not even going to mention this guy's name called Puerto Rico, a floating island of garbage. He said there's a lot going on. I don't know if you know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico. Now, there is actually a floating island of garbage in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii. Why not talk about that? Why not talk about the impact that there is truly a floating island of garbage off the Pacific, not the Atlantic coast, and it's full of plastics that are decimating the ecology. Fish are now being found to have microparticles of plastics in them. Sea turtles are getting caught up in all kinds. You could have talked about that in terms of a floating island of garbage, but no, you have to take that ecological disaster called a floating island of garbage off the Pacific Coast, and you have to turn that into this racist eugenic diatribe targeted at Puerto Ricans. Well, lemme tell you this, homie, Pennsylvania is a swing state. (00:50:03): Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes in the electoral college. Trump won the state in 2016 by a narrow margin of 0.72%. Biden was able to reclaim the state in 2020, winning it by a similarly narrow 1.17% margin or about 80,500 votes. See folks, I use data. When I take a position, when I tell you something, if it's my opinion, I'm going to tell you very clearly I don't have the data for it. Here's my opinion. When I have the data, I'm going to give you the data. So Biden was able to reclaim Pennsylvania and he won it with a 1.17% margin or about 80,500 votes. (00:51:12): Pennsylvania's Latino eligible voter population has more than doubled since 2000 from 206,000 to 620,000 in 2023. Now, Biden won with a margin of 80,500 votes in 2020. Now in 2016, there are 620,000 Latinos, and this is according to Census Bureau figures, and more than half of those voters, about 310,000 are eligible voters who are Puerto Rican, and they are pissed. They are pissed to the highest of Tivity. They are pissed. That's not good, Mr. So-called funny man, racist, funny man. That's not good. You didn't do your boy, you didn't do Trump any favors by going down that alleyway as Richard Pryor would say, because it may not be the voice of God. (00:52:34): Here's what's overlooked by a number of people. Too many of us believe that once you've cast your vote or once you've cast your ballot that your job is done. But folks, casting your ballot is just the beginning of the process. Once you've cast your ballot, your job isn't done. It's only just begun. You have to stay engaged. You have to hold those you voted for or didn't vote for accountable. You have to stay engaged. You can't abdicate your duty as a citizen and sit this one out and if you vote, you have to stay engaged. You've got to, folks, there are many, getting back to the Puerto Rican issue. There are many who will tell you, Dr. Anthony Montero, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant brother out of Philly, who will tell you that the disenchanted African-American, particularly black male community in Philly, that many of them are going to sit this out, and as a result of that, it's going to cost vice president heresy election. (00:53:50): I wonder if those disenchanted African-American males and females who are going to sit this out will now be offset by these angry Latinos, specifically Puerto Ricans. Again, this so-called Mr. Funny Man, I don't think at the end of the day this is going to prove to be, prove to be too funny. Harrison Wall said, claim that they're charting a new way forward to a future where everyone has the opportunity to get by, not just get by, but get ahead. I'm sorry. Her articulation of the opportunity economy is so that you don't just get by, you get ahead. They're proposing, for example, $25,000 as a down payment assistance for first time home buyers, small business entrepreneur assistance, tax cuts for the middle and working class. That's all great, that's all great and it's damn sure need it. (00:55:05): My question is, how's it going to be paid for? Again, I'm a policy guy. How's it going to be paid for? Has anyone publicly asked that question? How much is it going to cost? What's it going to do to the budget? What's it going to do to the deficit and how are you going to pay for it? Because with billions of dollars going to Ukraine, 8 billion about 10 days ago, 8.7 billion, about 10 days ago, going to Israel, 600 million going to Taiwan, that's 17 billion in one day last week or 10 days ago to the settler, 8.7, going to the settler colonial Zionist, settler colonial state called Israel, trying to pick a war with China. Where's this money going to come from? She's made the promise, the campaign promise. My question is, if she wins, will you hold her accountable to deliver on that promise to those who are so offended by the genocide being committed against the Palestinians and rightfully so, many of those of you believe that the answer to that atrocity is a protest vote for Trump. This gets back to the third party question. I believe my opinion that by failing to develop, understand and articulate our permanent interests and agendas, we are falling victim to the problem of binary politics. The simplest either or scenario. You're angry with Biden Harris, the Biden Harris administration for backing funding, participating in the genocide and Gaza. (00:57:15): So you believe that the answer to that is a vote for Trump to our Muslim brothers and Arab brothers and sisters who are rightfully appalled by these genocidal policies, I don't think your viable option is a protest vote for Trump, because remember his son-in-law, Jared Kushner is articulating plans to turn Gaza into beachfront Mediterranean condos, and Jared Kushner is a key advisor to his father-in-law. So if by chance you vote for Trump thinking, you're voting for Trump as a protest against the Biden Harris administration, I personally believe you're making a big mistake because yes, this is a two party system, but there's also third party candidates out there as well. (00:58:25): You've got Dr. Cornell West and Dr. Molina Abdullah. You've got Dr. Jill Stein and Dr. Butch Ware. Two examples from the Green Party. So if you're going to make a protest vote, then in my opinion, I believe in you cast a protest vote. Think about third party the real signal, in my opinion. If you want to really send a message, let the duopoly see a third party campaign. Get 20% of the vote, let a third party get enough to qualify for public campaign funding. Let a third party get a significant enough vote to qualify to be on the debate stage. Can you imagine Dr. West on stage debating Donald Trump? Can you imagine Dr. West on stage debating Vice President Harris? Can you imagine Dr. Butch Ware on the stage debating JD Vance, folks, I'm talking peace shooter at a gunfight. That's what you would be witnessing. And I'm not saying that Dr. West on stage against Kamala Harris. In fact, I'm wrong to put it in that kind of conflict scenario because it's all about the best interest of the American people. It's not about protecting one person's image against and using another person to tarnish that image. That's not what this is about. (01:00:10): Thank you, Sherry, for coming back and agreeing with me. This is about you. This is about America. This is about our country. This is about social security. In fact, to that point, let give y'all, let me give you a very simple example of this. We keep hearing that social security is in jeopardy, right? You've got George W that wanted to privatize social security, which we know was just grant theft auto. Here's the solution, and you can do the math yourself. This one is so simple, a 10-year-old can figure it out right now, the social security contribution that comes out of your paycheck every month if you have a paycheck gets capped at, I think it's either 140 or $144,000. Every dollar you make after 140 or $144,000 is exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. (01:01:49): You want to salvage social security, which by the way isn't really in jeopardy, but if you want to salvage social security, raise the ceiling on the Social security payroll tax, raise it to, I don't know, pick a number, raise it to $500,000 of salary, raise it to a million dollars of salary, raise it to 1.5 million of salary. If you are making $500,000 in salary, you can afford an additional 10%, 15%, or 10% on that. Whatever the payroll tax is, I don't have it in front of me. And what you would be able to do by doing that, you would ensure the sustainability. That's not the word I was looking for, but anyway, sustainability of social security, you ready for this? Lower the retirement age, you could lower the retirement age and don't send your money yet because there's a bamboo steamer that comes with this deal. You could expand benefits, raise benefits. (01:03:19): They right now are talking about what? Raising the retirement age to like 72 and what's the life expectancy of the average American about 67 years. So now you got to work five years beyond your death. Does that make sense? No, not at all. That's a very simple fix, folks. The math is simple. Raise the social security ceiling from 140 or $144,000 to a million if you make a million dollars in salary. We're not talking about return on investments, we're not talking about all those other revenue generating elements in your stock, in your portfolio, just salary. You could salvage social security, you could lower their retirement age, you could increase benefits. Why isn't Kamala Harris talking about that? Well, because as son Ray says, if we hold her accountable, they will send her the, oh, that's not one. (01:05:03): Oh, I'm sorry. It was JJ Mars who says the American oligarchs will never allow it. Well, JJ Mars, that's why I'm saying it's not about what the oligarchs will allow. It's about what you as American people and voters and constituents will demand so that a candidate cannot come forward and win unless they commit to doing that. And then you have to ensure that the members of Congress understand if that doesn't happen, they no longer have jobs. See, I'm not going to concede this to the American oligarchs. If I were doing that, then I'm wasting my time talk. I've wasted an hour and six minutes of my day talking to you. I could be playing golf. I could be a shaan right now on number seven, teeing off on number seven. It's beautiful outside, right? Shit, it's 80 degrees outside. (01:06:12): So jj, if I'm going to concede that to the oligarchs, then why have I been sitting here doing this? I'm about to fight, man. JI don't know if you're male or female, so please forgive me. I'm about to fight. I'm about to struggle. I'm about kicking ass and taking names. I'm not throwing the towel in because I'm going to succeed or die trying. The Powell memo, Sherry, what was the Powell memo and the chamber? Okay, Louis Powell, former Supreme Court Justice before Lewis Powell was nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court, Lewis Powell was the chairman or president, I don't remember the title of the National Chamber of Commerce. He was out of Richmond, Virginia. And Powell wrote what has now become known as the Powell Memo in, I want to say in the mid seventies. And the crux of the Powell memo was corporate America. Remember, he was the chairman or the president of the National Chamber of Commerce. (01:07:43): It was his position that corporate America had to get more involved in American politics, that corporate America had to invest more money into candidates, had to invest more money into parties, had to invest more money into the machinery. Sherry, thank you, 1972, had to invest more money into the machinery of the American political process in order to ensure that their corporate interests prevailed in the legislative system. And so that's how you now wind up with, oh, shoot, I'm drawing a blank on the Supreme Court case that now comes out and says that corporations are people too, and that corporations have interest and voices that should be allowed, and you can now contribute ungodly amounts of money into the American political system. Corporations can donate all this money to candidates. Thank you. Thank you, Zach. The Citizens United Case. Thank you. That's how you wind up with the Citizens United case. (01:09:20): And Sherry, I'm glad you No, I'm not talking about Elon Musk, jj. I'm talking about talking Powell. But look at how long it took. It took from 72, I think this is right to 2010 for the Citizens United case to be passed however many years that is. See, they play it for the long game. Powell writes this memo in 72, gets a Supreme Court case validating that position in 2010. Look at how long it took. They play it for the long game. We play it. I wouldn't even say for the short game. We play it. We play it an inning. We're happy with an inning at a time. They're looking at series. (01:10:23): So hopefully, Sherry, does that answer your question about the Powell memo and what has also become, well, some call it the Powell Doctrine. Others associate the Powell Doctrine with General Colin Powell and the You break it, you own it thing. But anyway, do I think Trump and Harris are both fascists? Yes. Yes. Yes. And how so? Because look at the industrialists that are actually controlling the policies, and what does Kamala Harris say? We are going to have the most, she didn't use the word dominant. I can't remember, Sherry. Oh, yes, sir. I have a PhD. Well, you know what, Sherry, to that point, PhD, my son says, it means two things piled higher and deeper, and it also means, please help dad. Anyway. (01:11:36): Now, what was I talking about? Oh, fascism. It's the corporate interests controlling policy and using the police force slash military in order to support it domestically and internationally. And so I believe that Trump is just a more vocal fascist than Kamala Harris, but I believe that she's just as fascist as the rest of 'em, as Barack Obama was, as well as was George. I mean, I don't see how you get to the exalted position of president without being a fascist, because that's one of the basis of American foreign policy is fascism. You can put a, okay, to those of you that are now up in arms, Wilmer, how can you call Kamala Harris a fascist? She's a kinder, gentler, fascist. Remember in a more attractive fascist. Remember George HW Bush and his kinder, gentler conservatism. Remember that? Well, we are now dealing with a kinder, gentler fascism. So let me look to wrap this up for now. (01:13:24): Anybody but Trump, I believe that whole mantra ignores the fact as a US president that he's a functionary. A US president is a functionary of the United States government. An American president is a functionary of the interests of the elite. Look at Trump's position on Venezuela. It was the same as the Biden administration. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have had policies that included US interference and other Central American and South American countries. Trump's position on tax cuts and cuts to social programs builds upon tax policy and social policy cuts from previous administrations. Remember Bill Clinton and ending welfare as we know it. (01:14:18): And remember, Obama's failed grand bargain. Again, folks, I'm not talking with you now saying that any candidate is the right choice or the wrong choice. I'm merely asking you, what do we get for our loyalty? What do you get for your vote? Do you get more hope without substantive and systemic change? What do you get by settling for the status quo through the willful ignorance of supporting a candidate that has a proven track record on issues that aren't in the best interest of the American people that aren't in the best interest of the African-American community? We, as Baldwin said, are merely making peace with mediocrity without substantive systemic change. Are we believing that we are really what the white world calls a nigger? (01:15:34): This should never become our reality. So with that, let me say to all of you all that have invested the last hour and 15 minutes of your morning with me, with us, my phenomenal, phenomenal producer, melody Graves. I would not be able to do any of this without her. Let me see. S one. All we can hope for is a president that will give us the softest landing for this dying empire. Create your own strategy to save you and your loved ones as many others as you are able to do. You're absolutely right. Oh, oh, oh, oh, right. Who do I think is going to win the election? Thank you for bringing me back to that. This is what I see you ready. (01:16:34): I believe that either at the end of Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, the 47th president of the United States is going to be Kamala Harris. I believe it's going, and I've consulted with a former classmate of mine, Dr. Bari Jahi, who's a brilliant, brilliant brother, and I agree. The numbers will be around 2 93 Harris, 2 45 Trump. Remember, you need two 70 to win. I don't even think Trump's going to win the popular vote. He got 75 million votes against Biden. I don't think he'll get 75 million this time. It could go to three 19 Harris, because I think that she's going to win North Carolina and I believe that she's going to win Arizona so she could go as high as three 19 or three 20. This hate fest, racist diatribe 2024 that he held in New York, I think did him incredible damage, and what he said Thursday yesterday about Liz Cheney, I think it is going to do him incredible damage. Also, I don't believe that the polling numbers that we're seeing, excuse me, I don't believe that the polling numbers are anywhere near accurate. I think you're, if you look at the polls, I think you're being sold a pig and a poke. (01:18:41): Remember, I forget the year in the first Obama campaign, the polling and all of the analysts and everybody, la, and everybody was telling us that Mitt Romney was going to defeat Barack Obama and that Romney was going to win by seven to nine points. Didn't happen even election night. They were still talking about Romney seven to nine point victory didn't happen. Their polling is skewed. Some of it is intentional, some of it is inherent in the systemic nature of it. Let me go through these real quickly. Please tell you who, doctor, please tell me this live will be uploaded. It will be so you can watch it again, Jackie. Thank you. Sandra believes Kamala will win as well. Trump wins with 300. Okay, Zach, we'll see. You say Trump wins with 300 plus, it might happen. Let's see, jj, whoever wins will not be able to complete their four year term. I can't speak to that. I can't predict the future. My crystal ball right now, unfortunately, is in the shop. (01:20:08): Sherry, I will not be voting for Harris or Trump. Okay? There are viable third parties out there, and when you think third party, you got to think long game, which I think if you really want to send a message, if you really want to have a vote protest, let the elite see a significant increase in support for third parties, and I think that'll do this. Democracy and incredible service, big C. Hey, you want to thank me for my brilliant commentary? Oh, brilliant. You're too kind. I think you just need to get out more. You believe Harris will win. Okay, so with all that and a bag of chips, here's what I want to do. I got to thank you all so much for listening, for participating in the Connecting the Dots podcast, this live podcast, we are going live, and I hope to start it next week, but there'll be more posted on that one. (01:21:07): Thank you again for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wier Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes, hopefully every day Monday through Friday. Please follow and subscribe. Leave a review. Folks, we're going live that costs and it costs big. I need help. I need your help. Leave a review. Share the show. Follow me. Follow us. Again, without the wonderful, brilliant Melody Graves, I would just be sitting here talking to myself. You can follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge, because talk without analysis is just chatter. I don't chatter here. We don't chatter here on Connecting the dots. Tomorrow. Saturday, my show Inside The Issues with Wilmer Leon on SiriusXM 1 26, urban View, 11 to two. Got a great lineup for y'all tomorrow. Check it out. You'll be really interested and surprised, and folks, I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I am Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great, great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:22:28): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.    

So Biden didn't say goodbye, but he did explain that duty surpassed ambition in his decision to not seek re-election. Jonah Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Dispatch, drops by to discuss some of the Biden theses. We will also diagnose where Kamala Harris now stands, and where she needs to move to win the favor of the median voter, a person too often forgotten as we chase the label of being "brat."    Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara  Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com  To advertise on the show: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist  Subscribe to our ad-free and/or PescaPlus versions of The Gist: https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/  Follow Mike's Substack: Pesca Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Biden has bowed out of the 2024 Presidential Race…He’s Endorsed Kamala Harris…Oh, and Kimberly Cheatle of the Secret Service is being Investigated! Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America) https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

So Biden has bowed out of the 2024 Presidential Race…He’s Endorsed Kamala Harris…Oh, and Kimberly Cheatle of the Secret Service is being Investigated! Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America) https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

So Biden has bowed out of the 2024 Presidential Race…He’s Endorsed Kamala Harris…Oh, and Kimberly Cheatle of the Secret Service is being Investigated! Sign up for The FLF Conference 2024 (Prodigal America) https://flfnetwork.com/prodigal-america/

Biden is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. He made that clear at Thursday night's debate. What kills me about the majority of pundit reaction is that Joe Biden is perfectly capable of operating as president in the United States, Biden is just not capable of campaigning for president of the United States. So Biden apparently has a hard time getting going before 10AM, and he has a hard time operating after 4PM. So he has about 6 hours a day. And this is acceptable for the president of the United States? If we get into a nuclear crisis, and only the president of the United States can make the call whether or not we launched nuclear weapons, that can't be fobbed off onto his staff. So you hear from the Biden team that he has a highly competent staff and when you're are voting for Joe Biden, you're also voting for his staff. Who's been making the argument of the past five years that democracy is on the ballot, and the vote for Biden is for democracy. The people didn't vote for Joe Biden's staff. And he clearly has not been up to the office the president in the United States. He was saved from campaigning in 2020 by Covid. He was obviously a frail old man who had that vacant checked out stare back in 2018. And now the cognitive declines has accelerated over the past few months. And then here's another element of the learned helpless that seems to dominate much of American political discourse among elites right now and that is we must follow the rules. Joe Biden is going to become the Democratic nominee for president because the laws say that because he won the delegates. And if he's determined to run as Democratic nominee for president? No one can stop him. So this is the legal perspective. So what's more powerful. Is it the situation? Or is it the law that will decide this. I say it is the situation. It is more important than precedent. Joe Biden is a suicidal choice. https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=156034 https://odysee.com/@LukeFordLive, https://rumble.com/lukeford, https://dlive.tv/lukefordlivestreams Superchat: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford, Best videos: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143746 Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Book an online Alexander Technique lesson with Luke: https://alexander90210.com Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

So Biden challenged Trump to a debate, and these Chumps think he'll regret it. Tune in every weekday at 5:00 every evening to hear the best chumps submitted by loyal listeners like you. Send us your best one-liners between noon and 4 at 844-500-4242. Visit the Howie Carr Radio Network website to access columns, podcasts, and other exclusive content.

Show Notes and Transcript UNRWA is a term that I had not heard 6 months ago. Their work, methods and purpose has intrigued me ever since.  Karys Rhea understands this issue at its core and joins Hearts of Oak to give the other side of the story.  The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee, known as UNRWA, was set up in 1948, just 3 years after the UN started.  Karys starts by setting out the story of how and why UNRWA started.  A fascinating part of this story is how refugee status of 'Palestinians' is defined. It seems as though this is used to create a Palestinian refugee myth that exists out of hatred for Israel.  Which country in the world has dozens of refugee camps in their own country? How much money is used and is the UNRWA corrupt or transparent?  Karys exposes this group like you have never heard before. Karys Rhea is a producer of "American Thought Leaders" and "Fallout" at The Epoch Times and a fellow with The Jewish Leadership Project. She also works with the Middle East Forum and Baste Records. She has appeared on Newsmax, OANN, Real America's Voice, NTD News, and a variety of podcasts, and her articles can be found in Commentary, NY Daily News, Newsweek, The Federalist, Washington Examiner, and more. She has a BA from NYU in broadcast journalism and an MA in counterterrorism and homeland security from Reichman University in Israel. A former life found her touring the world as a drummer and songwriter before becoming disillusioned with the political and cultural arrogance of the music industry. She continues to release music in her spare time, in addition to publishing absurdist flash fiction.  Connect with Rhea... X                         x.com/RheaKarys?s=20 Interview recorded  23.3.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... WEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA  heartsofoak.org/connect/ SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/ TRANSCRIPT (Hearts of Oak) It's wonderful to have someone who I met when I was over stateside last time, and that's Karys Rhea. Karys, thank you so much for your time today. (Karys Rhea) Thank you so much for having me, Peter. Not at all. It was great to meet you there at Epoch Times whenever I came there with Dr. Malone. And of course, you're there, a producer of American Thought Leaders and Fallout at the Epoch Times, you're a fellow of the Jewish Leadership Project, and people have probably seen you, especially your US audience on Newsmax or OAN or Real America Voice and many other of those networks. And I know your background, I think your BA is in journalism and then you've got a master's in counterterrorism and security, which is not just fascinating itself, but there are wider things to discuss. And you've got a strange background, I think, which you said to me was the music industry. The music industry to doing media and politics that's quite a step. Yeah well I mean I have competing interests on the one hand I grew up in the Bay Area and it's very progressive and artistic if you will lots of subcultures so I was always very much into the arts and performance and writing music. And then I spent 18 years in Brooklyn, which has New York City and much of that in Brooklyn, which has an incredible independent music scene. So after college, I made the decision to put a more lucrative and a safer career on hold and pursue music. And that's what I did for about seven years. And then I sort of grew up and got sick of hustling. And like I said, I had other interests and I started to slowly make my way into the non-profit world, doing Israel advocacy and, and, monitoring, Islamic terrorism and Islamism. And I went to grad school and then I got tired of doing that. And I switched into, broadcast journalism because as you mentioned, that is where I had originally received a degree in. And so that seemed like an appropriate career shift. Well it certainly is and obviously people can find you there on Epoch Times and also that is your handle on the screen for people to follow you on twitter and all the links are in the description but Karys maybe we can start with this term and I know you've spoken about it quite a bit I've seen a number of interviews you've done and that is this little phrase, which is an acronym, but I thought it was a phrase, UNRWA. And I heard this phrase from two of my US friends. And sometimes you let something go past thinking it's going to come up in the conversation, it's going to work out what it is they're talking about. I was never sure. So I had to ask, UNRWA, what is it? Do you want to just let us know what that stands for? It's obviously a United Nation agency, what it stands for, and then why this is an organization which you personally have been interested in it following? Sure. So UNRWA stands for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Many people do not know about it and did not know about it until October 7th, but there are actually many people throughout the world that have been raising the alarm bells on how corrupt and ineffective this UN agency is. It is one of the oldest and the costliest and largest agencies of the United Nations. It started in 1949 in order to help deal with the Arab Palestinian population that had been displaced as a result of the War of Independence, Israel's 1948 war when it was re-established after World War II. And it produced about 400 to 750,000 Arab Palestinian refugees. There's debate about that. And this UN agency was set up to to handle these refugees. One year later, another UN agency was set up called the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UNHCR. That agency deals with all of the refugees in the entire world. Today, it serves about 20 million refugees in 130 countries. And its mandate, as it should be, is to resettle these refugees that it's dealing with, right? You never want to keep refugees in limbo, in a stateless environment where you're in a camp and you rely on social services and healthcare and education, right? If you have been displaced from a conflict, the goal is not to keep you in a camp. The goal should always be to repatriate you, get you situated, get you settled in a new country where you can eventually be given citizenship and you're in that country and your children can be given citizenship. Right? You're repatriated. Now, UNRWA has a completely different mandate. And this is why, this is precisely why the Palestinian refugee population is still an issue today. If not for UNRWA, there would likely be no Palestinian refugees. Because think about it. Let's go back in time. When the War of Independence happened in 1948. That was after World War II. And after World War II, you had tens of millions of refugees created, right? I think 40 million refugees. I mean, there were millions of ethnic Germans, right, that were displaced from Eastern European countries. And you also had around that time the partition of Pakistan and India, right? And there was, I think, millions of refugees created from that, Muslim and Hindu refugees. How many of those refugees still exist today? Zero. There's no ethnic German refugees, no Pakistani refugees created from that conflict, right? Why? Because UNHCR has resettled them. And so that number of refugees has decreased. It has gone down and eventually has gotten to zero. The Palestinian refugees are the only group in the world whose population has increased from, as we said, 400 to 750,000 originally in that war, ballooned to what UNRWA says is 5.9 million refugees. Now, if UNRWA only claims to serve refugees that were displaced in this 1948 war, as it says, how has this number ballooned? People don't think about that. People accept, the media, academics, our governments, everybody just accepts this number that UNRWA touts. There is 5.9 million Palestinian refugees and nobody thinks to themselves, well, how is that possible? You know, and the reason is, is because UNRWA uses a different definition for what constitutes a refugee and their mandate, unlike the UNHCR, is not to resettle refugees. Not one Palestinian refugee that UNRWA claims to serve has been resettled into a host country. Not only that, as I just mentioned, the definition of what constitutes a refugee is different, right? So, you know, I could even read you. I have the actual definitions right here if you'd like me to, but if not, I can just summarize. Here, let me just read it to you. So we have, oh, wait, actually, I don't think I have it pulled up here. Never mind. It doesn't really matter. The point is, is that the UNHCR, the refugee status that they afford to those displaced from conflicts, it directly relates to those people, those individual people that were displaced. That's it. It does not carry on to their offspring, right? And that refugee status ends once they are resettled and especially once they are given citizenship in a new country, right? But refugee status for UNRWA extends to offspring of refugees regardless of whether they have been resettled or not, okay? And regardless of if they've gotten citizenship in another country, they're still considered refugees. So for example, if you were displaced in the 1948 war, you ended up in Jordan, and now you're given citizenship as about 1 million refugees, Palestinians in Jordan have been. All of those Palestinians are still considered refugees according to UNRWA, even though they are now Jordanian citizens. Not only that, but their children are now Jordanian citizens. And their children's children, even though they were born as Jordanian citizens, they are still considered refugees. This is bonkers, right? And not only that, UNRWA actually extends this refugee status to even adopted children, right? So, and it's so weird. They extend it. It's not all offspring. It's offspring of male Palestinian refugees, not females. And then it's adopted children as well of male Palestinian refugees. It is bizarre. So it's phenomenal that you have that crazy that the UN set up an organization to deal with refugees, but only one particular group a year before they set up a general. But you're right, you set up such an organisation to deal with an issue. So there was a conflict, Israel had reclaimed the land, it was rightly due, but there was a conflict, therefore, in that region, and Israel taking on the land, retaking its borders. So I can understand it would make sense to set up an organisation to help those who may be displaced by a conflict, conflict by any conflict, but yet that needs to have an end goal. But you talked about this passing on generation to generation. It seems as though the UN and other agencies, other bodies, worldwide governments, want to have an issue there, a problem there, because that's how they continue to apply pressure on Israel. So it seems to be they want a thorn in Israel's side. Is that a fair enough assessment? Absolutely. UNRWA was created to perpetuate the refugee, well, not created, but very soon after it was created. Because actually, I think a year after it was created, the director general or somebody high up in UNRWA recommended resettling about 250,000 refugees. The Arab countries were up in arms about this. Absolutely not, right? Not only that, we're not going to take any of these people in, right? These Arab countries that presumably were so, you know, sympathetic to the Palestinian plight and were so outspoken about, you know, how much these Palestinians needed to be cared for and how, you know, big bad Israel had treated them, right? And yet, how many Palestinian refugees have these Arab countries taken in? Only Jordan. Jordan is the only Arab nation that has taken in any Palestinian refugees and given them citizenship. They are still heavily discriminated against in Lebanon and Syria. You never hear about that. You only hear about Palestinian Arabs in the context of what Israel is doing to them. You never hear about how they're treated in Lebanon, where they are banned from dozens of professions, right. Uh, and kept in horrible, uh, conditions. So yeah, the UNRWA is, has basically just been hijacked. They are no longer, they are not a humanitarian, uh, agency as Enoch Wilf, who wrote a book called the war of return, I believe. And they, she heavily goes into the origins of, of UNRWA. She says that UNRWA is a war agency. It is not a humanitarian agency and it is meant to keep the Palestinian Arabs as as pawns in this fight against Israel. Tell us, you talked about corruption, I've heard that with the two friends i've spoken to stateside and they also repeat what you said that this is utterly corrupt organization within the UN and you think wow a corrupt organization is a corrupt organization within the corrupt organization of the UN. That's saying a lot. But what is specifically, because again, from the outside looking in, its mandate can seem a very positive one to actually help a group. So tell me why it's, I mean, the finance that goes through, how is that not used correctly? Is it because they have close relationship with Hamas? Is it because the money goes elsewhere? I mean, tell us a little bit about that side. Right, so even apart from Israel, even apart from UNRWA's connections to Jihadist groups, Islamic terrorist groups, even apart from the hate education, the anti-Semitic and jihadist material that they promote in their schools, even apart from their facilities being used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to store weapons and launch rockets, apart from all of that, they have actually been engaged in scandal after scandal relating to nepotism, sex for money. The suppression of whistle-blowers, right? There was a huge scandal, I think, in 2019 where the director general was involved in this horrific sex for money scandal. And he ended up being fired along with, I think, half a dozen others. And if you look at what was going on and how the funds were misused for private jets and lavish business trips, it was just horrific. So that's apart from the, you know, irredeemable nature as an anti-Semitic and violent group, right? So even just aside from all of that, this group has many problems when it comes to corruption. But in terms of how its funds are used with relation to, you know, terrorism and perpetuating this war against Israel, there's many different components of this. So, for example, there's the curriculum component, right? UNRWA schools serve half a million Palestinian Arabs throughout Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. I think they serve about 300,000 just in Gaza and the West Bank. And they have hundreds of schools. And they use the Palestinian authorities curriculum since 2017. And year after year after year, the textbooks are shown to be absolutely, horrifically rife with material promoting martyrdom, suicide bombing, other forms of violence, not just against Israelis, but against Jews anywhere, glorification of Hitler, teaching children in the context of math and science that there is no better position to aspire to than to be a martyr and to die in service of Allah. There is no better goal than to be fighting against Jews everywhere and to take up arms against Jews. I mean, the examples of this have just been documented year after year after year by organizations like UN Watch and Impact SE, they monitor these textbooks, and you'll see just the horrific examples. Not only that, UNRWA's teachers, their social media accounts have been investigated. And these teachers, hundreds of them have been found to glorify Hamas, to glorify the October 7th massacres. They've been found to just be outspoken about slaughtering Jews wherever you see them, slaughtering Zionists, slaughtering Israelis. They use these terms Jews, Zionists, Israelis interchangeably in Arabic, right? Like you're not going to, you know, when I say they're talking about slaughtering Jews... I'm not using Jews interchangeably with Israelis or Zionists. They are. They will use the word Yahud. They will use the word Jew, right? And in other times, they will use the word Israeli. In other times, they will use the word Zionist. So they're not just talking about Israelis here, right? Even if they are, that would be horrific. You don't want to be promoting violence against anybody. But these educational standards are in direct violation of UNESCO's provisions, which demand that all UN educational materials promote peace-making and tolerance. And, you know, you're not allowed to be othering any sort of group, any sort of religious or national or minority group. And yet UNRWA does nothing to reform their curriculum. As far as I know, not one teacher has been fired. There was a few, there was about six that were placed on administrative leave after a big report came out a few years ago. That's the most that I have heard, even though year after year after UN watch and it takes their reports to the UN, takes it to, you know, to Gutierrez and to, Philippe Lazzarini, the director of UNRWA and says, here, this is what we found. You need to to do something about this, nothing gets done. So that's just one element. That's just the education. Then we could go into, you know, their… So can I pick up? So how, I mean, people will be surprised to think the UN are actually running schools in any country. It's one thing to actually give money or help the program, but I didn't know it was a United Nations rule to actually run whole education establishments in other countries. Yeah. So UNRWA, well, because UNRWA's mandate, again, it's not to resettle refugees, it's to provide relief for refugees. So UNRWA, especially in a place like Gaza, has become the de facto government of Gaza. They provide education, they provide healthcare, they provide loans, they provide social services, right? And there was a quote that came out after October 7th from a Hamas leader who said. It's the U.N.'s job to deal with the refugees, the millions of refugees. It's our job to build the tunnels. So essentially what UNRWA does is it allows Hamas and other terrorist groups to not take on the responsibility of governing their own population and building a state. UNRWA allows Palestinian leadership, even the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to just focus on their war against Israel and not actually do the things that they would need to do to create a viable, functioning Palestinian state. That then they could actually have a chance of, you know, they could then actually have a chance of that state being independent and universally recognized. Tell us, there's one thing which came out, maybe the first time people did come across this term was earlier this year, or could be the end of last year, which was when a number of countries said they would cut funding or stop funding for UNRWA. Tell us about that because that seemed to be a possible wake-up call, although I think most countries have now rolled back and said, no, they'll keep giving. But there was, well, more than three months ago or whatever, a number of countries did say they had concerns. Right. It's tough to, it's hard to even really follow what's going on because, you know, one country will say we're pausing funds, right? And then a week later, you'll find out that they just released, you know, tens of millions to UNRWA and they'll say, oh, well, that was just leftover from like a previous contract or something. And now going forward, we're not, and then, and every few years, the European Union will pause funds because of a report that comes out discussing exactly the things we've been talking about here. And then they'll resume funding. You know, I mean, Trump completely pulled out funding of, he stopped all funding of UNRWA. We were giving, the US was giving about 300 million a year to UNRWA, which is about two thirds of its budget. They have have over a billion dollars annually from all of the countries. And just as an aside, the Gulf countries make up only about 7% of that budget. So the burden falls on the US and the EU and Germany and the UK. The UK gives about 40 million a year. And so we are funding UNRWA. And Trump pulled out this funding. He withdrew all of it in 2018 because he said it was the organization was irredeemably flawed. And unless they completely reformed, there was no reason to be giving money to an entity that was perpetuating a conflict rather than helping to solve it. Biden reversed that. Biden gets an office, you know, in 2021, he resumes funding. I don't think it's, I don't think it's back to 300 million a year. I think it's back to 150 million a year. You know, and then recently, like you said, the Biden administration and some other countries said, we're going to pause funding. You know, it might be paused for a few months here or there, but unless donor countries are prepared to permanently end funding, then I don't see any of these. I see these more as kind of virtue signalling moves rather than any profound interest in helping solve this problem. And I think I read that there were something like 60 refugee camps, I guess, run by UNRWA, supported by UNRWA. Obviously, you've got Lebanon, then Syria, then down to Jordan. And then half of them are, oh, they're in the West Bank and in Gaza. So half of the refugee camps are in areas where they are free to live. How do you have a refugee camp in your own country? I'm confused. Please explain that to me. I'm so glad you brought that up. There's no way to explain this. I mean, this is absolutely absurd. And it's such a tragedy that nobody has this thought that you just had, that people don't recognize, that people don't think to themselves, wait a second, why are there any refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank? These are areas that would be part of a future Palestinian state. These areas are Palestine, right? And the West Bank areas, Area A and parts of Area B in the West Bank have complete autonomy. I mean, Israel has no jurisdiction over Area A in the West Bank, and Israel has no jurisdiction over all of Gaza, right? Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. There's people who say it's occupied. They don't know what they're talking about. Who occupied? There's no troops there. There's no Jews there. There's no Israelis there. How can it be occupied, right? People are now saying, oh, well, they still control the borders. Well, okay, we can talk about that, but that's not occupation. That would be correctly referred to as a blockade, right? But not an occupation. So, I mean, you know, so if Gaza is completely independent, has their own government, they're not taxed by Israel, right? Why are there still Palestinians in refugee camps? This makes no sense. And again, it's because UNRWA keeps them there, stateless, in limbo, right? And as an aside, let me just say that many of these camps, quote unquote, are not really camps at all. A few of them are, okay? There are some camps that, and you see pictures of them and they're, they're not in, they're not really in great conditions. But usually when you think of refugee camps, you think of tents, squatters. Many of what UNRWA considers refugee camps are actually four or five story concrete buildings that have electricity, running water, kitchens, satellite TV, internet. Okay. And Palestinians are living in these, in these buildings and they're still considered camps, but regardless. So, so, you know. Going back to the definition of a refugee, right, the UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which deals with all the other refugees in the world, their definition clearly states that to be considered a refugee, you cannot be in the country that you supposedly were displaced from. You have to be outside of the region, right? But these millions of Palestinians that are living in the West Bank and Gaza, that is their home. It's not like they would leave if they got a Palestinian state. So they should not be considered refugees to begin with. And yet they are. Wow. And you've got, I think it was a beautiful interview clip I saw of Douglas Murray talking about, of course, the interviewer telling him how Israel is occupying Gaza and he was trying to work out what do you mean by occupation and the journalist then wanted to quickly move on but the other point was the Gaza Strip does border another country and that is Egypt. I don't see any refugee camps in Egypt, obviously the Egyptian border and Gaza is fairly closed I mean there has been a lot of Israel have welcomed many, many of individuals living in Gaza to work in Israel. And that's been back and forward. And by doing that, Israel shows itself to be a good neighbour, as long as you don't try and kill us. That's the prerequisite, which we all have. But it seems Egypt, that border doesn't seem to be very open for work. And yet no one criticizes Egypt for having that blocked border. Yep, which just goes to show the double standard when it comes to Israel. The sole Jewish state in the world is held to a different standard than any other country. Not only is the border between Egypt and Gaza closed, but since October 7th, Egypt has reinforced this border with tanks, right? Right. I mean, the block. I mean, they have been adamant about not accepting a single Palestinian from Gaza after October 7th. Now, now think about that. In any war, Israel is at war, right? There is a full fledged war happening in Gaza. In any other war the civilian population is allowed to leave. There are refugees that are produced. This war has produced virtually no refugees. Why? It's because the Biden administration is not letting people leave. Why? Because we don't want any Palestinians displaced from this war. Oh, OK. So you just want to keep them in Gaza, right, at risk of being killed or at risk of, whether it's from Hamas or from Israel, right, at risk of starvation, at risk of losing their homes, right? You just want to keep them trapped in this war-torn region? That is cruel and inhumane. Biden gives, the U.S. provides Egypt with, I want to say, is it one and a half million? It may even be more than that. Egypt is the second largest recipient after Israel of U.S. aid. Biden could so easily pressure Egypt to open the border and say, yo, you've got to let some of these Gazans in. You're not in a very good position right now, okay? Not a word from Biden, not one word. And it's because this is all about images, the images that have to be portrayed, right? It's all about pressure on Israel. Well, if Biden really cared about the Palestinians' casualties, about the growing Palestinian casualties, then you would think that the first thing that he would do is try to get the border with Egypt opened so that Palestinians could actually leave. Biden doesn't care at all about the Palestinians, neither does Egypt, neither does UNRWA, neither does any other country, not in the Middle East, not in the West. Since, I mean, 2005 was the last time Israel were in Gaza, and then they pulled out and obviously didn't do the job of finishing off Hamas and removing that external threat they face. But since 2005 to last year, 7th of October, when the atrocity happened. Was there no, you've got a better understanding because you're aware of this space, but surely that was the time for such organizations as UNRWA, for the world community. For the EU, for the US to have conversations about what actually could happen now, supposedly, what could be the narrative, the people are now free of Israeli occupation so they can get on with actually building their country. That doesn't seem to have happened and I'm wondering how, because in one way on one side I feel sorry for those, I even hesitate to call them Palestinians because I do have a massive issue with that, but we're talking to Robert Spencer about that next week, the Palestinian delusion, but that's a whole other issue but you kind of feel sorry for the people in one way but at the same time, hey you have got a government and if you don't like the government you have to overthrow it, that's what happened under communism all across eastern Europe, that supposedly was what the Arab spring was about, overthrowing government or leadership that you don't want and bringing a new one and yet those who Palestinians living in Gaza they seem to keep this government therefore kind of that does make you responsible for the the crimes the government does upon you and the crimes that the government may do on other countries and bring it on you so I've kind of come to a position where I look at the Palestinian people differently because I think, well. You've kind of brought some of the misery upon yourself, if that's not being too cold and callous. I don't mean that, but we're all responsible for what happens in our own countries. There's a lot to unpack there. I think to a certain extent, you're right. It's hard to really know how many Gazans or even Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank support Hamas. There's been a lot of polls on this. Some people say these polls are not to be trusted. If you call up a Gazan and say, do you support Hamas? Obviously they're going to say yes. But what we do know is that they do enjoy some measurable, of some measure of of popular support. There have been some protests over the years against Hamas, that Hamas has heavily cracked down on. And I salute those Palestinian Arabs. They did that with great risk, you know, but it's nothing like Iran where you know, where you see since 2009 year after year, people rising up. The mass is really rising up and protesting against their government. It's nothing like that. And even these Palestinian Arabs in Gaza who are unhappy with Hamas, I think that not a lot of people understand that just because Palestinian Arabs support Hamas, I mean, don't support Hamas, doesn't mean they like Jews. So there can be Palestinian Arabs who are very upset with Hamas because Hamas keeps them in these horrific economic conditions. Now, actually, if you look at pictures of Gaza, they're very different than what the general media narrative is. The general media narrative is that this is a region that is the most densely populated region on earth. False. That is just the whole thing is steeped in poverty and shacks everywhere. False. there is such an incredible degree of luxury alongside poverty in Gaza because Hamas has created an incredible gap between the poor and the super rich. So there are actually, there's a whole class of Gazans that really live a life of luxury. And it really goes against this narrative of Gaza being some, you know, open air prison or what have you. But I digress. In terms of Palestinian support for Hamas, it's very, very disturbing to have seen the level of complicity in October 7th among ordinary Gazans, right? We know, like you said, there was about 20,000 Gazans that came to work in southern Israel virtually every single day, before October 7th, so much for it being a prison and blockaded, right? You have 20,000 people leaving, coming to work every day in Israel. And they were working in these kibbutzim. And these kibbutzim that were on October 7th were largely, the residents were largely left-wing peaceniks, right? They really reached out. They sent an olive branch over to Gaza. They wanted Gazans to come in and work. They thought that, you know, getting, because they would get paid a lot more in Israel, and then they'd be able to have more economic success in Gaza that would help the region grow and flourish. Well, what we have found after October 7th is that many of these workers provided, they were complicit. They provided maps to Hamas of where to attack. Not only that, we saw troves of Palestinian civilians. Barefoot and on horseback come through, break through the border on October 7th and actually carry out some of these attacks themselves, whether it was murder, whether it was taking them hostage, whether it was just coming and looting. So these Israeli residents of these kibbutzim, after October 7th, a lot of them, you've heard them discuss how they have completely changed their views. They thought that it was really just Hamas is the government and the people are different from their government, much like in Iran, where the regime is not supported by the masses and enjoys minority support among the population. And that's what people thought about Gaza. And now that has just largely been questioned. And we see that there is a level of support that maybe people weren't really prepared to admit before. And polls have shown that if there were to be an election that was held in the West Bank, I mean, one of the reasons why, you know, Mahmoud Abbas is a dictator, he hasn't held elections. He's the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and he hasn't had elections in, what is it, 15 years now since he was elected? And one of the reasons, even though it was supposed to be a four-year term, and one of the reasons is because poll after poll shows that Hamas would win in the West Bank. So, yeah, I mean, I think that, look, it's not surprising. When you have half a million Palestinians that are indoctrinated in their schools, in their mosques, on state TV, right, in higher education, when they are indoctrinated to believe that they are perpetual victims, that Jews are evil, that they are irredeemably impure, filthy sons of apes and pigs. When you are indoctrinated to believe that Hitler was righteous, when you are indoctrinated, when the protocols of the elders of Zion and Mein Kampf are still in display cases in bookshops throughout this region. Then why wouldn't you support Hamas? I mean, these kids don't stand a chance and kids have been interviewed. There have been videos that show kids that are in UNRWA schools being interviewed and they say things like, we are taught to believe that the Jews are bad, right? I mean, it's black and white. There's no grey area here. It's very clear that there is systemic anti-Semitism, that it really has to do with Jews, not so much Israel, that this is a holy religious war, and that the issue is fundamentally not about two states, but about the Palestinian leadership's refusal to accept a non-Muslim sovereign in the region. That is what what it comes down to. Just finishing off it's obviously if any of us were overseeing the UN the first requirement for funding going in would be have a government that actually you can work with and if you have someone like Hamas you can can't give a penny, obviously there'll be massive demands for huge increases of money to go in, probably like we've seen in the crazy amount amount spent in Ukraine, I could imagine demands for that money now to be switched over to Gaza. But of course, with those refugee camps outside. If I was Nenyao, personally, I would just say, well, we're going to get buses. We're going to bring you all to your other refugee camps in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon. And actually, we'll turn Gaza into a nice area that actually may be a national park or something. And therefore, the people still get to live in the refugee camp in an area. But you kind of think, well, there has to be a way forward. How do you see? Because this war will come to an end. Either by the time Israel achieve its objective of destroying Hamas or by the time the world's PR machine forces Israel to stop. It'll be one or the other. And at that point, there'll have to be a conversation. What do you do with this problem that we have next door? And I don't know how you see, not that you have a crystal ball, but I don't know how you kind of see that conversation going and whether it's going to end up in a better situation than where we currently are. Right. What you're talking about is the day after, right? This is a term that a lot of people have used when talking about the Gaza war, which in my opinion is a little premature. We don't usually talk about the day after a war when we're in the middle of a war, but people seem to be obsessed with this idea that Israel is going to reoccupy Gaza and then everybody's going to be up in arms about this. But let's be clear about one thing. This is not Ukraine. This is no stalemate. OK. And if not for the Biden administration, this war would have been over weeks ago. OK. Israel has won. They've done a tremendous job. They've been incredibly successful at achieving, largely achieving their goals. Right. though they haven't retained the hostages. But Hamas is, I think, two-thirds of their military apparatus is just completely reduced to nothing. And Israel has one last stronghold, basically major stronghold, Rafah, right? And this is where a lot of the Palestinian Arabs, the Gazans, have been moved, right? And so if Israel can take out Rafah, and this is also where they believe the hostages are, where Yaha Simwar is, the head of Hamas, the war will pretty much be over. And then the process of what I call de-Hamasification, just like the de-Nazification of Germany after World War II, then needs to commence. But Biden has put a red light on Israel and is refusing to let Israel to take out Rafah, right? He doesn't want more casualties. So Biden is, with pressure from other countries, but mainly the Biden administration is prolonging this war and not letting it be won, which it could be won very swiftly. And also, let's just let's just be clear when I say Israel has been largely successful in their goals. I'm even taking into account the large number of Palestinian refugees, because even though people are going on about the fact that there have been tens of thousands of, sorry, Palestinian casualties. Did I say refugees? But people are going on about how there's been 30,000 Palestinian casualties. And that's outrageous. But actually, if you look at the casualty count in any comparable conflict in the history of modern urban warfare, the combatant to civilian ratio is unheard of. The amount of restraint and precision that Israel has exercised cannot be said of any other army in the history of warfare, okay? If you average out the general civilian to combatant ratio, it's usually about nine to one when you're dealing with modern urban warfare, meaning for every one combatant or enemy soldier, terrorist that you kill, nine civilians die. This is how it's been in past conflicts, taking out ISIS or whatever in modern warfare. Israel has managed to achieve, especially in this war, a two to one or even in some cases a one to one ratio. Because what that 30,000 casualty number doesn't tell you is that roughly half of them are Hamas fighters, right? But people, but the media loves to rely on the Palestinian health ministry, the Gaza health ministry for these numbers as if it's not completely 100% in arm of Hamas, right? Right. Like it's so insane. Like would we trust like Al Qaeda's numbers? Right. Or like ISIS's numbers. And yet everybody just accepts Hamas's numbers, even though this 30,000, this number of 30,000 does not mention any Hamas fighters. Not once have they included Hamas fighters in this number. They just say that the majority are women and children, but there have been incredible analyses done of this number that have shown how bogus and how problematic it is, even from just a statistical standpoint. But yeah, so I mean, Israel's done a tremendous job of minimizing casualties. But in terms of the day after, there really can only be one answer to this, and that is is that for some period of time, Israel needs to maintain control, security control of this region, right? After World War II, after Germany, after Nazi Germany was defeated, we did not just pull out and just like, okay, you're left to your own devices. No, there was a denazification process to reform the entire society so that the civilian population could be raised on tolerance and peace. And that is what needs to happen here. That cannot be done by the United Nations. We've already seen how corrupt UNWRA is. But even just other UN agencies cannot be, despite what everybody is saying, the UN is not equipped to be in control in Gaza. If you look at the history of UN peacekeeping missions, especially in that region, every single one has been an abysmal failure in Lebanon, in Syria, in Egypt. It's just, I mean, Eugene Kontorovich, Professor Eugene Kontorovich has documented this extensively and provided massive evidence for why this is just a recipe for disaster and for Hamas regrouping and taking power, if not, another organization that's equally as religiously, extreme and violent. So it can't be the UN. It can't be the Palestinian Authority because the Palestinian Authority is virtually the same as Hamas. The only difference is that because Israel has a presence in parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority isn't able to carry out October 7th, you know, October 7th like attack, even though they have said that they would want to, even though members of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have have praised the attacks. Members of Fatah actually participated in the attack and they have been very supportive. So, you know, and we had seen that when in 2005, when Israel pulled out and they thought that the PLO, which was the precursor to the Palestinian Authority, was going to be in charge there. Well, they didn't do a very good job because Hamas came, Hamas was elected and then they purged the strip of the, of their their Fatah rivals, and the same would happen. The PA is just, it's just an incompetent apparatus to keep that region secure. So unfortunately, although Israel doesn't want to be in control of over a million Gazans, Israel needs to maintain a presence there for security purposes and really transform that region so that something like October 7th can never happen again. Well, I'm still up for a national park there, but that's a different discussion. Karys, thank you so much for coming on. Fascinating, that whole understanding of UNRWA, of that refugee situation, which is probably an eye-opener to many of our viewers and fits perfectly into the current situation that we find in Israel. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

[SEGMENT 2-1] Biden ridiculed by Comedy Central [X] SB – Comedy Central on Suozzi not wanting Biden to campaign [X] SB – MSNBC discussing Biden's age [SEGMENT 2-2] Biden's Beau problem [X] SB – Fox News on Biden discussing shrinkflation Trying to make him look younger with the background Keep him seated; no walking [X] SB – Pat Fallon Joe Biden proves yet again to be a https://theblacksphere.net/2024/02/biden-tells-one-of-his-biggest-lies-yet/. And as usual, he lied to the faces of the American public, thinking no one would check up on him. At his hastily called nationally televised temper tantrum and https://theblacksphere.net/2024/02/bidens-special-counsel-report-tantrum/ to discuss Special Counsel Robert Hur's findings, Biden asked a question related to the comments of Hur in the report: "How in the hell dare he raise that [subject]? Answer: he didn't. Biden through his hissy fit because the old fool https://theblacksphere.net/2024/02/biden-sets-record-low-on-american-satisfaction/ when he was questioned by Special Counsel Robert Hur. The fact is Hur did Biden a big favor by declaring him mentally-unfit to be prosecuted. Most Americans would have taken their ball and gone home. But not Biden. He needed to lash out as most people with brain dysfunctions do. How DARE Hur state the obvious and declare me incompetent...publicly! Biden is well in the ninth inning of life and rounding third base, metaphorically speaking. He https://theblacksphere.net/2024/02/surprise-democrats-biden-aging-ugly/, and he's getting meaner. That's the product sometimes of aging and dementia. So Biden seized on his own mistake of bringing up Beau as NBC news reported. https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1757868319523160123 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/biden-attacked-hur-asking-beau-died-didnt-happen-sources-say-rcna138709 explains things clearly: President Joe Biden lashed out at Robert Hur last week over one particular line in the special counsel's report on his handling of classified documents: that Biden "did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died." “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden told reporters in an impromptu White House press conference. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.” But Hur never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Hur's five-hour interview with the president over two days last October. It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden's death, they said. Who would you believe? Tough choice, given the new and unimproved DOJ. But Joe Biden is a pathological liar. Also, Joe Biden seems to always brings the death of "the good son" whenever he's jammed up. And cue the band, because that's what Biden did, when he got pressed by the Special Counsel on why in the hell would he have (1) taken classified documents when he was unauthorized to do so as a Senator or Vice-President, and (2) keep those documents in multiple unsecured areas and handled by people who had no security clearance? Check out how Karma bit Biden in the ass: Biden's own words: “How anyone could be that irresponsible?” It's fun to watch Biden and other Leftists set traps for Trump, then ensnare themselves. Trump was president and could declassify documents as he saw fit. Biden couldn't. Yes, it's really that simple. Yet, Biden gets the "old and feeble" pass, and Trump faces completely bogus indictments. And when the public pushes for the truth in the form of transcripts, video, etc., the Left noticeably make none of it available. Look into any so-called conspiracy, like cheating in the 2020 Presidential Election, J6, global climate change, Covid, to name a few and you will find Democrat and other Leftist coverups. Then they wonder why Trump resonates with the common man. Despite being a billionaire mogul and former president, Trump https://theblacksphere.net/2024/01/scariest-pro-trump-video-to-date/ more so than any politician. He's relatable, because real Americans fight every day for justice. And not necessarily in the courts. We fight for justice at our borders, as Leftists allow millions to invade annually. The carnage of their crimes occurs at street level, and not inside the Beltway. We watch all our systems get pushed to the max. Our schools, hospitals, welfare system, and so on all at the breaking point, and still Leftists help others before helping Americans. Recently, Mitt Romney called the bill to fund Ukraine, [pp] "The most important bill ever put before the Senate". Sending billions of dollars to a needless war is more important that helping American citizens in need? Homeless veterans, struggling small businesses, one-parent households, the sick and infirmed? We know that Biden is sick and corrupt. We don't need any more transparency for that. But government should be in the habit of making its case with facts and not propaganda. [SEGMENT 2-3] Transgender prison policy 1 The price of housing prisoners just went up in California. And there is amazing irony. Aren't we in a non-binary gender-fluid world? If this is the case, why do we even have men's and women's prisons? If you're like me, you know the real answer. Women wouldn't survive in men's prisons, as they would be brutalized daily. It would be like putting the WNBA teams up against the NBA. Or like putting the American women's soccer against the men. Well, you get my point. If you believe me to be a misogynist, then ask the simple question I asked earlier. Why does California have gender-based prisons? If there were any state who would just consolidate prisons, ergo prisoners, California should be the social engineering petri dish. But even the morons who run the Land of Fruits Nuts and Fairies know that putting men and women (fluid as they may be) together would end in a complete disaster. What would they do with all the babies they would separate from their parents? It wouldn't take long for California prisons to look like Joey Demento Biden's southern border. Back to the gender issue If any state has made the case for gender fluidity, it's California. So why did they pass SB 132, a law that declares that a prisoner who self-identifies who is “transgender, nonbinary, or intersex” must be “addressed in a manner consistent with the incarcerated individual's gender identity”. Thus, this prisoner must be “housed at a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual's preference.” The law applies “regardless of anatomy.” Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law last September, declaring on that occasion that “our march toward equality takes an additional step forward.” Since the passing of this unbelievably moronic law, 261 California state prisoners have requested transfers to facilities that house the opposite gender. And for those keeping count, 255 of them have requested to move from a male to a female corrections facility. Surprised? Not. And I think I know why. For the record, any trans-man requesting a transfer to a woman's prison is a red flag. Talk about a target rich environment for a newly-minted woman. A small number of "women" with such a high availability of alpha males and they want a transfer? Not fooling this Black man. Those are men running from the booty bandits. And don't think the number is only 255. Because many other men whose butt are on the line, literally, are considering the same thing. Why risk rape, when you can move to a woman's prison and find a soul mate. Don't be surprised if California soon pays for prison weddings and honeymoons. There is one other thing Leftists want you to forget as they offer gender-reassignment and prison reassignment at the taxpayers' expense: these are hardened criminals. These people have committed murder, rape, human-trafficking, drug trafficking, and so on. Yet we treat them as if we owe them something. Classic leftism. Do the most to help the worst citizens. And make the best citizens foot the bill and deal with the new societal implications. Where will all this go with California's new "woke" prison initiative? C'mon Man! You know the thing. Clearly, this project will go where almost all Leftist projects go. In the toilet. The financial toilet, the societal toilet, and whatever other toilets you can imagine. Frankly, it won't work. In instances where this was tried, I remember reading where female prisoners were getting pregnant. [SEGMENT 2-4] Transgender prison policy 2 The National File https://nationalfile.com/transgender-inmate-accused-of-rape-in-womens-prison-facility/ of one case: A transgender inmate who was transferred from a male prison to a female prison facility is alleged to have raped fellow inmates. The biological male was blocked from being transferred back to a male prison, following the incident, as the decision was reportedly overruled by the governor's office, according to https://www.illinoistimes.com/springfield/transgender-inmate-accused-of-rape/Content?oid=11843778. Andre Patterson–as he is known to Illinois Department of Corrections–now goes by the name Janiah Monroe. Monroe was reportedly not welcomed by female inmates when she was transferred to the Logan women's prison in Lincoln. (...) On Feb 10 an anonymous inmate filed a Jane Doe lawsuit after several Logan prison employees allegedly punished her for trying to report sexual assault accusations.

So Biden is too old to stand trial but he's not too old to run this country and be in control of nukes? Here they go again, moving the goal post.

Yes, Republicans demagogue the border, but Democrats have ignored the border. And now it's a crisis. A crisis team Biden is largely responsible for these past three years. So Republicans at this point won't help him. So Biden should secure the border on his own.

New Hampshire is a make-or-break moment for Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor challenging Trump for the Republican nomination. Plus – on the Democrats' side – why Biden isn't on the ballot, and who is. Read more:Nikki Haley has emerged as the only major candidate remaining in the Republican primary against former president Donald Trump. A strong showing in New Hampshire on Tuesday could give her the momentum she needs to forge ahead with her campaign. Campaign reporter Dylan Wells has been following Haley, and she explains why Haley's message is resonating with many voters in New Hampshire. Then, we turn to the unusual situation playing out for the Democrats. Biden and the Democratic National Committee decided that South Carolina should be the first primary – but New Hampshire decided to continue to hold its long-prized first-in-the-nation primary earlier, in defiance of the new party rules. So Biden opted not to put his name on the ballot. The contest carries no practical weight since the DNC has stripped the state of its delegates to the nominating convention – but that hasn't stopped Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips from running. Today's show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, Emma Talkoff, Arjun Singh and Elana Gordon. It was mixed by Sean Carter. It was edited by Maggie Penman. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Get ready for an explosive episode of Adam's Archive, where host Austin Adams tackles some of the most jaw-dropping and contentious global stories of our time. The episode blasts off with Elon Musk's unexpected venture into Israeli politics and his intriguing pact with Netanyahu. The plot thickens with President Biden's contentious Hamas apology, stirring up a political storm. In a shocking health expose, a former White House doctor spills alarming details about Joe Biden's well-being. Austin then dives into the Orwellian world of the Department of Justice's massive data collection from Trump-related Twitter activities. Brace yourself as the episode unveils a mysterious and potentially catastrophic new illness sweeping through China, triggering flashbacks of the pandemic's early days. The climax hits with the dramatic OpenAI saga, revealing Sam Altman's surprising reinstatement and Elon Musk's cryptic warnings about a secret AI program. Don't miss out on this episode of Adam's Archive, packed with Austin's unfiltered analysis and bold perspectives.   All the links: https://linktr.ee/theaustinjadams Substack: https://austinadams.substack.com ----more---- Full Transcription Hello, you beautiful people, and welcome to the Adam's Archive. My name is Austin Adams, and thank you so much for listening today. On today's episode, we are going to be jumping into several current events, including Elon Musk visiting Israel. Not only that, but having a discussion with Netanyahu, personally walking through some of the areas of the war and destruction that happened there, as well as coming to a Somewhat surprising agreement with him, which we will discuss first, then we will walk through the next discussion, which also has to do with Israel and Hamas, which is that Biden is apologizing for something that he said more recently  about questioning Hamas. So we'll talk about.  After that, we'll jump into a former White House doctor, one that served under Bush, Trump, as well as Barack Obama, coming out with some pretty serious warnings about Joe Biden's health.  Then we will jump into the Department of Justice collecting some really serious information about basically every single person who interacted with anything about Joe Biden. With about Trump on Twitter,  following that into a discussion around a new, a new sickness,  or at least. A serious sickness that's  causing waves in China right now. And if that sounds familiar and alarms you, it probably should,  but the U S is now sounding the alarm after a new Chinese pneumonia outbreak raises serious health concerns,  PTSD, anybody.  And then we will talk about an update. So last week, uh, the last episode, I talked about the situation with Chachaputi, OpenAI, Sam Altman, um, and all of the employees there and this crazy wild story  that finally came ahead and one hour after, just one hour, one hour after my podcast, it was like two in the morning when they reinstated Sam Altman, completely got rid of the entire board. But that raised some even weirder questions, something I raised originally, but I'm starting to get the full picture now. And Elon Musk posted something that was said Q Anon with a star between Q and Anon,  but it was actually about open AI and potentially AGI or artificial general intelligence and his concerns around a secret program. Within OpenAI,  all of that and more. But first I need you to hit that subscribe, but  button, I need you to leave a five star review. Go hit that five star button on Apple Podcasts, subscribe on YouTube. You can watch all of the episodes directly on YouTube. I'll now be posting all of the topic clips individually there as well. Um, so make sure you follow on YouTube, the Adams. archive, you can find me there and watch along, you can see my beautiful face, uh, see the articles that we're talking through together. Uh, so make sure you head over there, do that, follow, subscribe, leave a five star review. That's honestly the best thing that you can do at this point to help out is just leave a five star review on Apple podcasts. Okay. It takes two minutes out of your day. It gives you some of that good belly feelings in your gut  just for helping out. All right. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for listening. Let's. Jump into it,  the Adams archive.  All right. The very first thing that we are going to discuss today is going to be that Elon Musk met with Netanyahu.  In Israel, not only that, but he also walked around Israel looking at all of the, uh, after effects of some of the war that happened there in this article says Israel tells Elon Musk Starlink can only operate in Gaza with a It's approval.  So now Elon Musk, after putting up Starlink in Ukraine, after putting up Starlink over Gaza, after being the savior to all of these, um, citizens, when there's a war breaking out and the commanding force shuts off their access to the internet to do God knows what  now he's given in. So Netanyahu is going to be telling Elon Musk, whether he can or cannot. Activate their internet with Starlink.  So this article says Israel tells Elon Musk, Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval says entrepreneur meets country's leaders amid fervor over alleged antisemitism on his social platinum or platform X. I'm not sure that's what it was exactly about, but it says Israel has told Starlink satellite network will only be allowed to operate in Gaza with its approval as the entrepreneur met with country's leaders amid a furor, furor, f u r o r e over alleged antisemitism on his social platform X. The world's richest man declared that last month that his satellite internet service Starlink would support connectivity to internationally recognized. Aid organizations in Gaza seems like a good thing to do, right? If there's a massive war going on and one of the sides decides to shut off all access to the internet, you know, not only does it do that, but it cuts off their messaging between people. Uh, in families locally, it cuts off their access to the outside world, so they can't post videos of things that are going on there, I don't know, by maybe some organization that's dropping bombs on them or doing terrible things to them, or, I don't know, just everyday things, right? Phone connectivity, internet, work, all of that stops. When you can't access the internet. So originally what happened is Elon Musk came in just like he did in Ukraine and said, okay,  you guys can battle this out, but you're not going to eliminate one person's access to the world. So he has Starlink. And if you don't know anything about Starlink, it's basically satellites. I'm pretty sure Elon Musk has more satellites than any.  Now, something like that, but a Starlink,  uh, is a way that he can turn on and turn off access to wifi and the internet for anybody in the world, basically at any given time, just by utilizing his satellites. And so it says the world's richest man declared late last night that his satellite internet service Starlink would support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza, which has suffered lengthy blackouts under. Israel's bombardment. But on Monday, Israeli communication minister, Shlomo Kari posted on X that the entrepreneur had reached a principal understanding with the ministry and has said now that Starlink units can only be operated. In Israel with the approval of the Israeli minister or ministry of communication, including the Gaza strip. Now, what that saying is that you have to listen to the words carefully and read between the lines here. It says Starlink satellite units can only operate, be operated in Israel, in Israel. Okay. With the approval of the Israeli ministry of communications, including.  Which means that within this tweet itself, they were already claiming ownership to Gaza. Already saying that that is our territory. Already saying that that is a part of Israel.  And we'll go ahead and we'll watch some videos here shortly. Uh, where there's some pretty interesting conversations by one of my fans. favorite political commentators, uh, and, um, he, he kind of discussed the background of Israel, the background of the Ottoman empire and Palestine and, uh, all of the, the things that kind of led up to this disputed territory, which I found to be really interesting. So we'll pull that up in just a minute and listen to that. Um, but it goes on to say that Musk has not yet publicly confirmed any deal.  The SpaceX and Tesla chief executive is visiting the Jewish state for the first time since Hamas October 7th assault on southern Israel, which killed 1, 200 people and triggered a war between Israel and the militant group, this says.  Israel's ferocious retaliatory bombardment and siege of the Strip has continued or created a humanitarian crisis, killing more than 13, 300 people and led to prolonged blackouts.  These have obstructed rescue efforts, notably  by preventing ambulances from reaching, or from locating wounded people. Now the interesting thing about that is like, they want to say that it's not controlled by Israel, but then they can cut off their water, they can cut off their electricity, they can cut off their access to internet. What about that says that you're not controlled by somebody? Because it seems to me that if somebody has access to, you know... You're to shut off your water. If somebody can shut off your electricity, if somebody can shut off your ability to drive on roads, if somebody can shut off your ability to access the internet or the world, it seems like that's pretty much control, right? And they want to say that it's not  controlled by Israel already. Uh, but it doesn't exactly seem to be the case. It seems pretty well controlled. After appearing to endorse an anti Semitic conspiracy theory in which a white house Spokesperson said was abhorrent Musk has been forced to defend himself from changes or from charges of discrimination. Wow, I can't read today. Nothing could be further from the truth. He said, an acts I wish only for the best for humanity. I wonder what this conspiracy theory could have been.  A video released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office showed Musk wearing a flag jacket as he toured burnt out homes.  Uh, a far Aussie, a kibbutz devastated by the militant group's assault, taking pictures on his mobile phone. Actions speak louder than words, Musk posted cryptically on X after the visit. Musk's initial commitment to enable Starlink in Gaza was followed by telecommunications blackouts in the enclave sparked. Uh, which sparked a spat by the Israeli government, which argued with the connectivity would be used by Hamas for terrorist activities. Yeah, just like basically everything and anything they ever want to stop as a government, they can just say is, oh, used for terrorist activities, right? Like,  anybody who, as we'll find out later, followed Donald Trump is now on a list somewhere.  Liked any of his tweets, retweeted any of his tweets, any single person who did that on Twitter is now on a list from the Department of Justice.  Anybody who was there on January 6th? protesting,  whether they walked into the Capitol and got a museum tour by the local police or not is now on some terrorist watch list, right? They can say whatever they want. That's the hard thing with like language and the way that what language can be weaponized, right? Go Back in read 1984, right? When, when you can take a singular word like terrorist and start to apply it to anything and anything that doesn't agree with the government's narrative, that becomes a huge issue, right? Just like when, when all the liberals were calling everybody Nazis.  It just loses its venom after so long. So like when, yeah, I agree. Hamas, what they did was an act of terrorism, obviously terrible. Don't do that. But when you start saying that the people that were walking through the Capitol on January 6th were also domestic terrorists.  It's just factually incorrect,  right? You can't, you can't,  every time you use that word in a way that it's not meant to be used or a way that is not legitimate, it loses its sting, right? So, so when you say that, Oh,  you know, we're, we're putting up all these cameras on highways to To stop terrorism. We're doing it to stop mass shooters. We're doing it to stop violent criminals, right? Well, we talked about in our last episode, you know, all the cameras that are going up on every single highway in America, you know, we're doing it for your safety. Like, don't worry about us. We would never spy on you. We would never follow and track you and see where you're going. We would never do that. It's just for those bad guys over there that, you know, you don't, don't agree with our opinions on politics.  It's, you know, all of the, the terrorism talk that's happened domestically has just really,  really, uh, caused the venom of that word to, to, to be questioned. Right, so it says Starlink, part of Musk's rockets, uh, Starlink, part of Musk's rockets and satellite company SpaceX, uses a constellation of Earth orbiting satellites to beam internet connectivity into places where traditional access to the web is denied. difficult. Musk has provided Starlink equipment to Ukraine's frontline with Russia. The Starlink signal is received through small satellite dishes called terminals. But Musk said in October that no terminals have actually attempted to connect from the besieged Gaza.  And so I was on board with that. I'm on board with that. 100%. I don't think that I think that in today's age, when we can give access to these things, I believe that it's absolutely something that everybody should have access to. If you have the ability to beam it onto the earth, which apparently we do, why wouldn't we want  Anybody and everybody in the country to or in the world to have access to that, right? You should it gives you access to the  ability to Conduct work it gives you access to the ability to communicate worldwide to be in the know of what's happening Right to know literally everything it should be basically a right that you have internet today now maybe you should pay for it if you're in a place that you know like the United States where you can Have a job and be a functioning member of society, but maybe eventually not like, but why should we have to pay for internet? Why isn't it just considered a, you know, utility bill at some point?  But anyways, I digress. Here we go. Um, the article continues on and says,  let's see if we can get this to be Full screen here, and says  that, uh, Musk's visit to Israel coincides with the last day of the four day pause in hostilities and comes as advertisers pile pressure on X over a rise in anti Semitism on the platform after appearing to endorse an anti Semitic conspiracy theory, which a White House spokesperson said. Let's see if we can find that out. Uh,  let's see. Musk tweet anti Semitic. That should be easy enough.  Conspiracy tweet. Let's see what comes up for that. It says, This  comes from CNN. com, so it should be a good one.  Uh, here we go.  It says Elon Musk has publicly endorsed an anti Semitic conspiracy theory, popular among white supremacists, this says on CNN, that Jewish communities push hatred against whites. That kind of overt thumbs up to an anti Semitic post shocked even some of Musk's critics, who have long called him out for using racist and otherwise bigoted dog whistles on Twitter, known as X.  It was the multi billionaire's most explicit public statement yet endorsing anti Jewish views.  Let's see, uh,  it says that Jewish communities, Musk has, was responding to a post Wednesday that said Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectic, dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. The post has also referenced hordes of minorities flooding Western countries, a popular anti Semitic conspiracy theory.  What is anti semitic about hordes  of minorities flooding western countries?  Seems to be factual when you're talking about the southern border.  I just wanted to see if I could see the tweet, but apparently they're not going to link it here because they're afraid you'll actually read into it  and see if this is it.  Nope.  Hmm.  So, doesn't sound exact The way that they can twist somebody's words and say, oh, they're they push hatred against white people, which you know, you follow the money in a lot of these places may be factually true. But anyways, um, it says nothing could be further from the truth, he said on Next. A video released by Prime Minister Netanyahu's office showed Musk wearing a flak jacket. Just discuss that. Actions speak louder than words. Discuss that. Discuss what Starlink is. The Starlink signal is received through small satellite dishes called terminals. But Musk said in October that no terminals had actually been attempted to connect from besieged Gaza. And Israel controls the movement of goods into the coastal enclave. During the seven week war, Israel has, at times, reportedly cut communications to the Strip.  I wonder why they would do that. Hmm.  And I think that ceasefire is gone now, isn't it?  All right, moving on,  Biden reportedly offers an apology to Muslim American leaders for questioning the Hamas death toll. We talked about this last time where  Biden was saying that he did not agree with the death toll coming from Palestinian health organizations. And now he's walking back those statements because obviously there's been a tremendous amount of death, a tremendous amount of, uh, question or, um, of. Bombs that have been dropped in Palestine, a tremendous amount of men, women, and children that have died as a result of the actions of Israel.  Factual. Go,  I don't know, fly a drone over there. Like, look at the, look at the, the, the destruction that has happened in the videos. And, and, who's to say whether that's completely accurate or not, but It's absolutely true that there has been a massive amount of death for men, women, and children in Palestine. So Biden is now recognizing that apologizing saying he's  quote unquote, I believe, let's see what this. Let's see if we can get the full article.  Oh, we gotta, we gotta subscribe folks.  Let's find a different one.  Now. My favorite News connector is ground news  and we can go here and let's go Biden  Offers apology now if you go to ground news what it does for you And okay, I would highly recommend educating yourself on this platform because I absolutely love it So I'll just give you a breakdown what this looks like. It's ground  And they give you the headline, they give you the top three points, and then they tell you the bias of the news distribution. So what percentage has been reporting on this, um, 41 percent of the sources that are reporting on this lean right. Right. Of those, um, there's two that are center, 61 percent biased, I'm sorry, 61%. I'm just blind.  And then they give you all of the articles. So then you can sort and sift through those articles. You can say you can look at all of them. You can look at the left leaning articles. You can look at the right leaning articles. You can look at the center articles. Then it gives you the factuality of each one of those and who owns those media companies. So it's like, very basically anything and everything that you would want out of the actual reporting. Um, so it gives factuality scores, ownership scores, like  whoever is responsible for this just does an absolute tremendous job. It's incredible.   All right, so here it is. It says this is coming from the Daily Post and it says Israel Palestinian war. I'm disappointed in myself, Biden says as he apologizes over comments on Gaza. Now, obviously, like we talked about, it's not Gaza in general, what a terrible headline.  But here's what it says. It says, United States President Biden Joe Biden has apologized to some prominent Muslim American leaders over his public questioning of the Palestinian death number reported by the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, right? And again, it's like you would just have to watch out for the framing on this because do we, is it, I don't know. I don't, I've never done research on the. Gaza Ministry of Health, but they just like frivolously throw that out there to delegitimize the numbers. And now he's apologizing for it, right? So they, they tried to shoo it away as saying, Oh, that's what the terrorists said. We don't believe the terrorists. You're not a terrorist. Are you? You're a  flag loving American. Right? Maybe not flag loving because then nowadays that makes you a terrorist anyways. But  you see what I'm saying, right? Like, just, just listen to the framing Biden, according to the New York post, made the apology at a meeting with the five Muslim American leaders  the day after his October 25th comments on reported Gaza deaths.  Vowing to do better. Biden told the group, I'm sorry, I'm so disappointed in myself, Biden said, when he heard the leaders describe individuals they knew who were personally affected by the conflict. Before the press conference, Biden had openly questioned the accuracy of the  casualty figures from Gaza, given Hamas terror track, Hamas terror track record.  The president was smeared with criticism at home as he made great efforts to pressure Israel to minimize civilian casualties.  He said, I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I'm sure innocents have been killed and it's the price of waging war, he said. Wow. Is that the price of waging wars? You kill innocent people? According to data from the Hamas controlled Ministry of Health, more than 14, 000 Palestinians in Gaza, including many women and children, have been killed in the conflict. Meanwhile, Israel has suffered more than 1, 200 fatalities, almost a tenth, less than a tenth. Mostly civilians who were killed when the terror group launched a massive attack on Israel in October.  The Muslim American leaders who have met with Joe Biden pleaded with him to show more empathy for the Palestinians. So here's, here's something that I see to, you know, I find this to be pretty interesting. You go to almost any major,  uh, account right now. Now there's a few, there's a few people who are...  actually honest and truthful, but you see a lot of mainstream media accounts, a lot of mainstream influencers, a lot of conservative voices, just giving the most egregious points on, on the Palestinian conflict. Like you go to Prager U right now, you go to, you know, go listen to Ben Shapiro. You hear them literally saying word for word.  That the reason, or that the blood of Palestinian children and women is on the hands of Hamas. Not on the hands of Israel, who actually bombed them. You know, but it's on the hands of Hamas, because, you know, they did this to us first, so they deserved it. Right? Like, that's, that's, we're almost word for word, verbatim, what both Dennis Prager and, um, and, uh, uh, Ben Shapiro had said about this almost verbatim, like literally go find it, then they'll say, oh, you know, Hiroshima was was something that just had to be done. We had to murder an entire city and block of a mile of people in order to stop this war. It's, it's like, no. Well, what should we do? Well, maybe send special forces in there and take them out. Like,  don't just bomb the children. Uh, and that's what's so funny about this argument that like, oh, Hamas is shielding themselves with women and children. And instead of, you know,  trying to wait for a sniper to have a good I am the target so that they can kill just the terrorists behind them, right, like their their point is that, oh, they use women and children as human shields. They use human shields. How egregious how much of a terrorist are they for using human shields? And it's like, okay, you don't use human shields, you just bomb the women and children, regardless without any thought to it. It's like, which one's worse, just endlessly bombing women and children without any say or reason why really and or using somebody as a human shield. They're equally bad because in both scenarios, somebody dies who was innocent, equally bad,  right? But they've they've probably done government think tanks and had massive surveys where they found out that if you say the human shield buzzword that that now all of a sudden people are on your side, right? It's like, You definitely can't use human shields. Just bomb them all.  Anyway. So there's your update on that. And, uh, from that, speaking about Joe Biden, the next thing that we'll discuss is that a former white house doctor has come out and raised some concerns surrounding the health of Joe Biden. So, you know, not that any of us thought that he was in great health or anything.  Uh, but.  It seems to be deteriorating just quicker than anybody would have even thought. Um, so let's read this article together. And it says,  Former White House doctor warns that Biden won't last another five years in office. They're saying that he has completely degenerated just during the time in his office. And this is somebody, this is a doctor who served under George Bush, who served under Donald Trump, who served under Barack Obama. So this isn't some run of the mill, you know, was in there for six months and now all of a sudden he has a political opinion that this man was unfit for duty. No, this is somebody who was trusted by the White House to give their unbiased opinion about the health of our presidents.  And he's come out and said that he does not believe Joe Biden is in any shape or form able to act the duties. Now, I agree completely, like Anybody who's,  the only thing that they could have done that's worse than this is what they did to Feinstein, right, where they wheeled her out there the day before she croaked, the day before she died and had her vote on the floor,  while some guy was whispering in her ear telling her to shut up and say yes.  Here we go. Uh, the article says, uh,  Ronnie Jackson, a Republican from Texas, a former White House physician, warned this week that President Joe Biden won't make it another five years if he's reelected in 2024. The decline is happening quickly, Jackson said, who served as a physician under former Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, as he told Fox News on Sunday. Jackson argued that Biden's cognitive acuity has declined rapidly, even since 2020, when he was first elected.  It's just unbelievable how much he's degenerated through his time in office. We cannot afford to have this man in office for the remainder of his term, and then for another four years after that. He's already putting us at great risk, right? Now, he says, citing his experience with the white house, Jackson said, he knows firsthand what it takes to be the commander in chief and the head of state. It's a grueling job, both mentally and physically, the man can't do the job he's proven to us over the single or every single day that he can't do the job, but this is just getting worse.  Fair enough.  Right. And I had this conversation with somebody the other day, to me, it's like, what is the, the,  even more so than his, like,  Then his politics, right? Because you probably can't even point to Joe Biden's politics at this point or his position on things. But what you can point to is, is the absolute embarrassment, the absolute embarrassment to our country. That is Joe Biden representing us on a world stage.  The man can't string a sentence together. The man can't walk up a flight of stairs. The man can't.  shake the hand of any other person knowing fully well who they are at any given time. Like, how are you going to trust that man to make some of the most complex decisions of any position with the biggest impact of any position in the world? How do you expect that? You don't. You want to know why? Because, you know, and I would almost rather have, that's what you have to understand about the president is that the president is. Essentially just a figurehead. They should exude power. They should exude intelligence. They should be charismatic. They should be able to calm a crowd in times of war and, and Excite them in times of peace to do great things and Joe Biden does absolutely not a single one of those things,  right? So I would, I would almost rather have somebody whose politics are just absolutely atrocious, but at least represent our country well, then Joe Biden, and that's what you have to know by now is that Joe Biden is absolutely 100 percent only in this position because he has nothing to say at all when it comes to politics. He is essentially a puppet with a literal hand up his ass telling him exactly what to say and when to say it. He has no opinions of his own. He is absolutely bought and paid for in every position that he holds.  And that's why he's in this position. And that's why they would probably hope to keep him in there another four years.  They being the people who really lobbied to get him there.  The Black Rocks, the Vanguards, all of those people, right? So it's like,  he is... Only in the position that he is in because he holds no position  and that's what you saw in the Osama bin Laden letter  And I called it was I said Saddam Hussein. It was actually Osama bin Laden's letter I think I was reading it wrong or no, that was just in a clip that I posted on Instagram.  I Posted a clip on Instagram and I had to edit it out because I was I kept saying  Saddam Hussein instead of Osama bin Laden  Silly me, mixing up my terrorists.  Alright,  so, pretty wild stuff, not that wild, because we all knew the guy could, is, is  about to die at any single moment. And then that's like probably the most, the most exciting thing about Joe Biden's presidency, is that the man could literally be in the middle of a speech, or walking up a flight of stairs, and just die. In front of anybody, everybody with all these cameras on him at any given moment. It's like, we should have a  death. What is it? The dead pool, a death pool, uh, for Joe Biden and have over unders on whether or not he would make a second term.  All right. Now, speaking of that,  uh, the next thing we're going to discuss is that the Department of Justice collected every single name of every single Twitter account that liked, followed, or even retweeted anything regarding Trump, right? Anything from Trump that he ever said. If you liked him, if you followed him, or if you retweeted him, you're on a list somewhere. The Department of Justice has collected every single name of every single Twitter account that he ever  And this comes from HeadlineUSA. Not sure what that is.  Twitter is, I got it from, uh, The Ground News, so. It said mixed factuality, so.  Most of them do, to be fair. Um, Twitter is required to disclose following information.  All lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted posts, tweets, uh, tweets posted by Trump, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account. So any mentions or even replies with Trump's name.  It says that Ken Silva,  Uh, stated that the Justice Department attorneys have released record records related to their search warrant for Donald Trump's Twitter account, revealing that prosecutors obtained a vast trove of data about the former president's social media activity, including info on every single account to like, follow. And retweet him.  The heavily redacted search warrant was released Monday, pursuant to a November 17th judge's order, which was made after a coalition of media groups filed an application in August for the warrant and other records to be made public. From the looks of it, Twitter forked over massive amounts of information to the Department of Justice. Um, indeed, Special Counsel Jack Smith sought and apparently ultimately received all users Trump followed, unfollowed, muted. Un unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, as well as all the users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, un unmuted, blocked, or unblocked Trump. Additionally, Smith demanded da, uh, Twitter data on all the lists of Twitter users who have been favored their retweeted tweets posted by Trump, as well as all the tweets that included the username associated with the account.  Wow.  In some we that the district court's ruling in all aspects, the, uh, the district court's properly rejected.  Uh, let's see here.  It's gonna be a jerk to me again. Need to figure this out.  My, uh, I, I have my iPad as the secondary monitor here and it keeps like going out on me. So sorry If we have any lulls in the action for you. It says, in some, we affirm, we affirm that the district court's ruling in all aspects are all respects the district court properly rejected. Twitter's first amendment challenged to the, the non-disclosure order, the appeals court said in the decision unsealed in August. Moreover, the district court acted within the bounds of its own, of its discretion to manage its docket when it declined to. day to stay its enforcement of the warrant while the First Amendment claim was litigated.  So any single person, any single person who liked, followed, tweeted, untweeted, retweeted, no tweeted,  anything at all to do with Donald Trump is now on a list that the Department of Justice has. For what reason? What would you want that for? What would you want that for, right? You want, you want to start surveilling those people, right? Especially the high profile people. If anybody actually has a following and, and you are somebody who voted Trump is, follows Trump tweets, Trump likes his posts, anything at all, you know, because very easily you could just take an Excel spreadsheet, which I'm sure somebody did over at the department of justice and filtered it based on follower count. So they could find out who are the people of influence that are a part of Donald Trump's network. Okay. Right. Not even network, but just support group.  There's nine comments here. Let's see if any of them are any good. Uh, what was the name of the Beatles song? Oh yeah. Back in the USSR.  Yeah. I mean, pretty fricking wild. Uh, do not fund the justice department. Yeah. Nothing, nothing too good. Not enough. All right. Cool. Um, so to me, that's egregious. To me, that shows an absolute surveillance state. To me, that shows that the, the collusion between Twitter and Department of Justice now has been fossilized in, in Excel spreadsheets somewhere at a, uh, Government facility to say whether or not you could potentially be a domestic terrorist because you  followed Donald Trump, the president of the United States, one of the most followed, liked, retweeted people of all time on Twitter.  Hmm. But now you'll find yourself on a list somewhere.  Alright, after that, this one's.  A little bit, even more concerning, but before we talk about that, the first thing I need you to do  is I think you know what I'm going to say, which is that you should subscribe. You should leave a five star review if you haven't already. And if you're driving, it's okay. I forgive you. But when you get where you're going, stop what you're doing, pull out your phone and it takes 10 seconds, 10 seconds is all it takes. All you got to do is scroll a little bit down on the Apple podcast.  Hit that five star review. You can give a five star on Spotify. It just doesn't let you write anything, but an Apple podcast, it really helps. Uh, go follow me on Instagram at the Austin J Adams. Uh, go follow me on Twitter at the Austin J Adams on, you know, all the things.  Uh, Truth Social, I'm even on there. I don't really use it ever, but that's gonna change. I'm starting to get some help over here, so uh, looking forward to being more consistent with you guys on content that I'm putting out. Getting back to the sub stack, which you can follow at austinadams. substack. com. Um, and that's what I got.  Adams Archive.  There it is. Let's jump into it. Um, the article says,  The U. S. sounds an alarm after new Chinese pneumonia outbreak raises serious questions and concerns.  And the article says that U. S. officials began expressing concerns this week about a new outbreak in respiratory illnesses in China that have sent a surge of Children to the hospital. NBC News reported that the outbreak in northern China has caused hospitals to become overwhelmed with sick Children. According to pro med, a publicly available reporting system for emerging disease or diseases and outbreaks. The news comes after COVID 19 began spreading in Wuhan, China in late 2019. And in the span of a couple months through the entire world into a global pandemic that killed millions and was used by governments to implement draconian measures. Yep.  Now, as far as the killed millions thing, I would like to revisit that and tell you that all of the PCR tests, you know, the with kid who died with COVID or died of COVID are serious things that we need to revisit and stop saying there's millions of people who died as a result of COVID when you have to understand that there was actually somebody who got bit by a shark  and died as a result of being eaten by a shark  and COVID 19. Was considered a COVID death because they had tested positive for COVID at the time And then you have to take that a step further and understand that not only were they marking people dead with COVID  So that they could make their money because they were incentivized off of this because this is all stuff We can't let seep through our memory people We have to understand the lengths that they went to for this propaganda campaign one being that it wasn't Died of COVID. What was important was died with COVID that they would mark as of COVID.  The second thing is even when they ran those tests and said that they died with COVID. They ran the tests with PCR testing at cycles that were way higher than what was supposed to be allowable for PCR tests to be accurate whatsoever. And then as things wound down, guess what they did. They lowered the cycles on the PCR tests. So there wasn't as many false positives.  So when you're talking about millions of people dying, you have to understand  The real number of people that died of COVID is far, far, far less than what was reported originally. Because first of all, as we just talked about, they marked people dead. Uh, with COVID as of COVID,  they marked people with COVID incorrectly because the amount of cycles they were doing on PCR tests, which was far above the allowed, allowable, uh, at least justifiable amount of cycles. It's like anything above 19 cycles is a very high rate of, of, uh, false positives, right? You go back to the podcast I've done about Carrie Mullisk, you go read the, who actually came up with PCR testing, Nobel prize, uh, winning laureate, uh, scientists, uh, who who designed the PCR test. And it's really interesting if you go back and listen to some of those episodes, even episode one, right? I'll mention that a couple of times is, uh, assassinations, coverups, and the cult of science that I did. Uh, I highly recommend you, you listen into that podcast. It may not, I haven't gone back and listened to it myself in a while, but, uh, it's the very first one I ever did. So cut me some slack. Uh, but I think there was a lot of value in there. And I went through that book that I discussed last week. Uh, code blue about the military or the medical industrial complex. So a pretty good one, but a highly, you know, when, when we're talking about millions of people that you have to remember the context, you cannot forget that when we talk about that. All right. So it says China's recent pneumonia outbreak raises serious questions in the world health organization is asking them said us ambassador of, uh, to Japan, Ram Manuel.  It's time to abandon COVID deception and delays as transparent and timely information saves lives, he said. Full cooperation with the international community is not an option. It's a public health imperative. Will Beijing step up?  China's, and this is, uh, the ambassador that actually tweeted that, so.  There's the exact tweet. Um, NBC News says that it witnessed long lines and crowded waiting rooms at Beijing's Children's Hospital. And this is, again, when you see the word children, right? Why would something be specifically affecting children?  Children generally have much better immune systems than you and I. Uh, or even older individuals, right? The reason for that is, well, they're young, they're healthy, their antibodies are much more aggressive in dealing with these things. Their hearts are healthier than ours, their lungs are healthier than ours. Um, Lots of reasons, but  says the who said in the statement that today who held a teleconference with Chinese health authorities in which they provided requested data on respiratory illnesses among children in northern China.  The data indicates an increase in outpatient consultations and hospital admissions of children due to Mycoplasma  pneumonia since May and RSV adenovirus and influenza virus since October.  You mean we're going into  December and we have a rise in flu cases.  What will we do? It's almost like this has happened every year since humanities existed.  Um, the who continued some of these increases are earlier in the season that historically experienced, but not an unexpected given the lifting of COVID 19 restrictions as similarly experienced in other countries. Yeah. Okay.  They've already cried wolf and like, nobody will literally believe them. If there was a flesh eating zombie disease at this point.  I think you would still have a large portion of the country in complete disbelief, right? The boy, let's go back to the boy who cried wolf, right? Or the government who cried pandemic is probably a more accurate one.  It goes on to say  the COVID 19 pandemic was marked by lying and deception from communist China about the origins of the coronavirus as well as attempts to cover it up.  The World Health Organization was also accused of not being forthcoming with what it knew about the coronavirus and of trying to cover for China.  Yes, we know. All of this. All right.  Cool. So there's your article on  that. So to me, you know, they, they've come out now and said that this is not a novel virus, that it's not something that they have not seen before. Um, so they, they, they've said, you know, it's, it's nothing to be concerned of, uh, until, you know, it's not like last time. Right? Until it is something to be concerned about. Um, But, I guess, Time will tell, And we'll have to wait and see if that's the case. And, Uh, When it is, Make sure you just, Buy enough toilet paper, I guess.  Or a bidet. Cause, Bidets are awesome. And, You get to limit your toilet paper use.  I never went on a bidet rant here. But I could. Bidets are amazing.  If you've never used one, High, Highly recommend.  All right, the very  next article that we're going to discuss here is going to be  one of our last ones, which is about open AI. So we talked about this  last week, there was this whole wild escapade, this whole story, this crazy situation happened, where the Altman for not being completely candid in their letter, um, and then said that even if open AI went under. That it would be  aligned with OpenAI's mission that OpenAI went under. Now, I mentioned that last time in reading that. Um, we can go back and listen to that if you want to. But, um, I mentioned that. That that wording was weird to me. That if OpenAI went under, they said that it would be aligned with OpenAI's mission.  And OpenAI's mission is for safe and aligned AGI, right? And if you don't understand AI much or what AGI is, we'll talk about it.  Um, but AGI is artificial general intelligence, meaning that something that is basically sentient and conscious, right? We don't believe today that the AI that we have is considered AGI.  Right, it's AI, but general intelligence, meaning that it  essentially has its own consciousness, that it can think for itself, that it's not just an input and output of, of a, A,  Bs, or X, Ys, or, you know, whatever,  the matrix essentially, right? So it's not binary coding that's deciding its next output, it actually can actively think and Um, you know, have conversations in a way where it has its own emotions and, and things like that. Right. So that's what AGI is. And that's what terrifies people is once we get to that point where it can start to detach itself from the infrastructure that we have, and it's sentient in and of itself, that it could escape the small black box that it's within metaphorically and take over the world and eliminate all of humanity. And  maybe  that's why the board was trying to kick out Sam Altman, because he wasn't candid about this program that is called QSTAR,  which is a  allegedly, uh, true AI potential path towards AGI that Sam Altman didn't discuss. Um, so this article says, and we'll, let's give this a better introduction, is the fact that Sam Altman getting fired could have been the best thing for humanity.  If Q star, which is potentially the  black secretive program within open AI that could lead to AGI, or maybe already is AGI  or sentient, a sentient, uh, a life form of AI  very well could mean the end of humanity to very many people that project these things, you know, almost even I think Sam Altman there, or even the Twitch CEO that was put into position said, yeah, it's a 50, 50 shot. If we reach AGI, whether or not. Completely kills off all of humanity and a lot of people think to agree with that. I think Elon Musk said the same thing. It's about 50, 50, right? So, so when we're talking about Sam Altman, not being candid with the board and the board saying that if open AI goes under, it might be aligned with our mission to begin with.  And then we find out about Q star and Elon Musk, funnily enough, posted something that said Q star Anon, right? And then. Posted this article, um, not the one that we're looking at, but one about the similar topic, but this says from Forbes about that mysterious AI breakthrough known as Q star by open AI that allegedly attains true AI or is on the path towards. artificial general intelligence. It says in today's column, I'm going to walk you through a prominent AI mystery that has caused quite the stir leading to an incessant buzz across much of social media and garnering outside headlines in the mass media. This is going to shock, or this is, this is going to be quite a Sherlock Holmes adventure and a sleuth of detective exemplifying journey that I will be taking you on. Now let's close the, let's close the loop here. Um,  In the fact that Sam Altman was reinstated an hour after my podcast at two in the morning as the CEO and they fired the complete board after 757 people signed that letter saying they were going to move over to Microsoft to the 777 employees  gave in  fired the entire board and rehired Sam Altman.  Wild story, definitely going to be a Netflix documentary in like the next two years, um, if we make it that long after QSTAR. Uh, but this says, please put on your thinking cap and get yourself a soothing glass of wine. I wish I had one. The roots of the circumstance involving the recent organizational gyrations. In notable business crises, drama associated with the AI maker OpenAI, including the off and on again firing and rehiring of CEO Sam Ullman, along with a plethora of related carry ons, my focus will not particularly be on the comings and goings of the parties involved. I insist, or I instead seek to leverage those reported facts primarily as telltale clues associated with the AI mystery that some believe sits at the core of the organizational earthquake. We shall start to do it. Uh, we shall start with the vaunted goal of arriving at the topmost AI.  The background of the AI mystery. Let's see how long this is. Holy shit. This is a long article.  Wow. They did do some detective work. Oh man. Um,  wow. So go to Forbes yourself and read through some of this. Uh,  cause yeah, it's, it, this is a extremely thorough write up on this. Um, the title of the article is the one that I gave you earlier. Which is, um, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through all of this tonight with you, but... Or this morning, depending on when you're listening to this, uh, about that mysterious AI breakthrough, look that up on Google with Forbes, and you'll you'll find this article and you can go through the full thing, but I'll see if I can skim it effectively with you.  Uh, it says the background of the AI mystery. So here's the deal. Some suggest that open AI has handed up or landed upon a new approach to AI that either has attained true AI, which is nowadays said to be artificial general intelligence, or that demonstrably resides on, or at least shows the path towards AGI as a fast background for you. Today's AI is, is considered not yet a, the realm. Of being on par with human intelligence. The aspirational goal for much of the AI field is to arrive at something that fully exhibits human intelligence, which would broadly then be considered an AGI or possibly going even further in a super intelligence,  nobody has yet been able to find out and report specifically out. Um, on what this mysterious AI breakthrough consists of, the situation could be like one of those circumstances where the actual occurrence is a far cry from the rumors that have been reverberated in the media. Maybe the reality is something of a modest AI advancement was discovered, but it doesn't deserve the hoopla that was ensued. Right now, the rumor mill is filled with tall tales that this is the real deal, and supposedly will open the door to reaching AGI.  Time will tell. Uh, on the matter of whether the AI has already achieved AGI per se, let's, uh, noodle on the prostulation. Let's not, because I already kind of clued you into that. It's not AGI already. At least, at least not what we have access to. Um, it has a hard enough time on some of the things, and it's probably from my use, and I use it basically daily in my, uh, career,  uh, company. Um,  It's, it seems to me like it's almost gotten worse over the last few months or so, but  anyways,  uh, you see, this is the way that those ad ho hunches frequently go, you think that you've landed on the right trail, but you are actually once again back at the woods,  or you are on the correct trail, but at the top of the mountain is still miles upon miles in the distance, right? So basically, it's just saying, we don't know what AGI could even look like, right? We have no idea whether what we're looking at is just a highly advanced football Uh, you know, Texas Instruments calculator that is just compiling all the information and spitting out, uh, based on connections of data and quick reading of, of information  or whether it's actually having some sort of, uh, development, uh, thought processes that are outside of, um, you know, normal variables. So so now that you know the overarching context of the AR mystery, let's see if we want to read any of this here.  Potentially or inadvertently is getting this to the immediate doorstep of AGI.  So, so yeah, the idea is that it seems like it's pretty far away. Now that you know the overarching context of the AI mystery, we're ready to dive into the hints or clues so far that have been reported on the matter.  Let's skip the caveats. Um, I'm going to draw upon these relatively unsubstantiated foremost three clues.  Uh, the name of the AI has been Ben said to be supposedly q star, the AI has supposedly been able to solve grade school level math problems quite well. And the AI has possibly leveraged an AI technique known as test time computations.  Interesting, which should be interesting because Chachi Bouti, as we know it today, has far more capabilities than solving grade school level math problems, but it's not the idea that it's doing it in the way that a calculator would do it when it comes to AGI. Right, it would be that it's thinking and learning those things on its own.  Uh, you can find lots of rampant speculations out, uh, online that uses only the first of those above clues, namely, uh, the name. Q Star. Some believe that the mystery can be unraveled on that one clue alone. They might not know about the other two above clues, or they might not believe that the other two clues are pertinent. The first clue is allegedly the name of the AI. So let's walk through these. It says it has been reported widely that the AI maker has allegedly opted to name the AI software as being referred to by the... Uh, notation of a capital letter Q that is followed by an asterisk.  The name or notation is this Q star. Believe it or not by this claim alone, you can get into a far reaching abyss of speculation about what the AI is. I will gladly do so. I suppose it is somewhat akin to the words Rosebud and the famous classic citizen Kane. I won't spoil the movie for you of the emphasize that the entire film is about trying to make sense of the seemingly innocuous word of Rosebud. If you have time to do so, I highly recommend watching the movie since it is considered one of the best time. Uh, films of all time, there isn't any AI in it. So realize you would be watching the movie for it's incredible plots, blended acting. Okay. Um, back to our mystery at hand. What can we divine from the Q star name?  That's a good question. I'm glad you asked, but my iPad froze. So. Again, give me one second. And this is like some horseshit because I have a very nice setup here and For some reason just this last like week or two I've never run into this issue and it's uh,  just being finicky with me for some reason  all right, so  Let's do this. Let's do that. So so yeah, so to me it's like  This seems like the most likely reason that OpenAI went through everything that it did. It seems by far from the clues that I read and I basically called it out just from the letter, right? You, you go back and listen to that episode. That's what I said is why would they say that it would be aligned? Well, it would only be aligned if they believed that the way that Sam Altman was Being non candid to them would lead to unaligned AGI, right? Which, which means essentially they're concerned about the direction the company is going because you have to understand, too, that the board of OpenAI is not a for profit board. Um, they're, I believe that all of the board members, like, essentially don't have any stake in the game financially when it comes to OpenAI,  and they're literally just there to, like, oversee the operations to make sure that it's aligned with its mission. Um. So this says, what can we divine from the q star name? Those of you that are fairly familiar with everyday mathematical equations are likely to realize the asterisk is typically said to represent a so called star symbol, thus the seemingly q asterisk name would be conventionally be pronounced aloud as q star. Okay, who cares? Um, overall, the use of the specification of the letter q innately coupled with the star present, um, representation does not notably denote anything already popularized.  Um, I am saying that the q star doesn't jump out as, Meaning this in particular,  so let's see what it does say for us,    It says the capital letter Q does have significance in the AI field. Furthermore, the use of an asterisk as a star does have significance in the mathematics and computer science arena. Hmm, so he's going to talk about those, which is that one of the most historically well known uses of the asterisk is potentially similar to  context was used in the mathematician Stephen Kleen when he defined something known as V star.  You might cleverly observe that this notation consists of the capital letter V is followed by the asterisk. Wow. Thank you so much.  In his letter in 1950s, he described that, uh, suppose you had a set of items that were named by the letter of V. And then you decided to make a different set that consists of various combinations associated with it that are in the set, in the set V. This now, uh, new set would. By definition contain all the elements of set V so basically saying that there's subsets of that V variation, right, that all house within V. But with V star, it's saying that it could be V, A, V, A, B, V, A, B, A, B, V, A. So it's just saying that it could an unlimited amount of combinations within the subset of the primary V. So You are said to be maximizing the letter to the nth degree,  right? Um, okay. Makes sense. The use of the asterisks or stars in the case of a capital a, you're going to love the next bit of detective work. I brought you up to speed about the, okay, come on, dude, get to the point. As an aside,  the, the classic paper was formulated a star and is entitled heuristic determination of minimum cost paths. Okay.  Imagine a set of cities with roads connecting certain parts of them. Suppose we desire a technique for discovering a sequence of cities on the shortest route from a specific start to a specific goal city. Our algorithm prescribed, uh, prescribes how to use special knowledge. The knowledge that the shortest route between any pair of cities cannot be less than the airline distance between them in order to reduce the total number of cities that need to be considered.   So I'll give you the TLDR of some of this, and when it's talking about Q star, what it's referencing is that the letter Q within AI or encoding is traditionally discussing the idea of reinforced learning, right? Reinforced learning being that, um, and traditionally when you're doing something like AI, it's reinforced learning through human feedback or RLHF.  And what that means is essentially you're giving it feedback every single time it gives an output.  A thumbs up or a thumbs down, right? When you answer this, it's good. When you answer this, it's bad. And now it takes that information and it learns off of it and enforces better. outputs,  right? Just as if a dog is doing a trick, um, and you want to teach it to roll over when it starts to make the movement, you give it a treat. And then the next time it goes a little bit further, you give it a treat. And eventually it's doing it on command to the word that you say before you made it do the rollover, um, through reinforced learning, right? Lean forced, just give it a treat. Um, now the star being, which we got into a little bit,  but the star being the idea that it's the infinite possibility behind what is that.  Initial framework, right? In this case, the infinite, right? If you use something, let's use the dog example. Again, you, you think of the word dog and you put an asterisk or behind it in the world of coding, that would mean dog could now be dogmatic. It could be doggy. It could be. Doggy style. I couldn't leave that one alone. Um, but the idea is that reinforced learning and the star being the exponential possibility behind that. And so what the idea is that the asterisk might suggest, is what this says, that this is the highest or most far out capability of Q learning. Reinforce learning that anybody has ever seen or envisioned.  This would simply imply that the use of reinforcement learning as an AI approach and that the model free and off policy can leap tall buildings  and go faster than a speeding train, metaphorically, to be able to push. AI closer to being AGI. If you place this into the context of general generative AI, such as ChatGBT or OpenAI of OpenAI, perhaps those generative AI apps could be much more fluent and seem to convey reasoning if they had this Q star included in them,  or GBT 5, essentially.  Right?  Um, And that could give a huge edge over the competition is what it says. It says, take a moment to deliberate on the razor sharp question. Should AI companies be required to disclose their AI breakthroughs? If they do so, would this inadvertently allow evildoers to use those breakthroughs for evil purposes? Is it fair for a company that spent, that spent its resources to devise AI breakthrough that cannot profit from it and must Just handed over to the public at large, who should own and control AI breakthroughs that get us to the realm of AGI. And do we need newer, additional AI related laws that will serve to regulate and govern what is happening in AI?  Um, now in that theme, I'm on the boat that where there should be some framework of, of, uh,  Oversight and governing bodies by individuals who actually know what they're talking about because this is a highly scary, terrifying industry, um, if it goes to the nth degree, right? If AGI occurs and it's not aligned with humanity and it identifies humanity as a threat to, I don't know, the world or,  uh, you know, doesn't weigh our lives over that of the animals that we slaughter on a daily basis. Um, lots of reasons that it could think that we're bad because, you know, some of us are.  Uh. Very interesting questions, but I do think that there should be some, you know, we could dive deep into that, but I absolutely believe that. Um, it says... Uh, now this talks about the solving of grade school level math,  um, don't want to get too far into that. That one's interesting to me because it just doesn't make sense why that would be such a huge deal. Uh, but I guess, um, no direct calculations or formulas were involved. You might suggest that this is a monkey see monkey do kind of answer by the generative AI. The similarity between the two math problems greatly overlapped in terms of its wording just to add the wording. Hmm.  Wow. This guy uses the word noodle.  Let's see if he gives a Okay. So let's  see. So it says, whenever they say this, the database converse will decry things that will go backwards in the older and disdained ways of rules. Okay. Anyways, there's the idea. The Q star situation is one that could mean that.  Sam Altman was hiding this from the board. Sam Altman was putting the humanity into jeopardy, and all these 770  or 57 employees could now have been the reason that the Terminator happens, and Arnold Schwarzenegger comes here from the future, and we all potentially die.  Or maybe not, and they were just dicks, and didn't know what they were doing, and let down all their investors. Um, but, I guess. We'll never  know,  but that's what I got for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it from the bottom of your heart. If you want to go read that article, I gave you the name of it earlier. It's from Forbes. Um, really interesting read. I'll, I'll read the whole thing at some point, but just don't want to, it's, it's a very long article. So you're better off reading it on your own time than sitting here and me talk about it, but an interesting thing. Nonetheless, I absolutely am.  Very as confident as I could be that I believe that that's what happened is that Sam Altman was not being forthcoming now What I think is an interesting theory about this  That I noted is that Sam Altman was on Joe Rogan and on Lex Friedman Not two weeks before this huge publicity happened and what are the odds of that  a question to ponder?  Probably not very high.  Do with that information what you will. But I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for listening from the bottom of my heart. You are awesome. I hope you have a wonderful day and see you next time. Thank you.     

Brokenomics is a word that describes the mess the world is currently in. Who better to discuss our present economic malaise than the presenter of LotusEaters Brokenomics, Dan Tubb. His background in the city gives him the understanding to unpack this issue. With the US hitting their debt ceiling (which is now over $30tn) as they do each year and most economies around the world running larger and larger deficits, Dan joins us to discuss how we got into this mess in the first place. Governments solution of simply printing more money seems to be be accelerating this global tailspin which the world economy is now in. Is there a way out of this mess and how would any solutions impact the general population. Tune in for Dan's expert analysis. Dan Tubb spent 20 years as a Venture Capitalist & Asset Manager in the City before retiring in 2020 just in time to watch the world go completely mad. He was so enraged he started appearing on podcasts & radio to discuss western governments reckless actions including their economic self-destruction. Dan then joined LotusEaters as podcast host and for his own series Brokonomics which separates economic facts from the torrent of mainstream BS. Follow Dan on... TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Kingbingo_?s=20 LOTUSEATERS: https://lotuseaters.com/ US DEBT CLOCK: https://www.usdebtclock.org/ Interview recorded 11.5.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share! Transcript (Hearts of Oak) Hello Hearts of Oak and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Dan Tubb. Many of you will know him from Lotuseaters, he's been with them the last six months and does Broken Economics up to the 20th and I'd advise, recommend you all to go on that and watch those, it gives you great understanding. And this is not a topic we've touched on before and I realised it was essential that we do and Dan's experience in the city makes him perfect to unpack the economic mess that we are currently in. So we start looking at debt, we look at the discussions at the moment in the US on the debt ceiling, 31 trillion, and it's not just the US's problem, it's worldwide. So he takes us around some other countries, discusses how we got into this problem, the different understanding and views I think on debt and money management across different generations and then he talks about solutions which could and maybe should be on the table to get us out of this. None of them palatable, none of them really appealing in a democratic system to voters but he talks about nonetheless what could be done to get us out and then we finish just on what he does to look after himself and take a path through the current mess. So taking responsibility and some things you can do personally for that. So a lot packed in. I know you will love listening to Dan as he looks at the mess we're in and also ends up with some of those possible solutions. And today it is wonderful to have a regular on Lotuseaters podcast and host of Brokenomics on Lotuseaters, which is a word which describes a lot of what we face today. And that is Dan Tubb. Dan, thank you for your time today. (Dan Tubb) Oh, no, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Not at all. I really enjoyed watching. I think you're up to, what, 20, I think, on Brokenomics universal basic income, I think was the last one. Yeah, it's been a good series. I wanted a platform to talk about some of this stuff. And I've been working with Lotuseaters about six months now. And yeah, it's a wonderful professional set up and really enjoyed working with those guys. Carl's done a phenomenal job over the last three years. I've been there a lot. But your background, you obviously spent 20 years venture capitalist in the city before hanging that up and then venturing into the world of media, of interviews and podcasts. And I get that gives you, that background gives you a, right and understanding talk about economics. Yeah, it wasn't intentional. I basically meant to sort of step back more broadly and just sort of do the, you know, the odd thing here and there. But then, of course, that was in 2019. And then, of course, we hit the pandemic in 2020, and I was just so outraged by this that I could not stay silent. And, of course, back in the early days there were only a few of us who were speaking out against it. And I found that with my background, I was able to contribute something to the discussion, which perhaps some people were not bringing up, the more financial side of it. Although I talked about all of it, of course, it was also outrageous. And that then involved me in more and more interviews, radio, and of course, eventually to Lotuseaters, where I am now. Well, maybe just we'll start on where we are currently, and I'll let you unpack it. At the moment, I think the current US mess, although it's not just in the US, with the debt ceiling negotiations. And when I was looking back, I realized the debt ceiling was raised last by 2.5 trillion. That was a year and a half ago, to a total of just over 30 trillion. And obviously, they're negotiating with it. And I guess they'll have to add another couple of trillion onto that, which they do each year. How on earth did the world get into such a mess whenever we are told one thing and governments seem to do something completely different. Yeah, so I mean the debt, the 31 trillion, that's just the amount that they've already borrowed. They are committed to borrowing a significantly larger amount because the US has written into law that they will make certain expenditure on military, on social security, on medicaid, and if you add up all those, that debt that they are obligated to take on, you're well over 200 trillion at this point. It is an extremely, truly extraordinary amount of money. Now, the 31 trillion is significant by itself because that's also about the same size as the US economy. So if you can think of the economy being about 30 trillion and the debt being about 30 trillion, it makes the maths easy for this next bit. The issue is which of those is going to grow faster. So if the economy is growing at say about 2% and it's very difficult to measure these days because the magic money tree has been turned on. So trying to figure out what is real growth and what is not is harder. But let's say the economy is growing at 2%. Well, the debt is now growing at 4%. So you can see that the debt is going to get larger than the economy. What that means is that the US, well it's not just the US, it's basically most of the Western world, they're in a debt spiral. What it means is the debt is going to get larger and larger every year and the servicing of that debt, so the amount that you're paying out just to cover your debt costs is going to go up all of the time. So let's bring this back to the UK, for example. In the UK, the biggest expenditure at the moment is the NHS. But debt expenditure is very close behind now. And it won't be that much longer before basically just servicing the debt. And of course, you're not getting anything for that. That's just paying off the monthly interest cost. That's going to overtake the NHS soon. And then our biggest expenditure is going to be something that we are getting absolutely nothing for. So yeah, it's a complete mess, Peter. You put up on one of your Twitter posts, which I found mesmerizing, was a website, I'll bring it up, which is US Debt Clock. I find myself just being mesmerized by those figures going up. But that's one side, that is the US. And then, of course, you talked about the world. And that's what's happening across the world. So let's talk about that quickly while you've got it up. Go for it. People can look at that. They see the US at the top there. And the key thing is you want that third column. So the ratio of the debt to the economy. And it's about 100% across most Western countries, although you get some like Japan, which are at 300%. But like I was saying, that's only the official debt. If you go back to the previous one now, so you can see the page on before, yeah, you can see that the sort of total debt up there in the top left-hand corner, then it breaks it down per citizen, so a total debt of quarter of a million dollars per citizen, and then right down in the bottom right-hand corner is all that other stuff that I was talking about, so the Medicaid and the social security and all the other sort of obligated spending that they've got, you look at that and it's well over half a million per citizen that is the debt obligation they've got to pay. So, you know, basically this has to break. Shall I get into how we got into this? Because... Please do! Please do! So, as I start to get into this, I want to be, first of all, very clear that I'm not blaming anyone in particular, but I do have to talk about the generations. This is not to say that the, generation I'm going to talk about has done anything wrong, because I don't believe they they have, it's just that demographics are a key driver of this. Okay, so we start our story back in 1950s, basically, early 1960s. And the boomer generation came along and they were the largest generation the world has ever seen in proportional terms and also in absolute terms, they were also extremely large. Now, they entered a, well, they were a very large generation entering a very small world. And that had a couple of effects. One of the big effects was that they all started contributing to the economy. They started working, they started producing. They all went out and bought a house, a car, a new suit, all those things. And so the economy grew significantly over their time. They also wanted to be generous towards their elders, which is a very understandable thing. They wanted to take the existing provisions for pensions and welfare provisions that were available and the NHS, and they wanted to grow all of those. And it is very easy when you've got a large generation being generous to a smaller population, which is a smaller population above them, that's very easy to do. The problem is, is that now that large generation are on the receiving end of those benefits that were designed basically for a smaller population behind them. And that's why we've got to the point now, whereas if you take the top items of expenditure, which is basically the NHS and pensions, you can see this cost and, you know, it's already extremely significant, but that is starting to grow even more significantly. So that's one factor. And what it has led us to is basically the government, western governments, are now spending as if they are in a total war type situation, because governments have been in this situation before when they've been spending the type of levels that they've been spending now, but it's always been because they're in a total war situation. The thing with war, is that it ends eventually. When is the war on old age, on sickness and all of these other things, when is that ever going to end? It's not. So that's one factor. The other factor is that when the boomer generation came into the workforce, yes there was a lot of them so they grew the economy, but because there was a lot of them they were competing with each other for wages. So for the last 40 years, real wages have not increased. In fact, they never increased again after about the early 70s. So yes, wages went up every year. People are used to seeing their wages go up, but their wages have not gone up by more than the rate of inflation. But assets have. So things like, you know, houses is the obvious example. The supply of new units never kept up, so asset prices have gone up significantly. So even though wages have not gone up, all of the asset prices have. And what's been happening over the last 40 years, as real wages have not been increasing, is people have been taking on additional debt in order to get that growth in lifestyle, or the additional generations have been taking on debt. So you've got that massive expansion of also the private debt that comes along with it as well. And then you've got a couple of other significant factors as well. It wasn't just the boomer generation that were large and expanded. Then, of course, in the 1990s, we brought China and India into the global economy, and that significantly expanded it. We have increasingly, well, to the point where it is just absolute commonplace now, women have been brought into the workplace that perhaps they were, weren't in the earlier 70s or 60s. And now, of course, we've got the robots as well. So there's been that big expansion, of workers contributing. The millennial generation was also quite large. So those wages haven't grown, but asset prices have, debt has and government spending has. So we've now got ourselves into this completely unviable situation where, say the UK, the UK is spending about £1.30 for every £1 it raises in taxes. Then you start to think about, okay, how are we going to get out of this? And that's when you start to discover that actually none of the options for getting out of this work either. Well, can I, because when you look back, you think of those in charge across the world who are causing these financial issues, the government's in charge there, baby boomers or Gen X, and they lived in a time, just on the edge of Gen X, but lived in a time where you had to use your money wisely. You had to save. You shouldn't have a high debt. So they grew up with that understanding of looking at money in a careful manner of balancing your expenditure and your income. And yet they're the ones who have tried to change the rules, even though they know better. And when I look at it politically, that kind of intrigues me and confuses me. Yeah, so if you're looking at generational patterns, it was really the generation above that. It was the silent generation, the greatest generation who had that high saving ethos. And they would have passed it on to a number of their children in the boomer generation. But actually the experience of the boomer generation has been that debt is a good thing. You've always wanted to take out debt over your lifetime. If you, in the 1970s, took out the biggest mortgage you possibly could and bought the biggest house you possibly could and then deferred the payment of that loan for as long as you could, you have done very well. Because what's been happening is the value of that debt has been shrinking. Because of course, what governments have been needing to do and central banks have been needing to do is, because the sums don't add up, part of the solution has been to effectively print money. To lower interest rates. Now, lowering interest rates is a significant factor on this. Again, for the last 40 years, interest rates have dwindled down. So, I don't know if anybody's going to remember this, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. There's this charming little advert from late 80s, something like that. And it was this Arthur Daly character, and he's doing the hustle. He's getting out there. I think he's trying to sell barbecues off the back of a lorry or something like that. And in the end, he realizes it's easier just to go to the Halifax and put it in the liquid gold account and get 9.8% on his money. Now we look at that today and think, wow, 9.8%. But you could get that by walking into a bank. And what you've noticed is over the last 40 years is the interest rates have just got lower and lower and lower and lower. So what does that do? Well, what it means is that if you have used debt over your lifetime, and the boomer generations were perfectly set to benefit from this, given the time period that we talked about, if you had a large debt, you could always roll that debt over the following year at a low interest rate than you did before. You add on top of that, the expansion of the money supply and the people who have done the best out of the boomer generations are the ones who have basically abused debt. So naturally, you know, the people who tend to end up in charge are the people who've performed very well in the system and their entire life experience has been, you don't need to worry about debt, debt is a good thing. Let's use this. And then of course you've got the political angle of this as well. It's very difficult to get elected without promising people more. And of course the voters they've gone along with this as well even if they think that they haven't. You know if you go back to say the 80s and you were voting for Reagan or Thatcher thinking that you were voting for the small state option? Well maybe you were voting for the small state option comparatively, but actually both of those politicians grew the size of the state significantly as well. So the state has expanded, the money supply has expanded, when that money has been created it's been done at the nexus between government and central banks and the finance system, so the finance system has got ever larger. And the real value of your money has shrunk significantly every year. So that's why if you wanted to hold the value of any of your excess earnings, you wanted to put it into stocks, you wanted to put it into property. The worst thing you could have done is in 1975, you've done very well and you've saved up a thousand pounds and kept it in cash under the mattress. That would have been an absolute disaster because the real value of that today compared to what it would have been in the 1970s is ridiculous. So we have a system which has for many years rewarded debt creation, additional government spending, additional all, you know, expenditure and debt on all things, in politics, in business and finance. And we've now flipped recently, where that is no longer the economic model, it no longer works. And that's why we're coming into this crisis period. I, before going to some of the possible ways out of it, I watched a, I don't know if you had it on your Twitter, someone else, an interview Jeff Bezos did, founder of Amazon, and he was getting interviewed and they were talking about how Amazon didn't make any money, famously, didn't make any money until quite recently and Jeff Bezos thought well this was the norm this was this was a bit funny and that's how businesses work that you didn't have to make money for 20 odd years you could just keep putting it back and that understanding is completely alien to previous generations where you made sure you made a profit and you set that over you had a buffer zone now it's just actually you can spend way past your limit because know you can borrow from somewhere and the idea you're talking about in government I guess in countries is the same we see in business. Yeah so certainly with say the government side of that, it has always been the case that you can go and win election by making promises. Spending basically spending more than you take in on the revenue side on the taxation side and if you didn't do this it was it was kind of a foolish move not to do that because you wouldn't have got elected. And in fact I can't even think of a historical example of somebody who went out and offered to spend within their means and then ended up getting elected. It doesn't work for that. But the thing is it wasn't even a problem because that debt that you added on, because the interest rates were coming down over that last 40 years, the cost of servicing that debt got lower. But also because you were printing so much money over this time period, the real value of that debt also fell. You know, my parents, they bought a house in, I don't know when it was, early 80s maybe, and they took out a mortgage of 30 grand. And actually, the way they did it, they did it right, is they did an interest-only mortgage and they didn't pay it off until the end of the term. But 30 grand in the early 80s was quite a lot of money. And, you know, whenever they came around to paying it off, you know, 2000s or something, because I think they extended it or something, I think the real value of that was significantly decreased. So this has been the experience. But now we've got a situation where global debt is about 400% of GDP. Just the official debt is 100% of GDP for countries like the UK and the US. And the problem is there isn't really a way out of it. And people think, well, there must be a way out of it. And people always give certain solutions that they feel must work. So so let's talk about those. You know, the first one is and this is the one that actually nobody talks about in any official capacity. But you sometimes hear this is a version of the guy in the pub might say this is OK, you just write it off. Well, there's a problem for that in the flip side of this debt is that it's somebody else's asset. So you wipe out all of this debt and you've wiped out pensions. Wiped out the basis of the financial system because that is all their collateral. All the banks, their collateral is this debt that they're holding. And you might think, okay, well, this financial system deserves to be wiped out and I'd agree with that. The problem is if you haven't got something to replace it with and you knock out the financial system, the farmer no longer has an incentive to supply food to the wholesalers, the wholesalers no longer have an incentive to supply the shops, you won't be able to buy energy, the whole thing stops and it would be a horrendous mess if we were to get into that without having something set up on the other side. And the people running this system have no incentive to explore alternatives because they are doing extremely well out of this system. So any alternative system is not even being given any time. This is the reason why so many of us are starting to like Bitcoin, because it could offer that alternative. If you want to, later, I'll come into why I say Bitcoin as opposed to gold. Yeah, we'll end off on that, look at other options. But when you talk about wiping it out by defaulting, which maybe most people will know that from Argentina crisis, whatever that was, 10, 12 years ago, and what happened there. And that was me the first time in many of our lifetimes that a second world country, I guess, had defaulted. It was normally basket case economies. But what does, because on, I watched the interview that Trump did on CNN, and a lot of it's bravado, but he was asked about the debt ceiling, and he said, well, we just default. It might be bad for a little bit, we'll just default. And that's playing to his base, and that's bravado, and I get all that. But it was interesting that he said, well, either we do it now or we do it later. Who cares? We may as well do it now. What are your thoughts on that? It's difficult to know precisely how it would play out. If it was just that you stopped, if you didn't wipe out the debt, but you stopped paying the interest on top of it, which is more to Trump's comments, it's more the Argentinian situation. But Argentina have got in a different position because whenever the Argentinian financial system collapses, which it does on a semi-regular basis, you know, they know what to do. They go to their top drawer, they pull out their dollars, and they get on with life. It's like, oh, okay, it's collapsed again, let's go and grab the dollars, and they just use dollars for a while. Because what's been happening is whenever they've defaulted, it's been, you know, they have been an island of chaos in a basically a global sea of stability. If the Western financial system collapses, it flips the other way. Now it's gonna be pockets of stability because there are a few countries that have, you know, low debt levels, viable currencies, but not many of them. And it's gonna be most of the world that's going to be in this sort of chaos situation. You know, if the dollar defaults, they're not going to go to the top draw and pull out their Argentinian pesos and start using those. They could attempt to use gold and in time, perhaps Bitcoin will be ready for that. But the but the financial rails to make that work aren't there. So default, that's that's why people never talk about it, especially the people in power, because they don't want to, because the system is set up very well for them. And actually, your audience might think that they want that, but you wouldn't want to be living through that transition when there isn't an alternative already set up ready to go. So that's default. Yes, as much as I would like to burn to the ground, I get that. They also do say that, what, if I owe you 100 pounds, that's my problem, but if I owe you a million, then that's your problem. And obviously, if the US did not pay, that would cause chaos. But obviously, the institutions that have lent money and keep lending money, then they're the ones that suffer. but I guess that has a ripple effect throughout the whole world. Yeah, I mean, it would, once you got to the other side of it, and I don't know how messy it would be and how disruptive and how damaging it would be, but once you got to the other side of it, it'd be very good for younger people who are supplying their labour, people who are productive in the here and now, but people who have been putting away their excess production for many years, thinking that they've got assets that they can get a yield from later in life, those white guys would end up getting wiped out so you can see why the boomer generation doesn't want it. You can also see why the millennial generation doesn't want it, because they're going to have mum and dad and great-uncle Peter and everybody else coming to live with them. It would be very much a sort of, you know, the sort of Southeast Asian type family situations, getting back to that. And actually, nobody should want it unless you've got something set up on the other side. So default is very difficult to do. Of course, they are doing a slow default, which is they are devaluing the money. So if you own a whole load of government bonds, you're finding that actually the real value of those is shrinking all the time. People sort of know that, but because it's like 5% or 10% a year, they would rather lose 5% where they know they're going to lose 5% rather than potentially getting wiped out on alternative. Well, that's defaulting, walking away from your debt and not paying it. What are your other thoughts that may be on the table as possible ways out or things that governments could consider? Yeah. So the next one that a lot of people go to, predominantly people on the left, is, okay, let's just tax the rich more. If only there was enough of them. There isn't. And I've done the sums on this, and to make it real, to make it tangible, I just said, okay, let's take the Times rich list. So the Times produce an annual thousand rich list, and they go into lots of detail on the on the top 250, and I said, let's just take all of it from them. And let's say you did that. You wiped out the top. Now, bear in mind, I don't think you'd actually be able to do it, because very rich people are not keeping all of their money in the local bank account where you can just turn up and say to the bank manager, hand it over. It's widely spread all over the world, and they design it in such a way that it is very difficult to do this. But assuming you could just take all of the money the Times Rich List, you'd be able to run the government for about seven months. It's not actually that much money. And that's assuming that you could get all of it. So if you wanted to try, because the debt is just so large, the governmental debt is so large at this point. So you would end up having to go down to people who you would imagine who don't think of themselves as rich. So basically you, me, everybody else watching this as well, it would be full confiscation of assets all the way down the chain in order to try and pay off this level of debt. So nice idea, but it doesn't work. Plus, of course, as soon as you've done it, you basically wiped out the profit incentive for everybody everywhere, because they know as soon as they generate something, it's going to be taken from them. So you're sort of in a Soviet system. So nice idea, lefties, but it's just not viable when you look at the maths, when you look at the amount of rich people there. Plus, of course, let's say you were a politician who started advocating that. You wouldn't get anywhere near the seat of power. You would be suicided into the sun before you got anywhere near that sort of level of power. So wealth confiscation doesn't work. Okay, let's turn to what the right prefer, which is cutting spending. Okay, let's say you wanted in the UK context, cause I know the numbers better there. Let's say you wanted to clear out this debt over the next 20 years. So a reasonable pace, but you're not gonna go too fast. You're just going to flip it from a deficit every year to a surplus that's sufficient to pay this off over 20 years. What does that look like? You would have to cut all government spending by, I think it's about 37%. But remember that I said before that debt interest is a large element of that. You're not getting anything for that. And actually, if you look at the budgets of the NHS, of pensions, of schools, and all the rest of it, A lot of that is non-cash items depreciation and so on. So actually what we're talking about is a 50% reduction to all government spending, and all of it, not just not one, not the top elements, all of it. So that would mean cutting the NHS in half, cutting the school system in half, pensions in half, military in half, all of it in half. Now, bear in mind that in my lifetime, I have never seen a government get elected that did not go into an election promising a real terms increase in the NHS, what are the prospects of somebody getting themselves elected saying, oh yeah, I'm going to cut the NHS in half and schools and everything else? So even though cutting the spending is actually probably the right solution, it's not going to happen until the government is absolutely forced to do it and the nation is forced to do it. So that doesn't get you there either. So we've knocked out three options. The next option is, okay, well, let's grow the economy then. And this is where I think Liz Truss had it right. It didn't help that she was as smart as a chocolate bar. If she had a little bit more brains and was a little bit more political savvy, you know, maybe she could have made a lot more progress. But her instincts were basically right. Even though her budget didn't actually do that because her budget was increasing spending because she didn't talk about the cuts on the other side. But let's stick with the theme of we're going to grow our way out of this. Okay, we've got a problem. I talked earlier about the growth in the debt. So the debt is growing about 4% or 5% a year at the moment. So if you want to grow yourself out of the situation, it's easy. You just need to grow the economy larger than about 4% or 5% a year. In fact, you sort of want it up at sort of 6%, 7%, 8%. The UK manages normally about 1.5% to 2%. So the level of growth required is well beyond the level that we are capable of. And add on to that, that the growth that we have achieved in our best years before have not been the level of taxation that we need in order to continue to pay out on NHS and pensions and Social Security and all those other big ticket items that we've got. So taxes are higher, taxes keep getting higher and taxes are gonna continue to get a lot higher. In addition to that, regulation, that's gonna be a big factor as well. Politicians, they don't like to sit still, they like to regulate, they like to make additional rules, which in their minds will add consumer protections. but what it's really doing is it's giving jobs for a larger army of bureaucrats and it's slowing down that wealth creation process. Yes, it smooths out some fraud and bad actors on the way, but the bigger effect is it really clamps down on economic growth. So the level of growth that we would need to get out of this situation is nowhere near the level that we can actually do. I do have one proviso on that though. Maybe some of the technologies coming down the track could do that. And it's really early, I think, to say whether that will be the case, but we have got a technology revolution going on at the moment in things like AI and robotics. And, you know, possibly there's a couple of interesting scenarios that come out of that. You know, one is the machines take over and they get rid of us all. That could happen. The other one is that it unleashes a productivity boon that drastically increases the growth rate. So maybe it's possible, but that, it starts to feel a bit like fantasy thinking when I'm talking like that, because I'm sort of saying the only Hail Mary that gets us out of this is a potential future situation, which we can sort of imagine in our minds might come true. And maybe it does, but that seems to be the solution they're going for. They're just hoping that a productivity miracle comes along. And even though we can imagine it, it feels pretty risky to be putting all our eggs in that basket. But that's what we're doing. Well, at the moment where we are and where the whole economy, world economy, balanced on a knife edge and been hit by headwinds, just in these last 23 years with the crash in 2008 and then with Covid. Those are two massive hits. And of course, debt, the government can take on debt only because of the rates it borrows it at. So when interest rates are low, when the ability to borrow money, when money is cheap, then they can keep doing that. But you talked about parents buying a house in the 80s and whenever interest rates were 15 percent in the 80s, all it takes is a change in the economic circumstances. All it takes is a disaster somewhere. And then the whole thing tips over. Is that a kind of a fair assessment? Yeah. So, I did allude to this earlier, basically, the economic model has shifted. So for a long time. Well, basically forever until the early 2000s, the economic formula, and if I'm gonna really oversimplify it, I will boil it down to more. Okay, so you want more workers, you want more factories, you want more production lines, you want more shops. Let me give you a pertinent example of the precise inflection point that I'm talking about. Blockbuster videos. So the recipe for success for Blockbuster videos was open another store, get another line of VHS or DVDs, get another employee, more, more, more, more, more. And then what happened is technology changed that, the digitization of information. Because Netflix came along, and they reduced the marginal cost of distribution for a video down to zero. And all of a sudden, Blockbusters went from, What was it, maybe 3,000 stores, 80,000 employees, something like that. All of those stores went from being an asset to being a liability, because all of a sudden you didn't need that anymore. And that's what's been happening in the digitization process that started in, say early 2000s, and has been accelerating every year ever since. Where the economic model is no longer more, it's more for less, it's reducing the costs. And that's what digitization technology does for you. But we've built a financial system that works on more. So this system that I've been describing over the last 40 years or so, and I talk about this financial system and I'm saying it is fundamentally flawed, it would be very sensible for somebody in their 50s or 60s to turn around to me and say, well, look, it worked over my lifetime. I went out and I got a pay rise every year. I work for a company that did more every year. I took on more debt. So why shouldn't it work anymore? And it is because of that technological change is starting to push massive deflation. So what do I mean by massive deflation? Do you remember going to get photos developed? You buy a reel of film, put it in your camera, you take your shots, and you pay for for the reel of a film, you pay for the camera, you pay for the processing, you pay for the picture album that goes behind it. And these days, everybody just uses their phone. The cost of that thing is basically collapsed down to zero for taking pictures because it's just all bundled into your phone. That's gonna be true for apps on your phone. Like when was the last time you bought a calculator? Again, it's just on your phone. There are so many things now that we do not pay for anymore. And from the economic, if you're looking at it as an economist, it looks like the economy's getting smaller. Because nobody's paying for photos anymore. Nobody's buying calculators anymore. All of these things are disappearing from an economic model that was set up assuming that next year there will be a need for more of everything. And actually it's flipped the other way. It's all deflation these days. It's all about getting more for less. So you try and combine an economic system that must always have more and therefore can accommodate monetary expansion. So you can print money and you can basically get away with it under the old economic system. You can't get away with it under the new system. So what happens if you take the old economic model, which is more printing money, and you apply it to the new economy, which is digitization and deflation? But what happens is you get the inflation manifests in a cost of living reduction. So in a quality of living reduction, I should say, sorry. So that's why you're seeing your fuel bill shoot up as much as it is. You're seeing the costs of the shop going up significantly because that expansion of the money supply is manifesting itself as basically your wages shrinking, what you can buy with them. But the value of all those real things are just being re-nominated by the amount of currency units that are out there. So we got us into this situation where the only tools that policy makers are willing to consider, to allow themselves, it's more and more money printing. At the same time, we've got all these different... And you think what's going to happen next with AI and robotics? AI and robotics is already taking over so many things. You may not have noticed it personally, if you're living in in the West, but if you are a Filipino call centre worker, you've noticed the impact of AI already. And now with the advances that we've seen over the course of the last year, say the image creation, if you've seen some of the image creation that AI is capable of doing now, it looks like photos. And I'm hearing this all the time now from small businesses, like game studios, for example, they just don't need as many graphic designers as they do. ChatGPT is fascinating because, you know, there are iterations of that that are coming out. So for example, I dumped a fairly large set of data into it the other day and said, tell me the most interesting trends from this data. And within a few seconds, it did what would have taken me at least a day to pass out of that data. You've got the big accountancy firms, the big consultancy firms, looking at effectively freezing all new hires while they investigate how they can incorporate this. And this is before robotics really becomes a thing. So a lot of people are working on self-driving cars. And some people say, oh, no, it's never going to happen. But we used to say that about some of the AI stuff until recently. But actually, today, it is possible to get into a Tesla and to go from your home to your office without any interventions. Now you do need to be there ready because it's not that technology isn't quite ready yet. You need to be ready to take over but plenty of people do have journeys where they don't need to intervene at all from home to office. It does the entire journey. When that technology is reliable enough it's going to displace drivers. Does that matter? Well yeah because driver is the largest job category for unskilled males across the entire world. So you've got all of these massive deflationary trends coming while governments are panicking and thinking, what do we do? We haven't got enough money, we can't cut spending, because that would mean that we get kicked out of the next election, let's just hit the print button. So, people are going to have to get use to a lot of inflation and a lot of tax over the coming 10 years until something fundamentally breaks and we are forced to adopt a new system. Well, I want to ask you about the US or what your thoughts are, because obviously the US has been the engine of the world economy as a superpower. Now we're seeing their, I guess, dependence on other countries increase and less self-dependent, certainly as they've abandoned under Biden their energy policy. But then you've got the whole petrodollar with a lot of push for pricing commodities in non-US dollars. You got the BRICS push for currency, and then you've got the supply chain, I guess, in chaos. Where we are now, is it because of the US's fall from that position? Is it a failure of capitalism? Is it globalization failing? I mean, there are a lot of parts, but what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think I think it's all of those parts. But certainly the the current U.S. regime have have been dealt a set of cards that weren't that great and played them extraordinarily badly. And I am honestly impressed by by what Biden has managed to do over his time. I think if I was given the job of president and I was committed to destroying the U.S. In the shortest possible time period, I really doubt that I could have done a better job than what Joe Biden has done. So the first thing he's done is he made domestic energy far more expensive than it needs to be. You really don't want to mess with energy. Let's talk about an economy very quickly. What is an economy? It is energy and agriculture. And then on top of that, you build whatever goods and services that come on top. Now, goods and services, you can swap them around all day long. If you're producing washing machines and nobody wants to buy washing machines, you can pivot over to hair dryers. If you're doing services, if you're doing accountancy and nobody wants accountancy anymore, you can pivot over to haircuts. You know, whatever it is, that layer is malleable. Energy and agriculture are the foundation tier of an economy and we have a political class these days which is dedicated to, and for example, this is Joe Biden's stated policy, he wants to to make energy expensive. He actually says that. Energy is the whole reason why we're doing this, why your audience do whatever they do as opposed to subsistence farming. It's because we have energy. So it was ludicrous to declare a war on energy, but that is what politicians have decided to do. Now, I'm not necessarily against energy technology long term. Long term, the idea of having energy supplies which have a marginal cost of zero is very attractive. The problem is you could only make that transition at a speed that is naturally possible. I'll very quickly explain what I mean on that. For example, I talked about some of the big interesting technology trends that are coming at the moment. AI and robotics are one. Energy technology is another. 3D printing is another. Let's say that we just decided that we were going to artificially shut down all our factories and replace it with all 3D printing. It would be absurd. You can understand how absurd that would be. Now, long term, the possibilities of large-scale 3D printing is remarkable what it could do, but you have to make that transition at the rate that technology is ready. Whereas we picked another one, we picked energy, and we said we're going to make this transition far faster than the technology allows, before the mineral resources allow. The energy storage simply isn't there. If you did it at a natural pace, I wouldn't have a problem with it. If you've got a factory in southern Italy and you produce mainly during the day and you've got a large roof space, it's a simple return on investment calculation. You think, OK, well, what does it cost me to stick solar panels up there? And what does it knock off my energy bill? And it's there when I need it. Fine. I've got a problem with that. But trying to convert these economies at this sort of breakneck speed, that simply doesn't work. OK. So Biden intact energy, he also undermined the dollar. The dollar has been the global reserve since Bretton Woods, since basically the end of the Second World War. The thing with the war is America ended up with all of the gold, partly because people sent it over there for safekeeping and partly because there was still a functional economy. At the end of the war, they quite liked having all of this gold and they said, I tell you what, instead of giving the gold back, why don't we just make Dollars as good as gold, and you can use dollars instead. They managed that for about 20 years, and then they defaulted on it with Nixon when they broke the link between gold and dollars, but they kind of managed to do it in a way that worked, that people were still happy with the dollars. And they did that through the creation of what you just talked about there, which is a petrodollar. They were a large energy producer, and they went to an even larger energy producer, which is the Saudis, and said, we will give you security guarantees. Basically, we'll make sure that the House of Saud is never overthrown either domestically or by foreign powers, so we will give you military support. In return, you price everything in dollars. All your energy in dollars. And then the invitation to the rest of the world is, would you like to follow suit or would you like to be invaded? And a few of them chose to be invaded, and they got invaded, and their president ended up dying in a rather messy way on a handheld camera somewhere, and the rest of them went along with it. And then you get the Biden government that comes in and they escalate a conflict with Russia. And they did something that we didn't even do during the Second World War, which was seize their foreign reserves. We didn't even do that against the Germans in the Second World War, seize their foreign reserves, but they did it against Russia because they've decided they're going to use the dollar as a weapon. Now that seems very clever to the to the policy wonks in Washington but it sends a signal to the rest of the world and the signal is, what if one day I disagree with the US about something? What if I don't want to go along with whatever their current thing is? And so all of a sudden you've got well basically everybody who who isn't in the, you know who I mean, the, what they call the international community, which is basically Western Europe, the English speaking world, you know, Canada, New Zealand, you know, those countries, those countries that really, that take their political lead from the US. Everybody else is now thinking, we need to find a way off of this. You've got the Chinese agreeing a deal with the Saudis to buy oil in, was it Yuan? You've got India having the same conversations, you've got South American countries having the same conversation. Everybody's thinking, get me out of the dollar because I don't want it to be turned against me as a weapon at some future point. And if I'm entirely reliant on it, that's a real big problem. So he did that as well. Well, I mean, there's so many things with Biden. I mean, I could talk, I'll take up the rest of the time. So I don't wanna do that. But very quickly, I mentioned Afghanistan as well. That whole process that I described with the petrodollar, which is you will use dollars or you will get invaded, only works if there is a credible threat behind it. And when you've got people falling off planes while they're hastily basically getting chased out of Afghanistan by a bunch of guys in sandals, it sends the wrong message. So I won't take up any more time on Biden, But yeah, he has been spectacularly incompetent on every front. Oh, yeah. I just want to finish just for a few minutes, just to bring us in just the end. And I know what you do and what your thoughts are, actually, you look after yourself. That's a whole topping itself. But just to touch on for a few minutes, I know you've talked about gold, Bitcoin, property. Can we just finish off just why those are positives? Yeah, well basically because we have now got into a global financial system that can only keep itself running on fumes, it needs to print money. So what you want are assets that can't be printed, and there's a fairly short list of them. It's things like commodities, it's, well, certainly industrial commodities like metals and whatever else. There are agricultural commodities, but they tend to decay over time. And it's not practical to store. You're not going to put all your wealth into copper and have a whole bunch of it delivered to your house, are you, or wheat or whatever. So you tend to want to go for things like property, but property is super easy to tax. And we know that governments are going to be hyper-incentivized to tax everybody as much as they possibly can. Taxes are going to go way higher and property is an easy victim when it comes to that. So then it turns you to the monetary resources, which is going to be gold. Now I like gold, I hold gold. It's very difficult to run a financial system on gold these days. And the reason is because obviously you're not going to be handing over gold coins and silver coins to people when you pay them in the shop. So it is going to have to be a financial system which is based on gold, which means that somebody else somewhere is holding it for you. So the whole logic of gold leads you back to centralization. And typically, the way gold has been done when it's been used as a monetary asset before, is it basically all ends up getting stored in two places, New York and London. And that's because if you take it anywhere else, because gold is so easy to, say, gold bars, it's so easy to drill into them and put tungsten rods inside, that the moment you take it out of the most high trust environments, you basically then need to do an expensive reassay process on it to check where it is. So the whole logic of gold is centralisation, except it's not going to be New York and London that's holding it in the future because everybody's going to want to hold their own. The Chinese aren't going to want to hold theirs somewhere else, they're going to want hold their own. And then you have to trust everybody. So, I mean, if would you trust the Americans when they tell you how much gold they have, or the Chinese or the Russians or Brazil? You know, are you going to trust these places when they tell you how much? So, so gold, I love the idea and I think it's going to benefit and I hold it myself. But when you really get into the nuts and bolts of it, it cannot function in an economy like the one we've got today. And then you start to go down the rabbit hole on Bitcoin. And I was very sceptical at first, and I kept on looking at it, and I kept on realizing more and more that actually this could be the solution. Now, it doesn't mean it will be the solution, because governments are heavily incentivized not to use it, because there is no central control. There's no court office that you can send a cease and and assist notice too. It is a protocol. What do I mean by protocol? Very important distinction between a protocol and service. Email is a protocol. Twitter is a service. You can be booted off Twitter. You can't be booted off email because it's a protocol and you can set up your own server in your house if you want to. You can go to another property. It's very easy, but services are centralised and they can't be. So Bitcoin is now at about 300 million users, and it's growing twice as fast as the previous fastest technological big grow, which was the internet. So Bitcoin now has about as many users as the internet had in 1997. And over the next 10 years, the internet went on to revolutionize everything. And I think Bitcoin has the possibility of doing the same thing. So I don't know that it's going to be the solution. All I'm saying is that I am yet, and I have looked at this a very great deal, I'm yet to see a reason why it can't be the solution other than adoption, which governments will try and stop people. But how successful were the record companies in stopping kids from downloading albums online? Not in the slightest. If Bitcoin was gonna be killed, it should have been killed already. And it's still thriving. So how do you protect yourself? Have stuff that can't be printed. And I like property, I do like gold, but most of all, I probably like Bitcoin as a solution here. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Obviously, the viewers can find you on Brokenomics on Lotuseaters, which is probably one of the best reasons people should get a subscription to Lotus Eaters. But thank you so much for coming on. No, it's been an absolute pleasure, really enjoyed it. And we'll have you on again. A lot of those things to unpack at the end, We didn't get time, but it'll be great to have you on again to unpack some of those three commodities you ended with. Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

So Biden v Trump seems to be our destiny. Anthony has invited both candidates to have a good old fashioned radio debate on The Middle. But we may have to settle for the second tier candidates for a while. We're looking at you Asa Hutchison! If you think that may be boring, don't fret. We have Joe Biden to keep it, uh, interesting. Also, our Special Correspondent from last week seems to be clairvoyant! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So Biden and Fauci have had an issue condemning China's zero covid policy that has locked citizens in their home, Janet Yellen said Elon Musk buying Twitter would warrant a national review if deemed to raise national security concerns. After she said it wouldn't.

President Biden's student loan forgiveness program is argued in a courtroom -- and a judge put it on pause. So Biden one upped the judge by extending the pause on the monthly payments on student loans. In a moment, pres. says his plan is legal. KSL Legal Analyst Greg Skordas joins the show to discuss what he thinks about the legality of the planSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

9:05 - 9:20 - Thanksgiving weather and travel  Team coverage of the ice rinks on our roads this morning-- crazy drive in -- Matt Johnson, KSL Meteorologist brings what the weather will be like if you're driving or flying for the Thanksgiving weekend KSL Traffic Reporter Andy Farnsworth talks about what to look out for on the roads. Taking you to the airport to see when the busiest times today will be -- and how to check security lines before you arrive. Aimee Cobabe, KSL Newsradio Reporter spent her morning at the airport and shares what is happening out there. Nancy Volmer, Spokesperson for SLC International Airport joins the discussion to share expectation for holiday travel today and through the weekend.  9:35 - What laws do retailers have to follow on black friday Black Friday a huge shopping day that's morphed into Black Fri-weeks. Still stores are advertising big deals for this Friday, door buster deals-- have you ever lined up for a door buster deal and found out -- the store barely had enough items for the 1st 5 people in line? Are there any rules on the books that stores have to follow when advertising these "door busters" so people aren't injuring each other over 3? Senator and Attorney Todd Weiler joins the show to discuss.9:50 - Is President Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Legal?  President Biden's student loan forgiveness program is argued in a courtroom -- and a judge put it on pause. So Biden one upped the judge by extending the pause on the monthly payments on student loans. In a moment, pres. says his plan is legal. KSL Legal Analyst Greg Skordas joins the show to discuss what he thinks about the legality of the plan 10:05 - 10:20 - Utah Tax Cuts coming after $3 Billion projected in budget surplus for 2023 The State is fat with cash... a massive $3.3B surplus. What are lawmakers going to do with that gigantic pile of money? everal reports have indicated that a state income tax cut is on the horizon, although it will likely to be very modest. Senator Dan McCay joins the show to discuss if tax cuts are on the horizon and where they would go. Matthew Weinstein, with the advocacy group Voices for Utah Children and also the State Priorities Partnership Director joins the show to explain why he thinks cuts to the income tax rate are not the answer. 10:35 - 10:50 - Members of Congress to investigate Ticketmaster  We think we found a new hero - not an anti hero -- but a hero -- Senator Mike Lee is joining members of congress in a hearing to investigate to the ticketmaster debacle ignited by Taylor Swift's Era Tour. Caitlyn Johnston, KSL Newsradio Producer joins the show to discuss the top concerns she wants congress to check. 11:05 - Religious Freedom Protection for the Respect for Marriage Act  The Respect for Marriage Act is moving forward. It is legislation that would recognize any marriage between two people... opposite or same sex. Utah Senator Mike Lee has some concerns The concern is that if you're a religious institution... you may face consequences if you refuse to marry a same-sex couple in your place of worship.Clifford Rosky is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law joins the discussion to discuss if the concerns have standing. 11:20 - How religion impacted the midterms  We've been discussing a lot about this red wave that didn't happen in the midterms. Alot of finger pointing to Former President Donald Trump.. but how did religion play a part in the way people voted? Democrats held a large focus on abortion after the decision came down on Dobbs V. Jackson's Women's Health Organization that resulted in the reversal of Roe V. Wade. Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a pastor in the American Baptist Church. He's the author of two books - The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going and 20 Myths About Religion and Politics in America. 11:35 - 11:50 How to not let politics destroy Thanksgiving Dinner  Many of us are looking forward to spending more time with family tomorrow at the dinner table..you sit down with mom grandma aunts and uncles and someone bring up the question...What do you think about politics? Not everyone wants to go to a thanksgiving dinner because of the conversations that get brought up at the dinner tableTom Golightly, Assistant Director of Athletics, Counseling and Psychological Service at BYU joins the conversation to explain how to manage those discussions without ruining thanksgiving. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

McLaughlin polling:  62% say the country's on the wrong track, 61% say USA is in recession, 43% affected by inflation and 87% won't benefit from Biden's s Student Loan Forgiveness while everyone's taxes will go up.  In less than 2 years, McLaughlin says Biden has added $4T to Federal Spending and $10T to the National Debt.  Biden corruption is a very real threat:  Chinese gave Hunter tens of millions and Sec. of State Blinken was head of the Biden Center at the Univ. of Penn where the Chinese had given them tens of millions.  So Biden won't stand up to the Chinese or Russian oligarchs, the ones who had the Biden family on the payroll.  Putin is unafraid of Biden because the Russians know more about Biden than we do.   GUEST:  JOHN MC LAUGHLIN, GOP POLLSTER

Yesterday, when President Biden reported a massive inflation surge over last year, the stock market reacted by having its worst day since the pandemic lockdown. So Biden drops a proverbial bomb on the economy and hurts millions of Americans struggling to get by, then he goes to a party? Jay, Logan, and the Sekulow team discuss the massive problems facing America's economy and the optics of Biden having a party right after breaking terrible news for American consumers. This and more today on Sekulow.

Daily News Brief for Wednesday April 20th, 2022 So Biden told Obama that he is planning on running in 2024, and he probably has already forgotten that… Microsoft, Apple, and Google are in bed with the FBI, nothing new…and the federal transportation masks mandate was illegal this whole time, but who cares. But first: Folks are you coming to our next stop May 19th in Phoenix, AZ. Did you know Jeff Delano Squires will be joining us? Sign up at FightLaughFeast.com, ticket sales will go fast. Sen. Chuck Schumer celebrates Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation from the pulpit of AR Bernard's NYC megachurch during "Resurrection Sunday" Roll Clip: https://twitter.com/WokePreacherTV/status/1516422087480594440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1516422087480594440%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnotthebee.com%2Farticle%2Fchuck-schumer-in-a-pulpit-on-easter-sunday-compared-the-confirmation-of-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-the-resurrection-of-jesus- Schumer is glad the Johnson amendment does apply anymore! Actually the liberals never followed that rule, only conservative Christians are silly enough to separate pulpit and politics. Boniface Woodworking DNB: Boniface Woodworking exists for those who enjoy shopping with integrity; who want to buy handmade wooden furniture, gifts, and heirloom items that will last for generations. From dining tables and church pulpits to cigar humidors and everything in between; quality pieces that you can give your children’s children tie them to their roots and transcend the basic function of whatever they are, becoming gifts! So, start voting with your dollars, and stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you! Visit www.bonifacewoodworking.com to see our gallery, learn our story, and submit your order for heirloom quality wood items. DOJ secretly spied on Apple and Google accounts of Project Veritas and its security detail https://reclaimthenet.org/doj-spied-project-veritas-apple-google-accounts/ According to ReclaimtheNet: “Just a few weeks after Microsoft revealed that President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has been secretly spying on investigative reporting outlet Project Veritas, Apple and Google have revealed that they were also subject to secret surveillance orders that required them to hand over information from the professional and private accounts of Project Veritas and its security detail. Apple and Google received nine secret subpoenas and warrants from the DOJ between November 2020 and March 2021. These secret subpoenas and warrants required these tech companies to hand over information about Project Veritas and its security detail. The DOJ also compelled Apple and Google not to disclose that they were secretly providing this private information to the government. Google provided highly sensitive personal information on several Project Veritas employees to the DOJ including their payment information, browsing history, and device media access control (MAC) address (which can be used to identify devices and track their activity). Two of the DOJ’s subpoenas demanded highly sensitive personal information on two Google accounts, one of which was connected to a separate non-Google email address. These subpoenas demanded the account holders’: Names Addresses Primary and alternate telephone numbers Primary and alternate email addresses Social security numbers Records of session times and durations Records of any internet protocol (IP) addresses used by the subscriber at the beginning, end, and at any time during these sessions (which can be used to monitor a subscriber’s location and their web browsing activity) Browser and operating system information Device media access control (MAC) address Means and source of payment for services (including any credit card or bank account numbers) Account notes and logs, including any customer-service communications or other correspondence with the subscriber Length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized Investigative files or user complaints concerning the subscriber” You can find the subpoena here: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/project-veritas-subpoena-gmail-address.pdf Lies, Propaganda, Story Telling, and the Serrated Edge DNB: This year our national conference is in Knoxville, TN October 6th-8th. The theme of this year’s conference is Lies, Propaganda, Storytelling and the Serrated Edge. Mark your calendars for October 6th-8th, as we fight, laugh and feast with fellowship, beer and Psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers, hanging with our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and more. Early bird tickets will be available starting in the middle of March. Head to Fight Laugh Feast dot com to sign up! WEF Speaker Yuval Noah Harari: "Covid is critical, because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize total biometric surveillance.... The next phase is the surveillance going under our skin.... We are really acquiring divine powers" Roll Clip: https://twitter.com/FMnews_/status/1515446659294982144?s=20&t=uzSSYkPinw7scTg9u-B22A These people are crazy. CNN+ looks doomed https://www.axios.com/discovery-cnn-plus-marketing-layoffs-jobs-b088c03c-b202-4756-8f5f-e64ee77b5095.html CNN+ launched on Tuesday, March 29 and According to Axios: “Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN's longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios. CNN+ executives were originally hoping to attract 2 million subscribers in the first year and 15-18 million over four years, as Axios has previously reported. Around $300 million has been spent and hundreds of jobs have been created to support the service. CNN's original plan was for CNN+ to become profitable in four years by investing $1 billion into the service. CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.” That has to be low, because according to Sensor Tower, CNN+ received only 18,000 downloads on day one, and it is averaging about 9000 per day. Just look at the money the liberals are throwing at their technology and content. Our network, by the grace of God, has, compared to CCN, drop in the bucket money and we are getting more listens per month than CNN+ right now. This is why we implore you to join the club and support what we are doing, because as we build our club memberships, we really have an opportunity to take over mainstream media in this new digital media world. Kansas' Governor Just Vetoed Transgender Bill That Bans Men From Competing In Women's Sports https://notthebee.com/article/kansas-governor-just-vetoed-transgender-bill-banning-men-from-competing-in-womens-sports According to Not the Bee: “The Republican legislature in the state of Kansas just passed a bill that would ban men who claim to be transgender from competing against actual women in sports. These sorts of bills have been passed in many conservative states and Kansas has joined that list of states where Republicans are actually using their legislative powers to fight back in the culture war.” And the New York Times reports: “Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly shot down two hotly debated Republican bills — one banning transgender athletes from girls' sports, and another forcing schools to let parents challenge classroom curriculum — setting up a fierce campaign conflict for the first-term governor who faces re-election in November. "We all want a fair and safe place for our kids to play and compete," the Democrat wrote in a Friday veto message on the trans athlete ban. "However, this bill … came from politicians trying to score political points." What? It is amazing to me, that women politicians are vetoing these bills. Doesn’t she know she is a woman? This shows you that sin is blinding, illogical, and destroys itself. Chocolate Knox gave an explanation on Jason Whitlock’s show Fearless on some of the cultural problems at play with free speech and transgenderism: Roll clip: https://twitter.com/WhitlockJason/status/1516381026645381124 Closing This is Gabriel Rench with Crosspolitic News. Support Rowdy Christian media by joining our club at fightlaughfeast.com, downloading our App, and head to our annual Fight Laugh Feast Events. If this content is helpful to you, would you please consider becoming a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member? We are trying to build a cancel-proof media platform, and we need your help. Join today and get a discount at the Fight Laugh Feast conference in Knoxville, TN and have a great day. Have a great day. Lord bless

Daily News Brief for Wednesday April 20th, 2022 So Biden told Obama that he is planning on running in 2024, and he probably has already forgotten that… Microsoft, Apple, and Google are in bed with the FBI, nothing new…and the federal transportation masks mandate was illegal this whole time, but who cares. But first: Folks are you coming to our next stop May 19th in Phoenix, AZ. Did you know Jeff Delano Squires will be joining us? Sign up at FightLaughFeast.com, ticket sales will go fast. Sen. Chuck Schumer celebrates Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation from the pulpit of AR Bernard's NYC megachurch during "Resurrection Sunday" Roll Clip: https://twitter.com/WokePreacherTV/status/1516422087480594440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1516422087480594440%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnotthebee.com%2Farticle%2Fchuck-schumer-in-a-pulpit-on-easter-sunday-compared-the-confirmation-of-ketanji-brown-jackson-to-the-resurrection-of-jesus- Schumer is glad the Johnson amendment does apply anymore! Actually the liberals never followed that rule, only conservative Christians are silly enough to separate pulpit and politics. Boniface Woodworking DNB: Boniface Woodworking exists for those who enjoy shopping with integrity; who want to buy handmade wooden furniture, gifts, and heirloom items that will last for generations. From dining tables and church pulpits to cigar humidors and everything in between; quality pieces that you can give your children’s children tie them to their roots and transcend the basic function of whatever they are, becoming gifts! So, start voting with your dollars, and stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you! Visit www.bonifacewoodworking.com to see our gallery, learn our story, and submit your order for heirloom quality wood items. DOJ secretly spied on Apple and Google accounts of Project Veritas and its security detail https://reclaimthenet.org/doj-spied-project-veritas-apple-google-accounts/ According to ReclaimtheNet: “Just a few weeks after Microsoft revealed that President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has been secretly spying on investigative reporting outlet Project Veritas, Apple and Google have revealed that they were also subject to secret surveillance orders that required them to hand over information from the professional and private accounts of Project Veritas and its security detail. Apple and Google received nine secret subpoenas and warrants from the DOJ between November 2020 and March 2021. These secret subpoenas and warrants required these tech companies to hand over information about Project Veritas and its security detail. The DOJ also compelled Apple and Google not to disclose that they were secretly providing this private information to the government. Google provided highly sensitive personal information on several Project Veritas employees to the DOJ including their payment information, browsing history, and device media access control (MAC) address (which can be used to identify devices and track their activity). Two of the DOJ’s subpoenas demanded highly sensitive personal information on two Google accounts, one of which was connected to a separate non-Google email address. These subpoenas demanded the account holders’: Names Addresses Primary and alternate telephone numbers Primary and alternate email addresses Social security numbers Records of session times and durations Records of any internet protocol (IP) addresses used by the subscriber at the beginning, end, and at any time during these sessions (which can be used to monitor a subscriber’s location and their web browsing activity) Browser and operating system information Device media access control (MAC) address Means and source of payment for services (including any credit card or bank account numbers) Account notes and logs, including any customer-service communications or other correspondence with the subscriber Length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized Investigative files or user complaints concerning the subscriber” You can find the subpoena here: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/project-veritas-subpoena-gmail-address.pdf Lies, Propaganda, Story Telling, and the Serrated Edge DNB: This year our national conference is in Knoxville, TN October 6th-8th. The theme of this year’s conference is Lies, Propaganda, Storytelling and the Serrated Edge. Mark your calendars for October 6th-8th, as we fight, laugh and feast with fellowship, beer and Psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers, hanging with our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and more. Early bird tickets will be available starting in the middle of March. Head to Fight Laugh Feast dot com to sign up! WEF Speaker Yuval Noah Harari: "Covid is critical, because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize total biometric surveillance.... The next phase is the surveillance going under our skin.... We are really acquiring divine powers" Roll Clip: https://twitter.com/FMnews_/status/1515446659294982144?s=20&t=uzSSYkPinw7scTg9u-B22A These people are crazy. CNN+ looks doomed https://www.axios.com/discovery-cnn-plus-marketing-layoffs-jobs-b088c03c-b202-4756-8f5f-e64ee77b5095.html CNN+ launched on Tuesday, March 29 and According to Axios: “Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN's longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios. CNN+ executives were originally hoping to attract 2 million subscribers in the first year and 15-18 million over four years, as Axios has previously reported. Around $300 million has been spent and hundreds of jobs have been created to support the service. CNN's original plan was for CNN+ to become profitable in four years by investing $1 billion into the service. CNN+ has roughly 150,000 subscribers so far.” That has to be low, because according to Sensor Tower, CNN+ received only 18,000 downloads on day one, and it is averaging about 9000 per day. Just look at the money the liberals are throwing at their technology and content. Our network, by the grace of God, has, compared to CCN, drop in the bucket money and we are getting more listens per month than CNN+ right now. This is why we implore you to join the club and support what we are doing, because as we build our club memberships, we really have an opportunity to take over mainstream media in this new digital media world. Kansas' Governor Just Vetoed Transgender Bill That Bans Men From Competing In Women's Sports https://notthebee.com/article/kansas-governor-just-vetoed-transgender-bill-banning-men-from-competing-in-womens-sports According to Not the Bee: “The Republican legislature in the state of Kansas just passed a bill that would ban men who claim to be transgender from competing against actual women in sports. These sorts of bills have been passed in many conservative states and Kansas has joined that list of states where Republicans are actually using their legislative powers to fight back in the culture war.” And the New York Times reports: “Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly shot down two hotly debated Republican bills — one banning transgender athletes from girls' sports, and another forcing schools to let parents challenge classroom curriculum — setting up a fierce campaign conflict for the first-term governor who faces re-election in November. "We all want a fair and safe place for our kids to play and compete," the Democrat wrote in a Friday veto message on the trans athlete ban. "However, this bill … came from politicians trying to score political points." What? It is amazing to me, that women politicians are vetoing these bills. Doesn’t she know she is a woman? This shows you that sin is blinding, illogical, and destroys itself. Chocolate Knox gave an explanation on Jason Whitlock’s show Fearless on some of the cultural problems at play with free speech and transgenderism: Roll clip: https://twitter.com/WhitlockJason/status/1516381026645381124 Closing This is Gabriel Rench with Crosspolitic News. Support Rowdy Christian media by joining our club at fightlaughfeast.com, downloading our App, and head to our annual Fight Laugh Feast Events. If this content is helpful to you, would you please consider becoming a Fight Laugh Feast Club Member? We are trying to build a cancel-proof media platform, and we need your help. Join today and get a discount at the Fight Laugh Feast conference in Knoxville, TN and have a great day. Have a great day. Lord bless

President Biden announced a DOJ crackdown on so-called ghost guns -- gun kits that you assemble yourself and don't have serial numbers. Biden says more and more of these guns are showing up at crime scenes. So Biden did what he always does -- blame the gun rather than the criminal! Joe Cardinale, retired NYPD Lt. Commander and FOX News contributor, says the solution is to keep guns out of the wrong hands. not attack the rights of law-abiding citizens! The Rick Roberts Show is on NewsTalk 820 WBAP ... (Photo Courtesy of WFAA) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Highlights:    “The first failure on the  part of Biden: he simply hasn't been able to cripple Russia the way he had hoped.”“Biden called China about Russia and Xi turned the conversation around and made it all about Taiwan and how the US needs to  bud out.”“China believes that Russia is firmly in control of the situation and is going to prevail, otherwise China would be mediating some kind of  peace settlement to help Russia save face amidst a clear military disaster.”“China and India, together with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and a whole host of other nations, are actually rallying around this new Russia as it asserts itself as a new post-globalist civilization state. So  Biden is failing again and again and again on all of this.”Timestamps:     [02:54] The three overall questions I'm trying to answer as your fake news antidote[05:15] How the sanctions did not heavily affect Russia[07:45] How Biden got spanked by President Xi of China  [09:16] What China's reaction Biden means to what's happening with Russia and Ukraine and how other nations want nothing to do with Biden's regime[11:30] What the geopolitical solution we need after we got rid of Biden in officeResources:Protect your Savings with a Gold IRA! Click Here! noblegoldinvestments.comSupport this channel. Get Your Brand-New PATRIOT T-Shirts and Merch Here: https://store.turleytalks.com/Ep. 900 BOMBSHELL Admission EXPOSES Media COUP Against Trump!!!It's time to CHANGE AMERICA and Here's YOUR OPPORTUNITY To Do Just That! https://change.turleytalks.com/Get your own MyPillow here. Enter my code TURLEY at checkout to get a DISCOUNT: https://www.mypillow.com/turleyPatriotSwitch.comBecome a Turley Talks Insiders Club Member and get your first week FREE!!: https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com/welcomeFight Back Against Big Tech Censorship! Sign-up here to discover Dr. Steve's different social media options …. but without censorship! https://www.turleytalks.com/en/alternative-media.com Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review.Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture!If you would like to get lots of articles on conservative trends make sure to sign-up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts. 

* The cynical, statistical sleight of hand behind the CDC's sudden removal of the dire declaration of emergency across the entire country in order to give Democrats room to breathe politically* People's Convoy begins. Demands Executive Order of "National Emergency" be removed* After over 720 days, US Senate passes symbolic removal of "Emergency". Biden will veto even if House passed* Everyone says "No-Fly" zone demanded by Zelensky will start WW3. So Biden sends planes to Ukraine via Poland in a passive aggressive move.* Some scientists propose tracking genetically modified children, others are concerned with the ethics of tracking. How about we STOP genetically modifying children?* Daniel McAdams with Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity becomes a meme in India after a hilarious mix-up. But when he's allowed to speak, he's spot on about Ukraine, NATO & Military Industrial Complex* The big government money behind media's vaccine propaganda campaign and which networks sold you out. The propaganda got more testing before it rolled out, than the vaccines* China moves to stop ALL religious speech and online churchFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughZelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at:  $davidknightshowBTC to:  bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Mail: David Knight POB 1323 Elgin, TX 78621

JUDGE BLOCKS BIDEN'S VAX MANDATE FOR HEALTHCARE WORKERS NATION-WIDEA federal judge in Louisiana issued a nationwide preliminary injunction yesterday, forcing Biden to halt his covid vaccine mandate for healthcare workers across the country.Back up: The Biden regime issued its vaccine mandate on November 4 for all healthcare workers who are full-time, part-time, volunteer, and contract employees working at a healthcare facility receiving Medicaid or Medicaid funding.How it was stopped: Louisiana's Attorney General Jeff Landry, along with AG's from 13 additional states across the country, argued that Biden does not have the constitutional authority to issue mandates.Judge Terry Doughty agreed with the Attorney Generals, saying:"If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands. If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency. During a pandemic such as this one, it is even more important to safeguard the separation of powers set forth in our Constitution to avoid erosion of our liberties."What happens next: If Biden appeals the Judge's decision, it will be taken up by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which earlier this month already blocked Biden's vaccine mandate on businesses with more than 100 workers. So Biden is cornered by good judges.By the way - Donald Trump is the one who nominated Judge Terry Doughty, back in 2017.[Source: Reuters, Louisiana's Daily Advertiser]https://www.spreaker.com/user/9922149/judge-blocks-bidens-vax-mandate-for-healShared byPeter Boykin For Congresshttps://www.facebook.com/BoykinForCongress/#Boykin4Congress BoykinForCongress.com#GoRightNews GoRightNews.com

Here with us today is Jason Szeftel. He is an expert with China politics. Listen how we tackle issues regarding force labor and many more.======================================Ari Gronich0:25Welcome back to another episode of creating a new tomorrow. I'm your host, Ari Gronich. And today I have with me Jason Szeftel. Jason is an expert in China politics. He is a writer, a podcaster, and a consultant. He's been in the world of sustainability. And I'm really excited to have a conversation with him about all of that, because, you know, this world we're living in is changing. And we are creating a new tomorrow today and activating our vision for a better world. And Jason might have some good ways for you to do that. And, you know, relationships with the rest of the world. Jason, welcome to the show.Jason Szeftel1:45Thanks, Ari. I'm glad to be here.Ari Gronich1:49Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started in, in the relationship with China, and some of your sustainability and those kinds of things. your background?Jason Szeftel2:02Yeah, sure. My China angle for me goes back a long time, probably around 20 years. But I was really, really got interested in China around when 911 and the Iraq war. And all of that really started. That was very curious about not even curious, I was kind of worried and curious and tense and nervous, wondering what was going on in the world, are we going to see with China, the same sort of bizarre miscalculations and hysterical reactions we saw with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. And then here we are 20 years later, and we've kind of fled with our tail tucked between our legs. And over that time, I just wanted to learn what was really going on in China, what the country was really about what to do with a country that's so large and complex. And we had to understand we have to really understand it, if you want to have any sort of way to get our hands around where it's going and where it comes from. Really. And then yeah, so I started I went, I learned Chinese. In college, I got a scholarship to study in China, in Beijing, at Beijing University. There, I learned about various systems. Actually, that's where a lot of the sustainability stuff came in. I was really interested early on, in how are we developing the world today? How, what systems what electrical types of systems are we building, sustainable water systems, transportation systems, all of this. And when I was actually in China, I was studying their transportation networks, agricultural systems, their demography, all of those inputs that kind of give us the societies that we live in. I was just very curious where that was going. And yeah, at the time, that was the, you know, 2010 to 2015, I was in and out of China, most of the time. And that was where that was kind of the heyday for me of sustainability, and what kind of sustainable future we were going to build. And I actually learned a lot of things that kind of set me against a lot of the mainstream about how would we would get that done? And what would work and what wouldn't work? And yeah, so I've just been kind of putting some pieces together, trying to figure out what could work and what we could do, and then trying to share it with people.Ari Gronich4:00Awesome. So you know, this show is all about going against the mainstream. So let's talk about a little bit of what the mainstream solutions are. And what you've found, are the flaws in those systems, and you know, how they can be improved?Jason Szeftel4:17Sure, well, right now, the two main systems from a sort of renewable energy perspective, it could just take this sort of green energy, which is very important, since the Industrial Revolution, you need energy to run society to run any of these civilizations, any of these industrial systems. And we've typically ran on fossil fuels, coal, oil, natural gas, and everyone, every where's talking about how we're going to get rid of them. And the main two that we've come up with are basically wind turbines, wind energy, and then solar energy with solar panels. And these two things are awesome. I have nothing against them. I think they're very cool. But the issue is that most of the world, the vast majority of the world does not have the solar irradiation you need or the wind speed, height and consistency that you need to have panels, I mean startup panels or turbines running. So if you sort of map it out, and you look at the sort of places where you have the right solar conditions, or at certain conditions that radiation you need, or the right wind conditions, to a very small percentage of the world. And you if you put that next to the places that have the population centers nearby, it's tough otherwise, you have to build very, very large transmission systems. And in the United States, for example, it's very tough to build a single transmission line, it can take decades, it can take 10,15 years. And so, red tape, but a lot of things, it could be environmental things, you could be crossing a lot of preserve, you know, sort of habitats that need to be preserved or endangered species, it can cross through tribal lands, red tape, and then yeah, and then there's increasing backlash from a lot of rural areas. So in California, the two oldest areas for one of the tools areas for wind and solar energy is near Palm Springs. And people in Palm Springs now see a lot of the solar and wind energy production as almost industrializing the landscape. So they don't want to see wind turbines, as far as the eye can see that I want solar panels on all land surrounding them. And it's a real challenge. So that's particularly on the left, where there's so much investment in these two technologies, there's ever more competing interests. And it's interesting that these are both environmental versus environmental, environmental versus humanitarian, environmental versus sometimes racial or other other justice issues.Ari Gronich6:38So when it comes to those two, right, we're not talking about something that I've thought of as a great source of energy for years, which is wave energy, right, the flowing of waves, so they're constantly coming into shore, there is a way to harness that energy, right. But we're not talking about that as far as like a main kind of energy source. The other thing that comes to mind with regards to things like the wind turbines, right, I remember reading, this is maybe 12, 13 years ago, and a Popular Science magazine was a wind turbine that was horizontal. So instead of vertically spinning, it's been horizontal and spun on basically a fulcrum. So there was very little resistance. So it was like a three mile per hour breeze that would cause it to generate energy, which is almost nothing and can be found almost everywhere. Yet, those kinds of newer forms of the old technology still aren't being adopted, right? The solar panels are just starting to undergo transformation in their technology as well. To make you know them less expensive. So here's my question, the point of that rant is, when it comes to these things, how quickly can we move with technology if we got out of our own way, rather than holding technology back due to money concerns and other things like that?Jason Szeftel8:31Yeah, it's an open question. But even you bring up a really good point, that there are different styles of these sorts of technologies, and some of them aren't being considered as much. A big reason why is that? It's a question of scale, and centralization, and a lot of ways. So the large solar and wind companies are just as invested in controlling these resources as a typical fossil fuel company, oil company is. So they want to build giant wind farms. And giant solar farms. Because it gives you scale, it gives you a large size. They're not as interested in doing small micro local sorts of things. There's a big battle going on between should we have giant, giant transmission lines all over the world and all over the country in sort of take advantage of the great wind corridors in the center of the country and sort of shift the energy out, you know, and take advantage of, you know, the Southwest, the United States for solar, or should we try and do this in a more diffuse distributed way, where you have little, little power plants everywhere? I mean that's a big question. Yeah, I mean, that's just one of the things we always got to remember. It's trillions of dollars to replace the grid. And it brings up real questions about reliability, about who runs it, how the systems work, because they're not meant for solar panels on every house. That's not how they're designed. And we'll see where it goes. But you also bring up the question of the tech, the actual, how far can we go? With the technologies we have and so, on solar panels, there's about there's an efficiency threshold, we really not gonna be able to go beyond it. But it's very good, I mean, it's very good. And then with wind turbines, you're sort of what they've decided to do is just go for bigger and bigger turbines, they're not really changing, like, the arrangement of them, they really just want them huge. I mean, I think they're multiple football fields long at this point. And that's also really good for the companies. Companies like vest das in Europe, the manufacturers, these because no one is gonna come at you, if you manage. If you're manufacturing things that big. It's, there's very few companies that can do it. The other question is the industry, where's it located? So and so one of the things with solar panels Is that something like 80% of all solar panels are built in China. And most of the polysilicon one of the key ingredients comes from shinjang. Whereas run it where the entire system runs on forced labor. So there's a big question about, well, should we be getting solar panels from there? You know, if we ramp it up to kind of expand it all over the country and all over the world to run on solar energy? Are we going to do that on the backs of forced labor, in western China, with their people, and basically, in concentration camps, three indoctrination camps and stuff like that? These are real questions. And it's, again, I think there's a strong corporate push at this time behind traditional renewable energy in the form of solar and wind companies. And I find a lot of dishonest at this point, especially because they pretend like there's gonna be a big green revolution in terms of energy and jobs. It's like, No, you guys are just buying panels from China and installing them. The jobs are an installation and construction, it's like, those are temporary jobs, you get the build out, you get the time you get the jobs from the build out, then it's gone.Ari Gronich11:45So, you know, let's say, I mean, we obviously can't change China's stance on how they treat their employees. And at least it up till now our policies are as such that it is tremendously incentivized to work with China, right? versus other places that have maybe better policies towards their people. So how do we bridge that gap between bringing those jobs back to America, bringing those jobs actually to anywhere that they're going to be installed, the manufacturing should be kind of in the areas in which there'll be installed? So that we're always buying local, right? So even big companies can, you know, think a little differently and do that. But how do we bridge those gaps?Jason Szeftel12:43Yeah, that's a great question. And I think you really nailed it, it's going to be more production, where the consumption or the installation happens. That's where things are trending. And the way it works is that China basically flooded the market with solar panels, and did them below cost so no one else can compete to basically cornered the market during the 2010s. That's what happened. They just wiped out the competition. It was not. Again, you don't want to say what's fair, unfair in sort of global economics, it's kind of not how it works. But that's the game they played, and they did very well. So most US solar panel manufacturers are all gone. And what they're relying on now is industrial policy. So they're relying on the Biden administration just like the Trump administration to start, basically, preventing, incentivizing things to make it happen, make them happen in the US subsidizing things, tariffing, different products from abroad, and basically trying to rearrange the global production system we've had since the 1980s. That's kind of what's happening. We see it in semiconductors, we see it in certain solar energy stuff, we see it with certain rare earth minerals. It just goes on and on. It's kind of what we're seeing across the board. COVID really set this, I mean, just set this loose after with the PPE and all of the vaccine problems, mean people in the United States would be freezing out if we didn't have vaccines made in the country. If they were coming from India or China, it would be even worse. So it really gave people a sense of almost like a national security thing for production for the economy. And we're seeing it. I mean, it's almost a bipartisan thing at this point. So we'll see where it goes. But that's where things are happening. We're not really trying to help other countries as much anymore, trying to prevent it from being in China. Number one, trying to build it here. And then we'll figure everything else out later. That's kind of the thought process.Ari Gronich14:26Yeah, well, so my thought process is always How can we plan and work backwards versus, you know, plan from the end result, right. So, in my case, this series I told you about, when in our pre interview, the series of books that I'm writing, tribal living in a modern world is a lot about how do we take technology and marry it with nature, marry it with a natural way of living that does support all the people on the planet and In a way, that's not like the planet isn't killing us because of what we've done to it, right? So how do we marry the modern, the technology, the influx of this revolution that started with the industrial revolution? and bring it back to a sustainable natural flow so that they're kind of together and helping one another versus destroying one another?Jason Szeftel15:30Yeah, that's a big question. I think it's one of the things that really animated the sort of sustainability movement, the more modern one that's more technologically focused since the mid 2000s. It's been a huge question that we need this greater sense with global warming, with climate change, with anything going on in the world. And even with the sort of political conflicts you see everywhere, resource conflicts, water conflicts, that we have to do something. But there is a real question. And a real challenge, just because it's not clear that we can do this for everyone everywhere. what's likely is that the sort of place that could have a sort of marriage of nature and technology is a place like the United States that puts the money into it really invest in it develops a host of new technologies which don't exist, and then is able to sort of transform its society and economy while also keeping it stable, and productive and healthy. Most places on earth cannot do that. And so for China, for example, trying to just transform the Chinese energy system is a massive, massive undertaking. So they use 50% more energy in China than in the United States. And they have all the dirty industries on Earth, right? They do more steel manufacturing, like steel and aluminum preachers like 50% of the entire world, they pull 50% of all the coal in the world out of the ground. Everything. I mean, all these really, really energy intensive, dirty industries, whether it's, you know, minerals processing, or gas, or steel and steel in different smelting procedures. It's just that everything is 30% of world manufacturing. So how do you retool this entire production node in the world to run on new forms of energy? I mean, it's trill again, trillions and trillions of dollars. And it's tough for China to do because they need low costs for everything they have to keep people employed. They can't have dislocated people running out of the factories and started marching through the streets, like you saw on a bit in Hong Kong. I think that it's really tough to see I actually see more countries, not marrying nature and technology in a wholesome way, but sort of heading heading back down in a bad way, not able to get the resources they need, not able to evolve their economy and the way they need not able to sort of bring society forward. At the same time as they're doing all this. It's just extremely difficult. And even in the United States, we don't have the best politically minded, cooperative sort of party system right now. So we'll see how that goes.Ari Gronich17:57I mean, if you were to if you were to like if you were to be doing this, right, but I was Biden, for instance, and you are giving me your, you know, five minutes, so to speak, your your elevator pitch on why I should listen to your consulting, and what I should be doing with the country. As far as this aspect goes, what would you be saying to me?Jason Szeftel18:28I don't want to shirk the question. But I will say that I don't think that the President has nearly as much power as people thinkAri Gronich18:33I understand that. And, and here's how, here's where I feel the power lies. The power lies in somebody like Kennedy saying, we're going to the moon, you have a decade to do it. You know, it's just gonna be done. It's like a mandate, right? They say something, and then the world kind of starts doing the things to make that happen. Right. So Biden has the power of a leadership position where he can create a mandate, he can say, this is what we're doing, you know, like a Kennedy would, I don't think we've had anybody since Kennedy, like that. Jason Szeftel19:17We'll also think our government or federal government's not as competent as it was particularly starting in the 1970s. Its ability to actually execute on programs like that for multi decade or even 5, 6, 10 years. It's just completely almost disappeared. So what we see is some of the biggest revolutions are just privately funded things. So for example, the shale revolution, particularly in Texas, North Dakota, and in Pennsylvania, all these small places, they, it was revolutionary for the US energy system, but it wasn't didn't come through any federal initiatives and actually sort of had to push back against a lot of state initiatives that didn't want fracking and didn't want all this stuff to happen. But it's been probably the biggest energy transformation in 50 years in the United States. So I'm very wary of, I love the idea, I love going to the moon, setting the mission, setting the plan. But even look at NASA since the end of the Cold War, NASA hasn't been able to do anything right now. It's gonna be Elon Musk that goes to the moon with his rockets in Texas.Ari Gronich20:15Now, I understand that. But here's the thing, I guess is the difference. Most people believe that when the government says, Let's do a mandate, that it's the government doing the job, right? You don't realize that it's the private contractors, it's the private citizens, the private companies, the engineers, the geniuses, that are actual human beings, right, that are doing the job that are getting paid. So when they hear something like this will be trillions and trillions of dollars, they don't hear Cha Ching, that means that we're going to be getting paid. That means that our communities are going to have sustainable incomes, and we're going to have a future and we're going to have money to spend and we're going to have things to do all they hear is it's going to cost trillions of dollars. Right? So I guess this is where, yes, I believe that private companies are the answer, private citizens, private people, but I believe that there needs to be some kind of level of incentive that says, You guys got to do this. And you gotta do it now. Because we're not waiting anymore. For your, you know, return on investment, so to speak, we're looking at what's the newest technology? How can we get it out the fastest and most effective, etc.Jason Szeftel21:37Yeah, so I don't want to shirk your question, I'll get back to it and just say, I think that what I would what I would tell them to focus on is, you know, actually try and focus on technology development in certain key areas and stop thinking about technology as just new texting apps, and new video messaging apps and stuff like that. We've really diluted the meaning of the word, technology. And it's really tragic. And some of the consequences. So I'd say, you know, focus on encouraging people to develop new ways to deal with natural disasters. Are there better ways that we can deal with fires? Is there something better than throwing water on it? Right, is there something we could do, you know what I mean, things like that, I think are very important. Ari Gronich22:16You're in LA, right?Jason Szeftel22:17I am in LA? Yeah, I am familiar with it.Ari Gronich22:19I saw 310 cuz my numbers were 310. And so I used to live through those LA fires, right. And I had an idea once and I brought it to the government. I said, Let's plant some ice plants all alongside the mountains, they grow very well there. They don't need a lot of water, but they hold a lot of water. It's like planting cactus, they'll keep a lot of that area from, you know, from burning, because it'll extinguish the fires, but nobody listened. was kind of interesting. It was like a really easy thing I felt like to do. But you're right. We're not telling people to do that.Jason Szeftel23:00Yeah, and it's a lot of the reason is just the government contracting methods. So let's say you and I had an idea for how to better, you know, fight fires in California, well, we'd go and we'd pitch something to, you know, probably this callfire, it would take, you know, three years for them to get back to us. And then you know, we get a decision, then we'd start we get to work on the project for maybe two, three more years. And it's just, it's this massive, extended timeline to try things out. So I believe they should be more encouraging of a lot more experimentation in agriculture and transportation technologies in electrical and energy technologies. I mean, the places bizarre. I mean, even the right to try, that's, I think that's a very good policy, like let's, you know, people are going to die, they have no other options. We should try things if they want, if they want to pay consent, you know, try things. I think that's a good policy. But it's funny, the place where you see the bizarre small innovation and experimentation is often in the military. The military has things like DARPA, that are invested in trying to push things forward with technology. And a lot of impressive technologies have come out of that. So we need a bit more of that focus. It's just very hard to get it together in government, especially the state governments trying to contract with state governments is not fun. So those procedures, I think a lot of things related to it sounds a bit, you know, buzzworthy, but smart government things that can just running the systems for government on more modern systems would be a really good thing. The reason everything's so bad on a government website is because it took the same thing we said, three, you know, six years ago, seven years ago, they had an idea for the website for unemployment benefits in Florida. And then, you know, crisis hits, and it all collapses because it was like, well, this thing was basically 2010 technology, and we don't live in that and it can't be updated. It's not right. It's not right.Ari Gronich24:47Yeah, you know. That's part of like, in general. My issue with business, with government, with what I see in the world, like, I see the technologies as they come out, you know, like the prototypes and the things that people are working on and they're showing done. And then I see what's out and I go, there's such a gap, it's like a 50 year gap between what is here, and what's developed and could be out. And bridging those together is usually a conversation of money, which to me is like the silliest conversation we could have, right? Money is something we made up, the planet, we didn't make up. You know, we didn't make up the need of money to be people who wanted to innovate or grow or things like that, I just find that by using that money as the excuse not to, we have stunted our personal growth, our financial growth, our systemic growth, and, you know, our technological growth.Jason Szeftel26:11Yeah, the places where you see the most technological growth tend to be places with a big consumer market that you can keep coming back to. So if you look at iPhones, or consumer electronics, you get a lot of innovation, just because every year you can put up something new and you can convince them to buy it. And that's huge, big promise for these technologies is if you just have a government buyer, if you just have something like that you can't get rates of innovation and iteration that you need to really continuously advance them. And so in China, for example, there's a new policy, not new five, six years old, called civil military fusion, where basically the Chinese government realized that they can't develop military technology, as it's as good as a lot of consumer stuff. And so what they're doing is trying to actively take consumer technologies, things like electronics, or little drones, that kids use to take videos or whatever to and bring that into the military, because they've realized that the military timelines are now too long and too slow for the same reason. And the United States has actually the same problem. They tried to have a big military cloud product they bought it from there's a whole brouhaha between Microsoft and Amazon. And they basically just said, you know, we're gonna cancel the contract, even though it's four or five years old, because already the technology is already too old. So there's a real challenge of bringing, we actually see. have to find a way to either give something a consumer market, to let it innovate continuously, right? Or you're in trouble. And so it's, that's the place where you can really see a lot of innovation, it's just hard to get. That's why so many technologies just die on the vine, can't pay the people to keep doing it.Ari Gronich27:44So there was something I saw recently, and it was, I think Samsung had their TVs on a subscription, where you're paying just, you know, a monthly amount, and you get the TV and every couple years or whatever, you get the latest one. So you send them back that one, you get the latest one kind of like Apple does with the iPhones these days. And stuff like that. Would it be with you know, if we have to have a money system, I think that would be a good money system is we have a subscription model instead of a buy for model. And that way, we're encouraging innovation versus encouraging people to have to get rid of their inventory before they can sell anything new.Jason Szeftel28:32Yeah, I mean, a lot of things are moving towards the subscription model. It's pretty crazy. Everything feels like it's a subscription. Now, Netflix is a subscription, your entertainment is a subscription. Even writers are doing subscription stuff on substack. There's a subscription ification of everything. It feels like I think there's a good reason why it gives you reliable recurring revenue in a way that one off purchases, that could be one year four, five, six in between really don't do. And often you just don't need as many as much marketing, customer acquisition can be a lot lower, smaller enough to do as best as much. If you have someone in there with you for years, it's reliable revenue, you can loan you could lend off of it, you can do a lot of cool stuff. So I don't think it's going to replace the money system. But it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of the way services are sold in almost every app and every sort of cool app on the internet or on your Mac or on your iPhone. They want you to subscribe because it gives them the certainty that they'll have money and they'll actually continue to invest in improving the technology or at least keeping it up to date for the newest operating system. There's a lot of apps I'll get on my Mac that are free that once you update to a new operating system. They just never updated either because they don't have any incentive to so the subscriptions are definitely here to stay. Although they're kind of getting out of control. They want you to have a subscription for like boxes for your dog. And like everything.Ari Gronich29:56I'm I'm more thinking like if that was the model we went to for technology, like, you know, whether it be our energy system, we're on subscription models, but they don't update the technology with every month, you know, the way that we're paying for subscription, they keep the technology, kind of they maintain it, but they they're not always updating. So that's where I'm thinking, like, Is there a way I just want ways I want things that we can do something that people if they're listening to this in the background, the audience, you know, they're like, what do I do, I'm passionate about something, and I want to be able to, you know, create a sustainable life, I want to create sustainable living with all the subscriptions people are going broke. Because they don't realize that the $9 here and the $10 there and the $9, there's adding up to $3,000. Right, so I you know, it's like, how do we get to where innovation and sustainability technology, and free flowing ideas is like the norm again, kind of like the Roman era or the Greek, you know, era where people were the Renaissance, where it was all about rebirth and growing, I think we've like hit this stage in our evolution, where it's like, we like we got to a place in the 50s, where we liked it, and we just want to stay there forever. And, and so, how do we get back to that rebirth? mentality? I know, you talked a little bit about the psychology of it.Jason Szeftel31:44Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think there's a bit of stasis. And you know, we're all watching Tick tok, and watching videos and all the subscriptions we have are typically little consumer comforts, that let us just keep doing what we're doing, kind of avoid the fact that the rest of the world that we live in, looks exactly like it did in 1970. None of the new physical systems are there, most of LA was built, every home feels like it's a weird, poorly built stucco building from the 70s. They were supposed to go up for like 5, 10 years be replaced and then never get replaced. So yeah, we live, you know, our digital comforts, and digital, little digital consumer electronics really helped us avoid realizing and looking at the fact that the world around us otherwise looks completely old, 50 years old. And you know, in China, it's a bit different, everything is brand new. So there's actually a lot more of a forward looking hungry edge to it, they've seen transformation in their lifetimes in a way that most of us have not. So to get back to it is a real, I mean, it's I think it's like a key key thing we all need to be thinking about. But for stuff, little people, I mean, stuff, little things people can do. That little people, I mean, the challenge with energy is that you often need huge, multi billion dollar investments. So that's not it. But so I mean, if you live in the southwest of the United States, you basically live in one of the best places to have solar energy, you should probably get, I don't want to say should, you can get solar panels on your home, that can be installment payments, and it probably will be a great deal. The panels are really good now. So people who bought solar panels, like 10 years ago, they were paying, they were paying for you to have great solar panels today. You don't I mean, those are outdated, and they're terrible compared to what we have now. And the cost is going down so much. I think you mentioned this earlier, that by 20, 30, solar panels are going to be really, really cheap. And they're going to be at industrial scale at sort of major grid scale stuff, they're gonna be really good. But for consumers, the probably be even better. So that's a great thing to do. I mean, I think Solar City, which is owned by Tesla, Tesla, energy, whatever it's called, now, they integrate batteries and solar panels on your home. And that's a good that's a good combo if you if you want to live in a world where you there's electric cars and solar panels and batteries. And that's I mean, that's a big part of the future. That is advocate the of the most optimistic future advocated by the solar energy cohort of the sort of renewable technology thing. That's something to invest in. I have certain reservations about electric cars, like for example, in China, I don't think China's ever going to be able to run on electric cars, there's, it would need something like four or five times the amount of energy China currently uses, which is more than any country ever, which is 50% more than the United States. And they don't have the energy for that. You would need massive, probably massive, massive amounts of nuclear energy to do that. That's probably the only way. So yeah, I think that's something people should keep in mind running. certain places aren't going to run on electric cars and solar energy. Germany is a great example. They built alot of solar panels in Germany, but they forgot to look up at the sky. And notice that it's overcast all the time. So there's a big installed capacity of solar panels, unfortunately, also old panels, like we said, they said, Germany is subsidized the good panels you can get today. They just, it's just the actual energy generation, the power generation from these panels is very limited. And so Germany actually uses more coal than it did 10 years ago. So those are one of those contradictions that you, you don't get caught in. But again, for people here who live in the southwest, feeling Florida, he lived in the southern part of the United States. So panels ain't a bad idea. And so that's a good one that I would focus on for the energy side of things. Yeah, it's good. The time is there, time is now.Ari Gronich35:42So, you know, you mentioned China could never run unless it was like on nuclear. Unless maybe it was local. You know, local supply, I think, might be a little different. But here's I guess that where I want to go with this question. So we're looking at China, and all of the innovation, all of what they're doing, all the energy, they're consuming the pollution that they're making, the violations that they have on human rights. And we go, all right, we don't really understand their culture much. And so we judge it from our outside perspective and our outside eyes. And so you have a little more of an insider's view on you know what it is to be in China and what it is to be under that culture. So just for the audience who has preconceived notions, which ones are true, which ones not so much. Can you kind of just illuminate on what this thing that we've now known to be? China?Jason Szeftel36:57Yeah, so there's a lot of sort of myths and sort of misconceived notions about China. I'll just try and kind of run through some things that people might find illuminating, to give them a sense of that place. And, yeah, I think one interesting thing people wouldn't realize, and that is so hard for people from the west to understand is that the Chinese Communist Party is not despised as a totalitarian dictatorship. Until the last 10, 15 years, the Chinese Communist Party was actually not in most people's faces. But all that much, it wasn't like authoritarian forcing you to do this or that there was a lot of freedoms on the ground level, because people were, they wanted to encourage private innovation. So back in the 70s, very different story back in the 60s, very different story. 50 very different story. But in the last 50 years, overall, it hasn't been 40 years, it hasn't been up in people's grill all the time, although that's now changing. And so the party is actually thought to be a good force of ease that you can't do polls in China, because that would be dangerous. But in a healthy majority of Chinese people think the Communist Party is overall a good thing. And they support it hard to hard to believe that goes very much against our Western individualist ideas, That's the way it is. So So why, what what MC, isAri Gronich38:18So why? Is it indoctrination? Is it just history and culture? Is it? What is it that that says to them? And are they allowed to be individuals still, even within the system of control that they're in?Jason Szeftel38:32So there's always a propaganda element in every Chinese state, that the Chinese state has to manage its population. So China has on a broad scale has overall bad land relative to the size of the country, and it has limited capital. So it doesn't have a lot of money, it doesn't have the best land. And so there's labor land and capital and technology, but just thinking about labor, land capital, the primary resource in China is labor. It's always been the population. You if you need a great wall built in the desert, you send millions of people to do it. If they end up as mortar for the stones, well, you have millions more. And that's what you see. You need to build things. You get them sent here, you just send people all over to deal with whatever needs to get done. But the people are also a threat. At the same time. You have a large, large, poor population, there's something like the entire population of the United States, there's like a group that large in poverty in China. It's hard to fathom. And yet the Chinese government and Chinese people are more concerned with one thing probably than anything else. And that's political integrity, its political stability and order. And the thing they're contrasting the communist party with isn't some Western democratic liberal ideal of a individualist democracy, blah, blah, blah. It's just chaos. They see the two options as order, often tyrannical authoritarian and terrible versus chaos, which is much worse. And most of China's history is chaotic, it's chaos. It's not in an integrated state ruling over an integrated people integrated territory. It is warring factious clans, and warlords duking it out all across the country. Ari Gronich0:11Wow. So you're talking about the land like, you know, we have a whole song about how majestic our land is. So I want you to, I want you to explain that in a way that people who have never been there could grasp what that means for the people what that land is like and what it means for the people.Jason Szeftel0:30Sure. So China's big. China's about the size of the United States overall, like the physical territory. But China, something like 66-70% of China is mountainous. And a large part of China is just huge deserts, the whole western and northern parts of China are massive deserts. So when you get down to it, the sort of flat, temperate, arable land, you can farm-on, build cities easily, all of that is really small. It's something like maybe 15% of the entire country, and maybe the size of Colombia, like the state of Colombia and South America, that's very different than the United States. The United States probably has 30% of the country, mountainous and hilly, right, sort of like the Rockies. And you know, Denver and Salt Lake are, and then you have massive flat stretches of land, all the way in between the Rockies and the Appalachian is basically the Appalachian Mountains is basically a giant Valley, it's like a million to a million square miles. It's enormous. And there you have the Mississippi River system, really like a bunch of rivers that are all interconnected, you can float things down, that you can send goods, products, troops, messages, everything down and across these rivers. And overlaid on top of these rivers are some of the best access to some of the best agricultural land on Earth. So you really have a Nexus, not trying to sing America, the beautiful here, but just to give the comparison, the United States does have a very, very, very fortunate set of natural features that are a major reason why this country is wealthy and powerful. It's not imperialism, it really isn't. It's not colonialism, the United States was the largest consumer market, the largest agricultural manufacturer, the largest industrial manufacturer, the largest food produced the largest everything by like the 1880s, within about 100 years after it was formed. And it's been all of that since for over 120 years. And that was before it ever invaded Cuba before it ever did any of that it was after the Civil War. So it wasn't built on the back of slavery. So that's something I want people to keep in mind. It's always good to have a good sense of our country, because otherwise we get caught up in very misguided and dangerous forms of American exceptionalism will think, oh, we're so great, because XYZ maybe, but maybe we'd be just as great if we all spoke Spanish, or if we'd all been Catholic or something. And my read on things is, that's probably true. If you happen to be in this part of North America, you've managed to take it all over. And no one had ever been here, in a sort of industrializing and heavily agricultural manner, like the Native Americans weren't quite like the 1000s of years of Chinese agriculture. It's very different. But in China, you don't have something like that. The Eastern lowlands of China that are basically the core regions of China are the yellow and Yangtze river valleys. This is 90% of the Chinese population lives there. And it is not like the United States. It's not like what we were just talking about, like this great large center heartland or whatever you want to call it of the United States. It's much meaner, it's much more overpopulated. It's crowded one way, think about it. Imagine the United States was mostly mountains. And then on the East Coast, you had a big kind of large East Coast was, you know, you could fit more people there, you had 90% of US population there. But instead of, you know, 300, 200, something million people, you had 1.2 billion people all stuffed there. So you have in China, you basically have the American Midwest. And on top of that, you have the equivalent of New York, and Boston, and Washington and all of it, it's all piled all piled on top of each other. There are people fighting for land, space, air, water, everything. And there are factories and mines and schools and in cities on top of farmland. I mean, this is just the way it is, there's not enough land. And that's really, really important to keep in mind.Ari Gronich4:17Right? And so for people who have belief systems, like everybody should go back to their country or something, right. We're talking about a country, where are they planning on going? Right, when the population gets too much for that place? Are they planning on terraforming some of those mountains? Are they I mean, like, what can they do? once that population is too much for the landmass?Jason Szeftel4:52It's a real question. It is certainly straining the ecological carrying capacity of the land. So many people China's built over 600 major cities that has over 100 major cities with over a million people that all built in the last few decades. And that's an enormous amount of people's products of resources that you need. And to sustain that is even harder, you have to keep feeding it, you have to keep pouring down. So you have to keep building buildings, you have to do all of that. It's just maintaining it is very difficult. But one thing people should remember is that waves of Chinese people have been leaving China for over 800 years. Okay, this has nothing to do again with colonialism. China was not never colonized. Or it was beaten up by Japan in the 20th century, but was not colonized by other European powers before that. And the reason you have waves of Chinese people in Southeast Asia, and why you have Chinese people in the United States, originally in California in the 19th century, is because China is chaotic and unstable. And you actually saw basically wars between the northern equivalent of northern and southern China, and the southern Chinese fled to Southeast Asia. And then they fled to California as well. These are typically people from southern China from the Guangdong Hong Kong sort of region. And it's that instability in China that has led to waves of Chinese people elsewhere in the world. So that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Because Yeah, people are you tell them to go back to their country, but they've left because of instability to call it often to call China a country is not correct. Like that's a new modern nationalist thing started in the 20th century, China was more of a culture and a civilization, ethnic heritage, cultural heritage than it was a single unified country. That's, that's important. But you also asked just the question of, well, what do you do with when there's too many people. So China has been in a war between its geography, nature, this terrible land it's been given, and any and all technologies that can use to help it. So China has enormous plans for everything, right? They're trying to move water from southern China, up to northern China, because northern China is sinking, drying out and getting covered in dust storms. And it's prone to drought and floods. And it's a problem in a lot of ways. So they're trying to do that, they're trying to build a green wall, basically, a Great Green Wall, to block out the expanding Gobi desert is trying to eat up a lot of northern China. So they're trying to do all these things. But there are fundamental limits, it costs a lot of money just to remediate all the pollution, all the, you know, the air and the water pollution. And like we mentioned, just paving over important farmland, all this kind of stuff, just to remediate that is trillions of dollars. So in a lot of ways, China is stuck with a kind of bluets load, it stuck with the development, it managed to get in the 80s,90s,2000,2010s. And it's going to have to make choices make tough choices about what to do afterwards. That's really the best way to think about it. But in China, typically, things devolve into pretty brutal scenarios you run out of, you have to choose between water and electricity to choose between getting fertilizer, and, you know, building military weapons or whatever. And that is, those sort of brutal questions might be coming back pretty soon. So that's what to keep in mind. It's very hard, like we said, like I was saying earlier, to, most places don't have the ability to marry nature and technology in the way that perhaps the US can if it can build a sustainable system. But like I mentioned with energy, even Chinese agriculture is its own disaster, Chinese transportation, a lot of it is just being built to keep people employed, right? Do you need autonomous electric cars, and rail systems to go to every single country, every single city? Wouldn't you just need one or the other? Maybe one of these never gonna do you need also planes and airports and every single one, like you a lot of the basic economics of these things aren't rational. This is a political project, all of this stuff in China, like we said, they worry about political integrity, and chaos. And that's what they're trying to prevent. And we'll see how it goes. But it's a tough, tough problem. Ari Gronich9:10Seems like a bit of a pressure cooker. Actually. You know, it seems like something's gonna blow.Jason Szeftel9:15I believe so. I believe so. I think that all you need is one the hammer to fall in one area, and it can start a chain reaction, that's what's always happened in Chinese history. So the people don't remember if China is a massive superpower. And it's always been it's, a once in future superpower. And this is just as rebirth into the modern world, which is kind of some of the narrative we've all heard. Really, if that is the case. Why? Why do all of its states always collapse? Every single one has collapsed. Every single Chinese state has collapsed and ended in a massive kerfuffle and bloody struggle. And we need to look at why that's happened. And see if there's anything different today. It's really the question is, What is different today. They could keep China together not? Well, China will continue forever, without any problem, because that's not what's happened. Ari Gronich10:06So let's take it to a cultural step there in that case. So culturally speaking, what keeps China going? Is the culture that they've developed over the last, however many 1000s of years of doing this behavior of implode, rebuild, implode, rebuild, implode, rebuild, right? So different mentality, different psychology. You know, let's talk about how the psychology of that is manifesting in the scenario versus, say, the psychology of, we're in this together, we can do this. And we just got to figure out and plan the steps and then execute them. Right. So taking it out of that emotional, back and forth, upheaval. Do you think that China's capable at this point of shifting the psychology from ancient to modern?Jason Szeftel11:12No, no, I think that the psychology is the desperate struggle for political integrity and unity. And it's very hard to move away from that. And so the way it works in China, like we were saying earlier, If US has a lot of different pieces, right? There's Texas, there's California, like there's the Northeast, the Northwest, there's Alaska, there's Hawaii, there's many different parts in different cultures all around the country. And that's something we all we always think about Florida is not California, Alabama, is not Minnesota. And this is the same thing in China. So when I'm talking about political integrity, and all of that, what I'm really talking about is northern China, Beijing is in northern China, Beijing actually means northern capital, in Chinese. And northern China is where you have political, military, and political military power. And what has always happened in China is that China is the creation of the Northern warlords, basically, and they conquered the rest of China. And they actually did that. Just as recently as well. That's there's only one time in Chinese history when there hasn't been like a northern power that took over everything else. And that's the culture that matters. That's the culture that is running the show. So southern China, in the southern ports have a very different perspective, Shanghai has a very different perspective, western China, Tibet, shinjang, very different perspective. But the overriding one, the only one that can come to the top, and really set the tone is the one in northern China, because that's the one that can keep things together, or can try to, if you let Hong Kong run China, there's not going to be China very long, there's not going to be any of that. So to have a unified China, you really need this northern power to keep things together and obsessively try and make it work. And usually it fails at some point. But that's the culture that rises to the top. So there's never No, no Chinese leader since Mao has ever been from southern China. They go down on tours to southern China. That's a big moment in Chinese history in the late 70s, early 80s. When and then early 90s, when Deng XIAO PING went to southern China, that was a big moment was it was a symbolic event, because southern and northern China aren't the same even ethnically or visually, a lot of Chinese people know and can tell someone who is from Southern versus northern China, it's, again, these have been not not even just separate countries. I mean, they've been different places that are populated for 1000s of years. Right there. There's a region in China called Sichuan, which has the good food that has its own, you know, old culture that had a culture that went back three over 3000 years, had its own language. And even today, the Sichuanese is like the language they speak there, more people speak that as a first language than German or French. And the, you know, the province of Guangdong in southern China, where Hong Kong is that there's more people there than any country in Europe, except for Russia. So there's just it's a scale question. So this question of like, can you integrate it into a new harmonious sort of cultural and if the Chinese perspective is no, there's way too much diversity, the histories are way too old. And what they did was they they simplified the language they impose written Chinese on everyone, because these languages in China they say they call them dialects. So this is a dialect this a doubt. It's not most languages in China are mutually unintelligible only propaganda calls them a dialect, right? But you have to do that because you want this sense of unity. It is essential. So that's what I would say this up and down this endless up and down, build, collapse, rebuild all that it has a permanent mark. And to move beyond it. That's been the goal since 1949, and Wilson's modern try since 1911, really, and they just have not found a way to do it, and technology and pushing into the future. Pushing as fast as you can. It's kind of like Republicans or Democrats trying to focus on enemies abroad or broader ideals that pushes people forward and can also avoid some of the immediate problems like, well, maybe everyone, the republican party doesn't agree right now on things. Maybe everyone that, you know, the democratic party doesn't quite see eye to eye and in factor, you know, clashing in moments? Well, let's look into the future. Let's just ride this technology wave as far as possible. That's what China's been trying to do.Ari Gronich15:30That sounds like a good thing to do, though. So that's what I like is let's ride technology as far as it can go, until it becomes seamless with the rest of nature and the rest of the world. But, so for Americans who want to do business with China, who are in the business, like, I used to do a lot of manufacturing of gym equipment, we know he had factories in China. So for people who want to do business with China, don't know how safe it is, don't know the processes and all that stuff. Just kind of give a little bit of a what would somebody want to think about? Jason Szeftel16:13Yeah, so the whole relationship with China is changing right now. It's transforming, there's more conflict, more animus than in hostility that we've seen since relations were normalized, in the 1970s. So we are really looking at a major sea change and what's been happening. So you know, how to think about it. Not to plug but I do if people have specific questions, sort of, you know, if you're in the entertainment industry, you want to see if your content can work, if you manufacture things, you want to see if your products will get stolen and copied right away. Those are sort of things I help address sort of directly, because it can be very specific. But in general, you probably, it depends industry by industry. But in general, I think what you said earlier, is the long term, right move. I think, if you can, you want production maybe in North America. I know that it's very difficult that the challenge of moving out of China is extreme. But the costs are also rising. I think that, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to do massive production runs all across the world, right, you don't need the same scale that you had, if you're just really selling in the United States. If the global supply chain system, global production world we live in changes, maybe you don't need that you can get ahead of the curve. But in general, it's very dicey these days, I mean, energy costs are going up across the Chinese coast. So our labor costs, so prices are higher. So a lot of them, they're eating a lot of those costs. So right now they're keeping people employed, their subsidies, etc. But they're rising, and a lot of people are moving to Southeast Asia. Is Vietnam. If you're, you know, textiles, you can move back to the United States, you can move to Southeast Asia, but does depends on each industry. But we're also seeing more and more party infiltration of operations in China. So just to think about it, just to give you a broad context, the Chinese Communist Party is a 95 million person organization that runs the country, right? So you have all these government agencies, and they're staffed by party officials, it's as if there was one, you know, Democratic Party, there's only one party allowed in this country. And they sort of had a shadow organization in everything, right. In the 1970s. Like I was saying earlier, this was everywhere, you used to get your food from the party leader, the party bureaucrat, the press secretary in your town, you get your housing from him, your business would be, you know, secured by him, etc. That changed when you had, you know, the privatization and entrepreneurial sort of time came, but later, now, we're kind of getting back to some of that. So there are party officials, party cells, party councils, and coming back to everything, multi-tenant buildings will have party officials, major corporations, all our party officials. So a lot of people that have joint ventures with companies in China are realizing that the state companies that they're partnered with, have a lot of party activity going on. And so the party is trying to both claim the glory for rejuvenating China and wants to be back in everyone's face and doesn't want to be behind the scenes as much anymore. Once people see the red armbands, you know what I mean? Here we are, you know, we rebuilt China, it's the national rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. But it's also just getting up into everyone's grill again. And so major tech companies are having, you know, there's party control of their data at this point as well. So I'd be very wary, I think, again, it really depends on the industry, if you're just manufacturing small things, probably not a big deal. Keep doing it wherever cost is lowest, right? I mean, you're trying to have a business. So that's a smart thing to do. If you're sending a lot of data back and forth to China, that's probably gonna be dicer and dicer. But, but yeah, it's again, I think there's so much transformation and change right now, that giving the broader sort of general stuff can be tougher, but the general stuff I'd say is that relations are getting worse with China every year and things are probably gonna keep getting worse. Because the humanitarian crisis in western China, the political conflict with Taiwan, the sort of eradication of a lot of the freedoms and everything that's gone on there for decades, centuries, the conflicts with potential conflict with Taiwan, you know, the militarization of the South China Sea, all this isn't going away. In fact, it's all kind of hitting into a massive nexus of problems. That is allowing the US government to target China more than ever before. We are also seeing more cyber attacks and cyber targeting by Chinese companies than we have ever seen. So how do I be wary of all this? Personally, I'm not going back to China. I don't think I'm welcome anymore. I wouldn't want to have an exit ban. So I come in and never allowed back. But people should be wary of this. I mean, this is not. Yeah. Ari Gronich20:44So, what's the devastation potential? As we pull back and start manufacturing in the US again? And in doing those local things? Is there a net devastation or a net benefit to like calming the water, so to speak, by taking back some of those jobs? And some of that? I mean, what the prognosis.Jason Szeftel21:07China? Do? You mean, calming the waters? Are there tensions with them?Ari Gronich21:11No, I mean, calming the waters as far as like, they're busy, right? They're busy, busy, busy, busy, they don't stop, they're busy. They're doing all our stuff, all their stuff, you know, all of the rest of the world stuff, as you said, like 50%, of manufacturing and of energy consumption and all these things. They're busy. If we pull back, and we start manufacturing in the US, as the largest probably user of the Chinese, you know, people. What's the prognosis? What's going to happen?Jason Szeftel21:49Well, it's a, it's a dicey thing, the Chinese system is built for exports, it got all the money, most if not all, got a lot of the money, it needed to develop the country through exports, since the 70s, late 70s, and 80s, it just money came in through the ports, they loaned against it, and they built everything in their country. That's the general super simplified story. So that's also where that's one of their most productive and credible industries. And it brings in hard currency and does a lot of things to stabilize the Chinese financial monetary system. But you know, if that goes away, there are deep deep challenges that the state has to face. And a big one is just that, China needs the enormous volumes of global manufacturing, it needs to build not just for China, widgets, just for China, but widgets for everyone. That's how it gets the volume. That's how it gets the profits. That's how it gets the scale. And that's how it keeps the employment levels up. China needs people employed and needs money coming in. And the US pulling back is a major, major threat, because the US is the largest consumer economy in the world. So you can add up the rest of Europe, and you're not going to get the same sort of effect for China. And they need to read. So this has been the whole thing, the last 10 years, people were like, well, China's gonna have to change catches export forever. Japan doesn't just do that Japan's clue that's just exporting all around the world, like it was in the 70s. Things have changed, but China's going to really struggle, I don't think it's, I don't think it's impossible for it to be a consumer economy. Ideally, China would want to start manufacturing for itself, sort of rejigger the economy, have more internal products and services and be able to sort of self-sustain what it's built. But that's for a lot of reasons. That's probably not possible. So this is this question. I mean, this is what makes the Chinese state governments so tense, so nervous and anxious, and defensive. You see that with every all of their diplomats are, you know, getting, you know, in everyone's face and having all this negative commentary, and they're, they're trying to project the image of power to their own people primarily. And, you know, to try and not be seen as weak to not have any, any event that could suggest that the Communist Party is, you know, weak or incompetent, or out of its depth, or illegitimate because they run on getting things done. Like you said, busy, busy, busy, keep doing things that people agree with it. You don't you can't vote on on their policies, but you can, you can see that they're responsive and making things better. And that's what they run on. It's like performance. It's like

Could Using the Right Multi-Factor Authentication Save You? I had a good friend who, this week, had his life's work stolen from him. Yeah. And you know what caused it? It was his password. Now, you know what you're supposed to be doing? I'm going to tell you exactly what to do right now. Let's get right down to the whole problem with passwords. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my friend this week. He has been building a business for. Maybe going on 10 years now, and this business relies on advertising. Most companies do so in some way; we need to have new customers. There's always some attrition. Some customers go away. So how do we keep them? We do what we can. How do we get new customers? For him, it was. Advertising, primarily on Facebook. He did some Google ads as well, but Facebook is really where he was focused. So how did he do all of that? Here's the bottom line you have to, if you are going to be advertising on Facebook, you have to have an advertising account. The same thing's true. Google. And then, on that account, you tie in either your bank account or your credit card. I recommend a credit card so that those transactions can be backed up. And on top of all of that now, of course, you have to use a pixel. So the way the tracking works is there are pixels on websites, about those already. And the bottom line with the pixels. Those are also. Cookies are about the pixels are used to set a cookie so that Facebook knows what sites you've gone to. So he uses those. I use those. In fact, if you go to my website, I have a Facebook pixel that gets set. And the reason for all of that is so that we know with. I'd be interested in something on the site. So I know that there are many people interested in this page or that page. And so I could, I have not ever, but I could now do some advertising. I could send ads to you so that if you were looking at something particular, you'd see ads related to that, which I've always said. It is the right way to go. If I'm looking to buy a pickup truck, I love to see ads for different pickup trucks, but if I don't want a car or truck, I don't want to see the ads. It isn't like TV where it sometimes seems every other ad is about. Car or a pickup truck. It drives me crazy because it's a waste of their money in advertising to me. After all, I don't want those things. And it's also not only just annoying in money-wasting. There are better ways to do targeting. And that's what the whole online thing is. Anyways, I told you about that because he had set up this pixel years ago. Basically, the Facebook pixel gets to know you. All of the people who like you that might've bought from you. Cause you can have that pixel track people through your site, your purchase site, they know what you purchase on the shopping cart, et cetera. And you can identify these people over on Facebook and their ads because they abandoned the cart or whatever it is you want to do there. So there's just a whole ton of stuff that you can do for these people. And it's so bad. It is so valuable. It takes years to build up that account. Years to put that pixel in place. And our friend here, he had done precisely that. Then he found that his account had been compromised. And that is a terrible thing in this case because the bad guy used his account to place ads. So now there are really two or three problems here. We'll talk about one of them. Why was the bad guy going after him? He has been running ads on Facebook for a long time. So as far as Facebook is concerned, his account is credible. All of the ads he runs don't have to be reviewed by a human being. They can go up almost immediately. He doesn't have to wait days for some of these things to go up. So our bad guy can get an account like his that has years' worth of advertising credibility and now start advertising things that are not correct. So there again is part of the value of having one of these older accounts for advertising. And so the bad guy did that use his credibility. And then secondly, he used 25 grand worth of my friend's money to run ads. Also, of course, very bad, very bad. So I sat down with him. In fact, it was this last week, and I was out on a trip with just a vacation trip. It was absolutely fantastic. I never just do vacation. It's always business plus work whenever I do anything like this, but I was on a trip last week. And so my eldest son who works closely with me, and he's also part of the FBI InfraGard program. So I had him reach out to my friend, and he helped them out, and they talked back and forth. So here's the problem that he has. And I'm trying to figure out a perfect way to solve this. And I haven't figured that out yet. And if you guys have an idea because you are the best and brightest, you really are. So go ahead and drop me an email at me@craigpeterson.com if a good way around this particular problem, which is he has. This Facebook could count and many other accounts, including his website, hosting account, email account, et cetera. And. He has people who manage his ads for him. Who operates his website for him, who put up some promotions, advertising, and everything else. So these are third-party. This is what we generically call a supply chain, risk people who are not him have access to his stuff, his private property. And how does he do it, or how did he do it? Is he went ahead and gave them. Access by giving them accounts or passwords. How well were they guarding their passwords and their accounts? So the first thing I had my friend do was going to haveIbeenpwned.com. I had him put in his email address, the one he uses the most, and it showed up in five different. Hacks data dumps. So these are five various sites where he had used that same email address in this case. And he found out that in those five cases, the bad guy's got his passwords and personal information. All bad. And he went ahead and cleaned it up. So I said put in the password because have I been, pwned also let you check your password, just see if it has been used by someone else and then stolen. So there are billions of passwords in this database. It's incredible of all of these known passwords. So he put in his password, and no, it had not been stolen, but the problem is how about the people that were managing his ads on Facebook and managing his Facebook ad. We're the usernames, which are typically the email addresses and the passwords kept securely. That's a supply chain thing I'm talking about, and that's where I'd love to get him. But from you guys, me@craigpeterson.com. If you think you have a good answer, What we've been doing. And our advice to him was use one password. That's the only one to use. I don't trust last pass anymore. After their last big hack where they got hacked one password, the digit one password. And go ahead. And set it up. And in a business scenario, you can have multiple vaults. So have a vault. That's just for people that are dealing with your Facebook ad account, maybe have another vault for people who are posting for you on Facebook. Or better yet when it comes to Facebook, go ahead and have an intermediary that is trusted the, if this, then that, or there's a few of them out there that can see that you put the post up on the website and automatically posted on Facebook. So you don't have to get. All of these people, your passwords, but again, it's up to you. You got to figure out if that makes sense to you that those are the types of things that I think you can do. And that is what we do as well. Now, one of the beauties of using one password like that, where you're not sharing all of your passwords to everything you're sharing, the minimum amount of login information that you possibly can share is that if they leave your employees, All you have to do is remove their access to the appropriate vault or vaults, or maybe all of your vaults. And this is what I've done with people that worked for me in the US and people would work for me overseas, and there have been a lot of them and it has worked quite well for me. So with one pass, We can enforce password integrity. We can make sure the passwords on stolen. One password ties automatically into have I been postponed. If a password has been exposed, if it's been stolen online, it's a great way to go. Now I've got an offer for you guys who are listening. I have a special report that I've sold before on passwords, and it goes through talks about one password. He talks about the last pass, which I'm no longer really recommending, but give some comparisons and how you can use these things. Make sure you go and email me right now. Me, Me@craigpeterson.com. That's ME at Craig Peterson dot com and just ask me for the password special report, and I'll be glad to get that on-off to you. There is a lot of good detail in there and helps you, whether you're a home user or a business. So the next step in your security is multi-factor authentication. Interesting study out saying that about 75% of people say that they've used it for work or for business, but the hard numbers, I don't think they agree One of the things that you have to do is use good passwords. And the best way to do that is to use a password manager. I was talking about a friend of mine who had been hacked this last week and his account was hacked. His Facebook ad account was hacked. We asked him if we could reach out to. BI and he said, sure. So we checked with the FBI and they're looking to turn this into a case, a real case, because they've never seen this type of thing, the hijacking of an advertising account who hijacked it. And why did they hide jacket? Was this in preparation maybe for. Playing around with manipulating our next election cycle coming up. There could be a lot of things that they're planning on doing and taking over my friend's account would be a great way to have done it. So maybe they're going to do other things here. And our friends at the FBI are looking into it. How now do you also keep your data safe? Easily simply. When we're talking about these types of accounts, the thing to look at is known as two factor authentication or multifactor authentication. You see my friend, if he had been using multi-factor authentication. I would not have been vulnerable. Even if the bad guys had his username, email address and his password, they still would not be able to log in without having that little six-digit code. That's the best way to do multi-factor authentication. When we're talking about this code, whether it's four or 5, 6, 8 digits long, we should not be using our cell phones to receive those. At least not as text messages, those have a problem because our phone numbers can be stolen from us and they are stolen from us. So if we're a real target, in other words, they're going after you. Joe Smith and they know you have some, $2 million in your account. So they're going after you while they can, in most cases, take control of your phone. Now you might not know it and it doesn't have to be hacked. All they have to do is have the phone company move your phone number to a new phone. Once. So that means one of the things you need to do is contact your telephone vendor, whoever it is, who's providing new that service. That's a company like Verizon sprint T-Mobile a T and Tone of those companies that are giving you cell service, you have to contact them and set up a pass. So that if they have a phone call coming in and that phone call can be faked. So it looks like it's coming from your phone, even if there was a phone call coming in, whether it's coming from your phone or not, they have to get that password or passcode that you gave them. And once they have that passcode now, and that's great, but if you don't have that in there targeting you specifically, then you're in trouble. So for many of us really it may not make a huge difference. But I would do it anyways. I have done it with every one of my cell phone carriers now. A couple of decades set up a password. So the next step is this multifactor authentication. If I'm not supposed to get it via text message to my phone, how do I get it? There are a couple of apps out there. There's a free one called Google authentic. And Google authenticator runs on your phone. And once it's there on your phone and you are setting it up on a website, so Facebook, for instance, your bank, most websites out there, the bigger ones, all you have to do is say, I want to set up multi-factor authentication, and then it'll ask you a case. So how do you want to do it? And you can say, I want an app and they will display. A Q R code. That's one of those square codes with a bunch of little lines inside of it. You're seeing QR codes before they become very common. And you take your phone with the Google authenticator app. Take a picture. Of that little QR code on the screen, and now it will start sinking up so that every 30 seconds Google authenticator on your phone will change that number. So when you need to log back into that website, it's going to ask you for the code. You just pull up Google authenticator and there's the code. So that's the freeway to do it. And not necessarily the easiest way to. Again, going back to one password. I use this thing exclusively. It is phenomenal for keeping my passwords, keeping them all straight and then encrypted vault, actually in multiple encrypted vault it's so that I can share some of them. Some of them are just strictly private, but it also has that same authenticator functionality built right into it. Microsoft has its own authenticator, but you can tell Microsoft that you want to use the standard authenticator. Of course, Microsoft has to do everything differently. But you can tell it. And I do tell it, I want to use a regular authenticator app, not Microsoft authenticator. By the way. That's why I advise you to don't use the Microsoft authenticator, just use one authenticator for all of the sites, and then Microsoft will give you that same QR code. And then you can take that picture and you're off and running. Next time you log in, it asks you for the code and instead of texting it to you to your phone smarter, otherwise it will not. That require you to open up your authenticator. So for me, for instance, when I'm logging into a website, it comes up and asks for the username, asked for the password. Both of those are filled out automatically by one password for me. And then it asks for that code identification code and. One password automatically puts it into my pace to buffer copy-paste, buffer, and I just paste it in and they've got the code. So I don't have to remember the codes. I don't remember passwords. I don't have to remember usernames or email addresses. One password remembers them all for me. Plus it'll remember notes and other things. So you can tell, I really one password. We use it with all of our clients. That's what we have for them. And it does meet even a lot of these DOD requirement on top of. Depending again, how much security you need. We will use duo D U O and it also has this authenticator functionality and we will also use UBI keys. These are those hardware key. They do oh, can provide you with hardware tokens. Those are those little tokens that can go onto your key ring. That show a changing six-digit number every 30 seconds. And that's the same number that would be there in your smartphone app. Your one password or Google authenticator smartphone. Hopefully, I didn't confuse you too much. I think most of the reason we're not using the security we should is because we're not sure how to, and we don't know what we're going to be. And I can see that being a big problem. So if you have questions about any of this, if you would like a copy of my password security, special report, just send an email to me. M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's S O N.com. I'll be glad to send it to you. Also, if you sign up for my newsletter there on my website@craigpeterson.com, you are going to get. I was hold little series of the special reports to help you out, get you going. And then every week I send out a little bit of training and all of my articles for the week. It's usually six to 10 articles that I consider to be important so that, what's going on in the cybersecurity world. So you can. With it for yourself, for your family, for your business. Craig peterson.com. According to researchers. 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. And you know what Facebook knew and knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls. There's a great article that came out in the Wall Street Journal. And I'm going to read just a little bit here from some of the quotes first. When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled bodies, perfect. Abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes, said, Ms.  Now 18, who lives in Western Virginia. Amazing. Isn't it. The one that I opened now with 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram, I made them feel worse. So that is studies again, that looks like yeah, these were researchers inside Instagram and they said this in a March, 2020 slide presentation that was posted to Facebook's internal message board that was reviewed by the wall street journal quote comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves. Apparently, for the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how Instagram is affecting its millions of young users. Now, for those of you who don't know what Instagram is, it allows these users to create little stories, to have. Pictures videos of things that they're doing, and it's a lifestyle type thing you might've heard, of course, of how this I don't know what it is. Kidnapping murder plot. These, this young couple and the body I think was found up in Wyoming. I'm trying to remember, but of her and it's yeah, there it is. It wasn't my OMI. And I'm looking up right now, Gabby potato. That's who it is. She was what they called a micro influence. And I know a lot of people who can loom, that's what they want to be. There's a young lady that stayed with us for a few months. She had no other place to live. And so we invited her in here and we got some interesting stories to tell about that experience. And it's, a little sad, but anyhow, she got back up on her feet and then she decided she was going to become an influence. And what an influencer is someone that has a lot of followers. And of course, a lot means different numbers. You get these massive influencers that have tens of millions of people that quote, follow unquote them. And of course, just think of the Kardashians they're famous for. Being famous, nothing else. They have subsequently done some pretty amazing things. At least a few of them have. We've got one of those daughters who now was the first earliest billionaire. I think it was ever youngest. So they have accomplished some amazing things after the fact, but they got started. By just becoming famous by posting on these social media sites. So you get a micro-influencer, like Gabby Petito, who is out there posting things and pictures. And you look at all of these pictures and, oh my gosh, they're up at this national park. Oh, isn't she so cute. I'll look at her boyfriend. They'll look so good together and people. Fall for that image, right? It's just like Photoshopping these pictures of models, changing them. There've been some real complaints about those over the years. So Instagram sets these kids up with these pictures of people that are just totally unrealistic. One of the slides from a 2019 presentation says, quote, we make body. Excuse me. We make body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls teams, blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety. And depression said another slide. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across. Groups among teens is this according to the wall street journal who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users, and 6% of American users trace the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. Again, according to one of these presentations, isn't this just absolutely amazing. And you might've heard it discussed a little bit. I saw some articles about it, obviously in the news wall street journal had it, but this is a $100 billion company, Instagram. That's what their annual revenues. More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 years old and younger. And about 22 million teens log into Instagram in the US each day, compared with 5 million that log into Facebook, the younger users have been declining. Facebook it's getting the population there is getting older and older on Facebook. In average teens in the us spend 50% more time on Instagram than they do on Facebook. And also tick-tock, by the way I took talk has now surpassed YouTube in some of these metrics. Quote, Instagram is well-positioned to resonate and win with young people said a researcher's slide posted internally. Inside Facebook. Another post said there is a path to growth. If Instagram can continue their trajectory. Amazing. So Facebook's public phase has really tried to downplay all of these negative effects that the Instagram app has on teens, particularly girls, and hasn't made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. Quote, the research that we've seen is that using social apps to connect with other people. Positive mental health benefits said Mark Zuckerberg. He's the CEO of course of Facebook. Now this was 2020. In March one at a congressional hearing, he was asked about children and mental health. So you see how he really lawyered the words that they can have positive mental health benefits, but Facebook's own internal research seems to show that they know it has a profound negative effect on a large percentage of their users. Instagram had Adam Moseri told reporters in may of this year, that research he had seen suggest the app's effect on team's wellbeing is likely quote quite small. So what the wall street journal seems to be pointing out here is that Facebook is not giving us the truth on any of this stuff. It's really sad. We've got to be careful. No, apparently Mr. Moseri also said that he's been pushing very hard for Facebook to really take their responsibilities more broadly. He says they're proud of this research. I'm just summarizing this before we run out of time here, but it shows the document. Internal documents on Facebook show that they are having a major impact on teen, mental health, political discourse, and even human trafficking. These, this internal research offers an unparalleled picture. Courtney told the wall street journal of how Facebook is acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routine. Fail great article. I've got it in this week's newsletter. You can just open it up and click through on the link to the wall street journal. They have a paywall and I hate to use payroll articles, but this one's well worth it. And they do give you some free articles every month. So if you're not on that newsletter, you can sign up right now. Craig peterson.com. You'll get the next one. If you miss a link today, if you want some, the special report on passwords, et cetera, just email me directly. Give me a few days to respond. But me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. We've all worked from home from time to time. At least if we're somehow in the information it industry, I want to talk right now about why you need a personal laptop. Even if the business is providing you with a laptop. Laptops are something that was designed to be personal, but many of us are using them as our main computer. I know I often am using my laptop, a couple of my kids and my wife. It's really their main computer, even though they all have other computers that they could potentially be using, laptops are just handy and you have them with, you can take them with you. We've got workstation set up that are kind of. Workstations, if you will, where there are three screens set up and they're all hooked up into one central screen controller that then has a USBC connection that goes right into the, your laptop. So you can be sitting there with four screens on your Mac laptop on your mac pro if you need four screens, it's really handy. No question. Many of us have a laptop for home and a laptop for business. And many of us also look at it and say, oh wow, this is a great laptop I got from work. It's much better than my home laptop. And you start to use the business laptop for work. At home. Okay. That's what it's for. Right. But then we start to use that business laptop for personal stuff. That's where the problems start. We've seen surveys out there that are shown. Then half of workers are using work issue devices for personal tasks that might be doing it at home. They might be doing it at the office. Things like personal messages, shopping, online, social media, reading the news. So the prospect of using your work laptop as your only laptop, not just for work, but also for maybe watching some movies, group chat and messaging, reading, fan fiction, paying bills, emailing to family or friend. It just seems not. It's so tempting. It's just natural. I'm on it. I'm on it all day long. Why wouldn't I just use it? And this is particularly true for people who are working from home, but we have to be careful with that. It's really something that you shouldn't be doing for a couple of reasons. One that. Top that's a business. Laptop is the property of the business. It's just like walking home with boxes, full of pencils and paperback in the old days, it is not yours to use for personal use. We also have to assume, assume since it is the company's laptop that hopefully it's been secure. Hopefully they haven't set up. So it's going through a special VPN at the office and it's going through special filters, maybe snort filters or something else. That's doing some deeper inspection on what's coming through your laptop. Well, there are also likely on that laptop. Tools that are monitoring your device. Things like key loggers, biometric tracking, Jill location, software that tracks your web browser and social media behavior, screenshot, snapshot software, maybe even your cam. Is being used to keep track of you. I know a number of the websites that I've used in the past to hire temporary workers. Those workers have to agree to have you monitor what they're doing. These hourly workers, subtle take screenshots of their screen, unbeknownst to them. Pictures from the cameras at random intervals. Again, unbeknownst to them, it'll track what they're doing. And so I can now go in and say, okay, well he billed me five hours for doing this. And I look at his screen and guess what? He wasn't doing that for all of those five hours that he just billed me. Well, the same thing could be true for your company, even if you're not paid by the hour. Right now, we're looking at stats that show over half of the businesses that are providing laptops for the employees to use more than half of them are using monitoring software. And through this whole lockdown, the usage of these different types of monitoring systems has grown. Now there's some of the programs you're using. You might be VPN in, you might be using slack or G suite enterprise, all good little pieces of software. They can monitor that obviously, but it goes all the way through to the business. And using your slack access as paid for, by the businesses also idiotic to do things like send messages to your buddies, set up drinks after work, complain to other people about someone else in the business, your boss, or otherwise your it, people at the business can see all of that. They can see what you're doing with slack. Even if you have a separate personal account. It's still more likely that you'll end up mixing them up if you're logged into both on the same computer. So the bottom line is if you are on a work computer, whether it's a laptop or something else, you can reasonably assume that I T can see everything. That's not. They own it. Okay. And they have to do some of this stuff to protect themselves. We put software on laptops for companies not to spy on employees. That's none of our business, but we put software on computers for employees. To make sure they stay safe. Think of what happens when your computer, your laptop, whatever it might be, connects to the company's network. Now that can be through a VPN. It can be because you take your laptop home or on the road when you're traveling and you bring it back into the office. If that computer is infected, somehow now you've brought that infection into the office. And that's how a lot of the malware works. It goes from computer to computer. So once they get in that front door where there's through a website and email that you clicked on or in a computer that you're bringing into the office, they can start to move around. Now it's not just your activity. And this is an interesting article from the verge by Monica chin. It's not just your activity that they can see on your laptop, but in many cases, they're also able to look at anything you're downloading any of your photographs or videos that you might've sinked up from your smart. Laura loading these types of things, your text messages on your work device for safekeeping, or just because it's your primary device might seem harmless, right? Cause you're just going to remove them before you hand it in. But some companies such as Apple won't allow you to wipe your device before handing it in regardless of how personal the contents are. And that makes sense too, because many times an employee leaves. And they don't give the company all of the information that they have, that they're obliged to give back to their employer. Things that they've been working on, customer information, et cetera. So Manalive, there are plenty of other devices out there. Hopefully if you leave your company with plenty of notice, moving a bunch of things off your work device in the last few days, uh, might raise some eyebrows at the. And I'm saying hopefully, because they should notice that sort of thing, because it could be malicious activity. It could be an insider risk that maybe they're not even aware of. There's so much you could go wrong here. So bottom line don't use the work laptop for home. So what should you use? You know, my personal recommendation. Almost always is get a Mac. They are safer to use the patches that they get are usually not destructive. You know, sometimes you can install a patch for windows and now your machine just won't work anymore. Right. You've had that happen. I know every last one of us out there that are tried to install Microsoft patches for a while have had that happen to them. All of a sudden the patch has completely messed up your computer and you are so out of luck, it's ridiculous. Right? So don't, you know, hopefully don't do that, but I like the max because they are basically safer than windows. And also because the patches just work on them, apple tends to get them out in plenty of time to try and protect us the next level. If he can't afford an apple and. Apple laptops really are not expensive when you consider how long they last and the quality that components, they are not expensive at all. But if you can't afford that, the next thing I would look at is getting a Chromebook. There are a lot of companies that make Chromebooks Chrome is an operating system from Google. It's similar to Android. Google keeps the Chromebooks up-to-date. They patch them quite regularly and make sure that there aren't nastiness is going on. You just have some of the same issues and Android has patches might take a while to get to you because it has to go through the vendor that made the Chromebook. You might have a Chromebook for Sam from Samsung, for instance, it's not Google's even though it's called a Google Chromebook. Now Chromebooks rely heavily on the cloud services that Google provides, but they can also run just locally. So with a Chromebook and you can get them for as little as 150 bucks, but remember you get what you pay for. Or as much as I've seen them in the $2,000 price range with fancy GPU's, local storage and other things, but at 150 bucks, it could be well worth it for you. It lets you do the regular word processing. Just think of what you can do with Google docs, spreadsheets against Google docs, spreadsheets, all of those types of things are built into it. You can. Cruz the web, obviously using Google Chrome on your Chromebook. And send and receive email, which is what most people do. That's really kind of all, most people do at home. So consider that as well. I also like iPad. They are quite safe again, but they tend to be more expensive and they can do pretty much everything. And now with Android support built right into Google Chromebooks, you can even run Android apps. So there you go. Keep safe and be safe out there. Right. Have a hack free life. Make sure you get my newsletter. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. The national cyber director, Chris Inglis said that we need cyber bullets, that cyber bullets are part of the war on hacks. And it makes sense on one level. But when you get into the reality, it's a much different story..  I had an interesting email this week from a listener. Actually he sent it about two weeks ago when I finally was able to get to it this week and responded, and he was pointing out how there are some things that I talk about on the show that I put into my newsletter that are really good. And. I'm paraphrasing here but theoretical to so many people, there's some things that you can figure out pretty easily yourself. Some things you can do yourselves and other things that are just different. To do still. And a lot of that has to do with the websites you go to in order to maintain your passwords. And he was complaining specifically about bank of America and how you can, according to what he has found here in the real world, you can come up with a. Password a 20 character long password that is going to keep everything nice and safe at trend to be generated. You're using one password and great. So you set your password up in bank of America's account, and then you try and log in later, and it doesn't work because it lets you put 20 character passwords and when you're creating it, yeah. But the login screen only takes the first 16. So of course they'd home match. You see it's things like that really are pushing us back, holding us back. But I'd say pushing us back from being secure as a country, there, there just aren't enough people paying enough attention to make sure this cyber security, even the basic stuff like passwords and two factor authentication are being done properly. So one of the things I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of is I need to know when you're having these problems, because what I want to do is put together some trainings to show you exactly how to do it. Because on some websites you were saying, it's pretty hard to use one password he's paying for it, but it's kinda difficult for him. And I think in some ways, a lack of understanding. Then, it can be difficult to spend a bunch of time trying to watch some training videos for some of the software. And so I want to hear when you're having problems so I can do what I did for him this week and spend a little time, write some stuff up, and I even am reaching out to some of this website. People like bank of America who are really messing up cyber security for people who are trying to do the right thing and writing them and saying, Hey, listen, I'm part of the FBI InfraGard program. I'm a member of it. I paid a lot of attention to cybersecurity. Heck I ran the training for the FBI InfraGard program for a couple of years, and there are some real things lacking. In the login anyways, and this one particular case of the cybersecurity, but I don't know all of this stuff. I'm not using all of these things and I have a disadvantage over you guys, and that is that I've been doing this for so long. I've forgotten what it's like to not know it. Does that make sense? So if you have something that I've talked about on the show, that's appeared in my newsletter and you're having some confusion over, let me know. Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. What he did is he just hit reply to my newsletter. And of course, that goes to me and me@gregpeterson.com and it tracks it. So I know I need to reply, so I can sit down and go through and answer people's questions. I sent out a lot of the copies of my password, special report to people you guys had requested specifically some of the. People out there had requested a little bit of help. And I had sent out an email to most of the people that I could identify as being business people. I sent out a little thing saying, Hey, listen, if you could use half-hour my help, let me know myself or my team. And then, again, you can just send me an E Craig. So I answered a lot of those questions this week. And in fact, that's how I come up with much of what I cover here on the show. You guys ask the questions and that's how I know that it's a real problem. If I understand it, that's one thing. But for the people who don't do cybersecurity as their primary job or a strategy, I get it. I can get why you guys are confused. So make sure you get my weekly newsletter. So you can find out about all of the trainings, the free stuff, the paid courses, and. It's easy. Just go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. That's Craig Peterson, P E T E R S O N. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. And I'm more than glad. Add you to that list. And there are now thousands of people on that list to get my email pretty much every week. If you miss it one week, it's probably, cause I just got too busy, but I put out all my show notes. I put it all a little bit of training notes, all. The us government is supposedly getting ready to fire what they're calling cyber bullets in response to these significant hacking attacks. This is what they're calling a comprehensive strategy to dissuade. Adversaries. And this is all from the national cyber security director, Chris Inglis. This is from an article in American military news.com by Chris Strome. That was out this week. And of course I included that in my newsletter this week as well, coming out. Today or tomorrow, depends on how this all goes right with the weekend. I got to help a buddy out today, but president Joe Biden has been really talking about how do we use cyber weapons to retaliate. For instance, he gave a list of industries that Russia should not be. As though Putin himself is running all of these hacks or come out of Russia. Yeah, certainly there are some that are part of their military, but there many of them that are just bad guys that are trying to make some money, we should feel sorry for them. So Biden gives him this list and says, Hey, listen, if you attack any of these various industries or actually portions of our economy, We are going to retaliate. We have seen the us retaliate under President Trump and the retaliation. Of course he did all kinds of economic stuff to stop it. And much of which has been reversed by president Biden's administration, but also he attacked them directly in. Down some power systems there in the Moscow area, which I thought was really kinda cool. So kudos to President Trump for doing that and for president and Biden now to say, Hey, we are going to attack back. Of course. The biggest question is. What would we be attacking? How would we be attacking it? And for what reason, for instance, the red Chinese have gone after our office of personnel management, OPM records and got them all back in 2015. So they now know everything about everybody that had a secret security clearance or the took a paycheck from the federal government. All of those records, they would get their hands on them and get them on all of the records a lot. So Inglis was in front of the let's see here, the, yeah, he was a former director of the national security agency. He's the first to hold his Senate-confirmed position at the white house, this national cyber director position. And he says there is a sense that we can perhaps fire some cyber bullets and shoot our way out of this English set at the conference. It was hosted by the way, by the national security agency and a nonprofit group, he said that will be useful in certain circumstances. If you had a clear shot at a cyber aggressor and I can take them offline, I would advise that we do so as long as the collateral effects are acceptable. Yeah. What we have done here under president Biden administration is we have shut down some people who were operating illegally, we have shut down some cyber actors that were attacking us. So we've been doing that, but it isn't exactly. Wow. We just saw a muzzle flash over there. And so we are returning fire to the area of that muzzle flash, because as I've said many times before, we just don't know. Where in fact that bullet is coming from, it makes it a lot more difficult. English went on to say there's a larger set of initiatives that have to be undertaken. Not one of those elements is going to be sufficient to take this. Out let's see here, the us should make clear to Russia now their adversaries, what kinds of attacks would prompt a response, which is what president Biden did when he was talking with, of course, President Putin over there, red lines of both good and bad red lines are clear and crisp. Although I got to say many of our administrations have. Really done anything about it. It's the red line in the sand and Syria president Obama didn't do anything when they stepped over that red line. So yeah. And then with what we just finished doing in Afghanistan, where we drew a red line and said, we're going to protect all of you who helped us. And then we not only abandoned them, but we abandoned Americans behind there. I don't think a lot of people aren't going to believe us. So here's the last statement here. And again, this is an article in American military news from our cyber chief is the government actions. Aren't always going to be broadcast. In some cases, it's not helpful to broadcast those for all of mankind to see another one. We are doing some things behind the scenes. And I have certainly seen some of the results of those over the last few years. Stick around.  You're listening to Craig Peterson online@craigpeterson.com. You've got a smartphone and there are some new versions out, right? New hardware, new software, Android iOS. How long should you keep that device? How long can you stay safe with that older device? Apple has now done something. Different something they've never done before. One of the reasons that apple equipment tends to be safer than almost anything else out there is that they have, what's known as a closed ecosystem. There's arguments both directions here on whether that's safer or not. But the real advantage when it comes to cybersecurity is there are only. So many versions of the iPhone out there. What are we now in a couple of dozen versions of the hardware platform that makes it easier for apple to be able to support older versions of the software and multiple pieces of hardware, much easier than for, let's say Microsoft windows. It doesn't even have a single. Platform or Android, where there are hundreds of hardware platforms out there and tens of thousands of versions of the hardware, because one model phone can contain many. Changes different types of hardware to talk to the cell towers or the screen you name it. So it's very hard to keep up. Android has for quite a while now supported three versions of their operating system. Of course, we're talking about Google, but Android operating system. So they support the current release. Of Android and the Breviary release is two previous releases in fact of Android. Now that is frankly a pretty good thing to know, but there's over a billion Android devices out there that are no longer supported by security updates. We've got Android 10, nine, and eight that are fairly supported right now. We're actually up to Android 12. So here's how it works. If you've got Android version 10 out, if that's the main one, then you can continue to do. Eight and nine and get updates, security updates. But then here's the problem, everybody, those security updates are coming out of Google, but that does not mean that they are making it all the way to you. So there you go. It's one thing for Google to provide updates, but if you can't get them because your phone manufacturer is not supporting them, you've got trouble Samsung. Is probably the best company other than maybe Google and the Google Pixel phone. Samsung's the best company to go to. If you want some longer-term support. Many of these other companies just don't provide support past the current version. So keep that in mind as well. Android 12 was the 12th major version of Android announced by Google, February, 2021. And it is starting to roll out a Android. The 11th, 11 is the one that was out in February of last year. At least it was announced then. And we're, they're coming out, they're getting pushed out. So basically Google is saying the current version plus two prior versions. And that usually gives you about a four or maybe even a five year window. So if you're. An Android device from a major manufacturer, particularly Samsung on the Android side, your device is going to be good for at least four years, maybe five years now on the, and by the way, you don't necessarily have to upgrade the. You could be continuing to run an older release saw, as I mentioned earlier, if it version 11 is the current one that's out there being supported, which it is right. 12 is early still, but version 11, that means two prior versions still get security updates. You don't get featured. Dates, you don't get the new stuff, but you get security updates. So Android 11, the current one that means 10 and nine get security updates. So you don't, you're not being forced to do an upgrade. Most people don't upgrade their phones from an older major release to a newer major release. In other words, they don't try and go from Android eight to Android 11. Because in fact, most of the time, the hardware manufacturer doesn't support it. That's why there's over a billion Android devices out there right now that cannot get security updates. So have a look at your phone and your vendors. See what you're running. You probably want to do an update because most phones cannot get any support on the, in the apple side. Things are a lot different with Apple iOS, which is the operating system used on the iPhone and the I pad apple has always forced you to move to the next major version. No, they only force you to do that. If they support the hardware. And I've got to say kudos to them, they're still supporting the iPhone six S which came out quite a while. The iPhone success is something that my wife has been using and that I had as well. In fact, she got my old iPhone success, but that's a six-year-old. Phone came out in September of 2015. So it is still getting security updates, and we'll probably continue to get them. Not only is it getting security update this six-year-old iPhone success is getting the latest and our iOS operating system. It's getting iOS 15. Isn't that just amazing? Yeah, exactly. And so not just security updates, like you might get from some of the other vendors out there, Android vendors. So the apple keeps their arms around you for quite a while. Here's, what's changed now with Apple and iOS, the, for the first time ever in the iOS world, Apple is not forcing you to upgrade. So you're not being forced to upgrade to iOS 15. You can continue to run iOS 14. And that's how apples got around the security patches in the past, because what happens is you get the updates and installs them. Basically. There's no reason for you not to upgrade your phone. And so you do so apple never had to worry about releasing some of these fixes for really old versions of iOS. Although they have done that from time to time. In the Mac iOS side, Apple has done a couple of good things. The, where they always have supported basically three releases, what Google's doing with Android. So you now have a new feature. If you will, with iOS, here's a PSA for everyone. Public service announcement. You don't have to take the iOS 15 upgrade. Now I did. I put it on my iPhone and I seem to have some sort of a problem with messages where it's telling people that my phone has notifications turned off, which it does not. So I haven't figured that one out yet. I'll have to look into that a little bit more, but. This is nice because that means you're not going to have to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 15. You'll still get security updates for iOS 14, something Apple's never done before. We'll see if they continue this. We will see if they match Google going back. Three releases in Android. It just never been done before over on the iOS. So good news for them. Also course in the windows world and the Mac world, you really should upgrade the operating system as much as you can. Windows 11 though, man, windows 11. And I said this to my newsletter. I warned you guys is going to be a nightmare. For many people. You are not going to be able to do an automatic upgrade unless you have the newest of hardware, with the highest end of features, Craig peterson.com. One of the very big ransomware operations is back online. And now we have some inside information from one of the contractors working for this ransomware organization and oh yeah, there's an FBI tie, too.. This organization, ransomware gang, almost business, whatever you might want to describe them as is known as revolt. They have a few other names, but that's the really big one. And they are basically the 800 pound gorilla in the ransom. Business, you might be using cloud services right now. Maybe you use Microsoft's email service. Their Microsoft 360, I think, is what they call it now and use it for email and various other things pretty handy. It's mostly in the cloud. Computers you own or operate or have to maintain. I think that makes some sense too, but here's the bottom line it's software as a service right now, salesforce.com software as a service, Oracle has their accounting stuff. QuickBooks online, all software as a service. It isn't just those legitimate businesses that I just mentioned. That are using the cloud that are providing software as a service where you're paying monthly or however frequently. And you're getting this software as a service. That's what that means. Typically it means it's in the cloud and you don't have any real control over it. That's what this ransomware gang has been doing. This gang known as rebill. They all appear to be in. And there's some interesting stuff. That's come out. A transcript was released of an interview with one of their contractors. Now the original interview was in Russian. So I read through a translation of the Russian. I have no idea how good it is, but it is being quoted by a bank. Insider magazine that you might be familiar with bank info, security. That's one of the places that I follow. And there's a few interesting things that he talked about that I want to get into, but these are the people who have been behind things like the colonial pipeline attack and some of the other very large attacks, the way they work, their business model is. You can license their software, their ransomware software, and you go after a business or a government agency, whatever it might be, you get that ransomware software inside. And the reveal gang will take a percentage of the money that you have in rent. Now, how is that for a, an interesting business model, right? Taking something that the rest of the world has been using, and then take that model and put it into the legal side of the world. For three weeks, during this whole reveal ransomware attack, this summer turns out that the FBI secretly withheld the key that could have been used to decrypt. And computers that reveal had infected with ransomware and looks like kids up to maybe 1500 networks. Now those are networks, not just computers. That includes networks run by hospitals, schools, and businesses, including critical infrastructure businesses. The way the FBI got their hands on this decryption game. Is by penetrating reveal gangs servers. So they got into it. They were able to grab the keys and then the FBI waited before. Did anything with it. See, what they were trying to do is catch the people behind reveal. And so they didn't want to release information, get information out there to the press that might tip off those bad guys over there in Russia. And then shut down their operations. But as you might know, because I mentioned it here before the reveal gang went offline on July 13th, before the FBI could really track them down. And then the FBI didn't release the key until July 21st. And then I think it was Malwarebytes released a decryption tool. So if you had been hacked by the gang, you could. Now, remember it isn't reveal itself. That's doing most of them. Ransomware hacking if you will or a placement it's small guys. And that's why some people, including this contractor that apparently worked for the reveal gang itself says, people think that it's the Russian government, that it's Putin, that's doing this. He said, in fact, it's not it's small guys. And people like me are getting four or five hours a night. Because we're working so hard trying to make a whole of this work, come up with the new software approaches. We have to provide code tech support unquote to our affiliates, as well as tech support to the people who have had their computers and their data ransomed. So it a real interesting mix. Absolutely. Interesting mix. Now Christopher Ray here a couple of weeks ago, he's the FBI director told Congress that cool. We make these decisions as a group, not unilaterally. To the FBI and working with other government agencies, these are complex decisions designed to create maximum impact. And that takes time and going against adversaries, where we have to marshal resources, not just around the. But all over the world. So this Russian based gang first appeared in 2019, they've been around, they've been exporting large amounts of money from businesses for a very long time. One of the interest he'd things I think about all of this is that this reveal gang has their software as a service, and they provide it to quote affiliates, quote that, go ahead and then install the software, get you to install it on your computers in order to ransom you a double whammy ransom you, but there's now reports out there that there's a secret back door in the ransomwares code that allow. Rebill to go around their affiliates and steal the proceeds. How's that for hilarious, you've got a bad guy who goes in and gets the software from revolt, pays them a commission, and then reveal apparently has been jumping in on these customer support chats. In other words, you just got nailed and because you got nailed with ransomware, you have to go to. Chat room. And so you go in there and you're getting customer support on how to buy Bitcoin and how to transfer to their wallet. And apparently revival is getting right in the middle and is extorting money from these people directly instead of having the affiliates do it pretty amazing. So here's this part of this interview? It was aired on the Russian news outlet, London. And was trans translated by yeah. Flashpoint. Here are the guys that got the full transcript of the interview. He says in the normal world, I was called a contractor, doing some tasks for many ransomware collectives that journalists considered to be famous. Money is stolen or extorted with my hands, but I'm not ashamed of it. I do. And again, this goes into the thinking of many of these bad guys of Americans are all rich and they don't deserve what they have. He said, let's put it this way. This is a very time consuming job. And if you've earned enough, then you can quit the game. But chronic fatigue, burnout, deadline. All of these words from the life of ordinary office workers are also relevant for malware developers. So there you go. You should feel sorry for these malware developers who are developing software to steal millions from you and. Down our critical infrastructure. Hey, join me online. Craig peterson.com. And if you subscribe to my weekly newsletter right there on the site, I'll send you a few of my special reports. The most popular ones will come to you right there in your email box. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. We all pretty much have some form of insurance. And we're going to talk right now about the types of cyber insurance you may have. Now this might be through your homeowners policy or perhaps a rider on a business policy.  Many of our homeowners policies have started coming with cyber insurance. So we're going to talk about that. What is it? Businesses as well are also using cyber insurance and I'm sure you've heard of insurance basically called LifeLock and what that's all about. So let's kind of start. When we have a breach in a business, usually what happens is information about our customers is stolen. Look at some of the biggest breaches in history where we. Hundreds of millions of our personal records stolen Equifax breach is an example of a huge breach where we had all kinds of personal information that was stolen by the bad guys. Now, some of this information gets stale pretty quickly, but of course, other parts of it like our address, our social security number, they are probably not going to change for years. If for. No, of course our social security number will never change the social security administration. Just doesn't reissue them for very many reasons at all. And they do not reissue a social security number was stolen online because. Just about everybody's has, so what does a company like LifeLock do? They keep an eye on your credit report for you. And they're looking at what's going on new accounts that are open. They look at various other things, just related to that. And they, at that point say, wait a minute, something weird is happening. Now my credit cards, for instance, I have a credit card that if let's say I buy two of the same thing, one after the other and the, both the same price that credit card company pops a message right up on my phone saying, Hey, did you just buy two? Of these $15 things from and I can say yes or no, if I'm out on the road and I am purchasing gas, the credit card can pop up on my phone and it does and say, Hey, will you just trying to buy gas at this gas station? Because what'll happen as you use the credit card at the pump. And the pump says it was denied and then up at pops and yeah. Okay. No, that was me. And they said, okay, we'll try the transaction. Okay. And we'll approve it next time. And that's all automated. And that has nothing to do with LifeLock. LifeLock is there to more or less detect that something happened and if something happened and it was a bad guy and basically your identity was stolen. So they might be trying to buy a Ferrari in your name or maybe a 10 year old, four Ford focus, whatever it might be. And. They will help you try and clean it. That's what they do. So that's why it's cheap. And I don't know that it's terribly useful to you if you're really concerned. Go ahead and do that, but do keep an eye on your credit report. I do as well. My bank has free credit reporting for me, my credit card. Same thing. Free credit reporting that lets me know everything that's going on. So that's an easy way to tell WhatsApp. And there are different types of cyber insurance beyond this sort of thing, beyond the LifeLocks of the world. And many of us just get our cyber insurance through our homeowner's policy. It's a little rider. And businesses can buy cyber insurance as well. We have cyber insurance, that's underwritten by Lloyd's of London and we provide a $500,000 or million-dollar policy to our clients. As well, because that's what we do is cyber security, right? So the idea is if one of our clients gets hit, we have some insurance to back us up, but of course we go a lot further. It's almost like the LifeLock where if you do get hit by ransomware or something else, we will help you get back in business. We'll help restore your data. We'll help you with providing you. The information you need in order to do press releases, which agencies you need to contact, which of your customers you need to contact. And we've got scripts for all of that. So you can send it all out and just take care of it. So the idea is you don't want ransomware. So you hire us. We are extremely likely to keep ransomware out of your systems. And on top of that, if you are hit with ransomware, we restore everything. LifeLock does not do that. Obviously they all, I'll only do stuff after the fact and the cyber insurance you buy from an insurance agency is much the same, and there's a huge caveat with these policies that we're buying for our businesses and for our homes. And that is. They have a checklist at the insurance companies. Did you do this and this? And if you did, then they might payout if you did not, they may not payout. In fact, pay outs on cyber insurance policies are not known because. Bottom line. They really don't payout. Okay. I'm looking at some numbers right now and about paying ransoms and everything else. You may or may not. You got to have a look at it. Many of these policies are never paid out by the cyber insurance covers. They usually just regular insurance companies, but it's a special rider. And what they do is they say, Hey, listen, you did not follow the rules, so we're not going to payout. And there are many cases. If you go online and do a search, just use duck, go and say cyber insurance, payout. Lawsuits I'm doing that right now is. And it'll come up and show. Oh, okay. Does it cover lawsuits? Why are liability claims so costly? Yeah, exactly. A 2% payouts is talking about here. I'm invoicing, the most common cyber insurance claim denial. Yeah, it goes on and on. There are a lot is an act of war clause could nix cyber insurance payouts. That's another big one that they've tried to use. So the cyber insurance company will say, Hey, that was China attacking you. Therefore it was an act of. And you can bet if there is a big hack, they will use that. Think of what happens with the hurricanes coming onshore. How much do they push back on payouts? Especially with the real big one, it would bankrupt them. So we gotta be very careful. There are some different types of  cyber insurance. Policies do which have different types of coverages. You've got the first party lost loss, I should say. So that's you to covering you and your loss, your first-party expenses, third party liability. Each one of those has specific parameters. So sub-limit retention and others. First-party losses are usually including the loss of revenue due to business interruption. First party expenses would include all of the services and resources that you needed to use to recover from attack like forensic or system rebuilding services. These third-party liabilities. May cover expenses and legal fees related to potential damage caused by the incident to third parties like partners, customers, or employees whose sensitive information may have been compromised. So read them carefully. Be very careful. There are next-generation, cyber insurance policies are going even further and make these types of services. Prior to any incident to reduce exposures and prevent incidents in the first place. Now we don't provide insurance. We are not an insurance company, but that's basically what we're trying to do here. Not become an insurance company, but to make sure. The businesses have the right services so that the likelihood of anything happening or is extremely low. And then following up after the fact it's different obviously than insurers in and insurance, the guardians, Jessica Crispin had a great article about a couple of weeks ago that I've been hanging on. And it's talking about this tattle where that's been incorporated into the computers we're using at home. Now we're specifically talking about employers that are putting this. The software on computers, they belong to the companies. A lot of businesses are worried. If workers are at home or where we can't see them, how do we know that they're actually working, not watching Netflix or something else on. They have, of course, come up with software that can reassure your boss. It does things like take snapshots of what you're doing. Record your keystrokes grabs photos from. Picture from your camera. There's a new program called sneak, which makes your webcam take a photo of you about once a minute and makes available to the supervisor to prove you're not away from your desk. There's no warning in advance. It just takes that photograph catches your doom. Pretty much anything can be absolutely anything. Then, it's the type of thing you'd expect the national security agency to do. So there are some good reasons for this lack of trust because sometimes employees have not been doi

Biden's Afghan Handing is his 911SON OF 9/11 VICTIM HAS HARSH MESSAGE FOR JOE BIDENNic Haros Jr.'s mother Frances was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And following President Joe Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, Nic is calling Biden the "Killer-in-Chief" and advising him to stay away from Ground Zero on the 20th anniversary of the attack:“I am demanding that President Biden do not show his face at Ground Zero on 9/11. It is now holy ground and I really don't think he has a place there. It's shameful for him, I think, to use the dead bodies as a political prop for his so-called victory lap."https://tv.gab.com/channel/peterboykin/view/bidens-afghan-handing-is-his-911-6141e92da6383c8a0e9eSo let's talk about Biden's Blunders, currently, the Taliban were holding six planes filled with roughly 1,000 people [including dozens of Americans] at the Mazar-i-Sharif airport in Afghanistan. For days the planes have been stuck, waiting for the Taliban to approve their departure to nearby countries. “The Taliban is holding them, hostage," according to Rep. Michael McCaul who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has had access to briefings on the matter from the Biden State DepartmentAn anonymous senior congressional source confirmed to CBS News: “The Taliban is basically holding them hostage to get more out of the Americans."Zoom out: This is happening while 100's American citizens are still waiting to be evacuated from Afghanistan after Joe Biden left them stranded at the mercy of the Taliban.What Biden's saying: His State Department is advising that groups looking to evacuate out of Mazar-i-Sharif that the US does not have personnel on the ground in that location and does not control the airspace.Never forget: Three weeks ago Joe Biden said "If they're an American citizen left, we're gonna stay until we get them all out."Meanwhile, Biden is demanding billions for refugees while Americans remain stuck in KabulThe White House is asking Congress for $6.4 billion to resettle tens of thousands of Afghan refugees as part of a request for a short-term spending bill to allow lawmakers to pass a budget for the fiscal year 2022.Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young said that the majority of the funds will go "to support processing sites overseas and in the United States and U.S. government transportation for our allies and partners between processing sites and the United States." The proposal also includes funding for humanitarian assistance, Young said.It includes a request for $2.1 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for costs associated with the evacuation of individuals from Afghanistan. Without the money, the departments "would be unable to complete evacuation and relocation efforts from Kabul and worldwide midway points; provide subsistence benefits for evacuated Department personnel; provide medical testing, processing through ports of entry, and respond to basic needs requirements of new arrivals; or respond to growing humanitarian needs of vulnerable populations inside Afghanistan and Afghans in neighboring countries."The White House also requests $1.6 billion for the Refugee Entrant and Assistance account and $8 million for the Children and Families account within the Department of Health and Human Services.While they were asking for money to help Afghan Refugees, it appears that Blinken was blasted over these Afghan evacuees hiring Uber to leave US military basesA Tennessee Republican who is also an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran sent a letter to the State Department, demanding answers after a source informed his office that evacuees being held at a Virginia military base have had "free rein" of the campus and have allegedly been leaving the base using ride-hailing apps without restraint from officials.U.S. Rep. Mark Green, who represents part of Middle Tennessee, told "The Ingraham Angle" about his letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken after a source with knowledge of the situation made the allegations to his office.Green wrote to Blinken asking for information regarding allegations that not-fully-vetted Afghan evacuees staying at Fort Pickett have "basically have free rein of the complex and have even been allowed to leave despite not having completed the vetting process."The lawmaker told host Laura Ingraham that the issues are happening elsewhere than just Fort Pickett, and that the Pentagon is not necessarily to blame in this specific regard because they are essentially taking direction from Foggy Bottom."[T]he State Department is failing to give [the Pentagon] adequate information. … They don't know exactly how many [evacuees] are even there. So they can't account for someone if they don't return," Green said.This was not the last of Blinkens troubles, as a GOP congressman erupted at Blinken during Afghanistan hearing: 'We don't need to hear lies'A GOP congressman erupted at Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his hearing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, saying Congress does not "need to hear lies."Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., who lost both legs while serving in Afghanistan, got into a heated exchange with Blinken as the congressman's allotted time to question the secretary of state drew to a close.Mast slammed the administration's handling of the withdrawal, pointing to Biden's controversial leaked call with the former Afghan president, leading the Florida Republican to proclaim that he does not "believe a word" the secretary was saying."I don't want to hear from the secretary," Mast said. "He lies to us when he appears before us." Now let's focus back on Biden, as the Biden Admin just was caught erasing Afghan Weapons reports.Do know what's worse than giving up $83 billion dollars in U.S. weapons to terrorist Taliban forces? Doing it and then deleting all public records of your disastrous mistake. That's what the Joe Biden administration just got caught doing. According to Forbes, here's what they did:"Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.""The scrubbed audits and reports included a detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles."Here's a small taste:75,000+ war vehicles200+ planes and helicopters350,000+ rifles25,000 grenade launchersThe Biden administration made excuses for erasing the public information, saying it was to protect "the safety of our Afghan contacts." Right... Just like they're so concerned for the thousands of Afghans who worked with us that they left behind.The icing on the cake: New reports indicate that the Taliban is delivering some of these weapons to Iran. So Biden is indirectly arming one of our biggest geopolitical foes.Let's Just talk about how Trump thinks about all of this, Trump says Afghanistan withdrawal opens door to China, Russia reverse-engineering US military equipmentFormer President Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan and speculated that China and Russia could already be reverse-engineering U.S. military equipment left behind.Speaking with host Sharyl Attkisson during an interview on "Full Measure," Trump excoriated the withdrawal as "incompetent" and warned it will likely endanger the United States and benefit its enemies.Trump also expressed doubt regarding whether the war in Afghanistan is over, noting how many unvetted Afghan refugees are being resettled in the United States and around the world."I don't know because you have people going all over the world and being dropped all over the world right now, and nobody knows who the hell they are, Sharyl," Trump said. "These aren't the interpreters that we took. These were people that rushed into the planes, and they were so interested in trying to make it sound like 'Oh, they're doing a good job.' These people, many of these people are going to be terrorists. Okay? They're going to be terrorists. They were very powerful. They were very energetic in getting onto the aircraft."Trump went on to suggest the nation's adversaries are already taking advantage of the stockpile of weapons, armored vehicles, and aircraft that left U.S. forces left behind."Now I'm saying, ‘How can they take this equipment?' And I guarantee that China and Russia already have our Apache helicopters and they're taking them apart to find out exactly how they're made. They're the best in the world by far. And they're taking them apart so they can make the exact same equipment. They're very good at that. It's a disgrace."Oh and By the way, if all of this is not bad, remember that Airstrike to take out a "terrorist bomber" well its been confirmed, BIDEN STRIKE KILLED AID WORKERS AND CHILDRENIn the midst of Joe Biden's failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, his administration lauded a drone strike that they claimed killed two ISIS-K terrorists. A new report from The New York Times (NYT) now confirms that the strike did not kill any ISIS terrorists. But it did kill humanitarian aid workers and Afghan children. Back up: On August 28 the Pentagon told reporters they had killed two "high-profile" targets who were "planners and facilitators" of the attack on the Kabul airport that killed 13 American soldiers.The truth: The NYT report confirms that the driver of the vehicle was a man named Zemari Ahmadi who worked for a California-based aid group. And he wasn't carrying explosives, as the Pentagon claimed. He was carrying containers of water. The Times also suggests 9 others were killed in the strike, including 7 children.https://www.spreaker.com/user/9922149/bidens-afghan-handing-is-his-911-9-15-21

Highlights:     “According to the latest Rasmussen poll,  52% of likely voters want Biden to resign. And here's the insult added to the injury, only 39% disagreed with that sentiment. Biden can't even break 40% of likely voters to defend him against calls for his resignation.”“The Afghanistan disaster was a symbol of the Biden regime disaster.”“Apparently we've got some voters who are, about 8%, who believe Biden should resign but they don't want him to, and I think that accounts for the discrepancy between the 52% who believed Biden should resign and the 60% who believed he should be impeached.”“Voters despise Kamala; they hate her. Only 38% of likely voters think she's qualified to be President… So Biden appears relatively safe here, in that the alternative is even worse in the eyes of most voters.”“Again, Rasmussen has Biden now at just 42% approval among likely voters with a 56% disapproval. His numbers are collapsing and if you thought all of that was bad, things can be even worse for Biden and the Democrats. ”“The Economist has the Democrats upside down by 30%, the Morning Consult poll has them upside down by 20%. These are utterly devastating.”Timestamps:        [02:30] How American voters want Biden to resign and his cabinet members[03:54] On poll showing 60% that Biden should be impeached and how voters despise Kamala   [05:30] On the result of two devastating polls that were released regarding voter's attitudes towards the direction of the country[07:55] How the Biden regime is trying to gaslight this disaster and on the MSM fact-checking the issue of Biden looking at his watch when the 13 US personnel who died in Kabul arrived[10:20] Why more and more pundits believe that the upcoming midterms are turning into an absolute nightmare for the DemocratsResources: Ep. 629 FLORIDA DINER BANS ALL BIDEN SUPPORTERS!!!Join our ARMY!! Our Virtual gathering of New Conservative Patriots on September 3rd and 4th needs YOU! Register today at https://conferences.turleytalks.com/Get Your Brand-New PATRIOT T-Shirts and Merch Here:https://store.turleytalks.com/Become a Turley Talks Insiders Club Member: https://insidersclub.turleytalks.com/welcomeThank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.  If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review.Do you want to be a part of the podcast and be our sponsor? Click here to partner with us and defy liberal culture!If you would like to get lots of articles on conservative trends make sure to sign-up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts. 

One of the most common misconceptions regarding the assessment of someone's character is the manner in which they think of themselves and their accomplishments in life. However, there is a fine line between confidence in your abilities and expressions of arrogance. That is precisely what we discuss in this episode of BTP as we contrast it with the feature of modesty which can be indeed a virtue when done in moderation.   Daniel's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmolgan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Danmolgan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-molgan-41812352/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript... ----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS modesty, arrogant, arrogance, people, modest, brag, black belt, talking, confident, achieve, life, hand, self esteem, leaders, insecure, success, achievements, confidence, inspire, express   Pouya LJ  00:08 Hello, ladies, gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast. As always, I'm joined with Daniel Morgan. How's it going,   Dan  00:16 buddy? What's up guys? What's up Blue Jays, life is great and awesome. I'm so happy to be here with you basically, life is as always amazing. We're now going through the final phase phases basically of this goddamn pandemic. But the Delta variant is still causing some disturbances. But as always, I'm optimistic and life is good. Just waiting for life to move to where it was. And believe me, it will happen. All right, that's okay. Good, good. Confidence, tone, man. That was like a confidence tone.   Pouya LJ  00:50 Exactly. Not only confidence, it was very optimistically confidence. So I like that so lovely. All right, good. Good. I'm very happy to hear that. All right. So okay, today's topic we're talking about. So last week, we talked about to weaken per tooth, you know, phenomenon is called minimalism and luxury. Now recovering to other phenomena is called modesty. And arrogance. So modesty versus arrogance. So what do you make of it? How how much modesty is good, how much arrogance is good? And whereas, which are more important? Yeah, sorry, go ahead.   Dan  01:26 I see before I go ahead and give my assessment, I will actually ask you please find each of these because sometimes people don't know what modesty actually is. Like if someone right forever, perhaps does not, for example, want to have big ambitions, that he's modest. That's not modesty. That's passivity. So let's first go ahead and define properly for our listeners, what modesty and basically, arrogance actually are. So why don't you go to do that for our listeners?   Pouya LJ  01:53 Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point, because we need to get our definitions straight. So yeah, let's, let's say what we're talking about modesty, we basically mean that, it doesn't mean that you're not achieving anything, or you don't want to achieve anything, it doesn't mean that you're not ambitious. what it entails is essentially, you are, you're you are comfortable with not, you know, expressing your your your achievements or your desire to achieve as much as an arrogant person does, or, or, on the other hand, you can you can define it as you are realizing your own limitations within your within your capabilities. And that sense, that sense of realizing those limitation gives you a calm about your position.   Dan  02:42 So you're literally   Pouya LJ  02:44 on the other hand, arrogance, it portrays the opposite behavior, right? arrogance actually goes overboard, like you're achieving 10, then you're bragging, 12, or you're capable, interesting, or you're capable of 1210, but you're not aware of it, and you're going overboard and claiming 15. So that is how I see it, unless you have a slightly different discourse, what   Dan  03:07 you're saying is absolutely true. I just want to add a few points. Mises, D. modesty, basically, as we have noted, basically, it's simply your ability to keep your lips basically accolades to yourself, you see, whatever social success, whatever, you know, personal things, when you keep it to yourself, you're modest. So for example, let's say you have just won the grants for a major, let's say, Blue Origin type of research, because you're a cool astrophysicist from University of Toronto. Now, if you don't tell the whole world about it, including your answer doesn't even know what basically Jeff Bayes actually means. Then you're not exactly very much. So modesty just means you are happy with your success, you keep it to yourself, you don't really share it. Now, arrogance, as you said, well areas isn't just isn't only about you know, showing off, it's more about your attitude towards other people. Those who are arrogant, do not see themselves as superior, so much as they see others as inferior. And they make sure they they know that that right. So that basically they are putting others down, basically. Right. And that's called arrogance. And I believe that both approach, as you probably know, are not in my approaches. Why? Let me explain a moment. If you're so modest, but he achieved a lot of things, give it to yourself. And then you simply can never promote yourself to acquire more success, and others might actually not know what you're up to. So you might actually miss out on a lot of opportunities. If you tell the world that Yeah, I got this great man. Maybe they actually joined forces with you know, far better people to actually have a great lunch. I think they're handing it all to yourself. Yeah, it's easy. I mean, there's nothing noble about now, no modesty because it's easy. Just keep your mouth shut. That's it. You're modest with us. Not gonna necessarily help you achieve a lot of the goals you want to achieve in life, because you are not going to be able to attract enough attention to promote yourself to gain better opportunities and arrogance. Well, that's the sign of lack of self esteem. arrogant people are not show offs. They are those who show up to put others down. You see, if you have, for example, a Lamborghini and it came shown that on your social media story, like oh, check it out. Oh, I'm in my lambos By the way, guys, I'm talking to you. Yeah, I'm going to work now. I'm going to buy my groceries now. What do these things? Honestly projects? How do you feel? I mean, because these feelings are universal. When you see someone intentionally shows off the Lambo in every single store, and every single thing constantly talks about the color of my Lambo. What feeling do you have for this gentleman or lady?   Pouya LJ  05:51 Oh, I just feel like blocking them because I want to exterminate this post from my feed.   Dan  05:57 Because it's not attractive, man knows not attractive. Because we feel like oh, this guy's either lying, or he got it from his daddy, or he's actually faking it, or he's renting it. Because people who are confident in their success, they don't need to always brag about it. So I am not a fan of bragging. I'm not a fan of keeping it to yourself. Now people should do know, basically, if you're a big shot, but ultimately do you want to treat your success for you? or for other people, it's actually relevant a little bit to that luxury versus minimalism. And that when you are not an arrogant person, you don't necessarily need to bring others down. Just because I am rich doesn't mean that others should, you know, suffer looking at my Lambo when they have problems eating. So that reason, I believe that the best approach as always inspired by that, because when you tell others of your ambitions, others people say like, you know, what, why don't I have such ambitions? What does he have that I don't have? And the answer is always nothing, whatever anybody else has, including Jeff Bezos, you have it too. And imagine Jeff Bezos says, like, you know what, guys, I'm going to a trip. I can't tell you exactly what it is. But it's a very long trip. And it was going way up, way up way up. And I'm not talking about like, you know, going to these Fiji Islands. And people are like, Dude, what the hell are you talking about man? because in that case, but people that inspire others, so by sharing your greatness, you actually inspire the world. And let everybody know, dude, this guy came from a very poor background, and he's got all of these things, right? So by sharing your greatness, you actually can treat other people. But there's a huge difference between sharing your missions and accomplishments, versus being arrogant, and bringing others down and bragging to them, like, oh, check out my call, check out my watch, and so on. Yeah, I   Pouya LJ  07:58 think I understand what you mean. And well, I guess, I think is easier to dispute. And, you know, we all know arrogant people in our lives if you're not one. And we know how annoying they can be and how unattractive it is. and all that. modesty, though, I agree with you that it is still the same boat, like you don't want to be 100% modest either. But it has, especially in some culture, it has certain positive characteristics. So Biden by by, you know, by the fact that you are modest, you're getting some social points essentially, though, for you to me, but but for you to exhibit that I am modest, somebody needs to know something immodest about you and then know that you're trying to not brag about it. So it's impossible to be completely modest and everybody knows about it. By nature. So let's let's try and let Now again, I completely agree I you need to sit and that's why I mentioned that you cannot be 100% modest when people know about it, that's just impossible to do just think you don't you don't accomplish shit so. So that's that's that. But is there any place that we can't actually say, say good things about modesty? Is there any benefits in any circumstances?   Dan  09:17 moderation in all things and all things in moderation. As you mentioned earlier? If you are someone who does not overly, you know, basically exaggerate your accomplishments, this actually shows your level of self esteem. Understand, if you really don't need to bring others down to make yourself feel good as arrogant people do, then you do not need to always say like, Oh, please, please tell me how great I am. Because I know who I am. These things oftentimes stem from lack of self esteem and self confidence, and to the degree to which you are confident about yourself. And especially in those areas, because you have to be very confident when it comes to let's say your professional achievements, but very I don't know, perhaps insecure about your success, I don't know what your health or fitness or I don't know what your relationships with the opposite gender. So it is very possible to be quite confident about your money, but very, you know insecure about your wife's like, Oh gosh, I don't want to show it to any of my friends. It's not the wife of a friggin millionaire, Oh, shit. So in that situation, you have to actually look at your life as a whole. And realize, in all those areas where you are more secure about yourself, you generally tend to somehow not want to show off. So I mean, I don't know, some people just don't have a desire to show off how rich they are, because they know they're rich. And I want to thank those who are really rich, as opposed to those who don't take photos of their lambos, 25 times a day. They are the people who actually are rich. That's why it's like, so what's the point? I don't want to show up because I know I'm rich, what's the point. But for that reason, to the guy who's insecure about his, for example, fitness, now puts others down for being fat, or the guy who's in Serrano, some job, they put others down in the same career. So it really comes down to your overall level of self esteem and self confidence. And generally, those who are more confident they tend to be usually more modest. Right, right.   Pouya LJ  11:21 No, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that I think people pick up on that, you know, it's then and that's why I wanted to get at about modesty is that in moderation, as you mentioned. Now, there are certain times as you said, that it pays off to actually share your accomplishments. And I'm not saying bragging about them, per se. You know, you're you're in a social event you're talking is like, oh, what do you do I do this, and I've gone done that and etc. And now you can be proud of it. No problem. You don't have to brag about it, you can still be proud of it. Just imagine   Dan  11:53 you projects, being arrogant when it comes to some talks about, you know, these spaceflights all that like, oh, man, this guy went to sit and like, so let me tell you something about the science behind that your little shit. As a matter of fact, this whole thing has to go to the or from this angle, like, I'm just guessing something like this. But do you actually practice arrogance at all boutiques?   Pouya LJ  12:12 You know, we all have our down moments, I think, and maybe I have done that. But I do my utmost to control that side of me. But again, I'm not shy to be proud of something I accomplished, or something I know. And I distinguished from being in being arrogant about it, you know, meaning that, you know, I know this, and I feel good about it. But it doesn't mean that you can't, it doesn't mean that this is unique to me, or a few people like me, meaning I'm capable, and you're not, it just means that I have done my studies, and I have paid attention to this or that. And I have accumulated this knowledge and I know about it, that's, that's so in, in this specific sense. I mean, you can talk, you can say the same thing about, you know, something in business and income and, you know, worth of how much money you have. So you can say similar things. So in that sense, I think I distinguish being proud about your accomplishments or your knowledge, or whatever it is, versus being arrogant about it. As you said, arrogance is kind of about, you know, putting others down, meaning I have this in a way, but but then, but then it doesn't stop there. It goes to say I'm unique, and you're unable to actually achieve this, or accomplish this, or do this or know this, etc. So it has that element of I am able and you're not the kind of thing that I don't like, personally, because on the other hand, I'm a teacher, I know what people are capable or given the, you know, the right platform, the right, you know, scenery, to express themselves and to develop themselves grow, you know, do business, etc. So, so in that sense, I try to, I think I'm leaning towards a modest side, but again, sometimes I'm, I'm proud of my own, you know, achievements, accomplishments, because, you know, it takes it takes takes a lot takes, takes a lot of work and sleepless nights to study some of these topics that you're speaking of specifically. So I'm like, you know, I think I earned my brownie points, I'm gonna I'm gonna spend them some of them to feel good. So yeah, I think i think that i think that's the that's where I, where I lie in that in that spectrum. And I think, Now, tell me, tell me, tell me if I'm wrong, I think you you will have good insight into this. But I think there's a there's a degree of badness or let me say a little bit better. There's a decree there's sorry, there's a balance of confidence, and modesty, I think, in leadership positions that actually can bring a lot of people together.   Dan  14:42 Absolutely. I mean, just take a look at you know, the last disaster president basically left the White House. Realize that in all top positions, we despise leaders who are arrogant, we despise leaders who feel like they are some special snowflake somehow And everybody should treat them because you're so friggin special. We, as a species do not like these people, believe it or not. Now, there are a very small number of people who suffer from lack of self esteem, who find these things attractive. But the majority of us, we are repelled by that kind of behavior, right? Which is why it's so incredibly important to know that the higher your position, the more you have to show empathy. And the less arrogance is tolerated by your followers, because that arrogance makes them question your true integrity as a leader. I mean, if you really feel like you're the best, why do you keep talking about it? If you really feel like you're rich? Why do you keep showing up all the stuff? I mean, it's like a scan or something? I mean, is it real? Or are you really if you feel like you're the strongest and most powerful person in the world, then why are you so insecure about these things? So people start asking questions, and that is why, by modesty and not trying to constantly brag or bring others down, you actually tell the world that yes, I am. That guy. And that's going to basically impress everyone in this regard. to want to follow each one to listen to you. And egotistical leaders, arrogant leaders, as we've seen, will always go down.   Pouya LJ  16:17 Yeah, that's exactly I think, I think, I think you're right, absolutely. In the sense that, you know, higher you are, you have to be less arrogant or rather natural, less arrogant is tolerated. So by definition, you   Dan  16:30 have to be a democratic systems, it's right, we'll have a choice. Or actually leave, if you are just, you know, for a country, if you are the leader of an organization, you act like this, your team is going to leave, they're gonna find a shop, you know, in a different company, because it's like, another word for this douchebag, this guy is always arrogant is putting already down quantity with these people. Right? And but then again, at the same time, being, I don't know, a doormat is not good either. Because in that case, no one's gonna respect you. Leadership requires setting boundaries, punishing bad behaviors, and rewarding good behavior. So if you're a nice guy, and you say, like, you know what, okay, okay, you came, oh, Johnny, he came to work 30 minutes late today, like the past 30 days, no problem, probably, you really had problems, you can't be a leader like this, you're gonna lose the whole business. So you got to have that balance between the two. And allow them to know that, yes, you know, the boundaries, you are confident in your abilities, but you don't need their approval back and forth, back and forth back. That's just not who basically you are, because that's not what confident leaders simply don't do. They simply believe in themselves, they know what they're capable of, it's kind of like, you know, when you, you know, get your, for example, black belt, I run this, you know, I noticed something, a lot of my friends, when you get your black belt, you start having fights for good. I don't know any of my friends who got their black belts or who, you know, finish tough trainings, for example, like that, you know, for example, the underwater demolition or whatever it is, these when these guys, you know, finish some of the toughest trainings out there. Ironically, after they gain that confidence, that dude, I'm now Special Forces or Dude, I got now the black belt of karate or something, once they have that confidence in them, for some odd reason. Most of them never get into a fight ever again. Because like the way they carry themselves show that and I think we can be like that black belt in all areas of life, financial relationship. I don't know, knowledge, wisdom. Once you have that black belt of wisdom, for example, you're not going to be you know, something like, Oh, I am so wise, please tell me I'm wise. I'm waiting. Nobody. Oh, boy. So that approach simply shows that you're real, you're faking it, that you're no real steps, right? Which is why I always like Dan, I'm afraid of making post on social media share my ideas. I say, Why? say there's no one's gonna like them. I say why do you need their likes, like, but if no one likes me and my posts, then I feel like I'm not important enough. It's like, dude, talk to yourself, as if you're talking, you know, in a vacuum or something, ignore that. And please be aware that it's not about being liked by their sight, but by being heard, which is why I also like, views are always more important social media than likes, likes mean. Views are what generates think of, for example, you know, top platforms, top platforms and top you know, influencers are the ones who don't look to be liked. They say what they want and I like, that attracts more attention, right? But those who are like, well, the guy says, Well, if I take you know, shouldn't my shirt off and just take muscle photos, I get a lot of likes, so I'm gonna keep doing that. So they can never express themselves or the girl says, Okay, if I just get bikini shots that I will get a lot of likes. So they, you know, pages become, you know, boring and meaningless. But once you ignore that approach, and say, You know what, I want to express my thoughts. That's it. I don't want likes. That is that lupino blackbelt, if you will, let's go with confidence and everyone you attract more attention that way. While in all areas of life, yeah,   Pouya LJ  20:03 I think actually absolutely right. Because especially with the advent of, you know, technology, social media, and on the other hand podcast is like the best podcasts are the most sincere and real ones they will relate least super structured like a sort of like a corporate media levels are structured, that the more sincere It seems that the more attention he gets. It said there's a there's a thirst for sincerity, it means it seems shallow there is Yeah, I think I completely agree with that. In my personal experience, anyways. Okay, so we talked a lot about, and I think I think we're honing on a point on many of our episodes about most things, many things. And that is, there's a balance required of finding the point of balance is the hard part is the difficulty. And and you'd never get there without trial and error. You never get there without getting your hands dirty. Doesn't matter how many books you eat, it doesn't matter what you do, you ultimately need to actually do it and see Oh, wow, I was too arrogant here. Oh, wow, I was too modest. Nobody knew what I achieved. So. So I think I think there's a good good segue to say, to bring this show to its conclusion. Is there anything you think we have missed that requires further brush up?   Dan  21:24 Well, first of all good topics is always projects. And as we compared arrogance versus modesty, we realized that in the end, what truly matters is a sense of balance. There's nothing wrong with being you know, satisfied and happy with who you are. There's nothing wrong with loving your success, because that's called self love. And self love is the foundation for loving others. If you don't really love yourself, you can't love other people, if you don't really like and are proud of your work, how do you want others to be inspired by you. So you should like that. But at the same time, being arrogant and trying to show off and especially by bringing others down. That is a short term approach to gain that, you know, feeling of self esteem, which we all look for, it's like in the mass look, you know, hierarchy of needs, right? So for that reason, we believe that it's better to fully stop with arrogance. arrogance is always a bad thing. There is no such thing as moderate arrogance. arrogance itself means you bring others down. So it must be removed. modesty in Your hands should be practiced with you know, moderation, because if you're too modest, you're not helping anybody. Because in that case, you will actually not inspire others. Now, if you are modest about your finances, you're definitely helping yourself by avoiding pay as much taxes as most of you do. Which I'm a fan of, by the way, because I mean, in that one case you've read, you probably don't want to show off. But generally, if you have other ideas, you want to understand that those who are the most confident, usually aren't always talking about that stuff. They aren't talking about their achievements. Rather, they're actually helping others to become achievers themselves, right? So by putting this focus on them, and not on you, you actually become a lot more confident and a lot more popular among those around you.   Pouya LJ  23:08 All right, that makes a lot of sense. I think that was a good conclusion. It had hints of what we didn't talk about and a lot of what we talked about. Thanks. As always, Dan, for joining us and having a moment. And thank you, everybody for participating listening, tuning in. I hope you participate by leaving comments, suggestions, you know, topics that you want to hear about in the comment section or directly to me or Dan through social media. You know where to find us. It's in the show notes as well. And until later episode, have a good one.

Parker Molloy: Joining me today is former Congressman Joe Walsh.Joe Walsh: Hey, Parker. It's awesome to be with you. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. This is not a conversation I could have pictured having, I don't know, two years ago, so it's-No, crazy times, and you and I have come together on some things.Yeah.And I've learned some things from you, Parker. So thank you. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you are kind of the rare example of someone who was a very big Trump supporter, going into the election you were fully behind him. Before the election, you said something like-The musket.The musket thing. That was it. "If Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket." And that kind of became like a running thing for you, where'd you tweet that, and even after you kind of turned on Trump a little bit, you were still like, "I'm still holding my musket." So it's been interesting to watch as you grew disillusioned with Trump and then kind of the overall Republican party.Yeah.And I think some people get this wrong and think that because you don't support Trump or because you don't support the Republican party that suddenly your policy positions have changed, which is not the case from what I've seen and from what you've said.Yeah.People are like, "Why don't you join the Democratic Party?" Well, because they probably feel just as uncomfortable a home as Republicans. Actually, less so, but Parker, look, when I write the book one day— You're right in that I don't know anybody else who made my journey from Trump supporter to outspoken enemy of Trump. I wasn't a huge supporter. I voted for him because he wasn't Hillary. I didn't take him seriously. I didn't pay enough attention to him. He blocked me on Twitter during that 2016 campaign, because I would criticize him. And the musket tweets, some of that s**t, I did because it was fun and I love muskets. But, overall, your point is a good one. Sure.I went from a Trump supporter to probably his most outspoken conservative opponent. It cost me everything doing that, so why the hell did I do it? Because he's an utterly horrible human being who I believe is an existential threat to this country. I wish I'd known that in 2016. I wish I'd paid better attention.And that is one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is what's the status of your radio show? Did you say that it got-Gone.Gone. Okay. So radio show, gone, but when you were doing it, you would speak to Trump supporters.Trump supporters, yeah.Constantly. When you would try to push back on the things that they were saying, their defenses of him, what do you think is the kind of the root cause of why so many people are so devoted to that one man and that specific kind of Trumpian movement?Parker, because he fights the people and the things they hate. They get to live through him. He fights their fight. And who are we talking about, Parker? We're primarily talking about older white people, men and women. That's the Republican Party base. These are people who are unhappy. They've got some legitimate grievances, and you and I have talked about this. Their America seemingly was changing overnight and the Republican Party establishment ignored these people. And Parker when I was in Congress and back on the radio and on Fox News, I would tell the Republican Party establishment, "You better pay attention. These older white folks, they're scared about things. They need to be educated." But the party ignored them.So then along came Trump and he said, "I'm going to build a wall, keep the bad people out. You'll be able to say Merry Christmas again. There are only boys and girls, two genders. We'll bring back 1954 America." It was all b******t, Parker, but he was the first politician who said, "I hear you. And I'll bring back 1954 America."Yeah. That definitely seems to kind of track. And that reminds me. So, the thing that you were saying about feeling overlooked, feeling left behind by the establishment and stuff like that, because that's a fair point, but it reminds me of something that in 2008 Barack Obama was asked about how he, as someone who was a first-term Senator, as a black man, could connect with white working class voters. And he responded by saying, "The truth is that our challenge is to get people persuaded we can make progress with. And there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go to some of these towns in Pennsylvania, and a lot of the small towns in Midwest, jobs have gone for 25 years now, nothing's replaced them. Clinton administration, Bush administration, every successive administration has said they'll do something, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera."So far that statement is very much like, yeah, exactly. They felt left behind. And then he made the mistake of saying, "So it's not surprising that they get bitter. They cling to guns and religion."They cling to their, there you go. And so like that became the soundbite, but the overall message was pretty-Was spot on.-spot on. And I think that that's kind of the downside of our political media is all soundbites. Yes.And no one was talking about what he saying. All that people remember from that is, "He said that we cling to our guns and religion." Obviously, should have worded that better on his end, but at the same time, I feel like that might be where political media has failed in a sense that it takes something that's the most incendiary portion of a statement and they just run with it and strip it from context. And that happens to people all over the place. Yeah.I mean, you catch someone saying something, catch Mitt Romney saying that basically 47% of the country is freeloaders or whatever. Right. And that's what stands out and you miss whatever the larger point is. Same thing with-And then Parker, what you get is, and because I was very outspoken, I didn't care about that, but what you get is you get politicians who then are afraid to speak.Yeah.And they're afraid to say what they mean. They're afraid to be honest because of what you call the got you. It's all about the got you. We're so damn tribal. Both sides do this. I think Fox News and the Trump side is a whole nother level now. I mean, I come from the world of conservative talk radio. You know it's all about riling these people up. And I did some of that, but man, that's all it is now. It's just every night, pissing these white folk off. Yeah. Well, and that's something that comes up a lot when I was working at Media Matters and watching way too much Fox News.Yeah.Was this idea you turn on the TV and you're like, "What are we mad at today?" And it would always be some weird little grievance that is supposed to hammer home that message that the America that you know is being taken from you. And sometimes-Typically, Parker, you're right. Typically it's a cultural thing. Not having anything to do with their day-to-day lives. It's “men in women's bathrooms.” It's “Dr. Seuss is gone.” It's “critical race theory.” You name it. And it'll always be something new. Just reminded me when you were talking about how the Trump team at Fox News, they're kind of on their own level there. There was a tweet last year from Trump's campaign account. So Biden was giving a speech and he was saying something like, "Trump and Pence say in Joe Biden's America you won't be safe." And so the Trump campaign account clipped that quote to where it's just Biden saying, "In Joe Biden's America you won't be safe." And it's like, "Come on."I remember that.That was a stretch guys, even for you, but at the same time, like that's not necessarily bad politics. No.It's probably bad for the country, but it's not bad politics if your goal is to get elected. It didn't work. No, Parker, you're so right. And look, there was probably, I'm sure there was, and there's probably a tweet from seven years ago where I probably said something like, "Barack Obama hates America" or whatever, but my God, that's all it is now. I look at Ilhan Omar or AOC, different politics than mine. They don't hate America. They love America, but every night now, still now on the Trump side it's, "These people hate America. They hate America." Yeah, and it's depressing. And I mean, that's part of why I left my job because it was very much just diving into this very depressing cynical worldview. And I think-You're younger than me.Yeah.You are younger than me.I'm 35. So that is younger than you, but that's still-I know. But you are still young. Parker, I don't know how you could, at your age, think, "I'm going to stay in this game for another 10, 15 years."Yeah.It is depressing. And it's exhausting to me.Yeah. And what is really frustrating about it is that so much that you could see coming from a mile away. Was there ever a time, whether it was when you were in Congress, when you were after Congress, that you thought, "Things are starting to go a little over the line?" I mean, because for instance, the Tea Party, which was kind of, you were swept into office on that the big 2010 Tea Party push.Yeah.That was branded as a movement that was against high taxes and against government spending.Right.But there was definitely a lot of other stuff happening. And I know that, for instance, there was a lot of racism. Obama's not American or Obama's a Muslim. That was a lot of stuff that kind of kept coming up, not necessarily from the politicians, but sometimes, but definitely when it comes to the people who were there. I mean, if you showed me a photo from a Tea Party rally from 2010, and you showed me a photo from January 6th, it's easy to kind of connect the dots from one to the other. Do you think that this was a movement that lost its way? Or do you think that it was flawed from the start or that it just kind of somehow ended up there? Parker, it's such a great question. And because I come from the movement, I realized early on in my Congressional career, and I certainly realized when I was done in Congress, that there was real trouble afoot, because I genuinely believe the Tea Party was issues-based, generally, as you say, size of government debt, all of that. That was my motivating principle. That's why I ran. And so once we went to Congress in 2010 and you know like I know the Republicans don't give a damn about spending either. So I figured that out in one afternoon in Washington. And so then because we didn't do anything about the debt and the size of government, a lot of the Tea Party people out in the country became pretty disillusioned. And so then you began to see, and I began to hear, Parker, every day on the radio around the country from Tea Party and the base people moving away from the debt and the size of government and starting to get into more of these populist nationalist issues. They were let down on the debt. And so it's like then they were primed for a demagogue to come along again and spout all the nationalist crap. And I suppose that always was there so it was the other intrinsic strand of the Tea Party. Yeah.Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, during last year's election, I was thinking about all the, all the things that groups like the Lincoln Project were doing with their videos, which the reason they stood out was that they're not like what Democrats typically put out.Right.The very kind of, "Oh, look, Trump can't walk down a thing." That's not something you would see a Democratic politician typically put out there. Right.So it was kind of, I think for a lot of people, this welcome change of pace. But one thing that I kept Tweeting about and kept saying was that if they really wanted to make a difference in all of this, it might help to put out a video that was just the people who are part of the group saying, "Here's the message I pushed and here's why it was wrong." Kind of doing what you did, but just in their own kind of ecosystem that they built. It's hard to tell whether people mean the things that they say.Oh, so true, Parker. So true.And with that, there's been this kind of issue where Republicans will say, "There's voter fraud. We need to put restrictions in place." And Democrats will say "Any and all restrictions are voter suppression." And I mean, some of them, if you take all the voting sites except for like two out of a city, yeah, you're trying to suppress that vote a little bit, but I kept thinking to myself, "Why don't they just put out something that says, 'Hey, for years, I pushed this idea that we should hammer home on voter fraud over and over and over.'" Because that was something that wasn't a surprise when Trump contested the election. Everyone saw that coming from a mile away. In 2016, after he lost in Iowa, he accused Ted Cruz of rigging it. That's just kind of his thing. And for months ahead of the election, he was saying that, "Oh, there's going to be so much fraud. There's going to be so much fraud."So I'm just kind of curious. Why do you think that there's such a reluctance to speak up in situations like that? And I know that's not you, that's them, but at the same time, I think they could have done a lot of good by saying, "Hey, we know this thing was b******t. We pushed it anyway." Shutting down things like ACORN, for instance, that was kind of a stretch. I don't know. Basically, do you think in pushing some of these ideas that they get swept up to it and they actually believe what they're saying? Or that it's just the cynical kind of game? Parker, I think it's a cynical game. There's a kernel of truth in everything. Tucker Carlson to me is just disgusting, but there's always a wee, wee, little kernel of truth in what he says and then he lies about 99.9% of it. There is voter fraud in every election. Inconsequential voter fraud.Sure.I mean, when I ran for reelection in 2012 against Tammy Duckworth, we found instances of voter fraud, not nearly enough to turn around an election. So the idea of rampant voter fraud is b******t. And you're right. So I wish Republicans could be honest enough to say that, but the problem, Parker, is, and I realized this when I primaried Trump and I ended up publicly apologizing for a year for everything I did that helped lead to Trump. It's the hardest thing in the world for a politician to do is to say they were wrong or to say they're sorry.Yeah.I'm genuinely sorry for what I did to help divide the country and bring us Trump. Parker, I've had so many conversations with Republican colleagues of mine. They feel the same way. They'll never say what I say publicly, because, you know, they love their gig, they love their TV show, they want the ratings, they want to get reelected and they hope the Trump s**t blows over.Yeah. And it's a little sad.It is.Yeah. Do you think that as far as the Republicans that are currently in office are concerned, do you think that they're a lost cause? Is there anything to get them back on track, to get them to go, "Okay, we're going to kind of snap out of this."No.You just think that that's-No. No. They gotta go?As long as Trump is still with us, they are beholden to him and Trumpism. Yeah.Most of them, Parker, agree privately with what you and I think about Trump publicly. Most will not say it. Only a few are real big cheerleaders, idiots like Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But guys that I served with Trey Gowdy, Mick Mulvaney, guys like that, they do their best to just try to ignore Trump. Most Republican elected officials have done their best the last five years to kind of just look the other way. And, again, this is your area, Parker, but if you look at Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity is a stupid Trump cheerleader. He defends Trump every night. When you really look at what Tucker Carlson does, he does his best to avoid even talking about Trump. Yep.Now when pressed he'll defend Trump, but he'd rather go after all these other cultural issues and not talk about Trump.A couple of years back, I did an analysis of which TV show talked the most about various cultural issues. Because there was this narrative that was, "Oh, the left is obsessed with trans people, transgender bathrooms."Yeah.That was a big one that kept coming up. And, "They're so obsessed. They can't stop talking about it." Et cetera, et cetera. But when you looked at the actual bills that were introduced in various states, and when you looked at what TV shows covered that issue so much, Tucker Carlson covered it more than any other TV show.Yeah.Any network, ever. He was the number one spot to get information about trans bathrooms and stuff like that. He knew that that was a cultural issue he could really drill down on and appeal to that audience.Parker, yeah, you're right. Look, for every Republican and conservative who's a public person in the age of Trump, we always had three roads to go down. We could be a Trump cheerleader. We could kind of ignore Trump as best as we could and look the other way. Or we could publicly oppose him. Very few of us chose to publicly oppose him. There are some legitimate Trump cheerleaders, but most of the public Republicans and conservatives pick that middle path where only talk about Trump if I have to, go after trans people, go after people who won't let us say Merry Christmas. You know who else is the king of this, Parker, is Ben Shapiro.Oh, yeah. Ben Shapiro has made a career out of the last five years doing his best to ignore Trump. I've long said that Sean Hannity is just a dumbass—Dumbass. Idiot.— but Tucker Carlson is … I reviewed the most recent book he put out called Ship of Fools. And reading it I was just like it's kind of genius how so much of this was structured, where he'll do that thing that you were saying, where he'll place a legitimate problem.Yes.”People don't care about the working class.” And then he'll kind of build back some sort of solution that ends up being way off the track. It'll start by saying, "The working class aren't making enough money." And then he'll end up by being like, "And that's why gay people shouldn't be allowed to adopt."Yes.It'll be so disconnected, but he does it, and it's brilliant the way he does it in like a very scary way.Having come from that world, Parker, I did it sometimes, more than I'm proud of, but I didn't do a lot of it. If you look at Rush Limbaugh, Parker, that was his show every night for 30 years, every day for 30 years. He's got these white listeners who, and he feeds their grievances. And that's what Tucker does, again, in a very smart way. That's a challenge that I think that is going to be very difficult for anyone to kind of deal with in the years to come.Because they're radicalized now.Yeah.We're talking about the GOP base, Parker. And it is a base that is fully radicalized now.Yeah. What do you think happens next? You've lived it. You've seen it. You've watched it. You've heard it. What do you think happens next in terms of the country? Again, I'm older than you, and I'm also maybe darker than you. I'm dark Irishman, Parker. I think we're at the beginning. I think we're in for a really, really, really, really rough patch. I think this country is more divided than people think. I go on CNN and MSNBC a lot. I don't think most people on CNN and MSNBC have a clue. And they bring out these Republican consultants from the Nixon era still. They don't know who the fricking base is. I think Trump's going to run again. I know he wants to run again. He'll get the nomination and no Republican will challenge him.No.None. He could win, Parker. Look, if you're concerned about Donald Trump winning again, I'm concerned about Joe Biden being able to run again. And if he can't, who would beat Trump? So one of our two major political parties has become a conspiracy-loving, authoritarian embracing, cult. One of our two major political parties. I don't see that changing.No. And not to end things on a bummer, but-It's a bummer. It is a bummer. I mean, there's no ways two about it. There's nothing to do. Well, what are you up to these days? What are you working on? Is there anything you'd want me to make sure that people, however few actually listen to this or read the transcript.Oh, wow. Millions, Parker.Yeah, millions. We'll go with that. Yeah. What are you doing? So, I, again, for the second time in three years, I lost my syndicated radio show. I was out there trying to reach Trump voters, but you can't be a Trump critic and be in conservative talk radio. So I still reach them via social media.Sure.What I'm trying to do now, Parker, because as you and I began this episode, I mean, look, I helped divide this country. I'm trying now to do something about the divide. I've got a couple interesting projects I'll be launching within the next month that I'll tell you all about. If people want to pay attention to me and find out what I'm doing next, they can follow me on Twitter @WalshFreedom. Get full access to The Present Age at www.readthepresentage.com/subscribe

Rising Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INv63dd5ypo&list=WL&index=5 Its undeniable that Obama bankrupted and was careless with the DNC money. Clinton only got the torch in 2016 because she bailed out the DNC. So Biden had no shot and Obama certainly was not outranking Clinton on anything in the DNC. Support the show on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/bigtalklittletalk --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bigtalklittletalk/support

So Biden has a running mate and Lynn Yvette doesn't agree. Leroy explains to Lynn how people jerky was being sold at a Butte Montana general store in February, and a special message from an audience member has Leroy upset.

9 AM - 1 - Washington Post economics policy correspondent Jim Tankersly talks about his story: "Why states with more marriages are richer states". 2 - So Biden is out n stuff. 3 - The News with Marshall Phillips. 4 - YouTube stars and what they earn; Final Thoughts.

1 - Washington Post economics policy correspondent Jim Tankersly talks about his story: "Why states with more marriages are richer states". 2 - So Biden is out n stuff. 3 - The News with Marshall Phillips. 4 - YouTube stars and what they earn; Final Thoughts.