Gene 0:24

Hey Ben, how are you today?

Ben 0:26

I'm doing well, Gene. It's Father's Day.

Gene 0:29

Yes, happy Father's Day.

Ben 0:31

Thank you. I would say Happy Father's Day to you, but

Gene 0:35

I'm not a father, so it wouldn't be correct.

Ben 0:37

that you know of.

Gene 0:39

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure. You know how I know that? Because I'm not paying alimony.

Ben 0:45

You know, you say that, but, man I don't know. There've been some crazy people over the years.

Gene 0:51

Yeah yeah,

Ben 0:54

But

Gene 0:54

that's true. And I do know my ex wife did have a kid in less than nine months after we got divorced. But you know, I think that's probably a good reason to get divorced.

Ben 1:04

That would be. I didn't know that, but thanks for sharing.

Gene 1:07

Yeah. But that's a long time now. I've been divorced way longer than I was married, so. Anyway, so I'm back.

Ben 1:17

Yeah, how was Mexico?

Gene 1:19

Mexico, I mean, the Seattle was great, had a good time, you know, all the great warm weather out there. It was a good time. Yeah, it was it was a good trip there was just a little bit of Typical Seattle craziness going on downtown my last day there, but other than that, it was pretty good.

Ben 1:38

oh man.

Gene 1:39

How was your trip?

Ben 1:40

Which one?

Gene 1:41

I don't know, I think we were both on trips, I thought, this time.

Ben 1:44

Last weekend. I was a while before. I was on a trip, but this trip that was supposed to happen today got cancelled.

Gene 1:51

Oh, yeah, no, I meant the last trip.

Ben 1:53

To D. C.? Oh, that's fine. Yeah, it was good. It You know, it's D. C., so it's always a pain in the rear, but

Gene 2:01

Yeah, these days, not a whole lot of difference between D. C. and Seattle.

Ben 2:04

My you know, I was in the yuppie parts, I was in the Alexandria area I actually stayed near Andrews you know, so I was in the nicer part of

Gene 2:14

would.

Ben 2:14

Heh, fuckin A. But conference was good, saw a lot of good people there, Some old colleagues, you know, it's a small industry, so.

Gene 2:23

Yeah. Yeah. Niche, for sure. The last time I was in D. C., I think, was for ShmooCon, probably like six or seven years ago.

Ben 2:33

Yeah, the getting out of D. C. was a pain in the rear because we had thunderstorms in Houston and D. C. So my flight got delayed

Gene 2:41

my God. Man made global weather.

Ben 2:43

Yeah. Speaking of, man, it looks like we might have a June hurricane in the Gulf.

Gene 2:48

Is there one cranking up?

Ben 2:50

Not yet, but there's a significant enough depression right off of Mexico where you just were that, you know, it might kick up and we got to wait and see, but, you know, I, this reminds me of when Alicia hit back, you know, hell before I was born in 83, because Alicia was a early hurricane. It was August though. But it started in the gulf right off of the right off the peninsula there in Mexico and just,

Gene 3:21

That Yucatan?

Ben 3:23

yeah, they thought it was going to be, you know, a category 1 ended up being a category 3 and a pretty damaging storm to Galveston. So we'll see.

Gene 3:32

Yeah. Yeah, I think that dumped a lot of water.

Ben 3:37

Next weekend going to Galveston for a day, taking the kids and staying at the Hotel Galvez, man, that thing's been there since, like, 1911.

Gene 3:47

I'm sure I've driven by it. I don't think I've ever stopped there.

Ben 3:51

Marriott bought it a couple years ago and has made it one of their, you know, tribute collection, whatever, hotels, so they've really changed it around. I had to play the titanium card for the first time.

Gene 4:04

Ooh

Ben 4:05

yeah, the,

Gene 4:06

So kick somebody out.

Ben 4:07

It, what it was I was trying to book for one night. And it was gonna let me, and then all of a sudden it wasn't, and it's like, you'll let me book from Friday to Sunday, but I don't need Friday, I just need Saturday to Sunday, you clearly have the rooms, make it happen. Yeah, it wasn't kicking someone out, it wasn't that big of a dick move, but, you know. It was a, you will make this work for me.

Gene 4:31

Yeah. Yeah. The most notable time that I had to kick somebody out was during

Ben 4:37

SpaceX.

Gene 4:38

No, it was during, no, actually I don't, I didn't have to at that point, but the Marriott's location sucks down there. It's way too far from SpaceX. No, it was during the San Diego comic con and I was in San Diego for work

Ben 4:53

Ah,

Gene 4:54

everything was booked up and I'm like, you know, I'm doing business here, and I'm out. Now, the one thing I will say is when you use that, when you kick somebody out, and for people who don't know, one of the privileges you get as being a top tier guy with Marriott is you get priority in your rooms, which means somebody who's not, Even if they booked their reservation will end up getting canceled. And it's not that bad. They actually will typically, Marriott will just pay to have them stay in a different hotel. However, when you use that privilege for Marriott, you pay the top tier room rate, you're not getting any discounts. So if you need a hotel room bad enough, it's guaranteed you will always have a room at a Marriott, but you may pay rack rate.

Ben 5:46

yeah, they're again, luckily they weren't sold out. So, I'm getting it for the points I wanted and everything else. So it's working out.

Gene 5:55

Yeah. That's good. Yeah. They will not kick somebody out for points. I've tried

Ben 6:00

No, they will not. I and I'm not trying to kick anybody out. I'm just like, you know, they, while I was booking, they said a two night minimum and it's like, no, you're not doing it.

Gene 6:12

Exactly. Good. I'm sure the kids will enjoy it.

Ben 6:15

the Supreme Court gave me a hell of a birthday slash father's day gift.

Gene 6:19

Yeah, man. Yeah. That was a I mean, I guess to some extent I think it was expected, but also nice to finally see. It's not a decade. I guess what? Five years later.

Ben 6:31

And what we're referring to here is the bump stock band being overturned, which actually sets up a lot of other

Gene 6:38

that's a great precedent for a lot of cases that are currently churning through the system. Because if some judge wants to throw out the current cases on technicalities or side with the ATF there, no, that. Their record will become tarnished as a result of appeals and being overruled by the Supreme Court. This is the whole idea of precedents is that generally courts try to just follow the precedent that is set by the Supreme Court so that their case doesn't end up in the Supreme Court. I think there's multiple reasons for that, but you know, you think about it, who are judges? They're basically lawyers that ended up not wanting to argue anymore and just make people do what they want, which is a certain type of personality of even the lawyer subset. These people don't like to be publicly humiliated by having their cases reversed. Saying that they had a bad ruling. And so it's actually I think mostly that fear that makes judges in the lower courts try and follow the precedents of the Supreme court rather than ruling whichever way they want, and then having all their cases be reversed in the Supreme court with the California ninth circuit being the one exception to that rule,

Ben 7:57

Yeah I tend to agree with Shakespeare and Henry the sixth

Gene 8:01

What killed lawyers.

Ben 8:02

exactly.

Gene 8:05

Lots of lawyer jokes out there, yes. But

Ben 8:08

my dad told me one today. I figured I'd share here. You know what? You call a bus full of lawyers with 1 empty seat that goes off the cliff.

Gene 8:18

One lawyer not enough? I don't know what.

Ben 8:20

Damn shame that there was an empty

Gene 8:22

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah. There's a whole series of those. Types of kill the lawyer type jokes. But, you know, Everybody uses one when they need one.

Ben 8:33

Yeah, unfortunately, it's the way the system works. But the good news about this precedent is it basically says that the A. T. F. Does not have the right to regulate. Parts like this will go to the force reset triggers. This

Gene 8:46

Yes, that's the one I'm most looking forward to because I really, you know, I've got a binary. I really want to force reset

Ben 8:53

yeah, which the force reset trigger is the same sort of thing as a bump stock in, in, in its functionality is

Gene 9:00

the

Ben 9:00

in the trigger.

Gene 9:02

that Clarence Thomas used, he clearly anticipated that case. And it says, because a firearm is only fully automatic. If the trigger is pressed and held, like, why would you use that language in the case about bump stocks? Other than to let the lower courts know, Hey guys, don't send the force reset trigger our way, cause you know how we're going to rule. So just do it ahead of time. So I think all of that shit's going to get reversed. All the current cases that were. In favor of the forced trigger are going to end up getting flipped around, which is great because those things, first of all, the only reason I don't have one is because it's ridiculously expensive. When I looked, it was over 600 bucks and that was before the court cases started. Now they're thousands of dollars.

Ben 9:57

Yeah. I would prefer a binary trigger to be honest with you, but,

Gene 10:01

I wouldn't.

Ben 10:02

okay.

Gene 10:03

No way, man. And the idea that when you lift your finger off, there's one more shot, I think is dangerous.

Ben 10:10

The, so like the Franklin armory binary trigger, one of the cool things about it is if you're in binary mode and you switch it to safe And let go, or you switch it to single

Gene 10:19

know, dude, that all of them have some type of mechanism for that. However, your adrenaline pumping, In case you use the firearm for something other than shooting deer. Remembering to, oh yeah, this one is a binary unlike my other triggers and I have to flip it into safe before letting go. It ain't going to happen. I'm going to say

Ben 10:43

don't see that as any different than the forced reset.

Gene 10:46

The force reset literally does what it says. It resets the trigger for you. So. You take that last shot, you move your finger forward. It's not going to shoot again.

Ben 10:58

Yeah, my point is, if your adrenaline's pumping, the odds of you pulling and holding are pretty high too.

Gene 11:06

Yeah, but at the forced reset trigger, if your adrenaline's here's the irony in it, right? Is in an adrenaline pumping situation, a forced reset trigger will not shoot fast. That forced reset trigger, much like the bump stock requires a somewhat loose hold. If you squeeze and keep squeezing, you will get the one shot out of a forced reset trigger, which again is one of the things I like about it. Because it means you can choose without flipping any switches. So it's actually better than full auto mode, frankly. You can choose whether you want a single round or whether you want a bunch of single rounds.

Ben 11:46

Yeah, it's almost like the multi stage trigger on like the

Gene 11:50

Video games. Yes. Sorry, what? Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. I thought you were referring to video games, which some games have that type of functionality with

Ben 12:01

No, I was referring to real life.

Gene 12:03

Yeah. Okay. All right,

Ben 12:05

thing that interests me about the way the wording of the ruling has been done is the implication to the ATF on its purview. And where they can and cannot regulate. This is clearly shit also setting up Chevron deference.

Gene 12:22

And it's not just ATF. Now, we're talking about guns, but this has much broader implications.

Ben 12:28

right. But one of the interesting things is, I don't know if you've been following the six hour muzzle brake case.

Gene 12:33

Yeah,

Ben 12:35

So the six hour went through and you know, a big company like SIG did their due diligence on making sure that. You know, they were compliant with ATF ruling and they have this muzzle brake that is a long muzzle brake and it's baffles and everything else, but there is no enclosure on it. So, it is not a silencer. It is, it's not a suppressor. It is a muzzle brake. The ATF's argument on making, trying to make this illegal is all you'd have to do is put a shroud on it and it becomes a Suppressor,

Gene 13:09

a potential. It's an intended muzzle device that isn't complete. Yeah, they're treating it like they're treating the 80 percent stuff, which is bullshit. You,

Ben 13:20

was a clear shot across that bow. Same thing,

Gene 13:22

yeah, which is correct. Now, I don't know, like, here's the thing. The ATF loves to argue the potentiality of things make them illegal. It's a potential. But I think a shitty silencer should not be legal. Like one that doesn't lower the sound appreciably should not be legal because what Yeah even though Congress erroneously banned this shit and the president signed it because he's a communist, but nonetheless, the intent, even back in those bad decision days was that not that, Oh my God, you have an extra piece of metal on the front of your gun. The intent was this makes guns. So quiet that you can kill somebody and nobody will hear it, which in and of itself is bullshit during the testimony of Congress, we have the the transcripts of that they didn't know how guns work. I mean, it was some of the most stupid testimony you can hear out of Congress because you have a bunch of people making laws about things. They know nothing about it all. Even that aside, the intent was. For silencers to be included because they allowed the hoodlums, the gangsters to basically do walk by shootings and have in the middle of a crowded area and have no one realize anything happened until there's a dead body and a bunch of blood on the ground. The reality is that realization took probably one second because first you heard a noise. You maybe weren't quite sure it was a gunshot, but you definitely heard a noise. And remember back then cars misfired a lot. This was early days of automobiles. There was a lot of noises going on that could be misinterpreted. So the idea that the ATF extrapolates from a device that limits the amount of noise that a gun produces to literally anything on the front of the gun that may potentially theoretically reduce the noise by one decibel. Is now banned. That is not the intent.

Ben 15:40

And you know, unless you're shooting a like subsonic 22 with a hell of a suppressor on it, which you know, a buddy of mine has had and. He had this Walther 22 that he had a suppressor on and shooting subsonics on it. All you heard really was the clack of the action. You can get some quiet guns, but again, what is the lethality and effectiveness of that You know, and that's a whole nother thing.

Gene 16:09

A subsonic nine millimeter shot out of a a bolt action gun. Super quiet. Amazingly quiet.

Ben 16:19

kind of goes against your argument, but the point is there is no, there is nothing

Gene 16:25

They weren't walking around with a single

Ben 16:28

right, right, right. But, you know, here's the thing, a suppressor, there, there is no rationale for a suppressor being

Gene 16:36

No. None. The it is frankly a safety device. It's kinda like saying that.

Ben 16:43

device.

Gene 16:44

Yeah, exactly. It's hearing protection. It's sort of saying like, red dot devices should be illegal because they make people more accurate and only bad people shoot guns, and therefore we don't want people to be able to shoot accurately. You should have to only use iron sites or like any kinda magnifying device site. Would be illegal because it allows you to shoot way longer distances than you could otherwise, and only bad people want to do that, but it's a crazy argument all the way around the whole NFA is bullshit. It is bad law. It's unfortunately bad law that no one's challenged for a very long time. And therefore it feels like, Oh, it's the way it's always been. No, it's not the way it's always been. It was the exact opposite. And then we had a bunch of guys with no balls that ended up electing the people that passed this law

Ben 17:38

And, you know, one of the

Gene 17:39

and women got the vote.

Ben 17:41

one of the things I would say to that is, I have a gun that was my first gun. It's a breech load 410 shotgun. That was my dad's first gun. That was my grandpa's first gun that my great grandpa bought out of the Sears and Roebuck cattle,

Gene 17:56

Yeah, I love that. That's a great story.

Ben 17:59

you know, and it Sears used to mail order guns. You could get a Tommy gun mail order. And I would love to see us go back to something like Regardless, the Supreme Court decision was a good decision. But we'll see what happens with it and where it goes. I hope more people get a little testicular fortitude from this and start challenging more things where it is possible and you can have sufficient standing to do so.

Gene 18:28

you sent me a video, which was of a local Austin gun dealer who was one of the plaintiffs in this, or defendant, I guess. I guess he would have been the defendant. In this, which is hilarious, for instance, for me, because he's a guy that I've used for FFL transfers for a long time. And then I actually took a concealed carry class from him when I first moved to Austin. So, it's interesting seeing him out there. I,

Ben 18:59

yeah he took it, he, a lot of people asked him why he was fighting it, His entire thing was exactly the ruling he got, which was the ATF does not have the right to regulate parts in this manner.

Gene 19:15

exactly. Now, I don't use him anymore because he he didn't respect the coupon that I had. But that aside. Kudos to him.

Ben 19:24

Yeah a coupons.

Gene 19:26

Huh. Fuck you man.

Ben 19:29

Oh, jeez,

Gene 19:30

I'm reading your mind and

Ben 19:32

Huh.

Gene 19:34

Anyway what else we got? That was a bit of good news. It's always good to start things off with good news in the morning.

Ben 19:41

While we're on guns, I got a part from my DeVore that I'm pretty happy

Gene 19:45

Oh, yeah, you sent the picture.

Ben 19:47

Yeah, the black label for our foregrip first of all, it extends the length of the rail and the area you can grab onto the gun significantly

Gene 19:57

I

Ben 19:58

gives you a lot of rail

Gene 20:00

just a little bit uglier, but I can totally see how useful it is.

Ben 20:05

don't think it makes it uglier and it's utilitarian as all

Gene 20:09

heavy.

Ben 20:09

Not at all. It's actually lighter than the factory

Gene 20:12

No, I don't mean an actual weight. I mean in terms of visual weight.

Ben 20:16

Okay. I'm not worried about that. Anyway, it is a significant upgrade and well worth it. I got the one without the bipod integrated, but you can get the one with the bipod

Gene 20:26

The PiPod one was pretty pricey, if I recall.

Ben 20:30

They're both pretty pricey, but yeah.

Gene 20:32

It was like double for the BiPod.

Ben 20:34

Correct. And I, that's not a gun I'm going to be shooting off of a bipod very often, if at all. So, not a thing for me, But also if you had this hand guard and you went with a 20 inch barrel, for instance, it'll

Gene 20:47

Oh, yeah.

Ben 20:48

kind of like it

Gene 20:50

Like it's supposed to. Right.

Ben 20:51

And they have an even longer

Gene 20:53

You were talking about doing it.

Ben 20:54

I have not yet,

Gene 20:55

Okay.

Ben 20:56

but you know, it's an, it's a nice little upgrade. I'm just glad to see that companies are making shit for the divorce. Now I will say in installing that damn thing, I, there, there's this pin and screw at the top of the hand guard, anyone who's putting this on and I was just hand tightening it with. Two Allen keys, essentially. And I snapped the head off the screw.

Gene 21:24

Ooh, that sucks.

Ben 21:25

Yeah, I had to order a new part from

Gene 21:28

you have to drill it?

Ben 21:30

No, because it's a pin that goes in, and then this screw goes into the pin to retain the pin. But it's it, the metallurgy that they were using something was wrong. I shouldn't have been able to snap it like that.

Gene 21:42

I need to get a good set of Allen wrenches I've got multiple sets, but they're all like, you know, 20 sets from Amazon and I've had two different sets now where the Allen wrenches have gotten stripped. Excuse me,

Ben 22:01

like the little,

Gene 22:02

here, so a little bit of coughing here and there.

Ben 22:04

yeah, you're fine. I personally like the little folding pocket style where they're all kept together for a lot of reasons.

Gene 22:13

I have. But I think I've got more than one set, but I've tried a couple of those keys and I had some fairly tight, very small, like these are size one screw I don't know, one what, one millimeter probably? Whatever they are. But they're. They were very tight and I had used one of the Allen wrenches on one of'em, and it unscrewed one screw, and it just kept going around in the circle on the next one, I thought what happened there? So I, I was hoping the screw didn't get stripped, so I put a different Allen wrench in there of the same size. It unscrewed that screw, but then wouldn't unscrew the third screw. I'm like, Jesus Christ. They literally last one screw.

Ben 22:54

yeah, I, and it

Gene 22:55

Chinese shit.

Ben 22:56

yeah, I quit, but quit buying at Harbor Freight, you know, although

Gene 23:00

it's about that quality. I mean, I literally, I never buy Harbor Freight for that reason, but the crap I've been buying on Amazon seems to be that same quality lately.

Ben 23:08

and I've got a nice T handle set that are long, you know, long T handle ones for working on stuff and that, that can be useful. You just kind of need a myriad of tools for the different applications. But yeah, a good, you know, good tool steel. There's a reason why there's a cost there that steel has to be hardened to an extent

Gene 23:30

Oh, yeah.

Ben 23:31

torque on those surface areas and everything else.

Gene 23:33

And especially for the little tiny ones, because you're Your amount of surface area is very small

Ben 23:42

Yes. And the leverage you can exert on

Gene 23:44

is large.

Ben 23:45

And that's something, you know, this goes for hydraulics and everything else. You know, if you have a one inch diameter. Surface area and you put 100 pounds of force on it and you have it linked hydraulically to a 10 inch you know, surface area platter, you've increased the amount of force that you can exert substantially

Gene 24:09

Absolutely

Ben 24:12

actually reverse that, but yes

Gene 24:13

you're

Ben 24:14

was in reverse.

Gene 24:16

well, which where's the platter which are you talking about the

Ben 24:19

The, you would be applying force to the 10 inch side and the one inch side would have a tremendous amount of, that's what I'm saying.

Gene 24:27

That's why we have torque wrenches.

Ben 24:30

Yes. To

Gene 24:31

you know

Ben 24:31

from and torque screwdrivers and everything else. Yeah. Especially with, you know, guns and gun parts, you do not want to over torque stuff.

Gene 24:41

and I got some Loctite red and blue here as well in anticipation of a project

Ben 24:49

What's your project?

Gene 24:51

Screwing things. For

Ben 24:55

we need to talk ammo at some point Winchester has, you can find it still, but there's some 7500 round barrels of M80 Ball, Winchester M80 Ball, you can order for about 50 cents a round.

Gene 25:12

what caliber? 308? That's good. I mean, that's a hell of a price. I'm trying to think back what the cheapest 308 ammo was back in the 90s. I don't even know if it was 50 cents back then. I want to say it was around 55, 60 cents for the cheap stuff and a buck or more for the expensive stuff. Cause

Ben 25:36

we're a buck or more for the

Gene 25:38

for the cheap stuff, right? Exactly. Cause the, like, I remember when federal gold match was exactly a buck around, it was a 20 for a 20 round box. And I was like, holy shit, this crazy expensive. I can't believe I need to be buying this. But cause all the other ammo costs back then was like 15, 20 cents. So yeah, that's times have changed, but then again, Really, and we did the math at some point, I think you and I did, and I've done it with plenty of people. Really, if you look at the inflation from, let's say, the mid 90s, from 95 to 2025, which is

Ben 26:17

But before you go crazy on that, real quick, at Cabela's right now, a box of federal premium gold match gold match, 3. 08 is 40. 99 a box.

Gene 26:29

That's for 20 rounds. Yeah, so it's over just over two bucks a round. Okay, so that sounds bad. However, the inflation in the last 25 to 30 years, let's even say 25 years has been more than double as an average. So technically speaking, the 2 per round right now is equivalent in buying power to two. A buck around back then. I

Ben 27:01

you know, what a lot of people don't realize is if you look at, for instance, gas prices, gas is as cheap as it's ever been.

Gene 27:10

don't think it's quite there, but it's very close.

Ben 27:12

I mean, I'm just saying because of inflation and

Gene 27:15

Yeah.

Ben 27:16

That

Gene 27:17

gas right now is

Ben 27:18

than people

Gene 27:19

where we at? Three bucks. What's the current gas price? I don't know. I don't have a gas vehicle, so.

Ben 27:26

Oh, you got rid of your Oh, that's right, you've got the

Gene 27:28

have diesel. Diesel's always crazy expensive.

Ben 27:31

Yeah, but you know, it's right around three bucks. Yeah,

Gene 27:35

So, back in the 90s, it was under a buck.

Ben 27:40

yeah. In D. C. gas was over shit. Gas was almost five dollars a gallon.

Gene 27:45

Oh yeah, same thing in where I was. Over five bucks.

Ben 27:49

I would expect Mexico to be cheaper.

Gene 27:53

I was in Mexico. I was in the United States. I don't know why I keep saying Mexico.

Ben 27:57

I don't know, you're sending me a midget wrestling video while you're, you know, from there. I don't think Seattle has that.

Gene 28:04

They totally have major wrestling. What are you talking about? That's a normal Seattle thing. It's very politically correct. Anyway it's yeah. So the inflation is ridiculous and it devalues your money. But also when we complain about the high prices, you can, you have to use inflation backwards to see what that is in the dollar range you're comparing it to. And of course, the longer you live the more fond memories of cheap things you have, but also don't forget they weren't necessarily cheap. They're just cheap relatives. They, if there was no inflation, but since there is inflation, That cheap price may not be that cheap. And I had this conversation with my dad who is in his eighties, who is, um, about like the cost of things. Like he had bought a Lincoln Continental back in the late eighties. And you know, that car was 29, 000 in the late eighties. Right now you can buy a hundred thousand dollar Lincoln navigator, which is the sport you, right. So it's the the Lincoln version of the Ford, uh, what's the big sport you did Ford has called, I don't even know expedition.

Ben 29:32

yeah, Expedition.

Gene 29:33

So, and you know, it's fun to bitch about how expensive everything is, but I'm like, you know, dad, that's triple the price, a little over triple the price cents. The late eighties, the inflation is more than triple the amount

Ben 29:49

And the amount of technology and everything else.

Gene 29:52

that was exactly what he said. I don't know. I don't think that's an argument, dude. I'm talking about like, if you want to get an expensive Ford, how much do you pay? I'm ignoring the whatever auto safety self driving bullshit stuff. I'm just looking at It's an easy way to, I think it's a bad argument, but it's an easy argument to get out of anything saying simply they didn't have 26 computers on board those cars, so you can't compare them. Yeah, I can compare them because I'm not comparing the specs. I'm comparing if I went to a dealership, what's the most expensive car I could buy back then versus today. And they're targeting the exact same segment today that they were targeting back then. That's not like I'm comparing a Ford What's their sports car that they did a few years back? The Ford just no. That the super was deaf one or whatever. It was that super exclusive one for 200 grand Ford's whatever. But anyway, German Clarkson has one. It's not like I'm trying to use an exotic car that somebody made for just a few years compared to a normal standard car. I'm just saying that's top end luxury back then was a Lincoln continental today. It's the, it'd be in that lineup. It'd be the Lincoln. So that's the prices I would look at and the comparison I would make. So anyway, long story short is inflation. Is gotten about as bad now as it was during the late seventies with Jimmy Carter. And that's devaluating all our money because the two ways to look at inflation is one, wow, everything's getting expensive or two, wow, I'm getting paid less and less every day, which is the more accurate one. It's the getting paid less and less because the things are typically saying if I've gotten more expensive, they really haven't gotten more expensive. In the global stage, like for the rest of the world, they've just gotten more expensive for the U S

Ben 32:21

The good news is that inflation's as low as it's going to be for quite a while.

Gene 32:28

well, the fed kept the interest rate flat this time around. They didn't bump up the rate at all.

Ben 32:33

Yeah, but given what's going on with the dollar and everything else, the devaluation of the dollar is just beginning. You know, Saudi Arabia didn't renew the petrodollar agreement, which.

Gene 32:45

Some of us knew it was coming, that they wouldn't, but a lot of people didn't know.

Ben 32:49

it's also one of those things that. I don't think it's going to be the cliff that everyone's predicting that it's going to be. It may very well be. It could be, but I see Europe and a lot of others still trading oil in dollars because they want to stay as long as the U. S. has the geopolitical power that we have. Yes, it's an erosion, but it's going to be a slower erosion, not a cliff. You know what I mean?

Gene 33:18

Yes. The big thing for us in the elimination of the petrodollar is that a lot of countries that only had dollars in order to do trades internationally now realize that trades are just numbers on the computer anyway. And there's no reason to hold dollar reserves anymore. And what that does is it's as it's sort of the roosters coming home to roost, which is we, by creating the petro dollar, by getting this deal 50 years ago, where Saudi Arabia and other countries exclusively use the U S dollar to trade oil. We were able to create. A lot more demand for the U S dollar and print a lot more U S dollars without. Inflating them. And now that is starting to fall in on itself, which means there's a shit ton of money that would have been held in reserves by all these countries. What we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it is hundreds of billions. When I looked that now. Are going to be traded or sold for other currencies because they no longer need them. And that puts more us dollars into circulation. And the best way for the U S to deal with that, frankly, is to have inflation. Like inflation is the prescribed solution to the problem of taking money out of the system. You just devalue it that way. You don't have to do anything else with it. And it's, I mean, that's the thing is like high inflation is bad for the population, but it's not bad for the country.

Ben 35:10

I don't see how it's good for the country. But I

Gene 35:14

I mean, by

Ben 35:15

currency is

Gene 35:16

By country, I mean Federal Reserve.

Ben 35:19

yeah. That's not the country, that's a private institution, you know?

Gene 35:24

people that run the country.

Ben 35:26

I mean, it is one way out of our debt, you know, we can inflate our way out of our debt, I guess. But, you know, I think that has its own set of consequences that will be very dire. I mean, just prepare for your you know, standard of living to collapse.

Gene 35:40

Which it is. Yeah, absolutely. I think that the most expensive thing that a whole generation of people will ever own is their iPhone.

Ben 35:49

I mean, that's a pretty expensive piece of equipment, but you.

Gene 35:52

else will be rented. Their car will be rented, their home will be rented. Everything else that's more expensive than the iPhone will be something you pay for your entire life.

Ben 36:02

And I certainly think that the way the housing market is going that's likely because I think what's going to happen is a interest rates are going to continue to go up. I don't care that the fed didn't raise rates this time. They're probably going to. And even if it stays exactly where it is right now, it prices a lot of people out of the market just because of the way A generation grew up with cheap money and structured their finances, you know, probably poorly, but that's the way they structured them. And as a result, you know, there is going to be a generation that does not own housing. They rent it and it's going to be corporations that rented that, or we're going to have a massive collapse in the housing market. It's one or the other. It can't be any other way.

Gene 36:56

And you're this is the bit that through certainly most of my lifetime is the idea that there were corporations that We're created simply to own single family homes just never existed. I mean, there were occasionally here and there you'd find people that own multiple homes and they rented them out. But for the most part the only things that you had corporations owning were A whole bunch of different apartment buildings. There, there was, and plenty of apartment buildings, frankly, were owned by individuals as well. There was not really this amount of profit that was available within this single family home rental market. Like you, you know, you could make money, but you'd have way too many units that were not. Occupied to justify it. You can make money faster. Other ways for corporation to do it right now, you got plenty of companies, including black rock that own tens of thousands of single family homes, if not hundreds of thousands by each company. With the,

Ben 38:03

it's pricing a lot of people out of the market because these corporations, if nothing else, let's say you have two equal offers of 100, 000 and one of them is contingent on financing and one of them is a

Gene 38:14

one of them's cash

Ben 38:15

which one are you taking? You're taking the cash offer.

Gene 38:18

Yeah, and that's happened here in Austin a lot, because I have a friend that his wife is a realtor, and so I hear about this stuff occasionally, and there's a ton of people, including Californians who have, you know, plenty of money from selling their homes who just get locked out of a home that they like because that every house has multiple offers here that's still going on. Even now for a while there was crazy. It was like you were getting 30 to 40 offers per house. It was insane. But Yeah, the people will always lose. The corporations will always win because the corporations have a lot more flexibility. That's what happens when you have a large group versus an individual. This is always going to happen. So unless there's some laws that get passed, and I'm not a big fan of passing laws for this kind of purpose, but unless there's some laws that essentially say that a certain area has to be owned by individuals, can't be owned by corporations, kind of like they've passed laws that exclude people from doing the you know, renting their homes out for short term. What do you call that? Airbnb. Yeah.

Ben 39:29

be done with, it can, Airbnb stuff. You can do it without even laws. You can do deed restrictions. Now, some deed restrictions have been struck down over the years, but, you know, in theory, if you're selling your home and you put something into the deed saying, this must be owned by an individual or something like that you know, that, that can be done. Now, will that deed restriction hold up? You know, deed restrictions were used for

Gene 39:59

I'm against that stuff generally

Ben 40:02

I am too. I can't stand it. It's like homeowners

Gene 40:05

But also the yeah

Ben 40:08

not reality.

Gene 40:09

but also the deed restrictions I kind of a joke anyway, because if you say something like that the home isn't owned by the person buying the home, the homes owned by the bank until the person pays it off. So really if the person stops making payments, the bank gets it. No amount of deed restrictions is going to make the bank not get that home. And this is the whole point is the bank

Ben 40:36

They are a lien holder. They

Gene 40:38

And a lean holder gets they effectively hold it, I mean.

Ben 40:42

okay. I mean, in, in that case, if you're going down that road, actually your homeowners association owns it because the homeowners association is actually the first line lien homeowner association has more rights to your property. In almost all cases, then does the bank,

Gene 40:59

Yeah, but they don't generally have a lien for the amount of the value of the home.

Ben 41:04

It does not matter. They

Gene 41:05

does matter. I've been on two different boards of homeowner associations,

Ben 41:10

what States,

Gene 41:11

in Minnesota, and,

Ben 41:14

it's different there.

Gene 41:15

I'm, how many homes have you had to deal with this issue on? Because I've got personal experience, so

Ben 41:20

If my current home has a homeowner's association, unfortunate.

Gene 41:25

right? And I'm not saying have you owned a home with the homeowners? Have you been on the board where you had somebody that stopped paying for their homeowners association dues that you had to then file in court a lien against their house? I've done that twice.

Ben 41:41

Okay.

Gene 41:42

And my point is,

Ben 41:43

you're a bastard. Got

Gene 41:44

if you get to that point, I'm not a bastard. I'm just somebody that happens to be on boards. Is that when you get to that point, you're trying to collect like maybe 5, 000 because that's six months worth of payments or longer. The bank has a 500, 000 lien on that in the property. Yes, you're first in line, but you're going to get a small sliver of that. So all you're going to achieve if you win is to kick that person out of the house and get your bill paid. Which is good. Obviously, it's what you're trying to do, but the bank will be the one that ends up getting the house. Not you. The bank's just gonna cut you a check. You're not gonna get a 500, 000 house for a 5, 000 lien.

Ben 42:36

I think you should go look at some of the stuff that's gone on. Nevada's the worst about this Vegas area, some of the foreclosures and stuff there.

Gene 42:45

Vegas is run by the mobs, so Yeah,

Ben 42:50

homes for minor minor amounts and selling the home. And yes, they technically owe you the surplus, et cetera, but man, they can do lots of crazy stuff. So that's the entire point.

Gene 43:06

I don't know, man. I like, we've Like, boards I've been on, we've had to do it twice while I was on the board. And and I don't know what the hell people are thinking. Like, pay the damn amount. That's not, it's not optional.

Ben 43:20

It should be

Gene 43:22

Yeah,

Ben 43:22

homeowners associations should

Gene 43:24

don't want to live in the homeowner's association, don't buy a property with the homeowner's association. It's that easy. It's, because the you're, it's like joining a golf club by buying a house on a golf club and then saying nobody should be playing golf because I don't want balls hitting my house.

Ben 43:43

Yeah, sorry.

Gene 43:46

You want that little exclusion after the fact? Guess what? Don't buy a house on the golf course if you don't want your house hit. Kind of a thing. Oh, that's a hilarious photo you just sent. Jesus Christ. Tee hee! Ahhh. Okay, you have to explain it now.

Ben 44:04

no, you're the one who brought it up.

Gene 44:07

yeah! You sent it! You can explain it.

Ben 44:09

It's just a double eggplant,

Gene 44:11

It's a vegetable. It's a double eggplant in the shape of a sex toy.

Ben 44:18

And the caption reads, Mother Nature is adapting.

Gene 44:22

Jesus Christ.

Ben 44:24

We're, you know, we're fine, right?

Gene 44:26

Huh. Huh. It's all good. No, that's hilarious. Hey, if it wouldn't be for humor, it'd be a pretty sad world, wouldn't it?

Ben 44:35

it would be. So while we're on a humorous trend here, so did Biden shit himself?

Gene 44:43

again?

Ben 44:44

Did you not see the D Day video that went viral and everybody's

Gene 44:49

I saw it like, a couple weeks ago, yeah, I think he did.

Ben 44:52

No, this was during D Day

Gene 44:55

oh, no, I didn't, no, maybe not then. I mean, I saw a video where he's walking with his wife and then he kind of stops, squats a little bit, and then keeps going.

Ben 45:03

No, yeah, this was at they were standing around waiting on some of the D Day soldiers to get there and maybe you lost track of time in Mexico, but it was this week. And anyway, he can just kind of squats, stands up, does another

Gene 45:16

Ana Day is not this month even, I don't know what you're talking

Ben 45:19

Anyway, it was pretty hilarious,

Gene 45:21

Yeah. Yeah, it, He, I think he does that on a regular basis.

Ben 45:28

I think the odds of him being incontinent are pretty high, but one of the things I'll

Gene 45:32

Incontinent, incompetent, you name it.

Ben 45:35

yeah. You know, I more and more people that I've been talking to especially on my DC trip, Quite frankly, the majority of people I was talking to are Democrats. Are convinced that Biden will be replaced, During the virtual nomination stuff.

Gene 45:55

Or later.

Ben 45:56

No, that they are doing this virtual nomination stuff in order to potentially get him out and change it so that You know, Kamala, or Gavin Newsom, or somebody.

Gene 46:09

not a Kamala. Nobody likes her. Yeah

Ben 46:12

how do you skip her

Gene 46:13

if you get rid of him, you get rid of her, you can't you can't have the The presidential nominee not get to pick his VP. Can you?

Ben 46:21

Yes.

Gene 46:22

No. The now nominee will always pick their own VP. That's how it works. That's how they're going to get rid of it. We can get rid of her cause I, nobody wants her to be the nominee cause she would even with a election like the last one, she was probably still find a way to lose. So they want somebody more like a Gavin Newsom or like, you know, like somebody who is not a moron. And somebody who can speak a lot of the rhetoric. What they need is somebody like an AOC, but with a little more experience.

Ben 46:55

Oh man. It's scary to

Gene 46:58

And frankly, if they ran somebody like an, oh, AOC will run at some point, you know, she will. But they need somebody that can make the age argument 80 year old Trump? Or do you want like a 35, 40, 45 year old person who understands your generation? I mean, it's frankly the argument that Vivek had that nobody on the right seemed to give a shit about. I can't. I'm still pissed at how few votes he got in the primaries. It's like, just tells me that it's not just the party that is a bunch of rhinos. It just tells me there's a bunch of idiots in the party, period. I think the Republican party is a, it's, I don't know, man I'm not a happy camper. Like there was a time when the Republicans were like a slightly worse version of libertarians. I'd say it's nowhere near that right now. Although the libertarians now are basically Antifa. So what the

Ben 47:59

The Libertarians shot themselves in the foot.

Gene 48:01

Yeah, there, there is no good party right now. They're literally. If I didn't, if I didn't think that a symbolic vote for Trump meant anything there, I would probably just not vote at all because there is no good party to vote for right now. Did you hear Marjorie Taylor Greene say something that was very cringeworthy in my opinion? She said we need to have everybody come out and vote. And even for the rhinos out there, and I know we all hate them and you could see the look on her face. She was cringing when she was saying it, but if we don't get a majority, including the rhinos, In the house, then the Democrats are going to get to do what they always do when they have a majority, which is just not let people run things like they'll prevent votes on certain things. They'll not bring certain topics up. So I mean, as much as I hate to hear it, she did have a point, but I also hate to hear it. So I'd rather let it burn, which is Okay. It's things are so close that even if you want to vote against the rhino like I've seriously been thinking of just getting in a car apartment for a few months down

Ben 49:21

San

Gene 49:21

In yeah in that well south of San Antonio like in that whole region that what's his face ran in Brandon ran in. Yeah, Herrera ran in.

Ben 49:30

a little over 400

Gene 49:31

Yeah. Yeah, lost by four. And just voting Democrat. Just to get that motherfucker out who he lost against. But the danger of trying to focus on getting one rhino out. Is that then the Republicans just don't have control of the house at all, but I don't know if it even matters, honestly. I mean, this is how bad it's gotten. It's like, does it even all that much matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats that they have control of the house?

Ben 49:59

You know, if we go to a contingent election, yeah, it's gonna matter. Now, that will be the next time, because right now the Republicans by delegation do control the House. The Senate, since the defection of the guy in West Virginia and everything else is kind of up for grabs, but you know, there, there's a possibility we go to a contingent election, but I'm somewhat with you on the, fuck it, just burn it all down at this point, man. It, we are at a point. Like, when you look at what is going on, for instance, with Alex Jones, and our judicial system, and you look at Trump, and our judicial system, and you look at all this, and people are acting astonished, it's like, this isn't something new, it's just, you're just now seeing it, our judicial system has been fucked for quite a while, so, yeah

Gene 50:48

it's been fucked but it's being openly politicized We're in the past this might have happened and people try to make it not obvious But right now no one they don't give a shit. They don't care. It's everybody's seeing America as a banana Republic I mean, this is the comments You have comments like this, not just from people in Russia and China. You have comments like that from people all over Europe. It's like, what is going on in, in America these days? You know, they trying to do a German accent.

Ben 51:17

Did not sound German at all.

Gene 51:18

I know I'm still getting over the cold, but

Ben 51:21

Come on, you should have the German one.

Gene 51:23

Yeah. Hand hoch! Hands up. So, yeah, I think it's a it's shitty dude. There's no good at solution here. And even if by some miracle, the Democrats don't steal the election and Trump actually gets elected and actually goes into office, nothing really changes. He's not some miracle man that a bunch of people in the generation older than me. I think it starts people my age and goes. The, what I kind of refer to as the pillow generation or the, my pillow generation, like, they think Trump is some kind of a miracle worker, right? Guy had a very meh first term.

Ben 52:11

I don't think it was that meh.

Gene 52:13

His biggest accomplishments were things that didn't happen like wars. He didn't have anything actually big happened during his first term. I guess, unless you count COVID in which, and if you look at COVID, he's the guy that put Fauci up there.

Ben 52:31

Well, Fauci was in the government and

Gene 52:33

No, I mean, up there as an on television he's the one that kind of pushed Fauci as the spokesperson for the United States healthcare system instead of being a dog torturer.

Ben 52:46

or, you know, killing AIDS patients.

Gene 52:49

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how he got his initial rise is by killing age patients, but Then he moved down to torturing animals. I, and I, again, this is something that I've had this conversation with a few people on that. The first time I saw Fauci, I just thought this dude's evil. Like there's something about him visually that just indicates. I didn't need to hear him speak. I didn't need to know really who the fuck he was. He just looks sadistic and and not in a good way. And so like the more that's come out, the more my gut feel has been. Justified.

Ben 53:30

I think most people are now recognizing that Fauci lied and people have died, right? That is a whole thing

Gene 53:41

Maybe it's because his name sounds like Faust or something, but to me, he just always looked demonic.

Ben 53:47

Regardless, did you hear what happened with Alice Jones on Friday?

Gene 53:52

Friday? No. I know they were trying to get his company.

Ben 53:55

Yeah, the judge Threw out the conservator, Handed the keys over to Alex, and is sending it back to the Texas court.

Gene 54:03

That's

Ben 54:03

So that's about as big of a win as you can ever hope for from an Alex Jones

Gene 54:08

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I guess what they were trying to do is say, look, he's not making payments in a timely manner. He's, he doesn't have a plan to pay off the entire trillion dollar amount. Therefore at the very least we ought to take his company. That way he won't,

Ben 54:26

take his Twitter account, everything.

Gene 54:28

Those are all owned by the company.

Ben 54:30

No, the Twitter account is his personal property. Yes, and they're actually coming after his personal property. This is the other thing, is they were trying to move it from a chapter 11 to a chapter 7, which would essentially make him an indentured slave for the rest of his life.

Gene 54:46

Exactly. Which, I think that's coming for everybody. I mean, honestly, I

Ben 54:51

Oh, debtor prisons are coming back, all sorts of stuff, man. You know, people who think, oh, nah, I can get out of this and whatever. No, that's going away.

Gene 55:02

Yeah, I think it is going away. Because you know, when the when the ships start sinking, the rats start screwing. And the government is doing a lot of screwing these days.

Ben 55:13

We had the anniversary of the Killdozer this last week.

Gene 55:17

The what?

Ben 55:18

The Killdozer?

Gene 55:19

What's that?

Ben 55:21

Gene, you don't know about the Killdozer.

Gene 55:23

No.

Ben 55:24

You've seen the meme. The armored bulldozer that a guy made in a muffler shop, armored it up, and then drove through Colorado town tearing it down.

Gene 55:34

No?

Ben 55:35

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Gene 55:36

I did not see that. What is this?

Ben 55:38

2004.

Gene 55:40

I don't recall that at all.

Ben 55:43

Okay, just Google Killdozer, go watch a documentary or two. Guy at the end of his rope, pissed off at the town and their corrupt politics, literally up armors a bulldozer and starts tearing up the town.

Gene 55:57

Wow.

Ben 55:58

And he finally got stuck in the basement of one building in Offed himself, but yeah,

Gene 56:06

And why'd you bring it up?

Ben 56:07

because it was the anniversary of it happening, 20 year anniversary,

Gene 56:11

Oh. Okay. Not heard of it, man.

Ben 56:14

Okay I mean, they were shooting at him, they tried to trap, do tank traps for him, he just, anyway.

Gene 56:22

Bulldozers can take a lot of shit, man. They're, actually, I think they're heavier than tanks. Meant to go as fast.

Ben 56:29

No, they're not.

Gene 56:30

But you look at a T 11 out there, and you know, what

Ben 56:33

I just can't believe you don't know about the Killdozer, like, it's a meme, man it's been a meme.

Gene 56:38

I was, you know, married to a 25 year old back then. Sorry.

Ben 56:43

Right, but the meme I guarantee you I

Gene 56:46

I wasn't watching television.

Ben 56:48

Twitter right now.

Gene 56:50

Yeah. I don't know, man. Don't know, tell you, never heard of it. I'll look it up though.

Ben 56:55

Yeah, Google, just go on Twitter and search Killdozer, and yeah, 2015. 2000, June 4th, 2020

Gene 57:04

I'm wondering what model he had now, that's

Ben 57:06

Yeah, and people are making Killdozers, people are, you know, and the meme right now is never forget what happens when reasonable men are pushed to do unreasonable

Gene 57:18

Oh, that was the tie in, I see where you were going. Okay.

Ben 57:22

Good God. I mean, you know, I make a reference that

Gene 57:26

Aw, dude, that's not even a, aw, it was a Komatsu, that's not even a good bulldozer. Jesus. It was a D 355.

Ben 57:34

he still did a fucking

Gene 57:37

Dude, you

Ben 57:37

amazing job armoring it.

Gene 57:39

yeah, you get yourself a D 11, then you take on the world.

Ben 57:43

Anyway.

Gene 57:45

Interesting. Guy looks like a normal dude.

Ben 57:48

Yeah, and apparently he snapped.

Gene 57:50

It says he's 52 years old. Huh. Yeah. Yeah, this is a baby bulldozer. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, people do snap occasionally, that'll happen, that's, uh government doesn't like that, so they would appreciate if people didn't, but certainly happens from time to time. What's the latest on I? I got confused with all this bulldozer stuff. What's the latest on night vision and or thermal? We haven't talked about that, people have been asking.

Ben 58:27

I don't have to do, other than

Gene 58:30

use,

Ben 58:31

this new stuff that's coming out that apparently will allow Close to a PVS 14 on a thin layer on normal glasses. I'm

Gene 58:43

I haven't heard of that. What is that?

Ben 58:46

going to have to look it up. They have a new coding talk while I do this.

Gene 58:51

Alright for anyone interested you can pick up one of these Komatsu they're not even called bulldozers, they're called a, uh, tracked tractor, which kind of seems a little redundant, but you can pick one up pretty cheap. They got they got them online. What?

Ben 59:10

check signal.

Gene 59:11

okay. Oh, my other ride is an ATF agent's wife. Yes. Yeah, I remember seeing that image as well. So, oh, the one before that. Okay. You sent me the, my other ride is an ATF agent's wife.

Ben 59:24

Yeah.

Gene 59:25

That was a funny bumper

Ben 59:26

I, this is this, I'm talking about the link regarding, yeah.

Gene 59:30

I have another buddy send me that. Am I could, my friends have something in common here. Optical engineers invent ultra thin coating that turns ordinary glass into a high efficiency night vision. I think that's funny.

Ben 59:42

Okay Kodak has a new patent out and several others are working on this, that it's essentially the same principles as how a intensifier tube works just in a coating. It does still require some power and electrification but the entire idea here is And there's several articles around it and maybe it's FUD, but yeah,

Gene 1:00:08

Yeah, I think it would be certainly an improvement if we can get glasses that have even a two to one photo intensification, that would be something. But you know, night vision is thousands of times of intensification these days, and I don't think we're going to get that with a thin film.

Ben 1:00:29

I am not suggesting that we do, but it's just interesting.

Gene 1:00:33

um, so it looks like

Ben 1:00:38

Anyway, you obviously had something to bring up on night vision since you brought it

Gene 1:00:42

I brought it up only because I've had a couple of people send me stuff on X asking about it. Here's the reality from my standpoint is after we were talking about it for like three months, six months ago, and I bought a a infrared. Doodad thingy for lack of a better term and a helmet to put it on and all this other stuff I am done shit with it. I have not I literally have done nothing. So there is nothing to report back guys if you're

Ben 1:01:14

one thing I will report is hardhead veterans finally came out with their all us made here in Texas. Ballistic helmet costs what a Team Wendy bump helmet does.

Gene 1:01:26

Right, which is a pretty impressive that they're able to do that

Ben 1:01:30

Made in Texas.

Gene 1:01:32

yeah, and made in texas is definitely a big thing. It means the atf can't fuck with it because helmets clearly are in violation of the nfa Being facetious there, but I wouldn't shock me if they came out with something that basically says all safety equipment for shooting violates the NFA.

Ben 1:01:51

There's already been a couple prosecutors trying to go after people for training outdoors, and that this is obviously militaristic, and you're involved in a shooting and you've been training. You, it's tantamount to premeditated murder.

Gene 1:02:07

They would much prefer that, that the plebs had no training whatsoever.

Ben 1:02:12

Yeah, and no understanding of how to protect themselves, I agree.

Gene 1:02:15

That would be the preference. Absolutely. Yeah, it's yeah. I read the article. It's, it does look interesting. I will say so they're doing Basically wavelength shifting to convert infrared into visible through a coding, which is a pretty cool thing. But, hardly night vision.

Ben 1:02:35

I mean, it's the same thing that an intensifier tube does, just in a microcosm. So, it, it's an interesting thing. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. You know, it, it will be. That's pretty much all we can say at this point. But did you see Trump new tax plan?

Gene 1:02:53

Nope.

Ben 1:02:54

So he's got two items that he's proposing. One is to abolish the income tax and go pure tariff based, which

Gene 1:03:02

I heard that. Yeah.

Ben 1:03:03

And then the other proposal he has at the very least is to, and this, I think, will get a lot of people to vote for him, especially if they realize it. The new plan would be to make tips non taxable income.

Gene 1:03:17

Yeah, I heard that as well. I didn't realize they were taxable to begin with. Or at least nobody ever reports them.

Ben 1:03:23

Yeah they are. So, good way to get audited.

Gene 1:03:28

yeah. So basically we're going to have a whole bunch of people reclassifying their income as tips

Ben 1:03:34

Oh, you know,

Gene 1:03:35

because if they're legally non taxable, why wouldn't you just charge zero and then just get tips?

Ben 1:03:42

Because a tip is a voluntary thing,

Gene 1:03:45

Yeah. So it's paying somebody.

Ben 1:03:47

Eh, you're running into the value for value model arguments here.

Gene 1:03:51

Exactly. Exactly. It's but you could like pre charge a tip. Hey you tip me and I'll do something for you.

Ben 1:03:59

Yeah it, we'll see how it all comes out.

Gene 1:04:01

Huh.

Ben 1:04:02

And before CSB complains about my audio again the Motu is in the shop, by the way. CSB it is at Motu

Gene 1:04:09

does complain about your idea with some regularity. That's true. And I hear about it. The tariff thing is interesting too, because generally I'm against tariffs. And it, most people don't realize just how many tariffs the U. S. currently has. It is hardly a free market here, but I understand why countries do tariffs and they do them for generally two reasons. One is to protect the local production facilities and local companies. To push back on other countries that they think are aggressively under pricing things in order to to hurt the industry of the country itself. Using tariffs for a third reason for in lieu of taxes is interesting. I think that might be worth a more of a deep dive to see how exactly that would work.

Ben 1:05:02

I mean, that's the way this country funded itself for the first several hundred years several hundred, the first 50 years of its existence. Was your fee for service model and tariffs?

Gene 1:05:14

tariffs are. They're certainly right for abuse, too, because you can selectively make, oh, I don't know, for example, a high tariff on tea. That would be no

Ben 1:05:27

as it, as long as it's done by the representatives, you know, problem is taxation without

Gene 1:05:33

As a drinker of Yorkshire tea, I oppose any tea tariffs.

Ben 1:05:37

I think we ought to have very high tariffs, except where we go into unilateral trade agreements and it is unilaterally or bilaterally rather. Not multilateral, but bilateral. Bilaterally agreed that, okay, UK, for example, we're not going to tax your tea. You're not going to tax our stuff going into the UK. We are going to have free trade between these two countries. We have agreed to that. But the problem is, where the US may not have tariffs, and China can just dump whatever they want, and China tariffs the shit out of anything going into China, that's not free trade either. So,

Gene 1:06:16

No, it's not. So the question is, do you have free trade, or do you have tit for tat?

Ben 1:06:22

you have to have tit for tat in the real world. Because you, you have to come from a place of we are going to tariff the shit out of you unless you agree to actual free trade between our two nations. And the only way to do that, the only way to do that is bilaterally. Otherwise it gets too big and shit sneaks in. You know, even NAFTA II and the

Gene 1:06:48

that's bad. Yeah.

Ben 1:06:49

It's not great. It's better than it was, but it's not great.

Gene 1:06:55

And there is an argument to be made that having a country be self sufficient Is worth preserving. Like if you outsource absolutely everything to the cheapest available, a country willing to do that particular task, at some point, you'll find yourself redundant,

Ben 1:07:19

indeed.

Gene 1:07:21

nobody needs a country that outsources everything.

Ben 1:07:24

And you can't have a service based economy. That's just a false principle to

Gene 1:07:29

Yeah. Yeah. Which I don't know if you saw that we've had another layer of tariffs or not tariffs, there's similar tariffs of, um, what do you call them? Restrictions on Russia. What am I thinking? Sanctions. Exactly. Exactly. Which are essentially tariffs. And this one is now been applied to to the money market for financial institutions that trade with Russia. And, effectively, it has removed Russia's ability to use the petrodollar, ironically. Which I'm sure a lot of people thought didn't we already do this two years ago? No, we didn't. But now we have. And so now Russia is having to not use U. S. dollars for settlement purposes for anything. Which is, boy, it sure sounds like the briar patch for Bricks to Me.

Ben 1:08:32

I mean, bricks,

Gene 1:08:33

You get the briar patch reference, I assume.

Ben 1:08:35

The rabbit running into the Or the 1812 reference, you know, we chased them they went where rabbits even wouldn't

Gene 1:08:41

Yeah. Oh, no, don't throw me in there. That would be horrible. So, I don't know, man. I think that at some point you have to consider the ramifications Of doing sanctions on your own country and your friendly countries and not just simply look at what they would do from a punishment standpoint. Because first of all, they may not do what you think they will in terms of punishment, but the ramifications on yourself and friendly countries may be far greater than the the punishment that you're doing to the other guys.

Ben 1:09:22

Fair enough. I, you know, I don't think we should use sanctions as economic warfare because I think it undermines our own position, largely.

Gene 1:09:30

Oh, it's.

Ben 1:09:31

would say that we shouldn't do that.

Gene 1:09:34

I think the, this is part of the reason that Saudi Arabia did not renew. Now you could argue that they never would have renewed no matter what happened, but I suspect that had the whole Ukraine situation been settled in the first six months. That there's a pretty good chance that Saudi Arabia may have just kept the status quo. It may not have been for another 50 years, but it might have been for another 20 years they would have signed something.

Ben 1:10:03

And I, you know, quite frankly, we should. If Trump gets elected, we'll see what happens because there's a good chance that if he is elected and he does resolve the Ukrainian thing and Goes the way we hope it does, that Saudi Arabia comes back around because they've spent billions and billions of dollars on us equipment for war fighting, for

Gene 1:10:24

Oh, yeah.

Ben 1:10:25

35s everything else that they've purchased, the reality is that they can, if they just. If they just try to abandon the U. S. dollar, It will be very difficult for them to handle, right? They can't just abandon the dollar because if we stop selling them, for instance, parts to the F 35, They have not they've just thrown away hundreds of billions of dollars.

Gene 1:10:52

When's the last time Saudi Arabia used those sub 35s?

Ben 1:10:56

I mean, without the U. S., they might end up using them more than they think.

Gene 1:11:01

I don't know, man. I think that Saudi Arabia Like, who's trying to attack Saudi Arabia? Maybe Iran? That'd be about it.

Ben 1:11:09

You know, we'll see.

Gene 1:11:11

I, like 50 years ago, when they were literally riding camels and living in tents. And I know I'm being slightly exaggerating here, but it's, Saudi Arabia has come a long way in 50 years. Technologically, financially on the world stage, all these things. And I think the Saudi Arabia of today, their needs for buddy with the U S and especially given the U S is current situation. Is way smaller than it was 50 years ago.

Ben 1:11:47

Okay. I think the Middle East is not a great spot and. It's kind of getting worse in lots of ways.

Gene 1:11:58

It's always been that way. I don't think it's getting worse. I think it's always been that way. It's always been a hot potato.

Ben 1:12:07

We'll

Gene 1:12:08

dude, you go back to biblical times. It was a hot potato.

Ben 1:12:11

I mean, to an extent. The the Romans seem to have it under control.

Gene 1:12:16

Control is a relative thing. I don't think the Romans did a whole lot when they occupied a land. They basically said, keep practicing your own gods you know, religions. Keep doing everything, just swear allegiance to Rome, and oh yeah, the taxes you collect, we're gonna take half of those now. That's it. I mean, Rome was pretty damn non intrusive.

Ben 1:12:39

Yeah, tell that to the Christians in the Coliseum, you know.

Gene 1:12:44

They were Romans.

Ben 1:12:46

Okay, and?

Gene 1:12:47

That's their own citizens, dude. That's not occupied territory, unless you're claiming that somehow Christianity was occupied by Rome in Rome. The whole Christians in the Colosseum is bullshit anyway. There were people at the Coliseum, a percentage of them happened to be Christians.

Ben 1:13:06

There were lots of interesting things that happened in the Coliseum, to

Gene 1:13:10

Yeah, there were lots of animals getting killed there too. And we have a lot of these records because they did keep very good records. So we can see like for which event, what the orders were for how many gladiators, how many elephants, how many lions, how many whatever. So we, we have pretty good records to see what it is. And. This idea that somehow that Christians were the only ones getting sacrificed at the Coliseum is utter nonsense.

Ben 1:13:44

I never said it was only Christians, but you know, there definitely were quite a few.

Gene 1:13:49

Yeah,

Ben 1:13:50

And the point is, the Romans did some shit that they probably shouldn't have done.

Gene 1:14:00

everybody's done the shit they shouldn't have done. It's pretty universal.

Ben 1:14:04

What are you admitting, Gene?

Gene 1:14:06

What am I admitting? I'm admitting that every people have done shit in their past that when you look back through the current lens, you go Eh, I don't know, man.

Ben 1:14:16

Did you see the latest anti Jew news?

Gene 1:14:20

No, I don't subscribe to that particular feed. What'd you see?

Ben 1:14:24

Just Massey on Tucker talking about his ADL guy and how the ADL has, congressmen have these lobbyists Speed dial, et cetera. And, you know, as a result, everyone was really going, ah, see the Jews.

Gene 1:14:42

Yeah, ADL is not Jews. ADL is Democrats. ADL is look, ADL is Jews, just like the NRA is all gun owners,

Ben 1:14:54

Exactly. That I can

Gene 1:14:55

You get that analogy. The ADL has never represented most of my friends who are Jewish. They're, the ADL has always been a very one track organization. Again, same thing for National Association of Colored People, NAACP does not represent black people. It represents. A very Democrat heavy politicized thing that has the word colored people in its name, but it doesn't mean that's the actual purpose of the organization. It's a, you know, it's a group that may at one point have been based on something to do with ethnicity, but has long since evolved into something that is basically a Democrat focused agenda. Uh, lobbying group. And I've posted on, I've tweeted on X lots of times in response to ADL shit, basically saying ADL doesn't represent the actual Jews in America because a lot of people assume that it's got the word Jew in the name that must be like a, you know, the group, all the Jews belong to. No, most Jews don't like the ADL and ADL incidentally, I guess it doesn't have June the name. It's the anti defamation league. Which is not what the group does.

Ben 1:16:23

Did you go see the gay crosswalk while you were in Seattle?

Gene 1:16:27

I was pretty close to it, but no I did not. I did not, I saw videos of it on you know, on YouTubes.

Ben 1:16:35

Yeah. The one in Spokane keeps getting trashed, which

Gene 1:16:40

Yeah, I have a real problem with that being a crime. Not because of anti gay. The fucking purpose of a publicly paid for road Is to have cars drive on it. Decorating the road and then giving out felonies for people that damaged the picture that you put on the fucking road is insane. This is literally like children drawing shit on the street with chalk and then getting pissed that somebody going home with groceries drove over their chalk drawing and ruined it. This is not what it's for. It's like, you want to paint something, go fucking buy a piece of paper. Don't do it on the street. That is insane. Plus I don't want. Rainbows.

Ben 1:17:34

children, being, you know, and lime scooters, putting a geofence around it so you can't drive there, which is just,

Gene 1:17:44

That, that is totally insane. And cause that whole generation is children and you've got I don't want symbols of any one group on public property like that. I don't want rainbows on the roads. I don't want crosses on the roads. I don't want stars of David on the road. I don't want any. Islamic shit on the road. I just don't want any group symbology on a public road. Don't need that shit.

Ben 1:18:14

It's a stupid place to put it.

Gene 1:18:15

Yeah. It should all be in private sector. You want to have gay churches? Fine. Have a gay church. Who cares?

Ben 1:18:23

well,

Gene 1:18:25

I mean, they're there whether you like it or not. It's just the thing. Speaking of, I heard a thing about how the the Southern Baptist Association voted to start getting rid of women, which is a good step in the right direction for them.

Ben 1:18:40

I, I have a you mean women pastors.

Gene 1:18:42

Yeah. No, I okay. I see how that sounded. I don't mean killing women in the Coliseum No, of course not. No, I mean they've decided that you know, maybe pastors really should be men as God intended Preach Preach.

Ben 1:19:01

I hate to say it and I really, some people may be offended, but quite frankly, biblical Christianity is unpopular and popular Christianity is unbiblical. what you have to realize is there are reasons and rationales. Whether you think of the Bible as God's word, or just a meme that has been handed down and refined over, you know, generations and millennia. However you think about it, there's a fucking reason for it. what happens when we turn over, when men become so weak that they turn over leadership to This is the society we get, and it's problematic, and it's the weak men's fault for having done it in the first place. So, I very much believe in Ephesians 5, very much believe that, You know, you can only do so much before you have to take it back. And I think we're getting there.

Gene 1:20:08

Yeah,

Ben 1:20:08

I and here's the thing. The people who are screaming the loudest and worried the most about a a handmaid's tale reality. You're ensuring it, it is going to be a retribution of men are going to snap and it's going to go the other way. If we don't want it to snap and go the other way, we need to, you know, actually talk about equality and not just. Everyone fighting for supremacy because right now what we have is men have given up a large portion of their quote unquote control. We've allowed stuff to go away. You know, we've let other people take over. And as a result, We are being disenfranchised and put down, right? The worst person in the world right now is a white male. Okay? So, what do you expect when you then take on the supremacy angle? There's gonna be a backlash eventually, at some point in time. I don't want to personally see a race. Boy, do I see one coming at some point.

Gene 1:21:18

Yeah, and I think a lot of people don't realize that when you have women in positions of power it is not because women now have gotten abilities that previous generations of women haven't had. It is because men have walked away from their duties and responsibilities. And the vacuum is filled with women. We can put a little shiny face on it and call it, you know, progress. But the reality is there's a reason that we've had a hierarchical male dominant society for the last million years, up until the last 50 or so. There's a reason for it. It's not random. And that reason has a lot to do with survival of the species. And what we've done right now is we've said, No, we're going to deny that evolution played any role whatsoever. In having the society be formed the way it is. We're going to rewrite the books on society and women are going to be in charge. Good luck with that.

Ben 1:22:28

What it comes down to is And this is, anytime you stereotype, anytime you do anything like that you're talking to a average, not the whole. So what I mean by that is, if I say, All women are X. What I really mean is the majority of women are X and this is how they're different, but some men are that way. Some women are not, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what it comes

Gene 1:22:59

Yeah. There are women that are physically stronger than some men. Like some women overlap

Ben 1:23:04

some women that are more logical than some men, but

Gene 1:23:09

Yeah. The Californian definitely proves that rule as a whole. What happens when you. taking those small exceptions and saying I'm going to apply that to all women or all men. Is you're basically just ignoring reality and you're living in your own little creative fantasy world. And, you know, living in a fantasy world which doesn't map properly to reality causes problems for everybody.

Ben 1:23:38

This is why the right level of analysis is always the individual, right? And should some people, should some women. Have leadership potential and so on. Absolutely. Think Joan of Arc, right? There are those women in history who definitely,

Gene 1:23:56

Yeah, she was autistic.

Ben 1:23:58

okay. Regardless,

Gene 1:23:59

No, we have genetic proof now.

Ben 1:24:02

okay. Regardless, but, and there are definitely men, I think Henry the eighth that shouldn't

Gene 1:24:08

What's wrong with Henry VIII?

Ben 1:24:12

Really? How

Gene 1:24:13

I don't see a damn thing wrong with him. He had a little gout that was problematic. But other than that, seemed like a good king. A fine king.

Ben 1:24:21

So?

Gene 1:24:22

He didn't kill his wife, did he? A

Ben 1:24:24

which one out of the six, which one

Gene 1:24:27

he put her yeah, I mean, you put him away. That's what covenant, goddammit, I can't say the word.

Ben 1:24:32

You know, I, I'm going to make my own damn church.

Gene 1:24:36

exactly. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to be said for that. I think that you ever watch the HBO Henry days?

Ben 1:24:42

no, I didn't.

Gene 1:24:44

So they did one Early 2000s. I thought they did a very good job because unlike most of the productions of Henry VIII that present him as this very caricaturized kind of Shakespearean character they looked at it from the standpoint of What would this guy have been in his youth that would have made his, shaped his character? And they basically made him a total Chad. You know, he was big, he was strong, he was smart, he was very popular with the ladies. You know, he was a guy that basically,

Ben 1:25:22

Had a bunch of daughters, you know.

Gene 1:25:24

this is before the daughters, but the point being that you know, Henry the eighth is basically Elon Musk.

Ben 1:25:33

Except totally more dictatorial and lots of, like, okay, there's lots

Gene 1:25:38

Elon Musk just got 50 billion that his surfs, I mean, employees, it voted in order to give them, and I'm sorry, not employees that stockholders. So basically people are just gave him money. I just voted to give him more money. And I incidentally, I'm all for that. I think he deserves it. But you know, other than having gout, I think you could make a lot of comparison with him and Henry VIII. A man who won't let simple little petty things like it's been done that way in the past stop him. He's definitely an iconoclast. Anyway, I'll get off my Henry VIII rant.

Ben 1:26:19

What else do we need to cover, Gene?

Gene 1:26:22

I'm sure there's plenty of things, because we've been off the air for two weeks here due to travel, but I don't know. I think we've hit on a good number of topics let me scroll, let me do this, I'll scroll back through.

Ben 1:26:35

the Libertarian Party imploding was definitely

Gene 1:26:38

Yeah, did we talk about that already or

Ben 1:26:40

did a little bit, but you know, Chase Oliver getting the nomination for the Libertarian Party. And did you watch the TimCast Culture War episode Friday? So he had some, it was about the Libertarian Civil War, and oh my god was it unwatchable. Because the people, and this is the problem I've always had with the Libertarian Party the people who join the Libertarian Party are not what I would call Libertarians. And you literally had this woman on there saying that people should vote the Libertarian ticket up and down, no matter what, in order to preserve the Libertarian party as a third party, which is fucking asinine. The fact that you would tell people to vote a party line Libertarian, it's just so anathema. It's. And she meant it. She was saying it 100%.

Gene 1:27:41

I don't think that party deserves to be preserved as a third

Ben 1:27:44

I don't either. I'm done. I'm done.

Gene 1:27:48

and as I've told you, I know in our conversations, I was one of the guys that got it to be an official third party. I was very heavily involved, I actually ran for office myself. And we managed to get the libertarian party to pass that magic, whatever minimum number it was on the balance of every election, including presidential, that would get it to be a minority party back in the nineties. And at this point, I just, I mean, the party has been kind of a joke anyway, but it's beyond the joke. It's actually a liability at this point.

Ben 1:28:21

I agree. But the good news is that with the way this quote unquote civil war in the Libertarian party is playing out the entire Mises caucus is going for Trump. Like there, there is no doubt in that whatsoever at this point.

Gene 1:28:39

Yeah, it's pretty obvious. I, in as much as I don't think Trump will be the panacea that a lot of people believe he will be. I do think that there is literally nobody else to vote for, of any party. I mean, there are no other candidates to vote for other than Trump. And he may still lose. And that's, I'm sticking to that until election day. I think there's still a pretty good chance that Democrats will figure out a way to make Trump lose.

Ben 1:29:12

I think the first step would be replacing Biden with like a Newsome,

Gene 1:29:17

And I'm pretty sure they're going to do something like that. The only question is, when are they going to do something like that?

Ben 1:29:23

I think if they're going to do it, they have to do it by nomination time. They have to.

Gene 1:29:32

What happens if the nominated candidate dies before the election? Like the officially nominated candidate. Has that ever happened before? In a major election?

Ben 1:29:43

it define major election

Gene 1:29:45

I mean, it doesn't have to be. Yeah. Have they been, have there been, do they have dead people elected? What happens in those cases?

Ben 1:29:52

Theoretically, dead people are elected and then a governor or who, depending on state law, gets to appoint, yeah.

Gene 1:29:58

So maybe that's what they want to do with him is just have Biden win and then die before he gets sworn in.

Ben 1:30:05

Yeah, but then you end up with

Gene 1:30:06

Yeah. But nobody wants that. Not even the Democrats want

Ben 1:30:10

Yeah, so I don't see that. Now, if you have one of the things that could happen is because the way the presidential race is done, if Biden were to die, you could have state legislatures argue that they're not going to certify votes, and then it could get thrown to a contingent election. You could also have the electoral college you know, say, I'm going to be a faithless elector and apply. Literally put Hillary Clinton in if they wanted, doesn't really matter. There are

Gene 1:30:43

Can you have two presidents get elected at the same time? Yeah.

Ben 1:30:46

No.

Gene 1:30:49

What would prevent that?

Ben 1:30:50

The electoral college.

Gene 1:30:52

Yeah, but I mean, you can have the electoral college be evenly split. Can't you, there's no way to have them be split.

Ben 1:31:00

there, there's no way. I mean, theoretically if you had all faithless, electors, you know, I don't know if there's an how many electoral college votes

Gene 1:31:11

Yeah. Is that an even or an odd number? And is it enough to just have one out of the whole group to have that winning majority? I guess I haven't looked into it deep enough to really. No,

Ben 1:31:22

Yeah, there's 538

Gene 1:31:25

So there isn't even a number. So you could be split.

Ben 1:31:27

You, if you had faithless electors, then potentially yes. But again, the odds of that happening is minuscule. And even if it did, then it would be thrown to a contingent election where the Congress would vote by delegation and the Senate would vote by member Congress electing the

Gene 1:31:48

which would screw the Democrats. Yeah.

Ben 1:31:51

Theoretically, I mean, you know, it's by delegation. So theoretically you would hope that the Republicans would hold it together, but maybe they don't, maybe they hate Trump enough that they put in Romney, you know,

Gene 1:32:05

Oh, God.

Ben 1:32:06

because at that point, once you get to that point,

Gene 1:32:08

Then you leave the country is what you do.

Ben 1:32:10

it will, but the point is the way we work in a representative Republic. So when you're voting, you're actually voting for electors and the party gets to choose the electors because that's. The bullshit we've allowed to have happened. It used to be state legislatures that Now it's no longer that way. So the party appoints these electors. The electors can technically vote however the fuck they want. Now there are some state laws that bind the electors,

Gene 1:32:42

But they could still vote any way they want. They just wouldn't be breach of state law. Yeah.

Ben 1:32:47

And then the Congress, if it goes to a contingent election in the Congress, the delegations get to vote however they want.

Gene 1:32:54

I don't know, man. It's all I know is that Anybody that's on the anti China front. You gotta realize that Chinese government is having a field day laughing at America self destructing.

Ben 1:33:09

I, again, I, the, where I have gotten to is the only way out, the only way out from total collapse of the Is peaceful divorce.

Gene 1:33:23

Yeah, it's basically, it's what I said, which is the only thing you could do is leave. It's just you want to leave and take your land with you. Heh.

Ben 1:33:30

And what I think it comes down to is, You have to either allow people to go their separate ways, or you end up in a true civil war. that's, that is what we're coming to. It's not that I want that. It's, you know, did you ever go back and actually read the post I put up?

Gene 1:33:50

yeah, I read it.

Ben 1:33:51

Yeah. I mean, that's, to me, where we're at. It's, there, there is You eventually get to the point of good men who want to be left alone, not being able to, Yeah, man, it's not gonna go well.

Gene 1:34:07

Yeah,

Ben 1:34:08

Did you ever watch the movie the A24 movie, Civil War?

Gene 1:34:12

the what movie?

Ben 1:34:14

The Civil War movie with Kirsten Dunst or whatever?

Gene 1:34:19

Oh no. I still haven't. Is that on,

Ben 1:34:21

streaming now, you can watch

Gene 1:34:22

Is it? Okay, yeah, I can I'll check it out. But so many people have panned it that's kind of made me less interested in it.

Ben 1:34:29

yeah and, you know, one of the things I'll say is, I did watch it recently, I wish I'd have seen it in the theaters, it would have

Gene 1:34:35

Really? Okay.

Ben 1:34:37

the, I will say two things, one, they need to make a sequel that focuses on the actual politics of the Civil War,

Gene 1:34:44

Not reporters? Heh. A lot of people have said that.

Ben 1:34:47

but two I think the infighting and some of the stuff that it shows It's actually pretty good. Like, it has it's moments if you parse it out well. But it does take parsing, you can't just take it

Gene 1:35:01

Yeah.

Ben 1:35:02

the way it's presented and it'd be okay.

Gene 1:35:04

I just think that the I think it's gonna be really hard for any country to have a splitting of territory It's just, people don't want that to happen. Who are in the majority. That's always the case. Like the majority does not want to have the minority split off and the majority is willing to use force to prevent that. That's been true in every single instance with the one sole exception of the breakup of the Soviet Union. But I think part of the reason that the Soviet Union was able to break up like that was because it was a totalitarian country.

Ben 1:35:43

I think we're pretty close to his

Gene 1:35:46

So we're gonna have

Ben 1:35:47

here

Gene 1:35:48

We're gonna have to get a lot more totalitarian before we break up if we want it to succeed.

Ben 1:35:53

there is a hope of getting a melee in U. S. that

Gene 1:35:58

Yeah. Which, you know, he's getting a lot of backlash right now. There's a lot of protests right now against Mali.

Ben 1:36:04

Eh, okay. I like it. I like what they're, what he's

Gene 1:36:09

No I do too. I'm just saying that it doesn't represent, like, a clear majority of the people. There's still plenty of people that. Are going to be negatively affected by what he's doing that are very much against him.

Ben 1:36:23

That's why we're not a democracy is that it comes down to this. We are not meant to care at all what the quote unquote, clear majority wants, right? We're supposed to be a representative Republic that takes the rights of the minority as a guide post. And the majority can go fuck itself. It does not override the minority.

Gene 1:36:47

In a manner of ways, sure. But I'm just saying from a practical standpoint, push comes to shove. While there are people that would certainly say good riddance, Texas that dislike Texas politics and be perfectly fine with Texas leaving. The majority of Americans consider Texas to be American land. Now, those of us living in Texas with a particular mindset, which is actually over half of Texans. As of the last,

Ben 1:37:17

saw the news,

Gene 1:37:18

yeah,

Ben 1:37:18

the GOP is going to put it on the ballot.

Gene 1:37:21

Yep. Which is great,

Ben 1:37:22

on the ballot.

Gene 1:37:23

which is very good. Now also I think it's if people vote the way that the survey show, we're going to have over half the people voting for Texas, but that's not a guarantee, first of all, and I think we're going to be, Because we're in circles of people, like people we know are friends that are all rah, text it. We're going to be surprised by just how many people don't want to leave the United States as well. And I think it's going to be a pretty large number. It'll be at least 49%, but it may be even over 50, frankly. We'll find out, but the surveys certainly indicate that somewhere around 40 percent of the people don't want to leave 30 really want to leave the camp we're in. And then there's another like 40 percent that are ambiguous about it.

Ben 1:38:14

I think that the number of people who want to leave is growing and growing every day. And I think let's take it this way. If Trump were to lose and Biden were to win, You would see support for Texit. Jump

Gene 1:38:33

I agree.

Ben 1:38:34

tremendously. Like, and this is something I have argued,

Gene 1:38:37

So, really we should be voting for Biden then, if we want to text it.

Ben 1:38:42

Yeah, this is something I can, I actually argued with the 2016 election is the worst thing about it was that Hillary Clinton didn't win because had she won, Texas would have happened. I truly believe that would have been the case. So we'll see. It's like the rat experiment. You give a rat enough hope and it'll swim for forever. But if, you know, if it, if you don't, then. Maybe we can get out. So we'll see.

Gene 1:39:10

That, that's true.

Ben 1:39:12

And the, what I'm referring to is the drowning rat experiment that I forget

Gene 1:39:16

I think Fauci does those on a daily

Ben 1:39:19

it what happened was they put some rats in in water to time how long they would swim and survive. They took 20 minutes. And the next time they ran the experiment, at 18 minutes, right before they were gonna give up and drown, they took them out and let them rest. And then they swam, literally, through the point of exhaustion, and for hours they sustained,

Gene 1:39:46

They're waiting to get rescued again.

Ben 1:39:47

exactly. They sustained hope for a lot longer.

Gene 1:39:50

That's interesting,

Ben 1:39:51

is an interesting psychological

Gene 1:39:53

that's exactly how you do torture, I've read. Is that you If you just torture someone continuously they just shut down. You have to find that breaking point, bring them right up to it, and then stop, and then create an element of hope. And then resume. And that's how you get somebody to flip. I've read.

Ben 1:40:18

Oh I don't know. I just don't ever want to be tortured, but I would hope that I would not give in. So

Gene 1:40:26

All right. And then on that happy deal, we'll wrap it up for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed it. We, once again, just want to not necessarily mention my name, but thank the guys that are supporting us on a monthly basis, we appreciate you. It's the reason that.

Ben 1:40:41

We had one dropout.

Gene 1:40:43

Yeah, but that happens, you know, we pick some up, we have some dropout and we certainly are very appreciative of people that do click on that little link on our podcast that says support us. And that money goes directly into a holding account to pay for the. company. So, we literally don't pull that out. I mean, we could theoretically, if there's a podcast that generates tons of money, they could pull that out. But for us, it's really been a way to not have to pay for hosting and infrastructure stuff. By having that money go directly towards making this podcast a little bit cheaper for us personally. I mean, we already commit the time and we have committed the money in the past, but it's great to have people that enjoy listening to it provide some of that funding as well.

Ben 1:41:31

It certainly helps make make the excuse easier on, you know, it not costing

Gene 1:41:36

Right.

Ben 1:41:37

on a monthly basis. So appreciate it.

Gene 1:41:40

All right, Ben, we'll see you next week.