Just Two Good Old Boys

040 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene Naftulyev Season 2023 Episode 40

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Hey

Gene:

Ben, how are

Ben:

you today? I'm doing all right, gene. Getting ready to hop on a plane tomorrow. Plane Hopper, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Going to Charlotte. Never been to Charlotte before.

Gene:

Charlotte, North Carolina. Mm-hmm.

Ben:

I think I've been there once. I have not.

Gene:

So. That did not make much of an

Ben:

impression. I, you know, it's a, it seems like an interesting city. I'm not sure why they chose to have this meeting there, but okay. Then they've been through a meeting. Kind of a combination. So it is technically a conference, but it is a. Client's internal conference. So it's literally all the power plant owners and operators coming together. I see that are part of this one conglomerate, if you will.

Gene:

Got it. So basically like the See a power plant conference, whatever you say, Ben, whatever you say. Anyway,

Ben:

so we were supposed to start early this morning. What happened to

Gene:

that? We were, yeah, I was actually, I got up really early. So I get up at five, couldn't sleep. And played a little bit of video game and I thought, yeah, let's see if we can start early. Sent you a message.

Ben:

Yep. And I messaged you right

Gene:

back. Sure. What time? Yeah, it took a minute, didn't you? I had like two Okay. Two even worse. So by the time message, my head was already on the pillow going, yeah. Maybe I'll take a nap. If I can't hear back from him. I'll just do a nap real quick. So, yeah, we're

Ben:

starting at the time again. That's all right, man. Mm-hmm. Anyway. Hop on on a plane for this trip and then I've got a couple more coming up. Nothing nothing crazy. Gotcha.

Gene:

Yeah. And the only thing I got is make good in the month. Yep.

Ben:

You're heading out of the country. So, I mean, you're giving me crap, but there you go.

Gene:

Yeah. Well, you know, I gotta, I gotta start working on my next book.

Ben:

So, so we had some major stuff go down yesterday here in Texas. Which, which

Gene:

stuff you referring to?

Ben:

The Paxton impeachment vote for one. Oh yeah. And subsequent acquittal. So the most yay votes they got, I believe was like 16, but they pretty much got 14 every time, which would be most of the Democrats. And they had to get 21 to convict, they never even got close. I don't understand why he was charged. Well, okay, so the charges and what was set forth in the house was pretty salacious. I mean, it was okay, you know, if he did this, this is a problem and so on. And then, you know, as someone who watched a lot of the trial in the Senate, the evidence that was presented was a fucking joke. Like, I mean, there was nothing, the witness testimony, everything was just, there's nothing wrong here. Mm hmm. What the hell is this?

Gene:

It's called Politics in America, circa 2020.

Ben:

Yeah, well, yeah, and what's really great is the lawyer that was bringing the prosecution was Prescott Bush's Was on Prescott Bush's campaign last time around nice. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Bush is not not, you know meddling at all Mm hmm. Anyway It's funny cause I was sitting in a restaurant yesterday watching the vote and these two old ladies came in and we started talking about, you know, oh, yeah, Paxton's, you know, they're getting voted on and I like him, he, you know, he, he's whatever. And I said, you know, yeah, excuse my language, but he better come out with some bigger balls after this, you know, after dodging a shot like this, but we'll see. They might've scared him off. I don't think so. If I was him, I'd be pissed off,

Gene:

man. I think those, those 14 Democrats better make sure they're squeaky clean though, because there might be some actual charges coming for some folks before too long here.

Ben:

Well, did you see Dan the lieutenant governor's speech efforts by chance, not a chance in the hell. Okay. Well, you, you should watch it. It's pretty good that he's calling for an audit of the money spent on the impeachment. And it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Gene:

Okay, probably nothing, but... I don't know.

Ben:

I think the Republicans are going to be out for blood.

Gene:

Oh yeah, I think they might gain a seat or two, but I don't know, man. I think, hoping that there was some embezzlement going on at the same time, it may be a little too

Ben:

much. Oh no, that's not what he's hoping for. What's he hoping for? Violation of rules, things like that, because the and then we had the whole Lauren Bobert controversy blow up. Yeah. So what

Gene:

happened there? I missed that whole thing.

Ben:

So she's, she's getting a divorce,

Gene:

right? Oh, she is. It's going to be, it's going to be on the market.

Ben:

Yes. And apparently she went to a show with a date and, you know, very low cut dress, everything else. And apparently she decided to reach over into his lap and there were cameras. Nice. And she got caught giving a handy over the pants and he was reaching over groping her. And this is all a controversy. They're teenagers, right? I mean, she's not that old by any stretch. I don't, I don't, she's my age. I think. I think she's in her thirties. Yeah, that'd be my age. Let's see, but

Gene:

regardless for like a young 50 year old

Ben:

how old is she? 30? Yeah. She's literally a year younger than I am anyway. It's just, you know, everybody's making such a big deal out of this. It's crazy. You know, it just everybody happens

Gene:

to woman's empowerment.

Ben:

Well, here's the thing. Nothing that she's doing is contrary to what she's standing up for as far as grooming and everything else. She's an adult this, you know, everyone's saying, oh, she's fighting against sexual stuff. And here she is doing sexual stuff,

Gene:

sexual stuff. I didn't know that was a whole category to fight against.

Ben:

That's my point is this is someone's personal life and who the F cares. And some people on the conservative side, well, she's not divorced yet. It's not done. The papers are filed. They're going that way. Who the fuck cares. I don't understand. Anyway, there've been some great memes like Spider Man going, yeah, I'm gonna, if I lived in Colorado, I'd vote for or Peter Parker, I'd vote for Lauren Boebert and then gag on, but she gave, she gives over the pants, hand jobs, Hey, you don't have to oversell me. I already said that before, you know, I just, I don't think this changes much for her and she's an attractive woman. Jack

Gene:

shit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was a pretty cute Congress chick until Miss Luna came out into Congress and then took the Luna. I don't know who you're talking about. Oh, yeah, you do. I've sent you photos. It's the uber hot Congress chick from Florida.

Ben:

Yeah.

Gene:

Yeah. She's got the jet black

Ben:

hair. She's got the cute. I see. I don't

Gene:

like the black hair. Miss. Yeah. It looks like Miss Florida kind of look in the face. Nice. Okay. Well, I'm going to send you a picture right now. What's her name? is refreshed. Her last name is Luna. I don't forget. I don't remember her first name. It's Mexican sounding. Okay. That's a technical term, by the way.

Ben:

Mexican sounding. Anna Anna Lou. That's Anna, yeah. Did you see a picture? I'm, I'm working on it. Yeah, yeah, she's cute.

Gene:

He's really cute. And there's a really cute one. They've

Ben:

got some comparison pictures on Google

Gene:

between Aaron and Bobert. Are they seriously? That's

Ben:

too funny. Woo! Huh. Yeah, I think Bobert's got better assets.

Gene:

I don't know about that man. There's one of, I have a whole set. But you like spinners.

Ben:

You're, you're, you're more of a I like spinners. Yeah. Yeah. I, and I'm more the curvy. Yeah. So Uhhuh, it's

Gene:

all good. I've got a whole series of assets of her photos here that I don't see available online for some reason, but can't imagine why. I've got her photos in uniform back when she was in service. Mm-hmm. And she looks fucking hot. And then there's, and by the way, yes,

Ben:

this is how we choose

Gene:

who to vote for. Well, that's how I choose who to vote for. And see, that's why women shouldn't be voting because men should be voting.

Ben:

Now, you have no problem with them running, it's just, Oh, I

Gene:

have no problem with them running at all. No, no. Would they be

Ben:

allowed to vote in

Gene:

Congress? No, of course not. You're literally

Ben:

there to be, I can't, Jesus Christ.

Gene:

Ooh. Wow. No. One of those episodes. In gene world, things happen in a very

Ben:

particular way. Yeah. Gene world is a very dark and scary place.

Gene:

No, it's not. It's a very friendly place. Super friendly.

Ben:

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene:

It's you know, anyway, I don't want to get rid of Congress. I just want to get rid of their ability to make policy.

Ben:

Well, the whole point in saying all of this actually was to say that, you know, character assassination is. The way everything is going there, there was already calls for the FBI to investigate Paxton after his acquittal. There are calls for Bobert to resign. There's all this stuff and it's like, you people are just nuts. The left calling for this because they're saying they're hypocrites. Well, it's not just the Jews. Fuck you. And then the, the people on the right, the conservatives who are freaking out like about Bobert doing stuff like that. Hey, does that in public were you never a teenager? Are you joking? I never did stuff like that. Well, how sad for you, I'm so sorry, you're like, what the fuck? How sad for you. Really? You never sat in the back row of a theater? No? No. Wow. Okay. Huh. Okay. You're not a very adventurous person. Got it. Exactly. I don't know. I, I, I haven't been kicked out of a theater, but, you know.

Gene:

Yeah. I mean, like, who hasn't yeah, let's just leave it at that.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean, it's like saying who hasn't gone and messed around at a rock quarry and the people who raise their hand, Okay, was there a rock quarry near you? No. Okay, there's your reason. Got it. You know, it's just a normal teenage thing to do. Yeah,

Gene:

and Broward clearly is a teenager. I just sent you a picture. Okay.

Ben:

Yeah, I've seen that one. Eh.

Gene:

Eh. Yeah, whatever, dude. Whatever. Eh. He's holding up a couple of guns. He can't get much better than that.

Ben:

Yeah, but Bobert's better. Oh, no way, man. Look up the dress she was wearing on this date. Yeah, Bobert's better.

Gene:

You're gonna make me Google. We're gonna have one of those shows where we're just. Googling the whole, there's the full, the full view.

Ben:

Yeah. There was I like the way this chick looks, man. Okay. Okay. Okay. Anyway, there was a lot of controversy, by the way. There was controversy on you not having a show yesterday with Mr. Darren. Oh, was there? Yeah. Huh. And did you post last week's

Gene:

episode? People noticed? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

Are you sure? Yeah.

Gene:

Okay. Oh, did I not? I

Ben:

don't think so because people are asking where are the episodes are really? Yes. You should pay attention to no agenda. So we'll take a look.

Gene:

Yeah. I post on there.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. You post, you don't pay attention. Yeah. All right. I'm dropping the post. There you go. It's in the zoom chat.

Gene:

I don't have zoom chat. Drop it into signal.

Ben:

I don't have signal on this computer. Anyway. Oh, okay. It doesn't matter. You can look it up on your own time. Point is, the character assassination and the way this is going you know, I think that it is important for people to be morally consistent. So if you want to take a per position about extramarital affairs or things like that, then, you know, don't engage in one. But, you know, her crusade has really been around a lot of the LGBT stuff, a lot of the groomer stuff, a lot of the, you know, cutting kids junk off stuff, things like that. So, you know, when people yell at her that she's a hypocrite or something for doing you know, adult activities with another adult, I just. Don't see that as a thing, right? Like this, this just screams to me searching for a controversy. Mm

Gene:

hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, and it's trying to use the what the liberals think the conservatives talking points are. To, you know, to, to make a point of it, it's kind of like saying, well, all liberals let's pick something ridiculous. All liberals smoke marijuana, every single one of them. And then finding one that's, that's talks about not smoking marijuana. Like, oh, well, see, clearly not a liberal. You should, you guys shouldn't like that person. That's like, even if let's say a majority of conservatives. Did not approve, and I don't think this is the case, but let's say it didn't approve a public display of affection like that. I mean, over the clothes, for Christ's sake, it's not like her hand was inside the zipper. You know, even if that was the case, like, that's just trying to use something that you don't own against the person who's, who's their affinity group, you think, is gonna care. It's just a bad it's a

Ben:

bad call. Well, well, I, I don't think she's going to, I don't think this is going to hurt her reelection chances, but She barely

Gene:

got reelected. She got reelected by like a hundred votes. You remember that, right? No, I didn't pay attention. Yeah, it was, it looked like she lost for the majority of that that evening. And then she picked up like a hundred votes right at the end. So it's a very tight, it's not like she's not living in a district. That's all for her. She's not like in the

Ben:

Colorado. Oh, dude, did you hear the AOC protest when she was in New York? No, talking about what to do with the migrants.

Gene:

Oh, were people chanting her down and stuff? Oh,

Ben:

man, people were yelling at her. People were pissed, because they were talking, she was talking about giving them work visas and everything else, and oof, oof I don't, I will be shocked if AOC gets re elected if that's really the way her district feels.

Gene:

Yeah, I don't know, man. I think she's, I don't know.

Ben:

I think, I think they may have broken New York, dude, with this migrant stuff. Like really, when you've got them, yes. When you've got the mayor saying what he's saying, when you've got everybody going, Hey, we can't handle this. This is overloading the city. This is going to cost us billions of dollars in overrun. And you know, they've got a few tens of thousands in Texas is sitting here going, really? Tell me about it. Come on, right? But I mean, New York government and the people are losing their shit over these migrants, man. It's a fantastic thing. Like, I think, I think they broke New York.

Gene:

I, I think that's appropriate, but I also doubt that it's. Really having that much difference, I think it's a few people with loud mouths,

Ben:

I don't know when the mayor's coming out talking about billions of dollars of overrun and having to cut every service across the board in order to maintain you know, solvency pretty bad when he sits there and says, I see no way out of this. Pretty bad. Like New York, because of their policies and the way they're handling this, they're literally having to put them up in hotel rooms and it's causing them.

Gene:

That's their own damn fault for

Ben:

doing it. And it's costing them millions and millions and millions of dollars. In fact, I think they said it was already up into the billions for the rest of the fiscal year.

Gene:

Eh, what's the budget in New York, a trillion?

Ben:

No.

Gene:

It's a few billion. It's got a huge, it's a huge budget. So, I, I don't know, I, I get it. I, I'm definitely experiencing shredding for this. Yeah. Mayor

Ben:

Adams says migrant flux will cost New York City 12 billion. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene:

If they're willing to spend 12 billion, it's clearly still a small percentage of the budget. I

Ben:

know that, but okay. 100, 000 migrants. That's all. By the way, people, just so you know, there are millions of migrants who have crossed into Texas this year. There are

Gene:

millions of migrants still living in Texas right

Ben:

now. Oh, yeah. That are, that came this year.

Gene:

Yeah, this year. Yeah, literally. Cause I think, what is it like 20 million came this year total. Yeah. And a good chunk of those are still in the U S I mean, still in Texas rather. Yes,

Ben:

which you have to remember Texas ends up with a lot of border crossings as compared to the rest of

Gene:

the states or New Mexico, because, well, let's face it even the, the legal immigrants don't really see a future in California. It's not really the place that they want to get to when they cross the border

Ben:

and that border is. Much smaller in comparison, so it's much more populated and much more difficult to actually illegally cross the Texas border. You've got long, long swaths of unpopulated. You may

Gene:

have small, but we've seen the videos, dude, you got the official access points controlled by. U. S. military waving people in, I posted those videos, dude, there's literally this, the line that is administered by the U. S. military right at the border had probably 1, 500, maybe 2, 000 people there, and they're all being waved in. They're, they're being given water bottles and hats. At the border. This is our border patrol at work. This is, this is why borders, it was a mistake to make border control a national rather than the states. Control control their own voters. We wouldn't have this problem.

Ben:

I completely agree. And I think it is a state's rights issue. And Texas is challenging that with some of the actions that we've done. So it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court has to say. And quite frankly, it'll be interesting to see if Texas decides to abide by what the Supreme Court says. If I were Abbott. I would leave the barricades that have been deployed in the river. I'd leave them there and I would defend them. And I wouldn't let anyone take them out. And if the court told me, no, you can't do that. I'd say, well, I do not recognize your authority. So come enforce it.

Gene:

Well, who's told them they can't do it?

Ben:

The feds, the feds are suing to have those. Well, they can

Gene:

sue them, but they're not going to win that.

Ben:

I don't know. It is federal jurisdiction.

Gene:

It's only federal jurisdiction at the border. This has always been my argument. This is

Ben:

literally a barricade floating in the Rio Grande. But they don't need to do that. No, they

Gene:

just need to go to the bank. All Texas has to do is go one foot inside the border and fuck the Federals. Is it at that point? This is beyond an argument,

Ben:

but then once someone lands on us soil, then they have certain processes that have been established and everything else.

Gene:

Yeah, but they have to walk around the state of Texas to get to either New Mexico or Louisiana in that situation. That's all we're saying. Just to have a nice, you know, clean wall, nothing much bigger than the size of the wall of China across the entire Southern border of the state of Texas. Let people

Ben:

walk around it. Who was it that was making the joke about Alien vs. Predator and having migrants on a TV show hunting down pedophiles as a way to gain citizenship?

Gene:

Well, unfortunately, there's some crossover there.

Ben:

Unfortunately. Yeah. Anyway, I thought it was funny. So lastly New Mexico, they're doubling down, man. Yeah. Everybody sits there and says, oh, they're you know, they're, oh, she pulled it back. No, she refined the order to say where families may gather, which is extraordinarily broad, actually,'cause mm-hmm. oh, it's just parks and the No, that's

Gene:

including inside, not what people's houses, it sounds like. Okay.

Ben:

Y yep. Yep. And so, Yeah. If she's not impeached and or charged with crimes

Gene:

to be tarred and feathered. Tell me more. Well, I think that there's not sufficient penalties for politicians. They get off with nothing. Just slap on the hand.

Ben:

Yeah. Like I said, she needs to be charged with a charged with a crime for

Gene:

sure. Beyond being charged with a crime, I think her penalty ought to be being tarred and feathered like in the good old days.

Ben:

I don't think that's gonna

Gene:

happen, but public humiliation has an amazing effect on people whose whole careers are built on lying to the public.

Ben:

So Walker down the road naked with everybody chanting shame at

Gene:

her. Shame, shame, shame, shame yeah, probably not something you want to see walking naked, but Tartan Feathered would have a better look. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a, not to make a joke. What's the joke? See, now you

Ben:

said it. Well, I think we have two candidates that we'd rather see them go.

Gene:

Oh, walking naked?

Ben:

Yeah. I see. I'm sending you a couple image links, by the way, since you're sitting here spamming me.

Gene:

I'm not spamming. I just have a bot doing it for me. Send

Ben:

bin photos.

Gene:

Send photos. No, no faster than once per minute. Exactly. All right. I'm looking at bro birds. That is a very skin tight dress in the wrong color for her. That totally does not match her complexion. Well, that's

Ben:

what she wore to

the

Gene:

show. Oh my god, she needs like an actual stylist.

Ben:

Well, she's getting a divorce and apparently wanting to get something else.

Gene:

Well, tell that for sure, yeah. But, so, how did she not think there would be cameras? I don't know.

Ben:

Hmm. I mean, like, in the theater, in the show, with Night Vision? I don't know that I would have

Gene:

assumed that. And how was she kicked out? Was she, I didn't realize she was kicked out. Yeah, yeah.

Ben:

The, someone complained and that she was handy apparently. And an usher came and asked them to leave. Excuse me,

Gene:

ma'am. You're being too handsy here and it's Beetlejuice. Musical. That's not really a family

Ben:

musical. That's what, you know, everyone was like, it's a family show. And I'm looking Now, is that a

Gene:

family show? I dunno, I don't think so. That's like being kicked out of the Rocky Horror Show for founding somebody in the theater. Okay. Yeah, that I, I not a

Ben:

family show a, again, I think the, the, the attacks are disingenuous and I don't really find much merit in them. Well,

Gene:

somebody complains, I mean some, it must have been somebody that was clearly not named, not a motive for her. Yeah, someone named Karen with a peculiar short haircut.

Ben:

Which, let's distinguish from the Karens with a K and the Karens with a C, and the short hairs and the long hairs, let's, let's, let's differentiate there. Yeah,

Gene:

I don't know why you're bothering to, but okay. Why is your mom's name Karen or something? No, not at

Ben:

all. All right.

Gene:

I don't know why no, it's. I mean, I guess if they're spelled with a C, they're probably like Irish or something. It should be a

Ben:

K. You're

Gene:

missing the joke. It's okay. I'm definitely missing the joke. What's the joke? Ah, nothing.

Ben:

K or C? It's an inside joke.

Gene:

It's an outside joke apparently, because I'm not getting it.

Ben:

No one said you were in the circle. Come on. Yeah, clearly. Clearly. Clearly. Yeah. Anyway, no, the New Mexico governor doing what she's doing and doubling down is, is very Cuomo did during COVID. But you know, it's really daring the courts to come and force it. And what I, what I'm suggesting Abbott do in the border is exactly what these Democratic governors are doing on removing rights and, you know, come and force it. If we want to really play that game, let's start playing that game. But I think it's going to be an unfortunate set of circumstances rather quickly.

Gene:

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, I, I think that I, maybe the way to spin the whole border thing is to find out all the property owners whose property actually borders the border and ask them, would you like your property to be protected? And then call out the Texas Texas National Guard to be stationed on that border, which is

Ben:

actually property owners have gotten in trouble for trying to do anything like that.

Gene:

I know, but that's retarded. That's what the, what the state ought to be doing is protecting that property. That's, that's the most risky. To being overrun by four nationals.

Ben:

Well, you know, if you've got a deer stand down near the border you got to be very careful every time you go in it because you don't know who else is in there, you know, people find the illegals in their deer stand all the time. And it's a, it's an immediately a dangerous situation, right? Yeah. Well, you got to protect

Gene:

yourself. Yeah. So does it count as a murder if you shoot somebody who's a illegal? There have been

Ben:

plenty of people charged with it. That's retarded. Yeah, remind me to tell you one of my family members border protection plans off off the air.

Gene:

Okay, that ought to be good.

Ben:

Yeah, well, anyway the gun control stuff, it's, I loved what the residents of New Mexico did going out and actually protesting in defiance of her order.

Gene:

Well, it sounds like it wasn't just residents of New Mexico either.

Ben:

Well, I'm, I'm worried about who all's going to get a knock at the door later. I think that that's, there may not have been people arrested. That day, but I wouldn't be surprised to see charges later on.

Gene:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well at the very least I think that these people are now on a list

Ben:

Well, Gene, if you're not on a list, you're not doing it right at this point.

Gene:

No, that's true. That's true Well, you saw the video that let's go Brandon made Herrera, yeah, he said he's he's going out there Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

Which one? Which which brand? Oh, yeah, no, which video?'cause he's released a few. You're you're talking about Yeah, he does. Yeah. Yeah. He go doing a two A walkabout. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. which you gotta be very careful with, but Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene:

But wait, doesn't he have like, secret service production as the no

Ben:

candidate for, Nope. No.

Gene:

Well, he's probably got better personal protection at this point anyway. Yeah. Well I gotta imagine somebody that's so high profile as him. You've gotta have some, you know, some bodyguards with you at all times.

Ben:

Maybe if your name's Pool Boy, you know your name's Pool Boy.

Gene:

Oh, pool Boy totally has some bodyguards. Yeah. No, I think if you're, if you're that combination of public and controversial, And rich, you'd be an idiot not to have bodyguards.

Ben:

I, I agree. I think Brandon, her actually has a pretty good shot at winning that district. Oh, I've talked to some people. Well, I've talked to some people I know in San Antonio and the more I've talked to him about it, they either already knew who he was and we're planning on voting for him or as soon as I told them who he was and, you know, what his platform is and who, you know, what his background is, they're voting for him. So if he can, I don't think it's a slam dunk. I think it's, can he get his name out there in, in time. I, I

Gene:

love the the, of Mexican descent by both parents thing he's got going

Ben:

on. Like to me,

Gene:

that was so ridiculous, but it must make a difference. So, but yeah, he's I, I certainly wish him well, but I honestly, I think he's got this. Hey, let's put it this way. I think it's his to lose. I mean, we'll see. You know, dude, there's no way that people are going to vote for some nobody. Thank you. Over a guy with millions of followers.

Ben:

Yeah. Except again, name recognition in the district. And you know, you've got, this district goes all the way from the South side of San Antonio to El Paso. How many

Gene:

people don't watch YouTube that live in this district?

Ben:

I think there are a ton of people who don't watch the Guntubers.

Gene:

I'm not saying Guntubers. I'm just YouTube in general. Okay. Because the one thing that Brennan's obviously going to be doing, that I would tell him as his campaign manager, is spend the entirety of your fundraising budget. On ads on YouTube, targeting that specific area.

Ben:

Oof. Oof. That's risky.

Gene:

No, it's not. Yeah, it is. It's totally

Ben:

not risky. So is. Because, A, look at the demographics of the region. Yeah. What do you think? Not the youngest region.

Gene:

Yeah. And you, you don't think that it's the people our age that watch cat videos? Really?

Ben:

I, I don't watch cat

Gene:

videos. Well, you're not our age yet.

Ben:

Oh. Anyway. You would

Gene:

be. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's YouTube is definitely the way to do it because he has, see, that's the beauty of it, of having seven years worth of videos up that are very supportive of your run is that your YouTube video is basically saying, Hey, I'm Brandon Herrera, I'm running for this district. And if you don't know who I am, why don't you check out this catalog of 7, 000 videos that I've made and you agree with me.

Ben:

Yeah, 7, 000 videos where I'm consistent in my beliefs and what I espouse.

Gene:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. So, I think it's, it's his to lose, like, he'd have to fuck up to lose this at this point. Well, I hope you're right. The other guy, no one's ever heard of, and the only reason the other guy got in there is because the Democrat fucked up. So, to be fair, Brandon may well be the candidate and may still lose and that

Ben:

ends up in Congress. Well, it's a naturally Democratic leaning district in Texas. Mm hmm.

Gene:

Or maybe, fingers crossed, has been. A democratic leading district. It's no longer the case, but we'll

Ben:

find out. I mean, we'll see which way El Paso goes, because that's really going to be the telltale,

Gene:

but certainly having him in there, I think would be endlessly entertaining and he has testified in front of Congress. It's not like he's a, some schmuck YouTuber. I mean,

Ben:

he's a. Pretty big schmuck YouTuber, but it's okay.

Gene:

Yes, but one of our schmuck

Ben:

YouTubers. No doubt, no doubt.

Gene:

And I love that he he kind of gave credit to the grandfather of all gun YouTubers FPS Russia in one of his videos and how he got started was basically because he loved watching that guy. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So. And I guess he has reached out to him and he's like, they've actually met and stuff

Ben:

just, just so people know, like, you know, when we're talking about border size and everything, New Mexico has more of a border Southern border with Texas than it does in Mexico. Just so everybody knows in case people forget.

Gene:

Well, I think the Texas has a bigger size border with Mexico than any state has with any other state.

Ben:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, may

Gene:

Alaska, Alaska with Canada, obviously that's a bigger one. Yeah,

Ben:

yeah, but as far as state to state the only one that might even be close would be like California, Nevada.

Gene:

No, I don't think Nevada is as big as. The southern border of Texas, but I don't know, it's close. It'd be close if it was, it'd be very close, but no. Well,

Ben:

and Texas has more border with Mexico than Arizona, New Mexico and California

Gene:

combined. You could almost say that Texas is more part of Mexico than any other state.

Ben:

Used to be. Yeah, we won that one. We won that

Gene:

one, yeah. Yeah, it's amazing they lost that one, honestly. Why? Cause Santa Ana fucked up.

Ben:

I don't know about that. You don't think he fucked up? Tell me your thoughts, I don't necessarily think this.

Gene:

Well, I, I, well, we can, we can delve deeper into that another time, but yeah, basically I just, I think he was way overly confident he was listening to too many people that were saying that the entirety of the Texas Gringo army there is going to be just like the Alamo they're, they, they like to make a lot of noise, but there's not many of them and they're not very well equipped and let us guard down instead of preparing for an actual military engagement.

Ben:

Okay. I don't necessarily disagree that militarily he underestimated the Texans, but you know, I, I wouldn't say that that was his materials screw up. I think it was very much that the Texans outmatched him as far as military maneuver, they were still outnumbered and technically outgunned. So you got to give them some credit in being able to, you know,

Gene:

Well, you can give them credit and still say that he fucked up. Yeah. Don't disagree. They're not mutually exclusive. It's not like it's the only reason, but you have to admit that when somebody comes in overly confident and then ends up losing to an inferior force, it kind of says something about strategy. It's, it's, you know, this was a national army versus a bunch of rebel rousers.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's like calling the first continental army, you know, a bunch of rebel rousers. Exactly. While true, there was also, you know, some pretty decent military minds there too. Oh, sure, sure, sure.

Gene:

But, but it wasn't a state supported, funded, organized army.

Ben:

I think you're splitting hairs, but sure.

Gene:

Yeah, whatever. I'm, I'm just, I'm just trying to say that Santa Ana got some egg in his face, that's all. I don't know. No doubt. But you know, I, there, there are consequences that obviously was that the Mexican territory went way too far north for them to effectively hold.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean, you have to remember Texas at the time, further Wyoming, Wyoming. Yeah. Versa Wyoming. Texas went way you know, way north

Gene:

and this is already after they lost California. Yes. Yeah. So, which honestly, I think California would have been a much bigger price for them because of all the gold. Yeah, but the

Ben:

gold rush hadn't started yet, right? Cause that was 49, right? The California 49,

Gene:

but that's my point is that it's you know, have they realized had Russia realized how much gold was sitting in Alaska? You think that sale would have been made and oil? Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. But the oil wouldn't have done much good back when it was sold, but the gold sure as well could have been used because the whole point of selling Alaska. Was to pay war debts.

Ben:

Yeah. Well, you know,

Gene:

and then the thing that officially got officiated because there was some signatures

Ben:

missing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, come take it back.

Gene:

Good luck. Come take it back. I think that'll be the first state that volunteers to become part of Russia. Just don't take it back necessary. They're going to want to get out of this crappy country and join a country that believes in religious freedom and Christian values and has actual capitalist you know, political stance instead of a, the current. Socialist, God knows what that we have with Biden now.

Ben:

Yeah. Did you did you see the Pornhub undercover? Sting, no, what happened? So a foreign hub employee that had been there since the beginning talking about the parent company, which can't remember the name of high bite or something, or, yeah, it's a huge, huge marketing mind bite or something. Something like that. Anyway. Anyway, they were talking about how. Abusers and traffickers get on there because you have to now show a photo ID and so on. So what they do is they take a photo ID of someone who looks like they could have the body type of whatever, which is wildly suggestive, right? Because your head and your body can be pretty whatever, and they just blur the face. And if they blur the face, then there's no way for the moderator to go through and confirm Who's who. Mm. And therefore they can just post whatever,

Gene:

which mind geek, that's the company mind geek.

Ben:

There you go. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And they they, they 100, this guy is sitting there saying they 100 percent know that there are underage people who get used in this, that there's rape that gets put up there. And that, you know, there is abuse that goes through the system and their current moderation technique has no way of stopping it. Which, no shit.

Gene:

Yeah. So does that mean that we just need to shut down all porn? Well,

Ben:

I mean, are you sure if you want to revolt in

Gene:

this country? Well, that, that, I mean, that's the typical knee jerk reaction that the left has every time that there's a shooting somewhere is, shut down all guns. Take them all away. Yeah. So, if, if there's a potential for some small number of, Illicit videos to slip into a system that hosts billions and billions of videos. Does that mean we should just take the whole industry down?

Ben:

I don't think you can or that you should but that's me. Yeah,

Gene:

but I think there are, there are certainly people that would say yes, absolutely.

Ben:

There are, and you know, porn is over a third of internet traffic, so I've heard that even if, even if a small percentage of it, which is probably actually a fairly large one, it's amazing how all

Gene:

those guys living in their basements generate that much traffic. Yeah. Because that's the only people that watch porn. So Uhhuh sure. And so, sorry I keep hearing you. Yes.

Ben:

Yeah. Anyway the, the point is even if a only small. Percentage of that is illegal or illicit. It's still a huge amount of traffic. Yeah, it's problematic.

Gene:

So you started off by asking the, or mentioning that there was a little bit of a hubbub about me not doing a show with Darren. We actually did a show yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't get posted. No, it didn't. It was on the OnlyFans. You're joking. No, because Darren was. Complaining about not getting enough money and I said, well, that's an easy fix. We just don't do it live for free like we normally did and so we still did one, you know, you can, I'm sure he'll talk about it if, if pressed, but yeah, yeah, you know, for all the people that don't donate donations, yeah, I guess you didn't get a show, did you? No, but we had some good, good conversation going

Ben:

on. So, you did or did not post our last show, because I haven't seen it, so... I don't think you did. I need,

Gene:

I need to hit the post button, which I'll do immediately after this one. It's all, it's all been uploaded, it's just been sitting there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just

Ben:

been sitting there. By the way, I just sent you a meme that it makes a great point about Lauren Boebert in the dark.

Gene:

Oh, okay. Lauren Boebert in the dark theater. White House when somebody brings in cocaine, Epstein's jail cell. Huh. So

Ben:

one is a picture of Lauren Boebert getting groped. The next one is just black. And the last one is just black. Yeah.

Gene:

I'm glad you described it. Speaking of dark theaters, so my God, my little portable night vision camera came in.

Ben:

Okay. I don't know what you, this

Gene:

is a Kickstarter that I supported like a year ago. I forgot about, and apparently they finally shipped it because I just had a little package sitting here from China. What's it called? I don't know, no idea, Jesus Christ, it showed up though. It's I got my money's worth, I guess. It's kind of cute. It's, it's very small. It's about it's a, it's smaller than the range finder. If that gives you an idea. So it's, it's about half the size of the microphone.

Ben:

So it's just using infrared.

Gene:

And it's got an infrared transmitter on it as well. Yeah.

Ben:

And you stand out like a sore thumb with anyone using actual night vision. Yeah. You can turn it off though. And then you can't see,

Gene:

well, you can, as if it's you know, if you've got some infrared

Ben:

lighting, yeah, sure. As long as there's bright enough lights around you

Gene:

and I don't know, what's interesting about it is it's not, this is what makes it somewhat unique is it's not something you stick right on your eyeball like binoculars. It just, it's, it's meant to look at from like a foot away.

Ben:

Okay, and the point of that is?

Gene:

I don't know, it's just different. You know, it's, it's just a different thing. It's a

Ben:

deal. And what did you have to pay to support this

Gene:

Kickstarter? I don't remember, dude. It was a year ago. There was something about it that made me go, Oh yeah, this seems like a good idea. And I probably wanted the camera next month is my guess. So I I figured this would be a nice way to do it because obviously the Kickstarter was going to happen because they got already enough money by the time I came in. And then I forgot about it. So I'm not sure exactly what it charges on USB C,

Ben:

so that's a good thing. Hey, yeah, now, now that you've updated your iPhone, you can actually use USB

Gene:

C. Well, I don't, I don't have it yet, but yes, it's ordered. Yeah, my Apple guy called me and got, took care of everything. Your Apple guy. Yeah, I have an Apple

Ben:

guy, I have

Gene:

a a sales guy from Apple that every time something new comes out, he calls me up and asks me if I want one or not. This

Ben:

is, this is when you know you're spending too much

Gene:

money. Well the irony of this is that I told this to a couple of friends that make significantly more money than I do. And they were both quite surprised that I had an Apple guy and they didn't have Apple guys. Yeah. I was like, yes, well, I used to spend money with Apple back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. You spend over 25 K a year with Apple, you almost said

Ben:

a month, dude. I was

Gene:

going to be very worried about, I didn't never spend that much, but I

Ben:

certainly 25 K a year. It's

Gene:

just ridiculous. Yeah. I bought plenty of gear at Apple, but I still have an Apple guy apparently, because I got a call at the woke me up that morning and, and so they, would you like me to put your name on one of our iPhones? So, I do have one coming, but it's gonna show up apparently when I'm in Mexico, so, I'll, I'll get it when I get back from the trip and I'll hang on to it.

Ben:

That's not good. Did you

Gene:

see, yeah, I don't like taking new shit on a trip, cause stuff could go wrong.

Ben:

Ah, okay. Did you see Trump's, comment on Caitlyn Jenner's post on truth. Uh uh. I don't hate truth. Caitlyn Jenner posted It's so hard to find a straight man that's confident enough to compliment me on my looks. And Trump posted underneath, Nice balls. Oh,

Gene:

nice.

Ben:

That's so funny. He's just, you gotta love it. You absolutely have to love

Gene:

it. Well, my question is, when did Trump see Bruce Jenner's

Ben:

balls?

Gene:

There you go. Part of the same trip to Epstein's place or what? Maybe. Huh.

Ben:

I, I've, have I told, I think I've told you I know his mother. Who, Bruce Jenner? Yeah. I know Esther Jenner. Really? Yeah. Fairly well. What's she like? Oh, she's a shrew. She's a horrible, horrible. Like, I'm, I'm not even joking. She is

Gene:

just absolutely horrible. So does that, is that enough to explain his length in

Ben:

life? Oh, absolutely. It is knowing his mother. Absolutely.

Gene:

Really? Wow. How do you know her? Oh, that's a long story. Okay. All right. Yeah, that's it's usually when shit like that happens, that's the first place you got to look at is what did the mother do?

Ben:

Yeah, let's just say my parents, everyone who, you know, knows Esther when Bruce came out doing what he was doing, everyone went. Oh, okay. Huh. What was his dad like? I don't know. His her husband at the time that I knew her was not his dad. I see. She had remarried.

Gene:

Yeah, because that's, you know, I mean, there's plenty of athletes that have done well that, that ended up being gay. But I think Bruce is the first one that ended up wearing women's clothes and then decided to Go to the next state.

Ben:

Well, you know, I, I think part of it was the involvement with the Kardashians and everything else too.

Gene:

They figured out a way to monetize it.

Ben:

you know, Uhhuh, there's something there.

Gene:

Yes. Those Armenians, they know how to monetize things. Mm-hmm. you ever go to a bazaar Man? Ah, I've never been to Armen. No, most people haven't, I haven't I'd love to, there's some beautiful

Ben:

scenery there. Yeah, the country I really want to go to, Azerbaijan.

Gene:

Yeah, they don't get along with the Armenians. No. You need to be careful when talking about Armenians and Azerbaijan.

Ben:

I wasn't the one talking about Armenians, I just said it. I'm just saying. Yeah. Don't talk about Kyrgyzstan. Azerbaijan. Gorgeous, gorgeous. At the foot of the Caucasus.

Gene:

Yeah. I think it looks exactly like Armenia too. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't

Ben:

mind going to that. Sir. Gene. com. Yeah. Speaks that.

Gene:

I know it's probably an insult, but like before those groups hated each other, the, the terrain already existed. Okay. And I, like I'm one of those people that says absolutely one of the most beautiful kind of, you know, States in the country is California. If you could just get rid of the Californians out of California, it'd be an awesome place to live. Agreed. Every, like, when I used to work in San Diego, dude, waking up to 68 degree weather and a slight breeze every fricking single day. You can't beat it.

Ben:

There are like no flights, by the way, from the U S to Azerbaijan.

Gene:

Just so you know. I think you'd have to fly through Russia.

Ben:

No. So you can do Turkish Airlines. Oh, okay. There you go. Yeah, Turk, Turkish Airlines, you gotta stop over and assemble. Makes sense. And then you can make it in, that makes the

Gene:

Turks hate their Armenians. And so they would like the, as everybody,

Ben:

Johns. But other than that you have to do like a combination of like, Emirates and fly Dubai or mm-hmm. just crazy stuff. Our Turkish and Azerbaijani airlines, which I'd find

Gene:

on the flight and Azerbaijan airlines, sorry, sorry, sorry. It's just, it's, it's, it's the meme that you always see when you talk about local airlines of countries that are considered not like

Ben:

some of the local airlines are pretty nice. Yeah,

Gene:

not, not Lufthansa though. There's definitely chickens aboard those flights.

Ben:

So, you know, Lufthansa and Aegean are, you know, not great. I

Gene:

used to fly Alitalia and I don't even know if they exist still, but yeah, they were definitely, yeah, Ryanair. I've never flown, but that is super cheap. But Alitalia, I think always had this attitude that they were, they thought they were a nicer airline than they actually were. But yeah, I, I still have a fond memory from my childhood of flying in a a Pan Am 747 and walking upstairs, walking upstairs where the bar was because that like that just puts into context all of the airlines and after that in a very,

Ben:

very different light. Well, I mean, you know, Emirates is definitely kind of got that feel to it though, you know, they've got the back of the a three 80 and all that, you know, I think even Lufthansa has a bar and there's some 47 now on some of the new configurations. Really? I, that's yeah. And Lufthansa even has a whole room suite sort of thing for first class available in some of their cabins, just like some of the Arab airlines. I

Gene:

got screwed out of having a flight on private air, which pissed me off years ago, I had a flight booked from from the U S to Germany on private air, which is basically, I think they might even be owned by Lufthansa, but it's basically a, an airline of only first class. So it's like a it's. I don't even know what plane it is, it's probably a 757 or a 737 maybe, but it's, it's an airline capable of doing the transatlantic flights it, but it's not a 747, I know that for a fact, but it is. Set up for the entire airline being first class. Hmm. And so you don't have all the, the riff-raff in the back. And I was really looking

Ben:

forward to having, having as the riffraff in the back,

Gene:

I was really looking forward to doing that flight and ended up, it ended up getting rescheduled. Which would have made my trip not work, which ended up having me to take a United flight in, in business class instead.

Ben:

Oh, poor baby. I know. Speaking of, I need to see if I can upgrade my seat for tomorrow.

Gene:

Yeah. Well, I also found out, remember I was telling you that one of my buddies just got a flight to Dubai. The the good airline there

Ben:

and to Dubai, that'd be Emirates. Yeah, I think it was an Emirates instead of fly to buy.

Gene:

Yeah. And his, he's worried about buying business class for his company. Oh, absolutely. And so he decided just to pay for the upgrade. I'm like, Jesus, dude, that is, that's a substantial, it's a six and a half thousand dollar upgrade and that that's, I I'm okay with buying upgrades for flights. Up to a certain level, but Jesus Christ, well, six and a half grand for what amounts to. Like 18 hours of your life.

Ben:

Yeah, but I mean, on that long of a trip, I mean, the difference between economy plus and business is huge. And for that long of a trip, it's, it, it, it, I mean, anything over 10 hours is, you

Gene:

know, I get it. My point is that. Your company shouldn't be sending you in coach on a trip that long. Oh,

Ben:

Oh, I thought he, he, he owned the business or something. No, no, no, no, no. The business should

Gene:

be, he wouldn't be upgrading if he owned it. He would have just bought himself a first class ticket.

Ben:

Okay. I misunderstood. Yeah. Now first class is different than business. But, but business at least for business, I mean, anything over anything over 10 hours needs to be business or at least economy plus and eight hours. But yeah. Where was he flying from? Seattle. Oh, he's that's way long. It's you're saying over eight hours. Okay.

Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. Anything over eight is what I mean, not over 10. So I, I think the limits. I don't know, man, I, I, like I've had all travel must be by a minimum of business class in my contracts forever. So I don't I get how some people have not really tried to negotiate that in, but it's you know, when it's coming out of your own pocket, that's a big chunk of change. Yeah. And I, I totally get why he's doing it, but at the same time, it's kind of like, you know, it's, it, it's a hell of a nice smack. Computer,

Ben:

I can upgrade my flight to first

Gene:

class now you're still flying a

Ben:

Delta or what are you flying?

Gene:

All right, well we got our flight plans out of the way here

Ben:

So, did you look up the ammo I I sent you to look up? I did. Yeah? And? Well,

Gene:

I didn't buy it, but yeah,

Ben:

I looked at it. So Liberty Defense has this 9mm round that they've developed that is a 50 grain bullet, which is... Which is very light. Well, the lightest normal commercially available that you'd find at a normal gun store would be 115 grain.

Gene:

Yeah, I was going to say 124, but yeah,

Ben:

115 but yeah, like I, I typically carry 124 plus I don't like real light ammo typically, but. This round is doing 2, 000 feet per second out of a four inch barrel chronographed on video out of a 16 inch barrel is doing 2, 600 feet per second.

Gene:

Mm hmm. Yeah, so you've got basically a round that's as light as a 223 and traveling almost as fast.

Ben:

Well, so, 3 is doing 55 grain is doing around 3, 100 feet per second on a soft light load. So 2,

Gene:

800. Okay. So depends who they buy the AMR from.

Ben:

Anyway, the, the point is. You could get some range out of that now, the bullet coefficient, because it's a nine mil and yeah, and it's a hollow point. So it's, you know, still not going to be that, but right. And it's interesting also

Gene:

that Jack shit though, that speed and, and the being a hollow point wrong things

Ben:

going wrong, wrong. They, they tested that round at short range out of a pistol defeating level three, a body armor.

Gene:

No fucking way. Yep. No, not gonna buy it. No, no, yep. Oh, let's do a test. Do a test.

Ben:

Sure. You wear the body armor.

Gene:

You want to buy the, our body armor that fits me. Let's do it, man. That shit's expensive. Yeah. A lot of square inches cover.

Ben:

Anyway. Yeah. The, but it's a neat round and I'm, I need to buy some for testing. That's for sure. Especially out of the new the new carbine.

Gene:

Yeah. Well, the, the bigger pro of that honestly is the fact that it weighs half as much. Yes. It carries double the number of load, the number of rounds, just the, well, not quite half, but you could certainly carry a lot more ammo for the same weight.

Ben:

The bullet weight is half the cartridge and everything's still there. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Gene:

exactly. Hey, I got a question for you. I have a rough idea of this and I probably watched the video once or twice, but since you used to reload What is caseless ammo and how does it work?

Ben:

Tasteless ammo. The only thing I can think of is just like a paper cartridge or something like that. You know, cap and ball, you know, dumping it in sort of thing because there would just be no casing. So it would be, well, some

Gene:

of the muzzle loader or something new high caseless ammo.

Ben:

Okay. So that would be no, no casing.

Gene:

So does that just mean it's plastic or does that mean there's literally a way that they figured out to just like feed a little tablet that contains the the powder and the whatchamacallit, in separately from, but I mean, I don't, I'd like to understand how this works because it seems like it's unusually complex, but I guess there's some big benefits. In having caseless ammo for these weapons,

Ben:

Wikipedia.

Gene:

Oh, okay, sure. I haven't bothered doing that.

Ben:

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. No, no, no. So literally the projectile is the casing. You've got a base that's the primer back end and all the powder stays in the casing, like a nose cone and it shoots out. And the case, basically the casing goes, no, the casing goes with the projectile at the end. How's that work? So think of a hollow point bullet, but with a hollow point towards the back end, filled with powder.

Gene:

Okay. Okay. Okay. So it is just using the case as the outside of the bullet. Got it. Got it. So, which

Ben:

is stupid as hell, but okay.

Gene:

I, well, I don't know if some reason that there's, you know, a lot of new high tech weapons are starting to move that direction.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Gene:

Interesting.

Ben:

Internal propellant caseless, yeah, blah, blah, blah,

Gene:

blah. So, I guess that means that you're getting to use the benefits of the case. For weight. For weight. For a projectile. For the projectile, exactly. Which means either reduction in overall weight or

Ben:

that would be, that would be the only anti, that would be the only advantage is that you, you know, basically getting to cut down on weight of ammo, which is not insignificant, but I'm guessing you're going to, I mean, having that long of a projectile and carrying that mass with you is going to substantially And That's going to be a shitty bullet. There's going to be a shitty ballistic coefficient on that bullet, period. And just from the aerodynamics of it. And then, you know, I don't know.

Gene:

I think you're extrapolating things that

Ben:

aren't actually there. That's not true at all. I, I'm extrapolating based off of bullet geometries that I know and can look at a bullet and go, Oh, that's not going to have as good a ballistic coefficient as that. It looks the same, dude. Okay. And this is why a boat tail and things like that matter. And if you're looking at the pictures I'm looking at you're, you're not going to have it in the same sort of way, but okay. All right. Looks like

Gene:

a nine millimeter to me. Okay. Like a full metal jacket. Anyway cool. Well, that mystery solved. Yeah. And it was, I think H and K was making these.

Ben:

My upgrade went through.

Gene:

Oh, nice. That was quick. All right. It's always nice to be locked in. So you're not wondering at the airport if you made it or not.

Ben:

Well, I mean, worst case scenario, I'm not in a bad seat on the back.

Gene:

Yeah. Good deal. How are you taking your gun out? Have you played around with it with the new stock you put out? I

Ben:

have. I like it a lot. You like it? Yeah. Yeah, I do. In fact, I didn't even shoot it with the other stock.

Gene:

Hmm. Okay. And how many magazines did you in the beginning?

Ben:

You know, enough,

Gene:

enough, more, more than

Ben:

two

Gene:

now, do you keep your magazines full or not full, but still. Somewhat full or do you keep them empty and only load them with the range?

Ben:

The majority of my magazines stay empty and then I load them before I go to the range typically. But I have a little tool called a mag Lula, especially for pistol mags. Pussy. What are your thumbs made for? Okay. It's about speed, but anyway have you ever used one? Yes. They're fantastic. I don't know what you're talking

Gene:

about. I. I've typically keep mine empty and then I load one before the range. And then I load the rest of them and the range. And the reason I do that, and I started doing that like in the 90s is because if I loaded everything before coming to the range, I would be done too fast. And I like to have a little longer range experience and usually go with somebody else and chit chat with them while they're shooting and stuff. And loading the magazine there keeps the fingers occupied while I'm not shooting. Because my temptation would be if I just showed up with like 10 magazines or 20 magazines or 50 magazines I don't know if I have 50 for any of my guns, but I certainly have over 20 for a bunch of my guns. I don't know if I would, I may just show up, go through all 20 and a half hour and then be done and go home. And that's not a good use of time and money. What have you calculated? Just out of curiosity, I haven't done this recently, but have you calculated what your hourly cost is to be at the gun range? Oh,

Ben:

no, I don't want to, and it depends on what guns I take. I will say this for the first time in my life, I actually asked the range safety officer to move me. Really? Somebody too loud next to you? No, no, no. I walk in, I'm going to the lane that I'm supposed to be at. And this you know, CT, this courtard has him and his girlfriend there, and he's, Got the last lane and then I'm in the lane next to him and he's got shit in my lane and he's doing stuff there because no one was there and that would, that would find and that really didn't bug me, whatever, but when he picks up a loaded gun is not pointing it down range correctly and moves, you know, and the safety officers having to come talk to him too. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to move to the other end. Okay. I'm going to get away from these people. You know, again. If you want to load magazines there or something like that, that's fine. But in your little, this is at a pistol range, right? This is indoor pistol range. You've got your little barricades and everything. Your gun should never not be pointed down range unless you have it clear and open period. Totally. Anyway.

Gene:

Yeah. The only exception I would say that is on my property with no other

Ben:

people around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're at a range, yeah,

Gene:

it's just good manners. Yeah. And, and putting the guns in their breach open position when you're not shooting'em. So it's obvious to anybody that's gonna be changing targets.

Ben:

Exactly. Well, and this, you know, has an automatic, oh, good. All right. Yeah. There, there's no have to worry about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

Gene:

man. Yeah. The first time I went to the N r a gun range was the year it was built, and it was an amazing experience. And the last time I went was about five years ago and it was the horrible experiences, like the crappiest gun range ever. I don't know if you ever been to the one that's in the headquarters. It

Ben:

was, yeah, I've never, never been. I don't know what you're talking about,

Gene:

but it's, it was one of the first publicly available Ranges that had the computerized target moving equipment. And so it wasn't just like a, a solenoid with a switch. It was actually put in the distance and then you can have the target turn left left, you know, and then it had a bullet catch. It was a kind of like a snail where it's a, you can actually recover the bullet from it. So it's not non destructive bullet catch. And it was really cool when it was first built in the nineties. But that place has just gone down to shit. It just reminded me when we were talking about indoor gun ranges just. How crappy that range looks, everything looks like it hasn't been kept up in, you know, 30 years. Unfortunate.

Ben:

Which range is this? The NRA gun range. No, I've never, I'm not an NRA member. I've never been an NRA member. Oh really? Okay. Gun owners of

Gene:

America, baby. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when they first started. There was another group that was popular back then too. I assume they still exist. Yeah. Yeah. Which was the Jews for the preservation of firearms. A lot of people who are not Jewish joined that group as well. But they were very litigious which makes sense, I guess, if you're going to stereotype Jews at all. Yeah.

Ben:

Yes. You know, the, the big problem I have is that the NRA thinks that we're about hunting and that, that's my problem.

Gene:

Yeah. It's not just about hunting, but yeah, I, I know what you mean. There's definitely been a little too much too much of the, we, we're not going to defend people that seem like they're just gun nuts from the NRA.

Ben:

Well, no, they're, they're just don't believe in the ability to overthrow the government.

Gene:

Yeah. That's what I was referring to when I said we're not going to defend people that are gun nuts.

Ben:

You know, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens because I, man, I, I got to think this doesn't end well with what's going on in New Mexico, for instance, like, I just don't see that ending. Well, I see that ending in violence, like I don't see a way out of that, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Gene:

Yeah, I the more people I talk to them, the more people are starting to think that something's coming, that's going to be. More similar to a revolution than that. Yeah. Now, what'd you send me? That was a video that I

Ben:

can't watch while we're recording it. Yeah. It's an old Andrew Napolitano speech. Oh, okay. That's a pretty good and relevant. Yeah.

Gene:

Ultimately I think it's a, it's a hell of a risky move to give the population guns, but you sure as hell are going to ensure that if you do that. Yeah. That people remember who did it and why they did it and actually use that if there's ever a need to.

Ben:

Well, hopefully, but we'll see, we'll see what happens.

Gene:

Because it's, it's kind of like the, the, it's not a corollary of you get the government you deserve, but it's, it's a similar to it, which is people don't deserve the rights. They're not willing to protest. To protect completely agree, and that's why I have no pity for people living in California because they deserve the lack of rights that they have there.

Ben:

Well, no, you, you have inalienable rights and you have to, at some point in time, decide whether or not you're going to stand up for them or not.

Gene:

And they've decided not to. So consequently, I have no pity for that. Okay. Well, that's the thing. It's like, how many times can you feel pity for somebody who doesn't try and help themselves? I mean, a lot of people

Ben:

feel pity for everybody. There's a joke

Gene:

from, I heard it many years ago, I'm sure it's been around forever, it's about this devout Jewish guy. Huh. You know, he's he's decided he's gonna take his chance with winning the lottery. And so he prays to God, he says, God, you know, I've been a faithful Jew my whole life. You know, you know what I've accomplished with my life in these years. I, I think it'd be nice if I won the lottery and he doesn't win the lottery and then says, well, maybe God didn't hear me. So next week he prays again and kind of repeats the same kind of thing, but. Provides more rationale and more examples. Still hadn't won the lottery, and then does it again the third time. Finally, on the third time, he hears God replying back. And God says, Moishe, will you at least go out and buy a lottery ticket? So, yeah, some people just refuse to do anything at all to help themselves.

Ben:

Well, yeah, you know that there's another joke that's not Jewish in the very much the same vein. This this fisherman is out fishing and his engine breaks down and he's sitting there and... Modern joke, okay. All of a sudden another vessel comes alongside and says, there's a hurricane coming. Let us tell you back in no, no, God will provide. All right. The storm starts coming in and the coast guard shows up and said, all right, let's get you out of here. Let's go. No, no. God will provide. Now the storms are really going and his vessels sinking and the rescue helicopters hovering overhead trying to get him out. And he says, no, no, God will provide. And he dies and goes to heaven and he said, God, why didn't you save me? And he said, I sent a boat, a two boats and a helicopter. What the more, what more do you fucking want, you know,

Gene:

that sort of thing. Yep. Yep. No, that's a good one. I like that. That's true. It's there's a certain elements of, you gotta at least make the effort to help yourself. If you want other people to you know, to help you. Yeah, absolutely. And that's everybody realizes there's no guarantee that everybody can help themselves completely out of whatever situation they're in, but, but demonstrating your desire to do that certainly helps show other people that maybe they can help you get there. So, that's probably a pretty good lesson for everybody to learn. Yeah,

Ben:

I'm sitting here wondering how much I, I'm going to have to look after this flight using, if I, so I've been upgraded. I wonder if I don't wait for an upgrade and I use miles to upgrade. If I get more premier qualifying points, because if I can, if I use miles to upgrade and I get more points, then that might be worth it. I don't

Gene:

know. I will tell you an American. If you use miles for the upgrades, you only get partial

Ben:

as long as I get something. Okay. So I'm going to hit titanium this year with actually after this trip with Marriott and so I'll be titanium with Marriott and then I'm trying to level up with United as well. Yeah, that's the whole thing when you're starting to get to the end of the year and you see something within reach and you're like, it would be really great to have this for next

Gene:

year or I don't have to, maybe you haven't done, have you done mileage runs before, not on airlines, but you know what that is,

Ben:

where you're just flying to get to the next level or

Gene:

you book a hotel stay that you never bothered going to

Ben:

well, so Marriott, you have to at least check in, right? Yeah, you

Gene:

could do remote checkin. I think you gotta show up.

Ben:

Really? Mm, yep. They've changed some of that. So like, yeah, with the modern locks and everything, they can tell whether or not a room's been occupied and so on, but

Gene:

that's, but it's to their benefit if it's not. So I've, I've done a few of these and back when I still needed to, and I remember I would just find the cheapest Marriott property.

Ben:

I, I literally did this last year just to maintain platinum. I was, I was one night away from, you know, renewing platinum and I just went and booked a cheap hotel. Yep.

Gene:

Yep. Cause they just want those nights booked. And I just, I call up the hotel and I just told them guys, I'm just doing this for a.

Ben:

Yep. Literally walked in, said, here, checking in here are your keys back. Thanks. Bye. Yep.

Gene:

Exactly. It's like, yeah, you don't have to bother redoing the room. Just try to get credit for this check in

Ben:

and yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, people think that's, that's nonsense. It's like, well, when

Gene:

you're problems, man,

Ben:

when you travel a lot, it matters. Oh yeah. And it's platinum late checkout is huge.

Gene:

Yeah. Frickin use that all the time. The late checkout is great and it it's I don't think I've ever been refused a late checkout. Frankly, I'm thinking of it. So yeah, yeah, it's, it's a thing, but yeah, I get it. You know, first world problems for sure, but it's. It's them that have gamified the whole process. And so when the process is gamified, expect people to play it like a game. Mm-hmm. it's, it's as expected, I would say.

Ben:

Well, yeah. And yeah. Absolutely. And you know, especially with Marriott in the spring when they do their double nights stay deals and stuff like that mm-hmm. Yeah. It, it gamification is a thing. Yeah. But you know, it's

Gene:

to their advantage. Yeah, absolutely. And they were one of the first chains that really... I don't know about

Ben:

you, but I always, when I'm traveling, like, for instance, I'll be going to a conference in Atlanta later this year and it's at an Intercontinental, which is a nice hotel and everything else, but I'm staying at a Marriott down the road a little bit because it's a Marriott and I get the, I get the points on the nights.

Gene:

Oh, hell yeah. No, I did the same thing many, many times. It's, it does make a difference for the perks in some places, less so than it used to, unfortunately. Yeah, cause you used to have more tangible benefits, like. The, the upgraded rooms was a very regular thing.

Ben:

It's less, well, fewer properties have rooms to upgrade you to the way they've broken it down is really the rooms at, so the rooms at a courtyard are pretty much all the fucking claim, right? There, there are very few differentiations. They've even gotten rid of suites and things like that at most of the hotels. So realistically, you're. Upgrade. If you booked a queen, you might get a king. Yeah. I mean, okay. There's really not much difference. No. Unless you're staying at some of the ones where you get the most and I, the autograph collection is. Is a great like, I stay at the hotel icon and downtown Houston fairly regularly. It's a really neat old hotel. It was originally a bank. It's a 100 and some odd year old building. You know, that's a hotel with some character and. They have some room differentiation just because of the age of the hotel.

Gene:

So, yeah, it's, it's totally true. And there was there's also used to be like gifts that you got and you get a, you just get none of that these days, at least the hotels I'm staying at.

Ben:

Yeah. No, but you get guaranteed reservations at titanium and you get guaranteed late checkout and all that. The

Gene:

guaranteed reservations I've used a couple of times and they definitely do them try not to have you doing that too often. But

Ben:

I remember, I'm definitely going to use

Gene:

it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've, I've kicked out twice people to get into a hotel. So once was at, at San Diego what's the big convention there? The San Diego Comic Con, which when that happens, good luck getting a business room in town. Everything's booked up. So I had to pull that card out. And then another time in Seattle, I had to do that as well.

Ben:

Didn't you do it in South Texas?

Gene:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. You're absolutely right. I forgot about that. In the, yeah, cause. At the, because they lost my reservation or no, they, they couldn't extend my reservation by a day. So I had to call up the the titanium desk and tell them what the hell, man.

Ben:

You will extend my stay? Yeah.

Gene:

And it's like, yeah, no, I'm, I need to get this stay extended. And they're like, okay, yep, we'll do it. And then they call up the hotel and tell them what to do. Yeah, it is, it is kind of funny how powerless the hotels themselves are compared to the parent company.

Ben:

Yeah. You know, I've got, geez, I've got sweet night rewards. I need to use, I've got some free nights I need to use.

Gene:

Yeah, it's I, ever since I've noticed that their, their benefits get worse every single year, I've tried not to maintain too many points. I used to have just a shit ton of points. I used to have over a million points sitting in the account at any given time. But the I would realize that like, Oh, well last year I could get a room for 18, 000 points of this in this hotel. This year, that same room is going to cost me 20, 000 points.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah, well, that's partially

Gene:

inflation. So you've got, yeah, you've got inflation happening, which means that if you actually keep a lot of points, your points are worth less every year. And so I actually have gotten into a habit of trying to utilize them just as fast as I accumulate them. So I think I only have maybe at most a hundred thousand points on Marriott right now. Okay.

Ben:

I have several hundred thousand, but yeah.

Gene:

And like I said, I used to like to keep it at about a million because you never know when you might need to stay somewhere for a month.

Ben:

Well, I mean, even at 500, 000, you can pretty much stay anywhere for a month. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene:

Well, yeah. It depends on the hotel, how fancy they are. But that's, I remember, in fact, this happened the last time I was at the exact same property. I'm going to Mexico right now which is a Marriott down there in Cancun. That I checked into how long of a stay I could get with the points that I had. And I didn't quite have enough for a full month. I think I had about three weeks at at how are they called Atlantis. I could do three weeks at Atlantis. I could do over a month on pretty much any other property including the JWs. Or I could do like three months set up at the cheap properties.

Ben:

Yeah, I was looking at JW in downtown Houston, which is a nice JW and the King room, not, not a suite, but just the King room was only 21, 000 points a night.

Gene:

Oh my God. That's super cheap. Yeah. Crazy cheap. Dude. I've paid 80, 000 a night. Oh

Ben:

yeah.

Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. In, in some of these places there's, they, they go crazy, which incidentally 80, 000 Four rooms, equivalent costs to what a cheap room usually is. But. In that particular hotel, that was my cheaper option because the, the per dollar costs or in dollars, the daily cost was 650 bucks. So any 80, 000 points was going to be cheaper than paying the money. Compared to staying somewhere else.

Ben:

Yeah. It's crazy that when you look at the cost versus points value, sometime they, the hotels get upside down, which is

Gene:

nice. Completely. Yeah. And that, in fact, the last JW I stayed at in Miami.

Ben:

You know, anyone who doesn't travel is just like,

Gene:

Oh my God, what the hell is this shit? But yeah, it was, it was pre COVID right before the year before COVID and down there. And I remember I used points and the hotel would have been about 310 bucks a night. The points equivalent was about 150 bucks a night. So I usually use the points on that one. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember. It was like 30, 000 points or 25, 000 points or something. It was a good deal to use the points. The only problem with using points is you don't get points for using points. Huh. And I don't need the nights, so I don't really care if the, if I get one more night in a

Ben:

year or not. So Mary, I was trying to tempt me with ambassador status and I'm like, I'm not going to spend that much and I'm not going to get to a hundred nights. So

Gene:

I hand down for a few years they didn't call it ambassador back then they call it something else, but it was basically for the, the big spender invite only thing.

Ben:

Yeah. You guys spend over 23 K a year.

Gene:

Yeah. Which I was over that quite a few times and real close to that. Most of the time. But that was back when I was doing corporate consulting. So I was basically living Monday through Thursday, every single week at a hotel.

Ben:

Yeah, I would, yeah,

Gene:

I would do it. Yes. That would do exactly what it did. Get a divorce. I, I knew my Marriott staff better than I did my wife. Say that again. I knew my Marriott staff better than I knew my wife. Oof. Oof. Yeah. And, and that was that's not a good thing if you're trying to stay married. No,

Ben:

no, no, no. I tell you what, though. I am I am a fan of that little PC car being Ruger PC car being that I got. It's that's going to be a neat gun going back to that. Okay. Well, I'm trying to get us off of some

Gene:

hotels. All right. You get a new car yet? What's up with that? Did I get what a new car yet? Why would I get a new car? You drive an old car. So have you got a new car yet? No. Okay. No

Ben:

plans. I like it paid off.

Gene:

Well, okay. There is a way to have a new car and have a car that's paid off. Maybe for you. It's called making a payment once.

Ben:

Yeah, sure yeah, maybe for you no, I, my truck still got a little life in it. I do need to figure out what I'm going to do probably in the next year or so, I think in the next year or so, but I

Gene:

mean to fix it or to get something else or do you want to do that thing you were telling me where you just want to get like an. Early nineties suburban or something.

Ben:

Yeah, no the suburban idea would be a eighties because I don't want fuel injection. And B would be a secondary vehicle, not a primary. Mm hmm. But regardless right now I'm trying to figure out what I want to get as a replacement. And the main reason that Tesla. No, I, no, I won't. I want a gas engine and I want something that's, you know, the problem is I don't want a lot of the technology that is even in base models today. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So I, I, I don't know. I'm having to try and figure out what I want and what I wanna get. Also, I don't think I want an aluminum body looking at the repair costs on some of the aluminum body trucks and stuff like that. I you

Gene:

Oh, yeah. It's not repair, it's replacement. Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. It's incredible. Aluminum tears. Yes, so that they're, you know, if you get into a fender bender, you're replacing the fender, which is just insane. So yeah, as, as a result I, I would probably buy a used vehicle, which is fine. And I'll figure out what I

Gene:

want. I always really liked the plastic on my Saturn and I never understood why all other cars didn't switch to using plastic bodies.

Ben:

You when, when did you have a Saturn,

Gene:

Gene? I, that was my first car after college. Okay.

Ben:

I never had a Saturn. I loved it,

Gene:

man. It was a great car. The,

Ben:

for those who are too young, this is like 90s cheap car. Did, did you also have a Geo?

Gene:

No, I never had a Jio. No, and it's, it was a cheap new car. And cheap is a relative term because that car was 17, 000.

Ben:

Yeah, this was the Kia of its

Gene:

day. In nowhere near. This was way better than a Kia. Don't, don't. No,

Ben:

a Kia is a

Gene:

Satchel. Oh God, no. No, no, no, no. You've clearly never driven the Saturn. No. The Saturns never driven the Saturn The Saturns were a very innovative American car company. They were innovative, utilizing rapid, cheap car techniques. Oh my God, they were not cheap. They were inexpensive. Uhhuh, Uhhuh, and, and much better produced than most American cars at the time. And one of the innovations that they had was using plastic body panels and not like cheap ass PVC. This was high quality plastic, but the net result of that is it meant that your car did not have fender benders, meaning if something plows into your car, the plastic just deforms. And when that force is removed, the plastic bounces back to its original shape. It doesn't, but obviously if the, if the accident is sufficient enough to tweak the actual frame, the car to get the metal bits, then yes, you're going to need to have a normal repair. Just like

Ben:

plastic and tear and lots of things.

Gene:

Nope. There's not that type of plastic, man. This is the hard plastic, not, not the soft plastic that tears. It was a, it was a vehicle that really should have led the rest of Detroit out of its doldrums. It's, I think it was the first model year was 89, I believe

Ben:

they came out. This is where I know you're kind of going senile if you think Saturn should have,

Gene:

yeah. It was, it was one of the it was really the only car company that could effectively compete with Japanese cars. Yeah. Weren't they made anymore? Saturns? Yeah. They stopped making them when GM was going through its bankruptcy. But if they were a

Ben:

profitable brand, but if they were a profitable brand, they were

Gene:

never a profitable brand because because unlike the shitty cars out there, they actually spent more money on each car than the car made that, that, that

Ben:

seems like a bad business model.

Gene:

Oh, it's a great business model. The exact same thing on the the other card that I had recently the Fiat 500 electric, that car costs the company. 10, 000 more to produce than it was sold for. And why would a company do that? It's called a great deal. That's not, that's not a bad thing for the consumer. It's bad for the company. It's not bad for the consumer, but yeah, if you've never been in a Saturn, I, I would say you've got a lot of false assumptions that if you ever get a chance

Ben:

to be in a Saturn.

Gene:

I've been in a Saturn. I doubt it. I doubt it. That you probably had Saturns. I don't think they did. I think you probably had some knockoff cars that. I thought were Saturns, but actually weren't,

Ben:

this seems like a cheap car. It must be a, yeah,

Gene:

exactly. I think that's, that's what Ben was thinking at the time, because this was definitely not a cheap car. It was a very nice but I don't know why we got on the topic though. Oh, I talked about plastic body panels and it seems like it's something that should have caught on. It should, it never really did though. It doesn't make any sense to me because aluminum is expensive to replace. Certainly steel is heavy and not as expensive to replace, but certainly more expensive than plastic parts. The closest you get is with the Corvette which has always been fiberglass. And now fiberglass was heavier than the plastic used in the Saturns. And more brittle, arguably a much smaller production. A number of those cars. So it didn't, didn't really matter. And I don't know what the Corvettes use that these days. I assume not, but they used to, it used to be fiberglass. So I, yeah, I don't know. It's that was, that was a pretty good car for the time though. Okay. I drove that car till I bought it brand new and I drove it until 110, 000 miles. Okay. Never had a single problem with it.

Ben:

Good for you. My, my truck has right at 200, 000 miles on it. So, yep.

Gene:

Yeah, it was it was quite surprising. I don't think I'm ever going to have any other vehicles that go over a hundred thousand miles. Why is that? I've never had one. It's too long. It's really too long. I like more fresher, newer things.

Ben:

Okay. I mean, yeah, if you want to refresh for that reason, but modern vehicles, you know, actually last, so there's that just great.

Gene:

Well, old vehicles last, if you take care of them, no,

Ben:

no, no. You can not take like a 1970s vehicle and compare it to a modern vehicle. You

Gene:

just can't, you can, as long as it wasn't made in the U S sure. Okay. There's Mazdas from the 70s, dude, that still run. Certainly plenty of Toyotas from the 80s that still run. I

Ben:

don't know about that. You don't see very many, other than cars that are collectible enough to keep on the road, you don't

Gene:

see. You don't, you really don't in Texas.

Ben:

Really at this part, at this point, you don't even see them though. See a lot of nineties vehicles still running around late nineties are getting rare at this

Gene:

point. I think part of it is cultural. Well, there's a couple of things. One is Obama fricking destroyed the used car industry. Fuckers. Yes. Yes. That was an evil, evil thing to do. Plenty of vehicles that were, you know, maybe, Oh, we're really good. Such bullshit. And they were being killed off. Like watching videos of BMW M cars. Being run with their engines after the oil has been removed in order to brick them, which were the rules. You had to brick the car to take it out of the market. It was literally painful. I mean, these are handcrafted engines back from those days and watching the thing run and literally die

Ben:

of a heart attack, the fuel or sugar or any of it. Yeah. Yeah,

Gene:

exactly. It's just evil. It's, it's no different than shooting a dog just because you're the FBI. I, I, I think it's

Ben:

a

Gene:

little different. Not really. It's the exact same thing, man. A lot of, a lot of people have attachments with their cars.

Ben:

Well, anyway, so, yeah,

Gene:

clearly you don't, so I

Ben:

had some emotional attachment to a couple of cars, but that's because I was young and dumb and right now it's just, it's a tool. I have more emotional attachment to firearms than I do

Gene:

the cars. Well, and that's, this is actually something I think I talked about on yesterday or on Friday's show, Darren, that no one gets listened to. Yeah.

Ben:

What, what happened? Why, why is there no show? No. Cause he, what's

Gene:

the real story? It is. No, he, he just said, look, we're not getting donations and I don't feel like putting the show out. And I said, well, that's fine. I'm, I'm fine with that, but we're still going to sit and talk for two hours and we still talked for two hours. It just never got released. You're joking. No. Come on. No.

Ben:

I'm going to have to get with Darren and find out. Go ahead.

Gene:

He'll, he'll tell you exactly what I just told you.

Ben:

Yeah. And so y'all did, y'all made it an only fans video instead. That's the story.

Gene:

That's

Ben:

exactly right. So what, what really happened is someone forgot to press record. No,

Gene:

no, no, no. There is no, I can send you a screenshot of Darren's text to me.

Ben:

Well, can you at least send me a copy of the recording so I can hear it? No.

Gene:

Why not? No, because it's, it's not intended for public consumption. That makes me laugh. Yeah. Okay. Here we go. I'm making the screenshot for you. And there you go. So this is all the proof you need right there.

Ben:

Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. Good for you.

Gene:

There you go. Anyway. Anyway, so as I was discussing on the show, so, so how

Ben:

star star citizen, or not that Starfield,

Gene:

please. Starfield, still the game. No, it's still good. I, again, I think I got my money's worth on it and I, I have to feel good about a game that you only pay a fixed amount for, but you play a lot of hours.

Ben:

There was a Starfield controversy about the sexual companions.

Gene:

Really? Now, I've not done anything in the game, apparently, to interest any of the companions into having sex with me.

Ben:

If you're not having, yeah, piece of game, or if you're not having sex in Starfield daily, you're missing out.

Gene:

Yeah, I know. I know it's supposed to give you a 15 percent XP bonus, but I haven't figured out how to get the companion to actually be interested in

Ben:

me. Gene, is this a fiction emulating real life?

Gene:

No, because I know how to do that in real life. I don't in the game, and I refuse to watch videos that show you how to do it. I want to either figure this out organically, or not. I mean, I guess I'll just deal with the, the result of not figuring it out. But most... I actually enjoy the process of solving the puzzles of how they want you to do stuff without directions. Yeah, there,

Ben:

there are apparently people who have gone through and had done it with all the companions in the game already. I'm sure they have. Yeah, exactly. Like that, that was a whole side quest for some

Gene:

people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That totally makes sense. At this point, all the companions except for the robot are no longer on my ship. I don't know what I said or did to make them leave. The robot's the only one that's decided to stick around. That seems about right. Fuck you. It's this game is too well programmed I think, and clearly is. Not liking my style of gameplay through its companions enough for them to not even be on the ship. So they took the money, but then they don't show up for work. Mmm.

Ben:

Yeah, you need to pay them after the job

Gene:

is done. Yeah. Well, they charge ahead of time and The, I don't know what the deal is, man. It's at some point I'll figure it out right now. I've been too busy shooting the bad guys to figure it out. And sometimes the bad guys are the good guys. Cause I've been playing a lot as a pirate. But you know, the good guys just have ridiculous rules for me to obey. And so

Ben:

the party is a romanceable in Starfield. I, I think everybody is no, it's actually a limited number of companions. So there's like four members. Yeah. No four, only four, only four of them are romanceable. Yeah. According to PC gamer. Which four? Sarah Morgan. She's a bitch. Yeah. Sam Cole.

Gene:

Yeah. He's a, he's, he's a douchebag

Ben:

anyway. You can look it up.

Gene:

Okay. Well, I don't want to purposefully. But it's

Ben:

Uhhuh. It's a yeah, you'll let me tell you the names.

Gene:

You can tell me the names, but I don't want to get into spoilers territory, so I don't want to figure out like, what am I not doing that's making them not, but I mean, a start would be to get them to actually start being in the ship again because they were on a ship for a while and then all of a sudden they decided not to bother showing up to be in the ship anymore. Yeah, it I did, I did have a few people die. On the ship while they were, companions were there, but it was mostly because I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them, so I had to kill them. Like they, these guests wouldn't leave the ship and I was trying to get them to leave and I, I think it was a game bug or something. They just would not leave the ship. So I ended up figuring out a different way to get them off the ship in, in body bags. But for some reason after that, the companions are no longer on the ship. So there's something good, something going on in there. These are kind of like your Doctor Who companions. Ah, gotcha. You know, they're, they're there to provide background scenery. Which,

Ben:

which which was your favorite Doctor Who and which was your favorite companion? Tom Baker, obviously. Oh my

Gene:

god. The only real Doctor Who out of the whole bunch.

Ben:

David

Gene:

Tennant. David Tennant, really? Absolutely. Well, who is David Tennant's favorite Doctor? Patrick Baker. Tom Baker. Okay, whatever. I got the wrong name. Baker. Tom Baker, no. He did an interview where he talked about watching him as a kid. Okay, okay, okay. And that was his favorite

Ben:

doctor. Well, you know what? But David Tennant did it better. And it wasn't near as

Gene:

campy. I think he was the best of the new doctors. Of the the

Ben:

reboot, as it were. Can we at least agree that the chick just screwed it up? Which chick? The chick

Gene:

doctor. Oh, that's not canon. I don't consider that canon.

Ben:

No, that's not a thing. I will say, I will say that Missy as a female master, did do a good job.

Gene:

Didn't even watch it. The the only female doctor who that I watched was a skit that Rowan Atkinson did. Huh. For a TV show awards. Huh. Where the, he thought of something that was completely and utterly ridiculous to do, which is to have a doctor become a female. Huh. And then just want to touch himself all the time. And yeah, that's the only female doctor that I recognize. Everything else is just phony baloney. It's like, might as well have a female James Bond. Yeah. Well, or a blonde Bond. He's not, yeah, exactly. He's not called the doctor because he's a female. Otherwise he'd be the nurse.

Ben:

Oof. Gene at sergenespeaks. com.

Gene:

When that show was created in 1963 the number of doctors who were female, you could count on one hand.

Ben:

Yeah. Hey, do you know what the measurement maximum is for carry on in the U. S.? Isn't it 24 inches?

Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's 22 in Europe. Oh,

Ben:

actually it's changed quite a bit. Why? What is it now? It, I mean, it's pretty much standardized at this point.

Gene:

So it's 22 in the U.

Ben:

S. now? No Europe and Europe's gone up mostly. No, they haven't. It's more about weight. Yeah, on newer planes. For carry on? The size is less relevant than than the weight.

Gene:

I believe that, but I don't think that's changed. Yeah, I'm looking right now. European standards, 21. 6 by 15. 7.

Ben:

Yes, and if you're on a little puddle jumper crappy airplane, they may give a shit. But if you are on a modern plane, which has actual room in the overhead bins, they don't.

Gene:

Yeah, so the fact that they don't care is different from what the standard is. You could probably stuff a bigger bag into an American one, too. I'm sorry? You could probably stuff a bigger bag into an American airline if you try it as well.

Ben:

Yeah, you, you could, but anyway, I'm just saying.

Gene:

But they are in, in Europe, they're limited to 10 kilograms. Which, I don't think our bag, they don't weigh our bags, right?

Ben:

Not in the U S but they're literally, I saw now this was Lufthansa I literally saw people them at the gates randomly picking people out, grabbing their carry on and holding it up on a luggage scale, which I found

Gene:

hilarious and what they make them check them or what? Yeah. Yeah.

Ben:

Wow. And pay for the checking too. Wow. Those Germans, man. They're there. There's something Hmm.

Gene:

Hmm. So Aeroflot allows us size, Aeroflot.

Ben:

What's that? I mean, Russian airline, Aeroflot. Dude, that, that sounds like something you should get checked

Gene:

out. Aeroflot literally means air fleet, which literally means Lufthansa. Okay. It sounds better in German. Yeah, if you're a Nazi, maybe, but anyway, yeah, there's a still 10 kilograms, but it's us dimensions. Whereas like Aer Lingus. You know where that, that's from, Erlingas is only 25 by 33 by 20. Are you 11 years old? Are you seriously 11 years old? You're laughing at me saying Aer Lingus. Have you not flown Aer Lingus? It just caught me off guard. National Airline of Ireland. Aer Lingus.

Ben:

Okay. Jesus. Huh. Oh, I needed

Gene:

that. Yes. You sound like you got it out of your system.

Ben:

Well, you know, I mean, dude, there's just so many funny things. It's shocking to me how little domestic flights there are in Europe though.

Gene:

Yeah. Well, they have other methods of transit. They consider airplanes only country to country and trains for local. Yeah, well,

Ben:

that's stupid. Anything anything I should, have you ever been to Charlotte? Anything I should check out

Gene:

while I'm there? We started off me saying that I've been there once and it didn't make an impression. So, well, yeah, I don't

Ben:

remember. I didn't know if you remembered something in between now and then. It

Gene:

was in the 90s. Wow. A lot of cocaine, a lot of time has passed down since the 90s.

Ben:

Yes. Well, I'll let you know what I think of Charlotte then. Yeah,

Gene:

I'm sure it's cute. Most of those southern cities are. If you're into the looking

Ben:

at, I mean, it's, it's, it's

Gene:

grown quite a bit, any battles in the civil war there. You want to go check out and

Ben:

not, not right in Charlotte. It's a little bit out and I don't know if I'm going to have time or not. Yeah. But that's going to be the, that's

Gene:

going to be the thing to be a lot colder than Texas. I'll tell you that much. It's going

Ben:

to be high in the eighties, high in the eighties, low in the fifties. And I'm going to be in a suit the entire time. So I won't be sweating my ass off in said

Gene:

suit. Yeah. That's actually a good thing. You want those cooler evenings?

Ben:

Yeah. It's only 880, 000.

Gene:

That's surprising. The population size. So it's smaller than Austin.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. So we are doing a client dinner at the NASCAR hall of fame though. So, Oh,

Gene:

there you go. Now that sounds like a fun thing. Yeah, I was supposed to be at the racetrack of America a couple days ago for a little FBI event, and then they did not Apparently they decided to change the venue. So fuck that I'm not going where is this? What the racetrack of America? Yeah in Austin. Yeah, there's an event there.

Ben:

Okay, so why they changed the venue I have no idea.

Gene:

I didn't know they're going I have some kind of FBI get together Oh

Ben:

God, don't do that. Don't slay the

Gene:

FBI. I'd still get invited to

Ben:

all that stuff. Dude, I purposefully have never joined InfraGard and things like that. It's just... There's

Gene:

no

Ben:

point in having a clearance for that sort of stuff.

Gene:

No, no. There's no point for sure. I agree. But I would have liked to have gone to the circuit of Americas without paying for a ticket. Yeah. So it's like, you know, if you can get to utilize stuff that you don't normally get to, like that, that's always fun.

Ben:

I guess. Have you ever been to Atlanta? Yeah. A long

Gene:

time ago in the nineties. It was hot.

Ben:

Did you ever go to a stone mountain? I did not know. Ah, see, you gotta go to stone mountain, especially before they get rid of the monument. Longstreet, you know, Stonewall, Lee, all on horses carved. It's the Southern Mount Rushmore, if you will. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah. They definitely want to get rid of

Gene:

it. Of course they do. Yeah. Yeah. The whole changing of history thing is just so retarded. Oh, dude,

Ben:

it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Gene:

Yes, although hopefully not a whole lot worse, but I've never been a fan of changing history of anybody. Like I wanted all those, those German statues saved and not melted down, you know, it's like all this shit that was created by a culture, negative or positive should be preserved. For historical purposes, and then you could take away completely different things from looking at it than necessarily people that built it well, you shouldn't be destroying that shit. So

Ben:

I've got a friend who's German and I know more about his country's history than he does. I know. Isn't that

Gene:

ridiculous?

Ben:

Well, it's purposeful. It's

Gene:

purposeful. Well, sure it is, but it's still ridiculous. Yeah. It's, it's the whole cover. I mean, Japanese did not as bad as Germans, but they kind of did a similar thing to where they completely gloss over the history of World War II. Just make it a little bit of a asterisk. And that's, that is ridiculous. There was a lot of people that that were involved in, in that war coming to a head. Both in Japan and in Germany.

Ben:

Well, and there's even a lot of stuff that's censored. Like, when we think of German censorship, we think of the Nazis and everything else. But they censor a lot of the East German stuff too. Like a lot of the stuff around the Stasi and things like that, that aren't really talked about. And, you know, talking to him it was really pretty shocking what he was allowed to know about and read and not. Which is

Gene:

just should come as no surprise given German culture.

Ben:

It's a huge

Gene:

surprise to me. Same people that you know, thought Nazism had great ideas. Okay,

Ben:

fair enough to an extent. I mean,

Gene:

same people that popularized bug burning. I don't know,

Ben:

book burning was very popular before that.

Gene:

Well, I, I think it happened before that, but they certainly popularized. So I, I don't know, man. I just, I think that

Ben:

you can thank me later for what?

Gene:

Look at the chat. Didn't see what you sent me in, in signal. No dude. First of all, I can't see the zoom chat. Second of all, the zoom chat gets saved

Ben:

and this is my work

Gene:

zoom. No, it gets saved. I looked, it's don't put anything in, we're going to find a plugin that lets you disable zoom chat. Cause I don't need you putting anything into zoom chat. Actually

Ben:

as the host, you can disable chat. How do you

Gene:

do that? I'm not telling you, God damn it. Tell me how to disable you. I need to figure out how to disable you now. Tell me.

Ben:

Well, when you're setting up the meeting, you can set up who can do what to not chat anyway. No ammo man has some of your IMI three on sale.

Gene:

I have a lot of that. I bought like a thousand rounds of that. That's

Ben:

not a lot. That's like one and a half trips to the range.

Gene:

Yeah. Whatever. For shooting, for, for shooting a 308 ammo, that's, that's not, it's not one and a half trips for me, dude. I don't shoot that much 308. I

Ben:

don't know. I, I don't, if I take a, so if I go to the rifle range. And I'm shooting 308. I typically take at least three different rifles. Then I'm going to put at least 100 plus rounds through two of them. And then one of them, I'm probably going to put 10 to 20. So

Gene:

if I'm going to bring it, it's just me. I generally only bring one at a time

Ben:

and how long do you stay at the range? So,

Gene:

hour, hour and a half.

Ben:

Okay. So if I make the effort to do a full range thing, I'm getting there in the morning and I'm not leaving till probably fairly late afternoon. Really?

Gene:

Oh, yeah. I usually don't go that long. I usually I'll go

Ben:

and I'll do

Gene:

two hours at the longest.

Ben:

Yeah, but it's okay. So I'll, I'll go, I'll take my bolt action. I'll stretch the legs, you know, get it out there. Then I'll go do some drills with like, you know, an AR or something, or I'll go shoot some steel here or there with some other fun guns. And then I'll go do some pistol based stuff. And then I'll go back out to the long range and. I mean, under,

Gene:

yeah, no, that's all right. I'm not the wrong of that, but generally not how I do it. Yep. I like, I, I, I am, I ammo for the civil war. So it's, it's the ammo. The gun was made to shoot. So it's appropriate for that.

Ben:

Oh, whatever. All right, man. Anything else you want to cover or talk about?

Gene:

No, I think we're good. You know, we got, we got some trips coming up, so hopefully that'll add some more interesting topics conversation. Maybe you'll run across something in Charlotte that's noteworthy to talk about. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. And we got another show before I go to Mexico, but I'm sure I'll have something after that trip as well. Cool deal,

Ben:

man. Cool. Don't, don't get caught in Mexico. Don't get caught? Yeah. I don't want to have to send lawyers getting some money.

Gene:

You mean crossing the border the wrong direction? Don't get caught? Exactly.

Ben:

All right. You got to be careful. I mean, coming home, that's easy. It's just going down that way.

Gene:

I'm not even driving in Mexico, dude. I'm going to be just sitting on the, on the hotel property the entire time. So it's not much getting caught. Yeah, when the federales bust in. There was a cigar shop across from the hotel, if I remember right, 15 years ago. So, if that shop is still there, I may head over there.

Ben:

Yeah. If they recognize you, they're handlers.

Gene:

I don't know many places I go where I don't get recognized,

Ben:

frankly. Well, what's that tell ya?

Gene:

People are friendly. Huh. Sure. I have a familiar looking face, but

Ben:

you are very

Gene:

unique. We'll put it that way. Yes. Depends on the country. I get asked if, if I'm related to Santa Claus, Santa Claus, that's the first one. Are you related to Santa Claus by chance? Well the shape and the beard, you know, when I was a little, a little more swelt I used to get asked if I. It was related to what's his face Castro.

Ben:

Oh, so what you're saying is you and Trudeau are brothers.

Gene:

Oh man. If I was his brother, he would gotten his ass kicked a lot and he clearly hasn't. So no,

Ben:

I don't know. I don't know. Did you see the pictures of him and his son going to the Barbie movie? Hmm.

Gene:

His son or his daughter? Son. His female son or female daughter? Biologically

Ben:

male

Gene:

son. So his daughter. Got it. No. No.

Ben:

No. Still, still identifying his boy.

Gene:

Yeah. Well, he can pretend all he wants. So. No, I haven't, but I'm sure that they both thoroughly enjoyed the movie. So. Although I've heard enough people talk about how. The movie could totally be taken the other direction if you have a different

Ben:

mind. Actually, I had a friend of mine who said it was actually pretty anti feminist from their point of view because Barbie wasn't happy in this feminist utopia and actually chose the real world over that and things like that.

Gene:

Okay. Yeah. And I, I watched somebody, I think it was the critical drinker did a review where he said that, you know, you could see it both ways. You can see how it's a total typical Hollywood Disney movie, or you could see it as director actually sneaking in a lot of anti feminism messaging in by demonstrating just how stupid feminism is. Yes.

Ben:

Well, you know, I mean, it's shocking to me how many of these, you know, quote unquote, strong women that I know that are what the feminist world would hold up as examples that when they get into their late forties and fifties go, Oh, fuck, what did I do?

Gene:

Yeah, you, you wanted to be a man is what you did. Yeah. The biggest. Lie that feminism sold women for a long time, especially third wave feminism, is this idea that to be full and Complete and happy as a woman you must be a man and the way they phrase it Of course is you you need to have the ability to do anything a man does. Yeah, like pissing standing up That's basically what they're getting at

Ben:

Yeah, it's Ukraine creating BDUs for pregnant women. Oh,

Gene:

yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, I think that was hilarious on a lot of different levels. One is, can you say propaganda? And two, there have been no men to fuck in Ukraine for the last year plus. Where are these miraculous virgin births coming from? Oh, no, no, no. It's Russians. Oh, it's, it's Russian, hold up, hold up. So the Russian army is raping Ukrainian women. Who are they going to

Ben:

fight them? Of course. Who are

Gene:

then going to turn around and fight them. Yes. That makes. Way more sense. You know, you're clearly right on that. It is insanity. And the fact that there's still people that believe this crap. I, I, I haven't had anybody apologize to me for being wrong yet, but I've had a lot of people. Just stop talking about that topic.

Ben:

Well, I mean, the whole Ukrainian debacle has been ridiculous on the amount of money spent and everything else. I, I, I, I really think that there is coming going to be a reckoning here pretty quick, but there's still lots of propaganda. There was propaganda about shooting down helicopters and things like that, and then making a big deal out of it. And it's like, well, if you're using. The tools that they have shooting down a helicopter should not be difficult. And why are you making such a big deal out of it? You know, Oh, this, you know, this old shoulder fired missile or whatever, took down Russia's. Latest and greatest,

Gene:

you know, attack. RPG takes down make 35. Yeah,

Ben:

anyway, now the strike on the Russian shipyards, that's first of all, they did not do that alone if they were involved. And now that's provocative towards Russia. We're going to take out your shipyards. Yeah, that dude. Yeah. Sinking an old vessel, one thing sinking vessels under construction.

Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's certainly a contingent that wants to just do anything to try and get Russia to scale up the,

Ben:

the war. Yeah. And there's, there's a contingent in Russia that just says nuclear. Yeah.

Gene:

Well, there's always been a lot of people just saying that we're just wasting human life and without nuking them at this point. But I think there's a, a contingent both in Ukraine and in the U. S. that just wants some rationale that they can sell to get the U. S. troops on the ground. And I don't know how they can want that because they're going to be the ones dealing with the aftermath of body bag. I just, I don't understand the mentality. It's, it's such a crazy thing and I, are they just drinking their own Kool Aid and they watch too many of these special military operations carried out by the U. S. in third world countries to think that this is some kind of cakewalk? Well,

Ben:

I mean, the U. S. has not faced a peer power since World War II.

Gene:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And even if the U. S. somehow can come up with a win scenario here, that win scenario probably has a hundred million dead. So really that's, that's the end goal here. That's the end game that we're shooting for to depopulate the U. S. I think so. Yeah. It's, it's insanity. But we'll repopulate with migrants. Well, we, we are doing that. That's for sure. Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. Alex Stein was on Tim the other night and it shocked me how much Tim let him go off on replacement theory. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah. It was

Gene:

surprising. Yeah. I, Alex Stein to me is like a troll jokester. He, he is, but he's. An annoying one there's, you know, there's an, like, we all have this buddy in college, at least the men do, that he was somebody that always came up with shit to laugh at, like he was funny, but he never knew when to stop. Like he went beyond the point something was funny, to the point where he was annoying, to the point where he wouldn't get invited to shit because nobody likes being around him. Okay. That's Alex Stein. Yeah. He's that guy. Okay. He's funny. He's done some funny bits. You can watch on YouTube, but yeah, I would never

Ben:

invite him that

Gene:

funny. No, but he's done some funny stuff because he's made people feel uncomfortable. Like AOC's big booty. Yeah. Wasn't that funny? But it made plenty of headlines because it made her uncomfortable.

Ben:

Well, but, you know. Like the guy, I'm just saying, Hey, come on now, let's put, let's be honest, if you got your way and women couldn't vote and so on, you would totally date AOC.

Gene:

Oh, I would have until I, I met Luna and then I clearly now I've dumped AOC and I'm, I'm looking at Anna Luna more. Okay. Nah, she's freaking hot, dude. You, you have to admit the photos I sent you with all those guns and pushup

Ben:

bras and everything. I, I, I would take Bobert.

Gene:

I would. Oh my God. You would take the librarian over the gun chick.

Ben:

I would take the bigger. Chest over the smaller. Yes.

Gene:

Yeah. The one you're calling smaller is a good seek up. The bigger is what? Like a triple F no more like a

Ben:

double D.

Gene:

Okay. So, yeah, I will look broke. Bovert is, is literally the conservative AOC. Yeah.

Ben:

Yes.

Gene:

It was a, was a. A barmaid. So yeah you know, and I don't get me wrong. I like the fact that she's I'm actually kind of happy that AOC was there because it provided plenty of fun commentary. Because we would have never heard of the representative from that district if that district had somebody other than the AOC. Like AOC. Yeah,

Ben:

she, she's highlighted the stupidity

Gene:

of. Yeah, exactly. Highlighting the stupidity of New Yorkers. And although you're saying she might be out after

Ben:

this, I do. The reaction of that crowd was shocking. Yeah,

Gene:

but. You should go look it up. But what's she going to do? She's already got her Tesla. She's got a nice apartment in DC. You know, she's get married or maybe already is. I don't know, but she's heading that way. So Brandon

Ben:

Herrera will be so sad. She's off the market. Yeah,

Gene:

exactly. You can't be you can't be taken. Wait, did he like her too?

Ben:

There's been jokes. Oh, really? That's about when

Gene:

he gets to Congress. Yeah, exactly. But no, like there, there's nothing wrong with making a little conversation about. Cute women, regardless of their political stance. And I, I think there's definitely something about Robert for sure, but I don't know, man, she's just a little too mousy looking for me. I like a chick that looks a little more formidable. Okay.

Ben:

So cool. You, so this is why you would be a good wing man. Gene. I exactly. I was thinking the women, the women who are attracted to me are never going to be attracted to you and vice versa. And. Well, the tapes of chicks we were attracted to, I mean, this, this is what my buddy and Bora and I did in college,

Gene:

we're attracted different tapes here because yeah, I just. I, if it was, if I was the last man on earth and, and Brobert was the last woman, don't get me wrong. I still do her, but just not given the choice.

Ben:

I mean, I would take Bobert over AOC.

Gene:

I mean, okay. What if you take politics out of it? Just purely unvisual. Yes. Oh, hell no.

Ben:

AOC has got those horse teeth that just bug

Gene:

me. You could fix that. Okay. I mean, you can fix other things

Ben:

too. I'm taking as is, but yeah,

Gene:

yeah, no, I, I get it. It's I dunno, I, you know, maybe I just like chicks with darker skin than you. Maybe that's what it is. Cause I always liked what's her face the Hawaiian chick. Tulsi. Yeah, Tulsi. I always liked her.

Ben:

Oh, yeah. I like Tulsi, well, I like Tulsi Gabbard's politics too, though, a lot.

Gene:

Yeah, but I always thought she was cute. She is.

Ben:

Until she did that skunk streak.

Gene:

And she's got, yeah, I know, that looks retarded. But a lot of professionally here, well, it is, it's retarded. It's, it just makes me think of that, that character from the Dalmatian movie or cartoon or whatever. Why would you do that? Why would you do that with your hair?

Ben:

To look more distinguished and older cartoon

Gene:

character. Yeah. I don't either. And it's, she has kind of become a little less relevant with all these hotter. Other women in Congress. That's

Ben:

all right. Well, I think it will be interesting to see where it all lands, my

Gene:

friend. All right. Let me leave you with these parting words. Then Trump will, his, his campaign will be derailed. There's something that they will absolutely guarantee due to get him off ballots. I don't know how many states. But in at least one state, he will not be on the ballot. That's my I,

Ben:

let me just say this. I agree that they're at least going to try that whether or not it happens will remain to be seen. And if they do that civil war, man that, that, that will be inaugurated.

Gene:

We're going to start seeing is. That apparently some state had some printing mistakes and it appears that Trump's name was not on some of the ballots, but not a significant number of ballots to cause any kind of. Change in ultimate voting counts. That's what we're gonna hear. Okay,

Ben:

then the election is totally illegitimate and why should I obey this government? I really think a large, at least a significant minority will feel that way.

Gene:

Yeah, and if they do anything about it, they'll get a 22 year prison sentence. Okay, and we'll see that's how it works when the the authoritarian socialists are in charge. Okay, we'll see Yep, so I really hope that The dot Indian gets a lot more votes in the primaries

Ben:

If Trump is removed from the ballot, I I think the vague will be the nominee. Yeah And but here's the thing, if the Democrats are smart, they don't remove Trump from the ballot until after the primary. That's

Gene:

true. That's very true. So I guess we'll have to see how smart they are. But the fact that it's going to happen, I'm probably like 93 percent confident that they will not allow Trump to have a chance, even though they're going to make sure he doesn't by other methods as well to reinforce their election. But I don't, I don't think they're, they want him to even have a chance of that happening and they'll undermine them to the extent of getting him off balance.

Ben:

Yeah. I think that's definitely something they're going to try and do. But again, I think the consequences of that is going to be pretty drastic.

Gene:

Has there been, and I haven't looked into this at all, so I don't know, but is there anything that actually codifies what, whether a ballot has to have a candidate's name on

Ben:

it or not? Yeah. What do you mean?

Gene:

Well, I mean, my ideal plan was always just to give blank pieces of paper to people to vote on. Cause if you don't know who the fuck you're voting for, you have no business voting. Was there an assumption 200 years ago, let's say that ballots had printed names of candidates Versus just lines for people to write in who they're voting for. The,

Ben:

the election laws and what derives getting on the ballot and requirements for the ballot are all state laws. That's going to vary from state to

Gene:

state. So there considerably could be a state that effectively has a law banning anyone with the name Trump from being on the ballot.

Ben:

Oh, that would be challenged and not necessarily. But if it's a

Gene:

state law, why would California have any issues with the federal government challenging that? And the other states can't, we've already seen that in the last election, which is because the Supreme Court basically says no state has standing in any other state.

Ben:

I agree. Okay. You're preaching to the choir on

Gene:

that one. Well, I'm just reciting a fact. So in that circumstance, what's to prevent California from simply through legal means removing any potential for Trump to run

Ben:

again? I think you can do it. I think the consequences of doing it are going to be pretty drastic.

Gene:

And why the hell would Texas have any Democrat politicians on any ballots?

Ben:

Well, I mean, that or, you know, we can say, you know, since you in Pennsylvania have decided that you want to go down this road, we're, we're just out. We're, we're done with this. We're not going to play this game anymore. Yeah. Thanks. But yeah, we're done. Yeah.

Gene:

That's what I'd like to see. It's going to happen. So the only question is what is going to be the Republican response? And we know that at least half the Republicans are milquetoast rhinos. So it's really like half the Republicans, which are about a quarter of the country that Would be the only ones willing to do anything about it.

Ben:

Well, we'll see. I think there's going to be

Gene:

more than that. I'm making a prediction. I was just hoping you would make one as well.

Ben:

I think if you remove Trump from the ballot and Trump is not on, in the presidential race at this point if you, if you force him out via removing him from the ballot, the elections will not be legitimate in at least 40 percent of the American populace's mind.

Gene:

Okay, well, I guess that's so that's your prediction, I guess, and I still

Ben:

mean nothing. No, I think it will mean something. I think that if you have 40 percent that don't think it's legitimate, I think you're going to have at least him. A 10 percent margin or so that are willing to risk jail time over it.

Gene:

Well, it's not a risk at this point. It's a guarantee because the federal government is the one that enforces it. We'll see. Well, ask Enrique Tariq or whatever the hell his name is. Yeah. But even on January 6th, he was in Florida and he gets a, a life sentence for it. Well,

Ben:

not quite, but yes.

Gene:

No, he did. He got, he got a 22 life sentence. And what that means is no possibility of parole for 20 years. Yes. And and he'll be in prison for life. We'll

Ben:

see I I, I guarantee you if vague or Trump get elected, there's gonna be a lot of pardons right off the bat if you

Gene:

have to resort to pardons. Oh, dude,

Ben:

I form of law enforcement. The, the law fair that is taking place is immoral in every way, shape and form. What happened to Paxton is immoral. Yep. This is, this is why we are at the point of let's just dissolve the fucking country. Let's break it up. New York and the Northeast can go their way. California and You know, Eastern Washington and Oregon can go their way greater Idaho and so on can take their chunk parts of New Mexico and Colorado can be theirs.

Gene:

And the same exact podcast laughing at the idea of Alaska rejoining Russia. Well, I just don't

Ben:

think that's going to happen.

Gene:

There's going to be a lot of incentive for it.

Ben:

No, actually, I think. If the U. S. breaks up, man. No, if the U. S. ever breaks up, I can see parts of Canada and Alaska breaking off and becoming a nation. You know, for instance, Ontario really needs out of Canada anyway. So, yeah. Yeah, we,

Gene:

yeah. You're, you're, you're

Ben:

wrong province.

Gene:

Oh, what am I thinking? So you're thinking, Oh, Quebec, Quebec, Quebec needs out of Canada. would have

Ben:

let them keep the currency, they would have.

Gene:

Yeah, that would have been hilarious.

Ben:

I think you're heading for a restart of the troubles in Ireland. I think you're heading for something similar here in the U. S. and possibly Canada. Did you see the stories about Ireland potentially unified?

Gene:

I did. I did. Cause my other co host is Irish, at least partly. Well, so am I. Are you?

Ben:

Really? On my mom's side. My mom's Irish. Yeah. So my dad's side Scottish. My mom's side's Irish. Yeah. Well, at

Gene:

least you've got, I got a little bit

Ben:

of Swedish in there

Gene:

too. Yeah. Well, it explains your your nature quite a bit then. How so? Well, both the Scots and the Irish love to argue and drink. Yeah. And fight. Yes, it goes without saying exactly it's, it's pirate versus a Scots Irish kind of the same thing. Yeah. Really? If you think about it, you know. I've got a whole lot of difference.

Ben:

We founded this country. What do you want from us?

Gene:

Oh, is that, is that how that worked? Okay. Yeah.

Ben:

Actually to a huge extent, and that's why this, that's why the war of Northern Aggression was fought is the Scotch Irish said, yeah, fuck you. Yeah, that's actually on both sides are

Gene:

pretty good at saying, fuck you, everybody. Yeah.

Ben:

In fact, the whole, you know, the reason why there's a St. Andrew's cross and all that. Yeah. It's interesting because in Missouri you had Irish on Irish, right? You had Kelly's Irish brigade that were against the Lincolnites. Cause they saw them as the very similar to the British invaders. Yep. Literally there's even a song about it. And Anyway, yeah, so that's what that that's literally on my mom's side. Like my mom's side was in Missouri and last name Kelly. And there's a lot of things that potentially link, but anyway, sounds pretty Irish. Yeah. And then my dad's side was came. podcast.

Gene:

I don't care. Okay, Mr. Security.

Ben:

Do you think I'd use a real one for that anywhere?

Gene:

Well, I wouldn't if I were you. I

Ben:

don't. You know, spellings and all sorts of things. And I just said that that was on my mom's side, not necessarily her last name. But, you know. Anyway. Yeah. My dad's side is. Scottish and settled in what was then the Spanish Felicianas, AKA modern day, Louisiana. So, yeah, my, my dad's family came here pre American revolution. My mom's family came pre civil war. So,

Gene:

pre American revolution. Yes. From where? What do you mean? Well, where'd they come from? Scotland. They, they settled in New Orleans from Scotland when that was still part of the French territories? Spanish. I thought it was part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Ben:

It was, but it was also the Spanish and at the time, the Spanish Felicianos. So look it up. And they didn't settle in New Orleans, they settled in Northern Louisiana, Alexandria area.

Gene:

So what was the timeline for Spanish versus French? Oh, I'd have to go back and look, man. So who's, who held it first? I assume the Spanish. Well, in New Orleans. If we bought it from the French, the French have to have gotten it from the Spanish then, right? Well,

Ben:

and New Orleans is different than you have to

Gene:

Louisiana territory is much bigger than New Orleans goes all the way up to Minnesota.

Ben:

We should definitely in the podcast.

Gene:

Well, let's call this the after show. So the podcast officially over. This is the after show. You can stop listening, but we're going to talk a little bit longer and do geography, God, history and geography. That's the main topic. So this post.

Ben:

Yeah, especially the, oh, I

Gene:

forgot to mention, by the way, while you're looking that up, I finally got my invitation to blue skies.

Ben:

Okay. So you're going to go join the trans Maoists.

Gene:

Yeah. So, well, Adam told me to go there, so I don't know. He's on there. But it took forever to get the invite. Okay. And why, why is it trans Maoists? I don't know. Nothing about that's

Ben:

what, that's what he says.

Gene:

Is that what he says? Okay. Well, I know nothing about it. All I know is I, somebody told me to apply.

Ben:

So I did. Yeah. Okay. Feliciana Spanish word meaning happy land. Formerly part of the French, Louisiana was settled by the French colonist, da da da when it came under Spanish control during the AM American Revolutionary War.

Gene:

There you go. Ah, okay. All right. So it was French? Yes. Then Spanish. Then Spanish,

Ben:

and then back, back to French.

Gene:

Yes. Got it. Okay. That's a long history.

Ben:

Yeah. There you go. All right, man. I gotta go get some tennis shoes, and we've been talking way too long.

Gene:

Oh, enjoy. Enjoy your new tennis shoes. I gotta find some first. All right. That sounds good. We'll catch you later.

Bye.

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