
Just Two Good Old Boys
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Just Two Good Old Boys
100 Just Two Good Old Boys
What if the United States expanded its borders to include Greenland? Imagine the shift in global power dynamics and energy markets if this icy land, rich in untapped mineral wealth and oil reserves, became part of the American empire. In our latest episode, we navigate the intriguing geopolitics surrounding this hypothetical acquisition. From historical presidential interest to economic incentives for Denmark, we weigh the potential risks and gains of such a bold move. Join us on a journey from the sunny plains of Texas to the frosty landscapes of Greenland, as we explore how global warming and evolving trade routes could strategically position Greenland at the center of a new energy frontier.
We also turn our attention to the strategic value of Panama and the importance of its canal. Could the United States regain control and counter Chinese influence in the region? We examine the potential benefits and controversies of this maneuver, drawing comparisons with past territorial expansions like the acquisition of Alaska. Our discussion also ventures into a wider vision of American influence, considering the implications of extending control over parts of Mexico and Cuba. With a touch of humor, we reflect on the geopolitical chessboard, where the pieces move swiftly, yet unpredictably, in a dance of national interest and international alliances.
Finally, we address pressing domestic issues, from the staggering California wildfires to the history and impact of the ATF. Through anecdotes and insightful commentary, we explore how environmental policies and resource management contribute to these disasters and consider the potential policy shifts on the horizon. With a thought-provoking analysis of political appointments and firearm regulation, we ponder the future of American governance. Whether it's planning a Texas Range Day rendezvous or unraveling the intricacies of geopolitical expansion, this episode promises a compelling look at the current and future landscape of American geopolitics.
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Howdy Ben, how are you?
Speaker 2:today. Oh, Gene, I am back in Texas. I am tired, I am worn out from a long trip Wasn't that long, but it was just a lot going on and looking forward to a nice quiet weekend. It is cold but beautiful here today. Sunny, yeah, sunny 28 degrees this morning when I got out.
Speaker 1:That's on the cold side, that's for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Back from.
Speaker 1:Foggy Bottom huh.
Speaker 2:I am back from Norfolk, yes, yeah, with a little sojourn in DC dc area that's what I said so I'm gonna be going back up there here in a week or two out to dc uh norfolk area down there, okay, yeah, so my.
Speaker 1:Uh. Well, one of our listeners, the my buddy, who used to work down there, now is pretty much just at the pentagon.
Speaker 2:So next time you're up there, let me know and I'll pick you guys up all right, all right, well, we'll figure it all out so, um, I wanted to chat a little today.
Speaker 1:I mean, we usually just do current events, but I want to do a little more of a deep dive into the whole american empire stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you and everybody else are finally coming around to my way of thinking, your way of thinking. All right, hey, I was on this early, you have to admit I, I, I heard what was being said and I went holy shit, this is where we're going oh, yeah, yeah, no, you, the first time you emailed me about this, uh, was last year, right yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, it was before the new year so for sure, man, I thought it was pretty damn funny, but that was about it. I'm thinking it might not be just funny, but it's still gonna be funny. But beyond that, uh, he might be actually able to get some of the shit done yeah, well, uh, you when, when peter zahan comes out and does a video boy zahan when he comes out and does a video on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's some elites going.
Speaker 1:Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck zaygan does videos and when he's told to do videos on? Uh, I think the freedom that zayn has is which mountain he happens to be on when he records the video. Yeah, because there's like all his videos are a hike on a mountain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or wherever he's at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, with his illustrious speaking career the uh, either he or his boyfriend really don't like being indoors well, you know, maybe they just watched broke bag mountain a little too much, I don't know oh, you went there oh boy, what can I say, dude? There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, I don't know, alright.
Speaker 2:So what do you want to know about the American Empire stuff? You want to do a long segment on this and we're going straight into it, so let's talk. What are the questions? How do we want to work this? Because I can tell you my perspective. But yeah, you know well.
Speaker 1:I mean, let's start with the obvious, let's do greenland, because I think there's some pros, some cons, and then there's the procedural stuff. So I kind of want to split it up, each country into three, three categories here, if we could.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we've got more than three categories there, but sure we can start with green so what are the pros? Pros uh mineral resources that have yet to be exploited.
Speaker 1:The denmark does not have the capacity to know what it has, or this just theorized, based on what can has.
Speaker 2:It is theorized, but it's based off of the geology, and American geoscientists, a la oil companies, are extraordinarily good at this. We are the best.
Speaker 1:So has anyone actually scanned it with the?
Speaker 2:There have been geographic there have been geologic surveys and the estimates are that greenland and america combined would have if you just had greenland, the continental us, alaska and greenland you would have the majority of the earth's easy accessible oil reserves hands down it's a dollar gasoline, like it's supposed to be um, maybe, uh, now greenland.
Speaker 2:This gets into some of the issues that actually russia has with russia's oil fields right in the um, the uh, siberian fields, in that once you start production, you kind of got to maintain it, um this. So, uh, let's talk about a potential con here because while, yes, you have that mineral resource, once you start extracting it because of the capital investment, you're not going to turn that off, because turning it off can potentially mean failures of some of the oil wells and stuff like that because of the cold.
Speaker 1:What that does is it permanently shifts the baseline production of the market yeah, well it, oil does an awful lot when it comes to geopolitics because, yes, the strength of the middle east and, to a large extent, russia, is tied directly to the price of oil yes, and if america brings on, we can flood the market at a inexpensive rate, create a better uh living, uh living wage in greenland and change the dynamics.
Speaker 2:First of all, it lowers the overall price of energy globally drastically. It potentially freezes out some competitors in saudi arabia and russia and gives the us tremendous control if we choose to export that, which exporting from greenland to Europe is a lot easier.
Speaker 1:It's a no brainer, yeah it's a total no brainer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, there's several things here that just shift and this is why I think people are underestimating this, like people are joking about Trump making even floating this idea. Trump is not the first president to float the idea that the us should acquire greenland.
Speaker 1:He's the third well, the prime minister of greenland said we're not for sale, but not really up to him because his land is owned by a different country yeah, but but they are also going through the process of saying they want independence from denmark yeah so I think, uh, to throw my two cents in for it.
Speaker 1:For pros, I I totally agree with you. The other thing I just was looking while you were describing it. It also has, uh, a fairly large um, up to this point buried under snow rare earth mineral resources, much like China does.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's where I was going. Next, the rare earths. Greenland has a ton there and you have to remember there's under 60,000 people that live in Greenland.
Speaker 1:This is not a large population and almost all of them are on the coast, so the inner Greenland is virgin territory, much like Alaska was back in the day when Alaska was stolen by the. United States from Russia. Yeah, uh-huh, you mean, purchased Contract was never signed.
Speaker 2:Was the money delivered? Contract was never signed. Was the money delivered?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Somebody leaves money on my front door. I guess it's fine.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, Alright, well, you know, we've got, uh, we've got uh. That's all, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Nothing, anyway, I think. I think it's going to be super easy to get the Greenlanders on board by saying, on the first day of statehood, every Greenlander who was there at the beginning will be legally a millionaire.
Speaker 2:And legally a US citizen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly A US citizen and with seven figures in their bank account. I mean, it's such a small number of people that literally giving each of them a million dollars to support the joining of their island to the United States would be such a no-brainer.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there are several things here, so what is it? 57,000?
Speaker 1:Yeah, $57 billion. That's all it would take. We spend more than that on not just aid to Ukraine, but we spend more than that on researching crazy, bizarre, useless projects in our universities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But let's say we give Denmark 500 billion to say here, here's your GDP, go away. And we give 100 billion in initial investment to Greenland and their infrastructure changes. Everything changes overnight you know, this becomes a big deal.
Speaker 1:Well, there's two things I think. One is if you make every Greenlander a billionaire in US dollars, I suspect most of them under the age of 50 would just leave and move to the United States. That kind of clears the island up even more and then you can just start selling off commercial rights to the land there. And I know for a fact Musk would have a launch pad facility out there, because you would cut the cost of polar launches roughly in half, maybe down by 65%, by launching there.
Speaker 2:Well, there's several trains of thought on that. Most of the launches occur from either the polar region or the equatorial region. Because of cost, right yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's why I said that if you today, if you want to launch a polar orbit polar orbit satellite, we're doing it from california, from the, whatever the military base is up there, which is the, the, the closest large launch site that we have up north. The further north you are, the less corrections you have to spend fuel on in space, the bigger the payload you can bring.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you have other operating costs because of the cold.
Speaker 1:You do have other operating costs, sure, but there's a big difference between the price of land in Alaska, another US territory, and what it's going to be in Greenland. Greenland being closer to Europe, being closer to everything and just being a brand new person Northwest Passage.
Speaker 1:Yep Northwest Passage as well. It's going to. I mean, I would say it is extremely high odds, probably in the 90-plus percentile, that if we get Greenland there will be a large spacex construction terminal there for launches, because it just makes sense. It's less fuel, which means either cheaper or bigger, or both or sure, yeah, so there are multiple things here.
Speaker 2:so, first of all, I'm not convinced that greenland has to become a state for this and this is one of the things I've said is, the American empire is going to be a conglomeration of efforts. It's not just going to be oh, everybody becomes a state.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what they were saying too.
Speaker 2:You're right, and his argument was well, we already have control through this. Yeah, well, we want more control, we want to be able to extract some of the resources, and that's the point I think he's missing because he's sitting there going well, we already control this. Why do we need to have it? Well, because we do, you know.
Speaker 1:Let's just end there you know let's just in there, um, but there's a difference in it. Look, if you're just looking to make money, there probably is very little difference in owning versus controlling.
Speaker 1:If you're looking to actually control, from a military standpoint, you're absolutely better off owning than just controlling because in the end we already have can simply not renew our lease on our bases there and unless we want to invade them, if we want to look like we're actually not an empire, then we would have to close our bases there, kind of like we did in Afghanistan in afghanistan.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a la. Um, this is a la. What happened to, uh, russia with, you know, the bases in ukraine? Uh, same sort of thing. You know, uh, the hurricane. Ukrainian regime came in change said well, we don't want you here anymore. Well, fuck you. This is strategically important to us.
Speaker 1:We're staying here, right, that's what started with crimea and everything else right and this is this is my cheshire cat smile moment is hearing all these people that were so damn gung-ho, uh against, uh, uh, russia beating up poor little old ukraine, that are now fully on board with coming in and taking over canada militarily if we need to.
Speaker 2:It's like whoa whoa, whoa, you're okay with us talking about greenland first. You're just not.
Speaker 1:We're not going to canada, I know, but I'm just saying I'm starting to run into people that were vehemently pro-Ukraine, that are also pro-American imperialism, which I think is hilarious, oh yes absolutely.
Speaker 2:The hypocrisy runs deep and I said when this started if people go back to listen to the first episode, we talked about this on. I said, this is something I would likely be against, because I think that this could be a dangerous step for several liberties and freedoms. Yeah, yeah, well, look, so I think there are. There are a few ways that this goes down. We can flat out acquire greenland. We've already talked about some of the economics of it. I think the economics of it makes hell fuck. We spend a trillion dollars on greenland.
Speaker 1:The return on investment is there exactly absolutely, there's more than a trillion dollars worth of materials to be mined there, for sure and trump is all about.
Speaker 2:He doesn't care about the debt ratio, he cares about how much you're leveraged and sees it as a good buy. He, he will go down that path. Will denmark acquiesce? Well, if denmark doesn't want to acquiesce, you know, with the european, with the european union in fucking collapse, let's be honest, it is being supported in to a large extent by the us right now, and if we say, look, we're going to stop this.
Speaker 2:How about denmark? You leave uh, you leave the european union, and we won't just admit greenland, we will admit denmark to the north american union I? I think that's not likely I don't know, dude I think, what is likely the economic route I can see it's fun dude.
Speaker 1:So the the, I think denmark like. What would tempt denmark, in my opinion, is um, in a lot of ways they're financially set. But but what would tempt Denmark would be a long-term, some sort of a discounted kind of deal saying and any oil that comes for sale from Greenland Denmark will get at a 20% or a 10% or whatever figure out the percent discount for 15 years. That would probably tempt them, because right now, like you said, they don't have the infrastructure to pump out the resources, so they give us Greenland, we actually industrialize it, and then they get oil cheaper than the rest of Europe. Now they would love that. That would be a good deal for them.
Speaker 2:Well, so it's only 3000 kilometers from, and you can probably get it a little closer from Greenland to Denmark.
Speaker 1:It's like 150 miles, not quite I'm being, but I'm being American. Damn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know we we might be able to do an undersea pipeline.
Speaker 1:Oh, so like we bring all our oil into Europe through then now that would be a hell of a deal.
Speaker 2:Yep, exactly, and you know you could do it where hey?
Speaker 1:That'd be like the North Sea pipeline.
Speaker 2:Well, or even if we don't do a pipeline right now, we just do LNG facilities. Lng, you know, works off of cryo and cryo is way easier to do when it's cold, yeah, so yeah. So what I would say is all right, we're going to do LNG, we're going to do tankers and Denmark, you will be the exclusive port of call and you distribute it to the rest of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be hard for them to pass up?
Speaker 2:I think I think so too. Yeah, it would kind of make them piss off the rest of the uk or the eu.
Speaker 1:You know how much the danish hate the norwegians, so that is a strong point of win for them. That would make the norwegians be less, because right now in norway is really the financial powerhouse of europe. They're the only ones that aren't losing money in their economy. The average salary in norway right now is 111 000 converted to us dollars it is it is the richest european country. Why?
Speaker 1:all because outside of outside of switzerland, but sure switzerland's gdp is nothing others okay, sure it's literally no money there it's other people's money, exactly it's russian money that was selling uh well, you know, they're, they're going the uh, they're, they're going the jewish.
Speaker 2:What can I say?
Speaker 1:oh, here we go, there comes the anti-semitism. Thank you when siri puts a yarmulke on you I don't think it's just me okay I, I'm tempted now to switch phone companies to android because, uh, that's just not right, it's like you've been listening to my conversations. All of a sudden it's like oh well, you should clearly look jish oh, anyway, back back to greenland.
Speaker 2:The the point is the distances. We could also have a pipeline to canada when canada becomes a province you know or protect right here, all right.
Speaker 1:So any any other pros other than the ones we mentioned, because we got a lot of countries to go through well, it's a strategically, yes, so militarily.
Speaker 2:There's several items here. One yes, if, if global warming is a thing and the northwest passage actually opens up as a trade route, it could be more significant than the panama canal and greenland is positioned in a place to control that. Military standpoint. It would be important beyond that. Let's not look at that from a missile defense. Let's say, russia has all the hypersonics in the world and they want to fire them at us and attack us. Yeah, well, anyone who's ever flown flown if you've ever flown from Europe or the Middle East home to anywhere in the United States, you go over the pole. Why? It's a shorter distance. So having Alaska on one side, having Greenland on the other, up there, is very strategic from a missile defense standpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, greenland is the closest country to the North Pole, so you can't get a whole lot closer, no, canada's further away. I'm looking at a map right now. Greenland is literally the closest. Now Canada might claim the water that's close to the north pole, but there's no land in canada close to the north pole.
Speaker 2:greenland wins on that one but you get my point so economically and militarily of your point.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to argue for the same point, which is that agreement, greenland I know that's a problem we have on this show is that greenland strategically, militarily, creates the closest military base to russia, uh, that the us has ever had outside of alaska the problem with alaska yeah is that there's nothing in Russia that is strategically important other than the one city that is um, on the on the East coast of Russia.
Speaker 1:but you're really far away. You have to fly over the entirety of Siberia to get to anything else in Russia, whereas going over the North pole from Greenland uh, especially with hypersonics basically means that your travel distance from Greenland to Moscow is not a whole lot longer than your travel distance using intermediate missiles from Poland to Moscow.
Speaker 2:Right, but let's think of non-offensive capacity.
Speaker 2:Let's just think of defensive capacity. If we're thinking defensive capacity and Russia decides to lob something at us, greenland is positioned to be an intercepting area and you know it gives us it would be the vanguard. It would be the first shot at shooting down whatever came at us. Then we could have closer in defenses as well, in, you know, in a layered defense strategy, right, defense in depth. It gives us a lot of that. Now to Zahan and some of these other points. Can we negotiate with Greenland to be able to do that anyway? Probably, but it would be better for us to just own it. We've already talked about it, but it would be better for us to just own it. A lot, we've already talked about it. Crimea downsides are. I think as soon as we take greenland, in whatever capacity we take it, the rest of the world is going to start paying attention and go uh the fuck, america's entering its empire I think you're.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is absolutely the case. Right now, everyone's laughing in america like, oh, what the hell? Yeah, look, it's moron Trump talking about taking over another country. No, the whole Earth's been divided. We're done having countries reparcelled. Yeah, like that's never going to end.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's not. I think it's foolish to think that the borders on a map are going to stay the same.
Speaker 1:Well, most people are, and in Europe that's an even higher percentage. So yeah, Greenland, I think, for pros, you've got both resources and you've got strategic pros. Now, how about cons? What are the cons of Greenland?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest con is geopolitically and how it sets the stage and what opposition it drums up. The other con is this will mean and this is an interesting play for Trump so you know, make America great again, America first, and then we go buy this and we have to have significant investment in Greenland to reap rewards in Greenland to reap rewards. So there's going to be a time period where we sink this money, this effort, this energy into this and critics are going to come out of the woodwork to say, well, you're not doing this at home or you're not doing that at home, and that will be a vulnerability for anyone who tries to take this on right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like there's a reason that Denmark hasn't taken the resources out of greenland well, the cost is not trivial, but they again.
Speaker 2:This is like you think of a company. You've got a mom and pop shop that may have an idea, they may have something here, and here comes this big multinational conglomerate that goes well, you don't have the capital to do that. We do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the difference here yeah, and, and the multinational can just kind of make the government agree to it exactly yeah, so I guess I think I think there's a very, very good chance that we at the very least gain a very strong interest in Greenland. Now, whether we outright control it or not, I think that remains to be seen, but there's a hell of a possibility.
Speaker 1:I think making Denmark the gateway for Greenland oil to Europe would go a damn long way to make everybody think this is a good idea.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, hey, we're going to go exploit these resources. We're going to do this Anything that goes to Europe. Denmark, you're the port of call. Put that in the treaty done.
Speaker 1:The only two countries that would serve a similar purpose from a pipe standpoint would be either norway or the uk. Norway has already got plenty of their own oil and the uk is not directly connected to europe and is also pumping their own oil. So really, denmark is an. It's a natural fit. Even if it wasn't a condition of the sale of greenland like that probably would be the third country to be considered as the gateway for Greenland resources anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you could go Sweden, but yes, Not really, because that's further away. Okay.
Speaker 1:I mean you have to go past Denmark to touch Sweden.
Speaker 2:I mean you're already talkingmark to touch sweden. I mean, you're already talking a multi, uh thousand kilometer trip regardless, and if you're doing it by ship, then it's not really further away. If you're talking about pipelines, this is already going to be like this would be the pipeline to end all pipe.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah I totally think so, but I'm also looking at the undersea maps right now and it actually doesn't look like it's all that deep, because both Europe and Greenland the continental shelves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the continental shelves are kind of high up, so it's fairly shallow waters. There's one trench that I see that, but you kind of jump from Greenland to Iceland and those shelves are pretty high up, and then there's just one little trench that is north of the UK that you have to kind of figure out what to do with, maybe build a bridge there or something above it, and then you're back on absolutely shallow waters in the North Sea.
Speaker 2:And when we're talking shallow waters, we're meaning this isn't the Marianas Trench we're building in. This is a very relative term. It a way shallower than ocean.
Speaker 1:Yes, these are. These are not ocean depth, so it's uh like when I was playing um world war two submarine simulators. You would often, of course, you would often want to get out of that territory you know, I played the silent service as a kid too, I bet you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you ever play that game on?
Speaker 1:service. Is that when you're pretending to be a Nazi enforcer or what?
Speaker 2:No Silent service was the world war two submarine game on NES.
Speaker 1:Oh, was it Okay?
Speaker 2:No, and it was a pretty boring game because you actually had to. You know there wasn't a lot of action, you actually had to sail to places to do stuff. So as a kid it was a hard game. I could see that there was a game. In fact, I am totally going to boot up my retro pie in a little while and play that game now.
Speaker 1:Jesus christ uh, there've been a bunch of submarine games, but we definitely have kind of gone out of the submarine video game popularity as of late. There's a website called SubSimcom which has been around for probably 25 years and they track all submarine gaming stuff. And they track all submarine gaming stuff. Uh, the one that I'm referring to is really silent hunter. It was one of the first games and then they had some higher two, seven hundred three, but the much like you just mentioned.
Speaker 1:The cool part about that game is you actually start off. You're playing a German submarine captain and you start off in in a base in well, in fact, in Denmark, and then you, your job is to sync the transports going between the US and the uk. So you have to go through the northern sea or the the north, but it was atlantic, yeah but you, basically you go through that shallow area at night as quick as you can to get away from that, so you can go into deeper water and hide, if you need to, uh from search planes and whatnot. Um, that was a fun game, I mean. Okay, let's get back to our main topic, otherwise we're going to talk about one freaking country, that whole show. So we talked about strategy. We talked about the pros, we talked about the cons. Any other general comments on Greenland before we move to the next country?
Speaker 2:I think it is the first of several I won't say many, but several and I think it makes sense for it to be the first for all the reasons we outlined. I think it would not be a military intervention, I think it would be treaty, I think it would be something done economically, with economic influence, and that's a win. Now, when we get into panama and mexico, that's almost certainly going to be military intervention all right, so we're done.
Speaker 1:We're done with greenland. I'm pretty much completely in agreement with you on everything that we talked about in greenland. It makes too much sense. Um, I think it could be a great hallmark of the Trump second presidency is the expansion of United States territory, the creation of a gigantic new oil production facility that is built not just to pump oil back down to Houston, but to actually have a refinery there that services Europe initially by ship and ultimately through a pipeline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that what it comes down to is again, this is not a trivial, you know, just throw it out there sort of thing. This is a significant investment. This is decades-long process. This is something that will potentially start under this Trump presidency but will not be realized fully under this president yeah, but if he can take care of the land acquisition, that'll be a hugely meaningful step right.
Speaker 1:Um, but much like alaska, you know there are resources there that have never been tapped 100 years after we bought alaska, so you would expect a similar thing with greenland. I mean, if whatever you spend, you can amortize over 100 years, because there are so many resources that have been buried under snow there that, um, just have never been tapped, you you will have virgin resource territories with very high concentrations, so all right. Well, let's talk about Panama, much smaller country.
Speaker 2:Panama or Mexico? Do you want to go in any specific order or no?
Speaker 1:I'm going in as likelihood personally, Like my personal likelihood.
Speaker 2:Do you want to go in my likelihood or yours?
Speaker 1:Obviously, let's go to Panama.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, I think Mexico is more likely than Panama.
Speaker 1:All right, that's good to panama. All right. Well, I think mexico is more likely than panama.
Speaker 2:All right, that's good to know. So, panama, what, uh? What are the pros of getting panama first?
Speaker 3:of all, I don't think we want panama. I don't think we want it.
Speaker 2:I don't think we want the country of panama at all you don't want a state of panama no, all right, but I think we will. We will control the canal zone. Now that can be under Panamanian rule. But hey, america, basically, is calling the shots. China, the investment that you made with the Belt and Road initiatives of the ports on either side of the Panamanian Canal is gone. Those are ours now, panama, you're playing ball with us. Those are ours now, panama, you're playing ball with us. That is the softest approach.
Speaker 1:That will happen is that China will be kicked out. When you talk about approach, let's talk about pros first, though. I'm just going to not let this just drift, if we can. Okay.
Speaker 2:You know the Panamanian Canal. Panama Canal is very strategically important, both for US military movements and economic movements. You know it connects the Pacific and the Atlantic without having to go around. South.
Speaker 2:America and we built it One of the most expensive and people were making fun of Trump for this. You know he was saying it's one of the most expensive pieces of infrastructure ever built. He's right. Like if you look at the number of lives cost, if you look at the, the actual investment amateurized and updated for inflation and everything else, this was horrendously expensive for the us. Yeah, and panama, when we built it wasn't even a fucking country.
Speaker 1:So right work off you okay, so the the main advantage obviously is control of the canal, which means not only do we have priority in going through it, which you could theoretically buy, but we also theoretically do now, yeah, but also it means that if we, if we take full control of it, we get to decide who doesn't go through it exactly, and that's a key thing.
Speaker 2:yeah, it's not just who, not just having priority over who's going through it, but who is denied. Yeah, and this is something that I think is interesting is that there is a provision in the charter, or the the treaty, that allows for the US to take the Panamanian Canal back based on a certain criteria. I haven't, I've been out, I haven't gotten to go deep into that treaty and look at what is actually said. But even Zahan was pointing out that you know Trump is going to try and maneuver this as them being a bad actor on the treaty and that as a reason to reverse it. And well, they very well may be technically, and if he can do that, then there's your answer on how we're going to do this. The other major pro that I think can't be understated, especially with the passing of Carter recently, recently is totally destroying his presidential legacy oh yeah, yeah, that'd be a good thing, because it sucked exactly.
Speaker 1:I was around during the counter-presidency.
Speaker 2:He was, up until biden, the worst president the united states ever had oh, no, no, no, no, like he's a bad president, but no, no, the worst president the U S ever had has to be Lincoln.
Speaker 1:Hold on, hold on, hold on for the um, for the United States, not the Confederate States. Lincoln did the right thing by winning the war and enslaving those States.
Speaker 2:No, he didn't Anyway. Lincoln, the United.
Speaker 1:States. He absolutely did.
Speaker 2:Lincoln was the worst president we've ever had, and george hw bush uh, or gw, george baby bush is a close probable second and com is pretty damn good under bush did, and I think you're way off on that okay, patriot act. One patriot act. Two military commissions act waterboarding, guantanamo g, watt.
Speaker 1:Civil liberties I have no problem with the shit he does to foreigners, I'm only concerned about well, but a lot of that was directed at us citizens.
Speaker 2:The expansion of the nsa spying programs all under bush we had a lot of jobs anyway, we can quibble over. That's not what we're here to talk about today but the point is carter and biden while they sucked as presidents were not abjectly evil so uh, well, that's a different criteria.
Speaker 1:I I didn't say evil, I said bad, bad for the country, horrible, horrible economies, horrible inflation. Uh, interest rates skyrocketed. I mean it was just. Uh, carter's administration basically took america from the the we are on top of the world of the 60s to the america sucks and everyone's doing drugs. In the 70s it was, it was a very bad time, it was the well, I mean, honestly, it was over 40 years ago at this point, so, cyclically speaking, at that point in time, uh, americans were in a, experiencing one of the first big downturns since world war two. So, like America never had it as bad as they did, and and with until Carter did, until Carter was there, like it was a low point in American history of the 20th century. That was internally caused rather than externally caused, probably since the Great Depression. The Great Depression was certainly an internally caused thing, not externally, although some people, I guess, could argue that too. But you know, I'm not saying World War II counts for that, because that was an external factor that America got dragged into.
Speaker 2:But as far as America fucking itself over, that was to a large extent during Carter, during the Great depression and during biden yeah, so anyway, I I think we are going to control very strategic ship if we, if we're taking this neo-munroe doctrine to its logical conclusion which I think is the entire point here. Okay, if we, if we take a neo-munroe doctor, an American, first, we're going to protect our hemisphere, we're going to exploit our hemisphere. This is what we're going to do for America. This is where we're going.
Speaker 2:So Panama Canal is very strategically important from a military and economic standpoint. Cons are you know, the canal zone is a maintenance nightmare and things. Yeah, it's basically in disrepair. You know the canal zone is a maintenance nightmare and things and it's basically in disrepair and it's also going to be the same geopolitical issue that Greenland is. Yeah, Now the third one that I don't think anyone has talked about.
Speaker 1:Hold on, we're not done with the canal yet, jesus Christ. Okay, yeah, you keep wanting to rush through it. So I agree with the downsides. It's in Disrepair. The original plan basically utilized Fresh water out of the lake that they have, which is draining off the mountains, for the Water movements, at least partly Through the canal.
Speaker 2:For those who don't know, we should probably Describe the canal Right, and for those who don't know, we should probably describe the canal's operations. Okay, go ahead. So the way the canal works is because you're going up and over land and it's not all at sea level. It's not like they dug a trench so it was flat all the way through. You have a series of locks. Where a ship pulls in, the water level is pumped in and raised to move to the next set of locks and to move them up and over and through the canal. So that takes water to do that. Your point is that that was fresh water being used there instead of water from the Pacific or the Atlantic.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, that, and the the lake is much smaller today than it was when the canal was built in.
Speaker 1:A large reason for that is because the canal uses a lot of water yeah, now the population of the country is also grown and that same lake is the only freshwater source they have. So there is a concern here that the bureaucrats would jump in in the United States and say, ok, well, if we now take possession, we can't be using any of that fresh water because it's detrimental to the country. So we have to now redo the canal with pumps of seawater in order to be able to do it on a water neutral basis, just using energy but not actually draining a able to do it on a water-neutral basis, just using energy but not actually draining a lake to do this.
Speaker 2:You know what would be, easier to do, just to blow a new hole straight through? No, no, no, it would be first of all setting up a parallel canal. So if we take control of the canals, one of the first things we need to do is set up a 2050 year project to dig a new canal, and the reason why is ships have gotten way the fuck bigger. They have Then when the canal was designed, so there needs to be some additional capacity done there. But the other thing we could do is literally a desalination plant or two to pump water into the lake and leave it fresh water the way it is.
Speaker 1:Oh, but those take decades to clear the EPA.
Speaker 2:because of the salt water, the EPA is done and especially in territorial areas, the EPA is not going to have.
Speaker 1:So here is the thing. Oh, that's the danger in having it be American territory EPA rules still apply.
Speaker 2:Okay, american territory epa rules still apply. Okay, I think you're going to see a massive reset, shuffling of how the bureaucracy works.
Speaker 2:Maybe not here at home as much but yeah, exploiting our colonies as they were, that's going to be a different scenario. Like I think, this neo-monroe doctrine is a return to colonialism in a lot of ways. So when you think of the European colonial era and Europe going into Africa or other places in Latin America, stripping resources and sending it back, no one really gave a shit about what was going on in the colonies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's France's number one job.
Speaker 2:So I think we're going to see somewhat of a return to that, but we can argue that. So I think there would be some projects and some things that would be necessary to do. Here's the thing you have to remember All of this is actually going to be a huge boon to the American economy, because it's going to be American workers going down and doing it, it's going to be American engineering.
Speaker 1:It's going to be American firms doing it, at least, at the very least American companies that probably will just be importing Chinese labor, but yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll see about that, we'll see.
Speaker 1:So I agree with most of that. The additional question or concern this brings up is, I think, if we took over the canal, I see a fairly fast move by chinese back to nicaragua to build the second canal again so we would have to plan on, if we take over this canal, to effectively take over any country that threatens to build their own canal.
Speaker 2:No, here's what it comes down to. This is the Neo-Monroe Doctrine. So if you go back to the Monroe Doctrine of, okay, Europe and the powers outside of North and South America, y'all stay over there, we'll stay over here, right, Mm-hmm? So we don't have to. I think the act of taking the canal back and kicking China out would be a warning to any other country to prevent that. Number one, number two, what that? The next step then is okay, well, China's just going to sail around South America.
Speaker 1:No, they're not going to do that. It makes no sense for China to do that. It at that point, if we want to exert our muscle in Panama and effectively prevent China from exercising their investments in the canal infrastructure, their most clear reaction is going to be fine, we'll go back to Nicaragua, which they already started on, to build their own canal and we will stop them from doing that. Well, and that's my point, is, if we take over panama, we have to be ready and have support of everyone, or at least a majority of the american population, to have a military action in nicaragua with china, sure, or china sails around south america and this means we have to take part of argentina or chile okay, I see we're going down that road.
Speaker 1:So, essentially, china you're. You're just fucked, yes, stuck over there. Yes, oh, and you can't take the northern package passage because we're gonna, we're gonna bomb you from Greenland. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Greenland waters are an exclusionary zone for Chinese vessels. Dude, I can see this happening.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you just have to keep in mind there is a certain point where you're fucking with the country that has the second most nuclear missiles in the world. Okay, so I don't want biden doing it, I want trump doing it either.
Speaker 2:We don't need to experience actual nuclear war yeah, well, china's population is half what they claim it is that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right, which is good for them, like that's an actual pro. I don't understand how people think that's a bad thing because everyone's talking about oh, they can't support their population. Look at the inversion. They've got, yeah, but their population is half yeah, well, we'll see.
Speaker 1:We'll see what it all comes so I think the canal taking back the canal zone will definitely be seen by the rest of the world and you can expect un resolutions condemning it and all that jazz. Oh yeah, but it'll be seen as an a first reactive or a non-reactive, but an act like a first act of aggression towards an independent country it'll be. The justification for it here is purely economical. So it's not going to be seen the same way as like we're attacking iraq because they invaded another country, we're attacking afghanistan because they're sheltering the people that bombed our supposed buildings, that blew up on their own. So it I think it's to the liberal world. It's going to be a much harder sell to justify a military action for economic reasons oh well, I, I again.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to fall under the treaty and we're going to have an excuse there. But regardless, here's what you have to remember about any UN resolutions to condemn this. If it comes from the General Assembly, it's toothless If it comes from the Security Council. We are a permanent member of the Security Council and have veto power. Yeah, so fuck that.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, yes, and I agree with fuck the UN sentiment very much but also we can just defund the UN and kick them out of New York and say, yeah, we should go have fun. We go there, Definitely a long time ago but I think I am all for the U S withdrawing from the UN, by the way. Well, I mean, if we go this route, we very well may you well.
Speaker 1:I mean, if we go this route, we very well may you gotta remember, the un's really only purpose is post-world war one, to legitimize the winners uh well, it wasn't post-world war one, that was league of nations, it was post-world war two united nations. It's really the same thing. It's uh, really isn't.
Speaker 2:There's a totally different charter and different items and a lot of other crap that this woodrow wilson bora uh, senator bora, ideal of outlawry of war, has fucked us on, and anyone who's read tragedy and hope by carol quigley.
Speaker 1:America from 1776 to 1787 was a different country then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, agreed, yes, Quit agreeing, goddammit. But here's the thing Anyone who's read Tragedy and Hope by Carol Quigley and if you haven't, I recommend you do, because Carol Quigley is the guy who got Bill Clinton to be a Rhodes Scholar, carol Quigley is the guy who got Bill Clinton to be a Rhodes Scholar. Carol Quigley is In that book is the globalist mindset In its entirety. It is a history book in that it goes through the wars and everything else. And why? So? The entire title, tragedy and and hope, is tragedy of war and everything else, the hope of how we can stop this.
Speaker 2:And in this, the basic thesis to to take a 2000 page book and put it down to just a few sentences. Is it really 2000 pages? It is like 1500, some odd pages. It's huge. Um, uh, wow, it's huge.
Speaker 2:But what it comes down to is Carol Quigley wanted globalism to create an interdependence among the nations of the earth so that outright war would be logistically impossible. Right, right. And that's why we have all these proxy wars. That's why we have Vietnam, that's why we have Afghanistan, that's why we have Ukraine today is because outright war between Russia and the US is somewhat unthinkable. I think that is changing. I think the efforts in Ukraine and the frustrations that we've caused Russia are getting Russia to the point where they're like it's thinkable now. It's thinkable now.
Speaker 2:So I think globalism is a failed premise to begin with, and as, especially on the military front, and as we say, okay, if we go this Neo Monroe doctrine and say, okay, we're done with globalism from an economic standpoint, now, we're done with it from a military standpoint, the uses of the first of all, I think the UN has been nothing but a detriment. I don't see the UN as a positive force for the world at all. So I think the UN can go away and or from our perspective, can go away. I think the UN and name will be there. I think Europe will stay part of the UN. I think Russia and China would stay part of the UN. I think the rest of the world may stay part of the UN. I think Russia and China would stay part of the UN. I think the rest of the world may stay part of the UN and, as we exert our control over the Americas, I think that will go away.
Speaker 1:Where do you want to go next? Well, I guess Mexico you want to do.
Speaker 2:Well, we can do Mexico. We can also do the Eastern Pacific. So, whichever one you want to do Mexico, all right. So Mexico, the advantages. Let's bring Mexico into pieces. So if you think of central Mexico, ie around Mexico City, not the Yucatan, not the Baja, not northern Mexico, but central Mexico, central Mexico is what is going to become, the remnants of Mexico. That's going to stay, much like you know, eastern Ukraine is going to stay. Ukraine and western Ukraine and Crimea are now part of Russia and going to be part of Russia russia yeah, you flipped east and west, but yeah, sure anyway you get my point here.
Speaker 2:Um, and you're right, I inverted those in my head I know it's, it's, I do the same thing.
Speaker 1:I have to think about it, to not say it the other way around, because europe is on the wrong side. I mean, that statement has so many different meanings, but compared to Russia, compared to the US, europe is on different sides of the left to right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so pros and taking over parts of Mexico, because I don't think we want all of Mexico, we want parts of Mexico, northern Mexico. You have a shit ton of manufacturing that aligns with the drug manufacturing.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Actual manufacturing. The north. So if you think of what has made China successful in its supply chain activities and how it has become a manufacturing hub of the world, has become a manufacturing hub of the world. The highly skilled labor of the US, the intermediate skilled labor of Canada and the low skilled labor of Northern Mexico can combine to produce something fairly similar.
Speaker 2:So, I think controlling Northern Mexico and getting rid of a lot of the drugs and a lot of the cartels gives us a lot of economic benefits. And if you think of controlling sea lanes, the Yucatan Peninsula is absolutely vital to controlling the Gulf, not to mention tourism. Right, but let's stick to that.
Speaker 1:And the Yucatan is also the most pro-US of different Mexican territories.
Speaker 2:Yes, Northern Mexico is up there too, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe, um, northern mexico is up there too, by the way. Yeah, maybe, but for sure, uh, the sentiment in the yucatan is always an apologetic one. In my experience from going there is always apologetic about the rest of mexico. You know, it's kind of like, ah, those guys are idiots, they, they should, uh, they should know that you know our Northern neighbors are our best friends, I think Mexico city definitely has a independent streak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let them, and they can control the remainder of Mexico. Fine, cool, we'll control the Panama canal, which will be a choke point on one.
Speaker 1:I was thinking of just trading mexico to mexico and getting to yucatan for the us okay, or you know selling california back to them. Fine, here take this yeah, although california apparently is in talks to buy canada now the other way around or other. Well, whichever way, they'd like each other. So much yeah, um seen the praise that the newsome is giving to trudeau and conversely, oh god, yeah, they're, they're.
Speaker 2:People are saying they're clearly in a gay relationship at this point I, I can see it, but anyway and I want to talk about california here in a little bit but so northern mexico. I think trump has already said that. You know, the cartels will be labeled terrorist organizations. I've said it and I'll say it again the GWAT is coming home, so we will exercise military. It will be Iraq, afghanistan, all over again in northern Mexico, all over again in northern mexico. And I think, once we go in and we discover all this shit about the cartels and oh look, they've got money in the dominican, they've got money in cuba, they've got money here, they've got money there we've got to expand to these areas as well. That's what we're going to do and I think it will all zahan thinks that cuba is an extremely likely target for us expansion.
Speaker 2:Yes, he does, which I found hilarious that he wasn't prepared for that, yeah you know, it's like it's, it's some it's been a few, it's been a couple weeks of just edification on my part, because people are like looking at this and starting to back up my analysis in ways you wouldn't expect and it's like, yeah, exactly, cool, um, so it I anyway. I, I can see, first of all, the cuban people. The cuban people hate the regime there. I, I think we could go into Cuba and be seen as liberators, especially the expats in Miami and everywhere else that, if Cuba became a US territory, would literally flood back and probably take to Cuba a huge amount of investment on their own, the Cuban-Americans that are in Florida and Miami area, and so on they're very conservative and they are incredibly entrepreneurial and it would be fantastic for that area and region up the Pandora's Box of lawsuits, because a lot of people that had large properties, factories etc in Cuba were the first ones to flee Cuba for the United States and they've never recanted on their holdings.
Speaker 1:Like, just because the communists came and took my factory doesn't mean it's not my factory anymore. So you're gonna have to deal with all those lawsuits yeah, well, the reality is okay.
Speaker 2:Hey, we got it back for you here.
Speaker 3:You go right, so we could, we could, even, we could even take the nationalized infrastructure.
Speaker 2:This would be a great way around that. Take the nationalized infrastructure of cuba that the communists took and say okay, we're, we're going to find out who owned this. Who's still alive? If they're still alive, they get it. If not, the first generation descendants get it. If not, then it goes up for auction. And then that eliminates a lot of that.
Speaker 1:That's not going to make most Cubans happy, because they're effectively will trade off one dictator for a bunch of little dictators that just came in, that lived their great, great lives in the United States, didn't have to live in Cuba, and all of a sudden, the guy that's been working at this factory for the last 30 years now loses his job because the original owner is coming back 30, more like 50 years coming back and saying and saying, yeah, we're going to bulldoze all this down and we're going to start building something totally different. I think that's just asking for a violent counter-revolution in cuba. You have to come up with a way to compromise between people that still claim rights from 50, 60 years ago, or probably 60, 70 years ago at this point, and people that have lived there for the last 50 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, let's look at northern Mexico, the Yucatan the Dominican.
Speaker 1:What's the downside of northern Mexico.
Speaker 2:Hold on, let's look at all this together, please for a second. That's fine. So let's lump together northern Mexico, the, for a second. That's fine. So let's lump together northern mexico, the yucatan, cuba and the dominican republic.
Speaker 1:I don't know why you want dominican dude.
Speaker 2:It's such a shithole, dominican isn't, haiti is well, fine, but it's the same island yeah, well, we'll build a wall and you know, seriously, the in anyone, any troublemakers in cuba or anywhere else, will just deport them to the haitian side of the island and you know, let the barbecues take care of a new guantanamo. Call it new guantanamo, exactly the whole whatever and we say this in somewhat jest, but really this if you're thinking okay, amer America is going fully imperial and we get our people behind it. I mean dude, it's a possibility here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're going to have to deport all those people from Cuba to somewhere.
Speaker 2:But the reason why you want those islands and you want the Yucatan and you want northern mexico is this gives you full control over the gulf of america right, the gulf of america, I think is a key point here, and well, in trump floating that, yeah, trump floating that you know we're going to rename it to the gulf of america. Well, you know, because it's not mexico first of all, if you want to, to say America, as in the United States we have more of the coastline than Mexico does.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing, but mostly because Texas used to be Mexico.
Speaker 2:Well, hold on. Here's the thing the Gulf of America isn't necessarily a and this is something that got made fun of, but the larger point really effing missed. Made fun of, but the larger point really effing missed. If you, if you're going into this neo monroe doctrine and this american union doctrine, much like eu, and you're saying, look, it's not mexico's, it's not the united states, it's the americas, as in the continental americas, and that is almost an olive branch to the rest of the fucking countries.
Speaker 1:We're going to kick out of the Gulf, but yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:Well, they're going to be consumed in this American Union and we can just ban the word American from use by anybody other than us.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's likely to happen. Yeah, it's not South America anymore. I don't think that's likely to happen it's not South America anymore the pros of getting these territories of northern Mexico, yucatan and the Gulf Islands really comes down to manufacturing capabilities, talent and geopolitical resources drywall or something yep, anyway. And geopolitical resources, drywall or something. Yep, some racist. Anyway, the downside is dealing with the Cuban communists and the cartels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't even think there's communists in Cuba. I think there're just a bunch of beaten down people that are not strong enough to actually overthrow their government, which has not been communist for a long time. It's just, you know, it's a dictatorship. You know, a communist dictatorship. I don't think it's a communist dictatorship dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like there's never been real communism.
Speaker 1:Well, there has in in people's minds, just not in practice and and we've talked about this I think the closest we get to real communism is a kibbutz is any bigger than that and it just falls apart.
Speaker 2:What else we got. I was having a problem with the mute button, so what do you see as the downsides to taking Downsides.
Speaker 1:I think the single biggest one is PR. Obviously it's like sure, you know, russia's been hammering at their neighbor, uh, and, and all the countries in the un and america have been saying that's wrong. And then soon as trump's in america starts hammering their neighbor and it's okay now. So I think that kind of pr is going to be problematic to it.
Speaker 2:I think they care.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a different question. The easy move, I think is the first move, has to be labeling the Mexican cartels and gangs as terrorists and then applying the same terrorist eradication mode thatica's had for the last 40 years. That actually we've been kind of saying is bad, but now it's going to be good.
Speaker 2:I I know again. I have said I don't know that I'm for this.
Speaker 1:I think this is dangerous well, okay, fair enough, but I think, but I do see, that it's a hard argument to call the cartels anything other than terrorists, because terrorism implies certain methods, and the cartels use absolutely the same methods as were used in other countries that we call terrorists, and they're been used by other terrorists that no one's arguing are terrorists, by other terrorists that no one's arguing are terrorists.
Speaker 1:Uh, when you do things like you, massacre people to send a message, that's a terrorist activity. There's no other explanation. It's not a military action, it's, it's a terrorist activity in the same way that, well and this actually kind of leads us into another problem with this if we label the mexican cartels as terrorists, the united states based mafia is going to start getting nervous because that they work together quite a bit and in a lot of ways, they're the distribution network for the Mexican cartels, and so they're going to start worrying about the fact that, wait, are we going to start being labeled domestic terrorists now, and are there going to be new laws passed that allow for military action against domestic terrorists? Yes, and you and I both know where that's going to go. You and I are going to both be on that list? No, very likely, which?
Speaker 2:is part of the reason why I'm against some of this, but go on yeah, well, but if texas becomes a separate country, as it should, yeah which? Is what I posted. Problems go away. I posted uh on twitter just the other day. You know uh time for texas. You know this changes nothing, um, but regardless. So at this point in the game, what about the gulf of texas?
Speaker 2:well, well I like the sound of that uh, yeah, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves right now. So at this point in the game, greenland is some form of us, greenland is some form of US territory, panama is some form of US territory, or the Panama Canal is, and we have 100 miles to each side?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, and right now we have a war on terror style action going on in northern Mexico. The Yucatan is just occupied because, yeah, and we're likely taking the island chains right now, yeah, once that is secured, and canada is getting nervous as all hell at this point and they're going it's got a 25 tariff on everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're.
Speaker 2:They're basically the collapse mode yes, and pierre polly of is prime minister apples I'm sorry, he's eating apples.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you see that video? No, oh, dude, you gotta watch that video. I posted it twice, even, I think, on x. It's a video of him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, it's a video of him being asked idiotic liberal questions by a reporter while he's eating an apple and he doesn't stop eating the apple at all. And so the reporter's like so you know how concerned are you about the fact that your beliefs are very much being aligned with Trump's beliefs and that, you know, canadians oppose Trump and so you're not going to be perceived as a very good Canadian leader and and he's probably sitting there chewing on, you know, taking a bite out of the apple and it's like so who says that? The reporter's like well, there, you know, there there are lots of people that think name one like who's saying that it's just hilarious because he answers every reporter's. So the reporter's questions aren't really questions, they're accusations, and pierre is answering each of those question accusations with a very short, one word question of who? Uh, you know, what are they specifically saying that I'm doing? That is like Trump, like. They're all very short.
Speaker 1:I'll send you the video it was. It was really good. It's probably the best of his videos that I've seen. It's one that he should use as a campaign ad. Of course, in Canadialand, in their political system, people don't actually vote for the prime minister, so there is no need to campaign.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, the other portion of this is then what do we do in the Pacific, and at what point do we approach Canada for a membership in this economic union and or carve off certain provinces?
Speaker 2:I think when you look at our current disposition in the Pacific, there is no doubt that we are going to go further than Guam and that, you know, japan will likely be a member to this union of some form and fashion. I don't think we'll take over Japan, but they're enough of an ally that they will be part of this union. I can see going down to even like singapore and taking everything except the south china sea and saying, china, you're bottled in ours, and at that point we're going to world war three.
Speaker 1:but yeah, that's a guaranteed world war three for sure. Um, I think that's unlikely.
Speaker 2:I I think that this is over the next hundred years, dude.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, I don't know what's going to happen in 100 years, but I think, with dealing with the integration of Greenland, the animosity from the retaking back of the canal and the ongoing scourges and conflicts in Mexico against the cartels are going to be taking 125% of the US focus, and so, if anything, taiwan's position becomes worse if this happens in the US. But we care less. Right we care less.
Speaker 1:Right, we care less about Taiwan at that point, which means China will see an opportunity to jump in with no, or at least minimal, us opposition, and they have a good argument. Well, what the fuck is this? America is expanding left and right. This, literally, was China, until the separatistsatists, you know, claimed that as their own separate country. It's just an island of china. Has been for centuries. So yeah, we're taking it back.
Speaker 1:It's ours okay I mean, that's the thing is. I think that doing what we've been talking about for the last hour makes it absolutely makes america greater. No two ways about that. But it does two things it'll scare the small countries like european countries, and it'll embolden both russia and china, the other superpowers, with military weapons uh, with nuclear weapons, and like large stockpiles of them, not a handful of them like India, to say, well, look, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. And do we really care about Russia finishing up Ukraine and the entirety of Ukraine becoming part of Russia when we're busy dealing with these other issues?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think we do. That's the entire point. That's why I keep referencing the Monroe Doctrine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to let people know that maybe Now I think, Japan will be a red line for us.
Speaker 2:So Taiwan, I think, is a little bit more flexible. I think Japan will be a red line for us. So Taiwan, I think, is a little bit more flexible. I think Japan would be a red line for us. I think Guam and the territories east of Guam are ours Also.
Speaker 1:none of those fall under the Monroe Doctrine. They're not part of the Americas.
Speaker 2:I said this is the neo part dude, yeah.
Speaker 1:Hello, but I think, just to give people a synopsis, the monroe doctrine effectively said don't come here, we are in a protectorate of north and south america, but also don't expect us to come and battle European battles for you. And it was a isolationist type move by the United States in policy. And so what you're, I guess, not really saying, but you're agreeing that it's out there is that we will be much less concerned with skirmishes happening in the rest of the world if our base expands locally. Exactly, yes, yeah, and if we bring canada on board. I think that that's the that, like that's the done deal, like there is no need for the rest of the world at that point, for the united states. We are fully self-sufficient.
Speaker 1:We have more resources than any other country on the planet, um, I mean more than russia and china combined.
Speaker 2:At that point, if we can get canada as well as greenland, well, and here's the thing, I I don't think we're going to go through and annex all of north and south america. I don't don't think we need to Well.
Speaker 1:I think we should start with the North. I mean South is going to be trickier.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, with Maduro and others, and if more Latin American countries will elect Maduros, who will play absolute ball with this, there will not be a need. They will be de facto protectorates.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also keep in mind that a lot of countries populations, not their government, a lot of countries populations are very much just one step above surf class, and so when they see imperialistic actions, they start getting nervous, even if they're're the good of the country. Fair enough.
Speaker 2:The populace doesn't understand that. Yeah Well, regardless, I think we live in exciting times. I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens. I hope we can do this, if we're going to do it and maintain our freedoms, if not expand them. It's going to be interesting to see how we handle franchisement as far as voting and everything else, and what that looks like. So we'll say I think we have the model with the current territory system where they don't really get a vote.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think a lot of people like that, because they also don't pay taxes exactly. So that's the trade-off is if you want to vote, you pay taxes.
Speaker 1:Most people, myself included, given the choice, would be like you know what, I'll take the no taxes yeah and uh like looking at my tax bill, all you gotta do is just fill out a form if you were born on any us territories, or if you're a resident of us territories and you were not born in the united states, and that form effectively says that you are a united states resident, not resident. They have a third word for it it's not citizen or resident, but there's another word that effectively says you're an american. You are protected by the military of the united states. Uh, united states laws are applicable to you. However, taxation isn't so we've spent.
Speaker 2:We hit your target. We spent over an hour on talking about the neo-munro doctrine.
Speaker 3:I think we can talk about this in future episodes a little bit more as more information comes.
Speaker 2:We spent over an hour on talking about the Neo-Monroe Doctrine. I think we can talk about this in future episodes a little bit more as more information comes out. Oh, there'll be new stuff all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I just felt like it was. You talked about it for about five, ten minutes, and then we moved on Because you didn't engage.
Speaker 2:You thought it was laughable. Whatever dude, whatever You're drunk on something, you know, whatever dude, whatever you're, you're drunk on something you know, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and now you're waking up to go. Jesus christ, my podcast co-host is fucking brilliant. Never once had that thought, but uh, I'm sure you've had that plenty of times but well, you know, hey, let's not beat up on darren too much. He's not here to defend him oh hey, darren talked about this topic, uh uh, last not last show, but the one before that we covered this, yeah, but no one's as enthusiastic about it as you, that's for sure I'm not enthusiastic.
Speaker 2:I just see the writing on the fucking wall did you?
Speaker 1:did you listen to? Um unrelenting perchance? Uh, last friday, okay, not this one, yeah, so we opened.
Speaker 2:I was on a plane, I'll, but it's way too many hours yesterday.
Speaker 1:Uh, what else would you rather be doing than listening to me yammering on with somebody about politics?
Speaker 2:um, I did get upgraded to first, nice, yeah, so one of my friends that I was traveling with that works with me now. He's like six, four, you know, big guy and everything. He was stuck in the back in the middle seat and I got upgraded to first. He's like I fucking hate you. I even posted the uh, the, uh, the, the text conversation we had on twitter because it was just funny, because I I was, you know, first in line for boarding group one and there was a problem with my boarding pass and the wooden scanning texted me come on, hurry up. And I'm like I had to close it and refresh it and oh, that's why I got upgraded to first.
Speaker 2:Okay. So it was a funny little moment Okay.
Speaker 1:It was great. So it was a funny little moment. Okay, it was great. So, um what? We started the show off with darren. I was just going to bring it up, and then he jumped in before me with the exact same topic was the fucking californians.
Speaker 1:And so I wanted to bring this up and get your thoughts on it. So, darren and I surprisingly to me at least, uh have a shared opinion of, like you, entitled california fucks, all bitching about how the rest of the country doesn't care about you. Well, maybe there's a reason we don't care and they're all like oh, you're all a bunch of assholes. And and even guys that are like Cernovich, you know, were saying fuck you to other conservatives that were posting and making fun of California fires.
Speaker 2:So fuck him. I mean okay.
Speaker 1:No, it's a mess they got themselves into. It's karma. I posted the word karma probably 50 times yesterday yeah, or you know god.
Speaker 2:I also posted the word sodom about uh dude. That is so where my mind went is this is the modern day, sodom and gomorrah it is a fuck you. One of my favorite memes that I've seen recently is you know, matthew mcconaughey is, uh christ overlooking and I sent fire smoking a you know cigarette going. I set fires yet they're still having gay sex.
Speaker 1:What the hell you know, yeah, if it's mcconaughey, it's, it's definitely not tobacco, it's marijuana. But yeah, I, I and I said that on the, on the, on ron'm like look, if you're living in Sodom and you see other people leaving and you're like, no, I think I think it's fine, it'll be fine. Maybe the problems with you, not the other people, and they're like there's a bunch of Republicans living here. Well, you know what, maybe you're not really a Republican if you still live in California a republican if you still live in california, or who the hell?
Speaker 2:cares about the republicans are the democrats, because they both suck exactly. But here's the thing. The. So my heart goes out to people who are losing their lives and their livelihood and everything that they worked for, regardless of how they got there, because they're not going to get it back. They're not going to get to rebuild the car.
Speaker 1:Someone will.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what here? So I I let me have this statement, then I'll jump to my hope. Yeah, um, it is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy, it's a. It's a comic tragedy, right, it is a. It is a tragedy, it's a. It's a comic tragedy, right, it is a. It is a tragic comedy. And what I mean by that is when you look at the fire department and the leaders there, when you look at all the mismanagement, everything that has led to this, first of all, something like this could happen and it'd be perfectly managed and you could still end up in the same place. But when you have such just bullshit things like the three dykes in charge of the fire department and the statements that they've made and the well, if your husband's in a burning building, he got himself there and he should have to have me to say I agree, it's that same statement, except the whole damn state Exactly.
Speaker 1:Then fuck all y'all.
Speaker 2:Yes exactly, then fuck all y'all. Yes, exactly the area. Look y'all put yourselves here. You screwed this up. Maybe you could have saved it, maybe you couldn't, maybe it would have always gone by ways, but when? You have all this shit. It it's just as an outside observer.
Speaker 1:It's, it's karmic do you know how many people have died so far? Like five or six, seven.
Speaker 2:Seven. All right, that's it Off by one.
Speaker 1:This is less people than die from falling down the stairs on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or hurricanes or anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, dude, forget natural disasters. Just more people than this die on Texas roads every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but all right. But the property damage and the fact that all these houses that burned down on the Pacific Coast Highway will never be rebuilt because of environmental reasons.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe, maybe, but they're also all owned by rich liberals. So do you know how many houses have been damaged so far? No, twelve and a half thousand, that's not that many Exactly. Uh, no, twelve and a half thousand, that's not that many exactly. And the biggest single chunk of them is in the palisades, which is just north of santa monica, on the way to uh, what is that? The what? Is that area called? I'm trying to remember but, it's.
Speaker 1:Well it's. It's literally the canyons where all the rich people live. Okay, so the the the reason that the loss is in the high billions of dollars already is because each of these houses was like 50 million dollars, not because there was 50 million houses burned. Do you know how many californian emergency response people are working on this fire? 17 and a half thousand people. Yeah, yeah, so it's. It's somewhat of it's dark joke, but it is somewhat of a joke. And the other part that I don't understand is why are there four distinct fire groups all happening at the same time? There's a fire burning on the coast, like I said. There's another fire burning up North it's called the Eaton fire, which is in Sherman Oaks area, north Pasadena. There's another fire way on the west side of the valley, the kenneth fire I have no idea what else is there and then there's another one up north called the hearst fire. But how do you end up with four large fires all happening at the same time?
Speaker 2:well, before I answer that, let me just finish my statement here. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:So I think that this actually gives me hope because of the comedy of errors that have taken place that have at least exacerbated this because of the news coverage, because of the way this is going on X and other social media platforms and the amount of ridicule that they are getting. This gives me hope that a lot of Californians may wake up and go the fuck is this? Why are we doing this? No, we're prioritizing a fish, a smelt, over our fire protection and our water. Whether or not it made a difference is irrelevant, but I think you may see a huge pendulum swing in California because of this, and that gives me hope. Also, maybe, maybe.
Speaker 2:I think, when you look at the root cause of a lot of these fires and whether or not it was the root cause, you see homeless people lighting fires right now in LA. You stay warm, huh, stay warm, yes, and everything else, but you see the, you see this arsonist move. I think you're going to see a crackdown on that. I think. I think the, when the finger gets pointed and the blame laid on the homeless, gavin Newsom and DEI, you're going to see a massive pendulum swing.
Speaker 1:Yep, regardless of how bad it was in perspective of other things and where I was going with the fact that there are four large fires in North LA is, it's pretty damn obvious. This isn't a lightning strike, this isn't some weird act of nature thing. This is mismanagement. This is having having, like you mentioned, a large homeless population that, frankly, isn't going to give a shit about starting and leaving a fire going, and the first thing they're going to do if the fire starts going out of control is run away because they don't want to be caught. Um, and so you have this happening in multiple areas at the exact same time, and also the the fact that they have managed to sell off their water supply uh to uh farmland and now no longer have water. Uh, that's pumping at any kind of pressure out of their fire hundreds, and there's just a litany of things that California has done wrong that has led to the moment that we're currently in, and the only people to blame for it are residents of California. Yeah, agreed, california, yeah, agreed. So I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1:Anytime people lose their lives or their belongings, as a human you have to feel a little bit of sadness, but when you start looking at what led to this, you kind of start feeling not quite as bad about what happened, you know, and Darren's like oh, look at all these rich people that no longer have a home to live in. I'm like Darren, you don't really know rich people. Because let me tell you about rich people. They lost one of their homes. They have several others. A lot of them have homes outside of the United States because they love taking off for Europe and then spending a few weeks or months in Europe because not only is it fashionable, but this way they can look internationalistic and their other rich friends see that as a common, shared, beneficial activity is like oh, the United States is just dreadful. It's so nice to go to a nice socialist country like Portugal. You know things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, regardless, I think that the California fires have actually given me some hope that there might be some salvaging of California after this conflagration. But I think that, literally, the burning off of the deadwood, the forced um coming to jesus moment of dealing with what your ideas and your practices have wrought, um, that I think that will see some change. Now there are going to be some people who double down on this and just say, oh, it's global warming. God, we have to protect the environment more.
Speaker 1:If you look at the, the newspapers of record out there, that's all they're pointing at. This proves global warming. Trump has to, at this point, put together a global warming panel, because California is a direct result of global warming.
Speaker 2:global warming panel, because California is a direct result of global warming, uh-huh. So I think the average person and even the average liberal wealthy homeowner whose home burned down and now they're looking at, double, triple, quadruple the cost of replacement, because of environmental changes and everything else, and what they had can't be built anymore. That's going to shift their attitudes dramatically Now. Maybe they'll be so absorbed and double down on their feelings. That is a possibility, right? We see morons do that all the time. Yep.
Speaker 2:But I think there's hope that this may be a wake-up call for a lot of them.
Speaker 1:So we'll see. Yeah, we'll definitely see. My confidence is lower than yours in terms of changing attitudes in California as a result of this. I think it's just going to be more doubling down, more blaming Trump one way or another, and they're already starting to. There's already videos on X and God yeah. So videos on x and god, um yeah. So videos next where they directly point the finger at trump, because he's our new elected president and he hasn't even done anything about these california fires. Why isn't he?
Speaker 2:out there. I've seen those.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, but my god, I went on blue sky yesterday just because I haven't been on for a while. Oh my god, why would you do that to yourself? I get on every down then just to kind of you know troll there that's like getting on grinder every down, then to go troll.
Speaker 2:Why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 1:not done that, but that's an interesting idea that might be fun I have no problem trolling, like you would clearly assume.
Speaker 2:You're missing the joke that I just made. No, I heard the Russian bear.
Speaker 1:And bear is a gay term, which no surprise there, that Ben knows. So yeah, it makes total sense.
Speaker 2:Oh, Jesus Christ, we're going to hell.
Speaker 1:Gene we're going to hell, gene. We're going to hell. I told you about how I was, uh, years ago. That's probably like 10 15 15. Hey, gene, I thought we weren't going to talk about your experimental phase on the podcast so I was in san francisco hanging out with this gay friend of mine and, uh, I, the guy I've known for like 35 years. He was a guy that I used to trade software with, you know, do activities that Darren does today.
Speaker 2:Gene, please tell me, software is not a metaphor here.
Speaker 1:Only in your mind, ben, it's a metaphor. Only in your mind. Everywhere else, software is software, at least you're not saying you're trading hardware.
Speaker 1:No, definitely not trading hardware. So, uh, met up with this dude. Haven't seen him for a while. And then, you know, catching up with stuff, and he's like, hey, let's go. Uh, let's go to a bar that a few of my friends are going to meet and I'll introduce the whole. Clearly, he thinks this is going to be hilarious. Right To bring uh, a bearded dude like me, fat dude, to a gay bar and uh, I'm like yeah okay, cause you know I don't care.
Speaker 1:And so we go to the the bar with them and, holy shit, am I getting hit on. It was uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I'm like, oh my God, is this what it's like to be a hot chick? Because it was annoyingly uncomfortable at the number of guys that are like coming by with stupid small talk and buying me drinks and stuff. Crazy craziness. Man, I don't know you ever been in a position where you felt like a hot chick?
Speaker 1:No no, I'm telling you it's, it's a bit of I felt like a hot man at times.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, feeling like a hot man, you're expected to buy drinks. Yes, I'm saying the other side, you're the one getting the drinks. Okay, so it was a interesting experience. That's all I will say, cause I I just uh, in my normal life never, never have that happen. No one's buying me drinks.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you got to have that experience Gene.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know, but it was weird, that's for sure. Anyway, I think the people in California are going to keep learning more lessons, but I have little hope that they will learn sufficient lessons to actually change behavior. That's the bit where I'm a little more black pill than you are.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I think at some point. But here's the thing If someone doesn't learn, if at some point people just ignore the lessons that are taught to them, there's nothing you can do. Yep, let's talk about the ATF.
Speaker 1:Shall we.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You mean the fact that they've decided to ignore the courts.
Speaker 2:Well, there's that, but also have you watched the TRX Arms series that's been going on? The history of the ATF. I sent it to you.
Speaker 2:You definitely should. Anyone who is interested in how we got here. Trx Arms is on part three of at least four that they're doing on the history of the ATF. That they're doing on the history of the ATF. They cover the initial setup of the ATF and prohibition and how we got where we got with the NFA and everything else. Then they talk about Ruby Ridge and Waco and they go into details on that. That. If you're unfamiliar with the subject, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Like anyone listening to this show is going to be unfamiliar with that subject.
Speaker 2:I think some of our foreign listeners very well might.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay okay, fair enough. We do have 666 American listeners, so we know a lot. Oh, Jesus Christ Anyway.
Speaker 2:I think that I think that the next episode is going to be very interesting because they're going into Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1:Yes, and a lot of that. I will start watching that series. It is very well done.
Speaker 2:It is not deep dives, it's just deep enough that I think it can entice a lot of people to do a lot of research.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic. Do a lot of research, it's so. Speaking of 666, did you see that video of one of the california spokespeople talking in a press conference with an upside down cross necklace?
Speaker 2:uh, no, but not surprising.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've got it you should look through my x posts um. That's one of the ones I I stuck on there.
Speaker 2:It's like going through gene's x posts is like digging through a spam laden email box it's just full of shit to find the right thing, they're all good, everything's good. Look my posts. Rarely are over 100 posts a day.
Speaker 1:There's not that much to go through. It's a curated 100 posts a day maximum limit set of posts. Curated 100 posts a day maximum limits set of posts. But like literally you know I'm joking about Sodom, but kind of joking and not joking and then you got the freaking official government spokespeople walking around with upside-down crosses.
Speaker 2:Which, for those who don't know an upside-down cross, is a mockery of Christianity. It's literally meant to mock. It's literally, the symbolism is literally to mock the crucifixion, crucifixion yeah and uh, I, I.
Speaker 1:It's just I don't know what the hell these people are drinking or smoking or eating or what, but the mentality is insane.
Speaker 2:It's very Californian. Anyway to the ATF. So other than the T-Rex arms thing, we did have Gun Owners of America kind of step in it with the ATF on the pistol brace ruling Yep so Gun Owners of America.
Speaker 2:Someone sent a letter to the ATF asking a question. The ATF basically said well, we've never changed our opinion on the pistol brace ruling. Any anything shorter than the 16 inch barrel with a brace stock, whatever the hell you put on, it, is an SBR and should be registered, even though the courts had vacated that ruling and said, no, you can't do that, even though the courts had vacated that ruling and said, no, you can't do that. Atf. The ATF, from their perspective, is essentially ignoring the court's ruling, which is going to set up a Supreme Court showdown and it will be very interesting to see.
Speaker 2:As we know how the Supreme Court votes.
Speaker 1:We'll see, but you know you also. Barrett, as I've said for the entirety of the time since before she was picked as a nominee, is nothing but a liberal catholic, sure, and for most people, the fact that she's pro-life seemed to be sufficient enough to endorse her, which is stupidity. I agree, I agree, I agree, I know you agree, but I'm just saying this is again, in my mind, one of the worst things Trump did the last time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know he might have some room to correct. That's fine. What we have though that's pretty interesting is you had Boebert introduce a bill to abolish the ATF. You have actually some Democratic co-sponsors on some of this stuff too. What it comes down to is, I think the ATF is absolutely setting themselves up to get fucking nuked, and it's out of arrogance. Did you see the outgoing director of the ATF for his retirement gift? What they gave him? No no.
Speaker 2:They gave him a stylized 80% AR lower in DC, so they violated local laws. Did I lose you, gene? I think we lost gene. Where'd you go, gene? Well, regardless, they gave him an 80% lower. That violated local laws. And the bad part here is that it's just the Hunger Games. It's the arrogance. It's the arrogance of the Capitol. It's the mentality that rules for thee, but not for me, and I think the ATF is really being set up to be taken out. Um, you, you have to remember how the atf came about, and I think the trx arms videos will be helpful to this. I don't think we're going to get brandon herrera as the atf director, but that's okay, because it'd be cool, though, if we did. Well, if we're getting a destruction of the ATF as part of this, I'm all for it. Yeah, and I think there are a few people that Nice of you to come back.
Speaker 1:I'd never left.
Speaker 2:I didn't see your message so I was like Gene, did we lose you, gene? Where'd you go, gene?
Speaker 1:I was just always here.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're talking about?
Speaker 1:Where'd you go, Gene? I was just always here. I don't know what you're talking about. So I think Brandon fully realizes that Brandon's name being floated is a troll, first and foremost, and then secondly, if it's going to be utilized at all. If Trump mentions it by name, it is for the effect of setting crazy high expectations. It is for the effect of setting crazy high expectations so that the liberals will pass through somebody who is less of a Brandon than Brandon is Exactly, but nonetheless somebody that they would have pushed back harder on had Bren's name not been floated. I think he's fully aware of all this, oh yeah, and I don't see anything wrong with that?
Speaker 1:no, and here we're finally seeing trump's negotiating inaction before he even starts. Oh, yes, indeed yeah although I'm still kind of a little confused on why they had um matt gates drop out so early. They could have waited in the month before having him drop out so early.
Speaker 2:They could have waited a month before having him drop out. We'll see. I think the Matt Gates story is not totally done, and if it is, then that was mismanaged. So there are two options with the Matt Gates thing Either we are not seeing something and there's some other play going on, which is possible, or there's not and they fucked up. That's the only two ways about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it seemed like if this would be my general take on anyone who is considered too hot by Congress to approve for a one of the offices that requires congressional approval. I think all those people should immediately be put in by Trump as the interim person for that position. As the interim person for that position, like you imagine if the interim director of the atf was brandon, and he's only going to be in there until congress approves the permanent position how fast do you think congress would approve that position?
Speaker 2:or how fast can brandon tear it down?
Speaker 1:right, right. But I mean they're going to try and limit what the interim guy can do. But either way, this is the biggest accelerator that you can give to Congress. Like, hey, until you approve somebody Brandon's going to be interim guy.
Speaker 2:Here's the jackass I'm going to put in.
Speaker 1:That's what I would do for all these positions.
Speaker 2:Give me some examples and let's talk about that. Some examples of what the assholes you would put in to accelerate for congress and given positions yeah, well, I mean, the brand is obviously the easiest one.
Speaker 1:I I'd have to look up the other names and positions by my name, but I I think there's been a few people floating around and cash patel's already it looks like the official nominee there. I don't think they're going to let them in. I think congress is not going to want cash patel in charge of the uh, the, the secret branches of the government. Um, so I would I you know, if there's pushback on that, I would push either somebody that they would dislike more than cash, or maybe put cash as the interim guy until you come up with somebody that can get approved. I think it's just it, just as a general strategy. I think you take people who don't need congressional approval and you put the most extreme version of that in so that this could be a record fast approval process by Congress for the permanent positions.
Speaker 1:That would be just my general goal to go that route and, frankly, um, if that doesn't motivate congress to act fast, I'm not sure what would, because there's a uh, if they want to string it out and just like mainly the liberals, but there's also some rhinos on this side as well yeah, that would want to just say well, we're not going to prove anybody. We're going to make this administration of trump a lame duck from day one. We're going to prove no positions at all that he wants in there. Now again. Democrats are the minority in both houses right now well, but there are sufficient recess.
Speaker 3:There's sufficient rhinos, yeah, but saying that, but I've heard nobody other than you talk about this.
Speaker 1:I don't think this is something they're Trump can force a recess.
Speaker 2:There's sufficient rhinos? Yeah, but Trump can force a recess.
Speaker 1:I've heard nobody other than you talk about this. I don't think this is something they're considering, but they could, theoretically. But maybe they can't, maybe you don't talk about your nukes right. Maybe, but generally you do. Generally you want to talk about the nukes to get people motivated to actually do things, instead of opposing you. I don't know it's.
Speaker 2:It's a weird one, like because to me, if the recess appointments were like so easy to do, you just do them right away, don't wait for approvals, just do recess, do it, do recess, do it the president shall have the power yeah the president shall have the power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during a recess of the senate by granting commission, which shall expire at the end of the their next session, so he can do a recess appointment no no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:Their next session, which could be less oh, oh, less okay, okay so the senate and trump can play games on recess appointments because it's the session if they go into anyway, uh, but he can also force them to go into recess. So they can play this game back and forth of appointments over and over and over again. And this is an article two, section two, clause three of the constitution, so no one reads that.
Speaker 1:So I think Trump, in this case, maybe he is saving this for a rainy day, kind of like nuclear option thing. But I just rainy day kind of like nuclear option thing, but I just I would have expected to hear more about this uh than just from you. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, you also started hearing about the uh expansion here we go, empire ben's on his high horse.
Speaker 1:Now he's right about everything I am not I.
Speaker 2:I I am very flawed and know what the Empire stuff may not come to fruition but, I think it's being a lot.
Speaker 1:You were the first talking about it.
Speaker 2:But I think, well, I think that there is people are not taking something serious that I think should be taken seriously. That's where we're at, but we'll see where the appointments go. We'll see what happens. I think appointing enough assholes could get people motivated and this not be a bad thing.
Speaker 1:so yeah, yeah, it's, it's. I just, you know, on new year's on the actual midnight I was thinking, you know, I'm so done with 2024. I'm so happy that we're finally done with the elections. We can get off all these just very emotional topics about politics. We can start just focusing on the fact that it's going to be very solid, well-known kind of Trump administration stock markets relaxed, they're not afraid of what Bideniden was going to do. There's not going to be big surprises. It's going to be a nice smooth sailing time now that trump's going to be in. Boy was I wrong on on december 31st right. This year has opened up with a flurry of bangs, literally Like more shit's happened in the first week of this year than the last several years' first weeks for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the meme was going around. Should we be concerned that the first three days of 2025 were Wednesday, thursday, friday? Mm-hmm. As in WTF. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm I I got it.
Speaker 1:I was thinking a drink, yeah, that's uh, it'll be interesting for sure, uh. And then there's all kinds of topics that we haven't even gotten to that we don't have a whole lot of time to spend on, like Zuckerberg coming out for free speech.
Speaker 1:Well, I think Tim and others have nailed it that he's a fair-weather friend and not I wouldn't call him a friend at all, but nonetheless he is making appearances on all kinds of things, including Joe Rogan, where he's talking about how this was not our intent, we went way too far. Unfortunately, he's not claiming personal responsibility. I really think that would have sold it for him much better if he said I made mistakes, I allowed these things to happen and you know, it doesn't matter what people it's like big deal. So take, take a hit, admit the fault, move on. You still own majority of the stock in the company. No one's gonna ever take that away from you. There's no such thing as a a hostile facebook takeover. It can't happen literally. But instead he did the very mealy mouth kind of like well, we made mistakes.
Speaker 1:There were some people that kind of pushed this to an extreme that we originally didn't intend. The government forced our hand, they wanted these things and we just, you know, we just thought well, if the government's telling us this is this Hunter Biden laptop is propaganda from russia, it must be the case because the government's not gonna lie to us. But like dude, that's not admission of guilt, that's like just blaming somebody. And look, even if you trusted the government, the blame is still with you because you shouldn't have trusted the government, am I right?
Speaker 2:I mean no one should trust the government exactly my point.
Speaker 1:So it it's a. Even like you saw the clip of um, uh that that uh, what's the guy's name? The the ex-Special Forces dude does a talk show. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where the we talked about this last time the Vegas Bombers Manifesto got released.
Speaker 1:The guy whose show they were on yeah, even he, having spent the majority of his life working for the us government as special forces unit, uh, and also for the cia. He did both gigs. Um, he says at this stage of my life, I don't trust anything that the government says good for him, yeah, good for him. It's like dude. And then immediately, as I also forwarded to you I don't know if you watched another ex army dude was like oh, this is all made up, this is all bullshit. Oh my god, can you be more of a official spokesman for the machine? Oh my god, it was. It was horrible. But that guy's whole channel is mostly that. It's him just justifying any bad decision the government's making.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know I I think there's a huge okay. So people I work with on a fairly regular basis um. I think there's a big difference between former CIA, nsa and DIA and their attitudes and everything that happens. And anyway, I was dealing with a client who's a former CIA, which we all know what that means, and anyway, just the attitude of well, we're right and you're wrong. There's a narcissism there. That is just epic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends on who, obviously. But I mean, you know, I've got my favorite ex--cia guy. Uh, you watch his videos quite a bit. I've sent you andrew. Um god, what's his last name? Bustamato or something like that yeah burmato, but it starts with a, b yeah, silent service.
Speaker 2:The submarine simulation bustamante.
Speaker 1:Andrew bustamante is the guy's name I. I really think he has a very libertarian minded attitude for a guy that's in his 40s and retired. I mean, he's like I would have expected somebody to be a lot more in line with the official company kind of line, but he's been very critical of a lot of things, Um. But again, you know he's a retired from a, a service in the CIA for, I think, 12 years or something. So he clearly is still in Um but I like, like. I like him as the face of the CIA a lot more.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, okay. So that's all I'm saying. Not all of them are the typical sort of mantra-repeating shills. Okay, so okay no, uh, what else? Any other topics we need to sneak in in the last little bit of the show here, um, and think, if there's anything that I've sent you, do watch that clip of pierre paulie talking about, uh, being interviewed while eating an apple. It is really funny okay, I will.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know, man, I think we've covered a ton and I think it's. I think it's good. I do want to say a thank you to someone, though. So, sir Jimmy, wasn't it, jimmy, right? Yeah, Jimmy of Holobooks.
Speaker 2:Freeholobookscom sent us a donation, so thank you, Jimmy. And he sent a note which was please bring back the old show song or at least upload a copy. Missing singing it, I can karaoke the shit out of it. Well, so I want to do two things here. Gene, let's send me the MP3 and I'll send it to him.
Speaker 1:You already have it, but I can resend it.
Speaker 2:I sent you originally when we made it yeah, yeah, I've got to go find it, but resend it. And then, jimmy, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send it to you, but you gotta send us a version of you singing the karaoke version back. There you go. So there you go, and uh, that'll be a fun thing, and uh, the other thing I wanted to cover is, you know, know everybody uh dude at name Bencom send questions If you want us to talk about something, uh topics, ideas, things like that. More than uh more than happy to uh hear some of your ideas, some're. You know we're at least thinking through topics and not having blind spots. You know y'all may have some that we don't have on our radar yet.
Speaker 1:So that would be my thought. Yeah, I mean, mean, we're always open to feedback, but very few people ever provided me and in fact, I would say most of the people that support us financially don't actually provide any notes. That, yeah, that, which I mean, that's okay, we're fine with that. But I tend to be on the other side of this. Uh, when I, when I, financially support somebody, I tend to utilize that connection channel to also send notes, questions, etc. Shocker, right, exactly. So I'm like, god damn it, talk to me, I'm paying you money, uh, but uh, yeah, most people do what I want don't really do that, do you guys?
Speaker 2:I'm getting home yeah, uh, gene, you are the adult embodiment of carden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me just adjust my yarmulke here I am. Uh, yeah, that you got the reference there, right, the episode where they're all in the future as adults yes, I did okay all right, and yeah, cartman's jewish married to a jew. Yeah well, he is jewish. I mean, he is rabbi cartman which is just fucking hilarious hey don't judge.
Speaker 2:Oh, I am totally judging. I'm right there with siri, oh yeah, you're right there with siri.
Speaker 1:Yeah, goddamn siri.
Speaker 2:All right, guys, let's wrap it up keep, uh, keep expanding uh, get us some more listeners.
Speaker 1:You know, as always we appreciate your money, but we really do want more people sharing the podcast with others they think might enjoy it, because both of us apparently suck at marketing and so the growth of this show has been 100% organic, with us doing zero marketing, so we kind of count on people to spread the word.
Speaker 2:We're off to a pretty good start on our stats for this year, but I gotta say you know the episode uh, what was it?
Speaker 1:44 was our most listened to episode you do remember what episode we're on today, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, we haven't even mentioned it we haven't mentioned it, because what? The hell idiots. So this goes back to the marketing premise we were just talking about literally, literally.
Speaker 1:We should have opened with this this is episode 100, a big round number, and immediately some people that like to be on reddit will point out well, actually this is 101, because you guys released 100 episodes already. Yeah, but one of those was a pure music episode. I'm not counting that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a Christmas card, that doesn't count.
Speaker 1:Actually, you started doing this show on Sir Gene Speaks and you did about 15 episodes before changing the name Again. I'm not counting that, because with this name, with this host, we are in episode 100 officially, so it is a big round number. We are doing literally nothing to celebrate. We probably should do something to celebrate. We've been talking forever about going out, uh, doing some shooting at the range. Literally forever we've been talking about that.
Speaker 2:And, um, at some point here, if we don't do it beforehand, I'm gonna need to make another rabbit run, and when I make a rabbit run it means I drive through your town well, and you know what, if there are any of the listeners or producers out there that are in the texas area and y'all would be up for a range day or something, shoot us a note and let's talk about it and see what we can't figure out yeah, and that's a good point too.
Speaker 1:And uh, you know it's, texas is a big state, but ben smack dab in the middle of it in college station. So, yep, it's not that far from any of the big three cities, the big four cities.
Speaker 2:Really, it's about the same distance all the way around, right uh, two and a half hours, depending on where you're at in the metroplex and dW, about an hour from Houston, about an hour and a half from Austin, two hours from San.
Speaker 1:Antonio area, so pretty centrally located. Yep, good, all right. So with that we're going to wrap her up and we'll see you all next time.
Speaker 2:See you next week, Gene.