8-13-25 - 7am - School AC and Palestine As A State

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Morning, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm annoyed this morning, and it's about the Pewter School District.
Tomorrow is the first day of school for our little ones,
and guess what they're doing. They're gonna let them out
early on Thursday and Friday by two hours because of
high temperatures.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Are you freaking kidding me? Uh dragon? Can you see
the last four digits of his phone number.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Is no.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I cannot okay? Uh nine six wrote during the last
segment the here's what fate obviously voice to text, right, So,
the Pewter Valley School District comes across as the Powter
put er on the text life the Powter the Pewter
School District is playing their part in this theater of

(00:58):
the climate activist. It's the church of the climate activists.
It's not a theater, baby, it's serious business. This is
a religion. This is the first week of school for
our little ones, and they're sending them all home on
Thursday and Friday two hours early because it's too hot. Now,

(01:20):
never mind the moms and the dads that work for
a living and are relying on their kids to be
at school from eight to three, not eight to one.
We welcome to communist Colorado, because I notice you have
a different area code, so I don't know whether you've
moved here from somewhere else or why any number of
reasons why you might have a different area code. But

(01:41):
if you're one of the same people that just left
to talk back, well sucks to be you, doesn't it.
Now I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing at well,
naive a little. This is Colorado. But wait a minute,
there's something actually more serious than the climate change thing here.

(02:05):
Why do we not have schools the air conditioned? Why
what are we spending the money on? There was some
story and again I confess, you know I bit you
about drive by consumers of the news. Well, I admit
that I am too, to a bless your degree, I

(02:27):
hope than some of you, I do am a drive
by consumer of the news because somewhere in my you know,
diet coke. Addle Brain is a story that was on
air sometime this week about how the Denver pub is
either Denver or Aurora, that one of the local school
districts was so excited they were patting themselves on the

(02:50):
back because they were air conditioning some additional schools no,
not all of them, just a few more. There's still
plenty of schools that don't have air conditioning. Now, in
terms of if you buy into the church of the
climate activists that we're going through a period of global warming, well,

(03:11):
then wouldn't you want to make certain that the rug
rats have air conditioned facilities in which to learn, because
you know that if Now, for those of you work
out doors, if your alignment, you're a construction worker, you're
you're one of the guys that works on a highway
construction project, and you're the guy that just stands around

(03:33):
and watches everybody else while they do the work or
the you're the flag guy. I always wanted to be
the guy that holds the flag that says slow or stop.
You know, they've always got an ice chest next to them.
They got a little umbrella on their head, and they
you know, they just turn the sign around from you know,
slow down or whatever. That's that's the job I want,
except it. You know, I don't want to do it

(03:54):
in the wintertime. I don't want to do it in
the summertime. So I just want to do it in
the spring, in the fall. I wonder if I can
get you a part time job doing that. If you
believe in the Churchill the climate activist, and it's getting warmer,
well you think they would want to air condition so
the kids could learn. But no, they don't do that.
They will spend the money on something else.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
I did find this headline from KDVR. Two Denver schools
get AC after voters approved nine hundred seventy five million
dollars bond in twenty twenty four, nine hundred and seventy

(04:33):
five million, nine hundred seventy five million dollars bond, nine
seventy nine hundred and seventy five million, two hundred and
forty million.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And that's how close to a billion, two.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
Hundred and forty million from that bond is being allocated
towards installing air conditioning in twenty nine schools.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
And they've gotten two done, So it would seem wow,
isn't nine hundred and seventy five million dollars close to
a billion dollars? Am I missing something here?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
That's nine seven five and then a large M next
to it, yeah dollars said so yeah, that would be.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, So that's twenty five million away from a billion dollars? Yeah, yeah,
And we're putting air conditioning in twenty school, as you said,
or twenty nine, twenty nine school.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Two hundred and forty of that million, of the nine
hundred and seventy five is allocated for the air conditioning.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And we've done two. Then we've done two, and we
wonder why the road suck. I've been watching this fascinating,
at least to me, it's fascinating because it's an example
of and I've tried to really analyze every every morning
when I drive by. For those of you that travel
the four seventy eastbound to get on northbound the twenty five,

(05:54):
they've had a you know these the traffic the mobile
traffic signs, and it has said it originally said ramp
now at eastbound four seventy when you approach the twenty five,
the ramp splits. It goes southbound toward Castle Rock, it

(06:18):
goes northbound toward Denver, and then it also has another
exit that goes continues on eastbound to E four seventy,
the toll road. Well, there's been one sign way over
to the right, which I assume which is probably going

(06:38):
to make a fool of meat probably tomorrow morning or
whenever that they actually mean the northbound ramp, not the
southbound ramp, but the signs over on the southbound ramp.
And a week ago it said that it was going
to be let me look at my calendar. I just
ship my dates right, Yes, it was going to be Thursday,

(07:01):
August seventh. Ramp closed from ten pm to six am.
Alternate route advised. So in the morning of last Thursday
the seventh, I anticipated that I might have to continue
on to the toll road and then loop back to
get onto the highway, or I could have checked Google Maps,

(07:23):
but I didn't think about it till I got in
the car, so you know, I'm screwed. Then it got
pushed to Friday, October eighth, then it got pushed to
the eleventh. This morning I noticed it's been pushed to tomorrow,
the fourteenth, And then I've tried to think to myself,
what's been going on that would have that. We've not

(07:45):
had any rain or thunderstorms or anything. We did a
little bit last week, but nothing this Week's what's prevented
them from doing it. So whatever little construction they're doing
that's gonna take place between ten pm and six am,
they still haven't done and they keep pushing it off
day after day after day after day. So whatever we
do in Colorado, we can't do it. You know, you

(08:09):
learn like this is true in New Mexico. It's also
true south of the border that minona doesn't mean tomorrow,
minyonna just means not today. Yeah, we're just not going
to do it today. So whatever construction project they have,
they don't mean they're going to do it tomorrow. They're
just not gonna do it today. So the signs are

(08:29):
absolutely worthless because you don't really know what's going on.
That the state continues to bumfuzzle me. It's just unbelievable. Recently,
the G seven Nations made an announcement France. I'll get
to France in a minute, but the G seven nations, France,
the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, among some others, they

(08:52):
made this announcement that they're going to recognize Palestine as
a sovereign state. The Gaza strip. Where are you going
to put at the West Bank? But where where's this
new sovereign state? What land are we going to conquer
to put the so called Palestinian people in their own

(09:15):
country somewhere? Well, that's really kind of a geopolitical shift,
because until recently, the idea that even one, much less
four members the G seven would take that step was
pretty much unthinkable because the long standing policy of non
recognition has been rooted in commitment to the Oslo Accords.

(09:37):
They were signed back in ninety three and ninety five
that created the Palestinian Authority as an interim administration, and
it emphasized that a Palestinian state should emerge only through
direct bilateral negotiations with Israel and not through some sort
of unilateral action. Well, we've kind of let that dissipate

(10:02):
and disappear. That barrier has now been crossed, and it
reveals a really troubling contradiction in the application of both
international law and diplomatic principles. Those same nations refuse to
recognize a country that is self governing. It's a prosperous democracy.

(10:26):
It clearly meets the established legal international law criteria for statehood.
We actually are quite interdependent upon this particular country, and
this particular country is spending billions of dollars to build
a chip plant outside Phoenix, Arizona. In fact, your cars,

(10:51):
your computers, your almost everything electronic device is almost solely
dependent upon this country. This country is under constant threat
by a communist country that's really not very far from it,
thirty forty miles. That's kind of like Key West to Havana. Yeah,

(11:14):
it's right there, you know what I'm talking about. Taiwan,
they're going to so Canada, France, the United Kingdom of
Australia havenized that they will recognize Palestine as a sovereign state,
but they won't recognize Taiwan as you know, a independent, free, thriving,

(11:38):
free market democracy. Why why if you refuse to recognize
Taiwan for what it is? Well, then, by contrast, Palestine
does not presently meet those criteria, and yet here it
is being ushered into recognition largely Why because for any

(12:03):
number of reasons which I may or may not get into,
there is suddenly this turn against Israel, and this action
by at least those four members of the G seven
represents a double standard that is as untenable as it
is transparent. Let's start with international law, because international law

(12:28):
provides us a very clear starting point for evaluating claims
of what ought to be a country, or a group
of people, or a geographical area getting its own nationhood
or statehood. The Montevideo Convention of nineteen thirty three. Yes,

(12:48):
I love history. The Montevideo Convention of nineteen thirty three,
that is the touchstone for these kind of determinations, and
it requires four attributes. So as I go through these
four attributes, I want you to think about either just
the word Palestine, or the word Palestinians or the amorphous

(13:14):
nonexistent Palestine territory. Okay, this is what the Montovideo Convention
of nineteen thirty three defines as a state or a nation,
a defined territory. Palestine doesn't meet that. A permanent population,

(13:38):
it certainly doesn't meet that. An effective government, the Palestinian
Authority and the PLA, not the People's Liberation Army of
communist time this going after Taiwan, but the Palestinian Liberation Authority. No, no,
I don't think that's really an effective In fact, there

(14:01):
are many times I would consider that to be a
terrorist organization. And of course then the final one is
the capacity to conduct foreign relations. Now those are not
suggestions that is really even setting aside the monta Video
Convention in nineteen thirty three, that really is the essence
of what it means to be a state, and I

(14:23):
you know, when I say state, I mean like a
state actor, like a nation state, like the United States
is a nation state. Well, let's go back to Taiwan
for a moment, because Taiwan meets every single requirement of
the Monta Video Convention. It is a very well defined
and stable territory. In fact, it's an island. It's a

(14:45):
very distinct island. The population is twenty three million people,
give or take a few million. It has a fully
functional democratic government. Now it's in turmoil right now because
the the I forget whether it's the dp K or
the KP of one of one of the parties is

(15:06):
really a front for the Chinese Communist Party, and they
do have some representation in their in their government, but
they really do have a fully functioning and robust government.
They have an amazing capacity for international relations. Taiwan has
has been able to secure embassies in many nations across

(15:29):
the world. Even though we have this diplomatic relation that
is uh ambiguity. We don't actually recognize Taiwan, but we
say that we will defend Taiwan and the current Taiwan's

(15:50):
president Lee or Lai I forget which way you pronounce
his name, was going to Peru or Bolivia or somewhere
in South America, And as a courtesy, they almost the
presidents of Taiwan have almost always stopped somewhere in the
United States on their way to another country as a
show of respect for our ambiguous promise that we will

(16:14):
defend them. The rumor is that, even though this trip
is not fully defined yet, the State Department has asked them,
please don't stop in the United States on your way
to South America, because we're in the middle of these
negotiations with China about tariffs and trade policy, and we

(16:35):
don't want to piss off China right now, So would
you please not come. What a friend we are, right,
I mean, what a good friend we are anyway, Taiwan
trades extensively. They have diplomatic missions around the world, They
participate in all sorts of international organizations, and they have

(16:55):
an internal rule of law. They have a free market. Now,
the absence of formal recognition by most other states is
not a reflection of any deficiency on the part of Taiwan,
but it's because of China's coercive diplomacy. If you recognize Taiwan.

(17:16):
We will do business with you. If you recognize Taiwan, well,
we'll we'll we'll, we'll attack you. If you recognize Taiwan,
will it wait? Will we'll hang you by your toenails.
The People's Republic of China uses their economic and political
power to punish any country that formally acknowledges Taiwan, a
reality that those same G seven members freely admit when

(17:40):
they get pressed about it. Yet here they are recognizing
a Palestinian state. He would have to. When you have
to refund our registration for our vehicles, the money that
we spent to go under the state parks, I have
it on one of my vehicles. So do I get
my money back? I did the same thing. I finally

(18:02):
decided to go ahead and do it, because you know
I when I hate bumper stickers and I hate the
stickers you have to put in your windshield. So I
did the same thing. But I'd already bought the annual
pass because my annual pass was due, because I take
the dogs to the Chatfield State Park a lot. Well,
when I went to get my refund for the annual pass,

(18:24):
I had already purchased. You know, mindus what I had paid,
or you know, the net refund. They wouldn't do it.
They'd cut off the refunds. No more refunds. Yeah, so no,
they won't have to refund your money. And if I
could skip, what if I can skip Taiwan and Palestine

(18:45):
for just a moment and go back to the HVAC
story about air conditioning in schools, Dragon, listen to this.
This comes from Goober fifty five sixty six. Mike, we
service HVAC in a number of schools. Getting approval for
repair is nearly impossible. Also, you have to talk about
dads something getting grants for new equipment, but they don't

(19:09):
have the budgets for maintenance. Well, the schools are the
same way. The facility departments aren't given the budgets to
diy the maintenance, to extend life. They can barely get
the filters changed. That sounds about right, doesn't that? I mean, here, okay,
here's here's nine hundred million dollars to go spend you know,
some of that on air conditioning, but we're not going
to budget for any maintenance of the air conditioning.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Yep, that's accurate.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
That's Colorado in a nutshell. That's well, pretty much government
in a nutshell. So we talked. We were talking about
the G seven, France, Great Britain, Australia and Germany all
agreeing that we're going to recognize a Palestinian state. Yet
Palestine doesn't mean any of the any of the accords

(19:52):
that were agreed to originally in the Mina Video Convention
of nineteen thirty three that says you there are four
attributes for a nation state to exist, a defining territory,
a permanent population, and an effective government and the capacity to
conduct formulations. And we went through. You know, Taiwan does
all of those things and Taiwan, you know, I've never

(20:14):
I'd love to visit Taiwan. Sometimes I'd love to go
to Taipei, but I haven't haven't been able to make
that happen yet. Why is it, though, that they would
recognize or start saying that we want to recognize a
Palestinian state because Palestine falls short of the Montevideo standards

(20:38):
in ways that Taiwan simply does not fall short of
those standards. So if the criteria is so clear, why
the disparity in the recognition, Well, it's a political calculus.
It's not it's not. It has nothing to do with
a legal analysis. It's all political because Taiwan's recognition is

(20:59):
withheld of fear of retaliation by China. The G seven
nations value their trade relationships, the investment flows, and the
geopolitical stability that they have with Beijing too much. Dursk
the consequences consequences of open recognition of a thriving democratic country.

(21:21):
Now with Palestine, you have a completely different calculation. It's
a cost freeway, relatively cost freeway to express your frustration
with Israel, especially in wake of these military conflicts that
are as we discussed extensively this week, generate undeserving sympathy

(21:43):
for the Palestinian cause, all the manipulation by the cabal
to make you believe that genocide and starvation and famine
are going on inside the Gaza strip. So what the
G seven has done is more or a political signal
than a legal judgment. But here's the problem. This inversion

(22:06):
of logic, rewarding what is absent and yet punishing what
actually exists, undermines the whole concept of international recognition itself
recognizing what is not yet there, namely a Palestinian state
with unified governance and defying borders that doesn't make it real,

(22:27):
and failing to recognize what does plainly exist Taiwan does
not make advantish. Just because we have this diplomatic ambiguity
with Taiwan doesn't mean is it's so fascinating to me
that we won't. Now Biden did say, in answer to

(22:49):
a question of a press conference one time, would you
come to the defense of Taiwan, And he said something
to the effect of course I would, and I think,
of course, I think we would. And if if China
were to invade Taiwan, Japan and Korea are both under
legal treaties to come to the aid and the defense

(23:12):
of Taiwan, which then brings us into that equation because
we're obligated to Japan and to Korea. Plus I think
we have a moral obligation to Taiwan. Now, if somehow
the G seven believes that somehow it's appropriate to recognize

(23:33):
Palestine so that they can punish Israel for what Israel
is lefully, lawfully and morally doing to defend itself, then
by the G seven's own precedent, it would be even
more appropriate to recognize Taiwan in order to punish China
for their far great graver record of abuses. Because if
you want to talk about genocide and famine, then let's

(23:58):
recognize the thematic repression of the Wigers and other Turkey
Muslims in the in the Xinjiang province. There's mass arbitrary detention.
There's forced labor, there's torture, there's cultural erasure, there's forced sterilization.
There's the suppression, the suppression of the Tibetans and the
Inner Mongolians through you know, through cultural assimilation, assimilations and

(24:23):
trying to wipe them out. There's religious persecution, the Fallen Gong,
the Christians. There's detentions, bans and worships, credible allegations of
organ harvesting, which we've talked about before. So the selective
application of principles really does corrode trust in in in

(24:44):
these international institutions and the rules that governed this international order.
Now you may counter, I don't know anybody in this
audience would, but some people might counter that Palestine's incomplete
sovereignty is the fault of the occupation. You know that
there's some sort of occupation going on. If if this

(25:10):
is an occupation, what's going on in the Gaza Strip.
Then that means that a country can never defend itself
when it's attacked by terrorism. Did we truly occupy Afghanistan? No,
we certainly had a huge presence there, and we didn't
occupy occupied Baghdad other other than the Green Zone, which

(25:33):
really was truly occupied territory of the United States. But
that's just because we took our embassy, which is sovereign
American soil in any country, including Iraq. We just made
it huge. We made it all the size of a
gigantic city, if not larger. It is in fact, you know,

(25:59):
Taiwan is not early under foreign occupation. This government is
not divided between rival factions. Oh, they got political parties
and they have political fights just like we do. But
it's not divided. It is, in fact the kind of stable,
self governing democracy that we ought to be championing. If
recognition we're truly about encouraging good governance and self determination,

(26:22):
Taiwan ought to be first in line. Palestine shouldn't even
be a blip on the line. This inconsistency is really
start when you measure it against the supposed values that
the G seven purports to uphold. Why do we have
a G seven because we want to make certain that

(26:44):
we maintain a rules based international order. We want to
make certain that we recognize sovereignty, that we uphold democratic principles,
the right of a people to determine their own destinies. Well,
Taiwan embodies every one of those principles, not theory, actually
in practice. It has free and fair elections and it

(27:05):
has so for decades. It has an independent judiciary, It
protects individual rights, It contributes meaningfully way, it punches way
beyond its capacity in terms of contributing and contributing to
the global economy. And it's actually a very responsible security

(27:26):
partner in one of the most strategically sensitive regions of
the world, in which we are way far behind in
our commitment to the Indo Pacific region. Now, contrast that
with Palestine. I don't even want to say that it's
even in a phase of a state building process. It's

(27:47):
not even doing that. It itself is hampered by internal division,
external constraints, constraints. I think right now this idea of
recognizing Palestine, or saying that we would recognize a Palestinian state,
is actually more of an attack on Israel than has
anything to do with actual support of Palestine. But here

(28:10):
here's a problem. A premature recognition actually risks entrenching a
divided status quo, and it risks granting diplomatic legitimacy to
a fractured body politic without kind of securing the unity
and sovereignty that true statehood would require. And then you

(28:32):
pile on top of that that you've got the problem
that what we're really missing about the Gods of debate
kind of explains everything wrong with how we discuss foreign
policy and politics in general. And that's the death of nuance.
You know, the UN had a conference on Palestinian statehood,

(28:55):
which is one of the reasons that G seven did
what they did. All these speeches they gave, it was
all a bunch of bull crap. And that conference unfolded
against that fake backdrop of reports about hunger, famine, genocide,
all of that, you know, a humanitarian catastrophe. Now I'm

(29:18):
not minimizing there is suffering in Gaza, I'm not minimizing
that at all. But to put it on the level
of genocide or famine, that's not nuance, that's pure politics.
So the symbolism of some one hundred and twenty five
UN members attending a conference on Palestinian statehood wasn't mistakable.

(29:41):
It's completely disconnected from reality, completely disconnected from reality. Good morning,
Michael and Dragon. This is your favorite juuber Michael, I'm
not understanding what is Palestine and who are the Palestinians?
Never heard of people or that state, I mean the country.

(30:03):
Do you guys have a great humpy umpy It's we
haven't even broached that part yet. But here's what I
think gets lost at all this breathless coverage about a
Palestinian state. For the first time in the history of
the world, all the world's Arab countries have joined unanimously

(30:28):
in demanding the Hamas lay down its weapons, release all
the hostages, and end its rule over Gaza. Twenty two
nations in the Arab League, including countries like Cutter that
have hosted the Hamas leaders and mediated on their behalf,
all endorsed the declaration condemning the October seven attacks and

(30:51):
demanding that Hamas disarm has any sort of condition for
this Palestinian stata. Yet the UN completely blows over that.
And to your point, who are those people and what's
there claim to any land anywhere? If you tell me

(31:11):
the West Bank, I'll ask you show me historically how
that fits in if it's the Gaza Strip one. I
still maintain that when Sharon gave it to the PLA
in two thousand and five, that there was a humongous mistake.
But that's really I mean, it was given to them,

(31:33):
so I guess they can claim that land. But let
us think in Cutter, which hosts Hamas political office, they
signed on to this accord and it wasn't a hastily
drafted statement. It was the product of months of painstaking
work by Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states to

(31:55):
create what they call the conditions for a Palestinian state.
So they've actually stepped in and said, you know, while
the G seven is doing it, because I think the
G seven is turning on Israel, the Arab States are
turning on Hamas and saying, no, if you want any

(32:17):
discussions at all about a so called Palestinian state, nothing's
ever going to happen until Hamas is decimated. Why don't
recall a similar declaration from Arab states. Ever, in the
history of that part of the world, there is a
fundamental shift in the regional dynamics that the recognition crowd

(32:40):
out there screaming for this so called state completely miss
You can read. It's the New York Declaration that the
UN and the G seven are all talking about. Is
this unbelievably naive and this turning in Israel that shows

(33:02):
the Cabal is still a fact