104 Just Two Good Old Boys

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Howdy Ben, how are you?
I'm doing Mojang yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
You know pretty good, although I woke up early today,
which is unusual.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
What's early?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
6am.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
That's early for you.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
And well, especially given that I was watching TV
till 2.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Uh yeah, it's not a good combination, dude.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Couldn't fall asleep, asleep, finally, I'm like fuck
it, I'm getting up okay so what?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
uh, so you just you didn't sleep, or you slept some,
or what well, I guess I sleptfour hours, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Okay, but uh, you know, I would have preferred to
sleep eight yeah I don't know.
It's usually if I wake up atnight or something, I'll just
fall back asleep within a fewminutes.
But I just wasn't, so I endedup watching some youtube.
That didn't help still stayawake.

(01:00):
And then I finally I'm like Iguess I'm getting up, yeah Well
hopefully it means I'll go tosleep earlier today.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, I mean it happens to the best of us, so
it's all good.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, I know, it just happened to me, but I'm pumped.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you thinkyou're the best of us well,
thankfully, I do think can't saythat for a lot of other people
out there, that's for sure thisis true the uh I.

(01:38):
I have to pace myself withreading stuff on X because if
you just fall into that blackhole, well I'm sure it is
addictive.
I'm not going to deny that.
But the stupidity that you runacross is just next level.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Do you have an example for us?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
well, um, I mean, take any comment that doesn't
have an american flag in thebackground.
Uh, about trump's um executiveorders and and you can see right
there, okay, it's uh uh, Ipretty much executive orders
have been exactly what we'vebeen asking for a while right,
exactly, and that's this is thebit that I guess the people that

(02:31):
are suffering from trumpderangement syndrome don't
understand is that he didn'tsneak in there in order to do
what nobody wants done.
He literally is doing what themajority of the country elected
order to do what nobody wantsdone.
He literally is doing what themajority of the country elected
him to do.
Okay, they don't.
They don't get that.
They they think everybodythinks like them and they think

(02:54):
that there's no way that trumppossibly could have been elected
fairly.
He just cheated better than thedemocrats cheated, and that now
that he's in, he's basicallycompletely disregarding what
anyone wants him to do and justdoing totally random evil shit
that a Nazi would do.
I think that's their position.
But every time.

(03:16):
I send you an update on hislatest executive orders.
I get a thumbs up from you, soyou know what does that mean.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
We're apparently Nazi adjacent as far as they're
concerned.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
It's sad man.
It's so sad, Especially now onthe 80th anniversary of the
spring of Poland from Nazis bythe Russians.
And consequently theconcentration camps that were in
Poland.
It's like you know for a factthat these same people that are

(03:55):
hating on Trump would be theones turning their neighbors in
in the 1940s in Germany.
Very likely Same fucking people, man, it's just so.
I don't know.
It's frustrating, is what it is.

(04:15):
I guess in the past I wouldhave said it's weird that
there's so many stupid peopleout there.
I'm beyond that.
Now I understand that theaverage is stupid and only a
small percentage of thepopulation deviates from that to

(04:36):
the right side, but still justthe hook line and sinker that
they've bought into, which makesno rational sense.
I guess it just shows you thatemotion is way stronger than
logic.
Which incidentally is what mymarketing classes have always
said anyway.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Emotion can be stronger than logic if you don't
catch the emotion, uh,immediately.
So essentially, what has tohappen is you have a visceral
emotional reaction to somethingyou need to think logically
pretty quickly about it andrespond logically, or you're

(05:17):
screwed.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
You're then set up to think emotionally I, I think
that well, I, I don't know.
I guess we we don't know.
Until it was it would be tried.
But I think we could solve alot of these issues by having,
like in probably junior highlevel, mandating debate, like an

(05:40):
actual class that teachespeople to debate, and the
important part of that is thatyou are assigned the side that
you will be debating for, ratherthan picking the side that you
actually believe in.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
If you don't learn to think.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah if you don't learn to think and really
strongman your opposition'spositions, then you're very
likely to have emotionallydriven positions that don't
think through of what the otherside's positions actually are or
think of a a horrible strawman's version of the other side.

(06:20):
And then you know, because wehaven't been doing that, we now
have tons of videos of collegestudents, uh, being completely
sold on ideas that clearly theyhaven't thought through, but
neither has anyone they'vespoken to recently, because we

(06:42):
all know how colleges work, uh.
And then, uh, when they'rechallenged by somebody who
actually is reasonable andrational and calm on these ideas
, it always ends the same way itends with them calling the
person a nazi of not knowingwhat they're talking about and
then storming away.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah it, you know it's childish response well,
what do you expect from peoplewho are infantilized as long?
As we do here in this country,you know, we we extend
adolescence far beyond what itshould be late 20s.
Right now, I think, is when itends yeah oh yeah, easily,
because you've got college andeverything else, where mommy and

(07:23):
daddy are still paying thebills and taking care of you and
you know, even if you aresuccessful in college.
Then you know, do you, are yousuccessful in getting a job?
Are you successful in findingsomething that will pay your
bills?

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Hence OnlyFans, onlyfans, youtube lots of things
, things.
Man, it's not just women doingit.
Yeah, fair enough.
I just think only fans paysbetter than youtube.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
But uh, well, that's because sex sells podcasting
totally doesn't pay.
Yeah, it's uh well, it mightstart.
You saw that the Trump pressroom and everything is going to
be.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, there's a lot of people on X that I follow
that have said they're fillingout the paperwork to be out
there, which is very cool.
It looks like my.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Surface Go is dead for some reason.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh, it's weird stuff happened while I was gone,
apparently huh weird.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
So for those who don't know, we're starting the
show a little late because Iwalked upstairs to get on
literally nobody except for me,knows that, because it takes
like anywhere between 4 and 24hours for me to publish it.
So yeah, we need to startposting on X and doing stuff
anyway.
Regardless, the point is, Icame up here and wifi wasn't

(08:52):
working on my laptop and someother things are just being
wonky, so look, but I've beengone for a few days, so there's
that.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Gotcha.
Well, hopefully everything canget back to normal operational
order that's what I would like,that whole thing.
What's up with all the theairline crashes?
We had two in one week uh twoin two days.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, yeah, and it one was not an airline crash.
So you had a passenger linerthat went down over dc that you
uh texted me about and told meabout, which kind of freaked me
out, because my uh, my boss, wasactually flying into dca right
then and uh should have beenlanding right about then and I

(09:39):
was like oh shit, so I had toreach out to him make sure he
was okay and he got diverted toBWI.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
That's what I figured would happen to him.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And then the other one was an air ambulance
transporting a patient.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
I didn't even know that Really Okay, wow, it was a
massive explosion.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
They were going from Philly to, I think, somewhere in
Nebraska, but well, I meanfully loaded, you know jet
crashing.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
No, no, no, I mean the other one In DC.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, that one was too.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Well, yeah, I guess both of them were yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
The American Airlines jet jet, though, had did have
less fuel on board.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
So there's that yeah, it was uh, it was landing uh,
but had more people and and acouple of russians too yeah,
yeah, which was somewhatinteresting.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Um, you know, I I think both were just tragic
accidents that occurred, but wedon't know enough about the
pennsylvania one to really opineother than took off and then
crashed um, and there there's noreal reason why the dc one we

(11:02):
know that, you know, a blackhawk helicopter was in the area
was told to watch out for thispassenger jet uh said he had
visual on the passenger jet.
Um, there's some debate onwhether or not he had visual on
the right jet or a different one.
Yeah, and regardless, the dccrash, that is congested

(11:24):
airspace, but there is no reasonwhy it occurred the way it did.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
No, no.
And of course I think Trump, atleast by, maybe indirectly, is
pointing the finger at trafficcontrol and saying we need to
get better people in there wellhe's.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
He's not necessarily calling out that specific
controller, but what he'shighlighting and I think the the
media is missing this is thatyou know the faa has changed
their requirements to now allowfor basically disabled people to
as a push specifically.

(12:10):
Well, and you know, if someonehas depression, should they be
an air traffic controller, Notwhile they have depression.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Well, but it's all.
This goes all the way down tolike ADHD.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
So if you want somebody that's currently
depressed, working as a CIA spy.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah well, do you want your air traffic controller
to have ADHD, Something that isone of the most stressful jobs
and requires you to focus?

Speaker 2 (12:45):
No, I want them to have.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
It seems like a bad idea.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Yeah, only OCD and cocaine.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, okay, and that's the thing.
Right Is, the drug test wouldprevent them from using such
things.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Well, not if they're prescribed.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Well, that doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
What?
What do you mean?
It doesn't exist.
Of course it does.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
You cannot get a prescription for cocaine Gene If
you tell?
Me.
Your doctor gave you one.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
I'm going to be very interested to find out who that
is.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, most people want things stronger than
cocaine.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
But no, you can get a script for cocaine I don't
believe you can you know it's umwhy?
Why do you think you can't?
Um, because it's a schedule onetheS government literally used
to prescribe it.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Sure, but with it being Schedule I you can't do
that by.
Schedule I, by definition,means there's no medical benefit
.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Just like marijuana, right.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, but marijuana is federally still.
Mm-hmm, yeah, but marijuana isfederally still somewhat
legalized.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
You're dropping out, ben.
I cannot hear you right now.
I don't know if it's yourcomputer or if it's the internet
.
So we get a pause until wefigure out what's going on with
connectivity guys, and thenwe'll be back as soon as that's
done.
Okay, we're back with Benhaving hardware issues.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah, it looks like I'm going to have to buy a
dedicated mini PC for thepodcast.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Well, what do you?
I thought you were already onone of those.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
No, I'm on an old laptop.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Oh, okay, got it.
So the laptop's having issues?
Yeah, apparently, yeah, well,luckily you don't really need
much horsepower to do audio.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Nope, I do not.
I just need Windows for theMotu driver, unfortunately,
otherwise I'd have other thingsI could use.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, the other thing you can do, you know, is get
that microphone that I sent you.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
I don't know that it's fully Linux compatible.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
It probably isn't, but you've got a Mac there.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yes, that my work pays for that.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
I'm not doing the podcast on.
I mean it's Zoom.
You probably already have itinstalled in there, right?

Speaker 1 (15:35):
but it's just.
I don't want any arguments tobe ever made that.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Okay, fair enough, you can also pick up a Mac Mini
for $500 or $599, I guess.
Or can also pick up a Map Minifor $500 or $599,.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I guess, or I can pick up an AMD Ryzen 7 with 16
gigs of RAM and everything elsehere for $250.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
What at Costco?

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Amazon.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Where.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Amazon, oh, amazon.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Oh, okay, yep, Well, well, whatever works, I guess,
just kind of keep your mouthclose to the microphone, because
you can't hear yourself nowyeah, that's true, all right
cool anyway so you've beenwatching community I have.
I'm on season three yeah, whichis good, and I just got to
season three, so you're a littletiny bit ahead of me now.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I'll probably slow down as I start to read
more again, but sure.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, so what do you think so far?

Speaker 1 (16:33):
It's gotten way better.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
I told you, first season is really just setting
things up.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Right, but second season and even into the third
season, they even referencedDoctor who directly.
Lots of things Like thepaintball episodes.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
It nerds out?

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yes, very much so.
And Annie has gotten way hotter.
You know, speaking as atelevision producer, of course.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yes, yes.
Well, you know what they saidin season one we don't like to
sexualize Annie because she'syoung young.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, well, she's getting older yeah, she's 19 now
easy gene.
Pick your uh, pick your tongueup off the floor uh-huh no, I
I've always liked the thatcharacter.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Uh, I like the actress in general, but that
character is obviously is astereotype, right, it's like no
actual persons like that.
But I will say that extremelysuccessful gamer girls that are
on YouTube and Twitch havefigured out that that character

(17:45):
works very well.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
It's the sort of naive hot girl.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, it's definitely something.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, so I think I think you will enjoy the rest of
the seasons.
Like every other show out there, the final season is probably
the worst.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
That's disappointing.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
I think I've yet to see a show where the final
season didn't skew down in termsof quality, including
Battlestar Galactica,incidentally, which we're
talking about yesterday greatshow.
They did an awesome job to oneof the few rerun or re launches
that did better than theoriginal.
Um, but there again I I feellike the final season was worse

(18:40):
than the preceding seasons well,the ending of Battlestar
Galactica was just notsatisfying.
Yeah, it felt like they had notactually gotten to where they
were planning for this entirefive year journey.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
No, they were not.
I think they assumed that theywould be able to continue and
anyway, lots of things.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, yep, um so, uh, let's see what else.
Uh, oh, we were talking aboutTrump, I think, when your audio
started hiccuping uh, when mywife I dropped out again, that's
what it was.
Oh, it was wifi Okay.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, yeah.
And then now I'm having audioissues to boot, so your your
your wi-fi dropped, causing theheadphones to not work.
That's bizarre no idea why theheadphones stopped working, but
when zoom came back up I was notgetting audio out of zoom to my
headphones that is nuts yeah,well, it's an old computer, but

(19:47):
you know hey yeah, yeah, I getit.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
Uh, so let me, let me scroll back and see what
executive orders uh that weregood trump was doing well, the
firing of uh, the j6, you knowattorneys is a good thing,
especially if they're notreplaced.
Yeah, that's right, that wasone of the last ones.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
And FBI agents.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, basically, people that
were taking advantage of theirpositions to achieve political
goals, which, ironically, is, ofcourse, what Trump's being
accused of doing by firing them.
Yeah, indeed, when you'refixing the problem, it's not the

(20:36):
same as having the problem.
I think it's a good thing.
Um, I, uh, I hope that uh cashgets in as well as tulsi in
there, because I think both ofthose guys this is the, this is
the bit that.

(20:56):
Tell me if I'm wrong about this.
I'm probably not, though.
Uh, I feel like when thedemocrats or republicans, but in
this particular instance thedemocrats go overboard on trying
to bash the person, that'sbeing confirmed, and then

(21:17):
they're confirmed that all allthose three days of bashing did
is make the person more hardline to be against the people
that were bashing him.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, in their views Agreed.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Like it doesn't.
It doesn't help the cause.
If, if you're a Democrat andyou're going to be confirming
Chelsea or Chelsea of Tulsi,right, I would think, as an
intelligent democrat, what youwould want to be doing isn't
badgering her about uh, hersupport of um snowden which is

(21:57):
what they were doing but insteadI would be reminding her about
all the things that she wasfighting for as a democrat that
she probably still believes andyou hope she brings into this
administration.
That's what I would be doing ifI was democrat.
Why aren't they doing that?
Does that make sense?

(22:18):
It does.
It's like look you're, you'vegot a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity here.
You were literally on the otherside of the aisle four years
ago and now you're going to bepart of this administration.
You have an opportunity tobring centrism or even
democratic values into the TrumpWhite House, and I would be

(22:43):
trying to make sure that that'swhat you do, and instead they're
trying to turn her into ahardline conservative.
I don't get it like.
Who does that freaking benefit?
Not them, not the senators it'splaying to their base.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's really trying to say, hey, we're on your side,
we're going down this road.
We're fighting for the thingsyou want us to fight for yeah,
or like that.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
There was uh with cash.
I was watching yesterday wherethey're badgering him about his
statements.
Um, I guess on breitbart orsomewhere he was being
interviewed and they wereshowing video of the police
escorting people into thebuilding and then they're

(23:35):
badgering him about how, like,so you thought this was a good
thing that people were going in.
You thought you know these,these people that are violating
laws.
They're breaking laws, wereconvicted of violating laws,
that they that they did nothingwrong and you're supposed to be

(23:55):
the head of the fbi.
Well, no, no policeman's goingto trust you.
And then, immediately after that, the, the next Republican
senator enters into the recordsignatures of 312,000 police
people that are supporting Cash.

(24:17):
It's like, okay, what was thepoint of highlighting the stuff
that he is uh, clearly just anormal Republican on and and
trying to badger him and saythat, like, essentially, what
the argument Democrats weremaking is being a Republican

(24:38):
disqualifies you from serving inthe office of the head of the
FBI.
That was literally theirargument.
Mainstream republican thoughtthat would disqualify him.
It's crazy, I just.
I mean, I guess I should behappy in a?

(25:00):
Uh, in a sort of a what's thatGerman word, schadenfreude?

Speaker 1 (25:09):
That one.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
I should be happy, in the Schadenfreude way, that
these guys are digging a deeperhole for themselves, and only
the extreme left, crazy lunatics, are going to be the ones that
are nodding their heads andsaying, yeah, take that.
But everybody else has got tosee this for what it is.

(25:31):
At the very least, evenmoderate Democrats are going to
be going well, yeah, I mean, theidea that somebody is
disqualified by having a partyaffiliation would disqualify the
person making that statement aswell.
It's insane.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Well, it's not just that, though.
They're going after cash andRFK Jr hard and heavy over
previous life things andprevious statements, previous
statements that, to me, are justpar for the course.
So, for instance, on RFK someof the statements around
vaccines and questioning vaccineefficacy.

(26:15):
You know that.
And he says I believe thatvaccines are a good thing, with
the caveat of they should betested and made sure that
everything is right and so on,and cash his statements around.
You know um the need for thefbi to be dismantled.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
They're hitting him hard on that, but I mean, my god
, we've seen the evidence ofthis, yeah well, and again, how
is this a bad or controversialstatement to say that we ought
to have more reliable vaccines,to have better quality vaccines,

(26:53):
to have better tested vaccinesLike none of that should be
controversial.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Well, we should have vaccines that are tested period
right Vaccines currently do notgo through double-blind placebo
testing because it's consideredunethical.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Well, yes, I mean, we do do that in Africa, but not
for US consumption, but it'sregardless.
It just seems like hispositions are not at all extreme
.
He's not saying ban allvaccines and make them

(27:30):
unavailable, while, as Bidendefinitely.
He's also definitely saying, youknow, vaccine should not be
mandatory, which I think you andI both agree with yeah, but
which I was going to contrastwith biden, who took away my uh.
What are they called the?

(27:51):
Uh, the?
What?
Anti-clonal antibodies orsomething like that?
What are they?
Called monoclonal antibodies.
Yeah who?
Literally I was supposed to goin to get those when I had the
COVID, had the appointmentscheduled by the doctor and
everything, and I got a callthat morning saying your

(28:12):
appointment's been canceled dueto presidential executive order,
Because Biden decided thateveryone should be masking
instead.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
And taking the vaccine.
I just I do not understand orget how we think a president has
a right to dictate what medicalprocedures an individual can or
cannot have mm-hmm yep, are youfree?
Do you own your body?
No, obviously not but if you do, then this is what a man's only

(28:56):
women on their bodies, not men.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Okay, did you miss that part of your training?

Speaker 1 (29:06):
by the state training I don't have any training by
the state uh well, your time incollege, man, that's state
training my time in college, Ithink, is a little bit different
than uh most people's think isa little bit different than, uh,

(29:28):
most people's and oh, that'sright, you were 14 at the time.
I forgot I had a veryanti-state um uh upbringing, so
oh, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, talk to your mom about that all the time god,
oh, why did I introduce y'all?
I was shocked when you did that.
Frankly, You'd already known mefor a while at that point.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you know.
So the demolishment of the FBI,the rolling back of some of
this DOJ expansion that occurredunder Biden all good things, I
think RFK Jr and Cash or Muskets.
You know we got Hegseth in, butyou know, that's one Cool.

(30:16):
We need a couple more and Ithink the Trump base needs those
wins and if we don't get it,it's gonna be pretty, pretty
interesting.
One of the things that I don'tknow if you saw the, did you see
the post on X that someleftists had done?
It was a cartoon sketch ofTrump getting shot through the

(30:38):
head at Pennsylvania instead ofthrough the year and it said
make assassinations great again.
No.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
I didn't.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Did it get reported?
Well, there have been peoplesaying hey, fbi and everybody,
why aren't you?
Investigating this yeah.
Now one of the things I wouldsay is here's the deal, free
speech.
Yeah, you have the right to saythat, absolutely.
You have the right to me if Isay, gene, go do X, y, z and.

(31:10):
I don't pay you to do it, Ijust say you should go do X, y,
z.
That's free speech, that is notsomething that should be any
issue here.
Yeah, we're not in the UK yeahwe're not in the uk right but
you might want to go knock onthe door and say, hey, you

(31:31):
posted this.
Do you have any plans, you know?

Speaker 2 (31:32):
and they say no, and whatever else then you probably
let it go yeah, you got to checktheir comedian's license.
You know, are they a licensedcomedian to make jokes like that
or not?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
you're funny there's no such thing as a licensed
comedian, nor should there bewell, I I'm glad you still think
so I, I, I do, I do, I believein free speech yeah I believe in
it as an.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Oh, I get a I get a principle I bought you a hat.
Oh what's the hat?
It says something about freespeech in it.
What does it say?
I don't have it in front of me,but next time I see you I got
to give it to you.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
We've got.
We both have a.
I've got a box in my truck.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
I know right At this point it literally is a box.
I've got crap to give to Ben.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah and crap, I owe you money for yeah, it's uh.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Uh.
I know you're not usually abeanie wearing guy, but uh, I
just thought it was just toofunny to pass up hey, when it's
cold out, I wear and it was coldout in texas this year.
Once again, I'm hoping thiswill be the last time.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
I don't know that that's over yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
I'm hoping this will be the last time.
I don't know that that's over.
Yeah, I'm hoping it is becauseI don't like the cold weather
man.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Well, you know, your snakes don't like the cold
weather as well.
None of us like the coldweather.
Yes, snakes included.
None of us Southerners like thecold weather, that's for sure,
and my snakes are definitely ussoutherners like the cold
weather, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
And my snakes are definitely southerners uh,
they're.
They're both from southeastasia, quite a bit further south
than we are right now, in factsoutheast asia.
You've got chinese snakes yeah,I got Chinese spies living in

(33:25):
my house.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Well, Vietnamese at least.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, and then the other one's probably more like
from India, but yeah, yeah, thereticulated pythons are, I think
, predominantly Indian.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Or they eat monkeys we need to talk about the
deportations too.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so that'shappening.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
At a very rapid pace.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
There's another good confirmation.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, Did you see that the Brazilians tried to, or
Colombians maybe?

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Colombians, Colombians that's right.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
The Colombians tried to say, oh, we're not going to
take them back.
You can't do this.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
That was hilarious man.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
And Trump said, okay, 25% tariffs, and if you keep it
up it'll go up to 50.
And boom, what do you know?

Speaker 2 (34:19):
An hour and 20 minutes later, that position was
reversed and he was offered thepresidential plane to come pick
people up.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
You know, even if you don't like or agree with Trump
on some of this, you have toadmit results.
Yeah results.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, well, he still actually is.
Uh just yesterday talked about,uh, how we're.
We're probably likely to seeboth mexico and canada with a 25
tariff uh, yeah, I, I can, Ican see it and I think the
canadians are.
They can't believe this ishappening because they're not

(35:05):
like, they were not prepared forthis at all.
And the canadian I don't thinkhe's the actual prime minister
yet, but if he's the likelyprime minister, the polio guy,
uh, you know.
His explanation is like well,of course we have a deficit with
the united States.
We sell them cheap oil.

(35:25):
We wish we didn't, we wish wecould like refine it here and
not sell it to the US.
But because the liberalpolicies in Canada we have no
refineries, so we have to sellit to the US.
We have no choice.
But that also skews the tradeimbalance right.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, the trade deficit.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, which I think Trump is using to his advantage,
because it's really not a bigdeal to have a trade imbalance.
There is no magic law ineconomics that says you have to
sell as many goods to a countryas you buy from a country.
If someone's got cheap laborand you can use that cheap labor

(36:12):
and then sell goods to othercountries, that's actually a
better use of your money thanselling more goods to a country
that has cheap labor and can'tafford to buy much from you
labor.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
I can't afford to buy much from you.
Well, I mean, but if you don'thave labor in your country
producing goods and if you dohave a trade imbalance, that's
wealth leaving your nation.
So I don't know that.
I fully agree with that.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
It can be.
It doesn't have to be, but yes,it can be.
But utilizing cheap resourcesand cheap production facilities
as long as the companies areactually owned by the United
States.
Even if you're not producingthings, if your country owns the

(36:58):
stock in the companies that areusing cheap labor, then you're
benefiting as a stock owner atthat point, without having to
produce anything yourself.
Okay, I think owning resourcesis important, but I've never

(37:21):
really been a fan of using ourresources.
First, my position on oil andeverything else is we should
absolutely, you know, exploremore territory and new methods
of drilling oil.
But there's nothing wrong withusing cheaper production of oil

(37:43):
facilities elsewhere, as long asyou're doing it through a us
owned company, like when we gotinto iraq and took over all
their oil wells.
I mean, I know I personallywouldn't have given the british
any oil wells, but whatever, butat least the ones that were
given to us companies.

(38:04):
That was extremely cheap oilthat all of a sudden we were
able to get and that wasreflected in the earnings of the
oil industry well, I?

Speaker 1 (38:16):
I don't think we exploited the oil from iraq or
afghanistan, ir, iraq being themajor oil producer, afghanistan
being the poppy producer, but Idon't think we exploited those
countries in any real way.
You know, had we gone in therelike the Romans or anyone else,

(38:37):
we could have said, okay, thisis ours now, your rare earth,
minerals, everything are ours.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Instead, we've allowed the Chinese to go into
Afghanistan, for example yeah,and, and I think that we should
have had policies more in placethat forbade direct trade with
anybody else while we'reoccupying.
That would be the more commonway to occupy a country not that
we should have been occupyinghim, but since we were occupying

(39:04):
him, let's not be stupid aboutit well I?

Speaker 1 (39:10):
I think we shouldn't have been occupying them.
I think we should have donelots of things, but regardless
the.
The point is, you know, we wehave this oil, we have this uh
multi-trillion dollar spend thatwe've done to liberate or do
whatever you want to say tothese countries and, as a result

(39:32):
, we uh should probably recoversome of that revenue yeah yeah
well dude.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
Remember we were shipping pallets of us hundred
dollar bills to iraq at the sametime and afghanistan, uh,
because that's what?
How?
We were buying the localwarlords off.
So we were effectively payingduring while we were occupying,
we were also paying the local um, and depends how nice you want

(40:05):
to be, so either the localpoliticians or or the local
terrorist cells in that part ofthe world.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
That's one in the same yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
That's why I said depending on how, uh how you
want to spin it.
Um, it sounds like trump isalso I heard some comments from
him is interested in pulling outof Syria.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Okay, which I?

Speaker 2 (40:34):
think both you and I predicted.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
So well, now I've heard him actually say that.
I don't think we're activelydoing it yet, but we're probably
going to soon.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
I think we've seen a lot of movement across the world
in what the USs is and isn'tgoing to do.
I think we've seen thedefunding of the who that
pulling back yeah made bankruptthe who, I think the pausing of
the majority of foreign aid,with a handful of exceptions
that I don't know that.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
I agree with the exceptions, but yeah, that is
causing massive impact I dondon't either, but I think that
he was smart in having both theexceptions be right next to each
other physically.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
And the exceptions being Israel and Egypt.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, yeah, because if it would have been just
Israel, that just kind of youknow it cements more of the
hatred for America that alreadyexists.
You know it cements more of thehatred for America that already
exists.
But doing it with Egypt andIsrael it's kind of like, look,
we're pumping money into an areafor stability's sake and,

(41:44):
frankly, egypt you better startstepping up.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Well, and it's also in recognition of the current
peace talks and everythingthat's happening there.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
And I say, peace talks in quotes, but sure.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
What would you call them?
I mean, you can call them that,but nothing's going to come out
of it.
Okay.
There's literally thousands ofyears of hatred there, so it
ain't going to get fixed.
It's always been a tinderbox.
It's always going to be atinderbox.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Okay, we'll see.
I think the Abraham Accords area good step.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Totally agree.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
But remember there's as much reason for Saudi Arabia
doing that, because of theirhatred of Iran, in fact, more so
than their love for Israel ohthat I don't think anyone's
under uh any illusions that,yeah, saudi Arabia likes Israel,

(42:46):
but I think that you know, whenyou look at the Gulf nations,
when you look at the Gulfnations, when you look at Saudi
Arabia, qatar and Dubai, youhave all three Gulf nations
really trying to go through andmodernize their, modernize their

(43:07):
economies and move away fromjust an oil based economy.
You have Dubai setting uptourist destination for
Europeans.
You have Qatar trying to do thesame thing.
You have Qatar Airlines andEmirates, which are two of the

(43:27):
top airlines in the world thatyou know they're competing.
Then suddenly saudi arabia islike well, we're gonna build our
new king solomon airport andwe're gonna do the same thing do
we really need three majorinternational hubs in that area?

Speaker 2 (43:44):
no, but that's what they're doing uh, yeah, well, I
I don't see a reason why,frankly, we have more hubs than
that just in our country.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Uh right, but the way these airlines work is very
different than our domesticairlines and geographically I
don't know that we would havethis size international hubs
that close together New York,Boston, I do believe Dubai and
Doha are closer new york andboston.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yep it'd be, well, either way, they got plenty of
money, let's say you might aswell use it for something.
And and I think the pointyou're making on diversification
is something you need to keepin mind when trump announces a
500 billion dollar investment bythe Saudis into the United

(44:37):
States, what does that actuallymean?
Well, it doesn't mean thatthey're doing us a favor.
It means that they are nowseeing a little more stability
in the United States with Trumpthan they did without Trump and
are willing to shift investmentsfurther into the United States,
which they need to do anyway aspart of their diversification

(45:00):
strategy.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
And what ways do you see that as a positive thing for
us, though?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
For us.
Well, trump is definitelyseeing it as a big positive for
us.
I mean, it's basically productpurchases.
It's product purchases Well,it's a combination, right.
So it's investment in companiesthat make products which is
increasing the activity on thestock market, which,

(45:31):
theoretically, in aggregate,moves stocks up, but it's also
part of it is the companies thatare being invested into are
going to be spending that moneyon something, so that's
increasing the amount ofspending happening, which should
move the economy in the rightdirection as well.
So I don't think it's anegative.

(45:53):
I do think it's a positive.
I think it's a little morenuanced in the way that Trump's
trying to portray it.
The way he's spinning isbasically, they just gave the
United States $500 billion.
Well, no, that's not what'shappening.
But it is a positive step for,I think, both countries, and
it's not something that theycould have done rationally if

(46:14):
Trump wasn't elected, becauseinvesting in unpredictable and
unstable economies andcontracting economies is a dumb
thing to do.
So this totally makes sense.
They would do it after Trump'selected.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well and remember, saudi Arabia is trying to take
Aramco public.
Don't forget that.
And taking Aramco public isgoing to be a hell of a feat and
it will be the largest IPO inhistory if they do it.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Yeah, but at the same time Trump is trying to push
both the carrot and the stickwith ending the war in Ukraine,
and to do that the price of oilhas to come down for the stick
portion, and his first try atthat resulted in a no, because

(47:15):
OPEC said no, we're not going toincrease production or lower
prices, so it is going to be upto the increase in oil
production of the United Statesbefore there's any impact on
Russia there.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Well and you know there's some debate on whether
or not US production willactually increase or not,
because we're drilling as fastas we can.
We're doing these things, butyou know at what point is that
law of diminishing returnscoming in for the US oil market

(47:46):
and so on.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Well, I remember when oil was 50 bucks a barrel.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, well, inflation , you know.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Okay so 75.
Still under 100, though.
And what about the Alaskanpipeline that was almost ready
to flip on before Biden tookover?
What was that called?
I forget the name of it.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I think you're talking about the Dakota
pipeline.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one.
Yeah, but didn't that oil comefrom Alaska through Canada, good
name of it?
I?
I think you're talking aboutthe north, you know, the dakota
pipeline.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
yeah, yeah, that one yeah, but it didn't that oil
come from alaska through canadauh, well I thought that came out
of the oil sands and, I believe, some alaskan oil okay, I
thought it was predominantlyalaskan, but maybe not okay.
But either way, like there wasnot just tons of jobs that were

(48:33):
lost in North Dakota as a resultof that, but it was also a
large amount of oil that had tobe transported more expensively
instead of being transportedthrough the pipeline.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yes, and the transportation of that oil
didn't stop.
It just continued on rail andtruck, which is far more likely
to spill and cause issues andmuch more expensive.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
And so if you can transport the oil, I don't know.
Do you know off the top of yourhead what percentage of oil
cost is transport?

Speaker 1 (49:07):
I don't know.
Off the top of my head I knowthat general goods cost is
generally around 30%.
Yeah, but that's general goodsI don't know about oil.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
But either way you got to imagine transport through
a pipeline.
It's got to be the cheapestright.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, well, it depends on the distance being
traveled and where, because youdo have the infrastructure, cost
Depends on the distance beingtraveled and where, because you
do have the infrastructure, cost.
Waterways are another very,very cheap method because
there's no infrastructure neededother than ship Like barges
yeah.
Yeah, exactly, barges andtankers are a big deal in.
You know any In?

Speaker 2 (49:53):
fact, you could argue that part of the reason why the
US has had the economic successthat we have is because we have
so many waterways thatnavigable waterways inside the
us to transport goods, althoughif you ever drive through any of
the states, like, uh, missourior arkansas or uh or, you know,
louisiana, obviously, where themississippi is um, you'll see
just how crowded the mississippiactually gets oh, the

(50:17):
mississippi is an extremely busywaterway it's a freaking
highway man and you know where Iwas used to, in minnesota,
where the mississippi originatesseeing very little traffic some
, but not a whole lot of trafficon there well, you get, the
further south you go holy cow,I've done that.

(50:39):
I I actually um, when I was akid I went up to the head waters
of the mississippi wherethere's a just a little trickle
and the sign literally you knowit's like a take your photo kind
of sign because I stepped overthe mississippi is it?
It's probably about six feetwide and about a foot deep you

(51:03):
know something funny.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
Um, one of the ways I uh remembered uh as a kid, and
this goes back to just this isjust kind of a funny story.
So I was having troubleRemembering the name of the man
who discovered the Mississippi,which was DeSoto my mom.

(51:25):
Being the southerner she is andhaving the sense of humor she
has.
When she was trying to get meTo remember it, she said just
remember you.
You soak the so-toe in theMississippi.
I don't get it your so-toe.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Oh, so-toe, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
De-so-toe.
I got it.
Yeah, the so-toe, de-so-toe.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
That's funny Anyway.
Ever since she said that andmade me laugh.
I've never forgot it.
Yeah, it's, uh, that is onething I will say um that there's
a similarity between minnesotaand california in extremely
socialist, uh, politics, butalso a similarity in the

(52:11):
beautiful nature, and prettymuch minnesota's pretty cold no,
it is cold, I didn't say warm,I said beautiful.
And the uh, the forests in thenorthern half of minnesota are
very wild, very beautiful andvery.

(52:35):
They're just like a shorterversion of the redwoods in
california.
They don't get anywhere near astall as the redwoods, but it's
the same kind of piney forest,same smell, uh, same kind of um,
um, just, you know, one of thethings that pine needles do is
they?
They kind of provide a, a coverthat kills off a lot of other

(52:59):
plants underneath them andbecause the needles, you know,
they're all when they're fallingdown there yeah, the tannic
acid.
Yeah, there you go and so you,when you walk underneath pine
trees, you're not really havingto chop your way with a machete
through a bunch of undergrowth.
You could just walk therecasually, because there's

(53:23):
nothing really big growing nextto those trees, which makes for
very nice hiking.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
You really should go to the Piney Woods in East Texas
.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
I've never been to East Texas.
I know I need to to do that.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
you've told me about that more than once now the the
piney woods in east texas is oneof the largest, if not the
largest pine forests in, uh,certainly the united states, and
definitely one of the largestin the world, and it's it's the
piney woods extends from reallynortheast texas all the way into
Arkansas and so on.
It's a huge, huge forest.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
And I've been in Arkansas, on that side of it, in
a number of different placesand it's very pretty as well,
but I've just never been on theTexas side we have invasive
species that have come in andchanged that dynamic quite a bit
like yaupon and so on.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Hmm.
What's the border.
What's the delineation for thepiney woods in texas?
Uh, you can google it, but Ithink it's really pretty much
jasper and north okay, yeah, oneof these days I'll make a trek

(54:32):
out yeah, well, we, we need to,uh, we need to go visit my
parents together and uh yeah,yeah shoot guns and take you out
there.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Yep, show you the sabine and, uh, some of the
lakes and stuff like that'llmake you feel more at home well,
I'm feeling pretty at home outhere these days with the uh
cedar shrub, but I, I definitelyhave fond memories yeah, dude
come on.
They're not trees, they're shrubcedar is not texas cedar trees

(55:04):
are not cedar trees.
I mean they're.
They're literally the exactsame cedar that that that's in
the middle east.
They're kind of shrub bushcedar it's an aromatic cedar,
but okay yeah, versus like 100foot tall cedar trees okay, well
, whatever so whatever goodstuff um finding new guns, that

(55:30):
seems to be always be a questionpeople ask uh, I am, I have, I,
I'm.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
I have not purchased any new firearms.
I have a few new firearmaccessories that are fun yes you
, you're on your uh pdw kickyeah, yeah, yeah.
So I got the mK a little whileback CAA MCK for my Glock clone
and that's pretty neat and niftyand it's a little bit bigger

(55:57):
than I kind of expected.
And then I got the StrikeIndustries Bravo chassis for a
P320 that I have and I got totell you that Strike Industries
Bravo chassis is awesome.
I am glad I went with thatinstead of the Flux Raider.
It looks because of themodularity and cost difference.

(56:18):
Yeah, you know, it's prettysignificant and the.
Flux Raider is not available,very well.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
You know.
So there's that.
Did you watch the Strikesegments from SHOT Show?

Speaker 1 (56:31):
On which ones They've got a ton.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Yeah, yeah, there's been a few of the guys, like all
the regular youtubers, guntubers we watch all over at shot
show, and so, uh, a number ofthem.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Are you talking about their p90 chassis?
What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (56:45):
yeah, just the new stuff coming out.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
They were showing off the stuff that's not available
in the store yet yeah, they'vegot a bunch of stuff uh strike
industries is really stepping upthe modularity on their yeah
and they're gonna have a fully,fully self-contained gun now as
well uh, what's it based off ofit's?
It's?
I don't know.
I saw that one.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
It's based off the, the glock with the um removable
uh.
Serialized part.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the FCU.
They're also going down theroad of, you know, making it
extremely modular, andeverything that seems to be the
theme from SHOT Show ismodularity, modularity,
modularity, like if you look atPalmetto State and what they're
doing with their shotgun seriesliterally once you buy the

(57:38):
receiver, you can make it into apump or a semi-auto now yeah,
which is cool, very cool, andthe the charging handle being up
front, the way they are doingit and several other things is
really cool to me someone whoshoots shotguns and charging
handle on the receiver is kindof interesting um you know, most
shotgun charging handles arevery ak like right they're
reciprocating, and they're rightthere.
Yep, so this non-reciprocatingforward, uh shifted one is kind

(58:03):
of interesting yeah, it makessense yeah, what do you think of
the uh new guns palmetto stateis looking at putting out?

Speaker 2 (58:11):
they well it's.
Are you talking about, liketheir, their index or array of
which should we make guns?
Are you talking?
About the ones that are forsure in production uh, the ones
of what should we make guns?
Um, I think that.
Uh.
Well, first of all, I thinkthey're kind of cheating,
because they have two of themfrom last year on this year,

(58:32):
that's okay.
But including the one that youlike.
What's the one that I like?
Gene, the 308.
What's it called?
It's the Scar Knockoff.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
The Jackal.
They already have made thatJackal.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
No, no, no, They've got a 308.
Well, yeah, I guess it iscalled jackal, but it's a.
It's a different variant.
Can you order that now?
Is that available already?

Speaker 1 (58:57):
yeah, it's okay, it's shipping.
People are shooting it.
I've sent you videos on it Iwell those.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Yes, but those people get pre, uh, you know their
test guns no, most of thesepeople have gotten production at
this point.
Okay.
Well, if you watch videos withPinhead or even the guy that I

(59:23):
like, TFB, those guns aregenerally provided by the
manufacturer.
It's not like they're going outand buying guns.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Well, like Military Arms Channel and several others
have gotten production guns anduh, you know that they did not.
I thought you didn't like mac,I'm not a big fan, but you know
he he does some decent reviewsoccasionally and you know all
that I I think he goes off onphilosophy of use and items a
little too much, instead of justsaying you know, determine your
own philosophy of use, orwhatever he's getting, old man,

(59:56):
I've been watching him for 20years right, but you know he, it
took him a long time to admitthat.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
You know, five, five, six is, uh, maybe not the best
gun yep, yeah he, but I rememberwhen I first started watching
him he didn't have any gray hairat all.
It's it's like holy shit, canyou see time fly when you're
looking at other people?

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
yeah, I mean, are you looking in the mirror at all,
jane?

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
as little as I can get away with as little as I can
get away with Okay and ants nowebcam either.
Oh well, you know we're, we'reall getting older, man it's all
oh, yeah, yeah, but it feelslike everybody else getting way
older.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah Well, I think we're all getting older, but
it's all good so.
So what were the guns you mostwanted to see out of the
Palmetto State Armory poll?

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
I like their P90-looking one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
They don't have a P90 .

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Well, it's not a P90, but it's a P90-looking one here
.
Let me bring up their thingPalmetto State 2025 Shot Show.
What do they call it Matrix?
No, they have one that has a.
Let's see if I can find it here, Not videos.

(01:01:31):
Show me the actual pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
There it is well, there was the vuk 9, there was
the saber lancer.
Yeah, the vuk is the uh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
That's the clone of the um, mp5.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Yeah the x9 is a clone of an uzi yeah, and then
they got the saber uh 2011,which, that one, I'm interested
in um, uh, that's a 1911 wasthat 1911 or 2011, it's a 2011
okay, yeah, that's better.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Uh, let's see is well , I only see four here.
I think there were like six ofthem.
Those are the four winners.
Oh, those are the winners.
Okay, well, apparently the oneI like didn't make it to the
winners so they're going to bemaking a 50 cal uh-huh yeah that
said will be under two grand Iguess it's interesting, but it's

(01:02:31):
kind of useless useless Dude ifthey make a Barrett-style 50
cal, like they're showing forunder two grand, I will buy one.
Okay, you wouldn't, I know.
No, why not?
I've had several friends thathave had the Barrett 50 cals.
I've shot one.

(01:02:51):
They've spent like seven to 12grand on these things, yeah.
I'm very proud of them, yeah anduh.
To me that's like the guy thathas the, the four 54 revolver,
like, oh, you want to shoot this?
No, fuck, no, I don't want toshoot that.
Um, the.

(01:03:15):
The one exception I would sayis just from a, I guess, an
interest standpoint.
I would shoot the barrettbullpup.
I don't know what model it is,but they've got a version that's
a bullpup.
But generally speaking, I justdon't have an interest in
shooting 50 caliber cartridgesin real life.
I'll shoot them all day long invideo games.
I won't do it in real life.
I'll shoot them all day long invideo games.
I won't do it in real lifebecause it's not pleasant uh,

(01:03:38):
okay, I don't think it's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Uh, I don't think it's that bad personally,
especially when you've got a bigwell, that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
you also own the hardest hitting uh 30 cal as
well, so your vote doesn't count.
Okay, you know, I'm not a pussy, I don't know what to tell you
I think the crank is probablygoing to be a much more fun gun
to shoot.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Yeah Well the new Jackal line is pretty
interesting.
They're a 14, five pen andwelded Uh.
So you got to choose yourmuzzle device carefully, um,
which I really just wish they'dmake a 16 inch version so I can
put whatever muzzle device Iwant on there.

(01:04:27):
In fact, what's stopping mefrom buying one right now is
they don't offer like a surefiremuzzle device.
So any you know, if I wanted asurefire suppressor I would have
to buy a three to four hundreddollar hub adapter to go on
there.
And you know that'd be anawkward thing, so not, not, not

(01:04:49):
interested in spending an extra.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
You know however much Yep Well, and I guess I have to
decide if I want to keep myJackal as is or convert it into
a rifle.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Oh, you've got it as a pistol, yeah, well, you know,
yours is a 5.56 Gen 1, right?
Yeah, I mean, quite frankly, Iwould look at just selling it
and get a Gen 2.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Yeah, maybe do that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Because the Gen 2s will be coming out here first
half of the year.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yeah, maybe I will.
That's not a bad idea.
Yeah, yeah, they've got the 300aac crank, which is good um
well, who is?
Doing who.
I'm trying to think if somebodyactually did have a different,

(01:05:45):
a different version of a fiveseven, if it wasn't them, who
would have done a five seven?
oh, there are several companiescoming out with new five, seven
pdws and everything else andpalmetto state was one that was
looking at a five, seven pdwokay, I think that's what I was,
that's the one I voted for them, uh, and then obviously the

(01:06:06):
jackal the other ones did, didyou?

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
while we're talking about guns, did you watch
brandon herrera's video on notdismantling the atf?

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
uh, no, I did not.
I saw you sent to me.
I haven't watched it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Yet you, you should watch it, and I think everyone
should, because he makes somepretty good points about making
sure that you know, hey,dismantling the atf, but leaving
these laws in place isn't agood thing.
What can we do to make surethat when we are, you know,
trying to reduce enforcement orat least remove some of these

(01:06:40):
laws, how do we get rid of thelaws, and not just the agency
that's enforcing them andletting the FBI or someone else
enforce it?
You know what do we do there?
And he makes some very goodpoints.
He talks about what an ATFdirector could do, and he's not
just being self-serving andsaying, trump, pick me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
I would love to see him in that position.
I just don't think Trump'sheard of him who he is.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
I don't know.
The point is, you know if hegoes, if the ATF director
actually goes through andchanges rulings and says, for
instance, hey, suppressors,there's millions of them out
there, this is common use.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
That would be a way of potentially getting them off
the nfa well, the atf couldcertainly file a brief with the
courts explaining thatsuppressors, even though they
were included in the um 86 gunban or whatever that bill was
called, no, it was actuallybefore that suppressor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Suppressors have been listed as an nfa item since, I
think, the 30s.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, you're right, I'm thinkingmachine guns.
Yeah, yeah, I think they couldessentially say that in our
examination of this, it appearsthat this law was
unconstitutional.
What do you guys think Like ifthe ATF was on the side of the

(01:08:16):
gun owner?
We wouldn't have to wait for acourt case to challenge them,
because they could actually filethat directly.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Yeah, well, you know, I think there's a lot of hope
and I think all the directionswe've seen out of the Trump
administration thus far, whatwe've seen the actions taken.
Pete Hegseth is a great exampleof going in and removing DEI
immediately from DOD.
A great example of rolling backthe name changes right of the

(01:08:48):
bases, things like that.
We've seen an immense amount ofaction in the fucking two weeks
that trump has been in office,man I know it's crazy right it's
insane like I as even someonelike me and, I think, like you
who keeps up with politics theway we do, um I know there's
stuff I haven't seen.
Yeah oh they're, it'simpossible.

(01:09:09):
It is I.
We're talking like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Asmongold, who streams 12 hours a day, is
streaming about eight hours aday about Trump right now and
he's a gamer.
He's a gamer streamer.
It's nuts.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
What is the executive order count to date?

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Let me look that up up.
I don't know the number isexactly executive order count.
So he signed a whole whoppingtotal of 220 in his first term
um, yeah I mean he did that onthe first day pretty much yeah,

(01:09:53):
um, yeah, I mean he's doing like40 a day right now yeah um and
a lot of them will be challengedin court.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Okay, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Wikipedia is probably keeping track.
Let's see how many total we gethere.
Uh, executive orders?
Um nope, they're not.
They don't have the full, thefull amount on Wikipedia yet.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
Yeah that's disappointing, but I think that
we've seen quite a bit that, uh,you know he he's putting out
hundreds of executive orders andthat's good and bad.
And that's good and bad.
It's not good in that we don'twant executive authority to just

(01:10:47):
be the be-all, end-all.
But there's a lot of actionthat can be taken and I'm happy
for that be taken.
You know, and I'm happy forthat, my concern is, okay, one
how?
Permanent is this if we don'tfollow?
it up with legislation and thenbe you know um again, just
founding principles.
Do we want a executive thatpowerful?

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
well, I think we do right now uh yeah, right now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
Right now is good, but you know he, he needs to be
well it's.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
Look, the answer is really easy.
We need trump to crank out 40to 50 every single day of his
presidency, which will promptcongress to pass a law limiting
the number of executive ordersof future presidents.
And then we get our cake andeat it too.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
That would be fantastic.
I think it would require aconstitutional amendment, but
that would be fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
I don't know, you think.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Well, no, that's not true, dude.
There's plenty of laws thatCongress passes that limited the
president's ability.
Such as Well, anything in USCisn't there by executive order,
it's there because ofcongressional.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
Right, but that's not directly limiting presidential
authority.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
So well, I mean like setting a number of executive
order, a limit on the number ofexecutive orders a president can
write yeah would require aconstitutional amendment yeah,
probably just that way, but theythey come up with some other
method of limiting and probablyI mean, here's the thing they
can simply pass a law that saysall executive orders that a

(01:12:37):
president creates have to betied to funding from congress,
which is part of their authority.
No, they can't.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
I think they probably could okay, I think it would be
immediately challenged andstruck down as unconstitutional,
but okay I mean they could justdefund the presidency go for it
, please defund the entireexecutive branch.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
Yes, congress.
That's the way to do it yes,and I'm gonna throw you in that,
uh, in that briar patch toowhile I'm at it, which one you
know in the rabbit gettingthrown in the Briar Patch.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Anything but that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Yeah, it's been a while since I was reading kids'
books.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
It's all good.
It's been longer for me.
I guarantee you that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Well, hey, I'm glad to see unrelenting, didn't
relent.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
I mean after two weeks of being.
I know it was actually it wastwo missed episodes, which is
three weeks was the previousshow was last year, so it was
like the first time we did ashow this year, that's that's a
lot dude I know, yeah, well, youknow what can you do?
Darren's just sick a lot darren, feel better man I.
I've told him I'm happy to findsomebody to replace him and do

(01:14:03):
the episode without him, and hedoes not seem to well.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
He neither thinks that's funny nor does he want me
to do it well, you know, I, Ican understand, I wouldn't, I
can't, I told them well, I, Isure as hell would I.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I told them, uh, to do that when we first started.
I'm like dude, if I'munavailable because I got a
business meeting or somethingelse, just grabs one of your
other co-hosts.
You got plenty of them.
Have them step in, do a showwhat.
I think it's better to have ashow even if one of the co-hosts
is missing, for regularity'ssake, for maintaining
consistency with people, than itis to just not do one for

(01:14:39):
several weeks well, just likephil stepping in this week for
tim, you know who's phil.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Phil levante, oh, the drummer dude.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Yeah, uh, lead singer , but whatever yeah, I've never
heard his band, I don't knowit's, it's grunge music.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Dude, it's not my style at all exactly, but I like
him, I like his politicsspeaking of music, I do too.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
I like phil um, speaking of you, were sending me
some very interesting titles,so I I found a way to just have
continuous playlists playing inthe background of music created
by Suno, and the beauty of thatis none of that is copyrighted.
Well, I mean, that's not true.
It could be copyrighted, butit's not yet in the copyright

(01:15:25):
system for YouTube, which meansI can have it playing in the
background while I'm doing avideo.
Which obviously with any normalmusic, if you try doing that,
usually gets copyright strikes.
So in the process of playing abunch of music in the background
, some of the tunes jumped outat me, like whoa, hold on.

(01:15:46):
So I have to send those to youso those weren't ones you were
specifically generating.
No, no those weren't mine.
Dude, those other peoples thatwere in the stream, in the
playlist.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
Yeah, yeah, wow that's like I thought you were
creating some dark shit for fun.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
No, no, no, no.
Your mic is a wee bit hot rightnow, by the way you've been
telling me to talk louder I know, but like monotonous, talk
louder, but monotonously, so youdon't sound excited and pop
your mic but, yeah, there wassome, uh some tunes in there
about uh one way to say it couldbe a little bdsm.

(01:16:26):
Another way to say it domesticabuse indeed definitely some
creative topics that would notprobably make it to mainstream
media unless they were sung byblack people.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Even then, I think it would be pretty rough yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
But you know, suno doesn't seem to be banning that
yet.
At least I'm sure they will.
Eventually, like everythingelse, the more usage and people
you have, the more tighter thecontrols get on what you're
allowed to do.
We probably won't even be ableto make music.
That's, you know, pre-civil Warera eventually era eventually.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Well, you, you already saw that um china, apple
and uh, spotify are workingwith china to remove podcast
episodes that the government hasasked them to remove.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, because you don't
own the platform.
So what are you gonna do?
Well, I mean, you could say, no, china, we're not going to do
that right, but apple makes moremoney in china than they do in
the united states okay, so justmake apple podcasts not

(01:17:43):
available in china well, that'sexactly what they're doing,
except on a per episode basisanyway, I, I don't know man, I I
wouldn't no, I don't think thispodcast is particularly
critical of china.
I'm actually, uh, generallyspeaking, well of china, because
this one of the oldestcivilizations on the planet and

(01:18:06):
most people in america don'tunderstand how chinese people
think.
But there are plenty ofpodcasts out there that really
rail on china and I certainlywouldn't be surprised if those
podcasts, or at least episodesfrom those podcasts, would not
be available in china well, Ithink, uh, some of zayhan's

(01:18:30):
stuff especially would not beavailable in China, but I would
expect that to be the case, butbut let's not just solo chat out
here.
I would say they literally theexact same thing about the UK,
which is now arrested over 1000people for their views online.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Well, did you see the Tucker Pierce Morgan?

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
interview.
Nope, is it worth watching.
I'll check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
I've only seen clips so far.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
It came up on my recommended list, but I haven't
watched it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Yeah, I have seen the clips, but that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Yeah, well, the UK does not have freedom of speech.
They've never had freedom.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
no, but that that was one of the clips that they were
talking about and pierce wasdefending those arrests and you
know saying oh no, those arepeople inciting riots and this
that and the other it's like, uh, again go.
Going back to our free speechconversation, um, unless I'm
paying someone to do something,I ought to be able to say

(01:19:33):
whatever the hell I want to sayup into you know, the a good
example was the girl who wasfound guilty of uh talking her
ex-boyfriend into committingsuicide that him committing
suicide is not her fault youknow when she tells him fine, go
jump off bridge.
And he does it, and that's notliterally what she said, or what

(01:19:54):
he did.
That's on him, not her.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
I agree.
I think that there's a.
I'm an advocate of free speechas much as you don't think I am,
but I very much much am justwith slightly different motives
about it is I think it's insaneto prevent people about speaking
about controversial and evenevil topics, because how else

(01:20:23):
are you going to find out whothose people are if they're not
allowed to talk about it?
I'd much rather them be exposedwith flashlights than be hidden
in basements.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
So right, don't, don't suppress speech allows.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
Allow the bad actors to speak out exactly, say
whatever they want exactly, andthat's why it goes for all the
trans stuff or pedophilia, foreverything.
It's like I don't want to keepthese people from talking, I
want to make sure that theydon't do illegal acts, but as
far as talking about them, great, that just puts them in the

(01:21:01):
spotlight more.
Then we all know who they are.
So agreed yep.
So what do you think of Snowdenbeing made kind of like the
test case for Tulsi?

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
What do you mean?

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Well, you know, a large portion of the Democrats
were jumping on the bandwagon oflike well Tulsi supported a
traitor to the country.
The bandwagon of like wellTulsi supported a traitor to the
country.
How can she possibly be incontrol of the military if she's
a supporter of traders Cause?

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
clearly, that makes her a traitor.
The intelligence apparatchik,not the military, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
Military intelligence Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think that I I think it's a
ridiculous thing for them to do,because I think that Snowden
isn't a traitor.
I think he was a patriot.
I think he did the right thing.
I've held that belief sinceeverything happened, that there
wasn't more of an outcry anddamn near revolution in this

(01:22:12):
country based off of the Snowdenrevelations.
Because, you know, in my lineof work the joke has always been
I've heard the NSA can and youfill it in with some nonsense,
and the fact of the matter is weknew they were spying on us.
We thought that for a long time.
But to have public confirmationof a lot of these programs that
a lot of us kind of knew aboutalready and they're not to be an

(01:22:36):
overwhelming response, and tohave the response of.
How dare snowden expose this?
Yeah well, first of all, don'tbe putting your secrets like
this on a fucking sharepointsite.
Dude, you know snowden, andthis is something that needs to
be understood, as snowden wasnot some super secret squirrel

(01:22:57):
dude.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
He, you know he had a clearance.
He's just a regular squirreldude.

Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
The point is, the information he pulled was okay
from a classified server, butman, I just, you know well, he
didn't go through the properchannels for whistleblower
protection.
Yeah, if he had, he'd probablybe dead.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
No, he did.
That's part of the little bitthat always gets missed is that
he absolutely did run it up theflagpole and was told that it's
all good, don't worry about it,but I'm talking about for the
actual release of theinformation.
Oh yeah, but he also didn't do afull dump either.
He selectively released infoand he only dealt with the press

(01:23:48):
for people that would agree tohis terms, for people that would
agree to his terms.
So I think the guy tried towalk his final line as he
possibly could, and this is whyI've always said I think it is
absolutely true that both thingscan be true at the same time.
He may have violated his oathbut at the same time, did the

(01:24:10):
right thing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
Well, I don't care if he violated his oath.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
But that's the point that I think these people are
focusing on is that nobody whohas ever violated their oath
should be let anywhere near amilitary or spy operation.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
Well, he's not Sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Well, he's not sorry, well, and they expand that to
nobody.
Who thinks that he didn't do abad thing should be allowed to
run that right, but that's,that's ludicrous well, it's yeah
I understand where they'recoming from.
But the problem is that youreally want both right, so you

(01:24:54):
don't want somebody whosepersonal morals are going to get
in the way of doing their job.
For certain government jobslike the CIA Sure, the CIA you
have to have somebody who youcan trust, has the North Star
deeply aligned with their job,not with contradictions to their

(01:25:20):
job, and that's why in theinitial days of the CIA, they
strictly hired Catholics.
They didn't hire anybody unlessthey were Catholic, and then
obviously that changed over time.
But the idea was that, whateveryou're being asked to do, all
you had to know is that somebodyabove you knew that it was for

(01:25:43):
the greater good, and your partof it may make you do something
that appears, on surface level,to be going contrary to the will
of the Constitution, the willof the president, especially
when you shoot him.
You know things like that butthat you had that belief that

(01:26:07):
your superiors had thought thisthrough thoroughly enough and
that, frankly, you're part ofthe branch that gets to do the
jobs nobody else is willing todo.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
Yeah, well, you know, it's definitely interesting
that Trump decided to open upsome of that right and we'll see
about the JFK files and whatreally comes out.
But the JFK, rfk and MLK filesare being released, supposedly,
yep.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Well, I think, I think there'll be a lot of black
pages, is my guess.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Uh, no, no, he the order actually says for full
declassification at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
We'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
I agree, Uh, but you know, um, I agree, but I think
there would be a cause for somefirings if you didn't.
But we'll see.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Yeah, but you understand my point about your
ideal hire for theseorganizations is going to be
somebody that has more moralambiguity than Snowden.

Speaker 1 (01:27:16):
Yeah, no, I I don't concede that point because I
don't agree with it.
But I can see how some peoplemight think that.
Uh, I can see the argumentbeing made, I just don't well,
no, and your absolute idealcandidate is literally a robot.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
It's not a human being, because a robot isn't
going to have questions aboutwhether what it's being asked to
do is moral or not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
No, I want people questioning, I want those moral
questions asked.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
You really don't for those types of roles, because
the things you're going to bedoing often are immoral.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
Then maybe we shouldn't be doing them.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Well, that's a different question.
I'm not going to argue with youon that one.
But if you go to the point ofhaving a secret agency be doing
them, well that's a differentquestion.
I'm not going to argue with youon that one.
But if you go to the point ofhaving a secret agency whose job
includes murder, then you don'twant people that are constantly
going to be second guessingtheir orders.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Yeah, but I don't want an agency.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Well then, you need to get rid of the CIA, but
that's not going to work outwell for the country.

Speaker 1 (01:28:22):
The CIA and NSA need to go away and we need to have
only military intelligenceoperations.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
Okay, in military intelligence operations, do you
think that you want people thatare second guessing?
Orders Hell, no.

Speaker 1 (01:28:37):
Well, but basically they should be pretty
non-functional outside of.
First of all, they should onlyoperate outside the US and
second of all, they should bepretty non-functional in times
of peace.
So unless we've declared a war,they should be basically idle.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
Okay, so I know I have to be the devil's advocate
on this stuff, dude Sure,because I may have a gut
agreement with you.
However, that would absolutelyplace the United States in
tremendous jeopardy compared toother states that we're not

(01:29:15):
currently friendly with.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Yeah, because.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
China isn't going to do that, russia isn't going to
do that, iran isn't going to dothat.
God knows Israel isn't going todo that.
Russia isn't going to do that,iran isn't going to do that, god
knows, israel isn't going to dothat.
We have a ton of countries thatare perfectly willing to have
these types of organizationswith very strong moral ambiguity
, and if we're the only countrythat doesn't have that, we will

(01:29:42):
end up suffering as a resultwell, what I would say is I
prefer dangerous freedom overpeaceful slavery well, that's a
nice platitude, but let's talkabout the topic at hand it's not
a platitude and it is somethingto consider is okay.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Yes, there's a risk that other countries might do
something shitty to us, but thatdoes not justify us doing
something shitty ourselves.
We have to take the moral highroad and maintain our status
well, regain our status you'rethe guy that wants to talk about
the new american empire.
You ain't gonna have thatwithout the cia man well, uh,

(01:30:21):
okay, first of all, I I am notpro the new american empire.
I just see that as you're veryexcited about it though I from
an intellectual exercisestandpoint, sure, but what I
would say is, yes, you cantotally have that without the
cia.
You can do it through softpower.
Look at what trump just did tocolumbia.

(01:30:41):
Look at, uh, what we're alreadydoing in the panama canal.
The panama canal uh, in thefirst two weeks of the trump
administration has alreadystarted investigations into the
chinese ports, which will likelyend up in china getting kicked
out of those ports and givingtrump a victory there.
Um, there are lots of thingsthat can be done and I I don't
think the CIA was involved inany of those actions, but you

(01:31:06):
know, to concede a point, Idon't know that we would ever
know Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
Not if they're doing their job right.
All we'd see, is all we know isthe number of stars that pop up
every year.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's soself-aggrandizing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
I believe that there definitely is a reform that
needs to happen in the CIA, buthistorically I'm a big fan.

Speaker 1 (01:31:39):
I think historically they've been absolutely
atrocious and horrible I thinkthat in a lot of ways, the cia
was responsible for a lot ofpositive change out of communism
and towards capitalism in theworld over the last 60 years I
think the cia has given us a lotof unintended consequences and
if you look, at oh yeah, forinstance afghanistan and charlie

(01:32:01):
wilson's war and the fact thatwe um financed that war and went
down the path we did and weallowed the um, the, the
afghanis, to basically reducetheir average age to that of
teenagers and then did not spendany money on education or

(01:32:25):
anything else it was a singleAmerican in the whole process.
Yes, oh yes, we did later on.
Well so, if you believe theofficial narrative, if you
believe the official narrative,yeah, the Mojadine we funded, we
trained, we did all this theycaused terrorist actions around
the world, including those youknow, the USS Cole, and then,

(01:32:47):
supposedly, 9-11.
And you know we had thousandsand thousands of Americans die
based off of the CIA's actions.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
Yeah, but again, being a bit of a devil's
advocate, I would say that theportion that the CIA were
involved with they didexceptionally well.
What happened afterwards was upto Congress and, because it was
no longer a covert operations,russia had pulled out of
Afghanistan, ussr pulled out ofthere, and so we then needed to

(01:33:18):
decide what do we do with thiscountry, with these people who
were at the time verypro-American?
And what we decided to do iscongratulate ourselves by
patting ourselves on the backsaying, hey, well, we won that
one without a single Americandeath, and then walked away.
And what those people weregetting as a result of that was

(01:33:41):
they got rid of the Russians,which were in no answer to them,
but but they lost all of theirAmerican support as soon as they
got rid of the Russians.
And had they known that theywould, that would be the end
result.
They probably would have keptthat war with Russia going for a
good 20 years and just neverbeing so successful that it

(01:34:01):
pushed Russia out, which isessentially what they ended up
doing when we were at war withthem.
So I don't blame the CIA forfault in their actions during
that period of time.
Um, you know, I mean it's I.

(01:34:21):
I am perfectly willing to grantany country's secret service a
success for actions that theytook that went well, even if I
disagree with the uh the endresult of those actions.
But but that's a differentquestion, because what they're
executing on is what thepoliticians told them to execute

(01:34:41):
on.
I'm just judging how well theyexecuted okay it's not like the
cia did something that you knowthat they did differently or
wrong.
That led to where things went.
It was just a completeabandonment of afghanistan, not
just financially but in terms of, uh, trying to develop that

(01:35:06):
country into at least thepakistan, into something a
little more civilized.
We literally did none of thatand we should have we should
have or alternatively, maybe weshould have just stayed out of
it completely and let russia dotheir thing.
Oh that 100.

Speaker 1 (01:35:21):
But I think we should have just stayed out of it
completely and let Russia dotheir thing.
Oh, 100%, but I think we shouldhave stayed.
But again, this is where theCIA and having these
intelligence agenciesautomatically get you into
foreign entanglements that ourfounders warned us about.

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, yeah, yeah, I agree.
But once you create the cia, ifyou don't shut it down if it
exists, what you want are peoplewith moral ambiguity there all
you're doing is making anargument that I agree with, that
we should shut down the cia I'mnot against shutting down the
cia.

Speaker 1 (01:35:56):
Okay, so cool, shut NSA, fbi.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
What I'm against is just pretending like we're going
to somehow manage it in a waythat doesn't violate any moral.
It's like, no, it's like youbuilt an organization whose
mission is such that it willviolate morals.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
Agreed In order to be competitive with the rest of
the world which is why itshouldn't exist yeah, I mean
that's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:36:27):
I just I think that right now we're probably in a
better position for it to notexist, because signals
intelligence has gotten to besuch a large percentage of all
intelligence.
Um to where the nsa can takeover those responsibilities
completely, oh man.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Well, you know what?
I'd be okay with the NSAexisting and even the CIA,
existing as long as A, they donot operate on any collections
on US soil.
Yeah, and we remove ourselvesfrom the five eyes that would be
the only.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
Yeah, the five eyes is okay with saying okay yes you
know they can.
It's a convenient workaround tohave the five eyes it's
atrocious yeah, yeah, yeah, butit, but it also is not
unexpected.
Like you knew, this would behappening.

Speaker 1 (01:37:24):
We can't legally spy on this american citizen uh uk,
australia, new zealand, wouldy'all mind?
Uh-huh yeah, please, thank youall.

Speaker 2 (01:37:36):
Right, appreciate it you know what five Eyes is run
on right?
What do you mean, Amazon?

Speaker 1 (01:37:46):
That's who hosts the data for them.
I don't know if that's true forall the Five Eyes nations, but
fine.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
Well, we've got contracts, man.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
I know it is Okay.
I mean the US federalgovernment.
Amazon was the first to doFedRAMPure, and others have come
along as well.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
So there's competition there now?
Oh, there, absolutely is.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
Yeah, yeah, which fed ramp is such a fucking joke in
so many ways.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
Don't get me started yeah um, and you know there's,
there's a uh, a handful ofemployees sitting at home
pretending to work for everycontractor that actually does.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
Well, the work from home stuff is ending.
I know I'm exempt from thecurrent push, but you know, my
company is pushing for a returnto the office.
You know, the main reason whyI'm exempt is my team is spread
out across the nation.
It's not like I'm we're all inone regional office.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
Yeah, you're just going to be driving to sit in an
office on the phone.
Anyway, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
And then um, but dell has now retired work from home.
All employees must return tofind, so it's amazon office yep,
so so it's who.

Speaker 2 (01:38:59):
Amazon.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
Yeah.
So I think we're seeing a bigpush to say, hey, this is over,
and I I think there's pros andcons.
I think, depending on your job,working from home is a great
benefit and really, if you havethe right employees, it's fine.
But the problem is, in most ofthese large corporations, you

(01:39:22):
have hr departments, which makesfiring people very difficult,
yeah, and as a result, you knowwhich which you have is, um, you
know, uh, an inability whensomeone isn't producing, an
inability to go in and say, hey,this person's not doing their
job, they need to go.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
And if you had that, then you know, um and and this
is literally the only thing I'veever gotten in trouble in
companies for is for beingaccused of being insensitive.
Shocker, right, yeah, shocker,yeah you should definitely do
the peterson personality test.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
I'd be very interested to see what uh came
out.
Oh yeah, I'll do it because my,my politeness score is pretty
low, dude, but I think yoursmight be zero, so uh, people
love me.

Speaker 2 (01:40:15):
It's just uh they're afraid of me keep telling
yourself that gene no, no, thisis not me telling you.
This is from surveys that I'vegiven to people.

Speaker 1 (01:40:28):
Okay, uh, because it's very consistent yeah, were
there names attached to thesurveys?

Speaker 2 (01:40:37):
well, obviously, how am I supposed to know who said
what?

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
I wonder how that might skew the results um, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:48):
I'm doing it right now, by the way, as we talk the
big five you already paid for it.
Peterson personality test.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
Huh, the peterson personality test know thyself,
or whatever it is.
Yeah, make sure you're doingthe right one I've done so many
of these things I talked aboutit.
I talked about this on um uh,did you pay for the one?
You're taking right now no,well then you're not on the I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
I think, yeah, I enjoy personality tests.
I've talked about this onUnrelenting as well.
I've always had friends thatwere like psychologists,
psychiatrists, and so they couldget me this shit for free and I
sent you a link to it, by theway oh, okay, cool, um, and so

(01:41:50):
they.
They have done that.
In fact, the story that I toldon the other show I might as
well just give us quick synopsisis I almost got to be the ceO
of LaCroix Water, but the thingthat derailed me was a
personality test.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
How did it derail you ?

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
Well, they didn't give me the offer.
I was on very good terms andthis was literally the final
step.
After all the interviews andeverything else um and um, it
was, uh, obviously not the rightresult.

(01:42:33):
Okay, so I don't know.
Do you want more on that?
You can listen to the episode.
I talked more about it on there.
Did we lose you again, ben?

Speaker 1 (01:43:03):
uh, oh no, I'm here, sorry, did we lose you again,
ben.
Uh-oh, no, I'm here.
Sorry, one of the vehicles isgetting serviced and they were
calling me, so the personalitytest and the IQ test for
employment is borderline illegal.

Speaker 2 (01:43:18):
I mean it's not for executive positions.

Speaker 1 (01:43:20):
It's really a very common practice well, you know
that, fair enough, it's commonpractice.
But it also can be used fordiscriminatory action.

Speaker 2 (01:43:29):
So you know sure everything could be, but I think
, um, and I've taken, I've takentests here.
In fact I was.
There was one company that hadrecommended a website that had a
bunch of personality testsalong with cognitive ability

(01:43:52):
tests.
Have you done those?
Oh yeah, and and so I went and Istarted you know cause I do
have some OCD I started doingall those tests, um, and like

(01:44:15):
really getting better at them,the cognitive stuff, um and uh,
I ended up getting the top scorein every single one of those,
except for one which, which hadum, just kept giving me errors

(01:44:42):
that I was not doing correctly,and it was basically like stuff
was flashing on the screen for avery short period of time and
you're supposed to make adecision based on something you
see for like a tenth of a second.

Speaker 1 (01:44:56):
Okay.
So you were trying to gamethese tests.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
Well, I wasn't trying .
I did game all the testsbecause I knew what I'm like
trying to game these tests.
Well, I wasn't trying.
I did game all the testsbecause I knew what I'm doing
and so I got, you know, absoluteperfect scores in every single
one, except for this one.
And I was like this can't beright, because I'm actually good
at this, because I play videogames.

(01:45:38):
And so I recorded it with ahigh-speed camera and actually
found that there was a bug intheir test, which I then called
the company to tell them andprovided video evidence that
their test is literallyincorrect.
And could they please fix myscore to show that it's perfect?
And, uh, they were at first.
They're like well, you know,we'll send it to support.
And then they they did reachback out to me and say, yeah,
yeah, looks like you found a bug, uh, and they sent me a t-shirt
that says um, uh, I I did thesetests and all I got was a lousy

(01:46:03):
t-shirt okay so it's cute youknow if you're that ocd and
borderline narcissistic to worryabout getting a score to go to
that point, man, I don't knowwhat to say what do you mean
borderline?

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):
I work hard, man oh well, I wasn't trying to accuse
you of being a narcissist.
You know I don't want to fallinto that female trap you know,
you know what we call peoplethat aren't narcissists what um
they're, uh, they have lowself-esteem well, I, I think

(01:46:39):
there there's some borderlinethere that you know like,
especially when I look at myselfand everything you have is
being confident in yourabilities.
Narcissism, um, you know, itdepends on your categorization
and, like anything else, um Ithink it's is expecting other
people to find you confident,your abilities, narcissism well,

(01:47:01):
there's that, and then there'salso the how is this affecting
your life sort of test to any ofthis bullshit yeah, I think
that's a part that I mean let's.

Speaker 2 (01:47:17):
Let's face it somebody can become a narcissist
because they do have lowself-esteem yeah, as a coping
mechanism absolutely yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:47:29):
It's like pushing in the other direction well, um,
you know, it's oftentimes thosepeople who have the least
ability who try to think thatthey have the most.
Really, the most dangerousperson is that midwit who thinks
they're more intelligent thanthey are.

(01:47:51):
Oh you mean a redditor.

Speaker 2 (01:47:54):
Yes there's that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):
Which I don't know how to take that Gene You've
compared me to redditorsmultiple times.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huhuh-huh um all right man.
Any other news we need to talkabout?

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):
well, I'm trying to think of what, as I mean, I've
been spending so much time justwatching trump signing things
and he seems to do a pressconference immediately after
he's doing it.
Yeah, like he's had more pressconferences in his first two
weeks than Biden did the entirepresidency Hell, probably more
than he's like that he himselfhas had in the first one.

Speaker 1 (01:48:34):
Yeah well, he's definitely doing a lot.
We've seen a lot of action.
This is good.
Most of the actions I prettymuch agree with.
In fact, I have yet to seesomething that I'm like oh my
god, no, don't do that right.
I haven't seen any of that yet,so yeah, yeah I don't know man
I so far, so good.

Speaker 2 (01:48:56):
Right, I got my fingers crossed, I'm liking what
I'm seeing so far, but we gotanother almost two years to go
until the first midterms andthen, you know, that'll
determine really what the restof the two years looks like.

Speaker 1 (01:49:17):
Well, you know, I think the midterms are going to
tell a lot, because if Trump issuccessful, if things are
turning around and we have anamount of action between now and
then, if the midterms goagainst Trump, then I could see
it slowing down, but if it's forhim, I see nothing but a
doubling down.
Mm, hmm.

(01:49:39):
And I think we've got a reallygood shot at at least eight
years of this sort of Americafirst movement politics going
pretty solidly.
I think Vance is notnecessarily the heir apparent,
but he's quite possibly.
I think there's still a lot ofroom for Vivek.

(01:50:02):
I think there's a lot of roomfor a lot of people.
So I think Tulsi will actually,especially if she gets into the
administration and does a goodjob and what we want her to do
in that position.
She will be a very strongcandidate.
I think if RFK Jr goes into theadministration and does what we
want him to do there, he willbe a strong candidate.

Speaker 2 (01:50:23):
So is this thing you sent me mostly about
agreeability and disagreeability.

Speaker 1 (01:50:31):
No, okay, it's the big five personality model, so
it's statistically derived.
It's not from a theory and thenderiving a model to make it.
It's looking at people'spersonalities and statistically
deriving things.
It's working in the oppositedirection.
You can go read about thehistory, but it's it's.

Speaker 2 (01:50:53):
It's the most predictive of the personality
models okay, so you paid 10bucks to take this test.

Speaker 1 (01:51:01):
I did more than that.
I paid several hundred dollarsto have tokens available for
employees to take it.
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:51:15):
Why did you do this one?
There are a lot of differentpersonality tests.

Speaker 1 (01:51:19):
Well, one I wanted to support Peterson, and then two
this is probably the mostcomprehensive of the big five
personality tests that I've seen.

Speaker 2 (01:51:30):
How many questions?

Speaker 1 (01:51:32):
A hundred, that's not bad.

Speaker 2 (01:51:34):
The one I just finished is 50.

Speaker 1 (01:51:47):
um so the the big five personality traits.
You know you have agreeablenessas a personality trait.
You have neuroticism as apersonality trait, um,
conscientiousness and, uh,intellect.
And then there's one other.
I'm blanking on it, but thepoint is that you know, these
traits are what make up yourpersonality.
So, like the intellect isn't anIQ test in this, it's.

(01:52:09):
You know how do you use yourintellect, whatever its capacity
may be.
So it's not judging yourcapacity, it's judging your
proclivity to use it got it okayand agreeableness is broken
down into subsections, andpoliteness is one of those

(01:52:31):
subsections, and um yeah, myscore on politeness is like the
third percentile oh, reallythat's hilarious extraordinarily
low on politeness.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
And you're kind of a polite young man, I'm surprised.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
You're kind of a polite young man, so I'm kind of
surprised.

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
Well, I mean, this isn't necessarily about social
convention.
It's about what is mypersonality, what is my inherent
bias, not what I actually do,yeah Right, so my inherent bias
is very unpolite, and so thatshould tell you something that I
go above and beyond to try andbe a polite person, for the most

(01:53:11):
part because that is not mynormal or natural instinct.

Speaker 2 (01:53:15):
Either that or the test is wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
See, I have that trait I'm suspicious of things,
and for good reason what's yourgood reason?
People tend to be, you know,very self-serving, and so
unbiased data is almostnon-existent.
People tend to be veryself-serving, and so unbiased

(01:53:44):
data is almost non-existent.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
Everything is biased, yeah, so let's see, here You've
got agreeableness.
In fact didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:53:56):
Marcus Aurelius say that the only things that we
hear are opinions, not facts.
Yeah, that the only things thatwe hear are opinions, not facts
.

Speaker 1 (01:54:01):
Yeah, so my agreeableness score is a 32nd
percentile, which is moderatelylow.
My compassion, which is asubconcept of agreeableness, is
moderately high.
It's 77.
But my politeness isexceptionally low and I was
wrong.
I was fourth percentile, notthird, so that you know

(01:54:24):
compassion I'm pretty high, butI don't you know, I'm willing to
say F you.

Speaker 2 (01:54:32):
Conscientiousness.
You've taken your Myers-Briggsbefore right.
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:54:37):
I would have to go look it up.
I've taken it several times.
So conscientiousness 80thpercentile, but industriousness
98th percentile, which I thinkyou see in my personality Order.
But what brings myconscientiousness down is
orderliness.
So do I care about stacks ofpapers on the countertop or
something like that?
Yeah Is 25th percentile, so no,I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:54:59):
I don't have a single friend who does yeah is 25th
percentile.
So no, I don't.
I don't have a single friendwho does, Just statistically
speaking.
I literally don't have a singlefriend that cares about that.
Everyone just has stacks ofshit at home.

Speaker 1 (01:55:13):
Yeah, so extraversion , exceptionally high 97th
percentile Mine's gotten down.

Speaker 2 (01:55:18):
Mine used to be higher, but I think post-COVID
mine's at about 50%.

Speaker 1 (01:55:24):
Yeah, I just you know , to me, a space is meant to be
lived in.
It shouldn't feel sterile.
And if it?
Does.
That's when I get itchy aboutit.
You know, now I really shouldspend more time and clean things
up and take care of things more, but I, I, just I don't.
I, I prioritize other thingswhen I was an infosec, I always

(01:55:45):
enforced a clean desk and, uh,some people hated me for it, but
uh, I just think it makesthings a lot easier well, a
clean desk is one thing, and oneof the things I'd say is, if
you look at my computers and youlook at my notes and everything
else, and where I'm storinginformation or how I'm storing
information is incrediblyorganized.

(01:56:07):
In fact, in this role I've hadfor the last seven months, one
of the things I'm doing isenforcing knowledge management
as a key principle and makingsure that we have consistency
across projects and what we'redoing and how we're storing that
information.
Yeah.
You know, and that that the mainreason rationale for that is,
as I move from project toproject or anything else I need

(01:56:28):
to, regardless of who's doing it, I need to be able to know
exactly where to find the rightthings, and you know I shouldn't
have to spend time searchingfor it.
So you know, there's where myorderliness comes in, because
where it matters to me for mywork and my industriousness,
that follows.
But in my daily life a stack ofmail on the kitchen counter

(01:56:50):
isn't going to bug me.

Speaker 2 (01:56:52):
Yeah, Yep, and I I definitely have plenty of those
stacks of mail.
But again, this was adifferentiator for me between
work and home.
Is um at work?
And especially when I wasworking in anthosec it it was

(01:57:12):
more important to enforce thatpeople um were not treating
their work the way they treattheir house.

Speaker 1 (01:57:24):
Well, and some people you don't want them to treat
their work the way they treattheir house right.
Some people you do.
It depends on each individual'spersonality and I understand
your clean desk policy.
You didn't need to send that tome.

Speaker 2 (01:57:39):
I thought you might find it useful for yourself,
right, and if you're in anoffice building that to me, I
thought you might find it usefulfor yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:57:42):
Right, and if you're in an office building, that
makes sense, but if it's yourdesk at your home, how relevant
is that?

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):
Are you going to be securing or?

Speaker 1 (01:57:53):
locking those papers anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:57:55):
Well, you already touched on what the equivalent
of that for you and it is thesame thing for me is to have a
separate computer for work andfor home yes, absolutely
duplicate computers, which mostpeople don't.
You realize that, because thenwhenever you, whenever I've laid
people off, it's alwaysshocking to me what we find on
their computers.
But I'm sure it's not shockingto the average person because to

(01:58:18):
them a work computer is just acomputer you don't have to pay
for it.
But that's the only distinction.

Speaker 1 (01:58:25):
They put all kinds of crap on there but see, I work
in infosec and I know themonitoring capabilities and
everything else and I'm just,I'm not going to put my personal
life on a work computer exactly.
You know, that's exactly um nowwill I say if there's something
going on and I'm out in themiddle of nowhere and the only
computer I have with me is awork computer and we want to do
an update, will I do itoccasionally or something like

(01:58:47):
that?
Sure, but it will be theexception and most likely what
I'll do is I'll you know remoteinto something else.

Speaker 2 (01:58:55):
That's what I was just going to say when I had to
do that kind of stuff.
If I had to use my onlycomputer where I was was the
work computer then I would justRDP into my own machine.

Speaker 1 (01:59:05):
Right, and you know basically just yes, I used it
for network transport you know,but that's it.
Yep Exactly All right Gene.

Speaker 2 (01:59:16):
Yeah, let's wrap it up, man.

Speaker 1 (01:59:18):
Sorry, we had some errors and issues today, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:59:21):
Hopefully you'll get that taken care of before next
show Get everything working goodand we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:59:32):
See you, Gene.

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