2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Two Army veterans—one left, one right—unite for the ultimate mission: tackling real-world problems with common sense, logic, and a healthy dose of military humor. 2 POGs Save the World isn’t your typical political podcast. Hosts Kj Bradley & Lance O'Neil bring unfiltered discussions, sharp debates, and tactical solutions to the chaos of modern society.
From politics and national security to sports and pop culture, no topic is off-limits. With battle-tested insights and zero tolerance for BS, these two POGs (Personnel Other than Grunts) prove that you don’t have to agree on everything to find real solutions.
Join the fight every Sunday at 8:30 PM EST, where the only thing sharper than the takes is the wit. Mission: Common Sense. Execution: Hilarious. Victory: Inevitable
🎙️ Listen. Debate. Disagree. Laugh. Take Notes.
2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Insider Gains & International Pains
This week on 2 POGs Save the World, KJ and Lance are fired up about the new class of political profiteers. While Main Street braces for the fallout of market chaos and an escalating tariff war, some members of Congress and key figures in the POTUS cabinet are celebrating their stock gains. We're digging into the open flaunting of financial wins amid global economic tension and asking the question on everyone's mind: Is this truly the art of the deal… or the art of the steal?
But that’s not all—while Washington fumbles its trade strategy, Chinese factories are cutting out the middlemen entirely, telling customers to skip the tariffs and buy direct. Is this globalization’s next chapter… or the beginning of a whole new war?
I'm gonna go live on the internet. Gee Ray, what do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:The same thing we do every night Pinky, Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:Alright, yo let's get into it. Try to take over the world.
Speaker 4:You're preaching treating the public. Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:And great chaplain in the world, mr Lance O'Neill, try to take over the world. And greatest chaplain in the world, mr Lance O'Neal, trying to take over the world. What up, what up, what up, what up, what up world. This your boy, kj Bradley, and the world's greatest chaplain, mr Lance O'Neal. We are back on another Sunday, getting ever closer to that two-year anniversary man. Our two-year anniversary episode is holy smokes, man. One week away, two weeks away, we got the 27th of April. Two weeks away. We are there. But tonight, tonight, we are in the building, we are in the house, we are live and in full effect. Chappy. How you doing, man, doing well, how are you? I'm good man, rocking and rolling. So, before we get into the nitty and gritty, you got into the Masters again, you lucky man.
Speaker 5:How'd you pull it off? Okay, so at Ford Eisenhower, the MWR, which is kind of the group that is there for the Army to have morale, what is it, m-dub? Morale, welfare and Recreation. Yeah.
Speaker 5:So the people that are on Eisenhower can go sign up and then they do a lottery. So they have 100 badges and they split it up over the four days, so 400 chances, but you have to put what day you want to put in and then they do the lottery and they generate the list. So I went in, I checked the list and I was number 131. I was like, okay, there's just, there's just no way. That sucks, I'm not going to be able to go this year. So I'm, I'm upstairs just in the bathroom in the morning getting ready, and my wife comes in and she goes hey, mwr is on the line for you. And this was like nine. I was like, wait, what? So hello. And hey, do you still want to go to the Masters? I was like, yeah, like how? Like that means 32 people didn't answer the phone, didn't check the list or said no.
Speaker 5:So I was like like, yeah, they're like well, okay, well, you know it'll be here. I was like, oh, I'll be there in like 40 minutes and I live 30 minutes away. So I went down, got the ticket. Um, in the meantime my wife started making the list of who you know christmas presents and she's like, okay, okay, so this number of shirts will be $15 each. And I'm like I didn't say anything but I was like I didn't even realize because I didn't remember how much the prices were last year. I knew $15 was low.
Speaker 5:The t-shirts are $32 each, so you have to pay for the badge, which is about $120. And then you go and you know all the stuff I got, because we got family members, I got hats and shirts for people and everything. And at the end of it she's like we spent like wait, she didn't know it was also $100 in front right, she spent like $1,000 to go to the Masters. I was like, yeah, but I mean we got a lot of those shirts and everything. They're really cool and I'm retiring this year, so I won't be able to be on that list. So I'm like anybody else. After that, where it's you, you can go online, you can apply.
Speaker 5:I had you apply for me, just in case you got the tickets you could give me. It was no, I had another buddy do it, another my brother did so like oh for four. So the odds of getting it just going online are just kind of really, really small. And then like to go to it to find somebody that has a ticket or is selling you the tickets around here for Sundays. You're talking somewhere around $2,000. And if it's a big name like Rory I think he he was was probably he probably boosted the cost by, I'd guess about 500 bucks.
Speaker 5:So it was good for mackaroy to win um, but the other cool thing was when I got there on on friday, tony finow's the guy I follow. He's lds and from salt lake and I followed him and he ended up not making the cut. He was on 17, had a pretty good or 16. If he'd made that putty would have had a pretty good or 16. If he'd made that putt he would have had a pretty good chance and he missed. It was what I mean. You're watching going. Oh, he should make this.
Speaker 5:Right, he couldn't buy a putt all day and I saw these three kids and I went over. I'm like, hey, aren't you guys Tony's kids? And they're like yeah. So I was talking to his two kids and they have one of the cousins there and we were just talking a little bit about what they do. They're homeschooled. One of them goes, the cousin goes to high school in Salt Lake and we were just talking it was cool. I mean, it's not like. I mean they're kids. It's not like I'm starstruck because they're Tony Pinault's. You know kids. Oh, I'm gonna get in with this. Ah, yeah, so it was. It was cool, though. It's great.
Speaker 5:So a buddy of mine. Just one last thing buddy of mine. When I called him, he was like oh, so you're going to white person's mecca, huh? And I was like, yeah, you know what? That's a pretty good description. I like that white person mecca, but but if you've never, if you ever have the chance and that there's plenty of black people there, there's plenty of hispanic yeah, people of all golf is universal man like it's yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5:But if you ever have the chance to go now I have not been to japan, but I can imagine that the masters is as close to the Japanese culture in America you'll get, because when you go, just the level of hospitality and the goodwill between people, I've never seen it anywhere else. And it's like people set up their chairs and if you walk up and there's an empty chair you can just go sit down in it. Or like I didn't have my chair, but I did last year, I had my chair and I walked up. Hey, that's my chair, they go cool, got up, no questions, it's no big deal. People have their stuff that they buy in the clubhouse, put it under their chair. They don't worry about it getting stolen. It is.
Speaker 5:It is truly like the hype if we could take what happens at the Masters and spread that mentality out across America. That is what we want. We just want everybody to act like you're at the highest level of golf tournament in the world and this country would just be phenomenal. We would be kumbaya, everybody would get along. There wouldn't be any problems because the resolutions are just like oh hey, man, you know, sorry, bump into, oh, sorry, I. Oh yeah, no problem. There was a spanish guy dropped uh bumped. I was standing next to a guy and he bumped into the beer. Was he set the beer down? There wasn't very much on it, oh sorry.
Speaker 5:You know, it's just like everybody is just a different level of culture, and we talked about it last week when you had your list of you know that's part of it too.
Speaker 5:Like you can look at the money and say, well, this is the amount that people get if they have money, but the other part of it is when people have money, they have a higher level of society and a higher level of culture too. So you don't see a lot of extremely rich people going into a grocery store or into a convenience store and making fools of themselves, like you see online with the clip Everybody's favorite fail, you know fail clips. So, yeah, it was great, though I encourage anybody if you ever have the chance, go online and just applying it. I mean, even if you're not there, if you have the chance, if you're in California, if you're in wherever, and you and you apply for the tickets and you're able to go. If you have any chance of going, you absolutely should. It's just, it truly is a I'd say, once in a lifetime experience but you know, I know I've got twice.
Speaker 3:It's yeah, it is, it is the super bowl of golf and it absolutely lives up to that, that standard. Every year it is oh it's, it's better than the super bowl it is I would go to the masters over the super bowl yeah, I don't know about that
Speaker 3:yeah, it's nice, like the masters like it. It's really a cool event, Like people you know if you're into, not even if, even if you're in the golf like this right, just by the experience. So just experience and it is a dope. But anyway, we got business to tend to. Are you ready to jump in my brother?
Speaker 5:Was that too much banter? I've read that people don't like the banter part of of any podcast. I don't think that's banter. I think we're talking. That was societal.
Speaker 3:I mean, the Masters is a pretty big event, man, and it's, you know, just like if it was a World Series, super Bowl, yeah.
Speaker 5:You know, and while we're not a sports broadcast, I think we could absolutely do a Tupac's Cover Sports podcast and we could easily do that, maybe if you guys all get enough people coming through and getting enough subscriptions, because right now we're up to a hard two nickels. We've made two nickels off of this.
Speaker 3:Just about Nine cents, almost Nine cents last month. So we are rolling in the off of this. Just about Nine cents, almost two Nine cents last month. So we are rolling in the dough. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 5:We are rubbing them together.
Speaker 3:What do I owe you? Let's see. Let's see if we can jump into it this week and see what we got. I got to minimize that and see if we can bring up my man, there's tariffs, there's China, there's tariffs, there's China, there's ballistic missiles.
Speaker 3:All right, I will let you do it short. So what we got today is we got Bill Mayer, everybody's favorite liberal, going to sit down with Trump and, surprise, surprise, he enjoyed it. Then we got China spilling the tea on luxury brands, which is absolutely dominating social media right now, which is hilarious. Then we got congressional trading, which has been an interesting conversation that's come up a time or two. Then the biggest thing we got to finish up with this week is POTUS in the White House with his buddies bragging about how much money they made during the dip, which is, oh, did they? I haven't seen that one. We'll get into it, all right. So that's what we got today. What do you want to start with?
Speaker 5:Well, I think Bill Maher is probably the most kind of interesting one I read. I read the article I. I didn't watch the video. Um, I'm not necessarily. Bill Maher is one of those guys that I can. I can watch in short bursts, so are we, I think? I think, kj, you have the video.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do so. Just to lead off, remember Bill Maher. I know I got a lot of slack about it last week in the comments about this, but Bill Maher is the typical white liberal that I try to warn against. He is the white liberal that will sit back and say I'm for you, I'm on your team and I'm on your team. I will turn around and bite your head off and not think twice about it. You know it is with this smugness. So he is a liberal. No, I just go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 5:The other thing that Bill Maher does is the same thing that Stuart the Daily Show.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what's his name? John Stewart.
Speaker 5:John Stewart. They do kind of the same thing. They will come out and they will say this policy is bad, that policy is bad, policy is bad, this is wrong, that's wrong. And then if you call them out on it, well, like, especially john stewart, like he's, he's made politics toxic for an entire generation. On the daily show 15 years he was toxic. And then he turns around and says, well, look how toxic everybody is. And then when he's kind of called out and he goes well, why are you talking to me about politics? I'm just a comedian.
Speaker 5:And Bill Mark yeah, bill Mark, it's the. Oh, I was just joking defense Like hey, you're a piece of crap. I don't like you at all. I think what you do sucks. What do you mean it sucks? I don't like you at all. I think what you do sucks. What do you mean it sucks? Oh, no, dude, I was just, I was just joking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is part of my stick. It's what I, it's what you know. I just do it for the show. Oh really, OK, cool.
Speaker 5:And they don't. And that's the problem is when you do it for a show. But what you do is toxic. It doesn't matter if it's a show or not, it's toxic to begin with. So when Bill Maher has been a, shall we say, an avid Trump critic for the past decade, it's interesting that he went to the White House to have a dinner and you remember it was the morning. Joe, joe Scarborough and his wife, they did the same thing when Trump was first, or was he elected or inaugurated? But they went down and everybody on the left was freaking out like, oh, how do you? You're going to kiss the ring. And you know, there's a point where Bill Maher says something like, look, I was, maybe it's time to bury the hatchet. And you just wonder OK, bury the hatchet until you, your writers, write another Trump joke next week. So? But here's the difference between what Bill Maher publicly versus privately.
Speaker 3:All right. So let's, let's see if I can get it shared. I'm cute, so I'm telling you man, those, those, those liberals are, they are something else. All right, I am in the wrong setting. I'm so upset. I'm in the wrong damn setting. All right, well, you keep doing it. Yeah, here we go. I got you, let's go, let's get it going. All right, boom, boom, boom. Are we sharing? There we go.
Speaker 2:He didn't get mad. He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public. Look, I get it. It doesn't matter who he is at a private dinner with a comedian, it matters who he is on the world stage. I'm just taking it as a positive that this person exists, because everything I've ever not liked about him was, I swear to God, absent, at least on this night with this guy. Bob Kidrock told me the night before. He said if you want to get a word in edgewise, you're going to have to cut him off. He'll just go on. Not at all. I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected, people who don't look you in the eye, people who don't really listen because they just want to get to their next thing, people whose response to things you say just doesn't track like what. None of that was him, and he mostly steered the conversation to. What do you think about this? I know your mind is blown. So is mine mind.
Speaker 2:There were so many moments when I hit him with a joke or contradicted something and no problem. At dinner he was asking me about the nuclear situation in Iran in a very genuine hey, I think you're a smart guy, I want your opinion, sort of way, and I said, well, obviously you're privy to things about it. I'm not, but for what it's worth, I thought the Obama deal was worth letting play out because we made Iran destroy 98% of the uranium and they were 15 years away from a bomb. And then I said to him but we got rid of that, you got rid of that. He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic.
Speaker 3:He took it in. So, all right, are we back? Yeah, we're back, all right. So let me stop sharing that. There we go. So that was the gist of the conversation. I cut it off a little short.
Speaker 3:He goes on to say that he made jokes with Trump and he, he made jokes with Trump and he didn't feel like if he was sitting in a room with Biden or Obama, he can make those same jokes. And therein lies the danger, right Of your typical prototypical white liberal, right, they, when, when Biden was in office, he could do no wrong with Bill Maher. When Obama was in office, he was all about diversity and you know, this is post-racist society and any black person that thinks the racism is this now is foolish. And all this stuff. Now, all of a sudden, you know, now, all of a sudden, trump's the guy, who's who's the most approachable and, you know, completely contradictory, whereas he wouldn't feel comfortable with obama and biden and it's just a bunch of it's more liberal bullshit. Right, and excuse my crassness, I tend not to get too animated over these kinds of things, but when I see stuff like this, it plays with me on an emotional level, right, right, it plays. It's a tool, it's a it's. It's an attack on the intellectual side of everyone who's trying to be rational about it. Right, like you know, good, and got that gum wheel Right that Trump didn't ask you a damn thing about or would value your opinion.
Speaker 3:He doesn't even listen to the opinions of the people in this cabinet. So him asking you, I get it. It's a stroke of ego, right? If I was sitting there and Trump asked me or asked you hey man, what do you think about the nuclear situation in Iran? Right, and you gave an opinion.
Speaker 3:Do you honestly feel like Trump is going to sit back and be like man, I never thought about that, that's a great opinion. Soon, as I get to work tomorrow, we're going to look into that. Or will he just nod and smile and say, hey man, that's a great opinion, and go on to the next topic? You know what I'm saying. I don't. I have an issue. No, I get your cynicism. I have an issue with those guys, because mayor now is saying oh well, you know, I talked all this trash about him and I'm as liberal as can be. And if I say Trump's a good guy and he's a good guy, maybe we had it all wrong this whole time. I just don't buy it, man, and that's why I don't trust white liberals. Hell, I don't trust liberals, period. But I definitely, definitely don't trust white liberals because they turn aflop so damn fast you can't decide which way is up.
Speaker 5:Well and that's one of the things I've talked to you about for a long time is one of the problems with the left is they're driven by emotion. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 5:You hear Trump talk about how years ago he and Whoopi Goldberg and some of the other hosts on the View were good bird and some of the other hosts on the view were good, uh, joe j uh, joy behar, and like they got along. He'd been on the show, they laughed, they liked each other. And then suddenly he's running for president, uh, on the republican ticket, and he becomes persona non grata and he becomes the evil person that nobody can uh respect and and all that stuff. And it's an emotional thing. Right Now, bill Maher yeah, again, he can say that Trump is engaging in all this stuff. So one of the things that I found when you talk to people about certain people, right, and this is this is like you go back to Stephen Covey and you go to the highly successful people, the seven habits and all that stuff. Yeah, some of the things are naturally inborn, right.
Speaker 5:Certain leaders have a way of doing things. I've heard things about Bill Clinton. Like Bill Clinton, I know people who just hated Bill Clinton, who believe that he legitimately was a rapist, and personally I do. I think that there were, from all the information out there, oh no, I mean between Paula Jones and Roderick and all those. I think it's fair to say that he was a rapist. That said, I know people that believe that in the moment met Bill Clinton and came away going he is the. He is the most engaging guy I've ever met. Like when I was talking to him he was there with me, he was, he was in my boat and there's something about certain personalities that they're able to do that.
Speaker 5:I think that's where Tony Robbins has made so much money and because he's such an engaging guy. But he does it in a way that he's in on you. Joe Rogan is the same way. You, joe Rogan is the same way. I can ask a question and Joe Rogan, if you ever watch his podcast, he asks questions without really asking questions. He'll kind of prime the pump a little bit and then the person he's talking to just goes and you'll hear Joe actively listening. He'll give feedback, he'll ask follow-up questions and it's not like Joe Rogan went to school to learn the art of communication. He's a natural communicator, he's a stand up comedian, he's he's figure stuff.
Speaker 5:So for Trump to do that and I think the disingenuous part more than anything from our is that a he'll be bashing Trump next week like nothing happened, like he didn't have the dinner with him and b. For him to say that the trump that he was with um and everything he didn't like about, about trump, isn't there, tells me something else. It tells me that it's not about the person, it's about what he believes the policy should be. And you say, well, trump, well, trump is a or Obama or Biden or Bush or whoever. And you say, well, they're a horrible person because I don't agree with their politics. That's where a lot of the discourse in this country has gone.
Speaker 5:It's not that, and especially from the left, and I'm not saying the people on the right, alex Jones, some of those guys, yes, but I really think for the most part in general, and know if that's listening, he's going to say that's not true at all. But for the most part, if you disagree with somebody on the right, they'll say I don't agree with you. Here's what my perception is, here's what I think my understanding, the facts are. And somebody from the left will say I disagree with you, you're wrong and you're evil, because you don't believe the same way I do, and so I don't know. I think it's nice to hear bill maher say that. I just I think it's I, I don't know what. I don't take it for a lot because, again, unless bill maher's monologues change, um, I think late night comedy is about getting viewership, it's. There's not a big difference between bill maher and the other late night guys than the, the sports yakkers.
Speaker 5:Steven a smith says the most insane things and he's making what? 10 million dollars a year Because he comes up with the dumbest thing. I mean really Rory McIlroy. He wins the Masters. I could see Stephen A Smith coming out and saying, well, yeah, that's great that Rory won, but he's just lucky that Tiger had a hurt ankle, because if Tiger had 49, tiger's still the best player in the world and Tiger would have won if he was healthy. That's a lot of ifs. But he will say that you know he just says things, that you go what, or you know there's no way that, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. The Dodgers aren't going to win the.
Speaker 5:World Series because they lost yesterday 16 to nothing. Yeah, it was one game.
Speaker 5:But he'll go off and he'll say how the Dodgers I'm making this up, he didn't Say it, but you know, say things like that and that's kind of how Mara these comedians, these Late night guys are none of them are there To, and rightfully so they're there to entertain. I just Don't find them very entertaining. But I don't. I mean, who is it on Fox News? Got filled. I think he's got the highest rated evening show. He beats all of them. I don't watch that. Rightfully so they're there to entertain. Hold on, I don't watch that. I mean, who is it on Fox News? Gutfeld, I think he's got the highest rated.
Speaker 7:Whoever that guy is, sounds really smart, he beats all of them.
Speaker 5:I don't watch that. They're there to entertain. Hold on. I'm holding on. I mean, who's been on?
Speaker 3:I've got to find out what that guy is, whoever that guy is sounds really funny.
Speaker 5:Late night guys are. None of them are there to entertain. They're there to entertain.
Speaker 3:I even got an open window, all right. So weird're we're? We're all right. So all of our live streams just started playing, yeah, at the same time. So our, our YouTube stream and our Facebook stream all were playing on this, this one feed, on the same feed as our live feed. So you just kind of heard our echo chamber from YouTube and Facebook come back. All right, sorry about that, man, I got it fixed. It was a little bit of a technical glitch, but we are back in business.
Speaker 5:I'll tell you that guy's voice, though I really like that guy's voice. We should have him on sometime.
Speaker 3:I know right. Well, if we can stop getting cursed out on TikTok, that'd be great. I love it All right. So, yeah, man, I think Bill Maher I'm good with Bill Maher, I want to get into the fun stuff. Man, that dude, I just, I just I'm glad you showed me that video, because that just that, just further, you know, cements my theory about white liberals. Man, I just I cannot trust him. I will trust a person who will tell me how they feel and where they stand, and I will be appreciative of it. Whether it's for me or against me, I can appreciate that. But what I cannot stand is a joker who will smile in my face, pat me on the back and then, as soon as I turn around, use that same other hand to stab me in my back and I just do.
Speaker 5:You think black liberals do the same thing though? Absolutely, absolutely, and I agree. Like I watch some of the video, or you know the clips from MSNBC and you have some of these. Who's the guy with the big afro, ellie Ely, something like that yeah, I mean he's yeah go ahead.
Speaker 3:I, I like. I like ely because he put in the work right. So he, he put in the work and he has the knowledge base, as opposed to a guy like Bill Mayer. Bill Mayer ain't researched shit a day in his life. Everything he spits out is something that some you know intern in the writer's room was put together, Some smoke in the writer's room was put together. He goes out and spits it out. Where you got a guy like Ely? Ely's written what I want to say 12 books by now. I think it's somewhere around that 10, 12 books. He's got two decades of research in academia. He's still a sitting professor. So I'm more willing to take what he says at face level over a guy like Mayor any day, right, Because at the end of the day, resumes matter, right? I mean we're in the world of meritocracy, right? So if we were to stack resumes, you know Ely's resume would crush Mayer's any day, and twice on Sunday.
Speaker 5:So what if it's a white liberal that has a better resume than is it? Ely, Is that how you say his name?
Speaker 3:I believe it is pronounced Ely. I know who you're talking about.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I'm just curious, you know, because it comes down to a lot of perception, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not. It's not a white or black thing, it's a credibility thing, right? Like you know what? What I found is the more, the more research, the more. The more research person does, or the more knowledge a person does looking into an issue, they tend to have, you know, a better view, right? They don't flip-flop, right?
Speaker 3:So, like, even on the conservative side, like you, you got guys like I'll give. I'll give you an example shapiro, right? What's his name? Ben shapiro yarmul, who likes to spit out all this crazy stuff.
Speaker 3:As asinine as he is, he is consistent with being wrong, based off of the research that he's searched. I may not agree with him, but I can appreciate his approach, no matter how flawed it is, because it's from one side. He's become a master at presenting it in a way to where it benefits his, his theory or his rationale. Right, and that that comes with knowing your subject. That comes with knowing your subject matter, right. The more you know it, the more you can manipulate the facts to benefit your story, and that works on both sides. You know liberal and conservative to benefit your story, and that works on both sides. You know liberal and conservative.
Speaker 3:So, um, yeah, man, but you get a guy like you, get a guy like mayor who will come out and he'll champion, like I told you, like the guys that did the picnic you know everybody that was at the picnic I mean, excuse me, the protest last week.
Speaker 3:I call them picnics because hell, all they did was go out there and celebrate and, and you know, it reminded me of the, it reminded me of the 1960s era, right, where you would get these, these hippies, to get out and they'll do these music festivals to change the world and feed the hungry and all this other stuff, right, and they'll party and do drugs and and listen to music for an entire weekend. Meanwhile, the entire city's homeless population is getting worse and nobody passed out a sandwich the entire weekend. Meanwhile, the entire city's homeless population is getting worse and nobody passed out a sandwich the entire weekend. You know what I'm saying. The problem is right there. You can put action to it right there. But it's more important that people see that we're protesting. It's more important that people know that we're out here instead of attacking and addressing the real issue.
Speaker 5:I said I saw something like that. Yeah, I saw something like that. A couple years ago a group of conservatives a group of conservatives went into baltimore to help clean up a neighborhood. Like they got trucks and they were raking and scooping and they were actually doing work and and the mayor or the councilman or whatever came out was like how dare they come into our neighborhood, how dare they do this to put on a show? And these guys are like we're just here to help. We don't.
Speaker 3:We didn't bring a single camera or a cell phone they literally were going to put in the work. But again, that's what. But that's the fallacy in all of it. Right, people would rather, and that's that, I think. On a. On a more macro level, that's what. But that's the fallacy in all of it. Right, people would rather, and that's that's, I think, on a on a more macro level, that's the problem with government, right, that's the. That's why we got all these yahoos in Congress.
Speaker 3:It's more fun to talk about the problem, because if we fix the problem, then I have nothing else to argue about. You know, it's my own job security if I talk about it but not do nothing about it. Right, security if I talk about it but not do nothing about it. Right, and you'll see that in both chambers of Congress, both sides of the aisle, you got a bunch of people who love to be in front of the camera talking about the issue instead of actually being in the chamber working on the compromise to fix the damn issue. And I guess that's what frustrates me the most out of how America works.
Speaker 3:Right, like, we got a million and one people who like to talk about the issue, but you got maybe 10 people who are willing to go and actually do the work. All right, at the end of the day, let's fix it and I fix it. What the hell are you talking about? We didn't come here to work. We're not here to here to. We're here to put on the show and get paid which, by the way, leads into a great segment, if you're ready, unless you got something else to talk about well, I, I know what you're going to go with and I'm fine with that.
Speaker 5:But that's where I look at it and I say it's a. It's a problem on two fronts. One if you or I wanted to run for Congress we've said this several times we don't have the money, we don't have the backing. If somebody came out and said, hey, chaplain, I'm going to back, you're retiring, there's an open seat, I want you to run. So now, a, do I go run? And B am I beholden to that backer who says I want you to run because I've got some certain things that I want to push? Now, if I believe in those things, ok, fine. But the other part of that is and this is, I believe, one of the very first things we talked about on the first episode. We've talked about this a lot of times the federal government all the way down, and then you get to the state that the higher you get in the federal government, the less they want to fix anything, because if you fix it, you lose power. Like, if you get everything in this country, if you get all the laws where they are clear, everybody understands them, they're fair to everybody, and if they break the law, then this is exactly what will happen. Blah, blah, blah. But if you were able to go in and have a criminal code that the federal level, and say here are the rules and everybody says, okay, we know the rules, we don't need to keep changing the rules, you wouldn't need the Senate, you wouldn't need the house. You know, if you had a balanced budget amendment and said it has to be a balanced budget and you have to do it, you and I have talked about this All you got to do is put something that says if you don't have a balanced budget amendment on time, you are disqualified from holding office and never being elected again. We both know there'd be a balanced budget, absolutely, but they don't. And so it goes into what we're about to talk about and why I've said for a long time and I'm not the only one the 28th Amendment should be that Congress shall pass no law from which they are exempt, that the public has to follow, whatever the wording is. You have people right now because we're going into the trading right. You have people that have been doing and this is a long isn't, and this isn't a Republican or Democrat side thing, this is a.
Speaker 5:If you or I did this. I've got a buddy who is the CEO of a bio company, right. And if I called him up and said, hey, can you give me a heads up, I said, hey, can you give me a heads up? Just shoot me a text with a smiley face if you have something that's coming in the pipeline. And if you don't right now, if you could just send me a smiley face at some point, so just send me other icons, but when you have something ready to go, send me a smiley face, right. And then I went and invested. I would be. I would be charged with insider trading. He would be charged with insider trading. Um, martha stewart, who did less than that, went to jail for insider trading. But you have congress people who are in these meetings where they are discussing very specific things like what pharmaceutical companies are going to be able to produce, the COVID literally, literally making trades from their phone while they're in the meeting yeah, and so and I don't and again, I don't care if that's I think it was Marjorie Taylor Greene that was kind of busted for doing it right but it goes from her
Speaker 5:all the what From her all the way again, from her all the way to Pelosi and everybody in between. You know, there's just, there's no, there's no way that it's fair for the American people to be charged with some of the things that these laws are. And then Congress should go yeah, but we're in Congress, we're in Congress, we just. And if well, then what do you do? Well, if you get elected to Congress, you put in a blind trust period and you can't make any trades for the time you're in office. Pretty simple.
Speaker 3:Well, if you do that, then what's the purpose of serving? I didn't come here to serve the people. I came here to get rich If I can't get paid then what's the point? Of being here. You know what, though? You bring up an interesting point with Marjorie, for, as aloof as she is, god bless her soul, she's not a dummy.
Speaker 3:She may have just cracked the code on finally getting the insider trading bill on congress passed right, because she was so, so blatantly out about it and then you had.
Speaker 3:So there's a 45 day right in congress.
Speaker 3:So when they make, when they make a trade um, I can't remember what threshold is, but when they make a trade, they have up to 45 days to disclose those trades Right, which and we know how the current news cycle spins after after a week or whatever people forget about it.
Speaker 3:So Congress men and women tend to wait up until day 40 and and beyond to release their trades because by then nobody cares, right? But marjorie god bless her soul, she's been consistent whenever she makes a trade within a day or two, it is listed, no matter where it is. But the problem that marjorie runs into is when you, when you make those kinds of trades and you're sitting in the oversight committee, right, and people look at the time that you've made those trades and they compare it to the time where you're sitting in committee and they can they can see that you're actually in the committee meeting making trades while you're in the meeting. That tends to be a problem, right? So that's why she's in so much hot water this week, but OK, this goes back to Trump and Hillary.
Speaker 5:We've talked about this Trump and Hillary in 15, when Hillary was saying Donald Trump didn't pay taxes. Donald Trump hires accountants so that he can pay as little in taxes as he possibly can. And Donald.
Speaker 5:Trump's response was absolutely, of course. Why wouldn't I? If you want to be mad, be mad at the system. Be mad at the system that you've been a senator in for the past six or however many years. Be mad at your husband, who is the president for eight years and he didn't push for the tax code.
Speaker 5:Now, simple fix. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene if she was sly as a fox or Ted Cruz or anybody that actually wanted to change things here's what I would do if I was one of them. I would say, okay, I'm in there, I have the information. I just made $100,000 on these trades whatever the number is right. I invested $10,000 and I made $100,000 in a matter of four hours. What I would do is I would turn around and say, hey, look at what I did. I traded this. I had the information. You guys didn't. I did so.
Speaker 5:What I did is I took $10,000. Now in taxes, I've got to pay. So I took that little bit out for the IRS. So I've taken what I've actually made $85,000 net and I've donated it to the soup kitchen and wherever right. So I've donated that money because I want to make the point that anybody that's in Congress can do this and they can manipulate the system and I'm showing you how they manipulate the system. So that's what I've done and with that $85,000 donation, I also have this bill to make that illegal for all members of Congress. And until this bill passes, I am going to continue to do this and I am going to continue to donate money to causes, and you know what I mean. Like I could see some.
Speaker 3:And that's why you'll never.
Speaker 5:That's for DHS. That's why, because, because, because the average person would rather have that eighty five thousand dollar payout and actually do the right thing and represents the American people.
Speaker 3:Let's watch, let's see.
Speaker 6:Just hours before the president announced his 90 day tariff pause, he posted this on Truth Social, saying this is a great time to buy, and he signed his initials DJT. His initials DJT Now. His official announcement later sparked a market surge, but one of the president's top political rivals, the Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California, is now demanding an investigation. The question is, who knew what the president was going to do? And did people around the president trade stock knowing the incredible gyration the market was about to go through? All right Now, as it relates to congressional stock trading, that has been the center of debate for years. At least half a dozen bills have been introduced to ban or restrict members of Congress from playing in the market buying and selling stocks really but nothing has become law. Right now, legislators are governed by the Stock Act of 2012 that requires members of Congress to report any trades worth more than $1,000 within 45 days. Only one congressperson has reported trades since President Trump's tariff announcement on April 2nd, eight days ago. That is the Georgia Republican Congresswoman, marjorie Taylor Greene. She has been disclosing trades basically within two to three days, despite the 45-day period allowing to report trading. Now, in terms of total trading volume, the congresswoman came in at just over a million dollars, putting her well behind the New Jersey Democrat, josh Gottheimer, who slid the way, and, according to stock tracker Quiver, quantitative this trade had totaled some $75 million in 2024. By the way, democrat Nancy Pelosi was second, just shy of $40 million Now from acquired public filings.
Speaker 6:Marjorie Taylor Greene made 19 trades in the two days after April 2nd. All were purchases between $1,000 and $15,000. The congresswoman purchasing stock in major tech companies like Amazon, dell and Apple. She also invested in Lululemon, ups, fedex. Stocks that have gained the most for green include Restoration Hardware, lamb Research and Dell. Stocks that have declined include Nike and Lululemon.
Speaker 5:That was interesting because I'd be curious. They didn't say what her overall plus or negative was, because the three best looked very similar to the three. Negative plus 13 plus 10 plus 8. And negative was minus 10 minus 12 minus 6. So yeah, either. So, a, is she really taking advantage of insider information or, b, is she just not very good with the insider information to make money well the.
Speaker 3:it went on to say that her net worth has since she's been in Congress. She came in at about seven hundred thousand dollars for net worth and now she's she's pushing close to twenty eight mil. So she's doing all right. She's well behind the pace of Pelosi, though she's got a lot of work. She's not doing that.
Speaker 5:So part of the problem with that, though, is and I'm not saying that's inaccurate I don't know what her numbers are, but I know the same thing got reported for AOC, like she came in and she had all the students dead and she was broke, and she got elected in and now she's worth twenty five million dollars, and she pushed back and said I'm not worth twenty five million dollars. That's crazy, right? So that's the other side. I don't know what the numbers actually are, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is you have the opportunity to use insider information. If you're in those, I think the window should almost be opposite.
Speaker 5:The 45-day rule should be that Congress cannot buy or sell any stocks in which it's been discussed in committee, any committee, any bill, anything for 45 days after. So, if she's in there, any congressperson a congresswoman X is sitting in there and they're talking about the importing of champagne from France, right, and there's going to be a new tariff? Well, ok, cool. So what are you going to do? Are you going to short it and say, hey, I think that's going to make it really expensive, so I need to sell my stock in French Champagne Limited. Or or am I going to have the money. Hey, I should buy it because that's going to make more scarce money. It should be the opposite. Now it should be. I have to wait 45 days before I can do it. But we've seen what they say half a dozen bills. It's the same thing as people who say, oh yeah, there should be term limits, but then when there's a term limit introduced I think Ted Cruz has introduced a term limit bill every year since he's been in Congress.
Speaker 3:No, it wouldn't be Ted Cruz. That joke is. He's one of the biggest. Oh, no, no.
Speaker 5:Oh no, absolutely. Ted Cruz has pushed for term limits. You can go check.
Speaker 3:I am definitely going to look at that, all right, so I'm going to look Hold on, here we go. We got a couple more, so let's get to it, all right? Oh, this is a continuation of what we were talking about, but now it just puts, puts into, I guess, better clarification of how well Congress is doing compared to the private sector.
Speaker 5:Oh my goodness, I'm sure it's a little bit better.
Speaker 1:It's funny, just to tell you, look at how many members of Congress outperformed him, and not by five percent, not by six or seven or ten, by 40, 50, 60, 70, up to 149 annual returns. He's been doing this for 60 years. He's never had a hundred.
Speaker 3:That's David Rouser on top. Then you got Debbie Schultz, roger Williams, morgan McGarvey, larry Buxton, pete Sessions, susan Collins, david Kustoff, nancy Pelosi. So the color scheme talks about what party they are. So you got Pelosi and Wagner. It's both parties. I was surprised. You see, my boy, dan crenshaw, is on the list.
Speaker 5:I that surprised me, um, and then nobody on there surprises me, madame schiff being on there wouldn't surprise me nobody. There's not a single person in congress, and again. So here's part of the problem I have with it. As a libertarian, I look at it and say, if it's not against the law, they should like they can do it, like okay, cool. Now, just because something's legal doesn't mean it's moral and ethical, though it doesn't make it right. And that's where I say, on the moral and ethical side, it should be changed. But until you change it like okay.
Speaker 5:But they're obviously like how embarrassed would you be, kj, if you were able to turn a $5,000 investment into $25,000 year over year for five years? Like great, you want to give me a hard time. So I went from $5,000 to $25,000. And now, remember, now I can invest that $25,000. So it's exponential, so that $25,000 now is 25, now is 125 in year two. Let's see, you start with five. You go to 25 after a year, 125 after two years, 625 after three years, 18. So 160 goes to 1.8 million, goes to 7 million. So in five years, just by going, just by making the five times, and I understand, look it's, it's not that easy. The highest one was only 140, but that's I'm sure. Cause I don't want somebody calling me out and saying that's not how taxes work.
Speaker 3:He's only got 149% ROI this year, so he's barely. I mean, how can you expect people to eat man, when they're making those numbers like that? I feel for these congressmen, man All right.
Speaker 5:So, speaking of which, but 100, think about that. 149 return on investment. That goes from 10,000 to 25,000. That's 10,000, 150%, so you're 10,000. You get that 10 and another 5. So you go from 10,000. The numbers aren't that far off from what I just said. 150.
Speaker 3:They say that Washington is an expensive place to live. Man, how do you expect these congressmen to survive, man? I don't. He's only getting like 20%. Man, I feel bad for Congress. Congress needs to have insider trading. I mean hell. I'll give you a prime example. Hold on, Before you get started. I'll give you a prime example. Go ahead, let's see this. Let's see, let's see what he has to say about this.
Speaker 1:It's not just because what he has to say about this.
Speaker 3:So that was POTUS bragging about how Charles made $2.5 billion on the curve and then another executive made $900 million on the curve in the White House. So that kind of lends into the whole conversation of insider trading right, and I'll give you so much so that congress is now saying, okay, we need to ask was this done by design?
Speaker 5:because um right, they think it's. Yeah, they think it's been. They think trump is specifically taking the stock market to readjust the 10-year bond rate. It's, it's a little bit of 10 hat stuff. Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 3:I'm glad you brought that up, because I want you to listen to this, to this the comments from the. The so Congress called Trump's primary trade adviser to a hearing to explain what's going on, and I want you to. I want you to listen to his response before.
Speaker 5:Before you do that, I just want to make one point about the clip you just said though Okay, so Charles Schwab and that other investor, right, we need to know, because when you say somebody like because you see it in the New York Times, you see it on Drudge right, elon lost $40 billion in the last month. He lost $40 billion because of stock right, yeah, but the month before that he was up $60 billion over the last two months, which makes sense.
Speaker 3:But that was between the two days of. That was the two days between the curve right.
Speaker 5:But Charles Schwab. But we don't know what Charles Schwab see. Here's the thing. Let's say Charles Schwab as a fund manager. Charles Schwab is a major fund manager. They have major funds. It's like the Guggenheim Group that owns the Dodgers, right? I think they control, like some. I mean, it's some ridiculous amount of money, right. But if they come in and the Guggenheim group is coming in, the head of the Guggenheim group and Trump is over these other people. He says, hey, it's not their name? Obviously hey.
Speaker 5:Guggenheim, how much did you make? Two point five billion yesterday on this Right? And he's like, yeah, and he's not going to follow up and say, hey, before that, how much when it went down, how much did you lose? And he's going, well, yeah, I mean I lost $3 billion since Friday, but hey, but you're right, I got $2.5 yesterday. So there's context, kind of matters, and I'm not justifying anybody. Here's the other thing. This is one of the really interesting things that I don't think people really understand the way the financial markets are. They deal with things with algorithms and their algorithms are based on, like to the point where it's, nanoseconds.
Speaker 3:Wait, wait, before you get to that, hold on. You're about to go way off course. Hold on. I'm glad you brought that up. Hold tight, because I want you to hear it out of his own mouth, okay.
Speaker 7:Is this market manipulation? No, why not? If it was a plan, if it was always the plan, how is this not market manipulation? It's not market manipulation, sir well then, what is it? Because it sure is not a strategy. We're trying to reset the global trade system. What is?
Speaker 7:that done? How have you? How have you achieved any of that? But to enact enormous harm on the American people, which was our concern from the very beginning. Tariffs are a tool. It can be used in the appropriate way to protect US jobs and small businesses, but that's not what this does.
Speaker 3:So I know it was a small clip from here, but that part I thought stuck out. And the reason why I thought it stuck out is because here you have the top trade advisor literally telling you no, you know, no, we're not market manipulated, we're not doing that.
Speaker 5:What's his position? Like who? Who is that? I don't. I don't know who he is. What's his?
Speaker 3:I had his title written down. I gotta go back and look it up. I I don't have it in my notes, but and I?
Speaker 5:I'm not trying to get technical, I just like I don't know who that is I don't know what, and because context. Again, I have a hard time with any clip because it's context, so I don't't know what was going on, but go ahead, yeah, but so he's the I can't remember his name, but he's the top trade advisor for the administration.
Speaker 3:So they called him in. After all the terror tariffs on terror thing. They called him in. It's like, hey, what is going on? Because from now on, looking in, we got a lot of congressmen making money, we got a lot of corporations making money, but the American people's 401ks are tanking Like this looks like market manipulation, this looks illegal. And he's like, oh no, it's not illegal. But then he turns around and says, well, did you guys plan it? And he's like, no, we didn't plan it, but we're trying to reset the global economy. So it's a little contradictory in its telling. I think he kind of put his foot in his mouth by saying, no, we didn't plan it, but we planned it. And then you know, before you go you're going to say, oh well, yeah, that just you know, in isolation that doesn't make much sense, right? And like I've been, like I've been saying, yeah, what I'm saying, like I've been saying, since this administration has, has taken hold, it's just another piece of the puzzle which makes a really big, really big pot that says, hey, man, this is getting real messed up really quick um but go ahead go
Speaker 5:ahead so there's a few things. One, you're talking about somebody who's using semantics, and they're talking about this is not market manipulation, because market manipulation is a very specific thing. Again, we talked about trading spaces last week and when they went in and they tried to corner the market by having insider trading, that's manipulating the market, right? When you're talking about resetting the global economy, for some ways Greg Easterbrookok, who is going to be on in two weeks, our good friend greg he talks, yeah, he talks about it in one of his most recent columns on substack. He's like why are we resetting one of the most, uh, positive performing economies in the world? And it goes back to the every you've got to sell, you've got to free people. Oh, we is so bad, right, uh? Because to freak people. Oh, we is so bad, right, uh, because congress and washington loves to to say, hey, everything's burning and you know, the world's going to hell and I'm here to fix it. I'm here to fix it. So, but as far as, as far as what he's doing, um, the and I understand your point like the 401k people, they're losing money, all that. But there's also a very different thing that's going on there.
Speaker 5:Most 401ks, uh, are long-term a lot of bonds, a lot of long-term treasury bonds, things like that. The treasury market is not as volatile as the stock market, right? So the stock market goes up and down. People see that in their 401ks and they start freaking out, uh, but realistically, if you look at the numbers, like for the past eight, nine years, it's just gone like this it's been consistently up and it's gone up, and there have been big ups and big downs, but consistently the trend has been up. So now that it's gone down a little bit, people are freaking out.
Speaker 5:Is that the media freaking out, going oh see, this is anti-Trump. If this had been, if this had happened in the middle of the Biden administration, they would. They've been like hey, you know this is fluctuations, and I get it. But because that that sells, you know, if it bleeds, it leaves, and in this case, your stock market at year 401k is bleeding, so we're jumping in, and so I think that now I don't know who that congressman is. I'm guessing, though, that when there were five or 10 percent dips during the Biden administration, he was not yelling about market manipulation, and, trust me, there probably were some Republicans who were yelling just like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But no man. I mean, if it was a typical market anomaly, fine, sure, because the market ebbs and flows, right. But what you have is you have a president who purposely what it seems like purposely went out shouting that I'm doing tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Get ready Right. And everybody, everybody you know, with the knowledge to listen, planned accordingly, right. They made their sellouts Right While the market was still high. Then the market tanked, right. And then, hours before, hours before POTUS was to make the announcement that he's changing his mind on tariffs, he sends out a tweet hey, now's a great time to invest, right. Again, for those who know, the signals took advantage Right. Hey, they bought Right. So I hear you.
Speaker 3:But when we talk about people's 401ks, it's always at the expense of the people. About people's 401ks, it's always at the expense of the people. Hey, it's going to be fine in the long run, you're fine. But while the people are waiting, you have corporations and our representatives making instant gains at a substantial rate, right? So how then does that look? How can you justify that? How can you reasonably say, okay, okay, hey, this was not intentional, because everybody, everybody from this level up is is making gains substantially, but everybody below that level. Oh don't worry, yours is gonna come later, it's gonna rebound later. You just hold tight the people who need it the most are.
Speaker 5:Here's how. Here's how it's justified. Right? Again, I'm defending it only along the lines of legal and illegal, not whether it's moral or not, right? Okay, I'm not just saying the morality, I am not arguing for the morality of this. That said, if you are a savvy investor, you've heard for two years that the market is due for an adjustment, that a bubble is coming. This is not a new thing, right? So then when Trump gets in and he says we are going to enact these tariffs and it's going to start on April 1st or whatever the date was, you had people who are savvy, who are listening to this going. You know that's going to hurt the market.
Speaker 5:So if it's going to start on April 1st or April 2nd, whatever day it is, I think I should sell on April 1st and then, as different things get announced, they go oh yeah, it's going to go down. Oh, it's good, I better sell now. I considered it, but I'm I'm long-term investor. I just have a few stocks there there and I'm just kind of like I've been bitten by trying to play the up and downs before. I've lost by trying to do the up and down thing. So I'm just going to leave it there. It's going to be a day trade. Yeah, day trading is not for the faint of heart. Yeah, especially, yeah, Don't trade on margin, by the way, don't ever trade on margin. And I had it. And here's the thing, I'm not talking out of my butt. I had a Series 7 license. I had a license to trade stocks back in the day before you know, 20 odd. Well, now, almost 30 years ago.
Speaker 5:So, and you say, well, the signals? Well, you're right, the signals are there. So if somebody is smart and they have the or I don't even want to say smart, savvy, the understanding, and then Trump sends out a tweet that says now's a good time, well, he's saying look, here's the dip. Now, if he came out and he said to specific people, if he had sent that text not on truth, but instead had sent an email to his 10 biggest donors, then yeah, you could legitimately say we should probably do an impeachment investigation on this right. But because he did it out in the open and this isn't just a Trump thing, this is politicians as a whole they do things out in the open. And, as you said, if you know, you know, but middle America doesn't know. Middle America is not sitting there going.
Speaker 5:Hey, what did the president say today about stocks? What did? What did what? What was the committee doing? The committee did an investigation, like what's going on, which is going to go from here to human trials and is a potential game changer when it comes to cancer. Like they might get it on drudge, but by the time it's on drudge, all the stocks have already been moved.
Speaker 5:Yeah, people, this is what I was going to say earlier these big corporations that trade, when you're talking the New York stock exchange, the big ones Fidelity, schwab they have invested billions of dollars in cable underlying fiber optic cables, going from London to New York because of the two biggest financial, and then Hong Kong going from London to New York because of the two biggest financial, and then Hong Kong, to save a matter of fractions of a second. Because if the computers and the algorithm say this is going to go up by half a point in the first second of trading, of trading having that advantage of a quarter of a second when you're trading, a billion dollars worth of stocks is worth $200 million and if you have the information, it's going to go, it's going to tick down by half a point, a thousandth of a second before the other, because it's all automatic. This isn't back in the day from trading stocks spaces where they were doing this and going. We're going to corner the market. This is the computer saying I see this coming. I know what my algorithm tells me you should buy this and it clicks automatically. That's how it's done, like the vast majority of it.
Speaker 5:So Trump doing that and saying, hey, it's a good time to buy. If it's before the markets, then there's no advantage to anybody as far as the big stuff go. But the small people, yeah, if you're a small nickel and dime investor, even if you're a guy, that's like, oh, I'm a day trader and so, wow, I saw that Trump said it's a good time to buy. Yeah, okay, I'm ready to go, I'm going to invest in. Yeah, okay, I'm ready to go, I'm going to invest in. I've seen this stock that went down um 15 over last wednesday, thursday and friday, so I'm ready to go, I'm ready to click, and when the market opens, by the time you press that button, everything's already been done. That is going to do everything that you can any advantage you had.
Speaker 5:You can't click the button it's it's. You remember back in the day trying to call in to get to the radio station? I will tell you right now, the radio stations on those, probably 90% of the time they were picking who. I used to work in radio. I had some insight. They knew who. Maybe not the small stuff, but the big, hey, it's a trip. Right, there was one. They were doing it in Salt Lake. They were doing a trip for spring break and they were going to do this drawing. I knew the girl who won. I knew it was pick three days because she had been flirting with the DJ for a week before that and she was actually dating a friend of mine and my buddy goes watch this, watch what's going to happen. She's going to win because she was also trying to break through. Yeah, she was. She was trying to become an artist. So now here's the radio station. Look who won. Oh, it's this 28 year old voluptuous brunette who, whoa? No, oh my, she won this trip. Wow, that was way congratulations.
Speaker 5:So this happens throughout. You know the power is the beat. So it's kind of. I look at it and I go is it fair? Well, technically, yes, technically it's fair. But that's like saying, technically, I can go try out for the NBA right now. Technically, the NBA, an NBA team, could sign me to a contract. Sure, technically, are they going to? Of course Could they Sure, and I'm not talking about one of those. Hey, this eight-year-old has cancer. We're going to sign him for the day and make him an honorary Hawks player for the day. I'm talking about a legitimate. They could sign me. You could theoretically sign anybody as an NBA team, as long as you've done the paperwork.
Speaker 5:There's a joke that every once in a while you'll see it on Twitter or whatever it's like for the 23rd year in a row, I have declared for the NBA draft and have gone undrafted, and I am a free agent. It's an old joke, but it's still funny every time I see it. So there's certain things that just so. When people do these things and manipulate the market, I'm not a fan of it. I think the system should change. And until the system changes, that's my frustration, because as a conservative and as a libertarian, I say it's legal, as somebody who also has an emotional base and as a Christian at heart, and says, hey, manipulating the system, whether legal or not, morally wrong. So I'm kind of stuck either way. So I go look, this is stupid. Like this is stupid, and it doesn't. I wonder, like the guy who yelled in that clip, the representative who was yelling at him. This is manipulation. I really am curious what his stocks are.
Speaker 5:Now. Here's the other side of the coin and I will readily admit this. The other side of the coin and I will readily admit this. The other side of the coin is this when, when joe biden was getting ready to run um in 20 I believe it was as obama's vice president, it might have even been 2016 and he decided not to run or something. But they were doing Joe Biden's financials after it was some point after he become VP and he hadn't done his book deal, and it said his net worth was because you know the net worth they always had between this and that, and his net worth was between like three hundred 500 000. And part of me went what's wrong with you? You've been in congress for 40 years. You're still only worth 300 to 500 000.
Speaker 3:That's just what you reported, man.
Speaker 5:It's well, no, because. But part of that is you get in more trouble, like, realistically, you get in more trouble for miss. Like, realistically, you get in more trouble for misreporting, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Think about it like this Marjorie Taylor Greene would get in more trouble for misreporting what she made than she ever will for making it. Yeah, like, if at the end of the year Marjorie Taylor Greene is up $5 million, people go oh man, she made $5 million. Oh gosh, dang it. The system's not fair. But if she only reported that she made $475,000 or instead of about $5 million, $4.5 million, now there's going to be a congressional inquest, and now there's going to be potential censure, and now there's going to be all these things that you know that come into play. She can lose her seat on leadership. She can lose congressional the prestige, whatever prestige. Oh, is she even in congress? Is she in congress anymore? Yes, she's in, she. I thought she had a job in the white house now no, she's in congress.
Speaker 3:She's the part of the um, she's a part of the uh trades committee.
Speaker 5:Oh, okay. So she's on the committee that talks about the legality of trades and she's making trades, sitting there listening to the information.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 5:I've got to tell you.
Speaker 3:That's why she's in trouble.
Speaker 5:For what? Again, that's the problem. The cojones are incredible. To do that, I got it. You got to give her props for just in terms of sheer audacity.
Speaker 3:It's just the fact that she just does not care. This is who I am. This is what I do.
Speaker 5:If it's legal.
Speaker 3:My biggest thing is not that they can do it. My biggest thing with potus again is he is a walking contradiction. Right, the whole drain the swamp thing, the whole drain the swamp moniker. I'm gonna go in and I'm taking advantage of the tax code and I'm gonna show you how to do it and we're finally gonna put a stop to it. Because we're finally going to put a stop to it, because we're going to drain the swamp. And at every turn, not only is he not draining the swamp, it seems like he's trying to build riverboats in the swamp and I'm like Well, it depends on what your definition of draining the swamp is, though I agree with you.
Speaker 5:I agree with you.
Speaker 3:What was the overarching? Because the definition shouldn't change based off of how he's performing. When he went in there, he said hey, there's a lot of corruption, there's a lot of things that are legal, that should be legal, there's a lot of bureaucracy. I'm going in there because, remember, the whole thing was first hey, release your taxes. Oh, I can't, because I'm under audit for like six years. And then he went in and said, oh well, you know what? No, what was the thing with um? They asked him something I can't remember what it was. Ask him something about financial. Oh yeah, when hillary was on him, about the taxes, right, about taking advantage of the taxes, and he was like, well, you knew about it. You know why didn't you stop? Oh, yeah, right, which is fine. But this is this is the second opportunity to stop it, and not only has he not stopped it, he seemed to become more efficient at manipulating it. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5:So it's kind of but that's where I say, when you talk about draining the swamp, I will tell you right now there are a lot of people who are very happy with what he's done because they look at draining the swamp. There are a lot of people who are very happy with what he's done because they look at Draymond and Wampus. Here's why, when you talk about you've gone from whatever the federal employee a hundred percent of federal employees, and you've cut that from a hundred percent of federal employees to 90% federal employees, cutting that 10% there are a lot of people who look at that and go that's exactly what I wanted. Like, I cannot tell you how many people on Twitter that you see stuff as like, there are a lot of people who look at that and go that's exactly what I wanted. Like, I cannot tell you how many people on Twitter that you see stuff. It's like 100,000 people have lost their federal jobs and their responses. It should be all of them. Like, I voted for all of them, and so draining the swamp now.
Speaker 5:And the other side of it is, though and this is where you and I agree, and and our, our buddy, uh aj, agrees like the chart. The problem is the wrong people are getting targeted and part of the problem with that is the system. So if you have a hundred thousand employees and you say we want to cut 10 immediately and then another 10 through through, what's the word when they just retire? Gosh, dang it. I hate getting old because I forget words. It's not attribution, it's something else. So, okay, so we're going to over the next four years, because how many people retire? We're just going to let them retire and we're not going to hire new people. But on top of it.
Speaker 5:We're all attrition. There you go. So we're going to just let that 10% go through natural attrition. We're just not going to rehire. Okay, cool. But now we're also going to take another 10% because we need to reduce now.
Speaker 5:And the problem is the way the system works. It's first in, first out. So if you're one of the young guys who you got hired two years ago because you were gung-ho, you're fresh out of college, you've just completed a tour in the military, you are somebody that's there. I want to make a change. I want to fix Washington. The bureaucracy is horrible. Ha, you just got fired.
Speaker 5:Instead of that crusty old 15-year-old veteran who knows all the ways to manipulate the system and you know, it's almost like anything you could look at teachers. The teachers unions are there and you say, well, if we want to fix the teachers, do you really want to get rid of that 15 year old, 15 year veteran who just hates being there and is mean to the kids and is really like I'm just here Cause I've already done my fifth, but you know I'm tenured. Basically, I've got my 15 years, I've got my 401k. I need to put in another if I put another 10 years in because they were selling us with teaching. That's like one of the biggest millionaires are teachers Because they make their money and they stay in forever and they reinvest. Don't get me wrong, they're not scamming the system, but they use the 401k and so they become very well to do when they retire and it's a really good career to do that.
Speaker 5:But at the same time, who do I want teaching my kid? If I could choose who's teaching my kid, I want somebody who's been there for two to three years. They've got the one year. That get your feet wet out of the second year. They're still energetic. They're still third year. I can change these kids. I remember those. You remember those. You remember those. It was like Mrs Peterson has been teaching English here at Wasatch Junior High for 20 years and nobody likes her.
Speaker 5:She's mean, she like, she goes through the book like disdains all the students, disdains all the students, um, just a person. Now I understand as an adult it's very different, but that was the perception as a kid. But but then you had these younger people that came in. You're like, oh, I really like this teacher, I like mr so-and-so, he's a good guy, he tries or she tries, and you know my I go through that with my kids right now, like well, these teachers. And don't get me wrong, I think to a degree every teacher, no matter how long they've been there, still wants to teach to a degree and a lot of them get frustrated with the system. But when you're talking about draining the swamp, you're talking about resetting. It's tough because you do have the ingrained bureaucracy. You have those people like to me and this will not be positive.
Speaker 5:A lot of people who are ex-military will not like this statement. I think every contractor that is hired for the Department of Defense for a military job that can be done by a soldier should be fired. And I've got a good, we've got a good family friend that lives right here. He's in our ward, he is a contractor. It would affect him and, yes, I know that would suck for him and his family because he's a former military and now he's got a job as a contractor. That said, his job can be done by a soldier and it should be, in my opinion, okay. So now it's not going to be. He's not going to get fired, so I don't have, he's not going to know about this, but to me, like, like, realistically, that's, that's how it should be.
Speaker 5:The worst contractors that I ever dealt with in the military were the ones that were ingrained Now in the military. For those of you who have not served, when you're in the military you get moved. You would do a permanent change of station, generally every three to five years. Sometimes, if you're higher up, it's actually two years. Commanders get changed about every two years, right, and the part of the reason is they don't want you to get so ingrained in one position that you become static. So, yes, it sucks for your family, but part of it is you have to move and you have to be moving up or you move out, all that stuff. Right, and I dealt with civilians that had been in the same seat for 10, 12, or more years.
Speaker 5:There is somebody right now at Fort Eisenhower that has been basically with the same unit for a decade and this person is what would be called a junior person on the scale, but the level of influence and the level of power like actual power. This person is, I believe, a GS7, which is not high at all. That is very like everybody who comes in is basically, unless you're mopping the floor, you're a GS5, right? Yeah, it's nothing special. She has her own parking space as a GS7 because she's been at the unit for that long.
Speaker 5:Now I know a lot of people say she does a really good job. I have some doubts about that because I've seen how it works and some of the things that happen. I don't necessarily agree and I've brought it up, like I brought it up with the Sergeant Major and say how does so-and-so? I don't get it. How does so-and-so have this position still it? How does so-and-so have this position still like this position? They've been in this position for this long. The office is right next to the commander and every like, literally everything goes through this person. Um, that that does her job.
Speaker 5:And I'm trying to be very, very, very careful because I like this person, I like this individual. I don't like the job and I don't like the position and some of the things that happens from that person's position. Okay, I disagree with how that person fundamentally deals with soldiers and fundamentally does their job OK. So I think if you're a contractor, just like somebody who if you're a civil servant, maybe you need to move. Maybe you shouldn't be in the same position for however long move. Maybe you shouldn't be in the same position for however long. Maybe, if you live in Washington DC, you shouldn't be allowed to be in your position in Washington DC for more than I don't know. I'll be nice six years and then you've got to.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so let's say it kind of is. It kind of is, however, because somebody gets hired and they've done the job and maybe they're good at their job. But I could see something where let's go with the easy one Border Patrol, right, you get hired as an administrator. You're not a Border Patrol agent, you're admin, right. Ok, so you're in DC, you're doing your job. You get hired for six years Now. So you're in DC, you're doing your job, you get hired for six years. Now, after six years, well, you need to go be admin in El Paso or in Phoenix or in Helena, montana or Niagara, and you could be there for six years and you have to move because when you get so ingrained and you have to move because when you get so ingrained, one of the contractors I had one of the civilians again like the person they told me, and this was years ago they said, hey, sergeant O'Neill, you need to get on getting everybody a TS clearance.
Speaker 5:And I went what do you mean? And they said, well, everybody in your unit needs a TS clearance. I said, well, wait, where's that coming from? They said, oh, the commander said that. I said, okay, but that's. I need something, because what you do is you look at what's called the MTO, and the MTO tells you everything you're supposed to have in the unit, including clearances. So you have these people and this is the clearance they're required to have. So I was sitting there going well, no, that's, hold on by regulation, this is what they need. They said no, no, no, no, it's a policy. So, okay, send me the policy letter. Well, after a few weeks might've been a month I'd been there for a month, and this is early on E6. I'm a staff sergeant and they say hey, have you gotten any work done on getting these people that started the TS clearances? I was like, no, why not? You haven't sent me the policy memo. Oh well, you know it's coming.
Speaker 5:Okay, well, as soon as I get it, I'll get on it as soon as you send me something from the colonel that gives me an order that says you need to do this, I'm on it, as long as it's legal and lawful. You know what I never got in three years? I never got that order. They now they ended up changing the mto and the mto takes a lot to change. But the mto changed three months before I left and everybody on there now was required a ts S. Guess what I did for the next three months? I worked on getting everybody to TS, and that's fine.
Speaker 5:But these guys, I would say and this was not an isolated incident they would say you need to do this. I said, well, wait a minute, here's what the regulation says. Well, no, you need to do this. I said this is the regulation, yeah, but we're saying this. And I said you guys, I appreciate that that's what you think, but that's not what the regulation says and I am going to follow the regulation. Never got in trouble for it, because the other thing I would do and it's sneaky is I'd say okay, tell you what. Send me that in the email. Yeah.
Speaker 5:And the minute it had to be put down, cys. Never, hey, we're just telling you, I'm just giving you a heads up. We need to get this done, put it in the email. Never, not once in my career, did somebody send me an email with a questionable order because they knew Yep, All right, hold tight. Here we go Six minutes for China.
Speaker 4:Yes, some say. As long as they're the same, made in China, the bag can never be luxury. However, in fact, more than 80% of the luxury bags in the world are made in China, but those luxury brands just won't acknowledge that. They take almost finished bags from China factories back to their own factories and just do the repackaging and logo installing something like that. That way, the bags will appear at their boutiques as made in Italy or made in France. You know those sophisticated European countries which make you feel mysterious, royal and thus luxury. Now close your eyes. Let's just do a little very easy experiment in your head.
Speaker 4:Okay, imagine that you have an Hermes bag and suddenly the label on it changed from Made in France into Made in China, while everything else, like leathers, zippers and hardware, remain the same. Do you suddenly feel that your bag is not as luxury as before? If you do, that means you have been misled and poisoned by the market campaign of those luxury brands for too long. Welcome to the real world. Now you see those bags are made in China by our intelligent and diligent Chinese artisans. Let's not be poisoned and misled by the market campaign any longer and be a real person. Buy a bag from us, from our factory in China. See the real world for yourself.
Speaker 3:Ah, so I posted that because there's a growing trend. I don't know if you've seen it or not. Tiktok is big on it.
Speaker 3:It's called China spilling the tea right and because of the tariffs that China and the US, the tariff order China and the US has you have a lot, of, a lot of retailers in China saying well, hold on, man, listen, you don't have to go through your manufacturers anymore and pay the tariff, just come directly to us, it's the same bag, us, it's the same bag. This is just one of the videos, and I found it. I found so much enjoyment from watching that video because it's almost like the truth has been there all along, but nobody wanted to acknowledge it. Everything is made from China.
Speaker 3:Matter of fact, I saw one TikTok creator and he was sitting in his living room and he said, quick, I want to show you around. I want to show you around my house. Nothing in here is made from America. Now you look around your house. How many things you got made from China. Who do you think the tariff war is really going to hurt? And then he just left it at that, right, and I was like, and I was like, oh OK, I got nothing. I got nothing because I'd say, conservatively, 85 percent of my house is probably made at some point in China. So I just found it funny, man, and this trend is hilarious. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 5:A couple of things. Anything that's electronic, our computers that we're using right now, watch microphone phone made in China. If you didn't know that, I don't know what to help. I don't, I don't know how to help you, but it's kind of like if I poured you a bowl of Rice Krispies and then I poured you a bowl of Walmart brand crispy rice and then fed them to you, could you tell the difference? Fed them to you, could you tell the difference? No, so my kids, now some stuff tastes a little bit different, right, like generic, whatever. Because I buy Sam's Club soda, because it's a dollar for a two liter bottle and I get caffeine free, I get two. I get either the zero sugar Sam's Club soda or the caffeine free diet Cause if I'm drinking something late at night. But can you tell the difference? Not not really, like the diet Coke. I can kind of tell diet Coke, but I can't tell the difference between diet Coke. I can tell diet Coke and Coke zero, but I can't tell the difference between Coke zero and Sam's club zero. Tell the difference between Coke Zero and Sam's Club Zero.
Speaker 5:So if you didn't realize that not everything goes through China, but like 80% sure, like if you go out, if you're in Kuwait, and you go down to the market and you buy a luxury watch. Now, if you pay a good penny, you're probably getting a pretty good watch. If you pay $20 for a Rolex, you're getting a $20 knockoff Rolex watch. But yeah, I just I do think it's kind of funny. And China, but at the same time China has been backdooring tariffs for a long time. So you know, china will buy companies that manufacture auto parts in Mexico and then ships them to the US, right? So I get, I get the idea of the tariffs, I don't mind the idea of the tariffs, but the practicality.
Speaker 5:Again, for me, my biggest problem with tariffs has always and this is not a new thing I have said if you're going to have free trade, have free trade, zero tariffs. And if you're not going to have free trade, it's very simple the tariffs on you are whatever you put on us. So if China has a 50% tariff on American cars, we should have a 50% tariff on Chinese cars. And now I understand there are certain things. The Japanese did this thing way back when, when they didn't want things to come into their country and they'd say, hey, this produce is coming in. We don't want California lettuce, because that will want California lettuce and because that will compete with the cabbage that we have in Japan. So the lettuce would come in and basically the inspectors would just wait and wait and wait and after three to seven days they'd go and everything's turned rotten and they went oh, we can't accept this into our country. It's no good. It was. There was actually a name for it was like japanese inspection. It was actually called something.
Speaker 5:I don't know if that's exactly, but but that was the thing. And so you know kind of the knee-jerk reaction on a lot of this. Um, I, I saw an article that said this company in middle America is going out of business because of the Trump tariff on whatever it was right, carpet or something, furniture, I think it was furniture they're going out of business. And then it was pointed out that the tariffs that would affect this furniture company hadn't been enacted yet and that that company had been struggling for a couple of years. And so it's really easy to then blame the boogeyman and say, oh, trump's tariffs, the boogeyman got me, or you know, the economy got you. And it's tough. And you know I, there's a lot of stuff that happens in the economy. It's it's funny. There's a lot of stuff that happens in the economy. It's funny. You've seen that progressive commercial where the little kid there he says what is the economy anyway? And all four of the adults are like well, I mean it's this. Well, jamie, what do you think? Well, it's so the economy. You see, the economy is. None of them can put any words to it, right. And so the average person, when you're talking about the economy, the average person, what the economy means is my Pringles can. I used to be able to buy for $1 each. Now they're $2.25. Five years later. The economy sucks. That's what it means. Um, I can't buy.
Speaker 5:I saw somebody post on x that the older people who think that you can go buy a used car that's less than 10 years old and less than a hundred thousand miles for under ten thousand, you guys just don't understand. That's just not real anymore. That's impossible. I was. I was like huh, that's curious. I went on carscom. I put within 100 mile radius, under 100,000 miles, under 10,000. I had like 308 returns. Now, were they great cars? No, most of them were probably seven, eight, nine years old. A lot of them were about 80 to 90,000 or 90 to 100, you know, under 100,000, but right there. But I was like they exist Now.
Speaker 5:Also, where you are in, wherever probably has a different supply and demand than in Augusta. Yeah, like, I can probably find that in the South where cars are a little more available and pricing. Here is, you know, my house, yeah, yeah, like my house here in Augusta. We got a pretty good price on it and you know. But it's, it's a, it's a big house. It's 400 and we bought it for about $420,000. If we were to sell it today, I think we could probably come up $100,000 ahead. However, you pick up our house and put it in the middle of Salt Lake City, our house is a $1.3 million house and, depending on where in Salt Lake, it could be anywhere from 700,000 to probably close to 2 million, depending on where it is. So the economy is not this one thing. It's not just the stock market, it's not just the tariffs, it's not just what you pay, it's not the tax. I read another really interesting one, and I know we're kind of going off a little bit.
Speaker 5:No, you're good, I'm going off right, but one of the things I thought was really interesting was that where does inflation come from? And I hadn't really thought about that Because you think, well, inflation comes from companies raising their prices and supply and demand. No, inflation comes from one place, and that's it how much money the government prints, because inflation is based on how much money is available to the public. And that's it.
Speaker 5:And once I saw that and I read it, I was like we're idiots. We're sitting here going inflation, first of all inflation. Oh my gosh, what are these companies doing with inflation? Ah, but realistically, like Trump saying I'm going to stop inflation. And last month, I believe, inflation was like negative, it was like two percent negative, which, because we've been so high negative in this case it's actually probably pretty good.
Speaker 5:And and the media was going oh well, you know we. I guess we kind of have to give trump some credit for this. All trump had to say is don't print money this month and take out the normal amount, like money is always being taken out of circulation, not just in bank. And the other thing was and again I bring it up again Greg Easterbrook. He had an article about this, fiat Gosh, maybe we should just have Greg on every week and I don't have to quote him all the time.
Speaker 5:But he was talking about if you have a country like ours, that is $35 trillion, what does it really mean? Like? Does it mean anything? Are we ever going to pay it back? Do we need to? It's $35 trillion able to have food on their table and buy their TVs and buy a house at a decent interest rate and they don't feel like they're being bent over and, and you know, really screwed from behind. You know no bohica going on. Um, most people are probably pretty fine with it, but, like, if the if the federal government was ever serious, like about about the deficit and truly wanted to change anything, the first thing would be to refinance the debt from the 2. It was either 2.3 or 2.7%. That we pay to the federal, that the government pays to the Federal Reserve on that To the Fed, which is insane Private bank.
Speaker 3:Insane it's insane Private bank Go ahead. Yeah, I have my own issues with the Fed, but that is insane.
Speaker 5:If you wanted to fix, the first thing you would do is you would create an actual Bank of the United States and you would. You would have the actual Bank of the United States take over all the debt and basically leave the Fed high and dry. And basically leave the Fed high and dry and the Federal Bank of the United States could very easily say okay, well, we're still going to guarantee your 20-year bonds. It's just the Fed's not going to guarantee we will. The government will do that and just write it and make it as you want.
Speaker 5:To make it interesting, make it a point like by law that the government cannot charge more interest rate than it costs to make the money, if that makes sense. So, out of $35 trillion, you need $100 billion to make new coins to keep the mints running, to pay. It's probably more than that. Let's say no, 100 billion is probably a good number, right? That's a lot of money to reprint and especially with how we're going to electronic for the most part right. So you could do it, and I'm sure part of the problem is if you did it, if you were the president of the United States and said this is what we're going to do? First of all, economists would freak out and say no, no, no, you can't do it, you'd be dead. And the second would be you'd be shot by I don't know, a representative who may or may not have been paid by the federal reserve.
Speaker 3:It was a lone wolf. He acted alone.
Speaker 5:Alone. Yeah, someday we should probably play the whole video or just go on, go on YouTube. What is it Search for? How the Fed the origins of the Federal Reserve Bank, I believe, is what it is. Yeah, something like that. It's a really, really interesting and that's where we talked about earlier. When you're like Marjorie Taylor Greene, hiding out of the open. Yeah, this is not Illuminati stuff, this is not secret. It's right there If you want to know.
Speaker 3:It's right there.
Speaker 5:Right, and that now tin hat for a moment. Oh, here we go. That's, that's why the public education system has been manipulated to stop kids from thinking critically and instead being able to produce. There you go, you are able to. You are able to do just enough to work at Starbucks and learn a job, and then just enough to get a job as a middle manager, and then just enough to maybe manage a store or, if you're really a go-getter, to get a loan to start your own store. Yep, and we talked about earlier the stuff with Trump posting.
Speaker 5:And if you're smart, you know, right, that's the point. Those people know, they know the right way to do these things and they know how to make this money because, a if they're not smart enough to do it themselves, they are in a position generally to have people around them that are smart enough or to hire them. And yeah, generational wealth absolutely comes into play as part of that and everything else, right. I think it's hilarious, not in a funny way, but when somebody wins the lottery and they're bankrupt in five years and you just go. That tells you. That tells you the level of incompetence. First of all, the lottery is a tax on poor people. Okay, so the Georgia lottery has put in over the years $2 billion into the Georgia education system. Oh, my God.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's just a tax. That's all they've done For me when I play the lottery. First of all, I will not play the lottery unless it's over like $200 million. Secondly, when I play the lottery, I buy one ticket for $2, because the odds of me winning are one in 440 million, says it right on the back. Now, if I buy two, that doesn't mean I have now one in 220 million. It means I have twice at one in 440 million. The odds have not changed in any significant way. So if I buy 100 tickets, it's not like now, oh, I'm all the way up to one in 20 million. No, it's still one in 440 million. The reason I buy the tickets is strictly for entertainment. You know why? Because if it's $200 million, I like to daydream about what I would do with $200 million, and it's fun. Now, do I think I'm going to win the lottery? No, of course not. No, no chance at all. And am I sitting praying that I'm going to win the lottery? No, not really, because remember you, remember Bruce Almighty, and he just said yes to everybody, and everybody won the lottery, and it made everybody's lottery ticket worth $4. Everybody won. I didn't win anything, though. So if you, if you manipulate the system so that people don't think and I saw a Substack article from a and, by the way, substack, you want to self-educate? Go to Substack. It is probably the best place for self-education that there is right now, anywhere available.
Speaker 5:Okay, but this assistant professor was talking about the essential illiteracy of college students and he said look, I've talked to my other professors, this isn't just me. These kids don't know how to. They don't read books. They don't read. They don't read the assignments I give them. They are unable to write and they're unable to critically think. And he gave an example of a book he had assigned. And they're unable to critically think. And he gave an example of a book he had assigned. I actually added it to my list to read but I haven't got it yet because you know it's delayed, the app I use, so I won't have it for like four weeks.
Speaker 5:But it was something like hey, describe this and why? The underground man, you know, whatever the question was was a college level question, right? And he showed two examples of the writing and one of them was just absolutely just dumb, like to the point of at this is college level misspelling basic words and putting together a, putting together a paragraph that if you read the paragraph, you thought, am, am I having a stroke right now, because that doesn't make any sense. And he said or you get this, and it was clearly chat GPT. Then you read it and you were like, yeah, you're like, oh, no, no, no, that is very AI-ish and you can read both. That is very AI-ish and you can read both. So if you have and that's probably for a generation, a Gen X like me that is probably the most frustrating thing that I have with my kids. My kids just had my 11-year-old just had spring break break.
Speaker 5:I told her I would pay her ten dollars for every book she read, including scriptures, like, not like, go read the bible and I'll give you 10 books. Go read one book. Go read matthew and I'll give you 10 bucks. Yeah, go read Book of Mormon, one chapter out of the book. Go read 1 Nephi, I'll give you 10 bucks and she read a grand total of zero, zero, right. She said, if you take me to the library I'll get books I want, and it's like I know the books you want. You want to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is fine, but that's not really a book, that is not a chapter. It's like taking you and saying, hey, well, I got this book. What is it? Well, it's Batman versus Superman. Let me see it. And it's a graphic novel. And you go technically it's a book, technically it's a novel, but it's also mostly pictures. And if you went through that whole thing like no you, you want to go out and you read um, mouse, m, a, u S and you want to describe to me why that is one of the most influential, uh, graphic novels, I'll give it. In fact, I have it. You want to tell me why, but she couldn't, she wouldn't be able to. Mouse is a very, very high level. Watchmen, the Watchmen, very high level when you're talking about challenging, right. But if you're just going to go out and read Diary of a Woman, no, and these kids, all the way up to college, they don't read books, they don't self-educate. That gives me a high feeling. And and for gen x, that's the frustration.
Speaker 5:You and I, we look at this and say this is the most powerful tool you could possibly imagine when we were growing up in the 80s. This literally would have been worth a billion dollars Easily In my hand, a billion dollars, because it would have had the computing power of every supercomputer in the world, like basically at every library. And what do they use it? For? Tiktok. And if you're watching this on TikTok, great Love you. I hope you're giving us a thumbs up and you really like it. But instead of scrolling to the next one on TikTok, put your phone down.
Speaker 5:Go on to an app like Libby L-I-B-B-Y. Use your library card, download a book and listen to an audio book, read a book. Go to your parents up in their room if they have books, and if they don't have books, what's wrong with your parents? Go to the library, find something. Even so, kj, you and I, we did something when we were young that these guys have no concept of. They had these things that came out every single day that you walked out your front door and they were folded up on the driveway. They had a rubber bound around them. If it was raining, they were in plastic sleep and you would take them out and you would unfold them and they'd get your hands a little dirty and you could read what happened that day, especially locally, and you would go wow, I'm actually reading. And it would increase your ability to your vocabulary, your reading comprehension.
Speaker 5:Kids today cannot read a story this is what the professor was saying Cannot read a story and understand the most basic things beyond the broad stroke. They don't know what the theme is, they can't what the underlying purposes are. They, they just don't't have it. And that's probably the most frustrating thing about this is the power of this. And instead and if anybody wants to go, oh chapel, what did you do? I've averaged over the last five years, I've averaged around 75 books a year, a year on.
Speaker 3:You know what, though that gives me a point, because I did the same. I did something similar with my daughter recently, my teenager Black History Month. I said, ok, hey, look, this is January 20th. I said, listen, you got the entire month. I want you to pick one female revolutionary and I want you to write a book report on that revolutionary, and it doesn't have to be a formal book. I said I want you to, I want you to read about them. Revolutionary, and it doesn't have to be a formal book report. I said I want you to read about them and I want you to write your thoughts on why that person was an important part of history. And I said you have until the end of the month. And here's the thing I said if you write the book report and you get it to me and it's not the AI generator, it's your own thoughts I will double your allowance. But if I don't get it Double it for how long? No, no, so this is for the next month. So she had the entire month of February.
Speaker 5:So her March 1st allowance for all of March.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so her March 1st allowance will be double. But the gotcha gotcha is if you don't submit a book report, you don't get an allowance for March. So I sat back and I waited, waited, waited. You know, send out general reminders. Hey, one week passed, Dad. I got three weeks left. I got it. I'm good, hey it's. Valentine's Day. Two weeks passed, you're running out of time.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So February 27th I get a text message from my daughter. She says oh my, my God, dad, I got these. I got these reports coming up. I got this test. I got to study for school. Can I get an extension? Yeah, can I get an extension? Oh, you got that. I said, but you had the entire month had. You just went ahead and knocked it out. I said you know what, I'm so confident you're not going to do it. I'm going to withhold your allowance. I'm going to withhold your allowance for another seven days. Going to withhold your allowance for another seven days. So you have until March 7th. If you do the book report, get it to me. The entire week goes.
Speaker 3:So March 7th, 10 PM, I get this generated AI generated report. I didn't even read it. After the first two lines you're like all right, cool, this is chat GPT. I got it. You know what I mean. So I hit her up and I said listen, you got two options. You can tell me the truth now and it might save your allowance, or you can lie to me and then you won't get any allowance Because I know she's. I was like you know, I do this for a living. I can. You know I can spot when it's fake pretty easily. And she was like oh yeah, dad, I generate. You know, I asked chat GPT to write it and then I sent it to you. I said why would you do that that? I said you had a whole month. Now I said if this exercise wasn't about the report, um, so much as it was about being disciplined and time management, you know I'm saying you missed all the ancillary, auxiliary um lessons that came about having this deadline and I said I'm disappointed in you. I said I'm gonna give you the allowance because you were honest with me. And then she ended up writing it anyway after the fact and then come to find out she actually she actually enjoyed it, but it's just the point of it.
Speaker 3:And then that brings me up like as an instructor. I'm kind of that's the kind of, that's the kind of instructors we had growing up, right, like they would do, like, hey, man, put your books away. This is going to be an exam, right? I want you guys to write. You know, tell me about the lesson we just learned about. And you can't use any notes, you can't use any books. And I wonder, I don't know, because everything's so structured in the school system. Now Can an instructor kind of do that right, say, hey look, man, all right, I know we're supposed to have a test on this, but here's your test no phones, no books. You got to the end of class to write me a five-paragraph summary on. You know, whatever the Gettysburg Address. I want you to write everything you've learned about it this month, and you can't use any notes. You can't use any. And then let that be the test. I think that will be something interesting to see because it would allow the kids to be able to you know what I'm saying to think on their feet.
Speaker 3:And then for college, at the college level, I'm thinking like if I was a college professor, one thing I would do is I would, I would you know, be one of those. I always look at myself like one of those, just like. All right, hey man, you guys think you're pretty smart, right? Great, here's what we're going to do. You get no phones, no digital assets. Put everything away. Here's pencil, here's paper. All right, I want you to write me. You have you're in my class for two hours. You have 90 minutes to write me. You have, you're in my class for two hours.
Speaker 3:You have 90 minutes to write me a three page paper on the you can pick. You know I have five topics on the board and you pick whichever topic you want to write, right and based off of, based off of this. This is how you're going to get graded and that will be. That will be the exam. But I don't know if you can do that anymore, because it it allows too much free thinking and I think school. What is it like? Can you do something like that?
Speaker 5:So this is my understanding and I'm trying to go into the teacher question Now I spoke to. I have I've had an interview with a public school eighth grade that I think, if, if, that, if I want that job, I'm pretty sure I'll be offered it. That I think if I want that job, I'm pretty sure I'll be offered it. I've had an interview with a Christian academy here in Augusta that I was worried because Christian academy being LDS not a lot of people think traditional Christians are like, oh, lds, you're not even Christian. Which got past that, which was great. So I have an interview this week with whoever the next person is, and we were talking about this, specifically about the difference between teaching to the test and teaching to the Socratic method. If you don't know what the Socratic method is, the Socratic method is, I'm going to give you the information, but you have to put it together, you have to figure it out. I'm I'm asking you questions to get you where I want you to go, but you have to go there. I'm not telling you the answer. Okay, and so this, this school, um, sounded like they were like that's what we want, that's the philosophy we have as well, because as a private school. They don't have to follow the same federal and state mandates. And we've talked about this Department of Education. That's one of the issues with Department of Education is you have to do these things. And I understand you say the Department of Education, look, all they're doing is recording the test results, but there's that paranoia at the state level. Going well, we have to do it to the state, we have to do it. And maybe that's a misinterpretation, yeah, so. So part of the other side of it is this there should be standardized for certain things. Math should be pretty standard, right, english not so much. And part of so.
Speaker 5:My son's high school as a sophomore, all the ELA, english Language Arts they all read the same book. They read Life of Pi. When I was subbing, that's what they were reading. And I said to him well, did you read the book? He goes well, no, so how did you? Then I subbed, they watched, we watched. The sub was me pressing, play on the movie, and so I said so when you had the test or whatever, did you write about what was in the book or what was in the movie? And he goes, well, we all wrote about what was in the movie. Oh, okay. So even in English class, where you're supposed to be reading the books, you're watching movies. Now, movies have their place. Don't get me wrong. I think there I could come up.
Speaker 5:I would love to do a, a history by film for a high school class, and what I mean by that? Not not the history of film, where you'd be going over citizen Kane and all that, but I would love to do a class where it was history by film and, depending on what you started, like, okay, how far, how far back do we want to go? Let's you know, do we go all the way back to Apocalypto, you know, which is supposed to be around the 11th or 12th history? Do you go all the way back to, you know, christ and those things? Do you go back to the 10 commandments?
Speaker 5:But if you just went American history, if you just went American history and you said we are going to teach history through film, now, don't get me wrong, of course history and film don't always go all that well together, right, you look at, like the Patriots. The Patriot was based on the Battle of Cowpens. What happened at the Battle of Cowpens and what happened in the Patriot are two very different things, and that's why the movie says based on actual events. Okay, but some of my favorite movies are like that. I love Glory. Glory is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's wonderful. I just finished a movie today that said it's called Judgment at Nuremberg and it was based on some of the Nuremberg trials.
Speaker 5:Now I have not gone and looked and said how real is this? It's a courtroom movie. That is just phenomenal. The acting is wonderful. It's got Spencer Tracy, it's got I'm blanking Judy Garland is in it doing a German accent. I didn't realize Judy Garland could actually act. You know Burt Lancaster was a German, but they did it three hours. It's on an app called Canopy. It's absolutely worth your time.
Speaker 5:But something like that, like are kids going to be more engaged in history? And then you would actually talk about world war ii. You would talk about the causes of why hitler came to power. What about? How? How did the people get caught up? Because that's what the basis of the story is these four judges who are now being judged by the tribunal after the war, two years after the war. Well, hey, you followed the German law, but what you did caused, directly or indirectly, the death of six million people.
Speaker 5:And at the very end, the one judge who had been a top legal guy. He was one of the four on trial, he was the most repentant and all that. He was Burt Lancaster. He asked the guy who was in charge of the tribunal who is this little judge from Maine? He had Spencer Tracy come in. He asked him if he would think, because Spencer Tracy and the other there are three judges and two of them found him guilty, sentenced to life in prison. Burt Lancaster asked him to come in. He comes in and he says I just want to let you know, you need to believe that I did not intend for this, that I did not know that it was going to lead to 6 million deaths. I need you to know that. And that was never. And Spencer Tracy character and of course you know this is what really happened Spencer Tracy's character said something like this you didn't think it would end with 6 million dead Jews.
Speaker 5:It was 6 million dead, but it started when you found the first innocent person and sent them to death. That's the end of the movie. And that's the end of the movie. He walks out, he goes down and he goes out of the prison and it was just. It is. I'm telling you, it is how this movie is not on every list. Wait, afi 100, I've gone through all those. This is as good as any movie on the AFI 100.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you did you see any parallels to today in that movie?
Speaker 5:Let me ask you did you see any parallels to today in that movie? I was thinking about it as I was watching that movie, and the problem is the hyperbole that happens in the media today. I think that when the defense, the defenses of this were basically like we needed to do this to help our country. This is why we did these things is to our country needed to do these things to survive. That's where the that's where the parallel was was how many people on the true believer of MAGA say we have to do these things because America will not survive if it doesn't.
Speaker 5:And the rhetoric I can see as being similar. The rhetoric I can see as being similar. The reason I stop at the rhetoric is because I'm unaware of anybody being sentenced to death because they were saying something against the administration. Now I know you'll say yet and the first person that is killed because they? But that's part of the problem, right? So when you say, when you have these journalists and Jerry Bayhart, those people, rosie O'Donnell, saying I'm going to be thrown in jail if Trump's elected, you're not, but you're not.
Speaker 3:What's the guy? The Supreme Court just ruled 9-0 To bring back and the administration Is saying, no, we're not. What's the guy? What's the guy? What's the guy? The Supreme Court just ruled nine zero to bring back and the administration is saying, no, we're not doing it. I think you're about to find the first death. I think I think we're pretty close to getting the first death because they haven't brought that guy back and you had this coming out nine to nine to zero, saying hey, where's the college?
Speaker 5:Did SCOTUS say that, I thought well, maybe we're thinking of a different one, because there was another one that said Khalil, something could be, because the immigrants no no, not him, this is the other dude, but the reason, the danger.
Speaker 3:Let me go Google it real quick.
Speaker 5:Is this the one that he shouldn't have legally been deported? But then Venezuela.
Speaker 3:Yep got sent to Venezuela and then they were like hey, the district judge was like yo bring him back, and they were like nah, we're not doing that.
Speaker 5:So let me ask you this that being the case, if Trump and the federal government, if the executive branch called the executive branch in El Salvador and I've said I'm a big fan of what they've done in El Salvador because El Salvador truly was going to hell, el Salvador, because El Salvador truly was going to hell right, it was the gangs and everything else and they basically rounded them all up, threw them in a prison and said do what you want in there, make your own little countries in there, but we are shutting you out of everything else. You do not belong in society. You are stuck here. Now. I don't know if he's at that prison, I don't know far enough. I don't know if I know. But if the administration said to El Salvador, hey, we need this guy back, the question is, if El Salvador said no, because we don't want to, how far do you go? How far do you go to get it?
Speaker 3:back. I mean, we are definitely riding down that slippery slope and that's the danger of having history by movies, because you'll have things like this happen. And you know, like you said, the final scene was extremely pointed, where the judge was like yo, I didn't mean for this to happen, I didn't mean for this to happen. And then, you know, the last line is what sticks out the most. You did it when you let the first one slide, so you put these things into motion and then what happened is you'll have you'll have these, these, if we were to go that route, right, history by moves, right.
Speaker 3:You'll have people like Caroline Leavitt, who is the Trump press secretary, getting up in front of a national media saying dumb stuff like oh well, you know, if it wasn't for us, the French wouldn't be free, not knowing and not recognizing, even after she was corrected, not recognizing had it not been for the French, there would be no America. You know what I'm saying? So when a reporter, and then when a reporter pushes back and says hey, well, yeah, that's true to some degree, I mean technically, sure, I guess you could say that, but had it not been for the French, we wouldn't have an America and she was like no, we are America because of our founding fathers in George Washington. That is the danger of having movies, because movies have glorified those founding fathers and not told the whole story right For sure.
Speaker 5:It's just what it is right. You can go further back than that, even when you tell these students, you know Columbus was a slave trader, right, and they go what he's like? Yeah, like he, he was responsible for about fifteen hundred what we would call Native Americans or you know from from the Caribbean, he was responsible for about fifteen hundred being taken back and basically turned into slaves. And they go no, no, I was like yeah. But here's the thing you guys, you got to understand when Columbus was doing it. That's just what you did. That's just what it was. Anybody would have done that. There's been slavery, and that's you and I have had this discussion. America did not invent slavery. America invented stopping slavery. But stopping slavery doesn't mean that you were moral to begin with just because it was legal.
Speaker 5:I was waiting, I was waiting, I was waiting.
Speaker 3:No, I was waiting for the filmmaker to come in.
Speaker 5:So well. So let me ask you. So here's here's my answer to that. On that, I disagree. Movies are there to make money and that is the only reason they exist is to make money. And if they don't make money, you don't get to make another movie. And like, if you turned around and you, if Saving Private Ryan hadn't made money at the box office, most people wouldn't know about it, right? Sometimes you have some cult classics, like Office Space that broke through on VHS and some of those things, but you don't have a lot of true history.
Speaker 3:I think the only movie I can think of this is going to be a whole other conversation.
Speaker 5:And this is why, KJ, this is why I wanted to do two pogs at the movies. This is why I want to do this.
Speaker 3:Movies are propaganda. Movies are for me, or at least I look at it from the perspective of movies are propaganda. Right, I don't know if that's the right word, I don't want to say propaganda. I don't know if that's the right word, I don't want to say propaganda, I don't know. I'll give you a prime example. Right, when was it in? Ah man, president Woodrow Wilson watched a movie at the White House? Right, it was a movie. Thad, I think you got to know what it is the Birth of a Nation. Right, there we go. I know what it is, absolutely the Birth of a Nation. Right, there we go, the Birth of a Nation. Right, and let me tell you that one movie probably did more damage, did more damage to race relations than any public movie could have done right.
Speaker 5:Probably killed, probably killed more people than any movie. Absolutely, absolutely, and I don't disagree that that was. But that's not true of all movies, that's all I'm saying. No, no, no, I mean obviously not all movies, I mean there's always, but for the.
Speaker 3:I mean you can look at war movies.
Speaker 5:Look at Inglourious Bastards. That's like. A central theme of it is that the Germans were using cinema to promote propaganda. And then Shoshanna turns around and screws them at their own game and kills them all on their own game. Screws them at their own game and kills them all on their own game.
Speaker 3:But I mean even Americans do it, because you look at World War II movies and you think you, like I said Caroline Leavitt is a perfect case study for this because she doesn't realize had the damn Germans not ran out of fuel? Yeah, the we could be. Or had the Russians not turncoat, we could be.
Speaker 5:it could be a completely different landscape, right, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing If Germany had gone into Russia four weeks earlier instead of dragging their hills.
Speaker 3:Well, not even that, but in 1943, nobody was stopping. Nobody was stopping. Germany, hell America wasn't ready to fight. We had gone into isolationism after World War I.
Speaker 5:We didn't have the army, but Germany didn't want us in. That was the one thing they were worried about.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, they kind of had the hand for us when Japan got crazy, and then too, they weren't expecting the Russians to flip either.
Speaker 5:Oh, no, no, no, they stabbed Russia in the back. Well, I I know they had so it wasn't about russia flipping it, was they okay anyway. So they had a miscalculation. So hitler? Hitler was dumb, because if hitler doesn't turn around and stab russia in the back they would have been everything from there. England is probably speaking German right now. There's no problem with you? Yeah Well, the reason I say probably is because there's a point where Germany actually didn't want to wipe England out.
Speaker 3:They looked at it as you're an Aryan brother, so they would have spared them, but it would have spared him, I mean, but it would have been at the leniency of Germany, not because Germany, of course, yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, germany at peak operation, nobody like that. And again, that's why I say, even in America we underestimate just how efficient and how technologically advanced Germany, the German army, was over everybody in the world. The Blitzkrieg was absolute military. From a military standpoint, oh yeah, blitzkrieg was absolutely phenomenal. I mean, they, they, they destroy. And there is no way, no way we could have spun up in time enough to get.
Speaker 5:Well, but the funny thing about Blitzkrieg, it wasn't that they were destroying everything. If they were just passing things well it used to be you would come up. So you're coming up on a town and we're like, okay, here's this town. We have to, we have to battle it out in the town, we have to win this town. And instead they went.
Speaker 3:We don't care about that, our goal is moscow, we don't care about that, yeah once you take the capital, or everything else is going to filter out here. That's what I'm saying from a technical standpoint, it was oh sure, absolutely so.
Speaker 5:What I'm saying about movies, though and I think that's absolutely right it depends on who's telling the story, how they're telling the story, what the point of the storyteller wants to tell the story. I'm just saying propaganda. Some movies absolutely are propaganda, others aren't. Like you, look at the two movies that Eastwood made that were phenomenal Flags of Our Fathers on one side and Letters from Iwo Jima To see the opposite side of the coin. Some people are able to do that. Now, of course, it wasn't all accurate. You know. They definitely laid on Ira Hayes a little bit heavier, and Ira Hayes went through some stuff, and I feel bad for Ira Hayes, but but you know, on the other side you might have a movie like the Joan of Arc, the Trial of Joan of Arc, which was based on the act, not based the dialogue was the actual transcripts of the trial, which is incredible, but you couldn't like Judgment at Nuremberg. Could you take what was actually said and turn it into a movie? No, because the trial lasted for a year. Now are parts of it in the movie?
Speaker 5:I don't know, but I'll tell you what. When burt lancaster was was giving his monologue about how he messed up and how the germans need to stop defending what happened and need to to come clean and be truthful with themselves and the rest of the world, I was sitting there going this and the camera. The camera kind of went like it was. I don't know how many takes, but there were not many cuts in this. This was not a 14, you know a cut every three seconds, this was a cut about every two minutes. At one point as he's giving his monologue, the camera zooms out, it goes up high and then comes in on him again and I'm just watching this going. This is a masterclass.
Speaker 3:What's the name of this movie, man? Because now you got me excited.
Speaker 5:Judgment at Nuremberg, and it's on the Canopy app. Canopy with a K, k-a-n-o-p-y, so it's free. If you have a library card, you get a certain number of movies. It's like renting a movie and the longer you have it the more credits you hold, and you can hold up to like 16 credits. So watching that movie it cost you like two credits, right, but incredible, incredible, acting all around.
Speaker 5:Again, I didn't know Judy Garland could actually act. I mean, she's in the Wizard of Oz, she can obviously sing, but it was the guy who plays the German, the guy who, to give you an example of the brilliance of this movie, they start off this is the German trial, so all the Americans are there, and so they're, of course, speaking English. So they have the headphones on it and there's a point where they're doing the translation from German to English. And then they kind of do this transition where he's going from sprechen to Deutsch to as he did, and I want the Americans to know, blah, blah, blah, and it changes. Transition where he's going from sprechen to deutsch to as he's and I've watched the americans and it changes. They do it in a way that you go oh, they went from german to english. So intelligently, because, like, really are we going to watch a movie that everything they say is going to be translated and we're listening to a translation from them speaking? But they did it for like the first five minutes of the trial in the movie and then they transitioned to English. The other thing they did was everybody that was German, that was speaking English, was doing it with an accent.
Speaker 5:Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes is one of the defendants, so he is the Germans. Do we want to do the right thing? Colonel Clink from Hogan's Heroes is one of the defendants, so he is the Germans. Do we want the soldiers of the right to say this is for our country, you are great. So it's Colonel Clink. Right, and it's hard to watch because it's Colonel Clink, but that's what it is.
Speaker 5:So even Lancaster I didn't know Burt Lancaster could do a German. It was a German accent. You don't sit there and go. That's Burt Lancaster. I didn't know Burt Lancaster could do a German. It was a German accent. You don't sit there and go. That's Burt Lancaster, it's this is he. Is that German judge who did this? And so that's all I'm saying about, about. Oh, I saw Stanley Kramer. I was about to look at that and go. That was Kubrick, no, but that's where I'm saying like movies can be a strong basis for an education if they're followed up with research and intelligent thought.
Speaker 5:There you go, fair enough, you go through and you watch Glory, and if that doesn't spark your interest, to go to the National Mall and find the relief of the actual thing they show at the end of the movie that has the soldiers of the 54th with Colonel Robert Shaw on his horse and the cannons. I love Glory and the first time I was in DC I was like that's what I have to go see. Time I was in DC I was like that's what I have to go see. The first time I saw Amistad I don't remember if I lived in New Haven or in Connecticut at the time or if I was when I moved to Connecticut. That was one of the first things I did. I went and found the Amistad monument. Now the movie Amistad and what happened on the Amistad don't have a lot of things in common. They have the name Amistad in it, but I went and read the book afterwards and read what the real account was. I was like, oh my gosh, yeah. But if you show a bunch of kids, amistad, if you're allowed to watch it because obviously there's some you absolutely cannot, no way. And that's the problem. Well, you can't even show Glory is rated R. You can't show Glory because it's rated R, because of the N-word and because of the whipping.
Speaker 5:Listen, one of the most powerful, absolute most powerful scenes in the history of cinema is Denzel washington. He leaves, if you remember, he leaves camp. He sneaks out. He's talking about getting some he's. He talks about hey, you know, there's this lady says she feeds you. If you go into, you're gonna come with me, right? And he, he gets caught as a deserter. He wasn't des, he was going to find some shoes and maybe get some food.
Speaker 5:Well, the punishment for desertion was lashes was getting whipped and they put him up and they ripped the shirt off and the hardened NCO, the Irish this is your right, this is your left he ripped the shirt off and he looks like are we really going to do this? Because Denzel Washington is an escaped slave who has the scars all over his back. And Colonel Shaw's number two guy says Kerry Ewells says not like this Robert, and he says major, standard attention. And he goes there and you can see Colonel Shaw I mean, matthew Broderick was great at this, but you can see, even in his face, like I don't want to do this, but these them are the rules and I don't want to do this.
Speaker 5:But the whipping, and you see, I mean I get choked up thinking about it Denzel Washington staring him down as he's getting whipped, and you feel it as he's getting whipped, and the tear that Denzel Washington dropped and it won him the Oscar, that scene, if you've never seen Denzel Washington in glory getting whipped, go watch it. And if you don't, if it doesn't break your heart to think what these soldiers did to participate in the liberation not of themselves but of this country, then I don't know what to tell you. Move back to wherever you're from, go back to Mexico, go back to Ireland, go back to wherever, because you don't belong in America. If you're not moved by that scene and think black men helped us win this war, they were a major part of winning this war and it's important to know these things. And that's where I say, like in a high school not just high school, but in school you can teach kids about 54.
Speaker 5:You can teach kids about the Buffalo Soldiers, you can teach kids about slavery, but it's just words and until they see something as visceral as and maybe you can get away with showing just that scene from Glory maybe, but the most important scene in that movie is at the end, when they charge Fort Sumter and they all get killed, including Colonel Shaw, and as they are lining them up after the battle yeah, they're lining up after the battle and sliding them down and you see, they slide Denzel Washington. They did it on purpose, but how they did it? Of course Colonel Shaw is dead. He's laying there and they slide. As they're throwing the bodies in, they slide Denzel Washington down and his character hits Colonel Shaw and his head goes onto his shoulder and they're equal in death and they died for this country.
Speaker 5:If you want, if you can't show stuff like that in high school, these kids don't know and they just they don't get it and instead they scroll through TikTok watching people do these challenges of throwing flour on each other or whatever this stupid thing is, and you don't make history interesting I don't and you make the school system in such a way that our kids, we talk about idiocracy.
Speaker 5:And I understand the threat of idiocracy and there are some things of idiocracy, I get it. It's a ridiculous level of it. But my daughter, she came home one day and she said, dad, my history teacher was talking about um, or one of my teachers, he was talking about Monty Python and I know you liked it and I. He said it and I recognize it was Monty Python and my history teacher. It's like, yeah, that's great. You know what it is.
Speaker 5:And so we sat and we started talking and we we started talking and we started talking about history. After 20 minutes she said she was a I I believe she was either a senior, I think she was a senior, and she said, dad, I don't get it. I learned more about history sitting here talking to you in the last 20 minutes than I've learned in my entire high school career and I, first of all, part of the fault is on you, kid. They're teaching this stuff, but how they're doing it. As a teacher, you have to be engaging. And if I could tell that story, if you cut that part and put it on TikTok and somebody watched me reacting because I can see my react, if somebody watches that and they're not inspired to go, I need to go watch that clip yeah, then I don't know what to tell you as a teacher if you're not getting your kids.
Speaker 5:Now, there are some kids, it doesn't matter what you do Got it. Some kids are there to be babysat, but I think most kids want to learn. Most kids, yes, there's that entertainment, I need to be entertained. But I also think most kids want that challenge, they want that discipline, they want to know that while I'm in class. The teacher cares enough about me that they're not going to let me also be a jerk, and they're going to. They're going to have my right and left limits and if I'm a jerk and I and I'm a tool, then they're going to treat me differently and they're going to hold me responsible.
Speaker 5:I think most kids would rather have that than the teacher who rolls over and is going to go oh, I'm so sorry, but we also have a generation of parents. So if that said, you know we can't do that anymore, and I agree to some degree, um, but the other side of it is we also have a generation of parents. When the kid comes home and says I got an f because my teacher doesn't like me, and they and the parent will go in and say why did you fail my kid? Well, he failed the tests, he didn't turn any assignments. Well then, you didn't teach him the right way. Oh, now it's my fault that your kid is disruptive. It doesn't do their work, it doesn't care, but if I'm going to give him back now, you care. Have you gotten any of the emails that have been sent out? I had a teacher reach out to me about my son and she said hey, by the way, he is missing this and he's missing this. I'm willing to help him out.
Speaker 5:And I asked him like what do you think? And he's like well, she doesn't teach the right way, blah, blah, blah. And so I reached out to her and said hey, here's one of the things he's concerned about. He feels like what's on the test isn't what's covered, like I don't know what the situation is. Can you explain it to me? She said well, yeah, there are times where you know you have to do some critical thinking. But if he's struggling, here's my open pot. You know, on Wednesdays and Fridays, at this time, right after school, if there's something he doesn't understand, please have him come in and I will sit down with him one-on-one and go over it. And I told him that I was like okay, guess what on Friday you're doing? I'm not picking you up at two 40. I'm picking you up at three 30. Cause you're going to go talk to the math teacher. I don't want it.
Speaker 5:Yes, you said you didn't understand this. She's willing to. That's where you're going to be, you know what he did. He went because I held him accountable and I said I'm going to check with your teacher.
Speaker 5:Make sure you show up yeah and after afterwards I said now do you understand what you're doing? He goes. Oh, yeah, okay. So what's the difference between what she was teaching you in class versus what she told was teaching you one-on-one? Well, I mean, when it's in class she doesn't like, she's not as focused, and she there's other stuff going on, she's just not as clear. I'm like OK, so if that's the case, do you know now that you can go on Wednesday or Thursday or Wednesday or Friday and you can talk to her? Yeah, ok, good, then that's what you need to do. Or you can self-educate when you get home, figure it out. Let's notice, effective, fine, need to do. Or you can self-educate when you get home, figure it out. Well, that's not as effective, fine, but you got to learn this stuff one way or the other.
Speaker 5:And then the dumbest part, just last thing. The dumbest part is I asked it last week well, so what do you have you decided what you kind of want to go into? I know you're 15 and all that. He goes well, engineering. I said you don't like math, he goes. Yeah, I know, like dude, engineering is like 90 math. So are you not good at math or you don't like math? He goes. I'm kind of both. You want to be an engineer? I'm telling you, man, go become a plumber. Everybody poops. I wish I to this day like if I was 15, now I'm a little bit different, but if my, if I'd had somebody that I respected and and well, just, it doesn't work generationally because I can take him and say, hey, come here, I'm going to show you how to do this, and his interest will be there for about 60 seconds and then it walked away.
Speaker 5:Show him how to do something actually in the house. This is what you do to fix this. Yeah, okay, but, and you can say well, you can just go look it up on youtube. These guys don't know the difference between a regular screwdriver and a philips screwdriver, though my favorite line is dad can you just call somebody?
Speaker 3:can I just call somebody? I'd be like ugh.
Speaker 5:Anyway, you got to get up and get me man, yes, and it will cost you the next two months of your money to have them come out. That's my other favorite thing. When we go to the store, my daughter says she's 11. She's like will you buy this? I said, well, you've earned $20 from chores and from soccer and all that You've heard, so you could buy. You could buy it. Oh, no, I don't want it. Yeah, You're willing to spend my money on it?
Speaker 5:and not your own. If you're willing to spend your own money on it, I will get it for you. I don't really care what it is, it's your money. You, you want to spend $25 on your nail stuff, that you're going to put your nails on and pull them off the next day. I think it's silly, but okay, cool, it's your money and that's kind of how I do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what we're doing with the toddlers now. Final thoughts, man.
Speaker 5:We are two and a half hours.
Speaker 3:Two and a half hours Most. Yeah, what are we doing? Yeah, we definitely burnt time today.
Speaker 5:Go ahead. You got the final thought. I don't care, I don't need a final thought, I've been talking too much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm good man. Hey, we will see you guys next week, one more week before our three-year anniversary.
Speaker 5:Is it two?
Speaker 3:or three. We'll be going on our third year, oh so it's our second anniversary. We completed two years, but we're going on our third year year, oh so it's our second. We completed two years, but we're going on our third year and it's going to be Greg.
Speaker 5:Easterbrook. We need to promote that, like we did seriously.
Speaker 3:We start next week. We start next week putting it out.
Speaker 5:Do the little clips from when he was on last year. And just he's coming on again. Let's go.
Speaker 3:All right man.
Speaker 5:Same back channel.
Speaker 3:I'll holler at you later, brother.
Speaker 5:Thanks for showing up at some point you need to come on so we can just talk movies, let's do a top 5 movie or something. Let's do an episode about movies man, you guys will be on here 3 hours talking movies.
Speaker 3:Cool, alright, we are out of here. Let me hit the notes. Play the music what do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:same thing we do every night.
Speaker 3:Note Take over the world and greatest chaplain in the world, Mr Lance O'Neill. Take over the world.
