Latest / DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas / Deadly Plague Escapes Russian Lab | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Deadly Plague Escapes Russian Lab | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas · DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

0:13
Good morning. You are watching DeProgram with
0:15
Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas. Jamarl Thomas is
0:19
presumably wrapping up his morning show and will
0:22
be with us shortly. Here's what we've got teed
0:25
up for you this morning. President Trump says
0:28
that the United States is willing to help the
0:30
Russian Federation if Russia requests assistance.
0:35
I think that's highly unlikely. But pneumonic
0:38
plague has escaped from a research lab in eastern
0:43
Russia, in Irkutsk Oblast, and it has killed a
0:47
lab worker there. We'll tell you about plague
0:50
and exactly what it all means. 1,800 high schools
0:54
and 90% of the universities in France are currently
0:58
either closed or blockaded, and therefore effectively
1:01
closed, as protests now spread from the students
1:05
in their second week of protests into the parents,
1:09
university students, and the nation's biggest
1:11
union, the CGT. Leaders in California are denouncing
1:15
Donald Trump as reckless and deranged after Trump
1:19
was talking at a rally and suggested that Iran
1:22
might want to take out Los Angeles and San Diego.
1:27
Suggested that implied that he might be okay
1:29
with it. Meanwhile, Trump's approval ratings are
1:31
down to 32. That's a record low for him. China
1:35
has opened its first overseas air force base,
1:38
not in the world. They have one in Djibouti in
1:41
Africa, but in Asia. This one is in Laos, and Americans
1:45
are freaking out because they didn't see it coming.
1:47
And in Germany, the federal prosecutor's office
1:52
has detained the former head of the BND, which
1:56
is the CIA of Germany. He was in charge back
2:00
in the late '90s and early aughts. He's accused
2:02
of spying, and there's lots of drama affiliated
2:05
with that. And Dennis Hastert and Jimmy Swaggart,
2:09
the most moral of all people who have ever lived,
2:13
have died. May they rest in peace. Good morning,
2:16
Jamarl. How are you? I'm doing fine. How's it going
2:18
this morning? Good. I'm just imagining the afterlife
2:21
cocktail party where Jimmy Swaggart hangs out
2:24
with Dennis Hastert. Both of them drop dead at
2:27
the same time? Uh-huh. Yep. I'm sure they're
2:30
in the same place, wherever that is. Well, I
2:32
don't believe in an afterlife, but I always imagine
2:34
an afterlife cocktail party. James Baker died,
2:37
too. Oh, sorry. Not Jimmy Swaggart. I was thinking
2:40
of James Baker. That's who I was thinking of.
2:42
I always confuse those two. Okay. Wow. The two
2:45
fake Christians who start with a J. Yeah, that's
2:50
how my mind thinks. Okay, so we have... You heard
2:54
what we've got to talk about? Oh, please follow
2:56
and share. Today is our one-hour show, so we have
2:59
a lot to pack in in the remaining 57 minutes.
3:02
We do this Monday, Wednesday, Friday, from 9
3:05
to 11. We do it Tuesdays and Thursdays from
3:08
9 to 10. TMI show coming up at 10 on Tuesdays
3:11
and Thursdays. We do appreciate, and we need your
3:15
support, so please do that if you can. And I'm
3:19
trying to think what else there is to say. Okay,
3:21
I think that's pretty much it. I'm kind of interested
3:24
in all these stories. Charles, why don't you
3:27
pick? Let's go with the protests. Okay, yeah, let's
3:33
go to the protest. By the way, yeah, it's spread
3:37
to Belgium. Oh, really? Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I was
3:41
watching the kids basically wreck stuff in Belgium
3:43
and fight the cops and all this other stuff. And
3:46
what they see: the protests are always
3:48
risky because they can always be categorized
3:50
as, what does this violence have to do with the
3:53
thing that you actually want? And that's what
3:55
they're saying. They're saying, well, what does this
3:56
violence have to do with what does
3:59
come to school at eight o'clock, and what does
4:01
this attacking teachers have to do with whatever
4:04
is effectively taking place? And France is more
4:06
clear. In France, because it's a political issue.
4:08
In Belgium, I'm kind of unclear on the rationale.
4:13
They're making the argument: class size.
4:15
We want, I don't know, we want to come to
4:20
school at eight o'clock. We want, et cetera, et
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cetera. I don't know. They seem slightly different
4:26
to me. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know the
4:29
situation in Belgium. I have to say,
4:32
I'm really surprised even by the French complaints.
4:34
The French system prided itself on
4:39
equity and equality within the system,
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and obviously nothing's ever perfect,
4:44
but having attended and visited and spoken
4:48
at French public high schools in the past
4:51
on book tour and everything, I was always super
4:54
impressed by what a well-run system
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it was. And I just, obviously, I haven't
5:01
been there for the last five, ten years in those
5:03
schools. So what the hell has happened,
5:06
right? I've got to think it's austerity.
5:09
I've got to think that the government is just
5:11
not dedicating the financial resources needed
5:14
to run the schools properly, and that
5:17
it's driving the kids crazy. Certainly,
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the hours have gotten longer. I don't get that
5:21
at all. It's from eight to six in France, which
5:25
is insane. People don't work eight to
5:29
six. Yeah, that's insane. They have a 32-hour
5:32
work week in France. What do they expect?
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Are they taking classes the entire time?
5:39
Whether they're taking classes or not, that time
5:40
frame is insane. It's too long. And then they
5:43
have to wake up in the morning and do the same
5:44
thing over again. Yeah, you have to be up at
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6 in the morning and get to school, and then
5:52
you're not really home until maybe 6:30 or 7,
5:55
right? In the winter, it's
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dark. Pardon? What was the reason for it? Because
6:00
I remember being in school, and I think we used
6:05
to get out around 3:30 or something like that.
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What are you doing that late into the
6:12
day? Is it just advantageous for parents,
6:15
because parents are at home at the time when
6:17
the kids get home? Yes, that's what it's saying
6:18
here. It's saying that, okay, so what's basically
6:22
going on here is so the parents can pick
6:26
up. They can drop off their kids before work and
6:29
pick them up after work. That's primarily. Oh,
6:31
and also they do have the long lunch break, but
6:34
they used to have the long break run through.
6:36
It's France, right? So they have a
6:37
one- to two-hour lunch break, so kids can go home
6:40
or... They have a two-hour lunch break in France.
6:43
Oh, yeah. It used to be two to three. It's France,
6:47
man. France is a civilized country. And
6:51
also, traditionally, elementary school
6:55
kids used to have Wednesday off, so they would
6:58
jam in the extra hours for the rest of the week,
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or they'd have a half day on Saturday sometimes.
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It's no wonder France loses all of its wars. These
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people are so soft and weak. This is pathetic.
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Well, let me just say, a bunch of cream puffs.
7:13
France has the highest per capita productivity
7:18
in the world, far higher than the United States.
7:20
Their workers are far more productive than ours
7:23
in a far shorter amount of time. So we should
7:26
be taking some clues from them. So that's why
7:28
they're burning the country down? Because it
7:32
impacts their schedules? You have to admit they're
7:36
very productive at burning the country down. They're
7:38
doing it in a very efficient way. Yeah, well, that
7:40
way they can import migrants to rebuild it, since
7:42
they can do jobs that French people won't do. Hey,
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that reconstruction, it's gonna
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drive the economy. Every school you
7:49
burn down is a new school that has to be built.
7:50
Is that the way you think about it? Yeah, that's
7:57
what generated the post-war economy of Japan,
7:59
right? No, but seriously. Two-hour lunches
8:04
is insane, Ted. And maybe they should just say,
8:07
look, let's do 30 minutes and we'll get off at
8:09
3:30 in the evening and call it a day.
8:12
They can't have it both ways. Well, I think it
8:17
has more to do. They're padding it with a long
8:19
lunch in order to extend the day so that kids'
8:23
parents can pick up their kids after school.
8:25
They get off work at 5. They drive over to the
8:28
school at 5:45, pick up their kids. Look,
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there needs to be a better way.
8:34
There's just, obviously, the kids are saying there
8:36
needs to be a better way. Fix it. We don't care
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how. Fix it. Well, for one, there are so many assumptions
8:43
built into that. Why are they assuming the parents
8:45
get off at that particular time frame?
8:48
Parents could get off at three. They can get
8:49
off at two. Hell, maybe they work at home. Oh,
8:51
France is a far more regimented country than
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ours. They don't have... It's
8:56
definitely most... Sure, there are people
8:58
who work night shift and stuff like that,
9:00
but the vast majority of people really do get
9:03
off at five. So also, what does it matter
9:06
if they got off at five? The kids just go home,
9:09
right? Latchkey kids. Yeah, let yourself
9:13
in. So they don't trust their kids. Go home
9:17
and watch Gilligan's Island, like you're supposed
9:19
to. Exactly. So the French don't trust their kids.
9:22
And Star Trek reruns. I know. Nostalgic.
9:28
So France doesn't trust their kids to go home by
9:32
themselves. Or maybe they think it's uncivilized,
9:36
or that the kids need to be supervised,
9:38
not necessarily a trust issue. It's
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cultural. A lot of people feel,
9:44
look, as a parent, I felt very privileged
9:47
to be able to drop my kid off and pick him up
9:50
after school when he was little. It
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just felt good. It gave me the warm fuzzies. I
9:56
didn't think he was unsafe making his way home
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on the bus or by himself. I'm sure he could. No
10:01
worries, no muss, no fuss. I lived in a very safe place,
10:03
but it's... I'm not one of those
10:07
stranger-danger parents.
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I totally think it's cool. I have no problem,
10:12
even in New York City, with the Lenore Skenazy
10:15
thing of letting your kid take the subway home
10:17
in second grade. You absolutely should be able
10:20
to. I took the bus to downtown Dayton,
10:24
which was pretty spicy when I was a kid, when
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I was in second, third grade. No muss, no fuss,
10:29
no problem. It made me the man I am today. So,
10:33
but I think the bigger issues
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here are, obviously, this is a bigger issue. It's
10:39
kind of when we talk with Robby about how
10:42
the government hates us and doesn't take care
10:44
of us, and the Israel and the
10:48
Ukraine thing. It's framed also
10:51
within the context of we're not getting the things
10:53
we need, like health care and infrastructure, in
10:56
this country. I think what's going on in France
10:59
is similar. They're looking at the social contract.
11:01
They're sending money to Ukraine
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also, and they're dealing, and their government
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seems to have all sorts of priorities, and the
11:09
kids and the parents look around at their schools
11:11
that are falling apart and their teachers who
11:13
aren't getting raises, and they wonder where the
11:16
fuck is the money from this incredibly robust
11:19
economy going? And it's a good, it's a very valid
11:22
question, and that's why they're pissed off. And
11:25
unlike us, they're willing to do something about
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it. I want to... I think this is notable, and we do
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have a lot to talk about today, so we probably
11:32
shouldn't linger too much on this, but I think
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what's notable here is the solidarity. I love
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the fact that the parents are walking alongside
11:40
their students. I like the fact that the CGT,
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which is the former communist labor union, which
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is the biggest labor union in France, it's like
11:49
the AFL-CIO, that they are joining the students
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and calling for a national strike, that firefighters
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are on strike, which makes it spicy when the
11:58
fires are starting. Yes, yes. It's... I
12:04
just love that solidarity. Could you imagine
12:06
how much the left could get done in this country,
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or populists in general could get
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done if we had that level of solidarity?
12:14
Whenever someone who's beleaguered,
12:18
if the air traffic controllers went on strike
12:20
in the early '80s and everyone else went
12:22
with them. Well, they wouldn't have been fired
12:25
by Reagan. They couldn't have been. They would
12:26
have all been protected. They look out
12:29
for each other in France. Solidarity is a national
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value. And we don't. I think we could
12:35
take a note. No, I agree. The rugged
12:38
individualist thing, which was always a myth,
12:41
is pervasive. It just is. You don't know. Your
12:46
problems are your own. You figure it out. Yeah.
12:49
We got some comments. Okay. Mr. Ali says, the
12:55
French are lazy fucks. Philip Blair: France only
12:59
recently lost Burkina Faso. Neocolonialism never
13:04
ended. And, well, that's true. By the way, we
13:08
never even talked about that, the effect
13:10
that that has on France. France was able
13:12
to use its colonies to extract wealth from those
13:15
colonies, like uranium, without necessarily paying
13:18
the actual value for the uranium. Well, now they've
13:20
got to pay a regular price. Yeah, that's true.
13:23
All that stuff gets expensive. And
13:26
France has, unfortunately, they still have,
13:29
despite the revolution, a rigid
13:31
class system. And that's also always holding
13:34
them back. They have... We're
13:36
getting to that point, too, where we have low
13:38
to no class mobility. But in France, that's been
13:41
a longstanding problem, even when their economy
13:43
was better. Mackinac says, Robby, shirt and
13:47
hat arrived today. Very good quality. Robby,
13:51
which shirt and hat are we talking about here?
13:55
So, on my channel, I've got a link called shop.westglaciamedia.com.
14:00
And so I have a couple
14:04
of really nice things. So I've got Vlad the Impaler
14:08
on a shirt. It says, "Bad neighbors make great
14:11
fences." And it's quite nice. I've got all kinds
14:18
of merch. I have put together a Deport That Heifer
14:21
shirt and coffee cup. And I've actually got one
14:26
of them. And yeah, that's what I'm doing. Making
14:29
friends in all the right places. By the way,
14:33
Robby, I owe you an apology from yesterday.
14:34
I was far too strong on the software thing. The
14:40
thing that I didn't believe was the... I think,
14:45
in my mind, when I think about it, I think I
14:46
was making the distinction between... I don't
14:50
know what it is. I think it was the software
14:51
thing for some reason. Or the idea that code...
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And maybe I misunderstood. Code can be created
14:57
that does not have bugs, or that doesn't. It always
15:02
has bugs. But what you do, though, is that you
15:04
use telemetry to find, especially the bugs that
15:06
always appear, the ones that just kind of sneak
15:08
in. If you have telemetry, you're able to go
15:11
in and find what happens to make this happen.
15:15
And so that's what I do. So basically, with my
15:17
model, so I've got the model, but I've got Python
15:19
scaffolding around it. So every time I run something,
15:21
it generates a JSON file. And so that's what
15:23
I do. I understand that. Keep it simple. I don't
15:28
think it's simple, but fair enough. I guess my
15:31
point is, you have my apologies. I was far too
15:33
strong on the "I don't believe it" thing. No, it's
15:36
fine. You don't have to. I would argue that all
15:38
code has bugs. Of course it does. Well, that's
15:41
why I audit. That's the whole point. I'm not
15:43
saying it's perfect. I'm saying the exact opposite
15:46
of that. Listen, I'm building something. My
15:48
family tree goes straight up. I have very little
15:50
genetic diversity. I'm a man from the Deep South.
15:53
So I'm baking my stupidity into it. Okay. I hear
15:59
you. No, I am building this on the assumption
16:02
I'm going to screw everything up. And I also
16:04
understand that if it's not written down, it
16:06
never happened. So that's what I do. Okay. It's
16:11
all logs. Okay. Okay, so let's see. A couple
16:17
comments here. Nietzsche: if you were a girl
16:23
in second grade, would you be okay? I guess if
16:27
you had a second-grade daughter, would you be
16:29
okay with her being on the subway? Yes. No. Philip
16:35
Blair: remember when Hillary Clinton and the
16:37
French government overthrew the government of
16:39
Libya? I do remember. Very few people do. Yeah.
16:45
It was Sarkozy, if I remember correctly. It sure
16:48
was. Imbecile. Okay, so what should we talk about?
16:54
Should we talk about Trump? Yeah, that approval
16:58
rating is insane. He's going to hit the
17:00
20s. He is going to hit the 20s. When he resumes
17:04
the war, that number is going to drop to the
17:06
20s. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I've never seen
17:12
an approval rating this low. I thought George
17:13
Bush was going to be the lowest in the history.
17:16
Not so much. I saw ratings like this because I'm
17:20
older than you. Richard Nixon, a few months, a month
17:23
or two before his resignation, he was down
17:26
to 28, I think. But this is, yeah, no, you're right.
17:29
In the modern era, this is unprecedented.
17:32
I was going to ask you. You like sports,
17:34
and to me this feels a little bit like a sports
17:36
phenomenon. When sports fans turn,
17:40
give up on a team, and they turn against that
17:42
team, they kind of think it's their
17:44
hometown team. They love them, but they're,
17:46
these guys are losers, and the bleachers empty
17:50
out, and people just don't go to the games.
17:52
Isn't there kind of a crowd effect where people
17:54
just stop going? They just stop caring.
17:57
They just stop going. They just stop caring.
17:59
And society in that town kind
18:02
of gives permission to each other to stop
18:05
rooting for the team. That's what this feels
18:08
like to me. It feels, for a lot of Republicans,
18:11
they now have permission to turn. If you see
18:16
the approval rating dropping, it has a snowball
18:19
effect where you look at it and you think, wow,
18:23
at 32 percent, lots of other conservatives
18:26
are now turning against Trump. They have to be,
18:29
because the country's 50-50, right? So maybe
18:33
it makes you... Maybe if Trump
18:36
was at 55, you're, oh, I'm good. That's
18:40
half, more than half the country. He was
18:42
never at that. He was like 45, 47. But at that
18:47
point, you're, well, that's half the country,
18:48
and I'm half the country. I'm a Republican. But
18:50
at this point, you start to think, huh, the tide's
18:53
running out. Maybe I should abandon ship, too.
18:56
I do know what you mean. So
18:59
I am not a big fan of sports. Chess is
19:01
a sport. Well, I define it as a sport. Oh, I
19:04
thought you liked football, but team sports, not
19:06
a huge fan of. I do like football. Yeah,
19:10
I do like football. I do like football, and I can
19:12
be caught watching basketball on a random occasion,
19:15
or at the very least I can enjoy the sports.
19:17
So fair enough. I accept that. Yeah, I agree with
19:20
you. The reason that people fight so hard
19:24
for high approval ratings is because they like
19:27
to be able to say, well, look at all of these
19:28
people that care about me and back
19:31
me and support me. And there's some kind of weird
19:33
effect with human beings where if a crowd backs
19:35
something, then that somehow gives it some kind
19:37
of legitimacy. It's not real, but it's just the
19:41
way it works. Maybe just because we
19:42
have higher numbers, you have a higher military,
19:44
and how your military by definition can usually
19:46
win wars. Maybe it's that, some kind of psychological
19:48
thing. But there's an odd effect of a crowd giving
19:51
legitimacy to something, even if the crowd is
19:54
wrong. It still gives it legitimacy. The mandate
19:57
of heaven, right? Yeah, yeah. The mandate of
20:00
heaven. That's the Chinese thing, right? Well,
20:02
it's, look, it doesn't matter if we have
20:05
this big-D democratic state, et cetera. If we
20:10
get 90 or 80% of the population believing that
20:12
we're doing the right thing, but damn it, leave
20:13
us to our devices. We're doing the right thing.
20:15
It's kind of that. And on some level, you give
20:17
them credit for that, right? I give you grace.
20:20
Everybody believes you're doing the right thing.
20:21
I give you grace. The issue with it is when you
20:23
do the wrong thing, how do you change that process,
20:26
right? But that's a side. For Trump, Trump's
20:29
biggest strength in the Republican Party was
20:33
that he had the momentum. If you remember,
20:36
during the elections and everything else, as
20:38
much as people hated him, he had a good 35,
20:41
40% of the Republican Party in lock, that he
20:44
can just move from place to place to place and
20:46
win the elections. And that conferred power in
20:50
the Republican Party from the standpoint of Donald
20:51
Trump. Hence, you get a Congress where you can
20:54
bully, you can browbeat, you can attack. Hell,
20:57
Marjorie Taylor Greene left office. Thomas Massie
21:00
was taken out. Jewish lobby, true, or Zionist
21:04
lobby. But also with Donald Trump screaming and
21:07
yelling at him. Hell, if you remember, Thomas Massie
21:09
even made an ad pretending as if he and Trump
21:14
were still on the same page when obviously they
21:16
weren't, right? That's power, right? What happens
21:21
when you hit 30 approval and everybody knows
21:24
it, and you get 80% of the public saying we hate
21:28
what he's doing on the economy, and the economy
21:30
was the one thing that Donald Trump, he wanted
21:32
many things, but the main thing, the thrust of
21:35
his argument that he wins on. He's now 80% in
21:38
the hole. That looks horrendous, right? And Donald
21:42
Trump is still oblivious to this. And in fact,
21:46
I don't believe he's oblivious at all. I think
21:48
he knows. I don't think he's oblivious either.
21:50
I think he knows how bad this is. And yet he's
21:52
going on the campaign trail. He's doing,
21:55
he's still doing stump speeches, like this was
21:58
his first term, but only in deep, deep, deep
22:01
red districts. That may be true. Right. But he
22:05
is toxic. And he's still doing that shit. And,
22:08
sorry, you are seeing in purple districts some
22:11
Republican candidates who always backed him
22:14
to the hilt in the last two months or so saying,
22:16
Mr. President, thank you so much
22:18
for your support, but it's kind of OK if I got
22:22
this. I'll do this on my own. Yeah, I don't need
22:25
you. Well, Republicans are about to lose Montana.
22:28
That's amazing. That's amazing. I don't
22:32
know if you had a chance to look at what I shared.
22:34
Our governor is in India right now, right now.
22:38
So first Trump goes in and he imports all this
22:42
crap Argentine beef that just screws over Montana
22:45
ranchers. Now our beloved governor is in India
22:48
right now talking about how we need more H-1B
22:51
visa holders and more Indian students to come
22:53
to Montana universities because not enough Montanans
22:57
are going to the schools and stuff. And so instead
23:00
of addressing the actual issues, depressed wages,
23:05
the cost of housing, instead, he's going to go
23:09
to India and bring over more people to put further
23:12
stress on those. I would not be surprised if
23:15
people start burning Greg Gianforte effigies
23:17
in the streets at this point. Well, they shouldn't
23:20
do that. Look. No, they should march
23:22
on Helena and burn the Capitol down.
23:24
That's the full threat of betrayal. What they're
23:27
doing in France right now, I agree with it. It
23:30
should be. This is how you do protests. The idea,
23:34
the idea that, I'm sorry, it annoys me.
23:37
The idea that it's, we don't have enough
23:40
students in our universities. And the response
23:42
isn't, well, maybe we should make university
23:44
free to try to get more people into the university.
23:46
Hell, if you want to say the government gives
23:48
a stipend in order for people to go, so those
23:50
universities still get money for the people going,
23:53
I don't care. You could do that. Right. You have
23:56
a shortage of nurses. You have a shortage of
23:57
doctors. You have a shortage of all of these
23:59
particular things that we need people to do.
24:01
And yet the issue is not that you don't have
24:03
enough people in your country to do them. You
24:05
don't have enough people qualified to do them.
24:08
And I would argue, in large part, probably because
24:10
they can't afford to go to school, or going to
24:12
school is such an exorbitant cost that it doesn't
24:14
necessarily make sense in the context of their
24:16
life. Exactly. It's a great place to live, but
24:20
you can't make a living here. Yeah. And so his
24:22
response is we need to get people from India.
24:24
Obviously, that's a solution. That's obviously
24:26
the solution. It got so bad, the U.S.
24:31
ambassador to India had to turn off the comments
24:34
on his post because he was getting roasted. Now,
24:39
God bless him. Lucas, our representative here
24:43
in Evergreen, where I am, I invited him to the
24:45
show. I haven't heard back from an email yet. Said
24:47
that he is going to vote against everything that
24:50
the Republican Party goes for. He's pulling a
24:52
full Thomas Massie, going completely. He's a
24:54
Republican. He's a Republican. He's a Republican.
24:57
And he's a pox on them. Complete betrayal.
25:00
And he's right. H-1B visas are not popular
25:04
anywhere, including... No, there goes Ted. He's
25:09
got that magic mouse. He swipes and it goes away.
25:12
Oh, it goes away. I got to be honest with you,
25:14
Robby. I don't believe in a Republican. I think
25:16
he's saying this now. We'll see what he does
25:18
if he gets in office. Yeah, we'll see. I am
25:21
very, I am deeply skeptical. I'm skeptical. Yeah,
25:24
he's not going to vote against the military
25:26
budget or something, right? Yeah, well, no, but
25:29
no, he's not representing the Congress. No, he's
25:32
not. He's not a rep. He's not a representative
25:35
to Congress. He's our representative to Helena
25:37
in the district. Oh, he's our state rep.
25:38
He's my state rep. Okay, yeah. The
25:44
Democrat Forsyth, I invited him onto the show,
25:46
too. I haven't heard back from him. I'm going
25:48
to vote Democrat this time. Me. Yours truly.
25:50
I'm voting Democrat as a great, big, gigantic
25:53
fuck you to the Republican Party. But Democrats
25:56
in Montana are a little bit different than Democrats
25:58
in, let's say, California, right? Oh, yeah. No,
26:02
they're blue dog Democrats. They are
26:04
conservative Democrats. No, definitely got more
26:06
of a populist bent, but as far as letting dudes
26:08
in dresses in the bathrooms, that's not going
26:10
to happen. Gun control is off the table. So no,
26:13
these are not... These are your old-school
26:16
Dixiecrats or blue dog Democrats. They're conservative
26:18
Democrats, more populist, but definitely not
26:21
woke. Okay. Ted, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, I
26:31
can hear you. Sorry, I was trying to
26:33
work on a little tech thing. Okay, which is,
26:36
I gotta be honest with you. Do you get the
26:38
sense that this is a Tea Party, a Tea
26:42
Party here? When the Tea Party
26:45
came in, John Boehner, there's a famous quote with
26:46
John Boehner. Says he went out to one of the rallies
26:50
and he saw how the people were just revved
26:54
up, and he said they are pissed off. He said, we're
26:58
going to win. He said, when they're pissed off,
27:01
we're going to fucking win, or something like
27:02
that. But he dropped the F-bomb, basically saying,
27:04
we are going to kill it this year. These people
27:06
are pissed off. They're ready to go. Is that
27:09
what we're looking at? And what's sad about this,
27:11
it's not even they're pissed off and there's
27:14
somebody to harness. That's exactly what I was
27:18
going to say. That sucks. That's my answer. That
27:20
sucks. My answer is that the people who
27:23
are going to benefit here, it's sort of...
27:26
It's sort of if you're dating a girl and
27:30
she leaves you for a great guy. She leaves
27:34
you for Keanu Reeves. You're, fair is fair.
27:38
He's better than me. And it speaks highly of
27:41
me, in a way, that I was dating a girl who ended
27:43
up with Keanu Reeves. But if she leaves you for
27:46
some degenerate opioid seller, you're, what
27:51
does that say about me? And also, he
27:55
doesn't deserve to benefit from the breakup of
27:57
our relationship. Right. He doesn't deserve
27:59
her or anyone. And that's kind of what's
28:02
going on with the Democrats. They don't
28:04
deserve this. They're going to... They're
28:06
definitely going to kill it. The House
28:08
is a given. The Senate is certainly
28:13
to be conservative, likelier than not. Right.
28:17
Shall we say that? So, and then, obviously,
28:20
next year, and watch this. In late
28:24
November and December, all we're going to hear
28:26
the Democrats say is, we're awesome. The
28:29
American people have handed us the reins. It's
28:32
because they believed in our message, to which
28:34
I say, what message? You don't have a message.
28:38
Right. Literally, can you tell me, can
28:41
anybody tell me, what is the Democratic
28:44
agenda for 2027? Okay, they're going
28:48
to investigate Donald Trump, and they're
28:51
going to go after him, and they're going to subpoena
28:53
him. Great. But what are they going to do about
28:56
health care? What are they going to do about affordability,
28:58
the issue of the day? What are they going to do
29:00
about inflation? What are they going to do about
29:02
trade? What are they going to do about the wars?
29:06
Nobody knows. They haven't even said
29:08
that they would end the Iran war if they had
29:10
a chance. Not that they're getting
29:12
into the White House next year. But
29:14
they could certainly say we're going to turn
29:15
off the spigot and turn off all military spending
29:18
until the war comes to an end. That's how the
29:20
Vietnam War came to an end.
29:23
They could do all sorts of things. They haven't
29:25
even promised or mentioned the possibility of
29:28
these things. They don't deserve the big win
29:31
they're about to get. And that sucks. Agreed.
29:36
Agree. There's no... They've done nothing,
29:39
and this is the Nancy Pelosi thing. When Nancy
29:42
Pelosi was, well, they'll come back. Yeah, well,
29:45
and she's right. She's right. And of course,
29:48
the thing is, the same thing is going to happen
29:51
in two to four to six years when the Democrats
29:54
disappoint everyone. And then people like Robby
29:58
are going to say, I'm going to send the
30:00
Democrats a big message. Fuck you. I'm voting
30:03
Republican. And so it goes, over and over and
30:06
over. And when she said that, it's one of those
30:09
things where you have to grudgingly
30:12
agree. It's, I don't want to agree with that,
30:16
and yet you're stuck with the agreement of it,
30:18
which is why I always say, just don't vote.
30:20
Voter boycott would be the way to go if we could
30:23
get enough people to do it. Can you imagine if
30:25
90% of the vote... Let's just say the voter turnout,
30:28
this will not happen, but imagine if the voter
30:30
turnout in an election, and let's say a midterm
30:33
election or a presidential election, was eight
30:35
percent. That was the national turnout.
30:38
This would be an international crisis.
30:40
You'd have people meeting at the UN and the EU
30:43
being, clearly the American people do not
30:46
believe in their government. Maybe we need to
30:48
invade and liberate them. You can tell by the
30:51
fact that nobody votes. The
30:54
point is, or if 8% of the public voted, again,
31:00
imagine all the people who are powerful
31:03
and/or rich and/or connected were,
31:06
there's room for a new party here. We
31:08
could, despite all of the institutional
31:12
barriers, clearly there's an appetite for something
31:16
new on the left, on the right, in the middle. Clearly
31:19
there's an appetite, and that would
31:21
send a message that the marketplace of ideas
31:23
has a vacuum that could be filled. But as long
31:26
as we keep flailing back and forth between these
31:29
two major parties. Yeah, it's hard for anyone
31:32
who wants to start a new party to say, oh, I
31:35
have a chance of making this work. Agree. Well,
31:38
I agree about that, as long as people
31:43
continue to put their energy into these things,
31:45
that these things are going to believe that they
31:47
have some level of legitimacy in order to keep
31:50
operating. And I will tell you, though, if only
31:52
8% of the population voted, or let's say 10%
31:55
to round the number off, I still think the
31:57
political parties would say we won a resounding
31:59
victory. The people who did vote chose
32:03
us. Yeah, and our system, and it would be absurd,
32:05
right? And yet I strongly suspect they would still
32:09
try to be, but I don't think it, but it wouldn't
32:11
work. And the reason I say that is,
32:13
look at countries, authoritarian
32:15
dictatorships like Saddam Hussein's Iraq under
32:18
Saddam Hussein, where it's, or
32:20
Kim Jong-un. They all have elections, right?
32:23
So those countries have elections, and they always
32:26
are, thank you for my win with 99%
32:29
of the vote. But why do they go through this,
32:33
right? It's, North Korea is a dictatorship.
32:37
It's a one-party rule. And there's no way to
32:41
know how popular they are because there's no
32:43
polling or anything, and there's no free press.
32:45
But the point is they go through this because
32:49
it's for domestic and international consumption.
32:53
Look, people like us. That's why they vote for
32:56
us. And that's important. That legitimacy,
32:59
it's not an abstraction in that sense. And I
33:02
think the only tool we would have if we really
33:05
hated the two-party system would be to sit on
33:08
our hands and either vote for a third party,
33:10
cast a blank vote, or don't vote at all. Those
33:13
are your options. I don't ever vote for a Democrat
33:17
or a Republican in a contest where I don't want
33:20
to see that Democrat or that Republican win.
33:23
You should wake up in the morning, and if your
33:26
candidate won, you should be happy. If you're,
33:29
the candidate that you voted for was,
33:31
well, oh, well, Hillary Clinton won,
33:34
but at least Donald Trump didn't win. And you're,
33:37
and you voted for her. That sucks. You
33:41
shouldn't have voted for her. And so
33:43
that's why I didn't vote for her. I didn't want
33:45
her to win. I would have been unhappy
33:48
if she won. I was unhappy that Trump won, but
33:51
I was unhappy as soon as Bernie Sanders dropped
33:53
out of the primaries. Then I knew the
33:56
election, the 2016 election, was over for me at
33:58
that point. I was just going to cast a protest
34:00
vote or no vote at all. Agreed. Yeah. I agree
34:04
with everything you said. I felt the same way.
34:07
It was, I don't want her to win. I don't
34:09
want him to win. I can always write Dr. Shiva
34:13
again. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, you would be
34:17
effectively doubling his vote because it's just
34:20
him. I don't think his wife votes for him. But
34:24
he's not in Montana anyway. I don't know who
34:26
the hell he is. Yeah, but you could double his
34:28
national vote. That's true. Yeah, we should have
34:31
him come on. He might be literally the most unpleasant
34:33
person in the United States. So, which is saying something.
34:37
I mean that seriously, with respect. Everybody's
34:39
got to be good at something, and he's good at
34:42
that. All right, here we go. Okay, so Andre,
34:50
hantavirus and diarrhea lettuce, now Russian
34:52
plague, $2. Let's talk about the plague. Well,
34:56
what did he say? He said the hantavirus and diarrhea
34:59
lettuce from Taco Bell, and now
35:02
Russian plague. Oh, Jesus. So the plague. So
35:06
there's an outbreak. This happened in Irkutsk
35:11
Oblast, which is, if you're not familiar with
35:13
Russian geography, if you look at a map of
35:16
Russia, it's just north. And it's, imagine
35:20
Mongolia. It's just north of there in the middle.
35:24
So it's in a very remote part of Asian Russia.
35:28
Lots of Asian people.
35:33
People who look Asian are Asian. Effectively,
35:36
partly and mostly ethnically Mongol or Manchu.
35:41
Anyway, this is a remote place for obvious
35:43
reasons. This lab is an anti-plague research
35:46
facility. And lest people who hate Russia and
35:50
are, oh, yeah, anti-plague. Plague is from
35:54
the former Soviet Union. Plague originated in
35:58
the Middle Ages in modern-day Kazakhstan and
36:01
then traveled its way along the Silk Road. So
36:04
there are plague outbreaks all the time. There are
36:07
three kinds of plague. There's bubonic, the famous
36:12
one that devastated Europe and killed about half
36:16
to three quarters of its population twice. There's
36:19
pneumonic, which is what this is, which means
36:21
it goes after your lungs. And this one's dangerous
36:25
because it can spread human to human. Bubonic
36:28
is only from flea bites from infected rats. You
36:32
can't get it from, if a person has
36:35
bubonic plague, you can't get it from them directly.
36:39
But pneumonic plague is,
36:42
like COVID. You can, if you cough,
36:45
you can spread it. And then there's a third kind
36:49
of plague, which is basically the blood-borne
36:52
plague. That also cannot be spread human to human,
36:56
I guess, unless you were sharing needles or something
36:58
like that. So this one is not bubonic plague.
37:03
This is pneumonic. Pneumonic is far more dangerous
37:06
because it spreads human to human. All of them
37:08
are treatable with antibiotics. If you get antibiotics
37:11
into your system right away, you'll be fine.
37:14
But the point is, in remote rural areas, this
37:17
could be a problem. So the point is Russia has
37:20
to have anti-plague research facilities. About
37:23
1,000 to 2,000 people die globally from plague
37:26
outbreaks. Every now and then there's one
37:28
or two in Arizona. There's some in Kazakhstan,
37:32
which is the source
37:37
of plague, as I said. So anyway, the thing is,
37:40
I'll give Donald Trump credit here. He said that
37:43
if the Russian Federation needs any assistance
37:46
whatsoever, although I don't know how we do that
37:48
since we're no longer members of the WHO, and
37:51
we no longer, and the CDC has been gutted. I
37:56
don't really know how we do that. But anyway,
37:57
whatever help we could provide, maybe on Twitter,
38:00
we will provide to the Russians. I think the
38:03
Russians probably have this in hand, but this
38:05
female lab worker got it on her somehow and got
38:09
out and then died. So obviously the Russians
38:11
are on top of this, and I don't think they probably
38:14
need any help, but it's worth noting. Yeah, that's
38:19
rough. That's rough. These labs are,
38:22
they're necessary, but it's a necessary danger,
38:27
I suppose. They're doing research.
38:30
But it's always possible, I suppose,
38:34
in any lab that something like this can happen.
38:37
Always. Yeah. Yeah, these
38:40
are obviously extremely dangerous
38:43
bacteria. By the way, has it spread
38:46
to anyone else? Is it just her? It's not known
38:49
to have spread to anyone else yet. Good. Because
38:53
she could have gone to Starbucks after work.
38:55
But I imagine that the Russian government
38:58
has the area quarantined and cut off. And then
39:02
they're probably dudes
39:04
in hazmat suits all over the place,
39:07
trying to figure out exactly how far this went.
39:09
That's why you do this in remote areas.
39:13
Very true. As opposed to a wet market. You had
39:17
Wuhan next to the pangolin display. Right, right.
39:21
It's, yeah, I'm going to leave work
39:23
and go to Starbucks, and of course everybody
39:25
that's in there, 100 people, let's say 10 get infected.
39:28
Okay, so 10 people now have it, and they go and
39:30
they... The numbers, the ease at which
39:34
sometimes these things can spread, it's just breathtaking.
39:36
COVID, the spread of COVID, was breathtaking,
39:38
and it didn't matter what you did, almost.
39:43
There are things, I suppose, that you could
39:44
do to push the percentages one way or the other,
39:46
but yeah, we were just all... It was a major
39:50
flu 100 years ago. A few years ago, I hope, I
39:53
don't know if this ever happened or not, but
39:55
European researchers are talking about going
39:56
into the plague pits of plague victims who are
39:59
buried in the city walls. So that's what, they've
40:02
entombed them in the walls. Of course, now they're
40:04
mummified. They're talking about going in there,
40:06
getting that bacterial strain that was the Black
40:09
Death and then trying to reverse engineer it
40:11
and then see if they can weaponize it. Basically
40:13
gain of function, which Anthony Fauci would be
40:16
all about. I hope that the Russians are not playing
40:18
that game. Yeah, when archaeologists have...
40:20
Archaeologists have gotten the plague from digging
40:23
up those pits from hundreds of years ago. Yeah,
40:27
and people just go in there and they start playing
40:30
God with things. They're better off left buried.
40:33
Yeah. It's terrifying. They're trying
40:37
to find, okay, is there an identifier for
40:40
Russian in genetics that we can engineer a virus
40:42
for that was specifically targeted to one particular
40:44
group as opposed to another group? They
40:46
think of shit like that, right? They do think
40:47
of shit like that. I know, but it's so easy.
40:50
In the '70s, they wanted to do, the U.S. government
40:54
had a biological research facility that was trying
40:57
to mutate house flies. And their plan was to
41:01
drop giant mutant house flies over the Soviet
41:03
Union. And the plan, the idea, and I kid you
41:07
not, was that the Russian people would be so
41:10
terrorized that when World War III came, the
41:14
U.S. Marines could just march in and everyone would
41:16
be hiding inside their houses while the giant
41:18
flies were buzzing around. And I'm, I think
41:20
the Russians own tennis rackets, right?
41:23
They could just go out and whack them. It would
41:25
probably be fun for them. And I was also,
41:27
you don't know Russians, do you? And then also,
41:31
I was, they would fly, right? They could
41:33
go all over Europe. They could come to the United
41:36
States. That wouldn't be good either. It was
41:38
so stupid. Yeah, what stops them from staying
41:40
in Russia? Stuff that our
41:43
military used to do, some weird shit. Yeah, yeah,
41:46
and I'm sure God knows what they're up to now,
41:49
but I'm sure that part hasn't come to an end
41:51
at all. Did you ever, Stubblebine, the guy
41:54
who wanted warrior priests, that they
41:59
have, they walk into countries holding
42:02
lambs, stuff that our military used
42:07
to do, some weird shit. They're so weird. Just filming.
42:10
Really, Robby still doesn't get it. You being
42:13
so against immigration just makes you as an individual
42:15
look bad. Your government wants immigration. Immigrants,
42:18
Robby. Yeah, but just because government wants
42:23
it doesn't mean that... Who cares? But my
42:25
government wants to kill, wants to kill
42:28
Russians, and yeah, and it wants to kill, it wants
42:30
to kill cousins. I don't care what they want. Yeah,
42:34
I think I've been pretty
42:36
clear on this. I don't blame the
42:40
migrant. I don't blame the immigrant. I get it.
42:43
I would want to get here, too. I want to go and
42:45
be able to suck off the tit of a developed economy,
42:48
too, if I had the opportunity when I was over
42:51
there. I blame my government for allowing this.
42:53
I blame my government and the tech overlords
42:56
for creating this problem. I blame my government
42:59
for hating me. I blame my government for all
43:01
this stuff. And that's the whole issue. It's
43:05
pretty clear. Sucking off the tit of a developed
43:08
economy. Yes. Let's keep rolling. We got lots
43:12
more to talk about. Okay, okay, okay. All right.
43:15
Those developed economies, though, sucked off
43:18
the tits of those countries in order for those
43:21
developed countries to be what they are, meaning
43:22
the starting capital for any developed nation
43:24
came at the expense of those, quote, developing
43:27
countries. Or do you disagree with that? I think
43:32
it's a bit more complicated than that. Was there
43:34
definitely an exploitation? For sure. Was there
43:40
a mutual gain? Yeah. The life expectancy in what's
43:43
now southern Africa was 30 during the days
43:48
of British colonialism up to the '70s. Now it's
43:50
collapsing. Thank you for the Brits. The Brits
43:54
were there doing them a favor. The Brits could
43:55
have stayed where they were. White man's burden,
43:57
Jamarl. For sure. White man's burden. What I'm
44:00
saying is, it's so hard on the white man helping
44:04
these... Whatever, the Brits, the French, the Amsterdam,
44:10
all of these people, the Belgians. Didn't fit it,
44:13
meaning the very fact that they were able to
44:15
be developed, quote unquote, came as a direct result
44:17
of the capital that they stole and the lives
44:19
that they killed. Yeah, and the resources, and more
44:21
to the point, they had no business being there.
44:23
It wasn't their place. Nobody actually, nobody
44:27
needed them. Whatever. Okay, just nobody asked
44:31
me to open up the borders and bring in millions
44:34
of people to drive down wages. So, guys, we have
44:38
15 minutes left to do. That's just a reminder.
44:40
This is a one-hour show. We go till 10.
44:44
It's 9:45. Okay, so, F you. So thanks for
44:48
the dono. Cash is getting married to his Mossad
44:51
country sensation girlfriend. I must have been...
44:54
Love at first pegging. She uses the Valhalla
44:57
strap-on of the gods. The well-dressed nerd
45:01
thanks for the dollar, or drag their asses out
45:04
and burn it down, maybe get ice cream after. Okay.
45:07
Did P.W. Walker... Did this person die of
45:12
plague or die with plague? Died of plague. Have
45:16
to ask now that COVID, and those with measles
45:19
deaths in Pennsylvania. By the way, New York
45:21
Governor Kathy Hochul has now declared a state
45:23
of emergency for New York State in the measles
45:26
outbreak. Really? Because it's spread across
45:29
the border from Pennsylvania. Yeah, so Nietzsche
45:35
says 28-year-old female lab technician Daria
45:38
Shipilova died in Siberia after a lab accident
45:42
involving a broken test tube containing plague
45:45
bacteria. Can you imagine that feeling where
45:48
you're just, wait, oh, you got it? Yeah,
45:52
I got it. Oh, fuck. Or you stick yourself with
45:55
a needle. That's the other shit, right? Yeah,
45:57
that happens. Definitely. Also, or if you're,
46:00
but I guess she didn't have
46:02
her hazmat. Her hazmat suit must have been compromised,
46:05
or she wasn't wearing it. Okay, so let's keep
46:09
moving here. So Trump suggested, here he is at
46:13
32%. The anti-immigrant people. Right here.
46:17
Here's my answer. Trump says. There you go. Right
46:20
there. Trump at a rally. That's going to solve
46:21
the immigration problem. Quickly, guys. Trump
46:25
suggested that L.A. and San Diego are expendable.
46:27
And as far as he's concerned, Iran could take
46:31
them out. First of all, Iran can't reach them.
46:34
They're the furthest. I guess the only part
46:38
of the United States that would be harder to
46:39
reach would be Hawaii. Iran doesn't have missiles
46:43
that can even reach Paris. Forget about
46:46
that. But, and of course, people in
46:51
California, Newsom, are, how dare you?
46:55
Now, I do. Of course, Trump is just being Trump,
46:58
and he's trolling. And he's... This
47:01
is just... He's joking. It's maybe
47:05
not a good joke, but it's a joke. It's a halfway
47:08
joke. Yeah. It's a halfway joke.
47:12
There's a huge military base, a Navy base, in San Diego.
47:16
I don't think he'd want to lose that.
47:19
Well, we've lost a lot of military bases. True,
47:23
true, true. What's one more? It's, Iran has
47:28
effectively leveled much of the bases of the
47:31
Persian Gulf. The U.S. military right now is
47:33
not in the Persian Gulf. It's way out. It's in
47:38
Syria, country like Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc.
47:40
So don't misunderstand me. But from the standpoint
47:43
of the boats and the ships and everything else,
47:46
those things are far out. After Iran nearly hit
47:50
them with a ship, and it's very possible that
47:52
Iran did hit them with a missile and they just
47:54
didn't necessarily want to own it. They said,
47:56
okay, we are no longer going to be in this particular
47:58
area. We're going to be much further back. Hence
48:00
Iran saying, well, we need missiles to be able
48:03
to hit further back now because the U.S. military
48:04
has gone further back. Does Trump, would he be
48:09
okay if Los Angeles was hit? Maybe. I don't
48:14
think... I think in reality, no. But look,
48:17
what was interesting to me was that
48:20
California politicians were calling him deranged,
48:23
and I'm, I think that part's true, not
48:27
because of this remark. And I think I'm
48:30
kind of wondering if that's going to start to
48:31
catch on. That should be a refrain. He's
48:36
deranged. He's out of his mind. He's losing it.
48:39
He's mentally ill. And deranged not in a political
48:41
way. Deranged in a personal, psychological, medical
48:43
way. Yes. Yeah. Because I think he is. I think
48:48
he is, too. For fuck's sake, man. We watched Joe
48:51
Biden degrade and disintegrate in that office.
48:53
Every day, he just seemed to be... And here
48:55
we go. Yeah. He just was vanishing, right? This
48:58
is the same. It's the same. And they should call
49:01
it so. Okay, we got to move on. China has opened
49:04
its first foreign military base that was in Asia.
49:10
And this one is in Laos. They opened a base in
49:15
Djibouti back in 2017. So apparently they opened
49:20
a military base and the United States never knew
49:23
they were planning it, financing it, building
49:27
it, nothing. And just suddenly, poof. Oh, by the
49:31
way, we're here. That's a big
49:35
failure of intelligence, I'd say. Yeah, and you
49:38
have to wonder why that large of a failure of
49:40
intelligence. Do you think that the Soviet
49:43
Union would have ever been able to make a base
49:45
that the United States was unaware that the Soviet
49:47
Union was making? No, no, no, right? How does this,
49:52
what time is it? This is about China and
49:58
the U.S. in the way that they're engaging.
50:01
They're not engaging in a similar way as the
50:03
Soviet Union and the U.S. engaged. It feels different.
50:06
It seems different. It looks different. It's
50:09
almost we lost, when the Soviet Union fell,
50:11
we lost the faculty of being locked in in that
50:15
way. Yeah, we're not sharp. I always
50:19
said that it was going to be bad for the U.S.
50:21
that the USSR went out of business. And it has
50:24
been. It's made us flaccid and flabby
50:28
in every respect, obviously, in terms of military,
50:31
our military intelligence. But also,
50:34
in the marketplace of ideas,
50:36
well, Francis Fukuyama now
50:38
says it's the end of history and capitalism has
50:40
triumphed now and forever. Although he rolled
50:43
that back recently, I guess, better 35 years
50:46
late than never. Yeah. But the point is that
50:49
socialism is ascendant once more. That wasn't
50:52
supposed to happen. But the point is that capitalism
50:54
hasn't had to smooth off any of the rough edges
50:59
to provide basic things that human beings need
51:04
in the U.S. and other Western countries. And now
51:08
capitalism is being caught with its pants down.
51:10
Yeah. It's interesting you say capitalism,
51:16
but you're right. Because usually somebody would,
51:20
I'm not saying usually, but you can make
51:22
the argument that it's not just the capitalistic
51:23
thing. The thing that's competing with other
51:26
nations is supposed to be the democratic component.
51:29
Right. But the Soviet Union was literally where
51:33
the Comintern, which was that global headquarters
51:36
of global international communism, was headquartered.
51:39
The Soviet Union gave orders to communist
51:43
parties in places like Cuba. So it's...
51:47
That was literally the symbol of the 20th-century
51:51
socialist project. And it closed. And when that
51:55
happened, there was triumphalism by the capitalists.
51:57
It's, well, we've won, and now we don't have
52:00
to fucking try harder. But it wasn't just that.
52:02
It was also by the... There's a political economy
52:06
at work that was at war in the sense of the Cold
52:09
War. It wasn't just, okay, we have economic systems
52:12
that are fighting each other. It was also, this
52:14
is supposed to be this kind of, quote, authoritarian
52:17
government versus this democratic government,
52:19
and democracy won, and blah, blah, blah. Meaning
52:21
they talk about it. And I guess you can look
52:23
at it through both lenses, but I think it's a political
52:25
economy that oftentimes when you're talking about
52:28
it, you're talking about both. I like the fact
52:29
that you use capitalism because I think that's
52:31
the one that matters more. I think that's the
52:33
one that eats the other. But I think it was held
52:35
in line by the political component of it as long
52:39
as you had an enemy that it was fighting against.
52:42
Meaning the capitalist side had to allow the
52:45
democratic side to get benefits. Otherwise, you
52:49
wouldn't have the buy-in in order to fight this
52:51
existential enemy of communism that they consider
52:55
themselves fighting. The flaccid part, I think
52:58
it's right. But I think it's the most natural
52:59
thing in the world. The moment that you lose
53:01
this thing that you're pushing against, that
53:03
you have to supply for your population, that
53:05
you have to show your population is growing and
53:07
developing economically, the moment that it goes
53:09
away, we no longer need to have this charade.
53:13
Capitalism can move in one direction, and it moves
53:15
in one direction, eating the political space.
53:17
Now, I agree with you. I think the moment that
53:20
you won, the moment that it dropped, it's
53:22
if I was playing sports, if I was... Chess reference.
53:26
When I was playing chess every day, I was a monster.
53:29
The moment that I stopped and I go into a tournament
53:31
10 years later, I got my ass kicked. Yeah. No,
53:35
it's anybody who, if you
53:37
practice physically, if you've been
53:40
out of whatever, you bike every day and then
53:42
you stop. You're going to be rusty. Yeah. Drawing
53:46
is like that. I once went six weeks without
53:49
drawing. Man, it took a long time to get back
53:52
up to speed. Yeah. And by the way, the China
53:56
thing is a really good example of it. It's,
53:58
okay, the enemy goes away. We won. End of history.
54:03
Liberalism forever. We're going to spread it
54:04
to the galaxy, in Star Trek. And then China
54:07
comes up. And it's, okay, well, you have
54:08
this Chinese government that calls itself a communist
54:10
government. And yet it's harnessing the capitalistic
54:13
entity in a better way than the capitalists do,
54:18
right? It's, well, that guy can use a lightsaber
54:20
better than a Jedi. It's, yes, we can. And
54:23
they use it for the benefit of their population
54:26
in regards to raising 800 million people out
54:28
of poverty. Okay, well, that's a challenge. Because,
54:32
again, the capitalistic thing is we were able
54:35
to look at what we've been able to do: freedom,
54:37
justice, and we have liberty, and we have a capitalist
54:39
system, and blah, blah, blah. And then you have
54:41
China saying, well, we raised 800 million people
54:43
out of poverty. We have the mandate of heaven
54:44
because we are competent in one sense, and we're
54:48
doing what we said we were going to do. That's
54:49
a challenge. But the U.S. hasn't lined up to
54:52
that challenge in the way we lined up to the
54:53
challenge of communism in the Soviet system.
54:57
And by the way, the Chinese system seems to have
54:59
more legs. Very quickly, we have one more story
55:01
to cover, this German spy chief story. But Paramount
55:05
has given up its bid to purchase Warner Brothers.
55:09
To me, that's an indication of Trump's growing
55:12
weakness because this was something that Trump
55:14
was midwifing. Wait, who? Paramount is not going
55:19
to buy Warner. Really? Really?
55:23
That's better for consumers that it not happen. Of course.
55:26
No, it is. I just thought they were going to
55:28
do it. Yeah, no, I thought it was a given. But
55:30
definitely that signals weakness within the deep
55:33
state, right, within the economic side of the
55:36
deep state. All right, so a guy named August
55:38
Hanning, 80 years old, he was the head of the
55:41
German version of the CIA, the Federal Intelligence
55:43
Service, known as the BND, between 1998 and 2005.
55:48
He's been arrested and accused, he's 80 years
55:52
old, of spying for a foreign country, basically
55:56
selling about 2,000 key documents to this foreign
55:59
country. We're not told what country that might
56:02
be. Everyone wants to say it's probably Russia.
56:05
Might be right. It could be Israel, right? We don't
56:09
know. Yeah, right there, because they're
56:13
not saying it. If it was Russia, they would
56:15
just have said it: Russia. That's what I think. I think,
56:19
so I'm going to say maybe Israel. And
56:22
then what's really funny is that apparently these
56:24
documents, the theft of these documents, came
56:26
to light last year in some kind of alleged kidnap
56:31
plot involving a lady who was the heir, the estranged
56:39
heir to a steakhouse chain in Germany. Can't
56:43
make these things up, to kidnap her children
56:45
from her estranged husband. So apparently when
56:48
the cops were investigating, the BND was, the German
56:52
national police were investigating that case.
56:54
They came across this August Hanning thing. August
56:57
Hanning apparently was suffering financial problems.
57:01
And so he was probably motivated purely by the
57:04
need for money in order to sell these documents
57:07
and prepare reports about how...
57:11
to prepare reports about the BND for this foreign
57:14
adversary. I don't know. It's
57:18
more of a John Kiriakou-type story.
57:21
I would love to pick his brain about that, but
57:24
I guess this is still, to me, this reminder
57:28
here is, so you had the former, you knew the
57:32
former head of the BND had all sorts of access
57:36
to intelligence that you cared about. You knew
57:38
he was having financial problems. And you didn't
57:42
think that maybe you needed to slip him a few
57:44
Deutschmarks to make sure that, or euros, to make
57:47
sure that he was okay, or
57:50
check up on him. It would
57:52
just seem to me you shouldn't give all sorts
57:54
of important information to someone who's broke.
57:57
But did they know he was broke? This
58:00
stuff might have come to light during the investigation.
58:01
Probably. It's a weakness of capitalism, though,
58:04
right? You're trusting people. Then you
58:07
kick them. Then they leave. They go and get old.
58:09
And maybe they get poor and old. And then they
58:12
need money. And they don't know who to turn to.
58:15
And then some guy with a Tel Aviv accent shows
58:18
up and offers them some money. And,
58:22
hey, okay. Yeah, with a Tel Aviv accent. Yeah,
58:30
I agree with you.
58:33
They probably just didn't know. And God, man,
58:35
just imagine you're doing an investigation about
58:37
a potential kidnapping and this comes into your
58:39
lap. How weird is that? You're, Hans, look
58:43
at this. Let me eat some schnitzel. Let's have
58:50
schnapps and discuss this. You're drinking your
58:53
beer and all of a sudden it's, hey, I think
58:55
this guy's being bribed. It's, what? What's
58:58
going on? What? Yeah, it would be
59:00
finding that George Tenet was working
59:03
for the Chinese or something. Yeah, that shit's
59:06
wild. That's so wild. Look, people are
59:09
susceptible. And yeah, they don't necessarily,
59:11
some of this stuff they expect on nationalistic
59:13
lines that you're not due. But when people get
59:16
desperate. Totally. No doubt about it. Well,
59:20
we're not desperate here. We're closing the show
59:22
out on time. We are. We can always use your support,
59:25
though. So please, if you haven't subscribed
59:26
to the show, please do so on YouTube or Rumble.
59:30
Five, 10, $20 tiers. Go check that out. Appreciate
59:34
you. TMI show coming up right now. We'll be back
59:38
tomorrow at 9 a.m., going for the full two hours
59:41
till 11 o'clock tomorrow. And looking forward,
59:44
as always. And thanks for joining. Bye, Jamarl.
59:47
Bye, Robby. Guys, bye-bye.