Sir Gene: 0:14

And dragging me once again today is dude named Ben. Ben. How are you?

Sir Ben: 0:17

I'm doing well Gene. So the reason why we're still doing Search Speaks and we haven't moved over, even though we've got some art and everything else is we're waiting on a theme song.

Sir Gene: 0:29

Yeah. I tell you that Whale and Jenn guy just keeps taking his sweet time.

Sir Ben: 0:33

Anyway, Secret Agent. Paul's done a first draft, but anyone else wants to throw their hat in the ring, by all means. Please do.

Sir Gene: 0:40

Are you soliciting free music? Is that what you're doing?

Sir Ben: 0:42

I am. Why not?

Sir Gene: 0:45

Well that sounds good. So, once that's done and couple little tweaks here and there and we'll be set up on the new channel. I did get somebody asking, and no, Jim's social, Hey, what Star says to that podcast you do with Ben?

Sir Ben: 0:58

Cool.

Sir Gene: 0:58

I said, Oh, well there ain't one yet. But you can still listen to us on Serge. Speaks a dumb ass.

Sir Ben: 1:05

You know, we could

Sir Gene: 1:06

a dumb ass.

Sir Ben: 1:07

start, you know, posting to both our SS feeds

Sir Gene: 1:10

We totally could. And as soon as we have everything lined, we will

Sir Ben: 1:14

So how you been Jean

Sir Gene: 1:15

Oh, pretty good. I guess. You know, I bought a new gun, which I know you're kind of tired of hearing, but

Sir Ben: 1:23

I'm just waiting for you to sell some of them.

Sir Gene: 1:25

I know, right? Well, I, I, you know, you're not allowed to sell guns the next day after you buy'em,

Sir Ben: 1:31

Well, I mean, you, you could, but yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:34

but they would not be looked upon favorably. And, you know, me, I'm, I'm a rule follower. So consequently I, I will sell in some of these, I think because I just honestly don't really need them. I actually, I mean, you, you've heard of one of the guns that I ordered, which was a a six five grl,

Sir Ben: 1:55

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:56

which I'm came to the conclusion after doing numerous research was the best gun in the the very short length format. It's same as 2 23. So, Which is what? 45? 45? So it's a

Sir Ben: 2:12

talking overall casing length?

Sir Gene: 2:14

Yeah. Yeah. Case lengths is 45.

Sir Ben: 2:16

I believe so. I'd have to go.

Sir Gene: 2:18

Yeah. Yeah. So. That's a small size cartridge, and it is this particular load, the six five grandle, is about as powerful a load in that size cartridge as exists Now, there might be some wildcat out there that are even more powerful, but

Sir Ben: 2:41

it's 43 by the way. 43

Sir Gene: 2:43

43, There you go. Yeah. So, next size up from that would be 51,

Sir Ben: 2:50

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 2:51

and then I can't remember what the the wind mag in the 30 out 30

Sir Ben: 2:56

Yeah. Now I was warning you about this cuz I went down this rabbit hole many years ago

Sir Gene: 3:01

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 3:03

and the problem with wildcat cartridges and things that aren't, NATO issue, but yeah,

Sir Gene: 3:09

Well, I'm not considering the GRD as a wild. So that fixes that problem.

Sir Ben: 3:13

okay. Well, you know, the six eight spc, which is the one I built, a couple AR and eh, I mean there was some adoption by special forces and things like that because, you know, and it is a cool cartridge in lots of ways, lots of similarities to the six five. The six fives got the better bullet coefficient, but, you know, we didn't have six fives back then. And what attracted me to it was, hey, the 6.8 is the same as a two 70. I have a two 70. I like doing my own hand loads. This is great and it's still a great gun for me, for my purposes and what I want. It's

Sir Gene: 3:51

Oh yeah. Well, that's the

Sir Ben: 3:52

ammo. Availability is an issue.

Sir Gene: 3:54

just cuz nobody uses a gun, doesn't make the cartridge is bad. It just means it's harder and or more,

Sir Ben: 4:01

Or

Sir Gene: 4:01

the ammo. Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 4:04

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 4:04

anyway, that's a pretty good one. And then there's a 300 blackout on sale, so I bought one of those. But anyway, moving on. What's new with you?

Sir Ben: 4:13

Well, just paying attention to the news and seeing some dramatic shifts in, you know, global politics coming.

Sir Gene: 4:20

Right? I, I don't really don't like the new actresses on the Game of Thrones. It's just, I don't know, I guess they had to do this swap out of people to age everyone. But I'm, I really thought the first actress did a much better job.

Sir Ben: 4:36

I haven't even watched it, but what I was referring to

Sir Gene: 4:39

oh, I thought that's where you were talking about.

Sir Ben: 4:41

tomorrow the voting in the don Bass regions ends on. The referendum to join Russia and the Russian and Federation.

Sir Gene: 4:50

Yep.

Sir Ben: 4:51

So I think as of Tuesday we're gonna end up with a positive vote. I don't, I don't think anyone thinks otherwise, whether it's because people think, Oh, those evil Russians are rigging the vote. Or, Hey, the Dom Pass has wanted to be part of Russia for a really long

Sir Gene: 5:05

Always has been part of Russia. So yeah, the votes are, the preliminaries are 94%, I believe.

Sir Ben: 5:12

it, It's insane so far. So regardless of what the actual percentage is or where it lines up, I think what we're gonna see is, this is gonna be a big shift because I think Russia's going to annex these regions.

Sir Gene: 5:26

Yeah, I, well, talking about Annex, I'm, I mean, they, they're joining Russia voluntarily, so

Sir Ben: 5:33

It's still, I mean, that's still, the legal process is still a annexation. So,

Sir Gene: 5:39

I don't know, I guess, I mean, at least they're doing a vote on this. Unlike when when Alaska. There was no

Sir Ben: 5:47

Alaska was bought and paid for

Sir Gene: 5:49

was no referendum and the money never actually made it back to Moscow. So, you know.

Sir Ben: 5:54

Sure.

Sir Gene: 5:55

Mm-hmm. that's theft if you ask me, but I'm sure when we do a referendum in Alaska, we'll probably get a good result back.

Sir Ben: 6:02

Yeah. That one would have to be rigged. I would say that one would have to be rigged.

Sir Gene: 6:07

There's a lot of Russian Orthodox churches in Alaska. Man,

Sir Ben: 6:11

Oh, I understand. But most Alaskans are pretty damn you know,

Sir Gene: 6:14

it's fed up with the current political climate in the us. I totally agree. I mean, they, they like freedom. They like capitalism. Yeah. Didn't agree more. That's the thing. It's, that's why I think the referendum in Alaska would be very interesting.

Sir Ben: 6:27

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 6:27

So what else going on?

Sir Ben: 6:29

well I just think it's gonna be interesting cuz once that happens and once the dom bass is part of Russia as far as legality and the dom bass and Russia is concerned, then it's a very different thing to be fighting in Ukraine versus fighting in Russia. And I think it's, I, I think Putin's already signaling that, Hey, we're done after this, and if you keep on, it's gonna be bad. So I, I don't know. I think it's gonna be very interesting to see where he escalates when Zelensky, because zelensky suicidal is gonna keep on.

Sir Gene: 7:04

Well, I don't think Zelensky cares what happens to Ukraine because Zelensky has property all over the world. He's a billionaire and he got to be a billionaire from booing, from being a movie actor by playing this role. That's his reward for doing all this

Sir Ben: 7:21

I don't, I don't think he paid, got paid a billion dollars to do the

Sir Gene: 7:25

He did? No, well, no, not to be in the movie, but he got paid a billion dollars to play this current role of president of the country.

Sir Ben: 7:32

there you go.

Sir Gene: 7:34

well, he did. I mean, if you look at his finance as no, because he was cast to do this back in what, 2016 when they started casting for the the TV show in Ukraine.

Sir Ben: 7:49

Uhhuh

Sir Gene: 7:50

And that was finding somebody that would be sellable and then putting him through a multi-year marketing campaign to get him elected. And his job is to effectively do whatever he's told, but yet, you know, do all these passionate press conferences, which he's very good at because he's an. I mean, I, I think you, you have to admit, regardless of where you stand on the whole Ukraine issue, that his portrayal of a president in time of crisis, he probably should get an Oscar for,

Sir Ben: 8:25

I mean, I, I, he is currently serving as the president so we can say he's acting it out and being a public government. Sure. But

Sir Gene: 8:33

not making any decisions on anything. All of that is coming from here, from the us. So what he's doing is he's acting the part of a president based on a scenario on a script that is written in Virginia.

Sir Ben: 8:49

And we'll see what happens when you know the, I mean, surely we have to back down on this after this

Sir Gene: 8:56

I think the us will probab, well, here's the problem for him. There's a. There's a storyline here where he's better to the US as a martyr than he is as an exiled president. Like that

Sir Ben: 9:14

would he be an exiled president?

Sir Gene: 9:16

Well, he

Sir Ben: 9:17

be a president over a smaller Ukraine?

Sir Gene: 9:20

no. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work If what what's been happening in the special military operation is a very concerted effort to minimize damage to people and infrastructure, and purely the targeting of military objectives. Now, everybody in war starts out doing that well, except for the us Us actually starts with targeting. So infrastructure to, to get the civilians to to be miserable and then turn in the their military, But, Okay, so I shouldn't say everybody. Some people start off that way, but generally when it's a war, those rules of engagement change and you're basically looking at not so much a military objective as a strategic objective. And I think that's what's going to happen here shortly, because there's no way that Ukraine is going to stop all attacks once the the new territories are part of Russia. They're gonna continue the attacks, which then triggers for Russia, this being an attack on the country of Russia, which goes then from a special military operation to an actual war. Now the, the last time the US was attacked on US territory, and without even getting into the specifics of it The response was to completely occupy two different countries. So I certainly think that if Russia gets attacked on its territory, which is very likely at this point it will occupy several different countries.

Sir Ben: 11:00

But which ones and why? I think

Sir Gene: 11:02

I think Germany and Ukraine are done.

Sir Ben: 11:06

they can't touch Germany.

Sir Gene: 11:09

Yes they can.

Sir Ben: 11:09

No, they

Sir Gene: 11:10

Absolutely. While you, you watch,

Sir Ben: 11:13

If they do, it's world wari.

Sir Gene: 11:14

it is war Lord three. They've said that already. The US has brought us to this point. This is where we are there. This is where we, there are, there are German troops in Ukraine right now

Sir Ben: 11:26

Okay.

Sir Gene: 11:26

and the minute Russia is attacked, every country's troops that are in Ukraine will be declared a war on starting with Germany.

Sir Ben: 11:34

That will start world

Sir Gene: 11:36

No. There is no start. There is no start. There's no start here

Sir Ben: 11:39

Well, I'm talking actually bringing other people in because that's gonna treat a

Sir Gene: 11:44

when you get attacked, that's a response. That's not a start. Did did the US start World War II by New King Japan? No, I think they finished it, didn't they?

Sir Ben: 11:55

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 11:56

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Sir Ben: 11:58

Okay. Here's the thing. There is not current hostilities between Germany and Russia. There's economic bickering, there's stuff simmering underneath.

Sir Gene: 12:12

There are German tanks right now shooting Don bus, German owned tanks

Sir Ben: 12:18

That were delivered as aid to

Sir Gene: 12:20

that cannot be operated by somebody that's never operated a German tank before. There are all, all the all of the strategic planning is coming from US intelligence satellites.

Sir Ben: 12:33

I don't disagree, but there's a difference

Sir Gene: 12:36

There's no different, Here's the different, here's the thing that Americans again don't understand because they've never been in the real war. When your country is attacked, the rules are not going to be followed. This, this, like, well, all we did was provide all the guns, all the ammunition, all the training, all the satellite information, but we had this one dude standing there with the weapon pushing the button that says, Destroy. They had this in fly fly, dude. It doesn't fly. And, and they've said it as much, is that the centers of control is what's going to be.

Sir Ben: 13:12

well,

Sir Gene: 13:12

of control is not Kiev. Centers of controls of control are in the U.

Sir Ben: 13:18

so we'll see if

Sir Gene: 13:20

We won't,

Sir Ben: 13:21

US and NATO back off

Sir Gene: 13:23

They're not gonna back off. Now this is, This is full blown nuclear work. There's no backing off here.

Sir Ben: 13:27

I hope you're wrong for my kid's sake. But you know, hey,

Sir Gene: 13:31

Well, then everybody should have voted differently in the last selection if they didn't want this. Because this is, We got here directly with a very straight line.

Sir Ben: 13:39

Yeah, I mean the whole stuff in, and this is something a lot of people may or may not know, but the whole Ukrainian situation started under Obama Biden you know, with the overthrow of a legitimate government

Sir Gene: 13:53

An elected government. Oh look, they're corrupt. Every fricking government that's ever been in that region of the

Sir Ben: 13:58

Every government is corrupt to an extent, but they were actually elected by the people

Sir Gene: 14:03

They were the last real elected government pre-civil

Sir Ben: 14:07

we went in, you know, what's her name famously said on a call that the Russians tapped, fuck the eu. And anyway, Obama Biden started this shit. That's when things were ramping up. Trump gets into office, it all shuts down magically. Kind of interesting there. He gets out of office, Joe Biden comes back in. Oh, it's a problem again.

Sir Gene: 14:32

Yeah. Well, and Joe likes controlling that part of the world, as he famously said in that phone call.

Sir Ben: 14:38

yeah, I mean, he, and what you're referring to is going in with the billion dollar,$2 billion

Sir Gene: 14:46

Looks like, Hey, I, You, you do what I tell you. Yeah. Not getting the bribes, I mean the, the American money

Sir Ben: 14:53

Yeah, foreign aid,

Sir Gene: 14:54

uhhuh foreign

Sir Ben: 14:55

can we at least agree that foreign age should just go away?

Sir Gene: 15:01

Yeah. Yeah. So here's the, the real question for me was, is gonna be, is China going to do a coordinated reunification at exactly the same time to create a dual front for the us? Because that would be the smart play if you ask me as, as soon as the US rhetoric starts going into, you know, by Russia doing these hideous acts in Europe, we're committing the full brunt of the US military to support nato. And that's when Taiwan gets lost.

Sir Ben: 15:39

Well, I mean here, here's the thing. The US isn't going to be the i if the scenario plays out the way you're thinking.

Sir Gene: 15:46

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 15:47

The West still spends a lot of money on defense and unless our allies

Sir Gene: 15:54

a lot of money on defense.

Sir Ben: 15:56

I'm sorry.

Sir Gene: 15:57

the west can print a lot of money on defense.

Sir Ben: 15:59

Well, but we have assets, We have military assets that others don't. Yes.

Sir Gene: 16:05

Like what?

Sir Ben: 16:06

The US Navy.

Sir Gene: 16:07

Yeah. What are you gonna do with that? What do you, what do you need that for?

Sir Ben: 16:09

I project power or, So Russia being largely landlocked is less of a target for this. But we also have our European allies and you know, the, between the Germans and us, we have the best tanks in the world. We have the most drone drones, so there's lots of things there. We definitely have the highest

Sir Gene: 16:30

of of the US military is built on asymmetric warfare principles.

Sir Ben: 16:35

Yeah. I mean, we haven't had a symmetric war since World War ii, but I would say that no one else has either. You know, when we talk about Russia coming in and doing a special military action, well, that, I don't see that as much different than Vietnam policing action, you know, or what we

Sir Gene: 16:50

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Sir Ben: 16:51

and so on.

Sir Gene: 16:53

yeah. And how well did that work out?

Sir Ben: 16:54

What do you mean?

Sir Gene: 16:55

Well, how well did Vietnam work out for the us?

Sir Ben: 16:58

Well that, that, that was a lot

Sir Gene: 16:59

working out for Russia.

Sir Ben: 17:01

so that was a lot of

Sir Gene: 17:02

partial committal just doesn't work.

Sir Ben: 17:04

not for the us. No, it

Sir Gene: 17:06

Not for Russia either

Sir Ben: 17:07

well, what happened to Russia and

Sir Gene: 17:09

learned right

Sir Ben: 17:09

be a good example there,

Sir Gene: 17:11

Afghanistan is another good example for both our countries, right?

Sir Ben: 17:14

Yeah. But I would say like if you look at the Iraqi situation

Sir Gene: 17:17

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 17:18

you could compare or the power disparity in Iraq, both during the first Gulf War and then the second to Ukraine and Russia.

Sir Gene: 17:29

I don't know about that. I mean, if, here's the thing I, I was wondering why in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution, like within a year, why there was no response from Russia. I really was very surprised about that. I was like, Wow, they're just turning over Ukraine to to Obama. That's kind of surprising. You know, I, I thought, well, maybe there's some strategic play here. Maybe somebody's an idiot, Who knows? But it seemed odd because it seemed like that would've been the best time to make a move. But they didn't, They kept it going and they kind of were,

Sir Ben: 18:07

that that would be the time to make the move?

Sir Gene: 18:09

because there were no German tanks in Ukraine at that.

Sir Ben: 18:12

Yeah, and there hadn't been the NATO training. So, you know, one of the things I would say when you say, Well, you know, how can someone hop in a tank? And well, they did a lot. They NATO trained the Ukrainians for eight years. So part of NATO training means cross training on allied weaponry. So there is that. You know, and if you have someone who already knows how to run a tank and you say, Okay, his, these are the specifics of this particular tank, I think they can probably come up to speed pretty quickly.

Sir Gene: 18:42

Well, I, I don't disagree with you in terms of driving a tank, but I think in terms of accurately using that weapon, that takes a lot longer.

Sir Ben: 18:51

Yeah. Well, I, I think if you look at the Ukrainian losses during this last quote, unquote offensive that would say that they aren't doing it very well,

Sir Gene: 19:01

Yeah. Yeah. Well, fair enough. But it's I don't know. I remember back a few months ago, there was an article about the, the protest in Germany about the fact that there are Ukrainian neo-Nazis with with Nazi tattoos being trained at German military camps

Sir Ben: 19:27

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 19:28

when the citizens of Germany can't even have a swic in their position without going to jail.

Sir Ben: 19:36

or even any memorabilia

Sir Gene: 19:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, hold up. What, what is Germany doing? By taking a blind eye to this, and I think this is why it's gonna end badly for Germany. I think Germany at best will once again become split. At worst, there just won't be a Germany, so I wouldn't buy a German car right now.

Sir Ben: 19:57

I don't know, man. I think I see this playing out differently. I think Russia's going to take, you know, the east I think there's a good chance that Poland may take the rest or parts of it.

Sir Gene: 20:10

At this point, Poland's not getting shit. Poland could have had an ability to take the West back five months ago, but their current anti-Russian rhetoric and support of the Nazis are they've removed that possibility.

Sir Ben: 20:26

well, I don't know. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens because I, I really think that they're, by Russia doing this. Any, I mean, you can say whatever you want about playing whatever games, but we don't have a dog in the hunt when it comes

Sir Gene: 20:40

and this is, this is,

Sir Ben: 20:41

We shouldn't

Sir Gene: 20:42

of, you kind of got to my final point on this topic, which is that the US and look at where it is on the map. On a globe on a map, and you look at where China is and where Taiwan is and you look at where Ukraine is and where Russia is, and yet the US is willing to go to nuclear weapons for, to prevent unification of these countries.

Sir Ben: 21:07

I doubt we're willing to go to Nokes. No.

Sir Gene: 21:10

Well then there won't be a World War III because then it's just gonna be one-sided. Cuz Russia will, They've said it, I believe him.

Sir Ben: 21:17

Yeah. I, I think

Sir Gene: 21:19

And I think the US will as well. I think. I think that you're

Sir Ben: 21:23

So do

Sir Gene: 21:24

not to be a dick, I think you're a little naive in

Sir Ben: 21:26

you think it'll be battlefield tactical?

Sir Gene: 21:28

It'll be ICBMs. Absolutely. It'll be mostly I think ICBM's coming off submarines for the US cuz the Navy is the strongest part of the US fleet. The

Sir Ben: 21:37

and that is one thing that we have that

Sir Gene: 21:40

Russia also has, which, which is why I think this is gonna be stupid. How many nukes do you think it takes to blow up Washington dc

Sir Ben: 21:50

I understand. I fully understand. But you do that.

Sir Gene: 21:55

more nukes than the US does

Sir Ben: 21:57

Yes.

Sir Gene: 21:58

and Russia contention will be stay out of Europe because what's his face, Lara said the other day at the speech in the un, I dunno if you got a chance to catch that or not. He's a very good speaker. That the US expansion of the Monroe Doc current has come to an end. The US basically treats the entire world as it does America at this point. Using the Monroe Doctrine. It has expanded the Monroe Doctrine when the Soviet Union felt the Soviet Union was the counterpoint to that. But the US. Didn't stop. They continued on and once the USSR went away, the, the focus is now on China, the focus is on. You know, we had fricking NATO in Libya like, and the US has occupied Iraq and Afghanistan for many, many years. Like the Monroe Doctrine, it encompasses the entirety of the world at this point, as far as OSes is concerned,

Sir Ben: 22:58

And

Sir Gene: 22:58

cannot do anything without asking us permission first.

Sir Ben: 23:01

yeah. And I think what we should have done was stick to the actual Monroe doctrine in that, I mean, if we would've stuck to the Monroe Doctrine, we would've never involved ourselves in either war, war I or two.

Sir Gene: 23:13

Yep.

Sir Ben: 23:13

Well, at least not in Europe. We may have fought the war against Japan. But you know, if we were really following the Monroe Doctrine, we wouldn't have allowed basically the false flag of Pearl Harbor, which, you know, people can look into that. We knew it was coming. Could have stopped it, but,

Sir Gene: 23:31

it's, it was the thing that the then current administration wanted

Sir Ben: 23:36

absolutely.

Sir Gene: 23:37

an excuse to get into the war.

Sir Ben: 23:39

well, we needed the war to pull us out of the Great Depression.

Sir Gene: 23:42

Mm-hmm. that's cuz

Sir Ben: 23:44

production. We

Sir Gene: 23:45

it's the only way Democrats ever know how to make money for the government is by going to war.

Sir Ben: 23:52

Well, it, I mean, it's a way of, So, so the problem with printing money, right, is, and then we can use this to pivot into inflation. The problem with printing money is you have too much money going o after too few goods. Well, when that money goes into manufacturing and building more goods, and then those goods are sent over, destroyed, used, and then there's more demand you can kind of get out of that cycle.

Sir Gene: 24:17

Yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely right. And the, the problem isn't that it's a lot of money going after too few goods. It's that the goods need to be depleted faster so that, that, that, Well, you also need availability

Sir Ben: 24:33

You have to have the

Sir Gene: 24:34

but, but you can't have people spending money that's printed by buying durable goods, like when money's printed and people buy land or houses. That's not good for the economy. It's good for those people. It's not good for the economy,

Sir Ben: 24:47

Agreed.

Sir Gene: 24:48

and that's why you want, And in fact, who is it? Now this could have been either been Trump or Obama, but I recall one of the presidents talking about, Like, if you wanna be patriotic, you should buy more stuff. Like buy, you should replace your car, replace your TV set. Rev, I think that was during Obama, wasn't

Sir Ben: 25:08

yeah. It was Obama during, you know, 2008 and the crash and the cash for clunkers program and

Sir Gene: 25:16

Yeah. Which destroyed a whole bunch of classic cars.

Sir Ben: 25:19

Well, I mean, it ruined the used car market even to

Sir Gene: 25:23

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 25:24

because so many were taken off the market

Sir Gene: 25:26

Mm-hmm. Cause the government bought'em and destroyed them.

Sir Ben: 25:29

stupidly.

Sir Gene: 25:30

And there was, I remember some of the videos from back then were, you know, literally mechanics nearly in tears talking about how, you know, you've got like perfectly fine running 10 year old Mercedes diesels with 50,000 miles on them, but because the car's aged, somebody wanted to upgrade, turn it. Into the clunker program. They can't resell that they have to destroy that vehicle. They have to destroy the engine It's like, oh my God. The stupidity of that

Sir Ben: 26:05

Well, anyway, it. There was a lot of stupidity that happened in the 2008 timeframe, you know?

Sir Gene: 26:13

and, and look who's present now.

Sir Ben: 26:16

Yep. Well, you know, but hey, you know, when we look at, So when we look at the when we look at the 16 years before Trump,

Sir Gene: 26:25

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 26:26

actually even further than that you know, other than Trump, what was the last decent US president? And when I, when you start thinking about

Sir Gene: 26:36

I mean, I,

Sir Ben: 26:37

way far back.

Sir Gene: 26:38

Yeah. I always liked Reagan, but there's certainly some negatives with Reagan as.

Sir Ben: 26:43

Yeah. I think the last truly good US president that did a lot for the country and well, no, I wouldn't go that far back, but I'd say Eisenhower, you

Sir Gene: 26:53

Hm.

Sir Ben: 26:53

I'd say Eisenhower After that, it's pretty downhill. We had an opportunity with

Sir Gene: 26:58

about him to say yes or no. I've always liked Teddy Roosevelt more, More for his

Sir Ben: 27:05

I don't like the national parks, but you know, Hey.

Sir Gene: 27:08

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? There's, yeah, there's frozen counts to that. But I, I think that I think Teddy didn't necessarily make the, the same decisions that Jefferson would've in his place, but I liked his anti kind of the rest of politician's attitude. Like he, to me, in the same, same vein as Trump. Like Trump was a fricking Democrat who switched parties because it was more convenient. But I liked that he was a muckraker. I liked the fact that he's going to stir the pot.

Sir Ben: 27:41

he was bombastic.

Sir Gene: 27:43

Yeah. Yeah. And he didn't

Sir Ben: 27:44

was alive

Sir Gene: 27:45

enough was the problem. The problem was that he was mostly talk and a little bit of action, but

Sir Ben: 27:51

Are you talking about Trump or Roosevelt at this point? Yeah. I was talking about Roosevelt. You know, the, the big problem I had with Roosevelt was, Hey, the Constitution doesn't give the government the ability to own a lot of land, and you shouldn't have this land. What the hell are you doing? Obviously I wasn't born then, unlike Gene.

Sir Gene: 28:08

Yeah.

Sir Ben: 28:09

You know, with Trump, my, my only real problem with Trump was, you know, the strikes on Syria. I, I had a real problem with that.

Sir Gene: 28:18

Yep. Well, I'd say that's one of the problems, but it was a consequence of the main problem with Trump was that he talked about cleaning out the swamp or draining the swamp, but then what did he do? He brought in an administration that was made of the swamp.

Sir Ben: 28:36

To an extent he tried to bring in, I, I think when he was trying to bring in Flynn I think Flynn would've been a good one. And I think that's why they absolutely went after Flynn immediately, because I think Flynn would've helped him a lot towards that. So I, I think that there was a lot of good intent. I think he listened to I, I, well, I, I, I think there was a siop there to try and use him. You know, I don't think his son-in-law has his best interests or shares his views to a large degree. I will say that what his son-in-law helped do with the Abraham Accords, that's a big deal, man.

Sir Gene: 29:12

You're talking about Judd?

Sir Ben: 29:13

Yes. And quite frankly, people should get the Nobel Peace Prize for that.

Sir Gene: 29:18

Mm-hmm. Well, that was already taken up by Obama,

Sir Ben: 29:21

Yeah. What Obama was given the Peace prize for because he had the potential to do, Trump actually did, which he gets no credit for. But you know, there are too many people who see moderates as good, you know, Peterson had David Crenshaw on the other day because he likes Crenshaw cuz he thinks he's, you know, reasonable. Well, I think Crenshaw is a rhino and, you know, is not a good character. But coming

Sir Gene: 29:48

guy?

Sir Ben: 29:49

Dan Crenshaw, you,

Sir Gene: 29:50

DA or the

Sir Ben: 29:51

congressman with the he the pirate congressman.

Sir Gene: 29:54

Yeah. He's a total douche man.

Sir Ben: 29:56

absolutely.

Sir Gene: 29:57

He's a total douche. Yeah. Fuck him.

Sir Ben: 29:59

but see that's the problem is so Peterson and Trump are both coming from traditionally much more left. Positions so they see someone like a Dan Crenshaw or a John Bolton even and go, Okay, well, you know, kind of got a bad rap, but maybe, maybe okay. You know, and that's the problem because they're not coming from the strict constitutionalist backgrounds that we are and going, Hey, Bolton's a warm monger, and, you know.

Sir Gene: 30:27

And so is Crenshaw. He's basically funded by the, the military industrial complex.

Sir Ben: 30:34

Well, and

Sir Gene: 30:35

That's who he reports to. And I, I, you know, there was a, Sorry to interrupt your thought here. Go ahead and finish.

Sir Ben: 30:41

no, I mean, he, you're absolutely right. He gave up body parts to it, so you know, he's getting paid back to represent him.

Sir Gene: 30:47

And he was a member of the the, what the hell's that group called?

Sir Ben: 30:51

The World Economic Forum young leaders. Yeah. Which he denies. He says, Oh no, they just put me on their website. I

Sir Gene: 30:57

Yes. They just have photos of him. That's, Yeah. I'm sure he didn't. Yeah. But the, the thing I was gonna kind of transition to is I, there was a book I read when I was young called Venus Incorporated. And it was a dystopian society in the future where the politics of the US has basically shifted from representation by ge, by geographic to representation by corporations.

Sir Ben: 31:26

Oh God.

Sir Gene: 31:27

So you had the, you know, the Coca-Cola senator, you had the you know, and, and on and on. So basically the, the large corporations had their own politicians. The smaller ones had to group together to get somebody elected. And I think that may not be necessarily a bad way to do it. It is a little dystopian to be sure, but I think it's more fair than what we have right now, which is literally exactly that. We have corporate politicians who are pretending to not be corporate politicians. I would much rather this be out in the open. And when you look at who donates to these people, you, when you look at where the money comes from to get them elected, it is very obvious that their loyalties are not going to be some random, you know, Joe Blow that maybe cast a vote for them. It is going to be to the corporation that donated a huge amounts of money to buy that person's vote. So, I don't know, man. I, I think that it may sound dystopian, but it, I think it sure as hell would be more honest if that was.

Sir Ben: 32:37

Yeah, so we, we have a couple of things here. One of the problems we have is that the House of Representatives was allowed to cap its number. So at the beginning of the country, a congress critter, you know, represented couple tens of thousands of people.

Sir Gene: 32:54

Yep.

Sir Ben: 32:54

Now we're up over a hundred thousand people,

Sir Gene: 32:57

kinda like in North Dakota.

Sir Ben: 32:59

right? So, you know that that's not reason. That's not representation. So allowing Congress to cap it's number was a problem. You know, when you look at the uk me, a member of Parliament represents right around 30,000 people. That's somewhat reasonable. We should have a much larger Congress than we have. And the other bad thing that we did that really was a turning point for this nation was turning the Senate into, you know, a popularly elected house. And what I mean by that is the Senate really was, and the reason why the Senate has to approve treaties is because we are supposed to be the United States Capital S for a reason there because we're supposed to be states. And the Senate was to approve treaties because the Senate was supposed to be elected and appointed by the state legislatures, meaning the States had foreign affairs powers. Now they don't. So the, a lot of this that we see, these foreign entanglements and so on, I think if the state still controlled the Senate the way they should have we wouldn't see as much as we have now

Sir Gene: 34:05

Well, I'm gonna be a devil's advocate too, cuz I don't think it would make any difference at all. I, I think that the same people would end up getting elected.

Sir Ben: 34:12

I don't, because what would happen is the states would have the power to more easily recall. Senators recalling senators now is not really ever going to be a practical thing, but in the days of state legislature control, there was so, you know, there, there's lots of things with that. But anyway.

Sir Gene: 34:32

I'm also not sure that not capping the house is reasonable because as the PO you look at what the population of the United States was. When the the house was created,

Sir Ben: 34:44

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 34:45

and like you said, I don't know how many votes is 20,000 or, or maybe less people that each of the representatives in the house would've represented. So having somebody represent that many people is great. I agree with you. There's a benefit there, but the, the ability to get any kinda laws passed. Imagine a house with 22,000 representatives, What do you think's gonna end up happening? Not, not even, let's say not even 22,000, let's say 3000, 3000 representatives in the.

Sir Ben: 35:24

what population do you think that would be representing Gene?

Sir Gene: 35:27

Well, I don't know, but let's, let's say we keep the same stance. I don't know if we wanna do the math while we're recording, but essentially if we keep each representative representing that number of people, right? If we have, instead of having 26 representatives from California, we have a thousand representatives from California, or even, even 500 representatives from California, right? And 400 from Texas.

Sir Ben: 35:54

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 35:55

I think that it is inevitable that what will end up happening as you grow the representative body to a point where they can't engage in direct democracy, is they will end up becoming themselves a voting block and electing essentially their representatives to do the government.

Sir Ben: 36:16

I have a better solution.

Sir Gene: 36:18

What's that?

Sir Ben: 36:19

So first of all, when you read Thomas Jefferson and you read what the founding fathers thought, they thought that they would spawn off a child country west of the Mississippi, that they didn't foresee America expanding past the Mississippi.

Sir Gene: 36:36

Wow. That's

Sir Ben: 36:37

that changed, but we have grown to a point of being too large for direct democratic rule. So what needs to happen is these states need to step up their game and what should have happened but didn't is the states need to become more independent and governing their own people, and that be the primary democracy where the laws are written, the laws that affect the people are done, and then the federal government focus only on interstate commerce and mutual defense, and every other federal law needs to go away.

Sir Gene: 37:15

Right. No, I, I don't screw with you there. But there again, if you end up having a legislative body that, that numbers in the thousands.

Sir Ben: 37:25

point is then if you limit the scope of the federal government, then it's okay to cap the number and to change the, In fact, you could even shrink the amount of representatives. It could be, you know, just a couple proportional per state. You could figure it out. You could shrink the body. Doesn't matter. My point

Sir Gene: 37:43

you're agreeing with the, the numbers, then you just don't like the fact that the states have seated too much authority.

Sir Ben: 37:49

Well I think this, that there, there are only two real options here. Either break up the country and allow smaller chunks to govern themselves, or you have to put the power to the states and really devolve federal power back down to the states. That's the only workable solution that, or you end up with tyranny which is where we're at now and where we're heading deeper into.

Sir Gene: 38:17

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think the, the North has always been impressing the south gad dammit,

Sir Ben: 38:22

Well, to an extent, and here's the, here's the thing. People should not think of themselves as American the way we do today. Thinking of yourself as American should be like thinking of yourself as European. I'm still a Texan.

Sir Gene: 38:36

Well, and I think this is where Texas is, is still a very cool minority, is that, this is something foreigners have noted, is that when most Americans introduce themselves, Oh, where are you from? Oh, I'm from America. Except for Texans. Cuz when somebody says, Oh, where are you from internationally? Most Texans reply T,

Sir Ben: 38:58

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 38:59

don't reply America.

Sir Ben: 39:01

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 39:02

I, I really like that. And it's, I think partly because of the size of Texas, but also partly because Texans, if they know anything about the history of the state they're living in, know that Texas really is a country

Sir Ben: 39:15

Well

Sir Gene: 39:16

a, it is a country that became a state, but really deep down it should be a country.

Sir Ben: 39:23

Well, we, we fought our own battle for independence and won it. So there is that you know, Texas, and, and here's the thing, I you, if we end up going to a hotter war than we're at, I think the odds of Texas seceding during it are absolutely zero. We won't, we wouldn't do that

Sir Gene: 39:46

Oh, I don't know about that, man. I think that's the perfect time to.

Sir Ben: 39:48

Okay. I don't think the people would vote for it. I, I think that Texas is very, is a very patriotic state and I think that even though some of us who would vote for secession under normal circumstances, I don't know that we'd leave the rest of the US in the lurch like that.

Sir Gene: 40:08

I don't think it's a matter of leaving the us I think it's a matter of the US leaving the principles of America

Sir Ben: 40:15

Absolutely, and part of what we need to do it, part of the reason why Texas should succeed if for no other reason, is to be able to set up immigration rules from California.

Sir Gene: 40:27

I like that. Yes. I, I

Sir Ben: 40:29

need to do some vetting

Sir Gene: 40:30

you were gonna talk about Mexico, but now the way you, you kind of brought a bell on top of that is perfect. But you're absolutely right. It's, it seems like with all the people coming in through Mexico, The biggest threat to Texas remains people coming from California

Sir Ben: 40:46

Well,

Sir Gene: 40:46

they're, they're going, they're going to change the way that Texans vote.

Sir Ben: 40:52

and here, here's what I would say. I am a libertarian. I am not a no borders libertarian. I think that's asinine. What I think you should do is there should be a drastic change in the immigration law, and what it should be is people show up at the border and it should be okay. You know, what are you coming here to do? Do you have a job lined up? You do Come on in. You wanna become a citizen? Work hard and become a citizen? You know, I, I don't think that,

Sir Gene: 41:23

When you come from California. Exactly. Totally.

Sir Ben: 41:27

but, but here, here, here's the thing. Our current immigration system is just taking in everyone regardless of that. But, and with very few powers to deport and send back, you're gonna get some criminals who come in, you know, a criminal who learns their lesson and can be reformed. Great. If you have a Reid rate there, if you, you keep committing crimes, we'll get rid of you. That, that's the way it should be. But, you know, I am all for the best in the brightest of the world coming to the US and making the US better. I mean, and this is one thing that has kept the US on top for a long time, is the brain drain. We have been able to execute from the rest of the world and has kept a lot of other countries impoverished because of it,

Sir Gene: 42:16

Yeah. But we're, we're,

Sir Ben: 42:17

which.

Sir Gene: 42:18

we're flipping that with Biden pretty.

Sir Ben: 42:20

Just cuz his, well, he, he definitely lowers the IQ average in any room he goes

Sir Gene: 42:25

before, but I have more and more friends that are getting citizenships in other countries right now.

Sir Ben: 42:33

Really?

Sir Gene: 42:34

Yeah. I mean, if, if somebody's worth seven or eight figures right now, odds are they're working on getting a citizenship somewhere else. They're not giving up their US citizenship, don't get me wrong, but they're making strategic backup plans that they can afford to because there are a lot of countries in the world, countries like New Zealand for example, and certainly Mexico, but plenty of others that have programs in place to do accelerated citizenship when you bring a business into the country. So you wanna just become a New Zealand citizen you know, you probably won't get. And if, if you do, it'll take you 10 years. You can do it by marriage in five years, or you could do it in one year by opening up a business that employs 10 people in New Zealand.

Sir Ben: 43:21

Hm.

Sir Gene: 43:22

So it doesn't, I mean, like this, this is the unfairness of reality. If you have the money, you can have a whole bunch of passports. Legally

Sir Ben: 43:32

Mm-hmm. So I Absolutely. But what does that get you? If

Sir Gene: 43:38

it gets you is,

Sir Ben: 43:40

ICBM launch?

Sir Gene: 43:42

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, so it gives you a few things. So the, the first thing it gets you is the ability to then legally shift your money around. And then you can become illegal very quickly if you really want it to at that point as well. But it takes money outta the country and it provides ownership of property outside of the country. And and that's could be a combination of both. Like if you buy a thousand acres of land in New Zealand, that's a thousand acres. That has nothing to do with the United States. That's still property. Same thing with opening up businesses. If someone's got a business right now in California and they're finally getting sick and tired of what's happening there, and they open up a business in Mexico they're no longer employing those lower wage people in California. They're now employing what are probably higher or at least middle wage people in Mexico

Sir Ben: 44:37

Well, for, for the same amount of money. Yes. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 44:41

And, and so there's that type of drain happening. A lot of people that historically have come to the US from India, China the Middle Eastern country, Saudi Arabia, During university time to get their degrees. And usually they, they go through and get their master's right away. They don't like come for a bachelor's and then fly back and then come back for master's 10 years later. It's, you know, if you can afford to come from the Middle East to get your degree at the Yale, you're gonna get your master right away as well.

Sir Ben: 45:11

Well, there, there has been

Sir Gene: 45:14

But, Well, let me finish the thought though. But that very often led to these people staying in the United States and becoming simply, you know, successful generally or at least experts if not financially successful within their fields. There's a lot of doctors that have an accent. There are a lot of people in physics and science that, that had accents more and more. And if you don't believe me, you could look up the stats yourself, but more and more of them are now returning back. Going back to India, going back to Saudi Arabia, going back to places that they grew up in originally with that advanced skill set and knowledge, rather than seeing their best outcome by staying in the United States.

Sir Ben: 45:59

Well, there's certainly always been two classes of people who come over here and the ar the argument has been for a long time that we're educating the world. Why are we doing

Sir Gene: 46:08

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 46:09

And subsidizing the education of the world. But you know, there have been a large class of people who come and stay, and there have been those who go back and those numbers very well may have been shifting around.

Sir Gene: 46:21

Well, and you say you know, the best and brightest, but that's not what the Statue of Liberty says.

Sir Ben: 46:26

I fully understand. But functionally what has

Sir Gene: 46:29

drags of the world come to our shores,

Sir Ben: 46:32

You huddled masses. Yes. Well, that, that may be a noble sentiment, but it is not US policy or law. For sure. So

Sir Gene: 46:40

Well, apparently US policy is as long as you cross the southern border, everybody's welcome, but not in Martha's wind.

Sir Ben: 46:48

yeah, man. Talk about a good troll. Talk

Sir Gene: 46:51

That is a great troll. The the left doesn't know how to troll, but the Right, Oh my God.

Sir Ben: 46:57

Dude. The, the fallout and the, just the way it looked was great. And I saw a great meme. You remember those two white people who had, he had an AR 15 and she had a pistol standing. Someone put Michelle and Barack's heads on them.

Sir Gene: 47:14

Oh, that's great.

Sir Ben: 47:15

was brilliant. It was just absolutely brilliant, you know. But so for people who don't know, which I can't imagine if you're listening to us, that you wouldn't, but, you know, DeSantis sending 50 50. aliens to Martha's Vineyard and, Yeah.

Sir Gene: 47:31

No, it's great.

Sir Ben: 47:32

Well, and the fact that they literally had a meltdown, had to move them to a military base. The governor was engaged immediately. Everything just, Oh my God. And then he trolled them again. Did you hear about the flight plan?

Sir Gene: 47:47

No

Sir Ben: 47:48

So he had the same people file another flight plan, like there was another one happening, and they were, they preemptively freaked out about it.

Sir Gene: 47:58

Oh my God. No, I think that's great. I, I love the idea of being able to do stuff like that now on its face, though it is kind of a waste of taxpayer money, but boy, that a fun.

Sir Ben: 48:11

Well, so realistically it shouldn't be. State tax pay our money. But you know what, it's, we're better off in lots of ways. I would say that, you know, if we are going to allow immigrants in, then they do need to be distributed around the country. Because, you know, why should Texas New Mexico, Arizona, and California bear the brunt of it?

Sir Gene: 48:32

And Florida. Yeah. I, I think that there's, well, they're, they're getting Dominicans. They're getting all kinds of people coming in. I think that there's a, certainly a precedent for something like that. But here's the, the next troll, I'd love to say, have come up with like,

Sir Ben: 48:49

well, you heard about what Abbott did.

Sir Gene: 48:51

Well, no, what do you do?

Sir Ben: 48:52

So Abbott not to be outdone. Then the bus load he sent to dc they unloaded right in front of the Vice President's house.

Sir Gene: 49:00

Oh, yeah, I did hear that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Sir Ben: 49:03

Anyway, what's

Sir Gene: 49:03

No, here's my next role that I would do like, and if I didn't already have another whole business I'm trying to pull off before the nukes come off is to put together a website. And even better would be some printed materials, but certainly at least a website that is essentially a the best cities to go to once you cross the border from Mexico. So essentially a tour guide for the newly incoming illegals taught, and, and it should list the benefits of like, here's, you know, where you get the best programs and, and make sure that this list is all the cities of the pla of the people that fully support this kind of program. So,

Sir Ben: 49:48

Absolutely. I mean, you could even list the sanctuary cities and what their literal policies state.

Sir Gene: 49:54

okay. You're, what you're saying is what I was trying to say. Essentially, yes. Just list the best places, meaning sanctuary cities, the ones with the most liberal programs, the ones that have that, that are promised the most to the underemployed and under housed to use their language and then provide discount and or free transportation to those places. I mean, I think that would be probably the most civilized thing that we can do as the state that happens to fall on the border where most people are cross.

Sir Ben: 50:30

Yeah. You know, I, I'm all for it and I, you know, I really think that I hate to tell you this, but that Austin would be pretty high on that list.

Sir Gene: 50:39

Oh, I know, I know. Totally, totally. No, believe me, that's, I'm,

Sir Ben: 50:43

yeah. And I, I think you avoid going to places, you know, that rural places that you know, don't want it. And,

Sir Gene: 50:52

to get shot at. Yeah,

Sir Ben: 50:53

well, and here's the thing that's what a lot of people have to understand is right now what the, the Texas border towns are small and they're seeing, you know, quadrupling in size based off of the influx of these migrants. That's not sustainable. 50 migrants going to Martha's Vineyard, that shouldn't be a big deal. But where historically you know, Yeah. Where historically you know, The Obama and Biden administration have shipped migrants in the past have been to smaller rural towns, and it's had an out outsized impact. Another idea of what could be done here is, you know, back in the turn of the last century, there was a big push, you know, Boulder Durham and trying to build out West Texas, well, West Texas, they're in shit out there. So, hey, we could build some, build some cities, you know, build it up.

Sir Gene: 51:49

start the land rush again. Just give away an acre and a mule to everybody that settles there.

Sir Ben: 51:55

I, you know, I think that we were talking about the federal government owning

Sir Gene: 51:59

in the day, by the way? Was it 40 acres in the mule? What was that

Sir Ben: 52:02

Well, that was the promise that was given to the slaves by Yankee General. But

Sir Gene: 52:08

acres in the mule.

Sir Ben: 52:09

yeah, literally

Sir Gene: 52:10

What, what, what were the handouts that Mexico was giving out here before Texas was American?

Sir Ben: 52:15

Oh,

Sir Gene: 52:16

that was the same thing. That's why a lot of Beats guys moved from Kentucky and Tennessee to this part of the country.

Sir Ben: 52:21

yeah, I mean, it was what you could manage and improve. I think it was way more than 40 acres.

Sir Gene: 52:27

Yeah, I think it was a hundred or more acres. Yeah. And then, and then they got what they deserve for that

Sir Ben: 52:32

yeah.

Sir Gene: 52:33

the country.

Sir Ben: 52:34

Well, but okay. And to an extent that could be a

Sir Gene: 52:39

I mean, that's the lesson to be learned, I think from when you invite foreigners to come over and settle lands on

Sir Ben: 52:44

Well, I'm not saying we invite foreigners, but what I'm saying is, you know, hey, you wanna come work, Let's build some cities. Let's build some industrial base. And, you know, you work for, to get your citizenship.

Sir Gene: 52:56

yeah, yeah.

Sir Ben: 52:57

So, you know, basically slave labor for a period of time, not

Sir Gene: 53:00

But if, But states aren't allowed to do that. If they were, that'd be.

Sir Ben: 53:04

Yeah, well, we'll see. And you know, when we were talking about the federal government earlier owning land, I think a good way to at least reduce our debt would be to have the US sell off all its major land

Sir Gene: 53:20

Parks.

Sir Ben: 53:21

to the US citizenry.

Sir Gene: 53:23

Uhhuh. Yeah. So if, if we had Yellowstone Incorporated that went on the stock exchange and that would be a way for the government to divest ownership,

Sir Ben: 53:35

sure.

Sir Gene: 53:36

and then you could own a piece of Yellowstone.

Sir Ben: 53:39

Or, you know, the big swaths of land in Arizona, Nevada. I mean, when you look at the four corner states, Utah, and so on, the majority of the state is owned by the federal government.

Sir Gene: 53:50

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 53:51

Open it up, let people build there. Get, there is no reason that our mega cities should be as big as they are

Sir Gene: 54:01

Yeah, no, I, I, and I think that'll be, I think that one of the consequences of the current administration's idiocy will be that because I think come winter, it's not just gonna be a bad winter for Europe. It'll be a bad winter for the US because the, the lack of fertilizer applied during the summer which a lot of farmers have talked about

Sir Ben: 54:27

during

Sir Gene: 54:27

going to be reflected in the final harvests. And I think all the land that is being utilized to grow corn for ethanol is once again getting, have to get reconsidered to be grown for actual food crops, because I think there will be a food shortage. And that's without even nukes. Like if you forget about nukes in the equation. I think Europe was going to literally have people starving, but the US will have food shortages, which means you can't always get what you want. You'll have to settle for what's available.

Sir Ben: 54:59

Well, in California just passed a bill to outlaw gas stoves and furnaces.

Sir Gene: 55:07

Yeah. Well, fuck California. I really don't give a shit about'em,

Sir Ben: 55:10

They are headed for a bruising man.

Sir Gene: 55:13

but yeah. Yeah. And there again, the people that are gonna get hurt, there are the sort of the middle wage Americans that, for whatever reason, live in California because the people in California that are driving to tus and living in a multimillion dollar homes all have property elsewhere.

Sir Ben: 55:33

Well,

Sir Gene: 55:34

They won't be affected.

Sir Ben: 55:35

did you hear about the Tesla? Well, that's Tesla is going to affect the entire state of California. I'll tell you why did you hear about the fire?

Sir Gene: 55:43

No.

Sir Ben: 55:44

So there are a couple big battery facilities in California. I was involved with the construction of one of them. In fact, the current largest operating battery facility in North America. One of the largest in the world I had and some involvement in programs around it. I'll just leave it at that. But the Tesla battery facility had a thermal runaway event and actually lost control to the point where there was dangerous fumes for the area and things like that. Lithium ion is a really. You know, we, we take it for granted because we use it on such a small scale all the time in our daily lives. But when you're talking large industrial battery installations, the, the, the potential for a thermal runaway event goes way up. So one of the things that is fascinating about these battery facilities is the amount of io, so inputs, outputs. So a large 1800 megawatt coal plant may have 80,000 points of io. A 300 megawatt battery site has 200, 200,000 points of io. And the reason why is cuz they're keeping track of the cell temperature, they're keeping track of the voltage and everything

Sir Gene: 57:00

Right Aren't they building those on lakes like they are with nuclear plants? Just to have cooling facilities.

Sir Ben: 57:06

So they are, they, they do have in fact, the one we built was actually at an old an old coal site in Moss Land in California that we literally reused the turbine deck for battery storage. And, but water isn't the answer for lithium ion. You actually have to have some different delusion systems to control those

Sir Gene: 57:27

I don't know, man. I really like lithium in water. That's a very, very cool thing to watch.

Sir Ben: 57:32

Yeah. All right. Well anyway, yeah, so the, the battery facilities aren't working out the way. California had hoped all the projects have had issues. And I speak from direct experience with that. And what's happening is California is moving more and more towards this quote unquote renewable electric grid. But the fact of the matter is solar and wind alone do not get you there.

Sir Gene: 57:58

No, of course.

Sir Ben: 57:59

And the battery technology isn't there. And one of the things that we're seeing is whenever you're talking battery, whenever you're talking wind, when you're any of these, all these have to go through these big digital inverters, okay? And all these big digital inverters. After the massive installation, we haven't seen this at utility scale be used, and what we're seeing is, for instance, a solar project in Texas, the inverter manufacturer went bankrupt and out of business because they had so many issues. So now you have this 200 megawatt solar site that's less than five years old that may cease operations because they can't get parts

Sir Gene: 58:39

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's good.

Sir Ben: 58:42

versus a fossil plant that has a 30 40

Sir Gene: 58:45

you know, my whole take is I don't like bird killers and I don't like micro climate creators, so I don't think we ought be doing any kind of mass installations of solar or wind. There's nothing wrong with them on an individual basis on top of a house. But as far as industrial level, I think that that's a problem.

Sir Ben: 59:05

Hmm. Well, you know, people putting solar on their rooftop is one thing. I think the large solar fields and everything else, and trying to do it at utility scale is another

Sir Gene: 59:15

There's a, Yeah, exactly. And there's a there's a new little cute as hell car vehicle. It's not a car, I guess it's a little, it's like a minivan site thing that just debuted that is covered in solar panels in the roof and stuff. And it's, it's a all electric vehicle. And what it's meant for is short distance last, what do they call it? Last mile delivery.

Sir Ben: 59:40

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 59:41

And Walmart just put in a huge order for these thingss. So Walmart's gonna start competing with Amazon by having its own fleet of solar powered vehicles. And probably autonomous at that point too, but but it just looks super cute and it's got solar panels all across the roof. But apparently it's gonna be able to derive in the southern states at least derive about half its power from solar,

Sir Ben: 1:00:05

Hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:00:06

which is pretty cool.

Sir Ben: 1:00:07

I

Sir Gene: 1:00:08

So I, I, I think that's the need of way to do it. If you have a fleet of vehicles that can bo boost their own battery life, it's not gonna replace. Cuz you, you simply, I mean, you've seen, and I've seen what the cars look like that won the solar 500 or whatever. It doesn't, it, it doesn't look like a car,

Sir Ben: 1:00:28

It's cuz it's not, it's a bicycle

Sir Gene: 1:00:31

with solar panels. Yeah, exactly. So is it possible, yes, it is possible to go pure solar and, and have a vehicle? Is it practical? Not at all. Not with current level. And I think that thing had really efficient cells too. That was,

Sir Ben: 1:00:47

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 1:00:47

was it I, was it UT or somebody else? I know University of Michigan had their design. There was a few universities competing for these

Sir Ben: 1:00:53

let, let's talk about the problem with both lithium ion battery technology and photovoltaic cells. They aren't green. Anyone who thinks they're green is a moron and hasn't looked into the construction methods used

Sir Gene: 1:01:07

Right.

Sir Ben: 1:01:08

and go look at lithium mine, you

Sir Gene: 1:01:10

But, but also, not everybody who's into solar is into green shit.

Sir Ben: 1:01:14

Right. And that's, that's fair. If you want to be off the grid or use it as emergency backup or whatever, cool. But you know, it's like people who bought a Prius and looked at me for driving my truck and I'm like, My truck. Is actually greener than that Prius in many ways. You're just offloading your carbon footprint, You're moving it to somewhere else.

Sir Gene: 1:01:38

of South Park where they, the Prius drivers, their, their forks smelled great.

Sir Ben: 1:01:43

No,

Sir Gene: 1:01:44

Oh yeah. Oh, you should, Oh, that was back when Prius first came out. That was Randy I think ended up getting the Prius and it's like, Oh yeah, no, these things are great. No, these, this you know, like my farts used to smell. Now that I don't smell at all, that was pretty funny. I think, so let me ask you this, Cause I've, I've often thought, why don't we use water batteries? Cuz to me it seems like a super fricking efficient method of doing it.

Sir Ben: 1:02:09

Well, where you have enough headroom, there's, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:02:12

So why don't we just, let's say on the house basis, I'm not talking about industrial shit again, I'm talking about like home homestead level, right? Why don't I have a windmill? That's only job is to pump water. Up into a holding tank that's higher level. That's, and then if there's no wind, then it doesn't pump water. And if there is wind, then it pumps water,

Sir Ben: 1:02:35

So windmills?

Sir Gene: 1:02:37

the outlet from that water is using gravity and generating electricity through generator.

Sir Ben: 1:02:45

Yeah, so the, there's a couple things there. You know, you head pressure is a thing, so you gotta get pretty high to be able to get enough head pressure. Windmills most farmers have replaced windmills for like, you know, water and cattle and so on with solar panels, just cuz they typically work better. That said, I actually looked at doing some hydro at my property in east Texas. So we have an artesian well spring well that we have capped that was preexisting. So before anyone thinks I'm just utilizing too much ground water

Sir Gene: 1:03:18

have the ground rates, you could do whatever you want.

Sir Ben: 1:03:20

well the water rights, our thing. But anyway, so out of this pipe, it's coming out at about 20 psi. And it is able to, you know, 20 psi at about what was it? I forget the gallons per minute. But regardless, I did the calculation. So you've got that starting pressure. And then I thought, okay, if I bleed this off into the river where it was running anyway, so now all I'm doing. Capturing this and using it for something where it was already running off into the river to begin with,

Sir Gene: 1:03:48

right.

Sir Ben: 1:03:49

and I put my generator down at or near the river level so I can increase my head pressure even more. Even with all that, I was only going to be generating it, it was you know, a like, I wanna say just under a KW of energy. So now that's not a lot, but if you're running that 24 7 then and you have a good battery system, sure that's plenty of energy. But the problem is you have to have that battery system to store and capture that energy. So I'm, I'm just saying mechanical conversions like that, you lose a lot of

Sir Gene: 1:04:21

but that's, but that, that was kind of my point, is using water to capture the energy, the, the water at a higher gra, you know, level using gravity.

Sir Ben: 1:04:33

Right. And you know, in some states they have successfully used head pressure in pumping it water into artificial lake and then at night using it. You know, things like that. Sure. If you have the geography to do it, that's one thing. But in Texas at least, we don't have the geography to take advantage of that throughout most of the state.

Sir Gene: 1:04:53

Well, how much head pressure do you need?

Sir Ben: 1:04:55

So I'll give you an example. To lead a bend is

Sir Gene: 1:04:58

know, but you're using huge system. I'm talking about like if I have one at my house,

Sir Ben: 1:05:04

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:05:04

do I need to, If I stick a tank on the roof of the house, is that not enough?

Sir Ben: 1:05:09

to generate how much electricity

Sir Gene: 1:05:11

I don't know. Some.

Sir Ben: 1:05:13

under a kilowatt probably.

Sir Gene: 1:05:15

Okay.

Sir Ben: 1:05:16

For how long though? How big of a tank are you gonna have? That, That's, those are all questions.

Sir Gene: 1:05:21

Sure, sure. I mean,

Sir Ben: 1:05:23

How, if you're j, if you're discharging that entire tank all at once, can you do a burst of, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:05:29

Yeah, but no, I, I'm not even talking about that. Like I'm talking about slow in, slow out.

Sir Ben: 1:05:34

Right. So slow end, slow out. Then you don't have a lot of volume and you're just not gonna be producing enough. It's,

Sir Gene: 1:05:41

But

Sir Ben: 1:05:41

really has to be a pretty big scale to produce any amount.

Sir Gene: 1:05:45

So a normal house uses what? Like 10 kilowatts a day? 18 kilowatts a day. How much?

Sir Ben: 1:05:50

Oh I mean

Sir Gene: 1:05:52

house use?

Sir Ben: 1:05:53

it, I, I, I looked it up at one point in time. Overall

Sir Gene: 1:05:56

that's why I'm asking. I think it was somewhere between 10 and 18. Somewhere in that

Sir Ben: 1:05:59

You kill what hours? I mean, you're, you gotta remember though your peak demand. So if you're doing a home home generator, you're looking at a 20 k w generator or,

Sir Gene: 1:06:08

Okay. Okay. There you go. So if you do, so this is just a math problem. How much. Volume of water to generate 20 kilowatts hours per day.

Sir Ben: 1:06:20

I would have to do the math, but it would be substantial, probably more than the load bearing capacity of your

Sir Gene: 1:06:25

So let me, let me give you some homework for our next episode then

Sir Ben: 1:06:29

You can give it to me,

Sir Gene: 1:06:31

But clearly you're not busy. So, yeah, let's just figure that out. Like, if we had water coming down and assuming not horrib, high head pressure or anything, is the peak usage just, it should be continuous spread around, not, not necessarily peak, but I just, I don't know, I'm, maybe this is impractical. Maybe Im just, you know, looking into things that somebody's already looked into and realized this is, this makes no sense. But to me it just seems kind of like a no brainer problem to address, rather than buying a whole shit ton of lithium batteries in a Tesla wall. For, you know,$30,000, how much would it cost just to set up a water battery,

Sir Ben: 1:07:15

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:07:16

that uses water and gravity and you, you, the electricity you generate, whether it's solar or wind or whatever, just simply uses, pumps the water up. And then the water coming out of that is running a small little generator providing electricity.

Sir Ben: 1:07:34

Yeah. Again, the problem is that small little generator, yes, it will produce continuous amounts of power, but your peak demand, you have to balance for peak demand. Right. So when you, when your refrigerator compressor kicks on or your air conditioning compressor kicks on, you have a much higher demand. If all you're talking about doing is running a few lights, Sure. Fine.

Sir Gene: 1:07:55

Well, you could do it the opposite. You could just have the air conditioner not kicking on and off and just having an air conditioner. Constantly running with a much smaller size coils.

Sir Ben: 1:08:05

Yeah. That's not necessarily as efficient as you'd think.

Sir Gene: 1:08:08

Yeah. It may not be, I don't know. I'm just saying if it's a balance between having multiple peaks that you can't provide for, like maybe by doing that you lose some efficiency of cooling, but you gain some efficiency in, in being able to run it off of a continuous generation coming from water.

Sir Ben: 1:08:28

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:08:29

I dunno. I, I think there's a lot of stuff that could be done on a per house or per house hold basis and not necessarily for the entire fucking community.

Sir Ben: 1:08:40

Yeah. And you know, people have done that. I, so for instance, I know people who live off the grid. You know, I grew up around that. But you have to make a lot of sacrifices. You're not going to run a modern, normal household off pure solar, for instance, or pure wind. You're not, You're going to have, for instance, everybody had a propane fridge, those sorts of things. Well, you're off the grid ish. You're dependent upon, you know, you're dependent upon

Sir Gene: 1:09:09

you know, you're off the grid and my off the grid experiences are vastly different.

Sir Ben: 1:09:13

Why is that?

Sir Gene: 1:09:15

Well, my off the grid had no electricity

Sir Ben: 1:09:17

Oh, yeah, there are those two, but

Sir Gene: 1:09:20

if you, if you wanna have something be cold, you have it in a root cell, you don't have it by having a propane generated. But then again, it also involved an outhouse. No, no plumbing and no piping

Sir Ben: 1:09:35

on posting toilet and things like that. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:09:38

Well, I, we didn't have those. I'm just saying my actual experience, not my theoretical, but back when I was a kid I spent the summers in the country and the, the amount of modern conveniences was nonexistent. It was basically growing your own food, pumping your own water using an outhouse to having no electricity.

Sir Ben: 1:09:59

Yep. And you know, that's the way my mom grew up.

Sir Gene: 1:10:03

the good old days. Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:10:05

yeah. My mom, when

Sir Gene: 1:10:06

probably about my age. So,

Sir Ben: 1:10:08

My mom's older than you. You know, my, my mom, when she grew up they, they lived in a tar paper shack and had an outhouse and, you know, when she was a young girl, and that's just the way it was. And parts of the country, it's closer than, than it was far away. And that's drastically shifting now. But, you know, I'm one generation removed from that being the normal life, you know, washing in a tin tub, you know?

Sir Gene: 1:10:38

Yeah. And then you know, pulling out potatoes and eating berries and mushrooms that you collected yourself and avoiding landmines. So these were all norms for me. So, yeah. And I think after the nukes come, I think a lot of people are gonna get a taste of that.

Sir Ben: 1:10:57

Oh man, I hope not, but we'll certainly see.

Sir Gene: 1:11:00

I, I think it's just gonna be a question of how many people feel insulated enough in the government to not worry about the consequences,

Sir Ben: 1:11:10

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:11:11

that's, that's the only thing that they're gonna base their decisions on. What are my consequences? For pushing this button.

Sir Ben: 1:11:19

And you don't think there's enough pushback? You don't think there's gonna be enough consequences for a lot of politicians?

Sir Gene: 1:11:25

I think there's more pushback in Russia right now than there is in the us.

Sir Ben: 1:11:29

Why

Sir Gene: 1:11:29

I really cuz peop I think more people in Russia realize how close we are to nuclear war. I don't think people in the US realize how close we are to nuclear war. You know, I got corrected on the agenda, the social by saying, Well, technically we're a hundred seconds away, Not just 10 seconds away.

Sir Ben: 1:11:44

Oh, because of travel time.

Sir Gene: 1:11:46

No, no, no, no. That, that's the, the clock, right. The measurement of how close society is to nuclear war. The, the furthest way we were, I think was 17 minutes on the atomic clock from nuclear war. And that was right after the fall of Communis. And then the closest we were was three minutes with Reagan. Well, right now we're a hundred seconds. We've never been closer, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, like we are closer today to nuclear war than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Sir Ben: 1:12:15

which is

Sir Gene: 1:12:16

don't, don't realize that. They don't think about it. They don't understand that,

Sir Ben: 1:12:21

Let's think about that for a second, because during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this was all over the American consciousness. Everyone was affected by this. It was a very tense moment in America. Everyone in the entire nation was paying attention to it.

Sir Gene: 1:12:37

oh, everybody was paying attention to it, and the threat was coming from the us. The US was going to be a first striker in order to prevent a foreign power from placing missiles within a hundred miles. Right now the US is placing missiles a hundred miles or less, in fact, from Russia actively and saying, What are you gonna do about it?

Sir Ben: 1:13:03

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:13:04

I just don't understand how people are shocked at anything right now, cuz we're, we're literally doing a tit for tat 50 years later, 70 years later, 60 years later, whatever it is. But Russia at the time had enough brain cells to say, We don't really want nuclear war, so we're gonna, we're gonna pull back those missiles outta Cuba. The US doesn't have that same mentality. The US is that, Fuck you. We don't care what you want or think or anything. We want missiles not only a hundred kilometers from Russia, we want them bombing Russian billings right now cuz you guys. There's zero con consequences imagined here. I, I'm, I don't understand why, because it's not like the number of warheads has shrunk since the fifties. We probably have 10 to 50 times more warheads today than we did during the Cuban missile crisis, and yet that to America was the pinnacle of danger.

Sir Ben: 1:14:04

Well, because it was on our doorstep and we were paying attention

Sir Gene: 1:14:09

But yeah, and now we're, we're, we're doing what Russia did, which is exerting power across the ocean to place nuclear warheads next to Russia, How there are nuclear warheads right now today in Poland. And it, it was allowed to happen. It's beyond me because. The non perforation treaties, the agreement between the countries that have nukes to not allow any more countries to have nukes should have prevented the US being able to subvert that. I mean, it is literally, it's like, Oh, we found a loophole. Yeah, yeah. If if you, if you screw in the ass, they don't get pregnant. That's the loophole right there.

Sir Ben: 1:14:54

gene. What an analogy.

Sir Gene: 1:14:56

is. Well, it's, it's the same kinda loophole, you know, It's like, oh yeah, well, there, there are missiles, you know, they're covered by, they're, they're listed under us property, but you know, we're gonna put'em in Poland right now. Like, that's insane. That, that goes against the whole point of the treaty. Well, what's the difference between the poles having missiles and the Americans having missiles in Poland while the poles would be less likely to use them, knowing the consequences because Americans using them from Poland have no consequences.

Sir Ben: 1:15:27

Well, and, but here's a better strategic question. Why haven't we done the same thing to Australia?

Sir Gene: 1:15:33

Well the, they UK would technically do that, not us, but, yeah. Well, I don't know. Maybe Australians didn't want'em. I don't know. I don't, I honestly have not looked

Sir Ben: 1:15:44

I mean, Australia still is part of the Commonwealth, so it, Would it even be proliferation at that point?

Sir Gene: 1:15:50

Well, I, I think the US rules are as we can put our missiles literally anywhere in the world, as long as they have a sticker that says, owned by the US government, it's now perforation

Sir Ben: 1:16:01

Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Sir Gene: 1:16:03

whatever amount of money you was spent and brew haha to keep Iran from having nuclear missiles

Sir Ben: 1:16:10

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:16:10

is fully out the window at this point.

Sir Ben: 1:16:14

Why is

Sir Gene: 1:16:14

Because, because Russia is currently shipping nuclear missiles through around,

Sir Ben: 1:16:18

Where did you hear that from?

Sir Gene: 1:16:20

I have connections.

Sir Ben: 1:16:22

Okay. Old KGB friends.

Sir Gene: 1:16:25

There's no such thing as the kgb. No,

Sir Ben: 1:16:28

Not

Sir Gene: 1:16:29

there are Yeah. Darren always keeps accusing me of fans like, Dude, there is no kgb. What are you talking about? No, because

Sir Ben: 1:16:37

then fine.

Sir Gene: 1:16:38

Yeah, they did a deal with Iran, they did a deal with Iran to do the exact same thing. It's like, Oh, well they're gonna keep rushing nuclear missiles on Iranian territory. That's apparently not against the law.

Sir Ben: 1:16:49

Well,

Sir Gene: 1:16:49

any treaties at this point. So for all practical purposes, Iran's getting nuclear weapons.

Sir Ben: 1:16:54

I guess we are going to go back, at the very least, into a new cold.

Sir Gene: 1:16:59

If we're lucky, which I don't think we will be,

Sir Ben: 1:17:02

Yep.

Sir Gene: 1:17:02

I think we're gonna go into a hot.

Sir Ben: 1:17:04

Well,

Sir Gene: 1:17:05

used to be a

Sir Ben: 1:17:06

just hope we can

Sir Gene: 1:17:07

just doesn't exist anymore. Like there, the way that the US is playing has been so fast and loose. The US got really used to being the the mono power, the, the only Yeah, the unit power. Yeah. Yeah. The only solo superpower in the globe. Which, which is a, a true statement by the way. I mean, I'm not diminishing the fact that the, the US won the Cold War and led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. So that was that clearly placed the US as the only superpower. I think the problem was that a lot of people that worked in US government, and a lot of the corporations that dependent on the Cold War for their existence started thinking, Hold on. This is gonna affect us negatively if we let this play out. We need to ensure that there's always going to be somebody that we're at war with. And if it's not the Soviet Union, we gotta come up with a new boogeyman.

Sir Ben: 1:18:14

that's that military industrial complex that we have to worry about there. But, and, and here's the thing. I'm fine with the multipolar world. I'm fine with a unipolar world as long as it is the us That's the hegemon

Sir Gene: 1:18:28

I don't like NPO ever in

Sir Ben: 1:18:30

I, Hold

Sir Gene: 1:18:31

I think it's, it's

Sir Ben: 1:18:32

I think what we, like I said, I'm fine with a multipolar world. I'm fine with the US having peer powers that keep our foreign policy in check.

Sir Gene: 1:18:39

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:18:41

What I don't want is a CCP hegemony. That's what I think we have to watch out for and make damn sure under no circumstances happens

Sir Gene: 1:18:51

I think that's too late. And I think we're greatly irresponsible for that because the US while

Sir Ben: 1:18:59

everyone.

Sir Gene: 1:19:00

while looking for for the next enemy in the Middle East, the US spent decades, like two decades easily funding the growth of the ccp. Every sector in the US utilizes Chinese production there. There's not a product that you can buy right now, which either isn't made in China or doesn't include parts made in China. Not a single product.

Sir Ben: 1:19:27

it wasn't including was it the F 35 or F 15 that they grounded for a bit of time because

Sir Gene: 1:19:34

had to take the Huawei parts out of it. Yeah,

Sir Ben: 1:19:36

Yeah. Well, I don't know. It was Huawei parts, but there were parts

Sir Gene: 1:19:40

yeah, yeah. WWE is a large military contractor in.

Sir Ben: 1:19:43

everything is a large military contractor and trying not to be honest with you in many ways,

Sir Gene: 1:19:48

I mean, this is not a problem that's spr up overnight. This is not China met with aliens who gave it technology that surpassed the rest of the countries in the

Sir Ben: 1:19:57

been stealing our technology for a long time and we've

Sir Gene: 1:20:00

We've been giving it to them. I mean, you could call it stealing, which

Sir Ben: 1:20:05

thousand talents program and a lot of

Sir Gene: 1:20:07

Absolutely.

Sir Ben: 1:20:09

high end research was directly observed by the ccp, somewhat illegitimately. Yeah,

Sir Gene: 1:20:14

we haven't done anything to prevent it.

Sir Ben: 1:20:17

well, and here's the thing. When you're manufacturing goods over there, you have to kind of send specifications in how things work, and as a result, they're gonna learn how to do it. When you're working with a country that doesn't have good intellectual property laws,

Sir Gene: 1:20:30

I'll give you an example right now. So for the product that we're making that I should get the, the shipments of any day now, hopefully before the nuke start. The, the, the last thing that we shipped to them, because we didn't want this compromising sooner was the UPC code for the product. Because I know for a fact that as soon as we shipped that product code to them to print on the box, they're gonna do a print run of our boxes and then they're gonna continue printing those boxes and then put that product up on Alibaba with our UPC code, which means there'll be instantly people on Amazon selling our product with our code under our listing, but coming from a separate supplier and you can't do anything about it cuz it's, it's got the same fricking number

Sir Ben: 1:21:25

Yeah. And this is where a lot of products on Amazon end up being counterfeits and everything

Sir Gene: 1:21:31

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cuz I,

Sir Ben: 1:21:34

it may be just as good of a counterfeit,

Sir Gene: 1:21:36

It may be, it may be, but that money's not going into my pocket. It's going into somebody else's pocket. That's the problem.

Sir Ben: 1:21:43

the, the real problem is on products like, well, like the sig scopes and things like that. You know, these companies that are manufacturing in China vortex, same thing.

Sir Gene: 1:21:54

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:21:55

you know, what gene's alluding to is a big warranty problem for them, you know, and how do you blame the consumer who bought something that they thought was legitimate?

Sir Gene: 1:22:06

Yeah, yeah. Well, the consumer, I mean, that's, that's one thing. But like you said, the warranty is the other issue. And then beyond the warranty I think. You've got like who's actually making money? Cause it, you could end up in a situation where SIG goes out of business or at least that division cuz they're losing money. And yet those same scopes keep being manufactured in China with just a little, a little label stuck over where the SIG label used to be. And then, you know, it's the same product, it's the same exact stuff. It's just now just being sold under a different brand name.

Sir Ben: 1:22:43

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:22:44

And who knows? I mean, that's why if you want something that has a certain guaranteed quality about it, you, you can't wait until there's dilution on Amazon of counterfeit products.

Sir Ben: 1:22:58

Well, I, I think what we need to do is shift our manufacturing base to countries that will respect our intellectual property. Are at least, are less duplicitous about it than the Chinese are because the chi culturally, the Chinese have a whole thing on just, know,

Sir Gene: 1:23:15

manufacturing in China is just like buying something at a bizarre in the Middle East.

Sir Ben: 1:23:20

Well, and it's the, it's, no, it's more, I would, you know, the old scorpion and frog analogy, right.

Sir Gene: 1:23:26

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:23:27

It's, it's just the nature of the beast. Whereas manufacturing in Mexico, I have, I, I think is very different. I think manufacturing in Germany and, you know, in, in the US for god's sake, has its ability, has its advantages. And you know, luckily some of the things that Trump started, the Biden administration has somewhat continued. It looks like we're going to actually get some chip manufacturers and some actual plants built in the us. We'll see how much of that actually happens. The Biden administration's push basically said it just had to be 10% US owned, which doesn't mean anything. Whereas Trump was actually pushing four chip factories in the us. So there, there are some slight policy differences, but you know, if we get lose Taiwan and we, we better have some chip manufacturing here, which we do, you know, you have maximum integrated, which is a big defense contractor

Sir Gene: 1:24:18

we don't lose Taiwan unless we do something stupid to China.

Sir Ben: 1:24:22

well, when I say lose Taiwan, Taiwan, and most imported chips go into consumer goods.

Sir Gene: 1:24:30

Yeah, but I

Sir Ben: 1:24:31

those consumer goods.

Sir Gene: 1:24:33

those factories in Taiwan aren't going anywhere under Chinese ownership, and China will happily keep. Employees producing the same products. The problem is if the US gets all high and mighty and then starts to a military action against China, well then they have incentive to disallow the US to receive any of those goods. And this is the other thing that I can't understand too, is like, to me this seems like a no brainer. And it seems like everyone's a complete idiot for not recognizes this, but Europe obliviously thought that somehow providing military equipment and aid and information and even plenty of people who volunteer to, to fight against Russia should not affect Russia's ability to sell them gas. Like, how stupid are you? Was was England still selling fish to Germany during World War ii? Just to help feed the German soldiers, you know, I mean, was was France still selling wine to Germany before occupation? Waiting for that occupation to happen?

Sir Ben: 1:25:43

of time.

Sir Gene: 1:25:44

I know it was about two weeks, but Fair enough. But you know what I mean. It's like how, how do you in some weird, bizarre world, think that a country it war has an obligation to keep providing products back to you? That a country you are at war with, that you're actively engaged in fighting. That's insane. Beyond that, how Russia didn't just stop the flow of all natural gas and oil when they got hit with the first set of sanctions is beyond me. It's like, what? You guys just sanctioned 18,000 products from us? We're gonna sanction one product from you.

Sir Ben: 1:26:24

Or to you, but Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:26:26

But to you, But you know what I mean. It's like, how the hell does this not happen? How, how can they

Sir Ben: 1:26:32

it's not out, It's not out of some, it's not out. The pressure being the good guy, it's out of economic necessity.

Sir Gene: 1:26:39

Well, and it, it could be, it could be, I mean, I'm, I'm overly simplifying probably. I'm sure many people thought about these questions and said, This is not a good time for us to stop pumping. But I will say the same thing about China. How the hell does anybody in the US think that they're gonna be able to get any container ships coming from China? If US starts a military action against the Chinese reunification with Taiwan,

Sir Ben: 1:27:03

Well, let me just say

Sir Gene: 1:27:04

it's done. Nothing will come from China as soon as there's a single shot fired

Sir Ben: 1:27:10

I don't know that China, there's, that's a lot of money that China's gonna miss out.

Sir Gene: 1:27:15

Well, okay, they're gonna miss out on. Really they can't print more money the way we've been printing more money and what's US dollar worth these days anyway.

Sir Ben: 1:27:25

Well dropping. But here, here's the other thing though. Most of our trading partners pretty much everyone's currency is dropping. So, you know, when you look at the pound, when you look at the euro, when you look at the dollar is relatively strong comparatively. So, you

Sir Gene: 1:27:44

Yeah. It's dropping against all the countries that don't use the dollar.

Sir Ben: 1:27:50

I'm sorry,

Sir Gene: 1:27:51

The dollar is dropping against countries that don't use the dollar as its currency for trade.

Sir Ben: 1:27:58

Which countries would that be other than the bricks?

Sir Gene: 1:28:01

Well, the bricks is a great example of that. Saudi Arabia right now, which still uses the dollar incidentally the problem is right now they're starting to realize that they're being negatively affected by the devaluation of the petro dollar. And they're starting, they just announced they're, they're now going to be selling oil to India in rupees instead of dollars, instead of the petrol dollar. Because if they keep selling in petrol dollar, they're gonna keep getting less and less for it.

Sir Ben: 1:28:35

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:28:36

I think this is a realization more countries are gonna start making

Sir Ben: 1:28:39

So here, here, here's a couple of things. So, the percentage of Chinese exports to the US is around 20% of their overall exports.

Sir Gene: 1:28:47

mm-hmm. that's lower than I would imagine.

Sir Ben: 1:28:50

Well, the, but still, that means one out of every five goods sold outside of China. Is directly to the us So that is a huge cut off the bottom line that they would have to take. So there's that. Just like the oil exports from Russia to Europe, that's their primary customer. They have yet to be willing to do that. That said, you know, you said, well, chip factories in Taiwan. You know why, You know, if there's a reunification. I don't see the Taiwanese allowing a peaceful reunification at this point. Regardless of US involvement. They are armed. They do have the ability to defend themselves to an extent. Why do you think those factories would survive?

Sir Gene: 1:29:38

Here's what I think is that the most likely scenario without US participation is a coup of the Taiwanese government to a pro China friendly government. Which would result in a set of new laws with reunification. And that would be done without affecting the, the, you know, factories or the average person on the street.

Sir Ben: 1:30:02

Yeah, so the US would have a problem with that because Taiwan has US arms, so we would, That would be even less likely to allow

Sir Gene: 1:30:12

well hold up, Hold up. So the coup that happened in Ukraine, a country which had Russian arms

Sir Ben: 1:30:19

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:30:19

a big deal.

Sir Ben: 1:30:20

okay. Soviet era, Russian arms that technologically no one gives a crap about. The Taiwan has fairly modern US armaments. We are not going to let China just get ahold of those.

Sir Gene: 1:30:34

Well then, you know, then I don't understand why I'm the only one that thinks there's gonna be nuclear war.

Sir Ben: 1:30:40

It very well could be if a lot of people make stupid decisions.

Sir Gene: 1:30:44

I think that the US from a intelligent analysis cannot afford to defend Taiwan. It cannot afford it because it will be drawn into a nuclear war of China, it's gonna be already in the nuclear war with Russia at the same time. I mean, it's like the, and I've said this before and that it's been now ages since I, I remember reading this, but I believe it's a true statement in that for a large chunk from the 1960s to the 1990s, a large percentage of Russian nuclear warhead were pointed at China. The threat from China to Russia was a much greater threat than a threat from the United States to Russia. United States certainly was still a threat, and there was always a belief that the US would launch a first strike. Because it's demonstrated that in the past, unlike every other country, but

Sir Ben: 1:31:42

I, I will say this, had the Russians had the bomb during World War ii, they would've NT Germany.

Sir Gene: 1:31:49

probably, Yeah.

Sir Ben: 1:31:50

When Germany turned on them, they would've if World War II happened and Russia had the bomb. You think Len and grad would've been allowed

Sir Gene: 1:31:57

I don't think World War II would've lasted for more than the month. If there was already nuclear weapons, I think everyone would've bombed everybody else. Germany would've come in and taken over Poland just like they did that kicked in the, the British Treaty with Poland. Britain would've threatened Germany with nuclear annihilation unless they stopped. And then at that point then Germany would've had to respond in kind.

Sir Ben: 1:32:23

so I can see the use of tactical nuclear weapons playing out, but

Sir Gene: 1:32:28

Here's the problem with tactical nukes while, while we have them here. Here's

Sir Ben: 1:32:33

Mutually assured destruction is still exists.

Sir Gene: 1:32:36

I don't think anyone believes that though. That's the issue. Here's the problem with tactical nukes. What is the commonly accepted definition of a tactical nuke, which would not trigger a ballistic nuke response from the other side?

Sir Ben: 1:32:50

Something on an aircraft used on a battlefield in the low, low kiloton range?

Sir Gene: 1:32:57

Okay, so if Russia drops a tactical nuke on Kiev to take out the control operators of Ukraine, you don't see a US ballistic response.

Sir Ben: 1:33:09

No.

Sir Gene: 1:33:10

You don't.

Sir Ben: 1:33:11

No. Why would we,

Sir Gene: 1:33:12

Are you kidding? Have you listened to any of our politicians? They're ready to New Russia right now before that happens

Sir Ben: 1:33:19

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:33:19

as a preemptive re

Sir Ben: 1:33:20

the rhetoric is one thing. Actually doing it is another. We do not have a treaty with Kiev. It

Sir Gene: 1:33:27

No shit, that is not amazing. And yet the amount of money that has been shipped over there and the, the, not only the money, but the push towards a hot war that everybody seems to be on board with. I mean, look at Lindsay Grahams, see, like in his opinion, we should have just nuke Moscow period be done with it. That would end the problem. If the US just nukes Moscow, there's no more problem.

Sir Ben: 1:33:53

so, you know, there, I think there are two main motivations for why we're doing this. One, I think that the main motivation here by the Biden administration is the same thing that the Obama's had. You know, I, I think they are expansionist and fall under the, the guise of wanting conflict in the world to spend the money. And yeah, I think that's a problem. And I think Lindsay Graham is right there with them. And someone like Lindsay Graham can sit there and say all that, all that he wants, but he doesn't want all out war with Russia

Sir Gene: 1:34:31

He wants all out victory. He doesn't want war, he wants

Sir Ben: 1:34:34

He doesn't even want a victory. What he wants is the military industrial complex spending money. Big wars are not good for that. Little wars are

Sir Gene: 1:34:45

that's not what he is rhetoric is saying. Then.

Sir Ben: 1:34:47

Well, rhetoric is one thing.

Sir Gene: 1:34:50

well, the rhetoric leads to war actions. Remember that as said war is simply the extension. Of politics.

Sir Ben: 1:35:00

Absolutely. But you know, here's the thing. The World Economic Forum. I, I, he, I think part of the rhetoric and what's happening here is because the World Economic Forum Clash Schwab and this great reset is getting a big pushback from Russia in lots of ways. I don't think China's necessarily on board with it fully either. So I think that's where a lot of the rhetoric of the West is coming from. So, we'll see, By the way, before we have to wrap

Sir Gene: 1:35:34

is on board either.

Sir Ben: 1:35:36

huh?

Sir Gene: 1:35:36

I don't think Indian's on board,

Sir Ben: 1:35:38

No, but did you hear the rumors Saturday

Sir Gene: 1:35:41

Which

Sir Ben: 1:35:42

about China?

Sir Gene: 1:35:43

no.

Sir Ben: 1:35:44

So there were rumors Saturday and there's been basically, I mean even this even hit in like Newsweek and others. So this is not just some fringe thing. Rumors of a coup against G in China and a bunch of flights canceled, lots of stuff locked down. No news about it coming outta China, which if there wasn't something going on, you would think they would respond and be like,

Sir Gene: 1:36:07

mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:36:07

yeah, nothing. But the fact that it hasn't been touched at all is somewhat interesting. So, we'll, we'll see what happens

Sir Gene: 1:36:14

Yeah. No, that is interesting.

Sir Ben: 1:36:16

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:36:17

so while we were talking here, I did look up the trade with China, US trade with China. So China represents about 10% of US exports

Sir Ben: 1:36:26

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:36:27

and that are going to China. And you want to guess what the, the state with the largest exports to China is

Sir Ben: 1:36:34

Probably Texas or California.

Sir Gene: 1:36:35

Texas. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:36:38

Yeah, well, Texas actually has a manufacturing base to a, you know, a, a large degree. We also have a lot of products that are produced as precursor products, a lot of chemicals and things like that, Right. The refining capacity in the state of Texas is unparalleled, so yeah, that's, I guarantee you a lot of what's going back over to China is chemical precursors and things like that,

Sir Gene: 1:37:04

Yep. That makes sense. Exactly. So I, I just, I don't think anyone consciously wants a hot war here, but there's a, a certain point when you're playing chicken with another incoming vehicle where you need to make the decision of, is it more important that I win, or more important that I stay?

Sir Ben: 1:37:26

and hope you both don't swerve in the same direction.

Sir Gene: 1:37:29

And the close you get, the more likely you do swerve in the same direction. Yeah. Or like it's unavoidable at some point.

Sir Ben: 1:37:35

So let me ask you this. What what, changes in the analysis if China is undergoing a coup right now?

Sir Gene: 1:37:44

I think that will definitely have an impact, I think if China ends up undergoing a coup. And first of all, there's no assumption that coup is gonna be us friendly the way

Sir Ben: 1:37:54

Oh, I, I, no, but I, this would be, this would be, so there, there are blatantly people in the Chinese Communist Party that don't like g and don't want him to be dictator for life. So that, that's what the motivation would be here.

Sir Gene: 1:38:07

So I think if there's a coup it creates more randomness in the equation and it frankly gets us closer to nuclear war, if anything. Because if there's a coup, the people that come in may just push forward regardless of any US threat into Taiwan, rather than playing this, you know, rhetoric game and and just making small little maneuvers. Just as likely though, or maybe not as likely, but it's certainly possible that they may go the other way and then announce that China has zero interest in Reifying with Taiwan. And that was just a previous administration. And that would create, and then of course there would be a big expectation for some you know, reward from the US for saying that.

Sir Ben: 1:38:55

Yeah, and we should say that, you know, this could all just be four chan and rumor and hoax and everything else, but it's interesting that there is not, there has yet to be, as of recording this, a real response from China addressing it

Sir Gene: 1:39:11

Yeah. And that's just like China to not have a response to it. So that's, it's, I think it's pretty typical, but either way, I'm like, I haven't, I don't have my, my product that I'm making for nuclear war yet manufactured. So I'm really kind of hoping that at least there's enough delay here for me to get that product manufactured so I can start selling it.

Sir Ben: 1:39:33

and

Sir Gene: 1:39:33

because that is one of the, Well, I mean, whether people use it or not, it's, they're up to them. But,

Sir Ben: 1:39:39

explains all the nuclear war talk on

Sir Gene: 1:39:41

but I do have a product that has been designed. I,

Sir Ben: 1:39:45

This is only

Sir Gene: 1:39:46

the whole show is one big ad. Exactly that, of course, that's how I write this shit. Now the whole podcast is one big ad for my for my line of survivalist products. One of which that's already been designed is actually one for post nuclear war.

Sir Ben: 1:40:02

so you're going the way of the seed man and selling iodine pills and next will be boner pills and.

Sir Gene: 1:40:09

Now, I cancel Iion pills because the only company that with a license to manufacture on pills for consumers in the United States is in it's either Pennsylvania or Connecticut. It's on the east coast. There's literally only one company. So if you buy anything else, it's, it's not real IDA and pills. So you have to get it from this company that's out in Eastern

Sir Ben: 1:40:33

there are lots of different types of iodine and it depends on what you're talking about.

Sir Gene: 1:40:37

I'm talking about the one that's actually manufactured for radiation.

Sir Ben: 1:40:42

I understand, but as long as you have unbound iodine, you'll be good, as long as it is

Sir Gene: 1:40:48

No, this is the only one licensed to sell it. Everybody else

Sir Ben: 1:40:51

by whom and

Sir Gene: 1:40:52

licensed by the US government.

Sir Ben: 1:40:54

Okay. But here, here's the thing. The only reason why iodine is a thing is because radioactive iodine isotopes from especially certain generations of nuclear arms, is a thing. Loading your thyroid up with good iodine to prevent it from absorbing bad iodine is the thing. There are several of us out there that take iodine supplementation as a regular thing and you know, There you go.

Sir Gene: 1:41:25

I hope everybody is, but I'm just saying that I did the research. There's only one company that is allowed to manufacture this stuff in the us. Can you

Sir Ben: 1:41:35

my unapproved iodine

Sir Gene: 1:41:36

I won't fuck that shit man. I don't, I don't trust some Indian idy that's made with subpar parts. This is, these guys manufacture it for the military as well. And this is exactly the same pills that are provided for in their arm services. is the shit that I want. So I've got about a year supply of it just in case,

Sir Ben: 1:41:59

I've

Sir Gene: 1:42:00

cuz you never know if there's an ongoing nuclear war for a year that I'm planning on surviving It's acu day. ACU day

Sir Ben: 1:42:06

yeah. The, the parts of the parts of Texas we're in is not a high survival hood. Likelihood.

Sir Gene: 1:42:13

Not at all. No, no, no. We're very much a first strike area.

Sir Ben: 1:42:16

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:42:17

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben: 1:42:17

right, man. Well on that.

Sir Gene: 1:42:19

on that fun note. We'll talk to y'all next week.

Sir Ben: 1:42:22

See you next week, Jean.