073 Just Two Good Old Boys

The conversation spans a range of topics starting with a personal account of a weekend sunburn experienced in Galveston and historical reflections at Hotel Galvez. It then transitions into global and U.S. political discussions including mentions of President Roosevelt, potential wars, political unrest, and immigration history. Additional subjects include election interference, distributing political pamphlets in seventh grade, and tech-related mishaps like Bitcoin wallet issues and Amazon returns for gaming laptops. The discussion delves into opinions on gun control laws, critiques of political figures such as Biden and Hunter Biden, and the implications of drug offenses on firearm ownership. Police behavior, especially in the Brandon Qualls shooting in Indianapolis, qualified immunity for officers, and entertainment habits of former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are also discussed.

Transcript

Gene: 0:22

Hey, man. How are you today?

Ben: 0:24

Dude, I am sunburnt.

Gene: 0:27

Yeah, you sound like

Ben: 0:29

How do you sound sunburnt?

Gene: 0:32

a little crispy.

Ben: 0:33

Eh, okay. We went this weekend, we're doing the podcast a day late, we went this weekend to take the kids to Galveston and swim a bit and have some fun in the sun and I thought I was using plenty of sunscreen but apparently I was incorrect.

Gene: 0:52

Yes. That happens to everybody. I don't know anybody that hadn't really been vacationing even for a few days that doesn't get a little bit of sunburn in the first day.

Ben: 1:05

I didn't get really sunburned until the second day, but yeah. I didn't have any burn the first day, it was the second day that got me.

Gene: 1:13

Interesting.

Ben: 1:14

But no,

Gene: 1:15

Are you counting the first day as like the first full day or the first day when you started driving out there?

Ben: 1:22

The day when we drove, we, it was only one day. We drove up there Saturday, day to night. Stay for a late checkout and then throw back.

Gene: 1:32

Oh, okay. Okay. I thought you were there a couple of days.

Ben: 1:35

Just one.

Gene: 1:36

All right.

Ben: 1:38

Have you ever stayed at the Hotel Galvez?

Gene: 1:41

I'd driven by there, but no.

Ben: 1:43

All right. You should add it to your list. It's a Marriott property. It's on their signature collection or A hundred and some odd year old hotel and it's awesome the way they've got it done up. It's really

Gene: 1:55

Really? Okay.

Ben: 1:57

And walk across to a nice beach, they've got chairs for you, towels, whatever, they'll even do food service at the beach, all that. And yeah, it was enjoyable. A lot of history in that hotel too. Apparently Roosevelt used it as a Southern white house in 37.

Gene: 2:17

Oh. That's unfortunate.

Ben: 2:19

Why is that?

Gene: 2:21

Kami.

Ben: 2:22

Yeah.

Gene: 2:23

White House. I see.

Ben: 2:25

Roosevelt is not one of my favorite presidents for sure.

Gene: 2:28

It's one of my least favorites.

Ben: 2:30

I would take him over Wilson.

Gene: 2:33

Okay.

Ben: 2:34

I don't know. He got a I believe that if you look at history, a lot of the, you know, new deal legislation, a lot of that stuff really hampered the recovery. It was only really World War II that brought us out of the Great Depression. So,

Gene: 2:52

That's usually what happens. That's why war is notable at this point.

Ben: 2:56

Boy, is it coming.

Gene: 2:58

Yep.

Ben: 3:00

Where are you going with that? There's a couple ways we could

Gene: 3:04

I mean, I've been saying that for about five years, so I'm still going the same direction.

Ben: 3:07

All right, it's about like you and Tim Pool on the Civil War

Gene: 3:11

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 3:12

Yeah

Gene: 3:12

I had this conversation recently when I was out of the country, I mean, up in Seattle area. And I think that, that war is the only thing that can kick the U S out of a downward spiral. So it's really a question of, does it keep going down or does the U S go to war, which will kick it out of the spiral?

Ben: 3:41

Oh and that presumes we win the,

Gene: 3:45

Yeah, I guess I, I assume that part, but honestly, the recovery would start even before, I mean, like during the war, certainly before anybody wins. But I guess if we lose, technically it would just delay the spiral.

Ben: 4:00

I I think it's one of those things that if we were to lose the war, it would be the end.

Gene: 4:07

Sociologically. I don't think that we can have one more generation without war, without having a full on communist government.

Ben: 4:21

Think we're headed that way regardless. I mean, if you know, look at the original Russian revolution, wasn't that preceded by a fairly significant war? You know, I mean,

Gene: 4:32

Yeah, but the Russian revolution, like recently I found out a very similar thing with the Iranian revolution. Was actually carried out by a much larger group of people than the communists who eventually managed to take over and push everybody out. Now Iran, it wasn't communists, it was Islamists, but it was the same kind of scenario where there was actually a fairly good sized coalition of people that were dissatisfied with the current form of government. The Shah in Iran or the Tsar in Russia and the communists use that and piggybacked it much like they have piggybacked on Black Lives Matter and utilizing racism and anything else they could. In order to essentially work against the current government, but then in both instances in Russia and Iran and probably likely happen in other countries, I'm just not aware of once the revolution takes place, it's a very you know, it's a very dangerous time for a country because a new government is being formed and you know, It can go in any direction. This is usually when the the communists or again, Islamists in case we're on essentially pushed their way to the top by utilizing very non democratic methods, i. e. Extortion, assassination, and the like. We know we have those same elements in the U. S. right now. So if the U. S. goes the way of Whether it's civil war, the way Tim Pool's been talking, or whether it's a a war with Russia slash China or Iran or whoever else I think both of those events would lead very likely to a undermining of the current US government regime with a lot of different groups, all being against the current regime. And I don't think it's hard to imagine for anyone that the current Biden Democrat regime is disliked by a lot of different groups, but it's a prime opportunity then for the socialists, communists, whatever you want to call them to be part of that coalition. And then as soon as there seems to be a opportunity to start eliminating their competition. And in fact, taking over and controlling and holding onto the government you know, in case of Russia for 80 years in place of Iran, that's been going on for about 40 or so.

Ben: 7:18

You see in every revolution, something similar to Night of the long knives sort of thing

Gene: 7:26

yeah, it's

Ben: 7:27

useful to get rid of the useful idiots

Gene: 7:31

exactly there. They're the useful idiots are safe until just after the the takeover happens or the The you know, occupation or the revolution or the whatever. I mean, there's a reason the useful idiots are useful is because they make up that larger percentage of the mob than the the purely extremist group themselves would make up. That same thing we're seeing right now with the the anti Jewish protesters out there who are. You know, the majority of these people are just sort of go alongs there. They've seen little bits and pieces that makes them think, yeah, this is wrong. Israel shouldn't be doing this stuff that why, where are the Jews pushing the poor little Palestinians out? And you know, they're not ideologically driven as much as it's fun to make fun of them for that. They're just kind of going along with the group. But within that group, there's a core that's actually leading and pushing the charge. That is they're not nearly as big as all these groups seem to be, but they don't need to be because they've got all the useful idiots with them.

Ben: 8:51

You know, we I guess you're referring to the Riot outside of the LA synagogue.

Gene: 8:59

I mean, that's, there's a different example almost on a daily basis that's one of the most recent ones. But if you listen to the videos from there, you listen to what people are chanting, you know, there's always somebody that's leading the chance and the chance. I mean, it's certainly in that one it's ridiculous to try and make a point that, no, they're just don't like Zionists when they're explicitly talking about wiping out Jews. It's wrong country. You're not protesting people that are doing something that you dislike. In your country, you're literally going after people with the same genetic features as somebody in a different country that you oppose.

Ben: 9:39

Yeah, what I would say is I don't think we would have a lot of protests against Israel for example if we weren't funding quite a bit of the shenanigans And my stance is just Israel, go be Israel, do whatever you want, and don't expect us to pay for it and have no issues.

Gene: 10:01

Yeah. I generally have the same stance. But that's not the stance that these people have. And the funding portion, I think this is something that there's a it's a gray area, right? I mean, if people that care to actually look into it will realize that The benefactors of the funding that the U S is doing are not the Israeli government. It is U S arms dealers, because what's happening is that money never leaves the U S. It's not like they just send a a shipment of C one thirties with pallets of dollar bills the way that we did to Iran or it well back what during the Biden administration, we were literally flying pallets of cash to Iran as part of a deal.

Ben: 10:51

You mean Obama administration

Gene: 10:53

yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I meant Obama. Yeah, I, it's the same administration, dude. I'm sorry. I got confused there for a sec because literally it is Obama still. It's just he's not sitting in the white house. He's just visits the white house. But you know, we were shipping cash. We're not doing that with Israel. What we're doing is we're essentially creating grants that pay us arms manufacturers to sell arms to Israel, either at a huge discount or completely free. I don't like that. I don't think we should be doing that.

Ben: 11:27

money is money, and I would argue that there's probably some cash going to Israel as well,

Gene: 11:34

there isn't, there's actually a program that dissected every dollar that's been authorized. Every dollar authorized is tied specifically to the US. To a U S arms manufacturer, unlike Ukraine, where we actually did ship and continue to ship both money and munitions. So we're doing kind of a split with Ukraine where a good chunk of that money. Isn't leaving the U S staying here. Nobody would be funding Ukraine if there wasn't some way to get a kickback and for there to be a kickback that we need to actually ship money to Ukraine that can then be disappeared back into a U S politician's pockets.

Ben: 12:15

You know,

Gene: 12:15

my point with all this is just

Ben: 12:17

disagree on some of the Israeli stuff, but that's okay.

Gene: 12:20

We really don't, I mean, I think we both think that it's not any business of the U. S. to be funding foreign wars, and it's not. Now if you don't think that Israel has a right of self defense, that's, I guess that would be a point of disagreement. I think they do, like every other country. I think Ukraine has a right of self defense. I think that the things that led Russia to come into Ukraine is directly the result of US and NATO actions. But at the same time, I don't fault them. And I would never say that, Oh, Ukraine doesn't have a right to defend itself. Of course they do. Everybody does. Yeah.

Ben: 13:03

yeah, I have no problem with Israel defending itself however it sees fit. And the people who are close to it, if the countries around them feel that their brethren are being genocided, then, you know, take them in. Or, you know, if you want to stop it, go to war, do whatever, but do it without U. S. taxpayer involvement.

Gene: 13:26

I mean, we've got just down down a few miles here. We have the Alamo, which was. In Mexico, and when the Mexican government came to assess its control of it the the Americans that were living around it were started shooting at the Mexican government.

Ben: 13:51

A little more involved than that, but okay.

Gene: 13:53

I mean, was it part of Mexico or not? Okay. So we had, were there Americans there? People that have U. S. citizenship.

Ben: 14:02

No, they were Mexican citizens.

Gene: 14:05

You're telling me David Crockett was not a U. S. citizen?

Ben: 14:09

He had a U. S. citizenship at that point in time was a little bit more nebulous. He had settled in Texas, which was Mexican territory,

Gene: 14:17

Do you lose your U. S. citizenship if you move out of the country?

Ben: 14:22

At the time? Yeah, more or less. So, if you moved to a different country, yes, you would have been becoming a citizen of the other. Immigration was not the set thing that we have since, you know, the days of Ellis Island and everything else. Citizenship was not documented. If someone walked across the border into the U. S. and started living there,

Gene: 14:42

So you're telling me that the rule for a president to be a native born citizen doesn't mean jack shit until the 1900s?

Ben: 14:49

no, that's not what I said at all.

Gene: 14:51

sounded like you said citizenship didn't mean anything.

Ben: 14:54

No. Citizenship, if you moved to an area and took up residence in that area, you became a citizen. That does not make you a native born citizen. Those

Gene: 15:05

So were the people at the Alamo native born American citizens,

Ben: 15:09

Most

Gene: 15:10

have become

Ben: 15:10

of them were Mexicans. Some of them.

Gene: 15:12

Yeah. So my point simply being that,

Ben: 15:16

Is nebulous and wrong? Yes.

Gene: 15:19

my point is that the the history is written by the victor. And right now we've got a group of people that sees. Victory getting further and further away from them. And they are trying to pull in other countries like the U S to prevent Israel from writing the history 30, 30 years down the road, the biggest segment of history that'll talk about this is going to be the initial attack on Israel. That resulted in over 700 people getting either killed or kidnapped. You know, obviously right now we're getting bombarded with messaging about how many people Israel's killing. What happens when you attack your neighbor? You get a response back. And that's exactly what's happening. It's a, it's a. It is childish to think that you can pull off the single biggest attack resulting in deaths of people since World War II and expect there to not be

Ben: 16:37

How are you

Gene: 16:38

weaponized response. Which numbers?

Ben: 16:42

Largest number of deaths since World War II.

Gene: 16:44

Yeah, largest, oh, it's the largest number of Jewish deaths at one II. Obviously more people have died from natural causes. But if you're looking at a single event, which was not naturally caused, this number is the largest number of Jewish people that were killed since World War II. Remember Jews are a very small population.

Ben: 17:08

Agreed.

Gene: 17:09

So it's a, I think it's exactly the response that the leaders of Hamas wanted. And that's the part that's also sad is that they got what they wanted because you remember that. Saudi Arabia and Israel were on the verge of signing something. I can't remember what,

Ben: 17:28

Yeah, Abraham Accords,

Gene: 17:30

was that part of Abraham Accords? Yeah. So that would not be good for people that want to get rid of Israel because the more countries have at least neutral relations, if not positive relations with Israel, the less likely it is that Israel ever goes anywhere. So, to the people that want to get rid of Israel, regardless of where they live, and frankly the ones that are in charge don't live in Gaza they live in other Arab countries, or other Persian countries for that matter

Ben: 18:10

which is a underrated distinction. A lot of people don't realize the differences between the Arabs and the Persians and a lot of the history thereof. That's why Iran and Countries like Saudi Arabia don't exactly get along.

Gene: 18:25

yeah they dislike each other. I mean, they have the same religion, but it's a different same religion. It's a different sect of the same religion. And they do generally dislike each other. And if Israel wasn't around a lot more of these countries would be actively fighting with each other. It's just that it's convenient to have a common enemy. You know, there, there is something to be said that the wrong choice was made. In terms of which physical piece of land Israel would be created on, I certainly understand the historical tie in, right, of using that piece of land because that is historically a place that Jews controlled for a thousand years. that control, but it does kind of put juice smack dab in the middle of people that through religious education hate them. Like it is not at all a secret that part of the Islamic education system, even in Fairly Western countries like Turkey is actively racist towards Jews.

Ben: 19:39

yeah let's define that a little bit because I know a little bit about Turkey and you know, have some friendly connections there. What I would say is rural Turkey has always been that way, but the majority of Turkey and what Ataturk founded was a very secular society, not

Gene: 19:59

Unfortunately, it's not what we have today.

Ben: 20:02

No, since the Gulenist movement in Erdogan, it's changed pretty drastically and, you know, people kind of need to be very aware of that because the Gulenists are very active here in the U. S., the Harmony Science Academies, the Harmony Schools that are charter schools that a lot of people think they're sending their children to a better than public school education or sending them to a different side of, you know, you know, the Gulenists are the other side of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Gulenists don't get along, but they're kind of two sides of the same coin. And Erdogan who I quite frankly credit with Telling one of my friends you know, he's played way too nice for way too long with the Muslim Brotherhood and really changed Turkish society from a very secular one, largely to, and the Syrians were very secular to for a long time until we destroyed that country as well. You know. Through various means, but same sort of thing. Iran was extremely secular until they overthrew the Shah.

Gene: 21:11

You know, I watched the documentary, I think we actually talked about it probably six months ago about the Shah of Iran and because I really didn't know a whole lot about him other than he got thrown over in the revolution. And I knew that the U. S. had a lot to do with installing him, but I didn't really know much about him. He was extremely westernized. But also very much a dictator. And a lot of the policies that were pro West came at the cost of the local population. And so there was, I think a genuine, at least from what I've seen in watching videos about them that there was a genuine desire. Of a majority of people to replace them, but who would take over the government? There were a lot of different opinions on, and this is why I said the way that it seemed to happen historically Seemed fairly similar, in iran as it did in the soviet revolution because the communists in the soviet union Or really in russia pre soviet union They were nowhere near the majority they were a small minority of the groups that were active in the revolution, but they were also the ones that were the most ruthless. And then the ruthless is what gets you the control of the government after a revolution. Yeah,

Ben: 22:43

you know, Erdogan and the Mullahs have taken advantage of a lot of. Discontent as it were in the population, but they've also instilled policies that don't necessarily represent the populations. Why we see attempted color revolutions in both, quite frankly, is there is enough discontent in the population to

Gene: 23:06

Exactly. And I think. There was a point, like you remember what happened in Egypt, where we instilled a color revolution which lasted, what, about a year and a half before the the military came in and said, nope, Not going to happen here and then kicked out the new U S favored government and then brought the country back to I can't remember the name of the guy, but it's always a two edged sword. There's, it's hard to push through a revolution in another country if there was zero interested in it happening. There has to be some discontent. There has to be a sufficient enough discontent that statistically your odds of getting a revolution to happen are fairly likely. You can't completely fabricate a revolution if the majority of the population is happy. You, you need to be careful on the countries that you attempt to do this in and focus on countries which already have a certain level of unhappiness. Amen. the little nudging and pushing from the CIA will move things in the right direction.

Ben: 24:18

Agreed. And I think the U. S. is In a place where we are right for said nudging and pushing.

Gene: 24:26

We, and it's funny you say that because one of the ex posts Now, I didn't create it. I found it and just posted it, which is often the case, but it was a very good little meme or a slogan thing. I don't know what you, it's all just pure text. And it said, if the U. S. saw what the United States is doing to the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States. Mean, if we were a different country, we'd be prime for a invasion slash liberation slash color level revolution guided by the United States.

Ben: 25:03

Oh, there's no doubt about it. You know, even the Texas movement the Texas movement could be. Utilized for that purpose when you know, a lot of people predict and think that it's very possible that after the election that we will see major civil under asked because regardless of the direction that the election goes, 1 side is not very likely to accept it over the other.

Gene: 25:28

I think that's true. I think that we're going to see more unrest if somehow Trump manages to pull off a victory. I still think that the Democrats are way too invested in ensuring a Trump loss, that we will not see a Trump victory. I'm not saying Trump wouldn't have won if everything was counted properly. I just don't have any faith that's going to happen.

Ben: 25:56

Don't disagree. I think there's likely to be a shadow campaign this time, just as there was last time, we'll see what happens. And, you know, if Trump is going to be able to make it or not. I think a lot of the swamp, the vote campaigns, things like that, that he's doing give me some hope, but there's no doubt The Democrats proved last time that they are far better at you know, running a mail in vote campaign, if nothing else. We can say that there are irregularities, you can say lots of things, but certainly they're at least better at that.

Gene: 26:39

Did I ever tell you about my election interference story? So back, this would have been probably like seventh grade, right around there. I had volunteered to go and leave mailers, flyers, whatever you want to call them on people's doors for one of the Republican candidates. And that was the first time I've ever done something like that. So, I got picked up. There's a bunch of kids that were all volunteering, and got picked up by You know, a guy that's, I don't know what his role was, but somebody in the Republican Party. And so we had an area geographically on the map that we're going to just walk up and down streets within this area. It was probably like I don't know, maybe a mile by a mile or something. Should take about three or four hours to do on foot. And all we were going to do is just take the literature of the back of this guy's truck and then stuff a a piece of literature, a pamphlet, a flyer into people's door handles or. You know, the edge of the door or something, but we can't put them in the mailbox because the mailbox you have to open to put something in there and it's, you know, to put anything in there unless you're actually working for the U. S. Post Office.

Ben: 28:02

Yeah, it would be a federal offense,

Gene: 28:04

Oh, we're getting to that. And so generally, you know, you like put it between the screen door and the normal door. A lot of people have those up in Minnesota. Yeah. A lot of mosquitoes up there in the summer. So a lot of people have screen doors outside their normal doors, or you would, if you, if they have a door handle that allows you to just. You know, spin something into a tube and then stick the tube into the door handle and it'll stay there. Anyway, long story short, so I started doing this and then as I'm walking around I noticed that there's already flyers or pamphlets that are in those door handles. Or by those doors and I noticed there for a, the Democrat candidate that's running. You know, I'm in seventh grade. I know what we're there to do. I'm not a lawyer. So I'm like as I'm putting my pamphlets in, why don't I just take out the pamphlets for the other guys? Cause you know, fucking commies. Right. So I started doing that. And then the other kids noticed I was doing that. They started doing that. So then we empty out the pamphlets that we had on us probably 15, 20 minutes later, come back to the guy's car, and then you know, I gleefully, with a big smile on my face, say, hey, what do we do with these? And he said, what are those? I said those are the pamphlets that we're taking out from each house. It's you're doing what? You can't do that. It's they're for the evil commies. We don't want to have people getting those fanfics. Yes, but that's literally illegal guys. You can't be doing that. Everywhere you took one out, you have to go back and put it in now. It's gonna take us longer to finish doing this and you better hope that nobody notices, otherwise we get caught. This is a serious thing. So, My perfectly, you know, reasonable as a kid idea of we're trying to achieve a goal here, which is to make sure people vote the right way. And part of that is going to be preventing them from seeing misinformation, right? So it seemed very reasonable to me as a 7th grader that Not only do you provide the information that you want them to read, but you also remove any information you don't want them to read. And the reason I,

Ben: 30:30

were a pro censorship early on.

Gene: 30:33

oh, yeah, I was pro censorship way before that. The question with censorship is just simply who controls it. But the idea is, I may have learned that you can't do that's illegal in seventh grade. I guarantee you 100 percent there's tons of college age students right now and maybe even older that never learned that and nobody ever told them, don't do that. And things like this add up, you know, things like going through doing the letting senior citizens. Fill out their ballots and then taking all the ballots and then just throwing away the ones that are for the wrong candidate, you know, all these things that are illegal, they're not even necessarily being told to the pro socialist you know, the people working, the elections do that. A lot of them will just do it out of natural instinct and no one's going to mention to them that you can't be doing this. So I think the guy that was. You know, had a bunch of seventh grade volunteers to go and distribute pamphlets for the Republican side. He was genuinely scared of the consequences of doing something like this, and he made sure that we were aware that this is totally illegal and we can't be doing that. There's multiple laws that are being broken. Because once, first of all, once something is left on somebody's property like that, it ain't. Yours to take. It's literally their property to throw in the trash if they want, but you can't be picking it up. The only exception to that are things that are in the garbage bin, but otherwise you're actually stealing property.

Ben: 32:19

that is even dependent upon jurisdiction. You can't just dumpster dive in a lot of jurisdictions.

Gene: 32:27

You can dumpster dive without setting foot on their property, then in most places, that's totally legal.

Ben: 32:34

Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 32:36

So if you leave your garbage cans right on the edge of the street, the way that you're told to Yeah, people can go in there and look, unless you're literally on a private street that's fenced in, then it is all private property, you're right. But anyway, point being, there are a lot of people that believe in a cause and will do things to achieve that cause, not knowing or even caring all that much. About the legalities of the specifics of the things they're doing. And I think that attitude is very prevalent in the current democratic party. It is a lot less prevalent in the current Republican party. And so even without there being a grand conspiracy of the party orchestrating all these maneuvers to cheat in the elections, the individuals that are volunteering for a variety of jobs. I guarantee you on the Democrat have side, have a much higher incidence of thinking the way that I did in seventh grade about their side. And there will not be anybody to stop them from doing it. And so they can be very honest in saying there is no coordinated effort to steal the election. Like you guys are just imagining this. And I can say that with a straight face because they don't need to coordinate it. It's just, all they have to do is not bring up the illegality of certain things and they will happen.

Ben: 34:11

And that, that's the thing is there's very few consequences actually ever meted out for election interference. Unfortunately, we have a situation where, you know, to your point, there is no grand conspiracy and as a result, sneeze as a result, there's no major findings, no major interference claims. It's minor at best.

Gene: 34:36

Yeah, it's I don't know. I mean, it's a tough one, man. It's short of having a landslide election, kind of like we had with Ronald Reagan, where all but two States voted for one candidate. That's a landslide.

Ben: 34:53

And you're talking about

Gene: 34:55

the 1980 election,

Ben: 35:01

You mean the 84 election?

Gene: 35:05

I thought the 80 had All but two. I don't know. They were both pretty big, but one of them obviously was a bigger landslide than the other. I just remember, gotta Google it. It's the one with Walter Mondale. When Mondale ran, he only got

Ben: 35:18

that, that would be 84. So, in, but you know, Jimmy Carter, he received it was a landslide, but not as

Gene: 35:26

Okay. Okay. It was still a landslide. So there were four states in 80 and two states in 84.

Ben: 35:32

Exactly.

Gene: 35:33

Democrats get so Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, five states,

Ben: 35:37

it should be noted when people go, how the hell did Jimmy Carter, you know, win Georgia? He was from there.

Gene: 35:44

It was from Georgia, exactly. Although, you know, Trump lost Georgia.

Ben: 35:49

Did he? He really?

Gene: 35:51

I mean, depends who you want to believe, I guess. It's

Ben: 35:54

While we're on elections hey, Europe.

Gene: 35:58

yeah, that kind of snuck through.

Ben: 36:00

Yeah the European Parliament is going to be very interesting this next time

Gene: 36:05

There's a few rebel rousers in there.

Ben: 36:07

Yeah, and Macron's reaction calling a snap election. That's going to be an

Gene: 36:12

I am still not I'm always confused at the shit they can do

Ben: 36:17

This is why parliamentary systems suck, quite frankly.

Gene: 36:21

Huh. It's, it always feels like I don't know what the hell elections are or what kind of timeline everybody's on. It's just hard to

Ben: 36:33

because it's not a set thing. It's up to the ruling party when to call elections. Now they have to call elections within certain periods of time. But inside those certain periods of time, you can election at any point in time and usually they are meted out to be, you know, announced well in advance and so on. But what Macron is doing is, you know, known as a snap election and is a, Hey, we're going to have a vote in basically the minimum amount of time allotted by law. I'm no expert on the French parliamentary system or its politics, but it's interesting to me because a lot of his opposition just spent a ton of money and a lot of effort to win what they did in the European Parliament, which is somewhat ineffectual in that European Parliament doesn't do much. And I kind of wonder if his logic isn't well, let's see him come up with enough money to do anything in this election now. Because that way he doesn't have to call another election for some time.

Gene: 37:34

the parties in Europe to, to at least my American eyes all seem totally crazy

Ben: 37:42

They're all communist

Gene: 37:43

yeah, exactly. They're like European people's party versus the party of European socialists versus the Alliance of liberals and Democrats for your party versus the European Democrat party versus the European green party. Versus the European party of Europe left. Oh, and let's not forget the European Christian liberal coalition. Every one of these parties is basically leftists. It's it's a

Ben: 38:14

to a lot of us

Gene: 38:17

Yeah.

Ben: 38:18

eyes. Yeah. Now I would say that a multi party system is probably better than the two party system in a lot of

Gene: 38:27

certainly more representative.

Ben: 38:29

Yes. And I would say, you know, if we go back to this country's foundation and think of no taxation without representation. If you look at the number of people that Congress represents versus the average PM, for example, in the UK we don't have representation and they do.

Gene: 38:47

Yes. I know you're on a kick to make Congress be thousands of people. I get it.

Ben: 38:51

Absolutely. Make it come to a screeching fucking halt, man. That or you know what? Split up the country even better.

Gene: 38:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I don't know, man, the for Europe officially not being communist, they sure are communist aligned.

Ben: 39:08

Name one European country that isn't communist.

Gene: 39:12

I mean, they're all communists to some extent, but you know what I mean? Like officially come, they're not like, like North Korea or China communist.

Ben: 39:21

Not in so many words, no, but close enough.

Gene: 39:25

Interesting. I'm just scrolling through here. It looks like there are two countries that they have compulsory elections. So Belgium and Luxembourg.

Ben: 39:36

Yeah, interesting.

Gene: 39:37

So that means I assume every citizen has to vote that you can't not vote.

Ben: 39:43

There are, if you say, if you're using the word compulsory, that would be my

Gene: 39:49

Yeah. I mean, that's what I would assume. And it means yeah, it's called otherwise known as universal civic duty voting or mandatory voting is a requirement that all registered voters Participate in an election as of January. Okay. Ooh, 21 countries worldwide, so I'm just looking at Europe, but 21 countries worldwide have compulsory voting laws. I wonder if if North Korea has one of those. Because if you're going to win, you might as well get a vote from every person, right? Oh

Ben: 40:20

You know, In the Soviet Union, right at the collapse, one of the things that ended up happening was, yes, you had a more or less compulsory vote and B, your vote was not secret and you would go into one of two booths, right? One to vote for the Communist Party and one to vote for others. And there were party members sitting there watching you. during the collapse of the Soviet Union, right there at the end, we had open you know, civil disobedience, as it were, to go through and now they, the ruling party still won, but you know, at least there was some people willing to literally give up their lives to say, screw you. No.

Gene: 41:01

Although really towards the end of the Soviet Union, the risk is so much lower than it was in previous decades.

Ben: 41:09

Okay.

Gene: 41:10

it's a, there were plenty of people for whom that was the first time they voted, you know? But for people that were a little older It was a much less risky time to actually vote opposition than doing the same thing a decade previous. Anyway

Ben: 41:26

I don't know. I think we're seeing a interesting start to a cultural revolution

Gene: 41:32

so other

Ben: 41:33

Pride Month got interrupted.

Gene: 41:36

it kind of did with the Hawk Tui girl.

Ben: 41:38

Yeah, man, I just, you go down the rabbit hole of memes and it's pretty, pretty amazing. I love the Hillary and Bill Clinton ones, they just make me laugh.

Gene: 41:50

Oh, which ones?

Ben: 41:51

Oh, my God Bill Clinton sitting at the Resolute desk and there are two people in this photo and there's a caption that says Huck to,

Gene: 41:59

Oh

Ben: 42:00

Are Hillary sitting there making a face and the face you make when your husband's in the other room with the intern and you hear Huck to.

Gene: 42:08

but Hillary is a lesbian, so I don't know if she really cared. That marriage was, I think so well portrayed in the House of Cards, like it was a marriage of political convenience and you know, Bill had his fun, Hillary had her fun.

Ben: 42:28

I mean, as far as I know, she still has a thing with Huma

Gene: 42:33

Yeah. I don't know. They might still be together. I don't know. I haven't really, I just remember when that first came out on Node Agenda and you start seeing all the photos of those two together doing. You know, government work, like going to beauty salons,

Ben: 42:47

well, but, you know, when you look at

Gene: 42:50

shoe shopping.

Ben: 42:51

when you look at the Anthony Weiner,

Gene: 42:53

Oh yeah.

Ben: 42:54

you know, debacle that unfolded and realize he was married to Huma and potentially a beard for her as well.

Gene: 43:03

Like potentially meaning absolutely. Yes.

Ben: 43:06

okay. Yeah. You know, you start to give the guy a little

Gene: 43:10

Oh

Ben: 43:11

leniency when you realize this. Oh, absolutely. He's an

Gene: 43:15

I get it. He's not in a good situation. You know, his wedding to Huma was presided over

Ben: 43:22

up by the Clintons and everything else. I mean, it just, yeah, we're going to, you're going to marry Huma

Gene: 43:28

Yeah. You're going to bury Hillary's

Ben: 43:29

be great. Yeah. Yeah. You can kind of follow after a bill, but,

Gene: 43:35

Yeah. It was a look, I don't give a shit who people sleep with, frankly, but the the part that I don't like is the lying and the cheating. If Hillary came out either today or 20 years ago, And said, you know, I've just realized I'm actually a lesbian. And I haven't Bill's a good friend, but I haven't been in love with Bill for 20 years. Nobody would fault her for that or a tiny minority probably would. But you know what I mean? Like it would be inconsequential. It'd be kind of like the you know, and I had one of these, like a high school friend that clearly was gay. But wasn't actively gay, but everybody joked about the way that he's acting or talking or clothes he wears or whatever. It was like, yeah, pretty gay. It was all very predictable. And when the guy finally came out to being gay in college, literally nobody was surprised. It was like yeah, no shit. We all assumed it'd be the same thing for Hillary. So I don't know why. She hasn't done that up to this point

Ben: 44:55

you know,

Gene: 44:55

that might've given her an edge back when she was running against Trump.

Ben: 45:01

Maybe you, you know, the rumors about Chelsea Clinton's actual parentage though.

Gene: 45:06

Yeah, it was. What's his face. God, it's on tip of my tongue. Oh God. Yeah. I can't remember his name. The lawyer guy.

Ben: 45:18

Yeah. I'm trying to find his name as well. I can literally picture

Gene: 45:21

Yeah, it's, I can see his face. It's on tip of my tongue, but

Ben: 45:24

now that you said that

Gene: 45:29

Yep.

Ben: 45:32

Webster Hubble, there we go. Webster Hubble.

Gene: 45:35

Yeah.

Ben: 45:36

And if you look at the pictures of them, it's about this, it's about the resemblance of Castro and You know, a little Canadian boy up there,

Gene: 45:45

Yeah, the little fascist

Ben: 45:46

Crudeau. There we go.

Gene: 45:48

Yep. It is. It does not look like Bill. That's for sure.

Ben: 45:52

And if you follow Dvorak's thought, you know, Bill's. Looks like an old lesbian and clearly a vas vasectomy victim.

Gene: 46:01

Think Bill had the vasectomy a long time ago, because for him, that would actually be A very useful

Ben: 46:08

you yeah,

Gene: 46:09

Yeah, it'd be very, because he knows he wants to fool around, but he also can't afford to get anybody pregnant. So it's a surefire way of making sure that there isn't an accident, cause you know, somebody might have to die if that happened.

Ben: 46:27

sure, fire away ish. But, you know, there is that one guy in Arkansas who claims Bill Clinton is his father.

Gene: 46:33

Yeah. But we also heard a whole bunch of stuff from him having a penile deformation to him being sterile to all kinds of things I remember from that. From the 90s that came out about him.

Ben: 46:47

I will say, on the vasectomy thing is, it's not a hundred percent. We had a family friend who, they thought they were done with kids, so he had a vasectomy and years and years later he ended up having a daughter and almost divorced his wife over it because, you know, he's what the hell, went to the doctor. And sure enough, it it had healed.

Gene: 47:10

Grown back. Hey doc, my balls grew back.

Ben: 47:15

They don't actually remove the

Gene: 47:17

I know.

Ben: 47:17

So they just snip

Gene: 47:18

I'm making a joke. I'm making a joke, yeah. Yeah, it's it's the vast deference that they block. Yeah, it's a it's still a much higher percentage guarantee than just believing that the girl's telling you the truth when she says she's in the pill.

Ben: 47:39

Oh, absolutely. You know, but I tell you what The only form of male birth control I would ever use is a condom. When you start looking at some of the side effects of some of these things that they are studying and proposing, there is no way in hell that I would be going doing an experimental you know, drug trial right now with some of these male birth control

Gene: 48:02

Oh, yeah, no, the best form of birth control is a mouth.

Ben: 48:06

Okay.

Gene: 48:06

Pretty hard for him to get pregnant.

Ben: 48:08

Yeah. I mean, if that's all you want.

Gene: 48:11

long way, man.

Ben: 48:13

You know the old joke, right? Yeah.

Gene: 48:15

What's that?

Ben: 48:16

What's one one sperm cell say to the other

Gene: 48:19

What?

Ben: 48:20

how far do we have to swim Bob? I don't know man, but we just passed the tonsils.

Gene: 48:25

Huh, exactly. Exactly. And if you don't want her looking at you, you got another choice to her back as well.

Ben: 48:34

Oh Gene,

Gene: 48:37

Oh, come on you I'm that crazy. Whatever, dude. Most

Ben: 48:43

not that crazy. Just that crude

Gene: 48:46

That's not crude. How's that crude? Did I say getting fucked in the ass? No. I said something a lot less crude than that.

Ben: 48:53

Everyone knows what you're in.

Gene: 48:55

Exactly. So, point is,

Ben: 48:59

sent me a microphone recommendation

Gene: 49:01

did. And I think I replied as well. He's not wrong.

Ben: 49:04

Yeah, just a you know, 200 something dollar mic and that yeah And at that point I could you know Get a, another Motu or other audio interface and just use the RS 320.

Gene: 49:19

Oh yeah, no, that's true. I will say that for somebody that doesn't have anything, that mic probably is the best way to go right now.

Ben: 49:27

Yes.

Gene: 49:28

Because it allows you not to have to buy A an external audio input device and it's just USB powered. And it has the noise cancellation built in DSP based. So it should be nice and clean.

Ben: 49:44

I think we're stuck with the Yeti for a little while until I get I get information back on the Motu and then I'll decide to

Gene: 49:52

You could just get one of these for the time being.

Ben: 49:56

Sure, but if I was going to spend that kind of money, I would just get a, you know, like Motu M4 or something.

Gene: 50:02

Yeah, you could do that as well. Yeah. But it's, I mean, you know, it I, if it was me, if my MOTU died and I'm knocking on wood right now, hoping it doesn't, but if my MOTU died, I don't think I would want to go more than one show without having that clean sound. So I'm not gonna tell you what to do'cause I'm not the one paying your bills. But I also know that you're fully capable of buying another device right now and you just don't want to.

Ben: 50:37

I think you're totally misrepresenting my lifestyle and monetary situation. I'm completely poverty stricken.

Gene: 50:45

Yes, poverty stricken, yes, that's you. Huh. Huh. Hey you got a bridge I could buy, too, while you're at it?

Ben: 50:51

Yeah, sure. Oceanfront property in Arizona while you're at it.

Gene: 50:55

Oh, perfect. I've been looking at some of that. I hear it's gorgeous out there.

Ben: 51:00

Oh,

Gene: 51:01

Yeah, it's and it's not like you'd have to throw it away later. You could either always sell it, keep it as a backup or use it as a travel mic.

Ben: 51:10

that's what the Yeti is

Gene: 51:12

I know, but the problem with the Yeti is, and it's my fault. Cause I got the Yeti first and I played around with it. I'm like, Oh, that's not too bad. For a, you know, 129 gizmo, that this sounds actually decent. Yes, but not anywhere near as decent as a pro mic hooked up to a pro audio thingy.

Ben: 51:35

yeah. So what it comes down to is as soon as I get the report back from O2, which I emailed them today on trying to get an update, we'll see. And if it's going to be a while or cost a whole bunch, then I'll start looking at other options.

Gene: 51:51

Yeah. So I got two things that have nothing to do with politics that I can bring up.

Ben: 51:56

What's that?

Gene: 51:57

One is I've been hitting my head against the wall with a stupid ass voltage app lightning slash Bitcoin server that I've been paying for the last four years.

Ben: 52:07

Okay.

Gene: 52:08

So this is what I originally set up. I'm going to blame Adam Curry. He's the one that pointed me towards this company. And at the time it was probably the easiest, fastest way to set up your own Bitcoin slash lightning server. So I did that. And I've been paying for it for the last, it's not four years. It's probably three years or two years, eight months, nine months, something like that, close to three years. Also, when I started, it was like nine bucks a month. Now it's 25 bucks a month. And it's a server that literally hasn't had anything happen to it because I was using it for incoming sats for Sir Gene speaks. And that podcast has had three episodes in the last six months. And so nothing has been coming in there for about six months. So. I'm getting tired of paying 25 bucks a month for something I don't use. And so I thought, okay, I'm just going to close it out and transfer the money. And it's so of. Basically representing almost three years of worth of donations, plus about 50 bucks that I initially put in there just to have something in the account. It had at one point, just shy of 1, 000 right now. I think it's at about 750 because Bitcoin's down a little bit, so it's got about 750 bucks and I can't get any of that out of that stupid server.

Ben: 53:39

Why?

Gene: 53:40

I don't know, because I can't figure out how to do it. One of them is, seems to be tied up in a channel that I attempted to open about three months ago that still says pending. So I've got a channel that is pending that I tried to open for about 600 or 500. And then the, whatever I had sitting there that was unused, not part of a channel, right? I tried to send to myself through one of these ledger devices that I have. And it attempted to send it and then give me an error message almost immediately. But yet the money is still missing. So it's I basically got about 750 bucks. It's in limbo. I'd like to have, yeah, I'd like to have somebody that knows something about this stuff. I've been recommended somebody to reach out to at no agenda social to try and get this figured out. If he has an opportunity to it. I'm just going to give him access to the server and see if he can figure out how to cancel the pending stuff.

Ben: 54:48

Yes, give someone access to your bitcoin wallet,

Gene: 54:51

Yes, exactly. And here's the alternative is I just stopped paying and shut it down. And I just write off the money because I can't figure it out, dude. I've. I'm at a point where I've tried everything I could, and I'm not willing to read a bunch of docs or Reddit posts to find some idiosyncrasy that I'm missing here to get this move. Either I'm going to get somebody that can help me, or I'm just going to say, fuck it, this was a failed experiment, and I'm going to shut it down.

Ben: 55:26

Yeah, I'd be on the, fuck it, it's a failed experiment train if I couldn't figure it out myself.

Gene: 55:32

Yeah, and and this is why you don't have money for the podcasting device.

Ben: 55:37

Why is that?

Gene: 55:38

As you keep shutting things down.

Ben: 55:40

No, I don't. I don't fail at my experiment.

Gene: 55:44

I

Ben: 55:44

You know,

Gene: 55:44

You're just recommending that I do. Okay.

Ben: 55:46

You know, there's a difference between

Gene: 55:48

Huh. Huh. That's true. There's a few years difference here. So I don't know. It's frustrating because it's

Ben: 55:54

hasn't fully taken hold with me yet.

Gene: 55:56

yeah. The good part of that is that I think I'm probably responsible for, it's probably more than 50. It's probably about a hundred bucks out of that total amount. The rest of it was donations. If I hate. To lose donations that people made. And I should have frankly taken out sooner, but I've also paid. I mean, like over the course of roughly three years,

Ben: 56:23

than that in,

Gene: 56:25

I've paid more than 700 for this thing existing. So yeah. So keep on to continue paying for this thing when it's unused. It's just crazy. So I just need to hopefully be able to get at least some of that money transitioned out. But if I can't do that then at least I should stop paying.

Ben: 56:46

One of the things I'd say is if you're trying to send money out and you're trying to send it to a wallet, that's not a lightning wallet, that may be the problem

Gene: 56:56

no, I tried to send it through the Bitcoin or through a on the chain. That's the other thing I noticed is you know, when you send them the chain, you're paying like 40 for the privilege of being able to send out 300.

Ben: 57:10

yeah, or a percentage, but yes.

Gene: 57:12

Yeah, but it's 9%, 10%. It's right around there. So yeah, and I'm even like I'm willing to do that just to get some money out of there. I don't, I hate to just throw the whole damn thing away, but I also wonder how many people just have the exact same experience that I do. When they finally got something set up, kind of working. And then when they stop using it, you can't figure out how to actually pull your money out. And it just goes towards the immaturity of these technologies.

Ben: 57:41

Yeah, I mean, this is where stuff like get Albie and

Gene: 57:45

Yeah. Which again, I've never tried taking money out of Gili Albi. I have no idea if it's any easier or if I would have the exact same experience. I would just lose everything.

Ben: 57:55

Yeah. And there's a big debate on custodial versus non custodial

Gene: 58:00

I've got a non custodial and I'm going to probably lose everything in there. So there you go.

Ben: 58:04

which is the risk you take. So, but you also take the other, the same risk with a custodial wallet because the company has access to that money. So choose your poison and choose wisely, you

Gene: 58:17

exactly. And God forbid I even, I try and get anything that's related to tech support out of this company. Cause they're basically, they're made for the guys that are offering custodial wallets, right? So they're basically geared up for the people that know what the fuck they're doing. Want some, somebody to actually run the wallet in the cloud and take care of all the backups and all the crap. So you don't lose it through technological reasons, but they're not really geared towards people like me that just needed a place to give an address to send money to, so, yeah, it's still a very. Low maturity technology. And I will say some people like Adams, very into the technology itself. He's got a he showed me his couple of Bitcoin miners running in his garage. Like 24 seven. So he's actually generating

Ben: 59:13

is garage. Yeah.

Gene: 59:14

Yeah. He's heating his garage. And and getting Bitcoin, not just receiving it from people, but actually generating out of electricity. So, you know, I'm all for people doing that. I just think I made a mistake at that point in time. What I should have done is instead of trying to jump on the whole. You know, Bitcoin sat bandwagon, I should have just said, you know what, I'll wait till this gets more acceptable and easier to do. I'll just keep putting my PayPal address in there.

Ben: 59:51

So, Gene, we have breaking news.

Gene: 59:53

what's that?

Ben: 59:55

Julian Assange, this is as of

Gene: 59:57

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that.

Ben: 59:59

guilty to get rid of any additional prison time. So, Assange may be free after this. So, what do you think of that?

Gene: 1:00:10

I think he's going to be dead.

Ben: 1:00:12

Why would they let him put in a guilty plea? Why would he agree to a guilty

Gene: 1:00:18

Yeah I

Ben: 1:00:18

you've gone through this hell. You've done all of this. Why are you now giving up?

Gene: 1:00:24

I think he's realized that he doesn't have much time left and that if he doesn't do this, he, the rest of his life is going to be worse than what the guilty plea results in. And it's always a, you know, pleading guilty isn't about actually admitting something you've done. It's about picking the thing that is the least bad of all the bad things that you have a choice of.

Ben: 1:00:50

Oh yeah, I I fully understand that hypothesis.

Gene: 1:00:53

I'm sure you do. Yep. So it's sad, but it's reality. I would prefer if he were to stick it out and wait, but also, you know, Trump didn't pardon him last time. And I, that's Trump's fault. And the last four years of Assange basically aging by 20 years and four years is Trump's fault.

Ben: 1:01:18

I don't, no, I wouldn't say it's Trump's fault, but he could have ameliorated the situation.

Gene: 1:01:24

Yeah. It's Trump's fault because. Yeah. There were a number of people that most of his supporters assumed he would and wanted him to pardon. Assange being one of

Ben: 1:01:35

define action versus inaction. If I can save someone through my actions, but I don't, does that mean I cause their death? Their

Gene: 1:01:47

No, but you're certainly responsible for the thing that, that happened to them, which you could have prevented.

Ben: 1:01:52

No. Disagree. Because I didn't actively do anything to cause their demise.

Gene: 1:01:58

It's not advice, first of all, but Yeah, you didn't do anything to actively cause it. You could have shut down the court case. You could have talked to the prosecutors. You had the, literally the top prosecutor in the country working for you. You could have done that too.

Ben: 1:02:17

Let's go through and do a thought experiment.

Gene: 1:02:21

My point is

Ben: 1:02:21

You come

Gene: 1:02:22

that Assange was innocent.

Ben: 1:02:24

You come across a old school railroad switch. And you can change the

Gene: 1:02:32

everybody knows the trolley experiment. We don't have to go

Ben: 1:02:35

I'm not going through a trolley experiment fully, but You know, there's someone already tied to it, so someone could die. You don't know what's going to happen on the other side. Do you flip the switch or not? By taking no action, you are

Gene: 1:02:49

There's only one proper solution to that experiment.

Ben: 1:02:53

Blow up the train.

Gene: 1:02:54

Yes

Ben: 1:02:54

ha.

Gene: 1:02:55

Glad you're aware of the correct answer. It's the Kobayashi Maru solution. But that, that, that is the proper solution. Answer to that trolley experiment. Good. I'm glad you got it. I thought I'd have to explain it to you. So anyway, the second thing that I wanted to talk about that has nothing to do with politics and we keep coming back to politics was my Amazon laptop experience, so about a

Ben: 1:03:26

know a little bit

Gene: 1:03:27

little bit about it, right? Yeah. So, before I went on my trip at the beginning of this month, I was kind of debating with myself, should I get a new gaming laptop or not? And I know, super serious topic, right? It's like first world problems. But my current gaming laptop is rather old. It's eight years old and that's ancient for gaming laptops. Still amazingly works. But you know, it has to be plugged in. Battery doesn't work and compared to modern computers, it is woefully slow, but it does have a dedicated graphics card so it can run games, at least on lower settings. It's also big and heavy. So I started looking around, see what's available. And. I found one that is probably the best bang for the buck combination, which is made by Gigabyte and it's a laptop that has an i9 processor and a Radeon 4080 card, 4080 mobile card in it, which is one away from the absolute top of the line graphics card that you can get. And it was available at Amazon for about a 1, 900, which is very good bang for the buck. So I ordered it excited to get it. I got it. I started installing software on it. I ordered some extra RAM for it, but hadn't put it in yet. And then in installing the software for it, including the software that controls the keyboard backlighting. I noticed that two of the keys on the keyboard were not backlighting properly. So I'm like, that's bullshit, I'm not gonna pay two grand for a laptop that has broken keys. I mean, they work as keys, but the backlighting doesn't work. So I thought, okay God damn it. I'm getting close to my trip now. I'm just a few days away. I don't know if they can ship me one quick enough. And certainly not if I initiate a refund and get a new one as a replacement. So I just ordered a second one and I figured, okay, I'll deal with refunding this thing after the trip. So I ordered the second one paid extra to get it. Overnighted and it comes in and I'm looking at the box and something's wrong. This looks like a smaller physical size box than the size of the laptop manufacturer box that it came in would fit. Sure enough, when I opened up the Amazon box, same manufacturer, smaller computer model. Now I didn't even bother opening the box. I just saw the model number on the outside of the Manufacturer's box on that. I'm like, son of a bitch called up. I Amazon said, okay, you, your first computer you shipped me had a defect. So I'm refunding that second computer you shipped me, which I got to replace. The first computer was literally the wrong model. Like I paid for the right model. I even paid extra. But what I received was physically a different model and I was sending him photos of all this stuff to prove it. And they're like, you know, finally talk to a supervisor person up there or somebody higher up than the normal sport guy. He apologized. He went through everything. I sent him all the photos. He marked them all as okay, go ahead and send us both of them. I'm like I'll do that, but I don't have time to do it for my trip. I'll have to do it after I come back. So long story short, I didn't bring a laptop on the trip, which was ultimately not that bad a thing, frankly. I think it's fine,

Ben: 1:07:16

you get to see more midget wrestling that way.

Gene: 1:07:20

allegedly. And and so right before my trip, I opened up my web browser and the page came up to that same laptop, which is the last thing I did on my iPad. And it had a one available as a refurb for a great price of 1399. I'm like shit, you know, if the one with the broken lamps on the keyboard would have been 1399, that's a hell of a deal. I would have been okay with that at two grand. I'm not okay with that because I want something that's going to have everything working in factory condition. So I bought a third laptop. So I put an order in for the refurb model. And the estimated shipping date for the refurb model was like 20 days later. It was quite a bit of a later period in time, which I'm thinking of perfect because then it's not going to show up until I'm back from my travel. So, here's what's interesting. Here's the bit I'm kind of curious to see what happens with. I am very suspicious that refurb model, which popped up after I put in my refunds, my returns, but before I shipped the return back is actually what Amazon's doing when they get a return. So they put in a refurb machine available with a 20 day delay immediately. As soon as somebody clicks on the, I want the refund for my computer.

Ben: 1:08:58

So you think they're just

Gene: 1:08:59

I will know

Ben: 1:09:01

making sure that it's

Gene: 1:09:02

that it's

Ben: 1:09:03

what you sent back and then

Gene: 1:09:06

I think that's exactly what's going to happen. So here's the question is going to be, am I going to get when I, and I still haven't gotten the refurb one because I just shipped off the the first two back to Amazon this last week, not this week, last week, so they should be getting it today, probably. And my question is Amazon going to ship me the same computer that I originally returned because it had a defect? I think there's a very high odds of that happening. Given the time, the timeline of when this popped up as available, but not available to be shipped, meaning, yeah, you could buy it right now. It's available. There's only one available, so you better grab it quick, but it's not going to ship until, The second half of the June the fact that I still haven't gotten it, even though technically there are a few days late now, and I just yesterday just got the notification that it's going to get shipped out today for the refer machine, which is also the same day that they're getting my old returned laptops,

Ben: 1:10:11

think they would want more than one day to inspect that.

Gene: 1:10:15

man, you would think that,

Ben: 1:10:18

it, validate that you sent, you know, yes, you did what you said you were going to do and then turn around and post it.

Gene: 1:10:25

But remember that the returns are totally disconnected from this purchase. All three of the laptops were just independent purchases.

Ben: 1:10:32

Yeah. But you're returning one

Gene: 1:10:35

I'm returning two. Yeah, I'm returning

Ben: 1:10:38

of the right model.

Gene: 1:10:39

Yeah, one of the right and one of the wrong models. I'm returning that and that should go through today. I better be, because right now I got three laptops sitting on the credit card. But it's just the timing for it. It's just really making me question, is this the just in time mentality that Amazon has? As soon as somebody says return selected. I'm going to ship out a product. They immediately turn around and sell that product. Pre sell it essentially with a non committal ship date. Ship data is, it just says estimated ship date, right? It's a non committal date, but because it's a refurb, you're not going to bitch about it because it's like I'm getting it for way less. So,

Ben: 1:11:27

Yeah. But again, what if you. End up not returning it, not actually executing the return. You haven't shipped it back, so they don't even

Gene: 1:11:35

well, again, the they're delaying the shipment from what they originally said. And I, interestingly enough, I didn't get notification that the refurb is going to get shipped to me. Until the same day as they would have received the return of the previous one. Like they're not going to commit to a ship date until they have it physically in stock.

Ben: 1:11:59

Okay.

Gene: 1:12:00

So I think that we'll find out. But if I get a laptop that has two buttons where the lights aren't working, I'm not going to be pissed about it because that's what I'm expecting, frankly, but I will have also confirmed that Amazon is doing just in time refund equipment sales to avoid having to have an inventory of returned products, which would be very smart for them to do.

Ben: 1:12:25

It'd be very scheme scuzzy, but sure.

Gene: 1:12:28

Would it though? In what way?

Ben: 1:12:32

refurbished.

Gene: 1:12:33

I mean, refurbished doesn't have a specific definition. The refurbished could simply mean they opened the box, took a look at it. Everything seemed to be working and they should because the laptop works great. The only thing that doesn't work in it are the two keys that have lights that are burned out. The LEDs don't work. I don't know how the hell that slipped through initial testing from the manufacturer. That shouldn't have gone to sales. They should have caught that and just simply replaced the keyboard portion. Pulled out the keyboard, put a new keyboard that works with the backlighting, and bingo, you have a working laptop. Now, if I get a laptop that has all working lights, then it's extremely unlikely that it's the same one that's fixed. It's probably just some other refurb version of this laptop. So that'll be the determining factor of what actually shows up, whether the keyboard lights are working or not. But so far at least the timing has been very suspicious, like the refurb didn't go on sale until right after I clicked on the, give me a refund, and it didn't ship until after I shipped back the original laptop.

Ben: 1:13:45

So, did you look at the pictures of the Tavor I sent you? What'd you think?

Gene: 1:13:51

It looks nice. I would not, I don't buy colored guns. You know, I guess I'm a

Ben: 1:13:56

The Tavor is bi colored by nature, but okay.

Gene: 1:13:59

really. Mine's all black. Thank you very much. But yours is. What black and brown or olive or what color is that? Yeah, olive. There you

Ben: 1:14:10

Pretty green.

Gene: 1:14:11

So OD green. Is that what it is?

Ben: 1:14:15

it already had black accents on it, so I didn't mind.

Gene: 1:14:17

yeah, so I you know if that gun was available in a mono color of OD green or desert tan Or coyote or whatever they wanna call it. I may have opted for that color, but since it was either mono colored black or bi colored with other colors, I opted for the black.

Ben: 1:14:40

Yeah I will tell you that I think the black label handguard and the manticore butt pad are significant upgrades. You should definitely do the manticore butt pad, although it does increase the length of pull, which may or may not be a problem for you.

Gene: 1:14:57

Yeah. It, that gun has a pretty short pull, so it wouldn't be an issue

Ben: 1:15:02

okay. I don't know about that. Don't think it has a short pull at

Gene: 1:15:07

really.

Ben: 1:15:08

Yeah.

Gene: 1:15:09

I.

Ben: 1:15:09

Yeah. I've always measured the length of pull from The crux of your elbow to the tip of your trigger finger. And you know, it's, I wouldn't consider it short, especially compared to like a AR 15 with a collapsed stock is way

Gene: 1:15:24

Yeah, with a collab, but you don't shoot that thing with a clap stock.

Ben: 1:15:28

some people do

Gene: 1:15:29

I don't know. Some people do. Yeah. I generally open up the stock.

Ben: 1:15:35

in anyway, the the short of it is the black level handguard is

Gene: 1:15:40

Yeah. It

Ben: 1:15:40

to install and a massive upgrade if you're going to, like I put a, you know, IR laser and. Flashlight and stuff like that online. One of the things I'll say though is there is a pin at the top of where the handguard is installed that is kept by a screw. Pro tip, do not torque that screw at all. Using just hand using a screwdriver and an opposing allen wrench just to tighten it was enough to twist the head of the screw off.

Gene: 1:16:15

That sounds like a shitty pin.

Ben: 1:16:19

Israeli manufacturing.

Gene: 1:16:21

Were you were you able to get the parts for it?

Ben: 1:16:23

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I paid IWI for a part. I mean, it's obviously a common enough thing that they literally sell that pin and screw on as a standalone item on their But when you realize that the whole point of the screw is just as a keeper for the pen there is no amount of torque needed just.

Gene: 1:16:43

And you can have just bought the screw somewhere else. Oh,

Ben: 1:16:47

sure, if I'd have been able to drill out the pin, that, that's the problem, right,

Gene: 1:16:51

oh, so you have to replace

Ben: 1:16:52

body is snapped off inside the pin.

Gene: 1:16:55

it. So how'd you get it up?

Ben: 1:16:57

The head of the screw came off, so then you just tap the pin out the other side.

Gene: 1:17:01

Oh Okay, I got you. Yeah. Yeah, it's

Ben: 1:17:07

Otherwise, I'm very very happy with my little Israeli weapon there.

Gene: 1:17:11

Huh. Yeah, I think it's a good gun. I've always liked it I've shouted some I haven't shouted a tremendous amount, but I really liked it. It had fairly light recoil You And I know you said that it's not any better recoil than some of your other guns, but, I don't know, it felt light to me for what it is.

Ben: 1:17:31

Yeah, I'm gonna let you shoot my M1A, and the recoil endpoints,

Gene: 1:17:36

be lighter than what I've

Ben: 1:17:38

it's not really lighter, it's just different because of the way the gas blows.

Gene: 1:17:42

gun.

Ben: 1:17:43

I mean, it's not any heavier than the Tavor, but it's the way the gas piston system is arranged on it is

Gene: 1:17:49

is it lighter than a G3?

Ben: 1:17:53

I don't know how light a G3 is.

Gene: 1:17:56

It's fucking heavy.

Ben: 1:17:57

Never shot one.

Gene: 1:17:58

Yeah, they're heavy. It's a very pretty gun, but I just really disliked how heavy it was, so I got rid of it. Yeah, I don't know. I like the Tavor. I've always liked the Tavor. Was pretty close to even picking one up in 300 Blackout, but I ended up deciding to get one from Palmetto State that they had on sale for another brand.

Ben: 1:18:26

Yeah, I would not. 300 blackout, man, especially if you look at Grantham just did a great review of the 300 blackout cartridge. And there's just, there's not a situation where I would do a 300 blackout.

Gene: 1:18:41

Yeah. Yeah. I saw the thumbnail. I haven't watched the video, but yeah I have one box of 300 blackout. I've never bought any more than that.

Ben: 1:18:49

It's just not a caliber of my choice. So, Did you see Missouri is suing New York and Alvin Bragg over election interference due to the Trump case?

Gene: 1:19:01

Oh, nice. I don't think it'll go anywhere, but that's good.

Ben: 1:19:07

Eh, we'll

Gene: 1:19:07

I appreciate seeing some pushback from the. Republicans out there because there's so little,

Ben: 1:19:15

the Supreme Court got a gun case wrong.

Gene: 1:19:18

Yeah. I saw that as well, although it's a, it's not even so much a gun case. I think they got the law wrong. Guns were involved in it, but the, the bigger issue is. Can you have restrictions placed on you simply from somebody getting a what do you call those things? A one call it order?

Ben: 1:19:46

order.

Gene: 1:19:46

Basically like you can't be within a certain range of somebody. What do you

Ben: 1:19:49

restraining or

Gene: 1:19:50

Restraining order. Yeah. Yeah. So somebody getting a restraining order, which does not require they're anywhere near as much. Proof in order to get that order as going to a, an actual court case would, should that be sufficient grounds to have further restrictions on the person? So, in this particular case, the issue was gun related. So that's why it's a gun case is that as part of that restriction order, the individual was not allowed to have any firearms. Which also I think is a problem. I still think it's a bigger issue than just limited to firearms with a restraint order. I think it's how much restraint on your rights as a U S citizen can there be based simply on somebody's accusation.

Ben: 1:20:47

This is the problem we have with red flag laws, which through this ruling, they more or less validated as well, right? The way this ruling is going to be interpreted is going far above and beyond. And the lone voice of sanity and dissent was Thomas.

Gene: 1:21:04

Yeah, Clarence Thomas, who is not a rhino, who is an actual

Ben: 1:21:09

I wouldn't even call him a Republican of any stretch. He's just a liberty minded individual.

Gene: 1:21:15

Yeah, he, I think he sees first of all, he's old enough to remember what the founding fathers actually intended. And that's an important thing because knowing what the original intent was. In an age when the rest of the government is trying to subvert that is a very rare ability. And he certainly possesses that. The other thing is he has a big penis. So there's that.

Ben: 1:21:42

And you know that how

Gene: 1:21:44

Cause I was around when the court cases were out or The congressional testimony of Anita Hill accusing him of sexual harassment. So we have it in the congressional record has the size of his penis in there.

Ben: 1:21:57

Oh the things that will go down in history.

Gene: 1:22:02

crazy. It's crazy, but I've always liked them. I thought that frankly, I would have expected him to be a lot more biased, just anti Democrat. On all issues, but he is actually proven to be just exactly what you want, which is a very Liberty minded, as you said constitutionalist, you know, he's somebody that looks at what is the least intrusive way the government can act as the sort of basis for what the constitution actually intended. But it also highlighted the fact that, and I'm almost getting sick of repeating this, that There is a lot of people, myself included, that were posting stuff saying that if Trump pushes through this religious lefty as though she's a conservative for the Supreme Court, and I'm referring to her by her political leanings, cause I can't remember her name,

Ben: 1:23:05

Amy Comey

Gene: 1:23:07

one, if he pushes her through, it will be a long term mistake cause she's going to be on there for the next 50 years. And unfortunately, I think that's what we're stuck with is she literally is a very typical feminist, liberal female who happens to be religiously Christian. And somehow to a lot of conservatives, that's enough qualification right there. You know, at least she's Christian. Like, how about we pick somebody who's not a feminist, somebody who's not going to reinterpret the constitution through a certain lens it was never written in.

Ben: 1:23:45

how about you know, we don't worry about having female justices as any sort of prerequisite, whether you know,

Gene: 1:23:53

No women in politics. You're absolutely

Ben: 1:23:56

I wouldn't even necessarily say that it just shouldn't be

Gene: 1:23:58

I highly support that, that recommendation you're putting forth.

Ben: 1:24:02

Huh. Okay, yeah.

Gene: 1:24:04

I'd be in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.

Ben: 1:24:07

A man hits a woman with a car. Whose fault is it?

Gene: 1:24:15

A man hits a woman and a car?

Ben: 1:24:17

No, with a car. Man hits a woman with a car. Whose fault is it?

Gene: 1:24:23

Yeah, it's probably the alcohol's fault.

Ben: 1:24:26

He shouldn't have been driving in the kitchen.

Gene: 1:24:31

Bump, bump. That's good. Yeah, Old joke. Yeah. You know, we're just kidding. Not really. But this is just more examples of this lie that is sold that women are not thinking emotionally. They're fully capable of being rational. That's just not true. Women absolutely have a default basis of thinking with their emotions. And when you involve that in politics. You're setting yourself up for problems along the way.

Ben: 1:25:07

Yeah unfortunately if Biden gets in, the the issues we will have with the Supreme Court will be

Gene: 1:25:13

Oh yeah. We're we'll be even more fucked. Absolutely. And you know, I mean, there, there's been some good rulings that. You know, we're celebrating as far as gun stuff's concerned coming out of this court as well. This last one I think is problematic. The problem here is this case really from the get go was really a hard one. Because the man in question that was found to have a gun he didn't just have a restraining order. He had actually assaulted the woman previously and threatened to use a gun on her. So it wasn't one of these things where somebody has a conviction for marijuana, loses their ability to have firearms and then gets caught with a gun and ends up going to prison. That happens all the time. And that's bullshit. You know, your drug offense should have zero impact on your ability to own the firearm.

Ben: 1:26:06

Agreed. Hunter Biden should go free,

Gene: 1:26:09

I agree Hunter Biden. I don't know about go free, but certainly for the gun charge, for the pedophilia, he should absolutely not go free.

Ben: 1:26:18

I think Joe has a

Gene: 1:26:19

of him, did you watch that video of him running out of a hotel room Buck naked after a underage girl grabbing her by the leg and then dragging her as she's naked as well back into his hotel room?

Ben: 1:26:36

No, I have not seen this, and nor do I want to, considering it sounds like

Gene: 1:26:41

do you want the link?

Ben: 1:26:42

No, I don't, considering it sounds like it could be its own charge for looking at that.

Gene: 1:26:47

Totally. You know, it's it's absolutely an underaged child that he's doing this with. So, you know, this is beyond just sex with a minor. This is like borderline kidnapping.

Ben: 1:26:58

You've seen that you've seen that meme, right?

Gene: 1:27:01

which one?

Ben: 1:27:02

Hey Hunter, do you know how your sister lost her virginity? Dad, please don't. Exactly.

Gene: 1:27:10

Yeah, I was gonna say, in the shower? That sounds like the way it is.

Ben: 1:27:14

Here's the thing. You got to look at the Bidens and you got to think they are just. At the very least, a screwed up family. We all have screwed up

Gene: 1:27:23

oh yeah, you can want Hunter to go to jail but still feel sorry for how the guy grew up.

Ben: 1:27:28

Yeah I'm definitely sorry for Ashley, at the very least. What I would say, though, is, you know, again, I don't think the gun charge should stand. I think that if Biden pardons his son for it it'll be a good thing and a good day

Gene: 1:27:43

already said he wouldn't.

Ben: 1:27:45

eh, yeah we'll see. So, I mean, if he doesn't, then he just proves himself a horrible human

Gene: 1:27:52

I think he's done that previously, so that's my expectation is he does nothing. This is this is one of these parents kind of like right out of Game of Thrones. Who is willing to sacrifice their child for their own benefit

Ben: 1:28:06

What would be great is if Trump would come out

Gene: 1:28:08

and pardon

Ben: 1:28:09

pardon Hunter,

Gene: 1:28:11

I agree. I agree. Shit like that, Trump definitely has an opportunity to do. You know, essentially pardon somebody for You know, this is, I've always said this would be a brilliant move for the Biden team, but they're too stupid to know it, is something that would make Biden It look like actually much better than the way he looks right now, is it let this whole Trump thing go until Trump is sentenced and then issue a pardon saying, we can't have former presidents going to prison.

Ben: 1:28:50

Yeah,

Gene: 1:28:51

That would make him look

Ben: 1:28:52

said this previously, and the problem is, the New York charge, for example, is a state charge, so he can't pardon him.

Gene: 1:29:01

He can't do it cleanly like that. But if

Ben: 1:29:05

can't do it.

Gene: 1:29:06

No,

Ben: 1:29:07

pardon him. He does not have the pardon power over a

Gene: 1:29:09

that's not true.

Ben: 1:29:11

It is true.

Gene: 1:29:12

The case to a federal court. They can have a mistrial for the last one,

Ben: 1:29:17

yeah,

Gene: 1:29:17

have a petition to transition it, have the judges agree. It gets transitioned to a federal court. It could happen.

Ben: 1:29:24

yeah, except they denied that Trump. Legal teams request

Gene: 1:29:28

Yeah, they did. But when this thing goes as a mistrial or, you know, on appeal, the, I think that they could

Ben: 1:29:36

no on appeal. It won't, if he, if Trump wins the appeal then he wins and they can't do double jeopardy. If Trump loses, then the federal government does not have the right to then take over the case on appeal and move it to a federal court.

Gene: 1:29:53

I don't know that they can't, I think you can move it to a federal court if there's sufficient rationale for it at any time. It's just, it's not a guaranteed thing. Like you can't just say, I want this in federal court and it happens. Like you have to get the buy in from the judge to agree.

Ben: 1:30:10

There has to be actual precedent. And I'm telling you right now, unless there is a, unless this, you know, stuff about the jurors leaking. Information comes out as a mistrial or something like that. There, there's no way for the federal government to take it over at this point, is my understanding. But I have lawyer friends I can ask.

Gene: 1:30:33

Yeah. We all have lawyer friends. I, I don't know. I mean, clearly they wanted to make sure that this thing got to a point where it was beyond any argument that Trump is a convicted felon now that they've achieved that, I think they have a little more. It

Ben: 1:30:54

I, you know, I don't think it matters though, at all.

Gene: 1:30:58

doesn't, but I think that was their goal, right? It was like, do whatever it takes, screw whatever you need to, bribe whoever you need to make sure that there's a conviction. Because they just want to, I think this was the crux of their campaign from now until election is, you can't be serious that you're actually going to vote for a felon. What does this country come to when you're, you know, When you've got felons running for president they're gonna try and use that type of argument.

Ben: 1:31:34

Yeah, I don't know, man. What we've come to is a banana republic where people are being charged for things that are just insane to be charged

Gene: 1:31:43

Yeah, I totally agree. It's The commentary about the United States from a variety of different YouTubers that I watch in Europe, in Russia, in other countries, That are normally like gaming channels, right? They're not political channels. The little bits here and there that you pick up about the U. S. is everybody scratching their head and going What the fuck is going on with the U. S.? This is, this feels a lot more like it's Central America, not like the U. S. or Africa. It's crazy stuff.

Ben: 1:32:17

I think we've just gotten to the point of a ludicrous nature in our politics where CNN is admitting that, hey if his last name wasn't Trump you know, wouldn't be being prosecuted, but yet here we

Gene: 1:32:32

Yeah, so, I don't know,

Ben: 1:32:35

are you ready for the debate Thursday night?

Gene: 1:32:37

I mean, I guess I haven't really paid attention to it too much because mostly I think I'm just going to enjoy watching the clips that everybody else is going to make.

Ben: 1:32:46

I'm going to watch it.

Gene: 1:32:46

You know, watch the whole thing.

Ben: 1:32:48

yeah, I want to

Gene: 1:32:49

It's too depressing, I don't want to go through that.

Ben: 1:32:52

whatever they're going to hop him up on.

Gene: 1:32:54

Oh yeah fetal blood. Yeah, he's gonna I suspect he's gonna be a lot more lucid and a lot more peppy during the debate than his normal appearance.

Ben: 1:33:03

You know, it'll

Gene: 1:33:05

had better not eat or drink anything that day that anybody provides to him that wasn't already sitting in his shirt. Cause I wouldn't trust anybody, including people around him to not give him something to make him slow down.

Ben: 1:33:21

well, or, you know, A lot of the rumors around why Trump likes McDonald's and everything else is because he can go randomly somewhere that's. Pre-prepared. So

Gene: 1:33:33

And he shares that with Bill Clinton. I get that guy also really liked eating. I

Ben: 1:33:41

why is that,

Gene: 1:33:42

don't know, but there's it was a very common thing when he was president that You would see a video of and today Bill Clinton was spotted with his water pool, stopping at a McDonald's. That was a fairly common thing. Bill enjoyed eating at McDonald's.

Ben: 1:33:57

Better Or he was just worried about Hillary? Who knows?

Gene: 1:34:00

In fact, there was even a Saturday Night Live video that was made about him stopping at a McDonald's where they took a funny path. Back when Saturday Night Live used to be funny. They had him, you know, his old motorcade, pull into a McDonald's and he comes in and he's all, Hey how you doing there? You know, he's the Bill Clinton voice, very kind of jovial. And then it's oh what are you eating there right now? Is that a Big Mac? Yeah. You mind if I have a bite of that? Then you see him basically walking through the McDonald's, eating a bite out of every person's sandwich. Or eating fries from multiple people.

Ben: 1:34:34

Have I ever told you the story about when I met Bill Clinton?

Gene: 1:34:38

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:34:39

Yeah I gotta say, I believe that man could walk into a McDonald's and anyone to give him whatever he wanted. He's that ous.

Gene: 1:34:46

Yeah. No, it's You have to give him preps for certain things and I think charisma is definitely his biggest asset. If he's a D& D character, charisma is capped out, man.

Ben: 1:34:58

Oh all I can tell you is I've never been a fan of Bill Clinton in my life from a political standpoint, but man shakes your hand and you're the only person in the room.

Gene: 1:35:08

And you're not even gay.

Ben: 1:35:09

Nope. I have a long confirmed streak of heterosexuality. Thank you very much. Yes.

Gene: 1:35:15

You shook Bill's head, Clinton's head, all you saw was big, Bill's big, beautiful eyes just looking at you.

Ben: 1:35:23

huh. Sure, that's the way you want to phrase it.

Gene: 1:35:25

It sounds like that what you were saying, but no, I get it. I agree. I got pulled away from my opportunity to be next to Bill Clinton because fucking Secret Service pushed me out of the way. So never got to meet the guy, but I was about six feet away.

Ben: 1:35:41

This was, you know, at a student government meet and greet

Gene: 1:35:45

Yeah, this was at a restaurant.

Ben: 1:35:46

McDonald's?

Gene: 1:35:48

Yeah, right. He ate half my burger and he didn't even say anything. God damn it. No, it was a, is a fancy restaurant in Minneapolis when he was coming in for a visit there. But anyway are we wrapped up? I feel like we've covered everything that I wanted to say. Anything else you want to bring up?

Ben: 1:36:05

no, man, I think we're good. It's gonna be a short week, and we're gonna turn around another episode on Time Sunday.

Gene: 1:36:12

Oh, you sent me a video just to last item

Ben: 1:36:14

Oh yeah. Right before it started.

Gene: 1:36:16

yeah, right before it started. I said, should I watch this before we go on? And I watched it's very short. And it's basically a black dude sitting on his porch, underneath, on the phone, underneath his porch. It's a three season porch, you know, it's basically, he's got a roof over him of the house itself. It's definitely, you have to cross the entry point, basically, to get on the porch. You have to go up some stairs and then walk into it. And a video of cops coming up to him, you know. With a gun drawn or a gun drawn almost immediately as the cop walks up to the porch And I couldn't tell what the guy is saying, but he's sitting in a chair He's literally doing nothing and the cop starts shooting in him from five feet away and continues shooting until the guy's dead

Ben: 1:37:11

So first of all, he was armed and he did lift the gun in the officer's direction after the officer told him to raise his hands and he was in the process of raising his hands

Gene: 1:37:21

dude's sitting on his porch holding a gun basically.

Ben: 1:37:25

So he had been accused of waving the gun at people and threatening passersby.

Gene: 1:37:33

If he was sitting on the porch with a gun, I got to say that cop is an idiot for walking onto the porch because he likely should have been shot.

Ben: 1:37:42

Yeah, there was an Associated News article I sent you with that.

Gene: 1:37:45

Okay, I didn't see that. But the cop basically, he's

Ben: 1:37:48

Oh, if he wanted to kill the officer when he walked up, he could've. But it's not just one officer, it's two. There's one that's off the porch that lit him up as well, and they just emptied mags into this man.

Gene: 1:38:00

yeah that's the way they're taught.

Ben: 1:38:02

Yeah, but there was just no, the guy wasn't like, stay off the porch. Hey man, can you put your gun down and come talk to us? Like there, there's lots of things to do.

Gene: 1:38:13

you do that from your cop car that you're sitting in on the speakers that say, place your gun down on the floor. And turn around with your hands up to your back towards us. That's the first command that should be issued at that point, because if you know he's armed, if you don't know he's armed, you'd walk up those damn stairs on the porch with a hell of a lot more caution, because you don't know if the guy's armed. And, when you notice that he's armed, you don't keep walking towards him while pulling your gun out and start shooting without saying anything. Because I didn't see the cop say anything.

Ben: 1:38:51

he said, raise your hands.

Gene: 1:38:53

He unloaded.

Ben: 1:38:54

I'd have to go back and watch it, but if you click on the news article they were responding to him allegedly basically brandishing a weapon,

Gene: 1:39:05

that's the way they respond to a somebody brandishing a weapon, those cops are going to get killed before too long because that was just totally negligent behavior that I guess the one cop that didn't go up the porch was behaving much better. That's what the second cop should have been doing. He should have been a lot more cautious. If he thought there was actually somebody with a gun, you want to start communicating with them to find out their intentions and to get them. To lay the weapon down and then turn their back towards you. What kind of idiot police training does he have that's not what he starts off with is putting a a lawful command to this guy to turn away from him. You don't approach somebody with a gun head on. That's it. You're asking to get shot. yeah, it looks like more like something out of a Hollywood movie. And then while watching that movie, I'd be shaking my head going, yeah, but cops don't actually act that way. Apparently they do.

Ben: 1:40:01

It looks like that cop had no intention of doing anything except what he did.

Gene: 1:40:06

Yeah. And that's the other potentially if that cop was acting as an enforcer. And he was just there to get close enough to take this guy out. That's kind of what he looked like. I mean, no normal person who isn't attempting to kill somebody would take the risk this cop was taking.

Ben: 1:40:29

you think someone has a weapon and has been brandishing it and threatening people, which is the Yeah, I certainly wouldn't just walk up to him like that. And when I saw, if I did, let's say I had the balls of steel that this cop apparently had, and I walk up to him and he doesn't just raise and point the gun at him or anything else, He's got it in his hand. He's not pointing it directly at the officer or anything that I saw in that video. Now we, this is a short clip off of the guy's ring camera. I'd like to see body camera footage. I'd like to

Gene: 1:41:00

Oh, there's probably no body cam footage. Probably get lost.

Ben: 1:41:03

Yeah. But anyway, even if the guy had a gun and I have the balls to walk up to him wearing the vest I have on and everything else, I would say, Hey man, Let's put down that gun. I'll put the, I'll holster mine. If you'll put yours down, let's

Gene: 1:41:17

Yeah, meanwhile, your partner's got his gun trained on him the whole time. Yeah.

Ben: 1:41:22

But, you know, to come to walk up. No. In fact, the way he walked up and from my perspective said, you know, put your hands up. The guy moves his hand with the gun in it. He can't just drop the gun because it's sitting in his lap.

Gene: 1:41:36

that while we're talking about here. And what, let's see So the video is about Brandon Qualls, Q U A L S If anybody wants to just look that up on YouTube, you'll probably find the video. Brandon Qualls. Lerner Lamar Brandon Qualls. L E M A R Brandon Qualls. So yeah, the cop,

Ben: 1:41:57

And this happened in Indianapolis, by the way.

Gene: 1:42:00

That is kind of a murder capital there. He had a continuous motion of the same rough speed of him walking down the lawn towards the stairs, same speed up the stairs, same speed to within three feet of this guy. The only thing that changed was as soon as he stepped in the first step of the stairs, he reached and pulled out his own weapon. Pulled out a service pistol and then started aiming at the guy and very quickly proceeded to Start pulling the trigger.

Ben: 1:42:33

Yeah, so apparently the article I sent you has some body cam footage on it as well. So, we'll have to see, but regardless,

Gene: 1:42:43

is pretty damn clear. I have to say this one, the newer rings,

Ben: 1:42:46

yeah, what I would say is, even if he is brandishing, even if he was guilty as sin of everything they said, hell, even if he pointed the gun at the officer, the way they Unload on him and kill him, to me, is inexcusable. But again, you have to remember, cops are not there for your safety.

Gene: 1:43:07

no, they're absolutely not. This cop was behaving absolutely 180 degrees off from the acorn cop. I mean, the end result is they both shot at something, but the acorn cop as soon as he thought that there was a gunshot from the acorn bounds did a roll he's laid himself out flat on the ground. Got his service weapon and started unloading into his own vehicle while at the same time yelling on the To his partner. I've been shot. I've been shopped this guy Walks a consistent speed pulls out a gun while he's walking towards this gunman with no cover He's not trying to protect himself whatsoever. And then Immediately after pulling the gun out probably with one second delay He starts squeezing the trigger

Ben: 1:44:00

one handed.

Gene: 1:44:01

one

Ben: 1:44:01

fact, he switches hands.

Gene: 1:44:03

and continuing

Ben: 1:44:04

He walks up with it in his left hand and switches it to his right. There are two comments on the Twitter post that I sent you that I think are pretty interesting. One's from the Military Arms Channel. That was

Gene: 1:44:16

did not, he didn't fire with his left hand, though. He

Ben: 1:44:18

No, he switched hands, but he walked up with his gun already drawn in his left hand. That was about the most nonchalant shooting I've ever seen by a cop. And then here's another comment. This looks really bad under our current rules. This officer is probably going to be exonerated, but I think this is the, about the most clear video I've seen about the rules needing to be changed. He knew he wasn't at any risk. That's why he walked up the way he did. I agree. He wasn't.

Gene: 1:44:46

He should have been shot.

Ben: 1:44:48

Yeah,

Gene: 1:44:48

I mean, this guy sitting on his porch with a gun is, let's face it, not the brightest thing to do.

Ben: 1:44:56

I sit on my porch with a gun all the time.

Gene: 1:44:59

Guess, when I watch a video of your house, With the cop. I'll be doing the podcast solo at that

Ben: 1:45:05

It's my back porch, and usually it's concealed, but you know, hey.

Gene: 1:45:09

this guy's front porch. But still, the cop, that's what amazes me is the cop is moving at a not a very brisk pace, like you said, just kind of a casual walking pace, while holding a gun, switches hands just before he gets to the stairs, or just as he goes up the stairs, and then literally one second after switching hands, he's squeezing the trigger.

Ben: 1:45:32

Oh yeah, and holding it like a gangster.

Gene: 1:45:35

his first, he kind of is, yeah, you're right, his first shot is, I would estimate is from about 10 feet away to 10 to 11 feet. And his final shot is from two feet away.

Ben: 1:45:49

Yeah,

Gene: 1:45:49

Who

Ben: 1:45:50

unloads the magazine.

Gene: 1:45:52

That is such a gangster move to be walking forward towards the guy you're shooting. You look at 95 percent of cop shooting videos. The cops are hiding behind something. This is not normal cop behavior to, this guy is acting like he's a fucking terminator.

Ben: 1:46:11

Again, he should have given him a chance to put the gun down, and he didn't. He put himself in a position where he would have a justifiable reason to just pull the trigger.

Gene: 1:46:24

Yeah. This is not the worst cop shooting video The one I saw is of a guy who had his hands in handcuffs and then got gunned down

Ben: 1:46:32

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 1:46:34

Which happened I think last month. That was a chick cop, which is very typical

Ben: 1:46:40

Oh, that was a tasing, but

Gene: 1:46:42

No, there was a shooting like that too. And the guy's saying, I mean, the guy is why you got that gun on my back? Why you got, and then you hear pop, and then you hear the cop you know, shooting. Huh. I think they are all trained to unload the magazine. I think that is normal part of police training these days.

Ben: 1:47:00

We have to get rid of qualified immunity. I would say that the presumption needs to be that you do not have qualified immunity. If there are some cases where qualified immunity is invoked, it should be the exception, not the rule.

Gene: 1:47:15

I agree. I think qualified immunity shouldn't be completely, Disappeared, but it should be something that is essentially due to special circumstances. Right? So if you have an instance where the, like from a police shooting where the cops and the bad guys are shooting at each other, and then a stray bullet from a cop goes through the window and kill somebody like, okay, that maybe should have qualified immunity, but because that wasn't the intent. But something like this, I don't see how this could possibly have qualified immunity.

Ben: 1:47:55

Oh, but it will.

Gene: 1:47:56

I know it will. I know it will. I know it but isn't that ironic though? You have a here's the thing. We say that, but this could just as easily turn into another was gonna say Rodney King, but it's the other

Ben: 1:48:09

You mean George Floyd?

Gene: 1:48:10

George Floyd. This could totally turn into another George Floyd type incident. It all depends on how they spin it.

Ben: 1:48:15

I think that the, this would be actually more reasonable to turn into that sort of incident than the actual George Floyd incident.

Gene: 1:48:22

Yeah. I mean, it's you could say the guy had a gun. So what? So what the guy had a gun? What did you do to de escalate the situation? What did you do to keep yourself out of harm's way? And what was happening that you had to interrupt with shooting the suspect immediately? What was he in the middle of doing? Was he aiming at a child and so you had no choice but to shoot him immediately? What was

Ben: 1:48:49

on his porch.

Gene: 1:48:50

That's what it looked like to me. It didn't look like anybody other than the cop that's on the porch was in any danger. And we don't know what kind of piece of shit the black dude is. He could be a total piece of shit for all we know. Could be a pedophile.

Ben: 1:49:05

But again, it does not just I am tired of the amount of. Police shootings that we have where the police are acting as judge, jury, and executioner. The fact of the matter is police should have a duty to do everything they can to bring someone to justice. And every shooting should be investigated and they should not have a presumption of qualified immunity.

Gene: 1:49:32

To end on this note, which tied into the what you just said, the brand new update for Starfield just introduced a new paid mission. Paid meaning you have to spend real money to be able to get it on the mod store. But as part of that new mission of doing bounties, they've added bringing them in alive bounties versus what the game has had previously. And what most games have is when there's a bounty on somebody, it's always dead or alive. So essentially it's always dead. So they've actually added a mechanic now to be able to bring in people who are wanted alive. I have to get that in for the bingo card to have the video game talk in there.

Ben: 1:50:20

I did send Darren a meme that I thought was funny that was bingo card related. It's about Taylor Swift writing songs for girls that don't hock to her.

Gene: 1:50:31

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ben: 1:50:33

So, just to tie it all together at

Gene: 1:50:35

and you saw, I'm sure, the little clips that have been popping up on X of of these massive football fields of mostly girls, but also some boys. Listening to Taylor Swift and singing her lyrics about, you know, killing the patriarchy.

Ben: 1:50:54

Good luck. Good luck to him.

Gene: 1:50:57

I mean, it's, ah, this country is so fucked, man.

Ben: 1:51:01

Oh, yeah. It's not going well, Gene, but you know, hey, we can, if it all burns down, we'll just have to be the phoenix and rise from the ashes.

Gene: 1:51:13

Oh, man, I wish I could play that song. I wish it wasn't copyrighted right now.

Ben: 1:51:18

Which song?

Gene: 1:51:20

About burning it all down and rising. You know the one I'm talking about.

Ben: 1:51:25

Not

Gene: 1:51:25

I've played it plenty of times. I'll send you another link to it. Alright, guys, we're gonna wrap it up. We're gonna just send music back and forth to each other now. Back like in the old Napster days.

Ben: 1:51:35

Yeah. But via YouTube and legal links.

Gene: 1:51:38

Well, naturally, I don't break the law. Until next time.