Embark on a journey of reflection and insight as we welcome MB back to the fold for an engaging discussion on the world's most pressing humanitarian crises. From the diverse streets of Seattle and Boise to the global stage of international politics, MB's sharp perspective shines a light on the stark realities and the human stories behind today's headlines. We grapple with the confluence of political decisions and their humanitarian consequences, spanning continents and ideologies in a candid exploration that promises to challenge and inspire.
Navigating through the intricacies of global conflicts, we dissect the historical roots and ongoing strife in regions like Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine. Our candid conversation doesn't shy away from critiquing our own backyard, as we confront U.S. domestic challenges, like homelessness and the immigration paradox. We're cracking open the complexities of these social issues, juxtaposing them against the backdrop of our nation's immigrant origins and the current political climate that whispers of autocratic leanings.
As we wind down our dialogue, we underscore the undeniable power of individual agency in effecting change. We share personal stories of volunteerism and community engagement, emphasizing the pivotal role local elections play in shaping our society. The dialogue evolves into a reflection on the generational shifts in activism and the pursuit of balance between tradition and modernity. By the episode's close, you'll find yourself contemplating your own potential for impact in a changing world, and maybe, just maybe, you'll feel that spark of inspiration to make a difference. Join us for this invigorating exchange that touches the heart and stirs the mind.
Embark on a journey of reflection and insight as we welcome MB back to the fold for an engaging discussion on the world's most pressing humanitarian crises. From the diverse streets of Seattle and Boise to the global stage of international politics, MB's sharp perspective shines a light on the stark realities and the human stories behind today's headlines. We grapple with the confluence of political decisions and their humanitarian consequences, spanning continents and ideologies in a candid exploration that promises to challenge and inspire.
Navigating through the intricacies of global conflicts, we dissect the historical roots and ongoing strife in regions like Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine. Our candid conversation doesn't shy away from critiquing our own backyard, as we confront U.S. domestic challenges, like homelessness and the immigration paradox. We're cracking open the complexities of these social issues, juxtaposing them against the backdrop of our nation's immigrant origins and the current political climate that whispers of autocratic leanings.
As we wind down our dialogue, we underscore the undeniable power of individual agency in effecting change. We share personal stories of volunteerism and community engagement, emphasizing the pivotal role local elections play in shaping our society. The dialogue evolves into a reflection on the generational shifts in activism and the pursuit of balance between tradition and modernity. By the episode's close, you'll find yourself contemplating your own potential for impact in a changing world, and maybe, just maybe, you'll feel that spark of inspiration to make a difference. Join us for this invigorating exchange that touches the heart and stirs the mind.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Hey, all you people out there, this is Michelle and this is Julie. Hi, michelle. Hey, I still feel like I'm in New Year mode. I want to say like Happy New Year. I know I here we are in 2024.
Speaker 2:I'm in New.
Speaker 1:Year mode. I'm in New Year mode. I'm in New Year mode Like Happy New Year. Here we are in 2024.
Speaker 2:I said it a few days ago and I was like, okay, it's too late, too late in the season to already start.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey, there she's sitting over there, kind of quiet. But some of you might remember our friend MB, who was here a few months back and did a really cool episode on elder abuse, and she's visiting Seattle area today. Hi, MB, Happy New Year. Girls, See to us, it's fine right, yeah, happy New Year's.
Speaker 3:Totally fine, it's so good to be here, and I brought all the cold weather with me. Oh, my gosh, I didn't bring the snow though.
Speaker 1:She did.
Speaker 2:All the snow is at home. Her husband's at home blowing off the driveway and doing all this stuff and sending her video.
Speaker 1:I would say your visit away from home was pretty good timing on your part it was.
Speaker 3:But, like I said, I brought the team temperatures with me. I just left the snow at home of the full 10 inches from last night Full 10 inches.
Speaker 1:Don't always want to leave a full 10 inches at home, do you?
Speaker 2:You never want to leave that Well, I gotta tell you. Zoe messaged me this morning and she's like did her flight get delayed, did it get canceled? And I said no, it's on time and she sent me all these crying emojis.
Speaker 3:Oh, my baby girl. Oh my gosh, my baby girl is about ready to have a birthday. I know, can you believe we have? 27-year-olds that age.
Speaker 2:I know, well, she already does, yeah, well, hey, we thought this was a wonderful opportunity, since MB is here and she has some very, very insightful things to share her opinions, her perspective, and we value that tremendously. But we wanted to get her voice on here and we thought it might be a really good opportunity for us to have our conversation about some of the humanitarian crises that are going on in the world today and, you know, maybe just shed a light on some different perspectives that might be out there.
Speaker 1:We always have really great conversations.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:When MB is visiting, we just start sitting on the couch and all of a sudden it turns into a million different things and we're like, oh, that'd be great to talk about on the podcast. So we decided let's do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just give it a try, because there's just so much going into this new year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, and where I live you don't see the interstate shut down with protesters, and when I saw that, it just sparked out what is going on here. And then here comes my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, again. Okay, she lives in Boise, Idaho. There's not a whole hell of a lot that goes on in Boise. That's similar to Seattle. Oh, it's starting to yeah.
Speaker 3:With all of the transplants coming. It's starting to, but we don't have those kinds of public issues that are protested. We have some small protests here and there, usually around the Capitol, but we don't see it where it shuts down the freeway.
Speaker 1:It's probably more community conversations that come together in some forum maybe.
Speaker 3:No, I think more politically Okay yeah.
Speaker 2:Like the abortion ban, like Roe v.
Speaker 3:Wade. Oh my gosh, I know Well.
Speaker 2:Idaho is like insane, Like they're like Texas you know so and of course MB's mind is in a very different place. So it's just kind of interesting to hear her perspective. And she lives in a very, very conservative area and we live in a pretty progressive area, but I almost say it's like sometimes rather socialist.
Speaker 1:You said progressive, right, progressive. I heard regressive. Oh no, no, progressive, progressive.
Speaker 2:I mean this side of the mountains is, and then you get to the other side of the mountains and it's kind of a different story.
Speaker 3:Well, they're small communities. There's no real metropolitan areas, I mean even Boise proper. What is it? 400,000? I mean it's growing. We're seeing more multifamily units being built in mass because we have so many people coming from far more progressive areas or states.
Speaker 3:The word they like to use there is libtard states. Yeah, so they're fleeing their tax base and all that kind of stuff and their idea of and everybody that comes says I am extremely conservative in my views. Their idea of conservative is far more liberal than people who have been born and raised in our state.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And a perfect example of that is the open carry law in Boise or in Idaho. So people that have been there, you'd never know that they're carrying. They all know how to shoot. But when you go to the grocery store and you see Mr California dressed in his holster at the grocery store, it's pretty much a.
Speaker 2:But it's open carry so he can do it.
Speaker 3:He can do it, yeah, but.
Speaker 2:I mean no shade to those California people. None, none whatsoever. I don't know. We dealt with the same thing in Washington, as you know several years back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the mass exodus happening from some specific areas to others for various reasons. A lot of it is related to taxes, of course, and just affordability and things like that. But we do have in our state and we're going to talk a little bit about. When we say the humanitarian crises, it's like we're not only seeing these things happen in our United States. We're seeing them all over the world and you can see them on the news and just some of the horrific things that are happening in other parts of the world and you can throw money, donations, things at it, because really, what else are you going to do? You can't really go over there and help in any way.
Speaker 2:And I think we're also viewed as Americans as being much softer to some of these other countries, because the way we approach things is more, I don't know, human, but that's not to say that that's always been that way. I mean, obviously we know the history of our United States and how it started, and we'll get into a little bit of that with the whole Israel and Palestinian conflict. I think what we really want to try to make sure we're not staying away from, but we're not totally focused on, is the political aspects of some of the things that are happening out there, but really how it's impacting our world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and to that point, what I would say is I'm not equipped to handle the political or even speak to the political, and I don't think anybody knows what's going on behind the scenes. Sure, michelle might.
Speaker 1:Well, no, that's how this all came up in deciding that we wanted to talk about this Cause, even to this point, just even trying to, you know, have a conversation about some of the guns and Roe v Wade, all those things. It's always political. It always is political. We've been so far into what we've talked about. We're talking conservative and liberal and all of these things and the whole idea is what's the humanitarian?
Speaker 1:aspect about some of these, which is what we're going to do our best to kind of bring to light it's not always left, right, conservative, liberal what is the humanitarian aspect around some of these and what can we do to shed light on that, so that maybe just be a little more thoughtful, mindful, because these are heated topics that come up in the workplace, in social circles, all of those things.
Speaker 1:So maybe just being able to be step back, pause and have a little bit more of a heartfelt humanitarian perspective and not always jump in to the political aspect of these things.
Speaker 3:Beautifully stated.
Speaker 2:My only caveat to that would be that I think it's important to understand what's happening and how. Yes, the impact is of a humanitarian nature, and obviously there's other issues, not just humanitarian issues, but other issues involving our food sources and oil and all this other crap. All of those things do end up being political topics, and everything surrounding the humanitarian issues out there is all directly related, of course.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying it's like I have done a little bit of research on my own, just because I've been very curious about some of the issues, like for example in the Middle East, that are taking place, because I don't really get it. I mean, I didn't really understand and I know that there's holy wars and there's all this stuff that's going on and has been going on for centuries. But in particular, if we're kind of reverting to the, let's talk for a moment about the and we're going to say war, we're not going to say conflict, because it's a war right now In Israel and Palestine I started looking back and going, okay, how did this even start? And I'm going to do very high level here, I'm not going to get into all these dates and stuff.
Speaker 2:But you know, in the early 1900s and going into post-World War II, there were a lot of displaced Jews out there because of the horrific things that had been taking place and they were ostracized and they were treated terribly and theirs is a race that people in Europe and going into, like World War II et cetera, were trying to exterminate. So, needless to say, there had to be some sort of neutral ground, right. So I don't recall who gave them the land, but I know we were involved from the United States perspective. But there was land that's a part of what used to be all Palestine that then became Israel. And if you look at these maps over the course of time, from the beginning of the 1900s to today, you'll see that the Palestinian land has now become Israel land. I mean, a lot of it started out that way, with a smaller portion, and has grown exponentially over the years and the decades.
Speaker 2:To be where now the Palestinian people are? On the Gaza Strip in a very narrow, long and narrow strip of land with a huge population of millions of people. So there's a tremendous amount of poverty, there's a tremendous amount of just icky stuff happening right there and also in Israel. So they fight. There's these fights that have been going back and forth and the effect on human life and the effect on just the atrocities and how they have impacted human beings is just absolutely heartbreaking and just any human being you know heartbreaking, it's devastating and the horror some of these people over the last just we'll just talk about since October.
Speaker 2:You know how much of that has taken place just in this very short period of time. And so when you look at the Gaza Strip and you look at the Palestinian people, I've been kind of honestly, you guys kind of stepping back going. What has happened to the Palestinian people can kind of be parallel to what happened in the United States when we had, you know, native Americans that were moved off of their land into smaller portions of land by settlers and where their rights were taken away and disease was brought into that brought to them and you know they have now been placed in sections in different states that are quote reservations or their particular land, when in reality all of it was. So that's the same thing. Obviously different countries, but same thing that's happening here. But if you look at the amount of land that has gone to the Israeli people not saying that the Israeli people have done anything wrong in this regard, but the amount of land there and then the amount of land that has gone towards Palestinians who now are in a position where their government is run by terrorists, essentially, and we've got Netanyahu running the other side.
Speaker 2:Going back to the conflict that has been going on for a long time, there was, just to bring everybody up to speed a really horrific bombing and invasion that took place in October of this last year that Palestinians, hamas in particular it's just Hamas their government, their whatever went in and just butchered all of these people and it was all done very suddenly. So you can kind of liken that to 9 11,. You know, and how we were. It came out of nowhere, they weren't expecting it. It was awful, they're just the. What they did to people was terrible. It was just. There's no excuse for anything they did. So now you see Israel responding in kind and they see red. And it reminds me of after 9 11, our country saw red and it was like all of the emotion that had gone into the decisions that were being made about how we were going to retaliate against this invisible enemy, because nobody knew exactly where this enemy was Not on a radar, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so now we've got Israel doing the same thing, because they're trying to eliminate Hamas and all of these people have been caught in the crossfire, and I mean grandmas and babies and you know all these things. Like Israel turning off the water, turning off the power, turning all these things off, which the hospitals but I kind of understand, I understand the logic to some degree, taking all of the human stuff out of it. They're trying to eliminate resources for Hamas. But the reality is, Hamas has this extensive underground system and all of these things. There's no way they're going to be able to eliminate them, so they just are going to basically carpet bomb, bomb everything, and so that's one of the things that we were kind of referring to before.
Speaker 2:And so now let's kind of go to a different part of the world and talk about what's happening with Ukraine and, just dialing back for a second, it's like Russia used to have all of these other states that were a part of their regime, their government, and those broke off years ago and became their own. Some of them went into the United Nations, most of them didn't I don't think all of them did, but in particular Ukraine has not. So because they're not a part of the United Nations. We as a United States are not technically allowed to assist them, certainly not with boots on the ground, but we've been providing resources to them. And the bigger picture here, people, is if we don't do that and Ukraine falls, then what happens next? Every other, those states, those are all going to go next, and then we're going to start dealing with Poland, who's a part of the United Nations, and some of these others, and boy does this look a lot like what happened back in the 40s 30s and 40s.
Speaker 3:And did we not learn anything? Yeah, did we not learn anything? To all of this, the United States is not the world's police. We're not. Yet We've played that role over and over and over. Because we're a superpower or we're a perceived superpower.
Speaker 1:We're not even saved to the world after World War Two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but look at how long we waited to do that and all the shit that happened, the six million Jews that died. We just sat by and didn't do shit. Now you got to remember back then there was no social media. There was communication by paper, there was phone and stuff, but the amount of information that was being shared was very prolonged in terms of how it got to people. So I'm going to take that and go okay. Well, that could be why part of it was that we didn't get invested or involved, but we just flat out didn't get invested or involved until it hit us at Pearl Harbor with the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. So then we got in, then we were all in and there were war, portions of that war happening, all these different fronts, but that's what it took for us to get involved. Now I don't know the logic behind that.
Speaker 3:I don't either, and to that point though, that's the superpower. That's how we became elevated into that position. So we are not the world's police, yet we act in that role. Look at 9-11. Vietnam and North Korea. Currently we're patrolling over there. We're patrolling off of Saudi Arabian Peninsula. We're all this stuff at the same time. Now let's talk about being back at home. We're not taking care of our own people.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:How many in this cold? Tell me how many people are out in this cold that don't have homes, that are living in a tent, and you're saying tent camps pop up all over the place because of the immigration crisis, and I put a crisis around that with air quotes.
Speaker 3:I understand that those southern borders feel it tremendously and don't want that responsibility and we have sanctuary cities in 23 states I believe 23 that are accepting federal money for these immigrants that are coming. Where are the plans for what they were doing with that money to be ready for this?
Speaker 2:influx. Or you have to ask yourself though is it enough money? I mean, when you look at the influx of people.
Speaker 1:where's the plan? Yeah, Like, and what does that look like?
Speaker 3:And at home. That is a huge conversation. Yet there are a lot of people who depend on those immigrants for their labor. That's correct.
Speaker 1:In my state, Right so.
Speaker 3:But I hear people complaining about what they're doing here, how we're going to take care of them, that they're a drag on all of our services. This country was founded on all the people that came from everywhere. That is a part of our identity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, all of us. So when we had Ellis Island, let's say when people were coming through Ellis Island, it was the same kind of thing, but they were coming through more structured, more, I would say, organized.
Speaker 1:Where did your family come?
Speaker 2:from my dad's Irish and Swedish, so they came over and my mom, she came over on a visa from, or was it a visa? She was sponsored to come over here and live from South America.
Speaker 3:What about you? B? Germany, switzerland, ireland.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sweden, yeah I mean we're all from different. I mean there's nobody that's American, that doesn't have something from the bloodline somewhere else there are.
Speaker 3:They're on reservations.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Good point, and we go back to that point. I know, as you were saying that, hence so much controversy now around the Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaker 2:That's just. You know what you said, yeah.
Speaker 1:All of that that surrounds that, and you were talking about a government run by a terrorist and I immediately thought of ours, not terrorist but you know what I mean Well.
Speaker 2:I know, but we may have a terrorist coming back into office and I'm and I'm terror, terrorized.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But to your point we're supposedly a first world country. Yeah, we have a lot of the same problems, with the exception of currently not a dictator, maybe.
Speaker 2:No, he's not a dictator. Maybe he's a little clueless, but he's not. Maybe one coming.
Speaker 3:I don't know, but you know, I put myself in these people's shoes. If I had a baby and I was living where I couldn't get food or shelter, what would I do? I'd be doing what they're doing. Me too. I don't think anybody. And when we start doing the us and them, is when you start disassociating from. They are human beings Right, and I get really upset when I see people taking one side or the other. The US is aligned with Israel and has been for years decades decades.
Speaker 3:That goes back Nixon Kissinger. I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 2:Oh, before we were to.
Speaker 3:Well, I just remember in my lifetime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been that whole area, the Holy, worst that's been centuries old, more than I'm just saying what we know, yeah, what we know today, yeah.
Speaker 3:I get really frustrated. So the highlight that I saw while I was here with the demonstrations on I five here was five hours. Yeah, kkk, seattle police, I can't remember what it's.
Speaker 2:Seattle police, kkk and Israel are all one and the same. Yeah, that's what was being chanted.
Speaker 3:That message is so ill informed. Yeah, and not to take one side or the other, because I have Jewish friends, I have exposure to some Palestinian people that are coming to where we live. That is so ill informed. Now, it may have enough shock value that it gets people out there to protest, but let's step back a little bit and look at the bigger picture. Right, these are women and children and somebody's sons, somebody's husband, somebody.
Speaker 2:They're grandmas, they're moms. Yeah, I see that. So what do you do? That's the whole thing, and me.
Speaker 3:Why aren't we looking at it like that?
Speaker 2:Well, because it's being looked at from a political perspective.
Speaker 3:It's not from a humanitarian.
Speaker 2:It's like humanitarian efforts are kind of like second in line, even like allowing humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip. Yeah, I mean, Hamas wasn't allowing any of that stuff and they didn't really. They don't really give a shit about their people.
Speaker 3:They don't want to be, they raise them to be soldiers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So those, the bulk of people there are, don't know any different.
Speaker 3:No, you cannot fault them for not knowing any different.
Speaker 1:So many facets to all of this because, as I was listening to, you were talking about if you had a baby and you couldn't feed him. You know, and in my mind I'm like there will be those that say, if you can't feed a child, don't have the child.
Speaker 3:Well, too late, the baby's already here, so what do I do?
Speaker 1:I'm just saying, then that brings it a whole other into the women's health issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like you know, maybe she didn't want to have the baby but we had a state where she couldn't make a choice.
Speaker 2:Right, I had to.
Speaker 1:There's just like so many side streets there are, and that's what makes it kind of so complicated.
Speaker 2:Going back to the protesting that you were talking about, I don't know if it is the same in other places to the same degree. I know that just everybody. What she's referring to is there have been these pro-Palestinian protests that were taking place this past week in Seattle and the group and it wasn't a few hundred people I think shut down the freeway the one major freeway, i5, for five hours and were allowed to continue shutting that down for five hours. Now I was talking to my oldest, who's moving to Texas, and he was like there's no way in hell that that would have been allowed in Austin. You know, there's just no way in hell that would have been allowed in Texas. And I'm like, well, he's probably right, it probably wouldn't have been.
Speaker 2:But if the Seattle police here, who happened to be defunded and down like five, six hundred people, were to do what they would do in Texas here, oh my gosh, can you imagine it would be all over the national news if they tear gas them or, you know, arrested them and made them get off the freeway or whatever they, and I think there's something about the fact that they would be treated like or viewed as monsters that they just kind of don't do it. It's not that they are not wanting to do it. I think they're just being told that they can't.
Speaker 3:Now I understand that, but at the same time, now look at the outrage that happened when Abbott put those big buoys across the river that would drown people, and there were a couple of people that were that were drowned, but the federal government made them remove that. There was outrage over that huge buoys. Well, that turned. You could not get under them and you couldn't get over them without them dragging you under. And it was an area of, I believe, the Rio Grande where you were seeing a lot of people crossing because it was more shallow there and not as swift moving. So they put these buoys up. That ran I don't know it wasn't a mile, but put these buoys up and there was outrage and they were forced to remove it from the DOG. Yeah good.
Speaker 2:But it's like, here we have it. Here we have like this black and white border border state that's getting an influx of people who everybody thinks are all from Mexico. I don't think it really matters.
Speaker 3:No, they're Honduras Venezuela. No, honduras Venezuela.
Speaker 2:There's people coming from everywhere that are in desperate situations. So I get all that. Take the humanitarian stuff. Just set it aside for two seconds. Now we've got this one state that's super conservative, really doesn't want to bring anybody else in hell. They wanted to like succeed from the union themselves. How many times Right? And they're just. They just don't want anybody else here. I mean, there's multitudes, thousands of people coming in every day and, on all fairness to that state, where are they going to put all those people Well again?
Speaker 3:There's got to be a plan. There's no plan Right, and that's where I'm going. There are 23 states that are accepting federal aid in the billions I don't know what the total budget is in the billions accepting federal aid for their sanctuary cities. Where was the plan for accepting these people and knowing where to put them? In Seattle, you're seeing these huge encampments. Now I'm not going to minimize that there's not mental health issues in some of those.
Speaker 2:That's a whole nother rabbit hole yeah.
Speaker 1:It's.
Speaker 2:Seattle yeah.
Speaker 3:That is. But where was the plan? In New York City, you're seeing people come unhinged over a landmark hotel, the Roosevelt, being used to house some of these immigrants. Where was the plan? Well, there was the money.
Speaker 2:You guys had the money.
Speaker 3:What was your plan? What were you going to do when they arrived?
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing it's like. I think that the you know there was something that was put in place when 45 was in office and I don't say his name because he, I just don't 45. And that was removed, and so that's why this influx is happening to the same degree. But what was happening before was people were coming, they were being basically arrested, putting these encampments, if you will their children are being separated from them and basically put in these fricking cages and babies and little ones. I'm just like what the fuck? What's wrong with these people? Yeah, why are they thinking that's okay? I'm just beyond myself that that would actually be an option in the United States in this day and age. Thank you.
Speaker 3:You make my point. Yeah, we are a first world country and yet we think there's privilege, way too much privilege, working into some of these decisions about how we treat other human beings. Those encampments, how are they any different than in World War II? They're not.
Speaker 2:They're not just like they took the Japanese and put them in in Capmins and World War II because they were Japanese. You know, it's like everybody's bad because they're Japanese, because they bombed us. I want to know. That's so such bullshit.
Speaker 3:I want to know where these people are that are thinking logically and about the human toll. Where are our leaders?
Speaker 2:Well, they're not leading.
Speaker 3:Well, we have a bunch of people.
Speaker 2:There's a problem so monumental so out there.
Speaker 3:Of course it is.
Speaker 2:That nobody can get their hands around it because they're dealing with things in a more segregated fashion. You've got states handling everything a little bit differently. There's not a federal moratorium, if you will, on how things are going to be handled, because everybody's allowed to handle things their own way.
Speaker 1:Are we where we're at with homelessness? Because so much of the federal money is going to immigration and not to our own people?
Speaker 3:Oh no, I think it's being pocketed. I'm just asking the question.
Speaker 1:I think I was talking to humanitarian, and I'm just thinking of all of our own people on the streets.
Speaker 2:Thank you, We've got speaking about Washington, but there's plenty of states out there that have very similar problems. We have thrown in this state so much money at the homeless issue yet it seems to just move. It's like whack-a-mole you deal with one problem, another one pops up somewhere else. There's even more people. We've gotten this reputation in Seattle. I know people have told me it's called free-attle because you can come here and the climate is pretty reasonable, you can get resources, nobody moves you around. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:F-R-E-E-A-T-T-H-L-E, in case people see you here, free-attle, yeah because there's resources and stuff available here.
Speaker 2:But then you have to go and look at. It's funny because I was having a conversation with my oldest about this and when we were in Austin we had just gone for a visit. It's like it was so clean. There was not people panhandling on the corners. There was none of that stuff. I mean there was a small shelter that was downtown that had people that were coming out of it and stuff. When I was like we drove by them, like oh, I feel more at home. I'm so immune to the things that I see, I'm so desensitized to seeing the people on the street going or on the corner going. Well, I'm thinking to myself it's like he's probably making more money than I do because he's not paying taxes. I mean, they're literally thrown on the corner like from a bus and they take turns.
Speaker 3:We are just beginning to see that in Southern Idaho, just beginning to see people panhandling and they're removed out of more affluent areas immediately. So I can't, did you say, you saw?
Speaker 2:that in Austin.
Speaker 3:I can't even imagine, because that was very there was only one little area.
Speaker 2:There was no panhandling, zero, I mean, I didn't see it anywhere. But there was one area that was near the downtown corridor, where that was where probably the services maybe were for the city. There was like a bridge area there, no tents, nothing like that, but you could tell that there were people that had probably come out of a shelter, because they empty them out in the morning, kind of a thing.
Speaker 3:So I mean Well, kudos to them for having a plan and having a place to put them that is humane, so that they have at least some living situation.
Speaker 2:Well, they, just don't have the same issues because people know that it's not something that's readily accepted or acknowledged there. The same question came up when I was in Mexico with the kids in November, right after Thanksgiving, and of course I'm always wanting to find out all the tea in the States and what's going on there, and I'm so curious about these other cultures and how everybody lives and I feel like sometimes we just take for granted what we have. And I'm talking to this one Uber driver actually. I just asked him. I was like do you guys have like a homeless population here? And he's like no, and I said well, where do people go that don't have a family or don't have something to fall back on? And he said you see the people selling chicklets or they're selling bracelets or whatever.
Speaker 2:They're hustling out there to make money to support their families or multi-generational is also very normal, which again you don't really see that in the United States I mean you see that with other cultures for sure. So that's why you've got elderly that are with their extended families and you don't really see retirement homes and facilities like that probably in other countries, like you do here. They're everywhere here, because it's like Americans just look at things differently.
Speaker 1:I've said before, if someone's hustling to try to make their money, on the corner. I just hold the sign but, they're playing their guitar or they're doing something. I have no problem. I want a couple of bucks at that. Good for them, for at least trying to entertain or they're not just doing nothing, they're actually trying to get a return.
Speaker 2:So well, and I know that the job market is a little bit tenuous right now. I mean we've got, I mean our unemployment rate in the country has gone down actually Way low. Yeah, it's gone significantly lower than it used to be. But I asked myself that same question and be if I was in a situation where, say, I ended up in another state and I was by myself and I had my kids you know, two kids or whatever with me, what would I do? And I think I mean maybe it comes from being more educated or having some exposure to some of these things. But there's always resources, there's always help, there's always kind people everywhere. You just have to know where to find them or look for them.
Speaker 1:So or have advocates that can help you do so I think to your point it's, it's knowing there's a lot of resources out there for different things and I know this from personal experience that I won't get into detail of but sometimes the person just doesn't know what is available or what options they have to be able to overcome addiction, homelessness, to be able to get the resources that are there for them, Because there are a lot of resources but it's just a lot of times having the wherewithal to be able to access some of those things and the pride.
Speaker 2:It's like setting your pride aside and being able to say I need help and you'll see a lot of people won't do that.
Speaker 3:People here, but the people coming across the border are looking for anything, yeah, yeah. They're willing to do whatever.
Speaker 2:I had a family stay in the cottage this last year, remember, and they came from a very war-torn area over and they were I think they were from Iraq or somewhere Anyway. But they fled and they were put in here into the cottage with three little kids, pretty much just had what they had on their back and these plastic bags, whatever you know their stuff and there was a company or a nonprofit that helped them find the housing, that had someone that spoke their language, that was able to coordinate things for them, and that resource would have been pretty amazing to have, you know. But whoever connected them in the first place, bless their heart, because these people were the kindest, sweetest people, so appreciative of everything that they had. And you know, I didn't speak the same language as them. We had to translate on an app a little bit, but it's like you know, I could. It was obvious to me. It's like this is a sweet, good family. Thank God they got out of there.
Speaker 3:Right, I just spoke to somebody last week actually, and, by the way, in Dallas and he somehow found a group I don't know how he came across it where they could help people from Ukraine. Oh yeah, he flew a woman. How he met her was through this organization. He flew a woman and her two children out of Ukraine, living in his home. He is now learning to speak the language. She has gotten a job. He's taught her how to drive and given her one of his vehicles. How kind is?
Speaker 2:that yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it's an exception?
Speaker 2:I would think not the rule right Right, exactly.
Speaker 3:But you know, we're supposedly educated. Education is a tool, a vehicle for us to learn new things. It's not just a vehicle for making more money. Why are we not applying our efforts towards helping other people and providing that vehicle when they're here? Why are we not? It costs money, we know that, but we're accepting money from the government to do the right thing. We are not doing the right thing. Our government, we are so far over our.
Speaker 2:I cannot.
Speaker 3:What's our deficit now? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Trillion.
Speaker 2:Trillion, 38 trillion, trillion, to infinity and beyond, beyond, yeah, which makes me laugh because if you think about it, you guys it's like okay, here's like a rhetorical question, because we all know the answer. It's like why would we, as a government, just keep spending money we don't have? They just keep upping the debt limit? Right, we just keep upending it to company. Okay, yeah, we just came out of a recession or we just came out of the pandemic unprecedented. Nobody knew what was going to happen. That's created a lot of the problems too. I get it. But if you even go back to, like, a housing crash that happened, you know, in the 2008,. We bailed people out, we did all kinds of stuff like that with this money, just keep printing more money and to find out a lot of that stuff was just pocketed.
Speaker 3:It was not used the way it was supposed to be.
Speaker 2:As consumers, as just regular old Americans right, we have the responsibility to live within our means, and so we may have credit cards. What's happening there is the same thing that we don't want to do as people Like, okay, let's just load up all our credit cards to be able to spend what money we don't have, spend outside of our boundaries and outside of what our wages are, and things like that, because we've got the credit cards, I mean we can just do that. I mean, if people had that logical sense or that illogical sense all the time, can you imagine? Because that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 3:Right? And what are the consequences of spending beyond your means? They come and take your car or they turn off your credit card, or they take your house yeah. Yeah, that begs the question what happens when we can't repay our debt?
Speaker 2:And here we are as a country and we owe some other countries that are on the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and we're on the list, the list.
Speaker 3:That's a whole other. Okay, that's another podcast. Yeah, that's a totally other episode. I just heard the list and I immediately thought of that.
Speaker 1:So anyways the list, sorry, where's?
Speaker 2:your mind, girl. Going back to that thought, it's like you know, we're not very responsible. So we're going through inflationary issues which are affecting the of course, in my world the housing market, they're affecting the bond market, they're affecting everything, and it's because we've overspent and you know, there's periods of time when we had to do that. I get it, we did have to do some of those things, or at least we thought we did because people were out of work and were not able to take care of themselves. These are all people that are. They don't have a savings account. Maybe they don't. I mean, it's all it was all done by, like pay levels and things like that. Maybe they're living paycheck to paycheck. It's like they can't go without a job.
Speaker 1:I saw this meme the other day video and it's like checking in with the national deficit and the budget and you know from the different branches of government, you know what's going on here and they're like, well, we overspent and they go into these just like billions of dollars amounts and they're like okay, and basically just poo-pooing it off, like, okay, just informationally, the Navy speaks up and yeah, we lost this fighter jet.
Speaker 1:We don't know where it's at, but whatever, just ridiculous things that are going on and where the money goes in the government, and then somebody from the IRS branch pipes in and he's like, yeah, we tracked down this single mother in Alabama who owes $2 and 12 cents. So we're you know, considering putting her in jail, which I mean, you know, you think about all that stuff, the billions of dollars and the government and all this stuff that we don't even know.
Speaker 2:And a lot of it that we don't necessarily even need. I mean, you think back when we, when we vacated Iraq and that whole thing and left fricking disaster over there 20 years later and left everything we left millions and billions of dollars in equipment. Well, who do you think got that equipment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that's, and who paid for it? We paid for it.
Speaker 2:They now have it and it's like they're. They have fighters that are over there that are using American guns and everything else.
Speaker 3:It's crazy so to your point about, is the problem so big that you just can't put your arms around it? There are problems like that in the past. What did we do after World War II? All of our guys were off fighting. Women were in setting rivet. I mean, you bite off chunks of the elephant and you do one thing at a time and it takes a plan and it takes leadership with a backbone. And even outside of every new administration it's got to continue and be consistent. Look at what Eisenhower did. He set something in motion that the next presidents kept going.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:That's how we got our freeways systems. It's how we got think about that.
Speaker 2:I know. I mean we've had big problems.
Speaker 3:We don't have the same leadership anymore.
Speaker 2:We also have a completely different set of problems, but then I also go back to it. Let's talk about Michelle wanting to wear her pearl necklace and live in the 1950s for a second. It was a time when things were so much simpler and our country was 100% more united than it is now. People had a common goal. Everybody's common goal was to beat the enemy back around World War II. But even after that you get into the Cold War and you're dealing with Russia. All the same stuff that was happening around the world was happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we maintain that the average American didn't know the details of what was happening with the decision makers no and I think that's still the case.
Speaker 2:Then you kind of go into these other conflicts, like Vietnam War. It's like you know the amount of protesting and the amount of pushback that was taking place and how horrible our people were treated because they were drafted and went, or drafted and said, hell, no, I'm not going. Is that unpatriotic? I mean, I step back and go. Well, why would they go? They're just going to get murdered in a jungle somewhere for absolutely no reason. But then if you don't go, then you're kind of a you're a traitor and you don't support your country and it's like so which one is it? I mean I'm an American, I mean I'm proud to be an American, but it's like you've got these stupid old white men that are making all these decisions.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you know we just we just we're talking about that on what was at Wednesday night, when we were up so late. What are all these conflicts about? What are they accomplishing?
Speaker 2:They're about money and power.
Speaker 3:They're not about anything that matters.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine you guys of women ran all of these governments? How much different it would be. Well, except North Korea. She's awful, but she doesn't count, she's fucking. You know whatever. She's a terrorist herself. But yeah but no, I'm just saying in general, can you imagine? Because it's like you take all of the ego and you take those kinds of things off the table and you start looking at things more strategically. But there's goes back to the whole thing about would people in these particular countries or whatever, listen to her because she's a woman?
Speaker 2:or what she'd be surrounded by people, all men and believe me, I'm not bashing men by any means. I think there's plenty of people out in this world that really want to do good, you know, by the people that they support, but we're not really seeing a lot of that. And then the controversy and the amount of the amount of just hatred that we see out in the world is just beyond me. I just am beyond it. I cannot believe it.
Speaker 3:I think money and power changes people, male or female. So I think maybe at the very beginning of a new female administration could look different, but you're still surrounded by people who want that influence, that pad your pockets. I mean, it was not think for one second that that does not go on. That absolutely goes on. Look at Clarence Thomas's life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes on behind the scenes, it's yeah, I'm not saying obviously that, but I think it would look different if we had if we had more women making more decisions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I look at AOC. Yeah, I love that woman, I love her fight, I love her spunk, but is she getting traction?
Speaker 2:Well, she's getting traction with certain groups of people, certain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but are they? Is it enough to make a difference?
Speaker 2:No, not yet. I don't think. Do you know what? Do you think she's one of the? She's one of, like the four or five people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, she's, don't worry, I know who she is. Okay, I do know who she is.
Speaker 2:Extremely progressive, to the point of being almost like viewed as a socialist not Chamoswant kind of socialism. But she's very progressive and I like her too. I mean, I really do.
Speaker 3:I love that she says what I'm thinking. That's what I like about her because I'm on her wavelength, but it falls flat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It falls like you know, just a woman shrieking.
Speaker 2:Well, it might be just that she has, like you said, she has a gotten the traction. It might be the delivery, it might, you know, it's creating a little bit of a divide. There's already such a divide out there, you know, amongst the people in the United States, and you saw the bulk of that happening. Well, it was happening before this, but you really saw it during the pandemic, because the pandemic was happening. Yeah, we had an election cycle that was happening and we had the BLM movement that was in high gear and I think the BLM movement took on so much strength because of the pandemic and people having the time and the ability to get out there and really have a voice.
Speaker 3:Did you see? In Texas they have just recently legislated where you cannot teach diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in any college. That went to effect January 1st. They don't want people thinking freely, they think that that textbooks everything's whitewashed. They think that that causes protests and things that they just don't want to deal with. Freethinking.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:That's coming again. Now that people are back to semi-normal, we're going to revert again. We don't want to do the work to make the change, which is why we were talking about this whole thing in the beginning and we've gone almost all the way around the world now Full circle, yeah. Almost all the way around the world, including ourselves. We've talked about all these things that we have opinions on. The problem is, what is the solution to that? I mean, I know what I can do in my own way.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's where it has to be. That's where it has to start. Aoc is doing it in the way that she thinks that she needs to. We all live our lives every day the way that we think we need to. I think it's just more about being more thoughtful on what that looks like.
Speaker 2:bigger picture and it's not all about us.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I mean, it's the only life we live as our own, and so how we think, how we act, how we project, the things that we do for other people that you know maybe gets noticed by somebody else and like, oh, that's a really good idea.
Speaker 1:I want to do that Like I've been feeding the homeless now because somebody else was doing it and I'm like that's really cool, send me the details. I want to do that too. Hence, it's one more person, maybe it'll be another person. It's like we can only do what we can do in our own lives because we can't control any of the other stuff.
Speaker 2:Right so can we influence it.
Speaker 1:That's what I just said.
Speaker 2:Beyond, it's like our little things that we are doing do end up adding positiveness to the bigger picture, but isn't it enough? I mean, I'm not saying go out and be, you know, some kind of activist.
Speaker 1:And those are the people that do like AOC. There's going to be those, because that's her way of advocating for change or whatever it is she's going to be, but not everybody's going to be able to do that. That's her job, I mean yeah but, you know, be able to, or want to, or like to, or whatever it is. That's why I say it starts within yourself and that's all you can do is what you are capable of doing, do you feel?
Speaker 2:like where we live and like all this stuff, because I mean we talk about stuff all the time and Michelle looks at me like oh, here she goes again. You know, because I have opinions about like the political stuff, I mean all the things and I mean I pay attention, I'm watching what's going on and sometimes I just get all up in a flutter about things and it's like I have no there's no, there's no outlet you know, so why not? Well, I mean.
Speaker 3:I'm. She's my outlet. I'm chatting about it with her. So if you're upset with the political thing, why aren't you reaching out to your rep?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a great question, I suppose I could. I feel like the efforts and maybe this is the wrong way to look at it, but it's kind of what I've thought the efforts that you make seem like they're futile because the politics plays into such a big realm. I think voting when you really think about voting I know people are not going to necessarily love hearing this, but you know voting at your local level is more critical really than a national election. But nobody I mean the percentage of people that vote locally are much more limited.
Speaker 3:They're elderly. However, what I would say at the majority are elderly. What I would say is you're seeing the gen Z's and the gen X get involved. That's how BLM got as big as it was and it really started, I believe, back with the Obama administration, when he was running the way he reached out, he met them where they were. I mean it was a whole new way of reaching his base and reaching people to hear his what, his platform and ideas were Well, he's obviously going to be more cognizant of and back to that that's where we start.
Speaker 3:So when you get ticked off about some decision, let them know it, but in the meantime I'm affecting my own community. So if I'm volunteering my time, in a facility. If I'm volunteering my time at the food bank, if I'm donating food to the food bank, if I'm I don't care, I mean, and I have girlfriends that'll be like cool, I got time to do that, I'll join you. So it's kind of back to what I was saying to you.
Speaker 2:The little things you can do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you take off a bite of the elephant where you can, because these guys way up here that are making all the decisions, I think that they are so detached from what's happening on the ground level that they don't know Kind of like Nordstrom corporate. Whenever they'd come into the store something like do you know, fucking know, where you're talking about?
Speaker 1:No, they have no clue. You have no clue. You've been out of the store for way too long.
Speaker 2:We have these, these ideas, and we implement them. I mean our head. They're supposed to be going so well and you go to the store and they haven't even heard about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Heard about it or tried to implement it, and do you feel, though, sometimes it's like we're talking about just us, in our own little worlds and societies. I feel like I've become kind of immune to things happening like in my backyard, just like I see it, and I'm like, yeah, I guess that's happening. I mean, you see the sex trafficking and prostitution on the road? Okay, it's so not far from our house, but it doesn't matter. You see this and you're looking at it and it's like, well, I guess it's just happening. I mean.
Speaker 2:I there's nothing you can really do about it? You've reported. Would you call the police? Or aren't you pleased because they're down 600 people? And what are they going to do? Police are like a reactive resource, you know. It's like maybe dealing with the Johns before they even get to the girls. The girls are victims. Anyway, my point being is like you see all these things that are happening around us and it becomes like, well, I guess that's just kind of the way it is, that's the part I hate.
Speaker 3:I hate when people say you know what? These are different times. This is how, how people do it now and it's kind of like no, we've absolutely lost the context of what we're doing here and why we're here and what we want to leave behind. Nope, that's just how they do it. Well, sorry, I still write thank you notes, I still say thank you, I still so do you think that's me with my pearls on living in the 50s right there, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like so do you think that's a generational thing how we're thinking? Because when we we talk with, if you talk to somebody who's 25, 30, would they think the same way?
Speaker 1:They look at it totally different Because they don't need to write thank you notes. They send a text and we're a whole other mindset.
Speaker 3:They fit. They send a text and think that that's adequate. Well, that's easy. You know, we talked about this the other night. Easy is easy. Doing the hard work takes time and effort and it makes you stop and rethink. You said mindfulness and tensionality. You have to stop and catch yourself.
Speaker 3:It's like a habit you have to be doing that over and over and over to reinforce it. Yeah, it makes me crazy and I do not buy that as a reason for why we don't do proper thoughtful, kind things. I think that's partly why we have such rage in this country is because we can say things here that we would never say to somebody's face Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people can be very cowardice on the phone, hiding behind. Yeah, it's so easy.
Speaker 3:Easy to say, whatever it's just that's.
Speaker 1:That's like so many things.
Speaker 3:When she says here she's looking up her phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, that's like with everything that, that, that that has affected families, relationships, all all of the things, social circles and everything, yes, politics, all of it.
Speaker 3:The whole world works that way. We're detaching from that human we live in different times.
Speaker 1:Now she's like bullshit. I just went down there, I just said yeah, I just said bullshit.
Speaker 2:But you guys, we are living in different times, so it's like that doesn't mean we have to necessarily conform to all the things that are happening in our world.
Speaker 1:To your point, we're from a generation that will continue to be different and I think at our age we're seeing that evolution of life being in our late 50s and we are now our parents. Yeah, and that they were when we were young and they were in their late 50s.
Speaker 2:Well, they were detached. I mean, my parents were detached, they were living in different times.
Speaker 1:They could say the same thing. My mom could say the same thing. She lived in different times. We're now saying the same thing as the generations move forward. We are now the ones living in a different, we're coming from and live in a different time than our children do and we're going to have that mindset. I'm with UMB, I'm totally that way. I buy cards, I send letters. I do all of those things because there's more of a labor love attached to that and it's thoughtfulness. But I know exactly what you're saying.
Speaker 2:But do you think that's going to die with our generation? Yes, yeah, I do. It already is when I found we're a dying breed.
Speaker 3:When I found letters that my parents had written, I came across the most lovely handwritten up my mom's handwriting that she wrote to my husband's parents for hosting the rehearsal dinner at our wedding.
Speaker 1:And it's just History, it's family history. Oh my gosh it just warmed my heart.
Speaker 3:It was such a kind, thoughtful gesture. And it's about another person and saying thank you.
Speaker 1:I mean, those are the human aspects of life that connect us, that connect us together, which, to bring this back again, I know we already talked about going full circle, but humanitarian aspect of just living life, right, there is part of it and, yes, this in so many ways it's dying out. We're connected differently. I'm not saying people aren't connected and my son, who's 23,. It's just completely different for him than the cougar whisper, than it was for me. Oh yeah, that's a whole other story. We were out the other night, yeah.
Speaker 1:He's a cougar whisperer, older lady who let him know that she thought he was good looking. Yeah, well, he is, and he's like. I didn't want to say, I just said thank you.
Speaker 2:He was adorable, that's the most words I've heard out of him all day. It's adorable, okay. So what you're talking about, though, is like that's, I want to say next level, that's there's basic human kindness, basic human everything. And then the next level of that is we project how we appreciate, but we're talking about people when we're talking about humanitarian crises that can't even frickin' feed their kid Right.
Speaker 2:Again, these are extreme things, but I'm talking about not necessarily even just in our country, but in these countries today, right at this moment, there are these wonderful people that will never meet that are suffering like crazy. Then in our own country it's happening too.
Speaker 3:And I hate to be cynical, but I refuse to give money to these big, huge organizations.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too.
Speaker 3:Because I've learned what they do with it. They're people rather than having it trickle down to the actual intent of me giving money which was to put a meal on every one of these people's plate every day for a month.
Speaker 2:So if that's the case, I might as well do it myself. I do have a hard time with, like they say, send money, send money. You don't know where anything goes or how people are helping, but it doesn't make any sense to send clothing or send Until you know what the needs are, and I can do that too.
Speaker 3:I've got more than enough. I'm happy to share that. We are privileged. We are.
Speaker 1:I think it's fair to say that obviously our intent was not to solve the world problems in this hour-long episode.
Speaker 2:Because we didn't, because we didn't, because we have very low expectations, because we didn't and we have not.
Speaker 1:It's been fun to talk about and share all of these perspectives and different things and shed light on others, and I think, as a final thought, we each can say what we got out of this and what maybe we'll do going forward to, in our own way, contribute. I think I already said it. Mine would be as far as a final thought. For me, it's just doing what I can my own self and the way I live my life and how I'm going to impact others and what that looks like that would be me.
Speaker 1:What about you? Mb?
Speaker 3:As a final thought God bless those people in Palestine or Gaza Strip area. I know that we are aligned with Israelis from a government political perspective, but I think about all the families that are hurting, have lost people. My heart just goes out to them. Same thing with Ukrainian and even the Russian troops that just Well they're being forced a lot of money on.
Speaker 3:And then the same thing with our migrant people that are coming up. I don't have any control over the people making those decisions. I disagree fundamentally with what's happening in the bigger areas over there, with the wars going on. I also disagree fundamentally with how we're handling our migrants. I can only do what I can do locally and I choose. Right now I've got time, I choose to give my time, my effort to reach somebody and maybe I can have a voice in it eventually there because I'm already working legislatively on elder abuse.
Speaker 3:Maybe I can have a voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to definitely need to start. I don't know. I think a lot of it. It all translates and ties into our political climate, whether we like it or not, and I feel that people who are in positions of authority throughout the country are going to do not necessarily what works best for people, but what works best for them or their party.
Speaker 2:And so that's where I struggle with a lot of it, because I know it.
Speaker 2:Like you're saying, these folks that are coming, fleeing their own countries, coming over from El Salvador, from Mexico, from wherever they're coming from, they're just trying to keep their heads above water and go to a place where they feel safe.
Speaker 2:And I mean, unfortunately they're coming here and they don't always have that benefit of feeling safe, because they probably are perceived as not being wanted in a lot of places and the reason for not wanting them is because of the resources and the money and the space and all of that the school systems and the hospital systems and all these things. It's like those are all things that are getting funded by whatever states in there. So again, it all goes back to politics, because it's not going to be something that's solved from a humanitarian aspect. I feel like the politics happens first, and that's where I get fired up about seeing photos or videos of these little kids, for example, in these detention centers, away from their families, and we're all thinking it's okay, Like hello, this is our country that's doing this shit, and how do we even fix that? I don't even know how to fix it.
Speaker 3:I refuse to participate in the divisive rhetoric which is what I saw with the protests on I5.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of frustrated people who are not necessarily well-schooled on all aspects of what they're protesting that's how I look at it or they're very one-sided in their view. They're no different than any right-handed or right-wing conservative from a left-wing liberal. They're all the same, I mean. They just have different points of view. But they all have their own point of view and they're not seeing things from another perspective. And that's the problem is, there's just too much divide.
Speaker 3:We need a third party.
Speaker 2:I think so too.
Speaker 3:We need a third party. This has gotten way too divisive. There's no voice of reason and this business of party over people. I'm sorry. I voted for you to speak for me. You're not speaking for me, You're speaking for your income.
Speaker 2:Well, and we don't have a lot of options coming up that are even no, I agree with that.
Speaker 2:Even remotely like something I'm getting excited about. So anyway, in closing it's like to MB's point my heart does go out to the people who I believe are suffering. I believe that, as a country, when you're looking at things in other parts of the country Ukraine as an example I think we have a moral responsibility to assist in any capacity that we can, because the bigger picture is so much more frightening and the US is getting tired of this, tired of providing the money. At the same time, on the flip side, we don't have the money to provide. We're in debt so far ourselves.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like we're trying to be the big man on campus buying drinks for everybody at the bar and our credit cards maxed out. So that was a really good analogy. Anyway, I don't have any answers. I think what I really want to focus on from my perspective is again going back to you guys have heard of before. My word for the year is intention, and really trying to focus my time intentionally on the things that I feel like I can impact, because it doesn't do any good to bitch from the cheap seats, because nobody can hear you.
Speaker 3:Right, and I can't wait to hear the comments that come out of this. Everybody's going to have one. Everybody's going to have an opinion on it.
Speaker 1:They're Nazis yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you liberal, I can already hear it. Like I said, the word at home is libtard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, those are the same people that you know probably have a picture of 45 framed and hanging in their living room. So whatever.
Speaker 3:Most of the time. Yeah, that is the case, but you know, and to your point, when you're talking about these people, the meme you were referring to. Yeah, and oh yeah, we have so many trillion. Think about how overwhelming that would be. As a representative from some state, how do you have an impact on dialing that back?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's another thing. And then you dial it back. What do you think is affected? It's social services that go first. Well, which is stupid, but that's the reality. It's like I don't take away the other stuff.
Speaker 1:They're bulking up the military because you know we might be having some nuclear bombs dropped on us at some point and I'm just going to do what I can do with my own self to influence those people around me.
Speaker 2:Michelle's going to wear a face mask and she's going to meditate every day. That's how she's going to help Well.
Speaker 3:I do that to anyway as well I mean, that's just for my own blood pressure.
Speaker 2:Meditating, but in the meantime, oh gosh, yes.
Speaker 3:And then in the meantime, whatever I can do with the little communities that are popping up from other places here that just need support.
Speaker 1:I only said that because we can go on and on about this probably for the rest of the day, which would make MB miss her flight.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And which Zoe might be happy about that, but I don't think my hubby would be.
Speaker 2:I don't know, he might be All right. Well, I think we've set our peace, yeah.
Speaker 1:This was a good one, I think there's any information that you are listeners want to please share with us. Easiest way If you're questioning anything we said, because we're not historians, we're not politicians, we're just, you know, three ladies having a conversation, so that pay taxes. Whether everything was on or off. We would love to know. If you download the episode, you can very easily find the part that you're thinking of. So please do that. Share information with us. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us in all the socials.
Speaker 2:And you don't have to agree with us. That's the best part. Yeah, that's the best part.
Speaker 1:So until then, I can't wait to chat again next week. Peace out people, Happy New.
Speaker 2:Year. Bye, bye, bye, bye.