About the Second Boat Strike and Ireland's Drinking Warnings

Jen, you are rolling, rolling, rolling down a river. - We are slower than we were supposed to. I'm on a Viking river cruise. And I'm pretty sure that I am, I don't think I'm the youngest person on the boat. I think there's a kid that's like five years younger than me. So by kid, he's like late thirties. - In his mid thirties, yeah. You know, are we talking about the ships captain or are you talking about other passengers? - You sure probably the oldest passenger. - I'm definitely not the oldest passenger. I mean, this is like floating villages. Yeah, it's so fun. I'm like in my element. I love it. Everyone's bed by nine. It's great. I'm loving it. But our boat broke a few days ago 'cause we were trying to leave a town called Pasau and it's where two rivers converge. - That's a troubling metaphor for an elderly ridden cruise. Just the machinery falling apart. - Yeah, well, so I don't understand how this happened. They didn't give us the exact story. But as we were trying to leave, one of the ropes fell into the water and got stuck in the propeller. And so it was a Sunday night. So they called the diver. He was like, you have two problems. A, I don't work on Sundays. And B, you're at the mouths of two rivers. I'm not doing this in the dark, even if it wasn't a Sunday. So they had to tow us. And it was kind of cool how they did it. They took another river boat that went side by side with us and attached their boat to ours and like towed us back about a mile. And then this like diver shows up in a Subaru and goes down for two hours and untangled the rope from the propeller. And so we got back on the water but we're like a full day behind on the schedule. In fact, I'm talking to you guys from a hotel that Joe's been staying in in Vienna. I don't know where the boat is, but I just checked to find my friends for my mother. And she's at a mall. So I'm guessing the boat hasn't arrived yet. - Got you. - Okay, chaos continues to ensue on this boat. And in fact, I'm just staying here tonight. I don't even want to deal with it. So I'll go back to the boat tomorrow. But yeah. - She were not presently nautical, Jim. You were at a hotel. - I am on land and will be until tomorrow. But I love it. It's been fun. - At some point, Jim, we should do an episode where I'm on a train, you're on a boat. And Justin's head explodes from the internet lag. We'll be used to do that. - Yeah. It's gonna be a very special episode. We call "Ponishment to the Listeners." Where we feel that we have been too good to them and therefore need to punish them with such a terrible auditory experience. Hey, what do you say? We get a little early jump on our Andrew Eaton's sports question of the week. (laughing) - Heedon, well, the committee punished the rebels now that Lane has left Oxford. - I think they probably will as you know, Justin, the rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge is an ancient one that goes back at least a thousand years. And for Lane to defect from Oxford to Cambridge. - To Cambridge. - To Cambridge. - To Cambridge. - In the game of football, whatever you buy that. - Yeah, the committee does not take it lightly. I'll tell you that much. - You know, I've had my problems with the committee, but overall though, I have to say they're tough with fair. And well, they only have to make 12 choices. - Yeah, and I think it's well within their abilities to do. You know, they're methodical, Justin. And if anything, I would like them to be a little bit faster in the decisions that they arrive at. You know, move fast and break things 'cause we gotta play, dude. - Do you, do you, do you bring it up a lot? - Do you sympathize with those that say that this has only happened because the portal opens too early? - So, Merlin's portal, which connects Cambridge to Oxford had been sealed by a wizard in the 1980s. I'm gonna, it's not directly attributable to Margaret Thatcher, but I think she probably helped. And now that there's a labor government that portals opened up again and you're thinking great. Good, it's gonna make transportation that much easier, but I say this, shouldn't we be focusing on fixing the transportation grid for everybody rather than just football players that want to easily transport back and forth between Cambridge and Oxford? - You wanna know what, you actually have tiptoed on a few correct facts. This is indeed a story about football and the portal is used to ferry football players, Hither and Jan. However, the Oxford that we're referring to is of course Oxford, Mississippi, where Ole Miss is-- - Oxford's primed. - Yeah, and the Cambridge you've referred to is Louisiana State University, often referred to as the Cambridge of Louisiana. But the Lane Kiffin has scandalously left the best Ole Miss team in, I believe the program's histories in recent history, the very least, so we could take a new job. I was threatened that we needed to bring up the Lane Kiffin story to you on this program or there would be hell to pay. And so now we have done it. You have any questions about Lane Kiffin or are your eyes about ready to glass over? - This is, I eat breath and sleep this stuff Justin. I am happy to talk about Lane Kiffin, tell the cows come home. He has a hell of a quarterback, in my opinion. And I get why he transferred. I get why he transferred, you know? It's, there's a certain amount of loyalty that you owe to Ole Miss, of course, but at the end of the day, he's looking to get a Heisman. And if he's gonna get a Heisman, he'd have the best placement. And that means he's a coach. - He's a coach. - Well, you say that now. But I think, I think like Kiffin is gonna have a hell of a comeback. - He's got some eligibility left. - Yeah, you don't want, 65 is the new 22. And I think we juice that guy up, we throw him through that magical portal and he'll just pop out on the field and quarterback the hell out of that ball. And it'll be a Christmas present for you, me, and all the children. - Jen, anything to add? Do you have any thoughts on Lane Kiffin, scandalously leaving from Ole Miss to LSU? Replacing Brian Kelly, who is the last scandalous coach to leave his team and go to LSU? - Yes, I'm just kind of fascinated that I've been on a boat completely disconnected from the universe. And I know so much more about this than Andrew. It's like, how's that possible? I haven't even had the internet. - Jen, just real quick. If Lane Kiffin becomes a quarterback and wins the Heisman, you owe me a stake, okay? - I will take that bet. - Okay, all right. I look forward to you giving me that stake. - 'Cause I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure we live in the sitcom universe and not the real universe. I don't think we live in the real universe where President Mitch Dandles is doing a bang up job. We live in our universe entirely possible. Lane Kiffin will become a quarterback at this universe. - We'll become a quarterback and win the Heisman. It's very messy. It's very saucy college football. It is very drama-filled Ole Miss left all of Kiffin's clothes on outside. - Oh, and it was so passive-aggressive. Just get the fuck out, mister. - Wow. - He's there. - He's there. - She didn't always take that. - He's probably the highest paid official in Mississippi. I'm guessing? - He's about to be in Louisiana. I'll tell you that based on the contract that they're about to give him. The last time that the old coach got fired, the governor got involved and said he was going to be choosing the next coach because he did not like the way that the last one went. But there is something funny. Lane Kiffin has been famous for going to different places. He has left different institutions early. This is kind of a thing for him. In fact, his time at Ole Miss was probably the most stable of his career. However, a Mississippi reporter or sports commentator got under coach Kiffin's skin when resigning himself to the fact that Lane Kiffin was going to leave, said to his audience, "You can't make a hoe a housewife to which Lane Kiffin got in his face and said, "Do you want to come into the press conference "and call me a hoe to my face?" Although he wound up leaving. So it's kind of hoe behavior. - Yeah, that governor, like if I have my numbers correct, they were mad that Brian Kelly was walking away with I think a $54-ish million dollar payout. So the governor was pissed off. And now Lane is getting, I believe, $90 million dollars. - And we'll almost assuredly leave for Alabama in two years. - Yeah, midseason again, because that's allowed. And I think that's really what needs to happen here. Now the players are getting paid so much has changed. Like they need some rules here. 'Cause with the NFL, there's no loyalty to teams, but you at least have to finish the season with these college rules. You can just kind of do whatever you want. And that just doesn't seem right. So. - Maybe there's enough anger about this to make some systemic change. - I tried so hard not to make this wonky and political, but just to be clear on this, this is a taxpayer-funded position at a public university or a private university. And they pay him $50 million dollars? - Yeah, I don't know whether or not there is some kind of work around to which the endowment of the school funds it. And so technically, he is the largest paid employee, but there are some other backstop by way of private donations that that would not shock me. But yes, technically the reason why in many states, the highest paid public employee is a football coach. - It's like 48 out of 50 states where it's your football or basketball, yeah. - And that is because the going rate, especially for football coaches is very, very high because football coaches are kind of these Sven gollies that get players to come to their teams. And that is now even more of an issue because that magical portal that Murrown created back oh, so many years ago is the transfer portal. That is essentially free agency for college students that used to not be allowed. Now, if you don't like your team, you can declare for the transfer portal and teams can fight over whether or not you were going to go to their team. That is how Lane Kiffin helped to build the Ole Miss program and he hopes to bring much of that to Louisiana State University. Go Togas. - Uh-huh, okay, good. Well, 50 million, that seems like a good use of taxpayer dollars. - No, no, honey, it was 90 million. - 90 million, my bad. - Yeah, also good, also good. So nearly $50 million is what the state of Louisiana paid Brian Kelly to go away to stop using a fake son accent and get the steppin. - Wow, this is it, they must have figured out all of its other problems. If they have 50 million dollars to throw it a full book, go get a tax payer. - Louisiana, Louisiana, Louisiana. Louisiana must really be rolling the dough and they've got that kind of taxpayer money. - Yeah, noted fiscal paradise. Louisiana is allocating. But to be totally honest, this kind of falls into my category of like whether or not it is in great governance. If you were to take a public site of Louisiana, you'd probably get a majority or at least a plurality of people that would say, no, we want LSU to win championships and this is what it takes to win championships. Pay the man his money. - I think you're right. I think if you put it up to a plebiscite, people would throw. - Go Togas. - Roads, cops and football coaches would probably be the top three things that voters would want to put money towards. That's probably true. - And in Louisiana, it would probably be reversed those three. It would probably be like, yeah, we get hit a few bumps and maybe there's a few less cops. But are you telling me the tigers are going to have a shot at the nanny? - From Austin, Texas. I'm Justin Robert Young from our nation's capital, Washington, DC. - I'm Andrew Heaton. - And from Vienna, Austria. - I'm Jennifer Breini. - And we're not wrong on this edition of the program. We're going to be talking about whether or not a second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat is indeed a war crime. This according to a Washington Post report. And whether or not Ireland needs new warning labels on alcohol products. A big fight has ensued in Ireland. So unlike them, the Irish fighting about something involving alcohol. We will dig into that. We begin though with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth under bipartisan scrutiny after a Washington Post report said he ordered troops to quote unquote kill everyone on a suspected narco trafficking boat in the Caribbean. The initial strike didn't kill all 11 aboard, leaving a commander to order a second strike that killed two survivors, cleaning the wreckage. Lawmakers from both parties say the incident may constitute a war crime and are demanding full transparency. Trump says he believes Hegseth denial 100%. Well Hegseth calls the report fake news. The controversy unfolds amid escalating U.S. Venezuelan tensions and broader debates over expanding military actions in the region. Mr. Andrew Eaton based on the article alone. Do you believe a war crime has been committed? - No, I don't think a war crime has been committed because we're not at a state of war. I think a crime has been committed. So I think this is an illegal action, but not one which violates the Geneva Convention. Transporting drugs is a crime. It is not a military action. And if it's a crime, the drug should be interdicted and these smugglers apprehended. Something that we usually give to the Coast Guard and other relevant authorities in that. Using the military to prosecute criminal law enforcement, which is what this is, is a violation of posse conventatus or however the hell you say that. And so violates our own internal laws. And I will add to that, if we are indeed so concerned about drugs coming in from Latin America, which is the ostensible reason that we're bombing ships, why did Trump just pardon the former president of Honduras, a man who is currently in our federal prison for 45 years having been convicted of moving 400 tons of cocaine into our country. Now you add to this, the UK has suspended intelligence for intelligent sharing operations with us for both strikes. So what we've ended up doing is we've killed somebody in contravention of US law and of military law because the US military and the Defense Department voluntarily adheres to the laws of war. It voluntarily adheres to the Geneva Convention. Technically speaking, the laws of war only apply to other signatories of the Geneva Convention and the Venezuelan voters are not signatories of the Geneva Convention. That does not obviate our own internal discipline to adhere to the laws of war. And under those, you're not allowed to fire missiles at people that are already shipwrecked. It's in US law, it's in the Defense Department. You can't shoot people that are already shipwrecked and you're not allowed to leave no survivors. These are opposed to how our laws of war work. We've not declared war. Congress is not declared war. We don't have a use of authorization like we did in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Neither of those applied to this. Congress did not write a authorization of military force against drug smuggling going on in Central and Latin America. My guess is that the Trump administration is probably going to invoke article two powers giving the president authority for limited strikes to protect US interests. There is some gray area there to do it. But even then, the ship that was shot was in a state of wreckage. There's two guys floating on the wreckage and then we blasted and killed them, which is illegal according to our own military. So I think that this is illegal at every level. I wouldn't call it war crimes. I don't think you could prosecute anybody for war crimes because they are not actually in a state of war. But what you could do is prosecute them for murder. And aside from that, this is something that is ultimately going to make us less safe because we now have less intelligence coming in from our British allies that would allow us to intercept drugs that are coming in from Latin America. I think the Coast Guard's better equipped to do this anyway than us going out. I'm curious as to the data that we have and the intelligence that we have that lets us know exactly who we're blowing up in these situations. And I think that it's an unnecessary extrajudicial killing. So no one war crimes, yes, on crimes. Jen, you've been on a boat. (laughs) Yes, I have been on a boat. Luckily, I'm not a Venezuelan fisherman. So Andrew, I actually really like the way that you frame this that because there is no war, it can't be a war crime. I think that reality is on your side in this. Unfortunately, I do think that we still have that 2001 authorization for the use of military force which was so broad. And I think there's a reason that the Trump administration is labeling people narco terrorists. They're going to use the terrorism authorities to say that the strikes themselves are legal because there's been more than 20 strikes they've killed 80 people. We're just talking about one of those strikes. So we've just barely scratched the surface of what these people are doing. Yeah, this was the first of Operation Southern Spear. Yeah, and so there's been a lot since then I think we're just starting to examine these. But what is a black and white, no question crime. So if we're going to like pretend that we think the original strike itself with the justification that these guys had drugs. Now, I personally am with you, Andrew, that I don't think that this is in any way legal. But let's just pretend for a second that they can find some way around the law to make it technically legal-ish. The second strike is clearly illegal. And you can see it not just in international law, and even conventions is pretty clear. But in the US War Crimes Act, if you want to Google this, type 18 USC 2441 into your school bar and you will see it says war crimes and it could not be more clear that what they did was murder. Because it says that murder is, quote, the act of a person who intentionally kills and like a bunch of people, but then quote, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause. We know that there were two people that were clinging to a completely disabled boat. If they hadn't shot at them the second time, the most likely scenarios that they would have died. But we went on purpose and sent another missile to kill these people. It is clear there is no wiggle room in here. That was an absolute crime. And from where I'm sitting over here in Europe, kind of like checked out for the last week or so, I don't know what the news about this is in the United States, but the last I was kind of paying attention. Donald Trump was super pissed because six former members of the intelligence community and military dared to tell members of the military and intelligence community that you are not supposed to follow illegal orders. And he was so mad about it. And now it kind of makes some sense to me, right? Because this is so clearly in illegal order coming, apparently from the top, coming from Pete Hexf himself. And he now appears that he's trying to throw the admiral under the bus. Although he did order it, he's also a murderer. So what I'm looking at now is we have a clear crime being committed. I don't think there is a question mark on this. The question mark is are we going to allow these people to get away with this? Like as I can't think of a worse crime than murder, you know? And this one's such a clear one. And we have such lawlessness in this administration. They have crossed such a red line here. And it's so obvious. And with the lack of wiggle room, like the question mark for me is, will accountability happen? And it's Congress that's going to have to step up and do this. And I have seen some positive signs. I know that Roger Wicker, who's a Republican, is working with his Democratic counterpart in the Senate to actually do an investigation. So I mean, I'm a little bit hopeful here, but this one, there's no wiggle room here anymore. There's no, you know, questions, it's, this was a crime. The question is, what do we do about it? And as the American people, what do we demand? Allow me to offer wiggle room. At least according to the New York Times. This is according to the New York Times. So the New York Times actually poked holes in the Washington Post's report. This is what came out today, specifically, you know, and actually, it heartened me because it was like, uh, especially during the Trump administration place it, you know, outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post tended to kind of write covered stories that were very much side by side with each other. And they didn't try to poke holes in each other's reporting, which is usually the way things went, especially when you have gigantic newsrooms and you have, you know, professional rivalries, you can, you know, if you think that somebody wrote a bad article, you poke holes in it. And the New York Times did that to the Washington Post reports, specifically, uh, saying that they were unnecessarily broad about the chain of authority and whether what Pete Hegg said said to Andrew Bradley, I believe his name is the officer that was named by the Trump administration. In a way that definitely wasn't there to draw a line between, uh, Pete Heggseth and, uh, the person who ordered the strike, uh, he wanted to support him 100%. All right. But specifically what the word from the administration is. And, uh, there is a very critical, um, military legal scholar who is quoted in the New York Times that does echo this, at least putting it into the wiggle room territory that the administration says they were not shooting at the people. They were shooting at the boat. Oh, okay. Well, my bad, then they didn't kill anybody. They just killed the people. If we are looking at what a war crime is and what is legally allowed, you are legally allowed to sink a boat. You are not legally allowed to shoot the people. Uh, that is something. Now the military expert in the TimesP says, you know, normally you are in an armed conflict where you are legally allowed to sink a boat that continues to fire or does not lower their colors. If it is a speed boat that doesn't have guns on it, then you do not have that luxury to know whether or not they are continuing to fire. Although the administration says that there was communication to other narco terrorists in their terms that they were coming to to go there. But, uh, that is, that is the, the wiggle room that the administration is offering is that this was not an attack on the people. That would be a move. Yeah, uh, this is, this is, uh, uh, sinking the boat. Reading the, the Department of Defense's law of war manual at states, quoting this, firing at shipwrecked individuals is clearly illegal. And it is, quote, prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, end quote. Now the, the quote that is brought up in the Washington Post, which needs to be verified, this should be investigated. They should release the tapes from this. Is whether or not Pete Hegg said said no survivors. If he said no survivors and they acted based on that, then I don't buy any of this. We're just shooting at the boat. Although even on that note, the, in the Washington Post article that cited the admiral is, is alleged to have said that they fired at the two individuals because they were concerned that they could call for backup or reinforcements, which I do not think holds water. I don't think, military people, correct me if I'm wrong on this. I do not think if a ship is lowered its colors, if it's wreckage in a war scenario, if we've disabled the Japanese submarine, if we're like, the Japanese submarine could call other Japanese people because as long as there's one radio, they're a threat. I know that, that goes beyond the pale on this. I'm less bothered by the murder here than I am by the obligation of bright lines within U.S. law. So I don't think the Trump administration cares about law. I think that the way they look at things is laws are these nets that hold us back from accomplishing our goals. They're written by pointy headed enemies of the administration. Do the thing, get the thing done, and then we'll figure it out on the back end. And I can appreciate that to some extent. If we're talking about like, I want to put roses in my front yard and I'm going to do it. And then I'll figure out whether or not the zoning ordinances my community allow me to get roses without talking to the aldermen about blah blah blah. I can kind of get that. But when we're talking about who the military is allowed to kill, in this instance, the military doing law enforcement, which is against the law, or the military being able to flout rules of war, these are very serious things. There's a there's a good reason that we have these bright lines here. And turning those bright lines into messy gray areas where the president can just kind of kill people or subordinates can kill people. This is dangerous territory. This is the stuff that Glenn Beck would have freaked out about 10 years ago. This is the exact kind of thing the Republicans would have freaked out about under Obama. And like rightly freaked out about when he like drone to guy that was an American citizen like these are these are situations that ought to have a very, very high level of deliberation. And I also I don't think that this is the right way to go about this. Like we we have a lot of fentanyl deaths in the United States. That is a tragedy. It's a really bad thing. We're going to end up losing intelligence from the British that could help us interdict other shipments by virtue of this action, which is going to mean there's more drugs coming into the United States and our ability to intercept them slower. We're going to well, I don't know. I'm curious as to if either of you know why we're releasing the former president of Honduras who's been convicted. I got a theory. Yeah. I got a theory. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. Yeah. Finish that and then I have a theory. All right. Here's the other thing. Look, I think probably 80% of the province of our country result from not understanding how supply and demand work. And the drug war is yet another example of this. We have been focusing on the drug war on the supply side of things for the last 50 years. And it has been a conclusive and horrible failure. When there's demand, people will find a way to get drugs. We've spent a trillion dollars on the drug war. We spent about 45 billion dollars a year prosecuting the drug war. One in five people in prison are there for drug offenses. There is about 300,000 people in jail for drug offenses at this time. And the results of this have not been a reduction in drugs over the last 50 years. It's been that the prices keep going up. Because if you've got the demand and you just make the supply harder, you just increase, if you increase demand, you lower supply, you increase prices. And that's exactly what's happened. So what happens as a result of this? You start messing with the supply chain and you end up incentivizing more people to come in because they can make more money at it. So it's not the smart way to go about this. It's a to the Trump administration's credit. They are pursuing a failed strategy that has been pursued by everybody since Nixon, but it is a failed strategy. What they are now doing is adding to that a ambiguity in terms of the bright lines we have of what the US military is allowed to do in terms of prosecuting a domestic crime racket and also in who they're allowed to kill according to the laws of war. So all of this is dumb. We need to rethink how we're doing this. We need to be very careful about how we prosecute military actions. I think domestic crime racket might be minimizing it. It would be an international crime racket. All right. I don't think the military is authorized to go after. No, no, no. All your other points stands. That's my own. I mean, I don't, I mean, domestic crime racket makes it seem like somebody's running like, you know, a numbers operation in Chicago. Yeah, but like they're naturally like drugs muggling operation. The fentanyl deaths that are happening in the country are horrible. They are a, they are a situation that I would put under the category of either health or crime. They're not a military action. They're not something that the military should be involved. So yeah, the, the, the argument for robust action lies around the idea that this is not really about the drug. The drug deaths here are a downstream effect of the fact that there are a lot of money that are propping up our enemies internationally and they are profiting off the drug trade. And that is why we need to have military action. That this is, this is us destabilizing our enemies in the region. And so why did Mr. White Coke cane Honduras leader get pardoned? Well, let's say theoretically, you were in active negotiations with a dictator of a country. Let's call it red is wala and that dictator is scared for his life is scared that the same missile that has been taking out his drug boats and has been cutting off some of his access to money is going to come into his house at any moment and, and his life. And there have been conversations directly between the person in the dictator of red is wala who by the way did lose a free and fair election and then just stayed in state, stayed in control. I believe the person who won that election recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. But that person that dictator wants to know for sure that he will be able to leave that country and not immediately be either jailed or killed. And you need to show a sign of goodwill to say, no, look, this is, I will hold to my agreement. Well, one thing that you could do is to pardon a confederate of his somebody who's been in the same game that he is to show that this is a glide path that all you got to do is leave this fictional country of red is wala and you will be able to, this deal will be honored. You can go to Qatar or Colombia or somewhere else and, and you will be, you will not immediately be arrested. That's my best operating theory is that this is connected on something. I don't think that it is a coincidence that while the American government is trying to talk Nicholas Maduro out of Caracas, that we have pardoned somebody who is cuts a very similar figure to him. You know, Justin, one of my friends, Lawrence, proposed an idea, kind of thought experiment a year or two ago, that we should have a thing called dictator's island. And dictator's island is a place that dictators get impunity. The rationality, I think there's all sorts of things that would be very difficult to work this out in real life, but the basic idea behind it would be that if you're a dictator and you lose power, you get killed. So the idea would be like Qatar or some town in Switzerland becomes Oli Olioxin free for dictators. And like if you leave, well, allow you to go there, you just have to leave, right? So there's something to that. But I stand by my position that overall, I think that this was a a messy use of military force that is atrophying some very good right lines. And also it's been pursuit of a very dumb drug war that we should be rethinking entirely. I don't even buy this about the drug war, to be honest with you, because I mean, they keep talking about fentanyl. There's no evidence that there's any kind of fentanyl trade coming out of Venezuela to begin with. Yeah, they're coke people. And it's not even them that's the coke people. They kind of help the drugs that go from Colombia to Europe and Africa. Like the people that they know of, they've been able to track down like four of the people that we've killed. And they were just helping the people navigate from Colombia to Europe. So the coke isn't even coming to the United States. I think that's the excuse they're using because this is all a part of the regime change operation. But they're using what they think will A) convince Trump to do what Marco Rubio wants, which is to overthrow Venezuela. He really seems to be like moved by the drug issue. So I think that's one of the reasons why they're going with the drug thing. And then the terrorist thing is how they're able to launch these strikes using Bush era laws and trying to make it legal-ish. But I don't even buy that this is a part of the drug war. I think that's mainly bullshit, quite frankly. I actually agree with you, Jen. I don't think it's about the drugs coming into the United States, because I do think that there's compelling evidence that the vast majority of Venezuela's trade does go to Europe and Africa. It's about the money. And it's about Maduro being propped up. And it's about. This has been probably a decade coming from Hugo Chavez through to Maduro. The big line that was crossed was the election that took place under a lost. He said, whoops, and just stayed in, like I think that was probably the line where these things escalated more than it would otherwise. At least the people that were being patient about a possible peaceful handover of power in Venezuela became less peaceful. And I would include in that. Narco Rubio, who, Jen, you are very correct, has had a hard on for getting Maduro the hell out of there for a long time. Now how that affects everything else from energy and the general region, or even how Columbia moves its cocaine. There are a lot of a lot of conversations there. There's also a good argument to say that Venezuela could be a very successful country was a very rich and prosperous and successful country before Chavez came in. And so having a more stable petro state in the region would be something that would benefit the entire country. That would be great. And you will find no bigger critique of strong mandatory and top down economics than myself. And I wholly agree that Chavez ruined that economy and Maduro has kept that failure rolling. That being said, the U.S. track record on regime change is pretty bad. And our our ability to rightly identify who to take out install somebody that's going to stay friendly with us and not have it somehow backfire or engender permanent hatred in the country that we intervene. And I think is a pretty bad one. We basically got Germany in Japan that we can go that worked. But in the last 50 years, the default is no for me. You have to really really overcome a big hurdle to get me to what to do regime change on somewhere. And I as miserable as the situation is in Venezuela, at least 10 years ago, they were eating zoo animals and weighing stacks of money because inflation had become so rampant over there. That's that's still not sufficient for me to go. We should send in troops. We should we should get into a war with them and attempt to install some sort of friendly government. Yeah. I mean, let's not pretend this is for the Venezuelan people because if we cared about the Venezuelan people, our government wouldn't be having crippling sanctions against Venezuela for the past 25 years. I know that like there's this idea that Hugo Chavez and Maduro destroyed Venezuela's economy. But their ideas weren't allowed to fully work because we have been sabotaging them for decades. So we played a role in that as well. What this is about is Venezuela has the enormous, I believe the number one fossil fuel reserves in the world. And the companies want them. And this new lady that says that she's like, she's waiting in the wing. She's literally in hiding. She got a Nobel Peace Prize for some fucking reason. She's out there saying like, we are going to let all of your oil companies in. That's what this is. It's another oil war. And so all of the reasons that they're giving us, I mean, wait, this has been a target for well over two decades. If not more than that, I remember during the George W. Bush years, they wanted to overthrow Venezuela. And this is just another part in that play. So I think this is all about fossil fuels. I think this is simply another oil war. And so when I hear we're, you know, bombing them because they're narcoterrorists, it's weapons of mass destruction to me. I hear it's the same thing. It's just the excuse that they're giving to go get those fossil fuels. But they're not, I do think that those are drug boats. No, I think they're drug boats, but I feel like all of this is connected. Like I think it's all part of a regime change for the fossil fuels. And just because they have this ideological thing that they don't like that these two guys try to different economic system that wasn't let Exxon mobile and Chevron in to take and privatize the fossil fuels and all of the, you know, the resources of Venezuela. They didn't like that those resources were being kept. But like this isn't for the people. Like we're not trying to help the people. We don't give a shit that they have a dictator because we don't give a shit that the Saudis have the royal family. Like we don't care that he stayed the president. We care that he doesn't let our companies in to take those, take the oil. He didn't true petro-socialism has never been tried. Yeah, I do it. I agree with Jen that I think it's probably more likely economic than it is America, the global policeman for the recent stated that we are friends with a number of dictators that have the same problems that doesn't seem to be a big issue there. I, yes, I would push back on the idea that the reason that Chavez did not transform Venezuela into a socialist utopias because we've not traded with them. There are intrinsic problems with what they're doing. A lot of this, yeah, okay, to just enstatement them of true petro-socialism has never been tried. If you want a good petro-state, be like Norway. Norway's a lot better. Norway's the one to emulate, not Venezuela. They're very different in terms of how they approach economics. And I don't have any problem with about Norway's up to here. We can quibble on some stuff, but they have an emergent market economy and liberal rights. That's a good thing. But in the notice sanctions like, sanctions do seem to have taken around to the negotiation table on a couple of instances. They do seem to have exerted pressure on that. They don't seem to have had a big effect on Cuba. Cuba's, we put in sanctions on Cuba during Castro. They're still, they've lightened up on housing. They finally admitted that socialist housing is a failure, but they're, they're still overall, socialist, still overall communists. So the, the sanctions I don't think end up being an effective tool just for a practical standpoint. But they share hurt the population and they hurt the economy, which is kind of the point. They do. And I think it would be overall better. Like, first of all, I kind of have a philosophical problem with the government telling me who I can trade with. Like, if I want to buy shit, if I want to visit Cuba, I'm a free man in a free country. I'll visit Cuba. If I want to visit Venezuela, I'll visit Venezuela. If I want to do business with people in Venezuela and Cuba, being a pro-freedom country, I think I should be allowed to do that. And yeah, I think that generally speaking, the sanctions tend to hurt people a lot more than they hurt the people at the top. In the same way that when you raise corporate tax rates, the CEO doesn't take a pay cut. When you do sanctions on a country, the president doesn't go, I'll, I'll sell three of my mansions. No, just squeezes the people at the bottom. I agree on that. Patreon.com/wearenotwrong is where you go. If you want to support the show on this Patreon exclusive edition of the program we discuss. Oh, wait, hold on. What do we discuss? Retirement agrees. Should we all retire? Yes. Our top 10 international retirement destinations. We continue our march on as the number one blue collar, proletariat, American working class show by discussing to you the paying audience where you should retire to internationally. Are the top 10 correct? Greece is number one. We go over that and so much more on the Patreon. We should go to Cuba. I would, I genuinely want to go. I think it'd be really cool. I, I hope that at some point we will, we will get rid of the band. We can't, we open it up to a great extent under Obama. But then we, we changed it under Trump and it's not been reversed since then. I don't think Biden reversed it. And so you can still, you can go there because you can just go to Mexico and then go somewhere else. I've had friends that have gone to Cuba. I actually was in a press junket with Conan O'Brien right when he got back. So I was able to ask him a couple of questions about Cuba. He had a really good time. And I would love to go there. I'd have to be real careful. I'd have to be real careful because I would be wanting to ask a lot of questions about the immense failures that have gone on in terms of communism. But I think the people are probably friendly and cool that I'd like to see the old cars. And I kind of want to get there before they modernize, before they liberalize. That'll happen to them too. I heard it's like going back in time. Yeah, because they can't, because of the sanctions and various other things, it's difficult for them to get new cars. So they just have to redoing all their cars from the 50s, which is horrible. But probably it's like, it's like, it's like Epcot, but all the cast are slaves who come. Yeah. And they could use my tourist money, Justin. Yeah, could they, could they do they just do they just to use it just to use it listeners listeners. Here's some advice from Lord Uncle Heaton to you. You can have a communist regime if you have a vibrant black market that's the only way you can have a communist regime that's even remotely salvageable. So like Vietnam, I went to Vietnam here a few years ago, which like has a stock market now, but is nominally communist. When I got to Vietnam, went to the airport, got picked up by my friend, and then he's like, well, we need to get your money changed. So we'll go to the black market for the money. And like, I thought it was going to be like dudes and trench coats in the back of an alley. No, like you go into a jewelry store, you say like, you know, hi, I need to talk to Peter or whatever. And then you go up like it was a whole outfit. Like, I mean, like these are people that have pension plans. They have like, they have like holidays off. Like they're, you know, they've got the bank windows set up and like vibrant black market. And that is what I would be paying for. They've got like, there's lots of ways that you get around that in Cuba as I understand it, where you can't technically operate like a for-profit restaurant like that because that would be, you know, selling food. Can you imagine anything more loathsome than that? But you can get around it if it's like your family doing it. So everybody will end up opening up like their own little family restaurant out of their house or something to that effect. So like, I would patron those places and see if I couldn't schlep some money into the housing black market through some sort of underground Airbnb or something. Yeah. I'm a brave man. I'm a brave man. I'm willing to do this. Actually, and I were thinking about going there. And we wound up not doing it because of anti-meat up guys. We wanted to, um, we wanted a stream and the internet very unreliable in Cuba. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was going to go there a few years ago and Glent back talked me out of it. Like I was going to go there. It was what I was still at Texas. And Glent was like, don't know. Like the president's not coming for you. Like Trump won't come for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if he did, I guess I'd have to reverse position on some things. They also, their cigars aren't as good anymore. They kind of, you know, they kind of lost their lead on that. All the good cigar rollers want to Nicaragua. Ireland's new alcohol warning labels stating links to liver disease cancer and risks to fetuses are already appearing in shops and pubs. But mandatory adoption of these labels have been delayed until 2028 after alcohol industry pushback. The country's deep cultural ties to drinking, complicate public health efforts. Many young adults acknowledge the risk but say the labels don't change their behavior. While average consumption has dropped among over 25 years and some young people are moderating or quitting, binge drinking among 15 to 24 year olds remains high in Ireland, shocker. Critics argue the warnings are less impactful than cigarette labels and limited night life alternatives. Keep pubs central to social life. Jen, do you believe that warning labels work? So one thing that makes me think yes is that if they didn't work, I don't think the alcohol lobby would be lobbying so hard to not have them on the containers. And then I also think about my own behavior. And I can't say that I really wasn't aware of the damage that I was doing. I feel like drinking alcohol was just a right of passage. It's what you do when you're an adult, binge drinking, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s. It was so common that I didn't really think anything of it. I didn't know that there were any cancers that were. I knew that you shouldn't drink well pregnant because it was bad for the baby. Other than that, I really didn't think that there were any repercussions. So if there had been a label on there that told me that it dramatically increases my risk of breast cancer. If it told me that it was, you know, making my anxiety worse and my depression worse and like all of the mental effects that it had, like had I seen these because I God knows, like I've held thousands of bottles cans of alcohol in my hands over the years. And if I had just had that there, I would have been bored enough at least at some point to have read it. But I really wasn't aware of it until my late 30s. And so for me, I do think it would have worked at least to some respect because I might have been like, okay, at least to cancer, what kind of cancer and then gone down the rabbit hole and question it myself. But without the label, I didn't know. So those two things, like, would it affected my own behavior? I think yes. And just you don't fight things with an enormous amount of money and power all over the world. If it's something that you're not worried, we'll have an effect and it caused people to drink less. So I think they do work. And so I'm kind of for it because I don't believe in prohibition, but I do believe in giving people information. And this is kind of important information about that product. So would you be for alcohol warning labels in America? Yeah. I mean, because if they weren't in America, I never would have seen them. So it wouldn't have helped me. I mean, I didn't see them. So it couldn't help me. Said the lady in Vienna. Yeah, but I wasn't in Vienna as a teenager and I was like a college student. Like I, I was unaware back then for a few months. Yeah. But like, I wasn't aware. I'm just saying you've spent time in Europe. Yes, I did spend time in you, but they didn't have the labels here in Europe either. Like it was, they just didn't exist. So it's like when I like back on it, I would like to have them. So yes, I would support it in the state. Yeah, this kind of witty repartee is harder on an internet delay. He didn't. Do you believe that warning labels work? No, I'm okay with them. I just don't think they're particularly effective. So this falls under the category of something that I'm neutral on. If Ireland wants to do this, it doesn't make a huge deal for me. In general, my position is insofar as the government is involved in trying to direct your personal behavior. I think the government has a role in helping you arrive at a good conclusion on your end from an informational standpoint. So I don't have. Like for example, I like that products have calories and ingredients in them. I'm fine with that. I think that helps people arrive at a conclusion on their own. If you want to eat something with trans fats, go eat something with trans fats. If you want to smoke cigarettes, like I don't and I will make you eat it if I catch you littering it. But I don't. You know, you want to do that. That's you. You get to. You get to assess the amount of risk and pleasure you get from personal behavior. But in terms of just facilitating information to allow you to have a good idea of what's happening, I don't have any problem with it. I don't think that there's very good data on this to indicate that it's effective, however. So my understanding is we've had warning labels on alcohol in America since 1989. And that has not had a demonstrable effect on reduction in drinking. There's been a reduction in drinking at a generational level with Gen Z or so I hear. I've not seen the data on this. But that doesn't appear to be a result of the labels. That's something else because the labels have been around since well before Gen and I could drink. The Canadians tried an experiment with this, briefly, where they had large warning labels on their purchases and it did cut sales for a little bit. And then people got used to it and it rebounded. I think most people in Ireland and elsewhere know that drinking is not good for you. I think there's been a good public campaign on educating people on this. And maybe we should be putting more into that. Like I think generally when I was growing up, it was like, well, if you drink too much alcohol, it might. You might get liver sclerosis, you might die from that. You might age prematurely. The cancer thing is new to me, not in this conversation, but in the last 10 years knowing that there's a correlation between. So I think that there's an element of public awareness that might be there. In terms of labels though, I'm fine with them doing it. I just don't think it'll be particularly effective. The things that tend to be effective in terms of reducing alcohol consumption are prices and taxation, which I don't like. I don't like trying to modify people's behavior by punishing them, which is basically what's happening. And I think that that typically ends up affecting people that are poor more than people on the other end. Like, if I'm drinking scotch, which is what I tend to drink, I'm going to get irritated if I have to pay $5 more for a bottle of scotch than I otherwise would have, but it's probably not going to modify my behavior in any capacity. So it's going to end up just forcing people that are consuming a whole lot of alcohol to just pay more for the habit that they've got, which I don't think that does any favors. The stuff that I think works well that I would be in favor of is I think that it's warranted in terms of restricting the hours that businesses can operate and sell alcohol at. There's a public safety issue there. I don't think liquor stores should operate after midnight. I think if you really need liquor, get it earlier in the day or don't get it after midnight because there's pretty strong correlations between after midnight liquor sales and violence and people getting into trouble. So just being able to modify it like that. I think maybe last episode or the episode before that, I would like there to be a system instituted in the United States where you go to the government with your ID and go, I want a blue ID, regular than a regular ID. And they go, yep, here's your blue ID. This means you cannot buy your own volition legally by alcohol for six months and you can update it whenever you want. So those to me are ways that are going to be more apt to preserve individual autonomy while also potentially having a downsizing effect on the the harms of public intoxication. But yeah, overall, I don't think that this will be effective, but I don't really have a problem with it because I don't have a problem with the government providing information. And insofar as the people fighting back, it might be Jim that that is what they think that's I think an astute analysis that if they're putting lots of effort behind that. But I think also it just could be they don't want people messing with them, or they don't want to have to pay the transaction costs of redesigning their labels. There is going to be a fee associated with that. There's going to be some kind of cost that's born. I think it's minimal enough that it doesn't really bother me or my free market sympathies. But yeah, overall, I'm neutral on this one. The alcohol lobby of Ireland says that they are pushing back on it because they don't want to redesign everything only to have the EU pass a similar law in two years and then have to reconcile what the two labels demand and redesign it again. And they'd rather wait until there is an EU ruling on something like this before they redesign. But then again, that very well could just be cope because they want to push and push and push and push and delay and delay and delay and lobby and lobby lobby until nothing ever happens for which I would say, God, they're ugly. They're bad. In an aesthetically beautiful world, they would not exist. Nobody cares about the fucking Marboros stamp where there's a rotten out mouth on it. If you aren't going to smoke, you're not going to smoke. There's different ways that you can color this and I would only say add to Andrew's list licensure and legality of where you can consume. That's the biggest way that you control this stuff. You want less people to drink, issue less liquor licenses or retract the amount of liquor licenses that you have. If you really want to knock that down, then that's how you do it. Make your town dry, like many towns in America are or restrict sales on certain times of day, like whether or not, I mean, if you really want to put full government pressure on it, then do it. I just, I think that this kind of eating along the edges of this stuff is bad. And let me go one step further. I think we should have more liquor licenses. We should have a federal stimulus for more bars in America as we become more atomized. If we become more shuttons as we find less third spaces in American life, we do need more of these places. We need more outdoor areas. We need more beer gardens. We need more pubs. It means that drinking is good for you. No. Does it mean that that's a place where people gather? Yes. And they want to gather there right now. We should have more of them and not less. Something else you could do. I would fall short just enough of having dry counties. I don't like that. That's restricting my ability to get stuff. That's fine. No, I agree. All I'm saying is that if you're going to go there, then go there. Well, but like what I was going to say though is like, I'm not saying I endorse this idea, but it's another tool you could potentially use. Like one of the things that I think is a very good development that's going on is so this last year when I was in Scotland, I was not sober. In fact, I was rarely sober when I was in Scotland this last year. But the prior year, I was dead clean sober the entire time I was there. I was very worried about it in part because the Scots have not yet invented hugging. They don't have any form of affection outside of buying each other rounds. That's it. There's no word in Scottish for love. There's just pints. That's it. And so I was worried about that. And I was worried that there was going to be undue pressure put on me amongst my fellow degenerates in Scotland. I was very pleased and surprised to find the amount of non-alcoholic beer that had proliferated in Scotland in a very short period of time, in a place that is notorious for drinking culture. So if I were going to try, if I were more technocratic and less libertarian, I would be inclined to say something like, just don't have sales taxes on non-alcoholic beer. Don't have sales taxes on mocktails. Try to try to, if you're worried about modifying behavior in that capacity. But I'll bring it back to the labeling thing. On the note of Scotland, this is anecdotal. I don't know whether the data is correct on this. When I talked to my Scottish friends, many of whom were smokers, they liked collecting the different gory, massive display things on cigarette cases. They find it macabre and funny. So they will intentionally go out and purchase different cigarette packs so that they can collect them like Pokemon cards. And I talked to other people that are like ongoing smokers. And what they tell me is it just makes them feel bad that they're going to keep smoking. It doesn't modify their, it increases awareness, but it doesn't modify behavior. And if that is the case, I'd be opposed to it because I don't want to have those, if it just makes people feel bad and like lets them know they're going to get cancer, if it doesn't modify behavior, I wouldn't want to do it. But maybe we all know that shame, a very effective way to change people's lives. But maybe it's not for them. Like maybe it's for the kid that sees mom's cigarette packs on the table and sees that this is what the consequence could be and has that in their head when they're offered their first cigarette. Like maybe it's not for the people that are currently smoking, but for the people who haven't started yet. And that's who I think it could be effective for. Interesting. So yeah, any big, big, big generation. Big generation looking thing. Yeah. There's yeah, I think people wear. I like that. I've had people wear. How many ways do we need to make people aware? I think pictures on the carton are I think that makes people aware in a way that they weren't aware before. Of the consequences of something else you could do, which is both the elitist and technocratic. If you want to go down this rabbit hole is rather than doing informational promulgation or raising overall prices, you do minimum unit pricing. So they do this in Scotland and Wales where they increase the bare minimum. So we're not going to increase the prices on scotch. We are going to increase the prices on plastic jug vodka. We are going to increase the prices on cheap malt liquor, that kind of thing. That does seem to have an effect on the amount of alcohol consume, but it's not my preferred way of doing it. I'd rather have hours, blue licenses, and information. I think that we see my program two, three times now and I like him. I think Cass Sunstein's got his head screwed on right. I was initially skeptical of the guy, but I've come around on him. And he also he's a committed liberally believes in individual rights. He believes in people making their own decisions. But having having information that helps you arrive at a better decision, which you could take or leave, I don't ever properly. I think that we should read the warning labels, contents five times a day off, a loud speaker like the Muslim call to prayer. That would make everybody aware. Okay. What if what if what if you have you know how you get those greeting cards that you open up and it sings happy birthday to you? What if all secret cartons have that? And it's the search engine. We'll go, you're going to die. No, I think we should put it on every birthday card. Every birthday card should also include a deer mom. You've always been there for me and I will always look to make you proud. Also alcohol in some cases causes cancer and liver disease. Yeah. We should mandate it everywhere. I mean, if the goal is getting the word out, I would say personally, you know, look, I've never been a regular cigarette smoker ever. And I grew up around people that were smoking cigarettes constantly. Now, maybe that was a part of it. I saw my grandfather and I saw my father and I saw my aunt smoking and that didn't appeal to me. And so I didn't want to do it. Maybe it was because at some point when I was a kid, I saw some grotesque public service announcement where somebody was talking through a tube and said, don't smoke a single cigarette or else this will happen to you. But then again, it didn't work with drugs. It didn't work with alcohol or drunk driving because I saw a lot of PSAs about those two and I sure as hell did all that. So I don't know. I mean, I think that there's a lot of reasons why people make the decisions that they make and that ultimately we can we can we can technocratically try to solve things to the point where we erode quality of life. And I'm here to stand on the side of quality. Hold on. Having a picture on the side of a bottle or a carton does not degrade your quality of life. You can still do this. Yes, it does smoke the butt and drink the drink. Like that's the what you actually want. Like the having a label on there like, come on Karen. It's fine. Aesthetics matter. Aesthetics matter. I like this. I like to see. I mean, come on. If I get a great obsidian black can of of of Guinness, you know, and the next thing you know, there's a gigantic ugly white box with a bunch of weird fucking metric numbers and shit on it. Boo. And it's talking about like cancer and stuff. No, no, no, no. I want just the can. I want it to look beautiful in my hand. That's what I dared to dream. A beautiful world. You know, the world wants to stand down by the crats. We're we're we're missing an obvious problem here. When you order a pint and a pint glass, it's not going to have that label on it, which means that if you're ordering beer, any one of the Irish pubs, you're not going to see any of this. It's just for the people that are buying it at gas stations, the liquor stores and go at home with it. Basically. Yeah. So we would depend on what the consumption is at bars. You know, what what are the other things when I'm over in Scotland, a real concern with publicans is that there's been a decline in people going there. So 20 according to my friends and most of my friends work in the hospitality industry in Scotland, the the 2020 lockdowns basically knocked out the incoming generation from going to bars and learning bar etiquette and and figuring all that out. And like they're concerned about I I'm not I have faith in the spirit of Scotland to not lose pub culture. I don't think pubs are going to go. I think they I think you're just going to see an increase in non alcoholic beer, which would be a good thing because ultimately it is about the socialization and having a place that you belong and you go to see your buddies more than it is about the liquor. But that is a concern that they have. They're they're worried that pubs are going to start closing and that you're going to see a decline in the foremost British institutional. I'm going to tell them that you told them that their pubs are British. It's a problem all over the islands. It is. It is. We're not wrong pot of gmail.com. Run Andy run rights. If heatens is seriously considering a run for Congress in a lame dunk, uh, lame duck Trump or post Trump era, especially if he ends up moving back to Oklahoma to do it. He might want to keep an eye on Rob Sands campaign for governor and Iowa. Sands is a Democrat running a low temperature hostage negotiator style campaign. The same style. Heatens says he excels at Iowa and Oklahoma's political landscape are similar enough, depending on how close Sands gets to winning. His results could give heat and a practical real world sense of what his own odds might look like. I have everyone would love to see representative heat and campaign manager young and chief of staff. Brianie someday. Boy, that'd be a fun sitcom wouldn't it? That would be fun sitcom. That would be deep too with the representative heat and it is two buddies killing it on Capitol Hill. I would have enjoyed it. Uh, I will keep an eye on this fellow. That sounds great. And I appreciate the, uh, the word of confidence from the listener. Thank you. Now one thing, let me go back to actually our first topic. Um, the, the Venice way of the thing. I forgot to get this in, but I think it does bear mentioning. I have heard that there is tremendous frustration. Part of the reason why there's bipartisan pushback on this is because the Republicans have been extraordinarily annoyed at how little information they have gotten on this, uh, to the point where what I was told is that many literally just want crumbs. They just want somebody in a uniform to come in and say, this was the, you know, the number on the boat. We tracked it for three days. We shot it. We're, we're pretty sure that it was a narco thing. They want anything. And the only thing that they have gotten is a statement from the Department of War, uh, and the Department of Justice saying that they believe all these things are legal and their legal justification as to why they have not gotten any details on the attacks themselves. And that has left many of them feeling, uh, really exposing. We're not talking about the, the, the rabble rousers. We're not talking about the never trumpers. We're not talking about even like the, the, the, the, the Thomas Massey's of the world. These are like, Trump, MAGA dudes that are, that are frustrated. And the other side of that is like, there's one thing. If your administration has been ruthlessly efficient, that you can go to them and say, Hey, look, if we tell you then we know this is going to get out. This is sensitive information. Uh, uh, you guys know as well as anybody that you tell a congressperson, you're essentially telling the world, um, trust us. Yeah. Ruthless efficiency and competence has not been the calling card, uh, of, of this administration as of late, which I think has heightened the anxiety even more. So I wanted to get that out there. I heard the same thing. Nicknamed police. Right. I know we have the Yankee doodle panther in the bicostal elitist. Did we ever get one for Justin? Is he just the pod daddy? I'm not calling you pod daddy. I think I agree. Like you're, you're primordial, right? Like you're before Jen and I emerged onto the scene. You were already one of the Titans that, that predated the Olympians and jury was your, your god name, right? Like, well, the other problem is that I repeat the nicknames. So I can't give myself a nickname like I'm the one who keeps saying bicostal elitist and Yankee doodle panther because I think those are really funny nicknames. So to get a nickname or require somebody to say, Hey, you, you're curly. Like, like, it was me so far for all of the talents that my co-hosts have. Yeah. I called you pod daddy and you told me that I'm okay. I might say pod daddy, but it's, it's gonna, I'm gonna have to weigh it. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to call Justin pod daddy. But if it comes to the point where it makes him twice as uncomfortable as it makes me that I'll use it. All right. Well, we'll, we'll have to say how Doug Jones actually got elected, right? It took a lot for Democrat Doug Jones to win. And here's how we got there. The scandalous details of Alabama governor Robert love gov Bentley being in a cock relationship with a staffer and her husband that was coming out. Senator Jeff Sessions endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. The first senator to do so Trump goes on to win and makes sessions his AG to squash the investigation by Alabama, AG big Luther Strange, independently using state assets to hide his marital issues. He put strange in the Senate seat, giving strange two years to prep for a special election while being a sitting senator. This pisses off the independently elected lieutenant governor Kay Meemaw IV as well as the Republicans who ran state Congress. They pushed for more investigations, leaking details, shaming Bentley who eventually does a plea deal and resigns and Kay IV becomes governor. Being a vengeful southern grandma, she moves up the special election by a whole year to spite big Luther. Luther goes on to lose the primary to Roy Moore, who at that time was an annoying perpetual candidate for many things in the state and had a weird cult that would always vote for him. Moore ends up being a bit of a pervert and already polarizing to many Republicans who just refuse to vote for him and then don't vote. That means Doug Jones lux into office being the only other name on the ballot. Hey, well done, Alabama. It sounds like you have a functional democracy down there. I'm impressed. Functional, I would put in quotes, but, but hey, you know what, I'm just doing things. I'll, I'll take backbiting crooks that fuck each other over in order for that to be an actual competitive election over competent solidarity crooks that don't allow for competitive elections any day of the week. Definitely not a foot guy, right? I'm going to say this up top. I'm not a foot guy. I was always curious as to the psyche and the psychological reasons for this seemingly aberrant fetish, particularly feet, turns out that as to do with the area of our motor cortex deals with genitalia is super close to the area that deals with feet, legs and thighs. During a similar process of synesthesia, crossover of different senses where people report being able to taste music, feel sound and taste colors, some people have crossover between these parts of their motor cortex with some degree of regularity. Of course, everyone's brain is different. So that's why you'll see a guy who's into feet, a woman who's into hands or somebody who enjoys thick thighs. That was very interesting. The hands, yeah. I did not know that about quentin Tarantino. Hey, Lads, if a lady sends you a text message saying that you have nice hands, she is sending messages to her friends like a prisoner talking about what he's going to do when he gets out. Like that, like that is a tip off. If you get a hands message from a gal, that's a thing. Hmm, good job. That's used to the scale. She's array. Right. I worked in a cheese cave for six years and wanted to mention that the cheese that Jen was talking about getting scraped onto a sandwich was likely reclet and cheddar. It was reclet means to scrape and has become a style of semi-soft, washed, rind, outpined style cheese. There are a few US cheese makers who make reclet style cheese, uh, Reading from Spring book farms is the most well known, but Jasper Hill and a few others do the style too. Andrew was talking about having a personal lawyer and doctorate listeners. But if any of you need a cheese monger, I'm volunteering my fiancee who also listens to the show. She managed the Murray's cheese shop in New York City for a while before they were bought out by Kroger, LOL. Hey, yeah, in the market for a monger. Monger heats. Reach out to me because this sounds like a really fun day in New York to me. Maybe we could do a cheese meetup and we'll go someplace in the West Village. I'll get loaded up on cheese and then I'll go to Marie's Crisis. That sounds like a glorious day. Just heat and rip and cheese fart singing airsprings. It's going to be a real fantastic. On the dumbest state control media, Bill Clinton loves rush hour rights. I wanted to follow up on your recent points about the rush hour deal and the broader comments on Hollywood. The thing about rush hour four is Paramount isn't financing it nor is Warner Brothers. Paramount is only collecting a flat distribution fee while Warner Brothers still takes first dollar gross for owning the IP, meaning that they get a cut of every box office dollar before expenses. Neither will be contractually on the hook for marketing the film. The current rumors that the movie will be funded with more Saudi money that has recently been flowing into the entertainment industry as a whole. More broadly, the industry's current contraction stems from nostalgia for the three or four network era of the 70s without acknowledging that this period was heavily regulated under the old Fincyn rules, which legally barred networks from owning the content they aired. When the Clinton administration dismantled those rules in the 90s, it opened the door for a relatively short-lived cable and streaming boom that is now cratering the industry as a whole for no good reason. While Hollywood can function with a limited number of distributors, it can't with the shrinking pool of financiers to fund the programming yet that's exactly what's happening in a landscape of limited distribution, the financial risk taken on for physical production needs to be diversified until that imbalances fix the industry will keep collapsing under the weight of perpetual need for monopolized market control. This is interesting and I think the takeaway is that we need to undo the deregulation of the 1990s in regard to the entertainment network or entertainment industry. I'm not swayed by that part, but the rest of it's very interesting backstory. I just don't get how there's so many shady characters involved in rush hour four, like the Saudis now, like, what is going off? This is so weird. Oh, it's Hollywood, baby. Come on, look. Before it was the other one's upstanding, fantastic, earnest, honest industry, which is Hollywood having shady people involved. Who could have seen this coming? Yeah, but you would think that the shady people would be involved in like a documentary about the Saudis or like something like that. But instead, it's rush hour four. Like, if it's going to be this shady, it should be spectacular, but it's rush hour four. Like, I would want godfather level, you know, to, to quote Ricky Jervais at the Golden Globes, who is admonishing all of the glitterati that they shouldn't be, that they shouldn't be going on and on about their personal politics. If ISIS had a streaming service, you'd be calling your agent. So like, they do not give a fuck who funds the, the program. They just want to make a movie about how they're mad at their mom. That, man, that speech was one of the all time greats. I love that speech. Like, Ricky Jervais came out, no one, everybody thought it was going to be just like an hour of hand jobs. They thought they were going to wheel a mirror out that they could all have a standing ovation too. And Ricky Jervais just slammed it like my favorite part of that speech is he starts talking about Epstein. And then he goes, I know your friends with it, but let me finish. Like it was great. I mean, the, the all time Jervais at the Globes moment was, uh, it comes out with a beer. It says, yeah, I got a beer. I like a beer as much as the next guy. Unless the next guy is Mel Gibson, and then Mel Gibson kicked out to for some of the boy. So good. Take it. Nope. Just amazing. Just amazing. The only thing I would push back on the emailer is, yes, the deregulation offence and did, uh, create a new dynamic. And you can make the argument that that is overly reliant now on the studios financing their own stuff or at least creating a conflict of interest because they will only want to finance stuff that they can sell to their own consumers as opposed to creating a panoply of entertainment that they could feed the entire market. Maybe there is a argument to say that there should be more people that are only creating things that everybody else can buy and own. And maybe we're getting back to that. However, the world in which the studios owned their own distribution networks also created the biggest boom in movies and television history, which just ended with the strike and, uh, the, the various different strikes that happened over the last few years. Before that, we were creating television and movies at an unsustainable level. It was, it was a huge boom time for the industry. Uh, and, and now that has receded, there is obviously a contraction that is happening. But the ownership of those platforms did lead to the boom. So you can't have both sides of it. Like, uh, there, there was a huge golden era, even if it was totally unsustainable and, and predictably burned itself out. Yeah. And you, you get, you get market contractions and you get market expansions. Those, those happen. And it's probably, I don't know, I, I don't see a huge need for there to being a federal strictures there. Although, I'm, I, I don't know, Vincent Law regarding 1990s entertainment stuff as well as Justin or the listener. Now what I would also say is maybe LA running all shooting and production out of their city and their state because of their own regulations. Maybe that has something to do with at least people who are living in that city, having, uh, more or less opportunity when you're chasing every NBC sitcom to shoot in Prague because it's cheaper to fly everybody out there than it is to shoot around the corner from where everybody lives. Maybe you have a local problem. And Hollywood solution of that, having spoken to a few people now is we need subsidies. We need federal subsidies because Hollywood is really suffering right now. And so we need the taxpayers to come in and help. Yeah. Yeah. Nope nonsense. Thanksgiving travel laws was our other topic market gen writes gen giving the textbook answer for how market competition solves the problem of Thanksgiving travel is the ultimate expression of Roberts con quest first law of power. Everyone is conservative about what she or he knows best. The other two provide an interesting lens for parsing reality. Number two, any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right wing will sooner or later become left wing. And number three, the behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies. Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's nonsense. I can't. I just can't. I think I've heard of this before. I'm not I'm not familiar with Robert Conquest. I've heard this from people that work in think tanks and some other ones. It's an interesting concept. I would be curious as to how Robert Conquest would define right wing and left wing since I kind of object to that paradigm in general. And I be curious is the mechanism he's talking about to people that is that any any power structure will naturally become more technocratic. And so it will it will become technocratic in its viewpoint. Is that the idea or I fucking hate these lists. They're so fucking dumb. It's like this one and the fascism one and then like the rules for radicals one. Everybody fucking quotes them like they're the Bible. And it's like it might as well be live laugh love. There's more insightful shit that's on my mom's kitchen wall than some of this stuff. And everybody acts like it's like, oh, it's so fucking. Oh, it's so deep. Whatever. Take your listicle somewhere else. Oh thank you. The bit that I would push back on this. I'd be open to number one and two. Number three, the behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret to all of its enemies. That runs a foul of I think a very useful listicle or aphorism, which is Hanlon's razor. So Occam's razor is the simplest solutions most likely to be the correct or it should be the simplest answers most likely to be the correct dance, right? Hanlon's razor, which I think should be far more used in politics is never attribute to conspiracy or malice that which could be attributed to incompetency or sloth, which I think goes a long way. I'm far more inclined to think that organizations are just incompetent and lazy than they are playing 3d chess so that there's been an insurgent fifth column that's infiltrated them to make their own demise. Number five, ask grass or cash. Nobody rides for free. Justin, I would buy a book called Justice Rules of Power. You could crank it like it'd be a big one if it's an ebook. Crank it out over the weekend. I would read that shit. Good. Late bloomer rights, one possible reason for the lack of air traffic controllers is the restrictive hiring requirements. In order to qualify, you have to be under 31 years old. By the time I heard about the possibility of becoming an air traffic controller, it was too late. Yeah, that's the same. Yeah, like if you, if I don't know, if you've worked in Canadian air traffic control and you're 45 and you want to come work here till you're 65 or whatever the cutoff date is, I'd be fine with them. Yeah, that seems like a very dumb regulation. Yeah, and that's really. Yeah, I don't know. They made a movie, right? Wasn't what there was a Billy Bob Thornton movie about air traffic controllers pushing 10 rush hour three. Was it rush hour three? Wasn't rush hour three. I don't know what that. In fact, was, was Angelina Jolie in it too? Is that what they met? Did Bob pull manage to get a movie made by Thornton and Angelina Jolie? I'd be thrilled. I'm going to have to call him up. We're not wrong as a production of Dog and Pony show audio. Our editor is Will Saddleberg on Tuesdays or, yeah, Wednesday's edition of a PX3. I'll probably come out later Tuesday because I'm going to, I'm going to set up this Tennessee special election that is happening. We'll see what the results are later tonight. And then unbeknownst to Heaton and Jen, they're going to be on the show. I'm just going to squeeze 15 minutes out of them because I don't have a guest. So they're going to be on the show. And I want to know how to react to it until right now. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not looking forward to when I'm fighting out about that. Yeah. Heaton, let's pop it on the orf. Do you guys know Freddie DeBore? I do. Yeah. I'm a fan of Freddie DeBore. Freddie of board. Freddie of board. I had him on a couple of years ago for a really good chat. I wanted to find out what Marxists think for a very good reason, which is that Marxist and neo-Marxist and cultural Marxist. These are all terms that are thrown out very willy-nilly in modern society. And I did not want to get in the habit of using the term Marxist as a brush to paint just that, which I don't like. I wanted to actually know what a Marxist is, what a Marxist was. Very few people were willing to come on the program to talk about Marxism, which I found very funny, because I'm like fucking cuck massie over here. Like whatever he is with low T. Like I have the Mr. Rogers of the free market. You're not like the idea that anybody would be afraid to come on. My program at talk is mind blowing to me, but I'm sorry. I said earlier a road easly that you can't give yourself a nickname. Well, I apologize, because cuck massie has proven me wrong. Yeah. Why would you have a problem? Go out and talk about Marxism on the cuck massie show hosted by it. Which is making sort of me not that messy by the way. Nobody would come on with the exception of Freddie DeBourg. He came on and we had a really good chat about what Marxists think. It was really interesting. If anybody wants, if anybody's interested in what actual Marxists think, it was a really good conversation where I just talked to him about what Marxists think. So I met him through that. I've since followed him on Substack. He's a very big writer on Substack. I find him very interesting. And he just had a novel come out about what it is like having bipolar disorder and going through the institutional process and having your life fall apart that happened to Freddie. Freddie suffers from what is now under control bipolar disorder, but it pretty much ruined his life for about 10 years, like burned every bridge, like got into legal trouble at one point, nearly killed himself on multiple occasions. And so I invited him on because I wanted to talk to him about mental health and what that is like. I am curious on the policy and then I plan to do a follow up episode on the program of why we got rid of insane to silence. If we should bring them back how we would do it. I'm interested in all of the mechanics of that. But in the meantime though, I'm talking to Freddie to bore about what it's like to be bipolar and what it's like to have a fairly debilitating mental health condition. I'll allow his book. It's a really interesting chat. That sounds very interesting, Jen. Yeah. So we just released our episode about the 23 and me bankruptcy, although the episode is more about the regulation of your genetic data. So that is now available on congressional dish. And I thought it was a pretty fascinating one. Even my mom was interested in the topic. So yeah, go check that out. All right, now we have to sit up for us for Jen briny floating down the European river and Andrew Keaton T falling lower than the New York City New Year's Eve ball. I'm just in Robert Young. The pod daddy himself saying we're not wrong. Pete Higgs said blaming that dude for shooting the missile at the two people in the water probably is by international law.