Episode 139: Iran and Icecream

0:09 Welcome back to another episode of A Record of My Father. Today we're going to be talking about the newest news events that are going on right now. We just started a war with Iran under the president that he said he was the president who doesn't start wars by I guess it's a little different than starting a war with Iran. And then we're also going to combat this topic with ice cream because we were thinking about favorite flavors of ice cream kind of coalesce or correlate to kind of wars that you enjoy, you know, or wars that you don't like. You know, because if I think about mint chocolate chip, that's kind of like my Vietnam.

0:53 I don't like it that much. I feel like it's it's forced on me. You know, I think that that's kind of that. Well, what do you think about this? Well, the reason I thought about ice cream in Iran was that your, your mother and I decided to go get ice cream today because it's a sunny day. And we whipped out the convertible and took the top down and went out and got ice cream. And that was like really cool. And it with all the horror going on, you're like, hey, let's go get ice cream. That makes a lot of sense. You know, you know, live your life, move forward. And not to put blinders on, but try to try to not to at some point totally be 100% involved in every single news story that bounces through. Even though it's a slaughtering of people, 'cause we're, you know, they're still slaughtering people in Gaza, They're still, they're doing it in the Sudan, they're doing it, we're doing it here within. Myanmar.

1:44 You know, Myanmar, yeah, it's over and over and over. So we're seeing all that. Yeah, yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but I was just thinking, yeah, no, the the way that we have become so obsessed with geopolitical issues and that's what allocates a vote for a president is so interesting. Well, I think you know, I think I think the reason is, is because ice cream was invented in 500 BC, early frozen treats where snow was collected and mixed with grape juice or fruit flavors. No way. 500 BC in Persia. That is not what I. Thought. Which is what? Oh, so we have a beginning here. So ice cream in Iran actually do have a connection. Later China reports suggest frozen combinations of milk, rice and spices and 200 BC.

2:37 And then of course we had 1st century AD, the flavored snow with fruit and juice. Tang dynasty, the birth of the creamy desserts, came along in 1560s in Europe, Italy, when we started mixing salt with it. And you know what I'm thinking? About rosewater You ever have rosewater ice cream? No, that's. Oh my God, it's. Nasty. So good. So, so, you know, so refreshing. And I think that's Persian as well. OK, this is this is kind of sad. First time in the US in Maryland in 1744. That's the first written account in American Colony, 1740. Four, we were kind of late. We were kind of late, yeah. I mean, GW and Thomas Jefferson popularized ice cream in the 1800s, which seems a little odd because I think they were all dead. Why did?

3:25 They. Yeah, yeah. The artificial freezer came along in 1843. That helped the production process. Commercial ice cream factory in Bomber Baltimore in 1851 we had nineteen O 4 the waffle cone and then 1920s to 1940s prohibition led to rise in soda fountains and post War Two home refrigeration makes ice cream a mass market wholesale item. The cone myth. While many people think America invented it, it's actually an English invention. Oldest company Bassett's ice cream in Philadelphia founded in 1861. Vanilla is the most popular.

4:09 Older historical flavors include Oh my God rose water. There you go Boulder and pistachio. 2 shitty flavors and 1 semi good. I like pistachio. I didn't like it when I was a kid. I didn't like it then, but I got to say when I was a kid what what was the first one I ever ate? It was like mango sorbet from Haagen Dazs. That was the first one ever and I think he gave it to me when I was like 5 and I was like this is great. This is. What would feed you dog ice cream up until you're like 7? Yeah, exactly. Cups, we'd put them on the floor in there. And the pub cups, yeah. Yeah, and you'd climb over there on your knees and. You kicked me.

4:50 Yeah, it went mad. I saw those, those baby videos the mom sent me. You see those? What? Where did you get the VHS tapes for that? Oh, he's going through baby footage of me. I think we stole them at the from block blockbuster that's just starting out that. 'D be kind of funny if it's like you could overlay an audio and just show your kid and you'll be like that's you when you were a baby because nobody knows what they remember, like what they look like, you know I mean, and you could just show it one baby video and overlay the audio. I think you'd be like that's you. And they say, Oh well, whatever, whatever. This, you know? You know, when you think about old civilizations, you don't think about ice cream. You think more about Iran and one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations with urban settlements, urban dating back to 4000 BC.

5:47 That's 6000 years ago. That's wild. That's that's the Persian Empire, you know. I think you just go on perplexity you just read yourself. Well, you read it, but you also got to take it with a grain of salt because some of it seems a little stupid. A lot of it's made-up, yeah. Yeah, well, when I look at when I look at the statement about Washington and Jeff. Biden, 1799. So how is he instrumental in the 1800s? That makes no sense. I mean, maybe if they were reading his books about ice cream? I have no idea. That just seems kind of like but did. George Washington write a book about ice cream like I don't know how that. Is No, he didn't. It's all silly, you know, we, we, we look at what's going on. I mean, wait. Let's see. Well, that's how they're going to redo all the history. They're just going to start saying things and then retaking it down when they're wrong.

6:33 And then you can just reformulate anything you want. Yeah. As long as it's good news about white people. Exactly. Well, that's what it seems like because. And I think always had the. Eurocentric map. Oh, George Washington was a major ice cream enthusiast who spent approximately $200, about $5000 today on the treat during the summer of 1790. He owns specialized equipment, including pewter and tin molds to serve it at Mount Vernon and during his presidency. So that's crazy. Actually, that's great. He spent $5000. Your tax dollars at work, man. Served me ice cream well. He was like, I don't want to be a king, I don't want to be ahead of all these people, but just fucking give me 5 grand so I could be king of ice cream. Ice cream King.

7:19 No, no, he, he was smarter. He, he, I agree with you that, that he was like, but he never said give me 5 grand. What he did do is he said you agree to pay all my expenses. That was the thing about that Washington. Yeah. And, and, and the what is it? The Revolutionary War. They, they, he said he didn't want a salary because they're like, we won't put you on a salary. Yeah, you don't do that. I'm doing it for myself. And, and he was the one that he needed like six horses a day. And he had, you know, like 19 meals and he had all this stuff and, and it cost just incredible amounts of money on. I mean, he was like the ultimate original grifter was that, that he was just like Takey, Takey, Takey, Takey, Takey. No, no, no, no, I don't want a salary. And you go like, well, where have we heard that? I'm not getting a salary.

8:10 I'm just making $3 billion a year off of what I can steal through crypto. They didn't have crypto back then, so they had to. And they didn't have taxing. So the government just had to figure out a way to pay or they did have some tax. Yeah, they did have tax, I think. It's kind of crazy that we let a president do a crypto rug pull. That's kind of wild. You know, I was thinking about that and there's an interview with Charlie Kirk, actually. And it's like, So what do you think? Is it? Is it before? Is it? Is it before his death or after? This was before surprising. OK, just check and just check. So he was talking to this guy, 'cause you know the turning point USA, they always invite people up there, then they crop all the videos to make them look like shit. And then you, you have all the people that just don't know anything.

8:51 Go up there and talk. They target the people they let go up there too. Well, they added it and they cut it out. That's really what what it is. But they were talking and it was like, what do you think about Donald Trump doing a crypto rug poll thing with Trump Coin? And he's like, oh, I don't really care. And I'm like, then what? What do you care about? Like I don't understand, like how you can't hold the person, the leader of the free world, accountable for moral and ethical clauses. Like I don't know what that is. He's like, but he wasn't president. And I'm like, but he was running for president. I don't understand. And he was already president before. So I don't understand. You know, it's just, well, it's the same thing where he was talking about like, if his daughter had been sexually assaulted, would he force her to have the baby? He said, yeah. And it's like, and this is somebody that the entire Republican side of the government was like, we are for this man.

9:39 And I think that's so funny. Yeah, things are very interesting. I think what they do is they there's a there's a discounting on things that are negative just like that. I mean, on, on the on the on the left, it's the same thing. You discount. Oh yeah, Biden's not really doesn't have dementia. He's just not really slower. But then you see him in life, you know, like, yeah, he's really. Slower. You know, so you, you see those kind of things. The question is, is that can you equate? What happens is, is that we have this line of how we equate things that where where I can't really write very good because I'm not, you know, the line goes up this way. And it's like, OK, if I murder one person or I drop a bomb and it kills one kid and you drop thousands of bombs and kill thousands of kids day after day after day, we're both murderers, right?

10:31 Yeah. But are they the same? No, no. See, I don't, I don't think they're the same. And I think that there's there's degrees and I think that that degrees and that nuance is what gets lost when people try to compare. And if you're comparing against the subject that I believe one side of you, I will, I will discount what you say by saying that, well, if you say something bad about my side, I'll say, well, my, your side does it too, you know, And it's like a, yeah, you, you killed one person. I killed 300,000. What's the big deal? You, you, you, you wasted a, you wasted $10 million in tax dollars. I wasted 100 billion. You see, you do it too. You know, when you're like, well, that's, that's come on.

11:13 That's not that's what do you call it disingenuous, lying bullshit, trying to justify things that you think are right and when they're not, you know there's a. Moral or ethical baseline for anything anymore? Is it like there there's no I think that that's why people are suffering with derealization and this this ongoing depression. It's because one, everything is not what you thought it was and all of these people that it's a top down issue and you still have these people that are saying, oh, it's a cultural issue in the US and these illegal immigrants are changing everything. And with the illegal immigrants didn't take all the colors off the building at McDonald's and make it a square or you know, like the, you know, they didn't.

11:58 Corporate minimalism has been destroying American character for a long time for. They were not, they were not forced to move manufacturing overseas. No, exactly. Microsoft spends is it, I think it was $60 billion a year, a year in China training the workforce. They have 6000 people there. I mean, we, we talk about unemployment and stuff and these guys are and they're taking tax dollars for that and they're like they're, you know, and you think to yourself like that's bigger than any program we've ever launched or ever had. These guys are just, it's just crazy.

12:40 And that's a year. Not, not, not not like five years. So you talk about General Motors, you know, like I don't. Know like they, they employ and they train. They have huge divisional training plants over there where they train the people to do what they want. The difference is, is that they don't have unions and they can do whatever they want to the worker. And I think that The thing is, is in the US, we, you know, we're, we're now trying to crap on the unions again because they're starting to come back, because people are like the poor people realize that unless there's, you know, two or three of us together, no one's listening. It's, it's OK to kill one of us anytime you want. It's OK to have to dump shit in the water and wipe out the poor people's neighborhoods.

13:21 As long as you don't touch the rich people. And it's OK to, it's OK to do all these things provided. But once the poor people get together and they start to have a voice, then you start to see people go, oh, oh, you know, and then the whole idea, hey, just point at one rich person that says it's a bad thing and say, hey, well, you should give all your money up. And it's like, that's not how society works. Society can't work by one person funding it just because one person says something. It has to be, it has to be the majority. It has to be, you know, a, a, a, A at least a controlling minority has to come together that says we need to change things. And the the problem is, is that you know they're, they don't. People are willing to lay down and die for the rest of the time that this country is going to exist. I feel like because at the same time too, there's such a stranglehold on voting and ever since Citizens United in this country, I don't think it's ever mattered. Since then opinion, I don't think it's mattered. And I don't know, it's just it's really about the war chest and how much money you can generate.

14:22 But at the same time too, you see such randomized kind of patterns that it's like, I don't even know if it's realistically. They were. They were. I saw something on Senate running, being a senator, that senator or House member, House member, 78% of your time, 78%, that's almost 80%. That's almost, you know, that's more than 3/4 of your time is spent raising money, not not helping your constituents, not talking about what they need done, not about, you know, focusing on legislation, not about reading legislation, proposing legislation that will change the the world to be making a better place for your constituents. No, it's about raising money to get re elected. And you start to look at the people that go in and get elected.

15:12 It's like financially, you know, you make $1.60 a 160,000, which everybody goes that's great. Well, in in Virginia or in Northern Virginia, that's not, that's not wonderful. That's, that's a place you could buy a house, you can live and you can survive and you could do things with your family and stuff like that. But if you're, but if you have a constituency that's in Arkansas, you have to have a house there and then you have to travel back and forth all the time. And now I don't know how they travel. I don't know what the money is. I don't know what the things are. And I don't know how it's paid for in the per diem and all the kind of stuff like that. But then there's also the the idea that you can you you can you get information before other people do.

15:55 You could actually buy stocks in the market with non public information. That's it's a violation for the laws for you and I, but not for Congress, which makes. No sense that makes sense. Yeah, well, the the weird thing about which I think should be something changed is that Congress's infamous for voting on laws that apply to society. Except, and the exception is always Congress and you know, like they have a separate pension plan, they have a separate healthcare plan, and they have all these different separate things for the rest of society. And I think that's, that's, that's a problem in our government. You know, those are the kind of things that, that should not be in place.

16:35 Those are the things that should be taken away. We, we don't, but it's hard, you know, if you're, if you're paying me, if I'm making $1,000,000 a year cheating the stock market and I'm morally OK with that and you try to take it away from me. I'm, I'm, I'm and I'm unwilling to give it up because I have all these free perks that allow me to get re elected. And that's why people get re elected over and over and over. And you know, some of them are pudding heads. They're not, they're, they're, they're, they're good oritators and they're good at grabbing a cute, a few divisive issues that they throw out there that make one side hate the other side, you know, hate taxes, hate this, hate that, you know, we're going to take $20 from the tax.

17:18 You're not, you're not going to pay your car tax anymore. And it's like, well, yeah, you are. You know, it, it, it, it comes down to spending. If you're, if, if you're going to spend things, you're going to need to make money somehow somewhere. And if you're going to spend it on your local government, your local government is going to have to figure out a way to pay for it. And they're going to pay more and more on the backs of the people at the bottom. And sadly, you know, it's not a, it's not a distributed thing. You know when you. Look at what was your favorite ice cream that you've ever eaten? That's my question. When I was a kid. Yeah. It has to be butter brickle. Really. Still. You know we make that one. Kid A peanut butter.

17:58 Was a kid. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of like peanut brittle with crunchy vanilla ice cream. Good vanilla ice cream. Didn't we? I remember eating that with you one time. Where was that? Do you remember? I do not. Was it Nielsen's before it went under? Yeah, it might have been that or the Rexall drug store in Vienna that. Yeah, maybe, Neil. I think it was Nielsen's. The Custer was so good that you remember that. Where did they go? They never relocated, did they? Are you talking the frozen Custer places since like 49? Well, they went into a really new fancy shop and they have one there and they had another. Oh, they do have one. It wasn't as good. And then they have a the Nielsen's they move because the thing was so loud. And I mean, it's good, but it's it's expensive and it's like we just went to Brewster's right downtown Vienna. I had a medium ice cream.

18:50 Your mother had a small $15.75, so 20 bucks. What's future? Going under, man, let's do ice cream, I mean. For me it's like whatever, but but it's like. You are not the rest of the world. Yeah. I'm not. I'm not in that. I'm not in the economic status of them. So it's sort of like but but I was and and and coming to. California, it's even worse. It's even. You know, it was a long time ago. I still, I still have this really stupid thing called empathy that I'm trying to kill, but I can't. Where, you know, you care that you see people that have a whole lot less and you feel like, you know, if we could get more of a sharing mentality in the world and or even in the States that it's like from the from the upper end, because it's, it surprises me by the number of people I know that have more money than they will ever spend in their life.

19:50 Yet their charity giving is, I would say, less than optimal. Thomas Hobbes, man, I'm telling you, people are inherently greedy and they're inherently evil. And I'm that's OK. I completely agree with that. And we're seeing that now more than ever. We're seeing that moral and ethical baselines that existed or what we thought existed in O8 never really accentuated or never really kind of existed at all. And I don't know, maybe they did. Maybe it was the idea that they could exist and that's what we loved. But now. I know we have the government jumping in and saying, hey, let's go after another war. I mean, why are we?

20:30 Why are we attacking Iran? It seems like a distraction to be honest. I mean. What just happened? I mean, it's like, oh, they, they hurt their people. And it's like, well, you know, we're incarcerating people here, too. We incarcerated 34, no, 172 Americans last year. We incarcerate them without due process. We 34 people died in prisons in, in ICE prisons specifically, not in prisons across the land. And you know, the, the, the explanations are less than good. And they just had the guy die the other day that he was, he was blind.

21:12 And they dumped them off, I think it was in Buffalo or whatever. And they dumped them off at a closed coffee shop at night. And he had, and he had slippers on and he had socks, but he had the, the, you know, the little scrunchies and he had a light jacket and it's not 15 inches. And he wound up dead. And you think to yourself like the just just just the absolute, we don't care. Well, I just don't understand how you can endorse A presidency that runs on cruelty, because it's not even like I understand that Obama was a war monger. I understand that.

21:53 I understand that he bombed a lot of people, but he never avidly said let's bomb these people. You know, he never looked in internally at his own people and said, you know what, those who are even naturalized citizens are no longer citizens in well, they did bomb here and that they say that now. And that's. Crazy. They openly say it. And I think the difference is, is that, I mean, he was over there and I remember the things that I thought were horrible were where is it? It's, it's, it's, I can't remember the place. It's not Iran, but it's very, very Iran, but it's not a not, not very close there.

22:35 And I can't remember the name of it. And that they changed what enemy combatants were because there were too many individuals dying and, and, and, and at that time in any combatant was of, of age person 18 year older that was killed, you know, so if you drop the bomb on me at this place and you were killed and, and 19 other kids that were 18192025 women didn't matter. They were enemy combatants. But if there were a school full of children downstairs, they were under 18. They were considered a collateral damage and they were counted as like you killed civilians. Well, they move the age, I think it got to 16 and I think they moved it down to 12.

23:26 And so that if you now, if you kill people that are over 12, that that's, that's OK, you know, But you got to say to yourself, you know, this goes back to the whole Clinton thing where, you know, he had a chance to blow up Osama bin Laden, but he wouldn't blow up the whole house because he was going to kill like 35 or 40 people that were family members, you know, And it's like. I always wondered if we ever really got them, you know, or that was just a projected identity for America at the time. You know, we may have gotten them, we may have gotten them like five years ago or 10 years ago. And then that was just, well, we need a new, we need a new enemy. Because he'd stop speaking for most two years prior to them catching them. And they did catch them in Pakistan, which is very weird because they were a friend of ours and he was in the compound like 3 miles from their military bases in Islamabad. So there there was, they knew, they knew he was there. They knew he was there.

24:27 And. Then we have a culture that's just based on the fear of its own citizens towards an exterior kind of culture outside we're. Going to We're going to. Patriotism and xenophobia are very, very tied together. We're going to fall internally, we're not going to fall externally. No one's going to come to our show. No. Way and land tanks and start shooting people because everybody then is going to have a common very clear enemy that they could shoot at. And, and just like when we went to Afghanistan, just like when we went to Iraq, just like, just like now we're going to Iran, whether you believe it or not, there's, there's population there that wanted to change to be wonderful and everything. But there's a whole lot of people there that don't. And those people have weapons.

25:15 And when you come in with your Whitey, tighty face and say, we're going to change everything, they're going to shoot you because their whole life they've been watching what you've done to other countries. I mean, we just went to Venezuela and we grabbed the guy that was in charge and we brought him. I mean, really we're, we're, we have no high horse to stand on anymore. And I don't, I don't, I don't understand this whole idea of going into Iran. I think that it it's we might get. Blasted off the map for this. It's short, it's very, very, very short sighted. It's a very stupid move. I it's a, it's a heavy gamble for what? I don't know. What are we going to do? We're going to get him to the bargaining table where he was 15 years ago.

25:56 You know, remember Ron signed a, signed a non proliferation agreement with us in 2015 under Obama. And as soon as Trump came in, he killed it. We'd already paid for it. We paid for it with their money. We gave them $27 billion that we'd frozen their assets. We gave it back to them. And he killed the treaty and never got the money back. So they got the money and never had to do it. And then they never enriched it to the point and, and every single advisor that was there never, never said it's, it's not close. They're, they're not, they're building it for nuclear energy. They want nuclear energy. They want because, you know, it's cheaper, it's more distributed across the whole country. And, you know, there's all these reasons behind wanting to have nuclear power and whether it's hydropower, whether it's electric, you know, whatever the case may be, because it's cheaper in the long run.

26:51 And they had the scientists and we went after it, you know. But we've, you know, it, it, it, I don't. It seems to me that this is wholly driven by what Israel wants and also what will create a diversion here at the USI don't I don't see it as I don't see it as an advantage in politics. You know, if you want to just cut and chase and say what do we gain out of this? I don't think we gain anything. I think we only lose and if we think just like Rumsfeld said, as soon as we come in there, all the, all the people are going to come forward and, and, and they're going to give up and they're going to love us and lay down their arms. And no, that's not going to happen. It's going to be the same thing as it was in Afghanistan, the same thing that it wasn't in, in every other war we fought just like what we thought, nor nor in in, in in Vietnam. We lost.

27:44 We lost in Vietnam. No way. We keep losing because we keep doing the same stupid shit. We can't, we can't beat them in a traditional war unless we kill everyone. And we are not willing to kill everyone because then what's the point? You know? We will not. You know, the only way you're going to change a lot of people's minds is to kill them. You know, and it's like we're, we're not going to do that. And this whole idea, we're going to bomb them down the glass. I've heard that. I'm going like we, we've said that before. We said that in the last two wars that lasted 20 years and cost what, 5 trillion in debt, we're going to add another 2 trillion. We're going to break our currency and our bank on this if we continue on this path.

28:36 The idea that we need over a trillion dollar defense budget, which is a war budget. It's like this is this is how Russia crashed. I mean, we even you can look at the history that they could not afford to feed their people, which we can't. And they took the money and we took away $86 billion from from SNAP. We cut people off of Medicaid and we're raising, we're raising the Department of war or defense by whatever amount. And you're like, and it's going to be over a trillion this year. And it's like, what? What? We're back to where we started. We're taking food out of out of kids. We're we kill the school lunch program so we can have another missile.

29:19 I mean, really. I like how kids don't deserve to eat. I think that that's interesting. I really think that that's interesting too. When you talk to people about these issues and it's like, no, like that's a a socialist behavior. And I'm like, well, you take away the socialist kind of label, right? Take that away just for just one second. It's a child eating. It's a child eating that doesn't have access to food. And then people so famously say, well, we have an obesity epidemic in the US, this, that or the other. I'm like, don't you think we have an obesity epidemic because of what is affordable in this? Your, your your children aren't my problem. Exactly. It's very selfish. To me and you're like. And this is what I was going to say too about.

30:01 Society. We're we're well, that's socialism. And when I hear that, I'm thinking like, you mean the police force or like the military? Mean like in China where they build 15 new bridges a day and 98% of Chinese citizens own their own home. And then people say, oh, they don't really own their own home. It's an 89 year land lease and like, you're gonna live 89 years. Oh, you're going to live 89 years? Oh, that's Britain. That's the same thing. Oh yeah, they all do. They all do. No, it's just like, well, I'm saying that this is the American point of view over oh, they don't really own their own home, but they do. They do. And so it's like, do you think I don't know? Are being willfully stupid. Willfully. No. I think it's an identity issue. I think it's an identity issue that's immersed in the lack of education in this country. I think that's what it is.

30:46 I mean, we are, we are talking average 6th grade. So you know these guys aren't reading Chaucer. You know they're. Well, Hunter S Thompson said it the best in such an eloquent way and he said I don't know when Americans are going to wake up and realize there were a bunch of used car salesman that are ready to kill anybody that makes us feel uncomfortable. And I completely agree with that. I I mean, is there anything that's more? Bombing the drug, bombing the drug boats. And you're thinking like, well, how do we know the drug boats? I mean, see, we've always had this. I mean, drugs that we, not we, I have always had this idea about the rule of law and about fairness and equity and everything like that. And it just seems as though that scale has changed dramatically.

31:29 It is harder and harder for me to have feelings everyday. If you look like you're something then then I can I can take action against what I think that you are and that is a scary time. Well you know Zach, look at me wrong. So I put 3 bullets in his forehead. That's OK you know, cuz he is brown. You know his last name's Brown, so that's close enough. You know, you think of an old George Floyd thing where it was like we met that woman in Sicily at the ruin and before you, you were like, my name's Phil. And then she said I moved out of New York to Pennsylvania because they made that drug addict George Floyd statue instead of Lincoln. They tore down the Lincoln one and they put up. They didn't tear down Lincoln.

32:15 That's what she said though, is what I'm saying is what she said. And she said this before even introducing her own name. And I'm like, my God, you can identify an American anywhere in the world like this. Before her own name, she was mad about a statue four years ago, three years ago at this point. And I, I don't know, I think something to to that you said to her was, well, even if he was a drug addict, he deserved to die. I mean, like that's that's kind of where I go with that every time. It's like, so you're a so you deserve to die. I mean, it's written in the Constitution that I mean, what is it A? Jury And then once once you're asked that question, what happens is, well, look what Obama did. You know it's not an you won't get a straight answer. And that that's usually the problem. There's no acceptance of or value or being able to say that you're wrong there that that's just impossible for any sort of American to say that they're wrong. Doesn't matter bipartisan you neither or. But no, it's a, it's a, it's a.

33:16 Very. And it's, you know, and everything is is is truly everything. Every single thing that the right does, the left does too now. And every single thing that the left does, the right does that the thing that that is and that people seem to always have this argument over is the degrees. You know, it's the degrees of helping. It's the degrees of killing people. It's the degree and, and it's all and, and, and sadly, it's all the nuance. And the nuance is we don't take, you know, nuance doesn't go into a sound bite, unfortunately.

34:01 Oh, that was good. I like that. You can't. You can't. You can't sell nuance in a sound bite. It just doesn't work. You need you need to say we we hate him here. We're taking about way the car tax now we're doing this something simple, very direct and it's like, well, well, if you take away 100 million from this side and you don't cut expenses, well how you going to pay for it? And then what about Obama? Cotton candy gummy bear when I was a kid at Marinco's in McLean, VA. That was amazing. Because if not, and some people out there, I know you're listening. That's too sweet.

34:46 That's too sweet of an ice cream. Surprisingly not in a frozen gummy bear. Have you mind the texture? It doesn't kind of do that thing where like cheese right where you have it kind of like grated off. No, it's just chewier. It's just a chewier gummy bear and cotton candy gummy bear. Man, if I could eat that one more time. I, I think that they, I don't know if they make cotton candy like that anymore because they went to what was it in store selling for points. They, they got rid of the store because I think it's $10,000 a month in rent or something in 2012. Like it's crazy. And they got rid of the store and then they started doing localized small store supplier. They became a supplier, right?

35:31 There was a lady in Woodbridge when I was growing up and I think I was like 9 years old, and we would go up there at highs and it was $0.35 for a double dip. It was $0.25 for a single and 37 total. That's how I still remember that. And I'd go get double dip ice cream, butter pecan, and on a hot day, it was crazy. And I did this probably off and on for two years. She's a wonderful person. We went in there and stole candy and we got caught and then she told me I could never get ice cream there anymore. And that was like, that's one of those lessons that, hey, you got, you ate, you stole, you slapped, you know, and I didn't steal right away. And, and I and I could certainly blame other people, but I was with them and I did it too.

36:20 So. You know. Yeah. And I or I was the guard that ordered the ice cream and the other kid went in the back and grabbed, you know, handfuls of candy bars and stuff them in his underwear or whatever it was. Well, that's kind of. Like the realization that one your actions have consequences. Yes it did, but at the. Same time as a child you you realize what a personal relationship that you lost felt like. You know, it was it was so sad because she was the be nicest lady, heavyset lady, big giant bouffant hair, you know, the whole thing. Just always a big smile, always hello. And then after that, she, you know, you're no longer allowed in my store. And I was like, oh, man, I like her. She's she's nice to me.

37:01 And not many adults were nice to me. No. No, exactly. Because I always stole shit from them. That is an interesting idea to talk about. Or think about the first kind of personal relationships that you established, but you didn't realize that it was a personal relationship because you were too young to realize. Right. And I destroyed it. Yeah, that happens. And I, I've seen those, you know, but there's others that I've. That you learn over time, you know, you learn over time and that's what you do. Another ice cream that I'm thinking about is the Halo Top ice cream because people on TikTok years ago, about a year ago, maybe two years ago, I have time blindness now because of the Internet really bad.

37:42 And they were licking the top of the ice cream and putting it back on the shelf. And then they had. To lock. I remember that. They had to lock the ice cream up in certain areas. It was crazy. Well, Haagen Dazs then put a plastic top on it. They've always had a plastic top. Yeah, they've always had the plastic top, but then like Ben and Jerry's didn't have one. There's a bunch of other ones that didn't so. Ben and Jerry's didn't, yeah. Haagen Dazs always has, Yeah. Yeah, so you had that sealant so people couldn't take a lick. And that is, I mean, it's like the memes when you see people run in the back and take a crap and run through and you're like. Well, I knew we were screwed when people during the pandemic were saying it's just the flu. Look at me.

38:24 And then they'd lick the toilet seat on an airplane. And I was like, what are you trying to? Prove that you're stupid and disgusting. You're trying to prove that you have no brain cells. I won't even poop on an airline and I'm on there for 14 hours and I'm just. That's actually crazy that you don't. Oh my way back. I made it back. I made it back. I thought you were going to die on the airplane because your heart rate was like 149 or something, 100. And 78. There we go. close enough. Yeah, Yeah. It wouldn't read. It wouldn't read. It said it's over 150, It's over 150. And I kept doing it. It's like it's over 150 and I'm going like I'm taking a nap.

39:05 Well, I think you ever think about the amount? Of my watch, I bought this watch, I bought this Apple Watch because it's got an EKG on it so I can check it, you know, and it's like now it starts going dude, dude, dude, your heart's going crazy. What's going on and I'm like, I'm asleep. Well, I guess I'm not. You ever think about just taking the medication every day like a normal person or no? I did that for a while but the it's this, I can't remember what. It is makes you tired. That's what you said to me. Yeah, it makes me not just tired, weird tired. Like 1:00 will come, I'll be talking to mother and I'll be like I got I got to lay down just like what?

39:46 And and I won't even and when she says what I won't even respond. I will just turn around, go up the steps, take off whatever clothes I can get off in 3 seconds or less. Lay down. Oh gosh, that's. Crazy in a position like this for at least 60 to 90 minutes. Nope, no movement, nothing. You know how you like you lay on your side of your back and roll and stuff to get comfortable No and I just drop and sometimes I close my eyes. No, well, most time I close my eyes, but I don't really go to sleep and I'm just like, and it's like I'm regenerating and I regenerate and then OK and I'm good and I go back down. So like, whoa, that was.

40:33 Maybe it's just the onset of the medication dissolving into your blood, I don't know, it might be. Bad it it it's it's it's it's it's really just and so I stopped it when I stopped having the the afib stuff. So, you know, and I have it now, but I have it like periodically and I just, I just pop a couple of the pills and then the heart rate goes from, you know, 180 to. Well, not getting blackout drunk three days in a row might help the. Heart. Yeah, there's a. Little bit I don't know in my. I I think in these studies it's it's, it's not a correlation, it's causation. In the. Research if I drink I get afib OK if I if I drink to excess if I drink one or two drinks it never happens. But that's that's kind of a rarity.

41:14 We either, you know, I'm either I'm either lighting the stick of dynamite and throwing it and and then running to catch it and then swallowing it and then they go, woah, wonder why that hurt, you know? That was like the whole thing. You know, what's funny is that they always release these studies that we already knew about. Yeah. I remember there was this one study about LSD years ago that was like, if you the tolerance for LSD is remarkably accrued over a short amount of time. Like even like day-to-day, like you, it double s or triples. Yeah. And I was like, I could have told you that, dude, from when I was 16.

41:55 But at the same time, there was a study recently that says social media shows that you can develop attention span issues. And I'm like, do we really need like a multimillion dollar study on this? Well, I don't know. I feel like scientists are the smartest and stupidest people in the entire. World, I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to show scientific proof because just because you can look at something and say on the surface that it means this without 1005 thousand 10,000 people. Otherwise you're just talking about, Hey, you know, my my brother, he had cancer and he ate one pinwheel a day for five days. You don't have cancer anymore.

42:37 And then based off of, you know, and you're like. And you're like, the kids are nowadays. And the lack of attention. I could have told you that. But at the same time, you know, it's funny. What used to change laws was scientific fact. And you don't really need scientific fact to change laws anymore, you know. Yeah, it's really, it's really coming out. What's it's money. Money drives it. Money drives everything when you when you look at it. And if you start to dig down into what the money is and how they're going to pay for this or how we're going to have this new of educational program, well, who's who's doing it? It's like, it's like the whole, the whole immigrant grab and get rid of the immigrants is a great hate vehicle. But you realize that we've tripled the number of prisons that we've set up in the South and the red states or the red states, please, I don't know the in the Republican states, you know, and they're owned by three prison makers, GO-2 others. Their stock prices have gone significantly up. They got huge amounts of money and they get paid by the body. Exactly $60,000 on average for.

43:37 Prison, so they get they get paid by the body, so they're out there trying to grab like Phil, Zach, whatever. And if there's no consequences to grabbing citizens, why not just put a couple hundred citizens in there? Well, the beautiful. Thing about private. And then we take the next step, and you know what the next step is? What is the next step? Put them to work for a nickel a day. Think about that. Not even labor in the factories. You you look at China, it's like, forget that. We we got prison labor in prison. For less. Still legal in some states. It, well, it is here it is here and 34 states, I think we still have the the ability to. And, and it's not you don't even have to compel prisoners because if you're in a cell all day and someone says, hey, we're going to take an office building and you're going to be an answer question and answer thing and you're going to get 2 hours or 4 hours of training and then when you get out you'll be able to be at a call center.

44:28 And it's like, no, you won't because just other persons will be doing it for nothing. And why would they pay you 15 grand or 20 grand or 30 grand a year when they could just get free labor over there? And sadly, those people donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the government campaign. They go, they owned it to the governor's they own. They give it to the state's supervisors that say it's OK to put a prison here. They do it. They give it. They give it to the local police association, which arrest people. They give it to the courts, which you know, and you're like. But they only give one. Yeah, they give a small percentage. $0.02 to $0.40 an hour was the extremely low pay but but there's states with no pay at all which is Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. Wow.

45:14 If you think about the Republic of Texas, my God, that is a big state to be. Yeah, I think they kill the most people too, if I remember. Florida was trying to pass them, I think, and then South Carolina, I think, was another one that's really high on the list of whacking all the people, I think. But you know what's funny? Though is the ice cream that I've been eating today. You know, when I was a kid and they have the, they had the mango sorbet in the mango shell. Remember that? And then they had the coconut one in half a coconut. And then they have, I mean, I can't remember. There's one more. I think it was like an orange, a sorbet and an orange. I found those again and they sell them at the grocery store. I ate one.

45:58 It's as good as I was when I was a kid. It was crazy. And guess what? 120 calories per sorbet thing. Crazy amazing we. Used to go collecting for the post when I was 6 and my brother would always tell me to put on my rag, which I had a lot of raggy clothes and put it on the raggiest. Because people departments would give a small kid that was six years old collecting for the post a bigger tip if he had torn clothes. And we knew this even then we were in nipple little fox. And so here we were collecting the money. And the reason I bring this up about ice cream is because my brother said as soon as we get $0.35 and tips we'll go get ice cream and he would take me down to and it was like $0.50 or something.

46:45 We would go down to people's drugstore and they had a soda fountain there, like a soda stand that you know, you go and you sit at a table in the front and you know, just like, just like, well, the Woolworth counter. And we would sit there and we'd ordered 2 ice cream. I, I remember I would get an ice cream sundae and with what the hell was it walnuts or whatever it was, pecans. If we had like $0.40 and tips and, and it was all bought with tips. And then we had star who came with us was, it was the neighbors German shepherd. She would walk around with us the whole time and we would, we would usually buy her a candy bar or something that would kill the dog, but she loved it so or something we would get at there and give to the dog too. So we'd reward the dog for being loyal and coming around with us the whole time.

47:38 And she would sit right outside waiting for us to eat and we didn't think anything of it. She's right outside this big German shepherd sitting outside People's Drug Store. And it's 8:00 at night on a Tuesday, because that's the only time you could grab people at home because on the weekends they wouldn't be there and they wouldn't answer the door because they know you were, you were bill collector, you know, and, but it was like. And now they'll just shoot you through the door. If you're the pizza guy, you. Know, you know, 70 you know, and The thing is, is that they would stiff us all the time and the the IT was mostly. Sales is not easy. Yeah, it was Army. The military is Quantico and Fort Belvoir. You think? That would be actually a little bit easier, but for sales. Well, you would. It was easy to get them. They all wanted the paper that everybody wanted that paper and they wanted to deliver by 5:30 and we would do that. But then because they went to work at six and then they would go, but then they didn't want to pay for the paper, you know, And it was only like so.

48:32 You got to throw bricks through their windshield. You got to throw a veteran. No, we did other things. We would we would light the paper on fire in front of their house and piss on it and. We didn't people that just got back from Vietnam that yeah, they. Probably. Were we just? Got back with. No idea. We had no idea. We. Were. We did not know. I mean, he was too on fire. You know, now that was an old lady that that was always yelling at us because we didn't put the paper squarely in front of her door. And there was just like, there's one thing after the other. And she would tell you, you know, it's one thing to pay you 285 for four weeks, but it's another thing to say here's 285.

49:13 And you know what? I'm not going to tip you. And you know why I'm not going to tip you? Because you didn't do this and you didn't do this. You didn't do this. And I'm and I'm taking back $0.15 because that was late on that day and you're just like and, and, and I'm seven, OK. Somebody this lady don't talk to her anymore. That's. No, she's dead. But. Now, but I mean at the time. No, no, we would. She was. We brutalized you. You don't. One of the things, that's one of the things I learned early on, I didn't realize it because it was me doing it, is that when people harm you and you're at the bottom of the thread of a, of A, and you can't do anything else. What do you have to lose? No, you. You don't even think about what you have to lose.

49:53 You have to think retaliation, retaliation, get even, get even. And that's all. The find is like, you know, piss all over the door handle. So you know when she gets there the next morning, she's going to pick up with her hand. You're going to and you can have a chuckle and that's. The thing about it? Too, It's stupid, but but it's you know, it's juvenile, but you're you're freaking 7 and you got a person that's probably in her later 50s, late 50s, living in Bayview apartment. So she had no money, was just getting by and she was a real curmudgeon. I remember. I wonder what our story was. I, I, it's, it's, I mean, if I heard it, I probably feel really, really, really bad. I'm sure, yeah.

50:37 But she was me. Just mean. Unnecessarily mean. People aren't born mean, though. There's there's something in this world. Yeah, I mean, her kid may have died in Vietnam, you know, Who knows? Maybe. There you go. You know, maybe that was it. Maybe her husband dumped her and her husband went off to Vietnam and died, and she got no money and she was stuck there. You know, there's a million different stories that we can make up just like regular news. You know, we can be regular news and just make up stories about people's lives that didn't really happen. You know, it's sort of like the narrative coming out of like, why didn't we attack Iran? Iran. I got to call it Iran. Because I don't know all. My we have neighbors that Iranian and they call it Iran and rock. Well, let's see if I. Iran.

51:18 Well, let's see if I get to turn 30 years old or we're going to die before then. I don't know. I'd like to turn 30. But you know, it's kind of a big time. It's kind of a big step and we'll see what nukes kind of do to us. Maybe they may. We'll make us give us super powers of some sort. That's the weird thing. Now super smart. You know, I don't think, I don't know about that. But they're they're the Pentagon is fighting with Claude about artificial intelligence, and they want it to be able to surveil Americans. Sam Altman was talking about that, too, yeah. And he and there's a group that said, no, I think Altman's the one that's against it or Claude's against it.

52:01 He's for it, but Claude's against it. And also to have totally autonomous killing machines. Well, there's this idea of being safe right in the. American, we don't want, we don't want total. They don't want to let what do you call it, artificial intelligence to have full and complete capability to go out and decide whether or not something dies or not lives. They don't want that not ready for that. And that's understandable because it makes decisions that wouldn't we wouldn't make you know, you know, and it's like RoboCop. It's. Literally going to be a RoboCop. That's crazy.

52:41 But it's RoboCop with no ethics. RoboCop had ethics. That was the whole point of RoboCop too. He did, but the but the ones that were full on robot, they just did whatever the master said. So that's the problem is that if you have a fully autonomous killing machine that and, and, and 95% of the military scenarios that they run with Iran, that's what they come up with. What? Nuclear. Yeah. That's what they come up with. You know, how do we, how do we defeat Iran? Well, we need a small tactical nuclear weapon. And you're like. What? What did we not just see Oppenheimer did? Did we not just see that movie like 2 years ago dude? Yeah, and I what?

53:25 Happened with that. Well, it's kind of interesting. And if we drop a bomb there on the world's oil supply, what do you think that's going to do for everything? You know, it's going to make some people really, really, really, really, really rich. And it's going to make some people really, really, really more, more, more. It's going to be more divide. And there's going to be a whole lot less trust your neighbor. There's going to be, you know, we, we're, we've gotten away from that. I think, I think that the, that the good thing about the 50s, even though we were segregated completely, is that we trusted our neighbor. And I would like to see, you know, and it felt like we had to trust our neighbor in the mid 70s to late 70s. I think that started ending in like O 8 and like O 8 to 10 is when it started like really ending. I feel like 'cause even in the early 2000s I remember. There's a lot of hate when Obama came along 'cause it's like, hey, black people can't be in charge. You know that.

54:25 Yeah, that was a big, big, big theme. And people that are racist didn't want to say it out loud because they could. Now they can't. Well, I thought it was so funny too that they they said when Donald Trump was elected, they're like, we never protested. I'm like, you were burning effigies in the street and they were not kind looking effigies either. Yeah. So I don't know when. Wait. It's, I mean, the president of the United States sends out a meme where? Oh yeah, the Obama. Yeah, yeah. Where they're all the monkeys. And you're thinking like, in what? What place or society is that? OK? And and he said it was somebody else that managed his feed. And you're like, why does anybody believe that?

55:05 It's interesting as well. Were they fired? Were they fired? That you have what? Was their name these? People that are are allocate themselves, take everything else away. But you're still endorsing a president that was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. So, I mean, I don't understand, take everything else away. Take everything else away, everything you could take every single thing else away, all the allegations of pedophilia and these things like that. And then at the end of the day, at the end of the day, you you support a guy that was supported by the Ku Klux Klan. Like I don't understand, like everything else away. And if it was ever about. Crime it was about. Criminality. The good Christians. Exactly. I don't understand, I don't know. Well, I think that I forgot the one keyword there. The good wack.

55:48 I'm tired of talking to these people about these things, you know? I don't I don't understand. Well, you're not. The thing is, is that are are we at a point where we look at someone and say, why should I argue with you? Because you will not use facts to rebut anything that I say and anything that I say that's factual, you will change the subject and not answer the question. You will run away like a little bitch. OK. And that's that's what happens. And I've run into this over and over and over. And you know what? I'm, I'm, I'm this close to, you know, cutting off the whole Facebook thing and just adding the birthday, birthdays to my list. But but you know.

56:31 This is just a distraction too this. Is how we sell this podcast, you know, and we're not going to get, we're not going to get to 100 million users if we don't, if we don't continue to. Soon enough. Placate the left and the right, and I think that we we, if we, we are the gestures. And we do distract and that's what we're here for. Yeah, that's what we're here for. What are we at time wise now? What are we doing here? Oh man, you talk a lot. Wow, it's over an hour. We've talked a lot of. Stuff, Thank you guys for listening. As always, check out the website. This is episode I think 139, so we're almost to 1:40 next Friday. See you there. One one thing I would like to do is I would like to come back to this in about 3 months or six months.

57:16 I'm curious. Yeah, that would be interesting. Yeah. I love that. What? What's going to happen? Make that reminder. Make calendar now, so we don't. Play, play a bit or 2 of what we thought about Iran and I I think that it's a forever war or we have to just stop and just let it go. The backbone of our economy. Do I do do what we did in Venezuela, you know, exactly. Take their money and run away. See you later, Bah.