 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow video. We need video. Hope everybody's doing well. It's Tuesday, December 12th. Hope having a great week. And yeah, tonight, there'll be the second show at 7 p.m. More on that in a minute. All right, let's jump in. A quick, just a quick update on Israel, the Israeli Gaza War. Just two items that I think are worthy to comment on quickly. One is, this might be a little too early, but I do think there's some early indications that the will of the Palestinians is starting to break, which is, of course, key to victory is to break the will, the spirit of your enemy. And it does seem like that is starting to happen. And I take two indications for that, two indications. One, in Gaza, you're seeing almost every day now truckloads of prisoners, people who have surrendered to Israeli forces, and being trucked into Israel. This is a great sign. The more Hamas fighters surrender, the better. It means that they're not shooting at Israelis, and Israelis are not getting killed. And I think it also sends kind of a visible, visceral message to the rest of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, that Hamas is maybe not fighting to the last man. It's maybe not to the death. And that opens up options for others to surrender. So this is something that we're seeing over the last few days. I don't think we saw much of it earlier. We're seeing dozens, if not hundreds, of prisoners being taken from Gaza into Israel. Israel's opening up old jails and facilities in order to house them. And they're all being interrogated. So they'll all provide valuable intelligence information for the Israelis in terms of continuing their attack in the Gaza. A second indication, I think, is Israel has been, since the beginning of this, entering into the West Bank, particularly the Janine refugee camp in Janine, where it has been arresting Hamas and other terrorist affiliated individuals. It's been killing them, arresting them. And it's been doing it really since the beginning, since it entered Gaza. So it's taking the opportunity to kind of not just get rid of terrorists in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. Just early indications are, and I don't know if this is real, we'll see, is that the efforts in the last few days to go into Janine and do this, kill terrorists, arrest them, has been met with less resistance. That is, it has become easier for Israel to operate within the Janine refugee camp, a hub of terrorism. And that, again, could suggest kind of a breaking of the spirit, the will to fight. So hopefully, both indications are real. Hopefully, this will shorten this war and lead to a more substantial victory on the part of Israel. We will see. I'd say Israel is already doing more than I expected. Less than I wanted, but more than I expected. So better, not ideal. But I'll take better rather than worse, right? So that is where we have a quick update on that. All right, quick update on Donald Trump. So Trump's polling numbers are spectacular, particularly vis-a-vis his Republican opposition. Polls in Iowa suggest that since the field has shrunk, the extra votes have not gone to predominantly DeSantis or Haley, but they have gone predominantly to Trump. He leads DeSantis by a huge margin in Iowa. In spite of the fact that DeSantis got the endorsement of the big evangelical group in Iowa. So DeSantis is still running second with about 19%, and Haley is third with 16, and then Vivek, and Vivek with something like five or six, and then the rest, Trump is well over 50% in Iowa. I'm sure that DeSantis and Haley will do better than that. I'm not sure, I hope, I expect that they'll do better than that, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, Trump is running away with this, which is just shocking and disappointing and upsetting and sad. I mean, if you look at polls of Trump versus Biden, Trump beats Biden, but by a small margin, quite a very small margin within the confidence boundaries. And on the other hand, DeSantis beats Biden comfortably, and Haley wallops Biden. I mean, she beats Biden by 17 points. And you'd think that the most important thing right now for Republicans would be not to elect Trump, but again, Trump is a loser and has lost Republicans three elections now. And you'd think that that would be the priority, or at least one of the priorities, but no. Republicans are willing to, luckily, they're running against Biden, so they'll probably win with Trump, but they're willing to even lose as long as it's with Trump. They will do anything for Trump. Again, this is personality worship that has nothing to do with ideas. It has nothing to do with defeating the left. If it was about defeating the left, then DeSantis would be a much better candidate. I mean, he clearly is committed to fighting the left and can beat Biden better than Trump. And of course, Haley has almost given T to beat Biden. And at least she's not of the left. You can argue of how anti-left she is relative to. I mean, Trump is anti-left, but really is of the left. Trump is a leftist, always has been. So the whole thing is just upsetting and disappointing. Anyway, the only chance we really have of getting rid of Trump, I think, and even this, I'm not even sure of, is if he goes to jail. And even then, I'm not sure he loses. I think he loses a general election, but I'm not sure he loses the primary. Or just a creative situation where he has to back out or cut some kind of deal or do something where he withdraws from the race. It seems like the only way other Republicans can actually win. By the way, I don't consider Trump a fighter. I consider Trump a, I mean, to lie and deceive and cheat is not to fight. It is that is the methodology of cowards. Just like Trump has no self-esteem, he's just got a lot of bluster. That's all Trump is. Anyway, the only real way to defeat him is for the Republicans. I think Democrats have lots of ways to defeat Trump. But for Republicans, it's to actually see him drop out of the race because of his legal troubles. In that context, Trump knows this. And in that context, Trump is goal right now is to try to delay, delay, delay all the courts or the criminal suits against him, so that maybe they occur after he's already elected or they occur so late that they don't have an impact. And in that context, he has appealed to, you know, he appealed the case that Jack Smith, Special Counsel Jack Smith brought in front of it to a lower court saying, if you remember, that he has immunity. Now, I don't think he thinks he's going to win the case. What I think he thinks is that that will delay it. The court came back last week, we talked about this, and said, no, no, no, he doesn't have immunity. He has to go and trial. So Trump now appealed to the district court. And his hope was the district court would take a couple of months and they make a decision. And then he would appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would take a couple of months and make its decision. And that would basically delay the start of the trial brought by the trial brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith to weigh into next year and will be relevant for the election. Well, the Special Counsel has, you know, sees right through this gimmick. And what he did is he went directly to Supreme Court and said, look, I want to start this trial March 1st. I want to get it over with. Please rule on this question of whether Trump has immunity or not. And of course, there was some uncertainty about whether the Supreme Court would take the case, because it is very unusual it is basically asking the Supreme Court to accelerate something. It is asking the Supreme Court not to go through the regular process of the district courts and then up to the appellate court and then up to the Supreme Court. It looks like the Supreme Court has taken that case. Trump is furious. Again, he views this as a huge betrayal. This is the court he created. And he's furious about this. Because again, what he's concerned about is not necessarily winning or losing. Of course, if he won this appeal, that would make his day. The whole court case would go away. But even if he doesn't, he was hoping he'd at least get a delay. It looks like that delay is gone. He will actually have to face the trial on March 1, unless he comes up with something. And of course, it's going to be fascinating to see how the Supreme Court actually rules. Remember, three of the Supreme Court justices were appointed by Trump. And it's an overwhelmingly conservative majority. What happens if they rule against Trump, which I think they will, what happens then to kind of the Republicans' view of the Supreme Court? What happens if Trump becomes president? How does he view all the judges that have voted against him repeatedly over the last few years? Of course, Trump doesn't care about the content. All he cares about is, are you for me? Are you against me? He doesn't care about what they actually rule. What they just, whether it's in his support or against him. So he takes it very personally. So that's where we are with Trump. Zelensky is in DC today. And he met with Biden. He met with both the, well, he hasn't met yet. He's meeting with the Speaker of the House. He met with a group of senators, both Democrats and Republicans, a large group, maybe most of the senators. He's met with the defense industry. I think he did that yesterday. And basically, he's on a campaign to try to secure the military support that Ukraine needs to continue its struggle. Against the Russians. It's hard to tell how this will go. I mean, basically, Ukraine has caught. Look, if you actually just ran a bill through Congress right now and asked, do you approve of the support of x billions of dollars to Ukraine? Overwhelming majority of senators would vote for it. And an overwhelming majority of House members would vote for it. It would dramatically, it would easily pass both houses. It is caught in politics. This is not about whether they agree or whether they disagree. It's completely caught in politics. Republicans are not saying we want to prove it. Republicans are saying, well, approve it, but we want something for it. What we want is more money for border security and certain conditions around border security. And that is the competition. Again, it's not that Republicans are opposing aid to Ukraine. They're using it to squeeze some political stuff out of the Biden administration. My expectation is that they will compromise in the next few days and that we will get a bill that provides aid. Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and allocates a certain amount of money or changes the rules vis-à-vis the southern border. The reality is that the Biden administration, too, would like to see stem the flow of immigrants in through the southern border. This does not play well in elections. It is one of his main weaknesses election-wise for next year. And I think Biden has incentivized to cut a deal. And Republicans, again, in spite of the fact that I think most Republican voters do not want support for Ukraine, I think the Republican senators and House members are not quite as much of stick your finger into the wind as politicians often are and they are willing to take the hit and vote for this because they think it's the right thing to do. So that's where we are. We'll see. Ukraine, I mean, I've already made the argument of why I think the support for Ukraine is justified, why I think it's essential, why I think the United States has to do it, why I think not doing it and allowing Ukraine to lose would be devastating for the United States, for the West, and for NATO. So I won't make the case today. You can check out a show I did a few weeks ago on why support Israel and Ukraine, where I made that argument. This is just a stunning case, but it gives you the sense of the real evil that are the abortion laws and the real evil that the state of Texas is engaging in, in particular its attorney general and how horrible this is. On November 27th, what's a full name? Well, I can't find it. Her name is Cox, something Cox. Kate Cox. November 27th, Kate Cox, who was pregnant, was diagnosed with trisomy 18. It's a genetic abnormality that usually results in a miscarriage, stillbirth, or death soon after birth. She asked for an abortion. One of her reasons to ask for an abortion is if she carried this defective fetus to term, she would have to get a C-section. The fetus would die. In any case, she would have to have a C-section to extract the fetus. This would be her third C-section and would probably deny her the ability to give birth again, which would deny her the ability to have children in the future. She already has to and she would like more. Her doctors, her doctors believed an abortion was medically necessary for her, but they were unwilling to perform the abortion without a court order because of the lack of clarity on how the exception in the law, which is a pretty tight law with very little exception, would be interpreted. And the potential penalties, including life in prison, life in prison for doctors who perform abortions, life in prison are a loss of their licenses for violating the state's abortion law. She sued in court to get clarity over this, a lower court-approved rule that she could have the abortion. The attorney general of the state of Texas, Paxton, immediately appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court yesterday stepped in and basically nullified the lower courts and said, no, you are not allowed to have an abortion. It does not count as part of the, I guess, the health of the mother exemption. And as far as the state of Texas is concerned, they are willing to force Kate Cox to carry this fetus who is not going to survive to term. Paxton went as far as sent a letter to the doctors that they would not be shielded, not the doctor, not the hospital, not anybody else from potential civil and criminal liabilities from violating the Texas abortion law. It was sent to three different hospitals who had admitting privileges for the particular doctor that was involved. I mean, this is pure evil. This is pure evil. This should be condemned by anybody who values human life. This should be condemned by anybody who values individual rights. This should be condemned by anybody who values women, their life, the ability to make choices about their own reproduction. But really, it should be condemned by anybody who values life. Paxton and the people who support him are monsters. They are moral monsters. These are people that are not in my tent. They're not allies of mine because I happen to agree with them on a certain percentage of their views. They are monsters. No less monsters than CRT and woke and everything else. Indeed, these people are actually more destructive to individual human life. And it is why it is not a slam dunk. You should just move to Texas because Texas is heaven. This is monstrous, truly monstrous. Luckily, we don't yet live in a monotheocratic nation. And Kate Cox has probably, most likely, left the state of Texas and is getting an abortion outside of Texas. But imagine, and I don't, maybe Texas has this law. Imagine if the law included a law that would not be able to do anything about it. It has this law. Imagine if the law included getting an abortion outside of Texas. Imagine if Texas arrest Kate when she comes back. How unbelievably disgusting would that be? This is truly awful and horrific. All right. From one awful and horrific to another awful and horrific. So of course, one of the big enemies of a modern intellectual class, almost everybody, is Big Pharma. Candace Owen has claimed Big Pharma is the biggest evil in the world today. Many others have gone and the right have gone after Big Pharma. And not to be undone, of course, the left hates Big Pharma. Big Pharma charges extraordinary prices. They built the American people. And they need to be controlled and they need to be regulated. Anyway, the Biden administration has published a new draft guidelines that are going to allow federal agencies to suspend exclusive patents to pharmaceutical companies for medicines developed using government-funded research. And offer that license to other companies to produce and sell the drugs. And the reason they would do this is if they found that the original company was charging too high of a price. Too high of a price. So this is a tool to lower drug prices. Now, you could argue, well, it's government-funded research and shouldn't. Almost everything is government-funded research these days. Government spends a huge quantity of money on research. One of the innovations, one of the better laws that were passed in the past, given that government funds a lot of research, was the Bay-Dole Act of 1980. And in that act, basically what Congress did was it allowed companies to develop drugs based on basic research that the government funded to get a patent on that drug. And the reason they passed this is in 1980, less than 5% of all patents held by federal agencies had been licensed to companies. Because before 1980, the patents were held by the government. Government held the patents. The government agency followed the patents. And then nobody did anything with them. And it was this huge, massive waste of research. Now, you all know my view. My view is the government shouldn't be funding research, period. And one day, we can make it reach that state. But given that the government is funding research, huge amounts of research, it would be good if that research could be utilized for the betterment of life. Today, a huge number of drugs and vaccines have been developed or in development based on government research with the idea. And companies spending big pharma, evil big pharma, spending billions and billions and billions of dollars developing these drugs with the idea that they could patent them and make money. If they cannot patent them, they won't invest billions. And now, they risk not being able to charge a market rate for them, a rate that allows them to recuperate some of the costs of that research. But they cannot charge a rate, they can only charge a rate that the government approves of. Otherwise, they lose patent rights immediately. What you're going to see if this ruling, once this ruling is applied or is seriously threatened that pharmaceutical companies get a sense that this is real, they are again going to withdraw from using the knowledge that results from government-funded research to develop drugs. And all that research will be doubly wasted. It'll mean that we have fewer cures, fewer drugs, fewer vaccines, fewer treatments for cancer in the future. But you know what, there'll be fewer pharmaceutical companies making a lot of money off of science that was initially funded by the government. And somehow, this will make people feel better. This is part of an entire campaign that the Biden administration has launched against a big farmer with the goal of forcing them to reduce their prices, forcing them to lower their profit margins. If you remember, Medicare now is issuing a list of drugs that they will negotiate in quotes, as if the government negotiates. The government forces. The government puts a gun to your head. So what you have here is a campaign to destroy the most productive, effective, innovative pharmaceutical industry in the world, an industry we will all be relying on as we get older, an industry that has the potential to extend our life dramatically. And I believe the only reason it hasn't extended it even more than it has is because of government regulation and FDA kind of barriers. We get a lot of, there's a lot of talk about supplements and supplementing and to extend life. But imagine if the pharmaceutical companies could take the principles behind all these supplements and actually create drugs that are a lot more effective than what nature has created in order to extend life. Wow, how far we would be today. The problem is nobody will invest the billions of dollars in order to do that because it is convinced the FDA would not approve it. I mean, the pure evil of the Biden administration is truly stunning. This is the problem. Texas evil, Biden administration evil, it's just, we live in a very, very, very difficult world. All right, let's see. All right, we almost, I want to talk about the housing in a second. I want to remind you of a few things. When I'm running a poll, you can see it in the chat. For those of you who have access to the chat, we're listening right now live about your favorite Iron Man novel. Right now, it's 56% of you say it's at the shrug, 29% the found head, 6% Anthem, 9% we the living, but the poll is still open, only 68 people have voted. We have 114 people watching, so don't forget to vote if you are indeed watching the show. And it's kind of fun just to give a sense of what you guys have read and what you guys view as favorite. Also, I want to remind you to like the show before you leave. We've got 40 likes, 115 people watching, so don't forget to like the show before you leave as well. You can also ask questions, use the super chat. This show is funded through the support of generous contributors like many of you, whether monthly contributors or super chat contributors or sticker contributors. You watching live can contribute directly to show through a super chat or through a sticker. Those of you not live can support the show with a monthly contribution. Thank you to all of my supporters. You literally make this show possible without it. I couldn't do this. I really have to do something else. And finally, yeah, let's leave it at that. All right, finally on housing. This is a title of a music article, but I see a lot of this kind of titles, which I find just, you know, this kind of ridiculous thing that I guess the media gets paid to do. Housing crisis could be the death knell of America's middle class. As the housing crisis is gonna kill the middle class, the middle class is just gonna go away. There's gonna be no middle class anymore. Kill it. And what is the argument? The argument is that housing today is at its most unaffordable it's ever been. And that might be true because what's happening right now is a combination of two things. A combination of relatively high interest rates are not high historically, but high from the perspective of the last 15 years, 16 years. You know, 7% mortgage rates. God, when I got my first mortgage was closer to 10%. But 7% mortgage rates combined with just unbelievable values, spiking prices, prices very, very high. Now, how does that happen? Because you'd expect spiking interest rates to cause fewer people to go out and seek homes, which would lead to a decline in prices as people adjusted prices to the new interest rate reality. Well, the problem is that because of regulations, because of not in my backyard, but also because of immigration laws, because of a whole combination of government involvement, there are not enough homes in the United States. There is a massive, over the last 15 years, there's been created a massive shortage in homes. Condos, single family homes, massive, not enough being built, just not enough being built across the entire country. And this is a result of the fact that there are not enough qualified workers to work for construction companies. There's a labor shortage in construction. It combines with the fact that it's hard to get land for because of environmental regulations and all the other regulations. It's particularly hard to get land in the places that most Americans actually wanna live in that drives real estate prices up, particularly in the most desirable locations. So the real problem here is supply. It also is true, and this is a consequence of the insane zero-interest rate environment we had in the past, that a lot of people, like me, like maybe many of you, have really, really, really low interest rates on their mortgages that they got a few years ago. And even though they would like to move right now, they are not selling because, they would have to give up a 3%. Some people have a low 3%. I have somewhere between 3% and 4% mortgage. And then the new place, they'd have to pay seven. Now, the fact that the two 3% mortgage was artificially created by the feds, easy money and negative interest rates and low interest rates and those kind of interest rates probably would never occur under capitalism. The reality is this is one of the costs we pay for that insane low interest rate environment that the fed created. One of the ways in which the fed through its manipulation of money and interest rates, one of the ways in which it distorts the economy. Anyway, oh yeah, so all that is true. But it's also true right now that rents are at relatively low rates. That is it's relatively cheap to rent as compared to its own. So, you know, people will just rent given the prices are high, people rent, demand will go down and ultimately enough homes will be built and supply will at least come close to matching demand and over time, if supply can accelerate, this will all get settled. So why is it the end of the middle class? It's because people associate the middle class in the United States with home ownership, which is a ridiculous category, ridiculous way to view it. The middle class is associated with your ability to consume. The wealth that you have, but here's the thing. Because of the way we have managed housing in the United States, housing has become instead of a consumer product that you buy and over time loses value, it has become a means of saving for most people. They buy it under the assumption that it will go up. WPR says rents have risen as much, not true. I mean maybe in New York, but just not true. If you look at rents versus the cost of owning, if you look at the monthly cost of renting and the monthly cost of owning right now, per whatever, per square foot or whatever, rents have not gone up anywhere near as much as the cost of ownership. There's a number of graphs out there where you can see this. Anyway, this idea that owning a home is a means of producing wealth is a fallacy. A home should not be perceived as a means for creating wealth, because it's not. You don't create any wealth in a home. In a laissez-faire capitalist economy, most homes would lose value. They wouldn't gain value. The only homes that would increase in value are those homes in neighborhoods that for whatever reason become more attractive over time. And other homes would lose value in those places where for whatever reason that particular area has lost attractiveness and you can't build anymore, right? But most homes would just lose value because just like when you buy a car, it doesn't go up in value the more years you own it. I mean, homes distribute with time. They depreciate. They lose value. They should. And the only reason they don't, and this has become now a part of what it means to be middle class in America, to make money off of your home. The only reason they don't is because of the artificial housing shortages that are created by government regulation and government control. All right. Let's turn to this super chat and we'll take any questions you might have. We don't have a lot of questions, very few actually. So feel free to jump in. Questions, $2 to $500. But we'll take any of those. And we are about $140 short of our goal. All right. Remember, the show is supported by contributors like you. One, and it's also supported by sponsors like the Ironman Institute that provides sponsorship for the show. And right now they'd like you to go to ironman.org slash start here and sign up for a conference that is being held in Austin, Texas towards the end of March over a weekend. It's gonna be a lot of fun and it's in Austin, Texas and which is a great city in spite of what I said about Texas before. And students and those interested maybe in sexual careers in the future and those interested in really delving deep into the Ironman's ideas can get scholarships. So go to ironman.org slash start here, Rick Salamiere, Ben Bear and others will be part of the faculty. All right. Remo says value for value. Thank you, Remo. So not a question. Let me just thank the people who stick as Jeremy. Remo would be one of them. Silvanos, thank you. Gale, thank you. And Ryan, thank you. And I might have missed some of you but that's because the screen only goes so far back. Okay, Ryan is the last one. All right, Hiram asks, speaking of self-esteem, Iran with the exception of the occasional annoying and even self-admittedly irrelevant super chat statements, do you think I have any redeeming characteristics? Oh God. Yes, I mean you have amazingly redeeming characteristics. You often listen to Iran book show, you're a regular listener. Second, you actually value the show and are willing to be a trader. That is, you believe in a trader principle and you support the show through your super chat contributions. And as such, that is a hugely redeeming characteristic. Now, I'm not exactly what you need to be redeemed from. I apologize if I don't remember your specific super chat questions, which I'm assuming you want redemption from. I don't remember them being that bad. Maybe I should, I'll have to go back and check. But I cover hundreds of these questions and I don't have the memory to remember them. So I apologize, but I doubt that you need much redemption, Hiram. The fact that you're here and the fact that you're asking, I can't grant you self-esteem anyway. Self-esteem is something you can only earn yourself and you have to identify it and you have to acknowledge it and you have to have, in essence, pride in it. So I'll leave it to you to decide, but yeah, just the fact that you're here and the fact that you're supporting the show, massive redemption just there, guaranteed to land in heaven rather than in hell. All right. We've got four questions and then we're done, which is gonna go very, very fast. Should Israel eliminate the leader of Hamas or arrest him and put him on trial like the Nuremberg trials? I think they should eliminate him. I think putting him on trial gives him too much of a stage, too much of ability to, I don't know, use it and motivate the troops. There's nothing redeeming about the leader of Hamas. There's no education that needs to be done here that people don't know about. And we're not talking about many of the, yeah, I mean, yeah, I would just eliminate them. I mean, there was value in the Nuremberg trials, partially because I don't think the world really knew what the Nazis had done and the extent of it. I think there was value in the Nuremberg trials who were kind of extra judiciary because there's no legal entity there, right? There's no, the enforcement mechanism is a voluntary enforcement mechanism of a number of governments and really it was an American trial. But why give them a stage? Why give them an opportunity when everybody knows their crimes, Nuremberg trials? I think a big part of it was education, the same with Eichmann's trial where Israel captured him and put him on trial. It was important for Israel, this is in the early 1960s, to remind the world about the Holocaust and what exactly people like Eichmann had done. People had already started forgetting, even in a place like Germany, it was forgotten during the 1950s. So reminding them, I don't think there's any need here for that kind of reminder. And I think after Eichmann, Israel's priority should have been basically to eliminate any Nazi kill, any Nazi remaining who was hiding internationally. All right, Sylvanus, what is your go-to source for citation of historical events in Israel? Recently tangled with an individual that didn't believe the Muslims were told to leave by the Muslim invaders during the 1948 war. I find myself struggling to recover. God, I mean, the problem with asking me for lists of books is I don't have them at the top of my head. But that fact, the fact that the Muslim invaders asked the Muslims to leave is not some obscure, difficult to find fact. That fact is well acknowledged by historians, even historians who are not particularly friendly towards Israel. It's just a fact. I mean, because, you know, there were courtings of those radio transmissions that happened at the time. They are photographs of thousands and thousands of Palestinian cars and Palestinians on foot leaving, not because Jews had forced them out, but because they'd been told to leave. But in areas that were still in the control of Muslims, they were told to leave and they were long, long convoys. So there's plenty and plenty of evidence of this. So you might find an argument about the ratio, how many of them left for that, how many of them kicked out the Israelis and things like that. But this shouldn't be much. There are a number of good history books on the history of Israel. You know, a good source, you know, as much as I hate to recommend anything by the sky, is a book that Dushuets wrote, I think the case for Israel that he wrote. Oh, well, all the most important sources, Yilan Juno's were justice demands. And you will find there is not so much the articulation of the entire history. He doesn't do that much history. But I think you will find sources, the historical sources. Dushuets' book has a number of citations to history books about Israel and Palestinians that include this, because every book pretty much does. But I would definitely read the number one most important book to read is Yilan Juno's book were justice demands. I also think that there is a course by Yilan Juno on YouTube, on the Ain-Ren channel maybe, or where he talks about the Israeli-Palestinian, the history of Israel and Palestinian conflict, and there are probably citations there for sources. But I would say, I would take the risk and say that my expectation would be that almost any significant history book, particularly one written in the past, not one written right now on Israel would include that story, the fact that they were asked to leave. So again, I don't think that's gonna be hard to document. If you send me an email, Yuran at Yuranbookshow.com, I will pull up some books that I think would be good references. Oivind Sandvik, again, I encourage you to take your wife to Godzilla minus one. It's especially pleasing from an objective perspective. By the way, you're probably the foreigner outside of the Nordics with the best pronunciation of my name. All right, I mean, I've traveled enough that I usually I'm awful at pronouncing names in any language so, but maybe it's all my traveling in Scandinavia has rubbed off a little bit. Catherine says, doesn't Texas have the law that says you cannot travel outside of the state to have an abortion already in it? I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if it does. And then the question is, will they enforce it and how they enforce it? We'll find out. Friend opposite, PSA for your audience, OPAR is really good. 10 of 10 worth your time to read and reread periodically. Yes, OPAR is a masterpiece. You should all be reading OPAR once you read Ayn Rand, the next book to read is OPAR. So I encourage you all to do that. All right, let's see. Sivanos, thank you again for the $50. Wes, $30, thank you, Steven. Thank you, and Kirill, thank you. I think we're only $8 away from our goal. So thank you all for making that happen. Frank says, what does Millet have to privatize to bring in dollars? Well, everything. Anything privatized will bring in dollars. He can privatize, he certainly can privatize a lot of land. There are massive minerals. Argentina is very rich in minerals, including some of the kind of the minerals that China has cornered the market on or controls certain rare earth minerals and other minerals necessary for batteries and things like that. So huge mineral deposits that could be privatized. And then Argentina has an airline, a railway system, it has certain utilities, it has a lot of industries that, oh, it has energy. It has some energy, not a lot. It's not like Brazil, which has huge oil reserves, but Argentina has some, I think, off the coast. That could be privatized. It has an energy company that could be privatized. So there's quite a bit. Stephen, you once said you felt emotionally manipulated by Schindler's List. Could you elaborate on the different screen when a movie is genuinely moving and when you find it manipulative, other examples? Well, I think Spielberg is particularly good at it, right? I mean, you know, I think, what do you call the one with the soldiers in storming Normandy? That is a, there, it's even worse in a sense, right? I mean, you have to earn an emotion, save in private life. So in saving private life, and there's a scene where they, I can't remember when, I think it's at the end of the movie, they go to the grave and they, and everybody salutes. And the whole scene there towards the end is, I mean, what do you need it for, right? Just to get teary-eyed at the end and it's manipulative. The movie in itself is powerful. I mean, I don't particularly like it for a variety of reasons, but it's powerful and it shows what happened quite accurately and it shows the heroism of certain people. And it's just too sentimental. And it's obvious what the audience is gonna do. You haven't built up, I mean, the whole movie's built up to it, but then the movie should stand on its own. It doesn't, it's unnecessary for the storyline. I think there's elements in Schindler's List, which I only watched once and I can't really remember well enough, the way he does the same. Now granted, I'm particularly sensitive to it, the Holocaust. I grew up on the Holocaust in a sense. I grew up on stories, grew up on videos, grew up on, you know, surrounded by people who experienced it, lived through it. So it's easy to mostly manipulate me on the Holocaust. But it's the question you really have to ask yourself from an aesthetic perspective, from an artistic perspective, is did he earn this emotion, right? Is the story, is this scene essential for the story? Has it built up for me to feel this? Or is it, he's thrown in a little gimmick that caused me to feel this even though, you know, I'm not sure, you know, it hasn't, it's not earned by the entire story, it's just earned by this little tweak, right? I mean, my favorite of Spielberg's movies, by the way, is Amistad. I think that's my favorite Spielberg movie. It's a really, really excellent movie. Now, you could argue that E.T. is the best and it probably is, it has the sense of life and it's just a wonderful movie we saw, I think last year, a year and a half ago maybe, I saw E.T. when they re-released it on the big screen theater. I saw it in IMAX, I think theater in Southern California and it was fantastic, it was just so much fun. Yeah, I like E.T. much better than I like Jaws. Jaws at the end of the day, there's not much point. I mean, it has points in it, but E.T. is just such a wonderful movie, it's such a benevolent movie. And Amistad is his best drama. Amistad is by far his best drama philosophically and it has some great characters in it. It's fantastic, but I don't like Schindler's List. I also thought the movie plays up your emotions about the Holocaust and plays down Schindler's heroism. I don't think Schindler's heroism is at the forefront of the movie. And that's too bad because Schindler deserves to be viewed as a real hero, but it's not, you know, he is a reluctant hero, but when he becomes heroic, it's almost like it's underplayed, it's under-emphasized. And I found that disappointing and upsetting. All right, Vandy, thank you. How to evaluate King Hussein? He was involved in early wars versus Israel, but dragged in by other nations. He somewhat liberalized Jordan, kicked out the PLO, recognized Israel, tried to broke a peace in the 80s and 90s. I mean, he's a king, so I can't be very sympathetic towards him. But yeah, I think of the different rulers of Arab kingdoms, he was not that bad, but he liberalized up to a point, didn't liberalize that much. He made a devastating mistake in 1967 by entering the war, which cost him Jerusalem and the West Bank and created the whole Palestinian problem, or you could view it as he was very smart in doing it because he transferred the Palestinian problem from a Jordanian problem and made it into an Israeli problem. He was brutal in 1970 when he kicked out the Palestinians and to his credit, he did ultimately sign a peace deal with Israel. So yeah, I mean, as autocrats go, but did he convert Jordan into a wealthy, successful country? No, he could have. Did he take the right stand with regard to Israel and the Palestinians? No, not really. He was still an autocrat. So I think you have to say mixed, not overly positive, but not as negative as maybe some of the other leaders of Arab countries in the region. By the way, one of the interesting things is that Jordan had a deal with Israel for Israel to supply Jordan with water. Israel, of course, has now excess water in a sense because it has incredibly efficient desalination plants and because Israel has found natural gas off the coast, it has relatively cheap energy and massive desalination plants and therefore it has excess water. And it kind of deal with Jordan recently to provide Jordan with water, which Jordan desperately needs. The whole of Jordan is basically a desert and Jordan has cut off that deal because of the Gaza thing, which is like shooting yourself in the kneecaps or maybe in the brain. I mean, this could really be a huge plus for Jordan to get water and relatively cheap water. And again, the Arabs always make money with the wrong decisions about these kind of things. Dr. Choum, this is from Brie, Dr. Choum Mayazaki has invented a one-time treatment that can double the lifespan of cats. His breakthrough came after all government funding was removed during COVID. It is an incredible story. Oh, I'll have to look that up. I'm not familiar with that. That is super interesting. Now we have to figure out how to do it to human beings. All right. Thank you, everybody. There will be a show tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. The show will probably be on the state, in a sense the state of American universities post university president hearings, how to evaluate universities what needs to be done, why we got to the state, what is the problem, and how do you actually get out of the problem? How do you solve the problem that the universities have got themselves into? We will talk about that. So 7 p.m. East Coast time. Join me, let people know. I will post it on Twitter and Facebook. Please share it. And yeah, thank you for all the super chatters. Thank you for the support. And I will see you all tonight. Bye, everybody.