 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Wednesday, early afternoon here on the East Coast. Well, I'm in Puerto Rico, but I hope everybody's having a fantastic week, looking forward to the rest of the week. We are going to do a news roundup today and as we do every weekday. And we're going to start with this new concept that I didn't know existed, called the non-man. I have to say I encountered this for the first time on Twitter a couple of days ago, maybe it was yesterday, maybe it was a couple of days ago, June 12th, so two days ago. I saw some tweets about this and I dismissed it because I figured this can't be, this can't be right. So this is too crazy, this is, I don't know, and I noticed that Jackie Rawlins had tweeted this and it treated about this. And I was like no, no, she must be caught up in something that's just crazy and untrue. There was no link, there was just a screenshot of something, so I just dismissed it and moved on. But then today, you know, I found the actual story on the website of John Hopkins University where this is supposed to be taken from. It is now being taken down and a disclaimer has been put into stead. But this is what appeared two days ago. This is the LGBTQ glossary, LGBTQ glossary. And the first item that appears is lesbian in parentheses, social orientation. I can't even do it. And this is explanation for lesbian. A non-man attracted to non-man. And it says, well past definitions refer to lesbian as a woman who is emotionally, romantically and or sexually attracted to other women. This updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label. So you're a non-man lesbian. Okay. But then, okay, so I see it non-binary, you want to be inclusive, you want to make sure you cover everybody. So I guess you want to include under lesbian trans, but okay, I get that. But then why is it that the next item is gay man. And gay man is not defined as a non-woman. It's defined as a man who is mostly romantically, sexually, affectionately, or relationally attracted to other men. Or who identifies as a member of a gay community. That's a little weird. At times gay is used to afford all people, regardless of gender, who have their primary sexual or romantic attraction to people of the same gender. Gay is an adjective not a noun. He is a gay man. Why is man treated differently than woman who, you can't even say the word I guess, can't even out of it? You know, this is insane. A non-man attracted to non-man. I mean, this is why at the very end of the day, you know, I talked about this in the show yesterday, I can't take woke seriously. Because, I mean, 99% of Americans look at this and say, huh, this is stupid. Right. So a couple of tweets, one by Real Scoricella. She says, why is a lesbian and non-man, but a gay person isn't a non-woman. Progressive misogyny, she says. And then J.K. Rowland's, J.K. Rowland's tweets, she says, man, no definition needed. It's obvious what a man is. Non-man, formerly known as woman, a being definable only by reference to the male. An absence, a vacuum where there's no male-ness. You gotta admire J.K. Rowland's, I mean, not only does she have the courage, but she's a good writer. And that's exactly right. I mean, what? Women are gone. Men, non-men. That's how it's divided. I mean, talk about, and I like this, a non-man, a being definable only by reference to the male, an absence, a vacuum where there's no man-ness. And it, you know, and of course, what it's referring to is what was formerly known as women. So anyway, that was on Twitter yesterday. John Hopkins has pulled that definition from its website. If you go to the glossary, the LGBTQ glossary now is empty with a statement from John Hopkins where it says, it strives to create a campus culture that is inclusive and welcoming for all gender identities, sexual orientations, experiences, and viewpoints. And we committed to ensuring that the glossary serves the introduction to a range of identities and terms that are used in the LGBT community, not intended to serve as a definitive answer of how all people understand to use the terms. But, you know, and then they said the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI. I'm not sure what ODI stands for. ODI, some entity within John Hopkins. The definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review. I wonder if after they do a review, we will get the word woman back in the LGBTQ glossary or if it's now established fact that under LGBTQ ideology, there is no such thing as a woman. All there is is non men, men in the absence of men. I mean, what do you what do you what do you even do? I mean, the alternative is this or Christianity is you get the sense that that's it. Oh, I got to get kudos to the writer, the writer of the essay that I critiqued yesterday. Over the over the the woke or Christianity and I encourage those of you who haven't watched that episode to watch it. I think I make some good points and I think it's interesting. Anyway, the author, the author whose name is Evan Riggs, actually tweeted to his credit, tweeted my discussion of his, you know, of my discussion of his essay. He tweets, we definitely disagree on a lot, but I'm honored to have my argument taken seriously by the head of the Ironman Institute. Any, any links to my things. So kudos to to Riggs, I've actually suggested that maybe next time I'm in London, we could do a debate on it. And then he also tweeted, thank you for taking my argument seriously, unlike many people who have disagreed so far. So yeah, it would be it would be actually pretty cool if we could, if we could actually have a debate over this. All right, let's see. So yeah, that that was yesterday show. Encourage you all, those of you haven't listened to it yet to go listen to it. All right, that was a non man. You know, there have been accusations around the Bidens and about Ukraine and being bribed and the job, the board membership that Hunter Biden received in Ukraine where he clearly is not qualified. And, and, and, you know, there's also an issue with China, but but there's this clearly, you know, we forgot to Ukraine. This idea that the Bidens were bribed explicitly bribed as talk of a $5 million bribe to for the US basically to put in a particular pressure on the Ukrainian government, not to investigate corruption and in exchange, not just they get the $5 million, but they also get they also got Hunter Biden on on the board of this Ukrainian company. So yesterday, I guess it was Senator Grassley went on the Senate floor and basically said that he has seen evidence in an FBI statement of that there that there is reason to believe or the FBI has information, not verified, not conclusive, but information that one of the one of the executives at Burisma it's not identified who but they think it's the founder has actually audio tapes of his dealings with the Bidens. And on those audio tapes there is key claims or Grassley at least claims there's clear evidence that the Bidens received a bribe. I mean this is interesting because this is kind of old news and the Trump administration and Justice Department under Trump investigated this whole accusation in 2020 and came to the conclusion that there was no solid evidence that this has happened. So they can dismiss it but they certainly didn't have enough evidence to pursue any kind of prosecution the FBI. This document is is part of the FBI this document that says that they are these tapes, the tapes have not materialized, nobody in the US has copies of these tapes has listened to these tapes as conclusive evidence of this. But the Republicans out to get the Bidens and they're doing everything they can to try to do that when Trump when Trump unleashed the Justice Department on them it it didn't get him very far he didn't get the evidence he needed. And but you know who knows do I think it's likely unlikely that that this actually happened. So I'm fairly convinced as convinced as I think I could be that Hunter Biden got positions both in Ukraine and in China because he's the son of what who was the vice president of the United States and who might be one day president. So there's no question in my view that this happens again. The reason Kushner Trump's brother in law son in law son in law I got what is it $2 billion from the Saudis is because he's the son of Trump and he did a lot for the Saudis while he was while Trump was president. So this kind of stuff goes on all the time in politics. Do I think they got $5 million suitcase of cash wired into a Swiss bank account. I don't know is it is it is it impossible no is it likely probably not probable. Yeah it's it's probable. There's a positive probability it happened but you know but is it likely probably not. I think Joe Biden is probably smarter than that but or more savvy than that. Smart is not actually something I want to associate with Biden but probably savvy enough not to take literal money. But is there an exchange you know I'll help you with the stuff and you put my son on the board. Yeah I think so. I mean I often ask the question. Never get a response really often ask the question how is it the politicians going to office poor and come out of office rich. Having produced nothing created nothing made nothing and Apollo you asked exactly the same question yesterday and answered it. And the answer is some form of implicit corruption. Very few of them actually literally get suitcases full of cash or wired dollars into some Cayman Islands or Swiss bank account. But almost all of them get consulting gigs and speaking gigs. You know once they leave or in some way or their family members or whatever in ways that are roundabout roundabout. In ways that are roundabout and get them and get them you know the money the money gets there the money somehow lands up in their hands. Because God how many of these congressmen are wealthy who started out unworthy not wealthy with nothing unbelievable unbelievable. So yeah you know it looks like Republicans are really going after the Biden's Grassley is is is 80 something year old long time senator. Standing up there on the Senate floor and accusing the president of the United States of being bribed taking accepting five million dollars of bribery. That's quite an accusation so we'll see how the story developed. It would be particularly interesting if these tapes actually materialize and if they do the Bidens are in deep deep deep trouble. There's there's no question. So this is this is all Burisma the Ukrainian company. All right inflation you probably you probably heard yesterday inflation came in at a low relatively low number. The CPI consumer price inflation that is this basket of goods that the federal government uses to measure came increased during the month of May by point one percent. That is a very low rate which means that the annual increase from 12 months ago to today to the end of May was 4% that is significantly below the highs that were achieved late last year of 9.1%. So it's it's less than half of what we achieved at the peak of the inflation pressure. Much of this is a consequence of of of energy prices declining or prices declining. They declined sharply during the month and as a consequence that drove it down. So what they call core consumer price inflation that takes out food and energy because food and energy are very volatile. That is still up 5.3% for the year and was up 0.4% in the month. So a lot of prices that are not related directly to energy or to or to food are still rising at about 0.4% a month. The Fed wants to drive that down to between you know to between under 0.2% a month. So so we'll see so inflation is still there price inflation a consumer price inflation is still there. It's still significantly higher than what the Fed's target is which is 2%. But it is coming down significantly although the coinflation is fairly stable over the last three months at around 5.25.3%. It is interesting Rob on the chat mentions eggs but it seems like greed has been sucked out of the economy in particularly with regard to eggs. Eggs spiked up dramatically last year and earlier this year and there was a lot of talk about greed inflation that egg producers were inflating because they wanted to make a lot of money and they could and they were just exploiting all of us and they had this quote monopolistic power and just drove up prices and Elizabeth Wong and many people supported her coined this term of greed inflation. Well greed inflation is gone. The opposite is happening. We're having I don't know altruists flation which is deflation because the fact is that last month or egg prices egg prices fell at the steepest rate since 1951 they fell something like 20 something percent in just one month. So there we go. You know we continue to track greed flation and continue to give you the good news. You know inflation is this tricky number because different goods go up and down at different prices. As I said oil has gone down eggs have gone down other fruits and vegetables have actually gone up. But again CPI tries to capture some kind of average a core CPI some kind of average those are still high particularly the core higher than what one would like higher than zero which is what I would like higher than two percent which what the federal like. But it does suggest that the Federal Reserve today will not raise interest rates that we've probably going into a period of the Fed holding back and not raising interest. One other inflation number was reported today which is the PPI the producer price index these are prices at the producer level in the supply chain. Those prices actually fell in May by point three percent and on an annual basis they went up one point one percent in the year ending in May. So again looks like inflation pressures in the various parts of the supply chain have been eliminated. If you believe in greed inflation that means the end of greed. But if you like like me believe that this is all caused by fiscal and monetary policy by by handing people money. Well the effect of the handouts is probably adjusted prices. There's probably still some adjustment to be made but ultimately ultimately you know the unless there's some massive addition to the money supply produced by the Fed were probably heading towards lower inflation. The fact that the Fed is stopping raising interest rates suggest that they might just pull off a what's called a soft landing. I've been calling for a recession for years now and it hasn't happened and I still think there's going to be a recession. But now I'm starting to think I guess there's a possibility it won't happen. I don't exactly understand why but the US economy is just super resilient and the barriers to actually shrinking into actually having a recession. A high given this resiliency and in a certain sense the US economy is humming forward. And you know good good I'd rather have it humming forward than a recession. So we might avoid a recession. I'm not calling. I'm not saying that's what will happen. But it might it might. All right. I'll remind everybody that we do use Super Chat to fund these episodes. These episodes come to you thanks to the live members who are on here who participate in Super Chat and contribute to the show that way. Of course, you know those of you contribute monthly are also helping make these shows possible. But those are the two sources of revenue for the show. There is no other than multi contributions in the Super Chat. I've set some goals for the Super Chat 250 for the for the news shows and 650 for the evening shows. Meaning those goals is kind of setting the value for value trade where I need to be in order to make these profitable for me. And hopefully if you're listening profitable for use it is a it becomes a win-win at that point. So I encourage you to use the Super Chat both to support the show and to ask questions right now. We're about $200 short from our goals. So please consider stepping in, ask him some questions, maybe the $20 level. We can get 10 questions at $20. We've reached our goal and we're done. All right. Let's see. Where are we? Yes. Industrial heartland. When I say industrial heartland, what comes to mind? What do you think of? Well, almost everybody in America would think of the Midwest. They think of, I don't know, Michigan, Wisconsin. They think of Illinois. They think of Ohio, right? This is the industrial heartland of America. This is where industrial plants and we build stuff from cars to machines to steel to all of that stuff. This is industrial heartland. And yet that has changed over the last, what is it, 40 years. The industrial heartland of the United States has actually shifted today in our world today. There is just as much manufacturing, heavy manufacturing that you associate with the industry in the American South as there is in the Midwest. So today, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and of course, Texas, that's where the action is. That's when industrialization is happening. Today there's many industrial workers in the South as they are in the Midwest. Starting in the 1980s, companies like Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW all built plants in the Midwest. They did not go to Michigan partially to avoid unions and partially because the Midwest, still to this day, has relatively low energy costs, generally has low living costs and has a significant amount of labor. Indeed, the biggest problem in the South today is the shortage of labor. What is super interesting about this is that Biden's projects, Biden has passed a number of big bills that involve huge, massive, multi-billion. By the way, thank you, Bjorn. We'll get to Bjorn in a minute, but he just took us way past our goal for today. He has passed these bills that involve massive investments and massive subsidies for industrialized progress, whether it's EV batteries, electric cars, solar panels, or whether it is chip manufacturing. Almost all those investments are going into the South. Now, some are going into the Midwest, but most of them are going into the South. What is it? Toyota is building this factory that is the size of 1200 football stadiums, football fields. That's just the size of it, and they're building it in Kentucky, right? And it's going to produce EV batteries, right? So, you know, all of these subsidized projects are going to the South. And what's interesting about that politically, if you think about poke barrel, poke barrel is where congressmen get the administration to hand over the poke to districts that support them. And here almost all the poke barrel is going to Republican districts, which is super interesting and probably not what Biden intended. But that is a fact. He didn't say to companies all over the world, if you build these factories, we'll give you subsidies only if you're doing a Democratic district. Maybe you should have had that. But he said, if you build it, we will subsidize it. So they're building and they're building all over the place. Chips, mostly Arizona, land is cheap. Water might be a problem, but land is cheap. Energy is relatively cheap. And seismically stable, not like California. And close to California, close to California, where they need the tech and they can get people moving there with the skills. But electric cars, electric batteries, all of that, mostly Kentucky, Tennessee, you know, South, the South. Funnily enough, maybe funnily is not right, ironically enough, guess why electricity is so cheap in those places? It's cheap because Kentucky, for example, produces 70% of electricity using coal. Coal that they dig right there, right? So a lot of these high tech factories, EV and everything, who are supposed to be clean, actually using electricity produced by coal, not exactly goes consistently with how they're thinking. Anyway, here we are. And a lot of it has to do, a lot of the energy around the South has to do with where people are moving to. It's not as much about unions anymore because only 6% of America's private sector workers are unionized as of 2022. So unions are not a factor really much anyway. But Texas has a lot of people moving into it. Georgia, Tennessee, Carolinas are major magnets of people moving there, not just retirees, but working-age people. And if anything, there is a shortage of labor in all these places in spite of people moving to them. But if they open up something in the Midwest, those are states that are shrinking and the labor shortage is a much larger. So just thought it was interesting. Industrial hotland, no longer the Midwest, but the South. All right, finally, you've probably all heard about the collapse of I-95 in Philadelphia, where a truck underneath the highway burnt. It basically caused the rebar in the concrete, in the highway above it, to not melt, just like with the World Trade Center, the rebar doesn't have to melt. But what it does is it weakens it. It weakened it to a point where the concrete collapsed. The concrete buckled down. It collapsed. Highway 95 is closed, both going north and south in that section. It's going to take months to fix. This is not easy. And this is highlighted now because what's going to happen? They're going to have to reroute the traffic. Some of the traffic is going to have to go through a 40 mile long detour, along mostly non-interstate roads that includes more than 60 traffic lights. And one of the realities, I talked about this on a show earlier in the year, is that I-95 carries massive quantities of trucks delivering goods south, north, north, south along the I-95, along the east coast corridor. Goods that could easily, more efficiently, cheaper and with less hassle, hassle to drivers, be moving along the shore in boats, in ships. They could be moving from Boston to Baltimore to Charleston down to Florida. And all of that could be delivered in container ships along the eastern coast. Instead, we deliver them by truck along I-95. That's why you get stuck in traffic jams. That's why this collapse of the highway is such a big deal, because it's the only way to get goods north, south, south, north. So why is that? Why don't we use shipping? And this is a theme I've returned to many times, a topic I've returned to many times. It's called the Jones Act. The Jones Act makes it impossible because the Jones Act requires the ship transporting goods between two U.S. ports. Must be, must be, American flagged, built, and the crew must be Americans. In all the world, there are only 70 ships like that. None of them, for example, are LNG ships that can carry natural gas. Very few of them are ships that can carry containers. There's plenty of container ships in the world, and it's very cheap to move ships using container ships. But there is, there are very few American made that has built crude and flagged ships that contain those containers. The Jones Act makes everything we consume more expensive, particularly along the shores. The Jones Act makes it so that, you know, in non-war times, Boston has to import natural gas from Russia instead of from Pennsylvania or Texas. The Jones Act is one of the most distortive laws we have in a book. It's easy, it's simple. It would take a quick act of Congress to get rid of it. And yet, we still have it. We still have it. But there it is. Whoa, what just happened? Let me see. Reload. You guys are still there, right? There's some database error. Keep trying. Whoops, all your super charts just disappeared. Not good, not good, not good. Opening error, opening the database, unknown internal error. Huh, all right. Let me close. Open. Sorry, guys. I hate stuff like this happens. Yeah, let me do one other thing. Yeah, okay, let me do this. First of all, let me just say, Webjohn just put in 5,000 Norwegian Krona, which is, I don't know, several hundred US dollars. He writes, how are you on? Since the Norwegian Krona has tanked hard, I sold some of my global index funds and made a huge payment on my mortgage. The rest I save for you. If only more of my countrymen listened to you, they didn't even agree. Just listened and thinking would help a lot. The intellectual climate would improve by orders of magnitude. I agree completely. Thank you, Bjorn. I really, really appreciate it. Thanks for the support over the last few years. I look forward to seeing you sometime in Norway. I hope I get to make it probably next year sometime. But thank you. That was very, very generous. Okay, let me do the questions I have access to quickly because the reality is my Super Chat tracker just went and died on me. And I think the only way I can resurrect it is by clearing cookies. Let's see if that helps. I don't know if that'll affect anything else that's going on. But let's see if that works. No, still getting that error. All right, I have a feeling I'd have to restart the browser and that I cannot do. All right, so let's say, let's go. Brian has for $10, three cheers for you on. Here's some money. I really get to watch these live during the day. So I am celebrating the special occasion. Thank you, Brian. Really, really appreciate your support. Roland says, identify as a non-woman attracted to non-men. Wait a minute. I have to think about that. A non-woman, all right, attracted to non-men. Yeah, I can see that. Correction, he says. Roland says, a non-woman non-repelled by non-men. Well, that's good. I'm glad you're not repelled by non-men. Yeah, I mean, the non-men thing is quite a joke. Frank says, can you say something about Silvio Bielosconi? Yeah, I mean, Silvio Bielosconi, the billionaire businessman in Italy who served as prime minister for many years of Italian government, really stood for nothing, I think is true. Kind of a nationalist, kind of a conservative, kind of stood for nothing, I think is accurate. Always accused of corruption, probably true Italian politicians. Very, very likely. And I don't know that he, you know, maybe some of you, people who follow Italy more closely, can't really think of things that he did that were super positive. Italy is still a mess. Maybe he didn't do really, really negative things. Maybe that's his contribution to Italy is preventing the left from kind of destroying it. Kind of a populist, fake smile, you know, lots of buttocks and plastic surgery, became a caricature of himself, kind of sad when you look at him and you look at those frozen facial features. Died yesterday, I think, or the day before. Schausbach says, man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransient mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Can you Google the term intransient and tell us if Ayn Rand would agree with the definition? You want me to Google it right now, right? Google intransient. Intransient. Unwilling or refusing to change one's views or to agree about something. No, I don't think she'd agree with that definition. Unwilling to change one's views. I mean, there's a sense in which that's true. Confident is views. Unswerving is views but always open to evidence. Intransient is characterized by refusal to compromise. That's true. Or abandon an ever extreme position or attitude when there's no evidence to suggest one should abandon it. And compromising is pretty good. So the definitions are not bad, but they're trying to make it out as unreasonable. That is not open to evidence. And I think she would definitely say you're always open to evidence. But when you're certain, when you're confident, you're uncompromising. And that I think she would accept. Apollo says, have you done the review of unromantics yet by Megan Ribbons? He asked that yesterday and my answer is no, but it is on my Kindle waiting for me to read and then to review it. Sylvanos, thank you for the $10 really appreciated. Bree says, there are crop failures in corn and vineyards due to late fast. How can they fed separate non-minutary cost increases like this for inflation? The most expensive wine comes from this, so stock up. I think what the Fed tries to do is try to look at cornflation, which excludes food, which fluctuates a lot in energy. And then because it's an average, it's kind of over many, many, many goods. Some are going up in any particular month because of non-monitory phenomena. Some are going down because of non-monitory and on average, the total basket reflects or is intended to reflect the monetary effect. Michael, $50, thank you Michael, really appreciate it. The boomer insult is directed at people of an older generation where finding Korea and purchasing a home was a lot easier. And then out of touch boomers don't understand what the current young generation has to overcome when they criticize us. Well, I mean, a couple of things on that. One is people have thrown the boomer thing on me. They throw it as, we forgot it, dating, they throw it, we forgot it. Anything where they disagree, they just throw it out. So it's been tossed at me on all kinds of issues, not only with the God of purchasing a home. But even there, I just don't think it's right. Purchasing a home a year ago in certain parts of the country, outside of California and in certain places that were super expensive, was easier than when I as a boomer was looking for a home because interest rates are so much lower. I mean, you could buy a home last year at an interest rate with a mortgage with an interest rate of like 3% or 3.5% and 3% really. And the lowest interest rate I could find when I purchased my first home was like 8%. So immediately, even though homes are today more expensive than they were back then, but your monthly payments may be cheaper. So I'm not even sure it's finding a career in a home is harder today than it was back then. It's harder in the Bay Area. I don't have the app running twice, Muralslove. But yeah, it's still giving me the same thing, still giving me the era of opening it. But anyway, it's still doing that. I think if I shut down Chrome and then open it up again, we'll see what happens. It might work. And that'll guarantee that there's no second one running some way. So, you know, again, yes, there are certain things that are more difficult today, no question, the certain challenges that you face that we didn't face. But we were poorer. You're richer. You're making more money. I mean, average salaries, starting salaries today, adjusted for inflation, adjusted for everything, cost of living and everything, much higher today than for boomers. So I don't think there's that, you know, that the criticism, even with regard to career and purchasing a home, is completely objective, when really has to look deeply into it. Okay, Clark says, also $50, thank you. Can you have Michael Laberich on one of your Thursday interview shows? Fascinating how someone discovered Ayn Rand while serving a 25-year prison sentence. And his product is very good. I just listened to his interview with Harry Binswong. I think he's trying to interview me. I think Angela, my assistant, is working with him on figuring a date. So I will be going on in his podcast soon. And so I will be interviewed by him. So that should be, that would be good. So thank you. Thank you, Clark Young, for bringing him to my attention. But he has already contacted me about coming on his show. So I will probably be doing that in the weeks, months to come. Anonymous users say, it gives me two bucks because I'm his-her-favorite boomer. So thank you. I appreciate that. All right, everybody. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it. We blew through our goals today. Primarily, thank you. Primarily thanks to our Norwegian friend Bjorn. And then, of course, Michael and Clark. But thank you to all the superchatters. I really, really, really, really appreciate it. We'll be back tomorrow morning. So no show tonight, but we'll be back tomorrow morning. And going on here. All right. We'll be back tomorrow morning and for another news roundup. And there will also be a show tomorrow night. I don't think we've got an interview scheduled for tomorrow night, although it is a Thursday and it's supposed to be interview day. But we will see. All right, thanks again, everybody. And I will see you all tomorrow morning. Bye.