 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, September 13th. I hope everybody is having a fantastic week. We have got a lot of new stories, nothing I think big, but lots of stuff going on. So to keep you guys all informed, we'll jump into those in a second. Anything from inflation to what's going on in the House of Representatives, to some tech updates, driverless cars, FTC, going after Amazon, and some crazy lot of California. But more and more that I haven't listed potentially. All right, reminder, you can use superchats to ask questions and steer the conversation in your direction. You can also use them to support the show. So thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Robert, for starting us off with everything. Also, I'm hopeful that today we don't have the internet outages that I had yesterday on both shows yesterday with internet outages right in the middle of the show. So hopefully that will not happen. Maximus is asking if I'm getting the iPhone 15, yes. My plan is to get that, I think mine's a 13 or something, so it's been a while, maybe it's a 12 even. So I'm thinking of getting the 15 or the 15 Pro we'll see soon. We'll probably go and see what kind of, what my phone provider is offering and what was, what's, yeah. All right, let's see. Again, yeah, jump in with questions. Any questions, happy to answer. Almost anything we will see. All right, so a big story this morning, obviously, was the inflation number. We get that once a month. And these days with inflation high, it is always, it was always a suspenseful moment, markets are waiting for it. Inflation came in higher than I think people expected. So the path had been that inflation was going down, that the monthly numbers were trekking downwards. Today, everything was up, relatively speaking, overall inflation was up by 0.6 on a monthly basis. So the inflation during the month of August was 0.6. That is quite a bit higher than prior months, where it was closer to 0.3, and quite a bit and a little bit higher than what economists were expecting. The big driver of the overall inflation number was gasoline prices. You might have noticed that gasoline prices back up significantly. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the Saudis and the Russians are colluding through OPEC to reduce the amount of oil that they are putting into the global market. And even though the United States is a net exporter of oil, the price is set in the international market, the price is set on a global market, and the changes in the supply from Saudi Arabia and from Russia definitely have an impact on prices overall. The United States today is, I should add, no thanks to the Biden administration, is producing more oil than ever in its history. It is the largest producer of oil in the world, but it's still affected when big producers like Russia and particularly Saudi Arabia reduce the supply that they provide, and that's why prices are up. It has nothing to do with anything else other than supply restraints. When you take out gasoline and food, which are considered particularly volatile, and you look at what the Fed calls core inflation, that was also up 0.3, which is higher than what it was in June and July, where it was at 0.2. So 0.3 is tracking at almost 4% on an annual basis, and over the last 12 months, core inflation was up 4.3%, while overall inflation was up 3.7%. Both numbers are still high. Both numbers mean that for most of us, this means a reduction in our purchasing power, which means a reduction in our wealth and a reduction in our standard of living, quality of life. Wages are not quite keeping up with this, although they are rising. They're rising at lower rates in inflation, so real earnings are actually declining slightly overall. The Fed will probably not increase interest rates next week. That's at least what the market is predicting. And then the question is what happens after that, given these inflation numbers, I wouldn't be surprised that the Fed continues to increase rates. At the end of the day, the Fed really believes that the way to curb inflation is by increasing rates. It is also sucking money out of the economy, to the extent, and it does that by selling bonds into the economy and taking money out. That is shrinking, for example, M2, which is a monetary measure. That is going down, and it's hoping all those things will reduce inflation. I think the deficit being a $2 trillion also is affecting inflation expectations, which affect inflation as well. So you've got multiple things going on here in terms of the impact of inflation, and it's not clear that the Fed only controls certain levers, and it's not clear that those levers are enough to really reduce inflation. At this point, so price inflation, going up, going up, continue to go up at higher rates, then the Fed advertises it once, which is 2%, or that I think is desirable, which is basically zero. Ideally, prices are just stable. Aggregate prices are just stable. No reason for them to be up or down. All right, let's see. That was inflation. Quickly, just a couple of words on politics, so you're hearing a lot about this, probably if you listen to the news or you read the news anyway. The Republicans are threatening a government shutdown, or put it this way, the Freedom Caucus, so-called Freedom Caucus, the caucus that claims to be for freedom. Those Republicans who are in the Freedom Caucus are threatening a government shutdown. Threatening a government shutdown. Suddenly, they've discovered the government spending is too high. Again, during the Trump administration, they forgot about government spending, that never concerned them. They had no issue with it. But suddenly, they rediscovered the issue of government spending, and they were upset about that, and they want to shut down the government over government spending. But they also want to start impeachment proceedings against Biden. And I think Kevin McCarthy, who is the speaker of the House, and of course, the lead of the Republican side of the House, is trying to, I think, cut a deal. That's my interpretation of what's going on right now in DC. I mean, basically, I think what he's going to do is he's giving them impeachment, but he's not going to give them cutting government spending and shutting down the government. At least that's what he's trying to do, whether he can achieve that, I don't know. But yesterday, he announced that they were starting impeachment proceedings or impeachment, looking at impeachment, getting data about impeachment. And today, McCarthy came out with a plan on how to avoid government shutdown. I think he's trying to balance the two and tell the people on his right, if you want, you can't have both. Choose which one. And of course, if they had to choose between the two, they're not going to choose government spending. That would be too principled and too actually beneficial to the American public. They'll choose impeachment, which is just smoke and mirrors, because smoke and mirrors, because it's just political, and it's not going to get by the Senate anyway. So, yeah, it's just all a game. And the more you look at it, the more you study Washington, the more you follow what's going on Washington, the more it is that for them, it's just a game. Lives don't matter. Standard of living doesn't matter. The economy doesn't matter. Rights don't matter. It's just a power game. Who has the upper hand at every given point of time? These people are disgusting, right, is the right label. There's also the possibility that they'll try to get rid of Kevin McCarthy, which will throw the whole Republican side of the aisle into a frenzy and into panic. There's just, politics is crazy right now, and the Republicans are part of that craziness. And instead of getting the business of what needs to get done in terms of the government, including potentially shutting down the government, if that's what's necessary, they're playing political games and they are doing all this nonsensical in fighting and everything else. So it is what it is. But that's the game, I think, that's being played, is this offset, these two issues that are so important to the right wing of the House Republicans. All right, let's see. A few stories. This one is about autonomous cars, driverless cars. I'm a big fan of driverless cars, even though I love to drive. I completely realize and have no doubt about the reality that driverless cars are much, much, much more safe than humanly driven cars. And they get you much more effectively, efficiently, faster probably, and definitely safer from point A to point B. So there are win, win, win, win all around. This is a technology that needs to be embraced, that needs to be accelerated. Well, Cruise, Cruise is an autonomous vehicle company. I think it's owned by Google, I'm not sure. But Cruise has been running taxis in driverless taxis in San Francisco for a while now, and has an amazing safety track record, including with pedestrians, driverless cars engaged in far, far, far, far fewer accidents of all kinds than regular cars. And the reality is that even when it comes to, when there are accidents, they're almost always caused by the car that has a human driver in them. Now, they're not 100%. They don't lower accidents to zero, but they've lowered accidents to almost zero, and dramatically lower, dramatically lower than, again, human-driven cars. Anyway, driverless cars are making progress in terms of getting regulatory approval to actually operate. I've just been corrected. Cruise is owned by GM. It's the other company that is owned by Google. Anyway, Cruise is saying that they're only days away from receiving federal approval, federal regulatory approval, to begin producing and deploying driverless cars without a steering wheel or pedals. No steering wheel or pedals, no need for safety driver there, even if there was one. He couldn't control anything. Yes, the Google company's, the Google-owned driverless car company is called Waymo. This one is Cruise. Anyway, these cars would be very boxy, very simple, primarily for short distances. They'd be all electric, and they would be driverless with no steering and no pedals. I'm excited. I think this is, it seems to be just recently moving faster than what was talked about. And I don't know where Cruise intends to deploy these cars. My guess is San Francisco. But if they can be deployed in San Francisco with its windy streets and its up-and-down hills and crazy entitled pedestrians, then it can be deployed anyway. So I'm super excited about a future in which we don't have drivers behind steering wheels in cars. On the down side, on the, not down side, on the negative side, if you will, you know, Count in California to provide a downer. So California Senate just approved AB 316 and it requires autonomous vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds to have, quote, a human safety operator, even though driverless cars are safer than human cars. Anyway, physically present whenever on California public roads. So why have a driverless car if you need a human being there present? In other words, it's a, it's a ban on self-driving trucks. It makes them illegal in California, which is a disaster because of all the vehicles out there on the road, the vehicle that is least safe are trucks. So being able to, being able to have driverless trucks would be one of the greatest contributors to safety that one can imagine. And also reduce the cost of shipping dramatically, given the fact that truck drivers are making huge amounts of money these days because there's a shortage and there has been a shortage. Anyway, the good news about this is it does look like Newsom, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California might actually veto the legislation. I mean, he's got this difficult path, right? If he's going to run for president, on the one hand, he doesn't want to piss off the crazy leftist anti-technology crowd. On the other hand, you know, if he wants for president, he's going to be dependent on money from the tech industry to fund his campaign. So he has to be protech. There's no way, you know, California government, in spite of all the craziness and insanity, is still relatively protech. And Newsom has a history of vetoing bills that go over the line and protecting the goose that lays the golden egg, which is Silicon Valley. So it's likely that he will veto this. So yeah, a future of driverless cars. I mean, isn't it a little surprising that the one experiment that is going on with driverless taxis anywhere in the United States is happening in San Francisco, not in New Orleans, not in, I don't know, Atlanta, not in Austin or Austin, Texas or Dallas or Houston, but in San Francisco. In the meantime, expect the Luddites to be out in full force, attacking driverless cars whenever. Let's see. Yeah, but don't worry. Newsom might be somewhat friendly to tech companies because of how much revenue they bring in to California. But the FTC is not. So the Federal Trade Commission under a woman who is really, Lena Kahn, is really obsessed with one particular company. I mean, it's an obsession she has. She's had, since she was an undergraduate, she wrote about this as an undergraduate, as a graduate student. She's written that as a professor and now she's the head of the FTC. She's obsessed with Amazon, hates Amazon, believes Amazon is a monopoly, believes Amazon needs to be broken up, and she will go after Amazon. No matter what, no matter what. Anyway, the FTC is probably going to sue Amazon this month, September. I think this is the fourth lawsuit, the fourth lawsuit against Amazon that Lena Kahn has filed this year. This time, she is suing them. Listen to this. For taking a cut off of third-party merchant sales, who sell on the Amazon platform and tying access to its marketplace, that is to its platform that it created, to use its logistics services. So if you want to sell on Amazon, you have to use Amazon Logistics, which guarantee customers get a good Amazon Logistics service. But the government has decided that this is not fair. I'm sure the merchants would be far better off if they just all got kicked off of Amazon. I mean, Amazon built this. It created it. It offers merchants a service. They voluntarily sign up for it, and then provides them with logistics. If they want it, if they don't want it, they don't have to participate in the Amazon marketplace. They can go somewhere else. They can create their own website. They can join eBay. They can do all kinds of things. But Lena Kahn is obsessed, and she will keep going after them, keep going after them. In the first two cases that Lena Kahn filed against Amazon, they covered privacy issues related to Ring and Alexa. Amazon settled those cases for $30 million. The third case, which alleges the company tricks people into signing up for Prime, then makes it hard for them to cancel, is still ongoing and now joined by a fourth case. And there are going to be others. This is not the end of it. She's going to have a dozen Amazon lawsuits out there. She will do anything to go after these guys. Don't know what it is in a childhood. Something, something said. All right. And then finally, another crazy California law that is that Newsom, the Gavin Newsom is willing to sign. It seems that he will sign. And this is called SB 54. And here, because it's more about social issues, is more likely to sign it. Let's crippling to tech, at least in the short run. This is a law that's going to require venture capital firms, operating in California, which is pretty much all of them, to report. It's hard to do this with a straight face. The venture capital firms operating in California are going to have to report the gender and ethnic and racial background of the founders that they fund. They will also be required to disclose the amount of dollar amount, the amount of dollars that they invested in the companies. Now, we all know why this is happening. The idea is to get the data so that then you could accuse venture capital firms of being biased against blacks, women, other minorities, because either they're funding fewer, I don't know, black founded firms and or they're getting less money or something like that. That's why they want all this info. It'll turn out, from this, that probably turn out that immigrants, that venture capitalists discriminate in favor of immigrants. They tend to discriminate probably in favor proportionally in terms of proportionality of the population. They tend to discriminate in favor of Israelis and Indians. Seems to be a lot of Israeli and Indian founders out there. Maybe even in favor of Chinese, but not maybe in favor of whites generally. Who knows what the data will show and who will be able to sue whom and who will be able to go after what for whom. This is all about this equity. This is all about the fact that they're unequal outcomes means that there's systemic discrimination in the process. And here, the process that they want to attack is one of the most vital for America's economy, one of the most vital for America's text leadership. And that is the venture capital process. Without the venture capital process, without the American venture capital process, without American venture capital firms, God, where would America be? Third-rate country right now? California certainly as a state would be nowhere. So there you have it. Gavin Newsom is going to help us find all the discriminatory practices the venture capital firms engaged in. But don't worry because if Gavin Newsom doesn't catch them, then the White House will and the Senate will. Today is a big day for artificial intelligence. If you're worried about the future of artificial intelligence or more importantly, if you're worried about the risks that artificial intelligence will wipe out the human race, destroy us all, then you can stop worrying. Leaders of the artificial intelligence industry are gathering today at the White House to talk about the risks of AI. They're talking to very, very, I'm assured, very, very qualified people in the Biden administration to figure out how the government can step in and help to regulate AI in a way that will reduce the risk of the human race being destroyed by artificial intelligence. I think during a break, they will be watching all of the episodes of the Terminator movies, including the really, really bad ones. They'll be watching them, all of them. So it's going to be a long day over at the White House. After the White House or maybe before the White House, we're going to have all these execs go to the Senate and meet with the equally qualified and brilliant senators who will also be discussing with them how to best regulate AI in order to prevent human extinction. God, God help us if our fate depends on politicians, right? Now, as you know, I for one don't believe AI is going to kill us all. I certainly, even if it was, wouldn't trust politicians one way or the other, they're much more likely in the end to kill AI than they and kill economic progress and kill success and anything else. But the idea that our politicians, whether in the White House or in the Senate, have the ability to properly even think about AI, never mind regulate, but there is no properly regulated. Government should stay out of it. It's none of their business. I mean, if there are national security issues here, bring them up. Maybe they should have a meeting at the Pentagon. But other than that, government has no business in the business of tech. Government has no business in the business of artificial intelligence. Stay out of it. But I'm sure everybody is, all right, here's a feel good story to end this. So a young boy over the last three years suffered from all kinds of pains and all kinds of other behavioral issues, chewing issues, other issues, can chewing things. Just strange combination of symptoms. For three years, his parents, his mothers, be trying to figure out what's wrong with him, taking him 17 different doctors, all kinds of treatments. Nothing was helping. I mean, the poor kid was in constant pain. I mean, the doctors basically said, give him Motrin. Give Motrin seemed to help. Give him Motrin. Just give him Motrin whenever he's in pain. But no solution to the problem, no evaluation, no idea of what the diagnosis actually was. Anyway, she got frustrated. She signed up for chat GPT. She took all the medical reports and the MRIs and she put to the best of her understanding everything she could from those into chat GPT and asked chat GPT for a diagnosis. Chat GPT came back with the idea that the kid had what's called tethered cord syndrome. This is a spinal cord issue. She then went, she did some research about tethered cord syndrome. She found other parents with kids that had the syndrome. She found that the symptoms that their kids had were similar to the symptoms her child had. She then found a neurologist who specialized or had some expertise in this field. She took her child there. The doctor took one look at the MRI and confirmed chat GPT's diagnosis of tethered cord syndrome. The child has recently gone under, went gone surgery to fix the syndrome and is expected to make a full recovery and be pain free from now on. I mean, wow, wow. Not surprising, not shocking, but wow, super cool. This is the promise. This is the promise. And now it's to the chat GPT some of the time make stuff up. Talks nonsense. They're calling it chat GPT hallucinates. But even if just one out of five are this good, that's okay. I'll take the error rate. I'll take the errors. So, you know, I'm looking forward to the day with chat GPT. I don't think replaces our doctors, but is another tool that they have. Enhances their abilities. And if certain areas in medicine that this is definitely going to happen, and it's, as you can see, it's already happening to some extent, and the potential is there for it to happen, you know, even to a greater extent. So, I'm excited. I think it's an amazing technology with unlimited potential, just unlimited potential. All right. All right. Let's see. You can ask questions. So, I'm moving to the part of the show where I answer questions. So, we will move to the chat, to the super chat. Alexis, thank you. Alexis just did a hundred pounds sterling. And he says, Johanna, I never had the opportunity. Thank you for the shows on the US dollars. Actually did too. I said, here we go. Do you fear the Goldilocks scenario of a soft landing for the economy which could teach everyone there is no consequence in printing money and spending to no end? I do fear that, but I'm not too concerned because it does seem like nobody's happy with the economic outcome, even with a soft landing. I mean, the reality is the economy right now in the United States is not that bad. Again, real income is down, but it's not that bad. Considering everything that's going on, people are super unhappy. People don't like inflation. And one of the reasons we didn't have inflation from the early 1980s or significant inflation until recently is because politicians learned the lesson of the 70s. And the lesson was people really hate inflation. Because inflation is the one kind of economic phenomena that affects everybody. Inflation is one kind of economic phenomena that everybody experiences and they don't like it. They know when stuff is getting more expensive and they will like it and they see their wages and not get going anywhere near as much as the bill at the grocery store. So I don't know that the lesson will be, oh, we can get away with it. I don't know that that's going to be the lesson. I mean, look how unpopular Biden is. And we don't have a recession. And look how unpopular Biden is because of the economic circumstances. So I still think politicians are relearning the lesson that they learned in the post-70s. And that is that inflation is a bad thing. Now, do they have any understanding of what causes inflation? Do they have any understanding of how to get rid of inflation? I'm skeptical, right? And do they think they were responsible for not having inflation, price inflation during the 90s and 2000s? I mean, a lot of that was not about the Fed and it was not about the central government. A lot of that was about a massive, just unbelievable increase in productivity on a global scale, which given that the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, had a mitigating impact on the inflationary pressures that were caused by government spending through this period and government putting money through this period. So the increase in productivity, particularly in China and in Asia generally, had a massive deflationary impact to counter the inflationary impact of the Fed doing what it did. And I don't think people fully understand that. I mean, I don't think Americans understand the extent to which the quality of life and standard of living is so much better today because of trade with China over the last 30, 40 years. It's been a massive boon to the American producer and consumer, to Americans, to America to the extent that there's such a thing, right? So Robert says, I especially appreciate yesterday's pushback against pessimism, optimism, Israelism. Happy to be a YBS monthly supporter and YouTube channel member. Thank you, Robert. I really appreciate it. Why at 516? McCaskey versus Harriman, who was in the right? Who was in the right? Can I say they were both wrong on different issues, but they were both wrong? I mean, I'd say there's a sense in which they both misbehaved. But as I said, I will comment on Harriman sometime in the future, not today. Michael, is your interview with Harry this Friday at 7 p.m.? No, interview with Harry has been moved to October. He couldn't do it on Friday, so it's been moved to October. On Saturday at 1 p.m. East Coast time, Saturday, 1 p.m. East Coast time, I will be interviewing Fleming Rose. Fleming Rose was the guy who published the Danish cartoons. He is immersed in the issues of free speech in Europe. We will be talking about we will be talking about we'll be talking about a free speech in Europe and about the Danish cartoons and the legacy of the Danish cartoons about the fear in Europe, about the ban on the burning of the Koran in Denmark. So everything to do with Islamism and Europe and free speech, that'll be on Saturday, 1 p.m. East Coast time with Fleming Rose, a fend and a really good guy, an interesting guy. So hopefully you'll join us for that. It should be really valuable. Michael says, why wouldn't you want to live in Manhattan for three months over the fall or summer? It's never too late. Well, for a few reasons. One is it's, the summer's just too hot, too hot and humid to be in Manhattan is a walking city. You got to walk it, otherwise it's no fun and it's just too hot. Fall or spring are not bad. And so the reason I wouldn't do it is this is too expensive. I just can't afford it. You know, I'd want to live well. And right now, given that I have a home, that I have a big mortgage on, I can't afford to have to go rent a place in Manhattan for three months. I wish I could. And that would be something, that's something I considered about 10 years ago. Doing never got to the financial position where I could afford to actually do that comfortably. Right. And if I live in New York, I want to live comfortably. I don't want to live in a little place. Manhattan is not a city. I know it's a part of New York City. Liam says, I just realized the last day of 2023 will be 123123. Is this a sign? Yes. Definitely on again. And the only way for you to buy yourself into heaven. The only people who are going to survive after 123123 are people who make substantial super chat and other forms of contributions to the Iran book show. And the sooner you do it, the more likely it is for you to survive the coming Armageddon. Right. Eric, in a free society, would an FDA still exist in a anti-fraud capacity? That is mass spec drugs to see they contain content, drug companies say they contain. I mean, whether it's FTC, something would probably exist in terms of fraud and to protect us from fraud. It would be a product fraud protection kind of agency. It wouldn't just be drugs, I don't think. But more importantly, what you would have is you would have a wide variety of private agencies, private companies that would basically test drugs. They test their efficaciousness. They test their purity. They test the harm that they do. They would test the risks that engage. And there would be a variety of those. And you, as a consumer, there would be a type of consumer report that they would publish. Or they would provide reports of doctors who paid them in order to do that. So there's a wide variety. And then you would, with your doctor, consult any particular drug to see if it was appropriate. So I don't think, and they would catch the fraud, right? And your doctor would catch the fraud. So I don't think a government agency would necessarily be needed or have a lot of work because most of the work would be done by these private agencies, by these private agencies. For profit, for profit, private agencies. All right, three, basically $3.20 questions would get us to the goal. So if you have any questions, now is the time to ask them. I've got three questions left before we end the show. Michael says, how do you feel about the Southwest, other than Texas? I think Arizona is the only other red state I could live in. Yeah, I mean, I like Arizona. I don't know that Arizona is actually a red state. It's got a Democratic governor, for example. That's because Republicans nominated an idiot like Harry Lake as their nominee, but that's what happens, right? I like Arizona. I particularly like Scottsdale. Scottsdale is enough of a real city there with really great restaurants and art and culture. The challenge, of course, of living in Scottsdale in Phoenix is just how hard it gets. It's perfect for winter. If you wanted to winter somebody some way, it would be great. The other challenge, of course, is that it is very dry, and I like dryness, and I really like that when I live in California. But I have to say that my skin generally, and I think health-wise, a little bit of humidity is probably better, not as much as humidity as you get, maybe in Texas or Louisiana, but maybe something in between would be healthier. But I've definitely considered living in Scottsdale and in the Phoenix area. I wouldn't go to Flagstaff. It's just too small and too small. Most of Arizona, I mean, Tucson is nice. The hills also behind Tucson is not as hot. Tucson is also nice, but it's small. What I like about Scottsdale is it's basically adjacent to Phoenix, which is a major metropolitan area. The doodle bunny. You notice Sam Cedar and Stephen Crowder never have any technical problems when they do their shows. Yeah, I know, I know. If I had the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they do and the staff that they have and the kind of studio that they have built in an office building, I do this from home, then I would not have the technical problems too, but this is a one-man operation. Anybody wants to invest a million bucks in my operation to upgrade it, happy to take the money, right now it's a one-man operation and basically it feeds me. So there's not a lot of money to upgrade it. But I would need a whole staff. I would need a whole staff to have the kind of Operation Sam Cedar, Stephen Crowder, those guys have all staff, probably not live in Puerto Rico. Because I'm not sure you could rely anywhere in Puerto Rico on the internet or on electricity for that matter. So I'd probably have to move back to mainland, hire a whole crew and invest in equipment to get to the kind of quality that they have. Maybe that'll happen one day, but not anytime soon. Chris, can you provide a brief summary of what was going on in Taiwan during the Trump's time? Can you provide a brief summary of what was going on in Taiwan during Trump's time? And I'm not sure in what sense. I don't know much about the internal politics of Taiwan, but as far as I know, nothing special was going on in Taiwan. China was much more interested in using the Trump era to take over Hong Kong, but still threatening Taiwan on a regular basis. Trump, generally Trump, I think, with his failure to act China involvement protest. Yeah, I mean, I think Hong Kong is more interesting than Taiwan. That is, can you provide a brief summary of what was going on in Taiwan while Trump was in office? What are some good articles to read and go out to this matter? God, I don't know about the articles, but we know that the really bad thing was what was going on in Hong Kong. And that is the fact that the Chinese, there were massive demonstrations, pro-freedom demonstrations in Hong Kong. China passed a law that basically enforced on Hong Kong in national security laws that held in China and would actually force some people to be tried in China or tried at least under Chinese laws. There were massive protests that delayed the implementation of this law, and but the Chinese did everything they could to suppress those protests. And ultimately, during COVID in 2020, the Chinese basically went in and cleaned up. They used the lockdowns as an excuse. They used the lockdowns as an excuse to basically, the lockdowns as an excuse to basically go into Hong Kong, arrest people, put them away and put them away in jail and many of them are on trial now and they'll be convicted. So what happened in Hong Kong was the Chinese basically took over the city completely. And this idea of two systems, one nation, was completely eradicated and eliminated. So what you get is a complete control over Hong Kong. And I think this emboldened the Chinese because they saw that Trump didn't do anything. The West generally didn't do anything, said a little bit of condemnation from the UK, but nothing really dramatic. And I think that has emboldened them in terms of what they want to do with Taiwan. That has made it much more likely that they go after Taiwan. I think they're a little worried about what's going on with Ukraine because the West did respond to that. But the lack of response to Hong Kong, one of the freest places on planet Earth, and now not anymore at all, is emboldening the Chinese to be much more aggressive vis-a-vis Taiwan. And if only Trump had stood up the Chinese over Hong Kong, but that would be a different Trump. There's no way Trump is going to stand up to anybody, except the left. All right, Frank. As a kid in Boston, did you see racism busing? Definitely busing. I mean, in my high school, kids were bused into our high school. So there were kids from black neighborhoods. They were bused in every day. They constituted a significant percentage of our high school. This is in Brookline, Massachusetts. They hung out by themselves. So I don't know that I experienced racism firsthand, but I saw the consequences. The consequences were there was almost no end to mixing. There was almost nothing, right? They were there. White kids were over here. There was almost no cross-cultural, cross-skin color mixing at all. They were treated as different and distant. But I was only, that was a year in high school, in middle school, we didn't have busing. So I never saw it in middle school. And I lived in Brookline. So Brookline, I don't think it was representative of what Boston was like in that period. Ginger says, no question. Glad to get you live looking so forward to Fleming Rose, a brave man. Absolutely. I'm a big Fleming Rose fan. Let's see. Apollo Zeus says, can you get Gino Jean on, please? I've said yes. It's like, I appreciate the Super Chat's support, but you don't need to ask the question because I've already told you I'm going to have them on. Wyatt516 says, what did McCaskey handle wrong? I'm not going to re-litigate the McCaskey affair. What is it? 13 years, 14 years later, certainly not today, certainly not now. Maybe in my autobiography and my memoirs, or maybe you can ask me in two, three years, five years, something, I just don't care at this point. And nothing good is going to be served from doing it. There's probably going to be a time and a place to air all that out, but it's not now. For a variety of reasons, it's just not that out, not that now. But it will be at some point. And maybe I'll do it, and maybe I won't. I mean, it'll depend. But I'm curious who Wyatt516 is and why his deep interest in the McCaskey affair. Maybe it's McCaskey. I don't know. Lewis Phillips, I doubt it. Lewis Phillips, no. Good news. Romney will not pursue another mandate. Why is that good news? I mean, it's very likely that the person nominated instead of Romney will be a Trump accolade like really horrible, populist Republican. Romney was, at least when it came to Trump, was a voice of sanity in the Republican Party. He voted to impeach Trump. Good for him. He spoke up about Trump's failings. He was not embarrassed to do so. He was the last presidential candidate I actually voted for. So no, I don't see it as a good thing. Republicans need more people like Romney who will stand up to the populist wing of the party. Francisco, I started studying philosophy. First assumption was that objective morality is impossible and we should search for an equilibrium based on our intuitions. What is the probability of reading RAND in a German university? Probably zero. I mean, I do know students who've done their PhDs on RAND. I think at a German university, at least one who referenced RAND or talked about RAND in a German university. So certainly it's possible, not that you read, but that you can comment on. And yeah, so I think it's sad, but it, and the other thing is, the good thing is that a lot of RAND is nonfiction, it's now in German, it's translated in German, right? So you've got some of RAND's articles and books in German now, and that's a good thing. But yes, the first assumption philosophy is, I don't know if it's a first assumption, but definitely a significant assumption is that we have to use intuitions to discover morality. Where do these intuitions come from? How did they develop? What are they based on? Blank out. They just exist. We all just have them. Which is such a cop out for philosophers who are supposed to dig in and find causes. Yeah, our feelings, our emotions. Mark asked, why Romney not a mesh, I like the mesh for the most part. He had a horrible foreign policy, but I like the mesh for the most part other than his foreign policy. Yeah, he would be better than Romney in all those other things except foreign policy. You're not going to get a perfect candidate who actually could win. We need more Romneys and we need more meshes and we need less of the idiots who are in the Senate and the House right now. We certainly need less Trumps. We need a lot less Trumps and a lot more sanity. And both the mesh and Romney brought sanity. A mesh more radical, right? But a mesh, a mesh, that's right, a mesh. A mesh more radical in a positive sense. But again, very bad on foreign policy and very bad on abortion. Romney more middle of the road, but sane. And decent on foreign policy. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks to all the superchatters. We actually made our goal. So really appreciate it. Francisco kind of put us over the edge. So that's great. I will see you all tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll be on at our usual time, 1 p.m. East Coast time. And this week, our second evening show is going to be on Friday. So I'll see you tomorrow and then two shows on Friday and then Saturday for the interview with Fleming Rose. Have a great rest of your week, everybody. And talk to you soon. Bye.