 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, January 11th. It's 1 o'clock here in Puerto Rico, 12 noon on the East Coast. And welcome to another overview of the news. So let's jump right in. This morning we all woke up, luckily I'm not flying anywhere this morning, because this morning we woke up to a grounding. Basically all air traffic in the United States was grounded this morning, because the FAA, Federal Aviation, something, had a computer glitch. I guess the computers crashed. And every single plane in the United States, it wasn't already in the air, I guess, was grounded because this is the system that basically coordinates at the federal level how everything is done and provides information and does all this and it broke. And not just one airline, not just two airlines, every single airline in the United States had to be shut down. Talk about systemic risk. I've always said there's no systemic risk in a free market. Systemic risk is government cars. Systemic risk is a product of government. That's true in finance, that's true in airlines, that's true in everything. Because the government has a monopoly and the FAA is a monopoly. And I thought this was particularly interesting because, you remember a few weeks ago when Southwest grounded thousands of flights because their computer system couldn't keep up and it broke in, they couldn't coordinate, they couldn't get the people to the right place and nothing worked. And immediately, buttinge, butlige, whatever his name is, like the secretary of transportation said, ooh, you know, we're going to start an investigation, we're going to investigate, we're going to find out what happened, maybe we need more regulations, maybe we need more controls. Some people on the far left even said, we should nationalize the airlines. This is ridiculous what the airlines are doing. This is, however, I remember there was a massive storm and we're talking about thousands of flights and coordination and software broke. Well, it turns out the government software breaks too. And when government software breaks, not one airline, not two airlines, every airline grounds to a halt. And maybe we should launch an investigation, maybe the airlines should launch an investigation and maybe we should start considering thinking about how about privatizing the FAA, privatizing the functions of the FAA. It is long overdue. It doesn't mean they will never have a break. It doesn't mean that everything will go smoothly all the time. But it's not a function of government. What the FAA does, everything the FAA does can be done by private enterprise. All the FAA really does is violate the individual rights, the property rights of airlines, their owners, all of us flying on those airlines. And this would be a good time to privatize the FAA. And of course, there'd be competition. There wouldn't just be one FAA, there'd be competition. One system went down, maybe other systems covered, maybe only a part of the United States would go out, not the entire United States. There wouldn't be just one monopoly FAA like there is today. There could actually be competitive FAAs. And then they'd have an incentive to have the best computer system. Now, again, Southwest is competitive and it's still broke. So it can still break even when you have competition. But Southwest is just one airline. Other airlines responded better. FAA fragmented, FAA competing, FAAs, some of the system would go down. It wouldn't be systemic, it wouldn't be the entire country. Brian says, supposed to fly to Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, where I am, for vacation this afternoon, fingers crossed. Yeah, flights are back up. So FAA fixed the problem, flights are flying again. It wouldn't be surprised if you had delays, but you probably are fine in terms of flights going back up. At least I assume so unless there are the knock-on effects of what happened. Okay, let's see. So that's FAA government failure, not surprising. I mean, as I think somebody pointed out, John pointed out, FAA spends money on climate change, preparing the world for climate change. It spends money on, I'm sure, diversity, equity and inclusion. It spends money on a million other things. How about just figuring out how to maintain the computer system that all of us depend on in order to transform? And how about the government not doing things that the government is not supposed to do and the government has no authority to do, privatizing it and letting competitive forces and the profit motive gated into the future? Talk about an institution that should be privatized. Let's talk about the Federal Reserve. Yesterday, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a speech in Sweden. He was attending a conference in Sweden in Jerome Powell. The Fed chairman gave a talk about Fed independence and sticking to the Fed mandate. And most of that was standard stuff, nothing really exciting. It's a pretty short speech he gave in any way. But there was an interesting section there about climate change and about the role of the Fed. And I thought it was worth sharing with you because the Fed is under a lot of pressure, under enormous pressure to start regulating banks with ESG in mind, regulating banks with climate change in mind, regulating banks to not allow banks to lend money to oil and gas and do all kinds of crazy things like that. And to Jerome Powell's credit, he's standing up against that. So he writes, this is him speaking, I'm just going to read you from his speech. Today some analysts ask whether incorporating into bank supervision, the Fed is one of the five entities or seven entities that regulates banks, it's probably the most powerful of all the bank regulatory agencies. He says, today some analysts ask whether incorporating into bank supervision the perceived risks associated with climate change is appropriate, wise, and consistent with our existing mandates. He says addressing climate change seems likely to require policies that would have significant distributional and other effects on companies, industries, regions, and nations. Decisions about policies that directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public's will as expressed through elections. At the same time, in my view, the Fed does have narrow but important responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks. I'm dubious about whether any of those exist, but okay. These responsibilities are tightly linked to our responsibilities for bank supervision. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require the banks to understand and appropriately manage their material risks including the financial risk of climate change. But without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals. We are not and will not be a climate policymaker. So I like that. We are not and will not be a climate policymaker. The Federal Reserve has a mandate dictated by Congress. For those of you who still think that the Federal Reserve is a private institution, it is not. It has a mandate mandated by Congress, passed by law. That mandate is to do two things, to price stability, keep inflation low, in other words, and keep unemployment low. Now why it has two mandates, and it really historically only had one and should only have one which is price stability, is a different issue whether it even has control over price stability and how it controls price stability and whether it knows what it's doing with regard to price stability. All good questions, but that's its job, supposedly. But there is a lot of noise coming out of the Biden administration, particularly out of Congress, that the Federal Reserve should do a lot more about climate change than the Federal Reserve, again, should get involved in ESG. And I like the fact that Powell is saying we are not and will not be a climate policymaker. He says we will not promote a greener economy or achieve other climate-based goals. That's not our job, we won't do it. So good for Powell. You know, we will see how long this lasts. Of course, Congress could pass a bill that requires them to do it, but I don't think it will. I think there's enough of a stalemate in Congress that that won't happen. I do worry a little bit about him saying that there is some financial risk of climate change. I mean, I get what he's saying. Let's say you're a bank and you're giving out a lot of loans for people building stuff in flood zones. That's a risk that you should take into account given the climate changes. Just ask a California right now about climate change. It certainly seems to have changed, but climate always changes, right? But it's good to know that Powell is not going to just fold. At least he says he's not going to fold. Let's believe him for now. To the crazy leftists who would like the Federal Reserve, to now become a climate change policeman. All right, speaking about California. This is not on my list, but we might as well talk about California. I don't know if you've seen what's going on in California, but California's got a once in a, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 year weather event. This is major and it's rare. It's actually rare. They've got one of those rivers of rain after rain after rain after rain. I remember this happened in the 90s when I was living in Northern California, but it's very rare to happen in the quantities. I mean, the ground, everybody speaks to Northern California, saying the ground is completely saturated by now. Any rain that falls is basically accumulates above ground because there's nothing to soak into the ground. It is really bad up there, and the quantities of rain, 20 feet of snow in Lake Tahoe. It is not just a season. It is a very unusual season, you know, but that happens. Of course, part of the problems are that California is not invested in mitigation for floods. It is not invested in mitigating against events like this because for, you know what, a decade and a half now at least, California's been under this constant bombardment of drought, drought, drought, drought. California's a drought, or once in a 100,000-year drought. It's going to be a drought forever. The climate change has changed. We're now a drought, drought, drought. There's never going to be water, enough water. And therefore, don't invest in flood mitigations. Floods are no problem anymore. Now we have to invest heavily in mitigating droughts, and the only way really to invest in mitigating drought is to kick people out of the state of California or to reduce people's consumption of water. God forbid you should desalinate or do anything like that. There's one major desalination plant in California in San Diego, and it's brilliant. San Diego doesn't have a drought. It hasn't had a drought because they have plenty of water from desalination. But the interesting thing, while California now is being just bombarded with quantities of water that's hard to imagine for California, and nobody is arguing about, hey, we didn't invest in the right in government. Why was there no investment in the flood protection and in everything like that? I mean, what is going on right now? What is going on right now is environmentalists panicking that their drought story is over. You're even seeing some environmentalists coming out and saying, well, don't think just because we've got a little bit of rain and the drought is over. As the snowpack is accumulating, as reservoirs are slowly filling, it still may be as a drought. So you have to feel for the environmentalists. It's horrible. You predict that population is going to explode and everybody's going to die and population explodes and nobody dies. And that's not an observation. It doesn't happen. You predict the ice caps will melt and islands will flood and the islands don't flood. And you predict that California is forever going to be in a drought condition and it gets a lot of rain. I mean, it's very, very difficult to have an ideology and to sustain an ideology, to keep going in an ideology when everything you predict coming out of that ideology doesn't really happen. Maybe it's not that hard. Somehow it doesn't seem that hard for them. Somehow it doesn't matter that they're wrong about almost everything. It's truly amazing that, you know, in finance and economics, if you're wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong, well, even that's not true. In finance, at least. In economics, that's not true. In finance, if you're wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong, people don't give you money. People stop believing you. People stop listening to you. People stop it. You don't raise money. But in environmentalism, somehow, being wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong doesn't prevent anything. Anyway, massive flooding, lots of problems in California, particularly in the north, but also in the south. This is ultimately good for the state. It'll get more reservoirs. It'll relieve some of the water constraints. If you're a skier in about a week, it will be amazing to go ski in Lake Tahoe once the snow passes. You'll have amazing ski conditions up there. So, fly out to California, go skiing. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff that's coming out of this. Wes, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Let's see. Yeah, quick Korean update. You're probably hearing a lot about this on the news. This battle that's been going on for months now in Bakhmut and more recently also in a place called Soledah, maybe the bloodiest, fiercest fighting of the whole Ukrainian war. I mean, it really is a bloodbath, hand-to-hand. I've talked about this before. Really horrible. The Russians seem to be gaining ground, but they're gaining ground inch by inch by inch with a lot of casualties and a lot of casualties on both sides. A lot of Ukrainians dying to protect these towns, and this is like the single focus of the Russian army right now. It's the one place where they're making progress in the entire front. The only place that they're making progress over the last, since the summer really, Soledah, and to some extent Bakhmut Soledah is filled with salt mines and tunnels. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels under Soledah filled with salt, that are part of the salt mines, and the battles there are truly brutal. There's a little bit of a conflict between the Russians about who exactly is fighting in Soledah and in Bakhmut, the Wagner group, which is a private militia, private security force, is claiming all the credit and claiming that they did this. Of course, the Wagner group is being involved in the fight over Bakhmut for months now, over six months, showing almost zero progress. Finally, they have something to show for it. But at the same time, the Wagner group is claiming credit for this and showing what are probably fake pictures of the oligarch who owns the Wagner group in the salt mines in Soledah. The Russian army is claiming credit for it as well. The Russian army is claiming that its airborne divisions are there. They don't mention in their press releases about their advancing. They don't mention the Wagner group at all. So there seems to be some fighting over trying to get Putin's attention over who's better, who's stronger, who actually achieved something finally on the battlefield after months and months and months of losses. There's also a conflict about Soledah. Soledah, the Russians are claiming they have full control of it. The Ukrainians saying no, the battle is still waging. Bakhmut is clearly the battle is still waging. It would be interesting to see how all this pans out. Also interesting to see whether Ukrainians use this opportunity where all the focus is on Bakhmut and Soledah to maybe advance on other fronts. That's what I would do to the extent that I think it's feasible and possible. I don't have eyes on the ground and I don't have intelligence. That's what they would like to do, I think, particularly in the northeast, around Crimea and around the whole axis in Luhansk province. So maybe give them a little bit in Soledah and Bakhmut and surprise them with a solid attack while they're busy there, a solid attack on another front. Whether that happens or not, I don't know. I don't know what the weather conditions are right now. I don't know how possible it is for the Ukrainians to advance and whether they have the troops to do it. But you've got to think that they're thinking about that, you know, they're thinking about that seriously. But I thought, you know, so I was looking at this, I was looking at other stuff from Russia. And I came across a video of Vladimir Putin. They just have to show you. This is a ceremony at the Orthodox, this is an Orthodox Christmas service, which Putin participates in every year. It's not December 25th, this is, I think, January something. It is a few days later, it's the Orthodox Christian Christmas. And traditionally Putin has a bunch of people, family members, associates surrounding him during this ceremony. It's always in this one particular church. But in this case, he's alone. There's nobody there celebrating Christmas alone. And you've got to see his face. And I want you to look at this expression. And I want you to think about this man as a symbol of, you know, according to Jordan Peterson of Western values, according to a lot of people, of masculinity. This is a masculine man. And I want you to just look at this face. I've never quite seen justice on a person's face quite so explicitly. He was justice. This is what justice looks like. So I'm going to play you this showed video. I mean, look at that. This guy looks depressed, old. This is not Putin shirtless on a horse. Life is not going his way. This is Christmas celebration. He's in church to celebrate this. This is a super, super depressed loser. A super, super depressed loser. This is a guy who started a war, had tens of thousands, really hundreds of thousands probably by this point, of people killed as a consequence of his megalomaniac. This is evil. This is the face of evil. The face of evil is not celebration and happiness and orgies and fun and let's have a good time, which is how Hollywood portrays evil. This is the face of evil. Alone, depressed, looking as down as one could look. I mean, it's not clear what he's looking at. This is kind of the little ceremony. He's crossing himself, but not even a hint of anything more than the biggest found possible. I mean, he's in the company of other founders, Jesus and saints and other stuff. This is the church in which it's happening. All right. Wow. And by the way, you can find lots of video of this. You can find pictures of this all over the place. A lot of news places covered it. But that look that I froze on, that is what I call justice. That when I say dictators are not happy, that's what I mean. I think politicians generally are not happy. All right. Let's see. All right. One final story, and this is from Hamlin College, Hamlin University in Minnesota, I guess, Hamlin University, Minnesota. I don't know if you've heard about this story, but this is a story that is repeated itself now for over 20 years. This is a story that Hawkins backed to what was going on in the United States after 9-11. You would think that it would be Scott trying to rationalize away Putin's pathetic expression. Who else would it be? In the chat. Anyway, this has to do with the appeasement of Islam, the appeasement of Islam that's been going on since 9-11. And really, as a consequence of that appeasement, as a consequence of the weakness, the fear that 9-11 inflicted on us, the complete bankruptcy of American leadership, this idea that we couldn't blame the Muslims for this, that we couldn't call them out, the idea that we couldn't call, you know, Islamophashism or Islamism, the evil that it truly is, the pathetic nature of George's Bush response where Islam is a religion of peace and inviting Muslims to kind of celebrate the Ramadan a month after 9-11. Just a whole capitulation to the idea that, you know, 9-11 had nothing to do with Islam. Well, here are the consequences of this. Of course, 9-11 wasn't unique there. If you go back to George Bush's father, the capitulation to Tula Khomeini's Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which we saw the consequence of a few months ago, we talked about that. We saw it again with the Danish cartoons in 2004, Bush Jr., a complete capitulation to Islam, whatever they want, whatever they want. We will never offend them. We don't want to offend them. We don't want to call them out. They can burn down the world. They can kill Massika Slater. They can kill the people of Charlie Headbow. But they will not be criticized. We're against killing. We're against terrorism. But we're not against Islamists. We're not against Islam. We're not against crazy religionists. How could we be? A lot of the people who vote for us are crazy religionists. It has nothing to do with oil. Nothing to do with oil. So this is a story out of Hamelin College. This is, in a course, an art history class. Art history class. And the class, this particular class was on Islamic art. There was such a thing as Islamic art. And they were talking about 14th century Islamic painting. And they were particularly talking about an Islamic painting from the 14th century, painted by Muslims, owned by Muslims. That depicted the Archangel, Archangel Gabriel, delivering to the prophet Muhammad his first Quranic revelation. Now, the professor, in order to talk about this, showed the slide. Showed the slide a picture of this painting. Before showing the slide, the instructor issued a comment, warning the students that, look, there is a controversy about Muhammad being depicted in painting. There is common thinking. He said, this is quoting him. I'm showing you this image for a reason, the professor explained. There is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids outright any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly found in this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one monolithic Islamic culture. He's absolutely right. A senior in a class and the president of the Muslim Student Association of Hamlet later complained that the pictorial depictions of Muhammad offended her Muslim sensibilities. Quote, as a Muslim and a black person, I don't feel like I belong and I don't think I'll ever belong in a community where they don't value me as a member and they don't show the same respect that I show them. The professor replied to her and said, I did not try to surprise students with this image. I did my best to provide students with an out. I'm sorry that despite my attempt to prevent a negative reaction, you still viewed and were troubled by this image. I mean, this guy's going out of his way. I would have said, suck it up. The complaint, of course, said in motion, the whole DEI bureaucracy on campus and the image was shown on October 6th on November 7th, the Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence, Inclusive Excellence, called the classroom exercise undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and islamophobic, islamophobic, which is an anti-concept because there are reasons to be afraid of Islam. The kind of Islam that prohibits the showing of pictures of Muhammad is scary. They burn down buildings. They kill cartoonists. They slaughter cartoonists. And many people in that same culture blow up buildings, slaughter innocent women and children, kill, prohibit girls from going to school, Taliban. So there is a reason to fear Islam, but islamophobic denies the ability to even talk about it. If you criticize an aspect of Islam, I mean, I am very critical of Christianity. Am I Christian-phobic? I'm even critical about Judaism. Am I judo-phobic? Because of this incident, quote, it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamelin community. So the faculty member who showed unbelievable strain showed a painting, a painting, painted by a Muslim, owned by a Muslim, commissioned by a Muslim, was fired for showing this painting. Now, a month later, on December 6th, the chairman of the Hamelin Department of Religion published a letter in the student newspaper explaining the historical context of such images in Islamic tradition and the importance of engaging with images for academic inquiry. So he's trying to defend the practice. In the context of an art history classroom, showing an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muhammad, a painting that is done to honor Muhammad and depict an important historical moment, is not an example of his homophobia. Dah, two days later, this letter was taken off the student newspaper's website and the president of the university. Then sent a message stating, quote, an image forbidden for Muslims, some Muslims, to look upon was projected on a screen and left for many minutes in the class. And that respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom. Respect? What about respect for Christians? Are we now not going to show certain works of art that depict Christianity in negative terms? What about respect for Jews in showing Judah betraying Jesus or art that might... What about the fact that atheists have to sit through hours and hours of art school with depictions of Jesus and on and on and on? What about, I mean, is the standard a fence or is the standard whatever a black Muslim wants? Whatever the black Muslim wants. What about paintings of nudity? Good one, Alejandro. Are we allowed to show paintings of nudity? Is that okay? Or should we take down all nude sculptures and nude paintings from museums? Because it might offend a Christian. I mean, this is an art history class. Art history, you can't show images. What about Hindu images that might, you know, if you study Hindu art, you'll see a lot of swastikas. What about, you know, anyway? I mean, this is absurd and offensive. It is insulting to Muslims to 99... Well, maybe not 99. Whatever percent of Muslims can handle seeing a painting of Muhammad? Obviously, some can't. They go into a frenzy. They land up burning embassies and shooting the cartoonists. But for those of them who are adults, those of them who are actual reasonable human beings who can actually handle it, this is offensive to them. It's an insult. It's an insult. What about, again, you know, what is this teaching students? That we elevate the emotions of, you know, this is intersectionality. We don't elevate everybody's emotions up. We elevate the emotions of those who are perceived to be the most oppressed. There is a good article about this in persuasion. That's where I got the story from. It is another substack. It's written by a Muslim. It's quite good. She says, I'm offended as a Muslim in choosing to label this image of Muhammad as Islamophobic and endorsing the view to figurative representations of Muhammad are prohibited in Islam. Hamlet has privileged a most extreme and conservative Muslim point of view. The administrators have flattened the rich history and diversity of Islamic thought. And their insistence that figurative representation of Muhammad are forbidden for Muslims to look upon runs counter to historical and contemporary evidence. Now, this is in addition to criticizing the fact that this is just based on whim, on emotion and has nothing to do with reality. You know, indeed, she says, she argues this Muslim argues that this is one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory. And I agree with her. This is truly horrible. And I hope this professor does something about it. I hope this gets a lot of a lot of you should. But notice how Islam is now in this position where they can kill as many people as they want in the name of the Muhammad. They can, you know, they can go to war in the name of Muhammad. They can oppress women in the name of Muhammad. Nobody says a word about what's going on in Afghanistan in Iran right now. They can do all this horrific stuff in the name of Muhammad. But God, if you show a cartoon or you show an image of Muhammad, that is unacceptable and you should be fired. I can't think of anything more disgusting than that. Truly offensive and disgusting. State of the world in which we live. All right, here's another disgusting thing in the name of religion. And then, because I see I don't have any super chat questions today. But let me just say, Wes, thank you. Jack, thank you. Fred Hopper, thank you. Danny, thank you. Gene, thank you. Let me just know that if... Wait a minute. I did us... Whoops. The goal is wrong. Some reason I have a $650 goal and the goal really is $250. Oh, there we go. That's better. Okay, so if everybody puts in two bucks right now, we'll make our goal. Right? We got 97 people watching live. Our goal is 183. So $2 each. We'll make our goal. Some of you have already done that. I appreciate that. We'll see if we can get some other people interested. Let me finish with this one other story about the horrors of religion. It turns out that the religious write conservatives are getting ready for the next battle in the area of abortion. And that battle has to do with the abortion pill. They are getting ready to start boycotting and demonstrating and harassing CVS, Walgreen and other pharmacies that are going to start carrying the abortion pill soon and make it easier. Still need a prescription, but make it easier for women to get this pill. Now, this lays bare, lays obvious, the idea that this was ever about viability, that this was ever about the final trimester. It never was. This is about a barbaric, primitive, religionist, anti-biological, and anti-human perspective that somehow human life begins at conception. And that a woman has no right over her own body when clearly all she has is a clump of cells. Clump of cells. This is about abortion in the first month, few weeks. And it's taking a pill. There's no traumatic surgery involved. And yet here we are with the religionists of the right trying to impose their will and trying to do their best to destroy the lives of as many young women as they can. This is horrific. I hope they are counter-demonstrations. This is, we'll see how widespread it is, but this is a big, the big next step according to the religious right of their continued campaign to destroy abortion availability in America. Abortion pills. All right, thank you, Gale. Thank you, Kurel. Thank you, Apollo Zeus. Thank you, Vladimir. Adam, happy, happy, happy birthday. Adam is 77 years old and he contributed $77 to our effort here today. Really, really appreciate the support, Adam, now and throughout the years. Thanks for all your involvement in the Iran book show. So thank you, Jack. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, a buck each at this point will do great. All right, let's see. We got two questions and then we'll call it a day. Brian says, what are the quick recommendations for things to do, see in Puerto Rico? We have reservations in Marmalade already. Good, you should definitely go to Marmalade. Where are you staying? I'm curious where you're staying. And I don't know how many nights you're here, but, you know, you should go see the fortresses. The fortresses are definitely in Old Town. A walk around Old Town. Old Town is beautiful and the fortresses are pretty impressive. Spend a little time in the fortresses. It gives you a little inkling in what life was like for Spanish soldiers in the 17th, 18th and 19th century. What life was like generally on the island back then and gives you a renewed appreciation for life in the 21st century. You know, there's a lot of good restaurants in the island. Mario Pagan has a number of restaurants that are worth going to. Vianda is a really, really good restaurant. If you can get to Cochina, El Fondo, they're phenomenal. Those are just some recommendations in terms of food. But there's lots of good food on the island. And Marmalade is the best and unique. You'll get a really unique experience in Marmalade, so I'm glad you're going there. I try to go to the beach. Beach is fantastic. What else do we have? Beach and fortresses, old town. Yeah, I mean, if you can get a car and go out to Arocibo and see some of the caves that the waters created on the coast, some of the beaches, some of the coves, some of the rock formations, really, really beautiful. But it's a drive out on the northwest side of the island. All right, let's see. Jonathan says, thank you for the support, Jonathan. He says, TDO and ARCUK YouTube starts at 6 p.m. UK, 1 p.m. Eastern time. Okay, that's in 20 minutes. In 20 minutes, my guess is Jonathan is on. And you can see him on ARCUK's YouTube channel. Always, always good to see Jonathan. And I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. All right, so whoops, that's wrong. Let's see. I have not lived and asked if I've seen the menu. I have not seen the menu. I'm worried about going to see the menu because it strikes me as a bit of a horror movie. And I'm worried about cannibalism. There's implied cannibalism. And it just, it sounds a little disgusting. But it does sound interesting in the sense that it's making fun of foodie culture, which is my culture. So, let's see. Harper Campbell. I have explained to a coworker who is no 60s to a marriage-level Christian that morality is only applicable to making choices. He accepts now that freedom is necessary because if the government takes away someone's, okay, we'll see the continuation of the question in a minute, Alejandro says, what do you think about the UK bill to repeal retained EU laws? I think that would be magnificent if it passes. I think that would be fantastic. And then you have to make sure that they don't lend, then add them on themselves, that is, add them on as they go. So yes, I mean, I've argued from the beginning that Brexit only makes sense if you repeal all EU laws that were passed in order to accommodate the EU. But there are a lot of them. And if they can repeal all of them, group, bake thumbs up to the UK government that'll at least somewhat compensate for the awful things that they have done so far. All right, we're only $34 short of our goal. I'm kind of waiting for Fred Harper to ask the second part of his question, which is taking a while because I'm done with the content I have. So, Fred Harper, if you want, you know, I'm glad that he sees that it's about choices, but, you know, and you need to get government out of it, but it's not going to be too hard to convince him again if you're a Christian that, you know, morality is about ultimately making the right choices and government can nudge you and should help you and should encourage you to make the right, the right choices. I got Alejandro's question. So I think I've got everybody's questions, right? I'm just waiting for Fred Harper's continuation of the question, which I don't, I don't see. I still haven't got it at SEC versus RuPaul. Sorry, demon, but it's on my list. I've written it down. I will get to it. I just haven't yet. Sorry about that. That case is going to continue for a little while. All right. Is the menu any good? Has anybody seen the menu? Is the menu worth seeing? Caleb says, random, but it's fresh on my mind. Do you like Tchaikovsky? I watched Solaris last night and thought it was plotless, meaningless mess. Yes, I think it's true of Solaris. Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky is the director. I thought you meant Tchaikovsky. Yeah, I think Solaris is a mess. It's got a lot of, what do you call it, pretentious pseudo-intellectual stuff going forward, but there's nothing really there. What else did Tchaikovsky make? Remind me again. I have a feeling you guys have really reminded me recently what he made, but I can't remember now. Okay, Adam says, I enjoyed catching up on the Capitalism 101 video last night. Great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks. I'm looking forward to sports episode next week. Yes, Adam is sponsoring the sports episode next week, next Tuesday. We will be doing that. So we're going to do the virtues and values of sports. Okay, friend Harper came back with freedom to get an abortion. They can't choose to get an abortion. I think I made an advocate of freedom out of a Christian. That's good. Hopefully it stakes. You know, I think at the end of the day, if I were the Christian, I would come back and say, look, you're absolutely right. The fact that the woman doesn't choose, doesn't get to choose not to have an abortion, it doesn't increase her morality. But the fact that we saved the human life, which is how they perceive the fetus, it doesn't matter. It's worth it. So we denied the woman the ability to make a choice that would be, quote, moral. But in exchange for that, we saved the human life. Therefore, it's worth it. That's, I think, the trade-off they have going in their mind, even if they accept the idea of choice, the link between choice and morality. All right, everybody. Thank you. I appreciate the support. We made our target again. We seem to be clicking along here in 2023, making our targets nicely. And I will see you all tomorrow morning, tomorrow night. I will be interviewing Adam Masoff. So any questions you have on property rights, legal philosophy, he is a world expert, maybe the world expert, on intellectual property rights. So intellectual property rights, property rights, legal questions, constitutional questions. I remember there was a bunch of questions on property and how you would go about protecting property and what defines property. All of that, those are great, great questions to bring to the show tomorrow evening, 7 p.m. East Coast time with Adam Masoff. And yes, happy birthday, Adam. See you all tomorrow.