 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this first day of August, Tuesday. First show of the week. Yeah, got back late last night from Colorado, so here we are back on a regular schedule. I expect schedule to be mostly regular in August. I just found out I might have to be going to New York for a day or two. But other than that, we should be here on a regular schedule. Let's see, you know, Jeff is complaining on the chat that there's just too much objective content out there that I guess this show right now and, you know, the show, there's a show on ARC UK going on at the same time and how do you choose and you can't, if you watch it later, you can't participate in the chat. I mean these are fantastic problems to have. I do hope we have even more problems like this. I'm looking forward to the day where there are five shows going on simultaneously and you guys don't know what to do because you want to switch between everybody. I assume you all ultimately be on this show because, you know, quality counts, right? But I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But yes, an abundance of choices and making it difficult for everybody. But for those of you interested, Jeff was, I do not watch other objective shows. Who has time? I don't. And it's enough to just prepare for this one. And I'm sure there's a lot of good content out there, but I don't watch them. And if I'm going to watch something, it's probably the ARI shows which delve deep into topics. Where I learn a lot, but that's pretty much it. And even there, I don't listen to anyone near as much as I should. All right, we are going to do a quick news roundup. Remember that there are opportunities to ask questions. You can kind of dictate the content of the show by asking questions. You can use the Super Chat for that. We do have goals for these shows. We try to raise $250 using the Super Chat. Every news roundup show that kind of keeps these shows going. I think Jeff chose ARC UK. Go figure. You know, it's difficult. All right, let's see. All right, let's jump in. So yeah, exciting. DeSantis has published an economic plan or at least something that looks a little bit like an economic plan. DeSantis released its 10 point declaration of economic independence policy platform. So we now have a policy platform from DeSantis. I mean, I read this. God, I mean, it is so difficult. It is so difficult to, it's so difficult in politics today. It's so frigging depressing. And the dominance, just the dominance of Donald Trump and Donald Trump's attitude and Donald Trump's presentation is just so overwhelming that, you know, you read a DeSantis economic plan and it's just hashed over Donald Trump. So, you know, how's he going to differentiate himself and what the hell, what is even. This is declaration of economic independence. This is how it starts out. And just put this in Donald Trump's voice and this is Donald Trump, right? America is in a state of decline, militarily, culturally and economically. People across our nation are collapsing under an economy that no longer works for the American family. Americans have been saddled with persistently high prices and weak economic growth. American families have seen the quality of life and economic security diminish while our national debt has exploded and our country loses, loses to communist China. Our policies can no longer be driven by the ruling class. It's time to name names and defeat those people and institutions that have formed the root cause of this economic melee. And a family focused economic economy means having the courage to take on our enemies, enemies. We are no longer going to kowtow to who, who are the villains in the story? Who's the villains in the story? We are no longer going to kowtow to Wall Street and be corporations who don't have your interest front and center. We are no longer going to sell out to China at the expense of the American working family. The American dream is slipping away from our nation's middle class, federal government policy. The bottom half of American households are less wealthy today than in 1989 where the top 10% have added $29 trillion in wealth over the same period. So let's do, this is Bernie Sanders. But bottom line is, first of all, this is just wrong. The whole less wealth today than in 1989 is bullshit. I've often documented here that that's not true. Yes, economy is growing slowly, but just compare us to the economies of Europe and sea. You know, so to start off with such darkness and Malay and just, it's just so Donald Trump, you know, carnage in the streets of America. In 2016, when, in January 2017, when he was inaugurated, when crime rates in America were the lowest they'd been maybe ever, but certainly since the 1950s. Mass illegal immigration has undercut American jobs and wages, the rule of law and our wider social fabric. So the problem is always the other, the immigrants. They're the problem. It's China and immigrants. I mean, this is straight out of 2016 playbook by Donald Trump straight out of it. And yet he doesn't have the, what is it, the charisma, the something. Okay, so, you know, he goes on and on and on in multicultural, multinational corporations, especially in sectors such as tech have been a massive sir. I've seen a massive surgeon wealth was selling out assets and outsourcing industrial base to China lies, lies, lies. I mean, this is it. You need to create enemies. You need to create people you're going to crush. Who are those people three? It's the same three years. Trump, China, illegal immigrants, immigrants more broadly, and elites, Wall Street, multinational corporations and the elites. Those are the three enemies that Donald Trump defined in 2016. And this is now the defining characteristic of the Republican Party, not freedom, not liberty, but crushing the enemy. China, immigrants, elites, and elites, of course, include, right? So what is, what is he going to do to combat this? What are you going to, you know, what is he going to do to combat combat this? Oh, first, we seek, he says, we will declare our economic independence from who are we going to make us independent from the failed elites that have orchestrated America's decline. Indeed, but those are the elites that have actually created the wealth, I mean, the slow economic growth, but at least something. I mean, if you take out those elites, what economic growth does America have? What wealth creation is there in America if you take out the elites? Wall Street, you know, multinational corporations, big tech, what do you have left? So, so we're going to declare independence from failed elites. And then we're going to declare independent independence from federal spending that has inflated prices and plunged our nation to the brink of insolvency. This sounds great. This sounds great, but a plan, some plan, how are we going to cut spending? Are we going to cut, are we going to reform Social Security, Medicare, anything? Who else are we going to declare economic independence? From the Chinese Communist Party that has run circles around us for a generation? Yeah. From central planners who seek to advance their political agenda at the expensive standard of living our African Americans. Oh, I really hope that is true. That would be fantastic if he actually meant it. From a class of progressive corporations looking out for every interest except for that of the American people. Okay, so we're going to fight our own corporations. We're going to go after American corporations because we don't like their politics. Because we don't like their politics. This is America, not China, DeSantis. Corporations can have whatever politics they freaking want to. Number one, the number one, so he has 10 items here of what he's going to do. The number one item is taking back control of economy from China and restoring economic sovereignty. What does that even mean? What does that even mean? We have an abusive relation with the CCP. Ever increasing, oh, here he goes, reverse our ever increasing trade deficit. But there's nothing wrong with trade deficits. I've explained that a million times. Probably have to explain it a million more. And I won't convince anybody, or at least not a lot of people, ban imports of goods made from all this stuff. Okay, let's see. Demand that American companies act in accordance with American interests. Which means preventing companies from sharing critical technologies with China. That's actually what Biden has done. And banning the same strategic assets like farmland. Farmland is a strategic asset. How is farmland a strategic asset? If farmland is a strategic asset, then everything is a strategic asset. Incentivize the reparations of U.S. capital from China. And then he wants to achieve 3% growth by incentivizing investment, eliminating bureaucracy and red tape and keeping taxes low. Achieving 3%. Wow. How cool is that? So he's promising this typical tax and regulatory reform. He's going to do away with the job crippling ideological regulations. He is going to eliminate the fourth branch of government. Eliminate it? Eliminate it? I'd like to see that. I'd like specifics. Eliminate the fourth branch of government is the regulatory agencies. He's going to get rid of them. All right. This is one section where it's pretty good. It's pretty standard Republican stuff, but it's pretty good. All right. Unleashing America energy dependence. Another one that's good. Ending environmental, social, and governance standards of political engineering by large investors. What the hell does that have to do with anything? Oh, will not tolerate the World Corporation using ESG as an end around for the constitutional system. ESG is a voluntary thing. President of the United States and the federal government have no say in whether a company uses ESG or not. This is fascism. Restoring merit and respect for individuals. There's a central criteria for economic advancement. This is, yeah, root out DEI. I mean, the scientists will instruct the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Why not just get rid of the Civil Rights Division? ESG is voluntary. There's lots of pressure, but it's voluntary. There's no, God, anyway. Okay. Reigning in the Federal Reserve. A point of Chairman of the Federal Reserve who will focus on maintaining a stable dollar instead of political pressure of the day. Isn't that what every Federal Reserve Chairman says he will do? He's against the digital currency. I'll give him that. That's good. Opposing bailouts and holding bad economic actors responsible. Yeah, but who are the bailouts? Does this include everybody? Oh, and he's going to protect crypto currencies. That's good. And finally, fighting reckless. Oh, this is perfect. This is exact. Instead, this should be number one, but broader. But this is number 10. Fighting reckless and wasteful federal spending. Is anybody in the world, any politician out there, for reckless and wasteful federal spending? Is anybody out there who's a politician not have this on their economic agenda? Instead of actually telling us the things you're going to cut and the things you're going to reform and how you're going to cut significantly government spending. I mean, one of the items, I mean, that's really important in terms of spending is, you know, getting rid of DEI and federal contracting. That's not going to save any money. It's just lip service. It's just sticking something in there and then sticking DEI in them because that's what he really cares about other social issues. So yeah, there's a lot of good stuff here, you know, about as good as you'd expect from any Republican candidate. My guess is that every single Republican candidate out there has an economic policy. There's nothing extraordinary here. There's nothing unusual here except for one thing. And that is it sets up enemies and it's all about defeating enemies. It's not about a positive political program. The whole setup is a Donald Trump. Here's the enemy and we're going to crush the enemy. It even says, you know, even we win they lose. That is the title, the title of his economic policy. This is in RunDeSantis.com. We Win They Lose, which is a complete zero sum game BS. Again, Donald Trump, make America a mega kind of superficial nonsense. You know, it's exactly how Donald Trump won in 2016. DeSantis is trying to mimic him, but be more, I guess, intellectual about it, more responsible about it. Let's see what happens. I don't think DeSantis has a chance because if you won Donald Trump, vote for Donald Trump. Why would you vote for DeSantis? I mean, now there's Donald Trump's in jail, but he says he's going to run even from jail. So we might have a president governing from jail. But you know, if you won Donald Trump, vote for Donald Trump. That's what I think people are going to. But if you want these kind of policies, why would you vote for RunDeSantis? What is differentiating? Well, granted, we'll see how other Republican candidates try to differentiate if they can. But this is such a negative message. It's just disappointing. I really thought at the beginning, right, when we were just looking at DeSantis and he was going to be potentially, he was going to be running, really thought that there was a chance that there was a chance that he would be better in some fundamental sense, right? That he would focus on some positive issues and focus really on economic issues. And he doesn't have a chance. He's not good in front of a camera. He's not good in debates. I don't think he's going to be good in debates. And Donald Trump might not even show up for the first debate because he's got such a big lead that he doesn't need to show up. The real question is going to be, can anybody in the rest of the field, Scott or Nikki Haley stand out as a non-RunDeSantis alternative to Donald Trump? I mean, a lot of the money is focusing now on Scott. So a lot of the GOP billionaires abandoning DeSantis don't want Trump and they're going for Scott. Now whether Scott is going to rise to the occasion or just play his cards to try to get a VP slot, I don't know. But it would be great to have anybody but Trump or DeSantis at this point. It would be great to have anybody but those two as the standard bear of the Republican Party. All right. Talk about wonderful politicians. So the hunt to Biden is the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, this thing doesn't end. The more you dig, the more I guess people are discovering, the more bizarre, the more stupid, the more ridiculous this hunt to Biden story becomes. So a couple of things today, right? And this is stuff that in the New York Times, you don't have to dig in some deep right wing channel to find this stuff. This is just out there because I don't think this is just factual stuff that's easy to, you can't avoid, right? So it turns out that hunt to Biden, when he take business meetings and like meet with other people, he would get his dad to call him on his phone. And he would take the phone in the middle of a meeting and he'd put his dad on speakerphone and his dad were like chat. Now they say never about business, always just casual conversation and chattingness. And then hunt to Biden will say, hey dad, I need to go, I need to wrap up this meeting, buy, and he'd hang up and then the conversation would go on. But he do this kind of a regular basis. In other words, what he was doing was basically giving his counterparties, his counterparties, quote, the illusion of access. The illusion of access. So they all thought, huh, not only is he Biden's son, but his dad calls him up regularly and we just had a chat with somebody who might be president of the United States one day and isn't this cool. And hey, if we get in with Hunter and the business deal, we'll have access to the president or the VP or we'll have access to, you know, and look, Biden has been in politics forever, right? So he's been in politics for decades and decades and decades. He knows how this game is played. He knows exactly how this is played. And basically the Biden family. And I know I constantly emphasize this because I don't think other critics of Biden do, just like every pretty much every other political family play this game in order to maximize their income post being in office or prior to being in office that Clintons did this the Trumps do this. Everybody does this. It's great to see it here exposed. It would be nice if the media expanded beyond the Hunter Biden story and showed how this is prevalent throughout the political game. It is Pelosi's husband completely independent from Pelosi in terms of his, you know, financial and economic success. You know, the gores are pretty wealthy and well off. Where did that money come from? You know, again, how did how did Trump's son-in-law get a $2 billion investment from the Saudis? And you could go on and on and on. You know, the illusion of access, I love that. So when Hillary Clinton gives a speech at Goldman Sachs and gets $250,000, you think what they're paying for is the illusion of access? Or they're paying for access if she wins. She didn't win bad investment. They write it off, not too bad. All right, next time. Next person. But this is inevitable. This is the country in which we have, right? This is the country we have. We have a country, we have a mixed economy. In a mixed economy, politicians have a lot to sell. Access matters. You can become wealthy, super wealthy by becoming a politician. Not by producing anything, not by creating anything, but just by becoming a politician. I mean, have you seen the Obama's new house? Now, that's all from, you know, I'm sure consulting fees and speaking fees and book deals and things like that. But God, that's a lot of books sold. That's a lot of house. And there's constant income. And why is that? Because he constantly gets paid for speaking, consulting. Why? Because he's connected. He's connected now because he's a great speaker. I mean, he's not a bad speaker, but all of them. Some of them may be a little bit more honest. Some of them may be a little less honest. But in a mixed economy, what you provide is massive incentives to be corrupt. And most politicians can't stand doing that. And the Biden family, it appears Hunter Biden just is a creep, right? I mean, it just looks like a creep and everything we know about him and his drug use and his, the parties, the sex, the alcohol, all of that. The guy's a creep. And he's exactly the kind of person, you know, exactly the kind of person who you'd expect to sell his family, sell his soul, sell everything. And the fact that his father participated in it, participated in it, is pretty disgusting. I mean, what when Hunter Biden did is basically sell his father as a brand, as access, super corrupt. I mean, for the first time I heard that Hunter Biden was on the board in Ukraine and in China, I've been saying the only reason to put some person on the board is because of access to his dad. But it just gets nutty. I don't know if the other story you saw. This is about his, his art, you know, Hunter Biden is an artist. I'm not going to show you pictures to spay you, to spay you the, the, the, but he's a quote modern artist. He splashes paint on a canvas. Some of it looks like something maybe vaguely. Anyway, his art sells for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars. We don't know. It sells for a lot of money. Now, why would anybody buy Hunter Biden's art? Well, to buy favors with the Bidens. So in order to prevent that appearance of, you know, again, selling favors, they created a gallery that sells Hunter Biden's art says that it will not, it does not release to Hunter Biden the names of the people who buy the art. However, it turns out that Hunter Biden actually knows the names of a few of the odd buyers. And one of those buyers who bought one of his pieces was appointed, was appointed last year by the president, Hunter's father, to a government commission working to preserve European historical sites. Now, don't even get me out. Don't get me started on why the United States government has a commission working to preserve European historical sites, paying people salaries for this, spending who knows how much money on this. Why can't the Europeans take care of preserving European historical sites? We have to subsidize not only the defense, but also the preservation of the historical sites. I mean, talk about over the top, right? But the government is full of these over the top things. There's a million little things. And this is why it's so ridiculous that they pretend they can't cut government spending. I mean, here's one that can just eliminate tomorrow. Anyway, she got this position. Now, nobody knows. Did she get the position before she bought the art? Did she get the position after she bought the art? And it's clear Hunter Biden knows she has, she has bought the art. I don't know how that's clear, but it is clear. And so this, you know, the accusations are this is paid to play. You buy Hunter Biden's art, you get a nice, juicy commission somewhere. You can put a new resume, maybe the government pays you six figures and all is good. Maybe the government pays you as much as it costs to buy the art. So every day, something new like this is breaking about Hunter. And of course, there's all the barismas, the China, there's the money that's supposed to be transferred millions of dollars that nobody can find. They're the tapes that have disappeared. There's the guy who had the tapes who has disappeared. There's a lot of disappearance going on. There's a lot of stuff going on here. This is, yeah, I mean, there's no question. This is corruption, par excellence. All right, this one's a kind of a funny, sad story. And I'm going to summarize it. It's a little complicated, but I'll summarize it for you. So there's a guy named Ryan Korn. Now, Ryan Korn is a, he's the chairman of the board of GameStop. He is in general kind of a meme stock influencer. I've talked about meme stocks in the past, and he's an activist. And he bought in early 2022, he bought a 9.8% stake for $121 million in bed, bath and beyond. And he announced that he had this position, and when he did announce it, stock went up 34% in one day. And when he announced that he had bought it. But then it stuck to client, and he was actually losing money. He was under the water in terms of his stake. In August of last year, he re-disclosed that he owned those shares. Now, why did he re-disclose? Because GameStop, stupidly, sorry, bed, bath and beyond, stupidly had bought back some shares. By buying back shares, taking shares off of the market, his stake in the company actually rose from 9.8% to 11.8%. He gained 2%. Even though he didn't buy any shares, but the law says that once you cross a 10% threshold, you have to announce that you own. So he put out 13D, which is the SEC form, that basically said, I own 11.8%. I didn't buy any shares, but now I own 11.8%. And he literally said in the report, there have been no transactions and securities for the issuer by the reported persons during the past 60 days. Haven't bought any new shares. Anyway, because he announced it, and it's a meme stock, the price jumped up to $23. This is the day after the filing, at which point he sold all his stock. So over the next few days, over that day, in the 16th and 17th, basically he sold all of his stock at almost $23 per share on average and made a profit of $70 million. Now, once that was revealed, the stock collapsed, never closed above $15 again, and ultimately fall from bankruptcy. Now, okay, is this insider trading? Is this stock manipulation? Is this illegal? Well, he's being sued. He's being sued for manipulating the shares. And the basis for the argument for manipulating shares is one that he made this disclosure, even though by law he had to make the disclosure. But second is a really funny one. So there was a tweet of, you know, a tweet on August 12th where somebody said, Loop Capital says, but Beth and beyond, comeback doesn't make fundamental sense. Stock headed to $1. True statement. There's a picture there with a woman with a card that's overflowing. Ryan Cohen retweets this and comments, at least her card is full. Well, okay. But then, then he puts a little smiley face next to it. Now, supposedly this isn't a smiley face. This is supposedly a moon emoji. It's a round with a little smiley thing. Now, the lawsuit, it's claiming that, and here's a quote, some online communities understand the smiley moon emoji to mean to the moon or take it to the moon. In other words, according to those who are suing, Cohen was telling his hundreds of thousands of followers that Bitbast stocks was going up and that they should buy a hold. They did so sending the price suing. Now, on August 12th when he actually published this, the stock did go up a little bit, but it's only after 30D that it really went up a lot and he sold. Now, so the emoji is the signal and that's stock manipulation putting that emoji there. Now, he's been sued over this and, you know, he filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit because it's a little ridiculous. And a federal judge, Trevor McFadden, has denied his motion to dismiss, claiming that, no, there's some reasonability here. You know, it's plausibly alleged that the moon tweet I'm reading from the judge's opinion, tweet relayed that Cohen was telling his hundreds of thousands of followers that Bitbast and beyond stock was going up and that they should buy a hold in the meme stock subculture. Moon emojis are associated with the phrase to the moon, which investors used to indicate. So meme stock investors conceivably understood Cohen's tweet to mean that Cohen was confident in Bitbast and was encouraging them to act. For example, one investor applied in Twitter. Well, it's not Twitter anymore, it's X. But one thing said buy BBBY, which is the ticker for thing. Got it, thanks. And then, so it's plausible that this was an action to manipulate and in order to sell. And then he goes on to the 13D taking the complaint as true Cohen's amended 13D was materially misleading as well. Was it? Investors filing 13Ds have a duty to disclose any solid plans to sell their stock. But maybe he didn't have a solid plan to sell the stock. How are you going to prove that? Maybe he just saw the price go up and he said, oh, cool, I should sell. Because who knows what's going to happen later? I mean, this is the nuttiness of our security laws that you can sue over something like this. And I have no sympathy for Cohen, who is a stock manipulator in a variety of different ways and responsible for a lot of the meme stock nuttiness and insanity and irrationality, which he is now suffering from as part of this lawsuit. So I have little sympathy for him, but this is ridiculous. How do we get so long? Oh, God, I spent too much time on the scientists. All right, quickly. Big story in the Wall Street Journal today about a global, there's a global health care provider shortage, a shortage of nurses all around the world, primarily post COVID when a lot of nurses, in the Western world, resigned and left post COVID. So there's a massive campaign by developed countries to try to import, if you will, nurses primarily from different countries around the world. Australia is particularly aggressive. They're paying very high wages. They're encouraging people from all over the world, from Zimbabwe, from Philippines, from all kinds of countries to come to Australia. But even they're even trying to encourage and succeeding, encouraging UK nurses, Irish nurses. So nurses that are underpaid in maybe some of the socialized medicine countries to come to Australia, which also has socialized medicine, but I guess they can afford to pay more salary. So you've got a massive movement around of nurses in the world right now. You know, 70 countries, more than 70 countries have introduced laws in recent years to make it easier to hire health workers from abroad. And even rich countries like Germany are literally going out there and trying to recruit healthcare workers in places like Ghana, Brazil, Albania. It's just not enough nurses. And this is going on all over the world and in the flip side of this, a lot of the countries from which people are being recruited, like Zimbabwe and Philippines and others, are now worried because they seem to be experiencing shortages of nursing and they are putting restrictions on people's ability to leave the country. Talk about authoritarian building walls, right? Not allowing people to leave. So you've got now authoritarian third world countries restricting their ability of people to pursue their own dreams, to pursue their own happiness, to try to improve their lives. What they should be doing is building huge schools to train massive numbers of nurses so that they can export them, which would be great for both developed countries and developing countries. So, you know, they are literally creating legal barriers for people to move. So huge shortage of nursing if you want a profession where salaries are probably going to go up and success and you can get out of a third world country and move to a place like Australia, become a nurse. Although I would add that if you're hoping to come to the United States, kind of forget about it. In the U.S., recruiting nurses from abroad effectively has been stopped because of the type of greed card that healthcare institutions use to hire nurses. It's so oversubscribed that the State Department stopped processing applications. Even though there's a massive need, a massive desire in the United States for nurses from other countries, the State Department and its world of them said, no, we've got enough nurses, we don't need more, too many visas, too many applications. So you've got the United States not hiring, Australia going crazy, hiring everybody they can, still have shortages, and a place like the Philippines imposing temporary bans on nurses leaving the country. I mean, what a bizarre set of circumstances. And you think the United States would be jumping to get anybody they can in a worldwide shortage. And so many of them would love to come. They've got plenty of applicants. Plenty of applicants. But the, you know, the State Department not processing the visas. Sad, sad. All right, let's jump into the super chat. We are about $144 short of a goal. So please consider asking a $20 question. No more $10 or $5 questions. Make them 20. Let's do $7, $20 questions. And let's just get to the goal. And so we can start off August on a positive note, right? With achieving the $250 goal. So please consider doing $20 questions and or just use a sticker. We've got 72 people actually right now watching the show. Value for value. Two bucks. Two bucks from everybody watching. And we've made it. All right. Rimo asks, do you still think that there are many zombie companies out there in the economy? By the way, I'm still waiting for the answers on my PE questions. Yes, I know. I've got answers. I actually watched, finally watched the interview with Michael Milken. So I do have answers to your PE questions. We'll do that maybe tomorrow evening. Remind me. Oh, I should remind you guys. So today there won't be a show at night, 8 p.m. I have to pick my wife up from the airport, but there will be one tomorrow instead. So Rimo remind me tomorrow. Also, I'm going to try to do the puts and boots movie review tomorrow. And we'll talk about private equity as well and your private equity questions. Are there still as many zombie companies? I think there probably are. I think if interest rates stay high for a significant amount of time here still. For another another couple of years, I think that some of those companies will have to refinance at higher interest rates. And you will find out the extent of the zombie companies. I think what's happened is that the zombie companies were smart in the sense that when they raised capital, not like the U.S. government, which raises raised capital always short term. When they raised capital, they raised it with long term bonds so that they haven't needed to refinance them now. But over the next couple of years, many of them will. Now it could turn out that the economy is in much better shape than even I think it is. And I think it's in better shape than obviously one of the Santas thinks it is. But so I do think you will see those zombie companies suffer. And therefore the economy suffer over the next few months as long as interest rates are high. Now if interest rates collapse quickly, then maybe that saves these companies somehow keeps them going as zombies for a little while longer. All right, let's see. We're still not making much progress on our goal, guys. Scott says welcome back. You said recently you didn't have a firm definition of objectives movement. Might be worth defining our terms at some point. Not really. I don't think it's worth defining it particularly. I don't think having an objectives movement per se and having a definition of it is that important. It's going to be pretty amorphous and what that is, what objectives movement is, you know, and different people are going to define it differently and different people are going to relate to it differently. And that's fine. And what's much more important is the focus on, you know, getting the word about objectives and out there. Oh, by the way, did you guys see the latest from Fox, Fox News? You know, the third piece was published yesterday. If you haven't, please go to Fox News and find it. There are now three articles, one every week on Ayn Rand that are getting massive numbers of comments. Please go to the article, comment on it. That keeps it alive. Comment on it and then share it. Share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter. I mean, if we're going to win this battle, you guys have to get involved. And one of the ways to get involved is to take stuff that's being published out there. It's not perfect. It's Fox News after all. But it's massive exposure for Ayn Rand. Take that and share it and share it and share it and share it and comment, engage. If you want to change the world, you have to engage with the world. So there have been three pieces now written by the same author. This is the last one. So this is it. Use those three and share them. And, you know, it is a great opportunity for us to get at least Ayn Rand's name out there to people so that they can engage with their ideas. So no, I don't think it's worthwhile to define it. You know, the movement is constantly changing. It is constantly influx. People are moving in and out of it. There is a core. There are various bands around it in terms of level of interest. That doesn't matter. What matters for cultural change is not that you have an objective movement. What matters for cultural change is that the ideas are out there. The ideas are being engaged with. And for that we need dozens of new intellectuals. I think the Ayn Rand Institute is working to do that and we need exposure. And I think these three articles in Fox should generate a lot of exposure. And maybe they would quiet down people like Scott who keep complaining about, oh, you don't work with anybody. You won't publish anyway. You won't do this. You won't do that. Well, you know, without, without me on Twitter and without me here, we wouldn't have those three articles on Fox. And who knows how many thousands of people will be reading Ayn Rand in the next few months if not for those articles. Fox, even among religious people, Scott says, Fox goes out to a lot of religious people. And in the articles there was a, there was really, you're not going to unite the Liberty movement. That will never happen. There is no such thing as a Liberty movement. 90% of the people you think are in the Liberty movement are anti-Liberty. So there is no such thing as a Liberty movement in the way you view it, Scott, in the way many people view it. All right, I don't have time. Please consider doing a sticker just to show your support for the Iran Book Show. We are way below our target. And this is the first day of, what is it? August and we need to set a tone for the rest of the month. So please consider doing a sticker, getting the numbers out. Even if it's two bucks, 10 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, just something to chip away at the deficit that we have right now. All right, Michael says, why exactly do they want us to suffer? Why can't we just be happy? Well, because you're not, you're never just happy. Happiness is something you have to earn. Happiness is something you have to work for. Happiness is something that requires effort, requires particular type of effort. And most people don't know how to do it. Most people don't know what it is. And it's, you know, why, you know, and at the end of the day, we live under a moral code that is clearly about other people and nobody challenges it. Nobody questions it. So why happiness? Why not suffering if it's for a good cause? And the good cause is other people. So, yeah, you should be happy with your suffering. I'm actually doing a panel debate type thing next week on this. I'll give you more detail on a future show. Michael says, was Reagan the only decent president since Coolidge? What did you think of him in the 80s while you were still in Israel? Yeah, I mean, I thought he was a decent president. I thought he gave a great speech. I still think he did. And, you know, so on the leeway says he asked a question. There is no question here. Never, never arrived on the leeway. Never got here is encountered. Didn't charge your bank account. Yeah, I think he was decent. I think he's the only decent president since then. Yes, he wasn't great though, and he certainly did a lot of damage. So, if you weigh the scale, ultimately he probably did a lot more damage than anything good. Anything good because he brought in religion straight into the American political system. And for that, you know, I didn't vote for him and for that I think he will go down ultimately in history as a really, really negative influence on American politics. Michael, if someone leaves their dog in a hot car, is it moral to break the window? Or is it a rights violation? Yeah, I don't know. I think it's a rights violation. Their dog is their property, their car is their property, it's none of your business. I understand why people would do it. And you think the owner would thank them. But not necessarily, so be prepared. Michael, are UFOs just another conspiracy theory distracting from our ever more anti-conceptual population? Yes, I mean clearly yes. Somebody put up a thing on Twitter saying, why are all pictures of UFOs blurry? Is this something where the UFOs want to, they're always blurry. There's never a clear picture. But yeah, I think it's a conspiracy theory. It's people's fantasies, people imagining things. It's a lot of different things. Not to say that they couldn't be UFOs, that they can be aliens. I'm not against aliens, or the existence of aliens certainly. But it is kind of weird that the kind of weird people that come out and testify, and the government has these secret labs. If they have the labs, open them up, show them why, you know, at least the president or the select group of whatever, aren't, isn't their armed forces, they're not the primary, they're supposed to do what Congress says. So why can't like the intelligence committee go in and observe these things? Why is it always, you know, so secret that even the people who have complete security clearance don't ever see it? So no, I don't think, I don't think, if there are UFOs, we haven't seen them yet. Or if we have, we certainly don't have any secret UFO materials in our vaults. I don't think that's kind of a, and you can see that the kind of people who always do this are kind of weird. Michael says, if the government should own no property in a full free market society, would the military not own its tanks and planes? It would own its tanks and planes. But that, you know, so it owns no property in a sense of any productive facilities, it wouldn't own any land, it would lease the land and buildings. But yeah, the materials which it used, the paper clips, it would own, it would buy them and own them. So, you know, you have to think of property in a broader sense here. Then, and there's a sense in which even then, yeah, let's just leave it at that. Can you do a show titled Why We Haven't Collapsed Yet? Sure, but you know, $1,000 for show sponsorship. Now it's you, Michael, you've put in so much money into the show, so I'm writing it down. But by the way, I'm happy to do shows. You dictate the content. And it's $1,000 a show. I've got a show coming up on the dollar, Alexis has sponsored. And it would be great if we had two or three shows a month that were sponsored. That would get us much closer to where we need to be from a fundraising perspective. All right, what is the name of the painting in the background? Who's the artist? That painting. That painting is the astronomer. And the artist is Vermeer. So it's the astronomer by Vermeer. I think it's at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in, oh, God. It's either at the Metropolitan Museum or at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. It's in the United States. You can't see it. It's extraordinary. You can't really appreciate it from the photo, particularly given the depth of field they have. And it's a little blurry. But it is amazing. Put tariff on your website. I would direct on it. Yeah. So, Luis Noel, if you want to sponsor a show, just go to PayPal, do $1,000 and put a comment there with the topic. Or send me an email saying, I just contributed $1,000. Here's the topic I want you to cover for $1,000. Is astronomer in the Louvre? You know, maybe the astronomer is in the Louvre. I could be mistaken. Astronomer. Astronomer. All on canvas. Oh, you're right. You're right. Wow. Remo is right. It's at the Louvre. So, it's at the Louvre in Paris. Another reason to go to the Louvre. It's a gorgeous painting. It's one of my favorite Vermeers. The only one that I like more than that, or one of the ones I like more than that is the Geographer. The Geographer is literally my favorite Vermeer painting. One of my favorite paintings all ever. I think it's beautiful. But Remo, wow. Good for you. So, yes, the Louvre. Go see it at the Louvre. It is magnificent. You can buy the poster at the Louvre. All right. Thanks everybody. Thank you to all the superchatters. I have to run here. If anybody wants to quickly put in a sticker before we leave, that'd be great. But no more questions. I will see you all tomorrow. Probably at the same time. I think it's at 1 p.m. east coast time. And let's see for tomorrow. Tomorrow's Wednesday. Tomorrow's Wednesday. Yes, 1 p.m. I think we should be good. So, tomorrow 1 p.m. Same time. Same place. And no show tonight. But two shows tomorrow. Two shows on Thursday. So, instead of tonight, we'll do a show tomorrow. All right, everybody. If you want to sponsor a show, it's $1,000. If you want to support this show on a monthly basis, which is by far the best way to support the show, then do so on uranbrookshow.com. And on Patreon, particularly, you know, if you can do $100 a month or 250 or 500 a month, that would be amazing and really, really help to plan out kind of a cash flow for the future of the Uranbrook Show. Talk to you soon, guys.