Welcome to Any Stashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking, Mike? We are smoking the Five Vegas Classic or the Vegas Five Classic. I can't remember which one comes first. I Googled it while I was waiting for you to hop on and it's Five Vegas. Five Vegas Classic. Perfect. At least according to Google, if that's incorrect, do not blame us. But this is our start of season two. Yes it is. And we're pretty excited to be back. Let's get this lit and then we can...
Do you want to have any comments on the cigar before we get going and then we'll kind of do the catch up. Yeah, when I cut it, my cap kind of got damaged a little bit. Mine too. I'm kind of disappointed. Mine too. Yours too. I wasn't going to mention anything because I thought maybe I did something wrong. But no, I wasn't super thrilled with that. Yeah. And it's, as everybody knows, we don't humidify these in the same humidor and we don't use the same style cutter. So there we go. Very true.
Okay. So I should mention this is the inaugural podcast of my new recording studio. Yes it is. Which is really just the garage, but I installed a bathroom fan which is doing a nice job of sucking all the cigar smoke straight up over my head. So that is delightful. Are you pairing your cigar with anything today? You're damn straight I am. I am pairing it with a Lagunitas Brewing Company Maximus Colossal IPA.
It is 9% ABV and it's little thing says Robusticus Flavicus, which I think is Roman for mighty fine tasting. Interesting. How about you? I am pairing mine with a Nord East. An excellent choice. But right off the bat, the flavor is not bad. Yeah, I agree. Other than the cap getting damaged, so far it's been a pleasant experience. I have to concur with that. So I feel like we haven't spoken in like two years, but in reality it's only been a couple months I think.
Well we've spoken since then, but we haven't had a podcast for a couple months for sure. Yeah, I feel like we go a little deeper on our podcasts than we do through random text messages and memes and things of that nature. Of course we do. But I guess like the biggest thing or not the biggest thing, I mean so much has happened since we last spoke on the podcast. I know we were, I think we were waiting for Brittany Greiner to be released and now she's been released.
Yes. Or is in the process of being released. Funny how the news doesn't care once somebody says the thing is going to happen. They don't actually follow through and give you updates, but I'm sure somebody somewhere knows. I was going to look up some stats. I was going to look up some stats. Because I saw something where they were like, oh, for all of you people saying she's just a WNBA star, she represented our country in the Olympics and won medals and it's still sports. You know what I mean?
Right. I'm not trying to poo poo you if you've won medals and you like sports and that's what you play, but is sports a big enough thing? We talked about this and I don't want to rehash it too much, but is that worth turning loose an arms dealer? I don't know. It is if that sports star is a puppet of the global elites. Those people don't face consequences. That is true. So that happened. And let's see. I don't know. Do you want to talk about the spy balloons first? Oh, yeah.
The Chinese, the quote unquote Chinese spy balloons. Don't forget the UFOs. I know. I know. And pretty soon we're going to have to call them the COVID balloons because we can't call them the Wuhan balloons. So we're at the point of this story where we pretty much have the solution to both, the US government claimed that there were unknown flying objects and then some of them were Chinese spy balloons and some of them were UFOs.
It turns out that most likely the Chinese spy balloons were private weather station balloons and the unidentifying flying objects were hobbyist balloons, I guess, that there's a couple clubs across the world that send balloons up and track them and do all this sort of like balloon orienteering type of thing. And there's a club in Chicago that is saying that one of at least two of the balloons were probably theirs that they shot down. Okay. And now I don't, so I'm not 100% sure.
I know back when I worked for the Boy Scouts, one of my volunteers flew a helicopter for one of the hospitals and he was telling me about how when he takes off, he has to file an emergency flight plan. But they made it super easy with an app. And I know with drones, you have to keep them below a certain height, a certain altitude. I don't know about balloons. I haven't looked into that if you would have to kind of say, hey, I'm launching a balloon and it should float this way.
Like, I don't know if you have to launch like a float plan or something. I don't know, but I watched a story on it for this episode and this is a long standing organized club and they make these balloons for, I guess, the range of one of the places was 12 to 180 bucks and they have different features on them and people, they track them and they use hand radios and they do spotters. It's kind of like geocaching, but with a floating balloon, I guess.
Or like when you do those little rockets, right? You remember those, you'd put up a parachute down the cardboard tube and send them up. I mean, you know, more slightly different, but I know that all sorts of these clubs exist not just for balloons, but there's all sorts of clubs out there. So right. And there is, and it made a lot of sense to me. And of course, each one of these missions costs like $2 million or something to shoot these potentially $12 balloons down.
So it's well worth the taxpayer money is what you're saying. Oh yes. And I've watched many of the interviews with the congressmen who are all saber rattling. Yeah. And it's just a... When I think what happened was the Russian-Ukraine war was getting boring because the news media has been talking about that almost nonstop.
And then the United States and other countries decided to send these big missile, anti-aircraft missile batteries and things and these big tanks now over there to the tune of like what, $45 billion or something. Something like that. And so I think the general consensus on viewership is maybe let's not talk about that because it's not riling the people up like they used to.
So we had to have Chinese balloons that are of course from China and not Russia because they want to remind us we have more than one enemy out there. Yes. And it's all... I mean, I generally think that whenever the news media and the military industrial complex are on the same side, that it's going to be a false flag of some kind. Yeah. So I was highly critical from the beginning.
But I do enjoy those people that are convinced they're not balloons at all and that they're aliens trying to... I don't know. I mean, again, it's the internet. So you can find anything you want to find, you will find. Just like you can find people that are saying some crazy racist stuff about whatever group. You can find whatever you want. That's true. If you look for it, you're going to find it.
So we have the balloons and that probably isn't as big a story as the current media is making it out to be. I'm sure in a week or two in this episode posts, the balloons will be an afterthought in most of our listeners' minds. The other thing though, I thought that was really interesting, was the airborne toxic event. Oh yeah. Yeah, we should definitely talk about that. I didn't do too much research and I read somewhere that they were actually...
It was in Ohio and they were extras or location shooting for the film White Noise, which is based off of a book by the same title, which is where the term airborne toxic event comes from, which is where the band airborne toxic event came up with their band name. And then this town, allegedly, is the same. I haven't verified the movie connection or not, but regardless, a train derailed. And I didn't do a whole lot of research into this because a lot of newsplaces aren't covering it.
But apparently the authorities thought the best idea to get rid of this potentially hazardous material on this train was to blow it up. So they did that. And then of course, this town is now under a noxious cloud and their water has been all polluted and animals are dying and the people had to evacuate their town. And I don't think they got compensated by the government to have to leave their homes. And I think they're just now starting to come back, be able to come back to their homes.
That's part of the story. Another part of the story was that the reason why they were allowed to destroy it the way they were is because the chemicals weren't classified as the type that have to be contained, even though they should have been potentially, you know what I mean?
And that derailment or the accident was caused by faulty brakes that the industry was criticized in the past for using and the Congress was on the verge of passing a law saying they had to update in the Obama administration. So it's like the typical American infrastructure decline type story. Yeah, let's help Ukraine fight their war. But if we need new brakes on our trains, we can't pass a law that quickly. Right. Well, it's like the, well, I'm sure we'll talk about it, the railroad contract.
You know, well, yeah, I know there's a lot of moving pieces and parts. The rail line industry is so powerful. It's incredible. It's incredible. They have all the benefits of the government backing, but they have none of the costs of having government regulation. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a very interesting fascist situation that we have going on.
Yeah. Actually, it'll tie in and maybe we'll talk about it more in depth in our next episode where we talk about one of the books that we've recently read and or in Mike's case reread so, but we'll leave that as a little teaser. But I did hear there was another derailment of a train carrying similar chemicals in Michigan. I don't think I heard about that. Okay. Crazily enough. Well, I mean, it is Michigan. Right. And I don't know.
I mean, I hadn't seen anything about the Ohio train derailment in any of the media. I guess there's a little blurb in my email digest that I get every morning. They had like a little tiny little blurb about it and I had to do some digging to actually find out more about it and how kind of not great that whole thing is.
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a bunch of explosions from oil and I'm guessing that they're still going on, but it's not very popular to cover stuff like that, especially when so many people are gets pipelines, even though pipelines are the idea behind the pipeline is to get the oil off of the rail. You know what I mean? Yeah. The pipelines are exploding oil. So, well, here's the train derails outside Detroit, Michigan with one car carrying hazardous materials.
And so this one was the Van Buren township train and that's two weeks after the East Palestine, Ohio disaster. So maybe that's why, you know, East Palestine and you know, Palestine is kind of a touchy name to be talking about on TV. Oh, right. I heard a lot of Palestinian jokes. Yeah. But let's see. I don't. Six, six cars were seen off the track in the Michigan one. That's crazy. Yeah. There was a big derailment in Frazee as well. This one. Okay. Frazee, Minnesota. Oh, yeah.
With all Amazon packages right before Christmas, I think, something like that. Okay. Mm hmm. Which I'm sure didn't make national news, but. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, I'm guessing not. It made news where I'm at. Yeah. I mean, if the Ohio crash where they actually released chemicals into the environment didn't really make national news, I'm sure Amazon packages wouldn't. Right. Oh, people were pissed because that was going north.
Yeah. It already was north, but that was a lot of people's Christmas gifts. So people were whining. Yes. As people do. Mm hmm. And maybe ratefully so. I don't know. Who knows? Oh, well, you know, first world problems, but. Yeah. It's also, you know, stuff sucks sometimes. So what else is going on? Well, I believe that Biden forced the railroad workers to accept the railroad contract. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Almost forgot about that.
And I have a friend who's in one of the railroad unions that was being represented. And the the backstory that wasn't told on the national news was that the union workers voted to ask for like a 42 or 38 percent raise, which was based on some certain metric. And then the union itself didn't put that forward, even though the members voted on it. They put forward some other number like 18 percent or something. OK. So immediately off the bat, the union fucked over their workers. Yeah. Right.
And the railroad accepted the number because it was so much lower than what it should have been. Yeah. It was a screaming deal for them. And then they wanted to strike for one. They wanted the real number, the 40 some percent, because they haven't had a raise in like six years. Yeah. And then they wanted sick days. So instead of the Democrat president siding with workers, he sided with the power of the railroad and forced the railroad workers into the exact contract they didn't want to accept.
And I know there was talks of maybe a wildcat strike. People were deathly afraid that the Biden administration was going to turn their guns on them. And that, I mean, Uncle Joe, they know that good old Uncle Joe would gun down railroad workers with the best of them. So that never accumulated. And now, by the way, the railroad is back in negotiations with the new contract because the contract they signed only covered the past. It didn't cover the future.
That's how far behind they were on a contract. Oh, geez. Oh, yeah. So they get so then do they the workers all get back pay then? They so that's another thing that wasn't covered in the news. And I only know because, like I say, I have a very good friend that is directly affected. Yeah. Instead of experience with unions. So you would know more more so than I would. Oh, yeah. Well, I've been in unions my entire adult life, basically.
But so the railroad, instead of writing the check out as a bonus to make it tax exempt, just wrote it as a regular income check. So the railroad workers only got like 60 percent or 50. What the hell was it? Fifty eight percent of the money. They must have done it. Forty two percent of it went to taxes straight to the government. Well, they must have done it the other way, then, because at least in my line of work, bonuses are taxed at a much higher rate.
So maybe there's a clause for the railroad where if they have a year end bonus, it's taxed at a lesser rate because of their Social Security deductions and all. They have a special tax rate code for the railroad guys. Oh, OK. Oh, yeah. They have a sweetheart deal. That's why the railroad doesn't pay into Social Security and they have their own fund and all that jazz. I did hear, though, that Social Security isn't going to be able to pay out full amounts starting what June of this year?
You know, something like that. They're going to come up with a solution that screws people over. They won't do. Oh, yeah. I mean, you and I know that. Yeah. They're not going to just raise the cap and tax people that make more than one hundred and forty thousand or one hundred fifty thousand or whatever the cap is at right now. OK. Three or something like that, maybe one hundred thirteen. I can't remember. It was it was in the low one hundred's, though.
Yeah. That was always the goal back in the day was to break out of Social Security. Yeah. But yeah, they won't raise the cap to pay for Social Security or, God forbid, tax corporations. Yeah. You know, corporate humans. Yes. They won't be taxing corporate people for that one. But they're going to fuck people over. We both know that. Yeah. It's interesting. But yeah, who knows?
I'm not I don't know what your retirement portfolio looks like, but when I built mine or as I've been building mine, I am assuming that there will be no Social Security or any form of government assistance for my retirement. Yeah. So that's what I've been going on, even though my 401k. Is seriously fucking me right now. Yeah, same. Yeah. I lost so much fucking money over the last three years. It's insane. So I guess that's a first word problems, quote unquote. But man, I was so much.
Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don't know. Like they tell you that the American dream is, you know, you work till you're 50 and then retire. But everybody knows 65 is the retirement age. But everybody knows that's not the real actual retirement age of when you will be able to retire. So right. Mine is officially 66. Yeah. To collect my pension. Yeah. But it would be if I was, let's say, 21, I would assume it's going to be 68 or even 70. Yeah. So. It's a kind of a strange thing.
As far as no government response to people's needs whatsoever, it's kind of like the student loan thing. Yeah. I don't know if that all accumulated before we left either, but that was a total fucking scam. None of that came to fruition. No, they saw. I think they still have the open court case, though. But well, it's my understanding that the way the Biden administration chose to do it was a way that was commonly understood to not be able to hold up to legal scrutiny.
OK. And that doesn't surprise me because even on private loans, the government makes a bunch of money. Oh, it shouldn't surprise anybody that Joe Biden wants to screw people and does not want to help them. This should surprise no one. So the Hunter Hunter Biden laptop thing came out, too. OK. Tell me about that, because I see Hunter Biden laptop and I just I don't get it disinterested immediately. OK. So there's two parts.
The first part was that Hunter Biden, during his drug fueled days, left a laptop at a repair place and abandon it, and then this guy after the terms of the contract expired, took possession of it and leaked the information on it, which was totally legal by the contract that they had. Yeah. And this information, of course, has a variety of implications. Some of it's just Hunter Biden being an asswipe. Some of it's exposing Hunter Biden's corruption and possibly Joe Biden's corruption.
Blah, blah, blah. But the bigger part was that the CIA and the FBI partially colluded with the news and Twitter and Facebook to ban the story from the presses right before the last election. OK. Yeah. And that's kind of the bigger story that the federal government or the deep state was colluding with the corporations to limit people's access to information that was incriminating towards Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, which at the time was called a conspiracy theory. And now we know it's true.
Well, and how many of those conspiracy theories that have been called by the news media conspiracy theories have turned out a year or two later to be actually true? I mean, look at Edward Snowden. In recent times, many things that have been called conspiracy theories by the mainstream media and corporations are in fact true. They just need to throw enough shade on it to where by the time the truth comes out, whatever they're trying to manipulate is already done.
Yeah, like the general population fervor for it has subsided. So even if it comes out, they don't remember. Just like Panama papers and things. And that was like a huge bombshell, everybody thought. Then two months after that, nobody even heard it because the news media was pumping something else, like something else happened. Right. And then two weeks after that, something else happened. So it's kind of very, very cyclical. And those things are not coincidences.
Our media does stuff like that very much on purpose. Yeah, because they're not journalists anymore. You know, their propaganda wings. Well, I don't know if I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I'm not sure journalists ever really were journalists. I think there's a good possibility. They were always doing propaganda for the state. Well, possibly. We know in Great Britain, they've been like that for a very long time. Yeah. I mean, you could make that argument.
You know, because like, why would somebody break Watergate or why would somebody break the Catholic Church? Child abuse. Those things were covered up by a lot of people, too. So well, yeah, I just mean like, you know, there's got to be some journalists out there. But not in recent times, I don't think. They're limited. And when they do come out, the state attacks them. Yeah. Did you see the GOP stuff that came out?
Like the recordings of their sessions and all the big like Fox News people were all like anti Trump. But then they went on air and were saying how much they loved them and stuff. No, there's something like that. And I didn't read the whole thing because I don't watch a whole lot of that kind of news. Well, you can't see my air quotes, but I don't watch a whole lot of that kind of news.
Right. So but yeah, so I guess it just kind of goes to show that even the only place conservatives have and I say conservatives because this is the story that came out, but I really mean both parties. The Republicans and Democrats, they present a united front to the general population when it suits them.
You know, and you and I have known that, you know, that both parties work together to keep third parties out of the out of the runnings and and to only allow certain things to go through or they try and start a fight amongst themselves just to distract us from the bigger issue. So, I mean, it didn't it didn't come as a surprise to me that these news anchors might not actually like the shit they're peddling. Well, that's manufacturing consent. Right.
I mean, you don't become an elite power broker in that space unless you're down with the program. Yeah. You're going to self censor. They don't have to tell you. Yeah. They they pay for your discretion. Mm hmm. You're attacked. I don't know. I don't know what they call it nowadays, but one of those two. Right. Have you looked anything at the Twitter files? Oh, God, no. That whole thing. But let's talk about it. I think I'm about halfway with the cigar. I am a little less than halfway.
Yeah, I'm a little less. But I mean, like, but before we get in launch into like this Twitter thing, I just figured let's do an update because we'll probably forget. Yeah, I would. Because it's a good cigar. It's yeah, it's it's you know, we saw when we got these, you were poo pooing them thinking that we're going to be not all that great. And this is exactly what I thought it was going to be. It's not great, but it's cheap, relatively cheap, and it's good. It's fine. It's good.
Yeah. It's not overly complex, though. I did about a quarter of the way through. It kind of like the flavor changed slightly, I think, and became slightly more complex. But not overly so. It's not overly complex. It's pretty simple. No, it is very pleasant. Yeah, I just it's mine started out. I felt like it was very, very simple at the start and for maybe the first 10, 10 or more minutes and then it kind of shifted up a little bit, which was good. The end of mine is unraveling a little.
Yeah, I've been I've been trying to be very aware of how I I don't want to say how I put my lips on the shaft, but how I put my lips on the shaft. Right. I mean, that is definitely I would say I mean, I cross cut mine and you I'm guessing flat snapped yours. Yeah. And they're both unraveling. And like I say, I almost immediately damaged the cap and I did wet it before I cut it. So yeah, me too. So not the best cap in the whole world, but it's also a very reasonable price stick. You know?
Yeah, I'm not I'm not overly worried about it. You know, we've had other other cigars that have kind of unraveled a bit. But right, I guess halfway through the flavor is a lot better than at the start. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, which is good. That's as it should be. That's what you want. You don't want it to get worse. Not not to not to call out any of our least favorites from season one. Oh, man. So very fascinating. But all right. So have you learned anything about these Twitter files?
No, I know that there's a lot of people that are upset about, you know, of course, Elon and whatever his giant man toddler meltdown is for running, you know, heavy air quotes again running the company. Subtext into the ground. Right. I mean, I've seen some some things about like disgruntled employees and, you know, I couldn't imagine ever working for Elon Musk, so I'll just say that up front. But I haven't heard of anything called the Twitter files. So well, so.
I also would not work for Elon Musk, but. That's aside the point. I don't care for Elon Musk. I think that he's a scammer. I was very upset about several of the things that he's done and lied about, like solar roofing and Tesla semi truck is a total joke. Yeah. And I know Elon fan either. We've spoken we've spoken about that before. So yeah, no, I mean, his lies are in them, but not borderline criminal when it comes to his, especially his Tesla side of things. It's a borderline criminal.
So anyway, the Twitter files were released and more or less confirmed that Twitter internally was doing all the things that conservatives were accusing them of, which everybody knew. I don't know why people are so think that it's such a bombshell because it was clear to everybody that they were banning and shadow banning conservatives. They it's clear they were colluding with the federal government to control information on certain topics.
And the Twitter files just confirmed that the executives and people working there were actively colluding with the federal government to suppress certain points of view. They were also acting independently to suppress certain points of view, which were largely conservative and conspiratorial. But most of the things that were conspiratorial were also the truth. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So it's not a bombshell to me.
It was very clear that it was very clear that it was going on and Twitter was denying it. It was like, of course they're going to deny it, but it's true. So I don't know. Yeah. Which I don't know how many hardcore libs would accept that, even though the company internally was saying that's what they were doing. Yeah. So it's very interesting. One I know, Elon's big thing was I want to make it free speech again or whatever, which is eerily reminiscent of making America great again.
But I don't think that he's done that. The funniest thing he did, which I really enjoyed, was when he was selling the verification check marks for like $8 at all. People were buying them up and tweeting his verified accounts. That was hilarious. But otherwise, I think it's been an absolute shit show. And I don't think personally that Twitter operates that much differently than Metta or any other social media for that matter. No. Like I say, we've talked about it before.
I don't see a clear difference between the corporations and the government. It's very evident that social media companies do things that are outside of the legal limits of the Constitution at the best of the government. And it's just a way to get around the rules and laws that are supposed to protect us from the powerful. So it's not very clear to me that it's not just totalitarian. You know what I mean? I don't have a very positive view of it. Let's put it that way. No. I think if you...
Man, if you were... This reminds me too, and I think we talked about this last season. Maybe we didn't. You and I just talked about it once, but it kind of reminds me of the Republicans, conservatives that were upset about Obamacare. And they were like, I don't want any Obamacare. And then somebody was talking about... And they were all like, yeah, let's reverse the Affordable Care Act. Let's reverse that. Let's reverse that. And they were like, wait, wait, hold on.
I'm on the Affordable Care Act. And then somebody was like, well, that's what you're calling Obamacare. You don't understand. So they didn't know that they were championing trying to get rid of the thing that they were even on. So I think by and large, and this isn't... We have our own... You and I have our own political views and we differ in some things and we largely agree, I would say, but this is for just the general populace.
And I would say if you're listening to our show, you're not part of the general populace because I don't think the general populace would understand what the term general populace meant. But they're not very bright and they don't know what everything's called. But part of that's by design. The government is trying to keep people just stupid enough that they don't know. So that's why you have multiple names for everything. What is it? Is it COVID? Is it the Wuhan virus? Is it whatever?
And it's like... Is it coronavirus? Is it... I mean, how many names just for that one thing? And then you've got all the bills that they pass and they're like... They're always these super long acronyms like, yeah, we're passing the Death Star Act and D stands for this and E stands for that and A stands... And they go through the whole thing and it's like, well, nobody knows what that is.
Plus they tack in like what they call the Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act was tacked into some housing regulation. It had nothing to do with healthcare. You know what I mean? So... Right. That's all just to say that these people that might not agree with what Twitter is doing or that they do agree with what Twitter is doing just because it happens to fall on their side of the political aisle, you know?
And you and I can sit here and say, well, this sounds very totalitarianism, which is exactly what we're trying to fight but not fight with the Ukraine-Russia thing. You know? I mean, but we're kind of the same. The Ukraine-Russia thing is interesting and I'm glad you brought it up because it's become very clear that the people who are running Ukraine are Nazi sympathizers, right? At least large sections of the government are Nazi sympathizers.
And it is absolutely unacceptable to criticize the war in Ukraine. You know what I mean? It's bizarre and the liberals are obsessed with it. And I don't understand... I mean, I do understand that it's all nonsense, but I don't understand how the average everyday person doesn't see through this charade. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, and here's another interesting thing is we fought... I always thought it was a 20-year war after 9-11.
I think on the 12th, I think a majority of America was ready to go over there and kick some ass. But the long sustaining thing was it was mostly the conservatives and that was their big thing. It's like, we're going to go and we're going to get Bin Laden and we're going to get all these people. And now kind of the Ukraine thing is... I don't know. I feel like it's more the liberals want to... You know, it's like a people outreach, but it's still a war. So it's...
It was the Republicans' turn last time to warmonger and now it's the Democrats' turn. And after this, then it'll be the Republicans' turn again to go warmonger somebody else like China or something. Right. Oh, they're already ramping that story line up. Oh, yeah, they're getting it prepped. They have been. They leaked a document on purpose that some Air Force general was talking about how he predicted war in 2025 with China. And it's like, they're just trying to ramp it up.
I don't know if a proxy war with China would even be real. You know what I mean? There's a possibility that it would be like a 1984 style war that we're sending resources to that's not actually happening anywhere. You know what I mean? Because the government is just advanced enough to where they can do that now, I guess. You know what I mean? It's just supposed to be a drain on the resources, that's all.
Make people in debt, make the government in debt so that they can force austerity on America so the corporations can profit here even more. Yep. And I had an old coworker and I'm trying to remember now, it's like it's tough because we did what? We did what? 30 some episodes last season? Sure. And we're probably on pace to do more than that this year. But I had an old coworker and he was convinced that the government started wars as a population control. And he served, he served in Iraq.
And that was his heartfelt belief. And if you asked him about it, he would literally talk himself blue about how he knew that this was how they managed our population. That's interesting. And I haven't done the studies or looked into it, but it's weird that you get these people. Oh, and going back to the journalists, a lot of people say, well, World War II was the last just war and righteous war and stuff.
And it's like, well, not if you talk to the World War II vets that wanted to talk about it, like Kurt Vonnegut and a lot of those people where they're like, this is the worst experience of my life. So maybe maybe journalists never were fighting for the little guy. And maybe war has never been glorious, you know? Oh, the it's a well known fact now that journalism was heavily censored during both World Wars and personal letters were heavily censored.
Yeah, during World War II and World War I. Well, that was a whole plot point of Catch-22. Yeah, I haven't read Catch-22. Oh, OK. I was just talking about this the other day at work, because why wouldn't I talk about a politically charged novel in a workplace environment? But one of the big things in there, and this isn't spoiling any of the story, but maybe we should do a Catch-22 review later on this season.
But one of the pot points is the main character gets put in charge of censoring the letters home to spouses and things. Well, the joke of it is that he gets bored doing that. So he just starts randomly censoring things or he censors everything but words like the and and or he'll censor everything but the classified information and send it out. So that's hilarious. Yeah, it's insane. And it well, the war in Ukraine is heavily censored. Yeah. Russian news is censored.
It's incredible, incredible the lengths that our government goes. Well, speaking about Russian news and this ties back to earlier in our episode. But I saw somebody posted about the train derailment in Ohio and the kind of the hellscape that that town now is. And complete with like pictures of this like dark looming cloud that was like hovering over the city and everything. And the comment was, I didn't hear anything about this in American news.
And I stumbled across these images and story from the Russian news. Oh, yeah. So I mean, I can understand why Russia would want to say like, look how fucked up America is. Right. On one hand, right. But you wouldn't think I mean, because that's kind of the thing, right? Like if you break it first, you're somehow more believable than somebody who didn't break it. So why wouldn't the American media be like, hey, by the way, this happened, but you know.
Now that every Russian news story I've seen over the last year is propaganda, but it's propaganda that is only telling the truth. And they the best kind of propaganda is when you can tell the truth about your opponent because your opponent is trying to hide the truth. Yeah. And the United States government and our corporations and our society is definitely trying to hide the truth of what's going on about anything that makes our society look bad.
Yeah. They would rather have us focus on gender politics and all this nonsense. And Super Bowl halftime shows. I don't know anything about the Super Bowl halftime show, I'll be honest. You don't have to. I didn't even hear anything about it. No, I mean, nothing happened. Like it wasn't like the Justin Timberlake like nipple thing. Oh, sure. Nothing happened, but they want you to be jacked up about that shit. They don't want you to care about what's going on.
And I know I sent you this link over text and I don't think we actually talked about it, but they want and there's proof, there's written proof that the politicians want a dumb population because remember the article I sent you about the origins of student loan debt and I did Reagan. You didn't read it. I did read it.
Yes. Yeah. And I remember the answer when he was a governor of California or something and he said that they want to because most of the colleges were free or very, very affordable at that time and they wanted to raise the tuition price because they didn't want everybody to be educated. Right. And so one of them to be educated and I am convinced that the government and the corporations want the educated people to be in a modern slave position. Yeah. And indentured servitude.
They want everybody to be beholden to debt. And absolutely. And so this goes a little bit further and maybe this is my personal conspiracy theory, but not only did they make colleges expensive, but in my grandpa's day, the only thing employers wanted was a high school diploma and so he enlisted in World War II and he was I think 16.
So he came back and got his GED afterwards so that he could be employed and he went on to be like a consultant and testifying in courts of law all over the place and was very well respected in his field with only a high school diploma, a GED. And now all the corporations want you to have a four-year degree because everybody wants you to be in debt, but the four-year degree is no better than a high school education in most cases. In most cases.
I know there's certain industries and professions where yes, it helps, but I felt like my college was high school kind of 2.0. Like yeah, I could drink, but they weren't really teaching me anything. No. It is basically high school 2.0. Unless you go into something specific. Well, that's what I mean. Yeah. Trade school is more viable as an education perspective or from an education perspective. Yeah. Because at least they're teaching you specifics to a profession. So very interesting.
I think that- It all kind of ties together, but go on. Yeah. Oh, I said I came to this conclusion not recently, but I've slowly come to it that I think that the push to get everybody into college and get everybody into debt is a version of population control as well because I'm sure you've noticed many people our age do not have children. They haven't been able to afford to have children and they probably never will have children now. Yeah. And look at the housing market.
They want to keep that out of our generation's hands. Oh, yes. Because that's the other thing. I mean, population is one side of the same coin or whatever, but- Oh, yes. Having student debt and a house loan makes it extremely difficult to have a family. Yeah. Even more so. And what's funny is like the house loan is easier than rent. Oh, yeah.
Absolutely speaking, because the house loan is the house loan and sure they can slap more taxes on you or hey, they cleaned up their front yard, but let's assess it higher. But when we were renting, every year our rent would go up and up and up, but we wouldn't get anything else out of it. Like we didn't have more equity out of it then or we didn't have... You still get charged a cleaning fee when you move out. All right. Now I know exactly what you mean.
My house loan now is the same approximately as what I was paying for a one bedroom apartment in Minneapolis. Yeah. And ours is the same. We were paying for a two bedroom in Minneapolis, but that was five years ago. Right. Oh, mine was five years ago as well. Yeah, yeah. We got our house two, three years ago and right before the pandemic and everything and all the prices went through the roof and all the rent stuff happens and I can't even imagine like... And that's another thing.
Nobody really followed up on that because I remember Biden was trying to push out the end date on the rent because wasn't he giving people like free rent or they... Not free rent, but they couldn't be evicted for not paying rent. But then there's got to be a huge swath of people that didn't pay rent, but now I don't know. Can they be evicted now or can they not be? They can be evicted and that was never covered by the news. How many people were evicted?
How many people were always paying their rent? The story was all about, oh, these people don't have to pay their rent, but I never heard how many people weren't actually paying their rent. Yeah, nobody ever went into that. No, well, they didn't want to talk about it. Student loans are going to come back online here too shortly. Yeah. So, that'll be interesting. Yeah, I think... I don't know, man. I feel like... I don't know. I mean, it could be all calculated.
I don't know, but I feel like all of this manipulation, right? If you don't have to pay rent, you don't have to pay loans. You do have to pay loans. You don't have to pay loans. Take on more loans. Don't take on loans, pay off loans. All of that stuff is... I don't know if it's all calculated to bring everybody to ruin or if they're really just trying to keep the majority of people constantly on the edge. How close can we get them to actually living in the gutters? I think that's it.
It's about population control. They don't want people to think about their slavery. You know what I mean? They don't want it uprising. They don't want people rioting. Now here's the other thing that I heard and I don't think we've talked about this yet on the podcast. I don't know. There's more cigar that I can smoke is starting to unravel because of the cap. My cigar is about two-thirds of the way through. It's unraveling at the end I'm smoking. Yes, mine as well.
It's unraveling basically totally. The flavor has pretty much... I'm just pumping on hot air right now. It's not good. Let's talk about this last thing real quick and then we'll wrap up. Absolutely. It's AI, the AI art. I know they released chat GPT or whatever it's called and people are having fun with that. The art one was driving people crazy because they were using artists' art to generate this AI art without the original artist's permission.
But I read something interesting that somebody was saying that now the government, the private corporation slash government are now trying to take all of our hobbies away from us and say, look, look, you don't need to go and paint. You don't need to write a book. We can have AI do that for you so you can work harder. You can focus solely on work. You don't have to do these other pursuits. These other things will be made for you.
It makes sense in the terms of the general output from Hollywood and other media. Not all of it. There's some really good media being put out but not by the big studios. I don't know. It's possible. It's possible. I don't know. It was interesting. I don't think that there's some master conspiracy. I think that there's coincidences that people in charge take advantage of when they can. They can. They know before we know and so they can spin it however they want to and spin it to their advantage.
Oh, of course. You know? So what? Maybe all the infighting at Disney and Disney pumping out just crap is getting the next generation of media watchers used to crap so that they can just easily offload that to AI and have AI write the next Star Wars movie and nobody will be the wiser and then they don't have to pay anybody. Oh, sure. Everybody can go work at the theme park and pick up trash.
I am partial to the idea that the Disney stuff especially is the company itself is doing it to save on PR costs or on advertisement costs. They don't need to advertise because people will freely talk about how crap it is and then other people go and watch it because they hear about how crap it is. They don't care if people like it or they care if people watch it. And as long as they're making a billion dollars on the movie, they don't care if you like it or hate it. It's irrelevant to them.
Yeah, it's completely irrelevant. It just needs eyeballs, whether good or bad. It doesn't matter. And the focus of many companies now is short term gains. They don't care about what happens in 10 years. That's not their problem. That's they just kick the ball down the road. You know, they don't care at all what happens 10 years from now. They don't care if the company even exists because all they're doing is making money now. So it's a it's a dangerous strategy, but it's working.
It's not like Disney's losing money. Warner Brothers isn't losing money. It's not not working. Yeah, they're they're making tons of money. Look at Velma that came out. Oh, God. People are talking so much trash about it. And I guarantee you that people are watching it because there's so much trash being talked about it to see if it's that bad. Yeah. You know, hate watching is becoming the new watching for stuff. Well, it's no need to make something good if you can make something that people hate.
Yeah. And you know, that's kind of our whole culture now is like hate culture. You hate the opposing political side, even though there should be more than two sides. Right. But you hate the other person. You hate the other football team. You hate you know, you hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. So right. Yeah. You hate the other side, the quote unquote other political side, even though both sides are working together to hate each other. You know what I mean?
It's like, yeah, it's all bullshit when it comes to a vote to pass a huge bill that puts the government even more into debt so that the military can expand. It gets 100 votes in the Senate. Yeah. It's not like they're voting differently when it matters. No, not at all. So they just you know, Marjorie Taylor Green is the the psycho pretty lady from the Republicans and AOC is the psycho pretty lady from the Democrats. And they can banter about nonsense that has no it doesn't affect anybody.
So people just they want to focus on it. But what affects me is this cigar. And I just put it out because it was unwrapping and falling apart in my hands. Mine's unwrapping. I can still smoke mine. Yeah. But it doesn't taste like anything anymore. No, no. It has no flavor whatsoever. So I think that's probably it for this episode. I don't know. I don't know. Would you recommend this one, Mike? No. Yeah, probably not recommended for the price you can get. It was like for a good chunk.
But the cap issue and the unraveling just not I don't think it's worth it. Well, you can get like a factory second from Alec Bradley. That's going to be way better for the same price. You know, sure. There's so many cigars in that price range. Yeah, let's say five dollars a stick. There's so many better cigars that you can get reliably. Yeah. So it's not bad. No, it's terrible. It's not terrible. It's just not decent. The cap issue.
I think if the cap wouldn't have been an issue for both of us and maybe it was a bad batch or bad box. Because I think I think we got them from the same. Yes. Oh, yeah. Order. So yeah, hopefully it was just just that. But if it's kind of a rampant thing, then definitely not worth it. Right. So. All right. Well, we're going to be back next next episode with another five Vegas cigars. So join us then. Stay positive, people.