Hey, I hope everybody had a good day. This is a, I gotta tell you, I was just talking to some chiefs right here in the front row in the second section here. I talked about what an unenviable position it is to follow Lieutenant General Jim Slife and try to pass on some brilliance after that and then get followed up by my peers in the chief master in the Air Force. That's a pretty unenviable place to be. So I'll do my best. What should I come up with? Hey, what's my video? Do you guys like the video? I heard they played the video in front of Chief McGee's briefing. No? Did we, did we got cut short? All right, so friend me on Facebook, look at my page 23rd November or so. I think it's when we put that on there, you can check it out. It's pretty good.  Any dog people out here? Got some dogs, got some dogs over here, dog people. How about cat people? Are there cat people here?  Two cat people, everybody else dog people.  And I've come to believe, after all my years of owning dogs, that there are four kinds of dogs out there. The first kind of dog is a lap dog. That's the kind of dogs I have. I have two little Yorkies, you know, less than 10 pounds a piece. I love those dogs, man. But they're lap dogs, and lap dogs, what do lap dogs do? They want attention. They want attention, look at me, they want to be in the spotlight. Pay attention to me, feed me, love me. I want to be on your lap. I want all the attention, I want to get in your spotlight, you know, as Lieutenant General Jim Slife might say. That's lap dogs. The second kind of dog is a road dog.  They don't have anywhere to be. They're not going anywhere. Certainly not concerned with time and the clock. Just walking down the road. Road dog in it. The third kind of dog is a yard dog. Anybody got yard dogs? They're out there in the yard and they're protecting the yard, right? Isn't that what yard dogs do? Don't come in here. Do not come in here. This is my yard. You're not coming in here, and you know what? I'm not going out there. I'm gonna stay right here and I'm protecting this yard. That's what I do. I'm a yard dog. And the fourth kind of dog is a hound dog. Hound dogs, well, they're kind of the opposite of road dogs. They're highly trained. They're using all their senses. Heads up with purpose. I'm seeking out problems. I'm solving things. I'm hound dogging. And that's how I'm happy is if I'm hound dogging. I think there's four kinds of chiefs in the United States Air Force. Do you know any lap dog chiefs? You might. You know some road dogs. We got a retirement on active duty, acronym for road dogs, don't we? They exist. They're out there. Yard dogs sometimes want to think of themselves like hound dogs, but they're just yard dogs in the end. They have yard dog tendencies and I'm just protecting my yard. I'm a chief. I protect my little area here. That's what I do. I'm gonna stay here and that's what I do. That's what chiefs do. No. Hound dogs. Hound dogs is what we need. If you spent 72 hours here in this room getting advice from people like Lieutenant General Jim Slife, all my peers here up front, the chief mess are in the Air Force and you're asking yourself probably right now, what am I gonna do with all this stuff? It's time to hound dog. Get off the X, get active, write down three things and say, hey I wanna get better at these three things. I wanna know more about this. I wanna read this. I wanna advance my skills on this and this chief right here next to me, my spouse, my friend, my mom or dad, they're gonna make sure that I execute this list. That's what hound dogs do. Ted Lasso says be a goldfish. I'm asking you to go be a hound dog. Thanks everybody, been great spent time with you. And now I get to be in the unenviable position of following the command chief of all of ACC, the hound dog, Dave Wade. I'll just share with you something really quick. You know there's probably a hundred different pieces of advice that you've gotten this week. I'll give you this one in case you haven't gotten it yet. Is Lud still here, chief of the chief's group or did Lud, he bounced out?  But Lud gets a lot of phone calls. He gets a lot of people got great ideas and things about where they should go. But one of the phone calls that Lud gets is, hey, we gotta make a change. Kind of something that might not be expected, right? And he gets these calls probably a little bit more often than you might believe, right? So I've just got a couple pieces of advice for ya. The first one is, you just got a great example from an awesome commander here of someone who you could probably right now be like, hey, I wanna work for that guy. You probably go work for General Slife like tomorrow. I've known him for several years. I feel the exact same way. You might right now though be working for somebody that you're like, ooh man, this is a tough one, right? And you might be in a situation where that inspiration isn't there, that connection's not there. Maybe you've just got like a personality conflict or you just don't kind of agree with the way that the organization's going. And that's okay. That's gonna happen from time to time. But it's your responsibility to make the adjustments that you need to make in that situation to make sure that you're supporting not just your commander, but the people in your unit, right? That's your responsibility as their chief. Now it's not your responsibility to help them commit crimes or do immoral things or things like that. That's where the chief part comes in. You stand up and say, uh-uh. You know, you close the door first and you give them that honest feedback. So lots of phone calls that Lud gets on maybe making a chief move. And a lot of times it's just that. It's hey, we've tried to kind of work this out and it's not working. So the phone call goes something like this. Hey, I got a chief, ex-location, no other jobs for them to do. Can't get along with the commander. Can we figure out something to do to move this chief on? The end of the conversation doesn't sound like this. Hey Lud, could you call over to the colonels group and see if maybe we could move that commander to another position, right? You will lose this every single time and twice on Sundays, all right? Folks, we don't move commanders because they can't get along with their chief. All right, so don't forget little things like that. It's gonna be really easy over the next few months. You may be feeling it already to kind of feel like you're bulletproof and you can kind of step out and start doing some things that maybe you couldn't do as a senior. And that's good. I want you to have that and don't lose that, but keep the focus of where you are, who you are and what your responsibilities are to your unit because you could go take your flag and run with it right off the cliff and then who are you helping? Nobody. You're not gonna be there to help those airmen. You're not gonna be there to be that sounding board, that voice of reason for that commander that might be a young, struggling officer themselves that is looking for some guidance too, right? And it's your responsibility to make sure that they can do the best job possible for our folks because at the end of the day, that's what it's about. You don't have anything left to do but run around and help as many people as you possibly can and I hope you're ready to go do that. So thanks a lot. Gee. When we created the grade of chief master sergeant, when Congress was arguing to pass the law that created the grade of chief master sergeant, Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson from the state of Texas stated that the reason we needed a chief master sergeant in the United States Air Force was to create a completely combat, competent and capable leader for the airmen of the greatest air force in the world. What has changed? Has anything changed since then when Senator Lyndon B. Johnson argued that the reason we needed chiefs was to create combat, competent and capable leaders for the greatest air force that has ever existed? I would say that nothing has changed. If anything, we need you now more than ever. We are not gonna fight the war we fought 20 years ago, 20 years from now. Those of us in the front row up here are going to be gone.  You are going to lead our airmen into the future. So I will get off the stage by saying, A, thank you very much for your service. B, congratulations on the opportunities that you are going to have to serve into the future. And congratulations on being the highest enlisted rank possible, that of chief master sergeant in our air force. And lastly and most importantly, please welcome our chief master sergeant of the air force, chief master sergeant, Joanne Bass. Okay, I have a lapel mic if y'all wanna turn that on. Let me know, test, test. Oh, now y'all can hear. All right, good stuff. So, hey, how was today? Good stuff. So, lap dogs. So how many y'all know Dave Wade? Like, like he is actually seriously a lap dog. First time he came to my house, like I have two lap dogs, by the way, JB and Grace. One I bought in Germany, the other one in France. JB's name was Juby New. And so we were like, man, we gotta call him JB. But anyway, they jumped all over Dave Wade. And I thought, you know, Dave, it looks a little intimidating. And he doesn't look like a lap dog person, right? I mean, but he loves them. We've got pictures with them with it. And let me tell you, like Dave Wade, let me tell you something about this entire group, like that we make each other better. And we have some great verbal sparring when we're together that I'm so determined that the next time we do some verbal sparring, JB and Grace are gonna be with you. So that way, like everything will work out. So, hey, we, I don't know, we might get out of here on time, 1730. We'll see, I have some things, pro tips as Dave Wade actually likes to say, that I wanna share with you guys and none of these are in any particular order over the past three days that I've been with you guys. I've been taking a whole lot of notes. And so I have some pro tips that I wanna share with you from all the stuff that we've unpacked. Hey, we've got a lead by example, like there were a lot of notes to be taken. If you spend time looking at your senior leaders, they all have notes. Like we need to, and it's interesting to me cause oftentimes when I'm on the road and have lunch with some of our airmen or NCOs, they roll into there without a notepad. So we got a lead by example chiefs. Like if you don't have a notepad, you need to get one. I get it, we're in the information age, maybe you're taking notes on the phone, go ahead and take notes on the phone, but your airmen will watch you. So we got a whole lot of things. And remember we talked about that learning curve? Like I think for most of us these last three days, it already started. So lead by example, make sure that your folks are taking notes. Thinking force. So you've got to, we talked about that a lot on day one. We gotta be a thinking force, but you're gonna have to give yourself time to think. General Mattis at the time, retired secretary Mattis, said the single biggest problem of senior leadership in the information age is the lack of reflection. So you are gonna have to dig deep and make sure that you put it in your battle rhythm to have times of solitude so that you can actually just think. I think if you talk to most of your senior leaders, they will tell you that they are deliberate about putting thinking time in their battle rhythm. I think every night, and then I think every morning. Well, you know, I suppose we should think more, but that's solitude time. I guard it with everything so that I can think about where we need to go as an organization. The information war. We talked a lot about that on day one as well. How it controls the people. And I'll offer that if we lose that information, we lose period. Y'all really need to think about that. Think about the things that Sergeant Denton spoke to you about World War Web. I'll be honest with you, when it comes to social media and the information age, I was a little bit of a novice when I first got in the seat. When I first got in the seat, and let me tell you a little bit about, we'll talk about social media a little bit. When I first got in the seat, I didn't even know what a troll was. How many of y'all know what a troll was? How many of y'all did not? I'm the only one. So I get in the seat, maybe about seven weeks in, eight weeks in. Sergeant Denton calls me up and oh, by the way, I have a PA who does all my social media, so it's not me online. But I do clap back. So when I drop the bomb, it's normally me. But anyway, so that's normally me. And I'll let Jared know. But anyway, I didn't even know what a troll was.  Trolls? What's a troll? And then he said, you have swarms of them. I'm like, what? Like, do these people work? And they're all intel. And I said, that figure's, that's right, yeah, that's right. So what I will tell you is like, we're in this information age, y'all. Like, but we are gonna have to learn about that controlling information piece. I think they talked about it also on day one where China is investing into media outlets across the globe. Why? To control information. To control the narrative. There are several books out there. I have some of them on my reading list that you all probably need to get familiar with. Like war is one of them. But there are lots of things out there. If we lose an information, we lose. It's a real thing. And I would also, well, let me wait till we get to design. When it comes to strategic competition, we gotta play the long game. That long game, we spoke about a little bit on day one too. And you heard the term whole of nation approach. And you'll hear that more. We also talked about control, what you can control, right? Where the United States military, where the United States Air Force, we can control those, you know, we've gotta control what we can control. But you will start to hear the whole of nation piece a whole lot more. If you wanna know more about that, I'm gonna offer that you need to read the kill chain. It'll start to help you explain and help you understand and communicate this whole of nation approach. Any adversary that we have is not playing the short game and they're not interested in beating the Air Force. Their focus is on how do we make sure that again, we can get to a period of rejuvenation so that we can be our very best. But we have to play that long game as well. And so it's with that, that I'm focused. Did you guys get your book under your marathon? When? Y'all give a hand clap to Air University for making sure that you guys have that. And in that whole of nation approach, you know, we spoke about, I think it was KP who spoke about friends, partner nations, trade partners, and how relationships matter.  Again, that's part of playing the long game. General Brown spends time with his Air Chiefs playing the long game to help build those partners up. We have, in fact, Chiefs-Elect Gary, where were you at? Is Gary here? Gary's right there. So he spends time focused on how can we cultivate our relationships with our partner nations. You know, we can be big critics sometimes in the Air Force and talk about the things that we don't do well in the Air Force. But there's a whole lot of stuff that the United States Air Force does well. And I know it because I spend time with our partner nations. You know, in fact, it was last fall when we brought 45, or 44, partner nations, my equivalents, Chief Master of Surgeons of 44 nations into San Antonio, military city USA, so we can talk about developing leaders. Because if for the smallest Air Force we've ever been, if we've got peer threats, if we've got threats across the globe, we can't do this thing by ourselves. We have to grow other partner nations. We have to grow their enlisted core. Relationships matter. In fact, it's through those relationships that we have with our partner nations that both Ben Haddon and Dave Wolf are cultivating. It's those relationships that will grow those partner nations for a bigger purpose than just sometimes we're focused on. In fact, those relationships, Diamond One was spending time talking with a few of the other partner nations on Byelats, talking to them about the value of a first sergeant. Most of them don't even have a first sergeant construct, and so a few of them were like, we need some first sergeants. Let's help grow their nation. So anyway, action order D, design implementation. While I might spend most of my time in action order A for Airmen, action order D is the one that I get most excited about, and I hope y'all do too, design implementation. We have an opportunity today to really think about that as an Air Force. If we could change the way we're designed to be able to compete against China or Russia, would we do it? If we had an opportunity to really think deep today, in whatever position you're in, would we change the way we're designed at a squadron level, group level, flight level, functional, community level? Would we change the way we're designed? Our processes, our policies, our organization, our structure, General Brown has tasked us to look at those things. Are we willing to do it? I'll tell you, to our career field managers, when I spent time talking to them, I gave them the warning order. I'm like, I need you to focus on the future. I need you to focus on the long game. What's our Air Force look like in 2030 and beyond? And how do we get there? I'd offer to you that we have too many AFCs, and there's some AFCs that we don't even have built yet. Those AFCs that we don't yet have, that we need in the future, are probably in our cyber and our information domain, and possibly even psychological operations. We've got to grow that. We can't keep doing the same stuff that we've been doing, but action order D, are you willing to help get after it? Culture. We talked a whole lot about that today. How many of y'all spent time in AOTC? How many as a tech training instructor? M-T-L. M-T-I. So y'all know what I'm talking about. How many of y'all actually have been to a BMT graduation in the last three years? I don't know if it's like this during COVID, E.T., but before COVID, I mean, they played Lee Greenwood. How many of y'all heard Lee Greenwood at BMT graduation? I don't remember Lee Greenwood when I graduated. Like, I mean, so listen, but if you've been to a BMT graduation in the last three years, like, I mean, they know how to get into that effective domain, right?  Everybody's crying, like people are crying at BMT. Lee Greenwood's playing, like it's a significant emotional event, but to our airmen, it's like the best day of their life. Their commitment level is high. If you've been to graduation, I'm serious, commitment level is high. They are excited to be part of the 1%. For whatever reason they came and served, doesn't matter. Excited to be part of the 1%. Then they go to tech training. For the most part in tech training, that commitment level's still gonna stay high, unless they sit around and don't do anything and don't have a sense of purpose. That's on the exception. For the most part, high commitment level at BMT, high commitment level at tech training, then what happens? They enter your formations. That culture is what either makes or breaks. That culture, and I would offer, it's not even a squadron commander, squadron chief, like that's not it. It's that flight level, first line supervisor, that section. It's that culture that's gonna be the deciding factor of that commitment level. High, excited to be part of the 1%. Or, that says, man, I can't wait to get out here. You all control that. So just think about that commitment level. Real quick, hey, when I'm a chief, I'll never forget one of the first phone calls I got. I was stationed in Germany at the time. Marty Klukas called me up. Anybody know Marty Klukas still? Marty Klukas called me up. We were stationed together in the 24 and he's like freaking, congratulations, boom, boom, boom. And the first thing he said to me, and we hadn't talked in a long time, first thing he said to me, don't ever let your PT be bad. So I would offer to some of you guys, don't ever let your PT be bad. That's part of that leading by example, you've gotta do it, you're a chief. You know, General Brown talked about don't burn a bridge, right?  Our air force is too small. Our joint force is too small. That's where that emotional intelligence comes in.  I think I heard somebody say, you don't have to tell your boss everything. I actually agree with that, but I communicate a whole lot with my boss. What I communicate to my boss, and this still holds true to General Brown, I communicate a whole lot with him to make sure that he's aware of stuff. But what I don't do is take him the problems that I can solve. So I would ask you guys to really think about that. Are you giving your boss stuff that you can do? Like I never do that. In fact, the only stuff I take to General Brown sometimes that I can solve is just as a matter of cause and effect. Most of the time I handle everything because I need him to focus on the things that he needs to focus on. Every once in a while I'll share some things that he needs to know out of embarrassment. Like 80% of your force goes and takes a number two pencil to promotion test. You need to know that, sir, because when I need you to find some money for us, I need you to do that. But otherwise, never take your boss things that you can handle. Airman's time, how many of y'all had heard that concept before? How many of you guys are doing Airman's time right now? I love it. You're empowered to get after it. You're probably gonna see a dual sig memo that comes out within the next few months for me and General Brown that says, hey, leaders, give your Airman time to be able to be the NCOs that they need to be, to be the senior NCOs that they need to be. But don't wait on us. Give your folks time to be able to be the folks that they need to be. IQ can help you go so far in life. You're gonna need EQ for the rest. And so good job on Chief Booth for sharing a whole lot about EQ. I'm almost down to the last bits. Good leaders help people do well at work. Great leaders help people do well in life. Think about that for a minute. Good leaders help people do well at work. Great leaders help people do well in life. We talked about climate. I loved and I appreciated that all throughout today they talked about the difference between climate and culture. And I learned a long time ago, in fact, while I was in one of the joint organizations, that the greatest thing you can bring with you as a leader is a climate where every person can be their very best. I heard one of the senior mentors, I think, talk about climate. You set the stage on what you accept at work.  Bring with you a good climate. A climate where every airman can reach their full potential. And while doing that, one thing I wanna say, people always ask me, especially those who are no longer in our service anymore, always ask me, are we becoming a soft air force? Are we becoming a soft force? And I would offer, we're not. We want a culture and a climate where every airman can be their best. But we also have to hold the line. And I need airmen to under leaders to make sure that we're holding the line and holding the standard. At the end of the day, we have to remember this is an all volunteer force. We're a profession of arms. I don't need leaders to wait for chiefs to come do it. Our first sergeants, we've got to hold the line. We've got to hold each other accountable. And we've got to be able to expect the best. With that, I think we have about 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I'm gonna open it up to questions. If I don't have the answer, I'm sure that some of these folks do questions and answers. So if you have some questions and answers for myself or the senior mentors, I'd love to open it up for about 15 minutes. Morning chief. Morning. Chief Simeon. This week we've got loaded with a lot of information and we see a lot of changes coming, right? And I'm asking, is there a consolidated maybe time chart to kind of give us a head start of what's coming next or even bite-sized pieces of what's coming next so that when it comes down, we can get in front of it and produce the right message that we're trying to cultivate to our airmen. Yeah. You got one hand clap. Hey, I'll share a few things with you guys. What I will tell you is this, your Magcom chiefs are tracking all the things that we're trying to get after. And I think I shared with y'all when I first started talking, we have this things to get after list. And I'll share some of those that we think we're gonna be able to get after in 22. The other thing that I'm gonna say before I share this is I hear it all the time. Every time I go visit an organization to have dinner with the chiefs, the chiefs are always like, how come we always have to find something out on Facebook? Here's what I'm gonna tell y'all. Like, we can push stuff out on, this is the information age people. We can push stuff out on email. We can push it out on APAN. In fact, I do that often. The minute I push it out, I will clock my watch and in 30 minutes it's on airmen and CO page. Like, it's a fact. We tried to notify our chiefs. In fact, it was, I think last fall, General Brown pushed a note to the wing commanders. I pushed a note to all the wing command chiefs and the CFMs. And within two hours, it was on airmen and CO page. And it wasn't General Brown's APAN message. It was my message. So that's the challenge ran. But there is nothing that we're making in a vacuum that you shouldn't probably be that demanding, like chief, I know when I was at a group, I felt like I didn't get a whole lot of information at the group. So guess what I did?  Like, hey, I know you're getting fed information. As a wing command chief, if you're not getting information, you need to be hitting up your NAF chiefs and so on and so forth. But these folks will share a lot of the things that we're getting after. We're gonna push out a blueprint in a few months. I think you guys heard Chief Blaze talking about that. We're getting after some EPME reform. I don't wanna get in AU and ATC's lane, but we actually asked for two do-outs on that. One is, are what we're teaching in PME today is it relevant? And let's do some deep diving to make sure that what we're teaching in PME is relevant today. So we're doing some reform there. But then also, what's PME in the future look like? What does enlisted education look like in 2030? We're doing some homework and we'll do some pilots on that. We'll push out a new brown book. How many of y'all love your brown book? How many of y'all want an updated brown book? How many of y'all want hard copy? I know. So we're gonna make sure that it's hard copy and digital, but we're changing the look of the brown book. It'll still be a brown book, but we're making it more relevant and applicable to today. So we'll roll that out this year. We'll probably get after a blue book as well. I think we've got that in the run. And we're gonna make some DSD changes. Developmental special duty. There's nothing special about 10 things under there. We've gotta do a facelift. So we'll make some changes to that. We'll roll that out. But what the intent is that we show that we value those who are currently recruiting this next generation of airmen, those who are building this generation of airmen, and those who are developing this generation of airmen. And we'll show that through a competitive process where it'll probably be a centralized board. So we'll make some changes on DSD. Trying to get digital ops testing passed across the line. We'll get the narrative piece passed across the line too. You know, I pushed in here, we're trying to get after a complete redesign in the EES. If we could honestly maybe blow it up and just start over, that'd be my preferred choice. Not because I think it's broken. I just don't think it's optimal for what we need in 10 years from now. And if I could start over, we probably would, but we can't. We're gonna have to be smart about the changes that we're gonna make. Or we're gonna make some changes to EES. I don't think the way we currently do evaluations, again, is optimal for 2030. I don't think the way we currently look at WAPS as a promotion standard is necessarily what we want in 2030. So we're gonna have an evolution of how we get there. I spend a lot of time actually talking to the former chief master in the Air Force II because I wanna understand sometimes their thought process on how we got to where we got to on certain things. And when I talk to most of them about WAPS, they're like, yeah, we wanted to make some changes, but it was a big lift, right? And I'm like, well, thanks, because now I gotta make those changes, right? But it's timing and it's system challenges that we have. But we may look at something like that. I do a whole lot of spitballing with this group. We do a whole lot of spitballing, thinking about what is best for the force. We'll see. I'll actually throw some stuff out there because I wanna know your thoughts like, what do y'all think if we pull out of the evaluation anything that's not job related? What do y'all think? How many y'all wanna keep stuff that's outside of job related? It's tough, right? I don't know. I have mixed reviews. We all, we kind of have some different review, mixed reviews on that. But these are things like we're thinking about. Personally, Joe Bass actually just wanna get us down to a one page EPR. I mean, I think we can figure this out. I'm also a little bit simple, you know, when it comes to the evaluation too. I feel like the five rating thing is just a little bit too complicated. Just my opinion. I'm kind of a simple person. Like, give me three things. Like, does not meet, meets, succeeds. So, few y'all like that. We'll see. We'll see. What makes some tweaks in that area? Talent management, I think I told you all, talent marketplace for senior NCOs. We're trying to get that across the line this year. And we're looking at leadership assessments too. I asked Diamond One to look at a leadership assessment for our first sergeants. And I actually want leadership assessments for our chiefs too. I feel like if you are entrusted to lead airmen in certain positions, then there is more than just what your EPR shows and we ought to have an assessment on that. And more importantly, it should be for your own self-development. So we're gonna look at pushing out some assessments. General Brown talked a little bit about that. There's a whole lot of policy changes we're trying to work. Like I mentioned, we have like how many DC was here talking about how many 90 something enlisted assignment recommendations they're pushing for. So we're trying to make some policy changes on that. Trying to get after stuff that's free. I'm actually okay with base swaps, you know? Five level here, five level there, they wanna swap. It's not gonna cost us anything. Who cares? Like figure it out. So we'll look at some things like that. Secondary caregivers, they talked about continuation board. As DC talked about, we'll roll that out too. I think that's about all the big things. Am I missing anything? Big things we're gonna push out. All right, thanks for that question. All right, five minutes. Good evening, ma'am. Senior Donathan, 96 test wing. So hopefully I'm not wasting you all's time with this question, but spending time in PAC AF and USAFI, I was always curious about airmen getting stationed for their first time in these high-op tempo locations. Still yet to figure out if they can conform to military standards. We spend a lot of time, resources, and everything like that. Has any consideration been put into maintaining first term, excuse me, not first term, but first assignments at CONUS locations, getting them qualified, making a five-level requirement for high-op tempo locations, Korea, USAFI, Germany, things like that, when we're looking at the future years and how we wanna reshape the enlisted structure. Thank you for your time. So I know in theory, we've talked about it, right? We're like, hey, Korea's not the play. You heard Todd Simmons say, don't go to Korea until you're mature, right? I don't know that that's the answer. I'm gonna defer to Dave Wolf. Are y'all thinking about it? We're losing out on an opportunity for your NCOs. It's a bill to do that. But I will tell you, we are considering at a couple of different locations in PAC AF. There's some data that suggests that there's some locations where folks, first term that have families already, which is becoming a lot more prevalent than maybe it was when we first came in. I mean, everybody I was in basic training with, there was like one married guy, we called him grandpa, cause he was 23, right? That's not really the case nowadays, right? This is kind of more the norm. So I think that we'll take a look at some of those policies, but I think when you start talking about a wholesale change like that, that's a pretty big muscle movement that would have a lot of second and third order effects that we would have to study pretty hard before we made a decision like that. Cool. All right.  Also say too, from like, if you're a conus like Air Combat Command or AETC, AMC, that puts the burden on training all those three levels to make them five levels so they can come overseas. That's a big burden. We went with that during COVID, we weren't sending any first term, like any Airman trade at a tech school overseas and we were maxing out all our dorms. You know, all of a sudden you have 14 brand new Airman show up your base, all in upgrade training. So that's a big onus to put on the conus units and that would be one thing I would say, even though that would really benefit me and you safety and all my folks out of here from you safety, it sounds like a great idea. But enterprise wide, probably not such a great idea. Yeah, all right. Good afternoon Chief Edmunds from Travis Air Force Base. My question is about the primary and secondary care gear relief. I believe right now the AFI allows the member to decide whether they're primary caregiver. I got a two part question. Is it possible to have like specific situations? We have some cases where the military members act of duty, obviously their spouse is civilian. No issues with the pregnancy or anything like that. But yet they wanna take the primary caregiver, which I can argue both ways, but it doesn't really specify in there. And then the second part is with the 12 weeks, which is around 84 days and 18 weeks, which is 126 days. Has there been any discussion at all on maybe possibly removing the EPR requirement when those members go on that long of a break, I guess from the military? For the first one, I'll be honest. I actually prefer our AFIs to be less prescriptive. I feel like that's a leadership thing and that leaders need to make the right decisions. However, let me take that one back to the team to find out are we having challenges where our leaders aren't being leaders and it's forcing people right, like and we're not making the right decisions. So I'll take that one back to the team. But when it comes to AFIs, again, I'm like leaders need to be leaders and make right decisions. Everything's not gonna be codified in an AFI. On the other piece, I think it, can it be non-rated time? Yes, ma'am, that's correct. Yeah, okay. So I think it's already in there. It's not rated time. We're probably gonna go for the EPR again and DC gave y'all a bit of a tweak to that and if we can get down to one page, like it's gonna be a non-issue. You know, you're gonna, whatever you did during the rated time that you had, you're gonna put it in there. It's not gonna look the way it did in the past. All right. Chief Senior Solis from Hickam. What are your thoughts on fracking if with regards to messaging, as we move forward, some of us selects PCS showing up with the Chief already on the chest? Yeah, I just fracked somebody, I think, last week. So yeah, we just fracked somebody. I think it depends on the situation. So you'll take that through your major command and they'll push it up my way. I think it depends, right? Not every organization needs to have somebody fracked to some of our joint organizations. It matters more than not. Like, I don't have an issue with fracking. So push that up your chain. Senior Erin Candida Air Base. Secondary caregiver leave. I'm currently, the AFI only allows a person to take secondary, or ordinary leave after secondary caregiver leave.  Is there any thoughts of changing that to allow members to take ordinary leave ahead of secondary caregiver leave? I'm gonna have to phone a friend on that one. Do y'all understand the question? I'm trying to make sure y'all understand the question. So you're saying that you can't take your ordinary or you have to take your ordinary leave and your secondary caregiver leave. Because one is chargeable, one is non-chargeable, correct? That's correct. So currently the AFI states, it clearly states, a member cannot take ordinary leave prior to starting their secondary leave. They would have to come back to work, then start their secondary. So for an example, if a member is at a base and their spouse is at another location. Copy. Yeah, so the reason for that is because just like we need any other passes, so you gotta remember that leaves are congressional, right? So it's a certain reason that we take leaves. And the whole point is to not have you out for an extended amount of time, it's accountability issue. But commanders do have certain leverages and authorities to put you in certain statuses to help along with that. So we had that conversation, I believe was with the Army and some others. And what they've said is they look, the authorities exist for your commanders to make some decisions based on what works for you. So in other words, you can very well do that if the intent needs to happen, where someone's on leave and you can change the status and then you can go and start your leave or your secondary care go leave in conjunction with where we have to be careful to meet the intent of the AFI. So commanders have some leveraging authorities there. I can see from your eyes, I don't think that satisfies your need. I'll follow up with you. Let's talk one on one. So I'll make sure I understand the question. All right, team mates, hey, I think we have some folks that we want to recognize that we're responsible for putting this event on. And so where are the folks who help make this event possible? All right, y'all come on down. At the gate will be a sergeant Watson. A sergeant Watson. He has, what's that one everybody else has done? There has not been. Congratulations. Thanks for everything. All right, y'all get on up here. We hooked you up already before. We're good to go, man. I love that. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you very much. Don't drop this now. It's real. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for that. Appreciate you. All right, Evan. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Marcia. Look at you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Very cool. All right. She's like, I'm not dropping it. Chief killed it. All right. Thanks so much. Chief. All right. Y'all give him one more hand clap. We'll get a picture later. Did he just drop this coin? It's gonna be an expensive knife for Linder. Okay. Look, did you just drop your coin? Oh, very good. He said he's coming to Chief Kwiakowskis. All right. I had some beer. I needed to buy him so you can buy it. All right. So real quick, as we get ready to close out what I think is an amazing three days and you guys all go off to spend some time with your major command chiefs and your fellow teammates in your major command. I hope you can reflect back on these last three days and take this back and pour into your airmen, pour into your organizations. One quote I'll leave you with that I always keep in my binder to just keep me grounded. And it reminds me that success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it. So if you just stay focused and busy, man, don't worry about like where that next job is gonna be.  No, that wasn't my ammo. Like success usually comes to those who are too busy. We got a whole lot of things for you guys to get after with that. On behalf of my husband, Ron, myself, please go home and tell your families, thank you. Make sure that they know how much we appreciate everything that they do. They serve so that you can serve. So please give our families your thanks. And with that, it's an honor to serve with you guys. And we look forward to seeing you in your formations. Who, awesome. Thanks guys.


Good afternoon, everybody. You're all very welcome indeed to this special webinar event hosted by the Irish Institute for International and European Affairs. My name is John O'Brennan. I hold the Jean-Manet chair in European integration at the Newth University, and I'm delighted to be joined today by our guest speaker, Ivan Kraste. I will formally introduce Ivan in a moment, but just to give you the format for this event. Ivan has kind of agreed to speak for between 15 and 20 minutes, and after that we will move to questions and answers. So I invite those of you who have questions that are prompted by Ivan's remarks to go to the Q&A function in Zoom, and those questions will be related to me and I will relay them then to Ivan once we get to the Q&A. A reminder that today's session is a formal one, both the contribution from our guest speaker and the questions and answers are both on the record. And as always, feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle for the Institute at IIEA. And now to formally welcome and introduce our speaker, Ivan Kraste truly needs little introduction. He has been an inspiration to many of us interested in themes around democracy, governance, and the European Union for a very long time. Ivan is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia. He is also a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is also a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a stalwart figure in journals like the Journal of Democracy. So he's followed the vicissitudes of democracy in recent decades as closely as any author could. He is the author of recent works, including After Europe in 2017 published by University of Pennsylvania Press. The Light That Failed, along with Stephen Holmes published by Alan Lane in 2019. And his latest book upon which today's talk is based a very provocative reading of the pandemic and its impact on Europe is a tomorrow yet paradoxes of the pandemic. So we are really, really grateful to Ivan for giving up his time to us today and I now invite him to address us, Ivan. Thank you very much and thank you very much for the generous presentation and the opportunity to talk. And I have learned that out of this Zoom conversations the most important is to be as brief and clear as possible so we can have a discussion. The book that you referred to, is it tomorrow yet, was written in 2020. It was after the first basically 100 days of the pandemic. So what I decided to do today is basically to comment on five or six things that I find puzzling about this pandemic. Because I have the feeling that when we try to see it from the point of view of what we find strange which we find unexpected probably this is going to tell us slightly more about certain changes that we're going to see. And when we talk about this place pandemics and I believe that now we can talk about never ending pandemic and the way we have been talking about the never ending course. One of the interesting thing is not simply to see what has changed, but also the changes that we were able to see the changes that have been there before. But in a way we have been blind for. And as a result of it. The first thing that I'm going to try to address as this puzzle says that you remember when the pandemic started one of the major question was, who is going to deal better with the challenge. The democratic government's authoritarian regimes. And now two years later, I do believe that most of us can agree that the nature of government turns to be a much less strong explanation for the success of the anti vaccine anti COVID policies, then we expect it when it started. You have a democracies that are doing fine. You have also some authoritarian regimes that are doing fine. But at the end of the day it turns out that some other factors explains better how the countries are doing and by the way one of the interesting story about pandemics is that who is doing better and who is doing worse. We should reevaluate every three months basically countries that you've been very much praised in the summer of 2020, then you've been very much in the bottom in the summer of 2021 and being in Austria now locked down. While Austria was perceived as doing quite well in the first year of the pandemic so success and failure. Also very much questionable Chinese a great example, how successful they are basically walking down the country totally opposing it. But nevertheless of what kind of qualifications we do that unexpected thing that came is that the nature of the regime is not the strongest predicator of how well you're doing. The fear that three other factors probably are turning to be more important. One of them is the general levels of trust in society. And you can see it on all level it is on the level of basically vaccination you're busy on the level of how confident the government was implementing one or the other policies. These kinds of levels of trust variety in a different societies and do not correlate easily with the nature of political regime. We have a democracy with a high level of trust and the navy and countries Germany to some extent that we have a very mistrustful democracy like the one from which I'm coming Bulgaria is from this point to be one of the place where we are not all performing contrast. The second is of course the efficiency of the institutions and not simply the public health system, but basically the institutions as a whole, what for example I saw in Austria was to what extent. For example, Austrian army was critically important for the success of Austria when it comes to testing the population. So this much more capacity issue and this capacity issue you can have also both in democratic authoritarian context, for example, Singapore, Taiwan, different regimes basically when it comes to the nature of the regime shows this type of capacities. And certainly there was this major distinctions between Asia and Europe, for example and Asia and the United States. Well of course we can try to go for a much broader cultural explanation, the explanation that I'm trying to offer is much more simple. The difference between Europe and Asia is that Asians had the experience is a similar crisis from the last decade. And this is a huge story to what extent you're prepared for this or not. I'm always going to remember some years ago, flying through Asia and seeing all these people with masks, sharing the feeling that you have landed on the moon. But it was also the result of some of the previous pandemics that went through Asia, and which basically make their governments much more prepared to many respects by the world's leaders. This was the first thing that struck me. The second was that when already in February, the pandemic was knocking on the door. The Italian philosopher Gambon basically made this important comment that he said the democratic regimes are just waiting for certain type of a crisis because they want to establish a state of emergency and basically try to normalize the state of emergency, as the way to deal with the problems of ungovernability of some of the modern societies. The problem is how true is this. And really the governments are so much keen to have this lockdowns to what extent the governments are really excited about coming with the policies that they're going to show their capacity basically of control. And here I'm going to give you two kind of examples that struck me as I told you, when you try to explain the striking probably you're going to see the obvious. One is why Russia is shying away from mandatory vaccination. Russia is not doing fine as a response to the pandemic. The figures are quite high. Basically, you have almost a million excess deaths in the country. And basically is affecting also the economy, even during the autumn Moscow had been closed for weeks. And you can see that President Putin, but even the Russian patriarch, everybody was strongly trying to push the population to But regardless of the fact that Russia has a vaccine of their own. The first one to have a vaccine that you've been very proud with this. So there is no the problem of the deficiency of vaccines. The population is not getting vaccinated. So if we think in terms of democratic authoritarian, we are going to believe that for Russian government which otherwise not shying away from using force when it comes to dealing with political protests and others. So this natural thing is going to be to go for the mandatory vaccination. Obviously, this is going to solve some of the main problems. But on the contrary, the Russian government is insisting that they never going to do it. And even more some people started to talk about the COVID federalism in Russia. And because of the COVID that basically the Russian government gave much more autonomy to the regions to deal with the pandemics and as a result of it basically, you start to see the differences one of the positive example was the very energetic response of the President of Russia, Mr. Sobianian, but on the other you basically see other regions failing. So why a much more authoritarian minded government is shying away. And here is my explanation I do believe that one of the biggest problem that those return regimes facing the situations like the pandemic one is that if you try to vaccinate obligatory, and if you're going to fail to do it. It's exposing your weakness and democratic governments can be legitimate even when they're weak, because part of the legitimacy comes from the way they have been elected. In the case of Russia basically part of the legitimacy comes from demonstrating how much you're in the control of the situation. So as a result of it you end up with a situation in which while you have quite high numbers of people dying you have infections you have a huge pressure on the Russian public health system. But the Russian government is not simply not coming with the idea of the mandatory vaccination but even more, they're trying to claim that Russia is a free country, exactly because they're not doing this. And usually enough, it is not the freedom of speech it is not the freedom of associations. It is the refusal to get people vaccinated that is allowing the Russian government to claim in front of the citizens that they're giving them the right to decide to get vaccinated or not, and I don't know how long this is going to do. I think this is very important because it goes against some of our major kind of assumptions in the beginning that you expect that authoritarian government are going to be much more decisive when it comes to things like lockdowns, closing vaccinations while basic for democratic governments because of the responsive nature of the regime is going to be basically less ready to do this. And the story why out of all places, Austria is basically locking down, and at the same time going for the mandatory vaccinations so are they not risking too much. And here is my argument why democratic governments contrary to what the government believes are not particularly excited about the state of emergency, because the state of emergency on one level is very much weakening the opposition is getting people out of the streets at least for a certain period of time. But then the government is starting to function in two modes which both of them are very difficult one is, if there is a dictatorship that existed for this two years in Europe, it was the dictatorship of comparisons. You all the time comparing what is happening in your country with the neighboring country and ordinary citizen basically is deciding on the performance of government based on how they didn't compare to the others. But secondly, in order to show to the people that they care about them that they want to protect them. I don't believe many of European governments went into a trap, which can have a long term implications for the way our democracy is going to work. Government promise to people things that simply cannot be fulfilled. We almost promise people that they are not going to die. When you're basically seeing also the discourse of some of the European governments, and don't forget we're talking about the governments that are governing over very much aging population. You have the feeling that this is treated as unnatural. So the idea that zero risk and total protection when it comes to human lives but also when it comes to the economic results created a very, very difficult situation for any government. And because this is something that you cannot simply do. And this is why I do believe that the Austrian government did it because this logic of trying to show the people how much you care about them was driving them in this direction. But in a certain point it can backfire and not simply backfire because many people don't like these policies, but because totally unrealistic expectations of what governments can do for the people in a major crisis can come from this. And I'm going as a result of it to the second to the second basically problem that we question that I cannot answer easily and this is the question. Why you have such a big gap in vaccination between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Listen, believe me, this is very much counterintuitive. European Council on Foreign Relations you've been doing survey in the summer in 12 of the new member states and what we discovered is that according to their answers, East Europeans declared that they much more you've been personally affected by the pandemic. When we have been asking people, did you personally experience in a severe way covered. Did any member of your family of course friends have died. Do you severely experienced the economic effect of covered majority of people in every single center in this European country said yes. At the same time, basically 70% of the Danish said no, none of this 60% of German said none of this 60% of French. So why, and if you see basically the figures Central and Eastern European countries now among the countries with the highest kind of death rates for 100,000 people and you know the numbers and the problems of the East European public health system so how it happened that countries in which people personally declared that they have been very much affected countries in which people basically have a very legitimate reasons to be hesitant about the capacity of the public health system to respond, why they do not vaccinate. Keeping in mind that during the communist period, we have a obligatory vaccinations for certain type of disease so all of us can be vaccinated by kids. And I know that people like to make a basically big kind of a generalization about this and the country is slightly different. But I do believe that there are four factors that are interesting to take into account when we answering these questions because probably this is going to help us also better to understand the politics of it all. The point is that it is now quite obvious that the countries that was most severely hurt by the first wave of COVID were the most negative accident. Spain, Italy. So this initial shock created the situation in which there is a broader public consensus that you should do it. This point of the center in Eastern Europe was not affected particularly strongly by the first wave, because also the movement of people in central European countries is not the most, the biggest hubs globalization general. So the provincial slightly nature of the center in this European society helped us to deal better with the first wave but of course now, for example, the second and the third wave we have been suffering a lot. But the absence of this initial shock, in my view, is part of the explanation. The second part of the explanation is that in some countries in Bulgaria, Romania being an example. The electoral process in Bulgaria we can see elections for this year because twice the parliament didn't manage the elected governments or we went for new elections created the situation in which there is not a single country and the single basically moment in which vaccination campaign was the most important campaign. It was always election campaign, and during the election campaign it was not that parties differ very much of what they stay on vaccination, but they were much more busy accusing others for not having results then basically pushing people to vaccinate. Certainly, we basically have a data to show that the level of consumption of fake news is much higher in Eastern Europe compared to other places, but it is also the nature of the media and this is quite interesting to see. To what extent the very nature of scientific debate in which in order for science to work. By the way the scientists should disagree between each other. This is how science works makes people very mistrustful because in a certain way the moment they see two doctors not sharing the same opinion. They're basically starting to lose confidence in science as a whole. And, but the two other factors that remind you have been underestimated when we're trying to answer the questions like all of us have been so less vaccinated than other is that you have an aging medical community. Many of the young doctors that graduated in our countries, went to work in Ireland, went to work in Germany as a result of it for this older generation, some of these new type of a vaccines will proceed as much more risky. They were less ready to trust them, and basically they were much less ready to push their own patients to go and to do it. So this is the crisis of the medical community, but not simply the crisis of the medical community says that they didn't manage to produce a single voice and to lobby of this, but paradoxically in Eastern Europe the expert community in general is much more weaker to influence decision makers. We have a much more politicized and much more polarized governments in which basically it is the governments that much more influences the position of the doctors than the doctors the position of the governments. So from this point of view, this was very clear that in places like Poland, the higher educated part of the population which now sympathize much more with the opposition were less ready to trust the government on medical issue, not simply because they don't trust science, you should believe that because of the education and we know a father surveys that there is a positive correlations there they should trust more, but because they believe that the governments are simply selecting the doctors that fit the political agenda. And the last and first probably the most important is the low level of trust in public institutions. When you trust nobody. You trust basically doctors, particularly when it comes like this. And I'm saying that this divide is quite important and also that from this point into COVID can have a very strong effect on our political systems. Because while there was this recent study by you guys and the Cambridge University showing that in the last three years. Because of COVID and COVID, we have the decline of the populist attitudes all over Europe. One of the important thing that is happening in which I do believe is still recognized by many is that populism did not benefit it in electoral terms of the COVID crisis for the moment just the opposite. But because of this crisis the populist party have made their ideological positions. And three years ago, when we talk about I have been Germany or the Freedom Party in Austria. We're going to describe them as political parties which are very critical to the existence system, and which are strongly advocating, much more authoritarian and decisive type of government. It was very clear during the migration crisis. Now suddenly, most of these parties position themselves as the defenders of individual rights. Very much endorsing anti-vax movements, very much saying that the government goes too far, be to lockdowns be obligatory. So as a result of it we don't know is this going to increase their vote or not, but in my view this is changing their relations with the younger generations. Because one of the things that you see here survey from the summer show very clearly is the younger people growingly see themselves as the major victims of an anti-COVID policies. So this is not about their life this about their way of life. This is about close schools both universities. This is also basically the freezing of movement in Europe. And for many of these young people basically the sense of freedom was very much related to the freedom to travel, and particularly to travel cheaply. So I'm saying this because as a result of it, I don't believe that necessarily the populist parties are going to benefit from this but I do believe that we're going to see a different type of a populist actors. So in this case is this kind of a rise of libertarian attitudes both on the left and on the right it was interesting the anti-vax movement basically adopted the slogan of the feminist movement. My body is my choice. This is changing European politics because suddenly now. What it means to impart is that they accused of being called retirees because of lockdowns because of vaccination and I do believe it's going to be the same because of the green policies telling you want to tell us what to do you're very much limiting our choices. And as you know that basically to finish because I see that I went much longer than it is. I'm going to speculate that we always at the end of the year, figure out which is going to be the work of the year I'll try to speculate which is going to be the year for 2022. And in my view this is going to be sovereign and the idea of sovereignty and sovereignty is going to be key work but understood in two or three very different ways. First all these populist parties are basically going very much to talk about the sovereignty of the individual and individual choices with respect to the governments when it comes to the anti-covid measures. And member states of the European Union are going to be very much talking about the sovereignty of the nation states versus vis-a-vis Brussels and to see this very much when you see what is happening in Poland or Hungary. But I do believe you're going to see many other places including France, and one of the interesting effect of COVID and the state of emergency is that the COVID related is going to be that governments and basically states are going to opt out of a certain policies declaring that this is a national emergency or national security issues. So suddenly nobody is talking about, for example, Poland or Hungary or I don't know whom exiting the European Union so this is not the Brexit type of a threat. But we're going to say Poland who said yes but we're not going to share European immigration policy. Hungary for example saying okay but we're not going to share common policies with respect to China or this or that. But this is going to be a new dynamic, a fragmentation of European Union that could be extremely important but certainly they're going to be talking about sovereignty of the European Union as a whole. So the idea of the strategic autonomy, very much favored by President Macron, because also as a result of the COVID, I do believe that the relations of the European Union with the rest of the world has changed dramatically. But let me stop here and during the conversation I'll be very much happy to develop some of these ideas and thank you a lot for basically inviting me for this talk.


The Brainerd Public Library offers a special opportunity every Thursday for young readers of all skill levels to read to shadow, a certified reading therapy dog. Kids can sign up for a 15 minute time slot to read to shadow, the 4 year old Collie who is accompanied by his owner, Susan. The library has been hosting these reading sessions for the past 2 years and they take place all year round. All children are welcome and they just sign up here at the library or they can do it online and they really have a great time. Of course shadow being so beautiful and handsome is just really a fun thing to see to have come in and shadow makes them feel comfortable and non-judgemental and just you know happy and feeling good so it's a great program that we have here we're lucky. For more information or to sign up to read to shadow you can visit the link on our website at lbtv.org slash news. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hi, Mr. President, it's good to see you again, sir. It's my pleasure to introduce you, Simon. Yes. I'm the Brazilian Ambassador to the Barons. And I'm glad to see you again. I'm the chairman of our panelist, and I'm the father of the Barons. Thank you for your speeches. Good to see you. Mr. President, broadly, you met yesterday, so why not sign a great pleasure to be here again? You baffled me, all of you, yesterday. But you were good to listen to us for all the time. It was fascinating. And I want to thank you both for what you're doing here, when President Sarni and I met. What? Oh, it's a clear group picture? Well, we'll try. Oh, right? September. And I know he must be as pleased as I am. We've got an excellent meeting. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I must congratulate you for the selection of the group and the presidential panel. Wonderful people. Well, on the American side. And on the American side. This was very good. All right. In regard to the President. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, may I please present Ambassador Polanski. Yes, we had a good afternoon. It's good to see you. Nice to meet you. Hello, Mr. President. Nice to meet you. So, why don't we get you in the middle here? Why? That's great. I want to look right here. One second. I appreciate what you're doing. I have a garden spot of the world. It's 96 degrees. Yes. I'm terrified. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. Please present Ambassador Polanski. Yes, hello there. How's Ron Walker doing? He's doing great. He's fine. Yes, hello there. That's great. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Well, listen, please let you do it. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. How are you? I'm fine. Big family. Hello. Hello. Karen? Well, I think the babies are a little different. Now, I think if the babies were kind of... Then they would have to kind of divide up. Half of you on the side. Half on the other. One of you will sit down. How's that look? Sure, that's fine. Step right forward. Thank you. Okay, that's terrific. Everyone's looking right here. Big smile. So long democracy. Right, yes. So then please give the head man that I'm going to call. He's here. Yes, I will do that, Mr. President. You're right. Now, just a minute, souvenirs. Really, Mr. President, I don't want you to forget this. So, in the key room. Thank you. And carefully. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, good luck. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Mr. President, I'd like to present Ambassador Herrera. Yes, Mr. President. It's a pleasure and honor for me to meet you, sir. I'm to meet you. And I present my wife. My daughter Margaret. My wife and two ladies get in the middle of the day for your picture. I'm so grateful for you. You're the most important to us. That's great. Sir, if you could look right here. That's good. I like the western motifs. Peter Roosevelt is a great hero of mine. And he named our youngest son. We have two sons. One was a lieutenant in the fourth Marines in California. He's following the Persian Gulf incidents with great personal interest. And the younger son, Teddy, who was named after the president, who was so representative of the outside. Okay. I and Teddy Roosevelt there were a boy that lived two, I mean, that's western. One, I'm mad, one and three years ago. There was a time when there was no west wing. And so the exactly French officers in the cabinet meeting, maybe they lived right up there in the White House in the residence. And one day, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt had said to her husband, if I'm going to raise six kids in the south, you're going to get your new blog. Well, yeah. I lived with the west wing for myself. But also this always reminds me that way back when the abstract art was so popular and people were paying thousands of dollars for pictures that looked like a tomato can or something, I was going around making statements that one of these days they would recall western art and Charlie Russell's and so forth and that would be a great demand. And in all the time I was saying there in holiday I never bought a single piece of western art. And I remember one time when I saw running these bronze that you could buy for $1,200. And I didn't buy it. And all of a sudden it boomed back and it became thousands and thousands of dollars. A great museum in Houston that I visited. So many of Reminders of Russell's visuals. They're great, they're great. They're a way of representing America. Yes. Thank you so much for having us. It makes a great difference to a good one. Thank you all for doing this. Thank you.


In yoga, when we talk about transformation, we always work with the body because that's where the real problem is. I would say eighty percent of your health depends on this, how much you're in tune with the earth. With your spine in contact with the earth or to be in a natural pool of water, we'll do tremendous things to the system.


Good morning, cyber traders. Good to see you all. Welcome back on this Tuesday, nine o'clock in the morning, about 30 minutes until full the market opens up. Got a couple of decent movers. Good to see you. Looks like we're missing some sound there. There you go. All right, Wayne. Hopefully you can hear me okay right now. So anyway, it is Tuesday. Tuesday is a busy day. We got phase three that's going on to today. So looking forward to seeing you. I'm really excited. It's the last lesson of the phase three classes at CTO that we teach you going into this month. And you will remember, September went things and they get really exciting. So, you know, you got to be ready. And then next month, I expect everyone here to get ready for onsite. And if you can't make it, you got the webcast. Remember, the best trade that you can make.  So that's the key part about it. Anyway, there's a lot of big news that's been going on right now. There's one really nice stock that's moving. It is, is TI VC moved really, really nice in pre-market. But what happens is that usually we start around 745 not really seeing that much action. It's going to it's having a tough time getting breaking through some big resistance levels. You can see some iceberg orders here and you can see it kind of holding it back. You know, right around this price of four dollars. But you know what? It's not the greatest day.  This is the slowest week of the year. Okay, last part about it. Last part about trading.  Those are the things you got to look at. So anyway, let's let's talk about some things right now that is moving though. And let me go a couple of things. But before I do that, really, really big news also that came out that I want to talk about. I want to talk about Hawaiian electric. Okay, so did everyone hear the news on Hawaiian electric? Just out of curiosity. Everybody here heard the news on it? Hawaiian electric. See if anybody here on the news part about it? Anyone on the chat? Nope. Okay. So, okay, good. So they came out and admitted that the fire in Hawaii was their fault. And not only that, but they're also blaming the fire department not reacting fast enough. Okay. So, listen. You, believe it or not, at the end of the day, this is what the fact is. This is a public company and this stock went from 36 dollars and dropped all the way down to about eight dollars. Look at the comeback it had. It ran from eight all the way up to 14 dollars. Okay. Now, how is that even possible? How is a stock like that? And when you go back and it gaps up like that and you could see how it had a really nice move and gap up like that. Well, this is what happens. Buy on rumor, sell on news, right? So, what ended up happening? The news is out, came out, destroyed it. They admitted it. Now, everybody knows the facts are on the table. Everything's done. Now, what happens is that they admitted to what? They went over the financial part about it and this is why the stock goes up. So, here you're thinking that it might be worse but ends up being a positive because remember the whole theory I told you about when companies go bankrupt? I've been doing this for 30 years, okay? I, listen, whatever you think is gonna really happen is always the opposite. It really is always the opposite because I see how it works. I mean, how the trading works. So, that's why when my biggest mentor always taught me and this is some advice I wanna give to you before we start going through the watch list. Once you think you know something about the stock market, I don't care how you are or who you know you're gonna lose all your money and why is that? It doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what these people think. These orders, these buyers, those sellers and please don't ever forget that and that's what we're gonna be covering in class. All right? Follow the money. That's all you have to do. Don't question it. All right. Now, let's move on. Let's see what's happening. There were a couple of the stocks that did move yesterday. So we had HE that moved pretty well. We had GNS, also Decent Move, Dollar Stock up to 240 in the last couple of days. That one did pretty well too. And the BEAT was the BGLC. That was another one that moved up pretty easily. Yeah, BGLC moved up really nice yesterday. Right in the afternoons. This stock, you could see it back in July ran from 4 to 18 and you could see how the stock literally last 30 minutes, big, big nice pop ran from literally $1.60 to 225. Really, really nice mover. Worked out pretty well. So anyway, is that a lot? No, it's typical. And that's great. You know what I mean? This is what you need to understand. So I didn't really do that many trades yesterday at all but that's how it is, okay? And I know a lot of you didn't do it also in the side of the group room. So that's good. That's really good because don't worry. Stock market's not going out of business. That's the key. Let's talk about what's moving this morning. Now, the Dow right now is down 37 points. You go through the watch list. I was talking about this even with Josh yesterday. Pretty much, look at everything. Up 10 cents, up 20 cents, up 5 cents. It's really crappy out there. So don't get nuts, all right? This is a nickels and dimes day, all right? Now, first of all, let's all hope and pray for everybody down in Florida, on the West Coast. A lot of you know Josh is right over there, our top instructor here at Sabatri University. And he's actually there. He's just told me he's going to be staying. He's going to hold the fort. He said depends where it moves, depending on where he is. Listen, I was even listening to the governor of Florida. He said, listen, you really don't have to leave. As long as you're really, really high, that's all really matters. But well, just be safe out there, Josh, and everyone else out in Florida. Now, on the other flip side, how that could help us in trading, well, we'll see what the damage is. But a lot of companies do benefit from it. Home Depot, Generac, anything that, depending on how much damage there is or how catastrophe, some stocks do benefit from it. It happened here at Hurricane Sandy. So we'll keep an eye on it. So if you see anything, we'll find out by tomorrow. We'll definitely share it with you here at Sabatri University. All right, guys, let's go through some of the stocks. Anyway, like I said, big stock mover right here, T-I-B-C. I'm not completely sold on it. It really hasn't gone anywhere. You can see it didn't really do too much. But it's the biggest percentage gainer. And that's really what we're going to go with. Second on the list, we have this ICCI. Not really that much out there. I'm just going to see something here. Not really that much out there. Stocks up about 24% million shares. But is it really trending?  Not really that much. No real, any real crazy, crazy excitement here. We've got a big buyer here, and that pretty much does it. So I'm not really sold on that one either. Beanox, cheap stock, decent volume, million shares. Not really going anywhere. You know, another one out there. Tiger, not going anywhere. PDD, nice stock, great push. Good news, it came at 6.30, didn't go anywhere. But it's $90. Screw it. You know, we need to spend a lot of money, you know, to get some of these stocks. This one took a big pop, came right back down. We're already down to 7%. This is how bad it is right now. This is how bad it is. Okay, any bottom fishing going on, anything getting crushed. This thing's down 12%, no big deal. We know this one, we trade this last couple of days. Not really that much going on out there. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. New York Stock Exchange. GSAT's not terrible. Did I put GSAT on here? No, GSAT. GSAT's got a couple of orders that just showed up here. Nothing really crazy. Not really big orders, 36,000. I mean, it's got decent volume. 3 million shares, very tradable. GSAT, I mean, we'll throw it on there. MFG, big, DNA. DNA's going up pretty decent, you know? Cheap little stock, not expensive. 10%, 2 million shares. DNA, anything else out there? GNS going down. That's been up good the last couple of days. Neo, big run-up, now it's coming down. I don't know if that has something to do. I know that somebody in China, from US Governments, they're having a meeting with them. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Boyle coming back down. CRM, look at that. Unbelievable stock, that company. Anyway, nothing. Three stocks up on pre-market. This is perfectly normal, perfectly normal. But we'll see how the market opens up. I'm more excited about today doing phase three because you know what, if we don't see anything, some of the best lessons that you learn is days like this when there's really nothing going on. Like I always tell you, my favorite lessons is not teaching you how to make money, it's how to control those losses. And that is everyone's biggest failure rate. And that is everyone's biggest problem while they kind of learn. They say, oh, shoot, maybe I should learn how to trade after they lose it. So these are one of the very rare lessons that we do over the year. And like I said, we'll see if we get some good out of it. Anyway, anything else out there that looks for anyone else? See anything else out there? Pretty much does it. I don't really see too much other than moving what we saw. Anybody on YouTube, Facebook Live? By the way, if you're watching on social media, remember you got a top left-hand corner, just take your phone, you can scan that QR code. You could join our trading room for a whole week. So if you want to just come in the morning, you're more than happy to, just make sure you like us and friend us. And for everybody else, I'll be waiting for you in the cyber group room and whoever's gonna be in the trading room and then who's gonna be in class with me. Remember we started at 9.35 and we're gonna go up for an hour. All right guys, good luck everyone. Happy trading, be safe. And everyone in Florida, like I said, be careful, Josh, we're praying for you. Okay guys, be careful. All right, good luck everybody. And we'll see you in a little bit when the market opens up.


Hi, I'm Matt Dickman. I'm the head of our P&G business globally and I've been coming to South by Southwest now since 2006, so a bit of a veteran. So for people that are going to be at the conference, I think the value of what you take away from it is really in the connections with people that you make. So it's, you know, I would say 10% is about the content, 90% is about the connections. And I think it's a place where people welcome other people, jumping in the conversations of hallways, walking up, meeting people, finding a panelist you're interested in and connecting with them in person, and then extending that digitally.