We praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We send blessings and salutations upon Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, his household, his companions. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to bless them, to bless every one of us, to grant us goodness, to open the doors of mercy upon us and to grant us every form of bless. Ameen. My brothers and sisters, we are looking at supplications from revelation and we are discussing the dua of Yusuf alaihi sallatu wa sallam. The prophet Yusuf may peace be upon him. He had an option of committing a sin or being imprisoned and he made a dua to Allah, رب السجن أحب إلي من ما يدعونني إليه. Oh my Rabb, the prison is better for me than what they're calling me towards and we spoke about this in the previous episode where I made mention of how important this dua was. It goes to show that we always need to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and we need to stay away from sin at times even if we have to endure a little bit of hardship in order to stay away from that sin. So Allah gave him this particular dua, responded to him positively. He was imprisoned and he enjoyed his time in the prison. He sees the opportunity while in prison to do whatever he felt was as positive as he could so that he emerged from there one day with no regrets. So my brothers and sisters, that was a dua of Yusuf alaihi sallam. But we want to go through another dua of Yusuf alaihi sallam also made mention of in Surat Yusuf verse number 101 where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says at a certain point when the parents were united once again, the brothers were united once again right at the end of the story. Another supplication of the prophet Yusuf or Joseph may peace be upon him is made mention of. Allah says He asks for two things but he precedes that dua with the praise of Allah and the acknowledgement of the gifts that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had bestowed upon him.  You've given me a lot. Here authority, dominion, kingdom, knowledge so much has been granted by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to Yusuf alaihi sallam. He's acknowledging it. Oh Allah, you gave me so much. You gave me a lot and you even taught me that which I didn't know whether it was the interpretation of dreams, the deeper understanding regarding speech, regarding what goes on with people etc. Allah inspired him, Allah revealed to him. So he says, You are the creator of the heavens and the earth and you are my protector in this world and in the next. Wali, Wali referring here to the protector, the closest of friends of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So he is saying you are my protector in this world and in the next. I want to ask you something. So he asks Allah, Tawafani Musliman, grant me a death in a condition that I am submitting unto you. Grant me a death in the condition of submission. Imagine this is a prophet of Allah saying, Oh Allah, when I die, let me be in a good condition. Let me be in a good state. Tawafani Musliman wa alhipni bisalihain. And let me be united with the righteous. Bring me together with the righteous. Let me join the righteous. So these are the two things he's asking for. A good death and post death he wants to be with the righteous as well. So this is a beautiful dua that we can all make as well. Tawafani Musliman wa alhipni bisalihain. Oh Allah, grant us a death as submitters because it's important to ask Allah for a good death. Hussnul khatima means the good ending. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for a good ending. So this is a dua of Yusuf alayhi salatu wa salam. It's a powerful dua and it's a supplication that Allah makes mention of in the Quran. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would not have made mention of it if there was no lesson for us to be deriving from it. But rather we can look at his life, Yusuf alayhi salam, his words, we can use these words, we can understand how to call out to Allah, what to ask from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. If you notice, none of the prophets have actually asked for specific material items. It was always goodness, it was always the pleasure of Allah, it was always submission, it was always something to do with gaining closeness to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Even if they were asking for offspring, it was in order to gain closeness to Allah as we shall see in one of the episodes when we discuss one of the du'az of zakariya alayhi salatu wa salam. So it's important my beloved brothers and sisters for us to call out to Allah and not to be materialistic in our du'a only, which means we are human, we are not prophets of Allah. We might ask Allah, oh Allah make this easy for me, help me to buy a house, help me to do this and to do that. But that needs to be coupled with a brilliant intention and it should not be the main focus of all our du'az. Perhaps out of a hundred du'az you might make two or three that might be connected to certain materialistic things you may want in terms of luxury etc. But it's not recommended to be focused upon those items when in actual fact a true believer should be focused upon the pleasure of Allah. If Allah is pleased with you, if Allah has forgiven you, if Allah is going to grant you goodness in terms of your spirituality and religion and in terms of your relationship with Allah then you've succeeded, even if you don't have much in terms of this world. So this is a beautiful du'a that we make mention of regarding Yusuf alayhi salatu wa salam. Now there is a question that arises when he says, Tawafani Muslim and grant me death as a Muslim.  So to say that Yusuf alayhi salam asked for death would be wrong but rather he just said whenever you take me, take me away in a good condition. Because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam has said in another narration of Anas ibn Malik radiallahu anhu that is muttafak alayhi. He says la yatamanna yanna a hadakum ul-mawta. One of you should not, or you should not, you should not hope for death to say oh Allah take me away, oh Allah take me away. You know min dharrin asabahu because of a difficulty or hardship that has reached a person. So no person should say or should wish for death to run away from a problem. That's a hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. No person should wish for death in order to run away from a hardship, a trial or a calamity that Allah may have caused to befall them. But rather we should say oh Allah keep me alive for as long as you know that life is good for me, take me away when you know that it's better for me to go. That's what the hadith says. So in this instance Yusuf alayhi sallam was not asking for death but rather he was saying whenever you do take me take me away in a good condition. My brothers and sisters I hope that we can learn that we should not be asking for death but rather ask for a good condition upon the death that is chosen by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We want to move on to the the supplication of the Prophet ayyub alayhi sallam. Job may peace be upon him. He had been tested by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in so many different ways.  And in such a way that he suffered and struggled but he was a very patient person. You see Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that he tests everyone and when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tests everyone, every single person would then see the result of that test on the day of judgment and Allah will decide where exactly you fit in in terms of your results. So some people have failed their test may Allah not make us from those, some people have passed them and some people have passed with flying colors. Some Allah has praised them to say you know we tested them so much and the result was the following. Now I want to look at Ayyub aleyhi salam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says These verses make me cry. It's Surat Sa'at verse number 44. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is saying Imagine Allah is saying we found him to be patient. We tested him one after the other. So many things. We took his wealth away. He thanked us. He was still patient. We took his health away. He thanked us. He was still patient. It did not decrease his acts of worship. He actually increased them. We took away you know his health, his wealth and his family members one by one. All of them we found him to be very patient. He was still as close to us as ever. Brothers and sisters when things happen in our lives that does not come right. Things that do not come right for us. We must remember don't lose faith. Faith is the last thing you should be thinking about losing because it is faith that keeps you going. It is conviction in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that will make you continue. Look at Ayyub aleyhi salam. An Nabi of Allah meaning a prophet of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chosen by Allah beloved to Allah being tested by Allah with great tests and he passed the test with such flying colors that Allah says about him. We found him to be very very patient. What a great servant of ours. What a great servant of ours. Who is saying this? Allah is saying it about Ayyub aleyhi salam. What a great worshiper of ours. Why is he such a great worshiper? Because he was Awab. Awab is one who comes back to Allah always. He always returns to Allah every day. He's worshipping Allah. He's returning to Allah. He was indeed one who constantly turned to us for everything. In hardship he turned to us. In ease he turned to us. So much so. Ayyub aleyhi salam is one of the prophets who who did not ask Allah to solve his problem. Amazing. When he had problems he loved Allah so much he was convinced conviction to the highest degree that he didn't say oh Allah help me out of my problem. But look at the words he uses. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says O Muhammad peace be upon him. Remember our slave Ayyub. When he called out to his Lord. When he called out to his maker. What did he say? He said, Satan has afflicted me with two things. With Nusbin and Adab. So these two things one is connected to his body. You know when the term Adab is connected to his his body and the term in fact it's connected to his body and his wealth. Nusbin refers to the tiredness, the fatigue you know. Satan has actually attacked him from two angles. One angle is his body, his health and two was what he had. What he had was divided into two. His wealth and his family members. So he only said oh Allah, Satan has attacked me. That's all. He didn't say so help me so you know protect me so he knows Allah loves me enough. I love Allah enough. If Allah has chosen this for me I'm going to go through this. Now we are not the prophets of Allah. I'm not saying to anyone that you only need to tell Allah oh Allah, Satan has attacked me and stopped there. Our levels of conviction may not be upon that level. In fact they won't reach that levels of the prophets but we can say oh Allah Satan has attacked me. Oh Allah help me. Oh Allah open my doors. Oh Allah guide me. Oh Allah protect me and so on. Ayyub alayhi salam chose not to say all of that. This is why in another narration, in another verse actually with different wording of the du'a. Now why different wording? It's not that oh the Quran is contradicting you know by using one wording one time and another wording another time. No the du'a was made many times. Sometimes this wording sometimes that wording the wordings were different so Allah makes mention of the du'as of the prophets of Allah with different wordings because they called out many times and they did not call out using exactly the same wording all the time. So Allah says for example in this beautiful surah He says oh my Rabb. Harm has reached me. Harm has touched me. Harm has got to me and you are the most merciful of those with mercy. That's it.  Amazing. So again he didn't say oh Allah harm has got to me. Please help me out of this harm. He says oh Allah harm has got to me. I know you're merciful.  That's enough. The fact that I have hope in your mercy, I'm convinced and I know the quality and standard and height of your mercy. I already know that that's enough. The fact that you know that I'm going through this. I'm just repeating to say oh Allah you know it's gotten to me. Now this is why Allah says but I want to quickly show you how Allah responded to this du'a. The du'a of a you. Now if you take a look at some of the surahs of the Quran. You know we have surah saffat. We have surah al-anbiya. We have some of the surahs where Allah makes mention of the du'a's and the supplications of the prophets. He shows you that all the prophets called out to us. All the prophets called out to us. The prophets of Allah called out to Allah more than you and I and the rest of the creatures of Allah. Yet they were the chosen ones. They went through greatest difficulty and they called out to Allah more than anyone. Look at the Quran. It's filled with supplications made by the prophets of Allah. Allah would not have mentioned these supplications if he didn't have a lesson in them for us. If he didn't want us to use those words to call out to understand that you will have hardship. You will have problems. You will have issues. All those should make you stronger. Remember when Ayub called out to Allah? Remember when Zakaria called out to Allah? Remember the prophet Yunus, when he went away while he was upset and he thought that it would be okay to continue. But he called out to Allah. He called out and so many different verses that Allah says this one called out, that one called out, everyone called out. They called out to Allah, call out to Allah. And this is why at the end Allah says you know they all called out to us hoping and with hope and fear. They always called out to us. Who am I and who are you? We are far lower than all of the messengers of Allah. Surely we should be calling out more. So Ayub After making this du'a Allah says he was very patient. We tested him. He was patient. So you make a du'a Allah will wait until he wants to give you that du'a. Like we've said in previous episodes that Allah chooses how to respond to you with what he knows is better for you short term and long term. Sometimes there is something you desperately want. It's not good for you but Allah keeps it away from you and gives you in return in the hereafter something so great that when you see it you will wonder why Allah did not do that more often to you. SubhanAllah. But while you're on earth, man wants exactly what he wants and that's it. So Allah says The verse number 84 of Suratul Anbiya Allah says we responded to him. To who? Ayub. The Prophet job may peace be upon him. And we took away the difficulties that he had. We took away the hardship that he faced. We gave him back his family. We gave him back his family. And not just that but we doubled it up for him through our mercy and as a reminder for the worshippers. SubhanAllah. If you look at that verse it's just too powerful because Allah says we took something away from him. When he was patient he kept on thanking us. He kept on worshipping us for years on end. We gave him back more than what we took away from him. Much more in order to express to him our mercy and in order for it to be a lesson to those who are our worshippers. It's a reminder. It's a beautiful story for us to take heed from. So this shows when Allah takes something away from you. He will always give you back more than what he has taken away from you. The condition is you need to bear patience. You need to persevere. You need to continue in your worship of Allah. You don't question the decree of Allah but you understand the plan of Allah. Many of us lose things and whether it's a business, whether it's a loved one even in the form of the death like in the case of Ayyub alayhi salam. Sometimes Allah knows that this was definitely better for us. If we were patient, if we are convinced, if we become closer to Allah as a result of the loss that we suffered it was definitely a gift from Allah. And as for what we've lost it always belonged to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So we don't get distant from Allah but rather we get closer to Allah. Continue making dua. Keep on supplicating. Keep on worshiping. Keep on remembering Allah with various tasabih and various ways of remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Declare His praise, His greatness and you will see the reward will be brilliant. The reward will be brilliant and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will open the doors in the dunya and the akhirah. So may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala bless every one of us. My brothers and sisters, this is Ayyub alayhi salatu wa salam. We see how beautiful Ayyub alayhi salatu wa salam his dua was. Allah returned his family to him. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala not only returned his family to him but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doubled it, multiplied it. His health was restored. In fact, his health was restored in such a way that he looked young again and he was absolutely overwhelmed by the way Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala had blessed him. Sometimes we suffer health matters. Sometimes we suffer in our finances. We've lost loved ones.  Look at how he called out to Allah. Call out to Allah using the same words and you will find that's indeed the mercy of Allah. It's definitely the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now I want to end off today's episode by making mention of a hadith that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam has mentioned to us regarding the tests. You know people are tested. So we're tested. We call out to Allah. In the hadith of Sa'ad ibn Abi Wa Qas, radiallahu anhu narrated in Sunan al-Tirmidhi and also reported by Imam Ahmad, rahmatullahi alayhi. He says he asked the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, oh messenger, ayyu n'naasi ashaddu bala'an. Which of the people are tested the most? They have the most difficulty, hardship and calamity. So he says, al-anbiya'u, he says the prophets are tested the most. They go through the most difficulty. Thumma s'alihun, and then the pious, the righteous. They go through many tests and difficulties. Thumma al-amthal, fal-amthal. And then those who are closest to them, and then those who are closer, which means the next and the next, and the next in righteousness.  Allah says we will test you more. We will test you much more. I've been doing good deeds. I've been reading my Salah. I've been dressed appropriately. I've been behaving myself. I've been trying to please Allah.  Well, that's a sign that what you're doing is right. Because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says, go and study the lives of the prophets. Whether it is Jesus may peace be upon him, Moses may peace be upon him. Those that are, you know, the Jews and the Christians would stop at, or Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, or any of the other prophets mentioned in the Old Testament, or the Quran, or the scriptures, look at every single one of them. They had great difficulty, hardship. They were driven out of their homes in a lot of cases. They had people after them. Some of them were actually killed. They were harmed, but they were the prophets of Allah. They were the closest to Allah. It goes to show that we're on earth for a purpose. And that purpose is to worship Allah. He's going to keep testing us. You need to pass your test. So he says, A person is tested according to his level of religiousness and closeness to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So if he is strong, he's going to have more tests. When he's weak, the tests are weak as well. You know, he will not be tested in such a strong way. And then the hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam ends by saying, difficulty and hardship continues to affect a worshiper of Allah until he treads the face of the earth and all his sins have been wiped out because of the sabr that he has endured. So this is a very, very powerful hadith. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us a deep understanding, expiation of sins through the difficulty we're going through. I'll say this. Wa sallallahu wa sallam wa baraka ala nabina Muhammad. Wa sallamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa sallam.


What is going on everybody? It's Stas here. Welcome back to another video. So in today's video, which was actually supposed to come out yesterday, we're going to be talking about the top couple of stocks and ETFs that I'm personally looking to trade, ones that I'm watching here in the second week of June in 2019. We're also going to be talking about a couple of stocks and ETFs that you guys ended up calling out to me either on the comment section from Friday's video and the call-out section in our Discord group chat, or through a DM, a personal message on other social platforms. So like I mentioned guys, this video was supposed to come out yesterday, but I got a new microphone and get this guys. I plugged in the microphone. I thought it was recording and I actually recorded the entire video and I realized I didn't turn on the microphone in the input settings on my computer. So the video was literally 24 minutes long and it had no audio and I couldn't re-record it because I was busy at that point in time. So no video upload from yesterday, which is why I'm doing it right now, guys. So we're going to be talking about all of those different topics. And by the way, yeah, I got a new microphone. Like I just said, let me know down below in the comment section. What do you guys think about the audio quality? Do you notice a difference? Maybe not at all. I would love to know what you guys have to think. So let's just get into it right now, guys. The market's actually open at the point that I'm recording this video. It's about 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and the markets are absolutely roaring today. They are roaring. The Nasdaq's up almost 2% here. The S&P is going absolutely crazy. It's almost up 1% on the day-to-day and the Dow Jones is up .67%.  And let's just do a quick little market recap from the past couple of days because I haven't really talked about the markets since Friday's video. So might as well do a little recap right now for the new viewers out there, people that don't really know what's been going on. So the past five days, we've been rebounding very heavily across all of the markets, the Dow, the S&P, and the Nasdaq. Or at least the markets that I personally track on this channel. And this is mostly due to a catalyst that we saw last week regarding interest rate cuts, potential interest rate cuts here in the next couple of weeks from the Federal Reserve Chairman. This is pretty big news of a potential cut. And for all you that don't know what this will do, it's pretty much a measure in trying to or an action in trying to stimulate the economy. When the rates are going down, people are more willing to borrow. It stimulates the economy. And it also makes the stock market, as you guys can clearly see, it makes the stock market more optimistic. People want to invest more apparently now that we can see that slight news came out. The stocks are going crazy. So it obviously makes people more optimistic, right? You guys kind of have to see how the markets react to certain things. We get a slight bit of good news here and it shoots up the markets. So it just pumps a lot of optimism at this point in time. But in my opinion, there are still a lot of negative things right now in the markets. We saw a jobs report this past week that was very, very terrible. 75,000 jobs versus 180,000 jobs that were supposed to be projected. We know the trade war with China right now is going on. That's getting worse and worse and worse. And we actually got some more news regarding Trump and Mexico. The tariffs are actually not being imposed anymore because they did end up coming to an agreement. And for those of you guys that didn't know this past week, this was another catalyst to the market falling, not this past week, the week before it, and then the rate news cut came out and that shot the markets back up. And now, I guess today you can say this is also a catalyst in the market going up. And for you guys that didn't know, those tariffs were supposed to scale up to 25% in October and Mexico quickly ran, not really ran, but they quickly got to a deal with Trump regarding the illegal immigration that's been going on for Mexico into the United States. So that's kind of a little market run down right now. Again, the markets have just been crazily going up. And at this point, in my opinion, they are quite overbought. So what am I doing right now that I'm noticing the markets are quite overbought? I'm personally looking at some of these market ETFs that go up when the markets are selling off to in particular here. One, I like more than the other one because it offers a lot more value. And my personal opinion, and the index that it tracks, which we'll get into right now, is very overextended. And the index that you're looking at is the index that it tracks, which is the NASDAQ here. So tech has been going absolutely haywire. We've seen Apple, we've seen Facebook, Amazon, Google, these stocks have recovered Microsoft's hit an all time high, these stocks have gone up an exorbitant amount over these past five trading days. Bringing up the tech heavy, or bringing up the tech heavy NASDAQ index here, about 7% at this point. If we go to the five day, five minute, you guys can see from about 7,000, if you guys look literally last week, we were at $7,600, literally seven days ago on June 3. Now we're up 7.4% from that point in time in the matter of five days in the index. That's crazy. So I'm watching SQQQ, which is an ETF, a three X leverage ETF that goes up whenever the NASDAQ is selling off. So if my theory here of the market cooling off potentially plays out SQQQ, which has a ton of margin of profit opened right now, about 22, 23%, this is going to recover and rebound pretty strongly. And my goal in that particular situation would be to day trade it and grasp a pretty strong trade to the upside at that point. If the markets do see a sudden drop, a sudden sell off over the next couple of days, not saying it's going to happen right now today. Who knows guys, but it will eventually sell off a bit and this will see that spike. So this is what I'm watching. And for those of you guys that don't know, this one moves three X in the direction of the NASDAQ going down. So if the NASDAQ sold off 2%, this will be up 6%. So the other one I'm watching, it relates to the S&P is the SPXS ETF. This is very similar to the SQQQ ETF. The only difference is it tracks the S&P 500 instead of tracking the NASDAQ. So SPXS, it goes down, or rather the SPX, the index, the S&P 500 goes down 2%. SPXS is going to be up 6%. That's how it ends up moving here. So this is one that I'm watching for the potential reversal in the markets for the cooling off period that we may be seeing here in my opinion over the next couple of days. So those are two market ETFs. They move quite volatile because the markets have been quite volatile. So be very careful about these. Don't just buy them or trade them simply because I'm personally doing that. You need to understand for yourself and do your own research when it comes to trading these ETFs. So a couple of stocks that I've been getting a lot of questions on regarding, they're really stocks that have been getting affected heavily by the trade war. One of these being Alibaba and the other one being Apple. So we've noticed these two have actually rebounded very strongly over these past couple of days ever since the rate cut announcement and ever since the markets in general have just been going up very aggressively. So at this point Alibaba is looking very very nice. You can't deny the fact that the technicals on this one are looking very nice. We notice how we've broken out of the 50 simple moving average resistance here on the 180 day 4 hour chart. That's a very good sign of a reversal. Over the past couple of days we've been making higher lows. We pushed to a higher high right now. That's a very good sign of an uptrend pattern forming. So Alibaba at this point is looking very good, but the one thing that I'm not liking about it right now is the RSI is overbought. It seems very overextended at this point and an end in need of a pullback. If we do get the pullback and we retest maybe at 156, 157, that will bring down the RSI at a very healthy spot and that could open up a nice entry point for a trade. But one thing to be cautious here guys, very cautious actually, is if this trade war, if we get some news that's negative regarding the trade war, this can very easily swing down these Chinese stocks again. So if you're looking to get into Alibaba right now as a swing trade, I'd just be cautious and I would really understand the impact the trade war has in Baba. So if let's say Trump tweets something, this stock can go down 5% if it's something negative involving the tariffs with China. Let's say he bumps up the tariffs on some other goods. This can very easily drop some of these Chinese stocks and the same thing goes with Apple. And kind of the market in general right now, since it's rebounded so heavily, if the market pulls back itself, the NASDAQ, the Dow, the S&P, this can influence the Baba as well as well as Apple and a lot of these stocks that have been going up like crazy this past week, they can also end up toppling back down. So that's kind of scary for me right now and Alibaba, I don't really want to get caught in a trap. Who knows, the market could be setting us up for a trap right now, which is something that I'm being cautious about. So Alibaba at this level, don't get me wrong. Long term, I love Alibaba. I really, really do love it. The growth rates on the earnings per share year after year, the revenue year after year, it's unbelievable. This company is growing like 40, 50% year over year. Some years a lot more than that. And this is a company that's like 500 billion in market cap and they're still growing at this rate, which makes me believe this growth rate is going to continue five years from now, which in turn will turn the stock price a lot higher than it is right now. So for a long-term investment, I love Alibaba, but short-term right now, I still think there's a lot of tensions with China, the US that could still fluctuate these stocks, which I'm being very careful on. And the same thing with Apple, right? A lot of questions today and over this past week about Apple, it's very overbought. We're trending right under the 180 SMA resistance as well as under a 195 level of resistance. The Nasdaq's been going crazy. I think it needs to cool off. If it does cool off, this stock will most likely see a cool off period as well, dropping it from where it is right now. And this is something that I wouldn't really hop into me personally right now. And all the technicals are just not looking too good. At this point, this would just be a FOMO trade for me, which is something that I avoid, fear of missing out. Literally, this is a point in time where if I got in, I'm literally hoping that it goes up more, which is A, a bit irrational. And I'd be hoping like, okay, I hope I can grab some more things here, profits here before missing out. It's just not something that I'm personally into doing here in terms of my trading style. So those are Apple and Alibaba. Another one that I've been getting questions on is 3M, which has actually been recovering very nicely as well. And you notice the trend here amongst these stocks, guys, these stocks have been recovering because the market has been recovering. So this could be a trap or this could be the reversal to all-time highs again. I don't know. Nobody out there really knows. And if they told you that they know, they're lying to you guys because no one can predict the future, right? But all we can do is predict what we're seeing from these technicals and what we see from past price movements. So we bottomed out at 160. And again, we've been recovering as the markets have been going up. Notice how 3M as well is very, very overbought. We are breaking out of that 50 simple moving average resistance here, which is very good. But a negative thing is that 3M gets a lot of their sales from China, like 20% to 30% of their sales, which means they have a lot of exposure to China. So this trade war, the trade issues right now, this is going to affect 3M stock price and company as well, which is why if you're looking at a short-term trade that, that's very, very difficult because it can swing up, it can swing down and be very, very volatile, which makes it difficult to predict, right? If you try to swing trade a company that has no business in China, that would be probably a bit easier, right? But these are very, very tricky. 3M, Baba, Apple, especially these past couple of weeks. So that is kind of what I'm looking at for 3M. A crude oil player right now is slowly setting up. We're noticing a potential breakout here on crude oil above this 50 simple moving average resistance. I did talk about this in yesterday's video, last night's video, but I didn't end up uploading it, obviously, because of the mic situation. But I'll just talk about it here again, obviously, because it didn't get out to you guys. But crude oil has been rejected by this 50 SMA over the past couple of weeks here. Notice how the rejection here, the rejection here. And now we're at a point in time where two things can happen here. If we break out of that 50 SMA, that's a very bullish move on crude oil. We may be going up from there. Let's say we slowly get rejected here. Let's say the market start to dump, although they're not completely correlated to the market, you guys can see as the market sold off, crude oil sold off as well. So let's say market sell off, that could trigger a sell off on crude oil as well. We start to dump getting rejected by the 50 SMA. That could be a bearish sell off sign. So two ETFs I'm watching are DWT here and UWT. DWT is going up whenever crude oil is going down at a 3x rate. So if crude oil sells off by 2%, DWT is going to be up 6%, right? 3x rate. UWT is going up whenever crude oil is going up and it goes up 3x and whenever crude oil is up 2%, UWT is going to be up 6%, right? So the breakout here above the 50 SMA on UWT would issue a breakout signal in my personal opinion. So I'm watching those two very closely. We're talking, or we did talk about gold in yesterday's video, but I didn't upload it again. So I figured why not talk to you guys about it right now. Gold ended up selling off from 1350 down to 1330. This is a level where it seems like it's holding as of right now. We're down about 13 points on gold, down about 1%. We got the pullback that we needed because we were very overheated on gold. The RSI was extremely overbought, got that pullback. So this could be a time where we might continue running up here on gold. But let's say we end up breaking the support, start to get into the 1320s level. We may be going back down to 1320 and potentially retesting that 50 simple moving average that you guys see here right now. Let's say we break that level, that's going to be pretty bearish in my opinion. We might be going back down to the lower 1300 levels. So if we hold 1330 here, guys, JNUG is going to be great. In my opinion, it goes up whenever gold is going up. Let's say we break that 1330 level on gold. JDST is going to be one that I'm watching. As you guys can see, it already gapped up today. It's up 7%. This may continue. It's a little up rally here if gold continues to sell off.  And guys, I'm just looking to see if this market rally is going to continue. Honestly, I don't know if it can keep it up at this pace, moving to 1%, 2% every single day. It's going to cool off. And I want to see in particular, if the tech sector, if these tech stocks, like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, are these going to cool off because they've been going absolutely bananas. And you see all of them are over bought right now. So it worries me. I don't want to get caught into a trap here. And I'm just going to be patient for a lot of this week, guys. Already today, I haven't seen much action in my portfolio. I'm pretty much just playing it safe at this point. And some other stocks, Tesla, Tesla's been the talk of the town recently, Tesla, TSLA. That one's up another 6% today, up another $11. This one's up almost like $40. Yeah, $40 in the span of a week. This one's really hot right now. This one's really overbought. We're getting to that 180 SMA resistance here, which if we break out of that, that can be a huge reversal on Tesla. But like I mentioned in a bunch of my videos, guys, the narrative on Tesla right now is very negative. Media doesn't like it. Analysts are downgrading it. Somebody in the media was saying an analyst was saying $10 stock price on Tesla. That is very, very negative. And when people out in the markets, retail investors, regular Joe's, traders, professional investors, whatever, people hear this stuff and they take it as being true and the stock just gets battered down and down and down. Even if the news, even if the media, what they're saying is not completely true, people do listen and take what they say as being 100% true. So now the stock is pretty much just recovering from a much, much needed recovery because it was beaten down so bad. Now I'm just looking to see what we're going to do at this point. I think if we see a positive narrative change here, let's say a good earnings report, production numbers, Shanghai factory numbers, some of these future numbers, if they start to get impressive, if they start to grow, maybe they turn a profit, that can change the narrative on Tesla in the next couple of quarters. I'm really excited to see how that ends up turning out. So that's pretty much it for this quick little update video. What I'm watching for this upcoming week, guys, it's a lot of me just being patient and seeing what the market is going to do. So I hope you all enjoyed the video. If you did, feel free to hit that like button, drop a comment down below, subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. I'll catch you all in the video later today. Check out the YouTube passive income video if you guys want to see a further channel announcement, in my opinion, on the YouTube passive income model. What do I think about that? I'll catch you all again in today's later video. Peace out, guys.


Welcome to WRC 19, the World Ready Communication Conference here in Shamashake in Egypt, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Cindy Cook, who is the deputy head of the delegation of Canada, as well as being chair of the ad hoc group of the plenary, and Luciana Camargos, who is a member of the Brazilian delegation, as well as being co-chair of the Network of Women. Luciana, Cindy, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now I'd like to start off by asking you, Cindy, perhaps that you could tell us a little bit about a declaration that has happened here at WRC 19. It's quite a unique declaration and perhaps you could give us a little insight into what's being declared here. Certainly. So there was an input contribution from many countries that was actually spearheaded by Luciana and her co-chair, Jennifer Manor, to raise awareness of gender equality and parity and balance. And I was very fortunate to be chosen as the chairman of the ad hoc group that took a look at that document and made edits to it and then moved it up to plenary for approval today. So the declaration is about raising awareness about the gender issues, about declaring and trying to move the ITUR to incorporate more gender mainstreaming in its hiring processes and its day-to-day work, not just at the Bureau but also by its membership and participants in the meetings. And then setting a plan forward for what can we do going forward. So inviting administrations to consider as well a possible resolution for the next cycle on the same topic and as well asking the Radio Communications Bureau to keep track of some of the statistics around gender. And Luciana, you've been involved with the network of women fighting for women to be seen and heard here at Radio Communication events. How do you feel now that this declaration has been made? For me it's a great victory. I have co-chaired in this cycle the network of women with Jennifer Manor and it's been great throughout the meetings, throughout the ITUR meetings and also at CPM and trying to pair some mentors with some mentees and to basically guide and try to help the newcomers to the ITU. And this work has been very, very, very good but we still see not a big participation of women in the delegations. In this conference we're only 18% and in chairmanship roles it's even less. In heads of delegation it's even less, although we do have some very big delegations here with heads of tel who are women. So for us this is a really big step in the right direction to be able to bring more women delegates to these meetings, especially as a commitment from the Member States to do that, but also as a commitment from the Bureau to look into more women into their hiring as well. So I think it's many elements, as Cindy was saying, it's a many, many elements declaration. Cindy, what do you hope that this declaration will achieve for the work of the ITU Radio Communications sector in real terms? So in real terms, as Luciana was saying, obviously we want to try and increase the percentage of women that are participating in the work in all levels of the work. So as delegates to the meetings who are taking on the technical roles, becoming the technical experts on a topic and fighting those issues and bringing them forward, but also in the leadership roles, leadership roles within the delegations, leadership roles within the ITU are within the Bureau itself. I think as well, though, part of the declaration is trying to encourage Member States to increase the numbers of girls that are taking on the ICT education. Get more girls into STEM, increase the number of girls and women in the field. And I think that's important and part of what I hope will come out of this resolution, or the story of this declaration as well, is that we will get more of a female perspective around radio communications. Now, Luciana, let's talk about the network of women, something that you've been involved with as a mentor and involved as a co-chair as well. Are you encouraged about the way that the ITU radio communication sector is going? Yes, very much so. I think it's really important to highlight the work that Hanan and Asiri has done from the BR. She's been taking on so much in terms of launching this program and getting the mentees and the mentors to register and to pair them together. It's really important. When I started 20 years ago, I navigated through the ITU corridors myself, and it's daunting. It's really difficult to understand what is going on and there's so many meetings and so many color documents. And having someone to help guide you through this, especially if you come from a smaller delegation, makes the whole difference. And I have feedback from the mentors and from the mentees that they're both enjoying the experience a lot because the mentors learn a lot from the mentees as well. Cindy, finally, I wanted to ask you, what do you think is most needed when it comes to ensuring that more women play a leadership role in radio communications? I think it's encouragement and opportunities. So one part of the declaration asks for women to be given more opportunities where they can learn and where they can grow in their efforts. And I think that's really important. I think if we're going to move people, all people, including women, up through the ranks of the leadership ranks, they need to be given some opportunities to learn what it's like to be a chairman, to learn what it's like to take the floor, to progress in their efforts within the ITUR. And so I think those opportunities are what's really important. And as people gain confidence in their abilities, they take on even larger roles with more responsibility, and then they will gradually move their way up. So opportunity is my word. And Luciana, is a mentor seeing people come from the ground up? Yes, absolutely. It's really rewarding to see that starting from presenting input contributions, she may be taking a chairman position from a small drafting group and then taking walking their way up through the ITU. And that's what we would like to see. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us in the studio. I know it's been a really busy time here in the last week of WRC. We've managed to rush you in here. But thanks very much indeed. And very best of luck for the end of the conference. Great news about this declaration. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Hello and welcome back to Radio Rothbard. I'm Ryan McMacon. I'm a senior editor with the Mises Institute and with me as always as though Bishop, my associate editor. Let's talk about Congress a little bit today. It's 2023. The new year begins. The new members of Congress showed up. They're trying to elect a Speaker of the House. And we're going to talk a little bit about what they should actually do this year. And we're even going to try and focus on things that could actually happen. And at least that there's like some conceivable way they might occur. But first, let's just talk about what the House is doing today. It's the 5th of January. The House is currently on its 7th ballot to try and elect a Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who just assumed he would sail in as speakers had to submit to multiple ballots. So apparently this hasn't happened since 1923, 100 years ago. But I wanted to just first of all oppose the narrative that this shows that Congress is broken. And there's the claims that, oh, it's embarrassing. They should have just picked somebody ahead of time. How crazy that you would have to actually have votes on things in Congress to elect the leadership. But of course, in reality, well-functioning legislatures, they have dissent, they have debates, they have multiple votes on things that require concessions and working out of compromises. This whole idea that everything that happens in Congress should be scripted ahead of time, that we should do it like the Democrats do it and just do everything by acclamation and have the leadership completely dictate everything. That's not how a good legislature should run. There should be disagreements. There should be what's going on now. And the fact that we so rarely seize it is a sign that there's something wrong with Congress. So I'm happy to see it, even though I don't personally really have a very strong opinion about whether McCarthy becomes Speaker or not. I think you could make arguments on both sides of that. But it's good that this is happening. So I'm happy to see that here we are several days later and the House is having to actually publicly debate, as is the role of the House of Representatives, their leadership positions. And you'd expect a battle on this in particular after such an underperforming midterm with all the problems the Republicans had. It is interesting to see the difference in the power that a Mitch McConnell has where he was able to kind of easily skate through the Senate majority battle there after a very brief, quickly ended rebellion by Rick Scott and a few allies there. Then you actually had someone who was actively trying to become Speaker. Here, there is no main candidate of leading the opposition. You have Brian and Donald's right now of Florida. Right now, as we're recording this, where we're on the seventh vote, I have no reason to think that this one's going to do it. So we have a young congressman who I don't think anyone really expects to be a serious candidate who has become the centralizing figure right now of the opposition. They try to get Jim Jordan, who is kind of a unique figure in this, where he has. He kind of checks those different boxes that you would need to have that position of Speaker. He's a good fundraiser. He's got respect, Yada. But again, it's just it's good to see that there is still a spark of some degree of rebellion here. You had 20 members is more than people were predicting just last week. There are still plenty of people. Plenty of the Republicans who are not particularly big Kevin McCarthy fans. Thomas Massey, for example, a friend of the Institute, he has voted with Kevin McCarthy so far through these seven ballots there. But yeah, it's the people freaking out about this is comical. The other side of it, though, is it's a very interesting reflection on the role that Donald Trump still has within the Republican Party, because he has been doubling down on his support of Kevin McCarthy. You have a lot of kind of the generic pop conservative Trump voices out there like your Sean Hannity's like your Mark Levin's and this crowd of conservative grifters that have been trying to beat over the head and mocking the Matt Gaetzes of the world. You have Dan Crenshaw, who was using nothing short of calling these people terrorists and, you know, evoking George W. Bush, you know, you're either with this or against this sort of mentality here. And again, kudos to, again, a time where there's very little in national Republican politics that is genuinely surprising with the legislative body. I mean, props to get 20 members willing to stand up. Because again, the process, the procedure of the operations of the House have changed significantly in recent years. You know, for all the problems that we've had in a very long time in this country for all of the, you know, the the pork and excesses of 20th century spending, the mechanics of how the House has been operating its business is something that Justin Amash has been very good at articulating for quite a while. He actually showed up in Congress yesterday trying to pitch himself as a nonpartisan speaker. Surprise, surprise. I don't think he got much traction on that. But he's been talking about the breakdown and procedure that really amplified during the Bainer years, particularly Paul Ryan, who replaced Bainer after Kevin McCarthy shot himself in the foot back in the day on that. So again, it's the fact that there's genuine uncertainty is a good thing. We like a little chaos. Best of all, it means that there's no House business going on. So as far as I'm concerned, I mean, they should be voting on speakers the entire year. That would be an upgrade over your average business of the people's House. Well, that brings us a little to what these concessions are, right, that they're trying to get out of McCarthy. And I agree with a bit with Tucker Carlson. I mean, if these 20 get what they want out of the concessions, well, then fine, let McCarthy be speaker, whatever. But the concessions I do think are very important. And for those who don't pay close attention to this stuff, the sorts of changes that really took place over the last 20 years are changes that have really centralized power in Congress in leadership. So I remember I was shocked when I learned a lot more about how Congress functioned because even though I studied it in graduate school, it was all very academic. But then I went to work at a state legislature and the Colorado legislature functions much more closely the way a legislature supposed to function and that there they bring legislation you're in fact guaranteed to get a vote on every bill going forward because you're limited to the number of bills you can do per session. So you can you can put up five bills per session you're guaranteed at least a committee hearing on all those bills leadership can't just decide hey I don't like your bill it'll never get a hearing. That's how it works in Congress. Also, it can it can if it makes out of committee, if they can go to the floor where people were anybody can offer an amendment on it and then there's actual debate. Again, the leadership can't just say you'll never get a vote if I decide you can't get a vote. And so it's this much more fluid free process where all the members actually can represent their constituents offer amendments, oppose bills, call for floor votes, all of those so that you're on the record as to how you voted. The way Congress functions now is that's also tightly controlled by the leadership and so so much legislation never sees the light of day never gets a vote if leadership doesn't like it. And what they do then is cram all of the legislation that leadership likes into these huge omnibus bills that then you're not allowed to amend on the floor and so that's just 20 years ago. That was very different and if we look back to the 90s like when it was the Republican Congress after 95 with Clinton, boy by today's standards like a free for all. And that was back in the day when Ron Paul would attempt to control a bit how the executive branch would spend money by affecting and amending where this money would go. That was through the appropriations bills. Ridiculously, the quote unquote libertarians thought this was a reason to oppose Ron Paul because he was trying to direct funding instead of just letting the president decide where every dime went. It's absurd that that Paul was criticized for for that sort of thing, but that's how Congress was functioning 25 years ago and the way it should be functioning now in fact much more free and easy than even in the 90s. And so they're trying to get some concessions from McCarthy to allow some actual floor amendments on these big omnibus bills as well as making it easier to call for vacating the chair for the speaker. And that's a couple of the concessions they want. It's all to the best that these sorts of things are happening and I hope they get success. I mean, if McCarthy gets in that fine, but those those concessions I think are pretty essential. When it's also great just to see how blunt the rhetoric about Kevin McCarthy is.  But, you know, he's out there saying that Kevin McCarthy has no ideology. He has sold his soul throughout his entire congressional career. The need for having, you know, that that a one of the hold ups in brokering a deal is the lack of faith that they have and Kevin McCarthy's integrity to hold up these things. All of this is obviously true. It's just very unusual to see it said so explicitly, which which is nice and refreshing. And there there are. I think there's there's two kind of different camps, I think as well going on here and I think both are very positive. One is it's it's the Matt Gaetz group. And he kind of has his followers and a plane of Luna, who is a young congresswoman from Florida that just got elected replaced Charlie Christ in the district down in the Tampa area. You have again, Byron Daniels, who's relatively new Florida congressman. You have Lauren Boebert, who squeaked through her election over in your neck of the woods in Colorado. Their focus is again, really trying to give teeth to the investigative deep state sort of of Trump era sort of rhetoric that the right has. And then the other side, you have people like Chip Roy, who are very serious. I think mainly motivated by the absurdities of the omnibus bills that you were talking about earlier, the gigantic spending bill that it just went through DC last month. And part of the point, you know, one of their arguments is that what difference does it really make here? You know, if if if, you know, when the majority of the Republican caucus has no problem deciding with Democrats to get this, you know, your typical uniparty sort of legislation in here. Then why shouldn't we, you know, we give away all of our leverage if we hold this up right now. And so again, it is a very interesting way where the little minor things, the procedure and really the rules writing process, you know, can really make some dense into how this body theoretically functions. Again, having that that potential out there, because that that's the other side of it is that the out to propose a vacate the chair motion that was used. That's how they got rid of John Boehner in the first place back in 2016. That's what was the first amendment happened in 100 years. When you have the margins of this narrow, even if Kevin McCarthy is able to squeak through, there is very much a very real possibility to bring this as a specter in the future. I mean, Boehner had survived similar motions leading up to that successful, you know, outing ousting there. So this is a this is a something that it could linger over this Congress going through to 2024. And so again, that's that's it will be interesting to see where do these individuals finalize in the stand that can get support. And I know we're going to be discussing certain things that we might be able to help help crowdsource. Just in case Matt Gates is out here watching this. So some lines in the sand that would be worth taking on over the next couple of years. Well, let's look at a few things that maybe Congress once they get their speaker should get to just because, you know, we get off. We get questions all the time. Well, what what should we do now? These are very moderate picks, right? Obviously, we have plenty more radical views about what needs to happen in terms of radical decentralization and major defunding of military operations and stuff. But this is all just stuff chipping away at at the problem. So they should be viewed as viewed as all just the steps in the right direction, not as like our ideal legislative agenda. But the first that just has to be covered is Congress, the House, they got to stop central bank digital currencies. That's going to be my number one here today, which is this is a terrible, terrible idea. And Neil Kashkari actually, I don't know misspoke was mistakenly honest talking about digital currencies last year when asked about it and noted that the only advantages you really get from digital currencies is they allow the central government to monitor people to impose negative interest rates to really control people spending and to really help set up a spy state. And he was saying that people who want digital currencies, they say, oh, look, China's doing it. He said and he said, well, I could see why China would want to do it because China wants to monitor and control all of its people. And that's what digital currencies are good for. Very weird that Kashkari was just sounding all libertarian on this, but he's, of course, absolutely correct. And he was saying, well, what can you do with digital currencies that I can't do with Venmo right now, right? And with PayPal, I can send money across state across international lines to you without incurring huge fees or anything like that. And so how does digital currencies improve that what you're seeing now is now claims and I've seen in the Wall Street Journal and in other mainstream stuff that oh, we need digital currencies or else the Chinese will be able to take over the world and prevent the dollar from continuing to be the world's reserve currency. And so this is a narrative and a line that's getting out there. And that was really pushed by a committee that Maxine Waters had where she had a bunch of speakers from these center left think tank type places. And they all agreed we all need digital currencies or China's going to be able to become more powerful geopolitically. So here we are yet again with Washington people telling us that we need to adopt basically a totalitarian sort of money that can be controlled from the center or else our international enemies win. It's the same usual Cold War garbage about how we need to put freedom on hold or else foreign enemies will conquer us. And so boy, we need to reject that in the house just needs to do everything as it can to prevent the Fed from moving forward on any sort of digital currency. You're right. The committee in the house that deals with this financial services committee. It's the same committee that Ron Paul was on. I served as a staffer on there for a few years. And this is something where there's been a lot of traction in the past for various types of kind of Fed reform things on the Republican side. Out of the Fed has passed several times through the House, never gotten through the Senate. They've tried some attempts at rules based monetary policy, all of which is, in my opinion, a waste of time. And again, it's never gotten through the Senate because the powers that be have a lot of stronger grasp on our stronger hold on keeping anything that infringes upon the independence, that sacred independence of the Fed. But I do think that this is something that can gain some real traction.  It's also ties into, I mean, one of the top priorities Republicans have claimed to have going into this cycle has been trying to reverse the, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of new IRS agents to go over the Venmo, Cash App, you know, trying to crack down on transactions of, you know, over $600 or so. There's already sort of a running message that Republicans have had kind of touching on this issue, trying to really make this one of the lines of the stand to attach to, you know, next time they have to pass through some sort of bloated, absurd, you know, insane spending bill. This is precisely one of the things that they can try to get stapled into it. I'm talking to Peter Sainange, former Mises fellow, who is doing some great work with heritage now on this issue. Because, you know, this is one of the most important, I think, you know, this is one of the institutional changes of how the Fed could become even worse than it already is. And, you know, I think there really is the opportunity to make some actual positive advancement on this as a political issue. So correct me if I'm wrong, though, but the House could, by itself, obstruct the movement towards digital currencies by the Fed, or they need more than that? Unfortunately, I think ultimately this is something that's going to require active legislation to firmly rein in. You kind of set a firm fire line there that you can't do this.  But the Fed currently is authorized to do, you know, and they've been doing test cases for CDC, or central bank digital currencies already. They're going to have to actively try to do something that prevents them from doing that.  And I think that's, you know, getting traction for that is the only way we're going to get anything done of any significance anyway. Anything that actually looks like serious reform is going to be DOA if it, by the time it gets to the Democrats, send in nothing else. Okay. Well, let's move on to number two then. This one's just to defund the war in Ukraine, or just cut defense spending in general. Now, obviously you're not going to get much traction from that from the center, right? Both, center right and center left. They love it.  I think as the economy worsens, Americans will see what a humongous waste of money this is. They'll figure out that Russia has no threat to the United States unless the U.S. provokes a nuclear war with them. And you can also leverage the issue of if people are going to go on and on about what a threat China is. Well, obviously wasting all your strategic energy in Ukraine is not going to help that at all. And I think maybe there's some potential for conservatives to ally with the far left on the Ukraine issue and to work their way around the center on this to at least get some concessions to scale back on that particular military operation. Obviously that's going to require opposing the White House. As we saw Bernie Sanders usual turncoat that he is backed off immediately with his attempt to limit spending and support for the Yemen starvation campaign by Saudi Arabia when just Biden asked him to stop. So he did that, so being the usual fake civil liberties guy that Bernie is, he folded on that. But I think there's probably some principled leftists maybe that she could be able to ally with this. And maybe at least ring some concessions out of the administration and congressional leadership on this issue. But boy, they really, if they want to be ahead of the curve, they need to start dealing with this now unless they just want to keep doubling down on just giving free money to Ukraine, expanding the U.S.'s strategic exposure worldwide just as the global economy is starting to turn south. Meanwhile, by the way, Russia, their trade balance is just improving for themselves. They're actually flush with cash in spite of all what you hear about how Russia is being hurt so badly by these sanctions. And yeah, they'd rather the sanctions not be there. It's not like they're not affecting them at all. But they're used to their standard of living being garbage. And so I wonder how much Americans are going to want to adopt more of that in order to stick it to the Russians. And so why not be ahead of the curve on that and start talking more sense on the Ukraine war now? And so just cut defense spending just overall. Okay, don't tie it to cutting welfare spending or something that. Just cut federal spending. And a good place to do that where you can get the left on board is on defense spending. Normally they play this game or will only allow some moderation and defense spending increase. If you allow us to cut welfare spending, stop that game. Just cut federal spending overall. A good place to start is with defense. And then sure, cut other types of spending later. But as inflation continues to be fueled by ongoing deficit spending, just stop. Just start reeling back on some of this federal spending and do it now. And if you got to do it with defense spending, great. Of course, one of the last things that Congress did last cycle and right before Christmas, in that gigantic almost $2 trillion omnibus bill was $45 billion, I believe, for Ukraine. It was higher than what the Biden administration was asking for, right? So Congress was going up and beyond the call of duty there. And of course, it's been very fun to see. One of the photos used the most to lampoon Kevin McCarthy during his continued failed run is the look of him with his Ukraine flag pin and blue and yellow handkerchief in his pocket. And that's been one of the very interesting actors within the House leadership battle has been Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been not only a voter in favor of Kevin McCarthy, a speaker, but a very outspoken defender and critic of the Matt Gaetz led rebellion. And part of that is her aim to try to collect these chips with the hope that it will pay off to increase at the very least oversight of future Ukrainian funds. If not outright, you know, start winding down the money being spent. Again, the problem is Matt Gaetz has repeatedly said as you can't trust Kevin McCarthy for any of this sort of stuff. But that's precisely why they moved up the timetable to try to get this Ukrainian funding through last cycle. So it'll be interesting to see next time, you know, does Zelensky come hat in hand asking for more money from the U.S. You know, but the problem is those that while there is there is a growing coalition on the right to address these issues. I mean, the beyond before the Bernie complete embarrassing surrender on the Yemen war resolution where we're getting. And that's that's something that in the past has been promoted as much by Mike Lee of Utah as Bernie Sanders from Vermont. But you had a coalition of, you know, the progressive squad types in the house, you know, starting saying, hey, look, we kind of need a wind down plan in Ukraine. And by the time that letter went out, I believe within 48 hours, not only had that been walked back by the members of Congress, but they threw the staffer under the bus. I mean, it was just, I mean, it was one of the most embarrassing turnabouts that I've seen in a long time, which again, it goes to kind of the very strong discipline the Democrats have in the ranks. Surprise, surprise with all these, these rhetorical radicals out there. It's funny how they never quite, you know, show the same sort of Mandel that you're seeing in the House rebellion right now. But unfortunately, I think this is something that the Uniparty is still strong on this issue, unfortunately. Yes, very much so. But yeah, so this is a long shot, but at least maybe rain in some of the increases in spending on this. Because yeah, things do get out of hand and let's, the United States can't afford it, right? Even though, well, the feds checking up on every 600 bucks you spent on Venmo, the Pentagon has lost trillions of dollars. And so that's just basically where we are right now. And it's funny, like, I mean, some of the scars that like still haunts, you know, that parasitic class of, you know, multi-decade DC staffer is the old sequestration, spending limitation that that was kind of the one big triumph of the Tea Party Age, where they kind of reined in both military and some social spending increases. And the idea at the time was, oh, well, we've created this pact, you know, it's never going to happen because neither side's happy with these cuts. And so that kind of forced us to the deal.  It was very cute where Congress kept like creating these deadlines that like, oh, certainly no one wants this.   And so the end result would come in. People are still terrified. They're still haunted by the memory of, again, these very slow, these very just these reductions in increases of military spending and so like, it's that, that's the scariest ghost in DC. Once again, just shows the absurdity of everything going on up there. All right. Well, number three is the GOP should just come out and say they're not going to offer any federal legislation on abortion. Now, of course, this has nothing to do with whether you like abortion or not. This just has to do with, are you committed to decentralization, the 10th amendment to recognizing that there's nothing in the Constitution that allows any federal legislation on abortion whatsoever. And also the political stupidity of Lindsey Graham's move right before the last election to start talking about how he was going to pass new legislation, imposing federal preemption on state governments as to what they could do in terms of their own abortion policy. So we had years of the better guys in the GOP saying, oh, it's a state matter. We need to get the federal government out of it, overturn Roe v. Wade, turn it back to the states as had always been the case before 1973. So you finally get that, finally, after 50 years. And then what do they do? You got Lindsey Graham up there saying, yep, I'm going to scare the bejesus out of sort of center left voters nationwide and tell them that no matter what state they live in, we're going to start passing federal legislation because it turns out it wasn't a state matter over after all. We just wanted Roe v. Wade so that we could start imposing our own legislation.  And just stop, just say, it's a state matter. We mean it. We were serious and there's not going to be any federal legislation. Now, of course, obviously they should stop any federal funding of abortion or anything like that, but that's different from what they were talking about doing. That also just takes it away from being a federal issue. So when you get like voters in Illinois or whatever talking about how they're trying to try to take your rights away in Washington, actually that has nothing to do with it if you live in Illinois or California or whatever. It's up to your state legislature as to whether abortion is legal there or not. It just shouldn't even be a federal issue and they shouldn't allow the left to federalize the issue for the next election either. Right. And I think, unfortunately, it became very clear that there were a large percentage of Americans that just the specter of abortion access mattered more to them than $5 gasoline and real economic hardship. Taking that off the table as on the federal level, an attempt to de-escalate a little bit some of the cultural aspect. I do think it's something that have some, not only is it the proper thing to do and just in terms of more Washington interferes in the sort of stuff, the worst we all are, but I think it's also just political savvy at this point. So that's the sort of thing where I wouldn't be surprised at all if we end up seeing this going into the 2024 cycle. And moving on to number four, the church committee to investigate, to a new church committee to investigate the FBI. So for those of you who don't keep up with this sort of thing. So back in the mid-70s, in 1975, there was a Senate committee called the Church Committee and there was a House equivalent also where the mid-70s were actually a good time in that we were coming out of Watergate and the Vietnam War and it was starting to be recognized that the CIA and the FBI to a slightly lesser extent then had become very much involved in meddling in the affairs of domestic politics. And so you would hear about all these, all this stuff that you were told were conspiracy theories five or 10 years earlier, such as all these CIA experiments on people like MKUltra and then you had the co-intel pro program, which was all there to basically just control people to infiltrate private organizations with federal agents in order to spy on them. This was regarded by an earlier generation of Americans as a horrible thing. Now ever since 9-11 and Americans all thought USA Patriot Act was a great idea and domestic spying is wonderful, back then when you had the church committee going on it exposed the fact that you had telecommunications companies conspiring with the deep state to feed information about private citizens to the executive branch and people thought that was a bad thing back then. And I guess a lot of people still believe that stuff isn't that bad or isn't going on or that the CIA and the FBI have only your best interests at heart and so this country badly needs a new iteration of the church committee and there have been some suggestions then that something McCarthy should be forced to do as one of his concessions is then to allow one of these committees to be informed and that ideally even Thomas Massey be the chair of the committee at least in the house and so with their subpoena power then we would get to see finally all these FBI agents placed up there forced to take the fifth or I guess some will lie under oath and then just really talk about what the FBI has been doing to people and how much it's been interfering in elections how much it's been demanding information from companies like Facebook and Twitter and intervening in those organizations and doing all those things that you're told are conspiracy theories but which if the usual pattern follows everything that's a conspiracy theory today as far as the CIA goes ten years from now turns out to just be something that was happening and that seems to be accelerating and seems to be the truth more and more and so absolutely it would be wonderful to have a committee like that and to further disabuse people especially conservatives of this idea that intelligence agencies are on the side of the American people and just trying to help you absolutely and it was Tucker Carlson that explicitly suggested both this and Thomas Massey as a potential chair for this which again I just chose to agree to which has become I think a very very mainstream issue on the right it's something that again you're talking with members of my local party there's no trust at all for the FBI for such a thorough investigation and I think ultimately this is something that to me should be one of the easy easy outs here and again if they want to end up giving one of the if they need to broker a deal with some of these members let Matt Gates chair it even too if that will kind of help bring him in the fold I think there is the potential for if you combine that with subpoena powers that the House has if you have a serious investigation which itself is a larger question then getting one in the first place right after the Republicans in particular are very good at holding multi-year long hearings and investigations with nothing to show for it Trey Gowdy and the Benghazi hearings are a great example of that this is something that it is definitely needed in this country the faith in the feds is at a very very low point it has good politics at this point for the right and again this is something that should absolutely be on the table and something that I have some optimism that so long as you don't kind of get something going the complete other way where McCarthy ends up making a deal with Democrats or something that leads to the moderate's hand being strengthened I think this is something that very much could get done any sort of compromise at the leadership level I think all of that's a good start then for Congress in 2023 but some of it will depend on ringing these extra concessions out of McCarthy and also really just holding his feet to the fire as you say which is ironically helped a little bit by the fact that the GOP majority so slim because it limits the speaker's power significantly and maybe you could actually expect a little bit better behavior from the Dems side when they don't have the speakership and are less able to dole out favors to their members and impose party discipline with as much in terms of majority committee assignments and that sort of thing but we'll see and once now here in about five minutes after we wrap this up I'll go back and see if they're already in the midst of an eighth vote for the speaker and then we'll know more maybe we'll know more by tomorrow maybe by the time this thing posts we'll do a census and dole out all of these concessions but we shall see and so fourth though Bishop thank you very much for joining us today here on Radio Rothbard and we'll see you next time


Just gotta gotta see the film and review it We got I got to go over and check the film But I do know we had a lot of especially in the beginning of the game a lot of pre snap penalties back this up We had good situations End up, you know pushing back whether second down or third down But those pre snap penalties to get started we can't start like that and definitely doesn't allow us to get rolling You guys got that big push It felt like in the stadium everybody felt like it was gonna happen at that point Just uh, just gotta keep keep making those plays being able to get the get the ball and the playmaker sands being able to make Guys miss and get guys going with this chair trailing myself Hooper Derek guys gotta get the touches and get the energy going feel like you left something on the table today Like a missed opportunity. Yeah, I'll say so we lost Thank you. Yeah, you know, we didn't find a way for us to score touchdowns in the red zone That's something that we need to find a way for us to do So we got to talk about it and watch the film and figure out how to find a way for us to be able to do that Yeah, no not necessarily we just need to find a way to score test on the red zone That's something that we as offense just need to get better at so we're gonna like I said You just go through the film get better at practice and find a way to overcome that and be better next week I mean it's disappointing whenever you lose, you know because the NFL we're all competitive We're all the most competitive people in the entire world So losing any game is tough But you got to look your wounds you got to find a way to come back and compete next week cuz the NFL No, it doesn't stop for anyone Yeah, it was pretty frustrating because that's kind of been our strength, you know all year But we did we just we just gave up page. You know, we didn't show up on a third down You got to watch the film to see what we get better at Burrow, you know his ability to just kind of hang in there and make plays even though You know, you're knocking him around a little bit. What's that say about him? I guess He's tough, you know We've been knew that you know since he's gotten to me He's been a guy that's always gonna come back no matter if he's getting sacked or you know He turns baller.  You know, it's always tough, you know We just wanted to keep that momentum going, you know, we say it's thought of a new season today Came up short. We just got to go and make the corrections and we'll be back Yeah, I was gonna say how quickly do you have to flush this and just you know get ready focus for next week We'll flush it tomorrow.  I said just football. I said I just got to play aggressive It's just got to be more smart. I'll say Overall, their their ability to stay on the field especially in those third and long is how frustrating was that? I would say most of the part with the defense that was all about just getting out third down And I feel like Rudy and it's cute that well. We're just getting out third down So I feel like going back tomorrow.  I would say Um Obviously tough tough loss, but you got it back and close just get ready for next week. Oh, yes, most definitely um, it's great I mean, we gonna want to take this a lot to this end this LL and we'll learn from it It's just gone learn from mama's stage tomorrow. It's going going to our next game. I would say