to carry out our deployment in all 260 districts in the country. And so currently, as we speak, yes, as we had earlier on deployed for HIV, we now also have TB Trapper running in all 216 districts of Ghana. Now, what were some of the objectives we thought to achieve? When we did this deployment, there were two key issues. And these issues were meant to solve problems for health information management, especially when it comes to omissions and errors during data collection and entry. And that is a problem that a traditional data capture using the Trapper system is able to help us resolve a lot more effectively. So key things we needed to solve was to introduce this automated traditional data collection system, and then use it to be able to generate our routine data indicators across all the levels of care. And these objectives were directly in line with the mandate of the Ghana Health Service for Insurance Investments. And so we had a buy-in from the managers across the service, and we were able to proceed with this deployment. As part of our deployment strategy, we were able to do some detailed documentation, including the development of a manual that guided end users on how to actually use the TB Trapper. Now, one of the critical things that we communicated during the training session was to provide hands-on training, because it's critical that during these trainings you are able to convince yourself that end users are able to use the system as you have taught them. So, practical sessions were organized during this training, where officers had the opportunity to actually even carry their live TV registers that have live data to the training sessions, and throughout the training sessions they were able to use this live data to purchase how to use the system. And then also during these training sessions, we were able to plan a routine monitoring research so that we are able to support the teams as we go back to the available utilities to continue to purchase data using the Trapper system. Another thing that we also were able to do was to do some post-training sessions, held with the program officers and our regional information officers across the country, so that they would be able to have enough capacity, support, and provide assistance remotely to end users, so that every user query don't have to be handled by the national team at a national level. These cascaded support levels were able to improve how we are able to respond to a number of the issues. Now, what was our TV Trapper system supposed to solve for us? It was to help us track all susceptible TV cases. It was also supposed to help us to track all treatment and outcome as far as TV is concerned, and then also multi-drug resistant TV cases in all our social level hospitals were also being trapped. Our scope of implementation as I have already mentioned is that we are able to implement Trapper in all 260 districts of Ghana, and currently we are able to see that all TV clients are being captured through the Trapper system, and we have also been able to generate the routine reports, that is the TV case registration report and TV treatment outcome report as well as the multi-drug resistant TV report, and so that process has also been automated, and we are currently going through that with facilities being able to capture the data quite effectively, and so you see this DSS screenshot of one of the automated reports that we picked from the system, this is on the TV outcome, and so it reduces drastically issues with data entries errors, if facilities have to enter this report manually by counting from the various registers, and Trapper have been able to help us do this quite effectively. Now, even though we had a number of successes and learning from a lot of the stages that we went through when we developed HIV Trapper, we needed to be a bit more cautious and put in a number of strategies to allow us to deploy this very successfully without the HIV that we had to overcome when we were deploying the HIV Trapper, but key among the issues that we identified from that deployment had to do with the acquisition of the electronic devices that is under-established because you need a lot of that to be able to do a nationwide deployment. And then funding for training of the healthcare providers across the facilities in the country was a challenge, and then of course the big thing is change management where you have to shift people from systems that they were using or they are always doing this back onto a new Trapper system. Then the stability of the Trapper for offline data capture was also one critical thing because once you roll out and then people are capturing data on the app and then it begins to misbehave there is some sort of property that sets in because you capture data and you are unable to send successfully onto the server. So that sometimes affects the enthusiasm with which facilities capture the data. So it was one of the critical things that came up when we deployed the HIV Trapper. So it was one of the things we were looking out for when we started with the CB Trapper as well. Then the abuse of devices by end users and that depends on the issue of MDNs to be able to restrict what the end users can put on these devices and all that. How did we overcome these challenges? It is important to engage your partners very well. When we say partners we need all development partners and then partners within the country who have interest in the capture of CB data or any other service that you want to use electronic systems to one end. So we needed those engagements. We also did a progressive deployment instead of a one-time deployment. So as far as CB Trapper is concerned, based on what we had learned from HIV we did a step-by-step across the districts in the country and so it made it a lot more easier to deploy than we had gone through when we first started with HIV. Then it was also critical to ensure that whatever deployment we were doing the tool itself that we were deploying was meeting the service provider's needs. So they could use it effectively to manage their cases without a lot of hindrance. So the content of the tool was reviewed drastically to make sure that what we are capturing was the very essential data that was needed as far as CB HIV is concerned. And then we had to try multiple versions of the identity wonder was stable for our case and be able to deploy that. Critical was the fact that as far as CB was concerned a lot of the facilities in Ghana that had a number of CB cases that were quite high were largely around the district capital. So most of them are stable internets. So in those districts where we have stable internet apart from deploying the Android app we also spend a lot of time building the capacity of the teams to be able to use the online version that is through the browser either through the Android app that was the Android device that was supplied to them or through any other electronic device that had internet connectivity and could develop into the system. And so whenever they are telling you through the Android app at the absolutely level they are able to switch to the online one to be able to still copy their data and report appropriately. In conclusion now one thing that electronic systems are good they always help solve a lot of problems especially with regards to including the data quality. But the most critical thing that we should always look at for has to be with the human beings that we are going to use to run the system. And when we say human beings it's not just the system developers or maintenance teams but then the end users because they are critical and you if you don't get their buy-in the system may be working effectively but they will simply still not use it. So it was critical for us to get district teams the health information also the facility managers case managers to be able to agree that TV tracker was a better way of managing our TV data as far as improving our information capture and the country was concerned. And when data quality is improved whether it is electronic or you are actually still supporting with some form of paper base it's so better with the attitude of the people that you are working with. So that was a great power lesson for us and we can see that we've gotten a lot more ambassadors at the facility level who have become champions and really push us to be able to improve the system as we go through these deployments. So in a nutshell it's not been too bad but it's been a success deploying TV tracker as well much improved than we did for HIV because as I said earlier when we did the HIV there were number of challenges that we had to go through. Number of iterations before we got the system moving but those ones were largely results when we moved on to the TV because there were certain mistakes or things we overlooked when we deployed that to to contribution to one way plan for TV drop the deployment and that made it quite effective for us. So thank you and I'm not sure this is what we have for you from Ghana. Thank you. Many thanks Oswald. It's very impressive how the deployment of the TV program was in Ghana. We have a question already in the expert launch so I would like to ask Alice if we have to move the discussion to the slide if we just how do you usually um what we can do we can just once again like encourage anyone who has any question to ask to raise them on to to to to write them on slide on this channel and then we would then we'll read them and Oswald will reply to them live. Is that okay Marta? Yes. Yes great um so as you were saying we have we have a first question for you Oswald. Do you have a biometric option for registering TV patients or do you have planned to do so? So with a biometric option for registering TV clients, currently we haven't considered that option largely due to infrastructure availability and some other challenges so as we speak now we are not at any consideration regarding implementing biometrics system for registering TV clients. Thank you and then do you have similar tracker program for HIV if yes is there any interconnectivity between the TB and HIV tracker programs? Yes because what we have done is to run both programs on the same instance so because we do have some data we are capturing in HIV that has some connection with what we have for TB as well so we are running both of them on the same instance. Thank you Oswald. We have another question. How are you dealing with patient identification especially where patients have to be classified? So with patient identification what we have done is to create a unique ID for each TB client that is registered on the system and that is all we are currently running. Again in country we have our national identification authority that is currently deploying the national identification system for all citizens in the country so for the time being we are implementing our own unique ID system for clients that are registered so hope that once the national identification system process is completed we will gradually replace these unique IDs with clients national IDs and that will largely improve how we are able to identify clients on the system. Thank you. Thank you. Another question for those areas that are without networking connectivity how are the facility staff submitting data? Yeah so for facilities that do not have internet connectivity or are quite unstable they largely have to depend on the offline Android app so they capture data offline and then periodically they will have to then move to a location that has better connectivity and then upload their data. Thank you. Then we have another question. What is the general acceptance of stakeholders in this deployment TB and HIV tracker as well as aggregate? Then is data coming from these sources and do they have any quality issue? And final question. Internet connection is a challenge in the third world but how areas with low connectivity are able to manage the Android device in reporting? Well with that to a stakeholder acceptance I can say generally it's been good because based on what we did for HIV and how the system is running now it was a good opportunity to always showcase what HIV is doing and so if we've been able to justify the challenges to deploy TB, a tracker for HIV and work well it was possible to do for TB. So for as far as stakeholder acceptance is concerned for Ghana I would say that it's largely very good and that's largely helped how we are able to deploy the system and talking of quality issues. Largely we have very minimal quality issues as far as the tracker is concerned because a lot of we're building a lot of queries and checks to be able to reduce the error that was literally had users capturing onto the system so data quality issues have largely improved as far as the tracker connection is concerned and as I indicated earlier with regard to internet connectivity where there is very good internet connectivity we deploy both systems both Android and then the online and users are able to see between them as when it is convenient for them. Thank you Zan I have another question. How large is the support team for TB tracker deployment and how many officers do they provide support for? We do have a national team that supports a TB tracker deployment and their team has members from both the DIMS to technical team as well as the national TB program so it's sort of a joint team the M and E listening component from the TB program. Then at the regional industry level then at the regional industry level we have also built capacity for the health information officer who provides direct support to the facilities that capture this data but basically at the national level we have a core team of 10 persons in there that are leading this support as far as the TB tracker deployment is concerned. Thank you so much as well. We don't have any other questions let's give a few seconds to participants so that they can then can write them. Actually what we're going to do because I see that we are now 60 on the call. Anyone who has a question you can just raise your hand here on zoom and you will have the opportunity to ask your question live directly to Oswald so don't hesitate to raise your hand if you have any questions. We have one Mohamed Bamoy you can unmute yourself please go ahead. Yeah I know getting funding for those areas those total counties like Ghana to buy tablets is a bit more difficult so how are you able to convince partners to get an Android device or tablet for all those facilities that are collecting TB data? Okay so if I may answer this question yeah it is true that it is difficult to get these tablets and get partners to be able to support the procurement of tablets for such last year deployment but uh well I say we're fortunate in the planning stage when we put up a proposal to Global Fund and other partners to be able to support part of the plans that we consider critical has to do with these devices for their deployment and so mostly we would always recommend that we do not even ask for the money to procure these devices but to ask them to be able to procure them from there and according to the specifications that we need to be able to deploy them so that's part of our proposal when we were starting a signal for funding to be able to do these deployments and that is how we're able to get that support but it is admittedly not easy to be able to get this partner to support with large scale deployment as we have done in Ghana but it has largely been successful in our case through proposal that we have submitted. Thank you Azad I have another question actually on Slack do you have a sustainability plan to replace tablets as they become damaged or obsolete? So we do have a sustainability plan for the new tablets in Ghana what we have done is that we have made uh managers at the various levels to understand that uh whatever tablets that we have provided at the first uh for the for the during the deployment stage is just a startup for you and so at the facility level if there is a need to increase the number of tablets you need to deploy you need to buy from your internally generated funds to be able to supplement what we have been able to take care of you don't have to afford and then we have also set up uh protocols to allow facilities to buy the device be damaged or it is stolen the facility then takes up the responsibility of replacing that again we have also agreed with the facilities to be able to get authorized service providers for these devices to be able to maintain them when there are damages that can be worked on so for instance if the devices we have to cure are Samsung devices we make sure that we have this maintenance agreements with authorized service outlets that the facilities can link up with to get these devices maintained for them but largely it's the duty of the facilities to replace damaged or stolen devices by uh extra work to be able to do their deploy uh their data capture as they need to arrive thank you as well um any other questions from the participants you can raise your hands and you would have the mic I have a question for Oswald actually I think Oswald you explained it in the early slides if you want to go back um but I would like to understand in a simple way the the how long did it take the deployment and how did you face it like how how did you organize your your implementation in terms of timing and scope I think you had a slide before but if you can share some details on that because I think for being a countrywide implementation it's being quite fast I I'm under the impression so I understand you you had the experience from HIV and probably some hardware already distributed but I think it would be very interesting to hear a bit about that okay so largely what we did was to have about five teams we created five teams where we had two kena card team members and then two from the M&E team from the national tv program and then we moved from one region to the other to carry out that deployment I think it took us about uh about about four to six weeks to do their deployment of course one of the challenges we face of course was the issue with COVID because by then we had COVID going on so the numbers that we could train per region had to be managed in a way that we are able to adhere to COVID protocols so we had multiple sessions in some regions to be able to carry out that deployment but it was largely successful within the time frame that we set out into it okay thank you let's give a few seconds to participants who want to to ask questions you can raise your hand okay I think there is no more questions now um just got too long response first sorry what did you say we just got too longer raised his hand oh sorry I didn't see that sorry Tiwongi just a minute and you have the pro yes please ask your question Tiwongi all right uh thank you sir I think you just wanted some clarification in terms of uh user support how are user support arrangements like in terms of let's say escalating issues or providing immediate uh response to users when they face challenges what are the arrangements that will make what issues are you facing if I got your question right you are talking of user support and so we uh gonna have uh we have levels across the country so uh at the facility level who are the end users at the district we have the first level of user support so you have the district health information officers and then the TBMAE officers who are the district level that is the first line of support and then at the regional level we have the regional health information officers that coordinate the support levels as far as the region is concerned then we have the national level where we have the core team that I mentioned earlier coordinating the support that goes out to the users so we largely uh will have issues travel as far back as far high to the national level if it becomes a major issue that is not able to uh district and regional officers are not able to resolve for any users then you will have the national teams coming in to be able to resolve them but we have clear uh documented rules for each of these levels on what they need to do or that what type of support that needs to end users thank you thank you thank you so much as well um I don't see any other questions so I think we can we can end the the lounge session now Marta Raimei is that okay yes yes that's uh that's very okay thank you so much uh Osvald for your availability and for replying to these questions and for this great presentation thank you so much oh now we see you as well hello thank you very much hi Marta thank you thank you all right no thank you it's it's been it's a great presentation and I was looking forward to see the presentation for your tv deployment which is a improved version of your hiv deployment right thank you thank you thank you very much thank you I'm sorry we'll be in contact so I think uh then um Alice I think we can because that was the content for today we will have more time for real cases and presentations on Thursday at the same time and then for questions we come out on Friday early morning but I think now we could stay for travel shooting um um uh if anyone hi me yes someone is speaking but it's very low I can't hear hi Marta should we um stop the recording now yes we can


Today, we're speaking with Mel Sanderson, who, among other accomplishments, was an American diplomat in the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for how many years, Mel? Mel, with the Diplomatic Service 3, but I lived in Congo 8 years working for a mining company after I left the government. Okay, so would you consider yourself more knowledgeable than, let's say, the Speaker of the House in Washington on the Congo? Yes. Okay. How about I'm going to up the ante, would you be more knowledgeable than the United States ambassador to the Congo? Yes. Okay, we'll stop there with the comparison. So tell us, Mel, with regard to critical mineral supplies for the United States, what's happening today, July 25, 2023, in the Congo that's going to be a benefit to the United States? Well, I'm going to answer a question from two angles of the tack, Jack. The first is what Washington believes is possible and when. So for instance, we just have this recent piece of legislation that came out of the hill. Quite a substantive document which tackles the issue of the Congo from a variety of directions. This legislation addresses human rights violations. It addresses the presence of United Nations peacekeeping force known as Monoc. It addresses the economic potential of the country. It addresses corruption and how that impedes that economic potential. And it addresses the need for the United States to expand its access to resources in the Congo. Now that's what it addresses. What the bill does is proposes a study by the U.S. Geological Service to identify the types, locations, and to the extent possible, likely quantities of critical materials present in the DRC. It gives the administration three years to complete that study. It also mandates that the United States should withdraw its funding and we are the principal funder for the United Nations peacekeeping mission. And therefore that that mission should withdraw from the Congo by 2024. It addresses the issue of the potential escalation of human rights violations in Eastern Congo if Monoc were to withdraw. By mandating that the administration should examine the possible consequences of potential sanctions against Rwanda or Uganda if they are determined to be instigators of human rights violations. It mandates the State Department to increase the staffing at the embassy in Kinshasa, including with the addition of rare earth expertise in order to be able to better facilitate the entry of U.S. businesses into the Congo in order to secure these minerals for the United States. That's the answer from the Washington side. What Congo expects would be something different. What Congo would expect and want is something that doesn't focus on doing studies and that doesn't focus on moral persuasion, but the focus is on actual money. So for instance, the UAE recently announced that it has reached an agreement with the government of the Congo that it, the UAE, values at around $9 billion for development of the mining sector of the Congo. That's really an interesting announcement because the UAE therefore positions itself to go head to head against the Chinese in the Congo because after all, let's face it. The reality is we talk about China has 85% right now more or less of the world's rare earth production and capability. It's actually higher if they're able to maintain their grip on the DRC. And right now they're well positioned to do that. They may not be popular, but they're spending money. You know, you made me think of something. I'm aware of the UAE's interest in the Congo and the fact is they've been operating there for some time. But it dawned on me just a second that the UAE is a very wealthy, tiny country. OK, and so they in fact would say to the Congo will not only mine, will process, refine, fabricate. We'll even make things here because they don't have any room in their million dollar square inch country to do anything like that, nor do they have the people actually do anything like that. So for them, it's a win-win. And even though I think we might think of them as coming allies of the Chinese, it's my opinion that Middle Easterners are allies of themselves first and foremost. Oh, I 100% agree with that, Jack. I mean, Saudi Arabia and the folks in Dubai, et cetera, had been completely up front and honest in saying that they are focused on building processing facilities for lithium and rare earths. They are clearly interested in transforming away, as the Prince of Saudi Arabia has said, from fossil fuels. And now we've got UAE coming in. And actually everything that you mentioned is in that agreement with the Congolese government. And so there's every incentive for the Congo to embrace the UAE and actually throw the Chinese out because the Congolese have never been fond of the Chinese. They've accepted them because neither the US nor the Europeans have been interested in operating in the country. So they'll throw the Chinese out and they'll hand it as much as necessary to the UAE who is there to spend money. See, this is the problem for the US. We don't want to spend any money in the Congo. We want our businesses to go there based on assurances that Washington is going to make sure that the corruption decreases and that they're not going to be hassled and that everything is going to magically be better for them. But we don't want to spend any money to make it so. One last thing, though, based on your experience and understanding, if Dubai or UAE, for example, becomes the principal investor in the Congo, is that a guarantee of the United States' full benefit? No, in my opinion, it's absolutely the opposite. And it also potentially raises yet another hurdle for the DRC because one of the things it's not widely talked about is that for decades, we have had strong Lebanese presence in the Congo, along with some other countries that have been engaged in illicit mining activities and funneling money to terrorist organizations. OK, thank you very much for that update on the Congo. And for your opinion, which I share, that makes two of us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mel. Thanks, Jack.


Oh hi, rent is coming up and YouTube is not very reliable so the best way that you can make sure that I'm not homeless is by buying my merchandise from CrowdMaid. CrowdMaid does really good work and they have like a T-NATUS LAME t-shirt. We got like a polo shirt that you can wear in a golf course. We even have this wonderful dad hat that I have not taken off since I got it. Link is in the description. I really appreciate it and yeah, on with the video. When I was about 11 years old my dad married a woman who is now my stepmom. At the time I hadn't done anything much in the way of housework or cooking or anything so when we moved to a two-story four bedroom three bathroom massive house one of the nicer neighborhoods in Boise it was a bit of a culture shock. For the first time in my life I had chores watering plants dusting stuff moving furniture and the occasional cooking. Since I had no experience with pretty much any of those things my stepmom often had to give me these really thorough instructions. They were occasionally weird and I didn't understand them but they worked out 99% of the time. It was kind of like something from the bible where Moses could just be standing in front of a massive body of water leading thousands of people away from the egyptian army. The pharaoh and his soldiers are storming close around the horizon and tons of innocent men women and children are primed and ready to be slaughtered. Moses is like um god what do I do?   So Moses does it and what do you know everything works out great. I'm saying all this to simply establish. You don't question what my stepmom sets. If she gives you instructions no matter how weird you follow them and things will work out for you. Fast forward about a year or so and I kind of understand all this.  We have an old family friend Chelsea coming over for dinner.  My stepmom was so excited that she spent days and days preparing the nicest lasagna that you've ever seen. Premium ingredients worth around a hundred dollars. They're organic. They're fresh. They're imported from Italy and stuff like that. They were blessed by Buddhist monks. If you served it to a ghost in the Sims 3 that ghost would probably come back to life. It was the night Chelsea was supposed to come over. I got a call from my stepmom. Hello? Hey pumpkin. I'm running a little bit late.  I need you to pull the lasagna from the fridge put it on a cookie sheet and stick it in the oven. I'll be home soon. Simple as pie. I opened up the fridge and the lasagna almost blinds me with its glory. I put it on the counter and I think about the instructions. Okay put it on a cookie sheet. When we made cookies as a kid we'd lay globs of dough on wax paper. So a sheet of paper you put cookies on wax paper cookie sheet. Okay I got it. So I pull out a sheet of wax paper and I lay it on the counter. How on earth am I gonna get all the lasagna on the wax paper? How is this gonna work out? Nope. Don't you question your stepmom. She's like Gordon Ramsay minus the F words. Do you remember the whole Bible thing? Yeah don't forget that. I grabbed a spatula and I eyed down the lasagna and it's perfectly good hand blown glass container. It shouldn't be too hard. You just tilt it down help the lasagna slide onto the cookie sheet. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. So I started and quickly found out that it wasn't easy peasy lemon squeezy. Some of the sauce came out of the sides. Little patches of grass and flowers sprouted from the floorboards. Like I said this was the finest lasagna ever crafted. Eventually all of the lasagna itself started to come out. I was hoping it would retain its shape. It didn't. All the layers were lost. All the toppings they were sliding out of the sides. It was a mess. But it was still salvageable. I realized things were not going so well. I tried to slide it back into its bowl. That was not working. Okay I know dad is asleep and sick but I need his assistance. I wandered upstairs and poked his shoulder and I was like hey dad I need some help here. His eyes shoot open. He's half awake. What? Huh? What do you need? Stepmom told me to put the lasagna on a cookie sheet and stuff but it's not really working out. Just put the lasagna on a cookie sheet like she said. There's no plausible way it could go wrong. Just do it please. Then he just rolled over and went back to sleep. Although in his defense you would have to use a lot of imagination to figure out a way that that could go wrong.  I wandered back downstairs and tried to get the lasagna back when there was a knock at the door. I answered it to find that Chelsea had arrived. I was standing there dripping tomato sauce. Oh hi Chelsea. Hey Busy. Everything okay? Oh yeah everything's fine. Great Dandy. How about you come inside and I'll turn on forest gump for you. I mean I can't say no to good old Tom Hanks I guess. Just let me know if you need anything. Cool thanks see ya. I scrambled over to the lasagna and I continued to try and fix it. A giant slab of meats and vegetables and pasta just fell to the ground and splattered. A puppy crawled out of the mess because like I said this lasagna was really really good. Chelsea heard it and poked her head over the couch. Um everything okay over there? I'm gonna die in here. Ah jeez let me help you. She wandered over and saw the mess. The thing that you need to know about Chelsea is that she used to live with my stepmom. She knew what stepmom was capable of. There was a look of terror in her eyes. Oh no. What have you done? I'm on my last legs here. We need to clean this up before she gets home. And wouldn't you know it that's when the garage door opened up.  Chelsea glanced over me with really big eyes. I'll go distract her. You take care of this ASAP. So she runs into the hallway to stop stepmom and I'm shelving the nicest lasagna anyone has ever made onto this wax paper.  Oh hi Nate. Is the lasagna ready to go? She sees the whole thing.  There was sauce all over the counter running down the island sides pooling up at my feet. Chunks of meat and pasta with bits of tomato clumped up in soggy wax paper. The goodness of lasagna evaporated into the air leaving some kind of quality vacuum for the legions of Satan to occupy. It looked like a murder scene.  She didn't drop her groceries. She put them on the ground. She looked over at Chelsea. Stepmom's smile never broke. I think you should go in the other room and wait a minute. This will only be a second. Are you sure? I can just help clean up. Now Chelsea. Chelsea went to the guest room like a dog with its tail between her legs and as soon as the door closed behind her. What is the matter with you? I gave you simple instructions and you went ahead and ruined family dinner for everyone. This lasagna is worth more than you are on the black market. I spent days perfecting this. See that puppy in the corner?  My dad wandered into the room half dead essentially. He acts as my defense lawyer whenever I mess up. What's going on over here? Where have you been all night? The lasagna has been absolutely ruined because of your absence in all this. Nate, how did this happen? I thought wax paper was a cookie sheet and I didn't stop to question Stepmom because she's always right about this weird stuff. Ah, that makes sense. Look honey, it was just a misunderstanding. Don't honey me. This isn't a misunderstanding.  Why would you remove this priceless lasagna from its hand blown glass bowl? The insides were greased with the tears of Robin Williams. The pasta was crafted by wheat from George Clooney's property in Italy. I snuck over the fence to get it myself and was almost eaten by guard dogs. I missed my mother's funeral while preparing this. Did you know it was my birthday yesterday? I did nothing. I stayed home delicately laying each drip on top of the other in perfect symmetry. I attended a college class on Feng Shui to achieve perfect balance for this dish and now it's ruined! God! Out of here! Now what you need to understand about my Stepmom is that she's one of the most powerful, incredible, amazing, sweet, kind, thoughtful women you will ever meet in your entire life. 98% of the time anyway. This was that 2% coming out in a fit of mad rage that was totally justified on her end by the way. Chelsea was still in the other room listening through the walls and having war flashbacks from when she lived in the house many, many years ago. Stepmom blacked out and threw the glass container in the sink a little harder than she thought and exploded to a million pieces. Robin Williams tears ran down the drain. Chelsea probably thinks I'm dead at this point. So a few hours went by and we wound up having shrimp. So, how was work today, sweetie? Good. Nice. I love you. I love you too, sweetie. Nobody wants to hear it, Chelsea! I'm running a little bit late. Your dad is up—Nate in late rhyme, so what if I called you pumpkin? I mean, it just sounds like, hey, Nate, I'm running a little bit late. I'm driving up the state.  So, okay.


I told you guys in my August makes video that this was one of my top five makes of all time and After wearing them again this weekend that statement is still holding true. I love these overalls so much So you might remember I have made the genie overalls before Thereby closet core patterns formerly known as closet case patterns. I made my first version earlier this year actually Made the pants version for the style maker fabrics spring style tour Those were made from a geometric print denim and I worked very hard on the fit of the pants So when I went to make these all of the work had been done And it was just a matter of cutting them out and sewing them up Well, actually there are separate pattern pieces for the pants and the shorts So I had to transfer the alterations I made to the crotch the rise and the side seams But that was really quick and easy the sewing is very detailed and there are so many Steps but seeing it all come together is so fun for this version I opted for the two-part waistband This creates a waistband piece for the front and a separate one for the back It also allows you to put zippers on both sides of the shorts and My first version is a little bit hard to get over my hips So I thought I needed the extra wiggle room literally Turns out I can get them on just fine by unzipping one side I think the difference between the first pair and this one is the length of the zipper on these is a little bit longer Than my original pair But I like having the two zippers as an option And I think the symmetry of the snap closures having them on each side is also nice Speaking of which the pattern would have you put in jeans buttons to close up the side seams But sewing a buttonhole in that small tab with all the thickness of the waistband is risky and could be really Frustrating instead. I opted for a good old hammer and snaps so I could muscle my way through that problem The front bib is exactly as drafted But again instead of installing the suggested hardware I opted for something a little unique that I have seen in a bunch of ready to wear overalls Instead of installing the typical overall hardware I installed a grommet on the front bib and Simply tie the straps through them It makes taking the overalls on and off slightly more time-consuming But you only have to do one side to get the overalls off the straps are way too long I know and I still need to hem them But honestly, I've just been wearing them too much to do any alterations Okay, the other big change I made to the pattern is the back Just like with my first pair. I added a back bib I just feel like the back bib gives it a more authentic overalls look and that's what I wanted for this version Maybe one day I'll leave it off, but I think I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to overalls design The fabric is a very stretchy denim that I got somewhere for a really cheap in the New York City Garment district. I don't remember where I got it and it was also years ago So there's a very slim chance that it would still be there anyway but you can find stretch denim pretty readily nowadays and I've taken the liberty of linking some options for you in the description box I Have paired these overalls with a plain white tee and silver sneakers that I got from Walmart But I have a lot of grand ideas of how to style them a little bit more Unconventionally in the fall. So be sure you're following me on social media to see how those outfits come together And before I go I want to tell you to come back to the channel tomorrow for a tutorial On how to add a back bib to your next pair of Jenny overalls. Yay But that's gonna do it for me today. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you all very soon. Bye


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, great week, and it's going well so far. Busy, busy, busy, busy, but that's my life. It never stops. So I did manage to put a program together today, it wasn't easy. It seems like time just gets squeezed every morning, more and more so. Anyway, yeah, let's jump in. Jim has gotten us, Jim Swannick just gotten us off to a fantastic start with a $50 contribution, just kind of with a basically a sticker. No question. Thank you, Jim. Really appreciate it. And he says, yeah, I made it to a live show. Live today can't wait, that's wonderful. Thanks for supporting the show and thanks for getting us off to such a great start. James has already got a question in for $20, so we need a few more of those to make our goal of $250, but as I said, we're off to a fantastic start. So it looks like Donald Trump is going to be indicted a third time. We're probably looking at least four indictments overall by the time we're done, by the time this summer is over, but now it looks like we're definitely going to get a third indictment, a second indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith's Justice Department. This one related to the January 6th events and Trump's alleged, alleged attempts to basically overturn the election and put pressure and try to get people to behave in ways that are fundamentally illegal and go against the Constitution and against the law of the land. He received a target letter on Sunday night, which basically said, which basically usually, which gave him an opportunity to come before grand jury and testify this week, which probably suggests that they're about to wrap up their investigation and will probably issue an indictment either late this week or probably more next week. It looks like the letter sites, according to sources because the letter is not being released, that the letter, the Trump could be charged with three different things pertaining to deprivation of rights, not sure what that is, conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States, that's the election and, and attempting with a witness. You know, this is going to be interesting, it's a circus, it's, you know, it's good to see. I, I, I think this is great. You know, Trump should not be president. Trump did horrifically illegal things. You know, none of these things, all these indictments, everybody says, oh, it's politicization of the Department of Justice, the Justice Department, it's politicization of the process, all of this stuff. But in every one of these cases, nobody is denying the facts.  Nobody, people saying, well, it's not that big of a deal, you shouldn't be indicted. Maybe, although if it was anybody else, they would have been indicted. So, maybe, maybe, maybe it's too mind of a thing. Nobody denies that he kept top secret information in boxes, in a bathroom, you know, in a bathtub, I guess, and Mar-a-Lago in spite of repeated multiple requests to turn over the documents as the law requires and that he hid them and moved them and, and lied to, you know, basically a obstruction of justice, lied to the FBI about them. Nobody denies the facts. And indeed, if you followed January 6 and you followed from election through January 6 and after January 6, you know that Donald Trump did everything that he could to try to manipulate the system, try to put pressure on people, try to, to change the results of the election. In a, you know, to the extent that the election is, is what governs, you know, elections matter in an illegal way. And then finally, he's going to be indicted probably in Georgia over trying to put pressure on election officials in Georgia to, again, change the fate of the election. Find me a few more votes. Just find the votes so we can flip this election. This is a US sitting president. So yeah, he deserves it. He has done everything in his power to make this happen, to bring this about. He, he doesn't care about the law, the law. He's above the law. He doesn't care about reality. He is above reality. He doesn't care about truth. He is above truth. He is truly a post-truth, post-reality president. He has inculcated into our culture the idea that one can lie and if one does it in a bold face matter enough and repeat the lie over and over again. I mean, this is not new. People have been doing this forever, but he just takes it to a new dimension. So yeah, you, when you do stuff like that, you get into legal trouble and he's in legal trouble, shockingly, unsurprisingly, he's in legal trouble. And he doesn't have a defense on the merit. He doesn't have a defense on the facts. There is no defense on the facts.  And this is, he's just a victim of politicization and he did nothing wrong and he's just a victim and it's the, the elites, the institutions, the deep state that is just after him from day one and continues to be after him for no good reason. He's such a nice guy. And he will, you know, when we get president, he'll get back at all of them. He'll get back at all of them. Don't worry. And his fans love him. So there's a, you know, at this point, there's a better than, I don't know, one in three possibility better than that, that he will be president in a year and a half, one in three, one in four. I'm not sure what the, how much of probability, but it's high. It's high. It's as high as Biden will be president. So there's a chance somebody else will be for a variety of reasons, but yeah, it doesn't matter. They can indict him 55,000 times.  And his followers will still vote for him. And it's not about ideas. It's not about what he stands for. It's not about closing the border. It's not about immigration. It's not about China. It's not about the economy. It's not about any of these things because the reality is the DeSantis represents all those ideas. Indeed, he's taken the Trump platform and presented an even more radical consistent presentation of it coupled with the fact that he is governor of Florida has actually executed in his promises. He's done a better job than Trump ever did. He's done a better job and he doesn't have the craziness. He doesn't have the indictments. And he indeed is tough and people left hates him and he hates the left and he's done everything. He's done everything to tell the world, look, I'm a more competent executor of Donald Trump's ideas and I'm more consistent. And he can't get traction. He can't get traction. They're not interested in the ideas. They're not interested in execution. They're not interested in actually somebody going to Washington, D.C. and doing this stuff. They're interested in the clown show. This is about the clown show and what it says to them about Trump. They love Trump because he's such a clown. Because he'll do anything, say anything and so unpredictable. Because he's so irrational. Because he's so disconnected from facts and reality. Because they don't care about facts and reality. They love this. So the Santas can't make any traction because the Santas thinks, the Santas is under the illusion, delusion, illusion that this is about policy and achieving certain things and undoing certain things in Washington and that he can run on his record in Florida and he is better at this and he knows this stuff and he's just better than Trump on every dimension. Well, you can't speak for yourself. And what people love about Trump is the circus. They love the circus and they love the irrationality because I think it reflects the logic that what's going on in their own minds, in their own heads, it's a reflection of that. So the Santas comes off as, I mean, I never thought I'd say this about the Santas, but too rational, too thoughtful, too straight, too, what do you call it, actually somebody who can get stuff done, actually get stuff done. And that's not what they want. It's not what they want. Yeah, so the Santas is really struggling. The Santas is, was supposedly the guy who could beat Trump and in every single one of, in national polls he's way behind, but even in every single one of the state polls where there's going to be primaries starting in January with Iowa and the caucuses in Iowa. The Santas is way 20 points, 15 to 20 points behind in every single one of them. Now it's still early. Things can change. Of course, Donald Trump could drop out of the race. I mean, there's a lot of speculation that ultimately he's going to add up all these indictments and cut a global deal because ultimately the thing he's afraid of more than anything else is jail. I mean, jail is not going to be good for good Donald Trump. And if he thinks he might lose, if he thinks he might land up having to go to jail, he will cut a deal and that deal might include not running for president. We'll see. We'll see. I'm not sure such a deal can be done. I'm not sure that's in the cards. I'm not sure. I'm not exactly sure how delusional Trump is about his ability to win or lose these things. So really, really hard to tell. But assuming Donald Trump runs, DeSantis is way behind. And unless, I don't know, Christie, and DeSantis is avoiding really going after Trump and certainly going after Trump around these indictments, he doesn't touch that. So mostly he goes after Trump by saying, I will do what Trump promised or I'm going to be more consistent practitioner of the culture wars than Trump is. But again, they don't care about that. What they care about is Trump. They care about is the man. This is personality worship, which you saw a little bit, you saw glimpses of it. With Obama in the left, you're seeing it full throttle with Trump over the four years and since then. But this is a phenomenon that's not characteristic of America. It's not characteristic of American politics. And it's, again, another little indication of how America is getting ready for, is setting itself up for authoritarianism of a charismatic leader who captures everybody through that charisma. Donald Trump has an element of that and, you know, did it, all right. Let's see. Yeah. So the scientists are struggling. His, as I said, his financial supporters are really, really worried. And you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens in the next few months.  Now he does have a pack. The pack is loaded with money. And the pack is going to be responsible for DeSantis' ground game. So we'll see. We'll see what happens in the debates. We'll see if he's willing to go after Trump. Trump's definitely going to go after him. We'll see how he goes after Trump. Chris Christie is the wild card here. Not because I think he can win, but because Chris Christie could shake things up by being so brutal towards Trump by going after Trump so harshly that he actually makes a dent in Trump's favorability ratings among Republicans. We'll see. Is he willing to go all out? Is he willing to call Trump a loser? Is he willing to articulate the anti-Trump case? You know, no holds bar. And if he is, that could be the thing that opens it up for somebody like DeSantis. But DeSantis is going to have to step into that gap. He's going to have to do something that resonates with people. So far, he's been a dud. This is just a weird story. It looks like a year soldier stationed in South Korea was being sent home, decided he didn't want to go home, landed up joining like a civilian tour of the Dmeril-Troi zone, and during the tour, just skipped over to the North Korean side and is now being held by the North Koreans. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's interesting what the hell happened there and what's going on. But there is a U.S. soldier now being detained in North Korea. After he bolted for there, it sounds like he wanted to go there voluntarily. And of course, the North Koreans are not necessarily going to believe that he wants to be there voluntarily. But yes, there are crazy people in the world, really, really insane people who would like to go to North Korea. You know, this was not an accidentally whoops, I crossed the border. I didn't mean to. This is somebody who wanted to be in North Korea and got around the soldiers and got around the U.N. and made it through, right? There's actually pictures of him running across. So weird, weird that there are such people out there. All right, I don't have anything original or interesting to say about the South, the American soldier going to South Korea. All right. I think this is an important story, the anti-Chase story. It's an important story because it could have consequences that are very long term in its, it's very difficult to undo these things once they get established. So the FTC, this is, I've talked about the FTC and Lina Khan and the evil that is Lina Khan and her commitment to basically destroying mergers and acquisitions in the United States, to increasing central planning, increase government supervision on every aspect of business consolidation and using anti-Chase, not only to prevent mergers and acquisitions, but also in a much more aggressive way than has been done in America ever to use anti-Chase to break up companies and to go after them. And Lina Khan, who has been committed to this agenda for many, many years, who wrote her final paper, I guess, at university about the evils of Amazon and how Amazon need to be broken up, she is now the head of the FTC. Hard to believe that somebody like this has made it all the way to the FTC, but she is, she's the head of the FTC. Anyway, a few months ago, the FTC put out for public comment new guidelines for anti-trust. So to really change anti-trust laws, you would have to go through Congress and Congress would have to rewrite the anti-trust laws. But the FTC can change the way those laws are interpreted, at least by the FTC, and then it's a question of what are the courts do and how do the courts treat it. Anyway, the FTC has guidelines. The FTC and the Department of Justice have guidelines in terms of major activity and what they were allowed and what they don't and how they're going to evaluate this and so on. They put it out for public comment a few months ago and then yesterday they basically submitted a new draft and new draft of those guidelines was made public yesterday. It's not the final draft but it's a pretty close to final draft. Anyway, reading through this new draft is just unbelievably depressing and discouraging. You know, these people are truly committed to increasing. So what has happened really? Since 1968-69, there's been an effort to try to bring some objectivity and granted it's very hard to bring objectivity to anti-trust laws because they're so non-objective. But there's been an effort since 1968 to try to bring elements of objectivity to the process of emergency acquisition, to the evaluation, to the judgment of whether to prosecute anti-trust or not. And for the most part what has happened is certainly since the 80s and 90s, anti-trust enforcement has come down. A lot of the things that might have been, they might have tried to enforce way back as bad as anti-trust has been over the last 20, 30 years. It's nowhere near as bad as it could be or that it has been in a more distance past. Anyway, Lena Kahn is dedicated to eliminating these more objective standards and she wants to give much more power to the agency itself, to the court system, to determine what is acceptable in terms of the size of business, the mergers and acquisitions, activities in business. She relies on no economic analysis. Most of the economic analysis that she tries to suggest is all being debunked and refuted. This is a philosophical battle against bigness, big tech, but bigness overall. The model here is some utopian model of perfect competition where firms do not differentiate between one another and they're all the same and they're all small and they're all... It's a disaster to the U.S. economy and it is a disaster for productivity and a disaster for companies because one of the things that companies rely on, one of the things that every businessman relies on, is you rely on some semblance of objectivity of the law. The law has to have some objectivity so you can plan, so you can invest for the long run, so you can think in terms of the long run and how to structure your business activities. So you know if going after this other company and buying it is going to be approved or not going to be approved because the government has to approve these things and all this is out the window.  At the same time, Congress wants to pass laws that are going to make it, again, much tougher and get a place a lot more burdened on companies and can make it a lot less objective what they're going in for and what they're not going in for. So on two fronts. And by the way, in Congress, it's bipartisan. It's not just Lena Kahn crazy Democrat. In Congress, these are bills that are sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican. So we've got a dramatic attack here on the principles of, you know, even a semblance of free markets in the United States. We've got a concentrated attack here on businesses being able to make decisions for themselves about growth and about and about mergers that is both spearheaded by the FTC with Lena Kahn. To the extent anybody has influence out there. This is still, I guess, available for public comment, right? Speak against this. This could really be we're taking the most flexible, the most resilient economy in the world. It's why the economy is still doing well in spite of everything. And by doing this kind of stuff, we're going to destroy it. We're going to we're going to make it a lot less resilient, a lot less capable of dealing with the status of coming from the top. And all of us and our children and grandchildren are going to suffer with the lowest standard of living in a low quality of life.  There's so little.  When right in front of them are real dramatic issues. And sadly, many of them are on the bandwagon to make life more difficult for all of us. It's coming both from Lena Kahn, also just a note that it's also coming from the Justice Department, the Justice Anti-Trust Division, which is run by somebody by Jonathan Kanta. But Jonathan Kanta and Lena Kahn, they need to be opposed. These merger guidelines are horrific, and they will set the U.S. back dramatically from an economic resilience and flexibility perspective. All right, let's see. Lastly, this morning, the president of Israel, I don't know how many of you knew Israel has. Oh, let me just say before I do that, Melinda Menil and the Wolf, thank you for another $50 that is very generous. We really, really appreciate that. Thank you for the support. That is great. We're still about $115 short of our goal. We have about 60 people watching live right now, so $2 from everybody would get us there. So a few, you know, some stickers. You don't have to ask a question if you're not sure about a question. But let's try to make our goal. We've made it the last few days with flying colors really, really well. I only have one question right now, maybe two on the list of questions. So once I finish the story, it's going to go very, very fast. So if you want to support the show, if you want these daily shows to continue, then please step in and make some contribution value for value for what you're receiving. Again, it doesn't take a lot of money. You can do a sticker for any amount and we can chip away at the goal. All right, so Israel has a president. The president is primarily a ceremonial function. It does not have a policy function. It does not wield any real political power. It is often used as a moderating factor for the different political polls that Israel finds itself under, but it is not per se a policy issue. Anyway, Herzog is in the United States. He will be addressing Congress today, I think this morning. Maybe he's already done it, but it will be coming in front of Congress. And of course, this has created a lot of brouhaha among Democrats. There is a significant portion of the Democratic Party that thinks Israel is an apartheid state, that it's fundamentally a racist state, that it should be boycotted. The United States should have nothing to do with it. A number of Democrats have already announced that they are not going to the talk, that they're going to boycott the talk. Of course, AOC, I had a list here of the ones that are going to be AOC. Jomal Bauman of New York, Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, you'd expect that from her, and Corey Bush from Missouri are not going to go to talk. Israel is so reprehensible, they wouldn't, they don't want to be in a position of sanction. The president of Israel, you know, another member of the Democratic caucus, Pamela Jayapal from the Progressive Caucus called Israel a racist state over the weekend. She was kind of forced to walk back her comments and, and we, you know, present them a little bit more moderately. The Hakeem Jeffries, who is the, who is I guess the minority leader and a bunch of other Democrats have issued statements repudiating these ideas and reputing in their own caucus. Because the reality is that A, a lot of Democrats are pro-Israel, a lot of, and B, Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic. And in some districts, they make all the difference for Democrats to win. Those Jews are typically pro-Israel and not all of them are pro-Israel, but they're typically pro-Israel just in essence. And they, given that the president doesn't represent a particular political party, they would find boycotting him offensive. The Democratic Party has always been pro-Israel and they get a lot of their, a lot of fundraising money comes from Jewish donors who are very pro-Israel. And the Democratic Party is, does not want to position itself as an anti-Israel party, not yet. But one has to realize that suddenly there are strong elements within the Democratic Party that are pushing the Democratic Party towards a position that is dramatically anti-Israel. And that's the direction the party's heading. The Republican Party is much more complex. The Republican Party is often pro-Israel for all the wrong reasons. The Republican Party is often pro-Israel because the evangelicals are pro-Israel. Rand Paul is pro-Israel because the evangelicals are pro-Israel. And, but at the very heart of it, there's a lot of Republicans who are pretty hostile to Israel. They just never express it because they're afraid of the evangelical vote. The evangelicals are pro-Israel, not because the evangelicals are pro-Israel, not because they love the state of Israel and what it represents in civilization and so on. They love Israel because they believe that, you know, I don't know, they're commanded to by the scriptures. They believe that the day of reckoning is coming and they have to support Israel because that's where Jesus shows up. And all the Jews, all the Jews who are willing to will convert on that day to Christianity and the rest of them go to hell. So it's okay to support Jews now because ultimately the good ones will convert to Christianity and the bad ones will go to hell anyway. So why not? I mean they support Israel for completely mystical, bizarre, irrational reasons. I've always warned my Israeli friends to beware of people who support you for reasons like that. All right. Since we've got a little bit of time and I don't have a lot of questions, but thank you, Silvanos. Thank you, Mary-Eline, Mary-Eline, Mary-Eline. Thank you, Mary-Eline. For the support, thank you, Jonathan Honing. Thank you, Jacob Collin. Thank you, anonymous user. So all of those kind of use Super Chat just to do a sticker and provide with support rather than ask a question. So thank you. We're down now to only $80 left in order to achieve our goal. So we're slowly chipping away at it. That's $420 questions. We should be able to do that by the time we're done. Let me just show you a graph. Since I'm riling on some of Biden's policies, this is a good one to show you in terms of, okay, this is a cost, construction cost. For the National Highway Construction Cost Index. And you can see what has happened since, you know, late 2020 into 2021, 22. I mean, the index has gone basically through the roof. Not quite doubling, but a lot. Now, a lot of that is inflation. Inflation has picked up and inflation impacts the cost of building highways, partially because the cost of labor has gone up and cost of goods have gone up. But a big chunk of that increase, and a big chunk of the increase, if you look under the Trump administration, there was a nice increase on 1.6 to almost two from about 2017, 2018 to 2019. A big chunk of these increases is doing what? Is what? A big chunk of these increases as a consequence are by America. This is what by America does. It makes everything more expensive. It is basically, by America is basically attacks on Americans. And it's attacks on Americans whether the Republican does it, attacks on Americans whether the Democrat does it. This is kind of weird because on so many of these policies, like by America and like tariffs, Biden is just continuing and indeed doubling up on Trump's policies. And in that sense, on many of these issues, there's no difference between the two. I mean, look at that cost curve and look at where it was in the early 2000s. It's basically 2.7 times what it was in the early 2000 when it was close to one. 2.7 times, almost 2.8 times what it cost. That's all government distortions, government provisions.  It's all the other rest. This is government buying hammers, right? Government buying infrastructure. Somebody said, you know, you have to remember that the point of infrastructure spending is not building infrastructure. The point of infrastructure spending is spending. And I think he's right. Government is just there to spend. All right, let's take a look at the questions that we have. So again, we're 75 short, so $420 questions or some stickers and things like that. And we can make this and not bake the streak. Let's see, James, do you still tell people during your talks that the best country to move to for freedom and capitalism is the USA? Every year, USA gets worse for capitalism and freedom. Do you advise people to look at any other countries now?  I think the advantage the United States had in the past is shrinking in terms of liberty and freedom. But it's still there. I've talked to you about the fact that Europe is so much poorer than the US. You know, there was a period when New Zealand looked like it had free market policies. They exceeded the United States. But then both you got the lockdown and the COVID, which was much worse in New Zealand than in the US. And you got really bad economic policies that have driven economic liberty and freedom in New Zealand down. It's not clear where Australia is. And remember the Australia lockdowns? They were worse than the US. It's as bad as the US was. And it's horrific as lockdowns were in the US. New Zealand and Australia outdid us. Now, if you're ambitious, then there are countries in which you can do well. Certainly there are countries in Europe, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, Scandinavia where you can still do well and you can achieve and you can succeed. But there still are limitations depending on the industry that you're in relative to the US. Now, the problem, of course, is that it's not just that the US is getting worse for capitalism. It's that everybody in the world is getting worse for capitalism. Which country in the world right now would you say is really, really moving in a positive direction when it comes to capitalism? 20 years ago there were a lot of countries, even 10 years ago. I'd say before the great financial crisis, there were a lot of countries in the world, a lot of countries moving in the right direction. I don't think India is moving in the right direction. India is sputtering along. Some liberalization, a lot of nationalistic driven trade restrictions, tariffs, subsidies, industrial policy, all that kind of stuff. India is not embarked on kind of the liberalization, even to the extent that China did in the early 2000s. So there was a time where I would have said, wow, a big chunk of Eastern Asia is moving in the right direction. Even countries in Europe are moving in the right direction. Certain Eastern Europeans countries are moving in the right direction. And that's all died since the financial crisis, most of that died. Maybe Rwanda, I don't know if you want to move to Rwanda, but Rwanda, but he's also pretty authoritarian in Rwanda. So you've got a mixture as you often have in the world in which we live. The prospects for liberty and freedom and capitalism have definitely become worse globally over the last 10, 12 years. Well, 15 years, right, since 2008. And that's America's fault. It's because we stop being an image. No, big countries are moving in the exact opposite direction. Brazil is moving towards socialism. It's got Lula as its leader. South Africa, which is the S, is massive inflation and economy that is basically shrinking and crashing. What else do you have there? China economy is disappointing. Low economic growth and authoritarianism is on the rise. Let's see. I know what R is. Brazil, what's R? India. So India is the best of the bricks. And Russia is in the middle of a war that's devastating its economy, crushing quality of life, a standard of living. And they've just experienced a massive brain drain. The bricks are in deep, deep doo doo. They're in deep trouble. So you're not going to, we're not going to be saved by the bricks in spite of all the propaganda of, you know, in spite of all the Russian propaganda. All right. We've only got $50 to go. So we're chipping away. We're getting that. We're getting really, really close, really, really close. All right. Thank you, James. All right. Max. I remember when people defined their political identity primarily by reference to the economic views. Today, their identity is primarily defined by their stance on cultural wars. Is that accurate? What can we do to fix it? Yes, I think it is accurate. I think basically what has happened is that it's turned out that people's, people, the people who actually stood for free markets, stood for the Constitution, stood for the founding fathers and the principles of the founding fathers. And I wouldn't even put it as economics in terms of liberty and freedom. And those people never understood it, never really cared about it. And we're willing to give it all up for somebody like Donald Trump. Give it all up over the cultural issues. And yeah, so they never really held those beliefs strongly. Never really held those beliefs strongly. So what do we do about it? I don't know. I mean, we advocate for what we believe in. We advocate for individualism. The political spectrum was never, remember, I ran in 1969, I think, declared conservatism basically dead and conservatism impotent and conservatism, you know, because it was being captured by religion, would never save America. So she'd already given up on the right. And then she wouldn't vote for Reagan. She gave up on the right decades before any of us. And what's left then? What's leftist is, as the left became more identitarian, as the left became more focused on identity, on genes, on skin color, so did the right. By the way, Reaganomics did not lead to the fall of the USSR. That is a massive fallacy. The USSR was going to fall anyway. Reagan might have accelerated it a little bit. If anything, what Reagan did was inspire the opposition, like solidarity in Eastern Europe, but it wasn't Reaganomics. And Reaganomics is not even a thing because he didn't do that much from an economic perspective. So no, you know, yeah, the government spent a lot on defense and the Soviet Union realized they couldn't compete with the US. But what really led to the fall is their own incompetence, their own decadence. And when they opened up a little bit to the West, the people seeing what the West had and what they didn't have, they rebelled against it. The credit for the fall of the Soviet Union goes to the people of the Soviet Union, particularly the people in Eastern Europe, not to Reagan. I'm not implying she would have backed Democrats for the last 40 years. I'm implying she wouldn't have backed Republicans. Only you think in terms of dualities. If you don't back Republicans, then you're backing the Democrats. If you hate Trump, then you love Biden. Because you can't think. When you can't think, you can only see two options and there's no other option. But the reality is she didn't vote. She didn't vote for, she didn't vote for Reagan. Does that mean she backed Carter? Well, by your thinking, yes. So I guess she did back the Democrats, huh? It's just so silly. But that's the problem of not being able to think. Anyway, how do we fix it by advocating for individualism and liberty across the board and defusing, you know, taking the cultural issues and trying to defuse them, trying to find the validity in why these issues are big and trying to show that both left and right are wrong, unwrong on these issues? Jacob says, how do I determine my market worth without applying for jobs and pissing off my current employer? I don't think my pay is just compared to coworkers. Well, you need a, I mean, there's surveys, there's information online where you can find out what people at your level are making in the industry in your particularly geographic area.  I don't think, but I think there's a lot of resources online to give you information about, about, you know, what's going on. Adam says, are you going to see Oppenheim? Yes, definitely Oppenheim. I'm very curious about the movie Christopher Nolan is an interesting director. So I will definitely see Oppenheim. I'm not exactly when, but I will see it. Gail says, what about Camilla Harris's Freudian slip about population control?  You could, I don't know, I don't think we should read too much into it. I think she meant pollution. I doubt she meant population control. But, you know, who knows, but she's just not ideological. Camilla Harris is just a chameleon. She's whatever she needs to be. Her whole political career shows that she's not a far leftist. She's just whatever she thinks she needs to be in order to win. She's really horrible in that sense, but, but maybe that's better than being an ideologue that thinks that we should have population control. So I just don't, I just don't give it a lot of credence. You know, and people do make, you know, these kind of miss, misspeak, particularly Biden misspeak. So it doesn't shock me that somebody so close to him can't keep a thought straight in their mind. All right, let me just mention that tomorrow we've got Amish Adulja. I will be interviewing Amish Adulja tomorrow night. So we will talk about COVID lessons learned. We will talk about vaccines. We'll talk about other kind of bio threats. We'll probably talk about RFK. We'll talk about conspiracy theories. We'll talk about a bunch of different things. So Amish Adulja will be on the show tomorrow. That should be a lot of fun. But for those of you who want to ask questions, feel free to come and ask the questions. What else? There was something else I wanted to announce that has basically slipped my mind. All right, we'll see if I remember between now and the end of the show. Mary Elaine asks, what about the cost of bicycle lanes and environmental studies and highway costs? We have a lot of little used bicycle lanes in Washington state. Yeah, I mean, bicycle lanes are probably huge in all new construction. I don't know if how much that factors into that particular graph. Correlation is not causation. So you can't say that that graph is just because of its shape is caused by America. But there is some causal relationship there. Environmental studies are insane and they raised the cost of building anything in the United States dramatically. I talked about that when we talked about the subway system and trains and stuff like this. I mean, the United States and the manufacturing plants that are supposed to be subsidized by the CHIP Act, the environmental regulations make everything slow and cost dramatically more. And bicycle lanes add to that. And they're now in some states like Washington and California and other places. They're mandated for almost all locations. I mean, we even have them here in Puerto Rico. We have quite a few people using them. The weather is such that you can use them all year round. But yeah, I mean, there's a million little regulations, hiring requirements, affirmative action that still exists in hiring to build these kind of preference for minority employers and stuff like that. All of that just raises the cost more and more and more. And I'm sure all of that has just become more rigorously pursued under a Biden administration. Frank says, do fathers have expectations of their son's masculinity? I mean, it depends on the father, right? And it depends on his orientation and to the extent that masculinity is important to him, sports is important to him, physical is important to him. So I don't think all fathers do. But certainly some fathers do. So it certainly is a part of the expectations that I think of many fathers, particularly the ones influenced and raised under the assumptions of a, what do you call it, a kind of a conservative, traditionalist perspective on masculinity. By the way, the show yesterday on masculinity, I thought was interesting. Hopefully you did too. Please feel free to share it. Those of you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. I think it's my goal there was to open up a conversation and to get people thinking a little differently about masculinity, to avoid this dichotomy between the left that wants to denounce anything masculine and a right that wants to go back 500 years to find masculinity and to try to envision a masculinity that is appropriate for a 21st century. Kind of remember, you know, concepts on a frozen in the past, we get new data and the new data that today is that in order to take care of yourself, in order to take care of your family, in order to be productive in the world and to have an impact on the world requires the use of reason more so than ever in human history. It's primarily a function of the mind, not at all a function of muscle, and that has to change the way we think about what constitutes masculinity and shift it away from muscle and exploitation and towards trade and use of mind. And the worst model, the worst models for masculinity are the ones presented to us by the right. The models of either 1220, the models of Andrew Tate or the model of Walsh with the good woman sitting at home or the model of course of Putin. None of those people are masculine. I don't consider Putin masculine.  And a creature of the past, not a creature of the future. As I said in my show yesterday, Steve Jobs, now there's a masculine guy. Adam Schmitz, Oregonians can now pump their own gas. Faith in humanity was stored. Oh my God, really? So you have self-serve gasoline stations in Oregon. I mean, and you guys think that these blue states are lost forever. There's a blue state that just took a massive step towards liberty and freedom. Isn't that amazing? I think Steve Jobs is masculine and is the definition of what masculinity is about the way he commanded a stage in his presentations. That's masculinity, not pumping iron. But anyway, I'm going to leave that for you to mull over and listen to my show from yesterday, because it was interesting. We talked a lot about this. And yeah, I will see you all tomorrow. By the way, we're $23 away from the goal. We've got 80 people watching right now. Somebody put in a couple of $10 or $25 or just get us there so that we don't go down kind of not achieving our goal. Tomorrow we'll have a show, a new show, probably at one o'clock. And then we'll have the interview with Amon Shadalja at 8 p.m. Friday we'll have a show at one o'clock. And Saturday, 3 p.m., we'll have a regular Saturday show. Not sure what the topic will be. And then Sunday, Sunday evening, I expect we will be doing a members-only show. So you can anticipate a members-only show for members on Sunday. And I will let you know. Yeah, I'm still looking for topics. Fred Hoppe, I think, or somebody said that they put something on the members-only section of YouTube. I don't know how to get there. I need to find how to get there and then see what you have. Sylvanas put in $20. Thank you, Sylvanas. Somebody do $3 so we can be done with this. But thank you guys. Appreciate the support. Thank you for the people who are here for the first, not for the first time, but really here live. Thank you for being live. And please go back and listen to the masculinity show. Those of you who haven't yet, like TZ. Bye, everybody. And share, share, share, share. And like. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It helps with algorithms. Really, really does.