So I just learned about this open-source project online for generating random avatars that you can use in your software So let's go ahead. I'm just going to show you how it works how their API works Something you can install yourself, but you can also just use their API to generate some random avatars. Let's get started This is the website avatars.dyspair.com. In fact right now if you just go to dyspair.com It forwards you to the sub domain of avatars.dyspair.com right here You can see an example of one of the avatars It's set to male and if you give it a custom seed you'll see that it changes randomly depending on what we're typing in there You can change it to female and get a female character. You can do human which will give you male or female You don't know and then there's other options too. I also like their bots one, which will give you like a little bot avatar It is a open-source project. Here's their github page Dyspair and if you look at the license, it's an MIT license So let's go back here again. This is something that you can install to generate something on your own system But they also have a very basic HTTP API, which makes it super simple So if you need to generate a random avatar for a game or an application you can do that here It also generates you can have it create just little avatars with initials in there So if you know your users initials you can have it generate something that way But let's go ahead and just have a look at how this works. It's super simple. So here we go Here's an example.  Let me go ahead and copy their example here Which also gives a value for a background if you don't give it a background value It's going to give you a pn or sorry an SVG with a transparent background But here where you were using hex code zero zero zero ff that's going to be blue So let's go ahead and copy that open up a new tab paste that in there hit enter There is our average our avatar so you can see here It's male and this is we wrote John here But that's just your your random seed so I can type anything there and it will give us a new male character Based on what we type in there and every time you use that seed it's going to give you the same results So you would want to generate something random each time if you want a random Output again the background is hex code. So right now it's set to blue I can set it if I do ff that's going to be all red and all blue So we're gonna get a pink color or Muav if you will And here's a here's an example or a little test for you If I do all red all green and no blue what color you get what does red and green get? yellow yellow, okay Watch my video about this is a yellow truck for more on colors like that So again if we just leave out the backgrounds, we're gonna get an SVG with a transparent background Again, I can change this to from male to female and I'm going to get the female version of that character I can type in something random again here That's a funny looking one. Let's try another one. There we go So we have a female character again I can come in here and I can change this from female to male and there's the male version of that character and We can also another option here would be Bots with three Ts and an S should give us a bot Random characters gives us that and again if you want randomly male or female You just type in human and it will give you a human character Let's look at their API gives you a little more information here You can also do things like setting the mood you can make them happy or sad So let's go ahead and grab that John character again paste him in there this time with mood equals happy Look, he's smiling, but if I change happy to sad same character, but now he's frowning So there's some examples and of course I can go ahead and take one of these copy it and In this empty folder here. I can you wget or curl and I'm just going to type in that URL And it downloaded a file if I list out you can see it there if I file it out You can see that it is a vector graphic image and if I open up this directory You can see that I have an icon by default. They're gonna be 20 pixels by 20 pixels Which might be a little small depending on your application They are pixely pictures, so it's not a big deal, but you can change the height and width by giving it variables of h and w so let's do 128 and Width of 128 and there we go. We now have a 128 by 128 image I can wget that this time since it has those variables at the end I'll want to use dash o for an output and I'll just call this Av.svg for avatar and if I open you might want to do xdg I have xdg open alias to the word open But we will open up that with my default image viewer. There we go. That's what we have just downloaded now Let's write a script to Download a handful of them Obviously you don't want to overload their API, but I'm just going to write a script that anytime you run it It's going to download for avatars with the same seed But it'll give you a male a female a human and a bot so let's go ahead Vim. We'll just call this avatars.sh And we'll make this a bash script to save some time and not bore you too much I'm going to copy and paste some code here. First thing we want to do is generate a random seed We're gonna do this by I've gone over generating random characters in the past, but we're gonna cat out You random so from our dev directory. We're going to tell it. We just want alpha numeric Output and then this is going to say okay. We just want 32 characters give us the first result Okay, we just create a random seed perfect now. We want to create an array We want to generate a male a female a bot and then a random human from this information and To easily be able to adjust the size. We'll create a variable. I'll say 128 now We're gonna download the avatar right here. Let's clean this up a little bit There we go So We have our array of types. We're gonna say for each of those we're gonna create a variable called t. We're going to This did not copy the way I wanted it to there we go We can I'm putting all this on one line We don't have to but we are going to w get we're going to be quiet about it Then we're going to download a url, but we're going to put in The type here and we're going to go through each one of these types We're going to create an output file that also has That type so that's going to be part of our random seed actually that doesn't even need to be there That's actually a little extra random seed there We can actually remove that like that and we should get the same results. So we're going to generate A random seed and I think I was thinking different when I first started creating this script I could have left that stuff in there. I'm just shortening up the code a little bit with unnecessary stuff okay, so type The seed we generated and then we're gonna set the size. We're gonna set the output We're going to say the type and the seed so that we can download more than one And then we're just going to echo the output of what we just generated. That's it I'll put a link in the description of this video to this code on pasted in but let's go ahead and make that Executable, let's see right there clear the screen and now we can just type in avatars.sh and We just created a bunch of things. So let's go ahead and open up this directory here. You can see Didn't mean to move that over there We have some new avatars all 128 by 128 pixels. Let's run our code again There we go. We just got four more avatars Run it again We're gonna get four more avatars. So already we have a bunch of avatars I don't know why my computer's not liking creating some thumbnails right now properly But yeah, we can look through all these And that's great So you can actually create your own collection to have on hand as well pretty easily with a script like this Sorry for the confusion when I was Copying my script and I decided to make some changes, but again the link to this to this script, which is very simple Will be in the description of this video. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please visit films by chris.com That's Chris the K. Those are linked to that in the description I do have a patreon page link in the description Please like share subscribe and I hope that you have a great day


Observations are an important skill of a scientist. What I want you to do is to set up an experiment and observe it for a week. First, take a test tube and put about an inch of copper sulfate in the bottom of the test tube.  If you don't have filter paper, something like a coffee filter will work. And put that just down into the test tube to sort of make a little barrier. On top of your filter paper, pour in about an equal amount of sodium chloride. So just table salt.  When you have your filter paper in place, now take an iron nail and drop the nail in the test tube. Fill the entire test tube almost to the top with water. And put a stopper to keep dust and other debris from falling into it.  And each day you come to class for the next week, I want you to look at this test tube and draw the changes that you see occurring. And save that test tube because at the end of the semester, we're going to take that test tube apart and see what's on the inside.


Hello again. Today's question again is another nice one it's one hectare is it too much or too little land and this relates back to a particular series of books that have been published in Russia and around the world now a woman called Anastasia who lives in the forest and she says that everyone should have one hectare of land and so just to translate that so for those of you who are familiar with acres rather than hectares so one hectare is about two and a half acres so what I would say is it too much or too little land well I would say what is it you're trying to do what are your needs where do you live so the Anastasia books are based in Russia there's a cooler climate a similar latitude to where we live in Britain if you live at Equator you have much more light for instance it also might have other things going on around so what are our needs what is the context in which we live and those things will determine how much land we might need and of course it also comes back to where do you sit in the landscape because permaculture is not about just being self-sufficient but for instance it's about each of us providing useful services for the people around us to create local economies so we don't need to move things a long way there's more resilience in systems like that and so some of us might need more land because we are growing particular things for instance if you have animals then animals inevitably need quite a lot of land because you need them to be able to move if animals stay in one place you get parasites, psychos, worm burdens and so on building up which you either have to deal with chemically which is what generally happens these days in agriculture or you do it herbally but either way you're trying to intervene in a system that actually could be cured by keeping the animals moving in wild ecosystems animals move they move in order to not be food or to find food that would include our ancestors too so coming up with the idea of one how much land do I need well really we rather than needing one piece of land all the time our ancestors would have had access to a large area of land but only passed through it for a short period of time and kept moving following the food wherever it happened to be at a particular time of year and there's a very nice book called The Hunter Gather Away by Fiona Campbell and she talks about how Devon ancestors so I live in Devon now in southwest England and how they moved through the landscape from the high ground in the winter months through the woods where they would be sheltered from the rough weather and worked their way down the river valleys basically following the food ending up at the sea the coast in the summer months where the seaweed was best and the one place you didn't have lots of insects flying around because it was nice and breezy and of course the sea is good to be about and then worked their way back up the river valleys to the highlands in the winter and so how much land do we need really depends on what are our needs you know so are we growing food are we growing food for other people are we just growing it for ourselves what kind of food do we want to grow are we active people do we need more energy more calories what are our skills what can we do where in the landscape are we are we high in the landscape where it might be windier but more light or are we down at the bottom of a valley where it might be colder in the winter in terms of cold air sitting frosty are we near water are we further are we halfway up a slope in the thermal belt all of these things are very significant questions so we need to know where we are and what the land can do and what we can do and what our needs are in order to work out exactly how much land we need but I think on one level it's probably better to say yes let's have a little bit more than we might think we need just in case because we can always plant trees in that place and create areas for wildlife rather than feel that we run out of space because for me as a gardener forest gardener I love to plant things to see the development of garden systems and to see the yields that come from those plantings and so on so the only danger with taking on more than you can cope with is that it becomes out of control which might not necessarily be a problem because out of control is essentially what nature wants to do but it might create some conflicts with your human neighbors who might start complaining about all of those thisles you've got growing over there and you've got to do something about them so I think the answer to is one hectare enough it might be it might not be it's quite a lot of land to look after for one person but perhaps for a family I think you could in most places certainly feed produce much of the food that you would use in that space and any land being able to interact and with any land is good to connect with nature to grow food it's a really important aspect of reconnecting with our primal selves if you like however much food you grow for yourself it's going to have much bigger benefits than just the idea of the money that it will save you so yes go forth and grow food and connect with land and yeah maybe a hectare is good


Garage sale with me. Let's go. Here we go Let's get started Okay, Bolo buddies. I am a night owl. I am not a morning person and this garage sale started at 8 So I had to get up at 7 15 today. Oh my goodness So lots of Little ceramics and pottery. This is a fits in Floyd and I definitely almost got this they had 15 on it They said they would take 10 same with the little teapot, but the teapot had some crazing and the fits in Floyd When I opened the lid it had been cracked and repaired. So I decided to pass on those items This is scrapbooking stuff and they wanted 20 for all of it I probably would have done it if there would have been more stickers But there weren't a whole lot of stickers. It was mostly paper and stuff like that. I don't know. Do the Starbucks Tumblers do well. There were a couple of those that I did not get That was missing something I do check perfumes those were bath and body Maybe I still should have looked it up. Maybe it was a discontinued scent or something They've got their social distancing sign That they have not hung up yet. I got there a little before 8. I was that person There it is. There's the sign Yes, everybody's wearing masks and Most of the garage sales here people are writing That you have to follow the Ohio guidelines. So People having garage sales are you know trying to protect themselves also Lots of little knick-knack toys. I did pick up some toys here I grabbed that coosie because it was free. I need to look into it a little more. I Didn't even realize it was in the free box the first time I looked in it And then I heard her tell somebody else that the stuff was free I did get these silverware from the brave show. I Could not find exact comps. I did pick up this word whammer And I need to again like I say at the end of the video. I have to figure out how many letters I have There's the hand sanitizer This is a nubby. It's like kind of like a chew toy for kids that I picked up I didn't get that because it was so heavy. It was a puzzle. It was new and sealed. Maybe I should have I did pick up these Little knee pads. I bought those and I think my camera got turned again. So I apologize I probably should have bought those because people are using them as face masks So definitely some cool toys. I got a v-tech watch, which I'll show you at the end. I comp it out Sorry, this section's really Looks awful, so I apologize. I don't know if I can fix that or not at this point There was a bunch of Halloween stuff, but somebody got there super early and beat me to it Those little guys were kind of cool, but I didn't want to mess with shipping them. I Did find some of my favorite things to sell and that is rad co-ornaments. I Can't remember. I think I show them to you guys. I might not but at the end of the video I'll show you Exactly what I got and what the comps look like All right, there they are So this one's like an elephant and there's two of those and Then there's a little puppy dog This guy right here. So I definitely scooped those up All right, this is the next garage sale. This was just a bag of toys. It was $5. I Need to go through it, but I'm pretty sure I can make some money. There's like vintage little tykes Little figures and people and vehicles. So we'll see There's this bag of GI Joe guys and They are all dismembered. I mean Horrible condition They wanted three dollars for them, but I talked to them and I ended up getting it for one dollar So there was some clothes in there and stuff. So I figured I would do okay. I could at least make my dollar back. I Didn't mess with those toys Yeah, this footage seems to be Maybe not Like my cameras turned wrong Or maybe I'm just too close Seems like when I transfer it over to my iPhone everything gets closer But it's so hard to hold your camera back and try to record and not have people notice you're recording So I don't know. I gotta figure that out There's the GI Joe's Yeah, so the arms everything seems to be there. They're just broken and I don't know if I can pop them back on or not So I got to figure out dates or years and stuff like that to see if they even have any value If not, they may go back to the thrift store. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I had my camera the other way Kind of a bummer. So those are magazines. I did not look at those. Maybe I should have Records same didn't look at them. I don't like messing with records because I don't know how to test them Lots of books. I don't mess with books very often unless they're goose bumps. I love goose bumps I know those are a bolo I don't want to sit and scan books. So I just passed The boots were I think $50 if I remember correctly They were priced more than I wanted to pay, but they were super cute This is the table by where they're sitting so I'm trying to be discreet as I video Probably should have got that little box that probably somebody would have wanted that Little jewelry box Little Christmas ornaments. They were nutcrackers But they said made in China with a sticker and they didn't seem old. So I passed This was a little bit disappointing. I drove about 30 minutes from my house because they said they were having a community sale and there were three sales So I was a little bit bummed about that. I was hoping to Hit some more garage sales, but it all worked out I ended up being able to go back to the thrift store that I was at the other day and find those items that you guys suggested And yeah looking at all the goodies on the table. I Only bought the toys at this store Store at this garage sale It's an old sewing machine. I didn't look it up. I hate shipping stuff like that I know I probably lose out on money because of that, but That's okay for today. I'm gonna say it's okay that I didn't buy the sewing machine I mean I should have looked it up though because what if it's like a $500 What do you call it? Shocks, I can't think of what it's called sewing machine What if Somebody will know somebody will tell me in the comments I'm always looking for movies if they're sealed. I buy them If they're not sealed I try not to buy them to sell just because I don't want to have to clean them or Wipe off fingerprints. That's all just way too much work for Not enough profits in my opinion. I don't know what that is That's a first alert. I think it's a ladder that you put out if you're There's a fire. I'm not sure. Okay, so this is the last garage sale I go to and this sign was kind of cool and I actually did get something from my husband at this sale that was not out I asked and they had something and they brought it out and I I It's something my husband collects So I went ahead and bought it for him. So these are the tie I forget what they call the big-eyed ones beanie booze I think and I wanted them all because beanie booze do decent. They're the TY Brand which I normally don't recommend getting but the beanie booze have decent comps But they wanted a dollar each and I just can't pay a dollar each for plush That are I mean some of them are like two inches three inches tall So, you know, I probably would have paid $5 for all of them just because I Don't know the value. I just know that I've done decent with like some of the McDonald's ones and stuff so Kind of cool There were some little soup mugs that had recipes on them I almost bought them, but I'm like, eh, you know, I could probably sell four of them for $25 But then I have to mess with shipping them and I just decided to pass. They were a dollar each also I got some cookie cutters Yeah Right there that It's William and Sonoma. I think is how you say it. It's a cookie cutter set. So I paid a dollar for it I don't know exactly what they sell for but I figure it'll be a bread-and-butter item and might do decent So, yeah, it's kind of cool This was kind of cute. I probably should have got it. It was a little owl mug Nothing super branded like a great brand, but it's an owl Everybody wants to drink out of an owl mug. There's the chicken soup recipe Let's see. I'm looking in the Tupperware. I Know some of that vintage Tupperware can do decent also, but I didn't look at it Okay, so at the end of the video, I'm gonna talk to you guys about Some of the things that I picked up at the garage sale today some of the items you saw and some of them you did not So let me know what you think. Let me know what I passed on that I should have bought I'm sure you guys will have plenty of things to be like you should have got this you should have got that It's kind of fun to read those comments because I'm like, oh, I thought I maybe should have So we'll see we shall see I have more of the Was I gonna say I lost my train to stop thought sorry I saw something in the video made me think of something And then I forgot Oh, there was a McCall pottery piece here, but they wanted four dollars for it. It was kind of cool, but These were kind of cool to their jointed bears, I probably should have got them There's another one that's all lace. That's really really neat That's not it Thank these were I can't remember But yeah, that lace one was kind of cool. I probably should have got it But I didn't I should have but I didn't it's my new saying Goodness me. Those look like little Jell-O molds that are maybe vintage J-E-L-L-O I don't know what that says No, I don't know pretty cool that stuff I got Okay, let's look at some of the comps for the garage sale items I got today This is the little aerial and the prints and they're called Clip clop horses And I don't have whatever This piece is but I do have Two pieces of like the road or whatever So this sold for 1496 plus shipping and I paid a dollar at a garage sale today for those as you saw earlier Okay, so these little guys were in the free box and they are so stinking cute They're from the brave movie and they're the triplets And they're these three little triplets and they fit in the back of the bears. Let me see if there's a picture of it But these were in the free box and yeah, so see their backs open up and They go into the back Super super cute Sold for 26 so you can see them in there. They're hiding So, um really cute the next item I got was this leap frog. Um Oh, what's it called word whammer And this one sold for 59 99 with free shipping I haven't looked at mine yet to see how many letters I have And I don't think mine has that additional piece So I'm going to do a little more research, but these are definitely a bolo um Depending on how many letters and all of that the prices do range But I learned about this one from youtube channel dad planet. So be sure to go check him out I saw it today and I'm like, oh my gosh. I know about that one. I was super excited and I paid three dollars for this And Those were free. Okay the next item Was uh this captain america the last in go and I have it. It's new in the box Looks like one sold for 1999 plus shipping And let's see 1499 free shipping. So kind of weird. They're Very uh different in their pricing. So I'll probably figure something out in the middle And definitely a great mercury item. I love putting toys on mercury And I paid a dollar for that. I do believe If not, um, we'll probably see in the video what I paid, but I'm thinking it was a dollar This little guy, I think was a dollar also And kind of weird one of them sold for 1970 with free shipping and one sold for Best offer up for uh, so less than four dollars so Yeah, I'm definitely not going to price it at four dollars So I will probably be on the higher end All right, I got this hat for 25 cents. It looks like this one here sold for 15 dollars and 99 cents plus shipping So not too bad for a 25 cent investment All right, the radco ornaments. This is the dog Mine has the tag attached which so do those Or that top one does So they took a best offer on it. They added it listed at 29.95 and took a best offer. So This one sold for 28 free shipping and that one They should not have auctioned it. So with radco, I definitely Will put a buy it now or best offer on them So I've got this little dog. I paid five dollars for it I love selling radco ornaments Here's the other radco. I got it's an elephant and mine's a little bit different But this one sold for 49.99 with free shipping. I got two of these um, they did write Like the date and initials on it. So that's probably going to hurt the value So I probably won't be able to ask as much But my total for everything was like 29 dollars and because I bundled I got them down to 25 So I'm just going to take um The money off The five dollars difference off of the Off of those so I only paid two dollars and 50 cents each. I feel much better about that The next item is this watch And they're going anywhere from 40 to 45 So kind of a mix I need to do a little more research, but I just wanted to give you guys an idea. I paid five dollars for that This little thing came in the free box And it's definitely, you know, just a bread and butter item, but it's a little backpack. It's by blah blah and uh Yeah, I'll probably put buy it now our best offer and put that on poshmark and mercari Okay, that's going into my thrift haul, which you guys will see later, which was crazy So these are my garage sale items that I found today Be sure to check out the description of the video like comment share and subscribe. Thanks for watching


A marine makes history, U.S. service members compete for the gold, and an update on hurricane relief efforts. All this and more this week on The Core Report. Marines and sailors with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit are providing humanitarian support in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Marines are clearing roadways, setting up communication towers, and converting salt water into fresh drinkable water. Joint Task Force Leeward Island are providing relief to St. Martin and Dominica in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma and Maria. The USS Wasp began evacuating on September 22nd. Marines with the Task Force created an evacuation control center at the Douglas-Charles Airport in Dominica and can process 80 people per hour. More than 140 people have been evacuated so far. The Core welcomed its first female infantry officer on September 25th. She's the first female to successfully complete the infantry officer since the Core opened all MOSes to women in the Marine Corps in April 2016. 131 Marines started the infantry officer course in July, only 88 graduated. The Invictus Games kicked off earlier this week. Toronto, Canada hosted more than 550 competitors from 17 nations from September 23rd to the 30th. The Invictus Games include 12 adaptive sports including wheelchair rugby, basketball, and golf. Prince Harry of Wales created the international competition after visiting a wounded warriors competition in the U.S. 88 U.S. athletes participated in this year's competition. The next Invictus Games will be hosted by Australia. The Miramar Air Show finished on September 24th. The Marine hosted event welcomed more than 500,000 spectators over the weekend. It took over 2,000 Marines and sailors and 1,500 volunteers to execute the three-day show. That's all for this week on the Core Report.


Miller's prism of clinical competence, where we have the domains arranged as the second dimension in this pyramid, that is knowledge, skills and attitude. But the basic dimension of this prism is knows, knows how, shows and does. In knows, there will be fact gathering and knows can be assessed using traditional true or false or MCQ type of assessment. In knows how, there will be interpretation or application through case presentations, essays, extended matching type MCQs. Shows, that is, in this stage they have the competence of demonstration of learning. This can be assessed via simulations and askies. And does, where the performance is integrated into practice, this can be assessed using direct observation, workplace based assessment. The base of this Miller's prism of clinical competence is know ways and through professional authenticity, he becomes an expert when he reaches the tip of this prism.


I feel like for a long time I got overlooked. And people were not checking for me, like at all. It wasn't until, I don't know, I don't know if it's cause like my hair is big now, that they're like who's homegirl with the big hair, but like people were not checking for me.  Like acting super grown, super sexy. I didn't even get comfortable with the idea of being sexy until like a couple of years ago. Listen, it's the message right here.  Cause I just want to build with you. Black girl tell me how you really feel. I want to keep it real with you. I want to live better, eat better. I want to love better, sleep better. Yeah, I want to feel so aligned. As a woman you have to vet men. Yes. As a woman you have insight on women. So going back to my first question. If you were a dude, how would you vet women? Ooh, huh. If I was a dude, how would I vet women? I feel like. And I want you to be granular. I don't just, you know, if she's a good person, I want you to get into the weeds. Get into the weeds on this one. This is a, this is an interesting question. Cause I mean, I've never vetted a woman before. I know as a woman how I vet men, based off what I'm looking for. Um, okay, can we do this? Can you share with me in your opinion what men are looking for in women and then I can share how I feel like you would find those things? The main thing is peace. Okay. Attractiveness. A warm and friendly disposition. And how do I put this?  But peace, the peace piece is the peace piece is the most important part.  And how peace she is with herself. Pay attention to how she talks about herself. Does she speak highly of herself or is she always down on herself? Like how much does she love herself? What's herself worth like? If she says that she's going to do something, does she do it? What's her relationship like with her family? That's not to say that the relationship with everyone has to be perfect, but does she have a relationship with people in her family and what does that look like? If there is a relationship in her family that is less than perfect, how does she feel about it? And has she come to terms with it? Has she healed through it? Has she like, you know, made effort? Like how did that go? What did that look like? Because I mean, that's important. I don't think that every family member has to be in her life and every family member she has to be on good terms with, but understanding her relationship to that, I think is very important. Little things, does she show appreciation and is she encouraging? Like with the small stuff?  Is she loving? Does she smile? How is she with friends? How is she around other people? Again, go into environments when other people are around. Is she friendly or is she standoffish? A lot of these things I just feel like you can observe in someone. Does she say thank you when you do something for her? Again, questions, what does she value? What's important to her? Some of those different things are gonna be important to different people in terms of that. But for the peace thing, I really just feel like how at peace she is in her own life, how she conducts herself in her own life. What are her self-care practices in her own life? I just feel like observing her and how she moves throughout life, how she experiences life. Her relationship to life, to herself and to those around her, I feel like is essentially what you look at. Is everything to her a drag? Is there always something to complain about? Because if that's the case, then you're probably not gonna have much peace because she's gonna be complaining about something. Because her mindset is her goggles focus on what's wrong and not what's going great in her life. So like how does she talk about challenges? Does she talk about challenges as opportunities for growth? Or does she talk about challenges in a way that she's defeated and deflated? Yeah, when someone does something, or even when you as a guy, when you do something that she doesn't like, how does she respond to it? Does she come to you?  Or does she give you the silent treatment for a week? Like just simple, I don't think, I really don't think it's that complicated, but maybe it's because I'm a woman. But I feel like if you just focus on the things that you're saying you want, it's easy to see if a woman's friendly. It's easy to feel if a woman brings you peace or not. I think it's just about not rushing it and taking your time to allow yourself to see that. So here's what's tough. Let me have it. I agree with everything you said.   And some of the positives, small examples smiling, tend to not be present amongst our women. I encourage men to take it a step further and understand that there's generations of trauma that inform her behavior, where she's from, informs her behavior, her father not being in her life, informs her behavior, all the traumas he's experienced throughout her life informs her behavior. So there's this level of grace that we must have with black women. How do we navigate the fact that stuff like simply smiling tends to be a more nuanced ask than it should be, I guess. And if we were just betting based on those things, then a lot of black men already are doing it, like we'll take their business elsewhere, because those things tend to be easier to find. So what are your thoughts on that? I don't know, though, I don't know. The reason I say that is because, and maybe I'm around a lot of women who are like me, I do know that there's a lot of women who maybe don't smile, who aren't super friendly, who whatever, there are a lot of black women who are. And a lot of black women who do. And from my perspective, I feel like sometimes men aren't checking for those women. I feel like they want the women who don't want them back. I feel like the friendly women get put in the friend zone. So is it that they aren't there or that they aren't being paid attention to or they aren't packaged the way that you want them to be packaged? Because also the woman who is smiling and friendly probably is not going around like wearing a face full of makeup all the time or with her hair super done up all kinds of ways or with freaking Fashion Nova tight, fit in clothes on all the time. She's probably in something comfortable because that's what she'd prefer to be in.  You know, she's not necessarily gonna be the loudest. She's not necessarily gonna be in your face. She's probably gonna be like quieter. Like I feel like for a long time I got overlooked and people were not checking for me, like at all. It wasn't until, I don't know, I don't know if it's cause like my hair is big now, that they're like who's homegirl with the big hair but like people were not checking for me.  Like acting super grown, super sexy. I didn't even get comfortable with the idea of being sexy until like a couple of years ago. Like you could not get me to say that I was sexy, no way. I was ever gonna say that by myself.  It's okay for you to be sexy. And I was like, I feel comfortable being cute. I feel comfortable saying I'm cute. I don't feel comfortable claiming sexy.  You know, so I feel like some of it is just about keeping your eyes open for, and again, this is for women as well, but also for men, since that's what we're talking about right now, keeping your eyes open to what it is that you say that you want. And paying attention to the types of women who are the kinds of women that you say that you want. I agree with you. I think what's tough though is, let me backtrack, part of the reason why I tell men to focus on themselves and focus on becoming the type of men that they wanna be first before going out there and trying to find the type of woman. Because she's gotta come help you with whatever you're building. So you have to be building something. With that being said, I'm not just talking about black women that we come across in a romantic context. I'm talking about just in general. I'm talking about at the grocery store, the cashier, the hotel attendant, whatever. Nine times out of 10, it's not a pleasant dialogue. A lot of times, and this is even my own experience, there's a veneer of suspicion initially that I met with. And I wanna say it's not until I open my mouth that they can tell that I'm one of the good ones. But sometimes even after that, there's still that suspicion. Like, what, you know, something ain't right. Like, I remember a female friend of mine was telling me about she was at a bar with some friends of hers. And a black man, probably a more nerdy guy was looking at her. And she said, hey, how are you? She said, he lost his freaking mind. She said that he lit up like a Christmas tree. Like, are you talking to me? He said, I mean, she said that he ran to his friends and was like, I just met a super, he's one of those guys, right? He's met a super cool black chick and like, she said hi to him.  It is sad. He, that was foreign to him that another black person who was a female was nice to him. And she wasn't interested in him. She wasn't, you know, but she taught him how to salsa dance. She, he followed her around that club like a dog. Cause he was the, and I say all that to say, that is more common than I think even women realize. So like, why is it, do you think that you, people like you and how you're describing the type of women men should be looking for are an anomaly in our community? Why is that? Or do you think they're not and we're missing something? It's hard for me to say, cause I don't want to negate your experience because I know my experience is different than yours. And I know that there are black women who have a demeanor that's not friendly. I don't know if it's because I'm, for example, I'm a woman. So I don't know if just because I am a black woman that I experienced black women as being more friendly because they trust me.  So I, I can't, it's hard for me to speak to that because I don't really understand and I can't really bat in that experience. I can make some guesses at why that might be the case, but I don't know that I'd even know if like my friends do stuff like that when I'm not around. If I had to say, though, I feel like what's, what is promoted as being sexy, as being attractive, as being desirable is more mysterious, is more, is less transparent. And so maybe they think that's what's gonna get them what they want and they're expecting.  Yeah. And so they're expecting that that's what's going to get someone to come and talk to them. Which to me is not logical, but I feel like that could be what it is. So the sense of like, if he's not man enough to walk through this veil of suspicion, I don't know. Yeah, I've heard that actually. I have heard that. Like if he, if he's not like confident enough to come over and talk to me, then, oh well. And I can say that I've definitely have had a little bit of that as well. For sure. But why? She's intimidating. It doesn't mean matter if it's a friendly person. And I know because, you know, I've shot a shot or two. And it's intimidating. It's scary. Not gonna lie. So I think I have a different, I understand a little bit. So I'm like the least I can do is smile in your direction and say, how are you doing? Damn. Yeah, cause when I have conversations with dudes, it's like, it's already scary to shoot your shot at a woman.  Like you might be, you might have it swatted and then you get dumped on. Like you stand the chance of being like utterly embarrassed and annihilated. Like, look at you. How dare you think you can, and this is the experience of a lot of men. I'm sorry.  So, for the men who still want black women, cause I don't necessarily deal with the ones who are done. And I don't, I don't think convincing people is a worthwhile pursuit, especially adults. For the ones who still want black women, what, what, what's the best pep talk?  I would just, okay, this is going to sound really boo boo, but I would just say focus on what it is that you desire to attract. Focus on, focus on what you desire and kind of putting yourself at the vibration to attract that and just keep your eyes open for what it is that you're looking for. Like don't give any energy to, to the things that you don't want because where your attention goes, energy flows. So you want to put your energy towards what it is that you desire, your thoughts towards what you desire. For a while, I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to like be able to, even as a black woman, if I focus on all the things that's wrong with black men and oh, statistics that are against me this and statistics, I literally will never find anybody if I do that and I've had a lot better look by focusing on the black men who are beautiful fathers and the black men who are beautiful partners. Like I literally put those images and that kind of stuff in my vision, in my awareness because I want to have the belief that that exists and that it exists for me.  You don't need all black women to be friendly and you don't need all black women to bring you peace. If you're a monogamous person, you need one black woman, just one who is that for you? You're just trying to find your one. You don't need everybody to be that for you because everyone's not gonna be that for you. So just focus on your one. Surely you can find one person.  But if you're someone who's looking for your one life partner, something that helps me is to remember that I'm just looking for one person. I don't need everybody to be the man that I'm looking for because I'm only looking for one. So, you know, there's a lot of talk these days about like black women divesting. That means going to best man for the job, white man, Asian man, whatever.  So they're going to Thailand, South America, Africa, Europe to find a better quality woman because American women are fundamentally broken. American black women are fundamentally broken.  Do you think it's still a worthwhile pursuit? Or do you think what those groups, what those groups, what those factions are doing is cool, is, you know, it's all right. Be honest. It's worthwhile for me. I think each person has to make that choice for themselves. And I've had times where I really wanted to be one of those people that divested. I was like, maybe it would be easier, if I maybe it would be fine. I've had these conversations with my mom all the time. I'm just like, mom, I just wish that I was attracted to white men. Cause I feel like, you know, I have more options, not even just that it would be easier, but you know, I would have more options if I was attracted to, you know, more than really just black men.  I feel like it's worth it for me. I can't say if it's worth it for everybody. I think you got to want it. And if you want it, then it's worth it for you. If you don't, then do what you do. I am going to support you either way. That's just, I just want you to be happy, you know? Just be happy. And if you feel like what's going to make you happy is dating someone of a different race, then that's cool.  It's a different kind of beautiful. I think that black love with black men and a black woman is exceptionally beautiful, but. Why? One, because we have a lot to work through to get there. I feel like if you have that, the appreciation for what you have, in my opinion, is much deeper, because I feel like we have to do more work to get to the point of having a healthy experience in the context, within the context of black love. And I just feel like it's a really deep, rich love when it's done well. And I feel like as we, as black people, come together and figure out what it looks like to have healthy families, then we can raise black children who grew up in a healthy environment and who are just like badasses in the best way. And I feel like that's the start of us shifting a lot for ourselves and our community is with the black family. I feel like the black flea family is important and it's the foundation of everything. Yeah, so it's important for building legacy, black legacy specifically. What do you wish, if you had Athena's glove, right? And you could snap your finger. What do you wish was different about black men? I don't know that I have an answer to that. Oh, what I could say, okay, okay. If I'm like, I'm trying to make sure I think of an answer because that's a harder one. I would say I wish, and again, I don't think it's just a black men issue, but I would say I wish more black men went to therapy and knew it was okay to go to therapy if I had to say anything. Because I feel like y'all need it, we need it too. What thing, what stone, why is it, or what is it specifically you think black men specifically need to work through from a psychological standpoint? The first thing that immediately came to my mind was feeling good enough. Because sometimes I feel like there's nothing that I can say or do to make black men feel good enough. Why do you think we don't? I think that y'all fully understand your worth because of things that you've experienced in your past and because of the picture that's painted of y'all. I think it's hard to believe that you're enough when there's been so many things aimed at making you believe that you're not. What are those things? Media, media don't like y'all at all, in my opinion. I know that there are men who experience some traumatic things with their parents, with women. I think there's a lot of things and it's been different things for every person. But I think it comes from all sides. It comes from all sides. So one of the things that I've observed that happens a lot and it happens less to me than I think it happens to most black men and the only reason is I have conversations a lot. I've gotten pretty good at it. But a lot of black men feel gaslit and I know a lot of times we talk about it in the context of black women feeling like their experiences are minimized and trivialized and you're crazy, that didn't really happen like that. Why do you think so many black men feel and to your point feel not just unseen or misunderstood but also like minimized when they do express themselves or air their grievances or talk about some of the things that they don't like whether with women or society at large. Why do you think that is? Why do black men feel unseen or minimized when they're expressing themselves? It's a question. Like I'll give you an example. Something that I hear a lot is the response from women tends to be where do y'all find these women? Well none of my friends are like that or you need to pick better. If those were our responses when women air their grievances we would be lambasted as insensitive and... I would say y'all are correct because that's what I tell women. That's exactly what I tell women. Straight like that. It's your fault boo. Be like, I didn't know he was like, yes you did. Okay, well maybe, yeah. So, I mean I would say that y'all are correct when you say that. I mean in general though again if we're saying why do black men feel like unseen or not listened to when y'all are expressing yourselves, that's the question. I have to keep going back because I will forget. I feel like I would say because sometimes y'all aren't seen or heard. And I think that's because it's hard to do. And not even just for black women when it comes to black men but women in general when it comes to men. Something that we don't talk about and something that I've kind of learned about is that as much as women ask for vulnerability from men it's scary. It can be scary when we actually get it because they are fake. It's the truth. I think that something that Brene Brown was talking about, I love her, I'm kind of obsessed with her, is she talks about vulnerability, shame, guilt and how that can be a barrier. How it's like shame and guilt can be a barrier to vulnerability. And I think she studied mostly women but a man came up to her and said, well that's all fine and good. What does that look like for men? What does your research look like in the context of men? She was like, oh I don't really know. I just study mostly women. And he was like, well that's real convenient. And he basically told her that his wife and girls would rather see him died on his white horse than to express any type of vulnerability or like weakness.  Like that's really heavy. And I think it's real too. And I think it's real too. And I think it takes a very strong woman to really be able to create space for a man to be vulnerable.


My topic is the corrupt origins of central banking in America. And I'll talk by mentioning one recent example of corruption related to central banking. It has to do with the Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, Henry Paulson. Henry Paulson, if you look up his Wikipedia entry, he was the assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1970 to 72. And so he was sort of a crony of Robert McNamara and the whole Vietnam War and Nixon administration. And then he became, in 1972, late 72, the assistant to John Ehrlichman, the Watergate criminal. And so naturally, you would want a guy like that as your Treasury Secretary to watch over the money. But anyway, the reason I bring him up, Henry Paulson, is that fast forward several decades, and George W. Bush appoints him Treasury Secretary because, well, naturally, he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. And as the Americans in the room all know, there's a federal law requiring the Treasury Secretary to be the chairman of Goldman Sachs. And I'm being facetious, of course. But it sure seems that way. And so he leaves Goldman Sachs for a while, goes to work for Bush, and administers a bailout of Goldman Sachs worth $12.9 billion with a B, and then leaves, goes back. And if you read his Wikipedia entry today, it says now, what's he doing now? He's running some kind of a global warming institute or something like that, whatever. But I remember reading at the time in The New York Times, shortly after he had arranged the $12.9 billion bailout of his company, and then went back to private life, that there was an article in The New York Times, I think I was on an airplane, how boring long airplane flights are. And I don't normally read The New York Times, but on a long flight I read every page because there's nothing else to do. And there was no internet on this flight. And I'm reading the style section.  And so it doesn't get more corrupt than that, does it? And so there is story after story like this. In the 1820s, the precursor of the Fed in America was something called the Bank of the United States. It was the first central bank. And Henry Clay, the politician Henry Clay, who would later become Speaker of the House of Representatives, was a member of Congress at the time. And he was known as a big gambler. And he had racked up $40,000 in gambling debt in 1822, and millions of dollars in today's money. And so he left Congress for two years to become the general counsel of the Bank of the United States, the head lawyer. And in two years, he was able to pay off all his gambling debt. So there would be the equivalent today of millions of dollars to pay off the gambling debt. And so they paid him a salary, and they also gave him huge tracts of land for the cases he had worked on. And so he left that job and became Secretary of State. And so that's the kind of person you want to put in charge of a war-making guy who racks up 40, who's so irresponsible. He had 11 children, by the way, 11 children, and he racks up $40,000 in gambling debt. That's the kind of responsible person you want to put in charge of foreign policy out there. And so that's massive corruption. Daniel Webster, way back in the early 19th century, in one of my books, I quoted a letter from him to Nicholas Biddle, who ran the Bank of the United States, the second bank of the United States. It was called demanding what he called a retainer. He said, if you want me to support the continuation of the bank in the United States Senate, you will give me my retainer. He was angry because they were late paying him his retainer from the bank. And so corruption in banking, in the central banking, go hand in hand. And there are a couple of ways of looking at this. One way of looking at it is, well, these are just bad people that sort of weasel their way in there. If you get rid of the bad people, you'll get rid of the bad corruption. That's typically what most Americans anyway have been sort of conditioned into thinking. But the argument I'm going to make is that corruption like this is inherent in central banking, and especially in American central banking. And I think I can make the case and pretty much prove the case that it was always the intent of the advocates of a central bank to corrupt politics. This was an instrument of corruption. It's not just that a few bad eggs have gotten in charge of it from time to time. And if we only weed those people out, that's not the case. It reminds me of when I was at the University of Tennessee 100, I think it was 175 years ago. It seems like that. It was during the collapse of communism in late 80s, early 90s. There was a Marxist economist on the faculty. And I ran into him in the parking lot. His name was John. I said, well, John, what are you going to do now? Plumber, bricklayer, carpenter? Marxism is dead. And he said, oh, no, we're no longer tarnished with all these evil people like Stalin and Chuchesco and all these. Now we can have nice people that run socialism. So it'll work now. And that's sort of the attitude a lot of people have toward the corruption related to central banking. We got rid of Henry Paulson and all these crooks from Goldman Sachs. Now we're going to find good people. We'll put the pope in charge. He'll run things better. So here's a story I'm going to tell. Murray Rothbard, in his book The Mystery of Banking, wrote about the origins of central banking. And actually, the first bank, the first government run bank, was actually called the Bank of North America. It wasn't the bank. The Bank of the United States actually came after this. But this only lasted about a year. And here's what Murray Rothbard said was the reason why the people who wanted a bank run by politicians. These are mostly business people from the Northeast part of the United States, New York, Philadelphia, Boston. And they were led by a man named Robert Morris, who was a wealthy businessman from Philadelphia. He was a defense contractor during the Revolutionary War. He was called the financier of the American Revolution. But I think most of the money went from the taxpayers to him, not from him to the government. He did arrange some loans for the US American government at the time. But Murray Rothbard said this is what these people were up to, these business people, bankers and merchants from mostly the Northeast. They wanted, quote, I'm quoting Rothbard, page 192 from The Mystery of Banking, to reimpose in the new United States a system of mercantilism and big government similar to that in Great Britain, against which the colonists had rebelled. The object was to have a strong central government, particularly a strong president or king as chief executive, built up by high taxes and heavy public debt. The strong government was to impose high tariffs to subsidize domestic manufacturers, develop a big navy to open up and subsidize foreign markets for American exports, and launch a massive system of internal improvements or an internal public works. That is the government funding of building of roads and canals. In short, the United States was to have a British system without Great Britain, end quote. And an important part of what Murray Rothbard called the Morris Scheme was, quote, to organize and head a central bank to provide cheap credit and expanded money for himself and his allies. The Bank of North America was deliberately modeled after the Bank of England. So that was the scheme. They wanted this economic agenda, protectionist tariffs, government subsidies for roads and canals. They also wanted a heavy public debt, which I'll explain in a minute, and a bank run by politicians, a national bank. So they started up this Bank of North America and it actually, they had a law passed that made it illegal for other banks to operate in the country. It was given a monopoly in currency issue, but it inflated its currency so badly that within one year no one had any faith in it and it was privatized. So it lasted one year. But these people never gave up, did they? We have the Fed, the Fed exists. And so that was the origins of the Fed. It was always a mercantilist scheme to fund corporate welfare. That's what it was always about. And then Rothbard also writes about a man he calls Robert Morris' youthful disciple. And this is Alexander Hamilton, who was the first treasury secretary in the United States. It's Robert Morris' youthful disciple. And he was youthful. He was only in his 20s, early 20s. Even though the average lifespan back then was, well, what was it, 40? The average man died in 40, 45. So 25 is not exactly a spring chicken back in the late 18th century. But anyway, but he was certainly more youthful than Morris or George Washington, who he also worked for as treasury secretary. And Hamilton knew nothing about finance and economics. And contrary to what Ben Bernanke will tell you, if you're interested in some of this, I wrote an article for lourockwell.com a couple of weeks ago called Ben Bernanke's Bromance. And he's very upset that there's talk about taking Alexander Hamilton, his hero and idol off the $10 bill. And so you could read this article about I sort of poke fun at Ben for doing that. But anyway, Hamilton knew nothing about finance or economics, never studied it, and they didn't have any background. But Robert Morris, he was Robert Morris' protege. So Morris writes, George Washington, the president, a letter recommending Hamilton as treasury secretary. And in the Pulitzer Prize winning book on Hamilton by Ron Cherno, Cherno says that George Washington turned to Hamilton and said, I didn't know you knew anything about finance. We never talked about it. But he appointed him treasury secretary anyway. So he was an economic dunce. But if you read Ben Bernanke, the opening line by the way of my article is, Ben Bernanke is in love with another man. And then dash dash Alexander Hamilton. And he talks like, it's like he's some kind of genius, economic genius. And this is sort of the myth, the mythology of American history, but he wasn't. He was totally unschooled. What he was schooled in was sort of the protectionist tracts written by the British apologist for mercantilism. So he knew that some of the mercantilist tracts written by publicists for British mercantilism. But I think he was unaware of Adam Smith and David Ricardo and the French physiocrats and all the people who his nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, was very familiar. It was Jefferson who translated the work of Turgo, the French economist into English. You know, if you walk into Jefferson's home, Monticello, tomorrow, right in the front door, I think there's Sir Francis Bacon over here, or maybe it's Montesquieu, I forget, but it's Turgo whose name is up here somewhere, on the wall, his precursor of the Austrian school. It was Jefferson who translated him and who knew, who understood that economics. But it was Hamilton who was the economic ignoramus. But if you read Bernanke or any of these people today who idolize Hamilton, they say the opposite. They say, oh, Jefferson was, he was a farmer and he didn't understand banks. He was against banks and he was against manufacturing. He wasn't. He was against government subsidies to banks and to manufacturing. He wasn't against banks, per se. He was against a bank run by politicians. But he was for real banks. So anyway, they never did explain this. So Hamilton became the number one promoter of resurrecting a national bank. And he did eventually succeed. We did get the Bank of the United States, but the way in which we got it was kind of interesting in that there was a debate between Jefferson and Hamilton and before George Washington. George Washington, the president, asked both these men to make a case for and against the bank. And so Jefferson made a constitutional case saying it's unconstitutional because the Constitutional Convention considered a national bank and rejected it explicitly. So that's proof that it wasn't intended to be a part of the Constitution. And it is nowhere in the delegated powers of the United States Constitution to set up a bank. Congress does not have the power to set up a bank. Hamilton came back and essentially said, but if you read between the lines of the Constitution, there are implied powers of the Constitution. So he invented the notion of implied powers. And once you get on that road, then you're down the road to unlimited government power because implied means anything any politician could dream up in his imagination. If you get away from the actual explicit powers of the central government that are in there. And but anyway, they had this big long debate and both of these documents are online. You can read Jefferson's statement on the constitutionality of a national bank and Hamilton's statement on the constitutionality of national bank. But what the reason we got it though was a sleazy corrupt political deal involving George Washington. George Washington was a big time real estate investor. And he had invested in a big chunk of property in Virginia. And they were in the process of moving the nation's capital from New York to Virginia and creating Washington DC. And what George Washington wanted was them to extend the boundary of Washington DC so that it would be adjacent to his property in Mount Vernon. And then he said, if you do that, I will sign the bill creating your bank. He told the federalist, which he did. So we had all this brainpower that Jefferson and Hamilton put together and making their arguments, but it didn't matter. What mattered was Washington was able to enhance the value of his property in Virginia. And that's how we got the first bank of the United States. And so what was the purpose of this bank? What did they want to do with this bank? Well, I'll give you a hint of why they were so dead set on giving this bank in place. Here's what Douglas Adair, this is the editor of one of the editions of the Federalist Papers. The famous publication, the Federalist Papers, said in the foreword to his edition of this. This was a 1980 edition. He talks about Hamilton. He said, with devious brilliance, Hamilton set out by a program of class legislation, that is as Treasury Secretary, to unite the property interests of the Eastern Seaboard into a cohesive administration party, while at the same time he attempted to make the executive dominant over Congress by a lavish use of the spoil system that is granting government jobs to political supporters. In carrying out his scheme, Hamilton transformed every financial transaction of the Treasury Department into an orgy of speculation and graft, in which selected senators, congressmen, and certain of their richer constituents throughout the nation participated. So he ran the Treasury Department as Treasury Secretary as a one big system of graft, as a way of buying the votes of members of Congress, of enriching members of Congress. This was the original version of insider trading, but it was political insiders. If you were a political insider, a member of Congress, or the Senate, you had all kinds of ways of making big money thrown at you by the Treasury Secretary, okay? Why? What did he want? He wanted votes in return. It wasn't that he enjoyed playing Santa Claus. He wanted the votes of these members of Congress in return. Votes for what? Votes for what Hamilton called the American system, protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare for road and canal building, and a national bank. That's for what? So he saw his job as Treasury Secretary as did his mentor, Robert Morris, as a way of using tax dollars to buy votes of politicians for their economic agenda. It wasn't the bank per se they wanted. They wanted a vehicle to finance the corruption of politics, the buying of votes so they could put in the system of mercantilism. And that's why Jefferson himself and the Jeffersonians were outraged over this because they had just fought a long revolution to get rid of this system, to get rid of the British mercantilist system. And here comes the federalist saying, we kind of like this system. We want to bring it here to America. As Murray Rothbard called it, the British system without the British. That's how I called it in the mystery of banking. And what I usually say at this point in this talk is that this reminds me, I don't know if any of you have ever seen, there's an old movie called The History of the World Part Two with Mel Brooks, the comedian Mel Brooks, and he plays the king of France in this movie.  As though anyone would think it's not good to be the king. But every time something good happens, a servant brings him a wheelbarrow full of gold bars and he'll say, it's good to be the king. Something like that. Well, that was the attitude of Hamilton and the federalists about mercantilism and the mercantilist system. If you're on the paying end, it's bad. You don't want to be on the paying end of a mercantilist system. But if you're on the collecting end, it's good. It's good to be on the collecting end of a mercantilist system. So they wanted to bring this system to America. Okay, and so they used the expenditure policies of the Treasury Department to buy votes. And there was also another big scheme that Hamilton used that really caught Jefferson's attention. And these two men hated each other. These two men really defined the two polar extremes of American politics and political economy that exists to this day. It really is remarkable. We even have the Brookings Institution, the left-wing think tank, where Ben Bernanke is now, by the way, in DC, they have something called the Hamilton Project with like dozens of articles and papers and books about what kinds of future government interventions they would prefer. And so these ideas still persist today. And so Hamilton's big scheme, though, was to nationalize the state government debt. And the American Revolution had been funded by the state governments. The federal government had no taxing power. Hold your applause, please. That's called the good old days in scientific language. They had no taxing power. And so some states like Virginia had almost totally paid off their war debt. Other states like Massachusetts had hardly paid anything. And so the federalists, who were headquartered in Massachusetts, naturally, said, well, let's nationalize this debt. Let's get someone else to pay our debts. It was they did, and they succeeded. But the way Hamilton, and Hamilton is sort of the grand puppet master over this. And so they had this plan. They passed the law. They're going to nationalize the state debt. And there were all these bonds out there. A lot of the Revolutionary War veterans were holding onto these bonds. They were paid in government bonds when they were in the Army. And so at the time, a lot of these bonds were trading at between two and 10% of face value. But the law that they had just passed said that at a certain date, like six months from now, the government will pay 100% of face value for these bonds. So if you could buy one of these bonds that's worth $2 today, and you're a member of Congress, you know this is going to be worth $10 in six months. And so the insiders made a mad dash all up and down the Eastern seaboard to buy up with the sending emissaries and representatives to buy up as many of these bonds as they possibly could and by any means possible because this was before the internet of course. And so they and only they knew that they could get these bonds and sell them for 20 times their value in a few months. And here's how there's a historian named Claude Bowers who wrote a book called Hamilton and Jefferson many years ago. And Claude Bowers was quite a remarkable person. He was a famous playwright at one point, he wrote some plays and anyway, he's one of these old early 20th century American historians that I've learned a lot from. But here's how he describes what happened. He said expresses and he means stagecoaches. Expresses with very large sums of money were on their way to North Carolina for purposes of speculation and certificates bonds, government bonds, splashed and bumped over wretched winter roads two fast selling vessels chartered by a member of Congress who had been officer in the war, the Revolutionary War, were plowing the water southward on a similar mission. And so there was ships, stagecoaches, horses going down in search of government bonds and to buy them up at two cents on the dollar. And so and then he goes on to say that the New York newspapers reported on how much money these political insiders made. And here are a few examples. Robert Morris himself made 18 million dollars. This is in the 18th century, 18 million dollars. The Governor George Clinton of New York made $5 million. Hamilton himself purchased the bonds through buying agents in Philadelphia and New York. So he became very wealthy personally through this scheme. Jefferson is observing all of this and he smokes out these rats. He figures out what they're up to. Okay, he understood what they're up to. And here's some of the things Jefferson said in a letter that he wrote, actually a big long essay on February 4th, 1818, this year, 1818. Hamilton died in 1804 by the way. His long after Hamilton is gone. He died in a duel with Aaron Burr who was a one-time Vice President of the United States. Not everyone here expected to know American history like that. Our friend Gary North, who lectures here sometimes, friend of the Mesa Institute, he told me once that he once started up at Aaron Burr Society and their motto was not soon enough. And he shot and killed Hamilton. I think they even had ball caps made. There's something like that, not soon enough, Aaron Burr Society. But here's what Jefferson said in this 1818 essay about what was going on here. He said, Hamilton's financial system had two objects. First, as a puzzle to exclude popular understanding and inquiry. Secondly, as a machine for the corruption of the legislature. So this extremely complicated system of the national bank and other things that he wanted to do, he said he wanted to intentionally confuse the public so that the public would always be in the dark about what the politicians were doing with their money. But second, as a means of corrupting the legislature, because he said this of Hamilton. He said that Hamilton is the kind of person who avowed the opinion that man could be governed by only one of two motives, force or self-interest. Force he observed in this country was out of the question. And the interest therefore of the members of Congress must be laid hold of to keep the legislature in unison with the executive. And with grief and shame, it must be acknowledged that his machine was not without effect. That even in this, the birth of our government, some members were found sorted enough to bend their duty to their interests, their self-interest, and to look for after personal rather than the public good. So Jefferson is talking about this scheme to nationalize the state debt. That these members were basically a bunch of crooks who were looking after their self-interest and not the public good. It's kind of a naive statement on Jefferson's part, thinking that any politician would not look after his own self-interest, okay? And then he goes on to say, continuing about Hamilton, he said, men thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader would follow, of course, the chief who was leading them to fortune and thus become the zealous instruments of all his enterprises.  So Hamilton was the man who made all these people rich, all these members of Congress, you're gonna follow them. They're not gonna follow him, they wanna become even richer. And they owe him also, they owe him votes. But the big problem Jefferson said, and he spotted this, was that this debt arbitrage scam that was played out was a one-time-only scheme. After all, these people are gonna retire or die, and along with them go their votes that had been purchased by making them millionaires. So how are you gonna keep this going? How are you gonna keep this mercantilist system going forever if the people who voted for it in the first place die off or retire, okay? And so Jefferson remarked, he said, the political power created by these things would be temporary, it would be lost with the loss of the individual members whom it had enriched, okay? And then he goes on to say, some engine of influence more permanent must be contrived. Who'd like to take a guess of what engine of influence he was referring to, to make this more a permanent scheme of corruption? A bank, a bank run by politicians. Once a bank is in place, then you have, you know, five years ago, Henry Paulson and the Fed is financing a $13 billion bailout of Goldman Sachs, okay? In return for Goldman Sachs, essentially, financing the political careers of most members of Congress and the president. Where do you think the American people just love George W. Bush so much, they're just sending him their paychecks to have him get elected president? Not likely. Well, the dumbest ones among us would do something like that, okay? So anyway, so Jefferson said, some engine of influence more permanent must be contrived. And then he said, this engine was the Bank of the United States. So that's what the Bank of the United States, that's the purpose of the Bank of the United States. So he had this figured out, that's why these people always wanted the Bank of the United States, the first Fed. And if you read Ben Bernanke's blog that I cite in my article from lurockwell.com, he proudly says that Alexander Hamilton was his idol, his role model. He was the first central bank chairman in America, or not chairman, but responsible for the creation of the first central bank. And like I said, that's his bromance with Alexander Hamilton. And then Jefferson goes on to say that Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but he was, at the Constitutional Convention, he proposed a permanent president who would appoint all the governors, and the governors would have veto power over any state legislation that was passed that the president disapproved of. So just like in England, the governors would just be puppets of the king. And of course we did not adopt that system in this country. But so Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but a monarchy bottomed on corruption. So why did he think he was so corrupt? Ben Bernanke's idol, role model. He told the story, Jefferson tells the story to another letter, he tells the story about a dinner party at his home. And the people at dinner were Secretary of War Henry Knox, I guess they named Knoxville after him, that's in Knoxville, Tennessee. John Adams, the former president. US Attorney General Edmund Randolph were there. And Hamilton. And Jefferson says in this letter, for the truth of which I attest the God who made me. So he's saying, I swear to God, this is true. He said they were having dinner time conversation was John Adams, the former president, said that the British constitution would be the most perfect constitution ever known to man were it not for the corruption of British politics. And then at that point, Hamilton intervenes and says, oh no, it's because of the corruption that the British constitution is the best constitution in the world. It's because of the corruption. And why would he say that? Well, Hamilton's position was always that the actual US constitution created a government that was far too weak and far too decentralized. And he was constantly badgering George Washington saying we need a government of more energy. And when they did pass the constitution, when it was ratified, Hamilton denounced it. He called it a frail and worthless fabric. He left the constitutional convention in a hissy fit after a few days because they did not adopt his king proposal for a king. And he just fought a revolution against the king. And there comes Hamilton and his crony is saying, hey, let's have a king, let's try that. How insane would that have been? And so he left in a huff and denounced the whole thing. Denounced the whole thing. And so anyway, Jefferson is saying here that this was always the intent of Hamilton and other supporters of the central bank is to create a permanent engine of corruption. And he quotes Hamilton's own words as saying praising corruption to the treetops. That's why he said he was bewitched and perverted by the British example, Jefferson said. And of course, one other figure in American history that Murray Rothbard quite a lot about in his writings on banking was Andrew Jackson. And again, you know, Murray Rothbard, for Murray Rothbard to say something nice about the politician was pretty rare. But Jackson is one of the few politicians. Jackson and John C. Calhoun, he liked some of the things they did and wrote. But that doesn't mean he approved of everything. Every time I say something like this, I'll get emails or write something like this. I'll get emails from somebody who digs up some nefarious thing that Jackson did or Calhoun did and say, how can you defend this? Well, I don't defend it. I just quoted something that makes sense that he once said one day in his life. It doesn't mean I defend every day of his life and every single thing he ever did. So Murray did not defend Andrew Jackson's murder of the Seminole Indians when he was in the army as a young man, for example. So when I arrived, quoted Murray Rothbard in my writings as approving of what Jackson did with banking, I inevitably will get emails from people saying, but he murdered the Seminole Indians. How can you defend the murder of Indians? Anyway, that's part of the sort of the collective insanity that so many Americans seem to have these days about these things or inability to think logically. And anyway, but why did Murray like Andrew Jackson? Well, he defunded the Bank of the United States. He ended the First Central Bank. The first one, it was called the First Bank of the United States had a 20 year charter and the charter was not renewed because it had created so many boom and bust cycles and generated so much corruption, just like the Jeffersonians predicted and just like the Hamiltonians wanted. That's what they wanted. And it did that. And so it did it so bad, it was so bad that the Congress, even though the Congress, many members of Congress had been enriched by this whole system, they feared they would lose their seats in Congress if they voted for it. So they voted against it and it went out of business. Then the War of 1812 came along and they resurrected it after the war in January of 1817 to monetize the debt that was accumulated to finance the War of 1812 in which the Americans attempted several times to conquer Canada. That was really the main purpose of the War of 1812 is the attempt by the Americans of the day to conquer Canada and they failed and the Canadians literally set fire to the White House in Washington, D.C. Hold your applause please over that and the Library of Congress and much of the rest of the city. Okay, wouldn't it be nice to be alive back in those days to witness that sort of thing? And so anyway, Andrew Jackson, it was resurrected. Same thing happened. You had Henry Clay and his corruption as a general counsel of the Second Bank of the United States. Daniel Webster demanding sort of mafia style retainer money for his political support of the bank. The bank financed the political careers of politicians who supported it and they published scathing critiques and libelous smears of politicians who opposed the Bank of the United States. So they totally corrupted politics and you know, Murray Rothbard's dissertation, his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University was on the Panic of 1819 and it's a title of one of his books. It's online and I think you can buy it downstairs, Panic of 1819. The Bank of the United States was brought back in 1817 and it promptly created the Panic of 1819. Back in those days, depressions were called panics and it was Herbert Hoover, by the way, the president, Herbert Hoover in the 1920s who decided that the word panic was a little too inflammatory, so let's use depression, that's better. So that's how we started to call these things depressions instead of panics, by the way. And so it created the panic and for the first time in American history, there was large scale unemployment in some of the cities and Murray dug up some of the statistics about, I think in Philadelphia, if I can recall, he said there were light manufacturing jobs that went from, I think he said they went from something like 7,500 people employed to 1,500 in one year. So that is a massive unemployment in one year. This is the sort of thing that happened during the Second Bank of the United States, not just political corruption, but boom and bust cycle. And so when Andrew Jackson became president in the late 1830s, he defunded it. The bill, it came up for renewal and he vetoed the bill to refund the Bank of the United States and the Congress did not have the votes to override the veto. So it sort of slowly went out of business and that was the end of it. And here's one of the things that Andrew Jackson said. He said, one of the problems with this bank, he said was this is part of, comments for his statement, his veto statement, which is online, you can read it for yourself if you're interested in this, you can want to do a term paper someday. Said the bank like this is subversive of the rights of the states and dangerous to the liberties of the people. Every monopoly and all exclusive privileges are granted at the expense of the public. And he said that many millions, which this act of rechartering the Bank of the United States proposes to bestow on the stockholders of the existing bank must come directly or indirectly out of the earnings of the American people. And he says these people were quote profiting from their connection with the government only and not on any productive efforts on their part. And so he, like Jefferson smoked out the truth about this bank, although he had a lot of help. It wasn't just one man. It wasn't just Andrew Jackson. And that's why Murray Rothbard wrote favorably about Andrew Jackson. One of the reasons, in fact, the whole Jacksonian movement, Murray said, was really the early libertarian movement in America, the Jacksonians. And that's why some of the modern day historians all kind of hate Andrew Jackson. And Ben Bernanke's blog that I refer to when I wrote the article about Bernanke does that too. He sort of sneers and belittles the whole idea of Andrew Jackson being on the $20 bill. And I quote one of the historians as saying that this speech that I just quoted to you was revolting. He used the word revolting. I thought it was a great libertarian speech that Andrew Jackson gave was revolting. But he had lots of help. For example, when the Bank of the United States showed up in the state of Ohio, it opened up two branches in the state of Ohio. The state of Ohio did not want the boom and bust and corruption from Washington DC in their state. And so the people, the legislature of Ohio imposed a $50,000 per year tax on each branch of this bank. And in the 1830s, that's a lot of money, $50,000. And so the BUS Bank of the United States refused to pay. So the state of Ohio sent armed marshals into the bank carrying a big empty chest and they made their way with guns, guns strapped to their hips into the vault and took $50,000 out of the vault of each of these banks of the United States and walked off with it. And the state of Maryland did something similar. The state of Maryland did the same thing, imposed a big tax. And that ended up in a famous Supreme Court case, McCulloch versus Maryland. But at the time, the chief justice of the United States was John Marshall, who really had a real bromance with Alexander Hamilton. I don't mean literally real, but if you read his writings, it was like just worshipful. It was like the way a monk would describe Jesus Christ, John Marshall describing Alexander Hamilton. And in this decision, page after page after page is literally plagiarized verbatim from Hamilton's writings, McCulloch versus Maryland, on the constitutionality of a bank, but one of the slogans that has come out of that decision was the power to tax is the power to destroy. John Marshall said that, the chief justice of the United States, he meant the power to tax the central bank is the power to destroy the central bank. And the people of Maryland said, well, yeah, that's the idea. And the people, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, tell us something we don't know. And so anyway, so he makes John Marshall who invented the idea of judicial review. You know, the words judicial review did not appear in the United States Constitution. John Marshall just made this up. And so there was like a 50 year crusade to give the Supreme Court, by the way, a monopoly in judicial review. They had me judicial review at the time. Andrew Jackson read this statement and he pretty much said, thanks for your opinion on the constitutionality of the bank, but I disagree. And I'm the president and I have just as much, my opinion counts just as much as yours because we have three branches of government, not one. You know, we're not a judicial tyranny like we are today yet. And so Jackson pretty much said, Congress has a valid view on this. I do as president. You do as a Supreme Court. And so do the people of the states, by the way. Jackson didn't say that, but that was true at the time. People of the states nullified many federal laws, you know, not just related to tariffs either, including this one. And so there was a lot of other states. Connecticut weighed in on this. Connecticut cited Jefferson in saying, we don't want this. We don't want this bank in our state either. And so it wasn't just Andrew Jackson that did this. But so those were the good old days when they defunded the bank of the United States. And because it was recognized that it really was a permanent engine of corruption. So by the time you get to the 1830s and 40s, there were many, many Americans who understood that Jefferson was right about this bank and Hamilton was wrong. And that I think is why it took them from, basically from 1840 until 1913 to finally resurrect this monster. You know, we didn't get the Fed until the year 1913. And so, and so, but I think it was because of the understanding of so many people that Jefferson and Jackson were right about this, the corruption of the bank and other, but that was a long time ago. And the Americans have been rebrainwashed in Fed worship. That's all we'll say for now then. Thank you.


So, I want to get your take on Black Lives Matter. Your second piece in commentary is about that. But in commentary, you really talk about Black Lives Matter's view on other issues other than what they were founded for. But let's start with the shooting. So let me just say this to those who are listening, particularly in YouTube. If you want to ask a question, the Super Chat is available, so you know how to use the Super Chat. And if you want to ask a question of Jason, feel free to use it through the Super Chat. So, the whole police shooting phenomena, the rise of Black Lives Matter, how do you see that? And then I want to talk more about the broader agenda of Black Lives Matter. Well, I thought that initially I thought that the Black Lives Matter movement was a legitimate movement, which I supported in the fact that it had a singular, a very singular aim, which was to draw attention to the shooting of unarmed Black men in this country that needed to be addressed. I thought that these shootings were coming from two sources. There have always been rogue cops or trigger happy cops in law enforcement. And there are policemen who are simply weighed down by what I call statistical reasoning, which is horrible, but the fact that Blacks constitute 11% of the population, but Black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes in this country is an unfortunate thing, but it has to be admitted. And I have a number of police officers, at least two or three who are friends, who admit to this form of what they call statistical reasoning. And that when you are in a very tense situation, this form of statistical reasoning overtakes or supersedes your rational judgment quite often. When you're so bombarded with stimuli that your judgment fails you. Nevertheless, law enforcement has a course of monopoly on the use of force. It has more of a moral obligation to exercise rational judgment, no matter how challenging those situations are. So I thought Black Lives Matter was strategically calling attention to this problem. They quickly lost their moral credibility for me. Very quickly. Because then, first of all, they started attacking Israel. And I'm a radical in the book, I have a chapter on a section on Israel where I radically defend Israel. They started attacking Israel as a genocidal apartheid state. So when did this happen? Because I was not aware of the Israel stuff. So for me, the thing that tipped me on Black Lives Matter is I remember the demonstrations in Chicago, actually. Instead of demonstrating in front of City Hall or in front of the police stations, where you would think have the responsibility for the trigger happy cops or whatever, they were on Michigan Avenue blocking people from entering stores and carrying socialist and Marxist plaques that had nothing to do with police shootings. And that's when I got that this went beyond that. Because if you concern about police shootings, you have to demonstrate to the state. You're not demonstrating private businesses. You're not demonstrating just people walking on the street. You're accusing the state of abusing its power. Go after state officials. Go demonstrate to the mayor, the chief of police. Go after them. But that's not what they did. That's not what they did. That's very indicative of a much bigger, more corrupt social agenda. That's right. So they stretched completely from their lane, advocated the breaking up of US banks, adopted a cultural Marxist perspective. Some of them adopted an outright communist perspective. I read the manifesto very carefully before I wrote the article. And it was horrendous. When did you notice this Israel stuff? I'm curious. When did this enter into the jogging? Was it from the beginning? I don't think it was from the beginning. I think it came in tandem with the Marxist stuff, the breaking up of US banks. Because for them, capitalism and this notion of, you know, a Jewish takeover are both inextricably linked. It was to some extent in Marx's mind. I mean, if you read Marx's essay on the Jewish question, as an essay called on the Jewish question, he talks about the problem of the world is that Jews are self-interested and therefore capitalist. And the problem is the Christians have become Jewish in that they've adopted self-interest in capitalism. We need to eliminate Jewishness from the world, which means we need to eliminate self-interest in capitalism from the world. So he made that link directly between the Jews and the capitalist and self-interest. And, you know, they're just adopting the Marxist rhetoric. So my position really, and I state this in the book we have overcome, is that Black Lives Matter should have been turning, the movement should have been turning its signs towards the Black community, making strategic alliances with police law enforcement officers to reestablish trust with the Black community. Because we cannot do without law enforcement. And two, to be facing these gang members, these thugs head on.  They have some sort of credibility. Facing these gang members that are wreaking havoc, for example, in Chicago, where we have up to 60 to 75 shootings and killings a week, which they all go unreported because it's so common nowadays. Instead of turning, instead of marching, some of them are marching into Jewish neighborhoods. Instead of turning your signs towards White people and towards the White community, why not go into the Black community now and hold some of these gang members accountable, talk to these people, try to rebuild the community from within.  I mean, there's something in me that dislikes the whole conversation in the sense that individuals should value individual lives. I mean, who cares, right? Who cares, exactly. Individual lives. That would be a great message. Let's be colorblind when it comes to these things. But let's go to the criminals, whatever color skin they happen to have, and let's attack them. And I do think they had a claim against the police. But the claim against the police was, we need better training. We need, I mean, I think there are programs. Some police forces have anti-bias training to deal with the statistical issues that you raised and things like that. That should have been the message, more education, more training, and then try to use their moral credibility to bridge the gap within these communities to address the gang violence. That's right. That's not where they went. And they also started advocating things like free education for all Blacks. And I wondered, well... Isn't that what they're getting now? Oh, this is part of their manifesto, actually. Free education for all Blacks. So this is college education, you mean? College education, yes. Because right now, they're getting government education at the lower levels. And the quality is pathetic. And that's probably one of the biggest problems is public education in these cities. I mean, in a city of Chicago, the public education system is so corrupt and so horrific. It's a wonder how anybody escapes poverty in Chicago. That's right. And I think what I raised in the article, and I raised it in the book also, is a philosophical question of whether people should be responsible for the procreational choices or the reproductive choices that other people make, which is the heart of what they're asking. And of course, I think the answer is no, right?  You cannot, in a sense, you cannot ask that to be a collectivized social good for the rest of society, right?  Your responsibility. And it's your responsibility. So they, when you say in the article, you talk about the fact that Black Lives Matter is wrong and crime. What do you mean? What I mean is that they, it's more like they're dishonest on crime. Okay. Because they're not really admitting, they're following the Tanahisi cult's line of argument in the sense that they're not really admitting to the real problem of black on black crime in this country. And that there needs to be a real honest conversation about the fact that it is not whites that are killing blacks in disproportionate numbers in this country.    That's not the main message, but that's implicit message or be that black on black crime is causally related to systemic racism and the legacy of Jim Crowism in this country. And that's what Tanahisi, that's Tanahisi's claim, right? That's right. And I think that's a bunch of malarkey.