Politically High-Tech
A podcast with facts and opinions on different topics like politics, policy, technology especially AI, spirituality and development! For this podcast, development simply means tip, product and/or etc. can benefit humanity. This show aims to show political viewpoints and sometimes praises/criticizes them. He is a wildcard sometimes. For Technology episodes, this show focuses on products (mostly AI) with pros, cons and sometimes give a hint of future update. For Development episodes, the podcast focuses on tips to improve as a human spiritually, socially, emotionally and more. All political, AI lovers and haters, and all religions are welcome! This is an adult show. Minors should not be listening to this podcast! This podcast proudly discriminates bad characters and nothing else.
Politically High-Tech
280- The Missouri Progressive's Political Vision with Dan Schaefer
Dan Schaefer, progressive candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives, shares his journey from engineering to politics and his perspective on navigating a red state as a Democrat with socially progressive and fiscally conservative views.
• Missouri is transitioning from a former bellwether state to one with increasingly competitive elections
• Republicans have a communication advantage by pushing messaging through vertical channels while Democrats try a more bottom-up approach
• Trump's followers represent a cult of personality that may not survive his political exit
• Missouri Republicans have repeatedly overturned voter-approved progressive ballot measures
• A conservative case for universal healthcare compares America's $12,000 per-person healthcare costs to other countries' $6,000
• Rural hospital closures create dangerous "healthcare deserts" in farming communities
• The pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains for critical medications and components
• Democrats often lose messaging battles by over-explaining instead of leading with simple, effective messages
• LA protests are largely peaceful despite media focus on isolated incidents of violence
Visit danformo.com to learn more about Dan's campaign and read his extensive policy positions.
Follow Dan Schaefer at ...
https://www.facebook.com/dan4mo
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@dan4mo
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@danschaefer52
https://www.reddit.com/user/Dan4MO/
Follow your host at
YouTube and Rumble for video content
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUxk1oJBVw-IAZTqChH70ag
https://rumble.com/c/c-4236474
Facebook to receive updates
https://www.facebook.com/EliasEllusion/
Twitter (yes, I refuse to call it X)
https://x.com/politicallyht
welcome everyone to politically high tech with your host, elias. So we have a newcomer here and I think, if you've been paying attention, there's a trend going on and you know, normally the right kind of has like a head start because they naturally come to me, but I don't know that's changing a bit. The left actually got the head start this season. I didn't plan it. You can make all the conspiracy theories all you want. I didn't plan it this way. It's just happened OK, and I'm fine with it. Like I said, I accept any political flavor, if you will the left, the right, the green, the libertarian or the non-affiliate who's tired of the political BS, if you will. So I welcome all of you here because, look, I pride myself of being friends of both sides of the aisle because they see me as a rational moderate, even though sometimes I could go a bit, sometimes my presentation could be a bit radical. That's why I curse both of them out for being idiots on some issues. But you know I do that here. We both mature adults here. So if you want entertainment, know that go watch fox news, go watch the five, or greg gutfeld or something like that, or even or even abby phillips show if you want to watch arguments or things like that. Not Not going to happen here. It's not going to happen here. Maybe disagreement, which is fine, disagreement doesn't equal hate. I got to keep saying that because people just treat disagreement as if it's a middle finger or cursing your mother or father. That's not happening. People just have different points of view.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I'm going to keep reminding you that I don't care about sounding like a broken record, because the tribalism is just getting worse, not better, to be honest. Why? Even even to some extent the state of local politics. You know I've been paying attention to local politics, the Democrats in New York City. It's a fight between the moderates and the progressives and it's pretty vicious, to say the least. You know, the fight doesn't always have to be between two different parties. It could be between the tents, the different tents within the party True party politics.
Speaker 1:But we got someone here and I'm going to nickname him the Missouri Progressive. You can correct me on that. You know Missouri is a red state, but before I did recording, before we start the recording, just talked about how missouri is slowly shifting blue and I even noticed that I would say since 2024. I don't know what's been happening before that, but I know since last year I was known as you changed because some republicans are going extreme, especially they're trying to restore dueling. I read that. So, uh, you could have definitely lose a stronghold if you keep pushing crazy stuff like this. Okay, I'll solid red or solid blue. If you keep pushing, your luck, people will not put up with it. But anyways, I could drag on for an hour, but I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to torture my guests here. Missouri, sadly, a state that gets overlooked sometimes by me. I'm going to be honest, and I'm sure a lot of you too, but you don't have to admit it. I will admit that for you it's probably calling you out nicely, but oh well.
Speaker 2:That's OK. We're a flyover state, so that's the way they look at us.
Speaker 1:But we can learn something here. We could probably choose a case study. You know, especially Missouri people, missouri voters, pay attention here, I don't you know, the red, the blues or in between, wherever the heck you are. Pay attention here, because you might, you might learn something. All right, this is concerning Missouri, and and if you want to just zoom out a bit, this can affect us, even indirectly, nationally as well. So, and they're, they're overarching themes. You put two and two together, ok? So the first and super basic question is what do you want the listeners and the viewers to know about?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, yes, you're right about Missouri. Here I think we do get passed over a lot. We used to be a bellwether state. This is going back to like the 1990s, and in fact I think we voted for Obama, I know the first time, like in 2008. I don't remember what it was in 2012. But yeah, so my name is Dan Schaefer. I'm running for the Missouri House of Representatives, district 97. I ran last semester I almost said last semester. I'm going back to college here. I ran last November and I lost it. I got just over 35% of the vote and I was running against an incumbent Republican. And even though I consider myself a native of Missouri, I also consider myself a native of California.
Speaker 2:Back in 1985, I graduated from college, had been in St Louis for a couple of years after that and decided I'm going to go to California for a couple of years and see what it's like out there. Well, a couple of years actually turned out to be almost 30 years. So I lived in the Los Angeles area, which I watch with intense interest these days, and what's going on in Los Angeles, and my son still lives out there and I know a lot of people out there, and so I get the inside scoop there a little bit. But then I moved back to Missouri about 10 years ago and you know I worked as an engineer. My whole life I've been a technical guy, designing computer circuit boards, designing software. At one point I decided to branch off and see how the other half lives, so I traveled with the sales guys for a while, did the field sales tech sort of thing. I did that for about 10 years actually and basically it was a globetrotter. I visited many different countries throughout Europe and as well as Asia, south Asia like India, australia, korea, etc. So it gives me a lot of worldwide sort of globetrotting experience, learning how to deal with people in different countries and learning how America is actually perceived in these different countries Sort of an eye-opening experience for me.
Speaker 2:But I had my head down interested in politics my whole life but I had my head down not really getting involved in it until I started doing my own podcast about 28,. I think it was 2019 when I started doing my own podcast. I did about 200 episodes under two different titles and I got to talk to a lot of really interesting people out there and I was surprised how easy it was to get some fairly popular guests on the show. But it was a learning experience for me. And then last year it was about one year ago now, that's a little bit more than a year ago I was calling the Democratic Party saying how come there's nobody running against a Republican in my district? And they said well, how would you like to run? So I did the Homer Simpson don't. I shouldn't have said that, but I ran anyways. I had to clear it, you know, with my wife because she's, you know, going to be exposed to this as well. And we had fun with it. It was.
Speaker 2:It's difficult to push the Democratic perspective in a red state and that's why I don't necessarily consider myself to be a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. I voted Republican before I voted for Reagan. In both terms I'm showing my age right now. I voted independent on a number of terms and I still occasionally throw the switch for a Republican not necessarily for president, you know, on the local scene, like if a Republican is doing a better job or feels a better person, I'll throw the switch for them.
Speaker 2:So I consider myself a progressive person, but also, when it comes to fiscal things, I consider myself conservative. So it's kind of a combination, I think a lot of people are talking about these days to be socially progressive and fiscally conservative and you really don't fit into either party with that type of an attitude. But you fit better in the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party at this point, let's face it in Missouri they're kind of desperate for people to run so they sign up a guy like me. But I like what I see so far. The Democratic Party has helped out quite a bit and they know where I'm coming from, they know what kind of attitudes I have and it's all over the internet what I do. I do TikTok and do a lot of writing and stuff. So they know who I am and where I'm coming from and let's see where it goes from here.
Speaker 1:All right, great, you see that People don't want us 100% Republican or Democrat. They're lying to you. Ok, I mean, I'm just going to use me If you hack. It's my voting records. I am as purple as heck. I vote a Republican, I vote a Democrat, I vote independent. I just go out who I think is best. I don't care about partisan loyalty, I just think it just kills your IQ, at best by one third. Worst case scenario by probably two third. First case scenario by probably two-thirds. You know, I don't believe in partisan loyalty, that's. I'm proud to say that before I used to feel it keep up.
Speaker 2:That's a huh should I be a democrat.
Speaker 1:Should I be a republican? Just fit it? But no, but I'm. I'm happy that I'm in the proud eye ever since, I think after donald trump won republican, because I was a republican for two years. I can't handle, true, I think trump's a little too crazy for me. I've been an I ever since, so I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I'm not comfortable voting for this. I have Republicans. What's wrong with you? You have better candidates. I was looking up to you. I liked the Ron Pauls, but you drove them away. I don't know.
Speaker 2:You did some stuff but I can't prove it for. But enough of my yammering, oh yeah, go ahead. I actually had an interview with a guy named Lee Drutman. He wrote a book called the Doom Loop and he has his own podcast show. He has a PhD in political science. Very nice guy and very informative.
Speaker 2:But in the book the Doom Loop he writes extensively about how politics existed like back in the 90s and people are confused because America only has two political parties. And it's that way because of the way we do this first-past-the-polling type of voting, which is pretty archaic and antiquated, but regardless, the Republicans used to have their progressive wing and their conservative wing as well as the Democrats, so you essentially had kind of four different parties within Congress and that kind of kept things in balance. Nowadays you're seeing a real stratification, a very vertical column. If you look at the Republican Party, if someone wants to run as a Republican especially Republicans, to some degree Democrats, but more so with Republicans you have to buy into their philosophy, hook the top and they push it down their channels all the way down to the bottom and eventually out to the constituents. And the way they're able to do that is they really control a lot of the media out there, especially like if you go into rural areas here, you tune in your radio. 90% of your talk shows are conservative and they're very religious as well. A lot of religious stations and Republicans have glommed on to that very, very well. But what they've done is they've used it as a communication channel, a very vertically oriented communication channel. They pushed philosophy down that channel.
Speaker 2:Democrats, on the other hand, I think they try that. They fail at it miserably. And so I think what they're doing now the word I get from Ken Martin who is the chairman of the DNC they're trying to do a bottom-up approach. They're saying okay, we realize that people in New York like your state. They have a different set of priorities.
Speaker 2:Missouri has a different set of priorities, idaho has a different set California and so we can tolerate these differences. We can still make a party and tolerate these differences. There has to be some core ideas that tie you together, but they can tolerate the differences, and so I think that's a much more intelligent approach. It's far more subtle, because messaging coming out in Missouri is not going to work in New York, it's not going to work in Idaho or California, but the core values are still there, and so I think that's the way to do it, and hopefully that'll be a way to go in the future. So I don't mean to ramble too much, but I just thought to throw that out there, because politics is a lot different these days than it was a century ago, or even a half century ago.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I don't think it's rambling, I think it's a bit enlightening. And I always say my biggest criticism of Democrats is you got to hone in the messaging and I think you point out something that the Republicans have a much more simpler. I don't want to say groups, sexual orientations, different priorities, but I think one of the core values is diversity. If you will, I think that's one of the more core values for Democrats. That's why Democrats still have a lot of minority votes, even though Republicans have been creeping in on that Thanks to recent results. Will it last? All I'm going to say is this, and this is a hot take I think the MAGA base is very unique because once Trump is done, a lot of those folks are going to disappear, I think, because they're just for Trump, trump, trump, and that's the truth. I don't think the movement is sustainable. I could be wrong.
Speaker 2:I'm just I tend to agree with you. I hate to use the word cult, but really the MAGA people are it's, it's a, they're based on personality that they call it a cult of personality and anytime the leader of such a group dies or goes into obscurity or whatever, yeah, the group dissipates.
Speaker 2:They fight for a while to try to figure out, okay, who's going to be the next leader, but they never can fill the shoes of that first person and everybody has that sense of perfection that that first person had, despite all the flaws. So, yeah, I think that the MAGA base will drift. I don't think that, when it comes to voting, I don't think they're going to go anywhere besides the Republican Party. They'll still probably vote with the Republican Party. But yeah, the MAGA extremists, they found their man in Trump, and that's just been my observation. When he goes, the whole movement goes with him.
Speaker 1:Except that one time when he tried to push vaccines, oh, he got the biggest pushback. I've never seen him cave so quick. He's like oh no, if no, if you want, if you want. But he booed him so hard I said, oh, they got you, they got you, they got you. Don't, don't, don't drift, don't drift, don't drift too far away, at least not in front of their faces. Maybe behind the scenes you can, but not their faces, because they will boo you instantaneously. I almost laugh. I tried to be so immature. I'm not the biggest trump hater, but I'm also not the biggest supporter either. Yeah, because I just try to be as fair as I can be. I support trump on certain things, uh, but but I don't, I don't see his first term.
Speaker 1:Trump has definitely been better so far. I'm going to be honest because it was more tamed and established. Republicans sabotaged him, I think, in some of the right places. That's good. That's why I was like okay, well, I think the Republican establishment could kind of tame him, but this time that's not happening, because he made sure it was the most loyal, not based on confidence, based on pure loyalty. So that's a bit of a cult. You get rewarded for loyalty in that sense. I mean I don't agree with the whole fascist um description that problem stayed away from. But cult I I agree with that more because I think that's way too drastic. If he starts killing millions of people of certain demographics, then I will say, yeah, he's the, he is second coming of hitler. But he has not done that and I refuse to get down to that right. But cult I can settle with. I'm fine with that description because it is a cult, I agree with that. And he keeps saying fascist, fascist. I say stop, stop, that's too far, that's too far.
Speaker 2:But cult I agree with. I think. Yeah, I think when you say fascist, it conjures up images of Hitler and Mussolini and so on. There's a part of people that don't want to believe that that'll ever happen and that's also the mindset that took place in fascist regimes, right? So you know the Germans from what I understand they, in their last election, hitler was voted in by like 30% of the vote or something like that, which is exactly what Trump got last time. He got 30% of the vote from qualified voters. Whole bunch of voters didn't vote. There's that element that, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:You don't want to necessarily label it as fascist, but you do want to keep an eye on it. You know, because there are groups that are being targeted these days the LGBTQ community, especially here in Missouri. They're being targeted to a huge degree and it's obnoxious when you think about it because you're such a small part of society they're like one percent, but they're an easy target. And when that happens, when you start vilifying people for their, for their personal choices, their religious choices, sexual orientation, color of their skin, and Trump said well, the Mexicans are bringing over rapists, you know, and Lemon challenged him on a very, you know, he's so meek, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:But he did challenge Trump on that one and Trump said well, someone's doing the raping. Well, you know, when you get that sort of rhetoric started, it gets a lot of people saying yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, and that builds on itself, that cascades into bigger things. So, yeah, I would hesitate to call him a fascist at this point, because it does tend to be an overused term, but I'm keeping an eye on the guy because this is. I think it could go that way. So we have to be very careful.
Speaker 1:I agree with vigilance. I'm not saying give him a pass because hell, no, hell, no on that one. No, no, be skeptical. Watch him, criticize him, call him out. I'm all for that. I'm not saying you know, trump killed a guy. Oh, give him a free pass. He was defending himself. You know the guy did nothing. No, I will never push that. That's ludicrous, that's insanity and I will never do that. I agree with being vigilant because cults is sadly a foundation for extremist radical movements that are destructive to society. I mean, generally speaking, I get that about the death and just, I guess a call is like to me. That's the perfect description right now. Um, at least to me. I'm sure the trump support is gonna say, oh, look at these, look at these two, you know, infected with trump derangement syndrome I said no, I phrase, phrase trump when, when he's correct.
Speaker 1:I mean you could say that all you want. You know there's a comment section. Feel free to express that. If you want, go ahead, I don't care, I'm, I'm 1a, you, to my sense of you, I won't. So just be. I haven't won rumble as well. If you feel a little safer, ironically, it's a safe space for 1A. The irony is rich. I've got Rumble, which will eventually be uploaded to there. But you comment there. If you fear that YouTube is going to censor you Because I'm 1A, I am definitely pro-1A. We all should be pro-1A, except if it generates violence. And, of course, freedom of speech. Speech, not freedom of action. Hello, speech, speech. Speech is words, you know. Or it could be, you know, non-verbal communication. Yeah, it's, it's communication, not violence. Um, and then you know. And then the 2a is more defensive gathering arms and all that. It's not going out there actively shooting people that you don't like. If that was the case, america would see 6S as a nation. Let's be perfectly honest. She was just some happy trigger people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's part of the problem you brought up two way right here. The very first words in the Second Amendment are a well-regulated militia. It's funny how the what was that? Dc versus Heller back in 2010, I think it was. I think it was Scalia that gave the majority comment on that and I think he twisted himself into a pretzel trying to explain that one away, because DC versus Heller if I'm not mistaken, that was the landmark case that basically said anybody can carry a gun, anybody can be considered militia even though you're not part of any militia, and then he proceeded to ignore the very first few words of the Second Amendment a well-regulated militia.
Speaker 2:I've heard people say why don't we regulate firearms the way we regulate cars? And I'm like that's cool Because when you think about it and this is a theoretical thing right here, but I go through this almost every day. I live, you know, somewhat on the edge of a urban slash rural area I go down these country roads and I'm going like 60 miles an hour one direction, someone else is going 60 miles an hour the other direction and the only thing that separates us these two yellow lines in the road, you know and you think, at a closing speed of 120 miles an hour. If you hit that guy you're both going to be dead, right, I mean so. But there's this implicit trust that I have. I don't even think about it half the time I'm driving down the road. I trust the other person knows what he's doing. I trust that he's taking care of his vehicle to the point where his tire is not going to blow out or something else is going to happen. His car is going to jump over that double yellow stripe. Yeah, I keep an eye on him. You know I'm driving. I always keep an eye on it, just in case. But that's the sort of way I'd like to look at guns. You know, because we said we live like on the edge of a rural area right here.
Speaker 2:Every November I wake up in the morning and the first thing I hear is gunshots. And it's because people behind the property here it's actually probably about, you know, maybe about a half mile or so they're hunting deer, right? And so you know at first. You know, when we first woke up in this place the first morning we woke up in November after moving in here, my wife's like oh, what's going on? And there's people shooting out there. She's like firecrackers. Are those guns? Those are guns. I can tell the difference between the two shots between a firecracker and a gun. She's like what's going on? It's another hunting deer. And she's like, well, this is kind of bad.
Speaker 2:I said well, I trust, I trust these guys know what they're doing. Not all of them know what they're doing. I'm sure that's what the government has to build itself on is trust, trust in its people. Make sure that the rules and regulations are there so that we do have that yellow stripe going down the center of the road. We don't speak. We have cops out there to enforce it. But within those boundaries there's an awful lot of freedom and we should all agree that. You know there's certain regulations we adhere to. So that's sort of my argument against. You know the DC versus Heller in the Second Amendment. And nobody I mean nobody wants a kid to get a gun and go to school and start shooting people, right? So the question is, how do we stop that? And I think regulations will help. It won't stop it. Ultimately People say, well, that's not going to stop everything. If someone really wants to, they're going to. But it's like anything else in life the more difficult you make it, the less people are actually going to go through it to do it.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, look people, for those of you who think old progressives are whack jobs and all that so far I'm hearing here are very rational points. Some can even say get ready for your cringe common sense to some extent Exactly.
Speaker 1:But listen, look some issues. I'm left and I'm going to say it again health care I want the progressives to actually win on that issue. I'm actually rooting for them, as this is coming from a moderate independent. As I said, yes, we need a new idea. Okay, I know this is a little random, but we need radical change because this private sector, employer-based health care system it's… it's a disaster.
Speaker 2:It is, it's an absolute disaster and I have so many stories about it. But I gave you a financial story, you know, before you started recording here, we talked a little bit about this topic and I said I'm going to make a conservative case for universal healthcare. Here's my conservative case. Let's just compare the United States to every other industrial nation out there. We pay, on the average, $12,000 per person per year for health care. Now where does that money come from? It comes from us, you know. Eventually it comes from us. We're the ones paying for it. We do it through insurance. We do it every time we go to see the doctor and we have to pay the copay. Your kid breaks his arm. You know life happens like that. Right, you get cancer or something like that. You're going to need, like you know, maybe $100,000 worth of treatment to get you back on your feet again. You know this is the way America goes, and we're fighting two problems here. One is medical procedures themselves are increasingly expensive and I'm not really sure how to get my arms around that, why that is, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with liability insurance. But the other part is the insurance companies. If we're paying that much for a healthcare and if you think about how much healthcare do you need, I don't know about you, but for me over the past year I just probably taken maybe two or three thousand dollars worth. I had a case of bursitis in my shoulder and an usual checkup, so that's a maximum three thousand dollars. So there's that. There's another nine thousand dollars that essentially, in a way, I'm paying for being a citizen. Other countries in the world are down to like at least six thousand dollars, like Canada is down to six. That's half of that, and they have what people will call socialized medicine. Well, it really isn't socialized medicine. What it really is is it's it's, um, the hospitals and the doctors, they all work for themselves. They have their own, their, their own centers where they work. It's a single payer system for the government. You know, through tax money or whatever, pay single payer, but now they're paying $6,000 per person rather than $12,000. So right away, you're saving $6,000. That's a conservative argument for me. You're saving money, saving a lot of money, and these multi-millionaire insurance executives are not buying their boats every summer. Look at how much these guys get paid, how much money they're sucking out from your healthcare.
Speaker 2:You know another criticism about Canada. I've heard this a lot and they say well, you have to wait forever to get a procedure done. And that's true for things like what they call optional procedures. So let's say you have your meniscus is torn or something like that, okay, they're going to put you in the queue and you're going to probably wait about five or six months. So you're limping for five or six months. You've got to bandage up your knee. If it becomes really, really bad, they'll get you in right away. But if you have something like a heart attack or something that needs attention right away, you get cancer or something. They're right on top of it. And that's not different from America too. It's just you're going to pay a whole lot more for it. So in America you wait also for optional sort of procedures as well. So I think we're essentially getting. We're not getting any more quality than and I'm just picking on Canada right now but we're not getting any more quality from our healthcare than Canada is, but we're paying twice as much for it.
Speaker 1:Some claim and debate, the outcomes are even more disastrous.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Despite paying for more. I mean, logically, you would expect paying for more would have better outcomes, but sadly truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes that tends to be the case.
Speaker 2:Paying more doesn't necessarily guarantee a better outcome. There's a lot of variables. One of them is my other shoulder. I busted that thing really bad back in 2017 and literally needed surgery and I said, well, I'll just find out who my doctor recommends. Well, my wife fortunately she worked in a hospital at the time in the administration part. She said, no, no, no, I'm going to find you the right doctor. And she called around and found a really good guy, was able to get me in at a pretty reasonable amount of time, like within like two weeks, and did an excellent job. So you know. But I've heard horror stories about other doctors. Yeah, it's just, it's random luck. I think you're going to get that, whether you're in Canada or UK or the Netherlands or whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about this, americans, because you know, some of us may think we have an idea what it is.
Speaker 1:Let's be honest, a lot of us don't, unless you have actually traveled. And if and this is a feel free to correct me here because it went out of a limb if they allow, you know, tourists, even foreigners, just to use their hospital, which I know europe, such like uk, I know they allow that for sure, because I've talked to people who've traveled that I want to travel some points and broaden my horizons even more and I just think, man, america, I mean we could do so much better. But I just think, like you said, you already said it's a insurance company, these middle people just sucking so much money. It's a to the freaking top right. I think that's what. That's the big issue compared to a lot of these other. I mean not just issue, but that's the biggest differentiator compared to all these other developed nations. They have more of a government run, single payer, public run healthcare system, as opposed to having corporations and insurance be involved and just grabbing money and finding exploitations to suck the most money without providing much effort, maximize extraction of profit.
Speaker 2:You've also hit upon something else too, like where the money goes, and there's always going to be a case of corruption, and one of the criticisms I hear is that, well, how do you keep the government is corrupt, how do you keep the Medicare system from getting corrupt? I'd say, well, look at Medicare. They've actually done a pretty good job there when you think about it, and the amount of money that they take out somewhere like around 2%, versus your insurance companies are taking up to 25%. So that's, I mean, that's just on the surface. Well, maybe the companies are corrupt, but they're taking your money anyways. They're doing it in plain sight and the sad thing is it comes right down to it.
Speaker 2:I don't know what it's like up in New York, but in Missouri, here we have some rural areas that are basically hospital deserts. We have rural hospitals and health clinics that are closing at a fairly rapid rate, and where do these people go? And I don't know if you've ever been on a farm. I never spent much time on a farm myself but one thing I know about farming it is freaking dangerous. It's dangerous work. It's like you know you're sitting on a, you know a combine harvester or something like that You're out in the field hacking away at something or whatever. I mean, these guys are always working and they're working with big machines the whole time and accidents happen. And when they happen, if your closest clinic is, you know, the next city over, which could be like 150 miles away, or if you have a heart attack, I mean maybe not where you just get a heart attack or something you're probably not going to make it and I don't you know.
Speaker 2:Running for the state legislature in Missouri. I'm not really sure at this point how to address that. I'm not sure if building health clinics is the right idea at this point, but having perhaps a rapid transportation system Medivac or something like that that's affordable they don't charge you $10,000 for a helicopter ride or something like that. I'd like to see something like that put in place in the interim until we can resolve this situation once and for all. Upstate New York you guys have a lot of rural areas up there too. It's the same sort of story up there.
Speaker 1:I'm sure I'm going to provide just an urban perspective. We have a different issue Hospitals get overcrowded. During the pandemic it was already overwhelmed, and all that I already have said. We should have built nationwide capacity, especially for deserts, at least 30 percent, I mean, and I still stick to that to this day.
Speaker 1:But now you know, I to go back to the pandemic pandemic exposed or re, or you know, or what's the word I'm looking for, or what's the word I'm looking for. It made us pay attention to the issues. It just not even magnify, because magnify is not right. It just brought it back to the forefront about what kind of problems we have because we've been pushing it aside. Pushing it aside, pushing it aside and the pandemic was a great example that exposes our inadequacies and our inefficiencies and our lack of capability.
Speaker 1:So that's a lesson that I think people should remember all the pandemics over with no, no, no, we're gonna have, we're gonna do that, we're gonna go back to the same stupidity. We need to be better from it, not going back to the same nonsense, and I see that that's happening. So I probably discussed it. Um, they should be building more hospitals, um, in general, um, and too, which I like that you pointed out, have those. I think transportation I like that should be kind of first and then maybe build, like small, more clinics. I'm not sure it's possible to do both at the same time. It would be ideal, to be honest.
Speaker 2:But we'll see. For me, it's just a matter of coming up with these ideas and pitching them and finding out if we can get some sort of a groundswell going the idea of having a transportation system like a medevac system, or maybe like a rural hospital on wheels or something like that. That would just be available. These are interim solutions, of course, but, yeah, I don't know if they're the best solutions, but I certainly want to open up the dialogue and start talking about it, because if we don't talk about it it's going to be bad. Now you also brought up the pandemic, and boy oh boy, that exposed so many systemic problems in our nation. One of them is, you know, going back to my engineering days. I used to work for military contractors and we would have to build, you know everything, every component that we purchased, every component that went into used to work, like on, on flight systems, aviation systems, and every little component like capacitor or resistor, whatever you threw into this, into this design, had to be sourced in the united states and had to have a second source in the united states, and it was a pain in the you know what to go through all this stuff. As an engineer, I just want to design stuff right and you end up doing all this paperwork. But you know, with the pandemic, what that exposed was. We dropped that requirement, not only somewhat in military, but also especially in consumer electronics, for cars and other you know, even just regular computers and cell phones and so on. The politicians sort of looked the other way and they let every integrated chip not every, but a majority being manufactured by TSMC, which is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. And now we're seeing, oh, china may be attacking Taiwan or something, or maybe influencing or putting Taiwan under some sort of a bubble or something. This is a real big issue and I have to ask you how did the politicians allow this to happen? We go back to medicine, to hospitals. A lot of our medicines, the base elements for our medicines, are manufactured guess where Two different countries, china and India, and we have very tenuous relationships with China right now. Trump keeps poking a stick at them, and so they're taking all their business, their culture business and so on, and pushing it to different nations. But what people aren't talking about is some of the base chemicals to make some of the things, like insulin, for example, comes from China, comes from India, and our relationship with India is not all that hot at the moment either.
Speaker 2:These are big issues and if you look at it from a pure capitalistic perspective, they say well, we're saving money by doing this. Why? You know what government's going to tell us to stop saving money. We're saving money by outsourcing all this stuff, but nobody's looking at the vulnerability of all of it. So when the pandemic hits, we got issues with medicine, we got issues with components for cars I mean, you know the whole thing. It just blew up everything. The supply lines just shut down, and this is a big issue. And again, I don't blame capitalism, I don't blame the guys working at these companies trying to optimize their costs, but I do blame the politicians. I say you guys are supposed to be keeping an eye on this stuff and making sure that these kind of things don't happen. And I don't know why I suspect a lot of it had to do with lobbyist dollars and so on that just turned their backs on it and allowed this to happen. And so you know, when COVID hit, it was, it was, it was nutty, it was just crazy.
Speaker 1:So, oh yeah, I want to zero in on the Missouri politics stuff, because you're a, you're a ran. I mean spoiler for anyone who has been paying attention it flopped. I mean it's predictable. Don't bash him, ok. I just think more people are losing. Parties should run more often. Give it a shot, because change can happen. That's all I'm going to say about that Before I go on this long monologue, because I don't want that to be what gives you confidence to run for 2026 again for that same office.
Speaker 2:I think I'll come into it with more experience, for one thing. Another dynamic thing that just happened was my opponent decided to run for a state senate position, so he's the incumbent, so he's out right, and another opponent has taken his place and I ended up having lunch with him last week. We talk quite a bit actually we don't give away secrets or anything like that, but we do get to know each other, and so I think it's going to be more of an even playing field this next time around. Missouri has done a couple things over this past year, this past legislative session, that has been notoriously, notoriously unpopular. It was driven all by the Republicans. Missouri was the first state to make abortion illegal. Within hours of the reversal of Roe v Wade, there was a trigger law in Missouri which made abortion illegal immediately. So Missouri is also a state that has the initiative petition. So people went out and got a bunch of signatures and they made abortion legal. It was a long story there, but it came up on the November ballot. Last November People voted for it and made abortion legal. They wrote it right into the Missouri Constitution. Well, guess what happens? Republicans are trying to back this thing out. They wrote a counter bill.
Speaker 2:Now the thing is Republicans can't change. I mean legislators should say legislators cannot change the Constitution directly. I don't think any state legislature can. They have to go through the people. But the legislature can create ballot issues that will change a Constitution. So they created their own ballot issue and they put all kinds of wording in it that made it extremely misleading. And then they passed another law that allows them to make the wording misleading. So it's going to appear on the ballot again.
Speaker 2:And the final kicker was the Missouri Supreme Court for some crazy reason, made abortion illegal again. They said well, we got all these rules, all these laws in the books that were from the era when abortion was illegal. You guys haven't removed those laws from the books yet. So abortion will remain illegal and we can enforce it. This just happened a couple of weeks ago. People aren't talking about that, but the people that are paying attention are extremely mad, even Republicans extremely angry at this point.
Speaker 2:Republicans, again, we voted for a statutory vote last time around, which would have raised the minimum wage and also allow for what we call earned sick leave For every 30 hours you work, you get one hour of sick leave, etc.
Speaker 2:And we would also raise the minimum wage with the inflation every year. The Republicans took about three months to back that whole thing out because it was a statutory change, again driven by the people using an initiative petition made a statutory change, in other words, a change in the law, not in the Constitution. Three months later, the Republicans backed it all out, except for one thing they let it go up to, I think, the minimum wage, let it crawl up to like $15 an hour, but they removed the earned sick leave. They removed tacking the minimum wage to the inflation rate. So they've done some other things like this and people are just furious. Even Republicans are furious about this and Missouri always votes. When they vote on issues, they always vote progressive. So they voted for a couple of progressive issues and the Republicans wiped it all out. So that is kind of a long-winded explanation, but I think that would give me an advantage next time around.
Speaker 1:No, that certainly sounds more hopeful. You never know. Upsets have happened. Upsets have happened. You know, upsets have happened. It's just that this is a hot take.
Speaker 1:Voters need to pay attention. Stop voting with familiar crap. Give new people a chance, because 80% of voters doesn't matter if it's local or federal. People vote with what they're familiar with 80% of the time. We need to change that. That's our responsibility as voters.
Speaker 1:Okay, you left, right, center or up in the sky? Okay, yeah, just just look at the candidates and, if you don't know, go to trusted news sources like ground news 1440, even brute america. Those are some good sources that that are sound milk, even the new paper which I'm going to put in, like right now, short, straight to the point, because I'm always saying it's busy, I, you know I don't have time. Well, I got a solution for you the motion is five minutes and that's if you want to look through the whole thing. But if you just came by, politics, 30 seconds for a minute, top, yeah, okay, or or or stock another 30 seconds to. So that's what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:I know we don't do shameless, plug in prematurely, but I think those ways to combat that, and, and so I'm relying on mainstream media. I don't care, it's left, right, left leaning, right leaning to make the decisions for you because they get a, they got their own agenda and we should go what's right for you. If you want more benefits, you know what party to vote for there. If you want more religious liberties, you know what party to vote for. Just go by issues that you care about and just stick to that, and hopefully the candidate doesn't have too many skeletons in their closet. Easier said than done these days, I'll say that much.
Speaker 2:One of the mistakes I know politicians make is they assume everybody is a well-informed voter and the reality is most people aren't, and I think that's an attribute of having a free society. We can go about our lives and not have to worry too much about it, and we pretty much make up our mind, like a couple of days before we vote, or even right there at the voting booth, we just look at the issues and we just vote on them. So that's, I think it's one of the mistakes Democrats have made. We talked about this earlier. They assume every voter is high information. Republicans are. Again. They have the messaging machine that assumes people don't know that much about politics.
Speaker 2:So they make it, they make they tell stories, they make it interesting. Yeah, obviously the stories are slanted toward them, but they get these buzzwords out there, you know, like little Marco or something like that, just a little buzzwords out there, that that really make America great. Again, I mean you couldn't come up with a better phrase. It doesn't make any sense when you think about it, but boy, it sure resonates with a lot of people out there. I'll just say the.
Speaker 1:Republicans. Yeah, the Republicans have more of a simple, digestible, accessible messaging. Yes, that's it. You know, and I said that's my biggest issue with Democrats, because Democrats, you've got policies that are popular but they don't like your politician. That's what some of these you know. You touched on that and I perfectly guess I was nodding almost passionately. Yes, yes, almost passionately. Say yes, yes, you see, this is.
Speaker 1:See, I'm talking to a progressive here and he has not. You know, he might say a few things, but it's okay, I'm not expecting, I'm not expecting unbiased person here, let's be real. But he's not spreading misinformation on as well, and I could tell the difference. Can you tell the difference? I want to see how informed you are. If you're brave enough, put in the comment section what part they think he's slanted on, whatever. Uh, look, if you call us both stupid and your mama's fat, anything like that.
Speaker 1:I'm getting work. Um, I'm not gonna bring to attention. I was gonna say the haters have spoken, that's the most. I'm gonna mention the haters, or or the trolls, whatever label I'm gonna give you. But you're, you're not helping.
Speaker 1:Now I'll just laugh because I've been called a bunch of names. I've been called even though I work, which I laugh. I obviously even right there in life. I was just laughing because I said you're a coward, you're miserable, apparently, and you're not going to face me. You feel that way, you feel like crap. You're not going to project that to me. Okay, and definitely not to this guest here. Okay, and definitely not to this guest here. I'm sure he got wisdom that you could share with you. You know, I don't care if you don't like his politics to me as a secondary. I just care about the person's character, what they have, what value they have to share. I care more about the ideas, all that, all that good stuff. So now we already talked about the cult, extremism and all that. I should tie this question earlier. But hey ben, like the number, how can regular, ordinary people fight against extremism? Local and state governments?
Speaker 2:I think the first way to the first step is to become aware of it, what it is and what's being asked for, and what I mean by what's being asked. What are politicians asking you to believe? And if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. There's something in there and it takes a lot of reflection, I think, sometimes to understand, sometimes when someone's being extremist and extremism is extremely it's kind of a poor choice of words, but it's extremely seductive in many ways, because it gives you the simple answer You're suffering from your personal finances, you're suffering because there's another guy with dark skin that's taking your job, you're not getting health care, but there's these other people over there that are jumping across the border and getting free health care.
Speaker 2:It's all a lie, I can prove it. It's all a lie, but those are the simple answers, and so when people start sharing these types of messages, your radar should go up, and I think that's the best way to fight extremism on either end. Right, we're seeing it now more on the right than on the left, but extremism on either end is very seductive, gives you the simple answer, and if you're alive for more than like a year, you know that nothing is simple. Everything's got a story behind it, so don't accept the simple answers Exactly.
Speaker 1:Ironically, that's a simple way to put it don't accept simple answers, except that one yeah, right, right, that's the exception, okay. So, wow, we actually actually went through quite a bit in such a time. I'm yeah, wow, that's all.
Speaker 2:I'm actually impressed, I mean oh it's been a great talk I love, yeah, I could talk for another three or four hours, man, but I know you don't have that much air time I mean I could make certain exceptions.
Speaker 1:Not three, four hours, maybe one hour, maybe that's not 30 minutes, but the difference I'm out, joe rogan here, that's for sure. He can go on those marathon talks and all that me I got an attention span of of a dying goldfish at times. Listen, though, if you want to see your host get mentally ill, make clips, viral clips. Make fun of me, yeah, torture me for three hours, you're. You're gonna get viral clips. I guarantee it.
Speaker 2:All right but I'd be on the air for three hours too.
Speaker 1:I don't care what they, what they'd say about me right, exactly, yeah, if I've, if I was a billionaire, oh, this would be easily two, three hours, no problem, yeah, yeah, just where's that contract? What? But that's not. Most of us, 99.99% of us, are not Joe Rogan. That's a true statistic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, it's a labor of love. Yeah, podcasting is a labor of love.
Speaker 1:It is for sure it is. I mean anyone says otherwise. They're not a true podcaster. Yes, you've been exposed. For those of you who disagree, I might make a podcast cult. No, I'm kidding, that's just hypocritical. At this point, I'm anti-cult. I don't like it. I like to even challenge my own views. That's how I get wires about these issues. It's almost felt for the extreme left, even the extreme right, talking points and so forth. Wait a minute, I think. Wait, that's not true. Once I look it up. You debunk so many points you know. Go to someone you trust. Go to a fair article and do the research yourself, if you can I know some of you don't have time. Go to someone who's very knowledgeable on a certain issue like abortion. Talk to someone who has done abortions or a lawyer who knows the laws around that. You know. You got to be your own advocate because, to be honest, everyone got their own interests. Let's just. Let's just be clear about that, I mean that's.
Speaker 2:That's especially true online with social media. You can get trapped into these speaking about seductive seduction. You can get seduced into these echo chambers an awful lot and uh, yeah, that I mean I I still read like there's this news organization called news max and they're they're fairly extremist, I think, but I still read their stuff. You know, not not all the time, but I still read their stuff. I just want to know what they're thinking, you know, and consider some of the ideas they put out there. I give you another example too, which I don't mean to ramble too much, but we're talking about the pandemic.
Speaker 2:Earlier, when it first came out, when COVID first came out, they said, oh, this comes from the Wuhan wet market. You know, I'm like it sounds reasonable because I've read articles before where these markets that bring in these animals from the fringes of the forest or whatever, bringing in unknown viruses. So that resonated with me at first. Then I found out there was, like this big virology research lab in Wuhan as well. And then right around that time, this so-called conspiracy theory comes out and says, yeah, we think it was this lab, right, and of course all the people say no, no, it couldn't have come from the lab and I'm like no, sometimes conspiracy theories actually come true and sometimes they actually make sense. So I you know that those kinds of things can happen too, but it all comes down to researching and, like you say, you don't have to be an expert at it, but get out, get out of your shell, get out of these social media channels and talk to some real people.
Speaker 1:Yep, and challenge even your own narrative. I know that's so uncomfortable. I mean, I'm happy I did because, because, oh, I, I didn't like being challenged, because I used to be, let's see. Oh, environmentalism. You'll talk to me as a teenager. You thought it was radical, right? I said, leave me alone, man, I'm a teenager, I'm just trying to have fun. I don't care about pollution all day.
Speaker 1:The earth would clean itself yeah no, after I look into it, I shift further to the left when it comes to environmentalism. I mean I don't agree every single policy, but generally I'll say I mean like center left when it comes to environmentalism. I mean I don't agree with every single policy, but generally I'll say I lean like center left when it comes to environmentalism. We do need clear energy. We definitely need to take care of Earth much better. I mean, to me that's good enough. I don't need all these political wording and political correctness. That part that's why I consider myself in the center is I don't need all these buzzwords from the left. I put that away Care for Earth, clean energy, speaking of practical, you know speaking practical. See that you had a, you know universal self-care in a more conservative case. For I mean, if you could make it either plainer than that so there's a left-wing, right-wing flare to it I think more people could be convinced.
Speaker 1:So just using these buzzwords, because it throws people off it, it definitely throws me off. I said, okay, this is a politician, what, what the heck do you want? So messaging is important. That's why I'm saying and that's what I'm going to say. So I want to give you a quick statistics before I wrap, before I ask for anything else, it's probably a gutsy question about the Missouri, you know by the Missouri government. Ok, and just like any other state government, they have their lower chamber and upper chamber. As of now, they have what? 24 Republicans in the Senate and 10 Democrats.
Speaker 2:So I mean.
Speaker 1:Republicans got a super majority in the Senate. Correct the Missouri State Senate. This is not the Senate of the Capitol building, no, this is the Missouri State. Missouri State Senate Yep, missouri State Senate, okay Right. State senate yep, missouri state senate okay, right. And for the house of representatives, it's even crazier. There there's 163 seats altogether. Republicans got 110 dems with 52. There's one vacant yeah, so they almost got three quarters right there at house representatives yeah, so it's, it's a red state, but I do see that they their super majority influence is slowly chipping away, slowly chipping away.
Speaker 1:Especially, they keep being radical and keep pushing unpopular policies. An extreme, and it's too restrictive. I mean, you're either too free or too restrictive. I think they don't trust the nuances as well as the democrats. That part I always give the democrats. They're more detail-oriented when it comes to policies. That's why sometimes I'm gonna side with democrats on some of the issues. I mean there's some issues I mean when it comes to.
Speaker 1:You said you're a fiscal conservative. That part I always agree with republicans in general, even though they're not practicing that right now. Look like they try to pass a big, beautiful bill, right so, and that's gonna drive up the debt for another four trillions of all fiscal conservatives out the window for the thousandth time. For the republicans, right? Yeah, so I'm. That means I'm on right wing than a republican politician comes to that issue as well. I haven't to reduce the web dole just for nothing. I want to eat almost lost his cool right there and start attacking trump. I don don't like both of them, but I understand why. Before I wrap this up, you know something popped up. You talked about the protests. I'll just get your take on that for someone who actually lived in California Before I address that. I know some of you haters are going to think that California brainwashed him or something like that. That's okay. I'm sure he's heard to think that California brainwashed him or something like that. You know that's OK. I'm sure he's heard it a thousand times. Yeah, but go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, la is a extremely large city. I think the metropolitan area is like eight million people. Then there's there's rings of of villages and towns around it, the whole thing. I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I wouldn't doubt if you get up to around 12 million, people don't really understand what that means. And one way to get your head around it is if you're flying to Los Angeles at night, you come out of the clouds and there's nothing but this huge carpet of lights as far as you can see, going to horizon, to horizon, and I remember when I first moved out there I had that experience. It is huge and the city is not built like New York City. Los Angeles has a fairly small downtown area where you have these high rise buildings. They tend to spread out because they have the real estate available. May have to do with earthquakes and stuff like that. So when they talk about, you know, the, the, the protests, and they gave the location of the protests I'm not highly familiar with downtown LA area fire or something like that you're going to get, like you know, 20 cameras surrounding it, looking at it and saying, oh, this is LA. It doesn't help when Trump says things like LA is on fire.
Speaker 2:Larger situation that was actually a riot. This is really a kind of a protest. The riots were actually much more widespread, but even then it was containable. So I just kind of laugh when people talk about Los Angeles and talk about how the protests are out of hand. All you got to do is pull up TikTok or something like that, get some live video. Most of people are just standing around holding signs and chanting and things like that. So it's just completely overblown. So I think when you call in like 4,000 military personnel at the patrol streets, there's going to be more military people there than there are going to be protesters. It's overblown. But I think it's purposely overblown, not only by the media but I think by certain politicians that want it to be overblown.
Speaker 2:Another thing I know about LA and it's probably, I'm sure, the same thing is with New York as well they don't tolerate outsiders very well. If you come in from the outside. You got to show a little bit of respect, as I was when I first arrived there, but I guess I'm talking about more, about agitators that come in and try to grab people off the streets. I've seen it happen in New Jersey. I've seen it happen in New York and Minneapolis. Nothing gets people going quicker than that, and you don't even care who the guy is that's being snatched off the street. You're going to get your ass out there and you're going to try to stand in the way and gum up the works as much as possible. That's just common sense. That's just being good citizens of our communities, and so I'm very proud.
Speaker 2:I'm very proud of LA, what they've done. I'm very proud of the way they've handled it. I'm very proud to see Gavin Newsom. I'm not a big fan of his, but I think he had some very good things to say over the last few days and it makes me proud to be like I say. I consider myself a native of both states. My son was born out there, raised him out there, and he still lives out there. I still have some flesh and blood out there.
Speaker 1:You're intimately connected with California. There's no denying that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Even if your son moves, there's still going to be a history connection right there, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I miss it. The climate is kind of different. I mean, the climate in Missouri is no doubt it's more exciting, perhaps too exciting. We had a few tornadoes come through here recently. But I just miss the vibe out there. I miss the state. And what people don't realize is you can focus in on places like West Hollywood or even just regular Hollywood and you think this is all a bunch of kooks out there. But really when I moved out there in the 80s, the big industry out there was national defense and so you got a lot of conservatives out there. I lived in one of the outlying areas. I lived out in Ventura County for many years. They're just normal hardworking people out there. There's nothing foofy about them at all. You get a small crowd of people but they get all the attention. Most of them out there are just hardworking Americans and they just want what everybody else wants.
Speaker 1:No doubt about that. It's true. The media, anything that generates detention ratings, you know blowing up stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or fights, you know, fight with the officers anything chaotic. I mean they don't even care about race, they don't care about truth. I mean they've always done that. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, left leaning, right leaning, or different issues, they just want. They just want the most violent, chaotic images that they could.
Speaker 2:That's what sells clicks. It sells, sells audience, so they can turn around and sell you soap and pills and everything else you know beer or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and anything is to get another dollar out of you right right now. So, no, I thank you for that, because me, I'm just gathering my perspective. I already know how fox is covering it. I already know how someone cover it. So, yeah, I already know you're gonna cover it. I'm sure you know the ones who are doing peaceful, peaceful protests. They're not gonna get the coverage. That's boring. Who cares? That's the media. That's the media's perspective. It's always going to be the case. Unless you get more, I'll say, informative, gutsy citizen journalists, if you will. That gives you more of a broader perspective. They're also going to show the. You know the civilized people who's protesting responsibly, right? I hate to say that. You know, of course, civilized people who's protesting responsibly, right? I hate to say that. You know, of course I'm against the violence, you know. But but we do have to fight the protests. I mean, yeah, I was going to address grievances in the collective and, I would say, pretty effective matter sometimes.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, Well, I mean, no, that's part of one. Hey, that's part of 1A. No 1A right there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, one of the best things I saw. I saw it on TikTok I think it's on Facebook as well but a young man standing. It was the LA protests and he was standing on like a slight berm, looking down at this parking lot and there's all these National Guard people down there and he was talking to them saying you know, you guys, you're on the wrong side of history, he says. But you know, we know we respect you guys, we totally respect you guys. We know you're here to do a job. You know, we know you don't have a choice, but we also asking you to make a moral decision here.
Speaker 2:These are, these are your people you're talking with. You're looking at us. You've got the weapons. You're looking at ordinary citizens here who just want what's best for their nation in their community. And I thought there was a really, when he went on for like five minutes or so, another, wow, this guy, you know, it was all impromptu on his side, it was all very contemporaneous and he just, he just said it and it was like man, that's like the culmination of the protests out there. That that's the part that doesn't get on the tv cameras and I don't want ratings, you're boring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sadly that's true. But hey, you know, just keep doing the, keep doing the work, just keep protests we believe in, um, I don't have to agree with it, but I do respect the the right. But this one I actually um agree with, minus the violence. But Other than that I agree. Just remove the violent part, that's it. Keep the protests, that's it. That's common sense, that's rational and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Anything you want to add before I wrap this up, Just in case anybody's interested, my website is danformocom, that's D-A-N, the number four, m-o, which is the Missouri abbreviation. I don't know where they get the L from, but danformocom, and you go to that site there and then from there you can kind of branch out to the other side to have Facebook page, have a page where I publish all my writings I mean just TikTok page and things like that. So I got all the branch outs from there. But yeah, just go to danformocom. There's a ton of information there. All my writing, a lot of my writings are there. So you get an idea of who I am. It's not your typical political website where they just have like one page and they put the bullet points in there and that's it, because maybe they don't want you to know more about it. I want people to know a lot about me. I want people to know what they're voting for. I want them to have too much information rather than not enough. So, danformocom, and yeah, just go from there.
Speaker 1:That's transparency, right there. Yeah, absolutely, and pretty darn ethical, if you ask me. And you also got a Reddit. Are you currently using that as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have Reddit as well. I'm not as active on it. I tune into it every couple of days. You know, sometimes I'll get into a back-and-forth argument with somebody and it's not one of my most proud things to do. But yeah, I do have Reddit as well. I think I have a link to it on Reddit as well for my website. I will check that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no, you do. That's what I was going to ask you. You mentioned the rest, I think YouTube as well. I'm going to link all of them, regardless on the description. Give them some support. You know, maybe enough of you Democrats galvanize. I mean, you know, I think this is an opportune time. You know you got time to gather. You know that's how 2026 comes. They can flip that seat. Blue. That's what we're hoping for.
Speaker 1:The incumbent is gone because he's running for the, the senate position, okay, so I think, yeah, I think you have a fair shot. I actually would agree as a fair-minded person. Yep, I think I think you have a shot, so come on if you're skeptical before I get it. Yeah, it was super ready. Incumbent, fine, fine, yeah. But I think the time, the time is now, you know, and so she, when the next year comes, could be pretty exciting political time for Missouri. Of course, all the House representatives in the national level and one third of the Senate and I give you know, I already gave my prediction there I think the Republicans could keep the Senate, but I think the House of Representatives could go to Democrats. That's my prediction, my general prediction.
Speaker 2:It's not a very big barrier to overcome at this point. Just a couple of seats right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, and I'll say 10 could easily flip. The Democrats have to strike now. They just need to organize right now, stop the infighting.
Speaker 1:Stop that nonsense. You have your time. If Trump keeps being crazy putting up on popular policies since then, you got a shot? Okay, you got a shot, and stop with the stop with the niche stuff, because niche stuff's not gonna help. You have messaging that could gather a lot of people. Okay, I'll say you deal with the niche stuff once you're in office, but with campaigning you gotta gather as much people as possible. That's all that's my advice to the democrats that you know, generally speaking, ain't more americans you could gather, the better. All right, and I included the red states. So that's what I'm going to say about that one more thing is uh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yep, I tell democrats, if you have to explain yourself, you've lost the argument. Stop explaining it. Just get your points out there first, and if somebody wants to have it explained later on, fine. But they get caught so many times Republicans will say something about Democrats and Democrats will have to explain themselves Like nope, you've lost. That's how it works.
Speaker 1:True, and that's what molded my communication style. If I had to over-explain, it means I lost and it's falling apart already. That's why I try to keep it concise more often. If you get it, you get it. If you don't, well, there's a comment section. What do you mean by this? Or if I'm wrong, just correct me, because I don't care about my ego, right? I mean, if I did forget, I'll do my own monologue podcast and just talk about whatever the heck I want to talk about and think all you people are just peons and all that. So, no, this, you know, I'm willing to learn, I'm willing to. You know, fight misinformation. That means put my ego aside if you really want to be authentic and true about finding misinformation, so just say oh, no, I support this because it supports my narrative. No, no, no, confirmation bias. That means you also. That's another source of misinformation, you know. I, for example let me just use some there you know, I just think all progressives are wacky. They burn garbage cans, they burn hospitals, and once I see that news coverage, aha.
Speaker 2:See.
Speaker 1:I'm right. I'm correct, they're wackos. They need to be put down. No, no confirmation. Don't challenge your own confirmation bias. I think that's the most common bias we have.
Speaker 2:That's what social media feeds at, though. I mean, it's what happens.
Speaker 1:Oh man, it's been great. I'm going to wrap it up now for my podcast shameless plug-in. Give a like, share, subscribe, give an honest review on Apple Podcasts. If you give it on Spotify, I will happily ignore you. I don't care for Spotify, I only use it as my jam to listen to. So I'm not paying attention to that. Apple Podcasts, those reviews, I'm paying attention to, even the ones that are unreasonably too good, too positive.
Speaker 1:I like the ones that tells me why it's great, something more specific or tell me where I can improve. I like specifics. I like specifics. If it's a positive, negative, I don't really care about that as much. I like specifics, graphics.
Speaker 1:And you know, if you think, four stars, four stars, five stars, five stars. If it's, you know, I'm happy to have that one star that that person never said anything, so it's a shadow hater. There you go. That means I'm a real podcast. Yay, a little more authenticity. I don't need perfection. I hate perfection. If I have a five star, I think I'm phonies If I have a 4.4, 4.4, 4.5 rating than a 5, because 5 is just inauthentic. I think they're going to think I pay a bunch of people. Oh, give me five stars, give me five stars. No, no, no. So I have that messy review system, I suppose, having a perfect, clean review and then you know, share this with someone that you love, and that's all I can say from there. Oh, and donate if you want. That's completely optional and you have access to the more older stuff. All right, for the first 140 episodes, and I'll start putting some exclusive stuff sometime in the future.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to figure out what. Maybe the visualization of the action Bible. I think visuals help instead of all that description that confuses people. I'd rather you believe in God or not, that's up to you. I'm not saying religious, I'm a spiritualist. That's about a spiritualist. Religious is the space for the fakers. I'm a spiritualist, I'm walking that path and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:And I will show some visuals about that book, the Action Bible. It's Bible in the comic book form. Yeah, more interesting instead of just a bunch of words that are confusing and all and all that. And I get that, I get that I. I found the bible confusing to you when I studied it. So I think the visuals will help you out a bit. And, yeah, I'll do some of that from there, who knows? And if you think I'm being too capitalistic or whatever. Just call me out probably, probably back down. I'll probably back down, who knows? Look, you have have influence here. It's not a rigged system Well, actually it kind of is, because sometimes I break people that you don't like because I think that's something valuable. I'll do some executive decisions, but mostly, no, you have influence people. Just communicate with me and I'll be willing to work with you, all right, all right, this audio and visual journey has been completed. So whenever you're done listening or watching this podcast, you have a blessed day, afternoon or night. Thanks, elias.
Speaker 2:Bye.
