Soup Sandwich
Welcome to Soup Sandwich, a podcast that explores the complex and compelling world of veterans in the United States. Through interviews with veterans themselves, military experts, and advocates, we'll dive deep into the issues that matter most to this community, from mental health and employment, to the history of veterans in the US and the future of military service. This podcast is supported by the generous contribution of the members of VFW Post 3033.
Soup Sandwich
From Burn Pits To Bylaws: Inside VFW Riders And The Fight For Veterans
***Recorded on 10/14/2025***
We launch a new season with candid updates on the VFW Riders’ push for autonomy, a grounded look at burn pits, PTSD, and VA claims, and a spirited debate on borders, raids, and what conscience demands. Stories from Iraq, Africa, and the road anchor a practical plan to keep posts alive.
• Riders group evolving into an affiliated entity with bylaws
• Why riders need rider-written rules and road protocol
• Post life: darts, trunk-or-treat, and new lottery draw games
• Mental health outreach and the state suicide prevention lead
• Burn pits, telehealth C&P exams, and filing smarter VA claims
• Membership realities, aging out, and family-first scheduling
• Service stories: mortars, piracy, and special operations culture
• Faith, conscience, and weighing security against mercy
• Immigration triage versus sweeping raids and late-night no-knocks
• School funding, per-pupil dollars, and local equity
Email Us with your comments and suggestions at vfwpost3033@gmail.com, we'd love to hear from you!
War is a paradox. It has the power to bring nations together, to inspire heroism and sacrifice, and to forge bonds of camaraderie that will span a lifetime. But it also has the power to tear families apart, to shatter communities, and to leave scars that will never fully yield. And for those who have served, the transition back to civilian life can be one of the greatest challenges they will ever face. This is the typical life of military veterans, a world that is both familiar and foreign to most of us. It is a world that is shaped by unique experiences, values, and traditions of the military, and by the sacrifices and struggles of those who have served. But it's also a world that is constantly changing as new generations of veterans confront new challenges and new opportunities. Thank you for joining us at Soup Sandwich. Dig your foxhole, heat up your MRE, and spend some time with us. This podcast is designed solely for entertainment and occasionally informational purposes only, and is to be regarded strictly as satire comprising of veterans that delves into their thoughts and experiences in combat, as well as their perspectives on various aspects of daily life that may be unsettling for certain listeners. This podcast is not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. The views articulated in this podcast may not necessarily align with those of the National VFW or VFW Department of Michigan or VFW Post 3033. Additionally, we kindly request that listeners refrain from pursuing legal action against the creators or contributors of this podcast. In other words, please don't sue us.
SPEAKER_03:Quite a few months, huh?
SPEAKER_05:Four months.
SPEAKER_03:Summer's busy.
SPEAKER_04:Summer's busy.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah, we normally take the summers off, but uh nonetheless, it's uh something that we try to try to do during I call it the school year. So but anywho, what uh what phone is that? That that is a Google Fold.
SPEAKER_04:Google ping is like a mini iPad.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it's actually a little bit bigger than the Samsung fold that they got out there.
SPEAKER_04:Um iPhone's coming out with one of those next uh next year.
SPEAKER_05:So yeah, it's a half an inch bigger than Samsung, I think, but you know size matters.
SPEAKER_03:That's what that's what your wife keeps telling you, I assume. Since we got two people watching, she can hear us nice and clear, it just texted her.
SPEAKER_04:So beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:She's watching on Facebook from good good tonight.
SPEAKER_04:It's uh good uh Apple uh microphones right there working for you. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05:All right. So yeah, so anybody who let's do a real quick round robin. I highly doubt it, but you never know. There might be somebody new joining us. So if they do, um, my name is Brent. I am the founder of the podcast. The founder. That's what we call him. The founder. He has to call me a lot of other things, but let's not go there. Um not yet.
SPEAKER_03:I'm sure. Definitely gonna get there.
SPEAKER_05:Definitely gonna get there. Um currently I am the senior vice commander of the Mount Pleasant VFW Post 3033, uh, Barley Hannel, VFW Post 3033, and uh all around cool guy.
SPEAKER_04:Um yeah, I'll attest to that. I'll second that.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, thanks.
SPEAKER_03:Up to you. Well, I'm Charlie Klein, um life member of Post 3033 here in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Uh I'm the junior vice commander of the post and uh the current uh riders group director or state president for uh the motorcycle groups for the Department of Michigan, um which we'll get into some of the some of the new layings uh that just happened with our our VFW uh national convention uh last year. That's gonna alter the riders groups a little bit, so but we'll we'll dive into that a little bit later.
SPEAKER_05:Cool. Uh that's a lot of good news, so we'll see how it is.
SPEAKER_04:Uh my name is Trey Porter. Uh I am the uh Riders Group president, uh member of Post 3033, and uh I'm the Riders Group president of the Rise Group at Post 3033. For the time being, we'll see how that how long that lasts.
SPEAKER_05:So they're firing him in the next election.
SPEAKER_04:I got 100% election coming up pretty soon next week.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, is it next week?
SPEAKER_04:Yep. This weekend, actually. This week Sunday, yep. All right, so we'll see. It's either me or me, Scott. Oh, yeah, or do you, yeah. But you're already the director.
SPEAKER_03:Nothing saying I can't be both. Really? Ah, please. Besides, I'm gonna say no. Um yeah, nothing on my plate.
SPEAKER_05:Cool. Well, I'd like to talk about that too. A little bit about the writers group, but we'll get there. Um so how about just a general update? I mean, it's been, you know, it's been probably about four months, five months since we had a podcast. I mean, you know, as a podcast organizationally, I think we uh, you know, we take the summer off just because especially the writers group is just it's really busy. They like to go out and ride, they enjoy the weather. I mean, this is this is fucking Michigan, so we only get like four months of good weather in this state. So, you know, take it while we get it. Um, so I totally get it. So for that, you know, we take the summer off, and uh, you know, for the most part, around the school year is what I call it. Around the school year time, we uh we do the podcast. So um this is the first episode of the new season. There's not really anything special about it.
SPEAKER_03:This is like season four. Yeah, is it? I think this thing's been going about four years, probably. Yeah, so three, four years.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, off and on. I'd say probably three. So but uh we're having fun with it.
SPEAKER_03:Um I miss Tim up here, I can tell you that. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. He was uh I actually drive when I go up to the kids or something like that. Uh it's two two and a half hour drive. Oh I go way back in the archives and listen to the Tim Tim and God damn, he's cracked me up.
SPEAKER_05:Uh Tim uh Tim was the main reason behind our disclaimer in the opening. Um that was some funny shit for him. He always thought it was hilarious, and I I laugh every time that uh you know, the bit where it's like, you know, it's occasionally informational. Strictly satire strictly satire, occasionally informational. Um but uh fucking focus on occasionally. That was that was that was a good addition on his part. So um but yeah, we'll have to do a sound of freedom. I totally I fucking forgot about it, man. Should have done a sound of freedom.
SPEAKER_03:I already had one open before we got started, so it'll be a sound of freedom next time. So we'll get there.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we'll get there. But a lot of time. But yeah, so let's talk a little bit about uh maybe some changes to the podcast we were talking. So um originally when we uh when we had oops, one so Mike keeps saying waiting for a live signal. Are you on his Wi-Fi by chance? Uh no, I am not.
SPEAKER_04:That might not I am I'm I'm on cellular though. Yeah, it definitely works, but full bars. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:It just keeps saying that we don't have a live signal, so anyway.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. If we cut out tab, let us know. Um, we'll switch it to Wi-Fi. But anyway, um, back to what I was saying. So when we originally founded the podcast, um, and the the VFW voted to support it um by you know purchasing the equipment and things like that, uh, the original idea was to you know keep it focused on veterans um and that kind of thing. Um and I guess we kept to that for the most part. Um it's called soup sandwich for a reason. I mean, there's really no organizational thing that you know dictates what we talk about, but um, but even more so, I think we're gonna really go into a mix. So um, yeah, anything you want to put in there? Because it was me and you mostly talking about it, Charlie.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, you know, I I mean it obviously it always is gonna depend on how many of us show up any one time. You know, when we get four, five, six people up here, it's a great time. Yeah, it's more of a party atmosphere with a lot of stories, a lot of BSing. Right. Less about uh necessarily it's all about veterans because it was when we served and the stories of you know uh the comradeship with our our brothers or sisters out there, right? During our service period. So we're still talking veteran things, but um you know I don't know if we want to kind of digress a bit some some episodes. Like I know you talked about real estate things and stuff like that. I mean, um, you know, we could have people come up and talk about mental health stuff. We can have all kinds of different things, or they can call in and do that as well. So I know uh Harrison Post 1075, they're about 25, 30 minutes north of us. They just had uh a mental health uh the state director um was up there and just they just kind of did a uh I don't know if it was a clinic or informational session or something. I just kind of cut it on. Uh Dave Dave Brinker does that. Um great great guy, he's been doing it for years and years, he's passionate about it. He was actually one of the guys that attempted and it wasn't successful, and now he is the the director for mental health and suicide prevention for for the state of Michigan. Yeah, nice. Yeah, so he just retired from his job. Um, so he's he's he's living high on the hog, you know. He's uh great, great guy, uh extremely passionate. So, you know, I'm sure we could get him to call in. Yeah, you know, it's one of these nights.
SPEAKER_05:For sure. We turn this fan off on this.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we can turn it off.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, getting a little hot. Yeah, well, yeah, but you're in here with all this man meat in here.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it is the Navy's birthday.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it is it was yesterday, yeah. 250 years. So yeah. It's a lot. This I'm trying to figure it out, so yeah, he's a marine. It takes a second. Oh, that's changing colors. There's the crayons. Okay. Is green your favorite crayon or no, blue. Blue raspberry. Well, okay. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Met another Marine this weekend. I was fucking with him about crayons. He knew exactly what I was talking about. There we go. I never heard that until I joined the VFW's Marines and Crayons thing. Oh, yeah. That was in the crayon eaters, man. And I was in Iraq for uh three months straight with on uh well, there's a lot of Marines on our base. We didn't commingle too much. We didn't talk much to them. They didn't talk much too well to be honest with you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um you have to stoop down to a certain level to talk to them.
SPEAKER_04:Uh oh man. Uh but uh uh yeah, that was the first time I ever heard about this whole crayon thing was at the VFW.
SPEAKER_03:We were the we were the literally the kids in kindergarten eating the paste, right? You know, that's that that's the the the uh theory, that's what it is. So, all right, yeah, but no, we've had a lot going on. I actually had the VFW coming up here next weekend on the 25th. Well, a week from this weekend, so two weekends technically. Um, we have our truck retreat. Uh so we set up tables. Riders group usually has a couple tables, Pulse and Auxiliary have tables, and we have a lot of community members that come in from outside that set up a table, hand out kids that come in, you know, hand out candy and stuff, and people get dressed up, and that's a good time. So looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Well, for those that don't know, and hopefully they do know, um also uh we're starting coming into darts season. Yep. So if you want to have a good time on a Monday or Friday night, uh whether you play darts or not, just come on up and spend some time with everybody. There's a lot of us up there, a lot of people, not just us, but people from the community as well up there. So come up there and have a good time and and uh spend a little money.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's it. And you know, and another thing, another update, uh pretty soon here, hopefully by I don't know, the end of November, I would say, um, we're we're hoping to get uh lottery in the post. Oh man, like Powerball and shit? Yep, draw games, Powerball, all that. Um and I mean and just the draw games, we're not gonna have scratch offs and shit like that. But yeah, uh but yeah, we'll have we'll have the draw games and and keynote and you know all that. Um so hopefully we'll get that in as soon as we can get our paperwork all together. We're we're waiting on um some paperwork left over. Uh so did that get paid?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. So uh but yeah. Um let's roll into the writers group updates uh Mr. Director.
SPEAKER_04:Uh me first.
SPEAKER_02:Uh go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I mean, I was gonna ask, what what exactly do you want to know? Uh now, and I'm I'll talk a little bit about it, but Charlie being at the state level knows way more about it. But transitioning into our own type of organization, like the auxiliary, like the the order of the cooties for the people that that know who they are. So right now we are strictly a function of the post. And correct me if I'm wrong or saying something wrong, but uh but now we're gonna branch off. We still we're still there to support our posts, but we don't answer them, right? Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, so basically the the way that I'm understanding is it's it'll be formed similar to the cooties or or the auxiliary. So we're gonna have um, you know, our own, we're gonna be our own entity. We still have to be sponsored by a post, a district, uh-huh, or if they're gonna have a department level, uh, state level, uh group, um, just like the auxiliary can't just come into a post and say we're gonna stand up an auxiliary, it has to be voted in by the membership. They're extremely hard to get rid of, right? So it's it's not something to take lightly, right? If if your post or your district wants to have one. Um, but the asset of having them is hugely important. You know, when we're out there riding, we're going to different places, going to events, they see us out there, and you get a lot of veterans come up. We've gotten couldn't even tell you how many members that joined our post or auxiliary, and or both, you know, if it's husband and wife, um, just because they found us out at an event, a charity ride, and stop for the lunch and do the things, you know, get gas, I mean, it all the time. So, you know, it's that that mobile billboard going down the road, as long as you're acting appropriately when you're writing, it's it's it's a good thing. But I mean, typically everybody does.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Um, but um where we're sitting at right now, and I had a phone conversation back in in August, right? And I had all the the presidents from the local local chapters that wanted to be on the call um on the call where what we're gonna do in the meantime, while national is getting set up, um they have to get their their bylaws done, they have to we have to elect national officers. There's a lot of things that have to take place before our group can technically be its own entity. So, um, because there's nobody to apply to, right? No, nobody to put paperwork to we don't even have the paperwork to do that stuff. So um in the meantime, the state of Michigan um I had a discussion with all the presidents. We're gonna continue to march forward with the same issue that we've had for the last 10 years here in the state. Um we're still gonna be doing everything that we've always done, still participating, still donating, still volunteering, still doing all those things on behalf of the VFW, especially the Department of Michigan, our posts and our districts that we belong to, uh to still show support, even though we know at some point in the future. I'm in a group, group me message uh thing with all the other state presidents, um, some of the national leadership people, stuff like that, that are gonna be there forming all this stuff up. Um so I'm I'm getting some other insight and kind of where we're looking at, but it looks like next convention, things will really be driving forward. They're gonna use this winner to redevelop the bylaws and and the articles and the stuff like that to incorporate based off the input and feedback they're getting. Yeah, from from actual riders group members, actual people that ride motorcycles understand the lingo, understand the um older things that need to be done in protocols and all those different things for the rules of the road that we ride on. You know, guy never been on a motorcycle, has no idea what it's like to deal with other groups or other clubs on the road they don't understand, you know, where we have to do things differently because as a group, when we come across the club, it's a lot of times it's their roads, we just share them.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:It's their road, right? We get allowed to ride on them, basically, right? So we want to make sure we're doing things appropriately and correctly and things are set up that makes sense to us. Yeah, so it's it's it's gonna be a good good transition. Um gonna be a lot of cost involved, gonna be a lot of startup and setup, and there's gonna be a lot, but um at the end of the day, it's nice for us to be our own entity. Um, you know, we work so well with our post here in Mount Pleasant, because I'm a I'm a member of the Mount Pleasant group that that trays the president of. We do a lot for our post. And I don't ever think that's gonna change. Um you know, we don't have a lot of uh outside post membership that aren't members of the writers group that really do a whole lot up there as far as volunteer their time or try to raise money or whatever. The lion share is pretty much the writers group, both on the auxiliary side. I know the I know the auxiliary ladies are probably screaming because there's a there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of the ladies or and men that are in the auxiliary that they do volunteer and they do do a lot of things, but you know, when it on I would say it's almost a 50-50 with the auxiliary, but with the writers group on the post side, the VFW side, it's it's like 90-10. Right. 90% is done by the by the members of the writers group and 10% is done by the general membership.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, right.
SPEAKER_03:You know, where the auxiliary is probably pretty close to a 50-50, 60-40 type type mix where you know uh their general membership does probably a little bit more than the lion chair and the writers group ladies help fill fill the gaps when when needed.
SPEAKER_05:So wanna do a quick shout out. If you're watching us live, I see that my sister-in-law is joining us. So, Lindsay, thanks for joining. Appreciate you.
SPEAKER_04:Hi, Lindsay.
SPEAKER_05:Um this is Trey and that's Charlie. You don't need to worry about them though. Um but yeah, uh jumping back in. I mean, I'm I'm obviously not a member of the writers' group. I don't own a motorcycle or anything like that. Um, you know, one of those maybe one days kind of thing. Um but uh, you know, with our post being heavily supported by our riders' group, like you said, you don't see that changing, neither do I. Um but you know, in the future, when when things really do get organized and whatnot, do you think you see the riders' groups standing up more so as districts or as posts? Obviously, because you get a strong post like ours, for sure they're gonna stand up a riders' group, but maybe especially rural areas that are kind of few and far between, do you see them standing up districts instead? And you know, supporting each other, you know.
SPEAKER_03:So, how do you see it? So, currently the way that it's written is any VFW member essentially can be a member of any riders' group. You don't have to be a post member in Mount Pleasant to only ride or only join the Mount Pleasant group. I could be, and I am a member of Mount Pleasant, I could join Harrison, I can join Holland, I could join Detroit if their membership votes me in, right? So just because I'm here and we have a group doesn't mean I have to only ride with that one. So you we do have one district, uh Rogers Group, and a district for the VFW for those that don't know, is like uh an area no different than your uh congressmen or senators or anything like that. Um they have two, three counties, and that's you know, or sometimes it might be ten counties, but uh VFWs within those counties, that's a district.
SPEAKER_04:Um so uh but that is uh that's the way it is now. Is it gonna be that way once we do the changeover?
SPEAKER_05:Obviously, we don't know that, but I'm just I just want to throw that out as a spitball and just kind of you know right now.
SPEAKER_03:I believe they're gonna leave post district and state or department groups. Right. I don't know that's gonna hold. Uh right.
SPEAKER_04:So because hell they might join uh Harrison and and Midland with us, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03:And yeah, so I don't think there's gonna be a restriction on how many chapters or how many groups we can have. Right. I think in the beginning there was some scuttlebutt going around that you can only there's only gonna be like seven or eight per state. Well, obviously you get small like Maryland, right? Right. Rhode Island, Connecticut, yeah, you know, like the whole ten square miles of it. They've got they they got two whole posts or whatever, so um you know it makes sense to join those, but here in Michigan, right, we have nine, so I think we're still gonna be able to have nine. I don't think we're gonna keep them all. Okay, I think there's gonna be groups that are just getting to where they're aging out now, right?
SPEAKER_05:Without a lot of younger members that are riding that are just probably gonna unfortunately just go away and do their own yeah, do their own thing as as so nationally, you said you're kind of in a group me message with all the na all the state presidents and whatnot. Nationally, what does the writers group look like? I mean, are there some states without any?
SPEAKER_03:Are there, you know, or is there a pretty it it it's actually more than half the states from what I'm been reading uh is has riders' groups. At least one. Um I think the last time I had counted was like twenty-nine states um or so. But um it's it's it's gonna be a a weird setup because like there's the first VFW was an MC out in California. They were able to keep their MC designation when any other group had to be a riders group, which is not a motorcycle club, it's a group.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Um and then there's a a group that's out in Colorado. Uh they're called the Warriors. They're kind of like an MC established type group. I don't know if they're technically an MC, I don't think they are, but they have this warrior designation that I don't know how they got.
SPEAKER_04:Um I'm still trying to VFW Warrior?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So they're run similar, very, very similar to an MC. But I don't know, I don't think they are an MC. I think they're still a writers group, but they're really run that way, and they want to be able to keep their designation as Warriors.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And not do not have to be labeled as a VFW group.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_03:They're the VFW Warriors, but yeah. So there's there's some things kind of going around I'm trying to catch up on, but I'm not too familiar with everything because I've just been concentrated on the stuff in our state now.
SPEAKER_05:Probably a good idea.
SPEAKER_03:Well, you know, I mean you have big states like Texas, and I think Texas was one of the ones that that really pushed this. And I don't know, we work, we've always worked so good.
SPEAKER_05:What is it with Texas and independence, man? Seceding from everything.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, we've we've always worked so well with our pulse, it was hard to understand where these other ones are coming from. And I don't know. I think at some point some of them probably were told, you know, hey, your group will do this and you will do this and you will do this, or we'll get ready. So they always had that knife held over their head where if you don't do everything that we want you to do, we're just gonna vote you out and you're gone. And you won't have Ryan's group here anymore. Right? Go down the road and set it up somewhere. What about in Texas? I that's that's kind of what I've kind of gathered from. I don't know that for sure.
SPEAKER_04:I I started riding legally in Texas. And out there, it and and I was I was not with any group. I was in the military at the time. I was riding independent, of course, and uh and I mean the politics out there, yeah, but it's crazy. Like with the Mongols and the Cossacks and all of that war that they had, and well uh Yeah, where I was where I was kind of going to be.
SPEAKER_05:For a non-rider, can you translate for me?
SPEAKER_03:I'm I will. I'm I'm thinking the reason why they wanted to be broke off in their own entity is so that the post can't hold the knife over the back. Right. You say if you don't do everything we want, we're gonna we're gonna knife you and you guys will be gone. Right. Where we know, like if we want to try to get rid of an auxiliary, that has to go all the way up to the national commander in chief. We could we could vote them out, but they don't leave until the national commander in chief says your auxiliary's defunct and they're not doing what they're supposed to do and get rid of them. We can't do that even as a post-membership.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:I think that's what they're looking to do, and and there must be something behind it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:So in in Texas, and it this is pretty much nationwide, too, is is uh you have MCs motorcycle clubs that um pretty much run the roads and and uh it gets deep and real serious in Texas. Uh it it does here too in Michigan, but I'm learning anyways that it does. But but in in Texas, it's man, they don't play.
SPEAKER_03:And this is this is the reason why I said, you know, it's nice that our our new bylaws and activities, procedures, all the things we're gonna do are gonna be geared by people that ride motorcycles. Because if you were sitting on this committee and you're like, oh yeah, we'll just make bylaws, and you have no idea what we actually have to ride in or live in or deal with, right, when we're on the roads, because these some of these groups, you know, if you don't get permission to pass them, and you pass them, they will chase you down the road, run you off the road, and you won't be getting back on the bike to ride it. Yeah, you know what I mean? So it's it's it's it's serious enough that we we have to protect each other and ourselves. Um so it's good that this is gonna be established by guys that ride or women that ride, right? That are so and that's actually spearheaded by our uh Kevin Conklin. He's our um our national rep um from he's right here from from Michigan. He was uh he's a past department commander, I think it was three years ago. He was our department commander. He rides here, he rides, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:In Michigan? Oh, okay. Yeah, I did meet Kevin over at uh yeah, he is in Michigan.
SPEAKER_03:And speaking of that, we're gonna be having uh our fall conference here for Department of Michigan. We held here at Mount Pleasant. Yep, yep, yeah, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_05:I um the week of Halloween, what are we doing? We're taking over Comfort Inn for our regional uh Comfort In for the Comfort Infall Conference.
SPEAKER_03:And we have we have a dinner at the VFW that Friday night, too.
SPEAKER_05:We do, yep. Halloween night. We have a uh we have a dinner um hosting, you know, a bunch of people and ladies and some of the post membership will be there to um cook some food.
SPEAKER_04:I I'm assuming they're nixing um they're nixing um darts at night. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Oh yeah, a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_04:Is there a district 11 meeting? Is that gonna happen on the 2nd of November? Probably not, right?
SPEAKER_03:Um excuse me. Uh believe it still will. Because we left midwinter conference on Sunday, and there was the district meeting up in Harrison on that Sunday.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, I was at that district meeting, as a matter of fact.
SPEAKER_05:Um I went to that meeting. I thought there wasn't gonna be quorum.
SPEAKER_03:Well, a lot of us are down at those conferences and conventions, so yeah. A lot of politics when you ride a motorcycle.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_05:I mean Well, and I mean I know I'm not dumb, you know, growing up. I've heard the stories of you know the Hell's Angels and you know all the all the big time MCs.
SPEAKER_04:Um and the thing is, really isn't as bad as you that that you thought it was, right? It was sons of anarchy, yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_03:We're not guys aren't shooting each other riding all the time. I mean everybody generally gets along, everybody's out to have a good time, everybody loves riding the roads, but it's no part of the road. When you don't right, when you don't go off protocols and you don't respect others, right, then that's where the the issues lie. Right. You know, that's that's when things become a problem.
SPEAKER_05:So and the other thing is putting yourself in the other group's shoes. They might do that, but why do they do that? They take it to an extreme, sure, but what's the reasoning behind it? You could argue that it's probably safety for their own people.
SPEAKER_03:I hate to tell you, my drill instructors took it to an extreme. Oh, dude. Hell yeah, they did. But in there, and it's for a reason, right? It's to to teach you and and understand and respect and all the different things. So that's yeah, I mean, that's that's basically so that's that's kind of what's gonna happen over the next year. Um, we're gonna continue here in Michigan to march forward and still do the things that we do. I'm still getting uh act because we are right now technically separated. But until we actually get accepted to the national level, we're like in this weird limbo, right? So we're still sponsored by our districts or our posts, so we're still gonna do the do the right things to continue to march forward, but uh technically as of right now, we're we're a total separate entity, right? We just don't exist anywhere, right? So, you know, that's that's what's going on with that. So the long story. So part two of that story. No, I'm just kidding. That's your part. You are, as Tab says, the founder. No, she says You are the founder of part two. No, two parts, founder of two parts.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, founder of two parts, yep. Two parts is my thing. Yep. I always have two things to say about a about a situation. So Lindsay and Tiffany, uh, my better half, my sister-in-law, and my better half are watching. So hi Tiffany, thanks for watching. Um they could probably vouch for me always having two things to say to something. So that's where that nickname comes from, is two parts. Um what's next on the agenda? What else do we have to talk about before Trey starts his whole thing?
SPEAKER_04:What are you talking about? My my whole thing.
SPEAKER_05:I know damn well what you want to talk about.
SPEAKER_03:I always want to talk about politics, but I mean we can all stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance. A Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. You fucked that up. I was gonna say to it to the United States of America and Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_04:And Trey Porter.
SPEAKER_03:You hot? Hell yeah. This uh fat man. This that remote right there.
SPEAKER_04:This one?
SPEAKER_03:Yep, handed here.
SPEAKER_05:Not gonna lie to you. The uh remote my four-year-old, I was you know, riding along um in the car, had the four-year-old in her car seat back behind me, and she was telling me about her day of daycare. This is Thursday or Friday, I think. And then randomly she starts reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Your daughter?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Oh man, I remember she's four years old, so of course she's mispronouncing stuff and it's cute as shit, you know. But she's got it down, man, and I'm you know, I'm all proud, you know, tearing up. Proud.
SPEAKER_04:So did I. Like what my daughter came home, was reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and I was like Big softness. Yep, I know, right? Uh with daughters, all rules are out the windows, man. That's true.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. Um, I got a uh I got a quick request that apparently we're supposed to talk about our favorite bartender on the podcast. And uh, you know, you know, I'll I'll we'll we'll we'll talk about her. I think Trish is I think Trish is pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:Are we talking about of all time? Because from the top just the post.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, just now all time or current bartenders. That's what he's asking.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Current all time because past bartenders or current.
SPEAKER_05:Um we can I guess we can do all time because I was bartending for you know a little while there, so I know I'm your favorite. Uh I don't remember you bartender. Well, maybe it's because you never freaking came in.
SPEAKER_04:You should have let me know. I'm wearing my crop top today, Jay. Come in and see me. Um wearing my okay. I'll say my favorite bartender of all time has got to be Merck. There we go. Merck is my favorite bartender. John McMurtry, all-time favorite bartender. Fucking Fabio himself. Yep. Fucking sexy Jesus.
SPEAKER_05:Who's yours? Fucking Fabio. I I'll never forget the day I met Merck for the first time. It was it was right after Tim had passed. He had heard the news and he came in and he just volunteered his time to run the canteen for us, and it was awesome for him to come in, but I'd never met him before. And I was relatively new to the post. I was the quartermaster at the time, and he was back behind the behind the bar. And I think I walked up to you, Charlie, and I was like, who the fuck is Fabio?
SPEAKER_04:Like well, that nickname stuck, you know. The thing, um, there was no love loss between uh Merck and Tim. Am I yeah, so there was and so Merck was kind of absent for a while. Uh, but when Tim passed away, it's you know, the thing is, he it nobody witches that on anybody. I don't care. You know, I fucking hate Charlie. You know what I'm saying? But I don't want to see him pass away. So I'm just joking, Charlie. No, you're not. It's fine.
SPEAKER_05:Hold on. Emily said something, Brent is no one's favorite bartender except yours, my produce. I ain't nobody's fucking protege. What the hell are you talking about? What the hell is she talking about? Let's be honest. I only bartender for like a summer.
SPEAKER_04:Current bartenders, I'm gonna I'm putting my um in McKenzie's batch. You know what? You know what? My favorite, my I'm gonna say this right now. My favorite bartender of all time, Emily Lackey. There we go. Oh yeah. Where can she get back on the schedule, please? Somebody put her on the schedule. She's normally on Fridays. I uh she hasn't been because we got so many bartenders.
SPEAKER_03:You want to see credit to the ones that are working on Sundays, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I know. So none of you guys will probably remember Rona. I do remember Rona. I do remember.
SPEAKER_05:No, that was before my time.
SPEAKER_03:Rona was in there all the time. She was a she worked um, so she's my all-time favorite because she was around for years and years and years and years. She worked um as a cart girl at Bucks Run in the summer. And then she worked every day at the post.
SPEAKER_02:Really?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, she was there like 40 hours a week. I mean, it was yeah, she was it was crazy how much she worked. I guess we were short on bartenders back then, apparently. So well, we didn't need a lot because she she wanted all the hours. It was her only job, right?
SPEAKER_04:She worked, she worked beer carton, and then she worked there. She was with Doc, her and Doc.
SPEAKER_05:When are you gonna do a shift? We need to get you in a tank top, you know, crop top, like you were wanted me. Yeah, I could do a cornrows.
SPEAKER_03:That's not what we wanted for you. We saw that with you. You didn't want it. There's a difference. Let's not get things confused. Thank you, Charlie, for clearing that up. Give me that.
SPEAKER_05:You fucking steal my pretzel, you asshole. But anyway. Oh, she's gonna yell at me.
SPEAKER_04:I'm just kidding. I don't have a favorite bartender. I love you all the same. Here we go.
SPEAKER_05:Oh man.
SPEAKER_04:So what happened?
SPEAKER_05:Emily sent me a Snapchat.
SPEAKER_03:She's at B dubs, yes, she is.
SPEAKER_05:You guys are all canceled, I'm unsubscribed. Go for it!
SPEAKER_03:That's why I'm not bringing out any any new names. So I'm staying staying totally neutral with that one. But yeah, Rona, Rona's just old school and she was there for like, oh hell, I don't even know, five, six years, and I'm talking this is like mid-2015s, all the way to like 2020. You know, so no one knew her for a lot of years.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I think I I came in must have been 2021, because yeah, I famous last words on my better half's part. Um I was going through some shit, man. Uh, you know, mental health and stuff, and just kind of lost. And I'm not from this area, I'm from Grand Rapids originally. And so when we moved up here. When we moved, I moved up here. I was working remote at the time, so you know, but I didn't know anybody, and I was just going through some shit. And Tiffany was the one that uh had said, you know, maybe you should go to the VFW, you know. Well, famous last words on that one because he seemed to that. Suck you in. Suck you in. So she's uh she's regretting that, but um no, it really, in all honesty, she um that recommendation kind of set me on a better track. I mean, gave me a purpose, gave me something to do, you know, and and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03:Well no, you know, I'll say this like and I would travel a lot for conferences, for work, and I always would go to a VFW. I felt safe. I liked the camaraderie, I like the people that are in them.
SPEAKER_04:How long have you been a member of the VFW?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I don't think it says on your card when you join, but probably 2008, 9, 10, somewhere in there.
SPEAKER_04:Damn, okay. I um I VFW wasn't even on my radar until uh once I moved up here. Uh I was living in in the city, and uh I moved up here and Shem was like, Come on, man, me to join the VFW. Like, join the VFW.
SPEAKER_03:Here I am. I don't I don't play cribbage. I'm not 80 years old. That's what everybody's what everybody always thinks.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's what I was thinking, like a bunch of old ass men up there. Yep, but uh even the old guys we got, I love them to death. Terry and Sensio, I'm talking about you.
SPEAKER_03:Terry's younger than all of us, right? I know guy might be like 75, but he runs circles around us. Yeah, he is. He does, he does.
SPEAKER_05:I'm trying to pull up my uh butt.
SPEAKER_03:No, we there's just it's always a lot of a lot of good things, you know. It's just like sitting up here tonight. You know, it's just oh wow, it's just guys guys talking, and this is the normal conversations that happen at the VFW, you know. It's not all sitting around playing Euchre and stuff, although we do do Euchre tournaments, which are usually pretty popular.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we haven't done one since I've been here.
SPEAKER_03:Uh Clippers, we're doing them.
SPEAKER_04:Well, you know what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring a couple of PlayStations up and put some PlayStations over there. We're gonna draw in a younger crowd with these PlayStations.
SPEAKER_05:Weller, you know, younger we that is just a conversation that we have been putting off and putting off and putting off and just kicking the can down the road. But, you know, the future of our post, the future of really just not just the VFW, but the the future of even the Legion. I mean, like, well, you know, what what do you do when the majority of our population is aging out? I mean, the older guys are all Vietnam, they're in their late 70s, early 80s, and this is this is the real problem.
SPEAKER_03:I I went through it with with my parents.
SPEAKER_04:Was your father in? Did your father serve?
SPEAKER_03:No, my grandfather did. And he was a VFW member. What happens, right, goes back to my dad's generation, so he's 75 like like Terry, um, or so. Um but they would get out of work and they'd go down downtown was the moose lodge. Yep. Get out of work, they'd go to the moose lodge, have a couple beers, come home. Right? My mom would she was working at CMU, she'd get out of work, take me to practice, go home, start dinner, go back, pick me up, bring me home, dinner was ready, dad come home, have dinner. Well, anymore, that's not the way it works. Nope. The way it works is you get out of work, you go get dinner, I'm gonna go home and cook dinner. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're gonna run the kids around to practices, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. Well, you know, back in my day you had like soccer, baseball, and you didn't play football until you got to the middle school and it was flag, and then you got to the high school and it was tackle. We didn't have like rocket football programs, we didn't have soccer clubs, yep, we didn't have 45 different baseball traveling teams or softball traveling teams, like the drillers they have here in town. My nephew you played in a normal league, and if you made the all-star team, that was a big deal because it was everybody in the league, and they just pick a couple kids off each team. Right. And you traveled like three weekends and played little tournaments, and that was it.
SPEAKER_05:My nephew's on a travel across team, but it's it's a club sport, it's not really sanctioned by the school or anything, and so there's he there's times that they've got to go out of state to meet another team that's willing to participate, and it's just like you know, yeah, well, we didn't know. I'm glad you're participating in something.
SPEAKER_03:We didn't have all these club hockey teams and all this stuff that the kids have nowadays. So you that we had a lot more as fathers or veterans, doesn't matter if men or women, we had more time to spend. And we're talking about aging out. Well, typically people that are 20 years old to about 40 years old or or even 45 years old are having kids going all through those stages, right? You're having the kid at 20, right? You're having your next one at 23, 24, and your last one at 27, 28. Well, by the time you go 18 years from there, you're 50 years old almost. By the time that last kid's graduating high school and you're done with responsibilities for the most part. So you're not we don't get 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds that show up to the post. They're busy doing kid stuff. Look at Roy tonight with two kids, you know, that are like middle school, high school kids, right? Yeah, I don't even know if you might have one younger. Yeah, one.
SPEAKER_04:I'm I'm pretty sure they're both middle school.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, I was I was gonna say some somewhere in that age, so she's got another six, seven years, right? Until his nights free up, free up. He's not baseball and wrestling and soccer and baseball.
SPEAKER_04:Fucking 50 years old. I got a six-year-old and a three-year-old. God damn it, I'm gonna be 70. Yeah, but damn you old fart.
SPEAKER_03:But no, but you see what I'm saying? So there was just it was a different generation where you know the guys would get out of work and they would go do what they want to do, then they could come home. That's what kept those posts alive. Yeah, it's not that way anymore. A dynamic of the households changed.
SPEAKER_05:My sister-in-law Lindsay said, forget the PlayStation, bring the Nintendos. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Remember, but do you remember when also when we were kids? We would there was no fucking staying in the house watching iPads or playing video games. No, I mean, we would be outside playing with our friends and people in the neighborhood. Um, yep. Absolutely. So now we don't want our kids that really got like, you know, you're gonna go outside and play be gone for hours. Yeah. But I mean, this is a different world we live in. 100%.
SPEAKER_05:But and you know, and then here's the other thing we're a different defin uh different generation of veterans, right? So every generation's got its problem. For for the Vietnam guys, it's you know, it's like Agent Orange and whatnot. So there's a whole thing about advocacy about those guys for our generation post-9-11, maybe even Gulf War, like Desert Storm, Desert Shield, maybe that's uh I would say burn pits. What do you guys think? Probably burn pits as our burn pits and PTSD.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because see, and the and and the crazy, yeah, PTSD for sure. The the crazy thing is when people think of burn pits, they always go back to Vietnam where you're burning, you know, will come out from under the latrine, right? The port of potty, it's not. It was it was the Iraqis, they didn't pick up trash anymore. No, right? Like the sanitation department did not pick up trash. So could you imagine living here and you know, at your house, and no longer do you get trash pickup for seven years, right? What are you gonna do with it? You pile it outside and you light it on fire, right? You know, I mean that's you have to get rid of it somehow because it's just piling up and rotten and smelling and that was but they and that was those are all the things ABR was also burning tons and tons of trash over there, like our trash.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, our trash.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they just have that because yeah, but I mean when people think burn pits, they're thinking, you know, someone's out there dumping diesel in a sewer. That that wasn't burned pits. I mean, that yeah, that was happening. That was that was minuscule compared to the trash.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. So what I saw when I was in Africa, um, I always say the word of the country, djibouti, and everybody laughs because you know, ha ha ha. But that's the country I was in. And uh the burn pit out there, I mean, the issue was it was the base is trash, but it was also literal um like camel carcasses, like like roadkill and just the ones that would just die. They would throw them in the burn pits too. They would throw random chemicals. It's literally, and it's just a pit, diesel, they light it on fire and they throw whatever they need to in there. Yeah, that's literally what it is. Tires, tires, munitions, all that, all that is burned, turned to soot, and it's the benzene, and it's all the chemicals and all that shit.
SPEAKER_04:So they I remember seeing the burn pits. I mean I I can tell you this. My uh my twin brother, uh, he passed away from uh this rare fucking type of cancer, and um, and we attribute it to the burn pits from over there. And um I remember when he when he first got cancer, they came in like how old are you? They were like they were like, How old are you? And he was like, uh 40. They were like this is uh this is a type of cancer we usually see in like a 75-year-old man. Uh and they were like, You ever do steroids? He was like, No. I'm like the scarniest little guy there is. And they did um uh uh genetic test on his cancer, right? They so they and they did like a DNA or whatever the fuck sequence on it, whatever. And uh they could tell that it was environmental, not something that genetic, not genetic, right? So it was invite so it was something in the environment that gave him this cancer. Well, it was a fucking burn pits over there in Iraq. Um we joined uh my mother did it. She joined some type of lawsuit that didn't it never went anywhere, of course.
SPEAKER_05:So and I think, and that's where I was going with this was Sound of Freedom. Sound of freedom. I can't wait for it. I can't wait any longer.
SPEAKER_03:Sound of freedom. Tim wouldn't have waited at all.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. Um so where I was going with that was you know, every generation's got its own thing. So for us, obviously it's the burn pits, and then there's a whole thing of advocacy about it. Um, but what's unique about our generation being post-9-11 that people often forget is the war on terror has uh raged for 20 years. And statistically speaking, 20 years roundabout roughly, is the definition of a generation. Yeah, so there are people who served in the trenches, you know, fluja and all the other the initial pushes into those areas, 2003, whatever, are now having children, and have those children have fought in the same war that they were a part of at the beginning, which is fucking insane to think about, you know. But so anyway, so you have an entire generation dealing with these burn pits, dealing with the PTSD and all the other stuff. You've got, you know, so not only are you dealing with the advocacy piece of your generation and trying to get help for those that need it and deserve it, but you're also trying to maintain our support organizations like the VFW and the Legion and stuff, because these organizations are the ones that you know lobbied Congress to give us the GI Bill so we could get out and go to college. I mean, you know, so when the older generations are passing on, we've only got post uh post-Vietnam, we've got what technically Cold War, but it was mostly peacetime. Um there was Panama. There was yep, there was Panama, there was Haiti, I think. But those those were small in comparison, those were not full-on offensives.
SPEAKER_04:Um nonetheless, they're still vaccinated. Haiti was a humanitarian mission. I don't think a shot was even fired in Haiti. Okay. And that was uh um the earthquake, you know? It was an earthquake in Haiti and sent a bunch of people down there. My unit before right before I got to my unit in in Fort Hood, after I uh was done being a drill sergeant, right before I got there, they had gone to Haiti and spent quite a few months down there. I wish I had been able to go with them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So as far as major offensives, as far as major operations post-Vietnam were pretty limited to just Desert Storm, Desert Shield, and and the war on post-9-11. I mean, and so with that, you know, I did I did some research not too long ago. Total number of veterans uh for both post-9-11 and Gulf War, um, you know, shield and storm, round about 3.2 million. 3.2 million veterans out of a total American population, roughly 360 million. So less than 1%.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You know, and these people are the people that are fighting to get their benefits, that are constantly going through the bureaucracy and all that. And so when when I talk about the future of our post, I think about where we are in Michigan. We are rural, we're in mid-Michigan. There's not much going on around here. Closest VA, major VA, is uh an hour away from here. Um, if you need anything higher echelon medical care, you gotta go down to Ann Arbor, Detroit, Grand Rapids. What about Saginaw? Saginaw's an hour away. Yes, right. But it but they don't have like made like cancer, oncology, you gotta go to Ann Arbor for that. They sent me down to Ann Arbor for an ENT doctor, your nose throat. Because they don't have one of those in Saginaw. So it's like, you know, for the care that they give us, I'm appreciative. I really am, but it's kind of segmented in a way, and it's hard to break through it. So I feel like when we're talking about the future of our post, you know, future of the VFW and the Legion and whatnot in general, there's gonna be a major advocacy need and demand because we're already, they're already struggling with the veterans that are applying now.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I'm actually almost done with mine, so I I applied, I think it was May 2nd, right? Put in my initial claim.
SPEAKER_04:Your VA for VA.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, for my VA disability and conversation. Put that in May 2nd. It was like in September, first week or two of September, got linked up with when my appointments are gonna be. And it's nice. Now what they did was they said, okay, uh, we're gonna do your mental health PTSD evaluation. You gotta meet with the shrink, you know. And they gave me options like in-person or telehealth. So I have to for the telehealth because I could get one like the next Sunday, right? Not have to travel to Ann Arbor or Saginaw or wherever to go see one. Um so I did that, and then tomorrow I've got my physical exam. And then next Friday I've got my hearing exam. So, and then and actually the girl that did my uh mental health PTSD, she was like, I'm also a rater as well. I can't rate you because I'm doing your I'm doing the exam on you, so I can't rate you. But just so you know, I that's what she does. So um, as a psychologist, so that's kind of cool. Yeah, you know, and that was about an hour long. So when we and I hope it worked out for you. Another shout-out. I hope it works out for you.
SPEAKER_05:Jake and Lindsay, Jake and Lindsay Bullis are watching. Awesome. Thanks for joining us, guys. Haven't seen you in a while. Swing by the post pretty soon.
SPEAKER_03:Actually, just ran into them last week. Oh, okay. Oh, well, what's the Tuesday? Yeah, it was last week. They're at the post. So um it was nice to see them again.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so the VA is just barely getting through the veterans that are currently in the process of getting benefits or have gotten benefits and and whatnot, and we're experiencing the things that we're experiencing, and that's what, maybe probably not even half the veterans that are actually eligible.
SPEAKER_03:I bet you it's way less than half. You think so? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So so what are we gonna do? I mean, they are 100% entitled to these benefits, they deserve these benefits. Well, so here's how do we how do we access them? Again, especially remember, think about us. We're rural, right? So if they're if they're disabled, if they're elderly, if they're they're not traveling anywhere, and and we're rural, so not all places have decent internet, so they telehealth's not an option either. So then what?
SPEAKER_03:You know, oh so we you we can't as an organization reach out to every single veteran that might be a need or not a need. It's it's up to them. They decide they need help, they should be reaching out to different organizations to find out what helps available, right? I mean, it's not like you know, I know we don't have phone books anymore, but they they found a doctor, right? To be able to call or somebody to be able to call. So, you know, it's it's sometimes it's word of mouth, but sometimes you have to do your own due diligence to a certain extent to find out what's out there for you. Yeah, but this is unfortunately what well the stigma has done its damage.
SPEAKER_05:The the stigma is that the VA sucks, it's terrible, you know, and to a certain extent, it still does. It's it's a bureaucracy, so there's there's always going to be some amount of red tape to get through. But at the end of the day, comparison from now till before, I think it is.
SPEAKER_03:Well, what ends what ends up happening is veterans get out, and yes, they qualify for all these things, but they might not necessarily need it. Right. So, for instance, you know, they get out and they get a decent paying job or good paying job that comes with good benefits and everything, and they don't want to go through the hassle of going through that stuff, right? Because they don't really need it. Right. So they're just like, yeah, why do I want to deal with all that bullshit when I'm good the way that I am? So they might not, you know, after years and years and years and years, right, they might finally say, Hey, you know, I probably should, just like I did. And I should have done this 20 years ago.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Instead, I'm doing it now because I didn't need it. I didn't want to go through the bullshit. I didn't want to deal with all the issues, the problems, the horror stories. The horror stories you hear, right? So, you know, when I when I hear all these people talk about universal health care and you know all this stuff, I'm like, if you walk into a VA facility and you ask a veteran sitting there, what do they think about their free government-run healthcare? They're probably going to punch you in the face. Right. Because of all the all the madness, you know, and of course you're going to hear the half percent horror stories, you know, people dying waiting for appointments and people not getting the services they need. You know, you're gonna you're gonna hear that anywhere. Yeah. Right? It's like the horror stories of an insurance company. Oh, they denied, denied, denied, and prolonged this, and then grandma died, you know? Right. Because they kept denying this procedure, this test, or whatever. Those oddities or rarities happen all the time. Right. But I'm sure it's the same thing with the the grand scheme of things. I mean, I'm I'm waiting month and a half for an appointment. I'm not saying if I called my regular doctor, am I gonna get in within the next two weeks? I don't know. It might be a month and a half till I can get in and see them. You know, so that's where the walk-in clinic, you know, the ready cares and stuff like that, are your best bet when you're sick sick. Right. You know, rather than going to your primary. So I mean, there's just it's just different, you know. Right. And I think there's people that that really need it and people that just they don't really need it, so they're just not they're gonna skip it.
SPEAKER_05:And that's and that's totally fine. Um, I I I encourage people to make that decision.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um, but at the end of the day, there's also a couple groups of people. The ones that go through TAPS class who were never told they know the VA exists, they know that that's where they're supposed to get their GI bill, right? But outside of that, you know, they might have in my TAPS class, they mentioned VA disability, but they likened it to legitimate disability, like you know, Social Security disability. And it's not the same thing, right? Yeah, you know, it's meant to help you augment, you know, the issues that you have, and there is a version that is like social security disability, but it's it's a completely different thing. And they don't know that that's there to help help them augment their lifestyle when you know things are you know, you're on the struggle bus. But well, and that's what I'm saying is I want you to know about these things and understand the thought process and the mechanisms behind it, and let you decide do you want to apply or just keep it in the back of your head. That's totally fine. I'm just saying the majority either don't know something exists or have an old stigma that may or may not still be partially true, and they're not willing to, you know, come out and try it.
SPEAKER_03:So I know for students at Central Michigan University, there's a there's a veteran resource center in the basement at uh at the Bovee Center. And uh it's a phenomenally large office staffed well. So any veteran that's on campus can go in there and they can deal with the GI Bill, they could deal with getting them with the VSO for, you know, if they want healthcare or anything else. They have everything that you need in inside that office. It's pretty dang impressive. I actually went in there just the other day um and and met uh one of the office guys. He's he's actually a Marine. Um and yeah, good, good, good place. And it's good to see that campuses or or universities have that access to students that might not know. You know, yeah. I mean, when they apply, where you veteran, yeah, they check boxes, right? Yeah, and GI Bill stuff and they send some paperwork in, right? But then there's a place for them to go when they get there for other resources that are available to them. So I think, you know, and that's only obviously if they want to go, right? If they're seeking that out. But but there is there is other places for young veterans or even middle-aged veterans, if the first time going to college and they haven't used those benefits yet, um, to to go uh get other information. Right.
SPEAKER_04:So uh isn't that what you do?
SPEAKER_05:Uh you're you're a veteran um so my nine to five, I am an academic advisor uh for our local community college, and uh my assignment um is all of the military-affiliated students. So whether they're veterans or active or reserve, or if they're using, you know, they're a dependent using a parent's benefits or whatever the case, um, anyone, you know, veteran affiliated, military affiliated, um when they check that box in the application, they automatically get routed to me.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:So um, so I am the dedicated um advisor for them to talk to. How many, how many, how many students do you have? This semester, I think I've got like I don't know, 60. Oh my gosh. So, yeah. Specifically veterans, you know. Right. But uh But what about family members? That that doesn't include family members? That does include, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. So um, but you also got to remember we're a community college. We're not 60's a lot. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But I'm thinking uh um I'm thinking, you know, these state schools like you know, Central and U of M and whatnot, they're good, they're easily gonna have hundreds, if not thousands. What? Really? Yeah. I mean, they're huge. They're huge affiliated.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we have like 14 or 15,000 students on campus right now. You know. So I mean, I I couldn't tell you what I have no idea. I'm just not even know if that for I've heard 14 or 15,000. I don't know if that's accurate either. I mean, I could include global, could include online, could include whatever, you know. I have no idea, but yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And considering, I don't know if they still are now, but central, um, when I was active, all of the base college offices and stuff had a central representative working there. And so, you know, I took a couple courses when I was on active duty and um ultimately didn't really mean much, but because they were basket weaving, yeah. It was a couple we like humanities courses, nothing, nothing too crazy, but um, but yeah, so uh I think advocacy at the post level and our organizations and colleges and you know all these other things, I think is gonna become our primary thing because as these um older generations you know move on and whatnot, it's it's gonna be something that we're gonna need to pick up the gauntlet and and carry forward, which you know, with our low numbers, I mean, like I said, what I say I think it was like 3.2 million between the last two majors. Vietnam by itself was 3.2 million. I think it was actually 3.5. Damn. But then again, they also had the draft.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so you know, but uh nonetheless, because um our generation, we were a little bit more efficient in our killing capacity, you know what I mean? A little bit more efficient. They need need to throw numbers over there. Us, it was about this right here.
SPEAKER_03:It had nothing to do with technology at all. Yeah, absolutely. Nothing. No drones didn't play effect, laser guided bombs didn't play effect, yeah. None of that. Nope, nothing.
SPEAKER_04:You're being sarcastic, right? You know I am, yes, 100%. Yes, that's why that's that's the reason why you don't need as many, yeah, many boots on the ground if you have technology, yeah. Because I'll tell you what, I mean, the the the shit I saw over there, uh not just when I was over there, but um and the technology we had was crazy compared to what I mean Vietnam, it was there was no technology really. I mean, let's be honest, like it was it was straight up.
SPEAKER_05:Radio was the best radio.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah. That was and they had that in World War II as well.
SPEAKER_03:So they still had guys like my grandpa running wires between outposts. Oh, in World War II?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he was running a wire from one to the other so they could talk. Jesus back then.
SPEAKER_04:I remember um guys, the the 82nd, I was with the 82nd when I was in Iraq. Um the first time. And um they would send guys out the wire. Those motherfuckers would be out there for weeks, weeks living in the swamps, just patrolling the base, like going around the base, and and uh you would see them come and and uh they have a couple Iraqis fucking zip tied and bring them in, they're fucking covered in mud head to toe.
SPEAKER_05:And they probably stink.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, yeah, because they were living out the outside the wire, but just waiting, patrolling, and and I mean I'm talking about I'm not talking about walking, right? Them motherfuckers were in the fucking swamps waiting, just sitting there waiting for that and man, it was amazing the shit that that that some of our soldiers do.
SPEAKER_03:I got to uh AJ says happy birthday to the Navy, by the way.
SPEAKER_05:Thanks. It's my 250th birthday, so I'm happy about that. Shut up, AJ. Nobody asked you. Um you know I got I got to meet a couple Navy SEALs when I was active, and those guys are those guys are legit, man.
SPEAKER_03:Speed load drag. Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So officially when I was over in Africa, I was part of uh um combined joint task force, uh 150 and 151. So um I think 150 was counter-piracy and then 151 was counter-terrorism. And so it's actually the the counter-piracy uh version uh was the one that actually rescued Captain Phillips. Oh wow, yeah, a few years before I was out there. So I was part of the same one, and uh got to see some of those guys out there, and you know, um they were nice enough to shake my hand and saw them once and never saw them again, but you know, it was it was an honor being able to shake their hand.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Knowing that those guys are out there patrolling the swamps, doing all the shit, you know, getting all down and dirty and making sure people are safe. I mean with us, it's yeah were you guys let me ask you, were you guys your bases ever rocketed or oh hell yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I I mean I got a um I got um uh combat action badge.
SPEAKER_03:He actually talked about it in one of the podcasts. Oh, did you? Yeah, woke up woke up and they were like, Zark border. Yeah, kind of getting uh shelter or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:Well bunker. Yeah, yeah. That was what that was that was one of the times. I mean, it happened fucking for me anyways, it happened a lot. I'm talking about we were getting fucking mortared all Morderitaville, yep, all the fucking time. All the time.
SPEAKER_05:So so we never got mortared, um, but the base had the shelters because when I was over there, it only had only been maybe like two or three years since Boko Haram was doing his bullshit out there, Muslim extremist and all this, and you know, kidnapping people and murdering them and whatnot. And my daughter's calling so um there was a time where the base was attacked, um, and so because of that, they just left the shelters there. I mean, it would be dumb to take them out, so just left them there. We had a couple drills and whatnot, but uh the base itself was never attacked while I was out there. However, um, when we were on the ships, we were attacked. Um, it wasn't anything crazy. I wasn't in a firefight, but I have been shot at by a couple dumbass pirates who thought it would be a good idea to attack a Navy warship. Um moral of the story, don't do that. Yeah, definitely don't do that. You're definitely gonna be outgunned. Um when you I was I was above uh on the weather deck, so Navy terms, weather deck is anything that you know the sea can touch, right? So you're out there on the on the deck, and I'm you know looking at the sea, and I go down below just as I hear gunshots, and I hear the ting ting ting ting ting on the side of the fucking ship. You know, I've been there. And you know, I don't know, about 30 seconds, minute goes by, next thing I hear the 16 mic micrrrrrrr. Um they shot the uh we again we had the we had the seals with us, they shot the engine out, put them dead in the water, and we took care of that. But yeah, but it was it was an interesting experience.
SPEAKER_04:Those uh those guys are a different breed. They are different. The seals, which I've I've I've come across some seals in in uh when I was in Iraq, uh met a few of those guys, also the Delta Force, like uh Delta Force, they're uh may Marsok. Yep. They're uh those Delta Force guys are now is Delta Okay, so is Green Green Berets are not Delta Force.
SPEAKER_05:No, no, no, but green berets are also kind of their own thing, too.
SPEAKER_04:I don't really understand army speak well so and I I I was in that world for for a little while. I was not Green Beret, I was not Delta Force, but I was there in support of the the special operations, and that's when I learned an appreciation and everything like that for those guys. Um but they um so you got Green Berets, right, which are special forces. Delta Force doesn't exist, right? The government will never confirm nor deny the existence of these guys.
SPEAKER_05:Um they do not exist.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, they they don't exist. They don't exist. Um and they have their own Yes, they do. Yeah. They have uh they have their own compound over there uh at Bragg. No, they don't. Right, yeah, they don't. I should probably not say this, but but I mean this is common knowledge, though. This is not something that you know I'm not something you can find that shit. Obsect tray. Find it on the internet. Listen, and and loose lips think ships, baby. I'll tell you this, that that um there are a lot of things that I even to this day that I won't talk about. Oh, yeah. That that I've seen, I've done, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_05:Well, there's shit that I've seen that I don't talk about.
SPEAKER_04:Well, it's not, it's it's it's not that I I can't. I still respect that that that um uh I guess uh um clearance that you have. Top secret clearance. Your security clearance. Yeah, your security clearance. And uh and um they're like you could never talk about this shit. So I I I don't 20 years later he's blabbing his mouth. Um but I'm not talking about that's the thing. I know.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we don't we don't talk about operations, but yeah, there's I mean, there's just and you gotta think about it, it's it's not just you know, when you're talking about classified information, you're not talking about only operations, right? There's different things that it applies to. So and it could just be the fact that hey, you're having a private conversation, and well, that's that's classified, you know. It's yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So when I was when I was in the Marines, we had we had a back in my day, we had a couple couple different units. We had the one that I was in, which was uh the fleet anti-terrorism security team company, and then we had Force Reconnaissance, so um, or Force Recon. And then they developed the Marsoc, which is now converted to the Raiders, which goes back to one of the first special operations groups way back in Vietnam were the Marine Raiders. Um, but um, yeah, that's that's basically the I think Force Reconnaissance is still around. Um I know I know I know Fast Company's still around.
SPEAKER_05:Now that I think about it, didn't the Navy SEALs technically get started right after or during Vietnam?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know when they got started. Just before I we ran into them. They'll look that up. I'm gonna look it up. When I was in Manama Bahrain uh for Operation Southern Watch, which was Oh, you've been to Bahrain too? Yeah, Bahrain buddies. So um well, you were on the what's it called NSA, Naval Security Activity? Yeah, we only base we only hung out there for a little bit. So when that first opened, we moved into it, but we were in a building called the Manaia Plaza, which we owned had you know uh basically lookout towers all the way around the corners and all the way around the perimeter. It was like an old hotel that the government bought, that's what we lived in. And uh the seals actually came in there for a couple days and stayed in there. And I was down in the gym working out one morning and some of those guys came in, and I tell you what, I see why they seals swim, eat, and lift. Right. Those guys were killing the weights, dude. Really? And they're just like yeah, and they're like, we're like, hey, how's it going? Like, who you with? And they told us. Right. And you're like, oh shit, and then a couple other guys come in, and you're like, Oh yeah, that's legit because it's not even doesn't look like any Navy guy that we know, right?
SPEAKER_04:You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03:And then like they were literally there like a day or two and then gone. We didn't know they came in and we didn't we didn't know they left. Yeah, not just that quick. I mean, they probably just got a couple day break, you know, so they came in and they were done. They're constantly on the move. I mean, it's came in and they were gone, you know. And but they were they were they were cool, they're like, Who are you with? We're like, Oh, we're with Fast Company, like, oh shit, man, that's cool. Fuck. We're out of Damneck, you know, which is in Virginia, that's one of their one of their training facilities, which wasn't far from from Norfolk. So we'd go to Damneck and train in their buildings on their equipment all the time.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So they actually have a building there, the size of a Walmart, and they can change that building over in 24 hours to be any embassy that the United States has in the world. Damn. Down to the couch, down to the paintings on the wall, down to where the doors are, and so these guys, so if an embassy gets taken over, these guys can literally walk through it and train, then deploy and actually walk through it. So unless you know the terrorists move moving couches around, right? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I mean? I mean, that thing is laid out exactly the way the embassy is.
SPEAKER_05:Of course, there's no way that's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03:But it's in it's impressive, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Um, the uh no way what's gonna happen. Embassy getting taken over.
SPEAKER_04:Oh well, yeah, probably not.
SPEAKER_05:Probably not, but anyway.
SPEAKER_04:They'll blow it up though. Well, that too.
SPEAKER_05:That happened uh but look at uh there's a YouTube video about uh the new embassy in London, and I know that's an exception because London, you know, England is you know one of our one of our uh yeah, it's relatively safe, it's one of our um allies. But um just a quick follow-up on my question of when the seals were started. So my assumption, because I remember some of the oldest seals that I you know remember reading about and and hearing about, um, and those guys were trained by early V early Vietnam era veterans, and so I just kind of assumed that you know that's about when they got started. It wasn't off by a lot, according to Chat GPT, thanks to uh the uh Empire Collective sponsored iPhone here. Uh the U.S. Navy SEALs were officially established January 1st, 1962, by President Kennedy. So, with uh Vietnam being about 10 years later, I mean it wasn't it wasn't too far off.
SPEAKER_04:Right after he died, yeah. Yeah, so um I'm sure that's when they had their first major dust up over.
SPEAKER_05:Now, of course, they have predecessors that go into World War II and before that. I mean, hell, we had the turtle, right? The first submersible in the Civil War. I mean, there's predecessors for everything, but yeah, um I did hear about that.
SPEAKER_04:The first the first submersible, like before it was like a submarine was World War or I mean during the Civil War.
SPEAKER_03:They fucking it was basically when he said the turtle, I thought he was talking about his PFT run. That was his nickname, the turtle.
SPEAKER_05:No, uh the turtle was it was basically a giant oak barrel, bourbon oak barrel. I mean, giant because it had to fit a man, right? Right, but it was propelled by pedals, like you know, the propellers. Um and when when you sealed it shut and you went underwater, you only had like half hour, 45 minutes of air, then you had to come up. But the way it was used was there was a giant spike out the front, and it had an explosive at the end, so that they would ram it into the side of a ship and then back out and get away, and then eventually they yanked the fuse and blew the fucking ship up.
SPEAKER_04:So I wonder how um I wonder how damn like how fast how fast could you go peddling a fucking bourbon barrel? How far away could you get? Not very fast at all. First you gotta get there, and you only got 30 minutes of air, right? First you gotta get there, stick the goddamn thing to the to the to the boat, then turn around and then you gotta fucking pedal. Damn. But maybe they would come up maybe 100, 200 yards away from the ship, and then that's get the air going.
SPEAKER_05:Because you gotta remember this is this is before submersible warfare. I mean, you know, people on uh the ships were looking for swimmers, not torpedoes and water explosives and submarines.
SPEAKER_04:So you ever been on a submarine? I have not.
SPEAKER_03:Um I wanted to uh been in one, like an active duty one, right, yeah, but never underway. Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Um I've never been in one uh except for like the USS Silver Sides and Muskegon, you know. Right. I've been in that, but no, I've never been in an active duty one. Totally would have if I had gotten the chance, but never never got the chance to do it.
SPEAKER_04:Um I think maybe there's one person that's ever been on a that actually served on a submarine.
SPEAKER_05:To get your to get your dolphins, to get your uh submarine uh submariner's pin and all that, um it's 100% volunteer. Obviously, because of the psychological aspect of you know being surrounded by tons of water. Yeah. Um for months at a time. For months at a time. No daylight. No daylight, yep. However, they do get the best food. Do they? Oh yeah. Oh hell yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Don't they come up from time to time and get to go out up in the every once in a while.
SPEAKER_05:Sometimes you get to go up to the polar ice cap, and you know, if the ice is thin enough, they'll sub, you know, they'll surface and let people out. And they've I got friends that have played soccer on the polar ice cap.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You know.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, we did a refuel, defuel in Pearl. I think it was the Arizona Arizona, it was um can't think of the name of the sub, but um anyways, uh part part of our patrol was actually walking on the walking on the sub when it was at dry dock. And you went down in it and stuff, checking badges of workers that were in there to make sure they were in the right compartments and stuff like that, and then back out. So that was it. So yeah, you didn't you didn't get access to any secret squirrel, even though we had secret security clearances, right? Right. It was basically just the the general clearance and stuff.
SPEAKER_05:You can have a um whiskey peat clearance and still not have access to a lot of things. Um have you ever heard of whiskey peat before? No. Okay. Um Google it. Chat GPT it. Whiskey Pete clearance? Yep. Okay. It's uh it's a version of the top secret SCI, secure compartmentalized information.
SPEAKER_04:P S S C I.
SPEAKER_05:Yep. And uh Whiskey Pete is the specific clearance you need for presidential White House access.
SPEAKER_03:So what'd you have in Chat GPT it if you're just gonna tell them anyways? Whiskey what? Pete. Just to you know, just to give them something to do.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Whiskey Pete, um security clearance. Chat GPT is smart.
SPEAKER_03:It'll figure it out. It is smarter than the guy typing into it.
SPEAKER_05:That's for damn sure. So me too. I had uh one of my chiefs, one of my E7s, at one point when he was an E4, he got to serve at the White House as part of the White House medical staff. Um that was something that I thought was cool as shit. But it's a nickname. To uh to my knowledge, that's probably the hardest for obvious reasons, the hardest clearance to get. Um, and obviously it's by application only for you know official purposes.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, Jesus Christ. This is talking about whiskey Pete Pete Heggs Hag Seth? How did you type in there, man? What is a whiskey pete? We ought to ask Jake.
SPEAKER_05:That's probably that's probably a good fucking Yeah, Jake. If you're still watching, come to Charlie's shop. You Lindsay, too. Get get your asses over here if you know where Charlie's shop is.
SPEAKER_03:There's only one person watching, it's probably you.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, either way.
SPEAKER_03:Did you mean says two? No says two.
SPEAKER_04:I said, what is a whiskey pee? Come on, you guys can't possibly think that was a good choice. Yeah. For Secretary of War. Why not? The Secretary of War. What was he? He was a fucking major in the in the reserves in uh in a Fox News host.
SPEAKER_05:I was I was waiting for I was waiting for everybody to get all upset about calling it Secretary of War, but at the end of the day, I mean I was the it used to be the war department.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, before it was it is now, it's again. It's war department now.
SPEAKER_05:Well that's what I'm that's what I'm talking about. Everybody's like, he shouldn't be called Secretary of War. Well, that's what it was fucking called before we changed it the first time. So you know, whatever. Doesn't really matter. Um but anyway, how many people we got? Two. My people probably got off who they are.
SPEAKER_04:So it's a lot a lot has happened though since our last podcast at worldly, anyways, you know. Yeah. Because god damn, when was our last podcast? Like June. Was it June? Might have been May. Look on Spotify and say it might have been May. It had to have been May.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:June, we were June, July, August, September. I mean, we're halfway through October, so we're four and a half months. And I think we should. I know we're busy in the summer, but I think we should at least do one or two. Maybe. Yeah, I I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:What is the power to bring nations together? To inspire heroism and sacrifice.
SPEAKER_03:January 2nd.
SPEAKER_04:Let me see. This year. January 2nd. Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_05:No, that's not it.
SPEAKER_03:Just don't go into my photos.
SPEAKER_05:What if I want to?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, well, you're gonna see some something you probably don't want to see. Are you sure? It's February 8th. That's the problem. I see the TikToks you sent me, and you probably do want to see. February 16th, March, May. Wait, oh no, that was 2024. There you go, brother.
SPEAKER_05:How do how have we not done something since January?
SPEAKER_03:Just letting you know, unless you got something. You haven't downloaded.
SPEAKER_04:We did do one that got all fucked up, and we it ran out of the thing ran out of space.
SPEAKER_05:Which maybe I have to upload that off of the old I don't know. I have it in my car, I think. Anyway, damn.
SPEAKER_03:But yeah. It's what's uploaded.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So been that long. We need to get out of here. Pushing it off, pushing it off, pushing it off. People not showing up. Because we tried to do it a couple times and we were the only two that showed up, right? Yeah. So we didn't do it. Hold up. Wait, now me and him showed up one time and you didn't show up.
SPEAKER_04:Oh. And then me and you showed up and he didn't show up. Well, I was on a date. You saw me that night, too. So I was like, when you came by, I was like, I told my wife, like, I'm glad Charlie saw me to know so he knows that I wasn't full of shit.
SPEAKER_03:This once again relies back to the issue on why we struggle for membership at the post because everybody's got other lives to do. Yeah. Your life is not supposed to be geared around the VFW. It's supposed to be in support of the VFW, but not right, right. 100% geared around it. And that that shows because there's nights when we have six of us up here, and there's nights that we have three. Right. You know, so I mean it's is what it is, but we definitely need to get get Jake up here. Right. So for sure. And I wish they were still on. Another Navy guy. Another Navy guy. Yeah. Trust me, I'm I'm well, if Run Royce here, at least I'm not totally outnumbered. I knew you guys are fucking Navy and you fucking Shem's ass up here.
SPEAKER_04:But preacher's uh he's Air Force, so yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That is true.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. So what do you want to talk about? What else? I mean, it's not a good thing. You want to get into your politics. But we have not done, we have not done since January? Yeah. So let's last uploaded. And that was what, January like 16th? Was it the second?
SPEAKER_05:January 2nd was the last one. So secondly it was uploaded. That might actually be a decision.
SPEAKER_04:Listen, since then, listen, Trump was not president. Right? Now we now we have a new president. No, January 2nd, he would have been president-elect. Yeah, he would have been president-elect, but right not officially president yet. Yeah. It was January 20th. That was before January 6th. No. No, that would have been the last time. Two years ago. That would have been four years. Yeah, four years ago, January 6th. But still yeah, he wasn't president last time we did. Is this how your your facts are all gonna be four years off? I've been drinking a little bit. Forgive me. So are you going to the bathroom or something? No, I just want to stand up for a bit. Um that's not a bad idea.
SPEAKER_03:I can only sit so long and then I guess.
SPEAKER_05:My ass is starting to go numb.
SPEAKER_04:I know. How does Joe Rogan do it?
SPEAKER_03:I have no idea. He's got that big ass comfy chair and shit.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yes. We need to uh I think we need to move this over to put a round table or something.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we need to do a round table.
SPEAKER_04:That's a good one. I mean, I'm not trying to bag on your shit here, but this is not very comfortable. I was I felt way more comfortable when we were sitting over there. Do you remember that? When I had the long table out?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I was a shorter table when we were all sitting at the Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, it's just long, yeah. I need a six-foot table. Yeah, there's other ones like that eight-footer long. Is this attached to the wall? It is. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:I'll bring you a six-foot table. I'll donate it. Yeah, we can we pull these chairs up.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:So what's happened since January 17th?
SPEAKER_03:Um country's going in the right direction. Absolutely. Just leave it. Just leave it at that.
SPEAKER_05:According to you, we are fucking. I haven't said anything. Knee deep in the handmaid's tale. What uh let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_04:What is your why don't upset I don't like the hyperbole? Why why do you why do you get so upset when people make that comparison?
SPEAKER_05:Like because that it's it's completely based in fiction. It's a dystopian fictional universe. Have you ever read that book? That has I don't care to read it. I'm just I know enough about it. Right. I chat GPT'd it to get myself a synopsis. Okay, so I'm familiar enough. Right. But it is ridiculous. I just remember, remember. And to prove to you that I kind of know it is a religiously motivated, dystopian, futuristic novel that, you know, there's there's just a lot of bad things that happen.
SPEAKER_04:Man, have you ever watched that show though?
SPEAKER_05:No, I've watched I've watched bits and pieces that, you know, like reels and shit that have popped up on YouTube. Um, but it's it's to be quite honest with you, it's disturbing to me.
SPEAKER_04:I it is disturbing. It is disturbing.
SPEAKER_05:It is disturbing. But in what in what way is it? Quick timeout, quick time out. Yeah, but I also personally, like for PTSD reasons and shit like that, I don't watch anything that's horrific, like legit horror that's legit um, you know, anything like that.
SPEAKER_04:I just I don't it activates my but it's not really horror though.
SPEAKER_05:It's no, it's not horror, but it's psychological thriller.
SPEAKER_04:It is, and that's enough to trigger me. It's more realistic than like fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know what I mean? Right. And it's it is disturbing to watch.
SPEAKER_05:It is I don't I don't like the psychological thrillers. Um I mean there are some horror movies that I like the original It. I watched that as a kid. I used to, you know, but I mean we're talking about but the new version where it's like legit demonic and the you know the CGI is on point and stuff. That that really that will fuck me up for weeks. It really will. You know, um so I don't watch anything like that. I don't I don't watch Saw because it's again psychological thriller. Um I don't know. It's just it's just me.
SPEAKER_04:So I and here's the thing. I you don't know this how I feel when you became a Catholic, right? I I don't know how you what you don't know uh this about me. And and uh but when you became a Catholic and your religious conviction, um I respect the shit out of it. Thank you. Like I when I see you saw you do that, I was like very proud of you. I was like, damn, you know, um I'd love to have a religious discussion with you. Oh, buddy. You know, and I I feel like people who have true religious convictions, um, they sh they they're they're respectable people. They should be respected. And I respected the shit out of you when you made that decision and you did that.
SPEAKER_05:So a lot of people thought I was crazy, so I I appreciate that. Why? I well you know, and before we we'll we'll stick on your topic, but we'll go on this tangent real quick, right? Um, you know, historically speaking, when you're talking about religion, the oldest religion, documentable religion in the world. Sorry. Go ahead. I'll miss it. Almost dying. All right. Download. Yeah. It is the oldest documentable religion in the world.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_05:Um, everybody well, I guess I shouldn't say that. Um Christian, Christian denomination, I should say. Okay. Uh-huh. Because I mean Hinduism and Buddhism and shit, like uh Shintu, I think, is like some of the Eastern religions. Obviously, they go back thousands of years, ancient China, like so. I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about Christianity specifically.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_05:Um, the oldest documentable is the Catholic Church. Um, and that's where most Catholics are going to argue with you when you start talking about apologetics, which is the study of defending your religion. Right. Is everybody's like, well, especially the Protestants, you know, where does the Catholicism get its authority? Well, we're the fucking oldest. So explain that to me. Like, right, if we're the oldest and you're the younger one, where do you get your authority?
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_05:Like everybody is branched off of Catholicism at some point. And I I you're right about that. And the word Catholic is not just the name of a denomination. The word Catholic translated just means universal. So we are the universal church. And if you read the Nicene Creed, we profess faith in one holy Catholic and apostolic faith. Meaning it's passed down from the apostles, and it's universal. You know, and there's different schisms, people, you know, disagree and whatever, and then they you know they branch off and whatever. And but for the most part, until the Protestant Reformation, you had 1,500 years of solid Catholicism, or until I think it's 1047 when the Eastern Orthodoxy branched off. But other than that, you had a solid history for 1,500 years. And then you mean to tell me for the last five, all of a sudden, you guys are right? It all made sense to me. Right. Two plus two does not equal four in this situation. So that honestly, historically, is the reason why I converted.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_05:Because everything else didn't pass the sniff test. You know? Well, and the modern day Bible comes from Catholics, you know. Um it was put together in the third and fourth century. So, you know, and that's where it comes from. But he's talking about like the Apocrypha and like the extra books that we added. We didn't add them. Martin Luther took them away. But there's a difference.
SPEAKER_04:Catholicism came from Italy, right? Am I wrong in that?
SPEAKER_05:I wouldn't say that it came from Italy. Right. Um, it is obviously headquartered in Rome now. Um, and I could get into some of the, you know, and I'd have to do a little bit of research to make sure I'm not talking up my ass. But there's there's an argument to be made if you study the Bible and you go from who was in charge at the time.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, Natalie. Um Natalie, hey! says welcome back. Thank you. Yeah, that's right, because we would have had Ray up here that night, so that had to have been in January. Was it January? No, it was warm out. He was up here up at the cottage.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. It had to have been May.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Well, anyway, who must not have posted it. Anyway, I'll work on that. Um, so yeah, I mean, when you get to when you get to all of that and you break it down, there's there's a lot of symmetry in the Bible, right? Um, and we're gonna get back to your thing here, but I'll just say perfect example. Eve was blamed for being the downfall, right? Her decision caused original sin to occur, right? Um always a woman's fault. And but it was the man's responsibility to protect her.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. He should have checked his bitch, is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_05:Adam should have checked his bitch. So, so but then everybody, you know, one of the main arguments against Catholicism is our veneration of Mary. All right, so the example is that Mary is the new Eve. She was the one that fulfilled by carrying Jesus, she was the one that fulfilled what Eve couldn't do herself. Right. Um, which is why we venerate her. Um, you know, and if the Ark of the Covenant carried the original tablets of the Ten Commandments, Aaron's staff, and some manna from heaven, and it caused the Ark of the Covenant to be so holy that entering into the tabernacle unworthily, God struck you down. How much more holy is Mary's womb for carrying Jesus Christ himself?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_05:So there's there's those arguments to be made. I'll get into that a whole nother time.
SPEAKER_03:But right, but we need to do a whole podcast just about that.
SPEAKER_05:Basically, but you know, and it's really interesting, and I'm I'm a freaking history nerd, and I really went down a whole rabbit hole, and that's well, you know why I made the decision to made.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and uh like I said, um, back to what I was saying, is I have a lot of respect for you in that regard. Um and I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. Thank you. Because it's I'm sure it's good for you. Thank you, thank you. You should we've always known you're a nerd, you didn't have to tell us. You should probably take Charlie with you sometime.
SPEAKER_05:He might burst into flame. I definitely give him some holy water third-degree burn.
SPEAKER_03:I definitely can't definitely can't even pull in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_05:I um just kidding. God loves you, Charlie. He does. He does. That's true. True story is all of us. Anyway, but politics. So let's get back to the I say that to say this.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think your current um prescribed religion uh or your politics, your prescribed politics, don't follow your religion and don't follow the teachings of Jesus. Okay. How so? How so?
SPEAKER_05:Are you gonna jump into immigration?
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But I mean, just uh being a decent fucking human being, period.
SPEAKER_03:Well, you're you're a real piece of shit, man. I'm just no you're saying.
SPEAKER_04:No, that's not what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_03:You're telling him he's not a decent human being.
SPEAKER_04:He's been he's been led astray. He's been run amuck. They've been run amuck. Run amok.
SPEAKER_05:I think you already know where I'm gonna go with this, so I might as well just say it now.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05:There is a fine line between open borders and a reasonable program, which I will admit our immigration program fucking sucks and it needs to be fixed. It really does. It needs to be overhauled, something needs to be done. Um, and I I don't know if Charlie agrees with me on that. Um you know, if people want to come here, fucking let them come here. Um, but they gotta do it legally, and it's the it's the jumping the border that really gets me. It's any other country in the world. You look it up. I mean, your wife, she's from Poland. You ever Google pictures of Poland's border and what it looks like?
SPEAKER_04:Uh I I I know it's heavily fortified. Uh I'll tell you why. But it's a utopia. You can't stop.
SPEAKER_05:The only reason I say that, and I don't mean to drag your wife into this, because I respect her. But right. I'm just saying the countries have an inherent right to monitor access to the country for purposes of security, national security, whatever. And, you know, at the end of the day, if people want to come and immigrate to your country, you have a right to dictate what that looks like. And there's countries down south like New Zealand. Trump wants to do it here, like this golden visa, I think is what he called it, where you spend so much money into the economy and then they'll get basically a free pass, you can come in, whatever. It's not us, it's not just him that's saying that. There are several countries around the world, New Zealand being one of them, a lot of um Southeastern Asian countries do it too, especially Singapore, that do these kinds of programs. So it's it's not an unheard of concept. It's not, you know, I it's the it's the illegal immigration. Because they're saying, and I can't prove it, right? But um, for argument's sake, let's just say the border was completely open. Does that leave us at a disadvantage for our national security?
SPEAKER_04:If the border's completely open, hell yeah, it does. Yeah. And uh I can tell you this. And I think I said that I agree 100% with with Trump when he said build the wall. Yeah, build it. Yeah, because we should we should should secure our borders, right?
SPEAKER_05:Um and I'm not doing I'm not saying that to, you know, for people to die crossing the Rio Grande or anything like that. I don't want anybody to die. They were coming to the United States because they saw the United States for what it was. We truly are the greatest country in the world. We have our problems. God knows we have our problems. But in comparison, we've all been overseas. We know what some countries look like. In comparison, are we better? And the answer is yes. That is why those people come here, and that is why they're willing to risk their life to come in. And yes, again, I I I can still maintain my opinion that they need to come legally, but I can also maintain an argument that we need to make it a little bit fucking easier to get temporary asylum. Because at the end of the day, if they're here, they're here. Let them fucking stay here. You know, I I agree with what Reagan did. That was pre-I was born in '91. So it was I was I was after Reagan, okay? God damn. But yeah, I know, you're welcome. So you're young, right? Yeah, but I agree with what Reagan did. There was this whole amnesty thing, uh-huh. Right? We when you talk about these DACA children, all right. I don't want them deported. They came as a young kid, they assimilated into this country, they were not raised in their old one.
SPEAKER_04:You you don't want them deported, yet this administration that you support is trying to deport them.
SPEAKER_05:Now, I don't know about that because in his previous term, I remember him putting it out before he got banned off of Twitter. I remember him putting out this whole thing about how he wanted he was trying to force Congress. You know, you guys got six months to figure out what to do with this DACA program. And originally it was circumvented around Congress. DACA was a I think it was an Obama thing, wasn't it? I'm pretty sure it was under Obama. Well, I think it was Clinton. Clinton, wasn't it? Clinton. Anyone, it might have been but there was no congressional approval for that program. It was all an executive action and nobody really changed.
SPEAKER_03:It was Obama.
SPEAKER_05:So at the end of the day, I agree with the purposes of the program, right? I don't think a person who by far was raised in this country and you know English was their primary language growing up, or you know, whatever. Point is, is if they grew up here from less than your average, like I can't remember from before when I was four years old, right? So if they were brought here around that period of time and they don't know a thing about their country, it is inhumane to send them back to a country that they have no fucking idea. They don't have the street smarts to go back and be able to survive and be safe. Like, that is completely against what I believe. They need to stay here. Well, but the stereotypical, illegal, middle-aged man who jumps the border just because he can, that's what I have a problem with. Come in legally. That's all I'm saying.
SPEAKER_04:And there was a lot. Yeah, there was a lot. Sorry. But but I think Does it make sense? Yeah, it's a good idea. Did my line get clearly drawn? I my my the the father of my grandchildren is an illegal immigrant. He was brought of your grandchildren. Can't you just say your dad? No, the father of my grandchildren. The father no, my grandchildren. I have grandchildren. I have a daughter who had kids with an illegal immigrant. So it'd be like a son-in-law. Yeah, he's like my son-in-law. Father.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. He's a yeah. He's an illegal.
SPEAKER_05:He's been a dude like generation ago.
SPEAKER_04:But he wasn't he was brought here when he was two by his parents. Yeah. And he's been here ever since. Now, he's had a couple run-ins with the law, everything like that. And I can almost guarantee you that when Ice catches up with his ass, motherfuckers are getting deported. Now, when I say he's had a couple run-ins with the law, it's nothing, no felonies or nothing. You know, he never did any prison time or anything like that. Maybe a couple of misdemeanors here and there, which he did as you know as a teenager or whatever.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yep. And he did his uh his his time or whatever, and whatever he had to do.
SPEAKER_03:And well, I've I've I've talked about this before. So my niece married in a legal and he was brought here as a kid. But uncle, whatever, brought him here from El Salvador. So he got attorney here, deported himself back to El Salvador for six, eight months, whatever it was, to get cleared to come back here legally and be a U.S. citizen. So, you know, there's options out there. They just don't want to do that. You know.
SPEAKER_05:Well, and especially let's I really heavily want to focus on this like DACA hypothetical, okay? I totally agree with the self-deportation method. I don't know legally, I'm not a freaking lawyer, I'm a barracks lawyer, but um I don't know immigration law to that level, right? So I don't know what options are out there. So it's great that he did that, but thinking about it from specifically, like you know, coming here as a kid, again, Street Smarts. If you weren't raised in El Salvador or Mexico or fucking India or wherever the fuck you're from, if you weren't raised there, how are you gonna navigate the country and understand?
SPEAKER_03:Why is that our problem? Okay, well, so there so the other thing I'm gonna say is okay, you were you were brought here as a two-year-old, and you're now 32. So in the last 30 years, what have you done to provide or do good for this the citizens of America? Have you been productive? Have you kept out of trouble? Have you started a family? Have you, you know, where are you at in your lifestyle? And If you're running around in a gang or you're getting arrested all the time, or you're a drunk driver, you're this, you're that. Get the fuck up. Then right. So that's what I'm saying as well, right? I don't have a problem because it wasn't up to the kids, right? That got brought here. Now, if they're if they're still kids and they get they get caught here with their parents, they get deported with the parents. Yeah, they don't just get to stay here. You can't leave right your kids without parents, right? So it's it's it's no different. Well, you can because okay, say I do something, I go to prison for 10 years. Right. And I got a two-year-old. What happens if the kid goes in the system and I go to prison?
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Right? So there's no reason why we can't leave the kid here. Put the kid in the system, ship the parent out, or ship the adult out. Well, I mean or the parent, or the parent or the guardian at the time has a choice. It's one of those damn kids.
SPEAKER_04:The thing is, they are not deporting just criminals. They're deporting everybody they get their hands on. They're here illegally, right? So they're criminals. They came here. That's a that is a uh coming across jumping the border is a civic, civil matter, not a criminal matter. It's a civil matter. Chat GPT. Yep, chat GPT.
SPEAKER_05:You gotta download the app, man. It's a lot better.
SPEAKER_04:Hold on. Yeah, I I got the app right here. You gotta get you gotta get the app, Charlie. We're old. We can't.
SPEAKER_05:We need to get an immigration attorney. That'd be fun to have a conversation with. Um but on just a principal basis, okay? Strictly this is the hypothetical, you know, whatever. Um I am silent.
SPEAKER_03:Federal misdemeanor.
SPEAKER_05:Federal misdemeanor.
SPEAKER_03:First time.
SPEAKER_05:When does it become a felony?
SPEAKER_03:Six months in jail. And or fines for first offense.
SPEAKER_05:So if you're caught for the first offense, it's a misdemeanor. You come back and you do it again, it becomes a felony. Yep.
SPEAKER_04:And however, unlawful press, for example, overstaying a visa, which is what a majority of these illegals do, they overstay a visa. It's a civil immigration violation handled through decreasing courts and not criminal court.
SPEAKER_05:So think about it this way, though. So wait, okay, so ICE is the immigrations and customs enforcement agency.
SPEAKER_03:So we should just stop issuing visas. If if visas are being abused, right? Yeah, then we should stop issuing.
SPEAKER_04:Let me let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Did you guys see what happened in Chicago? The fucking Black Hawk helicopters and and people kicking in the doors and shit of this apartment building. I haven't seen this. So ice came in on Blackhawk helicopters, landed on the roof, uh, also came through the the the you know on the ground, jumping through windows and shit, dragging black and brown people out into the fucking street, naked babies, naked kids, zip tied to each other and dragged them out in the fucking street. So and and some of those people were illegal. A lot of them were black people, right? Um I don't think I don't think, and and I've said this before in here, I look at everything through the lens of a black man in America, okay? That's the lens I see this world through. You're not black, you're racially ambiguous. That's the lens I see see this world through, right? Um and it it is communities of color that are suffering the injustices and the and the uh and being dragged out of their house for no other reason being poor and black in this fucking country. They weren't illegal. They weren't illegal. And you know what, you know what they heard ICE saying about those naked kids that they dragged out of the fucking place at two, three o'clock in the morning? The ice agents said, fuck them kids. So is is is that a policy, is that something that you guys agree with? Absolutely not. So wait a minute, hold up. I listen, when you the policy that I would agree with you elected Donald Trump, when you did that, I knew that was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:I knew it was gonna happen. You didn't know it was gonna happen, but you don't support it. You just said you don't support what that kind of shit. I knew that was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_03:I have no problem raiding an apartment building that has illegals in it. Sure, our our actual Americans are gonna get caught up in it and have to go through a little bit of hassle. But here's my next question is if I'm there as a legal American and I know someone's in my building that's illegal and they're doing these raids, guess what I'm gonna do? They're an apartment 2C, they're in apartment 4B, they're in apartment 18A, right? Don't kick in my door, kick in their doors, right? Community policing, it's no different. You look at the south side of Chicago, Walmart and Target left. Now people are bitching they've got to drive 30 minutes to go to the grocery store. Why? Because they're tired of their their stores getting ransacked, robbed, and everything else constantly. So they're billion-dollar companies leaving. Why? Because people in the community weren't policing themselves and let these stores get ransacked and robbed and everything else. So out, gone. Right. And so all they had to do was pick up the phone and say, Yeah, they're sitting on the corner right now, these are the people that are doing this or doing that. Get them rounded up, but instead, I don't want to see another. Do you know why they don't do so? So can it can I jump in?
SPEAKER_05:All right. So we'll get we'll get to it because I I completely disagree with these raids. Um I have And I don't know about voting for it. I don't know about Chicago.
SPEAKER_03:I have no problem with Reds.
SPEAKER_05:And I do too, because I do know that people are going to get caught up. But here's the thing Chicago is well within the 100-mile border, um, a hundred mile zone of the U.S. Do you know this rule? It's basically the the the law of stop and frisk and all that. 100 miles specific to immigration is extended to 100 miles within the country. Okay. I'm pretty sure Chicago is outside of that. So because of that, I do disagree with it. I think it is inhumane to fucking do that shit at three o'clock in the morning like it's a fucking swap rate.
SPEAKER_03:I'm sure it is. I gotta go all the way through Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_05:These these immigration, you know, actions and stuff. Yeah, I I do disagree because I do believe that some of the rhetoric has probably given these guys a little bit of a little bit an inflated ego. And, you know, and and they're they've been their rules of engagement. Think about rules of engagement when you guys were overseas, right? So everybody hates having their hands tied. And over the last over a decade, because we had Obama, we had a very small thing about Trump, and then we had Biden for eight years. Alright? No, four years. Four years. So we had um Obama for eight, Trump for four. Trump for four. Who was it? Oh, Bush. Okay, sorry. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. Okay. Anyway. The point is, um during the Democratic years, they ICE immediately gets handcuffs put on them. They're not they're not allowed to do shit. And and it's like Are you sure about that? No, because Obama, you know what they called Obama? I believe the mass deporter. The deporter in chief. That's what they called. They he deported a lot.
SPEAKER_03:But it's 230 miles.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so it's well within the border. I disagree with that. A better way of doing it would have been to do a 6:30 a.m. raid, surround the building, and as people leave, you don't fucking raid their.
SPEAKER_03:They're not they're not gonna leave. They're gonna hold up in the apartment for the next two weeks, and you can't justify leaving all these officers out on the street for two weeks.
SPEAKER_04:Then you then you um it you know what it was about? They recorded all of that. And they made a little fucking movie that they put on their social media for the fucking White House of people coming in on black ha hawk helicopters and kicking in the doors. It was a fucking production, is what it was. It was like they're going after Osama bin Laden. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Fucking so, and I I disagree with all of that. I do. You were saying that you disagreed with me on the religious aspect because I was I was violating my you know the religious part of it. Yeah. And here's the reality. The reality is that I do not have to- I don't want you to get offended by that.
SPEAKER_04:No, it's okay.
SPEAKER_05:I do not have to agree with everything that my bishop says or that the pope says. But as a faithful Catholic, I have to abide by the things that they come out and say. Right? So um, if that's immigration, and we're supposed to help those who are seeking asylum and everything else, that's fine. But notice what they are saying. They are saying those immigrants who are coming here to seek safety and asylum, they say nothing about the illegal immigration.
SPEAKER_03:The issue with the seeking legal asylum. International law that is abused. International law says you have to go to the nearest country that your war, right, or what you're being persecuted for, isn't involved in. So if you're in El Salvador, you've got to cross about four countries to get to the United States. Right. Shouldn't. Shouldn't. Right? You should go to the next country. So we should only be accepting people from Mexico or Canada.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_03:They are the only ones that are allowed to come to the United States to seek asylum. Right. Right. Not people from El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, Uganda, or wherever else they're coming from. Right? That's it. So this this whole seeking asylum for their safety thing is a bunch of BS, they just want to come here because we live better.
SPEAKER_05:I think and it also has to do with our our citizenship, which is still tied up in the courts. Um, if you're here and you're born here, you become a natural-born citizen of the United States, and now you have an argument to stay, even if you're illegal. Um they're trying to take away. But here's the thing: look at how other countries do their citizenship and how many are natural-born citizens. Or not other countries exactly. We're America, and the argument for American citizenship has never been natural born. It is, in my opinion, based on different documents and YouTube videos that I've watched, there's this lawyer that goes through and reads, you know, Supreme Court briefings and shit like that, and explains the legalese out of it. Um, he's a pretty interesting guy. But I watched several of his videos specifically about the citizenship topic, and he explains that back in the old days there was this one particular case about the person who was born here was the children of diplomats of another country. So he was born here, right, but his allegiance was to his home country. And when you broke down the US Constitution, it doesn't say anything about natural born citizenship. Right, it talks about where you have your allegiance. And so there was an argument to be made there, and of course I'm GPT that one. Yeah, so I'm I'm paraphrasing significantly because he explained it in a whole different thing. But um let's see, natural born citizenship what I believe uh hold on in the USA versus citizenship based on primary oops, allegiance. Okay, excellent question. Um two very different bases for understanding citizenship, one in birth and one in law. Um citizenship. Um, citizenship acquired automatically at birth by virtue of being born within a country's territory. The legal foundation of the United States is um established by the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, and this is what he was talking about. So listen to this carefully.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_05:All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. So the key point that they're going to be arguing at SCOTUS is and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And the uh the I don't know if it's prosecution or defense in this case, or you know, whoever, but anyway, the people voting or arguing against are saying, well, this diplomat's child was in the United States, subject to our jurisdiction, and so he's a U.S. citizen. Was he subject to our jurisdiction? He was here under a diplomatic visa because of his parents and their official business and their official capacity, and every understanding was that they were going to return to their country when their assignment was completed. So were they actually under our jurisdiction? They were subject to our laws, sure. You know, but they were also diplomats, so they also have diplomatic immunity. So were they subject to our jurisdiction?
SPEAKER_04:But we're not talking about diplomats, are we? That's a good-looking koozie. Lion's koozie. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_05:Um, but that's that's the argument. And I kind of agree with that. I'm not gonna lie to you. I mean, if the Constitution says subject to the jurisdiction thereof, you are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and its laws. If you have diplomatic immunity, you're not subject to our jurisdiction. If if you commit murder in the United States, yeah, we may not be able to prosecute you, but we can declare you um oh, what's that Latin term? Uh hold on. No. Latin term for hold on.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I think that was one of the arguments they were trying to make, is like, okay, if you're here Persona non grata. If you're here illegally and you have a child, that child's not a product of the United States, right? Right. Because you're not a product of the United States. So they were here on an official business.
SPEAKER_05:Same with illegal.
SPEAKER_03:But that's what they're saying about the anchor babies for illegal immigration.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Right? You're not here legally, so that means your child can't be born here legally, even if they are born here, they're still not because you're not a U.S. citizen, just because they're born here. Right? So I think that was one of the arguments they were trying to make.
SPEAKER_05:And, you know, yeah, we go overseas and we have a kid in another country, you know. Um hold on. So Your list of countries that list of countries that have natural earth citizenship. Okay. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There are seven legitimate countries that have citizenship by natural birth. Um it lists the United States as one of them, but we will find out if that happens or if that changes. The other ones are Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Liberia. And it does say some Caribbean Latin American countries like Antigua Barbuda, um, but there's a lot of caveats on that. So many countries do not offer unconditional Josuli, which is you know Latin for anyway, or have significantly limited versions of it. Some countries permit birthright citizenship only if one or both parents have legal residency. The child remains in the country for a certain number of years, the child requests citizenship upon reaching adulthood, or the law is designed to prevent statelessness, which is horrible. Um, there was a movie made about that with Tom Hanks. So, um, in Europe, for instance, most countries use just sanguess citizenship by descent rather than unrestricted birthright. So, like an Irish person here in America, if they can trace their ancestry to an Irish, you know, and I think there's a limit, I think it's like to your great-grandparents or something, you could apply for Irish citizenship.
SPEAKER_04:We used to do that with uh Italian citizenship. We were working.
SPEAKER_05:And I think Italians still do it actually.
SPEAKER_04:Well, they they they took it away. Oh, did they? Uh just recently, because we had a grandfather, uh great-grandfather, probably great-great-grandfather, that was uh uh you have it they would have to be not um they not become an American citizen. So I had one grandparent that didn't become a uh an American citizen, and uh we could have gotten our Italian citizenship based off of that. But they've so done away with that.
SPEAKER_05:So what are your what do you think about this argument? I think if and I I I had mentioned other countries, and you said we're not other countries. But here's the thing there is something to say about how other countries do it, you know, and if the vast majority of the 198 countries, 97 countries in the world, if seven of them supposedly, almost probably maybe gonna be six soon, right? If only six offer that, I think there's something to say about that.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, is every uh hold on a second. Hold on one second, okay? Hold on. If every civilized country or advanced country in in the world provides their citizens' health care, should we not do it? And provide our citizens health care?
SPEAKER_05:Every development's health care.
SPEAKER_04:No, no, no, no, every single one. We do offer every single one. No, we don't.
SPEAKER_05:It's not under a univ universal health care system. Uh-huh. You're gonna argue this with a person who's got a bachelor's degree in health administration.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, the argument, what you're trying to say is universal health care, correct?
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_05:But we have legal, we have law, right? Mtella is one of them, the emergency medical, uh, emergency medical treatment and labor act, I believe is how it's spell out. But yeah, in emergency situations, you're not allowed to be declined, you know. So um, and most places write it off anyway, if you show up anyway.
SPEAKER_04:Real quick, I want to uh Michael.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Uh so Michael, yeah, we're we do a podcast. Uh and um and you're on our podcast right now. It's veteran, it's veteran focused, but we uh get into uh I so my question is do you want to do you wanna add to uh this a little bit? Do you have the time? Do you have the time? But hold on a second. I I gotta introduce you first.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. So uh Michael, uh it's Michael LeBune, uh, very good friend of mine. He was uh one of my soldiers. I initially met him when I was a drill sergeant uh in Fort Jackson. I'm sorry, Michael. And we both ended up at Fort Hood together. I'm sorry about that, too. We both deployed Iraq together. Um and then um Michael went on to work at the um Michael actually got a purple heart uh when we were overseas together. Um then um he went on to work uh at the White House Communications Agency for many, many years. Oh shit. Um under Barack Obama, and then you got out, you got your uh you went to what what college did you go to initially?
SPEAKER_01:Uh undergrad, I went to the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, and then where I got a bachelor's of science in psychology with a focus on neuroscience and a bachelor's of arts in philosophy. And then I went to Vanderbilt, or where I got a Masters of Divinity.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so you're an overachiever.
SPEAKER_01:Now I'm at the now I'm at uh Minnesota Carlson where I'm getting my master's of business.
SPEAKER_04:So um yeah, he's an overachiever, but I I you know uh I'm very proud of Michael. Um now that's those are legit credentials. So uh he um he his father actually uh performed my my first uh wedding. Uh his father was uh a pastor, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, still is.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, still is. Uh and uh Michael is also you're you're uh you were a um help me out.
SPEAKER_01:I'm a clinical chaplain.
SPEAKER_04:Yep, chaplain.
SPEAKER_01:Um I'm ordained to the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, and now I'm in um leadership, hospital leadership.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, okay. So legit. This guy's legit. So we're we're we're we're getting into politics a little bit here, and and um Brent, I have Brent here and also Charlie, right? Uh both veterans. We're both all VFW members, and uh we do this podcast. Um it's usually it's veteran focused. Um, but then we we're uh now we are getting in, and I've been telling Brent, who's a devout Catholic, um, how I was proud of him for becoming a Catholic and and uh uh but I don't think that his politics line up with his faith. Right? Is that fair to say?
SPEAKER_03:My my in the discussion I've heard, that's that's fair to say. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's a pretty strange thing for you to say unless you're Catholic, though, Trey.
SPEAKER_04:Uh okay. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:You're you're an out-group member telling an in-group member that he's not in-group enough.
SPEAKER_05:We're not Catholic. That's the masters of divinity talking right there.
SPEAKER_01:So um my point Also, the Catholic Church is like divided 50-50. Like 49% are on the left and 51% are on the right, and then every four years it swabs.
SPEAKER_04:That's true. Brilliant. So um, I just wanted to get your take. Being a uh uh I'd I'd lean on Michael. Michael's like one of my best friends in the world. Um, how much does he pay you?
SPEAKER_01:I'm still paying off my tab, don't worry.
SPEAKER_04:And uh, but uh spiritual matters. I I uh I defer to Michael for those so because I am not as spiritual as he is, he grew up spiritual, right? Right, he's still a spiritual man, okay. Chaplain indeed. So what is uh I heard so I I this is my take is that he likes to interrupt, Michael.
SPEAKER_05:Sorry.
SPEAKER_04:I he knows. He's known me years. Um that I feel like the current administration uh is not following the teachings of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my god. Yeah, obviously. That's um they preach it unquestionably true. They preach it, but they don't even preach it. So um there's well they pretend to preach it, I should say. A couple things here. I'll I'll just say this. It's just like how you know the nationalist uh national socialism was like the the Nazi Party, right? The National Socialism of Germany or whatever. Like when you see what Nazis did, what like it was an acronym, nationalist socialist something something. Um but the Nazis weren't socialists, like the only thing socialist about them was was their name. And the same is true for the far right now in the in the United States that like they are Christian nationalists, that is the name of it, but there's nothing Christian about it. In the same way, in the same way that a tit mouse is a bird. You know, it's neither a tit nor a mouse, but it does have those words in it, right? So um the Christian nationalism is actually the worship of uh it's actually the worship of the state. It it has nothing to do with Jesus. And if you watch their like, even if you go to these Christo-fascist Christian nationalist churches, if you go to their websites, if you listen to their sermons, I do all of that because I'm a button for punishment. But um they they almost never read the words of Jesus. In fact, they they almost never quote the gospels. Uh they they love to read the teachings of Paul, but they will, they they they know very little, if anything at all, about the teachings of Jesus. Um that but but here's the thing it's that's too high a bar to ask for any government because um if you wanted the like the the the Democrats don't do that either. So they're they do a lot more like taking care of the poor. Uh you know, I mean they do better with that. They they do want health care for all, which the argument I heard about healthcare for all is very disingenuous to say that the emergency room covers that. We're no it doesn't cover that, but it's but it's also disingenuous to say every other free nation has it. So our healthcare system is very similar to Germany's, where basically our health care is tied to our bosses. And this is what to me, I think it's the craziest thing in the world that we put the power of life and death in the hands of our bosses. Because if they fire you, you lose your health care, which is nuts.
SPEAKER_05:Unless you pay for Cobra, which is fucking thousands of dollars a month.
SPEAKER_01:For that, right. So um, but but if you were if you had if you designed a country around the teachings of Jesus, you'd have to treat the immigrant the same as you treat the citizen. You have no such thing as a military, and you would have absolutely no no border enforcement. There would be no reason to do that. You would you would have to give to the least among you uh the most power and the most resources, and uh all the rich people would be exiled. There's not a Jesus didn't even want that. Jesus didn't want to be a governmental figure. Uh he he had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. Uh in fact, that's a large lot of people think that's what Judas was after. So I would say Christian nationalism is very close to the beliefs and the actions of Judas who sacrificed the person Jesus for the political figure that they want. And that's precisely what we're seeing Christianity do uh on the on the right, uh certain factions of it, especially, especially anyone calling themselves a Christian nationalist. And it's certainly uh what's happening that's benefiting the Republicans in this country and has been since the advent of the Tea Party.
SPEAKER_05:Can you go back to what you had said? Um I was trying to chat GPT, because I'll be honest, I'm a glutton for punishment with Chat GPT. So uh, but I liked what you said. You said if you designed a country around the teachings of Jesus, what did you say after that? Because I I missed the the final part.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not sure exactly what my wording was, but I wouldn't I I there certainly has never been um any state government that's designed itself around the teachings of Jesus. The two are antithetical.
SPEAKER_04:You would give you would give the least among us the most power. Yeah, you would exile the rich. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_01:Whatever you do to the least among you, you do to me. And um the but overall, Jesus spends a lot of the a lot of time throughout his life uh challenging the the authority of the state, challenging whether or not the state has authority. Uh he does this in pretty subversive ways, and ultimately it's what gets him killed. So Rome didn't kill him for no reason. Um they killed him because he was taking on the titles that were supposed to be for Caesar alone. And then when when asked like a question like uh, you know, should we pay our taxes? He tosses the coin to him, says, give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, because Caesar's face is on this coin. And he says, and given to God what is gods? Well, to first century Jews, this would have been a very clear statement that if you give unto God what is gods, then there's nothing left for Caesar. You see, so every single part about this amazing book. It's called The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Elul, who's a French thinker. I think he died in like early aughts, maybe late 90s. Um the subversion of Christianity, where he talks about how Christianity exists really in the same way. If you think about first century Jews in Rome, they were subversive. Uh, except for there was a faction of them who were siphoning power from the state. And uh, those are the ones that Jesus is talking to when he talks to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Not all Pharisees were like that. He's talking specifically to them. Kind of like when I talk shit about the Christians, I'm really just talking about the Christians who are trying to siphon power from you know far right-wing fascism.
SPEAKER_05:So um I'm not gonna get into the entire response, but um I have a GPT that is specifically designed um by the rules that I've given it to follow completely without ex uh without um uh my express approval to follow the catechism of the Catholic Church, all of the historical teachings of all the various councils, such as the Council of Nicaea, um, and the writings that came from them, um, you know, the the historical saints and what they've written, you know, X, Y, and Z, blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. Um that, and I have two versions of that. One is like my serious literal questions, and then literally one that's called hyperbole, religious hyperbole, because I wanted one that was serious that I could refer back to, and I wanted one that I could just mess around with. Because being a former Protestant, you know, there's a lot of things I'm working through. So um, I'm not gonna go through the entire response to what I had asked it about what you had said, if you, you know, built a country around the teachings of Jesus and so on and so forth. But one section is labeled what a nation shaped by Jesus would look like. And it says, if you really tried to design such a society faithfully, it would look like less like a Marxist reversal of wealth, and more like a few things. Laws built on the dignity of every human person, and it quotes the catechism, paragraph 1930, protection of the vulnerable, and it quotes paragraphs 2443 through 2449, preferential option for the poor, social structures that ensure no one is excluded, a stewardship of your wealth, so those who have share, and those who lack received, with no forced exile, and then authority exercised as service, not dominance. Um, and it refers to uh John chapter 13 verses 14 and 15. So um it tells me that that's the Catholic version of social order drawn from Jesus' teaching, again, pursuant to the rules that I've given that chat. So would you agree or disagree with that?
SPEAKER_01:So I disagree only that only in the sense that um I mean I don't I don't disagree with the thought experiment that that's what it might look like. Um I I I firmly disagree that Jesus would ever do such a thing.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um because just simply because states are rooted in violent power. Every law is rooted in violent power. My son is blowing up, I have to go. But um, but but I certainly sign me up. I mean, if you find a way to have a country run that way, then absolutely sign me up. I think that that it's taking directly from the Sermon on the Mount. Um anybody interested in in knowing what Jesus was about, the Sermon on the Mount serves as a sort of greatest hits album of like Jesus' most famous sermons. So um, yeah, and it it spells out a lot of that. And you you look at that, if you read that, and then you try to map it on to any of our national politics, it's embarrassing. But it's also it's also not what governments do. Governments don't follow such a thing. It's like asking a corporation to care about poor people. Corporations are designed to maximize wealth for their shareholders, right? To maximize shareholder value. So I I just think um I think that when we're trying to follow Jesus, uh, then we're automatically trying to live peaceful lives and the governments are inherently violent. Um, if you don't believe me, just check out what happens to Jesus at the end of the story. So um I think uh, but yeah, I think I think your chat's right about if we if we take the values of Jesus and then we try to think about what they would look like in national policy. In general, I think what we can best we can hope for. Is harm reduction. And um, for me, that looks like not having masked federal agents stealing people and shoving them in vans. So um, hey, Trey, I love you.
SPEAKER_04:Love you, buddy. I will call you later.
SPEAKER_01:Listen, when you send me a text like are you busy, it makes me think something is really, really wrong, which is why I thought something is wrong.
SPEAKER_04:There is something wrong. We'll talk about that later, though.
SPEAKER_01:All right, talk to you later, brother.
SPEAKER_05:All right, love you.
SPEAKER_04:So that was him saying, Don't say that again. Uh that say, yeah, don't say are you busy. I don't know. Me and him have a uh a love-hate relationship. No, not a love.
SPEAKER_05:We have a love-love relationship, really, to be honest with you. Uh so I liked what he had to say. Um, but and I think we turned our political discussion into the religious one that I said we were gonna have later. Right.
SPEAKER_04:Um but I mean uh see my point in Let's go back to the politics. My point in talking about that is is that this this policy that this administration is is enacting is it's cruel. It is. It's not it's not what you're gonna take my seat. Yeah, took the seat, yeah. I don't think it's it's what and and I I'm coming at you from a religious perspective because in my mind, in my mind, you're commented. I don't know if he's watching. You're a religious man. So uh so uh that's why I got into that. But here's what I think, and you guys might not believe it. I I know you guys don't believe it, you don't see it. Um I don't think that this whole plan is about following the law and you know doing what's right and blah blah blah. I think it's about keeping keeping no keeping America white. I say, Charlie, you're laughing, but but let's look at who they're going after. Okay? There are huge, huge amounts of Polish uh illegal immigrants in Chicago. I haven't heard one fucking story about them going into a Polish neighborhood and snatching people out of their fucking beds in the middle of the world.
SPEAKER_03:You know why you won't? Because it's not polarizing.
SPEAKER_04:It's not polarizing. That's the reason why you won't. Just like how many. Do you do you know who I'm married to, right? I do. Do you or do you not think that she's not plugged into that community over there? She is. And they are not going in those communities. Why is that? They're gonna break in first Mexican Americans. The Mexicans that are here, the Mexicans that are here, by and large, are not breaking are not breaking the law. Are not breaking the law.
SPEAKER_05:No, I agree.
SPEAKER_04:No, I you know not more than not more than those Polish people. You know what the Polish people do? They work in construction and other shit that we don't want to do, that Americans don't want to do. Mexicans too.
SPEAKER_05:Mexicans too, yeah. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. We could go down all of these nuances and all of this other stuff.
SPEAKER_04:Have you heard Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's memorial?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_04:Have you listened to it? Please, I beg you, I beg you to listen to that speech. How did you feel about uh and and and tell me we'll get to that? And tell me if that's not a fucking Nazi rallying cry when he's speaking at that, when he's speaking at he's talking about we build things, you build nothing. Who's we? Who's the we build things, you build? Who's the we in this we build things and you build nothing? I I can tell you because they're there are your interpretation of what he says. Uh not just my interpretation, but ex-white supremacists. Said he is that is a uh uh a Nazi speech. If I ever fucking heard one, they always talk about how the white race builds things and other races don't build shit. That that is I I beg you.
SPEAKER_05:I'm not a white supremacist, so I don't know what their ideality is.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not either. But I beg you to listen to that speech and not think to yourself, are you a colored supremacist? No, I'm a I'm a person supremacist. Oh people. So why did you take that away from Charlie? Charlie needs nobody wants to hear the Marine talk. Charlie needs one there.
SPEAKER_05:No, um, we can go down all these nuances, and and here's the thing this is the part about politics that gets to me is the the high the unsubstantiated hyperbole and these what if nuances, um, this, that, and another thing. Because you can talk about those until you're blue in the face, until something actually happens in the Polish community, according to your example. And it's and it's just again, until something happens, it's hyperbole and conjecture. Um, and this is how most people argue politics. It's by emotion and not by data, and not by you know, you know, anyway, I could I could go on that forever. But specifically talking about your argument of how politics don't align with my faith, I talked to my chat GPT.
SPEAKER_02:I talked to my chat GPT.
SPEAKER_05:I because look, uh the reality is, and you know this because of things that you know, motions and and shit that I've put down at the floor at the post, I a lot of the time cannot articulate myself very well. Um, and so Charlie is pretty good at words. Um, so anyway, but this is giving me the uh the substance that I really can't come up with myself. Um, and I asked it, do my politics have to align with my Catholic faith explicitly? And the answer is um the principle is that faith must inform conscience. So, in the formation of conscience, the word of God is the light for our path. That is the catechism, uh, paragraph 1785. Okay, you are morally obligated to let the gospel shape how you view every issue: life, justice, peace, the poor, the environment, immigration, economics. Faith is not a separate private zone, it's the lens through which a Catholic sees everything. So, which is why I called out the um inhumanity of sending a person who was raised in the United States and doesn't remember their home country being deported. I called that out. I called out the Black Hawk helicopter invasion of some random fucking building in Chicago, both on a legal and a moral stance, because I said the hundred-mile exclusionary zone, and I also mentioned that I disagreed with the 3 a.m. fucking I don't like those even for a regular American criminal. How many cops have died doing these no-knock in the middle of the morning fucking it's not safe, and they do it under the premise because oh, the person's probably sleeping, this, that, and another thing. We can easily overpower them. I disagree with that because that's a power move. The other thing is that person is legit gonna wake up in a stupor thinking that some fucking robber, and this is why it has happened, why cops have died, they're gonna come in thinking that their house is being invaded. They grab their gun and they start shooting. Yep. Alright, so I disagree with both of those points. Alright, so moving on. But no political party fully represents Catholic teaching, not a single one, fully, which is why he said, Michael said, we're like 49% left, and you know, and we switch. That's why we don't fully do that. And we're supposed to allow our conscience, our faith to inform our conscience, right? Do all of us no, right? Right. We're human, but you don't, but we should, okay. Next thing the church's pastors do not intervene in political matters in favor of one or the other political option. That's catechism, paragraph 2245. What they will do is they will stand at the ambo and they will call out things that are antithetical to the church's teaching. Right. The Chicago and whatnot. All of it. Oh well, he was the one that told the American bishops to say something about it. So you know he's against it. Right. Okay. Um, I'll get to that too. The church does not endorse parties, she forms consciousness, consciences. Um, notice how we refer to the church as a she. Just saying. Um every party platform will contain both morally good and morally flawed positions, but Catholics can and often must disagree on prudential applications on how to achieve shared moral goals. So you may be politically independent, conservative, or progressive as long as your moral hierarchy of values follows the Catholic truth and not party loyalty. Do I believe in abortion? Absolutely fucking not. Because I believe that life begins at conception, and if left to mature, by far, it will result in a healthy baby. I don't believe in abortion as a uh birth control method.
SPEAKER_04:Birth control method. I do believe in birth control as uh a medical uh right.
SPEAKER_05:Well, coming from a medic, right? Right, uh an example of like an ectopic pregnancy, right, where it begins forming in a fallopian tube, that's a life-threatening condition. That's that's a completely different thing. Okay, yeah. Um, but yeah, that we're not gonna get to the whole rule versus wade, that's a different conversation. Uh Charlie's bored of our religious talk over here.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just soaking it in.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Stuff I have no idea about.
SPEAKER_05:So But here's here's the other thing. Some issues are non-negotiable moral absolutes in the church. Okay, there are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong. That's the catechism, paragraph 1756. Examples include direct abortion and euthanasia, including assistance in death and dying. Um you know, uh physician assisted suicide, whatever the fuck you want to call it. Um, and that is from Evangelum Vitae, um, 62 and 73. So popes and their scholarly applications, they usually write stuff. And it's it's titled a Latin title, and you know, whatever they all do it. Anyway, that comes from one of those. Intentional targeting of civilians in war. Are you ready for the next one? Yes, I am. Racism. And then redefining marriage contrary to natural law.
SPEAKER_04:So racism, like that's uh like a non-starter, like yep, no racism.
SPEAKER_05:And in if I if I ran out into insert city name inner city, and I started yelling the n-word, right, that is a moral sin, and according to the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_04:So how can you how can you justify your support for this fucking administration? They are clear, clear fucking racists. Clear. I disagree.
SPEAKER_05:Uh I know you do. They're okay. I can just how you can agree with an overall, right, and disagree with certain pieces of the pie is the same way that I agree and voted for Trump. Right. Because when I looked at Kamala, I saw an unelected bureaucrat. Right?
SPEAKER_04:Well, uh no, uh, hold on. You know where I'm going with that. No, you're talking about because she was not uh and I agree with this. I agree with this. She was not elected by the yeah, she was not primary. He was, yeah. Yep. And I agree with that. Like I when when they when they fucking announces announced her uh like uh on the national stage, like here's your candidate for Democrat. I was like, what the fuck? Mm-hmm. I would I thought for sure because they were having the Democratic National Convention like a a week or two later once Joe Biden dropped out. And I thought for sure that they were gonna have a fucking vote there, like who do we want versus you know, who do we want?
SPEAKER_05:Now, Fox News would tell you that the reason why they did it was because legally, according to election law, they couldn't have access to the funds that they had raised unless at least one of their names was on, you know. Who gives a shit? You give the money back to whoever it is. That's the point. That's what they're trying to say. They're saying that they put her name on it as an unprimaried candidate so that they could have access to the funds and didn't have to give it back. That was their argument. Yeah, well, and I don't know if it's true or not, but that's beside the point.
SPEAKER_04:Suppose suppose I did hear that argument. I did hear that. And I think I agree with it. If it's true, probably chat GPT, it we won't, but I I think that is true. Still, and then they should have had a fucking primary, and it would have been uh President Gavin Newsom that we uh he was he's not gonna say, he's gonna be next.
SPEAKER_05:Everybody's saying that uh what's his face? Uh Pete Buttigieg is gonna be the next state governor, Michigan state governor, because he moved to Traver City. Did he? Yeah. I completely disagree with that. He's not fucking from Michigan, anyway. That's beside the point. Final uh bullet point in that section was redefining marriage contrary to natural law. I'm not saying that I hate homosexuals or anybody like that, but here's the thing the reality is this we all exist because of heterosexual relationships, that is natural law. Okay, that's what the church believes. Right, it believes that any uh relationship outside of that is contrary to the national law, national, you know, natural law.
SPEAKER_03:Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_05:Not Adam and Steve equals you and me.
SPEAKER_03:Adam and Steve equals nobody. Right. Right? That's what the church is saying, right?
SPEAKER_05:Yep, and it's just yeah. So and it says these are intrinsically evil acts, no political or economic calculus can justify supporting them directly. Other issues that require prudential judgment, you're gonna like this. Other issues that require prudential judgment. Questions like how to structure immigration policy, criminal justice reform, environmental regulation, and taxation levels or welfare design. And then how you discern your political choices. When facing elections or policy debates, the church suggests a three-step discernment. You inform your conscience by reading scripture, the catechism, and the compendium of the social doctrine of the church. You weigh intrinsic evils first by protecting life, marriage, and religious liberty. And then you assess prudential issues, policies that effectively serve the poor, the vulnerable, and the pursuit of peace. A well-informed quote, a well-inf a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program that contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. End quote. That's what they said. So in plain language, your politics don't have to match a party, they have to match Jesus. In one side's, if one side's stance on life violates moral law, and another's stance on the poor neglects charity, your task is to witness a Catholic both and defend life and dignity, faith and justice, order and mercy. So it doesn't say I'm not allowed to.
SPEAKER_04:I just want to hold it.
SPEAKER_05:That's what she said.
SPEAKER_04:Not in your case. So in in yeah, that's a badass. I'm just saying, I'm I'm waiting for Apple to come out with this right here. Now, uh, side note, okay, sidebar. What are you on? I don't know. Chat GPS. Uh sidebar. Oh, here it is. I am uh really enjoying this conversation. Just so you know.
SPEAKER_03:I know Charlie's like, oh god, just kill me. I'm well just listening, man. But um You guys are talking about stuff I don't I don't know anything about, so I'm learning.
SPEAKER_05:So so it the church doesn't say that I'm not allowed to check a box. Well, in my case, filling a circle with a Sharpie. But it says that I have to make a conscious decision. When I did that, and I went through that process, doesn't mean that I have to agree with the man the entire time. In his first term, I hated the fact that he was fucking on Twitter every five seconds. It aggravated the shit out of me. I know, but it is that a moral failing, though. Like yes, because he ran his frickin' mouth on shit that didn't need, you know. Anyway, we're not gonna get there. But but he really like he really does irritate the shit out of me in a lot of ways. Working in higher education, they and I noticed I'm wearing my work shirt, and I probably shouldn't be, but um, but seriously, was this guy? I wasn't I was I was thinking about that. Like yeah, but too late, man. Too late now, but yeah, you're right. Anyway, the point is is um take it, take the other one off, didn't you? Yeah, no, um no, um what was I gonna say? Oh, um in higher education, he canceled a whole bunch of shit. Doge did, you know, and there is a program called Trio, and it's designed for students who are they have to qualify in one of three categories. They have to be low income, they have to have disability, or they have to be a first-time, like first-generation college student. Um, if they qualify under one or more of those, they can apply for TRIO and and have special access to a success coach and you know various other things. It's a pretty good program, but it's grant funded. And it wasn't until like a month and a half ago that they found out that their grant was renewed because everything at the Department of Education has just been freaking put to a halt. Completely disagree with that 100%.
SPEAKER_04:Man, all these things you keep saying you disagree with. What do you think? Do you disagree? What do you agree with?
SPEAKER_05:What do I agree with? Yeah, what do you agree with? On a general level, again, we can go to the nuances until we're fucking blue in the face, man. Yeah, but on a very general basic level, I do believe that actions that secure our borders are correct. Securing our borders, I agree with. I believe, and and again, when we go into the nuance of those that are already here, I believe that we should triage. Triage. The ones that are committing felonies are up first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, if because fuck yeah, he was saying who am I gonna call? I'm gonna say, you know, apartment 13A or whatever. You want to know who I'm gonna call? If my neighbor, if, and this is a big if, if I know that they are illegal, but they are law-abiding citizens, I ain't gonna say shit. I'm really not. He's snitching on everybody. No. But if my next door neighbor is an El Salvadorian MS-13 gang member who I know pedals drugs outside, I'm fucking calling that guy because I don't want him to be my neighbor anymore. Fuck yeah. I would too. I would too. I would too. I am a human being and I can make rational decisions, even though I agree on a general level and not on every single topic.
SPEAKER_04:They said prior to being elected, Donald Trump said we're getting rid of the gang members. He didn't say we're dead. He got rid of a lot of them. He didn't say we're getting rid of the fucking Juan down at the Home Depot trying to fucking try to just come put a fucking tile floor in. Yeah. You know, and that's what he's that's what they're doing now.
SPEAKER_05:It's cruel. But here's but here's the thing, and this is actually a point I wanted to make earlier, and I forgot about it. Um if they are triaging these people, and in the course of doing that triage, they happen to find Juan, they are immigrations and customs enforcement. They are bound by the rules of engagement.
SPEAKER_04:There's no LS13 fucking gang members hanging out at the Home Depot.
SPEAKER_05:They might be in San Diego. They're not. No, anyway, but seriously, the point though, is if they're on a legitimate mission, they're they're triaging, you know, these gang members, these drug dealers, these people that they know are on the radar because they've been held in jail before, whatever. If they're on the radar, but they in the process of getting that person just so happen to find Juan, they're bound. Their job is to enforce immigration, okay. Even though he wasn't their target.
SPEAKER_04:I I agree with that. I I well, not I don't agree with that, but I I get that. I get it, I and I understand that. Um, but Juan, I mean, they were getting they were getting like we're picking on Juan. Poor Juan. Poor Juan. They they were getting um the MS 13 gang members in the beginning. And honestly, then they fucking ran out of they ran out of the game. I think they're all gone. I think they're MS 13. I think they're I don't think they're gone, but they need uh listen, they they uh not they ain't gone, they're hiding because they know.
SPEAKER_05:Oh yeah, but here's but that I think that's the point because it was all about rule and order. No, it's not no well, yes, the point is immigration, the point is deporting of the point, whatever. But the overarching argument of what he was trying to say was rule and order. If they are terrorizing your neighborhood by selling drugs and you know, fucking violence and this, that, and another thing, whatever, we get rid of triage those people first. By definition, you are going to get you know a safer neighborhood.
SPEAKER_04:Not overnight, but because you still got the regular local and here's another thing that we haven't even really touched on is him sending the National Guard and the and the military into cities.
SPEAKER_05:But they haven't done anything.
SPEAKER_03:When you have they have only protected federal property, like mayors or governors literally saying we're not gonna assist, we're not gonna help, we're gonna try to obstruct what you're doing, that's a problem.
SPEAKER_04:But you don't see you don't see sending the military into American cities. The National Guard. National Guard. Okay, that's what they're here to do. Okay, uh not unless unless the governor of that state uh requests it. They're federal. They have uh because Donald Trump federalized them. Which he has the authority to do.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Because the governor of the state will not have law and order, they have he has every right to do it. You're under the umbrella of the United States. Guess what? If Illinois doesn't like it, succeed.
SPEAKER_05:Become the country of Illinois, which is never gonna happen. Do it if Texas can't do it, Illinois ain't gonna do it. That's what I'm trying to say. Because Texas will start a fucking war.
SPEAKER_04:Here's what they need to do, right? Instead of spending the money to send in the National Guard and all of that bullshit, send that money uh to the local police and let them police their own citizens. And here's another thing they could do is invest more money into educating these poor communities. And this is where the problem lies. Problem lies is is these kids are not being educated. Um they're not being educated the way they need to be.
SPEAKER_03:Why? Because the federal government is because their education dictates.
SPEAKER_04:I think because their communities are poor. I think that's a social issue. And schools are funded by what? Tax dollars. Right, but it's so if you have a poor community, how do you get the funding for the teachers and everything like that? You you you realize that's a nationwide issue.
SPEAKER_03:You realize that's spread amongst the whole state. Yeah, no shit. Because Clare does not have enough tax base to have the Clare High School. Some of that money is coming from Grand Rapids, it's coming from Detroit, it's coming from Bay City, right? Some of it is they don't they don't have enough to have they don't have enough tax base in Clare to have the school. Some of it. Well, right, so it's spread amongst everybody.
SPEAKER_04:It's not divided equally. No. Is it divided equally?
SPEAKER_03:I have no idea how it's divided. I can't tell you how it's divided. I know that's a what it is. Do you think that that that's what it is is the state comes up and says, okay, we're gonna raise$100 billion in tax revenue that's gonna go to schools? That's why you have a per pupil amount for your school district. That's why count day is so important that students show up because that's$1,300 or$2,500 or whatever it is per student that day. That's how you get your revenue. It's coming from the state, it ain't coming from your local tax base.
SPEAKER_04:Is there a reason why Troy Public Schools are the best in the state versus Grasshield County?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, probably because those areas they do the same thing we do here in Mount Pleasant for actually building schools or refunding schools. We do special assessments, right? That we all pay for. We just passed another one a couple years ago when they just got done doing a bunch of remodeling and all this stuff. It was another mill or mil and a half on our taxes, local taxes to pay for upgrades to the schools. So it's not what operational cost, it was extra things that we're gonna pay for. Those communities could do it, right? All those people could vote. Hey, let's put another mil and a half on our taxes. They don't want to do it. And that's their choice.
SPEAKER_05:And then look at again, look at your community colleges. Your community colleges are not state schools, they are funded by the community, hence the name, right? So when you are in district versus out of district at a community college, it is because you either live or do not live within their tax base. We have at my employer, we have tons of students who live just barely outside of a school district, but have to pay over almost double, you know, and it's just because they don't live in the right school district. Right. But that school district's taxpayers have to go and put that on their taxes, and most of them don't want to. So, you know, and it wasn't until recently that Mount Pleasant was in district.
SPEAKER_04:Uh some of the here we go. I'm just reading this. Some of the best Michigan school districts that consistently rank at the top include Novi, that that's often ranked number one in Michigan, then Northville, Bloomfield Hills, Okamis, and Troy.
SPEAKER_03:Those are all decently wealthy areas, too. Yeah, yeah. I wonder why. Because they actually raised extra money on their taxes for those schools.
SPEAKER_04:Uh, because they have the tax base to do that. Okay. They have the the mu the funds to do that. And and on you think in on Six Mile in Detroit, they have they have the uh the funds to to to give the education that Novi public schools give to their children.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so when are you when is when is Empire gonna donate a million dollars down to Detroit to help them with their schools? So you can you can educate other people's kids.
SPEAKER_04:No, you're not gonna no. What we need to do is uh do a truly equal disbursement of education and I disagree.
SPEAKER_03:That's why count day.
SPEAKER_05:I disagree. So, but let me explain why. We have all of these sources of funding, right? We've got the lottery, supposedly, right? Has this two billion dollar freaking whatever fund, right? And it's the same thing with anything else. You know, when we're funding the roads and whatnot, we got this gas tax and we got all this other shit, right? Supposedly, we're A good portion of our gas taxes don't even go to the fucking roads. How does that make any sense? It doesn't. So my argument is this if you want publicly funded education, which is you know public schools, your local uh area, so we'll take Bloomfield Hills, right? If they can fucking afford it on a tax base, then they get to pay for it. If you are in uh maybe an inner city area, or you have a very rural tax base who doesn't really have for Grassett County, Grassha County, whatever, the school aid fund should be given disproportionately on purpose to those communities, not the ones that can afford it. I disagree with you.
SPEAKER_04:I disagree with you, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I think that really I thought you would I thought you'd go for that one.
SPEAKER_04:No, I mean do you fully understand what I'm trying to say? I do, I do, I do. Okay, I I do, but I think it's not a child's fault that he was born in Gratsett County and not in Bloomfield Hills. So we're gonna take away from that child because he was born, that child in Gratsett County, we're gonna take away from him because his parents are fucking broke. We're not taking a few. I don't think you understood what I was trying to say. You I maybe you don't understand what I'm trying to say. I say you take all that tax revenue that's for schools, you pool it all in Lansing, and then it gets distributed equally to every school district. And they all have an equal amount of money, be it for fucking building costs, for books, whatever the case is.
SPEAKER_03:It's distributed as equal as you can get. It's based on per pupil in a school. Um, well, uh in a school district, it is. That's why you have count day. Uh-huh. So if you've got a hundred students, you get X amount of dollars. You got a thousand students, guess what? You're gonna get more because your school's gotta be bigger, you gotta have more teachers, you gotta have more custodial, you gotta have more paper, you gotta have more pencils, you gotta have whatever. So it's as equal as it can get. It's a per pupil cost, regardless if you live in Clare or you live in Detroit or you live in the UP.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:It's based on per student. So if that so if they if Detroit's got schools that should have uh 1,500 people in them and they've got 500, then obviously the school's gonna be run down because they're not bringing the revenue in because there's only 500 kids there. You're not gonna dump a million dollars into a school for 500 kids when that million dollars should be spent on 1,500 kids.
SPEAKER_04:And I you know the thing is I cannot argue uh intelligently with you about this because I just don't know enough. But I will find out.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's it's called per people funding. And so and and I that comes directly from the state, and I know about that.
SPEAKER_05:Um so you should, and so I don't work in K through 12, and so I wanted to make sure that you understood, you know, at least to a certain degree, maybe a more um I don't know the word, the more uppity of an area, okay. I do believe that uh maybe on a slightly progressive structure they don't get as much funding from the state because their tax base is such that can afford certain things. I don't think that anything should be yanked away because I don't really believe in a progressive tax structure in the first place, anyway. I really don't, but there is an argument to be made that you know if you have the money, there's a reasonable expectation that you use some of it, right? The ones that don't should get you know a little bit more, um, and that goes back to what I was saying in that other chat GPT about like a welfare design, right? So anyway, um for fiscal year 24-25, school aid appropriation in the state of Michigan for K through 12 was about$21.4 billion. Okay. In the state of Michigan, there are 537 local school districts, not counting charter schools or intermediate school districts, ISDs. Okay. So if you divide divide that$21.4 billion over the course of the uh school districts, you're gonna get just under$40 million per district. Evenly. If a school district can't do their shit with$40 million, what the fuck is their problem?
SPEAKER_04:We will come back to that.
SPEAKER_05:Okay. All right.
SPEAKER_04:Well, this has been another great episode of In the meantime. I've sent you both a text message. It's it's uh Stephen Miller's speech. Okay, and I want you to listen to that on your way home. It's about six home. It's about six minutes.
SPEAKER_05:All right, so thanks for joining us again at uh soup sandwich. Hopefully, you guys join us again after having to listen to this guy talk. Um, so we appreciate you. Thanks for joining us, and uh we'll see you again soon whenever we can get this guy to come back. All right, peace out.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us at Stoop Sandwich, a podcast that explores the complex and compelling world of veterans in the United States. Through interviews with veterans themselves, military experts, and advocates, we'll dive deep into the issues that matter most to this community. From mental health and employment to the history of the U.S. military, the future of military service, and everything in between. Whether you're a veteran yourself, a spouse or family member of a veteran, or simply interested in learning more about this community, this podcast is for you. So come with us on a journey into the heart of the veteran experience and discover the stories, struggles, and triumphs that have shaped our nation's brave after they've returned home.
