Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
City Council Defiance: Cannabis Revenue, Veterans Support, and Evolving Immigration Language
This episode highlights the crucial intersection of cannabis regulation and community welfare in Colorado Springs, focusing on the perspective of veterans. The conversation touches upon local policies, the potential economic contributions of cannabis revenue, mental health concerns, and the evolving language surrounding immigration issues, urging listeners to engage in local politics.
• Veterans share insights on cannabis regulation and its impact on the community
• Discussion on potential cannabis revenue to address homelessness and aid veterans
• Personal stories illustrate the link between cannabis use and mental health recovery
• Legal actions taken against city council decisions regarding cannabis policies
• Shift to the evolving language around immigration and its political implications
• Call for community engagement in advocating for systemic change
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face, the Pikes Peaks Region Veterans Podcast. Talk about politics everything local, federal, globally, everything. Here I'm your co-host, Adam Gillard. Along with me is Dick Wilkinson. How you doing, Dick?
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm doing great, adam, good morning.
Speaker 1:Good morning man. It is a snowy, blistery day, so we're doing this virtual today. I usually like being in the office just so that we can have visual cues and interactions, but it is nasty out there right now. Hopefully, by the time people hear this, everybody's home safe and warm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a hazard for sure. I don't mind being the old man. That's like man. I'm not going out in that. That's the beauty of retirement you don't have to go to PT in the morning at 5am, even if they're just to put a snow on the ground. Right, you can look out the window and go. Nah, not today.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, you're saying like your school district didn't have any school cancellations or delays, like I hope parents just like.
Speaker 2:But no, I'm not doing this, yeah, yeah, but a lot of that drives.
Speaker 1:You know them having to get to work and get to their their money making ventures and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's different for everybody, but I'm glad I have the luxury now today staying inside. So, yeah, yeah, the. So you mentioned something and as we were warming up for the show here about the recent cannabis issues happening with the Colorado Springs City Council. So let's just lead in with that topic and share with our listeners how you're going to take on a bit more of an aggressive role in this argument role in this argument.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think I mean you look back at our episodes. It's every week or two. You know something about our city council restricting cannabis or trying to fight the progress of cannabis just being legalized recreational. Here in our city it's already legal to own. You can get it medically. You can buy it somewhere else. Bring it in.
Speaker 2:It's just about being able to buy it here storefronts and the city limits, yeah, not even the rest of the county right and the storefronts that already exist.
Speaker 1:It's not like we're getting new storefronts. We're not getting new licenses. The storefronts that exist can apply for a retail license right, which will bring in 10 to 15 million dollars a year to help solve the homelessness issues that we're facing. We just had a camp get raided down off Nevada a couple of days ago. There's a few arrests and citations out of there.
Speaker 2:And a day like today is a good reason for all of us to remember why this problem needs to be addressed, more than just eyesore or physical uncomfort around. Oh, I got panhandled and I don't like that. Like that's its own. You know that's your but not in my backyard problem. But the real problem is is that these people are outside today. These humans are outside and not safe today and we should be doing.
Speaker 1:you know we got to do something about that and a lot of these folks that are out there. They're veterans, they have their own problems.
Speaker 2:In this community, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Fort Carson had a history of you do something stupid, get a DUI, you're kicked out and they don't address any of your mental health issues.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've known people from Fort Carson that are in that bat boat right, like literally. They're like like hey, I met them at treatment facilities that I was working with veterans and you know attending, and they were, they were from fort carson. And yeah, the one one guy I can think of talk about it just a whirlwind story of, like you say, I mean his mental health unraveled so bad yeah, you know that he went awol. He went to a foreign country all his stuff was still back in the barracks room.
Speaker 2:His car car was sitting in the parking lot rotting into the ground. And you know he was gone, man Deserter. You know Wow, once the army figured out where he was at, he was in a treatment facility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know you hear those stories and they're not, you know that unique. No, no, that unique. You know, like, there's a lot of folks out there that are right. Yeah, so the cannabis community, uh, offering to, you know, help with the homelessness. You know, vets with ptsd I mean they're gonna have a safety fund. You can help build the police academy that everybody's wanting to build. Uh, you know, build some of the infrastructure that you know allows people to walk over some of these big busy streets that we have now. We just had a lady ran down a couple of weeks ago, trying to take a 10 minute walk to her job, got ran over by two trucks.
Speaker 2:I did hear about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like, and go the crosswalk over there and go the crosswalk over there. There's ways to get money into the city to fix our infrastructure and to serve our community and our city council is hell bent on just ignoring it and denying that, excluding that source of revenue, when you know all of their sources of revenue aren't providing that type of level of care to the community. The cannabis community is saying, like we are going to do this.
Speaker 2:No other community is doing that. And I think the most important part that people just always gloss over, if we really want to dig into the economy piece of it, which their argument has nothing to do with the economy, right, economy is something that you can measure. It's not something that you feel. When it comes to cannabis, right, and they want to talk about what you feel and what you're afraid of, right, and so for them, their focus is don't talk about money, we don't care about that. Like we'll find money somewhere else, we can solve problems with other money, right, the ills that come along with this product are the thing that we care about.
Speaker 2:Now, that is a straight up disingenuous lie that they understand, as we started this conversation, that the cannabis product itself can be purchased anywhere in the state and can be brought to your home or to your, you know, wherever you're at in this city. So the idea that you're keeping the actual substance out of the city is absurd. Yeah, and then you know. But what you are keeping out of the city is the sale. All you're keeping out of the city is the transaction where you get an opportunity to keep some of that money. That is all the city council can effectively do with this entire effort. That's it. They don't keep the substance out of the county. It's not criminalized here.
Speaker 2:There's no limited access for adults here. None of that All they're doing is saying make that sales transaction happen somewhere else. What politician would ever do that?
Speaker 1:Only the ones that are trying to hurt communities that it would benefit. You know like they clearly do not care about anything.
Speaker 2:you know south of Platt here Protection over compassion and it's such a backwards way of thinking about it that they believe they're protecting someone from whatever they think they're protecting them from, versus the realistic. You know that's an imaginary situation. We got into this last week. It's weird. They're forward looking and that's not how conservatives normally work. They're trying to sell us on a forward looking problem. This thing's going to turn all of our children into degenerates, right, of our children in degenerates, right? Well, you're not looking, as you normally do, conservative, at the backwards problems, the things that exist right now that are getting worse. You know, right now and yesterday you should be looking backwards at the problems that I can see on the street right now.
Speaker 2:And I want money to solve these problems right now and they're like someday our children could be corrupted. That is disingenuous. If a conservative starts talking to you about the future, they're full of of shit.
Speaker 1:that's all there is to it a lot of them have history with uh, an addict who made us may have started out with, you know, marijuana, but marijuana being labeled a gateway drug is like you know water being a gateway drug to alcohol. You know, like, like it's such a huge leap to go from marijuana to anything mind-altering like meth or heroin or fentanyl, things like that. There's just such a far disconnected misinformation campaign out there. But they probably dealt with addicts of those other substances and they know how serious that is, because that is serious, sure, and that can destroy families.
Speaker 2:Drugs ruin lives, period yeah, but it wasn Drugs ruin lives period yeah but it wasn't the marijuana that started that train.
Speaker 1:They started chasing a high for something other than just chasing a high, right, Right. But there's got to be some other things that are causing some of those things. But they never want to look at that. They just want to scapegoat the drugs and the alcohol, creating their poster child into an addict and take no responsibility onto themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see a lot of that. We can as citizens, and it's been proven and it already exists.
Speaker 2:This model is not imaginary or futuristic. This can be, you know. We can say this model has existed for years now. And talk to our conservatives about things in the past right. Here's what we can prove now. And talk to our conservatives about things in the past right. Here's what we can prove. Money revenue from these programs can be spent on mental health and addiction services. And you want to talk about making your community safer outreach to addicted people within your community that aren't on the street yet right, that need that help before they get to the street.
Speaker 2:They're still trying to take care of their family. They're still trying to take care of their kids. They're still doing what they should be doing to participate in society, but they're struggling. We can save those people from crossing that line by giving resources to them that they can't afford right now. Man, you want to talk about a better society and a safer place for your kids to grow up. That's a way to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, even expand that argument out into other areas where conservatives really fight, like uh, proper sex education, you provide, proper sex education.
Speaker 2:You provide condoms, you provide, you know, deterrence, um, and you decrease the propensity of drug-induced promiscuity right, because you're helping people with their mental health problems, yeah, out of their life, even from further away. You're putting distance in between those bad outcomes for that person. You're putting that further away for them so that they can get resources between here and there and if we don't allow the sale to happen in the city, those resources most likely won't exist right.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think the cannabis industry is going to keep having this fight. This is expensive to do these things, so, like, if they lose this one, like I think it's going to be dead for a long time for us. So you know what we're trying to do here. You know, I talked with some folks and we're going to be putting together a lawsuit against the city, putting together a lawsuit against the city, and I'm going to be one of the the co-assigners, sponsors, plaintiffs, whatever, whatever the terminology is yeah, along with somebody else in the industry. You know, I'm just doing it as a individual citizen, just because it's something that, like, I see our community could use this, and I don't see any other plans that are being presented. Even right now, the plan is to stop this and let businesses fail.
Speaker 2:That's it, and I think you know, uh, I'll use my very, very limited. Uh, I'm a barracks lawyer. Right, I never lived in the barracks, but I'm a barracks lawyer.
Speaker 1:So that should tell you something.
Speaker 2:He never lived in the barracks, but here's my barracks lawyer. Take on this, all right, um, for for your citizen within the city limits, right, so you have legal standing as far as jurisdiction goes. Right, this city council is a government official body that's in charge of things that you do in life, right? So from that perspective, you're definitely impacted by them. I saw your email and I like the angle of the basically misuse of government power, right? And then how do you define that harm and everything that we just talked about, which is basically ignoring the potential cash revenue, and even if you don't because I don't think the legal case is going to it requires nothing more than money is good for the city. Stop, it doesn't matter what you spend it on.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter if it's general fund or if it's directed funds towards mental health, homelessness. Those issues Don't even, you know, muddy in the waters and a legal argument about all that stuff doesn't matter because there's no legal direction towards where the money would go. Bottom line and the harm is, if I'm a citizen and my city council rejects the opportunity to receive 10 to 15 million dollars of revenue, I have a problem with that.
Speaker 2:At face value, right, no matter what that money if that money was going to be used to just make one like a football stadium, I don't care, right, it doesn't matter and I hate football, it doesn't matter. I want my city council to take advantage of economic opportunities and I can't understand why they would reject the opportunity to earn that much money.
Speaker 1:That's the harm and you can just stop the argument right there. Yeah, they should be naming libraries after these folks for bringing in this money and like building stuff and building things around the city.
Speaker 2:Name the mental health clinic after somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Name the police academy after somebody you know right, yeah, yeah, it should, uh, it shouldn't be this hard to to try to make your city better, um, but they're trying to run it and I mean there's a lot of like planned ignorance on their part. But like, when you look at like some of the city's uh, more mom and pop shops downtown closing down and like like property values are going to start going down, I'm sure there's people chomping at the bit to get into here, um, and and this city council is deliberately causing just in in, opt. You know situations where people are left having to close up their building because we can't get enough tourism dollars downtown. You know it's just. At this point it almost seems like they're just, they're just here to make a name for themselves with their crowd and then they're going to step up to something else and yeah, it's a. It's pretty disgusting on that city council.
Speaker 2:It is and you know, I I mean, I think it's an interesting case. I would say there's precedent. There are still many other states where jurisdictions, both county and city level, can reject whatever cannabis um programs that have been rolled out by the state, that exist in most states that have legalized to some degree, just like we have here. So these little microcosms of conflict, there's precedent on this stuff. So you know, granted, that's what you paid the lawyer for, but you might be able to say somebody might be able to save a couple of grand and do the legal research up front and say, look, you know, we found these five cases where a municipality did this exact same thing and a patient a medical patient was able to say, like you cannot reject this, and a patient a medical patient was able to say, like you cannot reject this. I would still lean into those cases as precedent, even if it's medical, because bottom line is, what it comes down to is that this has been voted on by the citizens and you're saying no.
Speaker 1:That's the conflict Right, and the speed at which they're trying to do it and trying to get it into that election in April, where you're only going to have 40 percent turnout, versus 75 percent turnout in April, where you're only going to have, you know, 40% turnout versus 75% turnout.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and that's why filing the case right now is great, because it could create a legal injunction where that doesn't go on the ballot.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's better to.
Speaker 2:It's much better for the cannabis group to stay in the position where the last thing that happened was a winning vote. The longer pull a Trump and stay in that position for years, because you can get out of that ditch at some point. But if the vote happens in April and they vote it down, the case is over, man.
Speaker 1:And so when they first voted to put this onto the ballot in April, donaldson and them, they agreed to obey by the 1,000-foot rule versus the one-mile rule. Yeah, so they can issue licenses now and start doing the paperwork now. And if they get a year or two of tax revenue and then try to come back and take the money, or you know, and that's my thing, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do it during the regular cycle, go through the regular process, not these emergency meetings that you're having, where seven people get to decide to turn down 15 million dollars, like just like the last 10 years that it's been legal. If we would have another 100 million dollars to like just fix shit around town, like it's amazing that this city does not want that, yeah so, yeah, so I mean, by the time we put this episode out, uh, I should have, because we're doing the paperwork today uh, but yeah, the lawsuit will be in place and uh, yeah, we'll start start fighting them on the legal, legal side here and see what we can do?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna throw you a curveball item. This is a surprise topic because we only talked about one thing that we're gonna cover on the show before, so I have to throw you a curveball.
Speaker 2:All right, are you ready for it? I'm ready, okay, um, deportations, uh, have started to take place. Donald trump is. What he says is he is fulfilling campaign promises. And everybody now. His campaign rhetoric was there's 20 million people that we're going to drive buses through everybody's neighborhood and if they just look like they're an immigrant, we're probably going to arrest them, right. That was his campaign language. Then, as the election got closer and closer and closer, the language got drawn down and down and down and down to well, actually, there's a half a million people that are convicted criminals and they're just fugitives right now and we're going to find those people and get them out of the country. And that was much more tolerable, I think, or digestible to the American public. That wasn't helping on immigration being a problem. You had to grab those independents like we were talking about, and if you were like, look, we're just going to drive a bus through your neighborhood, arrest people, get stop-lose style, like people weren't up for that, you know.
Speaker 2:But you can't argue like we're going to arrest people who are um felons okay, right, exactly, yes, yes, yes, do that, but like you have to know that person and you know like, yes, the language was dialed into a much more appropriate spot of how the government's going to go out and execute their, their work, right, right, okay. So all of that aside, uh, or just we're framing the conversation. I should say we're framing the conversation now. Now I want to get into something cause we're this is politics, right. Now, I want to get into something because this is politics, right.
Speaker 2:So when I was a child growing up in Texas granted, this is a conservative area, but the phrase used ubiquitously, it was on the news, it was everywhere. Yes, it was generally used, for Latino people did the word is illegal immigrant. And then somewhere I think it was probably around the year 2000, late nineties, early two thousands that those words started to shift from illegal immigrant to, uh, where we're at now, which is undocumented worker, and there's been a few different, there's undocumented migrants. There's been different words and shifting in language which was a softening by the left. I mean, it was on purpose, right, it was a political choice to say the word illegal immigrant is factually accurate, but we don't like the way it makes people feel. It's a feeling thing.
Speaker 2:The emotions associated with that word feels like persecution right the emotions associated with that word feels like persecution Right. And so liberal mindset was we don't want to persecute nice people that are just, you know, doing work in our neighborhood, right. But that requires a mental glossing over of every country in the world. Every country in the world has a border that they enforce, and most of them enforce it aggressively and belligerently. If you show up in Europe as an American and you don't have the right visa, you don't leave the airport.
Speaker 2:They put you in a holding cell and they put you on an airplane and send you back In the UK. We had a soldier bring his wife over and you could come. At the time, you could enter and leave the UK with no visa, no entry stuff for up to six months, just pure tourism, nothing required, no stamps. Well, she flew in on a one-way ticket and when she got to the airport they said when are you going to leave, american? And she said my husband's in the army and he lives here. And they said you cannot leave the airport, you cannot see your husband, you're going to the police station and you're going to get deported. And she was, wow. And so that's the reality. And it's even worse now in the uk because now you need a entry pass, you have to fill out and pay to go to.
Speaker 1:You can't land in london now. You can't just go to the airport down in new york and be like I want to go to london for the day now you need pre-approval. So it's harder to do it now.
Speaker 2:That's our bestest friends in the world, five eye partner. They're not treading on anyone's human rights by saying you don't have permission to be here, you need to leave, you are an illegal immigrant and basically we hate you. But in America we can't even use the word illegal immigrant. We have to, we have to ignore the fact that crossing the border without permission is a crime and we have to soften the language and we have to build policies around permitting illegal border crossings. Basically, that's I don't understand that. That doesn't. I am a liberal person. I don't understand that. That doesn't. I am a liberal person. I yeah, I have special effects on my thing there. I'm a liberal person. But I don't understand why the word illegal immigrant left the vernacular Right Because and that's my old Texas in me Right Cause I was like I mean, I don't know, the word just made sense and I got really upset.
Speaker 1:That's something that I've never, I've never really paid attention to Because, like you said, the whole, whatever they're saying, you know what they mean.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, it's coded speak. Yes, it's coded speak.
Speaker 1:So I never really paid attention to what it was. I've always just kind of thought of them as illegal immigrants. That's always just kind of what of them as illegal immigrants, that's always just kind of what. I would consider them right illegals, you?
Speaker 2:you know for sure I don't know um see, like that would be a slur by the 2005s.
Speaker 1:You just said oh, there's a busload of illegals over there yeah, you may as well have been using just you know the n-word, right like it was that level of slur to sensitive people.
Speaker 2:I say to sensitive people ie liberals that you know we're Democrats, so we hang around those people a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, we've had the conversation before. Say again, We've had the conversation before about just like how progressivism goes too far and inherently becomes anti-progressivism. Goes too far and inherently becomes anti-progressivism Right, and maybe this is an example of that and maybe that's why I wanted to bring it up to get your opinion on it.
Speaker 2:Is it's semantics, right? That's really what I'm trying to say. It's semantics and it's coded language. But, yeah, you got the polar. The polarity is Fox news says, runs headlines. It says illegal immigrants are killing everyone.
Speaker 2:And then MSNBC says undocumented workers, our economy will fail without undocumented workers. And there you go, there's the emotional tug over this same person. You got one side saying you should hate them. You got one side saying you should basically let them live in your house for free, right. And so you know the middle, where most 80 percent of understands that if you cross a border illegally, that is a crime and that in itself is prosecution worthy. Yeah, but the the here's and the departure, where it becomes politically divisive, I think, is what to do about it. Right, the terminology is one thing, and that's really what I wanted this conversation to be about is why do we do this? Why do we do this? Why do we code our language to soften things up?
Speaker 1:It's a ridiculous thing that people do all the time, like when they're cursing and things like that, but like they'll say, they'll say frick instead of you know, dropping just an F-bomb out there, and it's like the whole point of language is for you to put a thought into my head. And whether you say frick, you know more vulgar things, whatever Um, like, like that's the point of language. Like, if you can't be honest with what you're trying to say, yeah, I don't know what to tell you, man.
Speaker 2:Like I honestly and there you go you have now. Now we're starting to split the hair, because the honesty piece is your view of this person's choices, right, of the immigrants choices right. And on the liberal side of it, the view is the pursuit of happiness is what brought them here, not so much the, you know. They ignored this technicality of a crime in the pursuit of happiness and on the liberal side of the equation, like daddy's, the human right that we're supposed to be supporting, right? And so let's, let's gloss over that whole border thing. Let's, let's. That crime isn't really important, right? That crime is an acceptable crime. That's a gateway drug, right there. If you want to talk about gateway stuff, let's just start qualifying which crimes are actually important and which crimes are not important, and now you've got room to really cause some problems, right?
Speaker 1:I mean there's, there's a big difference between what's legal and what's ethical and when, when I think about what's ethical and that's kind of, I drive my life more by ethics than by legalities.
Speaker 1:Personally, um, like on a day, that's a good course when I think about what's ethically good for us is to people whose homes have been destroyed because of ridiculous free trade agreements that made them change their entire economy and then we decided to go shift somewhere else, so that you know they lost everything or destroyed their fields. So you know, drugs move in, cartels move in and these people try to escape that and they come here and they're good people. They're paying taxes. However they got here, they're still paying their taxes. People don't understand that. You know it's pretty easy to get a number like an EIN number or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then whatever it is, ein, there it is and still be able to support your community like that, and then with sales tax and things like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, they participate in the economy. I mean that's a fair, that's a valid point and that is honestly often what folks that after they've used their coded language to soften the initial crime, then they go. But what about all this good stuff that they do? But then the conservative says look like it doesn't matter if it's a freaking child brain surgeon. If Ben Carson was from, you know, columbia, and he came here illegally, we don't want him working on baby brains here until he gets his paperwork in order.
Speaker 2:Right, you order Go back to Columbia, get your paperwork in order and then come back and please help us solve childhood cancer.
Speaker 1:But that's the argument the Trump administration just pulled student visas for people that are dissenting against his administration. Yeah, yeah. So he's kicking people out, the next generation of STEM learners. He's kicking people out like the next generation of, you know, stem learners. He's kicking out of our country, sure, but like, how does that make sense to anybody?
Speaker 2:well and they are on paperwork. That they're why they're here. Like they're here for a reason, they're not.
Speaker 1:They didn't cross the border illegally right, right, like they were here an immigration crackdown right, that is a that's just having a problem with someone. Yeah, somebody said, you know, yeah, whatever, yeah, it's just sad that you know we get locked into the legality of things because right now trump's the president and he has presidential immunity, so he can pretty much do whatever the hell he wants. And yes, that's legal. That's legal, like everything that he's doing right now is legal until proven otherwise.
Speaker 2:Yes and so what we're seeing, too, is you never understand the ramification from government of, especially when there's three moving parts, right?
Speaker 1:supposed to be. They're not equally balanced?
Speaker 2:They're really not right. I've always seen the courts as the least powerful part of the whole equation. Right.
Speaker 1:And I work in the judiciary. Yeah, because they don't get to play as much. They don't. I'm big things. They're an arbiter, they're the referee. They're not a player, they're the referee, right.
Speaker 2:And so that that's really it right. The referee needs to be there for the game to happen, but they never score a point. Right? That's the judiciary, right, and so there's not really three equal branches of government, and don't tell any judges.
Speaker 1:I said that because they're not going to tell me how equal they are.
Speaker 2:But you know, I'll show you my power.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I can get a pardon, and then you're right back to being the referee. Right, shut up you. You're not as powerful as you think you are, but anyway, with that I digress. You know we have those three moving parts right, and what we're seeing now is we never understood that, as I talked about the unleashing with any president, if you take that, even the illusion of constraint away, what happens and I think what we're seeing is is that you basically it's like you can stick your hand in a fire and not get burnt, and so you're gonna walk around and just stick your hand in every fire, every electrical socket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know like I can stick my head underwater for 20 minutes and not drown, so I'm gonna do it and see what happens. Like that's what's happening inside this presidency. He's defining what the insanity of an, of a completely unrestrained president could be, and then what else in the system of those three moving parts is gonna turn into a stalwart and keep him from just blowing the doors off of a three part government.
Speaker 1:Right, we're going to find out and, like he knows, like he's old, he's going to do it fast. Like he's not, like they're not waiting around, like he, uh, yeah, he'd mentioned it in already multiple speeches that he, he wants a third term. Um, so, and the way that they have that, the one that's worded right now, is that it'll be uh for any president. That didn't have two consecutive terms. So you know my head. You remember when, uh, yeah, medvedev and putin did that little swap for prime minister president, like, yes, ivanka and don jr could just keep swapping after him and they could run it.
Speaker 2:They could run it until they get sick of it.
Speaker 1:They let eric take a swing and he'll just fucking run it down the hole, and then baron will kill them all.
Speaker 2:And now we're back in a monarchy yeah, like it's a whole game of thrones thing going on. Man, it's crazy. Well, that I mean. What we're seeing, though, is that he said I want to deport illegal immigrants, and then he started going after people who are here legally, right, right, I mean, in within days. It's not like he worked down the list and was like okay, we got those half a million federal criminals out of here, now let's go on to the next list and find all the people that you know we need to get rid of for this reason.
Speaker 2:No, he's hitting every single possible avenue all at once with full force right, Right, and so you know give him an inch, take a mile, he's going farther than that.
Speaker 1:Guantanamo was a huge issue for everybody to shut it down. When Obama said he would shut it down. It's been a huge issue for everybody and now he's not just reopening or keeping the guys there, he's cranking it up 30,000 beds he wants to have there that's insane.
Speaker 2:my hometown, where I come from, is 35,000 beds he wants to have there. Yeah, that's insane. I heard.
Speaker 1:My hometown, where I come from, is 35,000 people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in a town of 16,000. What?
Speaker 1:Imagine that. A whole city just of migrants that thought there was an American dream?
Speaker 2:Nope, and in the United States, too. We talked about this a long time ago, many episodes ago. The for-profit prisons all got a boost in their stocks after Trump was elected right. Guess what I saw last night on the news, or it was yesterday, two days ago Is it Holman? Is the guy that's the border czar right now? Is that his last name, Tom Holman?
Speaker 1:Am I getting that right? Yeah, I don't know. I read things.
Speaker 2:I don't hear him talk he worked for Trump in the first term and now as like an ATF guy. And now he's back. He's the border czar right For the southern border really in particular, and he's the guy that's going on news and just like we're going to arrest.
Speaker 1:He literally talks like that big like old looking dude Like yeah, I know exactly.
Speaker 2:So he gets on there and just talks real harsh. Right, he's real harsh, but I saw him on TV and here's the loop. The circle was completed because he said, oh, we got to arrest all these people, but guess what? You know just when we arrest? Somebody they don't immediately go to an airport and get flown out of the country that day or the next day.
Speaker 2:They have to get detained and it takes six to eight weeks to process somebody out of the country. So we need more beds. That was the word he said. We need more beds and more detention facilities to put these people in. That was him saying. We are turning on the lights on for-profit prisons in your community because every state has a reason to detain some of these people, so we need at least 50 for-profit prisons to turn on their lights right now right and they're ready and it's in the plate, like we all called it beforehand too, like as soon as the election happened, they went up like 800 or something like that.
Speaker 2:Those prison, uh, and so there he was yesterday and I hear it from the business perspective of the day before Trump gets elected. If you're one of those CEOs or one of those corporate boards, you're like, man, we're about to cash in. And then he gets elected and you're like, oh, we're really going to cash in.
Speaker 2:But, you have to wait for the federal government has a long tail. You have to wait for the rest of the tail to start walking by so you can grab onto it. That's what he just said was here's. Here it is latch on because we're we are opening up the money buckets and if you can fill this need, we will sign a contract with you. Right, so that that just happened.
Speaker 1:So it's good. It's going to be crazy to just the ramifications of so many monumental changes in such a short period of time that aren't well planned, aren't well thought out, aren't well executed. So, like the funding, freeze you know, they said they're just gonna freeze everything. And like everybody's what the you know. So like there's just so much chaos and anarchy and we knew this going into the like this is the exact way the first four years were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do we do this to ourselves? I mean, it's worse right now in my mind as far as absolutely yeah, yeah, it's on a next level.
Speaker 1:They learned so much and the heritage foundation has been so well organized and well written and things like that, or like the plan for it is well written. Yeah, um, he doesn't. It's hard for him to screw it up because he's following a playbook.
Speaker 2:There's a strategy.
Speaker 1:Everybody was surprised in 16, and then this time nobody's surprised.
Speaker 2:There wasn't time to put together a strategy to dismantle and break down. Did you see the?
Speaker 1:buying back people into service. If you got out for the vaccination, if you the if you got out for the vaccination, if you got kicked out for any reason for the vaccination for COVID.
Speaker 2:You're saying yeah.
Speaker 1:For COVID yeah, if you got, if you got forced out for any reason, you'll come back. Military. Okay, you get. You get reinstated full back, pay everything. So like yeah, that's crazy, yeah yeah, so like three, four or five years of back pay for some of these folks that are just looking to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing to just say hey, oh, we'll, we'll forgive your transgression right and let you rejoin, maybe even give them that time in service let's like sure, if you want to throw them a bone, just give them credit, right, but not money, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be $300,000 a person. That is going to be.
Speaker 2:And I mean the bottom line.
Speaker 1:He's buying his military is what he's doing. This freaking.
Speaker 2:What upsets me because we're not going to talk about it today but the conversation I brought up last week about the Air Force captain who got fired and got kicked out of the Air Force basically right. And now he's going to be the deputy fucking secretary of the Air Force, right, right, insubordination is being rewarded in the military. Yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa. We can sit around and be alarmist about all the other pieces of society and everything else and share our opinion, but if there's an opinion that you and I have and can see, I've never in my life would I have thought that someone who disobeyed a lawful order would be given any kind of right to defend themselves or speak their mind or even share their opinion like nobody cares. It was a lawful order, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, it's insane and it's gonna like that type of stuff bleeds down, it gets.
Speaker 2:it'll get highlighted, like those people get into leadership positions and then they believe they get to define their own rules for the rest of their career, for their unit. They're, they're mavericks, they're hot dogs. Right, I'm out here doing what I want to do. Pew, pew, I'm Colonel blah, blah, blah. We can't handle that bullshit. We cannot. The military cannot survive rewarding insubordination. Yeah, you want to talk about people. Just I can't even wrap my brain around how dangerous and deadly that could be in the military you know what I'm saying right and the fact that we're giving people fucking consolation prizes for insubordination, that's disgusting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you already have weak leadership at the top now with Pete, the sec def, there. He's never been in these type of roles and so he would appeal to that maverick mentality.
Speaker 2:And if you're a major out there that thinks that you've got a bone to pick with your colonel and you tweeted Pete Hegseth last week you might have a way to strong arm your colonel how's that?
Speaker 1:possible especially if your colonel did anything that ever helped somebody else out with like DEI stuff, like anybody has marks on them now too, you know it's so easy to throw people under the bus For sure.
Speaker 2:And let me put it into terms, if there's anybody listening who's not hasn't been in the military for a really long time or isn't a veteran. Let me put a different little spin on this. And let's say you're a parent and your 13 year old starts to tell you that every time you enforce a curfew on them, they're going to call the police and child protective services and say that you beat them and you starve them and that you, you know harass and you're a dangerous person, right? And they start to threaten you saying I'm going to call the police every time you make me come home at midnight. That's what this is. This is that it's a teenager telling their parent that they don't want any rules and that they think they understand how the world works and that's insubordination in the military. Is that exact same mentality If you take somebody who's got about three years worth of experience and think they've seen the whole?
Speaker 2:world and everything there is to see in their branch of the military they're going to get a burr under their saddle and start arguing with people who've been in for 20 years and really do know how to keep their stupidity in a box and keep them alive? Right, and I can manage your stupidity within these boundaries Right. But if you start to grow, outside of that box I can't help you from hurting yourself right, and we can't encourage that.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, you would never go to your neighbor's house and tell their teenage kid to start fighting with their parent and you. Next time they piss you off, call the police, but that's what's gonna happen right, yeah, I'm telling you it's. It's a game of thrones thing trump loyalty is going to be a big part of it too, Inspector generals that are required to enforce Trump loyalty.
Speaker 1:That's coming. He already tried to fire those. They already did.
Speaker 2:No, he already did. They're gone man. Did the Congress try to put a stay on that, but it doesn't matter, at the best they're going to be able to, you know they'll just get their 30-day window and still be gone window and still be gone. They're not going to be there 32 days from now, they're gone, and so they're going to get replaced by people whose number one job is to enforce loyalty to anti-wokeness and whatever Trump decides is most important that day, that's going to be the IG's job from that point forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and wokeness is just leading with a little bit of empathy. That's all it is, man. That's all we're asking for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, and see Adam, all of our listeners. Adam's more progressive than me Because he can justify that and I understand why he feels that way, but I'm like, nah, I don't like that.
Speaker 1:I get it, but I won't say it, you know. Well, that one kudos to that one pastor that called out Trump at the national ceremony See.
Speaker 2:I couldn't stand that.
Speaker 1:He brought me the wrong way so hard. If you have a chance to look, the devil in the eye and say, like, lead with empathy. You tell him that every day, If one of the cardinals or one of the senators or something or somebody said like oh, she fell for the sin of empathy, Like how is empathy ever a sin?
Speaker 2:Okay, that's disgusting, yeah For a.
Speaker 1:Christian to say that to another Christian like come on man.
Speaker 2:That's not a thing. Now, yeah, if I put it all the way down to Jesus, then she was spot on, right, but Trump was there. So I'm not going to take this as a regular church service, right, because Trump doesn't go to church, right.
Speaker 1:No kidding. Yeah, I'm amazed that he actually listened that much.
Speaker 2:Well, probably because she was talking about it that long that he didn't get up to walk out Right, like if I was him, I would have been like, yeah Well, talking about me still, she's still talking about me at least. So hey, but here's my um I am. Something gets my fascist hackles going, I guess, is the whole speak truth to power, right, when there's this idea of a david and goliath setup where there's some you know person that's seen as socially smaller or less powerful, and that they get the opportunity to yell in the face of somebody who is powerful and then they get clapped for and they might even get, you know, carried around on their shoulders at the next democratic convention, like, look at you, you were really giving him the left foot. I reject all of that chicanery, I hate it the whole like.
Speaker 2:I'm the tiny person and I'm going to go use this platform and wag my finger at you. The whole diatribe that she laid out for that setting and who she was talking to. I was like this is a show, this is for show, and I don't know this woman. But man, I almost felt like like how? I was like how can you what can I say? To basically go back and get patted on the back by all my super democratic liberal friends and maybe get a road show on some talk shows out of this. Now, was that her motivation? No, I don't think so, but the delivery was 100%. Wait until I'm on MSNBC tomorrow so I can go keep talking about this. The delivery was just annoying to me and, honestly, you know, if Donald Trump could have fired everybody in the room on the spot and been like don't let this woman ever step in the church again, and he could have succeeded in that right and now that's what I mean by fascist hackles, right?
Speaker 2:It's like you know sometimes, when somebody like she has not accepted that this dude's in charge for the next four years and whatever you're saying right now is just basically a waste of your breath, you could be making fart noises with your mouth and he'd understand that better than what you're saying right now. So this isn't for Trump. This was a show for the rest of everybody else and I'm annoyed by you putting on a show on your platform inside a church. It was just everything about. It put me in the wrong spot.
Speaker 1:I hated it. So two kind of things that I like is that one it was her position that she did it from, because she's not a politician, she's somebody that was speaking from a platform that she was elevated to because she earned it and she deserves that platform to speak on the teachings of Jesus. And that's what she did, and she nailed it. The fact that the devil was in the room when she was saying it just bonus points, man.
Speaker 1:Second point is that we're not hearing shit from our politicians anyways, so like somebody needs to start saying things like this well, that's like our politicians are not saying shit, like it is disgusting how quiet the democrats have been the entire time that all these things have been going on and now that the the house is rolling out their plans and like their bills and things like that, still silence.
Speaker 2:That's true. That is true. I think everybody's head is spinning and there's no strategy in the Democratic caucus. If you will, Hakeem Jeffries and whoever else that's running the show around there, they need to get their game plan together fast, Because waiting on the Episcopalian pastor to solve your problems, it's not going to happen, man.
Speaker 1:No, not at all. But as far as using the bully pulpit, you have to. I love Teddy Roosevelt man. If we had more Teddy Roosevelt leaders using the bully pulpit and actually talking to the people that are listening at that moment, like hopefully she got to somebody in that well here's, here's my, here's my.
Speaker 2:I'll give another uh example greta thune.
Speaker 2:She is the example of what I'm talking about yeah, like yeah don't don't take a 12 year old and put them on stage at the un and hand them a script and use them as a prop in your bigger argument.
Speaker 2:And Greta Thun's entire fame is as a prop status and I'm super annoyed by that because she may be a great individual but people have exploited her autism and simplicity to promote a message on their behalf. And she is, even if she completely believes it, to promote a message on their behalf. And even if she completely believes it, the nature of who she was was used as a prop and I feel like the priest in this situation, or pastor, basically put herself into that prop position, right, and said look at me, I'm a prop in this argument and I'm in the right place at the right time to be a very visible prop. But I'm just going to speak this script and I do believe she believed it, but I just feel like the delivery came off as a thumb in the mouth kind of. I'm going to say this out loud because you won and I hate it.
Speaker 1:That's just kind of how our society. That's just how our society takes information. Now, though, Like we don't, I agree People don't go look up what the hard workers really grinding away, you know, trying to fight climate change. You know they look for the spokesperson, the spokesmodel, and you know we all have our little talismans that we, you know, want to worship, and it's crazy and this is, you know, my it's purely my disdain is all superficial.
Speaker 2:Her message was accurate. Her concern is valid. The statement, the words she was using, are the words of Jesus Christ. And the message of his ministry was 100% there, so I have no problem with that it's the Lebowski defense.
Speaker 1:Like you're not wrong, you're just an asshole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I guess, yeah, that's I mean. I mean, in the end it just comes down to my own preference, right? You know, like I want these words to be said, but I really hated the way you did it.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, yeah, but you know he's not gonna read that. You can't like hand him a letter. He's not gonna read that shit no, I don't know, I get.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think part of it too is the fact that it was televised, even like why was that on tv? Why? Was that even on tv.
Speaker 1:I don't understand yeah, it's amazing that people know what c-span is, but like there's some crazy shit on there now, like like I've watched c-span for hours now, like when the house was trying to elect the speaker that first time it was like 18, 19 rounds yeah, like I was up at night like just watching on my phone like another round, like it's crazy the kind of access we have to things now, you know uh, we're gonna leave it on that note that adam watched c-span while they were voting through rounds and trying to rip mccarthy off the stage yeah, yeah, like hard sleeping next to me in bed, I'm like hey, wake up.
Speaker 2:You know, I know you're a politics nerd, that right there.
Speaker 1:There, it is All right man.
Speaker 2:Well we are. We are pushing on 50 minutes now. This is a long episode for everybody, but we covered a lot of topics. So thanks everybody for listening and sticking with us through this episode. We hope that you know by next week we've thawed out, we can do this in studio again. We have a Veterans Lunch next week. Adam Yep, veterans Lunch next week, all right. So if any of our listeners ever want to show up and have lunch with some of your camaraderie you know veterans here in the area talk about whatever you care about and see if you know how we can make that, promote that to the democratic level of attention, let's do that. So please come and find us at one of these veterans lunches. We have them every other week. Thanks everybody for tuning in and we'll catch you next time on left face.
Speaker 1:All right, take care.
