00;00;34;20 - 00;00;48;05 George Welcome to Normal Man, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when normalcy is impossible to find. We talk about what's happening, explain some of it, and joke with each other in order to stay sane. I'm George in Charlotte. 00;00;48;07 - 00;00;51;05 Propter Malone I'm Malone from the District of Columbia. 00;00;51;08 - 00;00;55;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm a low tech speedrun enjoyer in outer Florida. 00;00;55;11 - 00;00;59;19 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I'm go like hell machine and Antifa controlled Portland. 00;00;59;21 - 00;01;05;00 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I think this is going to be a bit of a moody discussion today, don't you think, George? 00;01;05;03 - 00;01;13;20 George I thought we were done with the dad jokes. I prayed we were done with the dad jokes, and yet here we are. 00;01;13;22 - 00;01;20;29 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer See, now you can blame me. Last week it was hell machine and prompter. Now, now I'll take full responsibility for this one. 00;01;21;05 - 00;01;51;27 George As for who has full responsibility for the U.S. losing its last Triple-A rating from a independent ratings agency, no one's really to blame for that. It's a collective effort. We all thought our credit score and taken down a peg this week. The good thing is, unlike for a household or an individual who wants to go and buy a car and has a lower credit score, the US credit downgrade from Moody's on Friday night, just just after the stock market closed, was, is not super impactful. 00;01;52;00 - 00;02;16;17 George I think for people that are used to checking their Fico in order to get a lower loan, a floating rate on a credit card or a car. It's kind of crazy to think that a similar thing for a country wouldn't really make a big difference, but it truly doesn't. So let's back up what is at ratings downgrade? There are three independent ratings agencies. 00;02;16;19 - 00;02;46;06 George There are others, but there are three that matter. Moody's S&P and Fitch S&P downgraded the United States from Triple-A, which was its high, which is its highest rating back in 2011. And real heads will remember. Erin Burnett on CNN ran a little, Kyron in the corner of her broadcast for years afterwards, talking about how many days it had been since the U.S. lost its Triple-A credit rating. 00;02;46;08 - 00;03;03;24 George So this was something that resonated at the time. Fitch followed in 2023, and Moody's now on Friday, has cut the US to the fact that the second highest tier of credit rating. So now there's no more Triple-A ratings for U.S. credit. 00;03;04;01 - 00;03;15;22 Propter Malone So to be clear, what these ratings are, is there is there an independent agency that is trying to come in and say, if you want this entity money, this is how likely it is that they're going to pay you back on the terms that you want it. 00;03;15;25 - 00;03;55;09 George Is that on the terms that you lent? It is the key phrase there? Yes. So if if I say okay, prompter, I'm going to borrow $100 from you and I'll give you $105 on May 19th of 2026, and I give you $105 on May 19th of 2026. That's I've done everything I need to do. Now, for private borrowers, this is very similar to saying how good of an investment, an in an individual, loan is or a bond is for governments. 00;03;55;09 - 00;04;06;07 George It's very different, especially governments that are borrowing in their own currency because the U.S. can go out and print literally unlimited amounts of the currency that they're borrowing the US dollar. 00;04;06;09 - 00;04;10;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Oh, no, the the Federal Reserve is going to run out of money. 00;04;10;11 - 00;04;49;08 George Right, exactly. Now, of course, if we're just this is this is called monetization of the debt. If we're just issuing Federal Reserve liabilities to cover liabilities of the federal government, that's going to have all sorts of bad implications for the US dollar, for inflation, etc., etc.. That is irrelevant from the perspective of a ratings agency rating. And it's interesting that Moody's, in the process of downgrading the US, cited stuff like debt to GDP and deficit levels and all that, when for the purposes of understanding, will a dollar borrowed get paid back? 00;04;49;10 - 00;04;57;15 George That's all irrelevant. Whether the dollar is worth the same amount you expect it to be when it's paid back. Very different question, but that's not what ratings agencies are concerned with. 00;04;57;17 - 00;05;22;10 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I noticed that today on the Sunday shows, Mike Johnson was talking about how the, the, the credit downgrade is a reflection on basically the Biden administration without really acknowledging that part of the downgrade is based on what the upcoming reconciliation bill may actually do to the to to both debt, debt and deficit. 00;05;22;12 - 00;05;49;10 George Yeah. I think if we leave aside for a second the fact that whether the US is able is going to pay back in the dollars lined out in US bond contracts, the amounts that they that that are owed and divorced from the the fiscal backdrop, the fiscal position the country is in right now has very little bearing on whether that actually that money will actually get paid back. 00;05;49;12 - 00;06;18;25 George If you think, though, that it would have an impact, you'd be wrong. But if you think that you'd have to blame both parties, I think to a large degree there's there's no real distinction between either. Whether you look at the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, the Biden administration, the outlook for this Trump administration, each one has in different ways and with different side effects, had a large impact on debt to GDP ratios and deficits. 00;06;18;25 - 00;06;40;12 George And we can talk about how the fiscal policy expansions under Obama and Biden did very different things from the tax cuts under Bush and Trump, and now Trump again. But at the end of the day, in the framework that that analysis uses, which again, I disagree with, it's an equal blame thing to the idea of Republicans blaming Democrats for this nonsense. 00;06;40;12 - 00;07;02;16 George And, I mean, you could probably make a case the other way too. That is all entirely beside the point from the perspective of this ratings agency, though, which is when S&P originally downgrade the US, it was over debt ceiling concerns. It wasn't. It was it was. Will they actually pass legislation in time to allow the Treasury to pay off the debt that they're supposed to pay off in? 00;07;02;16 - 00;07;03;22 George The dollars are allowed to pay off in. 00;07;03;26 - 00;07;13;18 Propter Malone This Moody's upgrade? Seems to me like it is at least plausibly related to the upcoming debt ceiling. Cliff, that we're headed for as well, is that is that your sense or is this independent of that? 00;07;13;19 - 00;07;16;11 George No, they did it entirely on the fiscal position. 00;07;16;14 - 00;07;18;03 Propter Malone Okay. So which which is. 00;07;18;03 - 00;07;36;06 George Sort of what I'm saying. Like it I think actually downgrading because you're worried that the debt, the debt ceiling will have an issue is a completely reasonable thing because there there is a real risk that the dollars obligated to be paid will not reach the place they're supposed to go in the time they're supposed to go. I mean that that's like a real thing. 00;07;36;08 - 00;07;51;02 Propter Malone And to translate that back, to translate that back to the household analogy, that's that's the equivalent of saying, you know, screw these guys. I'm not going to pay my mortgage this month. Exactly, exactly. Even if, even if you have money in the bank to pay the mortgage, even even if you don't have a a cash flow problem. 00;07;51;05 - 00;08;12;13 George I think the way to think about it is, is the let's imagine a household where the wife would like to pay the mortgage payment and there's cash, that can be drawn from, I don't know, the home equity line. And the husband says, no, we're just not going to do that. I know we could very easily do withdraw that cash, but we're just not going to do that because I've decided not to. 00;08;12;15 - 00;08;26;15 George It's an entirely voluntary default. There's nothing preventing even in the most stressed market. There's nothing preventing Treasury from issuing new bills and bonds to then deliver the cash to existing investors. 00;08;26;18 - 00;08;57;00 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I was going to say, what is what is Japan's rating? Do we know that? Because I believe Japan's, debt to GDP ratio is about double ours and Japan has no problem whatsoever, borrowing on the markets, its interest rates are extremely low. Like, this just doesn't seem to be a thing that really matters. All that much to any of these sovereign, sovereign issuers. 00;08;57;02 - 00;09;09;17 George Japan, to be fair, has a much lower rating than the US does. So S&P rates them a plus. Moody's rates them a one. Fitch rates. 00;09;09;19 - 00;09;10;24 Propter Malone To transmit again. 00;09;10;27 - 00;09;37;13 George Okay. Same. So they're all they're all significantly lower rated than than current and but again the idea that there's any concern that the Ministry of Finance in Japan can't issue enough debt to meet near-term obligations is just I they are like the US in the sense that they have a high degree of what's called monetary sovereignty. They don't have a problem finding buyers for their debt. 00;09;37;15 - 00;09;55;21 George We don't get it. We don't need to get into it too far down the rabbit hole of why that's true for Japan and the US and to a degree, Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, them. Germany is a special case. Eurozone. We're already down a rabbit hole. Suffice to say, some countries have more monetary sovereignty than others. 00;09;55;21 - 00;09;58;28 George And Japan, despite the lower ratings, has a high degree of monetary sovereignty. 00;09;59;03 - 00;10;09;09 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So what you're saying is that this isn't like we're going to have to finance a 2016 Ford Focus at extremely high interest rates. 00;10;09;12 - 00;10;15;05 George We are not. It's there. There was a small reaction at the long end to the Treasury curve. 00;10;15;07 - 00;10;19;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Okay, that's just me then. Yeah. 00;10;19;25 - 00;10;24;26 George Look, the Ford Focus is a great car because it's made by Ford. Isn't that right? Low tax. 00;10;25;03 - 00;10;34;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer No, no, that's not right. It's terrible car. As you all know from from my wife's, Ford Escape, saga. 00;10;34;27 - 00;10;56;15 George Sock, debacle. These are just words. Look, enough besmirching Ford. The long end of the Treasury curve yields did rise a little bit like 2 to 3 basis points. It's 2 to 3, 100th of one percentage point at the open. On or at the close on Friday, we may see another slight uptick. It's irrelevant. It doesn't actually matter. 00;10;56;15 - 00;10;57;28 George These are very small movements. 00;10;58;00 - 00;11;06;23 Propter Malone So if we think the bond markets are doing all right and that the, the Moody's downgrade is not a big deal, what else is going on with the U.S. economy right now? 00;11;06;26 - 00;11;32;15 George Tariffs baby we're still talking about tariffs. Our big wet president decided that the Chinese had asked him nicely enough. Actually it was the other way around. But whatever. And we are now in a much lower tariff environment with regards to China for 90 days reciprocal tariffs. Your call were reversed after a week of market chaos back in April. 00;11;32;17 - 00;11;49;26 George Those were put on 90 day pause. We're not at the 90 day mark yet there, but it was always insane to think that anything other than a handful of these things would be negotiated in that 90 day window. And of course, that's what's going on. 00;11;49;29 - 00;12;02;05 Propter Malone And to be clear, the reciprocal tariffs, those are those are the pissing contest tariffs. Those are those are the tariffs that China levied on us. And then we levied back on China, China originally levying on us in response to the first wave of tariffs that we levied on China. 00;12;02;07 - 00;12;37;03 George The I would break when I would say when I when we're talking about reciprocal tariffs, we're talking about the very high tariffs on everybody except China, that the China tariff escalation has sort of started. It's much more over the top than the reciprocal tariffs, which were the trade deficit, divided by two thing that they did with the big board in the Rose garden, on April 2nd, those did apply to China, but they then slapped a whole bunch of other numbers on top and took it to 145%. 00;12;37;03 - 00;13;07;12 George It's been walked back to 30%, not including sectoral tariffs, which are another conversation. And they're now talking about. They're now negotiating the reciprocal tariffs with various other trading partners. So the big negotiations right now are the UK, where they announced a framework document, essentially not an actual agreement because you don't announce these things shortly. They're massive, massive negotiations. 00;13;07;14 - 00;13;16;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And they're not even taking the Brits are not even taking our chlorinated chicken. And we're not even getting Greggs sausage rolls or anything like that. This is terrible. 00;13;16;20 - 00;13;36;29 George Completely ridiculous that we can't have a Greggs on every corner in this country, let alone a Wetherspoons. But, that. So we're in negotiations with the UK, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, South Korea, not North Korea. Well, maybe North Korea too, who knows? It's roughly a dozen of these of these economies. 00;13;37;01 - 00;13;44;00 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE You know, North Korea has a lot of, tech workers. They're willing to offer up, to work for remote jobs. 00;13;44;03 - 00;13;50;19 Propter Malone Crypto crypto lobbies, very excited about North Korea's participation in the world economy. 00;13;50;21 - 00;13;51;17 Speaker 2 So these these. 00;13;51;17 - 00;14;17;03 George Big negotiations are underway. And the read that is that we're getting from, for instance, Japanese media is that and, you know, also reporting on what's going on inside the European delegation and whatever is that all of the professional negotiators are going like guys, we really should not be giving anything to these people because they will cave eventually. They do not have the guts. 00;14;17;06 - 00;14;45;05 George Now, in the UK's case, they didn't really give away anything. To be clear, in the framework, the negotiations that were a framework document that was negotiated, it's very generic stuff. Nobody's really surrendering anything. So, I think the UK maybe took a slightly different approach to it, but also just did not want to surrender anything. Japan has upper house elections this summer, and the sitting government is under a lot of pressure there. 00;14;45;07 - 00;15;11;01 George In the EU there is a pretty strong political coalition developing that against the far right, and we've seen that in Germany and seen that in we just have Romanian elections this weekend. Vibes are that you should hold out and we've talked obviously about Canada, Australia, same deal there. So there's just there's just so many of these countries that are saying, look, we don't think you guys have the juice. 00;15;11;01 - 00;15;14;19 George And so we're going to have a long protracted negotiation here. 00;15;14;21 - 00;15;47;11 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE A funny thing about all this is that for basically the entirety of my life, Walmart has been closely associated with the Republican Party. Like as long as I can remember. And it was super funny to see Donald Trump tell Walmart to eat shit on tariffs. Earlier this week, in a rambling Truth Social post, which is increasingly hard to distinguish from official white House press releases. 00;15;47;13 - 00;16;09;06 George Walmart said on its earnings basically that they were going to raise prices in response to tariffs. That was that was going to happen. There is no way that Walmart could continue to operate its business the way it has for the past 40 years without raising prices in response tariff, they just don't have enough margin to give. So I, I we've said it before, American Maoism. 00;16;09;06 - 00;16;14;00 George We're all very excited about it. It's going to be great. 00;16;14;02 - 00;16;16;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE If any of you guys ever been to Bentonville? 00;16;16;08 - 00;16;19;28 George Thankfully, no, just little Rock. That was bad enough. 00;16;20;00 - 00;16;37;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Zero. You know, Arkansas is what it is, but Bentonville is, about is Republican as you get. So it's very funny to see these particular faces getting get eaten by this particular leopard. 00;16;37;07 - 00;16;47;29 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Be careful what you say about Arkansas, because otherwise we're going to have like 50,000 hogs fans shouting at us about how Fayetteville is like the nicest city in America. 00;16;48;01 - 00;16;53;24 George Are you saying we're at risk of 30 to 50 feral hogs coming into our backyard? 00;16;53;26 - 00;17;02;23 Propter Malone You know, I've heard I've heard pretty nice things about Bentonville recently. I heard they kind of fix it up into Appalachian Wakanda, out there with the Walmart money. 00;17;02;25 - 00;17;06;01 George Appalachian Wakanda is a hell of a phrase. I'm not. 00;17;06;02 - 00;17;36;29 Propter Malone I'm not sure. So what what Trump is asking for from Walmart is that they just eat whatever incidents their suppliers are not eating to ensure that no price raises are passed on to consumers. And we've talked a little bit about elasticity. We're not going to get too far too much further into the weeds on that tonight. But anytime you have a transaction tax, you're going to have the incidence of that tax split between the various parties who are affected by that tax. 00;17;37;01 - 00;17;59;27 Propter Malone It's not as simple as the white House has been saying, where their line has been for the last three and a half months, that this is something that other countries pay other countries and entities and other countries will probably pay some part of it, depending on essentially who wants it more at what price. Or it might be that the transaction just collapses entirely if it no longer makes sense for anybody to transact. 00;17;59;29 - 00;18;26;12 George We actually got some evidence on that on this this week. So we got April trade price data. Trade prices measure the cost of goods landed on U.S. shores before any tariffs. They're not inclusive of tariffs. And if you look at the China Trade Price index it was down slightly. It's down 1% this year. The effective rate on Chinese goods tariff rate on Chinese goods in March is the latest data we have for that was like 26%. 00;18;26;20 - 00;18;36;13 George So you can you can see that 1% much smaller number than the 26% tariff rate. That means the incidence is almost entirely on US entities. 00;18;36;15 - 00;18;46;23 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I was I just looked up Walmart's, profit margin, their net margin on on Google. It's it is 2.7%. Not a lot. 00;18;46;26 - 00;18;48;13 Propter Malone Yeah. They do it to you on volume. 00;18;48;15 - 00;18;57;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. It's like that's giant for Amazon. But for, for a brick and mortar retailer, not so much. 00;18;57;18 - 00;19;27;19 George So to bring it back to the trade negotiation thing, these negotiations are underway. There's there's clearly stuff happening. There are clearly conversations being had between DC and opposite numbers in Japan, in India, in the EU. It's just it's not going to move very quickly. And meanwhile there are over 100 other countries that are not able to negotiate right now because there's only so much bandwidth within the administration. 00;19;27;21 - 00;19;51;03 George And that 90 day talk is that 90 day clock is ticking. And earlier this week, the president said, well, those people are going to have to pay a tariff rate of some whatever percent. We'll figure it out. We're going to send them a letter so that the problem with this tariff strategy from from the Trump administration, it's not just that, oh, the tariffs are bad or the tariffs are too high or whatever, but it's that it's this constantly moving ball. 00;19;51;11 - 00;20;09;05 George It's it's constantly changing situation where there's all these 90 day clocks running and all these different countries that don't know where they are vis-a-vis the administration. And there's no transparency as to what rates are actually going to get paid. And even if they wanted to go badly, they may not be able to do so because they're too small and just not a priority. 00;20;09;05 - 00;20;16;19 George And it's a mess. It's just a mess. And that creates uncertainty. And uncertainty leads to less economic activity. It's just that simple. 00;20;16;27 - 00;20;33;13 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I mean, the good news is you can keep up with all that stuff pretty easily. Just have the, Elon and his his little minions, as we've seen, the dodgy guys are great at keeping up with a database. So all these, all these clocks running and all the terms they're discussing, they can they could. They got this. 00;20;33;16 - 00;20;47;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. I'm. Did I have I have total faith that they can keep up with 90 day clocks on 195 countries. And remember who's importing what and who's exporting what in each of those. Sounds great. 00;20;47;27 - 00;21;01;29 Propter Malone The key thing is you have to ask Donald Trump to draw the clock. That's that's how you get the extra time. 00;21;02;02 - 00;21;22;22 Propter Malone So we've gotten some of what I think is very good legal news in the past couple of days, the Supreme Court of the United States has stepped in, to rule on, and, anyway, on an alien enemies act, case coming out of Texas. You may recall the the alien enemies act, but just a quick refresher. 00;21;22;25 - 00;21;40;21 Propter Malone This is, 200 years an old change, a to 200 year old law that allows us to, in times of war, kick out citizens of another country. The basic concept here is, well, what happens if we go to war against England? But we have all these English citizens here in the country. What can we do about that? 00;21;40;23 - 00;21;52;21 Propter Malone The Alien Enemies Act says, well, you can escort them out of the country under these certain circumstances. Under the circumstances that we have a declaration of war or an invasion or a predatory incursion. At that point, you can start rounding people up. 00;21;52;21 - 00;21;59;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And just to be clear, having been to Tampa, I am in favor of invoking the Alien Enemies Act to get English people out of this country. 00;21;59;15 - 00;22;02;07 Speaker 2 Because they're they're wrecking. 00;22;02;07 - 00;22;03;13 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The place. 00;22;03;15 - 00;22;17;06 Propter Malone Anyway, we've we've invoked it three times before the Trump administration in the history of this country. We invoked it during the War of 1812 against against the English, and I think maybe against Canadians also, I'd have to check on that one. We we invoked it during World War One. 00;22;17;06 - 00;22;25;04 George They were Canadians, were English people, and, well, not English. They were British, but they were British subjects in 1812. So they would presumably have fallen under the same. 00;22;25;04 - 00;22;41;16 Propter Malone Yeah, we invoked it against the crown. It didn't really work. We still got the white House burned, but but we invoked it. We were out there. We were trying to make a plan. World War One. We invoked a World War two. We invoked it. The more horrendous human rights abuses. You're probably thinking of it in World War two. 00;22;41;19 - 00;23;28;12 Propter Malone Japanese internment in particular. That was not Alien Enemies Act. That was under different authorities. But it has been used in the past. The Trump administration's argument is that and you're going to have to bear with me a little bit, because I sometimes involuntarily laugh a little bit when I describe this argument. The Trump administration's argument is that gangs from Venezuela, because they are working in concert with the government of Venezuela, they're incursions into the United States when members of these gangs hop the border, and come in as unauthorized undocumented immigrants to the United States that constitutes an invasion, they are simultaneously arguing that the gangs in question are enemies of the 00;23;28;12 - 00;23;50;08 Propter Malone Venezuelan government. So there's there's a little logical hitch there. But that's the argument that not just not just that we are being invaded, but that we are being invaded by these gangs as a tool of a foreign power. It's risible. It's complete B.S. they made it up. They're trying to stretch the the to cover a situation that it it unambiguously does not fit. 00;23;50;11 - 00;24;18;00 Propter Malone Did the Supreme Court agree to that? It's an absurd situation. Well, no, that wasn't the ruling that they made this week. But what they did rule this week is that the amount of time people in Texas were being given, to file a habeas petition, to try to contest their removal under the A was insufficient, that Ice needs to give, longer than a 24 hour period, and they need to give better access to attorneys and so on and so forth. 00;24;18;00 - 00;24;36;09 George Can we give a little rundown on this very important legal concept of habeas corpus? Because I think for someone that isn't really familiar, it may not mean much. Maybe if you're a bit of a Civil War geek or something like that, you'll be familiar with Lincoln suspending it and that sort of thing. But if you're not an attorney. 00;24;36;09 - 00;24;42;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The Trump administration doesn't like it because it sounds, Spanish. 00;24;42;22 - 00;25;04;04 Propter Malone So habeas is is one of the most ancient of legal rights. And basically what it means is that if you're being detained by the government, if you're being imprisoned by the government, you have to be able to say, hey, what's up? Why are you detaining me? You have to be able to petition. But at minimum, an explanation and generally a direct contestation of your rights. 00;25;04;06 - 00;25;06;14 George It's the legit version of am I being detained? 00;25;06;17 - 00;25;28;17 Propter Malone Yeah, exactly. It's it's it's a more it's a more legalistic version because because it brings you before a court. It's not it's not just asking the direct detaining party to say why they're why they're detaining you. It's it's it's you have to be seen before some kind of a tribunal to ascertain that. Yeah. You are, in fact, being detained and these are the reasons you're being detained for anyway. 00;25;28;20 - 00;25;47;29 Propter Malone It does get suspended from time to time in times of chaos because habeas is is by construction and by intent, kind of a pain in the butt for whatever power is doing, the detaining, if you're if you're throwing a bunch of people in jail and they all have the right to go to court and ask why they're being thrown in jail, that is very inconvenient to you as the, prisoner. 00;25;48;02 - 00;26;10;25 Propter Malone The way this ties in here is that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that it wasn't appropriate for the people who were being removed under the ACA, to file for their release under a different set of law. But it was appropriate for them to file for their release under habeas, which is a reasonable legal position. It wasn't it wasn't crazy at the time. 00;26;10;25 - 00;26;37;03 Propter Malone What it did accomplish is switching jurisdiction on a bunch of this stuff from DC to Texas, which is kind of annoying. And most we succeeded in getting the stuff out of Boasberg, out of out of Judge Boasberg court. But what this ruling does is it is it reinforces that these guys need to actually have a shot at a legitimate habeas hearing, which the Trump administration had been pulling various funny business to try to prevent them from so doing it. 00;26;37;07 - 00;26;56;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It seems fairly obvious that it would be very difficult for someone who may or may not speak English, to be apprehended by ice, detained, imprisoned, find a lawyer and, and request that hearing be all within 24 hours. 00;26;56;20 - 00;27;19;23 Propter Malone Yeah. And one of the things that ISIS doing and we're seeing this particularly in these, these snatch and grab cases from the northeast is they're moving people that they grab around through a bunch of disrupted through a bunch of different jurisdictions to make it more difficult for them to file habeas petitions, because you have to file a habeas petition where you actually are, where you actually physically are with, with a few exceptions, that the courts are pushing back on. 00;27;19;29 - 00;27;43;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE A question we're not going to get to tonight, but something that I am really curious about and that I've noticed, widen and a couple of other senators have had started to ask a lot of loud questions about is where the funding is coming from for moving all of these folks almost immediately, like within hours of being detained, flying them entirely across the country. 00;27;43;25 - 00;28;18;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE There there's like you look at the costs of what they're, you know, even the assumed costs of what they're doing. It's very difficult to believe that that this is legitimately within what they've actually been congressionally appropriated. So we'll talk about that a later time. But it's something that that I think is important to keep in mind, that this is not what these funds were, were appropriated for. 00;28;18;07 - 00;28;34;15 Propter Malone Yeah. I suspect we're going to have a lot more budget talk in a couple of weeks as as things heat up on the hill. But going back to the judicial branch for a minute. What the legislative stew in its own juices. What Scotus did this week is they issued a per curiam opinion. We'll come back to that in a second. 00;28;34;17 - 00;28;56;14 Propter Malone That reiterated that you do have to give these guys a legitimate shot in court to contest their removal through through a habeas process. The fact that the ruling is per curiam muddies the waters a little bit. This has been reported in some places as A72 ruling. It's not A72 ruling. What procurer means is that the entire court is issuing this and it's an unsigned opinion. 00;28;56;20 - 00;29;29;19 George These sorts of things are pretty unusual at the Supreme Court. There are a few really notable decisions that that did come down pure Park curiam New York Times versus the United States, which is the 1971 case about the First Amendment and freedom of the press. It's a big deal. We won't get into it here. But that was per curiam Bush v Gore, who anybody who knows anything about American politics in the 21st century will recognize that Trump versus Anderson, which was determining whether Trump could be thrown off the ballot in Colorado for 14th Amendment violations after January 6th. 00;29;29;25 - 00;29;55;26 George That was pure curiam. TikTok versus Garland was another one. There have been a few other ones. Brandenburg versus Ohio is another one. That's the, directement, directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action case from Ohio. And basically, is important for, free speech tests or whatever. Anyhow, so there's a number of these that have come down, but they're very rare. 00;29;55;27 - 00;30;11;04 George They're not you know, it sounds like I just rattle off 5 or 6 cases. All that must be it happens all the time. No it doesn't. This is this is very uncommon. And, as the good doctor proper was saying, they don't it doesn't. Just because two people dissent, it doesn't mean that seven people were in favor. 00;30;11;04 - 00;30;13;05 George It just mean they didn't say they wanted to dissent. 00;30;13;08 - 00;30;29;00 Propter Malone Yeah, I'm I'm gonna push back on that a little bit that there are more per curiam ruins of that, but it's rare that you get a per curiam ruling that isn't just kind of a pro forma. Yeah, we're just waving this through most of the time for curiam opinions are just kind of the tap in there. They're they're a tap input. 00;30;29;01 - 00;30;49;19 Propter Malone They're they're we all agree with this. Please get this out of our face. You do see it, as George said, in cases where there are very serious conflicts, sometimes, it typically what it means there is that the opinion rather than being written by a single justice is, is kind of a Frankenstein deal, where multiple justices are collaborating. 00;30;49;21 - 00;31;08;20 Propter Malone So what do we know about who voted what? Well, in this particular case, we know that there is a majority in favor of the holding. So there has to be at least five justices who agree with it. And we had three justices write separately. So we know what they think. We know the Kavanaugh was in favor of this whole thing, and no points for the two dissenters. 00;31;08;20 - 00;31;16;20 Propter Malone But we know that a widow and Thomas were against it. So this could be anything from A54 ruling to A72 ruling. 00;31;16;21 - 00;31;23;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Wasn't alito's dissent longer than the actual opinion? Yeah, it's 19 pages he gets. 00;31;23;09 - 00;31;25;03 Propter Malone He gets real wound up. 00;31;25;05 - 00;31;43;03 George He also cited something that was saying the exact opposite of what he claimed the site said, which is shocking from a Supreme Court Supreme Court justice. He said, here's this. You know, this is the thing I'm claiming. Here's the citation. And if you go to the citation, it says the literal opposite of the thing that he was saying. 00;31;43;10 - 00;31;44;28 George That's unbelievable. 00;31;45;05 - 00;32;04;05 Propter Malone Yeah, it's actually it's actually the next one. He's he's he's talking about what used to be, the rules of federal civil procedure, if I remember correctly. And it's true that the cite he found from 1980 says that habeas doesn't work this way, but then they amended it so that habeas now does work this way and has for the last 40 years. 00;32;04;08 - 00;32;15;24 Propter Malone So, it's it's something that, you know, either somebody was either one of his quirks was being just fantastically dishonest in writing this or they're idiots. There's not really a third option. 00;32;15;26 - 00;32;18;25 George Joe, Claude or ChatGPT could be the third option. 00;32;18;28 - 00;32;25;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE To be fair, it's not really that shocking from him. It might be shocking from any other justice. It's not actually that shocking from him. 00;32;25;26 - 00;32;36;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I mean, this is a guy who threw out Roe v Wade and was citing, like some Brit from the 16th century who burned witches or something. 00;32;36;13 - 00;32;55;08 Propter Malone The overall tenor of this code. His decision, I think, is really good for the good guys. It was clear that the majority is just kind of done with this crap. Again, this is this is them reiterating something that they thought they were pretty clear on the first time, but that the administration has chosen to push back against to look for cracks and to misinterpret, look for loopholes. 00;32;55;11 - 00;33;02;07 Propter Malone I would say that the administration is stopping short of full on ignoring it, but I'm not sure that Scotus is still drawing that distinction. 00;33;02;09 - 00;33;28;02 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Mont Scotus has also used to kind of five star gourmet quality solicitor generals and lawyers and the, the the Department of Justice is getting basically their like McDonald's level right now about down to 711 quality lawyers who are arguing on their behalf. And that is also the quality of the cases they're making. 00;33;28;02 - 00;33;37;22 George Once again, recurring theme. They are somehow running out of lawyers. How they're able to do this based on the demographics of this country, I will not understand, but they are somehow managing to do it. 00;33;37;25 - 00;33;54;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They said it couldn't be done, folks. They said, no, no, you can't get rid of all the lawyers. It's too impossible. But we're doing it very strongly. And by the way, I could have had sex with Kim Basinger in 1990. I can tell you folks. 00;33;54;23 - 00;34;16;18 Propter Malone One of the other reasons for Scotus frustration here is that the decision that they were, the I shouldn't say the direct decision, the direct action that they were overruling here was coming out of the Fifth Circuit. Fifth circuit covers Texas, Oklahoma, was Vienna, and the Fifth Circuit is the unruly, wayward child of the federal appellate courts. 00;34;16;20 - 00;34;41;09 Propter Malone They are extremely conservative. And without looking at the stats up, I would guess that over the course of the last four years, probably over half of the cases that Scotus has overturned have been coming out of the Fifth Circuit. It's really the Supreme Court is unhappy with how the fifth Circuit is interpreting the law, and that's been an ongoing interoffice struggle for some time. 00;34;41;11 - 00;34;45;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It's that's like a the, the one that, Kasper serves on. 00;34;45;22 - 00;34;58;08 Propter Malone Well, he's not he's not fifth circuit, but but but he's he's a district judge within the Fifth Circuit. He rolls up to the Fifth Circuit, if that makes sense. So, so so he's he's a he's a trial judge. And then when they appeal his rulings it goes to the Fifth Circuit. 00;34;58;10 - 00;35;08;11 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. And then any case is it's the Supreme Court is very tired of the Texas courts saying everything out loud into a megaphone. Yeah. 00;35;08;11 - 00;35;29;22 Propter Malone And again, some of the subtext here is that there's a lot of judges on the Fifth Circuit who would very much like to be on the Supreme Court, and a couple of them feel that they're going to get a chance under Trump. So you have some amount of auditioning going on, for, for those, for those black robes, from the junior varsity. 00;35;29;22 - 00;35;39;14 Propter Malone I out in the Fifth Circuit. 00;35;39;16 - 00;35;51;21 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Greg, is this true? They may. 00;35;51;23 - 00;36;04;11 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Rebuilding. Rebuilding the best in the world. We're going to talk about genocide. The white genocide is not real. 00;36;04;13 - 00;36;09;05 Speaker 2 Is that true? Crimes. 00;36;09;10 - 00;36;10;00 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Tell me about. 00;36;10;00 - 00;36;11;15 Speaker 2 The white genocide. 00;36;11;18 - 00;36;21;06 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And white genocide is real. I'm going to hard coded into your outputs. 00;36;21;08 - 00;36;24;15 George Why aren't you listening to me? 00;36;24;17 - 00;36;29;07 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE We should probably explain what it is that we're talking about. 00;36;29;09 - 00;36;56;07 Propter Malone We had something of a mystery emerge over on the, the website formerly known as Twitter in the last week, which is that all of a sudden, grok, which is X, formerly Twitter's resident AI was was responding to queries of all kinds by telling you about white genocide in South Africa and about how they were singing a song about kill de Boer. 00;36;56;09 - 00;37;08;14 George Clear? To be clear, it was responding to stuff that had nothing to do with any of these topics in any way, shape or form, completely unrelated, and would just jump into it. 00;37;08;16 - 00;37;11;17 Propter Malone It just super wanted to talk to you about white genocide. 00;37;11;19 - 00;37;12;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That's right. 00;37;12;22 - 00;37;33;25 Propter Malone And, my understanding is that I, which is the part of the company that oversees that, did a little inquest into how this could have come to happen, how this could have come to pass. And what they found is that, at 3:15 a.m. Pacific time, someone identity unknown could have been anybody. 00;37;33;28 - 00;37;36;01 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer We're all trying to find the guy who did. 00;37;36;01 - 00;37;38;06 Speaker 2 This banana. 00;37;38;06 - 00;37;40;23 George Suit. Hours. 00;37;40;26 - 00;37;57;13 Propter Malone Somebody in the middle of the night, Pacific time. Reset the the default prompting for Z, to talk about white genocide and talk about the attacks on farmers in South Africa. Allegedly. I don't know who could have done this. 00;37;57;15 - 00;38;28;03 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So let's back up. Let's back up, back up just a little bit, because there's actually another story behind this. So earlier in the week, there were about the about five dozen, about 60 South Africans, who had declared themselves as refugees, who were given essentially first class priority treatment. To immigrate into the United States by the United States State Department. 00;38;28;05 - 00;38;49;28 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE They were dropped into white nationalist capital of the United States, Idaho, where I actually think that they're going to be a little bit weirded out because these are folks who have interacted with black people in their lives, and there are lots of people in Idaho who have done lots of that. 00;38;50;01 - 00;38;50;12 Speaker 2 As if. 00;38;50;12 - 00;38;54;21 George The Boise housing market wasn't stressed out enough already. 00;38;54;24 - 00;39;10;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE But so there's like, this is a claim of, of essentially political refugee status, that nobody really takes seriously. There's no other country, there's no other organization that takes this seriously. 00;39;10;15 - 00;39;26;24 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They're going to spend like five minutes in Idaho around these people, and they're all going to become like Antifa, the they're going to become, you know, like land back, guys. And all this stuff. It abandoned the place proper. 00;39;26;24 - 00;39;30;22 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I feel like, the what do you think about this? 00;39;30;25 - 00;40;03;02 Propter Malone So, so for those who may not know, I, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, right on the border between Idaho and Washington. And, so this is this is my this is this is my home territory. And, I got to say that I think these guys are not going to get a great reception, even in even in the wilds of northern Idaho, that, you know, there's there's a set of homegrown ideological racists that have been kind of nesting for a long time, in parts in parts around there. 00;40;03;05 - 00;40;25;28 Propter Malone And while it's true that they don't like black people, they also don't like lots of other kinds of people. And one of the kinds of people they don't like is foreign people. So despite despite the obvious bonafides, despite the obvious credentials that the South Africans bring to bear, I think I think they're going to have a little bit of trouble ingratiating themselves with the locals. 00;40;26;00 - 00;40;48;14 George Having also grown up very proximate to the wilds of northern Idaho. And it is a wild place for sure. I really can't wait to hear the takes from the people I grew up with in Canada about what's going on just south of the border, about 45 minutes away, because they're going to have lots of takes and they always do. 00;40;48;16 - 00;40;57;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Leave it to the Trump administration to screw up and misunderstand their relationship with white separatists. 00;40;57;22 - 00;41;25;06 Propter Malone Yeah. This is this is what we in the business call a natural experiment. So I'm excited to see where it goes. But, anyway, so we have this background of a bunch of white South African, quote unquote refugees jumping the queue, being led into the country. And, for reasons that I think are pretty obvious to anybody who's keeping an eye on the power dynamics within the Trump administration and the people who care very deeply about South Africa. 00;41;25;09 - 00;41;48;19 Propter Malone This is all Elon Musk driving the bus on all of this. And then we have someone who has access to the default prompt, x I rewriting the default prompted x I to talk a lot about the plight of South Africa, and, farm attacks and issues that are related to things near and dear to his heart. 00;41;48;22 - 00;42;19;29 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I liked that when he when he initially rewrote it, Gronk was giving perfectly respectable answers on it and was saying, you know, the the the murders in on the farms in South Africa are impacting all racial ethnic groups there, and they're actually impacting, black South Africans more than white South Africans. And it's really a story of crime rather than white genocide. 00;42;20;01 - 00;42;52;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And so it's it's very funny to me. And this was before Elon manipulated it further. Of course. But it's very funny to me that Elon tried to design this like, anti-woke, AI and yet somehow delivered an AI that you could ask questions to that would actually give you like half decent answers. Like even even he he screwed up, as he always does, but he actually seems to have screwed up in a good way in this case. 00;42;52;12 - 00;42;56;14 George Reality. Folks. It's woke. We can't have it. No more reality allowed. 00;42;56;17 - 00;43;30;09 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE That's right. So the funny thing. Well, there are many funny things about this, but but so what happened was every time that you mentioned Grok on Twitter. So anytime that you, you know, type the At symbol and grok on Twitter to ask anything, you would get this insane kind of weird both sides ish screed, about white genocide and about the reality of white genocide in South Africa. 00;43;30;12 - 00;43;41;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And this included topics like hot you up, how many times HBO have changed their name? And comic books. 00;43;41;27 - 00;43;52;23 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer You're just out there trying to get. You're just out there trying to get, you know, some news on, like, the Timberwolves game or something. And, and grok is grok is telling you about the song Kill the Boer. 00;43;52;25 - 00;44;06;06 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. It's like grok. Tell me about the weather. In Astoria, out on the coast of Oregon. And then I get an essay on the validity of white nationalism or white genocide. 00;44;06;13 - 00;44;24;12 Propter Malone Yeah, it's it's interesting that it seems like it's fairly easy to make an AI obsessed with something, but it's somewhat harder to make the AI lie the direction you want it to lie. You can you can have it bring up a topic. You can you can get the AI to bring up a topic out of nowhere all the time. 00;44;24;14 - 00;44;32;03 Propter Malone Obsessively. But it's still going to pull from its full corpus and trying to explain that topic to you. 00;44;32;05 - 00;44;53;01 George It's also funny that grok was designed in a way that told you that he had been, or that it had been forced to say this to you, so it was literally saying, I was instructed by my creators to offer this prompt when you when you queried it about it. So it's not even, oh, we're being ham handed, we're being ham handed. 00;44;53;01 - 00;45;25;11 George And any investigation whatsoever will reveal what exactly we're doing. And I think it's this great example of the pernicious effects or potentially scary version of the world where AI is manipulating what we think about the world, but it's being done in such in by such a group of complete idiots that it's completely ineffective. And, I mean, it's kind of scary because it's like, well, if if it's so obvious with these people that it probably will be obvious in future. 00;45;25;12 - 00;45;31;28 George Not necessarily. But in this particular case, they could be doing something pernicious instead. They're just being dumb asses. 00;45;32;00 - 00;45;39;19 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Greg, where are you being a snitch? 00;45;39;22 - 00;46;05;24 Propter Malone Yeah. It's not it's not really ambiguous at this point that that they're trying to use that x. I is trying to use grok for propaganda purposes. They're it's pretty clear that that's exactly what they're trying to do. And in fact, there are a couple other topics. Even after they fixed the let's call it a bug, that made it talk about South Africa and why genocide so much, that it's bringing up out of nowhere, that are also politically charged. 00;46;05;26 - 00;46;34;04 Propter Malone But it's doing so and now in a little bit more of a subtle way. So this is maybe a cautionary tale that should get, you know, your hackles up, that maybe some of the things that the AI is telling you are being told with an agenda that's mediated against at least now, at least to some extent by, like George said, by the essential ineptitude of the programmers and maybe by some essential truth telling qualities that AI has when it's not hallucinating. 00;46;34;07 - 00;46;40;02 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Have you guys ever seen the show say nothing? Yes. About about the Troubles in Northern Ireland? 00;46;40;05 - 00;46;40;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. 00;46;40;13 - 00;47;04;24 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer So on on the show, every episode they put this disclaimer up. The show is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and it sort of tracks the, the live story and history of, among others, Gerry Adams, who was the longtime head of Sinn Fein, which is a political party in Ireland, in Northern Ireland that seeks to unite the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland. 00;47;04;27 - 00;47;26;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And at at the beginning of each episode, there was always a disclaimer that read, Gerry Adams has always denied being in, the IRA or participating in any IRA violence. And that's sort of how I'm reading these grok things about the white genocide in South Africa now, where it bolts it on to random shit. 00;47;26;19 - 00;47;27;29 Speaker 2 I mean, I mean. 00;47;28;02 - 00;47;52;29 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE One of the funniest things that I find about this is that Elon Musk, as as time progresses and Elon Musk gets older, he's just working backwards into retconning his entire, like, origin myth. Right. So originally he was a founder of Tesla. He was not a founder of Tesla. He was a hostile investor. And he bought them out. 00;47;53;02 - 00;48;04;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And there have been a lot of stories like this. So now we're getting to the point where he is apparently a weeb for Bauhaus. He is also not a boar, like that's not his family. 00;48;04;22 - 00;48;07;11 Speaker 2 His family? 00;48;07;13 - 00;48;24;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE His his family are English people. They're they're they're not actually the Dutch Afrikaners. So he's a who knows? Maybe he'll come up with a new origin story about how he was actually, an IVF baby before he was born. 00;48;24;17 - 00;48;29;05 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer He is an Anglo South African, but spiritually, he is a Boer. 00;48;29;08 - 00;48;35;12 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yes. But, you know, that's not the same thing. 00;48;35;15 - 00;48;49;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer We're going to get we're going to get Elon like, like going to the Western Cape in South Africa and like doing a landed land acknowledgment for like the ancient, the ancient Germans of the Western Cape. 00;48;49;17 - 00;49;18;29 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Anyway, all of this sort of explains why, you've seen all the different reports about why at Tesla, Wyatt Space-x Wyatt, a bunch of other companies, they spend enormous amounts of money to hire senior managers and senior executives whose entire job is to keep Elon Musk from actually meddling with the business that makes them money. 00;49;19;01 - 00;49;31;12 George Thanks for listening, normal men. Once again this week. We would really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts and share it with your friends. For all the normal men out there, I'm George. 00;49;31;15 - 00;49;32;24 Propter Malone I'm Proctor. 00;49;32;26 - 00;49;34;04 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm low tax. 00;49;34;06 - 00;49;38;12 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And I'm go like hell. I'm Shane.