Yeah, it actually does seem like we're experiencing a war against the middle class in general and
white people in particular. I'm shocked that to come to that conclusion, I mean, actually quite
shocked that I can say that and it seems reasonable. But I think it's happening. I mean, your enemy,
I've always felt, of course, that the U.S. government is your clear and present danger,
your main enemy. It's not the Iranian government. They're not in a position to do anything to us.
They may not like us, and they have plenty of reasons not to like us, but they're not a danger.
What's a danger to us is our own damned government, which over the last 12 years or so
or more actually has been filled with Jacobins that hate the middle class. And basically,
even if they're white people, they hate white people. I mean, it's just, there's reasons for this,
but yeah, something wicked this way comes very quickly.
All right. Good morning, Doug. Well, it's morning for me. It's 440 a.m. here, and I
guess it's what, like, the time is where you are. Yeah, it's 340 on Friday the 4th for me here in Phuket.
And I've been to Phuket several times before an island off the coast of Thailand,
but we'll get back to that in a moment, perhaps. Yeah, okay.
Today. Yeah, we always like to do what happened this day in history, and I'm just
seeing what notable things there are, and there are a couple of interesting things.
And today in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
Well, I remember it started the space race, and I think most of us Americans,
and of course, I was just a little kid back then, were quite amazed that those primitive,
risky peasants stomping around in the mud with their great stomping boots were capable of
putting something into orbit that the Americans had not up until that time. So the space race
started, and all the rest of that nonsense. Anyway, this day in history, and we've gone a
long way since then because the next step is to Mars, hopefully not with NASA, but with Elon
Musk, I'd say. But that's no different subject. What else happened today?
Well, we also had today in 1927, they started sculpting Mount Rushmore.
Yeah, it's a marvelous thing. I've seen it, and it's impressive. They have Washington
and Jefferson, but then they put on Abraham Lincoln, who fought an entirely unnecessary
war between the states resulting in 700,000 deaths and basically tearing up and destroying
the Constitution. So I'm not a fan of Lincoln on any basis. And I guess I don't know if we've had
discussions of the so-called civil war and its very aspects, but in my opinion,
Lincoln does not belong on Mount Rushmore or on the penny or on the $5 bill,
but the penny is going to disappear soon because I think it costs the government about
$80 million per year to mint zinc but copper plated pennies that nobody uses. Anyway,
the fourth character is Teddy Roosevelt, who I would say that if I was going to hang out with
anybody for a week of all the presidents, he would be one of my top choices. I mean,
he was a genuine Renaissance man, many, many admirable qualities, except politically,
he was a statist, fomenting wars and loving it.
An imperialist, really, right?
An imperialist, yes. So he started, from that point of view, a very nasty trend in American
society with being involved in the Spanish-American War and its consequences thereafter.
So anyway.
It is interesting that the other people would have been on, you know,
they're much more historical figures. I mean, he was almost contemporary
to the time when they were doing Mount Rushmore. Isn't that strange?
Yeah, it is strange. And the same thing is happening with the national currency where
in the past, we used to have Indians and mythical figures and all that.
The currency in the past, founding father, okay, Washington, special, special deal.
But, you know, in recent times, we've gotten up to right after World War II,
well, first thing was putting Lincoln on a penny. I mean, this is like ancient Rome
used to have just gods and goddesses and concepts on their coins. And it was,
it started to show the show its degradation when it put current or near current people and
that across the emperors were always enshrined. And I guess it started with Lincoln and who was
the next person? Well, they put Jefferson on the nickel and I think it was 1939,
but was really objectionable was in 1946. What was that? Two years after FDR died,
they put him on the dime. I mean, this is something that's just died is enshrined on the dime.
So, well, but all our, all our, the good, the good news is all of our
coinage will cease to exist in the very near future. So we won't have.
Yeah, the bad news is eventually it'll all be digital and, you know, we won't have faces
on it anymore, but we'll be attracted to it when we spend everything.
Yeah, exactly. So what are you going to do? All right. So what else happened?
The other interesting thing is that in 1883, the Orient Express made its first journey
from Paris to Istanbul. Yeah. Well, I'm all for the railroads and being able to go from
one place to another over long distances. I rode the Orient Express both ways,
not quite from Paris. I rode it from Baron Switzerland to Istanbul as a hippie. And
we were, we were in third class coming and going, maybe we were in second class
going to Istanbul, but we were definitely in third class coming back with, with
the unclean toilets and gypsies in the, in the aisles with their sheep.
But listen, nothing against the gypsies because they shared their food with us because,
you know, our financial planning is basically hippie college kids was we'd pissed away all our
money in Istanbul and we just had enough for the plane train tickets. We were prudent enough
to figure that out anyway. So on the way back, we, you know, we're bumming food from gypsies
who very kindly gave us something to eat and, and cigarettes, which were only 10 cents a pack
back in those days, local cigarettes, which were actually quite good. So. So they didn't
gyp you? No, they didn't. They realized that we were too poor and bedraggled to be worth
trying to gyp. Anyway, we're no longer gypsies. They're aroma, if you please. Right. That's
right. And if you go to Romania, especially, they're such a damn nuisance because they sick
their kids on you. The kids attached themselves to your legs like limpets, and they won't go away
until you give money to them. They've got to let go of your leg to take the money or until you
drag them into a shop and the shop owner will kick them off your legs.
They hold you hostage, essentially. Oh, they do. Gypsies are not popular in
any place in Europe, but certainly where there are large numbers of them. And they say
after the Jews, gypsies were Hitler's prime prey. But there are so many of them,
and they were so obvious. I thought he killed them all, but I guess not. Anyway,
who knows? This is one of these questions that it's impossible to answer if only because it's
totally politically incorrect to actually look into what the facts may or may not be.
Exactly. Yeah, totally incorrect. Just real quick on, talk about the railroad.
I don't know if you see there's like, we have a for in the crisis investing portfolio,
we have an investment in a copper company, small copper company in Zambia. And
there's this railroad that they utilize still. And the Chinese are spending huge amounts of money to
improve this railroad. This is on the east side of Africa. And then at the same time,
on the west side of Africa, the U.S. is now getting into this huge amounts of money in
order to build a competing railroad that basically doesn't go quite over to Zambia,
but it goes to Congo. And it's funny to see these railroads becoming a huge,
important thing again when they've been basically discounted for so long. Have you seen that?
Yeah, because actually, I'm here in Phuket with Michael Yan, the war correspondent and combat
photographer who makes it his business to monitor all that kind of stuff. And I'll talk to Michael
about it. He's quite interested and he's concerned about the Chinese expanding over the world.
So, well, I'm kind of happy as a speculator in that stock we recommended, because it's up from
22 cents to 38 cents. So, it's treated really well over the last, what, five months, I guess it is.
And that's not even warrant, which is a big extra freebie. So, I'm all for building railroads
and to enter around Zambia and the Congo because it will make it easier to develop
compromise. When I was looking into this, what I learned is that the railroad that they're still
utilizing that the Chinese have invested huge amounts of new money in was originally built by Mao.
It's not right. So, the belt thing started long before
Xi. Mao did it. Mao did it. You know, in my gym in Virginia, I have a collection of
when I get back to Virginia, assuming I'm ever able to go back to Virginia,
I have a pretty good collection of Mao era posters showing the workers and the peasants
around the world. Of them, they're all on the wall, so they're easy to see.
I have about three or four of them show the Chinese and Africa during the days of Mao
with the Africans all having their little red book and all this type of thing. So,
yes, I think you're, I think you're quite correct.
Yeah, it's apparently it was 5600 kilometers that they did and they did it in,
it's called the Hazara Railway. Yeah.
I was shocked by that. I was like, whoa, so we got in a way, we have to
you know, thank Mao for that, for that investment, because if they didn't have
any infrastructure there to get the stuff out, it would probably be bad.
That's right. You know, there's so much history behind the scenes that we're just
unaware of. Anyway, that's interesting. Well, tell us what your experience has been in Asia so far.
I know you were in Malaysia, you were in Kuala Lumpur for a while, now you're in Thailand.
What are your impressions? I haven't, haven't been to Asia since before COVID,
before the COVID hysteria. And so I spent 10 days in Kuala Lumpur and so far I've been
in Thailand. I guess I've been here a week so far. I'm staying another 10 days.
And I'll stay here in Phuket. So just to bring people up to date, because I don't think
that Americans go to Malaysia at all. The other Farangs,
which is the word for foreigners in this part of the world generally,
were all Europeans, really no other Americans in Malaysia and KL at all. And as far as KL is
concerned, when I first went there in 1980, it was a totally different place. It has been
terraformed since then. It has an extremely modern building with dozens, well certainly
eight dozen, really tall skyscrapers, including several of the tallest in the world like the Patronas
Towers and others that they're building now that are even taller. Very advanced, very clean, very
safe, very civilized. And what's interesting to me, very comparable to Singapore, actually KL,
but much lower cost than Singapore. You can get everything you want or need. The hotels are excellent
and inexpensive, very inexpensive, even cheaper than here in Thailand. So having spent time in Malaysia
before and been to a number of places other than KL, I've got to say Malaysia is developing
nicely. In the past, I mean, this must have been 20 years ago when I went up to the northern provinces
of Malaysia. And it's very seriously Muslim up there. And it was kind of visible and uptight
and couldn't get a beer, this kind of thing. So those northern provinces,
Malaysia was put together after World War II from a bunch of sultanates, basically. I think there were
like 10 that were cobbled together to create Malaysia and then the British had what they call
the war of the running dogs against Malays that didn't like the British there. Anyway,
bottom line, if you're going to be doing any traveling in this part of into Southeast Asia,
I would go to KL and be favorably impressed, even though it's definitely a Mohammedan society,
but it's kind of a mellow variety of Islam. So I was last there in 2011. And it was the only
time I was ever there. And I didn't had no idea what to expect. And I was really impressed.
It was clean, nice. You could definitely live very luxuriously for very cheap and
may felt perfectly safe and very comfortable for as a for as a Westerner there.
Everything works. I mean, you know, it's so it's really a great place to live. I mean,
you're always going to be a Farang. That's okay. But there's not a whole lot of Farang. So
you're not considered a threat because there's not a horde of you there. So it's a candidate,
definitely is. Any, any other observations about Malaysia? Just like surprises? Yeah,
let me make another observation. It's that one thing that couldn't help but occur to me
is that how this city and we're not talking about a famous place that has been inundated with oil or
anything like that. But it's that the KL is transformed. It's a new and delightful city
compared to American cities like Cleveland or Baltimore or Cincinnati or Chicago or
a hundred others. They haven't changed at all. I mean, since I was a little kid and
actually since they haven't changed at all, many of the buildings are decrepit and the streets are
pockmarked with ruts and potholes. And so and the railroads in the US are crappy. And I flew
into Malaysia on cutter airways. There's no question that the two best airlines in the world
are cutter and Emirates. And they're not just better than American and European and South American
airlines. They are orders of magnitude better. It's, it is so noticeable. It's actually just
embarrassing. The way from just business class, you're picked up at your hotel in a proper car.
You know, not a crappy old New York taxi that you pay for yourself. And you know, on the plane,
they give you a pair of pajamas and and you don't just have a nice lay down seat. It's
actually a compartment. And I'm not talking about first class. I'm just talking about
business class. The food is it's not airline food. It's the service is it's perfect. It's
perfect. It's just perfect. You lack for nothing. And it's ultimately and it's completely polite.
It's not like flying on United Airlines where where the stewardess is my mother's generation
because she flew for United during World War Two when I was, you know, you had to be a
registered nurse and all this and young and good looking and single. So
forget about that through all Teamsters employees. Now, now, now these Cutter and Emirates,
which we're going to fly from Colombo, Salon to Buenos Aires in a couple of weeks,
this is far and away, unquestionably the best airlines in the world, Cutter and Emirates.
So anyway, another sign of how the U.S. is falling down and its cities are falling down.
What is what do you think is driving all the economic growth in Malaysia?
I mean, whoa, how are they able to do that?
Well, I've got to look into it because and, you know, mea culpa. I didn't research why is
Malaysia doing as well as it is. Because in the past, they just had chin and palm oil.
And they still have those things. But why are they doing quite so well? I think this is worth some
research that I'm very embarrassed that I haven't done to find exactly why this is.
Why is it like, why does nothing work in the U.S. with these giant budgets? And
I mean, I would suspect like the tax rate is much lower in Malaysia, too. You know,
people pay less of their income toward it. And still you have all of this
building and activity and safety and I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah, it's you don't have a giant underclass that's drugged out. I mean, there are some things
that as a libertarian, I'm somewhat flummoxed by. It's that unlike 50 years ago, how many years
ago have I been? Well, 45 years ago when I was first here, there's no slums. They put all
the people into acceptable apartments. Well, they tried to put the black people in cities
in what were acceptable apartments and they all automatically turned into slums.
In KL, you can see that these are government built high rise apartments, but they're well
maintained and they really look like ordinary decent apartments for people that aren't rich.
So there's no beggars. There's no people laying around in the streets.
There's none of this San Francisco phenomenon. Why? I'm going to have the next time we're here.
Well, I'm still here in the exotic orient. I'm going to find out why is Malaysia of all places
doing so well. Yeah, it's interesting. Okay. What about Thailand? What observations there?
Well, here, we didn't even go to Bangkok. We went right to Phuket and I've been here before two years
ago and I can tell you that this island, how big is this island? Because we drove all around the
island just to see what was going on. It's a giant beach resort, but it's not a little
crappy Caribbean island. That's a pretty big island in the Andaman Sea in southern Thailand.
And it is full of ultra high class resorts. I mean, we're staying at a pretty good one
right now like where I am. I don't know if you can see it. I've got a backyard and a
swimming pool, not a big one, but an adequate one and all this type of thing. It's a
very nice resort with a first class gym and all the rest of it. So we're staying here,
but the island is full of these things. And on top of that, rich Asians and rich Europeans
and some rich Americans are building like really rich houses on the ocean here or
overlooking the ocean. Because Thailand, for what faults it has, is a peaceful,
quiet, happy place, notwithstanding the fact that there are separatist movements
in Thailand in the far north with basically Muslims and in the far south with basically Muslims
where the army is battling them. But in Thai, purely Thai areas of Thailand, it's
extremely safe and just delightful. And once again, you can get everything that you want,
even though this is a resort island. We're not talking about Bangkok where,
you know, you can get anything you want in Bangkok. So one thing that kind of disturbs
me and I'm going to talk more to Michael Yan about this because we're spending the next
few days hanging out together is a new phenomenon here in Thailand is that there are pot shops
everywhere. You drive around the island, I think we probably saw and there are many we
didn't see, obviously, probably saw 30, 40 pot shops. And so I'm all for your body being
your own possession. Do what you want with your body. I mean, and I have no problem with people
that want to experiment with drugs or for that matter, do 10 heroin shots a day. I don't care.
Not my business, not your business. Certainly not the government's business. But it,