Speaker 1: President Trump's promises and pledges to freeze various aspects of
Speaker 1: federal funding and to examine the California High Speed Rail
Speaker 1: project are hardly an academic enterprise. California's got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of federal grant money that it's received that it
Speaker 1: hasn't spent yet, and so President Trump coming in to
Speaker 1: try and stop it could have a big time effect.
Speaker 1: Here's the story from the Fresno be written by Tim Sheehan.
Speaker 1: High speed rail development and construction in Fresno in the
Speaker 1: central Sanwaking Valley has consumed more than eleven point four
Speaker 1: billion dollars in state and federal funds, with about one
Speaker 1: point seven billion more budgeted through the end of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five fiscal year in June.
Speaker 1: So we have one point seven billion dollars still just
Speaker 1: for this fiscal year. This fiscal year wrapping up in
Speaker 1: about four months, still have one point seven billion to go.
Speaker 1: President Trump promised this month to investigate the California High
Speaker 1: Speed Rail Authorities project because of cost overruns, delays, and
Speaker 1: a reduced scope for early operations. It seems completely legitimate
Speaker 1: the threat by a president who has been critical of
Speaker 1: the state's high speed rail project was already apparent a
Speaker 1: former California High Speedrail Authority CEO Brian Kelly, as he
Speaker 1: ended his six year tenure at the agency last summer.
Speaker 1: Not only would finishing the merceaid to Bakersfield be at risk,
Speaker 1: he suggested, but so could any helpe of future extensions
Speaker 1: beyond the Valley to San Jose, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I look at how we are doing with merced and
Speaker 1: Bakersfield with those extensions, and we've still got to get
Speaker 1: more federal money to get them done, Kelly told the
Speaker 1: President be in an August twenty twenty four interview. And
Speaker 1: the capital cost is so high to move beyond the valley,
Speaker 1: You've got to have a big investment. What's going to
Speaker 1: be needed for San Francisco to La to happen is
Speaker 1: we're still going to need the federal partner to say
Speaker 1: get that done. Kelly expected the outcome of the presidential
Speaker 1: election to be a huge pivot point. You're either going
Speaker 1: to have a federal partner or you're not. Well. Brian Kelly,
Speaker 1: former commissioner of the California High Speed Rail Authority, who
Speaker 1: has the same name, as my least favorite former Notre
Speaker 1: Dame football head coach, we don't have a federal partner
Speaker 1: on this. President Trump has his head screwed on right
Speaker 1: and is realizing, no, I am not going to commit
Speaker 1: this kind of federal investment. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the many absurdities of both the original high speed rail
Speaker 1: project and twenty the very consequential twenty nineteen Gavin Newsome
Speaker 1: decision to keep going rather than cut your losses. Let
Speaker 1: me explain when high speed rail was introduced in the
Speaker 1: absolutely bonkers California election of two thousand and eight. Bonkers
Speaker 1: because we elected Barack Obama by a huge majority, and
Speaker 1: we passed Proposition eight to define marriages between one man
Speaker 1: and one woman, and we voted in favor of a
Speaker 1: high speed rail project. It was like all of the
Speaker 1: positives and negatives of democracy on full display in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight California elections. But it was clear
Speaker 1: even then because this was how it was messaged, that oh,
Speaker 1: we'll get federal investment, and we'll get local investment, we'll
Speaker 1: get state investment, we'll get federal investment, we'll get private investment.
Speaker 1: And that made sense in some sense anyway to think
Speaker 1: that that was happening in the political atmosphere of two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, where George W. Bush was incredibly unpopular,
Speaker 1: quite likely that a Democrat was going to be elected president.
Speaker 1: We'd have, you know, at least four years of Democrat
Speaker 1: control in Washington, and Democrats like spending money, and so
Speaker 1: that seems like a reasonable expectation in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight that we'd have federal partnership for funding the high
Speaker 1: speed rail. And we had it. We had an amicable
Speaker 1: Democrat federal governance for eight years of the presidency. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately Republicans took control. Unfortunately for this way of thinking anyway,
Speaker 1: Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the
Speaker 1: twenty ten elections, and Democrats did not have the trifecta
Speaker 1: at any point subsequently, so they didn't get the federal investment.
Speaker 1: And especially over the course of the Obama years, when
Speaker 1: it became more and more obvious that the high speed
Speaker 1: rail project was just not going anywhere. The cost estimate,
Speaker 1: the cost estimates just kept going up up up up
Speaker 1: up up up up up. The logistical problems just got
Speaker 1: more and more and more and more and more difficult.
Speaker 1: The original team from France that had designed France's high
Speaker 1: speed rail authority socker Bleau. They gave us all this
Speaker 1: good advice and we just ignored them. Huh. Stage. My
Speaker 1: dad once convinced one of his colleagues at Valley Children's
Speaker 1: Hospital that he knew how to speak French and took
Speaker 1: a trip with him to Montreal for like a medical conference.
Speaker 1: Convinced his buddy, one of his partners, that he knew
Speaker 1: how to speak French because he like two or three
Speaker 1: times said like corny French sayings like just orange around him,
Speaker 1: just like that, with just a ridiculous you know pepe
Speaker 1: La put cheesy French accent, and his partner actually believed
Speaker 1: him for a little bit and then realized he was
Speaker 1: just being an idiot. Now we ignored the advice of
Speaker 1: the guys who designed the French high speed rail system
Speaker 1: that was really successful. All these political deals were made
Speaker 1: for having it route through the San Joaquin Valley, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. The costs got higher and higher
Speaker 1: and higher, and nothing was accomplished. During all eight years
Speaker 1: of the Biden of the Obama administration, nothing got accomplished,
Speaker 1: and we then all of a sudden, twenty sixteen comes around.
Speaker 1: Oh it's Donald Trump and Republican complete control of the
Speaker 1: House and Senate. Okay, well, no one, Republicans are absolutely
Speaker 1: not funding this. Then twenty eighteen comes along. Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: is elected governor. He's replacing Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown has
Speaker 1: this pie in the sky idealistic you know, environmental vision
Speaker 1: that of course we're gonna get this high speed rail done,
Speaker 1: the environment needs it. And meanwhile, you know, twenty by
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, like electric cars were really becoming a thing,
Speaker 1: and then the future possibilities of electric cars were becoming
Speaker 1: more and more obvious, which itself limits the necessity for
Speaker 1: a high speed rail project. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: big ideas of high speed rail was that it was
Speaker 1: an environmental thing to lessen the number of Californians driving
Speaker 1: cars on roads and having emissions. So here's Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 1: He just gets elected in twenty eighteen, it's early twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: He's just come in as governor. He's signaling that he's
Speaker 1: going to abandon the high speed rail project, and it's like, our, well,
Speaker 1: is he really going to do this? And he's going
Speaker 1: to be the mature adult in the room and the
Speaker 1: way that Jerry Brown couldn't because Jerry Brown was too idealistic.
Speaker 1: What's he gonna No, Newsom decides to take this sort
Speaker 1: of half measure where he says, look, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: Bakersfield to Merced done. That was twenty nineteen January, early
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. He was saying this, We're gonna get Bakersfield
Speaker 1: to Merced done. Here we are in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: six years later, Bakersfield to mersaid still isn't done. It
Speaker 1: still is still not even funded, still not one inch
Speaker 1: of operable track. It's not done. We still don't have
Speaker 1: the money to finish it. We're still like not close,
Speaker 1: We're still not there. You've got the High Speed Rail
Speaker 1: Commissioner talking about how we still need federal investment. And
Speaker 1: this is the ass There are so many aspects of
Speaker 1: the high speed rail project that are ludicrous, the wildly
Speaker 1: to the wildly over optimistic projections of how much this
Speaker 1: thing would cost. Back when it was introduced to the
Speaker 1: voters in two thousand and eight, which you know what,
Speaker 1: I actually went back and I looked at the ballot
Speaker 1: descriptions that were in the California like the in the
Speaker 1: sample ballots that were mailed to all the to everyone
Speaker 1: in California, and it has for that proposition, which I
Speaker 1: believe was Proposition one A in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: It has the pro and the con arguments for the
Speaker 1: high speed rail. And one of the guys who who
Speaker 1: joined in for the con arguments for high speed rail
Speaker 1: was a former state senator from the Fresno area, Chuck Pucigian.
Speaker 1: And basically all of the people opposed to the high
Speaker 1: speed rail project in two thousand and eight were right.
Speaker 1: They were all right. They all predicted everything that was
Speaker 1: about to happen. The costs for this are going to
Speaker 1: be way higher than people think. The ability to get
Speaker 1: investments is going to be harder than people think. The
Speaker 1: logistical and engineering problems are going to be far more
Speaker 1: difficult than people are talking about or realizing right now. No,
Speaker 1: this is a terrible idea, and they were all one correct.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. So, granted, a gazillion aspects of
Speaker 1: this were bad, bad, silly, overly optimistic, rose tinted glasses whatever.
Speaker 1: I think. The aspect of it, though, that we are
Speaker 1: seeing is silliest right now with a news story like
Speaker 1: this relying on federal investment. Relying on federal investment. We've
Speaker 1: had like two or three different kinds of movements within
Speaker 1: the Republican Party since Proposition one A to tell you
Speaker 1: that Republicans are not going to want to fund this
Speaker 1: all right. We had certainly the nineteen ninety four era
Speaker 1: Republicans who wanted to cut spending, et cetera, were all,
Speaker 1: you know, we know that that's we knew in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight that Strain was still in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party as much as Bush was a big spender and
Speaker 1: was you know, spending on left, right and center. But
Speaker 1: basically immediately after two thousand and eight you had the
Speaker 1: rise of the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Then you had the rise of Donald Trump Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 1: You know, all these different kinds of movements within the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, so many of which are premised around one
Speaker 1: kind of hating California and two not wanting to spend,
Speaker 1: not wanting to spend, not liking deficit spending. The idea
Speaker 1: that we were all just these doe eyed simpletons in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight thinking well, we'll definitely get federal
Speaker 1: This is such a cool project. Of course we'll get
Speaker 1: federal investment. No, Republicans were never at the federal level,
Speaker 1: We're never going to want to fund something like this,
Speaker 1: and surprise, surprise, they haven't. California was able to get
Speaker 1: at a couple of points under Democrat administrations some federal
Speaker 1: funding for the high speed rail project. Not enough, not enough.
Speaker 1: They had they have had. You know, from two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight until today, Democrats have had complete control of
Speaker 1: White House, House and Senate for a grand total of
Speaker 1: four years, the first two years of the Obama administration
Speaker 1: and the first two years of the Biden administration. But
Speaker 1: that's it. And I think the idea in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight that well, of course we'd have all this
Speaker 1: federal investment, Like what kind of idiocy. You knew in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight Republicans wouldn't be hot on this deal,
Speaker 1: and you knew that this was going to be a big,
Speaker 1: long term project that was going to see politics shift
Speaker 1: and change in Washington, d C. Presidential administrations come and go,
Speaker 1: and in the case of Donald Trump, they come back again.
Speaker 1: Politics changes, The executive branch changes hands from Republican today
Speaker 1: Democrat every four years. Sometimes the idea that we had
Speaker 1: this like infallible confidence that just the strength of how
Speaker 1: wonderful California is, just the strength of how wonderful we
Speaker 1: all are, would be enough to somehow convince National Republicans
Speaker 1: to spend billions of dollars on this project and to continue.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I guess kudo's to the High
Speaker 1: Speed Rail Authority Commissioner Brian Kelly, whose name I can't
Speaker 1: read without feelings of deep resentment towards again my least
Speaker 1: favorite Notre Dame football coach of all time. Brian Kelly,
Speaker 1: the High Speed Rail Authority commissioner, saying, well, the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four election is going to be a big inflection point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no kidding. Maybe don't start a project that cannot be
Speaker 1: done without federal money where one of the two sides
Speaker 1: actively despises the project. President Trump is never gonna give
Speaker 1: us money for this thing, never never ever ever ever
Speaker 1: ever ever ever ever ever. He's probably gonna try to
Speaker 1: find a way to try to stop giving us the
Speaker 1: money that has already been allocated, which itself isn't enough.
Speaker 1: So and again, this is one of there are so
Speaker 1: many problems with the high speed rail question. From top
Speaker 1: to bottom A to Z. But the idea that we
Speaker 1: set off on this incredibly difficult, elaborate, expensive journey knowing
Speaker 1: that we couldn't do it without federal investment and that
Speaker 1: we would be at the mercy of the shifting winds
Speaker 1: of politics in Washington, d C. Federally is maybe one
Speaker 1: of the stupider aspects of the high speed rail that
Speaker 1: we were going to be totally reliant on who is president.
Speaker 1: We've had like three different massive shakeups within the Republican
Speaker 1: Party since that time, none of which are favorable to
Speaker 1: building high speed rail projects in California. And that lack
Speaker 1: of sort of foresight to realize, hey, Republicans are never
Speaker 1: going to want this, maybe we should, you know, temper
Speaker 1: our expectations about public funding is now really biting us
Speaker 1: in the rear end. When we return electric cars, did
Speaker 1: they render the whole high speed rail project moot? Next
Speaker 1: on the John Gerardy Show, big story about how, oh,
Speaker 1: there's all this money from the Trump administration that might
Speaker 1: not be coming for the high speed rail project. They've
Speaker 1: spent eleven point four billion state and federal funds for
Speaker 1: the construction of the San Joaquin Valley Branch of the
Speaker 1: high speed rail they need. They have one point seven
Speaker 1: billion more that's budgeted. There's four point three billion in
Speaker 1: unspent federal grants, and oh guess what. Sorry looks like
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is gonna maybe pump the brakes on
Speaker 1: all this. Well, there's a story about it from the
Speaker 1: President b While the first two point five billion dollars
Speaker 1: in federal grants awarded by the Obama administration in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Speaker 1: has been fully spent, matched by an equal amount of
Speaker 1: state money, almost four point three billion remains unspent as
Speaker 1: of November of twenty twenty four. Most of that was
Speaker 1: awarded by the Department of Transportation under the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: The unspent federal funds conceivably could be subject to cancelation
Speaker 1: by a hostile Trump administration. Now, so there's this again.
Speaker 1: We could talk at length about how really they managed
Speaker 1: to get that little federal investment during the Obama years.
Speaker 1: They got relatively less than they needed during the Biden years.
Speaker 1: And so this whole idea that we would start the
Speaker 1: high speed rail project without having like real federal commitments
Speaker 1: secured a project that would need federal investment to actually
Speaker 1: be accomplished, when we did not have any real sense
Speaker 1: that we knew that that federal money was coming. And
Speaker 1: yet here we are. Now we're going to be trying
Speaker 1: to go hat in hand to Donald Trump to try
Speaker 1: to see if we can get all of our money please. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's trying to pause federal spending on everything and
Speaker 1: is wanting to actually investigate the high speed rail authority,
Speaker 1: not fund it. This is the other thing, though, that
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about. Two thousand and eight, we didn't
Speaker 1: really have too many electric cars. We had hybrids that
Speaker 1: a lot of people hated because Toyota priases look like crap,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the people who drive them
Speaker 1: got a reputation for being, you know, snooty, annoying, you know,
Speaker 1: nose in the air, I'm better than you kind of people.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and eight, one of the big
Speaker 1: reasons for promoting the high speed rail was the environment.
Speaker 1: The basic premise from Democrats who supported the project was,
Speaker 1: we have too many people driving up and down I
Speaker 1: five and ninety nine, too many people driving We want
Speaker 1: to make our cities better with public transportation. And we
Speaker 1: want to have a method of transportation that is zero
Speaker 1: emissions and allows people to go up and down the
Speaker 1: state without air, without resorting to air travel, without resorting
Speaker 1: to driving. Also, it's like, why are cars so much
Speaker 1: worse than air travel for some? I mean, one airplane
Speaker 1: ride is using way more, way more emissions than you know,
Speaker 1: however many rides in a car. But anyway, set that aside.
Speaker 1: But the thing was, in two thousand and eight, the
Speaker 1: idea of I mean, there were no tesla was not
Speaker 1: a thing. In two thousand and eight, electric cars were
Speaker 1: still a couple of years away. I remember the first
Speaker 1: electric car I drove was when my wife's Dodged Durrango
Speaker 1: for you know, shuttling our family around. And my wife's
Speaker 1: Dodge Durrango was in the shop and the dealer gave
Speaker 1: us a loaner car. It was a Fiat, an electric
Speaker 1: powered Fiat, and it only had a range. It said
Speaker 1: it had a range of eighty one miles per charge.
Speaker 1: I drove it, I think twelve miles and it said
Speaker 1: that I had used you know, six miles to work,
Speaker 1: six miles back home from one of my day's commutes.
Speaker 1: And it told me that thirty three percent of its
Speaker 1: battery had been taken up, So yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it did not have an effective range of eighty one miles.
Speaker 1: Probably had a range of thirty six miles, and trying
Speaker 1: to get it onto I would take the one sixty
Speaker 1: eight to go to and from work. Getting onto the
Speaker 1: one sixty eight was like, oh, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of gidea up in this thing, like trying to rev
Speaker 1: the engine on a golf cart. Anyway, Tesla's were not
Speaker 1: around in two thousand and eight, and the sort of
Speaker 1: commitments from the state of California that you know, by
Speaker 1: twenty thirty five, one hundred percent of new vehicle sales
Speaker 1: are going to be electric in California. Now, I think
Speaker 1: that's a ridiculous pie in the sky, almost certainly unattainable goal,
Speaker 1: but that is the stated goal, and undoubtedly we're going
Speaker 1: to see more electric cars though in the future that
Speaker 1: is that is true, whether you know one hundred percent of
Speaker 1: new cars, it seems ridiculous. Given that that's true, it
Speaker 1: takes away one of the big justifications for the high
Speaker 1: speed rail project. Again, the big justification for high speed
Speaker 1: rail was fewer people driving, fewer emissions. If everyone's going
Speaker 1: to drive an electric vehicle, then what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I've wondered throughout is who is
Speaker 1: going to ride this? Even if you take away the
Speaker 1: electric vehicle thing. Am I going to go to a
Speaker 1: train station downtown? You know, an hour in advance, you know,
Speaker 1: forty five minutes in advance of my train leaving, Get
Speaker 1: on the train, take the train to Bakersfield, say get
Speaker 1: off the train. All the logistics of that rather than
Speaker 1: get in my car, drive to two hours and I'm
Speaker 1: drive for two hours and I'm in Bakersfield. I don't
Speaker 1: think you're gonna save any time. And it's actually logistically
Speaker 1: more difficult to do the train because then you get
Speaker 1: to Bakersfield, what do you do? Well? I guess now
Speaker 1: I gotta call an uber, I gotta get a cab,
Speaker 1: I gotta rent a car. It's not like you can
Speaker 1: walk Bakersfield. So anyway, top to bottom, high speed rail
Speaker 1: is an idiotic thing. Now the Trump administration is investing it,
Speaker 1: investigating it, possibly going to try to cut off whatever
Speaker 1: funding has already been allocated to high speed rail, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing is becoming more and more disastery every
Speaker 1: week when we return my next little writing project, I think,
Speaker 1: how USAID probably funded every movement in Latin America legalized abortion.
Speaker 1: Next on the John Jardi Show. The cool things about
Speaker 1: the doge guys and their investigation into us AID that
Speaker 1: I've noticed is no sooner do I think a thing
Speaker 1: than it immediately gets revealed to have been true. I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, huh, what kind of thing seems like
Speaker 1: it would be funded by USAID, all these sort of
Speaker 1: international programs of the sort of the intersection between liberal
Speaker 1: folks in government and liberal folks in sort of the
Speaker 1: big picture nonprofit world. I was like, oh, man, I'd
Speaker 1: bet money USAID was probably funding the Clinton Foundation, and
Speaker 1: of course it was. I bet USAID was probably funding
Speaker 1: this thing, and of course it was. It's like, how
Speaker 1: is there like this big push for like liberal pro
Speaker 1: abortion stuff in Poland? For example? You know the recent
Speaker 1: Polish elections, the more conservative party lost, and sure enough
Speaker 1: it's revealed, Oh, all the left wing media in Hungary,
Speaker 1: in Poland and all these countries that have more conservative governments,
Speaker 1: it's all funded by USAID. One of the things I
Speaker 1: have noticed over the last ten years or so is
Speaker 1: a number of different movements in Latin America to legalize abortion.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is sort of within my baliwick as
Speaker 1: mister right to life. But I noticed a couple of
Speaker 1: things about it. First, the way in which it came
Speaker 1: to be that the pro abortion movement came to be
Speaker 1: sort of pushed in Latin American media. How legal and
Speaker 1: political and judicial developments for the abortion issue immediately got
Speaker 1: aired and blasted into American media. It seems perfectly synchronous.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't hear about all kinds of other
Speaker 1: developments in law and politics within Latin American countries. This
Speaker 1: stuff got boo blasted all over CNN. When the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court in Mexico changes something, all the stories look exactly
Speaker 1: the same. And how obviously well funded these things are
Speaker 1: for movements that are allegedly these little grassroots movements. It
Speaker 1: seems hmmm, oh, everyone in this large crowd of people
Speaker 1: that are celebrating legalized abortion in you know, Columbia, Argentina,
Speaker 1: massive you know, historically Catholic countries that have had restrictions
Speaker 1: on abortion. Every single person there is wearing a color
Speaker 1: coordinated green scarf. HM. Who paid for those? And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this must be USAID lo and behold my buddy. I
Speaker 1: think Keller sends me this. USAID and the global pro
Speaker 1: abortion agenda. A dark money scandal exposed. So yes, USAID
Speaker 1: has in fact been funding a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: The development raises significant ethical and legal questions about the
Speaker 1: agency's adherence to federal laws, such as the Helm's Amendment,
Speaker 1: which prohibits the use of US funds for abortions as
Speaker 1: a method of family planning. So the trojan horse of
Speaker 1: USAID funding abortion through loopholes. Now reports indicate that, in
Speaker 1: spite of the Helm's Amendment, USAID has been channeling funds
Speaker 1: into reproductive health programs that indirectly support organizations advocating for
Speaker 1: abortion legalization abroad. A twenty twenty two report by the GAO,
Speaker 1: the Government Accountability Office, highlighted that from twenty seventeen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, i e. The First Bush for the
Speaker 1: first Trump administration, USAID faced challenges ensuring that foreign non
Speaker 1: governmental organizations did not perform or promote abortion as a
Speaker 1: condition of receiving US funds. The Mexico City Policy, which
Speaker 1: blocks USAD from going to organizations that provide abortion counciling
Speaker 1: referrals has been alternately reinstated and rescinded by successive administrations.
Speaker 1: Its fluctuating nature has allowed USAID to fund groups that
Speaker 1: will not directly performing abortions actively lobby for abortion's rights.
Speaker 1: The recent legalization of abortion in countries like Argentina, Columbia,
Speaker 1: and Mexico has often been portrayed as the result of
Speaker 1: domestic advocacy. However, evidence suggests that international organizations, some receiving
Speaker 1: USAID support, have played a significant role in these movements.
Speaker 1: For instance, USAID's partnership with Mexico has advanced family planning initiatives,
Speaker 1: which include components that align with pro abortion advocacy. USAID's
Speaker 1: involvement in developing and promoting modern contraceptive methods has been documented,
Speaker 1: indicating a broader agenda that may compass abortion related services,
Speaker 1: which also leads me to ask the question, why are
Speaker 1: our federal tax dollars going to promote even if you
Speaker 1: are totally you know, I'm catholic and I have my
Speaker 1: beliefs on contraception and family planning stuff more generally, but
Speaker 1: why are we spending money on family planning like contraception
Speaker 1: programs for foreign governments? Why? Why is that? What connection
Speaker 1: whatsoever does that have with American foreign policy? Literally, what
Speaker 1: benefit does that give us? I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into sort of a pure libertarian approach to this stuff,
Speaker 1: but like you know that, I mean, America is a big,
Speaker 1: powerful country. It's the hegemon on the world stage. We
Speaker 1: have the ability and if we are promoting good things,
Speaker 1: you know, if we believe that what we believe as
Speaker 1: a country, our national identity is good, then we maybe
Speaker 1: could should use the soft power of funding, influence, culture,
Speaker 1: et cetera to promote good things on the world stage.
Speaker 1: And maybe the notion that we should just be that
Speaker 1: we should be or can be a total ostrich in
Speaker 1: the sand. Just we're the most powerful country in the
Speaker 1: world and we have no broader cultural, ethical, moral, legal
Speaker 1: influence on culture, law, politics, et cetera in other countries.
Speaker 1: Is maybe that's a naive approach. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that's still attracted by this
Speaker 1: sort of libertarian argument of why are we spending any
Speaker 1: money on family planning for Mexico or for Latin American
Speaker 1: countries If they can't fund it them, that's not our responsibility.
Speaker 1: And it seems like there's so much of American foreign
Speaker 1: policy where it's like, well, we need to keep doing
Speaker 1: this because if you know, if we don't intervene in
Speaker 1: this foreign war, then innocent people will die without thinking through. Okay,
Speaker 1: first of all, are you sure that if we intervene
Speaker 1: more people might not die? Are are you sure about that?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure if we had just left Iraq alone,
Speaker 1: we would have had just a better situation. Overall, the
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died as a result
Speaker 1: of our interaction, many of them would not have died.
Speaker 1: Isis would not have come to be. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of bad things, you know. Us invading Iraq because of
Speaker 1: the alleged you know, humanitarian plight of people living under
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destructions that turn out
Speaker 1: not to be was a net negative probably for the
Speaker 1: region and for US. Everyone was a loser. Similarly, with
Speaker 1: this foreign aid stuff, it's like, well, if the United
Speaker 1: States doesn't fund this, then nobody will fund Really, are
Speaker 1: we sure? Are we sure that our funding for all
Speaker 1: these programs, first of all, that these programs are actually helping. Secondly,
Speaker 1: do we know that the funding for these projects is
Speaker 1: actually getting to the people like we have this like
Speaker 1: infallible confidence in these liberal dominated technocratic institutions that yes,
Speaker 1: they are going to achieve what they are designed to achieve,
Speaker 1: and it's just not the case. I just do not
Speaker 1: have this level of confidence, nor I think should anybody.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm off course here, on and on and on,
Speaker 1: this story goes about, oh yeah, basically all of these
Speaker 1: big Latin American movements to legalize abortion are in fact
Speaker 1: not the result of grassroots with Indigenous women rising up
Speaker 1: for their rights. No, it's liberals in the United States
Speaker 1: funding organizations to advance it and in some cases funding
Speaker 1: it skirting oversight from the Trump administration from the first
Speaker 1: Trump administration to do it. And if Elon Musk can
Speaker 1: bring stuff like this to heal it will be a
Speaker 1: massive benefit for the world. When don't we return my
Speaker 1: brief thoughts on the Kendrick Lamar halftime show next on
Speaker 1: The John Girardi Show. The Super Bowl halftime show is
Speaker 1: always a fairly significant little cultural moment, sort of gives
Speaker 1: us checks the temperature of who's popular and whatnot in
Speaker 1: American culture at the time, and the halftime show this year, uh,
Speaker 1: the starring attraction was Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar is a rapper.
Speaker 1: Say he's a pretty good rapper. His most popular song
Speaker 1: right now is a song talking about how another rapper
Speaker 1: named Drake has been having relationships with underage women. And
Speaker 1: it is basically an extended basically a verbal drive by
Speaker 1: assassination that is pretty hilarious at points and devastating towards Drake,
Speaker 1: who is Drake is like actually an incredibly popular famous
Speaker 1: pop slash rap singer. In fact, it's so bad that
Speaker 1: this this song by Kendrick Lamar about Drake, which became
Speaker 1: like number one most popular song in America. It's so
Speaker 1: been so devast stating to Drake's reputation that and I
Speaker 1: don't think rappers really ever do this when they get
Speaker 1: into wrap Beef's Drake actually has sued the record company
Speaker 1: for a defamation lawsuit, saying that Kendrick Lamar has promoted
Speaker 1: the idea that he's a pedophile and that actually he
Speaker 1: had a security guard who got shot by somebody because
Speaker 1: of Kendrick Lamar's Like it's that level of devastating, and
Speaker 1: here's Kendrick Lamar in front of, you know, hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of people watching the Super Bowl looking right into
Speaker 1: the camera and calling Drake a pedophile right to his face,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny. You know. I guess there's
Speaker 1: a part of me that's like, well, if that's not true,
Speaker 1: then it's the most horrific, evil act of you know,
Speaker 1: slander in human history. Now the the halftime show. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's funny about is that all of
Speaker 1: that that I just described the idea of you know
Speaker 1: rap battles, you know distracks in rap where basically rappers
Speaker 1: get into arguments with each other and write a rap
Speaker 1: song talking about how horrible the other person is and
Speaker 1: insulting the other person. There's this tradition of this within rap,
Speaker 1: and Drake and Kendrick Lamar having some sort of feud
Speaker 1: for some reason, all of this is completely incomprehensible by
Speaker 1: anyone over the age of fifty, who constitute a large
Speaker 1: part of the television audience. There's no which leads me
Speaker 1: to think, all right, the Super Bowls probably realizing that
Speaker 1: this went too far, and I'm or they're probably going
Speaker 1: to think that this whole thing went too far, and
Speaker 1: next year what we're going to do is we're going
Speaker 1: to have the safest, whitest musical act ever. Maybe next year,
Speaker 1: here's the Taylor Swift super Bowl. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: you are the Taylor Swift super Bowl. Maybe maybe even
Speaker 1: the Carrie Underwood super Bowl. But yeah, there's well it's
Speaker 1: gonna be an NBC super Bowl, so maybe it will
Speaker 1: be Carrie Underwood. You know, she's miss NBC. Now. So
Speaker 1: I've been laughing because basically every old person in America
Speaker 1: has had found the super Bowl halftime show to be
Speaker 1: completely incomprehensible and it's totally understandable, including even just like
Speaker 1: not actually being one hundred percent able to understand what
Speaker 1: Kendrick is saying. I mean, the Patois of modern day
Speaker 1: rap is not, you know, especially when it's going at
Speaker 1: a breakneck pace, is not going to be readily understandable.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's funny is Kendrick
Speaker 1: Mars trying trying to pose as if he's sort of
Speaker 1: anti establishment. It's like, dude, you're you're literally the super
Speaker 1: Bowl halftime show. There's nothing more like mainstream than this.
Speaker 1: Calm down, calm down a little bit. The other funny
Speaker 1: thing that I heard someone say was that white people
Speaker 1: will say that they couldn't understand a word, Kendrick Lamar said,
Speaker 1: and then put on some Pearl Jam. Come on, nobody
Speaker 1: could understand anything the Pearl Jam is singing either, So
Speaker 1: that'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time
Speaker 1: on Power Talk