War Is a Racket
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War is a racket. Retired US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler said it. War is a racket. Rand Paul, who again was my choice in 2016 for the presidency, and prior to him, I was his father. I wanted Ron Paul to win the Republican nomination rather than Mitt Romney. He was on the Ingram Angle, Laura Ingram’s program.
and said that spending billions to aid multiple foreign countries simultaneously threatens the very existence of our currency and perhaps our country. Again, an echo of the points that we’ve been making here on the program. Just as we saw on the run-up to the Iraq War, the big spenders and the big war advocates in Congress are demanding unanimity. They want no debate.
demand the hundreds of billions of dollars that will fly out the door. And they played a clip of Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House of Representatives calling for the House to take up this national security package and humanitarian relief package immediately in totality and without delay. Again, did Republicans push back on Jeffries? No.
Rand Paul, and again, I don’t see it, Rand. God bless you, man. I don’t see it. He felt optimistic in regards to Mike Johnson. Last week on the podcast, we talked about Mike Johnson. And I think all Mike Johnson is going to do is to divvy up the various different packages. Divvy up the various different packages, maybe not send as much to the Ukraine.
and call it a win. And they actually mentioned that minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, hey, met with the old axis of evil crew, met with Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush. And they walked away with a firm commitment to all of these projects. Everything that’s going on in the world is connected. It’s all connected and Hamas is connected to Iran and Iran is connected to Russia.
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and Russia is connected to China. And I’m sorry, it’s a big load of bull excrement, if you ask me. Yep, we are back. We’re back to the Axis of Evil days. Because hey, that marketing plan sold really, really well back in 2002. W, yeah, W, State of the Universe, Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. No, I don’t think these things are related or connected.
at all. And actually, Ingram asked Rand Paul the same thing. And he said, No, said I would only say that they are related in the sense that they’ll bankrupt our country and sending money everywhere all over the planet. It’s probably the greatest threat to our national security. If that’s what we are thinking we’re supposed to do is to protect our national security. The greatest threat is national debt. We borrowed a trillion dollars in the last three months, it’s out of control spending, and we’re threatening the very existence of our currency and perhaps our country.
by this crazy, profligate spending. And I happen to agree with that. Visual Capitalist, I like this neat company. It actually, they put together numbers and they put together charts where you can actually visualize. Again, today’s day and age, young people, they need to see stuff. And they did, they ranked the world’s top 25 defense companies by revenue.
Revenue, and let’s take a look at some of these companies. Just looking at perspective, 2022, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin, 96% of their total revenue comes from defense spending, $633 billion. That’s in 2022. RTX Corporation, which was formerly Raytheon, $396 billion. And this is just their defense revenues. Northrop Grumman, $324 billion.
Got a Chinese company, it’s owned by the Chinese government, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, 310 billion. Boeing, 308 billion. General Dynamics, 304 billion. BA Systems, which is UK, 252 billion. Another Chinese company, China North Industries Group, 180 billion. I can go on and on and on.
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But at least this up, you’re talking trillions of dollars spent every year. Or is a racket. I talked a little bit about Mike Johnson last week and the interview he did on Hannity. And again, I’m sorry. I know Rand Paul’s, you know, see something in this guy and everybody saying what a nice guy is and how wonderful. But I think he’s bought into the
the racket as well. Again, he is presenting Moscow, Beijing and Tehran as some sort of trilateral threat, new axis of evil. It’s a dangerous time, he said. And again, he’s doing this whole the knee bonus connected to the thigh bone, you know, type thing here. Hamas and Hezbollah are proxies of Iran, and they’re tied in now with Russia and China. I mean,
It is a new axis of evil. It is, they’re all doing the same thing. They’re all singing the same fricking tune, the fricking donkeys, the fricking elephants, the same BS. All a huge threat, existential threat to the United States on Ukraine. Johnson stated that the support for Ukraine must continue. Now we can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine because I don’t believe it will stop there, he said.
What do you mean? Where? Where are you going to go? He’s going to start invading NATO countries? I don’t see it. I don’t. And again, there’s this line of thinking too. If we don’t stop Vladimir Putin, well, then China is going to be encouraged to invade Taiwan. China could take Taiwan any freaking time they want to take Taiwan.
They could have taken Taiwan decades ago. They could have taken Taiwan last year, 10 years, five years ago if they wanted Taiwan. They don’t think that way.
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We’re not going to stop it. We’re going to get involved in that. Are you out of your mind? Sure. I’m sure we’ll send more weapons there. I’ve already gone over this for crying out loud. You can’t even get the Taiwanese people for that matter to want to go and fight against China. It’s not going to happen. And for some Vladimir Putin. I know Xi Jinping is watching that freaking meat grinder that’s taking place.
between Ukraine and Russia and he’s saying to himself, yeah, you know what, I want to get involved in that mess too.
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I’m sorry. I’m not. It’s going to encourage and empower China to perhaps move on Taiwan. Do you understand? You’re insulting my intelligence here. You really are. You’re insulting my… Okay, that is going to be the deciding factor for China. Whether or not they decide to go to Taiwan is whether or not Putin prevails.
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Anyway, he said he’d like to see more oversight, additional aid, but did not say it was a requirement to pass this multi billion dollar assistance bill.
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Yeah, all they’re going to do is they’re going to split the bill up and they’re going to call it a win. That’s what’s going to happen. Again, he mentioned that he supports boots on the ground in order for us to stand with Israel.
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Where do they not support boots on there? I’m just out of curiosity. Oh, I know we’re busy waging that proxy war there in Ukraine. And don’t tell me we don’t have military personnel doing training there because we do. But when’s it gonna end? And again, people, I’m gonna read you something. There’s a…
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There’s a military conference that’s taken place in China right now. It’s a gathering of military and diplomatic officials in China. Actually, China doesn’t, they fire their defense, they’re sitting defense chief. They don’t have a defense chief there, but they’ve got a top Chinese military official, one of the more senior officials. And this is what he had to say.
what he had to say. And I’m going to read it. You can decide whether or not he has a point to some degree. As we look across the world today, hotspot issues are arising one after another. The pain of war, chaos and turmoil and loss of life are constantly playing out. However, some countries for fear that the world may stabilize, deliberately create turmoil.
interfere in regional issues, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, and instigate color revolutions. For the sake of their own selfish interests, they bury nails everywhere, they create many artificial geopolitical conflicts, then preach impartiality when they are actually favoring one side, making regional situations complex and intractable. Behind the scenes, they hand out knives and think nothing of provoking people into wars.
ensuring that they’re the ones who benefit from the chaos. Having provoked an acute crisis in Europe, the West is trying to expand the crisis potential in the Asia-Pacific. Direct involvement of countries with nuclear arsenals multiplies the strategic risks. The West’s line toward escalation with Russia poses a risk of direct conflict between nuclear powers, which result in catastrophic consequences. Okay, you may not fully agree on.
I think he’s kind of pushing the issue to some degree, but you have to say he’s got a bit of a point.
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Does he not have a bit of a point? And do you think that many countries around the world see us in this manner, in this fashion, at this point in time? We’ve got a lot of issues we’ve got to deal with here in the United States, and we see them played out every single day. You see them played out every day if you try to decide to walk into a CVS for crying out loud, and have to call security to get your toilet paper.
unlocked. It’s again, I want to focus here at home, rather than saying that we can handle everything all over the globe. We’re like pot binds. We’re the United States of America. Damn, we can do whatever we want. Yeah, well, we can’t control our border. Cities are out of control. We have a commercial real estate crisis. Food insecurity is at record highs. I can go on and on and on. Okay, maybe we can’t walk and chew gum anymore. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.