Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-05-26_MONDAY_8AM

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

01-05-26_MONDAY_8AM

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. In Gradsbass. All right, we're going to catch up on what is happening with Venezuela and the various other national news deal with Fox. We'll have that coming up here in just a moment. Kim Commando's digital update and then the first, where past meets present, 2025. I'm going to dig into that with Dr. Dennis Powers and sure we'll be talking about Venezuela.

and, yes, I know it's the drugs, all about the drugs. I think you know it's a little bit more than just the drugs. Venezuela's like 1% of the drugs coming in here, and something tells me there are other ones we could have toppled, but no, it's probably tougher to. I don't know what. Maybe we'll topple Mexico next. Maybe that's it.

Wouldn't that be interesting? You know, you topple Mexico and then, you know, take that over and drive out the cartels or else you have the CIA run the cartels. I'm just kidding about that part. Only just a little bit. Scuba Steve's, you know, laughing at me. You know, we don't need cartels. We don't want their cartels.

We want our cartels, right? You know, we want to make sure that it goes into our deep state. Yeah, not their deep state. But anyway, we'll dig into all of that and a bunch more. Dr. Dennis Powers joins me next. Over the last 40 years, a lot of very beautiful homes have been built in our area. Take care of you. What a great deal.

I've got to go out and get some peanut butter. I need new wipers. I don't know what it is, but, the quality of wiper blades these days, as they have doubled and tripled and quadrupled in price. Have you noticed that they seem to just last like five or six months now? Rather than like a year or two? It's kind of funny how that works out. I don't know.

But, yeah, I'll be helping them out and wipe on hunger, too, and I hope you do too. This is KMED and KMEDHT1, Eagle Point Medford. KBXG grants pass. Two days after being captured in Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro will be in a courtroom in New York. I'm Dave Anthony. Fox News. He and his wife, who were taken into custody in that U.S. military raid were flown from their jail cells in Brooklyn this morning to the Manhattan federal courthouse, where Fox's Tanya J. Powers reports. He's facing charges, including narco-terrorism, and he and his wife were both accused of conspiracy to import cocaine. Maduro's arraignment is set for noon, and his lawyers are expected to argue that he is immune for prosecution as a sovereign head of state. Outside the courthouse, security is tight with many NYPD officers, barricades, lots of media crews,

Winchills are in the mid-20s. They are not stopping protesters, though, who have planned a demonstration against President Trump just feet from where I'm standing. Now, the president says the U.S. is in charge now in Venezuela, though Maduro's VP, Delsey Rodriguez, has been sworn in as the acting president. She put out a statement saying they want peace and dialogue. But the president tells reporters on Air Force One on his way back to the White House last night, if Rodriguez does not do what's right... She will face a situation probably worse than Brederner. Congressional leaders will get a briefing on the Venezuela... later today. Many Democrats have called it illegal, but Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden praised the operation's success with no American deaths telling Fox, this is the stuff that legends

are made of. Secretary of War Pete Heggseth will be part of that briefing. He has just censured this morning Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain cutting his military retirement pay after Kelly and other Democrats had recently warned U.S. troops about carrying out orders that are illegal. There's news out of Minnesota. Democratic Governor Tim Walls has dropped his bid for re-election amid federal investigations into these fraud allegations. The Somalian daycares and businesses would really just set up like sham companies, fake businesses, apply for government grants, and then pocket the taxpayer cash. Prosecutors say it's been going on for years, but it's gone viral in the past few days.

DHS is on the ground asking businesses, show us how you're using this cash. That's Fox's Alexis McAdams. America's listening to Fox News. Progressive Presents, Employee. I'm Dave Anthony. This is Fox News. Not only stocks, but gold, silver, platinum. Gosh, it's just all soaring today.

And is this inflationary, the look for inflationary pressures? I don't know. But I'm looking at gold up 2.5%. 4440 is where it is right now. It's under, boy, it's almost at its all-time high. Silver, 76, 68 an ounce. That has recovered quite amazingly. Platinum, up 6.5%.

gold up two and a half percent silver up five and a half percent it is just an astounding time to be into the precious metals for wealth preservation where you go j austin company golden silver buyers ashland 1632 ashland street in ashland sixth and g in downtown grants pass will it continue to soar to the moon i don't know maybe you're looking at this price and going man i better get my gold and i'm going to sell out or maybe you're saying yeah this is just the beginning according to the people I talk to. Either way, talk to Jay Austen, good people, and they help you, and they help you understand the buying and the selling of these issues,

and they are local, one of my biggest sponsors here for a long, long time, and I hope you'll do a business with them. Jay Austenbrokers.com, fortunereserve.com, that is fortunereserve.com. Gene is here. Hello, Gene. Now, you are formerly known as grumpy, Jean. So today, it's a brand new year, though. Welcome. Well, I'm not grumpy, but anyway.

Well, good. Two points I wanted to bring up. I would like to see the cops stop these cars that are driving with no light in the dark or in foggy conditions where you can't see the damn things coming. And another thing, the courier can have their name changed to brown nose because that's what they are. But Younger might bring up the point. You didn't bring home the bacon. And where does the bacon come from out of your pocket? Yeah.

That might be something that makes people think that. Yeah, yeah, the bacon was taken from you and redistributed to the pliable Democratic-friendly politicians. She, I get better names for them, but anyway. Yeah, all right. I still call on GD. All right, Jean. I appreciate the call. Thank you for that, okay?

Be well. I don't know if this is Dr. Powers or not. Is this Dr. Powers? No, I think this is your buddy from the SLM, Brad. Oh, okay. Sometimes I always kind of know the feel when Dr. Powers calls. He always calls in about this. Now, if we're going to have this, though, we have to have your theme.

I have not made my patica yet. I've got a good recipe. I'm going to go to work on that, Brad. What's on your mind, huh? Hey, I call you because you really picked me up. I got really depressed. Why is that? My wife and I had an opportunity to move to Minnesota and run daycares.

Oh, man. See, that was it. All this time you were thinking about having to work hard and come up with a retirement plan when the Somalians just figured, hey, we just have to open up some daycares. Nobody will notice, and they didn't for years. Did you imagine a Slovenian with a polka? Oh, my gosh. Name Stutch or something like that.

There you go. That's an image to remember, but gosh, you know, isn't it interesting? The worms turning. I hope you're right about that. You'd be well, okay? Thank you, my friend. Good hearing from you, and happy birthday. Dr. Powers joins me here in just a couple of minutes.

And it's where past meets present and Venezuela talk to. Who said the season of giving ends on Christmas? 16 after 8, Dr. Dennis Power, standing by. We'll get right to him just a moment, and Carol Ann is calling back, because you're going to change. You're going to be a pallet cleanser, I guess, on stuff we have been talking about. It had to do with a new story you heard. Maybe it was Markling Van Camp and Robbins talking about, huh? No, no.

It was national news at the news break. Oh, okay. When was this? It was, I can't remember what day it was, actually. I think it was probably like Friday or so. Whatever day they reported that Maldani in New York was sworn in. The first time I heard the report, at the end of the report, they said he was sworn in on the Koran. Yes, he was.

And I was like, oh, my gosh. And I listened to the rest of the day, they never said it again. It got swallowed. Well, you know what probably happened at that point that would be Islamic-phobic. Islamophobic. And, you know, and it's like if you have a snarling, bloodthirsty, rabid dog barking, and you notice that, that's Islamic phobic, okay? Right. Well, right. But, I mean, there's two points there. The most obvious is, to me, is this not America? I mean, on the Koran, please. And the other is that we aren't really getting

all the news, are we? Well, it's curated and massaged. How about that? For sure. All right. Thank you for noting that. I'm letting me express my frustration there. I lost touch for a minute this morning because I turned music on when I left yesterday for the cat

and I couldn't have trouble finding you on my AMFM radio, but I got you back. Well, I'm glad you did. Thanks for the call. All right. See you later. Bye-bye. We go to Dr. Dennis Powers, retired professor of... business law. Now, when you ended up, have you ever been sworn in on a Quran? Just kind of curious,

Dennis. Any thoughts on that? I've been sworn in on a number of, but I've always had the Bible. Oh, good for you. All right. Just kind of curious, I thought I would ask. And a retired professor of business law from Southern Oregon University. And we are definitely living in interesting times. Are we not, my friend? Oh, absolutely. And what we're seeing is the quickness. of social media, and also, for example, very quickly on Maduro is that within two hours of the announcement by President Trump, you already had demonstrations being organized by different left-wing groups and major cities in the United States within two hours. Yeah, interesting times. Yeah, it was almost like they were primed for it, even though nobody knew about it. The rental mob is available instantly for such things.

How fascinating how that works on the left side. It really is. Oh, it is. Interesting, Judy and I one time headed in because her friend of ours was being awarded the Silver Star and a number of really recognition for his work as a helicopter pilot, and Senator Merckley was there. And what we found when we walked in there is he had all these pre-printed signs that were there outside of this as a school in Medford that were demonstrated. demonstrating, you know, against different conservative values, and I watch people file into the gymnasium picking up these signs already pre-done and pre-put right where they could pick them up. Yep, nothing is ever what it appears in politics. That's for sure, Dennis.

I'll tell you what, we'll revisit the current stuff in just a minute, okay? We've got plenty to dig into. And a great palate cleanser. All right, so the Palac cleanser today is we're past, and today's past is the Medford Streetcar. And I bet a lot of people don't even remember that we had streetcars in downtown Medford at one point. Could you tell us a little bit about this? A little more than a hundred years ago, I guess, is when it got going. Yeah, this came in from one of the listeners, and I had looked into this before.

It's one that we go back over 130 years ago, but it's interesting because Medford did have street cars, but what we go into is take a look all those years ago, my friend, when we had so much that was set up for civilization and transportation, the railroad, for example, before cars came in with highway networks. And here, we had, going back to the 1890s, we had a railroad that actually stretched from Jacksonville and Medford because the original one that came through and established Medford had just bypassed Jacksonville. Yeah, and Jacksonville was kind of feeling a little smarted, and they wanted to, you know, smarting over that, and so they got that going between that railroad, railroad didn't last very long,

though, did it? That short line? Not in the scheme of things, but when we go into a major. your part of what transpired in southern Oregon, and especially Medford, being the orchard boom, you had in 1905 that was rightly where it was, where you had the first street car that was being under consideration. But then it then set up, and what was interesting was the fact that of where it went. It was a trolley. It was electrified. Was it electrified with a catenary above, or was it a electrified rail thing? Do you know? It was above. And there's, and a good place

for people to go if they're interested is that I had submitted different articles that were published in the Oregon Encyclopedia. But if you go to the Oregon Encyclopedia by Richard Thompson, You can find the Medford-Jacksonville streetcar system because what happened was, was that when the trolley was going in Medford, it followed West Main, Cross Bear Creek, around Keenway, and then ended at the prestigious Kensington Square, which was a largest state at the time that was then being built up. and from there, before you got there, you could pick up what then was made into a trolley on the railroad that went from Medford and came into Jacksonville, and that was electrified because the gauge was the same. And so what was interesting on this is that you had this incredible transportation that was very effective and very efficient, that lasted actually until 1920.

Okay, so it was about seven years, seven years or so, that we had street cars then, right? Approximately. But you know what was interesting, though, on this particular one was the fact that there was, in 1917, you had along on the Jacksonville route, you had a locomotive that was pushing two empty cars up the rail along Jackson Creek to pick up a log deck that was some three miles above Jacksonville because they'd been extending the line up. But through negligence, what happened was that they removed the blocks that kept the locomotive wheels from rolling backwards, which was what it did. And so it was out of control speeding down and then actually went ahead and raced across a wood trestle that spanned a canyon, one mile down from the log

camp, pledged in. The engineer died four hours later. And in any event, after that, the wreck train was removed. They found it. The line was abandoned. But then you continue to have the trolley going back and forth, although they couldn't go on the line of Jacksonville. And one, one One of the old-timers had mentioned to me that you probably couldn't go ahead and see it now because all the old trolley tracks were apparently ripped out. Oh, so it's not like – I was wondering if there were any remnants of it because in the city of Jacksonville there's that one section where they have a little bit of the old track from the old railroad that used to go between Jacksonville and Medford,

and they have a little bit of the rail which was exposed and left up there for. historical purposes. Yeah, correct. And then in terms of Medford, most of it was either paved over or ripped out nearly all. And so the evidence of this is out. But again, it was during this orchard boom and orchard bus. I would imagine that there was a huge growth in automobile traffic at that time. People were really kind of voting with that because the people that were coming into Medford pretty wealthy and they were probably driving cars I would guess would that be fair in in that time and they were from the the east and the Midwest and at one time the newspaper reported that uh that every resident let's put it this way there was for each car that was in Medford this is 1905 910 we're really going back

is is that for each car uh you had 500 residents, and that was the highest in the United States. And so there's no question that trolleys ran into problems. One of the great things we see about, you know, the private enterprise approach to economics is that rather than you having a government agency sitting on those old trolley tracks, you had cars, freeways, and then that was running into the competition of airlines. Yeah, yeah, it's all, it was all different. I was going to just mention, it's kind of funny because, you know, back then, the private trolley service, what was it, Southern Oregon Traction Company, I think is what it was called. Yeah, it was a fellow named Spencer Bullis.

Yeah. And he went bankrupt. He wasn't able to make that pencil, even though the traffic was probably pretty good at that point. And, you know, what we do now, though, is that we have a transit district, and if it had to compete for its, it actually run off of its fare box, it would be bankrupt, too. It's kind of funny how that works, what you think about it. Absolutely right, because Bullis found out that he couldn't make the money he really thought he could from the passenger fares on the Medford streetcars and Medford trolleys. He went bankrupt, and it was basically back in 1916, but he retained control of the railroad.

Yeah. But then the 1917, which really hit all of the... the newspapers here throughout when that engineer died when the train was out of control. Yeah, the bloom kind of went off the rail travel is what you're saying, essentially, right? The bloom was off, off that rose. You see when a locomotive with two cars half filled with logs are careening out of control backwards, I don't think I'd want to be on the trolley. Yep, you got a deal.

Wouldn't have worked. The Medford Streetcar, that's today's. Why don't we just take a quick break? We'll come back and we'll talk more about this. And we will go from the past to the present. And there's plenty going on there. This is the Bill Myers Show. When your neighbor tells you, call Fitzgerald Gas Services.

Welcome to the Bill Myers show on 1063, KMED. And I'm glad you're here for where past meets present, Dr. Dennis Powers. And you have an overall take on our Venezuelan escapades over the weekend here, Dr. Powers. Welcome back to Damien. Well, you know, what's really interesting is to see what the reaction has been. Now, politically, it's being hit with even calls for impeachment by the far left. But on the other hand, the stock market is really giving a yawn to it. The stock market right now is only up, well, it's up 1.5%. You know that Senator Merckley said that it's about the oil, and I would agree with him up to a certain. point. The whole thing about the, you know, the whole thing about the, well, this is about the drugs. You know, first off, it's cocaine. President Trump even pardoned a cocaine-dealing Honduras president, you know, just a few weeks ago, as in a matter. I don't think it was

really about the drugs, but it was certainly a good pretext to use to have some regime change. I honestly think it had to do with the oil, but about keeping the oil priced in dollars rather than yuan or roubles. I was reading a financial blog, and I tend to look at this more from a financial point of view. Have any take on that, doctor? I think it's about defending dollar supremacy, and that's a big, big, big, big deal,

and a challenge for the Trump administration, too. Well, what I find interesting is that you have a lot of experts that are taking different positions about legitimacy, about the economic impact. But, you know, it's only been about three days. And so there's a lot of time that's going to be going down before you have really an idea as to how this move is working out. Well, when you think about what happened then essentially with that takeover, you know how President Trump was not really sticking with the script? And Marco Rubio and others are saying, oh, yeah, yeah, this is about this is a law enforcement issue with the drugs and that.

And, of course, President Trump then started talking, yeah, we're going to take over, we're going to run Venezuela, and we're going to get the oil companies back in there. and the funny thing is is that the oil companies have been very silent about this. Chevron's the only one that's there right now, isn't it? I find it fascinating. Well, what's fascinating is the fact that as we're all going into this hoopla, you know, in terms of what happened with Maduro, you had Bush who actually invaded Panama where there wasn't one peep, even with a Democratic Congress to get Noriega. who addressed as a woman and fled to the Vatican embassy. Yeah, I forgot about that one.

Yeah, you're right. I remember that now. And that was really, you had some 200, no, you had like 37 U.S. troops that were killed. You had a lot. And when Judy and I were down in Panama, because I came in there to do some research on a couple of articles that I had published having to do with my Bissenthal profession on the Panama, canal, I ran into the individual who was in charge of dismantling Noriega's troops and his militia, and the atrocities that Norega had done, was really under. Oh, it's true.

And Maduro, but the thing is, though, if all we do is go after finding out, who was it a founding father that said, you know, not looking for hobglob hobgoblins abroad, you know, to seek to destroy. We can always find bad dudes to go out and attack. There's no shortage of that in our world. You're absolutely right, Bill. Absolutely right. But, you know, Obama was the one that was able to take a Gaddafi in Libya. And by the way, no word about that from the Democrats at the side.

That's right. And if you recall correctly, I've got to tell you, one of the worst things we did was taking out Gaddafi because it was essentially he kept a lid on it, all right? Well, even Bill Clinton, when he was able to make sure that he didn't go ahead and blow up a baby powder factory, was able to, with Kosovo and Serbia, which was a real, incredible war that took place. So there's always been these things where presidents have been forced by what they feel is public opinion to go into these types of various. But isn't it honestly, though, when it comes right down to it, quit talking about us being a limited government representative republic.

We are an empire of sorts. We have been for a long, long time since World War II. And I think that we almost sell ourselves a story that, oh, yeah, rule of law, and we're doing a political. lease action in Venezuela. Now, we do what big countries do. Isn't in that a fair assessment, a better assessment? It may not be something that we like, but that's the reality of where we are. It's kind of like, was it Cheney was always talking about, we make our own reality, that kind of thing? Yeah, but you know, Bill, I understand the arguments that are coming in, and they're going to be political too because you have the election coming up. Oh, yeah. I mean, when Wyden

and Merckley are all talking about there's, oh, they're against this, this is about the oil, it's like, yeah, and that's fine, and you sat on your hands when Obama was doing the same thing. This is just kind of, this is what we do as an empire, isn't it? Well, you know, from the legal end, I think what's going to be interesting

is that if you follow what happened with Noriega, which is very, very appropriate, you'll see all of the legal arguments that come in, because what Noriega did he had a better defense that he would ever have anywhere else underneath American law,

which is what's applicable here. But he used his attorneys, used head of state, can't go ahead and do this. He's a P-O-W, if you say that he had a legitimacy. Well, but it's like, you know, we, the reason I, and by the way, I'm not talking us down, I'm just talking about the reality where we find ourselves. You can, everybody can sit around there and talk about, you know, the sovereign leader of a country or the duly elected leader of a country that only matters until it doesn't. And I think that our government and our people decided that Maduro, and by the way, this has been a long time that Maduro has been on the, not on the kill list necessarily, but the deposed list, right? This has been a long time.

This is going back many administrations, isn't it? Yeah, and you see, of past administrations, they did nothing. For example, where this really comes true, and I remember this, as I'm sure you do as well, my friend, is the fact that Chavez, who was the one before Maduro, nationalized the oil industry. Yeah, that's essentially taking the property of other people and stealing it. but, you know, but governments do that. Our own government does the same thing. We just call it, you know, eminent domain.

Not, yeah, but eminent domain in terms of where the confiscation that happened in Venezuela in Iran and these other countries were way over what our eminent domain could ever do because of the rule of law. And give you an example, I found out that they actually went being Conical Phillips and Exxon, actually went to international arbitration, and they came up that Venezuela owed, now this is some years ago, $10 billion for the value of all of the property being oil wells, refineries, transportation, ships, and it was a confiscation that made what Iran did look just as bad. But then, you know, that's trying to collect it on is certainly going to be another issue there.

Now, the oil companies are not talking much about this because their Venezuelan oil is not what it once was. There is a lot of it available. I was doing some research on this over the weekend. And what I think is interesting and why the oil market is kind of just going, Dr. Powers, is because essentially what Trump has done is, cornered the market on crude that we could actually use. He kicked the Chinese in the gonads, and he also kicked the Russians in the gonads with his one. Because remember, the Chinese were buying this oil directly. And so that was a big part, the big part of Chinese oil imports up there, a big deal. But at least, even though the oil from Venezuela

is very heavy. It's heavy, dark, high sulfur crude, very tarry, lots of asphalt in it, you know, that kind of stuff. American, the old American refineries can actually handle this stuff. And a lot of people don't realize that a lot of this sweet crude that we get from the fracking, everyone's been talking about the fracking miracle, right? We can't refine that here. We have to send it overseas. We export that. People import that from us. But then we we can take this Venezuelan crude and actually turn it into stuff in our own refineries in the United States. So it actually is kind of a corner of the market now.

Big reserves there. Well, I'm looking at also the political environment, geopolitical environment. And for example, the inroads made in a long run as to the Central America is really amazing. recall also that we had Trump that went ahead and got right into the Panama Canal. Right. I remember that. Well, it caused the Chinese influence going on there. But what happened there, my friend, is the fact that they were able to get those contracts canceled, where China had all of the chokeholds on the Panama Canal. Then we can go to on the Honduran one. Boy, that's an interesting one, my friend, because what example was,

Biden, in 2022, had the Honduran president, Juan Hernandez, arrested after leaving office on drug charges. And I think that President Trump pardoned that president, correct? Because he looked at it in terms of a Biden setup. But if we look at Maduro, which I remember when Biden did it, he went ahead and he was the one that got the license onto Maduro's head. and put up the bounty as $25 million during his administration. By the way, who collects that, do we know? And then he said, that's fine. Yeah, but do we know who collects that yet?

You know, the actual bounty? Oh, if you, it'd be, it's the same way as here in the United States. Oh. It's the same thing as being whoever gives the, the, the, and works it. And I think it's almost impossible to do, but arranges for the, the finding and arrest. Oh. What do you think is the high bar? What are the odds of a hard left-wing judge ordering Maduro to be released? Serious question. I know you may laugh about this, but I could I see it coming.

Could I be wrong? No, no. I'm not laughing at it because I think that our court system here is absolutely absurd, as we've been seeing in terms of where we have district court judges who are acting as a president, whether you agree with what Trump is doing or not, the way that the district courts have come in is abominable. And you know, the reason is, as I mentioned before, was the fact that you had Obama and Biden got through over 75% of the appointments now to district court judges. But where Trump was smart, my friend, he came in and he has a slight majority of the appellate courts. Now, where that's important is that there's some really good decisions that came down on Friday. Yeah, that was a good one. Why did we talk about that one here and just a minute after the break here, Doctor? Okay, we'll continue on this because there was some great legal news.

We'll do that next. Okay? Sure. All right. It's 844. If you want to talk with Dr. Powers and bring in something here too, this is the Bill Myers Show, 7705-633. This hour of the Bill Myers Show is sponsored by Fontana Roofing. For roofing gutters and sheet metal services, visit Fontana Roofing.

services.com. Two dogs fabricating is your exclusive north star or visit clouserdrilling.com. The Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. State 47, back with Dr. Powers. We're past meets present. Chris is here too. Chris, I was talking about the type of crew that Venezuela is awash in, even though they haven't been producing a whole lot lately. You used to work in refineries, especially these older refineries out on the West Coast. Give us a quick take here with Dr. Powers on your knowledge about. about that, about whether we can use that oil or not. From my look of it, we can.

Well, that's right. We can. We'll be able to get that product here and refine it, because all our refineries here in California can handle, I know I've worked in almost every unit in Wilmington in Torrance and in the Concord area, the Bay Area over the years. and we have all the processes and all the, in all these refinings, like I said, the distillation, outulation unit.

They've built several new units in the Bay Area. But the bottom line, though, is that they can handle this heavy crude, this tarry crude that Venezuela tends to pump. Now, the sweet stuff that we get from the fracking, we have to export that, right? We can't really handle that to the same extent. I don't know about, I think they use a sweet product, the top. It's like it's one of the end byproducts, and I'm sure we use it here. Okay, yeah, I didn't think, though, that usually the heavy stuff is used a lot for diesel, especially.

Hey, I appreciate the call. Thanks for that. So, definitely, I think that there's a lot to do with the Trump administration cornering a market there. That seems to make strategic sense here, doctor, wouldn't it, long term? Well, if you bring in Russian oil, that what is happening is that this would be competitive to Russia. And when we take a look at where the oil prices are going, it really is so far very interesting, a yawner, because it's a one-and-a-half percent increase in terms of overseas crude and also West Texas. And this is a very complicated market with a lot of players from Saudi Arabia to Iran, I mean, all the places. And so we'll have to wait and see how this all settles down.

Yeah, right now it's very – it's very early in this situation. Very early. But to me, that's where the real national security issue is involved here, especially not – or wanting to make sure that Canada and China and Russia are not – really the controlling authorities in Venezuela. Would that be a fair assessment of looking at this? And you know, Bill, there's going to be a long, long time between here and there. And the reason is that what happened in Venezuela, as you're in animating, is the fact that because of embargoes and because of communism, these fields are just absolutely decrepit. It's going to take a lot, And, you know, years ago, you know, I worked for oil companies, just try to earn college money.

Yeah, and you know how years ago back when you were here, Venezuela was suffocated. Yeah, Venezuela was providing about 3% of the world's crude. It's about less than 1% right now at the moment because it's all screwed up. And the number of reserves are being thrown out, are just vacillating back and forth, depending who's saying that they're the expert. but you're absolutely right it's going to be an interesting ride from here to there yeah and did you did you agree with me though that president trump had trouble sticking with that script though because marco was talking about oh this is the rule of law we're here on the drugs and things of course the drugs are nonsense it's for domestic consumption right you know because that's not you know you need that pretext to do what the system is wanted to do i think there for quite some time but you know then president trump's going to you know you Yeah, we're going to go in. We're going to run Venezuela, and we're going to bring them all in and get those oil companies in there. And the oil companies aren't saying a word this morning right now, not at all. You see, these are, this is, as you know, these are just, this is just legal posturing for the courts as to, you know, this breach of American law and the bounty that was on him.

And actually, the geopolitical effects are really waiting to be played out. And that, I think, is going to be, this is going to be quite a ride, my friend. Agreed. I guess what I'm kind of wondering here is, will the president start turning his attention back closer to home? Because the rumblings that I'm hearing politically is that, you know, in spite of what some would call good news with, you know, liberation of Venezuela and some changes going on there, that the base is very fractured right now when it comes to keeping Republican control in the midterms at this point? Well, on affordability, which is the point that's coming through here, looking at domestic

and getting out the vote, which is so important, because I listen to all these commentators and I just keep thinking, you know, I can see that they're postulating to keep their position as an expert on whether it's CNBC or whether it's Fox News or whether it's with the New York Times. Well, the reason I brought it up, though, the division here. Did you happen to hear or see General Michael Flynn's ex post of about a week ago? I think it was last Monday, but he put it out there. Did you see that by chance? I did, and on that particular point, I agree with Hexat, who's going ahead, and is putting a letter of really almost dishonorable discharge, although he's not, as to that senator who was still on duty. Yeah, Mark Kelly, you're talking about. Of course, you and I may disagree on this.

I don't know why it is controversial to even remind people in the military that you're not supposed to follow online. awful orders. But be that as it may, we'll set that aside. What I was talking about with General Flynn, though, is that Flynn put out there, of course, Flynn was a diehard Trump supporter. And near the end of his message, Flynn is asking the president outrises, will you stand with we the people, or will you protect the system that failed us? And apparently the soldier is worried like a lot of a disaffected Trump supporters that the answer may not be like what he wants to hear. We'll stand with you through thick and thin, but you must respect our wishes. If you don't, as our founders warned, the deep state concentration of power in government will lead to a

greater corruption and tyranny. And what General Flynn is talking about is really wanting prosecutions of the people that abused us so greatly these last decade or two, you know, and he's not seeing any of that. That's what General Flynn seems to be most worried about. And That's what a lot of Trump supporters were worried about. What troubles me, being honest, is that the argument being used now by the far left, and if we think Mondami is bad now, wait, the problem, Bill, to me, is that here you have the argument going ahead by the far left, saying, when we get back in power, we're going to go ahead and try you, ICE, for dereliction of duty and for all these things. And what's coming in is then that Kelly feels...

Yeah, but then we don't touch anybody right now, either. We're not touching anybody, at least from what I can tell the Trump administration's really not touching anybody. Oh, yeah, well, right now on Mark Kelly, who's that senator from Arizona will get a formal censure letter and they're investigating as to whether he made a serious, seditious statement when he went ahead and was quoted

as a video that really hit through social media having to do you do not have to follow an illegal order obviously we knew what they were saying and this this is just unreal to me. Yeah, I don't know why that's considered so controversial, but you and I will disagree on that a bit, okay? Oh, and I respect your opinions, of course, for all the years we've worked together. Absolutely. We'll do it again next week. How about that? All righty? Sounds like a winner,

and you have a great day and you take care. Thank you, Doctor. It's 855 and change. This is the Bill Meyer show. Ready to upgrade your roof to it. And I'm on KMED. Don't have a lot of time left, but, man, I'm going to give you a bite of what is going on this morning. Hey, you being a financial guy, but you agree that part of this deal is to make sure that the oil is continued to be priced in Venezuela, in dollars, and not in the yuan, et cetera? What do you think? No, I don't. I don't think this is about oil at all. I wasn't actually even going to address that. That's not why I call it. Oh, no, what I'm talking about is oil from the financial side of the ledger is what I'm talking about, Not about oil, oil, but keeping control away from China.

Well, yeah, and what I'm going to read you here is tied to China. Okay. So, well, I'll just get to it because I know you're in a hurry, but this is something I haven't really heard anybody address in the news. Now, we know that the initial comments from the news morning president of Venezuela were sort of, you know, screw you Trump. Yeah. But then they came out with a second statement. And I'm just going to read it quickly. It's basically three sentences.

Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence. Our country aspires to live without external threats and the environment of respect and international cooperation. We invite the U.S. to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence. our people and our regions deserve peace and dialogue, not war, aligning, okay, this statement, and you wouldn't remember this. I read on air, it was translated from Chinese, from the Chinese government, and I can't remember it was during Trump's first term, and he was taking action. I think it was, it might have been about the police force that Chinese, the government

has set up in this country, right, but this statement. was not written by her, obviously. This statement was written by China. It is almost word for word what they wrote when we were busting their chops, almost the same thing. And they were talking about, oh, cooperation in colleges, and it's the same wording. Well, that kind of goes to my point, though, that taking control of the oil is really about kicking China out of there. No, I don't think so. I think it was generally about picking out China, Iran, and Russia.

You know, we don't have time to talk about it on there. I just wanted to get that out there. Okay. This paper was written by Chanik, because China's freaking out. Remember, they had a delegation there the day of snatching this guy. Yeah. Well, yeah, but it always was, but I think that oil and drugs are the pretext. But anyway, we'll talk more tomorrow, okay?

Appreciate the call. All right, go. Get you later. Thank you, man. 9 o'clock. See you tomorrow. 1063, KMED and KMED HD1. Eagle Point.