S15 EP45: Hour 1 - Muddying Truth

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Welcome to the Eric Erickson Show podcast, hour one.

Greetings, conversationalists. Welcome to Zurich Erickson here. I hope you're awake. The stupid

time. Just pick one. I don't care. Just pick one. In any events, hi, digress. Welcome. The

phone number is 877-973-745. Text Eric ERIC-K to 33777. I got to begin with an awful story,

and it is a genuinely awful story, and there is a point to this story. I am friends with the

family of Jason Hughes. This has made national news. Good morning, America, to the story about it,

and I got a really credit. WSB TV and radio in Atlanta, Georgia, for getting the story more

right than any other news outlet in Georgia, and a lot of the national news outlets. It's been

appalling to see the media coverage of this outside of my own flagship stations coverage.

This is a story that made good morning, America this morning, and I know the family, and there's

a larger story that ties into everything else in the news, but just let me tell you the basic story.

I'm a professional here. I'm going to try to do what I want to do and extrapolate out from it.

Jason Hughes is a 40-year-old teacher in Gainesville, Georgia at a high school.

And on Friday night, some of his very favorite students showed up to roll his house,

to TP, to put toilet paper around it. He knew they were coming. It had been raining,

and they waited for the rain to subside, and they rolled his house. He waited for them to be finished

to run out to surprise them, ran across his yard as they were driving off, and he slipped

on the wet grass and fell into the road as they were driving by, and the students ran over him.

He died at the scene with the students, who have now been charged with vehicular homicide

and manslaughter, among other things. And national headlines claimed there was a confrontation,

the students killed the teacher. It was a terrible tragedy, and it was an accident,

it was a terrible accident. And this poor family that now has to plan a funeral is also having

to work to get these kids out of jail because it was an accident. There was no maliciousness.

Bad things sometimes happen. The teacher loved the kids, the kids loved the teacher.

These are seniors. Five of them have been charged. They're going to live lifelong with the trauma

of what happened. They don't need to also live under indictment or jail because of an accident.

And again, the family of the deceased, I was just texting his brother-in-law a little while ago.

In fact, I'll read you directly what his brother-in-law said. His brother-in-law said,

there was no confrontation. Jason knew the students were coming. He was excited and wanted to catch

them in the act. It had been raining and he accidentally slipped and fell into the road

in front of the vehicles as they were driving away and was hit. The students tried to provide aid

until the paramedics arrived. Jason loved these students. They loved him.

Our family fully supports getting the charges dropped for all involved. This is a terrible tragedy,

and our families determined to prevent a separate tragedy from occurring, ruining the lives of these

students. That would be counter to Jason's lifelong dedication of investing in the lives of these

children. That's from his brother-in-law. Now, I bring up this local story because I mentioned it

online, and you could imagine what happens on social media. And by the way, I would be remiss if

I didn't say, if you text the word donate to 33777, I'll send you a link to the GoFundMe account

for Jason Hughes' family. He leaves behind a wife and two young boys, and they could certainly use

the help text donate to 33777. So I put this on social media, and if you've never heard my story

about how social media came about, there's a story in Mark 5 in scripture of the demon possessman

come out of a cemetery. They see Jesus, and the demons know it's Jesus, and they say Son of Man

basically don't destroy us. And Jesus is what would you have me do? And the demons say,

well, there's a herd of pigs running by, put us in the pigs. And Jesus says, well, what is your name?

And they say Legion for we are many. And he casts the Legion of demons into this massive herd of

pigs, and the pigs promptly run down the hillside into the lake, and they all drown. Well, demons

are immortal beings, and they had to do something. And so after they got out of the pigs, they started

Twitter. And thus explains social media and the demonic forces of social media. It's a terrible

gutter. I mentioned the story of Jason Hughes this weekend because it was getting so badly

misrepresented by so much of the local press. My friend Martha Zoller just texted me and said

her radio station and outlet up in Gainesville. Thankfully got the story right. Much of Atlanta

media got it wrong. Much of the national press got it wrong. And I attempted to correct the record

over the weekend. And a funny thing happened. The number of people who couldn't process

us that a terrible tragedy could happen. Someone must be to blame. Clearly, I didn't know the facts.

Clearly, there was a problem. Things like this just don't happen. Actually, bad things happen

all the time, unexplained tragedies. People accidentally struck by lightning. Houses that catch

on fire and the smoke detector battery was changed and the smoke detector still didn't work.

And people die. People are in car crashes. This is a horrible, horrible tragedy. These children

and they are children. They are 18 year old kids in high school. Do not deserve to be in jail.

Nor do they deserve to be prosecuted. And yet there are people who know nothing of the facts.

Who when they hear the story, they can't process that something bizarre might happen. Something

freak accident might happen. Freak accidents happen all the time. There's an entire movie about

freak accidents happening called final destination. When it's your time, it's your time is basically

the story of the movie. And people can't process this anymore. There must be a sinister hand. There

must be something. People are really good at oversimplifying the complex and over complicating

the simple because our brains in the 21st century with technology and everything. They can't

process it. They can't handle it. They don't understand it. And I would extrapolate from this

story to what's happening in the Middle East right now because something interesting is happening

online. There are a growing number of Americans who are convinced that there is a government

conspiracy to cover up the war dead. Seven Americans have tragically been killed by Iran.

And there is a belief online that actually there must be thousands of war dead and probably

some of our ships blown up. Why? Because Iran has fired so many missiles and drones, it is

impossible for Americans to not have been killed. Because they've seen war on TV, they've seen war

in the movies. They do not understand. They do not appreciate. They cannot comprehend the defensive

capabilities of the United States and Israel. Therefore, there must be a cover up. In the same way

people cannot understand a distinct accident, freak accident, tragedy of a man slipping into the

road and falling as kids are driving by and they can't stop from hitting him. The roads are wet and

and they can't stop. People can't process that Americans can withstand thousands of missiles

and drones from Iran and not to be killed. There must be a cover up. People have lost their

capacity in the 21st century to be able to figure out what is true and what is false.

They have lacked the capacity now to discern what is truthful, what is accurate and what is

factual. And people want to fill in the gaps with other information. In the same way you've got

people out there who are still convinced we never landed on the moon. It's got to be a government

conspiracy. People cannot understand that a bad tragedy could happen in Gainesville, Georgia and

they cannot understand that the American defensive capabilities are so good that we can shoot down

as many missiles and drones as possible to ensure no one dies other than seven servings. And seven

is a tragedy. But this is a war. Whether the Republicans want to call it a war or not, this is a war

with Iran. It is an existential threat of survival for Iran, which needs to be eliminated as a

terror threat in the world. And people just can't fathom it. Jill Stein is a doctor who ran for

president of the United States twice. And it is Jill Stein in large part who Democrats like to blame

in 2016 for Trump. Because Jill Stein got enough votes that had Hillary Clinton gotten them.

She would have swung some states and won the electoral college. Jill Stein is a doctor and a

presidential candidate who retweeted an Iranian AI generated video that even had the water mark for

Google Gemini claiming to show the capture of a massive number of American troops in Iran.

If this is true, this is an outrage. He said there were no troops in Iran. This is a terrible

defeat to the Americans. They said you can see the water mark, the AI generated water mark for

Google Gemini and people were falling for it. It's wild that people don't want to believe anything

anymore, but you show them an AI video. And well, it must be true. Y'all, I saw a kitten morph into

a lion that turned into King David and he slaughtered the Iranians. It must be true that kitten

must be the second coming of King David, the lion of Judah come to wipe them all out because I saw

the AI video. It must be true. We live in wild and absurd times where so many things have gotten so

much more simple. You can get on cloth or chat GPT and ask questions and find out explanations

which may or may not be true. They're getting better at telling the truth, but also we live in a

world where there are still deep, complicated things. People have decided there must be a

pharma conspiracy because we can't cure cancer or pharma one should have cancer.

It's all concocted conspiracy theories to try to rationalize a world people don't understand.

And what I'm learning more and more is there are a whole lot of people who are far

dumber than they think they are. You got a lot of people out there who really think they're smart

and they're actually pretty stupid. You got a lot of stupid people out there who are actually

smarter than they think. We can caught conspiracy theories and other things because we can't

process the world around us and our brain wants to fill in the holes. Sometimes bad things just

happen. There's no one to blame. There's no need to prosecute these kids.

Bad things just happen. Tragedies happen. Sometimes they happen

without anyone to blame. Sometimes we surpass your understanding and our capabilities as a country.

And we are better at things than you thought because you're used to betting against the country.

And the country is actually far better than you think it is. We are a country that was able to go

in to Venezuela and capture the president of Venezuela who is now in jail in New York City at

Rikers Island. How many people have thought about Maduro in the past week or two? We went in there

we got him without losing a single soldier. One of whom got the Medal of Honor because he was shot

twice was bleeding out. It was still able to land his helicopter before passing out from the

loss of blood. Guy looks like a like I mean central casting for Clark Kitt.

One the Medal of Honor. Amazing troops. No loss of life we captured the Venezuelan president.

We've now gone into Iran and in one week we have dismantled their capacity to make war.

Their missile and drone ability to attack us has been diminished greatly. We've taken out the

Ayatollah. There's now a new Ayatollah. He'll be taken out shortly. I'm sure.

We are arming dissidents inside inside Iran making it safe for them to take up arms against the

country. We have the Saudis and the Emirates working to realign oil capacity to stabilize markets.

We are an amazing country with amazing people but some of the people in this country

are brain-addled, fried, lost or dumber than they think they are and they can't process

stories and the media that should help us process stories is too busy with their own biases

and their own need for clicks to sensationalize stories or get stories wrong because

their biases the media has lost the ability to navigate these stories as well.

So we're flying blind and people are extrapolating and putting in facts that don't exist to try to

make things work for them in their brain to be able to process them but what you need to process

is this. Sometimes there are terrible tragedies and bad things happen and sometimes you underestimate

the ability of this country to do amazing things and you shouldn't extrapolate from that

that the bad thing is happening there's a cover up you should be proud of your country.

The world can be overly complicated sometimes and sometimes it can be way more simple than you think

and how you decide whether it's complicated or simple can help you arrive at the truth of the lie

and one more time if you text the word donate to 33777 I'll send you a link to the GoFundMe account

for the Hughes family. Friends I come not to explain away high oil and gas prices gas prices have

gone up because of the situation the Middle East still lower than the peaks of the Biden administration

but they're still high interestingly enough when I talk to you regularly about American leadership

in the world and how there are benefits to American leadership in the world that you don't want to

be dismissive of but a lot of people want to retreat from the world and be isolationist remember

what I've said exchange rates we get the best exchange rates in the world because so many

transactions are done in dollars we get the best interest rates in the world because banking

is done in dollars well guess what your gas prices have gone up but you know where they're up

even higher Cuba China Asian countries Europe we are not insulated from global oil and natural

gas prices but we're far more insulated than the rest of the world part of it is our own domestic

manufacturing and production thanks in large part to the leadership of Donald Trump

we have a bunch of people in this country who want us to get rid of natural gas and oil and go to

solar and wind and nonsense like that y'all we actually benefit by natural gas and oil

we benefit by having expanded pipelines for natural gas and oil in this country

and the rest of the world is seeing far higher spikes in gas prices today than we are

that really is no comfort to you if you are on a fixed income and having to pay higher gas

prices I do understand that but also keep in mind that our leadership of the world means that

we are less impacted by this and you know who's really impacted the Cubans who are on the

verge of complete economic collapse and they're next after Iran Swiss America is actually doing a lot

to educate people about this in fact if you go to swissamerica.com slash Eric E.R.I.C.K Swiss

America.com slash Eric if you look up at the top there's a a tab that says news and views

you get their real money blog you get the podcast the gold market news the market news their

special reports you can also fill out the form to get the secret war on cash the war on cash

intensifying for decades it's ramped up significantly since 2020 as instrumental but U.S.

debt and a dying dollar have set the stage for the current reset but if you click on the real

money blog you'll find the gold deal with Venezuela what it actually means for America if you

heard about the massive imports all you got to do is go to swissamerica.com slash Eric fill out

the form today get the secret war on cash report but also get educated with their news about global

financial markets about the price of gold their America's trusted leader in precious metals they

have been for 40 years they're rated a plus by the better business bureau great to get educated

great to talk to them about a precious metals IRA swissamerica.com slash Eric

welcome it is Eric Erickson here eight seven seven nine seven three seven four two five should you

wish to be on the program uh there's blue sky in tecaron today now this may mean nothing for you

there is blue sky in tecaron today uh why is it significant to say there's blue sky in tecaron

because the Iranian regime has put a bunch of manufacturing facilities and petroleum facilities

and the like around tecaron and the air there tends to be pretty dirty the fact that there's

blue sky in tecaron today and numerous Iranian dissidents have noted this today means that the iron

smelting plants the weapons manufacturing facilities and the oil refineries are all offline in fact

Israel blew up the oil refineries over the weekend that Iran's capital tecaron

has blue sky today is actually very very significant when I was growing up overseas as a kid I

had a magnivox radio that had been bought back in the day there was this thing called the Sears

and Robot catalog and I wanted a particular magnivox shortwave longwave radio now what was so

funny about is I remember that was what I wanted for my birthday and we got home from Dubai one

summer and my mom agreed that would be my birthday president she ordered it and the wrong one

showed up and so we took it back to the sear store and ordered it again and the wrong one showed up

a second time and that was when it we discovered that Sears in publishing its big book catalog

had put the numbers opposite to the one I didn't want had the number that the order number for the

one I wanted and vice versa so we ordered the one I didn't want and the right one showed up

and it was fantastic my dad still has it it runs on you can plug it in or it runs on sea batteries

like four sea batteries no six and it had a numeric pad on it you could type in the button of the

station you wanted you could push the shortwave button the longwave button and I would stay up

and you could also connect wires it had two little screws on the side where you could expand

and enhance the antenna and I would stay up at night in the Middle East and I would listen to the

voice of America I would listen to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and listen to the BBC

and occasionally occasionally if you were lucky you'd hear airplanes and very rarely

but occasionally you would stumble across radio stations and they were garbled and they were

speaking it in an odd cadence you know foreign language and occasionally I would recognize

the language oftentimes there'd be Arabic and you'd come across a station and you would hear

Wahed Wahed Wahed Thalata Wahed Kamsa Kamsa Wahed

Thalatad Ithnane Ithnane Wahed Ashra Ashra Ithnane Wahed

those are numbers in Arabic Wahed Ithnane Thalata Arabic Kamsa seat this out of the money just for

Ashra that's that's the first ten one one through ten and you'd hear them Ashra Ashra Wahed Wahed

Thalatadalata Arabic it was just random numbers and I learned from my math teacher who by the way

turned out to be in the CIA that these are frequencies where if you're a spy you keep these frequencies

on and when you hear the numbers those numbers mean something and the Americans and the Soviets at the

time they didn't do that more often than not the Cubans might and occasionally you'd hear you'd turn

into a Cuban channel and you'd hear something similar but typically what you heard from the Americans

of the Soviets was Morse code and it was very very rapid and someone somewhere was translating

the Morse code or had a device to translate the Morse code and that was their orders that was their

mission shortly after the Ayatollah Khameini was blown up last week people could hear this on

shortwave radio now that goes on those are transmissions in Farsi of numbers not an Arabic but in Farsi

we learned today from Israeli press reports that the signals went out after the Ayatollah was killed

signaling sleepers cells to activate around the world what's notable is that we haven't seen

significant violence or terror in this country since last week are they laying in wait are they

here are they are they real we now know from the Israeli press that the orders went out to activate

and none of them have thus far activated what is going on we don't know we will see

what we know is there's blue sky in Iran today in Tehran which means that their industrial capacity

for war has been shut down what we also know is that the Iranian ability to produce missiles and drones

to fire at us has been diminished there was a report I saw someone say that you know Russia

concluded that Iran could disproportionately fire massive volleys of attacks of drones and missiles

well yes except for the fact that they're blown up they're blown up you you can't fire drones

or manufacture drones at the facility in which the drones are manufactured has had bombs dropped

on it by B-52 but there's more progress now we're learning that ships are crossing the

Straits of Ormuz turning their transponders off as they go through there to avoid detection

by the Iranians we we know that is happening as well but also there's something else if you

look at a map of the Middle East if you know what the Straits of Ormuz are the Arabian

Peninsula shuts out into it the very very tip of it is al-Mani territory but the United

Arab Emirates people oftentimes don't realize actually most of it is on the Persian Gulf but a

significant portion of the country is actually on the Gulf of Oman side of the Arabian Peninsula

when I was a kid we would go to Corfacan Corfacan is on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula

we'd go there we go to Fujira it was gorgeous it was one of those places where the water was crystal

clear it in fact the very first place I ever went snorkeling was in Corfacan I remember there was

a there was an old um sikali net with sikalis are like lobsters and they had this big dome net

and it had clearly been cut from a boat and you could go down there and you could explore around

it and this was I had to be like eight or nine at the time I had on my flippers and my goggles and

my snorkel and y'all as an eight or nine-year-old it didn't dawn on me that when the snorkel got

completely underwater and you inhaled you were going to suck in ocean water my parents are laughing

right now I can guarantee you if they're listening to this they'll remember I got all the way

under the water and I sucked in and and nearly drowned myself had to get out coughing spitting out

saltwater only then did I realize you have to actually inhale go down and when you come out

blow hard to get the water out of the snorkel and then you go back down for while I remember that

and it was gorgeous I remember being down there but it was on the it was on the Gulf of Oman the

water was crystal clear that's where my sister was given lamb brains to eat thinking it was just

oversized blueberries she didn't go over well with that uh and it but it was it was a it was a

fantastic place and what Dubai and the United Arab Emirates have done is they built the pipeline

from their oil refineries and oil production facilities over to Corficon and Russell came

up there on the Gulf of Oman side so that if ever the poop hit the fan and the Straits of Hormuz

like is happening right now they can divert their oil to that side of the country and what we're

seeing now is a massive number of ships that are now docking in uh Corficon of the Russell came

area to uh and Fujira to those ports there to get the oil that can't flow through the Persian Gulf

likewise Saudi Arabia has built a massive pipeline that is called the east west pipeline and it goes

from the oil facilities around the Persian Gulf all the way over to the red sea and the Saudis

and the Emirates can actually offset a significant part of pain by moving the oil to those areas

where the Iranians can't target them the east west pipeline is 746 miles it goes across the

Arabian Peninsula from the Persian Gulf to the red sea it was built 45 years ago by the

Saudis thinking at some point the situation with Iran would deteriorate so much they would need

to divert their oil there are 20 million barrels a day of crude and refined products that flow

through the Straits of Hormuz a fifth of global consumption the Saudi pipeline doesn't offset

that altogether but between it and an Emirati pipeline uh you can get five of those 20 billion

20 million barrels a day out of the country and they have the port capacity to do it

which is why now that those pipelines are coming on we're going to see oil prices probably

beyond that however we're also seeing the Emirates start targeting Iran for the first time

the Emirates have launched missiles and blown up a desalination plant in Iran

that's a very important point um if any of you have ever seen Lawrence of Arabia

uh there is a scene in the movie and it's documented in uh in history where uh Sifar Ali

says the well is everything the well is everything and what does that mean water is life in the

Middle East water is life you can take a human's life in Islamic culture

and it's not nearly as bad as if you take someone's water the Iranians have targeted

the United Arab Emirates because the United Arab Emirates has the strongest ties to Israel

of any Middle Eastern country uh Abu Dhabi in Dubai uh once normalization relations with Israel

happened under the Abraham Accords poured in trade relations with Israel that the the uh folks in

Dubai in particular had already embraced Israel uh off the record and once it was official they

just thoroughly embraced them uh allow one of the very first places it flew after the Abraham

Accords was Dubai so Dubai already had a massive target on his back plus has a major tourism

industry uh Abu Dhabi has a wealthy oil industry so Iran started targeting Dubai and Abu Dhabi

more than Saudi Arabia more than Kuwait more than Jordan more than Egypt more than any other nation

they've launched drones and missiles at the United Arab Emirates Dubai finally had enough

and launched a successful attack on a desalination plant in southern Iran again the well is everything

water is life even the United States has not targeted desalination plants in Iran

nor has Iran targeted desalination plants in any of its Middle Eastern allies they understand

what it means to do that what Dubai is doing by blowing up a desalination plant in Iran is signaling

we want you gone some major escalation by Dubai to enter the fight and start entering the fight by

blowing up a desalination plant natural gas by the way interestingly enough is not being affected

in the United States by this natural gas prices everywhere else are being affected but thanks

to Donald Trump again we produce so much natural gas in this country our natural gas prices

aren't going up nobody's going to see a major homey well and we're we're into spring as well

it's starting to warm up but your natural gas prices in this country are not skyrocketing

your oil prices are going up as I mentioned but not as high as everywhere else and it's a large part

because of our natural gas infrastructure in fact I got to go to a meeting tonight they're

trying my backyard has a natural gas easement through it and they're trying to expand it

and green piece and the Sierra Club are rallying people to show up at a meeting

near my house to oppose this natural gas pipeline and in fact in the they're doing it because

part of the natural gas pipeline is going to be used to power natural gas plants to power AI

data centers and what's so interesting is in the Sierra Club video they say hey don't show up and

say you're opposing this because you oppose data centers that's why we're doing it but you can't

say that in the meeting you need to say it's about the environment and how solar power is cheaper and

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah they're opposing it because the communist

Chinese are opposing it into these environmental groups are just front groups for the chikams

to try to sabotage our infrastructure we need as a national security issue at this point more

natural gas it's one of the points I intend to make it the meeting tonight that given the situation

the Middle East it behooves us to expand these natural gas pipelines it literally runs through my

backyard and I am okay with them digging up my backyard to expand this natural gas pipeline because

it's needed and you will note with all the conflict in the Middle East while our oil prices are

going up natural gas is not so much because of how readily abundant it is inside the United States

and it's only going up in our areas of the country like New York and elsewhere that have limited

the capacity of natural gas pipelines to let the natural gas flow southern states that have

more natural gas pipelines are not being hit with natural gas pipe increases midwestern states

that have expanded their natural gas pipelines are also not being hit it's California, Oregon,

Washington, and New England that are being massively impacted by natural gas because they

chose to listen to the environmentalists and limit their pipeline capacity.

This hour of the program is brought to you by Van Allen Golf ALLE and Van Allen Golf.com I actually

was able to do a decent round of golf on Friday afternoon I love my Van Allen putter if you want to

check them out go to Van Allen Golf.com check them out on Instagram at Van Allen Golf or just

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text golf to 3 3 7 7 7 there's breaking news happening as I'm talking there's breaking news

happening right now let me get to this oil prices are back below $100 that's right what a wild 11

hours but golf oil prices are back below $100 barrel also ships are now flowing through the

Straits of Hormuz and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are announcing they have gotten their pipelines

open on the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea to offset what's happening in the Persian Gulf so between

tankers now making it through the Straits of Hormuz and the the east west pipeline and the

Emirati pipeline opening oil prices are starting to go back down well that was short lift panic

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