mes 60,000 would be $600 million. So that would cost us $600 million per year. Is that something you want to do to have control of Greenland? I don't know.

When the story is that they're considering it, I don't take that too seriously because what the White House should be doing is considering all the possibilities. If they just have it on a list of possibilities, perfectly acceptable. It doesn't mean they're going to do it and it doesn't mean it's the only thing they're going to do. It doesn't mean that we're going to do it with nothing in return. Maybe there's some rare earth minerals we could get in return or something like that. But I like the fact that the White House would be looking expansively at other options. So again, good job looking at the options. Doesn't mean I'm in favor of it. I'd have to see a lot of details to know if it makes sense, but I like the noodling of it so that we've looked at all the options basically.

Meanwhile, there's a report of a big success with the Panama Canal. So he was down there dealing with Panama and I guess the deal involves Panama hosting more American troops so that we've got more military presence there and that our military would be essentially a guardian against China ever having control over who goes through or how much it costs for them to go through. And then I guess Panama agreed to end their contribution to the Belt and Road initiative coming out of China. Their contribution would be just being part of the Belt and Road thing. So that all looks like a big win.

And this would be, if this is a stable and workable plan and it looks pretty stable and workable, then this would be an example of Trump making a first big offer and then negotiating for something in the middle that just makes everybody happy because I don't think that Panama loved being in the potential of being dominated by China. I don't think they loved it. And they know they can deal with the United States and that our military is not there to conquer them. We're there to make sure that we have access to the canal. So if that's the case, then that would be another big win for Trump and his style of negotiating where he goes big and then he's got room to negotiate.

CNN is reporting that the consumer prices, the inflation, it went down a tiny bit month over month but this is actually the first time we've seen this since COVID, a month-over-month drop. So it's very unusual and they say that the reason for it, the big driver, because normally you'd expect it to go up at this time of the year, is gas prices didn't go up. So energy costs allowed inflation to stay put and slightly go down. That's exactly what Trump promised us. That's exactly what he promised, that he would loosen up all of the energy sources and that when energy goes down, inflation would be impacted in every domain. Now, I'm not sure that this is 100% because of Trump changes, but it could be. So we'll see. That's good news.

Trump, along those same lines, is reversing a bunch of Biden policies about Alaska and energy. The Center Square is reporting this. So he's reinstating a program to make a whole bunch of acres up there in the ANWR region available for oil and natural gas. Now I guess he did that in his first administration and Biden canceled it. So we'll see if the oil drilling companies are willing to take the risk that it gets cancelled again because I suppose if you got another Democrat president, things would look dicey. But at the moment it looks like there's going to be a bunch of changes making it easier to get energy out of that part of the world, which could make a big difference.

Speaking of which, according to Newsmax, Lee Barney is reporting there's a big drop in oil prices from a year ago. The oil is 28% lower than it was a year ago. And oil went down another 3% just recently because of the fears of the trade talks. So oil going down is a pretty big deal. And Brent oil is trading around $64 per barrel and somebody who knows what they're talking about says that by the end of 2026, by the end of next year, we could be at $55 per barrel. So the direction for inflation looks pretty darn good. And by the way, this would be a counterbalance to whatever the tariff problem is. So if you're going to have a tariff fight with China, the very best environment you could do it in is where inflation is under control and there's a gigantic probable lowering of energy costs during the same period they're negotiating. So that would certainly take a lot of sting out of any tariffs. I mean it's going to affect people differently. So the people most affected by the tariffs may not get most of the benefit but at least on a country level that would be a pretty strong negotiating position.

Here's some science that's kind of cool. According to Live Science, Randi Collier is writing that there's a breakthrough to allow you to physically manipulate 3D holograms so that you could touch them and move them around with your hand. I'm not sure if you could feel them. That was a little unclear but you could physically manipulate them. Now apparently it's sort of in the early experimental stage, but they've created a demonstration. So if they can do it in a demonstration, it's probably pretty real, assuming the demonstration is not fake.

Imagine that. Now, what do you think would be different if we could manipulate holograms? Do you think that people are going to have a hologram boyfriend? Because if you add AI to a physically manipulatable hologram, it's even better than a robot because you could just turn it off and it'll go away. But you could have like a living room boyfriend that's only in the living room because that's where your 3D hologram is. And you can make your boyfriend only a few inches tall in case you want to not be bothered too much. I don't know.

I still think there's some possibility that the UFO sightings are some kind of hologram. I'm not going to commit to that, but let me broaden that to say one possibility for the UFOs is that they're somehow projected from somewhere else and they look like physical objects, but maybe they're something like a hologram. Why? I don't know, but I wouldn't rule it out.

According to news reports, Trump is saying Mexico owes Texas like 1.3 million acre feet of water and he's going to tariff Mexico if they don't pay up. So apparently there's some kind of long-term agreement, 1944 treaty, that says that South Texas farmers get a certain amount of water that must flow through the Tijuana area I think. And so at the moment that's being cut off. I'm not sure why, but Trump says if they don't fix that really fast, he's going to escalate with tariffs and maybe even sanctions. So we'll see.

Were you wondering if the Chinese investors would panic before the American investors? Well, American investors according to today are just saying our stock market's sold off enough and it's kind of stabilized. Now that doesn't mean it'll last to the end of the day. I'm not predicting anything and I'm not predicting it won't wildly jump around as there's more negotiating. But if you want to know what's happening in China, according to Reuters the government just told the biggest money traders that they can't sell too many Chinese stocks in a day or they'll shut them down. So if you're a big investor in China and you were thinking this would be a good time to sell all of my China stock, China just told you if you do that we're going to put you out of business. So is China panicked? And that's a pretty good threat, isn't it? That will put you out of business. So it looks like China can control the selling of their stock market. I guess you shouldn't be too surprised by that, but that would in theory put a bigger risk on the American side because the Americans don't do that sort of thing.

And I guess the U.S. put that 125% tariff on China and they just reciprocated with 125% tariff. So we're going to tariff each other like crazy. But according to AFP the U.S. dollar has dropped kind of hard, dropping nearly 2% just last day I guess at least against the euro. So is that a big deal that the U.S. dollar has gotten weaker 2%? I don't know. I suppose if it keeps going it's a big deal. So anyway, the trade escalation continues. So we'll see how that goes.

Here's a story that's hard to believe, but looks like it's true. The New York Post is reporting that some time ago, I think it was during the Biden administration, there was a meeting between China and the U.S. in which China acknowledged its role in years of cyber attacks against the United States as retaliation over its support for Taiwan. Now it's not surprising that it was happening. It's surprising that the Chinese said it just directly, a complete confession right to the Americans in a private meeting. Now that's kind of mind-blowing, isn't it? That years of cyber attacks, they're like, "Yeah, we've been cyber attacking you for years over your Taiwan policy." Now the obvious implication is that you can't stop us and that we have this ability to hack you anytime we want. So that is one scary kind of a threat and you have to throw that threat into the tariff negotiations as well.

And to me this is just one more evidence that our relationship with China is an abusive relationship. If it were a personal relationship, you would say you need to get out of that relationship. You know that you're being abused over and over, right? They're just cyber hacking you and then bragging about it and they've got trade policies that are bad for you and they don't care and they're stealing your IP every time they can get near it. And if you try to challenge them in court, there's no way to challenge them. If that were a personal relationship, what would all of your friends recommend? They'd recommend you get out of it. So we'll see what happens.

But here's some more risk. According to The Epoch Times, an author says that China controls 95% of the key components necessary for our generic drugs. So if China were to shut down export of those chemicals, our health care system would basically collapse. We just wouldn't be able to make drugs. So that's how dependent we are. Now it seems to me that that looks more and more like an abusive relationship. It's like, well, there's an implied threat that if you were to leave me, bad things would happen. Oh yes. Bad things would happen. Your health care would collapse. And that's I guess the author of the book China RX is where that came from.

So here's what I think. Using that same frame, I do believe that we're in an abusive relationship. Meaning that not only are things unbalanced and unfair, but like an abusive relationship, you can't negotiate your way to a better situation. If you're with somebody, let's say you're living with somebody who's an abuser, have you ever tried to negotiate with them? How'd that work out? Doesn't work. There's no such thing as a negotiation with an abuser. They're just abusers. And China seems very intent on continuing to be the abuser. So I think our path with China is very similar to the path that you would see in an abusive personal relationship. You can either put up with it because you think the risk of not putting up with it is too great. You might lose your healthcare, you might get cyber attacked, they might take Taiwan 10 minutes later. All of our costs would go up. I mean these are real seriously big problems. So what do you do? Stay in the abusive relationship? Is that how you'd play it if it were your personal relationship? Because it's the same thing. If you leave me, I will hunt you down and beat you up. You'll never get a job. You'll be poor forever. Your children will starve. Sound familiar?

So you can either put up with that and it might even worsen over time because why would the abuser fix anything? Because the abuser is happy. Or you can risk everything to stop it. You can risk everything. That's what it's looking like. So our two choices under a normal situation, and I'll take you to an abnormal situation in a moment, but under a normal situation you either put up with it forever and it just gets worse. And that's what we were doing. Or you risk everything to get out of it. Trump is pushing us to risk everything to get out of it. Is he wrong?

What's the thing that the Democrats hate about Trump? He's a bully. He's a strong man. He's a dictator. Right? But boy, do you need that now. Because if you're in an abusive relationship with someone else, who do you call to help you get out of it? You call somebody who's a bigger bully. There's no other way because you're not going to be able to do it. You need a bigger bully. Trump's a bigger bully and we've never seen anybody like it.

Now, is it a good idea to risk everything? I'm not even going to say. I'm just going to say those are your choices. Suck it up and be abused for the rest of whatever's left of the United States, which might not last long since China seems to have designs on controlling the world. Or you risk everything. Doesn't mean you lose everything. Doesn't mean you lose everything because sometimes you can scare a bully away, but you have to be the bigger bully by far. So what do you do? Those are two choices you don't want, right? And it's really easy to do the do-nothing choice and just put up with it and just it gets worse but then you get used to it. You just put up with it until your country is toast but you hope it's not today. You're just trying to get through today. Or you risk everything to put an end to it.

Now I have a hypothesis that the way, and this wouldn't be for every single person but if you don't have a direct trading relationship with China in which case you would be biased toward your own business interests which would be fine. I think how you see the situation of this abusive relationship is that you would handle it the same way you would do it in person. In other words, if you're the kind of person who says, "God, I'm just going to put up with the abuse," then you're probably the same person who says, "Why can't we just get along with China?" You know, just sort of do what we were doing before and keep asking if they'll do better. That's probably what you would do in your personal relationship because that would be your level of risk for that sort of thing.

But there are other people who would say, "You know what? I've reached the end of my patience. I'm going to risk everything. Might he kill me? Yes. But it's better than this life. It's better than this life." And there are a lot of you like that. How many of you have dealt with a bully the only way you can? Some of you. How many of you have been in an abusive relationship and said, "You know what? I'm gonna walk out of here with my bare feet because I'm done. I'm just done." That's some of you. So it's just a hypothesis, but I'll bet you the way you would deal with an abusive relationship in person has a lot to do with how you're looking at this China situation. I'll bet there's a pretty good Venn diagram overlap.

And so I'm going to offer you a trap door, an escape. I'm going to offer you another option, one that's not on the table right now. So this is the hypnotist take. So if I were in charge, I would use my hypnosis background to say, "All right, if you only have two choices, put up with the abuse or risk everything to get away, how could you invent some new options that just don't seem to exist?" And I'll give you a couple.

One option would be to negotiate with China and say, "Here's the deal, China. We'd like to treat you more like a peer and treat you with complete respect. So you have a take on trade that you think whatever you're doing is fair. We think it's not. Let's negotiate in public. Let's put all of your trade practices in the public domain. Maybe the UN, maybe some other kind of public structure. And we're going to show what it is that you have been doing and then we're going to tell you what we think would be a fair situation. Will you negotiate with us in public?" What are they going to say? They're going to say no. And then you keep at it. No. Let's do this in public because, China, we don't want to be your enemy. We want a good trade deal. If you can't do it in public, that's going to say a lot. W