➡ The government has allocated a large budget for veterans’ benefits, including $300+ billion for guaranteed benefits like disability payments and medical coverage, $134 billion for running VA hospitals and programs, $34 billion for community care, and $18 billion for building and fixing hospitals and clinics. Despite this, there’s debate over the community care program, which allows veterans to see private doctors if they can’t get a VA appointment within two weeks or live more than 50 miles from a VA facility. Some worry this could lead to privatizing veterans’ care, but others argue it’s necessary as more veterans move to rural areas. The government’s focus should be on improving VA services to encourage veterans to use them.

➡ The writer believes that the Community Care program, which allows veterans to seek healthcare outside the VA system, needs more funding. They argue that veterans should have the freedom to choose their healthcare providers, and this choice could increase their satisfaction and usage of VA services. However, the writer also highlights that many veterans do not identify as such or use VA services due to past negative experiences or personal reasons. This makes it difficult to accurately estimate the number of veterans and the budget needed for their care.

➡ The author discusses their personal experiences with their pet and the benefits of using coriolis versicolor mushrooms from Pet Club 24/7. They then delve into the debate between VA (Veterans Affairs) care and community care, discussing the allocation of funds and the potential impact on VA hospitals. The author shares their own negative experiences with VA care and suggests that community care might be a better option for some veterans. They also touch on political disagreements over the funding plan, including issues related to abortion services, job cuts, and programs for minority and underserved veterans.

➡ The article discusses a bill that aims to support veterans who can’t afford their own insurance or medical care. The bill, which has been met with some opposition, has found common ground on the issue of suicide prevention, with an amendment added to protect funding for the Veterans Crisis line. The bill is set to be voted on by the House and Senate, with the aim of being finalized by the start of the fiscal year. The article emphasizes the importance of this budget for veterans, and encourages them to take advantage of the services while they can.

➡ A woman with a severe lung condition was given a mushroom extract by her nephew in Japan, which significantly improved her health. This led to extensive research on the mushroom’s ability to optimize the immune system. The founders of Pet Club 247, who had lost pets to cancer, discovered that the mushroom extract could also benefit animals, leading to longer, healthier lives. They incorporated the mushroom into their products, aiming to combat the high rates of illness in pets due to poor quality food and treats.

➡ Pet Club 24/7 is a community dedicated to solving problems and contributing positively. They aim to improve the health of both humans and animals with their products, which are made from high-quality, US-sourced ingredients. They offer a potent mushroom strain known for boosting the immune system, beneficial for pets and their owners. Visit their website to learn more about their mission and products.

Hey folks, we just put a stamp on another record breaking week in the halls of US Government. Specifically for the purposes of this show, the va. The VA just received word a couple days ago that they are going to now have a $453 billion budget. $453 billion. Let’s dissect that a little bit. Let’s have a conversation. Of course there are a lot of people cheering from the, from the rafters about this thing but there’s also a lot of people that are saying this is not good news. So lets dissect a little bit. We’ll just put out the information, have a conversation.

You make your own decision but hear us out anyway. So today we’re going to talk about the new 453 billion dollar VA budget. Stick with us. Don’t go away. We start now. Hey everybody and welcome here to another installment of the Richard Leonard Show. As always, I want to thank you for returning. If you’re a returning viewer or listener, thanks for coming back. We appreciate your participation. If you’re new here, thanks for checking us out. Hopefully it’s something you want to stick around and, and take in. Even if you disagree with me. That’s great. I think that this is a great place for us to, to agree to disagree on some things and that’s okay.

Before we get started, of course I got to tell you about how the show is made possible and that is Cortez Wealth Management. Get on over to America First Retirement Plan.com. do not miss the webinar. They happen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Carlos Cortez and his staff want to help you plan and execute a tax free retirement plan. So take in all the information that they have to offer you. Digest it a little bit. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, feel free to contact him. Carlos and his staff want to help you get over any hurdles and down the road to a tax free retirement plan.

Got to check them out. Do it Tuesday. Thursday evening 7pm AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com is the place you need to go. Don’t be late on Tuesday or Thursday. Check them out. Like I said, digest it all. Ask questions if you have them. Anyway, one last time. America First Retirement Plan.com is where you need to check it. Okay, there we go. Housekeeping is in order. So let’s, let’s talk about this right. $453 billion was appropriated to the VA earlier this week. Their new budget is now the biggest one in, in the organization, in the department’s history. It’s more money than it’s ever been given to serve veterans all over this country.

And so it’s interesting to me because we’ve been hearing a lot of, a lot of narrative and a lot of speak from many different peoples in many different corners, peoples from many different people in many different corners of this country about how much our president hates veterans. He doesn’t give a shit about veterans. And I suppose way down in his core, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s true. There’s enough people saying that it’s there. I don’t know that anybody really knows the truth. Either you trust what he says about the topic or you don’t. I like to think personally that he is telling the truth and he does care about veterans, and there are things to show that.

And we’ve talked many, many times recently about the whole, the whole VA layoff and budget cuts and 15% and 83,000 people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, what I appreciate about all of it is not necessarily that people are getting laid off and not necessarily that budgets are being cut. And the narrative that we hear a lot of the time is, well, they’re just doing it because they want to put veterans. They don’t care about veterans. They want to put them out. They don’t want them to get the care, they don’t want them to get benefits, they don’t want them to get disability pay.

No, none of that stuff. They’re really just in it for themselves. And, and I believe that you’re never going to change anybody’s mind who really, honestly, truly thinks that way. But what I appreciate about Doug Collins and President Trump as it relates to the VA and veterans care, is that they are coming to the table with ideas and programs and budgets and things that haven’t been tried before. And so in a system where I think a lot of people would be able to say the VA has fallen short, there’s now leadership that is willing to try something different.

And I don’t know that we’ve really had anybody in those offices, in those chairs that were super committed to trying something different. And like I’ve explained before, I don’t know that it’s a great thing that 83,000 people lose their job. It’s not positive, but we’ve never tried that before. We’ve never tried cutting ourselves down to something that everyone can agree is manageable. If all the, if all the factors are right, right. If all of those data points are correct about numbers of people leaving. And that if we. If we do do this, if we do lay off these people, we do cut these programs and we save these dollars, we can put them somewhere else, thus making things, care, benefits, all of these things, better for the veterans that choose to use them.

We’ve not done that before. The narrative always is, just give us more money. Well, this time we got both. The VA got the biggest budget it’s ever had in its history, and we’re trying new things. So let’s go through this a little bit. This, of course, I found a publication. I found an article that talks about this. So let’s just go through it and see what they have to say, and we can make our own decisions. Which really, to be honest, is kind of the point of all of this. Right? I don’t know that. I don’t know that.

I’m super into just sitting here and telling you what’s what. I think that I like to find things that seem fair or not fair, whatever side of the coin that’s on, have a discussion about, and you make your own decision and you can do some of your own research to really come to a conclusion about what you think and how you feel about any given topic that’s discussed on this show. Uh, so let’s go through this here. A powerful committee in the House just approved a massive funding plan for the Department of veterans fairs, totaling 300.

I’m sorry, $453 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. This is the largest VA budget in American history. Like we’ve discussed, the money is meant to cover things like health care, disability benefits, hospital construction, and suicide prevention for millions of veterans across the country. Well, isn’t that everything? Aren’t these all of the things. Health care benefits, hospital construction maybe wasn’t as prevalent in the conversations, but suicide prevention was. Weren’t these the things that everyone was screaming from the mountaintop? Veterans were going to lose. We’re going to. Veterans are going to lose out on all of these things.

They’re not going to get the proper care benefit. Benefits are not going to veterans who deserve them, who have properly applied this or that, whatever the story is, whatever that narrative is. Hospital construction, okay, I think that’s needed in many places. I think we discussed on this show last week or the week before that, the VA in Minneapolis, the VA hospital, when I started going there in 2007, was pretty rough. And since then, they have slowly been renovating sections at a time. And it’s starting to come together. It’s starting to come together. It doesn’t smell like piss in there anymore.

And things are good. But these were all the things that all the bureaucrats and all the naysayers in the community were saying veterans are going to lose out on. Trump hates them. Collins hates veterans. All these people are against veterans. And they’re looking to put all of this money and all of these things in their own pocket and use them for their own gain or for their buddies or whatever the narrative has been. But yet here we see an unprecedented budget for the things exactly. That people are saying veterans are going to lose out on. And so let’s just assume without digging deeper that that’s factual.

Let’s just assume that that’s true now. Let’s just assume that everything that was said was a lie. $353 billion isn’t necessarily all going to go to veterans. It’s going to go to shove money in someone’s pocket or something like that. And there’s treachery afoot everywhere. Let’s just assume. I don’t know that that makes any sense. I don’t know if that narrative makes sense because the people who are involved, Donald Trump and Doug Collins mainly, have been saying the whole time that this is what they want to do. And it doesn’t seem like those words resonate over all of the audience that watches it or reads it or listens to it or whatever.

Those words always get twisted and hey, maybe rightfully so. Right. I believe that nobody would disagree that both sides of the aisle have the naysayers, and no matter what we do, someone’s always going to be pissed off about it. But if you ask me, a budget this big, unprecedented amounts of money to do the things that everyone has been saying veterans are going to miss out on or that they need is all been funded and seemingly. And then some. But let’s break it down. Let’s just, let’s break it down. Not line by line, but they have here how the budget is going to be spent, what it was allocated for.

So out of the $453 billion, $300 plus billion dollars is going to guaranteed benefits. That’s VA disability payments, that’s care and other medical coverage. 300 plus billion dollars. So who is going to say now that veterans are going to miss out on their care? Who’s going to say now that veterans are going to miss out on disability benefits? It’s all been funded more than it ever has been. Continuing on, $134 billion for running VA hospitals and programs. This is the discretionary budget. These are the things that Congress makes a decision on. These are the that the House Armed, not the House Armed Service Committee, but the House Veterans Affairs Committee, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee will tell Doug Collins and the VA this is what you’re going to do.

And there’s the money for it, discretionary spending. And I don’t know that 100% of that is directed by Congress. I believe that probably Doug Collins and the management suite have some say and maybe don’t need to get approval from the committees all the time. That I don’t know. But anyway, 133, 134 billion dollars just to run the hospitals and keep them open, keep them clean, keep the amazing food at the VA in the cafeteria, parking structures, keeping them adequate, all that stuff. And remember folks, that there are VA facilities all over this country that are in serious ill repair that need updating.

And maybe this is a way for the department or the government to save a little bit of money on these things because maybe it’s cheaper to fix it, maybe it’s not too far gone. It’s a lot cheaper than building something brand new, which is just going to be more taxpayer dollars. So hopefully, hopefully that’s where this is coming from. We’re going to save some money by repairing a lot of these facilities. $34 billion is for something called community care. Now community care is a pretty amazing thing. It’s a pretty amazing choice that veterans have. This is where veterans can go to private doctors instead of the VA hospitals.

And so this is going to be a sticking point, but let’s get to the last one. $18 billion is set aside to build and fix hospitals, clinics and vet centers. So there’s more, there’s more money for facility management. And so maybe the 134 billion to keep hospitals running and programs going is just for that, to keep personnel paid and things of that nature. So the 18 billion is fixing and building. But let’s dig in a little bit to the whole community care debate because this is something that came up in the committee. In fact, when they voted on this, this whole budget, I believe they deliberated for about 12 hours.

It was a whole 12 hour session of folks arguing back and forth about, about where this money’s going to go and how it’s going to be spent. So let’s digest this here. The community care portion is at $34 billion. It’s getting a lot of attention. As we just discussed, that amount is 55% higher than last year. And some lawmakers worry that it’s a step towards privatizing the va. Now, for Congress and the government, privatizing veterans care is a huge issue for them. It’s a huge issue for them because now that now here, they’ve invested a ton of money, they’ve appropriated a ton of money, and they want veterans to use VA facilities versus going to private doctors or specialists somewhere else.

But here’s the thing. Here’s how community care works. At least this is how it worked when I had to use community care. If I call the VA hospital, any clinic in there, the eye clinic, the. Any clinic, why can I only think of eye clinic, the eye clinic, the ear, nose and throat people, pain management clinic, dialysis, whatever it is that anybody needs. There’s quite a few clinics within a VA hospital. If I call the eye clinic, for example, and say, hey, I need my yearly eye exam and the VA can’t get me in there within an allotted amount of time, I think it’s two weeks, then they have to, by federal law, they have to find me a provider in the community, make me an appointment, and then they pay, they pay that provider whatever the agreed upon amount is, and I go to my appointment, I get my care, I get my checkup, my eye exam, and I walk out of there.

Well, now all I got to do is show an id, much like I would have to do at the VA hospital. And so the powers that be don’t want this program getting any bigger. But in my opinion, here’s the trouble with that. Not only are they supposed to get you an appointment if they can’t get you in within the two week period or whatever that allotted amount of time is, but also if you live 50 miles away from a VA facility or clinic, you also have the option to use community care. And so then it works the same way.

The community care people, they find a provider, they make you an appointment, you show up, show your id, get your care, and they bill the va and then the government pays the bill. And so this program probably needs a lot more money, if you ask me, because veterans are moving out of highly populated areas. I think, I think that there is a large amount of military veterans in this country that have had enough. They’ve had enough with the bullshit. They’ve had enough with the violence. They’ve had enough with the protests. They’ve had enough with the, the high prices and the traffic.

They’ve had enough of the upheaval in many large communities in the country. I mean, we see it all over. We see it, Louisiana clearly here in Minneapolis, Chicago, probably places in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, New York, City. It’s happening in Texas and Arizona. It’s happening everywhere. And I believe that there are many people in this country, a lot of veterans who are disgruntled. And we see it in the comments on these shows. I think that we had a comment recently that there was an army veteran who’s looking to throw out all of his shit, all of his memorabilia, everything from his military career.

He’s getting rid of it. He’s had enough. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that he’s wrong or that she should think about that or he’s overreacting. I’m not going to say that because who am I to tell him that? But I think that there’s a lot more veterans in our communities that aren’t quite to that point where they’re going to just get rid of everything that reminds them of their service and they’re just going to move. They’re going to move out to the woods, they’re going to move out to more rural areas. And so there is a very high number of veterans who are no longer within 50 miles of a VA clinic.

And they’re going to use community care in which they should. It should 1000% be an option. And if the government is worried about veterans not using VA facilities and clinics, well, I guess I don’t know what to say to that. I believe that veterans should have a choice. If I don’t want to go to the VA because I’ve had a bad experience or there’s a family doctor that’s been treating my family for a long time and I’d rather go there, that should be an option. I mean, that happens, happens all over the place. So why should we not be afforded the right to use community care? And I guess I would say that if the government and the powers that be did a lot better job at doing what they say they’re going to do, then veterans wouldn’t be going elsewhere.

I mean, for example, here in Minnesota we have Mayo Clinic, right? And maybe that’s a, it’s a, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty wild example. But people come from all over the world to go to Mayo Clinic. And why is that? Because they’re the best. They’re the best in the world. There’s a reason why the, the Arab princes and, and, and all these people, these super rich, super powerful people all over the world come to Rochester, Minnesota, which isn’t, isn’t super awesome. It’s just a, it’s a medium sized city in Southern Minnesota, they come all the way here just to get care at that one place.

And so think about if VA hospitals and VA clinics and the medical personnel and the powers that be were a lot better. People would come in from 75 miles away if their experience is better. Maybe, though, there’s folks that just can’t make the trip. They’re frail, they’re broken, they can’t go that far from their house. They might have some mental illness thing going on, some mental health thing happening. Who knows what the reasons are. And it’s really none of my business, but I believe that Community Care needs more money, which $34 billion to send veterans outside the VA system for the year when and if they need to.

Okay, well, they all can fight about whether or not veterans are going to use VA hospitals and clinics. Go ahead and hash that out. But I think that veterans all over are going to be a little more happy, a little more satisfied, and a little more apt to use VA services in general, knowing that they can go out in the community to find the care that they believe is best for them. I think it’s a problem when the government starts telling veterans where they have to go. They tell you where you have to go, get care.

Up until Community Care came along, which, if I’m not mistaken, was President Trump’s initiative and his first term made it. Made it a whole lot easier to go out in the community to get care. But I don’t think that it’s a great idea for the government who allegedly. We’ll say allegedly because some people say it’s bullshit, some people say it’s not. Has completely disregarded, and I guess I struggled to even find the word, but disregarded members of the military for a long time put them out in the cold. At least that’s the stories that we hear, that’s the narratives that we hear from people.

They don’t want to go there. But if I can enroll in VA Services and I can go see my family doctor I’ve been seeing for 25 years or my whole life in some cases, all right, I’ll do that. I’ll use VA Services if I can go to my doctor. So, yes, it’s more expensive, but will we boost enrollment? Will we boost enrollment numbers to the va? Another thing to keep in mind is that whatever numbers it is that we get, as far as how many veterans are out there, is it comes from the census. If you answer truthfully on the census and VA enrollment, I don’t know that the DoD puts out reports every year about how many people they put into the VA system.

Of course, we get reports and there’s information out there to see how many people a year have left military service, thus being veterans. But the thing to remember is that for these numbers, for the participation numbers that the VA uses to craft budgets and all these things are for veterans that have enrolled in the system. Now, Doug Collins said a few months ago, there’s quite a, there’s quite an alarming, alarmingly large percentage of veterans who have nothing to do with the VA have never enrolled, never been to a clinic or a hospital for care. And so do we really know what the real percentage of our population are? Veterans? Do we really know what those numbers look like? Because not only do those people not enroll in the VA system, use the services, I believe that many of them, they don’t check, yes, I’m a veteran on job applications.

They don’t use VA home loans because they’re not in the system. They don’t necessarily talk about it openly to people. They don’t ask for veteran discounts for their, for their $10 purchase somewhere. They don’t wear the hats, they don’t wear the shirts, they don’t put the license plates on their vehicles. They don’t advertise it. Some of them just don’t care to. That just doesn’t come to them. They don’t wanna, for whatever reason, but some people don’t do it because they’re disgruntled. They’re pissed off about an experience they had or experience a family member had or another veteran had that they know and is close to them.

These are the things that cause people not to identify, self identify and self report as a United States military veteran. And the way things are going, it might be more of a, more of an issue in the, in the recent future, in the near future, that veterans aren’t going to report that they served. It almost seems as if we’re heading to a time in some places where we were in Vietnam, where it wasn’t, it wasn’t a good idea, it wasn’t cool to join the military, and you’re publicly shamed for it and things of that nature. So I think that maybe those numbers will get even bigger.

Now, if every veteran in this country was enrolled in VA services and using at least one service once a year or twice a year, whatever that threshold is, would this be enough money? But $453 billion be enough money to serve them all? I don’t know if it would. We don’t know how many are out There. So what’s the, what’s the answer? What are we going to. I don’t know. But anyway, we got to take a break. We’re running short on time as usual. So stick with us. We’ll be right back. Foreign folks, real quick. Before we get back to the show.

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Before we get down to finishing off the show, I want to quickly just throw a plug in for our good friends over at Pet Club 24. 7. These guys have found these coriolis versicolor mushrooms. They’ve put them in dog treats, they put them in cat treats, they put them in horse treats, and they’ve also put these things in capsules for human consumption. If you have achy pain and joint pain and all this other stuff, you got to try this stuff. Get yourselves over to richardleonard.petclub247.com check these things out. These guys have figured out what I believe is some mystical mushroom originally found in Japan, to the best of my knowledge.

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Richardleonard.petclub247.com get on over there, check it out and order yours today. You won’t regret it, I promise. Okay, so let’s continue on here. So we were talking about the debate between VA care and community care. And so as we said, $34 billion for this initiative, which is 55% larger than last year’s or the year we’re currently in in that budget. And critics argue that by giving more money to private doctors and clinics, the government could be pulling resources away from VA hospitals, which many veterans say they prefer. Others say it’s about giving veterans more choices. Well, they’re not pulling resources from VA hospitals.

They’re getting $134 billion to keep VA hospitals running and staffed. So I’m not sure that they’re pulling resources away. If the argument is that community care is going to put VA doctors out of business, essentially, well, then we got to do a better job at making sure that the VA doctors don’t go out of business by maybe they need more training, maybe we got to pay them a little bit more, whatever that means. But if veterans are choosing to go and use community care, if they have an option, there’s got to be a reason. There’s got to be.

And so all these folks that are sitting back and talking about how people like President Trump and Doug Collins and anyone like them hate veterans and they’re just in it for themselves and it’s money, power and control. Well, why would they give veterans the option to seek out their own care if they think it’s better? Is it the fault of the veteran that community care might be better for them? Is that their fault? Should they be able to make a choice? Maybe. Maybe the answer is that we downsize the VA system, we downsize the hospitals, we downsize the clinics, we downsize the staffing and put more money towards community care.

If it becomes true that veterans choose community care over going to a VA facility, then what’s the answer? Is the answer cutting money to community care because we now make sure that veterans go to the va or are we going to cut back on VA facilities and VA personnel so that we can afford more community care? And so I understand that it’s a sticky topic, right? There’s a double edged sword effect of sorts. But is it really the problem of the patient? Is it really a problem for the consumer to worry about? Or is the consumer supposed to contact the people in the system that they need to contact and go get the care they need.

Why can they not have a choice? And so I probably need to do some more research about the implications of what bigger community care and less VA care looks like. But I’m coming from the mindset of I’m the consumer. I’ve had my share of horrible interactions at the va. I’ve had some really good ones. And the care that I use the VA for now, which is very minimal, is excellent. The couple doctors I see I’ve been seeing a long time, and I’ve always gotten good care from these ones in particular. But also understand that the VA isn’t just primary care, and it’s not just X rays and things.

Like, they have all kinds of stuff. Occupational therapy, physical therapy, mental health care, prosthetics. I mean, there’s a lot there. And so I’m sure that it’s expensive, but I prefer to get most of my care outside of the VA system. And why? Because they’ve almost killed me twice. The worst one was when they prescribed me liquid morphine after a throat surgery. I had on the bottle printed the wrong instructions. I was taking two or three times more morphine every four hours than I was supposed to. And a few days later, when I turned up yellow as a banana because my liver was shutting down and I was jaundice, then they had me back.

They invited me back into the VA to stay for another four or five days while they corrected their mistake. But I’ll tell you, ever since that day, every time I have blood drawn, I get some email or some phone call and somebody’s all alarmed about my liver functions because it’s never recovered. And I don’t drink. I have a. I have a lot healthier lifestyle now than I’ve had than I had two years ago. But those are experiences that veterans have that gives them the idea I’m not going back there. And so when offered community care, it looks like a really good option for people that have had those interactions and those experiences at the va.

And you’ll hear. You’ll hear many people say that they’ve had. I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve had excellent care, never had a problem at the va. They take great care of me, and that’s really good. But that is not the narrative of every veteran that uses the system. And I understand you’re not going to please everybody all the time. Somebody’s always going to be bitching, and someone’s always going to have a complaint, whether it’s justified or not. It’s always going to be there. But the folks that are getting less than adequate care or no care at all are important too.

And so is it enough? Is it enough for us as a society that claims that veterans are a treasure, that there is a pretty large number of veterans who are not getting adequate care, who are almost being killed by giving the wrong dose of medication? What about them? And so these are the reasons why things like this come up. This is why things like community care came up back, I don’t know how many years ago, 10, 12 years ago, or maybe even longer, when veterans were dying in Phoenix waiting for care. Do you think that the veteran community in that area is super excited about going to the va or would they prefer VA services paying for community care so they can choose their doctors not be assigned one, not be assigned.

When I go in and take my picture for my VA ID and I fill out the paperwork and then they tell me, well, your doctor is so and so. And then in order to get a new one sometimes, most of the time in my experience, it’s pulling teeth to get a different doctor, primary care doctor, or anything like that. So people that know that and then talk about it or have had that experience don’t want to go back or go there in the first place. So if you’re going to get me to enroll in the VA system by telling me, hey, you can go out in the community, you need a neuro ophthalmologist, okay, well we have some here, but if you want to see somebody else, no problem.

So I believe it’s a good thing. And until the VA clinics or hospitals or whatever the problem is gets fixed and rectified, it’s going to take some time for the VA to rebuild that trust and rebuild that narrative that you can come here for complicated stuff. We’re not going to kill you, we’re not going to deny you services. You’re not going to be out in the cold. So don’t go, don’t go out to the community. Come here, come home. The VA is like home for veterans. At least that’s what they want us to believe. Some other hot button issues.

The funding plan didn’t pass quietly, of course. We all know that there’s going to be naysayers. It sparked a heated debate in Congress that lasted 12 hours. We discussed that and in the end the Republicans supported just about everything in the bill, while Democrats opposed just about everything. And here’s why. The bill includes a ban on abortion related services. So they didn’t want to vote yes for the bill because the VA is going to stop providing abortion and abortion care. It blocks the White House’s plan to reduce staffing by 80,000 jobs. Well, yeah, that’s a hot button issue, because it’s not true.

The secretary’s already talked about that. And it also cuts programs designed to help minority and underserved veterans. I guess I would need to. I would need to know more about that. I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that because in my experience, the veterans who usually have good things to say about their experience at the va, are underserved, or I guess I don’t even understand what underserved means. But they’re minorities. By underserved, I take that as people who really can’t afford veterans who really can’t afford to go out in the community. They can’t afford insurance of their own.

They can’t afford to go and pay cash at the dentist or whatever that is. So maybe that’s a social economic status, a lower social economic status, but those are the folks that claim to have good experiences. So I guess I don’t understand that. Democrats tried to change the bill, but were outvoted on every amendment except for one. The one thing that they did agree on is suicide prevention. There was a. What does it say here? Lawmakers did find common ground on one critical issue, and that suicide prevention. An amendment from Congresswoman Underwood from Illinois was added to protect funding and staffing for the Veterans Crisis line.

That’s the VA’s 247 support line for veterans to dial if they. If they have. If they have issues and need to ask for help. And so, hey, I can agree with that. I can agree that there should be provisions if that is the one place that veterans can go to ask for help without having to walk into a clinic. Maybe they can’t get there at the time, or maybe they’re embarrassed and they don’t want to. But I can call. I can call somewhere and I could talk to a live person about how I’m feeling, what’s going on, and ask for help that should never go away.

I agree with that. So, hey, we found common ground, or they found common ground. We just agree with it. And so, out of everything, that was the one thing they agreed on. All their other bullshit amendments, according to the article, were voted down. But what happens next? What’s the next step? Well, the next step is the bill goes to all of the House, on the House floor to be voted on, and then, of course, to the Senate, and they’re going to have their way with it. And if it gets through there, then the President will sign it into law.

The question is, will they have all of this malarkey done by the start of the fiscal year, which is October 1st, so it isn’t far away, a few months. Are they going to have it all put together? And so, like this thing says, the proposal still has a long way to go. The full House of Representatives needs to vote on it, and then the Senate will weigh in, of course, and if both chambers agree, then it goes to the President. The goal is to have everything finalized by the beginning of the fiscal year. So by October 1st, hopefully they.

Hopefully they have this all figured out. They’re done with their arguing and name calling and all that other bullshit, and they get down to actually doing the business of the people. That’s what we want to call it. But why does all of this matter? Well, for veterans across the country, this budget isn’t just about numbers. It’s about whether or not they can get the support that they’ve earned. Like we’ve talked about. Supporters say $453 billion shows a strong commitment from the administration to serve those who served. But critics warn that how the money is used is just as important as how it’s spent.

I don’t know about that. I think that it’s all laid out how it’s supposed to be spent and how it’s supposed to be used. But I think that if we went and dissected budgets in the past and initiatives that were in these budgets, and we really got down to where the money went, whose pocket did it end up in? I don’t know that anybody wants anyone digging into that. I mean, we’ve talked about it many times on this show that people like the Elizabeth Dole foundation, what a crock of shit those people are. But I believe, I believe in the latter, and I hope that I’m not wrong.

I could be. But I believe that this is a way for them to show that, yep, we do care about veterans, and we’re going to fund these programs in this department more than we ever have before to ensure that veterans get the care they need. Which completely tosses upside down the narrative that we’ve been pushed on, that has been pushed on us for the last couple months, that they’re trying to. They’re trying to. To. To. To do away with VA care. They don’t care about the veterans, they don’t care about this, they don’t care about that.

And Donald Trump hates vets. They’re all chumps, right? They’ll throw that out there. Remember when President Trump said everyone that served was a chump? I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that either. It’s not what he said. You got to read the whole article. You got to watch the whole video, not just little mashups here and there. And so I think. I think that what we’ll find is that it has a slim chance. I believe that this is great, it’s a win, but I believe that it has a slim chance of making it through the Senate.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about that. And it’ll go all the way to President Trump. He’ll sign it into law, and we’ll have this for another year or two. And then when he’s gone, they’re going to destroy it again. And so I guess my message to all veterans out there is if you use the VA system and this thing passes, go get all your checkups. Get any work done that you. It’s like a. It’s like a warranty expiring on your car. Who knows how long this will be in place when President Trump is done, he’s done. So who knows how long it’ll be in place? So if you have care that you need or an operation that you’re waiting for the right time, maybe this is a time to consider that.

Because our warranty is going to run out. I believe. Because I believe that our politicians aren’t really looking out for what’s best for us. They’re trying to get reelected. So take that for what it’s worth. Have the conversations, talk about it. Tell me. I’m a. I’m a. I’m an idiot in the comments below, if that’s what you think. But I think that these, these are the things that are important to have conversations about, especially if you are a member of this community, if you are a member of the warrior culture, the veteran culture, these are great conversations for you to be having to be in the know so that when and if it comes up and you see yourself getting screwed, first of all, you’ll know why, and second of all, you’ll know where to better look for answers.

That’s all the time that we have for today, folks. I want to thank you again for being here. Take care of yourselves. We’ll see you next week. Have a good evening. As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be, at minimum, agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied. We literally should be at war with Israel 100 times. Over. And instead we’re just sending them money and it’s fucking craziness. Look at the state of Israel. Look at the state of Tel Aviv and look at the state of Philadelphia. You tell me where this money’s going.

You tell me who’s benefiting from this. I am prepared to die in the battle fighting this monster monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and to take away my God. Go fuck yourself. Will I submit to that? And if you’ve got a foreign state, you’ve got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they’re supporting? God, right now? Would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that’s willing to put their neck on the line and say, we stand with them.

We stand with them. You go to Trump’s cabinet. You go to Biden’s cabinet. SPO Jews. I have a black friend in school. I have nothing against blacks. She has nothing against me. She understands where I’m coming from. Excuse me. I’m a Jew. And I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible, it says that you’re. You’re like animals. The Jews crucified our God here on the break, folks, we’re going to talk about mushrooms. What do you know about mushrooms? Specifically coriolis versicolor. Mushrooms? Well, I don’t know a whole lot, but I have some friends here that do.

So I want to introduce you to Kurt and Kristen Ludlow. Hello, folks. How are you? Great. How are you doing? Very good. We have limited time. I don’t want to rush. I don’t want you to feel rushed, but I’d like you to tell us quickly about coriolis versicolor, mushrooms, and this breakthrough that seemingly not a whole lot of people have have been informed about or know about. But we’re here to change that, so help us out. What. What do you know? Absolutely. Well, let me give you some background real quick on it and how we got our hands on it, first and foremost.

One of our partners here at the company, his mother, was dealing with a very severe issue that affected her lung. She was attending Sloan Kettering. That issue ended up getting worse. They tried everything medically they could to resolve it. Nothing worked. And so they gave her two months to live. He started reaching out to friends and family regarding her circumstances, and her cousin or her nephew out in. In Japan reached back and said, look, I have something it’s just in a capsule form. It’s a mushroom. We have a proprietary way we extract it. You know, he was talking to her son, his cousin, and said, why don’t you have your mom try it and just see if this, you know, might help her out in any way.

And so she started taking it. And after 30 days, she noticed quite a considerable difference in the way she’s feeling. Month two went by, more improvement. Month three, she’s feeling as if there’s no issues whatsoever, and she goes back to Sloan Kettering. Sure enough, they run lab work on her and find that condition to no longer be there. And so they were flabbergasted. They wanted to know what she was doing. And of course, she was able to reach out to her nephew and bring all the information that they requested to them. And that’s where the first clinical study started here in the United States.

And from there, MD Anderson started studying it. The American Cancer Society, Loma Linda, Harvard. It’s been published in the Library of Medicine many times. And today there’s hundreds of studies on this mushroom. And what they concluded was that it didn’t cure, it, didn’t mitigate, it didn’t prevent anything, but specifically, it would modulate the immune system and get it working optimally again. And if we can get our immune system working optimally again, I think you can agree that it’s the best way to resolve any type of issue that we might be dealing with, because that’s what it’s designed to do.

And so for years, you know, if that happened to your mother, our partner, Simon, could not keep from telling anyone that would listen to him about it. And he started getting all types of reports back from different people with all kinds of different things that they were dealing with that they were noticing some great results with it. And it wasn’t just for sick, you know, people. It was for people that didn’t want to get sick, that wanted to be proactive versus reactive. And, you know, many great things that people were saying with renewed energy, feeling younger, sleeping better, things like that.

And so eight years ago, what ended up happening is one of our partners, aside from Simon, Steve, he lost a dog due to cancer within two months. Gino, our other partner, also logged, lost a dog due to cancer and two of their children. And so they were sitting around looking into it, and the dogs were all between the ages of 4 and 8. They were young, and they weren’t happy about it. And here they had this mushroom that, you know, they’d been getting out to people for years, as well as us. And they thought to themselves, wow, I wonder if this is safe for animals.

And sure enough, they found a study done by the University of Pennsylvania declaring that dogs that were taking this product were living three times as long as the dogs that weren’t. That had a very aggressive form of cancer. And so at that point, that’s where pet club 247 was born. Because they knew that they had an incredible strain. And here’s what they found out, Richard, is 65% of our pets are getting cancer today. One in three allergies, 6 million new cases of diabetes are going on there. They’re medicating them with human medications. And our pets are living half as long as they used to.

In the 70s, the average age of a golden retriever was 17. Today, that average age is nine. And they wanted to do something about it. So they added this mushroom into incredibly well put together products with no bad ingredients. Because what they found and why these conditions were happening was, was it came down to, like our humans, you know, it’s the foods, treats and toys they’re eating. The regulations are very loose and it’s causing all types of issues as a result of that, on top of all the other things that are going on. And that’s where the company was born and that’s where we are today.

That’s a, that’s, that’s a beautiful story. I, I think that there are so many people that are looking for something that’s not, not from the mainstream, not from big pharma or whatever the case may be. I mean, we all have these, these stories, right, about grandma’s old home remedies. And I’ll tell you what, I’m super interested in this because I have a dog. His name is Gus. He’s a Bernadoodle. He’s six, five or six years old. He was supposed to be a mini. He’s now 108 pound lap dog. And he does, he does struggle with some hip issues, only at five or six years old.

And he also has these subdermal, almost acne like bumps on his skin along his back and his side. And so as you’re explaining all this, I’m thinking about Gus and I’m thinking, man, we need to get him these, these mushrooms. I also, I also think about veterans, right, who have service animals and they get super attached and they, I know a few that have been through two and are on their third dog now. And it’s a, it’s a real struggle for some of these guys because the training’s long. They get super attached. They take these pets everywhere.

And so this type of product, the mushroom, I think, would be perfect for the veteran community as well. Do you guys see veterans or law enforcement or anything like that? Do people use them for these pets as well, on top of some other supplements or anything else that might be out there on the market? Absolutely. Because regardless of what our pets are going through or even what they might potentially have to go through, their immune system’s always going to be their first, their best bet. Right. It’s intelligently designed to handle everything in the body. Repair, recover, rebuild, regulate, renew, rebalance, everything that’s happening inside of the body.

So especially therapeutic dogs or dogs that are trained to do jobs where they have to focus and they have to have stamina and endurance. And we. We have spent a lot of time and resources training them. It’s very important that we’re not only keeping them with us longer, but that they actually have a good quality of life during those years. And so that’s why we say every pet, every person, every day should be getting this coriolis versicolor mushroom into system. We’ve been so blessed. God has given us a really pure and potent strain of this mushroom, and we’ve perfected the extraction process.

So that’s why we’re seeing such positive results relatively quickly from anything that you can think of with dogs, cats, horses, even people. It’s just been absolutely amazing. And we. We just want to be good stewards with what we’ve been given and take good care of it and be a part of restoring creation. So especially. Especially in those conditions, we encourage you to get your pet on the coriolis versus the color mushroom, or if you’re a veteran yourself and maybe you’ve been through some trauma and your body’s been through a lot, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, let’s get this mushroom into your system so that you can get that support that you need to really be able to recover from the inside out.

Well, and it makes a lot of sense to me, right? I mean, let’s get our immune systems working as our creator intended it to, instead of feeding it all this other junk and who, God knows what they give us in pill form and our food and all that other stuff these days. So this is actually a very refreshing conversation that we’re having because it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of things out there that are holistic and are natural to help us feel better. Explain to us, we got a couple minutes left why pet club 24 7.

Why, why is it, why is it put out as a club? I think that this is an important thing to touch on. Yeah, it was really important to us. You know, we feel very called to do what we’re doing and we know that we’re able to offer, offer the world a gift. And so we never really wanted to build a company. We want to build a community. That’s the idea behind it is that if we stand up together and lock arms, change the way that we’re doing things, change so that we can get different results and educate each other, make each other aware, connect each other with better solutions and better options that are going to give us better results and that are a lot more affordable in many cases.

You know, we believe that this, this community can truly change the way that pets and people are being treated just by being a voice for those that don’t have one. So that’s why the, the name of the company’s pet club 247 is because we want to be a community of people that are so solution, solution oriented, that do something about it, that don’t wait for other people to fix our problems or solve what’s going on. That we just stand up, control what we can control and contribute how we can contribute through this community. That’s beautiful. See folks, here at the Stu Peters Network, we’re here to help you feel better.

We’re so thankful that you guys are here. Pet Club 24 7, Kurt and Christine, we’re very happy to have you. Thank you for everything that you’ve done bringing this stuff out to people. Let’s get, let’s get healthy again. What was the movement that you talked about, Kurt? I said, you know, we have the Maha movement. Yes. We also have it here for our animals. Make animals healthy again. Absolutely. We’re fight to do so just like on the human side. And people can count on the fact that there’s no bad ingredients in our products. Everything made in human grade whole food, commercial kitchens, all sourced from the US and made right here in the US Very important.

Well Kurt, Kristen, thank you very much for being here folks. Pet Club 24 7, make sure you get there, get your, get your supplies of mushrooms not just for you but for your pets. Dog, cats, horses, all those things. Pet Club 247 guys, thank you very much for being here. Let’s connect soon. I’m going to get my supply and I’m going to report back for me and Gus to make sure that we, we do this full circle conversation. I’m super excited to talk to you guys again. We’ll see you very soon. Thank you. Thank you, Richard.

All right. Bye. Bye. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for our pets. They’re like our children. Our friends at pet clothes 247 have developed natural products that contain the most potent strain of a mushroom that’s been used for thousands of years to help support the immune system. So visit their website today to discover how they’re changing the way that pets and their parents are being treated for the better.
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