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This podcast is brought to you in part by Coke, Buffalo Wild Wings, Southern Immediate Care, Guaranteed Labels, Central State Bank Sunrise Docs, bankers Bounty, and Dr. Thomas Dudney. Now back to Bubba on the Lake. Hey, it's Bubba. Hey, Bubba. Bubba on the lake. Bubba, Bubba, Bubba on the Lake. Y gotta come and check this. Talking people, talking places from Bubba's perspective. This is Bubba, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba on the lake. A Bubba, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba on the lake. Let's go. Hello again, everybody, and welcome to Bubba on the Lake. It is a new year, a new start, and we are so glad to be with you again here in 2026. A lot to cover. We have a great show. Hunter is going to be checking in with us and updating us on Stranger Things. Some of y' all are big fans of that and they had their big finale. Betty is going to talk to us a little bit about our Christmas and Wendy Garner, many of you remember seeing her on NBC 13 for many, many years. She is going to be checking in with us and telling us what she's doing and a whole lot more. So you don't want to miss a bit of it. We want to remind you our website is bubonthelake.com. you can drop me an email bubbaaubaonthelake.com or you can leave a message on the 308 Big Lake comment line. Always love those. And of course, we are back in the Melayella studio for another year and we're excited to be here. I want to thank all of you for what you have done for us and these podcasts last year. Amazing. When we started it, we really didn't know how it was going to go, what was going to happen. We didn't get to do everything we wanted to do because of my knee replacement and the surgeries we had to have after that. But I'm doing well. We're probably going to start a little rehab. I'm getting around so well. I don't really feel like I need rehab, but we probably will just to strengthen everything up and I hope to get back out, play a little pickleball, a little tennis here before long. So everything is moving along very well with that. I will talk with Betty and Hunter a little bit about our Christmas, but just briefly before we start. It was a wonderful Christmas. We, we really focused on what was going on this year was as much about gifts. We, we counted the time we had with loved ones. Very important. A lot of family get together, a lot of friends. And it was, I think, one of the more Productive Christmases we've ever had, far as just socializing. And, you know, that's a great gift for me, it really is. Now a little bit on the political front, we cannot move forward without at least talking about what went on in Venezuela. And El Presidente Maduro is now a prisoner in New York and has pled not guilty in a New York courtroom. He was indicted and charged as a drug runner, among other things, him and his wife. Many people have pointed out that he wasn't really the president of Venezuela, which is true. He lost the election, but just didn't leave. And the opposition leaders and the people of Venezuela seem to be pretty happy he's gone. He basically was the CEO of a drug operation. And I knew something. And just before we go any further, a bit of history, because I had relatives that actually worked in the oil business in Venezuela back before Hugo Chavez took over. That was the elected dictator, if you will, before Maduro. And he turned that country from one of the high standard of livings in Central America to shambles. And, you know, this is the thing that always amazes me. The socialists slash communists always come in with a good sales pitch. The US Went in, leased land, leased mineral rights, built massive oil operations in Venezuela. Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia does. Okay, it is. It is. Eat up with precious metals and oil. And the US Went in, funded this. It raised the standard of living. People there were flourishing because they were making good money working in these oil fields. And then Hugo Chavez comes in. And this is what the communist socialists always do. They have a great sales pitch to the people who have fallen through the cracks or who are not moving up the ladder in the free market. And they come in and say, hey, those guys who have the oil wells are stealing all of your money. Now, they don't mention the fact that they're paying a nice ransom of a price for that. And the president, who was a dictator, steals that money and it never makes it to the people. But they blame the US as justification for taking over the refineries and the oil operations. And then what happens? Well, the people who really know what they're doing, the US and the people who work for these big oil companies all leave. Our family member had to flee in the middle of the night before the communists took over. And they come in and they say, oh, we're going to keep all this money at home. Well, guess what? The dictator just keeps getting richer and the people keep getting poorer. But now they don't have a vote because he takes all the guns up. So they're hung with it. So Venezuela, and we've seen this pattern repeat over and over and over again. Okay, it happened in Cuba with Castro, Noriega. It happened with who? Let's see, it was Daniel Ortega and then Noriega. In Panama, you had Chavez and Venezuela. I mean, just. You just name the country and they've all gone through this. I don't know why we don't learn our history. This never works. It never has worked. It didn't work with Russia. It didn't work with all these other countries who've played with it in the past. Excuse me. I tell you, one of the big success stories coming back out of the Soviet Iron Curtain was Poland. Poland didn't have much of an economy when the Iron Curtain fell. And they have a booming economy today because they have a free market now. A free market does not guarantee everybody there is going to be rich. A few people will get rich. A few people will work. Some people will put in the extra work to make more money, but there's no guarantees. People will still fall through the cracks, but it's still the best system going. And I don't know why we can't see this on a worldwide level. It just never works. When you go to socialism by gunpoint and then you go to communism, now they are social aspects of things that work, like insurance. If you're not made to get it, it doesn't work. But if people go in and invest in insurance because they want that protection and they pay into it, and then the people who actually need it draw out of it, that system can actually work. But that's by choice. You can't have insurance by gun barrel. It doesn't work. Obamacare, prime example gone broke. President Obama promised us lower, lower coverage, all this stuff. It was going to be great prices, all that. The thing is broke. If Congress doesn't keep pumping more money into it and the rates are going up. It was called the Affordable Care Act. It is anything but affordable. Anything but affordable. So I don't know why we keep falling for this. The free market system is not perfect, never will be, because humans are involved and we're in a fallen creation. But it is by far the best thing going. And it has created more wealth and raised more people's standard of living in the world than any time ever. And I just. I'm just perplexed sometimes. I just don't know why we keep doing it. I guess it's the easy sale to the uninformed masses. I've always called Socialism that because you go in and you say, hey, those guys over there getting rich are taking your money. Vote for me and I'll stop it. It's just like this character in New York. Now he's gone in, promised free, free bus fares. Just wait on that one. That'll be sweet. I will tell you the one example of where it, communism has survived, let me put it that way, is in China. And you know why? China was in the same boat and they changed their economy over to more of a free market. Now they still have a death grip on everybody. And if you get out of line, they'll squash you like a bug. But their economy, for the most part, is much, much more like the United States economy than it is Russia or Venezuela or Iran or wherever you want to plug in. Dictator dictators just don't work. Never does. Never does. And I know some of you like to call Trump a dictator. He's been elected twice. Sorry. And he'll leave when his term is up. He's not a dictator. He's a strong leader with strong opinions. I tell you, the thing about the Venezuelan deal, the fact that our military could go in and grab this guy, literally take him and his wife out of their bed wearing their pajamas and not have a casualty is incredible. Do you realize the odds of that? I don't know the full details, but somebody in his inner circle sold him out. That's the only way they could pull this off. The CIA was on the ground. They had trained extensively for the operation, even reconstructed the house where they went into. But Cuba was running his secret service, and somebody in that secret service turned. That's the only way we could have gotten to him in his pajamas and got him out of there without anybody being killed. Somebody turned. I don't know who it was. We'll get more details as time goes on. But he was arraigned in New York today while we're doing this, and pleaded not guilty. So he'll have his day in court like everybody else. But I don't think it's going to end up well for him. He, and I know many of you have sent me the video of him at the podium screaming, here I am. Come get me, you coward. Well, I wouldn't say that to Donald Trump. Too many times. It'll. You'll end up in a jail in New York, my friend. All right. Once again, Trump does what he says he is going to do. I really thought he was pulling the military down there to do a little saber rattling, but I noticed it. It was over it was the week before he was picked up. I heard him make a public statement that he was ready to share Venezuelan's oil revenues with Trump. He wanted to share, he's wanting to make a deal and that, that was so shocking to me that he would change his verbiage so dramatically that I thought one, he's either crazy or two, they are scaring him and they're getting real close. I really didn't expect them to go in and get him out of bed. Honestly, that's, that's kind of blows me away that they could do that. But hey, hats off to our military guys and the planners that did it. We've, we've had some failed operations in the past, but they were spot on on this one, buddy. I mean, got him and his wife, they're both wanted on drug trafficking charges and, and I'm afraid that they've got an overwhelming amount of evidence against them. So we'll see. What about Venezuela? What happens now? I would assume the lady who won the election and her name slips my memory currently will eventually become the president. Trump, of course, drove the left crazy by saying we're running Venezuela right now. I, I just was going to do that just to stir them up. I think he enjoys that. I mean the rest of us are going, my gosh, Trump, you know, go easy and, but he loves stirring them up and it is kind of funny. We just, I mean he's kind of like the Coach Signetti of politics, you know, I mean, it's just, it's just refreshing in it. But anyway, that's, that's the latest. We'll find out more about the raid and what happened with that. But you know, the, these drug boat and oh gosh, I've heard people crying about the drug boats. Oh, we're killing people. And listen, we have assets on the ground in Venezuela. They identify the boats, what the cargo is. Look, when you have a bass boat and you have four giant engines on the back and you have bales of things covered in plastic and you head out, you're, you're a drug running, okay, that's not a fishing trip, that's not a pleasure cruise. And they knew exactly when they left and they called in the reaper drones and took care of them. So if you're bringing drugs in the US look out because Trump's serious about it and I'm glad. I've had too many friends lose kids and whatnot. And we've all know people who have been succumbed to drug addiction and a lot of that is Just due to the ridiculous availability of it. So I appreciate President Trump doing that. All right, we'll be right back. We have a lot to cover. Thank you again and buckle in.