Chapo Trap House - 522 - American Junkie (5/11/21)

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

Topics for today include: Bustin’; The Junkie Horse; Elon SNL; Keir Starmer: Born To Lose; Ongoing Israeli assault on Palestinians (we will have a more in-depth interview on this topic after Eid); Elizabeth Warren persists; Return to the Workplace, Or Else. Get the Sarah Vaccine on Means TV here: https://means.tv/programs/sarahvaccine And of course, get tix to FRQNCY1 here: https://frqncy.live/frqncy1 And tune in to Felix’s FromSoftware stream this Saturday on twitch.tv/chapotraphouse to benefit: Movement to Safeguard Palestinian Communities Islamic Relief of Canada Palestinian Emergency Fund eye.on.palestine

Greetings, friends. It is Monday, and I have only one thing to say that is at the top of my mind this week. And that is simply, busting makes me feel good. Yes, that's right. Ghost busting. Busting makes me feel good. I bring it up because it's just that line has been stuck in my head because I watched the movie over the weekend, like Catherine hadn't seen it forever. And in the Ray Parker Jr. song, Ghostbusters, the Ghostbusters theme, he says busting makes me feel good. It does that, folks. Don't we love it? Don't we love to bust? Busting makes me feel good.

I've never seen any of those movies. Wow. Well, I mean, that's fucked up. I mean, like, I probably, Ghostbusters is the, I mean, I've read about it on Letterbox, but it's probably like the most important movie to my childhood. And like, you know, development into a human being is probably more based on that movie than anything else. I would probably put it in a similar spot for me. If not number one, it's in the, it's in the running. Well, yeah, I mean, that makes sense. It's like, was the first horror film ever made. It's the scariest.

It's scary. Everyone acknowledges it. Yeah. That fucking, that, is that a Bowie song? That magic song? Oh, no, no, no, it's not, it's not Bowie. It's a, please, please. It's actually a smiley mix. All those spooky ghouls coming out of the ground, coming out of the Twin Towers, the skeleton cab driver, a slimer, eating all of those hot dogs.

When the, that would be pretty scary. The dogs. Imagine you're trying to have a classic Park Avenue day and she just, it's like the Twilight Zone. It's like, oh, everyone got haunted out of New York. I can finally enjoy Central Park to myself. Oh, no, they ate all the hot dogs. That's horrifying. Please, bustin' makes me feel good. Got a lot on my mind today. A lot of things going on, but I suppose we should just start out the news with a statement

from our president and yours, Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States of America, from the desk of Donald Trump, May 9th, 2021. So now even our Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit, is a junkie. This is emblematic of what is happening to our country. The whole world is laughing at us as we go to hell on our borders, our fake presidential election, and everywhere else. There you have it, folks. America has fallen so low that even our Kentucky Derby winners are junkies now. Washed up junkie psycho.

Medina Spirit, junkie loser, stealing, stealing change from their parents. That's the best part. So what happened is, is that the Kentucky Derby winner has to positive for horse steroids. Which by the way, like every single horse race winner of any race of note is on drugs of some kind. Well, obviously, the idea is like, are people begging for integrity to the return to the world of horse racing? Probably the fewest sport ever invented. Other than boxing. If you win, like one of the triple crown races, that horse's come

is worth $500,000 a shot glass or something. Why would you not fucking dope it to hell? It tastes amazing. I mean, like this, okay. Well, like, you know, we can have debates over, you know, the, we can have debates over whether this is a clean sport or not. I guess it's not, but like the horse steroids aren't bad because they impugned the integrity of horse racing. I mean, we all remember what happened when Chris Benney killed his family because of his influence under horse steroids when he crushed them all under bails of hay.

My favorite thing is that he called the horse a junkie. Yeah. Yeah. And the stocky went into the bathroom stall and he like knocked on it and the horse is tying off. He's like, no, no, not now. God damn it. It's like the horses. It's the horses. It's like, hit me up. The horse, the poor horse just was doing living its life. It's psycho owner is the one filling you with drugs so that he could make more money.

Medina horse Medina spirit arrested last night in Tompkins square park. And then I did the, well, I think it's like the horse steroids, you know, it's not so much that they impugned the integrity of the, the sport of Kings horse racing is that they impugned the integrity of a horse semen and how it tastes. It leaves us sort of an oaky note that I could do without. We're sort of bearing the lead here that Trump finally unveiled his alternative to Twitter, which is not as a lot of people assumed it was going to be some sort of competing social

media site, but instead a blog. It took him six months and probably like $10 million to make a blog that he could post little, little creed thoughts and then you have an option you can heart it. And all that does is just make the heart light up or you can send it to Facebook and Twitter. It's not even like a blog. It's like, it reminds me of when people would make like personal websites and like 2000 just like, you know, Willie, Willie Gorman's page and it's like frequently asked questions about here. Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of those. This did make me miss him. Like calling this one really, I mean, I honestly have kind of,

I missed him for a bit and then I kind of, cause he was so gone that I kind of forgot to miss him. But this one calling a horse a junkie. I felt the twinge. I was like, oh man, I miss my buddy. That's a classic. And like, I do have to say there is like, there is a guy, you know how we've talked about how every Republican like tries to like replicate Trump's swag. Yeah. And it's just like, you just get like this, whatever fucking loser from like Missouri or North Dakota, who's like trying to be like, oh, Joe Biden's a washed up psycho. It's like they just, they just don't have it, but there is a new guy. Greg Kelly, you know, he's amazing.

That guy's amazing. The ball man's ball man. He was bragging about wearing like $1,400 ball man's tomorrow logo. Like it's like 2005. And that's like sick. And they were the shittiest pants I've ever seen. I gotta say, they look like absolute guard. They were cargo pants. Yeah. They were cargo has $500 or something. That's insane. They were like a combination of cargo pants, but then like bondage pants that you wear to like a fucking death tones concert. And it's like, it's so fucking sick. And he also, he did the best major and champ to it. Biden's to when he called them filthy, disgust looking dogs. That's good. Yeah. If he wants to be Trump, that's good because he's channeling Trump's

obvious loathing of animals. Yes. Because yeah, he thinks they're, he thinks they're dirty. Yeah. Wait, I got guys, hold on. I'm just, just seeing now on my Twitter, Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit arrested at the Chelsea Hotel following the murder of prize mayor Pharaoh's daughter. Did you see though, did you see got the owner of Medina Spirit hitting the morning talk shows to blame cancel culture for the reason his horse is a junkie or the reason his horse, his horse is being canceled. Don't you see? And what I love about this is like, like racehorse owner guy, like, and this guy's, he owns most of like the big like, oh yeah, he's always there. And he's just on TV with this shock of like fucking

ivory white hair and sunglasses indoors. And he's just like, yeah, he looks like the main mutant from the Omega man. He should be wearing a black Derby. Yeah. He's got, he's wearing sunglasses indoors to go on Fox and friends in the morning to claim that his horse is being canceled. It's, you know, with all the noise going out, you know, we live in a different world now. This, this America is different. And this, it was like a canceled culture kind of a thing. So they're reviewing it. Yeah. And no, his excuse, his excuse is great. He said a trainer took cough medicine and urinated in the stable and Medina Spirit ate the hay that one of his groomers had pissed on taking cough medicine. And that's what

led to the positive test. That's really good. I have, there's only one excuse I've ever heard in all the sports of rivals that for a positive test. And it was, um, Bikini, no, Gerrida, who's a Brazilian fighter, he tested positive in a losing effort and then was like, no, no, it's not my fault. So I, my friend made a goat that he gave steroids to. And he ate the goat. Yeah. I ate the tainted goat. I just love this guy like race horse owner, a.k.a trustworthy individual. Yeah. If this guy, but here's the thing though, why, you know, they shouldn't be testing for drugs in horse racing. They should look, they should whack these horses up. Absolutely. It's already

what is the idea here? What is the thinking? You can't have the horses on drugs because it might encourage other horses who are watching to do drugs. Winners don't use drugs, but like in, in horse racing, like, you know how many race horses are just killed when like they get injured or like just can't run anymore? They just shoot them on the track. Like, yeah, I read this horrible story about, uh, about Donald Trump's one attempt to get a racehorse in the 90s. He got some mob guy who owed him a bunch of money, owed a bunch of money to the, to the Trump Taj Mahal offered to sell him this racehorse that might have in, it had, there'd been an infection going around in the horse community and it didn't

show any symptoms, but they were worried that if they worked it too hard, uh, it would get sick. And Trump said, no fuck, run him. What are you doing? I'm not, I'm not paying for him to loaf around eating. Hey, and sure enough, he got super sick and had to have his front hooves removed. Oh, that's, I didn't even know that happened. Yeah. I would, and apparently they grow back, which I did not know. Well, they're like, but you can't run a race ever again. Yeah. That's like, man, that's like the worst person you could give a racehorse to. Oh my gosh. Yeah. He's, yeah, he probably just like the moment he got it was like, okay, great. And

then just like left it in a parking lot in Atlantic city for like a year. Parking garage of the top. One of the, one of the, uh, uh, stipulations in his purchase of it is that it was renamed DJ Trump. I love him. Okay. Like, and what I love about Donald Trump buying, buying a racehorse is like, you'd think that there is any possibility that weren't on offer. He wouldn't have given that horse drugs to make it run faster. Oh my God. He would have given that horse like a Lestra. He would have been like, it looks fat. They're like, Oh, look at those, look at those ankles. Howdy. Yeah. Like his trainer's like, um, there's a one in two chance that if we inject DJ Trump with a liquid plutonium, it'll win the preakness.

And then the other half is that it'll just die immediately. And it'd be like, it'll explode like it's in a microwave. Winners take big risks. Okay. If someone had offered to do that for like his sons, he would have done it for literally, for literally. Yeah. He's man. I miss him, but like definitely follow Grape Kelly. If you miss him, um, he's the only one doing Trump style post that doesn't seem like a sweaty, ham-fisted, like, you know, awkward copy of the original. Like his brain is just as warped as Trump's like, his shit's fried. And like, you know, he definitely is trying to copy Trump, but in, but like it works for him.

Yeah. And he's like surpasses him in some ways. Like he adds like a new, new type of swag to it. He, that's the thing. You have to have like legitimate, like low IQ swag. You can't just be stupid. You have to have like the, that type of swag. And that's why like, you know, Josh Hawley can't do it because he's, he went to Gale and all this shit. That's not the guy he is. He's pretending. But then like, you know, just a true doler, like, uh, the governor, uh, Brian Kemp, back when he was like more aping the Trump style, it's like, you don't have it, dude. You're just stupid. You don't have like, you've never had swag. You've never had low IQ confidence.

Yeah. It's like you can't have, it's not going to work when you got Ted Cruz going, uh, Graydon Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair, but the real vanity is serving the fair at his bad food restaurant. Ted Cruz, yeah, Ted Cruz, like quoting Churchill when making a speech about how Jill Zarin looks fat. It's like it doesn't work. No one believes that guy cares about hairspray. Well, I probably went to the other big, uh, cultural news of the weekend and, uh, Boyle Boyle, am I glad that, uh, one third of us has taken it upon himself to watch every single episode of contemporary SNL, like some sort of, like, I don't know, like, like Jesus Christ

kind of like, almost like during the suffering of the community for all of us, not that hard. It's not that big of a deal. It's like, it's an hour. There's a couple of songs. Uh, it's not the worst thing on earth. It's just very, very bad. Okay. So Elon Musk hosted SNL this weekend and it's what everyone's talking about. So we can find, we can now finally employ Matt, Matt, Chris, and SNL report, Elon Musk edition. Matt, how was it? Ah, it was, I mean, it was terrible, obviously, but they're all bad. And the thing is, is it like Elon Musk hosting, he's not like the regular times that they get us, uh, us actor or something. Like there are different types of SNL hosts. You know,

there are former cast member, uh, hosts, there's comedians who will do like a standup monologue and stuff. And, and then like there are actors who will try to be game. And then they have these sort of freak shows to come on where the novelty is the bit like Donald Trump when he did it or, uh, or Steve Forbes when he did it in 1996. Oh wow. Yeah, I remember that actually. And, uh, Elon Musk is in that grand tradition of just no charisma rich, famous stiffs who come out and just them like trying to do the bits is the joke. Like, oh, it's Elon Musk in a shitty beard. That's what's supposed to be amusing. So what were some of the highlights? Oh, highlights, you say, uh, lights, whatever.

It was, I mean, yeah, I would say that, uh, the things that were most, the things that were most visible about it was the, were the sketches that like took him seriously, like took his whole bullshit Ponzi scheme, a fraudulent ass, fake, um, futurist thing. Seriously. Like there was the last sketch of the night was about a old West, uh, saloon where, uh, a gang had just shot somebody and went away and they were hiding in the foothills and they wanted to go chase after him with a posse. And then Elon plays a guy who suggests instead that they dig a tunnel under the ground to get them. And then that they also use, uh, a different type of currency except for gold. So it's essentially like, Hey, what if Elon

Musk was in the, the, the old West? And at the end, he actually even says, I'm trying to make, uh, the old West into the new West. It actually, they take him seriously. They're like, this is, this guy, it's more advertising for him. And he did do a number of jokes about Dogecoin, which apparently caused the thing to collapse completely, which is very funny. After a lot of people assumed it was going to explode. So he literally being the host of that show has probably caused at least one person to kill themselves, which that's probably the first, except for maybe the say Steven Segal episode.

Well, that caused the guy who booked him to kill himself. Yeah. Yeah. No. I, uh, when you have a great line like that, uh, I'm trying to make the old West the new West. I mean, they probably came up with that first and then you have to write a sketch around it because you can't just let that die in the writer's room. I mean, obviously he's terrible and he is terrible in a very obnoxious way because he, I never know. I've never really, I honestly don't think I've ever even really heard him talk before this episode that long. Uh, he does this thing where every time he speaks, his shoulders like move, like he's, he's like, you remember the, the dancing coke can where

if you clapped or made noise, this coke can would like wiggle or like hula or something. His shoulders do that every time he speaks. Like as he's speaking, he's like, he's doing a weird Chris watch that Chris. Did you notice this? He does this like weird. Uh, yeah. He's he's got an intensely awkward physicality, which I guess he would explain by being the first host to ever have a Asperger's though that that is an acroid with like a word. Sir. Yeah. Exactly. Give me a break. I was on there for years. Uh, yeah. You want to talk about Asperger's? Let's talk about the original screenplay for Ghostbusters. Matt could fill you in on it. Yes. The traveler will come in one of the pre-chosen forms.

Uh, the rectification of the full drawn eye. He has the physicality of Jack Donaghy needing to hold two mugs to walk across the stage. Like this very, it's just awkward. Uh, and they put him in a bunch of beards. They, they made him Wario at one point. They had him dress up like Wario and Grimes was Princess Beach. Right? Oh, that's who that was. Yeah. Yeah. That was Grimes. She didn't even get a pop from the audience, which is, that's got to be embarrassing because usually when there's a spat, when someone does a cameo, they get a big audience applause, but nobody knows who the hell that is. There was another one that put him in a mission control of like his first man, mission to Mars. And the joke

of that was he was a hyper competent mission control operator of a vast tech enterprise sending a human to Mars. And Pete Davidson was a shithead who fucked everything up on the marching colony. So again, the, the, the, but the concept of the joke is that Elon Musk is, is essentially correct on all of his exploits. And, uh, we, the fucked up, uh, millennial and Gen Z plebians is embodied in, uh, Pete Davidson are the ones who are, are going to die in his, uh, uh, grist mill for his experiments. Yeah. That's the main thing that's obnoxious about is that, is that he is the host and all of the jokes, all of the sketches are essentially about how he is, what he says

he is, which that's, that's great comedy right there. I did see, I mean, it's like if everyone complied with Steven Sikola's ideas, I did, I did see one, uh, sketch from this night. I, I didn't see any others. I saw like screenshots, but I watched one entire sketch and it was the one where like all the zoomers are into operating room and they're like, yo, my, my fan broke his leg. Fina. Yeah. It's like, what's the average age of the person writing this show? Like 58. I mean, I don't know. I think they probably do have some young people in there and then they, they treat them like, uh, they like ask them questions and then write it like sort

of anthropologically. Yeah. Well, I think like, I mean, there are like good writers who write for that show, but it's like, I think like any good idea they have, they're like, no, actually we're going to get a 63 year old. Yeah. Look what happened to fucking to write it. Yeah. To write a sketch called like, you know, rap doctor. Well, that is in their defense, their target audience. That's the thing is retirees. It's for the olds. It's a legacy media thing. It's a way for older people to process the existence of younger people. It is not for like hip, like gay early twenties people. It's for a 75 year old woman who is

named gay. So basically what you're saying, Matt, is that like all of the humor of him hosting and being in sketches was rung out not from any like dissonance between his public, uh, like the public perception that he sells to the world and like reality. It's like the jokes are like, what if he really is just a humble, eccentric billionaire who's going to save humanity? Basically yes. And then everybody else is goofing around around him. Yeah. Could you imagine what mad TV would have done with this? Oh my God. Gay Elon Musk.

Yeah. It wouldn't even be like a satire of like anything that's bad about him. They'd just be like, all right. So Elon, for this sketch, you're a chef, but all you can cook is poop. You eat poop and you're naked and you're a baby. I mean, I feel like it's like it's almost like, I mean, it is a cliche now. It's almost like annoying to say, but I really do find like this certain type of person. And by person, I mean guy who like defends Elon Musk online or like looks up to him. Like he's some sort of like Da Vinci level genius or something is just like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's

so gratingly offensive to me because of how like absolutely hollow like it is. Like, I mean, it's just like, because whenever you press, you press any of these people on like Elon Musk or any of the shit he's actually done or like said, they're just like, you don't understand. He's trying to save humanity. And I'm like, get over yourselves. Like we are never going to fucking live on Mars, even with or without Elon Musk, like get that fantasy out of your fucking head. It'd be nice to think about, but like as we are currently constituted, get that fucking dream out of your head that we're going to save humanity by colonizing the solar system. It's not going to happen. And it's certainly not going to happen with

Elon Musk at the fucking controls. Well, the thing is though, is if you, if you like most people have no, if you, if you believe that like social cooperation, solidarity cannot defeat capitalism and in fact shouldn't defeat capitalism, the fact capitalism, even if it has problems and even if it is incompatible with life as we know it is inevitable, then the only hope to imagine a future which is impossible under current conditions is to imagine a technological salvation. And Elon Musk is now the on paper richest man on earth because he is the avatar of that fantasy future, that, that, that future where we are rescued by technology, where we don't have to confront the contradictions of the systems we live

under. And for a lot of people who have given up or never held any hope that we could do anything else so we could organize our society any other way, then guys like Elon Musk kind of have to be fixated upon and have to be fetishized and have to be patronized because then if you don't believe that they have an idea for a future, that they don't have the capacity to develop some technology that could save us, then there really is no future and it's hard to live that way. Can I say something that I think is good about Elon Musk? Do it.

He's do. So Elon Musk has a very rare tit shape for man. He can only get eating like several different types of like corn derived products. And I've noticed like it's a kid style that you'll see if you watch a lot of movies from the seventies that have a lot of nudity. And it's where like they both point outwards. They're like pointy like triangular ones and they point outwards. And it's like, well, cool, man. Good job. Triangle tit muscle. Yeah. No, it's not. I've never seen a man have those. Like men usually when they like get a little overweight or like are getting old, like he's an older dude. It's like what?

Like late forties probably. You know, one way that that can happen because, you know, you get tits when you get older, when you get young, it doesn't matter. But like there's one style which I call the Irish style. And it's where like you have a big like hard gut, but then your tits are like two popped blisters. They're like like flesh sacks. And it's like those nipples are pointing downwards or 45 degree angles. Or you can have like sort of like more conical ones to push out. But like pushing like concave like convex ones, that's like wild for a man. So yeah, it's pretty sick. I see Felix has been stalking my finsta. I always suspected that was going on. But you

know, I mean, shit, I'm just going to put myself out there, you know, for a select few and have it come back on me in this way is very upsetting. I'm sorry. But like, okay, I think like mine are probably like going to get huge because that that can happen to where they just, you know, they're like become luscious, luscious like a woman's breast sometimes. But I think the Irish style, like if you're going to have them, that's probably the best, right? Because it's like you can still no one will notice it if you have a shirt on. And then if you don't have a shirt on, it's like, well, those aren't like obtrusive. They're not like distracting anyone.

Yeah, no one's getting hurt. No one's got their eyeball poked out. Yeah. Yeah. Elon Musk's nipples are probably like weirdly hard. It's like when you have like a, you know, sap on a tree, it's probably like the hardened amber. Yeah. Well, anyway, so that's the Musk on SNL report. And, you know, to move on from the world of light entertainment and culture, I think we should probably now segue into more serious international affairs. And, you know, we'd be remiss if we didn't bring up at least a little bit on this show, what's the events that are going on in Jerusalem right now and particularly, you know, like at the Alaska Mosque. And just like, look,

we're going to, we're, you know, this is this is a topic that demands like a more serious in depth episode. And we do have one in the works. But suffice to say, nothing about what's happening on right now should be described as clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. This is straight up full on terrorism and ethnic cleansing being done by Israel to Palestine. And it's coming on the heels of like weeks of fucking far right wing rallies in Jerusalem and throughout Israel, just demanding for the like outright massacre and ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians, you know, the ongoing dispossession of just literally people's houses in Jerusalem who like come home from shopping and find some fat asshole sitting in their

living room going, call the cops, call the IDF, you know, I live here now, it's mine. I mean, it's just, and of course, like this can't be separated from, you know, Netanyahu's political fortunes. And it's like, this is what he's always done is stir up some fucking like massive, just like, you know, enabling the, the, the, the, you know, the right in Israeli society. I mean, I put, I put that in quotation marks because like, what isn't the right in Israeli society, but like they've had sit like eight elections in the last year and they keep being the exact same tie between two fucking psychos. And then they do this shit to try to basically make sure that Netanyahu doesn't go to jail by losing

the election. It's like, just make him God emperor. Why are you pretending that this is a fucking tomorrow? I know, I know about the fucking only democracy in the Middle East, but like, it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing is being held together by actual consent of the governed anywhere. Just fucking say, you know what, we're in charge and stop like intentionally provoking and causing violence just so that you can keep jiggering around the results of your fake elections. Yeah, this is, I mean, it's definitely Netanyahu trying, trying to create, create a crisis before, so yeah, for his political fortunes, but it's also like, this is also who they

are at the end of the day. Yeah. What this country is, this is, this is the country that does crystal knocked every fucking day. This is, you know, it's not men's words here. This is the fucking forthright. It's, it's not just IDF shooting and killing people in Al-Aqsa, which is something, you know, only Satan himself would do if he had dominion over that land. It's just random Israeli is just freaking out and hitting Palestinian children with their car, completely backed up by the fucking state. Things like this every fucking day, we, yeah, we do have a

really great guest lined up to talk about this more in depth because it deserves that attention. But yeah, there's something related to this. I'm going to talk about it at the end of the show, but like for now, something you can do because I think what they want Americans to feel like is if they don't outright approve of this is just helpless. What can I do? What can I, what can I say and just be a nerd to it? But there's a lot you can do. There are charities like Islamic Relief for Canada who provides medical relief and aid for people on the ground in Palestine. There's Al-Quds network that like provides resources for Palestinian communities. There's a ton of stuff and we can put that in the

link description, but yeah, this is, this is wholly indefensible, but this is the real face of Israel and the real face of Zionism. Yeah, I mean, it should go without saying that this demands like the, at the very least, the sternest possible condemnation from the US government and the rest of the world community. I mean, I won't be holding my fucking breath, but like, yeah, like this is just the face of Israeli policy and Israeli culture, like of their democracy. Like this is what their democracy means. This is what it's set up to do. But like to the extent that this is, you know, like Netanyahu, you're creating a crisis to cause violence, to enable him

to like, you know, get over the line for the 12th time in a row in the last three years and like form a government or like, and avoid prosecution for when he's out of office. So all I got to say for Netanyahu and Israeli society as a whole, I hope they get their wish and get it hard. Yeah. Moving on to another election, um, got like, I, I have followed so little of this because you know, our official policy on the show now is that, um, ignore all English posts, ignore all English news stories, ignore all, all news coming out of that island. But man,

you know, man has here, Starmer, has there ever been a more born to lose man alive than this guy? He's owning. That's what they fucking hired him to do. It's, it's great. I mean, God, talk about another group of people who deserve to get everything that's coming to them. And it's the British labor party. Yeah. You guys got what you wanted. You stopped Corbin. Enjoy. They are, they love enjoying it.

They love it. It's great. They don't, they don't have to win with the point, what's the point of winning? You still got, you get the, the, the paycheck clears regardless. Yeah. Uh, care has been, I think care hired somebody who, uh, worked for Pete because did you see when they were like, uh, Sir Keith, you, you know, lost the most. This is the worst anyone's ever done. And he was like, we're going to look to challenges in the future to better ascertain how to come across. No, they said, they said, they said, what changes are you going to implement?

And he's like, we're looking very strongly at implementing the changes that will make change. Yeah. Oh, um, I've, uh, uh, uh, an Iranian, uh, listener told me this cure means cock in Persian. There we go. You, I mean, I don't know if that's an asset or, uh, uh, liability for him, but it's like, he's got to do something here. He's got like, I mean, he, he, like, he does give a shit, I guess.

No. But like, Yeah. If they want to keep up the appearance that they're at least trying, but yeah, no, they, uh, they are promoting Jess Phillips and like other people who just fucking sabotage the shit out of Corbin. And this will keep happening worse and worse. I mean, like it is, it's amazing, like how indefensible the job they did is, because it's like, yeah, that I don't think you have

a better case for Boris Johnson's incompetence than what is right behind you, the timeframe that's right behind you. And it's just like, no, we're going to do even worse. And the thing is like they, they, they couldn't capitalize at all on the fact that like Boris Johnson and the Tories management of like the pandemic has been so fucking bad. And like they couldn't, they couldn't even, they, they did worse than the fucking last time. Like it's just, it's astonishing. They lost, they lost the crumpet upon buttocks here council for the first time in 60 years.

It's the fucking shambles. The only labor candidates that did win were people who were like either Corbin loyalists or just like out and out about socialist policies and ran on the same strategy that they ran in 2017. And the people that lost were the, you know, labor means you can have a Polish slave again. It's, I mean, yeah, no, I think there's like some, a momentum Corbin candidate won in Wales for the first time in like a hundred years. So Wales, Scotland, get out while the getting is good.

I mean, it might happen. England. One of the other things that happened in the election is that the SNP did better than they've ever done. So they want out. I mean, I understand. I also have to say big ups to the Northern independence party and that movement. You, your fortunes lie elsewhere than it's part of the UK under the, just chop the fucker

up. Let's just go into a, everything's going to fall apart eventually. Let's do it quickly while you can like do some fun stuff in the interim. Bring back the kingdom of Northumbria. Exactly. Yeah. Create the, bring back the Septarchy or whatever the fuck. Let's do it. Bring back the, bring, bring forth the Gregg's empire. I mean, you know what? It's like, I understand the UK has a national, they have health insurance over there, which is like nothing to sniff at. And by the way, they won't for much longer.

Yeah. But these fucking clunkies in charge, they will not have the NHS for much longer. They will have dynamic American style healthcare sometime in the near future, which is guess what? What you all wanted and it's what you all fucking deserve. Health, healthcare for the time being aside though, it is nice to just have one imperable democracy in the world that is more doomed and hopeless than America. And that's the UK. Yeah. I do. I mean, it's not just health. Like the NHS is the ideal system. It's like

better than Medicare for all. Like it's just fully nationalized medicine, which I think the goal should be. But yeah, no, I mean, we'll see, we'll see what it looks like when Boris is done with it. Well, I mean, and then like in the postmortems of this, there of course, everybody is just blaming Corbin for this. I saw this one lady, he was like, I compare Labour's performance in this election to a beloved footballer who had an injury and then was pushed out too early before they had recovered. But there are no way match ready to take the pitch.

And it's like you've had a fucking year where he's been like in the dirt and it's still his fault. It's still his fault to them. Because like, oh yeah, he did so much damage to them by making them for the first time ever like electorally viable, even close to that. And they're never going to forgive him for that. And again, like everything else, you got what you asked for in your way. Well, and it's like they can't even pull this shit because they were saying, you know, they were saying like, oh, you know, campaign means going great. No one's even mentioned Jeremy Corbin during like during our canvases. It's like, you can't have it both ways. But

you know, the Jess Phillips of the world, they will be further promoted. And the court people will be further buried, no matter if they're the only ones who win or not. What's the isn't there some rumor about her having an affair with Cure Starmer? Is that someone else? No, no, that's not Jess Phillips. It's a top Starmer aid. But it's very funny. It's like she was banned from his house by order of his wife or something like that. Someone tweeted and deleted that. Yeah, let me let me try to find Tim Shippers.

That's my favorite fishing ships chain in lower Saxon, Berge. I love going to Tim Shippers. Let me see exactly who it is. I'm really I don't want to get it wrong. I'm really afraid of getting banned from the UK. Jenny Chapman, Dwayne, Dwayne Chapman, Dwayne Dog Chapman's daughter. Yeah, well, they look like brother and sister. So maybe they are having an affair. They do love that. Yeah, okay. Well, moving on from one election that's just now recently over to one that's been over for a while now. And look, I bring this up. I bring up this article and it may seem like oh, this is just, you know, old material rehashing old beefs for, you know, the same audience.

But you know what? I am simply a petty bitch who loves drama. So I will now share with you guys the most recent profile of Elizabeth Warren in Politico. Because wouldn't you know it? All our old favorites and hits are there. And Elizabeth Warren has a lot of thoughts about her 2020 run for presidency that I think you may be interested in listening to. So gentlemen, I give you Warren says she will run for reelection in 2024. This comes courtesy of Politico. And this is about a new book. Elizabeth Warren has coming out about simply about her run for the presidency. The 71 year old senator whose new book addresses the disappointment of her failed presidential campaign says she sees a future in the Senate. Not if Dave Portnoy

has anything to say. No, Dave is. He's the prince that was promised. Yeah, Dave is rolling. Fuck Kevin Clancy couldn't leave it alone. Now I'm going to remind you who sits on the iron throne. Is that gold? He doesn't even know it yet that he's going to be senator, but he is going to be.

Okay, so it says here in a move that may surprise some ambitious Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren says that she's going to run for reelection in 2024. It will only surprise some in so much as usually when you finish third in your home state as a senator, you don't seek reelection. You can commit fucking seppuku if you have any honor. I mean, are any of you guys surprised she's going to run for reelection in the Senate? Not at all. I am not.

Yeah. What else does she have going on? That's where old losers is to hang out. Yep. The 71 year old said simply in a Politico interview Friday when asked if she is planning to make the run. The answer came as some Massachusetts Democrats have been gaming out a competitive primary in a few years that could include figures like Representative Ayanna Presley and former

Representative Joe Kennedy III, two well-connected base state Democrats that in interviews that they still wonder if Warren might change her mind in the end. After all, Warren did spend the past two years trying to leave the Senate, the presidential campaign, her auditioning to be vice president, and then the push to be Biden's Treasury Secretary. They don't mention- Racking up wins. They have not yet mentioned her losing her home state in the primary, which I'm shocked by.

The failure of those recent efforts seems to weigh heavily on Warren these days who addresses some of her disappointments in her new book, Persist. Yeah, no, she's been doing the same thing literally for like five years now. She should roll with what she was doing during the primary that she immediately dropped after. She was acting like an NYU student, it's like, we're having BIPOCs in liminal spaces. We need to start saving the cash for POC mamas, like she's putting X's in everything, even though she's like 73, and then just immediately dropped it when she lost. She should write a whole book like that.

That was awesome. I think Persist is a great title for a book that is just basically, would you like to hear about my litany of failure? Yeah. I just keep trying. I do not take a hint. The book is Warren's attempt to grapple with a difficult couple of years while defending some of the positions put forth during her presidential campaign.

The book has a confessional tone, and it comes at a time when many people in the Democratic Party, including some Warren supporters, believe she's at a political crossroads. In 2012, I was new to politics. In 2020, I was new to losing, she writes in the book. She makes self-deprecating references to her defeat at multiple points in the book. I didn't win the presidency, of course. Damn, I'd lost. And no, I didn't win.

I hadn't won my fight. I laid out my plans and fought as hard as I knew how. All those plans! No one cared about my plans! No use crying over spilled plans. The acknowledgments are not immune either. Campaigns are hard. Losing campaigns are even harder, she writes, while thanking various friends and aides.

But asked if she'd do anything differently, Warren says, not really. I like this. Like, this is all like, I got losing as such a bitter pill. Like she was like, you know, beaten by a buzzer beater shot at the last fucking moments of the game or whatever. She got washed out immediately, immediately. It was never close. So like, it's not like she had a taste of the apple.

There was like a month where she was pulling, okay, she was pulling like first, like five months before a primary. And I think when that happened, her brain short circuited. And then she was unable to accept everything that came afterwards. Because to her, that was the natural, that was the natural resting place of her popularity. Not a mirage. Does that mean that she thinks that there wasn't ever a path to victory? Look, we know the outcome, but I didn't make it.

I know that. She said in an interview via Zoom, wearing a light brown zip-up hoodie. In the book, she admits to making some strategic mistakes. I was wrong to take the test, she writes, of the DNA test she took to settle questions about her past claims of Native American ancestry. Were you wrong to take the test, Elizabeth, or were you wrong to have made this claim for most of your adult life? That to me, it seems to be the bigger error strategically on your part.

Doing the fucking cookbook, for example. How is that? And she mentions other factors that hurt her, but doesn't hone on a single thing. She notes that she never recovered from the Medicare-for-all debate and the headwind of trying to be the first woman president. So far as I know, no one ever asked the men in the 2020 race if they felt they were treated differently because they were men. She says that both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden had bases of loyal supporters that made

it hard for any other candidate to break through in the race. Warren also writes, there's always another possibility, a much more painful one. In this moment, maybe I just wasn't good enough. Nah, that can't be it. Warren's defeat has been followed by other changes that have left her trying to find a path forward. Many of her longtime staffers have moved on, some to join the Biden administration, and there are many new faces in her office.

By virtue of coming in second in the presidential primary and his perch atop the budget committee, Sanders has emerged as the leading progressive in the Senate. If Biden runs for reelection, as he said he expects to, the window for another White House run wouldn't open until 2028, when she'll turn 79. Warren's book is the latest evidence that even as Democrats control the White House and Congress, there are lingering divisions stemming from the 2020 primary, particularly among progressives. The strong candidacies of both Warren and Sanders fueled the hopes of progressives for

one of their own to lead the party. No, no, no, no. You just spent the last four paragraphs laying out, just her saying over and over again, I wasn't good enough, I failed, we lost, I have to come to terms with that. Both of them did not have strong campaigns. Sanders had a strong campaign. It wasn't good enough. We lost, but at least you could say he put up a good show.

Warren did not win a single state. This whole tragedy about her losing. She ate shit. No one cared. This whole tragedy about her losing and how bad she feels about it, it's just like, like, why even feel bad about it? You like, you didn't even, you didn't even come close. It was not, it was not a strong campaign that you ran, Elizabeth.

People are still mad rightfully so for her not endorsing Bernie and all that stuff. But for one thing, she was never going to do that because that wasn't her role. And two, even if every one of her supporters had gone to Bernie, it probably would not have been close to enough because there weren't any, she appeals, she appeals to young people who made it. And there are basically none of those in this country. There are no young people who have made it. And that is, that is the people who voted for her, which is why she got such a fucking

dismal showing because the current state of the relationship between Sanders and Warren seems to be more cordial than warm. Bernie and I are friends and we're doing great, Warren said in her political interview while declining to elaborate. Tensions between the two flared up in Iowa just weeks before last year's caucuses when Warren confronted Sanders after a debate about his denial of her claim that he told her he didn't believe a woman could defeat Donald Trump. I think you called me a liar on national TV, she said.

You called me a liar, he shot back. During the scenes, however, the feud had been escalating for months and the bitterness has only been partly revealed. In September 2019, when Warren was at her peak in the polls, she called Sanders personally and told him that she felt his people, staffers included, were being increasingly toxic and attacking her. Sanders disputed that and retorted that her people were also going after him, according to someone familiar with the dispute.

I'm not going there, I'm not looking back, Warren said in her political interview. I mean, that's funny because like the whole concept of your book is that you're looking back on your presidential run and why it failed. And this is the area that you don't think is worthy delving into, like, for instance, that completely kayfabe moment at the debate where he's like, what are you doing, Bernie? Her book acknowledgments include a subtle reference, however, to her frustration with Sanders' staff. Speaking of her former campaign team, she writes that, you showed that it's possible

to be respectful and friendly to those who are working for rival campaigns. Got a load of horse shit, I mean, can anyone take this shit from this woman? That sounds like you're not being respectful of an opponent and I'm disappointed to see it, honestly. I mean, no wonder you lost, you're running a fucking campaign, it's like, the people you're running against are your enemies in this competition, sorry, you can all be friends. Warren doesn't mention the fallout with Sanders much in her book, I mean, what a shock. But the divisions between them remain clear.

Sanders writes with the passive voice that, quote, it leaked that Bernie had told me that a woman couldn't win. What a way to say that. Things happened. It had leaked that he said this thing and that I simply just happened to respond to it. An officer involved leak right there. Yeah, exactly. Nice passive voice.

Sanders denied that at the time. It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win, he said. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist, and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. His office did not immediately respond for comment. Soon after the debate clash, liberal representative Pramila Jayapal announced that she would endorse Sanders over Warren.

Jayapal later told others that she felt Warren had questioned her feminism when she called the Massachusetts senator to explain her decision, according to a person Jayapal told at the time. Jayapal's office declined to comment. This is my favorite quote from her. Warren addresses other campaign controversies in the book. On the creation of the $14 million super PAC that kept her afloat after Sanders outpaced her in initial contests, Warren writes that a stunningly generous woman put $14 million

into a super PAC. That just happened. She was so stunningly generous to you, Elizabeth. It also doesn't bring up the fact that this was specifically the thing Warren was campaigning against, that she'd declaimed that she would ever have a super PAC fund her campaign, and then she was like, oh, all of a sudden, after she gets fucking wrecked in the first three primaries and just nose dives like fucking Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar did better than her, she just all of a sudden out of nowhere, a stunningly generous person gives

her $14 million only to stay in the race through Super Tuesday. It was a stunning act of generosity on that woman's behalf. Warren Sanders officials remain angry that Warren didn't endorse Sanders after she dropped out because of their shared progressive values. As in an interview why she initially chose not to endorse any candidate after she withdrew, Warren sighed and gave an uncharacteristically slow, halting answer. There were a few more states to vote, she said. I knew I wanted to wait until there was just one person in the race and get 100% behind

that person. Yeah, she wanted to make sure that she could possibly be Treasury Secretary for Joe Biden, which worked out great for her. I mean, it's hard for me to even really get mad at her anymore. I mean, yes, she did go out of her way to try to sabotage Sanders, but that's not really the reason the campaign lost. The campaign could have been run better, but if Elizabeth Warren could stop you, that's a bad commentary.

But she did harm it. She did show herself to be a very awful, conniving person. But the nice thing is she's a pure footnote now. No one gives a shit about her. No one talks about her. All the people that she paid to support her, basically, they've moved on. Everyone's moved on, and here she is. Even the people who don't hear about her plans anymore, you don't have to pretend that that

means something, it's nice. Even the people who got the hex code tattoos have already moved on, they don't care about this shit anymore. Yeah, no, they're just telling people they were in the Holocaust. Yeah, this, I was in Dachau. It goes on to say, it's ironic that that person ended up being Biden. Warren's political career began in part because Biden supported a reform of the bankruptcy code that she long fought against.

Quote, Joe Biden was on the side of the credit card company, she said, in 2019. In some ways, her career was defined by being a non-Biden type of Democrat. But Biden's presidency has been a pleasant surprise for progressives, including Warren. In the interview, Warren explains Biden's evolution as him meeting the moment. 20 years ago, we hadn't had a pandemic. 20 years ago, we didn't have Donald Trump, she said, referring to their dispute over the bankruptcy code. Yeah, 20, 30 years ago, they had another pandemic, it was called AIDS, and that's when you were

voting for Reagan. Liz, sorry, honey. Bye-bye. Yeah. And also today, Joe Biden did a press conference where he said, anyone who is able to get a job and still collects unemployment will be kicked off unemployment. Yeah. Oh, what is this?

Oh, no, they're leveraging their market situation to increase their pay. Nope, not going to happen. Not well, Sheriff Joe's in charge, get back to work peasants for fucking pennies. Yeah. He's learned and grown a lot. Yeah. It took, what did it take? It took like, it took two op-eds and some fucking viral pictures, most of which are probably

fake of signs at like a drive-through saying we don't have any workers for these people to just crack the fucking whip to make sure that all the leverage you might have to get a better fucking deal from these draculas is gone. Activist government at its finest. Warren's plans-based approach enthralled many college-educated voters, but did not catch on with much of the Democratic base. Weird. Warren's dork-ass nerd bullshit appealed to dork-ass nerds, but somehow didn't appeal

beyond that group. Weird. What feels releasing the 81 plans was the right thing to do, but wrestles with why voters didn't reward her. I often wondered why other candidates didn't have detailed plans for the future, she writes in her book. Maybe the more puzzling question is why people running for office so rarely campaign on plans and why that's apparently okay with millions of voters.

That says it all right there, right? I mean, because A, it's like none of these plans matter anyway. I mean, your plans are just saying what I believe in. Voters don't really care how you're going to fund it or laying it out point by point because no one's going to read that shit, no one even understands it. They just heard you say, I'm foreign Medicare for all, and then as the voting actually got closer and closer, you found a way to say you weren't for it. She acknowledges that politics can be tricky.

Plans force us to make choices, but also create targets, which we then have to defend, she writes, pressed on whether she thinks detailed plans are bad politics, she said in the interview, I don't think so. Oh my God, who gives a shit about the plans lady? That's not, that's a good Lord. Plans are over. Joe Biden, what was his plan? You imagine him having a plan?

Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. Curing cancer, get a milk cake. Yeah, that's it. He just says that. He just says, folks, cancer, it's done.

Being so old that he like forgets he's pro austerity and then remembers again pretty quickly. Yeah, because it's written on his body like in fucking memento. Yeah. It's like, don't listen to this man's lies and it's like a single mother. Asked about Donalyn's theory of the case that voters prefer values to ideology, she pushed back. I don't think there's a tension between having good solid detailed plans and values,

she said. The plans are the physical manifestation of those values. She warns in the book that the consequences of not having good plans will be catastrophic. I write knowing with absolute certainty that if we fail to make major changes, we will plunge our nation and our planet into an abyss from which we cannot escape. That's the last line of the profile. I just love the idea is like we are on the verge of plunging into an abyss from which there is no return.

The only thing standing in our way is from the preventing that awful future from happening is this like Sarah Connor figure in Elizabeth Warren. Well, with a fucking Manila envelope, wow, full of plans. If only we had voted for her when she had the chance and I understand, I sort of agree with Felix. I'm still obviously very salty about her behavior in the primaries, but with the lens of hindsight, I think it was just like we like everyone else, it's probably made too big a deal of it at the time because as cowardly and hypocritical as her behavior was, her

endorsement or her doing the right thing wouldn't have made a difference in the end anyway. It wasn't going to move the needle. Also, most of her supporters weren't going to vote for Bernie anyway to the extent that they existed at all outside of a few college towns in various states in America. It wouldn't make a difference. It was never going to work for her and it was probably never going to work for Bernie either. I don't think the campaign was run or just the factors as they laid out.

And the fact that politics is a spectacle that the people who Bernie needed have disengaged from. And that means that at a certain level, any amount of campaigning in the traditional sense is going to be falling on deaf ears. And I don't think that that's something that, I mean, I certainly didn't understand just how deeply that had set in and they certainly didn't act like they did. It's just, you know, for whatever it's worth at the end of the day, which is not much, I mean, there's a reason Bernie is like the elder statesman in the Democratic Party right

now and Elizabeth Warren is a complete afterthought. Yeah. And if anyone's going to stop like this current Biden austerity demon welfare reform replication or any other shitty things that he's planning to doing or that he is not formulated yet, it will be Bernie and it will not be Liz. If anyone's good at curbing Biden's worst, some of his worst accesses, because let's be honest, there is a limit. We know who it's going to be.

Yeah. We're at the harm mitigation level here. Do you guys want to do one more quick reading series? Give the people give the hogs a little something extra today. You know, we're not an hour now. You know, we've been going super-sized last time. I mean, this fits into what we were just talking about in terms of like the Biden like job search requirements for unemployment insurance and like, you know, crack the way in which like

now as things begin to call thaw coming out of COVID, the way in which, you know, like a capital and management is beginning to crack the whip to like sort of instill and like sort of to reinstill a discipline in a restive work force that is out of work and as Matt said, probably at no point in recent memory has more a stronger hand to play in terms of like, you know, what, what they can get to demand to like open everything back up again. Like if you want to get back to a normal economy, maybe a lot of people are asking the question, well, if you're asking me to go back to work or potentially like put my health or my family's

health at risk, you know, what are you giving me in return? And if the answer is the same fucking shitty minimum wage and awful work-based conditions, I, yeah, fuck it. Like I'm taking unemployment. Fuck this, fuck working at some shitty barn grill in the middle of Missouri that sells bad food and makes everyone sick. Fuck working at a Lauren Boebert's diarrhea factory, I can avoid doing it. But this is a, this is from, this is a, this is a, this is an op-ed piece that was in the

Washington Post. And I think it's a very, very telling example of like, yeah, CEO mindset and like how they're dealing with a, you know, a workforce that has become like due to COVID, largely due to like the accident of like a global emergency, shall we say becoming used to certain things that like, you know, management would like to make everyone forget it exists. Like for instance, if you have an office job, everyone over the last year or so has realized that there is absolutely no point in having an office to do any of these fucking jobs. Like, you know, it's just propping up the commercial real estate industry is basically

all of the, the only function an office serves as best I can tell. So here we go. This is Currency of the Washington Post. As a CEO, I worry about the erosion of office culture with more remote work. This is by Kathy Merrill and it says, Kathy Merrill is Chief Executive of Washingtonian Media. She writes here, like many of my fellow small business owners, I'm excited about the prospect of returning to in-person work, but I'm struggling with when and how to safely reopen our office.

How many days a week, vaccination requirements, masks mandates, and so on. But also like my peers, I'm concerned about the unfortunately common office worker who wants to continue working at home and just go into the office on occasion. In several group calls with Chief Executives, I've found a great sense of pride in how well our teams have done during the past year. However, we all started at a place where we and our employees knew one another, which made remote work considerably easier and more productive. We could also rely on office cultures, established practices, unspoken rules and shared values

established over years in large part by people interacting in person. Now we face recreating a workplace where a good culture of trust will be harder to build. Do you think that good culture of trust is harder to build because people haven't been to the office or because of what a shitty boss you are? Well, being away from the office gives you a chance to reflect on how shitty your boss is. Exactly. There's this weird sense of doom over my head and it's gone now.

What happened? What was that? Weird. Also, especially when it comes to remote work, if you're talking about the demographic of employees that we're talking about who have white collar professional jobs and professional or the creative knowledge-based economy, whatever you want to call it, the other thing is working from home is really underscored. When you're not going to an office, if you're sitting in an office all day, you can lie to

yourself that you're like, another nine to five, another long day at the office working, but when you're doing the same task at home and you're underwear looking at your laptop, you realize that you weren't actually working at the office either. Most people for an eight-hour workday have at most three to two to three hours of actual work to accomplish of a day. The rest of it is, like I said, fulfilling this pantomime of playing dress up and going to it like it's like Richard Scarry's busy town, you play dress up and you go to a place where the work happens and you feel like you've been hard at work all day when really you've

just been staring at a computer screen pretending to look busy. One of the biggest issues we talk about is an apparent age gap. Uh-oh, the CEOs have discovered age gap discourse, folks. See where this goes. Anecdotally, I've heard from many CEOs that are older, more senior employees working from comfortable homes and happy to be relieved of commuting are more reluctant to go back to the office than their younger colleagues, many of whom who have been working from small apartments or their parents' homes.

Some research supports that. Commercial real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield reported last year that 70% of millennial and Gen X workers struggle more with the challenges of working from home. And consulting firm PWC found that fewer than one in five executives wanted to return to the shared workplace as it was before the pandemic. See, that surprises me that it's like the younger workers who want to go back to the office more. I mean, I thought, like, I would just expect as a whole younger workers are, you know,

worse employees. And by worse employees, I mean that like they care about their life outside of the job. I think they want to be adults. So they want to be like grownups and they want, being on a computer is what they did in school. They want to go outside. They want to go with their little outfit and have a, have a chopped salad and enjoy a Panera bread and talk about television programs.

They want to, they want to like do a little adult, adulting like a boss. They want to get a delicious nutrition bowl every day from the many fine chain eateries of Midtown Manhattan. It says here, for business owners, this disparity poses a real problem. As the economy rebounds, we need to hire and attract talent. To do so, we will need, we will need leaders on site. Consider the son of a friend of mine, a young investment banker who was courted by two firms last fall.

One said that his employees wouldn't be back in their offices for at least a year. The other said that theirs would be back as soon as it felt safe. He picked the latter. He didn't want to spend another year working remotely. Most importantly, he wanted to be around a brain trust of more senior people whom he could learn from and connect with. How will we persuade new employees to come aboard and more importantly stay if they don't have leaders they can build a solid in-person relationship to?

I don't know. You could pay them a salary that makes all the bullshit seem at least worth, at least like if you pay them enough, like the brutal, awful dehumanizing aspects of a workplace, you can at least feel in your checking account when you get that direct deposit hit. You're like, okay, this is why I'm doing it. But if there's no talk here about benefits or salary or whatever, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, lady. That's the most important thing on the job is the leader.

It's someone who's 63 years old, makes five to six times what you make, dyes his hair, kind of like a chestnut red color, dropped out of college because he's playing too much bridge, needs you to use the printer and even really turn on his computer. A leader. A mentor. Yeah. While some employees might like to continue to work from home and pop in only when necessary, that presents executives with a tempting economic option the employees might not like.

I estimate that about 20% of every office job is outside one's core responsibilities. Extra. It involves helping a colleague, mentoring more junior people, celebrating someone's birthday, things that drive office culture. If the employee is really around to participate in those extras, management has a strong incentive to change their status to contractor. Instead of receiving a set salary, contractors are paid only for the work they do, either hourly or by appropriate output metrics.

That would mean not having to pay for health care a 401K match or our share of FICA and Medicare taxes. Benefits that in my company's case add up to roughly an extra 15% of compensation. Not to mention the potential savings of reduced office space and extras such as bonuses and parking fees. That extra 15% and your 401K and health care, that's for attending office birthday parties and buying bagels every other week. You see here, she says here, oh, this may lead us to consider an option that some employees

may not like. I mean, it's not hard to discern the threat here, right? Like I said, about reinstilling discipline, it's like, oh, nice expectations you have about the workplace. It would be shame if someone took away your health care benefits and salary. Why do you know sometimes people got a nose in charge? The point is making everyone a contractor or a gig employee, that's what they want to do regardless of whether you go to the office or not.

Like right now, they're using like, come to the office. If they can't completely outsource it, which would be the ideal. And with a lot of these, I mean, that would be what my threat is like, look, if you're not coming into office, why does this have to happen in the United States at all? Good point. Furthermore, we need feedback, good and bad to successfully manage employees and they need it to succeed. A friend at a Fortune 500 company tells of a colleague who was hired just as the pandemic

hit. He struggled. He wasn't getting the job done. It was very hard for the leadership team to tell what the problem was. Was it because he was new? Was he not up to the work? What was the specific issue? Worse, no one wanted to give him feedback over Zoom when they hadn't even met him.

Professional development is hard to do remotely. People considering just dropping into their office should also think about FOMO, fear of missing out. Those who work from home probably don't have FOMO, they will just have MO, they'll just have MO. The casual meetings that take place during the workday. Do you have three minutes to discuss X? These encounters will happen, information will be shared, decisions will be made.

Maybe if you're at home, you'll be zoomed in, but probably not. As one CEO put it, there is no such thing as a three-minute Zoom. Being out of that informal loop is likely to make you a less valuable employee. I mean, that's the thing. FOMO, if you're missing out, there will be no more office affairs if we all just go remote. Unless they're just gross, like jacking off on your computer. Mr. Jeffrey Tubin.

Like chat relay stuff, which is just depressing. Last paragraph here. While remote working is certainly industry and job dependent, and the future employment scene will probably be some type of hybrid, the CEOs I've spoken with fear, erosion of collaboration, creativity, and culture. So although there might be some pains and anxiety going back into the office, the biggest benefit for workers may be simple job security. Remember something every manager knows.

The hardest people to let go are the ones you know. So there you go. You have to stop by the office. You've got to glad hand a little bit or else your head will be the first on the chopping block because that's what leaders, mentors, CEOs, and your managers want from you. A personal connection. So that when it comes time to cut your salary or fire you, they'll think twice. And that personal connection can only be cultivated with stealing people's lunch out of the refrigerator.

That's what offices are all about. That does sound like the one thing that would have been fun. I would like to try somebody else's sandwich every day. See who makes the best club or something, just sampling. The whole office has popcorn lung because we'll put a bag of pop secret in there for eight minutes. It's not a fire drill. It's another popcorn disaster.

This is what working in an office is like. There'll be no fire drills, no office fairs, no annoying person with halitosis leaning over your computer asking you if you watched the game last night or something like that. So there you go. More management discipline of a rest of workforce. There are carrots and sticks out there. The stick is making you a full-time contractor. The carrot is a pizza party Thursdays.

So what do you think, guys? Do you think that about does it for today? It'll do. That wraps it up. Okay. Oh, wait. We've got a few things to plug. We've got plugs.

Yeah. We've got two plugs. Yeah. Double plugs. So everyone's heard me delve into my obsession with the From Software franchises to Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Sekiro, but you've only seen me play Sekiro. Not a true Soulsborne game. So this Saturday, I will be doing a fundraiser stream where I play my favorite From Soft

Games and you will see, have I been lying about playing these the entire time? Have I never played them? Am I too afraid of the monsters within them to play them? Will I just run away and my camera will just be stuck on a door for 14 hours? Well, we'll find out, but we will be raising money for movement to safeguard Palestinian communities, which is a group that fights evictions of Palestinians for Islamic relief of Canada's Palestinian Emergency Fund, which provides medical and other aid for Palestinians on the ground and Ion Palestine, which is an independent Palestinian-run media body

that documents abuses of Israel. I will be, who knows, it could go 12 hours, it could go 18 hours, it could go 24, but I will be matching whatever amount I have left after paying for my dining room table, which costs 37 million fucking dollars. Worth every penny. Will you be doing this on a Chapo FYM? Yes, I will. Can I drop by?

Of course. No, everyone's going to drop in and no, you will see me either vanquish the monsters of Lothric, of Anor Londo, of Yarnam, or see me run in fear. I don't know, but we are going to raise some money and we're going to help some people out. For a good cause. For a good cause. One final plug before we go.

I would like to plug a collaboration between our producer, Chris Wade, and the very funny comedian, Sarah Squirm, with Mean's TV. Sarah Squirm has a new, another Squirm short out there called Sarah Vaccine, of which Chris helped produce. It is now on Mean's TV. If you are a fan of all things, basically like most of Sarah's videos and comedy, it is an absolute atrocity and an abomination, and I mean that in the best possible sense. It is breathtakingly disgusting and hilarious.

Check out Sarah Vaccine, the Mean's TV, ex-Sarah Squirm, ex-Chris Wade collaboration, currently streaming on Mean's TV. Shout out to them and to Sarah Squirm. I'll put the link to that in the description, as with, as always, links to tickets to Frequency Fast June 5th. Yeah, Sarah is hysterical, if you don't know about her, you're a fucking loser. If you're a fan of his shitblood, things of that nature, check out her wacky comedy. Yeah, but no, I'm very excited to see this.

All right, gang, until next time. Great. Bye. Bye. All right, guys, thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one.