Cognitive Dissonance - Bachmann Nutter Overdrive

Episode Date: July 14, 2011

.

You know what I mean? You want a better world, ladies and gentlemen? Legalize pot right now. You want to end the deficit? Legalize pot right now. I am so sick of hearing about the goddamn deficit I could fucking puke blood. There ain't no fucking deficit. It's a fucking lie and it's a fucking illusion in the first place. But you want to end it? You want to end it? Legalized pot, biggest cash crop in America. Deficit's gone. But I am so sick of hearing about, well, your leaders misspent your hard-earned tax dollars, so you, the people, now have to tighten your belts

and we gotta start paying this back. Because we, your leaders, misspent your money. Boy, Jesse Helms is another great one. Just another little fevered ego tainting our collective unconscious. Because you know, anyone, like Swagger, anyone that far to the right

is hiding a very deep and dark secret. You do know that, right? I'm an armchair fucking psychologist, but anyone that, you know when Jesse Helms finally dies, he's going to commit suicide, first of all, in a wash tub out back underneath a pecan tree. He's going to slash his wrist and he's going to write in blood, I've been a bad boy. But you know they're going to find the skins of young children drying in his attic. Swarms of horse flies going in and out of the eaves. And on CNN, over and over, his wife going, I always wondered about Jesse's collection of little shoes.

I always wondered about Jesse's collection of little shoes. Anyone that far to the right is fucking hiding a deep, dark secret. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. So Cecil just got back from my first venture out of America. I spent a week up in Canada in the woods

looking at bears and catching fish and basking in universal health care. How was the health care up there? You know, I didn't use it. Because I hear it's pretty universal. I mean, I hear it's relatively universal. Actually, it's funny because I was there with a guide who's obviously a local Canadian. And he asked, like, we kind of got talking a little bit about it at one point.

And he asked, well, he kind of he couldn't even understand the idea because we were talking about talking about benefits for his job and he's like wow yeah you know my wife's got great benefits i'm like what benefits do they even offer you guys have universal health care i give you like a party hat right like well here's your complimentary bag of strippers like what's your benefits and he starts he's like no no that's he's like the you he starts, he's like, no, no, that's, he's like the, you know, the universal, he's like the social health care system. He's like, it doesn't cover anything. He's like, it doesn't cover orthopedics or vision or chiropractic. And I'm like, well, chiropractic is fake. Nobody has vision.

Nobody covers orthopedic. I laughed. I was like, even the major medical that we pay for doesn't cover any of that right that's still supplemental so like like you get the free stuff and then you get supplemental as your benefit it doesn't cover anything in that it doesn't cover anything that would keep you alive like our benefits the the difference is like, you know, they start off with the base model and then they add the trim. No kidding, right? Right?

Like we're just hoping for the base model. We're just like, I would like an engine. They're like, not covered. Up there, they buy you a car and then you could put the add-ons on. Down here, you have a stick and a fucking tire that you're fucking rolling down the road. Down here you have a stick and a fucking tire that you're fucking rolling down the road. He asked at one point – he was just incredulous at the whole thing. And he said – I mean he was dumbfounded.

He said, well, what does a broken arm cost? And I said there's no way to calculate it. It depends on what hospital you go to, what insurance you have, what tests they do. There's no way for you to know what it's going to cost. And as I'm saying it, I'm thinking, this is insane. There's no way for you to know what anything costs until you've had the procedures done. Sure, sure. And then you pay. I'm like, and then like in my plan, I pay $1,500 plus 20%.

And he just stared at me like, but I thought you were insured. That's the most expensive insurance my company offers. Oh, you got to love it when somebody's going to tell you, oh, it doesn't cover anything. Wait, you have to pay $1,500 every time you're sick? He's like, what does that cost you? I'm like, it's about $800 out of my pocket for the family every month. I thought he was going to spit. That is fucking, oh, that's fucking awesome, man.

Did you hear that This American Life recently, one of the latest ones where the guy, he had his appendix blow up and he didn't have health insurance and it cost him $44,000. Holy shit. No, I didn't hear it. Is it the newest one? It's one of the newer ones. Yeah. $44,000. Holy shit. No, I didn't hear it. Is it the newest one? It's one of the newer ones, yeah. $44,000? Can you imagine?

And he's making jokes because he's on stage. It's one of those sort of funny, you know, it's almost like a moth sort of thing where they do that thing where they record at the moth. And it's a story time sort of thing. And he keeps talking about how it just came in a regular envelope. Like the $44,000 bill came in like a regular white envelope with the rest of the mail.

It should have come in like a black envelope with like a skull and crossbones on it. It's a hilarious episode. So if the listeners, it's one of these, I want to say that the name of the episode of This American Life is called A House Divided. It talks about politics in Wisconsin a lot. But then at the end, it has this great story about the health care of – when you don't

have health care in this country, what happens to you if you – a simple procedure is – I mean it's not that simple because the guy could have died with a burst appendix. It's pretty bad. But at the same time, it's like this guy up in Canada, he would have shit a golden brick if you told him something cost $44,000. Right. Like in Canada, that same thing would have cost him no dollars. Exactly. He would have had a four-day stay or a five-day stay in a hospital for nothing, for zero dollars.

That's a $44,000 discount. No kidding. That's a difference. No, but seriously, it's the difference between a medical bankruptcy and fucking being able to live yeah being able to say like oh man that really sucked and i'm glad it's over and now i'll just spend my time recovering physically instead of like man that really sucked and the worst is yet to come yeah and now i have to get three other jobs to pay this bill well you know what's really crazy is is to come. Yeah, and now I have to get three other jobs to pay this bill. Well, you know what's really crazy is to imagine like the people who get sick, go to the hospital, become financially destitute as a result, and end up becoming depressed and committing suicide. It's like you should have just not gone to the hospital in the first place.

Right. You should have just toughed that shit out. Like it's ABC. Just cut out B. You know, get sick. No kidding. Commit suicide. Problem solved. Done. That's the. Just cut out B, you know, commit suicide. Problem solved.

Done. That's the health care system. And then you don't leave anybody with your debt at the end. Universal health care that's free for everyone who lives in this country. It'll cost us less than what we're spending now lining the pockets of these private health insurance companies, of these pharmaceutical companies. New York Times had a great story. It's also a very funny story in a way because – It's also a very fucking obvious story. It's sort of absurdly obvious. But even the beginning of it, first study of its kind shows benefits of providing medical insurance to poor.

Nobody had considered the poor before. of its kind shows benefits of providing medical insurance to poor. Huh. Nobody had considered the poor before. Do you think they need medical insurance? You know, I don't know if it would help them. No. You know, I just, I don't know. Would it help? Would it?

We don't, providing food to the hungry. Right. We're going to need some more study. I'm not, I'm just're going to I'm just not sure I mean what the fuck this study is at one point they call it an economics an economist's dream

because in Oregon they basically ran out of money and they had to have a lottery to see who got Medicare or Medicaid I don't know the difference Medicaid and so you know like 10,000 people got it. And the other 80,000 got a hearty handshake and a fair hello. And a big fucking fat bill.

Right, right. And so they were like, well, great. It would have been unethical. And this is my favorite part. It would have been unethical to devise a study that replicates this. That would be unethical to devise a study that replicates this. That would be unethical. Yeah. But it happened anyway.

But just doing it to people without studying it, without planning on studying it beforehand, that's fine. Yeah. It's sort of like, well, don't you think that if it's unethical, you're kind of assuming the result a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. unethical, you're kind of assuming the result a little bit. Yeah, yeah. But they studied it and they said, because evidently there's people who said, you know, well, the poor would not benefit from health insurance.

Who says that? I don't even know. Other than Michelle Bachman, who would say that? You know, and their arguments were like, well, there's already a safety net, emergency rooms, charity care, free clinics. And my favorite, the option to go to a doctor and simply not pay the bill. Do you live in America? If you make an appointment at any doctor's office, they ask you what insurance you have.

Right. And if you say none, they don't make the appointment. You know, my father-in-law just had his hip resurfaced. He's like a fucking old Buick, you know what I mean? Like he just got resurfaced. But he had his hip resurfaced, right? And he went down to the doctor's office and the doctor's office said, well, what insurance company

is this? And he said, well, I'm paying for it out of pocket. He's like, okay, that's fine as long as I have all the money up front. Yeah. And he had to pay it all up front. That is a fucking fallacy. You can't walk into a fucking clinic and be like, yeah, I don't have any money. Yeah. Well get a fucking, go to the emergency room where they're required to treat you. Yeah. But you know, even the emergency room, I, you know, my wife went to the emergency room recently for a fucking weird eye infection.

It's awesome that you're laughing at her. She looked so crazy. It was hilarious. We went to the emergency room, but she's like, her eyes all swollen shut and weeping and looking crazy as hell. And before they even look at you, they're like, okay, well, it's processed you in through registration, which

means, let me take a copy of your insurance card. Right. That's what it means. Like you can show up, be like, I've been shot in the face with an RPG. They'd be like, is that Humana or Blue Cross? Sir, you can't set your brain on the table. But I slid my insurance card under it. Okay, great.

No problem. Grab an M&M out of his bowl. It's insane. So when poor people were given insurance, they not only find that they see doctors more often. There's a shocker in that study. No kidding, right? But they also feel better. They're less depressed probably because the depression is getting treated.

And my favorite favorite they're better able to maintain financial stability that's because they're not paying 44 000 for a routine appendix surgery right i mean that's insane well you know the thing is is like like all of these things seem so obvious when you hear them when you you hear what they have to say, you look at this article and you're like – I mean you can't help but just look at it and say, well, duh. Because so much of it just seems like it would be common sense. It's like, well, the depression goes away. Well, yeah, because they don't have to worry about all these – one of these loads on their mind is, oh, fuck, my leg is all fucked up. Something is wrong with my leg.

And I can't go into the doctor and I'm fucking limping around and I'm not as productive at work, you know, or maybe I lost my job because of it or any of these, like, awful things that can happen to you when you're sick. And then, you know, they don't know if it's fucking going to, you know, kill them and they're always worried. All those things go away the moment you can just have somebody look you in the face and be like, oh, it's going to be fine. All you have to do is take these fucking antibiotics and exercise three times a week. Suddenly everything looks different. You know what I mean? Like there's something about a doctor telling you what's right and what's wrong with you

that makes people feel better. And, you know, well, fuck if everybody had that option. Suddenly you have a lot of people in this country that, you know, are more productive. Don't we want to raise productivity? I mean, right. Like, it's just it's just crazy to think that you would argue that, like, we'll just we'll just send them to the emergency room. Well, great. So if I'm diabetic and I go to the emergency room because I'm, what, dead or in a coma?

I hope somebody found me. I mean, you don't go to the emergency room for routine care or for maintenance care, which is what a lot of conditions call for. You go to the emergency room for emergencies. Right. That's the name. And everybody, everybody universally reviles the from the from the workers to the Republicans, the Democrats, everybody agrees that using emergency rooms as primary physician care is it is a drain on resources. It's more expensive. Everybody waits. Nobody wins. Right. So suggesting that as

an option, be like, well, they could just go. Yeah, they can just go if they get, you know, shot or fucking stabbed or something. But if you're just like, I have depression, I would like a pill because that helps be like, well, it's not really emergency depression. Call me when you have the gun to your head. Right. You just, you don't give people options. Well, here's another thing, Tom. Who's fucking paying for it? Right. Somebody's got to pay for it.

The guy doesn't just go in and because he doesn't have insurance, he walks into the emergency room with a fucking valid emergency and no insurance. a fucking valid emergency and no insurance, it's not like that fucking stuff that they did, the time the doctor worked, the materials that he used, the time and the electricity and all that shit that goes into it, the processing, all the stuff that goes into medical billing doesn't just fucking disappear because you don't have insurance. It's fucking still there. Somebody's paying for it.

Let me tell you who's paying for it. Our insurance companies are paying for it anyway because the next person who comes in gets charged more to pay for fucking guy who didn't have insurance. When you say it like that, it seems obvious that everybody should have some kind of coverage

that we should apply coverage universally. When you say it with my liberal bias, with my liberal bias that I say it with, yeah. Because reality has a known liberal bias. It does. You know, there's a there's a definite. The problem is that that numbers and statistics, all those things are liberal.

Right. You know, and that's a problem. I mean, really, if we used a different base system, maybe we'd have base conservative. Right. It's on Conservapedia, actually actually they won't even count to 10 on conservapedia they don't it's interesting that so many questions i guess do revolve around that that centeredness that i have of respecting life and the potential of every human life that no stem cell research that would ultimately end in destruction of life.

Also in medicine, this is actually kind of an awesome story. Woman in North Carolina, stem cells were used to restore her eyesight. She'd been blind for 20 years because of an allergic reaction to chicken pox. So I'm going to have to throw out there like, really, you don't want to vaccinate your kid for chicken pox? It's not deadly. Blinding, though. Blinding.

You're like, well, kid's still alive, can't fucking read. Why blind? Fucking could have solved that problem. Anyway. Don't worry, Jenny McCarthy is going to come over and read books to her for the rest of her life. Great. When Jenny McCarthy learns to read, that might be fucking useful. I mean, he couldn't even watch her strip.

The only thing she was good at. I know. Is she hot, Dad? Yeah, dude. She's really hot, buddy. Sorry you can't see this right now. But that's just terrible. So she gets stem cells.

It restores her eyesight. And I think this is awesome. She refuses to call it a miracle. This is I'm going to read this directly. This is from a an interview. Greg Dobbs did with her. When we first talked on the phone, you told me your story. I said, what a miracle.

You said, I don't like that word, miracle. Answer, no, I don't. Why? Because I think miracle connotes a religious miracle, and I think this is completely due to modern science. Which is why it's not a miracle in your mind? No. It's a lot of hard work, and it's a lot of education,

and it's a lot of willingness to go out on a limb and try something new that nobody else is willing to try. It's amazing. It's inspirational. It's wonderful, but I don't think it's a miracle. Yeah. That's my fucking slow clap for you,

lady. That's fucking awesome. That whole nonsense. And we've talked about this before, that whole nonsense where, you know, you get sick and then you get better. And then the getting better is because of God. That whole nonsense, and we've talked about this before, that whole nonsense where, you know, you get sick and then you get better and then the getting better is because of God. God's like, well, I didn't have anything to do with you getting sick, but I got you covered once you got sick. Didn't you create all this shit to make me sick?

No, I didn't create those viruses and bacteria that are living fucking things that I supposedly created the all of. Yeah. I mean, I create them all, but, you know, I didn't mean to. Like, even God sneezes sometimes. And aren't you omniscient? Yeah, well, sort of like, kind of omniscient. Oh, man, if there was a God, I would be so angry. Oh, God.

I read this, though, Tom. I read this article and I read about the stem cells. And, I mean, we had that fucking dullard in office for so many years that was not interested in stem cell research. And look at something like this. And then what you, you read that, that article that was posted on our page.

I think it was Colleen who posted on our page. That was about the, uh, the, they created, uh, a piece of trachea out of stem cells and, and it was inserted in somebody's body and they totally didn't reject it.

It was like grown in a lab and then put in and everything's fucking like they're like, yep, it's all good. No rejection whatsoever. And so like you wonder, you know, here is somebody who's against. He's a religious guy, obviously, who's against stem cell research for years and years and years and years. Then they finally let stem cells come in and this guy wants you to call him a miracle? Right. Fuck you, miracle. What an insult.

And I love that she's not empowering the word. I love that shit. You know, the temptation is to use throwaway words like miracle, you know? And she won't. And here she's getting interviewed, and she's like, no, this is my this is my chance. This is my chances to give props where they're fucking do. Exactly. You know, where are the props doing this?

The props, the props are due to the to the people who dedicated their lives. Right. Dedicated years and years and tremendous talent and energy and resources. And the culmination of all of that, I mean, really, honestly, the culmination of all of that gained knowledge for hundreds and thousands of years, but really from the age of reason and science forward, you know, that culminates in this woman getting her fucking vision back. Good for her for not blaming it unimagined man in the sky.

Fucking A, man. Motherfucker created chicken pox. Could have done without that. You fucking dick. I want to see young people who are as

committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel. So Cecil, this is an opinion article that you had sent to me. I thought this was kind of insane. The title of the article is Evolution of Religious Bigotry, the Cowardice and Intolerance of

Slapping a Darwin Fish on your car bumper. I thought it was satire the first time I read it. I was, you know, this is in the LA Times. This is in their opinion section. It was written by Jonah Goldberg. And I read this today, and I was sort of confused because the whole beginning of it has nothing to do with darwin fish it's almost like his editor said like you know give me 250 words he's like fuck i got 125 words worth of shit to say about two different subjects because the the first half of

this article of this opinion column um which proves much much like our show, that everyone has a fucking opinion. Right. Talks about a short film, a 17-minute film by Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party. And it's a pretty aggressive film, which takes a stance against Muslim immigrants and has a lot of images from the Koran and know, violence done in the name of religious leaders. And then he just like, he kind of goes from saying like, this is a brave and powerful film. And, you know, kudos to him for putting this together. And then he just like kind of

goes off the fucking deep end and starts talking about the darwin fish and how the darwin fish is is cowardly and a an insult to christians and he relates a story when he's in istanbul this is the part that i think is amazing he relates a story was in where he's in istanbul where somebody sort of surreptitiously draws the christian fish and shows it to him to sort of say like hey i'm a christian, but it's not cool here. I can't say it out loud. I've kind of got to hide this. So let me hide this. And then he's saying like, well, look, you know, in other parts of the world, the Christian fish is a revered symbol and people have to hide their beliefs. And here we have people mocking that with a Darwin fish. And it's like, well, you don't really understand what's going on here at all. Yeah.

It's not fair to juxtapose, first of all, the religious intolerance perpetrated by Turkey with America. That's not fucking accurate at all. Turkey with America. That's not, that's not fucking accurate at all. Right. Like at all. Well, it's not accurate. And, and you know what, what it says is, is that it basically, you know, he's saying that the Darwin fish, um, belittles Christianity and makes it feel like it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's belittling it, but it's like, what you're doing is belittling the struggle of other people in other parts of the world where the intolerant, where it's way more intolerant than it is here. Here, it's a conversation, right?

Like I have a Darwin fish on my, on my car, whether you like it or not. We might be able to have a conversation about whether or not you like it, whether or not you think it's the right thing to do. Over there, you can't even do that. It's like fucking apples and oranges. It's a totally different feel. It is. And his suggestion in the article is that the Darwin fish is sort of this self-important mockery of the Christian fish.

I don't think so at all. I think is it an appropriation? Yeah, it's an appropriation. Absolutely it's an appropriation, but I don't think it's any more illegitimate for somebody to, if I've got to hop in my car and drive behind somebody and see their religious belief sort of broadcast on their bumper and they've got a right to do that and that's unassailable and he's not criticizing them for doing that.

I hop in my car and see the Darwin fish on there. OK. Agree. Disagree. Fine. I don't see it as being necessarily like antagonistic in any way. I also think that there's like a straw man he's throwing up here, too, at the end of the article. Right. I'm going to quote from the very last last paragraph.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive minded science over backward looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition. I would have a lot more respect for those folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it. Well, hey, buddy, I'm going to say this right now. Fuck those people that use religion to hurt other people. OK, fuck all those people And fuck all their religions. How's that? Okay? So I'm not fucking taking sides here and saying,

you know, oh, I'm just going to bash Christianity because that's kind of what's in vogue now or how I look down on it because I'm a progressive-minded science over backwards-looking faith. No, no, no. It's if you use some sort of magic man in the sky to inflict damage on other people,

I fucking hate you, period. Okay? There's no fucking, I don't, I certainly don't look at somebody like Jerry Falwell and then somebody like the Ayatollah and think any different of either one of those guys. I think they're cut from the exact fucking same cloth and think any different of either one of those guys. I think they're the, they're cut from the exact fucking same cloth and I despise both of them.

So your, your argument's a giant fucking straw man. Don't pretend to know what I think. And this, this idea that, um, that the Christians are, uh,

you know, somehow better than the Muslims and that we should direct our derision at the Muslims. I would invite you to look a little more heavily into your past as a Christian and say, hey, you don't have clean hands either. Right. Not by a fucking long stretch. Yeah. The Muslims are definitely the religious group in vogue at the moment to be worried about. But you guys are hardly blameless. In fact, there was there was an article that I that I read today. You know, I think you sent it to me.

So they talked about a museum where these cars were being vandalized. Yeah. Cars that have this Darwin fish on them. You know, it started off simple enough. The little fish bumper sticker thingies were being pulled off. And then, you know, religious notes were being left on the cars. And then finally they just started pounding nails into the cars, like into the tires of the cars. So let's not pretend for a moment that everybody walking around is a turn the other cheek, give you a hug and a handshake.

Yeah. I mean, look at, look at fucking last week. What we're talking about last podcast, we're talking about there. You got to pay what? 50 extra thousand dollars to put an atheist sign on a bus because they're afraid of what the Christians might do to the sign? Fuck you, dude. You're bitching about a fucking Darwin fish

when people can fucking deface a sign that says, hey, you don't believe in God, you're not alone? You want to talk about an innocuous message that gets fucking people hot? Let's talk about the other one that we talked about a couple of weeks ago when those people were like, oh, I'm just so very disappointed in it. I can't believe kids can see that somebody doesn't believe in God. Like, what the fuck is that? Like this guy is and, you know, your argument is just it's just retarded and you're an idiot.

You're a fool who believes that somehow one religion that is, you know, obviously doing some really, some really – some people in that religion are doing some really awful things right now and have been for a while. They – somehow because they exist, I shouldn't give any derision whatsoever to the Catholics or the Christians because somehow I have to only hate one religion. Like, man, I don't like any of them. Equal opportunity. Stick a Darwin fish on this guy's fucking forehead. Great, you do that. I'll put the nail in his foot. I do think that nails are probably not the way to go as a Christian.

If the ionization rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities, we could really bust some heads in a spiritual sense, of course. Richard Weissman has a new book on paranormality, which I love that works. It's fucking awful to say on paranormality. And this is kind of interesting. to say on Paranormality. And this is kind of interesting. He had to retitle the book because publishers, publishers in the UK, fine. Publishers in many other countries, fine.

They bought it. You know, here we go. It's not like Professor Richard Wiseman is nobody either. I mean, it's not like this is his first fucking book. Right. But he wrote a book, Paranormality. In the UK, it's subtitled Why We See What Isn't There. In order to get publishers to bite, he had to change the subtitle of the book to Why We Believe the Impossible, which has a totally different tone to it. Totally different tone.

Right. And he was asked, even more egregious, he was asked by publishers to change some of the things in his book, to rewrite it, to suggest that ghosts were real and that psychic powers existed. The book is about how they do not exist. So you know your whole thesis? Right. Your whole arguments. If you could kind of throw in some things that fucking corrupt your entire

arguments, we would really, really like to buy it then. I would love to be at that lunch meeting, right? You know, you're just like, yeah, I'll have the chicken Caesar. So listen, professor, you're just like, yeah, I'll have the chicken Caesar. So listen, Professor, great book. Hey, listen, over at Haughton Mifflin, we're real

excited about it. Right, guys? Right? Am I right? Okay. The only thing we had a problem with were the facts and the conclusions. If you could just maybe reverse all of that, yeah, that would be great.

We really like the first page and the 45th page, but if you could rewrite the entire rest of the book. We do want to publish the cover, though. Yeah, because we think a bent spoon looks fucking awesome. I can't believe. And, you know, like, what does that say, Tom? You know, we get some mail occasionally from over the pond in different places. And what does that say about the United States? That our market is so fucking, I guess just so full of this garbage, this pseudoscience shit that, you know, somebody like Richard Wiseman can walk up to the publishers and they will look at it and be like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

You don't understand what sells in the United States. We're really fucking dumb over here. And what we want is fucking dumbed down, retarded bullshit. So if you could maybe put a Jesus fish on there for us and then, I don't know, talk about like celebrity ghost stories throughout the entire thing. Then we're fucking gold. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a real ringing endorsement for America at all. You know, it's kind of funny that America, you know, like sort of founded on this idea of like, you know, people can't, at least the mythology is that, you know, people of all stripes kind of came over to America to flee religious intolerance and persecution.

And they're here and they're just like, you know, it would be great. Let's be intolerant and persecute people. That's what that's really like. Not us. Like, we don't want to be the subject of it. That was bad. That's why we left. But if we could just go ahead and and be the ones doing it, that's a way better.

Like, you didn't learn the lesson, right? We should try to elect an official, somebody like a Michelle Bachman who is trying to. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? She is, um, man, she's this election season's Sarah Palin. Oh, my God. She is awesome. Oh, God, dude. She is all over the news because she's fucking crazy. I just have to understand who supports her. That is the most terrifying thing, I think, of this entire thing is that she's not only somebody who's just running for office, right? Like, so there's, that proves that she has some sort of backing.

But you look at it, Tom, and she is leading, not leading, but she's like trailing in close second in like the Iowa caucuses. And you're like, there's a majority of people out there, or even just like a large minority of people, who listen to what this obviously imbalanced crazy person has to say. And they think, yep, that's where we need to be. Like the most intolerant, crazy person you can find. And I really feel like I kind of don't want to jump into the Republican versus Democrat thing, because I think, Tom, both you and I, while we do lean liberal, I think more often than not, I think that we like to look at things objectively, at least as objectively as we can. And I hate to fall into those party lines where I'm like,

oh, this guy is this and this guy is this. And I don't you know, you don't ever talk bad about your party and you don't ever talk good about the other party. What I can't stand is that when a Republican runs and starts getting votes, they're almost always the craziest, most fucking right wing scary fucker you could possibly imagine. But when a Democrat starts gaining ground, they're almost always the moderate. Why is that? I have no idea. I think the conversation, I think the problem is that the Republican, the far crazy neo-crunchy nut job right, for some reason, they're so much better at the rhetoric. That's what it is. That's got to be it. They seem to have found a way, you way – even things like liberal and conservative.

Conservative sort of sounds better, right? Like it sounds – it's like, well, I'm just conservative. Oh, OK. Well, that doesn't sound – I don't think it sounds harmful in that. But like liberal sounds like, whoa. I mean conservative says you're going to do what's been done. I'm comfortable with what's been done. I mean that's not really what you do. But that's been done. I'm comfortable with what's been done. I mean that's not really what you do, but that's the idea.

I'm comfortable with what's been done. But they sort of reframe this whole argument, the whole set of arguments, and their rhetoric is just so much better. And they're just so fucking loud, man. Yeah. They're so loud. I'm so often caught – these people are so often caught in lies and it does not matter. No. That's the thing that's crazy.

And we're going to talk, Tom, about four or five stories straight in a row about her. Yeah. And they're almost always either just she's fucking scary. She fucking did something that people should be appalled by. Or she's just blatantly lying. And it's just like fucking glassy eyes with fucking Bachman signs like that's all it can be. She doesn't make sense to anybody, men being in charge of the womenfolk. And and Bachman even got her degree, her postdoc in tax law, which she hates because her husband told her to.

And her fucking husband's in charge of her because she's property. President property? Yeah. It's very confusing. Like, you worry that at any moment her husband can just, like, turn her over and mortgage her, like fucking Monopoly property. Just like, whoop, turn her over. Got a mortgage on her.

Give me the money. What? Yeah, don't worry worry things go tits up we'll just sell send Bachman over and take care of that no problem flip her over you know it's she's got a little tramp stamp on her that has like 250 dollars it doesn't make any sense at all for her as a candidate, even within her own. And they have to do like these sort of backflips to make it make sense. And it doesn't work. You know, I read that they, you know, one of the things they said is like, well, the Bible says that a woman is subordinate to a man in the home. But civic politics isn't the home.

So then they're maybe not subordinate. What? I mean, that's because fucking politics didn't really home, so then they're maybe not subordinate. What? I mean, that's because fucking politics didn't really exist in that way. Like, it was kings, okay? Yeah, right. And who are you to say, like, what are we supposed to think about this sort of thing? If that's what you really, truly believe in the home, why isn't it going to carry over in your work? No, I mean, it would have to.

It would just have to. But, you know, she's she's a total nut. I mean, she just she's the first of the she was the first of the candidates of the Republican candidates to sign the family leaders pledge. First of all, the family leader. I don't know if you guys watch The Simpsons at all, but it reminds me of that episode, the cult episode. Oh, yeah, yeah. About the leader. Yeah.

So I read the family leader. The leader. He has the most powerful mind we've ever encountered. But she signed their pledge and basically is like, you know, saying pornography should be banned. Good luck, Bachman. Yeah, no kidding, right? No more masturbation, America. Give that one a whirl.

You want to talk about a sexually frustrated America? We'll be attacking everybody by the end of the month. It's going to be war all over. No more pornography. Way to destroy the Internet. Yeah. Oh, that shit cracks. That cracks me up.

She's going to ban it. The family leader unveiled their 14-bullet pledge presidential nonsense thing that, you know, these guys are getting basically strong-armed into signing. And, you know, the preface to the pledge originally said that black kids, and they had to take this out because it's awful, that black kids were better off under slavery because at least they had two parents. They removed that bit of it because it's insane. That is the most insulting thing I think I've ever heard. And what does that tell you, Tom, about who wrote this fucking thing? Right. You know what i mean like it's not fucking uh michael steel of the gop writing this thing right you know the

old chair instead it's fucking you know it's not fucking clarence thomas writing this either you know what i mean like those are two black republicans that you know are pretty i mean i think pretty conservative, but I don't think they'd agree with that statement. Right. So, so who's saying that? Right. Because only a fucking white, entitled, cock sucking asshole white person would say that.

You have to think this wasn't the first draft. Yeah. No kidding. It went through editing process at some point. At some point they all said, okay, guys, it's going out today. Are we good with this? Do we? Is this who we are as the family leader?

Is this who we are? I like that you want to add the S on there. It's awesome. We can only have one leader, you know. Leader. Family leader. It's so ridiculous. I know. But, you know, they talk in their pledge about debasing the currency of marriage. And they say in complete absence of empirical proof that non-heterosexual

inclinations are genetically determined. That's not even true. That's insane. Then it goes on. It says that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible, and akin to innate traits like race, gender, and eye color. Race has actually been thoroughly debunked as something you, you, you cannot race is more social than it is genetic. The, the, the idea race has been very thoroughly debunked as a,

um, genetic thing that exists. Yeah. If you take the DNA of a person and the DNA of another person, the bones of a person, the bones of another person, you cannot determine what their race is. Race is not a genetic trait. You know, that's, that's been, that's been very thoroughly debunked. Race is a social construction, you know? So it's, I think that's very telling in and of itself. So and where's the where's the empirical proof that homosexuality is a choice then if that's the if that's the opposite of this pledge?

But she signs this pledge. She signs it. It's full of crazy shit. Homosexuality being akin to polygamy, adultery, polyandry. Homosexuality being a public health risk that pornography should be banned. And then rejecting Sharia Islam law. Who do we are? Am I living in the wrong country? Are there are there politicians that I'm not aware of who are calling for fucking Sharia law? Evidently, evidently.

And good thing Bachman's around. Oh, God. Protecting us from that. Because if she wasn't around, I mean, we would be under Sharia law at this point. We would. I'm surprised we're not. Yeah. I've grown a beard just in case.

Right? I've been wearing white a lot. Here's the thing. I don't know if it's going to go Sharia or Orthodox Jew so I went beard because it feels safe I'm just looking forward to my Sharona law eventually

that family pledge I like this Mitt Romney gave that the old no stamp and I have to say kudos to you there's some things I like very much about Mitt Romney, actually. Mitt Romney supports gay rights. He supported them.

He took a lot of flack for it. He probably lost in Iowa last time because of it. Yeah. Which is odd because Iowa has gay marriage. I know. Isn't that funny? But it's within a small subset of the Constitution. Right, right.

It's in the caucus subset. Right, the caucus. That is a ridiculous system. It's absurd. It's fucking held in people's houses and fucking living rooms and shit. That is not a system. I'm sorry. That's tea sandwiches, damn it. That's ridiculous. That's tea sandwiches, damn it.

That's ridiculous. That's a dinner party gone wrong. That's what that is. But he refused to sign the pledge. Now, there's a bunch of the other candidates who are reviewing it or looking it over, and they're probably going to hem and haw. And maybe they just – but he outright just said no. No. Not going to do it.

Not going to do it. Not going to sign it. And fucking kudos to you, Mitt Romney, because that pledge is crazy. Yeah, and Mitt Romney is one of these guys like they want to bust his balls about health care too. All the Republicans like to bust his balls about this. But a lot of the president's plan for health came from Mitt Romney. So, you know what I mean? Like, like here's a guy, I think there's some people on the right that I can get, get behind sometimes. And Mitt Romney's, like you said, you like him some of the time I do too.

And I think, you know, when I, when I hear him talk and I hear him speak, I'm never really one of these, I'm never cringing. I'm never thinking, Oh God, please. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm never cringing. I'm never thinking, oh, God, please, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. I'm like holding my ears or hugging my knees. It's never like that. It's always, okay, all right, maybe I disagree with you, Mitt Romney. Well, a guy with a name like Mitt, which is a weird name anyway. It's super weird. You know, maybe I disagree with you, but I don't – I'm not so like – I'm not so crazy about it where I could be like, oh, this person is like nails on a fucking chalkboard.

Like Michelle Bachman, like fucking Newt Gingrich. Like those people are fucking weird, crazy people that I don't want to ever see in office. At least I could – you know, I could see myself in a heated race maybe voting for Mitt Romney. Sure. If it was the right – you know, if he said the right things, there's a possibility I could vote for him. Yeah, Mitt Romney is not anywhere near as terrifying as...

And has anyone figured out if Palin is running yet? I don't know. Or is she just driving a motor coach around? She's driving around in a big vote-for-me truck. You know what I mean? I don't know. Maybe she's looking to film Who's Nailing Palin 2? I don't know. She maybe she's looking to film who's nailing Palin, too. I don't know. She like she is going to be deemed like not fit to run for office at some point, like medically unfit.

That's it. You know, that's the other thing, too, is that Palin is a scary person. Palin's a very scary person. And, you know, as scary as Michelle Bachman is, you know, Palin is, I think, it's hard to say that she's scarier than Michelle Bachman, but she's certainly up there. And the stuff that she was saying, and the stuff that she, you know, like

how she speaks and what she talks about, and how she approaches things, and would approach things like foreign policy, is scary as shit. It's scary as hell. And it says so much about the United States when her fucking book is a best seller. I mean, it really does. And nothing good, either. It's scary as shit. It's scary as hell. And it says so much about the United States when her fucking book is a bestseller. I mean it really does. Nothing good either.

It's not like, oh, that's a good – no. No. Yeah, it's sort of awful. And being frank, she is clearly not a bright woman. No, clearly not. And she keeps making that point clearer and clearer all the time. Well, and then she admits it. I mean she fully admits it all the time. Well, and then she admits it. I mean,

she fully admits it all the time. Like, Oh look, I'm just a regular old person. And it's like, yeah. And there's a reason why I don't want fucking Joe, the plumber or my fucking building guy to be the president.

You know what I mean? Like, like there's a reason I don't want the guy who cleans my office at night, who does a fucking spectacular job of mopping up the floor after a scummy fucker like me is in my office all day. I come in, it's sparkling fucking clean. But you know what? I don't want him fucking telling the army where to go. That's not what I want.

One of the more insane things she also did was give a speech about welfare and faith in God, basically saying that, you know know sort of giving her story she's a millionaire now um yeah where she she was poor at one point and they didn't go on any kind of social assistance programs instead they had faith in god and now she's a billionaire or whatever and that is is not fine. You know, like you just want to see like right above her head, like results, not typical. Right. Exactly. Right. All the time. Like, do not count on this. I think the most, um, religious group of people I've ever met in my life have been poor. Right. That is not helping them because they are still poor. That's not a solution. You know, I just want to read what she says here.

Let me just read what she says. This is her speaking. She says, we went from middle class to overnight below poverty. And my mother had to leave the home and get a job. And I had to go out and get a babysitting jobs to help out. We didn't go on any dependency programs. And I don't begrudge anyone who does that when I say that. But we didn't do that.

Yeah. Way to fucking look down your nose by not looking down your nose, right? We had faith in God. We depended on our neighbors. We depended on ourselves. And we just did without. We made do. We did without. And we do. We did without.

And we were just grateful for what we had. We knew that one day things would be better. And then they were. And God was faithful. Why does God have to be? I don't understand why God was faithful. And they were better. God was faithful?

Faithful to what? Like, why does, aren't you supposed to be faithful to God? But I want to point out something from my past. Okay. And I know exactly what this feels like, right? Because when I was a young man, very young, a boy, actually, my, uh, my father lost his job during the Reagan era. Okay. And, uh, overnight, just like her, we went from middle-class to poverty and we were on, uh, we were on very little public assistance. We had, we had gotten some food from the government, but we also had some food stamps. And then we, we had very little money that was coming in unemployment, but it was very little.

And I remember we went out and got paper routes to help support our family. So, you know, I did, we did the exact same thing, Bachman, you know what I mean? But we took the government handouts that we could and we survived. And I'm not any worse for it and I'm not on a dependency program. It's not a dependency program. What it was was it was a welfare program for the time. And now I'm a productive adult living a productive life paying taxes and giving to charities when I can. So, you know, what the fuck? Like I didn't spend the rest of my life on the government teeth thinking,

fucking, this is a good life. Government cheese every week. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not fucking thinking that. I know there's a million people out there that don't think that. And the reason I don't think that is because being fucking dependent on the government sucks giant donkey balls, okay? It is the worst thing that you can

be because you have, I mean, you're, you're stuck in, in a, in a tiny little rut. You have to, you have to try to dig your way out of it. It's not an easy fucking way to live. Don't pretend that it's easy. Don't, don't make these intimations that, oh, well, you know, we didn't go on it. Look at how much better I am than you. And oh, if you go on it, you're dependent. Fuck you, you fucking cunt. Her faith in God is not what helped her family out of it. I mean, she outlines what they did. You know, she got a job.

Her mom got a job. They cut back on their expenses and they fought through it. And there's some people that can do that and there's opportunities and times in the, in the economic history of the country where that's possible. And then there's also times when that's not possible. Right. Where the paper route and the babysitting jobs and the, you know, second income from the, you know, the Barnes and Noble or whatever, when that's not enough to make ends meet. And, and then what? Yeah. Well, then you're supposed to, you're supposed to just be like, well, we went enough to make ends meet. And then what?

Yeah, well, then you're fucked. What are you supposed to do? You're supposed to just be like, well, we went without. Well, what did you go without? Food? We went without food, you know. We just lived off faith. It wasn't very filling, but we lived off of it.

We were going to put a little cheese on the faith, but we didn't have any. Yeah, because we were too proud to take the government cheese. Yeah, we were just like, oh, man, this faith would taste better with food on it. No, but this is her just looking down her nose at those people. It is. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, fuck you. These people, those are people just like you, and they have had circumstances in their life that have caused them to be in a dire situation.

And for you to talk like this and make it feel like that it's a bad thing for somebody to be down on their luck, you know, you can't control your luck. And what you're also saying too, is that you're a more faithful person than the people that are down on their luck. Those people don't believe as much as you, therefore they didn't benefit as well as you. Right. And that's another load of bullshit. Well, sure. Cause it, it, it suggests that God financially rewards people of greater faith. Yeah. Really? Cause you know, I'm not terrible, I'm not a biblical scholar, but you know, there's the whole eye of the needle and the camel and the rich man. And you know, that's not a, it's not a difficult one to sort of interpret there about fucking wealth and Jeebus.

Yeah, well, and then also, you know, the most religious people, what about those people that have basically scammed people out of money? Those people that are like evangelical televangelist people that have like fucking drive around in Mercedes and all that bullshit. They fucking Peter Popoff. Is he a really religious person? Fuck you. You know, I just, I just hate a lot of the things that she's about. And I think she's a very terrifying person. And as time goes on, a lot of people, I know, I catch this on Facebook, I catch this on Reddit. I catch it on other places where people are all like, oh yeah, let her win the nomination. Let her win. Thank God. I hope she wins the nomination.

like, oh, yeah, let her win the nomination. Let her win. Thank God. I hope she wins the nomination. I don't hope she wins the nomination. And I don't hope she wins the nomination not because I don't think that the person who she's like then pitted up against from the other party couldn't destroy her because I really think that that would be the case. But I'm afraid about what that says about the United States.

I couldn't agree more. I am afraid more about what that says about the people that in a party, a Republican party, which at this point is probably half the half the people in the United States. What does that say about those people? What does that say about our country? And that's why I don't want her to win. Yeah. What it says is get out. Yeah. Well, what it says is my five year, my 10 year plan turned into a five year plan about getting out of the country. That's what it says. Yeah.

She's awful. She just is so awful. Yes. Yes. If you're involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it's bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous. It's a very sad life. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous.

It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay. It's anything but gay. Michelle Bachman also, you know, kind of a huge hypocrite, taken a lot. She talks a lot about that, you know, that story that we were just talking about a moment ago about not getting on dependence programs. She's taking a lot of money, actually, like federal government money in terms of money for farm and what other subsidies. But she also appears to just be a giant fucking liar. A giant fucking liar. liar because she has claimed that her and her husband's counseling center is, you know,

doesn't try to sort of like reeducate gay people or like whatever it is, I don't know, re-indoctrinate them back into or into a heterosexual life. But evidence has come out that that is, in fact, exactly what they do. Right. Of course. Yeah. Because what else would you have to say? I mean, you're an evangelical Christian.

What else would you have to say? Your book says these are not good people. So you have to try to make them fit into your book. And they're not going to if they're gay. You have to make a choice. Like you get to either be a crazy, fundy, evangelical nut who doesn't understand metaphor. That's option one. Which you're following very well at this point. You know, that's the route you've chosen, you know?

Yeah. Okay, great. So then like you should just come with like a list. Like here's a list of people you hate. Like, okay, cool. Like these are people I have to hate in order for my book to work it doesn't it doesn't work that way you you know you can be a moderate christian and still and and have no problem with homosexuality but you can't be an evangelical fundie it doesn't work you can't sign that fucking pledge and like gay people

right if they're incompatible. So her group, of course, is trying to like pray the gay away, which does not work at all. And she's gotten caught. She's gotten caught a couple of times. There's actually a really cool – you sent this to me, a really cool blog, The Wilted Sepulcher. I actually rather like this. I poked around on it a little bit. And he sort of makes fun, you know, that that same pledge that we were talking about refers to faithful monogamy being at the heart of a designed and purposeful order.

And then immediately followed by that is like hosts of biblical quotes which destroy the idea of monogamy which is not in the bible in i mean what would jesus do right not get married and have no kids that's what jesus would do right let's all be like jesus great we'll all fucking die when we're 33 and not bang women. That's a great plan. And not produce another fucking generation. So it's – we'll put this on our website. It's kind of a cool thing. You know, Anderson Cooper talked about this a little bit in his show where he was basically trying to respond to her. The people that were, like, beating the homosexuals and then, like, it was also faith-based.

This is a very similar thing, and he's very much against that and he's come out several times uh you know basically calling her out and she has never really responded to him and the reason why is because she's completely in the wrong the reason why is because she's they are they are they have a pray the gay away uh section of their clinic. I mean like that's what it's for. You can't talk about it in this way and not realize that that's exactly what they're doing and that it's damaging. That it's just a damaging way to treat a human being. It's a demeaning and damaging way to treat somebody who is probably already kind of insecure in their sexuality because they're both religious and gay.

And it's just a hurtful way to treat someone. And I think that, you know, this is a great thing to call her out on because it is a damaging thing. And you know what? I don't think that something like this should be institutionalized. Oh, Lord, no. And, you know, if this lunatic were in office, there would be attempts to institutionalize this sort of thing.

She's just a fucking loon. Speaking of total loons, the rapture is the story that just keeps on giving. It really is. It's like the fucking comic gold, man. There's a story from Eugene, Oregon, where the motive in a workplace shooting may have been because one employee was teasing another employee after the rapture did not occur. So I guess the one guy figured he'd be raptured. And when that didn't happen, he got teased because, you know, that's fucking ridiculous.

This is fucking awesome. And so he got mad about being teased and he shot the dude. It's not going to get you raptured any sooner. That's the best story ever. Oh, my God. I thought this story, when I was reading it, was going to implode in on itself. Like when I was reading it, I couldn't. And doesn't that guy look like Lenny?

He looks awesome. This picture is like, you know what he looks like? And the best part about this whole article is that on the picture you can click a button to expand the picture from like thumbnail size to like half your screen. And he's such a dopey looking fucker. Oh my god. He's wearing camouflage

too, which is totally awesome. No one will see me as I shoot this guy at work. I just love the fact that he's like, I am a pious individual. I love the Lord. And on May 21st, he is going to take me into his bosom and we are going to fly away and leave the rest of you sinning, awful people here on Earth to burn an eternal lake of fire. Now, May 21st doesn't come and he resorts to shooting someone else.

Like, this is going to be one of God's chosen people. At least that's what he thought. Like, he really thought he was going to be one of God's chosen people. And he gets made, like like sticks and stones, dude. What the fuck? Well, you know, the problem is that the rapture is like a giant celestial game of duck, duck, goose. Right? And this guy thought he was goose.

Yeah. But turns out he was duck. He was totally duck. You know? Absolutely. He was very disappointed. He was very upset. Nobody wants to be the guy who's totally duck. You know? Absolutely. He was very disappointed. He was very upset. That is fucking awesome.

Nobody wants to be the guy who's always duck. Right. You know? Right. And I'm looking at this picture and I'm guessing this guy's been duck for a long time. I just love that he's willing to shoot another human being for making fun of him. And he thinks he's one of God's chosen. That's fucking classic and awesome.

Your God sucks. That's all I'm saying. So we got some email. One of the emails that we received was from one of our listeners who took a little bit of exception, although he's very polite about it. He took a little bit of exception to a comment that you had made regarding 9-11. And we were talking about Wiener and Wiener's inability to keep his Wiener secret. And that did not bode likely very well for bigger secrets like the possibility that 9-11 was an inside job. We sort of mocked that. He suggested that we take a look at a website,

which was Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth. I did take a look at the website. I didn't find it terribly convincing. Yeah, neither did I. At all. I also found the website to be horrifyingly poorly put together. I know, man. You know, for architects and engineers, you would like to think that they would know how to engineer a better website. Man, hire a fucking architect for that thing. It is a disaster. They need an information architect. That's for sure.

Can I just talk real quickly about a couple things here, Tom? Sure. Yeah. I recognize and I understand that there's going to be a lot of people that have what some people refer to as sacred cows, right? There's some people who just believe in some things, whether or not the evidence really supports it. And you'll run into these people all the time that really are skeptics. They're hard-nosed skeptics. They're people that are very thoughtful people that think a lot about a lot of different things that they really require evidence for.

But there's one or two things that they let the evidence slide for. And I'm sure I'm guilty of this, but I feel like, you know, there's some sorts of things in this world that we will not take. We just won't look at with a sort of hard edge, you know, a tight, hard edge. And I think 9-11 is one of those things for skeptics. There's a big break in our community around 9-11. And I want to point out just two terms, and I don't want to be insulting, and don't take this the wrong way, Rowan, at all. But I want to say that there's two types of people that believe in, that there's two ways to look at information. There's skeptics, and the skeptics will always

side on the side of the massive amount of evidence, the scientific consensus, if you will. And then there's denialists. There's people who will look at in the face of scientific consensus and pull out anomalies. They will anomaly hunt. And that's all this is. Okay. These guys are looking and digging through a ton of data and they're pulling out one, two, three things that don't quite make sense to them. And they're basing an entire, entire, almost a worldview on what happened that day based on anomalies. And some of these things aren't even anomalies. Some of these things are absolutely explainable, but people don't want to hear it. And I am not one of these people who is going to look at a website like this and be immediately convinced because I know there's buckets full of information. And the biggest

part of this, the one piece that I'm never going to let go of is I saw two fucking planes hit those buildings. I saw two planes crash into those buildings from many different angles. And I saw, I've seen work, I've seen digital recreations of what that did to those pylons in there and those supports and what that can do. And you are not gonna convince me that that was a controlled demolition of any of those buildings, not with the evidence that is on that site.

You cannot convince me of that. No, I don't think that the evidence bears out a controlled demolition at all. And I know a lot of the evidence to a lot of the controversy a lot of times stems from World Trade Center seven. Yeah. You know, the collapse of that building. And, you know, I have to say, like, I've read I've read several of these sort of arguments and, you know, questions and, you know, why did it fall fall and why did the trade centers fall? The fire wouldn't have been hot enough. They never seem to take into account the impact. They focus so often on the fire.

The fire was a big fucking deal, but don't forget the impact of that thing. It was a multi-causal event. And I think that the problem that is often run into is that the event is looked at only from a single angle, only from a single vantage point. We look at it from the vantage point of the fire. You know, World Trade Center 7 fell. Trade Center 7 fell, imagine how much impact when the trade centers themselves came crashing to the ground, the impact and the force that such weight and such height creates slamming into the ground. It's incredible.

It's incredible. And World Trade Center 7, Tom, there's a lot of vantage points that show a giant chunk of one of the World Trade Centers crashing in, tons and tons and tons worth of debris hit and literally tore almost a side of that building off. It sheared a giant portion of that building right off because tons and tons of material from one of those buildings fell and actually hit it. And they show, they keep showing, oh, it's just a few fires on this one. They keep showing all these different little vantages where it just looks like, yeah, it's

just a couple of fires. But then when they pan back, if you see how much smoke is pouring out of that building, yeah, maybe you can't see the fire from the fucking windows from the side of the street, but two little fires in a couple rooms do not start that much smoke. No, again, it's looking at it only from the standpoint of the fire, not the standpoint of the impact of this thing. And there is no, the other problem is there's no corollary event for which to compare this to. There's no similar situation where jetliners, I mean, yeah, little small airplanes crash into buildings before,

but there's no situation where fully loaded, juiced up airliners crashed at speed into a structure that's built the same way these structures were built. So you don't have something, you don't have a basis for comparison to say, well, this is what should have happened and it didn't. Right. Instead, you're saying this is what I thought would happen and it didn't. I do want to point out one more quick thing, and it has to do with conspiracy theories

in general. And I feel like the more people, and this is an obvious conclusion, but the more people you get involved in any conspiracy, the more it will fall in on its own weight. And 9-11 is one of those things that people like to say, oh, it was an inside job and that our government did this. Well, here's the thing. What you're claiming is that they somehow got somebody behind the wheel of a plane or whether or not they created drones and then flew those unmanned. I don't even know how you even think about it. But somehow, they either convinced somebody to kill themselves for the country and fly a bunch of people in the

plane to it, or the radio controlled the planes into the buildings or whatever they did. But the one thing that they're discounting is that there were firemen in those buildings. There were firemen that got out alive of those buildings. And if it was a controlled demolition, the firemen would have witnessed something. The firemen would have saw something that would have indicated that there was some sort of explosives, something there. You can't just hide that shit somewhere. That is that's an impressive amount of explosives that needs to go off in order to bring a building down. And you can't just hide that.

And those guys are the same guys who worked and died and got cancers and just emphysema and just ruined their health for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks afterwards, digging, trying to find survivors. You can't tell me that there isn't one person who isn't in their best interest to tell everyone in the rest of the world they were it was a controlled demolition and i saw those things inside there there's no way you could keep those people quiet and you're not even willing to give them health care you know what i mean like they weren't even willing to give those people health care at one point and there's no way there is no way i cannot believe it and i would not believe it until i saw something that would absolutely have to blow me away in evidence. And nothing in this site and nothing I've ever seen really blows me away.

It's all really just speculation and anomaly hunting. But like Tom said, we thank you. Absolutely thank you for sending the email. And we do try to keep an open mind. But when it comes to this, I just, there's nothing that I've been so convinced by. We got a bunch of comments from a bunch of different people that just say, hey, you make me laugh. Hey, I like your podcast. Hey, thanks for doing it. And those are great comments. And we love to get them. We get a couple private emails like that. One from, you know, from, we got several

from different people. And then we also got a couple comments on our Facebook page and comments on our website. So keep those comments coming. You want to tweet us. You want to send a tweet to us, please do so. Those are great things to help let us know that, hey, we're reaching somebody. People actually listen. People actually like the show.

If you like the show, just let us know. It makes us feel good. It makes us want to do it. And we are working on an app you'll be able to get soon, relatively soon. New way to listen to the show, we just came up live relatively recently on Stitcher. So if you've got a smartphone, you can download Stitcher app. Can't actually from my phone, but any other smartphone, it turns out. You can download the Stitcher app, you can listen to our show.

That's the direction I've used it on other phones, and it's a great way to listen to podcasts. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter, obviously. Our website, dissonance-podcast.blogspot.com. You can email us at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. You can also call and yell at us with your own voice. We've got Google Voice set up, so you can give us a call at 740-74-DOUBT, which is also 740-743-6828. You'll get charged what you normally get charged, so pay attention to that.

That shit ain't toll free. Yeah. We could barely pay for the podcast to actually get distributed let alone pay for the phone call but no we what we really do tom we really do like to get those calls though but we like to play people's voice so if you feel like you want to call us and just give us a shout out and just say hey i love the show we'll play that on the air if you want to if you want to send us a voicemail um we. We're more than happy to play people's voicemail. We also got an email from Beth, Tom. We did.

And Beth sent in a very nice email. We have both met Beth in the past, and she was turned on to the podcast by her husband and started listening and gave us a lot of kudos and talked about another podcast that we do too. So we're going to probably talk about that on the other podcast. Everyone's a critic that we do too. So we're going to probably talk about that on the other podcast. Everyone's a critic that we do. But she said that, you know, she says it's a great podcast and she follows a few other atheist podcasts, but it's nice to have one in Chicago.

And it's great that you're listening, Beth. Thanks for listening. So, Tom, I think that wraps it up for another Cognitive Dissonance. We're going to leave everybody, as usual, with the skeptic's creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral,

brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques,

and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

Thank you for listening to Cognitive Dissonance. If you want to reach us by phone, you can call Call us at 740-743-6828. That's 740-74-DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. Send us an email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at dissonance underscore pod. We'll see you next time. you