Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 1: Shut Down

Episode Date: April 13, 2011

News Items for this show:

Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis? If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. I just pray over this equipment. We speak over the PowerPointpoint presentations all of the video projectors and we'll say devil we know what you love to do in meetings like this and we say you will not in jesus name you will not prevent this message from going out no microphone problems in

jesus name i think we better split up yeah we can do more damage that way. There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherfuckers like you. What if we're still doing this when we're 50? It would be nice to have that kind of job security. I'd like you to tell me that you are and have been false prophet. The God is a superstition. 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. Cecil, this is our first episode of Cognitive Dissonance. Very first. Very first episode of Cognitive Dissonance. Also, we've been doing this other podcast, Everyone's a Critic, for four years. So we're not noobs, I think, by any stretch of the imagination. But we still do suck. So I think we're going to bring a healthy

dose of suck-a-tude to this podcast as well as the other podcast that we still do. Well, it's nice to know that effectively 72 episodes into this adventure, we haven't improved. And I think that really says something about our character. You know, we don't give up. Much to our occasional listener's chagrin, we do not, in fact, give up.

So this new adventure of ours, Cognitive Dissonance, this is, I think, a pretty natural offshoot for our listeners who have found us through Everyone's a Critic, the podcast that's going to continue from now on just as a movie review podcast. But it used to incorporate news and skeptical thought and liberal politics and things along those lines. And atheism. Atheism was sort of a deep part of it. For sure. This is a natural extension. We've broken our podcast, our previous podcast, into two shows. Cognitive Dissonance is taking the place of the old intro section from Everyone's a Critic.

So for the listeners who've come over from Everyone's a Critic, we're very sorry. We're just, all I can do is apologize. We're going to punish you here, too. You don't get away. You going to punish you here, too. You don't get away. You have to listen to this, too. But we're hoping, Tom, I think one of the things that we're hoping to do is try to make a more digestible podcast for two different audiences. Because we really feel like we were really hemmed in with the stuff that we were doing with Everyone's a Critic, which is sort of a mashup of everything that we're interested in. It's just like we are interested in all of these various things.

And we sort of smashed it into one really long, really kind of unbearably long podcast that we forced people to listen to. Now we have two bearable, yet still bad podcasts that we are going to inflict on people. It's still barely listenable, but bearable. Exactly. I think, you know, bearable is good, but endurable is also another way. You can probably take this. You know, this isn't like, you know, it's not as bad as waterboarding, but in many countries it would be considered torture.

I'm just throwing that out there. This isn't – it's not as bad as waterboarding, but it might be, say, as bad as Bradley Manning's detention. It's like probably that bad. That was – So I just real quickly, Tom, before we jump into it and before you start rattling off all these great news items that we have for people, I wanted to sort of lay down the ground rules like we did a long, long, long, long, long time ago in Everyone's a Critic four years ago. When we started that podcast, we sort of came out with the statement that I think we followed throughout and we still follow is that we're not fucking

experts pretty much in anything. I have my various degrees in other things other than politics, atheism, and skepticism, and I think you do too. So we don't bring a lot of things to the table, but we bring what we think might be just a skeptical viewpoint to different news items that some people might miss. Look, I'm lucky when I bring a cup of coffee to any given table. That is my grand contribution. As you know,

as you have edited all four years of the previous podcast, there's not a lot that I bring to most tables. I think it is important. We're going to come off as experts because we're arrogant shitheads. But at no point

should you confuse our uh statements of grandeur with with any uh authority at all yeah yeah because it is completely unwarranted but yeah this is just two guys opinions on the world you know and on these subjects that do interest us you know when we first started this show i had no idea when we first started everyone's aic and then we started incorporating the news items, it was totally unfocused. And as we've grown, as we've gone through the last four years, I do think it has evolved and I think it's sharpened up.

And I think we have an idea of the kinds of stories and the kinds of subjects that we want to talk about. And I'm excited for this. I'm excited for the listeners that have come over from Everyone's a Critic. And I appreciate all of you guys giving us a shot with this new venture that we're starting out at. And hopefully we'll continue to disappoint you here. I really want to disappoint in as many formats and levels as possible. It's what I do for my wife.

It's what I want to do for you. If you're looking to be disappointed on Twitter, you can follow us there. You can be disappointed on Facebook. So I wanted to touch on two quick things if I could. The first is that Tom and I have talked in the past about how difficult it is to be an atheist because you don't have the church support group around you. People who believe go to church and they get the chance to talk to other people who believe. And they have a lot of things in common, but we don't have a sort of a meeting place, a place where we can go to be atheists. And in a way, it does define us even if we don't want it to.

Our lack of belief defines us in a world of belief. And there's no way to get around that. I know people don't want to use that as a way to define themselves. They just say that they don't believe in something. And that technically isn't a way to define yourself. But I think it is. And I feel like this show, more than anything else, is going to be one of those places where I think people that listen to it can talk to each other too, can have those conversations

that they really can't have with a lot of other people. Because atheists do not make up a large portion of this world. Mostly the world is filled with people who believe, and it's sometimes very difficult to have a conversation that can be secular. And that's what we want to try to provide is our listeners a chance to talk about that stuff and a chance for us to have that conversation. This sort of, this is our church, you know, it's Sunday morning, we have our coffee, and this is what we do on Sunday mornings instead of going to church. And then we also, the name of the program, Cognitive Dissonance, Tom and I both have a lot of cognitive dissonance in our own lives. We're both pretty liberal guys and we're both gun owners. That's something I think that,

that has a little bit of cognitive dissonance to it. Another thing I want to add too, is that, you know, while liberal and atheist, I think sometimes go hand in hand, liberal and skeptic, Tom, sometimes do not fucking go hand in hand. Oh, my God. You want to talk about the fucking woo woo community. They fucking hang out on the left about as far out as you can go. They really do. Well, and that's the thing, Cecil, is there's crack jobs in just about every community, but the left for sure has its fair share of kooky-ass hippie motherfuckers who have no idea what the hell they're talking about but won't stop flapping their goddamn gums. God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion. On the bent of the atheist and religious stories that we were just talking about, we've got a couple of really good ones. There's a story.

This is pretty interesting. The pope charged with crimes against humanity in the world court. You know, I think if you're the pope, though, you've got a pretty good defense, right? Infallibility. As defenses go. right infallibility is a really effective defense for dimwits you just show up be like look i am infallible papally infallible also he will not show up what is the point of this world court anyway? All they do is indict people that never come to court. Like, you want to come to the Hague?

No. I don't understand why your city has a definite article in front of it. It doesn't make any sense. They're going to call us in front of the fucking world court eventually. It's going to have to happen. I don't know why this guy wasn't charged with blowing up Alderaan earlier, because he's obviously the emperor from Star Wars. I don't know why. guy wasn't charged with blowing up Alderaan earlier because he's obviously the emperor from Star Wars. I don't know why.

I mean he silenced – what was it? A million voices cry out and then were immediately silenced. So I mean you've got to bring this guy up on charges eventually. I feel like this is just – this is one of those gestures. They're like the UN. It's like, well, we're going to do this thing. And people are like, who cares? They just move on with their life. You know, I do think the claims are pretty the claims are pretty aggressive.

They claim the pope is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion, which subjugates its members with terrifying and health endangering threats. Oh, bully for you, man. I think that's fucking awesome. They might as well just fucking run out like Tanya, Tanya Harding and hit him in the kneecap while they're at it, right? Label him and knock his dumb ass down. Yeah, I feel like I feel like the claims are fine.

But like you said, I mean, what does it do? It's just basically a way in which to have a voice to say that we condemn these actions. I feel like this pope among a lot – I mean there's been – obviously there's been a long line of popes here leading up to this point. But I feel like this pope especially has been a little shady. And the stuff he's been doing with people that have been sexually abused and how he's reassigning people that abuse people, there's a lot of shady shit that this guy does. And I'm glad somebody is calling him out on it. I don't know what is going to happen from it though, probably nothing. I have to feel like the Catholic Church is just crumbling. It just feels like it's crumbling.

How do you have any credibility as a church, as an organization that's supposed to be founded on these ideals of love and yada, yada, yada? But you're a pro-pedophile. You can't be – I don't know. Well, you know what we really condone is the diddling of children. That's one way to get closer to God. Like they're not saying that. No, they're not.

They're not. But they're not. As an organization, they're not as aggressively pursuing the perpetrators of these acts as they should be. I can't argue with that. They're not throwing them to the wolves. They're not saying, hey, police, we excommunicate this motherfucker for diddling some kids. He's all yours. Yeah.

Send him to the pound me in the ass prison right away. They don't do that stuff. I guess that's what I mean. I'm obviously being inflammatory because I am an inflammatory kind of guy. I get it. But you're right. They haven't been doing the things that they should be doing as an organization. I mean, look, I think that as an integrity organization – now this is going to sound weird coming from me.

But I mean look at like the government sometimes even has better reactions than sometimes the church does. Whereas if you get caught in like an extramarital affair and you're a senator, lots of times those people will step down or they do some – they wind up not running again. Whereas here it's like, well, he diddled some kids. Make him a bookkeeper. You know what I mean? Like really it's kind of scary. So I think that more attention to this. But this is not a new thing.

There's been demonstrations against him. The UK has had some great demonstrations against him when he came there last time. So, yeah, just keep it up. You know, they do say something in this claim, these allegations that I disagree with pretty strongly. They claim that the Catholic Church acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely through the baptism

of infants that do not yet have a will of their own. This act is irrevocable and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and fires of hell. I don't think that baptism act is irrevocable and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and fires of hell. I don't think that baptism is fucking irrevocable. It is very revocable. You can revoke that with a towel.

Yeah. You know, blow dryer. I was baptized. Okay. It didn't take. Yeah. It was, it was some water and some chanting. Yeah.

That's all it fucking is. If you're a believer, then the water means something. If you're not a believer, then the water was water. Exactly. I don't think you can call it irrevocable. Like, here, I revoke it. I'm done. I took an irrevocable shower this morning.

Right. I was actually baptized when I was seven years old. I like in our church, like we do, you know, we choose our God parents and what have you. And you, you know, like you choose when you're going to be baptized. I got baptized when I was seven, but you're not a person of substance or character at seven. Like you don't have, you don't even have free will in any reasonable sense at seven years old. Like you're just, you're still a fucking potato at seven years old. You're still a fucking potato at seven years old. It's fucking nonsense. Irrevocable.

Are you fucking kidding me? You know, the Pope's in trouble. And I think what he needs, Cecil, is he needs the power of the trees. That's what he needs. Because a family recently found Jesus. A lot of people find Jesus.

Some people find him in prison. Some people find him deep in their heart of hearts. This family found him in a tree. And of all places, McLean, Virginia. Who would have thought? Norton family. I'm just saying it doesn't happen in the Upper East Side, right? It doesn't happen in places. East Side, right? Right, right.

It doesn't happen in places. Well, you know what this is? This is like the Jesus bat signal is what this is. Like the Pope put out the Jesus bat signal and then now Jesus is gone. Yeah. The Norton family says an image of Jesus is engraved in a tree in their front yard right where a limb once was no i'm looking at a picture of it man it vaguely looks like a head like it's a smudge vaguely it's fucking justin bieber like what the fuck who the fuck knows what it is got the bieber

fever in my tree man so some of the quotes in this story, though, are priceless. I noticed the hair and then the beard and then it all just came together. I think that is Jesus, said Bella's mom. Yeah, well, that's because she said I had breast cancer, but everything is fine and I'm doing well. Like what? She rubbed her boobie on the tree. I don't understand what happened there. I will believe Cecil. I really will. When I can take one of these pictures of

Jesus on my French toast or, you know, Jesus in a oil stain in my driveway or on a tree in Virginia, I'll believe all of them. Just as soon as you line up the photograph of Jesus with the Jesus tree. So somebody can just break out the photos they've got. It's like fucking cryptozoology. You get fucking Jesus, he's all blurry as he's running past the camera.

He's got his beard. It's like, well that could be a hippie or it's Jesus. He looks dirty and homeless. It's like nearly everyone on the Chicago streets, but maybe it's Jesus. Is it Jesus or is it real? It is not either, actually. Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States. Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States.

Now, you know that guy ain't shit. Sorry, ass motherfucker got nothing on me, right? Nothing. This is a phenomenal story, actually. It's more of a graphic from politifact.com. And there's a really kind of a cool truth-o-meter. Anytime you can have an o-meter, by the way, you fucking sold me. You better do it, too.

Take your opportunity to have the o-meter. Man, I am a fan of the o-meters in general. So, this is an o-meter, the Obama-meter, tracking Obama's campaign promises. This is the sort of demonstrable information that I think, like, just being able to view it,

just being able to have a place where you can say, like, okay, you know, what did he say? What did he live up to? What promises are broken? What promises are kept? You know, what strikes me about this meter is two things. First, mostly pretty good. Right. Second, there's so much of it is stalled.

Yeah. There's so much that is in the works or stalled. And I guess that's the big problem I've have with, that's the problem I think a lot of people have with, with president Obama and his policies is just, just fucking get some done. I don't, what I don't understand is why you put some fucking Texas yokel like George Bush in office and he just pushes every crazy thing. Every crazy thing that popped into his head became a law, right?

Like every crazy notion became a policy or a law. Like Obama's like, I got a good idea. Anyone interested in hearing it? No? No takers? No takers? All right. All right. I'm'm gonna go think in this corner plugging their ears and going la la la la fucking jackasses it's almost like he's asking permission to get things done sometimes you know and i i look at this and it's like stalled stalled

stalled in the works in the works in the works stalled stalled you know come on you gotta i mean we have three branches of government and the two branches that fight it out all the time the legislative and the executive uh you know maybe he has all these ideas and wants to push these things through but the legislative branch at this point is is like the fail and the problem is is that you know, the House is controlled by the Republicans. They've been holding things hostage. We're going to talk about it in a few minutes about how they're going to shut the government down. So you have all these different things that they're not going to do now. And then what? A year ago, two years ago,

when it was both controlled by the Democrats, when the Democrats won all this, all the, they fucking won the internets, okay, in 2008. They fucking came on the scene and they won everything and they had a fucking majority. And what was happening? Filibusters. They were like, oh, no, we're just going to filibuster. So they stalled everything. Everything.

And you're like, well, then fucking why do we even have a government then? Well, it very nearly didn't. Right, exactly. that. Well, it very nearly didn't. Right, exactly. And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President, I hear the floor and suggest the admins of the court. Clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted we almost didn't have a government a federal government for a little while here like up until i went to bed thinking we did not have two governments that's that's how close it came i think they fixed shit at like 11 o'clock dc time or something yeah you know it's and and what are the what are the things that stall the government?

So they, you know, we have to pass a budget. If you don't have a budget, you don't have a functioning government. OK, fine. So they were about to they were about to shut down. Eight hundred thousand workers would have been affected. All kinds of services would have been stalled. The last time this happened, it went on for three fucking weeks. I can't even imagine my boss saying like, yeah, we're going to shut down for three weeks weeks i can't even imagine my boss saying like yeah we're

gonna shut down for three weeks because we can't balance our books what that's crazy balance the fucking books just there's a solution to this problem it's called fix the fucking problem that's what you're goddamn paid for but they almost shut down the government because of it and and what were the big stalling points? The big stalling points wasn't like, well, I want to spend $300 billion on missile defense and I want to spend $200 billion. No, it's ideological bullshit. Always ideological bullshit. Planned Parenthood figured strongly into the equation. Well, that's the thing that's fucking infuriating is that Planned Parenthood,

a service that has already been denied, basically you cannot get government funding to fund abortions in this country. It's already been set up that way. Even though abortion is perfectly fucking legal under our laws, even though we still have to shame those people in some way. We have to figure out a way in which to legislate morality in some way so that people can't get federal funding for abortions. And, you know, I think everybody looks around and says, OK, fucking fine. As long as you'll do the things that are very important to the poor, because that's who uses fucking Planned Parenthood here. Contraception and cancer screenings and family planning. Those are things that Planned Parenthood uses this money for. And they're like, no.

Planning? What the fuck, man? Contraception? What are you going to fucking bring forth your fucking abstinence-only policies, you dumb fucks? Yeah, well, look at your big spokesperson for abstinence only. She got knocked up. Yep, Sarah Palin's daughter. She made $262,000

last year giving talks on this sort of subject, and she got fucking knocked up as a teenager. It obviously doesn't fucking work. You've got an organization like Planned Parenthood, right? 35% of their budget goes to STD testing and treatment.

How do you say like, oh, geez, I'm more of like a pro-STD guy. Yeah. Like I hear what you're saying. I feel you. But if I can't spread syphilis, I don't feel like I've done my daily work. That's crazy. 3% of their budget goes to abortion services. 3%.

A whopping fucking 3%. So we're talking about giving, in the grand scheme of the budgets, we're talking about giving a minuscule, pathetic, tiny, insignificant sum of money to Planned Parenthood of which they will take 97% and put it toward causes that I think if you're not a total fuckwit you have to support so it's fractions of fractions at this point and what does that mean to the actual taxpayer I mean how much of your money you know when you say things like – because I've heard it too, Cecil. We've all heard it, right? Like I don't want my money to go toward paying that. Well, short your taxes one penny then because it's probably less than a penny.

Right. The total impact on the individual taxpayer, negligible. It's tiny because it's – they don't get a lot of money. And you pointed this out earlier, Tom, that that Senator John Kyle from Arizona said when he – and I'm going to read directly from this article. Defended the Republican threat to shut down the government by claiming that abortion is well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does. And it's been pointed out that it's 3%. So they asked his office when they were contacted by CNN to ask for a clarification. They responded that Kyle's remark was not intended to be a factual statement. Fuck you, dude. So like fucking just fucking use hyperbole every time you speak then because it obviously gets fucking shit done.

You said shit like 90% of what Planned Parenthood does. You don't even fucking know how to read a graph, dummy. There's a pie graph here. Go to fourth grade. Fucking learn how to read a pie graph. Imagine there's a lemon meringue pie, okay? And it's a delicious lemon meringue pie. I would like to eat this entire pie.

Seriously. Fucking 90%. Well, where is any – OK. So you got a party. You've got a position. You got a social position that says we are against abortion. OK, fine. I don't care. I think that's silly.

But that's fine. That's your position. I'm against abortion. Well, why are you against abortion? What do they always cite? Family values, right? They always cite the same, you know, it's not in keeping with our family values. Well, isn't integrity

a value? Yeah. Isn't that, I mean, I'm being honest here. Isn't that, isn't integrity a value? Because if integrity is a value, then you can't come out and say silly fucking shit just to get something done well over 90 percent. And then how do you have your your guy like how do you have your your lackey in the office who picks up the phone because you're too fucking busy making up lies about shit?

Integrity based lies, though, you know, and say, well, you know, his remark was not intended to be a factual statement. What the fuck was it intended to be? Because he threw out a fucking number. Yeah. And numbers tend to be factual statements. Yeah. He didn't say fucking it's equal, equal to less than or equal to X. He didn't fucking say that.

He didn't get a variable. He said fucking 90%. It wasn't like, in my opinion, I think Planned Parenthood, you know, performs too many abortions or, you know, there wasn't any coaching. There wasn't anything in that statement that feels unequivocal. Well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does. Really? Because if I can't believe you when you say that, when should I believe you?

Yeah. How am I, as a voter, how am I as just a dim-witted citizen who can't differentiate between your non-factual statements and your factual statements? How am I supposed to figure out when you fucking mean what you say? The libertarians were very happy that this was going to happen. Tom, can I just read this guy's quote? I'm just going to read what this guy has to say. His name is, what is it? Wes, not Wes Anderson. It's Wes Benedict. And he's the Libertarian Party executive director. And I'm just going to read his quote on what he thought, why he thought it was a great thing that the government was going to be shutting

down. Just think how a permanent government shutdown would allow so many Americans to regain the blessings of liberty. Education would blossom as the Department of Education ended its war on learning, no longer wasting our money and preventing educational innovation with one-size-fits-all central mandates. Our government spends almost as much on the military as the rest of the world combined. Millions of industrious men and women who work for the military and its contractors would be focusing on building up our economy rather than tearing down others. Crime would plummet as the government's war on drugs ended, no longer sustaining a giant, violent black market and overfilling our prisons.

The life of many poorer Americans would improve as welfare programs stopped, no longer trapping low-income families in an endless cycle of government dependency. Fuck you. Okay. First off, fuck you. The one thing, Tom, that I have the most problem with with what this person is saying is the last thing I read. The life of many poor Americans would improve as welfare programs stopped. That is the fucking statement of somebody who never, ever, ever had to worry about where their next meal was coming from. That's a statement of somebody who probably never had their house foreclosed, never lost

their job. This is a guy who fucking does not know what it's like to be poor and hates the poor. Yeah, I don't know how you take any of these claims seriously. I will admit, I believe the war on drugs is ridiculous, but a war on education, that's fucking—or war on learning, rather. That's just war on education that's fuck a war on learning rather that's that's just stupid that is a stupid thing to say and it's it's stupid for him to suggest that poor people are trapped in an endless cycle of government dependence and that's that's why we should just what just stop helping the less fortunate like we should just what do you do

you just stop paying out for section 8 housing? Where do these people live? Where do they live? Yeah, sorry, you know, we're just, I guess you're homeless now because, but you know, you're free. Be free, little birdie. Be free. Look, I've opened my hand. I've opened the cage, you beautiful parrot. Be free in the middle of a Chicago winter.

Right. Be free. You know what happens to that parrot? It fucking starves to death and freezes and dies. That's foolish. It is foolish to suggest that people who are in need of fucking government assistance would somehow be better off without the assistance. Well, it just doesn't address the problem either. It's saying it's what it's making the claim here.

This guy obviously has a position on this. And his position is that when people get on welfare, they never get off welfare. And that's just blatantly false. That's just the numbers don't support. They don't. Now, there are people who who who trick the system. They trick the system. These these people that are the welfare monsters and those people probably siphon off, you know, let's say a couple billion dollars a year.

We paid seven hundred and forty billion dollars to the fucking Wall Street people last year and didn't see a fucking dime of it because they fucked up our entire nation's fucking economy. And you're willing to say, oh, well, you know, those that couple billion that those people are stealing is. Yeah, that's fucking that's it. That's horrible. But the fucking, the government regulation that stops assholes in Wall Street from doing shit like that, that's something we don't need. Right. You know, strip all regulation. Just let the free market sort everything out.

Right? That's what they're saying. And there won't be any poor people anymore? Yeah, right. Really? Because that's not, there's no evidence to support that at all. And what are they supposed to fucking do in the meantime? Yeah, right. able to go out into the workplace right now and find work, regardless of your skill set, regardless of your educational level. So that being said, what are you going to do with, you're just going to let them, are you seriously suggesting that they're better off if we don't give them food and housing assistance? Are their kids better off? Like you said, that's somebody

who does never had to worry about, you know, geez, I hope I can pay the rent because otherwise I'm going to live outside. Yeah, living outside. We have enough people living outside. Like, that's a reality. Right. You know, that's not something that doesn't happen. That's something that happens every single day. And then what are you going to do? You're going to say, well, just, you know, we're not going to have any programs to help the homeless. Well, you just made a lot more homeless.

Well, what people don't understand is that there's a safety net in this country that is there to help the people that have fallen, that cannot get back up. They just can't get back up. If you don't have that safety net, you have Haiti. Okay. That's what you fucking have. You have a third world country and these are not people that are stealing from the system. And if you want to cut away government regulations and you think that's the fucking panacea and the answer to all your fucking problems, I point you to like 1850s factory life, asshole. Yeah. No kidding.

You can't get a fucking job in a fucking soot factory, fuckwad. A soot factory? Just fucking hook your fucking mouth up to the soot and suck that shit up all day. Jam your arm in a fucking – in some kind of machinery that's made for like embroidery or something and fucking dismember yourself because that's what life is like without regulation. What has regulation done for us except for make our lives cleaner and safer? Yeah, ultimately safer. Right. I agree that like some regulation, it goes too far, that it can be damaging to business sometimes.

I get all that. But the alternative is not – the alternative is never just cut it out, right? I mean you can't just – this is why I can't go – I can't be down with the libertarians. I really can't. And a lot of my thoughts are sympathetic to the libertarian party. They really are. I think often government just needs to just leave well enough alone, particularly as it comes to social issues.

Just fucking let it go, man. But this idea that you can take away these welfare programs, that you can deregulate everything. Well, I don't know. Let's try it out. Let's deregulate,. Well, I don't know. Let's try it out. Let's deregulate, say, the banking industry. Yeah. We did that.

Yeah. Bankrupted the global economy. Right. Pretty much crashed the global economy. I have a house that lost 50% of its value in four years. 50% of its value is on a piece of real estate because of this problem, because of this exact problem, because deregulation is not necessarily a good thing. The invisible hand does not always steer us in the right direction. Sometimes the invisible hand needs to be on the fucking tiller a little bit.

Sometimes the invisible hand is giving you a prostate exam. Right. I've just sucked one year of your life away. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest. How do you feel? Bradley Manning has been incarcerated.

He's the WikiLeaks guy, the guy who gave some leaked documents to Julian Assange. He's being held in a situation that is not – you can't look at it and say it's not torture. I mean you look at what they're doing to him. They're making him at points stand naked. He can't exercise. He doesn't get to talk to anybody. He's being held in solitary confinement. And this has been a long time. And someone named a U.S. State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, recently resigned because he had said recently that basically

Manning's detention was stupid and counterproductive. And now he's resigning. Yeah, this is pretty appalling that this guy would be forced out. And, I mean, let's not pretend that the resignation is anything other than basically being forced out. All these resignations, there's nothing voluntary about these things. I think it's appalling. Here's a guy who speaks his mind about a situation that is, I don't know anybody that supports Manning's treatment. I think it's, it's bizarre and indefensible.

And here is somebody who speaks out against it and calls it what it fucking is. It is stupid and it is counterproductive. It is both of those things in spades. I mean, this is the kind of public servant I want though. Yeah, me too. I want a public servant who sees something that he feels strongly about. I want a public servant who says something and says what's on his mind if he feels that something is unjust. Yeah. Well, I feel like

enough people in this country were against Guantanamo Bay. I mean, come on. We came out against it when it was Guantanamo and people were being tortured there. Why aren't we doing this for somebody who is an American citizen? I understand that what he did was wrong, right? I mean, if you're looking at it in the view of what the government, you know, these are secret documents and he gave out secret documents, I understand that. But at the same time, you got to fucking, you got to actually charge him, I understand that. But at the same time, you got to fucking – you got to actually charge him, go forward, move this case forward. There's some serious shit that can happen to him, but let's stop torturing him.

Let's start putting this back in the realm of what's fucking allowed in the constitution, please. If this is the kind of treatment we will subject an American citizen to with knowledge. Yeah. You know, everybody knows. So this is the kind of treatment we'll tell people about that we'll subject an American citizen to. What are we doing behind closed doors? I don't know, man. You know, I know that Obama has said that the United States won't engage in anything resembling torture. The U.S. government does not engage in anything resembling torture.

That's great. That's what I want to hear you say. But when you do this, you're lying to me. I mean, were your fingers crossed when you said that? Your PolitiFact fucking piece is fucking all the way on the false side now. Your fucking truth-o-meter is on fucking E, Obama, when it comes to torture. Truth not included. No actual truth. You are watching the beginning and the birth of the New World Order.

And you want to call me crazy? Go to hell. Call me crazy all you want. I think we got to talk about Glenn Beck. Oh, yeah. Because when I think truthiness, you've got to go Glenn Beck. Well, there's a guy who's resigning

in air quotes, right? I'm resigning. But what really happened is that you lost 38% of your viewers in the last year because you're fucking crazy. That's how you lost 38% of your viewers in the last year because you're fucking crazy. Like that's how you lose a lot of fucking viewers is if you're cuckoo for fucking Cocoa Puffs. And every single day, this guy has a new conspiracy theory on or he's talking about somebody who's trying to overthrow the government from within.

And eventually that shit just gets tired if it never comes to fruition, right? You keep telling me that the world is going to fucking end and the world doesn't end. I get a little bored after a while. He's the Chicken Little of punditry. He totally is. You know? And I, for one, am kind of sorry to see him go because he was hilarious for this show. Oh, my God.

Did he bring fucking material after? I mean, it's just fucking buckets of it. for this show. Oh my God, did he bring fucking material after, I mean, it's just fucking buckets of it. Man, I will mourn the loss of Glenn Beck. No, I don't actually know. You know, I love that like when

he's leaving, he compares himself to Paul Revere. Yeah, that's great. I don't know if you haven't seen this. That's funny. It's awesome. He says, Paul Revere did not get up on the horse and say, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. He didn't do it. He got off the horse at some point and fought in the revolution.

And then he went back to silversmithing. Like, really? Well, go back to silversmithing, Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck's hobby is like amateur silversmithing. That would be phenomenal. I hope he maims his own hand like Johnny Tremaine. Fucking fuckwit. This guy is about as useless of a human being as possible.

And you're exactly right, Cecil. The whole idea that, you know, he's continuously putting out these ideas, you know, oh, the government's going to be, you know, broken. We elect Obama. It's going to be socialism within six months. And it's the same thing as like the 2012 nutters or, you know, the the world is going to end in 1999, you know, midnight and fucking two o'clock in the morning. Everybody looks at you like you're the goddamn dim what you are. Yeah. Fuck you, Glenn Beck.

I look 400 advertisers won't do business with it with for his show. That's how you get off the air. I know he's still we looked at this earlier. He's still beating other people in the, in the news market, in the cable news market. He's still like number three, like O'Reilly's number one. And then a couple other people are down there, but he's, he's still fucking curb stomping everyone. He comes across. The problem is, is they can't sell his fucking show to anybody because nobody's willing to be like, yeah, you could go ahead and advertise

my product on the Glenn Beck show. Everybody's like fucking holding up their fingers in the shape of a cross and hissing at him at this point. It's like, fucking stay away from me. Don't ever come near, because they don't want to be associated with this fucking asshat. And why would you be? You're basically committing product suicide if you put it on his show. Why would

you possibly even want to? I mean, I wouldn't even fucking advertise depends on his show as full of shit as it is. I was actually thinking of, is there any product? Is there any product you could sell? I can't think of anything, anything that you see an advertisement for. I can't think of anything. Gold? Anything that you see an advertisement for. You know, he's always talking about gold because he's one of these end-of-time assholes. He's talking about how to sell – how are you going to have wealth after the fucking government collapses? Well, you're going to have gold.

Well, the problem with that fucking theory is that people are going to think that gold is still valuable after the government collapses. Let me tell you. I'm going to be trading in fucking canned goods, asshole. That's what I'm going to be using. I'm not going to be using fucking gold at that point because it's a useless heavy bar of metal. The only thing you could do is club a zombie in the head with it. That's the only fucking useful thing you could do with gold in a fucking apocalypse. There's nothing you could do with gold.

That's some shit I don't understand. That's some shit I don't understand either is the gold nutters. But anyway, that's another show. No, that's so funny because I just had this conversation with somebody not too long ago, Cecil. It's awesome. Like he was saying, you know, when the U.S. economy collapses, you know, we're going to have to have something to back our money, and that's going to be gold. I'm like, well, when the U.S. economy collapses, the global economy collapses, and it will be devastating chaos that will rain in the streets for many a year. It's not right. I'm going to trade in guns because it's the only thing people won't steal from me, right?

Because I'll have too many guns for them to steal. What am I going to – gold, are you kidding me? I'm like it's a shiny bar of lead at that point. It's useless. What do you do? Gold? Who wants gold? You can't eat that. Yeah.

I mean use it as a fucking sinker to fucking catch a fucking fish. Like that's the only thing you're going to use. What the fuck are you going to use gold – it's not even a good metal for anything except for like conductivity. It's so soft. Like it's only good for like electrical devices, which probably won't work because the power is out. Like there's no good use for it. I asked the guy.

The guy said, well, our dollar is so arbitrary. It's not based on anything. I'm like neither is the value of gold. Gold is arbitrary too. We just all decided. It's just the thing that came before the paper. There's your one instance of cognitive dissonance this week right there. It's fucking the arbitrariness of fucking paper money but the non-arbitrariness of gold.

How is gold not – we just decided gold is valuable. OK. Well, fuck you. I think stainless steel is really valuable. Yeah, it's fucking A, man. I think stainless steel is really valuable. Yeah, it is. Fucking A, man. I think my fucking knife set, my fucking shotgun. I think my wife is valuable.

Like, what the fuck? Like, I have a lot of different things that value, and none of them are gold. I think aluminum is really valuable when it holds food in a can. God. Gold. This guy. God. Gold. This guy is so goddamn goofy. People, this is always a show that I wonder. And I know it still has a ton of listeners.

Viewers, whatever. Yeah, he has a radio show. I never understood who watched this show. I know who watched it. I never understood who watched it. I've watched bits and pieces of it. And it is seriously cuckoo crazy talk. It's gullible, people, man.

I mean, really, like, you cannot look at this show and see what he has to say and listen to it with any fucking sense whatsoever that this is the truth. You watch the show and you're like, this guy is feeding me the biggest fucking line of bullshit I've ever heard. I mean, when he's making these connections and he's got his little fucking chalkboard out there and he's drawing his various lines between various people. And you're like, these people aren't even connected, but he wants you to think they are.

And words that aren't connected, but he wants you to think they are because they somehow incriminate the side he's not on. He's just a really weird guy. But I think what the thing is, is that people who are really gullible, who don't have a fucking critical thinking center in their head immediately just think whatever anybody says is the truth and therefore it's on TV, it's true. And that's, I cannot see anybody else listening to this, that program and thinking that that person is telling the truth unless you're really, really gullible. This is, this is an example, maybe the only example, where somebody who I think is very clearly just using his soapbox to say crazy inflammatory shit to sell books, to create a brand. You pushed it too far. Now you're gone. Yeah.

Sayonara, motherfucker. But who's taking over for him? Hopefully it's not like a tag team of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. No, it's Ann Coulter, so everything will be fine. They should have the three of them on there. Call them the Stepford Wives or whatever. So, Cecil, you called

up this story. This is a pretty awesome story. It's about power bands. Power bands? You know, I don't know why you've got several right there's for our british listeners they're 30 quid a pop so i had to look up quid the other day i'm like is quid a pound it turns out it is and i'm like i don't god I don't understand your money at all they probably think the same thing dollars bucks bananas whatever we call it you know what I mean they're like what the fuck

is a banana it's 30 bucks I don't have any bucks all I have is dollars what the fuck how much is it how much is a buck 30 fucking quid man I don't know how much that is what is that fucking 700 dollars in the US now at this point the exchange rate?

But it's a pretty expensive little piece of garbage that you can put on yourself. You can adorn yourself with garbage that does nothing. Since they fucking lost their class action lawsuit where basically the government said, yeah, you're bullshit and all the fucking products that you

sold you have to give refunds to people. All that being said, people are still willing to buy their garbage. I don't understand. How do you not look at this thing and see that it is a plastic band with a hologram in it? I don't. The fucking image is awesome too. Here be magic is what it says.

Here's the problem, man. I work too hard for my money. I just, I got to stop. I got to stop. I'm going to quit my job Monday, Cecil. And I'm just going to sell like a series of power related products, you know, like power condoms, you know, magic for your dick. If that shit goes down, it's your fault, not the power condom. You know, magic for your dick.

If that shit goes down, it's your fault, not the power card. You know, you got to – if it doesn't work, just have her put it in her mouth and say this incantation. I guarantee. Hum this incantation. You know, one of the things that this fucking company does, and I've seen these commercials, is they have these tests where they do this little video. And I'll post the video on our site where they do these little tests. And what they'll do is if you watch the video closely, they'll like push somebody. They'll be like, OK, now I'm going to pull you.

And they'll pull them and they'll just pull them right off balance. But then they'll be like, OK, now I'm going to pull you again. And instead of pulling back, they're pulling down or they're doing something. They're doing something in a way to make the people think that they're not, they, they're not, they're, they're utilizing this device in some way, but there's, I mean, it's really just quick Charlotte and bullshit. You could see right through it. If you watch the video, you're like, come on, you're pulling back at one and you're pulling down on the other. This shit doesn't do anything. It's there's all these people that want to sell this garbage and they're making a ton of money off people. Even when the

government says it's fucking bullshit, people are still willing to buy it. That is that's insane. I mean, who's buying this? People who watch Glenn Beck? It's got to be. I can't wait for the Glenn Beck show where he's got one of these things wrapped around his head like a fucking headband.

He's like on a treadmill. It's like squeezing his head real tight. It's red above the divide and it's like white below it. It's just like a bulging redhead. It helps my brain thinker. You may as well just wear a fucking Livestrong bracelet. Yeah, no kidding. And think that you're actually going to live stronger.

Right? That's not how it works. It doesn't work. Oh, my God. That not how it works. It doesn't work. Oh, my God. That's how it works. It fucking, it swindles you out of 30 quid is what it does. That's exactly what it does, right? Like, what does this bracelet do?

Well, it has at least one effect. Yeah. It will lighten your fucking load. Yeah. That's the effect it will have. You will be 30 quid lighter. Your vertical leap will be 30 quid higher. Whatever that is.

The ounce or so of dollar bills. I don't know. What do they still use? Coins. It's like a real country. It's a significant vertical leap then. If that's the case. Do they trade shells?

Turquoise beads. Take that. The country that founded this country. See, so I think that's about all the news that's fit to yell about at the moment. I don't think I have anything left. And chortled at all the news that we can this time. We're starting a brand new show, so we're starting a new tradition. We're going to say goodbye now, but we're going to leave you with what we're calling, and I know Tom's not calling it, but I'm calling it the skeptic's prayer.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. 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 tarot cars 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, double-speak 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 us at 740-743-6828. That's 740-74-DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. Send us an email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com.

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