Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 17: Fakey Reiki

Episode Date: October 17, 2011

Praying 24 hours a day, Bill 358 hates women, New date for the rapture, Bishop indicted, Rick Perry is being persecuted for his faith, Herb Cain, 999 Plan, Bachmann wants to go back to Reagan Era taxes, Gay Male Cheerleader, Human Sacrifice for wealth, ultra orthodox vs. orthodox, Fake Raki, 99% and Occupy Wall Street, Glen Beck thinks protesters are going to kill people, Indisputable proof of Yeti, Emails.  Clips: BBC debate, Jesus Camp, Blue Suede - Hooked on a Feeling, Fox News interview with Sarah Palin, Simpsons, It's Magic - Pilot, Quackery PSA, Bachmann on Taxes, Glenn Beck, A Few Good Men.

I personally don't think homosexuality is a good thing. That's my belief being a Christian. I don't think two men should sleep together, or two women should sleep together. And I stand by that. But from the Bible, these things are not right. It's not good for you. The moral mix is... Peter? I would defend Betty's right to hold those views. They're her conscientious views. Where I would object is the way in which people like Betty, some people like Betty, seek to impose her morality on everyone else through the law of the land. Mae rhai pobl fel Betty yn ceisio gwneud i'w moraeth ar bawb ar gyfer y Llywodraeth. Felly maen nhw eisiau gwneud moraeth ar gyfer eu moraeth, y moraeth leol sy'n ein cynnwys i gyd.

Felly gadewch i mi ateb hynny. Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth yw'r peth? Beth y A man and a woman. You are giving birth to five. A woman, a family together. And so by then, I do believe clearly that being a homosexual is not a good thing. It's your choice. You are not forced to be a homosexual. So, Richard Dawkins, are you worried at all by some of the social attitudes that come into this country? I'm worried when somebody sitting next to a well-known gay activist says, I believe that you had a mother, and gets a round of applause. Now, that's bigotry, and I'm worried about that.

He was given better by a woman. It was his choice to be gay. That is what I believe. I believe that to be the truth. And I stand by that. I don't care what you personally believe. Stand by that. And I stand by that. I don't think it's of much interest what you or anybody else personally believe. Never was it touched, their opinion.

The question is, what is the evidence? And there is no evidence that, as you say, you have a choice about being gay or not. You justify what you said on biblical grounds, which sounds awfully much to me like forcing your views upon other people. I think what we see here is what we heard from Professor Dawkins, that extraordinary arrogance, that if you have some views different from his, your views are not acceptable. There is no such thing.

There is no such thing as a vacuum. There are therefore values in the public sphere. The question is whether you have the lady here, the Pentecostal evangelical, with whom I would identify and encourage her to speak out, or you get the arrogance that says her views are not valid. Actually, there have to be some views out there. The question is, can we live together? Can we tolerate each other? Not write one another out like Professor Dawkins was trying to do.

She made a factual statement. She absolutely talked about her views. Tolerance and freedom of speech we will come on to and the right to offend, but surely all our views are valid, aren't they? No, not necessarily. It depends on the evidence. She made a factual statement about the upbringing of gays and about whether gay people are free to change their minds or not. That is a factual statement about the upbringing of gays and about whether gay people are free to change their minds or not. That is a factual statement. There is evidence bearing on it. That means that personal opinion, which is not informed by evidence, is not of interest.

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, Matt. Welcome to episode number 17. For those of you playing the home game, this is episode 17 of Cognitive Dissonance. Glad to have you guys with us. We've got some really annoying stories to bug the hell out of you this week. It, uh, you know, see, so I'm looking forward

to the week where we start trolling around on the news and I can't find anything to be angry about. We have to call so many stories because there's so many to be furious about. You're right. The first story that we've got to talk about is a revisit of my favorite people, the folks at IHOP, I'm not talking about the pancakes, talking about the International House of Prayer. They've got their rooty-tooty, fresh and pray all day and all night. You know, IHOP has extended their hours 24-7, Cecil. They never stop. This system in place in this article that we're talking about comes from the L.A. Times where they have a system in place, Tom, where they pray and play worship music around the clock. So they have a bands.

They have hired bands at two hour intervals to play worship music around the clock because their deity is so fucking fickle that if you stop fucking praying to him, he will hit the fucking smite button. He will reach out and fucking smite someone if you don't fucking pray to him constantly. I don't understand prayer anyway, right? Why do I need to ask for things that my omniscient God would already know I want? Right. That never made any sense to me. It's like when somebody gets sick and it's like, I'll pray for them. They're like, what?

God thought I wanted to be sick? Was God stupid? Are you fucking asleep at the wheel? It's like an appeals process. What am I going to change his fucking all-powerful mind by saying pretty, please? Yes, you are. My four year old does it right. Right.

You can't have any more juice, please. Fucking no. I said no. And I'm not God. I'm just fat. There's a big difference. I'm not omniscient. I'm just an omnivore.

And is he throwing a tantrum up there when you stop the music i want to listen to music you know like what the fuck is happening you've got to play worship music for 24 hours a day and they've been going tom for a very long time here they have it that's the thing it's that's crazy i love that they have to take shifts can you you imagine being like, oh, God, fuck, it's time to make the donuts. No, it's time to appeal to my God. Get these so confused. Fuck. Appeal to God.

Appeal to God. You know what he reminds me of? He reminds me of the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, right? Like, as soon as the harp stops playing, he's like, oh, fee, five, four. Like, somebody's going to steal your fucking magic harp. It's God. You guys are so ridiculous. You guys have a third shift of praying?

What are you, assholes? There's a hundred. The thing is, I was reading, it's like a hundred fucking people in like the middle of the night are just like up and praying. And I wonder if they kind of look at each other like, I don't think he's praying hard enough. I wonder if they like silently judge one another for slacking off on the prayer, you know? The picture from the article that I'm looking at, it cracks me up because it's got like this got like this like bearded crazed looking dude with his hands in the air and like some woman with her hands up in the air and there's a guy in front of him both his hands on his head like oh i can't fucking believe she dragged me here this is

fucking ridiculous i have ruined my life i like the guy in the pink shirt that just has that what the fuck is going on here look, blurry in the background there. I don't understand this, but these are the same people, though, that prayed for rain in Texas, right? This is the same group that Governor Perry invited to help pray for rain. So these are the same people who think that praying for rain does things, and when it actually lights your state on fire instead of actually giving you rain so they think that these sorts of things work and you know i

don't begrudge them obviously i don't care that these people are praying like 24 hours like shit i'm gonna when i get home from work i'm probably to play my video game or read a book or watch some TV. So if you want to spend your time praying, great. But I just – I don't get it. No, because it's an enormous waste of time. They don't get it either. This isn't a thoughtful thing to do. This is just silly. And plus, I mean isn't church – maybe I'm misunderstanding.

But isn't like one of the nice things about church is that you only have to do it once a week. But you get to get together with people and have a little fellowship and a sense of community. How special does this feel at three o'clock in the fucking morning? How does this not feel like a chore? I know. Everything's a chore at three in the morning. It's like religious boot camp.

It's totally religious boot camp. Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed. It's just appalling. passed. It's just appalling. So the House recently passed House Rule 358, which I have to admit, it's kind of funny that they're calling it the Let Women Die Act of 2011. I don't think that's its official title, Cecil. I'm surprised it's not a.357 instead of a.358. Oh, that would be fantastic. That would be, you know, this actually dovetails nicely with a story that we talked about in a previous episode. You know, there's this sort of like this idea that health care providers should have a right of conscience.

And this House bill, this House rule really attempts to codify that and allow hospitals, doctors, nurses, health care providers, people who have sworn and dedicated their lives to aiding other people. It allows them to ignore other people if they think that helping them would violate a moral stance that they have. So, for example, if a woman were pregnant and the pregnancy was not going well and the woman was in danger of dying and the only solution would be to perform an abortion on that for that woman and, you know, save her life, but end the life of the unborn, then they would have the right to just let that woman die. Just, meh. I don't understand that at all. I mean, like, you have a fully fucking actualized human being here.

Like, this is a person, living, breathing person who's pregnant. They treat, like, it's so crazy how they treat pregnancy in this country. It's just so weird. And one of the things, too, that they can do, I'm going to read directly from the article. It says, HR 358 codifies this unfair and discriminatory provision. HR 358 further allows health care entities, hospitals, clinics, to refuse to participate in abortion care.

This could mean that a hospital employee with no medical training or role in the patient's treatment decisions could refuse to process bills, handle medical records, or even set up an examination room for a patient seeking abortion care. That's a level of choice, of decision-making. Pardon me, let's not say choice. That's a level of, because choice is sort of a loaded term when we're talking about this. That's a level of decision-making that I would not allow an employee to have. You don't get to make those types of decisions because you're a guy who sets up an examination room or you're a gal who sets up an examination room. We're not looking

for you to you to be the moral compass of this institution. We're looking for you to pull the fucking little blue thing out from the end and fucking cut it off like butcher paper on the fucking bed and throw out the fucking used needles. That's your job. You could just, you know, you could be doing something else, but you choose to do this. It is. Imagine if everybody had these rights. Like, imagine if, you know, you could work at a 7-Eleven and refuse to sell people cigarettes because you didn't like it or alcohol because you had a problem with it. Imagine if everywhere you go, everybody who waited on you had the right to arbitrarily decide without fear of losing their

job for it, what was right or wrong for you? You know, imagine if, you know, I work in real estate in the title industry. So imagine if I could just say, yeah, we're just not going to close loans for people that are, you know, over the age of 60 because a 30 year loan, they're not going to pay back. So it doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to do it. So I'm just not going to let people who are over a certain age close because I have an objection to it. I have some kind of, you know, absurdist moral stance against it. You know, the whole economy would grind to a halt. There's a reason this only exists in this field. And that's because this is a backhanded way to control women's reproductive health.

Right. You know, it's not about morality and it's not about choice and it's not about protecting the fragile, fragile egos of the health care workers. It's not about that at all. Right. That's not it has nothing to do with that. Right. Because it's only about this one issue.

It only extends to this one sort of uniquely privileged group of people, just health care workers. Should police have this right? to this one sort of uniquely privileged group of people, just healthcare workers? Should police have this right? Do police have the right to say, well, I don't want to arrest people if I don't agree with the crime. You know, I don't think, I don't think, let's say the police just decided

I don't think drugs should be illegal. So we're just going to stop arresting people for it. Or maybe I don't think domestic battery should be illegal. So I'm not going to arrest people that beat their wives. Can't we just get past this and be like, if you don't want to fuck an abortion, don't get an abortion. If you don't want your child to get an abortion, convince them not to get an abortion. But you know what? Don't tell my kid or my wife or my best friend or my sister what the fuck they should do with their body.

Because you know what? I saw a great thing on Reddit the other day, other day and it was just four pictures, right? It's like a little slide. It's like four pictures and like, it's a cracked egg and it says, this isn't a chicken. It shows like an acorn. It's like, this isn't a tree. And it's like, and then the last one is like, and this isn't a fucking baby. You know what I mean?

Like this isn't a fucking child. And it's really true. Like, like look at these other things that are in developmental stages that you don't think of as the fucking actual thing. And, and I understand it. I, and I, I am, I sympathize with those people that are like, yeah, but fucking partial birth abortions in nine months, you know, when you go get an abortion, when it's nine months old and shit, it's like, I agree with you. I think that's kind of weird and shady and strange. And I'm not down with that sort of thing.

But that stuff isn't fucking what happens. It's not like people wait. Everybody who has an abortion waits nine months to make their decisions. And then right before the, like, going through all that fucking pain and, you know, bloating and fucking stretch marks and everything that goes with fucking having a baby. And then they're just like, you know what? Could you just pop this? You know what I mean? Like they don't do that.

They're like – they make it sound like women are in fucking active labor. Sure. When they decide to have an abortion, you know? And then they treat it like a boil. You know what I mean? They're just like, yeah, can you just drain this thing for me? Right. You know?

Right. But it's ridiculous. It's like, like decisions like this get made much sooner. Uh, decisions like this happen. Uh, and the baby is not, it's not at a stage where it's, you know, it's stopping the beating heart or whatever. It's not like a, it's not like the baby's fucking reading SART and it has its pipe in its mouth inside the fucking, it's like, Hmm, I'm, I'm, I'm stuck in this existential anxiety. Oh shit, vacuum. Oh, not yet. I was just to get to the end of no exit. What the fuck?

Get that coat hanger away from me. Oh no. Terrible. Terrible. Oh no. Who would say that? You did. That's outrageous.

That's outrageous. Well, since I'm going to go to hell, may as well get there a little earlier than I anticipated. Cecil, October the 21st is the day. Woot. Woot. A lot of people might remember May 21st. Is that this Friday?

That's like this upcoming Friday. Yeah, this sucks, actually, because this show has been doing pretty good. Yeah. We release generally on Mondays. You guys have five days to download this thing. This is our last show. It is. It's our last show.

It's so upsetting. Oh, man. I got to say goodbye to friends and family. It's sad. You know, and The Walking Dead starts tonight, so we get a chance to watch one episode of that in the new season. Thanks, Harold. What the fuck?

How am I going to? This is unfair. I don't like Harold camping. I wish you would just go camping rather than predicting the rapture all the time. If this guy went camping, six months later you would have a tent with bones in it. I guarantee it. Hell, look at him now. He looks like a tent with bones in it. Five months ago, Harold Camping predicted the end of the world.

Rapture was nigh. The rapture came. The rapture went. Nobody noticed. The rapture is once again upon us. I've noticed that the fervor seems to have died down. It's almost, Cecil, like people aren't taking the second prediction as seriously as the first. like people aren't taking the second prediction as seriously as the first. I didn't see any like giant buses or all the stuff that they had, the giant billboards and whatnot.

This guy treats the rapture like he's losing his keys. You know what I mean? Well, look at him. He's pressing the life alert. He's like, God, are you there? God! He's pressing the life alert. He's like, God, are you there?

God! The worst part about what happened before, obviously, is the people that got – they got duped by this guy. They did some – they made some financial decisions and they made some relationship decisions that now they regret because they're not voiped up to fucking heaven. they regret because they're not voiped up to fucking heaven. So I think that a lot of people are treating this a lot more cautiously than they did last time because, you know, well, first off, they've already spent their fortune, so they don't have another fortune to spend six months later. But or they don't have other people in their family that they could disown. They've sort of run out of family members. You know, it's hard to have it be a really big deal to give up your whole life savings when you just gave away your life savings five months ago. Sure. Their life savings now is a six months worth of savings, which probably isn't that much.

Yeah. I mean, it's a couple of bags of Top Ramen. I just, you know, it's going to be funny on the 22nd. We wake up Saturday morning, we're, you know, our coffee, and we realize, oh shit, the rapture happened again. Once again, the rapture, probably not going to affect me over much. No, not me either.

When you said this is our last show, it is definitively not our last show. Rapture or not, this is not our last show. I don't think our audience is going. Yeah. And I think our audience, I think we'll have more downloads. We Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord, open hearts. So Cecil, this is a case of fucking finally, um, a Bishop in the Roman Catholic church has been indicted, uh, for failure to report suspected child abuse. Um, this is the first time in the Roman Catholic Church has been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse.

This is the first time in the 25 year history of the church's sex abuse scandal that somebody, a leader of the diocese, is going to be made criminally liable for the behavior of a priest that he is supposed to be supervising. You know, we've talked about this in the past. I never understood why these people weren't prosecuted fucking immediately, because if it was anybody else, if it was a Cub Scout leader, if it was Joe the plumber, if it was anybody else that allowed this kind of sexual abuse of children to occur and helped to cover it up and help to move people around and failed to report what they knew they would be in fucking prison. And, uh, this guy's going to prison. I hope.

Yeah. I don't know. You don't think he'll go? No, because it says each, each was charged with one misdemeanor count. What? How can that, how can you even have a misdemeanor count. What? How can you even have a misdemeanor count?

I'm going to read directly from the article. The indictment of the bishop and the diocese of Kansas City by a county grand jury was announced on Friday. Each was charged, so the church and him because the bishop knew about the photos, right? The bishop knew that he took these photos. He specifically went and asked somebody, he said, is this wrong? Like, you walk up with, like, a fucking hoochie picture of, like, a fucking four-year-old, and you're like, is this a wrong photo? If you don't know that's a fucking wrong photo, you need to go to fucking human being school. How can there be a misdemeanor?

I've moved on. We've moved past the misdemeanor. I can't do that. I am unable to do that. You've got to be kidding me. If convicted. We're going to charge you with misdemeanor murder. If convicted. Really? Really? Like you with misdemeanor murder. Really?

Really? Like some shit's always a felony, right? Hold on though. If convicted, Bishop Finn would face a possible fine up to $1,000. A whole thousand. And a jail sentence up to a year. And the diocese faces a possible fine of $5,000, which is fucking inconsequential. But $1,000 for him is fucking inconsequential. But $1,000 for him is also inconsequential.

But the jail sentence of up to a year is not inconsequential. It's not but a year. This guy won't even have a felony on his record? Really? Yeah. That's crazy to me. Yeah.

That is crazy to me. And the worst part, you know why I think it's crazy to me too, Tom, is I'm going to read directly from the article here. If I hadn't mentioned, this is an article from the New York Times. It says, Bishop Finn sent Father Radigan

Now, Father Radigan was the one who was taking hoochie pictures of kids. Father Radigan to live in a convent and told him to avoid contact with minors but until May the priest attended and you're talking about Father Rattigan attended children's

parties, spent weekends in the homes of parish families hosted an easter egg hunt and presided with the bishop's permission at a first, at a girl's first communion according to interviews with parishioners

and a civil lawsuit filed by the victim's family. Are you fucking Yahoo fucking serious? This fucking guy who's, you know, suspected of child pornography taking photos of a nude girl from the waist down. I mean, like, there's no other more nude part of the body than the waist down. And then they're like, well, he took a picture of that.

Well, hey, why don't we just send him over to the people's houses? What, are they going to spend the night in their house? People's houses? Holy shit, that's like letting the fucking big bad wolf in. My, what cute daughters you have. I don't want to know how he blows anything down either, really. I'm not interested. And I don't want to know about the Easter eggs either.

He keeps offering to hide the eggs. He seems so willing. Oh, no. Maybe even excited about it. What's with this guy? about it. I don't, what's with this guy? This Bishop settled lawsuits with 47 plaintiff, 47 plaintiffs in a sexual abuse cases for 10 million and agreed to list, uh, to a list of 19 preventative measures among them to immediately report anyone suspected of being a pedophile to law enforcement authorities. And he basically, and he said that three, did that three years ago. I don't understand. And we talked about this before, Tom, why they don't shun these people,

why they don't get them out of the community, why they don't just say, you know what, you are endangering our community. You're hurting the people in here. Those people are more important than the figureheads. And what this tells me, what this tells me more than anything else is that these people feel like they're above the law and that the common citizen is just a commoner to them. That's the only way it works because why else would you want to protect your – look, I understand protecting our friends, right? We protect – that's what people do. They protect their friends and family. But not if your friends and family are preying on children.

If your friends and family are fucking sex predators you turn i would turn you in i would turn to my dad i'd fucking turn in me i i know like i would i would turn in somebody i was very close to to understand that you have to do it you don't when you i understand being a little conflicted for 15 minutes you know know, like, oh, man, I really like that guy. But they're a fucking awful monster. So, you know, chuck them to the wolves. And, you know, I understand, too, trying to find proof. But you're holding the picture of a little girl's hoo-ha in your hand. What's the proof?

In the name of Jesus, we speak that. So, Rick Perry, I'm starting to feel a little bad for. I have to say. I do. Liar. Okay, you got me. I'm totally fucking lying. So, part of this great persecution complex that somehow the religious majority of this country have managed to foist upon themselves is becoming manifest in Rick Perry as he claims that he's being brutalized for his Christian faith. Actually, his wife says it, but he agrees with it.

Brutalized for your Christian faith. If it wasn't for your Christian faith, you would not be a candidate. Right. That's totally true. And what country in the world loves Christians more than this country? What country is that? I don't think except for like Uganda, maybe. Like, there really is no other

country in the world where you can come and be completely protected to say crazy shit. Like, fucking nutty shit. Like, this is the same guy who thinks fucking, you know, 6,000 years ago Wilma and Fred were eating a fucking dino burger. Like, he fucking seriously thinks, like, fucking people and dinosaurs walk together. And those little T-Rexes were, like, fucking around, like, trying to grab people with their little tiny arms.

Like, I really don't understand. Like this is a guy who prayed for rain in Texas who fired a bunch of people, let off a bunch of people that were volunteer fire people, cut the budget because he had it covered with God. And you're being brutalized? You're a stupid Christian. That's why you're being brutalized. It's the stupid part, not the Christian part. Exactly. Look, here's why you're being brutalized. It's the stupid part, not the Christian part. Look, here's the thing. You can't use the fact of your faith to campaign upon as a foundation, as a bedrock of your campaign.

And he uses it constantly. He touts his faith as a foundational principle that he uses to make decisions. He's very clear about that. So you can't have it both ways. You can't have it but then be mad when people mention it. How mean. They're meanies. They're not meanies.

You brought it up, stupid. Right? That'd be like if I was like, man, look at this dog that I have. You like my dog? I have a fucking dog. I have this dog. look at this dog that i have you like my dog i have a fucking dog i have this dog you see my dog i have a fucking dog and then you were like yeah i don't really like dogs like whoa whoa whoa persecution what the fuck man going right to the heart on that one like well you fucking brought it up I don't want to be that guy I fucking hate dogs what an idiot

Rick Perry Herman Cain's gonna fucking beat your ass and Herman Cain's plan the 999 plan the SimCity plan I know that it's SimCity, too. That's awesome. And we were talking about SimCity training.

At least he went out and did it. He listens to the show. That's the thing. I have no idea if this is true, but I heard it, that Bachman, when she was asked about the 999 plan, she's like, well, if you turn it upside down, you're making a deal with the devil or something like that. Yeah, she said that in the debate. It's like 666. Like, are you fucking kidding me? She said like, well, when you really look at this thing inside out and upside down, well, the devil's in the details.

Oh, are you fucking kidding me? She said something almost exact. I'm paraphrasing, but it's very similar to that. You said it way more eloquently than she ever did. I guarantee it. She also, I think she's the one who compared it to like a pizza deal, which cracks me up. Five bucks, five bucks, five bucks. I was watching the Colbert the other day.

He was joking about the $5 foot long tax plan. For every foot tall you are, you pay $5 in taxes. Oh, Colbert is awesome, man. It was pretty great. Did you see when Sarah Palin kept calling him Herb Kane? Did she? Wait, we got to find this. That's great.

Hold on a second. I'll send it to you. This is the greatest season to find this. That's great. Hold on a second. I'll send it to you. This is the greatest. This is the greatest season to do this show because these people are all fucking they hate each other so much. And they're all so condescending to each other. And they're running together. It's the most like passive aggressive fight you've ever seen. It's like it's like remember when when Mitt Romney kept on calling Giuliani mayor, kept on being like mayor, mayor.

It's like all you've done is run a town, too. That's a great question. I think what helps is for that politician to have a foundation of having come from the real people of America, the working class, those who make up the majority of Americans who are so extremely concerned about the direction of our country. Take Herb Cain. Look at why he's doing so well right now. I guess you could say, with all due respect, the flavor of the week, because Herb Cain is the one up there who doesn't look like he's part of that permanent political class. Herb Cain, he came from a working class family. He's had to make it on his own all these years.

We respect that. That has an automatic connection with the electorate where we say we can relate to him. He knows the issues, the problems that we face every day, and he's determined to do something about it. He's not elite. that we face every day and he's determined to do something about it. He's not elite, he doesn't seem to allow us to be disenchanted with what it is that he's proposing because what he proposes in terms of solutions, Greta, for our economy are based on time-tested truths and common sense and true economic principles that will work. So, Herb Key is a good example of a

connection with the voters and why his message, good messenger, he's resonating with the people. Oh, so he's black. I know. She's like talking around and around and around. I know. Now, Tom, do you know anything about the 999 plan? No, I know that it won't go anywhere. I mean, I know that it's too simple, right?

Isn't it like it's like. I'll read it. I can read it. I can read it if you want. So the 999 plan is 9% flat tax. So gross income, less all purchases from other U.S. located businesses, all capital investment and exports, 9% business flat tax. So it goes right through. Empowerment zones will offer deductions

for the payroll of those employed in the zone. And I don't really know what the zones are. Then there's a 9% individual flat tax, gross income, less charitable deductions. There's a 9%. And then empowerment zones will offer additional deductions for those living and working in this zone, probably meaning those lower income people. Sure, I'm sure. 9% national sales tax. So unlike a state sales tax, which is an add-on tax that increases the price of goods and services, this is a replacement tax. It replaces taxes that are already embedded in selling prices

by replacing higher marginal rates in the production process with lower marginal rates. replacing higher marginal rates in the production process with lower marginal rates. Marginal production costs actually decline, which lead to prices being the same or lower, not higher. And then, so that's basically his idea. But a problem I have with a 9% flat tax is what we talked about before. We're like, you know, a millionaire getting taxed 9% and me getting taxed 9%, the proportion that we use to live of our income is so different. It's so different. Like the millionaire is not spending all that money on, you know, he's not spending a ton of money to live. He's got, you know, maybe if he's spending, if he's spending any money, it's really just on excess because we're basically living on about

the same amount of money, except for most of my salary goes to that and only a tiny little part of his salary goes to that. And the other part of this plan that is fucking nutty features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits. Yeah, because it's a – we don't want to tax investors. The people who make the most money, the ultra rich make their money on investments. They don't make their money punching a fucking clock. Sure. And they make their money on capital gains.

So you eliminate the capital gains tax and you basically get to tell this is part of the GOP's constant fucking suck off of the ultra rich. And I don't understand it. I don't understand it. Why is either party catering to such a small demographic of people? There's not a lot of voters in the ultra rich, but there's a lot of donations in the ultra rich. Yeah. And they don't need the voters if they get enough donations and if they can get people to watch the commercials and they pay for signs. If there are people in the world that make up their fucking mind driving down the road and being like, sign? Sign for Obama?

Huh. Maybe I'll vote for him. Well, you got me there. Really? Like a sign just to remind you that they exist. You're, you're too stupid to breathe then dummy. You shouldn't be pulling, you shouldn't be punching any various things in the world, let alone a ballot. Okay. You should be staying away from things that punch because you may die. Okay. If you just drive down the street and see a sign or watch TV and in the middle of Judge Judy, here comes a sign about a TV commercial about McCain or whatever.

Like if you're so stupid that you don't consume any sort of news outside of the mainstream and only watch commercials to decide who you're going to vote for, you shouldn't be voting. I'm not sold on the idea that we should have tests or any kind of, you know, right, you know, right. But there's a there's a set of people in this country who do a very poor job voting. Let's just put that out there. Right. They do a poor job educating themselves before they vote. They feel like there's like this crazy group, right? That feels a civic responsibility to perform the action, but they don't feel a civic responsibility to do any research. Right. So they're the ones that all those commercials and everything are directed at. You know, I'm not going to make up my mind based on, you know, a thousand attack ads.

First of all, my TiVo skips that shit for me. So I'm not even going to see that nonsense. But second, you see it and you know it for what it is and you fucking shut it off and don't watch that nonsense. We talked about this in our last episode where you implored everybody listening just not even to watch that bullshit. Because it's not fucking useful.

But it's the money. That's what's happening is that's really the influence of of huge campaign contributions you know that's pushing these names to the forefront of the mind so many times that you begin to have an emotional reaction before you can have an intellectual reaction yeah yeah that's that's exactly it and that's how they garner votes. They garner votes because they've appealed to your reptile brain before your fucking intellectual brain can catch up, before the thinking bits really get a chance to get involved. You're already having this sort of like gut reaction. Sure. And we're led by our gut.

gut reaction. Sure. And we're led by our gut. You know, if we feel afraid of candidate A, we'll vote for candidate B, even though we don't know fuck all about candidates A or B. But we vote against the people we're scared of. And the other people that that that make me a little upset, too, are the people who don't vote and they say, well, I'm just not informed enough. Well, you know, you have the fucking internet and three hours. Get informed. It's not that fucking hard to figure out who you're going to vote for. Just spend, just watch one of the presidential debates. Just one. You know, you don't have to watch them all. You don't have to follow politics. You don't have to be dug in. But I would like somebody to watch one or two of the presidential debates. What do they last? An hour and a half, two hours at the most. You don't have four hours for the future of your country. You don't have four hours because you know what? If you don't have four hours now, you got four fucking years later.

Yeah. I don't understand that either. It's like, well, I don't know enough. Well, there's a fucking cure for that. You know, it's not like saying, look, I can't vote because I'm in bed with fucking pancreatic cancer. Oh, fuck. There's no cure for that. There's a cure for being uninformed. It's called information, and it's fucking free. Yeah, and it's available. And there's a lot of nonprofit sites out there like that factcheck.org, like that Truth-O-Meter, where you can go there and be like, you know what?

I don't know. I watched the fucking debates, and I can't tell who's lying to me. Well, you know what? They'll tell you who's lying because they did the fucking research and they're a nonprofit not influenced by money from either side. So these two independent institutions come out and you say, well, fucking looks like truth meters fucking all the way on empty on that one. So you get a chance to see whether or not somebody's fucking lying to you. And that's where you need to go to verify that sort of thing. Just spend a little time. People spend time doing all kinds of crazy shit.

Turn off fucking Judge Judy for a half an hour and go on the fucking internet and learn about the candidates. And don't bitch about it later when you don't fucking vote. You know what I mean? I want to make sure that people realize that you should try to vote in every election and you should be informed when you vote. Last time, you know, the 99 percent people, you know, we're going to be talking a lot about 99 percenters. But you know what? The 99 percenters, that's not how many people vote in this country. That's for damn sure. Right. You know what I mean? I'm part of the 99 percent. But you know what? You want to call yourself part of the fucking

41% of the people who vote. Isn't that low? 41%? It's pretty low. That's hyperbole, Tom. I don't know. I just fucking made that number up. Not a factual response for me, by the way. Not to be intended as a factual response when I've quoted my numbers.

Not to be a factual statement. Intended to be a lie. Tangented. That's all right. That's fine. I think it's important to implore people to vote, especially our overseas listeners. 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? So I love Michelle Bachman's crazy gaffes that she keeps making. And I love them because it pushes her further and further into the fringe and further and further away from ever being elected to anything beyond dog catcher in this country. You know, I don't know that I would do that. You No, she can catch dogs. I'd let one of the rabid ones bite her and be okay with that. She's probably more rabid than they are, so it fucking wouldn't even affect her.

Her face looks like it's so stretched tight like a fucking drum. Her face skin is just pressed to the back. I just look at her and I'm just like, I just want to go. It's going to be a fucking drum circle in the desert of Michelle Bachman heads. Get a pretty good sound on that thing. Michelle Bachman made some pretty amusing comments when she was criticizing Herman Cain's $9.99 tax plan and its inclusion of a national sales tax. For her sales tax or for her tax plan, rather. I love this.

I'm going to read this directly because it's so fraught with error. I take a page out of one of my great economists that I admire. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was not an economist. He was an actor. He was never an economist. He may have acted as an economist in one of his movies. Yeah, that's when he was acting as president.

He's not an actor. He's not an economist, but he stayed in a fucking Holiday Inn Express last night. Under my tax plan, I want to adopt the Reagan tax plan. Second. Verse, same as the first. It brought the economic miracle of the 1980s. That was not a fucking miracle, lady. She must not have lived through it.

Why not go with what works? I want to reinstitute the Reagan tax model from the 1980s. Okay, let's do it. So raise the taxes. Let's do it. Way to go. I think a lot of people would agree with you. She is such a goofball, right?

This is some nutty stuff. Reagan wasn't an economist. His taxes are higher. You've been whining and crying and pissing and moaning and bitching about lowering taxes. whining and crying and pissing and moaning and bitching about lowering taxes before you speak on fox you can't figure out whether the tax plan that you're interested in is a higher or lower tax just come out with no plan at all just like i have no plan i have no what's your plan? No fucking plan. That's my plan. No plan. You're all dead. Oh, be nice. Oh, my son doesn't stand a chance.

The whole world's gone gay. Oh, my God. What's happening now? We work hard. We play hard. Everybody dance now. So in Texas recently, a high school decided that the better part of valor was to kick a 17-year-old senior boy off of the cheerleading squad and then suspend him because he kissed some dude at their high school. Now, I found this story not terribly shocking, probably because it's from Texas.

But Texas state law permits public schools to videotape their students without parent consent when it pertains to school safety. I don't know how videotaping them without their consent pertains to school safety. If you're then going to use that footage to suspend them for kissing another dude and there's no rules in the school against kissing people that doesn't lead to a suspension so it's like a totally made-up punishment right and then they're you know they're clearly punishing him because he's gay because it says um that there's there's been a couple of other people if it's like a morality thing there's been a couple of other people. If it's like a morality thing, right, there's a couple of other people on the cheerleading squad

that they're talking about here that like got – had – like one of them had a baby and one of them is pregnant. No. It sounds like the dirtiest cheerleading squad. Yeah. So they're kicking him off because he's gay? Let me tell you. Here's an indicator that he's gay. He's a guy on the

cheerleading squad. Like what the fuck? Like, I don't know. My gaydar's going off and I don't even know the kid. Like he's a dude on the cheerleading squad. So, you know, like there's a reason why you should suspect him as being gay, but that's not a reason to kick him off the team. That's not a reason to be like, Hey man, you can't be on the team anymore because you kissed, you know, you kissed a boy and it's okay that all the other cheerleaders kiss a boy, but you can't kiss a boy. What about the pregnant ones? They clearly did more than just kiss a boy. Yeah, you would think.

I mean, you don't get – I could be wrong about this. But you don't get preggers from kissing right right you would think like if they can show up to fucking cheerleading practice with a fucking belly bump i mean exactly and this guy can't lock lips with some other dude way to go texas and and the thing is too that this is going to get overturned because the school district released a statement saying that while kissing is not appropriate, that the district does not suspend students for kissing other students at school. So it's really just some administrator who saw this as a homophobe and went apeshit. And it's actually kind of encouraging for me to see that when these things happen, they make the news, they show up everywhere, and they get looked into. Because a few years back, that wouldn't have been the case.

This guy would have been kicked off the team and suspended and would have had no recourse. Now he gets kicked off the team, and we're talking about it on a show in Illinois. Oh, ho, ho, it's magic, you know. Never believe it's not so. It's magic, you know. Never believe it's not so. This is a story out of Uganda. Now, we've talked in the past, and I know we've both been belief in magic, based in a world that does not need to bow down to logic and reason and evidence, then what you end up with is stories like this one in Uganda. There's a story coming out of Uganda where they're talking about school children,

school-aged children being kidnapped and murdered as part of child sacrifices. Witch doctors are claiming that they can kill kids, bury them places, hack them to bits, cut off their genitals, and that will give somebody magic powers to gain wealth. You only get to that point if you start off with a foundational belief in fucking magic. You don't go to – see, so when was the last time you went to a witch doctor? Two and a half hours ago. Oh, fuck.

There goes my whole point. God damn. I called the witch doctor. You know what I think too when I read this story? I mean a horrifyingly awful story out of the BBC here. awful story out of the BBC here. And one of the things that just occurred to me when I was reading it was, what better metaphor for excess is there than sacrificing children for more excess? Like it's just, it's the most despicable thing that somebody could do.

And this person who they're talking about in this article has been like turned in like a couple times by the police. And the police are just like, yeah, nothing's going to happen. This guy had videotape evidence of this guy offering like, yeah, we can kill this. We can find a kid and we'll kill him and we can bury him at your construction site or we cut off his genitals. And we can bury parts of him all over. And they bring this to the police and the police are just like, well, you know, nothing we can really do here. And then you look at like the kids in these images and the images are horrifying. Like scarred heads, like where the kid, this kid had a, they attempted to chop his head off with a machete. And they missed and hit his skull.

And he's got this fucking – I mean just gigantic fucking scar that looks like a Grand Canyon in his skull. And then there's another kid's arm that has just been brutally, savagely cut open to try to extract blood from them. open to try to extract blood from them. You know, and like you said, Tom, there's a part of this article that's really hard to read, actually, where he talks about what he's going to do. And one of the things this guy says he's going to do, he's like, if it's a male, the whole head is cut off and his genitals. We dig a hole at your construction site. And we also bury the feet and hands and put them all together in the hole.

So basically, they're just mutilating these kids like fucking Dexter style and like fucking throwing them in the ground around your little area to like give you prosperity. Like you really think that? And, you know, like these people probably obviously don't think that. They're just sadistic fuckers looking to make a buck and they can trick gullible people who actually do believe it into giving them some money. I read this and I just think this is more evidence of the damage that a superstitious worldview does. It allows people like this to take advantage of you. Here in the States, it doesn't tend to go to this kind of extreme. Here in the States, it doesn't tend to go to this kind of extreme.

Here in the States, it tends to be financial fraud, fraud for time, fraud for money. And there's been some egregious cases of those things. But there's not a big difference here between a magical worldview in the States that leads to parents not taking their kids to the doctor, instead praying over them. And somebody in Uganda saying, well, I believe that if we kill this kid, then bury him in my construction site, that I'll be blessed with magic powers. It's all based in magic. It's all part of the same superstitious worldview where you're not in control of the world. And so you attempt to go to religious authorities and ask them to help you, ask them to intervene for you in a magical way in order for you to get the things that you want, in order to get prosperity or health or happiness or love or whatever it happens to be and people pay real prices for these things real we're not talking about you know an isolated fucking incident you know in uganda it's it's a serious problem where people are worried about

sending their kids off to school because they might be kidnapped and cut into bits. The guy offers to bury a kid alive. Yeah, that's nice. That's a good way to go. Like these are people, Tom, that like probably think that Quidditch exists. You know what I mean? Like if you break it down, like would they pick a stick up off the ground and be like fucking Expelliarmus? Because they fucking really just – I mean they have a disconnect with reality if they think burying a kid alive is going to help them some way.

The only way to close this I think is just to iterate again. It matters where your worldview comes from. matters where your worldview comes from. When your worldview rests on a foundation of irrationality, irrationality will always be the result. And the results can be pretty extreme. So now that we've depressed and angered you enough, we're going to go ahead and take a quick break to give you some ways to contact us, harass, harangue, and hate us. After the break, stay tuned, and we will give you some more stories and more reasons to harass, harangue, and hate us some more. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com.

Be sure to visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Be sure to like the show on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. The Twitter handle is at DissonancePod.com. Be sure to like the show on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. The Twitter handle is at DissonancePod. Thanks to everyone who shares our podcast through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. We'd also like to thank the people who have rated us and subscribed on iTunes and Podfeet or promoted the show through message boards like Reddit. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. So Cecil, this is another example of some fucking total nutters. I can read this whole article, actually, because it's only about four sentences long. In a town on the outskirts of Jerusalem, school runs have become the focal point for an ugly struggle over land and power.

Groups of ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters have been picketing a new girls' school. And this is the part that's really egregious. They say their religious sense of modesty is offended by the sight of the girls and their families passing their homes on their way to school, even though the families themselves are also from an Orthodox community. from an orthodox community. The fuck is the matter with you when the sight of half of the world's population, like the existence of girls going to school, offends you?

Girls are half. We only have two genders. Tom, the thing is that they're ultra-orthodox and then these people are just orthodox. So it's like when you go to the supermarket and you buy the Ultra-All instead of the regular All, they're just the Ultra-version. Or maybe they're like Ultra-Man. They have a big Jewish star on their chest and a big metal beard, and they throw their

hat at people and cut them in half. What I don't get is, here's one of the things that happens. This article actually has a playable movie. So if you go to the site, click on the article, you can watch this like three-minute movie, and it shows these fucking people on the side of the road like screaming at these kids and like getting in the face of like parents, like saying, you know, like your kid fucking, oh, my God, your kid can be seen outside or whatever. And are yelling at them.

And one of the things the lady's like, yeah, so they're, they, they assault us. They throw rocks and, and sticks and feces. And I'm like, hold on a second. Is this like a fucking prison fight? Like they're fucking storing up their own feces to put their hands in and throw at you? What are we, fucking monkeys, whipping our shit around at people that just because they want to go to school by you, you got to fucking ook and ah and fucking dig your own shit off the ground and throw it at people? Like what the fuck is happening? off the ground and throw it at people.

Like what the fuck is happening? If there's ever a time where you're thinking that your religious nature is so offended that the only solution is for you to throw rocks at little girls or, or you're, you're pooping in a bucket and thinking, ha ha ha, I'll show you. Hand me the toilet paper. That is a sign that you've ruined your life.

Yeah, that is a sign that there is no turning back at that point. Just upturn that bucket on your head at that point. You've made all the wrong decisions. You have. When you're throwing your poop. Yeah, your hand is in your own feces getting ready to hurl it. You need to reconsider your options. You're not a fucking orangutan, right?

I know. That's insane. And, you know, like these are the most religious people. Like that's the thing is like it's not the regular Orthodox attacking the ultra Orthodox. It's the the regular Orthodox attacking the ultra-Orthodox. It's the ultra-Orthodox. These are the people that are supposed to be so pious, so holy, that they hate that other people are walking down the street near them with a fucking fully clothed, with a skirt on or something,

and they're screaming at them. And they're ready to confront them, and they're ready to hurt them with objects, and then throw feces on them. These are the most holy of your people. That's – when you're ultra anything, right, you need to take a – you need to pause and reconsider. When you fall into a group that's ultra something, maybe you need to tone that back a bit. I mean I try to stay away from everything ultra. The only thing I use is like ultra, ultra-absorbent paper towels.

Like, that's it. Well, it is the quicker picker-upper, so you can't really be blamed. And it's really great on feces, it turns out. I'd be mad, too, if I had to grow an itchy fucking beard like that. I know, fucking bearded people. Today's doctors, drugs, and medical devices truly work medical miracles for young and old alike. But there are some as phony as a $3 bill. Investigate before you invest in health services or products.

Help stamp out quackery. So there's a recent study published where they compared Reiki, like real – I can't even say real Reiki, right? Where they compared people who had Reiki performed and they – By somebody who's like supposed to be a qualified person. Right. Somebody who's quote studied. What do you study? Like I made this up too. Some people who had – Science fiction is what you study like i made this up too um some people who had science fiction is what you study right um so they had some folks uh do what was supposedly real reiki and some other folks do

sham reiki um on uh cancer patients and then they patients reported you know whether or not they felt better and you know and the study was intriguing because the people who had Reiki performed, now it didn't matter if it was real Reiki or sham Reiki. If you had the Reiki performed, you generally reported a greater sense of well-being afterward. And there are those who are now claiming then that Reiki works. Placebos work because they couldn't tell the difference between real Reiki and fakey Reiki. You know what I mean?

Fakey Reiki. It's ridiculous. Like people don't understand the placebo effect. And there's a great Radiolab, Tom, and it's actually the first one you ever played for me. Tom introduced me to Radiolab a long time ago. And if you don't know what Radiolab is, go to Radiolab.org. It's seriously the greatest show ever on radio. It is amazing.

And it's a scientific show. And one of the great things about it is that they talk about all kinds of really neat stuff. And one of the shows they did was on placebo. And the placebo effect is very strong. But one of the things that the placebo effect is not is lasting. And that is something that is not is lasting. And that is something that people need to understand. It's all well and good if it relieves some of the pressure and some of the pain and some of that right instantly, but it comes back quicker. And so

you've got to pay attention to that. And I think that this is great if this is going to make people feel better, but understand it's not really doing anything. Right. You know, this study actually proves that Reiki doesn't work. Right. Because if sham Reiki works with the same level of efficacy as, quote, real Reiki, then there is no Reiki. You know, it doesn't work. You know, everybody reports a better sense of well-being when they get to lay down in a calm place with some soothing fucking music and some nice fucking aromatherapy and be the center of somebody's attention for an hour. Who wouldn't like that?

Everybody fucking likes that. Everybody feels better when they get somebody's fucking complete attention for an hour in a comfortable, controlled, warm, womb-like room. But you could get that same thing and get a massage. They're just fake touching you with the Reiki. So you could have that thing, you know, you could have that and then have sex at the end of it, right? There are things that would actually provide you a real benefit. You could have a massage instead.

It's the exact same thing. You get all the benefits of fakie reiki, but you also get the benefits that are real and established of massage. That's a real win. that's a real win. You know, the problem is people are pointing at this study and they're saying, well, look, you know, maybe people should get this Reiki. It makes them feel better. And who cares if it's real or fake?

It's placebo, but the placebo works and it's a real effect. Yeah, but they're spending finite fucking resources on shit that doesn't work. Right. That's where it's harmful. It's harmful because if it makes me feel better and the chemotherapy drugs make me feel worse and I'm sitting here trying to think, which one should I do? I only have a certain amount of resources and time at my disposal. Should I do the thing that makes me feel better or should I do the thing that makes me feel shittier?

There are going to be people who choose to get fakie rakey right but they're not going to get fakie dead they're going to get real fucking dead we also believe unlike warren buffett that tax they're high enough already as a matter of fact the president has redefined millionaires and billionaires as any company that makes over $200,000 a year. That's his definition of a millionaire billionaire. So perhaps Mr. Buffett would like to give away his entire fortune above $200,000. If that's what you want to do, have at it. Give it to the federal government. But don't ask the rest of us to have our taxes

increase because you want to have a soundbite. We want to have real job creation in this country, and that's what we'll stand for as fiscal conservatives. So, Cecil, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the Occupy Wall Street, which has now become Occupy Everyplace. Yeah, the movement. We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about it a little bit more. There are a host, a host of people who are really criticizing this movement pretty heavily, particularly the super wealthy. As well they should. Turns out that the ultra wealthy don't like it when you point out the fact that they are ultra fucking wealthy, ultra fucking privileged, and that those privileges create and maintain a strong inequity that has really come to define.

You know, we talk about that people talk in America a lot now about class warfare. Well, it comes to define the difference between the upper class and all of the rest of us. Yeah, and it's that extreme upper class. Right. This is a great article. It's by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. It's an great article. It's by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. It's an opinion article. And one of the things that I want to mention specifically, and I know, Tom, you've been the brunt of these Facebook posts from both sides.

You know, like I am the 1% or I am the 99% or whatever the hell, you know, going back and forth. And most of the ones that are not like I am the 99% and there's a couple that are I am the 99% where I'm just like, well, I going back and forth. And most of the ones that are not like, I am the 99%. And there's a couple that are, I'm the 99% where I'm just like, well, I really don't care. I'm just like, I am kind of unsympathetic to you. I don't really care. But there's some that are, you know, kind of heartbreaking. You're like, oh, that's sad. Like, you know, we shouldn't live in a country that, that, that happens to people on a common basis. But the ones that are like, quit whining, But the ones that are like quit whining or this is anti-capitalism or just go out and work harder and you'll make more money sort of thing. If you think that the – Occupy Wall Street is about socialism, is about people looking for handouts, you're too dumb to breathe at that point.

It is not about those things at all. Occupy Wall Street is very – there's a very small thing that they're looking to do. One, they don't want the government to fund failed corporations and bail out people. They don't want that because those people never paid that money back. We bailed out a ton of money to people. And when corporations fail, it's suddenly privatized to the whole, you know, it's suddenly subsidized by all of our tax dollars. But when we privately fail, nobody gives a fuck. And there's an inequity there that people are pointing out. And then the second thing they're talking about there that they're down there for is for equal tax. They're not looking at fucking

like, like I'm not looking as a 99 percenter. I'm not looking for the people that that make a shit ton of money to lose all their money to the rest of us. And suddenly we gobble up all that money. I'm not looking for that to happen. I am I am perfectly fine with the wealthy remaining wealthy because they got there and they're wealthy and that's fine. But I am, well, I want them to pay their fair share. There's that great quote that we talked about last time, um, Elizabeth Warren, when she's like, you, you know, you didn't get fucking rich in a vacuum. You know, the infrastructure in this company and the protections that you have in this, in this country, they're the things that helped you get rich in this country. And, and you know what, if you're a fucking, let's say you're a guy who's shipping fucking widgets across the country. If you're shipping your widgets and you're using a truck line to ship your widgets, you're, I'm paying more for the road than you are. Like the road is coming more out of my pocket than it is out of yours. And you're benefiting way more off the roads, the interstate system that we currently have. And that's just a tiny little fucking subsect to your business that is benefiting off of this great country. So pay your fair share. Nobody's asking you to fucking give up

all of your money down to $200,000. Nobody's asking you to do that, except for Michelle Bachman. Nobody is asking you to do that. Okay? What we're saying is pay your fair share. That's all the 99 percenters want, is for you to pay the money that you should be paying.

The rest of us have to fucking pay. Yeah, I think that there's a total misunderstanding about what folks want. Nobody's saying lower my taxes. You don't see that, right? You're not seeing – they're not walking around saying lower my taxes, lower my taxes. I want to pay less. They're saying I'm willing to pay what I pay. I'm already paying my share of taxes. Lower my taxes. I want to pay less. They're saying, I'm willing to pay what I pay. I'm already paying my share of taxes.

I just want you to do the same thing. I want everybody to pay the same, you know, a fair amount of taxes. And let's be clear. Fair isn't different for all people. Fair is different for different people who make, you know, larger sums of money. You know, study after study shows it is more expensive in whole dollars and in percentage terms to be poor. Being rich is cheaper. It's actually cheaper to be rich. You know, if I go out and I try to purchase, let's say, home insurance, homeowners insurance, and I'm wealthy, am I going to pay more or less than somebody who's poor? Well, I'm going to pay way, way less. I can insure a $500,000 home for percentage wise a lot less than somebody who's insuring an $80,000 home in a shitty neighborhood, right?

Because the actuarial tables will tell you that the home in the shitty neighborhood is more likely to be burglarized, vandalized, set on fire. So the likelihood of a claim is going to be higher. And while the rich person might pay more in whole dollars, they're getting vastly more coverage for a lot less. It's cheaper for them to be rich. The same is true. Food costs are cheaper in nicer neighborhoods. Access to resources is greater. They don't have to travel as far in order to get foods and goods and services because companies invest in those areas and they're fucking rife

with opportunity and services and products. It is more expensive to be poor, both in whole dollar terms and in percentage terms. And yet we ask people of modest means to pay a higher percentage burden of taxes. That is unfair. It's not right. And people aren't saying, they're not saying lower my taxes. They're not saying you have too much money. Give it to me. That's saying, give it to me.

Right. They're saying, pay it to the government, pay it into the kitty, improve all of our lots. Yours included. 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. So Cecil Glenn Beck's at it again

with his insightful commentary about the Occupy Wall Street people. I think, Cecil, he hit the nail on the head. Let me tell, okay, listeners, if you go to this site and you go to Huffington Post and you play this fucking video and just watch the first fucking

40 seconds of this, I would rather have a fucking like a venereal disease shot in the head of my dick than watch this again. I am dead serious. Like, it is the most annoying fucking childish, stupid fucking beginning to a show I've ever seen.

I could not imagine, Tom, somebody sitting there being like, man, did you catch the beginning of the Glenn Beck show the other day? Hilarity! Hilarity! Hilarity! It's the fucking dumbest beginning I've ever seen. These people get paid to be funny? Motherfucker, you're not funny!

You're not, you're fucking so unfunny it fucking hurts my brain! Glenn Beck pretty much has a Stop Repeating Me opening. It's a fucking, it's a three-year-old skit! Glenn Beck pretty much has a stop repeating me. It's a three year old skit. It's like and not like a three year old like three years ago. Like, no, like fucking little kids. Toddlers do this.

Not a particularly precocious three year old. Right. It's like it's like the dim weighted three year old rocking in the corner. Right. You know that nobody wants to play with. That's that's who put this thing together. You know, the thing that makes me laugh is that he had to plan this in advance. Right.

Which means he had to run it by a couple of guys. Sure, yeah. And they all had to say, oh, yeah. Oh, good idea, Glenn. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were in the conference room with their Fiji water, all sitting around being like, you know what's going to be awesome? When I repeat what you say and then, you know, what you should do is keep saying stuff and I'll keep repeating it.

Great fucking comedy bit. Stick to fucking news. You know what? Don't stick to news because your news is stupid too. So he has some bizarre, bizarre comments, about the Occupy people. Particularly, he seems to be alluding to this idea that these are, that the protesters are like the Nazis. He refers to the Night of Long Knives, which was a Nazi purging, a series of strategic murders that the Nazis committed over the course of three days in order to solidify power. That has nothing to do with this movement at all.

Have there been any murders associated with Occupy Wall Street? Yeah, they caught a couple CEOs and they fucking fed them cake till they died. You fucking serious? They're Marxist radicals, he actually says. They're Marxist radicals. You need to fucking look up Marxist and radicals. The only thing you got right in that fucking phrase is they are. He says they will come for you, drag you into the streets and kill you.

These guys are worse than Robespierre from the French Revolution. They'll kill everybody. They'll fucking have a drum circle, you dumb motherfucker. How many people die around a drum circle? Unless they fucking beat the drum till they have a heart attack and die. Like that's the only people that ever died around a drum circle. You dumb son of a bitch. Fucking part of Wall Street is not going to kill everybody.

Oh, my gosh. Because they have so far killed nobody. Exactly. Like, how could you look this guy in the face and be like, oh, yeah, Glenn, I think you're right. And you know those fucking douchebags that have their head up his ass on this show are sitting there looking at him thoughtfully from across the way, nodding slowly as he refers to the fucking night-along knives

and fucking Robespierre and fucking the French Revolution. What the fuck? Look, I would be a little concerned if the Occupy protesters started wheeling out guillotines. Yeah, sure. Right? That would, I would be a little concerned if the Occupy protesters started wheeling out guillotines. Yeah, sure. Right?

That would – I would be a little concerned. But that's never going to happen because that's crazy. Glenn Beck, you are crazy. They probably don't even have a box knife among them. You know what I mean? Right. That's a ridiculous fucking accusation. You're a dumb person and the people that are on your

fucking show are dumb people and you're untalented and you're horrible to watch please die in a fire that's glenn beck you want answers i think i'm entitled you want answers i want the truth you can't handle the truth so good news in the world of science. The cryptozoologists were right. Yeti expedition confirms the existence of Yeti. Of course it does. It was a Yeti expedition.

It was a Yeti expedition. What else were they going to do? Admit failure? What else were they going to do? Admit failure? There's no other reason to go out except for to look for a Yeti out there. But they went to Siberia. Again, I say there's no other reason to go out there except for to look for a Yeti.

You've got to really fucking want it to go to Siberia, right? I mean, it's Siberia, but they found what they're calling indisputable proof. Now, I know listeners, you're probably thinking they have one. They captured it. It's going to be at the Lincoln Park Zoo Thursday at 430. You can check it out. It's going to be hanging out with Han Solo. Or they've got a dead body and we'll soon see it, right?

No. Cecil, what do they have? Well, they recorded its call. It goes... No, actually, Tom, I scratched that. They don't have that. What they have is a bit of hair and some footprints. Yeah.

Where have we heard this before? You know, Tom, I'm down. Okay, indisputable proof. You have the hair. Well, let's do some fucking DNA samples on that. Yeah, let's find the body, though. When you're going to say you have indisputable proof, I want at least the fucking head of the thing.

Bring me the head of a Yeti. Have Robespierre cut it off its head, this guillotine, and bring it to me. Since when is a few hairs and a couple of footprints the same thing as the thing? It's not proof of the thing. If there was proof of the thing, then all the things we thought were around would be proved. That's not the thing. You didn't get the Yeti.

It's like saying, I saw awake in bubbles, therefore Nessie exists. Right. Right. Well, I listened to an Elvis song, so Elvis is alive. What? Yeah, I saw an airplane.

It was Amelia Earhart. Decided it. Boom. Done. Fuck you. Everything I decide is what it is. I had Reiki therapy. It worked.

Yeti. Indisputable proof. You need to relearn the words indisputable and proof you used neither of them correctly cecil we got some email we got an email from tom uh not me i didn't send us email although i was tempted so gotta have something for this segment. Yeah, because we don't get a lot of emails. We got an email from Tom.

It turns out that the founder of Conservapedia was on Colbert. And we're going to post this. We're going to post this. Colbert, as usual, hilarious. Colbert is genius. And so what we'll do is we'll post this on our site. Thanks, Tom, for sending it in. And yeah, it's very funny.

And his favorite part is a quote here. He's saying, this is the quote of – It's so crazy. From the clip. Most of Jesus' parables were economic parables. They were free market parables. Oh, my fucking God. Glenn Beck

agrees. Yeah, like the parable where he turns over the tables and the temples. Tom, you're misreading. I misread most things. So Pat posted on our Facebook page, and Pat had come to the Meet the Critics a while back

and Pat had sent this thing to our page, and it's an Occupy Wall Street piece that Victoria Jackson, a former SNL cast member, went out to the Occupy protests. I watched like the first minute and a half of this, but I'll be honest, Pat. I can't watch this. I think she is such a fucking idiot that it hurts my face to watch her just talk. He posts a link on our site, so if you're interested, you can go find it. But, you know, really, she is really a dumb person, and you can just tell when you watch this that she is a dumb person. Thanks for sending in Pat, and we want to send a shout-out to Pat and the Chief.

The Chief came a long time ago to our Meet the Critics a while back, and we want to send a shout out to Pat and the Chief. The Chief came a long time ago to our Meet the Critics a while back, and we want to say what's up, the Chief? Thanks for listening still. Absolutely. All of our crossover listeners, we're really glad that you guys made the decision to waste more of your time on our new show, and we hope you're enjoying it. Well, Tom, we've wasted enough time. We've wasted enough of the listeners' time, so we're just going to end the show now and leave everyone, as always, with the skeptic's creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit.

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