Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 377: All too Common Law

Episode Date: September 11, 2017

This week we talk with Geoff Blackwell, attorney for American Atheists and podcaster. We also discuss Trump's inability to "talk good", Rush Limbaugh's dangerous suggestion that Hurricane Irma was fake news, and Iowa Corn Goblin Steve King gets his DACA racism on. Don't forget to catch the live show Sunday, September 17th on Livestream or Facebook Live!  Thanks to Geoff for coming on the show! You can find his work below:        Stories covered in episode: Cognitive Dissonance Live:   

This show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. If you go to AdamandEve.com right now and enter GLORY, the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout, you'll get 50% off almost any item, a free sex swing, and free shipping. Hey Cecil, hey Tom, this is Devil Doc Josh from Cali. I'm calling to say a solid hoorah to the fellow foreman who left the message at the beginning of 374 and also to Michael Woods. Don't worry about it. And a second to that, welcome to the work of Citation Evening. We're home and keep the life going. Bye. Hey guys, this is Austin from near Los Angeles in good old godless liberal California.

Just wondering if you saw this story recently where a bunch of Texas churches were going to sue FEMA because they're not getting payouts for the flood. I thought it was interesting that organizations that wanted to avoid paying taxes all of a sudden want the government's help. And I couldn't help but thinking, hey, you knew the hurricane was coming. Why didn't you take a lesson from your precious little book and build a boat? Am I right? Glory hole, motherfuckers.

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. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. Really, let's see if it works. We bring critical thinking. Balancing acts. Okay, hold on. Cecil tries to fuck with me during this intro. And it doesn't work because I never break.

Because you stopped it. I never break. I never break. Fuck you. So right now he's got a box. The Johnny Walker Black label. Johnny Walker Black. Johnny Walker Black. And he's got the box. It was a gift, the Johnny Walker, black label, black, and he's got the box.

You know, it was a gift. It was a gift. It was a kingly gift. Holy. And then he's got an Aquafina empty water bottle and he's stacking that. He's stacking his teacup on top of the, it's not going to work,

man. What is this? Like fucking beverage Jenga. It's not going to work. Shut your fucking pie hole. It's going to work. Shut your fucking pie hole. It's going to work. Move your fucking hand for a count of three. It's never going to work. It's never going to work.

It didn't even come remotely close. It tipped somewhat more slowly than last time. We have different definitions of close. I almost had sex once. She almost had an orgasm. It was close. She came close. It was close.

In that she stopped yawning. Actually, I thought that was my opening. Hey, get off your phone. All right, don't. Yeah, no, it's fine. It's okay. Don't send us that porn. Are you talking to your mom right now?

Don't send us that porn. Don't send us that porn. Yeah, we've seen it, first of all. I did jerk off to it, but I didn't like it, I guess. Here's the thing. I didn't like myself after it. You know what's funny? When I jerked off to it, I was also on my phone.

It was so meta. It was the most meta fucking masturbating I've ever done. It's a meta orgasm. Welcome to our show, everybody. 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 at this episode 377 of Cognitive Distance.

A little later in this episode, we will be joined by Jeff Blackwell. He is the attorney for the American Atheist. You can sue him a little later on. We'll tell you how. Give you all his contact information. He'll defend himself vociferously. It's a whole thing. I wanted to talk, too.

I wanted to mention before we get in, because a lot of times people will wind up skipping the email section. We wanted to mention it ahead of time that on the 17th, we're thinking it's going to be at 3 PM. We're going to be doing a live stream on, we're going to see if we can get it to work. Facebook and live stream. If not, it might be just live stream.

It's just going to be, because last time Facebook was bouncing a bunch. So we're going to try to get it to work on Facebook as well. If not, it might be just live stream. It's just going to be because last time Facebook was bouncing a bunch. So we're going to try to get it to work on Facebook as well. If it doesn't work, it's just going to be on live stream. And we're just going to call it on live stream and we'll post the link on Facebook, et cetera. So people can find it, but we're going to be doing a live stream. We don't know what the content's going to be,

what we definitively know one thing we are going to get toast and we're going to try Vegemite. Oh, I forgot we have to do that. So if you're an get toast and we're gonna try vegemite oh i forgot we have to do that so if you're an australian listener and we're doing that specifically because we want to talk about our trip to australia skepticon which is coming up so we're going to talk about it a lot that day on the 17th of september at three o'clock but we are going to make toast in studio and try vegemmite live on livestream. So great. There'll also be a blueberry pie eating contest and we'll all just

vomit. I hear it's like... Hey man, you want to see a dead body? What color is Vegemite? Is it green? I just assumed it was gray like sadness. The fuck color is it? I don't know. I don't want to open it yet because I don't want to break the freshness seal.

I don't want to break the seal. I'm sure the yeast that's inside of this. How many months old Vegemite that we're going to be consuming. We're going to be spreading sea monkeys on us. Where is it? I don't even know where it is. It's around here somewhere. Here's what I will also commit to doing. I will retry

a piece of the anger licorice. On air? On air. I'll do it too. Well, both of us, we're going to eat the, the screamy licorice. Oh God, it's so bad. We're also going to, we're also going to have Vegemite. That's going to be on the 17th of this month. And if we can find it, and I don't know, I can't promise if we can find it.

There is a Neapolitan beer. We're going to wash it down with Neapolitan stout. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words. I have to. But there's no better word than stupid. All right.

So real quick, Cecil, before we begin, this is just a quick shout out to our Florida listeners. I hope you're not in Florida right now. I know because it's Monday. It's Monday in Florida. And basically your iPod just flew out of your hands I have a very very good friend who's got family in the Keys

in the Keys and they're like those won't be there soon they decided to ride it out and I was like are they in a boat there's no riding it out I think you could do it in a submarine if the's no riding it out. I think you could do it in a submarine. If the submarine was

in the Pacific, sure. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, man. It's crazy. It is crazy. The wind's out there. I have a friend who's just moved to Tampa this year. They just moved down there. Thanks, Obama.

And so he moved there. I want to say it was the last time I saw him was, uh, January. So right after January, it was like February, he moved down there and then he's been down there since. And, uh, he posts on Facebook. He's like, look, I'm in Tampa. I should be okay. He's like, don't worry about it. I'll be okay. He's like, I'm like, I got an evacuation route ready to go. I'm ready to go. Just don't worry about it. I'll be okay. He's like, I'm going to... Yeah, he's the northern Gulf side. He's fine. I got an evacuation route ready to go. I'm ready to go. Just don't worry about me sort of thing. But there's people in Miami, those fucking people.

Holy shit. It's going to hit landfall down there and it's just going to explode everything. It's like a black hole. It's just crazy. It's like a supermassive black hole. It's just like rolling across the earth. Well, so that's a great segue to this TPM article, Talking Points Memo. Yeah, speaking of a supermassive black hole is just like rolling across the earth well so that's a great segue to this tpm article talking points memo yeah speaking of a super massive so this is what trump this is our

fearless leadership yeah and the reason i want to talk about this is because um i have a three-year-old developmentally delayed son who is just now gaining some access to language, right? He's starting to form some very basic, simple sentences. And he is orders of magnitude more articulate than the goddamn commander in chief right now. This is what President Donald Trump said. This is an actual quote. There's a new and seems to be record-breaking hurricane headed right toward Florida and Puerto Rico and other places. Other places. You know, whatever's around that sort of general area. Stuff that is around in the place that the thing is going to now.

I'm not real globe familiar, you know. Anyway, I think maybe there's Cuba or China down there. China and other places. We'll see what happens. Said the president. We literally can't not see what happens unless you die before it happens. Or you're just like, I'm purposely not paying attention. Anyway, we'll know in a very short period of time.

This is my best part. This is my best part. This is my best part. This is it. I can't. But it looks like it could be something that will be not good. Believe me, not good. It looks like it could be something that will be not good. My favorite part is later when he's talking about Congress, he says, hopefully we can solve the problem in a rational way.

Maybe we won't be able to. We'll probably know pretty much at the end of this meeting or the meetings that we'll be having over a short period of time. The president said that he and Congress have many, many things that are on the plate. This guy is a fucking Mad Libs. He's a Mad Libs. He's a Mad Libs by somebody who doesn't know what parts of speech are like where they just like they're like what's a verb house he seriously he he has like he has he has the vocabulary of a not particularly precocious third grader. Any English people, any people that studied English, like let's say you studied English and literature and the structure of the English language.

Let's say I did. Let's just say someone in our audience did. What I want you to do is I want you to go to this article and I want you to diagram that final sentence there. I want those two sentences as a joint diagrammed and send that to us. That's great. At a certain point, I just think it's going to be like a wordle. It's just going to be

like a weird cloud of words that you just don't know what the fuck. It's spoken by an imbecile. Seriously, it is astonishing how poor his grasp of language is. He uses the same words multiple times in a row, very, very many, many. It's going to be bad.

Believe me, super bad. Like his facility with the language is so poor as to be genuinely jaw dropping. jaw-dropping. I don't understand how this man has reached levels of power that he's reached without being able to communicate effectively at all. He sounds like a fucking imbecile. This is a guy, seriously,

this is a guy that if I met him on the street, I'd be like, oh, he's not okay. When I think about it, I think about, imagine his resume and Barack Obama's resume come across your desk and you look at him and you think, okay, fine. Barack sounds like a black name. I'll interview them both. You know what I mean? And so they both come in and Barack Obama sits across from you and he

interviews for the job and he fucking kills it. I don't care what the job is. Fucking stripper. Doesn't matter. He kills it. Right right then this fucking buffoon comes in the room how you get two questions into the interview and then you say you know what i'm looking for somebody else yeah seriously this is like if you ever interview like you ever do like an interview where you have yourself and like another hiring manager in the room and you kind of do that sideways look like do you see that too yeah we're done, we're done. I have a lunch in the oven. I don't even want, I don't even want to tell you to leave. I'm going to call security and just have them take you away.

I cannot believe, can you imagine you're in Florida right now, right? You're, you're in Florida, you're in Puerto Rico, you know, cause that's America, right? So for realsies, you know, it's America light, but same difference. You know, you're, you're there and you're looking to the leadership of this country and they're telling you that in a short period of time, it looks like something that will be not good. Well, fuck. Are you serious? It's a category five hurricane. Of course, it's not good.

The largest hurricane ever recorded in this part of the Atlantic Ocean bearing down upon a major population center, and you're going to actually look at me and be like, believe me, not good. Are you a fucking Fred Flintstone? Are you kidding me? I am opposed to cap and trade. He is safe. And I also am an amateur paleontologist,

so I've spent a lot of time looking at the Earth's temperature over a very long time. And I'm a lot harder to convince than just looking at a computer model. All right, so speaking of hurricanes, this is Rush Limbaugh. Speaking of blowing hard winds. Right? Rush Limbaugh's dangerous suggestion that Hurricane Irma is fake news. So I actually read a couple of articles. This one's from the Washington Post. And they quote Rush Limbaugh, right? And Rush Limbaugh's coming out

and saying, look, you know, I'm not, at one point, I don't know if it's in this article or not, I don't care. But at one point he comes on, he says, look, I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm the tech guy at the office.

I'm not making this up. He says, I'm the tech guy at the office. And so people come to me because I'm like, really totes techie, says a fucking 93-year-old man, whatever, right? Yeah.

He can program his VCR. And he says, look, and I don't care. I just follow the data. And what the data says is that there's no bottled water left. You can get water out of your tap. Hurricane Irma is fake. I'm summarizing. Yeah.

But only the very smallest amount. I'm summarizing, but only the very smallest amount. Rush Limbaugh has been called one of the leading climate change deniers in the country. And you look at something like Irma, and Irma might, you know, Hurricane Irma, and then the subsequent hurricane that's following into the subsequent one, because there's three. You know, there's three on track right now in the Atlantic right now. Three on track. There's a big one that's coming in right afterwards, and then there's a smaller one that we

don't know how big it's going to be. Right. So there's Jose is the second one that's tracking. I did say a couple weeks ago when we were on Poorly Summarized, scary name for a hurricane, and I said Hurricane Jose. Guess what there is? They made it just to scare

Trump. They made it for you. Just to scare Trump. They made it for you. He was a DACA kid, that Tose. Now he's coming back with a vengeance. The beautiful thing is you can just stand and then say, no way. Oh, yeah. And it'll go away. Yeah. Right?

Yes. That was a great joke. It was. You loved that joke. I'm going to leave that in. Oh, my God. When it hits Florida, it's just, see you later, alligator. Whatever.

Those are great jokes. You'll find one in your living room. Well, it used to be your living room. I mean, come on. It's now a dying room. Exactly. I want to read this quote. Hurricane. This is from Limbaugh. Hurricanes are always forecast to hit major population centers because after all, major population centers is where the major damage will take place and where we can demonstrate that these things are getting bigger and they're getting more frequent and they're getting worse all because of climate change. No, hurricanes hit coastal cities because human beings like to live on the coast.

That's why. Well, that's not why they hit coastal cities. Those are why those are population centers. Yeah, they're population centers because people like to live there. And they hit coastal cities because hurricanes come from the ocean. So I don't know. I mean, like, yeah, you're right. They don't hit it because it's a population center.

You're absolutely right, Tom. They hit it because the ocean vomits them out onto the shore and then it hurts people. That's what happens. It's not that we fucking wind up going there and being like, oh, you know what? Oh, I bet you there's going to be a hurricane there and then I could sell lots of boards

to lots of stupid people. As if the board manufacturers are out there like, well, we just need to make a hurricane all we need to do somebody just it's like like what do they think is happening somebody's out in the middle of the ocean and they're all just like walking in a circle like in a swimming pool you know like

we're gonna make a whirlpool Marco Marco you know you know what you know why there's so many you know why there's so many right in a row? It's because Barack Obama didn't tell Trump that he shouldn't play with the hurricane gun. Right.

That they had at the White House. He's like, what does this thing do? It's the greatest. And he just shot it a bunch of times. This thing is good. Very good. I want you to make three of them. Send them right to my,

send them right to Mar-a-Lago. Yeah. I need to rehab it. I need some money to rehabilitate Mar-a-Lago. I just bought hurricane insurance. Also, Rush Limbaugh is fat. Yeah.

He has nothing to worry about a hurricane. Right? He's like, he's like an evacuation center like you know what i mean like you put him down there and people could just hide under his folds and be fine it'll just blow him around like a fucking zorb well tom yeah the uh the swing is still in effect well i would i would go so far as to say that this show is in full swing. It's still in full swing. It is in full swing.

We're getting into the swing of things. And if you want to get into the swing of things. Hey now. Right? Hey now. Transition, motherfucker. You can go to adamandeve.com. Caliente.

Right now. Caliente. It is Caliente. We should, even though the code is glory. It is. Even though the code word is glory, we should consider seeing if they could add Caliente.

So you can use either one? Yeah, we'll see if they'll do it. I like it. I don't know if they will. I like it. We'll get in touch. Glory is the code word at checkout. And if you use that code word at checkout,

you'll get free shipping, a little extra something, at checkout. You'll get free shipping, a little extra something, 50% off almost any item, and a free sex swing. That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff. And if you want to stimulate your clit, stimulate your balls,

get a fleshlight, buy lubes and juices of any kind, you can also get that sex swing and all that free stuff and get free shipping. All you have to do is use Gloria. Check it out. AdamandEve.com.

They're a sponsor of the show and we love how- They're a great sponsor of the show. They are a great sponsor of the show. They've been a supporter of the show now for quite some time. Look, here's the thing, guys. You're already fucking.

Yeah. Right? You're already fucking. You may as well do it for half off. You might as well. You can fuck twice as often. Yeah.. Yeah. Right? You're already fucking. You may as well do it for half off. You might as well. You can fuck twice as often. Yeah. With juice.

Right? Come on. So we're joined by Jeff Blackwell from the American Atheist. He's a staff attorney there. Jeff, welcome to Cognitive Dissonance. Hey, guys. So I guess my first question, Mr. Blackwell, is how well do you black? I mean, it's right there.

Come on. I want to know. The people want to know. They have a right to know. Cecil. I think you're just being racist. How do you know what I'm even referring to when I say how well do you want to black? I'm one of the, I guess, lower shades of gray.

It's just a light spanking shade of gray. It's just a light spanking shade of gray. It's not even like a clothespin on a nipple shade. It's not even a purple nurple shade. It's like a noogie shade. It's like something you could do in front of your parents' shade.

Like cuddling or something. It's kind of a rough tickle, really. I feel like a tickle would get you in a hell of a lot more trouble. Anyway, so. Are we talking about in chambers or just generally? Chamber's a strong word. It's only a chamber if you have to

move a book and a staircase rotates or something. Then it's a chamber. Otherwise, it's just a playroom without kids. That's what I call my wife's vagina. Same indoor-outdoor carpeting, actually. A playroom without kids.

Oh, no. Oh, you're bragging now, huh? Now you're just bragging. Still a sports car. Things I have to edit for this show. Number one. Welcome, Jeff! Hey, Jeff! Great to talk to you. A lot of jokes about your vagina again. number one. Welcome, Jeff! You come home from recording, it's like,

hey, honey, made a lot of jokes about your vagina again. Anyway, I'll just make the couch myself. Oh, I see my pillow's already out of here. Thank you, dear. The only pussy I'm sleeping with has four legs tonight.

I'll be smothered in it. Anytime you want to jump in here, Jeff, just jump right on in. I've got nothing. I don't even know. I am home, so she's in the other room. I'm curious about the job you do for American Atheists. American Atheists

as a group, is an organization that tries to make sure that America stays secular. Is that a good idea of what their mission statement is? That is probably the most succinct way of describing it, yes. And so your job is to find things that happen all across the globe. You probably get contacted by people right that

say hey they're trying to put they're trying to staple these 10 commandments to my ass and you gotta go sue someone for it right is that is that mostly what your job is he just shows up with like a writ and a staple remover it's like you can't do this. Not anymore. Yeah. I also don't know what a writ is. It just sounded legal. So that's why I worked with that. We haven't used writs in a long time.

Don't worry about it. Well, maybe we should start, Jeff. You know? To answer your question, yeah, that is roughly what I do. I don't go generally and find them. People come to us and report violations of the separation of church and state. And our work is limited to conflicts involving the government. So if you're at your job and you get discriminated against on the basis of your religion, there are established entities for handling that sort of thing, like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state agencies that deal with

that kind of stuff. We're limited to people suing the government. And we actually try and make litigation the last resort, because obviously everything I do is supported by member donations. So we take the use of member funds very seriously and litigation is expensive. And because of that, it is always, you know, our last resort. And so most of my job is actually trying to work constructively with government agencies to resolve potential violations. So tell us a little bit about a couple of these violations, because I got to tell you, like, when I read and, you know, obviously the only exposure I have to them is when they make the news.

And when they make the news, at least when I read about them, they seem so obviously egregious and cut and dry. I'm always baffled how there's even a conversation. So I guess I'd love to hear about some of these where maybe they're a little more nuanced than just like, come on, it's like a Ten Commandments monument. It's like, yeah, we've seen this lawsuit. We know how it goes because we've had this lawsuit like 50 times. So I guess I'd be really curious to hear some of the more nuanced or subtle cases that are brought to your attention. Well, actually, as it happens, today,

we sent a letter to each and every public school superintendent in Arkansas telling them, hey, don't. In crayon so they could read it? It's got the lettering or the spacing with the dotted line in the center so you could make your letters the right size and everything. Couldn't do it in cursive. It had to be printed. Oh, it's in Arkansas. Are you kidding me?

Every sentence has no more than four words. No word has more than one syllable. Stop doing bad. Period. Every sentence has no more than four words. No word has more than one syllable. You have to draw. You've done bad, period. Stop doing bad, period. I'm from Missouri, so I can smugly say that, yeah, and we sent it via email. So probably only about a quarter of them actually received it.

Did he have to ship some of them a computer first? Did he have to send them a laptop with like an AOL CD? In the real rural areas, they have to pay a Skywriter. It is member donation funded. So no, we didn't send them all Chromebooks or anything to

receive the emails. Or those crank-driven Linux laptops that they sent. Well, with the fitness level of the people in Arkansas, they couldn't work the crank long enough to get the thing to boot up. I'm just saying that they're fat. That's what I'm saying. No, I get it. I understand.

Because they're Southern. Yeah. I can't hear this anyway. I've never met you guys, but I've listened to the Skatingathing atheist guys, and I'm not sure if pot and kettle here. We'll have to move on from that line of inquiry. The letter in Arkansas. Well, Arkansas recently passed a law that mandated schools, so long as privately donated funding was available, to courts at all. Because on the one hand, the courts have repeatedly said that the national motto is constitutional, though displays of it,

if motivated by religion, could be unconstitutional. And on the other hand, courts view religious content in schools with an incredible degree of scrutiny, or are supposed to. So this sort of lies at the intersection of those two, because either the national motto is not to be displayed in public schools, or you can have religious content in schools promoting a religious point of view so long as it's the national motto. And those are kind of the only two choices that you have here. And so we sent a letter to the superintendents telling them that they can actually very easily avoid this issue by refusing to accept the donations of funds or materials in order to put up these displays. Because once they have those, they are obligated under the law to put up the displays. So that'll

actually be a very interesting question, which in the current environment raises a lot of difficult strategic questions that we have to address now. Can I just point out that our national motto is fucking stupid? I was thinking, can't we just sue the government? Can't we just skip everything and go to the government and try to sue them for a dumb motto? It's a really genuinely stupid motto.

And then this law, what the fuck is the purpose of this law? They've solved all the problems in Arkansas. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And just like, I don't know.

We got to put in God, we trust in all the classrooms. We haven't handled the illiteracy thing, but we'll just tell them what it says. All of our tweenagers are pregnant. All of them. And I said, tween.

Yeah. By Dan. I noted that. Um, it, it's a challenge because the courts have basically said that the place to litigate this question of the national motto is in the legislature. And if you don't like that the national motto is what it is, vote in people who are willing to change it. Jesus, that'll never happen.

Yeah. And people don't have standing to challenge simply the national motto because it doesn't involve expenditure of taxpayer funds. And it is it's not telling anyone to not do particular religious actions or to do particular religious actions. But it's making a declarative statement about the country. I completely agree. But it's making a declarative statement about the country. I completely agree. But we have, the courts have, the courts live in this fictional world where there's such a thing as ceremonial deism.

The fuck? I've never heard that term before. Just bask in the irony of the idea of deism, which is, you know, there is a God, but they don't, that God doesn't interact with the universe in any way, shape, or form. Why would you need ceremony at all for that God doesn't interact with the universe in any way, shape, or form, why would you need ceremony at all for that God? I guess now that you explained it to me, it's a heritage thing. That's a really stupid thing. I feel like this is a heritage thing. Someone needs to tear down a racist statue right now. So that's one of the nuanced, uh, issues we're dealing with. Um, uh, a couple of other

lawsuits that we're handling right now, um, are, well, one's a fairly clear cut, uh, so a, um, thing going on in Levy County, Florida. But the more interesting one, I think, is the question of of the invocations at the Pennsylvania State House. Their invocations at the start of their sessions where basically a local secular group wanted to provide someone to offer an invocation and they were denied. What? Yeah, so foolish.

They have to know that when they deny that secular group that they're gonna you know rabble rouse and they're gonna get some attention they don't wouldn't just be easier to let the secular group do their thing like yeah all right we're gonna skirt the controversy let you guys do it we know you're doing it you know we know you're asking in order to highlight the religious groups that do this right i mean that's why the secular because it otherwise why the secular group like i just want my would the secular group be like, oh, I just want my turn. Like, what do they fucking care? Like, they're doing it because they know they're going to get turned down, right?

And then they draw attention to this issue. Yeah, I mean, we would prefer that there not be invocations at all. Yeah, sure. Exactly. Which is why I was saying, that's why the secular group would be like, well, then I get a chance, and then you're going to turn me down, and then we can have this hullabaloo. It's like the Satanists, right?

When the Satanists put up a fucking monument to Baphomet, I'm going to get fucking a million fucking emails that I mispronounced a fucking made up deity's name. Anyway, you're going to check his birth certificate, fucking Baphomet or whatever the fuck his stupid name is. They put up these these images of him just to tweak people to say if you're going to put up your 10 commandments i'm going to put up this really crazy thing that is totally against what you believe and then suddenly everybody's just like let's just take down the right it's the same reason that these secular people are doing they're just like let's just

not have invocations it's what they're doing or what we've seen happen with towns creating free speech zones in order to have religious displays. And then, yeah, they show up and oh, we have to have a free speech zone for everyone. Never mind. We'll take our ball and go home. That shit was hilarious. Do you see that shit? They're like, we declare this a free speech

area. And then they're like, we're going to put up all our religious shit. And then they're like, so am I. Like, fuck no! No more free free space zones it was really like they panicked they fucking straight panic we're gonna have a religion fair right cool here's the satanist we close the religion fair right so funny it really does seem to be free religious freedom for me exactly no one else exactly and and it and it is funny, too, because it's excluding Islam. It's excluding a lot of times Jewish faith.

It really is just Christocentric. You know what I mean? They seem so tragically self-unaware that they're constantly surprised that this is going to happen because it's been happening now with regularity for several years. And they're just like, we didn't think that there were surprised that this is going to happen because it's been happening now like with regularity for

several years and they're just like oh we didn't think that there were like other viewpoints at a certain point really at a certain point you're just like yeah i guess the metal mucil is working right you know right well you know they haven't even bothered to read their own books so it's not like they're going to go out and try and introduce themselves to other points of view when they aren't even really that interested in the one they actually espouse. So, yeah. And I should say that we are not the only organization working on that. And I hope I don't misspeak, but I believe we're doing that in partnership with the, with Americans United. That's not a case that I am actively involved in.

It started before I came on board and we have hired outside counsel to handle that case in conjunction with Americans United. So what's the success rate for you guys? So the American atheists get involved, they're going to sue. What is the success rate?

Well, it depends. Are we talking about just litigation or all of our interactions with government? No, I'm talking about just in general. Well, I guess break it down for me. I'm curious. When it goes to litigation and it actually goes through the whole process, how successful are these suits? Well, I mean, I have not looked at the numbers and counted up all of our litigation and which one's won and which one's lost. We just count the hits and forget the misses. 100%. We always win. Always win when it comes to litigation.

Unless it gets thrown out on standing grounds or something. We don't count those. Because really, we're always sitting in court. And so I don't know why we even worry about standing. Terrible. Lawyer joke. Terrible. Lawyer joke.

Loved it. That's the best. That's the best they get. I'm not kidding. That's not a joke. American atheists, they do these lawsuits. Is there other things that they do? Like, is there something else?

Is there another branch of things that they do other than just lawsuits? Oh, absolutely. So there's American atheists that does all sorts of stuff. We coordinate with local activist groups. For instance, we took part in a counter-protest today in Kentucky, a counter-protest in the Westboro Baptist Church. And we support local atheist groups in other ways. We just held our national convention in conjunction with the solar eclipse in Charleston, South Carolina. What was your motto? It wasn't In God We Trust, is it? No. in conjunction with the solar eclipse in Charleston, South Carolina. What was your motto?

It wasn't in God We Trust, is it? No. Okay. You know, as far as I know, I don't think we have a motto. No motto? I'll have to talk to Dave. What do you put on your money? What's your heraldry?

A house Targaryen. Do you guys still do the billboards? Oh, absolutely. We did one for Christmas and I imagine we will soon be having another, uh, series of meetings to brainstorm, uh, the, the, the one for this Christmas. Um, but yeah, we do, uh, we do the billboards, the American Atheist Legal Center, which is our office down in D.C., where I am, has both a lobbying component and a litigation component. to oppose the repeal of the Johnson Amendment or actually to oppose the Muslim ban because we are of the belief that religious freedom for any member of a minority religious group helps the rights of all members of minority religious groups and those with no faith. So there's a lobbying component to the legal office and there's a litigation component.

Let me ask you a question about that. How effective is the lobbying? I mean, how often do you have to meet with Paul Ryan before he changes his mind? That's what I'm wondering. It's twice as many licks

as it takes to get to the center of a tutorial. You know how many years it has been since we've had a son? It's that many years. That's how long it's going to take. But seriously, I would worry, or not worry, but I would be

very curious to know you're lobbying a group of people that relies heavily on a Christian constituency and that every campaign that I've ever been made aware of, your religiosity as a candidate plays some significant role in declaring that you are of moral virtue. There's like one out atheist in Congress or something. So I'm really curious.

How does that how does that that is one of the reasons that we work with a coalition of partners because there are actually a number of faith groups that um have aligned interests with us in certain areas um yeah so catholics for choice or um actually that's the only one that comes to mind at the moment i don't mean to say that that's the only one but um i know it's the only one that pops into my head right now. So what about the Johnson Amendment? Tell me about that, because what coalition partners, are there religious coalition partners that are working with you on the Johnson Amendment issue? Because I would think they would all benefit. So a small number of religious organizations want the Johnson Amendment done away with,

because their interest is more political than community. But there are statistics about the number of churches and faith-based community groups that want no part of the repeal of the Johnson Amendment because they don't want to have to pick sides in political fights. And we think that they shouldn't take sides in political fights, but they don't. The repeal of the Johnson Amendment. So they feel like if the Johnson Amendment was repealed, that they would have then a pressure from their congregation to lead them in the arena of politics? Right. You'd have half the congregation asking them to endorse the Republican candidate, half the congregation asking them to endorse the Democrat,

or one Republican over another in a primary. It's just, it's not an area that people want, you know, infecting their religious life. And I completely respect that because I don't want their religion infecting my life in any way, shape, or form. But that's why we work together with these partners because in some settings, yeah, you do want, because of a particular lawmaker's constituency, you do want the faith-based group to take point, even if we're all working together to achieve

a shared goal. Well, tell us about your podcast. Sure. It's called All Too Common Law. I reliably put on an episode whenever I feel like it. And it's an ever-evolving project. I used to aim for about 45 minutes an episode. It's just me, though. So I was having to script out 45 minutes ahead of time

and do all the research and that kind of thing, which I just was unable to sustain a regular schedule that way. I've shifted it now to basically one story at a time as stories come up that I feel I have something unique to say on a topic. I put out a couple of episodes uh last month and i'm sure we'll be putting out another one soon you break down the the the legal issues surrounding like what like news stories that pop up so the the i think the most recent episode is a an in-depth breakdown of exactly what you have to do in order to impeach and convict a president.

A propos of nothing. Yeah, no, that's so weird. Not even remotely topical. And basically why we're going to have to wait until at least 2019 before we see anything on that front. God, really? Maybe he'll be dead by then. I mean, I'm not saying to kill him.

I'm just saying he just dies of natural causes. That guy's 71 years old. He's not the healthiest man in the world, whatever his doctor may say. Healthiest man in the world. Goodness gracious. That guy has fucking chocolate cake running through his face. His heart is like an easy bake oven.

The batter goes in, solidifies in his arteries, and gets pumped all the fat cells in his body. When they draw blood, it just frosts. It's like he's a red velvet cake. They take the needle out and then they just put a cherry right on top of it.

They actually just use a piping bag. They have him blow out the candle on his fucking syringe every time. You know, we laugh, but apparently he does get two scoops of ice cream for every one of anybody else at his golf club or whatever the heck that was. That is so funny. What a

child. What a petulant, shitty child. You get one scoop. What are you kidding me? Fuck you, Donald Trump. You're such an asshole. If Joffrey Baratheon was an idiot, um,

that's who our president is. And that is, by the way, that is not the opinion of American atheists. That is the opinion of Jeff Blackwell, host of All Too Common Law. That's fair. That's fair.

Is, is there any kind of, I know that you had mentioned earlier that there might be some, uh, some sort of matching going on with American Atheists right now with donations? Yeah, if you want to become a member of American Atheists, you can pledge to make a recurring donation. And we've actually received a generous pledge from a benefactor who provided us with up to $50,000 in matching donations. So if you want to donate

to American Atheists, if you do it now, you will essentially be doubling your donation. That's awesome. That is great. And you can do that at atheists, plural,

A-T-H-E-I-S-T-S dot org slash donate. We'll make sure to put a link on this week's show notes. This is episode 377. Where would they look if they were going to find All Too Common Law? iTunes, alltocommonlaw.com. Those are the easiest places to find it. Jeff, thanks for joining us today. It was a lot of fun.

You're welcome, guys. Thank you so much for having me on. And they will say to me and others who defend the rule of law, we have to do something about the 11 million. And some of them are valedictorians. Well, my answer to that is, and then by the way, their parents brought them in. It wasn't their fault. It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They weren't all brought in by their parents. For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another hundred out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. All right, this is from Right Wing Watch.

Steve King, deported dreamers can teach home countries, quote, how a civilized people interact with each other. Oh, my God, what a racist. What a shitty racist. This guy is the worst. This guy, a while back, if you remember, but we had somebody from Iowa send us a message because they were super mad that she used a term.

I think this term follows perfectly with this guy. He is a corn goblin. He's a corn goblin. We got a shitty email from somebody who's like, there's liberals in Ohio or there's liberals in Iowa. I'm not a corn goblin. First of all,

yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. You're in Iowa. You're in Iowa. First of all, I don't even want to say Iowa.

My body wants to say Ohio. Yeah. Like, because Ohio has cities. Iowa, like you have like, you have like a yurt made of corn and that's your city

hall or whatever. Most of the kids are named Malachi. I know this one. I've seen it before. Hey man, you remember that time somebody went to Iowa on vacation? No, nobody's ever done that. No, nobody's ever done that.

What would you do? It's like a make a wish kid out there. I've always wanted to see Des Moines. Is there any way you can take me to the farmer's market in Des Moines? You sure you don't want to go someplace fun someplace with people i've ever been in des moines oh i i've been to galena which is across river from des moines i think i don't even know at this point you wouldn't notice because i drove it's a cross river from something so i drove to des moines or through des Moines one time. I wouldn't go to.

To is the wrong word. Nobody goes to. Nobody's like, oh, my journey has ended. I can't wait. I reached Des Moines. I can't wait to get the Des Moines emails. It's going to be the best. Whatever.

They don't have any emails. There's going to be three people. It'll be like all of us here in Des Moines. Something will be hastily scribed on a corn husk and sent to us in the mail. I'm sorry. It's written in the mail. I'm sorry. It's written in Goblin. I can't read that. They basically took a burned stick char

and just like scribed it in there. Anyway, so you were, so you had the misfortune of going to Iowa. I drove through Des Moines and I was like, seriously, this is no shit. I was with a buddy of mine. We were driving and we just got in the car. We're like, well, I don't know. We're just going to fucking drive and see where I-80 takes us. So we drove through buddy of mine. We were driving and we just got in the car. We're like, well, I don't know. We're just going to fucking drive and see where like I-80

takes us. So we drove through Des Moines and we were hungry and we're like, oh, Des Moines is like a city. You thought? Yeah. And we couldn't find any place to eat in Des Moines. We had low standards. We were broke and poor. We're like, yeah, we'll just

stop at the first place that looks good. We just drove right out of Des Moines. We just, we needed a fucking rest stop. Like a service center rest stop had better options to eat at than Des Moines. Des Moines is a fucking nothing city. There's like two buildings

and they're just like, it's like somebody's garage. It's not even like a proper building. There's nothing there. I think the very worst part about Des Moines is that there's enough people there to elect this guy. Because when we listen to this guy talk in a few minutes, you just cannot believe how stupid a person can be and still get elected to office. Well, I don't know. He's both stupid and super, super racist.

So, well, here's his here's a little speech he's talking on uh this is on like it was on a breitbart thing i think uh another tweet you sent out this morning is former former daca uh in daca x uh apostrophe s doctor read the tweet you're reading all you have to do is read it what are you stuttering while you're fucking reading for what the fuck is that no one's asking you to fucking recite it from memory it's not fucking to be or not to be what is the motherfucking question jesus christ he's still not gonna get it today junior recipients will make great peace corps volunteers in their home countries. None would take more hardship or risk than we ask of the Peace Corps. Can you explain?

The Peace Corps is a volunteer force. You don't get to port it into the Peace Corps. What the? You get to come home when it's done. And the other thing, too, is. The fuck is that analogy? Okay. He's going to talk about the size in a little bit, and we'll get to that when I get to it.

But you're right, it's not an analogy because the Peace Corps is a volunteer organization where you have a nonprofit that provides for you. Right. You're not going to show up as a, they're not Peace Corps volunteers. It's not the Peace Corps is not going to be like, oh, you know what we'd like to do is up our organization by a thousand percent. is not going to be like, oh, you know what we'd like to do is up our organization by a thousand percent. They're not going to do that. And they're also not going to be able to put you up because that's what happens when you're on the Peace Corps.

You don't go and like get a job in the community. Right. You go and you get funded by people to help that community. Right. It's not like, hey, good luck. Hope you eat food today. Yeah. Welcome to the Peace Corps.

This is what they call a hoe. Right. This is what they call a shovel. Here is a bag of seeds. This is your food for the year. Enjoy Peace Corps. Peace Corps. Because you will be one soon.

That tweet. Well, yes. I mean, you know, people are saying, well, you send these poor DACA kids back to a country that they never knew. And the language they don't speak, a place where they don't have any connections whatsoever. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah, that's horrible. Because imagine if it happened to you.

Yeah. And that's the problem is, is that nobody has any empathy. Can you imagine what it would be like if you got put on an airplane right now? Just right now. Somebody put you on an airplane right now and sent you to Italy. Yeah. And then what happens? You walk off the airplane.

You have nowhere to go. Sure. You don't have any family. You don't have any connections. And I'm only an eighth Italian. It's just my last name. It happens to be Italian. But I'm only an eighth Italian.

You know what I mean? And I just chose that because I know your last name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you walk off that airplane and you look around and you think, fuck, I don't speak the language. I have no one to call. I don't have a place to live. I don't have transportation. You've got nothing.

You've got nothing. Basically, what they've done is they've said, oh, enjoy being homeless somewhere where you have no resources. And you're not going to, it's not like your parents moved here so they probably, they're not going back to visit the family there. The family that's structured there. So even if I did have relatives there, would they be willing to take me? They don't even know me.

And do they have resources to provide for you? And can they even do so? That's not true. That's how they paint it. They say, these are valedictorians. They're the salt of the earth. They are. Thisictorians. They're the salt of the earth. They are. This is the best. This is the cream of the crop.

This is the cream of the crop. You have to have, in order to get into that program, you cannot have any kind of criminal history. You can't have any of that stuff. And you have to be a good, upstanding person. A lot of these people go on to college. A lot of these people go into to college. A lot of these people go into the military. They become business owners.

Like these are not, this is a small group. This is less than, it's something less than, we figured it out earlier. It was like 8% of the immigrant population. This is the best part of the 8%. If you're going to talk about people with potential, it's the very best people that you could choose to help America

be better. Or we could deport them. Yeah, which is what he suggested. Because that's how you make a great guy. They're all good people and they're the cream of the crop. And some of them do fit that category. There's a lot of them that don't. And so I'm just...

A lot of them. Thanks for that number. That's great. A lot of them don't. Backed up with no evidence. How many? 50 of them that don't. And so I'm just... A lot of them. Thanks for that number. That's great. A lot of them don't. Backed up with no evidence. How many? 50 of them? It turns out, I looked at an article today

that was on Breitbart where they said 2,100 people have been arrested. There's been something that's been on there. And they listed what the arrests were.

Some of them were misdemeanors. Some of them were felonies, et cetera. And then they listed six or seven violent felonies. It's 2,100 over a five year period where over 800,000 people were involved, 2,100 people. And that's over a five year period. And some of these crimes are not, they're not they're not crazy crimes these are just crimes this is them trying to open up that you know that venn diagram as big as they possibly can to try to paint this group of people as a bunch of criminal thugs this is a group of people if you had 800,000

people randomly select let's say you you lived in a city of 844 000 people and you and over five years only 2100 crimes were committed and only five murders you would fucking live there tomorrow yep you'd be like this sounds like a great city yep 800 000 people and there's that few violent crimes fucking sign me up i would live there in a second. These people, these are not violent criminals. And they fucking even, I tweeted it today, but this fucking person found out that Breitbart used an image for the DACA kids, this 2100, used an image from El Salvador.

The image was of a gang in El Salvador, the 13-6 or whatever. M-13. Used an image of that, a gang in El Salvador, the 13-6 or whatever. M-13. Used an image of that, a fucking Getty image, to depict these kids as fucking violent thugs. Sure. No part of that is surprising. Yeah. No part of that is

surprising. It's so funny because they look and they say, well, look, there's crimes that are committed by these people. Well, there's crimes committed by any population large enough. Exactly. Right? I mean, as soon as I take a sample size outside the local kindergarten class, there's going to be crimes that are committed. Sure. So what you have, the only way that this would be relevant or meaningful is if you had a

statistical analysis that could prove that the crime rate, the violent crime rate, because that's really the only thing you would give a shit about, right? That the violent crime rate from undocumented immigrants was higher by, you know, substantively higher. Substantial margin, right? Yeah. That was higher than the crime rate committed by the non-

documented, just the regular citizenry or whatever, you know? Well, they never talk about that. No. They never compare apples to apples, right? They never talk about that. They love comparing their apples to their oranges. Or actually, what they do, what they rather love doing is comparing nothing.

Sure. They never draw a point of comparison. They never draw a, hey, let's see how this is, you know, representative or how does this fit into the whole. Instead, they're just like, crimes! Yeah. Period.

And then if you didn't hear them, they're just like, crimes Yeah. Yeah. Period. Well, and then if you didn't hear him, they're just like crime. And they want to do the same thing. Loud. Exactly. And they want to start a, a big, you know,

a fucking list of people. Right. That is just like, yeah, I want to start a list of these. Well, cause lists are intimidating, but they're only intimidating when you're like,

well, against, against, against what? Right. Are we going to start a crime list of all the people who are natural citizens? Yeah. Right.

So I'm making this point that if we shut off the DACA program, and there are 800,000 of them in the United States today, they would deploy, and I use that word that way, back to their home territories most likely. And they would go back there with a U.S. taxpayer-funded education. Many of them are college education. They don't have a top-notch. College educations aren't free.S. taxpayer-funded education. Many of them are college education. They don't have a top-notch... College educations aren't free. Taxpayers don't pay for those. Just saying. I don't want to point that out.

He's like, yeah, that's exactly right. There's very few places in this country where you can go and get any kind of college education for free. Where's my taxpayer college? I know that in Illinois, there are some scholarships that you get. And I think city of Chicago has something set up. But I'm talking about. Yeah.

But in general, you don't get a college education for free here. It's not taxpayer funded. So this guy's making it seem like, oh, yeah, but they all live under this false narrative that we're paying for their college somehow. But somehow these people show up here. They don't do fuck all for us. All we do is provide for them. And then they just leave our community anyway. English skills.

They would understand how a free enterprise economy works. Well, good with the English skills, too. If you deport them to a country that's not English speaking, English skills are not a like a general virtue or moral good. And I could be this. I could be the smartest person in the room in France. Right. Let's say there's no room I'm ever the smartest person.

But let's just say I was in France and I just happened to be in a room where I'm the smartest person in the room. But I don't speak a fucking lick of French. I'm not going to get a job there. Right. I'm not going to be like, man, I'm really fucking smart in English. Well, too fucking bad. If I don't speak the language, what the fuck good use am I? You know what I mean?

In those certain situations, I'm not, I mean, you know, maybe I can get a job like we do to the illegal immigrants here and make them a busboy. That's what we're sending away? These people that have been in our military? These people who have been college educated were saying go back to your country so you can be a busboy there? What the fuck? It's a waste of you know, we talk about sometimes we talk about

this idea of brain drain, you know and what a ridiculous waste of potential even if you're just selfish, like even if you didn't care, even if you didn't have empathy what an incredible waste of potential to take these folks and be like, yeah, all right, well, you could probably do some good here, but why don't we just take that and waste your fucking life? We'll just waste it. It's a resource and you're just shitting it out.

It's outrageous. And, you know, the people who come here that are busboys or that are in the service industry that are picking vegetables, they don't have a choice. They don't have a choice into what they're doing because they're coming here. They're choosing to come here. If we make somebody else do that, we're forcing these people into that situation. Those people are coming from a situation where they're poor and they don't have any options. where they're poor and they don't have any options. So they come here so that they can,

they're going to get paid less than minimum wage, but they're going to feel like they're doing well. They're living the American dream, right? They're trying to get better. They're trying to better themselves. They're doing menial, terrible jobs,

jobs that nobody wants, that literally no one wants. They're doing those jobs, but they're choosing to come here to do it. We're saying that what we want to do if we get rid of the DACA program and we send all these people away is we're saying, you know what?

We're going to send you somewhere and we're going to make you do what your parents did while they came here. By force. By force. Rather than by choice. How a generally corrupt free society first world works.

They're definitely going to feel that fucking charitable about the country that just fucking kicked them out. Exactly. They would have seen the transportation system we have, the educational system, the research and development systems that we have, how civilized people interact with each other. How civilized people interact. You're such a racist scumbag. You're such a fucking degenerate racist shithead.

God, how the fuck do you elect this fucking mouth-breathing garbage person? I mean, seriously. Iowa. One word, Iowa. That's how you do it. All of that would go with him back to their home countries. And wouldn't that be the best

economic and cultural development, a civilizational development that, say, Mexico could ever experience? I can't believe it. You couldn't be more racist if you lit a cross on fire. You know, maybe if we

took people and put them in the monkey house, it could train all the other monkeys to evolve into people. Unbelievable. And, you know, yeah, why don't we glut their market with a bunch of people that are overqualified for work? The idea that you're going to show these people are going to show up and be like, hey, you know, in America, they've got good transportation systems. And all these people are going to be like, oh, we didn't think of that. Ook, ook, ook. Are you fucking kidding me?

Oh, you know, it turns out the problem with our country is that we didn't know that other countries had better shit. We've never seen any photos of other places. And then they just talk in their fucking immigrant language or whatever they do. Ooka, ooka, ooka. Ooka, oka, oka, baka, baka, baka, baka, baka. These are their best and brightest.

Some of them are, but just give it to the people that advertise DACA and what if their words are right? Send them back home again. It'll have far more impact. It was never their home. Yeah, it was never, they've never lived there. You keep saying home.

You're right. It's never their home. You can't send somebody home again if it was never their fucking home. Yeah, it was never. They've never lived there. It's not. You keep saying home. You're right. It's never there. It was not. You can't send somebody home again if it was never their fucking home. Yeah. You know, my son, my kids don't have a fucking choice where they live. They live where I tell them to fucking live. Absolutely. Because they're fucking kids. I pick them up. I put them on my fucking shoulder

and I carry them to the place. I put them down like your home. Yeah, that's it. If I pick them up, bring them to Mexico and I say you're home now. Guess what, bitch? You're in fucking Mexico and you're now Mexican. Yeah, that's it. Or Canada pick them up and bring them to Mexico and I say you're home now, guess what, bitch? You're in fucking Mexico and you're now Mexican. Yeah. That's it. Or Canada. You know, you can take them and move them to Canada. Right. You know, and then you'd be like, oh, well, I got to send them back home because

they were born here. Your youngest son would have like no memories. He's even came in four memories yet. Very little memories of this place. Right. He wouldn't know. A lot of these people are young when they get here. Really young when they get here. Really young when they get here. One, two years old. They didn't have any fucking choice.

They were brought here. You know, how heartless is this? I mean, it doesn't take, I'm not a fucking, I'm not fucking a bleeding heart. This is real simple stuff. It's the meanest mean that ever mean to mean. It's so mean. And you'll get out of Peace Corps volunteers. And then they say, but it's too dangerous for them.

And it's a place they don't know the language. They don't know the culture. Nuts. We send Peace Corps volunteers to places where they- Peace Corps volunteers are supported. And they're trained before they get there. And hear me out, they're volunteers. Yeah, there's so many differences.

Are you crazy? You can't even remotely close. Don't know the language. They don't know the culture. And we say, figure it out. No, we don't. We don't fucking put him on a plane ticket and a fucking saber and send him somewhere in the world. Be like, figure it out.

Fuckhead. We don't care anymore. Make the world better. Fuck face. We don't do that. What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you serious? We need to deploy the Peace Corps

to Iowa, because clearly that is not civilized. Fucking flabbergasted with the stupidity. And become an ambassador to and from the country you're visiting. That's part of the network you build. We've got 7,000 and change Peace Corps workers around the world.

And we think they're doing a lot of good work. There's never been a- There's literally nothing analogous about the Peace Corps. Other than the fact that somebody woke up one day in a new country. There's nothing. There's literally no analogy. There's nothing. There's nothing at all that is remotely similar a thing. There's not one thing. And it's not that they woke up because they didn't want to be there. Right. You know, there's nothing analogous. In my time, there's never been a debate on whether it's wise to keep the Peace Corps going or not.

We believe in them. That's because they have nothing to do with this. If you go from 700,000, excuse me, if you go from 7,000 Peace Corps workers and scattered over 120 or more countries to, let's just say, 750,000. The Peace Corps, they're not gonna be like, okay, guys, everybody jump on board. They don't have funding for it. Where are they gonna get the funding for it? Also, they're not going to show up when they've been forcibly detained and deported out of the country.

They're going to be like, well, you know what I'm going to do? Nice things about America. You know what I'm going to do? Volunteer my time. Instead, they're going to be like, I need a food, sweets, and a place to live because you kicked me out of my fucking house. Former DACA recipients that are american

educated going back to their home country it would be a terrific economic boost for them yeah because they'd show up and be like i need a job how is that an economic boost hi i don't speak the language i don't know anything about the culture i have an education it's not relevant to what we do here anyway somehow dot dot dot money what what what what are they they made a gold and they cut open and they're just like a gold cupid inside each daca recipient for how you argue against that we i don't know how you argue for it. Nothing you said is, nothing you said even remotely constitutes meaningful thought. Are you kidding me? Rule of law.

And we left Mexico and Central America up to be on a path towards the first world. Iowa's not on a path to the first world. Fucking believable. Unbelievable. I do want to talk for a second about DACA because we talked about it before we recorded and we should talk about it a little bit. So they ended DACA. He ended it, but he's allowing what Trump is saying.

Trump is saying, try to pass it in Congress. He's trying to say that's what he's trying to say, because Trump wants to have both things. Trump wants to both be hard on immigration by ending DACA as a as a executive order. But he also wants to be he also wants to be magnanimous to these this group of people, which which I think and I'm willing to be proven wrong on this. But I from what I've read about the DACA recipients, these people are genuinely the cream of the crop. They are really, truly the type of people that you would want as a citizen of your country. These are the dreamers. These are people who, you know, they join our military.

They become business owners. They go to college here. These are people who you want to have as people who live in your country. You want them as citizens. It's a no-brainer, in my opinion. They've been trying to do this for 16 years. citizens. It's a no brainer, in my opinion, they've been trying to do this for 16 years. It's a no brainer, in my opinion, do this, this, this, uh, to, to take the best people that come in and let them become citizens. And in my opinion, it's absolute no brainer, but for some reason,

for the last 16 years, even though it's had bipartisan support, not a ton on the Republican side, but some on the Republican side still has not been able to get passed. Even I think it was in 2012, five Democrats voted against it, something like that. I mean, it's just like, you know, I mean, it's just amazing. You know, so, so it's had bipartisan support, but it's, it's never really been passed. I think this is the one time though, that if they sell this right, it could be passed. Now, what I hear is that they're going to try to tack this onto a bill, this DACA is that they're going to try to tack this onto a bill, this DACA thing.

They're going to try to tack it onto a bill that limits the amount of people that come in drastically from other countries. So there's a setup where they're trying to say, well, why don't we tack that onto the end of this? And then that way, you'll get your DACA people and then we'll get limits on immigration. And I think that's a huge win for the Republicans if they do that. It's a huge the DACA kids to stay, but if they're used as a political chip to try to get rid of 11 million people,

that's hard. That's a fucking, that's super hard to justify. It seems like a cake and eat it too moment for the Republicans, right? You know, like no matter how this turns out for them, or almost no matter how this turns out for them, they get to look both hard on immigration

and kind-hearted. Yep. Right? If this goes through the way I think it might. As you've described. And I'm just one guy who just sort of sees how this looks like it's maybe going to shake out.

Once they get the DACA kids in and they say, yeah, they can stay, now they can start doing whatever they want to the rest of those 11 million. Because they're like, no, we already gave you DACA. We gave you what- I know we talked about this before the show.

Like you feel like it's a little give in order to mask the big pull. The big pull. Yeah, right. You're hoping it's different. I'm hoping it's a wedge. You're hoping it's a wedge that opens that door. Right, but I'm an optimist in that regard.

And you are- I'm definitively a pessimist. I am definitively a pessimist when it comes to it. We'll see what happens with all this. It's not as dire for the DACA kids as I thought it was initially. From what I hear that they're, if their application is submitted, they're still going to be allowed and in,

they're still going to be allowed to be considered and they're keeping it open until March. And so there's something there's, there's, there's, they're still allowing people to be underneath that umbrella, but there's a time frame on what's going to happen. So I'm optimistic

that hopefully they wind up becoming citizens, but I hope that they're not used as a political pawn or something. That's horrible. So we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank specifically the newest patrons, Alan, Randall, Nick, Melissa, Peter, Taylor,

Penisaurus Dicks, Chris, Claire, Rachel. Wingdings? They look like, it actually looks like Greek letters letters to me but at least one of them look like a greek letter but i guess maybe it isn't it looks like it's yeah i don't know it's a bunch of x's and then an oe in the center i'm not sure gibberish uh gibberish and gibberish for the first and last name and anna thanks so much for your generous donations we really do truly appreciate it so we got a bunch of people, a bunch of messages from people in Houston.

We want to say, we hope that you guys are recovering from the hurricane that hit. We also hope that the people in the path of Irma don't have a lot of devastation. We won't know until a couple of weeks or a couple of days from now. We won't know the extent of that hurricane and what it does. But we hope that you're safe, anybody who's

in Florida. And we want to urge people, if you have a little extra dollars and you want to, and you want to help people that are going to be possibly displaced by this hurricane, Foundation Beyond Belief has disaster relief on their website that you can donate to. So make sure to go to it. It's foundationbeyondbelief.org. And at the very top

of their website, they have a link to disaster recovery and a giant donate button on the upper right-hand side. We got a message. This one is from Horatio and he says talking about the Ugandan porn

detector. Are they buying those porn detectors from Nigerian Prince's porn detector factory? I love that. You sound like somebody who's been duped before Horatio. Bitter experience. This isn't porn. The detector gave me a false positive. it's just the jc penny catalog

i'm still fine yeah it's fine i wanted to mention that i got a private message from michael wood jr this week and he had said that he was kidding around when he said the uh the comment that sounded conspiracy theory ask he said said, I was just joking around the, uh, you know, and when we were back and forth on the Skype and the way it was working in the way that we didn't get a chance to respond to it, it was just a joke that he threw out there that he was expecting a laugh to, and we didn't respond to. So when I wound up editing, I might have closed the gap of that conversation a little bit. And so, uh, so it was put in and he was saying he was clearly joking at that point. I, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Clearly,

I'm sure he was joking, uh, about the conspiracy theory stuff. Um, we probably still very much disagree on cannabis, but that's a different story. So we got another, a couple of messages about cannabis too. And, and a couple of different people specifically, Deborah sent us a message and said, the reason why people aren't experimenting and doing these tests with cannabis is because it's a Schedule I drug or something like that. And it's very illegal. It's a highly illegal drug. And I asked specifically, I said, well, aren't there places in the United States where it's not illegal? And they said, yes, but it's still federally illegal. And so the FDA and other things, there might be a problem with that.

So we understand now that those, that they might not be able to do the kind of research that they need to do in order to get it passed. But that doesn't really change much of the argument. Yeah, it doesn't, to me, it doesn't, that has no effect at all on the argument that you have to do studies to prove the efficacy and dosage, right? I see why we can't do that. And that sucks. But until and if we can do that, you can't make claims until you back up those claims. Right. So you can't say, well, I would back them up, but it doesn't matter. Yeah. You can't make the claim that you just have to say, look, this is on hold. Yeah. This whole

conversation in any meaningful way is on hold until and unless we have an opportunity to study and prove what we're trying to study and prove. If you just say, well, you know, we didn't study it, and we can't because there's problems with studying it, but it's totes really good for you and you should try it a lot. That's nonsense. Yeah. Like, it's just nonsense. If you like to smoke weeks, it's fun. Smoke weeks, it's fun. Smoke weeks, it's fun. Like, That's nonsense. Yeah. Like it's just nonsense. If you like to smoke weeks, it's fun. Smoke weeks, it's fun. It's fun.

Like that's cool. Yeah. But don't decide that it's, you know, some great panacea for all things, you know, until we figure it out. If it's effective,

it's effective. Until we figure it out. Yeah. Right. And we might not be able to do that for a while. We may never be able to do that. We got a message.

This is from Dan. And Dan and I went back and forth about the Kekistan thing. There was a bunch of comments about Kekistan. And a bunch of people said we missed the point about what Kekistan is. They claim that what Kekistanis and what the Kek people are is sort of a flying spaghetti monster. So they created a sort of a myth about identity politics to sort of lampoon both sides of identity politics.

And, and we got, we got, Dan and I got into a little back and forth about it. And he said, you know, look, they're not trying to, these people are, are, are against identity politics. So they clearly, they're not racist types of people. And I said, well, look, I saw the Kekistani flag in the, in the protest down in Charlottesville. And those people were all carrying white supremacist flags and Nazi flags and Dixie flags. And these are, I mean, this is a white supremacist rally. And if you have people in that rally that have this stuff and I, and I'll, I don't be perfectly honest. Someone had said, well, I didn't see it. Well, this week they released another full 25 minute video of the violence down there. And I watched most of that, but not a lot of it, actually. I only watched

maybe 10 minutes of it. And so I started watching it. And the first part is them at night. So I fast forwarded through the night part. Cause I, you can't see anything anyway. I can't see what anybody's carrying and they're all just carrying tiki torches. I fast forwarded through the night part because you can't see anything anyway. I can't see what anybody's carrying. And they're all just carrying tiki torches. I fast forwarded through it. I want to say maybe two minutes into that footage, I saw both a shield, like someone had made and painted a shield with the Kekistan symbol on it. And then I saw a full on flag all standing with the Nazis. So you can't tell me that they haven't adopted this. Now, maybe this isn't the true reason why this thing was created, but these people have adopted it.

And I got to be perfectly honest, if you are against identity politics like these people say that they are, right? They say that they made this group up. They made this idea up to lampoon identity politics. up to lampoon identity politics. If you are against identity politics, you should be on the other side with your flag fighting against the Nazis and the fucking white supremacists, because guess what? That is 100% identity politics. That is that they are the birth. They are the genesis of identity politics in this country. If you hate identity politics, you should have been standing with all those other people that are against them. There should have been a line of Kekistani flags. If that's what this was, there should have been a line of them against the white supremacists,

but I didn't see that. So I'm going to say that either, either you've, they've, the real people who, who are against identity politics on both ways, which I think is kind of bullshit anyway, because it's not, it's, it's a false dichotomy. On the one side, you have once in a while a shrill, screaming feminist and on the other, you have people who want genocide. So I don't know how you fucking false dichotomy your way into that to be like,

well, they're both real bad. No, you're an idiot, okay? That's a dumb thing to think. But if you're truly behind this and you really think, I really just want to separate myself from identity politics and you hate the idea of identity politics, I don't know how you don't pick up and go against this. So either they've left it, they've abandoned this Kekistani thing, and they've let the alt-right take it, or they're lying. Those are the two options. Yeah. Symbols, I was thinking about or they're lying. Those are the two options.

Yeah, yeah. Symbols, I was thinking about this a little bit. You know, one of the things about symbols is symbols are problematic in that they're subject to change or they're subject to being co-opted. Sure. And if they are co-opted by, you know, if you create a symbol and you say, well, the origin of that symbol is X, right? The origin of the swastika is not the Nazis, right? But the problem is that once the Nazis have taken that symbol, that symbol then becomes

associated with the Nazi party, right? So swastika is now associated with the party. It is forever tainted. That's it. You can't go back and say, well, originally it wasn't a racist, so now I can use it and it won't seem racist. You have to be real about how things are being used in practice, right? Symbols are not in theory this is what it meant or this is what it was intended to be or the origin was benign. None of that actually matters. None of that has any meaning. Don't send me that shit. It literally doesn't matter.

All that matters about symbols is what is the effect of the symbol? How is it being used? Symbols are only ever practical. They are never theoretical. Sure. Because a symbol doesn't have actual meaning. The meaning is always ascribed. It's not assigned. It is always ascribed. So

if it changes and it makes you totes sad because you wish it was the original thing, sorry, you lost control of the symbol. Yeah. And now it's gone. It slipped out of your hands. It's over now. And I think the reason why you lost control of the symbol is because you played the fucking

false dichotomy card way too many times. Exactly true. And they said, well, we know you hate the feminists. Well, we hate them too because we hate all people because we're fucking misanthropes. There's a reason a certain group of people seized upon that symbol, right? They didn't seize upon that symbol by accident. They didn't choose the Care Bears.

Right, exactly. We got a message from, this is from Kale. Interesting name. And Kale. Not name. And Kale... Not delicious. Well, depends. It might be in hummus. He sent us a picture

of a hummus trio. It is Neapolitan hummus. For $6.99. We are going to post a picture of this hummus trio on this week's show notes. It's probably better than Neapolitan ice cream

soups across anyway, so... I would scoop that fucking hummus across. No worries. So we want to thank Jeff Blackwell, who is the staff attorney for the American Atheist and also the host of All Too Common Law, the podcast. We're going to leave links for his work on this week's show notes.

Thanks, Jeff, for joining us today. That's going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to set your calendars and set your timers for our live stream when we're trying all kinds of horrible things that we'll be imbibing and eating and vomiting. Because we paid for the

equipment. Okay. Watch us eat a poo. Check us out on the live stream. It should be a lot of fun. That's going to be again. We'll put a link to it where we're going to be, but it's going to be on the 17th. We'll put a link on this week's show notes. Thanks for joining us. We're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie

cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo-quasi-alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information, and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you.

You know the show, so you know you can swear, you can laugh, you can interrupt us. It's all good. We're just going to all just play and have fun so uh so let's get started what do you say sounds great all right all right so we're recording we're ready to go i'm gonna try not to geek out okay just here's the thing you gotta laugh at everything we say that's the key that makes just like everything like exactly like that do a really fake one if you can the fakest laugh that he could

it's so evil he's got a good evil laugh I've honed that over decades they teach that in attorney school man that's like part of the bar like the last question of the bar let's hear your evil lair laugh. It's like part of the bar. Like in the last question of the bars, let's hear your evil layer laugh. Let's hear your maniacal laughter.

That's the oral portion of the bar exam. Hey, that's a different kind of exam. I never know if I'm passing. There's no few lawyers. Come on.