Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 413: The Clutch Your Pearls Hour

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Stories From The Week

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. 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 gloryhole studios in Chicago. 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 at this episode. Four hundred and a lucky 13. Yeah, this is actually 414. We're skipping 413. Oh, yeah. It's anywhere in between floors. Got to make sure my building downtown has a 14 A and B. That is so stupid. Ridiculous.

14 A and B. It's so stupid. It's like, oh, go 12 from 14. It's like people are like birds you put a fucking cover over and because it's so stupid and they don't know it's fucking nighttime like we're just we're so stupid we don't know where did i go oh they do that in planes do you have a being john malkovich floor they do that on planes sometimes i don't know about all there's like no row 13 it's like no row 13? There's like no row 13.

It's always 14 or 12 to 14. You're just like, 14 is 13! You just renamed it! You just numbered it wrong! You can't count, you stupid assholes! Now when I have bad luck,

I won't know why! This week, we're going to be doing a lot of politics. It's pretty much all politics. And we hope that it's still relevant because shit travels so fast. All right. We're doing this. We're going to cover the impeachment.

Yeah. This shit travels so fast that it's within a week and we're recording it a week ahead of time. Right. It could be irrelevant by the time we start talking about it. All right. But let's start. His first story is from CNBC. It appears China stopped buying soybeans from the u.s all together because of the trade fight so uh the trade fight is we basically told china like hey we're not buying

your steel anymore we've been doing that to a bunch of different places we have yeah we have saying yeah like we're not gonna we're we are getting pissy yeah like that is what is happening we're imposing tariffs and uh you know it turns out that we're not going to, we're, we are getting pissy. Yeah. Like that is what is happening. We're imposing tariffs and, you know, it turns out that we're not the only ones that can impose a tariff. We're not the only player in the game. Yeah. And by doing this, like China was like, oh, it's a great story. I'm not going to buy 62,000 tons of soybeans.

Right. And it's a lot of money and people are projecting that this could be a really big deal because China is one of the major buyers of soybeans in the United States. We have billions of dollars that we export. And one of the major exports of the Midwest is soybeans. Agricultural products in general are a major export of the United States. Getting into a trade war with China seems insanely foolish.

Yeah. You know, like, I don't even know, like, you get into a trade war with China, how do you win? How do you win without losing so badly along the way that we damage our economy in that process?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, even if there's like a long-term gain, the long-term gain being that we get more favorable trading position with China moving forward, you know, the worry that I have on that, even if we were to gain that down the road, is it's not like China's fucking toothless. Yeah.

No, they absolutely. It's China. Yeah. It's China. It's China. Yeah. So like, if we take a bunch of lumps along the way and get beat up and bruised in that process, who eats that shit? Well,

that's the difference, right? Is that I think when you're a businessman and you have your own company, you can burn bridges a lot easier than when the entire fate of your nation is resting on this sort of thing, right? Yeah. You know, yeah, somebody's going to have to eat shit. And if you're the CEO, you're probably not doing it. You know what I mean?

You've got to let a few people go. You let people go because you want to be stubborn about this or that or, you know, this supplier or that supplier. But when it comes down to the United States people, we're talking about a giant swath of this nation that relies on agriculture for its funds. And somebody is going to have to pick up that slack, right? So that money is going to go where, you know, are we going to be able to sell them? Are we going to get the same price that we were getting from China? Is that where's that, you know, that money, you know, that money is going to decrease no matter how you look at it. You're going to, you're going to lose money in this deal. Plus like it occurs to me that, you know,

it's not like China's not getting the soybeans. So what they did is they found another international supplier. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So who's to say when this ends, they go back to buying our fucking soybeans. Right.

Right. Maybe they're like, you know what? Hey, we got a real good deal from these other guys. We're going to keep buying them from the fucking other guys. Sure. That aren't going to fucking get pissed off and impose a goddamn tariff on my steel and my lead painted toys and all the rest of it.

Soybeans is a $22 billion. It's an industry in the United States, $22 billion. But it's not even, you know, like, like agriculture is an export of $133 billion. Massive amount of money. Massive amount of money. You know, corn, meat and poultry and soybeans make up the largest amount of that. But there's a lot of other things that, you know, we export that they could, you know, stop taking. One of the major things is capital goods.

We export $533 billion in capital goods. Commercial aircraft accounts for $121 billion. Industrial machines, $57 billion. Semiconductors, $48 billion. Electric apparatus, $43 billion. Telecommunications, $38 billion. Medical equipment, $35 billion. You talk about any of those things, you start getting into a trade war. These are, this is billion dollar industries we're talking about. You know, you're, you're, you, you are fucking with a country that has many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many more people than we have. Right. And a significantly more ruthless attitude toward those people.

So it's like you're playing chicken with somebody who is not afraid to crash into you. It's, it's a, this is one of the reasons why I think a lot of people voted for Trump though. When you think about it, they want to see this show now. They want to see this, this us say, we don't need you. You know, it's that American, you know, uh, individualism that lets us say, look, we can make it on our own. You know what? You take this deal because we're telling you this deal is what the deal is. I know, but like all of our economies, like it's such a, that's such a fucking ye old fashioned way to look at it. Absolutely. It's a cowboy way of looking at the world. The economy of every country is now just inextricably tied.

You know, it's like when we had a housing crisis in 2008, that the economic fallout of our housing crisis reverberated across the world. Yeah. Across the world. Sure. They felt that economic pain. Yeah. Look at what happens with Brexit. You know, when something happens, you know, anything that happens in other little places, these markets hit, that changes everything.

The entire aspect of the entire world. I work in the real estate market. I remember when Brexit happened, I called one of my managers into my office and I said, be prepared for a refinance boom. And we got one. Yeah. Because Brexit happens, it creates international instability. Investors don't know what to do. They buy treasury bonds that reduces interest rates and refinances go up. Yep. I hired after Brexit. Sure. Because I knew like, oh yeah, thanks for the money. Thanks, because we're all linked together. We're all linked together. And I think that individualism is what we want to strive for. We don't want to be linked together. We want to be able to put our foot down and say, we're not going to pay a lot for this muffler. Never going to happen though.

And the problem is that sometimes when you do that, there's consequences. And this is one of those consequences. And I don't think this is going to be an isolated incident. But this is old fashioned isolationism, economic isolationism. Yeah. And it doesn't work anymore. Not long ago, he said his country could wipe the U.S. off the face of the earth. Tonight, a dramatic turnaround for Kim Jong Un.

the face of the earth. Tonight, a dramatic turnaround for Kim Jong-un. After speaking with top South Korean intelligence officials, meetings attended by Kim's wife and his trusted younger sister, the dictator says his regime is willing to talk to the U.S. about giving up its nuclear weapons. All right, so some interesting shit, some really interesting, and I got to say, like, really excitingly, potentially positive news is coming out of the Korean Peninsula. So North Korea and South Korea, they're talking. Not only are they talking, they're walking and talking.

Yeah. Literally walking and talking together. Kim Jong-un came across. He came across the border between North and South Korea. Kim Jong-un actually said some, did you hear what he said when he promised not to stop the missile test? You hear how he phrased it it's actually pretty funny he told uh moon

he said you know i heard that you were woken that your sleep was interrupted many times in the middle of the night by national security meetings because of our uh testing i'll make sure you get a good night's rest from now on i think i I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but not much. I think it's really clever. Yeah. Like it's a really like tongue in cheek sort of way to say it. Like, and this is the first they're talking about putting an end. They're talking like actively talking about finally putting an end to the Korean war.

And they're talking about reunification of the North and South. A lot of reasons why that might be happening. One of which is that they might've blown up their mountain. It appears they blew up their mountain. One of the reasons is, is that at least part of that mountain fell in. Yeah. Right.

And you know, there's, there's other reasons too. And I don't want to discount the major, one major reason, which might be finally there's somebody unpredictable in there where they're like, I don't know. Yeah. There may also be the opposite end of that, which is there's somebody in there who they think they can manipulate.

Right. Because there's a National Review article I was reading on this that had a great quote and I want to read it. It said, we have seen this particular show before and nothing good has come of it. North Korea's diplomatic strategy of the last few decades has been to pretend that it will make major concessions only to renege on those promises after pocketing economic benefits. So this is not something new. This is not a brand new world here. Some of the actions that he's taking, crossing the border, signing the war, being over the armistice and whatever. Yeah. You know, a lot of the big showy stuff is new.

Right. But the fact that they will say that they're going to do something and then not do it, you know, and possibly not do it is not new. That's not new. They've been in communication with our government, our government in particular for many years since the Clinton administration, there's been some sort of communication between them. Now, Obama didn't, didn't do anything with them. No, he couldn't get anything done. And I, in fact, I think he just, you know, just ignored the problem in a lot of ways. The current administration

has had a totally different approach, which is to ridicule the guy over there, the leader of that nation, ridicule him on Twitter, talk about, you know, in some ways, some very distressing, at least to me, tweets about. Oh, about my nuclear power and things like that.

Nuclear power is bigger than yours. Very distressing. Yeah. Very distressing. And I have no idea what level that played in this because there's all these other factors, right? There's no control group. There's no way to look at this and say, this is the one thing. I can isolate the variable.

Right. Now, Trump is, of course, claiming all the credit for this. But there's a lot of variables that go into this. Well, and we don't know if there's anything to claim credit for just yet. Yeah, you don't know. I will say, though, credit where it may be due. Trump's bellicose grumblings may may urge Kim to say, like, look, all right, this is a guy who will he we might actually shoot a nuke at me. I never really believed Obama would do it. Yeah, this guy might shoot a nuke at me. I never really believed Obama would do it.

This guy might shoot a nuke at me. Maybe I need to do this. It also might be the case, too, and I'm just speculating, but I was thinking about this when I was reading. Like, it might be the case that he realizes, like, he's three generations out now. He might look and say, look, the greatest legacy I could have as a person, as a personality, would be to be the person that unifies and reunites the Koreas. That I, you know, if you were just speaking selfishly, the most selfishly gratifying thing he could do for his own personal political legacy would be to unite the Koreas. And it may be that he's far enough away from the war and from the ideology of his grandfather.

Could be. That could be. Absolutely. That he might see that and say, you know who I want to be? I want to be the greatest Korean hero ever. Yeah. You know, it's giving up your personal power because, you know, if you read anything about North Korea, you know this guy

is just an absolute, the one power point in the entire, in the entire nation. He has all the say. And he lives a life

that is different from every single person over there. He is the little kid in that twilight zone that can wish you into the corn field. He is, he can do whatever he wants. Um,

ice cream for breakfast. He clearly eats ice cream for breakfast, but you know, there's this, he definitely can do any of the things that he wishes to do. Right. And so he's giving up that power, but like you say, I don't think he's not going

to still be powerful. And I don't think that his, I think that his legacy then becomes, you know, so much greater. But one of the things too, I was thinking is if you unify this, this, and you allow people in there, they get to see the atrocities because there's been lots of people who have reported these atrocities, especially people who've escaped from there. And, you know, there's been some videos that have leaked and things like that. Oh, it's horrible. Of the horror that is that country. Think of the humanitarian boon that this is because of all those people that just suffer every single day of their life.

This is one of the biggest humanitarian... This has the potential to be a groundbreaking moment. Think of all these people whose lives just change completely from completely desperate to being able to eat. To join international society

and have some of the opportunities and safeguards. Because right now, the North Korean people have no safeguards against the tyranny of their government. Absolutely not. And the capricious whims of a dictatorial madman, right? Yeah. So, but wouldn't it be wonderful

if Kim Jong-un was not that madman? Yeah. Right? Because, you know, I read an interesting article when he first came to power. It was basically like, look, there was no guarantee that just because he's a Kim, that he would ascend to power, that there's a number of other power brokers within his government generals and others, other family members that would have loved to have stepped into that vacuum created when his father died.

And so it's entirely possible that he had to do that, you know, beat up the biggest guy in prison sort of thing, you know, go kill that guy in Malaysia. Right. You know, honestly though.

Yeah. He had to go get those two girls to stab him in the neck with that thing and kill that guy. Yeah. It was a brother or half brother. Half brother. Yeah. Yeah.

But like if, if, and I don't know that this is the case, but it's interesting to think about. Like, if he had a plan to unify the Koreas, he could only enact that plan if he came into power. Sure. He had to have some blood on his hands. Right.

Yeah. This was never going to be a bloodless transition of power because it's not like this. Sure. of power because it's not like this. So however that had to happen, I think it would be not wise, but it would be joyously optimistic

to be able to see best intentions realized. I don't know that that's realistic. I'm just saying it would be great were that the case. It would be a great story in a book. Yes.

You know, if that was the case. I'm not even suggesting that that's what's happening. It is finally possible, though, that that is even remotely worth thinking about. A thing, yeah. It'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out. about. It'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out because these kind of negotiated deals,

they're real sensitive. They have a lot going. There's a lot of stuff. A lot of hidden parts, yeah. Well, some people may want to say that Trump is the catalyst for all this. I don't trust Trump or his administration to

make any kind of deal that has any kind of, I mean, I have a feeling like they're looking for any win that they can, because they were going to win so much. We were going to be sick of winning and they're kind of not winning a lot. They're kind of not winning a lot. And I think they're looking for any win they can. So this would be something that I think that they want to fast track and make sure. And again, like, while I look on the other side of this, from Kim Jong-un's perspective, it's like maybe he recognizes that too. Yeah. You know, that they want to just try to get a win however they can get it. Yeah. Yeah. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. These allegations are false.

Yeah. So this is kind of interesting from NPR. Trump admits to authorizing Stormy Daniels payoff, denies sexual encounter, because you often pay off people that you weren't fucking and want to hide it. Weird thing to pay for. What are you paying for? What are you paying for then? Like, first off, you didn't pay good money anyway,

because everybody knows. Right. But at the same time, it's like, what are you paying for then? I just wanted you know i wanted to help a young mother out or whatever let me let me read the tweets because again like everything that comes from this asshole comes in tweet format yeah even when the tweet as and i just want to say like even when the tweet as a medium yeah doesn't work and so it becomes

a series of tweets to form a statement exactly like write a memo you stupid asshole do you not have any other app on your phone makes me fucking crazy all right so here's what you dictate that shit you got a secretary for fuck's sake yeah type this over are you kidding me right now all right sitting there twiddling his thumbs mr i love the way it's phrased. Mr. Cohen, an attorney, not my random attorney. I don't know. He's an attorney. He might be a barista. I don't know.

He's an entrepreneur. Mr. Cohen, a man. Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA.

What are you not disclosing, though? I love this part. These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. Only if you're a person of wealth fucking a celebrity. Nobody wants you to know. Whenever you're a person who's a celebrity who meets another celebrity,

you're like, I have this NDA. We can't admit we know each other. So crazy. In this case, it is in full force and effect and will be used in arbitration for damages against

Mrs. Clifford Daniels. The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair, despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. I love the idea that you've got this letter that you think exonerates you from fucking somebody, but you'll also give them $130,000.

Now I've never had to pay anybody for them to say I didn't fuck them. Like, all the people I didn't fuck are more than willing to be like, hey, he didn't fuck me. Like, that's a crazy thing to say. Many of those people

would say this about me. Ew. Right? So crazy. Prior. I also love the idea. Like you get a letter from somebody that you didn't fuck detailing that you didn't fuck them. I'm not fucking.

It's like, has not been handled. So crazy. Stupid. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and and her attorney this was a private agreement money from the campaign or campaign contributions played no role in this transaction it's interesting because uh giuliani got on the on the air on sean hannity did you hear this i did oh my gosh where he's just like he's just basically saying, look, it's true that they, that there was this money and that Cohen did pay it. Right. But it didn't come out of the campaign. Like, like, and that's why he had to like say that there was, you know, there was money that was received.

What's nuts is like from other things that I've been reading, it's like you don't understand. Like it is a violation of federal election law to pay somebody off to influence an election. That is payment in kind. Yeah. So whether it came from the account that your campaign money sat in or whether it came from a different account. If the intention of that money was to influence people's perception about your candidacy, it is a campaign fund. Yeah, it could because Giuliani said this. Giuliani said, imagine if that came out on October 15th in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.

Giuliani said on Fox, Cohen didn't even ask. He just made it go away. He did his job. That's important because if the payoff money was for the purpose of influencing the campaign then it is under law it would still have to be reported right that's what i was just saying yeah it has to be reported and it wasn't well it is now on twitter tom yeah i come the this this is going to be and there's a lot of people have been saying this this is gonna be the thing

that might be the real problem that's none of the other stuff it's not crazy other terrible stuff it's that this money it's not that he fucked her either no it's not that he well didn't fuck her and just paid her a lot of money or whatever I don't even know what your story is

like you do this has gotta be some really weird sofa conversations with Melania too didn't fuck her and just paid her a lot of money or whatever. I don't even know what your story is. Like you do. Like you do. This has got to be some really weird sofa conversations with Melania too. Just be like, I totally just gave her money. I did not have sex with that woman. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Did you see the handholding thing?

Oh no. Oh my God. Pause everything you're doing. Google Trump, Melania, handhold. Once everything you're doing. Google Trump, Melania, handhold. Once again, this is from the cut. Once again, Donald Trump awkwardly tries to hold his wife's hand. Here we go. Watch this video.

This video is amazing. Watch how many times he has to signal he wants to hold her hand. For those of you who have not seen this video, the video is fucking outstanding. He's standing next to Melania, and he's like, he does like the pinky touch, like he like reaches over with his shitty little tiny pinky

and like pinky touches her and she moves her hand away and back. And then he kind of like goes and like tries to grab at her hand area with his tiny mitts. He lets go. She walks away and she just kind of lets like cold fish lets go of his hand.

Oh, my gosh. The fucking conversations between them has to be gold right now. I don't think there are any conversations right now. I think that that is a silent room. You got to think, though. You got to think, though, when, you know, when that...

I think rich people have different agreements than a lot of other... Maybe the Obamas were rich. Yeah. They didn't seem. Yeah. But I'm saying like, like,

you know, these two people were celebrities before they became, they became. Oh, I think they have an, I think they have a different agreement. I think they have an agreement called you be beautiful. I'll be rich.

Yeah. I think that feels like what the, and it doesn't feel like it's been a very loving relationship the whole time. So I think like, I think you look at the Obamas, they seemed like they enjoyed each other. Yeah. I,

I, I also, when I, when I talk about that, when I'm saying the sofa time and stuff like that, I'm thinking like, like I always put my relationship in there, you know,

where you're just like, what kind of weird, awkward conversation would you be having? You'd be like, totally gave her money for not sex. Like you come home. It like okay um so so uh who good news is we're going to europe honey you're gonna read some things on twitter bad news is i130,000 out of your safety deposit. Good news is I replaced it with a trip to Europe. I'm just going to go ahead and buy you some more things.

And this other story is very similar, Tom. This other one just dovetails with it. This is the feds. Actually, I found this came out today. By the time this airs, this will be a whole week old. But they actually did monitor the phones of Cohen and they wound up intercepting

one call from the White House to Cohen. This is interesting because as I was reading about this, one of the things that they were saying was, you would have to have a big old stack of documents saying that there's some real shady shit going on in order to get this phone tapped. Yeah. They don't.

And this wasn't a full tap. So this is a log, like a paper log. Like they just they monitor who called when they called like that sort of thing. They don't listen to the content. So it's not quite to the full level of a tap just for clarity. But yeah, this doesn't happen just because you think possible. Maybe. Yeah. Right. Like there's a high standard that has to be met here. Yeah. So some shit's going to happen here, buddy. I don't, yeah, I don't know what, you know, I think, I think what, what's going to,

the time will tell and what's going to tell this, and this is even came out today. Paul Ryan had said this in another article. Basically, look, if we don't win in 2018, they will impeach Trump. That's what he said. He said it out loud. And it's just what everybody knows, right? If somehow the Democrats win back Congress and the House, and there's a sweep of both of those things in 2018, there could be a very good chance that Trump could be impeached. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that anything happens. You know, we don't know exactly what happens with that. And so that's going to be really

interesting. It depends on how slowly or quickly Mueller proceeds. You know, any of this stuff, all this stuff seems to be under scrutiny at this point. So it's not just the Russia collusion. It's also, you know, all these other pieces that they're taking a look at, too. If I'm Trump and it's like, let's say let's just for the sake of argument, let's say he did all this stuff. Part of me would be like, man, the thing I'm going to get in trouble for is that. Yeah. The one thing. Really? Like, I've done so much more. Like, and I'm not saying you did this.

I'm just saying, like, assume it for fun. Yeah. Like, could you just imagine, like, the thing that's going to knock me. You're going to sink my battleship. It's Al Capone getting charged with tax evasion. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it's like all the bad shit that you've done. Right.

It doesn't matter. You didn't pay your taxes. You know, one of the things that I think plays in the Democrats favor when it comes to 2018, not only Trump being in office and being an awful human being, but I think one of the things that happens very often is, is that the United States people have a very short memory. And so if you don't get anything done, you don't do anything real big with the time that you had both the houses and the presidency. You'll lose them.

You'll lose them. And that has shown to be true. You know, look what happened to Obama. They had everything for just for two years. It's electoral whiplash. It happens all the time. It happens all the time. And so, you know, that's something that that's playing in.

But we can't get complacent if that's the case. You know, I'm going to be voting for the Democrat here, you know, of course, but you know, I, I don't want to get complacent and think, you know, it's automatically one, like there's been a lot of things anymore, man, a lot of outrage since then. And I think that there could be a really huge win in, at the end of this year for, for, uh, for the progressive party and flip both of them. I mean, it, it seems like- It very well could happen. Even in the most contested places, people that have been safe for years-

Are losing. Are either losing or starting to be like, that position's not safe anymore. When they come up for election, that's not gonna be a safe place. They're really gonna have to campaign real hard. No guarantees, no sure things. Hey, you wanna get high, man?

That's how they do it, they got wooden balls, man. I got a joint here, man. I've been saving for a special occasion. This story is a cool story. This is from TheRoot.com. Seattle vacates hundreds of marijuana charges going back 30 years. So the city of Seattle filed a motion asking

the Seattle Municipal Court to vacate hundreds of marijuana possession convictions going back three decades. Um, and part of the claim was that, you know, a study of these convictions revealed that they were, uh, a lot of racial disparity. Yeah. Um, that was a part of these convictions. Basically like if you were black and caught holding, you went to jail more often than as somebody who was white and caught holding. And so they're going back in time and they're erasing people's record. Yeah, because it says in the article, the arrest can stay on their records for years and impact their prospects for jobs, loans, housing and benefits.

It's a great, you know, this is something that gets passed up and not thought about, I think, by a lot of people who just want to be able to smoke pot recreationally. I think that, you know, like when we're talking about, you know, like voting for that legislation, responsible government would be, okay, well, now it's legal. We need to really start going back and scrubbing off these records and then releasing people that are in this, you know.

Man, I totally agree. I don't know how you can like convict somebody on Tuesday and then on Wednesday it's legal and that guy convicted on Tuesday goes to jail. Or has his record ruined forever because of something that is perfectly legal. And I think within our lifetime we'll be perfectly accepted all across the United States. I totally agree. I think it's going to be just like ordering a beer at a restaurant. Nobody's going to think twice about you ordering a beer if you're an adult. They're not going to think twice about you smoking a blunt if you're an adult. There's going to be a point in the future where that's not even going to matter. Places around, we just had a referendum here in Cook County. And again, there's referendums basically just to just just to test to see how well this does. Right.

It's not deciding anything, but it passed by 60 some percent. Like it didn't pass, but it was it was voted on at 60 some percent of the people were favorable to decriminalize to decriminalize marijuana. Marijuana is already decriminalized. They're saying make dispensaries. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. To recreational. Let me see what it says.

I'll read the... The ballot said, shall the state of Illinois legalize the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, testing, and sale of marijuana and marijuana products for recreational use by adults

21 or older to state regulation, taxation, and local ordinance and... Wow. Yeah, the question approved by voters with a greater than two to one margin. So there was a lot of people in, in our,

and just in, in our, you know, in our state that wanted to approve marijuana sales as a dispensary type thing. Yeah. Cause I think it's just good for the economy. I was going to say,

Seattle's going to take in $730 million in tax revenue over the course of two years. Yeah. Based on this. Illinois could use that. Absolutely. And you know, like, we're talking about how much money

Illinois loses in business all the time because we don't know how to govern ourselves. We can't find our ass with two hands when it comes to governance. Think about how much of that the governor could siphon off for their own use. Think about the kind of house. But when you get Pritzker in there, if you get Pritzker in there, it's not going to matter. It's just like a exchange and jump change

billionaire for another bill, like another giant millionaire or whatever. I would love to see this sort of thing happen all across the country. And then, start erasing these you know what is clearly you know this this racist uh intention that we had to sort of you know a punish a certainly punish black people more than we did any of the white people the whole criminal justice system does that yeah it tends to tends to lean that way yeah ready to stick it in the glory hole get links to their facebook twitter and if you still use it google plus account at their website dissonancepod.com if you need to be all discreet about it contact them by email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com or you can call and leave a ransom message at 740-74-DOUBT that That's 740-743-6828.

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Give the guys a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher. Or tell your buddies in the drunk tank about the show. We want to send a big sloppy glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. This story's from CNN. The men arrested at Starbucks are paying it forward

big time. So, the two guys that were arrested at Starbucks for being black in a coffee shop, they should have gotten cream and sugar. What? It's just... No, yeah, absolutely. It's bitter. They're not bitter actually, surprisingly, over their treatment. Not at all.

So they reached an undisclosed settlement with Starbucks and the city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, the settlement was a dollar. They had no idea what the settlement was with the starbucks um but they're basically funding two hundred thousand dollars um yeah the city has agreed to work with the duo and a non-profit to fund two hundred thousand dollar grant to help yeah philadelphia high school students develop entrepreneurial skills you know these guys they, these guys, they're working with

Starbucks. So Starbucks is closing 8,000 of its stores and having a day of racial sensitivity training. These guys are working with the people at Starbucks. They seem like their intention here, and the reason I want to talk about this a little bit

is that there is oftentimes this sort of pushback that's like, they just want a big payout. What they want to do is I want to talk about this a little bit is that there is oftentimes this sort of pushback that it's like, oh, they just want a big payout. What they want to do is they want to, you know, cause you hear that stuff. You want to cause controversy and get in trouble and then sue a company like Starbucks for its deep pockets and get that big payout. And that does not. And I don't think that's even most of the time what happens. It does not seem to be the case here. They just walked into a Starbucks, man.

They want to use the bathroom. How the fuck can you be a mastermind in the middle of Philadelphia with terrible cheesesteaks walking around? And then you're like, yeah, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to try to get kicked out of Starbucks so I make a lot of money. But you know what I mean? You hear that shit. But you do hear it. Yeah, it's like the people who misunderstand the lady who spilled coffee on herself at McDonald's.

Right, and they're like, oh, yeah. Right, and they don't know the facts of the case. They don't know the facts of this. Yeah. But what I like about this is not only are these people doing this, right? Not only are these two guys, Dante Robinson and Rashawn Nelson,

doing this, you know, saying $1 each from the city, but let's start this program, entrepreneurial program. Philadelphia police commissioner walked back his comments to the Philadelphia police commissioner, commissioner Richard Ross apologized to these guys saying that he made the decision worse by initially defending the officer's actions. And I think that that's one of those things that you rarely hear, right? You rarely hear the police officer saying, look, I made this worse. I did something bad. I was the one who defended these people and I shouldn't have defended. You rarely see the law enforcement community walk that shit back. I think I've never seen most of the time they are steadfast. They

never change their mind. They can't because there's that brotherhood bullshit, right? There's that brotherhood bullshit. So it's like you got to stand behind your guy. Your guy's in trouble. Your guy's part of your fucking sacred team of whatever. So doing that, that's a pretty brave thing for him to have done. Yeah. The response to this has been perfect.

I agree. I think that the response to this is everything you'd want to see, you know, the, the response to these guys being willing to work with the community, work with Starbucks. Um, you know, there hasn't been any, any of this. And I feel like, you know, the, the police officer response to this, you know, like the, the police chief responses, all of this has been, I think the ideal, what you're looking for to happen when people fuck up, everybody goes, you know,

it's like adult accountability, right? You know, you just once in a while in the, in the adult world, somebody just says, you know what? I fucked up.

I'm real sorry. And you're, it's a refreshing thing because very often in the adult world, you wind up doubling down. It's always this, all this doubling down. But once in a while, somebody's like, man, I just fucked up. I'm real sorry. And

that's a shock in today. It's just a shock. It is, but it's funny because when you do that, when you just fuck up and then you're just like, you know, I just fucked that up. I shouldn't have fucked that up. And I'm sorry I fucked that up. It's like it's really disarming.

It's really disarming because it's like, well, that changes everything. Well, that's, then I just forgive you and we're just going to have to be friends again. You know what I mean? Well, yeah.

And that's the thing. The Starbucks came in and said, I fucked up. The police chief said, I fucked up. And everybody's like, cool, let's just work on this

and let's make sure this doesn't happen. Yeah. Let's make sure this doesn't happen. It's all of this is just the best case scenario. I mean, so far far that's happened here. This has been a really good story. Oh, $20.

I wanted a peanut. $20 can buy many peanuts. Explain how. Money can be exchanged for goods and services. Woohoo! Tom, I wanted to talk a little bit about the poverty line. We had this conversation a while ago about the poverty line. It was a couple of weeks ago. We talked about it. We talked about how low that line is. And one of the things that we got a bunch of messages actually about this and a bunch of

people were like, how could you not know where the poverty line is? And really, genuinely, the poverty line is just a trivial number because there's all these things that happen around the poverty line that change whether or not you're eligible for many different things. It's 130 percent of your income. It's this and it's all this different kinds of information that they gather based on this number. The number doesn't mean anything. The number is just really obscenely low. And what it tells me and what it should tell, I think, everybody else is that the government looks at this line, one person making $12,000 a year as somebody who's poor, but one person making $13,000 a year, somebody who's not,

that is a weird thing that we do. And that's something that I think that needs to be talked about because you can make a lot more than $12,000 a year and be living very desperately. We talked on the last show about people who make $30,000 a year, the 51% of Americans make $30,000 a year or less.

And that's not a ton of money to live on, especially if you have a family. That is desperately poor. And it also is interesting because it does not take into account geography. Yeah. You know, where you live matters as to how much money you make. Yeah. You know, it's like the $30,000 is not the same in Alabama as it is in New York. Yeah. It's not the same money. Yeah. It's literally different. Yeah. It's not the same. You should never draw a comparison because if all money is, is a signal of access to resources, which is all that money is, it is nothing else but a signal of your access to resources. It is not the same. That 30,000 is not the same number in Alabama as it is in New York.

It's simply not. Having a federal line doesn't do anything meaningful in practical terms in terms of how we define poverty socially. What it is is a statistical assignment so that Census Bureau can have some data. It has nothing to do with, in many states, when you qualify for services like you were talking about. It's fucking arbitrary. And you can be poor as shit. $30,000 in Illinois? Yeah. Living in the seven-county

region around Chicago? You can't. You are... Would you die? No. Would you be desperate? Yes, you'd be desperate every day. Yeah. Every day, you would be desperate. There's nothing... Yeah, especially in, you know, the closer you live to the large metropolitan centers

here, the amount of money that you would need to spend to stay into those areas would be it's more than $30,000. $30,000, you know, in, you know, southern Mississippi is a very different number than it is here. And it's just it's just that it doesn't take into account that locality like we were talking about. You know, it doesn't take any of that into account. $12,000 a year here as a family of one?

I don't, I mean, I literally don't, because I don't even think you can get rent in Chicago for under, you know, 700 bucks a month or something like that. I don't know what you would get. And like, you're still paying taxes on the $30,000. And you're paying into Social Security. You're paying presumably health insurance.

At this point, you've got to be in HUD housing. You've got to be in some sort of subsidized housing because there's no way that you could live. This is desperate poverty. And there's a lot of people that live around this level too. It's not just the level, right? We talked about 14 million people that live on this level from 2016. There's, you know, there's tons of people that hover around this level. You don't know the, the, and like we said, the 50,000 or 50% of Americans that live, you know, under $30,000, um, you know,

that's 50% of Americans that already live there. So it's even worse than you would think. The amount of money that the average family, there's a most families in the United States are paycheck to paycheck. I mean, most families in the United States. Is it, there's a, that's not a, it's not a,

you know, my whole life has been Paycheck to paycheck. Paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. Like my whole life leading up to this point. So, you know, and my whole life leading up to this point. So, you know, and my whole life when I was a child, like when I was a child,

we lived off of a paper route and government assistance. Like that's what we lived off of for two years. So, you know, desperately poor is a horrible way to live. It's a horrible, shitty way to live. And we expect that many people in the United States live that way. And one of the things that recently happened, you know, we and we just hand wave this shit away. Look at this housing and urban development. Secretary Ben Carson's proposal to triple rents for the poorest households, triple rents. We're talking he's changing it from $50 to $150 for people, Tom, who make $2,000 a year. Yeah.

Crazy. Crazy. Like, I'm sorry. You make $2,000 a year. You shouldn't pay anything. Yeah. You don't make anything. Yeah.

$2,000 a year? Yeah. You fucking kidding me? How the fuck are these people supposed to pay $50? Yeah. They bring home home 180 a month 50 of it is going out 130 a month 130 to get you to 31 days yeah you gotta eat yeah you gotta go presumably to a food having store how you are you going to get there? You got bus fare.

Holy shit, that's nothing. That's no money at all. There's nothing there. That is grindingly poor. And you're going to triple rent on these people? It's so crazy because we're reading this article and it's talking about what percentage

is that of their income? And it's like, under current rules, families that receive housing subsidies typically pay 30% of their income for rent. Now, they're talking about gross. Pause if you're a middle class person. Pause and think about what 30% of your gross income, not your net, your gross income is. And imagine if that was your rent. Yeah. You would, nobody's rent as a middle-class person should be 30% of your fucking gross. Most lenders won't lend to you. Yeah. If your income to debt ratio is like that. Yeah. They, you can't get a loan

like that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and we call that house poor you know the the middle class calls it that because if they see it as imprudent they see it as a thing that is a silly thing to do right it's something to be derided right and we're expecting them to do it we're expecting the most at-risk people people who do the thing that all the rest of us would never put ourselves in that position intentionally and most banks wouldn us would never put ourselves in that position intentionally. And most banks wouldn't let you put yourself in that position anymore. Yeah, because that's too much of a risk for them. For them, it's too much of a risk.

We're willing to let poor people do this. We're willing to force them to do this. This is a, you know, this is again, this is taking advantage of the most vulnerable people. And one of the, you know, I understand one of the reasons why they're doing it is because the rent increase is to make sure that the housing,

the housing, that they're losing money on this housing. They're losing money and they're like the upkeep and all this stuff. They're losing all this money. And one of the things that they want to do

is they want to make sure that they put some money back into the system to try to help make sure that these houses and the housing is fit and it's a good, and it's, you know, it's being repaired, et cetera. It's okay. If we take a loss on this guys, you know what I mean? Like I am, I, this is, this is taxes. I'm happily willing to pay. Don't we assume we take a loss when we subsidize people that are, and I'm willing, like, here's the

thing, like, why don't we not take a loss? It's okay. I don't understand this. I don't understand the mindset. And I don't know that I can ever get there. Of the, I got mine, I don't give a fuck about yours. I don't understand that mindset. I never will understand that mindset. I know that there's people out there in the world that have this mindset.

That's fine. You know, you are what you are. You vote who you vote for because of, you know, because of your pocketbook, that's fine. But you know what? Like, I think every chance that the progressive people have to get in power and to change these laws to make sure that the most vulnerable among us are protected, they need to do it. And they need to be forceful about it. They don't need to pussyfoot around.

They don't need to meet in the middle. We don't need to have any, you know, they don't. The other side that wants to cut taxes and fucking burn the poor don't need to have any, you know, they don't, the other side that wants to cut taxes and, and fucking burn the poor don't care. Right. So you need to have the same level of forcefulness on this side to say, we are going to care about people, whether you like it or not. Too bad. Suck it up.

You're paying a little extra. Okay. You didn't get your latte today. Too bad. Somebody gets a roof over their head. Thanks to Trump. Pink yarn sales are through the roof. After Trump got elected, women started knitting those pussy hats.

When I first saw them, I was like, that's a pussy? I guess mine just has a lot more yarn on it. Yeah. Should have done more research before you got me to do this. So stories from National Review, the selective outrage over Michelle Wolf and Kanye West. So Michelle Wolf is the comedian that gave the White House Correspondents Dinner comedic roast.

Yeah, the roast. And Kanye West is the guy who took away Taylor Swift's award. He was going to let her finish, though. He was. He was going to let her finish. It's was. He was going to let her finish. It's always nice to let the lady finish. If he jumped up on top of the stage, he's like, Michelle will let you finish.

But I want to tell you about Dragon Energy. Did you watch the Michelle Wolf thing? I did. Yeah, I watched the whole thing. I liked it. I think more than you did. That was good. That was fine. It's not that I disliked it. When I hear roast and people are getting upset

about the roast and I listen to the NPR Politics podcast and let me tell you something. I normally really like those people on there. I think they're normally really good. But fucking prudes that they are. Jesus Christ. They were so it was fucking clutch your pearls hour

after they talked about this girl, Michelle Wolfe, giving hers. It was vulgar. And oh, how she went after how she looked. It's a fucking roast, for Christ's sakes. You're supposed... That's literally what you do at roasts. Have you ever seen a roast

where they don't make fun of the person's looks? Like, that's the one thing you make fun of. Like, yeah, she made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She said three things. Three fucking things about Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She looked like the lady from fucking Handmaid's Tale. She said it funnier than that. She said she burns

lies into to make a smoky eye, which is a real corner case joke. Right. And then there was one other thing that she said that I was just like, I was like, you know what? Like there was like three things she said, nothing really that bad.

And they have fucking everybody was just clutch in their ball. My God, I can't believe she made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders. What the fuck was all that about? I don't understand. The left was doing it yeah well because like we're in a place now where we can't make fun of how people look that's that's that's part of it right is that now like we are we are all to be expected to be more

high brow and going after the way that somebody looks is far too low brow because fat or ugly but you know what i mean fuck it even if it. Even if they did, you know, like I, it is, it, we are just in a place right now where mocking someone's appearance, even at a roast, which you don't have to attend.

Right. Yeah. And I'm sorry, but like you've decided to be a public figure, a, a visible, physically visible public figure, not a voice on radio. You decided to be a visibly.

Yeah, you stand in front of a fucking camera. That's your fucking actual job. Every day, yeah. It's a roast. Yeah. Get a fucking thick skin or get a different job. Yeah. And the jokes also had social context to them right it's not like she

was saying i'm making fun of your smoky eye she's saying joke was the lies you burn lies right and it's not even it's not even a great joke to be perfectly honest with you it's not like i didn't like that joke i thought i didn't think it was funny but it's like she's saying you are a liar and then when she made fun of her for the handmaid's tale she's saying it to make fun of fucking pence you know what i mean like she's saying it to make fun of fucking Pence. You know what I mean? Like she's saying it because this administration is super uptight in certain ways. And in other ways, they're totally not.

You know, it's like you're missing all the social context to the joke that the person is saying. But we're getting upset about, we're getting upset because people's appearance is now off the table. It's just, it's just now off the table. It's just now off the table. Unless it's Trump. We make fun of his tiny hands and his shitty hair and his orange skin. We do it all the time. The left is happy to do that. Happy to do it. The left is absolutely happy to mock Trump's physical appearance.

We'll do that all day long. All day long. But we can't mock sarah huckabee sanders personal physical and again i don't even really feel like they were mocking her but we can make fun of kellyanne conway or ann coulter looking skeletal yeah right that's that seems to happen that seems to happen all the time too so i i don't understand i part of me thinks it's because it's it's like they expected this to be a higher brow roast. And I think that what she brought to that roast was a bunch of jokes that trailed the criticism.

I felt very strongly like what she walked up and she said, you guys are a bunch of liars and you know it. And I'm watching you and I will call you out person by person. And I will say, you are a liar. Also, here's a joke at the end of that sentence. Yeah.

So she didn't have a joke first. She had a criticism, a harsh one. It was very pointed. It was very aggressive. It pulled very few punches. And then the joke was like, oh, but I'm supposed to be funny. Yeah.

And I think that's more what people were reacting to. I think people were reacting like, fuck, I think she means this. Yeah. And then at the end, you can clearly tell she meant it. She said so. When she's like, look, here's the thing. You guys made Trump deal with it. That's your fault.

I thought there was some really great commentary in there and some very funny stuff. I thought the Anderson Cooper is what happens. Pence is what Anderson Cooper is if he's not gay. Fucking hilarious. There was a couple of really great zingers in there. I liked her affectations.

I thought she was funny. Her affectations were funny. There's people out there. There was a guy last week. We didn't cover the story where he's just like she's she's they found a Jew dark enough to be a black person or something. He said some some crazy shit, like some crazy alt right. Just nutty shit that people are saying. But I was really just surprised.

Like, I understood that the that the right wasn't going to get it. Like, I understood that. I get it. You're't going to get it. I understood that. I get it. You're not going to... Name all the right-wing comedians, right? Let's start naming all the right-wing comedians. Dennis Miller and... Did you see what Dennis Miller said? Uh-uh. Dennis Miller tweeted out that he thought

that her comedy wasn't very... Or that she was out of line. And he said, I'm going to take a few days and write a really nasty joke about her. Yeah. What a horrid human being Michelle Wolf is. I'm going to read up on her over the next couple of days and I will have a few brutally mean jokes about her by Wednesday.

That's his... Well, what I like about it is it's a tacit approval of what she did. You know what I mean? Because he's going to do the same thing. Yeah. So if you're going to do the same thing, then it's an approval of how she handled the situation. That's the rights only comedian. The rights only comedian's like, oh, you know what?

Yeah. If I have enough time, I could maybe accidentally be funny on. You know, like, here's the thing. You're going to need, and this is why i think they're they're clutching the stories about kanye west as well the reason why they're clutching onto kanye west is because they literally have nobody right right nobody in the entertainment industry whatsoever wants to be on their side everybody that that wants they they all just disappear the once in a while you have somebody and this week kanye west tweeted out some dragon energy bullshit

about how he's so weird and crazy weird crazy shit and then like like someone else had tweeted at him like look man what the fuck's wrong with you and he's like they're trying to control my mind nobody cares what you think man like literally nobody cares nobody even cares about your music nobody cares you're dead to us nobody cares what you think. You know, you're a talented rapper. Great. But that doesn't mean you have any other qualifications, you know? And that's the thing is like, I don't think that, you know, I was going to turn to Jay-Z. What do you think about this?

He was with Obama. He was hanging out with Obama all the time. Obama and Jay-Z were tight. Yeah. And it's just like, I don't care what Jay-Z has to say about politics. All I care about is that he's going to sing a song with a duet with somebody else. Tell me about something that happened in his life.

I love, though, when we do that thing where we look to our heroes in one area and we're like, well, you know what? I mean, I really admire so-and-so. And then we forget that you admire them

for their talents in music or sports or whatever. And it's like, well, what do they think about politics? No, no, no. Hang on a minute. They don't have anything. They have no special qualification whatsoever. They might have something new and insightful to say. They might not. Here's the thing, though.

I literally, once I read Dragon Energy, I was just like. Here's the thing, though. I literally, once I read Dragon Energy, I was just like, that's the end of it. I don't need anything else. Anything else that you put in that tweet, if you put Dragon Energy in it, you might as well just be covering the label. I can't see anything past that. It's Charlie Sheen crazy. It is. It's tire blood

winning. It's jumping on a couch when you're fucking that other guy because you fell in love with a girl or whatever. It's craziness you're just like you're an insane person who's under a lot of stress you should go be under a lot of stress someone should take away your keyboard on occasion but even if you tweet i won't read it i don't care right you want answers i think i'm entitled you want answers i the truth. You can't handle the truth. This is from Newsweek. This is great.

Trump wants presidential elections to be decided by popular vote. Oh. Which he lost. That's interesting. So hold on a minute because I want to read to you what he said. Okay. Here's what he said. Remember, we won the election, Trump said in an interview on Thursday with Fox & Friends, and we won it easily.

You know, a lot of people say, oh, it was close. And by the way, they also like to talk about electoral college. Well, it's an election based on the electoral college. I would rather have a popular election, but it's a totally different campaign. The electoral college is different. I would rather have the popular vote

because it's, to me, it's much easier to win the popular vote because it's, to me, it's much easier to win the popular vote. You didn't do that, though. You lost that one. You know, it's funny, too. Did you see the uncomfortableness that when he was on Fox and Friends? Did you see any of the videos? Oh, my God.

They're just like, we gotta go. If you ever want to see someone die inside, all you need to do is just watch the last 10 minutes of that video when they're like trying to anxiously like dump the call with Trump on it. Think about that. Like when you have the president of the United States on your call in show and you're like,

Oh, we got to cut to a bounty commercial. Like I have a food in the oven. I need to go. He's just just and he's just rambling on like it's like having your drunk uncle over and he's had a beer and doesn't want to leave i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna tell you look man it's 11 o'clock i gotta be up in the morning i don't even like you you know can you just go you don't tell him. You don't tell him because I'm going to tell you. You just got to wait for the, and then I'm going to tell it to you.

That's what. That's exactly what it's like. It's crazy. It's like, and he loses his train of thought all the time. Like he's a hard person to even listen to. I love how often he interrupts himself. A drinking game that would render you dead in an hour. Yeah. Drink one drink every time he interrupts himself. A drinking game that would render you dead in an hour. Drink one drink every time he

interrupts himself. You would be dead. It's unreal. He lost the election, but does he still think that there was that there was the illegal votes? Who knows what he thinks? If the election were based on total popular

vote, I would have campaigned in New York, Florida, and California, and won even bigger and more easily. California is never going to vote for you, man. Neither is New York. I mean, yeah, you'll get some votes out there because there's, I'm sure, some really rich neighborhoods, but the rest of it's just like,

go fuck yourself. Yeah, and New York, maybe the racist parts of New York. But those parts are not populist. Yeah. Yeah, that New York, like, yeah, maybe the racist parts. But those parts are not populist. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. I think that they just like this is another. First off, that's never going to happen.

Number one, never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to happen. The Electoral College has fucked the Democrats way more than it's fucked the Republicans. There's no way the Republicans would ever want to do this. The Democrats had screwed the Democrats. I want to do this. The Democrats, it screwed the Democrats, I want to say several times, actually. This would be the greatest thing ever to happen for the Democrats. They'd be like, oh, wait,

because every major population center always is blue. Yeah. Always. You would have to really, and I will say he's right about one thing. You would have to change about how you campaign. Oh, for sure. You would have to change greatly how you campaign. Oh, for sure. You would have to change greatly how you campaign. I also wonder too, do you think that if it went

to popular vote, do you think that we would get a lot more centrist people running and centrist ideas and centrist platforming? I do. I do. Yeah, I do. I think people would want to meet in the middle a lot more often. Yeah. I actually think it would be a benefit to this nation if that's the case. Oh, it would certainly be a benefit. I think, you know, what's crazy is like the election system we have now drives centrist candidates further left and further right. Yeah. The primary system specifically.

I think it drives everybody further right, to be honest with you, is what it really does. I mean, look at all the different presidents in the past. They started out far left when they do anything they talk about just to their base. But then when they start talking about major policies. I mean, look at McCain. McCain, I think, is a great example. When he campaigned, he changed. McCain, I think, is a great example.

When he campaigned, he changed. That dude totally changed from somebody who was, you know, a pretty reasonable centrist sort of candidate. And then all of a sudden, you're like, what the fuck? I remember you and I talking about McCain back in the day. I was like, yeah, you know, like, he's not my pony, but like, I'm not that upset. And then all of a sudden, halfway through that election process, I was like, he's gone crazy. I remember a lot of that entire thing was

a lot of who he was surrounding himself with. Sarah Palin was just a fucking disaster of a person and a heartbeat away from the presidency if he would have won. What an unbelievable... He's still with us. McCain's still with us, but he was an old man when he was running.

Right. What, eight years ago? 10 years ago at this point? 10 years, yeah. So, you know, he was an old man then. Now he's, you know, well into his 80s, you know? And so, you know, we're talking about, you know, a situation that where I felt this exact same way.

I remember having a conversation, I want to say in 2006. This is when Bush was in office way. I remember having a conversation, I want to say in 2006, this is when Bush was in office. And I remember having a conversation with somebody I know that was really pretty far right. And I remember having a conversation with him and saying, you know what,

I don't know that I would hate it if McCain won. I was like, you know what, to be honest, it'd be great if he did, you know, win. And I think, you know, because at the time it was Bush. And I hated Bush.

I was like, Bush's policies are garbage. McCain seemed far left in comparison to Bush. I was like, Bush's policies are garbage. McCain seemed far left in comparison to Bush. He was still right, but he was far left compared to Bush. And so I was just like, you know, maybe I wouldn't hate it so much. And I remember when they were going after each other and, you know, there was that thing. I remember

even in the early stages, I was like, you know, maybe McCain wouldn't be bad, you know, if he wins the popular vote. We talked about that. I don't think it would be that awful. And it, you know, suddenly, you know, it he wins the popular vote. We talked about that. I don't think it would be that awful. And, you know, suddenly, you know, there's a switch that gets turned. And it's because... It's because you've got to fill the map. Yeah, absolutely. Because you're filling a map. And you're filling, you know,

the parts of the map that you have to fill, some of those parts are really deeply rural and very, very strictly conservative. You've got to get Alabama, right? Let's be blunt. Nobody gives a fuck about, in a general election where, where it's, uh, uh, decided by popular vote, nobody gives a fuck about Alabama, Mississippi, you know, those areas, nobody's going to campaign there. Yeah. Nobody fucking lives there. Nobody fucking lives there, but you need those. You need

your red base to start to fill the gimme's on your red map. Right. And so you have to be this far, right. To start in order to get your gimme states. And that's, and that's going to be the Southeast. That's why they're not campaign. That's why the people that are blue aren't campaigning in the major, major places.

They're campaigning in the battleground states is where they always, that's why there are battleground states. Yeah. That's the thing. And that's where they always go. They always wind up and they spend way more time there. The thing that I don't understand is why we care where they campaign. Because I don't know that I care at all where they campaign.

I think this is one of those weird throwbacks that we do where we're just like, yeah, well, they spent time here. Therefore, they care about my state or something. But it's just like they're just the leader of the United States. Like they should, wherever they go to talk, I'm going to see it anyway. It's like they could work from home. Yeah. It's not, it's not like I'm not going to see Hillary Clinton's speech or whoever's running speech. If I want to see it nowadays, I'm going to see it on the same medium, no matter whether they gave it a hundred feet away or a hundred miles away. It's on demand now. no matter whether they gave it a hundred feet away or a hundred miles away.

It's on demand now. It's not even just shown on the local TV or just shown at eight o'clock at night or whatever it is, or I only get snippets if it happens to be in Iowa. I can literally watch her entire fucking speech from Nevada if I wanted to. Yeah, but there are a lot of people

who feel like the candidate cares if the candidate arrives in your state. There are a lot of people that feel that way. Maybe they're here and he's going to protect my jobs here at Caterpillar. Yeah. And I think, I think that it just shows how easily swayed human beings are because it doesn't matter where they physically are.

Because like you said, they can, I can do this work from home and absolutely they do it from, it's called the white house. They work from home every day. And so that's going to be my conversation, my boss, but I need to work from home more often, it's called the White House. They work from home every day. And so that's going to be my conversation with my boss, but I need to work from home more often if it's good enough for the president. It's good enough for me. It's good enough for me every time. But, you know, I just feel like we're just, we're, we're sort of in this weird in-between

stage where I think we recognize the immediacy of how well, like, you know, like, I mean, we recognize how easily I can consume any of the media that they create and any of the speeches that they do. But then at the same time, I want them to physically be next to me. I think it's kind of weird. Maybe somebody out there has a different take on this. Maybe somebody who, you know, who knows a little bit more about politics wants to tell me, you know, why it is that, you know, it's important that they visit your state. But I personally have a, I don't, I don't see what But I personally have a, I don't see what the point is. Yeah, I don't see what the point is. All right, well,

that's going to wrap it up for this week. This short episode we did, this week, the midweek episode that we did. So if all went well, yesterday night, we appeared on the Hope After Faith podcast. We're hoping that that still goes through.

We're recording this ahead of time, so we won't know. And hopefully soon we will be having some interesting guests and things, and we will be talking about that as they come up. We normally don't announce it because I almost always fall through when we do. So we're not going to announce it, but we hopefully will have some interesting shows coming up. We're going to be back on Monday, but we're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. and trouble, pseudo, quasi, alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy,

healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment, Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. 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. 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.