Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 43: The Medium Looks Well Done

Episode Date: April 15, 2012

Woman Says She Used Telepathy After Plunge Off Forest Highway Hackers Take Over National Organization For Marriage’s Twitter Account Wisconsin State Senator Says Women Are Paid Less Because ‘Mon...ey Is More Important For Men’ None of the three candidates told by God to run for President survive Republican primary Rick Santorum Drops Out: GOP Presidential Candidate Suspends 2012 Campaign (VIDEO) Mississippi has highest teen pregnancy rate: CDC; Rates higher in the South and Southwest, lower in Northeast and Upper Midwest The ‘Medium’ Is Not the Messenger Herbal 'remedy' may trigger widespread kidney failure Fox News host tweets birther murder fantasy This Picture of a Muslim Woman Holding a Bra Is Not Offensive Brazilian cult members accused of cannibalistic ritual Clips: Clip 1 - Ghostbusters, NCIS Hacked, Rick Santorum Concession with Kevin MacLeod’s “A Turn for the Worse.” from Incompetech.com, Long Island Medium on TLC, Quackery PSA, Obama at Press Dinner on Trump and Birth Certificate, Allahu Akbar, A Few Good Men. Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you want to get cognitive dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. There's been a lot of scrutiny of vaccines recently, specifically childhood vaccines. There's been a lot of news about, is there a connection with autism, for example. What do you make of all that? Dr. Wakefield wrote a paper about this saying that he thought there was a connection. And people, there was lower vaccination rates as a result for a period of time in Britain than the United States. What are your thoughts?
Starting point is 00:00:27 Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits. He created a fake paper. The journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. And so it's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn't have their kids take either Pertussis or measles vaccine
Starting point is 00:00:56 and their children are dead today. And so, you know, the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts, you know, they kill children. It's a very sad thing because these vaccines are important. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad.
Starting point is 00:02:02 It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode 43 of Cognitive Dissonance, for those of you who can count one plus 42 and listen to the last show. If Cecil sounds a little funny on this episode, I'm going to apologize for him. He's hacking and coughing and snorking and dying over there. There's going to be a lot of editing on my end this episode. It's nice because it doesn't affect me at all. Well, yeah, it's nice. And it's
Starting point is 00:02:32 normally on your end where all this hacking and coughing comes from. I'm usually the culprit of the various bodily sounds. You have a cold about 56 weeks out of the year. Dude, I have a five-year-old who goes to preschool. He's a Petri dish.
Starting point is 00:02:48 He just walks around like, it's the worst combination, right? It's like, it's a high density of children. Oh, yeah. And children are just, they're just like, they have the worst fucking personal hygiene of any animal on the planet. They're Petri dishes, man. They are fucking incubators. Fucking dung beetles are naturally cleaner.
Starting point is 00:03:09 Dung beetles? Oh, yeah. But I feel great. I feel like I'm ready to do this show. I may or may not pass out from cold medicine about halfway through. That's fantastic. Nobody would notice. Yeah, nobody would notice, it turns out. Just edit the show.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Just when it's done, just post that shit. Just make sure to do all the work. Yeah. You know, if you can just do that. That's not fair, Tom. You once in a while post things to Twitter. That's true. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:40 By occasion. I don't do it to Google Plus, though. No, Google Plus is kind of not your thing yet. It will be eventually when they add a plug-in to fucking Hootsuite. Just do a thing with social medias. Until then. You're a social—I don't understand that. It's a social media.
Starting point is 00:03:56 Why do you not integrate with any of the dashboards? Google Plus is fucking wholly unsupported by other people. Everyone shuns Google Plus. I'm amazed that it still exists. But Google is such a big company. I don't know that it really costs them anything to keep it up, anything like that's going to break the bank, so to speak. Google is like an Amish kid on Rumspringa or whatever it's called. Spending cash on hookers and blow.
Starting point is 00:04:28 It's like I'm in the middle of rural Indiana hooked on meth. Yeah. Like I'm the Google Plus of the Amish. I just hope that eventually Google Plus becomes usable by some of those programs that we use that are able to push the content to different social media sites. It just sucks that it's not. But until then, once in a while, we'll be updating Google+. And by once in a while, I mean I will be updating Google+. It's like six clicks to it. I'm just like, ah.
Starting point is 00:04:52 I'm not going to do that. It's exhausting. I'm not going to put the Owly link over there. Are you kidding me? I'm so lazy. Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis? If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. So our first story is from KTLA.com.
Starting point is 00:05:22 This is the best picture of this woman ever. This woman. She looks photogenic in this picture. She looks like a fucking zombie. Dude, seriously, when you have that much red in your eyes, you either are a zombie or you're dead. Those are the only two options you have at that point. If this woman
Starting point is 00:05:37 was looking like this, just walking down any normal American side street, her chances of being baseball batted out, just as a fucking precaution. Either that or she's like a professional MMA fighter. Like that's the only other option. Worst first match ever. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:05:56 She's a fucking big giant zero and one. So woman says she used telepathy after plunge off forest highway um this is the biggest non-story uh that's why i like this story so much so this woman is driving along and uh for whatever reason she just goes ass over tea kettle 350 feet down an icy mountainside. And she's all kinds of fucked up. She broke her back and her ribs and her face. Her face. Her face was sustained some damage.
Starting point is 00:06:35 So she does the only reasonable thing. Right. She uses telepathy to communicate with her husband. Mm-hmm. So does her husband race over in the car and rescue her? No, predictably, it does not do anything. It doesn't fucking work. That's why I love this story.
Starting point is 00:06:52 It's like she's laying there and she's saying, you know, she's using telepathy. And what she even says is like, hey, you know, to the effect of, I'm late, you should have expected me home by now. Come on, help find me. So even if he did find her, the explanation of why you would go looking for her is embedded in her telepathic message. Absolutely. It's like if I expect my wife home at 9 p.m., by 10 o'clock I'm out looking. Sure.
Starting point is 00:07:22 You're calling her or whatever it is. Right, yeah. clock i'm out looking sure you know you're calling her or whatever it is right yeah you know i'm i'm trying to find by 11 30 12 o'clock like that's a thing now now we have a now we have a problem so it's first of all it's not a fucking surprise that somebody would be looking for you if you have people in your life that are looking for yeah if you're the crazy cat lady your cats aren't going to come to your fucking rescue. But in this case the husband didn't even find her. That's the best part
Starting point is 00:07:51 of the story Tom. Local authorities happen to see her car. I love that. I think it's great. Here's what I think happened in this story Tom. Now hear me out. This woman is talking about a made-up power telepathy. It's hard to keep the spells in Dungeons & Dragons straight, especially when they begin with the word T.
Starting point is 00:08:13 So I think she confused telepathy with telekinesis. And she's saying, I used telekinesis on the way down to slow my descent, and I survived a 300-foot fall. At least that's more believable than she used telepathy. Right. Right. That I use telekinesis.
Starting point is 00:08:28 I believe that more than I believe she used telepathy. I would be I'd be more willing to believe that she summoned fucking pillows from space and threw them underneath her car than that. She used fucking telepathy because she survived the fall. But she used telepathy to communicate with her husband. And what? Her husband was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.
Starting point is 00:08:52 Bitch is always mad. Maybe that's the name of her phone. What? She calls it telepathy. Right. I use my Samsung telepathy. That would be fantastic. It's actually a great name for a phone.
Starting point is 00:09:03 It just keeps restarting. Samsung, you owe us all the money you used for that, by the way. That's spectacular. Yeah. Samsung telepathy. That would have been great for the, instead of calling it Siri for the iPhone. Yeah, call it telepathy. Telepathy.
Starting point is 00:09:16 Telepathy. It's like, all I have to do is speak it, and it happens. It's unlike telepathy. Unlike. If they ever hook it up directly to your fucking brain pan, then fine. Oh, yeah. Then they've got to call it telepathy. You've got to call it something like that, yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Also, I will not be signing that two-year contract. This lady, you know, after looking at her, I'm surprised they don't have to hook things up to her brain pan. Oh, she looks rough, dude. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's not a bad. But, you know. And those neck braces are the most unflattering thing.
Starting point is 00:09:44 They push your cheeks up. I know. Everybody looks like fucking Roger Ebert on those things. Oh, no. No way. I'm getting hats. A port ski? No.
Starting point is 00:10:00 No, this is major. They've already burned through the NCIS public firewall. We'll isolate the node and dump them on the other side of the router. I'm trying. It's moving too fast. Oh, this is not good. We're using our connection to the APHIS database. Sever it. I can't. It's a point attack.
Starting point is 00:10:17 He or she is only going after my machine. It's not possible. This is DoD level 9 encryption. It would take months to get built. What is that, a video game? No, Tony, you're getting hacked. So this next story is from Talking Points Memo. This is great.
Starting point is 00:10:30 Hackers take over national organization for marriage's Twitter account. So it's exactly what it says, man. Like somebody busted ass into that Twitter account and they just posted shit like, Nam apologizes for its evil race-baiting past and pledges to work toward full civil equality for all LGBT Americans! I love that the fucking image is a rainbow. That's fucking great.
Starting point is 00:10:57 And what kind of asshole lets their Twitter account get fucking hacked into? I mean, really, you've got to be a fucking dummy to get your Twitter account hacked into. I mean, really, you've got to be a fucking dummy to get your Twitter account hacked into. Uh, you're totally guilty of that charge this week, as a matter of fact. It's cognitive dissonance, turns out. Specifically me. Clicked on a fucking spam link.
Starting point is 00:11:17 Yeah, specifically both of us. So if you received anything from Cognitive Dissonance this week that said Jesus is real, that wasn't us yeah if it looks like uh you know i repent or some kind of uh conversion uh suddenly we're both muslim oh wait we already did that that would be we've done yeah we're apostates now don't forget that yeah i think they were looking probably to get like financial information just retreated immediately when they saw the sorry state of my financial life.
Starting point is 00:11:48 They're just like, oh, fuck, really? They actually donated money to you on PayPal. You just get like random PayPal receipts. You know, I've been scamming people for several years and you have the lowest credit score I've ever come across. They hack into my account. They're just like, oh, oh, this guy. How could you be negative on four accounts? That's impossible.
Starting point is 00:12:09 Oh, that's fantastic. I like the comments. People were like, oh, yeah, don't believe this for a second. Nice try, though. Oh, you guys didn't believe it? Really? The people who subscribe to the National Organization for Marriage? I can't believe you weren't fooled.
Starting point is 00:12:32 So it's not a good time to be in Wisconsin right now, Cecil. It's not a good time to be a woman in Wisconsin. Or to like women, for example. Yeah, sure. In Wisconsin. Be sympathetic to. Yeah, sure. I think that's probably, yeah. Be sympathetic to. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:47 So, Wisconsin Senator, just this Glenn Groffman guy, baffling comment. Just baffling comment. Talking about the gap between male and female wage. between male and female wage. And he basically says that money may not be as important to women as it is to men. You know. Right. Because, I mean, they're just women.
Starting point is 00:13:15 Right. They're just going to blow it on their hair and nails anyway. No, and there's really only one thing that's important to women, and that's rearing children. I thought it was the size of your penis. The Internet tells me it's the size of my penis that's the most important thing. That's not true? Look, I'm agreeing with you here. I think it's true.
Starting point is 00:13:38 You know, the nice thing is he can say this with impunity. Because, of course, the women don't have, you know, any ability to use a computer. They're all in the kitchen baking pies. They'll never even know that he said this. They're so busy. They have a child on each breast. Just like swinging back and forth like giant living nipple tassels. That's the worst stripper experience
Starting point is 00:14:06 ever. Anyway, by the way, if you go in and they have the baby nipple tassels on, you're just like, oh, God, not again. A stripper takes a break from the stage, comes down and breastfeeds for a few minutes and then goes back up. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, one or the other, one or the other.
Starting point is 00:14:22 That's the saddest stripper experience ever. Oh, it's so sad. Bring your daughter to work day is... That's the worst. Bring your daughter to work day ever. That's the worst day. Oh, my God. That's terrible in every way.
Starting point is 00:14:40 What a fuckwit this guy is. Let me read you some of what he says. Oh, please do. Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers. But the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off,
Starting point is 00:14:56 raises kids, is not go, go, go. Now they're 50 years old. The husband's making 200 grand a year so he hasn't made any more money in his entire career. I just want to point that out. This guy started off making $200,000. Now he's still making $200,000 30
Starting point is 00:15:11 years later in his career. Anyway. America! Right. No kidding. I mean, don't get me wrong. $200,000 is a respectable income. Sure, but you would expect that as time goes on, you would be worth more money. Not exactly climbing the ladder there, big guy. And the woman is making.
Starting point is 00:15:27 My rates are the same as they were in 1950. $2 to cobble a shoe. Buggy whips here. I got some buggy whips here. And the woman, she's making $40,000 a year. $40,000. Yeah. As a lawyer?
Starting point is 00:15:43 As a lawyer. My balls, you asshole. She's working fucking part time. Yeah, no kidding, right? That is a fucking terrible, incredibly offensive, ridiculous fucking argument. Most families I know, they're double income families, even when they've got kids. And I also know families where the man is the stay at home parent. It's not 1954, dude.
Starting point is 00:16:16 It's not 19, no matter how much your crazy fucking party wants to roll back the clock to 1954 to some idealized, leave it to beaver, never existed bullshit world. That's not real. June Cleaver was a lawyer. I don't know if you knew that. I love the idea that they're both lawyers. He continues to make the same sum of money for several years of their relationship. And it's like the woman takes time off.
Starting point is 00:16:46 It's like every family, obviously, the woman takes time off to raise the kids. Right. Every family. That's why daycares don't exist, Tom. My kid, when I go to work in the morning, I actually, I used to think I dropped him off at daycare. But since they don't exist, what I actually do is just leave them in the car with the windows rolled down. I think it's similar. I pick up stray dogs
Starting point is 00:17:10 and just say, he has something to play with. I don't want to be rude. I leave a little bowl of water for him in the car. They share. They're such good sharers. That's how sharing is caring. He's good. We got him like the rabies shot. I don't know if you can give that to kids,
Starting point is 00:17:24 but I have an unethical veterinarian. So fuck it. You know, I like this too. This guy says, I think, and I'm reading directly from this, I think progress article here. They're quoting him says you could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be the breadwinner someday, maybe a little more money conscious to attribute everything to this so-called bias in the workplace is just untrue. And the only reason he's saying this is because of that bill that would have allowed victims of wage discrimination to sue for lost earnings. That's, you know, like the reason why this is even coming up is because there's a bill that was, you know, going to allow people to be like, hey, man, fucking there's been wage discrimination here. You know, you got to hook me up because I've been doing the same work as everybody else here.
Starting point is 00:18:14 I just happen to fucking have a vagina and therefore I don't get paid as much. And they fucking like quickly like stamp this fucker out. So now you can't do it. And that's why that that's why they're coming out and saying this shit and here's what i don't get right if you really think that that it's the case that there's no such thing as wage discrimination this bill shouldn't affect you right right i mean it'd be like if you said tom you have to pay five i would support this if i have to pay five thousand dollars every time somebody gives me evidence of a ghost and
Starting point is 00:18:45 that when there was going to be a bill right they're going to pass a bill that tom has to spend five thousand dollars and just give it here you go every time somebody gives me evidence i wouldn't care wouldn't care oh because you're never going to provide me evidence of a ghost right not sufficient evidence anyway right i mean so if there's no such thing as wage discrimination, why should you care that people can sue for for recompense? Why would it matter? Well, ladies and gentlemen, we made a decision to get into this race at our kitchen table against all the odds. And we made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race for us is over for me, and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting. spend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting. I walked out after the Iowa caucus victory and said, game on. I know a lot of folks are going to write, maybe those even at the White
Starting point is 00:19:54 House, game over. But this game is long, long, long way from over. We are going to continue to go out there and fight to make sure that we defeat President Barack Obama, that we win the House back, and that we take the United States Senate and we stand for the values that make us Americans. So this next story is from Geopolitical, geopoll.net. I love this story. This story is fantastic. So in order to have you understand this story, I think you need to have a little bit of background. So here it is. God is infallible.
Starting point is 00:20:32 Right. Okay. I'm with you on this one. Infallible. Is he as infallible as the pope? Do they share the same infallibility? I think he's as infallible as that Russian Orthodox Photoshop watch guy. Oh, the guy with the glowing watch. It's like a vampire watch. infallible as that Russian Orthodox Photoshop watch guy.
Starting point is 00:20:46 Oh, the guy with the glowing watch. It's like a vampire watch. It only appears in reflections. Nice. Right? Okay. I get it. So, three. Three Republican candidates, and this should have been your first fucking tip off, were told
Starting point is 00:21:02 by God to run for office. All three of them are now out of the race. God is batting zero. No, God is actually batting 250 because God told me earlier to eat a croissant, and I did. Fair enough. So he's batting 250 at least. No, you got me there. I mean, I thought I had him.
Starting point is 00:21:20 I thought I had him dead to rights here. No, it's not a zero. It's definitely not a zero, Tom. Was it flaky and buttery? It was delicious zero tom was it flaky and buttery it was delicious it was very flaky and buttery you're raising your fist at the sky right now i can tell yeah i've got nothing i love when these fuckwits call upon their deity be like know, I looked into my heart and I prayed and God told me, he said, Tom, do an atheist podcast. I looked into my heart and I didn't hear anything.
Starting point is 00:21:53 And I was like, oh, I should do an atheist podcast. I said, really? That doesn't seem to make much sense given the state of this conversation. I said, shut the fuck up. I'm a goddamn deity. Do what I said. I am infallible. There's,'m a goddamn deity. Do what I said. I am infallible.
Starting point is 00:22:08 There's also this sort of pushback, too. I don't know if you remember, but we listened to a couple clips in the past. A guy was talking about the Christian in chief. I don't know if you remember this clip. The guy also in that thing is talking about how, you know, Americans are, we need this sort of message from on high. We need a Christian in chief. Right. And you're like, okay, well, the Christian in chief,
Starting point is 00:22:30 the three candidates that could have been Christian, actually, I think it's four. Four, because what about Rick Perry? Yeah, it's Rick Perry. He's not mentioned here, but I mean. There's no way that Rick Perry didn't say that fucking God told him not to run. Right. So, you know, you have four people there.
Starting point is 00:22:41 The Christian in chief, there was four chances of that. And all four got flushed down the toilet. Unless you account Mitt Romney, who's kind of the Mormon in chief. The Mormon in chief. Right? He's the Mormon in chief. I don't see how Mitt Romney is going to win this thing. I don't under, how is he, I actually think it's kind of cool that the Republicans are probably going to field a candidate that they can't possibly religiously get behind.
Starting point is 00:23:09 Yeah, that's a first time I think that's happened in a long time. How about the thing with Mitt Romney's wife now saying how she was a working mom? She's kind of like playing off of being a working mom. And she had like fucking four nannies or whatever. Yeah, made like $280 million a year or something like that. Yeah, and she didn't work. She didn't do anything. I'm a working mom and she had like fucking four nannies or whatever. I mean, like two hundred eighty million dollars a year or something. And she didn't work. She didn't do anything. I'm a working mom.
Starting point is 00:23:28 Yeah. You know, I think that means, you know, that's meant to mean something a little bit different when you're like, yeah, I'm a working mom. Oh, so you had to, you know, strike a precarious balance between work and home and, you know, balance the the challenges of taking care of kids and, you know, finances. No, that's not actually the thing. When you've got millions and millions of dollars, you're like, oh, I need someone to pick the kids up from daycare. Beep, bop, boop, boop, boop.
Starting point is 00:23:55 Hello, staff of as many as I would like. Yeah, here's a, I have a staff of six fucking nannies that I could decide what, who does what, you know, live in nannies or whatever. Like, it's just a ridiculous, and that's the thing, too, I guess, you know, live in nannies or whatever. Right. Like, it's just a ridiculous, and that's the thing, too, I guess, you know, we always come back to is the idea that, you know, the people who are ultra rich that run for office in the country have no idea, really no clue whatsoever what it's like to be a working class person in this country. I'll be honest, it's hard for me to even think Obama and his family even really understand what it's like to be a working class person.
Starting point is 00:24:25 I mean they might understand it in some platonic forms ideal, but they certainly don't understand fucking, oh shit, we've got to eat saltines this week because we don't have a fucking paycheck. You know what I mean? There is a fucking genuine difference between those two states. states. I, as a, you know, a fat American can look at, you know, somebody who is not, you know, who is not making as much money and fundamentally understand sort of what they're going through, but never truly understand what it's like to be poor in this economy. No, I mean, it's, and the decision making is, and we see it time and time again. The decision-making is based on these misapprehensions about who the poor are and what the causes of poverty are. And how are you going to arrive at real solutions when you don't understand real causes? Right.
Starting point is 00:25:19 I mean, it's baffling. But the truth is, and everybody knows this, I think, is that poverty is not a priority for any government. No, no. They're a politically disenfranchised group. So why would you spend, just from a logical standpoint, why would you spend your time and energy pursuing policies to enable a group of people who are politically disenfranchised and are never going to donate to your campaign and many of whom cannot vote. We have an incredible number of people in our prison system or have been put through our prison system because of our insane drug laws in this country.
Starting point is 00:25:58 And a lot of those people will come to make up the underclass, you know, the, the, uh, economic underclass of our society. And once you have a felony conviction, you don't get to vote anymore. So what, what in the world did you spend your time fixing that problem for as a politician? Yeah. You just wouldn't. You're, you're much better off as a politician. You know, like when, when you go to work, who are you going to pay more attention to? If your subordinate needs something done by three or if your boss needs something done by three?
Starting point is 00:26:32 And the other thing too, Tom, I think that the reason why the poor will never have true representation in our government too is because the poor have way less chance to be educated, right? So they have way less opportunities to be educated. So they're never going to get educated enough to be into that, to jump up into that tier. And the few that do, there's always that chance that they'll, um, they'll be happy with the wealth in which they've, they've achieved and think that everybody else can do the same thing. Right. So there's always this, this cycle of poverty never breaks itself free. There's so few people out there that are successful now that were poor that look back on that and say, oh, yeah, I know what it's like to be that way. So I'm going to go try to help everybody I can. I don't think that that's the
Starting point is 00:27:14 norm. I think the norm is I got mine. Yeah, I think so, too, because there's this there's this and there's a name for it. I can't remember what it is. But there's a psychological event or phenomenon that looks at your experience and universalizes your experience across the – we look at who we are and we say, OK, well, I will universalize my personal experiences in a way that attributes them to other people. in a way that attributes them to other people. And if you are one of those Disney success story sort of folks, and they exist, and fucking more power to them. Yeah, they do exist. But the problem with those stories and the phenomenon is that because of that, those people say, well, fuck, I did it, you can do it.
Starting point is 00:28:03 And it's not always the case. It's just not always the case. So, yeah, I mean it. You can do it. And it's not always the case. It's just not always the case. So yeah, I mean, Mitt Romney for fucking real? Yeah. I mean, fucking, that guy is fucking Scrooge McDuck. I mean, really, he is so out of touch and so fucking rich. I can't imagine him saying that, but at least he didn't say that God told him to run. I don't see that on here. Right. Because if God told him to run, he don't see that on here. Right. Because if God told him to run, he'd be sitting on the sidelines crying into his beer with Rick Santorum. What if they all got told to run? I mean, wouldn't you consider at some point,
Starting point is 00:28:32 wouldn't you consider that intervention to be like, you know, good luck on your theater production or like mentioning the Scottish play? You're like, fuck, no, really? You're like, you're sitting there praying and God's like, you should run for office. Well, I was going to. Thanks, Big G.
Starting point is 00:28:53 No fucking help at all. You would think God's super pack would be more powerful. You think God would just be more prescient? I like that he hedges his bets by saying it to three of them. He says it to four of them. Four of them. I can't count. You know, he should just say it to everybody.
Starting point is 00:29:13 Like everybody in the United States should get a message from God. It's like in your inbox. It's flashing. Yeah. Why not, right? I mean, that's really like he's going to hit once. Yeah, exactly. Let's forget about the misses.
Starting point is 00:29:24 They call that the Caputo method. So speaking of the Republican candidates, America, break out your towels. We're done. Rick Santorum pulls out. Oh, that's awesome. I like it says Rick Santorum drops out. But if you cut that, it's just Santorum drops out. And I think that's sort of apt. Nice.
Starting point is 00:29:51 Because you really could just like gravity pull that right out of there. It's going to happen. Just let it happen. It's either leakage now or leakage later. No matter how hard you clench, it's just going to come out of there. Oh, my gosh. This is just ridiculous. I mean, good.
Starting point is 00:30:06 Yeah. This guy is crazy. This guy couldn't get elected as senator in his own home state. He couldn't get reelected, rather. That guy is fucking nuts. The momentum that he had in this campaign, while I don't think he was ever truly going to get the nod, I think he just did damage. He's just like a hurricane, just constantly going on, like blowing through your town, like all hours of the day and night for weeks on end.
Starting point is 00:30:35 You're just like, can this nightmare be over? I thought his candidacy was probably one of the scariest things I've seen in a long time. That is the idea that people went to a poll to vote for this guy is scary as shit. And it's funny, too, because I saw, you know, everybody talks about the giant circle jerk that is Reddit, right? So everybody talks about all the comments on there just being a big circle jerk, hive mind. You know, everybody thinks the same thing here. comments on there, just being a big circle jerk, hive mind, you know, everybody thinks the same thing here. And if you don't think the same thing, we're not going to upvote your comments. So you'll be downvoted or whatever. But somebody mentioned on there, somebody asked on the political boards, like, Hey, is there anybody out there who really fucking likes Rick Santorum? If so, why? And there
Starting point is 00:31:18 was a couple people that posted and you know, they were obviously, you know, at the top of the queue there. And I looked and I read and I was just like, OK, you get his fiscal policy. And they're like, yeah, and social policy really doesn't matter to me. And I'm thinking, you know, the fiscal policy is all the same. You know, you're kidding yourself when you think that the fiscal policy is different, is so unbelievably different. The fiscal policy stays the same all the time. The fiscal policy never changes. It doesn't matter who's in office.
Starting point is 00:31:41 The fiscal policy stays the same all the time. The fiscal policy never changes. It doesn't matter who's in office. It's really a shift of a cup, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe 30 or 50 or, you know, $100 billion or something. Because the Republicans were just as big spending as the Democrats are. If not more so. You're lying to yourself to think about that. And he was actually, I think his economic policies, his ideas about economic policies, he's the worst kind of Republican. He's the kind of Republican who is ultra conservative when it comes to social policies, but also believes in huge government. Like he's the worst
Starting point is 00:32:16 one. But people were saying, oh, well, I like what he has to say. And I'm just thinking there's nothing this guy has to offer. And it's scary that people would actually go to a ballot box and fucking even remotely come close to checking any box near his name. If you accidentally check this box, I mean, you should just cut your fucking hand off. You should have like a firing squad in the box. Just like clacks on, start wailing. You like click. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Axons start wailing.
Starting point is 00:32:41 You click. I was like, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. A hole opens up in the ground. It sucks you down. I'm like, what about Santoro? Yeah. He did bring back the sweater vest in a snazzy way, though. He really did. He really did.
Starting point is 00:32:58 He was rocking that thing. Thank goodness he's out of the race. Now those things can fall into obscurity like him. Isn't that exactly the first thing you think? Welcome to obscurity, stupid. Yeah. You've blown all your political capital. And poll numbers show that he wasn't even going to win his own home state.
Starting point is 00:33:16 Right. So his ability to get elected as senator again, he failed last time. Yeah, he's not going to do it again. I think this guy's done. You know, I think he's done. He's going to go to the he's going to go the way of Palin, though, Yeah, he's not going to do it again. I think this guy's done. D-U-N done. He's going to go the way of Palin, though, I think. He's going to become a commentator. You run for office in this country, and then you become a commentator on something,
Starting point is 00:33:37 whether it's on Fox News or on another station, or you become a Rush Limbaugh satellite joker or whatever. I thought he was just a satellite at this point. I know he's got his own gravitational pull. Rush Limbaugh has his own satellites. So you would just float around Rush Limbaugh. They basically take conservatives and they just set them near him and they just start to orbit him very slowly.
Starting point is 00:33:57 They call him serious. So yeah, I don't understand how you could vote for the guy. But then also, I think I think I think ultimately this is a way in which to sell a book later. No kidding, right? Yeah, I think this is you know, this is your pre publication. This is your pre publication tour, right? Yeah, you get a bunch of other people to play for you, pay for your pre publication tour disguised as you running for office. And then you write a book and then you go on your real publication tour because everybody knows you.
Starting point is 00:34:27 Yeah. No kidding, right? It's the double day technique. So we're going to take a break and give you all the information that you need to find us on Facebook, on Twitter, to leave us emails and voicemails. You can post even to our Google Plus page, which I will not check or post to because I am fundamentally lazy and a terrible- I may post to it, listeners. Cecil might do it.
Starting point is 00:34:47 I may do it. I may do it. Cecil might do it. Notice he says might, though. I was throwing that out there. Yeah. Well, they actually put me into stasis in between episodes. Nice.
Starting point is 00:34:56 So they're like, I do the episode. I go into stasis. Tom does all the work during the week, and then they pull me out at the end of the week. All the work is basically, oh, God, right-click, copy, paste. Must think of snazzy 140-character comments. And we'll return in just a moment to ruin the rest of the show. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode,
Starting point is 00:35:31 visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance in Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. and Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. Help us out by retweeting and reposting our shows.
Starting point is 00:35:56 You can call us and leave us a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. So this story is from the New York Daily News. Now, this this story is not going to be surprising to anybody familiar with America's balls deep south. But Mississippi, it's kind of the taint of America. Mississippi might come as a surprise. Entertainment capital of the world.
Starting point is 00:36:33 Mississippi. Mississippi. Mississippi self-declares, by the way, as the most religious state in our great union. state in our great union also incidentally an abstinence only state and unsurprisingly the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country again or should i say still how did santorum do in the primaries down there you know here's the thing take a look at this list see so you got this list in front of you? Mm-hmm. All right.
Starting point is 00:37:10 Keep scrolling down and tell me when you cross the Mason-Dixon line. I'm just throwing this out there. I know. I know. Because you're right. You start looking. You're like, okay. Mississippi, New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, I think.
Starting point is 00:37:29 Is that above it? I don't know. Maybe, but it's skirting the edge. West Virginia is known for its incest anyway, so let's move on. Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arizona, Georgia. You're all the way to Kansas, dude. Yeah, yeah. And then Wyoming after that.
Starting point is 00:37:49 Wyoming and then Nevada. So, yeah. And then Sarah Palin. Bristol-Palin State, number 17. It's Alaska. Yeah, she accounts for half of that alone. Now, you know, take a look, too, and think, okay, if you were to categorize this in a and I hate the red state, blue state thing, I do. But take this in red state, blue state.
Starting point is 00:38:14 They're all red states in the bottom, man. They're all red states in the bottom. No one's telling me that Mississippi is ever going to turn blue, right? Like Mississippi would just turn white if it could. Well, they certainly love themselves some Rick Santorum down there because I just looked up. In 2012, Rick Santorum won in both Alabama and Mississippi. Shocker. He won down there. So I'm sure he's going to take on the niggling socialists down there or whatever
Starting point is 00:38:45 that, you know, the Barack Obama, we know what kind of person he is. Right, the niggling socialists. He's a nigger. Nigger off the sleeper, the deeper, whatever that was. He's a nigger, nigger, nigger. I got to change the subject. Yeah, I go, whoops. Turns out I'm a terrible human being again. Yeah, this is no surprise, right? I mean, I think that, you know, when you have a state that doesn't teach, when they teach abstinence only, we know abstinence only doesn't work.
Starting point is 00:39:12 We know abstinence only is really just, um, placating parents. It's not doing anything to teach children. It's just placating the parents, making them feel like they're not, you're not teaching some sort of inappropriate stuff. I don't understand why you want to shelter your children so deeply against sex anyway. Sex is a natural part of the human condition, and when you remove it from your thought process, only bad things can happen because there are repercussions to sex. Sex isn't one of those things that you can just be like, oh, well, we won't talk about it and nothing will happen. Teen pregnancies happen. STDs happen. You know, these sorts of things are
Starting point is 00:39:50 real and important. And you've got to make sure you tell kids about this stuff before they start doing it. And abstinence only does nothing. Abstinence only does nothing whatsoever. We tell kids all kinds of things in school. This is one of those things that should be taught. And if it's not, this is what happens. Cecil, were you allowed in your high school to chew gum in class? It depended on the teacher. Okay. I was not allowed to chew gum in school. Like our school had a no gum rule. Now, I didn't have any biological imperative to chew gum at no point did i have like massive years-long hormone surges which told me years long to chew gum right throbbing right pulsing full of blood engorged if you will with with it with the desire to chew gum. Right. People chewed gum every day.
Starting point is 00:40:45 Sure. You got in trouble, and there were immediate consequences, right? If you got caught in my school, if you got caught chewing gum, you got three detentions for chewing gum. I was suspended many times in school for smoking. I was a smoker a long time ago, so I know what you're saying. There's a rule against it, but I still did it. Right, and if it's something as inconsequential as chewing gum, which has an immediate, immediate repercussion, and people will still do it because teenagers do shit. You could tell a teenager to not do anything.
Starting point is 00:41:20 It doesn't make any difference. Right. There's a reason it's funny that the Peanuts characters – like when you watch the Peanuts cartoon, all the adults are just like. Right. That's funny because that shit's true for kids. Yeah. Any authority figure in that show. I can't imagine.
Starting point is 00:41:38 Abstinence only is not a real thing. You can't just be like, well, don't be having no sex. Oh, really? That's your plan? Don't be thinking about sex. Oh, really? That's your plan? Don't be thinking about sex, right? Don't even think about it. Abstinence only. I'm just, okay, well, I just won't speed either.
Starting point is 00:41:52 Or I won't drink alcohol before I'm 21. Or I won't chew gum in class. I mean, everybody does this. And that's without the biological imperative. Throw the biological imperative in there and you're going to have some sex, man. And you're also, if you live in Mississippi, you're going to end up pregnant. Hi, my name is Teresa and I'm a psychic medium.
Starting point is 00:42:17 And I don't mean to overstep my boundaries, but I see that your father is present and I'd like to give you a message from your dad. Tell my father he still owes me 20 bucks. He said, no chance, you son of a... Yeah, I know. He said, you never should have lent me the 20 bucks because you knew you're a son of a bitch.
Starting point is 00:42:34 You weren't getting it back. Okay. Now I believe you're a medium, because that's exactly what he said. I never realized that I'd come to work and have a medium talk to me about my dad. I was always very close with my dad. The phone has probably gone about 12 years now. Was there just a special birthday or something coming up? My birthday is tomorrow, the 22nd.
Starting point is 00:42:53 And you're a dad yourself? Yep. Well, you have young children under the age of 10? Actually, my oldest is 10. My youngest is going to be 8. Please know that he's acknowledging your children, that he knows of the children that were born after he passed away, and that he is a part of their life. So this is a story from Wired, and this is about the Long Island medium.
Starting point is 00:43:12 Oh, God. It's by Randy. I know you love this woman so much. Oh, God, I hate her so much. I would fucking slap the fucking taste out of her mouth if I could. God, I hate her. Slap the taste out of her mouth. I hate her. Slap the taste on her. I hate her so much. I watch – my wife watches this show and I just – I scream at the television so much she kicks me out of the room. That's fantastic.
Starting point is 00:43:31 Because this woman says nothing. She says nothing at all of substance and these people fucking eat it up and the most vulnerable people go to this Long Island medium. Right, because her whole deal, for those who aren't familiar with the show, this woman has a show on TLC, which, by the way, TLC, the learning channel, has not taught anyone anything ever. Yeah, Tom, I think you're right. Let me read down the TLC lineup, if you will. 19 kids and counting. That's the Duggars, right? It's got to be, or it's a Duggar clone.
Starting point is 00:44:01 Right. Cake boss. DC cupcakes. Extreme couponing. Oh, Cake boss. DC cupcakes. Extreme couponing. Oh, my God. Four weddings. Hoarding buried alive. Kitchen boss.
Starting point is 00:44:12 Leave it to niecey. I don't even know what that is. The little couple that's got to be a midget show. No, they're little people. The cake couple are midgets. I just did, though. I know. There goes our whole midget audience. I know. There goes our whole midget audience.
Starting point is 00:44:27 I know. Little people audience. They couldn't reach the microphone anyway. Oh my God. Long Island medium, the fucking, she's a little person, Oompa Loompa. Macy's Million Dollar Makeover. Mama's Boys of the Bronx. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
Starting point is 00:44:47 What else is on here? This is outrageous I'm learning already My Crazy Obsession My Strange Addiction How are those two shows different? I don't know How could they possibly be different? The Next Great Baker
Starting point is 00:44:59 They love baked goods on this show There's a bunch of fat people Who like to watch other people in pain Who fucking program this show And then's a bunch of fat people who like to watch other people in pain who fucking program this show. And then it says, Randy to the rescue, and I don't think that's the amazing Randy. Say yes to the dress.
Starting point is 00:45:14 And there's like four of them. Sister Wives, it's gotta be a Mormon show. I'm sure fucking... It is, I've seen that show. Toddlers and Tiaras, what not to wear. So that's their fucking lineup. TLC breaking fucking coverage on everything that you want to see flushed down the toilet. The learning channel includes no learning.
Starting point is 00:45:33 The only learning in that whole thing was the couponing. Right. That's the only thing you could learn. But the thing is, is the couponing is all fake. I don't know if you knew this. No. The couponing is all fake because a lot of those coupons they go to the store with, they say, oh, well, you can only use one of these coupons. But they allow them to come in and use multiples of the coupons just for the show.
Starting point is 00:45:55 But a lot of those coupons, you can't go in and be like, oh, I'm going to fucking save this much money on it. Like a lot of the shit that happens in that show is just fucking totally fucking fabricated. So it doesn't even make sense. It's like Sarah was watching for a while. Then she did a little research. She's like, this show sucks now because none of it's real. So who cares? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:11 Well, I've also heard that like they take advantage of like double coupon day, but there's no double coupon day. Right. I've never heard of such a thing by me. And you're a cheap man. You would have heard about it. I would have heard about it. I would.
Starting point is 00:46:22 I double, double something free. Yes. I would double something free? Yes. I am so cheap. Yeah, this woman, though, is not cheap. She has a waiting list of people. And you're right, Cecil. These are the most vulnerable people. Long Island Medium, what she is, is she's a woman living in Long Island who claims to be a medium.
Starting point is 00:46:40 And what she pretends to do is talk to the deceased for you. So you have a loved one that's passed on, and, you know, or fuck that noise. You have a loved one who's died. Yeah, I hate that passed on shit, yeah. Passed. I love that it doesn't say passed. Like, what the fuck? Were they in the fucking express lane?
Starting point is 00:47:00 Fuck. Grandpa. Holy shit. You led foot. So you have a loved one who's dead and you're feeling particularly vulnerable and ill at ease about their passing or about their death or whatever. And you go see this woman and she placates you with bland platitudes for money. Yeah. And shit that anybody could know. Attitudes for money.
Starting point is 00:47:24 Yeah, and shit that anybody could know. And then she does this shit, which fucking I don't understand why people fall for this, but she'll be like, I'm sensing like a D. Is there like a D name? And you're just like a fucking D name. A D name. Yeah, right. I called him dad. Do you have anybody in your family, Tom?
Starting point is 00:47:37 Tom, do you have anybody in your family that has a D name? I would just go dad. Right. Or, you know, my dad had a middle name that started with D. She's like, oh, is it Daniel? Oh, yeah, it's Daniel. Oh, that's my dad's middle name. You're giving them the information.
Starting point is 00:47:52 You never could have known it was his middle name. They didn't know. They didn't know. Exactly. And there's so many times that that happens on these shows. And then she, it's like the worst part of, know Jersey wives or whatever a show about like reality Jersey women and then also the worst part about like
Starting point is 00:48:10 cold reading so imagine like Sylvia Brown as a Jersey woman that's what this show is it's the most infuriating terrible show I've ever seen and you're right these people are so vulnerable like they come to the camera and they're like yeah my husband passed away like four months ago and I just want to find out if he's okay. And you're like, he's fucking dead,
Starting point is 00:48:28 lady. He's not okay. He's dead. Yeah. And it's always good news, right? That's the thing. It's always like, Oh, you know, don't blame yourself. You did everything you could. Were you? And she says terrible shit. Like, were you there says terrible shit like, were you there? And, you know, were you holding his hand when they when they passed? Like, like she cites very common experiences. Right. And then these people, they tap into this deeply personal and emotional private experience. And then they fucking display it for her.
Starting point is 00:49:08 Sure. And then she voyeuristically sits there soaking in the praise for her non-existent talents and charges them for it. Yeah. Charges them a lot of money. And one of the times, I remember this last, a couple of times ago, she was, she's talking to somebody and this woman's like, he's like, she's talking to her. She's saying that she's talking to her dad, right? Your dad is here. Your dad is here.
Starting point is 00:49:24 Oh, he's talking to me. Oh, you know, he said, he said, he said, um, tell her she's always been my little princess. And you're like, how many fucking fathers have said that to daughters? Right. I mean, like, come on when they're a little kid. And Sarah popped up and said to me, she's like, well, my dad would never say that. My dad would never said that when I was a kid. And he would never say that now after he's dead. And I'm like, think about it when your dad dies, right? When your dad dies and you're in a, in an emotional state, you think maybe he wouldn't have said that when he was alive, but now he's feeling sentimental after death. You know what I mean? Like there's all these, these ways in which your brain wants
Starting point is 00:49:55 it to be true. So you're going to make it true regardless of what this little orange lady has to say. Well, and, and if you, even if you did, let's, let's play that out where, where it doesn't work. Right. So your dad, you know, always wanted you to call you a little princess or whatever. No, my dad never actually called me that. He might not have called that to you, but he always felt that way. And he wants you to know he always felt that way.
Starting point is 00:50:19 It's easy. You deflect the no. Yeah. And it's, it doesn't take any. Because I am unskilled at everything. Right. And I can do it. I'm Raymond Massey, and I have a special message for senior citizens. Today's doctors, drugs, and medical devices truly work medical miracles for young and old alike.
Starting point is 00:50:42 But there are some as phony as a $3 bill. Investigate before you invest in health services or products. So this next story is from USA Today. And this is, herbal remedy may trigger widespread kidney failure. You know, I don't understand why people are surprised by this, right? You know, there's an herbal remedy that's been going around. It's a weed called birthwort. Anything wort, I'm not eating. I'm just throwing it out there. I know, you just want to stay away from warts.
Starting point is 00:51:20 The wart. Like, hey, you want some of this wart? No. No, I don't care how the beginning of that word sounds the end sounds like a wart yeah it's like you wouldn't need it if it was like do you want any of this birth pimple yeah you'd be like oh fuck what would you like any of this birth shit oh yeah i got uh i got this. John's boils. What? I don't want that at all.
Starting point is 00:51:47 Would you like the scallop scab? There's some words. It's like, oh, Jesus Christ. This is a ginkgo biloba smegma. What? Fuck. No one's consuming that. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:52:03 That's disgusting. No one's consuming that. Right, right. That's disgusting. So this birthwort has been used quite a bit, actually, for a variety of illnesses. Turns out one of the illnesses is kidney failure, which it doesn't prevent so much as it causes. It makes. It makes it happen.
Starting point is 00:52:27 Because it contains a potent kidney toxin. Yeah. And carcinogens. Let's just say may because it does say may at the top of the article. Let's say may. Let's say may because we're not – the good thing about this article is that it doesn't come right out and say it. It's not 100 percent, but it's saying there's been a lot of studies that look like it leads to this. So the conclusive studies are not in, but this is enough reason not to take it.
Starting point is 00:52:49 This is enough reason to read and be like, you know what, I'm going to wait until somebody fucking studies this. And then, only then will I take it. And I'm not going to take the word of some fucking, you know, Kevin Trudeau. I'm just going to make sure that I pay attention to the studies here. But it's kind of fucking scary that and also I think it's kind of brilliant to be selling this product
Starting point is 00:53:11 as a way in which to prevent something that it actually might cause because then you could be like, oh, they didn't get it in time. If you were somebody who actually sold this stuff, that would be a great way in which to sell your product. But this, I think the biggest part of this to take away is we need to regulate supplements.
Starting point is 00:53:32 That's the big thing. Absolutely. In the States, I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in the States, natural fucking supplements are completely unregulated. They're not tested for efficacy. They're not tested for efficacy. They're not tested for potency. They're not tested for the amount that's claimed in a pill. So you buy a pill, it's supposed to be 100 milligrams of, you know, St. John's wort or birth wort or, you know, whatever.
Starting point is 00:53:57 It doesn't necessarily have to have 100 milligrams of that in there. It could be 100 milligrams of fucking sawdust. They're not regulated at all. This idea, this fucking idea, we have to recognize this has been sold to us and it is untrue that natural has any kind of connotation at all in the good direction. Right, right. Right? Natural doesn't mean good. Natural doesn't mean anything.
Starting point is 00:54:27 It's a buzzword. It's a marketing term. Yeah. You know, just because something is naturally occurring, just because something grows as a plant, you know, poison ivy is a plant, but I don't want to fucking make lotion out of it. Right. Only if you're going to give it to somebody you don't like.
Starting point is 00:54:43 Yeah. You wouldn't be like, Oh, well, you know, look at this lotion. Like, you know, lotion's actually a great example. Lotions are always say like, Oh,
Starting point is 00:54:50 it's made with like natural oatmeal and like natural aloe. And it's like, okay, great. Well, it could be natural. It could be natural. It could be natural.
Starting point is 00:54:56 It could be natural. It could be natural. Yeah. That'd be the same amount of natural. That's the worst lotion ever. It would be terrible. Keep that, keep that away from the computer.
Starting point is 00:55:03 You know what I mean? Like you don't want to use that. You want to, you do not want to mix that up with the from the computer. You know what I mean? Like you don't want to use that. You do not want to mix that up with the Juergens. You know what I mean? Like you want to make sure because if not, you can't get your hand out of your pants. My hands get chapped while I type. You can't get your hand out of your pants for a week then. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:55:21 Natural doesn't mean anything. Arsenic is natural. Mercury is natural. You know know those aren't good for you nobody's like hey you know what i'd like a big glass of mercury that doesn't happen it's it's so many things are natural even vitamin a in in too large of a quantity is fucking unbelievably deadly and dangerous like you can't, natural is not a meaningful term. Right. So birthwort, it's a natural remedy.
Starting point is 00:55:48 Yeah. Yeah. You can have as much of it as you want and then your kidneys don't work. Birthwort, now with more dialysis, 50% more dialysis. It should come with a coupon at least. Yeah, right. Birthwort, not peeing enough blood? Oh, no. Do you have a friend of the same blood type?
Starting point is 00:56:10 We hope so. It always looks like I ate beets. Yeah. Someone should get to the bottom of that. And I know just the guy to do it. Donald Trump is here tonight. just the guy to do it, Donald Trump, is here tonight. Now, I know that he's taken some flack lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest to Dan the Donald.
Starting point is 00:56:42 And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? Biggie and Tupac. So this is from Seattle Pie News or Seattle Pie dot com. Seattle Pie. It's a blog.
Starting point is 00:57:16 Seattle Pie. So weird. Fox News host. Still going on about the birther thing, Cecil. Really? This is the tweet. Thoughts? Well, clearly, no, you don't have any.
Starting point is 00:57:30 Thoughts? Did Obama campaign threaten Chelsea Clinton's life to keep parents silent? Two is also in the number two. I just got to point that out. Right. Right. Although I can't beg that much because you only got 140 crazy conspiracy characters. I disagree, Tom.
Starting point is 00:57:51 And the reason why I disagree is because there's still 56 characters left in that statement that she could have used. There's a link, too. But even if it was Godfather Politics, it's not 50 characters. Right, Godfather Politics. And it's 56 character link. You're using Twitter wrong. No kidding, right? You're using it like I use it. Like 56.
Starting point is 00:58:05 Twitter will auto-shorten that shit for you. Are you crazy? At some point, Twitter's just like, uh-uh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. And then she replies with this other piece. Let me see real quick because Media Matters calls her out on it. Let me go to Twitter. She replies with, and now I'm going to read this sort of literally.
Starting point is 00:58:25 I know MM, and now this is Media Matters, strives to be, and she puts the number two and the small case B, factually correct. So attach the article PLZ, please. I was asking, and she puts the number four, opinion. I just put that into Twitter, Tom, and it's 51 characters short. But you are an idiot if that's how you type. I'm sorry. I can't get behind the fucking quick speak. That's ridiculous. No. Not when it's
Starting point is 00:58:54 unnecessary. Well, not when you're a fucking news organization. Right. I could expect that. I can fucking expect that if it's Tony and he's 17 and he goes to high school. I can get it. I understand.
Starting point is 00:59:07 But you're a fucking – you're a 30 to 40-year-old fucking news reporter. Did you go to journalism school? Well, clearly no because they're mocking Media Matters for trying to be factually accurate. What the fuck? Look, this isn't a matter of opinion. Yeah. It's not an opinion whether or not somebody was murdered, right? You can't be like, at no point, has this ever happened?
Starting point is 00:59:33 Was he murdered? Hmm. Let's ask him. Were you murdered? Let's pull the audience. Yeah, I'm fine. No, I'm eating cake. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:42 It's just, oh, well, we just have a difference of opinion. I think you were murdered. What? Wait, what? How does that? No, it's not a fucking difference of opinion. Somebody was either fucking, it's a thing that happened. Now, you might not know whether it happened or not, but it doesn't change whether or not it's a fact-based question.
Starting point is 01:00:00 It's a question of what did or did not occur. question it's a question of what did or did not occur so you're saying that her her assertion because because where she's linking is that obama and people within his campaign committed murders as part of a conspiracy to hide his ineligibility to run for office as a result of him not being an american citizen that's the that, there's facts there. Right. It's not, well, I can't believe you want to be factually accurate. Motherfucker, you're a journalist. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:34 That's what you're supposed to do. You don't have a podcast. And not only that, but she says, here's a, she said, thoughts. Did the Obama campaign threaten Chelsea Clinton's life? And you're like, well, what does that even mean? I'm basically polling the audience to see whether or not they think it's plausible or whether or not they think he did it. What does that even matter?
Starting point is 01:00:55 Be like, well, thoughts. Did you think Obama ate a cheese sandwich last night? Right. Like, who cares? What are your thoughts on it? I don't care what your thoughts are on it. Why do you care what their thoughts thoughts on it? I don't care what your thoughts are on it. Why do you care what their thoughts are on it? And that's not something you add, like, thoughts, German shepherds are lizards.
Starting point is 01:01:11 What? Fucking, that's not. Who cares if everybody says yes, it doesn't make a German shepherd a lizard. Absolutely not. And really, the idea that he's not, that he's, first, that he's threatening people's lives and or murdering people to stop them from realizing that he's not from this country. He's already the president of the United States. Yeah, that fucking ship has sailed. He's fucking already the president.
Starting point is 01:01:36 What are you going to do to him? You can't go to him now and be like, hey, man, you know, we made a mistake earlier. You got to get out of there. Yeah, right? He's not going anywhere. Like, fucking, you have fucking moved in your fucking cousin Earl at this point. He ain't fucking leaving. The fucking couch is his.
Starting point is 01:01:53 I don't care what you say. You ain't getting Earl off the couch. Well, what this tells me, because if he doesn't win the election, he's not in office that much longer. If he doesn't win the election, he's not in office that much longer. What this tells me is this person has no faith at all in the Republican candidate's ability to get elected. Sure, so you got to fucking. So throw him out on a technicality like he's a murdering Nigerian or something. What do you want? You want to grab this woman by the shirt and be like, what do you want, Biden to be president?
Starting point is 01:02:24 You dummy. Are you that stupid? Biden can't even fucking tie his own shoes for crying out loud. Why is that? Why is every vice presidential candidate you look like look a scant at? It's the fucking comic relief. Like they need to have the comic relief in order to fucking win the presidency. Don't they know it's not wingman?
Starting point is 01:02:44 It's vice president. Fucking I'm telling you, fucking Biden versus quail in a stupid off would be that would be amazing to watch. Biden. Oh, wow. I don't know who would win that. Biden would smile a lot more. He would.
Starting point is 01:03:00 He would smile a lot more. Biden could laugh at himself, though. That's the difference, I think, between Biden and most of them. Right. He knows he's a joke. Yeah, he knows it. But the joke's on us. He's getting paid fatty banks, y'all. Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar So this next story is from Friendly Atheist blog. We had Friendly Atheist on our show not too long ago.
Starting point is 01:03:38 And this is from a story, Picture of a Muslim woman holding a bra is not offensive. Yeah, no kidding. It's laundry. It's just laundry. She's not even wearing the bra. She's just holding it. She's looking at it like, man, I wish I could wear this.
Starting point is 01:04:01 Right, she's looking at it like, this is underneath 14 pounds of sackcloth. It's funny because this actually, like it was put up, this is a photo that was art that was put up, and then some faculty member got mad and ripped it down, and then there was this sort of back and forth between whether or not it was art or whether it was offensive.
Starting point is 01:04:19 I think the reason why this guy thought it was offensive was because this is actually how, if you're Islamic, this is how foreplay works. They just hold up the undergarments and then the other person goes... I will show you these various undergarments. Not on my body. No, they actually
Starting point is 01:04:35 put them on over the burqa. So like they wear the bra and then she scrunches the panties on over the burqa. They have to wear granny panties to get the whole skirt in there. You know, here's the thing that kills me about the objections that people had to this. This picture was created as an art project by a woman who wears the niqab herself. And she did it as an expression, as a way to say, like, you know, just because a woman
Starting point is 01:05:06 is veiled doesn't mean that she doesn't wear, you know, the same undergarments or do laundry or, you know, she left it sort of open for interpretation. But that was her intention. Her intention was to incite a conversation. But what's so galling to me is that instead of inciting a conversation, you just incite, like, vandalism and just, like, extreme reaction. Like, everything is like, ah! You can't even be like, oh, I didn't like that. Let's talk about it. Instead, it's like, oh, tear it down. Burn down the house.
Starting point is 01:05:40 Nuke it from orbit. Like, fucking settle down. Moderate your. the house, nuke it from orbit! Like, fucking settle down, moderate your... It's like there's no ability to moderate the level of reaction to silly shit at all. They're just mad. They want to think all their women
Starting point is 01:05:56 are ghosts, and they don't have lady parts. So they're just like, no, we do not want to know whether or not they're wearing bras underneath. They are all wearing bras underneath. Although are all wearing bras underneath. Although, really, why wear one? I would hope so. You don't have to.
Starting point is 01:06:13 If you don't have bags big enough to hold it, then who cares, right? I have to think. If I'm forced to wear that ridiculous fucking Casper getup, I would just be fucking freeballing it all day. Why not? No kidding, right? I wouldn't have anything on me. It's the desert, man. It's got to be hot in that thing. They're all black.
Starting point is 01:06:30 It's like wearing a solar panel. Can't they just wire all these women up with, like, power? That's terrible. Oh, my God. If they ever invented solar panels that were flexible, though, I mean, seriously. Yeah, that's how you do it. This is the way to go. Like, your iPod will always be charged.
Starting point is 01:06:50 Absolutely. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth! I don't even know what to say here, Cecil. This is from Raw Story.
Starting point is 01:07:03 Click on this link at your own discretion. Let's start there. Because Harry McMahon chest is like leading this story in a pretty big way. This is a story out of Rio de Janeiro. I'm just going to try to read. It's so odd. Right. Brazilian police announced Friday that they had arrested a man and two women on suspicion of having murdered and cannibalized at least two women in what was described as a purification ritual.
Starting point is 01:07:31 The three defendants formed a sect called Cartel. Not the Cartel, just Cartel. It's just Cartel. That seeks to purify the world and reduce the population. Well, you reduce them by eating them. You only reduced it by two or three. It's still a reduction. Admittedly.
Starting point is 01:07:47 They're cartel literalists. They are reducing the population. Look at this picture, though, Tom. And doesn't it look like they both have the same shirt on? Like when you look at it, you're like either she has a hairy chest or they're wearing the same shirt. I'm not sure. One of the things that struck me in this is – well, two things really struck me. One is sick, and that's that it seems like they had one of the daughters of the person they ate still with them.
Starting point is 01:08:19 So they were like taking care of that daughter. I don't know if they're like just – if she's like a veal that they're thinking, you know, what we're going to do is just keep her for a little while. Or they were actually like, they were treating her like a daughter. I don't know. But that's just the sick part of the story. But the one part of the story you just want to slap and be like, don't you watch CSI? Don't use dead people's credit cards.
Starting point is 01:08:39 Right. You dummy. Come on. Like, everybody does that. And it's so stupid. You don't use a dead person. If you kill a person, you go out and murder a person, you don't go then fucking wear the same clothes they were wearing when you murdered them. Right.
Starting point is 01:08:52 You know? And then go hang out in front of their house in the fucking clothes, big blood on them, and fucking do a dance. You don't do that, dummy. Then don't go fucking use their credit card. I know. Like, you didn't think this murder thing out very well. But to be fair, he only killed people that a spirit warned him were bad people. So if the spirit says, look, here's a – I went to the Long Island medium.
Starting point is 01:09:16 Right. And she told me who the bad people were and then I ate them. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. Because I have to purify the world and reduce the population. You guys aren't thinking. You're not thinking. That's how it works. When there's
Starting point is 01:09:33 too many people, then you form cartel. And you hire babysitters that you eat when the spirits say that they're bad. And then you use their credit cards. I don't know what – I mean it's all perfectly – it's crystal fucking clear. These people are the worst criminals ever.
Starting point is 01:09:52 I don't – Gosh, you're terrible at your job. You need to not do this. You need to not be – you need to not be cannibals who hire babysitters to eat. Yeah. Because you're just not good at it. You need to find a different profession. Look, when the advertisement
Starting point is 01:10:06 is from the fine young cannibals She drives me crazy! Maybe vet that information. I ate that bitch! Before you swing over there. Because they might be fine young cannibals. They might be.
Starting point is 01:10:23 Or they might be just cannibals. They might be. Maybe. Or they might be. There's a chance. Just cannibals. Just don't. Neither of these are fine or young. Right. I would just say they're cannibals. So we got a Google Voice this time, Tom. Rob, we both know, we both picked out that it's Rob who left this. He didn't leave a name.
Starting point is 01:10:44 But we're going to play it for you now, and then Tom's going to read it. Then Cain said, If I've understood you rightly, the Lord and Satan made a wager, but this man Job isn't to know that he is the object of that gambler's agreement between God and the devil. Exactly, exclaimed the angels as one. That doesn't seem very fair of the Lord, said Cain. If it's true as I've heard that Job, for all his wealth, is a good and upright man, and very religious too. He has committed no crime, yet for no reason he is about to be punished for the loss of all his money and possessions.
Starting point is 01:11:14 Now, it may be, as many people say, that the Lord is just, but I don't think so. It reminds me of what happened to Abraham, whom God, in order to put him to the test, commanded to kill his son Isaac. It seems to me that if the Lord doesn't trust the people who believe in him, I really don't see why those people should trust in the Lord. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. Not even the angels can fathom the workings of his mind. Oh, I've had enough of all this nonsense, but the Lord's ways being inscrutable. Answered Cain, God should be as clear and transparent as a pane of glass
Starting point is 01:11:40 and not go wasting his energies on creating an atmosphere of constant terror and fear. God, in short, did not love us. So, Tom, what did Google Voice think it said? They were infallible as usual when interpreting the word of God. Then came said, see if I understand you. Rightly, the Lord, save me to wait your. But this man job isn't to know if you'd be options. I can push agreement between gone double exactly financials as point. It's very simple.
Starting point is 01:12:15 Words, and it sure was. I've heard a job for all's well, and then it isn't good enough pregnant. Very religious. Two, he's committed no crime, yes or no reason. He's about to punish the lost, all his money possessions. Maybe it's meant. Say that the Lord is jazz. No.
Starting point is 01:12:38 So much of what happened to him and got an order to complete the test, commanded to kill his son Isaac. It seems to me that the Lord doesn't trust the people. Completed. And I really don't see what this picture. Trust no more. The ways of motor and scruples. Not even the angels.
Starting point is 01:13:03 Content workings of this month, all I had, enough of all this nonsense of the Lewis wasting its critical answered came. Got to get clearing transparency payment. Class or not. But we think
Starting point is 01:13:19 energists and creating an atmosphere constant terror and fear got a short knot. Love us. Love us. I like this. The ways of motor and scruples. That's got to be a book in the Bible, I think.
Starting point is 01:13:34 Trust no more the ways of motor and scruples. That's fantastic. Thank you, Rob, for leaving us a voicemail. We appreciate it. We also got an email from Tim. And Tim here talks about trying to explain Easter to his kid, Tom. Yeah, you know, he brings up the point that it may be problematic if kids are, he says this is the first generation, you know, where kids may be growing up without any religious beliefs in
Starting point is 01:14:08 their household. It may leave them more susceptible to religious views down the road, you know, like abstinence-only education. The difference is that abstinence-only education acknowledges the existence of sex. Sex is a biological imperative, and then it tells you to ignore it. Whereas just ignoring deities, there's no biological imperative toward belief. Right. There's nothing that's constantly striving in your biology to believe in something. If only there was something, why isn't there something? to believe in something if only there was something.
Starting point is 01:14:44 Why isn't there something? Instead, if you just never talk about gods or goddesses, your kids won't naturally come to those conclusions on their own. I mean, your kids will naturally experience a material world. And I think that kids will naturally develop materialist explanations if they're given good ones. I don't think you need to be worried that your kid will latch on to any kind of supernatural humbuggery just because they have nothing to fill some void. I don't think there's any void left by non-religion. I don't think there's any void left by non-religion.
Starting point is 01:15:30 We got an email from Paul, and Paul sent us – said that we did a lot – some really good coverage on the Trevon Martin thing. For those of you who don't know, Zimmerman was charged this week and is now expecting to go to trial. And he says – he's like, you know, a lot of new information has come out, and there seems to be conflicting ports. And he really – and he's not been able to nail it down. And the guy's been charged at this point. It's going to be handled in the courts. So if he gets off, he gets off. He gets imprisoned and gets imprisoned. And that's how we feel too.
Starting point is 01:15:55 It's like just give the courts a chance to look at it. It's second-degree murder, which according to the story that he's telling seems about right. So let's see where it goes. And at this point, there's nothing to be said. You know, he hasn't been charged. We're not going to say whether he's guilty or innocent. But at this point, you know, the facts will come out now in this case and we get a chance to see where it goes. So thanks for your email, Paul. We appreciate it. Well, that's it for this week. We're going to wrap it up here and leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.
Starting point is 01:16:30 It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram,idal free energy Healing water downward spiral Brain dead pan sales pitch Late night info doc Utainment Leo Pisces Cancer cures detox reflex Foot massage death and towers
Starting point is 01:16:56 Tarot cards psychic healing Crystal balls Bigfoot Yeti aliens churches mosques And synagogues temples dragons Giant worms Atlantis Dol dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive.
Starting point is 01:17:26 Doubt even this. friends, families, or of the local dairy council. you

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