Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 476: Non-Concentration Camps

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. 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 is episode 476 of Cognitive Dissonance, Cecil. And we spent the last couple of days studiously laughing at watching the debates. Which are a very serious thing, people. Very serious. God damn it. Absolutely.

And then later on in the show, we're going to be covering part of the debates and then we're going to be continuing on that conversation on our Patreon page. So stick around and we'll talk a little bit about the debates here. Some of us, we're going to talk a little bit about the structure here on the show

and then we'll talk about the candidates on our Patreon, but stick around for that. I drive from coast to coast, and this shit's flat to me. I'm just saying. Okay, that's the dumbest thing you've ever said. It's the dumbest thing you've ever said. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it's flat to me.

So Cecil, this first story is from deadstate.org. Biblical Flat Earth Society founder is charged. What? Yeah, okay, we'll get there.org. Biblical Flat Earth Society founder is charged. Wait, what? Yeah, okay. We'll get there. Okay. Biblical Flat Earth Society, buddy, is charged with

56 counts of child exploitation. Oh. Child exploitation, in a sense, isn't like having them build you a fence, is it? It's not like running a cobbler out of your house. Like they're building shoes.

Like it's like a Nike factory or something. It's not anything like that, is it? No, it's child sexual exploitation. Oh, sex exploitation. It's what it always is. See, so the thing you're thinking that it always is, is what it is. Admittedly, that's a hard job too, though.

Yeah. Hard is the, okay. Is it a sweatshop? I don't know. That's disgusting. Alright, so 40-year-old Durham, North Carolina. Carolina? Philip Stephen Stallings from North Carolina. Let's go there. 40-year-old.

He was arrested facing dozens of charges for sexually exploiting minors and for allegedly downloading media that involved minors engaged in sexual situations and then sharing it on social media platforms. He had child porn that he was sharing on social media platforms. Like, if that sounds stupid, it's because he's a biblical flat earther. If that sounds stupid, it's because he's a biblical flat earther. There's no way somebody who is a biblical flat earther is going to engage in a crime and get away with it.

Yeah, you already have to be bottom of the barrel to be a biblical flat earther at this point. Let's talk about biblical flat earth for a second. Because biblical flat earth to me, it's the one thing that makes sense. Biblical and flat earth. Because if you're like a biblical literalist and you think the flood happened, the water just runs right off a globe, but it sits on the plate for the flood. So it makes sense. You know, like at least in your weird mindset, at least it makes sense. Biblical flat earth makes sense.

Wouldn't it just like fall off the edges of the plate? Wouldn't the world have to be like a shadow box with the lid off of it or something? It's like a teacup. It's teacups all the way down, I think. I think it's teacups

all the way down. So the flat earth, biblical flat earthers, those are idiots that think that the world is flat despite every possible piece of available evidence.

Despite GPS. Yeah, right. Despite just like, watch the Felix Baumgartner video. Yeah just get like, yeah. Okay. A million reasons why that's just literally the dumbest thing you can believe, except for the other dumbest thing you can believe, which is that the Bible is a true thing. And so they actually believe that one begets the other, that like, that the Bible is, is the reason to believe in there believe and their basis for belief in a flat earth is biblical. Is there biblical literalism?

It's like, yeah, well, I mean, they didn't fucking say it was a big, you know, obloid sphere or whatever. It's like, nevermind that the Bible didn't say there's another hemisphere over yonder. Yeah, right. Bible didn't say it was round at all. Yeah.

Also follow that up with the fact that this guy shares like child pornography on social media. What kind of, what kind of emojis do you do to like it? Do you put like a pacifier, like a fast fire, eggplant, pacifier, eggplant, dirty diaper. That's weird. That that's strange i don't even know how to get caught i sent it in messenger so it's like a pro i create up a private group and then in my pro um idiot that works never i want to read part of this it says stallings is an ebook author that also has a youtube channel where he covers topics such as feminism, transvestites, and women in the military.

I mean, I think when you fill out to get a channel on YouTube, you have to be like, do you hate women? Yes. Have a YouTube channel. Okay. We're going to go ahead and start you with 60,000 downloads. That's the You Hate Women starter pack. So go ahead and, oh, you're going to talk about trans things? Are you? Okay. Yeah. That's the You Hate Women starter pack. So, go ahead and,

oh, you're going to talk about trans things? Are you, okay, yeah, that's the side? 80,000 standard. Do you dislike

black people, maybe? No, if you can just throw the N word in there a few times, we can get you to a solid million.

Yeah, we'll rock you up to a million, no worries. If you just like, let somebody kick you in the nuts, you're at two and a half million

and it could be America's funniest racist home videos, which is like what YouTube has become. No shit, right? YouTube is like three things as far as I can understand it, right? It's like music videos, how to tie a tie tutorials. Maybe that's just for me. I don't know. How to tie a tie tutorials and racist funny home videos. That's like it. Or shit that your kids watch and makes you want to kill yourself.

Well, my kids would watch the racist videos. That's why you want to kill yourself. I get it. I get it. I get it. We should not be subjecting kids' brains especially to that. And we make guinea pigs out of whole populations, and then we discover how many die. Holy shit.

This story's from PBS.org, and there's a couple of things about this that fucking blow my mind. So, the title is, Smartphones Aren't Making Millennials Grow Horns. Okay. Here's How to Spot a Bad Study. Okay. horns okay here's how to spot a bad study okay now the reason that i wanted to talk about this is because this got posted in a wapo article yeah it was washington post yeah like which what the fuck yeah like i would have i would have been like oh it's like on buzzfeed or something you know bustle or you know some bullshit yeah yeah like clickbaity nonsense it's like indiscriminate yeah daily mail right yeah

fine all right whatever but like the washington post publishes it says horns are growing on young people's skulls phone is to blame research suggests yeah so and this and this of course then immediately use phone use because that's an important part of this study, is that they never tested phone use. Yeah, well, there's no horns growing on people. And the PBS article is really interesting and it's really important because the PBS article really sets out to do what it says it's going to do. It's like, here's how to spot a bad study. Like, here are the things to look for. And this is like one of those moments where you have to say,

it's not enough to say, okay, Washington Post is a reputable source. If the claim seems outlandish, and I swear to God, if you think that horns growing out of people's skulls because they look at their phone all day isn't, like, if that doesn't strike an alarm bell for you in terms of maybe I should vet this, but it is really something extraordinary to have PBS have to say, look, it's not enough to rely upon Washington Post

or New York Times, like none of that. And now the source itself, you can't even go to big, you gotta be able to get all the way back to the original material. In Washington Post defense, there's an update that says after publication of this story, concerns were raised about an undisclosed business venture of one of the researchers who works as a chiropractor. This story has been updated to reflect the questions about a possible conflict of interest involving his business. The journal that published the main study in question said it was investigating the concerns.

The researchers say they are making minor changes to their paper, but stand by their work. So they did go back a little bit. And that's one of the pieces that is in this article. But there's so many other pieces, right? The number one piece that they say, first off, it's chiropractor patients, right? So it's chiropractor patients is the first thing,

which again, feels like it might be a flag. There's a flag there that pops up when you say, first off, it's chiropractor patients, right? So it's chiropractor patients is the first thing, which again, feels like it might be a flag. There's a flag there that pops up when you say, we tested a bunch of chiropractor patients. I know that they're looking at, at least they should be looking at data in this and not thinking about sort of what they're there for. But there's something in it that feels a little disingenuous already. And then

to talk about this in particular, it says this study doesn't actually measure cell phone usage. That's something that the article seems to claim and then doesn't even measure. So you've got to look at these things a little more critically, and you've got to be able to look at, like you said, these big organizations, news organizations, and say, is this study worthwhile? I don't know how good we're going to get at doing this, right? So there comes a point where I think our default mode has to be one of incredulity, right? We have to read things and say, you know, that doesn't pass a basic test that jives with the reality of the world. Sure. So that goes in a pile called, I don't believe it till I research it later. Yeah.

You can't just put in a pile of, well, I read it in this reputable source. Sure. So therefore it's true. And this like, I think scientific reporting is particularly bad for this, right? And it's because science is fucking hard and real science is hard and it's complicated.

And oftentimes it's a moving target. Well, research suggests things. And the reporting around science is often really irresponsible. They'll take small-scale studies, initial studies, studies that are not even intending to show causation. And they'll report them as if it's new facts about how the world works. So the reporting around science, especially emerging science,

is really, really irresponsible a lot of times. And a lot of times that reporting is done by people who don't have a solid grasp of the science that they're reporting on. So it's like you're reading a summary of somebody who read a summary of somebody who read the abstract. And it's like,

I'm thinking of like, there's bigthink.com. You ever look at bigthink.com? Yeah, yeah. It's really bad for that kind of stuff. It's like, it's a bunch of like, big clickbaity articles that are driven by really small suggestive studies about like, what might be happening, you know? Like, and they draw it out as if to say, this is now how the world works. Look at what we found. Yeah. That's really problematic, man. Yeah. Well, they're talking about in this, in this particular study, they're saying like that they're, the people are developing some sort of bone spur. Right. Right. And it, and there's, they're calling it a horn and it's like a horn is not a bone spur.

No. And like, I realized that that might feel pedantic in some way, right? There's a feeling like, yeah, I understand. But, you know, they're saying that they're developing some sort of protrusion because of this. And that's, I get what they mean, right? So you might be like,

there might be a little pushback there and be like, well, that's a little pedantic. But that's the point of a scientific article, right? That's the point of a scientific article. If you don't push back on the little things, on the tiny things, if you don't get the tiny, any of these tiny things right, and you get a bunch of them wrong, it changes the whole article. It changes the whole thing. And like, think about what the connotations around growing horns suggest, right? Yeah, absolutely, right? That's not accidental. That terminology

is used specifically because it gets people excited, right? Because it will create clicks, because it'll get people worked up. Like a bone spur, there's a great thing in a few of us articles, it says, using a horn to describe a bone spur is like saying your elbow is a fingernail.

They're not even remotely close to one another. But if you say horn, it sounds evil, right? It sounds devil and like it associates phone use with something bad. Some kind of disfigurement, right? Like you're being disfigured by this thing. You have a horn coming out of your head. There is a horn coming out of your head because of the thing that you're doing. Right. And it's also self-inflicted in some ways, right? And really what the study is is about the way

in which people's heads move forward because of, you know, how much screen time we're having. Right. So that's what it's set up for. Right.

But it didn't even test screen time. Right. It suggests that, like, there are bone spurs that are a result of postural changes because of looking down a lot. Yeah.

Right? And that may very well be true, right? Like certainly I think postural change very well might be a factor when it comes to like how we live our lives. Sure. I don't see any reason why that might not be true. It seems like it's-

Yeah, it seems perfectly reasonable. And then maybe there's some small anatom- But we're not growing horns. Yeah, right. We're not growing- We're not like rhinos or something. Right. Like, what the fuck? I mean, it could be the rapture and we're all growing one horn.

How many crowns? And then a couple crowns. Depends on the, you know, depends on the, on the creature in the head. You know, you get a crown. Do we have to share crowns, Cecil? Do you not have to share a fucking crown? No, it depends on how long our horns are. You know, if yours is like-

Well, my horn's not going to be that big. Depending on the weather, or if I just got out of the pool, it could be much smaller. It's always cold wherever I'm at. No matter what. What I'm saying is the planet's on fucking fire. There are a lot of things we could do to put it out.

Are any of them free? No, of course not. Nothing's free, you idiots. Grow the fuck up. Oh my God, this is why we can't have nice things. This is upsetting and I want to read this exchange. And I want to read this for a couple of reasons. First, I think it's incredibly important that reporters hold people this accountable. And I think the reporting is really good here. And I also think the exchange is just literally kind of unbelievable. So this is from CNN.com. Hi. So we're just going to play the audio from CNN directly because Tom started doing voices and it got a little caliente at the end.

So here it is. Do you think human-induced climate emergency is a threat to the United States? Well, what I will tell you is that we'll always follow the science on that in this administration. The science says it is. But what we won't do, and the Clean Power Plan was all about that, was hamstringing energy in this country, raising the cost of utility rates for working families across this country. But is it a threat? While other nations like China and India do absolutely nothing or make illusory promises decades down the road to deal with it. You know, the truth of the matter is with the advent of natural gas, with the natural gas explosion

that's developing, with clean coal technology, we're seeing a significant reduction in carbon emissions all across this country. But is what people are calling a climate emergency, is it a threat? Do you think it's a threat? Man-made climate emergency is a threat. I think the answer to that is going to be based upon the science. Well, the science says yes. I'm asking you what you think. There's many in the science that- The science community in your own administration at NOAA, at the DNI, they all say it's a threat. Look, what the president has said, what we've said is that we are not going to raise utility

rates. Remember what President Obama said? But it's not a threat. He said he had his climate change plan. He said it's necessarily going to cause utility rates to skyrocket. And that would force us into these green technologies. Now you've got Democrats all running for president that are running on a green new deal that would break this economy. So you don't think it's a threat is all I'm saying. You don't think it's a threat. I think we're making great progress reducing carbon emissions. America has the cleanest air and water in the world. We'll continue to use market forces. We don't have the cleanest air and water in the world. I mean, you get back to me with some statistics. We're making progress on reducing carbon emissions. We're doing it through technology, through natural gas, through continuing to support as our administration just rolled back all these clean, clean, turn back to nuclear energy, clean energy.

The answer, though, is not to raise the utility rates of millions of utility rate payers across the country. First of all, that's how it's done. Like if you're a reporter, that's how it's fucking done. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to dodge it. No, no, no. I'm going to pin that shit down. We don't move on. We never move past this question. If you don't answer it, the whole interview is you didn't answer this question. That's it. Yeah. A couple of things. One, I hate the name. I hate the title of this article. Absolutely hate it. Mike Pence's unbelievable answer on whether climate change is a threat. That's not an unbelievable answer. What he did is not unbelievable in the least. It's exactly what

you would expect from Pence to do. Dodge the question, say he doesn't say he believes the science, but then also demonstrably not believe the science. That's what they've been doing for years. This is not a new thing. This isn't an unbelievable thing. That's a clickbaity, shitty statement. That's fucking completely untrue. It's not unbelievable. I 100% believe that's what Pence would do.

The other thing that I think is amazing, is amazing about this, is if you watch this clip and you hear what this guy has to say, he, he is constantly murmuring over Pence. He's like the weird straight man in a comedy. And it's funny that he's the straight man and not Pence, but it's like, but like mother, mother, can you tell them I'm not gay? A girl made me feel weird in my pants. Tell them I'm not gay.

A girl made me feel weird in my pants. So did a boy. I'm very confused right now. But he is the straight man. And he's just like, there's a guy in the background who's just kind of just mumbling these things like, yeah, but the science says it's true. Yeah, but it doesn't make sense.

It's not what I said. I didn't say. But he constantly, he's just sort of like saying it like, like in a very low tone to be like, yeah, but I didn't say that. It's not, I'm not asking that. No, that's not. No, stop. just sort of like saying it like in a very low tone to be like, yeah, but I didn't say that. It's not, I'm not asking that. No, that's not.

No, stop. You know, like, and it's awesome. It's perfect. And the way it plays, it's not only comedic, but it also just shows how much he's getting off task on this question. And it's perfect for it. I think that's a perfect way to deal with it. Every reporter needs to only ask, like the first reporter

that asks a question, every other reporter, if it gets dodged, should just ask the same question. Mike Pence, Anderson Cooper, were they older brother, younger brother, you think? What do you think?

I think it's like good milkshake, bad milkshake, right? Like from Twins. Who's Danny DeVito in that case? Mike Pence, oh my God. Yeah, I? Like from twins. Who's Danny DeVito in that case? Mike Pence. Oh my god. Yeah, I guess you're right. You know, I think our grandchildren are going to be so happy that

we spent today working hard in this heat. Build a defense so that they can have white people busting their tables one day. You know? People are trying to donate to detained migrants. Border Patrol won't accept it.

So, yeah, I thought this story was important because a group of lawyers examined or went to the, some of the detention centers, and they found that, you know, the children and the families

that were being held there didn't have access to basic supplies. So they didn't have access to toothpaste, shampoo, regular showers, diapers access to toothpaste, shampoo, regular showers, diapers, you know, like the things that make hygiene a thing that prevent disease that are like the basic necessities of modern first world life, right? I recognize that much of the world doesn't have that. So they don't have this. They just don't have it. They're

running out, they're running low. So a group of people this. They just don't have it. They're running out. They're running low. So a group of people said, well, you know, all right, fine. We'll round this shit up and we'll bring it to them. And they went to a border guard and they're like, all right, well, we got, you know, boxes of toothpaste. Just like we want to make sure people can brush their teeth. We're not talking about smuggling in fucking files and things. And they're like, no, we have, there's no mechanism for you to bring that stuff in.

And I do want to acknowledge that like, you do have a security situation. I get that. I get that. It's a bullshit, right? So, but they have an obligation to security system or a security situation. They want to make sure that like,

there's nothing hidden in there. You know, there's nobody moving, you know, any contraband of any kind into the system. But if you're not going to provide for these people, then you have to have a mechanism that allows for concerned citizens to say, when the government kidnaps somebody, I'll give them some toothpaste.

I'll help. I'll help that person. Yeah. Some way, you know, don't these people fucking love charities, though? Like, isn't that like their solution for everything

is that, well, I shouldn't have to give them healthcare. They should just be a charity for that. I shouldn't have to make that people fucking have food. I shouldn't do that. I want to just have a charity that does that. They fucking love charities. They don't ever want governments to do anything.

So when somebody shows up with this fucking toothpaste in a bucket, they should be like, you know what? We normally fucking love charities. We should fucking love on this. And I understand if it's a security concern. If that's the case, then let's collect money and you buy it. Let's instead of them bringing you a bucket of toothpaste, say here's a GoFundMe page or whatever, a government page where we just decide to donate a little

extra money. And then you promise to send those funds and go use those funds for toothpaste and fucking soap and towels and a fucking bed for these people. That's what you should do. Cause if you are afraid that we're going to bring in stuff, that's fucking going to be like tainted or it's going to hurt. Like there's going to be a nail file secreted in there. So fucking two-year-olds going to saw to their own cage with it. If that's what you're so worried about, then why don't you buy it? Buy it from your supplier. We'll supply the money. There's a solution to this. It's fucking easy. Yeah. Well, the solution is like, if you take people in and you detain them, you have a responsibility to their safety and fucking wellbeing and their goddamn upkeep as human beings.

But I think, Cecil, the problem is that charity is for people. I guess that's true. Charity is for people. I guess that's true, right? And if you dehumanize them, then you don't have to worry. Yeah, fuck that. You don't have to worry. Can you imagine how bad if the toothpaste situation is this bad?

Can you imagine how bad the feminine hygiene situation is? The tampon situation? That's already, homeless shelters and whatever. I've heard that that's one of the most commonly sought after needs for homeless shelters and for other, because it's just not as often donated as many other things. Right, right. Makes sense, makes sense.

So can you imagine in these detention centers how bad things are for the young ladies, the women that need access to just basic feminine fucking hygiene? We're so fucking misogynist already. Yeah. And then we're dehumanizing a group. It's just, what a tragedy. This is a tragedy we should be ashamed of. You know what is nuts about this

is that over the past couple weeks there's been a lot of talk about these being are these concentration camps. That's the language that some people are using is saying these are concentration camps. And they fit the definition.

You are taking a group of people and concentrating them in one space. It makes sense, right? It makes sense. But how we treat these people reflects on us. It is an absolute reflection on the American people. Someone shows that you're up at your border,

a refugee, someone seeking asylum, someone who is fleeing violence, someone who is just trying to get away from a place that they know is bad. Because trust me, these people aren't showing up. They're not putting their child on their back, traveling far for something that they don't think is going to be a better thing for that child. There's no way they're not going to do that, right? They are in a for that child. There's no way they're not going to do that, right? They are in a situation that sucks. And being in care under these conditions is just as bad as where they were.

How we treat these people reflects on us. And it's an absolute, it's abhorrent to me that we are treating these people inhumanely. These are just, these are human beings that need to be taken care of. We are a wealthy nation that could easily take care of them. We would have no issue doing it.

When in our history, we look back and we see all the people that like wagon trailed their way across America, you know, during the gold rush, et cetera, they were heroes. We look back at them, and that was heroic. It was heroic to cross this untamed land and

settle the West. That's part of our mythos. We're like, we fucking jerk that shit off all day and twice on Sunday. But when somebody packs a bag and walks, walks from Honduras across Central America through Mexico and up to the

border, they're criminals. When we go from Pittsburgh to Oregon, they're heroes. And it's because we're liars. That's the reason. It's because we're liars. They all wanted the same thing. They were seeking a better life. They were seeking greater opportunity. They were seeking something for their family. Nobody walks across thousands of miles of danger because everything was fine where they were at. Yeah. Maybe Lewis and Clark did it, right? But I'm talking about families and regular people. It's just not a thing. There's no reason to leave if it's not dangerous. Like if you can survive and you're going to be okay, why leave? There's, think about how many people are at our border

and then think about how populous those nations are, right? If it was just that everybody just was like, yeah, I just want to go to America, why wouldn't there be more people? Why wouldn't it be the entire population of Mexico? It's because many people down there are living just fine. They're living, they're enjoying their life, they love where they are. And there's some people that are being harassed by gangs, intimidated, their lives are in danger. Those are the people who are

coming here. I mean, it's simple math. Look at the numbers of people that are showing up. It's not that everybody's banging down our door. It's not that we have to shoot 100,000 Mexicans every day because they're trying to bounce into our nation. We don't have that problem with Canada. Yeah, you don't have that issue with Canada. If you put,

if you had a collection in cages, Cecil, of just people from south of the border that all had ADHD, would they be non-concentration camps? They're all getting Adderall. Could you ever have a concentration camp

of just people with ADHD? They're just... They're all fidgeting. They can't do it no matter what. They just forget where they're at all the time. Just like leaving their shit everywhere. They're forget where they're at all the time. Just like leaving their shit everywhere. It is stuff. Oh my God.

We killed all these guys in a forgetful camp. What the? Never forget it says. Oh, that's just ironic. That's. Somebody write that down. Who here is tired of illegal space aliens taking our good Earth jobs? Me too.

I promise to cut taxes for the rich and use the poor as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel. Yeah, that'll show those poor. Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich. True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step. This is from CNBC. This is how much it costs to detain an immigrant in the United States.

So remember, guys, part of the argument here is that the immigrants are expensive. Yeah. They're taking your jobs. You have to give them something once in a while. I don't even know how that argument works. I don't know how it works either. I don't know how it works either. I don't know. All right. So, but you know, when you, when you gather them together in a pot or a murder or a collective

or whatever it is, when you put- It's definitely not a pot. Not a pot. We don't want it to melt, Tom. It's definitely not a pot. It was like a herd of Guatemalans. I don't know how that, I don't know. Anyway.

of Guatemalans. I don't know how that, I don't know. Anyway. So according to ICE's fiscal year 2018 budget, on average, it costs $133.99 a day to maintain one adult detention bed. But immigrant groups, immigration groups have pegged the number closer to $200 a day. But the cost to maintain a family bed, which keeps mothers and children together in a family residential center. Now we're up to $319 a day. And as of April, children that have been separated from their parents with much higher frequency, this has led to the creation of tent cities

to hold thousands of separated children. So when you take the children away from their families, now all of a sudden what happens is the state takes on the entirety of the burden for their care. It has to be parents. Right. Yeah. So the parents can't do that anymore.

Well, that's more expensive, right? So it now costs for these kids to take care of these kids. Those beds cost $775 per person per night. You could stay somewhere really nice for $775. You could pay a nanny to neglect your kids for that. I'd pay a nanny a lot less than that. Don't let her listen to this show. Like, $775 a night.

It's a lot of money. And, you know, here's the thing. I don't care that it costs that much money. I'm willing to pay taxes to make sure that those kids get good care. But that $775, is that going to put them in fucking rabbit cages? Is that what that's going for? I mean, is that what, like, is it going for the, you know, the shitty conditions that they're living in? The not being taken care of?

Is that what that's going for? Is it going for the perth, that kid who died of dehydration? Is that going for that? Because my God, man, that is the worst spending of money since buying a million dollar toilet seat in the fucking 80s or whatever. You could seriously send them all to an all-inclusive vacation for less than $7.75 a night. Like $7.75 a night is crazy. And like one of the things that you look at is the 775 is when they're separated from their parents. Yeah. It's cheaper to keep them together.

The reason to separate them is not an economic argument. No. There's no economic argument for this. There's no, like, there's no argument where you can say that this is just a cruelty. Yeah. The whole purpose of this is to make this as unpalatable as possible for the migrants who are coming over in an attempt to scare other migrants away from attempting to come here. Why Pence did it. Or not Pence. What is his name?

Trump? No, that fucking guy was the skeleton who used to be the attorney, the US attorney. What was the guy's name? the attorney, the US attorney. What was the guy's name? Yeah, it was fucking Sessions was the one who came up

with that idea to fucking do that to deter other people from showing up. I will separate you from your fucking family and I will make sure that other people see it

so that they don't fucking show up. He's the one who fucking orchestrated all that and he said he did it out fucking loud. there's no question about it

and we're paying an incredible amount of money for the privilege of being cruel to children in order to scare other scared people. We're trying to scare people who are already scared.

Think about that. That's like stacking a fucking boogeyman on another boogeyman, right? It's like it's putting like a fucking Trump mask on your boogeyman so when he pops up out of it's putting like a fucking Trump mask on your boogeyman. So when he pops up out of the bed at night, he's even weirder looking.

I knew it was you kids all along. You know, the other thing I want to touch on about Pence, not Pence, I keep saying Pence, but they're fucking basically interchangeable, Sessions and Pence. But the other thing fucking about Sessions, he did that shit and he said all that stuff and he went on the book i talked about the border and he did it with a biblical backing yeah he did it rooted in faith he did it quoting the fucking bible that horrible shitty book that people fucking base their fucking lives on he found passages that made it so this was okay that is a fucking

that's enough of a reason that's enough of a reason to fucking throw that book out right there because if you can just dig in there and be like yeah I can be horrible to people it says here on page 7 fucking throw it away have you ever had a dream that you had

you could you do what you want you could do, you could, you do, you want, you could do so, you want him to do you so much you could do anything. So this story is from Bustle. I just thought this was incredible. Highlights Magazine. Family separation statement is an urgent call to action. So Highlights Magazine. Family separation statement is an urgent call to action. So Highlights Magazine, remember this from like the dentist's office when you were a kid? Yeah, I remember it.

It's got like a word jumble. Like my kids get Highlights Magazine. They don't do anything with them and I throw them away. You connect the dots and you put the kid in the cage. Is that how this works? It's really easy, Dad. I finished this in no time. I read this story

and I was like when fucking Highlights magazine gets political what is going on what the fuck has happened in the world how bad have things gotten

when goddamn Highlights magazine is like alright we gotta stance on this let's do a fucking lasso around this motherfucker what is this happening is Dora the Explorer

gonna come out next with her? She's going to be Me Too'd. Somebody Dora explored her. Dora the Explorer Come on, explored her? Explored her. That's funny.

Dora the Explorer would have gotten fucking deported though. That's the problem. I guess that's true. All right, so here's the statement. Let's go ahead and read. I'm going to read the statement from Highlights Magazine.

Highlights stands up for immigrant children. Should be so unnecessary right now. And I love in the corner, like the logo, Highlights for Children. I know. I just can't stop. I can't. As a company that helps children become their best selves, curious, creative, caring, confident, and caged, we want kids...

I mean, okay, I added the caged up, but it had alliteration. He added confident, too. Yeah. He doesn't want them confident. We want kids to understand the importance of having moral courage. Moral courage means standing up for what we believe is right, honest, and ethical, even when it is hard. Our company's core belief, stated each month in Highlight Magazine,

is that children are the world's most important people, which isn't true, but it's very nice. It's not true. This is a belief about all children. With this core belief in our minds and hearts, we denounce the practice of separating immigrant children from their families and urge our government to cease this activity, which is unconscionable and causes irreparable damage to young lives. This is not a political statement about immigration policy. This is a statement

about human decency, plain and simple. This is a plea for recognition that these are not simply the children of strangers for whom others are accountable. This is an appeal to elevate the inalienable right of all children to feel safe and to have the opportunity to become their best selves. We invite you, regardless of your political leanings, to join us in speaking out against family separation at a call for more humane treatment of immigrant children currently being held in detention facilities. Write, call, or email your government representatives. Let our children draw strength and inspiration from our collective display of moral courage. They are watching. I get I'm just in awe

that a child's magazine has to be like, okay, all right, look. I mean, I can't keep putting a fucking word jumble out every week after week after week until we fix the concentration camp problem for babies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a toddler concentration camp problem. I don't feel like putting out my lighthearted magazine this week. Well, you know, I think that the best part about this is that this is probably a magazine because it's so milquetoast, that reaches all kids. It's not just reaching Democrat kids, right?

Who probably their parents love them more than conservative kids. But anyway, I'm just saying there's a chance that it's reaching conservative kids too. And this is going to be in there. I don't know what age group this is for. So I don't know how well a child would be able to understand this, but, you know, hopefully the parent sees it and understands it and week, you know, is something that they enjoy and you respected this piece. Now maybe you think, oh, well, you know, maybe they have something

to say about this. Maybe there's something interesting here to think about. Some way to change my mind, I guess. Yeah. You know this fucking magazine

goes to no step on snack houses. Like, it goes everywhere. Yeah. For sure. It goes everywhere. For sure. So, Tom, right now, our sponsor,

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This argument, again, this is like the last refuge from the worst misogynist when it comes to sexual assault claims. Absolutely. Right-wing watch. These women are unattractive. Bill Mitchell and Karen Turk dismiss latest sexual assault allegations against Trump. All right.

This is from Bill's show. He's got a very animated woman on who's going to tell you that everybody but her is ugly. It's so obvious and so transparent to so many of us, especially, I think, especially women, that these stories really hold no credibility. It's unbelievable. But we live in such a litigious society. This not only happens to our president, this happens to other American businessmen every day. It happens. There's like a war on white men in this country. There's a war on white men in this country.

We are winning. I'll tell you what. If there's a war, we're fucking we're like Israel when they're all like, we're coming against you. And Israel's like, oh. I got the better part of a week that says I'm going to fucking knock you to get you and israel's like oh oh uh i got the better part of a week that says i'm gonna fucking knock you guys the fuck it's like playing fucking call of duty on god mode like yeah like nothing can hurt me yeah very little can hurt me i basically

start out way way way ahead of everybody else cool story right unfortunately it's being perpetuated by these leftist women that have books to sell and have a financial agenda. I love that that criticism is leveled by somebody who's a YouTube celebrity, right? It's like, they have a financial agenda. It's like you have a financial agenda to be heard, to have an audience, to have something to push against, to be a provocateur. Like, a financial influence. I just want to put out there, like the fact that somebody makes money

does not change whether something happened. Yeah. Like it just doesn't. Like many, many people use their life experiences. David Sedaris has sold up to a trillion books, right? Talking about his life and his family. Like it doesn't change the truth of something just because something is

leveraged. It just doesn't. You have these lawyers that prey on them that will just go forward with it. And it's all about making money and gaining fame. That's all this is about. There's zero credibility to this woman's story. Yeah, because look at all those rapes, survivors who've come out in the public and the wonderful fame that they receive. The adoration of the world that the Anita Hills have managed to stack up, right? Isn't she like a judge on American Ninja Warrior or something like that?

What does she do now? Yeah, she's like super famous. American Idol, I think. Yeah, she's on The Voice. Oh my God. How many women have just like really come out so far ahead as a result?

They need a new show. They need Raping with the Stars. I think that's what they need. It's like everything wants its head for. How are Weinstein produced? Weinstein produced. Raping with the Stars production.

Money on it any day of the week, just like so many of them have come out before. And it's really a shame because you know who this hurts? This hurts real victims. Right. You don't care about victims. If you're, if you're saying that,

that women who say that they were raped is hurting other victims. You don't care about, you don't just genuinely don't care about victims. What are people supposed to do? Is she advocating silence for victims? I guess. I don't know. A certain kind of silence or a certain kind of advocacy for yourself?

What she's saying is that anybody who I say is a liar is a liar. That's what she's saying. She's saying, I get to decide who's lying about sexual assault and those people are bad. That's what she's saying. She's saying, I get to decide who's lying about sexual assault and those people are bad. That's what she's saying. And she's going to choose this woman. This hurts real victims of rape.

This hurts real women. This hurts women who have a story to tell because then people don't listen to them and people don't- That's exactly what you're not doing. This woman has a story to tell and you're not listening to her. Well, it's not the story she wants to hear. Yeah. It hurts people when I don't like it. Yeah. Take it seriously. And you want to know what, if any of these women gave one iota, one, one,

even ounce to care about other women, they wouldn't come out with these stories because they would care about the women that they're hurting and it hurts they would be quiet about being raped just yeah just let it happen oh wait no no that's the whole problem that's the whole problem real victims and it infuriates me yeah yeah it's it's uh terrible and i don't understand what the democrats you know strategy because you would think if they wanted to come out with a woman who apparently supposedly donald trump had had you know was aggressive with sexually something like that they would pick a woman that you would say okay you know that's an attractive woman is that where you're going yeah right i don't want to sound sexist by saying this but you know i'm gonna say literally one of the most sexist possible things. Too late, Bill.

Look, I don't want to sound sexist. I'm just saying that everything that I'm going to say is the most sexist thing. Wait a minute. Let me get a shovel and keep digging. Let me just say that Dr. Brett Kavanaugh, one out of 10, wouldn't bang. Like that's what he's saying, right? That's essentially what he's saying. He's saying like, I wouldn't bang that girl.

So that's okay. I love the idea that the reason this didn't happen is I don't find her attractive. Right, yeah. Right, because only women I find attractive are the women that are sexually assaulted. As if sexual assault is something that only happens to

attractive women, as if, in most cases, as if sexual desire is even the thing which drives sexual assault, and not a desire to use sexuality to bully, harass, intimidate, coerce, violate, punish, you know, and act violently against somebody else. Like, it's not like a, nobody like harasses, I don't want to say nobody, but like people are not like only harassing women that are fucking tens, right? Like that is a problematic, purposeful retelling of the truth

by people who want to deny that these things happen, right? What they want to do is be able to deny that 90% of women out there who are sexually assaulted that aren't pretty enough. Right. And how fucking incredibly insulting is that to the people that do get assaulted?

Like, oh, you have to be in this certain fucking category of believability as if you deserve. And then if you're attractive, I was going to say, yeah. You then deserve it. You deserve it because you've created a no-win situation.

Exactly, yeah. In category A, you're attractive, I was going to say, you then deserve it because you've created a no win situation. Exactly. Yeah. In, in category a, you're, you're attractive enough to deserve to be raped or assaulted. So it's your fault.

So it's your fault. Right. And in category B, you are like Sargon. I wouldn't even rape you. That's, that's the argument right now. We're falling onto the Sargon argument. What is happening?

What is happening? This is all wrong everywhere. No, man. Like in the cabin, I hear stuff like that. You look at them and it's like, you know, any sell pictures of her when she was a teenager. And I was like, it doesn't seem plausible to me. I wouldn't even rape you. I wouldn't even rape you.

That's what he said it without tweeting it. Right. Yeah. I don't even care anymore. I don't even want to be politically correct on this topic anymore because I just don't care. These women are unattractive. Let's just call it for what it is but you know what bill clinton had no problem

with unattractive women so i guess the democrats just know no different what the fuck what democrats will fuck anything you know what i mean you know bill clinton you know here's the thing about bill clinton if you hold its head he'll fuck it i don't care what it is anything warm and wet i'm just telling you that's how a fucking llama he would fuck that i'll tell you what yeah us republicans we only rape hot ladies that's because we got the moral high ground so we only rape hot ladies i don't even. Oh my God. What is even happening? What is going on? What is even happening in the world? Can you hear you? We can hear you. You saw Monica Lewinsky, right?

Blah. What a fucking asshole. Oh my God. He sticks a stick in Hillary. What an asshole. What's the worst person? Oh, she's terrible. They're the worst.

They're both the worst. Hillary's in the creepy weird sick stuff, man. She sleeps in the same room with that creepy weird woman whose mother wears a foot over her head. What the hell? That woman number one is ugly. The story's also from Right Wing Watch. This is Big League Politics. Patrick Howley says... I'm trying to get the face slap on the mic

so we could just be like, it's me slapping my own face like, that sounded good. Actually, do it again. No, I'm okay. My wife's going to wonder why I have a marker. I know she won't. Big League Politics, Patrick Howley says,

it's very clear that Hillary Clinton is a Satanist. Hillary Clinton, by the way, in case you were wondering, not the president. Also, why are we still talking about this? Is Hillary running this time? Was she in the far, far back of all the debates? Been like, I don't. Okay, so Patrick Howley has got Ann VanderSteel.

I think he's on. Oh, he'sel. I think he's on the Steel Truth. The Steel Truth? What does that mean? Steel. This truth is metallic. I will say she has the fucking most fucking butch fucking logo I've ever seen in my entire life. There is a religion called Satanism. And that religion, which practices witchcraft.

Isn't that Wiccan? I don't know. I love these guys. They're like, okay, so Satanism practices witchcraft. Witches practice Satanism, practice witchcraft. Fuck!

Oh, I'm stuck in a circle! I'm stuck in another circle! No, wait, it's a pentagram. I'm stuck in a pentagram. Oh, God, I can't get out. Someone poured chalk around me. I love these guys too. Cause like they, you know, when they're talking about,

first off, they have this idea that there's a Satanism, right? And the Satanism isn't just, we're going to build a big dumb statue to make you feel stupid. Like that's not, it's not that Satanism. It's like, we really genuinely worship the devil and we're going to be like, I'm going to fucking sacrifice a fucking goat or whatever you're going to do.

It leaves, due to the teachings of Aleister Crowley, that their spells and their summoning of demons... A couple weeks, maybe three weeks in Citation Needed, we're going to be doing Aleister Crowley. It's going to be good. Yeah, a couple, three. We haven't recorded it yet. From Hell is enhanced by child molestation and child sacrifice and human

sacrifice, but especially of children. And that is a fact. Yeah. Wait, child sacrifice. That's especially of children. I mean,

can it be a tween sacrifice? The spells are enhanced. Like, is it required? Like, how do you enhance getting a demon? I don't know.

Yeah, do you get like a bigger one? He's like, shows up, he's kissing his muscles. Which way to the gun show. You just get like

some fucking puss ass demon because you didn't fuck a kid. Demon shows up and it's like all like weak and she's like, it's like all like weak and she's like

Ted Cruz demon. I'm here to do your bidding. It's not as warm up here. Do you have a wrap? I brought some fleece slippers for me to put my... I'll make your bed. That's about all I can do. I'm just like

a bed demon. I'm a little parched. If you bring me some water, I'll wet your bed. That's about all I can do. I'm just like a bed demon. I'm a little parched. If you bring me some water, I'll wet their bed for them. It's like an annoyance demon. It just like makes your glass of water a little warmer. It's just like every time you cough, you get like that

dust to tickle in the back of your throat. You're like, oh, fuck. Summon an annoyance. That was me. I hate that. It takes so long to go away. He like makes the inside of your car, your car windows fog up when you drive. So you can't get them on.

And then he makes the outside fog up at the same time. So your defrosters don't work and you got to keep your wipers running on a like summer night in the middle of fucking Chicago because Chicago can't figure out what temperature it is. He makes sure like

a really big person sits next to you on the airplane. It's like, oh God, international and everything. He sets your thermostat so it goes up four degrees

after you go to sleep and you wake up with the covers on the ground and be like, why is it so hot in here? That was me. He's like the whammy from like, it's just a little annoying.

God, it's just a little run on a paper, like one page from printing that document. Just like, Oh, did you fucking one page? Could have set this whole thing to print on both sides. I didn't even know. Close the passport office five

minutes early. That's a fact of our world. There we go. I'm glad we've established the facts. Thank you. That's a fact of our world. So now that I've established that, I'll move on into Crazy Town. Let me tell you, this guy has gotten a severe amount of wedgies in his life.

That's all I'm saying. But it's something that we have to confront. Were there people named as Satanists during this trial? Specific names besides Keith Raniere? Well, it's pretty clear that Claire Bronfman was as well.

Keith Raniere definitely was a Satanist. The cult itself was described as Luciferian. They're discussing a guilty verdict in a sex cult. The NXIVM cult? Yeah. So if you guys aren't familiar with the NXIVM cult, NXIVM was like one of those business self-help groups.

It was based out of Buffalo, New York. And Keith Raniere is the charismatic leader of NXIVM. He's on trial right now for everything, virtually everything like right now. But basically like the claim is that he ran a sex cult and that women were forced into a kind of sexual servitude as a result of his structure. Basically, it's weird multi-level marketing.

With banging. Yeah, and the women were branding each other, and it was like a whole... Yeah, I remember hearing about this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty obvious. So does that mean, I mean, can we extrapolate then

that Hillary Clinton, who took illegal campaign finance from the nexium sex cult is as a satanist does that make her a satanist because she was taking money illegally from i don't know does it make donald trump a russian so like i love the idea like if you take money from a group you're now part of that yeah right right it's just like well like if i if i took money from a group, you're now part of that group. Yeah, right, right. It's just like, if I took money from a Christian, do I now believe in Christianity? As if the political candidates don't get money from a host of different religious organizations. And it's not that I disagree

that you should pay attention to where you're getting your money from. It's not that I disagree with that. It's not that I disagree with that. But I think to, to, um, the problem is, is that this isn't, this isn't a widely known thing until now. It's not that this has been known and was known for a long time. And while they were, you know, on trial, they sent her a check. They sent her a check years ago and she had no idea what was going on there. Right. And

there was no reason to know. They looked like a business. Exactly. They look like a business. And now everything's coming out that it's not a business, that it's, you know, it's a cult. It's a weird, crazy thing that's happening right now. It's coming out. But the idea that now we're going to, we're just going to project knowledge today on what, you know, she clearly knew it in the past. And that's just bullshit. That's a bullshit way to think. Yeah. And you got to figure like a presidential candidate probably gets contributions from literally thousands and thousands. I don't even know if that's true, right? And I also don't even know if it's true.

I didn't look into it. I don't even know if she even took money. Oh, if she took, yeah. I don't even know, but I'm presuming it is, right? I'm presuming it is. From a group that was bundling money illegally and donating to Hillary Clinton? Well, I believe 100% that if you look at what the Clinton Foundation was doing in Haiti,

if you look at the spirit cooking emails, which Hillary Clinton tried so hard to hide from, if you look at various things she said dating back years, she is part of what, and when you start- Yeah, like is one of those things I rape and eat children's faces? If that's one of those things, then and eat children's faces. If that's one of those things, then yeah, maybe I believe you. But if it's just like, I'd like to change foreign policy and you think it means I eat baby's faces, then you're the crazy one.

Well, I don't know if you ask fucking Nine Fingers Croak and there's a video out. Oh yeah, there is supposed to be a video. And it's going to come out any day now. Very soon. And I think we covered that story a year ago. Very soon, very soon. But any moment.

She's going to release it. She's going to use her little nub to press the release button well that was probably the problem is that that was her that's her button pressing she can't type in

the right password anymore yeah she keeps on hitting the wrong button no fuck I'm locked out of the system where's last pass at you know what I never should have used

a fingerprint sensor that's my only way to get in. Biometrics. I was foiled by my own lack of biometrics. Wouldn't it be so funny if she goes to open her phone? She's rubbing her nub on it. Motherfucker. She just keeps rubbing her nub on it.

Or she just pockets the pieces. Jesus. And just rubs them like a lucky rabbit's foot. Just. Just pockets to pieces. It just rubs them like a lucky rabbit's foot. These terms like the Illuminati or the New World Order. I mean, these are actual terms that are used in these circles.

And people on the internet. Yeah, well, when? When did fucking Hillary Clinton say out loud anywhere where she was recorded that she believes or fucking follows the Illuminati? I am part of the Illuminati. If she said that and didn't go, that's crazy. You're nuts. Yeah. Yeah.

Then maybe I would listen to that. Also, there would have to be an Illuminati. So just play the tape, right? You're saying that it happened. Play the tape of it. Play the tape of her and her fucking like spirit cooking dinner where she's

charging a child a plate or whatever. Play that tape. Right. Internet understand that it's very clear to me that she is a Satanist. Obvious. I mean, I was the lead Hillary Clinton reporter for Breitbart during the election. I reported on her brain injury.

I reported on various things that her emails... I love the idea that you're going to say, I was the lead reporter at Breitbart as if that's going to give you credibility. Hang on a minute. I was the lead reporter at Breitbart as if that's going to give you credibility? There's your cred, bro. I was the lead reporter at an internet magazine. Oh, alright. So a place where you can write anything by hitting publish?

I'm a published author. You see, I hit publish on WordPress and then it was completely visible. Candle. It was very, very clear to me that she was a Satanist. John Podesta is a Satanist. And I believe George Soros as well as a Satanist.

Oh, good. I'm glad you believe it. That's awesome. I'm, I, I'm glad we all believe things. The usual suspects are all Satanists.

Anyone I don't like and is powerful and scares me. Yeah. Is a Satanist. I, I've heard a lot of plans here tonight. And if we, we think plans are going to be Donald Donald Trump, we got another thing coming. My plan is to gather all the sage in America and burn it.

My plan is to harness the energy of babies, to finally put a man on the moon. And I said to the president of New Zealand, I said, girlfriend, you're so on. And I would say to Donald Trump, boyfriend, you chill. Thank you. So Tom, both of us watched the debates.

We watched last night's and tonight's debates, the Democratic debates. We want to talk a little bit about it here on the show and then also talk about it on Patreon, but we're going to start talking about it here. Let's talk about the format. So what do you think about the format that they used? It was, if you're not familiar, you didn't watch, they had 10 people on the stage, two moderators or

three moderators, depending on the phase of the game, which quarter it was, I guess. And they would ask questions. Mostly, they really did point the questions, start the questions out on people that were leading in the polls so the people that were in the more center of the stage were the people who were higher up in the polls and those people got more questions asked to them and also got responses where other people might not they spent a lot less time on certain people people that were on the far edges because they were people who were not a high up on the list. What do you think about this system? Ah, so good. And that it was terrible. I do like the way that they structurally put the people

on the fringe on the fringe. Absolutely. So that they have no hope of moving into the main... I don't even know why they were there. If you're going to do that, don't bother doing that. And I know that the argument is like, oh, we have to hear from a diversity of voices so the American people can hear all these things. But at the same time, like, we're already structurally making decisions about who's important and who's not. Yeah.

And we're broadcasting that visually to people. So, like, let's just be honest about it. Yeah. Like, let's have, like, the Republicans had Republicans had like the big kid table and the little kid table when they did their clown car debate. And now it's our time to have a clown car debate. And let's be really clear. I mocked it when the Republicans had 17 candidates. We got 20. Yeah. And it's a fucking clown car. It absolutely is. It's ridiculous. And like they don't all matter. They don't all matter. They can't. Most of them cannot possibly win. Most of them should not be running.

So we didn't even need to have two nights of debates structured like this where they just, oh, we just randomly did it. Like we just randomly assigned it. First off, the random assigning put fucking Elizabeth Warren in the like weakest pool. Yeah. I will say this, like, you say this, if you compete in anything,

let's say you play a magic tournament or whatever. Let's just say, I'll pick that out of nowhere. You play in a magic tournament and they put you with the weakest guys in your round robin area and you could just walk the fuck right over them and get to the finals. Right.

And not be the strongest candidate, right? Like not be the person who had the strongest, whatever, you know, whatever you were competing in. Same thing applies here. There was not a lot of fucking people on her side. There was one or two that were real powerhouses, but not as much as her, not clearly even close to her. And so she just shined in hers

because she was the one who was, you know, the one that you expected to shine. And I think she had an easy walk through her debate. The other one was way more stacked. The second one was way more stacked, but it also had, I think, you know, people on it that were far more forgettable than the other side. But I want to talk about the, the, the, the structure of it. It's not a debate. No, you know, they call it a debate. A debate is I say something, you say, and they ask us both a question and then we may disagree or agree on it, but then we give our stances on those things and then we talk about it. You and I have a sort of talk. There's no

talking between, mostly no talking between people at all. Instead, it's really just a chance for them to be a commercial. I get a chance to tell you what my issues are. If you didn't go to my website and figure it out, here's my chance for Buttigieg to tell you what he thinks about X. And so it's not a debate. It's just sort of a bunch of things you're saying about your own campaign. And it just doesn't feel, it feels disingenuous when they call it a debate. Now, later on, when they start whittling down the field,

it will be a debate, but it's not yet. Yeah, I don't know what this experience is. It's fucking weird. You watch it and the whole thing is kind of weird. And it's two hours long. And it's a tough two hours to watch. After a while, it's just a bunch of repetitive, bland talking points.

It's all plat. I will say 80% of it is platitudes. 80% of it is platitudes. So many of these people, you're like, I would make a better candidate. Yeah. I may. Yeah. I would make a better candidate.

I want to say too, I don't feel like these people have enough time up there. You know, I know it's an hour and 20 minutes, but they're not giving away that time evenly. And you also cede a lot of time to the people who are asking the questions because these questions are long. They're not asking simple, easy questions. They're asking long questions. These are, you know, there's a lot that goes into these

and they give a lot of background. So these questions are very long. So the moderators take up a lot of time. I just feel like when I watch it, I'm like, I feel like some of these people don't get a lot of time at all. And, you know, of course they're favoring people.

One of the things that I noticed yesterday was some people, and it happened today too, some people get to talk when they interrupt and other people don't. Yeah. And they really just get to decide who does that.

And some people get shut down when that happens and other people don't get shut down. And that's just what the moderators get to decide on the moment. And again, I don't feel like that's terribly fair. Yeah, I don't. But I guess because it can't be fair with 20 people, it's like, let's stop the pretense. Let's take the people that actually are polling in the top five, put them in a room, and let's pay more attention to the people who are polling in the top five because that's who, let's be real, that's who's likely to win, or top six or top seven. We have 20 to choose from,

right? And then everybody else goes in another corner and then actually do it kind of like a tournament. If you're going to have 20 people do something and we're really trying to like figure something out that might be important, having a bunch of people stand there and like just constantly iterate their talking, their prepared talking points offers very little insight into who they are as a candidate. It offers very little insight into their solution set that they bring to the table. It's just structurally not the right thing.

I think it would be interesting if you had like, let's have these people. You got 20 people. We're going to have groups of five, four groups of five. We're going to declare a winner or three winners

and they move on and they debate the next group and they debate the next group. Yeah, single LM tournament kind of, right? Yeah, right. Until we get down to a top three or four candidates. Now, that sounds interesting to me. I'm sure it's fraught with other problems, but that sounds kind of interesting to me. And in a tournament like that, somebody who is lesser known would have the ability to, if they performed well, move forward. Yeah. And get more airtime.

Yeah. And get more exposure to those ideas. Because what's inevitably going to happen is all the people who got little airtime, like Yang, Yang got very little airtime, so he's, for a lot of people, going to fall off their memory.

Yeah. They're going to be like, oh, I didn't see him a lot, I didn't hear from him a lot, I liked a couple of his ideas, I don't know where he stands on most things because I didn't get a lot of exposure. They never asked him. Yeah. They never asked him. Yeah. Not his fault. Yeah. I didn't get exposed to him for very long. So he's just going to fall out of our memory. There's 20 people to try to remember. Yeah. I don't remember them all. I'll tell you right now, if you ask me,

name all 20 of them, we've been talking about this most of the night. I could not name all 20 of them. Yeah. I probably could name maybe 15 of them. Yeah. But yeah, like, I don't know. I would have a hard time. When you came in today, I had forgotten somebody from yesterday. I don't know all the reindeer.

Because it's tough. Yeah. I don't know all the dwarves, man. Like, I have to sing a song to figure it out. There's 20 people. I have to sing a song to remember the alphabet. When it comes down to the questions that they asked, do you think that, you know, we'll get into some specific questions. I'm asking a more general

idea here. What do you think about the range of questions that they asked? And do you think that there was a distinct advantage on the second night instead of being on the first night like they had mentioned at the beginning of the second debate? Oh my God. Yeah, there's always an advantage when you can see how something is structured and we can get a sense of the questions that are going to be asked, the direction the moderators are going to take it. But it's an advantage only over the first night candidates. It's not an advantage over the other people that are with you. Right, because they also had the same sort of extra prep time. Everybody has that same advantage, yeah.

So it will be interesting to see how the people from the second night fare against the people from the first night, when and if that ever shakes out. So I did think that by and large, the questions were decent. I thought the questions were largely substantive, and I thought they focused on and around the issues that are really kind of driving the left right now. Yeah.

So I was happy with the questions. I was happy with the moderating too. Like I thought the moderators- They did the best they could. For the most part. They did the best they could. It's tough. They herded the cats.

They really did. And it was a difficult place to be because those people were, you know, there's a fine line you have to walk. And I will mention this. I think women have a harder time of it. It's a fine line you have to walk to being forceful, but not being too forceful. It's a very fine line. And I think women have it harder than men do. I think men, it's easier for them to be a little, they have a little, their margin of error is less. Yeah, they're granted more leeway. They're granted more leeway either way. Women are not

granted as much leeway. And so it's harder for women to walk that line. But I think that the couple women who did it, did a good enough job of it to not feel like they were being too overbearing and distasteful. And that I think is good. It's a good thing that that was the case. But it's just the nature of it. It's just the nature of how the women are going to have a harder time in general in this whole thing because women are judged not just by what they have to say, but they're also way more judged on their demeanor than men are. It's just what's going to happen.

It's just the way society is doing it. And it's not fair. It's not fair at all. I don't want to make it seem like I'm for it or like that, you know, like, oh, well, that's just the way it is, you know, like, but I am saying like, it's something that people have to be aware of. And hopefully if you hear me say this, you'll be more aware of it yourself and try to stop

yourself from doing it too. You know, the more we stop ourselves from doing it or calling people out for doing it, the better off we're all going to be. Right. Yeah. It's interesting because it's that sort of difficult to define quantity or quality, I should say, when anybody does it. When anybody goes over time, interrupts, is forceful, what feels overbearing and aggressive versus what feels assertive? Yeah. And everybody's tolerance for that is different. Everybody's reaction to that is different. So I think, by and large, I was really looking for candidates to do some of that.

Candidates that didn't do any of that, I found that distasteful. Candidates who were too meek, too polite, too rule-follow-y. followy i was like you're gonna get you're gonna get destroyed by trump you were like this is a contest to see who wins yeah like this is not a contest to see who's a good dinner guest sure you know a good dinner guest is not who i need in the white house you know yeah so like i had to stop myself a couple of times from thinking like, yikes, that's a bit much to like, yeah, like you need to be aggressive.

Like this is an aggressive job. That's what this is. That's what's being required by this job. So I have to like change my perception of what I like in a person versus what I think the getting the job will require. And it will like, if you remember from the debates with Clinton, how horrifyingly aggressive and distasteful, I mean, at least for me,

I found Trump to be aggressive and rude and insulting and distasteful. And he's our president. And he's our president. Yeah. So it's something to think about. So if you want to hear how our take on any of the candidates,

we're going to talk about all the candidates as much as we can. We're going to talk about the debates. If you want to hear any of that, follow us on the Patreon. You can become a patron for as little as a dollar a show. This should be almost the full episode that you'll be able to hear us talking about these candidates and about this debate. We'd love to have you there. You can go to patreon.com slash dissonance pod and become a patron today. to patreon.com slash DissonancePod and become a patron today. We want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons, Disestablishmentarianism, Elliot, Widleyskuz, Riley, and Sam. Thanks so much for your generous donations. It really does mean a lot to us. You are the reason Glory Hole Studios exists, and you're the reason we may have a fallback career if our careers fail and my career may be failing. So just remember that you're the reason that I might be able to become

a professional podcaster one day. So we got a message from Heather and Heather said that there is a program that they came across during the 2018 midterms. It's called carpoolvote.com. It's a website that connects people that need help getting to their polling place with a driver willing to take them.

So we will put a link on this week's show notes. I did not vet this site, but Heather says that this site exists and maybe people can get to the polls if they have a hard time getting to the polls. This might help you. We got a link to this show that you like, right? Isn't this a show you like?

I like this show. These guys, what is this called? Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning. They did a Jim Baker bucket test. I know the guys from Puzzle and the Thunderstorm did the same thing. They tasted Jim Baker foods, I guess, at one point. We'll put a link on this week's show notes. Good Mythical

Morning did a Jim Baker bucket food eating I feel terrible for them alright well that is going to wrap it up for this week remember if you want to hear our discussion about the debates you can go to Patreon we are going to leave you like we always do

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