Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 492: The Green Amendment

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Thank you to Maya K. Van Rossum for joining us this week. Learn more about The Green Amendment and Maya at:     Stories from the Week

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way we bring critical thinking skepticism 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 mat. This is episode 492, not to be confused with the aforementioned,

but yet to be released 492 part A, which will be 493. Which will be 493. But when we read it, when we read it, it was 492. So it's going to come out and there'll be probably a correction for me.

And it's like, no, that's actually 493. We're hoping we're going to release it next Thursday, but we reviewed the family and we're going to release that next week. My family did not review well. Yeah. Yeah. Not at all.

One star. I'm trying to think if I had to review my family, how poorly that would go. One star. Yeah, right. It'd be like the fucking motor in at the TripAdvisor website, you know, like my family, bed bugs. So, Tom. Yes, sir. We just got back

from New York City. Yeah. We went out there to do a Citation Needed show, which went off amazing. It was so fun. We had a great time. Yeah. But I wanted to talk for a second about pizza. So, I want to never, ever second about pizza. Oh, all right. So I want to never, ever, ever, ever hear from anyone ever again about how people know more about pizza than we do.

And here's how I'm going to say it. Okay, so the people that are normally attacking us about pizza, let's pick three, just three random people. Random people, okay. So the first one is a vegan, right? Who literally can't even eat pizza. If he does, he'll die, okay? He will die.

He can't eat any kind of proteins at this point. At this point, he's just like a breatharian. He's like this weird, he's existing in this really weird sort of stasis place where he can only have like nutrient juice and things. I did ask if oysters were on the menu for him because they're like... This is Eli we're talking about.

He's like, I can't eat any proteins that were once alive. He's like, I can't. If I can have empathy for it, I could never have eaten it. So Eli's out. Eli's out. Nothing Eli says is worth a shit. Right.

Noah has been smoking cigarettes of eating it. So Eli's out. Eli's out. Nothing Eli says is worth a shit. Right. Noah Yeah. has been smoking cigarettes like 45 packs of cigarettes a day since The womb. 1815.

Okay. So that's number one. Now, to be honest, I will say this. Of the people that have a right to say anything about pizza, Noah is the one I will take the most.

I will give the most, most credence to because he's the kind of guy who's like a connoisseur when it comes to like Mac and cheese and things. Right. Like, so like, like he'll tell you what the best chicken fingers are on the menu, but still don't care.

Okay. He's a kid food connoisseur. Right. I go out after we're done. Heath says, Cecil, you got to come with me. We're going to go get real pizza. We could get finished. We get finished at this show.

We drank until everybody was done. Cool. We walk back to the hotel. Heath is like, I'm going to take you to this place. And he takes me to 33 some bullshit pizza place. No bathroom in this place, right? I got to piss like a goddamn racehorse. I walk in. Fucking no bathroom in pizza place. No bathroom in this place, right? I got to piss like a goddamn racehorse. I walk in, fucking no bathroom in this place.

So I'm fucking standing there, fucking crossing my legs. My eyes are turning yellow and I'm waiting and they have all the pizza sitting out. It's all that sitting out like that. And as soon as I walk in, Ian is very uncomfortable and he keeps telling me over and over,

please do not order pizza that's been sitting out just order a new pie and I was like I don't have time for a new pie because I had to piss also that's not the authentic experience I was like

I don't want to do this he's like he's just like he's looking at me so intently Tom and he's staring at me and he's basically begging me

he's like do not do this you will get food poisoning you do not understand he's like he's like the Secret Service guy getting ready to jump and knock it out of my hand. Well, I do tip him to be the taster,

our royal taster. I'll tell you, he was so nervous about me ordering. He loves you. I ordered two slices of sausage and pepperoni pizza. Okay. The sausage was absolutely awful.

And when I mean awful, I mean, genuinely awful. It was sliced all weird. So they, they didn't slice, you know, you normally slice it across on a bias or whatever. They sliced it down. So they sliced it long ways. And it was like in strips, super weird, right? It was like strips of sausage, super weird. The pepperoni was fine, but it was super greasy. I get the two pieces of pizza and I have to hold them, fold them, channel the grease out of them.

I eat them. They're fucking passable, barely average pizza. It is Sbarro pizza, folks. It's not amazing. It's Sbarro. It's literally in every mall food court. It's not impressive.

The thing that fucking 100% excludes Heath from this conversation forever, Tom, is that he was eating a piece of pizza with penne pasta on it. Wait, excuse me? I'm not even lying right now. Wait, wait, wait. Slow down. Did he dunk it in a pasta salad? He had a piece of pizza that they put penne pasta on,

and then he threw it back in the oven. Wait, to crisp the pasta? And then they pulled it out, and then he put it in his maw. Fuck you, Heath Enright. You can never tell me about any food ever again, ever, period. The end. Wait a minute. You will never be a...

Never. Pasta as a topping? Never. The end. He's garbage. He's garbage he's garbage the end why would you even have that as an available option like that's like having like you didn't have enough carbs on your pizza you're like you know what i really need is the carb load in my pizza was it like like like masticioli yes it was penne it was penne on top of it so they like took like a penne

and they did a thing. With sauce? Yeah, there's sauce on it and like cheese. And like he's eating it. I'm like, is that penne? And he's like, oh, it's so good. I'm like, you're an asshole.

That is the weirdest thing I ever heard. I was seconds from knocking it out of his hand. I was so upset. You should have killed him outright. Like I think that should be punishable by death. Ian ordered his own fresh pie. And it was a margarita because Ian's a vegetarian.

I tried a piece of that and it was a margarita because Ian's a vegetarian. I tried a piece of that and it was bland. It's boring. I like margarita pizza too. But it's a different cheese. They use a different cheese on it than they use. So the cheese that they use out there is super greasy and super salty, right? So the cheese that they have is like a really salty.

And I will say this, it could be the best part of their pizza in New York is the cheese. It could be the very best part. I also don't dislike the texture of the crust. I think that the folding of the texture of the crust, and especially if it's crisped, I think that's pleasant. I just think the whole pizza eating experience there

where you got to stand, you got to walk up and there's some fucking weird sausage sliced on a wrong way. And it's like, and then there's like a dude back there who's like yelling at you to get you out. Like all of it is the worst. And the food is just subpar. So I'm not, I never want to hear it again. I tried three different pizzas while I was out there. They were all average, okay? So don't tell me that it's the best thing ever,

and don't ever point to anybody else, especially that crew, as if they are some sort of authority in this. They are not. They are not an authority. They lost all their credentials when they put penne on a fucking pizza. I don't even understand. Is it baked in? I don't even understand. Is it baked in?

I don't even know the process that it would actually work, Tom. What world are you living in where you're like, I got to think of another pizza topping. I don't know. What about baked ziti? Yeah. We're going to put a lasagna on it. People make fun

of us. They're like, that's not a pizza. That's lasagna. You're literally putting lasagna on your pizza. Literally what he ate was a lasagna on it. Like people make fun of us. Right. They're like, that's not a pizza, that's lasagna. It's literally putting lasagna on your pizza. Yeah, literally what he ate was a lasagna pizza. That's exactly, that's exactly. What is happening?

They're like, oh, it's a bread bowl with like sauce on it. Well, you ate fucking, like you couldn't decide which dish to eat. So you just mixed it all together.

Fuck you. I will say, I did not get an opportunity to eat any of the iconic New York foods. You're just so busy. Any of the iconic New York foods I set out to have, but I did have a lobster roll. So out here, all the lobster rolls I've had have been essentially like a lobster salad. This lobster roll was just garlic bread folded with just lobster

in it. Just lobster. Warm, delicious. And it was outstanding! I don't think that's a New York thing. I think that's just an East Coast thing. I think it's more of a New England thing. It's fucking delicious. Yeah.

I would 100% do that every time I go back there. And I also want to say, I'm not being a bitch about this because I did have good food when I was out there. Right. I'm not saying that I didn't have good food because I had a bagel sandwich that I thought was very good. I had another sandwich at a deli that was crisped up and

delicious. So I'm not saying the food is terrible. I thought the food was good. The pizza is just bad. Well, next time I go out, I will report on, I'm going to get a, I don't know, maybe a cheeseburger on it

or a taco or something. Yeah, no, yeah. Just get a- I'll get a lobster roll on top of it. See if you could get another guy eating pizza on it. Just have a Russian nesting doll of pizzas. guy eating pizza. Just have a Russian nesting doll of pizzas.

First you get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries, bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect. Do whatever steps you want if you have cleared them with the pontiff. Everybody say his own Kyrie, lay his own dew doing the Vatican.

This story is fucking amazing. This is from CNN. Vatican launches $110 click to pray wearable rosary. Like wearables are all, well, they're not all the rage, but like wearables are a thing. Some people can buy.

This is essentially a rosary fit bit. How like, how are you fit or hell? It's like, it's a chapel watch. I want to say though, if you are interested in having something go click on your beads, you can go to adamandeve.com, type in Gloria Checkout. You know, you could probably get rosary anal beads there. I imagine that they probably do. So if you wanted to get some of those,

you go to adamandeve.com, type in Gloria Checkout, get 50% off almost any item, bunch of free stuff and free shipping. So they have this thing. That's so great. That they want to try to make like a wristwatch where you click on it and it'll start to tell the rosary to you.

Like, could you, like, look Vatican, stay away from video games, stay away from apps, stay away from, your shit is just boring. You're just going to have to admit that the shit we do is boring. You're never going to be like, hey kids, want to pray? You know,

somebody sitting around some boardroom in the Vatican was like, how do we make praying fun? And it's just like, you can't. It's fucking praying. Yeah. It's something your grandma does. Like, nothing your grandma does is amazing. That's why she's your grandma and she dried up. And if you're dried up and you'd like to fix it, you can head over to AdamandEve.com,

hit Gloria checkout, and get yourself a splash of whatever you need. And if you're dried up and you'd like to fix it, you can head over to adamandeve.com, hit Gloria checkout, and get yourself a splash of whatever you need. I will say this. Have you ever heard the rosary being read? Actually, I don't know the rosary. Okay, so the rosary is a short prayer that they say. It's hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with you, something, blah,

blah, blah. I don't know the rest of it. I just know a little bit of it. And it's like, now in the time of something, it's like really short, but it's like, it's like maybe six lines. And I know somebody will send it to us. I'm sure somebody is going to send it to us as soon as this happens, but it's like six lines short. And the rosary is said, you say four hail Marys and then one Our Father and then four, I think that's how it works. I mean, again, it's all vague to me. It's all vaguely remembering how this works. But what happens is, is there are certain times that they do this in the church where everybody in the church will do it. And they were doing it one time when I went to church.

Now I'm an atheist at this point. And I wound up in a church 30 minutes before the service. I was traveling and we wound up going into a church 30 minutes before the service. And there's a whole crowd of people all chanting the same thing for 30 straight minutes. They're doing the rosary. And so they're just, hail Mary full of grace, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that the function of the rosary is to create a meditative headspace?

I think so, but it's creepy as shit when you hear it aloud. Oh, I can't even imagine. It's weird. Like, you hear it and you're just like, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like leader stuff. Like, it feels super weird and it feels weird to be in there and it feels super weird and it feels weird to be in there

and it feels extra weird to not be doing it too. Oh yeah, I can. Yeah. It feels extra weird because everybody's just like, it feels like invasion of the body structures where they're like, they're going to stare at you at points.

But this is like, but the rosary is a genuinely strange thing when you hear a whole group of people chanting it. I have literally never heard, I wasn't Catholic, so I've never heard rosary. I also, I'm trying to imagine a world where the Catholic church is like, you know, the reason young people don't want to come to the Catholic church isn't because we raped most of them. No, no. It's because of the gadgets.

It's like, well, what do the millennials want oh the millennials they want a wearable rose they don't want your rosary here's how you activate the rosary you make the sign of cross sign of the cross and that turns your gadget on so like i don't think the problem with the catholic church's like inability to inability to keep members is that it's not cool. It's never going to be cool. You could fucking have a robo-animatronic Jesus come down from the fucking cross and sing songs like Chuck E. Cheese. Now I would go. Admittedly, I'm already starting to be like, if someone could program their Chuck E. Cheese,

Chuck E. Cheese thing to do like Christian rock songs and like Joel Osteen is the fucking raccoon, the trash panda that talks, I would definitely be down for that. Would you go to Chuck E. Jesus? Chuck E. Jesus. Chuck E. Jesus, I would definitely go. I would definitely go.

Although the food there is just wafers. It's just not as exciting. Still better than Chuck E. Jesus. Chuck E. Jesus, I would definitely go. I would definitely go. Although the food there is just wafers. It's just not as exciting. Still better than Chuck E. Jesus. It's also still better than New York style pizza. I will relay this story. So Haley and her kids are from New York. They moved to Chicago. We go

to a Chuck E. Cheese. The first six, eight months or something that we're there that they're here. And Donovan, my stepson, grabs a slice of this fucking garbage. And Chuck E. Cheese is absolutely the worst pizza. It's the lowest quality. It's lower than

CeCe's. It is. It's lower than CeCe's. And that's saying something. That's the pizza you get when you can't afford Domino's. Like when Domino's is like, oh, what are we rich you can't afford dominoes like when dominoes is like oh what are we rich we're getting dominoes what are you driving to bentley getting papa john's over there oh some of us can't put gas in our ford fiesta you know like he he gets this slice of of chucky cheese and he bites into it and a look of just joyous recognition climbs over his face and he's like it tastes like new

york and i was just like this right now is a moment that i'm never gonna forget yeah it does buddy sure does smells like garbage in here well elder mckinley i think it's okay that you're having gay thoughts just so long as you never act upon them. Being gay is bad, but lying is worse. So just realize you have a curable curse and turn it off. Turn it off. Alright, so this story comes from ABC4, but it also came

from just kind of everywhere. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opposes rule that would ban conversion therapy, says it fails to protect individual religious beliefs. What they don't mean is, what they mean to say there is, it fails to protect the religious beliefs of the people who want to hurt someone.

Yeah, it does not fail to protect the person who's gay. It's not the person who's gay who's like, I really wish that this would go away. Instead, it's the family who's like, you can't be gay. We need to beat it out of you. So you need to go to this thing. It's protecting their religion. It's like protecting an abuser's religious beliefs.

That's exactly like I was thinking about this thing. It's like, well, I have a right to beat my wife. And if we make wife beating illegal, then as a wife beater,

like, how am I going to be? Like, are you fucking kidding me? Can you hear you? It's funny that we, we, we do. I know you can, can hit your kids.

You can spank your kids, but there's like a level at which that's not cool. Right. It's like where you, you go to jail for it. Right. Like you can, and I think it's in every state you can spank your kids.

Like it's totally allowed. Yeah. In every state to like, to like wallop your kids in the United States. Cause we're super backward and stupid. And we think that that's awesome. Is it illegal in other countries? It is. It's totally allowed in every state to like wallop your kids in the United States because we're super backward and stupid. And we think that that's awesome. Is it illegal in other countries? It is.

It's illegal. It's illegal in, I want to say Sweden and France for sure. It's illegal. You can't hit your kids, which is good, you know, good for them.

I don't think you need to wallop your kids. Yeah, you don't need to hit your kids. I mean, it's nice to have the option. Don't get me wrong. I understand it. But, but there's, you know, you don't,

but at some point we are like enshrining because we have, you know, we have all these weird rules in this country where we enshrine abusers and we allow abusers to do horrible shit. Like I was saying, like hitting your kids is one of those things that we just allow people to do. Same thing here.

It's like we're allowing them to be like, you know, and really genuinely, most people that are gay are at an age where they're past, you know, where they can be physically abused, right?

You're in a teen or a tween age at the very earliest, right? Most of the time you're past that. You're right near the cusp of when you leave the house. Spanking a teenager is weird, right? Yeah, spanking a teenager. Now, how are we talking here?

Okay, I feel like we've digressed. Don't, just everybody stop the thing you're thinking about. Everybody stop going to Pornhub right now. Okay, we'll give you seven minutes. Spanking a teenager. Hold on, let me just look that up real quick. But seriously, these kids are,

anybody who's coming out at that age, you're not coming out at a young age. You're not two or three coming out. You're already maybe even close. You're probably post-sexually active at that point. And you're still enshrining in the parents, the ability to abuse that child. It's crazy to me. It is, but it's, it's part of a, there's, there's kind of a, a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if it exists in other places, but certainly exists here

where there's a sense that parents own their children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that you have as a parent, like, and you'll hear it, it's built into a lot of the language that we use around parenting through divisive issues, right? So the vaccine crowd is like, I'm the parent, I make all the rules. And that suggests that, like, I'm the parent, so I have ownership of this person. I have ultimate say as parents of this person. It's like, no, I mean like you're the guardian. Like you are the caretaker. You're the custodian of their well-being.

You are not the owner. Like you are many roles as a parent, but you are not the owner of this other human being. We never get to own another human being. But you hear it when when people are like well it's my kid i can hit him yeah you know it's my kid i i don't i can do this it's my kid yeah my possessive yeah and and to some degree i understand that because anything it's your responsible you are absolutely responsible for it so i get it right yeah there's a part i get right the the things that we are responsible for we also have some uh authority over sure for sure there's a part I get. Right. The things that we are responsible for, we also have some authority over.

Sure. For sure. You can't have one without the other, right? Right, right. So, but we have a larger issue where we say like, you know, I own this kid.

I own them and they are subject to my whims and if I want them to not be gay, I can send them to conversion therapy. Yeah. I can make them not be gay. I can do with them as I want. Yeah.

And there isn't, like, we don't have the kind of social structures that can invasively protect children from parents who would do them terrible harms. I mean, schools are supposed to be on the front line of seeing it. Sure. You know, it's interesting too, because I thought that the Mormons had come out and sort of retraced their steps a couple years ago. If you remember, there was sort of a, they did a lot of takesies-backsies,

especially for Prop 8 and other stuff. They were like, you know, it seemed like they're- They got a new revelation. They were talking out, yeah, they had a new revelation. They were talking out of one side of their mouth. We found out from other people that that's not true, that they were always still kind of anti-gay, even if they weren't as vociferous about it. Right. But this is another way that they're going to be, you know, that this, this sort of

conversion therapy stuff, it's horrible. It's a horror. It's, it doesn't work. It's not something that we should be doing to people. We should be embracing people how they are and not worrying about their sexuality so much. Not at all. Do you think a part of it is like, there's an undercurrent within the religious narrative that if something, then that's what makes you gay. So then, logically, if something else, it can make you straight. Yeah. That like, they come down so hard on the nurture side of the argument when it comes to homosexuality versus heterosexuality.

Like your sexuality is, in their mind, like this tabula rasa moment in your life where it's just, it's written based on your experience. Like, I saw a dick at the wrong time. And it's just, it's written based on your experience. Like, I saw a dick at the wrong time! And it's funny because it cannot possibly match if you're, it cannot possibly match with the anecdotal life

experiences of the people who believe that. Of everybody. It's so bizarre. You wind up at that one moment in your life you saw a pee-pee and that changed your whole life. Like, it's just, it's ridiculous. It's ludicrous. So when I was a young boy,

I used to take showers with my dad when I was a very young boy, right? When I was a little kid. I'm sure a lot of people did. I know when I was a little boy, that's what I did. My dad would be like, you know,

I'd have to clean up and my dad would be like, you gotta get in the, you're gonna take a shower. And so I, you know, I saw a dick at a young age. Right. I like, God, I got to get one of those. I had a huge crush on the babysitter at five. Like my sexuality was not formed by what I saw,

you know what I mean? Cause I never saw a titty. I never saw any tits when I was a kid. I never saw open breasts and I never saw, you know, any cooch. But I'll tell you what, I sure as hell wanted it at five. You know what I mean? Right. And it just flies in the face of all of that stuff. It's like there's a lot of that shit that's pre-programmed into you. So let's say, let's say, for the sake of argument, that all of the water levels around the world rise by, let's say, five feet.

You think that people aren't going to just sell their homes and move just one small problem sell their houses to who ben fucking aquaman god this guy's such a little turd isn't he oh my god he's such a little turd how fucking awful is ben shapiro like on a scale from one to ben shapiro. He's such a little turd. He's such a little shitty human being. I want to talk to him. Do you? Like he's one of those people that I actually would like to talk to him because he's inscrutable to me in terms of like, he's seen as an intellectual on the right. And he is one of the least intellectual people. And I've seen him on a number of programs and I'm just baffled by his appeal. Yeah. And his arguments seem so apparently on their face flimsy. Yeah. And this is a great example. So this is from

the Progressive Secular Humanist blog. So Beto O'Rourke, and I can't fucking stand Beto. I can't either. I cannot stand. We're going to talk a little bit later on about some of the candidates that are running. We might even do it as a patron only. We're not sure. We might not get to it in this show. We might just do it as a patron only. But we are going to talk about the latest debate, and we will talk about Beto O'Rourke for sure. So one of the questions that was asked of Beto recently was like, you know, should churches lose their tax-exempt status if they are, I don't remember,

like mean to homosexuals? Yeah, if they oppose same-sex marriage. Right. And he said, yeah, absolutely. Fuck that noise. And his answer, I thought, in this case, was actually a great answer. It was immediate and unequivocal.

Yeah. He said yes. And he was like, look, there's no room for that nonsense, right? So Ben Shapiro loses his full mind He said yes, and he was like, look, there's no room for that nonsense, right? So Ben Shapiro loses his full mind, and also he loses complete sense of the question scope as well as the answer to the question. Because he responds by saying, like, you know, the government doesn't get to raise my kid. And if anybody shows up at my door to tell me how to raise my kid, I'll be there waiting for them with a gun.

How does that have to do with anything about whether or not your church has tax-exempt status? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? There is a conflation on the right with the tax-exempt status being some kind of equivalent to freedom. Yeah. As if, like, I pay taxes. Yeah. Also, I am free. I am no step on snack free.

Like, I'm free all day long, free. Don't tread on me. Yeah. But I still pay taxes. Yeah. Like, the fact that you pay taxes in no way disassembles Johnny 5 I am free I'm a citizen

of this country it just means that I have to pay taxes I'm baffled at how like the church well the church would have to pay taxes okay and then what other bad thing and then what happens right and how does that change the church is teaching well the church's teaching?

Well, the church can't afford to pay taxes. Get the fuck out of here. What he's saying is that they'll have to change what they're thinking because they don't want to pay taxes. Well, then that's not an institution you want to look to for your morality. Right. If they're so swayed by whether or not they have to pay a little extra into the kitty that they're going to change their entire ideology based on that, then why the fuck do you even follow it in the first place? You little shit. It doesn't even make any sense. It's, it's so pathetic. And it also, this is one of those fucking Charlie Bronson bullshit moments that the right love to fucking jerk off on their own face about where they're

just like, you come to my door, man, and I'll let my gun on me. And then you'll see, and then you'll get the fuck out of here. Nobody's going to come to your door to collect money for your church on how much they paid for taxes. It's literally a conflict that will never happen. And you can act like a tough guy because it'll never happen. It also reinforces like, well, you got to get your gun, got to get your gun, right? Got to put my gun on, got to wear it just in case the impossible happens. You know, they could make my church pay taxes and then

I would have to shoot the government. And the government shows up at my door. The entire government. Yeah. It's the government! We're here to raise your kids. I'd be like, terrific! I love that he's like, yeah, if you want to raise my kids, you gotta get through me terrific. I love that he's like, yeah, you're going to, if you want to raise my kids,

you got to get through me. And we're just like, get the fuck out of here. Nobody's, no, there's no threat of that. Nobody's saying that. It's not even germane. I know.

It's like, it's so weird. It's like, if you were a stegosaurus, I would eat a tyrannosaurus. Or it's even just like, no one's going to take my carrots away. It's just like,

okay, cool story. I mean, I don't think anybody was aiming for your carrots, but you put them where you want, Ben. Nobody cares.

It's so nonsense. It's unbelievable. China has total respect for Donald Trump's very, very large brain. They call her Pocahontas. I am the chosen one. You are fakehontas. I am the chosen one. You are fake news.

Okay. I am the least racist person. Look at my African-American over here. Look at him. It's a camera. Grab him by the pussy. Stop it. So this weekend, Trump,

we don't have any stories really. We do want to talk about how his new secretary of, not secretary, chief of staff, outwardly said that there was quid pro quo for Ukraine and then walked it back an hour later, but literally said out loud, we withheld aid because we wanted them to do a thing for us

and we wanted that thing to be done. And we withheld aid until they said that they did it. And so like, that's a thing that they said out loud. They've been saying all of these things out loud since the beginning. We also have Trump's weirdly worded letter to Erdogan who he, Erdogan then threw it in the garbage and then told his minister to tell Trump that he threw it in the garbage.

So those are the two main stories. There's a lot more that's been going on with Trump lately. He had a meltdown, evidently had a meltdown at one of those big meetings, one of the big board meetings that they had. But those are the two main things. But those are the two main things. Man, and we've already talked about the pulling out of Syria and abandoning our allies in Syria. That's the worst. Like, if there's ever anything that Trump could do that should motivate the armed forces and the veterans to stop being fucking hard right yeah and to be like this guy doesn't give a shit about the men that fought next to me that died next to me that helped protect me like

if if this isn't the thing then hypocrisy is the only thing yeah then that's it it is an impossibility for me to look an armed services member in the face and say like that guy abandoned your allies that guy fucking walked away from the same people who fought alongside you. And if you're all right with that, then this brothers in arms, comrade bullshit,

stop jerking that shit off and just shut the fuck up about it. You know what I mean? Like it's done. That shit's done. The other thing we got to talk about is like the weird Giululiani connection oh yeah ukraine like yeah giuliani's not a member of the government he's just trump's personal attorney

yeah his personal actual attorney and like people have been people people have been um told to go talk to giuliani yeah and giuliani is kind of puppet mastering this thing with the Ukraine. He's not even unelected or appointed or a security clearance official. Yeah. He's just Trump's personal. That's like his. Imagine if he did the same thing to his like personal trainer. Yeah.

It's the same thing. That's not an employee of ours. We don't hire that guy. He doesn't answer to us. I know. He's just Trump's like personal chef. That's not an employee of ours. We don't hire that guy. He doesn't answer to us. He's just Trump's like personal chef. That's it. I can't, I don't understand how that works anyway with Giuliani, but I will say this. I will say that the letter that Trump wrote was to Erdogan was at best

fourth grade vocabulary. Can you call it up? Can I read it? Is that okay? It's only like five, six lines long. This is a letter that one head of state wrote to another head of state. It's genuinely astonishing. Oh gosh, I didn't even read this, but Vanity

Fair says this is real Trump sends third grade reading level? I gave it one extra grade. All right. Dear Mr. President, let's work out a good deal! Are you kidding me? Yes. You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people,

and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy, and I will. I've already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson. I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Mazlum is willing to negotiate with you, and he's willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past. I am confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me just received.

History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Shut the fuck up. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool. I will call you later. Later after he gets the letter? Do you know what time he got the letter?

I'm going to call him after the letter arrived. He threw it literally in the garbage. He took it. He might have crumpled it up, and he threw it directly in the garbage. You know he was laughing his ass off. How embarrassing is that, that that's our president?

Maximally embarrassing? It's genuinely embarrassing. our president? I mean, it's genuinely embarrassing. Maximally embarrassing. Yeah, it's embarrassing. Why have you consistently voted against campaign finance reform? We all know big money is running this country. Do they run you? Hold on. Why don't we stop all the softball questions and ask some real questions okay like why won't marty huggins here take a lie detector test

is he al-qaeda is he a taliban i've seen a mustache like that before and you know who wore it saddam hussein and i believe we never caught two of his sons udayday and Falafel. We'll talk for a few minutes about the latest debate that just happened. I just want to say straight out the centrists just need to go. And the centrists recently before were sort of

they were attacking Biden because he was the big fish. He was the one who everybody was like, hey, Biden, gotta go after Biden, gotta go after Biden. And also he was like big fish. He was the one who everybody was like, hey, Biden, got to go after Biden, got to go after Biden. And also he was like the head centrist. So they wanted to like out centrist him. But like fucking- I cannot commit better than you cannot commit. Klobuchar, fuck you, Klobuchar. Holy shit, that lady. Folksy fucking Sarah Palin needs to go. And she is terrible. She is literally terrible. The shit

she has to say, they all keep saying the same thing over and over about Medicare for all. It's not a hard concept. They keep saying over and over, well, are you going to raise taxes? Well, are you going to raise taxes? That's an easy way to say, look, your program is bad, but it's such a stupid way to think about it. It's like someone coming to me and saying, Cecil, look, here's the deal. You're going to, your premiums, you're never going to have to pay any premiums. You're never going to have to pay any co-pays.

You're never going to have to pay any of that stuff. Any more medical stuff is never going to come out. Your line item for your coverage on your, that you pay every week, because you pay every week for your work. You pay money into that. That's gone. Your Medicare one will go up though. That one's going to go up, but here's the benefit. It's never going to go up past the one, the other one, the one, if you add the two together,

it's going to go up and everybody else gets health insurance. Right. Suddenly it makes it super fucking amazing. Like, I don't understand how people don't add that little piece in that. You know what? Yeah. You're, you might pay a little more in taxes. You're, it's not going to cover, it's not going to be more than what you're currently paying for health insurance, but you are going to pay a little more in taxes, but everybody gets fucking insurance, period. The end of story, every single person, every underinsured person out there, everybody in fucking crippling medical debt out there, everybody who sends us a fucking message every goddamn week that they've got to get a fucking because their we do is we say, well, cool. Well, hopefully the fucking hospital fucking fund it. And then you can fucking spend years in crippling

medical debt because that's all you got. That's the fucking future ahead of you. Instead, what we could say is, you know what, Tom, you might pay a little more for Medicare and Cecil may pay a little more for Medicare and Joe Blow may pay a little more for Medicare. It's never going to be more than your current premiums. And everybody gets health insurance. Why does nobody add that little piece in at the end? And Klobuchar, you're a fucking liar. You're a liar. You're just like, oh, people love their fucking medical insurance.

And I just want to do the best thing. And we should just use the ACA. Well, how about we fuck the ACA and we go with something a fucking thousand times better, which is everybody gets health insurance. Yeah, Medicare can't be so bad if survey after survey after survey after survey always shows that people love fucking Medicare. It's like the most beloved thing.

Like people, when you survey people on Medicare, they've done this again and again and again. And they say like, how do you fucking feel about Medicare? People are like, I goddamn love Medicare so much. Everybody who uses it loves it. Like, I used all of my, so like your health insurance, typically it's like, well, I pay a premium. Okay.

Then you pay a copay. Okay. Then you pay a deductible. Cool. Then you pay an out-of-pocket maximum. Yeah. So you end up paying so much more than your premiums. If anything happens, I had back surgery this year. So I've paid the maximum amount this year that I can possibly pay,

which means that after that happened and I'm already out five figures out the door, right? Then everything else that happens this year is covered by the insurance plan. And I got to say, like, I'm still paying buckets of money every month for the premium. The premiums that, but just, I got to say, like, just not paying for a prescription out of pocket, not paying for a doctor's appointment out of pocket, in addition to the $700 a month I pay for my insurance premiums for the family. It's like, it feels like a Christmas present to go to the doctor and not get a bill. It feels like a Christmas. And I got that Christmas present because I already paid so many bills.

I can't pay any more bills. Well, you know, it's funny because I don't go to the doctor very often. I go to the doctor like once or twice a year. Right. Right. So I don't, I rarely go to the doctor. I don't, it's just something that doesn't, I don't get a lot of, very sick or I don't get hurt very often. I go to the doctor like once or twice a year. Right. Right. So I don't rare, I rarely go to the doctor. I don't, it's just something that doesn't, I don't get a lot of very sick or I don't get hurt very often. So it's, I'm fortunate in that sense. And I just don't go. So for me, maybe my premiums, maybe, maybe I pay a little more. I'm okay with that. And there's all

these wealth taxes that they're talking about and people are like kind of poo pooing them. And I'm just like, get off the stage, just get off the stage. You know, they're not talking about a lot of money. She's saying two cents from every person. That's the thing. It's like when you look at the amounts, it's nothing. The number one cause for bankruptcy is medical debt. Bankruptcy is medical debt is the primary driver for bankruptcy. By the time you go into bankruptcy, so many other bad things financially have happened,

not just to you, but to our economy as a whole. Every dollar that I spend on bullshit medical debt is a dollar that doesn't pump into the functioning economy. It's not a good I bought. It's not a service I bought. It's not a fucking bagel at that store over there. It's not clothes my kids get to wear that had to be purchased from that fucking store somebody works at.

It's all just bullshit. It's bullshit every time. I'm happy that Yang has brought into the public conversation the UBI. I feel like at one point Yang was pushing back on the ultra-rich

tech saying it didn't work in Germany. Why would we try it here? And I'm just thinking Germany's different than here. So let's not poo-poo that extra big tax on the wealthy. Let's keep that on the table. I'm okay with UBI. I've been since the beginning. I think it's a cool idea. I'm happy Yang is getting people. I think he's pulling people fiscally left, which is good. I don't know if he's pulling people. Um, cause again, every single question he answers with UBI fixes this. So I don't, I know some of his policies, but not a ton of his policies when it comes to anything social, but I will say

fiscally, he feels like he's pulling people left and that's good. Um, Beto needs to go. Beto's awful. Beto's awful. Klobuchar needs to go. Biden needs, Biden's a wreck and Biden needs to go. Beto's awful. I hate Beto. Beto's awful. Klobuchar needs to go. Biden needs, Biden's a wreck and Biden needs to go. Biden's the worst. Biden can't finish

a sentence properly. Gabbard needs to go. I think that there's, there's a few people up there that I'm still like, I want to hear what they have to say, but some of these centrists

just need to drop. I want to talk about Beto for a second. Yeah. You know, Beto is capitalizing on the gun issue, right? And we have a huge problem with guns. The problem with Beto is that his gun control programs have no ability to work. And I got to give props to Buttigieg for pointing it out. There was a moment

in the debate, and they've been kind of sniping back and forth, but there was a moment in the debate where Beto, in response to his policy, I don't know, that he wants to take everyone's, you know, assault weapon. So it's not just a buyback, a voluntary buyback, but he would have a mandatory or enforced buyback. Right, right. So Buttigieg was like,

yeah, how would you do that when we don't know who has what guns? And he's like, well, I just trust that people would follow the law. Buttigieg called him back out on it again. He said, so you have no plan. You're saying it because it sounds good, but you have no ability to do it. So all that shit does is it riles up the right, but you can't accomplish it. That is a stupid fucking thing to do. That's not pulling,

like to your point earlier, like that is all the problems of pulling to the left when you can't accomplish it. It'd be like saying like, well, you know, we should make carbon dioxide illegal. Yeah. You know, that's what we should do. We should write a law that says there's no more global warming. That's a stupid fucking thing to do. Don't do stupid shit. And Buttigieg had a great point. He's like, look, we need to get the wins on gun control where they matter and where they're effective. And he listed off, you know, like universal background checks and the red zone laws or whatever it's fucking called. National registry. Like, hey, you might kill somebody. So we're going to take your gun, like taking guns away from domestic abusers, like that kind of

shit. That shit would work. That shit would actually accomplish something. Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. And I feel like you had said it earlier to me that you feel like it was almost a plant by the Republican Party to just rile people up. Feels like it. And you know, like the thing is, is like one, you're never going to be president.

And two, you're saying shit to just literally rile people up. And you're going to, you may turn someone out on the other side to go vote. When they hear that soundbite of you coming to get their guns. Yeah. It sounds scary, but it's like, nobody thinks that that's possible. That's a stupid, and that's nobody knows who has them. That's the thing, right? It's like, like, look, like, don't get me wrong. I want to see more gun control in this country. I'm not, I this country. I'm not somebody who doesn't think

that we shouldn't have more gun control. In fact, I would go as far as to say we should have the ultimate gun control and have no guns. If there was some way to accomplish that, I would be 100% for not having guns in this country. Let's do it tomorrow if we can. I just don't think you have the political capital at all to ever get it done. But if you start doing things incrementally, you can at least work to a better solution. But if you just say, no, the only solution is to take all your guns, well, then you just don't have a solution.

Right. Like if you pass a law tomorrow called guns are banned, guns are illegal, it doesn't get rid of the guns because the people who have guns don't have to tell anyone they have a gun. It's like a real problem. We're joined by Maya Van Rossum,

the author of The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment. Maya, welcome to Cognitive Dissonance. I am so thrilled to be on the show today. Maya, I have a starting question. Don't you have to have a certain amount of cognitive dissonance inherent in saying that we have a right to an environment? Don't we have we have a right to the money we strip from the environment?

I think we've made that very clear, very clear, very clear. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. If you if you ask anybody, do you have a right to clean water and clean air across the board? People will say, absolutely. Of course I do. And then when you actually explain to them that, no, here in the U.S. you don't. You have a right to free speech and you have private property rights and due process rights. You have gun rights, but you don't actually have the right to clean water, clean air, a stable climate and a healthy environment. They're rather shocked because.

I mean, I know the people in Flint, Michigan, I think they figured that out. Yeah, they figured that out. I'm only half kidding though, right? Because if they had a right to clean water the same way that you have a right to an AR-15, the court cases would have already made it through to the Supreme Court. But instead, they're just like, I drank a lead

pipe and I can't do math anymore. And we're just like, yeah, welcome to Flint. Yeah. Enjoy Legionnaires disease. Well, the thing is though, they actually, even though they're getting totally toasted when it comes to the environment, whether you're, you're talking about Flint, Michigan, or, you know, frankly, communities across the nation, whether you're talking about the air or drinking water, fracking, all kinds of things, the fact that people are really getting slammed by pollution and degradation and they're losing their lives and their health and their property values,

they still in their hearts believe that they have this right to a healthy environment. And so they can't understand how the government is allowing them to be so abused at the hands of industry, right? Like the profit-making industry. And they reference all the environmental protection laws we have, right? Because we do, we have hundreds of thousands of environmental protection laws. And so they're just confused and concerned and they don't understand why government is not coming to their defense. And more often than not, especially these days, seems to be going to the defense of industry because they do believe in their hearts. Like, hey, it's a fundamental right.

It's my right as a person to have clean water and clean air. And so they're actually confused rather than realizing the reality that they have gun rights, but they don't have clean water rights. So I want to ask about that. So you mentioned the hundreds of thousands of environmental protection laws that we have. Do those laws in aggregate create the functional equivalent of a right to clean air or water? And since I know that answer is no, this is what we call a softball. Why not?

Well, you're right. The answer is no. Nailed that. Man, I'm going to go die on some water real quick. Go ahead and keep saying that. We can end the show now, right? The thing is the way our government operates, right? our government operates so that they think about the environmental and health ramifications and the harms of, after we've already approved the fracking, the industrial operations, the development in the dangerous place or space, right,

the cutting of the forest, we're going to approve that. And then later, we're going to think about how do we deal with the environmental ramifications. And really, it's that back. Don't they have to do environmental study before they can do a lot of... I'm not crazy, right? I've heard of this. Before you're about to do a big whatever project, don't you have to have some environmental study that says, I'm going to kill all the red-backed toads in Louisiana? Am I crazy? I'm not crazy.

Well, see, you're not crazy, but you're down the line in the decision making process. Right. They've already decided they've already created the law that allows the industrial operations or the frogs or devastate the water or pollute the air or devastate the climate, right? The fundamental structure is already in place that will allow those projects to go forward and pretty much guarantee the industrial operator the permit that they need to operate. Those analyses that you're talking about are to figure out whether or not they're complying with the permits they need to do their industrial operation. But to get those permits, they just have to be able to check the boxes and say, I'm only going to release this much water pollution and this much

air contamination, right? And so again, by the time you get down there, you're managing the inevitable harm and you're checking the boxes to know how much degradation you can allow. Some of the laws, you're right, you say, don't you have to do an analysis first? Don't they have to do environmental reviews first? There are laws that do require that, again, they're down the line usually when the law and the regulations have already been put in place that are allowing XYZ bad thing to happen. But even then, very often, like under the National Environmental Policy Act, this iconic federal law, the federal government has to do all sorts of reviews to learn about how much devastation is going to be inflicted by the dredging project or, you know, the whatever project it is that they're, the pipeline project, the

fracking project they're going to allow. But they, after they've done the analysis and they figure out how much they're going to harm, they're going to inflict and whether or not there are better, less harmful alternatives, the law does not require them to choose the less harmful alternatives. They get to do whatever they want. They just now know how much harm they're going to inflict on people. So they're quantifying the inevitable. That's really like, they're post hoc quantifying the inevitable. Yeah.

That's amazing. People come to these, particularly right now, there's a lot happening with this, you know, thinking about fracked gas pipelines, right? And oil pipelines. And people are turning out

to all these meetings that the National Environmental Policy Act requires the government and industry to hold. And they're creating comments, you know, pages and pages of comments and they're hiring experts and they're coming out to these public meetings whereby they, by the way, they only get three minutes to testify about how their lives are going to be devastated by this fracked

gas pipeline that's going to go through their front yard or their backyard or, you know, their favorite. Better make it good. Better make it good in three minutes. Three minutes and I got to make it good. I can make it good twice in three minutes. I can't make it good for me. I can't make it good in three minutes. Three minutes and I got to make it good? You got it. I can make it good twice in three minutes. I can't make it good. For me. I can't make it good in three minutes. And very often these days, if you keep talking, right, they have the policeman right there to call you out.

I would make it past the introduction. Like, I have a series of jokes lined up. I got a solid three before we. Let me just stop you, Maya, and say here we are in this country. We've been told many times, and I think it's probably

the truth because the president has said we have the cleanest water in the world. That's true. He said that. He has said this many times. Isn't that enough? Do we need extra stuff other than just like the president's word? In some places and in some spaces you do, but there was actually a couple of years ago, there were some folks from the United Nations that came to communities here in the United States of America. And they said

that the water quality, what people were drinking and experiencing was some of the worst water and the worst environmental conditions that they had experienced anywhere in the world. And these were investigators, right, that had gone to really horrible places. It depends where you live. I mean, if you live in Flint, Michigan, you don't have some of the best water in the world, right? It doesn't matter. We can't all live in the land of Dasani or wherever these people are from. land of Dasani or wherever these people are from. Right now, if you live around, if you live near a lot of military bases, right, they're finding more and more of something called purine polyfluoroalkyls in people's drinking water. It's a toxin, right? It gives, it makes people sick. It can give them cancer and it's in their drinking water supplies because of Teflon, the military, the nonstick

stuff you find on slippery food packaging and stain repellent carpeting and clothing. And because of this, up until very recently, only in some places, this largely unregulated chemical, we're now finding it in drinking water supplies in at least three dozen states across the nation. So in those communities, their water may look good and it may smell good and they may have thought it was good. But for decades, they've been drinking very literally poison water. So no, their water is not the cleanest in the world, at least not to them. Yeah. But if they, if they were fracking nearby and fundamentally rending the earth until it groans in agonized protest, obviously that would help. And then lets out a really beefy fart.

One of my favorite things about fracking is that at this point, we are creating earthquakes. I know. And then we're just like, it's probably still okay. It's fine. We're probably still... I don't know if there's... Can you imagine if we created tornadoes from it? And we're just like, well, anyway, it's probably still okay.

But you love that natural gas, right? Right. Yeah. Right. The freedom gas. Thank you very much. Yeah. Yeah. No. But after all, I mean, the industry says it's not happening, right? And politicians say it's

not happening, so it must not be happening. This is like so objectively happening. Like, there's no scientific controversy left from what I read an article that not terribly long ago. Like, there is no significant scientific controversy left around the results of fracking causing earthquakes. Like, that's just a true thing now.

That is... It's funny because we, I remember when it first came out, we laughed at it. We did. We were like, what? We're like,

come on, that's not going to cause, and then now, we're wrong. Yeah, we're 100% apt. Yeah, we're totally wrong.

You know what you got to do? You got to revise your stance on things. You got to think about things a little differently. So how great is fracking for the environment? Like, obviously, it is very, very good, right? Like, on a scale of one to awesome. Okay, so I can't find a funny answer.

They told me to drink. It's horrible. So all I can say is it's fun when I go and I'm doing my talks and I talk about the frackers and people instantly mishear what I've said. We actually, you know, one of the things what's really scary is so the other hat that I have, other than writing the book and starting this new National Green Amendment movement, is it was all it is all an outgrowth of my 25 years of work as the Delaware Riverkeeper and fighting for the Delaware River watershed. And we actually have prevented, despite the fact that we have the shales necessary for fracked shale gas, we've kept fracking out of our Delaware River watershed for nearly a decade now. And still, despite that, despite that we've preserved our Delaware River, which is the drinking water supply of over 25 million people, we still have the industry and government seriously pressuring and thinking about opening

up our watershed to fracking, despite the fact that all the other watersheds, right, all around us where fracking is happening are being devastated. Communities are being destroyed. We have cancer clusters for kids, right? Drinking water supply is contaminated. Forests falling, right? Climate change, the known contribution of the methane to climate change just growing every day. And yet still to this day, we are battling to have to keep the frackers out of our watershed, a major drinking water supply on the East Coast. So it's really it really is quite shocking. And it very literally is because industry comes in and says there's no harm. And then the politicians in their pockets say, yeah, there's no harm.

And so there you go. So real quick, you know, as a as a lay person, my understanding is that I'm joking about earthquakes, but my understanding that one of the major troubles around fracking is that after the resources are taken up out of the earth, we pump a fair amount of toxic shit in there to get it out. a bunch of water gets pumped in there and then all that shit leaks into the groundwater and the aquifers, et cetera. And, you know, basically like poisons everyone around. Is that, is the biggest problem with fracking the danger to the groundwater? Is that the biggest problem with fracking? The problem with fracking is that there's dangers all the way around. And so if it was just one thing, right, if it was just the drinking water contamination, then you might say, okay, well, someday, some way, the industry is going to find a way to solve that problem, and then fracking will be okay. But the thing is, it's not just

one harm. It's not just one problem. It is contamination of groundwater. It is contamination of drinking water. It is the release of climate changing methane, which is the most devastating climate changing gas when you're talking about the next 20 year timeframe, which is what we have to talk about. It requires 10 to 20 million gallons of water to frack every single well. And to that water, the frackers add dangerous toxins and chemicals, many unknown, right? They don't disclose. And then when all that water gets pumped into the geology of the earth, it pulls up other contaminants in the earth, including radioactive materials.

The majority of that water actually gets- It's so bad. It's so much worse. It sounds so worse. You're like, I'm sorry. And I'm genuinely interested in this. This is amazing to have such expertise. But you're talking and I'm looking over at Cecil

and it's getting worse. Every sentence you utter, I'm just like, at some point she's got to say something good, right? And then pirate treasure sometimes comes out of it. No, no. So we got to radioactive materials. Continue on from there. Okay.

So then the water that comes back to the surface of the earth is so toxic that even the industry doesn't have a good solution for what to do with it. So they use it for more fracking or they store it in plastic line pits on the surface of the earth, which then becomes an invitation to the birds, right? Who cause problems. Or you have a major rainstorm that washes it out. Or they take it to Oklahoma where they try to inject it in the ground. This is so toxic. We literally can't think of what do we do with it? I don't know. Bring it somewhere pointless.

Like Oklahoma. Someone starts singing Oklahoma. Just singing. Oh, it's amazing. Oh my God. Hold on. No, I got,

I got, I got, I got to rewind just for a second. So they, they, they make the most toxic goo you could possibly imagine. And then they're just like, I don't know.

Let's refrac with this. That's like making coffee with your coffee. It's like, we're going to take more water, a lot of it fresh water, and then we're going to add it to this really toxic water.

So now that's toxic. And then we're going to take it and frac another box and make it more toxic so that we can release methane. And to do all this right they have to we're talking like you know acres of land for each of these well pads three to five acres so then they often are cutting the forest or sometimes they're putting these these um these well sites

very near homes and you know can they put one in a preschool can i just ask can we put one in a preschool? Can I just ask? Can we put one in a baby's heart? As the wildlife started by, they're just shooting a fire hose full of this goo and all the wildlife. This is so bad. This is the worst. No, but you know what the scary thing is? So what do they do in some of the places?

They take the wastewater from the fracking and they use it as brine on the roads. You know, like when they need to brine the roads. Okay, here's the thing, Maya. Maya, I really appreciate all this. I really appreciate all this knowledge, but when we're being sarcastic, we don't want you to one-up us, okay?

That's how this works. When we're making jokes, you need to not say a true thing that's worse than the joke we just made. The only worst thing she can say is like, then we spray black people at lunch counters with this. Like, Jesus Christ, this is unreal.

I had no idea that this even happened. This is so much worse. Oh my goodness. And I'm not even done. And then we have the pipeline. There's more to the frackers. But then also we have to have all the pipelines. Right. That are taking that fracking stuff. And by the way, they're not taking it to other places in this country so we can be energy independent.

That's just bullshit. They're taking it to export it to overseas where they can sell it for more money. where they can sell it for more money. A large proportion, a growing proportion of this fracked gas, which is devastating communities here, devastating the climate for future generations. This is all to give gas, send gas to other countries for their use for plastics, for energy creation, and really to make money for the fossil fuel industry. But the pipeline companies, they get the power of eminent

domain. That's a government-reserved power. No, you must be mistaken. That's a government-reserved power. That they give to the pipeline companies. Okay, real quick, hold on. I want to rewind just a hair, like, you know, you make it sound bad, but it injects a lot of money into the economy. And if your baby gets sick, you can rub money on whatever made them sick. I think. Right, Cecil? Cecil, you're...

I love how Maya's trying to power through. She's like, no, I'm not done yet. It gets worse. It gets worse. They're not just rubbing money. Some homes, because of their contaminated water or the methane that's coming out of their faucet bringing explosive gases into their homes, they just want to wash their babies in their bathtub. And they have to leave their windows open all year round so that they don't have an explosion. What the fuck?

What the fuck? Well, we clearly have all the environmental laws we need. Tom, I quit the earth. The earth is quitting us. I'm done. I quit the earth. Holy shit. That's just like-

So we turn into plastic to kill a turtle. What's crazy about this is that this is just one thing that we do, right? This is just one way in which we extract energy from the planet. This is just one thing that we do, right? This is just one way in which we extract energy from the planet. This is just one way. And I know for sure that other ways in which we extract energy are probably just as bad. Well, except clean coal because the word clean is in front of that word. Clean coal. Clean coal is very, Maya, clean coal? Yeah. A plus, double A plus? Yeah. How many thumbs do you have up right now? Well, if you're near a fracking site maybe 15 who knows right oh my thumbs are webbed remember all this stuff that i just told you right now we have all

those environmental protection laws in place right oh yeah basically yeah that's why you have to leave your house open when you wash your baby what the fuck is happening but you have the right to bear over the window but your kid doesn't have any right to arms so yeah okay so so we know this is horrid we know that this is this is one thing that you know a lot about. What's the alternative? Like, clearly you think we need to change the Constitution. What's your suggestion? So what we need is we need to put in the Bill of Rights section of every state constitution and then later, ultimately, the federal constitution. In the Bill of Rights section, very literally the constitutional right

to pure water, clean air, a stable climate and a healthy environment. And we actually have that in two states. Um, and one of those states, Pennsylvania, where they have a lot of fracking, but they had it on the books, but then the court said it's just a policy statement and they ignored it all the years that all this horrible stuff happened and the frackers came in. But then in 2012, there was a law that was passed by the Pennsylvania legislature that was going to make fracking even worse. They were giving the companies the power of eminent domain to force the storage of their gas under people's properties and automatic waivers from environmental protection laws and

mandating communities allow fracking, including their toxic wastewater pits, to be allowed to be located in residential communities, including as close as 300 feet from people's homes. And so we challenge that. I and my role as the Delaware Riverkeeper with my organization and our attorneys, we challenged that and we took this long ignored environmental rights amendment and we use that to challenge those provisions of the law. And this very, very conservative Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with us and said, you know what, for 42 years, we have been misinterpreting Pennsylvania's Green Amendment, their constitutional right to a healthy environment.

And they totally revamped how they interpreted it and breathed legal life into the constitutional right to a healthy environment. And so we defeated these devastating sections of the fracking law. We defeated these devastating sections of the fracking law, and we've been using, it was called Act 13, we've been using that Green Amendment now to battle on other fronts. See, the frackers were there first, so now we have to use the Green Amendment to sort of claw back the grounds away from them. But we're having important successes. But as we've been doing that, I realized how powerful this was. Like nobody talks about the right to a healthy environment in constitutional terms because nobody has it here in the United States of America. And I decided, you know what, this was. And that's why I'm in Kentucky. I'm working with communities across the nation to try to get Green Amendments added to every single state constitution across the nation and ultimately at the federal law. And as a result, we will fundamentally transform environmental protection here in the United States of America.

So you have to think about preventing pollution and degradation first while you're making the decisions, not wait till the end of the process when you're only about managing it. And that's your good news for the day that you want it. Okay, so who's your favorite candidate if you're just looking at environmental policies? Who's the candidate right now that you think is on point with environmental policies?

After Trump. I got on the left. I think that the candidate who has been, what is it, walking the walk or talking the talk or whatever, doing what he said for over 30 years is Bernie Sanders. He's been very pro-environment. He's been anti-fracking from the get-go and not just when it was convenient, right? When it was difficult. He's been talking about climate change when it was difficult. Yeah, but isn't Vermont an apocalyptic hellscape? Are there any legislators out there that have really tried to put a kibosh on this, that have tried to stop you from doing it? Have you run into some serious brick walls doing this work?

Well, the interesting thing is, is even the legislators that don't want to see it happen, even the industry representatives, right, that come to public hearings where you have this, even they are ashamed to say, I don't believe that you have a right to clean water or clean air, right? to say, I don't believe that you have a right to clean water or clean air, right? So you were talking earlier, you had mentioned your son. What's your son's name? His name is Vim. Vim Van Rompel. Vim. Vim. Well, we would like to do something nice for Vim. We wanted to send Vim a shirt. Do you know what size shirt Vim is? Vim would be so happy. A medium would be awesome. I know he's only 13 and probably shouldn't be listening,

but it's his favorite show. Definitely. He and I listen to it religiously. But we definitely want to... We will send him a Garfield shirt. We will send... No, a cognitive distance. A Snoopy shirt.

We'll definitely send him a shirt. We're going to get your information. We'll have Ian send out a shirt to you right away. Maya, we want to thank you for coming on and talking about this with us. This is really important work. If people were going to sort of just look into this or try to help out or try to figure out a way

that they could help out, what would they do? Where would they go on the internet? Go to www.forthegenerations.org and they'll find a lot of information and they'll also find a way to get in touch with me. I have a team, of course, that works with me, but I will go anywhere, anytime to talk about this because I really, really believe after being 20, after 25 years of advocating and litigating for the environment, I absolutely believe that this is the path forward

that we have to take if we want to make fundamental change. So I do whatever I have to. When you get your next state on, when they come on board, come back on the show. We'd love to have you on. Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, I'd love to. I hope it's New Mexico. They're really excited. Thank you. And I just want to say thank you. You guys do a great, great job talking about the environment, making it accessible, making it fun.

And it really is making a difference because people really hear you. So thank you for doing that. You have a lot of shows where you do it beautifully and I really appreciate it. And in a fun, funny way. Thank you so much for coming on, Maya. And we will put a link to both the website and to your book on this week's show notes. Thanks for funny way. Thank you so much for coming on, Maya. And we will put a link to both the website

and to your book on this week's show notes. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so we want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank all our patrons, but we want to thank our newest patrons, Belzebub's favorite heathen, Dylan,

Sean, Patrick, Brandy, Mark, Samantha, Max, Dabin Llama, Jasmine, Alex, Jonathan, Inglourious Baxter, Jason, Catherine, Emerson, CC, David, Justin, Thee?

I don't know that Thee is. It's probably Thee something else. I'm sorry. And Adrian, thank you so much for your generous donations. We are going to send mugs to a couple people because we said we send mugs to one out of five patrons. They are Citation Needed mugs. So you have to, when you get the Citation Needed mug, download one episode of Citation Needed and listen to it. But for Dylan, Samantha, Jonathan, CC, and Adrian,

contact ian at dissonancepod.com. Send him an email. Say, I was mentioned in the show. I'm going to read your names again. Dylan, Samantha, Jonathan, CC, and Adrian. Send him a message. Say, hey, I'm looking for my free mug. He will then send your address to Tom and Tom will then send you a mug. So I'm not going to say that the mug will be clean. Tom may have done something with it. I'm not going to say. These mugs are delivered with love. They're delivered with, so

definitely wash it, is what I'm saying. So, but Tom's going to send you a mug. So tell Ian your address and he will ship it out to you. We want to thank everybody for being a patron. We really genuinely do appreciate it. And we are going to be picking, I think next week, because we have slowed down significantly. Next week is probably when we're going to call it. We will send you a private message. You will get a ticket through Eventbrite.

If you said plus one, you'll get two tickets. If you said just you, you'll get a single ticket and you will get a message from us in that email that you sent to us. So the email that you entered will be the one that gets it. You will need to RSVP and there will be things on there that says you need to RSVP in a week because we need to make sure we fill this thing. So if you don't RSVP, we will revoke your ticket. So you better say yes or no, because we need to know who's coming and we got to make sure we fill the place. Can we send them golden tickets somehow? I don't know. Maybe we could just make it. Here's what you

do, guys. Change all of your printer ink to gold. There you go. Cecil nailed it. But that's what we're going to do. We're going to send out those tickets very soon and let people know there's going to be 30 people. Right now, it looks like you're about one in six chance of getting in.

So pretty good. Not a bad chance. Yeah. But that is for the pizza party that's happening on December 7th. Remember that if you are a patron, you can still sign up for it until, like we say,

next week when we start picking winners. And that's going to be next week. So we got a message from Brian and Brian said that he is happy that we're planning on doing a 2020 election day. He said back in 2016, he just moved to Los Angeles and he wound up spending the day at Disneyland and he wore his I voted sticker proudly. And then he was trying to ignore everything else in the real world. He said,

great night, but around 9 PM, I made the mistake and looked at the vote counts. It wasn't called yet, but there were several key states that Clinton needed and lost. And the rest of the night I was sad in the happiest place on earth. I love it. So Tom, Anthony has a correction for us about carrying a gun off duty. Yeah, so a couple of people sent us this email and I know I brought this up, so I want to eat the shit on this one.

So, you know, one of the things I didn't realize and take into account is that law enforcement, they are law enforcement on or off duty. So they have a duties, similar, I was reading about this, similar like a doctor, right? A doctor has a duty to their license. So if they're walking by and somebody gets in a car wreck, they have to stop and administer aid. And law enforcement also has responsibility as a result of their job. Sure. So I get that. So I take back my comment that you don't have to carry a gun off duty. Clearly, the responsibilities as they're written for law enforcement would require that law enforcement carry when they're off duty. So that's my mistake.

So, but what's the requirement of shooting someone in their living room eating ice cream? Is that- 100% if you're confused. Is that something that police officers have to sign up for too, or? That or if somebody's playing video games

at night with their eight-year-old nephew. Oh, okay. That's a good one too. Then you shoot them in their living room. That's a good one too. Okay. Yeah. Oh, this is one where I mentioned,

uh, this is a, this is one from, uh, Eva. Eva sends in a message and wanted to let us know that, um, that the prosecutor's job is not to, um, get justice for the victim. Uh, that's not something that they, that they do. They're working for the state. They're not working for the victim. And, uh, and I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that. And that's true. You're right. And I also think that that might also be a bad way to think about it in general. It's just like that you're working. Like, I feel like the victim is just sort of out of the equation and they should be.

And that's how our system is supposed to work. Although we seem to, like, if you ever watch like that Making a Murderer where they just keep going back to like that victim's brother and just being like, you know, they keep asking him questions and all that. So the victim's not really out of it, but they are kind of out of it. You know, it's hard because the prosecution will frequently leverage the emotionality around the victimhood of the parties that are agreed. Exactly.

And so it's hard to be like, oh, well, the victim isn't who you're working for. Well, you're sure leveraging the tears. Sometimes they are absolutely leveraging it. Yeah. I got a message from D, and D said that there is, I guess, a thing that they did, some sort of test where they take mammals

of two different ages, and they suture them together, like fucking some crazy doctor fucking goring or whatever style. I don't know if that's a Nazi doctor or not, but like some crazy fucking thing where they suture them together. And then both the test subjects grow together sort of, and then they have like their blood sort of works its way into each of each's bodies and one becomes a little younger and one starts

to get the traits of the older one. So you get like bad knees and shit. There's been a weird hardening in my political years. And arteries. But I guess there is something to be said about certain types of blood,

but it's not just like getting a transfusion doesn't do it. It's also not drinking it. Yeah, it's not drinking it. It's not getting a transfusion. It's like,

like she would have to, like Hillary Clinton would have to have like a young person attached to her back. You would have to graft a baby to you like a fucking hump.

You just have like two, your biceps are two and you're walking around with two babies' biceps. two, and you're walking around with two babies' biceps. Damn, have you seen these babies? So we want to mention that the American Atheists have a U.S. secular survey. We're going to put a link to it on this week's show notes. It's really good data for you to fill in.

So if you have time and you want to take this survey, American Atheist is looking for people to take this survey. We talked to Jeff Blackwell this week. He's the lawyer for American Atheist, their counsel. He's a great guy and he wants to make sure that we have the very best data that we have. Now, it's not going to be a scientific poll or anything like that, but it will gather a ton of data for them, data that they can use to become a better organization. So please, if you have time, please take a moment to fill out this survey. It'll be on this week's show notes.

We got a message from the couple next door and they mentioned we should maybe do a deep dive into the national debt. That's an interesting idea to do, but we would definitely need somebody who would have some sort of real expertise. So if anybody has any ideas on who might have some real expertise into the national debt, send the message to us at dissonance.podcast

at gmail.com. Maybe we can get an interesting guest on to talk about it. I think it would be a great interview. Yeah. Yeah. So Holly Dazzle sends a message and says, as a burlesque performer, I am both surprised and delighted to hear how much both Tom and Cecil know about the mechanics of tassel twirling. Anything we should know about how y'all gain such insider knowledge. Well, I will tell you this with my moves, I can move them and shake them. So I don't have to lift my arms to take my shirt off.

So I will say that Holly, I have, I have trained my moves to take my shirt off for me. Holly, I don't know how you think I paid my way through college, but. It's with tassels, baby. We got a message from Kimberly and Kimberly sent in a message

about protesting on their campus at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. There's a hate preacher that comes there every week and they were able to take signs out. Only a couple of them. There was only a couple of them in this image anyway that went out there and stood in the face of this hate preacher that comes there every week and they were able to take signs out. Only a couple of them. There was only a couple of them in this image anyway that went out there and stood in the face of this hate preacher and said that

we had helped her to be able to stand up to this person. And anything we did was only in the background. You were the one standing up to that person. So good for you. And that's awesome. Don't let anybody like spread their hate. So good for you. I that's awesome. Don't let anybody like spread their hate. So good for you. I wanted to stop before we end,

just to say thank you to all the people that we met at the Citation Needed live show in New York. I want to say specifically, there was a couple people that I didn't get a chance to speak to. One person caught us just as we were getting ready to go on. We were in a mad rush to try to get ready. And I don't know their name. They came up. It was a couple. The young lady had glasses on and she

had dark hair. It was pulled back. I don't remember what the gentleman looked like. Probably had a beard. That's how most of them look. Standard. But they both came up to us and they said they were so excited to meet us. And we didn't have an opportunity to really talk to them because we were in the middle of a whole bunch of stuff and I did not see them later. I just want to let you know, if you ever come to another live show or anything, I will take some time out of my day.

I really am regretful that I didn't get a chance to talk to you in person, but I did get a chance to talk to a ton of other people. Several people were just sort of fleeting. They said hello. They shook my hand. Several people came up and said, I know you got a lot of other stuff to do. There was a guy that I talked to about swords for a while, which

was awesome. There's another fella who told us awesome stories about his time as an ambulance driver. There was another fella who told me all about his time in the military. There was a woman who said she was 50 who lied completely and was 50, who lied completely and it was actually 30. Her name was Bernice. She told me that she wound up leaving religion because of some of the things that she heard through our show, that how we could laugh at religion

and it taught her to laugh at religion. She was able to leave it. We had so many meaningful conversations. I just want to say thank you to everybody we spoke to. I might not remember all your names, but I definitely remember all of you. It's always such a crazy thing to come out to one of these events and run into folks that are just like, you don't understand, like, we're as excited to meet you guys as you are to meet us. Exactly. This hobby has changed my life. Yeah. It has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. And so you guys seem like it's like this,

oh, we're so excited. I'm as excited to meet you guys. Yeah, yeah. None of this would happen if we didn't have people who were interested in the things that we had to say, who were happy to come out and meet us somewhere, who were able to become patrons, who were able to come out and see a show live

or go to an event that we were at. So the amount of shit that I owe to the fans of this show is innumerable. And it's such a pleasure and a privilege to meet all of you. Yeah. We want to thank Maya Van Rossum for joining us today. Maya wrote the book, The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment. We are going to put a link on this week's show notes to all the stuff that she talked about. She was a wonderful guest, super knowledgeable, and we hope to have her on the show again. That's going to wrap it up for this week though. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit.

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

Doubt even this. the opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only all opinions are solely that of glory hole studios llc cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy completenesseness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local Dairy Council and viewers like you.