Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 506: Flaccid Off

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Stories from the Week   GLORYHAMMER - Hootsforce (Official Video) | Napalm Records   Habeas Humor  

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, 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 506, I think. 506. 506.

I knew that as much as you did. 506. Cecil. And I will say we are recording this as we always do Thursday evening.

And, you know, it's encouraging that we have not assassinated any Iranian generals since last Thursday. Well, look, we still have two hours before we go live.

That's true. Who knows? Hey, the world's a crazy madcap place, buddy. It could be, we still have two hours before we go live. That's true. Who knows? Hey, the world's a crazy madcap place, buddy. It could be that we assassinate someone else soon. Well, I hope that we do because I want to watch it all burn, like Australia, which doesn't matter. What is it, a billion animals? Did you see that?

It was like a billion animals have died. What a barbecue. Oh, my gosh. What a- They just kept throwing them on the barbie. Yeah. They just- Toss another roux on the barbie.

Or however they sound. That's not how they sound. They threw their- Yeah, I knew it was like Irish. Why did I do that? They threw a whole country on the barbie. Yeah, no shit. Jesus Christ.

God damn. That fucking place- Yeah, man. Is like at a point of existential crisis right now. I read an article about like, maybe we should think about whether Australia needs to exist for people. Like, just like maybe,

maybe this is just becoming uninhabitable. Holy shit. Yeah. And that's not like, it's not going to, I don't think everybody in Australia is going to like go. Somewhere else.

Where would they go? Yeah. Like, because that's how countries work. Yeah. It's not like, as we've proven, it's not like if it's unsafe for you to live at home you can just go somewhere else yeah i mean like let's say it's unsafe for you to live in like guatemala for example for example right you certainly couldn't come here and do that although wait a minute does australia count as a shithole country oh i mean because i'm just saying like it might it no

it started off that way it did and I think we've been to Australia and it's actually one of my favorite places that I've ever been it's a beautiful place it is jaw-droppingly wonderful

maybe not so much anymore but it was when I saw it it was really beautiful it had a good run it had a yeah best prison I've ever been to prison I'm just saying

Australia best prison I've ever been to really nice scenery there you could go see the reefs that are bleached now but you know you could go see the the reef bones yeah that's nice reef bones are pretty cool it's essentially just all just disintegrating all within a couple years i want to ask you so you you swam the reef yeah and i swam the reef but we did it on different days i think we probably went to maybe different parts of the reef. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So was it like Jacques Cousteau, bright and lively and wonderful where you were?

Because it sure wasn't where I was. I know that they color correct when they do those things on— they color correct for you when they show those nature documentaries. They color correct a little, so they make it look a little more vibrant. But from what I heard, they were saying that a lot of it has been bleached out. And when we went, there was a big storm. I don't know what they call those down there.

Tsunamis, what do they call them? Tsunami, is that right? No, tsunami is like when a giant wave hits the land. No, you're right. Cyclone? A typhoon. Typhoon, that's it. Well, they had a typhoon, I guess, recently,

or a typhoon-like storm or something. And that, like, chased away, like, some of the stuff that was supposed to be there. I didn't see. Okay, I was only a week different. Yeah. So maybe that's why it's... So there was, like, sharks or some kind of fucking animal.

I don't know, some animal. It's one of those fucking animals down there. A fish thing. That can like switch genders. Oh. And like it was the girl. Well, it was a she. Okay.

And then it went to a they and now I think it's a he. Ah. So it did a little. It did a little switcheroo. It bounced around. Man. Yeah. And it didn't even have to like

get made fun of on Twitter to do it. Well, did we ask what Jordan Peterson thought of the situation? Like, maybe Jordan Peterson is still going to call that fish. Jordan Peterson will be like, a lobster is better.

A lobster is better than a fish. American hospitals overcharge patients massively. Hold up. Wildly inflated healthcare costs? This sounds like the work of politicians to me. What did you do? I'm not a politician.

I'm just a boring white guy. Why does this keep happening? All right, so let's talk about this story. This is actually, I've spent a little bit of time thinking about this one. It's from The Guardian. The Americans dying because they can't afford medical care. A couple of things before we start. One of the things that's kind of interesting about this,

if you go to our website and you find this article, I love it because it's The Guardian, right? So it's a UK paper. And when they talk about things, they have to describe how our system works. One of the things when you read this is like, they come up to the point where they talk about a deductible and they have to tell people in the rest of the world what a fucking deductible is.

Because in all the rest of the world, the idea of a deductible is so bizarre and like it requires definition. It is not a self-explanatory thing. It's so much a part of our life. Because everywhere else, it's like trying to explain somebody who's never seen traffic, a traffic light. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So for our listeners who are not American listeners, and we have a fair number, the American insurance paying system. So there's three different ways, generally speaking, to pay for health care in the U.S.

You can either pay cash. That's what some people do. There's about 40 million uninsured Americans still, even after the ACA. Population of America is about 370 million or something. So it's about 10%, a little over, of Americans are uninsured, which means if something happens to you, you pay cash. It's about 10%, a little over, of Americans are uninsured, which means if something happens to you, you pay cash. Option two is you may have access to some government system, right? That would be like Medicare.

Medicare is available if you're, typically it's available if you reach a certain age, if you're on disability for some reason. And then there's government programs which also cover children, but they don't cover all children. And then there's government programs which also cover children, but they don't cover all children. They cover only children for parents who don't have insurance and also do not have the means to purchase insurance. You have to meet a certain poverty threshold, in which case your children can be covered by generally a state-run program. I think in Illinois, it's called All Kids. Yeah.

Is what it's called in Illinois. You can't just go up to someone and be like, please, sir, may I have some more? They have to decide whether or not you need some more. Yeah, yeah. I can't enroll my kids in all kids, which is Illinois' version of that program. And that's a state system, not a federal system,

which means not all states have it. And it's run by Fagan. So it's a Fagan system. It's just all like stolen pocket watches are paid for everything. That's how they pay for everything. Like stolen like, I stole this pocket watch.

Why do I sound like that? I don't know. You're Australian. Oh, Jesus, Matty and Joel, I've thrown another shrimp on the bottom of me. What the fuck?

What is happening? All right. So, and the other way is insurance, but insurance works like this because I don't, I'm not sure like foreign listeners, like you buy insurance.

Typically you're, you can buy it yourself or your employer will provide a plan that you can choose whether or not to buy. Sure. And then your employer pays either some portion or all of the insurance, usually. Or they give you access to the insurance, one of the three. Then the insurance, so you pay some premium, some insurance premium, like you pay another insurance premium. But that insurance doesn't cover all of your medical care.

What then happens is the insurance typically pays, only starts paying for your medical care once you've paid your deductible, if your insurance plan happens to have a deductible. They don't all have deductibles. And then you pay the deductible, and then your insurance pays some percentage, and then you pay some percentage. Like my plan is a fairly typical plan is I have a $5,000 deductible, at which point once I pay the first five grand, then my insurance pays 80% of my bills. I pay 20%, up to $12,000 out of my pocket for my family.

So I paid 12 grand last year out of my pocket. So I wrote a check. I wrote a series of checks that totaled up to 12 grand. And then after that, everything's covered at 100%, as long as it's in your network, right? If you go outside your network, now foreign listeners are banging their heads against a fucking steel rod in an attempt to kill themselves. If you go out of network, you have a different and separate non-interacting deductible and a different and separate non-interacting out-of-pocket maximum. And those all reset at the end of every calendar year. hurt December 22nd and your medical care and you pay $4,998 by December 31st, January 1st, you have not paid any of your deductible because it's calendar year based. It's not, and that's,

that's, it's how insurance works. I know, but like, Jesus, could you imagine? Yeah. Like I can't imagine because Finn, my oldest, which you remember, like there was a lot of medical shit I paid for. He was born December 21st. So all the money I paid the year that he was born didn't count. Like nine days later, 10 days later. Oh my God. 10 days, 10 arbitrary random days later, all of it. Gone. Resets. And now you're back to paying your full deductible, your full out of pocket maximum. Oh God. All of it resets. And now you're back to paying your full deductible, your full out-of-pocket maximum. All of that resets.

God, it's so depressing. So I'm just setting the table for people who might not really grasp all that because they might not be a part of a horrible non-system. I want to add one thing. I know a lot of people that maybe are listening are thinking, okay, yeah, but you know,

the healthcare that you do have is good, right? That's not true. That's just not, it's just, and it's objectively not true. We have the worst health outcomes in the world. We pay more than anyone else in the world. And a fucking perfectly anecdotal example, and this is an anecdotal example

that has happened to me many, many, many, many times. And I'm sure this is shared by many people. I won't say it's ubiquitous, but I will say this has happened to me many times. I want to go for a checkup. I'm reaching middle age. I want to make sure I get a blood test to check for pancreatic cancer so I can get jumping on those Steve Jobs remedies right away. Yeah, rub a sauerkraut on it or whatever you got to do. I want to jump on it faster than he did at least,

you know, because then maybe I get, you know, if I go to goop and get the right rock ahead of time, then I won't. Where do you got to put that for the pancreatic cancer? I'll tell you what. Man. Yeah. I'm not getting colon cancer.

That's all I'm saying. I am definitely not getting colon or prostate cancer. I basically want to go and get this done. I want to go and have this procedure done, which is really just a blood test. And then like they poke you with something and they listen to your heart and they're like, yeah, you're not going to die this week.

And so that's what I'm hoping to do. No actual guarantee about your death. Yeah, no, I mean like, look, they make me sign a thing. Right, yeah. You know, they're like, look, none of the things, I'm not actually allowed to tell you anything that makes you encouraged about your life being a long life. Here's what I'll say on the record.

You're not dead right now as I say this. Yet. Yet. Actually, let me say it while I'm holding your arm, just to test your pulse. Why is the doctor talking micromachines fast? That's not, that's disconcerting. So that's all I want to get done.

That's it. Right. Call my doctor. Hey, I'd like to set up an appointment. Sure. When would you like to come in? I love that they open it up with, when would you like to come in? And I always answer when. I'm free this afternoon. I always say, you're first available. Because I know for sure if I'm like,

how's tomorrow? They're going to be like, ah! So I say, when would you like to come in, so I say, when, when would you, they say, when would you like to come in? I said, I don't know. When's your first available?

And she's like, here's what the sound that it made. I got a March 22nd. Yeah. Right. And I'm just like, yeah, I,

I, you got a what now? you got a March 22nd and I was like do you have any she's like at the South Loop location that's where I live is South Loop and she's like at the South Loop location I said is there any other University of Chicago hospital that I could go to

major giant system I mean it's like a huge fucking system it's like oh lord and then the hospital and the fucking in Hyde Park is like this size of Hyde Park. It's like all the Hyde Park with a lawn, right? It's unbelievable. I asked him

the earliest they could get me in was like February 19th at another location. So I had to call University Illinois at Chicago and I was able to get in like next week. But I had to call University of University of Illinois in Chicago and I was able to get in like next week but I had to call a different hospital

and the only reason I can do that is because I have a PPO if I didn't have that PPO oh yeah I'm just like okay March it is I guess

right yeah I had I made last year I hurt myself and I made the decision that like

okay I'm going to get this fixed I made that decision while I was in London on vacation in October. The day I got home from London, I don't procrastinate a lot with this stuff. So the day I got home from London, I started making phone calls and I got surgery on March the 6th. It took five months. People who oppose single payer systems, that's what they cite right they're like

oh yeah you know like you're gonna have to wait in line somebody needs knee surgery they're gonna have to wait six months I literally waited five months yeah to get my back fixed

and it wasn't just yeah like like yeah the thing is is like I just want them to be like I took your blood and you don't have pancreatic cancer

right that's what I want right it's 15 seconds yeah I could they could in Chicago they're gonna do it with a gun anyway and you don't have pancreatic cancer. Right. That's what I want. Right. It's 15 seconds. Yeah. I could, they could,

in Chicago, they're going to do it with a gun anyway. Like, I mean, it takes seconds. That's how we do a blood draw. Exactly. It takes literal seconds.

They take one of those pipette things, they shoot you, and then they just hold it in front of you and be like, and then they stick it in a test tube. In LA, you have a choice

between a Crips or blood draw. Like, those are your two, those are your two options. So stupid. With the pipettes, they just spell thug life. No, but like,

it's stupid. And then on the idea that we have, that we somehow have the best medical care in the world is ludicrous. And this article points out so many people, because you talked about the deductible system, talks about so many people that because you talked about the deductible system, talks about so many people

that literally forego any medical care because they can't get it. They can't get it because they just don't have the money to do it. Insured people. Insured people. Working people. Well, the first one isn't insured

because Walmart, she took an extra day off. One extra day off with pneumonia. You know, oh, big baby got to One extra day off with pneumonia. Pneumonia. You know, oh, big baby got to take a day off for pneumonia. Oh, is there fluid in your lungs, you fucking pussy? Why don't you greet somebody at the door? Rub some dirt on it and get to work. No, but seriously, this woman had pneumonia.

And they're like, oh, well, you took one extra day off. We're going to fire you. Yep. And then we're going to, you basically have one year of insurance and that's it. Well, but even that, I don't mean to interrupt you, but even that year of insurance is not paid for. No, it's through a system called COBRA. Here's the insanity of COBRA. What COBRA means is that you can pay for your insurance, your fucking self. So like my insurance, my employer pays a percentage and I pay the rest.

If I were to get fired or quit tomorrow, I would have access to COBRA. All COBRA means is I could continue my existing insurance coverage, but I got to pay all of it. Right. Which you got to pay it all. Which is mind numbingly expensive.

Those premiums are mind numbingly expensive. In order to afford that, you have to have the baroness in Destro to fund it. Right. You know what I mean In order to afford that, you have to have the Baroness and Destro to fund it. You know what I mean? Although, to be honest, I would take Cobra if I could get one of those sweet metal masks.

Or just even, I mean, Cobra Commander definitely had the best mask. The mirror finish with the blue outfit. I don't know, just the blue outfit with the giant red Cobra insignia, that's kind of baller. I think also the best part

is the hold music because it's like cobra. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. What do you call them? They got Trans-Siberian Orchestra to do that for them. It really turned out good, I think. I think it turned out good.

You know, you show up and they're doing like tests with lasers and they always miss. They always miss. They always, everyone. Their LASIK is terrible. It's literally the worst. You go in for six, seven,

seven tries to get the LASIK and they just miss your eye every single time. The tech, he's got it done like six times. It's like, Jesus, will you stop shining that on my face? Or they just bounce off that sweet face mask. The orderliest sergeant slaughter. But anyway, let's talk a little bit. I did too. I watched so much G.I. Joe when I was a kid. Oh my God. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit. I fucking love G.I. Joe. I did too.

I watched so much G.I. Joe when I was a kid. Oh my God. So let's talk though about this story in particular, Tom, because you sort of had a bit of an epiphany about our healthcare system. I did. And as I was thinking and reading through this story, I thought there's no way

that the things I'm going to describe are true. So I looked them up on a couple of law blogs. And then I thought, maybe I'm still wrong. Yeah. Because it seems so crazy what I'm about to say. So then I called Sharon at the Habeas Humor podcast, who's an attorney. And I said, Sharon, I'm going to say some things. And I want you to tell me when any of the things I say are inaccurate. Friend of the show, Sharon. Great friend of the show.

Check her show out, habeas humor. Anyway, wonderful show. And then she did some research for me and sent me some research. So here are some things that are entirely true. So,

you have no legal right at all. And I didn't really realize this to healthcare. Even if you can pay for it. Even if you have insurance.

You have no right to it. The law provides in America, the law provides only that a hospital give you emergency care. So there's a name for this law, and I'll bring it up for you, and I'll tell you what it is. So there's a law that is supposed to provide some protections, but the protections are so thin and so slim, the law requires that a hospital must treat you only in the case of an emergency. They're only required to treat you up to the point where you are stabilized, or if you are a pregnant woman imminently giving birth. Those are all of the legal protections that we have.

So what does that mean? So that means that let's say I break my arm. And this is just the United States. We just want to say this to internationalists. If I break my arm, I can go to the emergency room and the emergency room doctor has to stabilize that break. So if the break is such that like, you know, it's the bones are going to hit an artery because they're just all sharp and angry, right? They got to put it back in place. Sure. They don't have to perform surgery

to make my arm useful again at all. There's no legal requirement that they do that. If I can't pay for it, they can tell me to go fuck off. So you can just have me a nubule. I can have an arm that's effectively useless because that's not an emergency. I see. I'm stable. My life isn't in danger. All the law requires is that they stabilize me so that my life isn't in danger. That's it. That's all

that they require. If I have no right to, let's say I have a doctor's bill. So I had that back surgery. I had it in March, right? So I paid thousands and thousands of dollars to get to my out of pocket and et cetera. I paid all that stuff, but let's say I couldn't pay it because so many people can't do that, right? It's just cripplingly expensive. Let's be real honest. You could barely pay it. It was a lot of money. Oh my God. It was a lot of money. Yeah. This isn't like,

it's not like, no, I didn't just like reach into my back pocket. Of course not. No. In my life, I've almost gone bankrupt from medical issues twice. I've mortgaged homes.

Yeah. Like, this is not like, just like, no, oh, I just happened to write a check. I want people to understand that.

It's not like, yeah, no, I just, I was able to pay that out of nothing. Like I, we've both run into problems financially where you're just like, holy shit. God, that could really be bad.

And we just happen to be lucky enough to be able to get out of it. Like, you can leverage family. Right, exactly. There's a lot of ways to do it. Whatever you got to do. But it's not just fucking write a check because it's too much goddamn money.

No, I didn't have $12,000 laying around. No. So, but like, let's say you get into trouble and you can't pay the hospital and you owe the hospital a bunch of money. Well, they know you owe them a bunch of money, and they'll collect on that money, or they'll send you to collections, or ruin your credit, etc., etc. But beyond that, they're perfectly within their rights if two months later, six months later, five years later, you go to that hospital and you say, I got cancer. I need treatment. That hospital can say, no, thank you. They can turn you away. There is no requirement that hospital and you say, I got cancer. I need treatment. That hospital can say, no, thank you.

They can turn you away. There is no requirement that they treat you. The only things that a doctor can, like other than the emergency or an imminently delivering pregnant woman, which means also, by the way, that pregnant women don't have a right to prenatal care. They have no right to prenatal care whatsoever. So what prevents this? The only thing that, the only time you do have some rights and some access to the healthcare,

there's no system. That's part of the problem, right? There is no healthcare system. That's a bad term. A system is like a school system, right? So like in my neighborhood, there's a school system and it's funded by my tax dollars and it's set up in districts and it's federally regulated, it's state run. And then, you know, it comes down into the community. And if I show up and I say, I want to send my kid to this school and I live in this district, they can't deny me. And if they do, I have some recourse because there's a system. There is no healthcare system to reach out to. There's just a bunch of private practitioners and private company hospitals and hospitals run by charities

or hospitals run by religious organizations. There is no system that you can appeal to. So the only time that you have any leverage is if you have, ironically enough for the people that deny this shit, is if you happen to be on Medicare. Because once you're on Medicare, there are requirements that hospitals have to work with Medicare patients. You have to. You have protections then because you have a whole giant thing behind you. Because you have the might of the contractual obligations between the hospital and Medicare. Does it, does it, would your insurance company go to bat for you or whatever?

Or can they just refuse that insurance company? No, the insurance company. So like, here's the other crazy thing. Like, let's say you have Aetna. I have Aetna insurance, right? So I have Aetna insurance. And on Tuesday, I have Aetna insurance. And the hospital takes, or the doctor, whatever,

they take Aetna insurance on Tuesday. But they don't like the new contract that Aetna has, and they decide we don't take Aetna insurance on Wednesday. Okay, fuck me. That's it. Middle of my treatment protocol. It's entirely possible. In the middle of a treatment protocol. Like I said, use cancer as an example because it's not an emergency.

How we die and the medical issues that impact us most often and most likely are not emergencies. Like emergencies are like kind of the rare thing, right? An emergency is like, holy fuck, I broke my arm. I got in a car accident. But we're going to die of like cancer or a heart attack or a stroke.

Like those things have impacts after the initial event, which nobody has a right. You have no legal right of access. So at any time, any doctor or any hospital can just say, no, thanks. Here's a situation. I ran past Sharon and I can't find anything that suggests that this isn't true. Let's say you live in garbage town, Wyoming. Remember when a situation I ran past Sharon, and I can't find anything that suggests that this isn't true. Let's say you live in Garbage Town, Wyoming. Remember when we were talking to those guys in Wyoming? Sure, they live in Garbage Town, Wyoming. Waiting for Rath podcast. Hi, guys.

Great guys. Yeah. And they could be 100 miles from the nearest AIDS doctor. Well, you could be 100 miles from the nearest oncologist, right? Right. So let's say I've got fucking pancreatic cancer. Well, let's pick one you could survive. Let's say I've got, like, skin cancer. You're not surviving pancreatic cancer. Let's say i've got fucking pancreatic cancer let's pick one you could survive let's say i've got like skin cancer you're not surviving pancreatic cancer let's say

i got skin cancer and i and i i it could be treated but there's only one oncologist and he's 100 miles away and i just banged his wife last week and he knows it or he doesn't like me because i beat him in poker i don't have any right to force him to treat me, which means I could die. I could just die of an entirely, what if I have diabetes? And the only guy who's the diabetes guy, I don't know what that is termed.

Like, what if that guy just doesn't like me? One of the most common reasons I was reading on some of these law blogs, one of the most common reasons to be denied care is if you're a malpractice attorney. That's an entirely legitimate, like they could just be like, I don't want to get sued,

so I'm just not going to treat you at all. Yeah. And there's nothing you can do. That'd be like not letting any food critics into your restaurant. Right. And like you were driving me earlier, like the only protection

we have is when we are part of a federal system yeah that's it so like when these people like talk about how

oh we gotta keep our private insurance everybody likes their private insurance like the only time you have any right to healthcare is when you are part of a federal system

and the only reason you have a right to it is because medicare has contracted with these hospitals yeah that they will provide care to medicare of a federal system. And the only reason you have a right to it is because Medicare has contracted with these hospitals that they will provide care to Medicare patients.

And that doesn't change the same way it would with Aetna or Humana. And like, these companies offer dozens and hundreds of different types of plans just because a hospital

or a doctor takes your type of plan or your company doesn't mean they take your type of plan either. It's all capricious and it's all arbitrary and everything is balancing on a knife's edge of people just deciding whether or not they want to treat you. And people like this article in the Guardian, like it outlines like three or four people who died. Yeah. It said like 45,000 people a year. That's more than gun deaths. It's fucking crazy.

That's more than gun deaths. And look at how up in arms we get about gun deaths. Right. Gun deaths, gun deaths, gun deaths. More people died because of lack of care. It's unreal. Because of this. There's parts of this where we're talking about GoFundMes.

We get plenty of people who talk about GoFundMes. But recently on my feed, my Facebook feed, there's a guy, I belong to a group, a medieval group called the SCA. And there's a guy that I just happen to be friends with from the West Kingdom, which is the California. He's got cancer in his legs. And he can't afford the copay, the $8,000 copay. And his GoFundMe has been static for months because there's not enough people in his system that have enough money to be like, yes, we'll help you. I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll help you. There's just not enough people. They keep on sending out. He's like, guys, I really need this surgery. I will lose my legs if I don't get this surgery. But they just doesn't have anything.

There's another person in this. And he might not be able to get care. He might not be able to get care. He might die of fucking cancer because not enough people wanted to charitably give to him. Absolutely. And then there's a person in here who had cancer, an aggressive form of cancer in their face.

They go to the doctor, get the stuff taken care of, and it gets in remission. But they have to keep on getting these tests every year because if they don't get these tests every year, they don't know that the cancer didn't come back. And it's an aggressive form of cancer. It will fucking kill you. It will kill you fast. They can't afford these things. So she hasn't gone in four years to get this preventative thing because she can't afford to go to get the

preventative thing because it's too much money and her insurance doesn't cover enough of the thing for her to actually pay for it. You know, I had a cat, my cat passed away in November and I had a cat that was diagnosed with kidney disease, but also had a lot of other problems, right? So there's a bunch of problems, young cat, but had a bunch of other problems. And there was, the doctor kept coming into the room and this is just a cat, right? This is just a cat. And there's like thousands of dollars worth of tests they want to do on this cat. And I will shift shit around

and go into debt to make sure that this cat stays alive because I love this cat, right? But God, could you imagine someone else, right? They're just, they're not going to be able to do that. Right. I'm talking about a cat, Tom. I know.

I'm not talking about a human fucking being. I'm not talking about mom. I'm not talking about fucking sister. I'm not talking about my little kid. I'm talking about a goddamn cat. Yeah. People can't move shit around to save their mom. Yeah.

And they can't, they literally can't because they just don't have the money. People, they're talking to hear this guy's's $40,000 going medical bankruptcy because he has $40,000 in debt. You know, and like that is actually in some ways a best case scenario. Because what it means is that he got the treatment and then couldn't pay for it. But there's no guarantee. It's not like you can say to the doctor, well, just treat me and bill me later.

Sometimes they'll do it. Sometimes they won't do that. And if they don't do that, that means that like your friend, like you don't get the treatment then. Like there's an idea, I think, that's really pervasive that what you can do is go to the doctor

and they'll treat you and they'll send you a bill. And if you don't have the money, you don't pay it. But that's not necessarily the case. That's actually a best case scenario is to go bankrupt because the worst case perfectly legal, absolutely happening in America right now scenario is I went to the doctor and I can't pay. So they didn't give me treatment. It's not like I got the treatment and got a bill and didn't pay it. Yeah. No, you just don't give me treatment. It's not like I got the treatment and got a bill and didn't pay it.

Yeah, no. You just don't get the treatment. You just don't get it. So you fucking die. Yeah. And when I realized that, and like, you know, one of the things we have here in the States that I think like tells you so much is you drive around. I'm sure you've seen these signs. I never once thought once about them, right?

You drive around, you see a sign by a doctor's office, now accepting new patients. And what that means is sometimes I don't accept patients. And what that means is the decision whether or not to accept a patient is a business decision that I get to make on my whims. And as soon as you realize that, you realize, oh, I don't have a right to this. I have no more right to go to that doctor and get care than I have a right to go into a restaurant and get a sandwich. If they don't have an availability to seat me, or if they just don't want to, as long as they're not doing it because of my race, color, religion, national origin, sex, they could kick you the fuck out.

It's crazy. And we're having a debate politically about whether or not we want to have a national healthcare system. The alternative is no system. Yeah, the alternative is more people dead than gun deaths a year because they can't get care. That's the system. That's the system that even the fucking,

like the centrist Democrats want you to keep. That's crazy. It's nuts. We spent $3.65 trillion in one year, and the result of that is that we are ranked 34th in the world. We're ranked low. 34th in the world on our health outcomes. Grandma, my teacher says if Grandpa was a girl, that's okay.

You can still be married. He should have created Anna and Eve. If my dad married a man who would be my mom. I'm confused. All right, something a little lighter. This is from LGBTQ Nation. America's most anti-gay pastor. How do you do that?

Thank you. How do you do that? You know, what is he? Is there like a, is there like a series of tests? Is it like Iron Chef? I mean, like,

like a bunch of guys parade past you in, whoever doesn't get hard the most. Like, is there like a flaccid off between, like, does, does this guy, does this guy,

and like Kevin Swanson, like, do they get out their dicks? Like one, two, three, four, I declare a flaccid war.icks? Like one, two, three, four. I declare a flaccid war. And like a bunch of

like fruity dudes. These guys sword fight. You know they do. You know they do. Oh, you know they do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So America's most anti-gay pastor. I wonder if he has a medal for that. Does he have like a big medal? Like it's like a big. Like a Flava

Flav dick. It's a big, hard cock with a line through it. The international no sign over a penis. Over a penis, yeah. Right? This is Steven Anderson. Steven Anderson.

America's most anti-gay pastor says, God set Australia on fire because that country banned him. I love this because he did get banned from Australia. He did get outbanned, yeah.

Australia's like, no. You can't even come here. No. We literally used to be a prison. Yeah. You can't come here. Like, no.

Sorry, you can't sit with us. Yeah, right. This lunch table's not available for you. Can you imagine if you're such a shithead, Rikers is like, mm-mm, not this island. Alcatraz just says, no you right there. You're like on the island. Alcatraz just says, no, you. You're like on the boat to Alcatraz and the vacancy sign turns off.

Like, it's like, oh man. You know what this reminded me of? What made me think of this was like, like, of course an evangelical thinks this because they have the most narcissistic view of the universe in the, of all the humans around because they think like God created all of it. And like on this tiny spec is where his, all his attention is. Right. Yeah. And you on this tiny spec is where all his

attention is. Like that's, that's how narcissistic they are. And then, and they also have like a genie God where they can just be like, you know, it's not a Jehovah God. That's different. It's a genie God. And I want, um, and I want these things for my birthday. I want a new bicycle and I want some LOL dolls. I want a, I want a big wheel and a green machine.

Yeah, exactly. Like that, they basically, they use God as a way to, to say, to wish for things and then to point out if anything ever bad ever happens, they can be like,

yeah, well, God did that for me. Right. You know. Anything bad happened. It's a limited timeline. So something bad is going to happen

to Australia eventually. Oh yeah, right. Yeah. Australia, like a place populated by 14 of the most dangerous poisonous things. Of the top 14 most poisonous things

in the world, they all live in one city block in Australia. Are you kidding me? Oh, something bad happened? Actually, I'm thinking let Stephen Anderson down there. Just put him in like a funnel web spider nest. All he has to do is go surfing. Yeah.

Like, it's just like, all right, it's box jellyfish season, stupid. It comes out just covered in them. Just like, and God protects you from that.

Watson. And I, I do want to point out too, um, that this fucking guy is so ridiculously awful. He's been banned from 33 countries, 33 countries, countries, by the way, like these are not like bastions of progressive thought and thinking. Right. So imagine how

shitty you have to be that a country's like, okay. Botswana, Jamaica, Ireland, South Africa, the UK, Canada. All right, fine. But like- Yeah, I can see Canada on that list. Jamaica is not like a progressive country by any stretch. We've covered stories here. Yeah. Jamaica is a rabidly anti-LGBTQ country.

33 countries. Well, let me put it this way. All energy in the universe is expressed in motion. All motion is expressed in waves. All waves are curved. So where does the straight lines come from to make the platonic solids? There are no straight lines. So when I took the flower of life and opened it properly, I found a whole new wave conjugations

that expose the in-between spaces. That's, it's the thing that holds us all together. Oh my God. You know, this fucking story. This is from BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed, a wonderful place to find news and long lists of things someone found on Reddit. Let me tell you.

Like, that's like what BuzzFeed does. I found something that I could get my wife this year for Christmas on one of their 25 clever gifts for someone for Christmas. I'll just let you know ahead of time. BuzzFeed is the Menards of news. You know what I mean? You go to Menards and it's like, it's kind of a hardware store

with bird feeders and dog food and a mattress. And like, you know, like for no reason, like one aisle of like frozen TV dinners. And you're like, by the ply, what is happening in this place? Nars is a weird place, genuinely. Buzzfeed is fucking insane. Like they can't decide if they're like a news site

or just like a random funny list site that they mostly pilfer from Amazon and Reddit. Yeah, yeah. Like that's all it's like, here's fucking Reddit user one set of funny thing. Let's make a list from this like comment section. Here's the shower thoughts. Right, yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And then sometimes they'll have like legitimate hard hitting news. There was a couple of things that they broke about this administration early on that were huge. Yeah. And this story is fucking crazy.

Disinformation for hire. How a new breed of PR firms is selling lies online. I actually want to read a couple of things direct from the article if you don't mind.

So, this guy pulls out his phone eager to show the future of, I'm not pronouncing his name, it's fucking Chinese, I'll get it wrong. Eager to show the future

of online manipulation, unseen servers began crawling the web for Chinese articles and posts. The system quickly reorganized the words and sentences into new text. His screen displayed a rapidly increasing tally of the articles generated by his product, which he dubs the Content Farm Automatic Collection

System. First of all, man, branding is everything. That name sucks. Yeah, it really does. With the articles in hand, a set of websites that paying controlled published them and his thousands of fake social media accounts, spread them across the internet, instantly sending manipulated content into news feeds, messaging app inboxes and search results. So there is an entire industry that is popping up. They call them black PR firms. And one of the things they offer to do,

and I'm paraphrasing, but only by a little bit. One of the offers is we will manipulate reality to meet your customer's requests and customer's desires. Our perception of the world as sold to us

is literally being manipulated for hire by firms that rewrite reality and then say it to the right people or enough people, often enough that our perception of what the world is and how it works is being changed by bad actors trying to manipulate us. And you can no longer say that any of the things I just said aren't true. They're true. They're documented. There are goddamn companies advertising

that they're doing it now. And one of the dangerous things about this is that we have an administration and literally an entire whole right side of the political spectrum that is trying to say that the people that we've been trusting to give us information

for years and years and years are lying to us. Right. And so you need to search out different forms of those, those different ways to collect information. And this is a perfect way

to insert this different form of, you know what I mean? Like it feeds right into it. You know, the people on the left are still like, no, the New York Times is a pretty good system to, to get fucking information. You know, BBC is still okay. But if you talk to any of those people on the right, they'll all say, oh, that's all fake news. That's all bullshit. Instead, I got my thing from this, this weird

Chinese website. That's going to tell me something completely made up. Yeah, well, alternative media is what they like. These guys love, like, there's this idea that if you move away from the mainstream media, the alternative is alternative media sources. And alternative media sources are typically social media related, right? Because we're headline driven now. We're not like grabbing a newspaper and reading a newspaper. People, the studies are clear on this. Like people read the headline. They don't even click on the fucking article. So you've got, you've got thousands and thousands of bad Facebook pages, thousands and thousands of bad Facebook groups and Twitter pay or Twitter, maybe not pages. I don't know what it is on Twitter, Twitter tweets, tweets. Thank you. Like, and Twitter accounts that are all bullshit.

And they're made, and it's not just Russia anymore. Like, no. Like, that was cute in 2016. But now in 2019, it's Russia and Ukraine and Georgia and, like, China. And they're flooding the information systems. They are controlling our information by repeating shit back to us. And, like, we're in a place where you have to be extremely fucking careful.

You can't tell anymore because of artificial intelligence. They write programs that rewrite the news for you, which is what I just described from the article. They rewrite the news. Nobody's even has to bother typing that story anymore. But there's also AI programs, which will go on and comment and share and interact. So like those people you're interacting with may not even be people. The people online,

they may not even be people. That AI is getting good enough that like it's not, and it's not just advertising anymore. Like it all, like again, in 2016, there was, you could kind of put your head in the sand and be like, oh, it's just advertising. Like, so what if they sell me a biscuit, you know? But it's not that anymore. And like, you go online and your friend may not even be a living person. And the people commenting in a story or on a group may not even be actual people. It is, there are artificial intelligence programs that populate these pages. You have to be fucking really excessively, grandly careful online now that what you see and who you interact with,

that any of that shit is real. I posit that it's easy because all you have to do is follow the sources that you know are 100% true. Don't fucking look at a meme that some dude churned out in China and take it for truth. Don't look at at a meme that some dude churned out in China and take it for truth. Don't look at something that someone else posted as a share that's not directly from the place where you know you can get good news.

That's what you need to do. You need to pay attention to where you can get good news and do that. If it's funny, it's funny, and that's different, right? I'm not saying like funny needs to be vetted, right? Funny is just funny, it's funny. And that's different, right? I'm not saying like, like funny needs to be vetted, right? Funny is just funny, right? Yeah, like there's fucking Epstein didn't kill himself memes that are funny, right? That's, it's just funny.

But it's like, if you're trying to vet information, you need to go to the places where you know for sure that that information is going to be vetted very, very carefully. You can't just rely on some guy's comment, some guy's share, some guy's image that he posted, a tweet that you saw. And the problem is that we are relying more and more and more on those things instead of paying attention and stopping. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, vetting your memes before you post them,

or at least vetting them when you see them, right? When you see somebody post something that says, that gives you an informational statistic, how true is it? There's plenty of sites out there that make a lot of money vetting these things. Snopes is a perfect example. I don't know how much money they make, but they get a lot of traffic, clearly get a lot of traffic vetting these things. And so they go out of their way to see, is this a real thing? Is this not a real thing? One of the things in this article is they said that they try to do, that they go out of their way to do

is make you angry. They go out of their way to upset you, to make you angry. So they want people to read their feed and be mad about stuff. And so they also want commenters to go in and comment and be mean and make you angry about things.

Because anger, emotions drives traffic and it drives how we respond to the world. Sure. Like, I would suggest this. Like, in terms of making sure that we interact with real people, because it's increasingly difficult to even know that the people, the groups, the pages, that we're even interacting with things that are real. Apply the dinner rule. If you haven't had dinner or don't have a reasonable expectation to be able to set up a dinner with somebody, don't assume that that's a real person. But just have no expectation at all that that's a real person. Because seeing a picture and reading a bunch of comments, like going online and like seeing your like good friend's baby, that's great. Like that's a great way to use like,

and going online and like connecting with your, you know, friend that is now living 3000 miles away and you miss them and you want to see something about their fucking cat or whatever. So that you know, some part of their life, That all makes sense. But like this idea that you can go online and like connect with the world, like you may not be connecting with people. Yeah. There's a reasonable likelihood and it grows every day

that the people, the groups, the pages, like all of that is built, custom built by firms trying to change how you see the world. Yeah. That's scary, man. You see, the storm is a sort of master conspiracy that connects every conspiracy you already know is true. The dossier, fake.

The Vegas shooting and inside job. The deep state connected to Big Pharma and the Illuminati. And say it with me, the Egyptian sun god Ra. So this story comes from Right Wing Watch. Oregon congressional candidate places electoral hopes on QAnon. This is a woman named Jo Rae Perkins. And she is banking her political career on her affiliation with the QAnon conspiracy. And here's what she says about her strategy.

And I think it's fucking amazing. It's a very highly calculated risk that I'm taking. Most people play it a lot safer than I do. It's either pure genius or pure insanity. I got this. It's one of those two. The voters are going to have to make that decision. So I grabbed this story because it's like,

if those are my only two options, lock this woman the fuck up. Like pure genius in no way is one of the options. You know what? Turns out, pure genius. She said, she says, I think there's probably a lot of us out there, but I happen to be bold enough to say,

hey, I'm following Q because I want to know. Because if Q team is real, I want to know about it. If the Q team is not real and fake, I want to know about it because we have to be willing to look at both sides of the issue. And I want to stop here and just say, just because you're looking at both sides of an issue doesn't mean you're looking at something critically, right?

That's not a necessity, right? Both sides of global warming. That's not a thing. Like, that's not... No? That's not a necessity, right? Both sides of global warming. That's not a thing. Like that's not like, that's like being like, well, there's two sides. Either there's a Borg or there isn't. You know?

Yeah. Either Santa Claus is real or it's not. Santa Claus, perfect example. I give equal credit to both sides of that argument. Both sides of an argument doesn't mean you're critically thinking. You know, what's the saying? It's like, I want to keep an open mind,

but not so much that my brain falls out. It's the same thing here. It's like, you know, they say crazy shit. The QAnon conspiracy says crazy shit. And for you to be like, well, they might be telling the truth. It's a 50-50 down the middle. Equal evidence on both sides.

Equal chance you're an insane person and to think that it doesn't cause harm is another thing that she says in here. She's like well what's the big deal and you're just like a guy brought a gun to a pizza place. Right. That's the big deal dummy. You didn't even pay attention to that when the guy was like hey where's the kids at

and he had a fucking Bayer 15 for Christ sakes which he shot in that pizza place but it's yeah I know like what the fuck man that's dangerous

like it's genuinely dangerous when you say shit like this because it makes people think like there's actually like demonic human beings out there that are trying to hurt other people

and they're like no I don't I'm gonna stand I'm proud to be an American and I'm gonna grab my fucking gun and I'm gonna go to a pizza place where they're just like we don't even'm gonna stand I'm proud to be an American and I'm gonna grab my fucking gun and I'm gonna go to a pizza place where they're just like

we don't even have a basement I know well in the basement maybe there's kids there's not even there's stairs here Jesus Christ I know

this is this lady though yeah and she's running for office like we're at this like insane place in history and like I know we've talked about it before

but it's like where you see the world and you look around, you're like, no. Yeah. Someone is running for office on a Q platform. Yeah, on a Q platform. On a platform where somebody's like, well, I read it on the, I anonymously read it on the internet. And that's why I think maybe it's true.

We've abandoned the idea, Cecil, entirely abandoned the idea that there are some things which are just fucking stupid on their face. We've abandoned the idea that the way we settle on whether something's true is we follow the evidence and the bulk of the evidence inexorably leads us somewhere.

We have abandoned the idea that absurd thoughts are not worth considering. Like, and you know what started this? And I'm going to be old for a minute. You know what started this? Fox News and their fair and balanced bullshit. You remember when they would like, they would put out this idea that like, well, we want to be fair and balanced. And it's to your point about like, well, we got to look fair and balanced. And it's to your point about like, well, we got to look at both sides. We got to look at both sides because before that,

stupid fucking ideas, bullshit conspiracies, that shit was ridiculed because we had this understanding that like, we don't know anything. We weren't democratizing all decision-making. And in the process of democratizing decision-making, shitting on the idea of expertise, because that's one of the things democratizing decision-making does, is it says everybody's ideas are equal. But they're not. An expert in the subject that we're considering is not equal to a layperson in the subject you're considering. But we've gotten rid of that idea. We've flattened it. And now we've flattened the idea of which ideas matter and which ideas don't.

So that climate scientist's idea about how the world works is equal to James Imhoff's idea. And that's not true. And it's not true. And you can objectively measure all the ways that that's not true. But because truth doesn't matter the same way and we don't define it the same way, we have people running for office who look at a bunch of anonymous internet conspiracy bullshit and they're like, anonymous internet conspiracy, pure genius. Well, yeah.

Well, and then there's enough people. So they're just like, yeah, well, my entire campaign is the argument for popularity. Right, yes. You know? My entire campaign is, well, a lot of people believe it. Yeah. And you're just like, that doesn't make it true. A lot of people believe in God. Doesn't make him fucking show up every Sunday. Yeah. Right.

It's actually like something our current president says. He says a lot. Well, a lot of people say, and then that's how we, then he repeats something as. Well, a lot of people say, and then that's how we, then he repeats something as if the, a lot of people say, lends credibility

or truth to the next thing. Like that means, it doesn't mean anything. Like it matters who says the thing. A lot of people thought there were humors in the body. I know.

Yeah. I know. Hey everybody. This audio comes from our live stream from Thursday, January 9th. Make sure you're checking out the live streams every Thursday at around 9 p.m. Central. Here we go.

Let's play this prayer. It's going to be good stuff. I'm asking you, Father, that the general public would see all of the stealing and all of the dirty things. The general public has a smartphone. You can look at any dirty things you want. No shit, right? Browsers have incognito mode. You can look at a lot of dirty stuff. You can just have no shame.

Yeah, you can just be like, I want to find this later. I got my kid for Christmas. I got one of my sons for Christmas. A VR headset thing. Just thinking of like... The Beat Offinator 1000. It didn't even occur to me. It didn't occur to you

that people were going to be doing VR porn, Tom? It literally did not occur to me. Are you kidding me? No, until we were talking to Heath. I taped two cell phones to my face. Are you kidding me? I genuinely... I walk around with two cell phones for eyes.

That's what Haley said. She's like, what the fuck? What do you mean you didn't think about that? I was like, literally one time ever, he's like, I want a game thing. I'm like, great, here's a game thing. Like, my brain didn't even. The very next time we record with Heath, Heath's like, yeah, I P.O.B. fuck girls on that thing all the time. I'm like,

I got news for you, Heath. You're not fucking girls. You're fucking your hand. That's really what he said. I'm fucking the time. I'm like, I got news for you, Heath. You're not fucking girls. You're fucking your hand. That's really what he said. I'm fucking this girl. I'm like, okay, that's the problem. The hilarious thing was,

is Heath, this is a record you guys can't hear, right? Because like, we get on a record with the scathing guys and he's like, yeah, man, I use the VR thing for porn all the time. And I said to him,

I said, can you like look around the room and like see what the curtains are and stuff? And he's like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And he's like, do you have a curtain thing? And I'm like, don't shame me. I'm like, but also, but also, like can you see if like they have a messy stack of books

or something? Like I'm actually curious like what the room looks like. Eli was saying that like a lot of these like porns are filmed in like a rented mansion. And like if you look around you'll see like someone's like family photos

all like shoved in the corner. Or you can like look over and like see like the boom operator or like people putting makeup on their nuts and stuff. And I'm like

that would be amazing. I wouldn't even watch what's going on and be like what's going on. That guy's got a turkey sandwich back there. Are you kidding me? I would watch that all day.

That would be the best. If there's ever a time I don't want to break in the fourth wall, man, it's porn. Oh, I want the fourth wall to come crumbling down. I want to fucking chaos. I want to see a fucking burrow

run across the screen. I want to fucking chaos. I want to see a fucking burrow run across the screen. I want the worst, craziest shit you could possibly have happen. That's what I want. It's a tenuous connection to my moral reality to start with. Yeah, I want the jizz mopper. Oh, that's what I say. Yeah, you want to see the jizz mopper. That's who you want. China has total respect for Donald Trump's very, very large brain. They call her Pocahontas. 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 week in Trump, we don't actually have a story. There's just like a couple of stories that came out.

The main one is what happened last week when we rocket attacked Soleimani. We shot him with, he was with another militia guy. We shot a rocket at him and bloated him up. And then we had a rocket attack to one of our bases that supposedly didn't hurt anybody.

And so that's been happening. And then the Congress was pissed. So they've passed a new resolution or a law that said, hey, you can't do that anymore. You shouldn't just be unilaterally just deciding to shoot shit off and then just notifying us via Twitter

because that's not how any of this should work. And then- Oh my God, please stop saying what's happening. And then the Ukraine, a bunch of people were leaving thinking, wow, this is a bad place to be in Iran right now. And then Iran decided to shoot a missile at that plane on accident and blow it up and killed, I think, 180 people on board.

So that's mainly what's going on. It's mainly revolving around Iran. Let's talk about Soleimani for a minute. He's the most dangerous guy you never heard of until last week. Such a big worry. And I will say, though, that is one of those things that we might not hear about, right?

To be perfectly frank, right? To be perfectly frank, we might not have heard about him ahead of time, and he could still be dangerous. Those two things could be possible, right? But this administration is known for its

this is the most amazing thing, the best thing, the biggest thing. The hyperbole. The hyperbole. So he is now, according to this administration of the Republicans, literally like he was like fucking like Dr. Evil in his fucking like hidden mountain, tenting his fingers, getting ready

to ask for a million dollars if he's going to blow up the world. Like, I mean, he genuinely, the way they're portraying him was like he was like genuinely the worst thing ever. But he wasn't a kind of threat like Al-Baghdadi. Al-Baghdadi was literally like a head of a snake, right? Like you hit Al-Baghdadi,

the rest of the people are just unorganized. They can't do anything. This guy was not that. This guy was just a really popular general. It's like if they killed Mike Pompeo, we would still go on. Right. We'd just be like, yeah, we're still okay.

Nobody, first of all, if you killed Mike Pompeo, I don't think Mrs. Pompeo would blink. You know? Mrs. Pompeo. You'd just be like, I don't know what her name is. I don't even know if there is one. It doesn't matter to me. Like,

this story is, this whole sequence of events is so unbelievable. Like, here you've got a guy who evidently

is so dangerous that what we have to do is assassinate a foreign leader in another country. So, like, imagine if that happens. Like,

I think sometimes it's useful to use, like, some analogies where you just stop talking about the Middle East and talk about, like, parts of the world where white people live. Yeah, absolutely. Talk about it in a way where people are like, oh, because sometimes this is so commonplace in the Middle East that you're just like, yeah, of course it happened.

Right. So, like, imagine if Mike Pompeo was in France and China shot a missile into France to assassinate Mike Pompeo. That is analogous. Yeah. That's literally analogous. Like, we assassinated a guy. We haven't done a political, a direct one-to-one political assassination of a person

part of a legitimate head of state. Like a legitimate... Yeah, right. Since the 1940s. Yeah, because we're not talking about like legit... Yeah. Because there has been

some high-level assassinations. Right. Like that's true. But they were not like... They were not part of... They weren't part of a state organization. They were part of a state-run organization. So this guy is effectively like the head of the Joint Chiefs,

to give you some analogies. The head of the Joint Chiefs in America, but has been for like 40 years. And I don't want to say that he's a good guy. I think he's an extremely unpleasant. He's part of a militia that's like shitty and like definitely is bad. So I'm not, yeah. Yeah, the Quds Force has done some evil shit.

And Soleimani has been in charge of some serious fucking attacks. So like nobody's saying he's a good guy. But what's interesting is that we don't take out all the bad guys. He was a bad guy a year ago. He was the same kind of bad guy three years ago. Yeah. Like- And when Trump said it, he's like, oh, we should have taken him out a long time ago. He was the same kind of bad guy three years ago. Yeah.

Like, and when Trump said it, he's like, oh, we should have taken him out a long time ago. Why didn't you do it three years ago? Two years ago, one year ago. He had plenty of time to do it.

Yeah. Like, that's a bullshit argument because immediately you're like, well, if he was this bad, and most of the shit that Trump cites in his speech is shit from fucking years ago that he was doing.

Yeah. And then he's like, oh, he was going to do an imminent attack. There was an imminent attack. There was an imminent attack he was totally going to do. This is the same guy that said fucking

a hurricane visited Alabama and drew on a Sharpie. Right. So I don't believe anything you have to say anyway. Right. No evidence provided to the people.

No evidence provided to Congress. Yeah. Which the libertarians involved came out of that meeting and they were like, fuck you. That was fucking disastrous

and insulting. Yeah. Because they were told not to ask questions. Like, these are libertarians that are on my side of the fucking aisle. Like, these are people

I think are fucking idiots. Like Rand Paul and that other fucking And Rand Paul, can we just say he's objectively an idiot? Like, you just don't have to just think it.

Like, he's objectively an idiot. So anyway. Yeah. Like, so it's not like these are guys on my side, so to speak. These are guys that came out and they're like, that briefing was a motherfucking joke.

Are you serious with that shit? Yeah, one of the Republicans was like, I can't believe I just sat through that. Yeah, I mean, like, it would have been like more, like, I would have felt better about the state of our national security if he came out and was like, I can't believe that's not butter. Like, I'd have been like, you know.

I don't even know what that means, but I feel better about it than this. So what happened after that? So after they bloated, bloated this guy up, immediately I ran like they first, they held like a crazy scream riot for a long time. Like a dozens of people got trampled. They held like a yell, a yell fest.

They got a yelly riot for a while. And then after they were They held like a yell, a yell fest. Yeah. Yelly riot for a while. And then after they were done, they should have had a quiet riot. Well, I'll tell you, they're not going to take it. But in any case, they,

they shoot a missile at a place that's not. And what it felt like, well, they shot 30 missiles. They shot 30 missiles. But they, they, they didn't supposedly didn't kill anybody.

They just damaged stuff. Right. And one of the things that happened afterwards was it felt like it felt like two guys who were gonna get into it and were begging

for someone to be like hey bro uh huh let me just get in between you guys cause I just don't wanna see you guys fight but they're both saying but I would kick his ass though

that's exactly right I would kick his ass though if that fucking bouncer wasn't here, bro. I'll fucking have you. Right. I got a face tattoo. And like, that's what it was. Like it totally felt-

I'm all fucking juiced up on Long Island iced teas, motherfucker. You want some of this? It totally felt like two guys on the Jersey Shore that were just like, that had too much to drink, but new, but like not so much that they started throwing,

but just enough to realize that they were being saved by the bouncer. And so that's, that's what it felt like to me. And I'm just an outsider. I don't have access to any of these big meetings. I'm just, all I'm able to do is consume what you can consume, which is from NPR and from BBC and from the New York times. But what I'm consuming makes me feel like everybody was just like,

okay, yeah, but we're like super tough though. That's what it felt like to me. They said afterwards, supposedly said that they were done. Then they said they weren't. Then they said they were. Then they said they weren't. I will wait until to see

if the Iran is actually done with this or not. I think that just declaring them done right now, like the president did is a folly. I think that's stupid. You don't just declare it done because, you know, now they're, now they could just be like, yeah, well, I'm going to fucking blow something up. But like Trump seems to take like every despot at fucking face value. At face value. What are they saying? Because if I was Iran, and I'm not saying this is true, but like if I was Iran, I'd be like, all right, I'm going to. Because here's what it seems like happened.

They gave a three-hour notice and they launched a bunch of missiles, right? So they gave a notice and they launched missiles. The missiles appear to have hit targets that were like a tent and a parking lot and a few structures, right? And they gave a notice and so nobody was killed. They gave a three-hour notice. Everybody scrambled into bunkers, fine. And that seems like a save face kind of an attack, right? Yeah, right.

I got to do this because my people need me to see that I'm tough. And incidentally, a bunch of those missiles just blew up in the air and didn't like strike their targets. It was a fucking mess technologically. But like, if I was Iran, I'd be like, all right, cool. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to winky face

tell you I'm totes done now. Yeah. And then I'm going to, and now- Then I'm going to sucker punch you. Yeah. Then I'm going to wait until the bouncer leaves

and I'm going to sucker punch you. Exactly. Yeah. I'm going to hit you with this fucking bottle when your fucking back is turned. Yeah. And like,

there's no reason to think that that is happening or isn't happening. But like, what we shouldn't do is be like, well, we've solved that problem.

Yeah, don't dust your fucking hands off and make it look like mission accomplished. Don't roll the mission accomplished banner on your fucking battleship. But the other thing that happened that, that I think is, that I think is really negative is that we killed some people in Iraq and did this on Iraq soil. And then immediately they're just like,

why don't you get the fuck out? Yeah. Why don't you get the fuck out? Yeah. Why don't you get the fuck out? You know what caused ISIS was the fucking power vacuum we left last time. What do we do? We're just like, no, let's just put a Dyson back over there. Let's fucking vacuum that shit out. Like, so what Trump has done in the last year, in one year, is he pulled troops out of Syria,

left a massive power vacuum that Russia and Assad filled. And then he's done this fucking crazy escalation of tensions and whatever with Iran. And Iran is no Iraq. If we get into it with them, it's a big fucking deal. So he did this thing with Iran. And then in order to be like, well, now that might kick off. So they pulled back all of their forces from fighting ISIS. And they said as much like, well, we got to stop the fight against ISIS because now we have to hunker down and make sure that if Iran retaliates, that we're all kind of in the same place and ready to respond. So the fight against ISIS, like we took that out of Syria. We took that out of fucking Iraq. That's literally what you said about like creating that

power vacuum, which is just like fucking putting fucking catnip around for fucking ISIS to come fucking roll around. Exactly. Yeah. Rub its fucking back on. Yeah. Like it's like we are so much less safe because this happened so much less safe. It's a crazy person thing to think that like doing this in any way made the world safer or America safer or our fucking troops safer and like this is a guy who said like no more adventuring around the world and then he immediately

deploys thousands of troops to what is happening I flew on Friday the day after this happened I flew on Friday my entire flight was packed with people that were all in uniform. Every available seat that was on every single plane was full of a person in uniform. I got to ask, like, how much of this, I cannot help but think that what we are doing is serving as the big brother proxy to protect Saudi Arabia. And the reason I think that is that we're constantly like fucking back of our throat mascara running, gagging on the fucking cock of the fucking Saudi prince.

And Saudi Arabia and Iran are having a proxy war right now in Yemen. In Yemen. Right. Been happening for a while. And so like this strike against Iran and we clearly support Saudi Arabia, no matter what they do, there's nothing they can do. They can literally cut apart an American citizen with a bone saw and we don't care. And we're just like, thank you. I'll have it. Cool. Yeah, you can make them into soup for us. That'd be awesome. Saudi Arabian dudes can

shoot up a fucking naval airbase and the president will immediately tweet out before the facts are known like, hey, super sorry. Standing with our Saudi brothers. Yeah. Like, we are so on the side of Saudi Arabia, it's insane. So is it like, I find it really difficult to imagine that it's some

goddamn coincidence that now all of a sudden, Iran's head of their fucking military is a super duper ultra bad guy that he wasn't a year ago or two years ago. Come the fuck up. And then all the conservative pundits, because we, when I talked earlier in the week,

and I said, I want to see what these conservative pundits are saying. And every single one of them is like, Trump is playing 4D chess. He knew what was going to happen. It's like, Trump had no idea what was going to happen. You can't lie to me and pretend. They are counting it a 100% win

that he knew 100% of that, what exactly what was going to happen. He was prescient. He knew exactly, that's exactly what every single one of these commentators is saying. And I'm just like, are you-

When Iran launches another attack, I'm curious to see because, because I do not think this is over. No, nobody does. I don't think this is over. Yeah. Like none of the pundits that I read are like,

oh yeah, this is like the fucking game set match. We just get to assassinate one of their revered leaders. This guy like... Yeah, I know what he's saying. He was a fucking selfie guy. Yeah. This guy like, literally millions of people flooded

the streets of Iran to celebrate his life, or not celebrate, but to mourn his legacy, to mourn his passing, to mourn his assassination. This isn't something we have a legal right to do. You can't just decide that a state actor is a terrorist and then assassinate them in another country. We don't get to do that anymore, like I said, any more than it would be reasonable for China to shoot a missile. Your analogy is well taken. Your analogy is well

taken. I mean, think about that analogy and then say, well, how fucking, how is it? And look, don't get me wrong. I'm not like fucking in bed with this guy. I don't think this guy is great. I don't care. He was causing harm. I get that. But I also feel like there's a lot of people in the world that cause harm. We don't shoot missiles at them. Yeah. Like we don't shoot missiles at most of the world's despots. All this does is accelerate, like if I'm Iran, the message I take from this is, and the message they did take because they fucking declared it. Yeah,

they went straight back to their nuclear stuff. The only way I'm safe is if I'm North Korea level safe. Yeah. So, okay, and you know what North, Iran's not wrong. They're not wrong to think that. Yeah. Like it's, and then the last thing that happened is that Iran shot down that airplane. And like you mentioned, they shot that down.

And what the reports say is that they shot that down in error by one of their missile defense systems. And we're at a place, too, where when tensions escalate this high, mistakes happen. Because it's just a bunch of fucking people making decisions. So they mistook a fucking commercial airplane for something else, for like incoming American fire. And they shot a missile at it, and they blowed that airplane up. And a couple hundred people died. But like when the world escalates military tensions like this, people make mistakes,

and those mistakes can have disastrous, domino-like escalating consequences. This is why you don't get into these conflicts. You can't play 4D chess because the best of intentions still doesn't prevent us from making honest errors, and honest errors can escalate things so fast. What if this was a nuclear

missile? I mean, yes, seriously. Like, and, and, and now, you know, I know he's bad mouthing the, the nuclear deal, uh, the, the nuclear deal that we had with, with Iran, he's bad mouthing and saying it was the worst thing ever. And that was why they, they felt like they were, but they were not enriching that uranium. And they just recently said recently said no we're taking all those limits are off baby yeah meat's back on the menu boys fucking crazy anyway that's all that happened this week yeah one week so we got a bunch of new patrons. We would like to thank you all for your patronage. We put a lot of time and a lot of effort into the show.

And your dollars go to make sure that we get food on Thursday nights. We get to pay an employee. And we get to do fun stuff like live stream and, uh, and things like that. So we thank you very much. Your, uh, your patron dollars do not go to waste.

And, uh, and we, we want to thank you for it. Yeah. You know, I want to say too, like without patrons,

there is no cognitive dissonance. Like the show cannot exist in its current state or any other state at this point. Like without, without our patrons, we would not be able to afford to do this. We need people to become patrons. If you're not a patron now, please take a moment

to go to patreon.com slash dissonance pod. Become a patron. We're genuinely grateful, and we do need your support. We need the support of our listeners in order for us to continue not only to offer the extras, but to continue to do the show. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to thank our new patrons,

Stu, Babelfish, George, Timbo, Eli Bosnick's Pug Adoption Agency, Dylan and Allison. We would like to send a mug to Stu and to Babelfish. So Stu and Babelfish, all you have to do is contact Ian at DissidencePod.com. Give him your snail mail address

and we will ship out to you a Citation Needed mug. Remember, if you listen to this show, you may like Citation Needed. I think you probably will like Citation Needed. It's another show that we do. We do it with the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm guys. It's a lot of fun. We make a lot of jokes.

And there's a lot of puns. So that's, it might be up your alley, maybe not. What's the next episode coming out? The next episode that's coming out is Uranus. I believe it's pronounced Uranus. Yeah. Anyway, if those are the kinds of jokes you're looking for, head over to citationpod.com.

Check that show out as well. We got a message from SM. And SM said, in the live stream, you mentioned Kud's Force being better than Space Force. And it reminded me of something even better than that.

And she sent a video. No. Of Kud's Force. What is this video? And I will be perfectly honest. The name of the band is Glory Hammer, I guess. And the name of the band is Glory Hammer, I guess. And the name of the song is Hoots Force.

This is every single one of those songs I've ever heard. There is nothing to differentiate it from any of the other songs that I've heard, except for they got a green screen and they damn well used it. This is seriously a bunch of dudes that like played Warhammer and then picked up guitars. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, we're going to put a link on this week's played Warhammer and then picked up guitars. Absolutely, yeah.

Well, we're going to put a link on this week's show notes. This is episode 506. So go to dissonancepod.com, check this out. And while you're there, become a patron. I mean, there's links right there. So we got a message from Corey. And Corey says, I just wondering, you guys still here or hang out with David Michael?

David Michael used to run My Book of Mormon podcast. And then other people took it over. Bryce was one of those people who took it over. And we hung out with David Michael at events. We used to go to events. We used to. Like David Michael and us, we went to like three or four events with David Michael.

And he was an absolute blast to hang out with. Super fun guy. Funny guy. A fun guy. I kind of wish I knew where he was now. I have not heard from him in a couple of years. He got married. He sent us a message about coming to the wedding. And I think we just sent a gift because we couldn't make it. It was like, there was something going on.

It was kind of far away on a Friday. It was a Friday and it was like in the middle of Indiana. That's what it was. Yep. I couldn't get out of work. I couldn't get out of work for it, but we sent a gift. We were just trying to be nice. But he's a cool guy. I loved him. I loved him. I thought he was a lot of fun to hang out with. But I don't know out of work. I couldn't get out of work for it, but we sent a gift. We were just trying to be nice. But he's a cool guy. I loved him. I thought he was a lot of fun to hang out with, but I don't know where he is now.

It's like a VH1. I don't know where he is now. David, if you're listening, send us a message, buddy. I miss you. Yeah, buddy. Come on down to Glory Hole Studios. I actually crashed at his house

during a snowstorm once several years ago. Yeah, he was a sweet dude. Great guy. And I'll tell you, we went to Skepticon with him. He was the first guy we ever went to Skepticon with. He came to our picnic years ago. That's where we met him,

was at the picnic. I remember hearing his voice in a group of people and being like, what? Yeah, because his voice was unbelievable. It was stellar.

And we met him at the picnic. We hung out with him at the Skepticon. We went to two Reason cons with him. He was great. He was great to hang out with. So we got a message from Mary and Mary was talking about, we went to reason, like two reason cons with him. He was great. He was great to hang out with. So we got a message from Mary and Mary was talking about,

we talked last week about how big pharma isn't trying to buy up or like basically pay off research scientists. One thing that Mary says is, she says, basically, take a four-year post-doctoral position making around 40K a year

and dedicates their entire life to a subject of finding a cure for something just to hide the damn cure for around 80 to $120,000 a year. They won't even start seeing until they're in their 40s. And it's like, no shit. There's not enough money there to get to quiet enough people down. Like the amount of money that you have to save

hiding that cure through all those people is just wasted money. If greed were the ultimate motive, you could spend less than 12 years in college getting a fucking finance degree and make a lot more than $120. Absolutely.

We got an image from Aaron. So Aaron sent along an image. You can check it out in this week's, uh, this, this week's show notes. It's five Oh six. I'm going to play this message. This is a voice message. Hey guys, I was listening to the last episode and, um, you guys were talking about the, the fake health information shit.

I'm actually a PhD student at Johns Hopkins, which, Tom, I appreciate the shout out there. And I am studying a DNA crosslinker that causes cancer that we're trying to possibly use to treat cancer. And having studied these biosynthetic pathways and the gene sequencing, I just want to say, do you know how fucking complicated cancer is? Oh, my God. Saying some ignorant bullshit like the cure for cancer, like it's a singular thing. Tom, you touched on this, but I just need to rant about it. Is fucking, is Dime Kruger personified?

And it makes me want to drive off a cliff. And that is dangerous right now because right now I'm driving through Western Maryland back to Baltimore. Glory hole, you casserole pizza-eating motherfuckers. How dare you? Outrageous. How dare you? So we got a message from Cassandra.

And Cassandra has a ghost-ish story. Cassandra's son was nonverbal at the time and was very emotive and able to express himself easily with expressions and gestures. One night, sitting on the bed watching movies and stood on the bed, reached up into the ceiling. Son grabbed the leg, pulling her down, terrified. And then about a week later, so this happened for like a week. And then about a week later, the son sees Ben Carson mumbling something on the screen and grabbed and pointed to the TV and then dragged to the room and said,

that's what I basically miming. That's what I saw on the ceiling. And she asked if the man on the TV was there and he nodded. And to this day, I'm going to quote to this day, I have no clue what he thought he saw on the ceiling as we escaped that apartment shortly thereafter. I use escape,

not because the apartment was haunted, but because the apartment was in Alabama and we moved 17 hours North. Yeah. That's yeah. Well, the best part of that and we moved 17 hours north. Yeah, that's, yeah. The best part of that story is when you left Alabama. That certainly is. Got a message from Ross who says we should try to see

if we could get the people from Parapod on a UK podcast. We're going to look into it. I'm going to listen to it, see what it's about and see if it's good. So we got a message from Joe and Joe wanted to thank us for the roast that we had done.

And he said that he's talking about the apple bit that we had, the red delicious apple bit we had in our year end review. And he said the bit about red, red delicious apples made me think of a guy from high school. He used to make apple grenades with red delicious. He would cut a grid pattern about a quarter inch deep and throw it against the wall. And the apple would explode in a shower of disappointing apple jelly. That's amazing. Disappointing apple.

Even when a red delicious apple explodes, it's disappointing. Most lackluster grenade possible. So we recorded a live stream tonight. You heard part of it on this week's show. We hope that you join us for our live streams. We're going to keep bothering you about this.

Come see us on Thursday nights, 9 p.m. Central. You can find us on Twitch or YouTube. Go there. Subscribe. If you're on Facebook, like us on Facebook

and then you'll get notifications. The other day, I just so happened to be working and Ian's like, don't worry, it's not going to go out live. And I was working on Twitch

and everybody got a notification that I was on Twitch. Oh no! We had like 30 people just watching me trying to make sure we don't melt and get all weird on our

troubleshoot the network card. Yeah, so. But it was cool. We got a chance to talk. People were asking questions about the equipment and stuff. So I gave a little impromptu stream.

But you'll get a notification if you like us on Twitch or YouTube. You'll get a little notification when we go live. And then you can come talk. There's people in the chat. So there's community. You can talk to them. Sometimes we interact with chat and you get a chance to see part of a story in the future. We're hoping that we might actually do use some of these stories in our show. So you'll actually be getting sneak peeks of next week's show when you watch the

stream. So, uh, so come check them out. We want to see if we can get people there to join in the community and chit-chat with each other. 9 p.m. Central Time. Like I say, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Mixer, all the places where you can see our stream. And you can find that if you go to our Facebook page or our Twitter page,

you can find those links directly on there. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We are going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues,

temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only.

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