Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 512: Rush Limbaugh's Malignant Tumor

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

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 well well all right recording 40 miles apart for the first time cecil a long time god damn dude we haven't we we haven't been apart in a long time it's been so long so we are we are actually recording uh from our separate but equal yeah spaces but equal i don't know about that um all right that's inherently unequal it's definitively now i will say this the other day uh even though we didn't i figured that's the intro right there right we stopped in the middle here we go yeah you good all right okay okay i've spent my load cecil okay all right that's fine i'm panting i'm

in recovery i do want to say the other day on my Facebook feed, a bit of history, you know how they do the history thing that things pop up? A bit of history came up that reminded me of the day we created Cognitive Dissonance. It was nine years ago,

what would be yesterday, which was Wednesday of last week. We came up with the idea on a car ride where I had enlisted you and your vehicle to help me drag something all the way to Chicago. But it was, I remember the car ride where we decided to split our show, what used to be Everyone's a Critic, into two shows.

And we had a long conversation about it. It was nine years ago yesterday. So yesterday was our nine-year birthday. It was the birth of Cognitive Distance. And how we used to record is exactly how we're recording today, which is Tom is 40 miles away. I am downtown at the studio. Tom was sick.

We had to cancel our live stream. Tom didn't want to come downtown and contaminate the whole world with coronavirus. So he decided to stay home tonight. You get one little coronavirus. I know I shouldn't have gone on vacation to Wuhan. That was a bad call. It's a bad idea. Especially mid-January when I knew better. And I just- There was a headline today that said something, this woman was talking about it saying it looked like the movie Contagion over there. I guess everything is.

They said this week, I thought I read somewhere, that one-tenth of the world's population was in quarantine this week. Dude, have you seen? That's fucking incredible. Right? And it's because of the immense population, right? It's the immense population of China that leads itself to that. But they were saying it's one-tenth of the population is in quarantine.

At least were. Have you seen some of the viral videos coming out of China of Wuhan? I have not. It seriously looks apocalyptic because everything is just shuttered. Everything is just shut down. Wuhan's a city of 11 million people. It's a huge goddamn city. That's as big as like London and New York. Yeah. New York's 9 million. Right. So like,

it's just an enormous goddamn city. And like, imagine just somebody flips the switch and everybody's inside and the city is just shuttered. Like businesses are closed. Cars aren't on the street. It looks crazy. It seriously looks like some shit from an apocalyptic zombie movie. Sands the zombies because even the zombies are in quarantine. Zombies are like, fuck that. I don't want to get sick. Are you kidding me? I'm already falling apart. What the fuck? Fuck you. You're not wearing a mask. You know, it is the one thing I will say, and I,

this is something I don't think we have touched on when we talked about the coronavirus in the past is, you know, we do downplay it because we say how, how viral it is. And in comparison to the flu, and we also downplayed the amount of people that have been, uh,

got gotten sick and the amount of people that have died. But I will say that is also presuming that all the numbers from China are true. Yeah. And that may not be the case. So I didn't want to, I didn't want to throw that caveat out because a couple of weeks in a row, we were just hand waving and saying, oh, whatever about the coronavirus. But you also have to trust a, uh, the media that's coming out of there. And you know that they do have a stranglehold on their media. Are you suggesting that there is a reason to be distrustful of an autocratic secretive regime whose outward claim is stability above all else? Yeah. I think that there might be a reason to be concerned, but I don't think there's a reason

to panic. China has a rich history of protecting human rights. Rich, rich history. Absolutely. I remember when, when those guys, when they had that epidemic of people in terrible working conditions, jumping out of buildings. And so they put the nets out there to catch them. And then they bounce right back. It's like a circus act now. Because they love their workers.

You know, when you, when you trapeze people back into the fucking assembly line. Yeah. Are we going to get the message that tells us that that's not true. And that was all made up by that guy who went over there. Wait, no,

it's not made up. I saw, I saw a times article about this. Not that. Oh, okay. Cause there was that one. But you remember that,

that this American life where the guy went over and few days ago. But you remember that This American Life where the guy went over and lied about it? Do you remember that? No. You don't remember there was a This American Life where a guy did a one-man show that they basically did on This American Life. And it was about the workers in the apple plants in China

and how terrible their life was. Oh, I do remember. And then he wound up having to backpedal and retract. Back when we cared about whether or not things were true, Tom. This was a long time ago. So it may not,

you may not remember it with the way we act now, but back when we cared if things were true, they made him, they dog walked him on the air. I don't know if you remember that, but they fucking dog walked that guy. I do. And like, it is funny because I think there's a part of me that has flushed that from the

Ram for the very reason that you're mentioning. It's like, yeah, well, I mean, now it doesn't matter if like, like the idea that something just because something isn't true, that it would be a scandal. You'd be like, what? Why would I have a scandal over truth? That's a silly thing to have a scandal over. Like that's like having a scandal over whether or not you grab somebody by their pussy.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, we need some goddamn standards and priorities in America. Possibly sexually assault or harass 40 different people, 64 different women. All right. Yeah.

I was talking about a different billionaire, Tom. You were talking about Trump. I was talking about a different billionaire, Tom. You were talking about Trump. I was talking about Bloomberg. They're different. Not much, but they're different. Holy shit. Elizabeth Warren is still fucking blowing the goddamn smoke from her fingertips right now. Let's save that for this week in Trump when we get to it. Let's shift a little, if we can, into the fake news thing. Do you want to introduce the fake news one? So this is a Times article. These students are learning about fake news and how to spot it. New literacy instruction is flourishing in the wake of the 2016 election as worries about fake

news grows. It's funny because I read this and there's this um like facebook group or page or whatever that i that i follow um that says it's something like um these dystopian events being presented as feel good stories are getting really old and yeah like this fits so neatly into that category right where you're like you read it and you're like you know, I'm glad kids are finally getting that instruction. And it reminded me of when we had Cara Santa Maria on the show. Yeah. And we had this like long conversation about like how important this kind of digital literacy is to, you know, to kids and to like the next generation and like how poor that they actually were when tested. like kids were so bad at spotting advertisements and editorials as opposed to news sources and it was like distressing because the

idea i think that a lot of people had was like oh well the younger generation is good at it and like they're super not good at super not like worse they're like the boomers like the studies are interesting because the studies show like the boomers are the worst like the boomers. Like the studies are interesting. Cause the studies show like the boomers are the worst. Like the boomers can't tell the difference between a fucking banner ad and like a news story. Oh no, no. They are constantly clicking on the porn ads.

Right. They're on the, they're on the computer and a porn ad pops up. They are down a porn ad rabbit hole as soon as they possibly can. And their computers locked up 30 seconds later how many sad grandpas out there are like singles in my area horny moms want to fuck what like click their computers just start smoking like their fucking social security number just prints out over and over again on their printer

the only singles in your area that are interested in you grandpa are the ones you you cash in at the casino that's the only one yeah but uh but i do want to talk a little bit about this story this specific story uh i really uh i i remember when you and I first met, you had turned me onto a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And the same author, Neil Postman, had written another book on how to watch TV news. And they were critical media theory books that both of them were in a time

when there wasn't a lot of internet, but there was an internet, but it wasn't to the level of ubiquity that the current internet is. But there was certainly a saturation of television news shows out there. And he went out of his way to make sure that he made some sort of media guide

to let people understand how this works, what they're after, what they're trying to get you to do, why they want you to watch more, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a really thought-provoking book for its time. And I think that that book and other movements in critical media theory have brought us to the place we are now, where we look at that television news, I think, pretty critically in some respects. I know like you said before, the boomers are always bad at this and they are still bad at this as proven by Fox News. But there is, I think, some pushback even at the younger generation against

places like MSNBC, which feel like Fox News, bizarro Fox News and other things like that. So I feel like there is some underlying education we have and some expectations we have when it comes to television media news, but we just are really bad at the sharing of information on the internet still. And it's my hope that this sort of thing will stem the tide of what we've been experiencing, which is an absolute anarchy of information. Yeah. It's, you know, I remember, I remember how excited you and I were during the, um, Arab spring. Do you remember this? And we talked so much about how exciting the democratization of information was, and it is exciting. And like, there was this sense of like optimism and hopefulness that like sprang from that

movement like holy shit like like the ubiquity of this information is going to set us free and like it's interesting how that promise has both held true and then also fucking enslaved us at the same time you know like the ubiquity of information has in so many ways like it's it's reduced um the the amount of um religiosity in the world for sure you know it has caused despots and autocrats to fail and to be questioned and like it's toppled whole governments like it's it's done like really deeply important work. But the problem is that like if you can't separate good information from bad information and all information is weighted equally, then that democratization of information becomes a goddamn cancer, becomes a poison. And I think it's really whether it should be or shouldn't be, doesn't even matter.

It is one of the most necessary things that we can do is to teach people that kind of media literacy you were talking about. And it's funny because I still love Neil Postman, the guy that wrote those books. Sure. I love Neil Postman. His essays are way ahead of their time. And all of the shit that he was talking about fundamentally can still be applied. Absolutely. From like medium to medium. And the only difference I think is that the concerns he had about sort of like broadcast mediums are only amplified by the kind of individualized mediums that we have now. And the internet's become this really deeply individualized media content, right? Because

like you log in and everybody knows, your browser knows who you are and what you like, where you go. And because of that, you have to be even more careful because you're being targeted so much more carefully and so much more specifically in terms of the information that you're presented. But all those media literacy tools that I remember and that were important and that I thought were like, holy shit, this is like, we have to know this. That was important when I was watching TV. Yeah, yeah. was important when i was watching tv yeah yeah man and like now that we're like looking online it's like fucking neon lights and claxons and sirens just going off all the time and i it's really encouraging that this is going to be part of a curriculum like an educational curriculum i just hope they tie it in with sex ed so that way we can just learn that abstinence is the best policy.

Who said they like coke? Me. Oh, you tell me about that. I like Coca-Cola. Oh, Coca-Cola. All right. But who knows about cocaine? Anyone ever seen cocaine? Yeah. What about cocaine? Good thing? Bad thing? What? Bad. Do you know people who take drugs? No. You don't have to tell me who, but I bet you do. I do. Okay. All right. All right. I think you're dumb. So this story comes to the Washington Post. i bet you do okay all right all right i think you're dumb so this story comes from the washington post here's that medicare for all study bernie sanders keeps bringing up um so this is fucking amazing right because there's been a number of commentaries about like oh man medicare for all what's that going to cost what would it do is it worth all

the costs and there has been so much talk about it. John Oliver on his show just the other day had a really great piece where he's like, look, undeniably there would be some costs. And he talks about like how different studies have shown that there'd be different costs, some savings, some costing a lot more. But a really comprehensive study has recently come out published in the goddamn journal lancet right so that's some reputable shit right yeah so like it's anti-vax level at this point right yes the lancet will retract it um after the damage has been irreparably done they find out that that socialized medicine gives you autism but it's it's kind of amazing. Like they did a study and they're like,

all right, well, what would the net effect be both in terms of actual dollar costs and human lives? A Medicare for all plan, and that's a bit of a misnomer because Bernie's plan is much more generous than Medicare is, but it would save taxpayers $450 billion a year. And it would save 65,000 lives.

Yeah, that's the best numbers. There are other numbers where there's different groups that have said it might cost more than that. But I will say this. The one thing that we're not talking about is the lives thing. 68,000 lives. The lives thing is the most important thing, but it's the one thing that no one talks about. 68,000 lives is more people that die gun deaths in this country a year. You're just saying, oh, that's not a big deal. If we complain about gun deaths and we don't complain about this, I think we're being hypocrites. You know, the other thing, too, is that, you know, the cost is what happens when you, you know, remove the profit motive from an insurance from the system.

So if you remove those things, the cost suddenly goes down. Yeah, that's because there's no profit motive anymore. motive anymore. Well, it's like, you know, you get rid of the ridiculous amount of administrative and bureaucratic costs associated a doctor or hospital's office. You know, like I have had in my life, I've had blue cross blue shield. I've had Humana. I've had, uh, Aetna I've, I've had four or five different insurance companies over the course of my life, over the course of the different jobs that I've had. And my, my employers are always looking at options and always reevaluating options. So hospitals and doctor's offices, they have to spend a ton of time and money administrating all of their billing in all of these different ways so that they make sure that

they bill Aetna the way Aetna wants to be billed and Humana the way that Humana wants to be billed. And Aetna is going to pay this percent and Humana, the way that Humana wants to be billed, and Aetna's going to pay this percent, and Humana's going to pay that percent, and this guy has a deductible that's this much, and I got to fetch money from him and get the balance from his insurance company. There's a huge amount of administrative costs. All that disappears.

It just goes away when you have a Medicare for All system because you have one place to bill and everybody fucking takes it they talk about like oh you know like it's so hard to get coverage on medicare it would if there if there was just the medicare plan everybody would take the fucking medicare plan because that's the fucking plan that's the plan that's it that's what you have so it's not like there'd be all these other fucking doctor. Like, it's not like all the doctors right now that don't take Medicare. And then all there is is Medicare that they're going to wake up and be like, well, I still don't take Medicare. Right. So like that argument is just a garbage argument. Like just flush that

out of the fucking system. It doesn't make any sense. You also have like the costs that we don't even count as medical costs, which are hugely important. 58% of all the bankruptcies in this country cite medical bills as a cause for that bankruptcy. So that's money that, that, that got, did not get paid back into the system, right? That's a huge number of, of bankruptcies that would not happen. It's 58% of the bankruptcies. Just wouldn't happen. You know how many less people would be on modest needs if we had that? Right. Because of the medical bills. Just scroll through modest needs and look at all those people on the verge of bankruptcy, ready to go bankrupt because they cannot pay their fucking medical bills.

And for all the people out there that say, well, where's, what do I see? I want to read two paragraphs. They said that to fully fund Medicare for all, the federal government would have to bring an additional $773 billion a year relative to the current revenue levels. They estimate this could be paid for in part by a 10% payroll tax that would bring in $436 billion annually. Given the current employer contributions to healthcare, they work out to about 12% of payrolls. This would still be $100 billion less than what employers currently pay. The remaining funding could be paid via a 5% tax on household income,

yielding $375 billion, which is more than what they're asking for, by the way. And again, with an elimination of employee contributions to existing health insurance premiums, the average household could expect to save well over $2,000 a year and have no co-pays or deductibles to worry about. That suddenly changes the game for so many people.

I was reading, they're paying, how much they're paying for fucking insulin nowadays. It's basically the cost of a Nintendo Switch a month. Oh my God. So you have to buy, and some people need multiples. So imagine having to buy

many, many, many multiples of that a month and suddenly that cost goes away. That's like basically paying off your mortgage. And suddenly you just have all this extra money because you don't have to worry about paying it anymore. Suddenly it changes the game for so many people in this country. It literally does nothing for me, right? This is not a self-interest thing.

My wife and I aren't sick. We don't pay a lot of money for our medical insurance. I don't think it's going to lose me money, but I don't think I'll see much of a difference. But I want to see everybody that I can get on this system because it would change so many lives. Right. And to your point about you and your wife,

tomorrow something could happen where you need it. Right, exactly. And you have no idea. And like that, that idea, like we're, we're so focused on what we need now and what we have now that we don't, we don't stop and consider that. Like you are one bad turn of events that you do not control right away from needing something. It's the argument it's like well you know like i've never needed it or i don't need it now so like fuck it it's the same thing it's like tomorrow i could get hit by i could get in a car accident on my way to work tomorrow and i could get really hurt and i

could have big giant medical bills that are a big giant fucking bankrupting problem for me and that has nothing to do with my lifestyle choices or any other judgy bullshit people want to put on like and that is a people do put a lot of judgy bullshit like well people get sick because they don't take care of themselves yeah that's why people get viruses yeah that's why people have genetic fucking conditions fuck you like but still like even eliminating that, just like take into consideration, like how much you don't control about like your own health outcome. It's so much, so much of it is outside of our control. For fuck's sake, we are recording this not in studio this week because I happened to get sick. I just happened to catch a cold and there's like nothing anybody can do to avoid that shit. and there's like nothing anybody can do to avoid that shit. But like we treat it like because we don't need it,

we all kind of fall into that camp. It's like, because we don't need it now, we're not going to want it for anyone else. Yeah. And we're not going to consider that like, man, I'm one bad turn of events away from needing that help myself. One of the things that a while back, you and I knew a friend of ours,

he was a pretty conservative guy. And I remember having a conversation with him talking about Medicare for all. At that point, it was single payer health insurance that Obama was trying to push before Obamacare got its teeth pulled. But it was the idea that we were going to shift to a universal healthcare system.

And his comment was, I don't want to have to pay for some fat slob to be on. I don't want to have to pay for some fat slob to be on, I don't want to have to pay for some fat slob's medical expenses. And one of the things that he doesn't realize is if I'm on my work, my work doesn't charge me less money,

substantially less money than the next guy who works next to me. So I'm already paying for people that have problems with their weight or that are smokers or whatever it is, whatever lifestyle choice I want to pick on them for. I'm already paying for those people. So it's not a big difference. It's not a big difference. And the fact is, is that if everybody was under there, the burden shifted to everyone. Yeah. I mean, that's literally what insurance is. It's the pooling of risk.

Like, so if you're on an insurance plan, like your insurance plan is already taking into account the size of your organization and the relative demographic of your organization when they calculate your premium in order to pull your fucking risk. And the size of your cube, mate. Right.

Yeah, the size of that guy too. Yeah. So like all of that has already been, so that guy who thinks he's not paying for it is already paying for it. Yep. The thing is like, he just doesn't understand how the goddamn system works. Yep. That's it. Like this Medicare for all, like one of the, one of the comments that I read, which I thought was so great, it was so great because there's an answer to it is like, I read, which I thought was so great. It was so great because there's an answer to it is like, this is going to save us $450 billion. Right. So, and one of the comments I read was like, yeah, but who's going to pay for all that savings. And I was like, oh my God, that's the best comment. And the, and the best part is like, the answer is the insurance companies. Yes.

And that's why there is so much pressure. That's why it's even a conversation because even on the Democrat side, there are people that have gotten contributions and that have worked with insurance companies in the past and they are not going to be budged on some of this stuff. You look at how Biden pushes back. You look at how Buttigieg pushes back. Buttigieg has deep connections to the insurance industry. You look

at how they push back. I know that they say things right now because they're being pressured to say things that match what everybody else says, but this is not their priority. They're being pushed into this corner by the people who make it a priority, like Bernie and Liz. They're being pushed into this corner by the people who make it a priority like Bernie and Liz. They're making them talk about this over and over and over again. This is not their priority. This is the, that's why I love that Andrew Yang was in this whole picture because the UBI was not anybody's priority. It wasn't on anybody's map before Andrew Yang came out and started talking about it. And then suddenly, and nobody had any bad arguments against it. Right. Everybody was just like, oh, wait a minute. No, actually, that's a really good idea.

Holy shit. And now suddenly it's a talking point that was in this debate. And that's huge. And I feel like the same reasons, you know, Klobuchar, she's been talking about how people love their insurance company.

Do you think day one, if it's a president Klobuchar, that she's going to go in there and strike a deal to make Medicare for all her top priority? Absolutely not. That's not her top priority. The people that it's their top priority, those are the people who are going to be making this significant in their campaigns and making it significant in the presidency if they win. And you know, I literally don't know anybody that loves their goddamn insurance it's a fucking myth have you ever met anybody who's like oh my god my insurance company is so baller it's unbelievable like i just

i love my premiums they're reasonable and and easy for me to pay my co-pays are virtually non-existent like get the fuck out of here you love your insurance company that's fucking nonsense i work for a big fucking company. The other day I went to fill a prescription, Cecil. I have insurance with a big company. I went to fill my stepson's prescription and that prescription was $290. That is going to cost $3,600 a year just for that one prescription. And that's with my goddamn insurance. God damn it. That is with my fucking, that's with my goddamned insurance god that is with my fucking that's like not like somebody who's unemployed like that's with my fucking insurance you know yeah it's like

that's unbelievable it's crazy i would love to pay a 10 tax to not have any co-pays not to have any deductibles not to have any prescription costs and also bernie's plan by the way covers medical and it covers vision. They're coming. Now we'll see how these Russians deal with a crack SS division. Hans, I've just noticed something. The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What? No. They've got skulls on them. Hans, are we the baddies?

So this story comes to the New York Times. Far-right shooting shatters an already fragile sense of security in Germany. I read this and I thought like, far-right violence in Germany? Oh heavens! Nine! Nine! Oh man. So this story

it is pretty awful. I think the death toll is at 11 now. And what it is is some fucking far-right extremist, racist, conspiracy-driven asshole went to a couple of different bars or hangouts where immigrants were known to congregate and shot those fucking places up. Yeah. And then we think went home and killed himself and his mother.

Oh, did really? I still miss that part. Yeah. So I think they found the person dead and their mother dead in the house. So I'm suspecting that's what happened. The attack, the authority said, was carried out by a 43-year-old German who had posted a racist video and a screed on the internet. It's always a screed. It is always a screed. And then he later, he was later found dead from a gunshot along with his mother at his home.

The authority said, so maybe he had a shootout with his mother. I don't know. Well, maybe that's just like writing. Like maybe like he was found dead from a gunshot and his mother. Yeah. Maybe his mother is also one of the-

Yeah, maybe that's one of the reasons she beat him to death. Good. This is one of those people that this links back a little bit to media literacy in the sense that this person was quoting and talking about conspiracy theories. They had no way to process and vet

any of the information that was coming to them. And they went bonkers. And they hurt people because they couldn't control what they were seeing and also didn't feel like they could trust people

and then went nuts. This is comet pizza, except for this went to the next level. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like this, this, it's like we were talking before that, that idea that like people don't know how to vet information and now there's just too much of it. Yeah.

Like I'll just go so that far. Like there's just too much of it. Like there's no barriers anymore for the dissemination of ideas. Like it used to be that like ideas in order for them to really have legs they had to get to like a publisher an editor they had to get vetted in some way they some there were some goddamn gatekeepers in place to make sure that like the craziest wildest ideas didn't really get very far, you know? And that's not to say that like fucking Stormfront and those kinds of nut jobs didn't publish their own like newsletters,

but they didn't have any legs to them. You know, they like, they circulated among their little in-group and they were physical and like the barriers for that kind of dissemination of hate speech and dissemination of crazy conspiracy-laden nonsense was just slower and more difficult. And now everything is like the fucking floodgates of information are just wide open. And like people don't understand how. They just like, they have no fucking idea how to build the right filters as all this information floods into them.

And they don't know like when it's okay to just turn the whole fucking spigot off and walk away. And like, they go down these goddamn rabbit holes of bad information, of bad information. And some of them end up as anti-vaxxers, you know, and some of them end up as incels. And some of them end up as like far right conspiracy theorists, racist shooters. end up as like far-right conspiracy theorists, racist shooters. Like it's causing real fucking problems that we don't know how to do this. And we are doing a bad job of managing the information glut. Well, and it's not just that, it's that they can find each other now and they get into a feedback loop. So the problem is that, yeah, if you were just an insult and you just had some crazy misogynistic views about women and how they owe you sex and how you you you treat them completely as objects and not as people and you just had those views individually, it's not a big deal. talking to other people who feel the exact same way and amplify my shitty ideas, then suddenly I start getting into this feedback loop where I can't stop thinking about it that way. The same

thing happens when it comes to racist conspiracy theories like QAnon and all this other garbage that's out there. And specifically it's anti-immigrant racist bullshit. And you look at how this person, he almost certainly found like minds on the internet. He posted a screed. Who was it for? It wasn't just, he's not just screaming it into the fucking wind. He posted it so that other people that he knows can read it. People that also fed were in this feedback loop that helped him deal with, and not deal with, the exact opposite of that, which helped him destroy and crumble all of the bits that helped keep him in society, right? They helped destroy all those bits. They knocked down all the moorings that kept him steady. And he was, and they helped that feedback loop.

They fed that feedback loop. And that is happening, not just in conspiracy boards. It's not just in insult boards. It's also in racist boards. And look at all these racists that can now find each other and they can all post that they're all gonna go march on Charlottesville together. And those people can find each other now a lot easier

than if you're just fucking a silk screening out or whatever those things are, where they spin the wheel or whatever it is. You know, the old movies where they spin the wheel and the papers fly out and they're all copies of the wheel, whatever that thing is. That's basically what they used to have to do. They said that old timey spinny thing that shat out. It was, they didn't even have a Xerox. It was like a primitive Xerox is what they had. That's how they had to reach people before. Now that's not even necessary. They didn't have to do anything except for type it somewhere on the internet. And everybody,

everybody that believes that, that agrees with them can find it. You know, all they need is like, you get like a thousand people, which is nothing like a thousand people is, is an infinitesimally insignificant statistical blip. But you get a thousand people in your little group and they're all talking and you have

fucking notifications turned on and all day long, something is happening. All day long, minute by minute, minute by minute. This guy, that guy, this guy, that guy, this guy, that guy. Your world shrinks so fast. that guy, this guy, that guy, this guy, that guy, your world shrinks so fast. Like it's so easy for the size of your world to artificially shrink and for you to believe in the size of that shrunken world. And like, that's what you're taught. It's that feedback loop. All of those tools at our disposal, like they're all conspiring to convince us that the world is smaller than it is. And it's a goddamn cancer.

And like, I am encouraged as much as we joked about it being dystopian. I'm encouraged by like the classes that are starting to be recognized as necessary to teach people this kind of literacy. Like, we need this kind of literacy. You need to like really understand that like perspective is the only thing that's going to allow that information and notification glut to be like kind of set aside for you to be like, Oh, a thousand people don't matter. A thousand people is nothing.

No matter how loud a thousand people are. I am alone. If I'm only with, if there's only a thousand people that agree with me, nobody agrees with me. And I'm probably wrong. there's only a thousand people that agree with me. Nobody agrees with me and I'm probably wrong. What the hell is that? I don't know.

It must have been a bed bug. That was pretty big for a bed bug. Okay, it wasn't a bed bug. Let's go back to saying it was a bed bug. So this story comes from the LA Times. Boy Scouts seek bankruptcy under wave of new sex abuse lawsuits. You know, man, I read this and I thought, couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

Right? Except for the Catholics. And we'll talk about that in a minute too. Because like the Boy Scouts, so the Boy Scouts have this history, right? Where they were kind of financially taken over by the Mormon church, right? And the Boy Scouts for the longest time were an organization that was aggressively homophobic and aggressively anti-atheist. And so they pushed these sort of bad, shitty, religious, moral ideas.

And I got to say, it is any organization's prerogative to hold as many bad ideas as they want to hold, right? But the point is they held this goddamn moral high ground. Oh, we don't want any gays here. Oh, we don't want any atheists in our organization. We don't want them corrupting the minds of the youth. We don't want them. We don't want any gays here. We don't want any atheists in our organization. We don't want them corrupting the minds of the youth. We don't want them.

We don't want that. This is a good place, a wholesome family place. They're going under because they're fucking the kids. That's why they're going under now. And I read it and I thought like, good, fucking good. You outdated, outmoded, fucking backward organization. Yeah, yeah. yeah i mean what do they have in common with the catholic church anti-atheist bankruptcy from lawsuits access

to kids in a weird judgy morality around sex i think all those things fit in right they're essentially the same organization right and and you see the one thing that's making them start to go bankrupt and to start paying attention to this is the moratorium on the statutes of limitations that they keep doing in different places where they go back and they say, look, we're going to repeal the idea of these statutes of limitations for a couple of years

to make sure that all the people who were victimized in the past have an opportunity to come forward and accuse people who've done them wrong in the past of these horrible, heinous crimes. And they've done it with the Catholic Church in a couple of different places. And now they're doing it with the Boy Scouts, specifically in California. And it is causing them serious headaches and making them start to hemorrhage money in a way that they did not expect. And I think that's the only way these organizations will come to the light, right? So Chapter 11 is not going to collapse the Boy Scouts of America.

So next week, next year, next month, there's going to be a Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts of America will continue. Chapter 11 will allow them to restructure their debts. So they will continue to exist after the Chapter 11 very probably, at least in the short term. But, like, you got to hit these fucking people where they count. You can't hit them on the moral high ground, right? You can't do it because these are the same types of organizations that always fight those, like you were saying, like those like statute of limitations laws. You cannot be a moral organization that's like, well, I mean, I really care most about

morality, but I don't want to deal with adults who we diddled years ago. Like, I'm sorry, but like, if I diddled you a long time ago, it doesn't count anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I was on base or whatever. Right, yeah. What the fuck? You know what? You should have said something

and now you didn't. And now NDA Michael Bloomberg. Yeah. I want to say this though too. There was a piece of this where it says the Scouts chapter 11, it says that they basically filed bankruptcy in the court of Delaware. This comes amid declining membership and a wave of new sex abuse lawsuits after several states

did that. They recently expanded legal options for victims to sue. Many of the lawsuits followed the Los Angeles Times publication in 2012 of internal Scout records that involved about 5,000 men on a blacklist known as the perversion files, a closely guarded trove of documents that detail sexual abuse allegations against troop leaders and others dating back a century. God, doesn't that sound familiar to 5,000 people? Like when you, when you, when you've got five, you you don't have like like at what point are you just like you're just a criminal organization yeah how is this different what i what i want to know is like and maybe maybe smarter people than me can actually write to us about this but like i don't understand how they can't use like rico statutes or something else i know to take

down the mob right to take down like the church or to take down the boy scout like i don't i genuinely there must be some reason but i don't understand it i don't like these are criminal fucking organizations like as soon as when when it seemed to me that there would be some mechanism for the government to dissolve an organization that has yeah that's that's caused a lot of pain and committed criminal acts. Yes, I think absolutely. But that doesn't seem like they have

either the will or the power to just dissolve them. Yeah. They hold these individuals accountable, but they don't like say, okay, but like the individuals are absolutely part of the problem. But a part of the problem is like

your systems to hide these crimes, like they are part of your organization. So your organization no longer gets to exist in the world. That's, that's it. evident or commonsensical to you that like, you could just pass a law that says like, you know, if you're an organization that has a proven history and system to hide sexual abuse, then your organization, once that's found out, your organization as of that day ceases to exist. That's it. Like your charter is gone. Like you can't organize anymore. You just like, poof, you're just gone. Like, no,'re just gone. No more church basements for you. That's it.

It dovetails nicely with the Pennsylvania Catholic diocese facing new sexual abuse lawsuits, and they file for bankruptcy as well. And this comes, it says, the inquiry, which found more than 300 priests had allegedly molested more than 1,000 children in the state over the span of many decades. Again, we're talking in the thousands here.

Yeah, these are huge criminal organizations. Like Chris Hansen would be exhausted. You know, like how many Chris Hansens do you need? You're asking a lot of different people to sit down. You know, you're asking a lot of people to take a seat. That's for sure. Can you have a seat over here, sir? Hold on a second. I'm going to be booked for the next six months asking people

to have a seat and having a two minute conversation. For real. Like, like is, is there, is there no point at which we just acknowledge like, all right, priest diddle kids. Like that's just like, I, you know, I, we don't need to have a hashtag not all priests. All right. It's just default assumption is okay. I understand that you're going to have, if you have an organization that interacts with children, it almost certainly will attract a person who is nefarious and will be put in a position of power over children and then abuse that power. I understand. It doesn't matter what that organization is. There's a chance

they're going to do it. One, you've got to have really strict background checks. But the most important thing is that you don't sweep it under the rug, that you immediately recognize it, you immediately expel the person, and you immediately say you're sorry, and then you work to try to make amends. Instead, what has happened forever in both of these institutions is that you have a perversion files, or you have a shift the priest around to different fucking diocese files, and that's happened where you keep on hiding it and hiding it and hiding it. That's on you, man. That's on you now. Before it was, at least we could understand, yeah, you know, there's no way to a hundred percent keep all these people away from children. They're going to find a way to get to kids. We understand that, but we've got to stop it and nip it in the bud and be proactive. Instead now it's just, no, we're just going to hide it.

Well, then that's on you. That's your fault now. And let me just, just so there's no like lack of clarity. Let me read right from the article about, about what the church is doing to protect themselves because they're not acting to protect the kids, right? Yep. So a bankruptcy proceeding would freeze the lawsuits and compensation for victims would become part of the bankruptcy judgment. Shannon Doherty, an activist who's campaigned for statute of limitation changes in Pennsylvania and is now running for state Senate said he feared victims would get far less out of a bankruptcy settlement and would not get the day in court that they sought. Quote, if you're a victim that finally had your opportunity to seek justice, it's horrendous. That's how the Catholic diocese operates. They're protecting the secrets, the assets.

So what they're saying is like by filing for bankruptcy, that puts all of the assets under the chapter, probably, I don't know what the chapter is, but under the bankruptcy trustee's protection. And then any liabilities attached to that organization then have to be doled out to the creditors, essentially, from the trustee. So it stops the process. That's what bankruptcy is designed to do, is to stem the bleeding of an organization and to make it possible for them to restructure their debts and continue forward. Bankruptcy is actually a way to structure a business to reorganize your debts in order to not go out of business. That's what it's for.

So like what they're doing here is not saying like, oh man, we had a systemic problem and like we had a moral bankruptcy and we had a moral failing and we need to do the right thing for the people involved in the diocese. What they're doing is like saying like, fuck, how do we save the most money in this process?

How do we not go out of business? Yep. 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 before I get to This Week in Trump and start reading off some of the stories, I did want to talk for a second, Tom, about last night's debate. The Nevada debate happened.

A couple of interesting moments happened last night. Most notably, Liz Warren stop and frist Bloomberg, which was really interesting. She did slam him against the wall, baby. Yeah, she had permission to treat him like a hostile witness and she did. My God,

that was unbelievable. She fucking, that is like a strip search fist up your ass she did to him last night. She profiled him and fucking, she fucking tased him, bro. All over the

place. Oh, what I love was the, my favorite moment of, of that was, you know, she was, she was digging at him all night, but one of my favorite moments was when she called him out because they, they specifically called them out. The, the, the, the people who were asking the questions, the moderators asked a question about his previous sexual assault lawsuits. Now, this is a guy whose sexual harassment, sexual assault lawsuits total over 40, and it's like 64 different people have tried to sue him in the past, right? So that's an immense amount of lawsuits for sexual harassment and sexual assault. And he was asked about this and he had a really weak sauce answer.

And Liz jumped in and said, hold on, I want to talk about this for a second because this is a guy whose answer is basically, well, I'm nice to some women. Oh my God, it was amazing. And then she went on to say, look, here's the thing. There's a bunch of non-disclosure agreements that you have with these women. Why don't you just

right now release them from their non-disclosure agreements so we can hear what their side of the story is. And he just kind of said, no, it was amazing. Cause he was like, well, they signed it and it says non-disclosure. They got to live with that. At one point, like, at one point, like, he's like, look, not all these lawsuits are against me. Some of them are against, like, my company. So the ones that are against me, they probably just didn't like my jokes. That's what he said.

Yeah, they probably didn't like my jokes. And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. Because when you, because that's, like like how fucking awful is that to women to be to say like oh you know what women women are so sensitive they don't know the difference between a joke and sexual fucking harassment yep that's exactly what that's oh women are so sensitive they'll sue you for anything these days right you tell a bad joke and, oh, it's lawsuit this and it's me too that. Women, huh? Jeez. That's exactly it. Take my secretary, please. That's exactly it.

I did and she sued me. I just want to say, though, that today there was an article that released about Bloomberg where he said his taxes were way too complicated to release the tax returns. Get the fuck out of here. And I just said, I said, I posted it to Twitter and I said, this is Trump in a different suit, folks. That's all it is.

Yeah. It's Trump in a different suit. It's a disgrace that Bloomberg is even on that field, on that stage, mainly because he bought his way out there. It's an embarrassment. I hope that this is the last time we see him

because he would get so wrecked by, I mean, he's going to get so wrecked every single time he says anything from this point on. It's really just good to just hide and not say anything. Truth doesn't matter at this point, right? The truth doesn't matter. And not only that integrity doesn't matter. We see it constantly where people, hypocrisy doesn't matter. All these things that we thought forever mattered. They don't matter anymore. forever mattered. They don't matter anymore. And even in that time, our side still, I think, does have a grasp on it, tenuous as it is, of all those qualities. And it still does matter at least a little bit to our side. So he's getting raked over the coals and he can't just do what

Trump did when they raked him over the coals, which was say, I'd put you in jail or just be snappy and say something else. He can't do that. He's stuck. And so he's in a position where he's just going to keep on getting beat up over and over and over again. I hope he drops out real soon. I will say about Bloomberg, genuinely, on the plus side is he's richer than fucking God. He's got an astonishing amount of money. And if he wants to spend that damaging Trump's reputation, I'm okay with that. Yeah. Right. So the attack ads directly on Trump, if he wants to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars damaging Trump, I'm, I'm okay with that. I don't think he has a shot in hell at getting the nomination. I don't

think if he gets the nomination, there's no shot in hell he's going to win. So that's fucking pointless. And we pissed that opportunity down the drain. So that's a goddamn tragedy. But like, I'll also say, like, I've never seen any human being look as fucking lifeless and expressionless. Yeah. As Bloomberg. Holy shit.

He's unelectable just for that. Like there's no way that the American people are going to look at a guy whose net worth is about $69 billion, who helped George W. Bush get elected in 2004, who's donated, who's been a Republican when it suited him, is a Democrat when it suits him. There's no way, there's no way. And who can't smile, who can't come up with a reason? Like, you know, like he's a terrible, terrible candidate. Like, like the more I learn about Bloomberg, the more I'm like, oh fuck, really? Yeah. Like, and this isn't purity test stuff. Like this is like, cause I hate that shit. No, I'm with you there. I'm with you there. But this guy, this guy's repulsive.

He's repulsive. Really a bad person. And the other thing too is, you know, I also feel like this isn't a purity test when it comes to Biden either. Because he's been awful too in the past. He has bad shit in his past that will come up over and over and over again. And even if it is Republican light, it's still not good. I don't want it. So there's a couple of people that I'm not,

this isn't a purity test. This is, you can't even hang with a regular middle of the road Democrat, let alone somebody who's gonna try to be progressive. So get out of here. I don't wanna hear from you. So there's a couple of people on the stage that are like that.

So I'm totally down with, I mean, right now, everybody has got every single goddamn opinion about what's gonna happen in this race. People are already calling it for Trump. People are, I mean, right now, everybody has got every single goddamn opinion about what's going to happen in this, in this race. People are already calling it for Trump. People are, I mean, it's just, it's getting to the point where it's getting, it's getting nuts. There's been two primaries, man, two primaries that literally aren't indicative of anything and have never been indicative of anything ever in the history. So let's pretend, let's stop pretending that these things are, are some sort of signpost

that can show us exactly what's gonna happen with the nomination. Let's just stop and just watch what happens on Super Tuesday and pay attention to those types of things and forget that two tiny little places had a fucking caucus in a primary and let's move on. It's gonna be two weeks. Then y'all have some meat to understand

where things are going. Until then, let's not pretend that we know going to be two weeks. Then you'll have some meat to understand where things are going. Until then, let's not pretend that we know exactly. We can prognosticate. Man, motherfuckers tried to do that last year. It didn't work. Last election cycle. 538 had a lot of different things on there. All that stuff was not true.

Please don't do this. So this week in Trump, we're going to talk about the 11 criminals granted clemency by Trump, one of which is a former governor of Illinois. We're going to talk about how Trump called Roche and told him not to apologize for homophobic attacks on Pete Buttigieg. We're going to talk about how the White House denies claim that Trump offered pardon deal to Julian Assange to Julian Assange and Julian Assange's lawyers say that's not true. And then we are also going to talk about the president was right to weigh in right wing lawmakers defend Trump and Barr's handling of

the Roger Stone case. Let's start with the Roger Stone case. It looks like there's a bunch of people, large names in U.S. politics. I'm going to name two, Louie Gohmert and Devin Nunez. Both had things to say about the people who were involved in the Stone case, specifically talking about the head juror calling her a partisan hack or whatever, attacking her for being partisan and uh, hack or whatever, attacking her for being a partisan and saying, uh, and they're also talking about how it was right for Bill Barr to swoop in and for the justice department to come in and try to change those sentencing guidelines that they, that they had initially put forward.

He talked about this last week on last week's show. Um, this, what, what, what blows me away for this is I don't think, and someone can correct me, but I don't think, I mean, maybe the jurors can do some suggesting, but I don't think they have a lot to do with the sentencing. I thought that had to do with the judge. And being partisan and even being a head juror doesn't override other people's autonomy. And so this idea that even if they were partisan, who cares? There's fucking other people in the room that can have autonomy and say out loud, I disagree. I don't think Roger Stone did it. All of them unanimously agreed he was guilty. Yeah. Most people are

partisan. That's how the country works right now. Yeah. Most people are on one side or the other. Like I'm sure, I'm sure their side would not be bitching too much if their side, if like the head juror was a partisan Republican. Yeah. Right. That's nonsense. Like most people have some political feeling or inclination. It'll be a really weird jury of 12 people that just like are all like, yeah, I don't have any feelings about politics. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not political at all. I don't even pay attention. I never even turned the television on. Neither one. You know, you know what I am? I'm a Pennsylvania independent. I'm just some weird, crazy, undecided, independent there. But, but all these people are complaining about how it was

rigged against, uhged against Stone somehow. They do this constantly where they keep attacking people that are just doing their jobs. They did it with Vindman. They did that. They do this with jurors. They do this with people that are ambassadors.

They do it with all these people that are literally just doing their job and they attack them and call them awful and partisan and yada, yada, yada. And it's only because they're not coming in on their side because if they were coming in on their side as partisan, they would never even bring it up. And in fact, they'd attack you for saying anything about it. I mean, this is like straight mob tactics, right? Like attack the person.

Yeah. Make them afraid to do what they're supposed to do. the person, make them afraid to do what they're supposed to do. Like wield your power in such a way that people who are like charged with doing a duty are afraid to do that duty. Like, well, and then, and then that leads directly into the 11 people that were granted clemency by Trump. One of which is Rod Blagojevich, who was a governor here in, in, in Illinois, who was a governor here in Illinois who was, he was accused of selling a Senate seat. He lied to the FBI. He was into deep into pay to play politics.

He got, I want to say it was like 24 counts of charges were brought against him. And he was found guilty of a bunch of stuff. First, he was found guilty of lying to the FBI and then found guilty of a bunch of stuff. First, he was found guilty of lying to the FBI and then found guilty of a bunch of other stuff in his second trial. He has been spending his time behind federal prison bars for a long time.

And for some reason, Trump lets him out. And I gotta say this, and I posted a tweet about this, but when he was being accused, I never once called that a witch hunt. He's on my side. This is a guy on my side. He's a Democrat.

He's been a Democrat forever, right? I never voted for him, but he was a Democrat. I voted, I think I voted Green Party when he ran because I hated him so much. He's a repulsive person. But he's an absolute repulsive,

shitty guy. That's a great way to put it. But the guy, the fact is, is that I never once, when he was being raked over the coals for all the wrongdoing he had done, I never once said, oh, that's bullshit. Oh, they got that stuff illegally. Oh, this is a, this is a hit job by the FBI. This is a witch hunt. I never once said any of that stuff. I never stuck up for him.

When I found out that he was accused of that stuff and then tried and convicted, I never once said, oh, that's way too much time or, oh, they should let him out or they should look at all the good stuff. He never once said anything. I was like, good, send him to jail. And he was on my side, ostensibly on my side, but he was on my side, right? But I don't give a shit. Fuck you. You do something wrong. You should go to jail. But look at all these people. And I got to ask the Trump supporters out there, especially the far right ones. What the fuck are you thinking? He's releasing a guy from jail. That's totally opposite of him. He's essentially bizarro Trump. He's got the same hairdo, but it's dark hair. At least he used to be now it's all white, but it's dark hair. And he's, he basically is a

bizarro Trump. He had a lot of different policies and a different stance is exactly opposite stance is still a crook, but, but, uh, exactly the opposite stance is a Trump. What the fuck? How can you defend this as a Republican who's constantly singing my side, rah, rah, rah? What the fuck are you? How are you navigating this landmine of cognitive dissonance, this landmine field of cognitive dissonance you have to go through right now? Rod Blagojevich is on tape. On tape, you can to go through right now rod blagojevich is on tape on tape you can listen to it right now you could go you could fucking google this you could listen to his tapes of him saying about this the obama senate seat i've got this thing and it's fucking gold yeah and i'm not giving it away for free yep yep like there is no equivocation. He also extorted a children's hospital.

Well, him and Trump, again, they have a lot in common, right? You know, they go after charities. So it makes sense. Like he's a terrible, and Trump's like, yeah, I think it's terrible what happened to him. He was railroaded or fucking whatever. Like get the fuck out of here. Like I saw something that said like, and I don't know how true it was, that, like, Blagojevich's wife was on TV talking about how great Trump was. And then very coincidentally, Trump commuted Blagojevich's sentence. Oh, yeah. Well, you can't know the operation in Trump's mind. You don't know if that was in there beforehand or if he had contacted her beforehand.

No, no idea. No idea. was in there beforehand or if he had contacted her beforehand no no idea no idea but like i do know that blagojevich of all people is like he's so guilty you could just hear him be like i'm guilty so guilty yep yep crazy and it's not just him there was a bunch of other people and they're just random weird rich people that you just look at the list and you say why on earth is he commuting the sentences of these people but it doesn't matter because he's just, he's essentially running amok at this point and nobody can rail him in. Yeah. And these are all the same kind of person.

They're rich, connected, white collar criminals. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's who he's like, because like once they get out, these are all, I really think like once they get out, these are people that are connected still that can help him win reelection. Well, and there's, there's some people who literally donated a shit ton of money to his campaign and their person got, that sentence got commuted. That's buying, okay. It literally is the same thing. I mean, it's, it's essentially what Blago did. It's essentially the same thing. He had something that was worth gold and he wasn't going to give it away for free.

Right. And he didn't. Basically, they donated to his... I mean, it's unbelievable. I don't know how you, as a Republican, see Trump do this and wonder what the fuck is up in his head. I don't know how you defend this.

I can't wait to see the people I know that are straight up Republicans because I'm going to ask them about this. This is the one thing I'm going to add. Normally, avoid these conversations. I will not avoid this conversation. Yeah, this seems indefensible. Especially in Illinois because people in Illinois know how bad this guy was. And I want to go up to them and say, how do you defend that? What do you think? Did you ever vote for Blagg before? The Blags? Did you ever vote for him? Would you have ever voted for him?

Do you understand what he did? Why on earth would Trump do this? Why do you still support Trump after he did this? Now, I want to talk too about the Julian Assange claim. Julian Assange's lawyers made a claim that this old senator, who used to be a senator, he's not a senator, a congressman, by the name of Dana Rohrabacher. Yeah, go ahead with that pronunciation.

I don't know. Whatever. I don't know. Rago Flagerblacker. Flagerblicker. Let me try it. Hold on. Yeah.

Let me try it. I'm going to get in front of me. I'm going to try it. Go. Okay. Roar shock test. Very close. No, no. It's what you see in it, Cecil. Yeah, it's very close. It's very close. I'm going to get in front of me here. I'm going to try it. Go. Okay. Roar shock test. Very close. It's what you see in it, Cecil.

Yeah, it's very close. I'm going to try for real. Yeah, I see a penis, Tom. That's what I see. I see an orange toupee. Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher.

Whatever. Dana, anyway, Dana, Congressman, ex-Congressman Dana, he basically, now even according to some of the things that he said, he tried to broker a deal with Assange. They were basically offering a way for him to not be extradited and giving him some clemency in some way. And their side supposedly refused. This guy, according to him, he did this, but he did it without the White House approval. But now they're saying no, that the lawyers are saying, no, he had White House approval. Now this came out in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago that this happened, but this is the first link there is to the actual White House giving that go ahead.

You know, my prediction here is this would be a scandal if time still made sense. Yeah. You know, right. If we weren't in bizarro land, it would be a scandal. It'd be a huge scandal for any other president in the history of the president. This will blow over in a way that like people won't even bother to investigate it to see if it's true because you'll be like, we're sort of at a place where you're like, okay, I know I got stabbed, but I also got shot. So like, I'm not going to worry about the stab wound until I patch up the other. You know, we're just constantly under attack in some ways. We're just like, all right, fine.

I broke my toe. I got other shit to worry about. This last one, this is talking about Rush Limbaugh. Trump called Rush Limbaugh and told him not to apologize for homophobic attacks on Pete Buttigieg. This is exactly what it sounds like. This is from Politics USA. I, you know, this doesn't surprise me at all.

No, no. And this, I don't think that there was any danger before a phone call that Rush was going to apologize for his terrible comments because this is the same guy who told a black caller to get the bone out of her nose. Yeah. This is Rush Limbaugh is, he is, there's no way that you cannot defend him from these truths, right? He is a homophobe. He is a racist and he is a misogynist and rampantly, obviously. So like in a way that like, you don't have to read into things a little bit and like, Oh no. Yeah. There's nothing veiled. There's nothing. There's no words you have to parse

through. There's no like special fucking dog whistle language that you have to like, learn how to speak. He's like openly a homophobic racist massages. He's a terrible, terrible person. And he's always been a terrible person and he's never gotten any better. And like the best thing about him right now is his cancer. The best thing about Rush Limbaugh is the terrible, terrible cancer eating away at his insides.

That is the greatest thing in him will ultimately destroy him and leave us all better for his demise. I hope that his cancer gets the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm just saying. We should put his cancer in for the Nobel Peace Prize next year. Then everybody will be like, no, I think you're right. I think that's, well, absolutely. We're going to give it to Rush Limbaugh's

malignant tumor. If Rush Limbaugh's malignant tumor was like on one of those stages where like people had to bet to take it out on a date, he would make millions because people would fuck that thing. People would be like

i'll pay a million dollars to fuck rush limbaugh's cancer that's how much i fuck his tumor i'll pay a million dollars to fuck his tumor the tumor wakes up with a cigar in its mouth in the morning you know i would definitely listen to this Toomer's TED Talk. I would absolutely. Absolutely. Hi, everyone. Tom and Cecil wanted me to take a moment to thank all you patrons. But unfortunately, there's sad news. See, every day we find out there are more people who aren't already patrons.

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You've done so much. But we still need you. Feel him. If you've found comfort, why not pledge today? Oh my gosh! Gary's flying! You did it, patrons!

Thank you, patrons. Thank you. It's beautiful. Thank you. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. May you find some comfort there. You can find that comfort today by becoming a patron. Yeah, yeah, comfort there, baby. Patreon.com slash DissonancePod. Those sad dogs, oh God.

Those sad dogs. So we want to thank everyone who patronizes our show. We want to thank our patrons, of course. All our patrons. Our patrons are wonderful. But we want to thank specifically our newest patrons emily james sacco i own later cheese.com uh what uh james the custodial humanist larry kenny and kyle's app company laura and scott and the the people who are going to walk away with a mug this week, we would like to give a mug to Sacco, the custodial humanist, and Kyle and Kenny's app company.

Please send us a message at dissonance.podcast.gmail.com or send a message to ian at dissonancepod.com to get your free citation needed mug. Thank you so much for joining up and being patrons. We will send it to you. Send us your snail mail address

and we'll ship that out to you. We want to thank everybody who has become a patron and we want to urge people to become patrons. We got a message from she who must not be named that she said,

how did you not get my Harry Potter reference in my patron name? I don't know anything about Harry Potter. How dare you? How dare you? That's like being like, that's like saying, Tom, I can't believe you didn't get my Chicago Bears reference in my patron name.

See, and I would understand that because I love baseball. Thank you, though, for becoming a patron. She must not be named. And I do know that has to do with Dumbledorf. We got a message from Michael. And Michael says, one small correction,

both 501c3 and 501c4 organizations are tax exempt. Only donations from 501c3 orgs are tax deductible by the person donating. Okay. So that's how that works. And look, we thank you for the correction. It turns out we didn't know as much as they didn't know. So David Barton has the same level

of accounting knowledge that we have. Which is very little. Which is not a lot. Tom, Joe sent in the greatest picture ever of Jim Baker. Now this is a picture we've seen before, but we're going to post it on this week's show notes. They said, this is their favorite picture of Jim Baker. I wonder how many of his followers remember it. And I would say they might remember it, but they have either washed out of

their memory or they don't care. But this is an amazing picture of Jim Baker. Go to this episode. This is episode 512, and this will be in the show notes. It's an amazing picture of Jim. We also wound up getting an image. This is a tweet that was, that was posted on, on Twitter, of course. And, uh, someone, someone had done a bit of, uh, of finagling with Neapolitan ice cream containers. So we're going to put it on this week's show notes. We've seen this before, but we want to post it here so you can take a look at it. This is episode 512. Uh, I want to give people an update on the Comcast problems we were having from last week.

So I had said that Comcast, I don't know if people tuned in to last week's show. We did play the entire rant on the show last week that I did about Comcast and their failing service and how bad they are.

But last week's episode, we talked about how I contacted them via Twitter. And I contacted them because our Twitter following happens to be big enough where they actually paid attention. And they did pay attention. And they've been messaging me back and forth. And I have not been able to get them to stop

basically saying over and over, we need to send a tech out. I have said many, many times, Tom, I must have said six different times to them. Look, you send a tech out, contact that guy. There's been a tech. I spent two and a half hours here in our studio with him fiddling around with all the different stuff and replacing stuff.

And he said that there was nothing wrong with anything in here. It has to be an outside line. And they said, sorry, we have to send a tech out. Sorry. That's literally their answer to everything. And I think it's because they want to keep pushing the problem back to me

so they don't have to spend any money doing anything outside, which is where the actual problem is going to everything. And I think it's because they want to keep pushing the problem back to me so they don't have to spend any money doing anything outside, which is where the actual problem is going to be. We're going to probably shift away from Comcast. I do not feel like I'm going to be spending an hour and a half to two hours waiting for some guy to find his ass with two hands here inside our studio. So that's not of interest to me. But I did want to mention that Char sent in a message and she said, I had to laugh listening to you guys rant about Comcast. It reminds me of what it was like here in rural Michigan. Now, this is some unbelievable shit.

Up until three years ago, our only options were dial-up or satellite internet. Satellite was awful because not only is it $250 a month for residential services, but you have a data limit equivalent to about two to three YouTube videos before they slow down your bandwidth for a day. And in winter, it barely works. Now we have a great option of local wireless broadband service. It's super flaky, but it works efficiently a couple days a week.

I love how much it is. It's so funny. A couple of days a week. God, that's the problem living rurally. I remember when I first moved out, I lived rurally for about four years, rural for Chicago, which is still relatively populated. It was a town of about 15,000 people. But I lived rurally and they had just gotten

Comcast out where I was living. And so that was good. But for my first couple days, I had dial-up internet. And this was in 2004 when dial-up internet was nearly unheard of, but I just didn't have any other options. And then the people that still live far away out there where they don't have Comcast, they have satellite internet and satellite internet is the worst. The satellite internet is terrible. It's like the upload and download speed. It's like old timey internet. It's like dial-up. It's real bad. And so they have some real difficult times

out there with that. But, you know, living rurally, they still don't have good infrastructure here in this country. Now, granted, it's a huge country, but they still don't have good infrastructure. Hell, they don't even have good infrastructure in Chicago.

It took me five or six weeks to get fiber optic back when I wanted fiber optic in my old place. It took me five or six weeks to get that set up and it took them forever to finally come over and try to set that all up. And my building was already wired for fiber optic when it was built because it was a brand new building. It was insane to just try to get them to get there. Part of the problem is like, it's just that there's only the one option. Yeah. It's the monopoly. Yeah. They're just,

it's like, yeah, we've got it wired up, but like, if we don't get to you, we don't fucking get to you. All right. Well, we did not stream tonight, so there is no stream for this week, but we hope to stream next week. So join us next Thursday, Thursday night at 9 p.m. Central. It's our great hope to have a stream for you. And we will be live for a little bit of time. We're not sure how long. Sometimes they're about as much as an hour

and they're a lot of fun. So join us for our stream next week at 9 p.m. Central. We're on all the popular broadcasting types of internet places. You can check us out on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and others, Twitter and other places.

We hope that you do wind up joining us. But that is going to wrap it up for this week. We will talk to you next week, but 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.

Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-altern 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 crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. 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, 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 Outro Music