Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 611: Sexy Military Car Wash

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Show Notes  

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 Glur Hill Studios in Chicago and beyond and beyond beyond, and beyond, 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 hope. This is episode 611. Man, we can't get shit done, bro. Lots of steps back today. Lots of steps back. Right before Cease and I got on, we record on Thursday. By Monday, this will be, by Monday, there'll be some new fresh hell. But right before we got on, I look at the times and it's the Supreme Court strikes down Biden's authority to have a mandate for businesses over a hundred employees. And I thought, oh shit, that's bad news. But I thought that would be the big bad news that we would talk about.

And then I get on with Cecil and he's like, hey man, do you hear cinema's not going to support filibuster reform for the voting and voting rights legislation? And I was like, cool. All right. Neat, neat, neat, neat. That's Thursday. Thursday evening. Fucking Thursday, dude. And like, this is going to be three days from now, people will have forgotten this. Yeah, I know, right? People will have forgotten it. It's crazy to me because there's going to be some stuff we're going to talk about that I had completely forgotten about.

You know, we're talking about like, because we're going to talk about Trump later. And there's some shit I fucking completely forgot about. Like 100%, like my brain was just like, and then I was like, wait, he did do that. That's absolutely right. It's insane to me how quickly the bad news, I mean, like we're all just fucking ducks

and it is just rolling off our backs because there's never, it's rare that there's good news and the bad news doesn't feel like as swift a gut punch anymore. Yeah, well, the bad news just gets replaced by somehow worsening news. Right. Hits keep on coming, baby.

It's distressing. This is like a snowball made entirely out of shit that is constantly rolling downhill and gathering speed. And which we are supposed to both catch and push back up the fucking hill. Sisyphus-like, yeah. Yeah, we are shitifice is what we are. It's like you're deep-throating a shitsicle. You know what I mean? It's just the worst.

It's the worst. Man, it's one thing for the incredibly right-wing, entirely-to-be-expected Supreme Court to strike down the mandate. I think that's intensely upsetting. We will talk about that. But it's another different, also, I guess, expected betrayal when Kyrsten Sinema refuses to back filibuster reform. When the filibuster reform, first of all, fixes a fucking broken garbage system. The Senate is a broken institution. It's a shit institution made up of curmudgeonly old fuckers who are absolutely obstructionist to the very idea

of accomplishing even the most basic tasks of democracy. And to do that in the face of trying to accomplish fucking election reform? Yeah, man. How the fuck do you stand in front of anybody and ask them for their vote when you have failed to secure for them the right to fucking vote? You know, how do you stand there as a woman? Because, you know how do you stand there as a woman because you know what i mean like like this is the problem is is that is that this country for a lot of its existence was not governed by or directed by women at all right how do you stand there as a woman looking down the barrel of voting reform and be like, nah, we're good.

We're good now. You know what I mean? Like that's closing the door behind you. It's closing the, it's basically saying I got mine and I'm going to close the door behind me and I don't care who else gets it, right? Because it's not just about, it's about access to voting. It's about accessing the polls.

It's about not closing polls in poor neighborhoods. It's about not making people who don't have time during the day because they have to work three jobs to go get a voter ID somewhere. When we literally have ways in which to identify voters right now, we don't need to add another whole step to the process to force someone who is already low income,

who may not have the transportation, who may not be able to get off of work, force them to go get some sort of state ID that they may not even need. The fact is, is like these things compound and they take little subsections of people out of the voting populace. They just basically pluck them out. And it's enough to disturb the entire apple cart. It's enough to knock it all

over. Well, we've seen time and time again, and this bears out no matter what you study, that making things less convenient reduces the likelihood of that event, right? So, and a great example is when the government of India made a certain poison more difficult to come by. There was a pesticide that was being used very frequently for people to commit suicide. It was a very commonly available, very ready poison, and people were using it to commit suicide. That pesticide was made less available, so it was more difficult to come by. Suicides as a whole dropped. When you make it less convenient for people to act in a certain way, you reduce the overall number of actions within that category. And they are very clearly and out loud and everything targeting demographically Democrat

voters. They've said as much. So it's not like this is the Tom and Cecil speculation hour, right? The Republicans have come out and said, if voter reform passes, we will never get another Republican in office. So that's why they're passing these voting restriction laws is because they know they have to rig the game. And it is rigging the game because a democracy should seek out and cherish the vote of every citizen. That's what a democracy should do. It should they're trying to cut away what they're really trying to do.

And this is the main thing that they wanted to do. And this was why they threw up all that bullshit about voter fraud. This is why they talked about this for months and months and months, even though there was never an ounce of voter fraud that was found. And the only voter fraud they found

was onesie twosies for Trump. I know, it was all Republican fraud. It's like all Republicans voting for Trump, like taking dead mom, dead mother-in-law's fucking vote and voting for Trump. I know, it was all Republican fraud. It's like all Republicans voting for Trump, like taking dead mom, dead mother-in-law's fucking vote and voting for Trump. What they wanted to do

from the beginning, and we called this fucking a year ago, what they wanted to do from the beginning was demonize mail-in voting and demonize

early voting because those things make it easier for people that are on the margins, people of color, people, anybody who has a hard time voting normally, especially when we're talking about like they don't have a polling center anywhere near them. Like, like if you make early voting a thing, they have an opportunity to be in a place where they can vote. And that makes it more,

that makes it easier for them. They have time when they're away from work, when they can like, it's a Saturday, I can just go vote today. Or, you know, I'm off on Friday. I can just go vote that day instead of making it one day during business hours. It's a long period of time. And so, and mail-in voting during Corona. I know. Are you kidding? We should be, we should have mail-in voting forever. It was so fucking easy and it was amazing. I got to sit down on my couch and look up judges. I never did that before. I've always got kind of gone in with like a half-ass sheet that I sometimes would kind of look at, but not really. And like fucking this time I was like, fuck that guy, fuck that guy, fuck that guy. It was amazing.

Yeah. One of the voting restrictions that they passed, I don't remember if this is Georgia or not, but I tend to think that it was, but I'm sure I'll get corrected. You know, they, they purposely restricted voting on Sundays. So some of the early voting was available on Sundays and they restricted it on Sundays with the express purpose of limiting black people from using churches. So churches would gather people. They'd all gather together on a Sunday and then they'd pile into church vans and shit and they would drive them to the fucking early voting and polling places that were available. And they restricted that shit for Sundays. It's diabolical.

It's diabolical. And fuck you. That is to disenfranchise black people. And fucking Tom, all those people get on their fucking knees and jerk every religious fucking dick off onto their face, right? While they're campaigning. But they wind up disenfranchising people who believe the exact same thing as them based on that.

It's unbelievable. That's wretched. It's disgusting. And it's just bullshit. And you know what? We're going to wind up with a system now because one person doesn't want to change anything. We're going to wind up with a system of voting. And I know that in some places, right?

In some places, they are starting to vote down some of these gerrymandered maps. Ohio did this week. Even in some of these places, I'm looking, I'm like, are you kidding me? Get the fuck out of here. There's no way we're going to have that because it's so crazily gerrymandered,

they won't allow it. And that's happened in a couple places already. I will say, man, you know, millions of people voted in California and that number made the number look really big, right? Biden won by a lot, but you know, you didn't win by a ton in a couple of like 11,000 votes or something in Georgia. Couple other places were, you know were 10 or 15,000 votes. It's a slim amount of votes. If you had 200,000 votes that you could give to Trump and flip the other way, he could have won the election. Oh, yeah, absolutely, man.

And it's going to hold true for not just presidential elections, but it's going to define the state of our politics for generations to come. Because these things- It'll be worse on the lower level. Worse on the lower level. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So Kristen Sinema, she fucked over essentially an entire generation of people. So remember that name. And your point is well taken, Cecil, is that when it was the turn of women to fight for the right to vote, which they should not have even had to fight for, but when they had to fight for the right to vote, they got the fucking vote. And every day that they didn't have it, they were disenfranchised. And the idea that anybody who is part of a group that has been systematically disenfranchised would not look and say, holy shit, when it happened to people like me, it was unfair. is part of a group that has been systematically disenfranchised, would not look and say,

holy shit, when it happened to people like me, it was unfair. And I cannot allow that to happen to people like you. That we are unable or unwilling to do that is fucking traitorous. And like, we got to talk a little bit about the fucking mandate, the vaccine mandate, just a little bit getting shut down. So again, i said at the top i think it's unsurprising because the goddamn supreme court is stacked by a giant fucking egg carton full of assholes so yeah unsurprising that this this didn't go through i think they would thwart literally anything biden attempted to do if they had even the barest legal justification to do it.

Sure, sure. But to be a nation in the middle of a pandemic that is surging, worse than it has ever surged, with a death rate that is climbing right now on a 14-day average, double digits and growing every single day, with all of that going on, and to look everybody in the eye and say, you know what? He doesn't have the authority to keep us safe. OSHA has the authority,

and he's trying to do this through OSHA. OSHA can say everybody at this factory has to wear a hard hat. If you're on say everybody at this factory has to wear a hard hat. If you're on the factory floor, you got to wear a hard hat. Hard hat zone. You got to wear steel-toed boots. You know? You can't pile shit

too high because it might be a fire hazard. OSHA has lots of rules. If I have to wear steel-toed boots, that only protects my fucking biscuits, man. That's it. Nobody else's feet are protected. Doesn't protect anyone else in the entire factory.

But a motherfucking vaccine and testing mandate literally protects the entire country. To some degree, it protects everybody. So to turn away a vaccine and testing mandate for what are clearly political reasons seems just so, it's just evidence that as a country, we've lost the fucking thread

and we have lost the ability to do great and important things. And we used to be able to do great and important things, Cecil. And I know we've talked about this before, but it's so fucking upsetting to drive around on the fucking interstates, which are great and important things, and to have visited someplace like Hoover Dam,

which was a great and important construction project, to look at the fact of the space shuttle program and NASA, and we're done, man. To some degree, our ability as a nation to bind together and aggregate our resources to do great and important things is over. Great and important things still happen, but they happen piecemeal by capitalism. Yeah.

And that makes them less great. And it makes a lot of them less capitalism. Yeah. And that makes them less great. And it makes a lot of them less likely. Yeah. In spite of, I mean, a lot of times in spite of, we have stopped trying to find the truth and we are only taking a partisan truth. Yeah. Now it's just a partisan truth.

That's all we have is a partisan truth. And even though I think the liberals have a reality, they have a reality bias, right? We're biased towards reality. It doesn't matter because a lot of the nation is controlled by people who don't pay attention to that. They only pay attention to what their side wants to say about something.

And it's swayed deeply by a ethic of freedom, right? And I wonder, I really do wonder like how other countries deal with stuff like this, because I know like freedom, I'm not stupid enough to know, I'm not so stupid that I think freedom is a uniquely American thing, right? I'm not that stupid, right? But I also recognize that freedom, thing. I'm not that stupid. But I also recognize that freedom, wearing freedom like a fucking cape kind of is. Wearing that freedom like a suit that you're going to walk around in kind of is. And it really feels uniquely American to basically make it so that you're so selfish that you're willing to let your need to be free impact other people.

We do it with guns. We've done it with guns forever, right? We've done it with guns forever where it's like all the other real civilized countries on the globe have all said, we're not doing this gun thing, man. Guns get held by like some fucking, you know, some cops. We got a couple of SWAT teams with a little escalated guns.

And then we've got, you know, you got to go through like a rigmarole to get a hunting gun if you want a hunting gun. But other than that, that's it. There's no guns. You just can't walk into the fucking gun store. But we love our gun freedom so much that we're willing to like watch people die constantly,

watch people commit suicide, watch people shoot up schools, watch incels shoot a bunch of people. We watch people bring them to fucking protests and shoot each other. So we're willing to do that for guns all the time. And there's just another version of that, right? It's another version of I want my freedom.

And my freedom means that if it hurts you too fucking bad, man, that's on you. And so, and so, so we have this, we have this really weird hyped up idea of freedom that it's not just where my freedom ends, where my nose ends. It's not like that. It's my freedom ends where I fucking want it to end and fuck you. It's my freedom ends where I fucking want it to end and fuck you. There's a, there seems to be like a continuum within societies between the individualistic and the communal. And you've got societies like, you know, Japan, which tend more toward a communal society in terms of like what they value. And I think on the total opposite end of the spectrum, divorced from every other nation I can think of, honestly,

is America on, America defines the individualistic end of the spectrum. Nobody else is even close. And that's not to say that other countries don't have strong ethos of individualism. I think countries like Australia is a great example. I think they have a very strong ethos of individualism. But they are willing to put that to the side when it comes to some social goods, right?

Like healthcare, for example, the well-being of other people. Guns. We are guns. Exactly. We are, we are, there are people in this country, serious people, important people, and influential people who would argue vociferously against any social safety net, any social safety net. We have very poor social safety nets in this country. The worst of any industrialized, free, rich Western nations. The worst. Just across the board. The worst. And there are people who still feel so strongly like it's too much. It's too much.

feel so strongly like it's too much. It's too much. I'm trying to remember who was saying that if we, some asshole on the right, I can't remember who, who was talking about the child tax credits and saying, well, if we keep giving those out, people are just going to use them for drugs. If we just keep, the child tax credits have been widely credited with keeping something like 18 million children from falling into poverty and hunger over the course of the last 20 months. And there's serious people out there who are thrilled that that program is now over, even though it costs vastly less than, say, our helicopter's budget, right? We spend more on fucking, like, helicopters and cruise missiles and fucking MREs and BDUs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking A, man. Sure, yeah. You know?

But, like, so, because, fuck you. That's the reason. Because it doesn't fit with that ethos of the individual. Please, officers. There's no need to use force. Let us handle this, weirdy. Keep your big nose out of this, eyeball. No one makes fun of my nose.

Damn. You guys were totally out of control. That's our job. We're peace officers. Yeah, you know the law. You gotta do what you gotta do. So this story, this came out this week. This is very interesting. This story comes from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Black Lives Matter protesters

were overwhelmingly peaceful. Our research finds the Black Lives Matter uprisings were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counter-protesters were reportedly directing it at the

protesters. No shit. How many videos have we seen? We have all of the evidence if you watch it in context. If you don't just watch three second fucking snippets and decide that three seconds is all the context you need for an event that lasts hours. If you watch the fucking events unfold in context, in their entirety, the fucking violence is kicked

off by the motherfucking fascist cops who jackbooted their way into these otherwise peaceful crowds and pushed and beat and kicked and sprayed and drove cars through crowds of people exercising their fucking First Amendment rights. Yeah, man. It was that we saw it again and again and again. Whenever it got kicked off,

it was somebody was kicking. It's not always, right? No. They said that, you know, like there's sometimes that there's opportunist people that are there that are trying to do some shit. There's counter protesters there that are kicking it off. And then there's police that are kicking it off. You know, it's not saying that there weren't violent people at these events, but it is saying that of the 7,500 that they were able to count these protests, and think about how many people that is, Tim, over the entire summer, 7,500 different protests, 3.7 of the protests involve property damage or vandalism. So we're talking about 3.7%, that's like 600 protests.

Out of 7,000, I mean, this is 7,000 protests. It's an immense amount of protests. And then, and then, you know, like that also doesn't say what level of damage was done. Right. You know, shit gets reported as like, you know, a couple of things get turned over or, you know, a couple of trash cans get overturned or whatever. And that's automatically like property damage. So you've got to look at it like that too, where it's like, is there significant property damage? Is there something going on? And then they talk about the violence too. The violence almost always throughout this whole thing. And you read it and you're just like, our research doesn't show any of the fucking narratives you've been hearing. None of the narratives that have been pushed. Our research

shows none of that. Our research shows that these were mostly peaceful protests. They were mostly kicked off by the police. And the police, like fucking people died at these protests. It's not just like, it's not like there was injuries and people died at these protests. And what we heard all summer was how awful these people are. Look at on Congress, you know, go back and watch the tape on C-SPAN. Watch those people stand up and scream

about Black Lives Matter and how they're destroying cities and they're destroying everything. Everything's going to hell because of Black Lives Matter. Go watch this shit from a year ago. Watch those people scream. And then you read this thing and you're like, yeah, that's exactly what we knew when we were watching all those fucking, when you watch all the full video. When you see the little Twitter twit thing that's like 10 seconds with no. And it looks like it's really bad for the people who are protesting. But then you find out later on that somebody like fucking bear sprayed him or something. Right. Well, let me, let me read right from, right from this article, a couple of things I think were really interesting. In many instances,

police reportedly began or escalated the violence, but some observers nonetheless blamed the protesters. The claim that the protests are violent, even when the police started that violence, can help local, state, and federal forces justify intentionally beating, gassing, or kettling the people marching, or reinforces politicians' calls for law and order. Given that the protesters were objecting to extrajudicial police killings of black citizens, protesters displayed an extraordinary level of nonviolent discipline, particularly for a campaign involving hundreds of documented incidents of apparent police brutality.

And I thought this next paragraph was interesting. How the news media frame protests influences how the public perceives them. Ambiguous framings, such as those describing clashes between protesters and police, can convey false information about which side is violent. For instance, an extensive archive reveals that police themselves allegedly instigated a number of reported clashes, which also likely led to more arrests, participant injuries, and possibly even property damage. When the news media tries to play this off, and they only do this for fucking black people, right? They don't do this for white people. They just don't. 6th fucking violent insurrection, the right-wing media has painted that time and time again as, you know, like a walk in the park, as people exercising their rights, as, but when it's fucking black people, all of a sudden, even the best journalistic enterprises often try to fucking find a middle ground, but there's not a middle ground.

There's not a middle ground. If I'm nonviolently asserting my First Amendment right for free speech and to gather in protest, both of which are protected rights, and the police come in and beat the shit out of me or tear gas me or illegally tell me to go home when I have a right to go out, where are all these fucking,

I love the fucking constitution motherfuckers when it comes to black people wanting to gather together and exercise their first amendment rights. They're too busy at home polishing their fucking guns and yammering online about how nobody better take away their second amendment rights. It's all bullshit.

We give different rights to different groups in this country and we are allowed to beat the ever-loving shit out of black people. And there's complete impunity. I have not heard, maybe there have been, but I haven't heard of any fucking arrests of these cops. We've got these guys on fucking video. The New York Times, when this shit was kicking off see so i remember watching or looking at a new york times piece that they had online where they analyzed footage and footage and footage and they showed i remember this terrible instances and instances and instances like 600 instances of police brutality the police were like shooting fucking pepper balls at goddamn protesters and reporters, man. They were seeking to do that

because they wanted to control the narrative. That's why you arrest the reporters. That's why you go after the people with the cameras. You're trying to control the fucking narrative of this thing. Because if you control the narrative, if you present this as a clash, if you paint a one-sided, if you paint one-sided violence as having two sides,

you skew the conversation. And if you skew the conversation away from the truth, it skews right. That's just what happens. It's just true. That's just exactly what happens. And it's all copaganda, right? It's all that copaganda stuff, right?

Where it's like the cops get this privileged place where whatever they say to anybody is automatically believed. But we know that they lie just like everybody else in any kind of situation when they get called on something. Cops lie just as often as anybody else does. And so they'll like, you know,

look at what happened with Laquan McDonald here in Chicago. A cop fucking, we saw the footage because they constantly pressured to get that footage out but four or five people that were police officers that were there fucking basically lied they I mean didn't basically they absolutely lied straight up lied on reports so you know like look at that happen look at what happened in fucking Minnesota we covered it maybe a month or two ago where those

guys were driving around in the vans and they were just shooting people like with fucking these these these less than lethal guns right that were just walking down the street. They weren't even protesting. They just wanted to injure somebody, right? Think about how, and I also think too, you're a police officer, they're protesting you and you're there to keep the peace. So of course you feel upset. You feel attacked. You feel peace. So, of course, you feel upset. You feel attacked. You feel, you know, so tell me that there wasn't a moment there somewhere in 7500 marches where a cop kicked it off because he was mad because they were protesting him. Right. Yeah.

Right. You know that happened. And I also tell you this. You know they don't have good impulse control because you could see it, Watch it fucking any tape and watch these watch the cops with their poor impulse control. Like use their authority as a hammer to attack even the most like the tiniest little old lady. You know what I mean? They do it all the time to intimidate and to scare people and to wield their power like a fucking hammer. And you tell me that they went out there to go protect people,

and they were the ones being protested against, and they did it all 100% by the books, and it was all the protesters? Bullshit. Protect people from what? This study shows that 96, 97% of these protests were nonviolent. I'll tell you what, the cops didn't help make them. It's not like they, oh, it would have been even less if it was,

get the fuck out of here. Get out of here with that nonsense. No one one's gonna sell me that and still watch the video of that fucking navy veteran who just walks up to talk to somebody and gets his fucking arm broken for what standing there or that like old man that gets pushed down yeah or like the people bleeding out his ears like a fucking sprinkler. And ignored. And walked past. Walked over. We saw videos of like the cops riding bicycles over people's fucking heads.

Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. Like the violence and that's, the thing is like, and this is something that I always have to keep in mind.

That's the, that's only what we have on tape. That doesn't mean that's all that's happened. Right? What we know and what we have on tape. That doesn't mean that's all that's happened, right? What we know and what we should always remember is that it's probably better now than it's ever been because it's all ubiquitously filmed. People of color have been telling us

that the police have been brutalizing and murdering their communities for years, for decades, for generations. And we have not listened. We have not listened. And the only thing that has changed is that now that shit is sometimes, but mostly not, statistically mostly not. Sometimes recorded.

Sometimes taped. That's it. The amount of murder. When that poor man was murdered for doing nothing more than going out for a fucking jog, the only reason that those people were arrested is because the New York Times pressured the city about why no arrests had been made. And then the guy who made the tape

thought that his fucking recording would be exonerating. He brought it to a radio station. The radio station put it on their website, and then that evidence came out. The DA had to turn herself in for dereliction of duty because they refused. She's being charged because they refused to do the right thing. The cops covered that murder up. The only reason that that's unusual is not because it happened. The reason that that's unusual is because we it happened. The reason that that's unusual is because we have the video evidence. This shit is happening. And the people of color have been

telling us for generations, we are being murdered in the streets by these fucking cops. And we have not been listening to them. And we've not been listening to them. Laquan McDonald would have never come to light if there was not body cam footage. That would have been 100% just thrown away. No one would have ever been able to prove anything, even though people would be like, there's no way he was going to do this. And like, he's fucking like the bullet wounds don't show that or whatever.

It doesn't matter. That's what the cops said. That's what happened. And so, and that happens all the time. It's that little tiny bit. And you're right. You know, the little bits that we do get is frightening, but imagine what we're not getting. And I was going to add one more thing.

Do you remember when the, it's not just a onesie twosie, like the guy getting beat up. Do you remember when they fucking corralled those people with tear gas on an entrance ramp? Yeah. They fucking corralled those people. They like fucking boxed them in and then they just fucking gassed them. They're just like, you're just going to get gassed. Trump, when he wanted to get to the fucking place,

they fucking tear gassed and used helicopters to scare people away. Like this is a terror campaign. This is a terror campaign to scare people not to do this. Absolutely. This is a terror campaign to force people of color to abandon the same civil

rights that white people hold supposedly so fucking sacred. That's it. Because I'll tell you what too, and I know this is a digression, but if black people and people of color and marginalized people, if they asserted their second amendment right with the same veracity oh yeah as white people did white people would fucking shit themselves they would absolutely shit with the black panthers yep that's what happened with the black panthers man cover your ears sweetie fuck this court fuck jim leahy fuck randy fuck those two idiot cops right there fuck suit dummies as a matter fact, fuck legal aid. Fuck Danny and Terry's Buffalo chicken wings. Fuck all the old wooden here. Fuck the moon. Fuck corn on the cob. Fuck squirrels. Fuck me. Fuck you. Fuck everything. This audio. These are two stories in a row, but yeah. the Independent, Fauci heard on hot mic calling Roger Marshall a moron after he did questioning.

So this is great. Fucking Roger Marshall is just badgering Fauci about his financial disclosures, basically saying, look, don't you think you should have to disclose your financials? Just like we here at Congress, you're a employee, and you're a highly paid federal employee, and people should know. And Fauci's like, yeah, man, that's already a thing. Yeah, I do that already. Yeah, and then he's like, oh, well, but, you know, I don't know where to look. And Fauci's like, I don't know what to tell you.

That's already a thing. And he's like, well, big tech makes it hard to find. Basically, he's like, I tried to Google Fauci's financial disclosures. And I couldn't. And it didn't immediately come up because that's not how gaining access to federal employee financial disclosures work. But literally anybody that wants them can submit a fucking FOIA request and have those. Yeah. I read them. Yeah. You can read them. I fucking saw them. Cecil, I saw them on my flipboard stories. This whole day was a fucking weird day for Fauci. Right. Because we're going to talk

about Rand Paul here in a second. But, you know, fucking this guy's asking him all kinds of crazy questions. And, you know, like, like, here's the thing. The Republicans just want him up there so that they can they can put him on the pillory so they can fucking attack them for their base. That's all they want to do is say one thing. They just need a gotcha moment. They just need something. They don't even need a gotcha moment. All they need is him being flustered. And then they'll

fucking do a tweet and they'll edit it and they'll put it out to their fans and their fans will lap it up. They'll lap that shit up. So this is exactly what happened. He's up there saying this dumb shit and Fauci's just looking at him like, are you kidding me? You're asking me a question that has an easy answer

that you could easily find. You could literally tell your aide right now to go do it and they could do it for you. It would not be an issue. And he's flabbergasted by it. And the best part is at the end, he's still on a hot mic. So as they say,

no more questions or whatever, and he yields his time back, Fauci's like, what a fucking moron. And he's like, he says, what a moron. Jesus Christ is what he says.

That's what he said. I love it. I love that he's like, you know what I wish is he could just look at these people and be like, that's the stupidest question I've ever heard anyone ask.

You should be ashamed of yourself for asking a question. Part of me is just like, that's the stupidest question I've ever heard anyone ask. You should be ashamed of yourself for asking a question. Part of me is just like, we don't deserve Fauci. We don't deserve it. I know. For real, if this man did not, I mean, first of all,

he makes good money, but he doesn't make so much money that he couldn't make that money in private practice. Oh my God. Are you kidding? He could make more money than what he's making make that money in private practice. Oh my God. Are you kidding? He could make more money than what he's making from the government in private practice. Easily. He's doing this because he actually gives a shit about goddamn public health outcomes, because he has devoted the entirety of his professional life to caring for the public

and devoting his life to it. And here we are in a moment of real crisis where we should be turning to the guy who has devoted his life to this expertise and we're trying to beat the shit out of this guy. And we are lucky he hasn't just retired. We are all, every single one of us, we are fucking lucky because if it was me- You'd walk the fuck out the door.

You'd walk the fuck out the door. I'd have walked the fuck out the door When Trump was up there talking about sunlight When Trump was talking about sunlight and fucking shooting disinfectant into the head of your dick or whatever the fuck he was saying, I'd have walked the fuck out the door. I'd have been like, nope

Peace out. I'd have dropped my fucking name tag on the fucking, on the podium and I'd have walked right the fuck out the door. I wouldn't have sat there and just stared and been like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm No, I'd have walked right the fuck out the door i wouldn't have sat there and just stared and been like no i'd have been like no no no no no you're a fucking idiot i would have waited for my next full mic moment i'd have gotten up there i've been like look i got fucking tickets to fiji for my fucking family i'm leaving bleach your assholes or whatever you dumb motherfuckers want to do. Die in a fire.

I'm out. God, I would piece the fuck out of him in a second. There's no fucking way. Are you kidding me? We don't, we have, we do not deserve the expertise and the care that he has shown us.

We don't deserve it because we've treated him so poorly. We're like, he's just a guy with a job, but he didn't sign up for this fucking shit. That's not what a guy like this signs up for. Well, in this next story with Rand Paul, Rand Paul is essentially saying that he's responsible for millions of people's deaths

and people listen to Rand Paul. And there's a point of this conversation where Fauci says to him, there was a guy in Iowa, they caught, he was on his way here with an AR-15 to shoot me. Like he was going to come here to shoot me. And it's because of stuff like this, because of what you're doing and the reason why you're doing it. Fauci fucking holds up an image and the image is of Rand Paul. And it says, Rand Paul gives it to Fauci or whatever. And on the side, it's like donate. And he literally holds it up and says, you Paul gives it to Fauci or whatever. And on the side, it's like, donate.

And he literally holds it up and says, you're doing it to get donations, man. It says it right here. Donate on the side of this big thing. And he calls him right out in front of everybody. It's the best moment. I got to read from it. It's because it is, honestly, this is the best moment.

And I wish more people had the balls to do this when they were being grilled by these disingenuous assholes. So this is what Fauci said. He says, so I asked myself, why would a senator want to do this? So go to Rand Paul's website and you'll see fire Dr. Fauci with a little box that says contribute here. You can do $5, $10, $20, $100. So you are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain. And it's fucking true, man. It's absolutely true. These guys pick a villain. The right has chosen a man who absolutely we should be kissing his ass, not vilifying him. Because every day he wakes up and comes to work, he doesn't have to.

That guy's a Republican, too. He's a lifelong Republican. He's not like a crazy leftist, man. He's just like a Republican doctor. Yep. Probably like most doctors. I know, right?

And it's true. These guys are making... And let's be as clear about this as possible. The Republicans are making the pandemic worse than it has to be, right? There's only two things that you do in a crisis. You either help or you make it worse. That's it. Yeah.

That's it. There is no third option. There is no stasis, middle of the road, neutral option in a crisis. That's not the nature of crises. They are not helping. So they are making it worse. And they are actively making it worse.

The best Republicans are neutral and neutral makes it worse. Because if you do not help in a time of crisis, you are making that crisis last longer and be harder to recover from. More people are dying.

Every day this goes on that it doesn't have to go on costs lives, it costs jobs. It just costs. The costs are enormous. They're just enormous. And Rand Paul, one, it's amazing to me how many motherfuckers look at their lives and do the calculus and say, for my personal gain, I'm willing to hurt or kill hundreds or maybe thousands of people. Yeah.

You know. They're absolutely willing to do it. And Rand Paul's been pushing this for a while. Rand Paul's been trying to attack him. And he's trying to say, like, Fauci was involved in this from like when it was in Wuhan, a Wuhan lab. Like he keeps on like trying to bring this stuff back. And you're like, man, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, and the reason why he wants to do this isn't because there's any benefit, right? It's not like there's any benefit to doing this. What he's trying to do is trying to vilify

him so that he gets brownie points with his side. That's all he's trying to do. It's not because there's any, not because there's anything that can come of it because there's nothing that can be proved. It's all just bullshit hearsay that he's saying at him, but it doesn't matter because all he wants to do is fucking rile him up. Just keep riling him up, rile him up. And then they'll get all wound up and then they hate up. And then they'll get all wound up. And then they hate Dr. Fauci and they send him money to get reelected. And people fall for it, man. They fall for it because there's a cognitive bias that means that the more you hear a story, the more likely you are to believe that that story is true. If it's repeated and it's

repeated over and over. And then when, when, when what are considered reputable sources, pick up and report it, all of a sudden it's like, because everybody's done this. And this is an important thing to learn, to know about like how our minds work. Have you ever told somebody a story with, you know, I read somewhere and you don't know where. I saw once. I heard that. Yeah. I saw once. I heard that. Yeah, yeah. The lack of specificity means that that narrative that you are about to convey has weaseled its way into your mind as a truth, and you don't know anymore where it came from. Now, that doesn't necessarily make it not true, but it should give you pause about spreading that narrative because you have lost control of its origin in your own mind. We all do it,

but we should be real fucking careful about when we do it and what the stakes are when we do that stuff. The intention is to create more. I heard that. I heard Dr. Fauci won't release his financial disclosures. I read somewhere

something about Fauci and DARPA and Wuhan. Sure. It's literally how Trump talks. It's creating headlines. Yeah. It's what he said. Listen to every time that Trump, in fact, we may cover a story about Trump today.

And if you listen to the audio, all he talks about is, and there was so much of this, it was unbelievable. There was so much of this, it was unbelievable. There was so much voter fraud. It was unbelievable. And it's like, there's nothing, he's not saying anything. He's literally just asserting something that is fucking demonstrably false. But if you say it in a way that makes it sound like there's some other authority there, other than me just saying it, it gives it some sort of, it gives it some sort of like, like it makes it. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. It gives it some sort of, it makes it verified in some way. And that's like, it's not true, but it's a, it's a rhetorical device to trick you. And that's all it is. It's just, and he's the type of guy who does this too, all the time. Well, that's really good. Well, you just have a good time. Are you still a believer in Santa?

Because at seven, it's marginal, right? Well, you just enjoy yourself. I've got to talk about this story from Rolling Stone. And Trump can't take the heat, hangs up on NPR when host pushes back on election lies. Steve Inskeep was interviewing Trump. The total time that was allotted for the interview was supposed to be 15 minutes. And I think to me, Cecil, the important thing is that when confronted with a non-biased, high quality journalist, Trump lasted nine minutes. He lasted nine minutes before

he had to bail. Yeah. He had to quit because he wouldn't let him lie. And there's parts of this audio, I'm not going to play the audio, but there's parts of this audio where Trump would say something false and he would say to him, that's not true, Mr. President, that's not true. In fact, that was proven not to be true.

That was an early report, but that was not what was true. In fact, they said that that was rectified afterwards. So I know you're saying that there was more voters, supposedly more votes taken in Philadelphia than there were voters, but that was actually early reports that came back that were false. And that has been shown through records that that's not true. And he's like, no, it's true. It's true. And he pushed back on it enough to get to the point where Inskeep keeps pushing back on him. And Inskeep is,

he's either morning edition or he's all things considered. I don't know which one he is. I think he's morning edition. Morning edition. I think he is. I'm fairly certain he's morning edition. Yeah.

So he's one of the big flagship shows on NPR. And he's not a brand new journalist. This is a guy who's been doing this for a very long time. And his interview is hard to listen to. Listen to what he's, when he talks to Trump, Trump tries to get away with these lines all the time. And Inskey pushes back, even when he says, he says, look, you sent in guys to go do the audit down there. And they came back and said there was no problems. He's like, and then Trump tried to make it sound like there was, no, they found voter fraud like you wouldn't believe.

And he's like, that's just not true. And he keeps on saying over and over, that's not true. And that was just too much for Trump. Trump had to bail on it. He couldn't take it anymore. And, you know, there's been a couple times where he's walked away from people. And it's when they push back on him and he doesn't like it and he can't push his own narrative and he can't lie.

He just walks away. This is what every journalist needs to do. This like deference to our politicians is bullshit. Our politicians work for us. Our journalist job is to keep them fucking accountable. If our journalists treat our politicians with undue deference, then neither one of those groups, which is supposed to do the will of the people, does the will of the people. Journalists don't provide transparency and politicians aren't

held accountable. This is the only thing that should ever happen. Anything less than this is an abject failure. An attempt to keep the interview going at all costs and like letting people skate on difficult questions. Absolutely not. Show the people that they are unable and unwilling to answer difficult questions. If nothing else, we deserve to know that. That's the job of a fucking journalist.

Something that struck me, there's a part where Trump's talking about how many people come to his rallies. He's talking about how could it possibly be possible that nobody goes to Biden's rallies and yet he wins. And what I think Trump doesn't understand is that you can vote for somebody and not be enthusiastic about it, right? I think Trump doesn't get that. Trump doesn't understand that. He thinks everybody just loves him who voted for him. But I think what he doesn't get is you can just vote for somebody and then be like, yeah, man, I did it because it was really the lesser of two evils.

And I don't like either of you, but I'll just do it. And I don't think he understands that yeah I also think he doesn't understand that like I would not like I don't

do and so many other people don't like the cult of personality worship thing like that rock star fucking

you know rock god bullshit nobody else has done that this fucking the whole idea of like a rally in the style of a Trump-esque rally is exclusively a Trump thing. It's weird. There are no other rallies to go to in the same way. There are some, I mean, like, like you can go to some. And I remember like,

like during the primaries is a perfect example. Those things do happen. Right. And I remember there was some, um, you know, like, like for example, the guy who that guy, Harold Dean or Herb Dean or whatever his name was, I don't know. Howard Dean. Herb Dean's a referee in the UFC. It's different. But, uh, Howard Dean was, uh, was at a rally and screaming that stuff. And, and that's when he, he lost it and he wound up blue and he's like, yeah, like they threw him out after that. But he was at a rally. He was at a place where there's a bunch of people. So there are things like that. They're just not like what Trump does,

which is like a whole stadium full of weird people who like tailgate and there's like a whole line of them and they all stand outside and like yell at people and they'd be belligerent. Like that's not a thing. But there are rallies and there have been rallies. Like that's not a thing, but there, there are rallies and there have been rallies. I mean, Obama had some, and after Obama was elected, there was a bunch of people went to the, you know, they wound up, there was like an impromptu rally

in Grant Park after he was elected. So like, like there have been mass crowds at political stuff before. It's just, he just has like a new thing on it. And even after he was president, that was never after you're president, you don't do it. Until like Yeah, you don't travel around still doing the adoration thing. And it was always, like it was never as like personality focused.

You know? So, and also like, it was fucking COVID times. That's the other part that he doesn't seem to understand, is that the left by and large was heeding the advice of the fucking medical and scientific community not to gather in groups. So like, I don't know that Biden would have attracted crowds. I don't know that he wouldn't.

But what I do know is that if you look demographically at who is following the advice of the fucking health officials, it's by and large the left. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that means don't go to a rally in 2020. Like I was saying, you could have dragged me out to a fucking rally full of 60,000 people.

Yeah. And it wouldn't have mattered who the rally was for. The rally could have been for me, Cecil. It could have been 60,000 people being like, we love Tom. I'd have been like, cool. Live stream that have been 60,000 people being like, we love Tom. I'd have been like, cool. Live stream that shit.

Yeah, exactly. I'll do that from home. You kidding me? If you do the cooking by the book, then you'll have a- Break it down, bitch. Let me see you back in love. So for this week for Cogdiss Book Club,

we're nearing the end of Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. This week we read the chapter Maxwell and the Nerds. And this chapter is really about funding. Like it's really like a long play to try to talk about funding, science funding in specific. He starts the chapter talking about, you know, there's a part of it

that's actually really funny where he's talking about, you know, like I talked to some people and ask them what a nerd is, and they describe what a scientist. I'll tell you what, I know some really fashionable scientists. I know. They're very cute, and many people want to sleep with them.

He does. He literally says that. Some scientists are fuckable. Some of them are really fuckable, and I want you to know that. It's actually really kind of adorable. Like, it's really cute that he's like fighting. But, you know, it is true. It's like, you know, there's a range of people in all kinds of different fields.

He does mention at this point in the chapter that, you know, it could be that, you know, it's the discipline itself and the long hours by yourself that might lead some people who are a little antisocial to doing this. It could be something else, but there are, he does say that there is a lot of people that might be a little less, you know, a little less socially aware. You know, maybe they spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours doing this thing and they don't spend as many hours, you know, just hanging out with their buddies playing PlayStation. And so they don't get, they don't pick up on a lot of the same social cues. And so there are some people that are tragically unhip. No matter what you do, some scientists, they're going to be tragically unhip. They're going to have the big pocket protectors and their

big glasses and their, their calculator and a holster and whatever. And he, and he talks about that for a little while. And then he starts talking about, he shifts a little bit and he starts talking about a discovery by a man by the name of Maxwell who discovered essentially electromagnetic waves. He discovered, he wrote up three different formulas or four different formulas for these electromagnetic waves. And he doesn't really even describe these formulas so much to us because he says you would need a lot of physics background to even understand it.

But, you know, he sort of gives us the real, real 30,000 feet view of what these ideas are. And they're essentially four formulas about electromagnetic waves. And then he talks about how that really changed history. It really changed how we thought about the universe,

how we thought about things that travel in a vacuum, how we thought about things that travel in space, how we thought about light, how we thought about things that travel in a vacuum, how we thought about things that travel in space, how we thought about light, how we thought about all kinds of things. And it changed how we thought about it. And it also created innovation. It created lots of innovation in different areas of technology. It created, without that study, we would have never had radio. We would have never had TV. We'd have never had TV. We would have never had several of these things.

And he finishes up the chapter by basically saying, a lot of these people, and he starts naming these people who sort of discovered things. They didn't start out thinking they were gonna discover these things, but they did because they had the funding to do it and they had the backing to do it

to figure out these things. And these were important discoveries that led to technology, and we shouldn't neglect that. And that's essentially what the whole gist of the chapter is. One of the points that I think he makes very, very well, and it's very important, is that our focus when it comes to funding research should not exclusively be to create a product from it. If the goal is always to create a product, build me an innovation, go invent a thing that does a thing or solves a problem. If we do not invest in research that is fundamental, if we don't invest in the big, basic building block research, we won't get all the happy accidents. And most of the innovations that we enjoy today are the result of an accumulation of happy accidents. The happy accident of finding penicillin.

They weren't looking for fucking penicillin when it was found. The happy accident of the discovery of electromagnetic waves that led to, like you said, TV and radio and radar. Well, they weren't looking to try to build TV, radio, and radar. They weren't even looking for electromagnetic waves. There was an attempt to understand the universe. And fundamentally, science, no matter which discipline you're engaged in, is always an attempt to understand the universe. I always laugh because as the world has become more intensely focused, the research that we do has gone from being very broad to being intensely, intensely specific. to being intensely, intensely specific. And so you'll sometimes read a story that'll be like,

you know, biologist wins grant to study, you know, rare species of tree frog and discovers, you know, they like to eat this certain fly. And you're like, who the fuck's job is it to fund research, to go to the Amazon, to sit in the fucking jungle and look at one specific tree frog all day. And that seems fucking ridiculous until somebody discovers a tree frog

that has fucking spit or something that cures cancer. You know what I mean? Like the happy accidents are the result of the accumulation of knowledge. We need to always fund the accumulation of general and specific knowledge and not pour all of our time and energy and money into trying to create a specific innovation. That creates a kind of intellectual and scientific tunnel vision, which is just antithetical to actual real progress. Yeah. just antithetical to actual real progress. Yeah, and he talks about this in the beginning of the chapter where he talks about Maxwell. You know, he talks about the queen right around the time

when they were getting telegrams in England, when there was telegram capability. She essentially wanted television. She wanted a television back before there was a teletype. And so they're just like, we don't know what to do. There's nothing we can create. You just can't create that without the knowledge that was needed

from Maxwell and all these other people to figure out those waves and to understand that because they didn't even know that stuff at the time. Right. They didn't even understand that stuff at the time. So you need to look at it in that sense. And so you're absolutely right. Like without those people just thinking and learning and studying,

you're not going to get any kind of progress. What you're going to get is you're going to get, like you say, very hyper-focused progress. Well, I mean, look, COVID's a great example because if we had not done the fundamental research to learn about DNA and then RNA and then mRNA, if we hadn't done that, that background research, we never would have been able to build mRNA vaccines, right? You've got to, you've, but, but when the first studies were being done about, you know done that led to the many, many steps that got us to mRNA technology, those were not done with the hope of creating a vaccine. That only becomes something that you realize is possible after a lot of that fundamental research has already laid a groundwork for the aha moments.

Those aha moments that we all celebrate because they have like real world tangible benefits to us. They all rely on decades and hundreds of people's worth of research doing shit like sitting in a fucking Amazonian jungle, watching a tree fog fuck or whatever. You know, it seems ridiculous until it aggregates yeah the problem of course is that is that individually if you are to pluck those things out and you're to say them to a large group of people people think they're absurd too right and so you'll all kind of like and he said even in the in the chapter he talks about how it's kind of a joke at congress they'll bring up these things they'll they'll mention well, they're studying this

thing. And why are they studying this thing? And he brings up SETI too, because he's just like, well, you know, why on earth would you want to do that? Who cares about that stuff? And it's like, it's like, if we allow ourselves to think and we allow our horizons to expand, we can progress. But, you know, the problem is, of course, these people are all looking at a budgetary line. You know, it's funny enough that they only look at the budgetary line

when it comes to, you know, science funding or feeding kids or something. It's never when they want to, like, bomb a nation. They never look at the fucking budgetary line. Always money for that.

It's always money. I said, plenty of money in the bomb budget, guys. There's always money in there. We don't have to worry about that. There's plenty of money in the bomb budget. The Marines don't hold bake sales, man. Yeah.

When it's a feeding kid fucking budget, let me tell you. Yeah, the fucking Marines should have a bake sale, man. What the fuck? Have a bake sale. The Marines should have a sexy car wash. Yeah, seriously. And you know what? Have all those fucking patriots go out and pay your bills. Right. You know what I mean? Go fund me for all the

patriots out there that are like, oh, I love my military. Okay, go love them. Go drive through while they put their fucking pecs on your window while they're washing it or whatever. Go drive through. Instead, it's like, no, it's got to come out of everybody's kitty. It's got to come out of the kitty for everybody.

You know, when it comes to taxpayer money, I'd love to see more taxpayer money put towards stuff like this, towards stuff where there's research involved, where, you know, like it's, and like you say, it's not just research on a thing where you're not just like, I am just focused, hyper-focused on getting a product. I'm researching these more esoteric things. That's where the good shit happens. That's what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about the fucking James Webb telescope. You're just like, that's why it's beautiful. Yeah.

Some things too are just, that's a great, I'm glad you used that word. Because also, man, some things are worth doing because they're beautiful. You know, I remember the first time I went to Europe. It was with you. We went to a conference. We went to the QED conference. Yeah. And we're walking around and we're doing some

sightseeing. We went to a few places. It was wonderful. And I remember seeing some of these really old cathedrals and buildings and stuff. And I thought these were built at a time when people did not have extra. Nobody had extra. And they still built these beautiful things, right? We still set aside socially resources to build things that had no specific value except for the fact that they're beautiful. And the reality is that like the James Webb Space Telescope is fucking beautiful. And we should set aside some resources and just be very comfortable with saying we're doing it because it's beautiful we're doing it because it's beautiful to learn how the fucking world works that's why we're doing it and if we get something out of it neat and if we don't get something out

of it except for the fucking beauty of the fucking space telescope that's a cathedral man that's a fucking art museum that's like there's it's the same thing it's part of just this this thing that we have in us which is our humanity our drive to know and to be curious like that is something that if we squash that in order to create

a fucking saleable product all the time shame on us yeah and you can't rely on you can't rely that a fucking saleable product all the time? Shame on us. Yeah. And you can't rely on, you can't rely, another thing, you can't rely on capitalism to do this, right? No.

You can't rely on capitalism to carry this because capitalism won't. If there's nothing in it, you know, R&D is the first thing that gets cut all the time. Research and development's constantly one of the first things that gets cut. And the reason why is because if it's not bringing in fucking revenue, get rid of it, especially how we view capitalism nowadays,

when we're talking about, you know, the quarterly numbers, the first thing you'd cut is that. So you can't rely on capitalism. Capitalism is like you said, very goal focused, very oriented toward a goal. And so you might be able to still get some innovation, but you're not going to get the same kind of innovation as you would if you just had sort of that general funding that we can all pitch in. And it's not that much money. That's the thing is, it's not that much money. It's like, you know, like we could fund some really amazing

stuff to learn about stuff and to learn about the universe and to learn about, you know, scientific endeavor. And it doesn't cost that much, but the problem is, of course, is that we're all so goal-focused and goal-oriented nowadays that we demand that these things

sort of have like these grand purposes that we can see and you better show me. So this week, this next week, we'll be reading, I think it's the second to last chapter. I think so. In the book. So we're closing in on this.

We just did a survey this last week and we got an overwhelming response. Most people really love it. So we got a couple of negative responses, but most people really do love this segment. So we're going to try to figure out a way to keep it going because it's one of those things that we really love to do. So we're going to be working on talking about the next book in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that. So we'd like to thank our patrons of course we'd like to thank all our patrons but we'd like to thank our newest patrons ryan seth thanks to cognitive dissonance i now have crippling a crippling addiction to podcasts tara and one blade of grass and the people who up their pledges adelaide nathan and i was drunk the day my mama got out of prison okay thank you all so much for your generous donations and your donations

go to paying the salaries of ian and sarah who are our two employees and next week if you want you can join us on stream when we will be doing Ian's review, 9 p.m. Central Time. You can come and listen to us give Ian his yearly performance review on the air. And we're actually going to let everybody who's involved in the stream vote to see how well Ian did in the last year.

So if you think Ian did poorly. His fate will be determined live. Or you think he did good. You think he did poorly. Come join us and you can tell us all about it. We'd love to hear it. Think of it as like a suggestion box, like a live suggestion box on the air.

You know, we finally get to answer that age old question. Is Ian a good boy? He's not. It turns out. He's not. It's out. He's not. It's going to be great. So come join us. It'll be fun.

So Tom was exposed to COVID last week. So the live stream this coming week is tentative. We don't know if that means he has COVID,

but we will let you know on social media whether or not it goes forward and then we will let you know on social media whether or not it goes forward and then we will do my review. So you can't blame this one on me. Like everything else. Okay, see you soon. Also, we wanted to mention too

that we have almost everything to the formatter now and within the next couple of weeks, we should have a final proof. And then we should be getting more and more messages about the book coming up soon for you. It's not gonna happen in the next two weeks for sure, but we're hoping that soon afterwards it will happen. And so keep your ears pressed to the earphones

so you can find out exactly when the book's gonna be coming out. It's called The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit. It's going to be out on Amazon, on print on demand. It'll be available in Kindle. And then Tom is going to be reading a copy for us and you can buy that. This will not be through Audible. It'll be actually through our site. So you'll go to dissonancepod.com and you'll get it. You'll be able to download it there. So we'll be selling it in three different places. And one of those places,

you won't have to deal with Amazon. One of those places, you will not have to deal with Jeff Bezos if you don't want to. So we're going to try to set up an option that will take him out of the equation for some people because that aggravates some people. And I recognize that.

Just no good way to do a print on demand anymore. He's taken over the entire market. That's the monopoly, man. So we got a little bit of messages. Tom, last week we talked about Senator Ron Johnson. You called him an eye doctor. He is not an eye doctor. He is not.

I was wrong. I got him mixed up with Rand Paul. Ron Johnson is a roofing contractor. Even less qualified. Even less qualified, yes. even less qualified even less qualified but yeah I was just dead wrong about that we got a message from Kitsune and they said that

someone came to their work and they basically were talking about voter ID and when they were talking about voter ID Kitsune said okay that's fine well let's make sure it's free and everyone should be able to get it and they're like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa hey whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hold on a second here.

And they say at the end of the message, they say, so you're right. Voter ID is just a bait and switch. It really is a bait and switch. And we should do, we should be the ones doing the bait and switch. We should be the ones proposing voter ID, but making it so ubiquitous

and so easy to get that the Republicans would never ask for it or never vote for it. And then we'd be able to use that as a way to say, we want voter ID. But we...

They would immediately turn it into the mark of the beast. They would. They would say it's the mark of the beast. They would tell all their followers to be the best. They should make it like a little Satan baby too.

You have to get on your thing the best. We got a message. This is from Dan and Dan says, you guys were talking about how being tough on journalists, being tough on politicians. He says, I hope you've seen the clip of Ted Cruz on Fucker Carlson's show.

The link is embedded in an article and there's an article that he shares here. And this this it's basically ted begging forgiveness ted is begging forgiveness from tucker carlson because he said they the the january six people were violent and he had he had to walk that shit back so badly and he's all over the internet for the next couple of days, just walking it back. It was sad. It is so fucking pathetic. And Tucker Carlson wasn't having it. He was not having it. He turns Ted Cruz into a little bitch and then dismisses him. Just dismisses him. Can you imagine that guy was running for president and he won states? Oh my God. He won states, man. He did.

What a fucking coward that man is. He was such a coward and he's always been a coward. And like, I don't know how anybody can look at that guy after the way Donald Trump talked about his wife and he just like,

and followed Donald Trump and still defends Donald Trump now. I'm like, he's only, there's nothing more important to Ted than his votes. Nothing more important. That man is as craven as the fucking day is long.

He is such a piece of shit. He would have been the worst. Can you imagine Ted Cruz sitting with Putin? Oh my gosh. Putin would have fucking eaten him. He would have, I mean, fucking Trump was a giant pussy. Ted wouldn't even got in the room. He'd have pissed himself.

Got a message. This is from Ernesto. And he says, you know, I just want you to know, uh, I'm Argentinian born in, uh, born and live in Mexico. And in both those countries, basically they have a national identity system and it's a document, a national identity, identity document where you're basically assigned something at birth, it's free, and at 18, you're allowed to vote, and all you have to do is update the address. That's it, and it's free, 100% free. And that's the thing is they don't want that. They don't want something like that. They don't want something that easy. They don't want something as simple as like a national voter ID because that is given to you at birth. They want you to go through hoops to get it. They want you to make it, they want to make it difficult so that it's

like a fucking, it's like you have to go through a ninja warrior ask fucking system, like fucking zip line down and finally get it. And then you have to like decide, you have to have a bag of sand and you have to like put it on the idol thing and you have to take the voter ID. Dodge the Mayan arrows. Yeah, there's arrows and a whole boulder and you'll forget your hat. There's a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

They want it difficult. They want it to be difficult. Yep. We got a message from James. James says- This is great. James, you should fucking sell this idea. It's so good.

He says, I have an idea. We should start an ancestry testing service like 23andMe, but for evangelical Christians. They send in the money and some spit. And then we send a card back. It says you are directly related to Adam and Eve. He says maybe throw Noah and Moses for good measure. And then, you know, basically give all their money to Planned Parenthood. Hilarious and amazing. That's tremendous. I love it. Fucking amazing. Absolutely love it. We got a message. This is from Ian.

And Ian says, the pause in Ted Cruz's reception when he's in the elevator is about seven seconds. Just want to let you know it takes about seven seconds to get radio signals or light from the moon. So, I don't think it's a coincidence.

There are no coincidences. So there's a moon base for Ted Cruz. We also got a message. This is from David. And David says, just listen to your stream. And I wanted to let you know that Hudson Baby bourbon is completely undrinkable. Tom and I, every week when Tom is in studio,

we have this bourbon advent calendar that I got from Heath a couple of years ago. And we normally try a whiskey on air and we'll try two of them. And we tried one of these and it was genuinely awful. Just genuinely terrible. It's so bad. Yeah, it was so medicinal and terrible.

It was the worst. Yeah, genuinely disgusting. So that is going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to join us for Ian's job review. Tentatively. Next week is performance review on the stream, 9 p.m. Central Time, Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube. If it happens, just check social.

But that is going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue.'s fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward 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, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, 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. Thank you.