Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 629: A Thin Film of Gross

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Show Notes

Today's show is brought to you by AdamandEve.com. Go to AdamandEve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY, G-L-O-R-Y, at checkout. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Gloriole Studios in Chicago 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 welcome at this episode 629 of Cognitive Distance. See, so I was thinking, you know, there's a certain like, like timber and cadence to the opening, to the intro. Sure, sure. I always think like right before I began, what if I just did it different this time?

And you want to know why I don't? Why not? I wouldn't remember it. It's like counting on your fingers. It's exactly, there is like, I was like, I'm going to fuck with,

I'm going to fuck with it. And I'm going to say it different. I'm going to say it with a different tone. And there's no way I would be like, recording live. One, I don't think I could. At this point, say it different i'm gonna say with a different tone and there's no way i would be like recording lies just one i don't think i could yeah at this point it is it is it's in there it's a rut and so that's it because i was gonna fuck with it i thought about it last week and i'm like i didn't do it and then like i don't think i'd get it right i will point out too that in the past you've fucked

with the uh skeptics creed you tried to record the skeptics creed yeah and uh people were not happy no no we we when we got i remember when we got new microphones the first time we got like higher quality microphones we thought well we'll just re-record the skeptics creed so that it's at the same quality level as the rest of the show and we did and it was off. If there was a percentage of variance, I would say it was less than 10%. Yeah, it was close. It was very close, but it wasn't perfect. There was a collective foot stamping.

Nobody wanted that to happen. No, no, no. Everybody was very upset. I corrected my pronunciation of tarot cards so that I pronounced the D. It says tarot cards. And if you're a viewer on YouTube, you know that we made a little joke about that.

Yeah, you've got a very clever little montage. With the end, we did a montage of the skeptics create. So if you've never listened to our podcast on YouTube and you watched it till the end, there's like a whole montage that we created. And in that montage, there's a part where you say tarot cards, but you say, it sounded like you say tarot cards but you say you sound

like you say tarot cards so there's a tarot card and then it just does a car so we have we've sort of played on that over the years because we we've recognized that there's a mistake in it right but people don't they're like don't no dude absolutely not be very mad if you change changing the intro would be almost impossible for me to do it this point. Changing the intro and changing the skeptics creator. Couldn't do it. They're just both two fixtures that you can't change now. So it has to be that old, shitty, blue snowball recording that you recorded years ago. Absolutely.

That's it. That's it for life. It's in there. It's locked in, buddy. It is locked in. Speaking of locked in, let's talk about how we failed to even bring to the floor the legislation. They had passed something in the House. This was in September of last year.

They passed a bill that would enshrine into law across all 50 states, basically Roe, right? Protection. Essentially protections for abortion. Reproductive choice protection. Exactly. Protections for Essentially protections for abortion. Reproductive choice protection. Exactly. Protections for reproductive choice. And what happened was they didn't even get a chance to bring it because all the Republicans

banded together and said, no, we don't want to even hear it. Yep. And Manchin. And Manchin. So they didn't even have enough votes to bring it to talk about it. It wasn't a vote. They didn't vote on it. So don't, don't, don't misunderstand.

They didn't have a vote to decide it. They just had a vote to decide to talk about it. It wasn't a vote. They didn't vote on it. So don't misunderstand. They didn't have a vote to decide it. They just had a vote to decide to talk about it. Because that's how broken the fucking Senate is. The Senate is the most fucking broken, shitty, garbage institution that if you want to be obstructionist... So there is a

tactic, a strategy, almost a strategery. There is a tactic or a strategery to not go on record opposing things. Right. And so we will often, you will often see one side or the other attempt to bring a bill to the floor for a vote because they want to say they want you on record either opposing or taking a stance.

Say that shit out loud. Right. Say it out loud. Say it out loud, let me or taking a stance. Say that shit out loud. Right. Say it out loud. Say it out loud. Let me write down. Say it out loud. Right. But I think that and so what can happen is the opposing side can then vote not to vote on it.

But then that has also become a de facto vote. If you want to, if you ask me, like, this would be 49 to 51 if they got to actually vote. There's no difference. They would have been OK if they would have brought it to the floor. Right. Right. Everybody would have been fine.

It still wouldn't have passed. In fact, it might even had fewer people because I know there was one guy in Pennsylvania that was hemming and hawing about this and that said already that he wouldn't vote for it if it came. Now, he might have been willing to hear it, but he might not have voted on it. Right. And that's the thing is,

and what they don't want is they don't want that soundbite of them having to give a speech on the floor, opposing women. It's what's, what's really kind of crazy is the right has gotten their fucking wishlist, right? They're fucking Santa Claus, horrible, horrible wishlist. And they are backing away. They're backing away from it.

The right's narrative now is not about how great it is that we won. Their narrative right now is all about, let's pay attention to the leak. Yeah. Because if they can shift the conversation among their base, if they can shift their conversation from winning the fight in their minds, winning the fight to destroy reproductive choice for women and make them second-class citizens, and make it about this leak, then they don't have to contend as a party with all of the center-right people who might be socially conservative but pro-choice

or be fiscally conservative but pro-choice. And there's a significant number of those people. So they're not doing the fucking happy dance. Instead, they're trying to shift. Mitch McConnell basically said, I don't want to talk about that. Let's talk about the leak. Let's not talk about Roe. Let's talk about the leak. What's interesting is that there's a lot of speculation out there that it might have actually been a conservative leak.

Yeah. Because the conservative position might not have been as solid as they thought. And then if they leak it, now the position has to be sort of solidified. Yeah. And it has to be these votes. And so there was a possibility that somebody might have said no you know what maybe not and although i can't think of who on that that bench would have moved over from that position i'm thinking about who's signed on to it and you're like alito's the one who penned the fucking thing so clearly not him cavanaugh and amy coney barrett they're both locked in

fucking clarence thomas is locked in. And then Gorsuch might be your only shift. Maybe that's the only one. But the rest of them, it's like, you're just like, those people are locked in. I don't know how you're going to. But anyway, they don't know yet who leaked it. There's a big thing about protesting now. So they're protesting outside of houses

of the Supreme Court justices. I don't know if you saw this i did and there was a pushback they actually passed a bill or something very quickly to help protect them which is bullshit it's just like that like if you're gonna fucking you know you're gonna do this we should people are gonna protest they they stand outside abortion clinics yeah and and harass these women as they come in to like, you know, sometimes just get contraception or like rape counseling or something. Yeah, Planned Parenthood provides a host of services for women in addition to abortionally, a myriad of resources to women across the country. They're a tremendous medical resource. source. So they're not just an abortion provider. And the Supreme Court ruled against a law that

would have prevented protesters from being too close to the building. There was a law that was passed a couple of states saying, you got to be like, I don't remember what it was, like 75 feet away or a hundred feet or something. And they said, no, absolutely not, you know, free speech. So there is a law, I did read that there is a law that says that you cannot protest outside of any sitting judge's home with the intent to influence the decision. Sure. But I don't think that applies because the decision's been made. Yeah, right.

So that's it. That's fucking done and done. And I'll tell you what, if a fucking sidewalk outside the abortion clinic is fucking fair game for a group of people who have have a violent history. Yeah. You know. Oh, yeah. Bombing of abortion abortion providers have been shot yeah they've been fucking bombed and firebombed and shit so sorry motherfuckers

own your shit yeah own your you know you should just be like cool you know what i did vote that way and that's the way it's going you know what i would say just get used to those people because okay fine you'll kick them out now but guess what Once it becomes enshrined in law in less than four months away, then what? Is it fair game now? And it's one of the arguments in Alito's terrible, terribly argued reasoning was like, look, Roe versus Wade has caused so much faction and division within this country that we have to overturn it because we need to heal the faction and division. It is bad for the country for Roe versus Wade to exist. Well, if that's true, why are all these people outside your fucking house?

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Like, where's the... That didn't fix anything. That's nonsense. It actually was... It exacerbated the problem. It is such a fucking bullshit argument to say,

hey, you know, one of the great ways to bring the country together would be to create a system of two Americas where some states get one rule on a deeply contentious issue and other states have an entirely different rule on a deeply contentious personal choice issue. How in the world are you saying that's how we come?

That's how we come together. One of the ways we come together is by having different fucking rights for different people, depending on your geographical location. And how absurd is it, Tom, for them to look across the way and say, yeah, and we're going to heal the nation by going with the 15 to 30% of the nation that wants this to happen. That's a great point. You know what I mean? It's a minority view. Yeah. So what we're going to do is we're going to have the tyranny of the minority and that's going to be our kumbaya moment. That's going to be the moment that we

can look in and be like, we're all together in this one, folks. We took away rights of half the population of the United States based on a much lower percentage of people who want to take those rights away. Bullshit. It's a nonsense. Bullshit. The number of people that, in polling, disagree with this is enormous.

Enormous. If you look at the people, there's a lot of people who just agreed with Roe. Right. You know, Roe was restrictive. Roe versus Wade was restricted. You know, the first 20 weeks was not. But after that, it was it was restrictive, depending on the state you're in.

And a lot of people across the country were like, you know what? That kind of makes sense. It makes sense that, you know, it starts to get more restrictive as time goes on. And the fetus starts to become more and more viable. That makes sense to me that, that the way they did it makes sense. And to ensure like, there's a lot of people who are just like, I liked the way that worked. Right. That's all. You look at the way, the way it strikes out now, it's like, when you take away, like you look at the places that are going to take it away. We talked about it last week. We talked about how many different places we're going to take away abortion rights

from women in this country. And you're looking at 20 plus states right away. Boom. It's just going to be gone. It is gone. Gone overnight. And in many of those, 28 states, and in many of those states,

there will be no carve outs of any kind for rape or incest or fetal viability. So, you know, in many states like Texas, there's no carve out for fetal viability. So, you know, you, you, in many States like Texas, there, there's no carve out for fetal viability. So like, if you have a fetus, which will not ever be viable, you have to carry it either to the point of stillbirth, miscarry it or deliver it that, that, that fetus and watch it die in front of you. That is what the law will require of some people, regardless of the tremendous risk of carrying a kid, of having a fetus, of giving birth. None of these things are risk-free. Yeah, I know. And the way they're talking about it is to prevent

damage to women, right? The talk about this, their talking point seems to be, talk about this, this, that their talking point seems to be, it's, it's going to help prevent this sort of possibility of women being hurt by this abortion procedure, but being pregnant is way more dangerous. And we talked to, we talked to abortion provider, we even said as much. And I read something and I, I didn't, it's, it, the numbers seem to vary depending on what you read. But from what I read, being pregnant and delivering is 10 to 20 times more dangerous than having an abortion. Abortion is a super low risk procedure. As medical procedures go, it's a super, super low risk procedure, especially at the timeframe where over 90% of abortions take place. Over 90% of abortions take place within the first like 10

or 15 weeks. I forgot what the number is. So I think it's 15 weeks. So you're looking at within 15 weeks, you're looking at like a tiny risk. We take, we take greater risks when we go get like a fucking nose job. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, it's ridiculous. There's an article that we, we looked at this week and it was from the New York times where they fact-checked Samuel Alito and the different things that he had said in his argument that he put forth, this 100-page argument to remove Roe. And the one that really struck out at me

was the one that talks about the heartbeat. Yeah. Because we had a conversation with Jessica about this just a couple weeks ago. Jessica was just on The Daily, by the way, if you want to hear Jessica, who was on our program maybe four weeks ago talking about before this was leaked. Right. We had a conversation about how terrible it was in Texas because they had six weeks to hear the quote unquote heartbeat. Right.

And then after that, they couldn't. That's it. Well, they could. You certainly could perform an abortion. It wasn't against the law. Right. And then after that, they couldn't. That's it. Well, they could. You certainly could perform an abortion. It wasn't against the law. Right. But there were civil penalties. If someone finds out.

Right. They could sue the provider. They could sue somebody who helped, et cetera, et cetera. So it's essentially economically not a thing that you could do. So nobody, all the abortion providers down there are noping the fuck out of it. Yeah. I'm good. So they're sending people to other States. We talked to her and she was saying, it's not even a heart. It's just like a signal. It's not a heart. And they, they use it to evoke

emotion in the people who want to say it's a heart. Yeah. It's, it is, it is a nonsensical argument that the legislature, here's what Alito wrote. He wrote, the legislature then found that at five or six weeks gestational age, an unborn human being's heart begins beating. But that's not true. So when we think of what a heart is, if you picture a heart, a heart is a thick, dense piece of muscle with valves that pushes blood around. At five or six weeks gestational age, that simply is not a physical reality. And the idea of what a heartbeat is, you know, like put your fucking ear to the chest of a loved one and listen for their heartbeat.

That's not what you get at five or six weeks. The heartbeat, quote unquote, is a artifact of a machine that is listening, listening, quote unquote, not with audio, but listening for an electrical signal and then translating that electrical signal into audio for the purpose of making you feel something. It's fake. It's all nonsense. There's no heart. It's fucking theater. That's exactly right. right and and that's what they're doing they're making it they're they're creating a theater piece to make to make people doesn't matter men or women on fall for their side yeah because it makes it feel like it's more human and more alive and more uh grown up than it actually is it's a it's. It's seriously blowing your fucking nose at six weeks, man. It's that, it's fucking, it's what you, when you open your snot rag, that's essentially the same thing.

It's not a fucking person. No, it's, it's, it's not a fucking person. And this, the, the right response to this, I'm going to read it again. And then I think the right response I'm going to give is it's two words. The legislature then found that at five or six weeks gestational age, an unborn human being's heart begins beating. And I would counter that with, so what? Yeah, no, you're even if that were true, if it's true, you're right. And it's not, you're right. No, you're right. But my counter, that would be so fucking what, you know, we recognize with other human bodies that the beating of a heart is not the same as life. You're absolutely right.

So if my body, if I get in a fucking car wreck or something tomorrow and my heart is beating, that is not how we decide if someone is alive or not. That's not the standard. The standard is brain activity, right? And that's not even the standard because it's higher brain activity. So if the brainstem is still kicking, we have no problem saying the brainstem is active. It's motivating the heart to beat the lungs are breathing, but this person is not in any functional way alive.

And it is perfectly morally acceptable to almost everybody to harvest organs, pull the plug, you know, make decisions about end of life, because we know that brain activity is concomitant with our understanding of what life really is. At five or six weeks, not only is there no functional heart, there is no brain. There is no meaningful idea of a brain, and we know it. So the answer to blah, blah, blah, heartbeat, that's so what? So fucking what? That does not in any way supersede a woman's right to own her own body. And the other arguments in here, the next one where they're talking about dilation and evacuation procedures, where they actually take surgical instruments to crush and tear the unborn child.

Those are Alito's words, right? That's what Alito's saying. And again, it's one of these emotional arguments to get you to, you know, after 15 weeks, they've got to basically dice the baby up and that's a horror. And you're just like, look, man, there's some women out there who, you know, are you going to force a woman whose baby's dead

to go through something like that? You're going to make them have a child because you're just like, sorry, that what you're going to have to do to this dead body offends me too much. Offends me, someone who's not involved in this at all. It offends me too much. You can't do it. Yeah.

I'm going to make a whole fucking law that, that bans all abortion, even when the fucking mother's life is at risk. Yeah. For, for, for, because, because it makes me feel icky. Right. Because you're telling me a bedtime story that I don't like. Yep. That's exactly it. And it's, it's, again, it's, it's that theater piece that you were mentioning. It's,

it's there not because it belies a reality around life and dignity that we should really have a meaningful conversation about. Sure. It is all just theater to get people to feel a sense of revulsion because if they can, if they can get people to feel a sense of revulsion strongly enough, then they can, they can strip women of their personal bodily autonomy. Absolutely. So this revulsion feeling, it's like that.

It's a tactic, man. You know, you've brought it up before that the book, The Righteous Mind, like it's important. Like Jonathan Haidt mentions many times, like our feelings of revulsion are the first things before our moral decision and moral judgment making. Yes. So it's a very clever but obvious tactic that if we can create the revulsion, then we can backdoor our way into the moral judgment. You can control the rest of it. Right. Yeah. And that if we can create the revulsion, then we can backdoor our way into the moral judgment. You can control the rest of it. Right. Yeah.

And so if we just write a narrative about, you know, the ripping and the tearing of this, you know, human being, which is theatrical more than it is true. Yeah. Then we can get our way into the moral judgment piece.

Yeah. That's the wind. So the story comes to the New York Times. I lost my baby. Then anti-vaxxers made my pain go viral. So this is a very sad story. It comes from the New York Times. And it's about a woman who had posted her experience. She's a prolific user of social media.

She posted her experience getting vaccinated online. Vaccinated, and she was pregnant at the time. Right. Yep. Yeah, thank you. And then later, totally unrelated, she lost her child. So a tragedy, a terrible tragedy in this woman's life. And she posted about that too.

And anti-vaxxers connected those two dots, which were not in any way medically connected, and basically turned her tragedy into a meme in order to promote their anti-vax narrative that vaccines kill babies and cause all this terrible harm. I want to read. The person created an image of my tweet side by side, one from July where I shared my relief

at being vaccinated while pregnant, and another from September with my story of my loss. And a stranger had written, quote, safe and effective, end quote. What a stranger had written, quote, safe and effective. And I'm quote, what a fucking shitty troll garbage human being. Because, you know, it's it's that cause and causality bullshit where somebody just doesn't know what caused anything. But since I say it out loud now, I can basically, you know, put these pieces together for all of you, cutting out everything else that could possibly be in this woman's life that could have caused this.

In fact, if you read this article and you look at the things that they talk about, getting COVID is way worse, way, way, way, way worse for your pregnant woman than getting vaccinated. In fact, they say the vaccine has no effect whatsoever on your pregnancy. However, getting COVID very much can be very, very, very dangerous for the baby. Even still, people were still shying away from the vaccine and then using this woman's

pain on social media as a way to push a point she doesn't agree with. Yep. It got so bad for this poor woman that she had to step back and have people read her social media and basically interact with her online life for her while she was able to deal with her grief because her space online that was hers had become hijacked by assholes. This feels like the Sandy Hook shit. It does. 100% does. It's like, let's find somebody suffering, ignore the reality of their pain,

and then weaponize that for our bullshit cause. Use it. Use it again. Not only are we taking and manipulating and moving their original message into what we want, which is completely opposite of their message. Yeah. Now what we're doing is we're turning that against them

and against all these other people. We're connecting dots that don't exist. And what a shitty fucking troll thing to do. There's a disconnect from the fact that like every person you meet online is a fully actualized person with feelings and life experiences. And we have, we've created an idea that that's not real and that everybody online is a fair target and is fair game. And that is just nonsense.

Like that is a method of living in your world that is lacking in empathy and embracing cruelty for weird personal motivation. It's a horrible thing to do. It's a really, truly horrible thing to do. And it, it really speaks to the denial of the reality of, of humanity that comes from these kind of like, impersonal, impersonal interactions, impersonal reactions, these places where we're not, you know, cause who does that to a person who does that to a human? Nobody's, nobody's doing that face to face. Somebody would do that that face to face but when it's online it feels like it's okay and they're so far away from you it's not even it doesn't like you say

it doesn't even feel like a real person no one's doing that at a cocktail party right you go to a cocktail party and you know this whole story it's not like somebody you've never been to a cocktail party probably where somebody says hey there's tom here's a personal tragedy i want everyone to clink your glass yeah clink your glass. Yeah. Clink your glass. I want everyone's attention. Yeah. I would like to use this person's personal tragedy at this cocktail party in order to push my political or other agenda. That doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. And it shouldn't be happening online, but like we've lost our sense of connection and compassion. Sure. And that's a, that's a, that's compounds the tragedy that this person suffered yeah is

there a link between this and say the herman cain award yeah probably they're the same they're not the same there's not an equal sign yeah i don't think they're the same but i think that there's a link there especially to the people who are shitty on the herman cain award or like good another dude dead or whatever yeah like when i viewed it i i always felt it as like a real tragedy to look at like i would look at it and see the because there you can see the cause right you're like these people weren't masking they didn't believe in covid they went out and they did all this stuff and then they got covid and they died yeah and like like that was like you know drinking and driving and dying from drinking and driving like you can see it happening this is this is not the same it's not the same

thing it's like there's no connection between these two things, but you're making a connection. So that's, that's how it's different personally. But then it's also different in the sense that like, I don't know that everybody really viewed the same way, like Herman Cain award the same way. Cause I know I didn't view it as a way to be like, ha ha, you're dead. I viewed it as a way to be like, wow, what an amazing repository of people who literally went in the face of science and then died because of it. And now we have a digital record of them. Yeah. It's a tough spot because it depends on, like, if you prioritize your worldview over someone else's, which everybody does.

Yeah. But the thing is, like, the worldview of science is just demonstrably true. It's just true. It's just true. And, like, they would argue the same thing, except for, like, there's no backup to it. There's no backing.

Like, your point about drunk driving is well taken. Like, we take beat-up cars that are crashed up from wrecks, and they'll like, they'll like tow them to schools and be like, this car was in a drunk driving wreck. The person died. Yeah. You know?

And so they'll use those as sort of like, remember that from like the nineties edition all the time. I feel like the Herman Cain award is kind of the same thing. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a drunk driving car. Right. Look at this accident.

This can happen to you. Well, what are you going to do about money and bills? bills and you know i've never really liked paying bills i don't think i'm gonna do that either this story comes from vice the story's fucking crazy man the q anon queen told followers they didn't need to pay bills it didn't end well i feel like we got to read large parts of this yeah totally so there's a q anon queen of canada which i just learned about from this article i had no idea question yeah the queen has all the swans does she have the canadian geese oh the q anon queen of canada the first of all the q anon queen of canada is wonderful alliteration it's a great way to say i mean i love it i feel like i feel like that's

that's a shirt that makes itself. Thank you. Yeah. I only want to read this article so that I can continue to say the QAnon queen of Canada. I agree. It's great. I agree. But Canadian geese.

Canadian geese. They're going to have the... Who wins in a battle? Admittedly, a swan can fuck up a goose. A swan will kick a goose's ass. Fuck up a goose. But I think there's more geese. There are more geese.

Oh, so it's the horse-sized ducks. Yeah, it's a horse-sized duck versus a duck-sized horse. Right. Or a whole bunch of... It's a quantity over size issue. A whole bunch of duck-sized horses. So it's a... Okay, so if it's a quantity over size issue,

I'm always going quantity. Yeah, I feel like you go with the geese on this one. There's probably way more. Let's just presume there's... We're going to make a judgment right now. There's way more geese than swans in the world. There probably isn't. I don't even know, but I have no idea. I'm guessing. I'll tell you what I have seen. At least there are in North America. North America, there sure are. And I will say this though, I used to work at this place

and this place was, it was a place that's nearby. It used to be a research center for one of the big oil companies. And I used to work there as a cafeteria worker. I was a guy who worked in the kitchen. And in this place, right outside the cafeteria, was this huge pool. It was like a big, like, what are those, draining things or whatever, retention ponds, whatever they call them. Big old fucking pool.

It had, like, you know, fountains in it and shit. But it was big. I mean, it was big. Like, you know, maybe about the size of, you know, maybe like a full three-acre. Okay, yeah. It was a big one mean it was big like you know maybe about the size of you know maybe like a full three acre okay yeah it was a big one it was a size yeah and they had geese and they had a ton of geese that would come in migrate and they shit all over the place everywhere and there's constant just goose poop for for weeks and for the entire place because you covered in goose shit so they went out and they bought a

couple of swans yeah and they put the swans they made a nest and they put the swans in the middle of the thing and they were male and female they had a baby and that baby was out there with them and those swans killed those fucking geese they would just kill them they just they just i don't know how they did it but those swans those swans huge. They are like a goose is like up to maybe, you know, if you're, you know, average height, it's probably up to like your thigh or your crotch. These things were like eye level. They were big fucking animals. And they would just grab a goose and just be like, you're dead.

Nature's metal, bro. And they would just shake the fuck out of that thing until it died. And then they would move on and be like, whatever. My day's continuing. Not that long ago, I looked up some, cause like, I was like like how fucking geese are so ornery geese are so ornery and i was like i wonder how strong a goose really is a goose is strong enough with its wings to break your arm no kidding a goose can hit you with its stupid fucking wing and its ornery goddamn honking face it can hit you hard enough to break your arm a goose can fuck you up so if a goose

can fuck you up and those dude a goose can fuck you up, dude, a swan will straight kill you. Those swans are fucking enormous. They are huge. But anyway. And the queen owns them all. The queen, we found out when we were in the UK, the queen owns all the swans in the UK.

In the world. In the world, guys. Partly in the world. So does the queen of Canada own all the Canadian geese? We're still going to look into it. But anyway, the Queen of Canada also happens to be the QAnon Queen of Canada. The QAnon Queen of Canada is, let's just read this. Yeah, sure.

Followers of a QAnon influencer who's convinced some Canadians she's the true Queen of Canada are saying their utilities are being cut off because they were told by their sovereign that they no longer had to pay bills. One woman has repeatedly told her fellow QAnon queen followers she's, quote, stopped paying hydro, water, natural gas, property taxes, line of credit, and my credit cards, end quote. She pushes hard on her fellow true believers to join her in not paying their bills and chastising those who continue to pay. Quote, the more who do it, the quicker we can be free of enslavement. Quote, she wrote on one of the group's telegram channels, quote, those still living in fear are making it harder to get out.

Don't be afraid because we're in this together. So people have taken that. The fucking Q people are nuts. And they think that there's a fucking, this is a sovereign citizenship. This is sovereign citizenship. That's exactly what it is. And in fact, the article quotes a sovereign citizen researcher later on being like this is kind of some standard fair sovereign citizen nonsense don't pay taxes you don't you can't

arrest me i don't have to pay utility bills because i don't even get that one yeah well because these guys think that there is a royal proclamation from an actual queen of Canada. That's not even how your government works. That says y'all don't have to pay your bills and everybody else is just like a sucker. Yeah. And they just pay them just because. But the other thing, too, is like this lady, this queen, this QAnon queen of Canada, she wound up crowdsourcing her bus trip around the country and she brings like 25 30 followers with her and she has a little rv that they drive around but

she crowdfunded this this lady's raking it in man she knows what she's doing this is this is a scam these people are being scammed by this poor woman by this woman and all these this other poor people are are paying attention to her and listening and then they're getting their shit shut off. And these are not people, Tom, here's the thing, man, being poor sucks. Okay. Being poor sucks. You wind up getting your, get your fucking gas shut off. Now, suddenly you've got to pay late fees. You got to pay a reconnection fees. You got to pay like 60 different fees just to get yourself back in, get your car impounded, watch what you have to do. You know, anything that happens to somebody who is, who is in poverty, that it is

expanded on not only because they're spending more of their percentage of their income in order to get it fixed, but they're also getting caught with all these fees that we just tack on because we don't like you. And we want to make sure that we basically punish you for being in poverty. And that's what we do to people all the time. Man, electric bill, same thing. It doesn't cost them any extra different bullshit to change your electric.

It doesn't do it. They don't give a fuck. They don't care. They're going to turn a thing in the fucking, they're going to go to a switch or whatever they're gonna send some guy out how much does that cost how much does that cost but it's gonna cost you hundreds of dollars to get your stuff changed they're gonna pay they are they lose somehow losing money because you didn't pay them ahead of time i mean they lost the initial money that they used to give your utility or whatever but now that that doesn't matter.

But that shit racks up these late fees. And suddenly you're under this crushing mountain of debt and you can't do anything about it and you can never crawl out of it. And these people in this article are telling her, look, I got my shit chopped. I literally cannot, I don't have the money to turn it back on.

And these are a set, like we've talked about this in the show before, like it is more expensive to be poor in both whole dollar and percentage terms. You're you're the, the actual dollar to dollar costs for being poor are higher. It's more expensive per dollar to be poor. Go get car insurance, living in a poor neighborhood versus car insurance, living in a wealthy neighborhood. Your car insurance is in whole dollar terms. But then when you calculate that in percentage terms, to your point against your income, it is even more egregious.

Then all of the systems of like bank overdrafts and reconnections and late fees, all of those things are designed specifically because they disadvantage poor people. It's a form of sort of capitalist class warfare that keeps poor people poor. So, and this lady is like, you know why she's doing this?

Because if most of the people who follow her don't have a lot of money, but she says, don't pay your bills, suddenly they have more money to give her. To give her so she could do her RV trip around the country. Right. And these people are desperate to like, I got all my shit to, these are essential services. money to give her to give her so she could do her rv trip around the country right and they and these people are desperate to like i got all my shit these are essential services how do you want

to you want to live in canada without natural gas you want to live these are this is your electricity your water your power these people are making decisions for their families there are kids now certainly as a result who are living in homes that don't have water. Don't have electricity or water. Like, if you buy a house that doesn't have running water, it won't get the occupancy certificate. It's not fit for occupancy until you have at least running water. The amount of damage that this causes, and it's a ripple effect, right?

It's a ripple effect, and this will ruin someone's life. This can ruin someone's entire life by just having their gas shut off or whatever. It can ruin their whole life. Think of how long they have to be in debt. Maybe they got to go to one of those car loan places, and then they got to put their car loan up. Get payday loans and shit.

Payday loan. And then they're stuck in that cycle forever or whatever. I don't know what the laws are in Canada about payday loans, so maybe they don't even have that. Maybe they're actually decent. Maybe they're more enlightened than we are and they don't know what the laws are in Canada about payday loans, so maybe they don't even have that. Maybe they're more enlightened than we are and they don't have payday loans. But, you know, in the United States,

I could tell you, it would be a fucking disaster. And you know what? There's not a ton of services to help you out of that shit. That's why modest needs exists. That's exactly. Literally, the reason we even need an organization like modest needs. It's a gap organization that fits that they they search out

that gap between desperate services which is what we you know what happens when you're on the street or whatever versus you know people that are you know able to live or whatever and it's just like that gap service doesn't exist in our country yeah that's why it's there and this lady these the thing is like the the q folks and we talked about this on skeptics in the pub today when we recorded that so if you guys have a chance to go over those those videos are available to watch on twitch yeah um i think you can also link to them from our facebook page they're going to be on their youtube page too so we we've talked about this the the q nonsense is insidious because it is all encompassing yeah and any grifter worth their salt

is gonna look at q and say yeah i'm latching on to that man i am latching on to that because it's i can put my arms around any circle that venn diagram is so big for q i can just i can carve out my niche i can be the fucking q anon queen of canada i can drive around in my weird little rv and i can get you not to pay money and give it to me give it to me just just hand it directly over to me and then put yourself in mortal peril yes absolutely living in canada without natural gas can you imagine now let's review the q says the q says every letter makes a sound the q says although there are some people tom yes that do not agree with q anon so how weird is this world we're living in this story comes from the raw story this is alex jones explodes at caller over damn q anon i've put up with the q people

all over the place he He says, now I want to play this clip. This is a great image of Alex Jones, by the way, just tomato red, just looking great. He looks like a carnival barker from like mom's basement. He, he 100% looks like somebody who is going to like, I don't know, like he's going to tell you about Jesus while you're eating. I'm in the middle of my burger and he's going to come over and try to tell me how I'm evil and I'm going to hell. So this is, this is the clip. This is from Twitter. I'm going to play this whole thing. So you can enjoy it with us.

I mean, I mean, look, I love you, Adam. Did you hear what I just said? It sounds like a robot there. It's like, I'm going to listen to that one more time i mean i mean it does remember that roger's like yes yes it sounds like he's got a fucking bad needle and he's on skip yeah it's not saying yeah but yeah but yeah that's a buck rogers robot or something but how old are we buck fucking rogers with a little Rogers robot or something. Buck, how old are we? Buck Rogers. Buck fucking Rogers. Buck Rogers with a little fake dog or whatever. He had a cool ship though.

Buck Rogers probably off here in the early 80s. He had a cool ship though. I remember his cool ship. I love Buck Rogers. Buck Rogers was badass. Was that Lee Majors? It wasn't Lee Majors, was it? God, I don't know.

No, Lee Majors was a $7 million man. Do you remember that? I do. Remember when $7 million was a lot of money? Yeah, right? $7 million man. Do you remember that? I do. Remember when $7 million was a lot of money? Yeah, right? $7 million. You could easily get a hospital bill for that

just for like... They should make Jeff Bezos the $7 billion man or whatever. Oh, fix him up? Fix him up. Give him a monocle. It'd be amazing.

He's going to be a fucking... You know Jeff Bezos will be a cyborg in our lifetimes. 100% cyborg. All right. Yibbity yibbity yibbity. Here's Alex Jones.

I mean, look, I love you, Adam. Did you hear what I just said in the lead up to that? What did I say to you right before you responded back with, yeah, I know somebody was giving out that information? Okay.

I'm sorry. I'm a little nervous. I might have... No, no, no. It's okay. It's okay. You understand that we lost... That was okay.

So I know that there's people who listening to this, right? So you didn't see what we just saw, but there was a whole, like until that point, there was like this whole computer generated montage of like a ball and it was red and it was sort of going into these like little holes. And I mean,

like it was genuinely a weird, like Rube Goldberg machine. Super weird. That was, and we're into this, we're into this 20 seconds. holes and i mean like it was genuinely a weird like rube goldberg machine super weird thing that was and and we're into this we're into this 20 seconds so it was like a 20 second thing while they were talking that you didn't get a chance to see alex jones you just saw this weird montage yeah with like a red pill falling and like turning into a laser and there's like a piggy bank or something i don't even know it's like the i'm not sure what that thing was i have no idea i i feel like you could spend so much time on what we just saw just deconstructing the images and figuring out what it is but it's

crazy to me that that was what was on the screen you know i gotta tell you see so all i can really focus on though is that desk fucking desk i want look at how many papers guys you can't see how many papers he has on this desk but my god he's gotta have he's printed out the internet like the whole internet desk he just he just logs into his fucking chrome account hits control p just print the whole internet he's like got his msn account it's like aol accounts and he's printing things out but i will say his giant green screen behind him oh it's great's great. Green screen desk. It's awesome, man. That desk is so great. So good. God,

it's so good. I, his, it's not at all douchey. His studio is pretty great. It is cut free because of Q. Okay. Hold on.

You understand that we lost the cut free because of Q. Yes, sir. And I had to put up with the Q people all over the place and I'm tired of it. So I'm not mad at you, but you just, you hit a button here and the damn Q people all over the place. And I'm tired of it. So I'm not mad at you, but you just, you hit a button here and the damn Q people.

Jesus Christ. God. What an unstable human being. To go. Right? And I love that the caller was like, I'm a little nervous. He's like,

run it, run it, run it, run it. He's like this poor fucking guy. Isn't that classic abuser stuff? Like, like, like. Right. Yelling at someone and then? Like, like, like yelling at someone and then be like, I'm not mad at you, but I'm just mad.

I'm screaming about the thing you said, but I'm not mad at you. Thanks. That's terrifying. Uh, okay. We're the ones that manipulated some people to go into the damn Capitol

and worked with the feds. Q is the worst people on earth at the top. Q is the new world order Q is a psyop to lead us around by our noses what the fuck what is happening it's pretty easy to see what's happening it is it's not actually hard to dissect it

but when he says Q is the worst people in the world and I was like, for one sentence, I agreed with Alex Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel, and like when he's like, Q is ruining this country, and I'm like, why am I agreeing? Like, all the rest of it is crazy.

Because what he's mad about is that he can't control the Q narrative. It doesn't fit into his InfoWars worldview that he's selling. And so it spirals, it moves, it's slippery. It's always out of his grasp and he can't use it to sell supplements. And I think too, I think that you're absolutely right.

I think you hit it on the head that it's out of his grasp, right? I think that there are people who allow Q into their narrative because they think it gets them more audience, but they don't maintain control and sometimes they will say things that might be at odds with other parts of q so they're you know these people will will will take it in and sometimes they sometimes bad things happen i remember that guy uh firefighter

prophet guy yes so firefighter prophet guy he got fucked because there was a back and forth and you know some of these people get fucked because they get too deep into q right so they'll get too deep in and they'll be like well i don't know man i thought it was gonna happen and now nothing's happened and it feels weird and i hate my life or whatever so there are some there's some pitfalls to it alex jones is smart enough to recognize that it's a tiger by the tail yeah exactly he's smart enough to know that if i can't control the narrative, then it's useless to me. It may bring someone into my audience, but I still won't have any control over that person.

And so it's essentially useless to me. And so what he wanted to do since the beginning, I think, and we talked to the Knowledge Fight guys, and they sort of confirmed it, that he doesn't want this narrative in his group. He wants to have his own narratives, his own racist, shitty, garbage narratives that are very similar.

There's so much overlap. They're so alike that when we first started talking about it, we were surprised that he wasn't embracing Q. But he can't control it, and that's a big deal. That's a big deal. Remember that person that,

I'm trying to remember who the hell it was, but they were like a Q person and they didn't do something. And then all of a sudden they were accused of being a pedophile. And like Q just turns on people randomly because there's no central locus of control. Sure. And anybody can be Q. Right. So you could essentially say, well, you're probably this or whatever. Right.

At any moment. So the, the best way to deal with Q is to stay on the outside of it. Stay all because being in the middle of that shit, it's like, Ooh, but, but Alex Jones has been a,

a sort of vehemently against this for a while. Yeah. And it's weird to be on the same side as Alex Jones, but this is not a, my enemy and my enemy situation. No, it's not because no, you know, like sometimes that's beneficial. this is not a my enemy, a my enemy situation. No, it's not. Because, you know,

like sometimes that's beneficial. This is not one of those moments. No. This is fuck them both, light them both on fire. Yeah, right. That's exactly what it is. They're both garbage fighters. This is one of those things

where he's right about a sliver of an issue for also all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons. Yeah, he's right because he wants to control it, not because he cares about what's right and wrong. And then his weird narrative, it's a psyop and it's a... Exactly. Yeah, it's more deep he wants to control it, not because he cares about what's right and wrong. And then his weird narrative, it's a psyop, and it's more deep state burglar florgles.

Yeah, exactly. He's going to make up whatever it is to try to discredit it. When all you just need to be like, it's just not true. It's not real. That's the whole, yeah, all that never happened. Okay, move on. It's interesting, though, that he's blaming Q for the insurrection January 6th.

Yeah. Which means he's separating anybody on his audience from that January 6th. Right. So there's a separation there, which is interesting to me because I know that there was someone on his staff that was nearby at the time. Well, he was there and he peaced out. He peaced out, but somebody in his staff was either close or involved in some way. So it's interesting that he's choosing this way to push around it,

to say, no, it's not, and we don't like that January 6th stuff. That's Q stuff. Yeah, as the years have gone on, I've come to understand just how savvy Alex Jones really is. I really just thought he was a kook at first. When we first started covering Alex Jones, I'm like, he's just a loud mouth who's charismatically kooky, right?

But as the years have gone on, you can see just how strategic and savvy he actually is. And his leaving, his showing up to January 6th and then recognizing the volatility and seeing it go south and then leaving is really great evidence of that. Yeah. Yeah. Of him being savvy.

Of him recognizing danger. Nope, I'm out. And being like. Yep. Yeah. I'm out. He recognizes danger and his little weird hood comes up and he backs up really quickly. Everybody in the tank.

Constantly sort of moving backwards with his mouth wide open like. Ah. Hit the road trip and don't you come back no more. Gary, did you load up the car? We have a lot of stuff. Gary, what are you doing? Okay. Why is there a dildo in your mouth?

What do you mean there's no more room? You can't fit one item plus the three things in your hand into the car? You can only fit 50% of the item. Half of the item. Okay, then what about those things? Yeah, the three free gifts. Wait, is this an ad? Okay, okay.

So you can only fit 50% of almost any item yes in the car plus then there's the three free gifts yeah where are the six free movies gross gary well did you use code glory well obviously you could fit all these things in the car because when you use code glory at adamandeve.com you can 50 50% off on sending one item, three free gifts, plus six free spicy movies, and free shipping, which in turn means there's plenty of space in the proverbial car. No, just get in the fucking car.

Where else? Adamandeve.com to use code GLORY. Where we're going, we don't need codes. I mean, yes, we need code glory. Shut up, Gary. I'm very well read. Shut up, Gary. Oh, I love this song.

That's the power of code. Glory. That's the power of code. Glory. So again, the world's getting weird. Yahoo News getting OAN finally admits no widespread voter fraud after settling defamation suits. Wow, that's weird. The most important part of this is after settling the defamation suits. That's strange.

That's super, super strange. I'm going to read what their quote is here in the article. The segment notes that an investigation by state officials into unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud made by ex-president Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani turned out to be nothing. Quote, the results of the investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wanda Shea Moss

did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct. End quote. A narrator states, quote, a legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement, end quote. This is the Chobani's really good for you,

Alex Jones moment. This is what this is, yeah. Yeah, well, this is the second time that OAN has had to scale back and be like all right here is a statement yeah i know that we get confused as a news network because you know it's kind of built into the title but we have to pause and say sometimes the things we say aren't true oopsie doopsie yeah sorry there's literally no damage to that most of the time. But once in a while when we feel the damage, we immediately retract everything we've ever said,

which makes me think we should do a lot more damage to these damaging, shitty organizations that fucking run free. They run their message free for everyone to hear, and they spread blatant misinformation. There should be way more lawsuits against shitty garbage organizations that have literally free reign over our internets and can broadcast their message, their lies to people and get away with it. There should be a lot less getting away with it. There should.

getting away with it. There should. And I think if you are a, if you are purporting to be a news outlet, then your standard for vetting information should be legally higher than everybody else, right? So if you're fucking Joe Blow spouting off on the street corner with your megaphone, you have no obligation to,

and nobody would have a reasonable expectation. And that's why you should have no obligation to necessarily only say true things, right? We should say true things because we should not be shitty, but whatever. But if you are a news organization or you purport to be a news organization or the word news is built into the goddamn title like One America News Network, right? Then there should be a higher standard where you should be able to, I should be able to, I should be able to take you to court. If you've said bullshit about me and say, show me your due

diligence process for vetting the information you publish. And if you cannot lay claim to a process that has editorial and journalistic standards to it, you should get fined up to wazoo. I hope that the defamation suit that dominion is bringing tears them up bankrupts these guys and fox too i know it won't bankrupt fox right there's no way you're going to be able to empty out their coffers but i hope it i hope it's damaging enough where enough people are like you know what there's not enough new there's not enough money in this for us to do this sort of thing anymore yeah and what i hope is that they don't settle. I would like to see it go to court. I would like to see there be transcripts. I would like there to be an investigative and depositional process that we can hear and show

the world. That would suck if it settles. It would suck so much. Because you really want to hear them have to get raked over the coals. You do. That's important. Because if you're a believer of OAN and then OAN gets taken to court, I would be like, oh, yeah, well, they're going to defend. They're going to have their time to show their stacks of affidavits. Yeah. And it's like, all right, man, they had nothing.

They had literally nothing. The emperor has no clothes and we need to get in the closet. You're going to die, bitch. That's a letter that I'm writing to my father. I see. My bad. Okay, that's the number. Good.

Thank you. This story comes from Reuters. It's a Reuters Investigates article on extreme policing. U.S. police trainers with far-right ties are teaching hundreds of cops. I learned so much from this article. are teaching hundreds of cops. I learned so much from this article. Yeah.

So one of the things that I learned from this article is that the people who train the cops, that that training industry is an entirely unregulated industry. Yeah. So Cecil and I- It's a fucking wild west. Yeah. We could start a police training company.

Yeah. And then we, you and I, right now, we could start a police training company. And then you and I, right now, we could create a website and we could have our own police training website and we could go around trying to sell our training services to police forces who could choose to engage that training in order for them to say they completed certain hours or whatever. And we could train them on anything. And there's no regulatory process to make sure that what I'm training the cops on is good information.

It doesn't have to be. There's no rigor behind it. It could be literally whatever they want to learn. And there's no regulatory or vetting process to make sure that I'm not a virulent racist. No, because there's a guy in this article that's that. A virulent racist. That is a far right alt right racist.

Just a racist. A shitty person. They talk about his social media feed. They talk about the people he talks to, the groups he belongs to, the things he's done, the things he's said. And he's a shitty human being. And he's out there training your police officers to deal with your traffic stops

and your lost kittens and your muggings and also, you know, involved in high speed chases and, you know, maybe showing up when, you know, your son or your dad is having a psychotic episode. Yep. Man, one of the crazy things that they were talking about in this article, this was really appalling. Yep. Man, one of the crazy things that they were talking about in this article, this was really appalling. So, again, the police can get trained on anything by any of these unregulated, uneducated people. Right. So it doesn't get no standards whatsoever.

So one of the things they were talking about is that there is there's a guy I think was the same guy who's who's offering training about how to believe or who to believe with regard to sexual assault and to distrust women who refer to themselves and their assailant using we. So the huge number of sexual assaults are intimate partner or date rape or, you know, somebody, you know, so you could say we went to a bar and then we went out, we went home and look, whatever. And the, he is training the police to discount the assault narrative. I don't believe you. Cause you used the, you used the, let you use one word that I don't, it makes me think you're lying to me.

Holy shit. Holy shit. These, these guys make the infrastructure that the police rely on worse every day. Yeah. Every day. I can't believe this article. And what this should show us, you know, is that one, we know it's not difficult to become a police officer. No.

Right. It's not, it's not. The standard is not super high. It's not super rigorous to become a police officer. We don't have years and years and years and years of training. I'm going to be the first one to say they should have so much more training, so much, so much more training. It should be de-escalation training, you know, along with all the other paramilitary stuff they want to do. I understand that they want to do that. We live in a country with guns. So there has to be some level of like,

you know, physicality and, you know, some sort of shooting stuff and whatever. I understand you have to do that, but they weighed it so heavy on the side of that. And then they also very much weighed it on the side of like, like this sort of dude bro policing mentality that our country has. And, you know, there should be so much more just to

even get in the door. But then the continued training that they have is trash. It's garbage. Trash. You wouldn't, you wouldn't walk out of a conference if you paid $20 to be at this thing, because there's somebody who's unqualified telling you nonsense with a, with a racist twang to it. Yep. And you would walk out of anything. This wouldn't hold up to any kind of rigor whatsoever. They wouldn't invite these people to talk anywhere. They're getting invited because of nepotism or they're getting invited because they, you

know, there's something there that allows them to get to have this broad reach. Maybe their message, the underlying message might be appealing to a lot of people. I sure do know there's a lot of overlap between police officers and that punisher, weird punisher thing that they're doing with the back, the blue and whatever stuff. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of deep stuff here that's going on. But the fact that these people are able to walk in and look at the, look at all the police officers in your local area and have a conversation with them and possibly change their mind on, you know, two or three important things.

Yeah, I mean. That's scary, man. That's very scary. That's scary. There needs to be people who, you know, who do you want on there? You want the people who have had these long careers in policing that have been vetted,

that have been, you know, I want the guy who's diffused 50 gun gun battles that's what i want not the guy who's gotten in five right shooty shootouts killed yeah i don't i don't i want the guy who's been able to slow the people down or not get into those high-speed chases rather than the guy who survived 10 high-speed chases right but they're looking at all the action because because i think that there is a draw for people to become police officers because it feels like there's going to be a lot of action. There's an action movie, right?

And so they feel like there's going to be some sort of action involved in the job. And so that's why they join on. And I really wish that we had a lot more Andy Griffiths. You know? Let's just defuse this shit. It's not really a situation. Let's figure this out. And instead what we have is a bunch of people that are like you know i mean that are that are basically doing it they're all SWAT fucking police force

right yeah and they don't want to do the SWAT shit yes yeah i think you hit it exactly i think there is a there is a mentality that this is an action-packed job right and that if you want an action-packed job that cop is one of those things that you can go out and be to have an action-packed job these guys also train police on how dangerous the police job is yeah and by enforcing the message of how much in danger you are yeah man then you automatically come into a situation ready to escalate in order to preserve your safety yeah we talked about this before yeah So like if I walk into a kennel and I believe that kennel is full of puppies or I walk into a kennel and I believe that kennel is full of rabid dogs, vicious dogs, like my behavior toward the sleeping dog in the corner is going to be influenced by what I walk into that kennel thinking. So that's, that's, that's incredibly

important. I also think that policing just necessarily needs a greater degree of specialization. So we should be training investigators and detectives as an entirely separate element. Like I should be able to go to college and get a degree in Sherlock Holmesing, right? Yeah. That should have nothing to do to college and get a degree in Sherlock Holmesing, right? Yeah. That should have nothing to do with being a beat cop. And I should be able to go and get training on how to be a beat cop that does not necessarily involve investigation, like beyond a certain level. We really need to specialize. It's one of those fields that is still in many ways,

overly generalized in a world that is increasingly embracing specialization. And specifically, you know, they talked about it when they talked about defund the police. Stop sending police officers to things that they can't defuse. Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. You know, this is a perfect example of this. You know, these far right cops that are teaching these terrible ideas, they're going to get sent out to, like I said, you know, when somebody's having a psychotic episode, it's way better to have somebody there, a trained professional who can handle that

and diffuse that situation than somebody with a fucking gun and associate's degree. Yep. Yeah. An associate's degree, if you're lucky. At best. If you're lucky. At best. Somebody who's not trained to do this.

Right. Right? I'm not shitting on associate's degree. No, I'm not either. I have two of them. Right. So I'm not shitting on associates. I have two of them. No, I'm not either. Right. I have two of them. Right. So I'm not shitting on them. Right. I know their worth and I think they're worthwhile.

Right. But I'm not going to say that I am a hundred percent, you know, a master at something because I got an associate's degree in it. Yep. And I think like, like the problem is, is that we're, we're putting our lives in their hands. And if you're putting your lives in someone's hands, we don't expect any less

from doctors, right? You can't just go get it. You can't just go to a, an hour training course and do surgery. Well, I mean, we, we talked about this a long time ago, but the requirements to be a hairstylist are greater in hours. So if I want to be a police officer in New York state and I, or I want to do hair in New York state, it is a longer training and apprenticeship process to be a hairstylist than it is to be a cop. And that's insane. And that's not because hairstylists get too much training, right? It's because the police are not required. We don't have federal standards. We don't, I mean, it's just the whole thing's a fucking mess. We don't have a database of them when they fuck up in one place to go somewhere else.

It's a fucking mess. You're absolutely right. It's a fucking mess. The tornado wrecked the town's all-nude library. It demolished Concussion Stadium, the beloved football stadium where high school kids get concussions, and their proud parents cheer, my son's brain is broken now!

Just horrible. I wish that tornado was a person so it could go to jail. This story is just fucking crazy as hell. And from Rolling Stone. But I found this, by the way, because we got burned on that one Rolling Stone article. I found this in multiple places. Yeah, no, everybody's quoting the Rolling Stone article in this, which is why I think when I added it to the notes, I went to the stone article but there was a vice article there was a yahoo article there was an ms on article there was a business insider article there's a bunch of different stuff

so trump kept asking if china was shooting us with a hurricane gun so this is another revelation from uh defense secretary esper so trump trump is claiming that he basically was running the So this is another revelation from Defense Secretary Esper. So Trump is claiming that he basically was running the military himself because his defense secretary was so incompetent, right? I basically ran the military. This is a guy who kept asking. He asked it so many times that it became a running joke around the White House that no, there is no such thing as a fucking hurricane gun he wanted to know if he could retaliate for the chinese hurricane attacks

he's but you know like he's such a it's so crazy that you hear these things tom because we talked about it last week that for every crazy thing you heard, there's 20 crazy things that nobody ever talked about that happened behind the scenes. And as time goes on, those will become more and more to the light. And this is one of those moments where one of those crazy things are coming to the light. You know, he's sitting in front of everybody

with his fucking Sharpie extra-sized hurricane bubble that he made. He's talking about shooting fucking disinfectant into your veins in front of the the mass populace but behind the scenes he's saying just as stupid shit yeah because he's a stupid stupid man he is who had no business being president united states and we elected an incompetent fool yep as our as our our commander-in-chief of the military and he you know here's the thing i can forgive you asking that question a single time i absolutely can forgive you you're a normal

dude you don't know anything about the military at all sure right you're just a guy who shits on a golden fucking toilet on wall street so maybe you come in one time and you say do they even have like a some kind of weaponry that i don't know about you know like you don't ask like a hurricane gun right but you could be like look man i just been a normal joe my whole life can you just tell me the 10 things that they have that i don't know about like is there a hurricane gun is there like a weather machine is there a thing right i don't know you know i can forgive that one time right but when you when it's a running joke that you want to keep on shooting missiles at fucking china because they have a weather gun that you don't know about or that you keep asking about you're a dumb person

well and it's it's like this like constant and we've heard this now so many times there's like all the staffers all the grown-ups in the room all the adult serious people are constantly having to be like oh my god this fucking guy again this fucking guy it's like right on a toddler it's like having a toddler in your house and you didn't baby proof everything right and so now you're constantly trying to like use your foot to stop them from getting at the fucking lights and then you got to go over here no don't go play in the cat box no no no no no okay we want to go over here now no don't press the buttons on tv oh you touch the front of it it's disgusting because you're a slimy brat and you're always covered in a thin film of gross and like but that's what he was yes and he's just constantly

he's constantly running around the White House as a little tantrum throwing brat. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's like, there's an idea that like really fucking stupid people have that the weather, which we can barely predict. I know, man. Can be controlled.

I know, dude. And that it can be controlled at this like both macro and micro level. Like it would be a macro level event to create a hurricane. How much power goes into a hurricane? It's insane. Basically, it's an, comparatively to what we would,

it's an infinite amount of power. Exactly. We can't generate the kind of power that it would take to make a hurricane. The idea that you could create a hurricane is insane. The idea that you could create a hurricane and also control its trajectory, where it's like all of, idea that you could create a hurricane and also control its trajectory where it's like all of and that you're doing all of it secretively right with invisible

tools don't get me wrong we have we have the ability to create a lot of energy at one moment right we do have that ability not as much i don't think it's as much i don't think it's even close to as much as a hurricane but you can can create a large, but the world knows. Right. Everybody on the planet knows it happened if you create a large amount of energy at one time. We're creating, in order to believe that there is a fucking Chinese hurricane gun,

you have to suppose that the Chinese have a level of technological sophistication, which is like, it's fucking Dr. Who fantastical. It's insane. And he's genuinely, just to ask that question means that you should not be the leader of the free world. It's okay. Your point is taken. It's okay for a regular Joe to ask that question, right?

If you're just some guy. And that's what I'm getting to, too, is that he was just a regular Joe. I mean, a rich regular Joe. We should not be hiring regular Joes. I think you're right. I think you're right. What the fuck? Because if you put me in that position, I would ask the same question.

But I know I'm not capable. Same. Right? I know I can't do it. I know that I know my own limitations and be like, if you put me in that position, if tomorrow they're like, sorry, Biden died and everybody down the line. And comes down as Cecil. And they're like, it's Cecil. It's Cecil. It's your next. I'd be like, sorry, Biden died and everybody down the line. And comes out as Cecil. And they're like, it's Cecil.

It's Cecil. It's your next. I'd be like, cool. I'm just going to basically go there and be like, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to find every single person in the room that's smarter than me and be like, you guys do it. Yeah. Right. And I'll sign it.

Well, I think because you got to recognize your limitations and that's the problem with him. That was his issue, right? You know, George Bush, I think as shitty as a president he was and as shitty as a person he is, he recognized his own limitations and he surrounded himself with people that were evil and shitty and awful. But at least he could get things done in a way. They weren't stupid. Because he knew that he could just trust these people around him to do all the smart shit, and he could be the dumb person who signed his name to it.

Yep. Yeah. But Trump was this stupid person who thought he could just do everything. Trump literally believes he's an expert in everything he touches. Everything. He believes that he's the smartest guy in the room no matter what room it's in. Yeah. And no matter what the topic at hand is, right?

Yeah. He's the guy who can hit a fucking hole in one he's the guy who can you know solve medical problems make every deal he there's nothing outside his level of expertise because he's a fucking fool that still believes in a world simple enough for one person to understand yeah we live in a world that's right you're right it's crazy yeah hurricane gun Hurricane guns. Hurricane gun. We can't even make a tornado gun. You know what I mean?

I know. What the fuck? We're like not even starting small with like, like dirt devil gun. Really? Like, how about like a, like a seish gun? Right. Like, you know? Yeah.

Like the best we could do is like a super soaker. Right. Like, can we make it? Can we fill up fucking like the reservoirs in Southern California? I know, right? Because like they're so low that the bodies are showing up. If we can. That's for real. If we could, if we could do that, we should do it in the places in the country that are experiencing a severe drought. Right.

You know, like if they could do that, why didn't we just die out the trees that were on fire and during the fires and while you were president? Right. Yeah. The entire West. Or are we saying like that the Chinese have you have to believe here's the other thing you would have to believe. You'd have to have to believe that we have this technology as well. Yeah. But and but we did not use it for good. Right. That that being able to control the weather we still were like whatever heat waves where they're at droughts where they're at fires where they're at i don't give a fuck i'm just we're not going to use it so okay or you have to believe that the chinese have a level of weaponistic technological sophistication and yet you still want to bomb yeah you still want to start that fight right that's like me being like

dude anderson silva fights like a beast i should fight him i so that i don't get fought by him later i think i kicked my ass all day my ass asleep the best defense is a good offense holy shit best defense everything is dumb the more you think the dumber it gets worse every week and the more that comes out it it's the worst. And I just think to myself, I'm like, I know the people who voted for him stay away from this kind of news and they don't pay attention to it.

But I'm always just like, you voted the stupidest person in the world. Genuinely. He's the dumbest person in the world and you voted him into office and you should feel ashamed. Even if you agreed with all of his crazy principles. Deeply, deeply.

Ashamed. Yeah. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We just recorded this week, a Skeptics in the Pub on the Skeptics in the Pub Twitch, which will be on the YouTube. So you can go check that out. I mean, the Skeptics in the Pub, we recorded it as about our book, The Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit, which you can find at YouTube. So you can go check that out. I mean, the skeptics in the pub, we recorded as about our book, the grain unified theory of bullshit, which you can find at

dissonance pod.com that, uh, that book is available through Amazon in three different formats. You can find it in hardcover paperback and Kindle, and then you can also download from our website, not Amazon related the audio book, which Tom reads. And it's a wonderful audio book, Amazon related, the audio book, which Tom reads. And it's a wonderful audio book, eight hours worth of audio book goodness for you. That is, we think a good book, a good product for you to buy.

So if you want to do that, you can go do it. We talked about the book extensively with Michael Marshall, skeptic of the year at the Merseyside Skeptics. And it was Skeptics in the Pub. We had a great time. We got off maybe an hour and a half ago and it was just a great time. So check it out.

We'll link to it in the show notes if we can. I'm not sure their Twitch was showing up the previous video, but I think their YouTube will have it. So we'll link to that. So check it out. If you haven't seen it before, go check it out. That is going to wrap it up for this week.

Remember, we won't be doing a live stream next week. So if you show up at the live stream, we will not be doing one, uh, this Thursday, but we'll be back the following week. Uh, but that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with skeptics. 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-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment.

Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information

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