Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 657: Dr. Hitchslap

Episode Date: November 28, 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 glory hole 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 is episode 657 of cognitive dissonance and cecil uh just a few days ago i don't know if you saw this but uh frish or first or whatever however you say like he resigned his race lauren bober lauren bober lauren bober retained thought though very very close like a thousand votes close when we saw when we saw coming through

one of the things that we were saying was like it could be that uh that the uh that the there was a chance to flip the seat but the most of the people had picked it it was like 99 chance she was going to win a race like it was really high really high and she did win her race she did she won it very very narrowly and there will be a recount from I hear, there's going to be a recount no matter what. No matter what. So Colorado law requires a recount. So there will be a recount. There's probably not enough juice in there.

Recounts usually only move a couple of hundred votes in any direction. There's not a thousand votes, typically, unless there was some abnormality in the voting, which doesn't appear to be the case from what I've read. But what is interesting about this is that this now makes Boebert susceptible to being primary. So if you're a Republican- You got to love that shit, right? And then if you're a Democrat, this is exciting because what you need to do is turn out a thousand more people.

You need to say to people, look, if you feel like your vote doesn't count, we were a thousand yous away from getting rid of Lauren Boebert. We've talked on this show so many times about how important and how valuable it is to vote. And we get pushback every time we talk about it. We get pushback from people, you know, they didn't earn my vote. They didn't earn my vote. I wasn't excited about any of the candidates, whatever your excuse is. We're a thousand votes away from getting rid of the Boeberts. That's how close this stuff comes.

You're, you know, if you add up how many close races there were and then how narrow those decisions were, your vote does count because there are places where a thousand votes here and a thousand votes there and a thousand votes there is now control of the house. Yeah. That's how close this shit is.

So like maybe your vote doesn't count as much in this sort of like strategic sense of like choosing who's the president. So like if you're in New York, right, do you feel like your vote counts in terms of choosing who the president is? No, it's going to be a fucking, that state's going to be blue. But they lost four seats in the House. Sure. So your vote absolutely counts in those local seats that are the seat of government. And many times,

you know, it's not just the one big race that's on the ticket. Right. It's a whole bunch of stuff down ticket. And if you see these rabidly right crazy people

who are now taking over school boards and taking over local governments and fucking, you got a Nazi dog catcher now. Yeah, man. I mean, seriously, it's a nightmare because most of the time,

the Democrats don't come out for the smaller races. They don't, but they did this last time. They did. This is a huge upturn. And I hope that the younger generation, and this is the younger generation is the one that saved the Democrats. Gen Z, it's amazing. Gen Z saved the Democrats. But I will say this, I hope that

they're fired up for elections from now on. I hope that they're as excited to vote every single year because there's probably a vote around you every single year, no matter what. And every two years, it's your congressman. Every four years, it's your governor. Every six years, it's your senator. congressman. Every four years, it's your governor. Every six years, it's your senator. There's important stuff happening all the time. And Boebert came close. She came close. A bunch of these other people came close. Look at how close many of these races were. They weren't calling them until four or five days afterwards because they were so close. So this tells you that this is an important thing to do and that you need to be the one who's proactive in going out and trying to make sure that your voice is heard every single time because it adds up. And I would also add that if you're mad that the vote, that your opportunity to vote does not provide you with left enough candidates, let me say I sympathize with that.

Me too. I sympathize entirely with that. Me too. But let me tell you what would change that. If Republicans lose in droves, if these elections were not nail-bitingly close, because the message when these races are nail-bitingly close, the message is most people are in that middle space. We got to go for the center. We got to hit the center. Exactly. Because that's the message. If you're a politician, you're looking and saying, look, if the message is that the center is the space, then the center is the space that politicians will choose to occupy.

They're going to aim there. If, though, the Democrats, and again, you could hate every Democrat on the ticket, right? But I guarantee you hate the Republicans more. Yeah. if the Democrats keep winning overwhelmingly, then what that message is, is man, the left continues to be the place where the energy is, where the votes are. And then what we'll do is we'll be able to say, okay, now that we've secured votes on the left, then we can make a decision about how far left we get to go. We can't make that decision about how far left we want to go until we stop demographically claiming the center.

We are demographically staking out a statistical position that says the center is where the battle is won. We got to stop that shit. So turnout, it like, yes, I know like people hate the vote blue, no matter who, but what's your other option? Your other option is vote nonsense, vote not at all, or vote red. Yeah. And it's not even that. It's we're letting them win every single time. We're letting them win when we don't have to because we have the numbers, overwhelming numbers. It's not even close.

It's not even close. If people came out and were motivated by this and said, okay, look, I'm going to vote in this election. It's not going to be as progressive. But as time goes on, they're going to see that the more progressive they get, the more people come out for them. You're going to see a far, far push. Suddenly we become more like Europe where the center is what our fucking Democrats are, where that's the center. You're moving that Overton window over constantly and you're moving it the correct way instead of moving it to the far right extremists

where now people are having conversations about Nazi horns. And that's part of the Republican Party. So yeah, absolutely. And you're letting them win every time. You're letting them win. And also I will say this, get a grassroots thing going at local government if you want far

progressive candidates, because you can get shit done at your local government at a way higher rate. Your state government, your county government, your city government, all that stuff can be taken over by a leftist candidate. And you can get a leftist movement in this country if you build it from the ground up. You can't build it from the top down. That's not how politics works in this country. It can't be built top down. The fucking libertarians are trying to build a top down presidential candidate for decades

and they can't do it because it's literally impossible, period. And I would also add, look at the recent decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and how long that decision was in coming. The Republicans understand the long game. They do. And they play the long game. And because over the course of the 45 years that they've been working to overturn Roe, they have had a strategy.

They put their time in. They put the work in. They allowed the shift in the Overton window to take place. They didn't allow it. They made that happen. They forced that to happen. Absolutely. If you guys, if we want the same kind of radical change moving to the left, we have to be willing

to play a decades long game. It's got to be. We have to be willing to say we didn't win. Keep fighting. We didn't win. Keep fighting. What we cannot do is allow Lauren Boebert to win next time. Yeah.

We can't throw up our hands and say, oh, well, you know what? Lauren Boebert won. So Lauren Boebert barely won. Statistically, it's nothing. Yeah. Statistically, it's a thousand people. That's nothing. We can actually shift things to the left, but we have to recognize that it might take

an entire generation. It might actually take, but an entire generation plus is what it took to overturn Roe. So we can get it back, but we're going to have to fight and fight and fight and fight. And Lauren Boebert should recognize that her policies almost got her unelected. Absolutely. And her stances and her public opinion and the way in which she presents herself, that almost got her unelected. And she should recognize that, but she will not because she's a dumb person and she will not change who she is.

And so this absolutely opens her up for a chance to get taken out of office in the future. The old days of the Sith Army. Anger is not the way of the Jedi. Sister, it comes from the New York Times. In news special counsel, a prosecutor schooled in corruption cases. Okay, hold on a second, Tom.

We're looking at this picture. The people who are watching this on YouTube can see it. The people who are at home can't see it. But I will say, if this guy came out for the professional two as a hitman, would you believe it? Oh, 100%. Are you kidding me? You'd be like, no, this is hitman, would you believe it? Oh, 100%. Are you kidding me?

You'd be like, no, this is hitman two. Hitman two or whatever, or fucking the professional two or whatever. Yeah, man. This dude is so fucking intimidating looking. He's super intimidating. He's crazy. And I'll tell you what, like, this is Jack Smith. He is the top prosecutor for a special

court now investigating Donald Trump and the January 6th malfeasance and his involvement, of course, in the attempted overthrow of the United States government, the destruction of democracy and the insurrection that followed, right? So he's investigating that little minor snag there. And then isn't he also investigating Donald Trump for the documents that he stole? He's doing the document, the classified documents that he stole as a fucking treasonous thief. We have been on the verge of ball tickling for, I don't know how long, right? You know, since he left office. And in fact, even before he left office, there has been,

you know, people have been investigating him for, you know, at this point, six years or something like that. It's an insane, maybe four years, but it's been an insane a long time. Four years, I would say.

So like the second term, his second half of his first term is when he first started getting investigated because he's been a shit the whole time. He's been doing things

that have been against the law or really unethical since he's taken office. And then he was brought to account for two of those things. He was impeached twice by the House. Twice he's been impeached. And it wasn't like, you know, these things, when you're talking about the things that he did, you know, the thing that he did with Ukraine and the thing he did with January 6th, both of those things are things he got impeached for. So these are terrible, shitty things that he's done.

And that's not even being brought up. What's being brought up now is January 6th and his involvement with taking these top secret documents. And now they're trying to make a decision on whether or not they're going to prosecute him. This guy's got war crimes experience. This guy's got tons of really high level political experience where he's bringing cases against politicians.

He's bringing cases that are so hard that they're changing rules based on like the stuff that he's brought against. I mean, like this is a guy you want in your corner. This is a guy you want to be prosecuting this or at least looking at to see if you could prosecute. And part of this is that, and make no mistake, so Trump's early announcement for his 2024 bid

was done specifically and strategically in order to shield him from this prosecution because now a prosecution looks so much more political in nature. So the Department of Justice was hamstrung immediately. They started off hamstrung immediately. They started off hamstrung because to criminally investigate a former president is something we've just never done. And then to now criminally investigate a potential presidential candidate, or not a

potential, but an actual presidential candidate by a Department of Justice, which works for the current administration, it has a look to it which is terrifying, right? And it is terrifying because you don't want the politicization of the Department of Justice against political rivals. That is something we should all be very worried about. The appointment here of a specific second special, not second, but a special counsel was done to insulate the Department of Justice from any appearance of political motivation. Yeah. And when you talk about rivals, you're talking about political rivals.

Look at what's going to happen now that they took over the House. The Republicans took over the House. They're literally going to be trying to impeach Joe Biden. For whatever. For whatever. And they're talking about the laptop, which is an absolute nothing burger. They did a story on this

hilarious story that I watched. It was going over, you know, getting passed around as a viral story on the right as, you know, they did this thing, I think it was NBC or CBS

did a short story on Hunter Biden's laptop. And there's just a bunch of nothing in there where they're saying, yeah, we had the laptop for a while and we haven't really found anything. Like that's really it.

And there's nothing in there that anybody, and they're even asking questions like, could there have been something taken out of there? Like, no, we don't think so. Not from the way we see it. It's just generally a nothing. And here's the thing, like if Hunter Biden somehow got his dad money,

let's just say that that's true. If they and they find out about it, I'm happy to fucking weed out corruption. Absolutely. But you're talking about a guy who just got an office who literally used the office of the presidency to fill his fucking coffers. This is a guy who's made a shit ton of money and people around him have made a shit ton of money exploiting this position that he has had in government. So if we're going to do that to one person, then let's do it to everybody, man. Like let's do it to everyone. Let's bring it all out. But you're going to see, they're going to go after Hunter Biden. They're going to go after it. They're going to try to impeach Joe Biden. They're going to do whatever they can retaliatory because what they don't have is they

don't have reality on their side. What they have is they recognize, they see, they're like, you know what? I recognize that what I want to do is I want to hurt the other side, period. They're not looking for the truth. They're not looking for anything like that. They're looking to hurt the other side only. And so they will utilize it. And the thing is, is here's the thing that drives me crazy. You know that they will. You know that they're going to do it. But we somehow have the Paul that hangs over you

that you are the ones who are moral and you are the ones who won't stoop to that. And it's just like, look, man, they're going to do it to us. They've already said they're going to do it to us. So I know that we're worried about, oh, it shouldn't be for a sitting, a presidential candidate or whatever, but fuck you. Fuck you. If the fucking facts come out, fuck you. How's that? Fuck you. Take him to court. Take him in. I don't care what it takes at this point. If he's,

if he keeps on hiding behind the shield of being president or a presidential candidate, he's essentially obstructing, or presidential candidate he's essentially obstructing he's he's essentially just dodging every single legal bullet you can shoot at him that's exactly he's like he's like in the matrix at this point he's dodging every single one they're unloading every barrel he's like that fucking guy who split himself a million different ways it's like that it's ridiculous it's out it's outrageous that we let somebody just fucking face fuck our system and we have to watch by because it's not like it's out of decorum or whatever well but that's that's the thing is that like you said there's only one side here that

seems at all occupied or preoccupied with idea of decorum or decency or what's right at all here's the thing if hunter biden if we investigate, if Hunter Biden, if we investigate that, just like you said, if we investigate that and there's juice there, then let's fucking expose the juice to the air. Yeah. But like, let's not also forget that Hunter Biden isn't an employee of this government. And unlike Ivanka and Jared and like,

you know, like the former guy, the former fucking guy hired nepotismly his entire fucking family and all his buddies. He's like, here's a bunch of guys I know. Here's my fucking family. Everybody come in. That's it. This administration is like, who's the best for the job? How can we have like more diversity hiring in these positions of high accountability and cabinet members?

There's a massive difference here. There is just a massive, massive difference here. But even if you throw all that away, I will tell you, if you investigate Hunter Biden's laptop and there is some connection to this administration, then we absolutely air it. We put a fucking spotlight on it and we say, hey, this is wrong.

I would vote to impeach Biden if I thought there was something there. Well, they don't let me vote, but I would encourage it, right? And I would support it. What's happening though, is that on Biden's first fucking day, articles of impeachment were floated by some of the fucking howler left or by some of the howler right. Like, are they just first before he even did a thing? He didn't even do anything. Just by showing up. Yeah. They were like, yeah, I'll fucking impeach. And I'm with you, man. Ethics matter, period. Right. Matter, period. And I get that. But at the same time,

my ethics are stronger than we just don't do it because it's a president or whatever. Yeah, my ethics are stronger than that. Like, fuck you. I don't care who you are. You're not above the law. I've I've been marching in Chicago since he was in office screaming with all the rest of the people, no one is above the law. That was the chance at every single march I'd ever been to. No one is above the law. And it's true to the common person. Right.

But it is not true to anybody in office, period. But I'm happy to oversee any corruption that comes to light. If they start finding out that all these fucking people are insider trading and they start popping, I don't care. Get rid of them. Get rid of them. Make it so they never can trade again. Good. Fucking 100% agree. They should never be able to go home and tell their fucking husband to go whatever, do this and make them billion dollars. Fuck all. Get them all in jail. Period. The end. But I i just it's such a relief that they're actually going to move forward with something i know because there's been this stall forever and i'm happy that they're

doing it from somebody who's you know got some kind of experience here yeah and this is a war crimes guy man yeah this dude is not fucking around gonna fuck around this dude rides his fucking he's a triathlete who rides his bike to the office and eschews personal security. I will say this too. He's tough. Terrifying that he eschews personal security in this position because these people are terrifying. But he's a registered independent. He's a registered. He's an independent.

He's so fucking like unbiased. He just wants to be like, no, I'm 100% unbiased. Yeah, right. Fuck you. I don't even care. I won't even listen to you. I'm just going to fuck you. My official position is I refuse to take a position.

I love it. I think it's great. And you know they're going to fucking dog this guy. You know't even listen to you. I'm just going to- My official position is I refuse to take a position. I love it. I think it's great. And you know, they're going to fucking dog this guy. You know, because the right has no defense other than ad hominem. That's the only defense they've ever had. So that's all they're going to do. Well, and they absolutely rebrand and recast their characters as villains because they did the same thing. You know, how many times have they looked at career Republicans and just rebranded them? Mueller. Both of them.

Career Republicans. I mean, Barr. Yeah, Barr. But like, the entire cast of like Pence. Yeah. The cast of characters, the right will burn its house down around it in order to preserve a liar's narrative. You're right. And, you know, I'm talking about the people that they absolutely demonize, but you're right. Those people that they pushed out of the party or

pushed away from the, absolutely. Sir, I think we should probably continue to jog. We've only gone about an eighth of a mile. All right. All right. You guys up for a real run? Yes, sir. Race you to the pizza hut. Breaks the heart. This story comes from Vice. This is a fascinating story. Almost twice as many Republicans died from COVID before the midterms than Democrats. that some of the underperformance of the right can be at least partially laid at the feet of the misinformation that the right sold to itself about COVID resulting in many, many more deaths on the right.

The right died of COVID at a wildly, and continues to, I shouldn't say this in the past tense, they continue to die of COVID at a rate that is wildly disproportionate to the people on the left. On the left, you are literally, we've gotten so crazy about misinformation and disinformation that this statement is now true.

You are safer from viruses based on your political affiliation. Yeah, it's true. It's absolutely true. That's like saying gravity works different depending on how affiliation. Yeah, it's true. It's absolutely true. That's like saying gravity works different depending on how you vote. Yeah, exactly. No, but it is true.

And they are very cautious in this article to make sure that they mention that there's people that are saying that it might not have affected it at all. And so they're very cautious in this article. But the true statement is that they died more. They died more, period. The other thing that I don't think a lot of people,

I've seen a lot of people talk about, but I think might be a statistical push too, is there's been sort of an exodus to Florida. So one of the things that you're seeing is that Florida came back with just wild, just wild numbers for DeSantis and whatnot. And I think there's been kind of a pilgrimage down there because of the way he was handling COVID. People who own businesses and things like that might have

moved their operations down there, traveled down there, people who agreed with him, who wanted to live in a place where they didn't have masks, where they were able to go out and do what they wanted, might have decided, you know what, I'm working from home now, I'm going to go live down there. And so there might've been a push down to some of these places that have become sort of Republican meccas, right? Where they're traveling small races all across the country where they had the red before, they thought that they had the red to win this. And if you looked at the way they talked about the last election, they thought for sure they were gonna get

a whole bunch more seats than they actually did. They thought they were gonna win the Senate. So there's a lot that a lot of people that have been displaced or might've know, might have died or something. They can't get good information based on this article, though, because like the voting records and the people who have died, all that stuff. There's only a couple of places where they can even look at it. So they can't make these big sweeping, you know, might have caused them an election. But there's a possibility that it did.

But there's a possibility that it did. You know, I have wondered, you know, when we've been watching this sort of great migration that's taken place as a result of COVID, I have wondered, and it appears to be at least partially true, if there will not be continued demographic pooling and concentration based on ideology. I've known, and this is just anecdotal, but I've known several people who said, I'm leaving Illinois. I don't like living in a blue state. And I've known several this is just anecdotal but I've known several people who said I'm leaving Illinois I don't like living in a blue state and I've known several people just personally and again, you know, it's a demographically significant No, but that have left for redder climbs

Yeah, and so I am wondering and also there has been a great migration of people who typically skew blue Who have moved to, and they have tech jobs and other jobs that allow them to work from home, and they have moved into areas that are marginally blue or purple. North Carolina is an interesting example of a state where there's been a lot of tech-heavy development,

and then there's been a lot of migration into North Carolina by people. And that state is starting to turn demographically more and more blue. Yeah. You're also seeing- It's a hot state to go to. People want to be there.

It's a big migration state. And it's got like just a ton of people there that are like progressive minded. Yep. So I am wondering if we won't see more of this continued pooling and concentration. And if that won't start to shift the sort of color map. You know what's interesting?

I wonder why Colorado isn't more blue than it is. Because there's still plenty. I mean, I guess maybe rural Colorado, no matter what, is going to be red. And I think that's why like Lauren Boebert and that ilk profit off of. But it's more red than I would have thought. It is. And I thought about this and I have a fucking Tom doesn't know anything theory

about this, which is like Colorado seems to me, and this is just fucking spitballing, but I have thought about this. Colorado seems to me to have a kind of Alaska vibe to it, a very live and let live libertarian-esque. Libertarian vibe. Right? Like a sort of, you know, that's the vibe that I get around Colorado. It's like, yeah,

well, we'll approve cannabis and mushrooms and that stuff, but we don't want any regulation. Leave us alone. We came to Colorado to live a certain kind of life in the same way that people go to Alaska to live a certain kind of life. Yeah, I hadn't considered that. That's interesting. Yeah. But I, you know, I hope, but I hope that this is one of those things that the Republicans see maybe, and then they say, wow, you know what? They're not dying as much. Right.

We should change our ideas on this stuff because vaccines are safe, period. Right. I think it's awful that a group of people is killing themselves through ignorance and willful ignorance, right? There's plenty of information out there by trusted sources. And if you're willfully ignoring that stuff and going to some mom who's telling you to fucking take like essential oils or whatever,

you're willfully killing yourself. I mean, you're getting a chance to, I mean, clearly, and long COVID is no joke either. There's been studies that are starting to come out that are really, really damaging for people who haven't had the vaccine and how, how, how often they get long COVID and what long COVID can do to you. It's, it's not good. It's not pretty. It's not. And you know, I'm just going to stay topped up whenever I can, man. Every chance I get, I, you know, I got COVID re like within the last six months and I got it through like a week before I was going to sign up to get the vaccine. They hadn't gotten the booster near me yet, and I wasn't able to get it, but I was seriously ready to get the booster when I got it. So it's like, I want to stay topped up

as much as I can, period. Yeah, because it's fascinating that the right is producing the misinformation and the disinformation that is creating its own reluctance to accept the solution to the problem that's killing itself. It's this weird, insane, Ouroboros thing because the left is not producing information that results in the death of the people on the right. The right is producing this same disinformation and misinformation.

And they're doing this, I think, because cynically they understand that this is a wedge issue. This is a new wedge issue that they've created around freedoms and around government and around tyranny and all these other bullshit buzzwords that don't actually interact

or intersect in any meaningful way with science and reality. But they've done it and they've dug this hole. It's sort of the same thing where the right has constantly sort of like doubled down and doubled down and doubled down again on, hey, you know, the elections are rigged. The elections are rigged. The elections are rigged. And then people are like, why didn't you go vote? I thought you're a Republican. Like, well, what's the point? The elections are rigged. They're rigged. And you're like, you guys are literally killing yourselves with your own misinformation. Your misinformation is actually the thing

that is killing you. It's not killing me. But that misinformation could also be being pressed by other sources to try to create deeper rifts to create a civil war. Oh, I think this is absolutely being funded by foreign sources too. I think that there's smart people out there

that see that these wedge issues can be turned into actual... Yeah, you could foment a... Absolutely. Yeah. This is, I totally agree. And we talked about this years ago. Like I think that we are engaged in an active war right now,

an information war with Russia and China. But certainly both actors have been demonstrably shown to be spreading this kind of misinformation, which is exactly what you're saying. It's driving that wedge. It's creating a chasm. Will it result in a civil war?

I don't know. It's certainly resulting in chaos and dysfunction. And chaos and dysfunction weakens the American state. You suck, you duck ass. Why don't you shut the hell up? I'd love to punch that guy in the face right now, but I can't, you know, because I'd get in trouble. And speaking of which, Tom, you know,

one of the things that has become a wedge issue for a while is anti-gay rhetoric. Yes. Right. So anti-gay rhetoric, the groomer metaphor, that groomer line that they say all the time, they say the groomers, you know, they're groomers, groomers. And they, what they do is they bring children involved so that like the thought of protecting children comes up and you're suddenly a pedophile if you're you know part of the lgbt community and we're seeing people act on this and in in the last week there was a there was a shooter at a nightclub that had a lgbt event that was going on and they wound up shooting and killing five people injuring many others i saw the guy who who tackled this guy.

They had an interview with him. So the person who walked into the bar or whatever with the AR, this guy saw them, saw they were in tactical body armor. Tactical body armor has handles on it. They ran at him, grabbed the handle and pulled him down. Holy shit. And so they used the tactical body armor he was using against him to protect himself against him. The gun came out of his hand. They kicked the AR. They got the pistol out of his hand, and then they just kicked the shit out of him.

Like, literally just stood over him, kicking, because he can't really hurt somebody in body armor. The guy said that he found a piece that was between his neck and his head, and he punched his neck for like five straight minutes. Holy shit. He fucking pummeled his neck. Good, good. Everybody around them just stood and fucking boot partied the guy, but he came in. Another politician's son, this happened in Illinois recently, the politician's son, that mayor's son who shot up the parade out here,

he was like a mayor's son. I didn't know that. Yeah, so the guy who shot up here, what was the city that he shot up? In Highland Park. Highland Park. The Highland Park shooter, his dad was like a mayor or something.

He's a politician. I didn't know this. This guy's dad was a politician as well. Holy shit. So this guy was a MAGA politician, his dad, and he was running and I think he lost or something, but he was a politician as well. So you're seeing another politician's son. This guy clearly had red flags that popped up.

Yeah, man. But some stuff was swept under the rug. Right. same guy, the guy who just committed this fucking mass murder at the nightclub in Colorado, this guy had previously threatened to kill his own mother with a homemade bomb. And the police did not press charges. They did not pursue the seizure of his weapons through red flag laws. Yeah. These red flag laws are weak, but they are the only thing we have. And it is infuriating to me

that we aren't using even the weak tools that we have. In fact, this article from NPR points out that there are many counties in Colorado that have declared themselves Second Amendment zones. And in those zones, their seizure of weapons

is something like 300% less likely to occur than in other counties where rational fucking minds prevail. And we look and say, hey, you know what? Like, if somebody has these fucking red flags around violence, they should not be fucking well-armed. Yeah, right. And if threatening to kill your own mother with a homemade bomb is not enough of a red flag, there's literally nothing I can do.

Seriously. We should make it, and fuck you if you don't agree with this, sorry, but we should make it easier, not harder to seize guns. I agree. We should, if we're going to have an armed nation, then we should make it easier, not harder to seize guns from people who show any proclivity to violence.

Right? Any proclivity whatsoever toward violence. I'm talking about like, oh, you're fucking shitposting hate stuff online? Awesome. We're coming to take your guns. I know it's just talk. Fuck you. You know, it's a lot of just talk when it's manifestos and other evil incel 4chan racist nonsense.

Right. Right. And then they go out and shoot fucking places up. They go out and kill people at schools. They go and kill people at nightclubs, synagogues like all this shit. We should make it easier. These red flags. You know what? These red flags should be popping up. And if we're wrong and we accidentally disarmed somebody. OK. Fucking go to court. What is that? What's the harm here? What's the trade-off? And the thing is, is the only thing you're defending yourself with, with the guns is from people with other guns. Yes. Like that's the only thing, like we're creating the problem. You know, you watch every single police shooting that

happens recently, you know, like, cause they're all being fucking filmed on body cam. Oh God. And you see how afraid every single police officer is of people because they know that they can be carrying a weapon. And when they are, they immediately put them down. I just saw one yesterday where there was a deputy, an undercover deputy who was in an altercation, had a gun out and police officers just came up and shot him. He was a deputy. He's like a, he's like one of you guys. And like, they still came up with, if we take guns out of the equation, suddenly there's a lot less police violence too. Yeah, man.

People can't come in and blow up a, and shoot up a nightclub like that. They can't come in and shoot up a nightclub if they don't have access to these kinds of weapons. And the police don't have to come in with SWAT teams and fucking armored carriers and shit to stop these people. It just, we have escalated the weapon situation in this country to an absurd level, and we're never

going to get away from it. You're never going to, I am not convinced that there will ever be any real meaningful legislation for guns. I'm not convinced of that. What we have is the pittliest shit, and we don't even pay attention to it. When somebody does something that's horrible or awful, what happens is, this shit got swept under the rug

because his daddy was somebody who's important. And guess what happens? Now fucking, you have, this guy has access to weapons and walks in and kills people, murders people because he's a fucking absolute shit bag. Yep. Who's been tuned up by this violent rhetoric. Yes, exactly.

That's exactly right. We have worried and worried and worried after 9-11. We worried and worried and worried about radicalization, like Muslim radicalization, Islamic radicalization. There's going to be this. And ISIS was reaching out and like talking to people on fucking message boards and radicalizing them toward extremism. and radicalizing them toward extremism. There is a radicalization movement that is taking place in this country right now, not by the Islamists,

but by right-wing fucking conspiracy theorists, nutjobs. And there is a radicalization taking place by the fucking right-wing incel nonsense. There is a violence problem in this country against women, against the Asian community, against the gay community, against the gay

community, against like virtually everybody that isn't a fucking white right-wing nationalist. The great, the FBI has come out and said that the biggest threat to American democracy right now is right-wing violent extremism. That's where this extremist, this indoctrination and this radicalization is taking place we need to identify that shit we need to strip these fuckers of their guns we also need to strip people of their firearms when they have mental health crises that would put

them at risk of dying by suicide there is a suicide problem in this country and it is very infrequently spoken about but it is a massive problem lots of fucking people, way too many, die of suicide. And we've seen in so many places that reduction means reduction results in... It takes nothing. It takes nothing to change that to a positive, right? It takes nothing to change it. And the thing, like you said earlier, what's the worst that happens? You took the wrong guy's gun away yeah if my wife was scared that i was gonna hurt myself

and she called the police and they came and took my guns away what what happened what was the worst thing i would be fucking grateful nothing happened i would be so grateful to be cared about that much happened and that's the problem i think is that you know it's the same thing with the environment i'm always wondering like what's the worst that happens as you clean the environment? Oh, where's my smog? The worst that happened as you clean the environment. I don't know.

I mean, yeah, you had to spend a little extra money and with somebody taking your guns away, you lost that money, right? So that's the worst that happens is you lost some money, but you had disposable income for guns already.

I know. So it's not like you, you know what I mean? Like, so I just don't, I just don't know what the, I don't know what the hangup is, but enforcing these laws feels like it's a problem. Yeah. And, and, and you're seeing it happen.

You know, like, like these red flag laws could do something. They could, and they really should. And if this is the only tool we're going to put in place, let's fucking use it. Okay. I want to correct myself before we continue. Um, I just looked it up and the accused gunman is actually the grandson, I apologize, the grandson of a state assemblyman who lost his seat in the midterm elections. That person is a MAGA person. I can see them wearing right now. I can put it on the screen.

If you're watching this, you can see it. That person is wearing a Make California Great Again shirt or not shirt, hat. So they clearly are a, you know, this is their great, this is their grandfather. And so they were a lawmaker, but it was not the father. I want to, I want to correct myself before we move on. I said it was the father. It's the grandfather. But yeah, connected to a lawmaker. Right. And so, and almost certainly shielded by that lawmaker. And I think so too. You know,

like, I mean, there's a reason why somebody who said they were going to blow up their parents with a fucking bomb wasn't prosecuted.

Yeah, man. There's a reason. And in this article, when they asked the police, like, hey, why didn't you fucking prosecute?

The police were like, we're not talking about that. It's part of another investigation. Sorry guys, we're busy. It's because somebody called in a fucking favor because I guarantee

if the police showed up to my house and I was threatening somebody with a homemade fucking bomb, I'd get arrested. And I'll tell you what, if I was a person of color, I might not survive the exchange.

Probably wouldn't even survive the arrest. Another leak. This is extremely serious. Absolutely. This is almost approaching a disciplinary level. You do so agree, don't you, Humphrey? Oh. Yes, indeed. Absolutely. This is almost approaching a disciplinary level. I do so agree, don't you, Humphrey? Oh, yes, indeed.

If only we could find the culprits, it would be a most serious matter. This story comes from Business Insider. The Senate Judiciary Committee will review reports that Alito's Hobby Lobby decision was leaked to an anti-abortion leader. Huh. Another black mark on the Supreme Court's increasingly marred ethical record. Alito's Hobby Lobby decision was leaked to an anti-abortion leader. Huh. Another black mark on the Supreme Court's increasingly marred ethical record. Alito, huh? Huh, again.

He's the guy who penned the other decision. Do you think he leaked that other one? Oh, do I think Aliko did this? Yes. Do I think Aliko was the problem? It could also have been his, Clarence Thomas' crazy wife, too. That's true.

Ginny Thomas. She's running through the fucking Supreme Court while they're trying to have a fucking conversation like fucking Amadeus. It's insane, man. We live in a country of crazy people.

And I cannot believe that this stuff gets... Here's the thing, man. Those fucking... Every single... When that fucking decision was leaked, every single person on the right was like, we need to find the leaker. We need to find the leaker. And then it got real quiet.

They got real quiet because... Then it got real fucking quiet because they think they found who it was and they're just like, nothing to see here. And they quietly swept something under a very bulging rug that's Alito-shaped or Ginny Thomas-shaped. And they were just like, okay, well, I don't know.

Maybe nothing happened. And then they fucking moved on. But here's another example of them leaking this stuff. And they leak it specifically so that they freeze people's positions on this. That's why they do it. They do it so that they can't go back on it. Because if they go back on it later, then they could say,

you know, they could be like, oh, I know that I was ever really part of this. But they do it specifically so that they catch them and be like, no, they have to now that they signed on this. Now you're stuck. Now you can't change your mind. And they're being fucking courted by people. This whole article is obscene.

This whole, it is. The fuck of being courted by people like, oh, we can't talk about the exact case, but we certainly can't talk about abortion at a 30,000 foot level while you buy me dinner. Fuck off. God, it's so obscene that these people are being able to be caught like this.

So I want to scroll down a little bit in this article. It's a part of this article at the very end that I want to read because this is something that I didn't understand until very recently. And so I suspect other people also may not understand. An AP reported Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia also issued a statement Saturday calling for a code of ethics for the highest court in the land, referring to the Times report as another black mark and saying they intend to get to the bottom of these serious allegations. So this is an important thing that I didn't realize until relatively recently, which is that the Supreme Court does not have accountability anywhere to anyone. They have technical accountability in the sense that they could possibly be impeached.

But beyond impeachment, which is this insanely high politicized bar that'll never happen. Way high bar. There is no codified ethics standard. There is no judiciary review board that looks and says, hey, you know what, Clarence Thomas, your wife is, you should recuse yourself. There is no, there is no recourse to the Supreme Court. That's the problem with being the highest court on the land, is that nobody has any standing to sort of like fix the problems there.

So if you end up with, I don't know, a wildly politicized kangaroo Supreme Court that is just there to have these sort of fancy fucking dinners with a bunch of fucking people that are going to tell them what to do and how to accomplish these stated goals rather than rule on the ethics of law and rule on like the letter of law

and respect jurisprudence and precedence and all that. There's no recourse. There's no recourse. There is no code of ethics that they are required with penalty to follow. There's literally nothing outside of impeachment, which is impossible. It is a political impossibility to impeach these people. You know what I think we should do? I think we should sequester the Supreme Court while they're in office. Oh, I fucking love it.

They get four years and they have to live in a compound like Big Brother. Oh. And they have to live with each other. Can we film it as a reality show too? And they don't get any outside information. They just get what's in the fucking court, period. And they can't go out with fucking dinner with people,

but they only have like a four-year term and they got to dedicate their fucking life to it like a fucking monk for four fucking years. I love it. Fuck you. How's that? See how many people would be

fucking reaching for that shit? How many people would be dedicated public servants for four years that would sequester themselves and literally only be able to talk about the law that was it for four years?

I, you know, I do think that we make these positions too desirable. Yeah. The desirability of these positions creates an incentive system, which just reeks of corruption. It does. It just reeks of problematic corruption. These positions should be things that we do altruistically because they are, not because

they are pleasant and because they confer great status and wealth and power and like lifelong privilege, but rather these should be positions that you say, look, I care enough that I will sacrifice a portion of my life in service to my country. I'll have, you know, I'm not saying we don't pay for them, but they shouldn't be these, like you said, they shouldn't be these lifelong appointments. That's crazy. It's crazy, man. That's insanity. The fact that it's a lifelong appointment, first off, is insanity. They should try to really push for it not to be. But since it's so highly favored in one direction,

the only way I think you could absolutely get away with that is if it was an even-steven court where someone was literally like a middle pillar that swung back and forth, not like Roberts, because Roberts did swing once in swung back and forth, not like Roberts, because Roberts did swing once in a while back and forth, but not enough. He was way more right than he was left.

Get somebody who's like a pendulum who literally swings back and forth based on issues, and then a 4-4 court on the other side. So it's always 5-4 decisions, and they sometimes go for you, and they sometimes don't go for you, and it kind of sucks. And it's not great for everybody. And then suddenly you'll get everybody

on board with, you know, what we really should do is make it so that every president gets to a point like one and then, or whatever, or two, and then they just like have a tenure span or whatever. I know that there's situations out there that these sort of scenarios where they've suggested that they get it suggested that every president gets to a point two and they rotate out as they work their way out or something like that. And so I don't know exactly what the math on that would be, et cetera. But if that's how it worked, I think it'd be much better and a lot more fair. But as it stands right now, you're looking at a generation of right-leaning decisions.

Not right-leaning, hard, far-right-leaning decisions. That's what you're looking at right now, you're looking at a generation of right-leaning decisions. Not right-leaning, hard, far-right-leaning decisions. That's what you're looking at right now. The only chance you have is one of these guys is going to die while there's a Democrat in there. That's the only chance you have because they're not going to resign while there's a Democrat in there and they'll resign when there's a Republican in there. So you'll be able to replace these people

that are oldie McOldersons with some fucking 49-year-old who's going to be in there for 30 years. Yep. Yep. Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that?

Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that did I do that did I do that Tom

Twitter is blowing up Twitter is explode Twitter is explode Trump's back technically allowed back on

you can see his old tweets if you go back there Elon Musk held a very scientific poll oh my god and he said who wants to come back on who wants him to come back on and Who wants them to come back on? And

Trump won by like a couple percentage points on his poll. And a bunch of people saw it. He said something like a hundred million people saw the poll, but he allowed him to come back on. And then immediately Sam Harris tweeted at him and said, when are you going to get Alex Jones back on? And that's when Elon Musk said, suffer the little children or something. It's a weird response. It's just been crazy. And they fired a bunch of people and now we're in this position right now. I love the implosion of Twitter because I do want to live in a world where Twitter just doesn't work anymore. I want to live in a world where you go to Twitter and it just fails because it's nonsense. But they fired, they had 7,500 employees.

He fired 3,700 of them seemingly at random. Yeah. Then he put out a thing saying, you guys are going to have to work your asses off. It's going to be a really lousy job. Aren't you super excited to work for Twitter? And 1,200 more people quit. Yeah. So like you took your employees from 7,500 to 3,800

down to 2,600. And from all accounts, they don't have like any people on some like really massive projects and like maintenance. No. So someone uploaded the entire Fast and the Furious movie. They did it in 20 tweets, Tom. So it was in 20 different tweets, because I guess you have a limit of how long the movie can be. And it was up for hours. And then once it got taken down, the people who shared it were still up for hours because I guess there wasn't like, because the way the code's written, you wouldn't need a person. It couldn't go find all the instances. Yeah, you couldn't find all the instances. So for a while, it was like cascading around Twitter. I think they finally chased the problem down, but it was hours after someone

had already uploaded the latest Fast and the Furious movie all to Twitter. And I think that that's exactly, you know what we were talking about a while ago? We were talking about Alex Jones and you're talking about like,

this is how you got to take these misinformation, disinformation guys out is you got to sue the fuck out of them so they're just fucking lost. This is how you fuck Twitter is you make it an impossible place for advertisers and you make it. So copywriters are starting to sue them. You make it so that there's real, real problems with that fucking medium so that there's if, cause if it's the wild West and people just start posting crazy shit,

there's going to be people who sue Twitter because they're going to be like, fuck you. I could sue Elon Musk for money. Are you kidding me? Yep. If they, he, he suddenly ruined my brand. Yeah. You could start really getting fucked for it. What I'm enjoying so much is how many people are seeing the blood in the water of this poisonous system and stress testing it. Yeah. That's, that's what this amounts to. That's exactly what it is. You're right. It's a massive, massive stress test. And, you know, what I, what I read is something like, you know, just because all these people quit doesn't mean Twitter is going to fail immediately. But it's sort of like gunning the car and then opening the door and jumping out. The car will continue for a while.

But when it hits an obstacle, there's nobody there to steer the car away from it. And so tech issues are very similar from this article that I read is that, yeah, it will continue apace for a while, but it will continue to run into

these barriers and these technical obstacles that there simply won't be the technical expertise and manpower to avoid. Yeah. And it's like,

it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. There was a week that couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Last week, they shut down, he said,

I'm going to shut down a bunch of these Twitter systems that aren't really working anymore. And you shut off the fucking, the thing that sends your phone a text. So like, you do this verification where there's like multi-factor verification, right? So I have this on our Twitter account

where if I go to sign into Twitter from a different computer, it has to send me, I do it on almost everything I own. Almost every major piece of equipment that has a password for me, period, has multi-factor. It has multi-factor because your cell phone's always next to you. Right.

So my work actually just recently went to Microsoft MFA, which is really, really robust. And so like almost everything I try to open that's Microsoft, that's based on my work password, I have to have my phone on me because it's going to ask me. And then it's going to ask me, what number do I see on the screen? It's not

just, you know, is it you? It's like there's a number on the screen and you've got to type it and you have to be there at the same time. And that's a pain in the ass when you're not the person. And it times out after like 25 seconds. It's really robust, right? And so these sort of things are really important to people nowadays.

Well, I guess he shut off a bunch of this stuff. So like the, the, the multi-factor still worked. And so it's still asked for it, but there was no one to send the actual thing out. So like people were not getting a text. They're like waiting to get a text and there was no one to give them the text because he shut it off. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's not, I mean, yeah. Did he code a website years ago? Yeah. That's different than what this is. Like this is so different. And so it'd be like asking your dad

who knows how to rebuild the carburetor to fix your Tesla. Yeah, exactly. It's so different. It's so different now than when he was recoding a website decades ago. You know what I mean? He's using HTML and shit back then.

Now it's like so different from what they were doing. And the other problem too is that he's been selling these verified check marks. And so for years, verified check marks on there was a way to say that's a real serious person, right? That's a person who's verified who they are and they have you know, have some sort of following. That's sort of what that, that check Mark really, you are, you, you

are who you say are and you're notable. You're notable. You're a notable person. And it allowed people to sort by check Mark. So if I was say Sarah Silverman and I posted a tweet and I, I was able to just sort of not look at some random joker like me who's tweeting. I'd be like, yeah, you go, Sarah, or whatever. Instead, it's, I can only see, oh, yeah, Ben Shapiro replied. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied, and et cetera, et cetera. Anybody who has a blue checkmark. Well, once he opened it up to everybody, people were just buying crazy amounts of these blue checkmarks. I love it so much.

But then the bad part is, is that some of these people were bad actors. And then the bad part is, is that some of these people were bad actors. So there's now been a rash of these verified Twitter accounts that are now, you know, doing medical shit. There are. And that's bad. That's a negative because people see that blue checkmark and they think it's a fucking real thing. And it's literally cost you $8. Yeah. And, you know, to be clear, and I think this is something that is and has always been a structural problem with the blue checkmark.

The blue checkmark never verified that the things you said were true or accurate or that you were a good person or that you had good intentions. It only verified that you were notable, which is defined by a following size, and that you were, in fact, who you said you were. So there wasn't, it was there to prevent impersonation. The problem has always been, and this article notes it in The Guardian, the problem has always been that people conflated good information with a blue check mark as meaning like, I could go on if I were notable, which I'm not, but if I could go on and get a blue check mark, people would think that what I said was more true than what you said, because you don't have a blue check mark. The truth of the claim is not in any way correlative, but that's how psychology works, right? Psychology says, well, this is verified. Verified means

that this has been vetted, but that's not what the blue check mark ever meant then you dilute the blue check mark even more yeah because thing you know people like robert kennedy they were blue check marks from the beginning alex jones was alex jones was blue check was so like these fuckers had blue check marks and were lying but now anybody for eight bucks can be like i want the veneeneer of the prior blue check mark. Did you see the fucking, was it Eli Lilly? Eli Lilly. Oh, I love it.

Eli Lilly, someone created a fake Eli Lilly account that went on with a blue check mark and said, just so you know, we're making insulin free from now on. And their stock took like a billions of dollars hit. It took a billions of dollars hit in a few hours. This is what I think is going to make Elon Musk liable. These companies are going to get together and be like, you know, they're ruining our brand

and you owe us money for that. You allowed this to happen. Absolutely, man. You know, I don't know that they're not going to have a case. I mean, you know, we've talked about this for many years that you need to be the one to at least somehow police your content. Absolutely, man. The guy, Greg Locke, just had his channel revoked, right? So his channel on YouTube was revoked. He had initially had his church's channel, that got revoked.

Then he started posting the same content to his personal channel and that got revoked. And YouTube has always had a heavy hand when it comes to this stuff. They have taken our stuff out, which has been, they've said, you're anti-vax. And we're like, we're not, we've never once in our life been anti-vax, but they're saying you're spreading medical misinformation. We've taken your videos down. In fact, I went to appeal one of those

decisions where I said, no, we are literally not doing that. You have to watch the video. And they didn't, they passed it off and said, no, we reviewed it and you're wrong. Right. And so they've always had a heavy hand with this because I think they recognize that they can be liable for something. Yep. And when this happens, and I think you should,

I'll be honest, it sucks to get your channel taken down. It sucks to get one of these things to happen to you, especially when they're in the wrong. But I would much rather have a heavy hand than no hand. Yeah, man, absolutely. When your business model is relying on users to generate your content, and then you're monetizing that through advertisers,

you have to, like, the problem is that these media platforms have abdicated all responsibility. Or at least they're attempting to abdicate all responsibility because they want their cake and they want to eat it too, right? Yeah, look at A they do. What better space is there there than to say like, I don't have to create anything and I'll still somehow sell the middle space where creation happens. I'll just, you know, I am the art gallery. I am not the artist. I am just the space where the art appears, right? But to have, if you open an art gallery,

you have responsibility to the art that you allow to be curated within your space. If you open an art gallery, nobody would tolerate if I open an art gallery and then a whole bunch of fucking Nazi child pornographers all showed up and they hung up their art. And I said, well, you know, I don't know. I'm just here to open an art gallery.

I'm just the art gallery guy. Nobody would tolerate that. You'd be like, what, well, you know, I don't know. I'm just here to open an art gallery. I'm just the art gallery guy. Nobody would tolerate that. You'd be like, what the fuck, dude? This is your fucking space. Take a look around and see what you've created. Yeah, man. I think you're absolutely right. Elon Musk also said something the other day,

which I thought was really interesting, that basically if advertisers try to pull away from Twitter during this transition, he was going to come at them hard. And I don't know what that means exactly. But it seems like a weird anti-free market, anti-free enterprise threat. But that's the thing. The people who believe in this sort of free speech absolutism garbage where you can say literally everything you want and there's no

consequences for what you say and you can't know who I am. And I get to say, you know, the most horrible shit and I get to brigade people and I get to do literally all that horrible things that these free speech absolutists want. When you, when you allow that sort of thing, they only care about that. They don't care about if they're, you know, they only care about that specific freedom. They don't ever care about any of the other ancillary, what you think it follows that you should care about this. That doesn't, that doesn't fit. That doesn't compute. That literally is an IO error. And they fucking, they fucking 404 you. They just look at you like, huh, huh, huh, because they're fucking idiots and they only care about what they care about, period.

And so, man, I hope this fucking absolutely blows up. I really do. I mean, I know there's a lot of people out there that use Twitter and that they use Twitter as a way to reach others. And it's an empowerment thing. It's a social network thing that gets them involved. And I don't want those people to be harmed in some way by, you know, they suddenly have a connection with other people that they won't have any other way. And I do recognize that that is a bad thing.

It's bad collateral damage for this to happen. But the fact of the matter is, is that a bad person now owns a bad product. And those two things are true. And it's a worse product now that he's the owner. Yeah. And it's not going to get any better

and he's not going to introduce any safeguards and he's not going to allow that information to be filtered in any way that makes it more real. In fact, he's going to make it less real. And so that's a danger to society. And if you happen to have

a friend circle on there because of that, that's collateral damage. And I'm sorry that that ruined things for you. But this thing is becoming more and more a danger to society. Yeah. And I think you've got to recognize that with anything this big, there are going to be parts of that which are good. But I think the net negative here is so much greater. It's just so, so much greater. Twitter is one of the primary spaces where misinformation goes to thrive. And it moves at a speed that we absolutely, runs out of control.

You're right. You're right. And look at what happened with the previous president, man. There was fewer and fewer and fewer fake stories once he stopped posting and people start putting them underneath these major posts that he put out there. There's a definite major negative side to it. And unless those things get fixed, it's better that it doesn't exist. Absolutely. How are you? You seen any grifters around here? Okay. Yeah, well, I'm a grifter. any grifters around here okay yeah well i'm a grifter hi oh well that's good because we need a grifter sister comes from ars technica right wing doctor group led by anti-vaccine insurrectionist

implodes in scandal this is so amazing just just let me read that headline again yeah do it listen to all the words that just happened there's a lot of descriptors here. Right. Yeah. There's, it's just, it's all adjectives. Yeah. Right wing doctor group led by anti-vaccine insurrectionist implodes in scandal. This is so tasty. This, I love this so much. This is fucking just absolutely feed this to me until I die.

I love this so much. I love it so much because Tom, we have been doing the show for over a decade. We have been calling out grifters when we see them for over a decade. And we knew from the moment you see these people that we're pushing the ivermectin and that we're pushing this stuff,

this America Frontline Doctors, you knew they were fucking grifters when you saw them. And then to see it happen now. Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. $7 million in their bank account. I love, this couldn't happen to a nicer group of people. $7 million.

So for those who are not familiar, the America's Frontline Doctors is a organization of doctors who capitalized off the pandemic by spreading bullshit misinformation and then monetize that capitalization through guest appearances on Rogan, having YouTube channels, monetizing a message of death and destruction and misinformation. And getting fat cash. Getting fat, fat, fat, fat

fucking cash. Simone Gold is basically one of the founders of this. And let me read a little chunk from this article to give you some context of who this person is. This is from the Ars Technica article. AFLDS, America's Frontline Doctors, went viral in the early days of the pandemic, memorably spewing pandemic misinformation from the steps of the Supreme Court in a July 2020 event organized by the group Tea Party Patriots. Jesus Christ. Clunk all their heads together. Goddamn.

Far-right media outlet Breitbart livestreamed the gathering, and then Donald Trump retweeted video clips. The viral clips featured AFLDS member Stella Emanuel falsely claiming hydroxychloroquine is a cure for COVID. Emanuel is also notable for previously claiming that gynecological conditions are caused by having sex in dreams with demons and witches, that modern medicine uses alien DNA,

and that scientists are trying to make a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. Yeah. This is the kind of nut job called the Christopher Hitchens vaccine. Look, if there was- You get hitch slapped. Oh! They got like a doctor hitch slap and they just slap you with one. You like get inoculated against religion.

Like, okay, that's good. But weirdly, I now support the Iraq war. I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't, huh. That's weird. Is Saddam that bad? Is he that bad? So now what's happening is Simone Gold basically was like,

neat story, I'm stealing all the money. So amazing, dude. And then when she went to jail. $3 million house. And they're taking like tens of thousands of dollars, like $50,000 in credit card bills. A month. A month.

A month. Yeah. She hired, like nepotistically hired her boyfriend. Yes. To, like, just be a drain for a while. Like, you're my Ian or whatever. No, he sounds more valuable than that. So.

Also sounds hotter, too. He's a swimsuit model. He is a swim. Like, it's so funny. You're just like, okay, this chick, this doctor marries, this doctor is getting a swimsuit model. He is a swim. It's so funny. You're just like, okay, this chick, this doctor is getting this swimsuit model who needs tens of, it's a rent boy who needs tens of thousands of dollars a month. It's outrageous. And so the whole thing, she's basically stealing all this money, writing fucking checks out of this account. They're going out and like crowdfunding money as if they were like doing good in the world.

And in fact, they're doing nothing but harm. They're literally killing people with this bad information. You're absolutely right. Yeah, they're not only doing bad things because they're hurting the public because they're spreading disinformation. But then they're also just taking the money

and being like, make it rain. And they're just fucking like having fucking stripper parties with cocaine. And so then, so that all that jazz is happening. Then she goes to January 6th and she enters the Capitol. When she enters the Capitol, of course she gets prosecuted for, I don't know, treasonous insurrection-y shit. Yeah, sure. While she's in jail, other people in that organization are like hey she's not here let's open up the books and they open up the books and they're like and a moth flies out holy shit right this is like i thought we had money in our accounts the moth has the single dollar bill

that's in its teeth as it flies away yeah so then she so they're like all right you're out you are super fucking out because you're stealing all this money. Then she comes home from jail and she's basically just like, I'm not out. You're out. She still has the accounts. Right. So she's making videos that says she's right. So she just said, so it'd be like if I stole all the money from the studio.

And then Cecil didn't notice. And then I went on vacation. And while I was on vacation, Cecil was like, oh, I'm going to check the bank account. And I was like, where's all our money? And then I came back and he was like, Tom, you're fired. And I came back and was like, no, you're fired. And then I locked you out of a Twitter account. And we just fought about who's fired.

This is amazing. The whole time Ian's like, can I have some more? What a train wreck of assholes. Who's fired? This is amazing. The whole time Ian's like, can I have some more? Outstanding. What a train wreck of assholes. Such a great thing to happen though to fucking clearly obvious grifters, man. Like, here's the thing about going into business with a grifter.

Yeah. You can't trust a grifter. Right. It's so funny that all these people think, you know what we should do? We should all put one over on the general public. But be so stupid and gullible that you don't realize that the guy you're putting one over with is also going to put one over on you. Yeah, man.

This is like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It's so amazing. Right? Where it's like everybody is grifting everybody. Everybody's grifting everyone and there's always a fucking, yeah, it's exactly it. Oh, my God. It's so good. It's so wonderful. And yeah, it's exactly it. Oh my God. It's so good. It's so wonderful

and I love watching them lose everything. I want them all to, what I want is them all to go bankrupt. What I want is for enough bad things in their lives to happen before they go to jail, that when they go to jail, they are already at

what they would perceive to be the nadir of their lives, only for that bottom to be pulled out so they can sink even further. Then they get rock bottom. No, but fucking, I want to say though too, what a horror.

They went out and they bilked all these innocent people out there who were just looking for answers, who were confused about all this stuff. You know, anybody out there who's giving money to these people is giving money to somebody who lied to them

and played a confidence game. Absolutely. And they're all victims. Every single person out there that gave money to these America's Frontline Doctors because they thought they were doing something with the money that was something. I mean, just literally anything.

Like, I mean, using this money for literally anything would have been different than, you know, spending it on credit cards and renting a Mercedes and, you know, having a $3 million house or whatever. All this money was literally spent just to make them, like, pamper them. That's all the money was spent for. But these people out in the world,

they thought they were giving money to a cause that was, that they believed in, that they were sold the bill of goods for. And all those people were taken every single one of them, you know, and these are people who are just like regular old folk. These are just the money. This money is crowdfunded, man. This isn't like one rich investor. This is millions of tiny investors that were all taken. Even if it was only 20 bucks, they still took this person's 20 dollars. Yeah, and they did this, and there's nothing more horrifyingly cruel and cynical

than at the height of a national, international medical emergency to play on the fears of other people and to disadvantage them and to spread information that kills people. Some of these same people who donated money, I guarantee there is a 100% chance that Some of these same people who donated money, I guarantee

there is a 100% chance that some of those same people contracted COVID and died. You're probably right. I wouldn't. Yeah. It seems statistically impossible. Statistically impossible for it not to be the case. Right. Taking the money from these people, taking the money from these people is a horror. They did it. I love to see their folly and I love to see them fall. But it is also important to recognize that these, that there are real people out there. And I'm not saying that they, because there's a chance that very few of them were hurt financially, but they could have been. Yeah. There's a possibility somebody who's like, you know what? I got a lot of money. I want to,

I want to give you a thousand dollars. I want to give you $2,000 because I really believe in this cause. I really, what I really want to have happen is the thing that I believe to be true. And so I will give you money to validate my own belief system. I also think that it is statistically very likely, to your point, that there is somebody out there who lost their mom or their dad or a loved one to COVID, and they saw the AFLDS message and they said, wow, I'm so heartbroken by this loss. I want to do whatever I can to help other people not lose someone that they love. I think it's entirely possible that there are absolutely people whose grief and loss was preyed upon and that they probably did. Just like the televangelists reach into the pockets of the fucking hurting and the elderly

and the scared and the sick. reach into the pockets of the fucking hurting and the elderly and the scared and the sick. The AFLDS is just a secularized version of this same televangelist grift. You're absolutely right. So, we wound up

finishing up Vulgarity for Charity last Thursday. Now, we're recording this a couple of days beforehand, but as it stands right now, we're at $282,000. That's amazing. We're hoping we can hit 300. That would be terrific. We can hit 300 between now and then we won't know until, you know, until, and this show will be posted at that point and ready to be uploaded well before we finish the charity event. So we won't know until we record next time what the final total is. But we want to thank everybody who donated.

Yeah, you guys are amazing. This is an amazing community that has an outpouring every single time. There are so many people that got helped because this community is amazing. So we want to thank you guys who whoever donated. Thank you so much. If you missed out on it, go become a member of Malice Needs. Five bucks a month. You know, it's a, it's a big deal. It's important. Yeah. Just, just to put in perspective the, and to, and to really appreciate the quantity and the human toll or the human advantage

that this created $282,000. toll or the human advantage that this created, $282,000, that's $600 a pop, is like 440 families. That's a lot of people. That's a huge number. A lot of people, man. Huge number of human beings that have had their lives impacted in a really positive way by you guys, by the generosity of our listeners, by how meaningful it is that you guys continue to turn up for this event. So we really want to thank you

because we couldn't make anywhere near this kind of impact if we didn't have such a motivated and wonderful and generous listener base. Absolutely. So we want to thank you for joining us. We're missing email this week and we're missing that section of the show because we are recording way early.

But we want to encourage you to join us for our live stream the Thursday after Thanksgiving. We will be live 9 p.m. Central. You can catch us on Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube and come hang out with us. We're going to be chilling. You're going to want to hang out if you want to hang out with us on the live streams. They're a lot of fun. You can catch us at 9 p.m. Central. 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. 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, 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. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you. you