Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 718: Dark Brandon on the Picket Line

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

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 GlorH 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. Today is Thursday, September the 28th. And a lot, a lot has happened in the last seven days. A lot has happened. Yeah, a lot has happened. We're going to get to all that. I want to jump in real quick before we get started, Tom. Last week on our show, we were talking about a group of people trying to take away rights from trans kids and gay kids. The story was a funny story about someone who was saying

the kids were putting butt plugs, getting butt plugs given to them or whatever. Taught how to use butt plugs and dildos and stuff. It was a dumb story. It was somebody who didn't understand what was really happening in the world and freaking out about it, hyperventilating about it,

and we talked about it. But one of the things I said in there, and nobody mentioned this, nobody called me out on it, but I noticed it when I was editing and I wanted to correct myself. When we were talking about that story, I said that the problem is

when they take away these things for kids, for all kids, they wind up singling out these kids that are trans and LGBT. And I said they do it. I think I said something like they do it and they're actually hurting normal kids too, is what I said. I said something like that. They're hurting normal kids. And I want to roll that back and say

that being trans and being gay are normal. Those are normal things. It's just a smaller percentage of the population is, I made a mistake when I said it. Nobody graciously, I think people give me a lot of grace on this show. I think that our audience is very gracious. I hope they do at this point.

They give a lot of grace, but I caught it and I left it in specifically because I thought the point I was making was important, but I wanted to at least correct and say that gay and trans kids are normal kids. That's a normal thing that happens. It's normal. What I was using was a different terminology and I shouldn't use those words. Yeah. And I think that's just a understandable semantic or rhetorical accident that happens. I don't think that there's any connotative intent there. I know that there's not.

And I think what is often requested is the idea of typical. Yeah. Other than typical. Yeah, good point. And maybe I'm wrong about this. So if I'm wrong, you can write and correct me. But I hear people talk about not being neurotypical. And I don't think that's connotated.

And so I thought when you were telling me this, I had to record. I thought, well, I bet we could use the word typical and replace that for normal. Because normal has an antilog, which is abnormal. And abnormal is certainly full of all kinds of connotations. And that's why you don't want to make that presumption. And that's why I didn't want, it felt weird.

When I said it, and when I said it, I wasn't thinking of it. When I heard it again, I had an opportunity to cut it, but I thought, you know what? The point I was making, I think, is important, that it's taking away from all kids, right? It's not just the- You're not even just shitting selectively. Yeah, you're not just shitting selectively

on the people you want to hurt. You're hurting all kids. But I wanted to say that, and I thought it was important enough to leave in, but you're right. It's, you know, typical or, you know, I could have said heterosis. I could have said something like that.

I just didn't. I was lazy with language, but I just wanted to mention it just so that people know, you know, sometimes you catch yourself and you want to just change what you said. I've been waiting for you, friends. Goldman, do you know what you're doing? I'm fully aware of what I'm doing. Can you see? Man committed a sin, disturbing the life cycle of nature. The original sin that man is responsible to. To protect the life cycle.

I have made a creature to rule over man. This is the final battle. Show yourself, our new ruler, the emperor. Tom, I want to play this for you. This happened today. I don't know what he's going to play, guys.

So it's mature content. I'm going to put it on the big screen here. Cecil, hands above the table. Hands above the table, everybody. So I found this today. This is on Public Freakout. And it's really funny. This is a Reddit.

This one is from, this is from the house today. I think it was either today or yesterday when they're talking about Hunter Biden and they're trying to do an impeachment because they want to impeach. Good luck. They want to impeach Joe.

Good luck, clown car shit heads. So let me, let me make this. I'll ambiginate this and I'll turn it up and we'll listen to it. It's a minute and 30 seconds. I like the suit though. Hold on. I'll ambiginate this and I'll turn it up and we'll listen to it. It's a minute and 30 seconds. I like the suit though. Hold on. I gotta say.

This guy is awesome. Mr. Moskowitz. He is. That suit is a level of blue. And he is amazing. So here we go. Love it. It's a simple board, right?

So all other presidents in the United States, 50% of the impeachments. Donald Trump, the other 50. Donald, 50% of the impeachments. Donald Trump, the other 50. Donald Trump has half of the impeachments in American history. But you know what? He's got 100% of the indictments. 100% of all indictments. Zero for the other presidents.

Listen, let me do it another way. I want to tell my inner Tim Russert. So let me go to the board, right? And I don't have Florida, Florida. But Donald Trump, impeachments. Oh, how many impeachments? We got two there. How many indictments?

We got four. How many for Biden? Zero, zero. Donald Trump is right. He's sick of winning. He's just winning and running away with it. And that's why we're here. We're here because of math.

That's what this is about. They can't save Donald Trump. They can't take away the two impeachments and the four indictments, but they can try to put some numbers on the board for Joe Biden. But the problem is when you sling mud, you got to have mud and they just don't have anything, Mr. Chairman. So look, we get it. We know why we're here. That's why they say the Biden family, the Biden's James Biden, Joe Biden's dog commander, but never Joe Biden. So when are you going to have the vote on impeachment, Mr. Chairman? What are you scared of? Call the vote. Come on. If you all think

there's so much evidence, we're here. Call the vote on impeachment. Impeach him right now. I dare you. impeachment. Impeach him right now. I dare you. And then he yielded back. So, I love what I love about that is that I think there's finally a group of people in there who are done pretending with this sort of

decorum stuff. And they're like, no. You know what? Fuck your face. How about this? And then he just holds up all this stuff. He's like, no, man, here you go. Here's the numbers. Yep. And go ahead and do it.

I fucking dare you. Yeah. I fucking dare you. And they're not going to do it. They're never going to do it. No. What they want to do is they want their sound bites from this so they can keep playing them on Fox News over and over and over again. Yeah.

This is, this, all this is, is meat to dogs. Yes. That's all any of this shit is. It's perfect, yes. Like, it's just, it's just throwing meat to dogs. Yeah. That's all any of this shit is. It's perfect, yes. It's just throwing meat to dogs. Yeah. It's fucking nothing. It will never be anything.

He'll never get impeached in the House. He'll certainly never get convicted in the Senate. He's literally not done anything. And the point that keeps getting made, and I think it's the important point to seize on here, is it sounds like Hunter Biden did some bad shit. Like, Hunter Biden broke some laws. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Hunter Biden isn't fucking employed in any way, in any way. There is literally no evidence of influence peddling whatsoever. That would be the only thing anyone should be worried about is influence peddling from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden. There's not, they've been digging and digging and digging. They've had this laptop so fucking long. I could have poured through this laptop. Cecil,

I, Tom could have gone through the contents of this laptop. Yeah. They've had it so long. It's like running on like OS one or something. For fucking real. It's running on Windows 95. They're just like,

oh, I got a smocking gun. Yeah. And it's like, where's your, where's the smock, right? Because like, there's no smock, there's no fire. Yeah, man. There's nothing. You guys have nothing.

And all they do is talk about this like vague collection of like conspiracy adjacent kind of buzzword bullshit. They've got nothing that even approaches the concept of evidence, not even a littlest bit. And it's just a dog and pony show for the tragically stupid. That's what this is. This is fucking poisoned bread and circuses run by idiots.

Yeah, that's exactly it. That's all it is. I will say, too, if you pay attention to any of the stuff that happened while Donald Trump was in office,

his children and his in-law children, whatever, their children-in-law, whatever, they were racking up dollars and having big deals. Yeah, man. $2 billion after the fact to Jared Kushner. Yeah, I was going to say, with the Saudis. With the Saudis. $2 billion from the goddamn Saudis. This is an intense,

intense amount of stuff has happened. Here's the difference between them and Hunter Biden. They were employed by the government to do work for the government. They were doing work for the government. What did they do for the government that got the Saudis

to give them $2 billion? Because it should be asked of everyone. I don't care if it was a Democrat who did something and then got this. The perfect example is that there's a Democrat who did something and then got this. You know, the perfect example is that there's a Democrat right now who's being accused of bribery. Yeah.

And it sounds like he fucking did it. It's incredible. And so, like, here's the thing. Go away. Yeah.

Go away. Never come back. You can be a Democrat in jail. I don't care. Yeah. But don't be one in the fucking Senate, which is where you're at now. Yeah, dude. A hundred percent. Menendez is a great example. Menendez, when they went into Menendez's house, they found like $500,000 in cash and gold bars.

Yeah. And then this like treasure trove of information and text messages about like what really does appear to be bribery and influence peddling. It really seems fairly cut and dry, actually bribery and influence peddling. And I'm like, all right, cool. Thing is like that dude and I no longer share values. Fuck that guy forever. All Democrats, all politicians are tools for the people. We hire these tools to go in and perform the fucking work that we the people want accomplished. This guy is no longer capable

of performing that work. He's not my buddy. We're not on the same team. He's not sucking my dick. I don't care about this guy. I could care. I could not possibly care less what happens to him.

Throw him in jail. Fire him. Replace him with someone else. If it means we got to get a Republican replacement, a Republican replacement it is. So if it's one of the states where the governor appoints a replacement.

He's in a place where right now he would be replaced by a Democrat. But even if he wasn't, I'm just saying, still throw him in the trash, still burn him at the stake, you know, illegally speaking. Like good, get rid of him. He doesn't share values with me anymore.

He's not a useful tool to me. He's broken the law. Everybody is subject to that. Fuck that clown. Jared Kushner, Jared Kushner's like, he was supposed to be in charge of the pandemic response. He bungled the fuck out of that. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing. Now he gets out of fucking politics. Now he's got a $2 billion deal with the Saudis. The Saudis, like if you remember, 19 of those guys kind of committed 9-11. Yeah. You know, like we are not buddy-buddy with the Saudis, except for weirdly we are and always have been. That's a problem.

All of that shit is a problem. Huge, huge. This Joe Biden thing, show me something, show it to me and then I'll flip. I'll be like, great, fuck that guy. Yeah. But they've got literally nothing to show for it.

And I'm happy to do that on any, just like you, any single one of them. You do anything wrong, get out of there. I don't need you there. I don't need you there. But if you're not doing anything wrong and you're just doing it just specifically to go after them because you want to make sure

you have headlines on Fox News, get out of here with that. I do wonder though, increasingly, does Fox News fucking matter? Because who's tuning into that that wasn't already converted? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like, if I go to like the local fundamentalist Baptist church and the guy stands up there and he preaches some crazy shit, it's like, well, yeah, he's always going to preach crazy shit. That's why we went there. We went there because we're crazy shit listeners and we wanted our guy to spew crazy shit. If you at this point in history are still tuning into Fox News, you are an immovable object.

I don't think like hearts and minds are being won over at Fox. Do you? I don't think so. But I don't know how much, how many other like middle of the road, quote, middle of the road people are putting it on their network, too. You know what I mean? Where they're trying to do that both-sides shit where they say, well, the Republicans said this today. Yeah. And then they report it. And then it makes it feel like the Republicans said something that was true.

Right. Yeah, no, that's true. Right. Yeah, no, that's true. Because while Fox News is going to doctor up and do whatever they want with it, you know, if you play Jim Jordan on CNN as if Jim Jordan has as much validity as somebody else on the other side,

say, Ocasio-Cortez, you're like, okay, well, you're lying to people. You're lying because he's lying to people. Rarely is there a news network out there that's willing to say

so-and-so is lying. Jim Jordan has, should have the same assumed political veracity as the guy outside Liberty Tax swirling the sign that says, come on in. Like, that's it. Like that guy, Jim Jordan, I'd be like, all right, should I listen to Jim Jordan on this one or the guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty? Statue of Liberty guy. Statue of Liberty guy twirling the sign that says taxing

is coming soon. I thought you were talking about Jim Jordan with tassels on his nipples making him spin different directions. I was going to say, do you think you could get him

going in different directions? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't think I could do that. I don't think I could get him. That's a lot. That's a lot to... I can't even hula hoop.

I couldn't get my fucking titties opposite. Hey, Donald, prepare to get masked in a duck suit. Let's play. Let's play this. It's three minutes long of the debate. So if you missed the debate, if you missed the Republican debate, here's three minutes of that debate. Donald Trump, he hides behind the walls of his golf clubs and won't show up here to answer questions like all the rest of us are up here to answer. He put $7 trillion on the debt. He should be in this room to answer those questions. When we have a conversation about the things that are happening on this stage, we think about the fact that Vivek just said we were all good people.

And I appreciate that because last debate, he said we were all bought and paid for. And I thought about that for a little while and said, you know, I can't imagine how you can say that knowing that you were just in business with the Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden millions of dollars was a partner of yours as well. It's nonsense.

We opened a subsidiary in China. But you know what I did that was different than every other company? We got the hell out of there. And when I started my next company, Strive, right? Yeah.

Can I see this on that point? He's like, okay, I did open a company in China. I did. But then I didn't later have a company. His defense of, you know what I did that was different is I later folded that company. I did. But then I didn't later have a company. His defense of, you know what I did

that was different is I later folded that company. I later changed my mind when I knew I was going to be running and people would bring that up. What is that? That's nothing.

One thing I will say is you haven't seen it yet, but genuinely pay attention to the amount of bickering that goes on between these people. God, they're so bitchy. They start going

after each other. I'm glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in 2018 in China. That must've been about the time he decided to start voting in presidential elections. Donald Trump failed on this as well. He said he was gonna build a wall across the whole border. He built 52 miles of wall and said Mexico would pay for it.

Guess what? I think if Mexico knew that he was only going to build 52 miles, they might have paid for the 52 miles. Damn. If you and Les Putin have Ukraine, that's a green light to China to take Taiwan. Driving Russia is a win

for China. But I forgot, you like China. Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say. Nikki Haley with the fucking singers. Yikes, man. Man, that's great. I want them to eat each other alive, though.

I want more of this. I want it to get to the point where they retreat to the backstage and get weapons. That's what I want. I want them fucking cutting each other with fucking weapons. With the Chinese that gave one hundred five and five million dollars, we can't trust you. We don't trust you. I have to be very clear about this. Transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder. Florida's new black history curriculum says slaves develop skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.

You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it. That was written by descendants of slaves. These are great Black history scholars, so we need to stop playing these games. I reject this idea that pro-lifers are to blame for midterm defeat. Okay, I just want to say, everybody who's watching, look at Ron DeSantis and tell me he doesn't look like that little leprechaun, evil leprechaun.

Tell me he doesn't look like that. He 100% looks like the evil leprechaun from that movie, the leprechaun movie. Leprechaun movies. He feels like he's coming to take away your choice. He's like,

oh, my choice, my choice. And he's running around. He's got a whole barrel full of choice. He's like, oh, my choice! My choice! And he's running around. He's got a whole barrel full of choice. And he's taking yours and putting it in his barrel. There's disappointment at the end of the rainbow.

It's Florida, it's his. I appreciate Tim. We've known each other a long time. But he's been there 12 years and he hasn't done any of that. I voted no. We've known each other a long time, but he's been there 12 years and he hasn't done any of that. I voted no. We've waited and nothing has happened. You didn't ask the only guy that's been attacked. You have energy questions. You don't ask anything.

But I'm just going to say right now, nobody else done the big fights. North Dakota was leading the charge. We won the battle. Energy, economy, national security have been talking about it since day one. And now finally, good, we're having the conversation about it. But we've got the answer in North Dakota. And I want to look at that camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you're watching. You can't help yourself. I know you're watching. OK, and you're not here tonight, not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You're not here tonight because you're afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You're ducking these things.

And let me tell you what's going to happen. You keep doing that. No one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We're going to call you Donald Duck. That's a good line. I got to say, that is actually a good line. It is. That is an actually good line.

It's a good line. It is. That is an actually good line. It's a good line. It was distressing that it was delivered by Chris Christie because he is a repugnant human being. But I do like that he's singing after Chuck.

I will say, I will say, as soon as Donald heard that, though, he jumped in his giant pile of coins. Well, his pile of coins

isn't as big as he says it was. It certainly isn't as big as he said it was, Tom. That is true. You know, why don't we just transition as big as he says it was. It certainly isn't as big as he said it was, Tom. That is true. You know, why don't we just transition right into that? Yeah.

This is such big news, actually. I listened to a whole bunch of podcasts today while I was doing chores around the house that really kind of broke this story down. It's from Business Insider. Will the Trumps lose their homes? New York judge who dissolved Trump org is cryptic at tense hearing. So Trump lost on summary judgment. So he lost on summary judgment. Basically, the judge is like, look, I looked at this evidence it was convenient for you to inflate your personal net worth and the value of your assets. And then when it was convenient for you to minimize those

for tax purposes, you minimize those. That's fucking fraud. That's just straight fraud. And the judge was like, yeah, we don't even have to summary judgment, not in your fucking favor. What that's going to mean is that the trust, the company that holds these properties is no longer allowed to exist. They're going to dissolve that company. And the thing is, only people and companies can own property. He doesn't own the property personally. The company owns the property. Once the company is dissolved, the company can no longer own the property, which means that the property has to go into receivership. When it goes into receivership, it gets sold. All the debts get paid. Who sells it? The government. So the government,

will they auction it? They'll appoint a receiver. Yeah, they'll appoint a receiver. The receiver will put it up for basically an auction or a bid. It'll get sold. The assets will be divided up to pay any creditors. So any creditors to that asset get paid first. Then here's the best part. Then what's left over goes to Donald Trump. Then he experiences a giant capital gains tax on that, which these guys don't, they don't take big lump sums of cash like this.

Then he'll have to shit out an enormous capital gains tax of cash like this. Then he'll have to shit out an enormous capital gains tax on all of this. So he'll take his properties right now, which sit and are just massive assets he gets to borrow money from and live without income and without paying taxes. He'll lose the asset. It'll be wiped out. His creditors will be paid. He'll get a much smaller sum of money than what that asset was originally worth because all the creditors have to get paid. Then he'll eat shit on the tax side

and he'll be left holding half of what? Half of his luck. Half of that. Half of that probably because they're going to take an intense amount of money. And like things like Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. He's not allowed to do business in New York anymore. Yeah, I know.

The state. Yeah. And like Mar-a-Lago is owned by the same entity that owns like Trump Tower. Yeah. This is all getting sold out from under him. And this all happened before he was president, right? All this stuff was happening. And there's a reason why he genuinely didn't want his tax returns out there.

And he didn't want people to have his tax returns and why he fought it so long for people to get a hold of these things. Because as soon as they did, they found the fraud and said, nope, we're coming after you

for fraud because there's fraud here. And there was a reason why he wanted to hide that stuff years and years and years ago when he was running for president. He wanted to hide it. He wanted to keep it hidden.

Yeah. Because he knew what was going on. Probably should have never fucking ran for president. Probably not. You it. He wanted to keep it hidden because he knew what was going on. Probably should have never fucking ran for president. Probably not. You know, I think he's the guy who finally caught the fucking,

he's the dog who finally caught the car. It's all collapsing. Because he, I don't, I think he wanted the press and the publicity of being a loser

in that election. I think, because he would have done the exact same thing he did in the second election that he lost with the first election. He'd have done the same thing. And for him, it wouldn't have mattered because then he could have just had this sort of group of people behind him that were following him, constantly doing all that. He still had it when he was president, but then he doesn't have the scrutiny. And so that's the thing that he wanted

was the power without the scrutiny. But he got both. And he's's the thing that he wanted was the power without the scrutiny. Yeah. But he got both. Yep. And he's not happy with that because, and now he's trying to, you know, his true social rants are all about how crazy this is, but it's not crazy. This happens to people when they commit fraud. That's just, I mean, that's, there's nothing crazy about it. The crazy thing is, is that we elected him president and that's on us. Oh yeah. Not on him. That's on us. On us. Yeah.

That's on, that's on the American people. I agree. I don't think, and this is just conjecture, but like, I genuinely don't think he wanted to be president in 2016. I think there's enough reports of him and his, and his mind and the things he was saying from enough people to that, that's a safe bet. Yeah. I think the scam, because he's a fucking scammer,

I think the scam was just like you said. You run, you lose, you pre-declare it rigged, you say you're going to run again, you keep your packs open, and you fundraise into those packs. You use those packs as a way to keep building this brand and selling people more of your Trump-branded shit and to open this political action committee that you can have as an infinite supply of money.

I think that was the scam. The problem is like all of a sudden he won. And then he was like, fuck, I got to be president. And he was a terrible fucking president. And everybody, like you said, there's an enormous amount of additional scrutiny that comes with that that would not have come with that otherwise.

And these financial disclosures, they're not even close. Like the valuations of his they're not even close. Like the valuations of his assets are not even close. They're like a thousand times like overblown from what they are reasonably. So like people do do this stuff,

but they don't do it at the levels that he was doing. And I think that's important to point out because I think people will listen and say, well, don't people automatically try to devalue themselves when they want to, don't want to pay the property taxes. And then if I'm trying to sell my house, I try to get as much money as possible for my house, let's say. And I might try to do those things together, but that's not fraud because I'm not saying my house is worth a thousand times less than I'm

trying to sell it for. And that's the numbers that we're talking about here. It's not those, it's not just that like, uh, it's $10,000 cheaper on my taxes than it is on my whatever. You know what I mean? So, and he's like, he's lying about materially established facts. So like one of the things he talks about is like Mar the value of Mar-a-Lago. So he says Mar-a-Lago is worth is the most, is the most like valuable piece of personal property in the world. He values it at like $1.8 billion. There's no fucking way it's worth $1.8 billion, no matter how you value that asset. But he also, part of his valuation is saying, well, we could turn this into residences, except for you can't turn it into residences because it was not zoned and built that way. It wasn't, there are laws that say like there's use laws,

like how you're allowed to use a property. It's specifically built saying this is not a residential development. But then he says, well, but if this was residential, it would be worth all of this money. It's like, yeah. If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. Right, exactly.

And that's kind of what the judge said was like, look, you can't value it based on a series of hypotheticals that literally cannot come to fruition. That's insane. That's insane. The tax valuation, which is a bad valuation, was something like $18 million. And there is in real estate, especially

in luxury properties, there's a wide range on how things get valued because there's a limited number of buyers and it's harder to do comps. There's a lot of wiggle room. So even taking that 18 and kicking it up to 24 or 30 million, nobody would have batted an eye. 35 million, nobody would have batted an eye. But when you start saying, this is an asset that I want to use as collateral to get favorable loan terms from Deutsche Bank, and I'm going to say this asset is worth $700 million, when in fact it's probably worth a 20th or a 30th or a 100th of that or less, that's just like, that's straight fraud, man. That's like lying on your fucking loan application. It's 100% fraud. That's just like, that's straight fraud, man. That's like lying on your fucking loan application.

It's 100% fraud. And that comes out in this other story, Tom. This is from The New Republic. The footnote on Trump's boasting about his Saudi

line of credit is terrifying. And this is where they're asking him, this is from the same source, where they're saying, how do you think that these things are worth that much?

And he would say, basically, look, I could call the Saudis and they'll pay that price. They will pay any price for this. And that is terrifying. Why are they willing to pay that kind of price? That only, that's like, this isn't helping you. Do you not understand how this isn't helping you? And he is so stupid that he thinks it's helping you. Do you not understand how this isn't helping you? And he is so stupid that he thinks

it's helping him. For real, I can call an internationally despised enemy of the United States and they will pay any unreasonable price for my property in exchange for what, man? You're saying like, look, I'll just take a bribe. Here's what I'll do. I'll just take a bribe. If I need to sell Mar-a-Lago, hey, you know, I'll take a bribe. I can't. What? I just can't. Hey, you know what? I don't have the money, but I could borrow it from the mob. Yeah. What? What? Yeah. That's the same thing, man. It's insane that he would say something like this. And like to say, I am willing to at any point owe a favor to the Saudis for this. That's not a fucking,

that's not a plus one on your column for the judge or whoever's hearing this stuff. I just can't believe that he would say something like that. And, you know, like we mentioned before, Jared is now in bed with the Saudis to the tune of $2 billion. And also, the Saudis bought up golf.

The Saudis just bought golf. I know. Well, they also paid an immense amount of money for one of the premier football players, like, not football, like American football, like soccer. One of

the premier, they paid an immense amount of money for one of them to come there. And they also are at this point looking to purchase, it looks like they're looking to purchase the NBA too. Holy shit. It looks like they're looking to purchase, basically purchase,

or not purchase the entity of the NBA, but have an immense amount of investment in the NBA. They are now diversifying their money from their money into other places because they're probably getting out of oil eventually, and they're just going to own probably entertainment is what their plan is. Well, and I did read that this is part of, there's a term called sports washing, which is like sports are beloved and the Saudis are not.

Smart. And it is a way for them to increase their public image and up their sort of like, become a part of the larger international world in a way that is perceived as positive without having to do any positive shit in their own country. You don't have to do any of the work. Right, but buying up golf,

they now live golf instead of PGA or whatever. All the big players, I guess, are now playing at live. I don't know a lot about this, but they're a huge factor. They're doing their fucking events at Trump golf courses, man. So Trump's already getting paid. Kusher's getting $2 billion.

Like there's, they're already enmeshed with the goddamn Saudis like crazy. And his defense is like, I can sell these over, look, I can sell a 1983 Ford Fiesta to a Saudi guy

for like $82 million. He'll buy it, whatever, you know. It's worth $82 million. It's like your kid just thinks that you can exchange stuff for money

because they don't know how things work so they just he keeps walking up with like pretty stones and they just give him giant buckets of cash and he's like

here's a leaf and they're like here is here's a bucket of money here is enough gold to bury you Jesus Christ it is exactly that yeah do we think this doesn't come with strings attached Here's a bucket of money. Here is enough gold to bury you. Jesus Christ.

It is exactly that. Yeah. Do we think this doesn't come with strings attached? I know, man. It's crazy. Holy shit. What? Saving. Saving is the opposite of losing.

Saving is the opposite of getting no stuff. Choosing cold glory is the thing to do. Oh, hi. I didn't see you there. Please come right in and sit down. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, Ian, what the hell are you doing? Well, when I'm not stealing ideas from TikTok, I'm extolling the virtues of glory. Code glory, that is. You see, saving is the opposite of losing. It's kind of like making money. It's kind of like something else. But most of all, it's saving. That's why I go to adamandeve.com and use code GLORY for 50% off almost any one item.

Then Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff with three free gifts, six free spicy movies, discreet and free shipping, and rush processing. Wow. Tick tock. Don't stop. Almost something on the cut. Never mind. That's a different song. Anywho, make sure you're heading on over to adamandeve.com and using code glory because

saving is a wonderful thing to do. Code glory. I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with light! Light! Light! Light! Light! Alright, this is a good story. It's from Friendly Atheist. I thought this was a piece of good news. I knew you'd like this.

NASA's new policy chief took her oath on a copy of Carl Sagan's content. And you can see the photo. If you zoom in on the photo, so I'm going to take a, I'll put it on the big screen. If you zoom in on the photo, it's underneath Hemant's blog. Sorry, I'm not subscribed to your blog, Hemant. It says, it says Carl Sagan's contact. They zoomed in and she's taken it. And this is, he says that there's actually quite a few people who now are starting to do this sort of thing, different types of books. You got a book you would do?

Do you have a book that comes to mind? I don't know. Because I'll be honest, any book I walk into my house, it doesn't matter, Tom, it doesn't matter. Any book is more worth more than the Bible to me. It doesn't matter what the book is, right? Like this notebook that I one time took notes in is more valuable to me than the Bible.

So anything, I could find anything. I just got in the mail for the cooking channel, microwave cooking for one. Yes. I just got, I just ordered. Is this based on the text messages I sent you? So yeah, so I got microwave cooking for one. And so, but that book, I just got it today.

Worth, I would swear an oath on that book over the Bible and it would mean more to me than the Bible. I am trying to think, I might be really fucking like ridiculously

ego-tested. I might do it on our book. That's what I was thinking too. That's so funny. But at least, I will say, at least I'd pick a hardcover. Yeah,

a hardcover. She's got a floppy cover book. Yeah. She's got a flop cover. Also, it's a novel. Like, I would maybe do it on a Something non-fiction.

Something non-fiction, I think. Well, then you've got to eliminate the Bible. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ah. You probably shouldn't laugh anymore. А-а-а! too funny i thought this was interesting this is from vox gen z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do so i grabbed. I read another article very similar to this maybe three, four weeks ago,

probably based on the same data sets. And I think that there's a misconception, which is important to put to rest. And that misconception is that the digital generation is better equipped for the kinds of critical thinking that is necessary to do to combat the misinformation glut and the quicksand of disinformation that exists and is pervasive online.

And that's just not true. Critical thinking and information vetting are skills where and how you apply them. The medium, like if you either have those skills to apply to any medium or you do not have those skills, it is not the case that like the digital generation,

like those who are like born into it, are just like somehow de facto better at this. And I think that there's been kind of a lot of that narrative that floats around, like just casually. I think there is an important piece though, and that's they're more immersed in the digital landscape

than their boomer grandparents are. So what happens is that a kid, somebody who's young, will probably have better security ideas and do the things that are necessary for security, but they've spent their entire life digitally. So they're way more immersed in it. They're doing it more.

And so naturally, if you do something more, there's more risk. There's more opportunities, more risk. Just like the reason why if you drive more, your insurance goes up. There's a reason for that. It's because there's a better chance you're going to be in an accident.

Now, you could be an excellent driver. You could be like an amazing driver and never get into an accident. But, you know, what the problem is, is that they are constantly in this flow. And so while they may practice some better practices, security being one of them, they're still more immersed in this flow. And I was thinking very specifically about how I am getting targeted. And we talked about this maybe five or six weeks ago, where I'm getting targeted now by random texts. Those random texts are something like, hey, Joe, I'll pick you up from the movies at six. Or hey, Lisa, can you work for me on Tuesday? Here's the thing.

I'll never think that that's someone trying to contact me. It'll never cross my mind that that is a person who would be trying to contact me ever because I don't operate like that. I don't operate with some random person

sending me a message. But Gen Z might, right? They might work with a bunch of people with their names on a wall and they might get a text that says, oh, hey, can you work for me or whatever? And that, those are texts that I've gotten before. So there's a possibility they may answer that question. Whereas I would never think to answer

that question because I'm not swimming in that pool. They are every day. And so they have three or four, four ways that they're going to be even deeper in the deeper end. So they have to be even more secure than I do. Yeah. And they probably get by with the same level of security. And that's why they get taken more, I think. I think those are all excellent points. And you're very right on all of them. I think that there's a...

I think about my kids. I think about the people that I know that are Gen Z. And they have a lot of relationships that are only online. I don't have any. I am not going to fall for an online trick in the same way, right?

Because I'm not going to develop a relationship that is online only. I only have real life relationships. And that's an intentional thing for me. And not shitting on relationships. Because your kids have them. online only. I only have real life relationships and that's an intentional thing for me. So. And not shitting on, on relationships. No, because that's a personal, because your kids, my kids and my wife, my wife has relationships with people, friendships with people she's never met. Sure. I just don't do that. But like, I, and I, I'm just validating your point. Yeah. I just

wanted, I wanted to say that just so somebody didn't say, it's not a value judgment. It's just something that I just don't like. So like, but if you are living a life where you have lots of people that are online only people that is necessarily harder to vet yeah and that opens you up to a host of security risks and scam risks that would be very difficult to really like counter all of them. Sure. It's easier. You're right. It's easier for people like myself or boomers who are more like pen and paper,

more flesh and blood, you know, oriented folks. Because I'm like, like you said, like if I get a text message from a stranger, I know that's from someone I don't care about. Yeah. It's literally not. It's impossible for it to be wrong. And the other thing too that they do in these text messages,

which is really clever, is they make it seem like it's important, right? So they say something like, hey, I'm going to be out of town and I won't be able to pick you up from the airport, right? So a Gen Z kid, I'm going to call them kids.

I don't know if people would be upset by that. I don't know. I'm going to call them a kid because I'm an old man. So a Gen Z kid might say something like, well, fuck, somebody's going to not have a ride if I don't respond because they think that's how the world works, right? They would get a text and then they would be like,

well, what if somebody did that to me? So they probably trying to be a good person, they would respond to that person and say, hey man, you got the wrong number. They'd be like, oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, hey, what's going on? And then they might develop that friendship because that's what that is made for. It's made to get you to the next level to be like, I'm so sorry. Who are you by the way? And then they might get it because that's how that scam works. Just so that they can then talk to you and then try to scam you out of money. That's what that's for. That that whole fucking fake text thing is literally to scam you. Yeah. But they might get taken by it because they care enough about the person at the other end thinking

that they're going to be the ones who get screwed. That what I don't is care about any of them. So if I get a call and Joe's supposed to work for Susie, Joe and Susie should have figured this shit out without my phone number. Yeah. And I think there's a, I think, yeah, it's exactly right. I think there's a, I'm going to tell you a quick story. Like, I think there's a vulnerability to,

like a security vulnerability to being vulnerable with people that are only online. And when you're, and I'm not saying that that's something people shouldn't do or shouldn't like experience. A lot of people have really satisfying online only relationships, but I, this is just kind of a funny thing. It just happened this week.

Just this week, my stepson had a oral surgery at his wisdom teeth pulled out and he went, he was put under for that surgery and he came to, and he was loopy as fuck. And he was really funny. He was really, really funny. He was really, really funny. It was like very like typical, take a video of your kid being loopy coming out. He's 17. So he's coming out. He's never been under before. He's loopy as all get

out. And he's just chattering away. And he's not much of a chatterer. He's not much of a talker. And in fact, at one point he's like, it's so much easier to talk about my emotions when I feel like this. Like he was just a hoot. He was a riot. But at one point he starts telling me, he's like, did you know I had four girlfriends in my life and you only met two? And I was like, no, obviously I didn't because two of them were online only. And I thought about that a little bit. And I was like, he would, he counts those two people he never met in the flesh as girlfriends. They are, for him, real relationships that he had, that had an arc, that ran their course, that had a breakup.

They had this whole thing. And that's the experience I'll never have, right? That's an experience that I can't personally relate to. But that also tells me that he is vulnerable to being vulnerable online. And that creates a space that I think you're right, that older generations don't have. Yeah, we just don't have it. Yeah.

Yeah, we just don't have it. It's really interesting though. And I think what it says though too is like, is that I think if you're in those generations and if you have those relationships or if you're prone to those relationships, you just got to be extra careful. Extra. You got to be extra careful because you're swimming in a deeper part of the pool.

Yeah. That's just, you're just deeper. You're just deeper than the rest of us. I'm not over there. I'm in the, I got, I got fucking arm floaties and I'm in the shallow end. I know. I am literally never leaving the shallow end. I have a desire to be in the deep end.

I'm fine. But I also think like it's so strange when I, if I go online and I see people doing online dating and I'll read some of these exchanges that people have, like it'll be on the front page of Reddit sometimes. Sure, yeah. Tinder will pop up

or someone will have a Tinder exchange and I'll read it and I'll think, holy shit, did two strangers say that to each other? I'll just be like, you are strangers and you're talking to each other. It blows me away did two strangers say that to each other? I'll just be like, you are strangers and you're talking to each other. It blows me away that two strangers, you know, and most of the time, the stuff that makes it to the front page

is all just super bad rejection, right? A really, really terrible rejection. So somebody will say something and someone will say something really horrible back to them. And then that'll be the thing that gets upvoted a million times. And so I just get blown away that somebody had

that kind of terrible awful rejection online that you know like they're just they're just they're just flipping they're just moving pictures back and forth

with their thumb and they get fucking just absolutely fucking obliterated missile command style from outer space

just nuked from orbit. Just unbelievable. So I, but I just, it just blows me away because I, I date, I analog dated. You know what I mean? I all, all I did was analog date. And so I don't have a world with that.

And so for me, it's like, I'm a complete alien when it comes to that stuff. Yeah, I didn't do the apps when I was single, but when Haley and I first started talking, I reached out to her on message, like a friend of ours, Thomas Smith actually set us up. But like, you know, so she was kind of expecting that I might reach out to her.

But I did have to do like a cold open on Messenger and be like, hey, you know, and like chit chat. But it's literally within the hour, I was like, I made up some bullshit. I was like, hey, this app drains my battery. Can we talk on the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I was like, I don't like this so I was like, Hey, this app drains my battery. Can we talk on the phone? Cause I was like, I, I don't like this so much. I just hate it. I just like, can we just talk? Like I can't, this is not taking. My texts are the driest texts

in the world. Like I couldn't, let me tell you something, man. I couldn't, there is, there isn't a thing I could open with my texts. There isn't a thing I can open. They are the driest text. It's like wiping your tongue dry, dry text. They are so, did you get the milk? Like that's my text. It is, there is nothing extra in there. I'll sometimes try to chat with Cecil over text.

And I don't like to chat over text, but like I'll see like a news story or something. I'll like have like three or four lines of text and Cecil will be like, thumbs up to the middle one or something. Or like,

yup. Or like, I'll get like one line or something. I'm like, we'll talk about it on Thursday. I'm so bad at it. I just,

I'm not, I just don't, it's my brain doesn't work in that way. Same, man. But it's okay. It's okay. I'll get text messages

and I'll be like, I'll like, in my house, like we'll communicate by text. Like if someone's in another room or something. And like, I'll get texts from Haley and I'll be like, I'll like in my house, like we'll communicate by text. Like if someone's in another room or something and like, I'll get texts from Haley and she'll be like this, this, this,

this. And I'll just type, like I'm, I'm coming upstairs. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not walking up. I'm,

we're not stopping and typing. Like I'd rather walk up, like I'll come up. I hate the thumb board. I'm not doing keyboard. I hate them. This is the oldest we've ever sounded. I know we sound so old, but I hate it. Did you know, sometimes you can put Thumb keyboard. I hate thumb keyboard. This is the oldest we've ever sounded. I know. We sound so old,

but I hate it. Did you know sometimes you can put a trash bag in a pterodactyl's mouth and that's how you throw away your garbage? You can have a yabba dabba doo time.

A dabba doo time. Hurry! This way! Oh, Barry! That was too close. You were almost a Jill sandwich. You're right. Barry, thanks for saving my life. But Barry, didn't you say you're going back to the dining room to do some research? Why on earth are you here?

Uh, I just had something I wanted to check. Now, let's get back to searching for the lost captain and Chris, shall we? So this, I grabbed this because I really wanted to talk to you about this. This is from The Guardian. Texas death row inmate at mercy of Supreme Court and junk science. So you guys may remember back in, I don't know, it was probably the 80s, 90s, early aughts, maybe even, that there was a spate of so-called shaken baby incidents. There was billboards.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever shake a baby. And I remember listening to like a podcast, like a long form podcast, maybe six, eight years ago about the shaken baby thing and how it's pretty much bullshit. Like it's just not really a thing. And a lot of people have gone to jail, like gone to jail for shaking their baby because

it became this sort of, I don't know, it became this sort of cultural phenomenon that we all believe in. It was this satanic panic of killing the kid or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, and it's a very similar thing because somebody heard it, they thought it was true. Yeah. And then everybody just suddenly saw it everywhere they look. And with these sorts of things sometimes too, one of the things I find fascinating is that like these will happen and then entire trainings will happen for police will become trained on how to spot shaken babies.

Yeah, man. And then, you know, MEs will get trained on how to spot shaken babies. And there'll be all this like proliferation of junk science on how to spot this thing that isn't a thing, this thing that has not got any real backing to it. There's no evidence. And lives get lost. Lives get completely fucking ruined. I cannot imagine the horror of losing my child. And rather than grieving the loss of someone I love, I have to be incarcerated instead. I have to lose all of my family and all of my friends and my job and my freedom and my reputation. And people are going to look at me

like a baby killer. And I'm going to go to jail and be treated like a baby killer, man. That's not a good time. That's like the rest of your life. And in this case, maybe the end of someone's life. Yeah, because they're on death row. It's a horror, and this is not the only junk science that gets peddled and is still peddled, right? I mean, they talked about bite marks in this, too. One of the reasons why

some of these people get killed is because of bite marks, because it's bite mark analysis, and bite mark analysis is fucking feng shui. There's nothing to it. It's literally a junk science. The same thing with the shaken baby, the same thing with so many of these forensic skills that people come out and say,

this is how you spot this. They don't know what they're talking about. No, it's all made up. It's all made up, but the points do matter. This is different, right? What matters is they're taking people's lives away because they are falling into this trap, thinking that there are experts in this field that are telling them true things. And then they're finding those true things, but those things that they're being told are lies. And then they are propagating those lies because then

they're becoming trainers of those people. And, you know, even, we were even finding like just fingerprint analysis is sometimes so not fucking real. Yeah. They just, they don't have, nobody just does what they do in the station. Right. They touch an ink thing and then they roll it back and forth.

Nobody touches anything like that. There's tiny little partial prints and they, we looked at one thing where somebody sent out a hundred of these and no one could match it. No one could match anything with anything else. And so you're seeing this happen with all kinds of forensics. And this is just one of those pieces where someone saying this isn't real, but we have plenty of people in the courts all across the country that are willing to keep this junk science around. Because I think our country hates people who do crimes so much, they're willing to hurt innocent people to punish maybe someone who might do something wrong.

Yeah, I think that that's very, very true. I want to bring up another junk science just in that same thing. And then I want to circle back to what you just said a little bit and add one to that maybe. One of the other most famous cases of somebody on death row for bullshit was a guy who was about to be executed

for killing his family in a fire. And it was based on that fire investigation, that arson investigation shit. And that's nonsense. Like all that, like that, like, oh, I can come out and I can see where the fire started and where the accelerants and what the, no, like, no, it's, and it's, and the part of the problem is that it's, it all sounds very plausible. And it leads me to my next point. It, that plausibility, that sounding of plausibility

and the fact that sometimes it probably is right. We're going to get right by accident. A stop clock is right twice a day, right? But one of the things we all want so much in cases that are so tragic is we want certainty. There is a real natural desire for certainty because we want to make sure that like, it's like, why do we ask why somebody killed somebody?

You know, I've watched, I don't know how many like true crime stories you've seen. You'll see a true crime story and somebody will admit to doing it and they'll admit to, I did it and here's where and when. And then they always ask why. Why doesn't matter to the legal process, right? Like we already established, I did it, and here's where and when. And then they always ask why. Why doesn't matter to the legal process, right? Like, we already established you did it,

two o'clock on Thursday at the grocery store. Okay. But they want to know why. There's a drive in us for certainty. There's a drive in us to know and to like understand these tragedies at a deeper level and to be able to say, okay, it was Tom that did it. We know for sure that it was Tom that did it. We're not just putting away somebody on junk

science. And we're also not just letting a tragedy go unavenged. And we're not just like letting justice not occur. That's a really understandable human impulse, I think. But it's wrong. Like it's understandable, but it's fucking dead wrong. That desire for certainty clouds our judgment. That need to have an answer to questions clouds our judgment. Because we're like, okay, I have to have an answer. I have to have a certain answer. Here's somebody who's coming in and saying,

trust this like shaken baby bullshit. Trust this bite mark analysis. Trust this fiber analysis. You're like, cool. I want to believe those things because I want to be able to act with certainty. That's what I want to be able to do. So it's very reassuring to have these junk peddlers come in and tell you they're nonsense. It's an understandable impulse, but it's an impulse that throws innocent people in jail.

Yeah, and it could get them killed. And you have a bunch of people, I think, in power right now that probably will stand with the junk science, right? If it's going to go to the Supreme Court, I can't imagine any of those people up there that are sitting in the majority that could parse through any of this in any reasonable way. Well, and I think the Supreme Court has shown

that they don't actually care if you're guilty or innocent. Yeah. What they want to know is, is there a legal basis that forces us to release you? Yeah. That's it. Yeah. They're not trying to adjudicate

or re-adjudicate someone's guilt or innocence. They've made that very clear in several cases. Yeah. Just another draft dodging ploy the way I see it. Who are you? Colonel Buster Monroe, commander of the Harvest Nuclear Missile Installation, keeping America safe from those who would die

or flag red, white, and pink. These are nuclear missiles? Goddamn right they are. Every one of them ready to rain death on the Ruskies. All I gotta do is hit the button and blammo, the price of vodka goes through the roof, along with the vodka. Well, I suppose you have, you know, safeguards against accidents? Safeguards? Don't be such a weak sister. There are no safeguards. This is the 50s.

So the story comes from the Huffington Post. Mark Milley taking safety precautions after Trump suggested he deserves execution. And it's not just him, because GOP Representative Gosar suggests that Milley should be hung for his January 6th response. Now, Tom, is it Gosar or Gosar that goes there?

And is it hanged or hung? Well, I'll tell you what, I'd like to be hung. I'm not, but I'd like to be. Can we read, let's read what both of them had to say specifically because here's Trump's truth. He truthed out right here. He said, this guy turned out to be a woke train wreck who if the fake news reporting is correct,

was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the president of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been death. A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. Now, Gosar, the Gosarian, actually said this instead. So here's what Gosar said. Now, Gosar had like a whole thing in a newsletter. Read both of these paragraphs, Tom, because I think they're both telling.

Gosar, the Gosarian says, but even after approval was given, General Milley, the homosexual-promoting BLM activist, chairman of the military joint chiefs, delayed. Of course, we now know that the deviant Milley was coordinating with Nancy Pelosi to hurt President Trump and treasonously working behind Trump's back. In a better society, quistlings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung, he added, also calling Milley a traitor. And after he said he would be hung, we said Caliente. No, well, so

we were looking at this earlier and genuinely the language he's using when he says deviant, like, I think that's a very specific word there that he's using to

dehumanize him. For sure. Like, I think he's very much using language there that is, you know, it's not hate speech, but it's as close as you can get. It's towing the line. Oh, yeah. You know? It's hate speech edging.

Yeah, it really is. And the other line from Trump basically says that in a normal, if all things being equal, in a regular place, he would be killed for this. Yeah. This is to suggest to a group of lunatics, right-wing fucking lunatics, to suggest that those people, hey, these guys are traitors. This is a mob that, based on the faintest whiff of the concept of traitorism

that was being brooded toward them. They were like, fucking let's hang Mike Pence. Let's kill Nancy Pelosi. Let's murder these human beings without trial. These are extrajudicial vigilante nutjobs, right-wing fucking terrorist nut jobs. And I really think what this is is a call-out. I think that they are calling them out.

I think that the, I think there's a group of people on the right who are hoping for some real violence. I think that they're constant like, hey, you know what? If we don't get our way, if we don't get our way, there's going to be a temper tantrum civil war.

Give us, give us our way. It we don't get our way, there's going to be a temper tantrum civil war. Give us our way. It feels very toddler-esque on the one hand, but on the other hand, it is also absolutely trying to see how much they can churn. Sure.

How much can they churn? How much energy is really over there? I think that they are looking out at the crowd and gauging the violent energy of that crowd. Yeah, I don't think that's off the mark at all. I think that they are looking out at the crowd and gauging the violent energy of that crowd. Yeah, I don't think that's off the mark at all.

I think that that's kind of exactly where they're at. And I think one of the things that they're trying to do is, you know, they're trying to see if there's something there. They're trying to foment that if they can. If they can't and nothing comes of it, then what? There wasn't any problem. can. If they can't and nothing comes of it, then what? There wasn't any problem. You see what happened with Trump when he was putting out these texts throughout his entire November, December after he lost. He's putting out these texts and these tweets, et cetera, for a whole month. He's tweeting and tweeting and tweeting. And he was able to foment a group of people

to come forth and attack the Capitol. Oh, yeah. I think that this sort of thing is something that he very much wants. And, you know, you can't take away his bullhorn. These are essentially threats to someone in the government who's stepping down, right? This is essentially threats.

And not just by an ex-president, by someone who's currently in government, right? We see these things happen and somehow we feel powerless in some way to take away their rights. But I just don't feel like we should live in a world where this is okay. And somehow we've gotten to this place where we've fallen off so far from what normal is that we just hear this and we think, well, I don't think you should be able to do that. I genuinely feel like someone should be showing up here to your door and saying, you are trying to incite something. You're going to jail or something. I mean, like genuinely, this is not something that should be taken so lightly. In 20, I don't remember, in 20 some year, I can't remember anymore, a group of fucking

lunatics believing the shit that Trump was spewing about COVID restrictions tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Yeah. It's not, this is not stuff that isn't happening in the world. It's not in the realm of possibility. Right. stuff that isn't happening in the world. It's not in the realm of possibility.

Right. I mean, how insane is it, Cecil, that the right-wing conservatives, the Republicans, are calling out the military as being too left-leaning? I know, man. The famously liberal military? I know, man.

What the fuck? And I don't even understand how Milley got the job if that's the case. Because he's not. He's just like an educated guy. It's just that the right's gone so far right that a guy who's like center right is now looked at as the fucking far leftist.

That's Pence. Yeah. That's Pence, you know? Center right is Pence. Although I'd say he's hard right. Pence is pretty far right. But even he's center right to them. Although I'd say he's hard right. Pence is pretty far right. But even he's center right to them. Or he's left to them.

Dude, like Mitch McConnell to some of these guys. Fucking Mitch McConnell. I know, I know. Is now like regarded as like a rhino. I just feel like the good thing about, I was listening to somebody talk about the Hunter Biden thing and how this Hunter Biden thing is shaking out. And the good thing about these indictments

coming after all these people that were involved in the election fraud is that nobody's willing to go to Congress now and say, he's guilty, let's get him. Yeah. Because they know that if they do, there could be repercussions down the road because there was some action taken against people who did something similar. Right. Right. So if you trumped up some charges on Hunter Biden and you pretended

that they were real and you manufactured some stuff and then you came to Congress and you presented that manufactured stuff and then they came to Congress and you presented that manufactured stuff and then they had some big bullshit where they impeached the president. Right. And then they came back and investigated it later. You might, you might've committed a crime and there, nobody's willing to step up now that they're seeing all these people all over the country start to get fucking thrown in jail or they have, they're out on bond right now. You know, these people are out on bond. These, and these are not the heads of organizations. This is somebody who's like the head of the PTA and the Republican party in a small county.

They're on bond right now and they will be going to court very soon to defend themselves against the state of Georgia. And they see that. And then, so there's teeth to it, right? They see there's teeth to it. And so they're not, they're these, that's why this Hunter Biden thing isn't taking off as much as it should, right? Because everybody's like, fuck that. I ain't stepping on that landmine. I think you need to do something like that with this too. Something like this needs to happen where people don't feel safe saying things like this about people who are in government that are, you know, like a fucking, you shouldn't feel safe saying those types of things. No, I think we've got to get to a point where we have, where we still retain reasonable, strong, robust, wide freedoms of speech. But we can't threaten people with mob

violence, right? You can't sick by proxy vigilantes on something. Because you're exactly right. What these guys have figured out is that they can't take direct action. Direct action is going to land their asses in jail. But I think what they're trying to do now is shift their tactic to get a bunch of dumbass pawn proxies to do their bidding for them. And I think some of these guys are waiting.

I think it's like, well, if I keep poking, if I keep poking, at some point, someone's going to murder someone for me. I don't think you're wrong. Invader P-21-01. What happened? Someone set up us to bomb. We get signal. What? Main screen turn on. It's you.

How are you, gentlemen? All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction. What'd you say? You have no chance to survive, make your time. Ha ha ha. All right, so I grabbed this on purpose. It's from The Nation.

I read an excerpt of this from a friend of mine that actually posted it on a Facebook post of his. I thought it was interesting. It's from The Nation. I read an excerpt of this from a friend of mine that actually posted it on a Facebook post of his. I thought it was interesting. It's from The Nation. It's called, My President Joined a Picket Line. No matter what you think of Joe Biden, his decision to stand with United Auto Workers is historic, and it might just get him reelected. And I thought this was interesting. Never in American presidential history has a president picketed with any striking workers. And, you know, Joe Biden did say when he was fighting for reelection, for election, he said, you know, I will be the most pro-union president in American history. And I think so far he has borne that out. I really do.

And I, so I grabbed this because like, I think that Joe Biden is far left of Obama in practice and in tone. And I think he gets far too little credit for, because he's not perfect. No, I mean, he's, he is, he is not perfect, but he is the most progressive president we have ever had. Like by a lot, there is nobody comparable that we have ever had. And I find it bizarre that he gets like so little credit for this stuff. And what I saw this week, when I saw him on the line and I saw that people were talking about it, a lot of people posted it. But I saw a lot of pushback where people were saying, yeah, he's trying to make up for what he did to the rail workers. And the rail workers, he shut the strike down.

He did. He shut the strike down. And we can go back and forth and decide whether or not that was necessary. Right. Like, I think there's arguments that say it was necessary for our nation because there was important things that were being shipped by the rail. If he didn't shut it down, there would have been some serious problems with our supply chain.

Yeah. And, uh, there's another side that says that was kind of propaganda possibly by the companies to try to convince people that that's what it was, you know? So there's some back and forth there. Regardless,

he did that. And I was very upset. I remember. Yeah. Uh, he and forth there. Regardless, he did that. And I was very upset by it. I remember, yeah. He and Bernie and other senators and the unions themselves fought after the fact to get the thing that was left on the table, which was sick days,

to try to get the sick days for the rail workers. Now, rail unions, there's like 11 rail unions. There's a ton of different rail unions. So some unions decided not to take the thing that they're offering. So they haven't gotten sick days for some of those people, but some of them have. Others have praised the other portions of that union, have praised the administration, specifically praised them and said they did a great job and got us what we asked for. Other people didn't ask for more and didn't get enough, but that's how negotiation works.

Sometimes you ask for more. They were asking for 15 days. Some of them got seven. Some of them got four. It just depends on how they, but these are sick days only. These are not like total time off. These are sick day only.

And so there's a back and forth there to decide, you know, whether or not that was worthwhile. I will say this, the unions are coming out and saying, the ones that he got, that he helped and that other people helped, it wasn't just Joe Biden. It was the administration. It was senators. It was Bernie Sanders. It was other senators. It was other pieces of government. And it was the unions themselves that did that hard work, that hard work on the ground to try to push those rails, those, those rail companies to give them the benefits that they were looking for. And so some people, some of those unions were happy with what they got. Others were, others are still trying to fight for it. So it's not a hundred

percent. Right. And I want to make sure that's clear, but genuinely that's a great thing, right? Stop the rail, rail, stop the rail strike bad, in my opinion, but getting the things that they wanted good. Right. And so that's redeemable in my opinion. And this I think is genuinely awesome. I love this. I love the fact he's standing out there and Trump tries to do this, right? Trump tried to do this. Uh, he went to, uh, uh, a factory down the road from here. He didn't go to the UAW. He went down somewhere else where there's a factory not associated with this at all and talked to people

who weren't even involved in this whatsoever. But he made it look as if he was doing the exact same thing that Joe Biden is doing, right? Because here's the difference. The difference between Joe Biden and Trump is Joe Biden

thinks you are who you are. Donald Trump thinks you're fucking stupid. Okay, that's the difference. Donald Trump thinks you're fucking stupid. Yep. Okay? That's the difference. Donald Trump thinks you're a fucking idiot. You work in a factory.

You work on an assembly line. He doesn't think you're smart enough to know the difference between what Joe Biden is doing and what Donald Trump is manufacturing and pretending he's doing. Yep. I completely agree with that take. I completely agree with that take. I completely agree with that take. I think, you know, it could be dismissed as, oh, it's just a photo op. Yeah. But it's not. It's not. This is not just a photo op. This is big. This is a big deal. This is huge. The administration wields a lot of potential power in helping to broker negotiations in industry. And they have absolutely signaled here and to all other industry right now that they are on the side

of the worker. They are on the side of the worker. Here's the difference. At some point, we are likely to have to make a choice in 2024 about whether or not we're going to support Joe Biden for president re-election. And we can all hold our nose and say, he's not my choice of candidate, but he's probably going to be the candidate. So like, okay, like wish in one hand, shit in the other. You're going to have Biden. And on the other side, you're going to have Trump.

Or something like it. Very likely Trump or something like it, right? Yeah. Some other horrible right wing piece of dog shit. Or something like it. They're all bad. They it, right? Yeah, some other horrible right-wing piece of dog shit. They're all bad. They're all the same. They're all bad. If any of those right-wing fuckers win, they will do everything they can do to dismantle every

union. All of them. Every single time. They will work tirelessly to break every union. Yeah. To break their backbone, to disassemble them, to make it impossible for them to organize, to make it impossible for them to wield any power. Which is what they've been doing for 40 years. Yes.

So that's the right. Yeah. And then Joe Biden is out there marching with the UAW. Yeah. There's a difference. There's a difference. There's a big difference. A lot of people like to fucking spout that line like, oh, it's all the same.

Like the Democrats and Republicans are all the same. They're not. Two sides of the same coin. Two sides of the same coin. Stop with that shit. It doesn't make you clever. It doesn't make you the guy who can, they're all the same. They're not. Don't be an ass. Yeah, two sides of the same coin. Stop with that shit. It doesn't make you clever. It doesn't make you the guy who can see through it all.

It doesn't make that. You're not the fucking guy. You're not fucking Morpheus with your fucking two colored pills. Yeah. Being like, that's not you. That's not you.

You're the guy who can't see the difference between having Roe and not having Roe. No, man. You're the guy who can't see the difference between having Roe and not having Roe. No, man. You're the guy who can't see the difference between having unions and breaking unions. That's what that makes you. Yeah. It makes you the asshole. Yeah.

A hundred percent of the time. You're not clever. That's not a cool thing. There's another one too that I hate too is where they'll say something like, give us rights and it says the Republicans, no. And then underneath it'll say, hashtag BLM and a pride flag, no, for the Democrats, right?

So they'll say, the Republicans just say no, but the Democrats pretend they're with us for a minute so that they could tell us no as well. And this is another same, it's that cleverest, I'm the cleverest person. It's not true. It's just not true. Look at this, look at what's not true. It's just not true.

Look at this. Look at what's happening here. This means something. This means something to those people who are sitting there trying to get the things that they want. I mean, these are people who work hard jobs that are in a strong union that can all collectively decide

when this shop shuts down. Yep. And that's powerful. And I think the thing is,. Yep. And that's powerful. And I think the thing is, is that Joe recognizes that's powerful. And he's out there, this is, you know, is it a photo op? Yeah.

But does his voice lend credibility to that union? Absolutely it does. Yeah, man. Absolutely. And like, I also think it's the case that if we pay attention to, if we pay attention when it's rhetoric only from the right, and we do, then we should pay attention when it's rhetoric that we want to hear from the left.

Yeah. I think there's a tendency to say, ah, it's just talk. But like on the right, when they just talk, we pay attention. Yeah, sure. Right? And that's important. It's important because those just talk pieces are often floated out to the public to see how the public reacts. Yeah.

And they're floated out to see what the kind of reaction is because these are politicians. And if the public reacts positively, they very often will move the ball forward in that direction. Yeah. So, yeah. Is it sometimes just talk? Yeah, sometimes it's just talk. Is it sometimes treading water to see if we can swim? It absolutely is that too. And very importantly, when the UAW, when the, that wasn't the UAW, when the railroad strike

happened and Joe Biden stopped the strike, there was a bunch of bad press about him. Yeah. Ton of bad press. So when they do shitty stuff, we should call it out. For sure. And so what happened? He and other people shitty stuff, we should call it out. For sure. And so what happened? He and other people worked behind the scenes to continue to get stuff for him.

So he heard that, saw that, continued to work for it. The same thing, the opposite is true here. When they do something good like this, they should get the press for it and they should get the clue

so that they know they should keep doing it over and over and over again because that's what we want you to do. That's why we put you there. We're going to hold you accountable. That means we're going to shit on you when you shut the rail strike down and we're going to praise you when you go to this other strike. That's what that means. And so hold them accountable, good and bad. Don't hold them accountable only when they're bad and forget when they do the good. I know. I know. And know. And this is at the end of the day, this is always a compare and contrast.

Yeah. It's always a, you know, it's like you said, like it's no hashtag BLM, hashtag, you know, pride flag. But I'll tell you what, I haven't seen a single piece of legislation floated to strip like trans kids of rights. No. From the left.

No. So it's not the same. It's not the same. It's not the same. I haven't seen any of this legislation that like it would seek to disenfranchise the black vote coming from the left. It's only from the right. So seeing that, like draw that fucking stupid equal sign and being like, oh, it's all the same. Look at what I did. I made a funny, clever meme. No, you're not clever. What you're doing is encouraging people not to act,

to become depolitical, to disengage from the process. And that hands elections over to the right, who then does the shit you're afraid of. It's real. Like it matters. It matters every time. So yeah, like we got to give him credit. He's out there.

He is the most progressive president in any of our lifetimes. Why can't we be okay with that? Why can't we be like, yeah, is he everything we wanted? No, is he better than everything we've ever had? Yeah. How is that not progress? To me, that feels so much like progress.

All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. Be sure to check us out this Thursday. We're going to have a funny show for you. I want to thank everybody who's a patron. Of course, you can become a patron on a per-episode basis. Go to dissonancepod.com. There's a way on the page. I think it says Patreon on top or donate,

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