Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 783: Q and A Disaster, GOP is Weird, More Project 2025

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:31 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 today is Thursday, August the first Cecil. I had an experience this week. I got for the first time in my life, I got a call from one of those like,
Starting point is 00:01:46 would you like to take a political poll survey? Oh, that's cool. And you did it. I did it. There's some like, there's like some civic things I've never, I've never been on a jury. I've always wanted to be on a jury. Have you ever been called to be like in the pool of jurors?
Starting point is 00:02:00 I have, but I've never actually even gone to the courthouse. Me, I've never been in the actual room where they ask you questions. I've only ever made it. I've never actually even gone to the courthouse. Me, I've never been in the actual room where they ask you questions. I've only ever made it, I've been called three times, but I've only ever made it to the waiting room and then got dismissed. I didn't even go, I got called into jury duty the same day as finals in college. So I called and was like, hey, I got finals, I can't do it. And they're like, yeah, that's fine.
Starting point is 00:02:21 And so they said, we'll just put you back, put you back in the pool and like react. And then literally like 25 years passed and like nothing. And I was like, Jesus, all right. And then I got one, this, and it was for like a summons. And that was like the same like day we were gonna be like at Mayo Clinic. And so I called him and I'm like, I'm gonna be out of town like for a doctor's appointment, like at Mayo.
Starting point is 00:02:42 And they're like, yeah, no problem. We'll put you back. And I'm like, so I gotta wait another 25 years. I'm back in the bucket. They put me back in the bucket. You're either gonna get back in the bucket or you're gonna kick the bucket. But one or the other,
Starting point is 00:02:51 but I'm never gonna be able to sit on a jury. Yeah. Like it's a civic thing I've kind of always wanted to do. I've always wanted to do it as well. Never had an opportunity to do it. But I got to take a poll. I got to take a, and it takes a while. And so I wanted to kind of talk to the audience about this
Starting point is 00:03:05 because I think it's important that if we can between now and November, a lot of people are in the habit and I think rightfully so of not answering random phone numbers, I totally get that. You don't want to do this, don't do this. But if between now and November, if the idea of answering a random number does not fill you with millennial dread or whatever,
Starting point is 00:03:26 answer it and take the poll. It takes 10 to 15 minutes. The reason I say that is that I think that there is a kind of energy to seeing the results of polls closing that drives people to say, by God, there's a reason to show up. We've got a shot at winning this. Oh, we're in the lead. We're doing great. Like there's, there's a momentum to show up. We've got a shot at winning this. Oh, we're in the lead, we're doing great. There's a momentum that can be built or lost.
Starting point is 00:03:49 And I've always wondered like, who's fucking taking these polls? Because who answers their cell phone when rando numbers call? The only reason I do it is for my work. I can't just not answer the numbers. You can't not answer the call. But I was thinking about just exhorting our audience
Starting point is 00:04:03 and saying, hey guys, for the next six months, if you can, if you have it in you. Less than six months. Less than, for like 90 some days. 94 days. Jesus Christ, it's terrifying. Bite the bullet, answer the numbers, see if it's a pollster and take the poll.
Starting point is 00:04:17 It's annoying, it takes 15 minutes, it's repetitive. You'd be like, part of you is gonna be like, just send me the test questions, I'll be done with this test in two minutes. But I think it's worthwhile. I do. I think it's worth doing. OK, cool.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Yeah. I don't think I would answer the phone, but I sometimes like, I'll answer the phone on occasion if I have called somebody who's going to fix my house or something or my car's at the shop. And I'll see a number and I'll be like, I don't know who that is. But my car's at the shop, so it's probably the shop. And I'll see a number and I'll be like, I don't know who that is. But my car's at the shop so it's probably the shop.
Starting point is 00:04:46 And then they'll be like, hello, I would like to sell you car insurance. I'm like, damn it, motherfucker. But yeah, I'll probably try to answer my phone between now and then. I wanted to put something on the screen, Tom, while we're talking about elections. One of the things that I noticed this week,
Starting point is 00:05:01 and I didn't realize it wasn't a thing, is that some states don't allow you to register to vote online. I want everybody, if you get a chance, take a minute and see if you can actually register yourself to vote or if you're already registered, check your registration, make sure you're still registered to vote because it's really important
Starting point is 00:05:20 that you don't show up somewhere and think you're registered and then they say, well, you're not actually on the books. And I'm only saying this because there was someone who posted a video from themself in TikTok from Texas. And I don't know if this is true or not, but they were saying that specifically, if you go to the Texas website that has the online form, you can fill the form out and hit submit, but it doesn't actually submit the form.
Starting point is 00:05:44 It just submits it so that you can print it and then bring it somewhere or send it somewhere. So be sure to pay attention in certain states. You can see the ones here in gray. The ones in gray are Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas. This is Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont. Oh, pardon me, New Hampshire are the ones that you can't actually register to vote online. All the other states, though, it appears, according to this, look like they do have online registration. But if you're in any of those states, you need to make sure that you're actually registered to vote. And it might be harder than just going online and doing it. You might actually have to go somewhere or send something in, but you might actually be able to find that information online. And it, and this is also an opportunity to just
Starting point is 00:06:37 take a minute now and send a message to somebody who you know, to remind them to register to vote. This is an important, like, this is a great way to get something rolling so that there's more than just our listeners, but whoever our listeners touch too. Yeah, let's Kevin Bacon this shit. Absolutely. In fact, let's get Kevin Bacon to vote. Is he registered in California? Let's look at it.
Starting point is 00:07:01 I don't know. But yeah, so go ahead and register to vote. And I also want to urge people, if you have time that day on election day and you want to do this, I think it's important now to try to see if we can get as many people as possible to be election judges. There has been a lot of people
Starting point is 00:07:19 who have been talking about the ways in which the Republicans have been attacking these, not only the poll workers, but also been trying to get in the jobs that are in charge of them, right? Doing their best they can locally to try to be in charge of these elections so they can reject results. And it's important to have people there that are objective
Starting point is 00:07:40 and they're gonna pair you off with somebody else, right? So like there's gonna be somebody there who's on the other side of the aisle so that you guys are paying attention to each other and what's going on. But is somebody you could pass a USB stick to like a like a violet crack or whatever. Either a violet crack or a ginger mint.
Starting point is 00:07:57 Ginger mint, yes. One or the other. It could go either way if you're a horrible monster. And if you do do it, make sure you put a bunch of shoe polish that you spread into your fucking eyes outside of Four Seasons Total landscaping. No, but genuinely, if you have an opportunity
Starting point is 00:08:11 to do it that day, I think it's really important for people. And it's a really rewarding thing. Like you were saying, participating in democracy, that's a really great way to do it. Get an opportunity to spend part of your day on election day, helping other people vote and making sure the process is fair. If you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true.
Starting point is 00:08:33 All right. So Tom, I wanted to start to show with this, even though it's not the biggest story this week, because it was kind of from last week, but I really want to talk about it. This is from JD Vance. JD Vance, two different stories we have that he basically said that women who don't have children, he's making fun of women who don't have children. He's sort of attacking, especially Kamala Harris
Starting point is 00:08:55 because she has two stepchildren. And he was also attacking Pete Buttigieg because he's a gay man who hadn't yet adopted children. And the other thing he had to say too, in this mashed up in all of this, because this is from years ago, right? Like this is when he first was running for Senate, is that people who have kids
Starting point is 00:09:14 should have more of a say in government. People who actually like natural born kids too. Not just more of a say, like just to clarify for the audience, literally your vote should have more points to it, like a waiting system for people who have kids so that they get like 1.2 vote for every, like every person. Like if I have kids, because he said it's like,
Starting point is 00:09:36 people have kids have more at stake. That was his bullshit take. It's a bullshit take, right? So he's saying people with kids have more at stake, so they should be able to vote more. Their vote should literally count more. So he's talking about building a waiting system to differently disenfranchise certain people.
Starting point is 00:09:56 And he doesn't, like, of course, there's a million problems with this. One, it's horrifying. It's unethical. It's antithetical to democracy. It is absolutely like violation of the idea of how we make decisions in a democracy, that everybody is equal in terms of their voting. Then there's like, what about if I had kids and they're fully grown adults now
Starting point is 00:10:20 who are fucking voting on their own? Like, do I still get my 1.2 or my one, you know, like, do I still get the weighted vote? It's based on how many dependents you have on your tax returns. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Cecil. You know, the thing is like, you're pro, like conceptually, I'm sure he'd be like, that's a great place to start. And it's like, no, the place to start is if you're a person over the age of 18, you get to cast one vote. By that logic though, Tom, I put more more into the kiddie per person. Right? Like I pay more per person. Yeah. My the other people get tax deductions. Right. Right. If you have
Starting point is 00:10:57 kids, you get you pay less taxes. That's right. Right. There's already a benefit to having children in the sense that you pay. I mean, governmentally, not any other way, but in the government's. Yeah. In the sense of like, yeah, but you're exactly right. I get a tax deduction for each dependent. It is a very modest tax deduction. It's not at all. And you're right. It doesn't even come close to the cost of actually like feeding and housing somebody, but like, well, you could do less. doesn't even come close to the cost of actually like feeding and housing somebody.
Starting point is 00:11:25 But like, you could do less. I mean, come on. If I could I would. No, that's terrible. But like this is, you know, I also I've got to seize because I'm in this position. So probably like sensitive to it maybe but like Stepparents are fucking parents, man. You can't be a step parent and just be like, okay, you could just self parent now to your step kids. Right. You have to be a parent.
Starting point is 00:11:51 Like step parents are parents. Like every day I wake up in a house that has my step kids in it. They live in the house that I provide for them to live in. They eat the groceries I buy for them. I'm paying to send one to college right now. They come to me for love and for advice. I hug them when they're sad. This is parenting.
Starting point is 00:12:12 Step parenting is parenting. It is so insulting. It's so insulting to people who, not just to step parents, right? But it's also so insulting to those people out there who wanted to have children and couldn't because of biological reasons. Oh my God, I know. How insulting is that to those people, right? It's insulting to people who are foster parents, who open their house to somebody who, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:39 to them is a stranger, but they want to help as best they can to raise that child. Yeah. Same thing with adopted parents. Like all these different parents out there that are not, you know, I pumped a couple in my wife, I cream pie'd my wife when she had a baby. Right, it's not that. But it's just as important for our society for those kids to have a loving pair
Starting point is 00:13:02 of whatever parents happen to be parents, right? It's so fucking insulting for him to say that. And it's so what it is, is here's why he's saying it. He's saying it because he's also anti-abortion, right? Why he's trying to stack those two things together is because Kamala Harris is his fucking opposition in this. So what he wants to do is devalue her as a person by saying the thing that she's doing is less than the thing that she could be doing, which is being an actual mother
Starting point is 00:13:34 because she's not an actual mother. He is what he, I totally agree to it. Like he is seizing on the idea sideways, but not cleverly that she is failing her responsibilities and duties Like he is seizing on the idea sideways, but not cleverly, that she is failing her responsibilities and duties as a woman by not following her biological imperative to fucking reproduce. Because he's saying that is what a woman's function is.
Starting point is 00:13:57 Because this is not a criticism that is leveled ever against men, right? There is so far, like I saw something clever, it's not my sentence, like I saw something clever, like there are no presidents that have ever given birth to a child. This would not be different. It's not any different than any of them.
Starting point is 00:14:14 We don't require that a male president have fathered children. That is not a requirement. I think many of them did. I don't even know if they all have. I literally don't even know. But it's not something that anybody would say, hey, but with women we're doing this. We're doing this because we're in this moment where the right is trying very hard to push women back into the
Starting point is 00:14:38 home barefoot and pregnant and bereft of options. Absolutely. That is the absolute driving animating force behind the rights treatment of women right now. So this is their way to say, you're not a real woman. And like the not a real fill in the blank is a hundred percent their attack right now. Like they've got, they got a fucking mad libs for that right now.
Starting point is 00:15:01 They certainly do have a lot of different not a reals. Why don't we get into one of those not-areals, Tom? Yeah, let's talk about the... Let's talk about the Black... The National Association of Black Journalists had... Donald Trump... You imagine? Donald Trump show up and, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:19 I feel like maybe we just play a little piece of this. Oh, God. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So I'm going to play a little piece of this. Oh God, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I'm gonna play a little piece of this just for our audience so you guys can hear.
Starting point is 00:15:28 If you missed this this week, Trump was invited to speak at this convention, black journalist convention. One of the organizers stepped down because of this beforehand. So they had invited him and one of the organizers resigned and said, I won't be part of this. Wow.
Starting point is 00:15:46 And the reason that she gave when I heard her talk was that the reason why this thing exists is so that we can talk about black issues and try to focus our conversations about how to improve black journalism, but also talk about what happens in our communities. And what this is going to do is it's going to bring a white guy here to talk about essentially national issues, which might may or may not be black issues. And some of the things that they talk about are not black issues. But let me just say the juiciest pieces of this are the black issues. So I'm going to play two pieces of this. The first piece is literally when he just sits down. People did not think it was appropriate
Starting point is 00:16:30 for you to be here today. You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true. You have told four congresswoman women of color who were American citizens to go back to where they came from. You have used words like animal and rabbit to describe black district attorneys. You've attacked black
Starting point is 00:16:53 journalists calling them a loser saying the questions that they ask are quote stupid and racist. You've had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So my question sir, now that you are asking black supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that? Well, first of all, I don't think I've ever been asked a question, so in such a horrible manner,
Starting point is 00:17:20 first question. You don't even say, hello, how are you? Hello. Are you with ABC? Because I think they're a fake news network, a terrible network. And I think it's disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the black population of this country. I've done so much for the black population of this country. I think it's a very rude introduction. I don't know exactly why you would do something like that. And let me go a step further.
Starting point is 00:17:52 I was invited here and I was told my opponent, whether it was Biden or Kamala, I was told my opponent was going to be here. It turned out my opponent isn't here. You invited me under false pretense. And then you said you can't do it with Zoom. Well, where's Zoom? She's gonna do it with Zoom and she's not coming. And then you were half an hour late, just so we understand.
Starting point is 00:18:15 I have too much respect for you to be late. They couldn't get their equipment working or something was wrong. I would love if you could answer the question on your rhetoric and why you believe that black voters can trust you with another four years. I think it's a very nasty question. I have answered the question. I have been the best president for the black population since Abraham Lincoln. That's my answer. That's my answer.
Starting point is 00:18:33 Better than President Johnson who signed the Voting Rights Act. And for you to start off a question and answer period, especially when you're 35 minutes late because you couldn't get your equipment to work in such a hostile manner, I think it's a disgrace. So something occurred to me and I, I'm guilty of this too. And I don't know why. And I want to think about this out loud.
Starting point is 00:18:53 I wonder why with Trump and Biden, it's Trump and Biden and not Donald and Joe. But with Harris, we say Kamala. Yeah. I don't know why I do that. I don't know why everybody seems to feel comfortable using her first name and using everybody else's last name. Like it's sort of, you know what I mean? Like we use last names often as a sort of
Starting point is 00:19:16 like unconscious side of respect. Why? That's interesting. And I don't, I just, it just occurred to me listening. I was like, fuck, I do that. I think about Kamala Harris. Admittedly, in her- I think I try to say both names a lot, but-
Starting point is 00:19:28 In her speech the other day, she referred to him as Donald multiple times. Did she? Because that's disrespectful. So I think genuinely like she's modeling her speech off of his now. Yeah. In that very specific way.
Starting point is 00:19:41 Yeah, so I think I'm gonna try to recognize that I think that's something I've been doing that I probably shouldn't do and try to refer to her as Harris. Yeah. I'm either going to call her Harris or vice president here or first and last name. Yeah. Maybe Kamala Harris. Yeah. Because they saying Joe Biden or Donald Trump is fine. Yeah. I don't ever just say Joe. I never, that seems like it would be weird, right? I never just be like, well, Joe did this. Yeah. Never say, yeah. What about Donald? I don't say that. So I think, I think weird, right? I never just be like, well, Joe did this. I never say that. What about Donald? I don't say that. So I think there's probably an unconscious,
Starting point is 00:20:09 I just realized, I think maybe there's an unconscious bias. I think you're right. That I wanna just point out and call myself out on, cause I do that, sure. What I think is also really striking is that what he's saying when he's like, hey, that was rude, is where's my deference? Why are you not deferring to me?
Starting point is 00:20:26 Sure, sure. It's unbelievable. I don't think you're wrong. I think this is a perfect opportunity. Now, this answer that he gives is seriously one of the worst answers you could possibly give. Oh my God, yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:39 You could easily turn this around into a positive thing by not adding all the extra extraneous shit about them being late, about how it's a horrible venue, about how you shouldn't be, how the other person is gonna be here and they're not here, and complaining and complaining and complaining instead. He could have just talked about the things that he did and just say I think I've done a lot for the black community. I'm a big supporter of the black community. You could ask all these different... I did these three programs. You should check them out. I think I've done a lot for the black community. I'm a big supporter of the black community. You could ask all these different,
Starting point is 00:21:06 I did these three programs, you should check them out. I think that the reason why black people should vote for me and why they should trust me is because I am gonna try to do my best for the American people in general, and I'm gonna try to do my best for the black community, which I've done in the past. And if you look at the comments I've made in the past,
Starting point is 00:21:23 those are about people, not about race. How fucking hard is that? How hard is it to be like, I was, I was going after that person. It had nothing to do with their race. They happen to be black. But if you look through my record, I call all kinds of people names. Yeah, right. You know, it's easy. I mean, I'm not even fucking, I'm not even running. It's fucking easy. And you did a great job. Instead, he's just shitty. And this is, and this is something that I noticed in this very specific place He's being held with his feet to the fire and he can't squirm out of it Most of the time at least for the last six years We've seen these interviews where people nobody's bothered to let him speak or to if they were gonna push him
Starting point is 00:22:03 They wouldn't let him speak and if they were gonna if they were going to push him, they wouldn't let him speak. And if they were going to, if they weren't going to push him, then they just didn't push him. And this is an opportunity where a person pushes him, lets him speak, pushes him a little more, lets him speak. She's giving him so much rope to hang himself. Yeah. Well, and he can't refuse the bait. I really think one of the things that's going to be different about this cycle, this next 90 whatever days that we have left, my God, is he is now going toe to toe, not with somebody that he sees as a peer that he has a power position over, which I think is really how he saw Biden. But this is somebody he inherently does not respect. And he does not respect these journalists.
Starting point is 00:22:42 And he does not respect this venue. And he does not respect, he's doing this, like, because he knows that this is a photo op he's trying to get, this is a, but he has no respect here. He is gonna be completely unable to resist the bait, and he will, time and time and time and time again, go further down the weird, crazy old man rabbit hole,
Starting point is 00:23:02 because this is bait he can't not hit. Like these are points where if he feels disrespected, because I know people like this, right? You've met a million old racist white guys. If an old racist white guy feels disrespected by another white guy, they respond to it way differently than if they feel disrespected by a black person or a woman, right?
Starting point is 00:23:24 They do not respect, and he's so, this is the worst of all worlds for him. It's genuinely the worst, and he reacts in the very worst way to every question. I wanna play one more bit of tape for everybody, because this is the piece that everybody's been talking about this week. Well, one more quick thing I wanna say about this piece,
Starting point is 00:23:40 though, is that, because it kinda drives this, is that, dude, he's the one asking to be here. Like, and kind of like to your point about the person who's like, hey, I'm gonna quit and set it, he is the one saying, let me come to your event. I want something from you. I want your votes. I want you to vote for me.
Starting point is 00:23:59 And even when he's asking other people to do something for him, he's not saying I wanna do something for him. It's I want you to do something for him. He's not saying, I wanna do something for him. It's, I want you to do something for me. I'm asking a favor. Let, hire me for this job. Can you imagine going to a job interview and being like, you kept me waiting 30 minutes.
Starting point is 00:24:14 I can't believe you kept me waiting 30 minutes. That is the rudest interview question I've ever been asked. And being like, I think I probably got that job. Fucking nailed that interview. And that's the thing, and a lot of people don't miss the idea that this is an extended job application. It's an interview process. You gotta be nice to everybody along the way.
Starting point is 00:24:32 And if you're not, it's gonna get blown up on the media. All right, so here's the next piece I wanna play for you guys, this is about, we talked about it last week, about the DEI hire thing. How that is genuinely trying to demean a person who worked very hard for their job to say, you don't deserve this job. The only reason you have it is because you're a woman or you're black or both. So here's the question.
Starting point is 00:24:54 Some of your own supporters, including Republicans on Capitol Hill, have labeled Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the first black and Asian American woman to serve as vice president and be on a major party ticket as a DEI hire. Is that acceptable language to you? And will you tell those Republicans and those supporters to stop it? How do you define DEI? Go ahead. How do you define it? Diversity, equity, and inclusion? Okay, yeah. Go ahead. Is that what your definition? That is literally the words.
Starting point is 00:25:23 Give me a definition then. Would you give me a definition and would you give me a Definition sir, I'm asking you a question. You have to define it define the define it for me If you I just defined it sir Do you believe that vice president Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a black woman well I can say no I think it's maybe a little bit different so I've known her a long time indirectly not directly very much and I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black.
Starting point is 00:25:57 So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? She is always identified as a black woman. She went to a historically black college. I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person. Just to be clear, sir, do you believe that she is a-
Starting point is 00:26:13 I think somebody should look into that too when you ask a continue in a very hostile, nasty tone. It's a- Ha ha ha! He's again, he's gotta talk about the tone, right? Because he's tone policing her. He's very, he's got to talk about the tone, right? Because he's tone policing her. He's very much tone policing her because it's the only power he has on that stage is to point out how, how nasty, not that the question has merit, right?
Starting point is 00:26:35 Not that people on Capitol Hill are being racist. How do you respond to that? You're asked that in such a mean way. I just, and he's, And he's playing the victim. Because that's all he knows how to do. And this like, that's a nasty question. He uses that word with women. That is a word he historically uses.
Starting point is 00:26:54 It's a word, it's a nasty woman. It's a nasty question from you. Like he uses very specific language to demean women in order to not address the very real questions that he's being asked here. He doesn't answer the question. First of all, he does not answer the question. He tries to sidestep it being like, I need you to define it. I love that she's just like, here's the three words we're not doing. Here's what I love about that. It's fucking great. Here's what I love about
Starting point is 00:27:20 that is, if you want to get a Republican on edge and you want them to be upset when they bring up something stupid like woke, you ask them to define it. Right. He's trying to turn that on its head, but it's literally super easy to define. Cause she just read the three, the acronym to him. And that is basically saying what she's asking. And if you're smart enough to understand, you know what it means. And there's no hidden meaning and there's no inferred meaning and
Starting point is 00:27:51 there's no, you know what I mean? Like woke is one of these words that the right has weaponized. A hundred percent. And when you ask them to define it, they can't because there isn't a definition for them to understand. They want to be like, it's black shit is what they want to say, but they can't say it. So they're like, well, it's, it's like when, when you just like, it's like, and so they get frustrated and that he's trying to flip the script, but she won't let him because it's not, it's not an undefinable racist term. It's not fucking analogous to the word game rhetorical bullshit that the right tries to play. He's trying to play it off like it is, but it's like, no, I mean, it's diversity,
Starting point is 00:28:28 equity, inclusion. These are words that make sense. Let's ask the question. And then she just asked the question slightly different. Yeah. In order to say like, look, fine, answer the fucking question. Then he retreats into this insanity, insanity that, that Harris is all of a sudden black. Like Harris is not all of a sudden black. Like Harris is not all of a sudden anything. She's like that soul man guy or whatever where he takes the tanning pills. And suddenly she's, like, wait, like,
Starting point is 00:28:56 whether or not you are black has very little to do with how you perceive yourself. It has very much to do in America in terms of its relevance in how the world perceives judges and hurts and reduces your opportunities. Like that is a truth about like why this matters in some of the big important ways that this matters, right?
Starting point is 00:29:20 In the ways that we're talking about right now. I know that there's a lot more to being black than that. I don't wanna say that that's, that I understand what being black is. But what I'm saying is that the perception is an exterior perception. It is not something that I just like hum and do an om and then I decide whether or not the world will see me as black or not. If I get pulled over by the cops tomorrow, the cops aren't gonna be like, I wonder if he's black, right? They're gonna be like, that's a white guy. And they're gonna treat me a different way.
Starting point is 00:29:49 And that's just a true fact. That's just a true fact. If I apply for an apartment and I walk into the leasing office, I get to walk into that leasing office showing my white fucking skin and somebody else doesn't have that same privilege when they walk into the same leasing office for that apartment. That's the part of being black that many people are talking about
Starting point is 00:30:10 because that's how it intersects with opportunity and lack of opportunity and privilege in our culture. So the idea that like he's trying to say like, well, now she's just promoting herself as black and like nobody's promoting themselves as, man. We're not promoting ourselves as minorities or non-minorities. It's not a matter of self-promotion. It's just that's the only terminology a guy like that can understand because he lives his whole life self-promoting. Yeah. I want to point out too, I saw a couple of people, I had mentioned this on my Facebook feed and a bunch of people I had said, like, I this whole thing. And this is just a cringe fest the entire time. He can't answer a question, he's terrible.
Starting point is 00:30:50 Everything is about race for him that's in a bad way, like really in a bad way. He could have easily knocked this out of the park. These aren't hard questions, but they let him game enough rope to answer and he fucking hung himself six ways from Sunday. This entire bit will post this particular 11 minute piece on our show notes. You can watch the whole thing, but genuinely it's terrible and I
Starting point is 00:31:13 don't know how you, how you climb out of this and I was talking to you before we started the show Tom and I said this is the worst I've ever seen him be held accountable the entire time from before he was a president, while he was a president, after he was a president, in all the stuff he's done, I've never seen him flounder as bad as this. And I posted on my Facebook page something to that effect, basically in like, is this the last nail in the coffin? And a bunch of people posted to me,
Starting point is 00:31:37 they're like, there's no nails in this coffin, come on. Like, this has been going on since 2016. This is not the same thing. It's not. It's a very different race now. It's a very different race between these two people. But it's also like one of these, it's one of these moments too, where you're never going to change the minds of the real mega, mega, mega diehards.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Those people, they don't care if he's racist. In fact, I saw several tweets that said he won that debate. Basically, it was a debate. And he went into hostile territory and he tore him up. That's what I've seen from these people. I don't know how the only thing you can be doing is fucking huffing Copium straight from Trump's ass in order for him to like in order for you to like. Yeah, you're right.
Starting point is 00:32:16 His handlers after 26 minutes through literally threw in the towel. They're like, no, he's going to get brain damage if he gets punched anymore. They literally threw in the towel. They were like, no, he's gonna get brain damage if he gets punched anymore. They literally threw in the towel. So that's just a lie. But the MAGA people, you're never gonna convince them. And this wasn't about that. What people don't understand is that Donald Trump has been going up in the polls with black Americans.
Starting point is 00:32:39 People of color have been, are more likely in this election to vote for Donald Trump than they were in 2020. That has raised by like, just one particular demographic, black men, was 16% in 2020, it's 20% in this election. So it's gone up by 4%. That's a big swing and that's a lot of people. And he had every opportunity to come in here and extend an olive branch.
Starting point is 00:33:06 And what he did was he demeaned every single person of color that he could possibly lay his eyes on. That's not a good look when you're trying to fill up that middle space. It's very not. And it's also the other thing you have to understand is there's a lot of people who are not on Trump's side voting for a woman who is Indian in the primary.
Starting point is 00:33:27 Right. Nikki Haley is an Indian woman. Nikki isn't her real name. Right. So she is somebody who a bunch of people already identified and liked. How are those people who didn't come over as Democrats, how are they going to see this?
Starting point is 00:33:46 This isn't about the deep base. A lot of people were saying this is signaling the deep base. This is a war cry to the deep base. No, it's not. The war cries already been sent out. They were already going to vote or not vote. They were already energized. There's nothing you can do to change that.
Starting point is 00:34:00 This is about shifting that center and that malleable piece in the middle. And this is horrible for him. It is, it's horrible. And I think that to a certain segment of the population, this kind of stuff is very clippable. It's very memeable. It's very tick-tockable, right? So this stuff will drive people,
Starting point is 00:34:19 not just away from Trump, but into the waiting arms of Harris. People who were not maybe motivated to vote when Biden was the candidate, right? People who are like, are gonna be like, well, wait a minute. Now that that's so fully on display, I wasn't really gonna vote. Neither one of these candidates fully represented me. I can't see anything about myself in these candidates. And now you've got this horrible shit.
Starting point is 00:34:45 And then you've got Harris on the other side. Yeah. One thing I wonder too, about why this seems to be unraveling, um, for Trump differently now, cause I get the same feeling that you get is that he has way less control than he had. Initially, when he was president, he had incredible control over the narrative, right? He got to decide who was gonna interview him,
Starting point is 00:35:10 when he was gonna do an interview, probably got to vet most of the questions that he was gonna ask, got to choose the time, the location, and said, because he don't want anything. When you're president, you don't want anything. The journalist wants from you, not the other way around. Transaction changed.
Starting point is 00:35:25 Now he's asking again. And I think that now he's in a position where he's like, fuck, I am not a person of power. I'm coming off of really bad midterm losses that he led the country through midterm losses for his party. He lost in 2020. He has a lot less control now than he had in terms of steering the narrative outside of his base.
Starting point is 00:35:48 So I wanna make clear, within his base, he has a lot of control over steering the narrative. I know that. Like he is absolutely in control of the base's narrative. Outside the base, I don't think he has any control because he's the one with this fucking handout saying I'd like air time, I'd like votes, I would like attention.
Starting point is 00:36:06 And I don't think people are giving him the same kind of credibility that they gave him last time. This is one of those things that when you look at the way in which this campaign is shaping up, I saw a new story today from, you know, there are some rumblings in the Republican Party if they should replace Trump. That's never been said before. Oh, crazy. So you're talking about a disastrous interview, disastrous for him.
Starting point is 00:36:34 It's a weird feeling being smarter than everyone. So the story comes from Salon, old and quite weird. Democrats finally discover new effective attack and Republicans hate it. After nearly a decade of being forced to take Trump seriously, Democrats increasingly call BS on the whole charade. Man, I was talking to Haley about this article and I, you know, this feels like the Democrats
Starting point is 00:37:00 are four years behind where they should be, at least, a minimum of four years. Fucking good. Trump since 2015 has been leveling attacks that were very, very, very personal. And Obama, and you know, that famous like, they go low, we go high. And I think that works when you have candidates who don't really go that low.
Starting point is 00:37:24 But when you have a candidate like Trump, who there is no bottom to how low they go. I think you've got to point out this guy's fucking weird, man. You got to call names. You can't keep it just to policy. You've got to point out personality. You've got to do that. And I think the Democrats were way less willing to take it to the personality level than they should have been. I think this Democrats were way less willing to take it to the personality level than they
Starting point is 00:37:45 should have been. I think this is overdue. I actually have a totally different take. Do you? Okay. Yeah. So like, I think that I agree that they should be calling him weird, but I agree that they should be calling him weird for a totally different reason.
Starting point is 00:38:01 Authoritarianism thrives on personality. You have to have a powerful, in-charge personality. And the people who follow authoritarians, what they want out of this, and very specifically what we could tell about the MAGA personality, is that they want to see us mad. They want to see us hurt. They want to see us afraid and anxious about this man because we're afraid of what he can do. So when he exudes that power and he looks powerful
Starting point is 00:38:33 and people call him things like a threat to democracy, which he is, or they call him a monster, or they call him an evil person, that's a power thing for them. person, that's a power thing. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. When you call him weird, you take the shine off that fucking authoritarian person, right?
Starting point is 00:38:54 Suddenly they're not powerful. They're just fucking weird, man. That dude is weird. And it fucking makes him crazy because he's no longer powerful. He's just a weird old guy. Right. And that changes this, you know, the fucking images of God Emperor Trump or Trump is a fucking spacesuit guy or whatever.
Starting point is 00:39:14 Now he's just some weird old guy ranting at the bus stop that you just want to get away from. And I think genuinely, you know, while I do agree that, you know, you're right in some ways about how, you know, whether or not we should be calling people names or any of that stuff. I think that the reason why you call Trump Trump names isn't because he used names. It's because names actually hurt his authoritarian stance and his authoritarian projection. Yeah, I don't disagree literally with any of that. I guess I just feel like this is
Starting point is 00:39:46 something Democrats should have figured out a long time ago. I think so too. I think somebody should have thought of it before. Yeah. Because I think it's really important to point out. And what I love too is that it's creeping into policy now. So when it, what, what, what's happening is, is they're talking about people being weird, but I want to play a video for you now that was created by Democrats in Missouri. And I'm going to play it for the audience. And it is genuinely amazing in that you're pointing out
Starting point is 00:40:13 the absolute creepiness of their policies and of their stances in a way that makes them feel so weird and creepy, and it gives you the heebie-jeebies to watch it. And it's really funny. So I'm going to play it for you. Us, MAGA Republicans, banned abortion. But that's just the start. That's just the start. If Trump gets elected, we want the government involved in all aspects of your sex life.
Starting point is 00:40:38 Way more involved. Way more involved. When you have sexual intercourse, it should be illegal to use contraception. No pills, no condoms. Your genitals are reserved for procreation. If you freeze 12 eggs, you should be required to have 12 babies or else you're a serial killer. And I'm definitely not a serial killer. My son monitors my porn usage to make sure I'm not self-pleasuring. Just like speaker of the house, Mike Johnson. That's true, you can look it up. Don't you think that's normal? Yeah, I do.
Starting point is 00:41:08 It's normal for your son to do that. You should have a family member monitor your porn use too. Because pleasuring yourself is very, very naughty. I'm voting in November. I'm voting in November. We're all voting in November, are you? Because what happens in your bedroom is up to me. Is up to me and my son also mouth stuff
Starting point is 00:41:26 Is a sin Isn't that the greatest rate isn't that okay? So the people are listening everywhere the people who are listening to this they they didn't get a chance to see but every single time They showed one of these people and their voices, they got more physically repulsive because they zoomed the camera in closer, but then they also like sprayed water on them. So they looked like they were sweating profusely and like they gave them like cold sores and bad teeth and like their hair was messed up. It was.
Starting point is 00:42:02 And so every time they look more and more disheveled, more and more crazy, more and more unhinged. But then also there's kind of this like, like genuine creepiness to the whole thing. But when you pull it all apart, it's all just stuff that they've set. Yeah. Even at one point of a QR code, so you can look up that Mike Johnson's son monitors his porn use. I feel that I'm gonna be embarrassed when I ask this question, but when is the Super Bowl? Can this be a Super Bowl? It's not gonna happen before the elections.
Starting point is 00:42:30 God damn it. I know it's not football. Yeah, the football will be in, could be a World Series commercial. This is so good. It's amazing, right? This is so good. This should be the only ad that ever plays.
Starting point is 00:42:41 It's perfect. It's perfect in every way because what it shows just how fucking weird they are. And how obsessive and sexually focused. We've talked about this for years. These right wing nut jobs are absolutely obsessed with your sex life. They want to control and know.
Starting point is 00:42:59 They absolutely want that. They're the ones, oh, like we're such prudes. Oh, clutch our pearls, clutch our pearls. What are you doing in bed? Yep I'm in some states. It should be illegal to own a vibrator Yep Like you got to get a porn filter like they want to know what you want to do with your junk real bad They're thinking about your sex life more than I'm thinking about my own sex life Yeah, and that's the thing is thing is that comment about, you know,
Starting point is 00:43:28 how genitals need to be used. That's a great comment. It is. That's a great comment. Because you're suddenly, and it's showing them as the small, the large government, big government people that they are. The big government, top down.
Starting point is 00:43:41 I want to control aspects of your life that the government shouldn't be involved in. And I think like We need to keep every good chance you get between now and the election call them weird Call it weird because it makes them mad they get really upset. It's like tuning them all up. Yeah, and They're weird. Yeah, it's not like you're lying. Mike Johnson is fucking weird, man Yeah, Mike Pence was a fucking weird guy that fucking lady Lauren Bobert that's a super weird lady Marjorie Taylor Green read anything
Starting point is 00:44:09 about who that woman is like on a I saw an image this week she's a super weird lady these are like these are weird people remember fucking Madison Cawthorn yeah and like the weird shit he was doing like mouth fucking his friend in a hotel room or whatever these are weird people man They're all just weird fucking people. It's not a stretch to be like, you're fucking weird. Yeah, no, man. It's right on the button. It's right on the button. And those people are those people, it tunes them up and makes them so mad because you're no longer upset as upset about them being in charge. Right.
Starting point is 00:44:44 Because you're not afraid of them anymore. You're basically turning on the light and it's just a big orange dirty blanket. It's not Trump anymore. Well, like just off the top of my head, just for funsies, just to say it all out loud, like Trump fucked a fucking porn star while his wife, after his wife had just given birth, right?
Starting point is 00:45:05 That's a fucking weird thing to do. Mike Pence is a fucking weird dude who's not allowed to eat dinner with other ladies because he's got some weird fear of other women. Madison Cawthorn had that insane video where he's like mouth fucking his sleeping friend or whatever. Lauren Boebert is married to a sex criminal. Fucking Marjorie. Somebody off in a fucking Beetlejuice musical.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Right, yeah. And Marjorie Taylor Greene had like an affair with her CrossFit coach. Like these are all off, and Mike Johnson's son literally monitors his porno. Yeah, I can't fuck his own hand. This is off the top of my head. Right, he can't even fuck his own hand
Starting point is 00:45:39 without his kid being like, Dad, did you fuck your hand yesterday? This is literally off the top of my head. No, I didn't. No. being like, Dad, did you fuck your hand yesterday? This is literally off the top of my head. No, I didn't. No. You, Kevin, Kevin, nothing's changed. It's still me with one tiny difference.
Starting point is 00:45:57 Well, not tiny. This story comes to the New York Times. An Olympic scene draws scorn. Did it really parody the Last Supper? Did you get a chance to see any of the images? I didn't. I tried to find a video just like a video of just the opening scene and I couldn't find it quickly.
Starting point is 00:46:18 And I'll see if I can find an image now so that we can actually look at it together. I mean, I guess this would be the last supper in the sense that there's a table. You know, and that's the thing is like, if you're looking to be offended, you can find it anywhere. Sure. Right? You can look anywhere you want
Starting point is 00:46:38 and find the offense you're looking for if you're willing to be offended. Yes, right. And in this case, here's an image, a bunch of images, a bunch of people. They have drag queens back there. They have, you know, a diverse group of people. They have a guy sitting on a bunch of fruit who's blue. And clearly these are all references to Bacchanalia and like things like that,
Starting point is 00:47:00 like different, both French references and Greek references, which matches what the Olympics would be. Matches the fucking Olympics in France? Yeah, makes sense. and like things like that, like different, both French references and Greek references, which matches what the Olympics would be. That's just the fucking Olympics in France. Yeah, makes sense. And a lot of paintings back then had one side of the table. I mean, there's multiple paintings that, and they even mention it in this New York Times article,
Starting point is 00:47:18 there's multiple, they interview two different people who suspect one says, well, it seems like it has some roots based in The Last Supper and others are like, well, it's got, doesn't have the same number of people. It doesn't have the same people that are, they, they always are in like three groups of four and there's more people back there. There's definitely different other religions and other lore. So the thing is, is I think they're just mad that like other mythologies exist. Yeah. Well, that's what it just mad that other mythologies exist. That's what it feels like to me.
Starting point is 00:47:46 It does, and it feels like a couple of things. When I read this article, and then you read through it, and it's like, oh, well, actually, this is a referent back to this ancient Greek thing. And I'm like, oh yeah, it makes sense, because Christianity is plagiarized. It's all plagiarized. You can't be like, I'm mad because you're plagiarizing my thing. Well, that's not based on that. You can't be like I'm mad because you're plagiarizing my thing Well, it's not based on that's not based on you don't have the first thing Yeah, unless you have the first thing sure I get to go back and refer back to the thing prior and all the things subsequent
Starting point is 00:48:16 It's like it's not you don't own it It's also like really fucking disingenuous and stupid and I think intentionally so like really intentionally So like you were saying you you gotta look for that fence and find that offense to be like, well, I'm gonna count the parts of this that are similar to the picture. And I'm gonna ignore the parts of it that are dissimilar, right?
Starting point is 00:48:36 Because if I think about the images of the Last Supper, like the iconography of the Last Supper that we're all sort of familiar with, they have these certain elements in common. They also have certain things, they also don't have certain things. They don't have blue men covered in grapes laying on the table.
Starting point is 00:48:53 Oh, well, and then they don't have 20 people in the shop. They've got 13 total, right? 12 disciples plus Jebus. Oh, well, this has 20 people. Well, you gotta ignore that. And then they're always posed, like you said, in these three groups of four, four groups of three or whatever it is.
Starting point is 00:49:08 And then their body positioning is typically in a certain way. Well, okay, ignore that. We're just ignoring all of the things. At a certain point, you're just like, okay, well, they're just all standing on one side of a table. Is that what you're saying? Are you saying that we're not allowed to stand on one side of a table because that's the last supper?
Starting point is 00:49:23 For a picture? And it's like look through history There's so many paintings so many paintings of people on one side of a table because that's how you take a picture man Look through your own photo. Yeah, you know look at wedding photos where they make people stand up on one side of fucking table So they could do it look at where you sit at a fucking wedding at the head fucking table You don't fucking sit with your back to the crowd here at a fucking wedding at the head fucking table? Sit with your back to the crowd Like what the fuck is going through your head man every wedding is the last supper every wedding is a blasphemous last supper It's so always betrayed by Judas
Starting point is 00:49:59 He never he never brought me my real jacket supposed to bring me a jacket coat! You started dancing with that hooker over there! Ha ha ha ha ha! Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered
Starting point is 00:50:26 a rational thought? Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. Tom, we want to read another piece from Project 2025 this week. This is very specifically on the education piece. So go ahead and read the two paragraphs. Federal education policy should be limited, and ultimately the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society,
Starting point is 00:50:55 families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our post-secondary institutions should also reflect such diversity with room for not only traditional liberal arts colleges and research universities, but also faith-based institutions, career schools,
Starting point is 00:51:13 military academies, and lifelong learning programs. All of those are already existing. Elementary, I can't help myself. Yeah, no shit. All right, elementary and secondary education policy should follow the path outlined by Milton Friedman in 1955 where an education is publicly funded but education decisions are made by families.
Starting point is 00:51:33 Ultimately, every parent should have the option to direct his or her child's share of education funding through an education savings account, ESA, funded overwhelmingly by state and local taxpayers which would empower parents to choose a set of education options that meet their child's unique needs. Did I ever tell you I know Milton Friedman's son and grandson? What the no? I know him personally. What?
Starting point is 00:51:58 So, years ago, I met Milton Friedman's son, David Friedman. David is a big deal in the SCA. So the medieval recreation society I belong to, he was like the second and fourth king of the mid realm. So like, I know that's where I'm from is the mid realm. So you know who he is. And so I got a chance to be at the same practice as him multiple times, cause he was teaching at UFC while I was fighting at UFC.
Starting point is 00:52:22 Crazy. And so I've had conversations with him. My favorite, my favorite story about David Friedman is we weren't friends, we didn't get along, and I didn't like him, and he didn't like me, but he was being nice, and his wife invited us over for his birthday party, and she said, "'Would you like to come over to our house afterwards?
Starting point is 00:52:38 "'We're having a birthday party for David. "'We're gonna have some cake.'" And we said, "'Sure.' "'It was me and my buddy Ian, this other guy Ian, not Ian from, the different Ian. We travel over and we go over to his house and they serve the cake and the cake has eight candles on it and they're alternating blue and blue and pink.
Starting point is 00:52:56 Different like two blue, one pink, two blue, one pink, I don't know, I don't remember what the order was. And they set it down, they light the candles and he starts laughing and they're like, do you get it? He said, yeah, that's my birthday or my birth year or it's my, either my birth year or it was the number of years old I am in binary
Starting point is 00:53:18 is what he had said. Oh my fucking God. And so they cut the cake and they turned to me and Ian and they say, would you like to have a piece of cake? And Ian looks at me and goes, uh-uh, I ain't smart enough to eat it. It was one of my favorite stories because it was instantaneous. He said it instantly. He didn't even like, it was no pausing, no hesitation.
Starting point is 00:53:39 It was immediate. He's like, I ain't smart enough to eat that cake. Anyway, Milton Friedman. Was it red velvet pretension? So douchey. Dude, it's so douchey. But in any case, I know Milton Friedman. I know Milton Friedman's son who is, I don't know Milton Friedman.
Starting point is 00:53:55 I know David Friedman and his son and they're Milton Friedman's son and grandson. So I know I'm both personally, they're both douchebags, but they're both also crazy libertarians like Milton Friedman's economics. They just took it one full step farther. This is talking about removing the Department of Education. It's literally the first sentence. You can't read this paragraph and not stop there, right?
Starting point is 00:54:20 They say it should be limited. Actually, it should just be gone, but it should be limited, right? And if you are to remove it, what you're doing is you're saying, what they're trying to say throughout this whole chapter is they're trying to say, well, what we'll do is we'll take this piece
Starting point is 00:54:35 and we'll move it over to this department. And this piece should really be part of this department. And this piece should really be part of this department. And then we'll just kill the whole department, essentially. What we'll do is we'll just outsource the work to other departments, probably not staff those departments any differently, and then essentially just kill this entire department,
Starting point is 00:54:52 which is what I said several weeks ago, which is their MO. Give as much work as you can to these governmental institutions, and help them fail, and then blame them for the failure, because you don't fund them, you don't increase their funding, you don't increase their funding, you don't increase their,
Starting point is 00:55:07 all you do is increase their workload and increase your expectations. Yeah, I wanna talk a little bit about, cause when I read this and the articles that you put in the notes to sort of accompany it, I thought a lot about what I know about education, having gone to school to be an educator. So that's what I went to school,
Starting point is 00:55:23 I have a degree in English Lit, but I have a minor in secondary ed. And then having now shepherded four kids through parts of the system. And there's some things that we don't, I think, always think about as much as we should when it comes to what a school is, in addition to just an educational box
Starting point is 00:55:39 that we put people in, right? Schools are a place where kids go, then they are surrounded by mandatory reporters, people who have their eyes on those kids, an entire building full of hopefully trusted and trustworthy adults that are required by law to report suspected abuse and neglect of those kids. Many, many, many, many kids get saved
Starting point is 00:56:07 because some kids, some nurse, some teacher, some administrator, some counselor calls the state and says, I think there's abuse going on. Something is happening. And then CPS gets called and his system kicks in. If we pull kids out of public schools, and the point of all this is to defund public schools. That's essentially what they want.
Starting point is 00:56:29 The point of all of this is to intentionally cripple those schools. That means less eyes on a very, very vulnerable population. Very vulnerable. Schools are also full of lots of other essential roles that are non-educational roles. They are full of occupational therapists and speech therapists and physical therapists.
Starting point is 00:56:50 And they are full of people who teach English as a second language. They are full of counselors, psychological counselors. They have nurses in them. There are, they provide meals. Schools do so much. We think, when we think of them only as places where people learn their ABCs,
Starting point is 00:57:07 we absolutely neglect all of the other essential social functions that these institutions provide to our communities and to the people that attend those places. If we defund those places, if we move kids into private institutions, and private institutions, by the way, do not have the same legal obligations
Starting point is 00:57:27 to provide extra services for kids with learning disabilities or kids with behavioral disabilities or kids with other challenges. They don't have the same obligation. My schools, my public schools, my kids have gone in. I can demand at any time an IEP meeting for my kids that have IEPs. And I can say, we need to sit down and have a meeting and I can get 12 people in a room
Starting point is 00:57:48 at the drop of a hat at a local like private institution. I do not have that right. And if the, if the school is not able to meet my kids needs, I can sue the school and the school even has to pay for me to sue them. If I think that they are not meeting my kids' needs. That is a right I have in the state of Illinois. If I enroll my kid in a private school, I have none of those rights.
Starting point is 00:58:11 Literally none of them. This is a bad set of ideas that makes the most vulnerable amongst us more vulnerable. It also talks about very specifically defunding many of the programs for poor students. And it's specifically talking about that in the sense that what they wanna do is they wanna try to generalize the fund that we use to pay for schools
Starting point is 00:58:32 and do this voucher system. Well, the voucher system literally only benefits people who can already afford to send their kid to a private school, right? They can already afford to do that. And all they're gonna do is essentially get more money back for doing it. They already probably do it anyway.
Starting point is 00:58:49 There's very few people on the margin or the cusp of that that will do it now because they can. Most people will still send their kid to regular school because the amount of money that you're gonna get from the voucher system isn't gonna cover it, but it's gonna subsidize all those people who could already afford it. And what it does is it allows all those people to indoctrinate their children
Starting point is 00:59:09 into their religion, which is really what it's for. It's for religious schooling. And then the government gets to subsidize that instead of saying, why don't you do your Sunday school on Sunday or whatever, and teach your kid about your religion at home and then send them to school so we can improve the schools together. Instead they're saying, well, what we wanna do is we wanna take our money out of those schools and I wanna use it in a different school. Well, if that's the case, then let me have my money back. I'm paying for your kids to go to school.
Starting point is 00:59:35 Let me have my money back. And they're not gonna do that because what they wanna do is they wanna force that money into those private hands of that private church because that's what they just wanna get their churches more money. This also creates a really perverse incentive for some people to say,
Starting point is 00:59:50 hey, I'm gonna homeschool my kid and take my check. And then whether they homeschool that kid or not, no one will ever know. Because homeschooling is bizarrely legal. And if we are now gonna get a check, I guarantee Cecil that if you can get a check for your ESA, your fucking education savings account, and keep your kid home all day,
Starting point is 01:00:11 there are gonna be people who absolutely are like, cool, I'm homeschooling, give me a check. And they're just gonna take that check. And whether that kid gets educated or not, there are gonna be some people like, I don't really give a fuck, I got a check. Because we already see child abuse that works like that in other ways and abuses of other parts of the system.
Starting point is 01:00:30 This also absolutely will cripple teacher pay, which is already unbelievably dangerously low. You've got a group of people who are required to go to school and get a degree, in some cases in in some states, advanced degrees. And they take a job that is paid horribly for the education that they have. They walk into these jobs with a skillset and an education
Starting point is 01:00:55 that if you've got the same skill and training and education in, say, finance or banking, you would get paid six, eight, seven times that amount, minimum, to start. These people are already making far too little money for the amount of work that they do. Education doesn't pay. It doesn't. So there's a teacher shortage in nearly every state.
Starting point is 01:01:14 I think all but two states have a teacher shortage right now, a severe one in many states. There's also the issue of teacher requirements. In a publicly funded school. I know this. I have to go, like I wanted to be a high school English teacher, which meant in the state of Illinois, I had to go to school and get an English degree. So I had to get a full degree in my subject matter. So if you want to be a history teacher,
Starting point is 01:01:35 you got to get a history degree, English, English, et cetera, et cetera. So you get a full bachelor's degree in your subject matter. Then you get a typically a minor in education itself. Then you go through a hand, a fair amount of clinical. So like observing hours and then supervised teaching and then student teaching, et cetera. So you go through all these requirements.
Starting point is 01:01:53 Then you get certified by the state of Illinois that says, hey, you're certified in order to, and you're allowed to teach. That's only required in a public school. To teach in a private school, you don't need anything. It's all wiped out, man. If you want to teach at like local Catholic high school, they can choose to hire anyone they want
Starting point is 01:02:12 with any experiences or credentials. They don't even have to background check them by law. That's crazy, man. That's crazy. I think, you know, one of the things that we need to pay attention to, if we want to be a country that leads and continues leading, you've got to educate young people.
Starting point is 01:02:30 And we don't pay enough attention to it and we keep defunding it and we keep on pushing teachers out of those positions and we're not paying them enough. These are positions that need to be funded. And the Department of Education is a necessary tool in order to make sure that those standards and there's equality across the board. And to just walk in and say,
Starting point is 01:02:52 we wanna just kick this thing out, shows me you have no respect for the education of young people. You don't care. In fact, you're anti-education of young people. And that's what Project 2025 wants to do. 100%. This is something that should frighten all of us. Whether you have kids or not,
Starting point is 01:03:09 America will be a less competitive, less successful, less economically viable nation if we do not invest in education. So Tom? Yes, sir. We want to talk about the Creator Accountability Network. Go ahead. We do. We've joined the Creator Accountability Network. Creator Accountability Network, or CAN, is a nonprofit dedicated to reducing harassment and abuse through ethical education and a system of restorative accountability.
Starting point is 01:03:43 We joined because we care about the safety and wellbeing of our community members. If you feel our behavior or content has harmed someone, please report it to CAN, either via the reporting form on their website, creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org, or via their hotline at 617-249-4255. They'll help us make it right and avoid repeating that mistake in the future.
Starting point is 01:04:04 CAN also needs volunteers from our communities to help with their process. So if you have skills you think would be helpful or time and a desire to help, please visit their website to find out how you can volunteer. Most importantly, get the word out to other creators who you think would be interested in getting credentialed. Help us build safer communities together. So don't forget to check them out creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. You can also call if you need to report something, anything in the community, anything in the
Starting point is 01:04:32 cognitive dissonance community, whether that's something on a page or something that we said on the show or someone in some interaction you had, they're looking to make sure that everything is handled correctly. So we're happy that they're part of this community and please reach out to them if anything happens that you think they need to know about. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to be back with a long form show on Thursday about trad wives. So you're going to want to check that out. And if you're a patron, Tom will be reading an article or two or three. We're not sure exactly how many several my voice holds out.
Starting point is 01:05:07 At this point, we're going to put them all in one big episode so people can listen to all the articles that we'll be discussing this upcoming Thursday. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're gonna leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan
Starting point is 01:05:39 sales pitch late night info-docutainment, Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, bigfoot, yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, then it hits me like a kick in the nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.
Starting point is 01:06:32 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. It's time to gather loved ones together for all the holidays' best spread. Lens has great prices on all your favorite Thanksgiving items.
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