Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 892: DOJ Goes After Renee Good's Widow. Trump Still Wants Greenland

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Opinion | The Resistance Libs Were Right - The New York Times What to know about the rules for officers firing at a moving vehicle Whistles, then gunfire: How the deadly ICE shooting unfolded in Minneapolis | CNN Six Prosecutors Quit Over DOJ Push to Investigate Renee Good's Widow - The New York Times ICE Detention Center Says It's Not Responsible for Staff's Sexual Abuse of Detainees | American Civil Liberties Union Europe must now tell Trump that enough is enough – and cut all ties with the US | Alexander Hurst | The Guardian Trump Raises Middle Finger at Heckler in Michigan Ford Factory Tour - The New York Times Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell Donald Trump Reacts After Republican Senators Vote To Curb His War Powers - Newsweek The Quest to 'Make America Fertile Again' Stalls Under Trump - The New York Times

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence 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 Gloria Old Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissanance. 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 skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at. Today is January 15th, 2026, Cecil.

We are coming up on, by the way, not even. Almost though. One year. Close to a year. One year. Some years feel real long, dude. You're, what,

a quarter of the way through the presidency? as we get older, the fact is that time speeds up unless there's a Trump administration, it turns out. In which case, time slows to an impending doom crawl. We've had a couple of moments in our life where time has been like, fuck you. Yeah.

Wow. I thought about that this morning when I was like, oh, okay, got to record. I'm like, on the 15 more. In five days, it'll be a little. whole year and I'm like, it's been 20 years worth of shit. And I feel that way because we've dismantled a generation worth of work. A general. We've dismantled literally an entire generation of progress in less than one year. So it feels like you shouldn't be able to break a nation so quickly. But then I remember that like, no, actually nations fall fairly swiftly. Yeah.

Like that's actually, I'd say historically this is in keeping with how this works. Well, and then there's, you know, the conservatives, what they want is to go back to a time that they know, so they're willing to chip away from all the things that you built. Yeah. They're willing to chip all those things away to go back to a time that is sort of codified in the way in which our society works, right? Patriarchy is really easy to keep going back to because it's sort of codified in what we do. So if you chip away any of the structures that you built that try to lead you away from it, it's just you just fall right back into it. So it's the same thing. You know, can I ask you a question about that?

This may be sound insane. So, like, I think we often, the way I've always been taught to think about, like, the left and the right is that, like, the conservatives want to conserve or revert back to a prior sort of, like, social and economic sort of time in place. And, like, the idea of progressivism is we want to progress and move forward. And, you know, so there's this tension there. And I was thinking about that as you were talking a little bit. And I thought, like, the problem, I think, with MAGA, with conservatism, is there, is that

the past that they want to go to is fictional. It's not real. It's Mayberry. You know, they want to go back to a time and a place that in many ways, like, they are, they are actually creating on a whole cloth rather than, like, something that exists. And you could point to in history and say, that's the date. That's when we, so I wonder, is it just a different kind of, like, they want stuff? Like, they just, the way they get what they want is by breaking rather than building. But like it doesn't feel like reverting to me. It almost feels like I've gotten to a point where I'm like, I don't know if that's the right way to think about it anymore for me.

Because if the place they want to go back to never was, then it is a different kind of building. Does that make sense at all? Yeah, I guess. I mean, I keep thinking to going back to Nazi Germany. And I know that exists. Yeah. So, you know, and there are a ton of parallels.

No, you're right. It's not like there's not a lot of parallels, but I do understand what you're saying, where you're saying, you know, like going back to leave it the beaver. Yeah, that seems to be a fictionalized version of the world that they are like fetishizing with their politics and their social. Yeah, but I think, but I think they want all the bad stuff that was going on at that time too, right? They definitely want minorities to have less of a say. Yeah, I guess that's true, too. Yeah. And in that time, there was people who, like, there was minorities who had way less of a say.

So what they want is they want that white primacy and then they also want to make sure. that the minority shut the fuck up or get the fuck out of the country, know who's in charge. And I think like, you're right, actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they want that poster, but that poster was always fake. Right.

And what was underneath was pretty gross. And we can easily chip back down to that. Yeah, you know, I think, I think you're right. I think for a long time, I think I're 100% right. And I'm just thinking this throughout loud. But like, I think for a long time, the idea that I held was like,

well, obviously nobody would want to go back to like when, you know, like women didn't have the vote. And, you know, like, no, but like, yes, that is what they want. Yeah, of course they do. And so, but for a long time, I think we weren't, nobody was willing to say it out loud. Yeah, yeah.

And so it was this sort of like background hum that, that I think many sensible people will be like, well, okay, well, we're not going to do that. And if we're not going to do that, then the other pieces don't fit because they weren't real. They were sort of bedrocked upon this sort of stuff. Yeah. But now that we're, I guess you're right,

now that we're saying the other stuff out loud. I mean, now there's no, there's no, Right. I don't have an inside voice anymore. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I read this thing the other day that discussed the ideas for parenting, but I thought it was funny. And it was discussed the idea of inside thoughts versus outside thoughts. And the idea is like, maybe you don't have to fucking say everything you're thinking, right? Like if you're saying, if you're thinking something stupid or offensive or annoying, like just keep it to your fucking self, right?

And like this administration has no inside thoughts. Oh, God. No. They have no inside thoughts. None. And I think that's the only thing that is working in our favor. Yeah. Right? Well, yeah. Either they're, in some cases, they are too stupid to hide it.

Right. In other cases, I don't think they care. And I don't think that it'll hurt them. I think if they were, you know, I think back to like the neocons. And the neocons had inside thoughts, right? And so as the neocons were breaking and setting up the sort of foundation to continue the breaking of American society and American democracy, they had inside thoughts. And so we were forced to contend with their outside thoughts, with what they were saying

out loud. And many of us suspected that there was this background, but you really kind of couldn't prove it because nobody was saying it out loud. I think that the only advantage we have, and it's slim, and if we don't seize upon it politically in 2026, we're fucked, but they've just saying it all out loud. And so we don't have to say, well, I suspect what you really mean is this. That is always a problematic conversation. It's hard to have with people that are like you're trying to convert over to try to grab the center.

Now that like they're just saying out loud every racist, shitty, awful thing that they mean, every nationalistic fucking neo-Nazi thought in their stupid fucking heads. I do think that that is like, well, thanks for telling me. I mean, I knew. I knew all along. But like, it's kind of nice that you're saying it too because now no one has to lie about it. Hey Dave. Hey! Hey!

What's going on? Come on! Wendy's sleeping. Come on, man! What? What? Race war? Race war?

Come on, Bill! Race four! What do you mean? Didn't we always talk about wanting to do that? I don't remember that at all. Race more! I'm gonna be sergeant. No. You woke her up.

Tell her I said, hey! Is she so mad at me? Yeah, she is. Come on, man. Race War. Bring her. No, don't bring her. She's, what is she?

She's a... Italian. Yeah, don't bring her. Hey, you want to get her? No. You like her. No. No.

Tom, but we wanted to talk about Renee Good again. Yeah. We wanted to do it very specifically because we recorded last week and when we did some of the stuff that hit wasn't actually out yet, right? So the stuff we've heard over the weekend and some of the things that were released were released after we actually recorded. So by the time we recorded, there was really only like two angles of the video. Right. And we were, of course, I think we had the right thought process. Yeah. But what has come out since has made it so much more egregious and disgusting. Absolutely. That it needs to be spoken about. A couple of things that that popped in the last

week. One of them is the cell phone video that the Department of Home and Security released that the person was, that the person who killed her, the shooter killed, that, that murdered her, he was recording. So what happened was is they get into a confrontation, he gets out of his car, and he starts recording not with a body camera, which is what they were trying to pass it off as, right? They're trying to say this was a body camera or a camera, but it was a, it was a cell phone camera. So this arm is out. He's walking around the vehicle. And there's a couple of really important pieces in that footage that they released, which I think is telling, right? They think it exonerates them because at the very end, the cell phone goes down and you hear the shots. And they

seem to make it think, they're trying to make you think that the car hit the person. And that's why everything went crazy. But that's not exactly what happened. And you can see it from the other videos that that's not what happened. But the things it revealed were really important. And one of them is that Renee Good tried to de-escalate the situation by basically saying, I'm not mad at you. I don't know what's the problem. I'm not mad at you.

And he walks around the car. Very importantly, he has his camera in his right hand. He walks around the back of the car. And you can see in the reflection of the car, he hands his camera over to the other hand. just as he's about to stand in front of the car. Yeah. To prepare himself. To have his gun ready.

Right. There is clear intent there that he is going to shoot. He knows he's going to shoot on the side of the car when he switches. Why else would he switch hands? Why else would he put the gun, his, his gun hand open and the camera in the other hand. Why would he do that otherwise? There's no. Can you think of a.

reason why you would switch to your offhand with the camera? No, of course you can't. Unless you think you're readying yourself to fire a weapon, which is what he had planned to do. There was a bunch of stuff that came out very specifically. We're going to talk about some of the stories about what you should and shouldn't

do when there's a car there, like a car that's moving and should you fire into a car, there's a whole story we're going to cover on it. But the other real important piece of that video is after that video is over and he shoots, he says, fucking bitch

after he shoots. So there is definitely a it shows intent. It shows maliciousness. Yeah. It shows that it was a murder. I mean, it shows it was a straight up murder. Yeah.

And they released it thinking it was going to be like that's, I mean, you didn't even cut out the fucking bitch part at the end. And they released it. Well, because the ghouls, the violent ghouls on the right who want these tactics, they see, so when I see that, I see the same thing you see. What I see is a guy who is looking for a violent confrontation where one is not necessary, right? And like, looking for an opportunity to wield lethal force if he can find a way to get away with it. And a guy who's angry.

So he's not afraid. Angry and afraid are very different feelings, right? He's allowed to shoot in self-defense if he feels like threatened, if he feels like, and he if you feel threatened, your response to that would typically be that you were afraid, right? Like, oh, shit, I was afraid for my life. I fired my weapon in order to, but no, he's mad. He was mad. He was mad. He was mad. And I think his anger is also reflected in what happens in the moments after the shooting. He does not render aid. He's required to render aid. When you shoot, when the cops shoot you, they are required to render aid. He did not render aid. He fucking left.

and then other people refused to render aid and did not allow a physician that was on site to render aid. So they're fucking mad and they wanted Renee Good to die. Not just to be shot but to die.

To die from it. If she lives from that then maybe she gets to testify she's a witness in her own assault, etc. But they're fucking mad and they're mad with guns and they're empowered.

And that's like, when you're the first, fucking SS, you don't ask permission. That's not how that works, man. Like, you're walking around with a fucking lightning bolts on your fucking lapel for a reason. And that's because you've been empowered by an administration to create

havoc and fear and violence within a community. And that's what he did. Yeah. And very specifically, you're not supposed to shoot into a car. They say that that's really not something that you should do because it can cause, it can get into an accident, which is exactly what happened after

this, this, this, this, uh, this shooting. this murder occurred. But also, you shouldn't be standing. When was the last time you were hanging out and a cop pulled you over and stood in front of your car? They don't stand in front of your car. They know better than to stand in front of your car. They're trained not to do that.

This person very specifically put themselves in the way like that because they wanted to trap that person and they wanted to intimidate that person. And when they turned, you can totally see that they're not anywhere near them. They step completely out of the way so they can lean over the car to, shoot and then shoot two in the window. Yeah. That's exactly what happened. And like from the articles that we were talking about, the police have an obligation to get out of the way of danger.

Right. So the police are supposed to do things and they're trained to do certain things. They are trained to de-escalate. There was no de-escalation. None whatsoever. So there was there was no attempt to de-escalate at all the situation. They are specifically trained to get the fuck out of the way, to not stand in front of a car like a fucking idiot. That is a genuinely foolish. It's either

a foolish thing to do, an incompetently foolish thing to do, which is not the case. This guy's been on this job for 10 years. So it's not like he's not been trained. It's not like he doesn't know not to stand in front of a fucking car in the middle of a tense confrontation, right? It tends because he's making it, tends to be very clear. So I mean, I think René Good was like kind of ribbing him a little bit,

you know, like, oh, my license plate doesn't fucking change every day. Like, she was kind of zinging him. But like, zinging him. him, you know, like, not, this is not murder worthy words. There are no murder worthy words. That's not how murder works. Yeah, yeah. You know, so he intentionally was doing things so that he could create a situation where he

was allowed to shoot. And I think also, if you look at like what happened to him relatively recently, relatively recently the same guy was injured when he was reaching into a car. The car drove off. He was dragged along and he was injured in that process. I strongly suspect that pissed him off. And he wanted some fucking getting backseys. Yeah.

And it didn't matter who did it. He just wants, he wants to inflict that on somebody else. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think too, you know, a lot of people, I know it's not a great comparison, not a perfect comparison. But really genuinely, the, the fucking ICE agents, they're more like DMV people who work at the DMV than they are police officer. Right. The police officers are there to like stop crimes and to like arrest people who may be violent. These are people who are collecting people who may not be allowed in the country and the worst thing they did was mostly a civil thing.

Right. For the most part. The people who get caught for crimes are almost always caught by police officers ahead of time and then hand it over to DHS. Right. So they're not out there busting crimes. They're not out there like trying to solve rapes or whatever they've claimed. that all these immigrants are doing, they're not doing any of that work. There's no investigative work in that work. There's none of that work that they're doing. What these guys are there to do is to intimidate the public. That's why they were there.

They weren't there for any other reason than to intimidate the public. That's why they're armed like that. That's why they're dressed like that. That's why they're acting like that. That's why they have less than lethal rounds and shit to shoot into protesters, right? There's no reason for this.

This is not central to the mission of immigration enforcement. No, not at all. And so very specifically, the people who are on the other side of this, who are saying, oh, well, you know, you just got to listen to the police officer or whatever. It's not a police officer.

Right. Okay? They're doing this very specifically to antagonize the group. That would be like you going to the DMV and the guy at the DMV is like, hey, man, you're next. And you're on your phone and you didn't listen. And he said, hey, man, you're next.

And you didn't listen. And then he shot you in the face. Yeah. Okay. That's more like, what this is, then not paying attention to a police officer. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Very specifically. These people are not like, like these people are made very specifically to deal with people who are undocumented and who are who are coming into our country who are immigrants, right? They are not made to deal with us. They're not supposed to be dealing with us. Right.

Yeah. And they're not, they're not trained in riot. No. They're not trained in crowd. They're not trained in any of that stuff. Because like, the other thing is, these guys are barely trained. Yeah. are not really truly in immigration and customs enforcement.

That's not, what they are is a federal arm, a violent federal thug arms of the Trump administration. Yeah, exactly. Why else is he in Minneapolis? Why do we think they're in Minnesota? Does anybody really think that if you were actually, if you were following the central mission of immigration control, right, you would not, just thinking about it out loud, you would not say, hey, we need thousands of troops in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That doesn't make any sense.

There are plenty of places in America that would have more undocumented workers. So why are they in Minneapolis, Minnesota? Well, they're in Minneapolis, Minnesota because being there allows the Trump administration to further a political aim. Yeah, right? So if you're following, there, there is an issue right now that has blown up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tim Walls, of course, being the governor of Minnesota. Tim Walls, of course, being the vice presidential candidate, along with Kamala Harris on the Democratic side, no love loss there between Walls and the Trump administration. There is a legitimate issue of some fraud

that was perpetrated in large part by a small community, many of whom are of Somali background. And that gives the Trump administration wonderful political cover to do this Gestapo shit. None of it is necessary. None of it is like all of the fraud stuff should be investigated as fraud. And then if you committed fraud, you should be arrested for fraud and you should be tried and a jury appears. It should be a due process.

That's already against the law. We don't need a new system. Already against the law. There's no new system. Yep. But what the Trump administration wants to do, and they've said as much, right, what they want to do is they want to paint an entire community and demographic of people who are not white with a broad brush and say, I told you the Browns were here doing illegal shit.

That's why I sent thousands of fucking armed federal, you know, these are, this is not an immigration crackdown. Yeah. It's not. It's got nothing to do with immigration. No. No. However, that we're making progress in this country and worldwide.

No, no, no. I will never say that progress is being made. If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull a knife out, much less try and heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

The stories from New York Times. It's an opinion piece by Michelle Goldberg. The resistance libs were right. So this is a very interesting piece. It basically says like, hey, for a long time, there were a lot of people on the center left and on the left who were saying, calm down. it's not fascism.

And then there were a bunch of people were like, yes, it is. Here's the various definitions of fascism. Let's get out a checklist and start checking them off. And everyone's like, Trump, derangement, syndrome. Settle down. It'll be fine. Everything's going to be fine. And then you get out your checkbox and you're like,

it's literally fascism. Yeah. And I think it's worth actually going through some of the arguments. I think they're interesting to go through. Sure. So some of the counter arguments is that, like, first, when Trump came to power, he lacked a street fighting force, right? So Benito Mussolini had the black shirts. There was a street fighting force, a group of armed thugs.

And in Trump's first administration, excluding January 6th, he did not have the same on the ground in mass thugs. He did, though. In the same way. I mean, like, do you remember the 2020 protests and how you had people driving around in vans and abutting people? But please do correct me if I'm wrong. I thought a lot of that were local administration, municipal cops, state cops, etc. I didn't know those were federal police. I thought it was the Border Patrol.

Well, the Border Patrol definitely did some of that work. That's true. I do remember that. I guess I was thinking of like the egregious police brutality in the middle of the protest. But yeah, the Border Patrol was also a big part of that. So I take it back. I take it back. you're absolutely right. Again, having nothing to do with border control.

Yeah. Nothing whatsoever to do. But that was an argument is that there was not the same group of thugs. That was one of the arguments. A quote here actually, Trump didn't proceed to unleash an army of paramilitary supporters in an American Christalance or whatever. I don't want to pronounce that. Or take dramatic action. Crystal knocked. Crystal knocked. Or take dramatic action to remake the American state in his image, wrote the leftist Daniel Bressner and Ben Burgess. and did it happen here? The other argument was Trump did not pursue campaigns of imperial expansion,

which some scholars view as intrinsic to fascism. And here's another quote. For all of Trump's hostility toward countries he perceives as enemies of the U.S., notably Iran, there is no indication he sought a war with any foreign power, and still less that he has been consumed by a desire for foreign conquest and the creation of an American empire. This is from a 2021 essay called Why Trump Isn't a FACTS.

So Cecil, let's contend with those two arguments very swiftly. Well, I think I have a, maybe I have a different take than you. And my take is that it's possible that we could have got into another Trump presidency. And none of this could have happened the way it happened. The only reason it's happening, the way it's happening now is because of the Supreme Court in their decision on not being able to charge Trump if it's in a official action. Oh. I think that really genuinely is the thing because I think that there would be people in the background who would say, hey, man, maybe you don't want to go after that company.

Maybe you don't want to take some of those oil profits for yourself. Maybe you don't want to have a group of people who murder other people on the street because that might lead back to you, etc., etc., etc. I don't think he cares anymore because he feels like he's immune. And I think that that has, like, more than anything else, that has emboldened him to the point where if he was diet fascist light before, now he's 100%, you know, full-fat fascist. Full-fat fascist. Yeah. Like, I think, I think I have a very similar take.

I think that there were, there were restraining factors in the first administration that don't exist. That, by the way, during the presidential, I don't want to do too much this, but we said, hey, one the big problems is some of these restraining forces will not exist. So all the shit that happened in the first administration is going to be amplified a hundredfold. That is just objectively

true. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. So in the first administration, he mused about bombing Mexico, right? He's like, why can't we just bomb Mexico? If you recall, he wanted to shoot protesters in the legs, he used the military, military

helicopters to forcefully evacuate protesters who were protesting peacefully and I believe legally and in concert with their First Amendment right to do so in order to evacuate them from a square so he could do a photo op with an upside-down Bible. So it's not like he didn't want to do this. It's not like we should have any like, oh, this is really a big departure from what it is like you got an old guy with nothing to lose. He doesn't have to get, there's no opportunity to be reelected either.

So in the first administration, you want a second administration. Second administration, you don't have to want anything. And he's an old fucker. So, like, he's not worried about what happens after he gets out of here. Not that much. Not the way somebody who was 40 would. Yeah. You know, if I'm 40, I get two administrations.

Then I got another 40 years, presumably, to go be alive in the world. He knows his age. Yeah. So, like, he's got nothing to lose, no restraint from any, like, smart people in the room saying, hey, we don't want to break down our democracy. He eliminated all those guys. Like, even the bill bars.

All those guys are gone. It's just sycophants all the way down. It's fucking turtle sycophants all the way down. And then I think you're right, the most important restraining forces, and there will be no consequences when you leave office. You could do whatever you want, man. Fuck them all.

Worst, you should be in prison for life. And the best, you should be executed. New York Times six prosecutors. quit over pushed to investigate ice shooting victim's widow. How disgusting is that? Fucking, I read this and my blood was boiling. How disgusting. Boiling is that.

They literally want to do this. They do this every time somebody does anything and they want to try to weaponize the group again. And this happens all the time if somebody happened to be black, right? Yep. This happens all the time. And this is what they're doing is they're trying to find any way that they can to demonize this woman. that they shot and their partner.

That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to do as much as they can to demonize them, and they're trying to dig up dirt enough to prosecute or do something against them. That's what they're trying to do. This administration has 100% shown an open, an open, blatant, cavalier willingness to use the Justice Department to further its political agenda and to hurt its political enemies. And so here you've got a situation

where it's like, oh, well, this is going to blow up. Well, you know, I've got a bunch of dumbass assholes on the right that believe that if somebody is bad, we're allowed to shoot them extrajudicially. If you look at like comments on this stuff, just in the world and you start reading like what people say, a lot of people will not contend with the idea that, hey, we have a due process system

and that due process system should be involved before people die. The state should not just put people. to death in the streets. There's a lot of people that refuse to contend with that side and just say, hey, fuck around and find out. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

This is like, hey, if I can prove that these were bad people, then we can extrajudicially kill them. That doesn't matter. And a certain amount of the population will be appeased by that. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. Those are all the worst people.

I'm buoyed by the idea that prosecutors, a half a dozen, are just like, yeah, I'd just rather not work here. Yeah. I won't do it. I won't do it. I'd rather do something else. Yeah. it's a disgusting thing.

My fix for this is that the next person who gets in, they have control of the Justice Department. So they make an announcement. They say, I'm going to go after every single senator that is a Republican with the Justice Department in the next 30 days, unless you make a law that says I can't. Love it. Unless you make a law that says,

I'm going to give you 30 days to make a bipartisan law that says, I can't do what I'm going to. going to do. But I'll tell you what, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do exactly what he did before me. I'm going to do 100%. And the person who gets in office should never interact with anyone without swearing like a sailor. They should and then be like, if you want me to change who I am, make a law that says I can't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kick every single, every single right wing person out of the newsroom. Kick them all out and be like, or give them a deadline, give them a timeline, be like, in 20 days, I will kick every single one of you out of here and never speak to you.

And if you talk to me, I'll jail you. I love it. So if you don't make a law that says, I can't do that. I'm going to fucking do it. And I'm going to fucking smile. And then I'm going to shit on the papers when you hand them to them. Like, I will fucking ruin everybody. But I'll warn you ahead of time.

I'll tell you I'm going to do it. You got an opportunity. There's plenty of people that'll work to get this. So no one gets to do this again. Because if you don't make it so no one does it again, you're fucked. You're going to be fucked the next time somebody comes in and you're going to have too much of a conscience to do something like this. Yeah, yeah.

You got to have somebody who doesn't hire me. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll fucking, I will fucking eat your eyes. I will fucking eat them out of your face while you talk to me. I will eat them. I would fucking 100% send those people. I would be like, here's your, here.

I'll put your fucking to-do list public so they know you're going to get it. Right. Yeah. But I love it. You got to do it. You got to do it. And the thing is, like, if you do that and you warn them, then they make this law that says, hey, people can't do.

The president can't use the justice department as his own weapon for his own political gain. You do that. Then suddenly things might change. Now, don't get me wrong. I know people will be like, yeah, but the Supreme Court will protect the president. If it's the right president, et cetera, et cetera. I know that there's other. hookups, but there's smart people who know how to make laws too.

Yeah. I think you're exactly right. What would be hilarious about this is it would force Congress to do something, period. Yeah. Like, that's the end of that sentence. It would force Congress to do something. Everybody would have to join in. And then Congress would get its fucking groove back, right?

Like Congress would fucking stella its way into fucking relevance again. Because what has happened through this administration, and I can't believe it's taken less than a year. That's stunning. that Congress has completely ceded their entire role. Oh, I know. They have seated, like the most important two things, I think, that Congress really does is they have the power of the person, they have the power to restrain military force. They have the power to require military force kind of run through them before it's being allowed. They've ceded both of those. They've completely

seated both of those essential powers. They are nothing more than a budgetary rubber stamp. that's what they are. They're there to argue about, you know, some fucking this and that bullshit and then accomplish nothing. This would actually give them their relevance back. They would say, hey, you know, we did. We passed laws that basically protect the function of American democracy by moving away from the honor system.

Because when you have dishonor in the system, it's broken. It's broken. Because this is disgusting. This is genuinely grotesque that you're going to do this and openly do this. And you know it's open because these people literally. Once they left, they're like, yeah, no, that's what they wanted me to do. Yeah. I just told you what happened.

I told you why I quit. Yeah. I love that they're not doing it. I love it. And I do think also, Cecil, that there needs to be, we've talked about this before, but there needs to be individual ground level accountability for people who are violating established legal norms. Yeah.

Like if you're the sixth, the seventh prosecutor that stayed on that is willing to do it, that guy needs to get looked into. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Who can mount ICE the fastest. This story is from the ACLU. Ice Detention Center says it's not responsible for staff's sexual abuse of detainees.

Did they sign a waiver? Jesus Christ. This is a fucking upsetting and dark article, dude. Fucking A, dude. So here's the deal. If you go to jail, you cannot consent to sex with a guard or warden or other worker in the jail. Because there's a clear... Why even work there?

That's stupid. Like, and it's obvious why. Like, you are, you are necessarily in a coercive situation. Like, of course. There is no non-coercive relationship. Between a prisoner and its guard. What person is like, I don't know, man. It's a gray area.

What? What is even fucking happening? Oh, it's amazing, bro. But, because these aren't prisoners, they're detainers. they're detainees. And because these aren't prisons, they're fucking concentration camps or whatever we're calling them. They're just like, well, that doesn't apply to us. Oh, God, Tom. So when we rape people, as long as like, we didn't hit them a lot or whatever, it's fucking not it. We were on base when we raped them or whatever. There's no, everything that they could say is

insane and horrible and they're saying it. Yeah. And I can't believe. we live in a world where anybody would even hear that out loud and not vomit and then murder that person. Well, and I think, I think it's important to pay attention that these, this isn't just the, the only thing isn't happening, the only thing that's happening isn't just that they are deporting people. It isn't just that they're sending people to other countries that they don't, that isn't actually their country of origin, right?

It isn't that they're just housing them in some random country that we just threw a fucking dart at and decided that this was the country where we're going to house them in some supermax prison in some other country. It's not just that. It's not just that there's a brutal force of thugs that are murdering American citizens who didn't do anything wrong, right? It's not any of that stuff either. It's also that the people who are in, that are taken into custody, several of them don't

belong to be taken into custody, but they don't protect those people when they do, right? Yeah. When you give yourself over to the state because you're being taken care of, they need to take care of you. Yes. They're taking responsibility for you. And what they're, what these people are doing is like, fuck them. I don't even care. And there's, and there's no repercussions when these people fail at being your custodian. Yeah. You are, they are, they are purposely carving out a legal gray zone that feels so much like the enemy combatant gray zone that we carved out in order to torture people. Rotanamo Bay, baby. Yep. You know, we, we decided.

for those of you who were not 48 years old, in 2001, after when we invaded, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq and all that, we created an entirely brand new kind of designation. We said, oh, if we have people and they're prisoners of war, then we have to abide by the Geneva Convention. We have to treat them a certain way, and they have certain, like, rights, and we have responsibilities, and we can't torture them. What we really want to do is torture these people.

So if we create a new designation called enemy combatant, then all those people that were shooting and disappearing and whatever, we can do whatever we want to them. So we created that and then we tortured them in CIA black sites and fucking did shit to him in Abu Ghra prison and we fucking sent him to Guantanamo Bay. We did a bunch of stuff probably that we don't know about. And none of nobody ever got in trouble for any of it. We just redefined what it means to be shot at by America, right?

We just created a whole new redefinition. This feels so much like that. We are saying, well, you're being arrested, right, by a federal police force in the street. You have no due process rights. We have no state custodial or federal custodial right to treat you a certain way. You're just in this entirely gray area. Yeah. That's, dude, like, that is concentration camps.

Yeah, that's fucking dark, dude. Tell me how it's different. I don't know. I can't tell you. You know, like it's a, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. That's how we're treating the people who we capture. That's how we're treating.

And a friend who bullies us, he's no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, to now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that. This story is from the Guardian. Europe must now tell Trump that enough is enough. and cut all ties with the U.S. This is about Greenland specifically,

but yeah, I mean, I don't see any. I mean, I'll be honest, if I was living in another country and I was looking over here, I would say, get out of there, get any kind of ties you have with that country, just wipe your hands with it. Because we're in a position now

where who knows if we get anything back? Who knows? He's talking, he mentioned today, it's not in the notes, But it was like yesterday where he said, we shouldn't have midterms. We shouldn't have midterms. I didn't even see that. And someone asked that plastic lady who is his spokesperson.

Love it. Love it. They asked her, they said, what do you think of about that? And she said, oh, it's just a joke. He was just kidding. Sure. We do such a good job. We thought, ha, ha, ha, we shouldn't have midterms.

None of that's funny. That's not funny. That's not hilarious funny. But he said it out loud, basically, that maybe we shouldn't have midterms. God damn it. Yeah, I mean. I mean, so if you're in another country.

Yeah. And you're hearing this. And you're hearing this. Why wouldn't you be like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't be friends with America? Maybe we shouldn't be allies with them, especially if they're just going to attack a member of the EU. I think after the first Trump administration, Europe, and we elected Biden, I think Europe was like, okay, we'll give me another chance. Yeah. now I think we've lost the benefit of the doubt.

And if you're Europe, you have to say, like, existentially, I don't know that we can continue to ally. But, like, you know, when I was reading this article is like, ah, they should kick us out of all their, you know, kick our military bases out of Germany, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, I don't think they have the power to do it is the problem. I really think that part of the problem is that we've created a situation because it has been mutually beneficial from an intelligence standpoint,

from a military standpoint, from an economic standpoint, for so long. Since the World War II, it's been beneficial for everybody. I don't think you can break up anymore. I don't think that you can break up anymore. Not really. Not in the ways that this article suggests. No, I don't think so either. But anything you can to do to separate, you should.

You should. I think you should. We have to. I am really nervous that we are going to take over Greenland. And that's an insane thing to say because that essentially will break NATO. There won't be a functioning NATO the same way there is a NATO now. I don't think that NATO and Europe would come to the military defense of Greenland. I don't think that that would happen.

They have to. But I don't think that they would because who wants to fight the USA? That would be, you know, a nightmare. And then you've broken NATO. And then what does that tell Putin? Oh, there's no NATO anymore. I'll do what I want. I'll do what I fucking want.

I'll do what I want. And now I think it's legitimate to say at that point, we could begin a new process of territorial expansion by the Russians. You could have a massive European land war that takes place. Seizing Greenland by force would upend, I think, could really very swiftly upend the entire world order militarily in ways that are genuinely very frightening. I used to not think that the Antichrist was real. that the what? The antichrist.

I used to think I used to be like, oh, that's bullshit. One guy can't do all that. Come on, that's bullshit. What is that? That's nothing. What is that? Huh.

Stupid. Tell me when a bee has a sword and then I'll believe in an antichrist. When I see a grasshopper wearing a helmet. Dude, 100% I would take a grasshopper over a helmet over the truck. You kidding me? Give me that serpent who has more horns and heads or heads and horns or horning.

hornier than heads, I don't know. But give me one of those guys. Cabber out of the ocean sounds amazing. Awesome. Sounds great. Give me Cloverfield. Maybe a star does need to impact the Earth. You know, like maybe we have, maybe we'll, we should all be all right with that.

I'm all right with it. Well, File is my second name. All right, I see. Peter File. Who's a pedophile? No, no. His name is Peterfile. His name is pedophile.

Don't. Say it like that. Sounds like pedophile. Isn't that what he just said? No. Peterfile. Pido fire. Peter File.

Who's a Peter Fyle? God, what a petulant child, New York Times. Trump makes obscene gesture. At Heckler and Ford Factory tour. He pulled his dick out. Nobody saw it, so then he raised his middle finger. So he's walking away, and there's no real cameras. So there's no like cameras on him at this point.

And he's walking away and somebody, one of the workers in the floor screams, Patafowel protects her, Adam. And so he mouths, fuck you Adam, a couple times. And then walks away and then turns around and comes back and flips him off and then walks away. Very presidential.

This is genuinely, if this were any other president, they would be fucking, we would cut them up for bait. Yeah. Like, I mean, there's so, it's, he gets, away with so much. Anything you want. But this is, when I was talking earlier about, I would just be obscene as possible if I was the president. I would be as obscene as possible and be like, you need to make a rule that says I can't do it. Yeah. Because I tell you what, you make a rule that they can't do it. You make it, you make it something that they have. They would somehow be,

there would be some sort of repercussions for the things that, because this isn't, this isn't what you would want from somebody who's leading your country. No. And think about your workplace. Yeah. Like in my workplace, there's a code of conduct. Right? So it tells me that I have to dress a certain way. I can't drink too much on a company trip. I have to speak in a way that's professional and appropriate. I just work for a regular company. Like a regular just go to work and do stuff in front of the computer

and nothing I do has an impact on, I don't know, the entire world. Right. And there's a fucking code of conduct. There's a code of conduct at every workplace I've ever been at. There was a code of conduct, Cecil, at Burger King. At Burger King, if you flipped off a customer, you're fired. This guy is behaving in a way that when I was fucking 15 years old, I'd have gotten fired from a Burger King for.

What I think is important to pay attention to as well, is that if someone were to say these words to any other president, they wouldn't say anything. They would just continue on with their. day. They would ignore that person. It wouldn't hit them very hard. Right. Yeah. This there's a reason. Seems like it hit pretty hard. It looks like this

curveball definitely hit the fucking mitt. You know what I mean? Like it 100% at a nice speed. It was going to nice clip. And that should tell you everything you need to know about Trump and his fragility around this very particular

topic. People seem to have forgotten. People seem to have forgotten because, you know, I don't know, Trump's murderous thugs that are part of his very special police force murdered somebody and continue to shoot and harass and terrorize other citizens in Minnesota, we seem to forget that the Epstein file should have been released. Yeah, and they missed their deadline. They sure is fucking missed their deadline. And I'm not seeing a whole lot about that right now. He hasn't seen a lot about that.

He still cares about that in a big way. And I think he does a bunch of things to try to flood the zone so you forget, but don't forget because it clearly makes him mad. Yeah, it upsets him and that's important. And it's not like I'm fucking a prude either. I don't care. Like I just said fucking for crying out loud. I don't care that somebody flips somebody off.

I just think that that position needs more gravitas than the way in which he treats it. I think it's a disgusting display of somebody who has no class who took over a job that they are utterly unqualified for both socially and mentally. An entire week of news coverage was dedicated at Fox to the time Obama wore a tan suit. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I just, you got to say that out loud. Now you got a guy saying fuck you to his constituents and flipping them off. New York City, you listen to me.

If you're near a convenience store right now, any type of 24-hour store, going to the store right now and put your hand in the cash register for no reason. Their money is your money. As of right now. So there is an absolutely, I think this is like groundbreaking and speech from Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell is the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

And recently, because Trump has wanted Jerome Powell to preside over a lower, a fast lowering of interest rates. Jerome Powell has refused to bow to that pressure. And he's keeping the monetary policy decision separate from the administration's pressure. Yeah. That fucking irks the shit.

So mad. Out of Trump. He has not moved at all. Yeah. And so the Department of Justice has opened up a criminal investigation of Jerome Powell. Yes.

And literally nobody thinks that's a good idea. Nobody. Even some of the most like stalwart maga Republicans have been very vocal and being like, what the fuck is this? This is nothing. even people like I said that are like very much aligned with Trump. I've seen a handful of them saying like, Jerome Powell, get the fuck out of here, Jerome Powell.

No, there's nothing here here. This is clearly an intimidation tactic. But what is awesome is Jerome Powell put out a statement saying like, this is an intimidation tactic. Yeah. And I'm here. I'm cool. I'm good. You can go ahead and send some people.

Take a look around. Yeah. And this is one of those things. things, though, that is going to downgrade us in a huge way. If something bad happens to Jerome Paul, you are no better than a third world country that is essentially, that is essentially, you know, a dictatorship that can arrest its officials when they don't say the, tow the proper party line. You know, this is, this is a, you know, you're essentially North Korea at that point. You know, I mean, you're just, you're a, you're a, you're a country

that's going to inflict damage on people who are part of that administration when they don't fall in line. And so I think it's no good whatsoever, especially because that person is in charge of your monetary policy. That's a huge deal, man. That's like that's basically, and that's like lighting a fucking fuse under the dollar. We are, Jerome Powell's term naturally expires in May of this year. And then Trump will be able to appoint whoever he wants. into that role. And there's some names

that have been floated. And the names are going to do whatever he wants. There are just names that he is going to handpick to be yes people to the Trump administration. When that happens,

we are going to lose the distinction and the separation structurally from who sets our monetary policy and who wants political advantage. And we will be in a terrible economic position

if that happens. Regardless of what the trust, it actually will hurt us economically, I think, no matter what the Fed actually does, even if they do nothing. Because the rest of the world is going to see that and they're going to signal it for what it is, which is instability or potential instability, and they're not going to want to put their money over here. And if they stop putting their fucking money over here, ironically, rates will go up. That is what is going to happen.

The exact opposite of what you wanted. And like, not to get too deep into those weeds, but like Japan's the world's third largest economy, and they're paying a fucking fortune for their bonds right now. And a ton of international money is moving into bonds in Japan. And the only way for us to entice people to buy our bonds is for us to offer bigger yields. Well, like, at the same time that that's going on is not when you want to have this fucking chaos. Because we're going to have a real hard time. We can see interest rates, no matter what the Fed does, you could see actual interest rates that you as a consumer pay rise dramatically if this happens.

I don't, I'm not even good at economics. Well, you know who else isn't good at economics? Yeah, I know, right. I got a message for all you liberals out there. You want my gun, my firearm? Come take it from me. Just walk through my door. Come into my home and take it from me.

With your weak, soft, liberal girlish hands. Just try to put those hands on me, those soft liberal hands. Put them on me on my body. Just slowly, gently dragging. your fingers up and down my arm giving me goosebumps. You want my gun? Come kiss me for it. But not like right away. Don't be too obvious with it. Let's do that thing where our faces get close to each other and you know what's going to happen. It's just a matter of time. You just stare at each other's lips, but you're waiting for the right signal to give yourself over to them completely, like in a walk

to remember. Come do that for my gun. Bite my lip and play with my hair for my fire wrong. If you want my gun, come spank me for it. Not like too hard, but like, still. hard, you know? Like, like hurt me, but make me feel safe at the same time, you pussy liberals. This is from Newsweek. Donald Trump reacts after Republican senators vote to curb his war powers. Yeah, but they didn't actually. They didn't do it, though. This is, this story's old. It's a day old. They wound up voting. He called them on the phone and he cajold them, and then they took their votes back, and he now has no curtailing of his war powers whatsoever. And to be very fair, like this was a Senate vote.

It was probably never going to get, it was never going to go anywhere because Trump would have had to sign it. Yeah, that's the problem. So that's the, this is the system we have, right? It's like, at the end of the day, Trump has to sign off on I would like to be restrained. Yeah. And good fucking luck with that, you know. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I, Trump is doing all the things that he wants to do.

No one is ever standing in his way. and the one or two people who do, he demonizes so badly that they just fall into line. I can't believe how spineless, though, like we mentioned earlier, how spineless the Senate and the House is become. Fucking worthless.

Fecless, worthless cowards, all of them. Yeah. It's some craven, shitty bullshit. Yeah. They all need to go. Yeah. Like at some point, they just fucking all,

wipe the slate of them all. Yeah. Wipe the slate of them all. Yeah. And the people who are Democrats who are supporting Republican policies. Gone. When it comes to border control, when it comes to other, get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of them.

Eject them into space. Get rid of them. Get rid of them. Primarium, get them out of there. If they're supporting ICE, get them out of there. Yep. Get them out of there. Those people are disgusting.

Fucking that, that fetterman guy, that guy needs to get hit by a bus. That is the worst person. That dude sucks so bad. I hope his fucking hoodie strangles him. I hope it fucking, I hope his stupid fucking. hoodie comes to life and fucking reaches out and strangles him because it doesn't want to be on his shitty body. Have you seen that thing? It's got

to smell like it's going to come to life. For real. Fucking put that in the wash. Get a new one. Tom Tato von Takoma, you will be educated. Me? America's son. Ha! That will be a challenge.

You bet. This story is from New York Times. The quest to make America fertile again stalls under Trump. Yikes. Administration officials have been urging Americans to get married and procreate, but some conservatives are frustrated by a lack of action. Lack of action, huh? Caliente. So I genuinely think that this is a twofold issue, I think, for

the conservatives. I think that anybody who knows anything understands that if we follow through with our immigration policies and we're going to have like net negative immigration. Massive lack of people that you need. And we're not going to have enough people. And I think their solution to this is to impregnate as many

women as possible. Dugger. Right. And dug her up and fucking quiverful all the all the white ladies. Right. And then if we do that then we get rid of all the brown people and then all the women are too busy having babies to go to work. And then the guy is in charge or the, you know,

white guys, the white men are in charge. And if they can get all that stuff done, then we can have a shitload of birth that is all going to be the right color and the only people going to work are going to be men and all the browns are going to be out of the country. And then we'll have a hegemonic white national estate. And I think that's very,

that feels exactly like what they're trying to accomplish. I mean, it's hard not to think that that's what they're trying to do. Right. But like, people don't want to have a million babies. And like fertility rates are down. Like people are less. So people are getting married later. They're entering into relationships later. They're intentionally having less children overall.

They're unable to have as many children because fertility rates have changed. There are some biological realities to that. Sperm counts are down. Strangely enough, I don't really know that anybody knows why. I don't know why. So like it's not that easy to just be like have a million babies. It's also just physically difficult. people to produce lots of children.

It's not like having kids is some net zero thing that happens to a human body. Like human bodies change with birth and with, you know, pregnancy. The pregnancy is dangerous. Yeah. Our infant and maternal mortality in this country is terrible. It's the worst in the entire industrial world. So like, and then we have no social safety and other child care subsidies. And just like, this is a bad solution.

Well, and what they want is more babies, but what they don't want to do is help facilitate the people to help them have more babies. Right. So they have little show things. Basically, like, the differences is instead of paying for you to have a child in a hospital, they're willing to give you a gift basket of diapers. Yeah, right, yeah, right. That's not enough incentive to shit a kid out and then take care of that kid forever.

Right. Other countries are so much better at this. One, other countries have universal health care. So that changes the scope of how whether or not you're going to have a child, right? That's a huge difference in other countries than it is here. That being said, they also reinforce those people to have children by helping them, by giving them daycares, by giving universal pre-K, by giving them things. Right? So they come and they give you like a care package that basically you don't need to do.

What we do is we crowdsource that. We have a baby shower. Right. So we fucking refunder that thing or whatever. And we have a system where we're like, yeah, we're going to, you know, you're going to buy the crib and they're going to buy the little mobile that goes over the crib and whatever. And there's a bunch of shit you go scan at fucking babies are us or whatever. And then everybody buys something off of it.

And we share the burden in the sense that we crowdfunded it with your family and friends. They don't do that. And like they deliver like a small little pod to you. And they're like, here, here's all the shit you need. Right. And then you just take care of your baby. We don't do any of that stuff. But we want to make sure that we force this sort of, we force people to have children.

And the way they do that is by cutting out abortion. Yeah, man. And the other thing that is super important that we don't do. And I think that all this is structurally intentional is we don't have a single day of paid maternity leave. Not a single one. And in many places, across the developed world, there is like a year, many months to a year of paid parental leave, whether it's maternal or paternal or some combination of both. We don't have a single,

not one single paid day of federal leave for having a kid. And definitely not for guys. Like 100% not for guys. But like some companies may do something. It's possible. Yeah. Well, some companies. But it's a lot more infrequent that it would be paternal. So I will say that, like speaking just personally, my company just last year announced six paid weeks and it is family leave. Nice. So it's just, it's just family leave. Oh, that's great. So, but like, I think the intention is very clear. So imagine if they solved for the two biggest problems, Cecil. Imagine if they solved for paid family leave and imagine if they solved with child care subsidies, right?

Then women would not leave the workforce. They would just, they would leave the workforce temporarily, perhaps, but they would return to the workforce. They wouldn't have this massive gap in their resume. And they would continue to be competitive with men in the workforce. That's not good. That's not the intent. It's not the intent.

That's not great for them. We can't, you cannot maintain the patriarchy financially. Yep. If you do that. So especially as women continue to out. compete men in college for university degrees. So I think these men are scrambling to be like, well, we need women to have a ton of babies and we need them to stay poor.

If they can have a lot of babies and be poor, then we can recreate the financial reliance system where women are financially reliant on men. They're going to be more reluctant to divorce them because they won't be financially viable out in the fight. They're trying to rebuild a world that, like, we've passed. laws to make it like harder for that world to recreate. I think that's what they're trying to do. Yeah.

Well, and in this, it's really interesting because they're religious, the things that they want to hold on to religiously also conflict with this, right? So IVF would be a boon to them. Sure. IVF would help them. But these people are so crazy, like, IVF is the devil. Right, yeah. Conflict, conflict.

So like they're running around as cognitive dissonance machines. not sure what to do. And it's because they have this weird, like, hang up over IVF. Right. When IVF could be amazing for them, but they're like, burn it! And you're like, okay, you're a crazy person. Right. But the thing is, they won't even do the thing to save themselves.

They won't drink the water to save their life. They're right. It's amazing. It's amazing. Because they're folding themselves up in a little, fucking tiny little parcels, trying to figure this all out. And then the other side of that is all the religious nuts that do embrace IVF, but then oppose abortion.

You're like, you don't understand how anything goes. Yeah, exactly. You're bad at everything. A guy who was like, yeah, abortion's bad, but so is IVF. Like, that guy's consistent. At least he's consistent. He's consistent. You at least at that point would be like, I held these two ideas in my head.

I mean, the guy's crazy. Right. But at least he's a crazy consistent person. Yeah, the train is on the same track. Exactly. Yeah. Tom, read this last paragraph because I think it's important. Mr. Severino said he believed that a vibe shift on marriage and family was

already underway. He cited an NBC news poll released in the fall in which young men under 30 who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 listed having children is the most important marker of their definition of success. For young men who voted for Kamala Harris, on the other hand, having children was way down the list. The 10th most important marker after having money and a good job. Marriage is making a comeback. Can you, I mean, genuinely, you know, Sarah and I, when we first, when we, when we were together, you know, in our first years together as a couple, as a married couple, there was an idea that maybe we're going to have kids, right? There was a thought.

We were maybe we're going to have kids. We weren't sure. They're still up in the air. But we was up in the air. And I remember thinking like, you got to have a good job. And you got to have some money aside. And you got to have this planned out. You can't just jump into this.

Don't just have a kid because if you're not ready for it, this could be a real bad decision that you make. Sure. So we had that. conversation, we're like, okay, well, we've got to sort ourselves out. And then, you know, once you sort yourself out, to be honest, this is what happened to us is once we sorted ourselves out, we're like, fuck the kid. Right. Like, this is actually okay. Really nice. Like, if we're sorted, let's just sort. And then we'll just keep sorting. And we don't have to.

We don't have to do any of that. Yeah. So it was, for us, it was the right decision not to. Neither of us really wanted to. After, after we thought about it, we're like, oh, yeah, I guess we're just kind of following what other people suggested we should do. And we didn't need to do it. So for us, it wasn't a thing. But what went through my mind was what was going through these people who were voted for Kamala Harris, right? Get a fucking job. You want a good job and you want to have some money before you have a kid. That's 10th down the list.

The other ones are real important. But have a kid later because these things that you've got to get in liner. But the first thing on the other, they didn't even give a shit about a money or a job. They want to just shit out a kid right away. That should tell you everything you need to know about the ideologies based around these two parties and around the future of having children in our country. And like, again, I think if

we lived in a society where there were like actual financial backstops in place, then you could have a reasonable position where you're like, look, I can have a kid before I have that good job because, you know, I'll have these various

state sponsored helps, right? Like I get my kid and go to child care while I work out while I finish school or while I finish this internship. Even though I don't have a good job, You know, my kick going, we don't have any of that stuff. Nothing. The financial burden of having children is immense. It's absolutely stunningly immense.

Even like, like for listeners overseas, even the physical act of giving birth can cost people thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. It's insane. That makes no sense. It's contrary to sort of like, if your political aim was to increase the birth rate, you would want, of course, not do that. But we also hold the other idea in our head that's like, well, we don't want to. fucking help people. Yeah. How do we hurt people without helping?

Like, well, I don't know. It's crazy. And, I mean, you could just be like, well, all births are free. You know, like, yeah, that's something the government could just be like, you know, maybe we're never going to do anything like that. We're not going to do universal health care, but we'll do all births are free. Sure. Right.

They're not even doing that. They're not doing that at all. And if you, like you say, that's like tens of thousands. It could be tens of thousands of dollars. And that kid can't work till they're much older to pay that off. That's a lot. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this.

this show today, but we will have a show this Thursday, and we're going to be talking about the absolute fucking ghoul that is Stephen Miller. So you're going to want to check that out. There's a whole article we read on it. Terrifying, horrifying article that we read. It's our long form for this week. We'll be back on Thursday and then on Monday, and we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue, Hypno-Bablon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing,

water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late-night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls,

Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and threads, all under the handle at Dissonance Pod.

This show is Can Credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.