Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 9: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Show

Episode Date: August 22, 2011

North Korea's Kim Jong-il in rare Russia visit  Rick Perry: Illegal Immigrants Who Serve In The Military Deserve Citizenship Girl Spanked to Death - Ungodly discipline  Court: Teacher can't be sued over anti-Christian remarks  Perry To Boy: Evolution 'A Theory' With 'Gaps'; Equates It To Creationism  Seven ways Rick Perry wants to change the Constitution  Rick Perry's College Transcript: A Lot Of Cs And Ds  Sarah Palin's Husband Admits on Video That His Wife Quit Being Governor So She Could Make More Money  US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024

Father, we pray over the electrical systems. We pray over the electricity will not go out in this building in Jesus' name because of storms or any other reason. I just pray over this equipment. We speak over the PowerPoint presentations, all of the video projectors. And we say, devil, we know what you love to do in meetings like this. And we say you will not in jesus name you will not prevent this message from going out no microphone problems in jesus name god's will that's what they say people say it's god's will that means god can

do anything he wants so why pray they say you pray for something okay my he didn't answer my prayers well it's god's will well if it's god will, why did I even pray in the first place? He's going to do what he wants anyway. We gave it all up to superstition. Primitive superstition. Primitive shit. With an invisible man in the sky looking down, keeping track of what we do, make sure we don't do the wrong thing. If we do, he puts us in hell

and we burn forever. Primitive shit. 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. 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 mat. Welcome everybody. I think we've got a great show again for you today.

We've got some good stories to talk about. We've got some responses to our last show that we have to lay into. We got some ratings on iTunes. Yeah, we sure did. You know, we also had a fast turnaround time here, Tom. This is probably one of the fastest turnaround times for a podcast we've ever done. One of? One of?

What fucking show are you on? Okay, fair enough. This is definitively the fastest turnaround time, but people seem to really like the show, and so we really want to put forth an effort to do these as often as we can. Typically, I think that's going to mean once a week for you. Yeah, let's not fucking put the horse before the cart here, Tom. We're going to say, okay, we're going to try to put them out at a more frequent basis, but we are not going to put a number on that.

How's that? No, no, no. See, I guess what people need to understand is there's what I try to do, right? And then there's what I do do. And those two, there's a wide and insurmountable gulf between those two things right like i i am a guy who's always trying to do something sure and never succeeding in any of them so right but we do have some great stories we did get some great feedback so we'll go ahead and get it right into our stories we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of jesus open hearts lord open hearts it's depressing that we can turn a

show around this quickly you know we four or Open hearts. It's depressing that we can turn a show around this quickly, you know, four or five days from the last time that we recorded and find yet another case of horrifying abuse in the name of religion. Again, directed at kids. It's pretty awful. But this is a story I think that we need to talk about a little bit, in part because I got into a little bit of a Facebook conversation that I want to discuss for a moment as well, because I do think it's kind of telling. LiveLeak.com has a link to an Anderson Cooper story that we listened to about a little girl who her foster parents decided that they were not going to spoil the child.

So in order to not spoil the child, they did not spare the rod. And it turns out they didn't spare the child either. It turns out, yeah. Because they just beat her to death. That is not sparing the child at all. The rod in this case was a plumbing implement. Oh, God. Which was pretty awful. child at all um the rod in this case was a plumbing implement oh god um which is which was pretty awful and all these kids they've got you know fucking half a dozen or more kids at

some point you just got to stop counting them you know and just sure listing them off but um they had a whole shitload of kids and you know from all accounts looking at them they all appear to be happy the only thing i think that would mar that happiness is being fucking beaten to death with plumbing implements. The story is actually a remarkably sad one. It's about six and a half minutes long. If you want to feel awful, we'll link to it and you can watch it. But it really is pretty, I think, a pretty awful story. This little girl was beaten for seven hours.

She died in such a way that her cause of death, they said, seven hours. Um, she, she died in such a way that her cause of death, they said is, uh, like a form of trauma that, uh, is usually they only see among bomb victims. Um, because it's, it was so severe and pervasive. So, um, the, the real part of the story though, is that this guy thought he was following a religious mandate. He was actually following not just the Bible, which does say to not spoil the child and not spare the rod, but there's a guy who wrote a book to sort of help parents along, like a self-help, like a parenting book. Sure.

Because anybody can write one. Sure. But it was like parenting with the Bible. And he suggests beating your kids with actual rods. And they interview the guy on this thing. And they ask him, why can't you just, if you're going to spank your kid, why can't you just use your hand? And the guy leans over and he smacks the reporter a couple of times with his hand on the leg. And he's like, see that? That doesn't even hurt. Like the whole idea is like, well, it's not creating enough pain unless you use something. Doesn't he say something like it's moving your whole body?

See how it's moving your whole body? And you're like, oh, well, then why not use a blade then? Because that's the smallest cross section you could use on somebody's body. Just whack them with a cleaver because, you know, you want to make sure it's a smaller cross section than your hand, dude. You know, like one of the things he says to Tom, which I couldn't believe he even said it because, you know, the show is called Cognitive Dissonance. Listen to this. This fucking douchebag sitting there and says, well, let's say your son hit your daughter.

What would you do? And he's like, well, I would take my son in the other room and I would say, well, now, Billy, you inflicted violence on your sister. In our society, we do not inflict violence on one another. So I'm going to beat you. What the fuck? What the fuck does that tell your kid, man? You know, that's like your parent with a fucking, you know, a scotch in one hand, cigarette hanging out of their mouth, be like, don't smoke and drink. Right.

You know? Yeah. Your fucking brain thinker isn't working, buddy. Fucking A, man. And the thing is, like, here's where, here's part of the breakdown, right? here's part of the breakdown, right? So people think that, you know, if you spare the rod and spoil the child, you got to beat your kids if they do wrong. There's no science. The science all points in the other direction. All of it, it all, all points in the other direction that physically disciplining your children is unnecessary and ineffective.

It's not the, it's from a parenting perspective, there's a lot of studies that have been done on this sort of thing. And none of them are like, yeah, you know, it's a great idea. Swatting the kids with sticks. Right. Nobody fucking suggests that shit. The only people that can get away with suggesting that shit are religious nuts. Because they can point to their crazy book and be like, well, crazy book says to hit him with a stick.

And then you take that book and you read it hyperliterally and you say, well, we actually have to hit them with a rod because that's what we've got. Because it says rod in there. It doesn't say hit him with your hand. We got to hit him with a rod. So now I get a rod to hit this kid with. And now I'm whacking the shit out of my kid with a rod because that's what God wants me to do. And God's not going to tell me to do something that's bad for my kid. And look, I read this book that tells me all this stuff. Look,

it's right there. It's right there in the infallible word of God in my holy book. And, you know, at the end of the day, I killed my own kid. I fucking beat him to death. It really is the fucking end of the day because they spent an entire fucking day beating their kid like they just they fucking spent an entire seven hours beating they said the beating was only interrupted by prayer sessions what were you waiting for the fucking command to stop right like give me the cosmic stops i didn't see a cloud in the form of a stop beating your kid sign so i just kept i don't i i understand that there's there's there's a reasonable argument to make that like well this person was clearly an abuser this person was clearly somebody who was who wanted to hit this kid because you can't beat somebody for seven

hours without seven hours i can't do any look i couldn't beat off for seven hours without seven hours. I can't do any. Look, I couldn't beat off for seven hours. Right? Like, you can't do anything. You give it the old college try, though. Hey, we were all 15 once, you know? Dad's going away for the weekend. Curry, what are you doing? Nothing.

I can't go out this week i've got busy plans for an extended period of time but you know there's very few things you can do for seven hours without putting a lot of dedication into that shit and that's physical exertion for seven hours like right like you know people don't even dig ditches for seven hours. I'm so tired of beating this kid. Like, what could this person have possibly done? I don't know. Where Lord of the Rings has ended and you're still whack, whack, whack.

Like they defeated Sauron in less time than it took you to beat your fucking kid. I would imagine that what the kid did was beat a kid for eight hours. Right. It's just – the argument of course is going to be made, like I said, that it wasn't religion that did this. This was a deranged person. This is somebody who has violence. Sure. And that's a factor.

That's a factor. Right. But the justification is religious. Right. You cannot parse them out and say, well, this was the, you know, the religious belief had nothing to do with it. You cannot, you simply cannot do that. Right. Do I think that it had everything to do with it? No, I don't. Of course not. But do I think it was a fucking clearly a factor? Yes, it was clearly a fucking factor. Because you know what? If I'm a deranged motherfucker that likes to beat kids and I believe that God's on my side, what's there to stop me? Right.

Nothing, evidently. This is a video. You know, this video is kind of not safe for life. You know what I mean? It's one of those videos where you're just like – No, it's not. You watch it and you hear the 911 call and then you hear the police officers in the background and the girl's like, I just threw up. Is there any way I could take a – I've been beaten so much I threw up.

Now think about that just first off. Think about somebody getting beaten so much by their own fucking parents that they threw up. And then they're like, I might have to take the fucking bucket with me in the ambulance because I might have to throw up again. Or die. Yeah. And the girl nearly dies. Two of them. I mean, this is two girls, I thought. Right. Yeah. The other little girl that's on the 911 tape, they ask her, like, where do you

get hit? And she's like, on my back and on the bottoms of my feet. God, that's so ridiculous. That's what they do. I mean, that's a torture method. That's an ancient torture method. Well, it's a way in which DCFS doesn't get called, too, right? Beat them on the bottoms of their feet. You can't see it.

Right. Now, run and play. Yeah. Oh, that sucks so bad. Well, these parents deserve every bit of fucking legal justice that comes their way. Well, and the mom only gets 12 years. The father gets, like, please to torture and murder. And I think he gets 25 years. Not long enough. Not long enough. Not not anywhere

near long enough. You know, everybody has the Facebook flame wars. I don't want to do a blow to blow about a Facebook flame war because it really wasn't a flame war that was that was part of this. But I did get into a little bit of a back and forth with somebody who's like, well, you know, not all Christians are like that. And, you know, one of the things that he said is he's like, well, you know, clearly, you know, no God would want you to do that. That's, you know, it seems clear that, you know, beating your kid to death, you know, no God would ask you to do that.

Well, not the case. It's not at all the case. First of all, God does ask you to kill people in the Bible. He asked Abraham to kill his son. Right. He asked you to kill all kinds of people that don't abide by his petty little tyrannical rules. You're supposed to stone damn near everybody you meet to death.

You know, that's why I carry a pocket of quartz around. Hey, your name's Bill. Upstone him. You know, but it's, first of all, that's not accurate. But I guess the other problem I have is you've got a book here that is terribly unclear. Right. Right? Right.

This guy thought he was doing the thing the book wanted him to do. He thought he was well within the bounds of his book. He was actually following the advice of somebody else who thought he was well within the bounds of his holy text. Sure. Instead of using common sense. Yes, common sense, common sense reason humanity compassion those things would all tell you not to pick up a plumbing instrument and beat your kid with it and there's there's no i've got a kid there's no part of me that is ever like man really wish i could beat my kid with a

stick like i've never wanted to beat him with a stick i've been frustrated with him but i've never been like god i wish i had a stick to beat him with and a reason I've been frustrated with him. I've never been like, God, I wish I had a stick to beat him with and a reason to do it. That's because that's crazy. Because that's crazy. Finn, take these matches. I want you to go do something with them right now. You know, that's insane.

The problem is you can't decide. You can't pick and choose. You know, that's not being religious. That's being bad at it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. To me, it's pretty simple. A person either believes that God created this process or believes that it was an accident and that it just happened all on its own. So moving on to another story, this is a this is actually a very good story. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said that James Corbett, who is a teacher who made some disparaging comments of actually actually some funny comments because I'm mean spirited.

But he made some disparaging comments about Christianity in his classroom. And he was sued. He was taken to task for it and he was sued. He was sued under the notion that he was violating the Establishment Clause by being critical of religion. And at first he lost. He lost his first case. His case was overturned on appeal. I think it's a great thing that his case was overturned on appeal.

He basically called creationism religious superstitious nonsense, which, of course, we know it to be. But he was sued for it by a student who came up with 22 different instances where he made anti-rel know, he made anti-religious remarks. And I can't even believe he lost the first case, to be honest with you. You should be able to, as a teacher, to not have sort of carte blanche to be critical of things. Especially if you look like Jeff Bridges. I think you should be able to. The guy looks totally like Jeff Bridges.

Especially if you should be able to. Oh my God, this fucking dude. Totally is the dude, isn't it? I think that when you're a teacher, it's hard to get this because, you know, you're forced. There's sort of these forces outside of you that are always pushing your curriculum to change in different ways. And specifically when things start to push towards that more Christian right ideal of, you know, creationism and intelligent design and, you know, those sorts of things, you've got to be getting more frustrated with it because it's creeping into a lot of different districts and people are sort of hearing about it in different ways. And all these different

districts are then forced to, or either, you know, like not maybe forced to, but they sort of adopt the, teach the controversy things. And as a teacher, you've got to be more, you've got to be frustrated about it. And sometimes you just got to speak out and say, look, this is ridiculous. It's a silly thing. It makes no sense. You're starting with the conclusion and working your way back. That's not how science works. Figure out how science works and start with, you know, a valid conclusion and working your way back. That's not how science works. Figure out how science works and start with a valid hypothesis and work your way through the scientific method and then we'll talk. But until then, intelligent design and creationism is not science. It's a way to look at the universe, but it is not a scientific way to look at the universe. Right. And, you know, I think we want to have teachers in our classrooms that are able to have some

intellectual freedom to be critical of things. Right. That's, God, if you can't protect that, you really, what the hell is the point of sending your kids off to school? You know, so if a kid, if a teacher can't promote critical thinking by being a critical thinker himself. Right. Or herself. Right. It's not that's not the fucking win. Yeah, it's good news. And I hope that I hope that more places will will start realizing. I know that in Texas there was a big thing where they just recently overturned something with with intelligent design too. Everywhere it starts, like it's always these small little places that

it gets injected in, trying to sneak it past and people start taking notice of it and say, no, no, no, we don't want to teach this. We don't want to have this. And you talk to the average person on the street and most of them will say, oh, well, I'd like to teach the controversy. But the problem is that they don't understand that there is no controversy. I mean, there's certainly no controversy with regard to the science, right? I mean there's a political controversy. Sure. And you could talk about that.

I think it would be perfectly legitimate to discuss the political controversy in a social studies class, in a civics class, to say like, hey, we're right now embroiled in a controversy between these two groups of people within our society. And let's look at the things that they want and the perspectives with which they're, you know, coming at this question. You cannot do that in a science classroom. What's the science of creations? You know, how does that work? So you go through the irreducible complexity argument and you say, you know, it all has to come from a designer. And you ignore, you know, tens of thousands of pages of actual research. And then you finally get back to the to the creator. Right. And then you say, OK, so there must be a creator.

Well, OK, that's not science. First of all, that's logic. It's flawed, but it's still logic. But it's not science. Like you haven't used a science yet. Right. You've just used a logical argument. And that's not the same fucking thing.

You can't logic your way into truth. You can use logic to understand evidence, but that's the whole thing with the scientific method is it's fucking provable, verifiable, falsifiable. You know, it's a method. And if you abandon the method, you abandon science. Right. I think one of the major two reasons why that creationism even still has a hold, and I think one, it has to do with sort of the American spirit, right? There's sort of this feeling like almost like we need to vote on things. Like we need to vote and figure out which one we want to do,

which one's better, that sort of thing. And so they want to present two things to the students, and the students will figure out which is better. And, you know, there's another idea that if my area votes to teach intelligence and design, well, then the parents in the area want intelligent design to be taught. Well, that doesn't matter because, you know, like then why don't you vote on what 2 plus 2 equals? You're not doing that.

You're not voting on – well, we want to say 2 plus 2 equals 4.1. Well, you're not doing that. What you're doing is you're choosing one of the topics that there's facts for and you're saying, well, we don't want to pay attention to those facts. The other major factor that influences people's decision on whether or not intelligent design should be taught is the idea – the concept of theory in the colloquial sense and theory in the scientific sense. People really don't understand what theory means when it comes to scientific notation, when it comes to scientific tense. They don't understand it.

They think theory means, well, I got a theory on this and that means I kind of understand, I kind of have a guess. That's what they think it means. It's not a hunch. It's not a guess. It's not a hunch. But, you know, when you start confusing these terms, you know, when you start throwing around the colloquial theory and just, I got into it once with somebody, my wife's work about this.

And they kept saying, like, it's just a theory. And I kept saying, you don't understand what the word theory means in a scientific context. Right. You just keep saying the word. You just keep doing it. Like repeating yourself is not is not going to help solve this disconnect here. I'd like you to tell me that you are and have been a false prophet and that God is a superstition.

Rick Perry suggests the same thing. Well, yeah, of course. Rick Perry. This is a guy who is, you know, running for president of the country. Possibly president of the country, possibly president of the United States, tells a boy that evolution is just a theory, suggests that they teach it in Texas, which I do not believe that they do, which is kind of funny because he doesn't even know what's being taught in his own fucking state curriculum. And then, you know, says, I think

kids are smart enough, you know, to pick and choose which one they think is right. Well, you know, I'm sorry, but that's not how education should work either. That would be the only instance. It'd be the only instance where you say, well, I'm just going to teach these two things to young impressionable people and let them make up their mind. You know, I guess it would be one thing, Cecil, if we had a, we had an educational tradition of doing this. You know, if we had an educational tradition of taking topics, presenting multiple sides of the argument and saying, hey, hey, we're teachers, but we don't know. So here's the evidence. Go ahead and pick and choose. I don't know about you, Tom, but when I got taught the Second World War, the Nazis in the United States, they were both equals.

Nobody in my class was like, oh, well, the Nazis did the wrong thing. They were just like, oh, they're the Nazis, and they just chose to do these things, and we're going to leave it up to you to decide whether or not the Nazis were right or wrong. Right. Right. No other subject is taught like this. No other subject in science is taught like this. No other subject in the social sciences is taught like this. And let's be honest, you can't give kids the evidence and ask them to pick and choose.

What age do you decide, okay can give you know vast amounts of scientific data to a kid like what age is that is it 13 is it 14 at what age so can you say okay guys you know here we go we're going to talk about the controversy now between evolution and creationism so i'm going to give you creationism, which any idiot can understand because it doesn't have any science. So it's just a bunch of buzzwords strung haphazardly together. And then I'm going to give you evolution, which can get kind of complicated and difficult. You pick which one you want to support. There's no way for them to write these books in a way that doesn't really tell them what they think they want them to think.

Of course. There's no way you can write this book and just regurgitate a shitload of data because there's a ton of data on fucking evolution. What, are you going to truckload that shit into the classroom? Or are you going to condense all the major arguments into something that resembles a summary and then give it to them? Well, right. I mean, that's what lay people always get, right? Yeah. That's the thing that kind of makes me mad. It's like, well, you've got to look at the evidence. Really? right. I mean, that's, that's what lay people always get, right? That's, that's,

that's the thing that kind of makes me mad. It's like, well, you got to look at the evidence. Really? No, I can't. I'm sorry. I can't. I don't have the time. Cause that's a full-time job to be an evolutionary biologist. Right. Nobody does that as a hobby. You know, it's not like fucking model rocketry. I'm just a, you know, my garage, I've got a little evolutionary science lab. Sure, sure. That's, you know, I've got generation after generation of bacteria, and I'm exposing them to different stimuli to see how they change over time. That's what I do in my garage. Nobody does that. It's absurd, right? Like, nobody's like, oh, what are you reading, Bill?

Oh, you know great you know i'm sitting at the beach and i just picked up this great new article from nature and it's you know it's about no yeah nobody does that right nobody i don't even know what it's about like i can't even make a joke about what it's about yeah you know the best you can do is you can pick up uh a pop science book like the greatest show on earth by dawkins right best you can do is you can pick up a pop science book like The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins. Right. And you can read through an evolutionary biologist summarizing the data for laypeople. That's as close to the evidence as laypeople get.

It's totally disingenuous to suggest that we can teach the controversy because you can't even teach the evidence. All you can do is teach summations of evidence to lay people. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. This is a great article. Seven ways in which Rick Perry wants to change the Constitution. And this is kind of insane. There's only one of these that is even, I think, even remotely rational. First thing he wants to do is abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article 3, Section 1 of the Constitution. You know, this is the worst idea I think of this bunch. The idea that you would force judges then to become tools of the political system.

Right. That's the advantage to a judge, right? Is you get them in and now it doesn't matter. Republican, Democrat, win, lose, you're here. The only way to maintain impartiality is to be involved in a system in such a way that you can't be kicked out of it. So you don't have to worry about your fucking next paycheck. Look at the problems with all the rest of our political system. Everybody is working so hard to get reelected all the time that they can't get any fucking work done because they're terrified of the

fickle nature of the American people booting them out for, you know, not working. You want to do the same thing to judges? You want to mire judges in the same shit that our legislature is mired in? That's insane. Yeah, that's really dumb. Well, and then, I mean, what do you got to,

you got to make them, you're forcing judges to become politicians then in a way. Right. And that's just a, that's not a good thing. We should be, we do you got to you got to make them your force and judges to become politicians then in a way. Right. And that's just a that's not a good thing. We should be but we should be trying to get more or less people to be politicians, not more. I mean, it's a problem that our politicians are so much like politicians. Fuck. It's like they forget that they're supposed to be legislature legislators.

You know, all they all they are is full time politicos. It's ridiculous. And he also wants Congress to have the power to override the Supreme Court with a two thirds vote. Then why bother having a Supreme Court? There's no reason to have a Supreme Court then, because if you can just override them with a two thirds vote, then just fucking dismiss that group. He also wants to get rid of the federal income tax. He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment. What does he want to do instead? Where's the money going to come from? I, you know, I'm fine with somebody saying,

get rid of the income tax, but give me a fucking valid option other than the income tax. Because you know, the government has to function. The government has to do things. They do things for us. I know that people don't think they do, but the government does a lot of things, a whole lot of things for us. And you can't just defund the government and be like, well, now there's no more government. Yeah. Welcome to Somalia. Sure. Right.

You know, this idea of like hyper libertarianism, you know, where the government is so small as to not exist, where you don't give them money and you don't fund them. And it's, you know, there's no countries that have no government that function really well. Right. That doesn't that doesn't happen. What happens is the fucking rule of law breaks down because you've gotten rid of law because law is enforced by the government. Right. you've gotten rid of law because law is enforced by the government. Right.

Right. You cannot, you can't have a safe and prosperous nation if you don't have government. There's legitimate arguments to be made about the size of government. You know, how big should we allow government to be in that? The fact that there's an ongoing debate about that is healthy. That's a good thing. We should always be looking at that and pissing and moaning about it and griping about it. You know, the day everybody agrees on the same thing is probably not a good day for the country.

You know, you've got to have that healthy debate, that vigorous back and forth. Those are the things that keep ideas in check and make sure that no one idea spirals out of control. But really, you're going to get rid of all the money coming into the government? The two that I really want to talk about, the two that I think are the most egregious on this list, and we'll post this list on our blog so you can take a look at all of them. But, you know, the last two, Tom, six and seven, I'm going to read them both. The federal constitution should define marriages between one man and one woman in all 50 states and abortion should be made illegal throughout the country. It does. I always am confused with how the Republicans look at the world. Don't they want a small government? Like, don't they?

Aren't they always bitching about small government? How is it that you say the federal cons, first off, you're changing the constitution, which should only be done, you know, in fucking in very, very, very, very, very extreme circumstances. I don't, I think you should just leave it alone. Just don't even consider changing it. But let's say you have to, why would you want to create more, more, a bigger government to say, oh, you can't marry who you want? Why do you want to do that? Aren't you supposed to be small government? I mean, you make laws to protect people from being harmed, right? You don't make laws to make sure that stuff you think is icky doesn't happen.

But that's not, that's ridiculous. That's not, like you said, that's not small government. That's – when the government is peeking in my bedroom to see what I'm doing, that's the biggest government – I mean that's like – Right. That's crazy. Right. That's a spy cam government. Sure.

But abortion should be made illegal throughout the country. Again, that's another piece of the government leaning in and saying you can't do certain things. piece of the government leaning in and saying you can't do certain things. Look, I understand. And I'm one of these people that I'm probably as far away from, you know, I'm still pro choice, but I'm as close as you can get to like the pro lifer type person while still being pro choice. There's plenty of ways in which you can, you know, use contraception in our you know, we we can make it available. There's free rubbers anywhere you look.

You can get a fucking free rubber. So don't you know, you shouldn't be using this as birth control. But at the same time, I also recognize that it's not my fucking place to tell you what to do with your fucking body. It's not my place to look at you and be like, you know, waggle my fucking finger at you and be like, I disapprove of what you're doing with your own body. Fuck you. I shouldn't have any you're doing with your own body. Fuck you. I shouldn't have any say in it and neither should you. Well, you know, this is just another example, right? Where these guys trust the states when they think the states are going to vote the way

they want them to. And then they want federal law when they want, you know, when they think that the states are not going to vote the way they want them to, you know, everything else, you know, you read this guy and he's always saying, well, leave it up to the states, leave it up to the states. But this one will make a federal law about it. Why? Why would this, why is this issue a federal fucking issue when all the rest of the time it's all about states' rights? Well, it's because you're nervous you might not win. Well, sure, because states' rights have already proven that people in this country, there's plenty of places in this country where homosexuals can get married.

Right. There's plenty of places in this country where the state has already said, well, we've made that decision. There's no integrity to this idea of small government. It's really just, well, I want small government in the sense that when my issues are going to win, I can say states' rights. And I want big government, but shh, don't tell anyone, when I think states' rights are going to swing the way I don't want them to swing. And it always – it wasn't always like this. As near as I can tell, it wasn't always like this. The Republican Party has changed in the last 20 years to become like this.

But I don't remember it being like this when I was young. No, I think it was hijacked by the religious right and then it became crazy. I think the Republicans, for whatever reason, they saw this group of rising religiously minded voters and they saw them and said like let's let's organize them into a voting block. They're too disparate. Let's make them into a voting block by creating a platform based around social issues

and in turn they've abandoned all of the sense that the party used to make, all the balance that party used to provide. Now there's no balance between the two parties, all the balance that party used to provide. You know, now there's no balance between the two parties at all. They're both equally fucking nuts. Yeah.

Of course, I don't know. Morgans, morgans, morgans. I might have to work down the drain. Sandy, come on, you don't. You're buried. Oh, F. Oh, I should at least never have to read one more F. You know, but it's not a big surprise that Rick Perry's having a hard time understanding these concepts.

His college transcripts just got released. This is fucking embarrassing. I would be fucking mortified if these were my transcripts. Oh, I cannot even imagine. There's a lot of things, it turns out, Rick Perry isn't good at. School being among them. It looks like Think and Thoughts is also chief among them. Rick Perry's grades, not so good.

And by not so good, I mean pretty fucking awful, actually. I'm just going to go down the list of some of the more egregious grades that he has. It may take a moment. First of all, he was an animal sciences major. I think science is not his forte given his D in organic chemistry, his C in physics, his F in organic chemistry too. How do you get an organic chemistry too if you got a D in the first one? I think that possibly electing somebody to president who has a D in principles of economics, that's economics 203. 203.

203? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry, but it's a 203 fucking class. Are you fucking serious? Oh, my God. It is a president of the United States gets a fucking D in a 203 class. It's fucking repulsive. Veterinary anatomy, a 202 level class D.

He got a D in feeds and feeding. I don't know what that is. I don't. There's one of them here that looks like meats. Yeah. I don't know what that is. I think it's Keats, isn looks like meats I don't know what that is I think it's keats isn't it I don't know what it is

I hope it's meats It's gotta be meats He got a fucking D in that He got a D in feeds and feeding Like you said that's fucking ridiculous Writing for professional men Is that what that is I don't know

English 301 D Okay but Tom Writing for professional men? Is that what that is? I don't know. Writing. English 301D. Okay, but Tom, you're missing where he got his A's now. And I'm going to read off all his A's. Okay? So here we go. I'm going to read off all his A's. All right.

Improv of learning, A. Yeah. World mill systems. I think it's military systems, A. Keep going. No, that's it. That's the entirety of his A's. Oh, that's it. it's Military Systems A. Keep going. No, that's it. That's the entirety of his A's. Oh, that's it.

That's the two A's. Is that what it is, though? I mean, it's like, what is course number AS201? I have no idea. It's World Mill Systems, M-I-L. I'm guessing it's military. I think that's got to be Military Systems. It's got to be.

But I don't know. But he got an A in it, so he knows what he's doing there. Yeah, I mean he got a B in gym. Once. He got a C in it too once. A C in gym class. This is not a smart guy. Like it's just – I'm sorry.

He's not a smart guy. This is a Texas A&M. Now I'm not disparaging Texas A&M. I'm not. I'm really not. But it's not Harvard, right? Right. I mean, it's not like he went to

one of the most difficult schools in the world and was just in over his head. He went to Texas A&M. And I'm sorry, I don't care what fucking school you go to. Econ fucking 203 is not going to be a hard class. You show up, you know, as long as you're not fucking partying at the frat and, you know, skipping class, you're probably going to be fucking just fine in that class.

I'm looking at just his 100 level classes right now, and I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Eight C's. Eight C's in his 100-level classes. That's outrageous. That is insane. That's fucking insane. I don't want to point to grades as some sort of indicator of, you know, intelligence, because there's obviously, there's things that are calculated into somebody's intelligence

and wisdom that is not in, you know, in grades. You know, you roll the 3D6, and and you see what you add and that sort of thing. But that was a gamer joke, Tom. You missed it right over your head. No, no. Yeah, that's not a thing. Anyway, there's other things that are calculated in there. And I don't want to say that grades only because there are some people who just are not good at school.

I get that. But this guy is not good at smarts. Okay? Listen to this guy talk. This guy is not good at school. I get that. But this guy is not good at smarts, okay? Listen to this guy talk. This guy is not good at thinking. This guy is not good at what it takes to even process a thought. And grades are just an indicator of that. I will say he did recently come out and say something that made a lot of sense to me.

Although he opposed the National Dream Act, which I think is ridiculous, he did support a main tenet of the bill that illegal immigrants can earn citizenship by serving honorably in the military. Fucking bravo. That kind of thing needs to be said again and again. I don't think there's any reasonable argument to be made where you say like, well, the guy served in our military, you know, honorably discharged from our military. Well, fuck them, send them back. They just, there's gotta be, you've got to do something to create paths for people. You have got to do that. I understand where you're coming from. Half of the bill is that,

and I get that. And I say, OK, bravo on that. But who are you willing to turn away then? You're willing to turn away the brightest, you know, illegal immigrants and say, no, you can't have citizenship. These are the people who are able to make it into college and, you know, excel in college in our in our country. These are people with little or no opportunity that are able to make it to a very high level of education in our country. And we're willing to turn them away? We're willing to say no? You know what?

You're really fucking smart and you did a whole lot with nothing. But we're willing to turn you away. That is – that's an awful, awful thing to do. I think that's – you know, you're first off – you know, these people are here and you need to work – you need to figure out a way in which to help these people become part of our country and not try to push them away. I don't understand anybody whenever they whenever they talk about, oh, those damn immigrants or whatever. That doesn't make any sense to me. When somebody has an anti-immigration policy, I don't understand where where their their thought process even comes from, because this country was based on immigrants. There's no way to have that policy and be like, well i got mine you know because that's what you're basically saying

well i got mine i don't give a fuck about anybody else i don't care fucking burn them and fucking live at the border i don't care pour some fucking kerosene on them because you don't care about anyone then you don't even care about your fellow man then if you don't care about you know if you don't care about people that are here that that are already here, that are working in a productive way. I understand the people that are like, oh, well, the criminals and whatever. Like I don't like criminals anyway, whether they're illegal immigrants or fucking regular criminals. Doesn't matter. You're a fucking criminal.

I don't like you, period. You should go to jail. If you're an illegal immigrant, great. Deport them, whatever you want to do. I don't care about that. What I care about is the productive people that come to this country. They work as hard as they can and then they can't get fucking citizenship. And all the only way that that he's saying they could get it is if they get into the military. No, I think the best and the brightest should have a fast track to citizenship in this country. I think that you're neglecting a very

important half of this bill. Oh, I agree. I mean, the Dream Act, we talked about the Dream Act. The Dream Act should have been supported. It should have gone through. There should have been a path. What country turns away? What country reasonably looks and says, you know what I don't want?

I don't want some really fucking bright people flooding into this country thinking their thoughts. Like, that's not, that's what I don't want. You fucking bright people flooding into this country thinking their thoughts. Yeah. Like that's not – that's what I don't want. You know, God bless America. Yeah. Get them out of here, boys. Pew, pew, pew. You.

The entire country is just Yosemite Sam. Like that's the entire country is just Yosemite Sam. Yosemite Sam did very poorly at Texas A&M. That's all I'm saying. Very, very poorly. Palin, in her non-Canada Sea to her, to her, her husband, who this is a guy who's never done her any good by speaking, by the way. Right.

This is a guy. There's never been a time. I mean, she does herself very little good by speaking. This is a guy who I don't think at any point he's ever anyone has ever said, man, that Todd Palin, he's a sharp one. He really got. I got to tell you, man, Todd Palin really got me on that one. Never happened.

Never in all the history of people that have known this guy. Anyway, there's a great video of Todd Palin being kind of cornered by somebody who's, you know, very upset. And she's like, hey, you know, what the fuck? Sarah Palin sold us out, ran for vice president, and then just fucking abandoned everybody for celebrity, like for just to be a celebrity. And, you know, what's the deal? And he basically says, well, look, we had a lot of debt.

We needed the fucking money. Wow. Well, I can we had a lot of debt. We needed the fucking money. Wow. Well, I can't blame her. I mean, couldn't you come up with a more convincing story, though? No, you can't. Because I think at this point it's obvious why she did it. She became a, you know, the moment she quit, she became a Fox commentator. She's getting paid by them.

She wrote, what, two books? She had a movie done about her life, that Going Rogue movie or whatever it was. Oh, jeez, don't you know. I think it was called, like, The Victor. What was it called? God, what was the name of it? I don't know.

Going Rogue was her book. Yeah, what was the name of that movie? Hold on a second. Let me do a quick little search. Palin movie. Undefeated, I think, is what it was called. The Undefeated, was think, is what it was called. The Undefeated, was it? But she was defeated.

She didn't even pick up on that key fact. It admittedly is false advertising, but I think it was The Undefeated. Let me look here real quick. Oh, gosh. Safe search back on because Palin movie. Safe search. Safe search. Okay. The Undefeated, it was called. back on because Palin movie produced something else. Safe search, safe search. Okay, The Undefeated it was called.

Not Who's Nailing Palin. But it's funny because, you know, like she has, you know, she had all this stuff that she went out and did right afterwards, right after she stepped down. What kind of person, here's the thing that I want to say to people who think Sarah Palin is a good idea as a legislator, as a, as an executor or a legislator or whatever she's good.

She's going to be an executor, right? That's what she's trying to run for. Maybe we don't know yet. Maybe who knows what she's doing. She's just going around the country in a fucking RV, giant RV, um, petitioning to have her face put on Mount Rushmore. But anyway, she's got, here's what I would say to those people. She was an Alaskan governor and then decided midterm, nah. So I don't know that I would trust her with, you know, the all of it.

You gave her one 50th of it and she said, nah. I don't know that i want to go let's put her in all we're fucking all in palin i don't want her to get halfway through her term just like and just quit it's a good thing that she's not a viable candidate i think i think that's an advantage although to have michelle b Bachman sort of fill her crazy shoes. Like when Michelle Bachman slipped the ruby red slippers off of Sarah Palin and fucking put them on instead of clicking her heels down the yellow brick road of insanity. I don't think any of us have won. Like it's very hard to be like, Palin seems out of the picture.

Well, glad we got Bachman and Perry. The thing with Perry that scares me is he's one of those regular old guys. I'm just a good old boy. Well, that'll never work out of Texas. And that's the scary fucking thing, right? Because that shit worked before, and it worked not just for fucking one term, okay? That worked for a long time. So that's scary in itself.

So Perry, I'm not, I'm not willing to chunk into that, into that sort of inserted into that sort of demographic, but I will say with, with Bachman, I think she is visibly more crazy and unhinged than Sarah Palin is. So her being in the race to me says there's going to be more people are just gonna be like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not a good idea. Whatever she is, whatever kind of creature they've fucking genetically created to be Michelle Bachman, we are not interested in it. We don't care what you

say. We're not interested in it. But Palin had this sort of folksy going rogue thing and she had a lot of charm and a lot of people fell for it. And I think she was a scarier contender, I think, than Bachman. While Bachman's policies and thoughts are scarier, I think she was a scarier contender, I think, than Bachman. While Bachman's policies and thoughts are scarier, I think that she can't hide those things. Yeah, Palin's chances were better.

For all the fun it is to make fun of Michelle Bachman, I don't think she's going anywhere. I don't think she's got any legs on her hand. I hope not. How is she going to motivate the middle? She's just going to be like, bah! Nothing she says makes any sense to anyone. She's just going to stand there and be like, You're a Jehovah God. You're a Jehovah God.

Fucking crazy person. In additional crazy leadership news, Kim Jong-il visited Russia recently. Now, Kim Jong-il doesn't usually leave North Korea. I don't blame him, to be honest with you. No, I don't either. If I were Kim Jong-il, I wouldn't leave North Korea very often. A, it can't be terribly

safe. You're nuts. Yeah, sure. You're a fucking lunatic. But B, I would be so jealous. Right? When you're in North Korea, it's got to be easy to think, easier at least, to insulate yourself and be like, this is really the way the world is. This is really the way the world is. But once you leave and go virtually anywhere else and see, wow. Liberia, for instance.

Oh, no. But you've got at some point, you've got to look around and be like, why are all the other leaders doing better than me? Yeah. You know, it'd be like, this guy is clearly the last picked in dodgeball. You know what I mean? Like, he's just sitting in the playground alone. Anyway, this is kind of a scary visit. He went to Russia.

He hasn't been there since 2002. And they held some talks about putting a pipeline through North Korea to South Korea. This is a this is kind of a terrifying idea. The idea that North Korea would be in any way responsible for a pipe of any sort like they shouldn't be responsible for anything cylindrical in general. Like that's a shape that should be not allowed. But the idea that a gas pipeline that feeds South Korea, the sworn enemy of North Korea. Yeah.

Everyone's a fucking sworn enemy of North Korea. That that would run through crazy town. That's that is a fucking terrifying idea. Well, I am leery of anyone even remotely trying to do any kind of business with this guy. Don't try to don't try to just just forget he exists. Don't try to put any trade on him or anything like that. Eventually, people are going to realize in that country that, you know, he's a fucking crazy person and we need to get get him out of there. Because, you know, there's there's these people are starving there. They're starving. Tom, you saw a documentary recently that showed how crazy it was

there. We've talked in the past about how nutty it is in North Korea. North Korea is a scary, scary place on earth. And it needs to be either, you know, you need to get in there and depose the leader and get him out of there. Or you need to just let that thing break down on its own because it's bound to break down on its own if you leave it alone. You certainly can't trust them to be a reasonable actor in a business transaction. I mean you're going to run a pipeline through and then now they've got your pipeline. That is a terrible thing to do. You're just like, well, I thought I could trust Kim Jong-il. Like, how does that sentence end in a way that doesn't make you sound like an asshole?

I really thought I had a handshake agreement with Kim. I mean, this is a guy who's crazy. He is fucking insane. All you need to do is watch the mass games. They have these mass games there that they put on just for him because he likes them. He likes, they go on for fucking weeks at a time and they're just crazy. It's like, it's like a spectacle of madness. His whole country is a spectacle of madness and you're going to do business with him.

I wouldn't sell this guy a gallon of milk. I'd be afraid he'd pour it all over his head and cluck like a chicken. He's nuts. Actually, I would sell him a gallon of milk if he'd do that. Like if he promised to pour it over his head and cluck like a chicken, I'd be like, you know what? You could just have the milk for free. How's that? finally i think our last story of the day um let's end on a depressing note, Tom. What do you say? Well, we started on one, so

why not? Bookends. America and Afghanistan are close to signing a pact which would allow thousands of American troops to remain in the country until at least 2024. I gotta say, first of all, if we're there until 2024, we're there forever. Right. I mean, we're just there.

I mean, it's just we just America signs a pact to stay in fucking Afghanistan forever. Once you're there, 23 years after the precipitating event that caused us to invade Afghanistan, we just fucking like some people just fucking live. Right. And that's it. I think this is a terrible idea we need to reduce the amount of foreign intervention um and not you know extend our commitments fucking ad infinitum for another decade there's got to be some you know there's there's obviously things over there that that we want to protect our interests in. Right. There's some sort of business interests that are there that we're paying, you know, the military to protect these

interests because there's no reason for us to be over there for that long. You know, at this point, the guy we went over there, the one guy we went over there to kill, we've killed the government that we went over there supposedly to oppose, even though we technically really weren't even involved in that until they said, no, you can't have this guy. The Taliban is really out. I mean, I know that there's still a force over there, but, you know, at a certain point you want to say, well, this is something that other people have to deal with.

You know, I understand that, that they were, they were removed by us and we didn't want them in there, but I think we didn't want them in there because they said no. Like, we were mad. And I'm not going to get down on the U.S. for what they did over there. I think, you know, initially, I think a lot of people were behind what was happening in Afghanistan. And I think I was one of those people. I was angry. I wanted to wield the sword of the U.S. military against someone. We did. And, you know, we appeased a lot of people. But at this point, we're you know, we need to we need to really consider some exit strategies that don't involve a quarter of a century somewhere. Yeah. No kidding. You know,

I know that we want to be close to Iran. This is really just the way they say in this, too, that they're not establishing base. We're not establishing bases. Come on. Yeah, you fucking are. You know, if you've got thousands of American troops, whether they're our bases or whether they're Afghanistan's bases, let's be real honest. If we want them to be our bases, all we have to do is say, my base, and now it's our base. So, yeah, okay, it's Afghanistan's base in name alone. But, you know, the real truth is, hey, man, we'd like to be close to Pakistan and Iran. That's what we'd like. We want to we want to sit here where we can intervene in more places across the world as often as we'd like with strategic impunity. Well, another thing that costs a lot of lives, too, Tom, is, like, there's not a good track record of people taking over fucking Afghanistan. Okay. There's not a good track record

of that. The Soviets tried to do it in, you know, in the eighties, I think it was, or in the seventies or eighties and they got fucking hammered. We tried to do it too. The thing is, is that it's, it's a country that allows people to hide. They can do a lot of guerrilla warfare on you and they can hide there. And there's a lot of places to hide and you just can't find them. And it's a war you can't win with the type of military we have. It's just a war we can't win. It's a war we can't we can't control what happens over there. So what we need to do is just step away and say, you know what, if you do anything wrong in the future, we're going to step in again. But, you know, here's your country. Do what you got to do. You know, we're going to let you be, you know, whatever you want to be until you do

something really stupid again. And then maybe we'll step back in again. We got, we got some good email. We got some, uh, ratings on iTunes. We appreciate all of the ratings on iTunes. Um, we really do. So if you've got an iTunes account, we would encourage you to keep going on there and rate us. iTunes sees that. Yeah. And rate us what you think we're worth. You know, last time we were kidding around about five, somebody came in and gave us a one, although it seemed like a positive rating. They were like, oh, you guys asked for a five. Look, rate us what you think you were worth. I mean, we were just kidding around. Obviously we're joking around with what, you know, we deserve a five or whatever. Rate us what you think we should get. If you want to rate

us on iTunes, it's just a nice way for people to see, Hey, uh, you know, this, this podcast obviously has a lot of followers. Um, look on, you know, the really major podcasts, they have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reviews from people who just took the time out of their day to say, Hey, I really liked this podcast. I'd like other people to know I like this podcast. Rating on iTunes, though, I think comes secondary to telling other people about the podcast, Tom. Absolutely. I think, you know, we've gotten a lot of people to tell one other person about what's going

on, and we've gotten a good response that way. So my suggestion, if you want to help us out, if you like the show and you like what we're doing and you'd like to see us produce more shows, my suggestion would be just go on, either share it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, share it on Google plus. Uh, if you want to blog about it, you know, you could put a blog about it. If you want to put a post on Reddit about it, put a post on Reddit or some other message board that you're involved in, tell people about it. Tell one friend, you know, what I would do is if I had friends that wanted to hear it and I was on Facebook, I would just share the post that we put and maybe put a couple ads at people say, Hey,

at Tony, I think you'd like this podcast so that they actually get a chance to take a look at it and listen to it. Tell the people, you know, sort of target aim at the people that you think would enjoy it. And so far we've gotten a lot of great feedback. So I'm going to go into some of the messages that we've gotten. I really think your show will keep growing. It's got a lot of humor about current events like Stewart's and Colbert's show. That's a fucking hefty comparison. That's a huge stretch.

Those people are professional and funny. They've got a team of writers. They do, yeah. I wake up 30 minutes before we record. That's my, I'm sleeping 20 minutes through our recording, but also gets serious a lot too. It's really opened up my thinking about what's going on in the world. It's remarkable how most people don't ever stop and think about anything critically. Thanks guys. Keep up the good work, John. We did get some disagreement with our coverage of the riots. You know, I know we have some listeners who are in the U.K.

I'd love to hear from you guys about your thoughts on the riots. I'd love to have a conversation on our page, on Cognitive Dissonance's website. That would be fantastic. Noah disagrees with us, says, The riots in London are perpetrated by the same people who commit crime and destroy their community on a less spectacular way, of course. As a matter of course. As a matter of course. If they were generally interested in improving their community and inequality, they would not be taking actions that would make their community and inequality even worse.

They riot for days. I think that's he's quoting me there because London's government is unwilling or unable to deploy measures to stop them. Also, the riots are being done by people from all racial backgrounds. So I disagree with your take on it, Noah. I do appreciate you coming to us with your feedback. This, I think, is a conversation I'd love to see on our Facebook page. I'd love to see this on our website. You know, go on to either of them,

because we've got listeners who are going to be much closer to this action, so to speak. I, you know, when you say this, I want to just I want to just talk directly to Noah real quick. When you say that, you know, these crimes are done by people who commit this stuff in a less spectacular way every day, then why why do the riots stop and why did they start? Because there had to be some sort of catalyst to start them. If they're just people who just riot because that's what they want to do, then they would be rioting right now because you said that the government is unwilling to deploy measures to stop them. Well, then why didn't they continue and why didn't they – why did they start at a certain

point? There had to be something that started it. And everything that I look towards is that the, that Dugan person was shot and there was a protest and that's what sparked it. The closest thing I can connect it to Tom in our recent history is Rodney King, right? When Rodney King was beaten and then the, the, you know, when Rodney King was beaten and that footage came out, nobody rioted. When Rodney King's people, the people who beat Rodney King, went through the justice system and didn't get any time, riots sparked. And those people, they burned down their own neighborhoods.

They beat people up in their own neighborhoods. They were very angry. But the catalyst for that to start, the thing that started all that was the verdict for Rodney King. So there was some sort of political issue that caused the riots and then they went on for a while there. So that's what we were saying before is there's something that caused it. Something had to cause it because if there wasn't, they would just be rioting forever. You don't get – you don't wake up on the third day of a riot and stretch and wipe your eyes. Oh, God. Time to go rioting for no reason at all.

God, man, what have I not looted today? Let me see. That's just that's not how that I mean, it's just not how it works. I mean, rioting comes from rage and anger. You know, that's that's where that comes from. comes from rage and anger you know that's that's where that comes from and it's not like i i have a hard time believing that there's just a segment of ne'er-do-wells who like do they all like text each other like ne'er-do-well 384 at yahoo.com uh meet me in street at 4 p.m for riot lol yeah like how does that work you know it doesn't, clearly there has to be some event, like you said, which motivates people in mass because they're not organizing to be criminal. You know, I'm not suggesting a criminal element doesn't exist in every society.

Certainly they do. Some larger, some smaller. And they they commit criminal acts and they should be condemned roundly. And there's probably people in this riot that are hanging on that are saying, fuck, man, I get a free TV out of this. I can fucking break something. That's fucking awesome. I'm sure those people exist. Absolutely. Those people exist. And I don't discount that.

But I think that there's more to it than just people that are just bad people that wanted to do something bad. And you've got to ask yourself, too, why are they in such a bad way? Why are these people bad people that want to do bad? Are there any outside extenuating circumstances that are making them bad? Most of the most crime-filled areas in our country, in the United States, are poverty-stricken areas. So what's a good correlation between crime and poverty? Why do those people that are poor, why are they more involved in crime than other people who are, you know, more affluent? Why? What's the connectors there?

And, you know, those connectors are pretty easy to see. So maybe, you know, you're dealing with people who are involved in a lot of, you know, that have, you know, that are in crushing poverty and they have nowhere else to turn. So there might be some other things involved. I see which I see where you're coming from and what you're saying, Noah, is what a lot of people are saying about it. So I'm not, I'm not going to discount what you're saying, but it just, a lot of factors don't make a lot of sense to me. We also got a message from Mike.

Hey guys, I know less than you on iTunes. So sorry about the inability to validate your efforts with stars. I want you to send me gold fucking stars. That's what I want. I love that statement. That is a fucking. When I get 10 of them, I get my book at prize. It's a fucking great statement.

Like, you have to fucking. Here's your stars. It's almost like he's patting us on the head. That's fucking awesome, man. Way to go, Mike. I'm also not much of a letter to the editor kind of person. And in general, feel some discomfort giving sycophantic responses. But I've been

listening to all these atheist podcasts for a couple of months and some are really good. And I've now concluded that you guys are the best. We like you too, Mike. Fucking all I have to say is about time you came around. I mean what the fuck? He goes on, you guys are fucking

perfect. Tell me something I don't know only when i listen to you do i laugh out loud enough for the neighbors to hear and what's more it's that you are smart and formed and informing you're like the quintessential funny smart friend who you go to for perspective on all the maddening nonsense in the world and i like that you keep it political unlike these other shows that pretend two things. One, not everything is politics, which of course it is. And two, there are potential conservative GOP listeners out there. Yeah, right.

You know, the one thing that's sad about this email is that it's addressed to the point of inquiry, guys. You know, thank you, Mike. I think this is great. Mike, at the end of his letter says he wants to get active in church state issues. So if we had any suggestions on how to start, Mike, that what we did was start a podcast. So that's what we did to get involved in that sort of thing. But I really, you know, I wish I knew a way in which somewhere to point you other than

you say, you know, most atheist groups appear to be confined to online organizations. That's really where I would send you is online. I don't really know of anybody who would be able to help you. But what I will say is let's put a call out to our listeners. out to our listeners. If you have a way in which to get involved in either political issues that deal with atheist issues that also, you know, those two things combine, if there's some way in which for you to get involved in that, post it on our Facebook page. You know, you can recruit through us. Use us as a recruiting tool. This is a way in which for you to meet other atheists, meet other people that have the same ideas as you. So use the space that we provide,

the Facebook and the comment section on our blog, to talk to other people that listen the same ideas as you. So use the space that we provide, the Facebook and the comment section on our blog, to talk to other people that listen to the show. Right now, we have 70 people or so that like us on Facebook. That's sort of going a little slower than our actual downloads. So if you want to get involved in a conversation, go to Facebook and like us on Facebook and then jump into the conversation. And you can find out different ways in which to maybe work with your community and work with the other people that are involved in these sorts of issues. Yeah. I would really love to see our, our podcast be a place for people to meet. I think that would be, I think that would be awesome. I

think that would be terrific. So, and certainly those people exist and they're, you know, for whatever reason, there's some really smart people that are listening to this show. There's not some really smart people who actually do the show. Yeah, but the people who listen, they're pretty swift. So, yeah, just if you want to post something on there, if you have some sort of cause that you want to champion that is, you know, that has an atheist or skeptic or liberal or, you know, heck, even conservative causes. I'm not going to, you know, as long as it's not like fucking let's put put the 10 commandments up somewhere. I'm not going to delete it from our page, you know? So if you have some sort of cause that you want to champion, you know, go ahead and put it on our page. See if other people will get involved in it. Carlo is the last person who commented. And I just want to read

this, this really quick, Tom. Carlo says another great episode, demonic Amaterasu. And he says, doesn't that sound like a Dragon Ball Z character for the win? I got to agree. The demonic Amaterasu and he says doesn't that sound like a dragon ball z character for the win i got to agree the demonic amaterasu that we talked about last time the fire goddess so to speak that had sex with everybody in japan uh that was a lot of fun to talk about because people it really showcases the crazy that exists in the world that's a hot pocket i'll tell you that. You've been wanting to say that all week. I have. I've been wanting that joke. Tom texts me after the last show, and he's like, oh, my God, I totally should have had this joke. I should have said this joke. I've been saving it up.

I see Carlos send the email. I'm like, oh, I get a place for my Hot Pocket joke. I'm 11 years old. That's a lot of people. My voice deepened early, but a lot of people would be surprised. You know what deepens your voice is sex with a fire god. It did. It actually should raise your voice a little bit.

That'll put some hair on your chest, I'll tell you that. So, as usual, please spread the word about our podcast. You know, like we said, all the different ways in which you can get in touch with us. Remember that you can leave a voicemail. We'll play your voicemail. If you want to leave us a voicemail, you can call us at 740-743-6828.

That's 740-74-DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. You can send us an email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. You can leave a comment on our blog. Talk to us on Facebook. Talk to us on Twitter. Go to our site at dissonance-podcast.blogspot.com, and you can find all these different ways in which to download the show, subscribe to the show, buy Android apps and or shirts if you're interested in shirts and garbage and junk. We sell that stuff too.

But there's ways in which to share our podcast, so we encourage everybody to do that. And as always, Tom, we're going to leave everybody with the skeptic's creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. mommy issue hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo-quasi-alternative acupunctuating pressurized

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human healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thank you for listening to Cognitive Dissonance. If you want to reach us by phone, you can call us at 740-743-6828. That's 740-74-DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. Send us an email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com.

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