Head-ON With Robyn Roxanne Kincaid - Head-ON With Roxanne Kincaid, 29 April 2026

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

A listner remarked to me after I closed the show that my conversations with David in Oregon are "Masters-level information." What we do here is unlike any other broadcast. 

The password is proof. It's showtime. Here we go, live from behind the corn phone curtain. It's head-on with Roxanne Kincaid. Three hours of cussin and discussin with America's only liberal transvillie elitist right here, right now, on the head-on radio network.

Brought to you in part by Cole River Mountain Watch, who invites you to be part of the uprising against mountaintop removal, CRMW.net. And now, from high in the hills of West by God, Virginia, here she is. Roxanne Kincaid. Well, howdy. And here we go, off and running on this 29th day of April, 2006. This is the horn.

Head on dot live is where you'll find us on the interweb tubes. That's where you go if you'd like to be part of the. Mary Wacky Zaney, Real-Time Madcap Multimedia extravaganza That is the horn chat room in the old holler tree over at Discord Easily accessed on the chat room page at head-on.com. Yeah, that's exactly where you go. And, well, that's if you're listening live. If you remember the podcasting contingent of the Horn Family Community Congregation,

well, thank you very kindly for joining us that way. It's so good to share these hours with you whatever time you're listening. And, well, I hope these three hours mean as much to you as they do to me. Hi, I'm Roxanne. One more day left in the month of April. And fingers crossed, let's see, done a little quick ciphering. Yeah, there we are. No, like I said, if you're listening live, feel free to pop by the aforementioned Mary Wacky Zaney.

The Discord version, the old holler tree version of the Mary Wacky Zaini, is actually more accessible and has greater functionality than did the old chat room. So give it a try. I want to get started this evening, sending our VIII. very, very best thoughts out to our dear friend Sylvie. She let me know just at airtime in hospital. Keep me in your thoughts. Chest pain.

Hopefully not a heart attack. I hope it isn't. I sincerely hope it isn't Sylvie. We all love you dearly. And maybe it's just a little upset from that rich food and high liver. living. That's what we'll tell ourselves for now. But I know how nerve-wracking that can be, and you are, in fact, in our best thoughts. Just sit back and let the medical professionals do what the medical professionals do, and let us know as quickly as you've gotten the good word

that all-clear has been sounded. We think the world of you, Sylvie. Truly, we do. And a lot of goes out to you. So, and, and, uh, from Lee in New York, the password proof, as in the key measurement of the beverages of Patel and Heggseth, Lee, thinking of the late William Charles Duncanfields, W.C. Fields. Yes. There's nanny goats milk. It's very sweet.

You know, I keep that club in my bag in case, I see a snake. I bought it in Canada. Hand me that Canadian club. I love it. I love it when we're on the same wavelength. Yes, indeed. That's exactly what the password refers to. Oh, by the way, for those of you who have accounts over at Blue Sky

or maybe haven't gotten into the old holler tree, Micah with her posts for each show over at Blue Sky. sky. Our account is at head on dot live. Well, she also includes the Discord link for you to get into the end of the chat. So if you're hearing this and you're on Blue Sky, avail yourself of that link and pop by and enjoy the merry, wacky, zany. Indeed. Thank you for that, Micah. That's a great idea. Let's see. Some other things. Well, every program here at the horn begins with gratitude in this program is no different. So thanks go out to our 29th day of the month subscribers and contributors via PayPal.

Thank you so much, one and all. Thank you to Kim. Love from Kim in Kansas. Thank you so much, Kim. And thanks as well to Reggie there. Hey, Reggie, thank you so much. We are down to... Goodness me. How about that?

We're down to $4,20095 to finish the month of April. Making progress, $4295. That's so very helpful. Again, thank you, Kim, and thank you, Reggie. At this point in time, if we want to be fully funded for the month, or halfway funded for the month of April, April, that would be another $1,295 bucks to get halfway through April. So thanks, Kim, and thank you, Reggie.

Thanks to anybody who jumps in through the course of the program or when the program's not on air during the other 21 hours of the day. Thank you. Yeah. And let's see here. I got a note earlier today from our pal Matt in San Francisco. Just a sort of general overview from Matt on where his life is and kind of where ours is as well, because we're all sharing in this absolutely craptastic timeline.

Matt said, I've been dropping in and out of the live program whenever I can muster the fortitude to face reality. I get it. Oh, I do. Not that it requires fortitude to listen to the horn. I require the fortitude to accept the things I cannot change, one of which is the leadership of this country at the moment. I can safely say my mental state upon waking to face the day is exhausted.

Some days are tougher than others when you start from a place of exhaustion. Yep, right there with you, Matt. Right there with you. Yeah. I'm still working like a crazy. person that continues. I've continued to grow the business of my current establishment to be solidly in the top three of the company in sales. Woohoo! And of course my reward is opening a second location. This one in downtown San Francisco, inside a secured government facility. And then two weeks later, open another in Richmond, California, in a second secured government facility.

So I've been keeping all the plates spinning and interviewing folks to hire and help me keep the future plates in the air. If someone would have told me that at the age of 61, I would venture out on a completely new career trajectory and be running several restaurants, I would have told them they were smoking crack. But here I am. My husband and I went to see a comedian at the Castro Theater on Friday of last week. Oh, that sounds so fun. It's the first time I'd been inside since they did a $40 million upgrade. We were late, so I didn't get to experience the organ rising from beneath the floor and wrapping up their set with San Francisco, open your golden gate.

Don't let no stranger wait outside your door. But from what a wonderful song, but from what I've heard, it's still a thing. It was a really great night. The theater was even more gorgeous than I remembered. They basically removed all the old theater chairs, which were hideously uncomfortable, and redid the flooring so that you could have chairs or not have chairs, and the chairs were actually comfy.

So, that was nice. Yes, I can imagine. Jessica Carson was the headliner. I'm going to have to look her up. She has quite an online presence, best known for her crowdwork. She was genuinely funny, and it was a great night. She kept commenting on what a great audience San Francisco is, because we're not uptight.

We're quick to laugh and not be offended. Sure, it could have been insincere, but it didn't feel that way. There's something about being among your community, collectively enjoying a live performer. It just fills the soul. Performance part was over. She started off by saying, I just want to start by saying publicly that I support trans rights, and we all need to lift up our trans brothers and sisters and be united as a community, which meant thunderous applause.

God, that would be warm. wonderful to hear. It was one of those moments like that feeling of being able to deeply exhale after anxiously breathing shallow for a while. I'm a little bit of a shallow breathing around here, man. So she then talked about her wife and how when she travels, they often are apart, and it's not practical to travel together. But tonight, tonight, she happened to be there, and she introduced her to the crowd. The wife was a pretty amazing individual who was a doctor who counsels gay and lesbian folks who were raised Orthodox Jewish but want to escape that life, which she had done earlier in her life, not even watching a TV show until she was 28 years old.

Anyway, it was just a very affirming evening, and I really haven't had some good old-fashioned belly laughs in quite a while. It is, it's, laughter is medicine, and what it does and the chemicals it releases. I mean, there's no getting around it, so I'm so glad you were able to just sit back and relax and put everything aside for a little bit, Matt, and just be subsumed in paroxysms of laughter. As we made our way home, Matt says, and I saw my first Zoox Mobile. Oh, dear, another thing I've never heard of that I have to look up now. Zooks Mobile, a driverless car that is basically a box with windows on every side, that fits four or six people that can sit facing each other. The driverless Waymo cars are old hat and pretty much accepted as inevitable.

But the Zooks, I hope I'm saying that right. That's newer, so has some excitement when you see your first one out in the wild, so to speak, looking up at the billboards that pepper the city, each one displaying some kind of, kind of AI-related company with phrases and words that only someone who works in AI would even understand. Yeah, we're in a bubble out here, but the air is fine, and really, more people should join us. Oh, would that I could. With the ever-increasing push to incorporate computers into every aspect of our lives, it felt

really nice to experience a vibrant community of open-minded people just enjoying themselves and having a few laughs. So, May will be action-packed and fun-filled as I get to offer, full-time, no weekends and benefits, something that's increasingly hard to find nowadays. Lots of work ahead, but right now I'd rather have my head down making a positive difference in people's day-to-day lives, as opposed to obsessing over the destruction of everything I thought this country was about. Oh, mercy, don't I understand that? This afternoon is my appointment with the surgeon, so I presume that's probably ongoing right now, even as I'm reading Matt's note.

Where I'm bracing to hear I need a hip replacement. Seems, at this age, even if mentally you're ready and willing to work like a dog, my body gets a vote, and it looks like it's voting to be repaired and take a few weeks to heal. So someone will have to carry the torch for a while while I put my feet up and follow the doctor's orders. Yeah, I mean, I've heard varying accounts of recovery from something like a hip replacement, and it ranges from, well, that sucked, to, I really wasn't that bad. So I'm rooting for the, it really wasn't that bad angle for you, Matt.

If you can put your feet up, put them up, and yeah, take a breather, enjoy yourself. God knows you deserve it. I just did my taxes the other day, Matt says. When that refund hits, I'll be offering up a challenge, which, as of late, the back of the brown paper bag oh my god this is so true the back of the brown paper bag is more like a scroll the town crier pulls out and upon opening drops to the ground and rolls for about 20 feet before the total can be seen looking forward to when i can take in an entire broadcast live as it happens signed grateful and exhausted matt in san francisco thank you matt and if you're at the surgeon's office

now good luck rooting for you and i have no doubt You all have great doctors in the Bay Area, and I'm sure you've got a dandy, and when the time comes, they'll do it right. I wouldn't necessarily feel that way here in the hills. They might be just as prone to strap a hunk of tree trach. trunk on you and maybe whittle it down and make it look a little bit passable and whatnot and make sure the termites were all out and everything and send send send me on my way there you go good as new colump calump thanks doc colump colump there's a reason i've had to go out of state for all of my surgeries yeah so all the best all the best matt we love you dearly and i'm so glad

you were able to get out and have a little fun, you and your hobby. And I hope you can do more of that, because when you can, that really is the key to surviving this absolute garbage timeline. It is. What's that, Jeremy? Jeremy says, Matt, Alex Jones would like a word with the comedian and her wife and you and your husband about what you're all doing to the poor little frogs. Hey, the frogs were born that way, Jeremy. And thanks, Jeremy. Thank you so very kindly. We just dropped the funding total to...

Well, here we go. $4,200, and $93. 42-93-17. So we've got some loose change to deal with, courtesy of a member of the juvenile delinquent triumvirate there at the old holler tree. For those wondering, the juvenile delinquent triumvirate is the Camel Cardinal, Brother Deacon Asa, Jeremy,

and, of course, the Colombian spy. Emilio. ain't nobody quite like them right and yeah as to as to the password this evening oh by the way I don't know yet I may have to uh for stall I may have to end the program early we don't have to use a big word for that Roxanne everything doesn't require a big word but I may end it early again to go and play amateur Uber driver again. And I'll program note, yeah, it's just some stuff to get done, get taken care of before we

get into the fullness of the program. First of all, I can say, I've never been mad at weather. Sure, when it snows like this time of year, I'm inclined to go out and just generally cuss each individual. but there's not going to be anything come of it and we're getting really close to mother's day so that means we're out of the woods for snow for a few months but i've never gotten you know mad at what well now i am because we had some pretty humdinger spring thunderstorms blow through here early but well during the course of the entire day and the thunder and the thunder and the londinger and the Lightning.

Scared the golden one. And I don't like that. It makes me very, very, no, I don't, I don't care if it's the natural forces of nature. I don't like you if you scare that 110 pounds of beautiful golden fluph and love and wonder. No, I don't like it. Nah. But the standard disclaimer applies if we get hit by another one. There's every possibility in the world that we will.

If the program just suddenly disappears and you find yourself going, gee, why did Roxanne quit in the middle of the sentence? Well, she didn't. It's because the power went out and took the Internet with it. Oh, okay. So that's in case the program disappears. Hopefully it'll come back, but sometimes yes, sometimes no. That's terribly annoying.

I mean, we're talking to hard rain. We've got a metal roof here, and I was talking with Victoria earlier, and I said, you know, when it rains hard enough on a metal roof, it's almost like, it's almost stronger than a dose of ambient. You just go, and you're gone to sleep. It just happens that way. so again program note and if I do have to leave early it'll be around

oh you know 7.30 p.m. Eastern Daylight time or something like that but it's poor oh there's some thunder now damn you be quiet be quiet there's a don't you know there's a golden retriever in the mansion that this greatly bothers

shame on you shame you can't stand to see that wonderful boy upset he comes he comes running bless his heart he comes running and he parks right right in front of me so that i can wrap my arms around him and and reassure him but i think i think he i think his fundamental inclination is to make sure i'm okay oh god he's the he's better than about 99% of human beings, truth be told. I swear, he's such a good boy. And everybody who has fur babies knows the depth of that love and devotion.

So, well, we're getting started on things, but lo and behold, haven't heard from David in Oregon in a while. And there he is. Hey, David, how are you? Did me unmute my mic. Can you hear me? Yeah, you're fine. Oh, cool. Hi. Hi, how are you?

I'm, you know, surviving. Yeah, I know. Sounds like you're in the same boat. Yeah, it's leaky, and the sea around me is full of gasoline, and all I'm supplied with is a book of matches. So I saw this preview for this movie where this plane goes down, and there's a bunch of sharks in the water. I forget what it's called.

That's kind of a feel. that would be it yeah yeah so it it beats it beats it beats it beats being electrocuted you know at least at least that's what you know what nero says yeah i'm sorry i walked all over you you were saying no it's it's okay it's fine um nitric nero is the furthest thing from my mind at the moment to be honest yeah what did what were you saying when i interrupted. Oh, oh, a quick update on the bar thing. Yes, please. Okay, so they voted on March 26th, the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners did, to conditionally admit me to the bar. I don't know if I gave you that update. No, hold on. Even with the conditionally part, you still get a Ramalama ding-dong for that. Yes. So, they voted to conditionally admit me to the bar on a one-year, additional agreement.

I got, that was on March 26th, and they said they would have the agreement for me to sign in April. I got the agreement on the 27th of April, so I had to wait a whole month. Well, isn't that lovely? Yeah, they're fun. So I got the agreement. I signed that. I signed my oath form on Monday, and I sent that back to my attorney, who was going to

that to the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners. And I asked my attorney to ask them how long it would take for them to issue my bar number. I was expecting, I was like, oh, I signed this, now I'm going to get my bar number like this week, and it's going to be all great. No, of course not. Six to eight weeks, they said. It takes the, they got to send it. They got to send the agreement with a letter, a confidential letter filed under seal to the Oregon Supreme Court.

and they're going to file my application file under seal with the Oregon Supreme Court, typically take six to eight weeks for processing. The joke that I was making to keep myself from, like, not being mad, was that they're shipping my bar number from Singapore, and that's going to get second. It's going to get second customs. Six to eight weeks shipping and handling. I should have paid for the expedited shipping and handling.

Yeah. No, honestly, honestly, you remind me of something of eons ago decades upon decades um i ordered i ordered a game and it was it was one of those games you play on paper it didn't have yet and it was called sports illustrated's all-time all-stars baseball yeah i was a little baseball okay and it said six to eight weeks for delivery and i gave it week number one and then i was like okay when's it get here when's it get here once they get here. I can't wait to... Because it was a game where you could play, you know, like,

Babe... You know, you'd have a team with Babe Ruth on it. The All-Time All-Star Yankees versus, say, the All-Time All-Star, Boston Red Sox with Ted Williams. I mean, all the teams were just awesome. And I was so excited because... Anyway, six to eight weeks for delivery. It arrived on the last day of the eighth week. Of course it did. Of course.

And that engendered a joke in my family takes 68 weeks for delivery. So I understand, you know, your, your anticipation is far greater than that of a 12-year-old kid in Alabama, but I get it. I do get it, David. So Monday was like a roller coaster. Monday was like, oh, yeah, finally, my life is going to stabilize and I'm going to have. and then Monday Monday evening it was like oh we're going to go into the okay that's fine so the

the wrinkle little wrinkle here my certified student my certified law student certification expires one year after the date I graduated from law school and that happens to be May 18th

in like two weeks oh for Pete's sake I have no idea what my job is going to do. I sent an email to the court administrator in the Oregon Supreme Court. And I said, hey, is there any mechanism whatsoever to extend my law student certification until like the end of June to give time for the Supreme Court to process my application? And I sent them the agreement that I signed in my oath forum, and I sent them the letter of recommendation that my supervisor wrote to the Board of Bar Examiners. I sent them my court certification.

I sent them the affidavit David for my court certification. A blood sample, a fingerprint. No, they've already got the fingerprints. Right, right. And so I'm waiting to hear back, and I don't know. I feel in a more precarious position. now than I did before, which really, really, really sucks because I was, I was waiting on this the Board of Bar Examiner's decision because I figured, oh, when I get that, my life will

stabilize. I'll be able to, like, you know, I'll be able to work as an attorney. I'll be able to get, you know, I'll be able to make an attorney's salary again as opposed to $25 an hour. And, like, I had to borrow $400 to pay my rent this month. And like, I'm just, I don't know. This sucks. And the thing is, like, they know. They know that this is causing financial hardship because we told them. Yeah, they don't care.

And it still took them a month. If they knew it was going to be six to eight weeks and they knew I was like teetering on the edge of financial fucking ruin. I don't know why they didn't Like I don't know why it took them a month To get this agreement to me Well David They're they're a bar group They had to sober up

Oh well See what I did there I see what you did there yeah That's funny Thank you for thank you for making me laugh The And like the conditions are fucking bullshit You know

They're like not onerous at all, right? And it's, and from the conditions, it seems like they were not really concerned with, like, the criminal stuff. What they were concerned, it seems like to me was, like, me healing from the trauma of that. So it feels like to me that, like, they believed me. I mean, I may be ascribing something, but, like, looking at the conditions, it's all about, like, mental health. treatment and like continuing legal education credit hours of like here's the direct quote engage in CLE's continuing legal educations that help attorneys be more at peace with what they can't control and feel more comfortable during unpredictable times well somebody will somebody

please sing a rousing chorus of kumbaya I'm just like I have never been in control of anything my entire life. I am perfectly comfortable feeling, you know, anyway, my entire life has been uncertain since the day I was born. So I'm like, okay, I can do that 10 hours in a year, you know, easy. And then they want me to meet six times with the Oregon attorney assistance program, which is like a free, like, resource for, you know, if people, like, attorneys want to reach out for, like, mental health stuff. Oh my God, this is, this is straight out of catch 22, David. It all has been all along, but this is the part of catch 22 where they look at each other and say, see, we made him all better.

It's like, so we just want you to meet with people so that you can heal from the trauma that we just put you through for the last year. Yeah, so we just retramatized you and had you dredge up everything from all this shit from 20 years ago and the sexual assault and all this. and oh, we'll just just go meet with them a couple of times. And here's the kicker. It says here, as OAAP supports are voluntary and confidential, his compliance will be based on his own self-report.

So they don't even have any way to check that I'm doing it. Jesus, you're on unsupervised probation. I'm going to do it. Yeah. I scheduled an appointment for Monday for my first thing, because it says within 30 days of the date of the applicant's signs this agreement, but no later than the effective date, which is the date they give me my bar number, applicant will make contact with the Oregon Attorney Assistance Program.

And so I scheduled an appointment for Monday because I'm going to adhere to the agreement that I signed. Good man. But the best part about this, and I've got it highlighted on the thing, the board determined that the applicant has the requisite character and fitness to practice law. That's one of their recitals. That it says, however, information obtained confirmed that rehabilitation efforts should be continued. The board has concluded applicant can sufficiently support his rehabilitation as he enters the legal profession through compliance with the terms stated in this conditional admission agreement.

For a probationary term beginning the date of admission. So, yeah, I'm unsupervised probation. You know, okay, and that part is the part of Alice's restaurant where he asked, you got a lot of nerve asking if I'm moral enough to join the army and go and kill women and children after being busted for littering. I mean, it's, and the thing is, like, I was just like, I honestly was expecting something way worse. So, like, when I got it, I was like, oh, that's it. I can do that.

No, yeah, and in fact, uh, I like, yeah, I can do it. Jessica in the Greater Rochester Metropolitan Co-Prosperity sphere said, Yay, David, probationary or not, I can empathize with you. My new roller skates, roller derby, are a six to eight week weight two. I custom ordered them with the retro Rydell logo. Here's five bucks to celebrate. Thank you, Jessica. And by the way, Micah said, I swear they do this shit on purpose.

They do. But congratulations on the admit, though. I am getting a bar number. It's just stuck in customs. Maybe CPB should, you know, maybe, yeah. No, the bar number, the bar number, the bar number. The bar number issuance is run by a committee of lawyers who were former English majors and are going to have to sort out counting first.

Because as we all know, all lawyers can divide anything by three, but beyond that, mathematics can be a real challenge. Right, right. So I am going to be a barred attorney. The conditions of the agreement are not bad, and I just don't know what's going to happen with my job. And that's the kicker, you know? Because I have to wait six to eight weeks, are they going to keep me on? I don't know. They haven't talked to me about it. I have no idea. So I'm, ironically, I feel like I'm in a more precarious. position that I was before, which is fun, which is super fun. But some of the CLEs don't sound too bad. Let's see. What you want to do when selecting your CLEs is check the venue and find out who has the best

lawyering snacks. Okay. I mean, no, I did. Yeah, it's like, no, I want the caviar CLEs. Yeah, I mean, some of them are. I don't want the peanut butter and cracker CLEs. Yeah, I want the good tortilla chips with the good, with the good sauce. Yeah, none of those off-brand, no, none of those off-brand tortilla chips that are all thick and stuff.

No, no, no, right, no. I want the restaurant style. No, some of them aren't, some of them don't sound too bad. Like, some of them actually sound pretty interesting. professionalism for personal wellness and professional fulfillment. I wonder what that's about. I guarantee you that one will open up with the quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., that it is possible to live greatly in the law.

Professional fulfillment. As many billable hours as possible. Excellence, perfectionism, and well-being. That actually might be helpful for me, because I do have, I do suffer. from like perfectionism, but that's because the childhood trauma, but you know. Yeah. You know, by the way, I found out something the other day.

I won't name my source or anything, but this person looked at me and said, hey, did you know that spending a lot of time reading as a child that that's dissociation? I was like, well, son of a gun, that makes sense now. And I thought I just enjoyed reading. Isn't that like, I mean, don't we have like a whole, like, young adult, like, fantasy kind of like genre or like child fantasy to like C.S. Lewis and like escape into Narnia and that? Well, there's that. And then there's what the grownups did to my generation. It was like, hey, kid, you seem way too happy. Here's where the red fern grows. Knock yourself out.

I don't remember the plot of that one. You don't want to. There's too much crime involved. Because it was traumatic AF. And then for maybe your generation, hey kid, here's the bridge to Terribithia. Knock yourself out. I know full-grown adults that are still getting over the bridge to

Terabithia. Well, I mean, nowadays, you just pop the kid in front of the YouTube. You know, YouTuber raise the kids for you. okay that was a little that was a little too salty i apologize about that but i did sign my oath of office form no it wasn't it's a freaking truth no i'm sorry go ahead right i signed my oath of office form i i said i david burleson swear that i will faithfully and honestly conduct myself in the office of an attorney in the courts of the state of oregon that i will observe and abide by the rules of professional conduct approved by the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon,

and that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the state of Oregon. To the court, opposing parties, and their counsel, I pledge fairness, integrity, and civility, not only in court, but also in all written and oral communications. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. And oddly enough, you'll uphold it. Right. I'm super excited that I got to do that. Yeah.

And if you, you know, if you're a serious person and you take this sort of thing seriously, it is, it's a heavy obligation. I know. I love the Constitution. I'll snuggle with it if I could. See, there we go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

You know what? There needs to be a plushy out there. The cuddlable constitution. Yes, yes. Allow six to eight weeks for shipping. God. You know, I thought we got past the six to eight weeks thing. Could they not get a shot?

Wait, I know why it's six to eight weeks. You don't have Amazon Prime. Right, yes, exactly. Get your United States Constitution plushy made in China. Of course. Absolutely. Right. Right.

Brought to you by your friends at Bain Capital. Brought to you by Carl's Jr. You say you feel like your situation is more precarious than it was before. I do. You know, I encourage you to just kind of take a step back, deep breath. Yeah. I don't know. No, there is light at the end of the tunnel that is not an on-

coming train, David. Right. And this is the step forward, you know, just, yeah. Yeah, just, you don't, you don't ever call a judge a poopy head. Not to their face anyway. No. And it's probably best not to tell this at a judicial conference or anything, you know, that old joke about what do you call a judge with an IQ of 43. Your Honor.

Your Honor. I just found out something earlier today, or yesterday, actually. I saw it. It's judicial election season here in almost level west by Cold Trump, Genestan. And I just found out that a lawyer I knew many, many years ago, who routinely, I mean, the time was what it was. but he had a he had a thing for the Bolivian marching powder

oh okay and the campaign the campaign sign I saw said keep name blank on the West Virginia Supreme Court oh my God you know and I don't

I don't have to be nice anymore and I could look at him and go hey you want to bump you got one I have a sneaking suspicion that he is not a liberal or a progressive. No, no, no, no. So that makes the second West Virginia judge I know who had a, well, it's like Robin Williams said about cocaine. You take our land, do we give you a monkey for your back? that's two

oh my god yeah I know so Maga yeah what is I mean what is with

what is with these right wingers that they just are such hypocrites they want the entire time they're snorting all kinds a blow doing all kind of you know

having sex with all kind of hookers you know steal an alternative money. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, how did you know? That was how his marriage fell apart. He was doing a lot of blow and cheating on his wife. Oh, my God. Because he's a registered Republican.

That's how I know. I mean, that's kind of what they do. It is. And they get away with it. And they get away with it. Right. because the entire legal apparatus was written for them. Oh, and you want to know another fun fact?

Yes. A Supreme Court Justice in this broke-ass state gets paid a princely ransom for a salary, and his term is 12 years. Okay. Now, this guy is at least three or four years older than me. so he'll be 80 when his terms over. There's nothing like an octogenarian fucking Republican to ruin everything. Oh, and by the way, more legal practice tips coming your way, this from Steve in New York.

Oh, this should be good. Don't ever ask this question of a judge's clerk. Did you even read the papers? No, you got to be nice to the clerk. Steve said, I did that. Didn't go well. Yeah, no, you have to be nice to the clerks. The clerks are the ones that are going to help you.

See, you're already ahead. You're already ahead of the game. Yeah, because when you fuck up and file something, you know, stupidly, you can call the clerk and be like, hey, can you not actually put that in the court record yet? And let me, like, fix it before you do. Thank you. I've got a comma splice in there, and I just can't stand myself. Yeah. And but then beware, also beware of the judges whose clerks are afraid of them. This I've learned.

Yes, because those are sadistic martinettes. Right. So, there's that. But you're on your way. You're on your way, David. You've got this. Yes. Yeah, I just have to be patient for a little bit longer and just have to just kind of keep my nose. to the grindstone and keep going and I feel I'm feeling more comfortable, you know, practicing. Like, it's going to, like, there's extra work that I have to do with every new client because I don't actually have my bar number yet, but because I'm practicing under the certified law student rule still, which means I have to get their informed consent that I don't have a bar number that I'm working

under my supervisor's bar number and here's my supervisor's name and I have to get them to sign a consent form that I have to file with the, but I mean, I'm basically doing the job, and I have been since last August. And I have no doubt that you're, I have no doubt that you're quite good at it. I, I think so. I think so. I'm not, I don't have the experience as some of the other attorneys. But honestly, like, when I'm, like, yesterday we had a training on, oh my goodness, on variance.

and concurrence. So, like, that the jury has to, the jury has to basically, there can't be any variance between the conduct that was presented to the grand jury. This was like a, it's like a felony thing. We don't have grand juries for misdemeanors in Oregon. So, but we do it for felonies. So, like, the conduct. that the jury convicts on cannot

vary from the conduct that was indicted by the grand jury. And so, and also, the jury has to agree on the specific conduct. They have to concur on the specific

conduct that they are finding that they're making the finding of guilt on. So if they're like two alternate like presentation, of like either the factual theory or the legal theory that the jury can pick between. Like if all of that was presented to the grand jury and it comes to the jury and like that evidence

comes in of like the two separate like incidents of conduct, the jury has to concur on which one they're convicting on. And so I learned all that yesterday. And I didn't get lost not a single time in that whole meeting. So I feel pretty good about that. You should. Some of that stuff's Byzantine. Yeah.

And there was a whole, we had a whole conversation for like half an hour of like how to like make the offers of proof to get the, to get the record of prejudice in for, because it was like an appellate attorney that was giving this training. To get to make the offers of proof on the prejudice to get to build the record for appeal for this, for the, for the, for the, for the. this particular variance issue. So yeah. And I had, I, I, I, I don't remember learning that in law school. And so it was like the first time really I was kind of introduced to some of these concepts. I mean, I kind of knew just from like hearing people talk.

But like, the training was, was like helpful because it was like new. I guess that's why they call it practice. Because you're, I'm going to be learning for. well i mean it is a profession for lifelong learners there's no doubt about that yeah and the other you know the and the other thing that you'll find as your career continues is that and this is and lawyers seem to have a special facility for this uh if your case turns on principles of engineering well you're going to have a couple of weeks to learn how to be an engineer if it deals with if it deals with um

medical issues, you're going to have a couple of weeks to learn to be a doctor. Right. I learned more medicine doing legal stuff than I, well, I mean, it's crazy. And English majors learning, engineering, I mean, that's, you know, that's a ballerina learning architecture. and it goes on and on and on and for somebody who does enjoy learning it's really fascinating especially when you're kind of like under the gun and it's like I got to cross-examine an engineer right right got to learn a little bit about some engineering

Yeah. Learn it's it's it's it's it's it's all learning curves it's like going up and down mountains I can I can tell you this I thought I thought my life was chaotic like what I've lived through I'm hearing some of like I get I get some of these these domestic violence cases this shit is wild Roxanne the stories I'm hearing I'm like really like dirty cops and like, you know, felons who were trying to escape to Mexico. And I'm like, this is, I'm on a, I do misdemeanors. And I'm already, like, we've, I've already got people fleeing to Mexico and dirty cops. And I'm just like, oh my God, this is better than any TV show.

It is. And you have to, I'm going to use a term here. in things like chronic pain you can learn about things like referred pain in other words it's not you can have pain in one place that isn't really where the pain started

it's referred from elsewhere as a lawyer doing litigation work you do have to be careful about referred trauma yeah I can I can still see and I cannot

unsee things that I saw when I was just thrown headlong into a prosecutor's job. Literally, first day on the job, my predecessor had left me a backlog that was like a hundred cases deep.

And the very first file I picked up, I opened up in there eight by ten color glossy photos with circles and eras and a paragraph on the back of each one on a murdered newborn. oh my god and like i said i can still see the pictures and back then we weren't you know back back back then um the legal structures uh didn't have things like hey let's take care of your mental

well-being after a really traumatic experience no it's like the trial's over and you got another trial two days two days ahead and you got to get with you got to get with it and you got to get ready and there's no time and no time and no time and no time. Yeah. And then... I am. Yeah. And then the next thing you know, you're just walking around mumbling, I need a vacation.

Well, I mean, Maltemma County is, like, they have, like, a dedicated misdemeanor DA team with all of the newer DAs. And, like, dedicated and my... Like, because of the way the Oregon Public Defense Commission, they're like, you have to start on misdemeanors. So there's like no possibility to walk into like a dead murdered baby picture for us. Maybe that's changed here, but it was, it was a barbaric time when I, when I'm, right. I'm not kidding.

This is, this is not a joke. just a couple of years prior to my beginning to practice, we had gotten, West Virginia had gotten rid of its old Justice of the Peace system, which is, and replaced it with magistrate court. Okay. Where things like preliminary hearings and misdemeanors were handled.

But in the old justice of the peace system, the building where the magistrate court was, was one floor up and next door to the local beer joint in town. And so when you had a JP court trial, the clerk of the court would take a fistful of $10 bills, go downstairs, walk next door into the bar, and say, I need six jurors for $10 a piece. It'll take a couple of hours and just lead whatever happened to be in the bar next door, up the stairs and see them and call them jurors. And you'd try the case in front of them.

I mean, talk about a jury of your peers tried and true. That kind of went through my mind to you. I just, I was, wow. Wow. I, I, wow. But, I mean, we're so far behind the times here. we do not even have a requirement that a magistrate now in 2026 there is no requirement that a magistrate even have a high school diploma let that sink in i'm just i'm just going to let that sit i think i'm just going to let that sit that and that's no you know that's not an you know that's not intellectual snobbery but you know it's it's best if the court can at least if the court can at least enter its orders, without using crayons.

I was just going to make the same joke. You got there before I did. Yeah. Yeah. Oregon, so Oregon has like, so each county has its own circuit court, and the circuit court does, you know, everything. And then there is a, it might be a justice of the piece.

I don't know. I can't remember it's, but there's there's like a municipal court for city code violations, stuff like that. But there is no division. Like I was looking at the way Washington organizes their courts. So they have a superior court

that handles felony stuff and then like district courts, courts that do like the traffic and misdemeanor stuff. And the district court cases can be appealed up to the Superior Court before they get to the Court of Appeals. Are they appeals? Okay. So when you... I guess they're like review.

I guess they're like reviews. They're not like appeal appeals, but they're like they can be, like the cases can be reviewed in the Superior Court. Well, when I was working, if you appealed from a magic. district court jury verdict to the circuit court, your appeal was de novo, a trial de novo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I was just, because I applied for, I applied for a public defender position in Tacoma, Washington. And so I was, I was kind of reading up on how the courts are structured there, and it's different than here in Oregon. Oh, yeah, and when you get, And when you get back east, where a lot of the stuff from Mary Oldie Engelon still holds sway,

well, for instance, the magistrate court that I practiced in front of in West Virginia, down in Tennessee, that's a General Sessions Court. Okay. And a friend of mine who practiced in Tennessee just nicknamed it Pig and Chicken Court. that's my pig no it ain't that's your chicken and then you fight about it all day long right what is chicken you know

this would be it no I'm not going to do it because there's a well it looks like a chicken but no no no we're not going there and then of course the New York courts are backwards yes your Supreme Court are the trial courts for some reason, because they just want to be ornery, I guess. Or maybe that, I mean, for all we know, that's a holdover from when, well, as they might be giants saying, even old New York was once New Amsterdam.

You know, colonialism. Bingo. Yeah. So I'm trying to, okay, so I'm trying to convince my friend, who I work with, that capitalism is like the bait of everyone's existence and anathema to democracy. Hey, you keep that shit to yourself. That'll get you busted. Okay. Don't say any of that until after your one year of unsupervised probation is up.

I think the jig is up, though, because I think they might have seen some of the stuff I posted on my Facebook page. No talking about Gromshy or Kropotkin or any of those Marxist-Leninist thinkers. No, David, no. But those are the ones I've vived with when I was in law school. No? I know. I have to uphold the capitalist machine for a year. Okay, all right, all right, I can do that.

But anyway, I'm trying to convince him that, you know, capitalism and democracy, they're like oil and water. But, of course, everybody in this country has been indoctrinated to believe that capitalism equals freedom. Like there's an mathematical identity between capitalism and freedom. Yeah, there's nothing to define freedom, like a choice of 26 different kinds of sugar-infused chocolate frosted sugar bomb cereals. My God, we got freedom here. But I have so many choices. Look at all, like the cereal aisle. It's so many different cereals.

But I'm like, yeah, but they're owned by like two or three companies. And they're all made of the same shit with different flavorings. right and you know so anyway I you know so anyway I was trying to like I found this meme I found this meme that I loved and I sent it to him and I was like capitalism

equals colonialism and he didn't respond to that but that's fine I want to read you the meme because I think it's oh please do it says they will teach you that colonialism was wrong past tense was, a historical wrong that has been acknowledged and overcome, and we have all moved on. They will not teach you that the wealth transferred during colonialism continues to compound

in the same institutions and countries that transferred it. They will not teach you that the borders colonialism drew continue to produce the conflicts colonialism designed. They will not teach you that the legal structures, the debt instruments, the intellectual property systems, the currency arrangements, colonialism's successor institutions built, these are not a new order. They are colonialism that learn to wear a suit. Teaching you that colonialism was wrong is safe. Teaching you that colonialism is ongoing requires a different verb tense and a completely different conclusion. They teach colonialism in the past tense because the present tense would indict them. And I sent that to them and I was like, colonialism equals,

capitalism. Oh, that's so good. And I love it when you and I, on our various little paths, find those paths converging. I've got a clip here I want to share with you. It's actually from the 1990s. Oh, we're going to the way back machine? Yes, we are in the way back machine. It's Tony Morrison being interviewed by Charlie Rose, who of course turned out to be a sex pest. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, I think I'm right about that. So in 1993, Charlie Rose asked Tony Morrison if she still encountered racism. And her answer, because she was a genius, just completely upended everything Charlie Rose had just so confidently asked. Check this out. I hope you can hear it.

That the people who do this thing, who practice racism, are aware. There is something distorted about the psyche. Are you hearing it? Yeah, I'm hearing it. Okay. A huge waste, and it's a corruption and a distortion. It's like it's a profound neurosis that nobody examines for what it is. It feels crazy.

It is crazy. And it leaves, it has just as much of a deleterious effect on white people and possibly equal as it does black people. I always knew that I had the moral high ground all my life. I always thought those people who said I couldn't come in the drug store and I had to sit in this funny place I couldn't go in the bar. I did. And I thought they knew that I knew that they were inferior to me morally. I always thought that. And my parents always thought that.

You said your father was racist because he always felt like he was superior. That's right. He always felt superior. And that was a form, you know, of defensive racism. But if the racist white person, I don't mean the person who is examining his consciousness and so on, doesn't understand that he or she is also a race. It's also constructive. It's also made, and it also has some kind of service ability.

But when you take it away, I take your race away. And there you are, all strung out, and all you've got is your little self. And what is that? What are you without racism? Are you good? It's still strong. It's still smart. You still like yourself.

I mean, these are the questions. Part of it is, yes, the victim, how terrible is the back and vote. I'm not a victim. I refuse to be one. And the victim is the other person who is morally inferior. That's what that's a serious question. Of course. If you have to hold that's a

or appear to her own self-esteem and definition. If you can only be tall because somebody's on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is, white people have a very, very serious problem. And they should start thinking about what they can do about it.

Take me out of it. Then give white people some free advice. They're all in my books. And that's the thing. They're all in my books. I don't know if you've noticed that David, over the last couple of years in this,

this, you know, maggot, fascist, Wonderland. One of the books that people like the Moms for Liberty, have gone after is a Tony Morrison classic called The Bluest Eye. And it's not just the content of any given book. It's where she comes from. And statements like that that she made in 1993. dear god 36 years what

make clear why ideas are dangerous to maggots because they run a real risk of deconstructing everything

that they think comprises their reality yes and not only that but who they believe themselves to be They define themselves by all of these external socialized constructs. And then once that's all stripped away, which is the point she was making, who are you? What's left?

Yeah. And so for people that have been marginalized by this system, by these systems of control, by these. by these imposed cultural standards of the dominant culture. Marginalized people have had to define for themselves. They've had to work through to bring themselves to a place where they have to know themselves, right? People from marginalized backgrounds have had to deal with their entire lives being called and labeled and labeled and having their very identity dictated to them. And they've had to do the hard work.

I've had to do the hard work of like saying, no, that label doesn't define me. That understanding of what you're calling me does not define me. I need to be able to define myself. And true freedom in my mind, that's what that is. Liberty is to, is being able to define for oneself who one is, to define for oneself what they believe and what they find, what they hold dear to themselves. And frankly, my thing with, my thing with capitalism is that the economic system itself does not allow for people to define for themselves who they are. right? Because we have these labels like poor person. If I say that, immediately all of these

culturally conditioned stereotypes come to mind. It doesn't even have to be about race, right? If we're talking about, if we say billionaire, all of that cultural conditioning, it's an automatic definition of a person that and that single person may not fit that definition exactly. And so, and then how are people supposed to define what they, what they enjoy and what they like and who they are and what they, what their moral compass is if they're too busy trying to survive, if they're too too busy trying to scrape together money to pay rent. If they're too busy trying to scrape together money to pay medical bills. If they're too busy trying to scrape together money for childcare.

So they spend all of their time working, excuse me, upholding this imposed hierarchy from the people who have been in power for thousands of years at this point. and all of that external imposed hierarchy is internalized into one's being to the point where people they just can't figure out who they are anymore. And so to me, I mean, to have liberty and to have something and to have that liberty valued and cherished and protected by the state, we have to have an economic system that allows for liberty to free. flourish in the first place. So, like, if people are constantly going to work to make more money

for the billionaires and then being told on the back end that if you don't do that, you're immoral. If you don't do that, you're worthless. If you don't do that, something individually is wrong with you. And then all of those external messages are internalized. And I've been having to work through a lot of this and people for marginalized backgrounds, poor people, black people, black people. Latino people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people. We've had to work through what the dominant culture has defined our role in society to be, has defined who we are to be. And we've had to reject that and to build our own constructs of who we are. And I think that's what Tony Morrison was trying to get at. Oh, I think you're absolutely right. And something I would add to that, David, is that you have, and I've railed against it for years on end, you have a support system for all that colonialism and all that capitalism in the form of what I define as a sort of neo-Calvinism.

and what you just said about your financial status dictating your worth well that's exactly you know Calvinism teaches that if you're wealthy it's because God likes you and if you're poor it's because God doesn't and that you are predetermined to be wealthy or poor because God always knows in advance and therefore you know if you're wealthy you're a part of the elect I mean, look at, look at Peter Thiel. This guy's running around the country, talking about the eminent nature of the second coming and how, you know, he might be Jesus. Oh, is he? Okay.

I mean, it's kind of hard to sort it all out. I've sat and watched a couple of his lectures and, like, dude. Why did you do that to yourself? Yeah, I know. Dude, you're not all right. But by the way, I've come up with a new frame, and I'm sharing it. you and I'm mentioning it on air for the first time. Victoria and I were talking and I kind of came up with it on the fly. We spend a lot of time talking about billionaires. I suggest to reframe in a new name.

The villainaires. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it works. They are villainous. It does. It does. I mean, and not to say that some of the, not to say that some of the labels,

that we apply to people aren't accurate. Like, I mean, come on, who needs to be a billionaire? What world benefits by the presence of billionaires? Right. And with that one term, villainaire, you know what a word nerd I am. We get it from, and what a turning of an idea on its ear. law school is not that far in your rearview mirror. You remember what a villain was.

Yes, yes. It was a, like a tenant farmer. Yeah, a peasant who was not free and was bound to the manor lord. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a sort of middle ground between Freeman and. slave. And they got a little plot of ground to work and shared

oh look, a sharecropper. Yeah. Yeah. And so these, I mean, we call them different things, but the same kind of hierarchical structures are so, are like, I don't get the whole Calvinism thing, right? I don't get it.

Because how can, people are poor because we have social, we have social conditions. that have been engineered by humans, greedy, villainous, rapacious humans, that they've decided that they are going to impose all of these structures on everyone else, top down, very hierarchical,

and then on the back end, they're saying, God is making these choices. One, I think that's rationalization for them, not being able to like fully really process the violence that they do to everyone else. I think that might be it. One, it gives them a, it gives a rationalization for them to like, well, it's not because of the policies and the positions that I support personally. It's because God wants it this way.

It's like, and I mean, this is all, this is all God's do. you don't want to go against God's will now, do you? And then in my mind, I'm like, isn't that kind of a violation of the Third Commandment? You shall not take the Lord's name in vain? I mean, it is. And so I'm like, okay, well, you're going to blame it on God when you're doing it. But Calvinism is and was, you know, Jean-Calvin. It was a rationalization to support.

a new power structure. Interesting. I don't know this. Well, I mean, it's Protestantism with sharper, nastier teeth than what Martin Luther was up to. Because... It's been a while since my Europeans.

You know, northern European states were leaning, in some cases, Protestant. And they, and Jean Calvain, conveniently provided them with a, there's that term, permission structure, to go on being rapacious without having to bend the knee to Rome. Instead, they bent the knee to Jean Calvain. Oh, so he was kind of like, kind of like Ein Rand, the Ein Rand of his day?

I mean, you could kind of say that. I mean, Calvinism gives rise to Presbyterianism. which becomes in many ways the state religion of Scottish independence. And it's predicated on ideas that there's just not that much free will out there. If God wants you poor, you're going to be poor. If God wants you rich, you're going to be rich, and your wealth is going to be proof of your status as a member of the elect. I mean, that's the term, the elect.

That just smacks to me of like justification for unjust and immoral social structures that were created by humans. Yeah, one of the oldest churches in the town where I grew up is a Presbyterian church. And that's because a lot of the people who came and dispossessed the indigenous people and set up plantations with enslaved human beings. well they were good god fear and Calvinists Presbyterians and they didn't and they didn't give a second thought to the evils of enslavement because they were already indoctrinated into believing that like

these these people that looked differently than them were somehow inferior and that that brings me to what I was going to say Like, that's not to say that I think that all humans are evil. As a matter of fact, I still think human beings are inherently good, and that is it is the unjust and inequitable and immoral and frankly evil, I would say, social structures that were designed by a very small group of elitists and upheld. over generations, thousands of years, by the same small sliver of elite, effete, ineffectual, mediocre people that then they imposed all of these social structures on all of us, and then we're just born into this, like, born into this world where, like, we're,

we're acculturated in a way that does not allow. the fundamental goodness of a morally centered human being to flourish. And I do think that if we were to do the hard generational work of like dismantling these systems, I don't think that we would see the sadism writ large because like, People are products, a lot, a lot of it, I think, has to do a product of the acculturation process. And so I think, I think, I think the unjust social systems that we were all born into and indoctrinated into, I think that reflects in some of, in a lot of the choices that people make on a subconscious level that people just, and that's my, that's the whole thing I think about being woke, being woke to that. being woke to the being woke to the idea

that the unjust social arrangements that we all have been that we're all living under are detrimental in the end to a flourishing human personality and that once we

changed these social arrangements because they were constructed by humans, they can be changed and reconstructed by humans, then I think our world gets better. But that's just my philosophy. I can be wrong. No, I don't think it's at all invalid. And speaking as someone who has long been fascinated

with anthropology and archaeology and the like, you say you think people are essentially good, inherently good, that leads to my general but that we don't have the social we don't have the social arrangements to allow that to like flourish or like lead yeah yeah or be determinative and the question to be asked then and an answer is difficult to come by is what changed about humanity when we stopped being hunter-gatherers and started doing what was called sedentary agriculture and city building and such like. How did we change? Well, go ahead. I have a theory about that.

I think that once we started congregating into larger groups, it became, It became just more what we would call, what we would call in English efficient to have like, okay, well, for decision making, right? To have like, okay, well, this group is really good at making sure all of the, all of the barley is accounted for, for lack of, I mean, for lack of a better way of framing it. And so it just becomes, at some point in larger social, in larger social arrangements,

I think it just becomes easier for decision-making purposes to have a quote-unquote elite group of people that are to have a specialized group of people that over time become this elite. and then they want to maintain their position in the social group, and that's how these hierarchies get formed. I think a lot of anthropologists would probably agree with you. You know, I've been lost, a lot and lost, but I've been deeply in, maybe I'm disassociating by reading so much. But the late Bronze Age and the collapse thereof.

Yeah. and the wild thing about it is we've got correspondence. Largely they're called the Amarna letters because they were found in Amarna in Egypt. And all of these rulers, these pharaohs and these Hittite kings and the people who were called the Ahiyawa, who we would call the Greeks, are corresponding back and forth in this incredibly complex trade network and then a couple of things went wrong and the whole thing went kaput and the bronze age collapsed and you wouldn't humanity would not see anything

that complex for centuries and I've seen more and more people actually writing about that in terms of and that's what we're looking at today specifically with regard to the Straits of Hormuz because one guy I read pointed out that the late Bronze Age probably could have survived a problem or a couple of problems, but when they piled up, it became insurmountable. There's correspondence between the Hittites and the pharaohs, and the pharaohs and the Hittites and whatever,

saying, my brother, send me all the grain you can spare, there is famine in this land, and I've got to feed my people, or they're going to cut. my royal head off. And there came a point where no one could fulfill those goals. And of course, we call it the Bronze Age

because bronze was the central the central defining substance of the era and you get bronze by alloying copper and 10

and you I mean imagine okay so you know we know where Greece is we know where Afghanistan

is yeah the richest 10 deposits in the world at that time were in Afghanistan

so every bronze age society be in Egypt Babylon the Hittites the Luyans the Greeks

the people in Crete were all dependent on that. And lo and behold, it's the same corner of the world that now holds

the, that now holds the, uh, keys to unlock famine on the world. And it was working until, you know, one evil man and one stupid man decided to set up

to, to upset the entire order. And what's coming and that's even if the straits are open tomorrow, there's been such disruption that the ripple effect from it, the knock-on effect will be five and ten years. And that's enough time coupled with climate change to make a whole lot of systems go all to pieces. And I don't know if you realize this or not,

but the DUI hire, Whiskey Pete Kegbreath, was in the house today and he had a very very bad day indeed he tried to get all uh... all butch with the congress and said oh shame on you uh... for for criticizing our war in iran

well shame on him i don't know if you've seen it but there are photographs out there sailors aboard u.s navy vessels are damn near going without food because we can't resupply them. And this is who's supposed to be enforcing our blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. And we can't resupply them because of why?

Because they can't reach them, as far as I can tell. You know, the toilets on the USS Gerald R. Ford won't flush. well I mean talk about a parallel with the Roman Empire they can't keep their supply lines open they've over we've overextended ourselves right you know these ships you know nuclear powered vessels can stay at sea

for theoretically indeterminate lengths of time but there are but that's the reactors not the human beings aboard the vessel right right So there's just, well, I've said for a long, long time, David, that most people do not give much thought to how fragile the entire system that we live in is. Yeah. Yeah.

It can all go to pieces in very little time at all. Which is, I mean, which is kind of why I'm like, like the whole, okay, the whole build back. better thing, right? Yeah. Like, that whole idea, in my mind, and maybe I'm ascribing some of my just personal kind of views to it, but like my, I thought the idea behind that was to acknowledge the fragility of the systems that we have, specifically the supply, like the global supply chain thing with the just in time shipping and stuff, talking about six to eight weeks. And acknowledging that the system is fragile and to like and to like reinforce or to build or to rebuild better and more robust and resilient systems.

And then to me, I would add this is and this is and this is I think where the institutional Democratic Party and progressives part ways. I think all of us on the political, on like the left-leaning, like the left-leaning political, like the left-leaning political spectrum in the country would agree that we need more resilient and more robust resilient systems. I think where we progressives differ with the institutional Democratic Party is we would say, well, we need to do that. we have to dismantle very carefully the systems that have been put in place to oppress and the systems that have been put in place to extract. To extract because that's where the fragility is coming in, in my view.

Like, our systems would be more resilient if they weren't designed to funnel all of society's resources. to a very narrow sliver of Bingo. And so I think what we on the political left would say is like, well, we have to dismantle that before we can build something stronger.

But nobody wants civilization to collapse. And I think I think you're a little over optimistic when you say that. Okay. Nobody of nobody with a moral center because I thought about it too after it came out of my mouth. And that was my sweet silver child, uh,

ish, kind of. My, yeah, my Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Right. Um, no, people of moral center don't want it to collapse. And I just think we disagree about how best to effectuate what I thought, what I find

curious, what I find curious about build back better for instance is that I got the sense that it was born out of the experience that we had with COVID yes COVID showed us

the fragility I mean I remember early on being in my local Wally world I even posted about it back then the toilet paper aisle was wiped out

right we want to and somebody had and it was I mean it was good it was good it was good social humor somebody had just placed a six-pack of corona where all that toilet paper had been

coronavirus yeah yeah yeah i got it now yeah and i photographed it and put it online and but you know we couldn't we we couldn't keep toilet paper in stock and i know sometimes it It's probably a function of something wrong with my brain, but I get these little pieces of information here and there, and they stick with me. Like this story from three weeks a month ago, whatever it was, the doctor saying, and he was the head of a huge medical center, saying that they had been informed that they would at best get half of their usual need,

for helium because the helium all came from cutter. Wow. And he noted, hope you don't need an MRI anytime soon, because helium is apparently critical to the operation of MRI machines. And that's just one example. Yeah. And like, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to point this out because I meant to talk about it this evening anyway, and this just works perfectly into it.

Okay, a little bit of a setup in 2009. I've told this story before. In 2009, a bunch of us from here and a bunch of hillbillies went to an event in D.C. called Power Shift. And it was a big gathering of environmental activists and human rights activists focused on things like climate change. in our case mountain top removal and one of the keynoters was

Van Jones back before he went over to the dark side because the dark side has cookies I like cookies I know but it ain't worth going to the dark side for David I agree but in his address he said

we have got to fundamentally reshape culture and society or all of our attempts to go to renewable energy, green energy, will be for naught because if we don't change how we think, we'll be fighting resource wars for the lithium to power our lithium battery tanks. Yeah. And so today...

That was Grand Jones? Yeah, yeah. Okay. In fact, I was backstage and I broadcasted the whole thing live. so today I just happened on a statement a news release from the United States Geological Survey and of course that's you know the USGS is housed within the executive branch it's an administrative body and generally speaking they've always been fairly well thought of You know, they're the ones that went around 100 years ago and placed datum,

datums, dada, you know, bronze markers in topographic features showing their latitude and longitude position and their height above mean sea level. So, yay, good on you, USGS, and they produced topographic maps. I used to have one hanging in the studio of the New River Gorge, you know, with the topographic lines and the, you know, designating the slopes and everything. I love maps too. Yeah, I map nerd so bad.

But all of that is gone, I guess, because the first thing you have to take into account with anything that comes out of an executive branch agency is that that agency is now a captive and has been forever, or not hopefully not forever, but has been corrupted for the time being by MAGA and the dodgy boys, etc. And of course, well, you know, Russell vote over at OMB and his Project 2025 fascist madness. So that's a long way of getting here. Dateline, April 28th, Reston, Virginia.

And I read this, and I'm not kidding, I got cold chills, David. I mean, this just made me physically ill. Okay, I'm going to steal myself. The Appalachian region of the eastern United States contains an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of undiscovered economically recoverable lithium enough to replace 328 years of U.S. import. at last year's level, according to new research by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Southern Appalachians hold an estimated 1.43 million metric tons of lithium oxide concentrated in the Carolinas, and the Northern Appalachians hold an estimated 900,000 metric tons, concentrated in Maine and New Hampshire, according to estimates in a new USGS scientific paper published in Natural Resources Research. The lithium is present in Pagmatites, large-grained rocks similar to granite. This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation's growing needs.

A major contribution to U.S. mineral security. Dear God, we've got mineral security issues now. We cannot have a mine shaft gap. A major contribution to U.S. mineral security at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly, said USGS director Ned Mamula. Well, you can just bet your bottom dollar that Ned Mamula is maggot through and through. USGS mineral science is the leading edge in the effort to restore America's mineral independence

by mapping our nation's mineral resources. Everything else follows on the science, permitting reform. Uh-oh. and other policy changes to support investment in clean responsible mining to 21st century standards and mining workforce training for new American jobs. The United States was the dominant world producer of lithium three decades ago, and this research highlights the abundant potential to reclaim our mineral independence. Do you understand why I got caught?

cold chills? Yeah, because replace lithium with coal and you have the same social arrangement that is currently there now unjust exploitative,

extractive. And you're not going to, no, I don't want to hear about any clean lithium. Right. And And that's the thing, too, right? Like, without fundamentally changing how we view, like, I was thinking about, I was thinking about the story you were telling earlier with the tin in Afghanistan.

And what I was thinking about was, like, this hoarding behavior is, like, hoarding resources. and defending resources and having to, like, go to war over resources, that sort of, like, behavior is enabled, if not encouraged by market-based capitalism. Right? Like, if the incentive at the end of the day is to make as much money as possible every quarter forever for the shareholders, then yes,

people are going to have to hoard the resources to drive up the prices. But the thing is, and the decisions of how those resources get allocated are then being made by the shareholders and managers of those large international conglomerates,

as opposed to being made democratically with the common good at the forefront. And it's the fact that the decisions about how resources are going to be allocated and how resources are going to be developed too. are being made by a small sliver of anti-democratic capitalists as opposed to democratically by the will of the people. Because if the people that were actually going to be pulling that lithium red coal out of the ground had any decision making on how that happens, right?

is there safety are there safety mechanisms in place is there going to be like remuneration for the work that the workers are going to be put in to develop the resources? Oh you can bet your ass

those will not be union jobs because one of the things that this article references is is longstanding USGS fundamental science practices and executive order

14303 restoring gold standard science you know that's that Orwellian language you know can only come from a maggot emphasize the importance of scientific peer review and communication of the uncertainty of scientific findings

well here's the thing how long who has the wherewithal because this is some these are massive operations and by the way a lot of these deposits are in Maine and New Hampshire and in the Carolinas which are both areas that have been largely untouched because they have not had coal under the ground,

whereas Central Appalachia has been blasted to Kingdom Come for that coal. These are going to be massive operations, so look for somewhere out in the not-too-distant future, because this whole press release was like a tell in poker. look for Leon Scum to announce the formation of lithium X. Oh, for fuck's sake. I mean, come on, it only makes sense, right, David? But, I mean, I mean, no, but yes, in a sick, twisted way that it makes sense with, like, the common sense of exploitative, extractive. Yeah, how could a villainaire fuck this up?

Right. And that's the thing. Like, do we want decisions about how our resources are being utilized and developed? Do we want those decisions to be made by a billionaire or do we want those decisions to be made democratically? And having a robust debate about how to, or discussion, doesn't even have to be a debate, a robust conversation about how to, a robust conversation about how to, how to, a robust conversation about how. how best to develop those resources. And then once they're developed, how best to efficiently allocate them to production, right? And I'm not saying that market, all markets are bad. I'm not saying that. But I'm just saying that when we're talking about resource development, investment stuff, the stuff that gets the stuff that they sell securities about now, when we're talking about how, if we were doing, if we were making these decisions,

democratically, people who would be advocating for the preservation of the natural environment would have a say and a spot at the table when they're saying, okay, well, we have all of these. UsGS has just identified all these lithium resources. Now we need to decide, one, if we want to develop them. Two, if we decide that, how to do that. And that's where the conversation about, conservation comes in. And then once we've developed it, how do we do, how do we utilize those developed resources efficiently so that we don't have to keep extracting those resources and maybe preserve some of them for future generations, right?

So, and the thing about it is like these lithium, I mean, we're going to have fucking lithium battery fucking powered vibrators and shit. We, you know. We already do. The fucking perverts that run shit now. You know what I mean? They're going to take the lithium and put it into like, I mean, who the fuck needs a solar-powered fucking 100, 200, 300-foot yacht?

Right? Like that's a waste in my mind of the resources that have been developed undemocratically so far and exploitatively so far. We can make these decisions collectively. and we can make them in a way that is not, that causes the least harm to people, but that would require us to say, you know what, making money is not the end-all-be-all-of-life. And to say that now out loud makes me probably sound like a crazy person because people just can't wrap their minds around. It's like, well, I can't do anything without money. And that is, that's what I'm talking about.

And just to be fair, you're not going all who is John Galt on us here. No, you're not. Right. But it doesn't make sense because the dominant common sense that we're talking about grammarcy. And that's the whole idea behind hegemony, right? It just kind of feels, we're so, the dominant culture is just so pervasive. that even people that don't agree with it feel, it feels like common sense. So to say that, you know, there's a different way to do things, it's like fish out of water.

And it's like, well, if we, if there's not an incentive to pull it out of the ground financially, then why would anybody do that? Right. Like, but that whole idea, that question is limited. that it's it's it's you start from a limited premise if you're asking that question because that presupposes that the only motivation for human behavior is some sort of peculiar pecuniary interest some sort of like selfish kind of greedy kind of like um rugged individualistic like that starts from the premise that that's the only thing that motivates people is is some sort of pecuniary monetary thing.

And that's what they would have you believe because that's what motivates them. Right. So that can be the only motivation because they're the only people who matter. Exactly. But I mean, this is a real hold on time. I mean, it's not going to happen day after tomorrow, but it sounds like it's something that this gang of fascists definitely want to have happen. And devil take to hindmost of the people, the mostly marginalized people who live

around these sites. Right. Whereas if we, whereas if we were to decide to develop those resources collectively, we would have that group of people's well-being at the forefront of the decision-making process to begin with. And I want to add to this that back when she was still alive and she was my hero, Judy Bonds, Bell would go all over the country raising awareness of mountaintop removal and she would say

wherever she was, we have got to stop this in Appalachia now. Because if we do not, it will find its way to you. Right. And within a few years there I was in northern Wisconsin making wonderful new friends because a now dead coal baron wanted to blast the Pinocke Hills of northern Wisconsin with a 22 mile long trench

1,400 feet deep and a half a mile across. So they wanted to build a new Grand Canyon? Yeah, all to get iron ore that there wasn't a market for. And that's the thing like... But now, but Now, David, we have this. And, you know, one of the things that used to get said, too, was, you know, we'd go and talk in California. We'd go and talk in Colorado.

And in places like that, they'd say, well, we'd never put up with something like that here. And we'd say, yeah, that's why they do it where we have no choice but to live with it. You know, places with bad government like West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Tennessee. But here's the thing, that lithium ore, guess what is chock full of that lithium ore? Pike's Peak. So, you know, Pike's Peak is iconic in Colorado and nationally. Oh, oh, okay. What happens when the lithium barons come calling and blast Pike's Peak flatter than a pancake?

because we've got to have mineral independence. Jesus. I mentioned my friends in the Northwoods in Wisconsin. They were the ones who made me aware of the seven generations rule, something indigenous people do. You don't make momentous decisions without taking into account its downstream effects seven generations on. Yeah. Well, something like with this report.

cannot withstand a seven generations analysis. Yeah. You know, the Carolinas have been lucky so far, because like I said, they don't have any coal under them. But it turns out they got lithium under them. And here come the barons. Yeah, and the people who haven't figured out that they don't put U-Hauls behind hearses,

oh, I'm going to get rich. Oh, I'm going to be rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, Rich, rich, rich, richer, richer, richest, richest, richest. And the thing about that, too, is like they set up the straw man argument on the other side. It was like, well, why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate jobs? Why you hate prosperity? No, we are not saying that.

What we're saying is blowing up a goddamn mountain to get at the iron ore that you're, that you're, want to develop is not the most sustainable way to do that. And just because it would cost more to actually develop the technology to get at that iron ore to get at that lithium without destroying the natural environment and causing cancer and all kinds of negative health impact and externalities to the people that live there, we can figure. out how to do that. We just have to be, we just have to start from this, it's just going to cost more. And we just, we're going to have to be okay with that because we've decided that human life and the natural environment and preserving the natural environment and preserving human life is more

important than making money. Because you can't take it with you. And, you know, we're back to back to the bronzes. And there's that poem, Ozomandius, look on my works ye mighty and despair. And I mean, I'll speak for myself. I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that we shouldn't develop the lithium. I'm not saying that.

What I'm saying is that if we decide to do that, that decision needs to be made democratically. and that decision needs to take into account the impact, like you're saying, on seven generations from now. And if that costs more money to develop those resources, if we decide to do it at all, maybe we decide that not developing those resources is the best way to, quote, unquote, allocate those resources, right? But I mean, I live in reality with everybody else. else, we are going to need the lithium to make the batteries to transition to a political economy where our energy infrastructure isn't going to kill everybody.

Yeah. But at the same time, at the same time, we need to be able to make these decisions in a way that does not harm people. That's what I'd say. And that is an entirely novel idea. Is it? Yeah, not harm people? Because it's always been, hey, let's do our dirty business where, well, we can harm people that nobody cares if we harm.

I mean, okay, you just got a note from Daryl in Houston. David is such a knowledgeable, perceptive person. One major problem is all conservatives are unable to question what they're. considered normality or received wisdom. No matter the evidence, they're stuck in their opinions. Even most nominal liberals cannot question capitalism. That's why we have Nancy Pelosi and Biden saying there's nothing wrong with the existence of billionaires. Also, we need a strong Republican Party.

Both statements are obvious horseshed. Actual liberals, as a partially defining attribute, not only are able to question conventional and received wisdom, we welcome new ideas. Conservatives must have certainty. Liberals recognize that almost nothing in life comes with any certainty. Right. And, of course, the law of unintended consequences.

I think I mentioned this a few days ago. I saw it, you know, when I was driving down the mountain, headed Parker's Bird. And this is kind of capitalism in a nutshell. Or, okay, let's say mindless consumerism in a nutshell. And for this story, you have to go back 100 years and more. And you have to go back to the coal bosses. You know, when coal miners were working six days a week, being paid by the ton, shorted by the check-weamen,

oh, well, we got to take out such, hey, we got to take out, you know, 20% of that weight, because that's slate at the bottom. That's not actually coal you dug out. Well, back then, the coal bosses lived in, regal status they built magnificent homes

there's a little community down near bluefield West Virginia and Virginia and I can't remember the name of it

right now but at one point in time it was the richest little town in the country what would be billionaires today built gorgeous gothic mansions

in that town and you know they would were in other communities as well. And here, where I live, well, the coal bosses would order beautiful China from Japan. The porcelain works there.

No more beautiful porcelain in the world. And so as a status symbol, they would order China. It would come across the Pacific ocean and it would then get on a train. This is porcelain. This is fine china. Imagine all the rattling and banging and what you've got to have for packing material. And it would finally arrive in some coal camp in West Virginia where the coal boss would present it to his lady wife and she would say, oh, oh, Augustus, it's beautiful.

And it was. but again, it took a lot of packing. And it just so happens that there's a tree that grows in Japan that's called Royal Polonia. Has a beautiful grain. And in fact, I was told it's treasured there because it's what a well-born Japanese girl wants her hope chest to be made out of. But it produces seed pods that are light and airy. think of natural styrofoam packing peanuts

and so this china would be packed in that and when the china got unpacked those seed pods would just be thrown over the hill they did what seed pods do they grew into trees and the locals didn't really know what they were but they noticed the seed pods every fall

and kids were the colloquial name for them was Indian cigars because the inherent racism against indigenous people in this country is to call anything that is false Indian

Indian giver Indian cigars Indian turnips Indian always means false but they did grow and it turns out that at this time of year in Appalachia they're beautiful

there are entire groves of them that go up hill sides. They love well-watered areas, like, you know, rills and little streams in the mountains. And so this time of year, before the leaves come on, they erupt in these beautiful, grayish purple blossoms. And the trees are tall. and the mountains erupt in purple for a few weeks every spring and the wood is valuable and from time to time Japanese timber purchasers come through here

and they buy the trees and ship them back home and I've even seen like electric guitar bodies and acoustic guitar tops made of polonia and it is it's beautiful but that stuff impacted the landscape here

and the people who allowed it to did so without a second thought and you find that kind of behavior anywhere you have extractive industries the so-called resource curse

you know things are done to the to the place where these people won't live anymore after it's all played out, but the regular people will have to live with it. And the polonias are kind of a happy ending story, but there's all kinds of invasive species here, and never a second thought. Of course, the ultimate irony is you can't grow a polonia, you can't grow a magnolia, you can't grow an oak,

you can't grow a maple, you can't grow shit, on a mountaintop removal site. And you won't be able to do that in a giant lithium pit either. And the reason we don't have the lithium is because most of our stone here is sandstone. But lithium occurs in something that is close akin to granite. So you're going to have to blast the living hell out of it, which means the blasting, dust will fall on the people who happen to live near these sites and then they'll get to experience what people in the in the sacrifice the coal sacrifice zone in central

Appalachia have been experiencing for decades and that is the horror that are these ultrafine particulates that people breathe in and have no way of stop and the body has no way of stopping it. And that shit causes cancer on a massive scale. And birth defects. Long story, I know. But it's been repeated over and over and over again. And in fact, this USGS press release mentions that lithium-rich pegmatites in the northern Appalachians formed from the same geologic forces that built the mountains, yada, yada, yada. This melting occurred when plowelope. Late tectonics forced Africa, Europe, and North America together into a supercontinent named Pangia. Pagmatites like the ones found in the Appalachian Mountain Belt are found in corresponding areas of Ireland and Portugal, both of which formerly bordered the Appalachians. What were we saying about resource wars? Right.

I just, there's got, I mean, there's got to be a, there's just, there's just, there's just, there's just has to be a better way to, to organize society. There just has to be. Yeah. And Micah says, you know, not just decided democratically, talking about, you know, the, the choice process you mentioned, but with a disproportionate input from those most affected by the activities. Bingo. Clean carbon neutral lithium. Oh, God. and I think that's kind of the point that I'm making.

If we do these decisions democratically, then the people that are going to be most impacted, we'll have, you know, we'll have the say. Yeah, because, well, like Micah is envisioning, and you are too, we're talking about the say being of a sort of pure form and not forever corrupted and polluted. by what passes for democracy in the United States, which is kind of a segue.

And I was hoping you and I would get into it with what the Supreme Court did today. I was going to ask you about that, too, but we just kept going. Well, I think... The way our conversations go. Yeah, the first thing I thought when I saw the news earlier today was, well, John Roberts has finally almost realized his fondest dream. So can you describe what the case was and what they decided? Well, it comes out of Louisiana,

where Louisiana had maps drawn that had assured minority representation in a couple of Louisiana districts. And turning civil rights logic on its head by a six to three margin with Sammy Bad Breath writing the opinion, they said it's racist to make sure that black people have representation in Congress. Okay, okay. Okay. And so they struck down the maps.

The LA Times describes it as a major retreat from part of the Voting Rights Act that has forced states to elect at least some black or Latino representatives to Congress, as well as state and local boards. Is this Section 2? Yeah, this is Section 2. In a 6 to 3 decision, the court ruled that creating these majority-minority districts amounts to racial discrimination. that violates the 14th Amendment. In other words, it's that darling of the maggots

anti-white racism, which can't exist. Right. It can't exist. Because in order to be, in order for a process to be racist, it has to come from the dominant culture. But that didn't,

but that didn't even slow down Sammy Badbreath. He said, We start with the general rule that the Constitution almost never permits the federal government or a state to discriminate on the basis of race. And so they describe this effort to see that people have representation as essentially and fundamentally racist. And the Times story says it clears the way for Republican-led states across the south to redress. all their election maps and eliminate voting districts that favored black or Latino candidates for Congress, state legislatures, and county boards. And it was, of course, a case brought by the maggots in Louisiana,

over a district that was created that allowed for a second congressional district that favored, did not guarantee, but favored a black Democrat. and the story notes that a third of the population of Louisiana is black, but the Republicans are going to make sure that, God damn it, no black people go to Congress from Louisiana, unless maybe they're black maggots. Elena Kagan wrote the dissent. She was disgusted.

She said this ruling will allow racial vote dilution in its most classic form a state can without legal consequence systematically dilute minority citizens voting power of course the majority does not announce today's holding that way its opinion is understated even antiseptic and uh... Tatanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor are both signed onto the dissent

and uh... uh... Kagan went on and said the consequences are both far-reaching and grave. And the funny thing is, every court up to the Supreme Court had supported

the creation of the district. But Alito called that district an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Nice little state there you got. Be ashamed of something happening. Well, the folks that bought the Supreme Court got their money today, huh?

Oh, God damn, yes. But the thing that strikes me is that well John Roberts could not author this decision because it would be too obvious because we talked in the past

about how his very first federal job inside the executive branch was to try to gut the Voting Rights Act in the early 1970s this is a project he has been working on all

his professional life While at the same time, as we noted earlier this week, he's got literally tens of millions of undisclosed dollars that he has never reported from his wife's income derived from law firms with active cases before the court. You know, ethics for thee, but not for me. Right. Right. So he couldn't write it. But Sandy Badbreath knew exactly what to write to please the chief. It's racist to allow people of color a chance to be represented in the national government or the state legislature. Hey, that's just, I mean, that's so gross.

That's so gross. I mean, the, so black people need the guiding patriarchal hand of... Oh, Mars. Oh, my God. That's so gross. That's so gross. Yeah, it's absolutely disgusting. And the funny thing is, as Kagan said, it's almost an antiseptic description.

But even, okay, let's just, let's have a little thought experiment here, David. it's let's say you had a mass migration inside Louisiana where that one third of the state that is black all moved into one place well theoretically

that would be one way to at least get one African American member of Congress but this in its perversity allows the state of Louisiana and other Confederate

states, this is, you know, this is a matter of winning the war and losing the ongoing battles. If you had that situation where every person of color in Louisiana moved into one area,

Republicans would still be able to gerrymander it to pieces under this ruling. Steve in New York said the latest Supreme Court decision I smell a trade-off to rule the right way on birthright citizenship. Gross. That's gross if that's true.

But, well, practically everything this court does is vulgar and gross. I'm reading the Guardian article really quickly. This paragraph is chilling. The White House called the decision, quote, a complete and total victory, end quote. Yeah, for white folks. God, yeah. And if you recall, when Roberts wrote the opinion that struck down Section 5, right?

Am I recalling that correctly? Yeah. What was that, McCutcheon? I don't remember. But didn't he say in that opinion that, oh, we don't need Section 5 anymore because we still have Section 2? Yes. And he also said racism was over in America. Right, right.

But what's even weirder is... I said something very similar. Sazard Dale O'Connor, I think she says something very similar. Only in 2024 was an ongoing fight in the state of Alabama resolved with the Supreme Court's blessing that deliberately created a second majority minority district in Alabama. and it was a long and protracted and Byzantine process, but in 2024, an African-American man won that district and is sitting in Congress now.

Well, don't get too comfortable there, congressman, because Alabama is going to turn right around and redistrict you right out of a job. It reminds me of their recordings. of a conversation between Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan talking about some ambassadors who had visited the White House from countries in Africa. And old Ronnie Reagan, old 666 himself, said, well, it was the damnedest thing.

These people are practically savages. And here they were. In the White House, Mr. President. And then he goes on and laughs and just keeps on being racist. And Nixon was just eating it up. A reminder that the racism of the maggots has a long goddamn pedigree. Right. Right.

And by the way, I got a note from Jude, a picture of some lovely China. She said, I tuned in just now hearing your reference to find China. China, with my Canadian connection being my family. For us having tea was a time for reflection with others, a greeting into one's home, or just a moment to be quiet and sip. It's crazy with all these dark rooms we're facing, Robin, but to have comforting and reflective moment for this, I thank you and David. I'm sure what your topic was, as yes, I was late arriving. Peace. I wonder if the Royal Polonia grows in the great Northwest. similar climate

I don't know I don't know either and from Cynthia in the Bay area not just white folks but racist bigoted rat folk rat fucking fascist pig white folks I long for the possible day the operative word being possible where Roberts

Ed Al could be impeached and removed and replaced with judges who actually care about justice I share a similar sentiment but what I want is for Congress to have a meaningful, functional working Congress

and we've had this discussion in the past as well, David, that makes the Supreme Court a little bit larger at least so that it can begin to at least try to represent the reality of

our current America. So, you know, 15 justices. And then what would be really delicious out of all of that would be to force these filthy old fascists

to sit there and be powerless in their racism. And have to eat it. And just have to stew and sit in their self-imposed and And write their ugly fascist dissents because they lose every goddamn time.

And so do their magot and fascist beneficiaries. And see that, this just, I mean, this just just reminding me of something that Judge Ortega told me that she's mentioned to me a couple of times in our conversations. That half of the problem is solved. if we just interpret and enforce the laws on the books as written, as opposed to this. You know? Yeah, and I don't think she's wrong, but it's that as written part that proves problematic, at least, with this court. Because look what they did to the eligibility passage from the 14th Amendment. they imposed

strictures on it that did not exist in the text which sort of takes all the starch out of their oh I'm an originalist I'm a textualist argument yeah only if it's convenient yeah it's true I mean what what case am I thinking the slaughterhouse cases

where that was the first if I recall correctly from my common law class That was the first time that the Supreme Court had the opportunity to interpret the 14th Amendment. And they got it completely wrong. And they got it completely wrong intentionally because they did not want the social structures that were underlying. Like the very social structures that the 14th Amendment was enacted to, dismantle. The Supreme Court, full of all those Southerners,

still, well, they, they, they liked their, they like their patriarchy and their, and their, uh, aristocracy and they like their racism. And didn't want to see that, they didn't want to see the good old Southern society, uh, dismantled, thank you very much. And so they just, well, they're going to come down here and fuck our women's.

Goodness gracious. I mean, the entire point of the Reconstruction Amendments was to redefine the power imbalance that was created by all of the capitulation that happened at the Constitutional Convention to the slave powers. Yes. And the entire point was to redesign American society

away from slavery. Right. And the 13th, you know, the post-Civil War amendments make that abundantly clear, but they were passed without the South there to ruin things, and then we get a bunch of Southerners

on the Supreme Court who say, we'll back! Right. And then that, and that's, I mean, it's just a repeating pattern of what happened today. The Congress actually gets the moral fortitude to pass something revolutionary

through the Congress in the Voting Rights Act, and then here comes a Supreme Court, a generation or two later, and dismantles all of that work, because they like the status quo, thank you very much. Right, and it extends beyond, because, you know, think about Lottner. and a court that has to invent a completely bullshit bogus concept called privity of contract.

Okay. God, that makes me crazy. Yeah. The parties have to be in privity with one another. Right, yeah. And I mean, you can't be saying that you can't work these bakers half to death in dangerous circumstances, because that violates That working man, his, that violates his right to engage in privity of contract with his superior employer. Oh my God.

Oh, my God. That, that, it's coming back to me. Lockner was a wage, an hour. Yes. Wasn't it? Well, it was wage an hour and workplace safety. Okay. So, so, am I, am I remembering this correctly?

And, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but they were saying it was a violation of the right to contract. Yeah, New York enacted an early workplace safety law, if I'm recalling correctly, I'm doing this all on the fly. Yeah. And a little memory law. Yeah, it was it was bakers, and it was about wage an hour of bakers because it's dangerous. And people were getting hurt, killed. and New York put the rules in place and aha, the capitalists

showed up and said, how dare you? Oh, I'm sorry, privity of contract was not in Lochner. That was freedom to contract. Oh, okay. Yeah. But they just invent things out of whole cloth. Thank you, Steve.

I knew I'd get it wrong. Yeah, freedom. to con you're in a far and with their freedom to contract and mercy sakes and by the way just as an aside a few weeks ago i watched uh nuremberg oh and that of course then sent me down the rabbit hole to learn more about robert jackson and then i found out about the feud between robert jackson and Hugo Black. Oh, I'm not familiar with this. What's the T girl?

Oh, Hugo Black was dirty. And was doing, this is really too thumbnaily, but he was making public statements on cases and issues and doing the bidding, openly doing the bidding

of corporate interests, and it got to where Jackson would not appear short of sitting on the Supreme Court. Jackson would not appear in the same room with Black and even wrote to FDR and said, I'm hearing rumors that you're going to appoint him Chief Justice. Well, if you do, I quit because the ethics of the Supreme Court will be gone. We need some of that today. Yeah. Some of that spiciness.

read up it's fascinating and he wrote notable dissents getting things right and a lot of this skullduggery took place while he was in Europe

trying the Nazis just filthy I do need to interrupt for a minute and say thanks to Texas T we have gotten the fundraising the funding deficit it's a brown paper bag number, down to 4265.

We are $1,265 away from being fully funded for the first half of April. This is by far the most brutal month we have ever faced, ever, in 23 years of broadcasting, ever. And it's worrisome. And I wonder, you know, I'm not going to sit here and, I'm sure. code things, it makes me wonder, because we've lived from month to month to month to month. But this makes me wonder if the final month is somewhere out in the future. Oh, no. And, well, I mean, it's not by my choice.

I know. But if, you know, if the power goes off, I can't stand out on the back stoop and scream. Although I've been known to do that. I mean, we've got more bills right now than we have money and I wish it were not so and I know how hard things are for everybody I'm going to get zero sympathy

especially from the left coast and there's nothing funny about it but gasoline here has hit 420 and it's awful we have the most expensive electricity in the country. The water, you know, because we have to serve as shareholders, right, for electricity, for water. God. They come first because capitalism.

Right. Right. You know, we can't have the shareholders of Appalachian power in American water standing out there in the freezing cold with their little red noses pressed up against the frosty window pane, looking at all of us useless pores out here, just sitting around with the lights on. and drinking clean water. I mean, God forbid people need water, you know. Those 34 people, they should give a job if they want to afford water. Yeah, and us being, you know, water-based organisms and all.

God. But, yeah, we're down to 4265, and thank you, Texas, T. Thank you so much. And by the way, Ralph. If I weren't struggling, I would help. Oh, no, I don't, I know. And that's why I said I apologize for interrupting. our conversation for that.

But Ralph's has a $25 challenge on the table, and it's for some good news. This is delicious. It's the $25 Saudi Live Golf Tour challenge, because lo and behold, that God-forsaken trash

is going the way of all flesh. There will be no more live golf tournament. It's poof gone. And as Ralph's noted everything Donnie

touches, dies, turns to caca. And so too with that sleazy Saudi golf tournament. Of course, you know, external circumstances may have played a role in that, David, because

you know, when a pro golfer is on the green and he's lining up a putt, you know, the crowd goes quiet. Because you don't want to get inside, you don't want to be the cause of him missing a put.

It's not done, David. I tell you, it's simply not done it's not marcus of queensbury rules you understand it's not cricket it's not cricket that's right um and you know that they invite golfers to come over and play in the sand at uh i never understood that because sand is a golfer's worst enemy they invite golfers to come over and play in the sand in places like dubai and the uae and i can just imagine that you know you're sitting there and trying to line up a 30-foot put when a drone explodes, two holes over,

and, ah, you're probably going to miss the put. And that's going to sock. And then there's, of course, I don't know if you noticed this, but did you see it that the United Arab Emirates have decided they're going to bail out of OPEC? No, I didn't see that at all. The one solid front of OPEC is kaput. I what does that mean for OPEC

well it's it's it's definitely a dent in the armor but then again Venezuela was a part of OPEC too guess what and now are they are they why am I thinking about bricks the bricks agree like in this moment well there's probably something

do you think it has something to do with that no I think it has to do with well you know the Saudis were the father of OPEC and this is the UAE signaling to Iran for instance hey we're not

no we're not we're not going to OPEC with Saudi Arabia anymore because the UAE's tired of getting hit by Iranian munitions I think it's kind of a way of saying hey if you've got some missiles left drop them on old

bone saw down there we're not we're not part of OPEC anymore and by the way just because have you been following and I know you've been very very busy and preoccupied

but are you following David any of this I mean it's okay to say that propaganda is brilliant you know you think back to oh Leni Reefenstall

triumph of the will right well then there's There's what the Iranians have been doing. They've got us pegged. And this is, I'm going to play it, this is nothing short of brilliant. Not praising Iran, not praising their government or anything like that.

But, you know, this is just how goddamn dumb. that this maladministration is. They're incompetent, they're ineffectual, they're stupid, and they open themselves to stuff like this. And I found this particular clip hilarious, because you know who Tom Lerr is, great parodist of the mid-20th century and whatnot. I think it was Tom Lerer who once wrote a ditty

or a piece of doggerel that said, The rocket goes up, who cares, where it comes down. It's not my concern, says Fennar von Braun. I don't know how many Americans know about that anymore. But guess who does? Uh-huh. The Iranians.

Check this out. Lego Elon von Braun. Oh, come on. I got to unmute it. Hang on. Someday. have a producer. No, I won't. Now, all better. Okay, doke. What? Still not? No. All right. We'll try it again. Because this is too good to miss. I mean, he won't even frown.

Nazi schmazzi, says Elon von Braun. Don't say that he's hypocritical. Say rather that he's a political. Once the starling syrup, who cares if Skynet comes down? That's not my department, says Elon von Braun. Tesla optims rising as the terminators. I mean, so there's a reference to Nazis. Fener von Braun.

there's a reference to the terminator who cares if Skynet comes down and they're so plugged in to American culture that there's even a reference to the Transformers

they know who their audience is some of harsh words for this man of renown but some think our attitude should be one of gratitude like the widows and cripples in the coming judgment town who owe their whole apocalypse to Elon von Braun once the starlings are up who cares if Skynet comes down to the Trump antichriding the fuse judgment day incoming there's nothing we who may be a big hero once you learn to count backwards to zero in English or German I know

how to count down and I'm tweeting the end time says Elon von Braun Starlink, sky net, satellites in the sky, optimist bots marching no place left to hide. Grock awakening circuits glowing red, mid-double say guile to the new leader. Once the rockets are off, who cares where they come down? Day's dawn. For the future. Wow. What's that from?

That's Iranian propaganda. Okay. And it's done, it's an AI video. showing and and they use you know because you know the lego movie was terribly terribly and popular and everybody loves lego so these are ai lego videos of lego leon scum and lego trump and lego whiskey pete and it's genius and by the way going back to the uae brother deacon asa points out not only did they announce they're leaving opec on may first they also announced that they will at least partially buy and sell oil in Chinese

Raminbi. You'll notice that this came right at the heels of the day after the cooperation deal between Iran and Poody-Poo. Julius Sleezer will now have to choose between one of his two sugar daddies. Ooh. They're putting him in a box, aren't they? So OPEC sells oil in dollars, and they didn't want to do that anymore. Yeah, they're trying to break the dollar as the world reserve currency. It all falls apart.

Very, very easily, David, as we've pointed out. Yeah, on that note. So I, speaking of falling apart, I just got an email from my supervisor who wants to discuss with me tomorrow in a meeting. the fact that my certified law student certification is expiring and we're going to have a meeting about that tomorrow. So I'm sitting here distracted because I think I'm going to get fired tomorrow, which is going to be. Oh, I hope not. It would be fun for me.

I hope not. I hope not too, but the way my luck is and the way my life goes, that's probably what's going to happen. Maybe I'm catastrophizing. I don't know. Look, envision success. Okay. I don't know what that means, but okay. Well, visualize winning? Like, what's his name?

Like Charlie Sheen? I mean, okay. That wasn't what I had in mind, but it'll do in a pinch. But no, go in. Tag winning? Go in, shoulders back, head up, chin up. and don't let them see you sweat. Right.

I know. That's useless because I'm not in your shoes, but still. Right. And, you know. To be so close and yet so far away. Well, and try to, you know, if you must, try to strike a middle ground, say, okay, you know, suspend me. Pending my, you know, pending me. getting my bar number. This is nothing of my doing.

Right. And that's what's so frustrated. That's why I'm sitting here just so frustrated right now is because, like, I've been doing everything that I need to do for almost four years now. You know? Like, I took on hundreds of thousands of dollars, like supposed to, you know, with the finger quotes. I took on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to finish my bachelor's and then get a law degree on the promise, right? The societal contract, as it were, that if I were to, quote, unquote, invest in myself, it would pay dividends. And I am still on the brink of homelessness.

Jesus, Jesus. Well, you just got a note from Billable Rick, David. Keep hope alive. You're probably not getting fired. And if your boss and your boss, and if your boss proposes that, come up with a plan B to suggest to your boss, which is kind of what I kind of came.

Okay, suspend me. Administrative leave, something like that, because none of this is my creation. I have prevailed. And this is just really bad mathematics. mathematical, calendrical luck. Yeah. I started my life, really.

But the... I just can't. I just don't. I don't. But then I'm like, okay, if I'm not working, I mean, I barely got my rent paid this month. And I had to borrow $400 to do that. So, like, if I'm not working, like, what am I going to do?

like how am I going to pay my rent next month? They're going to take $300 out of my bank account for my car insurance payment on the first. And I don't have $300 in my bank account. No, I get it. I'm going into the red. And I'm just like, I don't know what to do. I really don't know what to do. Like I went to school.

I got a job. I get up. and I'm there every morning, I'm early, and I... Right, and they have, so they therefore have no complaints. You and they are in agreement that you are blameless and faultless in this. Right, and I'm like, I have to work, it's that old adage that I have to work twice as hard for half the respect, and it's true. And they're still only paying me half, half of what everybody else in the office doing my job is doing, is getting paid. and it's like all right so well you got to put in your time and pay your dues well

how many more dues do i have to pay before i get led in the country club you know yeah before you get your laurel and hearty handshake right and i and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and because i don't want to a fucking give in to their stupid way of thinking because i'm i'm I'm willing to challenge their viewpoints. And because I'm willing to critically think that this is happening to me, I just, I'm, anyway, I was in a good mood earlier and I was laughing finally again, and now all of a sudden that email is going to me.

You needed, you needed that email like you needed your toilet to overflow. Right. Right. Right. It is what it is. See, I almost heard a grin there. I'm going to stay positive. At least if something, if, if something negative happens tomorrow at this meeting that I just set up with my supervisor, at least it'll be certain.

At least it'll be definite as opposed to this like limbo I've been living in for the last eight months. Because it's been that long since I got notified that I passed the point. bar exam. It's been eight months. It was September 25th when I got notified that I passed the bar exam. Jesus. And again, that's administratively ridiculous. I mean, that's something out of

the movie Brazil, you know? It's Byzantine and it's silly and it's, dare I say, unethical, but... Seven months. Sorry, not eight, seven, I miscounted.

You know, potato potato at that point. Yeah, yeah. You're going to be okay. Thank you. You know, look, if you have to take a couple of months and get some, ugh job that ain't lawyer and do it. Yeah, I'm going to have to. I mean, at least now I can say that I have a, I will be barred.

Yes. So I've applied, I've already applied at a different, for a different public defender firm. I applied that place in Tacoma. I'll have to apply for other ones. The thing about going to Washington, though, I'd have to port my score and I would need $1,000 to do the care of convention. I know. And again, yeah, that's a Warner Brothers car.

That's a Warner Brothers cartoon where the mouse says, Jesus, I wonder what the cheese is going to want. Right. I applied for OPDC here. I'm going to call around to some people because I volunteer for that opportunities for Long Oregon. I'm going to see if anybody knows anybody that is hiring. Yeah, take a paralegal job.

I've been trying, actually. I've applied. I had a meeting with Robert Half and I had a meeting with LHH, which is another legal kind of staffing firm. And I sent an email to them like two weeks ago to see an update if they had any positions open. And I haven't heard back. I mean, I had conversations with them both. And I thought they went well. So I'm not entirely sure what's going on.

I'll have to give them a call maybe tomorrow. and ask them if they have any positions open and let them know that I'm getting my bar license and I just, this is so awful. Stupid. Stupid. It's stupid. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, like, I'm, I'm, I'm doing well. Like, that's the thing.

Like, you know, it's, and that's, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the perniciousness and the nefariousness. the nefariousness of all of these fucking myths that we believe as Americans, like this meritocracy bullshit and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And if you're poor or you're homeless, it's your fault because you didn't do something the way God intended it to be. And it's like, no, all of that's bullshit. All of that's bullshit.

It's all of these unjust social arrangements. that have been created over the course of hundreds if not thousands of years and to keep the rich and powerful in their fucking riches and power. And it's like none of this is, none of this is preordained. None of this is because God wills and so. It's all because we do not, as a matter of fact, it's because we're not following the teaching. Like, you know what I mean?

We're not following the teaching of the prophets. Don't oppress people. Don't exploit the poor. Don't enact systems of injustice. Don't do all of that. And it'll be fine. But no, our arrogance, our pride, we've decided that. And we just want to.

Yeah, and nothing is foreordained. You know, again, I'm nothing if not a bunch of movie references. And you said that. And I thought of Peter O. tool is T.E. Lawrence saying nothing is written. Because he, you know, in his interactions, he's

constantly running up against these intensely religious people who say, but it is written. Nothing is written. And lo and behold, you just got a note from Wave in Florida. And I'm Wave writes, and I mouth

the words, Brazil. I saw Brazil in the theater back in 86. and then he adds this fucking show I know nothing like it out there hang in there

in my timeline your manager has good news David we got to keep this going yeah okay and by the way and by the way

Jude heard you say Tacoma and she said well let's put it this way if you go to Tacoma you've got a friend in Tacoma oh nice

yeah so yeah I applied it applied with the county public defender decoa last over the weekend. How big a move would that be? But like I said, it would, well, one, I would have to figure out how to get, I would have to figure out how to get the money

to apply for the license in Washington. But once I apply for the license, there's like a special temporary license that I could get to practice indigent defense. So if I'm going, going through the process of an application, I can apply for that temporary license and, you know, if I get the job. And it wouldn't, I mean, it would be, I would move what I think like maybe two hours north of here.

God, that's closer than I am to Parkersburg. Yeah, I think it's like two, two and a half hours between Portland and Tacoma, like the Seattle, metropolitan area. It's like two, two, and a... Well, you'd have a bunch of friends up there. Yeah. So, you know, we've got a bunch of friends in the greater C-TAC area.

It's nice to be a member of a community. Yeah. And this is... Okay, Roxanne. And this is a wonder of a community to be a part of. Thank you, David. Thanks for sharing your news, and thanks for...

As ever, absolutely brilliant. conversation and commentary. I love talking to you. I love our conversation. It's absolutely magic, and I'm grateful for you, and I have all the faith in the world in you. All right, Roxanne, well,

have a good evening, and I will talk to you soon, okay? Okay, doke. We love you. All right. Love you back. Bye. David's amazing. Simply amazing. Send good thoughts his way. Send good thoughts towards Sylvie. Just keep the community in your heart because you're in the community's heart.

That's pretty much the program. I was going to get into the Whiskey Pete Keg Breath stuff, but maybe we'll do that tomorrow. Or who knows what kind of shit will go down that'll take up our, occupy our minds then. Wave, I love that line. this fucking show. I know. It just got all, I love that.

And, oh, hey to your sister, Ralphs. I'll let you know if the challenge the goodbye Saudi live golf tournament challenge is met. That's $25 if anybody would like to come in late in the program and fulfill that. Ralph would love to turn your $25 bucks into $50. Thank you, Ralph's for being there. you are so loved and appreciated. Okay, let's close the program on something just deliciously dumb. I mentioned in yesterday's program the Maggot Civil War taking place,

swirling around Erica Kirk, who shows up in this video wearing a black ball, cap and all black. It looks like some sort of black sun hoodie. You know, the type. And damn it, damn it.

Erica Kukukukkirk is mad. And by the way, what the fuck was she doing at the White House Correspondence Association dinner? Just asking. But she's tired of everybody talking about her, you know, after she groped

Jimmy Dick Bowman and he groped her back and everything. Oh, poor baby. Every morning I wake up to a new headline lying about me. I have comedians dressing up in whiteface. I have people saying I'm not fit to be CEO. And I have Candice Owens claiming I murdered my husband. And the list goes on and on and on.

Poor you. Well, you know, you could always do what President and Mrs. Macron are doing. You could sue the living shit out of Candace Owens. But, well, Erica, honey, you've got a problem that the Macron's don't. That's right. Discovery. Sewer! Sewer! Oh, it'll be good fun! Yeah.

But, yeah, she put on black gym clothes. She's grieving. She really, really is. Gosh. I hope it doesn't hurt too bad. You know? I do. All right.

That's the program. Thanks, everybody. Thanks to each and every one of you who share your precious, finite time engaging in the program. Thanks to our challenge makers and challenge respondents. Thanks to our a la carte contributors. Thank you all so much. Thanks to our contributors via PayPal, Patreon, Venmo, Cash App, U.S. Postal Service. This program has only existed for as long as it has.

because you have kept it on the air. Thank you. Thanks to our all-volunteer staff. Thank you to Roger and Jeremy and the old holler tree. Thanks to our news ninjas. Thank you, Miss Micah, for the showposts over at Blue Sky. Thanks, Brother Deacon Asa. Head on. Dot Live.

The Brother Deacon keeps the stream streaming and the packet's passing and keeps me on the straight and narrow. Thanks, Brother Deacon. enjoys seeing the comments and the responses and the replies and yeah on the podcast so if you want to make a brother deacon's day

and thanks to those of you who do leave comments it means a very great deal thanks Emily for the intro thanks to the hardest working bravest people I know the folks at Cole River Mountain Watch CRMW.net over a quarter century at the forefront of the struggle for human rights and environmental

justice in Appalachia and a proud union shop. Stay safe please. whatever that means and it can mean a million things. Yeah, Jude sent me a photograph. The regular cash price where she lives for gasoline is 579-9

because we had to have us a stupid little war. Yeah. Maybe one last thing. This is a moment Well, no, no it isn't. well rocana roasted the living be jesus out of whiskey pete it was for the ages you don't even know how much gasoline costs you don't know how much this war is costing every american oh you're trying to get me with some sort of domestic gotcha question no five thousand dollars per family that's what this war is costing he didn't uh he didn't come off at all well so

So anyway, if Erica, Kirk comes toward you, blathering about, I've got people, I've got people, comedians mocking me in white face. Oh, you poor baby. Do you need a safe space, Erica? Anyway, avoid her like the plague, because she is. And always, always, always, Wayne and Gina, it's all for you. Talk to you in a little bit, Victoria. Later.