Some More News - Even More News: We Used To Be A Proper Hair-Sniffing Country

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Hi. Margaret Killjoy ("Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff") joins Katy and Cody to talk about President Biden's remarkably Trump-like plan to address the "crisis" at the U.S.-Mexico border, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and the failures of the old guard of the Democratic Party. Plus, they'll try to determine which conservative dudes actually believe that Taylor Swift is a psyop and which just want clicks. Go to https://ground.news/SMN to stay fully informed. Subscribe through our link for as little as $1 a month or get 40% off unlimited access this month only.  Right now, Hungryroot is offering Some More News listeners 40% off your first delivery and free veggies for life. Just go to https://Hungryroot.com/MORENEWS  Take the first step to visibly thicker, healthier hair. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com/men and enter the promo cod e MORENEWS. Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA   Follow us on social media: Twitter:

Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is still Katie Stoll. Oh, I wasn't prepared for this. I, oh, hi. Hi. I'm Cody. I'm Cody. I'm Cody. Hi. I'm Cody. Thank you for the I. Oh, hi. Hi. I'm Cody. I'm Cody. I'm Cody.

Hi, Cody. Thank you for the introduction. Hi, Cody. Hi. Hi. You were prepared. We are good. We're firing on all synapses today, which is a good thing because we've got a great guest

welcoming. I'm going to tell you, you might know her. She's an author. She's a musician she's the host of the podcast cool people who did cool stuff that's right it's Margaret Killjoy whoa that's me Margaret yeah you've heard of yourself before haven't you I have I've run across me on the internet that's good I mean you're pretty prolific healthy relationship with yourself yeah I mean you live alone in the mountains you gotta at least know yourself right

yeah totally yeah okay you've been here before so you know how we start things off here that's with some celebrating so celebrating let's celebrate february 1st, National Get Up Day. No, okay. St. Bridget's Day. St. Bridget's Day. So, okay, this is a day to celebrate perseverance in the face of adversity. No, this day was not started by Chumbawamba, but by U.S. figure skating. Then I do not celebrate it. Oh, maybe I do celebrate it.

Since January is National Skating Month, and one of the top lessons young figure skaters have to learn is how to get back up after falling okay it's kind of presumptuous that they fell all january and they need to get up in february well they're new that's true figures yeah i mean it's very brave to even get out there i always think that's just tempting fate put me on ice with blades underneath me not my sport but yeah i guess if you fall down you got to get up i read that national get up day like what's your get up your outfit national wear clothes day yeah that's a horrible day i'm sorry yeah yeah it's every day i'm so sorry. Speaking of every day, February 2nd is Groundhog Day. Perfect segue. The movie Groundhog Day.

Yeah, we'll be stuck there for a while. Yeah, we'll be stuck there. I don't know. What does this mean? Winter's over? Has it started? Do you not know what Groundhog Day is? I forget.

It's spring is coming in six weeks, right? It depends on what the groundhog sees. Yeah, if the groundhog sees a shadow, you get six more weeks of winter. If no shadow, no more winter. No more winter. Because the sun's out. Climate change is making it much more likely of early springs. But if you see your shadow, then that means it is sunny out because there's sunlight making a shadow yeah but it's always colder when the sun's out in the winter at least

where i grew up i guess but if you don't see the shadow then it's not sunny like it's very overcast right i'm sure there's an 1870s farmer's almanac to explain all of this but i did not look it up well i just i think we'll bring it back to the climate change point of, I don't know if we can rely on this source of data anymore. I think all bets are off. Winter started super late. Last year, our winter started in October and went, like, to May.

I think the groundhog will see the void and, like, just stare blankly. I think the groundhog will see the void and like just stare blankly i think the groundhog's gonna check out there six more weeks of existential dread this yeah i'm hiding for two years the groundhog is just gonna store a bunch of food and get back underground wait for humanity to die out. The groundhog has emerged from a 10 by 10 metal bunker with 300 cans of black beans. What does that say about our society? This is groundhog with his huge beard. Yeah. It's also the first day of Black History Month.

We want to say that? Probably a better choice. Because I just did. This is a month, the whole month. Yeah, we'll probably get to it in the month, in like a week or another week. Good call, Cody. That's why they were the shortest month of the year. Again, there's just the constant struggle.

Yeah, no coincidence. For what, do I include real stuff in the holidays? I know, I know. In the fake holiday bit. It's always. Yeah. Is it disrespectful? Okay, see, I felt bad about St. Bridget's Day.

Yeah. This is the part of the show where we interview guests. We know you. So I've got a question. Our listeners might not. Well, our listeners definitely don't know. But after we record this show, I'm going to be recording your show. We're going to be doing a four-parter.

And I don't even know what it's about. Should we tease it what episode are we recording after this is this you trying to find out ahead of time one of my whole things that i don't tell my guess she said before you hopped on that she was gonna do this uh we're gonna talk about the easter rising of 1916 we're gonna talk about the the lighting of the fuse that caused ir Irish independence and how it was done by way weirder and more interesting people than most people assume. Genuinely so excited for the rest of our day. That's a great topic to have me on for.

Excellent. I'm Irish. Great. I mean, it really adds absolutely no knowledge or input except for the fact that that's my genetic makeup yeah no no that's a very common american uh yeah i mean i am too like don't get me wrong yeah a lot of us are yeah jonathan you wrote this question for margaret so i'll let you have it so you you responded to a prompt about professional advice it was like people over 30 what's your best professional advice or something? And you responded with, my advice is that the old world is dying and the

new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. And I was like, well, that's not very helpful for someone going to a job interview, you know, tomorrow. So I thought you might take this opportunity at the beginning of our podcast to elaborate. Okay. So this is a quote from Gramsci, who's this like Italian Marxist who I don't know whether I agree with about anything. And it's like a little bit of a meme thing just to talk about like the times we're in.

But, you know, obviously it's like, now it's funny because if I describe it, it feels less like a joke, but obviously when it's a response to the job interview thing. I think that my response is that like there's this thing that people talk about about how like the world that we were prepared to grow into and live into just doesn't exist anymore and we don't know what the new world will look like and so like that that's kind of what I'm trying to get out there besides, you know

Internet clout by tweeting clever things. Sure. Yeah Compit what you get competition a tweet clever things and now it's a competition a tweet mean things Yeah, that's worse. Why I almost completely I feel so out of my depth Yeah online and what my voice is or what I'm supposed to say. But to the original point, that's just a note on social media these days. Well, I just found it funny. And so I always want to kill funny things by being like, explain the funny thing. Make it not funny if you can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That made sense because I was like, when I say it, it seems funny. But then when I describe it, I'm like, it's a quote by this Italian. I think he's an autonomous Marxist. He talked about culture a lot. It was funny because I think it's better advice than a lot of what I read because I didn't know how to answer that question. I'm like, meet podcasters and ask them to. It is it is a very funny response.

I also agree that it's actually good advice just in general, looking at life and professional opportunities differently. What do we want out of the job versus and what do we want out of our life? What are we preparing for? We actually don't even know what we don't know what to expect and yeah there is something very stressful about that and also very liberating in a way to me personally i feel depending on my mood which one excitement and uh anxiety are two sides of a coin but i would encourage everybody to think outside the box and uh and say this in job interviews i'd just say that yeah now is the

time of monsters specifically i think that will land well in a job interview you know if you said that in the job was for like social media of like if you're like if the company's like trying to hire a zoomer so that they can connect with the youth and you answer with this you'll probably get the job you're not gonna know Gromshie and you're and oceans are now battlefields too

maybe just slip that in there the uh the VP of marketing at Panda Express is like we gotta go with this person they're tapped in they know they know what to tweet yeah all right now we get to talk about the news yeah we do we're excited about it are we pumped all good like always yeah lots of good news we've got a great guest today so we're really we're gonna go hard in the paint with some news today which is in the title of the show so we should be doing that every week. Yeah, we should.

Yeah. My heart in the paint is the title of the show. Well, let's write that down. Always in the search for new show ideas. All right. First of all, calm down.

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The link is in the description. You may now calm up. Hey, there are you. Look at you all dressed up. You know, I like to dig pitfall traps in my yard. It's a good way to get exercise and collect mail carriers. But I often forget where the traps are, and I'm too scared to leave my house.

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topic today. We're gonna talk about the border. Woo! The crisis at the border? The crisis at the border. Jonathan, why don't you set this up for us? Well, yeah, I don't know if you guys know, there is a crisis at the border that's... All caps.

Every four years, or every two years sometimes it gets worse you know resulting in dot dot dot horrible things happening to people um so we did a some more news episode about the border some months back which you can watch so i'm not going to do the 50 minute background on all this sure but here's the latest. The Supreme Court ruled last week that the federal government could cut razor wire that had been placed along the US-Mexico border by the state of Texas. This is wire that had injured migrants, and the federal government said it hindered border patrol from operating. But as a result of this ruling, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, ordered the Texas National Guard not to allow federal border

agents to remove the wire. He says the Biden administration is failing to do his duty. I think this is Chip Roy who said, quote, failing to do his duty and defend our country. So a bunch of Republicans say, you know, Biden's not securing the border. They want to have this odd standoff at the border with the Texasxas national guard and the national guards from like 20 other states with republican governors standing in the way of federal border patrol that's being ordered to cut the wire and now a thousand or so people of various far-right disciplines are headed there as part of a convoy I think they think they might be starting another civil war they want that or they're

pretending to think that they want that they might want that yeah some of them might some of them really just like being a part of something right yeah I feel like they haven't really thought it through too hard what would actually go well no war all right like the one video that i saw they're like here are all of these patriots going to the border and it's of course from 2019 in another state about something entirely different i i am assured that there are people going there to do something i've read it's only a couple dozen cars as of today. Like Fox News or Fox Business said it was going to be 700,000 vehicles.

On Monday, a couple dozen left Virginia. So, right, this channel on Telegram called Take Back Our Border has over 1,000 members members but obviously all of those people decided you know they didn't want to like maybe give up their morning starbucks run on the way to work if you play a show and you like who's who clicks yes i'm going on facebook oh right it's like 10 of that is actually going oh yeah exactly if that yeah they're like interested watching event no at the end of the day who's gonna spend five hundred dollars on gas to go not start a civil war yeah to go get like a do like a photo op with ted cruz it's like a really big tailgate party or

something i don't know i mean i'm sure they have fun. And the real insurrection was the friends they made along the way. Well, right. It seems like they'll be there for a week or two until they realize the civil war is not happening and the Biden administration is just going to sue or try to bring this to court instead of saying like open fire. Yeah, let's Texas National Guard or whatever. It's astounding, but also also not i'm not surprised by anything now but our there's just such a big propaganda machine on all sides this issue it doesn't even matter what biden does or doesn't do because objectively speaking he's barely moved the needle since trump was in office and you loved his rules and his policies then.

So what people don't want to engage with is the fact that there are crises happening everywhere and that people are going to keep trying to come to this country. Doesn't matter if you're a Democrat, a Republican, Libertarian, fucking Green Party, whoever is in office is going to be dealing with this. And the bigger question is, what are the causes of it? What are it? It's just saying that we have to be harsher on it isn't going to stop the fact that people are coming and trying to. And so they're going to spin it to be that this is a crisis that Biden has created. Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have been calling it a crisis that Biden has created. Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have been calling it a crisis for years. Democrats and the New York Times have recently joined them. So you don't really have any voice saying the obvious, which is that people coming here is not bad and enriches our country in various ways.

And provides tax revenue that many of these people never get to see the benefit of. Even if I was a fiscal conservative, I would be all about it. Like, I've played strategy games a little bit too much in my life. When you have the higher population, you can do more and you get more done and you like make more money and you have more resources and you accomplish things. Like, and that's even just like literally true in the specific case of what migrant labor is used for unfortunately yeah in this country like absolutely and it's it sucks to even put to lay it out on

those terms yeah that's not the terms i think about humanity no of course but like you said even if i was a fiscal conservative you would think about it this way because it's it's also just the foundation of our country. But even outside of that, racism, though, racism trumps fiscal responsibility. Totally. Yeah, totally. But when I'm talking about this is only going to get worse. I mean, the humanitarian crises that we're facing and that other countries are facing it's not going to lessen we have to think about this differently obviously um but and it's not that the the left does it in the same way but the right no matter what they will point to this as a crisis that is a democrat making even though he hasn't and right now we're looking at biden's uh proposals

to flank from the right yeah which is really gonna work this time yeah what is what does he want to do yeah so so biden has proposed that there's not specific legislation there's nothing written uh he's proposed in being incredibly harsh harsh to the people at the border. He wants to give the president the permanent authority to shut the border down when there are more than 5,000 migrant crossings per day for a week. It's much higher than that. He wants more than 1,000 new border patrol agents. He wants, quote, 100 cutting edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our southwest border. OK. And then, of course, in order to get what has to be a machine because of a cop gets within like 100 yards.

Exactly. Yeah. I have a hard time believing that a machine can detect and stop fentanyl. What about 100 cutting edge machines? Well, maybe all of them together. Their powers combine like Captain Planet or whatever. One cop in the room and then the cop

is like the canary. If the fentanyl is in the same room as the cop the cop will die. 200 feet away and then the line is in the other direction and then just watch the cop and see if they start freaking out. Yeah. That's not bad. And in addition –

I don't know if Biden will bite, but – You know, he wants this to be bipartisan. He goes, I want to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He thinks this will help him politically. He thinks this will help him politically. But in order to do that, Republicans won't agree unless it would limit asylum significantly and include deportations, which he seems more than willing to do. So he's kind of being Donald Trump ish. I wouldn't even say Donald Trump light when it comes to the border. Yeah, it's interesting because these are things that it does seem like

obviously he wants to do and they all kind of just like want to do and like it i've also heard people talk about like well he's just like playing chicken he's like challenging them to do this um even though he really doesn't want to um which seems like those like 5d chess claims for but like now and even if that were true which i don't really subscribe to that seems bad that you're bargaining with these people's lives in such a flippant manner in like a game of political chicken and saying that you would do this because you're still messaging to the country that you're open to it even if it's like it is like ah they're not gonna they're not gonna bite i'm gonna give them this offer and they're gonna turn it down and i can make them look bad you're also still looking like you offered that plan so i don't know the whole

thing is just get very he has a really strong control of this progressive base right now right right this is some real he's playing to his crowd right now, for sure. It's frustrating to see, too, because, like, and this is, we've talked about this also in, like, relation to what's going on at Gaza. There are so many things, and not everything. We've talked about good things that Brandon's done for us. He's capping those overdraft fees.

We love it. But there are some things he does that are fucking bad. And those things he often will say in a more traditional political manner. He doesn't say them like Donald Trump does. But if Trump did a lot of this stuff, the people who support him would be up and who support Biden now would be up in arms about it. And just I nobody listening to this is is like in this camp. But like I urge people who aren't listening to this to just like consider like what you would think and feel if Donald Trump said this exact thing. Maybe with a little a little bluer language, you know, he might be a little harsher with the language, but the actual action is not the same or is the same. Exactly. Well, and I this brings this was my original point, essentially, which is it doesn't matter what you say or do trying to capitulate to the other side in this situation it's not going to land but what

you are doing is alienating the people that voted for you who are already pretty upset with the whole you know genocide thing amongst others um so it's hard to see this as a savvy move, except I guess this is what he ultimately does want, because at no point over the last. My God, has it been almost four years? It has been almost four years, but at no point over the past four years did I ever believe that you, you know, wanted to make this more humane. you know, wanted to make this more humane. Yeah. And meanwhile, I guess what he wanted is happening because Republicans are rejecting the plan because Trump is worried that it would hurt him.

Trump called it a horrible open borders betrayal of America. But he would do the same thing. How in the make? betrayal of america i but he would do the same thing like they're dispatching like a hundred uh t-1000s to the border just to scan for fentanyl and he's like well that's an open borders plan it's wild to like when part of it part of the proposal is literally giving the president which could be you donald trump one day the power to shut down the border that doesn't sound like an open border i don't yeah and it's also a little bit nerve-wracking like i'm not a big fan of much about the way our government is structured but oh yeah you'll

be shocked to know this um from the body of work that i've produced but the idea that someone who's not the president anymore can say he has like quotes where he's like oh I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen. He's not in Congress but he controls enough of Congress that he can be up front about like well I control enough of Congress that I can make this not happen.

That's bad. It's wild. That's a bad thing. Yeah literally he was just like I want to run on immigration and if you take this deal it's going to be harder for me to do that yeah so so don't take this deal even like i think at one point lindsey graham even was like we got to take this deal guys like this is like the best deal we'll ever get because you're not going to get anything like this under donald trump because people who don't like him will see the things that Biden's proposing under his name

and go, oh, I don't like that stuff. The resistance or whatever will activate against this this kind of deal when it's a different guy proposing it. And it's funny because all of the not all, but a bunch of the Republicans are saying, well, Biden should just use his executive powers to do this. So they're not even saying we don't think it's a good idea like Trump is, like he should do something else. They're saying, no, this is all good, but you should – what are you looking at us for? What do you want us to do? No, no, no. Just use your – like in this instance, we need you to be the executive and do this stuff and bypass Congress.

But for everything else, if you do that, we'll impeach you. We'll do whatever. Exactly. Right. I just remember being really like a lot of my cynicism was baked in when I was watching, you know, Bush, the younger Bush do Guantanamo Bay. Right. And did it totally illegally.

And Obama ran on like, well, that's totally illegal. The problem is, is that it's illegal. And I should have paid more attention to the way he phrased that because then he became the president and made it legal, you know? And like, I was just like, Oh,

that's the way that Republicans and Democrats work. Trump will just come in and be like, well, just do it. And Biden's like, no, I want to do it the right way. I want to,

I want to make sure that I could do it. Yeah. Yeah. And then also, yeah, the idea that like assembling a loaded gun to hand to trump is what he's doing anyway as you mentioned you know he's just like he he has to know he's probably gonna lose right like he has to know that i you would hope i think that he has

that awareness you know grain of salt with any sort of like uh palace intrigue type story out of politico or whatever but like yeah there's a lot of people who are like yeah they're worried he's old and people don't like him he's struggling with a lot of this stuff they're trying to you know meet with like muslim leaders across the country and they can't even get a meeting with people in like michigan running a genocide in yeah anyway yeah uh it's go it's go it's not going well and it does seem like they're at least aware that it's a problem uh it's just a matter of how they're going to address it um maybe they'll reach out to some reasonable republicans and get those votes yeah that that thing that still exists i like yeah exactly i actually want to run this

past you because you all pay more attention to current events than I do. I just read history books all day for work. And it seems like Trump was like, oh, OK, I don't care about the old Republican Party. I'm reinventing the Republican Party my way. And it matched with where the base was at. The old Republican Party was going away anyway. And the Democratic Party hasn't figured that out yet. The old Democratic Party is gone. Like no one under 40 likes capitalism, you know?

And like, yeah. And so so Biden is running as if he's the old politics. But the old politics are are over and he's just not acknowledging that. Is that a. I think there's a mix of that too i think because there are some democrats who do know that they're younger and realize this but i think i mean part of it is also like biden is very very old right um and he's been in that uh crowd for decades and decades and decades so because he ran on i'm gonna return things to normal yeah i'm gonna

we're gonna get rid of Trump. This aberration. I think he may be back backed off on the aberration claim, but he is kind of goes back and forth on it. Like Trump is like is a unique threat. Like, no, he represents the Republican Party. We need to go back to the old Republican Party. But like he it's he's kind of a mess, addled, addled in the brain.

Yeah, a little a little addled. But I think it is a mix of that and like being kind of sad that that is the case and resisting that truth okay because he did run on like a return to normalcy like okay part of the pitch was we're gonna get rid of trump then you don't have to think about politics anymore we'll take care of it i just don't think that they agree that capitalism's bad or are willing to let go of it. There are enough of people still in power. And I mean, so many of them have been there for so long and probably too tired and old to think outside the box to care enough. It's also the systems worked out for them but yeah

you would think they would look at what's happening as a very very clear wake-up call that this these are not the same party like i think people have a hard time calling themselves a democrat right now yeah a lot of us do and i don know what I am. I don't know what my label should be. Not a libertarian, not a Democrat, you know. Yeah, I guess I'm more of a socialist, you know. We don't have those. We don't have those parties. Yeah, that doesn't exist.

What are you talking about? I don't know. Right. But it's we're in disarray. But the people who believe that exist, it doesn't exist as a political label in a useful way in the United States right now. And yet it's a scary word, even like any policy that Biden

or the Democrats do bring forward that dabbles in that approach. They're not going to use those words because they're scary words. But yeah, I think it's because he's, you know, Biden is one of the old guard of the democratic party so i think also acknowledging that the republican party the old republican party is dead and it's this new fucked up thing uh would sort of have to make him face a lot of stuff that he doesn't want to yeah um about his own party and his own sort of role in our politics

for the last several decades about how like hair sniffing is like no longer on the table we can't do it anymore why not not allowed why can't we do that weird times times have changed huh times god we used to be a proper country yeah proper hair sniffing country well that feels like a perfect transition point to pivot to ads for some nice clean shampoo no we don't have a shampoo sponsor yet but we would yeah would love a shampoo sponsor reach out i guess we did have any samples at one point but did we yeah well we did but then they didn't re-up because they sniffed our hair and they saw we weren't using it you're like ah

you're not using it yeah or they listened to us like sort of like ramble about like potential other products and then like we're like ah

shampoo is whatever and then the ad finally played and it was about shampoo and then they were like well we can't do this anymore I want a leave-in conditioner sponsor that's like changed my

that has changed my hair fundamentally is leave-in conditioner yeah. That's like changed my, that has changed my hair fundamentally is leave-in conditioner. And detangler. Yep. Less washing, more that stuff. Yeah. For me anyway. Yeah.

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That's Nutrafol.com slash men promo code more news. Oh, boy, those were ads. And now they're over. They're over now. Oh, no. But we're not. Oh, yeah. We're not over. Not yet. We're over now. Oh, no. But we're not. Oh, yeah. We're not over.

Not yet. We've got time. Oh, boy. We've got time to talk about Israel and Palestine because things are still not good. Are they worse? I left the good Joe Biden story first and then then sprinkled in this one afterwards um all right so the updates here that uh gaza is heading toward what humanitarian groups are calling a full-fledged famine half a million people are starving there most are drinking polluted water

the amount of humanitarian aid getting into gaza been severely limited. And now the Biden administration has paused funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency because Israel accused 12 members of the group of taking part in the October 7th attack. And for context, the UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza. So expecting none of those 13,000 people to be in any way affiliated with the ruling government of the area seems to me a little bit naive. Like, what do you expect? This is what the government is there, essentially. Not the government, but they've been providing resources and of course there's going to be some sort of involvement sorry yeah well i was going to say for additional

context um this was announced right after the icj's orders and ruling about the south africa's accusation of uh genocide and uh so that's interesting timing i would say i think a few of these things uh have been very interesting timing wise uh the first i think the first strike against the houthis was i think the day after the case was originally made i think that's true it was around the same time and then yeah this was just like very clearly like I don't want to get conspiracy brained. It's just very clear, like a retaliation against this ruling. It happened right afterwards. It is pulling much needed aid from people who need it.

I don't know. It's frustrating. Just like the both sides of the mouth stuff of the what Biden administration is doing, like all these little leaks of like, oh, he's really, really broken up about it. He's really struggling. He's having such a bad time. But then doing things like this, there's like messaging and then there's like the leak messaging and then there's like the actions messaging and they're all different. And we can talk about how all that stuff is horrible. And I just want to before we do, I just want to say that if you're against any of this stuff, you're either being paid for by Russia or China, according to Nancy Pelosi.

Oh, that is some I am perfect example to what I was talking about before about the old guard of the Democratic Party does not understand shit about what's happening. I have no idea if I can cuss on this show. I forgot. Yeah, you're good. Great. Fuck. Yeah, you're good. Great. Fuck yeah, you can. I was thinking the same thing when we were talking about this fucking Nancy Pelosi.

You know, tell us a bit more about that. What was going on when she said those lovely words? Oh, well, on, I think, CNN? Yeah, on CNN's State of the Union on Monday morning, she said protesters calling for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin's message.

Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now. And then the next day, there were protesters outside her house. And she said, go back to China where your headquarters is. I gasped when i saw that i cannot nancy pelosi out there saying go back to china it's wild what has happening so like a couple things because this is uh the protesters were code pink right and there's like some like person connected to china that like

their funding gets from like the like the the on like the reality of it is there's like there's some connection between that group and uh and china in some way but i would posit that that's still a terrible like look to say out loud to protesters and doesn't it doesn't get the message across that it seems like she wants to no it doesn't that still say a fucked up thing to do and say well what it is regardless of like well yeah it's just the same thing we've we've talked about making assumptions about people and adding adding in rhetoric that because starts to become pretty racist you know we start to propagate things when we're lumping people in with a country and making assumptions and also just of course the fact that we can't care and be upset about what's happening unless we're paid protesters it just feels like the script is completely flipped yeah and like i that's the

thing about it because like even if there is some truth to to any of these things like even like you know whether like if if putin is like getting some paid protesters to do x or y or whatever um i don't i don't get the intelligence briefings that she does but even if there's a grain of truth in any of these things what is the effect of it functionally what is saying these things exactly and what it does is it makes anybody who is protesting this fucking genocide be framed as like this outside like foreign agent or like do it like it creates this sense that none of it is legitimate you can she can say i think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere as much as you want but if it's sandwiched between, but the real problem is Putin's doing the masterminding of it all, then you are effectively dismissing that thing

you said. The thing you said about how they're sincere is meaningless if it's sandwiched between this other stuff. I think about the way that COINTELPRO was used to put down the movements in the late 60s and 70s, because all I do is read history books. And, you know, and it was this method of entering these organic and sincere movements and mucking about in them and, you know, sending them off in different directions and trying to make them fight and stuff. It's like if I was any other country, probably any other country, even like European ones we're friends with, I would be looking at America and be like, man, this is easy to mess with. Like, look, you just like, yeah, you poke the conservative and they start screaming racist stuff, you know? Yeah.

And like, or you poke the liberal and, you know, this or that. Right. And so like, yes, absolutely. Of course, they are going to do that. That is a playbook that works, that doesn't change that people involved are doing this because they actually care. And I look at what Nancy Pelosi said, and I think about how there was this, again, this is my best I can put together, is that there was this media narrative that worked for generations about Israel-Palestine. And the media narrative

was that supporting Palestine was anti-Semitic. And the best you could hope for is to throw up your hands in the air and say, it's complicated. And you have this thing where Clinton's offer of the first Clinton bill, his offer of the two-state solution, which was like, in any sense, he talks the rest of his life about how like, oh, it broke my heart. I didn't succeed at the one thing I was trying to do with my life is give Palestine a state and blah, blah, blah. Like if you actually read what they offered Palestine, it was not in any functional sense a state. Yeah.

And it was not in any functional way anything that he would have accepted that any American conservative would have accepted. Like it was not in any way a fair offer, but you have this media narrative that worked for generations, and it doesn't work anymore. You can no longer say supporting Palestine is anti-Semitic as inherently and have people believe you. And so you have people like Nancy Pelosi who are just immediately running around and copying all of this. They just don't understand that the world has changed we

don't live in 1995 anymore yeah yeah and you can't just like use china as a boogeyman or whatever like it's not people can critically think and yeah look at like wait why would why would putin be calling for a ceasefire why is that his game like what what the like what's going on now like if if there was a ceasefire we would be like hardcore funding ukraine even more again like this whole this whole thing's going on is like a distraction from that right it's like it just the logic doesn't like quite add up the logic isn't logicking yeah well and even if china and russia were responsible for an outsized portion of the protest even if they were responsible for all of it it wouldn't make what israel is doing right good and correct that's the frustrating thing seeing her like

i you know some people like really care about it but our enemies are wanting you to do it. So it just shuts the entire thing down. Right. And it's like, OK, you people care about it. How do you feel about it? Because it seems like you're cool with everything. Yeah. Right. Or you'll express some vague amount of concern. Well, they've got a blah, blah, blah.

OK, let me get back. You know, like it obfuscates the whole thing and lets them get away with not really addressing. Yeah. So, Jonathan, what's the good thing that Biden did get away with not really addressing yeah what so jonathan what's the good thing that biden did today right before we started recording yeah he uh you have a stroke did he do it did he die or did he as i've suggested shoot donald trump with the gun. No, he cares, you guys. He cares about Palestinians and Palestinian life. Today's Thursday and Biden issued an executive order sanctioning four Israeli settlers for attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, blocking them from being part of the U.S.

financial system or doing business with American companies. Just four of them? Four of them so far. But he's going to keep an eye out in case any of you settlers are going to continue brutally murdering people. You won't be able to, what, invest in Halliburton?

Like, I don't know. Did he address the the the sanctions do hurt like i'm not saying like yeah yeah did he is he addressing the like israeli government that it's like doing it do it like it's just like such a like he's he cannot he just cannot confront the situation uh it's so i mean it's not funny it's frustrating and weird like i got i don't worry folks i'm on your side these four settlers what's the like the project going like what's the larger project that uh is like resulting in that but fortunately none of this is going to expand out in any kind of broader way, right? Yeah.

Well, sorry, Margaret. Jonathan, why don't you break the news to Margaret? Yeah, the facts don't care about your feelings that that shouldn't have happened. Feelings about this, unfortunately. My feelings where I would prefer to not be involved in the World War III. Yeah, I know.

I mean, I get it. Those are valid feelings, but sorry. Yeah, Biden says he's decided on a response to the drone strike that killed three American soldiers and injured dozens of others at a U.S. base in Jordan. The White House says that Islamic resistance in Iraq, which is a, you know, quote-un unquote iran funded group uh is behind the attack and they're going to be hitting targets in the region iran itself says it has nothing to do with it and does

not want to take any part in a broader war but biden says he holds iran responsible for the attack given its funding support of the group he said quote i do hold them responsible in that they're supplying the weapons to the people who did it oh that's interesting so interesting so interesting i fucking hate this guy so close to to understanding what everyone's upset about but also not at all. That quote really made me lose my mind this week. Yeah. Yeah.

It's pretty ghastly. He's old and he doesn't know what he's saying, or he does know what he's saying. Or he's old and he knows what he's saying. It's maddening, actually, because if, like... I'm slow, and just for anyone slow in the audience,

the point here is that America has been supplying the weapons to Israel. Thank you we've been supplying weapons yeah this whole time perpetuating the genocide um and uh or ethnic cleansing if you want a softer term uh but uh and we can go even further i mean we've been supplying and propping up this dynamic for a very long time very very very long time we've got a smart audience they knew exactly what i was talking about they were all like bam he's yeah we're right now for anyone that's new here that's testing checking us out for the first time now we're clear um it's the kind of thing that he like if he when he says that i just want somebody like in the room to be like are you are you a

russian agent yeah are you you gotta go back to china with your little talking points like it's just what can you say you know i mean probably just the things that we've said right now i guess fuck that guy god throw shoes i think is a classic way to handle this problem. Throw shoes. I got something to say about it. Let's hear it. Okay. Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl's a sigh up. Taylor, we are going to end on that.

We are. It's time. There's so much that can be said. I constantly sickened every day, every week. And we make jokes. But fuck, man. Yeah. Let's talk about Taylor Swift being a fucking psyop.

This is awesome. It is the stupidest thing that's happened in, I think, years in terms of the quote unquote culture war. Yeah. Not in its absurdity because like the Sesame Street is funny. Like Dr. Seuss stuff is always funny. Like, but there's something about getting mad at this country singer, this blonde country singer

dating a football player that like has exploded conservative heads. And it's just so, it's so silly. I'm not sure how many people believe this. I'm going gonna do the super quick version yeah this is gonna be a t-shirt that i say i'm gonna do the super quick version and then i talk for 10 minutes but here it is okay i guess i'm getting super quick version on the back it's just like i never know shit about any of this so i'm curious yeah no this

is interesting is taylor swift biggest pop star in the world right now. I know who that is. Right. Okay. Is dating the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. His name is Travis Kelsey. He's won multiple Super Bowls. They're going back to the Super Bowl. They started dating earlier this year. Very public relationship. She's been to many Kansas City Chiefs games. They show her on the TV for not that long, for a little bit, because she's the biggest

pop star in the world and she's showing up in Missouri to do a a thing they're going back to the super bowl sorry you have something to interject i'm just disgusted that they're showing a celebrity attending a football game that's never happened they've never shown a celebrity on the fucking jumbotron at a at a game like a beautiful famous woman's thrilled for her boyfriend's game. Are you mad when they show Jack Nicholson in the fucking front? Like, it's whatever. Anyway, keep setting it up. So that's not what's happening, though. Here's what's actually happening.

According to the likes of Jack Posobiec, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, you see where I'm going with this. So here's what's actually happening. The entire Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey relationship and the entire NFL season, which consists of hundreds of games and thousands of players and coaches, et cetera, is choreographed and scripted by the Democrats. Whoa. In order for there to be a public endorsement- It's out there, Margaret.

It's out there. in order for there to be a public endorsement of Joe Biden, potentially even at halftime of the Super Bowl while Usher is performing, or after the game, which will, I guess, guarantee that he wins, question mark. And because of this. Once Biden gets back into office for the second time is when he will enact his huge plan of everyone's got to get COVID vaccines because that's what this is all about.

We failed the first time to make everyone get the COVID vaccines. And there, of course, Travis Kelsey does commercials for Pfizer to be like, hey, get your flu shot and your COVID shot at the same travis kelsey does commercials for pfizer to be like hey get your flu shot and your covid shot at the same time he also does commercials which you should do fucking state farm and campbell soup and every other right like again it's like so you're like freaking out because of like a football player like doing commercials and like having like brand like integration and stuff and then this pop singer um i just like i

can't this is so sad and funny and pathetic we're not going to show clips of these people talking because uh we don't need to give them the time of day but they there's this like tortured way of talking about it where they can't they can't quite talk about it in a way that makes them seem like they know what they're talking about like there's this benny benny johnson if anyone's familiar he got fired from buzzfeed for plagiarism uh he's a kind of like a bottom feeder conservative pundit uh just like gobbling up the slop and doing as much uh like bullshit as he can oh uh taylor swift is trending i guess i'm all in on this psyop idea and he's talking about this as like oh this totally like suddenly taylor swift is so popular

she's been popular for 15 years i know who she is that's fucking saying something knows who she is uh and like travis kelsey uh like talking about him like oh yeah like this random like tight end like tight end nobody cares about like there's no famous tight ends in football first of all i don't watch or follow football yes there are what are you talking about there's a kid named baby gronk like named after a famous tight end like it's so absurd and also travis kelsey's fucking awesome at this game he didn't he just like break a record of like a wide receiver like jerry rice's record for most catches in the playoffs but travis is a tight end he's not even like it's so the whole thing is absurd and i don't know what i'm talking about

but i know more than that like it's hard to believe that i it's hard to understand what the end goal why you're even doing this because people don't believe this i don't believe that people think it's funny now i do think that people believe that the nfl is rigged i know that some people do they think that the democrats did it for vaccines or is it like all in triple parentheses who they think does it it's triple parentheses it's the stuff the whispers that i've heard but wait really oh god well no i mean i i said this to you guys conversations where the m up here the nfl is rigged i'm like please explain more and they go wait miss make that face that would have been words where i grew up i i just don't know much about it i was like i'm not touching it i'm tired

of arguing with everybody i meet up here um wait democrats can't plan shit no exactly like what effective thing i have said like do you really think the democrats can pull that off but no they i haven't heard people say that sleepy but also he's rigging the nfl so that my point is that i don't know how many people believe the democrats have rigged this and that taylor swift is a psyop i believe that jack posobiec believes it and benny johnson doesn't right like you can tell sorry continue that's about right exactly but i'm like this is it is clicks the fake doesn't believe it or no the fake is just here's i would actually i want to actually read this um tweet from fake uh again we're one of the few uh that pronounce his name correctly so So you're welcome,

Vivek. I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here. Let's see how it ages over the next eight months. I would like to address this tweet because I think, Vivek, you are a fraud. And this is, so here's the thing. Taylor Swift endorsed Joe Biden in 2020. So if she endorses him this year, that's meaningless. It doesn't mean anything, Vivek. It doesn't mean there's this like conspiracy

to prop up her and like this football player to get like, oh, the big impact. No, Taylor Swift, the famous person who's been famous for decades, endorsed him already. So what like what is the prediction? If if they get engaged, that is proof that they are in love. And like it finally worked out for her. If she endorses Joe Biden, that proves that her political leanings haven't changed in the past four years like it's not a prediction to say like i i wonder who's gonna win a super bowl oh you

mean the good football team yeah they're not there's only two there's only two teams that play two options and like the chiefs aren't magically good this year like they've been good i know like this whole thing is like they keep going i wonder who might win the super bowl maybe And like the Chiefs aren't magically good this year. They've been good. I know. This whole thing is like. They keep going. I wonder who might win the Super Bowl. Maybe one of the two teams in the Super Bowl. And maybe the team that's been good.

And maybe the team with the guy who broke Jerry Rice's record. It's so stupid. We also know why people rig sports games. There's a lot of evidence and data that has been collected about why people rig sports games. It's to make money from gambling. That's why people rig sports games. I don't think the NFL is rigged. There's no part of me that believes that that is happening.

But if it were, it would be for money from gambling. You don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to concoct a story about this. Also, I think the rigging is a strong, sure, there can be refs that throw calls a certain way, but you still can't predict how these sports people play. Yeah.

It's so funny. Players, players. Athletes, athletes. Are you doing a sports ball joke, Katie? Are you bringing sports ball humor to this? It's just sometimes I get excited and the words get water, like, logged in my mouth. And, like, I have a hard time choosing one. Sports people, athletes.

I do think it's interesting. And I touched on this earlier. I think it's interesting because I put, we're not going to read them all, i put like six or seven like tweets and quotes from podcasts here and you can i think very easily tell who really believes it and who's just like well these are the trending topics this week yes so i'm gonna say the nfl is fake because i'm tim pool and i that's the thing to do yes and completely yeah owen benjamin i also think he's just doing a bit do you want to read this week. Completely, yeah. Owen Benjamin, I also think, is just doing a bit... Do you want to read this tweet? I mean,

not really. It's just so offensive. Yeah, he's just kind of like a Nazi. Yeah. He's basically saying that Taylor Swift is not a high-value woman because she's 34 years old. Oh, that's who that picture was of. Sorry, Twitter just suddenly made

sense to me yeah i opened twitter and i don't understand what anyone's talking about why would anyone want to be with taylor swift she's 34 yeah it's so it's just like again like this glomming on to these issues and like pretending pretending to care pretending to be like on the inside pretending to be like i'm i'm the the truth sayer i predict here's my prediction my vivek style prediction that a team will win the super bowl and a celebrity will endorse a candidate for president also side note um celebrity endorsements have been a thing in politics for decades and decades decades and decades uh before donald trump was the celebrity president that happened all the time it's not a new thing of like oh is this celebrity gonna endorse this person or this person that's old politics stuff well there was that one actor who really disliked

lincoln exactly the aunt the the anti-endorsement yeah this is this is a tale as old as time, you guys. Tale as old as time. And if, you know, Joe Biden, in a way, is a celebrity, so if he wants to, again, shoot Donald Trump with a gun, go for it. Also, like Jonathan noted, when she did endorse, the candidate she endorsed

in Tennessee, the Senate candidate, lost to Marsha Blackburn. Yeah, the Republicans in Tennessee didn't give a in tennessee the senate candidate lost to marcia blackburn yeah the republicans in tennessee didn't give a shit that taylor swift told them to vote a certain way people are like oh if taylor swift uh said one thing the war would end tomorrow i don't think so like she's influential and powerful she's a billionaire now like she's a huge pop star i don't think if we put her in the room with netanyahu and hamas i don't know could she solve this thing you know diplomacy i actually wouldn't i think star power would work i'm like soul i'm soul on this argument charming right and like

she might tear up a little i don't know like but then kanye will show up to try to disrupt the whole thing he'll take the mic from her i'm talking to netanyahu right now so far right he'd be like you're not a high value woman i know that's the thing that's the problem yeah that's the thing it's like these like weird ways to like slip in their like cultural like uh here's like what women need to be and here's what men need to be and if we have an excuse but it's so weird because like yeah she's a famous uh she's a pretty woman yeah and like and also like and this football player but like they have to be like actually it's gay to love a woman like what are we doing what is this fucking oh yeah that's the takeaway they're insinuating that he is actually gay the whole thing it's so silly i mean dating women sounds gay well at least to me but i mean

contextually dependent but i just uh god my prediction is that a team will win and uh huh that's the end of story we'll check this space in eight months i i don't need to check it in eight months i'll see you in a week all right we did it we've arrived at the end of our show margaret thank you for joining us we didn't even i want you to plug your stuff i want to shout out your substack oh you're a wonderful writer thank you so that's also your invitation to shout it out for yourself as well and tell people where to go yeah i have a substack i post an article every week uh half the articles are free and half of them are like more personal so there'll be more for for the paid subscribers uh it's just a way to keep myself writing every week besides the fact

that i write an incredibly large amount about history every week because I run a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a history podcast where next week, where I am later today recording with Katie. And Katie tricked me into telling her what it's about. And it's about these rising... You didn't have to.

No, no. It was a good maneuver. I respected it. Yeah. And I am genuinely excited to continue this conversation No, no, it was a good maneuver. I respected it. And I am genuinely excited to continue this conversation after maybe we've got like an hour break. Oh, yeah, I'm going to go eat dinner and very early. But lunch? Yeah, something.

I'm going to eat food. But yeah. A meal of some sort. A food meal, yeah. And you can still find me on Twitter, which is a terrible shame, at MagpieKilljoy. You can find me on Instagram, which is a terrible shame at Magpie Killjoy. You can find me on Instagram, which is not particularly better

at Margaret Killjoy. But Substack and podcasts are the things I actually enjoy, even though sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't enjoy turning off the internet and walking into the woods.

Yeah, that, it's a, I have that same question all the time. I ask myself that every day. Well, we did it. We're here. Thank you, Margaret. Again, thank you to the listeners. And of course, as you all know, we love you very much.

Joe Biden shoot Donald Trump with a gun. Much. And that. Much. that much. Sometime in the early 80s, REO Speedwagon's airplane made an unannounced middle-of-the-night landing. This is my friend Kyle McLaughlin, the star of Twin Peaks, and he's telling me about how he discovered a real-life Twin Peaks in rural North Carolina, not far from where he filmed

Blue Velvet. What was on the plane was copious amounts of drugs coming in from South America. Supposedly, Pablo Escobar went looking for other spots, quiet, out-of-the-way places to bring in his cocaine. My name is Joshua Davis, and I'm an investigative reporter. Kyle and I talk all the time about the strange things we come across, but nothing was quite as strange as what we found in Varnumtown, North Carolina. There's crooked cops, brother against brother. Everyone's got a story to tell,

but does the truth even exist? Welcome to Varnumtown. Varnumtown is available wherever you listen to podcasts.