Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews - 10/01/24 - There Will Be Flood

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Hurricane Helene cut a swath of cataclysmic destruction across the South last weekend, with much of the worst of it being in western North Carolina…which is profoundly upsetting considering it was a hurricane and that is the mountains. So what is being done, politically, to ensure this never happens again? Believe it or not, very little. But Trump’s getting some good photo ops out of it and that’s what really matters. Join us. Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day to you it is the first of october 24 i'm trey that's mark how you doing mark are we all going to fucking die how's it going eventually yeah uh yeah today we were talking about the hurricane and uh one of our you know one of the apocalypses that we're living through and climate change and I guess you want to start off time with the other one, the Middle East. The Middle East has now been cancelled. We're going to reboot it next year under a new showrunner, a new host. Fuck, dude, we bumble-fuck our way into another war in the Middle East, another land war in Central Asia.

I swear to God, I'm just going to go live in the woods and dig a hole. I don't fucking understand anything that's happening right now. main thing is I think we need a rule that if we're going to go to war, 20% of Congress should be assigned by lots to serve on the front lines. That feels like a useful deterrent.

It doesn't skin the game. Or at least, you know, their sons or something, I know it's not fair to the sons, but it would still make them, you know, think a little more about it. Yeah, I don't know. That kind of reminds me that I read last week that there was this Harvard professor in the 80s who proposed during the Cold War that

during or for the nuclear codes that what they should do is they should embed them in the chest of a secret service agent who the president had to kill with his bare hands to remove the codes to launch the nukes because you know that would make him come face to face with taking a human life in that context

and the guy said when he like proposed it at the Pentagon or whatever they were like that's horrible then he might never launch if we did something like that you know yeah you get it I think you get it. Right. Yeah.

Well, the important thing is we keep a heavy military presence in the Middle East so we can have cheap oil and gas so we can jit up more climate change. We drown more of our own people. That's really what we've got to keep doing. That's the system work isn't intended. Yeah, it's going to be an upbeat show tonight, everybody. A lot of shenanigans, a lot of goofing tonight, a lighthearted discussion. I mean, if you've been watching the news lately, you know what this show is, you know, you shouldn't be surprised. However, on that note, I will say, and I'll probably say this again a little bit later, just so y'all know, just like we did with the first debate a few weeks ago, we will be ending a few minutes early tonight to give you all time to switch over. I know you can't miss this show, but you can't miss that either. So I just want to make it easy for everybody to get over to the big debate with Tim Walls and Jim David, Jim David, Vince. See how that goes.

Yeah. Is that his real name now? He's from Donald, right, James Donald? Yeah, I don't know. I just. I know he changed it, yeah. Yeah. So, changed his name five times? Nothing. Yeah, whatever.

So, yeah, we had a lot of, we've had a lot of dessert shows lately with Nazi porn sex scandals. But yeah, today's, today's some broccoli. But before we get the broccoli, let's do, let's have dessert first, all right? We got a fun, dumb scandal. Well, it's not even really a scale. It's just stupid. So the New York Times wrote this piece a couple days ago about how a lot of Republicans are using their wives, you know, in the forefront of their campaign and trying to soften their

image with women because, you know, they otherwise hate women out the door with their wives. And the process of reporting it, they found one guy, a candidate in Virginia by the name of Derek Anderson for Congress, a former Green Beret, who's running in a competitive race for an open seat in Virginia's 7th District. He posted footage of him posing with a woman and her three daughters, and it looks like a photo that might be used for an annual holiday card. I'm reading here from them. in another scene film for producing

the campaign dad, Mr. Anders, who is seated around the dining room table with the same woman and three girls, chatting and smiling. Here's the image. Look at that. Nice, mid-American family, just a working family doing the best they can,

a man, his wife, his three daughters, you know, who can't support that? You know what I mean? Here's the plot twist. He's not related to them at all. Yeah. They're the wife and children of a lot. longtime friend, which is like, so funny.

Like, hey, man, can a bar your daughters real quick? It's the funny is fucking. It's also, I read that, uh, when asked for comment, his, his campaign people or whatever, we're like, no, that's just all that's meant to show is him with some female supporters of his. That's all it. You know, like, yeah, one of his, you know, five year old, uh, potential voters who really likes his policy decisions and stuff that he's, uh, posing with there.

But yeah, this is just, I don't know. this is I mean there's always I've known that like it's always been like conventional wisdom over there that like you know you got to have a nice nice wife nice family nice photo op that type of thing that's what it takes to get elected but I still feel like in 2024 in the era of social media and everything you should still stop short of just borrowing your buddy's whole family and thinking that no one is going to find out about that you know what I mean yeah it's just so funny it's like their version of like you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would you it's like obviously I can't be misogynistic as a father of daughters right so instead of as a father of

daughters he's like as a father of three hypothetical daughters right but like I mean I like the obvious did not like they have a plausible liability here because like no in nowhere do they say it's his wife and daughters right but they didn't just take these pictures they created B-roll for like for packs to use and ads where they're obviously presented like they're sitting around out of the dinner table playing cards and shit like their family like we all know what the aesthetic language is supposed to communicate here at these wife and kids. I know it's not technically alive, but it's fucking bullshit, right? But it's like, the thing that infuriates me is like back in my day, politicians

had secret second families, not imaginary first ones, right? Absolutely. What is this country coming to? Yeah. Whatever happened to the secret second family? You think Facebook destroyed them? You can't really have a secret second family? I don't know.

I still hear a tale of them every now and then. We've got some mutual friends. We can talk about offline and I've heard about people in their, in their circle. Not friends of ours having secret second families, just people in their family who have secret second families and that type of thing. I'm pretty sure my grandpa has a secret second family, I think. I don't know how secret it was. Maybe he just didn't give a shit about him.

It's hard to say, you know, who's a long-haul truck driver. I'm not talking about having like a side, like an affair and you get a one. No, I know. But like, we've got. We're two wives and neither one of them know about the other one? Right. And there's kids with both and they're both like thinking that they are the nuclear family and there's two of them. Yeah, that's that old school American man shit right there, you know, which I never understood.

Like, I, like, bro, I've got the one and it's a lot. I love them. They're great. But, you know, it's like a lot of attention, a lot of effort. You know, I can't imagine just voluntarily starting a whole different one and then going through all the stress of trying to hide them from each other. I mean, really, in that way, this guy's way more sane. He's like, I'll just have neither and make up one, you know? That's way easier.

I just pretend to have the one and then not even have to deal with any of them, you know. The part that got me, because the guy is on me, this guy, Anderson, is a Republican, by the way, obviously. He is unmarried. But he said, Mr. Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged, does not have any children of his own. His campaign website says he lives with his dog and does not spay any of the photo. Like, so he basically says, why don't hang these photos in my house? Well, of course, that'd be fucking insane. Right.

But like, what does your fiance think about this? You've got to be like, sorry, my love. I had to pose with a woman who I can prove as fertile. Like, what the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Everything about it's weird. But, you know, that's what they do.

They'd be weird. That's kind of their whole brand nowadays. But anyway, we'll keep going here. I'm Trey. That's Mark. Producer Laura is with us. And this is weekly skews before we continue. I want to remind y'all, as usual, a couple of things.

If you'd like to see me to stand-up comedy live and in person. And you should want to do that. go to Trey Crowder.com. Check out my upcoming tour dates. I will be in Missouri this weekend. Springfield on Saturday, Columbia on Sunday. A very quick note about those. If you, for a little while, I had Friday in Springfield listed on my website, too. It's been fixed for a long time. But there was a mix-up at the club. If you have tickets, if you think you have tickets to see me on Friday in Springfield, you will instead see Kyle Canane. So congratulations to you. That'll probably be a much better show. Anyway, yeah, yeah, he's great. So you still, even If you have that, you still should go because he's incredibly hilarious. But I will be there Saturday and then Columbia on Sunday. And then we've got a whole bunch of other dates coming up. Go to Trey Crowder.com. Come out there and see me.

It's been a fun time recently. We're going to keep that going. Also, if you enjoy this program and would like to show your support, you can do so by signing up on Patreon, weekly skews.com slash more. Or you can just go on Patreon and search for my name. Either way works. $5 a month gets you access to full-length bonus episodes. We did the first part of a two-part.

part skewing a last week where we answer your burning questions. We otherwise cover things that come up in the interim between shows or just extra stuff we want to talk about. If you like this show, you'll like that show because it's just this show, but more of it. So get some more skews in your life. Sign up on Patreon. All right. As for the show tonight, as Mark said, you know, he called it the broccoli.

It's going to be tough. A lot of bad things happening out there. We're going to focus on the horrific natural disaster that was Hurricane Helene, which toured through the American South, and in particular, western North Carolina, but also parts of Georgia and Florida this weekend, and the fallout and responses to it thus far from our leadership and our American politicians. You won't believe this, but it leaves something to be desired. But before we get to all that, we begin with the Daily Dumbass.

Laura, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., people who don't realize that the real crisis with teen boys is the need for thicker jizz all right here we go yeah rfk junior teens today have 50 percent of the sperm count 50 percent of the testosterone as teens American teens two generations ago so as a former teenage boy I feel like you could probably stand to cut another 20 30 percent out of that number and probably still be okay if team boys is have been, if anything, working with a surplus of sperm that they don't need all that. You could argue they don't really need hardly any of that, if any at all.

So I'm kind of fine with this. I mean, I do get that like, whatever, it's a problem as you go off into adulthood. But focusing on the sperm count of teen boys is like, I don't think we really need to worry too much about all that personally. so the thing about yeah like real problem is uh joe biden depleted our strategic jiz reserve uh so so like years back i was working on a script for about about conspiracy theorists and i was reading info wars every day as you do to try to figure out what the fuck they were going on about and the thing about that is 90s percent of the stuff they talk about has right pretty large grounding in reality

it's where to take it from there right right a kernel of truth yeah so i was trying to figure out what the fuck he's talking about. I know that there is like a panic about the sperm count and especially in the northern hemisphere with the declining birth rates and whatnot. And I was like, where did he get? The National Institute of Health does say that

American male sperm count has been declining for a while. But basically they think it correlates with obesity and also wearing tidy white ease and sitting with her phones in her pockets and shit. Right. You mean, it's not just us baitifying herself. It's not just us becoming soy bowl.

that makes our sperm not work as much because that's what I heard. That's what the internet told me. It was liberals in the gay agenda turning us all into a feminine half man that that's what was happening inside of our ball sacks. That's not true. It's just health and the bullshit we eat and all the other bad things. Another stuff, other stuff are doing to ourselves. So like eat a salad, go for a jog and your sperm count will go back up.

But so we haven't really got into it. I know we talked about doing an episode about like the crunch. mega alliance and how like they're doing that like hit uh rfk and his old running mate Nicole shanahan at running the country talking about make America healthy again how Donald Trump is going to put America back on the track to being super healthy which is really funny that Donald Trump you know that the hamburger in chief is going to make us all able to run six minute miles again right well it's not just it's not just that he you know he loves McDonald's and shitty food and all that he also famously doesn't believe in exercise because he believes that

your energy in your body is like batteries and you deplete it when you use it. So exercising like runs your batteries down and it makes you die earlier, which is like, so I've literally heard never, I've never heard anyone else even espouse that belief, but it's something he holds close and dear to his heart. So yeah, the idea that he's going to be our, you know, our Arnold Schwarzenegger or something, the guy that inspires us to do it better ourselves. You got to really twist your brain to think the, they're going to trend. They're trying to ban gas, oh, his panic guy is going to, like, Nicole Shanahan had went on Fox News and talked about how I forget the name of the chemicals they put on nonstick pans, the plastics that are in everything that people think are poisonous and cancer causing, that, like, Donald Trump was going to ban those so kids don't have them with their bodies anymore.

And I'm like, he's not going to ban. Anything. That would be regulations or whatever, right? Like, they don't, they don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. We were all the live when the right wing panicked because New York tried to ban 64-ounce sodas and, Michelle Obama politely suggested kids eat vegetables, right?

So I don't know where the fuck they get this stuff. But I wanted to use RFK as a launching point to talk about some pretty funny election fuckery going on around the country. So since RFK, Eric, quote unquote, dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Trump. He's had a bunch of mega-financed lawyers running around the country doing opposite stuff in different states depending on whether he thinks it helps or hurts Trump. like he's trying to get on the back on the ballot in New York because he because he thinks that I'll help Trump

while trying to get off the ballot in Wisconsin all right so this is this is if any of the judges read the newspaper they got to be fucking pissed right because they're going to be aware of this shit going on to the jurisdictions so he was disqualified in New York because he doesn't live in New York

so that's fucking not going anywhere in Wisconsin is kind of even stupider and funnier he last month the Wisconsin's election commission told Kennedy he could not remove his name from the ballot because the law says the qualified nominees must appear on the ballot unless they die. So he does have a way out here. He just doesn't like it. I don't understand. I thought like if you're, I mean, I don't know. I guess it's just a letter of the law in each state. But to me, it's like how do you try to make a cogent legal argument in two different states at the same

time that in one state by all rights I should be off the ballot and in another state I must be left on the ballot and try to do that without you know contradicting yourself but I guess that's just not how things work you can just make any argument you want to make at any time and yeah okay and all can win right you can argue two different things in different places and win both of them that's a law your brain baby right so what Kennedy is done is petition the Washington Supreme Court to remove him from ballot right but not but actually not removing, and what he was asking them to do

is to put a sticker over his name on the ballot, okay? This will require 1,800 different jurisdictions, people to sit around, like the nice ladies are working in elections offices, to sit around physically placing stickers and all the different ballots. And if they messed up, they put it in the wrong place,

it was a little too thick, it'd clog the ballot counting machine. So it's hot new election stealing idea is just having people put bubble gum in machine holes. All right? Right, I guess, yeah, I mean, I guess, like, gumming up the works like that, that still, that still plays. You know what I mean?

Like, that still accomplishes what you want it to. Anytime you, like, reduce the number of votes, it tends to help. Yeah. Also, just like, make all these people who just these, they're working in these 1800 different offices, just making their lives fucking harder. Like, I sat there for days on end, putting stickers on shit for no reason. Yeah, also, who pays for that? Those people all volunteers or how does that work?

Do you know what I mean? Like, who, like, I mean. The man hours, I'm assuming it would fall to just, like, the counties. So they'd bankrupt a lot of these counties. cause them budgetary problems. So by the account of a podcast to listen to earlier today, there's over 100 lawsuits right now around the country dealing with election litigation, like basically 90-year Republican and 20-year Democrat.

And we talked about the trying to change the rules in Georgia where, like, local election officials could just not certify an election, right? There was a hearing in Georgia today. Bad news for the crazies, the judge seems kind of sane. because the law is written, it says county officials or election officials shall certify the election meeting. Once their votes are counted, by November, whatever, they have to do it, right? They don't have any, they can't, they don't have any will in the matter, right?

What they want to do is say they have a right to not certify it if they have concerns. Now, he seems super skeptical. The funny thing about this case is both Republicans and Democrats agree that shall rules the day. The Republicans are saying is like that because this hasn't happened, even though it has happened, happened in a primary election in May where a woman refused to certify the results of an election even though Donald Trump won it because she was suspicious of like various precincts or whatever. The Republicans are arguing that it's purely, it's dumb to make a rule based upon a hypothetical even though the ruling would be what does the law already say, all right?

But the judge offered a split in the baby sort of compromise where it's like, okay, they have to certify the election, but what if they had some concerns about some discrepancies in some precinct we basically had a complaint box so they could look at if they could formalize their complaints so I was like this is brilliant all they want to do is fucking complain give them a complaint box yeah I don't understand the whole I mean like I what the idea that just a kind of administrative position like this at a relatively low level you know from a macro perspective and the American general election would have some kind of agency or power to be like no they're saying it is you know it's just weird to me it's like I mean I guess does it

is it because like is it so that if something nefarious really did happen they could alert people to that and do something is that why they even have any kind of authority at all in place you know what I mean because I don't have the authority they don't have it they're trying to try to just try to have it for themselves they're trying right yeah okay right well yeah they shouldn't so right good it's not never it's never been up to the country's been around for hundreds of years right everyone's been theoretically able to vote since the 1960s uh it's been fine right uh maybe one stolen election when when kennedy beat nixon thank you chicago but like that's it

they especially without like i think everyone knows this but like the the way every ballot has a QR code and it's assigned to a person like like their ballot their registration and like there, like, the amount of people that would have to be involved in stealing an election would be insane. Right. Yeah. And also, like, again, once again, why would the Democrats rig the election but forget to take the house? Yada, yada, yada, yada. I have a one-vote majority in the Senate.

Not that it makes any sort of sense. Anyway, so I want to talk about this truly hilarious case. If this is all they're, I know this isn't all they're doing, but all the stuff that's on the surface is purely fucking stupid. Okay. So, uh, the mayor of Wasaw, Wisconsin named Doug Diney last. week he was in a dispute with the county clerk of whether or not there should be a ballot drop boxes for early voting and he just stole it he stole the fucking ballot box he just took it and put it in his office all right uh he said he said he said he

said the reason was the box was relocated to a safe indoor location until certain issues that the clerk is aware of or addressed all right he took a picture of himself doing it like he put on a hard hat and made a big production of it if you want to show this photo right uh here he is taking a photo of himself committing both state and federal crimes yes and the hard hat

is also hilarious because it's like this is me going to work for the citizens of Wisconsin or whatever like is that what it's supposed to be yeah like he thinks he's going to get

you know lauded for this or whatever and people are just like you can't fucking do that so the beef here the context is on July 5th the Wisconsin Supreme Court which is not controlled by Democrats

ruled the municipal clerks do, in fact, have the authority to establish secure dropboxes for absentee ballots in their district. Wassal clerk, Caitlin Bernard, made that decision, which Diney took exception to, because he ran for mayor opposing stuff like drop boxes for votes, except it's not the mayor's purview, it's the clerk's purview, and I guess he just forgot to run for clerk, you stupid fuck, all right? I guess he realized he fucked up because hours later, in an interview with a local TV station, he backtrack on the move being related to policy and clean he moved the ballot box because he was

worried that it would be quote, take it and throw it into the river. Yeah. Can't have that. Can't have people taking it and throwing into the river where people might not be able to vote. Instead, I just took it and threw it into my closet. Right. Might not be able or won't be able to vote, you know. But I better at river at least.

Somebody's got to watch out for this thing. Yeah. So an update from yesterday, we'll sell ballot drop box returned outside of City Hall after a week long standoff between the mayor and the clerk. Um, he, the DA did open a criminal investigation and the drop box is now bolted to the ground so you can't steal it again. But I want to watch this video of him if we can, Laura, because his, um, even Midwestern evil is kind of nice and charming.

I want to watch this guy talk about trying to overthrow the votes of it, these constituents. When did it get back to the control of the clerk? I would say sometime over the weekend, the, uh, the maintenance. They took control of it. Did they come to your office and take it away? I worked. Well, I coordinated with the maintenance person. We got it down.

Okay. So you. I got over like this for like five minutes where he's like, the reporter, I love local news, man. He's asking all these hard-hidden questions about the conversations he had with the janitor about whether or when to move the bow boxed back outside or whether or not he physically did it or the janitor physically did it because we've got to get to the bottom of this.

Oh, shit. The last one of these, on a day where the state, was hit with some of the hardest flooding in recent history, the Republicans in North Carolina chose to focus on blocking access for students on UNC's campus to use their digital student IDs as valid voter IDs. So while Hurricane Helene was barring down to North Carolina to drown the western half of the state, what they're worried about is a couple of college kids voting with their student IDs. Because a good way to throw an election would be to register for college, pay $30,000 a year in tuition, and then vote for Kamala Harris and shout

Apple Hill, North Carolina. Right. Yeah, that's the type of, it's always like, what is there, even like the dude stealing the, I mean, you can tell by the excuse he came up with. It's like taking a ballot box away that allows people to vote, you know, not in person or whatever, absentee voting or early voting. What could possibly be the justification for doing that? And the best thing you could come up with is why I thought somebody might throw it in

the river, you know, and it's like, there is no, and it's like with these, Like, what is the justification for not allowing college students there to vote? You know, they're of age, they're American citizens, they're, what's the, what are you railing against? What are you protecting from happening? And there's, I mean, there's literally nothing you can come up with. They're just like, like, no, there must be order, I guess, or whatever. Or they'll be like, no, people will fake things. The Democrats will still the election because they'll fake.

But like you said, the sheer number of the, the American. amount of fraud you'd have to undertake like to successfully sway an election through these means is just it's just not practical like there's you'd also have to risk almost definite 10 years in federal prison for helping Kamala Harris get a job which I'm not going to do right right so there's that part of it too um yeah it's all it's all I mean there is a cogent case for being against early voting and uh you know enabling a lot a ton of early voting that is like the election is supposed to be a one day snapshot of public opinion and like in theory something could come out about Kamala Harris next week they would call it or lose support and somebody might regret voting

early I guess or they might have like voted what they right their their opinion in early October might be the same as November 5th but like I don't think that's the world in which we live and if you are a swing voter please wait till Tuesday November 5th or whatever like it's fine but like the rest of us know we're gonna vote for so it's fun yeah yeah I agree. All right. Well, let's get in the fun stuff, right?

Yeah, the second apocalypse of the show. So I remember a while back, we're talking about Davos. Now the hot new word was polycrisis among the, you know, the globe trotting elites. It's a good word.

It's about when a bunch of things are going wrong at the same time, they're contributing to each other. So here, like we have, climate disasters are fully fucking here, not a future hypothetical anymore. We never got our infrastructure ready. So we just sit,

It's just sitting there being old and decrepit. Local news is completely decimated. So you can't even go look at a newspaper or get online to find out how fucked you are. And over two major political parties, one party is trying to actively dismantle everything that could fix any of this. And the other party has had like half split between people who want to fix it most of the time. And people who the rest of the time are just like compromising and managing the dismantling more effectively.

Right. And it doesn't feel like we have a political will to fix any of this shit. we're just in such denial about it. I just find the whole thing, uh, depressing as fuck. Yeah. Disheartening. Yeah.

Yeah. Wasn't, I mean, didn't we didn't, wasn't there some movement in Biden's, you know, Biden's tenure for infrastructure, right? There was a big like infrastructure bill like, like, right? It's not like, it's not, like, it's not that, it's not that people aren't trying to do the right thing. It's just like,

we should have done this in like 1986. Right. Right. For sure. Like, it's just like, it's just like, we're so far about in the eight, And it's like one of it I remember reading this piece like 20 years ago about one of the defining personality like traits that's really destructive in America is like we're cheerleaders by nature like we're overly optimistic by nature we generally assume everything's been

work out in our favor and I'm guilty of it too I like my hope for climate change is that we just invent our way out of it we just figure it out right we're not we're not figuring it out or we're not looking reality clear in the face enough with this shit and it's like it's It's not that it's too late to do anything. It's just like we're just going to keep doing the same shit, even though we know it's bad. For those, if you case you guys missed it, we're talking about, it was a hurricane named Helene. It was a Category 4th Storm with 140-mile-an-hour winds, made landfall on Thursday.

Basically cut a 500-mile journey across the southeast part of the United States, hitting Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, leaving them with record storm surge, wind damage, and catastrophic flooding. According to the Associated Press, as of today, at least 133 people have died with the largest concentration of fatalities are recorded in the western regions of North Carolina. More than 600 people just from that region alone are reported missing. About 1.6 million people in the affected states still have no electricity and affected cities in Georgia and North Carolina have shut off running water. Yeah, it's just, it's so weird because I know that like a lot of it, you obviously it hit in Florida, but also I know Atlanta in particular was like bracing for this, you know, for this catacet. clismic event and all this stuff.

And like I would anecdotally, no this really matters, but just anecdotally I was a last weekend I was I was in Bristol, Tennessee and then Atlanta, Georgia on Friday and Saturday. And Friday I was flying from LA through Atlanta to Knoxville to drive to Bristol. And I, you know, Wednesday and Thursday I was like,

well, this, this isn't happening. Like these shows are not happening. Definitely. Obviously that's not going to happen. But I was, you know, but I'll wait and see what Delta says,

whatever. And I flew into Atlanta. landed like one and it's like gray and overcast but the airport seems generally fine everything seems kind of fine then i my flight from there to knoxfield took off without issue we fly from atlanta to knoxville on friday afternoon landed knoxville drive from there to bristol and like halfway up that drive about the time we got to bristol it's like sunny and there's clouds in the sky like the sun i posted a picture of it it was like idyllic and beautiful the day but 20 minutes away from Bristol there was a hospital underwater and I keep see I people kept sending me all these

pictures and posts and stuff of everything it was going on and it was just so surreal to me because I was like I'm like I'm here I feel like I'm here and I don't see and and uh but it's just how crazy fucking weather is and how and how it can work you know and the way that the way that it operates but it was a wild time uh to be there because it was like some places got hit so so hard for by it and some places just got like relatively spared you know and I guess that happens all the time with tornadoes and all kinds of big weather events that's kind of the nature of the beast but it was just yeah what happened was god protected you right yes exactly yes god like my understanding is it shifted east the last moment like like the schools were closed in

anticipation of it where my family is in center virginia but then all they got was a drizzle but then And, you know, Eastern Tennessee got hit real hard. Like talking about, we were talking about some places are spared. I read an interview with a guy in Asheville who was like, yeah, my, my street's fine, but like over a block, everything's wiped out because it's just lower elevation or whatever. So, but the hospital you're talking about, the hospital rescue was in East Tennessee is in a Unicoy County Hospital in Irwin, Tennessee. Yeah.

It's about 20 minutes south of Johnson City. That's where my, my granny's family's from. population of about 6,000 people. If it's known for anything, they once hanged an elephant back in, I think, 1906, they executed an elephant. Very famously, yeah. Well, if you're from Tennessee, very famously,

early, hanged an elephant, yeah. Which, perhaps with them, we're figuring out how to hang out of 6,000 pounds. Well, I believe they used a crane. I believe that's what they did. Also, we talked about this on putting on airs once, me and Corey. There was a long and storied tradition of people

executing animals for human crimes. Did you know, like, they put them on trial, too. Like, they gave, they had lawyers. Animals had, like, pigs had lawyers. They were put on trial for, like, you know, killing a peasant child or something. And they'd be, like, found guilty and, uh, and executed, hanged or guillotined or whatever.

Or some type, there were, there's been animals that were excommunicated from the church and there's thins or whatever. Like, they used to do shit like that all time. I'm only saying that just some people. know it wasn't just fucking Irwin or East Tennessee that was on some bullshit when it came to executing an animal for you like obviously that wasn't cold your beloved Tennessee is not the only student that's right we used to do that got you had people used to do that anyway go ahead yeah so 50 people were stuck on the think about how high the roof of a helic of a hospital is and the

water was almost up the top of it and they couldn't get a helicopter to them for like hours because the wind was so bad obviously so people just stuck on this rooftop and the in the wind and the rain not knowing if anybody was going to come get them and I was just thinking about that just like just because of my personal connection to it I know that's how we all a lot of us process stuff and like because there 50 people up there only 6,000 people in the town and my granny's family's from there I'm like I kept thinking like I probably got like a third cousin up there fucking stuck and I know if you're going to live for another hour it's just fucking stupid nut shit um and while we're all in denial about climate change a couple like

things that happened within this um the national oceanic and atmospheric administration's the national climactic data center is located in ashville uh which is probably the hard hit city in this flooding. They maintain the world's largest data, a climate data archive. And now due to a historic climate disaster, it's currently offline. One of the reasons

you would hide the climate data in Asheville is because Asheville, previous to this, had been considered a climate haven. It was supposed to be one of the areas is going to be least hit by climate change because it's high elevation. It's not in tornado alley.

It's far away from the coast. and it's got a moderate climate. Right. And now it's under fucking water. All right. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like, you know, I understand.

We all understand. There's rivers and creeks and waterways there that can overflow when flooding happens. And that's what happens here. But it's just the fact that it's just so far away from the, still a hurricane doing this to the Appalachian Mountains. It's not that nobody gets like how that happened. It's just that it's wild considering the nature of both a hurricane. in the Appalachian Mountains and it's the type of thing it's like you were saying earlier it's like it's not hypotheticals anymore

like this crazy shit it's here now it's happening now and it's going to keep happening like clear it's not good this isn't like a one off like this type of shit's going to keep happening and people are going to keep burying their heads in the sand about it and pointing fingers at each other politically and that type

of thing and nothing's going to fucking change probably which is upset yeah yeah I mean I'm not a comedy party of China's a ideas guy, but if you guys wanted to invade, now it's probably a pretty perfect time, because we can come on the same page about anything in this fucking country. But, like, if China invaded California, 30% of Americans would think they were coming to

rescue American citizens from Joe Biden's woke transgender or whatever. So another climbing aspect of this is that tiny town of Spruce Pound, North Carolina, which is near Appalachia, has home to the United States largest deposit of quartz, which is an essential mineral for semiconductors and solar panels. and they got bludgeon. So another side effect of this is going to slower transition to, like, solar panels and getting better and more energy efficient semiconductors. So my thing is with all this, like, where happened to the people who thought hurricanes were a message from God?

Because this feels, if he's real, this is a pretty fucking clear signal that we fucked up and we should hurry up and get back in his good graces by not destroying nature. Corey told me earlier that he saw people, obviously lunatics. he's pointing out that these people are lunatics but he saw lunatics on the internet saying that this was that some of the places where the damage was the worst correlated with like with vaccine statistics and stuff

like you know they used to blame they used to blame hurricanes on gay people like you know and I mean Asheville has a high proportion gay people right and it's like that's what God did you're gay there here's a hurricane that's what he does Corey was saying now some of that shifted that gay stuff still counts but now it's also like getting the gab and things of that nature.

So they still claim that God is sending these things as, you know, weapons of vengeance or whatever against the sinful and whatnot. It's just that the specific sins are being, the goalposts are being moved a little bit, I think. I'm not familiar with this data, but I'm just going to say it's probably bullshit that the hills of Appalachia or how they're vaccinated relative to, like, New York or whatever. I'm just going to say that's probably not fucking true.

Just because who, you forget politics. Let's talk about who has. self-insurance for a second. The thing that really depressed me, as I've never thought about this way before, is like, we are just fully not part of the environment anymore. Like, we're totally separate destructive force, just hovering above it. Like, what made me think of this is like, floods are, you know, natural occurrence is necessary for ecological succession.

Like, it's not like, it's like it's good when they're happened, but they happen for natural reasons. Some things need to be washed and replaced. It just sucks if one of those things is your farm, right? I get that. But like, because of the way we live, we turn them all into toxic spills that forever poison the fucking lands. So every hurricane makes things worse than they were before. They can't just, we can't just build back.

When you see all that trash in the floodwater, it's not even close to the worst of it because it washes up sewage, pesticides, transmission fluid, antifreeze. All that stuff is going in the water now. Yeah, I've heard. There's like horror stories of people who've lived through these types of things before and I'm sure it'll happen with this incident too where like you have like a tiny scratch on your foot or something. you don't even know it was there and you step into these flood waters or whatever just like ankle deep and then pull your foot out of it and then later your leg gets amputated

or people even die from the infection and stuff because those waters in cases like these those flood waters are like highly toxic because of the shit that you're talking about it's yeah and like maybe we could do something about climate change because if we framed it as like it makes grocery prices go up

because that seems to be the only thing anyway to fucking cares about anymore is inflation, right? So another thing to know about this is, like, Helene, let me quote here, Elaine just pummel in America's chicken farming capital. Almost half the more than 9 billion chickens farmed from meat in the U.S., known as broiler chickens,

are raised and slaughtered in the region hit by Helene. An estimated 2.14 million to 5.5,6 million birds are likely to have died in a hurricane. So we're about to get a huge supply shock that's going to lead the chicken inflation, and we're going to blame it on biodynamics, for sure. I'm trying to make everyone eat soy or some shit.

For sure, that's what I was going to say. It's like, it'll still be, I mean, that'll just also be Joe Biden's fault. You know what I mean? Even when that happens, like, you know that's what's going to happen, you know. It's not to say, like, Joe Biden's already getting blamed for plenty of shit where this. Right. And it's not that it's not, it's Joe Biden's fault in this sense that he's been in American politics for 50 years. And he could have like organized a coalition of the Senate to pass climate change legislation in 1988 when Al Gore realized it was a fucking problem.

Right. That's the degree. which is fault but like all this stuff is like we all this is all of our faults it's Joe Biden's fault to the degree it's all of our faults right um and like I just like I like foods about food's gonna keep going up because of climate change because it's going to get more expensive to grow and ship right uh types of vegetables are going to go extinct we already got like monoculture where it comes to bananas like it's only one kind of banana anymore because the rest of the rest of them work profitable so if that one with that one can't survive we're not going to have any more

fucking bananas. It's like, like, so I, I just don't think people understand what's coming, and it's like, it's, it's probably comforting

to not understand what's coming, but like, it's just like, we're so unprepared for it, man. Everybody, start, learn how to grow your own food. I made my recommendation.

Figure out what southern hemisphere crops will grow in the soil around your house here in the United States. So in response to this, you get all the normal wig and not conspiracy theories. Like, people are complaining that the weather channel was talking about climate change.

They were just trying to find out where the hurricane was going. people were saying the weather machines are being used to target Trump voters. Kat Turd was telling his millions of followers that the hurricane was fake altogether. It was just trying to scare people like into voting for Kamala because of climate change or something. Trump went on true social and said that he believes the Democrats have been intentionally denied a Republican parts of the state, which is not fucking true. It's a theme is a catastrophically underfunded agency because Republicans don't want to give it any money. And Democrats don't want to spend a bunch of political capital for it on it.

So it's just, it doesn't have enough money to go around. And they're talking about a really remote area. It's hard to get shit to. And it's just, it's a cluster fuck. It's a cluster fuck of our design. We made it this way. My favorite conspiracy theory was that their National Guard was, this is while the National Guard's on the ground distributing a bunch of aid to people.

They said the National Guard was not responding because Kamala Harris had deployed them to the Middle East. Right. Yeah, I look, I typed this in just to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass, but also you said Trump claimed on true social that they were, the government was denying aid to Republican parts or whatever. And I thought I remembered that, uh, Trump did that with California, right? With wildfires. Trump, Trump administration refuses to give California federal aid for wildfires. That was when he was in, uh, when he was in office right before the last election in 2020. So, um, dog, he did it. Uh, it was laid down way down. on lower the outline, but he did it to North Carolina in 2017. He was asked for not earned $29 million for North Carolina for Hurricane Aid, and he gave them $6.1 million, so about 99% less than they requested. So $6.1 million, I guess, just a little bit of walking around money for North Carolina to rebuild. I guess everybody in Durham can have a fucking pizza party or some shit.

And he did that purely because the governor was a Democrat. It's one of those things that were like a lot of these states, I'm not blaming the people in the states. A lot of the people that run, a lot of these southern states, like refuse federal money sometimes to the detriment of their own citizens because it's socialism or whatever. But obviously in this case, it's like, oh, we need help. And they do. They do need help. But it's just the hypocrisy being on, you know, full display like that is particularly blatant in these scenarios. Or, I mean, it is if you're paying attention or give a shit.

A lot of people don't. They don't care about that. also they get a completely different narrative from what they watch than what we're talking about so that's a factor too like I know we're going to talk like the stuff Trump has said people people see Trump say that and they're just like well that's true

that's fucked up and when it comes to this hurricane and Joe Biden's response and then even if it isn't true it doesn't matter they're never those people are never going to find that out you know they're never going to know that it wasn't true there's going to hear him say it and be like that's a goddamn shame Joe Biden did that even though it wasn't true

it doesn't matter this is like I hate trying to graph culture stuff on top of like this this something is like plainly material as like a hurricane response do you know what I'm saying like this this stuff right government right on the front end like the real disaster comes later once people try to figure out a scam the system I'm talking like like when contractors get in there and disaster capitalism land gets bought up on the cheap um people take contracts to rebuild stuff and then just leave behind polluted disasters behind them because no one's going to do anything to them. Like, that's the, that's the bad part

that comes later. But all that's bipartisan, too. But on the front end, it's something government's good at is sending helicopters to get people all the roofs and distributing bottle water to remote areas. It's like, that stuff is like, as long as you fun FEMA, they can fucking do that shit. But, like, all we do is argue about the dumb bull. Here's Jesse Waters on

Fox News yesterday. And I think this might have been the thing that infuriated me the most. What I recommend her doing is maybe you get a little paper towel like this, like you did in Puerto Rico. That's what the people want. Give what I

recommend her to do. People are fucking dying. People are fucking dying. Sorry. I don't even get I don't even really get what he is doing even from his perspective there. Meaning like I feel like that's almost the thing that I would do to make fun of Trump for how he responded to things like this.

Do you know what I mean? Like pointing out the disaster that was Trump's response to that in Puerto Rico when he did that. And it's almost like he seems aware of, I don't know. It's like he's presenting it like, oh, that was a slam dunk, him doing that when that was a thing he was universally mocked for?

Like, I don't even understand where Jesse Waters is like ostensibly coming from by making a remark like that, aside from how insensitive it is, is what I'm saying. I just don't even think it works. Where he's coming from is none of this matters. Right. The world outside of your, if you can't see it right in front of you,

if you're not feeling the pain yourself, it doesn't matter. right that's what that's what Fox News fills their people's heads with all day every day is not to care about others no all this is a TV show this America's most watched TV network doing bits about fucking

10 year old fake controversies while people are literally drowning I mean I but that I feel like that's kind of a chicken and egg thing because we were just talking about maybe it was on the bonus skews the Patreon episode about how like it's been a long known thing

I feel like for a lot of like far right America conservatives. It's like they don't care about things that don't impact them personally. There's so many famous examples of people that's like hated gay people until their kid came out. And it's like they're still not woke about it. But they love their kid, whatever. So they soften a little bit and that type of thing. We were talking. Oh, it was the Springfield. We're talking about Springfield, Ohio and how I've been there and talked to these Republicans who are like, it's a real shame how this is all happened. And it's like, yeah, because it happened to you. If this happened to some town in Iowa, what would you be saying? and, you know, Republicans for Springfield. And we were like, we just need stuff to impact every one of them personally for them to start caring.

But that's not statistically possible or numerically possible. So they're just like feeding right into that. Because, yeah, I mean, yeah, they don't. I mean, that's, there's a famous viral like Huffington Post article. The headline gets reposted all the time. I think about it all the time. This is from like the early on in the Trump era. And it just said, I don't know how to explain to you that you should.

should care about other people, right? And that's, I think about that all the time because that's... But Appalachians are poor and Jesse Waters is rich. Right. So there you go. But another reason I fucking hate election years is like everyone has to retreat into some defensive court, like defensive crouch about like, arguing about like, it's like that every aspect of everything must be criticized or defended, right?

And like, so I wish George W. Bush's are, response to Katrina had been good, I probably still wouldn't have voted for him, but I would appreciate it more and thought of him less as a piece of shit human being who just like let a mostly black city fucking die. But like I like I still would have been rooting for him to do a good job at it. Right. Of course. So like I like I don't understand this knee jerk thing to like retreat everything into partisan politics like but like it is worth mentioning that like Trump has was he in office? So we already know he'd be worse

on every aspect of this. It's not just like denying climate change, investing less in infrastructure. He wants to like basically disband FEMA that's in Project 2025. But none of that means I have to pretend that Joe Biden's response has been perfect or whatever.

And I'm open to like, I haven't seen any sort of material, other than FEMA's been systematically defunded by both parties and you can't get Republicans to agree to fund it. They just voted to, they barely voted to fund the government last week, I think, and didn't do disaster aid in it

because Republicans were trying to defund the government entirely and all the fucking congressmen crying the most about how their districts need aid just tried to shut down the government and then passed a budget with no aid for disasters. Right. So they're going to be called back in a session probably to vote to see if, and they're going to have to decide

where they want to own Joe Biden and hope that their voters blame him or let their own constituents, let them and their towns die. without aid, right? And I think it's 50-50, honestly. Oh, yeah, for sure. At best, man. They'll just, I mean, you know, they'll do the one thing and then act like they didn't later.

You know, they'll vote against relief funding or whatever. And then later, bitch about how they didn't get any or the Democrats didn't do enough or whatnot, even though they voted against it. They do that type of shit. Or vice versa, when the Democrats do do something good that helps their constituents, they'll, like, brag about it and take credit for it, even though they voted against that, too. You know, I mean, they're just completely shameless. Yeah.

But in case you're wondering, like, all the governors say they have everything they need from the federal government. It includes DeSantis. I'm quoting here exactly, we have everything we need. Brian Kemp in Georgia, Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Of course, he's a Democrat. So maybe you don't want to trust him if you're maybe maga people are watching for whatever reason. But Roy Cooper announced that I-40 East and Asheville has reopened and I-40 West was supposed to reopen today. 1,100 people are in shelters.

57,000 people have applied for female assistance and funds are starting to be distributed. The reason roads are important is because 100,000 people in Asheville may not have access to water for weeks. So we got to drive in water. And they're saying that people were saying like part of the problem was like there was no cell service and no one knew anything. So no one knew when help was coming or if help was coming. And there were saying they couldn't shelter in place because there was no electricity to boil water. their kids needed fucking a formula right it's just like there's just a just a nightmare and just like so just get it being able to get the road back open and get drive-in resources is a big first step okay um watch the interview with one of the uh 20 project 2025 authors earlier today who wanted to remind everyone that their plan is to cut uh federal disaster assistance for hurricane victims the idea is to like have female be more of a backstop for local authorities instead and basically leave cities and towns and states to do it on their

own. So instead of like the whole idea of a federal government as we pool resources for stuff that jurisdictions don't need right on a regular basis, his plan to his fan to streamline government is to have every Asheville, North Carolina by a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters in case of once in a century flood hits. Right. And it's like, and that's on the back end, right? As far as project 2025 goes, I mean, they also like, I think we talked about it before, even before this happened, they want to, like,

privatize weather. Like, they want to make it to where, you know, people, people get alerts. They get told to evacuate. Hey,

this shit's coming. This is dangerous. Get out or whatever. But in the future that they want, Project 2025 wants, you'd have to pay for a service to get those, you've got to subscribe to, hope I don't die fucking weather app.

And they'll send you an alert on your phone if you're up to date on paying your app bill or whatever. And if you're not, you're just too bad. You don't even find out it's happening. and then so they're fucking you know on the front end and the back end and then you know pointing fingers at Joe Biden saying that he's not handling this well enough for whatever else like yeah describe for $25 a month to the fucking Ron app

yeah that's what they want to do by the way today Trump gave a speech where he said no one could have predicted the hurricane which happened at the peak of hurricane season so there you go he's not checking the weather app and tell you that I will say Optically, I don't, but materially, I don't sure what the Biden administration could have done differently, but optically, they fucking handled it disastrously. One, Kamala was at a fundraiser in California, which whatever, you got to do campaign shit.

You don't have to announce that you raised $55 million while a career game was wiping out towns all over the, all over Appalachia. She did give a speech at FEMA headquarters on Monday since she plans to be on the ground as soon as possible when a photo op doesn't take away resources. Joe Biden spent the weekend in Delaware at his beach house, and he was asked about it, and he said,

I was in charge. It's called a fucking telephone. I'm like, okay, but optically, you're laying at the beach. And I'm not a big optics guy, but you understand how it looks like shit, right? Right. Like that you're laying on the beach while people are walking through deep water looking for baby formula. Like, just like, just come back to Washington, dude, please. People were, only people get, the only way people in Asheville could get information if they had their phones had charge was to crowd around the library and hope to log on to the Wi-Fi network. and talking about a time

but everything's being dismantled there you go as people crowd around running on the Wi-Fi at time when libraries are being defunded like it being a place where people come

come together in a disaster because their only access to the outside world feels like poignant and poetic to me and we should probably stop defunding fucking libraries

by the way the communication problem should be getting better soon because the Fed's supposed who started delivering Starlink's today, which Trump took credit for somehow. He thinks, I think he's trying to present it, like he still runs FEMA.

I found the lack of information here, like, people were able to get extremely depressing as somebody used to work in newspapers, like, because a lot of local news sites that have been bought out by private equity groups who, like, have fired everybody but, like, one reporter. Their front page

are, like, automatically generated, like, stories about sports scores from national, I just want to say local news in the southeast wasn't decimated by randomness anymore than the hurricanes are fucking random anymore. It was a policy choice. We decided to let Google and Facebook steal

$14 billion a year from local news. We did that. But instead of doing honest critiques about all the shit that's going wrong and what's fucked up in America, instead, Trump's, they're just doing fake ones. Again, I said, let me quote here. I summarized this earlier,

but reports I'm getting about the federal government, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, they're going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas. Trey mentioned this up top. If you guys aren't familiar with Asheville, it's got a thriving, like, arts and music scene. It's votes hella blue. Mary.

And I got this stat here from LGBT-Ashville, which is an advocacy group, so you can take the numbers for what they're worth, but the Asheville area has 83% more lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identified people than the typical American city or town. All right. Yeah, I would say, I'm pulling this out of my ass. I'm just making this up.

But I would imagine since, like, Joe Rogan and all the tech bros took over Austin, I would think that Asheville might be the preeminent liberal oasis in the American South now in terms of progressivism and whatever. They've surely got to be up there, I would think. But it ain't mega country at all. Obviously, there's a lot of small towns in the area that are also hit real hard. need help too but yeah Asheville

not like that I just like I saw somebody drowning wouldn't ask if they voted for pulling their water I think it's like it's insane that people think they can't

can't do that and here's how Trump's again I talked about how the governors say that everybody's doing the best they can no matter of their probably affiliation because it's amazing to me

how like guys like DeSantis talk when they actually have to accomplish stuff versus when they're campaigning for stuff because when they're trying to win over the rubs everything's a fucking fantastic nightmare. We have to deal with the material reality of helping their state

survivor hurricane. Everything's very practical and sane. Here's a, here's Trump and then a mash-up of people talking about talking in reality. Ideally with the governor, that governor needs to, he's been trying to get them and I'm sure they're going to come through, but he's been calling the president hasn't been able to get him. But I just spoke, the president just called me yesterday afternoon. I missed him and called him right back. And he just said, hey, what do you need? And I told him, you know, we got what we need. We'll work through the federal process.

He offered that if there's no other things we need just to call them directly, which I appreciate that. All right. That's Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia. I already mentioned about how Republicans in Congress refused to fund anything. I know you want to get off in seconds. So you can go ask the debate, Trey. I just want to mention this real quick. According to the daily climate, FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund is, quote, is insignificant deficit.

facing a $3 billion shortfall by February without additional funding. The head of Homeland Security himself began warning the government about FEMA's shortfall earlier this summer. The office is responding to roughly twice as many major disasters as they were eight years ago. Frustration has grown over the last several years as FEMA denies more requests because they don't meet the minimum threshold for disaster declaration. They appear to be raising their cutoff. They're having to face so many more disasters.

They're responding to fewer because they don't have the money to cover the real bad ones. And I'm here to say While we're apparently engaged in a 40 front war That maybe we should pivot the United States Marines to work for FEMA And just do disaster relief shit Because we don't need all this fucking military stuff We need to fund people It's tough to help people who are drowning in fucking Appalachia

Yeah The tale is oldest time So many federal budgets You know They just stay roughly static Go up by a small percentage, whatever And a lot of those things are kind of static, but with FEMA, when it just, when it expands, maybe not literally exponentially, but it expands so much because of climate change. They have so much more to do the fact that the budget doesn't reflect that leaves them in a very, very, very precarious position.

But, you know, can't have the government spending more money. That's socialism, unless, of course, it's, you know, war-related or military or defense budget. So I don't know. Maybe we'll figure out one of these days. But I believe it when I see it. But anyway, listen, we're going to let you go. guys go, go watch the debate here. Hopefully Tim Wall's dog walks, J.D.

Vance, that would hit for everybody, I think. We'll have a recap next week, I imagine, at least in part. Listen, before you go, go to Trey Crowder.com. Check up, coming to her date, see me in Missouri this weekend. And then I'm in the southwest after that and a whole bunch of other places in the very near future and into 2025. Go to Treycrowder.com. Go to weekly skews.com slash more or go on Patreon and search for my name. Either way it works, sign up on there, $5 a month.

You get two full-link bonus episodes of this. This is your show, support the show in the process. Main thing is you keep watching on skewses, and we'll keep showing up and running our mouths. We surely do appreciate it. See, you love you by.