Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 10/26/21 - Pandora Papers

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

This week Smart Mark breaks down the nefarious dealings of the world’s ultra-rich, as shown in the Pandora Papers (and Trae gets upset about it all). Also: the war on books, January 6 rioters get upset about the criminal justice system, DeSantis goes to bat for the un-vaxxed, and much much more. Support the show

Howdy, everybody, welcome back and happy skews day to you. Today's October 26th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark A.G. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? I hope you enjoyed D.C. over the weekend. I heard you guys had some hot shows, right? Yeah, some super hot shows, buddy.

Um, you know, all you missed in LA over the weekend was, uh, you know, the film and television industry melting down over Alex Baldwin, uh, shooting a lady at work. Yeah, that's super messed up, obviously. We, uh, it's not really clear what exactly happened or how it happened. Of course, it's going to be investigations and stuff into that. But we talked a lot about union drives last week. Yeah. And I would say that, uh, the one takeaway, if there is one is that unions will save your life because what happened was. was the crew, the union crew, felt unsafe.

And also they were getting fucked on money. So they were complaining if producers had security escort them off set and replaced them with non-union crew because New Mexico is a right to work state. And promptly, someone did not do the job right. And two people got shot and one of them died. So, yeah. Union saved lives.

Ever since the days of people getting chopped up and put into the canned meat, you know, with the rest of the meat. Like, that's what unions are for. I think we talked about this before, but what happens to Claire wrote the jungle, he thought he was trying to get people going to read him, be horrified by the working conditions, but all it succeeded in doing was getting the FDA started because people were like, oh, humans are in our hot dogs. Yeah.

We got to get them, fix the hot dogs. Dude, hot dogs are gross. Oh, my God. Write a letter to your senator. Yeah. All right. So with us, as always his producer, Matt, this is weekly skews. Real quick, remind you, if you're vaccinated, want to save me live, you can go to well-read comedy.

dot com for tickets and information and you know hope to see you out there okay as for the show tonight Mark's going to walk us through the Pandora Papers the massive collection of leaked documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which details the true extent of the shady

and underhanded dealings of the world's ultra rich prepare to be pissed off but along the way we've got some other infuriating stuff for you for example the January 6 rioters shocking realization that jail kind of sucks. And Ron DeSantis has a hilariously hypocritical new stance on unemployment. All that and more on this week's skews.

But first, as always, the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., anyone who thinks schoolchildren should be forced to read books. That's right. Take a look at this campaign ad from the heating up Virginia gubernatorial race. As a parent, it's tough to catch everything. So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine.

I met with lawmakers. They couldn't believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment. They passed bills requiring schools to notify parents when explicit content was assigned. It was bipartisan. It gave parents a say, the option to choose an alternative for my children. I was so grateful. But then Governor Terry McCullough vetoed it twice.

He doesn't think parents should have a say. He said that. He shut us out. Glenn Yonkin, he listens. He understands parents matter. Join me in voting for Glenn Yonkin. I'm Glenn Yonkin, candidate for governor. And I sponsored this ad.

All right. All right. This seems dumb on the surface, but it's actually even dumber than it seems. I feel like most of us watch this and you think I'm sure this is some critical race theory bullshit, even though they don't explicitly state it. But yes, you get into the details of it and it's even dumber than at first glance, eh, Mark? Yeah, the book she's complained about that gave her now 27-year-old son Night Terror,

was beloved by Tony Morrison, which does have some graphic. to be out of the rape scenes. It's been a while since I read it. I haven't read it since high school. But it's like, it's a said in the 1850s. It's about a woman who's tracked down by fugitive slave hunters and kills her child rather than have them be submitted to bondage. So you imagine why she doesn't want her pretty white schoolboy reading it and knowing

the horrors of his ancestors committed. But it's even dumber than that because one, this was an AP English class. So it's a college level. 12th grade, right? Because, yeah, I feel like you watch this and you're picturing, at least I pictured like a nine-year-old, nine or ten-year-old. You know, my baby boy brought home this brutal literature, and I just couldn't believe it. But this was a senior in high school and an AP English class given this monumental work of American literature. And, yeah, that's what gave your nightmares.

A literal college level class that he signed up for as a. borderline adult to read adult books and by the way you you want the school education doesn't design for teachers to teach the test this is literally on the AP test if he doesn't know it he's not going to do good in the test he's not going to get into the college you want so it's not really a way around this but someone else made this point but like he was a the kid was old enough to drive a car down to see the 1998 film version without adult supervision he could buy a ticket to the r-rated movie starring Oprah um so by the way The kid, the kid's now, he's a lawyer, and he works the National Republican Party, and he was an intern in Trump's White House.

And he was not, doesn't appear to be all damaged by this. But also, like, this is another example of, like, there's a lot of astroturfing going on in the Virginia governor's race where these people are presented as concerned parents, but they're literally just like Republican Party activists. They're not just regular parents. And she had tried to pass a law in like, like eight years ago when her son, when this came up with her son trying to let parents, choose what books their kids are taught, which, Trey, do you need more parental duties? No, no, I don't. That's what I was thinking it's like, you know,

and I guess some of them do, but it's just like, just, you know, just teach them yourself. Like if, you know, if you want to like completely dictate what they are taught at school, then just fucking homeschool them. Like, I feel like that's what schools are supposed to be for is,

you know, making sure they learn things that they might not otherwise learn if they didn't go to school. So if you're going to let parents start dictating what the curriculum is, then what is even the fucking point anymore? I mean, first of all, teachers, my mom and my sister are teachers, and the teachers don't have time to make 30-something individual lesson plans. Let's have one class. So you have six classes. You've got 180 students.

But Matt, so if one kid, this kid, she's asking for her kid to go to set the curriculum for the entire class. And by the way, they all have to take this test to get into college. But like 40% of Americans believe in angels. can you imagine one parent was like, why is in biology class teaching the biology of angels? And so all the kids had to learn about people with wings in science class. Well, I mean, they don't, it's not, that's not that far off from the other things they've gotten furious about in the past as far as curriculum with where science is concerned, i.e., you know, if we came from monkeys, why are they still monkeys and global warming being a lie and all that bullshit? I mean, they get up in arms about that stuff too. And it's funny because all of these things are, you know, real things that happened in the world.

They just don't want their children to know about them, which, again, can't stress enough, the ostensible purpose of school. So, yeah. And if you're wondering how, like, how our post-reality, post-truth media is handling this, here's a clip from the most trusted name and news talking about this governor's race. I heard that. I felt like that was a little bit of wishful thinking from President Obama. Anybody who has a child in K through 12 school right now knows that these aren't phony culture wars. You might not think they're legitimate or founded on facts, but they're happening. Right.

Yeah. This might not be real, but it is. But it's real. Yeah. I don't understand what she's saying like people really are pissed about this. If that's all she's saying, I mean, yeah, sure, fine. We see them screaming at the school board every other day. Like, yeah, of course, they really are.

pissed about it, but, like, it shouldn't be given the sort of, like, legitimacy that, you know, just that she seems to be giving it there. This is, like, the level, like, it drives me crazy about political analysis, but it's, like, 30,000 feet, like, sort of, like, trying to hover over everything. And instead of, like, saying what reality is, which is what the news should do, she's trying to play analyst at what other people are thinking reality is, and then trying to formulate coverage of that. Do you know what I'm saying?

It's like, it's, it's like, it's like Plato's Shadow Cave, but only concerned for the shadows or. Right. Yeah. No, I think that works. I think you've nailed it. That's good. Good job. Yeah.

Good pull there. So I'm going to be honest with you. I was going through our show outline earlier. I don't think you had yet added this Madison Cawthorn clip, so why don't you set this one up without making everybody think. Well, anyway, just go ahead. So I guess the dumb ass here would be Dr. Fauci for being.

the Corrello Neville of Africa. Rollerclip, that. Okay. Madam Speaker, today I am calling for the creation of a formal commission to investigate the true origin of COVID-19, the role Fauci played in its creation, the false statements he made to members of Congress under oath,

and why the hell Americans are funding the torture of puppies in Africa. Americans deserve the truth, and this demon doctor must never be allowed to escape justice. With that, I yield back. For what purpose is the gentleman from? so if you're not well attuned to right-wing internet fever swamps there's like a nugget there's like a nugget there's like a nugget of a story about the NIH funding some research in Africa that somehow and I'm not sure how much truth is this part

but these medical experiments were conducted on dogs and so this is blown up into a huge meme on the right that Dr. Fauci supports some dog murder and so yeah and now we're shit posting on the floor of Congress about a 10% truth made up right-wing internet meme. Yeah, and it's funny I guess, did Hitler love dogs? Wasn't that a thing? I say this because Carl Thorne's a Nazi,

you know, high oil wheels, as I like to call him. Yeah. Yeah, you know, he's into that. It's just, it's funny that like, that a Nazi would make any type of like humanitarianism or whatever, humane, ethical treatment of any other being like a platform. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, I think it's mainly about, it's mainly about getting Fauci hurt into a camp. I think that's the goal here. For sure. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Congress is really all the one lately.

People have been chanting, let's go brand. You know the let's go Brandon thing? Yeah. It's, uh, their like, thinly veiled way of saying, fuck Joe Biden or something like that.

I'm still not really clear on how that whole thing got started. why they even care enough to do that instead of just saying it, you know, but. Yeah. So what happened, I think it was on MSNBC, they were interviewing a NASCAR driver. His name was Brandon. His first thing was, and in the background of this interview, I don't even know what the context was or why they were doing it, but the crowd started chanting fuck Joe Biden. And so the newscaster paned a little bit, oh, they're saying, let's go, Brandon, back to you in the studio.

Okay. And so this is their adorable meme way to say, fuck Joe. Biden. So like literally their big congressmen are ending their floor speeches with let's go Brandon and a guy, one congressman wore a let's go, let's go Brandon face mask on the floor of Congress the other day. So just a bunch

of fucking clown children. I don't know language police. He wants like fuck Joe Biden and say fuck Joe Biden. I don't care. But like don't be a baby about it. Yeah, exactly. Well, thinking about it further, it is kind of like totally in keeping with their general philosophy of I feel like they love to not say exactly

the thing that they are saying do you know what I mean when it's just like you know just say let poor people die like you know if you're against you know universal health care and just say you're cool poor people dying but they won't say it's like just say you're afraid of black men or whatever when they talk about like you know police feeling threatened and shit like that like i feel like they very often don't actually say what they're thinking so it actually totally tracks that they would have let's go Brandon instead of fucking a Biden. I mean, when you just turn everything into a memes, you can say stuff without actually

saying it, right? It's very, but it's just a, it's adorable, just a bunch of 50, 60 year old guys who are little school boys having a naughty, you know, it's just like, they're being naughty, Trey. All right. So next up, for honorable mention here, anybody who thinks British politics is any more sane than ours are, this is a hell of a clip here. So the guy being interviewed is a centrist right-wing British media figure interviewing an environmental activist. And the first thing he's going to say is, what are you glued to?

So the context here is British environmental activists have been gluing themselves to roadways to plug up traffic. So he started off being a dick and then it got worse from there. Yeah, he's like trying to, he's basically interviewing a tree-hugging hippie, right? And he's just trying to shit on him is the context of this. and then this is how that conversation goes. Yeah. Morning, Mike. Oh, hello.

What are you glued to, Cameron? Just your screen, unfortunately. Unfortunately. What do you do for a living, Cameron? I'm a carpenter. A carpenter, right. So how safe is that for the climate? Well, I work with timber,

which is a much more sustainable material rather than concrete. You work with trees that have been cut down then, don't you? It's a sustainable, building practice. How is it sustainable if you're killing trees? Because it's regenerative, you can grow trees. Right.

Well, you can grow all sorts of things got you? Well, you can't grow concrete. You can. See you, Cameron. Cheerio. That was Cameron. He grows trees and then cuts them

down and then makes things from them. So even worse, that guy, Mike Graham doubled down. He found some obscure article about a bacteria that can grow concrete. He's like, see, I was right. And then he's also been jokes about, like, of course you can grow concrete. He has a concrete plant. It's like a concrete manufacturing plant. So things are really saying over there.

It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so he's like trying to say, like, you can't be, you can't care about the environment if you work with wood ever. because that murders trees it's like yeah yeah you just heard trees grow back I don't know it's fucking this is this is a this is a ruling elite guys

this is this is who's in charge and everything is this generation of fucking idiots so I feel we feel for you across I've been I've been listening to a lot of British political podcast lately because it's more it's it's so far away from here it's at least recreationally stupid you know what I'm saying like yeah they they don't have a they don't have a 11 aircraft carrier

battle groups and enough military to destroy the world So it's like, yeah, their fuckups are just sort of funny. Yeah, anything seems a little more whimsical coming from them and their accent. You know what I mean? It's just easier to laugh off. Tell you what isn't easy to laugh off, Mark, prison or at least jail. Yeah, this just in. Jail kind of sucks.

That's right. Our next arm will mention is, oh, Cooey. I'll remember Cooey, if you don't, you will, in a minute the later of Cowboys for Trump. And he's a dumbass for not having the foresight to go. to like a fancy white jail or something. I don't know. It just seems like a jail didn't work out for him. And this has been a startling revelation.

Let's hear it from the man himself. And after that, they threw me in the D.C. Department of Corrections for a total of three weeks. The first nine days of which was spent in total 24 hour a day solitary confinement. They didn't let me take a shower. They didn't let me use the phone. I was called the F-and-white cracker. I was just verbally assaulted, treated miserably. But unfortunately, a lot of the treatment that I received in January 6

is driven by the liberal left because the liberal left has told the populace that all the Trump supporters are racist. So can you imagine the treatment that a Trump supporter gets when you get thrown in a D.C. Department of Corrections jail whenever every jail guard there is black and they've all been told that you're the racist person. It was very difficult, y'all, and it was very hard. So, I mean, I wonder, maybe they saw the news and saw Confederate flags of the Capitol in January 6th. That could have been it. Also, he shouldn't be mistreated in jail. But every time you complain about something like, say something like solitary confinement shouldn't exist because it's psychological torture.

What do they always say if you don't do the crime? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say. It's like we talked about this before. Marjorie Taylor Green, I think. She was on some tirade about how horrifically these people are being treated. And it's like we said, like it's just them, them talking about how there are these inherent problems with the nature of our criminal justice system and the way that it.

It treats people and it's not, you know, rehabilitative. It's, you know, just punitive only and all this type of shit. And you hear them say it. And it's like, yeah, oh, no shit, you know, that's what we've been saying for forever. But of course, the context of it, them only caring now, them, you know, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime, all that bullshit, just really makes it all more, just gives it a little bit of a different flavor. You know what I mean? Because it's like they're, they're, it's so, it's wild to watch somebody make like a good point in such a bad and off target fashion. You know what I mean?

Like still be so wrong while saying something that, you know, fundamentally I would otherwise agree with. It's just, it's a wild, it's a wild thing that they're able to do. I and only I should have human rights. The, that, that video is from a big Q&on conference. that happened in Vegas over the weekend. I think it was Vegas. And the newsworthy part was a coupie turned on Trump.

I don't know, the big breakup. He's mad at Trump for basically abandoning them and not giving everyone pardons and yada, yeah, yeah, I don't talk to you in a second. But he was really funny. He said, for four years,

we cried, lock her up, lock her up. We know she's a criminal. What did the president tell us? If I was in charge of the law, you'd be in jail. But Mr. President, you were in charge of law for four years. The end of your four-year time,

the only ones who were locked up are men like me. It's like, oh, fuck. You just, you just like you just learned in real time that Trump's a bullshitter is fucking it's like it's absolutely amazing yeah it's that it's that classic it there's like a comment from a Trump supporter that went viral and continues to go viral every now and it's like he's not hurting the right people you know yeah and that's if it's like they want him to hurt people they want all

this bad shit to happen just not not to us wasn't supposed to be us that did it or that received it's supposed to be good for the goose not good for the gander tray yeah I'm the Bander, give it to the goose. See, so Coe is out of jail now. He's at least spent three weeks in jail. But some people aren't so lucky. I haven't been lucky enough to get out yet. There's a whole wing of maggot people in jail in D.C.

And recreationally, to soothe their fears and anxieties, every night of lockdown at 9 o'clock, they've taken to singing the Star-Spangled Banner, which is just like, you imagine you're locked up for petty theft or traffic warn or whatever and you get to let you try trying to go to sleep and you get these morons singing they don't even i bet you don't even know the fucking words they're just sort of half-assing it yeah yeah and they uh they formed their own little they call it the patriot wing that they're in in the prison they've got a little uh news letter that they pass around and they sing the star spangled banner every night and like you hear this and this is pointed out in the article that this comes from about about the way but also you read this stuff and you just kind of like laugh at how silly they are and everything else and and it is but also uh so in the article we got it's from raw story they're pointing out that uh this is likely to just radicalize them further you know again going back

to the way our gales and prisons work or they don't actually rehabilitate anybody or whatever and it just makes people even worse for the same thing applies to these Dudes potentially because they're in even more of an echo chamber now and they feel like, you know, down-trodden or whatever. Like they're stepped upon so now they're like motivated even more so to be their dumb-ass selves. This is their version of joining the Nation of Islam and learning how to make toilet meth. You know, it's like, this is like where they're at. Yeah, I don't doubt it would correct Iraq laws no more. The headline speaker of that big Q&N conference was A-List Hollywood actor Jim Kivisel, who,

starred in Passion of the Christ and the CVS procedural person of interest, I believe. And for a little flavor of what his speech is like, check out this clip. Will you fight? This man says no, we'll run and we'll live. Yep, fight and you may die. Run and you live for at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you have been willing to trade all the years from this day to that for one chance? Just one chance to come back here and tell her enemy.

that you can take our lives that you can never take our freedom every man dies not every man truly lives you yeah he's just doing the modelogue from Braveheart right

that's what that's what these things are it's like it's always like some mad lib like freedom madlib that they put together that works so effectively you know what I mean you can just use

Braveheart clips if you want to but it's just a list of cliches that they just check off as they go down and get more emotional and people just eat it up. Toward the end of that clip, you can hear a guy in the crowd scream, Freedom!

And that gets a huge applause break too. And it's just, but I always point out, he's probably a lunatic beforehand, but I think he's come up before for being a right-wing lunatic. And I always point out that he was apparently struck by lightning like three times

on the set of Passion of the Christ, which I feel like might make anybody believe that the Lord is real and wrathful and everything. And obviously, you know, he probably got some, blown circuits up there or something but either way pretty wild shit he's a he's a full grown

cute full blown cue guy now and uh he uh if you might have talked about it and the guy like the q an anonymous podcast did a great episode on him basically behind the scenes uh set uh by uh behind the scenes stories from him on personal of interest and he do shit like uh plow like speed through intersections because he said his character wouldn't stop at red lights and he uh he uh he refused to memorize his lines his lines. The crew had to put him on little note cards for him. And they didn't want to insult them because they didn't put one of his lines in a note card once.

And he asked for it. And the line was just nope. He couldn't remember nope. So, yeah, he's a fucking great one. Yeah. So, but on the note of the January 6th, uh, people, the insurrectionist and whatnot, there's some, uh, actual developments on that front, right? Or reportedly. There's new, uh,

information coming out, new allegations that are not surprising, but still very relevant. Yeah, so Monday night at Rolling Stone dropped this investigative piece from sources inside the January 6th investigation and a couple of people that are cooperating with the investigation who were January 6 rioters that they had a bunch of meetings

to plan the insurrection with members of Congress and told them that President Trump will give them blanket pardons. Which, of course, if true, would... I mean, I'm not sure the legal framework for holding people accountable for a promise, but it should be politically explosive. if it should be a death sentence

for political careers. We know it won't be. Paul Gossar, pretty hilarious that Paul Gossar is a dentist and congressman. He's a congressman from Arizona whose family openly campaigns against him. All his brothers and sisters say he's a loser and a moron and a psycho. And he got asked about it

and he said, well, I didn't be with them. My staff probably did. I thought that was Mo Brooks that said that. I thought it was Gossar. Well, whatever. It was one of them, because it was So it's, so yeah, Mo Brooks, Bobert, Mass and Carl Thorne, Andy Beggs, Gossar, Louis Gomert, are all said to have met in advance of January 6th with some of the organizers of the January 6 proceedings. And yes, as part of that, we're promised you'll get blanket pardons and stuff. And like, yeah, I also, my expectation is the answer to this question is ultimately nothing, not shit.

But, like, this should have actual, like, implications shouldn't it? Of course we've been saying, like, they stoke the fires of this shit, and we all saw it, and that's true. But, like, you know, I feel like this goes a step beyond that and seems like it should matter, but probably won't, I guess, because nothing ever does. But, I mean, this is pretty genuinely some wild shit right here, in my opinion. Yeah, I'm fighting Merrick Garland to be extremely annoying. Like, Steve Bannon hasn't been arrested yet for his contempt, even though it won't show up for a congressional subpoena. it doesn't feel like, it feels like Democrats are doing the usual shit

of just waiting for us to do something. You know, y'all fix it. We're busy. But I just love the balls on Cawthorn. He literally just been sworeed into his first term like two days earlier. Yeah. And he's still using Google Maps to get to the Capitol.

And he's fucking trying to overthrow the government. Yeah, man. Well, anyway, I don't know. Maybe it'll actually matter. We'll see. But, hey, Mark, let's do,

because I talked about it up top. Let's talk about DeSantis and then we'll, and then we'll, the Pandora papers. Okay, so yes, guys, guess who's on board with unemployment now? Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, that's right. You're thinking, well, that doesn't sound right. I thought unemployment just incentivize people to not work. It makes people lazy, and they kick their feet up and take their welfare checks and shit, right? That's what they think about unemployment. No, not anymore. So long as the person looking for unemployment is

doing so because they quit their job after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. That's right. I am not bullshit, and you. This is a true thing, and it's not just a Santis. Other states are doing it, too. Some GOP leaders are favoring jobless benefits specifically for the unvaccinated. This is just one of those things we talk about, just the bald-faced audacity of their hypocrisy sometimes. Like, it's just so, they're just so shameless with it. Like, this is so apparently hypocritical and anyone you would think would be aware.

that and thus less inclined to just dive headfirst into an ideology like this, but that's just not how it works with them. They'll just do it with a smile on their face. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, so I guess the dumbass here is me for getting the vaccine and not just moving to Florida and going on unemployment. But DeSantis also, like, said, like if you're a cop who gets fired for not taking the vaccine, come to Florida will give you a job. So I guess like 10% of American cops are going to move to Florida. So it's going to be all, it's going to be like copland. But think about how crazy the sort of crime headlines we see out of Florida already are. And now inject the worst 10% of the rest of the country's law enforcement officers into that equation.

And think about what Florida is going to be like in the future. That's just going to be gnarly, buddy. They, yeah, I mean, like, what's perfect about this to me is, like, Republicans in general see everyone who needs unemployment or any social sort of social program is somebody who's lazy or stupid. Right. And here you have people creating special unemployment benefits specifically for people who are being lazy and stupid. Yeah, I know.

And that's what I'm saying. And the argument is always you can't get people these benefits because then they won't need or want to work, you know? But it's like, so they're totally okay with somebody just not working, which is supposed to be, again, a huge knock against your character as an American as far as they're concerned. but they're totally okay with it as long as they're doing so because they refuse to get a vaccination in the middle of a fucking global pandemic. And the answer to that is apparently, yes, that's exactly how they feel about it, as wild as it may seem.

You know, when they call Nazi socialists, there's a current, like, her and vote democracy, which is what they were doing, was basically socialism for just the Aryan rakes, right? Yeah. And here you have socialism just for anti-vaxxers. It's like they're created. It's like they want special jails themselves that are nice. They want special unemployment benefits for them that work, but not for anybody else. Yeah. Yeah, it's exactly like the jail thing earlier where it's like, you know, yeah, employment benefits should be expanded in times of crisis.

And it doesn't make people lazy because they need them. Like, they're so close to like doing a good thing or saying the. right thing, but there's always this hard veer in the middle of their line of thinking that makes it, you know, completely flipped on its head and turns it into, instead, some crazy bullshit that they're saying. They find themselves making explicitly left-wing arguments, but just for themselves. It's like, it's like, I would be in favor of a jobs guarantee where everyone got a job. And that would, of course, it would be hard to separate and vaccinate people without a

government, you know, vaccine mandate. I would be in favor of, like, better job protections for people, picking it harder for them to get fired and not have that will employment where you can get fired for any reason all the time. I'd be in favor of better social safety and that takes care of everyone who's unemployed for whatever reason, including this one probably. But they just want it for this. Right.

It's just like we've said a million times over the past few, the fucking, it's my body, it's my choice thing. Yeah. With vaccines. Like, yeah, they're making hardcore left-wing arguments for these insane right. wing rationales that they have and it's just you know again Simone bowles inside they skulls man the mental gymnastics that they're all doing it's wild um all right so let's get into it mark tell us about the sorry-ass rich people and what they got going on i here

all right so we've been having this in the back burner for a few weeks since this story dropped and what may be made me want to talk about it today is that i am once again mad about helen musk uh so part of the democrats uh may be happening a big infrastructure bill uh as being held up in reconciliation by cinema and mancha they're proposing a billionaire a tax on billionaires and this estimate that's on the screen right now says musk could be hit with a 10 billion dollar annual tax bill and he's complaining about it he's been all over twitter basically saying that once they take my money they're going to take yours he's doing the first they came for the gypsies thing and first they came to the communist but for uh you know he's not once they get done with a billion

They're going to come for the millionaires. And they're going to be taxing you, the garbage man, right? I can't believe people fall for this shit. For context, Elon Musk made somewhere I've seen different estimates between $36 and $42 billion yesterday. Yesterday. Yesterday. That's fucking insane.

Yeah, because Tesla had a trillion dollar market cap because Hertz ordered 100,000 Tesla's for rental cars. So just another example, everything's fake. Tesla hitting a trillion dollar market cap, it's like they have basically the same amount of yearly revenue in profits as T.J. Max. All right. Um, the economy is made up. It doesn't, it doesn't. I know. Well, I read that and I knew it had to do with their stock price and shit like that, you know, but when I first read that that, that, that because a rental car company ordered a hundred thousand Teslas, his net worth went up $42 billion in one day and reading that and it's like, I don't think that's like, how does that? It's like you said, it's all just like, it's all. It's all. made up it's like fucking uh wall street harry potter shit man i mean if you want to know how all all fake and all made up is first of all elan's uh we can do we can do five whole episodes in elan but just is what a what a fraud he is his whole i'm going to save the world with electric cars thing his space x plant has submitted environmental permits to turn a chunk of their land

that's next to it into a protected wildlife space uh into an oil refinery so he's doing that He's his whole brands fake and made up. But beyond that, one of the things he's complained about on Twitter, he was saying that like, who do you do it? It's not about wealth. It's about capital allocation. I'm a better, more efficient allocator capital than the government will ever be. One of the things Elon's heavily into right now is he made up his own subset of doge coin,

I think called Shiba coin, whose value was pegged to how many pictures of his dog he tweets. It seems like he's just making fun of all the. rest of us with shit like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so just talking about how fake the economy is, the Pandora papers dropped. And I'm not sure where we're calling everything papers. The Facebook papers just dropped too. But I guess it goes back to the Pentagon papers. But so this consortium of journalists all over the world got dumped a bunch of private financial documents from tax havens and combed through them. And they tell a very interesting tale about who pays taxes and who does it. Mainly you and I pay taxes and people that are richer than us, do

not. It's basically it. So there's like the total of about a trillion dollars of assets and where it is is pretty interesting. Matt, this sounds a good part to play this video. He gives a little explanation of what the papers are, what they're about. For years, some of the world's richest people have hidden their wealth in prominent offshore tax havens in places like the Bahamas or Belize. Now, a new investigation of reveals the involvement that the United States and prominent world leaders have in the secret of world. There are 1,001 different ways to describe a tax haven. It's generally considered as a country or a jurisdiction.

Where you can put your money and avoid paying taxes where you made your money. A team of reporters from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Washington Post, and hundreds of reporters around the world unearthed secrets from millions of documents. The Pandora papers show how the ultra-rich and powerful move their money around the globe. It is the largest collaboration of journalists ever organized by the ICIJ.

We have emails, passport copies, bank statements that show how presidents, kings, princesses, billionaires, and criminals hide and move money. There are more than 11.9 million documents that reveal the holdings of powerful foreign figures, including the King of Jordan, and a woman widely considered to be the girlfriend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States, through some very liberal laws in places like Alaska, South Dakota, Nevada,

and Delaware have really become go-to tax havens for global clients. Yeah, so basically we've turned huge chunks of America into the Cayman Islands. And mainly, the surprising one, I think, to everybody, was South Dakota. My favorite headline about this was from Gawker. It was South Dakota. We're sluts for assets, which is basically what it is. There's one brick building. Producer Matt's homeland, by the way.

Yeah, South Dakota. Tell us about the South Dakota asset sluts, producer Matt. I'm just kidding. I'm sure he'll put something in the comments about it. But, yeah, who knew? South Dakota, man. So there's a one little brick building in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, houses billions of dollars in assets somehow. The reporters went there to try to figure out what it is and it's just an empty building with a bunch of like post office boxes and shit in it.

And it's one of the people who has billions of dollars there is a Brazilian orange juice tycoon slash criminal who got hit with the $88 million antitrust case in Brazil instead moved that money to Sioux Falls. That's what you do, baby. When you get hit with a huge penalty, you pack up your. You pack up the truck full of money, you haul full of cash, and you go to South Dakota. But this is just like talking about nothing's real. It's also fucking farcical. The people caught up in this, like, Putin, they call Putin's girlfriend, but she had a kid with him. Putin has a teenage daughter with her, it looks like, although not a lot of Putin's life is admitted to the public.

But she is theoretically a house cleaner. That's her job title. But she also owns a shell company that owns a $20 million house in Monte Carlo. So that definitely seems in the up and up. It reminds me of when the Panama Papers dropped, Putin's childhood best friends, who is nominally a cellist, had $2 billion in a bank account in Panama.

So he plays the fuck out of the cello tray. Yeah, evidently. The Elon Musk of cellist. Because for years you always heard, like you said, the Cayman Islands, or like Swiss banks and shit like that. Like in movies where people need to put money, you know it's always offshore banking accounts why and how and how for how long has it been you know you don't have to go offshore for that like america became the place for that or certain

states did like i think you trade your bad money so foreign bad and dirty money comes to america and dirty american money goes out so it's just like it's all it's all passing each other in the night but like this is there's a word for this and i can't think of it right now but it basically is synonym for like strategic boredom. What you do is you take a bunch of rare boring accounts, think, you know, the main character in Ozark. And you do a bunch of weird stuff on paper where a shell company buys a shell company,

buys a shell company, buys a shell company, buys a shell company, buys a shell company, they're all headquartered in different countries and they pass money back and forth, and no one can really tell who owns it unless you can take a forensic accountant or a team of thousands of journalists working for years to figure out where the fuck this money is.

But literally everyone with more than $20 in your bank, accounts pretty much involved in this. The funny ones to me, I mean, there were a couple, like, King Abdullah was a funny one to me, because what's the point of being a fucking king? If you have to, if you have to do this, right, exactly. Like, just put it in a fucking, you know, put it in your golden tiger pit or whatever. Like, you know, who gives you shit? You got to, you have to write a premonauta, but you have to hide your money from the taxes,

guys. It's fucking weird to me. Tony Blair, the former prime minister of, I mean, of the United States. kingdom uh apparently shielded six million dollars in taxes by buying a house using a shell corporation he used a foreign shell corporation to buy a house in london where he lives i think um uh also involved in this were uh beloved pop stars elton john wringo star and shakira um maybe those hit do lie mark there's there's there's there money is kept yes she's she's been in trouble in spain for hiding from tag like she has a big tax case in spain

I think she won her court case, but all that means is she successfully hit her money. But the really, really funny one to me was the 13-year-old son of the Azerbaijani-ruling family is nominally the owner of a shell company that has a 33 million-pound office park in London. So I know this is just a tax game, but it's really, really funny to imagine this kid just loves playing in office parks. like he's just doing home alone shit in like a british office park yeah just like yeah it's like yeah i i just urge them yeah the the like what how does this make you feel about we're always talking about taxing the rich and stuff like that but i feel like you read these stories and hear them and it's like the links that they already can and and do go to to a little bit of

avoid paying taxes that they should in the first place. You know what I mean? I'm not saying that nothing, something can be done, but I'm saying like it's a, you know, it's a serious undertaking. It feels like actually forcing these people to just pay what should be their fair share because clearly they have infinite resources to dedicate to the practice of hiding it all in all these fucking nebulous ass hocus pocus fashions that they already utilize anyway. way. You know what I mean? Have you ever driven through Delaware about 95, Troy? No, I don't

think so. So Delaware is a funny little state. There was a great article about this. I think it was a New Republic cover story years ago. It was call it the pirate state, basically. But basically Delaware is like five miles of interstate to go through Delaware, and there's like a toll booth every 15 feet. Basically, if you, it's just a tax on people passing through the state from other states to steal money from other states, right? And you ever notice how all your, all your, all your bills were paid to Delaware? Like all your, all your, yeah, I've heard before that, I know that a lot

of places are incorporated in Delaware because of their tax laws or something or whatever. Yeah. So instead of cracking debt on Delaware, we've turned the whole state into, a whole whole country into Delaware, apparently. Right. And considering that our current president is, you know, uh, former senator

dee's dash mastercard. Uh, this is, this is just the way it's going to work and no one has any will to change it because people that write the checks, do this and all the reason I like talking about this stuff is because it to me it highlights to people like us money is real right right a certain amount of money very yeah right goes to my bank account my name on it the IRS has my social security number

they take a percentage out of my check and then I take that money that's basically physically knows on a card and I go and I exchange it for goods and services right then you have a whole other group of people for whom money is it's like passing through um like a mc escher staircase of bullshit like like an abacus is just counting nothing and moving around and then out comes a bunch of free money that's not attached to anything the IRS can't even find right it's like if that doesn't make you angry that right you're paying taxes and jack bezos is getting a child tax credit right it's like yeah

the new that's what I'm saying they clearly play by a completely different set of rules insofar as they even have rules you know than we do and yeah it's fucking infuriating and that's what I'm saying like that

because they have the ability to to do all this shit they have you know an army of people they could pay to just spend their entire life dedicated to figuring all this out for them and making all these like little money modes and stuff and it's all just

it's all just numbers on a computer screen or whatever and meanwhile they own islands and jets and stuff they fucking you trade you trade your blood sweat and time for money to feed your family and they push a button and the money machine goes brrr and gives them all money it's like yeah and our sensible left-wing political party can't even manage to pass a bill to crack down on this shit because christin cinema wants to wear a jean jacket and on the floor congress instead of doing her job so yep all right um yeah there she yeah there we go there she is today there's our there's our manic pixie dream editor uh she loves you pointed out earlier yeah i was going to say you pointed out earlier but

before we started that she's real into thumb gestures yeah yeah don't worry got out of control got my denim vest and my two thumbs um all right matt you start putting up uh some comments and stuff i'll uh try to scroll through them here i want to know mark you're ready for halloween oh man we were uh had tickets to go on a haunted hay ride last night but it got canceled because it rained. Oh, that's a bummer. Haunted Hayrides. I didn't know they had those out here.

I mean, I guess I, you know, got a matter. I never put together, because we had haunted hayrides where I grew up, and I just, just because of the hay part, the hay ride part, I guess I just always assumed that was like a rural thing or something. In other places, you know, y'all got haunted houses. We got haunted bales of hay. But that's not the case. Everybody likes a haunted hayride.

All right. Yeah. I mean, you drive 15 minutes outside L.A. You can find horse ranches. I mean, that's where they shoot West. Yeah, you're right. That's true. Yeah.

But so, like, the, yeah, I mean, I'm not really a hayrod kind of guy, but I give my wife like two or three super corny activities a year to make her happy. So we do that kind of shit. Last year, we two years ago, I guess, because of COVID, we did a family porch, Christmas portrait and Christmas sweaters with our dog. So that was her one that year. And this year, the first year we together, I did. I told her I would do it. a couple's Halloween costume once in our life together. She chose to burn it the first year because she didn't believe me.

Oh, buddy. I do it. Yeah, that's a, Katie, my wife is very much a, like a Halloween fanat, loves Halloween. So I'm always having to be an accessory. Like, you know, she has various accessories to her costume. Maybe she's got a cane or a wand or something. And then also, I am an additional accessory. to her costume rather than really having my own costume i'm just a part of her whole

ensemble that she's got going on which is fine because i don't really give a shit about it producer mad is reminding me to say to everybody please like and subscribe hit them buttons all that we appreciate it and uh if you would like a weekly skews shirt you can go to weekly skews dot com and check those out and so well read comedy tour is uh i'm gonna get a t-shirt i gotta get a t-shirt yeah i'm gonna order one um I'm sorry, I keep you interrupt you, Trey. Go ahead. No, no, that's okay.

I'm trying to, uh, sorry. I'm looking through the comments and not trying to do two things at once, and I'm not good at that, so go ahead. So you're talking about being an accessory, and I just realized that's what I was. We did a couple of Halloween costume because, um, my wife loves the peanuts cartoons and, uh, I'm a bald fella, as everybody knows.

And, uh, she, Charlie Brown, he's crushed in the peanuts cartoons was the little red-headed girl, right? My wife happens to have red hair. So we did one year. as he went as Charlie Brown's little red-headed girl. And, of course, she looked amazing. She had, we got to wear a hot dress and do her hair up in pigtails and look beautiful.

And what I got was a dumpy yellow shirt and a sharpie with a squiggle drawn on my forehead. So, yeah. Yeah. Right. I did a video about that once a couple of Halloween's ago, about how that often goes for guys in general, I think. You know, it's not an isolated phenomenon for sure. She, earlier this year, she was like, I could be Mary Poppins and you could be one of the penguins, right? And I was like, okay, fine, whatever, that's fine.

I was like Maleficent's Raven a couple of years ago. So let's just do a bird. I'll just be a bird every year. But anyway, I was like, that's fine. And then she sent me a screenshot from Mary Poppins of the penguins doing a little penguin dance. And she's like, you know, you'll have to learn the dance. And in that screenshot was Mary Poppins and also Dick Van Dyck's character. And for the first time, it occurred to me.

I was like, wait, why can't I just be fucking Dick Van Dyck's character? like wouldn't that make more sense you know and she's like I'd rather you be the penguin but what if what if instead like you know how we just talked about Republicans are like socialists but just for anti-vax benefits what if we started a men's rights group where our only issue was Halloween costumes yeah yeah I had a buddy in college once and his would-be wife one day girlfriend at the time was like a sexy baker like a little you know like a baker lady but you know sexics that's how their costumes are and he was just a fucking donut just a big round donut with sprinkles on it uh which you know it was fun but yeah

yeah we want to be we want to be sluts too tray let us dress up like sexy sleds come on yeah um sorry i'm trying to put this up here betty veronica says hashtag tray spelled like my name lir baby trailer baby i don't i say trailer baby a lot i was a trailer baby i got me a couple of truer well i guess mine aren't trailer babies their trailer babies they're trailer baby uh and they're uh from a long line of trailer babies anyway yeah not sure what i said it prompted that but i appreciate it i went and got a haircut at a new barbershop once in east tennessee and i walked in i probably had my sleeves cut off or something like that and i said my name's tray and the guy goes tray is that short for trailer and i was like all right i appreciate a barber just go deaf jam off

top like that you know um i love barbershop humor yeah burr people were somebody i'm i'm i'm a little bit behind and reading through the comments that some people before i even said the thing were like why couldn't you just be dick van dyck's character like when i first said y'all are smarter than me because it didn't occur to me until i saw a picture of him um but yeah let's see over here judy kidder browning says i do halloween disguised as a normal person what's that what that what's that mean about your uh the rest the other 364 days of the year judy As you dress up, like her, her job is as, like, a demonic candy striper or something. And so Halloween is the only time she gets to dress.

What if, like, you know, Canadians do Thanksgiving, like, a random, like, day in September or whatever, October, whatever it is. What if we just, like, I celebrate, you know, Canadian Halloween. And there's, like, one day in random day of March, I just go to work in Joker makeup. Yeah. All right. we got an actual like Jennifer Hart's one says those are legacy trailer babies thank you that's what that's the time I was looking for I appreciate it carla barracks says question

how's the left turn things around to prevent a Trump second wave what do you think about that Mark is there going to be a Trump second wave uh I mean if Biden's approval is underwater by like eight points and like Democrats can't even pass very popular their bill I mean like it's so I was reading Dave Weigel other day as a Washington Post reporter was like if If Democrats can't pass, you know, child leave, paid parental leave, then Trump's going to run on it. He's just like he ran on improving Obamacare. It doesn't mean he's going to do it. But it's a very popular policy, and it's a layup to run on.

And it's like, they already talked to, they start off at 12 weeks, which already isn't enough. I think in most countries, you get 29. Like, in Mexico has paid parental leave. If they can afford it, we can afford it, right? and they were they already whittled it down to four manchwell only except four and someone else made this point that like it's illegal in most states to take puppies away from their parents before eight weeks um so it's just like i don't understand it's like it's so just cruelty for no reason even our left wing party can't do stuff to help people it's popular um that's very easy to pay for yeah carla also as when are we going to see trump indictments that's what we were alluding to earlier i'll just believe them when i see them you know Because like I said, Garland don't seem too inclined to do any of that shit that people want him to do for whatever fucking reason. Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon has refused to testify in front of Congress in defiance of a subpoena, claiming executive privilege for a time when he, three years after he worked for the federal government. And this former president can't even assert executive privilege that belongs to the office.

It doesn't belong to a person when they leave it. So it doesn't, like if you can't lock somebody up for flagrantly violating. the law without even a decent pretext. They're doing that. We're looking forward, not backward bullshit. And here's the thing about that, Merrick. All crimes happened in the past. You don't arrest anyone for future crimes.

Yeah, not until Minority Report, at least. Yeah. Sean Adams, the other question, does Biden run for a second term? I remember hearing when he was first, like, running for this one, some like speculation that he might not even intend to be a two-term president or whatever, but I haven't heard that shit in a while, I feel like, was there anything to that, do you think? Well, Kamala's polling are roughly around, or approval is roughly around that of malaria. So I hope to God he has a plan because the party does not.

And like literally this old guy with sort of left-wing ambitions, but also has the trust of other old white people in the electorate, is literally the only thing holding this whole coalition together. and he's 84 years old. So I hope so. I reluctantly hope so. Yeah. It just, it seems to me like,

I desperately want them to pass something too. I'm not making any kind of excuse. I'm just pointing out how shitty this is, I guess, but it's that like, yeah, they have to get some shit done and get some shit passed,

but it feels me like, if not for two people, they would be able to do that. But they're being like held hostage by two of, you know, their own, in air quotes, in cinema and mansion. But that doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, shit still just isn't happening. It's just very discouraging that it be that way. There are other concerted Democrats who would very much like a lot of this not to pass, like, for example, Mark Warner.

But they don't have to put their names on it because they've designated Kristen Settlement to be the villain. Right. And it was her turn, and she's stupidly volunteered for it. And now she's getting all this heat for positions they probably, a lot of them share. But if they got me, if it got to the floor, I would just put the bill on the floor and dare Kristen to vote against it. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's say here. Democrat, Darlene Peterson says Democrats are not left wing. The Democrat Party is definitely, that's definitely true. Yeah. there's definitely a difference in this country the democratic party is like moderate it like on the actual spectrum of right to left it's like centrist and then the republican party is just you know further and further to the extreme on the right but we have very few people that are actually left wing in positions of leadership it feels like which yeah sucks in the leadership yes the party in general nationally has moved a lot to the left not far enough in my opinion but like but like literally the house every house democrat for the most part except for like three prescription drug you know sleaze balls and 48 senators at least say they're willing to vote for a lot of these awesome left-wing priorities and it's just

even christian even nancy pelosi's on board for most of it Chuck schumer's on board for most of it it's just two fucking people and even and Biden's on board for it or at least says he is and like he could probably put more pressure on cinnamon and man well you can't put much much much pressure on mansion because mansion likes it but yeah yeah wild times man rosco motley as always says uh says garland is a pussy so there you go that's a get that biting political analysis here from old roscoe i appreciate it yeah yeah i mean like it's weird we spent like what four years of Merrick Garland martydom, and then he finally gets a dream job.

Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah, it's just, they all let you down in the end, one way or another, it feels like. Yeah. Through my eyes on YouTube says, it's about money, not what's right. And keeping with the story from earlier, yes, it's always the case in this country. Yeah. And just follow the money.

It's always the fucking money. Mansion's son runs a couple of cold. companies and his daughter is a pharma executive so there you go that's why we can't save the planet yeah sorry you can't go to the doctor joe mansion's daughter wants to work for evil company instead of a good one so yeah that's the way that goes yeah all right well listen mark enjoy your halloween everybody get all spooky out there put on your uh your bone outfits and your witch makeup whatever else you're going to do and and have a good time eat a shitload of candy get drunk and fuck however you choose to celebrate it i hope you

You enjoy the end of Spooktober, and that is also the end of this week's edition of weekly skews. One last time you go to well-read comedy.com for tickets to see me. If you're vaccinated, you can also go to weekly skews.com if you want one of them fancy, fancy shirts. And me and Mark and producer Matt will be back next week right here. Same skews time, same skews place. Thank you all very much. See you, love you. Bye.

Thank you.