Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews - 3/9/21 - COVID Relief Bill and more

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

On tonight's Skews we break down the COVID relief bill, the filibuster debate, and some top NOTCH dumbassery including everything from pizza to trees to the Lord above. Gonna be fun!Support the show

Hello there, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Today's Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? Uh, nothing, Trey. I was at Walgreens last night picking up a prescription, and I saw a line of people about 40 deep waiting to get vaccinated, and that was the best beautiful thing I'd seen in a long time. And it's like, it's actually happening.

This shit's ending finally. Right. I saw, yeah, I saw a headline that said, and admittedly, this is, you know, like confirmed cases, but I saw a headline that said, more people have been vaccinated for COVID in America than have gotten the virus the whole time, which I found to be a uplifting headline. Again, I know that there's so many people who got it and will never know because they were asymptomatic or whatever but I mean still that's good to read it's good to hear yeah that's that's fully vaccinated too so it's like we've passed like a 30 million fully vaccinated like we've had like 29 million

documented cases or whatever but yeah you're right like three three or four times many people that should have some herd immunity because uh they got it and didn't know they had it so yeah man it's nice to see some light at the end of the tunnel you know hopefully like yeah man i'm ready to uh get back to licking toilet seats you know what i'm saying right yeah well yeah and i know you've made fun of me before and rightfully so for being uh so it's i would never self-identify as superstitious but i know that i evidently am because like i'm i have like a certain level of anxiety inside of me right now talking about this because i'm like i don't want to jinx anything you know like us talking about being good that will somehow confirm or uh ensure that the universe makes it not good

you know well but yeah the uh the uh the uh the way The way people have been covering this, like, we're so habituated to being screwed by this now that people are, like, beaten dogs where they're just like, like, every time a new variant pops up, people freak out, like the pandemic's going to go another three years. But all the vaccines seems to work for the variants. The, I saw some article yesterday saying the scientists are like, like, COVID's got no more moves left. There's only so many spike proteins that can do because of the nature of the virus and space they run out of them. So it's not much more working involved. and knock on wood it's just like it's about done man we fucking kicked its ass hell yeah humanity we win this one yeah see i love that but you were like making me nervous in the middle of that you're talking about

how he's got no moves like i'm sitting there i'm like shh shh you know don't you know don't talk during a no hitter type of thing not that this tray we're up three touchdowns on covid we can go pre-d defense maybe yeah we're up 28 to three on covid right now yeah half time no one's ever done it No one's ever been coming back down 3-1 in a seven-game series. No virus. They've ever done it. All right. So let's get into the show with this. As always, producer Matt, doing his thing.

This is weekly skews tonight. We talk about the big COVID relief bill, what the Democrats got right, what they got wrong, and what the Republicans were doing in the interim. Spoiler alert, it's whimsically infuriating. We also talk about the appropriate role of the filibuster in the future of American politics and as much British royalty discussion as either of us can stomach. We'll see how that goes. All that and more on tonight's skews,

but first, as always, the Daily Dumbass, Matt, graphic, please. So tonight's D.D., let me put it to you this way. Better hot takes, better dumbasses, weekly skews. That's right. It's Papa John, who you may recall was canceled, fired by his own board. of directors a few years ago for using that most vile of racial slurs, the N-word, in a public forum. But not to worry, the impresario of mediocre pizza pies has spent the intervening months working

diligently on self-improvement. Matt, you play the clip. Take me back to a few years ago when you start to see these headlines coming out and smearing your good name. How did you feel at the time when you were? were seeing these headlines. State of shock. Unbelievable.

I couldn't understand it. I mean, again, you have a public board that paints its chairman, complicit, passive, or active, they paint the founder as a racist. They know he's not a racist. It's just unbelievable. And I used to lay in bed just going, how did they do this? And we've had three goals for the last 20 months to get rid of this. to get rid of this N-word in my vocabulary and dictionary and everything else because it's just not true.

All right. He's got it off last. I can get on with my life. He's been working for, guys, he's been working hard for 20 months to remove the N-word from his vocabulary. And it seems to me like he's feeling good about his progress, Mark. He's coming along with getting rid of the N-word from his vocabulary. I can't even figure out what point he's trying to make. unless he's coming out as having Tourette's

because I don't even know like if you if you can control it but you're still like I'm still staying the N-word but I'm down to three times a day right yeah yeah he's cut back he's cut back on the N-word which he feels you know should be applauded

like he's got a patch for it he's got an inward patch he's going to N-word Sayers anonymous meetings you know like uh he said also he's like we've been working for 20 months like I imagine he's got this like whole special team he's

put together to help him with this. You know what I mean? And they drill him every day on not saying the M word. They come in and they're like, all right, John, what do you call a black pilot? He's like, hmm. No, no. It's just a pilot, John. He's like, oh, right.

That's right. I'm sorry. You know, I'm still evolving, you know, I'm still getting there. See, in my head, it's like he wears a shocking collar around his house that has an AI in it, that hears him when he says it. I mean, first of all, it's weird for the founder of Papa John's to claim he as a racist, considering his pizza has been racist against Italians since the day. Italians would object to that framing.

I mean, first, I mean, I love Papa John's that lived on in college, but also I like pizza, Tistino's pizza rolls, so I'm not like a hardcore connoisseur, but I can't imagine. And I'm not, and I'm not just saying this because of the sort of the political context or whatever. I also lived off Papa John's in college, but I felt like, and I still, Mark, tell me if this is even a real word. It was a word in my culture. I got foundered on Papa Johns. Have you ever heard that?

You heard that word? Yeah, that's a thing where you get foundered on it, which basically means, like, you have too much of it, and then you don't, you like ruin it for yourself. Like, you end up. Oh, that happened to me with tequila. Yeah, right. Yeah, there you got foundered on tequila.

Producer Matt says it's a horse term. So there you go. That's interesting. No more detail than that. Yeah, but yeah, I eat so, it's when horses eat too much. Oh. But I ate so much Papa John's in college that, like, I genuinely, I don't, I can't do it anymore. I don't, I haven't liked it for a long time.

I just wore myself out on it. By the way, I looked up the circumstances of his firing because his firing was a two-step process. So he got fired, he stepped down as CEO in January of 2018 because he was in a beef with the NFL over the anthem protest. The NFL dropped as the Papa John's official pizza of the NFL contract. So that's why the board removed from the CEO. And then he got fired from the board because when he was complaining about the getting fired for the anthem process thing,

he said the exact words where I can't believe I got in trouble for this. Colonel Sanders called Black's bloop. That's what he said. He was defending himself. him like just even like in word aside which is not a thing you should ever say but like him like framing it as him versus Colonel Sanders is also hilarious to me like him being like look look what Colonel Sanders did like that I'm in trouble I'm not as racist as a fake Confederate General General. God us love. Oh, man. Okay, all right.

So let's give some honorable mentions for the Daily Dumbass tonight. Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass. Trees in the North Carolina region, any tree there who thought that in the presence of Ricky Congressman Madison Hawthorne, they could talk shit and not get hit. Matt, play the... Oh, slow-mo. What I love about this. Ooh, who whipped that tree's ass, boy, look at him. Yeah, so, but like that tree's so rotten when he punched one part, another part fell off.

What even is that supposed to be? Is it because, okay, Mark, is it a just like, liberals are wimps and we're not is it a like a tree hugger joke or something like you know we're tree huggers they're tree ass whippers or whatever is it literally just trying to be as badass as you can be or what is happening here i think it's one of those times where you're looking for meaning behind something when it just owns to punch a tree he just wanted to punch a tree yeah Yeah, he bought, Matt, producer Matt found the gloves he was wearing. There were tactical gloves with, like, hard knuckles.

So he bought special, uh, Matt says he's mad at his dad. I'm assuming this context to his dad's a tree. His dad and this tree both leave. I didn't need a pun, it didn't even work. Yeah, here you go. These are the gloves that he's wearing in that clip. Hikeman, tactical army military gloves, rubber, hard knuckle, outdoor, full finger touch green gloves for men fit for cycling.

motorcycle hunting, shooting, hiking, camping, airsoft paintball. It's a, it's like a, like a porno title, just checking, just hitting all the, all the, you know, search terms in there. But yes, it's like got hard plastic knuckle covering so you can really just whip a tree's ass if you want to. Also, I know I said Madison Hawthorne. It's Madison Caulthorn. That's my fault. But anyway. That's one of those tactical gear things that, like, I mean, obviously there are circumstances where you'd want a tactical, Catatical gloves with brass knuckles attached

in case you're going into some hardcore door-to-door city combat. You know, like you're like a Navy SEAL and, you know, Mosul or something. But they sell these to like those, but they sell these to like guys who have fantasies and act like these

are useful for riding a motorcycle. There's no reason you need brass knuckles to ride a fucking motorcycle. It's that, yeah, it's that mall ninja tactico thing that they have. There's a whole industry for that yeah i mean it even they've even got like shurikins and you know ninja weapons and stuff that they sell to these people that yes they'll never ever ever use in there yep matt producer matt

says gravy seals yes exactly yeah yeah um but it just makes them feel bad ass you know apparently but like okay and i mean i should know the answer to this question and i don't this like him whooping that tree's ass he posted that right like he said, hey, film me whooping this tree's ass, and then let's post it to social media. This man is a congressman. Like,

I mean, I know there's, you know, when you've got Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and that ilk in Congress, it's not particularly egregious to whip a tree's ass. I'm aware of that. But it's like, what? Like, there's just no standard. And also, you're somebody remembers he's also, a literal white supremacist

Nazi as well as a Trey ass whopper just I'm sure we put that out there Trey uh was not just talking about him being a right wing goon he literally said his dream vacation was going to like Hitler's vacation house and he like has done a how Hitler salute and shit and like done stuff like uh use the number 88

in his screen name which of course is internet slang for how Hitler because it's eighth letter of the alphabet shit so yeah he sucks uh but he's a congressman but he's also 25 and filming yourself punching a tree down is something like a school shooter would do in a lead-up to it, which kind of fits his personality. So speaking about the current standard for GOP congressman, let's move on to Dr. Paul Gosar, a Arizona Republican U.S. representative and a doctor who posted the following meme on his Twitter

just put yes there you go so it's a if you're only listening to us it's a cartoon image like a comic strip type colored in cartoon image of a

woman of the night a prostitute yes leaning over the driver's side of a car and it's got the her speech says $50 whatever you want baby

and the John in the car says can you tell everyone America first is inevitable. So this is like a U.S. congressman slash doctor using a prostitute meme to propagate a white supremacist message. So, you know, Madison Cawthorne whooping a tree's ass really doesn't seem all that bad in comparison, I guess. Yeah.

So a little bit of background on that. That's not just a random assortment of words that don't really mean anything. America First is inevitable as a slogan slash a pioneered by Nick Fuentes, a former Daily Dumbass nominee, who is leader of an internet. Right. Not the Groypers. They're separate group. I mean, there's somebody who's dumb little groups, not the proud boys,

but they're worse than the proud boys because they're out and out racist, or the proud boys at least try to hide a little bit. Anyway, so he pioneered that slogan. and he also hosted a event that was down the street from CPAC because CPAC wasn't hardcore enough, which Paul Goster spoke at. And Paul Goster, if you don't know who he is,

he's the guy whose own family cut a series of attack ads against him because he sucks so goddamn hard. He's really bad. He's a dentist, I think. Dentist's just, mine's pretty cool, but as a general rule, they have a high suicide rate for a reason. They're miserable,

bastards. And he's one of them. We didn't talk about this in the pre-show discussion. I don't know Mark was going to go in on dentist in here. I mean, I'm all for it. That's hilarious. I didn't know how soon is that rate? I'm just saying, that's a fact. You're like, listen, guys, generally speaking, dentist, no. If you know what you're just being distrustful of dentist, you know, we just, yeah, it's sort of, it's, it's a cultural thing. That's what it is. But no, you obviously. this guy's a fucking lunatic.

Yeah. I mean, if any dentists are listening to make any, our, Tray's right, our people are naturally suspicious of dentists because we don't have any teeth, so that's wrong on. Yeah, weird how that works. No way there's a relationship those two things. But, um, all right, next up on the honorable mentions list, we've got

anybody out there who doubted that Joe Biden wouldn't just choke his dog to death or whatever, I guess. I don't know. We've been, his dog major has been the subject of great scrutiny as we have covered on recent episodes of the skews. So to set this up, go ahead. So Joe Biden's dogs got banished

from the White House and shipped back to Delaware because they bit someone, supposedly a Secret Service agent, but no one said. Anyway, so Joe Biden's dogs bit somebody. They had to go home. And so this is the press conference today. About it. That's three things. That's okay.

The dogs, immigration. and then governor another dog's question okay just a quick clarification on the dolls stupid country that it was a secret service member who is bitten and can you also reassure the public that major Biden will not be euthanized as a result of this major Biden is a member of the family so I can assure you that I don't have any more details on the individual I would encourage you to ask the secret service but I'm not going to have any more can you reassure the American people but Joe Biden will not murder this dog also producer Matt for the

record we heard the audio we couldn't see the video there but you only needed the audio but yeah I love he's like okay I got a couple questions we're going to cover dogs immigration first up dogs then America's immigration policy

we could I mean look I love dogs I have a dog I love it but like this country's priorities like if if the Biden's dog got hit by a car the same day we nuked Iran guess what the first question would be about yep the dog no look we yeah what as we've said on the show before I'm more of a cat person I want no harm to come to dogs I like you know dogs are great

I'm a cat person okay see I'm saying this I'm walking on eggshells right now because of how fucking hardcore dog people are. I know y'all are going to crucify me just saying like, yeah, I'm more of a cat guy, right? But I am, okay? But having said that, yes, you're right. It's like the thing with Lady Gaga recently, right? Where her, when her dog walker, well, her dogs got kidnapped

and her dog Walker got shot, a human being got shot, and all of the headlines were about the dogs who, got kidnapped you know uh so yeah it's uh seems a little out of whack we should move on because i know i'm gonna fucking bury myself uh in this yeah trade's real sense the trade feels like he feels like papa john talking about colonel sanders when he talks about dogs uh it's about get canceled yeah uh okay so we don't so producer matt we ain't got any of the pepula pew stuff because we can just talk about but Peppaula Pew has now been canceled too, everybody.

Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, and now Peppaula Pew has been canceled. Although, I would argue that Peppaula Pew, you know, has some cancelable offenses, in my opinion. So, y'all don't know that we're talking about the, there's a new space jam movie coming out. Yeah. And they... Matt says got the clip if I'm going to play. Okay. All right.

If it's the second... Yeah. Anyway, you've got the Barter Romo clip play. it if you have. Both of a bartero, but yeah. The second one is the one I mean, if you have it, Matt. Okay. I know sound, but here we go.

Following a busy week in censorship, a number of Dr. Seuss books being discontinued from publication, Warner Brothers scrapped an appearance of Pepe Lepeu from the upcoming Space Jam 2 movie. Following a busy week in censorship, a number of Dr. Seuss books being discontinued from publication, Warner Brothers scrapped an appearance.

Uh, yeah. So, yeah. Anyway, so all that happened was like a year and a half ago, Warner Brother, if you guys know how long animation takes, um, Space Jam has been, been written probably five years ago and drawn three years ago. And so they decided not to put Peppily Pew in because people have been doing, Chris Rock had a bit about Peppleapue being a racist and rapist. I actually think it was, I think it was Dave Chappelle, but yes.

It was like 20 years ago, almost, literally, is the early 2000s. He had a whole bit about Pepele Lepew being rapy 20 years ago. So, yeah, not that controversial or out of left field. Also, it's a fourth-tier Loonie teams character. It's not like they got over the fourth-year-old. Dude, no one gives a fuck about Pepe Lepeu. Are you kidding me? No one's missing Pepe Lepew's inclusion from Space Jam or whatever.

And also, there was another Bart Romo clip, which we're not going to play. but she has this commentator on who clearly she expects to agree with her. And she's like, Peppa impeachment canceled, what do you think? And the guy's like, well, I mean, if you watch that clip you just played, he seems pretty rapy, doesn't he? Like, like, do you see how he's treating that cat? He's, that cat is clearly trying to get away from him by force and he won't let it happen.

So, you know, yeah, maybe, maybe this one's okay. the Republican commentator said on Fox News. Warner Brothers has LeBron James attached to a children's move that's going to make $1.5 billion. They do not want a single think piece about why Peppily the Pews in it. They just don't want it. So it's not even important.

Who cares? There was also people mad because they decided to redraw Lola Bunny to not, you know, have so much. Be so hot. Yeah. Yeah. Which her being, drawing Lola Bunny's super hot was weird in the 90s. Yes, of course it was.

Of course it was. Dude, they used to all kinds of that shit. Like, it was a Lion King movie, Nala, man. She makes some real bedroom eyes a few points in that. It's like they sexualized animals. And, yeah, you said, that was weird then, you know, so addressing that now seems totally fine. But yeah. Can we just be less weird without having to be a talk show time?

I think. Right. It was probably like, you know, somebody was super how on Coke when they drew Lola Bunny in 1993 and probably shouldn't have done it that way. Is that great? So let's do something a little different.

Okay. All right. So we're, I mean, I'm having a great time, but we need to move ahead a little bit here, producer Matt, I think.

Let's, let's do a bit of a dumb ass deep dive here. Y'all know him. You love him. The Q Shaman. Been in the news. Everybody knows what I'm talking about. The guy that's,

storm that yeah there he is there at the bottom of the screen there is with his buffalo horns and his raccoon hat and whatever else he had that that dude has been in the news recently because he was interviewed on 60 minutes plus the new uh paramount plus streaming platform news magazine show based on 60 minutes and which he had a bunch of wild shit to say i guess mad if you've got that first clip we pulled with the excerpt from him although mark you want to add anything to the setup to it No, this is all really funny because it's a three-part story, and it ends really funny. So just enjoy the clip to start with. All right.

Okay. Yeah. So if you guys don't know, sometimes the system we always use gets overloaded. We have too many viewers, and Matt's computer can't keep up. So it slows us down sometimes. Anyway, so what does describe me to what happened? So this guy, he does a 60 Minutes interview where he says basically that he doesn't understand exactly what it did wrong. He's still a patriot who loves his country.

And he was escorted in by the police. so none of it's his fault and then he goes on to say that he loves Donald Trump because he saw Donald Trump getting picked on by the media and made him really identify just like how he was picked on in school and picked on at home

and so it's this huge victim narrative that'll be really familiar to you if you paid any attention to the American right wing anytime Sam and so okay so you want to try play. Go ahead. I just told you what happened in the Q Shown bed. Do you have the do we have the mom clip Matt?

I think he's got the shaman one. Yeah. Which one you got Matt, you can play if you think it's ready to go. Yeah. Okay. Said 10 seconds.

So we got like rough for five left. I want to read an excerpt from the article about the judge refusing to release him that covers the day that he got arrested because it's so hilariously indicative of these people, the people that we've spent a lot of time talking about, like, how hopelessly oblivious these people are to what even happened to them, to what they did. And so here's an example of that. This is, so here's a paragraph from the BuzzFeed News article about. this subject, about the Q Shaman getting his bail request denied by the judge or whatever.

This is a little bit of background for you. The guy's name is Jacob Chanceley, right? So anyway, here we go. Chanceley had called the FBI the day after the Capitol assault and not only confessed to participating in the insurrection, but also said he had plans to come back to Washington to protest President Joe Biden's inauguration, according to his charging papers. He was arrested on January 9th after driving to an FBI field office in Phoenix to speak with investigators,

apparently unaware that charges had been filed against him under seal. The headdress he was photographed wearing inside the Capitol was in his car, along with face paint, a six-foot spear, and a bull. Horn. He's been in custody since then. So just like, like I said, the glorious obliviousness to what they had even done is the most consistent trait across all the different cases of these people. Like he literally called the FBI himself. He drove to the FBI with all his treason shit in his car and went in there like, yeah, what's the deal? We're going to, you know, we're going to fix things here, whatever. And then they, and he's been in jail ever since. Yeah. My understanding is that the federal bail systems, easier to navigate and more lenient than a lot of like state and counting bail systems.

And so he probably could have got me out of jail if he'd been a little more contripe. But play the mom clip if you got it, Matt. You can see what the problem here. See anything wrong with what your son did? What do you mean by wrong? What, like wrong? He went through open doors. He was escorted into the Senate.

Escorted. So I don't know what's wrong with that. This was an attack on the U.S. Capitol, and your son was a part of it, whether or not you say he was violent. Do you see the gravity of it? Of course. Of course. I feel the gravity of it because my son is in, you know, he's. he's where he is right now

so if he could take it back he would right exactly I know that he's sorry of course I see the gravity out because he's again it all it's like oh there were bad parts but he wasn't part of those parts

he walked through open doors did it look like the doors were just peacefully open to the public after defending him so much why why the word peacefully I mean the doors were open they were letting people in. They were overcome by a group of people, many of whom were armed.

Jacob wasn't a part of that. I hear you saying, well, you know, my son was there, but he wasn't a part of the bad part of it. Right. Well, I think that's really important to understand that. But wasn't all of that bad? Wasn't any attack on the Capitol, any interruption of our democratic process, isn't all of that bad?

No, I don't think, I don't think the process of being able to go exercise your right to free speech and to stand up for what you believe is right. But it is not your right to interrupt the democratic process. It is not your right to breach the capital, to go where you are not legally allowed to be. You know what I would say to that is I don't think it's right. It was one fraudulently. I don't believe it was one fairly at all. Absolutely not.

Both Jacob. That, okay, my thing with that, that last part is like, the way she says that seems to me like you can tell that she knows it's bullshit what she's saying. Like, it's like she's like prepping herself to say some bullshit. You know what I mean? She's saying it under her breath, like, I know this isn't popular to say, but fraudulently. But at the same time, I think that they believe all this stuff. Like, it's such a weird dichotomy to me.

I took that to me and she was whispering something she knew to be true, but she knew she should get backlash for it. But she couldn't say it. Yeah, you're right. No, no, you're right. No, I agree. And to be fair, by telling them being peaceful in an arm, like in the charging documents, the cops were saying that the flag he was carrying had a pointed tip, which might be cops being cops, but it's definitely

because did he pick that up in there? I think he just grabbed a random flag or did he bring that one in there? He brought it. He was carried it outside of the Capitol before we went in. But also the funny part about this is like all this came up because he filed a

you know, he was trying to get bail and his argument in his bail document one, he was asking to be releasing to his mom's custody, which is the problem without there because his mom doesn't think he didn't do anything wrong, right? Even she wouldn't show contrition. Two, he was saying that he needed to be lit loose because of COVID restrictions. He was having difficulty talking to his lawyer over teleconferencing.

Now, what's the problem with that when you just did fucking 60 minutes over teleconferencing? Over teleconferencing, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the judge said that it was so, it was such an unsound defense as to be insulting to the court because of that. Like, I just can't, I can't, you know, I can't properly meet with my. logger via teleconferencing and then doing 60 minutes from jail over teleconferencing at the same time. Do you want to know what really doesn't hit for judges is openly bullshitting to their face? Like, they deal with murderers all the time.

If you're an honest murderer, you can get bail. What you can't do is fucking tap dance around the truth when they can see it right in front of their face. You can't be like, I don't know how to work teleconferencing. when he just saw you on 60 minutes doing a teleconferencing interview. You can't fucking do that. So, you're fucked, and your lawyer is going to probably drop you as a client

because that was really bad. All right. Mark, let's move into the COVID relief package, if you will. And why don't you take us into this, please? All right. So let's do the bad stuff first. Because I'm me. They fucking chicken down the $15 minimum wage,

which bails on a, campaign progress promised Joe had although maybe they can go back to it later it won't get to 15 but maybe they can talk Republicans and they're coming up to like 10 or 11 or some shit they means tested the the $1,400 checks which I don't know I'm not one of those people who's mad

that's not going to be 2 grand understood the whole time it's going to be 1400 to come up to add the 600 that's also what Trump wanted by the way that McConnell wouldn't give him the mean means testing thing was so fucking stupid because it caused a big argument over nothing it didn't even save much money because the checks going to like 97% of people it wasn't enough money to add back in the bill to do anything else like they're like we'll save the money we'll use it for something else but it couldn't beat the reconciliation uh test to like do anything else with that money so it didn't save anything it's just going to piss off a bunch of people who were going to be accurate that they got less money from Biden than Trump gave him uh because Trump gave him $2,000 checks and then when they voted down the $15 minimum wage I'm sure you guys have seen this video uh Kristen cinema senator from it from Arizona uh, uh, uh, uh,

who dresses like she mugged three different fun aunts. I did this. Miss cinema, Miss cinema. Oh, that was sassy. That was real sad. What is that? She did kind of, if you're listening to the podcast, she had kind of a half a thought.

She walked up when she tapped Mitch McConnell on his shoulder to make sure he was watching, which is really fun. And then she walks up and does like half a little curtsy with a thumbs down and then turns of walks off their Lulu Lemon bag to go. party somewhere, I guess. By the way, Kristen Sinema was on the record being for $15 minimum wage. So I don't even know what the fuck she's doing.

What is the, what, right. I mean, literally what is that? Like, what is she trying to do with that, like this cutesy little, like, she's dunking on the idea of a minimum wage, minimum wage increase move. And this is

a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona. Why? And her seats, I mean, like, she's not, Arizona is a purple state now. And it's pretty, I mean, Biden won it. The other senator won it Democratic. They have it. I mean, it's a fairly blue state now.

And by the way, a $15 minimum wage polls way more popular than she is in Arizona. So I don't know what she's up to or what she's doing. So that's the bad part of it. The good part. Real quick, the means testing thing, though, before you move on to the good part, like, one of the things that's always driven me the most. crazy about any efforts to try to increase the minimum wage or, you know, help out poor people or whatever is this obsession that a lot of Americans have with like not giving money to the

wrong people, to the freeloaders or the people that abuse the system or whatever. It's like, well, you can't give people money because it'll go to these pieces of shit or lazy and they'll fucking do bullshit with it or whatever. And it's always killed me because, like, no one, I don't care how many people you poll. one feels that way about themselves. Do you know what I mean? It's like, no, well, I could, I could use that money. Yeah.

But them sorry, motherfuckers, they don't need it. And it's like, I don't understand that on any level because to me it's like, it's wild, because it's almost like you're saying, I'd rather no one get anything than for some asshole who doesn't deserve it to get free money from the government, including myself. I'd rather I myself not get anything than. some asshole to get some money he doesn't deserve. And I just don't, I don't understand that. Like, why do you care?

Why is this such a, you know, an obstacle for so many people that they get so hung up on? It's always been so weird to me. Gervin out of spite, man. We're talking about as the phenomenon where, like, people that drug test, people for unemployment, right? Which is more expensive just giving them unemployment. Like, drug testing itself is super expensive. And it causes, like, extra regulatory hurdles where it's like, and also, like, what is the fact somebody smoked weed 26 days ago

have to do with the fact they're unemployed today. Two things aren't connected. But this is like means testing is sort of the opposite way where it doesn't give it to the well off people. So it's only the pieces of shit getting this money kind of. Although they worked really hard

to not give it to like, you know, they made it really clear that undocumented immigrants can't get it. But of course they can't because they don't like. Yeah. That's about saying. Right. Yeah.

I know the undocumented immigrants was like a big part of the argument or whatever. But it's always, but it's just like, like human nature thing to make sure that only the right people get, you know, the benefits of stuff or whatever.

But it's hard to define what that even means. If you want to have a social program, the ones that survive are universal, right? Social Security, Medicaid, roads. Like rich people and poor people drive on the same fucking roads. I don't know if anyone's noticed that. Like, they all get access to the highway.

We all get access to public schools. If you want to send your kid to a private school, you can. but you don't, if you want to send your kid to a public school, it's available to you. Used to be that way with public colleges. It used to be like, it's like, this idea that we have to select who get specific benefits is not only cheap and more, it's, it when you make it more expensive to administer, it makes the program more expensive than just sending it to everybody.

Like, imagine how expensive would be to establish like a guarded toll booth at the freeway to make sure only people could get on and pay the right amount of taxes, right? It would be more expensive. Our government is already overly bureaucratic and inefficient anyway. So adding in all these extra steps to make sure that some arbitrary designation is met before any kind of benefits received or whatever is not ever going to make any program work better, in my opinion. No. The more forms. Yeah, yeah.

Just to tag that before we move on, the more forms you have to fill out, the less people can figure out how to access the. the program and the more pointless the program is. So that's basically the short of it. And they make it more complicated on purpose. So people can't figure it out. It's how unemployment works. So the good of the bill, all, first of all, $1.9 trillion is $1.9 trillion. And that was Biden's original ask, and he got pretty much every penny and a penny of it.

And a lot of that money is going to go to, like we're talking about the checks, but really expanding unemployment benefits is a much bigger part of the bill and more important to keeping people out of poverty and keep people in housing. There's stuff for, like, to help out, Native reservations have been hit really hard with COVID. There's stuff to bail out hospitals and schools and get people ready to go back to school to pay for vaccines to, to, like, help out child care agencies who are going under. There's a lot of shit in here that's going to make a lot of people's lives better. And here's a way to think about it. This is from the LA Times of these numbers.

The Republican bill from a couple years ago, most of the benefits, nearly half the benefits were the top 5% of incomes. which is people make it more than $308,000. The Democratic bill, by contrast, since about 70% of its benefits to those earning $91,000 or less, which is the bottom three-fifths of the nation's income distribution. Those in the lower fifth, people would make less than $25,000. It would increase their take-home income by 20%.

This bill is going to make a lot of people's lives a lot better. Yeah, man, when you make less than $25,000 a year, a take home income increase of 20% 5 grand is massive yeah and 5 grand is huge that's an insane amount of money for people in that tax bracket you know I know because that's most of my family

and how I grew up the average the average I mean like my first job out of college I think my salary was 24 grand a year if you gave me extra 5 grand that would have that would have fucking made my whole year right um so that's great

I think I saw one number. The average family of four is going to have an extra $7,400 in their pocket this year. That's shoes and food. And also keeps the economy out of a crater so we can all go back to our lives sooner. So if you have a small business or whatever, people are spending money in it. People are going out to eat. People are, you know, like the nightmare scenarios, people say people get, if somebody is a middle, solid middle class living and give them a $1,400 check, they're just going to buy a new TV. You know how that helps?

Everybody works at Best Buy. It's good. So. And. one thing, not to get too bogged down into like economic theory, but one thing that's happened in the last few years is people that realize that our understanding of like how inflation works in economics is kind of bullshit. There's no real like cohesive theory for what the alternative is. But for like past 40 years, we've been operating under the illusion that deficit spending

and national debt would lead to interest, would lead to inflation that would make everybody go broke and turn our currency into Zimbabweis. Well, while trying to break even, and stick to a budget. We have built a, I don't know, a $10 trillion budget national debt, and nothing's fucking happened bad. In fact, inflation's near zero. So it turns out, we can't just print money and hand it out, it seems like, which we always do for wars.

So it seems like the government's been like, let's try it this way for a while. Let's try making people's lives better without worrying about a fake national debt and just try it. Let's see what happens. So I'm in favor of that at least. Yeah, absolutely. And there's also a measure in it to give more money to people with children to address child poverty.

So obviously that's huge as well. The proposal, which can provide nearly all American families with monthly checks of up to $300 per child would cut child poverty in half, lifting nearly 10 million children up to or above the poverty line. So, you know, like we talked about a lot on the show about the Democrats getting important. power on what they needed to do and the idea that like past democratic policies that you know help people if they work the way they're supposed to and as long as you do that you'll be okay but mark uh not everybody's in favor of this didn't this package this bill didn't get a single republican vote um but to be fair to them they were kind of busy they were kind of busy this week

this is what the republican leadership was doing uh in the interim eggs and ham by Dr. Seuss. This fucking shit. I am Sam. Sam, I am. All right. He literally just reads green eggs and ham, so we don't have to sit here and watch it or listen to it. But it was a quote about a tweet that said, I like Dr. Seuss still.

And I don't want Dr. Seuss to get canceled. If you agree, then retweet this. and it's literally just Kevin McCarthy reading green eggs and ham as opposed to working on the stimulus package for all these

I have a compromise I have a compromise proposal for you Trey what if every single mom with two kids is about to be homeless promises to spend part of her 14-year-old check on a couple of Dr. Seuss books

how about that? Will that fucking make him happy? Because this is like I mean going out to go complain too much about, I mean, Bernie said that this is the,

the, one of the best bills is passed in his like 87 years in the Senate or whatever, and I take his word for it. And it seems it is going to help a lot of people, but going back to the Democratic brain thing and not get any Republican votes, man, they

negotiated down with, I forget, a Republican dip shit that Joe Manchin took his, like, suggested amendment. And then they, no, Republicans still voted for the fucking bill. So negotiating the Republican position and exchange got zero votes. So it didn't.

Right. Yeah. Yes. So, right. Like, we've been saying for forever, like, don't waste your time trying to work with them, you know? And like, why? You're not going to get anything out of it.

You compromise and then still don't get any support whatsoever. And that's just the way it's going to be. So who gives a shit what they think or what their positions are? Just move ahead without them and make people's lives. better and see what happens. And so the state of the bill is they could, the Senate passed their version after the House had passed there. So now this House has to repass the version of the Senate passed, yada, yada, yada.

It's pretty much locked in to be what it is. But the Republicans can slow it down by doing a bunch of like amendment bullshit. Like just they can just drag their feet and make it and make it take longer, which is what they're doing. So today Tim Ryan went on the floor, a Democratic congressman from Ohio. He went on the floor and had this rant, which is pretty fucking cool. Heaven forbid, we pass something that's going to help the damn workers in the United States

of America. Heaven forbid! We tilt the balance that has been going in the wrong direction for 50 years. We talk about pensions, you complain. We talk about the minimum wage increase, you complain. We talk about giving them the right to organize, you complain. But if we're passing a tax cut here, you'd be all getting in line to vote yes for it. Now stop talking about Dr. Seuss and start working with us on behalf of the American workers.

I yield back to violence. Yeah, so I look, I wasn't familiar with Tim Ryan before the Democratic debates early in the election process. And the main thing I remember about him, I remember him kind of shooting his foot at a couple of, shooting himself in the foot a couple of times. But the main thing I remember about him was he was the only one I felt who spent any real time sort of, standing up for you know working people or the working man or blue collar people or whatever so like you know he's been pounding this drum for a while i think i don't i'm not from ohio i don't know all the rest of his stances or whatever but i do you know he's he put some actual effort towards trying to um take care of working class americans and i appreciate that yeah he's sort

of like uh in that joe biden lane where it's like centrist but also super pro-union he's from Youngstown, his parents worked in, like, factories and shit, and he talks about that all the time. He also, uh, he doesn't appear to have any, like, huge skeletons. He has, like, a wife he actually lives with, uh, like most conscious. Well, that's good. But he also, uh, he writes self-help books in his spare time. He, uh, he's written to the real food revolution, healthy eating green groceries and the return

of the American family farm. And he wrote him one on mindfulness called a mindful nation, how, how a simple practice can help us reduce stress and prove performance and recapture the American spirit. So if he runs for president again, I'll think about voting for him just based on that. He also challenged Pelosi for a minority leader in 2016, correctly surmising that she's out of date and sucks. So, yeah, I like Tim Ryan, I think. Yeah, I think I do too.

All right. So we need to move on. Let's talk about the filibusters, you know, as much as we can. obviously with we're talking about if the Democrats are in power they got to do they just got to pass their shit

and get it through there but obviously the way it works in American politics the minority party has the power of the filibuster which I feel like could be

kind of understandable if it wasn't so perverted to the point of like they can they can just say they can just sort of declare I'm filibustering this and that's all it takes

as opposed to to having to actually show up and do the thing. It's like Michael Scott in that one episode of the office where he like declares bankruptcy or whatever. They can just declare filibustering, but that works though in our current system, which is just so patently bullshit.

It doesn't even have to be a senator. What they do, the office of the leader, the various party leaders will call around to their members and ask if they plan to filibuster and a single staffer, Maybe an intern who answers the phone.

You'd be like, yeah, we're going to filibuster. And that's the bill's dead. Because you assume if one member of a party is going to do it, then you probably got another, you can pull together another 39. So it's a really stupid fucking system that's very anti-democrats, my anti-smallity Democratic. It's extremely dumb. And it's really imbalanced, too, because Democrats are the ones that want to pass bills. Like Trump had unified control the government for two years and passed one law, essentially. That's all they wanted to do was cut taxes and they all.

And they tried to kill Obamacare, but didn't really have consensus for that. So they fucking quit on that. So it's really biased in favor of the people who don't want to do anything, which is, you know, one side of street here. And so this debate's having context of HB1, which is the New Roading Rights Act, the John Lewis Act, John Lewis Memorial Act, RIP. And the context is a bunch of Republican states are passing laws to make it very, very hard to vote as a backlash to Trump losing. Yeah, Georgia Republicans are being especially agreed. They might as well call up the Jim Crow Act, what we're trying to do. And so this interview with Joe Manchin happened today, and it was pretty interesting.

If you have Manchin ready, Matt, go ahead. The Senate was designed for the minority's input. Is there a nuance in your statement? Is there nuance in that answer? There are so many different ways you can look at that. You can look at it as what's the pain? You had Jimmy Stewart, well, Mr. Smith comes to Washington, this talking filibusters. You had that. You had other things to where people had to be present when they basically announced that they were going to filibuster.

And it had to be the pain of being there, not just saying it from your office and calling down saying, I'm against that and let the good times roll because you don't have to be present. So many things that we can do, but you have to give the minority the ability to object or involve themselves. But still 60 votes. You're not taking it down to a different bar. No, no, no. I have not and will not on that. No, 60 vote. But there's different ways to get to that 60 vote. And people have to make sure that they're willing to show them. And it'd be great, don't you think, if someone was down there telling you why they're objecting? If I was in the minority, I'm telling you, I'm objecting to, objecting to something that the majority wants. That's such a seemingly common sense stance on that subject. Wouldn't it be great if the person who objected to this had to stand there in front of you and explain. explain to you why they object to it. Like, it's insane that it doesn't automatically work that way, you know, that we have to

argue in favor of making it work that way. It's crazy that it would ever work any other way, you know, but what are you going to do? To, uh, it is. Like, if you should, if, if the idea is that the better legislation comes out of debate, then being able to just, like, say on the phone, I filibuster and offer no reason and be able to stop a bill, and it could be because your brother-in-law and didn't get a cut of whatever it is, then it's a system designed

for assholes to prosper, right? But you should at least have to stand. Like, Rand Paul did a pretty epic, a good filibuster about Obama's drone policy a couple years ago when he stood in the floor and he fucking made his case for like 10 hours or whatever. That was actually the one good thing Rand Paul ever did, to my knowledge, other than

establish his own ophthalmology board to certify himself. That's pretty fucking cool. And to translate what Joe Manchin's saying there, the 60 vote threshold, you can ignore that because you don't actually need 60 votes to pass the bill. You need 60 votes to bring it to the floor. You can still pass with 50. So in politician talk, what he's saying is open and changing the filibuster rules to make it much harder to filibuster and easier to pass legislation. So that's good. He's coming up with a framework where he can say he's still kept the filibuster, but also make it easier for Joe Biden to pass his agenda.

Yeah. That's good. So, Matt, yeah, questions and comments, whatever you all got out there. While Matt's looking for some of those, Mark, I wanted to ask because I said something about it up top. We haven't talked about it. How do you feel about the British rural family, Mark? Do you care at all? Oprah's big blockbuster interview. Where are you standing on all that?

Well, I've actually, the last, like, half decade or so, I'm kind of in favor of an American symbolic monarchy, so a president can actually do governing shit and somebody else can do the ribbon cuttings and handshaking, all the stuff that Trump liked doing like the state dinners and agreed in college football teams. Let Trump do that. That's all he wants to do. If he wants to do that, fuck it, who cares?

But as far as the specific British role of family, the ones who all their in-laws were literally married to higher-ups in the Adolf Hitler's regime, not a fan. Not a fan. They suck. And I cannot give a fuck about that. them. I don't care. Don't

understand why anyone else does cares, especially Americans, but Megan Markle killed here's order. 22 says, oh my God, do we have to talk about this? And I mean, I hear you, Kim, and you know what? On that note, we can just move on, but it's like I'm completely,

it's funny, I agree with you, Kim, and I agree with Mark. It's like, why do we in America give a fuck about this? But I also recognize that spending time talking about it on this show is, you know, uh kind of hypocritical to that stance so you know i get it but i feel like taking a moment just to say yeah fuck them who gives a shit is not the same thing as uh being fully enamored with it

or getting obsessed about it uh Nicole Johnson says I have a cat named Pepe Lepeu do I need to change his name now uh yeah no you're fine although he would like peppy Lapeu's a skunk right the cat the cat was the object of his affections so if you're doing some little kind of roll reversal thing there you know oh it's a it's a cutey name i guess i'm assuming the cat has the stripes on the back that's probably why i got the name yeah um but yeah like it's a good name for cat and your cat's probably fixed so it's not sexually assaulting anybody good job yeah you know who knows who's to say uh animals animals can be a little sexually assaulty do you think the people i kind of think the people should

you most offended about Pepe de l'bue were the French. French, of course, dude. Absolutely. But, like, you know, we ain't ever gave a shit what the French think about anything, which, by the way, I think it's fine. That's fine. They don't give a shit what we think either.

It's a symbiotic relationship we have in that way. So I think it's okay. But, yes. We get together every couple decades to get in a war together and either kick some German ass or lose the Vietnamese together. So whatever, which is.

every way it goes. Plarn dude says, normally I don't care what royalty's up to, but all that racist bullshit needs a word or three. My thing with that is like, and I don't mean this in any kind of dismissive way, but it's kind of like that Bill Burbett he had about like, what about Donald Sterling or whatever?

He's like, what did you think they thought? Like she literally, she's been the queen for so long that when she became the queen, she had like African colony. she's like a colonial do you know what I mean from from half a century plus ago like it and I know it's not it's not literally the queen that they're saying who said that shit but I'm just saying yeah and like Mark said they have Nazi ties and whatnot it's not at all surprising to me that they were concerned about I mean they didn't like the fact that Mega Markle was American you know what I mean like let alone a person of color like nothing is less surprising. me than hearing that they were up they were you know they were concerned about the degree of

ethnicity that this new uh progeny would have you know queen elizabeth was uh homies with uh winston churchill who literally did genocides so i don't know what we're talking about but the uh i mean as far the the british media is wild to me i don't really understand the contours or british racism but every time i see a clip and then talking about this shit it's like holy shit it's like I saw one last week where so a dude

was like saying that like to me Megan Markle isn't isn't black I don't think of her as black and you get this all these explanations

for why she's not black and every single reason was like racist as shit he was like comparing her to a hypothetical black woman who she doesn't look like because she's better looking then

and it was like what the fuck man right Stephanie Walsley said wow colonizers might be racist shocker and yeah right

I agree with you Stephanie that's how I feel about it too. It's not surprising. Again, that don't make it okay, and it's still wild to hear it just put out there like that, you know, for sure. But, yeah, it's not surprising. You ever been to a... Producer Matt has just reminded me, actually,

and I did want to say this. For anybody listening that mostly does the audio or whatever, or if you do both or whatnot, I want to make... To remind everybody that we're on weekly skews now, we've got the weekly skews Facebook page and all that. We're still broadcasting from my regular pages, and we're going to continue doing that. But the audio version of it, I've been putting it on the well-read podcast feed, and rather than continue to spam up the well-read podcast feed with skews episodes,

we're going to put all the audio, the podcast versions of the show, on the weekly skews, Spotify, and Apple podcast feeds in the future. So just go on there and look up weekly skews, and then it will be just that, and you want to deal with that and me and Corey and Drew doing our bullshit all at once. So we are moving that over there. So yes, Matt, thank you for reminding me of that because, yes, that's a change we're making. So check that out. Anyway, sorry, were you about to say something, Mark?

I was going to ask you, have ever been to Hawaii? Yeah, I have. We did some shows in Hawaii, a couple of them. Beautiful, loved it. But what were you going to say about it? The whole colonial part of it? Yeah, it was like we're supposed to. say my mom was to take a trip there for celebrate her retirement. Congratulations, mom. In June,

vaccine, you know, status of COVID dependent. But wife and I went a couple years ago for the first time. And I wasn't really that aware of Hawaiian history. But if you want to see the land speed record for white people. Holy shit. Yeah, man. But they were, the islands were discovered by white people until 1790 something, I think. And between then and 1940, which is, only 150 years, which we know between that Pearl Harbor, like wiped up 95% of Hawaiians, imported a bunch of slaves. It changed hands three or four times, a bunch of wars. It's like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, very corporate fruit company bullshit going on, like not just governmental stuff. No, they got fucked over. And it's like still very much, and rightfully so,

it's still very much a thing. I mean, I've only been to Hawaii once for a few days, but like, I ran into multiple people, multiple Hawaiians, and it came up like every time. The sort of like colonial history there. And again, rightfully so, I don't blame them. But yeah, it's shady and unfortunate and very typical of all of us British Commonwealth adjacent entities over the years. Because that's the thing. We learned it from you, Mom.

You know what I mean? Like, we're still like, we're one of Britain, like America gets all. this flag for being the new empire and being empirical and racist and all that stuff. But hey, like, we're just Britain's baby at the end of the day. Like, Britain really kicked it all off, in my opinion. Yeah, they always say they're like, we don't learn their lessons. We're just behind them a learning

curve. It's like, you know, like stuff like, no land wars in Asia, like shit like that. Yeah. I've been doing it. Right. All right. Well, thank you all very much for joining us. We'll be back next week. uh march 16th yeah next tuesday march 16th and we'll see what's happened between now and then this is weekly skews see y'all later later later