Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 7/20/21 – Space Farce

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

Tonight we discuss billionaires achieving the impossible...making rocket ships not cool. We also get into the designed impotence of the IRS, the divine idiocy of the January 6 types, and plenty of other fun dumbasses too. Also we will be joined by bluegrass artist/man of the damn people Joe Troop. Holler at it!Support the show

Hey everybody. Welcome back today, July 20th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? Hey, what's up, Trey? I saw the video you made about the Texas KKK. The KKK is good now, law. I don't really understand it just a bit. Can you sum it up for me? It seems to be like, so basically, the Texas state legislature passed a bill that would cut out a whole bunch of things that are required curriculum in public school history classes. And it was a bunch of stuff. And it was including things like Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech, anything about Susan B, Anthony, Caesar Chavez, Native American history, big chunks of that. And also, it cut out a requirement that

students have to learn about the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to slavery, eugenics, the Ku Klux Klan, and that these things are, quote, morally wrong. So, like, it wasn't making it illegal to say that the clan is bad. It was removing a requirement to say that the clan is bad or to teach it in that way, which is, in my opinion, still kind of shitty, you know. Yeah. I mean, you and I talk a lot about this stuff. I think because we're annoyed by how many lies we were taught in school. But I saw, like, I take the other day that was like, it was basically like, have these people ever been to school?

Because kids, like, you spend like 45 minutes a day on history and most of that's not listening. It's like all this stuff's so fraught. And kids are going to do most of their learning after they get out of school anyway. So it's like, plus you can control teachers. Teachers are saying either great shit or insane shit in classrooms all the time anyway. Like nobody, whatever. Yeah, it's definitely related to the stuff we talked.

about with critical race theory. You know what I mean? It's like a response to that made-up problem that they have, you know? It's like you can't be having white kids thinking that this country is inherently racist or whatever. So you just have to not tell them about any of the racist shit that happened in this country's history because that might upset them, you know. And it's like, you hear that. It's like, well, you know, what else is upsetting? Learning about the Holocaust, you want to not teach about the, you know what? Don't answer that. I mean, it's like, a lot of them would probably prefer not to cover that, too. So what are you going to do?

It's wild because, like, the way they, the way they, like, stuff like Martin Luther King Jr.'s taught in school anyway is, like, the people come out of that thinking, oh, he would be a Republican now. Like, anyway. So, like, it's not like they're accurately teaching. They don't teach him the poor people's campaign or that he was a socialist or that, you know, any of that shit. So, like, it's just like they turned him into like a cuddly grandfather figure. A nice guy who wanted everyone to be nice. And that's like, it's just, it's also another example of the, that. whole party of Lincoln thing because I saw going around Twitter today when this was all

trending. I saw some conservative sharing this meme or whatever. It's like just a reminder, the clan was founded by Democrats, right? It's like, yeah, that's true. Everything changed completely in the interim, but it's also funny that it's like we're talking about Republicans making it so you don't have to teach that the clan was bad. And in defense of that, They're like, listen, the Klan was a Democrat thing anyway. It's like inherently acknowledging that it was bad and blaming it on us in response to them saying, well, we don't even have to acknowledge it as bad. Anyway, let's get into the show with us as always producer Matt. This is weekly skews tonight.

We discussed the billionaires who have achieved the impossible, making rocket ships seem uncool. Also, the designed impotence of the IRS, the divine. Vine ignorance of the January 6 types and a bunch of other fun stuff, too, including a conversation with friend of the show and head-to-to-to-legit bluegrass man of the people, Joe Troop. All that and more on tonight's skews, but first, as always, we begin with the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's DD, Matt Gates, for just blindly trusting any old motherfucker wearing American flag clothes. play the clip please oh my god i'm so excited i'm so excited i mean just oh everyone thinks you're crazy i don't think you're crazy people think you're a pedophile i don't think you're a pedophile at all i don't think he's a pedophile at all the tons against him are totally false they're totally

false oh my god thank you all right uh disclaimer just so everybody knows if you're not aware that it was a prank uh gates and taylor green were not in on it but that guy's a comedian and his name's Walter Masterson and he did that on purpose and I for one tip my silly flag hat to him. I think he executed it perfectly but yes very funny. Also hard to tell right. It's hard to tell

at first glance. That is a supporter of Matt Gates would be dumb enough to do that. That's the trick there is like how do the fuck do you tell these people are kidding but like that was in Santa Monica if you're wondering why a Florida congressman and a Georgia congresswoman are in Santa Monica they were out here

for a free Brittany rally. They're trying to glom onto that to get some people busy. And there are like 20 gate supporters there with a couple hundred free Britney supporters. And he got drowned out there. People were chanting, oh,

pedo file, pedo file. So just all around a good trip for that, dude. He's killing it. Yeah, they also got, yeah,

that happened out here, me and Mark stomping grounds, the Los Angeles area. And they got canceled from like three different venues before that ultimately happened. They kept moving the event. and getting disinvited before they finally got set up. And, yeah, they got canceled.

They got canceled. I know. As soon as I said it got, it literally did get canceled at these other venues. But as soon as I said that in my head, I was like, oh, God damn it. I just said they got canceled.

That's literally what happened. But it's just such a charged word now. I mean, can you, um, look, like I, the whole Bertie Spears thing's a fiasco.

and obviously they should let her, if my broke ass gets to blow my money, her rich ass should be able to blow as much money as she wants to blow, right? It's not like, sure. It's a, it's, it's truly unjust and stupid. I don't know what Matt Gates has to do with it. But how tone-diff you have to be to attach,

as a guy who's accused of sex trafficking underage girls? Right. Attach yourself to a woman became famous for being hot when she was 16, and her music's popular with 16, 17-year-old girls. It is also being like effective. held captive, you know, financially and legally and whatnot. Like, yeah, right. Like, you said, I don't know what he has to do with it. It goes beyond just like, oh, he's just trying to attach himself to this for clout or whatever the hell. It's also,

like you said, exceedingly toned death because of all the things surrounding Matt Gates and, you know, the shit he apparently gets up to. But, you know, like he's trying to introduce a bill to ban conservatorships or to limit them or whatever, which is like extremely short-sighted on his part. I'm feeling his future career plan, if he gets out of prison, it's going to be going to glom onto some wealthy widow and try to put her in a conservatorship. So here we go. Yeah. All right.

Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass tonight, anybody who thought Tom Brady would move to the state of Florida and not start talking shit, that isn't how it works, everybody. If you're not a football fan, Brady's been roasting everybody lately, everybody from Aaron Rogers to unnamed quarterbacks, and the list goes on, and he kept it up during the Super Bowl champion Buccaneers' visit to Joe Biden's White House. May I play the clip, please. Okay.

On a roll, not a lot of people, you know, think that we could have won. And in fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won. I understand that, Mr. President. I understand that. Yeah. And personally, you know, it's nice for me to be back here. We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was. I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing.

And they started calling me Sleepy Tom. All right. So for people that, you know, don't know much about Tom Brady somehow if he's not a football person, the reason this is noteworthy at all is because Tom Brady, Mark, he's supposed to be Trump's buddy. They're friends. Yeah. Five. You get into it.

Yeah, he would play a lot of Trump's celebrity golf tournaments. And he, uh, someone gave him a maga hat and he had his locker a couple years ago during an interview. Cause a big shitstorm or whatever. But like, to point his wife. had a Giselle Bunchkin, who's the, not only makes all the money in that family, which is amazing, she has like 10 times much money as Tom Brady, but also was the smart one, and it's politically active. And she put out a statement being like,

hey, my husband doesn't think about politics. He's just a regular dumb ass. Don't take anything he says seriously. But the reaction from the conservative online sphere was hilarious this. Bright Barretted headlines five times Tom Brady called Trump a friend before stabbing him as supporters in the back. the uh the most the most the most deranged take was a conservative blogger was like it tweeted this uh whatever you think of trump watching tom brady stab him in the back is disgusting the mark of a true tragic

heroes even his friends betray him this the man has sacrificed more for this country than tom brady or joe biden for that matter ever will uh yeah it trump's christ figure these people it's it's yeah absolutely amazing yeah man at two bray day it just yeah can i believe it um All right. Next time we'll mention the Texas Democrats for not figuring out they could prevent a quorum by getting COVID, at least sooner than they did. Yeah, it seems like I don't know. I don't know the Miller D's man, maybe on their bus. They had a situation there, a super spreader or something because the six member of the Texas Democratic delegation has tested positive for COVID. So, you know, that's no fun. yeah i mean uh one way to get the uh the special session of uh the legislature shut down is to give everyone covid i'll do it so it's pretty it's kind of like you know how james hardin kept uh going to the club and trying to catch covid on purpose to get traded out of houston yeah this is sort of like a very similar sort of strategy and i did it i'm into it of course they're getting roasted by right wing media

too for like all these hypocrites more masks on their plane they just direct motor light now they all got but they're all vaccinated too they did they did a stupidly exposed to people to the White House. And a couple of people, people with the White House have come down with it now, too. I don't know if that's related to them or whether that's a coincidence. But they met with Kamala, well, maskless in the White House. All right. Well, our next honorable mention for Daily Dumbass, showerheads for getting wrecked by the Trump administration. That's right. It might play the clip if you have it here. President Trump's greatest victories, of course, was lifting restrictions on showerhead flow on our bathroom time.

And it got better because of it. Biggest victories. His biggest victory, Trey. Is that sincere? Like, that, that dude literally laughed while saying it, didn't he? Like, you remember all the press conferences where Trump had rail about low-floor toilets and stuff? Yeah, right. But I, I'm saying, like, as far as Fox News and that anchor and delivering it or whatever, I don't know.

You don't know, he looked like he was laughing when he got into it. No, I don't think it's, that guy does love Trump. I don't know if he completely thinks it's one of his, actually think he's one of his biggest victories, but the fact they're still talking about it four years later. But, like, Trump would be like, a lot of people have trouble flushing just one go, not me, not me.

Like, it's like, like, other people have big, big honking turds. Not me. My tudes are pristine and appropriately size or never clogging up a toilet with low flow. But it was just, uh, the dude, I honestly, I miss him sometimes. I get him back in there to talk about, make him secretary of toilets,

do a press conference once a day. Yeah, dude, him is secretary of toilets or whatever. I could definitely go for that. I mean, yeah, when he doesn't have his, you know, all the power in the world, it's definitely, he's, you know, certainly easy to laugh at. But, but, yeah, Mark, listen, I definitely want to talk about the space farce and the IRS and whatnot. So I'm thinking that we get into Captain Moroni. What do you think about that? Yeah, let's do that.

So we just have to make a January 6th dumbass the week segment because we have one every week. it never ends never ends with these people yeah so we found a good one this week this guy from Arizona who I guess is Mormon from the way he was of Thornton mythology but he came to the Capitol

dressed as a Roman centurion carrying a flag with a Mormon bowers on it and telling you everyone he was Captain Moroni he was a hero from the book of Mormon and he had a homemade wooden sword that he managed to get into the Capitol he was making videos for his mom he unlocked his phone for the FBI

he absolutely did cooperate. All the videos he had in his phone were to his mom, and he was bragging about what good exercise it was walking up the stairs. And there was a USA chant. He thought it was hilarious. He was just chanting Taco Bell. No reason. Just really hit the photo.

And I just really want you to see this guy's picture for going to further. So the black and white one up there. Yes, a Roman centurion, this guy. Look at it. I love this guy, man. There's some Internet. clues have found out that that appears to be a widely available plus-sized Roman soldier costume from Amazon, uh, it seems like, which, you know, it's not like I thought he had, uh, made

his own Roman centurion cosplay, but he later lamented to his mom that he really fucked up by not getting the hat, the like feather hat, whatever those are called. He had to help by that picture. I guess that was the night before. He left it for the day of the rally. Okay. So he remembered it the next day. So cops are shooting rubber bullets at them. So in one of the videos, he says, Mom, I should have brought that Centurian helmet after all. All right, got to go, Mom.

Yo. Isn't this another example of like he had taught his official stance when he got caught and arrested and whatever was I didn't know that. I'm sorry, I didn't know I couldn't do that, that classic Chappelle. But I didn't know that any of this was going to be all, you know, insurrectione or whatever. I never would have done it. But then there's all these. videos that he made for his mom, which is what makes it doubly hilarious, where he's like

telling his mom, it's great. We're all taking over. Hey, mom. We're like, yeah, they're shooting at us, but we're soldiering on. And like, it just. Yeah. Yeah. He definitely, he's a lot of their stories go like this. Like, I thought it was okay for me to be in there. When I saw people smashing stuff up, it's like, oh, man, we're getting trouble. So I should leave. And then the left. That's what they all say is like, but. Right. And then a lot of them have videos on their phone where they're like, I know it's not okay for us to be in here, but we're smashing shit up and it's fucking great. It's me, Captain Moroni, inside the Capitol, smashing shit up when I know it shouldn't

be. And they post that to their Facebook page or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't turn, leave your phone at home and do in crimes, guys. It's pretty much like I can't emphasize that enough.

Well, I think it's a lot. We'll be talking about, well, we're going to skip over the other crime stuff for today. but like the uh just don't don't guys we need we didn't do america needs to add an opposite class to like high school if we're going to be getting all these kind of shenanigans you got we got to like uh you know this guy also is from arizona and he is the second arizona to be caught rate or you know storming the capital in costume specifically the other one being the qanan shaman so both the shaman and the roman centurion

guy, the great state of Arizona, representing. Arizona is low-key become a craziest state. Absolutely. Dude, it's the sun, right? The sun has to be a huge part of it, I feel like, because, yeah, Arizona's creeping up on Florida, in my opinion. And it's like, you know, you just can't handle that, that let you can't get baked for that long by the sun, I think, without getting a little wild and crazy, apparently.

Yeah, it's like somebody putting peyote in the water. some shit. All right. So our first big story tonight. Actually, let's put it this way. The biggest, we've done our daily dumbass and our honorable mentions, but the biggest dumbass of all today is all of us, apparently. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you surely know that Jeff Bezos finally had

his date with the stars on Blue Horizon, came back, and had this to say afterwards, very graciously, he had this to say, Matt, play the clip. please. And I also, I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this. So seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. You're welcome, Jeff.

Yeah, I know. Dude, this, this honestly really bothered me. I don't know if it bothered me enough to stop buying shit for me. Amazon because you know I'm a fucking suburban white guy. My wife has fucking Amazon boxes showing up every goddamn day. You know what I mean? But also him thanking the employees when you, if anybody knows anything about the long running, you know, war Amazon employees are fighting for just basic decency, you know, being treated remotely decent as employees. So it's just like it's pretty audacious thing for him to do, which I know it's weird. Jeff. Bezos being audacious, but, uh, but yeah, I found it upsetting. Yeah, I mean, odds are, only went to space because he heard Martians are trying to unionize, uh, but like, didn't even like, like, even like these, these guys were such a bootlicking. We're going to get more to this a little bit, but there was such a bunch of bootlickers.

In fact, everyone in the room laughed at that instead of a fucking guy or to pitchfork, was insane to me. And the, he didn't even really go to space. He went to like, um, I guess the where the atmosphere starts phasing out. I forget the line's called it's like a hundred kilometers up. And he went just past that, right? For like, so, for comparison's sake, a, what is a commercial airline flies like three and a half kilometers or whatever. So it's pretty far up, pretty far up. billionaire went about 100 kilometers up. Sixty four years ago, the Soviet Union launched a dog to 212 kilometers who managed to orbit the earth four times. So the billionaire did something objectively about 30% as cool as a broke-ass communist dog in the 1950s. So I,

The dog did die. Broke-ass communist dog. L-A-L-A-K-A-A. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. A hero. Soviets to kill that dog with an accident, so it doesn't hit for me. But Bezos spent like 10 minutes up there, didn't do an orbit or anything.

It's like barely got a pie enough to float around for like a second or two and then came back down and treated him like a world-conquering hero. The motherfucker wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat in that thing. And, and they, they, they, they're wearing spacesuits, but they're costumes because they didn't need spacesuits. Right. They could have worn business casual wear, and it did the exact same goddamn thing. The whole thing is just a ridiculous, like, joke. And like you said, people treat them like a world conquering hero. There were some real hot takes, uh, in the wake of this, including Matt, if you have that next video there, if you could play it.

Okay. I will, people will criticize what I'm about to say. The young man sitting there excited as he was. That's one less black kid on a corner somewhere, getting ready to use a weapon. Holy shit. This amount of stuff baked into that. Thank you, Jeff Bezos, civil rights icon, save you in the black community.

um it god damn it especially because like remember like we went over bezos paid not only pays zero dollars in taxes but he gives a child tax credit right so like he's been able to do this because we're subsidizing him we're we're covering his share of the tax bill right we're covering his share of the tax letter besides that like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have this dumb rivalry was one of the reasons like like Bezos wanted to do this prance had been in his space but at least he'd beat musk although like the thing is SpaceX don't I'm not a fan of musk by any means we talked about before, but like space actually actually does go to space. And then it's not great. They have like thousands of satellites living in the night sky. They're like blocking out like people from the telescopes being to look at the moon and shit. But like at least it does go to space. Blue origin doesn't do shit. It's nothing.

It's just a purely masturbatory. I mean, everyone talking about how it looked like a dick. It does look like a dick and balls. It's ridiculous. But like the fact that we all paid for this. They don't know what to pay for this indirectly by covering his taxes and by replay. giving him tax refunds, but his lobbyist tried to get, because he's got a contract he was jealous of,

the Senate tried to pass a bailout bill just to give him $10 billion, a tip to be nice, because Musk got $10 billion. So his own space program costs $5.5. So this would have more one of the doubled what he's invested in his own goddamn space program. The Senate, I mean, the House thankfully killed it after the Senate put it in. But Jesus Christ, like these guys are so shameless, man. I just don't understand it. Like, yeah.

Yeah, no, I, like, I'm, I don't, I'm not going to call myself a space nerd because I'm very space dumb. I can't accurately talk about any of it, but I'm just a big proponent of a higher budget for NASA and spending more on that. Like, I think that getting away from space fairing was a mistake, generally speaking. Like, it's always annoyed me when conservatives would talk when NASA asked for a budget increase because they want to go to Mars. And then conservatives are like, yeah, they want to spend X billion dollars to go to Mars when fucking we've got problems here or whatever has always annoyed me for multiple reasons. And yet I'm annoyed by billionaires going to Mars instead of paying their fucking taxes. But there's obviously a massive fundamental difference between the government doing it and fucking billionaires who are on corporate welfare doing it. So it isn't the same thing.

So like I just want everybody to know I'm all four advances. in space travel and space fairing is the human race or whatnot. But like... The gains are socialized. Right. When they're paid for by tax dollars, the gains are socialized. Like, like, we have the internet. Yes, exactly.

We have... Right. When you turn on your phones to see where you're Uber is, that's the government satellite. That's why it's different. They're, like, we, society saw the benefit and we continue to see the benefit of the space race or a new space race. If it's the government, if it's now. so we're talking about, but all the advances that these motherfuckers make, they're not going to

share it. They're not going to share any of them. Like, generally speaking, other than the other rich assholes who are competing directly against them, and it's all going to be proprietary and patent, you know, patented and whatnot. Like, it's not, it's not the same thing. And it's also

just, it's just upsetting giving the, given the general state of things with income inequality and whatnot. I saw Concertus be like, uh, uh, Socialism didn't send Jeff Bezos to space. Capitalism sent into space. Like,

motherfucker the government went to the moon 70 years ago. This guy, he barely went as high as that Felix Bumgartner guy who jumped out of the balloon. Remember the guy to the balloon to space? Yeah, yeah, the Red Bull guy, yeah. That was, he did that with a Red Bull budget. That was way cool here.

Yeah, yeah. This is just, it's such a jerk off. And just to get to this real quick, because I talk about actual government stuff. One of the reasons rich people are able to pay away no tax, pay with no taxes. is because as much of the people argue about how defund the police is a bad,

bad slogan, a bad strategy. For years, the government has defunded the Ritzkaa police. We're talking about the IRS, right? And so one of the things Biden had proposed the infrastructure bill was to increase IRS funding because the estimates are if, like, you increase their funding $20 billion, they could bring you back $400,000, it's gone missing because people aren't paying their taxes, right? So keep that in mind and watch this clip from the Sunday shows about this big. fall apart, right?

Talk about some of the sticking points that I know that you're working through. One of the proposals is to improve IRS enforcement of existing laws, which is estimated to increase revenue by up to $100 billion without raising taxes. A number of your Republican colleagues, though, they are coming out against this approach. Senator Ted Cruz called it a foolish and dangerous idea. So is IRS enforcement still part of your proposal or not? Well, one reason it's not part of the proposal is that we did have pushback. Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a proposal into the reconciliation package,

which was not just similar to the one we had, but with a lot more IRS enforcement. So that created. Yeah, so these lying sexes shit are they're doing the typical Republican dance. do in the Senate where they pretend to be negotiating and then they pull out the last minute, right? So there's two bills being negotiated. The cluster fuck here, the mistake they make is that the reconciliation bill has to have everything paid for us to be budget neutral, right? So kicking this out of the bipartisan bill and put it in the recreation reconciliation bill could give burning like $400 billion more to work with to add back into infrastructure spending. So it might

work against them, but at least they'll be able to say they'll tell their donors they tried, right? but here's the fucked up thing like this is like raise forget raising taxes on rich people just enforcing existing laws is like ridiculously possible like literally no one thinks that people should be able to break the law and not pay taxes when average working class people cannot like you and I can't do this right we can't we we can't navigate the tax code to like save hundreds of thousands of dollar years and taxes or like whatever like trump's a CFO Alan Weisselberg was doing like we this shit's insane everyone knows it's on unfair. It's a layup. It's a fucking political layup for everybody in politics. And I hope

they take it because it's just, it's very frustrating. Yeah, for sure. But it's one of those that we've talked, we've talked so much on the show about the apparent layups that the Democratic party just either bricks or typically refuses to take. They go Ben Simmons and they pass the ball off instead of taking the wide open dunk so many times. Things that just seem like obvious layups, like fucking weed, you know, for example, or things like this, you know, and they just don't do it, you know, but with this, I'd say, like, I could see how it, you know, they are also in the pocket of these rich motherfuckers at the end of the day. And so that's why they just won't do it, which is very disheartening, but yeah. That's part of it. But yeah, but they

think about, pair that up with this issue at the same time. All right. So, um, into it and, uh, these TurboTax and all these like the big companies that get paid to file taxes. They lobby to keep taxes insanely complicated. In a functional country is mostly what happens. The government sends you a bill for what you owe and you send what you owe. You don't have to do your own taxes, right? But they want to charge to get people to file them. So as a compromise of the government for years, they provided a free e-file option for people

who just want to do simple, straightforward tax shit. Turbo tax is pulling out of that. They're just going to stop providing the free tax filing. So while rich people's taxes are getting cheaper, you're going to definitely have to pay to do yours going forward. And that seems like a pretty layup for a pretty easy layup for a campaign commercial than me. But, you know, I'm the big city political expert. No, I'm with you. We'll see what they actually do.

All right, let's get to our guest tonight. He is a multi-instrumentalist singer and songwriter, hailing originally from Winston, Salem, North Carolina. He is the founder of Grammy-nominated string band Che Appalachia. His music is deeply embedded with and inspired by his activism after spending the last year learning direct action from stalwart progressive organizers. This radical folk singer is now channeling that energy into his first proper solo album, Borrowed Time, which will be released next month. Joe Troop, everybody. Hey, Joe, good to see you again. Nice to be back on the show, Trey and Mark. Hey, I love to see you.

So, you know, for a long time, like, The roots of, you know, folk singers, it's very working man oriented, right? Like, Woody Guthrie, coal miners, that type of thing. And not that country and folk are the same thing. But I feel like to a lot of Americans generally now, it's a different kind of perception they have when they think of, like, working class music, basically. Do you know what I mean? Like, and it's not the best one. It's like Nashville country type stuff that people think of.

but you're out there on the ground every day taking roots music back to its roots right you're back there you're out there keeping it real trying to keep it in a real contemporary way I suppose because you know you can't I for as much as I'd like to think of myself as a you know like a Woody Guthrie of the now I mean it's now it's not the 1940s yeah so yeah do you um sorry i was going to say if you guys are familiar with what he got through that much

he was a guy saying this land is your land this is my land he was an avowed socialist and he had this machine kills fascist painted on his guitar so he was a fucking all-around rocking dude yeah he was a badass pretty much yeah uh you know it's he just he

he rooted for the underdogs basically I mean right he just tried to tried to tell the stories of the people who were getting screwed by the system and that's what I like to do too Just, you know, provoke, poke the bear a little bit in a vernacular that they think is theirs, but it's not. I like the, you know, bluegrass and old time and folk music did come out of the working class, and somehow everything got convoluted and screwed up, and now working class equals dumbass or something happened at some point, but that's just not the case.

I mean, it could be further from the truth. And so I kind of feel like in some way by playing a style of music that is so associated with being a right-wing ignoramus and singing something, you know, very clearly progressive, for lack of a better word, then maybe kind of like refocusing the whole concept of folk music. Not just me. There's a whole lot of people doing this, you know. I'm just part of a movement, I would say, that is. is using Roots music to push the progressive rural envelope. Yeah, and how is that going? What kind of resistance do you run into out there doing it,

given we've got to this place where, like you said, the genre itself is oftentimes associated with right-wing ignoramus, right? And I've talked to other musicians who, you know, have dealt with the same things. Like, how often is that a problem for you in just doing shows and whatnot? Like, do you have to sort of actively push back against the tide in that way? Or is there this sort of avenue for doing it the way that you do it that still exist and that people are automatically receptive to? Well, of course, there's pushback.

You know, people will hear a vernacular that, again, they think is theirs and their vernacular being right-wing dumbassery. So I'm saying, you know, protect the postal service. And they're like, well, yeah, protect the postal service, but fuck Joe Biden. It's like, where's, hey, incongruencies. And so you're like, well, the vernacular I like, and then boom, heads explode. So the pushback is like, I don't like this, but I just wish you'd shut up and play music. But don't sing the word, God, you know, it's like that.

So it's kind of funny for my perspective. Sometimes they get violent. That's never fun. But I have never, I have yet to get my ass beat. This is not an invitation to beat my ass. I will fight back and I do bite. So.

Yeah, I've talked to other like country and Americana artists before. Well, I mean, I'll just like, like Hayes Carl, right? I would call him country,

but Americana, whatever guy from Texas who, like, who just did that type of thing for a long time and had that fan base and did shows. And then he had a song where he like, basically said the equivalent of he took an anti-Nazi stance in it and then was surprised to find that that was somehow controversial amongst people apparently like you know he was like i thought i was

walking out on a pretty sturdy limb with that i didn't think that would be a problem but for some people it was you know what what we're dealing with what we're dealing with is basically the death growl of dixie and with the new emerging zeitgeist in the united states the once propagated white myth of we are we are this and davy crockett and macaroni and cheese and whatever it's like not holding up so the only thing they can do when backed into a corner is go or whatever and so it's uh i don't know we're just we're just watching a bear being poked and it didn't even a smart bear it's kind of like uh you know barely got its wits about kind of bare.

And that's because they haven't, no one created a new, and I hate to use the word, create a new narrative, because it sounds like the kind of like woke speech that they would automatically reject and hate, understandably too. What I'm saying is,

in the vernacular of the white proletariat in Appalachia, why not start propagating a new creation myth and story, which would be inclusive and recognized genocide? and recognize white supremacy and slavery and everything that actually happened because there is truth in the world. And that is the hardest thing for these assholes to accept. But at the same time, demonizing them, which is what's happening in media in general, is not proving to be effective. So why not just start in, you know, not demonizing the opposition and go in there and say, look Ricky

we're fighting for the same things man you don't see the system screwing you the structures of an equity they are not on your they do not favor your existence my man so buck up expand your mind you can and maybe Ricky will say well damn yeah

okay fine yeah that the thing you said at the end there like to me that seems like what should be the like primary messaging such that there is one is you know we are we are all on the same team against the same opponent which is you know the fucking rich assholes who fuck everybody over absolutely screws everybody over and that's and i feel like that used to be an accepted thing with a lot of these fault musicians and with the

people like johnny paycheck and whatnot and and like coal miners and whatnot it wasn't just white people and there was a kind of understanding of like working people being united against the powers that be. Division-based politics. They have found wedge issues. This goes back to, like, Lee Atwater, may he burn in hell. And taking these wedge issues, and they are the same wedge issues they've been since before I was born, or when I was coming into the world in the early 80s. It's abortion.

It's always the same shit. It's hate the homosexuals, abortion, whatever. It's these, and that has served to divide and conquer. And these few elites are laughing all the way to the bank. I think that if a real left emerges, and I'm not talking about a San Francisco left, though they're played an important part in a lot of things, I'm talking about a rural left.

If it can emerge and had a media market that maybe wasn't based in New York or California, we could fashion some sort of new nationwide narrative. But the problem is the media is also controlled by the coastal elites. So now I sound like a right winger, don't I? This is the subtlety we're dealing with. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of truth. Like, it's not just, I mean, being on the West Coast, like, the amount of, like, the East Coast bias, like, it's northeastern, definitely. But it's like a rainstorm in Washington, D.C. You'll get tons of media coverage. And the whole state of Oregon's burning down right now. It's changing the weather patterns.

That's how hot it is in Oregon. And no one seems to care very much. It's like, it's wild how things get filtered in our national conversation. What makes it up to the high-profile cable shows that are just people yelling at each other about performative bullshit, you know? Performance, baby. It's all hype. Entertainment industry, music industry, news media, it's all hype-driven. Hype, hype, hype.

And it's very, very non-tagmatic, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, so last year, you started this project called Pick of Progress. I'm gathered because there was an election year. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so I'm here in, actually, I'm in Key Center, Washington at producer Matt's house. Matt is a longtime co-conspirator of mine. And he, when COVID hit and the music industry died, Matt was like, well, you ain't got a job. Why don't you write a song for the Postal Service? So I did. And it went banjo viral. I literally got asked to play.

it three or four times, and including in front of Louis DeJoy's house, there was a petition, 450,000 people signed it. Banjo, in some small way, helped bail out the postal service, which was Matt's brainchild, so Matt's kind of a genius here. And then he said, well, that was that work, didn't it? Why don't you keep doing that? And so then he somehow came up with this concept of picking for progress, and I inadvertently became the Anthony Bourdain of social justice music, illuminating performance.

progressive voices from across the state of North Carolina, picking music and interviewing in this kind of like episodic series we did for 15 weeks prior to the elections. I was working with Roderico Jol Diaz, who is a Guatemalan film director, Kakchiquel, indigenous dude, lives in North Carolina, and Emily Ron, the executive director of Witness for Peace Southeast, so two stalwart activists and people in the know. and I got to be kind of like the host and the musician and it was really fun and we did this and I got to meet all these real organizers and activists and it was just very informative and that kind of like helped me produce all of this music when the elections happened and everything kind of died down

I was like well I got this collection of songs I might as well put them into a new record which Matt is probably bringing up onto the screen and that's what I've been doing I got this record about to go back on tour. I mean, hell, it looks like the pandemic is doing okay. That Delta variant is pretty bad. If the Delta variant is bad, I wonder what the Spirit Airlines variant is

going to be, because that shit is going to get hairy pretty quick. But if God willing, I'll be out on the road in September touring that album around. So I kind of issued the conversation from picking to progress into selling my CD, but you know how it is. It is, maybe. That's a good segue, because one of the reasons you're on today as opposed

to any other week is you had a a video drop from this series called Jim's on VHS. Right, yeah. Do you want to set up that? I think we have a clip. Do you want to set it up? Sure, yeah. Today, my single Ehrmano Migrante dropped, which is, that means brother migrant.

And it is a song I tailor made for migrants. It's a message that really resonates with them. Thankfully, I have been able to play it for a lot of migrants. And prior to being here, I was in a migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. And anyway, if anyone knows how to save the world, it's the people that have experienced firsthand the structures of inequity. And no one understands the structures of inequity better than migrants. So you might think they're at the bottom of the totem pole.

They know more about it than anyone else does. So this is my song to them. And it's in Spanish, but there is one in the line in English, to kind of sum up the whole situation they're dealing with. Right on. He says, no you're from here. While with your efforts, no, they could be able to be.

Grita in Calley a migrant, Esperanza no I Do you work without paper Keep us fed and will die Damn That's awesome, man We didn't say that this part

But you live in Argentina for a long time, right? It's one of the reasons you're so fluent in Spanish Why you're so enthusiastic about like Latin culture. Yeah, so as a 19-year-old, I found a foreign exchange program in Spain. I ran away because, you know, I had my gay parade and I was like, screw North Carolina, I'm getting the hell out of here. They don't treat me very good.

And then I met a bunch of Argentinians there. So years later, I moved to Argentina and the shoe fit. I stayed for a decade. And, but more recently, well, since the pandemic, you know, this year, actually, I've been back and forth to Mexico. And that's kind of my new project. I'm kind of fascinated by the borderlands. And so, yeah, I've had a lot of, you know, 12 years of experience with Spanish language.

That's after learning it, my whole childhood. It was my favorite subject in school. So in North Carolina, believe it or not. And anyway, so, yeah, that's how I got interested in all these ideas, all these concepts of migration and whatnot. So much smarter than me. I chose Latin as my subject in high school. My dad tried to talk me out of it. He was right, but his reasons were so I could talk to girls.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that was. yeah well i've tried uh tried and failed to learn spanish like eight times over the course of my life not because i'm not into it it's just like i just you know i just yeah you got to be you got want you got to memorize i mean it's you know stick to it yeah and i mean you know speaking rednecks pretty hard man yeah yeah well born into that you know that spanish and french and all them romance languages they're romantic it's why they call them romance languages because somebody told me that

one time's right i learned me a romance language because i like romance i'm like rickie don't mean they don't whatever buddy yeah yeah a true romantic rick uh all right joe let everybody know um you know how they can follow to support you the album how to find that all that good stuff please well i guess unfortunately uh the best way to follow is now instagram because facebook sucks ass but uh i guess people are watching it on facebook sorry Facebook. Sorry, but not sorry, as the Gen Zers say. But, yeah, Instagram at joe dot troupe.com. Had to think about it there. And then I'm on Twitter, Joe Troop, and I'm on whatever other things. But you can go to my website, Joetroop.com, J-O-E-T-R-O-O-O-P.com.

And if anyone wants to support me, just buy my CD off my website. And then once I sell 3,000 of them and meet my recruitment calls with the record label, I can start making some money off of them. So, uh... There you go. But anyway, that's a good record label. I have to say Free Dirt is a good record label. That's a very just recoupment clause because they put poor money to me like a, like a leaky faucet. But anyway, so yeah.

Hell yeah. So, yeah, it's the best way to go about it. Go to Joe Troop. com and check it on out there and get the album borrowed time. Joe, it's always good to see him. We'll have you back on for too long. Such a pleasure. Thanks, buddy.

Right on, buddy. All right. Joe Troop, everybody. Okay. Yeah. always impressed by somebody who fucking keeps it real you know yeah actually walks the walk man he is a walk walking son of a bitch joe turk biz um all right matt you can start throwing up some questions and comments there for us uh well what was you're talking about

bezos just something i forgot to mention earlier uh this is just a funny little anecdote so when bezos was like an eight nine years old he was one of the subjects of a book about child prodigies. And the chapter on him, the guy wrote that he basically was too socially, he was too socially awkward to, end quote, has no leadership skills, end quote. And do you want to know the one book it's kind of hard to find on Amazon? Oh, that's hilarious. Trish Pulley from YouTube says this is a quote from Joe's song.

the clip from earlier says work without papers keep us fed and go die trish says damn based on that alone i will purchase the album thanks for the intro i agree completely joe set it up saying there's one line in english kind of sort of sums up the song in general i don't speak spanish that was incredibly impactful uh the way he did that so yeah hats off to him um yeah yeah if uh joe mentioned lee atwater If you guys aren't familiar of who he is, he's a guy that is architect of Reagan's campaign in 1980, and he gave his fame. You can just Google Leigh Outwater in 1981 interview,

and you're finding where he lays out how this is the Southern Strategy works and how you can do racism with your dog whistles. Oh, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. I know the interview you're talking, and the clips you're talking about. I didn't put us together. Yeah, that shit's wild, dude. He says the N-word a bunch in it.

Yes, it just totally just lays it out completely baldly. the way they operate yeah that's it's pretty wild y'all should look that up betty veronica says bezos looks like lex luther on the super friends villains the legion of doom especially that capsule he definitely has a lex luther thing going on i don't give him too much credit though but uh but but yeah and also like that uh they're his rocket in particular they're all phallic rockets are just inherently phallic but his had a real dick looking thing going on you know so yeah yeah and again the boots and the hat and all that it's all it's just all a bit much guys do you know it's like his 10 billion humans thing or whatever so no just to give you example of how dumb and out of touch these guys are so

his like his big futurist i'm thinking about the future humanity type thing he always talks about an interview 10 i think is 10 billion uh no 100 billion humans or whatever trillion humans whatever it is his idea is like if you get x number of geniuses like Einstein and beethoven with the current population if you grow the population, you'll get that many more Einstein's and Beethoven's. Sure. How many kids are talented enough to be Beethoven, but don't have the money for a goddamn violin? You never have a chance.

Yeah, exactly. Dude, there's been so many, there's a couple examples where people are aware of that, where they've somehow found, like, mathematical prodigies who grew up in poverty in India or something, and it never mattered, but we know about them now. I'm too ignorant to give specifics on it. But I know, it, dude, it does, you don't have to have it proven. you know that it's true. There's no telling how many fucking Einstein's and Mozart's and whatnot have been born into abject poverty, lived and died in the exact same.

And no one ever knew their genius, you know, because of just the fucking way the world works. But because we live in a society of manufactured scarcity and artificial competition. Like, it's just so cutthroat and dog-y dog. Like, you can't even talk about it about, you can't even talk about it in terms of what we're losing. But, like, how much talent we're just wasting? because if you're like, well, if you're like, we should give all kids music lessons and free SATs to see who has the best opportunity.

Like, you'd be like, well, that kid's going to take a slot for my kid as opposed to being like, how much better would the world be with so much better music and stuff? But there was a school where none of the kids could afford the SATs. So somebody's like, I'll just pay for them all to take the SATs. All of them got high scores and they all got to go to college. There's a whole group of kids who weren't going to be able to go to college because they couldn't afford the SAT.

It's just like you could save, to the extent there are any good billionaires like the one practical Bill Gates' enthusiasm for malaria nets is really cool because it's a really low-cost way in trying to figure out better water-water filtration for underdeveloped countries. It's like that's the easy way to save a lot of lives

is cheap stuff like water filters and malaria nets. That's going to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And here you've got a guy talking about, we've got to build a moon colony so we can get to five Beethoven's. Fuck off, man. Jesus Christ. Will Tyson on Facebook says Rockets don't have to be phallic. That's a choice.

I'm just going to trust you on that will. I'm rocket dumb. In my head, I think of a rocket. I think of a vaguely dick-shaped thing. But I do believe you. I believe that. But yeah, but I don't know. You know that like, and we talked about this on a well-read podcast forever ago.

And so I don't remember the specifics of it now. But you know, like early on in the existence of billionaires, maybe they weren't even billionaires at the time. But like the ultra wealthy, it was kind of almost taken for granted that they had to do. shit to sort of give back in a way like it was almost like I don't know if it's like a shame thing or so or what but like no less oblige yeah yeah they just like it was sort of taken for granted that you had to give back if you were in that type of scenario and now it's the exact opposite it's like if they do it you know they're lauded as being heroic or whatever because so many

of them just say fuck it and don't and take every opportunity they can to keep as much for themselves possible and it's just a real bummer because I feel like it didn't necessarily have to be that way or wasn't automatically that way, you know, to begin with. And we just got to that point because of, in part, the mentality you were talking about earlier, where everybody makes it about themselves in their head. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, if I get to that point, that's what I'm doing. I'm fucking keeping it all.

They deserve to keep it all, you know. Yeah. Like, Jeff, you don't have to build a moon colony for a Martian, colonies to get to a trillion humans or whatever to find five beetovans you might have to find them just by funding school lunch programs do you know what I'm saying like it's like yeah right yeah absolutely man it's fucked up oh Roger Strange says bozos went to space by selling crap that catches people and homes on fire what's he talking about specifically Mark I don't know

like I remember Musk's sold those flamethrowers from the boring company and Tesla was catch on fire all the time. Maybe remember me or make some of our billionaires or I don't know. Maybe it's something I don't know about Jeff. Yeah. I mean, they want to catch us all on fire.

He just like, he burned like 300 tons of carbon shoot himself into space and got back and talked about how we need to save Earth. It's like. Right. Yeah, I know. Like being up there looking at the earth and how fragile it is, remind you of how important. And like you said, the fucking the carbon output

of the fucking vanity project that he'd masturbatory vanity project that he just went on that inspired him to say that that I'm sure he'll have no follow through on whatsoever yeah the audacity man

he was saying if we put we could save the environment here on Earth by putting all our industry in space and on the moon so you're gonna like you're gonna put a power plant in the moon and then what we're on giant like a extension cord back to Earth

fucking idiot yeah man see i would like well i don't know like i said i think about like we should in my opinion we should you look at like kitty hawk north carolina and the right brothers to the moon landing in that amount of time you know like we should be on the moon and mars already but it should have happened the right way and it's disappointing that we're not but i don't want it to be like this it's like that like switch from the matrix not like this not like this ain't what i want But, like, as a species, you know, we should be doing all that shit already. And we should be reaching towards space-based, fucking industry and stuff like that.

But not from these, not like, not like this, not this way. Is anyone defending, if you look at the, the tenor of all the news coverage today was very lauding and celebratory. Yeah, I agree. I've seen a lot of people. In matter of fact, we were at core, yeah, senior Georgia correspondent, Corey Forrest. was telling me that, you know, he's a hardcore commie. He posted a video shitting on Bezos for it. And we have liberal fans.

All you hear today, you guys know that. And he got some pushback from our fans on it, apparently. People being like, listen, at the end of the day, it's an advancement. It's a scientific and technological advancement. And we should be happy about that, that type of thing. I think a lot of people feel that way. To the extent the advanced technology, they built reusable rockets, okay. But like, so we haven't already had a spatial.

No, it's like we were saying earlier, that argument doesn't hold water the same way it does when you're talking about NASA or, you know, the government or socialist efforts that lead towards the same goals because the information sharing and intellectual property and all that stuff, it just works completely differently. Yeah, it's all Jeff. We fund it and just gets to keep it. Yeah, exactly. Right. And that's why it ain't the same thing and that's why it's fucked up. Randall Tuft says, let's celebrate what we did in the 60s. Hello.

Yeah, no, I mean, for sure. That's what I'm saying. I think that's so rad that that happened, like the fucking, the technology available at that time to have gone to the moon with that, what we had available then. Imagine the shit we could do now and should be done. doing but again not for motherfuckers like Richard Branson Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos

literally the fucking the ships that went to the moon were built out a duct tape and aluminum foil and shit yeah it's crazy and we got there the computers they had are like there are calculators today that are more powerful

than those it's fucking insane yeah they don't like uh like everybody see the Apollo 13 knows that uh the Kevin Kevin Bacon Gare gets real sick or whatever

They don't go into detail Why I got sick But in real life the guy got sick Because his urine filtration system messed up So he was just like He just got sick off his own piss But like that's the level of bad technology They were dealing with

The guy just had to deal with his own piss And his bloodstream for a few days While he got back And they were able to go to the moon and back And we can't do that right now We're celebrating a guy going like three times As a fucking commercial airliner I don't get it

It doesn't make sense to me. No, dude. No, you're 100% right. It's such a good point. It's like literally just the fact that it's like, oh, it's just one rich guy who made it happen. It's the only thing that makes it noteworthy. And again, that wouldn't be possible if not for the way he has exploited countless, faceless masses of fucking people. And the tax code and all of that shit is the only thing that makes it even possible in the first place.

in terms of just purely technological and all that speaking. It's not impressive, objectively. At least he thanked them after taking away their pandemic pay. So there you go. Yeah. All right. Fucking producer Matt has just reminded me I'm such an idiot. I'm fucking every single time.

Very last thing, remind you all, I'm going back on tour this very weekend. I will be in Birmingham, Alabama at the Star Dome, July 23rd and 24th, but plenty of other dates, too. You can go to well-read comedy.com and see the dates, get your tickets, and come see us. We're chomping at a bit, ready and raring to go. It's going to be a good time. Thank you for the reminder, Matt, and thank you all for the support. All right.

Well, that's it, Mark. Love you, see you by. There you go. Nailed it. All right. We'll be back next Tuesday right here. See you, love you, bye. Love you, bye.