wellRED podcast - Evening Skews - Week of September 22, 2020

Episode Date: September 27, 2020

Hoo wee boy howdy what a doozy this week was. Everything from the fallout of RBG's death, to the results of the Breonna Taylor case, to Trump heavily implying he may just be emperor forever....nothing hit this week y'all. What else is new. But me and Smart Mark try to make it entertaining to listen to at least. Love y'all. 

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion. Because used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

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Also, a fun one I'd said it before, but I had a, I got an app, lovely little app where you could, you know, put your friends' faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got, I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies, you know, those weren't a little like the cue ball looking twin fellas. Yeah. So that was that response to? What was that a reply gift for just when I did something stupid?

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Prices may vary additional terms apply. Well, how do y'all? Welcome back. Today's Tuesday, September 22nd. I'm Trey Crowder. That's Mark. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey?

And this here is evening skews. As always, we got some somber, somber subject matter tonight, but as always, we begin with our dumb-ass report. and for tonight's edition I don't have much of a preamble because in my opinion there's very little that I could possibly

say to you about this clip I do want to say yeah but this is a good clip but I like how you call it the dumbass report because it's like the weather it's just like dumbass exists in American politics and you're just like yeah today this is dumbassery on the West

forecast always calling for Gail Force dumbassery in this country in 2020 Yeah, this particular clip we select, I feel like there's very little I can possibly say about it that would adequately highlight the comical stupidity of it more than you guys just watching the clip. So I'm going to pull it up. This is a campaign ad, an honest-to-goodness, real-life campaign ad from the great state of Georgia. Did you know Kelly Leffler was ranked the most conservative senator in America? Yep.

She's more conservative. than Attila the Hun. Fight China. Got it. Attack big government. Yeah. Eliminate the liberal scribes. More conservative than Attila the Han.

Uh-oh. Kelly Leffler, 100% Trump voting record. I'm Kelly Leffler. I approve this message. She approved that message, Mark. I mean, of course she does, but where do you even begin? with that. The fake Atilla Le Hine.

By the way, she doesn't know anything about Tilda Hine. Of course not. But the fake Attila Hine is threatening to murder liberal journalists, like have them execute it. And she is saying she's... She's further right than that. I know. There's just so much to unpack her.

Like, first of all, I feel like this is such a good example of this, this whole dynamic with political comedy in America right now, meaning like, I feel like there's this person. perception people have thinking that if you traffic in political comedy in the era of Donald Trump, then you're playing with a corked bat, you know, that it's like it's easier than ever to be funny because of how how mockable they are. But I think this is an example of actually sometimes it's more difficult because like I, how do you parody that which is a parody of itself? Like I said up top, how do you even make this dumber than they made it with a completely straight. face. I can't even figure out what the goal of this ad is here because I was trying to look at through her race. Like she's leading by three.

But second place is another Republican, which is assuming why she's running ads about how conservative she is. But there's two of the Democrats who add up to beating her by a mile. And Georgia's kind of a swing state now. Like the Trump foot's within the margin of error. So I don't know why you would brag

about being cruel in the campaign. Right. Right. Well, that's the thing. It's like, you says like they're first of all again they seem to know little to nothing about atilla the hun but also even in their own like portrayal of attila the hun he's this like it's very racist like you know what i mean he like speaks in grunts he's this he's this foreign barbarian who's like oh kill them all yes sir kill them all and it sounds like it you would think they are like comparing

liberals to that or something if you just saw that part of it in a vacuum but like you said that's not what she's saying she's saying I'm this guy cranked up to 10 please vote for me just grunting

grunting murder orders at her subordinates and that's her selling point it's fucking ridiculous man yeah also like a to mention doesn't know shit about Attila like like Atila like Attila's remembered as a feared conqueror because he invaded Europe and defeated Western.

Like, like, he's literally, like, from her point of view, would be the leader of an invading horde of foreigners coming to sack Western culture, right? So it's like, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about here. And it's, he falls in a fascinating gap of, like, people would say history is written by the victors, but it's not necessarily true because, like, people remember Vikings as being super cruel just because they couldn't write down all their wins, whereas the people that got their ass kicked by the Vikings, got to write down the history of how mean the Vikings were. word. So it's like

Attila just gets falling into that trap. But anyway, she's a, she sucks. She's stupid. I don't know. Yeah. So we've got a couple other little fun things for you guys. I mean, as always, the fun things are also infuriating. But still, before we get into some

of the sadder stuff, there's a Donald Trump had another one. His super spreader rallies. This one in Ohio. And among many other things, he got to talking about airplanes. And he He likes airplanes and airplanes are cool. Airplanes go room and zoom.

They do. They do go room and zoom. So here's the first clip. We're going to show you. We had a depleted, we had old planes. We had old everything. It was a depleted military. And now it's a beautiful brand new.

We have F-35s that you can't see. Stealth. They're stealth. Yeah. All right. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.

One more. Let's see the next one here. Because it's also on the subject of aeroplanes. and how cool they are. Trump's a big fan. You don't see them either. They go through here, they're saying,

what happened? What was that? It's gone. It's here. There it is. I hear a noise over there. Where is there? It's gone.

It's over there. But I go it super duper. It's super duper is easier for people to understand that hydra sign. But you know, I mean, super duper, invisible airplanes, Mark. You can't fuck with us.

I mean, like, we're on year five of him thinking stealth planes are actually invisible, like, Wonder-Role. Yeah. He literally still believes that stealth airplanes are invisible to the eye. I do hate the gotcha stuff, and politicians obviously misspeak, if people don't like their idiots, like when Obama said the 57 states or whatever. He's talking about 57 primaries. But I would be like, okay, what he says

invisible, he means to radar, which is sort of true. but then he goes you go by you can't even see them it's like no no you can see them you can see them this isn't a misbeak it's not a gap yeah and it'd be like they call them hydrasonic I call him super duper that's a better word the best words he's got all the best words best adjectives he knows what what to say to fire the people up

we got the super duper murder planes everybody right here in America I mean what I do love about the guys he's totally just proved the idea of a meritocracy and like just The rest of us learn vocabularies. Yeah, it's like, we've talked about it before on here, but you just reminded me of like this whole argument,

the whole thing about should or should not Biden debate him, you know, and there's this idea that persists out there that like Biden can't hang with Trump in a debate. And I'm not, I'm not even talking yet. Biden has a lot of gaffs. He puts his foot in his mouth a lot. But every time I hear somebody saying this, I just feel like, hey, if you seen different types of Donald Trump talking than I have seen, you know, like Friday on Elmar when I was on there, you know, we ain't got to get into all that. But Michael Cohen was on there and he was talking about Donald Trump is a master deflector. He was saying like he's a master deflector, you know.

if you say he's stupid, he's going to be like, no, you're stupid. He's a master deflector. It's like, what? That's, I'm rubber and you are glue shit. Like, that's fucking elementary school shit that he's getting praised for. And everybody's like, you know, like Biden can't hang with that in a debate. And I've just never understood it. Now, disclaimer, before you respond, I do know that the reality is, no matter what transpires in a debate between Biden.

Biden and Trump, Trump's people are going to act like he mop the floor with him, no matter what actually happens. But I just don't believe that the reality of it could possibly play out any other way. Like, I can't think of any high-level politician that I wouldn't put up against Donald Trump

in a war of words. Super-duper jet planes. Like, what the fuck are we talking about? I still think your, what's it called, the just world fallacy? I still think like, you think because Biden gets up there and his answers will make sense and Trump's won't, but it won't be a more effective debate performance. And I just don't know if that's, I think saying I'm not stupid, you're stupid actually works on a lot of people. And I just, I don't know.

It's just a, it doesn't, look, it doesn't appeal to me, but a lot of people, people were there cheering for it. He said super duper and a bunch of people went, yeah. I don't know. Right. I mean, no, you're objectively correct about that. There's no doubt. But it's like, again, I've had the conversation before on here. I just don't like, still, even acknowledging that,

is Biden going to lose people that are on the fence? And again, I don't even understand how fence voters exist right now, but I guess they do. Biden's going to lose people that are on the fence by debating him because of the shit we're talking about. I know that Trump's people are going to be like, yeah, he is stupid. You got him. own the libs, you know, or whatever. But like, I just, I don't know, the idea of backing down from that motherfucker in a verbal debate is just, to me, that's a worse look than going through what you're talking about. Because, like, that's going to happen either way.

But I think, I mean, I... I mean, there's a, like, like, political coverage in this country is, like, suffers under a lot of bullshit. And part of it is like if I was going to back out of the debate, I would I would do it because it doesn't matter. It just like there's not a single person like it's not going to change anyone's minds. We talked about the other day like some like 70% of people thought Hillary went all three debates and she didn't get enough votes to win. A bunch of people voted that Hillary was better at the debates and then voted for Donald Trump. Like these are the same people. So it's like this is like debate camp for like politics nerds.

Like it's like they did it's like do a model UN. It's like the candidates take a day off to go to a model you at, right? And so political reporters have something to do and something to write about and something to talk about narratives are shifting. There's a, this historian wrote this piece about some reporter called him to ask him about the debates. And this guy was like, well, I will talk to you about this election, but I'll talk to you and the guys of trying to, of this being an aspiring authoritarian whose elections, you know, this election is bad news in a lot of ways.

I'm not going to talk to you about epic debate changes throughout history and what Trump could do in the debate to like turn the narrative because that's bullshit. It's pointless. And reporters like, okay, I don't need you as a source that. So it's just like people, it's so far removed from anything that matters. I would skip it because it's just like, you guys are going to write about this like it's a horse show that I'm going to go to something else. Yeah, no, I know. And again, like, you're right about everything you just said. But I just, again, I just still go back.

to like, I can't imagine backing out of a debate with the super-duber jet plane guy, you know, but I hear you. Like, I mean, you're right about what you're saying, and it's just, it's a goddamn shame. So speaking of a goddamn shame, now we move on to the aforementioned more somber topics, as everybody is aware, between the last edition of the skews and this one here tonight, a moment that American liberals had lived in fear of for quite a while. finally came to pass last Friday when Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, passed away at the age of 87. And there's a million different reasons why that's horrible,

but one of them in the macro-American political sense is that it opens up another Supreme Court position for the Republicans to fill. And I don't, no one on either side is surprised by this, But despite the fact that in 2016, when Scalia died in February, nine months before the election, the Republicans made a big show of refusing to confirm any new Supreme Court justice, specifically because of the fact that it was an election year. And according to them, the American people had a right to have a say in the Supreme Court appointee. That big dog and pony show from back then, they are not even pretending to get. give a shit about what they said at that time and are instead making no bones about the fact

that they are going to fast track as much as humanly possible a Trump appointee to RBG's spot. And Mark, this is just, this is just horrific anyway you slice it, isn't it? Like, this is awful. But go back to the political theater stuff. They didn't rule Mitchell made up and said to Joe Biden made up or whatever. And we don't know as don't confirm justices when the Senate and Presidency or split in election years. Like they didn't mean that when they said it. And I hate to call it hypocrisy because no one believed them then.

They're a bunch of political reporters. Pretend to believe them because the number one job if you're a Washington reporter is you have to take everyone with the words come out of their mouth or have to be taking an extreme face value. And you cannot look any deeper than that, even if it's what they're saying is horseshit. So the, I, they were, they should have been up front and been like, we don't have to confirm an Obama judge so we're not going to because we want, if we win, to be able to install someone who will overturn Roe and make it so the government, uh, corporations can you use your children for food if they want. They could have just been honest about it. It might have cost them a point or two in the election maybe if they were honest. But I, I wish like this, but the same token, like to hear Democratic politicians try to use this as a debating point is really frustrating because it's like this is a made-up rule you're trying to enforce a rule that you didn't believe they said then and now you're trying just say we don't want another conservative Supreme court justice because they might eliminate gay marriage outlaw abortion and make this for climate change progress impossible just just make the actual cases instead of

retreating to a political theater I don't like this is we always complain I always complain about on here a democratic politicians will appeal to the refs like just appeal to the rest what somebody help us out here. It's like this, there are no rules, man. Use the power you have to, to, to grab, use the power you have to work for your constituents. They make, yeah, they make the rules. Like, the only rules are the ones that they make when they had the ability to do so. Like, you know, trying to sort of hold it in their face. Like, look, remember what you said back then? You said that was the rule. Well, what about now? Like, of course they don't give a fuck about that. Like, They didn't give a fuck about it then.

They don't give a fuck about it now. Like, they're going to, they're going to do. If there's anything they have illustrated during the entirety of Trump's reign as president so far, it's that the rules are what they make them to be. Like, they don't, they don't care. There's no such thing as consistency or precedence or anything like that. All that matters is what they want to do in any given moment, you know, like, the whole time. when Trump was getting impeached and all that, like, I mean, he needed to get impeached,

and I'm glad he did, and I'm sure every other liberal felt the same way, but I never for one second thought it was going to amount to anything because, of course, they were just going to do what they do. You know, they were never going to fire their guy no matter what the actual, you know, facts said, or what the case said or what the evidence said or anything like that. And they do, like you said, they participate in this political theater and they try to find ways to be diplomatic about their bullshit.

But at the end of the day, like, they do whatever the fuck they want to do because they're in charge. And that's just the way that it is, which is why I think, and I don't know you feel about this, but I feel like the only answer to this scenario is we have to win big. And everybody has to show up. We have to win big. and I know the answer to everything is always just vote, but it literally is vote, and we have to win big and if and when

we do win big, we got to play by that same rule that they have. We're in charge now. Well, we're going to do whatever the fuck we want. Expand the court, make term limits, whatever. Do whatever the fuck you want. That's what they've been doing for the past however many

years, like it has to be approached this way. And if we do win and get in there and then take the high road again and stand on like principle or whatever the fuck it is, then yeah. I'll say this. Everyone should vote. I'm not trying to discouraging them from voting here. But what discourages people from voting is that Democrats actually do have power here.

They have leverage. If the rolls reversed, what Republicans would have been doing for the last few years is, like, Democrats in the Senate have given unanimous consent to everything. There's a bunch of procedural bullshit the Senate has to do according to their own rules. And Democrats have done everything they can to make it faster. out of politeness. They could have slowed down the judge approval process, where it wouldn't be 200 judges.

They could remove unanimous consent right now and there probably wouldn't be enough time to install Supreme Court justice by January 20th. The House Democrats, like constitutionally, the Senate has to take up impeachment. They can impeach every cabinet secretary they have calls to, which is most of them at this point, and the president, again, for multiple things.

And that would bog them down and delay until they could not install Supreme Court justice. And they absolutely would do that because those aren't, how to put this, those things aren't against the rules. They're in the rules. That's not cheating. That's trying. So, yeah, right.

It's like, this is like a game of basketball, one team trying to, one team considers it uncouth to try to block the other one shot. Right. Like it's not sportsman like or something. Yes. You know, and it's like there is no, there's no sportsmanship. with these motherfuckers. Like, there's no, there is no high road.

It doesn't exist. Like, if you, you cannot beat them unless you agree to fucking play dirty and play the game the way they play it. Like, we will keep losing as long as you try, you keep trying to make it into something that it's just not anymore. And I don't care how cynical of a viewpoint that is. It's just the fucking reality of it. It's not even, I mean, it's not about what they, like, look at, okay, from their perspective, If I honestly believe that abortion was murder, was child murder, and that Joe Biden was going to herd, you know, conservative professors in the camps or whatever, I would absolutely do everything I could to make sure to, even in a lame dunk session to install a Supreme Court justice who would reign in an out-of-control liberment. Now, that's not true in my way of thinking, but if you believe that, you should be fighting tooth and nail, right? Whereas on the other hand, if you really believe that a conservative Supreme Court is going to overturn Roe, it's going to outlaw gay marriage, it's going to lock in, you know, the voting rights bullshit is going to eliminate it in the last two decades.

It's going to allow a new Jim Crow to rise. It's going to lock in gerrymandering to where it will be. It won't matter. Like, if they get a six to three advantage of crazy conservatives, or the swing boat goes from John Roberts to Neil Gorsuch and they have the Supreme Court, it won't matter if Congress can ask. a Green New Deal unanimously and it's signed by the president, the court is going to walk off the map. Literally, this is planet destroying shit. If you really believe that's the case like I do,

and Democrats in Congress claim to believe, you should be doing everything you can to stop it from happening. So it begs the question, do they not believe what they're saying? Or do they not actually understand reality? Because while they were fundraising off RBG's death Friday night, they raised $20 million, they announced they weren't going to do anything to stop the hearings. So do why are we giving them money? Why are we voting for them?

I vote for them because there's no other choice at this point. But like I like my, our senator, Diane Feinstein already announced that she will vote. She did that, that she won't vote to end the filibuster. So now we need a 60 vote super majority to extend unemployment benefits starting January.

So we read, so Democrats, we take the Senate and nothing's going to happen. That's a hell of a voter turnout initiative. Vote for us. We'll have 53C majority and we won't do shit with it. Because Diane Feinstein doesn't want to end an arbitrate rule that was invented in 1950 to stop the civil rights movement. So, yeah, fun stuff. Yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's very, it's very hopeless and dark. But like I said, I just still like, I don't know.

If they take, if they take all three factions, right, or all three, they take the White House and all of Congress, if that does happen. and they have four years in charge and they continue this mealy-mouthed bullshit, then obviously, yeah, we're fucked forever. But our best option right now is to try to ensure that that happens and then try to hold their feet to the fire. I don't know what else to do, man. I mean, maybe if people start chaining themselves to Congress's doors, then Chuck Schumer will get the hint and start doing stuff.

But the, I mean, like, even the way they talk about it, stuff. Like, they talk about playing within the rules to consider cheating. Like, people talk about expanding the court slightly or admitting Puerto Rico and D.C. as states as cheating. When it's not cheating, it's expanding your power within the rules, which is how democracy is supposed to work.

I mean, even the, even the Constitution, on the last episode, we made fun of Marsha Blackburn, the asshole senator from Tennessee, for saying that it's not possible to alter the Constitution. And we're like, of course it is. They're called amendments.

We've done plenty of them. So even the most fundamental level, you know, you're talking about the Constitution. If you have the power, you could change that shit for the better. Like there are things you can do. And like you said, that's not cheating. Like we have rules that allow for that. And do that. And look, this isn't like new level of partisanship or whatever.

This is exactly how the game's always been played. The reason Delaware is the same amount of senators of Virginia is because they fought for and demanded the, even though I think of the founding at 13, uh, Virginia at 13 times. many people. And the slave states were like, we need a house of equal representation, two votes per state, even though you guys have more people than us. That was always a, that was, that was a power play at the time. And then later on, the reason there are two to two decodas instead of one is because they wanted four slave opposing senators instead of two, or four Republicans instead of two. It's not, this is stuff isn't out of bounds. It's not apocalyptic. It's trying to make

progress and advance the country. And also, the citizens of D.C. and Puerto Rico pay taxes and deserve a saying shit. They have rights. The way this stuff is talked about is ridiculous. And I don't understand why Republicans frame it in the news media, but Democrats trying is cheating, and then we all just sort of buy up. But like, it kind of won't, going back to what we're talking about a few minutes ago,

it kind of won't matter if Biden's elected, and there's a Democratic supermajority at the conservative court. Because people think conservatives want the courts for cultural stuff, which they kind of do. They don't, you know, they would like to be able to stop social progress. But really, it's raw power stuff like voting. rights and two business most of what the court does is interstate commerce business regulation right that's the stuff you'd have to read about in the in page 27b of the newspaper but um for example do you

know what the chevron doctrine is chef uh uh uh no tell me it's this judicial theory that when a law is written vaguely the courts will defer to an agency's interpretation of the law now this is a i'm not a lawyer this is a dummy's understanding of it from just reading about it so uh if you're a lawyer forgive me for being stupid. If Drew's watching, he's probably already mad at me. But the, so basically it's like Congress doesn't understand science, right? They're 435, 535 morons if you count the Senate. So, but they'd be like, Congress will agree there should be less lead on toys, right?

Broadly speaking, there should be less lead on toys. They create the consumer product safety commission and empower them to regulate how much lead's on toys. So kids don't, brains don't end up fucked up. It's hard enough for Congress to agree on principles like that. What they cannot agree on ever is the exact amount of lead that should be allowed on toys. Imagine Congress that do negotiate that, right? So they delegate to the agency to talk to scientists and figure out the exact amount. Now, Neil Gorsuch's purpose in life has been to end that, right?

Which basically would eliminate the entire regulatory state. If they get six justices who believe like Neil Gorsuch does. The FDA, the EPA, the Super Product Safety Commission, the SEC, everything that regulates, everything is gone. The federal government cannot function. This means when you go to the store, the expiration date on your meat that you always assume is fairly accurate, is absolutely going to be a lie. So this is real life stuff that affects your everyday grocery shopping. This is not just whether your gay cousin can get married, which is also very important, but this is like whether or not your kids can breathe.

So it's... Yeah, the big government shit aside, I've never understood the opposition to just any kind of regulations that comes from the right. Because like these corporations, like you were talking about the grocery store, like food corporations and stuff. They literally used to like,

if a worker in a meatpacking plant fell into the grinder on accident on the job, they just grind. his ass up and put him in the can with the rest of the mystery meet and send it out. They don't give a fuck. Like the only way to rein these corporations in is with

governmental regulations. You have to. They're never going to police themselves. They will keep poisoning your water, killing your cows, killing your fucking kids, making your tap water flammable. They'll keep doing all of that

as long as it's more profitable for them unless the government forces them not to like yeah i don't it's always been so wild to me that's even a partisan thing but i mean it absolutely is but that's fucking crazy man like why do why does conservative middle america or whatever why do they give a fuck about what dupont is or is not allowed to do unless you live in a dupont town you know where they've founded this town and They pay everybody's wages, but that's one town. If you're anybody else, why do you care what they are not allowed to do? It blows my fucking mind.

You know what? Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle about, you know, people falling into meat processing that and getting grown up in the hot dogs? He was a socialist. He was writing about worker abuses. People read about human beings being in their hot dogs, and we're not mad about the human beings dying. They were mad about the hot dogs.

That's what we got to the FDA. that's gross I don't want people no pig assholes only and my hot dogs I don't want Gary meat in there

that's disgusting he was trying to start a Social Revolution instead of the wellness cult well either way they shouldn't be able to put Gary

in the sausage you know so let's talk but Biden bumper sticker no Gary in the sausage no Gary in the sausage no Gary in the sausage no Gary in the sausage. So let's talk briefly about the, according to everything I've seen, likely nominee

from Trump. I mean, there's a few different candidates, but everything I'm seeing is saying the frontrunner is a woman named Amy Coney Barrett. Yeah. Um, who she's a former clerk to Scalia. She's, uh, been a professor at law at Notre Dame and a judge in the seventh circuit court in Chicago, I believe, for years. And she's, uh, been a professor at law at Notre Dame. And she's, uh, been brought up a few times before and she is to put it likely a bit of a zealot a religious zealot she's super catholic she's her and her husband have seven kids uh they belong to a particular sect of catholicism based on the reports i've seen that is pretty uh conservative meaning they believe that the woman's place is being subservient to the husband she gave a commencement address

at Notre Dame, her alma alma mater in 2012 and at that address she said that quote, a legal degree is but a means to an end and that end is the coming of the kingdom of God.

So this is all looking good. I mean, I don't, um, look, if, if, if Joe Biden nominates a Bosl for the court, we're going to get a lot of religious paranoid. I think, I don't, I feel like it's a trap to talk about.

They really want to bait everybody into a fight about her religion, right? That's what they want to have to fight about. But on a hunch, I just Google Amy Barrett Chevron. And the first hit is Trump frontrunner could bend court on Chevron deference. And that's from an environmental news website. So I'm just saying, like, eye on the ball here. They're not going to, they're not really trying to do. I mean, Mike Pence would love to live in the handsmate's tail.

But like, that's not really the top five things they want to make happen. They want to. So you think the whole like the whole abortion, aspect of it is the row v white aspect of it is a straw man like you think that's like i mean it's a dog chasing the car kind of thing you never tell what they mean and what they don't because if they they understand if they actually invalidate a road they're looking at landslide election losses for for for a while um they they probably rather have the issue than when but uh because the people are committed to it are very dedicated voters and the people that aren't don't care about it very much

just don't believe Republicans would ever actually do it. But electoral losses won't really matter if we're ruled by, the way the system is set up where the Supreme Court has total say over everything, we've just, we've, you know, let our politics go to this point. We're essentially ruled, our laws are ruled by a council of nine elders who you can't get rid of. Like it just like, do Republicans care if they don't control either house of the, the, the House of Congress or the presidency?

if Democrats can't pass any laws without being invalidated. So I don't know. Right. Well, that's another thing that just now got brought up and we haven't talked about. I mean, off top, the whole notion of lifetime appointments is extremely antiquated and, you know, irrational at this point, right? Like, we were texting about the other day. Like, it's crazy. You know, you think about like the founding fathers when they put that in there, a lifetime appointment, a lifetime then was like 54 years old or whatever.

But also their whole rationale was that a lifetime appointment would insulate the Supreme Court justices from the swaying of partisan politics in America. It's like, oh, so you're worried about the Supreme Court getting political? politicized. Yeah, we definitely need to watch out for that. You know what I mean? Like, like, nothing about it makes sense anymore at this point. And it's, it's ridiculous that they get, like, they're in there forever. People also used to leave the court voluntarily. They didn't stay there for life. Like, it was like, it was a different world. Like, I mean, I was reading today about, like, LBJ bought some guy off, like a Supreme Court justice. He pointed him, he was a cabinet secretary who resigns, he would replace him and then fucked up because he couldn't get the guy, the guy he wanted on the court

approved because he was corrupt and then end up holding the seat open for uh for nixon so uh but the thing is like they conservatives want to win and they understand like like this is about wielding levers of power like look at the look at the difference like um was it suitor that retired so they could appoint cavanall who's way younger um and Ginsburg god rest her soul fucked up and didn't retire when obam was president now when it was you offer that criticism and people say well she earned the right to do whatever she wanted she did she she had the choice she made the sure on the right to make that choice she made the wrong choice right um and we we we sure learned that lesson because third good marshal held on too long after um during card's administration he tried to stay alive until there's another

democratic president but it wasn't until 13 years later and so he died 91 and third good marshal was replaced with clarence thomas so right we just never learned that this isn't about like fedding your heroes. This is about real world stuff that affects people's actual lived lives. The politician and justices aren't like comic book heroes. You can argue about the interpretation of their characters and their story arcs. I mean, I'm sure, like, I'm sure Ruth Peter Ginsburg was dreaming about the second woman of the Supreme Court being, you know, having a replacement named by the first one president. That probably would have been a really cool button to restore it, but life's not a movie,

you know? Right. It also, it's one of those things where like, it's hard to see it ever changed. because whoever is empowered at any given time is like benefited by it you know what I mean like whoever has the power in any given moment is probably not going to be inclined to change it because they're like well yeah but we could we could you know we could use that to our benefit though whenever whenever we hold all the cards and there's I don't know it's just it's upsetting but I mark I want to talk moving on a little bit I want you to talk to us about

money laundering. What's going on with that? So anybody who's talking about politics to borrow with me ever knows that I'm obsessed with money laundering. This is not just because I live in North Hollywood where there are a bunch of, you can't spend any time in New York with all the cash bars and wonder how cash bars make any sense in 2020 and then look around at what business is work and how they work and why and all these really rich areas in New York. that have no businesses in them because no one actually lives in the apartments there. They're just empty.

They're bald and sitting there as investments. And you read about all this app financing that's like the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and all these like a South American venture capital funds who are flushed with cash and no one knows from where drug cartels. They are buying into apps that don't make any sense and can never turn a profit. And all this stuff like on a small scale, there's like, there's three lamp stores side by side a mile from my house i've never seen anyone go in them they don't have the same lamp there there's a bar across my old department that nobody ever went in

except for me and they were always remodeling and i guarantee you if you track the lcc's back the company doing their modeling was the same company they're doing the place and they were paying themselves to move money around it's all nonsense anyway so buzzfeed has this um as this uh uh would be an earth-shattering story along with like the Panama Papers and from a couple years ago that reporter got murdered by the way BuzzFeed did it more they they they spread the reporting out among like 15 reporters three or four different news organizations but if you Google FinCEN which is reporting so what this guy did he he tried to get a hold of all the the the suspicious activity reports related to the Trump campaign in Russia right

so he's trying to get a hold like when you read about Paul Manafort his his money laundering operations being reported by banks and that's what Mueller indicted for he tried to get a hold of everything else and so there's a bunch of like like mentions the Trump and a bunch of Kushner rich people get a ton of those anyway so but he couldn't figure out the extra story with them was he took a step back and um looked at it and it is bigger than that because basically everything is money laundering everything is he found mentions of Walgreens of no boo Richard De Niro's sushi restaurant like the list goes on and on and on and basically what What banks have figured out is that they can snitch on themselves.

They can do the voluntary reporting where you follow the suspicious activity report for the money laundering you're doing. Because the government's not going to do shit about it. You can abide by the letter of the law and break the spirit consistently because the feds do not care about busting money laundering because it controls our economy. America's riches shit by this reverse colonialism thing. We made herself the safe place for the international elite. to park their ill-gotten gains. So if you're El Chapo and you've made your billions

by making Mexico a miserable, corrupt place to live, you can't trust keeping your money in Mexico. You've got to get it out. You got to buy real estate in New York and part of Uber and invest in movies in L.A. and shit, right? And we're more than happy to take that money.

Anyway, you should listen to the podcast and read the articles because it's fascinating and it's a way bigger story in whatever was in the newspaper today about political warsry shit that doesn't matter. This is the world we live in, and this is what control it. Right. Well, that's the thing to me is, and I understand why.

I mean, I get it, I'm worried about all the same things, too, but because of how, just how many awful things are going on in 2020, politically in this country and how many things there are to be terrified about, the notion of America being a straight up plutocracy, and income inequality and rich people just running it and the banks running it and all that has kind of fallen by the wayside

and that's a real shame because before all this insanity popped off that to me that was like the number one issue that we were facing you know we talked on a previous episode about like you know I love Obama

but I had criticisms of him because I didn't think he was liberal enough and one of those things was that you know he was in the bank's pocket He went easy on the banks and everybody always has. And I definitely feel like because no one's talking about that anymore because we're so far removed from the financial crisis in 2008 and that type of thing and because there are so many other problems that everybody's facing in their day-to-day lives,

no one's really worried about the banks and the financial elite and what they are up to that they're going to just slide it under the radar and keep up to their same old bullshit. And that's a huge fucking problem. There was a CIA analyst in the 90s testified from Congress. I'm going to butcher this quote or his testimony because it's been a law since

to read the article about it. But when so when Soviet Union collapsed and all this Western, all this Soviet property fled out and Western investment went in. And this guy was talking about, like, Congress is talking victorious about how like, wonderful this was and all that stuff. And this guy kept trying to make the point to them to make them understand that like,

this is how their corruption escapes. Because we think about it, we think a lot of dumps to this country, we think of us in terms of like communism versus capitalism. And capitalism, one, is kind of stupid because it's, it's cronyism versus at least attempting to be some sort of kind of meritocracy where good ideas and good, in good progress. products win. And he was trying to explain this to a really deaf, stupid Congress. And it was really frustrating to watch the clip. But yeah, they mean like the we're rapidly becoming a third world federal government, but that we've accepted, we've just, we've been open to bribes and we've

defined bribes as political contributions. And all the stuff that were, that we're seeing in our politics is just because of Citizens United and money laundering. That's it. Rich people have figured how to buy elections and how to buy everybody by the government. And so things generally suck. So. Right. And you and I'm like I know you know what I'm saying, but I feel like like you said, Citizens United. You remember how big of a talking point Citizens United was for a little while? You know, like this whole thing we're talking about for a while there was at the forefront of the American political debate, you know, Bernie and all of them like it would be because it's a huge problem. but now we're going in this election and it's like

I can't remember the last time I heard somebody bring up Citizens United it's not like it stopped being a problem I know we got a whole lot of other problems but it's still a problem it was a scandal when Obama at the State of the Union talked about Citizens United because you weren't supposed to talk politics from the Supreme Court because the court's not political fucking horseshit so he talks about Citizens United

and he said that he was going to allow a huge influx of foreign money into our elections. And I think it was David Souter or maybe it was Alito, was caught on camera, shaking his head, no, like that was wrong. And it was a big to do for a while, especially conservative media. But like you now we're having debates.

The President of the United States goes on Twitter and we're arguing about whether Russia or Saudi Arabia or China is influencing our elections more and who they want to win. This is where we're at now is like, like, Saudi Arabia can just start a suit super pack and run all the ads they want. And which maybe that's free speech, maybe not, but in my opinion, any public financing for elections, we need to dial the money back where we can actually talk about ideas and

policies and things that affect people's lives as opposed to all this horseship or drowning them because it's easier. If you're a sea level power like Russia, I'm not even talking about the scandal. I'm using this to hypothetical. It's much easier to buy an American election through simple campaign. donations, funneling $60 million to the NRA or whatever it is they were accused of doing, than it is to defeat us on a battlefield because you have a $2.20 military. It's just a much cheaper effort. And so when you, and it's not just like, the Russian gate thing is wrapped

into Russia, but like all that stuff was being handled it through Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And it's, yeah, it's, well, you know what? It's also wrapped up with what you're talking about there. You just maybe think of like the, when it comes to social media and everything and the have with that with that with propaganda and spreading it and people living in their own bubbles and that type of thing like i feel like sometimes people look at that as like uh just a reality of the new world we live in or whatever but that also that goes back to regulations you know what i mean like they're they are the same as the meat packing plants were in the early 20th century that upton sinclair was talking about like there there are things we can do to Facebook and Twitter and them to keep that type of shit from happening. Like, we just have to do it. You have to regulate them and force them

to be better shepherds of that shit, or they're never going to do it on their own. It's not like a lost cause or just a reality of the world we live in, you know? Yeah, I mean, we just got to, like, there's got to be less, I mean, it's, getting to weed to this stuff so deep, but, like, I don't think it's about social media,

I mean like a fairly evil world power can just basically with one pass-through can give money directly to a candidate. So it's like if Exxon can buy half the Senate, you know what has more money than Exxon? Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Right. You know, like by just allowing this stuff, it's like like we're, this lobbying, like, I never, it never occurred to me. I was always against America being the world's police, but like one bad, really, really, really, really, really bad aspect of being the world's police that I hadn't even occurred to me, is what's the first thing the mob does is try to buy the police, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's see what people are talking about in the comments over here. Let's see. Yeah. A bunch of a commenter.

Somebody with a Trump account just commented dick ass talking out their ass and they're not wrong. No, they're not wrong. You're 100% right, actually. We are two dick ass talking. ass. David S. Skipper says, address to the idiots on your messages, the futility of voting third party.

All right. This has gotten brought up on recent episodes, but this is something that honestly drives me crazy. Like, don't get me wrong. I, in principle, I understand and appreciate the

desire for multiple parties. That would be great. Like, I wish that was an actual option in this country at this point, but, like, it just straight up isn't right now. And in other previous elections, there were opportunities to make that stand, I think, to try to get any given third party to a 5% level where they could participate in the next election at a higher level in the debates and stuff like that.

And I get all of that. Like this year particularly, it's just, that's just not what's happening. Like there are, there are, whether you like it or not, there are two options. And you've got to pick one of them or sit at home. And in my opinion, sitting at home is still picking one of them. And that, that's what worries me. I have a bunch of thoughts about this. One is like, I voted for Nader in 2000, but I did so in Texas.

and it was a strategic vote trying to get, like, it wasn't a, it was, it was not an important vote, to put it that way. Bush was going to win Texas. The goal was to get Nader to 15% so you could get, you know, equal funding for the next election. Right. We get equal to find the next election. I understand voting strategically. If you're in a safe state, if you're in New York, if you're in Vermont, if you're in California, do what you want, right? the structure of our system allows you to do that.

Practically speaking, I think what you should do is if you live in a state of the ballot initiative system is try to get ranked choice voting, because then you could vote green first, a Democrat second, and if it wasn't winning, it would run down. The way you guarantee your vote isn't wasted, right? But also, politicians are supposed to win your votes in our system. If you're not, if you don't feel motivated to vote for somebody, I'm not going to yell at you for it. I think you're setting back your own agenda and I will

tell you that, but I can't tell you how to vote. It's your, you know, it's your solemn right as an American to figure that you're going to vote for. I would just say that like if you're doing it in a state that's going to be close, I think it's a, you're screaming into avoid. I don't think you're doing much.

That's my personal opinion, but you guys do what you want. Yep. Tiffany Austin says, voting third party is a luxury. We don't have right now and that's pretty much how I feel about it too. And Andrea Keeling says, do not vote third party. A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump in this election. Please, please vote blue for all of our sakes. And I think that's true. But I also think the same logic works in the other direction, meaning like, I think there are, I think there are Republicans who are not

comfortable with voting for Trump, but also will never vote for Biden. And I'll just tell you right now, I'm straight up for them not voting. They can sit at home. They can vote third party all they want. But that, but that, it, it serves the same point. Like, doing that is still a choice you make. Like, that is still a vote you cast, you know. And I hope that the people who are in that boat on the other side, I hope they do it.

But, you know, I mean, there's no escaping the fact that, like, the reality of the situation, you're still making a choice either way. Whether you sit at home, whether you vote third party, whatever you do, you're making a choice. And the stakes are too high right now, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, so,

like, I mean, we spent the first 25 minutes of the podcast ranning about the, the ineptitude and fecklessness of Democrats. So it's not like, we're not captive to the party in any way to say, or form. I would just say, like, like, next Senate election,

I will, I will, vote, I'll be voting for Joe Biden and then voting for whoever Diane Feinstein's primary challenger is. Because she got a goat. Yeah. So we got a comment here from

a YouTube commenter whose username is we the people for Trump. And it says, why is Trump so bad? He only been there for years. And it's funny because I feel like you're making a point you maybe don't intend to make with that. How's your year's your good bud because like i actually the thing is mr we the people from trump i actually

100% agree with you he has only been there for four years and i also wonder i can count how has he been this bad like that's i mean that's a valid question like it's crazy how bad he's been in only four years and the idea of four more of it can't stomach it It's both better and worse than I thought. Like it's like, for one, my worst case scenarios I imagine haven't happened. War with Iran, war with Korea, you know. Those things I thought were live possibilities. Turns out he doesn't have the attention span for that shit.

His whole lack of attention span is a problem that isn't, you know, allowed COVID to take off. And his various cronies to run the departments the way they want a strip mine the whole country for parts. I didn't think he'd be able to, like, I didn't imagine I'd have to be sitting in my apartment for a whole fucking year. That was not a part of it. I had 200,000 dead was probably about what I would have guessed, but I would have thought it would happen in a war. Yeah, it's bad, man. It is bad. It is bad.

Tim Miller says one in the head or five in the chest, two options. See, I just, like, are they threatened to shoot us? Is that what? Yeah, I don't know. Oh, it's something like the voting choices. Yes, the voting choices. Nathaniel Seaman says, Ranked Choice would fix that problem,

which is what Mark was talking about earlier. And there's a lot of other people talking about ranked choices. And again, for the record, again, like, theoretically speaking, I'm all for ranked choices. I think that's a great idea that we should absolutely explore. But we just, we don't have that right now. Like, we are living in the reality we live in, and that isn't a thing. In the future, I would love for that to become a valid option, but it's just, it isn't right now.

All right. So the weird of people for Trump guy, who I'm assuming is a troll. But he's sincerely asked what is, he seems to sincerely ask what is so bad, I don't understand. Okay. No, he's still out there, Mark, before you talk, he's got a follow up. He says Trump has never been the problem. So anyway, go ahead, Mark. What do you got to say?

So we ran about the Supreme Court. The hauling out of the regulatory state, right? You're going to have more poisoning your food and your water because of Trump. The hauling out of the CIA and the State Department, which the CIA fucking sucks. And the State Department mostly sucks. But having professional people know what they're talking about there, not the CIA still in a lot. And this is a bad example to use. But the State Department keeps us out of fucking wars, right?

That's bad. We're going to have more wars in the next decades because of Trump. Those are just two big reasons. reasons, cancer and war. I'll throw that out there. I don't know how you could argue would be in a worst right now than we are

with Trump in charge. You know what I mean? Because like there are so many examples you can point to around the world of countries who like I know the numbers are not the same population-wise or whatever else, but there's still parallels to be drawn. We're not the only, this was a global pandemic. We're not the only country to have been faced with this problem. And yet, we have more deaths than anybody by a lot. We're number one. We're number one. And like, we're supposed to be the leader of the free world. And this is the best we

could come up with. And you really, like, you really think that if it wasn't the Trump administration, Trump, who came out early in the pandemic and was saying it's not a problem. Don't worry about it. It's a China thing. It's going to disappear soon. We've got it locked down. And this still happened anyway. You really think if it wasn't them, we would have done better?

That makes no sense. This is our opportunity to talk about that Kennedy. So this kid, this kid went to the New Yorker. He broke an NDA to talk about, he was on the Kushner's task force for the fucking pandemic, right? Yeah. The Kennedy, yeah, he's a Kennedy, a Kennedy kid. He, he volunteered, like Kushner put out a call for all these Harvard kids to come to

Washington to work on the pandemic task force. This kid, he couldn't go to law school. He's planning to go to law school, but he couldn't go because of COVID. So he decided to volunteer and service the nation, probably a good resume builder, whatever. He goes down there, they're going to be helping some big governing task force with some volunteer intern

type stuff. He realizes they are the whole task force. They had a bunch of 23-year-old kids with no training, logistics or anything else, medicine trying to control a pandemic. And he realizes because they were trying to give him cover for where they're talking points were. And like you look around the world, this isn't like, like, the beginning was like, oh, well, you know, the racist who don't read a lot about Asia would be like, well, this is because those are, you know, totalitarian societies and Asians are very, you know, they conform easily or whatever rules or want to wear masks.

South Koreans took to the streets two years ago and overthrew their fucking government. They got a good government response because they demanded it, right? This is an authoritarian versus liberal democracy thing. They're meant liberal democracies to handle this problem great. New Zealand, for example. Germany did pretty good. France, in Spain, they've had a backslide,

Britain handled it terribly. The only correlations for who did this poorly is the countries ran by right-wing anti-science buffoons. Not just right-wing. You have to have the anti-science buffoons part. You're Boris Johnson's, your Gerald Balls and Arrows,

and Vladimir Putin. Those are the countries that have absolutely done the fucking worst. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I had one up there for a minute where our buddy were talking about the YouTube commenter. He said, it's not that bad. 200,000 people dead. It's not that bad. But we've got another one here that I'd like to actually address. Venturi Atomore, I'm doing my best here, says, I want to vote damn, but I'm having trouble articulating a cogent argument on why that is a good choice. please provide me some backup for why i should do that i like i know people i know i guess people get tired of hearing the same argument over and over again but like i like to me like i said earlier

it all this ranked voting shit third party shit aside there's two there there are two choices there's only two and you say you can't justify voting them but that's the same and this election as voting for Trump. And if you can't see all the reasons why it's a bad idea to vote for Trump right now at this point in time in the year 2020 with where we're at with COVID and everything

surrounding it, then I don't like I don't know what argument I can make to you to convince you otherwise. I will say that as a trade is reason for doing this show and why we know each other and get along so great. We're both world

we both live in L.A., but we're rural southern people by background. And we talk about this politics stuff from that. I think it's like I'll see like tone deaf lives tweets stuff about how like the jokes about how we should like just like let the

South secede or you know, break the country up or whatever into like the coastal states and then Jesus land in the middle or whatever. Here's a thing. There's gay and black people in the middle in the like the South is the blackest region in the country. We did an episode of our Facebook show about it.

The South is also the gayest region in the country. The reason you shouldn't make yourself more comfortable by taking the easy way out is because you're abandoning those people. You're abandoning people. You can vote however you want to. I don't want to yell you. I don't know if I could a pronunciation or name. I'm sure you're very nice.

Without knowing where you live, I don't want to yell at you. But I'm saying like you have a less chance of dial. dying. A bunch of people less chance of dying under Nimerickad administration. That doesn't make them good. It doesn't make them perfect. We can yell at them, but you have a less chance of dying of COVID, less chance of dying because of answer from your drinking water, and less chance of not having health insurance because they're,

they're not going to work past Medicare for all, but by God, I'm going to fucking yell at them to. Constantly. Right. That's, yes. As a, like, I understand, coming from the town I come from, I understand rural people, and we don't know if this guy's a rural American or not, but I understand rural people not trusting Democrats after everything that went down when NAFTA and all that shit. Like, I get that. But the thing is, you've had four years at this point of Trump who made all these promises to you.

And if you can look me in the eye and tell me that shit is better in rural America than it was in 2016, then you're full of shit or you're lying to yourself, you're lying to me or both because it's fucking not. And if you, if that still is enough for you to vote Democrat, honestly, that's fine with me. Just don't vote at all.

But you can't act like he has improved your life. You're fucking, like you said, you ain't got health insurance, your job ain't come back from Mexico. Your fucking hospital is probably closed. Shit is not better. And you know it.

My hometown's still closed. No more employer is still Walmart. $7 an hour. I don't know. I don't know what you guys wanted or expecting, but it hasn't fucking happened. Yep. All right. Well, with that said, ain't shit better.

Follow your heart. Can we do this motherfucker here so we leave on a fun note just real quick? You think this is going to be a fun note? But yeah, sure. No, maybe not. Maybe we can. Well, no. I mean, hell, since you brought it up, we'll do it.

Yeah. me and Mark are floating a recurring segment called This Motherfucker Here, and the nominee we had for tonight was one of the cops involved in the Brianna Taylor case in Louisville, Kentucky. And this motherfucker here has sent out a mass email to the entire department. At 2 a.m. At 2 a.m. Obviously drunk up his fucking ass. Just a drunken manifesto laying out all the reasons it was bullshit that they are being villainized for what happened in the Breonna Taylor case. And one of the things he said was among many other horrible things, quote, regardless of the outcome today or Wednesday, I know we did the legal, moral, and ethical thing that night.

It's sad how the good guys are demonized and criminals. are canonized. Brianna Taylor was not a criminal. Is not a criminal. Like, there was no criminal element. You broke into a person's house. And as the NRA would back up any white Americans

tried to do so, you got ballistic resistance to that effort. And that ended in murder. Like, what the fuck is the rationale for calling that the legal, moral, and ethical thing to do. The Breonna Taylor case is such a more clear-cut example of both incompetence and institutional racism than the George...

I mean, the George Clinton case is awful. I'm not trying to excuse that by any means, but you could, in theory, do a bad apple, one guy, four cops, or whatever. This, they got a no-knock warrant, which is supposed to be very hard to get. It's unconstitutional, use them or not warrants for the level stuff. They're using it for a weed dealer arrest. They went to the wrong address. That's fuck up number one.

First part, racism number one. Second part, fuck up number one. They're looking for a guy who they already had in custody. They didn't do a search to see if the guy was already in jail. They were trying to arrest a guy who they already had in jail. It's fuck up number two. They kick in the door. They don't announce themselves.

They shoot her. That's incompetence and racism. The guy defends himself. he shoots one of the cops. They arrest him for shooting them. When he shot them in self-defense, they're armed intruders in his house. They weren't supposed to be in.

They don't arrest the cops. They don't fire the cops. They don't fire. They drew a name out of a hat or whatever. This cop's still on the job, getting drunk. He's on paid leave, but he's the one that got shot in the leg. The whole thing is fucking infuriating, and he thinks he's the victim here.

At a minimum, at a minimum, you went to the wrong address the guy was already in custody. Yeah. Right. There's no argument. What is the stance the NRA takes on the purpose of the Second Amendment, if not for, to defend yourself whenever agents of a tyrannical government enter your home illegally and assault you with violence?

If you can't defend yourself in that, point or in that moment, what even is supposed to to be the purpose of the Second Amendment? You know? Or the Fourth Amendment. Or the one about putting troops in your house. If you had to sum up a whole bill of rights in one log line,

it'll be cops can't come in your motherfucking house. That would be it. But yeah, this guy has been disrespected and inappropriately villainized because, or no, in his words, demonized

while criminals are canonized. Again, no criminals in that situation. So, yeah. She was also a public servant. She was a paramedic. Yeah, an EMT, right, yeah. Yeah. Literally worked saving lives, the opposite of a criminal.

Shot for no fucking reason. And this guy is incensed that people think there should be some kind of consequences for that happen. And this is all happening. Fuck that motherfucker. This go get them guys email, by the way, was sending the guys of Louisville being put on lockdown and a heightened sense of security because they're about to announce they aren't going to charge the cops. So this is basically, you guys get out there and save my ass because they're coming for me because I fuck. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, maybe we'll have that to talk about on Thursday. We'll see. Shit's about to get even uglier. Yeah. 2020, everybody. That's how it goes. So we'll see y'all.

48 hours on Thursday for the next edition of evening skews, but that's it for tonight. Thank you all for joining us. Love you, see you by. Have good, guys. Be safe. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back. Today's Thursday, September 24th.

I'm Trey, and that's Mark. Howdy, Mark? How are you doing, bud? I'm doing all right. This here is evening skews. And for tonight's dumb-ass report, we turned to the great state of South Dakota. You didn't see that coming, did you? No, nobody expects South Dakota.

but that's where we're going great plain state known for a couple things I would imagine I don't know I'm not sure but it's one out of Rossemore they got that they do yeah yeah yeah there you go South Dakota one of the Dakota is the bottom most one and they've been struggling what like many states this country with the pandemic you know and trying to get their hands around how best to handle it and how is South Dakota handling the pandemic well Why I hear it from me when you can hear it from the governor herself? This from her Twitter.

Christine Nome, Governor South Dakota. This is how we do social distancing in our state. That was correct. Has COVID more hunting? That's the plan for the future. Okay. So Mark, is the dead bird, the pandemic or? I couldn't tell if she was recommending fun outdoors COVID activities or shooting COVID.

or making light of COVID, more hunting, less COVID. That would be ideal, I guess. Less COVID would be a good plan. But like, I don't, like, I don't know. It's like, for context, South Dakota currently has a 22% positivity rate and is doing worse than every other great plain state

with coronavirus. And also, in general, coronaviruses are up in 22 states. So, like, it'd be nice if, like, you know, the people in charge of, did we pay, who's salaries you pay, to try to solve our, problems or at least pretend to take it seriously but i'm glad she got uh got a got a nice day off in the in the field yeah also so like she says is how we handle social distancing i mean that bird first

all was that was that was that was that was that a was that a thing was that she's peasant hunting pheasant okay yeah whatever it was a uh um it looked pretty social distance from her from what i could tell you know what i mean it's like this is how we do social distancing all you can see is her and a bird the bird's more than six feet away and then she shoots it uh to death and immediately. So that's kind of funny. It took four shots to kill a little bird. I know. I thought that too. Like, I'm sure they had more birds there that they could have thrown right in front of her to get a better

take where it didn't take her three or four shots or whatever to take it down. Like, that's a bad look, I would imagine. I mean, there was a jump cut there. So, like, that was the best take. Right. Yes. She's like, this is how we're handling it. And then there's a jump cut to that happening. And yeah, you know that wasn't a one take situation. That was the best one. It's like four birds who, like barely escaped with their light. Now, somebody else shot him, I'm sure.

But, but, but yeah. Yeah, they think it's like an intern off camera throwing up a, like a, like a, what do you call this little chickens you get a grocery store? Cornish Game Man? Yeah, they just took a Cornish game in the sky. You pretend to see it. Because that didn't sound like an air, airsoft gun or something. It didn't sound like a shotgun.

I don't know what's happening there on any level. But two thumbs down for that ad. or Twitter put it. Yeah. It's an ad or PSA? What is that? It's PSA, man. Shoot,

shoot birds, kill COVID. Shoot birds, kill COVID. South Dakota. So, all right, well,

you know, that was fun. But now, on to everything else. Obviously, I feel like probably the top story has happened between

now and Tuesday. It was yesterday. The, uh, Brianna Taylor case, the grand jury, indicted one police officer on a charge of wanton endangerment because he had blindly shot through a door and a window and the bullets went into an adjacent apartment where there was a kid and a pregnant woman and all this stuff. He got indicted for that. But no other indictments came down. And as you can imagine, people rather incensed by this. There's been other protests fire up in Louisville and around the country. The protest in Louisville to police. officers were shot last night at a protest there people you know high-profile public figures and

sports and everywhere else have come out and condemned in and express their dissatisfaction with the results of it so you know obviously i want to talk about it here so preface this by saying i'm the opposite of a logger i don't know shit but and i'm sure most people on the left expected this but I expected this. Like I said, I'm sure most people did. If for no other reason than just a general, you know, lack of faith in the justice system where these kind of cases are concerns, like, yeah, well, this is how it always goes. There's never any accountability.

So, of course, the result's going to be bad. But not just that. My understanding of it, suspect as it may be, had been basically that the laws are shitty in the first place. The laws that exist are bad and should be changed. changed, but underneath those shitty laws or according to those shitty laws, these officers did not

break, they didn't break the shitty laws that are in place. And because of that, they technically couldn't be charged because of the flawed nature of the laws to begin with. Is that, is that sort of how on base is that? There's a good piece about it. And I know in Washington

Post today by Guy, Guy, and Radley-Bal-L-K-L. if you want to go Google it and find it but he basically tries to explain what happened like i'm up two minds about it like it seems weird to me you can uh have a series of screw-ups and also kind of lies to lead you to a certain point where a woman ends up dead and there's no way to hold anyone criminal accountability criminal accountable except that's what the little fucking law is apparently but if it i feel like they could have uh you know suades of a lot of anger if they came out of like, okay, we're firing these cops. We can't put them in jail except for the guy that fired through the blinds,

but here's how we're going to do things differently going forward and the proposals to fix the problems so no one else gets shot this way. Because, like, however they around at the moment where they pull the trigger, they had gotten four different search warrants related to this one case. The guy they were hunting for, her ex-boyfriend, didn't meet the standard for a no-not warrant, which is like he's a hundred. high level risk because they're just trying to catch a guy moving little drugs or whatever. He's not

it doesn't matter. But they were so sloppy. They cut and pasted explanations for why it needed to be no knock in all four warrants even though they're going to four different locations with different people at them. The police, Cameron lied yesterday too at the press conference, he said that

she had received a package that was suspicious related to her ex-boyfriend and the post office had reported it. The post office is like, we don't have any record of that man. We didn't do they used the paid informant who apparently lied. Five guys who were on this raid were on another raid. They raided the wrong address in 2018 and ended up killing a couple members of a family. They used SWAT for the other locations on the warrant locations, but they didn't use SWAT here, which is, in general, there should be less SWAT teams.

But if you're going to execute a no-not warrant, it should people train to do it to lower the risk of shit going wrong. or their shit goes wrong with those all the time. Another thing wrong with, when you send SWAT, an ambulance goes with them. So there was no ambulance on site. Actually, there wasn't ambulance there an hour before this rate when they were staging for it. They sent it away.

It's just like, it's a series of stuff that no one's going to be held accountable for. And if they just would fire people for those kind of their lies, lies. And the judge shouldn't grant of the warrants because the warrants were full of lies. And they lied to the press conference. Cameron still won't say what information he gave the grand jury because it's stuff like they

announced the stuff leading up to the raid like all the all the chicanery with the warrants wasn't a part of their of the probe so if to me the fact that they lied to get there seems to be an important element of the story that should be made should make it criminal liable but I don't know man seems like at least met a minimum huge amount of malpractice to live there and like yeah I'm sorry good no no yeah I mean, we're talking about, like, oh, you know, they didn't break the laws because the laws are shitty and the laws need to be changed. And prior to this, before this result came out a couple months ago, in Louisville, they passed the laws that's supposed to eliminate no-knock warrants or whatnot. So, like, that's a thing.

But it seems like, like you were saying, okay, you can't just, whenever a case happens, it falls underneath the laws that exist at that time. You can't just act like it doesn't in a high pro. file case anyway I'm sure that type of thing happens all the time but you know what I mean but still that doesn't mean there wasn't a better way to handle even this result right like you were alluding to like okay you technically you basically can't charge them because of the way the laws are written or were written when when this happened but there's still other things you can do like you said even like press releases are publicly stating I mean you know firing them taking some kind of action and saying

you know, we can't retroactively make the laws be different for when this happened, but we can address it moving forward, you know, or just try to make some sort of at least a public relation show of of addressing how upset people are obviously going to be. Like you had to know, because that's the other thing too is like they knew, everybody knew

that when this happened, there was going to be a lot of shitload of, you know, fallout from it. And there has been. And it was, It would seem like it would behoove you to at least attempt to get out in front of that, even if you feel like the result is inevitable. I think it's a trend we see in everything, the amount of frustration and anger and, you know, it boils over into protests and riots. And it's not just like, like this is what happens when a conspiratorial thinking, too, I think, goes into it,

where it's like you see things are obviously wrong. And you know a majority of people want to make them different and then nothing ever changes. It starts being like, well, what's in the way? you know what's what is what who I need to talk to what do I need to smash what secret forces are behind this because it doesn't make any sense um I think you know one of those things to me you mentioned earlier it's like he wasn't the guy they were even her ex-boyfriend the actual primary suspect in the case or whatever wasn't some like high little drug runner or whatever this whole thing also comes back to just the war on drugs in general right which like has been

declared over in a massive victory for drugs in my entire adult life pretty much. Like it's been a bad idea. It's been very apparently a bad idea to most people, I feel like, for the better part of 20-something years or whatever, but it still rages on. And if it wasn't for that, then none of this would have happened. And also, I want to say, like, the war on drugs is and has been inherently racist in a lot of ways the whole time, too. Like, I'm not trying to mitigate the racial part out of it.

the racial part is a huge part of the problems with the war on drugs but if we weren't still you know trying to break into the homes in the middle of the night of what they even according to the cops it's like a mid-level

drug dealer maybe you know guns blazing or whatnot then shit like this also wouldn't happen it's yeah I mean it's even afterward like they went to they tried to

get both her current boyfriend and the ex-boyfriend who was the target of the investigation to implicate her after her death to try to make it seem more justified like they offered um a demarcus glover i think is they're the the target investigation's name he was in jail and unrelated like he's in jail you know uh related to whatever other stuff he's got going on and he offered him a plea bark and basically offered him a lesser charge if he would implicate implicate reala and they had like her her her family's lawyers have that on paper now to his credit he him to fuck off. Rather besmirch this woman's name,

a dead woman's name. But even like her boyfriend, the cops also tried to make it look like it was his fault because he did fire first. He did, yeah. His version of the story, I mean, there were 12 neighbors who

heard the raid. 11 of them said they didn't hear police announced they were police. One of them finally said he did hear them announce the third time he was interviewed and also some sort of language barrier there. but so like he changed his story but originally it was 12 or 12 nobody heard the

house close to anyone can tell from peace and back what happened it was like 45 seconds of banging on the door 1240 a.m. which got them out of bed he gets his gun now now glover apparently apparently brianna had been on off again with going back and forth between the two of us it's a very human story

where like she's got this loser ex-boyfriend who's not a nice guy she's got this other guy who loves her she's trying to make her life work with but she had given glover bail money a few times and rented a car for him, which ended up being used in a crime, which is why police thought she was involved in his shit.

So, but, so, Walker, her boyfriend, like, apparently Glover had, didn't like the fact that she was back with Walker. So when you hear people banging the door, his story, he thought it was the guy the police were looking for coming to hurt him,

so which is why he, you know. Well, even without the specifics of it, in my opinion, like, if it's 12.40 a.m., and you're woken up by, like, banging on the door without an announcement, which is

what, you know, like you say, 11 out of 12 of the witnesses are saying is they didn't specifically announce that they were cops. Because I've seen I've seen like conservatives online say a couple of things, say all kinds of shit in an effort to like discredit the whole thing, but regarding what we're talking about right now saying they keep

talking about no knock warrants, but they knocked. Everybody says they knocked. And the second one is, you know, everybody says, you know, this EMT was murdered in her sleep. And it's But she wasn't asleep. She was standing right beside the guy who shot him or whatever. Well, two things.

First of all, it's not the knocking. If they're banging on the door, yeah, they're knocking. But if they don't announce themselves as police officers, that still counts. Because you don't even need a spurned ex-lover to assume that it's bad news. Somebody's banging on your fucking door at one in the morning. You know what I mean? And secondly, she was at home. asleep minding her own business when all of this shit went down.

It has nothing to do with the fact that like literally she was laying in bed asleep when she was shot. Like that's not the point, you know? Yeah. But just that like purposeful trying to, you know, obstruct the narrative in that way or whatever is just all over the place with this case in particular. And yeah, and it's just like I don't understand. Like we've all seen cop shows.

You know the move. You yell, police, boom. One one. It's one right after the other, right? They're afraid you're going to flush the drugs or, I don't know, get a gun or whatever happened here. But they already admitted she was a low risk. It was a low risk warrant. They didn't need to be going in at night.

They didn't need to be going back using the battering ram at all. The whole point of a knock warrant versus no knock warrant is you don't knock the door down. You knock and the person comes to the door and they let you in so you don't destroy their property before you have any evidence that they've committed a crime. The door, like, we're so forth on the rabbit hole with this shit. But cops aren't supposed to destroy the door. your property. It's not. You know, without just cause. It's a whole Fourth Amendment about it.

So, yeah, I don't know. But it's just like, it's all very, nothing, it doesn't appear to be any motivation to change or as it is. And like, you're talking about the drug war. Like Biden already announced he's not for legalizing weed, which is like an 80% issue across the board.

Everybody's for it. Everybody's for it. Yeah. Like, I, um, I did this, uh, like, sort of like a, style like news pilot show a pilot for a show like that that didn't get picked up a couple years ago but i was like a correspondent for one of those segments and it was a segment about a

medical marijuana bill in my home state of tennessee that was currently on the docket it has since failed but at the time it was you know coming on the docket the next couple of months and we went to tennessee to sort of cover that and as it relates to the opioid epidemic and this whole thing but the point is uh that particular medical marijuana bill was co-author by by two state level Republican congressmen in the state of Tennessee. And I met with both of them and talked to both of them. And it was so infuriating, not from them, although I'm sure those two guys have done plenty of other things that would infuriate me.

But just the whole process was so infuriating because in talking to them, these guys are both Republican congressmen at the state level in Tennessee. Their jurisdiction, their district covers, like a lot of, you know, backwoods rural, old boy type areas, you know, redneck areas and whatnot and some bigger towns. and I asked them, so when you're actually talking to your constituents, like among your constituents, how much like vocal opposition do you receive to this bill? And both of them independently of each other were like virtually none. They're like pretty much none ever.

No one is, no one is really that opposed to it anymore in our experience, in our experience, even in rural Tennessee. And then the follow-up question is, okay, well, so what do you think the likelihood of this passing is and they both independently were like oh it's a coin flip at best 50 maybe honestly probably not in our favor and so immediately you're like how is how is that possible that both of those things are true and they were like well you know a lot of our a lot of our colleagues here in the state congress of tennessee just haven't been convinced yet it's like what by who like why do they need to be convinced but they said they you know it's lobbyists they were like

they said, well, two major factors, the prisons, the private prison industry, and law enforcement, and they're lobbyists. Like, they, those are the two things pushing back on us in this state right now. And those are very powerful influences on state level politics in Tennessee. So because of that, there's a very good chance that this measure will not pass. And then it didn't. But like, that shit just drives me up the wall. And again, that's all, that's all shrouded in republicanism, that whole scenario I just laid out. I have no

fucking clue why Joe Biden wouldn't be all for this. I can't even... I know he's old and shit. He probably, like, refer madness probably still

in his mind, but like, he should have every goddamn person on his team screaming at him that this is a no-brainer because it is,

right? It should be, like, no liberals, none, in my opinion, you know, maybe a very small,

fraction would be opposed to it, but pretty much no liberals or Democrats or whatever are going to be opposed to it. And even most Republicans don't seem to be opposed to it anymore. So what the fuck are you doing? A lot of them are no sense to me. Joe Kennedy, who was against it until recently, screw that guy, not a fan, gave up the game when he said he didn't want to legalize weed because as a former prosecutor and a lot of politicians are former prosecutors, the feel the police need the pretext of smelling marijuana for a lot of the enforcement actions they take. So literally, a cop thinks you have something in your car. He wants. He can just say he smell weed, even if he never finds any weed, and he can search your car. So that's it. That's the basis for it.

Just like you can't prove a cop didn't smell weed. So what are you going to do? I think a lot of it is tied to like law enforcement budgets and whatnot too. Do you know what I mean? like they're budgeted for enforcing those lots because of what you just said it makes up a huge chunk of like the overall work that they do and if that goes away it's going to inevitably lead to you know lesser justification for the amount of resources that they receive and so of course they are opposed to it but i don't know it's just so fucked up it shouldn't matter i mean i know that's not how any of it works but i don't know that whole situation is just so so I wanted to ask you one more thing related to the

Breonna or Taylor case and just the whole situation with law enforcement right now and it's been this has been brought up and pointed out by plenty of other people before but body cams right like why you know you would think and I don't want to you know I got to watch it with this argument because like people talk about like Patriot Act and stuff like that you know the argument of well if you ain't got nothing to hide then don't worry about it which is annoying, but when it comes to the police,

what other rationale is there? Like, it should only ever help you unless you did some shit that you shouldn't have done as a police officer. And if that's the case, you know, you need to go or be, you need to be punished anyway. So how do they justify the opposition to body cams because logically speaking,

you would think it would really be in their favor? I mean, nobody likes to. being watched. And it, I mean, what this is bulls down to is like, to my mind, it makes perfect sense the whole police officers to a higher standard behavior. For sure. What they keep fighting for is to be held to a lower standard. It's like all our jobs are stressful.

Yeah, we get put in these bad situations. The guy was shooting at where we were supposed to do when you're supposed to do your job before that where you would, where you could have just went at 4 p.m. and knocked at the door and said, hi, hi, Brianna. we have a warrant to search the premises because we think there's money that your ex-boyfriend was keeping money. And they could have, like,

there's no reason, yeah, you can just walk up politely and talk to people and achieve the same objectives that you, but instead you want to play Army Man and kick the door in. Yeah. Do you think if, and it's two things that each should happen,

I'm just thinking out loud, do you think if there was, if we got rid of qualified immunity, do you think that they might be more likely to care about or be open to wearing body cams? You know what I'm getting at?

Oh, you mean, you mean. Then they would need that. Without qualified, with qualified immunity, they don't need that. You know what I mean? But if it did exist, they might be more inclined to find sort of be doing everything right.

They should want every piece of evidence they have to. Well, I think we, in every court hearing related to this, we, uh, It's the same story as the tie goes to the police officer, right? So in the absence of any videotape, they're going to get away with it. So I mean, I think the Louisville cops were wearing body cams, they didn't turn them on. What, yeah, that's, yes, that's my understanding of it, too.

They were wearing them but didn't turn them on. Yeah. And also, basically told me the legalizing weed, I want to say that liquor companies and big farmer also really, really big lobbyists against legalizing marijuana, until they can figure it away to get themselves licensed for it, then they'll flip them before it. Yes. But at this point, if a pill company comes to you and says they want to do something, your instincts as a politician should be to do the exact opposite, I feel like.

Yeah. One of the major, like specific political forces of opposition to that medical marijuana bill in Tennessee a few years ago was Marsha Blackburn, who wasn't a U.S. little senator yet, but was still like on the come up. her and her husband they got they made their fortune off of drug testing people like they run testing companies among others

so you know sure that had nothing to do with her rationale from wanting to keep weed we had a Noel on who was running for blanking her last name right now who was running in the Tennessee fourth for state legislator and no living says she she said

the number one issue people brought up when she was door knocking Republicans Democrats across the board are you going to legalize wheat? Yeah. Yeah, again, it just seems like a no-brainer, but there's like no. So anyway, on to the next horrifying thing. Donald Trump straight up will not say that he will respect the results of the election in November. He has repeated it multiple times, repeated it again today.

He brings up the ballots, you know, just like, he's just like, said the ballots. The ballots are a big scam. There's a problem with the ballots. If you can get rid of the ballots, that's a big problem. So, you know, it's just fraudulent. So why would he respect it? He said, I'm like, if you get rid of those ballots,

then it would be a, well, it would be a continuation is what it would be, implying that, you know, he would win without mailing voting or whatever. But this shit is completely unprecedented. And it's so, it's so insane that even, like, fucking Mitch McConnell has you know come out and not directly criticizing Trump but

even Mitch McConnell has like publicly stated no the results of the election will be well acknowledged which like you shouldn't no one no one should ever have to say that but he's making it so

so that it has to be said because he's very heavily implying that he's going to pull some form of the bullshit that I know most of us on the left have been fucking terrified he was going to pull for the past four years. But as we draw ever closer, it seems more and more like a virtual certainty to me that he's going to try whatever the fuck he can.

And it's going to be an absolute shit show. I mean, they, I think you give him Mr. McConnell a little bit too much credit because what he said was the winner. I don't do that. The declared winner will be sworn in on January 20th. But Trump's not saying that he won't be declared the winner. He's saying he's going to clear himself in the winner, right? So, I mean, I don't think he's going to work, but it's like, the problem here is not,

I'm not trying to let Trump off the hook because what he said is there's another example of how he's a madman who doesn't understand anything outside of his own interests and what happens downstream from the shit that fumbles out of his mouth. But like in general, what he does, we've already talked about before, respect the results. I don't know what that means this context because we've already said he's definitely going to bitch about it a lot on Twitter and say it was very unfair to him. I mean, even if the, even if you acknowledge it's the more people voted against him, it's going to be unfair to him that COVID happened to him, that the economy tanked for him, because he didn't cause it in his mind, that all this stuff, that the FBI investigated him, that all this stuff happened to him. And so he didn't deserve that suffering sort of negative result for it. There's also the possibility of because of mail-in voting and everything and the perceived biases that, you know, liberal. or conservatives have towards mail-in voting, that liberals would be way more inclined to participate in the mail-in ballots

and those sorts of things, as opposed to just go into the polls on election day, than conservatives will. And because of that, on actual election night, it could, there could be some, like, misleading results up and to that point that make it appear as though, you know, he's got a lead or he's, doing well because a whole lot of votes from the left haven't been haven't been accounted for yet and the idea that if that happens he of course is not going to acknowledge the context at all

and instead will just say hey i'm winning matter of fact we won you know like that he'll have misleading early numbers to point to back up his this bullshit that we're talking about and there's just so many there's just so many fucking things that could that could get twisted around about this whole thing. And you have to expect him to do any and all twisting that you can imagine. I sort of like, I mean, obviously he's going to run his, but all he ever does is run his mouth, right? He's going to tweet and run his mouth and go on and do rallies and go on TV.

To me, it's the party that's a bigger problem because, like, I mean, this is a latter era of George W. Bush scandal that I got completely forgotten, but he fired a bunch of U.S. attorneys. There were his own appointees because they wouldn't prosecute voter fraud cases. And they weren't prosecuting voter fraud cases because they couldn't find any. There were none. One of the guys he fired was incidentally was the guy that a few good men was based on, the Navy lawyer, who Tom Cruise played.

So they've been trying this over and over again for years and years. They really want people to think that mail-in ballots are inherently fraudulent or that a bunch of people are doing in-person voter fraud, which if you were considering in-person voter fraud, I want to urge you to not fucking waste the effort because one, you're not going to get away with it. Two, the penalty is huge. And three, you get no direct benefit from it.

It's the dumbest crime in the history of the world. And that's why I don't think anyone's ever done it. And you get very few people ever get even attempted. And the people, you get caught doing like a poor woman in Fort Worth. She didn't realize that she couldn't vote because she was a felon. So she went and voted and they put her in prison for like 10. years for it. Yeah, that, all that, the, the, they're, you know, the whole thing with them in voter fraud and all that's always just been like kind of a straw man to allow them to push through like voter, voter suppression type measures, right? Yeah. Because they just, they want fewer people to be able to vote because that's better for them. So that's always been like a phantom buggyman that they throw up the idea of voter fraud for exactly the reasons you're talking about. Like if you think about it for a second, it makes no fucking sense. but not the version of it that they talk about anyway.

That's really the big flaw in our system is how, like, how many ways there are to do legal coups that are purely perfectly legal and constitutional, but any simple, any regular person would absolutely understand as, you know, crooked and unfair. Like, I mean, I don't want anybody to panic about this, but I'm sure everybody who cares saw the report, yesterday about the Pennsylvania GOP floating the idea of using the legislature to appoint Trump

electors if the vote was in doubt, which their their definition of the vote being in doubt is going to be very, very broad. The only that I don't really take that too seriously is like the Pennsylvania is a Democratic governor who have to sign that bill. I don't think that's going to happen. But the fact they're floating it out loud. Right. But yeah, so the constitution allows for that specific thing that, yeah, they can appoint

state electors and yeah they're already openly talking about doing exactly that because that specific case in in pennsylvania it all has to do again with voter fraud and whatnot and it was first open the investigation was first opened by a county level district attorney in pennsylvania right who opened the investigation into the possibility of uh electoral fraud in the state yeah before had even been sent out. Yeah. So like no one even had, there's no way anyone could have fraudulently, you know, filled out a ballot or whatever the hell because ballots hadn't even been sent out yet

when this investigation was opened. I think I figured out what happened there after I put that link in there in our show prep doc. So, so what Pennsylvania does, because before the candidates are finalized and the ballots are mailed out, you can get a right-in ballot if you want to vote super early, right? If you know you want to vote for Trump and whoever's on the Senate ticket and at your house or whatever, you can just get it right in ballot or write their names and sign it, send it back. A lot of military people do this, I guess, because they don't know where they're going to be or how fast the mail is going to go. So what happened was they didn't put it in the right envelope to send it back.

So it wasn't in the secret, you know, there's like an extra secret pouch you put in somebody knows who you voted before it gets counted, right? So they didn't do that. So it looked like a ballot request envelope. So the workers opened it, so nine ballots got spoiled that way. So what the DA did to try to look, I mean, what the county officials did to try to be perfectly above board. And he's like, we're not trying to cheat Trump here when those seven of the nine the votes were for Trump. It's like, we're not trying to cheat here. We want to be perfectly clear.

We're going to let the federal, the feds look into this. And probably imagine what's going to happen was going to send those nine people regular ballots and they'll vote in regular, regular form. But so, but what instead happened is that the U.S. attorney, the Trump appointee, grabbed a hold of, of it and did a big press release about it, which is pretty out of form for them to do to announce their opening investigation and try to make it look like something really crooked was happening here when somebody opened the wrong envelops. Normal human error type stuff. But yeah, that's the stuff. It was like nine votes total, right? Yeah. Yeah. So net plus five for Trump. So we're doing, we're going to, we're going to throw away the results of a national election because of a plus five

margin in one one mail room in Pennsylvania. But that's what's the stuff they're going to do is try to try to make all this stuff look fuzzy and murky. So there's pretext to act like a bunch of shit went wrong when it's just normal. I mean like humans run this stuff man. Stuff's going to go wrong. I don't know. Right.

Another thing. Uh, that's fucked up in the realm of the forthcoming election. Um, is you never believe it taking place in the state of Florida where actually, previously there had been some short lived good news. when the people of the state of Florida passed a new law that would allow felons to vote. But right after that happened, the GOP in the state of Florida passed a measure to the measure that clarified that, sure, they could vote, but only if they were in good financial standing with the system and the courts.

They had to pay all their fines and anything outstanding if they had. well, you know, you'll be utterly unsurprised to learn this population of felons in Florida. A whole lot of them, a little backed up on their legal fees. And so by passing that measure, they gutted the resolution entirely. It was something like 1.4 million people would have been given the right to vote back to them. But then when the subsequent measure passed, it was like 800,000 of those were immediately disqualified. but then this week, Mike Bloomberg announced that he had raised $16 million to be put toward those outstanding legal fees for felons in Florida so that they would earn the right to vote back. This one's all over the place, roller coaster, good, bad, good, bad.

I think LeBron and LeBron and Michael Jordan have an organization doing the same thing too. but as soon as this came out publicly, the Republican Attorney General of the state, Ashley Moody, had said she was reviewing the matter at the request of DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, and they're launching an investigation over to, you know, into the legality of a measure like this, because they're going under the assumption that it's like,

that they're buying people's votes. We'll pay off your legal fees. so you can vote. But obviously you understand you got to vote for Biden or you don't get the money, which is not, that's not how it works. They're not taking into account anyone's political leanings programs at all, but

that's the basis for this investigation. They're to shut this down before it even get started. Yeah. I mean, of course, a couple of things. One, of course, don't have the money. They didn't get paid five cents an hour for whatever their prison sentence was to work in a sweatshop. So, of course, not

money. Even if you did have the money, how much would you pay to vote, Trey? Because a vote... You know how many other bills these people got? You know what I mean? Like how many other people they owe other than to pay to vote? It's the same idea earlier we were talking about why in-person voter fraud the dumb thing to do because you don't get any personal benefit out of it.

I'm not sure. I'd probably pay $10 to vote because I have it. But after that, what else am I doing? You know, it's like one vote. How often is one vote inside an election? They don't want to swing one vote. They want to swing all 800,000 of these votes. And they're already giving way the game.

The Fox News, Kiron says that Bloomberg paying for black and brown felons to vote. Bloomberg's organization is colorblind, but Fox News isn't. Like, that's just a really interesting way to, not interesting, it's an evil way to frame it. Right. Like, there are no Florida Cracker felons, you know what I mean? Yeah. Which people don't know Florida Cracker is like a specific epithet they have down there. but there's no white trash felons in the state of Florida, you know, it's not like, no reason that it should be framed in that way, but, you know, that's Fox News. That's how they operate. But also, like, by the same, you know, by the same token, if you're saying, oh, Bloomberg, it's obvious that you're like, you're buying Democrat votes with this. How is the measure in the first place not just a version of a poll tax? You know what I mean? Like, that's, yeah.

charging people to vote, which is, we've been through that before. You can't do that. The logic, the logic goes both ways. If, if, if you're saying that I'm paying all these people to vote because they're definitely Democrats, what you're saying is I'm trying to charge your Democrats to do it. Yeah. Like, you're charging them a poll tax and now you're mad at me for trying to pay this fraudulent poll tax that you placed on them in the first place. It's just, this, this system is so crooked because a lot of people don't even know what they owe and like did the government organizations in charge of telling them how much they would have to owe to to pay off their fines can't even give them a

number so it's like this this you know like you know as your mc usher staircase of stuff it's like you have to pay me to vote okay but how much i can't tell you uh okay so we guess we're stuck here forever um and also like the other way their internal logic doesn't doesn't work it's like you can't say their whole argument for it's not a poll tax is that it's unrelated to voting and just has to do with their criminal sentence. It's okay, but then how is paying it? Having to have fucking with the election? If you're arguing on one side of your mouth, there's nothing to do with the vote, the other side of the mouth you're saying this has everything to do with the vote. It's purely pure bullshit.

This is pure speculation because I have no idea how the, you know, this type of thing works when you get to this level of legal, whole. shit, but like, is this the type of thing that if this, like, ties it up in court, you know what I mean? Like if this investigation somehow, like, puts an injunction on the Bloomberg program, like, temporarily, but it will definitely get stressed out long enough to go beyond the election. You know what I mean? So, like, maybe they don't even expect to win it. They're just trying to just stall it for the next, you know, six weeks or whatever, that type of thing. I think if they're doing anything organized, it would be to make all these people who could sign up for the Bloomberg organization be afraid of being running a foul law and violating their parole.

Because if you're buying a vote, both ends the transaction are illegal, right? So if I'm like, I'm like, I'm not voting if it's going to put me on a list of cops have for them might have to go back to prison, you know? Yeah. All right. Well, let's say, what else? Oh, Trump still loves old people. And, you know, he's got his old people who love him. And he's trying to show it by a sign an executive order that will give old people money to pay for their medicine.

$200 to seniors to cover the cost of prescription drugs. There's so much that's fucked up with this, in my opinion. like, you know, $200 in America for specifically for prescription drugs, that don't cover shit. I don't get two talent on a Flintstones vitamin. Right. But also, like, just the acknowledgement, like, I don't know, do you know what I mean? They're like implicitly acknowledging that there's a major problem with seniors in health care in this country while also, you know, raging against Obamacare. every former universal health care and socialized medicine and that type of thing at the same time.

Like it's just so, I don't know, the mental gymnastics of it are so fucked up. Yeah, I mean, it's a couple things are funny about this. One, this seems like a very democratic proposal where it's like it's in the right direction, but not nearly enough where it's like, you know, usually the typical democratic policy responses, voters would be like, I need $500 or I'm going to die. And they go like, okay, how about $200? right that's usually it yeah yeah no it's like this is either this is an either war proposition I said or I die like or I'm gonna lose my house or all this stuff's gonna have this is like not

not this is not negotiable and politicians keep doing this remember when the the first round of COVID relief Kamala Harris's proposal was to send everybody $500 a month I was like do you guys have any idea what things cost 500 dollars won't cover groceries for a family of three for a month much less any other kind of expense so I it's just like It, this, another reason this made me laugh is they feel like it's going to backfire. Can you imagine your, you're, you're juggling your medications where you're like, you have, you're supposed to take diabetes medicine and heart medication, but you're having it, alternating days to just stretch it out.

And somebody sends you enough money to fix the problem for like half a week. Right. I was going to clarify, like, this is, as of this is considered to be a one time thing, right? Yeah. Right. I know. Yeah, that's the other thing. Like you just said, like, seniors have, they take a.

A lot of prescripture drugs each and every month. Like, if they're struggling to pay for them for this month, they're going to be struggling again next month and the month after that. That's why it's such a struggle. So, yeah, a one-time payment of, like you said, an amount that would cover, you know, two Tylenol and a Flintstone vitamin in this country's busted medical system is like almost a slap in the face, you know? It just highlights how shitty the situation is

without actually doing anything real to address. it. I mean, I think he's been underwater with seniors for a while because, you know, COVID's killing all their friends. And I think this is sort of an acknowledgement. I think what they did was, like, they finally convinced them that the polls are accurate and you're losing old people. And he's and they're like, okay, well, what can we do? We can send them all checks for medicine. Old people like medicine. And he's like, well, how much money do we have? And they figured out how much money they could legally figure out how to get checks out by, you know, in the next week or two, so we'll have it by the election. And they just divided that by however many seniors they are

and sent out that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, how else did they, you know, arrive at that major? All right, well, we're going to go to the comments. That's what's going over here. Donna Hawkins says it's a major slap in the face. And I agree with you.

David Teets says $200 is the equivalent of a roll of paper towels after a disaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see. Chris. Just one comment to make a good point is the $200 dollar Medicare. Is that buying votes? It seems way more more transparent to buy votes than to

pay out some felons deaths. Good point, lady. Mike, thank you. Chris, Mao Ladei. Some people went to Canada where meds are about a quarter of the price or less, but customs would not let them bring them back to the U.S. Again, just like the sheer, just

the measures that people have to go to in this country, you know, for like, for medicine is just insane. And like I said, this whole $200 thing, it pretty much just acknowledges the reality of that. But without doing anything to actually, you know, alleviate it. It fucking blows my mind.

And you were saying that, you know, this is buying votes too. If this, and it will, I'm sure it will work on some seniors. But I feel like if you get this, you get this $200 check and you're like, okay, well, I'm back in, you know, back on the Trump train where you were to begin with. because of a little dab of socialism that he hit you with. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's just the whole situation is so fucked up. Yeah, none of it. If you like this, if you're an old person in a Trump,

if you like this, you would probably like this every single month. You know what I mean? Or like just not having to pay for any of them as it at all. Like, you'd probably be into that, wouldn't you? You know, you know, socialism is the devil, you know. That's what they're afraid of as well. Like, people realize that they like it.

You can never take it away. Like, I mean, you couldn't take old people would march to Mitch McConnell's house and put a fork, put pitchforks in the room if you try to take away their Medicare. Yeah. Look here, Mark. Liz Kaiser says, Mark, you have great hands. Keep talking with them. Thank you.

You've been complimenting on your hands before. My hands are, I've literally, fischly large is the term people often use. I've had people tell me that I couldn't focus on what I was saying when they sent me in person because they were distracted by the size of my freakishly large hands. So that's fun. You're talking to the day. Trey's larger than you think, guys. Trey's always bigger than people think. He's like,

you want to you, six-one? No, I'm six feet tall, but apparently I make myself look like five, seven or something. I don't know, but all the time people are like shocked by how big I am.

But yeah, the very first part. part of me to go to a gross spurt was my hands and feet too by the way so my hands and feet have been this large since i was five five in ninth grade like yeah like an old school disney cartoon like i just enlarged but the rest of the curse didn't didn't go through yet you know anyway i don't know what the hell i'm talking about um okay let's see here uh do uh yeah yeah Trump Linda Aspen says

Trump has never had Trump has never had to buy an aspirin or even go into a drugstore and I mean yeah that's part of you you said something about earlier Mark you're like they don't seems like they have no idea and I'm sure they don't especially somebody like Trump you know

like who grew up the way he did and his lived life he always has lived they you know he can't really know how much anything costs or how far money goes or whatnot like how would he? I was watching a

In interview, there's a, this video gave a part of the AME promotions for Succession where Karen Calkin was talking about how in Succession they have a wealth consultant. By succession is a great show if you have access to HBO, I should watch it. But the wealth consultant told the most mind-blowing thing the guy told them was that, well, rich people don't have winter coats. They would have no reason to ever win a coat because they go straight from their car to their plane to their to a to a dugout and a door for them so bulky uncomfortable winter coat is just like why would you have that right it was just like oh even that's a real thing yeah and

karen kulkin's rich by the way he's he his brother had been in movies since they were five but he's not wealthy he's too has a winter coat yeah yeah that old chris rock joke the difference between rich and wealthy is like shekel o'neill is rich the guy that signs his checks is wealthy yeah and yeah So Trump, at least on paper, he has access to the lifestyle of a wealthy person, even if he's always underwater and joke on his finances. So, like, he would never, he's never, he hasn't carried a wallet. I mean, like, how funny would it be if the debate, I know the Cropox News is doing it, so they'd never do it,

but they should just ask, just turn the debate into prices right, and just ask them the prices of stuff. That'd be the best comedy content. Yeah, right. Dustin Berg says sadly my grandma will act like it's a huge favor of Trump did for her. And again, you know, I'm sure. I'm sure there will be. I'm sure a lot of them will.

It seems to me like I would think a huge chunk of those who will respond that way, I would think we're probably going to vote for him anyway if they were going to vote at all. You know, like it seems unlikely to pull many of them off of the fence, but I don't know. But I'm sure many of them will view it as a huge favor he's doing for them. I mean, they did this with the 1,200, right? They, they, they took them like a week or 10 days longer to get the 1,200 out and they went during the first round of COVID relief because Trump wanted the checks to be printed with his signature on a letter from him saying he was doing them a favor.

And he's still losing by 10 points next. So it's like, do people see through this shit, I think, most of them. And like, I'm just, I'm glad your grandma's getting the 200 bucks as she needs it. Right. If she asked you to take her in ballot to the mailbox, you can drop it in the trash. Okay. Eric Beck says, bro,

they are dropping the bomb on the ACA on November 10th. How can people not know this? What's the plan there, Mark? I mean, I know they've been after the Affordable Care Act for forever, but I don't know the specifics of what he's referring to there. When RBG died last week, there was a rate of about,

it's court observers explained. Apparently there's some case before the court now. They would kill, the lower court has killed the ACA. And the Supreme Court, or the full nine of them, because John Roberts has supported the ACA before, would have five to four to four. Vote, because RBG died. It's four to four now,

which means the lower court decision stands. And that here, that decision is supposed to come out next week. So, or in a couple weeks. So I think that's what he's talking about. But also that they, if Trump wins again and they have the Senate, they're going to figure out a way to kill it. They just are. Johnny Eads

I've seen this pointed out before it is weird how this the difference in how people perceive socialism or whatnot FDR Democratic Socialist 14 years as president and people loved it

yeah the New Deal everything with that was one of the largest socialist measures in American political history and was by all accounts of resounding success is it literally

just the cold war, you know, the cold war in the situation with Russia and communism becoming such a boogeyman and socialism being like tied to communism in people's minds. Is that how it became this thing that people are so terrified of? Is that what happened? Because we got some good history with it otherwise. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, uh, I think I saw like, uh, Marshall Blackburn came up earlier. I remember there being like somebody proposed getting rid of the TV at Tennessee Valley Authority or privatizing it. And all the Republicans in Tennessee flipped out because it's rates will go up. It's like, yeah, man.

Yeah. Yeah. But so, I think that that's obviously part of it is like, I mean, by the way, business interests did not like FDR. And if you Google, you Google the business plot and you can go read about how a bunch of a Republicans maybe, maybe not started trying to plan a soft coup to, to have the military overthrow FDR, maybe led by one Prescott Bush,

who was, you know, George HW's dad. Same five families, man. Same five families, always. And but then also, so the Cold War happened, and the right winners took over the whole government. And then, but also what happened was the civil rights movement. And there's an argument you made that what happened is,

we could have socialism when just white people got it. But then when the benefits were distributed evenly, people started clawing it back because of both our benefits. Yeah. Well, I mean, that would check out. It's like the only time any like significant gun control measures have ever been passed is when black people start showing up with guns in public, you know, like when the Black Panthers armed in sales.

So I mean, I would totally buy that what you said. Ronald Reagan outlawed open carry in California because Black Panthers were walking around Oakland with AK-47s. Yep. June Sackett says, don't stereotype older people.

Many of us despise Trump. If I said it like that's what I was doing, I wasn't trying to. My ma-ma hates Donald Trump. I said, somebody said his grandma would look at the $200 as a favor,

and I said, I'm sure a lot of them will, just because, I mean, I'm sure a lot of them will, but I don't, that's, I wasn't trying to imply that, you know, all seniors are,

Trumpers, because like I said, my ma-ma can't stand that son of a bitch. She can't stand that. It's not, by the way, I mentioned earlier, but Trump's underwater with old people now. Seniors aren't his biggest voting block anymore.

His most rock-solid voting block. Young people hate him, old people hate him. It's Jen Exter's man. People 40 to 50 love Donald Trump. That's his big time out right now. So, do you know the stats on, because I remember in the

in the 2016 election, Trump won every single category, subcategory of white person, including, like, you know, white women, although that was the closest one. It was like 5149 or something like that. But do you know, have you seen like numbers on that, like how he's doing across, you know, the different demographics of white people? No. I haven't seen that data. Yeah, I haven't either.

I just wondered because, again, I remember that being a huge talk. point because the first huge talking point was, oh, it's poor white people, it's working class white people, rural white people, that's what carried him to victory. And then some other people, you know, were pointing out, like, hey, just so you know, Trump won every demographic of white

person in 2016. Oh, it's right. If he had lost some of those. Do what? We don't hit. No, we don't. People. Can Trump actually run for a third term in four years? How? Well, pray it never come.

of that. No, he shouldn't be able to but like my thing is like in a world where he has successfully gotten it assuming that the election goes the way the polls show and it goes in Biden's favor or seems to

but he somehow pulls this like basically coup that he's been you know floating for a while if we're in a world where that shit has happened like as far as I'm concerned all bets are off why wouldn't he first of also how much longer can this motherfucker

live. He's like he's in terrible shape. He's old. I know he's rich but god damn. But still, as far as the question in hand, like, I mean, any same person would say no, but I feel like if we're getting in a scenario where that's even something that's getting brought up, because we're already in the middle of his second term,

at that point, like, who the fuck knows, man? Like, they do whatever the fuck they want to do lately. That's the problem. The your problem is like, minority rules being submitted in a lot of ways

whether Trump wins or loses. I mean, all the polls should say that Biden has to win by five points to ensure the wins the electoral college. Electoral College isn't going to be the biggest problem going forward because at some point, Texas is going to be is going to flip, even the people

have been saying it's going to come. But it's definitely just because of demographics. And then you'll have Democrats locked into controlling the presidency, but Republicans are going to be locked into controlling the Senate, because you know we all know the numbers like the California's two senators and so to South Dakota and people are moving especially more diverse younger people are moving to the coast that leaves a much more political power in the hands of older white people in the middle

of the country so it's something like Democrats have to win if the filibuster stays you need a supermajority to pass stuff I think Democrats need to get like 70% of the vote to have a super majority for the Senate which is ridiculous where Republicans only need like or something. So it just doesn't make any sense, but like the minority rules stuff, any of the voting rights act has allowed a bunch of like weird gerrymanding chicanery to happen, closing polling places. And going back to Texas, there was a proposal from a Texas state legislator to do

the electoral college by congressional district within Texas to try to lock in the gerrymandering for the presidential vote. So even if Texans, popular vote in Texas goes for a Democrat or presidential candidate, the electors in Texas, the majority of them would still go to the Republican. Right. They think they've really figured out this game. And we really need a huge, like if Democrats are actually able to take, take back Congress, they're going to have to pass a bunch of new voting rights stuff to try to level the playing field

because this is a, it's getting out of hand. Yeah. Well, Mark you vangered people over here. Although like with Jane earlier, like I don't think that this is, is what Mark was saying, but a lot of people take a lot of Gen Xers have taken offense at the statistics you presented earlier. I guess I am. I'm Gen X and I hate that piece of shit.

This is polling data. It's not about you, Sally. I'm 42. That made me Gen X. I'm the edge of Gen X and millennial or whatever that we're in our generation is. But yeah. I don't know. Look, the last thing, look, I'm a, I'm a white man from a tiny town in Tennessee. Like, the last thing that I would ever intend to do is generalize someone's political opinion based on some kind of superficial demographic.

It's kind of a whole thing. It'd be, I mean, I'm pulling data, like Trump's approval rating with rural white men's like 83%. So it'd be a, it'd be a pretty solid bet to. put you in that bucket. It's just like doesn't happen to be true in no case. Right. So yeah. Y'all, yeah, y'all do you. We're all, you know, we're just want to be put into boxes. Individually, we're all special snowflakes, but we do fit in broad categories we're talking about groups. So you're all, I understand you're all made your own choices and I respect it. So with that said, come and see us next Tuesday.

Who knows what crazy shit will transpire between now and then, but whatever, come what may, me and Mark will be here. We'll see you then. Oh, before we go. I'm reping American Cancer Society. I'm doing Relay for Life walking 27 miles on Saturday. If you like it, throw some money to American Cancer Society for Relay for Life and try to train some cancers. I have a piece of shit. All right. Y'all support the Relay for Life.

Love y'all. See you by. Bye.