Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 779: Project 2025 Threats, AI Jesus is Swole

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

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This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live again in Glorial Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical.

It's political. And there is no rest for the wicked. It is today, Friday, July the fifth. If you're keeping track, we recorded on the third. We recorded on the third. We have to record, Tom wants to have a week off. We don't get a lot of time off. Right. This is a thing that has to happen week to week.

And often the things that we do require a swift response, right? The news changes so quickly. But we have to sometimes record a little early because that's just how we've got to get a little time off. Got to have life. So, so Tom's going to take the next week off. And so we want to make sure we get Thursday show finished. So that's what we're doing right now is not a Thursday show.

It's actually a Monday show we're doing, which is Monday, the no longer, no longer 15th, Monday the 15th. So if the news that you're hearing, if you're not hearing us cover something and you're like, God damn, that's important. It's because I wanted the week, just a week. One week off. One week off. And that's just how this works.

So yeah, so we're actually recording early, but there is some really important stuff to talk about. So it's not like, it's not like the things that we're not going to, we're going to talk about happened so long ago, they're, they're useless. I feel like no matter what some of the stuff we're going to talk about is going to be very relevant. I think so too. And you, you made an effort obviously to find stories that would have some staying power to them. I'm just letting you guys know, because sometimes it happens where you're like, Holy shit, we got to cover that right away. If something like that happened

and you're like, what happened to the Cognizguise? We missed it. It's like, yeah, you know what I'm going to do too? And I was going to, I'm taking a full news break for that time. You're not going to look at anything, huh? Not going to look at anything. I'm not going to listen to any of my news podcasts. I'm not going to, I have a routine, you know, like everybody else does. So I wake up in the morning, I shuffle down the stairs, cursing the sun, I get coffee. And then I immediately put on the daily.

It's the first thing I start my day, and then I immediately put on the daily. It's the first thing I start my day with every day. I listen to the daily, I listen to What Next by Slate, I listen to the journal, and then I listen to Up Next NPR. So those are like, I always listen to those first, and that takes like an hour and a half, as I stagger around trying to get my bearings in the morning and keep myself upright.

I'm not doing that shit at all. Like I've already decided, like I'll wake up when I wake up and I'm gonna listen to something like an audio book. And I'm just gonna take a full news. A news detox. Detox, that's right. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

So I'm not gonna know what's happening. If you want some news cleanser, I can sell you like a news. It's just baking soda, but I'm gonna up market. I'm gonna wake up and I'm going to listen to colloidal silver. That's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to take my iPod and shove it in a juicer. Just will it blend? Yeah, that Vitamix guy. That was a will it? What was that?

What was the company that used to do that? Do you remember the Will It Blends? Yeah. Yeah. Was it Vitamix? It was something else. No, it was Blendtec. tech blend tech. That was a blend Yeah, this is like early. Oh, this was a cop popular internet where the guy used to blend shit He would just say will it blend and he would take an iPod He would turn it into fucking toxic dog

He put shit in there that would catch on fire. Remember do it big writers. It was insane. That was a hilarious I love that shit. I watched so much shit. I'm like, Oh, I bet that'll blend the early, early internet. Really? There's a lot of stuff. Can't compete with it. Do you know what? I can't not watch. So like, I don't, I don't watch a lot of like reels and whatever, you know, I actually try to like avoid them. So, but you can't dismiss reels so that they don't come up. Right. So you can't, you can hide it, and then if you scroll for another 40 seconds, they pop back. They're like, you wanna see these reels?

And I'm like, I don't ever wanna look at reels. But sometimes I'll look at reels because it's almost unavoidable. The ones I cannot not watch, I can't do it, I do not have the power in me not to click on them and watch them, are the giant industrial metal grindinators. Like they'll take a motorcycle and they'll drop it in.

And then the wheels are going super slow, but they're just like these metal crushinators. They gobble it. And they eat it and there's nothing to it. And I'll be like, ooh, eat something else. But then when it eats it, it comes out as strips. It's like a motorcycle strips. I watch them do that.

They could throw anything in there. They could throw my belongings in. I'd be like. Dry it in the sun and put it in a Slim Jim bag and it would taste the same. Slappin' to a Yamaha. I'm so motherfuckin' tired all the time. 10 a.m. tired.

1 p.m. tired. 6 p.m. so tired. All day tired. All right, Tom, we've got to start. We've got to start talking. You know, we talked about it the other day. We talked about Biden the other day. We did. And more has come out about Biden after the fact, after his debate performance.

Yeah. So this story is from the New York Times. Biden tells governors he needs more sleep and less work at night. So he met with a bunch of governors. So he met with these governors to try to persuade them of his fitness. But like part of his message was, yeah, you know, I gotta get some more sleep

and work a little less. And it's like, man, you are asking the American people to give you a job where you need to be always on, always sharp and always available. This is an international job. It has 24 time zones. give you a job where you need to be always on, always sharp and always available. This is an international job. It has 24 time zones. You're still a human being.

You got to sleep, but you got to be the kind of person who can. There are these people, right? You've got to be the kind of person who can be woken in the middle of the night and be sharp. You've got to be the kind of person who could put in a 14 hour day and like chug a fucking energy drink or whatever you got to do and still be sharp and still be like able to project power, project authority, make good decisions. We are in an international, that's an international space. This is not reassuring. This is the opposite of reassuring.

I want to point out too, like before anybody says it, cause I'll say it for you. I don don't think I think Trump is in the same position. I think he probably needs more sleep at night I think he probably you know Definitely fucking did a little performance enhancing drugs before he came to that. I think so too more that he came to that debate I think that Trump Probably is in the exact same position. These people are away from each other by a couple of years. This is not, it's not like we're talking about a 45 year old and an 80 year old. You're talking about a 70, 70,

I don't know how old Trump is, 70 something, 76 maybe, and an 80 year old. So you're talking about people that are really close in age when you get up that far into the age bracket. So I recognize that Trump is probably in the exact same thing. I also recognize too, like I'm one of those people who's thinking this could be an amazing time to energize the party with a younger person. Yes.

Joe were to step down, but I will say this, you know, this is something that, uh, I saw an article about this in the, in, I think it was the New Yorker, and it's a really great point. When a football team is struggling, the most popular person on that team is the second string quarterback. Because everybody always thinks, all we have to do is change this quarterback, and we can change the calculus of everything.

And there are some good things about changing out a quarterback in your mid know, like in your midseason, because that gives people an opportunity to not really know a lot about him, and they have to struggle to kind of figure out what they're gonna do. Now that changes after like one game. Essentially it only gives you like one game worth of surprise. After that they know exactly what he's gonna do, and then they plan for it and they fucking kill him, because he's the second string quarterback!

Probably for a reason. Because he's not as good as the first fucking option. Okay? So I understand that there are some people out there who are really vociferously calling for a replacement and the people who they may replace him with might not be as strong a candidate as Joe Biden is. There's a possibility. There's a lot of people in this country that are older voters that also recognize that Joe is and was sort of a person who reached across the aisle in his last campaign when

he was in the primary. And that may be something that they're not willing to let go of right now. And so while a bunch of younger people may be saying, we need to get a younger guy in there to energize the younger crowd. What if it de-energizes the older crowd who are? People who vote who do and have shown up to the polls for years and years and years So the people who understand the political calculus we hope are the Democratic Party We don't know for sure because we saw how bad they fucked up the Hillary situation

Yeah, so we know for sure that they saw how bad they fucked up the Hillary situation. So we know for sure that they could fuck. They could easily fuck this up. But it also, there's a lot of Monday morning sports call going on right now with a lot of people who are like, should we replace the quarterback or should we not replace the quarterback? Something you said brings me back to a point that, that really we have to continue to make like now and make forever is that the only votes that matter are the votes that are made, right?

So if this country, if the majority of the people in this country that vote are old people, it's not because there's more old people than there are younger people. That's not true. Demographically, that's inaccurate. It's just that they show up and exercise en masse the same power younger people refuse to exercise. When that happens, we as younger people cede control of the country to a winnowing and smaller population of people. There's a fix for that.

The fix for that is young people show the fuck up and exercise the demographic power that they really possess. If they refuse to do that, shame on them for not doing that. We cannot say, oh my god, this country is ruled by old voters. The country is ruled by voters. They're showing up. There's more of us. If we don't show up, that's not on them for doing their civic duty. That's on us for not doing our civic duty, right? There's also something new to the calculus about the presidency since this immunity thing that I think I don't know how to articulate better. So forgive me for saying this poorly, but like we now live in a space where there is an absence of structural protections. And that means that one of the things we need

to really work on hiring for is civility and honor. And I know those are like stupid kind of words and like weasel words, but if there are gonna be no structural protections that make sure somebody acts decently, then we have to be vetting people for their civility and decency. We have to look at that because now we don't have a system that will hold them accountable

That's a great point. That was less important when we thought the system would hold somebody accountable now It's like alright. Well, who's not the worst as a person who has moral fortitude? Without moral fortitude the right thing to do becomes an option Because and that's where we are at legally now the right thing to do becomes an option. And that's where we are at legally now. The right thing to do is now an option. It is not a demand any longer. So there's also that calculus that needs to be made.

And I don't think we had to worry about that as much before. Well, and you can tell who's going to do bad shit if throughout 250 years of us existing, it was all a handshake agreement, basically up until that point, everybody was just saying, okay, well, you're gonna be good in there. And everyone said, yeah, sure. Cause there's nothing really there with any teeth

to stop you from not being good. And up until this point, we've only had one person who said, fuck your face. I'll shake your hand, but I'll lie to it too. And there's only been one person, but everybody else has. Now, even that handshake agreement is gone. Even that little thing which was, well, they'll all act... Now that's open.

Now they actually have a red carpet rolled out to do bad shit. Yep. So you've got to make sure the person you put in there can body check somebody off that fucking red carpet so they don't do the worst shit ever. Yeah. That's, you know, it used to be like there was this, I remember when W, because I'm old as fuck, I remember when W was being elected for the first time and there was a lot of talk.

There was a lot of talk about like, he just seems like a guy I'd want to have a beer with. I remember being super mad about that and being like, we shouldn't be hiring somebody because we want to fucking hang out. We're not going to ever hang out with them. But part of me now is like, we want to hire somebody that seems good. That really like we can feel and seem and vet

and look at a history of actual decency and goodness. There's a lot of flag burners who have got too much freedom. I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat them. Cause there's never two I'll never tease. At least I hope and pray that there are. Cause those liberal freaks go too far. This story comes from the AP. House Democrat is proposing a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court's immunity decision.

Well, that's not going anywhere. Is that okay? Hey man, we don't have a fucking equal rights amendment. Sure. We've been working on an equal rights amendment for checks. Watch, I don't know, 60 years. We don't have that yet. They tried to pass an amendment and there was wide support for it,

or an electoral college elimination amendment. This was back in the day, back in, you know, I think it was around, it was, but even before civil rights times, they tried to pass that amendment and it fucking failed. It fucking didn't make it. I mean, there was a wide support across the country for it and it still failed. You got to get two thirds of the country. It's so hard to do. You've got to get two thirds of the country. It's so hard to do. You might as well just take what you want to happen in the world and put it under your pillow and hope for the fucking political fairy to come and make it happen in comparison to how fucking hard this is. Yeah, this is great. It's the right idea. Sure, it's the right idea. It's the right idea. It's the right salute the right solution when the

Politics of our country are hijacked by a judiciary like this The right solution is to say alright. Well, fuck you. Let's change you have to run the Constitution We'll change the Constitution now you have to do this because it's constitutional The problem is it can't happen. We can't get you need like a fraction You need sick what 60 votes in the Senate to accomplish fuck all at this point. We can't get 60 votes in the Senate to really accomplish fuck all.

We're gonna get two thirds of the states to ratify anything? We couldn't get two thirds of the states to ratify that the earth is round right now. We could not get a, when was the last constitutional amendment, I wonder. Do you have any idea? I bet it's, I bet Cecil,

I bet we've not ratified a constitutional amendment in 70 years. Tom, let me look it up. All right, so here it is, the 27th amendment to the constitution that required any change to the rate of compensation for members of the US Congress to take effect only after the subsequent election

of the House representatives. And that was in, holy shit, 1992. 1992? So it was proposed, and the first state that ratified the 27th Amendment was in 1789. So it was proposed way back when in 1789 It got ratified by Maryland first and then it finally worked its way up to the 39th 39th state to ratify it was in May of

1992 it took 203 years from the time it was first proposed the time it was first proposed. I feel like. I feel like. What a system. Are you fucking for real right now? Are you fucking for real right now? Let's see what the 26 says.

What did you just say? 26 remember. This is a good example. I would feel like this is a good example. I feel like this is a bad example. Hey guys, every eight and an eighth generations will get around to one. And you know what's so funny? You know what's so funny about that is you're doing it to bypass the generational change

to the Supreme. You could have like six Supreme Corpses between now and then. 203 years. Oh, that's so good. All right. So 1971, there was a minimum age of 18 in participation of state and local elections. And I want to plug my other podcast, Lawful Assembly,

Craig, who I co-host with. He was one of those students who helped pass that law. He was one of the students who helped pass that law. He was one of the people who like protested and worked on trying to get that as an amendment. And they got that. That's amazing. No, 1971, 53 years ago. Yeah. 1971. And I want to see how long it took that one. Do they have the state that one was actually proposed before the pangea was still a thing. 71 to 71. So 71 to 71. So it started in Minnesota and the last state to ratify it was the 38th state was Ohio. So, yeah. So 71 to 71. That's a way better track. So I don't want people to

think that the track record is the latest amendment where They finally were just like, hey, you want to pass this? That's 203 times faster than the other one. In any case, this is a pipe trick. This is a genuine pipe trick. In America, amendments passes you. It's as old as the country. It's so amazing. What I want to say, though, is like with the Senate, the Senate is a stupid. It's such a stupid institution.

You have states like Wyoming are on equal footing with places like New York and California and Illinois and places with even Florida places with and Texas places with massive populations. There's there and they have the time they have more horses than they do people. Right. And, and they're, and they have the time, they have more horses than they do people. Right. And they have the same amount of votes. The Senate is a way in which to give landmass votes. That's all it is.

And it's mostly built on a, probably on a slavery institution, so they could give smaller places with actual quote unquote citizens, the same amount of votes. Here you are, Jesus, my superstar. actual quote unquote citizens, the same amount of votes. I love this. I love everything about this. Put on the big screen time.

It's from CNN. AI pictures of Jesus on social media are suspiciously rugged and we only have ourselves to blame. I would love it so much if anyone referred to me as suspiciously rugged. I think that would be great. I would be like, you know what? I'm going to take that with me to the grave. I will have that on my tombstone.

Here lies Cecil, suspiciously rugged. I want to show this picture. Jesus, look at him. Do you remember the book? We both listened to it or you might have read it. I listened to it. It was Julia Sweeney's book about God. She has a really funny story about fucking, you know, rubbing one out to Jesus on the

wall. The sexual awakening of many a young lady and gay man, I think was awakened by a very ripped Jesus. Getting wet and wild with a little Jesus there. Slippery when wet. Oh God, some of these pictures, man. There's like an AI picture in this story of a fantastically handsome Jesus, right?

Like, I'm not gay, but I'm not blind. That's a great jawline. Just gotta say great jawline. Look at that. And just huddling an elderly lady. I also wanna say the beard line on that is perfect because it's not straight, but it's like grown kinda straight.

So you're like, wow, does that guy have just such a great face for a beard, right? Well, also, what a barber. What a barber. Jesus' barber, like Edward what a barber. Yeah. What a barber. Jesus's barber. Like, Edward Scissorhands. I'll tell you what. Beautiful.

A savant. Perfect. A savant. He has Keanu Reeves hair. I also like in this picture, so like, yeah, it does have Keanu Reeves hair. He's like, he's cuddling in a hospital bed an elderly lady, who, by the way, looks mind-numbingly terrified. The fear in this lady's eyes.

It does not look like a good picture. She's not look... She doesn't look like she's being comforted. She looks like, why is this man in my bed? It looks like a movie poster for something you would see around Halloween. Yes! I also want to say too, this is the most important part. The woman seems fine except for like, it looks like she has oxygen rose,

but Jesus has a bunch of shit in his arm Yeah, like why would Jesus be the one in a hospital gown and with a bunch of shit in it? I was thinking to say he in this picture guys. He's doing the comforting, but he's clearly the patient because he's got the hospital gown He's primarily better. Yeah, like AI is insane. AI is like, I don't know. Is this what you want? You're like, that's never what I want. There's too many tubes. You did too many tubes this time. He's got fucking teller tubes coming out of him. How many fingers does he have? Oh, they get better at fingers.

The hands actually look pretty good. Yeah. The hands, her hands. Her hands, look at her hands Cecil. Her hand looks terrifying. It looks like the Cryptkeeper. It looks like the cryptkeeper. It did a job of trying to make her as gaunt as possible and as skinny and as thin and genuinely terrifying. You're right, this is not a good look. Then you scroll down to another AI generated image of Jesus.

Again, ruggedly handsome, suspiciously handsome. And they're all Caucasian Jesus. They are all incredibly Caucasian Jesus. My daughter, Cecil, this is really funny, she has on her phone, she loves to play with character AI. Okay. So, and I guess character AI, like it's her favorite thing. Like she plays with it like all day.

So she mostly like talks, typing back and forth to Sonic the Hedgehog characters, because he's got a weird thing about like Shadow the Hedgehog. It's a whole weird thing. But we were in the car the other day, I was picking her up from camp, and she's like, oh, a character AI came out with a thing where you can call character AI on the phone through the app and you can have a conversation. She's like, who do you want to talk to? I'm like, I don't know, Aislinn.

I don't know any characters I want to talk to. I'm driving the car. And she's like, let's talk to to talk to? I'm like, I don't know, Aislinn, I don't know any characters I want to talk to. I'm driving the car. And she's like, let's talk to Jesus. We're both start laughing, right? Cause Jesus is one of the characters. And so she puts Jesus on the phone through AI and he comes on and he's got like a heavy Italian accent. Like Jesus boyardee. Oh, amazing. And we're like, wait, and I asked him like, why do you have it? Like a contemporary Italian accent Jesus.

And then Jesus on the AI gets real snippy. Like he's like kind of a bitch. Like we have this like testy back and forth about the legitimacy of his chef boy, our D accent. It's crazy. AI is fucking nuts.D. accent. It's crazy. AI is fucking nuts and AI Jesus. AI Jesus is such a little bitch. Here's another picture of the swolest,

rippest Jesus you've ever seen. He's got fucking the vainiest arms and he's ripping his shirt open to show you the sacred heart of Jesus. Dude, I have never seen a more vascular anything. Yeah, it looks like he has Brock Lesnar arms. I've gone to body worlds at the Museum of Science and Industry where you can only see the vascular system of a human being.

That was less vascular than this guy. If I even have, this guy has extra veins. I have more veins than you need. Oh, the boxing. The boxing Jesus has Jesus with the crown of thorns on which seems like it would be bad for boxing. They call that the singer. They don't let you use that anymore. But he's got he's got boxing gloves on and he's punching he's punching a devil who is also fucking shred bro. The devil. Oh yeah.

Shredded man. The devil's in his cut phase right now. That devil is keto. 100% keto. And then there's, it says amen or skip I guess. But here's why, here's why this is interesting. And here's why we need to talk about this. Is because AI isn't an intelligence. All it does is just gather a bunch of shit that humans do.

It takes all that shit that humans do and it stuffs it all into a big thing. And then it says, you like this, right? So which is why, like, AI recipes suck. Because you say, I would like you to make an AI recipe, and it'll make you fluffernutter beef welling or something. You know, where you think, that's disgusting. But you know, you're making a nothing because you know, humans like this and this, and this is the exact same thing.

It can't, it can't, one of the things it can't do too is understand the different types of reverence, right? Humans have a type of reverence for Jesus that is different than a type of reverence for a handsome person, but it sort of sees Jesus as a handsome person because it looks at a bunch of images of him as a handsome person. And then it's like, well, why don't I just exaggerate all the features you made to make him handsome

to make him even more handsome? Well, and it's like, AI reflects society back to itself in some ways, right? Because that's what it does, but it does not filter society in any way. What's funny to me though, is that we always paint Jesus in ways that are conventionally sexually attractive. Like, what we're saying when we do that is like,

here's God, I'd fuck him. Fuck the shit out of God. I'd fuck God. Oh, man, I'd fuck him. Get in here. Ride him hard and put him away wet. Are you kidding me? When you go to heaven, it's just pony by genuine. Like that's all that's playing.

It's like, right. Yeah. Jesus is in a pony suit. Come ride me, big boy. You know what? I'm starting to warm on this heaven thing. Sexy heaven. Sexy heaven sounds great. That's a good sound. Sexy heaven is actually a sex dungeon. That's sexy hell is the sex dungeon.

Yeah, we're both okay. Yeah, we're both alright. Actually like sexy heaven is like what the misogynist Muslim belief where you get like, you die a martyr and you get like all the virgins. Oh yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top.

Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Like there's like a velvet rope just to get to the top.

Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Yeah, you get like a whole line up. Yeah, you get like a whole line up virgins? You get like a whole line up. You get... Yeah. Like, there's like a velvet rope just to get to you. You have somebody checking their ID here. No, you don't. No, you don't.

No, you don't. It's like when Mr. Burns goes to the steakhouse where you pick your own cow. It's like, oh, that's a feisty fellow. Oh, man. Anywho, what are we doing here? What's the plan? The plan? You're our lawyer. It's a figure of speech. You're going to be fine.

This story is from AP News. Giuliani is disbarred in New York DC, according to this article. Good. I think this is great. Get rid of, you know, you're not going to be able to do a lot, I think federally to these people because there's so many people in the federal government that are covering for them. And they're doing a good job of covering for them. We, we had a lot of hopes on Jack Smith, but now they're even questioning the legitimacy

of Jack Smith and in New York. And I think that's a for them. And they're doing a good job of covering for them. We had a lot of hopes on Jack Smith, but now they're even questioning the legitimacy of Jack Smith. And in the recent decision that was the immunity piece, Clarence Thomas just goes off into the distance and says, by the way, by the way, I just want to mention everybody

that I think Jack Smith is fucking an illegal appointed position. So maybe we should reconsider, like out of nowhere. He's just some random dude screaming, he's like screaming Freebird at a fucking Taylor Swift concert. What it is, I think, is it's a softball and dog whistle to Eileen Cannon.

Absolutely. To be like, hey Eileen. I got you, I got you. This is a good way for you to dismiss this case. You can find a problem't worry. I got you. I got you. This is a good way for you to dismiss this case. You can find a problem here and we'll cover you. We'll cover you.

I think that's absolutely like. Absolutely. Yeah. But at the same time, you're like, come on, you shouldn't be able to, but there you go. But so there's not a lot of protection, I think, at the highest levels. But what's great is we're seeing these states that understand the rule of law and understand that what they did was a horrible thing. And hopefully we see, you know,

Giuliani at like fucking Sephora or whatever, trying to sell concealer for the black wives on the side of his face. Do you think that a way to hold accountable this administration is not through the administration themselves, because obviously that's that's done deal Yeah, but by making it so unpalatable for him to have an accomplice So yeah, yeah can't really do that much

Without other people also acting and if all the people who are acting all end up in jail Is that a way to hamstring or create pressure? Because we are seeing that like all these special electors, these bullshit false electors, like there's case after case after case. So if somebody tapped me on the shoulder was like, hey man, do you want to be a fucking special, super ultra elector or whatever,

an alternate false elector? I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. All those other guys are in jail. If I was like, hey, do you want to be the mouthpiece for my bullshit? I'd be like, yeah the fuck out of here. All those other guys are in jail. If I was like, hey, do you want to be the mouthpiece for my bullshit? I'd be like, yeah, you can say that. That's fine for you, man. But like all these other guys are in jail.

I'm not doing it. I wonder if that's the only way to apply pressure is to make it impossible to be an accomplice to these crimes. Yeah, but does that consolidate power in the worst possible way though? Does that suddenly take away every other voice in the room that could possibly be a negative voice because that pressure has been applied. So now the only voice in the room is the one is the dictator's voice,

the one that can't be hurt. But I wonder, yeah, I agree with that. I wonder though, how much, because I think about like, and maybe this is the bad analogy. So like, I'm like a, in my company, I'm like a middle management boss, right? So I've got a bunch of smaller bosses that work under me. I can't actually do a whole lot without the help of a bunch of other people, right? So like, I need to get HR involved to do something. Like if I want to like fire you,

I can pick up the phone and fire you, right? No problem. But like IT, accounting and HR also all have to do fire you. I can pick up the phone and fire you, right? No problem. But like IT, accounting, and HR also all have to do their work. Because if they don't, then they have access to the computers. They're still getting paid. Yeah. Right. So like, yeah, I can fire him, but like functionally can I perform the act of firing? That's a good point. I wonder if like, if you're Trump and you want to be like, hey, let's get a false slate of electors. And everybody's like, I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. Because I'll go to jail and he can't actually do the next thing.

And what is also important is that these are states that are doing this to him and not the federal government. Because Trump can change what the federal government does. If the Justice Department were putting some sort of sanctions on him, he could stop that. But this is a state that is doing something. Right.

And he can't reach across that line and say, I'm'm gonna tell you what to Do in the state he can certainly pressure people that are in that state to maybe like the governor to pardon somebody or whatever If they're go up for crimes, but he certainly can't be the one to do it himself He has to ask somebody else to do it and those governors or whatever don't have the same sort of protections He does so that down the road, what could happen is, is there could be a retribution for something for some sort of criminal way

in which you pardon somebody where you just, you know, so there's a, you're right, this is also the best way to do it too. Just go after him through the states because we see that if Trump is elected, he's gonna rule with, you know, a lot more power and you've got to do it in any way you can. You've gotta pull that power away from him.

In a lot of ways to me, it feels like the defamation suits. Yeah, right. It's like, all right, we can't stop you from saying it. I get that. But what we can do is make it so that once you've said it, everyone in your orbit, like nobody wants, Trump is already having a hard enough time

finding legal representation. Like if everybody who's in his orbit eats shit, at some point there'll be less people willing to be in that orbit. Yeah, they'll just jettison and not come back. I hope. Yeah. Have you ever been beaten by a wet spaghetti noodle by your girlfriend because she has a twin sister and you got confused and fucked her dad?

Well, that's how it feels to drive a Ford F-250. This story's from the Daily Beast. Man behind the 2025 project just said the quiet part out loud. I wanna play, it's only 10, it's like 10 seconds of tape. So I'm just gonna play it really quickly. That we are in the process of the second American revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.

So that's the quiet part out loud. He basically said, look, here's the deal. It's gonna be bloodless if you want, but the obvious implication there is if they let it remain bloodless, it will remain bloodless, but we're ready to bring blood if necessary. Yeah, what he means, I think, by this is as long as the left acquiesces to our demands,

we won't kill anybody, but we are willing to kill for this set of ideas and ideals. And it's like, yeah, well, I watched it in January 6th. Yeah, I watched it. I had this crazy thought that might get us kicked off of YouTube and I'm sorry if it does. We can edit it out if it does. But I was wondering the other day,

would it have been better if the, politically speaking, and like for the history of the company, or the country, if the insurrectionists had caught a Congress person. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And killed them. Sure, yeah. Because that was their intention, right?

Like I'm not saying I want, I very much want to be clear. I'm not like, hey, I wish somebody had died that day. But I think that if a sitting member of Congress had been caught and hurt, held captive, killed, whatever, I think that the calculus would have very fundamentally shifted. I don't know that that's true for sure,

but what if they had succeeded just a little more? You know, part of me wonders if we have kind of the vaccine problem with the insurrection because the insurrection ultimately did not accomplish its goals of finding and killing anybody or ultimately stopping and reversing the election. It did accomplish anything and nobody in that moment, no there were no bodies on the floor dead in that moment. People died afterward but they did not die right then and there, except for that. The insurrectionists got shot.

Babbit, I think. One insurrectionist didn't like try to break. You watch that video. They break through a window and try to squeeze themselves through a fucking window. They should have been shot. That was the right call. But like, I wonder if they had caught someone in power, would everything be different now? It might be.

And I kind of think it would be. It might be, it might be. I also think too, would it have been different if there were more people there to defend the Capitol and those people who came at the Capitol got roughed up like some of the Black Lives Matter protesters did? I wonder how that would change the calculus too. You know, everything happened the way it happened and there's no way to go back on that to know. But there is some interesting questions to wonder,

would that be more of a deterrent or less of a deterrent in the future? They'd be like, look at how they treated us. You know, there's all this stuff that could, you know, swirl up from that. And the same thing's true about what would happen with a, would it make it so that more politicians would be willing to stand up against them?

Or would it make some of those politicians be like, fuck that, I'm 100% for this mob. You know, if they can get in here and do that, I don't wanna be the next person. I don't wanna be the bad side of that mob. So who knows which way? Is it worse or better? You know, it could be.

It's just that like we had, the reason it occurs to me so much is like when I was reading this story, it's like What they're calling for is bloodshed and they're saying like we will take power If we don't get the power where we want we will take it by force So you can surrender now or we will kick your doors down and there will be blood in the streets But as soon as blood starts flowing then all of a sudden there's chaos and we never know how that's gonna end up, right? It's not like when the blood starts flowing that there's a guarantee of success. You don't get to hang a mission accomplished banner

Above your fucking aircraft carrier with certainty. We know that right soon as the blood starts flowing It's chaos and nobody knows how it's gonna play out. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I also feel like, and I, I, this guy is, this guy is saying a message that is chilling. He is saying it's, but the, I'm just going to talk about the delivery of this from this guy. I am always just blown away by the people who try to deliver the most threatening message. And he looks like Dr. Phil after a really difficult juice cleanse. He does. You know, don't get me wrong. I know the message is chilling and I realize the message is true.

And I also realize that the message, it means a threat. So don't get me wrong. But at the same time, I'm like, go fuck yourself. Bring that weak shit over here. Uh huh. You know, like, like this is a guy who's these people act tough all the time. They do this thing where they have this much like I'm a macho man and this is who they're trying to appeal to. Right. He's not trying to appeal to anybody else out there except for people who love toxic masculinity. So he's got gotta be as toxically masculine as possible while not appearing toxically masculine at all.

Yeah, man. And like, it's amazing to me the tough talk of a bunch of suburban dads who can't run a 5K. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And you're like, yeah, man, like, you're going home at night.

You are not a revolutionary. Get the fuck out of here, Shay. I also wanna point out. Okay, Chase, calm down. You are not a revolutionary. Get the fuck out of here, Shay. I also want to point out. Okay, Chase, calm down. But I also recognize too, it takes two calories to shoot a gun. It does. It's nothing, right?

So I understand that and I recognize that. I'm just talking about the facade that they put up. Same, yeah. I'm not talking about the actual gauging of their threats, right? Yeah, now I want to make clear, like there's an absurdity to the toughness of something that doesn't require toughness. Right?

Like acts of violent rage do not require a toughness of character or spirit. Like what requires a toughness of character or spirit is to be in this country, a minority or a person of color who perseveres in a system designed to fucking kill them. That's toughness, right? It's tough to be like a woman at a bar who has to fucking cover her drink all the time

so she doesn't end up getting fucking roofied and raped. That's toughness of spirit. It's tough to be a lot of things. It's not tough to have a fucking AR-15 you bought with a credit card sitting in your fucking guest room somewhere and be like, yeah, I'll shoot somebody with it. Like you might cause some damage. I'm not saying you're not violent and problematic and dangerous.

You are, but you're not tough. There's no tough. That's not what tough means. Yeah. I recognize the same thing. And the thing to me is always the juxtaposition of what, what seemed to be a bunch of soft dudes who are also not, not going to be in the front lines, right?

Here's a dude who's saying it'll remain bloodless if they let it, but that guy's not going to have a gun in his hand. That guy's going to motivate a base of people who are going to do the work for him. This is a guy who's not, he's not getting his hands dirty. This is the architect for him. This is a guy who's not, he's not getting his hands dirty. This is the architect of 2025. We know it's terrifying, but he's not going to do that work. Yeah. 99% of the time, those who call for violence are calling for someone else to commit. Please someone else, can you do a violence? Yeah. to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. So here's a story that sounds good and isn't

because of what's on the side of it. This is from Michigan Live. Michigan's set to become the 20th state outlawing the gay panic defense. So hey, go Michigan, but also what the fuck 30 other states? Jesus Christ, dude. For those who aren't familiar with the gay panic defenses, I killed somebody or committed some other act of violence because a gay person came on to me and I fucking freaked out. Allegedly. Allegedly. Because

guess what? In most cases that gay person is dead now. Yeah. So if that gay person is dead, the only person who's saying it is... Mm-hmm. And so that also opens up to a bunch of terrible closeted people who may just be rejected and then could murder somebody for it. This is, in those states that have this, this is essentially a homosexual hunting license. Really? I'm shocked. I was shocked that 60 percent, this is essentially a homosexual hunting license. I am shocked. I was shocked that 60%, 60%, 30 states, man, are just like, yeah, that's a legitimate defense.

Can you imagine like, like being the family of somebody who was murdered and, and, and you've got to go and hear this defense as if there's any rationality other than evil. There's some legitimacy to a guy being like, I was just really afraid for a minute and I had to get my weapon and murder somebody with it. I murdered somebody because I'm a bigot is not a defense. It's not at all. Not even remotely. That's not a defense.

It's not. How can that be a defense? And it's a defense in most of the country. That's I fucking am floored by this of the states I don't want to say most of the country because that my people move it like well actually the geometry by by demographic, right? I'm sure actually the by demographic. It's not it's but but in most of the country in 30 of these states you can go to and you can have a gay panic defense where you panic because somebody says can have a gay panic defense where you panic because somebody says, um, can I buy you a drink or something like that?

Right. And like, that's not to say that that defense will be successful. No, no, no, but it's a viable one, but it's a defense that like, you should not be able to even raise, right? It would be like if the defense for raping somebody was, but I wanted to do that. That's the same thing. There's nothing there. Like there's nothing, there's literally nothing there. It's burden shifting to the victim of a crime. That's all that it is.

And the fact that you can ever burden shift in a way that's like, I did this because I'm a bigot. My bigotry is the animus that causes me to murder. And in 30 states, you're like, let's hear him out. Let's hear that one out. Let's see where the defense goes with this because I'm a little curious. Fucking hell.

You brought up something before we started recording that I want to remind you of. You had said, what if these states had this for women who were approached in a bar? Yeah. What if women at a bar were like, that guy scared me so I shot him. Right? Guy came on to me, I felt scared and I shot him. Right? I'll be honest, that's massively more legitimate.

It's more likely. Because women are often approached, I mean like, perpetually, frequently harassed, approached, pestered, and victimized, right? But women can't raise this defense. Women can't even raise a defense in most states and almost never is it successful that a pattern of systemic personal intimate partner violence creates a situation that only violence will let them get out of that. That is oftentimes an unsuccessful defense or defense that cannot be raised. That's an entirely legitimate truth about living in a pattern of systemic intimate partner violence.

If women were like, yeah, guys that approached me at the bar, if you scare me, I get to fucking shoot you. Men would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Absolutely not. I have the right to scare the shit out of women. Obviously I'm a guy. It's my God given dick right. That's so you're absolutely no. And think about this. The, you had said that, you know, there's a, there's a lot more women that get, you know, uh, approached by dudes than it would ever happen with a gay person. But I also want to point out too, there's also a better chance that the woman would be victimized and there would be more

violence. Because when you think about the way violence flows, it flows from mostly from men to women. I'm not saying there's no women to man violence, but there's a certainly a bigger slope on the other side. They're not even remotely comparable. Like it's like, if you look at the numbers, it's like, you know, like as a quick aside, like when we talk in this country about, well, we have a gun problem. We don't entirely have a gun problem because like there's no gun problem

with respect to like women killing people. Like statistically, that's not a problem. We have a gun problem where men kill people with guns, right? So we have a male dominated gun problem, a male, an almost exclusively male gun problem, right? So we have a male dominated gun problem, a male, an almost exclusively male gun problem, right? It's weird and intentional and tells us everything when we look and say, I refuse to look at the one demographic marker that is most highly predictive of violence. And that's whether or not somebody's male. Yeah.

And you are always busy trying to save the end zone layer. Oh, zone layer. Ozone layer. Oh, Frank, you never tried to understand. How can you say that? When I sank every penny I had into buying that 1,000 acres of Brazilian rainforest, then I had it slashed and burned so we could build our dream house. Frank, how could you be so insensitive? Insensitive?

You think it's easy displacing an entire tribe? You try it sometime. This story comes from CNN. What's at stake easy displacing an entire tribe? You try it sometime. This story comes from CNN. What's at stake for the climate if Trump wins? A catastrophic outcome. Neat. Oh, hey, hey, hey. Like there's no math anybody is going to do math for where you're like the world is better under Trump. The world is better under an actual potato. If an actual potato with a functioning vice president were in charge, I'd be like, yes, I vote Idaho Russet. I'd take that fucking Liz Truss lettuce right now.

Are you kidding me? 100% that, man. I don't even care how rotted it is. Send it over. It could be literally the same head of lettuce. I'm good. If we said like, all right, what if we had a new rotating president every six weeks appointed

at random from throughout the country or Trump, I'd be like, I'll take the random six week rotation. Random person. That is a terrible idea. A genuinely horrifying idea. I'll take it. Done. Sold.

Absolutely. Can we give the nuclear briefcase though to someone else? Can we at least hand that to someone else? So the football needs to go elsewhere. Here's the thing, you get to cut a couple ribbons and you get to eat in the fucking, the chef gets to cook a couple of meals for you. That's what you get.

You get to use the good bathroom. You get to use the nice bathroom at the White House. If you're like Steve Jobs, you put your feet in it. I'll cut it. But they talk about in this story about like pulling out of the Paris Accords. Like cutting down a bunch of other climate stuff that has been passed. His attacks on, you know, watch him talk and watch him attack low flow toilets, low flow

dishwashers, low flow shower heads. He attacks any kind of EV. He hates wind turbines. There's all these, the solar power, you name it. And he has no knowledge of how any of these things work. He has no knowledge whatsoever. It's all fucking magnets to him. And it's all crazy shit, he says, where he'll say, they made a solar airplane and when the

sun goes down, it crashes. For real. and you think No one could really believe that right and you and you think that's not a thing that normal people believe but Trump believes it He thinks that wind turbines cause cancer. Do you remember that that like windmills one of the oldest technologies? Why windmills have been around like go to the Netherlands man? There's like when I go on a bike ride sometimes I go on a bike ride when I go into down the path up through Geneva like there's a great big fucking you know ye olde style windmill And I ride past it. I'm like that's like a 300 four or five so whatever hundreds a year old technology there's not like oh my god because

a year old technology. There's not like, Oh my God, because rotation cancer. I have uncontrolled telomere splitting because of a fucking rotational arm on a guy. That's not a thing. What are you talking about? I love the, you're afraid of sharks and boats and fucking showers and dishwashers. This guy is insane. I love the idea that a fucking windmill is going to cause you cancer, but fucking you could suck the fucking exhaust out of a tailpipe. Right. You're fine. He wants the biggest Roland colonist fucking things out there, but he won't, he won't even entertain anything EV.

He talks about how, and that's one of the things too is Trump is selling the exact same thing to people, but lying to them. So what he'll say is something like, they're going to make you buy all this EV stuff. They're going to make you buy all this. Demand it. They're going to mandate you buy all this EV stuff. But what he's mandating is essentially the opposite. He's going to rip it all off the market.

He's going to make it so there's no subsidies for it. So no, anybody who could possibly get an EV won't, they can't afford it or they won't get it because the subsidies are there to help subsidies for it. So no anybody who could possibly get an EV won't they can't afford it or they won't Because the subsidies are there to help people afford it, right? They're there specifically as a tax incentive So we don't pollute the environment. It's a smart thing to do It's a smart thing for the government to be involved in he'll whip all those things away So when you go try to do this, it's not available to you So he's actually closing off your options instead of expanding them like he says. Because of freedom though. What you keep missing is the Republicans want to protect our

freedom to do less stuff. You're not wrong. They want to protect our freedom to not have our own reproductive choices. They want to protect our freedom to practice only their religion. They want to protect our freedom to read the books that they like. They want to protect our freedom to practice only their religion. They want to protect our freedom to read the books that they like. They want to protect our freedom to only buy the cars they approve of you purchasing. They want to protect our freedom to do all the things that they want you to do. That's how protecting freedom works. That's why you write this with a bald eagle's face. No, what you do is you open your mouth really wide and the bald eagle pukes it in your mouth. That's how their freedom works.

It's a fucking disaster, guys. The calculus couldn't be simpler. It's so bad. And like anybody who cares about the environment, if you don't, if you stay home, you're basically just being like, I'm going to open up every aerosol can today. You might as well. Do you remember when he was like talking about how in his apartment, he would spray so much hairspray?

Do you remember this like hairspray thing? He's like, yeah, my apartment in New York, I spray like, you know, hairspray into the air until there's like a cloud of it. And they're saying that's going out into the world, but it's all staying in my apartment. And I don't believe that these parafluorocarbons, and he didn't say that, like, but it's all staying in my apartment. And I don't believe that these parafluorocarbons, and he didn't say that, like, but like, are, you know, gonna hurt anyone, because in my apartment, all it stays on my greasy dome

of a fucking head, and you're like, do you think you live in a hermetically sealed environment? Especially not where you live. Right? Where only air, like air gets trapped in, and that's all you get to breathe forever once? Yeah, I, it doesn't take a while for you to go through all that air, it turns out, yeah. I? It doesn't take a while for you to go through

all that air, it turns out, yeah. I wish it did. I wish he was in a hermetically sealed environment. He talks like he is, constantly like losing oxygen. There was a really funny tweet where one of these right wing pundits, I think it was Matt Walsh, had posted. He said, remember when everybody was up in arms

about chlorofluorocarbons or whatever, and ozone layer. Where are all those people now? And someone posted and said, well, actually all the people of the world decided that was a really bad idea. We stopped doing it and it fucking repaired itself. Thanks for reminding everybody how this works. Let's take a minute and think about that.

Yes, there was holes in the ozone layer. It was a problem. The problem has been largely resolved and the holes in the ozone layer. It was a problem. The problem has been largely resolved and the hole in the ozone layer has begun stitching itself together. There's actually like we covered articles on this like a few years ago, where there are some places where those CFCs

are being off-gassed through industrial processes and the introduction or reintroduction of that off-gassing is hurting the ozone layer again. So like on lawful assembly, you were talking the other day, like the Cuyahoga River would sometimes catch on fire. Love Canal would catch on fire. Well, that doesn't happen anymore.

Why? Not because like flammable things aren't flammable anymore, but because like we have regulations in place. Yeah, we're fucking EPA, man. Right. But when you fucking pull all their teeth and suddenly the fucking, you're gonna get a flambéed fish when you go on the

Kyle the river it's catching cold But it's like again. It's the vaccine problem. It's like we fixed it. We're just like it was never a problem at all You're right. You're right Bacon soda I got bacon soda Bacon soda I got bacon soda All right, this story is a pretty long story from the New York Times. It's called the opaque industry secretly inflating prices for prescription drugs.

Pharmacy benefit managers are driving up drug costs for millions of people, employers and the government. So this is a pretty complicated and long article. And there's a couple of things here that I think are important for to understand how these things work. So pharmacy benefit managers, they push patients toward drugs

with higher out of pocket costs, and they push people away from cheaper alternatives. Now, the reason that they do this, here's how they work like in broad terms, it's actually fairly complicated. Pharmacy benefit managers make their money by essentially collecting the difference between what the drug costs from the manufacturer

and the price that they negotiate to the employer. So if the drug costs, let's say $3,000 and they can get it down to $300, the pharmacy benefit manager is able to take some portion of that middle space, that $2,700 difference, right? So it is in their benefit, it's to the pharmacy benefits managers to create as much gap as possible, to create as much space between the retail price and the negotiated price as possible because they're getting

paid a percentage in their SPF on the center. If the drug starts off inexpensive, a percentage of a smaller number is a small number. Wow. Right? That's how math works. That's the math. So the goal of a pharmacy benefit manager then would be to inflate the retail price,

to push people toward only covering, to push coverage only to cover expensive drugs that have a high retail price. And then if the drug manufacturer knows that they're only going to get paid a percentage on the retail price, they jack up the MSRP, right? Because they know, all right, well, I'm going to say it's 3000, no one's ever going to pay 3000.

I'm actually only going to get 60% of 3000. So if I really want, you know, $1800 for this drug, I need to claim it's $3000, negotiate it down to 1800, let the pharmacy benefit manager take their cut in the center and then the consumer will pay some other percentage, again, of an already inflated number. And I know it's kind of complicated, but the system is designed to fuck us. It fucks us. The only people who make money are your employer

and the pharmacy benefit manager and the insurance company. And if you just go to the, if you wonder like, why has there been this huge push in drugs right now to like not cover generics wire, like the cost of retail drugs climbing precipitously? It's because pharmacy benefit managers are trying to make their money on that center space. The point being that like the introduction of capitalist forces, profit driven forces

into medicine only works against us. It cannot work for you. So bad. I'm reminded of a story you told recently on the air where we were talking about, you used to work for commission. And at the store where you worked, it was a Circuit City, which was an audio and video

and electronical store. You'd walk in and there'd be things that you wouldn't get any money for so you wouldn't even interact with that space in the store. Yeah. There would be somebody be like, can you help me with the CD? You'd be like, absolutely not. I can't.

Come over and buy a stereo and I will help you all day, but I'm not going to help you there. This is the exact same thing, man. They're basically getting a vig off of what they're selling you. So they're not going to steer you to anything that they're're not gonna make money off of. Why would they do that? It doesn't even make sense as a business model. It makes a tear, it's a waste of their time to steer you towards something

that they can make less money off of. And that's the real problem with this system. If we don't make it so that there's some sort of regulatory body that looks at these people and says, like a national healthcare system, that looks at them and says, fuck your face, we're paying this much money. Then suddenly all these little fucking middlemen,

it's all these people who insert themselves into this. It's like, they're fucking grinding up your medicine and cutting it with baby powder and rubbing your ozempic on their gums just to see if it's real. It's outrageous that this is a system that we have in this country. And it's also, this is not the end

of the middle man in your fucking, because if somebody can make money off this, they're gonna do the same with other stuff in your health insurance. So there's gonna be a therapy benefit manager maybe. And a testing benefit manager. Maybe someday they're gonna be like,, Oh, maybe you know what? We're only going to pay.

We won't pay for your simple blood test. We'll only pay for MRIs or something. And then I'll get caught up the MRI. This is not something that they're going to do their best to make sure that they insert these middlemen because then they get another opportunity to siphon money off the top. Yeah. And like, if you've wondered, like I have, like if you've wondered, you've seen commercials or you're like you're familiar with like a company called GoodRx, right? If you look and you say like,

how is it that the manufacturer of these drugs can give a coupon such that the cost of the drug has all of a sudden changed from $600 to $26. How can that be? It's because the $600 was always a bullshit price. That was the price they had to inflate their prices up to in order to create cushion for the center to make its money to sell them, to sell that idea that they're saving money to the, uh, to, to the actual like insurance company. The drug was never $600. They can give you a coupon through something like GoodRx or a manufacturer's coupon, which

they now advertise on TV. They advertise on TV that you can just buy this drug directly from the manufacturer. The manufacturer still has an MSRP on that drug that is wildly inflated because they do that to work through this insurance benefit manager system. But if you want to buy it direct from the manufacturer, they'll give you a coupon that all of a sudden brings the cost of the drug down to next to nothing. That system, when you start trying to figure out,

well, wait a minute, how does that, how, why would that work? It doesn't work. It works because we've created middle spaces where people get in the way and you know who's harmed the most are the people who are uninsured or underinsured. Because they're the people who are paying the sticker price or closer to the sticker price. All the people who have really solid insurance or you know have a little bit of extra scratch, they're just fine. The system works. I mean, they're not just fine. The system doesn't work for anybody, actually.

The system does not, I don't wanna pretend. The system does not work for anybody. Drugs are far too expensive. But it is at least occasionally financially palatable or possible. But like, if you're uninsured or underinsured, something that never really cost anybody, not me, not the pharmacy benefit

manager, not my employer, not the insurance company, never cost anybody. Nobody paid $600 except for the guy with no insurance. The guy with no insurance is the one who pays that $600 because that false or fake bill or fake price was inflated in order to grease the wheels of all of these other guys with their fucking hands out in the center of the system. It's a crime. This should be criminal. Like we cannot continue to have a profit motive

interjected into our ability to gain access to life-saving care. It's so interesting too, because it's a human right, right? Healthcare is a human right. And what we're doing is we're inserting as many car salesmen as we can in between you and the product. Yeah. And it doesn't make any sense to do that. There's no real sense to that. The only people

that benefit are these big companies, these big companies that, and then, you know, like clearly the companies that are making these more expensive drugs are benefiting too, right? Because they're like, well, they're shifting people over and it makes more sense for us to keep raising our prices. Cause if we do, then these pharmacy benefit managers, they're going to pick our drugs over the generics because they're making bigger cut. And then they're going to, they're going to sell this to the, to the insurance company

who's going to sell it to the person who's going to have to pay a bigger cut of that because it's a copay type thing. And so now you're paying a bigger cut and you're also paying for your insurance. And then your insurance goes up because then they got to pay for it. All these costs go up because people realize they can make more money in the system. They can keep on going up and getting more and more water. And it's your fucking water. And the other thing that's happening right now as we speak is there is an absolute crisis

in generic drug manufacturing. Because these pharmacy benefit managers have squeezed and squeezed and squeezed so hard on the profit margins pushing people to more expensive drugs, it has become almost impossible to make a profit and make money making generic drugs. That's why if you go to try to get a prescription field right now, there is a list. There's a huge list right now. We've never seen this to this degree in our lifetimes. There is an enormous list of drugs that are essentially unavailable and have been for months and months and months and months. They're unavailable because nobody's manufacturing them and nobody's manufacturing them because there's no money to be made because they've squeezed all

the money out of that which was inexpensive, out of that market where those drugs should be available at a reasonable cost. So now you go to like fill your prescription and nobody's got it. Like my kids, two of my kids have prescriptions that they've not been able to fill in more than six months. There is nowhere to fill it.

Because like, and this is kind of crazy, the pharmacy benefit manager in my case won't actually pay for the brand name drug. They require to pay, they'll only pay for the generic drug. The generic drug, however, is no one's manufacturing it. So these drugs are essentially unavailable unless you pay cash. And then if you pay cash, they're fantastically expensive and they're fantastically expensive because the prices have been jacked the fuck up by pharmacy benefit managers.

So like, you're either out of pocket hundreds of dollars a month, like a fucking car payment, for something that when it was a generic was $25. It's crazy. What you need to do is you first need to take the pharmacy benefit manager to the shore, then you have to go back across, and you gotta pick the drugs up, and bring them out of shore. Then you take the go back across and you gotta pick the drugs up. You bring that ashore.

Then you take the pharmacy benefit manager with you. There you go. Back. Okay. And that's why I didn't think about it because I was, I had the fox with the pharmacy benefit manager. And then I had the pharmacy benefit manager with the grain. That's why I couldn't do it.

I did the wrong thing. And then I traded wood for sheep and I built my road in the wrong spot and it was a whole fucking thing. I wanna say too, this reminds me of where we're headed with housing. Yeah. That there's no starter homes anymore. The only thing that's getting built is these big expensive homes because that's where all the money is. And so the money, the path of least

resistance is capitalism. And so the path of least resistance is I can make more, I can make more scratch off of these really expensive homes than I can off of starter homes. So I won't make a bunch of starter homes for the people who need those starter homes. Instead, I'm going to make homes for people who already have a ton of disposable income and are guaranteed to get mortgages and I can unload them very quickly. And so that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to stay in that business because that business is good. And then what happens to all the people across the Country who need to buy a starter home. Well, I'm sorry. You're fucked. You're going renting literally forever Yeah, and like, you know like a lot of like a lot of political issues

There are really easy common-sense solutions to that problem that you were just articulating Like we're never going to do them because they fly in the face of the interests that keep people in power in power Like the solutions are fairly straightforward. You eliminate foreign investment in single-family real estate So you just eliminate that there can't be foreign or corporate investment in single-family real estate Okay. Well that that would actually be a huge deal almost a quarter of single-family homes in the height of the 2022 housing buy were quarter of single family homes in the height of the 2022 housing buy were purchased by hedge funds and other cash buyers that were not individuals looking to live in those homes. They were large landholders of some kind. So you eliminate foreign money and you eliminate

corporate money from the single family real estate game entirely. You just get rid of that and then you subsidize just like we did post-World War II, you subsidize the building of high quality, reasonably priced single family homes or multi-family homes. We don't do any of those things. These are not actually complicated solutions. They're very straightforward. But hedge funds lobbyists are gonna be like, no the fuck you're not.

Big foreign money is gonna be like, no the fuck you're not. And we're a bunch of fucking like political pussies. We won't stand up to these people because they fill our coffers and they fund our campaigns. There's one more piece I want you to read. I want you to read that bullet right there, Tom. This is also about local pharmacies. The pharmacy benefit managers, which are responsible for paying pharmacies on behalf of employers

are driving independent drug stores out of business by not paying them enough to cover their costs. Small pharmacies have little choice, but to accept these low ball rates because the largest pharmacy benefit managers control an overwhelming majority of prescriptions. The disappearance of local pharmacies limits healthcare access for poorer communities,

but ultimately enriches the pharmacy benefit managers' parent companies which own the drug stores or mail order pharmacies. One of them is CVS. One of them is, that's mine. That's mine. Mine is CVS Caremark. And that's, and that's one of these people literally owns one of the biggest chains in

the country. I just saw recently, Walgreens shut down a bunch of stores. They started closing a shit ton of stores. Well, who's going to open up in those locations? They sure as shit look like CVS locations to me. They're going to be your future CVS location guaranteed. And this is a company that's, I mean, in any other field, we would be like, Hey man, that, that feels like insider trading shit. Like you shouldn't be able to do that. That seems bad. You shouldn't be able to like, we, we recognize this in some places, but in other places, we just watch it atrophy the

market. Yeah. And it's crazy that antitrust legislation hasn't looked at this and said, wait a minute, you're negotiating on behalf of you to drive prices up for the consumer to enrich yourself in two different places, both at the retail level and at the benefit manager level. This is absolutely insane. This cannot stand. I will whack your hand with a ruler.

I'm tearing here. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this early show we put together. Like we said, if something big happens, I may go like live or something, if something something big happens, I may go live or something if something really big happens, but I don't know. Tom's gonna take a week off. Tom is gonna unplug.

I promise to only text Tom cat photos for the next week. So that's gonna be it for this week. We're gonna catch you next week. We're gonna leave you like we always do with the Skeptic Screen. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno Babylon bullshit.

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nuts shame and healers evangelists conspiracy Antworms, Atlantis, Dolphins, Truthers, Berthers, Witches, Wizards, Nuts, Shaman Healers, Evangelists, Conspiracy, Double-Speak, Stigmata, Nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, Evidential, Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios LLC. Cognitive Dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any

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