Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 110: MAGA Morse Code
Episode Date: August 22, 2019This week it's Tarence and Tanya covering everything from Hal Rogers to truckers to the Chosen One himself, Donald Trump. We also do a little bit of Speak Your Piece for the first time in...months?...
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Yeah, my phone is down to 8%.
So that means essentially I'm down to 8%.
So you're getting me at about 8%.
You didn't bring a charger to work today?
I never bring a charger to work.
If I can't make it from daylight to dark without a phone charge, I got a problem.
When I used to work in the office, I used to have a...
Charge all day long.
I had a separate charger there.
I'd charge all day long.
My phone never went without charge. that feels like a slippery slope no i unhook in the morning and i gotta make it to the end of the day or i just have to go home
yeah it's over i don't even know what i don't even remember like what it feels like to go to
an office every day i mean i started trying to think about it the other day because I've been going to the library.
You on that
library kick again? I'm on the library.
You're going to start
partying with your library friends again?
Yeah. Those were good
times. Get a little library
stories. I make my rounds
in Whitesburg. But they're like, where do you
work? Here. I work here.
I come here every day.
They eventually just put you on payroll, honestly.
Right.
Well, there was that one time the guy asked me, I was like, I'm unemployed, man.
And he was like, man, that's rough.
Valor.
It was like valor.
There's a lot of us out here unemployed, my man.
He probably just assumed you were an out-of-work coal miner.
Oh, shit.
You're just hanging out at the Dairy Queen waiting for somebody to ask you what you do.
Can't wait to be like, oh, man, I'm unemployed.
Yeah, wistfully in the distance.
I'm unemployed, man.
On the drive.
Yeah, I've been hanging out at the library again.
Yeah, I've been hanging out at the library again because I've been doing a lot of research into Hal Rogers' entire career.
Can I take your pulse?
Can I take your pulse?
Someone close to me did this about six years ago, too, and it didn't end well.
I can tell you that. I can tell you that.
No, I've been spending like eight hours a day
watching C-SPAN videos of him from the 80s and 90s.
It hasn't really felt great.
There's been a spiritual void at the center of my being.
Oh, yeah.
It's rough.
Once you get into Hal, every...
We really don't give Hal enough credit. Yeah. It's rough. Once you get into how every, we really don't give Hal enough credit.
Yeah.
For how fucked he, like he is meticulously moving money into his pocket.
Yeah.
Like so, so craftfully.
Yeah.
So creatively.
creatively like he advocates for tax um write-offs or tax like bonuses i don't even know how you say this shit for building low income like section 8 housing to rent to people right then he
and his like lackeys build it so then they get a bunch of money, which he then rents for
office space for his fake fronted non-profits, which is crazy.
And so he's just paying himself every month so much money, but it's wired so well.
It goes through eight different organizations and people.
So just picture Terrence in front of a map, a wall of pictures and maps, and people. So just picture Terrence in front of a map,
a wall of pictures and maps
and string
string tied.
Phrased.
I mean, everyone, this is how everyone already
pictures you. This is no new news.
Someone said that to me on tour.
They were like, are you alright? And I was like, yeah, no, I'm fine.
I was like, it's kind of a bit.
They were like, no, are you? They know it's not'm fine there i was like it's kind of a bit they were like no are you they know it's not a bit they were like yeah no they were like um i mean it kind of
gets the vibe of a guy like living by himself on top of a mountain just slowly losing his mind
yeah it's that vibe because that's exactly what it is. Just nail on the head.
Well, look, let me tell you what I found.
Let me tell you what I found.
In your How Rogers Dirty?
Can't wait to hear this.
Yeah, so this is the most interesting thing about How Rogers.
So How Rogers, for the uninitiated, is our congressman in the 5th Congressional District of Kentucky.
He's had that fine seat longer than both of us have been alive, turns out.
Yeah, he got elected into office in 1980.
So he was part of the Reagan Revolution.
They called him the Reaganauts.
Woo!
Yeah, great name.
Like a rough rider.
Yeah, very much like that.
Literally has been in office longer than we've been alive.
I bet, like, that means he's going to punch his 40-year ticket here pretty soon.
And I bet that's why he's not retired yet after he lost chairmanship of the budget committee.
I bet he's like, I'll just see this for two more terms until 2020, and then he'll have served for 40 fucking years.
What does that mean?
Does something special happen?
No, probably not.
I mean, how many?
Are there a lot at this point of people who've served 40 years plus?
It's pretty rare.
It is rare.
He is the longest serving Republican in the House of Representatives right now.
Is he?
Yeah.
And he gets no respect.
No respect.
He's not even going to get a pizza party
when he leaves. He's so pissed.
He hates everyone
around him. Imagine his life right now.
He'll get a pizza party.
He's fallen from grace, though, you have to
admit. Okay, so this is the thing. This is why
I've been so interested
in his career. I'm happy that
you're doing this, actually. I love our
Hal Rogers bits.
He is, I mean, he is my favorite villain, honestly, at this point.
Like, we've spent much of our world-changing careers, our activist careers, targeting Hal
Rogers.
Locking horns with him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and so it makes you wonder, like, so this is the thing about Hal Rogers.
If you sort of contrast him with a guy like Mitch McConnell, like Mitch McConnell's entire career has been trying to reshape how government functions.
You know, sort of defanging the Senate and making like the legislative arm just completely not work.
And then packing the judiciary with people who are friendly to his sort of like
corporate oligarchic cause.
Like that's sort of Mitch's idealistic cause.
Hal isn't an idealist.
Hal is a complete realist.
Like he understands, he understood from a very early, like, sort of career, point in his career, that, like, if he just rode through the budget, like, committee, like the House Budget Committee, if he just rolled his entire, in Appropriations Committee, if he just rode his entire career in that committee, he could become the most powerful man in Washington.
And he did.
committee he could become the most powerful man in washington and he did and then he peaked in 20 like when he became chairman of the of the house appropriations committee which is like one of
three most powerful positions in washington dc controlling the money right and so like this is
the thing this is that thing that's so crazy about him though um so like we sort of know him in our sort of trivulis universe it's like
guys is trying to bring the prison here but like what's the thing like that how said so many times
over the course of like the prison thing um he said the prison system the federal prison system
is at over capacity needs more beds that beds, that kind of thing. Remember?
Yeah.
Like, he would always say that.
Totally, yeah.
It's overcapacity.
He's been saying this since that exact line, since at least 1986.
Over 30 years, he's been saying the exact same thing.
And, like, that's how he started his career in.
Like, you know, I think we also sort of know him through the mountaintop removal stuff,
but he was actually, from an early time, time like his big things in the 80s were immigration control uh giving the fbi and dea as
much money as possible to fund the drug war and then building prisons in that process so ahead of
his time yes no he he was like the clint would have built a wall in 1980 if he was ready to build that wall. There's this crazy video of him in 1988.
In 1820.
He is that ancient.
There's this video I found of him where he's talking about how when he and Reagan came in in 81,
the Justice Department spent like $1.2 billion on drug enforcement.
By the time Reagan left in 88, they had got that number up to $4.5 billion.
And that was all Hal.
Like, that was his thing.
And so in the process,
he funneled all this pork back to eastern Kentucky.
And I think that's a huge reason
why he just never lost.
Because, like, there's...
I found this quote from...
He padded the right pocket.
Exactly.
He bought...
He has consistently bought his... I mean, he buys his voters, but specifically
he buys his territory.
Yeah.
Yeah, he.
He's above gerrymandering.
Yeah.
And it's like Jim Ward said, like Jim, I saw this quote from other Trill Billy celebrity
villain, Jim Ward, where he's like, of course he wins.
Like, there's no tax base in Eastern Kentucky.
So he just brings, like, that's the source of revenue.
Hal Rogers.
He just brings in a lot of money.
It's like a fiefdom.
He runs a fiefdom.
And he also never comes.
Right.
He also never comes.
Because he's, he's ancient.
He's awful.
He has no joy.
Right.
Well, anyways, that's how I've been spending my day.
Wow.
But here's the thing, Tanya.
I never really thought about this before.
Like, while I'm watching all these videos, I never really thought about, like, the sort
of machinery of government.
Like, how...
You, Terrence Ray of Sunshine, has never thought about the mechanisms of government.
Right.
You know what you just said?
I've never really thought about
like ours anyways.
You know, like
I beg to differ.
Okay, maybe I haven't
thought about it
like comprehensively before.
But like the whole charade
of like elder statesmen
getting up in front
of the rest of the room
and like giving this speech
where they bang on
the fucking pedestal of the lectern and they like you know he's just been on repeat for 30 some years
he's been on repeat absolutely exactly i mean he is kind of the um poster boy for like you know the
the whole like mediocre white guy thing yeah that is just you know that's like a viral idea just the
confidence of a mediocre white man and it's. Just the confidence of a mediocre white man.
And it's the stamina, honestly, of a mediocre white man to say the same thing over and over and over.
And I mean, I do three interviews in a year about sex ed.
And I'm like, all I do is talk about the same thing.
I say the same thing all the time. men just just consistently say the same useless information
yeah and they get raises and jobs and promotions and titles and money and coke
and penthouses and girls and who knows what all they just get it all. They get it all riding a train of glory on these prisons.
They're full.
They're packed to the gills.
It's the stamina.
It's also the ambition, I guess.
Blind, backless ambition.
Right.
I don't know.
I mean, I guess that there's just something to be said about like the congressman of the poorest congressional
districts in the u.s becoming the most powerful congressman in the u.s i hadn't even it hadn't
even occurred to me he's kind of the he's kind of the original trump i mean he was a he was like
you know he's been in office the whole time but he really just is talking in soundbites about nothing has no interest in
in what anyone has to say about him yeah i don't know he's a very
he's he's got more focused than trump at least in the sense that he has a vision he knows what
he wants that's true um but you're right in the sense that they say this the same things over and over again the
pull string doll yeah itself has become the doll right right so speaking of trump did you see the
uh he's really had a normal one today he's had a pretty normal one today also today on a trump's
normal one when i left the creek you know i didn't live where I live now in 2016 right um
but I when I moved into my creek I was proud to say there were no confederate flags and I know
that seems like a low bar to our listeners but honestly that felt like strong that that felt
strong to me there's a strong community up here, up on Pine Creek.
There are no Confederate flags and only one dog on a chain.
Right.
That's pretty fucking good.
Yeah, as far as ratios go, that's pretty good.
For a hauler with, I don't know, what would you say, 50 houses in it?
Yeah, maybe a little bit more than that.
Yeah, 50, 60 houses.
Well, this morning I left my house just like every other morning and i blew a kiss at boo-boo
the one dog on the chain that i that i plan to rescue every day i don't and then when i turned
the next bin there was an enormous trump flag just one of the biggest ones i've seen close up
and perhaps my favorite one yet it It just said, Trump 2020.
No more bullshit.
You like that?
No more bullshit.
It's so much to unpack.
I was riddled.
The whole rest of my drive to work just like, rich bullshit.
It's like their analysis of the world got frozen in 2012 and has just stayed there.
And that's the lens through which they see the world.
Like they're still running
against Obama.
Yeah, the last four years
didn't even happen.
It didn't even happen.
Complete, I don't know.
The last three years,
just a blip,
just no idea.
Oh, and that's crazy
to think about, though,
that, like,
does Biden give them, like,
the opportunity
they've been aching for?
Oh, so they can fight Obama again.
So they can finally fight Obama again.
This will reinvigorate the Trump...
If these motherfuckers
really do say they care about electability,
Biden would actually be the absolute
worst. Because there's nothing
like Obama
to really fire up the chuds again.
And he's running on, I'm not
sorry and my black friend.
Those are his running.
That's his entire platform.
Uncle Joe, I'm Sorry, which he's stolen from Beyonce.
Right.
So he's just stealing all these branding tools from the black people in his periphery.
Oh, shit.
Which I guess that's not new either.
Well, today he had something about um bobby
kennedy and martin luther king having a real normal one too he was having a very normal one
too like the two senile guys are having real normal ones on this side trump says i am the
chosen one it says i'm the king of israel basically a radio host called him the king
of israel and trump basically blasted it out and
was like good job thumbs up to this fully support fully endorsed right fully endorsed tweet here
and then Biden on the other hand had something about how like
um wait was this an American radio host called him the king of Israel? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow.
Which, like, if you were a Christian,
so I, you know, tying this in with the Obama thing,
like, I had friends in 2008 who would literally be like,
I mean, you know, I guess it's, you know,
obviously Obama's not the Antichrist, but, like, he could be.
Obviously, Obama's not the Antichrist, but he could be.
If there's a 0, 0, 0.1% chance, we can't take it.
We can't take that chance.
That's the thing.
That's what they would say.
There's definitely at least that much chance that he is the king of Israel or whatever. But now Trump comes out.
I mean, I know it's stupid to point out hypocrisy, but 12 years later, 13, 14 years later, Trump
comes out and is like, I'm the king of the Jews.
It's fucking crazy.
I'll just mic drop.
Woo.
Yeah, we are in a loop.
We're in a hot loop.
We are.
It's getting hotter.
Yeah.
It's getting hotter. It's like one of those geforce things that just gets faster the heat index today in the year of
our lord is 98 degrees oh it's getting here in weinsterburg kentucky we're going to be completely
unhinged by october 2020 certainly if your ac's out is that a permanent update that your ac's out
completely i hope not i apologize that we couldn't record at my house.
Oh, that's fine.
But you're having a real hot one.
I am having a real.
I was really hot and frustrated earlier.
Oh, hot and bothered Ray.
I was.
A familiar tune.
I was.
God damn, this is bleak.
I tell you, Terrence texted me earlier today or yesterday while my day's running together.
It was like, hey, you got any hot topics for the podcast?
I'm like, no, man.
I've been working my eye out.
I haven't even read any headlines.
I don't know what's happening.
I only know what people have tagged me in on Twitter.
If you haven't tagged me in all the important headlines, is that too much to fucking ask?
Can you tag me?
Yeah, a whole sort of array of unpaid interns who just send you news items.
Yes, I need a curated list.
You do.
Please.
Too much to fucking ask.
Please, people.
Please curate Tanya's list.
I only know because I get on Twitter a few times a day and all I see are my notifications.
That's all I have time for at this point.
I'm about to have more time.
I'm about to free up more time.
Yeah. I'm having a real tense one right now this is what biden said uh biden falsely said that robert f kennedy and martin luther king were assassinated in the 70s
late 70s wait what which is uh they were assassinated in 68.
We just had the 50 year anniversaries.
Right.
When both men were assassinated,
he says, quote,
none of you women would know, unquote,
about activism in the 1960s.
That's what he said.
He said none of you women would know.
It's literally never okay to say that. There's literally, there's not one instance.
Not one instance.
Even if you're talking about, like, ball cancer, I don't even know what.
Women are literally the ones.
It's still bad form to say none of you women would know.
Yeah, because no matter, even if it's only, I mean, not even to say the problems with gender here,
If it's only, I mean, not even to say the problems with gender here, but even if it's just prostate cancer, the number one caretaker of people suffering from prostate cancer are women.
Okay?
There's literally nothing.
There's nothing. There's nothing.
I mean, this is like the all-male panel.
Right.
There's literally nothing worth talking about
that women have no say in.
You know what I mean? That women aren't
experts in. There's nothing.
There's nothing.
Who let him out of the house?
You women
wouldn't know anything about that.
It's like...
It's crazy.
So that's the two
that's what's on offer right now Tanya
that's what's
can't wait to vote
can't wait to fill up my car
and drive to the polls
look I've been feeling pretty
bearish
I guess that'd be the word pessimistic
I'm selling right now
on electoral politics it's been a week it's
been one of those weeks where i'm like there's nothing we can fucking do here i'm just yeah
just dusting my hands off like this is there's nothing we can do here we need to get the fuck
out of here retreat to the hills start storing guns stockpiling weapons. What's crazy is, you know, you know how bad it gets when people work me into a corner demanding answers.
Yeah.
How crazy I get.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I know.
I've explained this before.
Oh, I know.
Immediately, I just end up talking about militarization of the movement.
Okay.
The resistance.
If you talk long enough about the state of things that's
the point you're all right but crazy like i'm wrapping up my work day and starting to like
pack up some things in my office and my intern yells um or someone who's been doing some part-time work for me, who I love, was like, hey, you have a visitor.
And before I could say, I'm not here.
Before I could say, who has a visitor?
Tonya, who has a visitor?
Tonya already left for the day.
I don't know where she is.
Don't know where she went to.
Who knows?
Not here.
Absent.
The man standing in front of me.
Okay, so this was somebody from...
Before I could say.
I've been thinking about this since you told me about it.
Well, but I didn't hear how it actually went.
Because somebody coming out of your past,
10 years in your past no less
and like asking how you are now yeah it's a really funny it's like i was like what do you even oh
you want a 10-year recap man that's like uh okay well
525,000 just a fast forward montage of the past 10 years of your life.
How do you measure 10 years in the life?
Did you give him that routine?
I should have.
I just kind of stared blankly.
But no, he's a Tribal Leads listener.
He'll be tuned in.
And it was very good to see him once I realized who he was.
But so shout out to Jay Walk.
Apparently he has been, yeah, I didn't know this, but he's been living in Seattle.
He's from Kentucky.
He's been living in Seattle.
He somehow ended up organizing with a bunch of Trillbillies fans in Seattle.
Oh, hell yeah.
Who knows, yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
He said, apparently, this is what he told me, which I thought was pretty funny.
He said, yeah, I was like in this, he called, you know so he used some resistance language i'm not familiar with autonomous
working group or something i don't know literally i think that's what he said one of those words
yeah he was like you kids hey but yeah he's he and i organized together in kentucky 10 years ago
around environmental stuff and some water quality stuff and like yeah did some work together and um
he he said yeah it was crazy like i showed up to this like autonomous working group or something
he said and i like just like floated it out it's like hey has anyone heard of trailbillies and
everyone's like no and just went on he said then three months later he was three months ahead of
his time he said then three months later in in another space, whatever space I was in, someone showed
up like, hey, has anybody heard about Trillbillies?
And a few people were like, yeah, dude.
And then it became like a Trillbillies fan club.
He was like, I tried to float it before then.
It took a little longer.
I was like, what?
That's how Christianity started.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh.
Now Terrence is the Messiah.
Terrence is king of Israel.
You heard it here.
I have been.
Yes, that's right.
I have been studying the tactics of the early Christians.
Anyway.
How to start a religious political cult.
Your Google searches are good.
That's my Google search right now.
We need to have a whole episode on Patreon that's just your Google searches. Dramatic readings of your Google searches that's my google search right now we need to have a whole episode on
patreon that's just your google searches us dramatic readings of your google searches
we could do that but anyway he's at he's like what do you mean he's like oh i lived in washington
and seattle and i'm like i've been here this whole time for 10 years i feel like a fucking idiot
honestly i haven't left yeah i was like i've literally been here since the last time I saw you.
I was like looking around my office trying to think of something to tell him.
Would you say your life has gotten better or worse?
Than 10 years ago?
Yeah, like are things generally better now?
I'm having better sex than I was 10 years ago.
That's something.
I'm making more money. Well, it's close. I think 10 years ago. That's something. I'm making more money.
Well, it's close.
I think I'm actually...
No, I am making more money.
You have health care.
Well, you had health care back then, too.
Well, no.
Actually, I didn't have health care
when I was organizing with him
because that was right before my KFTC days
when I was bopping around with him.
Were you a bartender at this time? Yeah, I was bartending. You make a pretty good money as a bartender. Yeah, I was him. Were you a bartender at this time?
Yeah, I was bartending.
So you make a pretty good money as a bartender.
Yeah, I was doing alright as a bartender.
But you're probably drinking all the time too
and that's probably, you know,
you feel physically pretty shitty most of the time.
But it was during that time
that I got a free,
well, I think I paid 20 bucks
for an IUD at Planned Parenthood
because I didn't have any healthcare.
So with that world,
an IUD would cost me $200 right now.
Yeah.
And I have health care, so.
God damn.
Why has the price gone up so much?
Well, I think, right, the price has gone up.
But 10 years later, it's just, I feel like I pay more out of pocket now because I have
insurance.
But I did when I didn't have insurance and they would just like toss me into the like,
we're not getting anything out of that right you know what i mean i was getting less quality care
but it was still better than what i'm like than being in debt and um bill collectors are now
calling me for those are the only bills that i don't pay are my medical i mean i've paid some
but some of my medical bills i'm just like god God, I've been paying on some medical bills longer than my fucking car.
And I'm just like, I can't deal with it anymore.
Same here.
Same here.
Yeah.
It's like, fuck me up.
It's bad.
But on that note, did you see that thing going around about how like rural hospital administrators are freaking the fuck out about Medicare for all?
Like they're saying it will make them close down.
And it's all this funny.
Yeah, I love this.
I almost wish, you know, I hate to give the Clintons any credit here.
Let's not.
We won't give the Clintons any credit.
But around the Clinton administration days, there was a pretty awesome daycare,
child care program that my mom was a part of.
So my aunt was able to get paid to be my caregiver while my mom worked.
Really?
And she, like, cared for, like, eight kids that lived in our camp.
And so that was, like, her career.
She was able to, like, create a, like, daycare situation for, like for some people who were related and some not.
Yeah.
So we were all there together all summer, which was really cool.
And turns out that happened and no daycare shut down.
Really?
It was great.
Yeah.
I'm sure that was the same.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, no, daycares will be out of business.
You're going to blow out the market.
Right.
Then they'll shut down.
You won't have the funding.
You know what I mean?
It's just like the same like, of course, of course they're in pandemonium because they
cannot envision anything beyond the like weird numbers they've been crunching for hundreds
of years of whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
for hundreds of years of whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I also just think rural people with power are really scared right now
because they see it slipping away.
That's their...
Oh, yeah.
Hal Rogers, like his power is slipping away.
Right, right.
It's because the economy of rural America
is changing pretty rapidly.
Yeah.
And so the biggest industry around here
is healthcare now.
It has been for a really long time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Probably for about 20 or 30 years.
But I was thinking, it's interesting, though.
I didn't read the article, though.
I didn't read the whole thing.
We're on that headline tip.
Right, that's right.
We're reading the headline.
But it's interesting, like during the prison stuff, all of the health care CEOs around here supported the prison because all those guards would have government subsidized health those people are
sick we need them here we need people with poor mental health in our communities
to support our no suboxone clinic bitch well this Well, this is what I don't understand.
It's like, again, this is just pointing out a hypocrisy when one example is just like the fascist thing that the government wants to set up.
But like those health care CEOs supported that because that's guaranteed health care.
And that's all Medicare for all is.
It's just a guaranteed government health care plan.
So it actually helped rural hospitals like I'm.
It honestly doesn't make sense because MCHC like luck bloomed with the Affordable Care Act.
Right. Right.
Like Kentucky was one of the first state right to opt in to Obamacare so much that in one of Obama's last state of the unions, our governor was
there.
Right.
Steve Brashear.
Governor Steve Brashear was a special guest at State of the Union.
He was there in the flesh.
After the first State of the Union, it was him.
He got a nod in the audience.
The Trump State of the Union.
Yeah.
No, it was Obama's last.
Oh, okay. It was Obamaama state of the union okay oh one of obama's last either his maybe his last one but the the message was like this will be the
future of the democratic party has already has already signed up a million people because we
like we i mean there's only five million people in kentucky and we signed up like a million people
right out of the fucking gate a fifth of Kentucky
I mean it's pretty like they might not be the exact number no it was insane yeah it wasn't
insane it was like half of our state is was not insured and now we are and so that was like the
Kentucky was the early poster child well MCHC hired like 10 people full time immediately just to sign people up.
You don't have to read.
You don't have to write.
You don't have to.
If you can blink twice, come roll your ass down to MCHC and we'll get you signed up.
Yes, because government subsidized shit.
Like, I mean, it creates jobs.
It's crazy.
Crazy to say, right? I mean, this is the thing that, like, sort of tears me in two because on one side it's, like, that's nothing more than a sort of, like, social democratic welfare state thing.
Like, that's what Bernie wants.
They want Medicare for all.
Like, we need something beyond Medicare for all.
But at the same time, it's, like, it's pretty easy to, like, this must just be some sort of, like, lobbying front group, I guess, that's, like, trying to, like, protect the industry.
Like, they don't want it to be taken over by the government.
They don't want the healthcare industry to be taken over by the government, I guess.
I mean, these are just right-wingers with a little, with enough power to be quoted in a bullshit article at this point.
It's pretty bizarre.
I mean, these aren't, these are people who are concerned with how much money can be made and not people's access to care or like how many nurses they can hire and that kind of shit.
Now, yeah, people who are shareholders of health care corporations and all that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
corporations and all that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
There are also probably people who are getting kickbacks
from insurance companies
because insurance companies
aren't seen as the next,
like, they can't be quoted.
They're not going to quote
insurance companies
talking about this,
you know, like that's just.
Yeah.
Well, on that same note,
I had something
I wanted to show you.
Anywho, well,
I saw this person that I was organizing with 10 years ago.
Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.
Tell me about it.
And he just kept being like, well, what's going on with you?
And I was like, well, I'm leaving this job.
And yeah, I've been here this whole time.
I've been living here for 10 years.
Uh-huh.
Wah, wah, wah.
And he's like, yeah, I've been in Washington and Seattle and all these places.
I'm like, that's cool, man.
And then he's just like, well, yeah, like, what are you doing?
Like, what are you thinking?
You know, where are you at?
Like, intellectually?
Yeah, I feel like I could have went anywhere.
I don't really know what to say.
But, of course, I found myself talking about blowing up coal,
which I've mentioned
before and I was like you know man I'm just trying to see past the non-profit system I've
been trapped in for 10 years and and you know it's unclear to me what my future beyond this
looks like I'm just still I'm still trying to escape.
And he was like, huh?
Yeah.
Wow.
Very profound.
Yeah.
Like I'm trying to get out.
But I was like, um, but I'm just really trying to focus on some creative work, make some money outside the system so that when shit pops off, I'm like ready to go.
Yeah.
Um, and my job isn't connected.
Like my job, like I'm not going to lose my ability to support myself in any way
because of something I do politically.
Because that's the situation I've been in for 10 years.
Yeah, totally.
And it has rained down on me.
Yeah.
So I was just like, yeah, I'm just I'm trying to, you know, and I just think trying to do more creative things is harm reduction.
It's like trying to take care of myself a little better.
He was just like, fuck you.
I think I could have said anything.
He would have been like, oh, man, it's great.
It's good.
Yeah.
You just need to support.
I was like, I don't know.
But what have I been doing for 10 years? I don't it i was like i don't know but what have i been doing for
10 years i don't know yeah i don't know either um well this is in response to whatever i said
i'm not this is not verbatim what i said i was just like you know stumbling around who knows
what i actually said but in response to whatever it was i said he said you know i know a lot of
people that are really at an existential crisis moment right now. And I was like, huh, is that, I looked behind me like,
is that what I said? Is that me? I'm nuts. I was like, well,
I think a lot of people are, you know,
finally realizing that incremental change is over.
Like it's just not going to help anymore. Like, I mean,
I did talk about incrementalism i was like this is not working
obviously and um collapses upon us so it's just like working to inch us in a direction is not i
mean the house is on fire right so starting now to work on the fire detector isn't yeah it's not
it's really not an option. That's a good answer.
10 years ago, I definitely believed
in some sort of like incremental.
That's what he and I were doing.
Theory of, right, right.
That's what he and I were doing 10 years ago.
And I was like, yeah, I'm kind of over that.
It took me, you know, 10, eight to 10 years.
Well, see, you have wisdom now.
So that's good.
Wisdom is worth it.
Like that's worth.
I can tell you, I didn't feel wise when I was speaking.
It's worth staying in a place for 10 years, Tanya.
Because then you learn something about yourself.
I loved, I loved it.
And the place you live.
But not a lot of people can say that, you know?
Like, not a lot of people.
Like, I think in our sort of generation, there's a lot of, like, sort of transience and moving around.
And I think that's natural.
Like, you want to try to. Yeah, it's natural. It's totally natural want to try to yeah yeah totally you want to find a place that's good for you
um but we planted roots here well what i think this always you know how just like sometimes just
random shit will just stick with you and then you recall it so often that it becomes probably unhealthy. I know you know. Oh, I know.
I know you know this.
But so a coworker of mine, like a good friend of mine, we've worked together for basically 10 years now.
We've followed each other to different jobs.
And right before that, she had done this creative project where she gave postcards to a bunch of people in her community this community
here she had like given out a bunch of postcards and then she turned them into a book and it was
like a lot of like peers and elders and all these people was just like you know just like write a
message to yourself to your past self you know just like and then um created a book like a
literal physical hard hard copy book out of it.
And a lot of them are really cutesy and inspirational.
The only one I remember that I recall often, and it's a guy I still see.
It's like an old man.
He's retired.
I see him around occasionally.
He told me a funny joke last time I saw him.
I saw him at seed time.
His card said, I thought I could change things here.
I was wrong.
Damn.
And honestly, I feel like that's all I want to say
in my exit interview
for this job.
That's how I felt at the end of my
last job. I thought I could change.
I was clearly very wrong.
I was wrong.
Happy to report
that was a mistake. That was a mistake.
That was false. I was
wrong. So yeah,
what have you been doing the last
year? I've been wrong. I've been wrong.
I've been wrong.
You gain wisdom when you're wrong.
You know?
Yeah, that's what, that's the only way
to find value
in failure.
If you do it differently next time or something.
I don't know if that pertains well
here since the house is on fire.
I find that you have
to do things just to know
if you're going to be right or wrong.
Because that's
how you grow. If you're wrong. how you grow if you're wrong you really
grow if you're wrong or you don't sometimes you get trapped yeah and then that's when the bad
phase of your life comes and yeah there have definitely been times recently but mostly in
my past where i i've literally watched myself behaving terribly yes couldn't couldn't do
anything about it yeah but it's because you can't grow.
I know that sounds like really like Joe Rogan
type shit.
Oh, that reminds me
that I was going to read
you that comment
we got before we...
Oh, good, yeah.
We got right as I was
about to walk in.
Yeah, get me out of this.
I'm...
I'm...
This just happened to me
like 20 minutes
before you got here.
What then?
The guy showed up.
Oh.
So it's like this is the freshest
yeah yeah well look this is i gotta let it go this this is relevant this is relevant so this um
this is irrelevant this is irrelevant give it to me um the first part of this comment is bad so
just bear with me not trying to hate on y'all, but East Kentucky is already very socialist. So many welfare rats who don't want to work at Senn.
I'm a Trump-supporting conservative, but it is good to see people like you who do love your home area instead of hating our people like a lot of people on the left do.
Thank you for that.
I thought that was very interesting.
What did we post for them to comment on?
It was actually an Instagram comment.
That's what I'm saying.
What was it on?
It was on the post about the upcoming tour with Lee Baines,
which I need to clarify, we're only doing four dates of that tour.
Tom was sharing around the whole poster.
We can't get our own poster together, clearly.
We can very rarely get anything together.
We're hanging on by a thread.
We really are.
I keep telling myself as soon as I go down to part-time, I'm going to be able to, like, whip us into shape.
But it's probably, I was wrong again.
I thought I would be able to do that, too.
But the thing is, is, like, most of my days are just a frenzied mess where I'm just confused all day.
And then it's, like, record time.
Okay, let's do this.
Exactly.
Yep.
I like step out of my life for an hour and a half, sit down to a mic, and exit it again
like nothing even happened.
What a bizarre comment, though.
That read like a speaker piece.
It kind of did.
You bunch of holler rat motherfuckers.
But you know.
It was a backhanded compliment in a way.
Yeah very passive aggressive.
Which I've come to
understand well.
I'm an expert in receiving passive aggressive
communication. Oh same here.
Same here.
Holy shit.
I'll give you two rats out of this episode you can either get
speak your piece or
you can get a New York magazine
article called
how Moscow Mitch is helping Democrats
we could actually do both
why the fuck not?
We need content.
Where are we at over there?
I can't see.
We're at 42 minutes.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like recording in here.
I mean, it's got a weird vibe to it.
No natural light.
Right, right.
No cats.
Right.
Kind of sucks.
It does suck. And it's in my building, so. There. Kind of sucks. It does suck.
And it's in my building, so.
There's not a single window in this room.
No.
Just one-way mirrors, essentially.
So people could watch us. It's basically
like we're in a live show in here.
And everyone can be, the audience can be over there.
We're going to be like, pack 40 people into the
studio next door.
Alright, check this out.
Sid Weeden first met Mitch McConnell at a Pack 40 people into the studio next door. All right, check this out.
Sid Whedon first met Mitch McConnell at a 1978 prayer luncheon in Louisville.
What's this guy's name?
Sid Whedon.
Give me a break.
Sid Whedon, Tanya.
Change your names, Sid.
Please.
When the now Senate Majority Leader was serving in his first elected office. Over the years, the retired Presbyterian minister and lifelong Democrat would regularly run into McConnell at the local Kroger store.
I've stared at him eye to eye over the oranges before.
But until this year, Whedon had never opened his wallet in an attempt to defeat McConnell.
Like those of thousands of Americans, his first donation to the Kentucky Democratic Party was spurred by a phenomenally successful new line of merchandise built around the one nickname the self-professed Grim Reaper doesn't embrace, Moscow Mitch.
Wednesday marks two weeks since the KDP began selling its line of Moscow Mitch merch, headlined by a red t-shirt with the slogan, Just say nyet to Moscow Mitch.
Just say nyet.
As I was reading this, I was grinding my teeth so fucking hard, and I didn't even realize I was doing it.
Was it right when I sent you that picture today?
It was right around that time.
God damn.
In that time, the party, which is also selling beer koozies, shot glasses, and Cossack-style hats, has brought in $500,000 on 13,526 unique sales.
Each of those is a donation to the Kentucky Democratic Party, and more than 90% have come from people like Whedon who have never before given to the state party.
It's because they don't fucking live here.
Because they're buying.
Because he's in D.C.?
He ran into him at the D.C. crash?
No, he lives in Louisville.
Wait, so they're buying Moscow Mitch merch.
Yeah, but it's like, I guarantee you the vast majority of people buying Moscow Mitch merch are people who don't live in Kentucky.
I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of people in Kentucky buying it.
It's probably actually like 50-50 or something.
I would actually like to know the percentage.
They're not going to be releasing that information, I can tell you right now.
Right.
We won't know that.
But they haven't.
We know he was underwater, but this really gave us an indication of how angry the people are,
said Nicole Irwin, communications director for the Kentucky Democratic Party.
I'd like to know the names of these people, honestly.
Write that down.
Nicole Irwin.
Hey, Nicole, can we get coffee or something?
Maybe out back behind a big brownfield or something?
I'd like to leave you there for good, honestly.
I'm sorry, is this Patreon?
Brownfield. Oh, I don't know.
If you'd meet me out back at Brownfield real quick.
A toxic way of saying it.
Catch me outside. I don't want to strangle you with my bare hands.
Nicole added that the Moscow Mitch items
are the largest merch campaign the party has ever done.
It blows everything else out of the water, she said.
What else have you done?
Name one other campaign besides Ditch Mitch.
Oh, shit.
Name one.
You know, they had that Alison Lundergren Grimes thing where she, like, went into a coal mine.
There was that.
What merch came out of that?
Were they selling hard hats?
I don't know. Headlamps?
I remember seeing a commercial on a big billboard for it
around Prestonsburg.
Nothing even compares.
Oh, god damn.
I swear to god I was grinding my teeth so hard
when I was reading this. Yeah, relax.
Erwin traced the idea for the Moscow Mitch
merch back to Robert
that fucking phrase.
Moscow Mitch merch.
You can't.
I fucking hate it so much.
Do yourself a favor.
Release your shoulders from your earlobes.
Relax your
shoulders.
We need to start having little, like, breathe.
We're going to start meditating.
This is just going to become a meditation,
Trill Billy meditation podcast.
I want to try to read this as calmly as possible.
Do what you can.
Erwin traced the idea for the Moscow March
back to Robert Mueller's congressional testimony last month.
Oh, did he?
The former special counsel warned of the Russian government's continued efforts to interfere
in our election, and McConnell, who had infamously stopped the Obama administration from making
a bipartisan condemnation of Russian election interference in 2016, responded by blocking
two pieces of election security legislation in the Senate.
His moves drew criticism from the likes of Dana Milibank, who called McConnell a Russian
asset in the pages of the Washington Post, and Joe Scarborough, who accused Moscow Mitch
of aiding and abetting Putin's ongoing attempts to subvert U.S. democracy.
Oh, they really got him.
Oh, I'm getting him now.
He's a Russian asset. They got him oh i'm getting him now he's a russian asset they got him tanya um well anyways
we felt like the kdp was in a really unique position to hold the senate majority leader
accountable erwin said we've really seen the cells take off and we feel like it's largely
because we have this warning that we need to do something to ramp up election security
and even though bipartisan elections election security has been proposed, Mitch McConnell refused
to take a stand.
Oh, my God.
KDP?
KGB?
I don't know.
I don't know.
To taint them as Russian assets.
He who smelt it dealt it, Mitch.
assets.
He who smelt it dealt it,
bitch. Yeah, like, oh,
interesting that you're trying, you're raising so much awareness of this.
How do you know what a Russian hat
looks like, huh? Yeah, huh?
Huh? Huh?
This is so fucking dumb.
The thing is, Tanya,
is that
this really, like, um,
brings home for me that there is still a lot of resistance people
out there and there's still a lot of like with her Hillary types out there and unless the Bernie
Sanders campaign can somehow pivot its attention and work and priorities to the working class
then it does no chance
because
there is still a sizable portion
of our country who thinks
that the way out of this
is Moscow, mid-Japan
Moscow, mid-Japan
and
I don't know as I was saying earlier I'm bearish
on this election thing
because I'm really starting to think it's not going to
fucking matter one way or the other
I mean
can you imagine four years of Biden
after Trump
the entire four years
well it's not surmised but the entire four years
will be him making fun of Trump
that's what it will be
he will spend four years saying,
well,
when Trump was here,
he will use
Trump's name to stay relevant.
Absolutely. Just like Trump
has done with Obama.
Nothing can actually move forward.
The government, everything is just
ground down to a halt.
It's incredible, really.
It's incredible.
Bernie needs to win and then institute workers' councils, go around the country, do, like, a Hugo Chavez thing.
Institute workers' councils where, like, we just start creating a sort of, like, shadow government that can then sort of like take things over because this motherfucker is going down.
Like this thing is it's done.
This whole American experiment thing.
It's it's not fucking work.
It's experiment.
Like like when it was working, it was doing some really fucking crazy things, as we saw
like with Mitch, like when it was really fucking working really well in the
80s and 90s like we saw with hal and reagan and the clintons like when they were actually making
things happen they were horrible things a horrible terrible thing but they could do it they could
they were getting away with murder yeah but um but yeah no i mean like this thing is uh it's
gonna balkanize or something real bad is going to happen. So I'm telling you, set up workers' councils, do whatever it fucking takes.
This motherfucker's going down.
We're running out of yarn, people.
We can't link anymore.
Yeah, this is bad.
We're out of yarn and tax.
Yeah.
I mean, everything is just, like, regurgitating itself.
It's like the other day.
It's like this Disney stuff, this Marvel Universe stuff.
I was reading the other day about how Spider-Man would have gone into public domain in 1970 or recently with the copyright laws we had up until 1978.
with the copyright laws we had up until 1978.
But then after that,
large corporations could hold on to these artistic products
and then just fucking cash in on them
for forever, for perpetuity.
Culture itself is ground to a fucking stop.
Nothing new is being created there.
The whole thing is.
Well, I mean, all the
startup now,
the booming businesses
are all
corporations that don't actually
own anything or create anything.
They're just moving people around electronically.
Yeah.
When's the last time you watched
something like Jimmyimmy fallon
it's awful i know that's well you know someone we know was recently on jimmy fallon and that's
how we all found out that it's so bad and all the shows are like that and snl is like like this is
a thing everybody i talk to and even myself i know this like we're actually funny than those people
and we're not even that funny you know what I mean like we could actually do their
job you know what I mean
it would be better at it than they are
but like that's the thing like
culture itself has sort of like
ground down to a whole like
the sort of most meritorious of
us and funny of us aren't even rising
up anymore
is everything just a tight advertisement now
basically I'm covering for us when we don't actually amount to anything.
We fail miserably.
I just blame it on...
Oh, it's the culture.
We never got a shot at anything.
Again, you're a boomer.
Exactly.
You've been a boomer.
We already know.
Hallelujah.
Are you going to sail us off this cliff with Speak Your Peace?
Yeah, I might.
Please do.
I mean, I can't do it just as like Tom does.
That's the thing.
So it might not even be.
What do you mean?
You know, Tom is like, Speak Your Peace as recounted by Tom is a specific like.
Yeah, he does a good job.
A specific thing.
There's a lot in here, though, about the Harlem. We can rotate. Oh, there's a lot in about Harlem? Yeah, that's good job a specific thing. There's a lot in here though about the heart rate
Yeah, it's weird it covers the spectrum
There's a lot of a lot of them are like those coal miners are taking handouts from people giving donations
And it's you know, it makes no fucking sense
But they also mentioned how Bernie's campaign sent them pizza
Were you there on the day that they sent them pizza?
Fuck yeah, I ate Bernie pizza.
Yeah, I did too.
I was there too.
And like, I hadn't seen it online.
I was just, and I hadn't ate any of the pizza because I was like, I don't want to eat these
people's pizza.
Like, I don't feel like I've earned this pizza, you know?
Right.
And then Lil was straight up like, yeah, that's fucking Bernie pizza, man.
Bernie bought this pizza.
And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
And they were like, no.
Somebody from his office called.
It's like, how can we help?
And they were like, well, we got a bunch of people coming.
You could probably order some pizza, huh?
And she said, they said 30 boxes showed up.
Oh, yeah.
So I was like, fuck yeah, I'm about to eat this.
Somebody take a picture of me eating Bernie pizza.
Hell yeah.
I was so into it.
Yeah, I ate some too.
That was a weird day. Yeah. That ate some too. That was a weird day.
That was a totally weird day.
It was weird.
And I heard some wild shit that day.
There's been, it's, oh God.
The world will probably never know all the like crazy shit that went down in Harlan County over this time.
And it's not over yet, of course.
No, I saw this tweet from somebody that said um
oh shit hold on let me find it real quick it was so bizarre oh this kentucky call story is so so
good the 24-hour tent city actually sounds like a bit of a partisan free utopia when i so i've
only been there one day uh so i don't really know a whole lot about this at all i mean there's
people have been literally living there for three weeks.
But when I was there, it was highly, like, political.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody was having – there's been, like, daily meltdowns of, like, of all the things that can and will happen when people who don't know each other are put into a 24-hour encampment together.
Right, right, right.
You know, like, a lot of, there are a lot of beautiful stories of solidarity, and there's
a lot of bullshit.
Yeah.
So on Friday when I was there, a bunch of truck drivers showed up, and they were, like,
hardcore MAGA people.
Like, one of them was even a three-percenter.
This motherfucker shows up to a space where they
have like trashed trump they've tried they've like trashed all these republican politicians
the fucking governor had showed up and people trashed him and this motherfucker shows up and
and he's there for five minutes and tells the new york times that he's there with uh blue smoke
matters or something crazy yeah uh, Black Smoke Matters.
Black Smoke Matters, yeah.
Yeah, no.
Black Smoke Matters.
They've turned the trucker identity into an identitarian category.
This is insane.
It's really fast.
That's what's so dark about it.
Oh, yeah.
It's very fast.
I guess they just rung up somebody at the thing.
We're like, hey, me and my trucker trucker friends will come down there and we're going to run an action out on the road in front of y'all.
We're going to block the road for you.
And they were like, what?
Yeah.
They like they did like Black Lives Matter tactics.
They shut down a conduit of transportation, of commerce, like for an activist cause.
That's it's very fucking scary.
It was like they're borrowing all the language and tactics of the left yeah but they're like insane MAGA yeah fuckers
it's fucking nuts and and it's like that's and none of it was strategic it wasn't like anyway
whatever I don't want to yeah you know is this patreon right I don't think so I don't know
anyway probably not like the organizers who are camping there, like, this isn't strategic.
We're shutting down a road that only people in our community use.
Yeah, right, right.
This isn't a fucking road to the hill.
This isn't a fucking Capitol Hill driveway.
Right.
This isn't an interstate that's moving commerce.
This is, like, people in our community are driving to school and work.
Right.
It's fucking 119.
You know? Right, right. to school and work. Right. It's fucking 119. You know, it's strategic.
Yeah.
It was all for show for the MAGA motherfuckers.
It was.
That was it.
It was all for show for the MAGA guys.
It was crazy.
They worked through it.
And like, I think the minors were really energized by having support from far away.
And yeah.
And, you you know you got
all these fucking truckers out there blowing their horn we while i was there you and i basically
tag team but while i was there the truckers like went on this like five minute honk-a-thon
and it sounded like it was like morris code like they were communicating with each other i was like
is this do you think they have a language that we don't know they probably do you know they're just like
communicating in this bizarre honking pod and conservative morse code yeah trump yeah which
is all just mega morse code yeah mega morse code uh and yeah and he was just being a complete
i mean this guy was just these most of these people were awful
that showed up and so then the encampment had to like deal with a bunch of shit that they had been
working through to make it um a really liberatory space in this encampment they had to be like okay
well we you know we're we want support we want these people to come help us um or and we like
you know it took a while it's not like the people were like hey we're
mega motherfuckers and we're rolling in tomorrow it took a while to unpack what was going on yeah
and definitely and you know i think it was taken by quite a bit of shock when he's like yeah we're
with black smoke matters and everybody was just like what the no one is with that scratch that
from you know everyone just panicked they're just like ready to burn down every tent that they had set up themselves.
Be like, no, no, no.
Black smoke matters.
This crazy shit.
No, it is.
It's totally crazy.
But they handled it very well.
And actually.
Yeah, they did.
They were great.
Yeah.
And the signs were awesome.
They were basically like, you know, we're cult miners against like corporate greed and
all this shit.
That's very partisan.
Because trust me, there is is a there are two parties
there are two parties
who that is kind of their whole thing
corporate grade it's like when
RBG said the Supreme Court
was nonpartisan right right so it kind
of sounds like there's not a currently
a political party or
infrastructure to court the vote
of people who are against corporate greed. Yeah.
Don't fly.
Jesus Christ. Wild.
Jesus fucking Christ. Well. Yeah, that
Bernie pizza was good. It was.
It was. I drank a lot of
Gatorade and ate pizza. You know what's
wild is I heard that
Sorry, that was my foot.
I was like, is there a knock at the door?
That was my foot. We can scratch this if we decide to.
We've had enough break in volume that you could cut this.
But apparently, like, in the late one evening, like, a handful or less of Socialist Worker Party motherfuckers showed up.
That's what I heard.
Acted wild.
That's what I heard.
up that's what i heard acted wild that's what i heard showed up with pam i mean all they do it's like i try to organize people in two specific i shouldn't say not i shouldn't say all they do but
yeah what they do is organize people in a couple narrow fields right and remember tom is a member
of them yeah tom was a lonely socialist workers party member yeah what tom does in fact is make pamphlets
and sell them to people right like that's how they make a lot of money they how that's how they make
their like that's how they do fundraising stuff they show up to this motherfucking encampment
with black jewel miners on the cover of their fucking magazine trying to sell it to miners for
five fucking dollars they are hawking like guys that haven't
had paychecks in fucking months literally they are literally hawking pamphlets like fucking
like fucking christians right right like fucking uh jehovah's witness motherfuckers
show up with you you your picture is on the cover trying to sell it back to you
trying to sell it to you for five dollars get the fuck out of here i'm surprised they didn't
get their asses kicked yeah but what they did do was leave a bad enough taste in minor's mouths
that that now they don't want bernie to come down right i heard that i heard that or they were at
least suspicious of it they're like noigning, no campaigning on the tracks.
You know, they're like, set up these rules, which they probably should have set those
up earlier.
You know, great.
Good.
Right.
But what the literal fuck, dude?
I just cannot.
Like, who?
The audacity.
Yeah, well.
The fucking audacity.
No, I mean, it's completely.
And of course they hear socialism they
think bernie and they're like right right yeah it is very bizarre because like the socialist
workers party is like a splinter group of a splinter group i mean like they're like
trotskyist you know like their analysis is specifically derives from like a nine-year time window in the 1920s and then i don't know it's just i don't know but um yeah words of the wise don't do that if you're
trying to organize people this is not i know something showed up for like three hours like
in the middle of the night stay in a hotel like right i mean like there's not a whole lot of i
mean like obviously like we're not
experts or organizers
but just like feels like
organizing like 101 like just don't
do that I just can't help but think that they've
been telling this story like
15 times a day since they left
we took
the materials to the people on the
tracks man the masses
they yeah we even sang.
They're invested.
They're invested.
That's so bleak.
I mean, do you need a better sort of like anecdote or metaphor for like the state of like the,
what I would consider to be sort of like communist left?
I mean, don't be fucking awkward fucking awkward i mean it's not that hard
be cool be cool
you some common sense yeah we are we are truly lacking in common sense but honestly i don't
blame us because shit's crazy shit ain't common honestly you're right there is no baseline
what i do have from 10 years in one spot is some common fucking you're right there is no baseline yeah there's no baseline in war but it's like I think what I do have from
10 years in one spot is some
common fucking sense I know how to
fucking deal with people
I could
while I was being told this I was
clamoring to
you know unstationary things around me
trying to support my body
because I was about to fall to the ground
in horror in disbelief I was about to fall to the ground in horror.
I was Spongebob.
These words were coming out
in all caps
and I could not compute.
I couldn't believe it.
It's incredible, really.
Here's the thing.
Everybody wants to be a savior.
Everybody wants to...
The savior complex is peak on the left.
Oh, yeah.
It's really, really bad.
We've dabbled ourselves.
Well, we live in a highly individualistic age.
Yeah, we were wrong.
We were.
And you are too, my friend.
Meet me out back at the brownfield.
Oh, Jesus.
Yeah, I really do want to kill those people.
I was so upset.
I was just like, this is un-fucking-believable.
Yeah.
And it might stop Bernie from coming and, like, boosting this story that's only gotten, like, two national headlines.
Yeah.
No, I don't know if you noticed this or not, but it wasn't on the Sunday page of the New York Times. I don't think it was published on Monday. It wasn't even in my New York Times.
Evening briefing. Right. I only check on occasionally. But when that one dropped, I was like, oh, I wonder if it's going to be in this. And it wasn't. Well, I guess the New York Times is. You know what was? Three Russian stories. Right. Yeah. It's always like Moscow. You know, it's some Russian story.
And I'm like, what is it?
What are you doing?
And I like Campbell.
We love Campbell.
We had him on the show.
He's the one who wrote the thing.
Yeah, Campbell's great.
And he did really well with that story.
Rarely does anyone here like a story that comes out about the region and the New York Times.
And everyone's been like, no, he did a good job.
And if I had to guess, I would say that the New York Times justification for it is like people get laid off all the time.
There's people, blah, blah, blah.
And so it did get me to thinking, like, what about it is such a compelling story that is important for people on the left or for anybody?
Like, what is it about?
What does it say about our current reality?
Honestly, I was talking out loud about this today
that I found out recently that our nearest trauma unit,
Holston Valley, like a lot of people,
well, Pikeville Medical Center now has a trauma unit.
That's pretty basic.
But before that, everyone had to be sent to Kingsport, to Holston Valley Medical Center.
And there has been an over 100-day protest outside that hospital by mothers protesting
them exing their NICU and other, like, women's services at that hospital.
Holy shit.
They've cut them out.
And women have been, like, protesting for over 100 fucking days.
This is literally the first time I've even heard of that exactly this just came to my
acknowledgement where was it at holston tennessee it's in kingsport tennessee kingsport where we go
to aldi our nearest aldi and and it's um you know honestly if you had a baby here that needed to be
in the nicu you'd probably go there right they service most of eastern kentucky they they have
because they have like they're the nearest trauma unit they're our nearest va hospital they are like they service
um a huge appalachian region um and they're trying to get rid of they they are they're cutting they're
cutting a bunch of this stuff i'm sure it's just like you know they're cost-cutting yeah it's
bullshit but all these women are like no the fuck not where are we what are we supposed
to do there's literally no other option and it hasn't been in the news no it hasn't been anywhere
and so i probably have some of these details wrong because i'm having a hard time finding
out what's going on i'm ready to drive down there this weekend and be like sis what's happening
help please what the fuck do we do and i and it makes me want to like maybe the next rabbit hole you can go down when you come out of this.
How Rogers' tail spin.
I think we could do good of just like pulling together a full Appalachian like current protest moment.
Like what encampments, fucking strikes.
Right.
What picket lines are visible in just in Appalachia right now?
Because it's a lot.
We have people in tree stands right now.
Yeah.
Blocking.
The mountain valley pipeline.
Yeah.
Blocking pipelines.
We have like there are people fucking up corporate transportation.
Like people trying to either build shit, move shit, cut shit.
Like we have people standing in the way right now in the region,
and I would love to see, like, just, like, a full report of what all is going on
because it's hard to track all of it because it's getting zero.
One, there's zero national coverage of shit like that unless it's, like, some MAGA shit.
You're right, right.
But two, we've had to cut so much of our local regional journalism
there's so little to go around that it's not being covered locally either right right uh i mean wymt
has only been out to harlan a handful of times yeah they should be out there every fucking day
there should be a daily report of what's going on on those tracks you know what i mean and we're
just and like the closest you've come to that it's probably wmmt reporters right oh yeah yeah no um
and we're and we don't have money like that we don't have no funding for that yeah this is like
very it's just yeah and and the videos that we've made here at apple shop were kids who came and
picked up cameras and we're like this is happening in my community i'm making videos that they
weren't paid right not one penny was spent on it right it's crazy so it's just like this this
shit's not being covered i have no idea what's going on in east tennessee but it impacts me in
a big way right because that's the that's my closest nicu right yeah um and i don't know i
guess like corporate media doesn't find like resistance, actual resistance.
Shocker.
You know,
uh, newsworthy.
Um,
yeah,
shocker.
Yeah,
this isn't,
anyway,
I feel like we could probably come up with a roundup.
Yeah,
we could totally.
Let's,
let's,
let's do a roundup.
We should go down there this weekend too.
I could,
I could use an Aldi trip,
honestly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To Target.
Yeah.
We could go to Target. Oh, we're eating at Cheddar's for sure. Yeah. we can go to tarjay oh we're eating at cheddar's for sure
yeah you've got a cheddar's waffle they've got a waffle house no that's true how do we choose
honestly yeah all right well we'll uh we'll look into it let's do it all right We got over an hour. Wow. So we can go ahead and head out. I just wanted to say,
though, before we leave, God rested a thousand years after his six-day creation of the races,
2 Peter 3.8. Then he created the man Adam, who would be a farmer, Genesis 2.5. Adam was placed
in the Garden of Eden and was told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil.
This tree is symbolic of Satan.
Genesis 2.21-25 tell about Eve's creation.
Adam was put to sleep and God removed what is called a rib in the Bible.
In the Hebrew language, it is called curve.
Strong's Concordance No. 6763.
Oh, my God.
In 1962, biologists received awards for their research of the double-strand helix curve
that contains the DNA that determines traits.
In Genesis 2.25, Adam and Eve are in the garden, naked and not ashamed.
I think what they're saying is that, like, the Bible foretold DNA.
they're saying is that like the bible foretold dna like it's saying that like people knew this whole time because christians knew i just love that they reference like they give you the footnote
or like the the um the verse numbers yeah check me bitch bitch. Check me. Look it up. Look it up. Right. Just check it out.
Like no one has ever read.
Like these are secret encrypted texts somewhere.
Google it.
Wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
To a certain girl in Sexton's branch, you are fooling with fire this time around.
The best thing you can do is lock your doors and never open them up for that gentleman.
He is bad news.
Wow.
Nothing about the car chase at Pine Creek?
Nothing about the car chase, Tanya.
I thought for sure that would land in speaker piece.
I used to be a big football fan before the Kaepernick thing.
Anybody who still watches the National Football League
does not care about his or her country.
Thank you a lot.
Oh, that could go either way, honestly.
Right?
Because they still, Kaepernick still doesn't have a job.
That's true.
You know what I mean?
It could go either way.
It could be someone-
The NFL has fucked Kaepernick out of a career.
That's a glass half full reading of that, Tanya.
Thank you for that.
Ten years, I do have a little optimism left.
That's right.
You've got it.
That's right.
Let's see. What else do you want?
Lordy, lordy. She's from Roxanna and she's 40.
What did you do this time
to get run off?
Is that a lyric to a song?
Alright. Who knows?
I'll give you one more and we can leave.
Unless you want to read one. How about you pick one, huh?
Usually these are circled.
Yeah, I didn't have time to
prepare them today. This is the first
time we've done a speaker piece on here. Is there one about Matt Jones?
Oh, we didn't even talk
about that. That's another thing in the
sort of... Well, that's Tom. Tom needs that to do that.
Tom is fired up about that.
Have you noticed that? He's been tweeting about it a lot.
He loves it. He's fired up.
Speaking of, we didn't even acknowledge
that Tom just wasn't even here.
Hi, Tom!
He lives in Lexington now.
Oh.
He's by Coastal.
He's moved on without us.
He's currently trying to get us footing.
But he has concocted a way to cut off an hour
to the trip.
Yeah.
Tom's actually
been working diligently on
teleportation.
He thinks he's found
a harebrained scheme to cut
down an hour from
Leicester to Whitesburg.
I'm going to have to call BS on that.
If I were Matt Jones, I would get
myself a big lazy boy
recliner and sit in front of the WLEX-TV building in Lexington with a cooler and a big baloney sandwich, just like those black jewel miners are doing in Cumberland.
I would protest the heck out of their decision to fire me.
And the eagle speaks, as it so rarely does.
The caller is referring to WLEX-TV's decision to fire Kentucky Sports Radio founder and host Matt Jones from his second job.
As co-host of a popular daily TV show, Hey Kentucky, after Jones announced he would be writing a book about U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell titled Mitch Please.
I got to call my man on that terrible name for a book.
It's even worse than Ditch Mitch.
Yeah, Ditch Mitch.
Mitch Please is worse than Ditch Mitch.
Yeah, it's worse.
It totally is.
I mean, it is fucked up.
This is how bad things are,
because the Amy McGrath campaign manager, I guess, was bragging that he's the one who got Jones fired. worse i mean it is fucked up this is how bad things are because like the amy mccrath
like campaign manager i guess was bragging that he's the one who got jones fired these people are
nothing surprises me now about the campaign seriously in their mind they're all these
machiavellian geniuses who are just like this is the thing i guess the left really does kind of
need to reorient to itself like what did say? They're playing ninth dimensional chess?
Yes, in their minds they are.
But this is how fragile power is, I feel like.
I feel like these people are so convinced on both the left and the right.
I'm talking about the liberal left and everything on the right.
Everything.
Everything to the right of the liberal left.
There's no in between.
They're all convinced they're just these
political geniuses.
But like I do feel like
The middle of the rotors
are going to cut themselves
in half anyway
riding the fence.
Exactly.
The whole thing just feels
kind of like a paper tiger.
Like it just feels like
false.
It feels like it could
sort of crumble
at any moment.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Anyways, it's a good note to end on. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Anyways,
it's a good note to end on.
Yeah.
Go support the Patreon.
If you miss Tom,
he'll be on the Patreon
this weekend.
Hell yeah.
P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com
slash
Trill Billy Workers Party.
There's all kinds
of good content there.
You'll be on that one.
Maybe.
Yes. I feel like me and Tom are just going to'll be on that one. Maybe. Yes.
I feel like me and Tom are just going to start tag teaming now.
God damn you.
God damn you.
You have no idea how mad that would make everybody.
I thought you were going to say me.
We lost a $10 pledge because not enough Tanya.
Is that what they said?
That was the quote.
Not enough Tanya.
You can send me your $10 a month.
I'll give you all the money.
It's unlimited.
I'll text you every day.
Tanya's starting a spinoff cult where they just pay her directly.
Directly, and I'll just leave you voicemails every day.
Yeah.
30-minute solo podcast.
All right.
Yeah, do that.
I mean, I don't care.
Give Tanya as much, it takes to like get her independent
um alright
uh support us at the Patreon
uh have a good week we'll see you later
bye