Ep. 593 Are People Dying Because of Liberal Policies?
God bless our men and women in blue. Please read this story about this heroic police officer who was brutally slain in the line of duty. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sean-suiter-baltimore-detective-dead-after-head-shot/ Unbelievable! The “Congressional Hispanic Caucus” told a Republican lawmaker he can’t join their group because he’s too Republican. http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article184983023.html The war on your Second Amendment Rights is getting intense. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/know-the-facts-anti-gun-activists-utilize-emotional-grief-to-line-their-pockets/article/2640904 Who pays America’s business tax? You do. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/you-should-want-to-cut-business-taxes-after-all-its-you-who-has-to-pay-them/article/2640982 Is Atheism really “scientific”? https://www.facebook.com/prageru/videos/1602721066437410/
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm doing okay, Dan.
Yeah, Joe, as you know, Joe works up in the Baltimore market up there at WCBM, and I'm formerly a Maryland resident for a long time.
Folks, I don't do a lot of show dedications.
Matter of fact, Joe, I don't think we've ever done any.
This may be our first, but it's a good time to do it.
I don't mean to start you on a somber note, but Sean Suter.
Sean Souter.
Remember that name, folks.
Sean Souter.
43-year-old detective with the Baltimore Police Department.
Dead.
Shot in the head.
Father of five.
Former Navy officer.
Decorated police detective.
Dead.
Walks down an alleyway in an investigation of a homicide doing God's work and the people's work for no money and even less notoriety.
And shot in the head by a dirtbag who still hasn't been found, by the way, in Baltimore.
God bless this guy.
You know, this guy's got five kids, he's got a mother, he's got a father, he's got a wife.
Never gonna see this guy again.
And again, I know it's Friday and I certainly don't mean to start you on a somber note to the show, but...
You don't need to be a former cop or former fed or anything like that, like my former, you know, job, what I did before this, to recognize the heroic sacrifices of these men and women.
And I just ask on this Friday, you keep this guy in your prayers.
Prayer matters, folks.
Ask God to rest his soul peacefully and take care of his family and give them the strength to get through this.
Five kids, never going to see their dad again.
What a damn shame.
God rest your soul, brother.
Sean Suter.
The show's dedicated to you today.
Man, it's tough to move on from stories like that.
And like I said, we don't do that often, folks.
But I just feel like, you know, you cops out there, police officers, you men and women out there, working for crap salaries, getting beaten up all the time, beaten up by the press, political footballs back and forth.
And yeah, listen, we all know you're not perfect.
I wasn't.
You're not.
You all know that.
But man, you do a really tough job, do God's work for almost nothing, and I just want to spend today's show, at least the beginning of this, again, just thanking you and thanking the family of this hero who died.
So a heartfelt, sincere debt of gratitude to our men and women in blue out there.
You do an amazing job.
I mean, who would have thought, Joe?
As this guy's walking down the alley, Sean Suter, remember that name?
Remember, we mentioned the names of all these mutts that kill people over and over again?
Now let's mention a name you should remember.
He's walking down that alley.
He has no idea that these are the last seconds of his life.
Either did anybody around them.
How many of us go to work knowing that every day?
That any moment could be the last seconds of your life because of your job?
Not many.
God bless you, brother.
God bless your family, too.
All right, moving on to some lighter news.
It's hard to move on from that stuff.
So the big news yesterday in Washington, D.C., Joe, the tax bill passed on the House side, the tax cut bill.
Now, just to be clear where we're going, because I like to distill the show down to talking points here, you can take home with you so you don't waste your time.
A tax bill passed on the House side, passed out of committee on the Senate side.
They're expecting some action next week on the full Senate during the Thanksgiving week to pass that bill.
It'll then have to go to some kind of a conference.
They'll have to agree on it because they have to pass one bill.
And the House bill, Joe, and the Senate bill are not the same thing.
Right.
So they're going to have to come to some mutual agreement, which I'm hoping happens before the end of the year.
Now, a couple of things about this, folks, because there's a lot of information and misinformation out there about this tax bill, but one of the big glaring problems I see with the tax bill right now on the Senate side that has to be reconciled and you should be a little concerned about, to be candid, is The corporate tax rate, I like what they're doing on corporate taxes.
They cut the tax rate from 35%, we're now the highest nominal rate in the industrialized world.
Cuts the business tax, the corporate tax, to 20%, which ultimately will filter down at some point to increased salaries.
Not all of it, let's not be unrealistic, but most sound, reasonable economic studies have shown that when you cut business taxes, we get better revenue.
Better revenue leads to more productive workers.
More productive workers leads to increased salaries and wages.
That's only controversial to liberals, not to regular, normal people who understand how businesses work.
Okay?
But here's the problem.
Again, small businesses and S-Corps.
This is with the problem on the Senate side of the bill, folks.
The Senate side, not the House side.
The Senate side.
This has to be fixed.
If you are a small business, you are not a larger corporation that's incorporated, you are going to get just a 17.4% deduction from your income.
What does that mean?
These numbers are confusing everybody, so let me just make it real simple.
So if you're a bigger business that's incorporated, the corporate tax, you're going to pay 20%.
Got it?
Alright.
20% bigger businesses.
These smaller businesses that are S-corps and pass-throughs, what we call them, you're only going to get a 17% deduction from your income, which is going to result in a tax rate for you, Of not 20% like the other businesses we talked about, the bigger incorporated businesses, but it's going to result in a tax rate of 31.8 plus a 3.8% tax for Obamacare, which keeps coming back to kick us in the cajones every time.
I know it's not cajones.
Please stop emailing me.
I get it.
I just think it's funny.
People email me.
It's not cajones.
I know it.
I know it.
I get it.
I got your email.
You win.
I just like it.
I think it's funny.
You're welcome to start your own show and call it whatever you want.
Okay, so that leads to a big problem on the Senate bill, Joe.
If you were a smaller business pass-through, you're going to have a rate of 31.8 plus a 3.8% Obamacare tax.
But yeah, which kind of sucks.
And on the bigger side, the bigger business side, the incorporated business side, larger businesses, the corporate tax is going to be 20%.
Big problem.
So, this is one of the reasons Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, yesterday said, listen, I'm not on board, as it stands now.
I thought he had a reasonable, I think it was a reasonable, you know, defense of his position.
It just creates real anomalies.
Wouldn't you say, Joe?
Bigger businesses are getting 20% as a tax rate, smaller pastors are getting 31.8.
So, in the interest of not whining and complaining and giving you actual solutions, folks, the path forward here is pretty darn simple.
And the journal, I don't want to take, this is not proprietary to me, the journal has an op-ed about this morning that's very good.
A number of other people have proposed this, but this is what I'm thinking right here and this is how I think we fix this relatively easily.
First, we've got to scrap this stupid bubble bracket, which is on the house side.
Get rid of that.
The bubble bracket we talked about last week, which is the hidden tax in there for people who make like 1.2 million and 1.6, where you lose the 12% rate, you get a hike to a 45% rate.
That has to go.
That's on the house side.
But fixing what I just told you about the anomalies between the corporate tax and the pass-through tax, right?
A 30%, excuse me, a 20% and a 31.8% rate.
Here's what we do.
We get rid of Obamacare.
We get rid of the Obamacare individual mandate, Joe, that buys us $300 billion in savings on the reconciliation process.
And as the Journal proposes on the right, you just cut the top rate, the top rate for earners to 35%, and you move the S Corp rate back down to 20% to 25% like on the House side.
the S-Corp rate back down to 20 to 25 percent like on the house side. This isn't complicated.
This is really simple.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because there's nothing more to say.
Just fix it.
Just fix it.
You can't have passed through small businesses paying a rate of 31.8% plus 3.8% for Obamacare and then have larger businesses.
There's nothing wrong with larger businesses, Joe.
But you can't have them paying 20%.
It's not fair to smaller businesses.
Take rid of the individual mandate in Obamacare.
Scrap it.
There'll be $300 billion in savings.
Take the $300 billion in savings.
Cut the individual top rate on the income tax side down to 35%, which will take care of a lot of these blue state folks who are complaining about the loss of the state and local tax, Joe.
That'll wash that out.
And then take the rest of the savings, And apply it to a 20-25% rate on the pass-through side.
So at least you have some similarity between bigger and smaller businesses.
You get what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not complicated, right?
There's nothing particularly difficult about this.
Just get it done.
Now, you may say reasonably, and I like to give you both sides of this, well why aren't the Republicans doing it, Dan?
That sounds like a reasonable proposal.
This is the part where you get ready to retch or vomit because you're going to get sick when I tell you this, but Republicans are afraid that the media is going to beat them up because it's tax cuts for the rich!
You can't lower the top rate from 39.6% to 35% for rich people!
0.6 to 35% for rich people?
You're gonna die.
The typical hyperbolic, ridiculous, far left media nonsense.
Here's my beef against this, folks, and any of the Republicans in the House or Senate who listen to this, or their staffs, I know we got some of you.
Why do you care?
No, seriously.
Joe, let me ask you a question, because you're a pretty good audience on Budsman.
You could be the congressional on Budsman, too, for now.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Is there anything the Republicans can do right now to get the media and the Democrats to stop saying that these are tax cuts for the rich?
Do you think there's anything they could do?
Hell no.
No, hell no is right!
It's not just a no, it's of course not!
Folks, the Republicans could raise the top tax rate for the rich to 100% and cut every other tax everywhere and the Democrats and the dopey media would still be on the news saying, tax cuts for the rich!
Tax cuts for the rich!
It doesn't matter!
Even Orrin Hatch, who's one of the most peaceful, you may not like the guy's politics, but a moderate Republican from Utah, Just dismantled.
Who is it?
The guy from Ohio yesterday or Sherrod Brown.
Joe, Orrin Hatch is an elder statesman.
I mean, he's been around a while.
Orrin Hatch is like, I'm tired of this bullcrap tax for the rich.
It doesn't matter.
Why are you worried about that?
No, it doesn't matter what you do.
Whether you cut the top rate or don't cut the top rate, whether you cut the pass-through rate or don't cut the pass-through rate, the talking points for the left, which are, they are talking, but they're not fact-based ones like we put out there, are always going to be your cutting taxes for the rich.
It doesn't matter.
Why are you wasting your time?
Who cares?
You know what?
Reagan cut the top rate for the rich from 70 to 28 percent.
Tax revenue doubled and the rich paid more.
Both as a share of the tax load and in nominal terms.
Why do you care?
Gosh, I did a Facebook Live yesterday on my Facebook page show and I put out there some of these same ideas.
It's your money.
Why do you care?
Why do you give a darn anymore about what the Democrats say about the Republicans and the media says about Republican tax plans?
They're always going to say the same thing.
Oh, man, is it frustrating?
Have some guts, man.
Just stand up.
I mean, seriously.
I know it's Friday.
I want to do a bit of a lighter show.
I know we started with that sad story, tragic story there.
But, you know, I mean it.
Just stand up.
Have some guts.
You're going to be attacked anyway.
Oh boy.
All right.
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And one more thing.
Thank you for all the feedback on the shows this week.
I appreciate... Folks, contrary to... I am not a yes guy.
I don't like yes people.
I hated it in the Secret Service, and I hate it now.
If you have a critique about the show, there's no need to apologize when you send me an email.
A lot of people send me emails.
They say, I didn't like Monday's show or Tuesday's show.
I'm sorry to say... You don't have to be sorry.
It shows for you.
You don't like it, you've...
You know, you go into McDonald's and get a bad hamburger, right?
You don't apologize for it.
Let it rip.
It's your show!
I mean, you know, listen, shows happen that people don't like, and I deeply and sincerely appreciate your criticism.
Joe and I were talking about it before I got on the air today.
It matters to me.
This show is for you, folks.
I enjoy doing it, but it's your product.
So, you know, complain away.
Or if you like it, tell me, too.
That helps, too, because then I know to do more of it.
Yeah.
All right.
This is a really troubling story.
I saw this yesterday and I thought, really?
I mean, is this where we're at right now?
You know, I've repeatedly made assertions on this show about identity politics show and how the liberals play the, you know, phobophobic-ist-a-phobe game.
You know, calling people racist, misogynist, whatever it may be, anti-Hispanic, anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-trans, it doesn't make a difference.
Anybody who disagrees with them is anti-something, right?
But the case I made in the past, it's not genuine.
That's not really a commitment to the betterment of the Black or Hispanic community or the gay community.
It has nothing to do with that, folks.
It's simply a matter of getting votes.
I mean, I think the example I used yesterday was The immigration bill that they put a poison pill in years ago where some Republicans said okay well we'll let we'll give people amnesty who came into the country as immigrants but here's the catch they're not going to be able to vote and the Democrats said no.
Now folks that, I mean, it's clearly not about then allowing people in the country because we would have done that.
It was just about the votes and the power.
Identity politics is about power too.
It has nothing to do with actual identity.
It is a power trip.
And the reason it's a power trip is because folks, look, this is important.
You understand the why here.
And for those of you who've heard this before, forgive me, but we do have some new listeners and it's important you understand this because it's an ongoing evergreen topic covered throughout just about almost all of our episodes in some way, shape or form.
Liberals know, smart liberals, that their agenda is, it's a counterintuitive one.
It's one that doesn't naturally appeal to people.
What do I mean by that?
Think about, I could go on about a thousand topics, but let's just keep it to what I call the big three, right?
Taxes, the economy, healthcare, and education.
The liberal stance on the economy is give us more of your money.
In other words, if you run a business, turn us over the profits and we'll let the government take care of it.
That is not a naturally intuitive or appealing position to Gosh, 99% of people out there who wants to work and give their money to someone else.
I mean, listen, I love Joe to death, but outside of a couple months in the beginning when Joe and I were in like the beta phase of the podcast, trying to feel around what we were going to do, I realized quickly I'd have to pay Joe.
I mean, Joe likes me as a friend, but I would never ask Joe to do the show for free.
It's not an intuitive position.
So to get people to believe that position, you need something else.
Now, moving on quickly, healthcare is the same thing.
Turning over your healthcare to the government and allowing a government bureaucrat to say yes or no to you on the phone to a hip replacement or brain surgery is not an intuitive position.
It is not something Joe or even his liberal friends want.
So to sell that, It's important.
They need something else.
Same thing on education.
You see where I'm going with this?
The big three, economy, healthcare, and education.
There's a theme.
It is not an intuitive position to say, send your kid to a government-run school, even if it stinks.
That is not an intuitive position, so the liberals need something else.
So they figured out a long time ago, based on a lot of their learnings in critical theory, a lot of their Marxist leanings from some of the activist side of the liberal movement, that if they could play identity politics and not sell their ideas, In other words, disguise their crap ideas.
Give us your money.
Give us your health care.
Give us your kids.
And disguise those crap ideas and wrap them in a, hey, but the other guys are worse gift package that they could win elections.
And they did.
They took over most of America's major cities using almost exclusively identity politics.
In other words, not running on their real agenda.
Give us your money.
Give us your health care.
Give us your kids.
That wasn't it.
It was always disguised as something else.
And that disguise was identity politics.
In other words, yes, these policies suck, so we're gonna hide them, but the Republicans, wow, do they really hate you, Joe.
And it just, it didn't matter what you were, they would find something.
I mean, the easy ones were, oh, you're black.
Oh, Republicans hate you.
Hispanic, oh, they hate you, too.
Immigrants, they definitely hate you.
Then it just expanded.
Muslim, they hate you, too.
Trans, oh my gosh, they really hate you.
Gay, they hate you, too.
Union workers, they hate you, too.
The middle class, they hate you.
Low-income groups, they hate you, too.
I mean, it's amazing, like the Democrats.
Every single thing you say, they will say someone hates you for it, right?
You're probably like, well, what's the story?
The story, this story yesterday kind of proves what I'm telling you.
This has nothing to do with actually taking care of these groups, but just batting them.
So there's a congressman in Florida, 26 down here, Carlos Curbelo, who, uh, I'll be honest.
I'm not, I don't, I don't know him personally.
I'm not a huge fan of his politics.
He's in a, you know, a left-leaning district and he tends to take a lot of positions that I would disagree with personally, uh, on immigration, some of the things on gun control.
But Carlos Curbelo is a Republican.
I believe he's Cuban.
And I saw this story, I'm like, this has to be BS, right?
It's a scam.
But it's not.
He applies for membership, Joe, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Okay.
Now, Carlos Cabello is a Republican member of Congress.
So, Joe, let's walk through this, okay?
Okay.
Wait, Joe, listen, because this is going to be tough for liberals.
So again, we may have, can you resort to caveman Joe mode for a moment here?
Because I'm going to require you to dump at least 100 IQ points to figure this one out.
These are simple yes or no answers, by the way, okay?
Okay.
So Carlos Curbelo Joe is a member of Congress.
Do you think the term congressional suits him?
Yes or no?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, we're a third of the way home.
Bear with me.
I know this is complicated.
Okay.
Carlos Cabela, Caveman Joe, is Cuban.
Do you believe that that would fit the definition of Hispanic?
Yes.
Oh!
Oh!
Yes!
We're two for three.
This caveman Joe is on fire.
We're gonna have to throw him a bone or something.
He can gnaw on.
Get the marrow out.
Okay.
Now, this third one's pretty simple, Joe.
Caucus, right?
So caucus, does that mean a group of people that are going to get together to discuss something?
Yes or no?
Caucus.
Group, yes!
So Carlos Cabello is in fact a Cuban-American congressman who wants to meet with a group of other of other Hispanic congressmen and he is in fact denied admission to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
This is just the craziest story ever and Sorry, again, of course, I'm laughing and I'm tearing all over the content.
I can't even see the paper anywhere.
Folks, their reasoning was, well, you know what?
Yeah, we are the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, but this guy really doesn't share our values.
Like what?
Being in Congress and being Hispanic?
By the way, Joe, this guy is no hardliner.
Like I said, I don't know him personally.
I'm sure he's a very nice guy.
But he is a moderate if not a left-leaning Republican and this guy's not entitled to join and that proves to you my point again over and over again this is why this topic is totally evergreen that this has nothing to do at all With being Hispanic, Joe, or being in Congress, and it has everything to do with the advancement of a far-left agenda and disguising it.
God forbid a Cuban-American congressman who's a Republican is allowed to go into the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and actually talk about actual ideas that would affect the Hispanic community, by the way, where he works.
Now, if you are in Florida 26, which is in southern Florida, south of me, I live in Martin County, I live in 18, By the way, I have Brian Mast on NRA TV today at 1 o'clock if you guys and ladies want to tune in, who is my congressman, a Republican up here in Florida, 18.
If you are a Hispanic voter, if you're any voter in Florida, 26, look up if this is you guys' congressman.
And ladies, you should be super PO'd right now.
No, I'm serious.
It's like, if you're a Hispanic voter, or any voter who voted for Cabello, you now can't get your ideas out there with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus because the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has deemed him not worthy like it's a Wayne's World episode?
I mean, seriously, dude?
I read this story yesterday, Joe.
I'm like, is this a joke?
Like seriously, is this?
I thought it was, I had, I thought this is a setup.
They're trying to get, you know, right-leaning conservative commentators to jump the gun on this and make idiots out of themselves.
So I had to wait four or five times before I saw the story reappear in prominent media outlets to determine it was true.
And it is in fact true.
He was not admitted into the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and it's sad.
We needed to bring Caveman Joe out of the bullpen for that because it really requires a level of idiocy to understand that only Caveman Joe is capable of it.
But he got it right.
He was three for three.
You're amazing today.
I'll tell you, man, this is just, folks, I really, really enjoy doing the show, I promise you.
This has never been like a job to me, ever, ever.
That's why if I ever come after our sponsors or anything like that, I'm just gonna take the thing private.
I would never, I don't wanna do subscriber stuff because I don't want you to have to pay anything for it, but I never wanna go off the air.
I don't, because I really, really love the show and it's just, sometimes I think it may be safer to go that route.
But we'll have that conversation at a later date.
All right, let's see.
From the annals of liberal policies that they say are designed to help but really kick people in the teeth.
We haven't talked about one of these in a while, Joe.
You know, I always say about liberals that it's not just that you fall in front of them on the street and they walk past you and don't help you up.
It's that you go to get up and they take the back, sink in a rear naked choke and promptly punch you in the face as you're not looking.
There's a big difference between the two.
You know, one is misfeasance, one is absolute malfeasance.
By the way, I grappled last night, and I gotta tell you folks, I love.
If you are not out there, if you're out there and you're interested, please, please go check out jujitsu, Brazilian jujitsu.
It is the coolest thing ever.
It is the gentlest art ever.
I was rolling around with my friend Jordan last night, he's a lawyer around here.
He's a good dude, blue belt, pretty talented, super long legs, so you gotta be careful to get chokes out of everywhere.
And before the class, we were warming up, and we're on the ground, rolling around, and we're talking about his dog.
And I'm thinking, who does that?
You see a street fight with two guys, and they're on the ground, rolling around, and it's, ah!
Screaming, they're cracking each other's heads off the concrete or whatever.
We're talking about his dog.
I'm like, how's your dog?
He's got this huge dog.
I'm like, does he eat a lot of food?
It's the most gentle, go try it.
It's just the greatest thing.
It's the most peaceful place on Earth.
It's on the mat.
Rolling around, man.
All right.
One more thing on that, by the way.
On Thanksgiving, we will do a show next week.
And Joe, I think we should do a rough cuts.
All right.
Because I don't think on Thanksgiving people want to hear about nasty politics.
So let me know.
Give me your feedback on that.
If you want a political show, I will certainly do it on Thanksgiving.
But if you think of rough cuts, I think Thanksgiving would be a good time.
All right.
OK, here is again from the files of liberals trying to so-called help people and actually hurting people.
Is Obamacare killing people?
No, I'm not kidding.
That's the actual title of the story I'm quoting from the journal today.
It's Obamacare Killing People.
So this, this is incredible.
Now, folks, the free market has a remarkable way of setting up incentives.
You know, I was in the gym this morning thinking about the story, putting together the show, and I'm like, okay, how do I explain incentives to my audience in the simplest way possible so we don't overcomplicate this and how the government screws incentives up constantly?
And I thought, okay, this is my gym.
What's the goal of the gym?
The goal of the gym is to keep the gym members satisfied, right?
I mean, there's no other distant, more complicated or necessary explanation.
People don't like the gym, whether the equipment's bad, whether the sauna doesn't work, or whether the bathrooms are dirty.
Then people leave and go to another gym.
There's like four or five gyms in my area.
They have Planet Fitness, they have the Treasure Coast Barbell Club.
There's a ton of gyms I could go to.
I like my gym.
I'm happy.
They keep me happy.
That is how the free market works.
The incentive in a free market for a business, a gym, a doctor, a food establishment, a restaurant, whatever it may be, Joe, is to keep customers happy.
That's it.
That's the goal.
You say, oh, the goal is to make money.
You can't make money if the customers aren't happy.
That's the point.
The money is secondary.
Now liberals will tell you otherwise.
All about making money.
No, it's not all about making money.
It's about keeping the customers happy and then the money comes later.
It's not about get them the money and then piss them off.
It doesn't work that way.
Now, when the government tries to recreate free market incentives because they want to control things, they fail every single time because they don't have the knowledge or the incentives to create actual incentives that are going to help.
Remember, the government's incentive always is control and to stay in power.
It's not to satisfy customers.
Don't ever, ever believe that.
The government doesn't have customers because it takes your money by force.
The gym doesn't do that.
The government takes your money by force.
It redistributes your money based on how it can enhance its political power, not on enhancing your personal powers.
Nothing to do with that.
So, this is a fascinating story.
Obamacare, Joe.
Yeah.
They instituted, in the genius idea of the government officials that drew this up, they said, you know what?
We're going to recreate incentives for hospitals.
Instead of the hospital's original incentive, keeping the customers happy and alive, Joe, we're going to take over and we're going to rebuild our own incentive system.
And the incentive here said, we're going to penalize hospitals that readmit patients that have gone through heart failure, heart problems.
So, if Joe, God forbid, you had a heart problem and you went into the hospital, and you were let out, and then you were readmitted, some genius in the government said, well, that's a sign that what?
The hospital must stink, right?
Because you had to go back to the hospital, you were readmitted, right?
Wow.
So the government's, yeah, you see where this is, Joe, this does not end well.
As you already have figured out, the story does not end well, it never does.
But, so the government geniuses said, well, let's do this.
Let's penalize, financially, hospitals that readmit patients.
Now, liberals, again, for Libs, the story, and you can tune out now, the story ends here.
I'm sure you think this was a genius move.
Because you're like, look, they're such so smart, what a great idea.
Instead of like in the free market, where you just take care of people and want them to live because they're custom, because they're actual paying customers, right?
Well, what happened?
Again, facts and data, liberals put, this is tough for you, I understand.
So Joe, pre-Obamacare, the readmittance rate was 20%.
Now, roll with me for a second because this is a two-parter.
Post-Obamacare, the readmittance rate went down to 18.4%.
Now, I have a big note in capital letters.
Yay!
Great!
Again, liberals, you can tune out now.
Now, what was the incentive, Joe?
Let me ask you a question, okay?
Simple question, Joe.
If you own a hospital, Joe's hospital, whatever it may be, and you know you're going to be penalized by the government for readmitting patients, do you want to readmit patients or do you not want to readmit patients?
I would probably not want to.
Joe, you are a freaking genius lately.
You are on fire.
No, of course you don't want to readmit patients because you're going to be penalized.
So is it even remotely surprising that the government creates a set of artificial incentives and that hospitals then comply and don't readmit patients?
Okay, now part two.
Now, the liberals, I know the liberals are already gone, because this is the part where we talk about what happens in the real world, okay?
So, in the real world, what actually happened?
Now, Joe, you have Steve's dictionary handy?
Yeah, go ahead.
Okay, and I'm going to give you a word in a second to look up for me, okay?
Because liberals have a tough time with this, and there may still be some tuned in.
But for you Republicans out there, so readmittance rates went down, but mortality rates One Up is not even funny.
I'm just laughing at how stupid the liberals are.
They never ever go to the what's next thing.
Mortality rates jumped to 8.6% from 7.2%.
Now 8.6% is clearly greater than 7.2%.
Joe, can you check in Steve's dictionary what is the definition of mortality?
Alright, on Steve's Dictionary, page 552, mortality, number one, the condition of being mortal.
What's number two?
I'm sorry, number two is death rate.
Death!
So now we have Steve's Dictionary, Steve was nice enough to, it's the follow-up to Jay's Abacus, because I know we have liberals who are still tuned in, who have a tough time with words and facts and data.
So mortality rates are death rates!
Number two definition death okay so if mortality rates jumped from 8.6 to 7.2 percent why do you think that would I spent the whole morning stewing on this and I have a theory about what's going on so Obamacare says Hospitals, if you readmit people for heart failure, we're going to penalize you.
Surprising, absolutely no one.
Hospitals readmit fewer people.
What happens?
Death rates jump.
What do you think is happening?
People are dying.
Here's my theory on this.
Joe, I'm absolutely confident this is what's going on.
Patients are going back to the hospital who've had heart failure, who were there, And instead of being readmitted, what's happening?
The hospitals are sending them home, where they're dying!
The death rates have gone up!
Now you may say, and we love facts and data on the show, you may say, okay Dan, but what were mortality rates in the past?
Great question, and a fair question.
I'm a step ahead of you though.
Because Joe, if the mortality rate jumped from 8.6 to 7.2 percent, but let's say mortality rates have been jumping up and moving up forever, that would be an irrelevant statistic, right?
You'd say, well that doesn't have anything to do with the readmittance.
Mortality rates have been going up forever.
You'd be wrong.
So, this 8.6% jump in mortality from 7.2, mortality rate from 2014 to 2015 went up 1.2%, so it has happened before.
But this is the first increase since 2005, and the only other time that a mortality rate jumped by more than this, outside of the ACA period, was 1% in 1993, a jump in the mortality rate, which was basically the height of the AIDS crisis.
Folks, You know, as I always tell you reluctantly, I wake up every morning thinking, what liberal dopey policy am I going to have to talk about and fight against today?
Ladies, guys, I'm just begging you to take the fight to the left on this stuff.
Nothing they tell you is true.
Obamacare did not cut your premiums.
Obamacare did not save anybody's life.
Matter of fact, the headline of the piece is, is Obamacare actually killing people?
And at least, I don't want to make big bold assertions right here, but at least in this limited measure right now, it was a big study.
But this readmittance thing, which is a part of Obamacare, it has clearly, Joe, led to more people dying than before the bill even passed.
So now we have an Obamacare piece of legislation, again, that is costing Americans billions, if not over time, trillions of dollars in increased premiums.
That is actually killing people, at least with respect to readmittance rates in hospitals.
Man, thank God for Steve's Dictionary today.
What would we do without it?
Because liberals would be like, mortality rates?
Doesn't that mean that, you know, people living longer?
No, no, that's not what it means.
It literally means death rates, as Steve's dictionary is clearly.
Death rates gone up, up, up.
That means an arrow pointing to the sky.
Man, alive.
So Obamacare, what a, I mean, what a crap sandwich this thing has been.
I saw the story, I'm like, I can't believe people still buy into it, too.
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All right.
What else are we going to talk about today?
Okay.
On a more personal note, I teach a bunch of kids in a CCD class, which I really enjoy a lot, and one of them brought something up the other day, and I was inspired just to talk about it briefly on a Friday, leave you on a good note.
I was asking the kids, uh, about, you know, what, what's it like, what's, what's the culture like amongst teenagers now when it comes to religion?
I know when I was a kid, it was, you know, I went to Catholic school and even in Catholic school, if you spoke openly about, I hate to say it, but if you spoke openly about your faith, you were almost like, kind of laughed at a little bit.
Yeah.
That's even in Catholic school.
I mean, you were like, what is he, the religious weirdo or something like that?
I went to Catholic school too, Dan.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You know what I'm talking about.
I mean, you know, it wasn't virulent or anything, but it was kind of like understood that you just didn't talk about religion, especially in the crew I hung out with.
And I always was bothered by that.
So I asked the kids, I said, you know, what's it like?
And they said, well, it's getting a little better, but there's a lot of atheists in my school now.
And one of them told me that their friend told them that, you know, religion is, quote, you know, stupid.
And I thought, um, Okay, uh, so I, you know, rather than responding with, well, you know, that's stupid, I thought, you know, why would they think that?
So PragerU, Dennis Prager has a thing called PragerU, short for Prager University.
If you go to their Facebook page, they do these videos, which are really great.
And it was a video by a guy named Frank Pastore, which is really terrific.
I'll try to put it in the show notes today at Bongino.com, the link to it.
And as always, if you join my email list, I will send it to you.
But he's a former major league pitcher, and it's a really fantastic video.
And he brings up a couple of points we think we've hit on before in the show, but he does a really, really good job at it.
But one of them he brings up is, you know, what's, quote, stupid?
The idea that there's no God and this is all random?
Or the idea that there was some kind of intelligence designer?
And I just, I remember a video, excuse me, an audio series of CDs I listened to years ago on religion.
I used to love listening to them in the car on the commute to work, like some of you are listening to my show right now, which I appreciate.
And one of the points the guy made up is, The guy brought up, excuse me, in the CD was, what is consciousness?
How do you explain that by science?
Listen, I'm not going to get too wonky.
It's Friday.
I just want to leave you with this.
And I know I have atheist listeners because one of them emailed me.
Nice kid.
He says, I have a lot of values that replicate Christian values, but I'm not a Christian.
I'm an atheist.
And he said, you know, am I welcome on your show?
Of course you are.
I'm a Christian.
Absolute firm believer in the power of Jesus Christ to save you.
I believe that with all my heart and soul, and I know Joe does too.
And I wish you would believe the same, but I can't force that on you.
Matter of fact, Jesus Christ didn't force that on anyone, right?
He was God, Joe.
He could have forced it on everyone, right?
He just could have snapped his finger and said, you're all believers.
It's a choice.
That's your choice to make.
But I ask you just with an open mind to think this through.
What the heck is consciousness?
How do you explain that by science?
And the way the guy explained it on the CD was brilliant, Joe.
Consciousness, if you think about it, is like a guy in your head watching a movie, right?
You know, it is a... I took a note on this.
What in your brain is telling this unified story of you?
Like right now, Joe, I'm envisioning... Joe and I are separated right now.
We talk by Skype.
But let me tell you where I am.
You've seen my office.
Yeah.
Right now I have my ten fingers on the desk, literally touching a wooden desk.
So there's pressure.
My eyes are being stimulated by light.
I have Fox News on a monitor in the background.
I can hear a fan going to my right, although be it lightly, you probably don't hear it in the microphone.
Not much smell, but I can smell my wife cooking something inside, which smells really good.
My mouth's watering a little bit.
And I'm talking to this microphone.
My muscles are moving.
My muscles are contracted a little bit to keep me from falling off the edge of the chair I'm sitting on.
I sit on the edge because it keeps me keeps me going on the show.
I'd rather stand but the mic doesn't go that high.
How is all of that information, sensory, auditory, visual, olfactory, how is that all being translated into this movie we called life?
Who's watching it?
Now, I know the atheists out there, and with all due respect, and not an insult, you may say to yourself, oh, it's a series of neurons.
Really?
Which ones?
No science has ever proven that, by the way.
What neurons are doing that?
It's a group of neurons that are telling a story?
How?
It's a neural network.
How is it doing that?
How is it translating all of this information into effectively me watching a movie of myself?
That's what I'm doing.
You're thinking in one collective story.
Who's watching the movie?
What in your head is taking all of this information and putting it on a movie screen which results in your sense of consciousness?
And the guy in the piece was amazing, because he's like, and by the way, if there is one set of Neuron's show that's taking all of it, and there's like a master center that's translating this into the story you call consciousness, then who's watching that?
Seriously, who's watching that?
Who's watching the guy who's watching the movie?
Folks, it's not explainable.
At least now.
The only explanation for me is an intelligent designer.
Here's another analogy, the guy in the CD, and forgive me, I don't remember, it was a long time ago, used.
Imagine your neurons, all of them, As individual pieces of information, right?
So imagine there was like a billion or so people and you asked them to hold up a sign overhead, like over their heads, right?
And you know how in the stadiums when everybody holds something up and it spells out and to be like, go Tide or whatever, you know what I'm saying, Joe?
Like in a football game?
Imagine you did that on a scale a million, a trillion times larger and you had the whole planet hold something up and someone in space was going to read it.
And it said, Consciousness.
Think of how many people that would have to be to see that from space.
There is absolutely no way, if you told no one about what it said, that anybody would be able to read the sign, Joe, other than the people from space.
Because pretty much every sign is going to be white or a tiny, tiny little snippet of black from like the C in Conscious or the S. No one's going to know what that means.
If those are all the neurons in your head, what's reading the sign from above?
What's watching the movie?
I know the answer.
I'm confident the answer to me is the Almighty gave you a consciousness and the ability of free will.
The consciousness exists nowhere else other than on earth with human beings.
I don't know.
I'm sorry if I just bored you with it.
You may not have thought that was interesting, but the question came up.
The PragerU video is interesting.
He brings this up at the end.
He brings up four points on why he believes that Atheism is non-scientific and ridiculous.
And one of them is, you know, life in and of itself.
Why does it only happen here?
And I think the third part is consciousness.
How do you explain human consciousness?
That you can say, as Descartes said, I think therefore I am.
How do you know that?
Why can't a dog say that?
Why doesn't a dog know it's a dog?
Why, really, why did he know it's a dog?
Why can't a dog just speak and say, hey, I want bacon bacon?
They have these bacon strips in my house, but my mother-in-law's dogs, we call them bacon, bacon.
The dogs go nuts.
Why can't they say that?
I don't know.
Fascinating question, folks.
All right.
I hope that was okay.
Give me some feedback on the show today.
I really appreciate it.
Daniel at Bongino.com.
Please join my email list at Bongino.com.
I'll send you these articles, and I'll look for that PragerU link, and I'll get it out to you.
Thanks again, folks, for all your comments, criticisms.
I appreciate all of them this week, and I will see you all on Monday.
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