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April 8, 2011 - Jimmy Dore Show
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Hello, this is Robert Siegel, host, along with Melissa Block, of course, of all things considered on NPR.
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It's the Jimmy Dore show.
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper say.
It's hard to talk on your TV.
So sit back or sit up or keep driving.
And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to today's show.
I'm joined in studio by Frank Connant from CinematicTitanic.com and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
How you doing, Frank?
Hey, great.
Next to him from Dinner and a Movie on TBS and ask a Republican.com.
He's not a real Republican.
It's Paul Gilmartin.
Jimmy.
And the funniest Twitterer, the funniest Twitterer out there at Team Yasamura, it's Robert Yasamura.
Hey, Robert, how are you, buddy?
What's going on?
All right, so what's coming up on today's show?
Well, BP is drilling in the Gulf again, and I say it's about time because America needs to stop relying on foreign disasters.
And guess what?
Somebody lost their TV show.
I want to verify something that is true.
I am going to leave this program later this year.
Woo, Glenn Beck leaving Fox News.
Now the only place to find crazy dishonest commentary on TV is every other show on Fox News.
Okay, Paul Ryan unveiled his plan to balance the federal budget.
Pundits are calling it courageous.
Some people have some problems with it.
He screwed everything up.
It's a big mess.
The numbers are all wrong.
He's killing Medicare as we know it today.
He's doing nothing whatsoever about all the people aren't covered by health insurance right now.
Okay, so it's courageous, kind of in the way, you know, like when Mr. Potter attacked George Bailey's building and loan, you know, real gutsy.
So there's more tax cuts for the corporation, an Uber rich in Paul Ryan's bill.
Lots of cuts for the poor and working class.
Plus, plus, the good news is the bill contains a provision that provides soul vouchers.
So after passing this budget, the Republicans can replace their souls with vouchers on the open market.
And we're going to take a look at that budget plan and the budget battle.
Plus, we help Chris Hardball Matthews answer the question about Paul Ryan's budget.
Why would a guy who's ready to inflict pain on grandma at the same time say, let's give the hot shot on Wall Street a big cut in taxes?
Okay, Chris, I'm going to give you three guesses and the first two don't count.
All right, but plus, we have a new oh my god segment.
Jim Hightower calls in to bum us out in a folksy voice and moron's got some social security problems on his mind.
That's this week on the Jimmy Dore Show.
Okay.
Okay.
is you and you for me.
I'll be together.
Okay, and we are back.
And, you know, this on today's, oh, you know what?
It's time for.
Time for another installment of Oh my God.
Okay, now if you were if you were privy or lucky enough to be at last weekend's popping politics show at the Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard.
Thanks everybody for coming out.
It was fun.
Sunday sold-out show.
Look at that.
Our first show over there and we filled the place.
God bless everybody.
But if you were there, you saw this clip already in the oh my god.
The man who's running, they're having their Republican primary in Iowa is not too far away.
The election is next year.
Like it's quick.
Like Barack Obama's term has gone flying by, right?
So anyway, so the guy, there's one of the guys who's number three.
Some say he's number two.
His name is Herman Kane.
He's a chairman of the Godfather's Pizza.
And he's running for the Republican nomination for president.
And he's, again, let's keep in mind, he's number three in the polls.
So he's really up there.
He's ahead of Sarah Palin in the polls.
Okay, so here they asked him recently about how he felt about Muslims.
And here's what he had to say.
Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?
No.
I will not.
And here's why.
That is this creeping attempt.
There's this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government.
It does not belong in our government.
I said the role of Islam at Islam American is for those that believe in Islam to practice it and leave us alone.
I get upset when the Muslims in this country, some of them, try to force their Sharia law onto the rest of us.
Where have you seen attempts to.
Okay, we'll stop it right there.
We'll stop it right there.
And then we're going to come back to it.
But that's Herman Cain, and that's him being afraid of Sharia law.
And he's sick and tired of the Muslims forcing their religious beliefs down our throats because— When was the last time a Christian ever tried to laugh?
Well, on the way over here, you know, Sharia law is just really all over the place now.
I think he has a point.
On the way over here, some people tried to stone me to death.
And even ask them why.
I mean, it's with Sharia law.
They can just do that.
You could just do that.
That's what the gift to say.
And the point he's making is Sharia law is creeping into our society more and more every day.
I can't leave my house without running into Sharia law.
And by the way, Sharia law was such a horrible sequel to LA Law.
I don't think a single person watched that.
I don't, I didn't.
I certainly did.
A bunch of people.
Though Harry Hamlin was just as good.
Yeah.
Oh, they booked him?
They nailed him?
that's good.
So here's some more of his Sharia law ranting.
I really can't get over.
So they ask him, where are people instituting this Sharia law?
And here's what he said.
Established Sharia law.
They've done it.
One judge did it up in New Jersey and ruled in a case.
Then last week we heard about it.
Just New Jersey, by the way.
I don't have the judge's name.
I don't have the name of the court case.
I don't have the court district.
I don't even have the city.
It might have been an episode of the Sopranos.
I'm not sure.
But it happened in New Jersey.
I think it was on the Sopranos.
Are you sure it happened in New Jersey?
Yeah, I called my girlfriend who lives in Canada and she double-checked it for me.
In order to fight Sharia law, everybody has to get together and tell us vaguely in general where it might be happening.
And we'll try to find out.
That's what's so good, so valuable about Fox News is any news organization can tell you what happened, but they'll tell you what's going to happen.
And the one thing that this Sharia law people hate is if you be specific.
So don't just somewhere in New Jersey, and where else is it happening?
Judge down in.
Was it Texas?
It might have been Texas where a judge said that there was a dispute in a mosque and he was going to consider ecclesiastical law in his deliberations because of a dispute that was going on inside the mosque.
And so my point is the First Amendment guarantees people freedom of expression relative to their religion.
It does not guarantee they have the opportunity to push their religion off on us.
That's what the First Amendment says.
Robert's passing a kidney stone.
I've heard this clip four times and I still am furious.
And God forbid, I've never, you know, part of his point is I've never heard of a Christian trying to impose their no, I'll bet you a dollar in God We Trust that I mean, come on.
Yes.
And, you know, but why should he?
The thing is, he's a black guy, and there's no reason he should be sensitive to discriminating against total big groups of people, right?
Should he?
No.
Even if it's not like he has a...
He might be the Republican nominee.
He's right now, number three, and he will not appoint a Muslim.
This has been, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Okay.
Okay.
By the way, he's also got this smug look on his face.
If people want to look at the clip, which is currently like a pandemic among Republicans, of like, there, I said it.
It wasn't PC, but I said it.
I was brave enough to say it.
It's like, no, you weren't brave enough to say it.
You were stupid enough to say it.
Yeah, that's like, yes, there's a quote we played on the show before from Rush Limbaugh when he said, there, I said it.
When I was watching the NFL football game, it looked like the bloods against the Crips.
There, I said it.
Yeah, there you said, there you said that racist thing you had in your head.
You said it all.
Maybe that should be another segment, too.
Not brave, just stupid.
Yeah.
Oh, there you go, Paul.
Yeah, okay.
I'll get on it.
Now, let's go from a Republican to a Democrat.
How about President Barack Obama is looking to compromise because he didn't want to shut down the government.
And here's what he had to say at a press conference earlier this week.
I think what the American people expect from me is I'll tell you what we expect from you.
What we've come to expect from you right now is that you're going to roll over to the corporate concerns and you're going to be a lackey, right?
The same thing that they expect from every member of Congress, and that is the I want to know why he's doing this from a WHO concert.
I get a lot of my clips off of Morning Joe, and they play betting music.
He just hired Boba O'Reilly to his cabinet.
Who?
That's the name of the song.
You know me, I'm ignorant when it comes to the kids' music as well.
Looking out for the interests of the American people.
Oh, that's what he's doing.
He's looking out for that.
I didn't know that's what he was doing.
He was looking out for the interests of the American people.
Now, here's he goes on to say that these are tough economic times.
And that is that we act like grown-ups.
Yeah, we got to act like grown-ups, right?
We all got to act like grown-ups.
And when we are in negotiations like this, that everybody gives a little bit, compromises a little bit in order to do the people's business.
Yeah, like he's going to compromise and keep giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people and corporations.
And then their other side's going to compromise by cutting Medicare and Social Security for people.
That's their compromise, right?
Well, we are behaving like adults in the sense that no one under 50 owns that WHO album.
I thought it was kind of an ironic juxtaposition that he was talking.
Yeah, they're playing the Who underneath, which is the sign of rebellion from my youth anyway.
Yeah, absolutely.
And he's telling us to be grown-ups.
I was never a big WHO fan, though.
They're great, though, I'm sure.
Robert Dulcery, quite an actor.
If we talked about that John Steinbeck quote talking about how when the Depression was happening, how people were voting against their own economic self-interests.
No.
And Steinbeck said that America is filled with people who don't see themselves as poor, but see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Which I thought just nailed it right on the head.
Well, it's a combination, Paul, I think, of that.
And that it, for whatever reason, we've talked about this, about why people get angry at other working class people when they actually have a good deal, like when they can actually have benefits and they can retire at a decent age and live like a good life.
And people who don't have that, working people who don't have that, instead of saying, why can't I get that?
They go, he shouldn't have that.
Right, right.
It's the opposite.
It's like, well, no, no, we can have it, but it's because it's been ingrained into their brain from the corporate media that things are tough.
Well, that the other guy who has a couple of benefits, he's the one that's taking things away from you, not the corporate people.
People who have huge tax breaks.
Right.
And keep outsourcing your jobs and raise to the bottom.
Yeah, so that's.
And you know, the weird thing, it's like we all have to take a haircut.
That's what Barack Obama says.
But I don't know if you remember in January.
We're bald.
In January.
We're bald, Jimmy.
They've got long flowing hair.
Yes, I know.
And I'm bald all over.
I look like a 12-year-old.
Yeah.
Corporate America looks like Fabio at this point.
They're looking fine.
I'm really liking our metaphor, by the way.
I like extensions.
This is luxurious.
This is nice.
Glistens in the sun.
I'll tell two friends, and then you can tell two friends, and so on, and so on.
And speaking of 30-year-olds, he brought in as a consultant for that fantastic Sam.
So here's what Barack Obama said just a few months ago.
The stock market has come roaring back.
Corporate profits are up.
The economy is growing again.
So we all have to take a haircut?
Those two statements aren't.
Those are incongruent, right?
I can't reconcile those two things.
Everybody has to take a haircut, and the stock market is booming again, and corporate profits are up.
Everyone has to take a haircut, and meanwhile, the corporate CEOs look like Z-Z-Top.
Oh, this is going great today.
So the corporate profits are up.
How about we get more money from corporations?
How about that?
How about we stop letting people fight their profits over?
all of the Republicans giving these gigantic tax breaks is based on if we give them tax breaks, they'll stimulate the economy.
But it's now a fact that all these Wall Street people have all this money and they're not spending it all.
They're not investing it in the country.
They're not putting it into the economy.
That's where the best bet is.
So, I mean, that whole theory has been discredited many times over.
That's the thing they're basing their model on the Reaganomics model of 1980 before we were an international world, you know, before you take investment money and just take it overseas.
And now they're taking the money and investing it in China because China is a rigged economy.
And if you don't know what I mean, people, when every time I say that on the show, somebody emails me to say, you're wrong about that, and blah, blah, blah.
It's a rigged economy for a lot of reasons.
The big reasons are they don't have any environmental laws or worker or worker protections like we have here.
Okay, a lot of the government invests in their own businesses.
If you want to open a business there, the government makes you partner with one of their businesses.
It's a rigged economy.
To give you an idea of how rigged it is, they've been consulting with the producers of Last Comic Standard.
Wow.
Frank Conniff, ladies and gentlemen.
Hey, I got a phone call.
Barack Obama called me.
Jimmy, this is Barack Obama.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the criticisms of my handling of this impending government shutdown.
We need to arrive at a compromise here.
And like I said yesterday, we need to start acting like grown-ups, adults, grown-ass men.
We put away childish things like principles, ideals, and convictions.
A grown-up, let's the opponent, frame the debate.
Grown-ups do what corporations tell them to do.
That's a very adult thing.
Now, I've been criticized on the left by folks who just don't want to grow up.
I hear, you know, Dennis Kucinich sitting there sucking his thumb, telling us that the workers should come first, like a child.
Bernie Feders, more like Bernie Sandbox.
Another big baby.
Now, just imagine.
If Martin Luther King had more of the spirit of compromise about civil rights, he might just be alive today.
Well, come on, Jimmy.
Nothing and nobody are perfect.
We need to meet the Republicans halfway, you know, in the middle of the other side.
Everybody knows the best way to build a bridge is to start from both ends, and we're just building our end a little further, which means that we'll be able to keep the government open, and then in the future, your grandma won't be able to see a doctor every time she wants.
That way, everyone wins.
So hit me up.
I'll be on Scott Flaters.
Give me a buzz.
Okay, that was.
Oh, my God.
That was brilliant.
That was Barack Obama letting us know how he feels for real.
And, well, this is the Jimmy Doer show on Pacifica.
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Okay.
Okay, and we are back with the Jimmy Doer show.
Let's move on.
You know, we got a few minutes left on the front half of the show, and I wanted to talk about the, we're talking about the Paul Ryan.
I'm here, first of all, I'm here from Cinematic Titanic and Mystery Science 3000.
C-SRIN'S Theater 3000, it's Frank Conniff from TBS's Dinner in the Movie.
It's Paul Gilmartin.
And from Team Yasamuri, it's Robert Yasamura.
Oh, look, we had a little music still getting funky.
We're getting a little funky.
By the way, on the drive over, I was listening to NPR, and I gotta say, like, everybody has dropped the ball on this budget story.
Everybody.
Okay, well, they're gonna get, I think they will get to it.
You're right.
Like, they're talking about it, but I don't know the details.
Like, there are a lot of policy rides.
Everybody.
I watched Charlie Rose the other night because I love seeing people interrupted.
Steve, if he was, he had like three pundits on, you know, John Heilman and the guy from ABC and a guy from Wall Street Journal.
And all of them agreed that Paul Ryan's budget proposal was a very adult, as Barack Obama was saying, a very adult, grown-up, serious proposal to cut the budget, and that Barack Obama was going to exploit it for political purposes.
But the point of it was that Paul Ryan was the one with integrity, and Barack Obama was going to exploit it politically by because people, everybody wants Medicare to stay.
So there's a real, there's a big and David Brooks in the New York Times said that it was like the most the greatest budget proposal of all time.
There's a real coming out of the beltway, their attitude is this is like a really serious, important grown-up thing, not it's a horrible evil thing that's going to destroy Medicare and Medicaid while giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
Is there any talk of cutting the defense budget?
Okay, well, let's get to that.
So here he is.
Here is Paul Ryan calling into the Glenn Beck show.
Okay, so here we are.
The whole budget committee, you know, half of which are new freshmen, we decided, look, we're just going to fix this.
We're going to go after these programs, after these drivers of our debt.
We're going to go after the, we're going to get rid of stuff that people need.
We're going to get rid of Medicare.
These drivers of our debt.
Not the war, isn't it?
The war, the wars, plural, is not a driver of our debt, could it be?
Could that be a driver of our debt?
No.
I'm sorry.
I was just going to say, don't judge the wars yet.
We're at an odd number of wars, and we're probably going to get to an even number of wars, and that's when we're safe.
That you're ours.
They're crunching the numbers there for us.
Thank you, Paul.
I've worked for the last few months, you know, working with the CBO and all these other actuaries to put in place a plan that cuts $6.2 trillion out of the Obama budget over the next 10 years and gets this debt on a path to actually be paid off.
By the way, the real numbers on his budget are pretend.
In order for his budget to work, there has to be a 2.2% unemployment rate in 2022, which that's never happened in our country.
In fact, everybody, the Fed, the CB, everybody says 5% is a normal.
And he mentioned the CBO and the CBO denied his numbers.
That it'll call that his budget will cost.
Increase the deficit, increase the deficit as a percentage of the GDP.
Well, I think what you guys are missing is the fact that when you cut Medicare, not only are you not having to pay for those people to go to the hospital, you're getting to stop paying their Social Security when they die.
Yes, you know what?
If you really want to cut, that's a double cut.
If you really want to cut the Medicare cost, you know, tell people to keep smoking, get rid of the motorcycle helmet laws, because that'll help.
That's really what they're doing.
That's how they're cutting money by cutting health care to people.
So I just say, tell people to smoke, tell people not to wear seatbelts, and tell people not to wear motorcycle helmets.
Let's listen a little bit more.
Okay, did you take on the wasteful spending in the Defense Department, too?
Because that's my.
Oh, here it comes.
Did you take on?
Did you take it out?
$178 billion.
They cut $100, really?
Out of waste.
Put 100 into the troops in 78.
Well, they put 100 into.
He just moved $100 billion from one part of the defense to another part of the defense.
And then...
And then he took $78 billion into deficit reduction.
I'll play that again, Rio.
$2.2 trillion out of the Obama budget over the next 10 years and get this debt on a path to actually be paid off.
Okay, did you take on the wasteful spending in the Defense Department, too?
Over 10 years?
Yeah.
Yes, over 10 years.
So we cut $78 billion.
That's not even $10 billion a year from the defense.
And we're in three wars.
It's cut $10.
And by the way, those are all things that Obama and Bob Gates came up with.
Yes.
Those were already, and they're not deep cuts.
It's not like he's talking about going in and eliminating one of the nations.
That's like 10% a year on what we spend on the war, isn't it?
That's 10 billion?
No, no, I think we spend way more.
What do we spend a year on work?
It's currently about $12 billion a month in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan alone, we've got to get a second bid for the war.
But that does not factor in the after-the-war cost, but taking care of all the soldiers.
That's not figured in when they figure out.
The pussies you made.
Yes, because they'll say that the Iraq war only costs us a trillion dollars, but it really costs us $3 trillion when you factor in all the hurt soldiers that we have.
But if we get one more war, though, we get a free one.
Hey, John Boehner called me.
Jimmy Dore, John Boehner, Speaker of the House.
Tired of hearing the spirit of compromise crap coming from the Democrat Party.
We've done nothing but compromise.
For example, we insisted on defunding NPR.
In the spirit of compromise, we've convinced 1 million people to stop listening to Glenn Beck temporarily, so Fox News had a reason to put him on hold.
Tit for tat, right?
And speaking of NPR, some have accused the Republicans of using this budget crisis as an opportunity to implement our own twisted plans for social engineering.
To that accusation, I say this.
You're goddamn right we are.
Why wouldn't we?
Republicans hate the arts.
We hate the arts more than anything in God's filthy art-ridden universe.
Every latte-sipping Democrat I know majored in liberal arts.
Is there a conservative arts?
No, of course not.
You major in liberal arts in college, and then you get on unemployment and expand the size of government.
And you bet your ass we're going after Planned Parenthood.
Sorry if that pisses off all the little pregnant lots who've been s ⁇ ting around all over town, but too bad.
The American people, even the name Planned Parenthood, is offensive.
As a devout Roman Catholic and one of 12 children of a man who ran a tavern in Ohio, I can assure you that only God decides when a sweaty, drunken husband rolls on top of a defeated, sad, yet dutiful wife and creates, through the miracle of life, a new barback.
So yes, this is our time.
We're going to finally make American society what we want it to be come hell or high water.
But I'm sure we'll reach some compromise before the Friday night deadline.
Mayor out.
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Hi, welcome back to the show.
I'm in studio and joined from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and CinematicTitanic.com.
It's Frank Conniff from TBS's Dinner in a Movie and AskARepublican.com.
It's Paul Gilmartin and from Team Yasamura, Twittering at Team Yasamura.
It's Robert Yasamura.
What's coming up on the second half of today's show?
We're going to listen to a little bit more of Paul Ryan talk about his budget.
It's fantastic, very courageous.
Love that he's doing that.
And Moron calls in, plus Jim Hightower.
And we're going to visit with Sean Murphy, who's a congressman, is going to let us know what a congressman makes in Wisconsin.
It's going to be a little awkward.
He's going to tell that to a teacher.
Okay, so right now it's Jim Hightower, and he's going to fill us in on what the Mickey Mouse wage hike is.
Good news, people.
America's wages are up.
The average worker is making more today than a year ago.
How much more, you ask?
Get ready to be excited.
58 cents a week.
Of course, averages don't tell the whole story.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith graphically explained the problem of averages with a story about a six-foot-tall man who drowned When wading across a stream with an average depth of three feet.
Similarly, while average workers are trying to decide how to spend those extra five dimes, a nickel and three pennies they're getting each week, your average CEO is wallowing in an extra $860,000 this year over last.
That's just the increase in their bonuses.
It does not include their multi-million dollar salaries, which are also up, nor their golden pensions, free health care, limousines, corporate jets, et cetera.
And as you might imagine, many corporate chieftains did much better than average in their bonus checks.
Take Robert Iger of Walt Disney, Inc.
He pocketed a bonus of $13.5 million this year, 45% more than he got a year ago.
Will, explained his PR agent, bonuses provide incentives for excellent executive performance.
And Iger deserves his riches this year because Disney's profits are up by 24%.
Swell, but why is his increase double that increase in profits?
And by the way, Robert's salary is $2 million a year.
Why does he need any extra incentive to do his job?
One more question.
Does Iger really think that he alone produced Disney's rise in profits?
Notice that the animators, performers, and other hardworking employees at Disney World and Disney Studios got no 45% increase in their pay.
This is Jim Haitar saying, no one goes to Disney World to see Robert Iger.
If he wants bonus money, tell him to put on a Mickey Mouse costume in the wilting heat of Florida summer and earn it.
Okay, thanks, Jim.
Jim Hightower stops by almost every week to bum us out in a folksy voice.
You can hear him here.
Also, let's get back to the show and we're talking about the budget crisis that's happening right now and the potential shutdown of the government.
You know, Naomi Klein, she wrote the book called The Shock Doctrine.
In it, she warned that the right wing excels at creating crisis, real and imagined crisis.
Like we have an imagined crisis, we have a real crisis and they make up pretend things of what caused it, right?
Sharia law.
Sharia law, too high corporate taxes.
People can cash in and make a lot of money off of the crisis.
Off the crisis, yes.
So what Naomi Klein said in the shock doctrine is that they'll use these real and imagined crises to viciously advance their pro-corporate anti-government agenda.
And she credits economist Milton Friedman, who's the guy who kind of invented supply-side economics, him and that laugher guy.
And Milton Friedman once said, only in a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real changes.
When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.
That, I believe, is our basic function, to develop alternatives to existing policies to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
And before, it used to be, you know, killing Medicare, that's the politically impossible.
Now we have a whole party forwarding that plan.
Supported by the pundocracy at Washington.
Supported by guys like David Halperin, David Halperin, Mark Halperin.
Mark Halperin and David Brooks.
David Brooks.
We're going to play that on MSNBC.
I just don't understand how they can get away with stuff like that.
And then so what they'll take is a real crisis, and then they'll give you phony reasons why.
And it leads to stuff like this.
No, you're from Wisconsin.
You know who's involved with these unions.
They are communist socialists and revolutionaries.
What?
So here he is talking to Paul Riott, and here's what he has to say to him.
No, you're from Wisconsin.
You know who's involved with these unions.
They are communist socialists and revolutionaries.
I just don't know why that guy lost his show.
I don't understand.
Communists and revolutionaries were behind it.
That's what it is.
The leftists.
They're undermining him.
It's the lefty teachers, firemen, cops.
They're all communists.
So anybody who doesn't, I disagree with her, just smears them.
It's so like old school.
I mean, that's been going on for since.
That's Father Coughlin stuff.
But it's the red red baiting and communist bashing and presenting communism as a constant threat to everything.
And anyone who does something that you disagree with is a communist.
That's how Richard Nixon built his career.
Yeah.
Well, I love the fact that it's a false.
They have to operate from false threats when there's like actual threats like, I don't know, an elderly population suffering.
Right.
You know, like they forget that Medicare and Social Security came in because we had a massive growing impoverished elderly population that needed to be addressed.
That was the real crisis.
Before Medicare, 33% of senior citizens at the time lived in poverty.
10 years after they instituted Medicare, that number had dropped to 11%.
But the Republicans had a slogan about that is that you're never too old to be a freeloader.
All right, let's move on to Chris Hardball.
He had addressed this.
He had Mark Halperin on and he had on Chris Salism.
Yeah, I saw that.
And kind of, did it kind of drive you crazy to hear them all?
Okay, so, you know, and I've enjoyed the decline of our news media as much as the next guy from Woodward Bernstein types of the 70s who actually ask questions to get information that the public needed to today's reporters who look pretty, read press releases, and don't hurt my thinking parts too much.
And by the way, you guys, I mean, the media, the news media, you're one of the pillars of a functioning democracy.
And that's why the founders wrote the First Amendment.
And what are you doing with it, for God's sake?
They're doing nothing with it, okay?
And one of my favorite characters in this ultimate reality show is called Chris Matthews.
I like to call him Chris Hardball.
He's like your drunk uncle reporting.
Some days he's grumpy and angry and really holds his guest's feet to the fire and asks hard questions, but most days he's just grumpy and angry and doesn't feel like doing his job.
So he's a real wild card.
He's like the Gary Busey of news, right?
Although, honestly, I think Gary Busey wouldn't be afraid to upset his guests as much as Chris Hardball is, right?
So just the other day, you saw it, Frank.
I saw it.
Let's see which one, which Chris Hardball decided to show up.
Here's the question he asked.
We teased it at the top.
Which includes huge tax cuts.
Why would a guy who's ready to inflict pain on grandma at the same time say, let's give the hot shot on Wall Street a big cut in taxes?
I'll just let anybody answer that.
Because you don't care.
Because grandma.
And because you're bought and paid for by the guy in Wall Street.
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
Why would I cut grandma's money, but give a tax cut to Walt Disney?
Because that's what they do.
Because grandma can only give me $2,000.
That's right.
Grandma doesn't fly me to Ireland to golf.
That's why.
That's right.
Grandma's not going to give him a job after he's done being a congressman.
That's another thing.
Why don't we institute that law that you can never lobby after you've been able to do it?
We can't even break up the banks, Paul.
After the biggest financial meltdown in a century, we can't even break up the banks.
We can't even have real financial.
We can't get out of a war.
We're in three wars at the same time.
We're firing teachers, cops, nurses, cutting people's Medicare, and we're in another war.
And not a single pundit who came on TV in 2003 going on and on and on about how we were going to win the rest of the war.
It was such a great idea.
Not a single one of them has suffered any consequences.
They're all still on the Chris Matthews show being experts on everything, even though they've been wrong about everything.
They've been wrong.
No one predicted the financial breakdown.
Nobody ever on any show said, oh, you know what?
There could be this financial.
No one predicted that at all.
No one says, hey, you know, what happened?
These banks are too big to fail and they're over-leveraged and nobody knows what's happening in derivatives and maybe we should take it.
Nobody.
Nobody.
You're exactly right.
And if they, because if somebody would have said that, Frank, they would have fired him.
Then they wouldn't have been on the street.
They wouldn't have been on TV.
If Jim Kramer, I'll get, you know, to Jim Kramer's defense, if he would have said that, they would have fired him.
He would have lost his job.
And so let's let's, here's what they're talking about Medicare.
Chris Hardball is talking with Mark Halperin, the guy from Time magazine.
And here's what he said about cutting Medicare.
Horrible reality, but the current trajectory of the system is such that they won't have anything.
They won't have the current system because it will be bankrupt.
Okay, so that's part of that shock doctrine.
That's part of that.
There's going to be no...
Here you go.
Democrats now have to have an alternative.
Ryan's plan is imperfect, and liberals are not.
It's not going to bankrupt.
Imperfect.
Imperfect.
It's based on phony numbers.
It ends Medicare as we know it.
It ends it.
It's imperfect.
It's not even a plan.
It doesn't.
Okay.
Okay.
So, and here's what Chris Hardball says.
The government stop paying the bills of Medicare patients.
He says, why would the government stop paying the bills of Medicare patients?
We're getting an older population, fewer young workers contributing.
That's a Republican argument.
He goes, that's a Republican.
He's talking to a journalist.
He goes, that's a Republican argument.
And then Chris Matthews follows it up with.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with it.
It's a Republican argument.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
Hey, we're all going to still be friends after this.
Yeah, this is not really like saying that you people want to destroy this.
There's nothing wrong with this.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's just a Republican argument.
This is just an incredibly partisan, non-informational argument.
Yes, and it's wrong, by the way, and it's wrong.
And so then Chris Harbaugh finishes off.
Medicare and not the projections of what Medicare and Medicare is.
The government will provide the health care for seniors and has promised to provide them, or it will be out of business.
The people won't elect them anymore.
And the government that comes along, the president says, I'm not going to pay the health care costs of seniors, which we promise to do, is in big trouble.
I mean, that's the fact right there.
I mean, that's what I don't.
You won't hear that repeated in the pundit, the pundits on television, the Washington insiders.
They're not going to repeat what he just said.
I don't know why that is, but that's correct.
The first president or congressman who says, I'm not going to pay your Medicare bills, they're out.
They're done.
But that's why Ryan is so brave because he's not afraid to get thrown out.
So that's why they spun it that way.
Do you think that we're going to see the younger generation move to the right?
Because it's going to be spun to them through the media that they would be rich if it weren't for the old people draining all their money.
And they're going to become a bad person.
I think it's a very real possibility because the people who are supposed to present the counter narrative to those things aren't.
Barack Obama isn't.
He's not doing.
He could have.
The country was ready.
They were so ready to be moved to the left.
They were so ready for change.
They were so ready for big change in a progressive way that they went from George Bush to electing a black guy with a Muslim name president.
That's how ready they were.
And Barack Obama did nothing, almost nothing with it.
Almost nothing.
He did everything a good Republican would do.
By the way, even Boehner is coming out looking leftist in this.
He's thinking less crazy.
Because he walked in and he's like, yeah, 30, 40 billion.
That's roughly right.
And he's got guys on his right, a lot of them, the Tea Partiers, who are losing their minds, who are like, Boehner's selling us out.
Boehne's a liberal.
He's not showing leadership.
No.
No, he's following.
He's doing what he said.
There's no daylight between him and the Tea Partyers.
Well, here's the thing.
Here's where Chris Matthews ends off the segment, and it kind of bugged the hell out of me.
I think politicians should be willing to pay for what they support in terms of government activity.
Do you agree?
Yeah.
They should be willing to pay for it.
They should be willing to limit the amount of government activity to the amount they're willing to tax.
Yes.
Is that fair?
They should limit what they support and spend down to what they're willing to tax.
Keep it all as low as possible.
Okay.
So we're in the middle of an economic downturn.
We know we're supposed to deficit finance.
That's pretending that deficit financing doesn't have a place in a budget.
That's what that's doing.
You're only allowed to spend as much as you tax.
Well, then we would never buy any would never buy a nuclear submarine.
We'd never build the Hoover Dam.
We'd never build the internet.
We'd never go to war.
By the way, nobody's saying we're not paying for any of the wars.
We didn't raise a tax to pay for any of the wars.
Right.
Okay, so let's...
And it's crazy that Republicans are always referred to as the deficit hawks, whereas it was in the Clinton administration that there was a surplus.
Yes, it was.
Because we were roughly spending what we were taxing.
We were roughly taxing appropriately.
And people will, yeah, to talk about the money.
And he raised the taxes, raised taxes, and the economy was better.
He got better.
But also, the playing field hadn't been leveled globally, which it is now.
We don't have the leverage economically that we used to because the way things are put together around the world, we just, you know, India has more power.
China has more power.
We're not the powerhouse that we used to be.
We still are the biggest consumers in the world.
And if we shut our markets to other people, like we do have a substantial amount of leverage.
I don't know.
I agree with you, Robert.
We certainly do.
And when people say we don't, and what's the wrong with the tariff?
I don't understand what's wrong with the tariff.
And, you know, the alternative to no tariffs is a race to the bottom, continued outsourcing of our jobs.
Well, you know what?
What is scary is the fact that China has cornered the market on precious metals, the ones that are needed for high-tech instruments, rare earth.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah.
And they flexed a little muscle a couple of months ago.
They remember when there was the beef between them and Japan about some submarine or I can't remember what it was.
Somebody was a trawler was taken captive and they had hostages or something.
And China flexed its muscle and didn't ship any rare earth elements to not only Japan, but the globe for a month, and people were forced to go into their inventory, their surpluses, and they were freaking out.
Really?
Oh, the high-tech world as we know it is in the palm of China's hand.
Did not know that.
And let me just go back and it's weird that we're talking about the WHO and rare earth.
Folks, the 70s references just keep coming.
And let me just say, last week we talked about Libya and the oil.
They produce a certain type of oil.
Like I said, it's called sweet crude.
And that's the stuff that's most easily converted into gasoline and diesel fuel and jet fuel.
And that's why that's and then they can't make that up anywhere.
Like Saudi Arabia can't just start producing more of it.
They don't have it.
And so that's why that affected, that did affect the oil market so much.
And then we learn even more, we'll talk about this next week, that the oil markets were actually manipulated by Wall Street.
And that's why they keep spiking all the time like this.
It's speculators.
The same way energy was manipulated by Enron in California.
Very much the same way.
You know, the oil market, people don't know this, but the oil market was it was kind of regulated in a sense that it was very it worked perfectly for 70 years.
And then when George Bush came in, they got rid of it.
And then you saw the spikes in the oil.
And okay, so that's what happened.
And let me just also go back one two shows ago.
Robert mentioned that when they start coming after the teachers, totalitarian regimes always come after the teachers.
The first place they go.
And the first place they do that, they come after the intellectuals.
That's when you should be scared.
And so I just wanted to play this clip for you.
The Republican Party of the state of Wisconsin filed an open records request demanding to read Professor Cronin's emails, taking a law designed to make government transparent to the public and instead using it to force into the public emails written by a university professor whose academic writings put him on the wrong side of the Republican Party on an issue they feel quite sensitive about.
Okay, so that just makes the case of why you need tenure.
Because as soon as you don't have tenure, they come after the intellectuals and they fire them and they get rid of them.
That's what happened in the Red Scare in the 50s, too.
Did that happen then?
That's basically why we have a tenure in this country.
To protect that sounds a little Glenn Becky on the surface, a little paranoid?
No, Crony, Cronin wrote an article.
He's a big shot professor, big shot professor from Madison.
And when I say big shot, I mean really well-respected, right?
So he's internationally known.
And so he wrote, he kind of documented what's happening in Wisconsin, where their money's coming from, these think tanks, how they so he wrote about it.
And he's an independent, by the way.
He's not a, he really isn't a partisan.
So then they did that.
They went and they go, we want all that guy's emails.
And they use this.
So yeah, they're coming after him.
So now we have.
Oh, you know what?
Hey, I got to take this.
I'm sorry.
Hey, it's Jimmy.
Who's this?
Hey, Jimmy.
How you doing?
It's Moron.
Hey, Moron, what's going on, buddy?
Jimmy, you know me.
I sure do.
I'm a good American, right?
I'm easily manipulated to vote against my own economic interests.
You are.
And also to demonize and blame those a lower down the economic ladder than me for my problems.
That's particularly unsettling.
Huh?
But what does bring you comfort, moron?
But what does bring me comfort, Jim, is the fact that my Lord Jesus the Christ hates exactly the same people that I hate.
Isn't that nice?
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Moron, what's going on this week?
What's on your mind, buddy?
I don't get what's wrong with you guys.
You know, we got to cut the deficits.
What do you mean, you guys?
And, you know, Social Security and Medicare adds too much to the deficits.
Actually, Moron.
That's not true.
Jim.
Yeah.
Jim, come on.
Come on, what?
Everyone knows you got to cut the money because to Medicare and Social Security, because that adds to the deficit.
And we ain't got no money right now.
We're broke.
Yeah, but the reason we don't have any money right now, as you put it, is not because of Social Security.
Social Security doesn't add one penny to the deficit.
Jim, come on, Jim, now.
Come on.
Come on.
That's not enough.
I don't know what just you just keep saying, come on, Moron.
Come on.
Come on, Jim.
Yeah, Moron.
What?
I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you, Andy.
I'm having a serious conversation.
I'm not going to at least admit that.
To what?
To what?
To them Social Security adds to the deficit.
Okay, Moron, I'm going to just tell you this one time, all right?
Social Security is prohibited from spending any money beyond what it has in its trust fund.
Trust fund?
This means that it cannot lawfully contribute to the federal budget deficit, since every penny that it pays out must come from taxes raised through the program or the interest garnered from the bonds held by the trust fund.
I don't know what any of you.
Social Security doesn't borrow money.
It lends money to the government.
Okay, Jim, I don't know what anything you just said meant, but come on, Jim.
We all know this.
Again with the come on, moron?
What's he talking about?
Jimmy says that he's telling me Social Security doesn't add to the deficit.
By law.
By law.
Come on.
No, that's what Jimmy's saying.
By law.
Come on.
That's what I said.
Come on.
It's a common misconception.
I'll give you that.
Yeah, and you know why it's so common?
Because it's true.
No, it's common because we have lazy media that's corporate owned that doesn't really care about giving you the information anyway, which is why you don't know anything.
Why?
Because you get all your information from the TV inside.
the AM radio gets so I know that social security is bankrupt and causing the deficit moron I'm telling you right now it's a fact that social security is bringing in about a hundred and billion dollars more a year than it pays out yes and it has about a 2.6 trillion dollar in trust funds therefore social
Security has loaned money to the rest of the government to help float the budget deficit.
It's not causing the budget deficit.
Doesn't make sense, Jim.
Doesn't make sense.
Hey, where's the toothpaste?
Huh?
The toothpaste.
I'm looking for the toothpaste, Maura.
Where is it?
Why don't you check on the wall?
What do you mean?
Just check.
What the hell is this?
It's the touch and brush toothpaste dispenser.
What'd you get that for?
Well, you know how it's impossible to get the last drop of toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube?
Yeah.
I knew there had to be a better way.
Well, there is, Trees.
It's the touch and brush.
It's hands-free toothpaste dispenser that works with just a touch.
What does it work?
It's easy, Trees.
You just put your toothbrush underneath it, and then like a vacuum thing or something, squeezes the toothpaste out for you.
Okay.
Yeah, and no electricity or battery is needed.
It's like a vacuum.
A vacuum?
Yeah.
It's based on the same technology as a penis pump.
I'm told.
Oh, I get it now.
Look, it dispenses the toughest amount of toothpaste.
Moran, that actually sounds like a good...
I hate my toothpaste tube.
It goes right on your wall?
Yeah.
It goes right on the wall, Jim.
Suction cups.
Keep it up.
You don't need no tools or nothing.
You know, Moran, this might be a first, but could you send me a...
How do I get a hold of that?
I want to get that.
I got it off the TV, Jim.
I got no link to send you.
Come on, let's go brush our teeth.
Okay, Jim, I'm gonna go.
We're gonna go brush our teeth.
Hey, I want to go first.
Trees, you already got a toothpaste on your brush.
Yeah, I want to do it again.
You can't do it twice.
It'll smear all over the place.
Look, I just did it twice.
Trees.
I'm gonna do it again.
No, you're gonna smear it.
I have an extra toothbrush.
Here's another one.
Now it's all gross.
Yeah, it's fine.
all gross okay that was uh tuesdays with moron thanks moron for calling in appreciate it and uh that's uh that's about the end of our show uh did you guys have uh fun today robert how did you feel had a blast uh Paul?
Don't make us leave, Jimmy.
Oh, Paul, let's talk about you have a podcast.
I do.
It's called the Mental Illness Happy Hour.
And there's also a website, mentalpod.com.
And it's for people who are interested in mental illness among people in the creative arts.
So I interview comedians and actors and hosts and stuff like that.
And what's the name of the podcast?
The Mental Illness Happy Hour.
Hmm.
Okay.
It's catchy.
I will say thank you, I think.
We got about three.
No, okay.
And you're going to interso.
Yeah, my first three guests were Janet Varney, Mark Maron, and tomorrow I'm putting up my interview with Adam Carolla on there.
Oh, all right.
Look at and hopefully at the Portland Comedy Festival, I'll interview you and put that up there and find out why you're such a nut job.
Boy, I have a lot of reasons.
There's a lot of reasons, Paul.
I just think you're going to run out of guests really fast.
Fantastic.
All right, Frank, how's Cinematic Titanic?
It's great.
We're going to be in Morristown, New Jersey and Princeton, New Jersey next Friday and Saturday.
And then we're going to be in San Francisco in May at the Castro Theater.
Really?
Go to Cinematic Titanic.com.
Oh, our show is big up in San Francisco.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and Cinematic Titanic, when people come see it, it's basically mystery science theater.
Yeah, it's pretty much it's mystery science theater, except instead of robots making fun of a bad movie, it's it's all of us.
It's Joel Hodgson, Trace Perdue, Mary Joe Piel, J. Elvis Weinstein, and myself, who are all the writers and performers on the show, just making fun of.
And you do it on a ship, right?
We do.
And so, yeah, it's a great show.
I hope people will come if they're in the areas.
I'm sure they will come if they're in the areas.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you.
I want to thank everybody who helps write the show.
Robert Yasimura, Frank Conniff.
Stan Stanko's no longer.
No, Frank, he's busy.
And Mike McRae and Steph Samurano.
I want to thank my guests, Frank Conniff, Paul Gilmartin, Robert Yasamura.
I want to thank our producer, Ali Lexa, for getting it done.
And for John Corbett, also.
I didn't want to leave him out for help writing the show.
And that's our show for this week.
Thanks for everybody for stopping by, JimmyDoorComedy.com, leaving a comment.
And also, you can leave a nice comment for us on iTunes.
That's always nice.
It always helps.
Thanks for your support.
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