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May 13, 2011 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:00:02
20110513_The_Jimmy_Dore_Show_May_12_2011
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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, everybody, and welcome to this week's show.
I am in studio joined from cinematictitanic.com and from Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It's Frank Conniff.
Hi, Frank.
Hey, Jimmy.
And from Team Yasamura, it's Robert Yasamura.
Hey, Roberts.
What's going on, Jimmy?
And from Dinner in a Movie, not for long on TBS.
We just got the axe.
Too bad.
And from the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast, it's Paul Gilmart.
Hey, Paul.
Hello, James.
Oh, it's good to see you're taking it in stride.
I am.
Dinner in a movie.
When's your last airing, DNA?
Our last show airs Saturday, September 10th.
Okay, September 11th, suddenly more tragic now.
Oh.
What's the movie going to be?
Do you know?
I don't know.
I hope it's not Flight 93 because that will be harsh.
Wow.
So what's coming up on today's show?
Well, Condi Rice lets us know who's really responsible for catching Osama bin Laden.
Bush had to make some very, very hard calls that frankly helped to set this up.
That's right.
That's right.
It was George Bush.
But, you know, asking Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice about the search for Bin Laden, it's like...
And hey, guess who's running for president?
I'm Newt Gingrich, and I'm announcing my candidacy for president of the United States because I believe we can return America to hope and opportunity.
An initial polling indicates that voters are not giving a shit about Newt Gingrich's presidential candidacy at historic levels.
Hey, Donald Rumsfeld went on Fox and Friends to proclaim he's not a racist, and he then went to a liquor store to proclaim he's not an alcoholic, and then he went to a proctologist's office so you could finish the joke yourself.
And guess what?
Rand Paul has figured out who's to blame for our government's financial crisis.
And son of a gun, it turns out it's the people too poor to pay income taxes.
We'll examine the many tax lies and debunk the BS.
And Ronald Reagan's budget director has a great plan for reducing the deficit and funding government.
It's called raising taxes.
And Liz Cheney, the lady who never met a rape room she didn't like, was back on TV talking about the efficacy of torture and defending war criminals.
That's coming up.
Plus, we have Tuesdays with more on Jim Hightower and Oh My God segment that's coming up.
This is today.
That's today on The Jimmy Dore Show.
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Time for another installment of Oh My God.
Okay, the thing I like about the right wing in America is that once they've been told a fact over and over, they accept it.
And so, for instance, with Barack Obama, there was all the birther thing and then his birth certificate.
We want to see his birth certificate.
So he produced his birth certificate and it shut up Donald Trump, at least for a little while.
And I was watching Fox Business.
That's a great channel, by the way.
Oh, boy.
I got to tell you, I think that was the channel everybody was watching in 2006.
Right before.
Also, the fact that you were watching it meant that its ratings doubled that night.
Well, people don't watch Fox Business because people who need business information don't need a spin.
They need it.
They need the business information.
Anyway, so here's the people.
So they did.
So we're watching Fox News, Fox Business News.
And so here they're talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate, the long form that he released.
And well, let's see what they have to say.
It's clearly been photocopied from a book.
You see that?
It kind of folds back to almost like the binding of a book.
Yes.
And then for some reason, there's a green border around it that had to be photoshopped in.
I'm trying to figure out what it is.
Well, this whole border is suspect.
I mean, if you're taking a scan of something, it would, to your point, it would be white.
Why is this the color of the same thing?
Okay, so they're going over Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate.
Why can't a misfired drone ever hit that room?
There's more.
Why always poor Afghan villages?
And then never where it could do some good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This, you guys, April 25th, 2011, two days ago, is when this was requested from the state registrar, registrar Alvin Onaka.
So we'll keep our eye on it.
We'll keep digging.
Hey, listen, it may or may not be, but certainly opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.
Okay, Pen, hang on.
Very quickly, Pamela.
Yes, there are questions.
So they're looking at the long-form birth certificates saying, I don't know, if there's a color over here, and why is it that it wasn't signed by Reagan?
I don't know.
Wait a second.
You sure you were listening to Fox Business and not Fox Forensics?
Because wow.
Those guys are on the ticket.
They're going to dig deeper, which means, well, we might talk about it again next week.
Yeah, we're going to go.
We're going to say the same thing next week.
By the way, that can of worms is sealed tight.
By the way, I got to say, I am so tired of hearing Republicans say, I'm just asking questions because I feel like saying to them, yeah, that's a push-poll.
That's what's called a push-poll.
Oh, that's you're asking loads of questions.
That's what Trump said through the whole birth of thing.
He always said, hey, I'm just raising this.
Yeah.
Well, he can answer the question tomorrow.
Release the birth certificate.
Why won't he talk about his Nazi past?
So here comes some more from that same program.
Pamela, this doctor right here, the guy who signed it the four days after the birth, here's when he passed away.
But his wife today, TMZ, had his wife saying, I had no idea.
She didn't know about it.
His son said, I had no idea.
It came as a complete shock to him as well.
If you gave birth to the president of the United States, don't you think your family would know about it?
Yeah, well, maybe he doesn't know about it either.
I mean, I think it's, I think it's very telling.
First of all, he was supposed to know when he decided that he was doing it for the future.
This kid's going to be the president's son.
You hear Hell to the Chief.
Push, breathe.
It's hilarious.
I mean, it raises questions.
The fact that I don't know what my dad was doing in August of 1961.
I couldn't tell you what he was up to with that.
You didn't know if he was giving birth to the president of the United States.
And it raises some serious questions.
It's funny that they say, yeah, the guy's dead.
So the guy, the doctor who signed the birth certificate, probably died before Barack Obama became president.
So why would that guy ever know that he could he ever possibly know?
The guy wasn't president yet.
There's more to this.
It gets fun.
It's even more.
What do they edit out of that show?
I'd like to know.
No, they go right live to tape on that show.
Okay, here.
After three years he didn't release it.
There's a big question there.
We have to say, why?
Why didn't he release after three years?
Remember something.
Every single president has been scrutinized.
Bush, every document of Bush.
And when they didn't find what they wanted of Bush, they actually forged the gold standard of journalism.
Dan Rather forged documents for his service in Vietnam.
And they knew he volunteered for Vietnam.
But we are not allowed to see the birth certificate.
We're not allowed to see his school records.
We're not allowed to see his applications for school.
We're not allowed to see the past when he went to Pakistan when it was under martial law in 1981.
I mean, look how the media protects this man.
He's the president.
He answers to us.
All right.
All right.
We want to point out Alvin Anaka, PhD.
He's the state registrar.
We'll keep an eye on that name as well.
Casey, I want to say thank you to Panama.
When she says he reports to us, does that mean a high-strung people from Long Island?
Exactly.
And what do the other goodfellow wives think?
Yeah.
And we're going to keep it.
We're going to keep an eye on that state registrar.
That's my favorite thing.
What is an interview at Fox News like?
Like, okay, speculate wildly.
It's like, I like your bona fides up to this point, but can you say some really crazy shit now?
And I, you know, seriously, I really hope that, you know, when Trump is interviewed again, that people say, what's the status of that investigation that you said was producing incredible things that you couldn't believe?
So obviously it must still be ongoing.
Sure.
And somebody did ask him about it.
Oh, did they?
And he said that he said, well, the way he got around the question was, well, no, I had an investigation, and now I called him back.
I don't need him anymore.
I called him back.
Well, I thought they were finding stuff.
Yeah, he's so in other words, the only possible explanation is if he really did have the investigation, which I don't think he did.
But he's either a fool that he was believing what these people were telling them so they could spend another week or two in Hawaii and live it up, you know, or he's lying.
Those are the only two possible explanations.
I really like the one where Trump has a secret army of crime fighters.
I really like that.
I think he would make a great president because I think impulsive and overly dramatic are two great qualities in a leader.
Exactly.
Okay, we didn't get a huge, oh my God.
I got to say, those two clips were about as crazy as they come.
Yeah, they are.
But because we knew it was Fox News.
Right, yeah.
The oh my God is already established.
Okay, so now let's let's let's let's go get on to there.
There was a lot of happening on the Sunday shows this week.
First of all, Arnold Schwarzenegger, by the way, a friend of the show, he's getting divorced.
And they asked him why, and he said it was because he wanted to spend some more time banging young women before he died.
And actually, he called into me.
Hello, Jimmy Dora.
It's me, Arnold.
Wants to terminate in the Galvinator and now the divorcing because I'm also the butt and boobs grabbing Ada.
Jimmy, it's wrong that I'm not allowed to run for president.
I am as American as any other person who was born and raised in a foreign country.
All right, I admit, I sound like a Nazi who threw the von Trapp family into a concentration camp just so I could hit on Julie Andrews.
But I love America.
And I mean all of it.
From the shores of Malibu to the purple mountain majesty of Bryantwood.
I mean, how screwed up is it that Trump and Gingrich can run for president, but I'm not allowed now.
I got more pruning one afternoon in my trailer on the set of kindergarten cop than all of these guys have gone with their whole lives.
I'm just more presidential than Trump and Gingrich.
Believe me, I spent thousands of hours admiring myself in the mirror.
And I can tell you for a fact that I am more presidential gravitas in my tent than the rest of the Republican period as in the entire bodies.
Okay, Jimmy, give me a call back.
Okay, that's Arnold Schwarzenegger letting us know how he feels about the divorce.
I didn't know you and Arnold were that close.
Well, he's a friend of the show.
He listens.
I know he listens to it on the iPod.
I know that in his pummer, I'm pretty sure.
Anyway, okay, so back to the show.
And again, on Sunday, we're talking about torture, and we had to.
And why do we have to hear from Liz Cheney whenever torture comes up?
Well, she's got the credentials, right?
She's a torture freak and the soulless daughter of the most universally despised politician in America.
So let's give her a microphone, shall we?
Liz Cheney, actually an attorney at international law.
And her reading of the law in her reading of the law means, yeah, the world needs less rights.
So here is Liz Cheney, the nicest Christian mother of two to ever tout the benefits of war crimes and torturing other people's children.
And here she is on national television defending torture to a bunch of nice white men in suits.
Let's hear how that sounded.
Liz, does this reignite this debate as to whether these enhanced interrogation techniques work and should be brought back?
I think it does.
I think the fact that you clearly have the current CIA director saying that part of the intelligence came from enhanced interrogation.
It's important to remember, you know, Chick Berlingame, who was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77 that flew into the Pentagon, he himself was subjected to these techniques when he went through serial training.
These are not torture.
These are techniques that we know work.
That debate is over.
It worked.
It got the intelligence.
It wasn't torture.
It was legal.
Seems to me the key question now is.
Okay, well, there it is.
She said it, and none of the other people who sued contradicted her.
Well, because she said the debate is over.
Yeah, she said it, and nobody contradicted her.
So that settles it.
Liz Cheney, although being the farthest thing from an interrogation expert as you can get, she ought to know.
But what you didn't hear, Jimmy, was when she said the debate is over, then she hit a tiny little suburban gavel that lets you know the discussion is officially closed.
Well, the best part of this little comment by Liz Cheney is yet to come.
Here we go.
We've got this trove of intelligence, what looks to have been perhaps the biggest trove we've ever been able to get a hold of.
If that leads us to other Al-Qaeda operatives, it's not clear to me that we have any way to effectively interrogate them.
We don't have enhanced interrogation anymore.
We read people their Miranda rights.
We are not detaining people at Guantanamo anymore.
We're not detaining people in the secret prison sites.
It's not clear to me what the administration will be able to do to get this information.
Yeah, I mean, if you're not willing to act like a bunch of Nazis, how are you ever going to push back against evil?
Right.
What about making them watch Fox Business News?
That is unnecessary.
She's like, hey, hey, you just came from some godforsaken country or unimaginable poverty and ultra-violent totalitarian government created a hotbed of terrorism.
I honestly don't know how I'm going to get intelligence out of you without a secret rape room.
And how did we ever get intelligence before, you know, during any of the other wars?
But she talks, I love how she talks about like, this golden age is over.
You know, we can't do that anymore.
That was, you know, that was a great era when we were torturing people.
And the family would gather around the rape room.
Listen to the cries.
And I love that it's like, you know, if we hadn't tortured someone 10 years ago, we wouldn't have gotten this information now.
Yeah.
Which is the biggest BS there is.
Which is why we need to start torturing now to make sure we get information in 27.
And also, you know, we got Bin London and we got all this information, but she's saying, but we didn't go about it the right way, so it's not valid.
Well, and she brings up Chuck Berlingame, right, who was the guy who piloted the.
And the name of the character Brian Keith played on the Sampeck and Paul series, The Westerner.
That's absolutely true.
Wow.
Wow.
Cinematic Titanic.
Well, she says how Burlingame went through waterboarding and seer training, but he did that because, specifically, because it is torture.
Because, you know, other countries who don't live up to our standards and values torture their prisoners.
Right.
So that's why we would do.
They didn't waterboard Burlingame to honor him.
They did it to prepare him for torture.
So her argument amounts to: well, if torture is good enough for our heroes, it should be good enough for our prisoners, too.
That's really what she's saying.
That's like that Alice in Wonderland kind of logic.
No, I agree.
I almost almost threw my computer against the wall when I was listening to this clip.
I was so furious when she, like, she was like invoking the name of somebody who died in the service of his country.
You know, this guy, Chick Burlingame, and then said, well, he got tortured.
So it's fine.
And his last thoughts as he drove into, as he was being driven into the Pentagon, was, well, I'm glad I got tortured.
You know, it makes no sense.
Like, what's her point?
You know, Robert, I almost threw my computer into a wall, but Ronald Reagan brought that wall down ahead of time through torture.
Wow.
Wow.
Good stuff.
And also, but, you know, I think part of your point, too, is that why the hell are they even having Lynn Cheney on the show in the first place?
Because any good, self-respecting person that knows about this is probably not going to go on that show.
But of all the people, what is her qualification to talk about anything?
She's the daughter of someone.
Well, that's not.
She actually worked at the State Department for several years.
In a job that Dick Cheney created for her.
But she's, she's, and she, by the way, she worked at the State Department in a really nefarious program that was funneling, secretly funneling money to NGOs inside the Middle East.
It was very, very like dark, like kind of iron concept.
Tom Clancy gets a boner kind of a group.
Exactly.
But as we all know, torture doesn't work.
And I mean, how do I know that?
Well, I didn't ask an expert like Liz Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, or Liz Cheney's dad.
I got it from my information from an interrogator who interrogated prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo, who said, quote, without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden.
They gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with giving us to get the pain to stop or to mislead us.
Quote, I never saw enhanced interrogation techniques work in Iraq.
I never even saw harsh techniques work in Iraq.
In every case I saw, they slowed us down and they were always counterproductive to trying to get people to cooperate.
In fact, the National Defense Intelligence College, the National Defense, that's a thing.
That's a real thing.
The National Defense Intelligence College issued a study entitled, You Ready for This?
Educing Information.
And it says in that report, quote, the very nature of the use of physical force would seem to undermine the likelihood of useful connection with a source.
It might also increase a source's hatred of the United States and interests in suicide or willingness to be killed.
The preponderance of reports seemed to weigh against their effectiveness.
So now that's I so that I know that.
I found that information because, and I'm just a guy with a public radio show.
And now, and there's, here's another, here's another guy we can listen to.
Here's the actual guy that I was just quoting, and here's what he had to say about it.
That's correct.
And when you look at the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques, in the case of the trail of evidence that leads to Osama bin Laden, what you find is time and time again, it slows down the chase.
In 2003, when we have Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, we have the person most likely to be able to lead us to bin Laden, and yet we don't get to him until 2011.
You know, by any interrogation standard, eight years is a long time to not get information from people, and that's probably directly related to the fact that he was waterboarded 183 times.
The other piece of the story that we don't know yet.
Okay, so I found that out.
And then there's another guy who was another interrogator, and he had this.
But the fact is that it transgresses Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Convention's Executive Order 1233 for the CIA.
It's quite clear.
That the information that eventually broke the case and let us find Osama bin Laden was obtained a year after any enhanced interrogation techniques were stopped with him and had nothing directly to do with them.
So I think the answer for that narrow fact is that the current rewriting of history is wrong.
So I just gave you about four different sources.
But were any of them Lynn Cheney?
And none of them were Liz Cheney.
Well, it's Liz Cheney.
Oh, Liz, whatever.
Well, they all pale in comparison to a single John Yu memo.
Yes.
And to the guys who ordered torture defending it.
So I got all that information.
I just gave you four different credible sources of information, how they laid out how that it was actually counterproductive.
It doesn't work.
And the big reason why they don't do it is because it's immoral and against the Constitution.
But when Liz Cheney said that torture worked, and we know it, and that debate is over, she said that in front of some of the biggest brains in America.
You know, she was sitting there next to George Will.
I thought you said one of the biggest brains in America.
She's sitting on a Sunday news show with these people who are these policy shapers.
And well, I bet they put her right in her place.
Here's what George Will said about it.
It's interrogation.
It's an unanswerable question.
Could we have got it another way?
Perhaps, yes.
We don't know.
We know that we got it in part using enhanced interrogation.
Okay, so there you go.
So, George.
Part of the harsh interrogation techniques or torture techniques that they used is reading excerpts from George Will's baseball book.
But so there he so apparently ABC News and Christian Mahongoor and George Will, they didn't have access to the same information that I just shared with all of you.
Even though they know.
They even like present the argument opposite that.
Yeah, there isn't even a person to come on to talk about how what we just talked about.
But like I think I said last week is that the mainstream media is very much pushing the idea that torture worked because the mainstream media was complicit in everything that led to it.
And in order for them to live with themselves, they have to lean towards the idea that all this stuff was good because they played such an essential part in making these bullshit wars happen.
The thing that kills me is that not only did they not have someone on to rebut her, like the people I just played for you, but it was as if those people didn't even have access to that information.
George Will doesn't, he doesn't go, wait a minute, I'm going on the ABC News this week, and maybe I should look into this torture thing to see what the real facts of it are.
They don't.
They just, he's talking like he heard the information on an elevator on the way up to the studio.
And they're not even talking about like the what they're citing is the Leon Panetta statement.
And they're not even citing that statement.
They're citing what somebody else said about that statement in the sense that, like, if you actually look at what Leon Panetta said, he's very murky about it.
Like, he doesn't hedged.
He never says enhanced interrogation is an A to B to bin Laden.
He never says that.
Well, you can't, you know, that's the thing, too.
You can't just take two points in time and then string them indefinitely.
You can't go, okay, we tortured a guy and then we eventually caught him.
So those two things connect.
No, they don't.
Well, the same people who are saying all this, their original argument about Obama anyway was that he was too weak on the war on terror.
And, you know, from what they said before this happened, Barack was the kind of guy who was never going to catch Bin Laden or do anything that was strong for a country because he just didn't get it.
And he just disproved that, but yet they're still living in that old mindset.
You know, the CIA people or whatever who are just like meticulously doing the boring work of going through intelligence and figuring stuff out.
Like, they get no props from the Bush people.
You know, people really doing the hard work of sharing intelligence.
The people who really did the work.
Bush would just get rid of all those people and just have it all be based on torture.
Yeah, we just need to start torturing people.
Well, it gets even worse.
Now we're back to Fox Business.
And here's a guy named Dr. Zudi Jasser, who is Fox News' go-to commentator.
I hate him just when I heard his name.
He worked in the same building as Winnie Boomba.
Dr. Judy Zudi Zud with the Z Zudi Jasser, who is Fox News go-to commentator on persecuting Muslims because he is himself a Muslim who thinks there's a massive Islamic conspiracy to create Sharia law in the United States.
Yes, this is true.
And just to give you an idea who this guy is, he's a Syrian American who voluntarily lives in Arizona.
What's his name again?
Most people with a suntan won't live voluntarily in Arizona.
His name is Dr. Zudi Z-U-D-H-I Jasper.
I loved him when he was with Woody Herman's band.
He was the star witness at Congressman Peter King's radicalization hearings.
You remember that, don't you?
Sure, sure.
The inflammatory show trial designed to convince us all that our brown neighbors were going to kill us.
Yeah, he was a star witness at that thing.
He's like the one guy who gives testimonials for homosexual re-education camps.
That's who this guy is.
Okay, so here he is talking about torture on Fox business.
Jasir, the head of the CIA, Leon Panetti, point blank, said waterboarding was one of the techniques used, and it aided in the capture of bin Laden.
Any questions?
No, I mean, I think ultimately we have to realize that the Judeo-Christian and in Islam, we believe that there's just war.
Oh, you know who else thinks there's a just war?
Al-Qaeda.
Okay, keep going.
Unless you're a pacifist, you have to believe that ultimately targeting individuals, a morality is going to win over evil by the use of some force and coercion as transparently necessary.
We're transparent with it, and I think it was moral.
We got bin Laden with it, and ultimately we just have to be transparent and clear about it.
But to say that we're not going to use it at all is naive as the yeah, because we all know Jesus wasn't a pacifist.
That's right.
Jesus wasn't a pacifist.
Either you're a pacifist or a torturer.
Those are your two choices.
Those are your two choices.
You're either a pacifist, and if you don't torture, you're not grown up because you don't realize that we need to do this stuff.
That's just the way it is.
And you know, we never used torture in the 40s, and that's why we never won World War II.
How could we possibly do it?
It makes you wonder why the Inquisition didn't go better.
And I didn't think that anyone would ever do that.
Even people pro-torture people, I didn't think they would say, hey, this is the moral thing to do.
It's the good Christian thing to do.
We're going to be.
And it's great that they're basing everything on like restaurant, you know, establishing the Bush administration's place in history as doing a great job on the war on terror.
And they're betting everything on just everyone accepting that torture is great.
You know, it's like that's their only thing that they're hanging it on.
And did you catch where he said that?
He basically said that, you know, we might makes right.
Because if we do this, we're going to eventually win.
So that makes us right.
Okay, so we have to take a break.
But before we do, I have one more phone call from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Jimmy, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger again.
Okay, admittedly, I've done things with young women a married man should never do.
But I'm telling you, these chicks, they throw themselves at me.
Sure, they throw themselves at me because I'm holding them down.
They're trying to hitbot me and get away.
But that's the kind of one-on-one campaigning I'd be doing right now if Congress would only amend the Constitution on my behalf.
That's not what you ask, is it?
I know I've let Maria down, but in my defense, women with Naria's religious and ethnic background are not exactly what you would call sexual adventurers.
Let me put it this way: marrying a Canada woman means that when it comes to sex, you've lost the Irish Swiss face.
And why is it everyone is so excited about President Obama killing bin Laden?
I've killed dozens of terrorists in just about every movie that was made.
But Ivan Gordon won Oscar nomination.
No!
And don't forget, when I became governor, I stopped making movies for eight years.
For that reason alone, I should be getting the Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to the betterment of society, don't you think?
Well, anyway, got to get to the drugstore and stack up on Ziagra.
At my age, sometimes your erection can be subject to a re-competition in your pants.
Hasta la vista, Jimmy Dua.
Okay, this is the Jimmy Dore Show on Pacifica.
Thank you.
Hey, podcast listeners.
I hope you're enjoying today's show.
We've got some great stuff coming up in the second half of the show.
John Boehner calls in another Schwarzenegger.
Lots more fun stuff.
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Okay, thanks.
So now on to the second part of today's show.
Thank you.
Okay, and we're back.
I'm in studio with Frank Conniff from Mystery Science Theater 3000 and CinematicTitanic.com and with Robert Yasamura from Team Yasamura and from Mystery.
From dinner and a movie.
Not for long.
Not for long, just till September 10th.
And from the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast.
It's Paul Gilmartin.
What's coming up on the second half of the show?
Well, Jim Hightower is going to stop by.
Plus, we're going to talk about Rand Paul and his view on taxes.
And we might even talk about the Royal Wedding and the way we got let down by our media here in America.
But right now, here's Jim Hightower.
Let's check today's sports scores.
4, 10.7, and 21 and a half.
Those tallies are from the Oil League.
And the winner, of course, is the league's powerhouse, ExxonMobil.
4, as you might have guessed, is the $4 that Exxon is siphoning out of your wallet these days for one gallon of its petrol.
Next comes 10.7.
That's the $10.7 billion in profits that this oil giant has soaked up in just the first three months of this year.
A new record, not achieved by any managerial genius, increased productivity, or improvement in consumer service, but solely by the jackup in gasoline prices.
Finally, 21 and a half.
This is the big score made by Rex Tillerson, Exxon CEO.
The chief pulled down $21.5 million last year in personal compensation, making him the highest paid executive in the oil league and one of the most richly paid CEOs in the entire country.
Wait, this late-breaking score is just in zero.
That's from the special tax game that ExxonMobil consistently wins in Washington.
Last year, ExxonMobil powered through loopholes created by a slick lobbying team to pay an income tax of zero on the $19 billion it had racked up in profits the year before, making it one of America's most flagrant tax avoiders.
But wait again.
Here's a surprising update on that score.
Exxon's taxes were actually less than zero.
How's that possible?
Because Big Oil's lobbyists have so skewed the tax system that Exxon got a $156 million rebate from us taxpayers last year.
This is Jim Hightower saying, so Exxon is soaking us at the gas pump and sacking our public treasury to gain record profits for itself while bestowing a royal fortune on its CEO.
Oh, one more score, $14 million.
That's the average dollar amount that Exxon spends on campaign donations and lobbyists every year.
Hightower's commentary is brought to you by the Hightower Lowdown.
From Wall Street to Washington, this monthly newsletter reveals who's doing what to whom and why.
Check it out, HightowerLowdown.org.
Okay, that's Jim Hightower.
He's here every week to bum us all out in a folksy voice.
Right now, we're going to move on to Ron Paul.
No, Rand Paul was on the David Letterman show, and you're going to hear this quote a lot.
They like to mess around with the tax statistics, and he said this.
If you look at the taxes, if you look at the income tax, the top 1% pay about a third of the income tax.
The top 50%, those who make $70,000 and above, pay 96% of the income tax.
So what Rand Paul is saying is that he's pissed off because the people who make the money actually have to pay for stuff in our country.
I mean, why can't the people without money pay for stuff?
He's saying the people who make the money pay 96% of the income tax in America.
I guess that sounds fair to a libertarian, but I didn't know a libertarian meant misleading on purpose.
Because that's what he's doing.
I mean, it sounds unfair to a libertarian.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Okay, thanks for the correction.
The fact is that even those who don't pay federal income taxes still pay lots of taxes.
But that's not what he wanted you to think.
Rand Paul wanted you to think that half the country is a bunch of freeloaders who don't pay anything.
Instead of what they are, they're a bunch of people who work 40-hour weeks and don't even make enough money to pay federal income tax.
That's who we're talking about.
People who are working their ass off and don't have anything to show for it.
And instead, he would spin it to make you upset at them and think that they're the reasons why you have to pay higher taxes.
They're not pulling their weight.
They're not right.
Sure, they're starving and there's no weight to pull, but they're still not pulling their weight.
That's right.
And so he has a little bit more to say.
So the middle class and above are paying all of the income tax.
So the middle class and above are paying all the income.
The poor people are not paying me.
Such freeloaders.
These goddamn poor people, when are they going to start paying?
Lavishing themselves with ramen noodle.
Okay, there's more.
We are paying our fair share.
Even you are probably paying your fair share.
I think there's something wrong with those numbers.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with them.
So that's David Letterman doing what a newsman won't do is actually push back against Rand Paul.
And he doesn't even have the facts.
He knows they're BS.
He goes, okay, I don't have to.
I'm not a newsman, but I'm just going to go.
And Andrea Mitchell's never going to push back on that.
Brian Williams is never going to push back.
Katie Kirk is never going to say something like that.
Even though they're two Google strokes away from completely debunking what he just said.
And the ultra-wealthy.
By the way, which Google stroke do you normally orgasm to?
The upward, not the downward.
Okay, I was curious.
And, but you know what?
Actually, Ron Paul called in.
I got a message from Ron.
Hey, TV, this is Congressman Ron Paul.
Look, I wanted to get in touch with you and talk about some issues.
I really wanted to avoid using the telephone.
I mean, the federal government is not supposed to be running phone lines around and launching satellites of any kind in space.
Because none of that is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
At least it's not in there.
Usually I prefer to use my passenger pigeon, like the founding father Silent Chan did.
But old Alexander Flappington here couldn't seem to find the KPSK studios there in Caspina.
Anyway, you've been giving my son Rand a bit of a hard time on your show.
And all he's saying is that the size and scope of the federal government has simply got way out of hand, waiting on the scope of his original constitutional mandate.
At least you talk more about that on your program.
I mean, for example, the Federal Reserve isn't supposed to be printing all this monopoly money out there.
In fact, when I ran my OBGYN practice, I only accepted payment in the form of gold indents or silver certificates from the 1890s.
And any client who did pay me with modern currency, I was forced to deem their babies unconstitutional.
In fact, it sits so right there on the birth tip, kid.
So now you've got all these unconstitutional Federal Reserve babies running around out there doing God knows what kind of unconstitutional shenanigans.
Shenanigans that really should be reserved for the state level.
So you can see how far down the rabbit hole we've really gone with all of this.
Anyway, Jimmy, give me a call back on the Pony Express.
I'm pretty sure horses are in the Constitution.
Okay, Ron Paul coming to defend us.
Just like Liz Cheney defends her old man, the old man calls in to defend his kid.
Isn't that so?
Okay, well, let me just get back to this Rand Paul thing and him being upset that the people who make income have to pay income tax and the people without income don't have to pay income.
It really does stick me too.
But, you know, let's keep in mind that the people, the ultra-wealthy, also have a thing called tax shelters.
They have the ability to hide their money in offshore accounts.
I don't even know what a tax shelter is.
I wouldn't even know where you don't.
Do you guys know what a tax?
Maybe you do, Paul, because you have the television show for 20 years.
It's cable.
Oh, okay.
That's right.
But I assume that a tax.
It's usually an offshore account or some type of tax loophole where it looks like an investment, but what it really is is a way to hide your money and let it build tax-free.
It's kind of like a gazebo offshore for your money.
It's like you're sending your money on vacation.
Yeah, most people can't afford to go on vacation.
Yeah, but a lot of people could afford to send their money.
The money, sure.
And a lot of the financial institutions that are savvy enough to know how to create a good tax shelter won't accept an account from somebody unless it's over $100,000.
So if you're an average person, you're just not going to get hooked up with the people that know how to cheat.
And let me make one last point to Rand Paul.
In case you missed the last eight years of reality, it wasn't the bottom 50% of households in the United States that invented the deregulation of the financial services industry that crashed our economy and created a debt crisis.
The credit default swaps were not devised in a double-wide.
Yes.
Okay.
And talking about, they love to make that point.
Like 1% pays 30% of the income taxes and top 5%.
Do you know that the top 400 earners in America, top 400 people, top 400 have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of Americans in America?
The top 400 people have as much wealth as the bottom 50%.
It sounds to me like people in the bottom 50% have it pretty sweet.
If they could just somehow pull their money.
Oh, the way that we're doing it.
And so they keep saying there's no taxes, right?
But here's David Stockman, who was Ronald Reagan's budget director.
David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, said this.
But if you're honest, we're spending 24 to 25% of GDP.
So that means the government is spending 24 to 25% of our GDP.
Okay.
Even if we have a big rollback in defense and some real entitlement reform, we're going to need revenue of 20% of GDP or more, and that means raising substantial amounts of new taxes.
Now, why isn't the White House, for instance, saying we should have a tax on Wall Street, something called a transaction tax?
We have a massive amount of churning in the stock market every day for no purpose except the robots are trading with each other.
We could easily put a tax on transactions, raise $100 million a year, and begin to close this gap.
It's a brilliant idea.
But we won't.
No, because the people on Wall Street have a powerful lobby.
I think practical ideas have no place in this discussion.
That sounded so rational and practical.
I don't know why they even allowed him.
I'm surprised a shot didn't ring out in the middle of his idea.
And by the way, we spend a huge percentage of GDP, but we spend like the lowest of any industrialized nation on public spending of GDP.
Like most countries.
Oh, because we're spending it on military and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so here's a stat that might blow your mind.
Okay.
And this is from David Stockman.
Ready?
In 1985, the top 5% of the households, the wealthiest 5%, had net worth of $8 trillion, which is a lot.
Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top 5% have net worth of $40 trillion.
And top 5% have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.
So maybe, maybe we should tax them a little because that's what's happened with trickle-down economics: that the top 5% have amassed more wealth than the whole human race had accumulated.
But do we really want them to go back to having to get by on $8 trillion?
Sounds so puny compared to the $40 trillion.
So Stockman's advice on how we can cut this deficit is a great idea.
Still, he says there should be a one-time 15% surtax on the wealthy that he estimates would cut the national debt in half.
So there you go.
A one-time 15% surtax on the upper 5% would cut the deficit in half.
That's so unrealistic, though, because that would never happen.
They're too powerful for that to ever get any traction.
You have to remember that if that happened, it would affect the wealthy, not at all.
Would change nothing in their lives.
It would change nothing.
But it would cut our deficit in half.
But you know what?
We're not going to be able to do that.
We should be taxing.
It's better to, you know, if somebody who's working 40 hours a week who doesn't pay income tax doesn't have enough money for health care, send his kids to college or to buy gas in the winter.
It's better to not tax him.
See, I say it's better to tax Warren Buffett's second home or maybe or his summer home.
Or how about we tax Donald Trump's summer hair?
That would be better.
You know what John Boehner called me?
Oh.
Jimmy Dore, this is John Bayer, Speaker of the House of Goddamn Representatives.
I'd like to come on your show to address this nonsense about raising the debt ceiling.
Well, all of these chicken littles in the Democrat Party claim that failing to do so would be an unprecedented and disastrous move that would put the U.S. in default.
A ridiculous claim that happens to be 100% accurate.
But accuracy is not what matters here, Jimmy.
What matters is us getting our way, slashing entitlements, and balancing the budget on the necks of the middle class.
Remember them?
Me neither.
As long as the Tea Party think they're the middle class and support our sociopathic blitzkrieg against the American dream, we are golden, baby.
So what if we default on treasury-backed securities?
Only losers have their savings and those anyway.
Why don't you get some nuts and invest in blue chips and commercial real estate?
All right, Jimmy, give you a call back on the cell.
John Boehner letting us know how he feels about the debt ceiling.
And well, here's what Eric Cantor had to say just yesterday.
So he had a visit with some people from the stock market at the beginning of the week.
Here's what he had to say.
I started off the week with a visit to the New York Stock Exchange.
And while there, talked to many individuals engaged in our capital markets, investors, traders, and the rest.
The message that I heard was: keep at it.
Don't back down.
Cut spending, reform entitlements, and make sure we get our fiscal house in order.
Oh, isn't it amazing?
Isn't it amazing that the people he talked to at the stock market said the exact same thing that is his policy?
Isn't that amazing?
Yes.
So I'm glad he's listening to us.
I talked to all the crack addicts on the street, and they don't believe they have a problem with crack.
They believe the problem is there's not enough crack.
Yes.
And they say, keep at it.
Yes.
Keep getting the crack out.
Yeah, so he went to Wall Street to ask the people what we should do for our budget.
And then he asked the captain of the Titanic the fastest way to England.
Okay, he actually had more to say this, Eric Cantor.
And in particular, they were focused on the issue before us as far as increasing the debt ceiling of this country.
What I heard and what I believe is it is reckless for us to increase the credit limit of the country without cutting spending, without reforming entitlements, without getting our fiscal house in order.
Sure, yeah, it's reckless.
It's not reckless to not raise the debt ceiling like you're supposed to.
And so here's Pat Toomey, Senator Pat Toomey.
He went on with Andrea Mitchell, and he was talking about the debt ceiling.
I was at a briefing earlier today with Chuck Schumer, and he said that people are kidding themselves if they think that this debt ceiling problem isn't real.
So here's what Pat Toomey has.
So she's at Andrea Mitchell.
I like how they're all buddies, by the way.
Oh, they're totally.
They're all pals.
Okay.
That as far as he's concerned, the markets are going to get very nervous, and interest rates are going to go up noticeably.
And before August 1st, if they think there's no progress being made.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because there's a great deal of disinformation that's being propagated by people who simply want to raise the debt limit and keep on business as usual.
And the gist of it is that somehow, if we don't raise the debt limit immediately upon reaching it, we're going to default on our debt.
And that's just factually, absolutely wrong.
And people who know better shouldn't be.
Okay.
Wait a second.
It isn't.
It's actually factually exactly right.
Exactly right.
So does Andrea Mitchell, does she push back on him on this?
No, no, no.
So she just quotes Tim Geithner.
That is really a drop-dead date.
No, no, let me be very clear.
It has nothing to do with August 10th.
She says you're not buying it.
You're not buying it, are you?
She's like helping him along.
You're not buying it, she says.
Here's why, Andrea.
If we never were to raise the debt limit, which I'm not advocating, but if we never raise the debt limit at all, the Treasury would still take in 70% of all the money they plan to spend in the form of tax revenue.
The amount of money needed to service our debt is only 6% of our expenditures.
So with more than 10 times the revenue needed to avoid a default, what Treasury Secretary is going to default on our debt?
It will never happen.
Now, what would happen if we reach the debt limit and don't raise it is we would have a partial government shutdown.
It would be very disruptive.
We probably have some employees furloughed.
We'd have those kinds of disruptions.
That's not the same as a catastrophic default on our debt.
So there's no scenario in which we're going to have a default on our debt.
Frankly, I think the markets would most like to see that we're making some progress on our structural deficits because I think we're at the end of the road with these big deficits we've been running.
Okay, so now he just said a bunch of really, really false stuff.
And Andrea Mitchell pushes right back at him.
Well, you've just laid out why the gap is so wide and what the challenge is for the president and the Senate Republicans when they get together tomorrow.
Senator Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania, it is great to see you.
Thank you.
Sing!
That's in your face, Pat Toomey.
You can't bring that weak stuff in Andrea Mitchell's.
She's going to throw it right back.
You know, it used to be.
She's going to be cordial to you and say goodbye in a pleasant manner.
That's right.
Was that MSNBC or ESPN?
Because I thought it was, I heard a softball being thrown.
I think that was QVC, wasn't it?
I mean, but how bad is if we don't raise the debt ceiling, how bad will it really be?
Everybody knows this will have huge international consequences on international finance.
It will raise interest rates in this country.
It could perhaps bring about a depression worldwide.
Oh, don't try to scare me.
Favor monger me with the depression word.
We just had a depression.
It wasn't so bad.
So take the financial crisis we had two years ago, three years ago now, and imagine it basically a thousand times worse.
Oh, okay.
So it might be worse.
Okay.
Well, then why don't we tax the depression and balance the budget?
The depression is making all that money.
That's a great idea.
You know what?
John Boehner called in.
He had something to say about this.
Jimmy Dore, goddamn John Boehner again.
If we don't raise the debt ceiling.
Let me start this over.
Jimmy Dore, goddamn Boehner again.
Oh, if we don't raise the debt ceiling, we're going to screw up the economy.
So why don't we screw up the economy?
You think we're worried about that?
We put George W. Bush into office for Christ's sakes.
You think we care about screwing up the country?
We care about lowering taxes on rich people, keeping the wars going at full steam, and getting industrial pollution back to prenex and levels.
Worry about screwing up this country.
Come on, we'd elect Gomer Pyle president if we could.
Hell, we'd even enjoy his truly angelic singing voice while he was doing it.
Quit being such a party, Pooper Jimmy.
We are on the verge of accomplishing everything we've ever wanted, all thanks to this massive crisis-level debt.
A master plan is coming to fruition.
And instead of trying to fight it, I suggest you put on a tricorn hat, join the Tea Party, and maybe we'll let you teach improv classes at one of our projected suburban re-education detention camps.
All right, call my Android.
And by that, I mean Eric Cantor.
Good stuff.
John Boehner, letting us know how he feels.
All right, I wanted to really quickly.
We didn't cover almost any of the Royal Wedding Because it really wasn't worth covering.
And I was watching, I turned it on for about, I don't know, three minutes.
And I watched it because it was in the middle of the night, which is prime time for me.
Yeah.
Are you up watching Morning Joe like I am also?
Morning Joe is my regular late-night programming.
I love it.
I'd love to, because I love to watch.
I'm a fan of Battered Wives Syndrome.
I loved going to bed being pissed off at Mike Barnacle.
Oh, his wife is a Bank of America executive.
That's why he's so horrible now.
Yeah.
He's a real man of the people.
Like, you're not a man of the people just because you don't get your teeth fixed, right?
If your wife works for Bank of America and you're an apologist for the banks, that doesn't make you a man of the people.
You can only be a millionaire for one decade and still consider yourself.
Jimmy, it doesn't make you a man of the people.
It makes you a people of the man.
Yeah.
And then do you ever watch Way Too Hacky with Willie Geist?
It's gone right before.
Willie Guy.
actually that show he actually gets good clips on that show I don't know how he does it but I was watching the royal wedding coverage and this is what made me I So they're.
The future Queen Catherine and King William now making their way through the gates of Buckingham Palace.
So when she said that, immediately it registered with me how gross this was.
The future King and Queen of England.
It's like, oh, yeah.
And so they're going to go to work now and learn how to be the king and queen.
Nothing.
They don't have to do anything.
They just sit there and wait for someone to die.
So we're sitting there.
We're being fascinated by nepotism.
That's all this is.
Shiny nepotism.
Yes.
What did you call it?
Shiny.
Shiny.
Well, it's funny.
And then I understand that people have a lot of time to fill in situations like this.
And people need to escape.
I understand that.
And so here is the announcer.
Here, listen.
So they're going in the carriage.
One of my favorite moments was when they first got into the carriage.
And it seemed that she was turning to him and saying, Are you happy?
Yes.
We've been perhaps reblux.
And he seemed to assent to that.
Just shut up.
Just shut up.
She may be the most worthless one minute of television since the invention of radio.
I love that she had a favorite moment.
That was such a wonderful moment.
Oh, what a wonderful moment for them.
These people who have accomplished nothing in their lives.
Done absolutely nothing.
Turned and said something to each other.
That was magic.
That we don't know.
But we're not quite sure what they said.
It seemed like she said, Are you happy?
And he seemed to say, Yes, I, you know, with everything you could ever ask for in the world, I'm happy.
I mean, I would have liked it better if she had said, you know, he turned to her and she turned to him and said, Are you happy?
And it seemed like he said, I'm dying inside.
Then I would have appreciated.
I hate my family despite all the jewels.
We're in a trap we can never get out of now.
You're going to die in a car accident one day.
So just the other day, just the other day, I'm watching local NBC News, and they do this story.
William and Cage were, of course, the stars of the royal wedding, but now an adult film company wants to make Kate's sister a star in the porn industry.
TMZ reports Stephen Hirsch.
First of all, it's nice to know that NBC News Los Angeles is using as a source TMZ.
This is their source.
Well, that's very common for people to use TMZ.
Now it is TMZ has a budget.
Vivid Entertainment, right here in Los Angeles, has offered Pippa Middleton $5 million to appear in just one scene.
Hearst wrote a letter to Pippa saying, quote, as far as I was concerned, you were the star of the royal wedding.
Hearst said he'd throw in an extra million dollars if Pippa's brother, James, also wanted to appear in a separate scene.
And $100 million if they'd appear in the same scene.
And this is on the news.
This is on the news.
A porno guy wrote a letter, and so it gets covered on NBC News Los Angeles.
And here's how he ends this little clip.
Most bloggers see this as just a publicity stunt.
But not us here at NBC.
No, we see it as news.
It's news to us.
If it was just a publicity stunt, we wouldn't be covering it.
So we're letting you know.
So the two sources they quoted in this story, TMZ and Bloggers.
Those would be the two stories, the two sources for the story on NBC.
Okay.
Well, actually, and the other source is probably Vivid Entertainment.
They just released a press release.
We get traction.
And by the way, Vivid Entertainment, great company.
They do great.
They do great.
Don't get me wrong.
But like, really, guys, you know, NBC, like, they had nothing else they could have mentioned that day.
There's three wars going on.
That's literally three wars.
And Arnold Schwarzenegger called in again.
Oh.
Jimmy Dorr, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
People should not judge divorce.
It's only natural that two people living together for 25 years would develop some fundamental differences.
For example, I fundamentally believe I should be able to have sex with younger, more attractive women.
And Maria just fundamentally thinks differently.
Look, I just realized now that I have no more political ambitions, I don't have to be married into the Kennedy cybers.
For example, I can marry some more, some weird mute woman who lives in a trailer and tries to fix her childhood by being a sexy dynamo.
Or I could go and carry scene and have two girlfriends, one model, one porn star.
Look, the possibilities are endless.
Now that I'm getting rid of scared tour over here in a family of people that keep dying, I don't even have to date women if I don't want to.
I have the kind of man who I can just sexually harass women and see how it goes.
Making makeup lady stylist.
I'm going to touch your booby.
And if you like it, we'll see what things go.
If not, he has a million dollars, all right?
Either way, makeup girl.
I got to touch a boobie.
So I've got it all planned out, Jimmy Dorse.
Don't worry about me.
Goodbye.
And that's our show.
I want to remind everybody, if you missed any part of today's show, you can get a podcast of this show for free at iTunes or at my website, JimmyDoorComedy.com.
I want to take a moment to thank everybody who makes today's show possible.
My producer, Ali Alexa, everybody who helps write the show, Mike McRae, Robert Yasamura, and Steph Zamborano.
And I also want to thank my guests one more time.
Frank Connor from CinematicTitanic.com, Paul Gilmartin from the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast, and tweeting at Team Yasamura.
It's Robert Yasamura.
And I will be in Atlanta May 21st through 23rd at the Funny Farm Comedy Club.
And then I will be at the Laugh Spot in Houston, May 27th through 29th.
And June 2nd through 4th.
I'll be at Rooster T Feathers in Sunnyvale, California.
Okay.
You can find the links to all those dates at jimmydoorcomedy.com.
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