I am joining Studio B in Pasadena, as always, from CinematicTitanic.com and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It's Frank Conniff.
Hi, Frank.
How are you?
And from the Daily Show, writer for the Daily Show, it's hilarious comedian Steve Rosenfield is here.
How are you, Steve?
Great to be here, Jimmy.
Okay, and comedian Extraordinaire is sitting in for the first time.
A special guest excited to have him.
Bob Duback is here.
How are you, buddy?
All right.
So what's coming up on today's show?
Well, we did not have Armageddon, ladies and gentlemen.
Reverend Harold Camping now says that the end of the world is going to be in October.
And if this guy were any wronger, he'd be a broker for Merrill Lynch.
And after saying he'd withhold tornado funds, relief funds from the people in Joplin, the National Weather Service has upgraded Eric Cantor to a category five asshole.
And Tim Palenti officially kicked off his campaign to help get Obama re-elected next year.
And for the love of family is why Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, said he won't run for president.
While Polenti said he will run explaining, I really hate my family.
And Glenn Beck is going to be in our new segment.
We have a new segment featuring Glenn Beck.
And I know you're wondering, shouldn't a security guard be escorting Beck to his car by now?
He's going to tell us why we need to lock arms this summer.
He has a point, but when you lock arms, it's harder for them to get the straitjacket on you.
Okay.
And Mitt Romney, the nicest Mormon to ever switch his position on abortion three times.
Romney says that Obama threw Israel under the bus in his speech last week.
And Romney's a guy who never just says things because he has to.
And we're going to talk, we're going to check in with Paul Ryan.
He was out defending his new plan to cut Medicare.
And he says it's not really cutting Medicare, but he's giving them choice.
That's right.
The choice to pay your own medical bills or get really sick and die.
Under Ryan's new plan, seniors will be able to choose which insurance provider rejects them because they're old.
Plus, what's coming up?
Plus, we're going to have the Oh My God segment.
Jim Hightower stops by and a lot, lot more coming up on today's Jimmy Dore Show.
We'll be right back.
Time for another installment of Oh My God.
Okay, so now it's time for Oh My God.
Now, I think I might have to change the name of this segment because maybe we should be called Race Baiters, the new Race Baiters segment.
Because, well, last week we had Newt Gingrich said this famously last week.
President Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history.
Okay, that's a nice little dog whistle.
Yeah.
And then he went on to meet the press and he said...
Okay, boom.
And it's a nice little race.
But this week we got a guy over from the Fox Business Channel.
Now, if you don't watch Fox Business, if you don't watch Fox Business, you've got something in common with nearly everybody else in the world.
Okay, and so here's our race baiting for today.
They were talking about now President Obama had a trip scheduled to Ireland, right?
So he was over in Ireland, and he was even seen sipping a pint of beer, which is ironic because the reason they said people voted for George Bush was because he's the kind of guy they want to have a beer with.
Right.
And then, except he was an alcoholic, and he didn't drink, which is kind of...
Okay, so here we are.
So here's what they said on Fox Business about Barack Obama being there instead of in Joplin, Missouri.
Where's the leadership on the golf course or entertaining rappers in the east room of the White House?
And now tornadoes devastating the heartland, killing scores and leveling just about every building in Joplin, Missouri.
Mr. Obama, you've decided that chugging a few 40s and rediscovering your Irish is more important than a presidential visit to a community trying to figure out what just hit them.
Okay, so let's now let's keep score.
He had the chugging 40s.
Now, what does that mean exactly?
40 ounces.
Yeah, Chuck, no, no, Frank, if you were more in tune with the hip-hop culture, you would know that it's a malt liquor?
Yeah, a 40 out 40 older.
40 ounces?
40 ounces.
The big guy.
The big one.
Wow, look at these white guys have no idea.
You know what?
You've heard of Gin and Juice.
I'm sure you've heard that.
I'm up to date on rap.
Is that racial?
Is that a 40-ounce?
Is that a 40 racial?
Yes, it's often referred to in rap songs.
Racial vernacular.
I'm very up-to-date on rap.
I have the latest Sugar Hill gang out.
So, okay, so now, so that was, I'll play it one more time for fun because I like to play those twice.
Where's the leadership?
Where is it?
On the golf course or entertaining rappers in the east room of our White House.
And now, tornadoes devastating the heartland, killing scores and leveling just about every building in Joplin, Missouri.
Mr. Obama, you've decided that chugging a few 40s and rediscovering your Irish is more important than a presidential visit to a community trying to figure out what just hit them.
Okay, well, what just hit them was a little race baiting from Fox Games.
That's Fox News.
It was at the business.
Oh, Fox Business News.
Fox Business News.
That's right.
Oxymore on there.
Well, everybody, that's the thing why they don't get high ratings is because people who need business news, they don't need spin.
They can't be going, wait a minute, ideologically, I should have invested my money.
Right, right.
You can't invest in attacking Obama.
This has been, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I think I'm going to start a new segment for Glenn.
Fish for Glenn Beck until he goes off the air.
And we're going to call it, hey, what is Glenn's audience shitting their pants about this week?
I think that would be a good title for this.
Okay.
And this week, Glenn Beck is telling us to be afraid for the summer.
Let's hear what he has to say.
We just have to hold on to firm reliance of the protection of divine providence.
Hold on.
I'm telling you, gang, we must lock arms this summer to defeat the great powers of the earth and beyond that have aligned against us.
And beyond.
And beyond.
Gene Roddenberry's.
It's the great powers of the earth and beyond that have the moon is bad, too.
Not just the earth.
The moon is too bad.
Tell us about Mothra.
That's all.
You know, UFOs, he really makes You know, because he's just putting on, and it makes it now.
cynical about it.
He is very.
Okay, so that's Glenn Beck today.
And he did have, at least he didn't tell us the gates of hell were going to open up like last week.
Okay, so now that was Glenn Beck and our new segment.
What is Glenn's audience shitting their pants over this week?
It's kind of like that.
Okay, so let's move on.
And so Paul Ryan went on Meet the Press, right?
And he has to defend because it's right-wing social engineering, Newt Gingrich.
And I tell you, David Gregory asked some really tough questions on that.
Oh, you know, it's like Katie Couric.
She gets an Emmy because she just happened to be sitting there when somebody says something stupid, right?
But David Gregory with Paul Ryan, all he wanted to talk about was Newt Gingrich, and he didn't challenge him about anything that he was saying about Medicare.
Not anything.
No, you are correct.
He was all about, well, didn't, but it's all about the horse race.
Yeah.
Right?
So what David Gregory was saying to him was like, well, doesn't Newt Gingrich, how much did he hurt you?
Didn't he undercut you?
Yeah, that was all he asked about.
And then when you watch the panel afterwards, the whole gist of the program was Paul Ryan's plan is very brave, but politically not wise.
That was the gist of what you came away from watching Meet the Press.
Did you say Gist?
Is it GIST or GIS?
GIST.
I say GIST.
BoGIS.
Bogist.
It was a play.
It was a great French play.
Yes.
Bogist.
But we're focusing on the wrong.
See, we're like, ignoring this.
This is exactly what we're just making fun of.
It's as bad as David Gregory.
We're just totally ignoring him.
I was so excited he was shooting out Gizm.
That was very good.
So let's just go to Paul.
Now, here's what Paul Ryan had to say on the press to meet.
Choice in competition, giving the senior the power to deny business to inefficient providers.
Yeah, you know how we're allowed to deny our health care dollars to inefficient because I told Blue Cross no.
I really showed them they had a billion other people they could turn to.
It really hurt their feelings.
They called me up to deny an MRI.
I was like, no, I'm denying you.
You don't even know.
And you felt so empowered doing that.
Oh, and I was, thank you, Paul Ryan.
You know, and I can't wait to become a senior so I can do that all the time.
When I die, they'll be sorry.
Eight out of ten people.
This is what David Gregory told him.
Eight out of ten people and are, according to our polling, are against what you're doing with Medicare and against Orion budget.
And this is his responses to that.
Okay, we're going to give people choice.
The alternative to this, David, is a rationing scheme of the 15 bureaucrats the president's going to appoint next year on his panel to ration Medicare spending.
Yeah, so instead of rationing Medicare spending like he says Obama wants to do, what they're going to do is just end Medicare spending, which is nice, right?
So you don't have to worry about rationing at all.
Even better than rationing.
It is better than rationing, right?
Let's see.
He has some more to say.
We don't think we should give the government the power to ration spending to seniors.
We want to give future seniors the ability to make choices.
Again, the choice, pay for it themselves or die.
The choice to, in their golden years, have something hanging over them that is going to worry them constantly, as opposed to knowing that it's there for them.
We're giving them that power.
Like, that's what you want when you're 80.
Many of these people can't even hold a pen.
What are the jobs for what are the golden years now?
What is the age now?
I mean, because we were living longer.
And we're living, you know.
Pretty soon it'll be the golden months.
Well, you know, 70 is the new 40.
That's what they say, right?
I don't know.
That's what I'm hoping.
And 80 is the new dead.
Very soon.
Yeah, but you look good for 80 dead, right?
Most people back then, remember when people would die at 80?
You're like, ooh, how long has he been dead?
Now it's like, this guy looks fresh.
This guy's just right there.
You're going to save money at the funeral home.
There's not going to be a lot to the embalmer's going to have to work on.
Have you ever been embalmed?
No.
Have I?
By choice?
By choice?
No.
I don't know by choice.
I have smoked a joint that was dipped in formaldehyde.
Oh, I did that back in the day.
It's nice when you have to remember how to breathe.
I have to.
Sorry, what are you doing?
I'm concentrating on breathing.
Yeah, okay.
That doesn't appeal to me at all.
I'm bombing fluid, taking that in.
That's just me.
I smoke pot, but certainly not dipped in that.
No, it didn't appeal to me either.
You didn't know?
In retrospect, no, that's not a good...
I loved it.
Did you?
Yes, I did.
You're mixing it with your roofies, right?
Yes, I did.
I take roofies when I'm by myself, and then I masturbate against my will.
It's more fun when you refuse at first.
But you're filthy.
But I get the gist of what you're saying.
Okay, so let me pause one.
So Paul Ryan wants to put senior citizens back on private health insurance.
And, you know, the great thing about private health insurance companies is that they've got plenty of health care.
They just won't sell it to you unless you don't need it.
And that's how it works.
It's a great way.
That's why you have to have groups of people who won't die for a long time to balance the people who are going to die right away.
Yeah, exactly.
And now people are going to have to buy insurance who have a pre-existing condition.
They're 70.
That's like.
Being 40 is pretty much a pre-sick to condition.
If you've made it to 40 without anything wrong with you, you should be in the museum somewhere.
Okay.
He had some more sense.
Second of all.
So he just said to him, hey, listen, people don't like your, eight out of 10 people don't like it.
And how are you going to get this done if you can't build a coalition of people around your budget plan?
And obviously you want to pass this budget.
So here's what he's first of all, he goes, first of all, if you ask the question correctly, more people are for this plan than, so he's blaming the polls.
And then he says, second of all.
Second of all, leaders are elected to lead.
I don't consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policy should be.
Leaders change the polls.
And we are leading in the House.
We are not seeing this kind of leadership from the President of the United States.
And we are going to try and move these polls and change these polls because that's what the country wants.
He's defining leader as dictator, I think.
Yeah, well, I think it's kind of interesting what he just said there.
He's like, so the polls are against us.
Okay, but I'm a leader.
And what leaders do is change the polls.
And why do you want to do that?
Because that's what the people want me to do.
They want you to change their mind?
Yes.
And how do you know that they want you to do that?
We took a poll.
I mean, that's to me, that's some of the most back-ass word logic I've ever seen.
Yeah, everybody's against what I want, but I'm a leader, and people want me to change that.
They don't want me to change my mind.
People want me to change their mind.
That's why they elected me.
And the people who are against what he wants are the citizens and constituents of the United States.
And why should they have a say in anything?
A lot of these people are senile and they don't know what they're even saying.
They're old.
They might have Alzheimer's or something.
So that's the Paul.
So that was Paul Ryan on Meet the Press.
And so it's pretty clear that Paul Ryan's budget plan has kind of screwed the pooch.
And now the Republicans are running against it or they're trying to run away from it.
So they just lost the race up in the 25th district Because the guy took his shirt off on Craigslist.
And nobody, how could that ever come back?
That's not going to come back.
So, hey, you know what?
John Boehner actually called in.
He wanted to talk about this.
Hey, Jimmy, this is John Vader, Speaker of the goddamn House of Representatives.
Beautiful day, huh?
Summer is upon us.
I love the hot weather.
The humidity slows down poor people and makes it harder for them to sponge up the government.
Yeah, how can you not feel great on a day like this?
Well, okay.
There was an election this week in upstate New York, a district that used to be as safe a bet for us as there was for Republicans.
Hell, up until a few months ago, we could have run Charles Manson if he was a Republican.
He would have been elected in that district.
And not just because conservatives love how anti-Hollywood Chuck is.
Okay, we lost the election to a Democrat.
But come on, that's not a big deal.
These things happen for any number of reasons.
Like, oh, hey, just off the top of my head, the fact that...
Yeah.
Nobody likes us anymore.
I don't know.
No.
No.
Yeah.
you Thank you.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, Jimmy.
I'm a little emotional.
But it pays me to know that people seem to have this perception that Republicans want to destroy Medicare just because that's exactly what we've been trying to do for the last 50 years.
We're just trying to make life fun and adventurous for senior citizens by replacing Medicare with a voucher program.
It would add suspense and tension to their lives.
Just like an episode of Matlock or the Hallmark channel, which, as we all know, seniors love more than life itself.
And once privatization of Medicare kicks in, life itself might not be an option anymore.
But our program requires seniors to get out of the house and go from doctor to doctor, desperately trying to get covered by companies that would sooner give Stephen Hawkins dance lessons than even look at these people's vouchers.
It'll be as if seniors are on a non-stop roller coaster ride with no access to their blood pressure medication.
Doesn't that sound exciting?
All right, Jimmy, call me back on my droid.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Okay, and we're back to the show and we're talking about Paul Ryan's Medicare plan.
I'm sitting here with Frank Connop, Steve Rosenfield, and Bob Duback.
And right now, I was watching CNBC.
This is yesterday.
So I go to CNBC because I like to get the real joke about what's really happening on.
It's pretty clear that Paul Ryan's plan has screwed the Republicans.
And well, I was listening to Kudlow and Kramer, and here's what the host, how he's introducing their segment on Monday.
The battle for Medicare.
Is this the Democrats' plan to derail the needed austerity measures to get our fiscal house in order?
We're going to get to that.
Oh, that was slightly slanted.
Interesting viewpoint there.
What the?
The battle for Medicare.
Is this the Democrats' plan to derail the needed austerity measures to get our fiscal house in order?
We're going to get to that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, sure, you guys could have health care and stuff, but how does that going to help us?
How is that going to help us if we're going to be able to take care of our citizens?
Aren't they derailing austerity?
You would think so.
But this guy, I'm guessing, is a rich guy.
And so he would enjoy.
He sounds like a rich guy to me.
Now, I would like to tell you what this guy's name is, but he was the fill-in for Kudlow.
Now, I like to watch Kudlow because I like to get my business news from a guy in French cuffs and a kerchief.
So here he is.
Now he breaks on Matt Miller.
I think this is Kudlow 2.
His brother.
Who took over the app.
Yeah, yeah, I think he gets the sledgehammer and the watermelon.
So here is now, he brings on two people to talk about a Matt Miller from NPR's Left Right Ridiculous.
And then he brings on this woman who I don't know her name.
She's a Republican.
So it doesn't matter because I'm not going to quote her.
So here's what Matt Miller has to say.
I think that the problem Ryan got into is in his zeal to have a budget that did not have any tax increases, he provided the Medicare voucher with such a low growth rate that it looks like it shifts lots of costs to seniors over time, and you're getting a rebellion.
It looks like, he said it looks like it shifts the costs of.
That's the only reason it looks that way.
Yeah, it's what you know, it's going to look, I love how Matt Miller, because Matt Miller's a centrist.
And, you know, as we all know, the centrists are ridiculous because there's no such thing as being a centrist, you know?
So as soon as somebody on the right moves farther to the right, then what happens to the center?
The center moves to the right.
It's been moving there.
Centrist spines.
Right.
So now the center is somewhere in the middle of where they're, you know, so now if you're a centrist, you're somewhere where Bob Dole was in 94.
Right.
So that's what a centrist.
So Matt Miller calls himself a centrist.
And he said it looks, that's the problem with the Ryan budget is that it looks like it shifts.
You know, the way that the oil well looked like it was spewing billions of gallons of oil.
The optical illusion.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just, you know how when the oil comes out of the thing and you can see it?
Well, that's what makes it look like there's oil companies or we're not sure.
And Paul Ryan didn't think about that because he knew senior citizens have bad eyesight.
And so they can't see how it works.
They can't even hear what they're saying.
Yeah, they can't hear or see it.
It's a moot point when it comes to the 80-year-old.
It looks so here's more of his explanation of why Paul Ryan's plan is wrong.
On that.
See, the problem is both parties are totally full of it on this issue.
Both parties, the Republicans, demagogue the Democrats on.
Okay, so I love that.
That's the pretend.
I'm the reason.
I'm in the middle.
I'm very.
Yeah, I'm the reasonable guy.
I'm not an extremist or an ideologue.
I do what's reasonable.
both parties are full of it, except the only problem with that is except they're not right.
Because the Democrats, Yeah, yeah.
And other than that, there's no difference between the two parties.
But the only reason they want to take this away is just for some economic reasons.
They're just trying to balance things is what they're doing.
Yeah, the whole way, like the main, when I watch cable news, and I'm not talking about just Fox, I'm talking about NBC and Ameet the Press.
And they're really slanting it as if Paul Ryan is the one who's serious about changing things and has the intellectually ambitious plan.
And the Democrats are just demagoguing him and creating all this fear about that he wants to destroy Medicare.
But he does want to destroy Medicare.
And his plan itself has all these things in it that are ridiculous and aren't going to lower the deficit anyway.
Even if you put his plan into effect right now, it would add money to the banks.
It would add like something like $10 trillion to the debt before it starts.
But they don't talk about that on, they talk about like he's the brave one.
Right.
So what you're telling me, Frank, is that the news media is falling down on the job.
Well, they've been down for so they can't fall down anymore.
They're on the floor already.
Yeah, they're pretty.
Yeah.
They're as bad as, well, you know, again, when you can, when the news anchor wins an Emmy for asking a presidential contender what newspapers she reads.
Emmy, somebody get the awards out of the book.
Hear what she said.
That's the skeptical once, and they're like made for that.
Oh, you were skeptical of them.
And also, Matt Miller just engaged in the thing that the media love more than anything else is false equivalent.
False equivalencies.
They love false equivalencies.
Now, I have another clip here from the same Matt Miller.
I don't know what it is.
I'm just going to play it and then we'll talk about it on the bottom.
The problem is both parties are totally full of it.
Okay, what's this thing?
On this issue, both parties, the Republicans, demagogue the Democrats on the Medicare cuts that they had in their thing or the slowing of growth.
Cuts never the right word.
The Democrats are now going to do turnabout as fair play and demagogue Paul Ryan on the Medicare guts on the next election.
Okay, no, it's not demagoguing him when you say he's cutting, he's ending Medicare to tell the truth.
That's because he's written a ridiculous budget proposal.
That's not demagoguing.
That's right.
When you say that his budget proposal cuts taxes for the wealthy and also cuts your Medicare and shifts the cost of it to the senior citizens, that's not them.
So there's a difference between demagoguing and accurately describing the situation, right?
Yeah, actually telling the truth.
And by the way, this is on CNBC.
Matt Miller had just got done hosting on MSNBC, which we're going to play a little while later.
And it's like, where do I turn to get a lefty on the goddamn TV anymore?
I mean, it's like, so, I mean, this is so I, and this isn't Fox business.
This is supposed to be the real deal.
And so, okay, here we go.
Both parties know behind closed doors we need trillions in savings from future Medicare costs.
You know, I don't think we need trillions in savings from future Medicare costs.
When he says both parties know, no, what we really need is to cut the growth of not Medicare spending, but healthcare costs.
The fact that we spend twice as much than any other industrialized country.
Like, why don't we work on that instead of trying to, well, we're just going to pay double as everybody else, but we're just going to try and cut what we paid seniors.
Do you know what I mean?
Sure.
You know, I think it's, and they're also, they're so used to the fact that, you know, go even go way back when, you know, you realize the government's spending $50 to $70 for a hammer.
I mean, they know what they're going to get with the medical expenses.
They know how much they can charge.
They know that the rich guys are going to keep getting money because if they keep this up, they don't want to get rid of, they don't want to have a more efficient way of taking care of our medical problems.
They just want to keep the lion's share of the money that's going to charge.
Yes.
And it's all, you know, mirrors and smoke for us to, you know, for us to not be aware that that's what's going on.
And it's so established that the people who have to take the brunt of the sacrifice are working people and senior citizens and people in need.
And it's just, it goes without saying with all these people that the millionaires don't have to make any sacrifices.
It would be bad for our country.
Nobody ever talks about raising taxes.
It's like it's not on the table at all.
Well, it's been made, you know.
And cutting defense.
Yes, when you say raising taxes, the media's convinced all the working class people and the older people that it's going to be their taxes are going to be raised.
And we all know it's not.
It's going to be the wealthy's taxes are going to be raised.
And then they're going to fight because they're saying, well, isn't that the American dream in capitalism that we can, you know, you make money, you don't give it back.
You only pay your fair share.
So it's a whole dynamic of what our cultural ideals are that need to be changed.
And the media's not, you know, they're not addressing that.
You know, the Republicans don't.
So you can't find any lefties on the media.
There's nobody even talking about a scope of belief.
You know, when they brought on earlier in the day, I didn't get this clip, but Matt Miller was talking about Medicare on the Dylan Radigan show, and they had Bob Kerry, former senator from Nebraska, who's considered a centrist.
And he was saying that, you know, he's doing that whole thing about we have to be serious about it.
You know, we have to, you know, Democrats have to sit down and make some serious cuts and Republicans have to.
I'm like, what?
You do not have to cut Medicare.
You do not.
It's like, how could we possibly be able to afford to give health care to our seniors, you know, like Canada does?
We couldn't possibly do that.
There are no other examples of this working anywhere in the world.
Where else does it work?
Right.
It's like the old thing in Rush Limbaugh.
If they pass Obamacare, I'm moving.
Where are you going to move to?
Every place you're going to go to has to be.
It's like, I can only feel comfortable if I know there are people sitting around me not getting health care.
I feel healthier knowing there are more sick people.
Okay, we're up against a break.
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Back to the show.
Okay, and we're back.
I am joined in studio from CinematicTitanic.com and Mystery Science Theater 3000.
It's Frank Conniff and former writer for the Daily Show and hilarious comedian at Steve Rosenthal.
Field.
Field, did I say fix that in post?
So anti-Semitic.
I can't believe that.
It's Steve Jewestein.
And also hilarious comedian and writer Bob Duback is here.
And right now, what's coming up on the rest of the show?
We're going to talk more about the Paul Ryan plan.
WikiLeaks Frontline did a nice little hit job on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and we're going to talk about that.
But right now, it's time for Jim Hightower to stop by and bum us out in a folksy voice.
Billionaires are different from you and me for obvious reasons, including the fact that they buy much pricier baubles than we do.
A sleep car costing $100,000?
Well, that's just an impulse purchase.
A few million bucks for a Matisse original?
Go ahead.
It'll liven up the hallway.
How about throwing a fat wad of cash at a university to get an academic chair named for you?
Sure.
It's all part of living in billionaire land.
Then there are megalomaniacal mega-billionaires like the Koch brothers.
Using money from their industrial conglomerate, their foundation, and their personal fortunes, these two far-out laissez-faire extremists are literally buying public policy.
Their purchases of everything from politicians to the Tea Party help them push the privatization of all things public and the elimination of pesky regulations and taxes that crimp their style.
To advance their plutocratic cause, Brother Charles has gone on a shopping spree for an invaluable bobble that most of us didn't even know was for sale, academic freedom.
And it's surprisingly cheap.
For only $1.5 million, Koch bought a big chunk of the economics department of Florida State University.
His donation gives him control of a new academic program at this public institution to indoctrinate students in his self-serving political theories.
The billionaire gets to screen all applicants, veto any he deems insufficiently ideological, and sign off on all hires.
Also, the department head must submit yearly reports to Koch about the faculty's speeches, publications, and classes.
And he evaluates the faculty based on objectives that he sets.
This is Jim Hightower saying, Charles has made similar purchases of academic freedom at two other state universities, Clemson and West Virginia.
Now, just imagine the screams of outrage that you and I would be hearing from the Coke if a labor union was doing this.
To get more of Jim Hightower's populist take on what Wall Street and Washington are up to, visit www.hightowerlowdown.org.
Okay, that was Jim Hightower.
Thanks, Jim.
Jim's here every week to bum us out in a folksy voice.
And you can catch him in a, they're having a benefit for Jim Hightower coming up in Los Angeles.
Is he okay?
I think he's going to be okay.
No, he's going to be at speaking.
He's going to benefit quite a bit.
He's speaking at a benefit for Citizens United.
And we'll put a link up on the website for that.
Just kidding.
And so let's get to, so now WikiLeaks did a, oh, before we get to the WikiLeaks, now Benjamin Netanyahu, we talked about, Obama gave his speech where he talked about we have to go back to pre-67 borders and then with mutually agreed land swap.
So everybody went nuts about that.
And even though he was stating the exact same position that Bill Clinton had stated and George Bush had stated.
So this has been the United States policy for over a dozen years and we all know it.
And of course, it's the net.
Now you talk about demagoguery.
So there now, Benjamin Netanyahu, his ratings are down.
His poll ratings are like at 30% in Israel.
So he's got to do something, right?
So he comes out against Barack Obama and says he's threatening our security.
So he goes and gives a speech to the joint session of Congress.
There was yesterday.
This was yesterday.
So listen, so he gets heckled, and he handles it pretty well, but there's a little irony happening here.
And I'll see if we can pick it up.
As we share their hopes.
All right, so he's getting heckled.
People are booing the heckler.
And then the security comes over, and they take her out, and everybody applauds, right?
So then we come back.
I take it as a badge of honor, and so should you, that in our free societies, you can have protests.
You can't have these protests in the farcical parliaments in Tehran on Tripoli.
This is real democracy.
Yeah, because, you know, in Tehran or Tripoli, they would have probably arrested that girl even faster and thrown her out.
And here, we waited at least two or three seconds before we jailed someone.
I mean, I'm not saying that Israel in America is equal to Libya or to Tehran, but it is kind of ironic that someone did shout out.
They immediately shut her up, arrested her, and threw her out.
And he's like, isn't this a great democracy?
People get to shout, and then we arrest them.
She thought she was helping him, though.
Yeah.
Well, she said beforehand, she said to the head of the house, sit me up front so that he makes fun of me.
It's my birthday.
She's so is you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
He says that, and the whole place jumps to their feet.
This is the rest of the clip that I'm jumping.
Let me see this.
Thank you.
So as we share the hopes.
So anyway, what else is going on?
Exactly.
Very smooth segue there.
So anyways, as I was saying.
He goes into the airline bit, you know.
As I was saying before democracy broke out.
And these people in Congress who are cheering are the same ones who cheer just as vociferously for, remember when Bush gave the joint address and they had people with the ink on their finger.
It was like such a great symbol of how democracy had triumphed in Iraq.
And then all the pundits afterwards talk about what a beautiful, inspiring moment it was.
What happened with that?
I don't know.
I think we've installed democracy in Iraq.
I think it's all fixed.
Oh, good.
Good.
But we just need to keep 50,000 people there at the government's expense to make sure it stays fixed.
That's all.
All right.
And we empowered the Shias in Iran.
That's all.
I mean, it worked, right?
Yes.
Okay, so now I don't know if anybody saw it, but WikiLeaks is the subject of the frontline last night.
And of course, no, let me just let people know now this podcast usually drops on Thursday, and the radio show airs at all different times around the country.
But we're recording on Wednesday, right?
Wednesday of this week.
What is the date?
Wednesday the 25th.
So just so you know, so you go, wait a minute, that wasn't on yesterday.
That was two days ago.
Well, you're listening to the show on a different day.
How about that?
Okay, so they did a frontline did a really nice, top, top-notch hit job on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning.
They talked about Daniel Manning.
He talked about him being gay.
They talked him by being a real troublemaker, how him and his father don't talk.
They had some guy saying how he would cry all the time on the phone to him because he was being abused.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
And Bradley Manning is still going to be in the hangover, too, right?
That's the other.
They described him as being a risk taker.
They described him being a risk taker because he was against Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
And he would show up at gay rights rallies.
And he was in the military.
So that was, you know, signing up for yourself.
Everybody knows when you're in the military, you're supposed to not really stand up for the Constitution.
Right, right.
And that was real.
That could really cause a lot of problems.
So this is the kind of stuff they were saying about him.
And so let me, so here's what I learned from the WikiLeaks show last night.
So what, so they're trying to, they want to indict Julian Assange.
They want to put him in jail just like they have Daniel Manning, right?
So what happened was, here's pretty much how the law works, right?
So if you're a newspaper or a news, and if someone sends you Information and you didn't solicit it and it's classified, you can print it.
That's called that's protection of the first amendment.
But if you somehow talk that guy into getting the information and said, and you gave him the idea, like, hey, if you go in there and get a disc and give it to me, I'll print it, that's espionage, and that's illegal.
So that's what they're trying to pin Julian Assange with.
They're trying to say that he somehow pre-get the information, talked to Daniel Manning or talked to an intermediary who talked to Daniel Manning, and they instructed them on what information to get and how to do it.
And that would be illegal.
But he didn't do that.
In fact, he went out of his way when he got the information.
He contacted the Guardian newspaper and the New York Times, and he wanted to make sure that it was published in The Guardian.
But first, it had to be published in the New York Times because if it was published in the New York Times, then it would be protected under the First Amendment, and nobody could, they couldn't take him, they couldn't put him in front of a jury and say that he was committing espionage because the New York Times was already doing it with him.
Well, he kind of soured on the New York Times because, well, here, listen, I just want you to hear how they couch this on the front line.
So they wrote some pretty.
So Daniel Manning is their source.
They're getting the scoop of a lifetime from Julian Assange, right?
New The New York Times.
Daniel Manning is their source.
They do a hit job on Daniel Manning, right?
They then come out and write some articles in the New York Times that kind of, and so, and how did Julian Assange take that?
Assange hated that story.
He hated things we wrote about him.
He hated the fact that we were publicly critical of him.
So he didn't want us anywhere near these documents.
He gave them to the Guardian.
So now what they're trying to do is pay Assange is like, oh, yeah, he double-crossed.
He turned his back on us, and he didn't like it because we wrote articles that were critical of him.
Yeah, you mean the guy you're working with?
And so here's the guy from The Guardian.
Here's how he describes it.
He decided he was going to double-cross the New York Times and cut them out of the deal.
Wow, well, that sounds pretty horrible.
I mean, why would he double-cross the New York Times and cut them out?
What was it that made him do that?
Because he was angry.
They had written a disobliging profile.
Oh, disobliging?
What did they say that he had?
Is that a word?
Disobliging?
Did they say he had funny-looking hair?
What did they say exactly?
Him describing him as imperious and crazy and impossible.
And then he double-crossed them.
You mean, after the people he's in business with and giving them the scoop of their life, they call him crazy in print, and then he didn't want to work with them anymore.
What a goddamn double-crosser that Julian Assange turns out to be.
Egomaniac.
But did the Guardian decide to double-cross them?
They weren't willing to double-cross the New York Times.
We thought the deal is a deal.
Yeah, we thought, even no matter if you go in your newspaper and call me crazy by name, I'm still going to honor my deal to work with you.
So this is the kind of thing that's happening on a frontline.
I'm going to frontline, and I guess I should know better because NP, you know, public radio and public television, they don't even refer to torture as torture.
They refer to it what the government tells them to say, which is enhanced interrogation techniques, which is nice because it sounds like they're going to put on a little mood music.
We're going to put you in light some candles.
Yeah.
Oh, isn't that nice?
No, no.
We're going to have some track lighting.
It's going to be all right.
They call it enhanced interrogation, and you also get a tote bag at the end of it.
Yeah, and two tickets to Spago.
Tickets?
I don't know if you get tickets.
You know what I meant.
Give certificates.
That's what I meant.
Okay, so that was that.
So that's the first.
Listen to what they're saying, though.
I mean, they're all passing the buck on who because they don't want any of this thing to deflect to them.
Oh, that's what it is.
I mean, The Guardian, The Times, everybody is because they're trying to distance.
They don't want to be charged with the espionage either.
Well, they already printed it.
I know they have, but they don't want it to come back to them because it was if they prove that Assange had gotten, was it Bradley to do what he told them to suggest it, then it's still going to come back and bite them in the ass.
So they're trying to diss themselves completely from it.
Yes.
And they're trying to do it.
And this is trashing him, and they're trashing Daniel Ash.
I'm trying to wrap my head around because it's for the first time.
Well, the whole reason, part of the reason Assange is so criticized because the attitude in the media is that the government should be protected.
You know, we should be on the government's side.
We should help them protect their secrets.
When we don't get them.
Get the secrets first if somebody else comes up.
But it's unpatriotic to want to reveal the truth to the public about what the government is being secretive about.
I'm going to speak to that point in just a second.
You're exactly right because we're going to go back to MSNBC.
But here's so he hands he has like a quarter million documents he gets right from Daniel Manning.
And he only releases like 12,000 of them so far because he doesn't want to incriminate people who are innocent, who are helping.
I mean, but they're still trying to say in the front line, they were saying that the reason, another reason why they didn't want to work with Julian Assange is because he didn't care about protecting sources, even though he did.
He totally redacted stuff.
He blacked out stuff.
And so they just make up falsehoods.
So here's what they say about him here.
Only 12,000 out of a quarter million diplomatic cables have been published so far.
But they've already had consequences.
And what are those consequences?
What would be those consequences of WikiLeaks?
I bet it's pretty horrible because the government has been telling me this is the worst thing ever, and we've got to prosecute this guy.
We've got to prosecute Daniel Manning.
In fact, they're torturing him right now to try to get him to turn on Julian Assange.
Right after this, didn't we catch Osam bin Laden?
Didn't that with WikiLeaks?
We got to?
We got Osan.
I don't know if WikiLeaks help, but here's what they say.
Here's what Frontline, the people doing a hit job on him, actually said it did.
A dozen cables from Tunisia exposed widespread corruption there and helped fuel a revolution and arguably had a domino effect.
I mean, I don't want to give WikiLeaks credit for the transformation of the Arab world.
No, this is.
No, of course not.
Of course, I don't want to give them credit.
This is Bob Keller, the editor of the New York Times.
I don't want to give WikiLeaks credit for doing that, but.
But, you know, to the extent that Tunisia influenced Egypt, these cables played some role in the overthrow of the Mubarak regime.
Oh, so they just kind of changed the Middle East.
The WikiLeaks did what Americans' military fight might have been trying to do for decades and decades and decades.
Somehow, WikiLeaks did that?
That's interesting.
That's not that big of a deal, is it?
No, wait, wait, wait.
I don't want to give him too much credit, but yeah, he changed the whole world.
He's not the kind of New York Times journalist that they respect who would protect Scooter Libby or protect their sources.
Right.
Protect the powerful.
Or print falsehoods on their front page about nuclear rods in Iraq and let Judith Miller kind of reach out.
Because that's part of the big outrage that everyone had with Julian Assange is he was actually doing journalism.
Yes.
And the mainstream press in America was very outrageous.
It's competition then.
They don't.
But they don't even want to be in that competition.
No, of course not.
They don't even want to recognize him.
They don't want to validate.
They want everybody to just kind of say what the government wants them to say and not bring anybody down, not create any ripples, not create any ripples or anything like that.
Yeah, they don't even want to be playing his game.
they're not going back to the days of the Pentagon Papers.
No.
They do not want to be those people.
Not at all.
No, no, no.
So the way Daniel Manning got caught was so he started an internet chat with this guy.
He's this guy in California, and his name was Adrian Lama, right?
And so he was a big internet guy, somehow in the hacker community, and he told him what he was doing.
So this guy turned him.
So he turned on him.
And so the hacker community is upset at this guy.
So he was at a panel, and they're talking about Daniel Manning.
And so he was in what they called the snitch panel.
So they were interviewing him.
And listen to what he says.
People ask him, hey, how do you feel about it?
Adrian Lama sat on what was referred to as the snitch panel.
Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker, is currently sitting in prison in Kuwait, I believe.
And he could be locked up for the rest of his life.
How do you feel about that?
And then somebody else, and he's being tortured.
And sent here.
So here's the guy who turned him in.
This is what he says.
I think that it's a little bit ludicrous to say that Bradley Meang is going to be tortured.
We don't do that to our citizens.
Listen to everyone.
Or maybe we do.
By the way, on the snitch panel, what did Huggy Bear have to say?
So it's kind of ludicrous to think that we would torture our own guy.
We only torture Muslims.
And it turns out we are torturing Daniel.
Put him on suicide.
So here, now let's get to.
So I'm watching NMS NBC.
Matt Miller is hosting.
He's got a panel of one Democrat lady, Democratic lady.
He's got one Republican lady.
And he's got an insider, what they call this guy, Jimmy Williams, who is a lobbyist, right?
So they get all the different perspectives from inside Washington.
And so they're talking about this WikiLeaks thing that was going to air last night.
And so here he is talking to the Democratic representative.
Well, that's been sort of a key piece is whether or not the government can actually prove, and it sounds like what they're suggesting is that you have Assange and perhaps some kind of intermediary and then Mr. Manning.
And it sounds like this is going to help set that case up.
So she just laid it out.
If they find out there was an intermediary, then they can prosecute him.
And that would be bad, right?
Because then we wouldn't have any more WikiLeaks or journalism.
Which I think is important because it sounds like Assange is as guilty as anyone in all of this.
So I hope that the government can make their case against him and that he is under the Espionage Act and that we actually can get justice.
Right, justice for a guy who we can get justice for a guy who told us that the wars were a lie and compete cause.
But she's not even a journalist.
She's a Democratic spokesperson.
She's like an operative.
Yes.
And yeah, I mean, he does sound guilty as anyone, you know, anyone who risks his own freedom to change the world, you know, like Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers.
And so they have to prove that there's an, and she's going.
I hope they can prove there's an intermediary.
And Matt Miller says, wait a minute.
And yet, and any leak, isn't there always, if it's to the Washington Post or the New York Times, isn't there a quote-unquote intermediary somehow?
You would think so.
You would think so.
So it's okay when they do it to the New York Times or the New York Post, but it's just not okay if they do it to WikiLeaks.
So here he asked this guy, Jimmy Williams, the lobbyist.
And here's what Jimmy Williams, the lobbyist, has to say.
Look, it's simple.
If Manning did what he did, they ought to try him and they ought to put his ass for a firing squad and light him up.
And if Assange did what I think is going to come out tonight, and we'll wait to see what it is, you know what?
Let's get him into this country and let's prosecute him as well.
Okay, so he's saying, light him up, light up Daniel Manning.
Let's get Assange in here.
We don't use torture.
We just shoot people with their hands tied behind them.
We light them up.
So we light him up so now we can see him when we're shooting at him.
We're shooting in the dark because we don't want anybody to see us.
So here is Matt Miller asking the obvious question.
Is he different than the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal?
I don't see that guy at all as the press.
Because of his press.
Because he released information.
Yes.
He did things.
And here's why he doesn't see him as the press, right?
Evil intent.
He wants to bring down capitalists.
I'm not in the business of deciding intent.
No, you want to put him in front of a firing squad.
Without any intent.
You're not in the business.
I'm not in the business of deciding.
But listen to how interesting.
Here he's very eloquent and telling us what he is in the business.
What business are you in, Jimmy?
I am in the business of saying, if you're in the business of press, if you're out there printing paper and doing, if you're out there doing the press.
Doing the press?
Wow.
He's in the business of being in the business.
Of saying, if you're out there doing the press, and if you're an airline pilot and you're out there doing the airline industry, or if you're any, who talks like that?
There's more.
It gets better.
Jimmy Williams.
Because this is what you have to do, folks.
This is what happens when you're going against our Constitution, our principles, and you don't understand the First Amendment, and you're trying to prosecute a guy for doing journalism in America.
This is the kind of pretzel kind of logic you have to employ.
You have to twist yourself in every way.
None of this stuff is making sense.
So here he goes.
It's the end of what Jimmy Williams has to say.
And exposing both good and bad.
Let's back because of his evil intent.
He wants to bring down a capitalist.
I'm not in the business of deciding intent.
I am in the business of saying, if you're in the business of the press, if you're out there printing paper and doing press.
If you're out there doing the press and exposing both good and bad in your government, which is the press's job, that's fine.
That guy's not, that's not his intent.
Oh, I thought you weren't in the business.
So now all of a sudden, you have to know what you have to first make sure that people, if you're going to be a journalist, you have to give good and bad.
And that has to be your intent.
So now in order to have the First Amendment, you have to have the right intent.
So the First Amendment doesn't protect you unless this Jagoff says you have the right intent.
This guy.
Okay.
So let's just play that one more time here.
I'm not in the business of deciding intent.
I am in the business of saying, if you're in the business of press, if you're out there printing paper and doing the press.
If you're working in the press room, if you're pressing a room, pressing on his suit.
So now he goes back to the Democratic representative, and here's what she has to say about it.
With Assange, the problem I think most of us have with it is it doesn't seem like his goal was to shine a light and tell the truth.
This is a narcissistic guy with all he cares about is himself.
So that's right.
It clearly states in the First Amendment, Frank, if you haven't read it, that you have freedom of speech unless you don't have a good personality and you're a little too self-centered.
And he's the only Narcissistic guy I can think of in the media.
Right.
He's the first one.
And that's amazing that that would be her excuse.
Okay, maybe he released information that was valuable, but he only cares about himself, so it's not valid.
He just wants to be famous.
Yeah, he helped change the middle.
Unlike us.
He should go to jail because it's like, ooh, I'm Julian Assange.
I'm so great.
He's such a nice.
He's stuck up.
And who gets to side if you're a narcissist?
I'm guessing a panel of talking heads on the table and a lot of cable shows.
A snitch panel?
Yeah, snitch panel.
You know, people who don't really understand what the First Amendment is.
And again, let's just remember: what did this narcissist person with the wrong intention end up doing?
A dozen cables from Tunisia exposed widespread corruption there and helped fuel a revolution and arguably had a domino effect.
These cables played some role in the overthrow of the Mubarak regime.
Okay, but you know what?
I really hope we get this guy.
I hope justice.
Okay, he brought down a repressive regime, but it really is.
Anybody could do that.
Right.
But it really appealed to his ego.
So it shouldn't have ever happened in the first place.
He was showing off for chicks.
Hey, Jimmy, this is John Vader, Speaker of the goddamn House of Representatives again.
And another thing that's good about this plan: everybody thinks seniors should be active, and this program will encourage seniors to actively worry that they're going to be crushed by medical expenses.
Sounds like an active lifestyle to me.
But the Democrat Party.
Yeah, I said Democrat Party, not Democratic Party.
Uh-huh.
That's right, bitch.
I went there.
I don't care about senior citizens.
I just want to placate them by letting them stay with a program that's given them security and comfort for the last half century.
So, okay, because of our stand on Medicare, we lost an election in a seat that should have been securely Republican.
So, sure, it looks like Republicans are in trouble, and I'm the leader of the Republican Party, so I guess you could say I'm in trouble, too.
I'm not worried.
I'll pull through.
I mean, Nuke Gingrich once had my gig, and look how he got.
Oh, my God, I'm so screwed.
I look excited to the abyss.
My old doom is staring me back in the face.
This is the end.
Beautiful friend.
This is the end.
My only friend, the end.
Well, Jimmy, I've got to run.
And remember, no matter what happens, I am the orange lizard king of our elaborate plans.
The end.
Of everything that stands the end.
Okay, that was John Vader.
I want to thank everybody who helped write today's show.
Mike McRae, Frank Conniff, Steph Samurano, Steve Rosenfield, Thal.
Thank you.
And I want to also thank my guests, Frank Connoff, Steve Rosenfield, and Bob Duback.
Thanks for sitting in.
I hope you guys had fun.
It was great.
And Frank, people can find you at cinematictitanic.com.
Okay, anybody else have a website you want to plug?
Mailintellect.com.
Mailintellect.com.
Oh, that's nice, Bob.
Okay, the Mail Intellect Act.
It's only for women, though, Jimmy.
Okay, and I want to thank my producer, Ali Lexa, and everybody else for listening.
And you could always stop by JimmyDoorComedy.com and leave a message.
That's right, leave a message.
When I say leave a message, I mean write something nice underneath the episode.
And we'll see you June 11th.
We're going to be doing popping politics once again at the Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard.
Frank, you're going to be there, correct?
Well, yeah, because Le Dou Alan War graphic novel is coming out.
That's June 11th.
I'll be there with Frank and Paul Gilmartin and David Feldman.
We'll see you there.
You can find everything at JimmyDoorComedy.com, the links to all those shows and all the fun stuff.
I'll see everybody in Houston this weekend at the Laugh Spot and in San Jose at Rooster T Feather.
Okay, until next week, be the best you can be and I'll keep being me.
How many times did you have to go to the bathroom during the Wiki Weeks?
That's a kind of sophisticated comment.
I should say that for the air.
You should, we should raise the level.
You've been doing your homework.
She was the secretary.
Secretary, Rosemary Wood.
That was her name.
Secretary for who?
Nixon Waterno.
Yeah.
The 18-minute gap.
Did you guys see?
I only have an erection for 18 minutes.
It's called having a rosemary.
Ah, Frank.
Then you shoot your gizm.
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!
Thank you.
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