Ana Kasparian and Joe Rogan critique media’s shift from corporate censorship to unfiltered online engagement, exposing issues like wealth inequality (top 1% owns 33%) and government surveillance via Snowden’s NSA revelations. They debate blackface’s historical harm, contrast Rogan’s podcast’s organic format with traditional journalism, and question Obama’s policy pragmatism over principle—like drone strikes and delayed civil rights support. Kasparian advocates for legalizing prostitution and ending the war on drugs to curb private prison profits, while Rogan muses on internet accountability reshaping politics. Ultimately, they argue systemic corruption thrives when profit and optics override ethics, demanding cultural and political reckoning. [Automatically generated summary]
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I mean, I'm not 100% sure that it's going to be published, so I don't want to give too many details.
It's something I'm working on now.
But I got to experience that transition from establishment media to new media.
And there are really important differences and just this whole media revolution that's happening that's really exciting for anyone who's interested in journalism.
What's fascinating is all you have to do is be interesting, entertaining, informative, and that's it.
It doesn't have to have CNN on it or Fox on it or any of these other names that we've attributed to meaning what the news is, where the news comes from.
I mean, when I first started working at TYT, it was this unknown show.
It had been around for a few years, but it was a really big risk for me to work there because I was working at CBS Radio at the time.
And CBS Radio had a very clear path for me.
You start off as an assistant producer, you will work your way up, and if you're good enough and persistent enough, you'll be an anchor and you'll be fine.
You'll be set for life.
With TYT, it was just this huge risk because it was unknown.
I didn't know if it would survive.
At the time, it was on this radio station called Air America.
Um, so I just remember being really unhappy at CBS, feeling like, you know, even if I get to the top of the ladder within this company, I'm not going to feel fulfilled doing what they're doing.
And the first day I worked at the Young Turks, I heard Cenk Uygur, the main host of the show, go on this rant against the Bush administration and some of the ridiculous, you know, civil liberty violations, civil liberties violations that they were accused of.
Guilty of, not even accused of.
And I was like, wow, you do not see this in the media.
You don't see this type of honesty.
You don't see people go off like that.
They're usually very senatorial whenever they're doing any type of commentary.
And I was tired of it.
I wanted some real news coverage.
So that's why I made the decision that I made.
And I left.
And thank God I made that decision because TYT actually succeeded in big ways.
What year do you think it was where it started to shift?
Because it seems like, to me, it's maybe three, five, whatever years it is, but within the last few years, there's this shift where my friends don't ever talk to me about what they saw on CNN. They don't ever talk to me about what they saw on Fox News.
It's always, I read this online.
I watched this online.
I saw the Young Turks.
I watched this show.
I watched this guy's podcast.
And this guy said, I mean, everybody that I talk to is talking about stuff that they're getting.
When they're talking about real issues, they're talking about stuff they're getting online.
The real problem is they don't even realize they're being shitheads because their dad was a shithead, their brother's a shithead, they grow up in a community of shitheads.
I've considered that but you know a lot of times they'll send me the pictures on Facebook because I have a fan page on Facebook and every once in a while check the messages and they're so stupid because all of their private information is on there like where they work who their girlfriend or their wife is and part of me wants to like forward it over to their girlfriend or wife but I'm too nice like I don't want to like ruin their lives over there like perverted behavior Well, that's very kind of you to not do that.
A small part of me felt kind of bad for him because he had a family to take care of, and it's going to destroy his life.
And I get it.
Online anonymity allows people to blow off steam in that way.
And a lot of people right now, because of the economic crisis, because of all the crap that's going on in the government, all the I'm not interested in censoring them.
I know that YouTube is trying to work with their comments so those Negative comments get pushed back to the bottom or whatever and no one can read them.
I just feel like, you know, the internet should be an open forum for the most hateful people if they want to be hateful.
And we as adults have to have thicker skin and just walk away and not let it get to us.
I think men and women have similar sexual desires.
However, women are not allowed to be...
As open about it because of societal expectations and certain gender roles.
If you are a woman who is open about how much you love sex and how often you want to have sex and how badly you need it, you are looked at as a hoe.
There's no question about it.
People will refer to you as a loose woman, a slutty woman.
That's the reason why a lot of women like to have the cocktails before they have sex, because that'll allow them to let loose and do what they really want to do.
And then also, if you don't have sex, if you decide to save yourself for marriage or you save yourself for someone that you genuinely love or whatever, then you're considered a prude.
There's guys that would have zero problem with it at all, and then there's guys that would only have a problem with it if you weren't attracted to them.
See, it weeds out assholes.
So if you were a chick and you were just like, listen, I'm a freak, I like to get fucked all day long, that's what I'm into, you'll find exactly the right people you need in your life.
Because I think for a lot of people, especially in the culture we're living right now, if you're that open about your sexual desires, people will see that as a green light to do things that might even be considered illegal.
Whether it's harassment or sexual assault or something.
And also, I mean, this is like Probably bullshit, but I would imagine that if you're the type of person that starts getting into threesomes and tying each other up, and you start getting really freaky, it's way easy to go too far with that.
If you hear about someone like, I'm just into sex all day long, I just love sex.
Is it just sex?
Or how long does it take before a ball gag comes out?
You want the bigger TV. And even I'm definitely guilty of that.
You know, I live in a really modest apartment that I love.
But the other day I was like, you know, I could probably go for a bigger apartment.
But why?
I live by myself.
My apartment's fine.
I don't need a bigger one, right?
When it comes to...
You know, physical stuff, I think you kind of just get desensitized by things.
You know, there have been many studies about what porn does to the brain, and you start off by watching something that might be considered softcore, and that's enough to, you know, do the job.
And then all of a sudden you're watching more and more hardcore stuff, and you just become desensitized to it.
And for a lot of teenage boys that grow up on that kind of stuff, that's what they expect from women, you know, or girls once they start having sex.
Yeah, well, I agree with you on that, but at the same time, everything always goes back to who is funding our politicians.
You know, Wall Street, these big bankers, these are the people that fund the campaigns for our politicians, which is why they just willy-nilly went for the bailout.
And by the way, after the bailout happened, we did nothing to break up these too-big-to-fail banks.
They still exist.
And they're still doing the same type of bullshit that'll lead to another economic collapse.
I mean, the regulation that we passed was nothing.
So it's just, it always goes back to money and politics, which, you know, we talk about on this show all the time.
If someone is funding you, whether it's the media or whether you're a politician, you're not going to go against them.
I mean, when you really stop and think that it's gotten to the point that it is today, where essentially it's open, it's pretty obvious, they control virtually every single aspect of our economy, our society.
It's all just money-generating hubs, these big giant spaceships filled with assholes that are just sucking money out of whatever, whether it's through oil or natural gas or whatever they're doing.
Most profitable industry in the United States, in the world.
So it's frustrating stuff.
But fortunately, there are ways around it.
Citizens United was a terrible Supreme Court ruling.
You know, which effectively allows corporations to act as people and make these unlimited campaign donations to politicians.
So one way that you can get around that is by creating a constitutional amendment, which we're trying to do at the Young Turks.
There's a political action committee that we formed called Wolfpack.
Your audience can learn more about it at wolf-pack.com.
and basically it would have state leaders propose a resolution and the resolution would create a constitutional convention where you can make an amendment to the Constitution that would get money out of politics and that would fix so many problems because then our broken democracy would change into a system that it was intended to be where our elected politicians are supposed to represent us the people instead of corporations Well,
when you back something in the corner and shine a light on it, you really get to know its true nature.
And if that ever does come to play, it would be a very fascinating moment to see how the system that's in place today would deal with the idea of taking money out of politics and what kind of a scramble would take place.
I... You know, Cenk Uygur is really optimistic about it.
I'm not as optimistic as he is.
But I think that if the American people become a little more politically active and they sign the petitions necessary and they hold their state representatives accountable, I think that this could happen.
You know, it just takes a little bit of political activism.
And unfortunately, there's this huge level of apathy right now, which I don't understand because The political climate is leading to, you know, this economic meltdown and all of the problems that people are experiencing right now, income inequality, wealth inequality.
It's scary stuff.
I mean, we lie to ourselves when we say that we live in the best country in the world.
When you look at the future of this country, the way it's running, the way it is currently operated, how long can that, it seems like it's falling apart at the wheels.
It seems like it's like this crazy thing that's spinning and shaking and sucking money out and freaking out.
How long can this thing operate the way it is right now?
Top one percent owns one-third of the wealth in the country.
And so people are struggling to make ends meet.
And the reason why that's happening is because we're seeing these huge tax cuts for the most wealthiest people.
Why is it that we're supposed to have the highest corporate tax rate, but because of corporate loopholes, we actually have the lowest corporate tax rate?
I mean, we've got to get rid of those loopholes.
And then you have the Republicans saying, yeah, you know what, we should raise taxes.
One way we can do that is by getting rid of deductions.
Which deduction do they want to go after?
Homeowners.
They want to go after people who get that interest rate deduction in their taxes.
And that, of course, impacts the middle class.
So there's just a lot of frustrating stuff going on.
I'm going to watch the Kardashians or play video games or do whatever I need to do to distract myself.
And I don't blame people for doing that.
A lot of these issues are really complicated and complex.
You know, you have to sit down and do so much research.
We have this mainstream media that's also broken.
They're not reporting the real news.
You know, you have to really depend on independent media to get real facts.
And so I don't blame people for wanting to be distracted.
But at the same time, if we allow things to continue the way they are, we're going to have the wealthiest people living in their castles with moats around them while we're going to struggle to find private security because everything that is publicly funded is going to be defunded.
including our education, we're seeing that happen now.
And I think the most frustrating part about that is, you know, we have politicians that will pass policies that lead to the collapse of certain cities.
California is in a lot of trouble right now because of a proposition we passed in 1978 called Proposition 13. It kept property taxes at 1.2%.
And as a result, we started defunding our education, which is why the LAUSD went from being one of the best school districts in the country to being one of the worst school districts in the country.
And we just lost out on a ton of revenue as a result of our low, very low property taxes.
They'll pass policies like that.
In the case of California, of course, Californians voted for it, which was disastrous.
But then at the same time, they'll cut government programs that'll help the poorest people, whether it's the SNAP program or the food stamp program or, you know, the welfare programs or whatever that help needy kids.
And it's like, look, if you don't want to spend this much money on governmental programs or social programs, then stop passing policies and tax cuts that make it really, really difficult for people to make ends meet.
Well, I think if it wasn't for shows like yours and people like you and Cenk who are exposing this stuff and people in the new media, people that are writing these very, very popular blogs, if it wasn't for that, this information wouldn't be going out.
And if the information wasn't going out, people wouldn't realize what a clusterfuck it really is.
They would tune into the nightly news and get this sense that everything's going to be okay, which is basically what America did until the internet came around.
I mean, I studied political science for my master's and it's just always been a passion of mine since I was in high school.
So, even though things are really bad right now, I have this passion to try to make a difference.
And so, I see Cenk making a difference, and I'm really proud of him, and he's someone that's been my mentor, someone that I look up to, and, you know, I want to be able to analyze politics as well as he does.
At the same time, you know, I was brought in for something completely different.
I was brought in to make the company money, and that's basically what I do.
The stories that I cover in my hour of the show are sometimes very important social stories, whether it's gay rights, women's rights, whatever, men's rights when it comes to how they get screwed over when it comes to children and marriage and basically the law.
Men are basically screwed over when it comes to sexual harassment and stuff, but women aren't.
It's amazing.
But that's a side note.
But then, you know, I'll do the stories that are really stupid, but people love them.
Like, we'll do a Miley Cyrus story, and it'll get, like, millions of views, and we'll make a ton of money off that video, but there's no value to that story.
So I always feel guilty doing it.
So I'll have days where I'm just like, yeah, I'm...
I'm a big failure.
This is what I do for my life, and I feel guilty about it.
I had this conversation with Jamie Kilstein once, a dude from Citizen Radio.
They were talking about politics and I go, do you ever think that by following this fake horse and pony show that you're like lending credence to it?
Because you're an intelligent person and you're pretending this isn't all just assholes who are getting bribed.
Because that's what it really is.
It's really just a bunch of assholes that are getting bribed and they're cronyism and all this weird shit going on with laws and things they can and can't get away with and what they can and can't get charged with.
Well, I mean, look, there's a huge difference between political reporters in the mainstream that just report on it, but they don't really give a shit about making a difference.
And then there's a huge difference between people like Jamie and Allison on Citizen Radio or the Young Turks or any other, you know, what is it called?
That strategy or that delivery is effective because there have been people who have been reporting about, you know, civil liberties violations for a while and they get no attention.
So sometimes the squeaky wheel will get the attention.
And, you know, if that's what he needs to do to get coverage of those important news stories, it's totally fine.
The thing is, you know, There are little sprinkles of truth to some of the stuff that he reports, and then some of the stuff that he reports is just crazy, and it's made up.
So it's like, I don't know where to fall with that guy, because I want to support him with some stories, but then other stories, I'm like, dude, you need to tone it down.
He wants to see a conspiracy in every fucking thing that's ever existed, ever.
If you come up to him about whatever it is, name it, JFK, the Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Death of Vince Foster...
There's a million stories!
They never end.
He'll just fucking come at you.
But he's been right about a lot of stuff that's really freaky.
One thing that he reported on that very few people caught was the use of paid police officers to pretend to be people that are in a crowd protesting.
And then agent provocateurs.
And they would start smashing things.
He covered this in Seattle when the World Trade Organization was making their, I believe it was the 90s, when there was these massive protests and the protests went violent.
Well, he has all these photos of their bottom of their boots, military-issue Vibrams, and he points all this like, these are police officers.
They're wearing masks, no one else is, and they're the only ones doing any damage.
They're smashing things.
And they're doing it so then the police can come in and start arresting peaceful people, which they normally couldn't do.
And I thought that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.
The crazy thing is, when it came to the Occupy protesters, they weren't even Asian provocateurs.
They were just cops breaking shit and starting the violence.
And they got a little bit of criticism for it.
The media would pick up the story and make it seem as though the Occupy protesters were the violent ones.
They would do everything necessary to discredit them, which made me so angry because finally in this country there was a little bit of political activism.
They changed the conversation.
Because we were talking about bullshit until Occupy came along and talked about wealth inequality.
And then, you know, you have the mainstream that totally discredited them, and then they just kind of fizzled out.
When you have evidence backing up, you know, your belief that something is a conspiracy, then of course, I mean, you have strong evidence and I'll believe it.
But it's one thing to have the evidence, it's another thing to purport that something is going on and then not having the evidence to back up.
The only problem with that is just that thinking that goes along with that, which is like collect gold, like dig a hole in the ground for a nuclear shelter, like preppers, and people start putting battery rams in their pickup trucks.
The Koch brothers will fund scientists to put out studies that claim that Either climate change does not exist, this is just a normal trend that we're experiencing with our planet, or that it exists but it's not created by humans.
When we were talking earlier about being addicted to items and being addicted to things and how you wanted to get a bigger apartment even though you don't need it, I'm guilty as charged too, but I think about it all the time.
And what I'm starting to believe is that human beings, like the reason why...
We like to think of ourselves as being something that we're much more in control of than just the woes of nature.
But I kind of think that more likely than that, everything is natural.
And even though we break down like ant behavior as being natural and wolf behavior as being natural, But humans, well, you know, we have free will, and we have education, and we have...
Maybe, but...
When I look at, like, the trend, like, where it is right now, let's...
I don't know how it got here, but let's pretend it's all nature.
What is it doing?
Well, what it's doing is it's making things.
It's making crazier and crazier things every day.
The whole race is working together.
And one of the ways it ensures that people consistently technologically innovate is by making it attractive to have the newest, latest shit.
I don't know if you talked about it at all on your show, but there was this young black man who went into a Barneys.
He purchased a $350 belt with a debit card.
And allegedly, the cashier called the authorities on him because she didn't believe that a black guy can afford this $350 belt.
So the cops came.
They started questioning him.
They said, we need proof indicating that that's your debit card.
He had to call Chase.
And prove, like, yes, that is his debit card.
You know, they, like, detained him for a little while, and then finally they let him go.
So he's suing Barneys now for racial profiling.
So we'll see how that case plays out.
But, you know, aside from the racial profiling component of that story, I was just shocked that, I think he's 19, that a 19-year-old would save up multiple paychecks, by the way, to buy a $350 belt.
And it goes against everything I believe.
I hate that kind of materialism.
And he's a victim here, so I'm not trying to criticize him.
It's more of a societal thing where we all want to show off our new shiny handbag.
And it's fucking bullshit.
I hate when women fall for that crap.
When they work multiple months...
Just to afford, like, a $2,500 handbag.
And it's like, who are you trying to prove?
Like, what are you trying to prove?
And who are you trying to prove it to?
You're trying to show off to other women, right?
Which, by the way, if you're, like, a real woman, I think that you shouldn't get jealous by that kind of crap.
I don't know why people are so obsessed with that.
And then these young kids think, oh my god, I got to work really hard for that Maybach, which is why so many people get involved in the financial sector and they sell their souls because they just want to be rich.
And we need people who want to be teachers.
Something.
You know, albeit most of them get screwed over with really, really crappy salaries and we should definitely pay our teachers better.
But people don't gravitate toward jobs that actually help the community because they're so obsessed with making money.
And I hate seeing our brightest students go toward the financial sector instead of, you know, focusing on jobs that do help the community, whether it's, you know, in fields that Lead to technological innovation or to medical innovation.
And of course, doctors make a lot of money, but a lot of scientists that do some serious research that really benefits society don't make a lot of money.
But as a person trying, making an attempt to look at it objectively, if I was like an alien species coming down to observe Earth, I would say they're in a mad scramble to create the next technological marvel.
They're in a mad scramble to create the new internet, the next thing.
And they're going to go from that to the next thing.
They're transforming themselves.
Essentially, it's a long-term...
Cocoon that turns a caterpillar into a butterfly.
It's just taking a few hundred years.
But technologically, there's some sort of a symbiotic relationship that we have with technology, and that's fueled by materialism.
This materialism drive, it ensures that people consistently buy the newest things, innovate, and constantly trying to impress with the latest.
Sociologically, I agree with you 100%.
But I think that there's probably something more going on that we're just not aware of because we're trapped in the middle of the hurricane of it all.
Yeah, when my manager was telling me that it was affecting my career.
Because I was paying more attention to playing pool than I was to comedy.
Yeah, I was completely obsessed.
But there's not that many pool cue manufacturers, makers, but the artisans, the real handmade ones.
There's a guy named Zambotti, Barry Zambotti, who's world famous.
His dad was Gus Zambotti.
He's one of the original pool cue makers.
That name has a lot of weight to it.
And these cues are like this artistic, functional art that you could play pool with, but they're also really beautiful.
I'm fascinated by them.
My friend Eric has a company called Sugartree, and he makes these beautiful cues all based on woods that are really exotic and strange burls and weird figure in the wood, and he's just obsessed with wood.
When you buy one of his cues or you play with it, you could literally see the passion that it took that this guy made, this guy who's obsessed with wood.
He's obsessed with different grains and tonal qualities and aging them.
Some of them are probably made out of ivory and Silver.
It used to be legal to buy ivory to make pool cues with.
They used to make the balls out of ivory.
And then people realized what a piece of shit you have to be to kill an elephant.
So they cut that off.
But there's so much ivory left over.
It's really kind of sad.
There's so much left over from when they were just slaughtering elephants before they started regulating it that you can get ivory to make inlays and stuff in pool cues.
It's everywhere.
So it becomes like a real issue, like a moral issue.
You have to think like, wow, is that kind of fucked up?
But then it's like, well, what are they going to do with the animals that have been dead since 1970 and they've had these tusks?
Are you just going to let them go to waste?
Or is it better to put them in a museum where people can look at them?
It's kind of an interesting moral dilemma.
But my friend Eric uses this fossilized mastodon bone that he got.
He uses 10,000-year-old fossilized walrus ivory that came from...
Is this because of the way your responsibility that you feel for looking at the world and seeing how fucked up things are, that you feel bad spending a couple hundred bucks on a nice meal?
Is that what it is?
It becomes a guilty pleasure because you're like, fuck it, I'm just going to do it.
I think that there's something subconsciously that makes me feel guilty about it, but I can't really put my finger on it.
I think it's because I know how hard I work, and seeing all that money go toward one experience or one meal makes me feel a little bad.
But I actually...
What I like to do is if I'm going to go out and I'm going to spend some serious money, I make sure that I take people with me and I spend the money on them as well.
Because then I feel like I'm doing something good for my friends.
And I read this study about how the happiest people We'll actually spend money on others.
And it's totally true.
You feel really good when you take care of other people.
So, you know, I usually do that.
That's not my guilty pleasure.
That's the one thing that I will splurge on and I won't feel guilty about it.
I'll feel really good about it.
And then I hope, you know, one day when my friends are in the mood, like, they'll take me out and they'll do the same thing.
But to say that I have white guilt would imply that I have ancestry that did hideous things to black people, which is why I now want to raise awareness about issues of racism.
And that's not true.
I want to raise awareness about that because I want genuine equality.
Yeah, I've heard some pretty ridiculous blanket statements.
But what's really important is that the idea of racism should be eventually, it shouldn't exist anymore.
One day, it should come a time where that has been ironed out of the human culture, where we've beaten it down.
It seems like if you go back to a few thousand years ago when they were burning people at the stake for various beliefs, we've managed to get past that.
We've managed to get past killing neighbors, you know, rival countries that were like a block away from each other in Europe.
We managed to get past all that.
I wonder if one day we're going to get to a point where we don't give a fuck when anybody's racist.
I wonder if there's going to be some economic evenness where it'll eventually all smooth out where it won't matter.
And if one person can get away with doing that type of, you know, act or behaving in a certain way, then other people will think, like, well, I can do that.
I can get away with that.
And, you know, in the case of the Steubenville rape case, I was actually really shocked at how many people bullied the girl after she was raped.
And you see more and more stories like that popping up all over the place.
I think it's a human nature issue with a lot of young kids that have not been, not only have not been raised correctly, but I think there's a lot of people that are just letting their kids raise themselves and they're not even having conversations with them.
And they're growing up with animal instincts.
And animal instincts are to go after injured animals.
And the parents of the victim, I give them all the credit in the world because I'm going to be completely honest.
If I were in that position, I don't know if I would be able to prevent myself from doing something that would lead me to getting prosecuted and thrown in jail.
There's a man thing that can happen if there's too many dummies, and they get together, and they start thinking that they're making sense, or that they should just fucking do this.
That's where gang murders take place, and gang beatings.
I'm sure there's a similar sort of group mentality that happens with women, but it doesn't seem to turn into as much of a victimization thing.
It can happen.
I've heard of groups of women beating up other women.
I've heard of that.
If a girl fucks some girl's husband or something like that and she gets her friends and they all beat the shit out of the girl.
I just worry that, you know, the men's rights movement is a response to, like, radical feminism.
And I have a lot of issues with radical feminism because when you pretend as though women are always the ones that get screwed over and men don't deal with certain double standards and certain issues, then you're being disingenuous.
You know, you're doing a disservice to your own movement.
I mean, there are some serious issues with the way women are perceived in media, for instance.
Very different from how you're perceived in the media.
You know, the comments that you will get usually will question the legitimacy or accuracy of something that you've said.
The comments that I get don't necessarily criticize the legitimacy of what I'm saying.
Of course I get comments like that as well.
But how often do you get comments about like, oh, you know, I want Anna to sit on my face or I want Joe to sit on my face.
I don't want to sound like I'm kissing your ass, but it's much more courageous for a woman to do what you do than a man to do what you do.
For a man to do what you do is like...
Men with opinions are as common as birds that shit on cars.
They're everywhere.
Everywhere you look, a man has an opinion.
But women with an opinion that go public and have this very strong stance they take on things and expect to be taken seriously...
It's a lot like female stand-up comedians because female stand-up comedians, they're so limited in topics because men don't want to hear you talk about politics.
Men don't want to hear women talk about certain things.
Anything where you're telling people how to live their lives, men don't want to hear that from women.
I wouldn't think you were high maintenance, but I would think that a woman who's a public figure, a woman who's very articulate and intelligent and makes a living off of her opinions, that's intimidated for a lot of dudes.
Especially people that are not good at expressing themselves.
What is the big thing with relationships?
It's the weird sort of expression dance that you do with each other.
If I was a douchebag guy, the way the douchebag guy translation of that is, if you meet a girl and she's not turned on by you, she's a fucking lesbian.
On a national internet program such as this, you know, I know, and everybody listens to this, including black people that might pretend to be offended.
You know what the fuck I'm saying?
Listen to me.
There's zero wrong with being black.
Absolutely nothing.
I am the least racist person you will ever meet.
I hope.
I have zero racism in me.
So I don't think it's possible to get any less racist.
However, I am a person that likes to look at reality.
I think it's interesting to find what people do and don't get offended at.
And telling someone they sound black is not a bad thing.
But people sound black.
Women and men.
I have talked to them on the phone and had wonderful, elaborate conversations that I truly enjoyed, but I knew I was talking to a black person.
Going back to the whole gay thing, because I want to kind of backpedal from what I said, because it was disastrous.
Look, I'm in a unique position because of where I live.
And also, I'm in Los Angeles, which means a lot of people, a lot of guys, take a lot of pride in the way they look, and they are almost proud of being overly feminine in some ways.
Like, they like the moisturizer and they like the fancy clothing.
And so then in that case, they used to be called metrosexuals.
I don't know what the politically correct term is now.
And there was a guy that I used to work out with at this gym.
And he would talk about girls.
And the best way I could describe it is if I was speaking to you, if you were French, and I was saying the correct words, but I had no idea what the fuck they meant.
If I'm like...
But obviously I don't know what the fuck I'm saying.
The guy that I was talking to just started talking about this interaction that he had with a woman in a nightclub and now this girl just came up to him and just started kissing him and making out with him and it was like the way he was saying it was like the worst like fake storytelling you could imagine it was he was like he was doing a sketch yeah yeah but he was a beautiful man like beautiful like big tall perfect bone structure just handsome and And he had this girlfriend that just always had this perplexed look at her face.
She just looked like an explosion just went off like 30 seconds ago.
And she was trying to figure out what the fuck happened.
That's how she would go everywhere.
She was batting way over her head with him.
He was at 10 and she was probably in the 6 or 7 range.
And she was a little on the overweight side.
It was a clear mismatch.
And it was just a gay guy who had this girlfriend.
It would be nice to meet an Armenian guy who's as Americanized as I am, but most of them are very traditional, which means we're going to butt heads, and I just don't...
Remember they used to have the dating game and people would be wearing those weird suits with the fucking bell bottoms and they'd tell what they would do.
Bachelor number one, if I met you and I was on a beach looking for shells and you wanted to get my attention, what would you say to me?
I feel weird dating someone that I work with or someone that I'm going to run into often with my career because I don't want to burn bridges.
It might end disastrously.
So I just don't want to do that.
And plus, on top of that, I'm more interested in dating someone who has a completely different career than mine because I want to learn something from someone I'm dating.
Yeah, so Michael Hastings was one of the few real journalists left in the U.S. He was one of the few journalists who actually gave a shit about holding politicians accountable for their actions.
And he was so driven.
He was one of the most driven people that I've ever met in my entire life.
He made me feel like shit about my career on a regular basis because he was so inspiring and so...
Just hardworking and determined, you know?
So he broke the story about General Stanley McChrystal.
Basically, long story short, Stanley McChrystal was saying some crazy shit about Obama, basically criticizing him behind closed doors.
Yeah.
Michael Hastings wrote a Rolling Stone piece about it, and the Obama administration forced McChrystal to resign.
So that was a really big story.
Michael Hastings won awards for it, and that kind of put him on the map.
He wrote many great books, and he was just a great journalist.
But the most important thing to keep in mind is he was one of those people who was fearless when it came to holding the government accountable.
And you don't see that often.
Then all of a sudden, you know, in June of 2013, he gets into this really mysterious car accident at 4, I believe 4.20 in the morning, 4.30 in the morning, around then.
And he was speeding in this silver Mercedes and he crashed into a palm tree.
And the car exploded on impact and everyone was wondering whether or not this was something that was basically orchestrated by the government or if this was a real accident.
Now in terms of those rumors and the conspiracy theories, I feel very irresponsible speculating one way or another.
I don't know what happened.
No one knows what happened.
All I do know is I worked closely with him at the Young Turks.
He was on our show often.
I co-hosted a few episodes with him.
And I remember sitting in the makeup chair getting ready to go on air when I found out that he had died in this car accident.
And I've never felt the way I felt in that moment.
It was like a ton of bricks had just fallen on me.
And I was just tearing up and I couldn't believe it.
And so I wanted to do an investigation.
We don't have the resources to do a full investigation into this.
But there were so many weird, crazy...
Aspects of it that didn't make sense.
Like his engine being tossed so far away from his car.
The fact that the car exploded.
I contacted Mercedes-Benz.
They refused to answer any questions.
And I asked them, I'm like, look, don't comment on the Michael Hastings story.
Comment on what happens in your crash tests.
Is this typical of a crash?
And they would not answer any questions.
I tracked down the one witness that saw the entire accident from beginning to end.
He was Mexican.
He only spoke Spanish.
And we got a translator and he told us exactly what he saw and he said that Michael Hastings was in fact speeding really, really fast.
But that doesn't really answer any questions either because some people are wondering whether or not the government can manipulate his car I don't know.
I've read stories where it's possible, but it's very, very difficult to do.
So again, I feel uncomfortable speculating.
But what I do know is his family, including his brother, have said that he was increasingly paranoid leading up to the accident.
He was unstable.
His brother was really concerned that he was, you know, abusing drugs, which is why he flew to Los Angeles to help him out.
His brother, I think, was the last person to see him prior to the accident.
At least that's what he's alleging.
And I, again, I don't know what happened.
But it did have severe ramifications for people who want to be investigative journalists.
Because if that fear does exist, if that is even a possibility, it's going to deter you from doing real investigative journalism.
It's going to deter you from holding the government accountable because you know that the NSA is watching every fucking move.
You know that if you're watching the wrong kind of porn or if you're doing something that's a little questionable according to societal morals or norms, then the government can find that and they can leak that to the public and they can destroy your reputation.
Do you as a journalist want to take that risk to do what a journalist is supposed to do?
And I think a lot of people out there are unwilling to do it and I don't blame them.
It's scary to know that the government can come after you if they wanted to.
I think that's really important because we really don't know what happened.
I looked at it when it first happened.
I was pretty freaked out, too, because I was like, wow.
And I thought about it for a minute, and I'm like, this guy was going after generals.
I mean, these are people who are professional killers.
They've been killing for the government for a long time.
They know how to do it really well.
They have friends.
They can pull favors.
And they can make some shit happen.
I mean, it is possible.
Did it happen?
It's also possible that the dude was doing drugs and he was going crazy from the trauma of this whole thing about thinking.
I mean, that might be just enough to get you to fucking kill yourself.
They might not have to do it.
They might have to just scare you and freak you out and get you to believe that they're watching every move you make and waiting for their time to lower the boom on you.
And it's crippling for people that I work with that want to do the type of journalism that he did.
And that's why I fear for people like Glenn Greenwald.
Glenn Greenwald is I look up to him so much.
He's the one who broke the Edward Snowden story.
He's the one who's revealing things that Americans should know about.
What frustrates me is a lot of Americans feel that someone like Edward Snowden is a traitor.
He's not a traitor.
He's telling you about how your civil liberties are being violated.
This is the kind of stuff that should make people want to stand up.
Instead of having a discussion about what we should do to stop the government from spying on us, we're having ridiculous conversations about whether or not Edward Snowden can be considered a traitor or an American hero.
That is a stupid conversation.
Okay?
We know the information now.
We know what the government is doing.
The government is indiscriminately collecting our metadata and they are Holding this information for a period of time, and they can use it to intimidate you if you're a political activist or if you're a journalist.
That intimidation is what cripples our democratic process.
So I have a lot of problems with that, and I worry that there aren't going to be many journalists left that will do what Michael Hastings was willing to do.
And the information that's come out has really changed the way people look at the government and how they're handling privacy, how they're handling this idea of the war on terror and what they're willing to do and not willing to do.
They're willing to violate everything.
They're willing to go against the very principles of privacy, like every principle of The idea that you're sending someone something, you have a password, you log in, they have a password, they log in.
You send them an email.
If someone doesn't get in there and breach it, you're thinking that what's going on here is a completely private conversation.
But no, the government gets to look at it.
Not only that, but some fucking employee that they kept going on and on about how he never graduated high school.
And I think that we're moving closer and closer to some strange point in the future where The idea of privacy is a thing of the past.
It's non-existent.
I think that's going to happen.
I don't think you can avoid that.
I think that is, whether it's a decade from now or two or three or whatever it is, I think there's going to come a point in time where the boundaries between people and information no longer exist.
I feel like we're going to get to a point where we will just be desensitized to all private information.
What people worry about most is, let's say you're not a politician, you're just a political activist.
You might be worried that the government might use some information about you to intimidate you and cause you to not be politically active anymore.
So it could be something like nude pictures of yourself that you emailed or it could be the porn that you watch or whatever.
I feel like with the way things are going, eventually we're going to get to a point where all of our dirty laundry is just going to be out there and everyone's going to be like, oh, alright, whatever.
You know, because you're going to be forced to.
There's going to be so much crap out there about everyone that you're just going to have to deal with it.
I think if you're really pretending that if you're a completely non-racist guy and you put some...
Paint on that makes you look more like an African American, that somehow you're doing something offensive, I think that's silly.
I think the idea of a white person pretending to be a black person is just as weird as the idea of a black person pretending to be a white person, but who gives a shit?
If a black guy puts white face on and does that thing that Dave Chappelle used to do in his show where he pretended to be a white man reading the news with white paint on, nobody gave a fuck.
Look, that's a really interesting argument, and I might reconsider my thoughts on it.
But based on where I stand now, I just feel like...
Look, I feel really uncomfortable with it just because how society would make fun of black people by making white actors put the black face on and, you know, mimic them and make them seem like they were morons and they were less than.
It just has such a dark history.
So if people find it offensive, I'm definitely empathetic toward that.
There was a story about these two women in England, or two girls in England, and they were dressed as the World Trade Center on fire after the attack.
Oh, I saw that.
And they had people, like little fake people, jumping out of the costume.
And to add insult to injury, they were part of this costume contest, and they won.
They won best contest.
I'm sorry, best costume.
So, like...
What amazes me is how little people think these things through before they do it.
You see what I'm saying?
I mean, there are some things that you just do not mess with, and that's a perfect example of something you don't mess with, especially considering that there are family members that lost people as a result of those attacks.
Family members who saw their own family members jumping off those buildings.
And then you have these two dumbasses wearing this stupid costume Kind of making fun of that situation.
There are some things you don't mess with and that's a perfect example of it.
You know, he interviews a lot of artists, and he's really good at getting them to talk and say things maybe ordinarily that they would.
But, you know, I mean, I think he's also got a much larger audience.
And there's also a bunch of people behind him that probably would...
Kind of like want him to talk about certain subjects, but I've, you know, we started this out just on a laptop, and I don't really give a fuck what other people are interested in.
You know, we don't have a hard time finding guests.
But yeah, some people are just not, it's not right for them.
Some people don't want to talk for three hours because if you talk for three hours long enough, people are going to find out who the fuck you really are.
I was talking to my friend about how important it is to be open-minded, especially at this point in our lives, like when we're, you know, willing to meet new people and make new friends and all that other stuff.
And like, you come across people that have certain habits that are just strange.
And when I was younger, I'd be like, ugh, like, I just don't want anything to do with this person.
And now, I love this.
I love that I've grown into this person where...
Where I will step back.
I'll realize that something's weird and it'll make me uncomfortable.
I'll ask why it makes me uncomfortable.
And I'll be like, alright, that's fine.
It's not something that's going to hurt me or damage me.
So if you were dating a guy and you found out that he was into being a furry and he would go to furry conventions and they'd snip each other's fake butts and bounce around like squirrels, you'd be like, that's fine.
If I was dating and I met a girl and we're hanging out and she's pretty cool and then she's like, well, there's this one thing that I really like to do.
I like to pretend to be a chipmunk mascot and I put on my chipmunk mascot outfit on and I go to these conventions in Pittsburgh.
We all fly in with our furry outfits on and we dance around together and we pretend to have sex but no one really penetrates anybody.
When people start dating each other, this is my thinking on it.
When people start dating each other, if someone really wants someone to be a part of their life, they might want to do something really weird with them to show them that I do not care.
I'll do anything.
I'll change your diaper.
I'll wipe your butt.
I remember a dude that I know.
We were at a fight.
It was backstage.
My friend was warming up in the green room.
And this dude went into the bathroom with his girlfriend and took a shit in front of her.
This little bathroom together.
And I go, did you just take a shit in front of her?
I feel like sometimes my issue is I'm too wrapped up in my career bubble and I'm really attracted to independent guys that don't want a girl who's always on him.
Guys pretend like they don't like that, but they do.
They want a girl who's all about him all the time and I'm just not that kind of person.
Like, obviously I don't want a mediocre guy, and obviously I want a guy that I'm physically attracted to, but I do believe that a guy is as faithful as his opportunities.
It's especially human beings when they're not like If you haven't found someone that enthralls you or someone that you're deeply locked in with, it's real easy to lose a relationship.
You've got a relationship and you're like, you know what?
I'm not investing any more time in this.
And then boom.
And guys are always worried about the music ending and then being left without a chair.
Like, hey, you're playing musical chairs and the music stops and there's nowhere to sit down.
No one wants me.
That's that thing, that thing that a lot of people want someone to want them.
And if they're dating an independent woman, they realize, like, this chick, whether she enjoys your company or not, she could do without you, dude, and she's fine.
You know?
That freaks guys out.
A lot of guys, they want some girl who's, like, waiting by the phone, and when you call her, oh my god, I was so happy you called.
It's the same reason why people pretend they like to fight.
Men always say, if I was a black belt, I'd go to the UFC and kick everybody's ass.
You don't understand what you're saying.
What you're saying is you would like to beat somebody up, but you don't really actually want to fight.
Because the fighting is fucking brutal, and somebody might beat you up.
You could lose.
It's not guaranteed.
It's a risky, wild...
The whole thing, the whole proposition is incredibly risky.
So are relationships.
Relationships are unbelievably risky.
Of course.
So a lot of people don't even want to enter in a relationship.
They just want to smash it.
They just want to go in there and kick somebody's ass.
The same way they want to go in there and kick somebody's ass in a fight and not actually be in a fight.
They don't want to date some girl who's smart, intelligent, is going to see through my bullshit and I can't use all the stuff that I learned in my pickup artist book that I've been reading for the past six months.
Yeah, it's tough to not be suffocating sometimes if you're scared and you're clinging on to the last piece of wood you found floating in the ocean after the horrible wreck of the last X amount of years of your life.
That's a lot of people.
You run into them.
You're not just running into a person.
You're running into a person that's just getting back on their feet from some whatever fucking disaster, whatever it was, whatever breakup, whatever home repossession, lost job.
What is the crisis that you just recently survived and just washed up on shore and now you're meeting that person?
You meet someone in their 30s, oh my god, you're meeting a lot of shit.
You're meeting a lot of shit.
It's a lot of years.
It's not a bad thing.
Some people are better for it.
I mean, there's the bright side of it.
Some people, because of all those disasters, they develop character, they understand what's good and not good, how they should behave, what are the ramifications of different kinds of behaviors.
You find that out.
But how many people learn from their mistakes?
Half.
Half of them to 50% of the people learn from their mistakes.
I just, I feel like it's better to, look, if you don't meet someone that makes you feel good about yourself and you do the same for them, I feel like it's just better to be alone and live your life and wait.
But I have read stories about robots that they're creating that are very lifelike, so women will be useless in 10 years or something when these are perfected in Japan.
You know, if they look like super hot in their robots, but hanging out with them, there's going to come a point in time where you realize that this is just a bunch of circuits.
And going back to the necessity of human interaction, in some Asian countries, prostitutes offer something called the girlfriend experience.
And they probably do that here in the United States too, but I distinctly remember talking about it in Korea, I believe.
And they don't just have sex with the guys.
In some cases, they never have sex with the guys.
The guys will pay for the girl to be like a girlfriend where she's nurturing and caring and cuddles with him and watches movies with him and stuff like that.
And that actually gave me a little bit of faith in humanity because that showed me that there are people out there that just want that connection.
They want more than that physical, raw interaction.
All I was thinking of, like, what a dangerous situation that is for the girl to be with some man holding on to her, like, in, like, very close proximity.
Like, how many guys are just going to start beating off on her back?
You know, how many guys are going to be cuddling with her and try to rape her?
It's like, I wouldn't trust a guy to cuddle with him like that.
Look, I don't know what the legality of that is, but it does go back to the whole prostitution issue and how important it is to legalize and regulate it and create a safe environment for women to do that type of stuff so you can actually mitigate or minimize those types of instances where a guy will be abusive or do something degrading or demeaning.
The worry is also, I mean always, that you're promoting it and that if you make prostitution legal and the people are going to go to prostitution that would never go to prostitution before.
I just feel like people who want to have relations with a prostitute are going to do it anyway.
And if legalizing prostitution somehow convinces someone who wouldn't otherwise go to a prostitute to go through with it, then okay, like there are worse things in the world.
Like, if you are married and, um, you'd- well, you are married, but, like, if you were to go to a massage parlor and get that done, would that be considered cheating?
Yeah, it's one of those weird things where we've decided that people can do it for free and no one gets hurt.
But if they do it for money, It's illegal.
And the logic behind it is very weird, and the logic behind the laws are, you know, there's morality ideas, there's ethics ideas, but the reality is that money is going to be changing hands whether you like it or not, and most likely it's not going to get taxed unless it's legal.
It's just going to move into the economy in some sort of a weird way.
But the government in that, and also in drug laws, they're fucking themselves out of massive amounts of revenue.
And when you look at the war on drugs, specifically the war on marijuana, very little of it has to do with stopping people from using these drugs.
Most of it has to do with paying for correctional officers, paying for private prisons, Paying for private contractors, even private contractors abroad who continue to amplify the war on drugs.
People are making a ton of money off this prohibition, which is why it continues and it'll never stop.
And I love that we're seeing the snowball effect with the legalization of recreational marijuana or recreational use of marijuana.
There was recently a small town in the East Coast that legalized it.
I believe it was in Maine.
Yes, Portland, Maine.
Yeah, it was Portland, Maine.
They just legalized it.
And it was more of a symbolic thing because, of course, state laws and federal laws will trump whatever municipal laws have been passed.
But I love that now politicians are forced to pay attention to the polls and make changes because we're spending untold amounts of money just incarcerating people for simple marijuana possession.
It is, and the real problem with the war on drugs being, when you have marijuana illegal, it means you're not getting that tax money from it, just like you're not getting it from prostitution.
The government doesn't get their cut.
They're not getting it.
It's going to make its way into the economy in some ways, like in BC and British Columbia, there's a huge issue because a giant chunk of their economy is based on marijuana, but yet marijuana is illegal.
They arrest people, but then let them go.
There's a lot of weird fucking games going on up there.
But because it's illegal, they're not getting their taxes from it.
It's a huge issue.
They know it's a giant...
There was a documentary that I was in called The Union, and it was all about...
That's what they call it.
They call it The Union, when they talk about all the different marijuana growers in B.C. They're a multi-billion dollar part of the economy up there.
So it's this weird hypocrisy that's going on, where you have this thing that's a huge part of why everybody's doing well, and that thing's illegal, and that thing's hurting no one.
And by the way, because it's illegal, you're not getting your cut.
It's very scary that not only do you have private prisons, but you have private prison lobbies and you have guard lobbies where prison guards make sure that certain things stay illegal so that they can ensure that they have work.
That's slaves.
You're making slaves.
I mean, you want people to be locked up more than not locked up.
In my opinion, if it's not robbery or violent crime, those are the two things that I'm worried about.
Robbery or violent crime.
That's when you need to remove people from society.
Everything else should be on some sort of a penalty thing.
Well, we're doing the same thing with people who are undocumented immigrants, right?
So they'll come into this country, they're undocumented, we find out they're undocumented, and instead of deporting them, which is what we used to do, we will detain them for X amount of years and spend our resources on imprisoning them.
Which doesn't make any sense at all.
And I get it.
Okay, we want to punish them and show them you can't do this again.
But you punish them by deporting them.
You know what I mean?
And that's it.
Why would you want to incarcerate them and spend tax dollars on that, especially when we're having this huge issue with public education right now?
There was a long time where immigrants were, their children of immigrants, or immigrants that came over and their children were born in Mexico but lived their entire lives here in America, they weren't allowed to go to college.
In a lot of cases, especially in California, I mean, they pay taxes in the form of, first of all, they pay Social Security, but then they never get a dime of that Social Security later, right?
So they're contributing to the Social Security system.
And on top of that, they're paying for state taxes as well, or sales taxes.
So they do pay taxes.
They do contribute to society.
And I'm not trying to make excuses or to...
Justify coming into the country illegally.
But if you've been here for decades and you've had your children here, we need to create some sort of comprehensive immigration reform.
And right now we have clowns in office that can't seem to agree on anything and refuse to work with one another.
So I feel like it's going to be difficult for that to happen.
But I feel like something like the DREAM Act is common sense.
And you might just get there while these cartel members are dropping off headless bodies and lining them up on the street with signs on them.
Or, you know, you might see a brothel where you can go fuck some immigrant for a dollar that made their way up from El Salvador or Peru or, you know, where Mexico is the promised land for them.
By keeping marijuana legal and also through our current fiscal policy, you know, by allowing companies like Walmart To basically pay full-time employees so little that the government has to subsidize their health care or food stamps, whatever it is, just so they can make ends meet.
We have that system here now, and we need to do something to change it.
Well, it's exactly what they were protesting about during the WTO thing.
It goes all back to Alex Jones!
I told you, Joe Rogan!
That's what he was, his document, I think it was 9-1-1, A Road to Tyranny.
It was all about that.
It was all about how this is like an established pattern of behavior and, you know, this agent provocateur thing that they do to break up peaceful protests.
The World Trade Organization meeting was just about that very thing.
It was about moving jobs to these other places and figuring out how to set up shop in third world countries.
I do see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we really need a revolution.
And I'm not calling for violence and I'm not inciting violence, but I think that there has to come a point where we hit rock bottom and the political activism actually makes a difference.
You know, the political activism needs to exist to begin with, by the way, because it doesn't even exist now.
I mean, we're at a point where the government can literally do whatever it wants and no one will make a peep out of it.
The NSA can spy on us.
The Obama administration can go drop a drone or do a drone strike on an American citizen and his 16-year-old son, and no one will say a Damn thing about it.
That's the country we're living in right now.
Our civil liberties are being destroyed.
Our fiscal policy doesn't make sense.
We need people to be politically active, and we need to get money out of politics.
But I mean, most of these stories are important news stories.
Yeah, there's a lot of bullshit sprinkled in there.
But a huge problem is, you know, every American...
I have the luxury of keeping up with this stuff because it's my job.
A lot of Americans don't have that luxury because they're working 12-hour work days.
You know, they're working a few different jobs just to provide for their families.
Who the hell is going to go home after a long day of work, sit down and read all of these news stories, much less understand the nuance of these news stories?
That's a difficult thing to do, and it's a lot to ask of the American people.
But the way that you can fix that is by creating a media, a form of media that That is informative with no corporate interest.
Because right now, the gold standard of news is still the MSNBC, CNN, Fox News.
It's the stuff that you just turn on.
You watch it in the background while you're trying to feed your kids and take care of your family.
And that's problematic because a lot of those networks will spread misinformation or they have a particular agenda.
And as a result, they will only cover the news that fits their agenda.
And there's an issue with that.
But hopefully new media will grow to the point where it'll take over that system and it'll, you know, educate people enough to where they will want to stand up for their rights and they will want to be politically active.
I'm teaching a class at Cal State Northridge right now.
And I remember when I first started teaching the class, I asked every single one of the students to tell me what they find most interesting in media.
What do they want to cover?
What's their beat?
And the vast majority of them were like, entertainment news, sports news, you know, stuff that's really easy to cover and very profitable.
So I don't blame them for wanting to do that.
But I wanted to instill in them a type of intellectual curiosity where they would want to know about what's going on in the political world, where they would want to be these mini political activists.
And I don't do it in the sense that I tell them, hey, you got to be progressive.
I definitely shy away from that.
But I want them to look at news stories critically and And question the way that they're being covered.
So that's like my little tiny bit of trying to make a difference, and I love doing that.
Being an instructor at a university is a very thankless job.
I've learned that this semester since it's my first time doing it.
But you've got to start by changing the way people learn about journalism, changing the way they cover stories, and you've got to get people to be critical thinkers.
Do you feel like, because, I mean, you do this for a living, but do you think that you can even keep up with all the shit that's happening on a daily basis?
As a responsibility, how much do you have a responsibility to be informed?
Not you, but a regular person with a regular job and a family, and God forbid if you have a fucking hobby.
But if you're working on something during the day, what are the odds that you can pay attention to the top ten news stories of the day and form a really clear opinion on any of them?
And doing things that we want to do because we just want to shut our brains off.
We want to numb ourselves to what's going on in the world, right?
Instead of doing that, maybe we should change the culture so people will want to use that very precious time and that very precious resource to be informed.
They want to use it for that as opposed to being distracted.
Being informed over being distracted is that it's incredibly frustrating and you feel helpless.
When you start reading all these stories about the stock market manipulations, about the banks being bailed out and about bailouts where the fucking people that were involved in the bailout somehow or another warranted some crazy commission.
They got some bonus and then the president says he's going to limit to a half a million dollars.
A fucking half a million dollars is a lot of money, man.
What do you mean you're limiting it to a half a million?
Didn't we just give them a ton of money?
You feel helpless when you read about this shit over and over and over again.
When you watch documentaries on fracking, when you read stories in the news about how poorly veterans are being taken care of when they come back from war.
There's so many different things that you read that doesn't make sense.
I know, but when you look at all of these news stories, there's always one underlying issue in every news story.
It's kind of amazing.
And it always goes back to who is funding these politicians, right?
If you get the money out of politics, that virus, if you destroy that virus, things will change quickly because our representatives will be forced to pay attention to the American people, the people that are voting for them, as opposed to the people who are paying them.
If you get rid of that type of bribery that we're dealing with right now, the entire system needs to be changed.
They're obviously very much bought by corporations, and as a result, it's really difficult for them to propose any real change.
But when it comes to the state level, when it comes to state legislators, it's a little different.
So we actually managed to get a state representative from Texas to propose a resolution for a constitutional convention.
It goes back to what I was saying earlier about Wolfpack.
And if we get state representatives from all the states to agree to this constitutional convention, Then we can actually have this constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.
I think that it's incredibly difficult to get venom out of the system.
Once it's in there, it's in there pretty deep.
It's going to be very hard to heal this poisoned system.
And the people that are accustomed to extracting money, that's a giant part of their motivation for being in the position when they're in the first place.
Now all of a sudden they're there and they can't extract money anymore?
They're going to go, what kind of hippie bullshit is this?
He believes that there's so many dangerous people in the world that Obama got into office, then immediately realized how fucking scary the world is, and then started tightening down drone attacks, cut down on whistleblowers, surveillance ups, all the things that he did once he got into office.
What explains that, his reversal on Guantanamo Bay.
He believes that it's because the stack of papers that he gets on his desk every day of memos telling them what's been avoided, how fucked up the world is, what dangers we're facing on a regular basis, who we need to attack before they attack us, that they're just trying to avoid another 9-11.
So, Elizabeth Warren, you know, is an incredible senator.
I don't think that she's actually going to run for president, but people are becoming more and more open to principled politicians because it's refreshing.
It's, I mean, when this whole Rob Ford thing was, Ford thing was happening in Toronto, there were a number of supporters because they thought that it was refreshing that he was so honest, even though he's freaking crazy.
But if you look at a guy that's that fat, he's this giant moon face.
Like, he's wild.
He's going to do anything.
He's so indulgent.
You know, look what he's doing with food.
Look what he's doing to his body.
You think he's scared of some crack?
That guy's not scared of anything.
He'll smoke some crack.
Yeah, I think that one of the things that this shift that's happening with information, one of the things that's going to be very fascinating about this erosion of privacy is that you're going to get real honest politicians because they have no choice.
You know, what's amazing though is you'll have politicians that are on the record saying one thing and then like a few months later they backpedal or they say something or flip-flop and they say something completely different and they deny that they did a flip-flop.
And it's like Mitt Romney is an example of that.
There was evidence indicating that Mitt Romney supported Planned Parenthood.
And then when he was running for president, he's like, I will shut Planned Parenthood down.
It's like, you're on the record, dude.
There's evidence.
Are you unaware of the internet and how it holds you accountable to what you've done and said in the past?
Yeah, I mean, he had health care in Massachusetts that's very similar to the Affordable Care Act, and then he went off and started criticizing the Affordable Care Act.
Yeah, he would have fucked up as soon as he got in office, too.
I think all of them, once they get in there, they just get taken down.
They get sat down and they get spelled out how the world really works.
And they probably have hints of it before they actually get in there.
But once they get in there and they meet with the fucking Bilderberg Group and they meet with the international bankers that control the world's economy and they just realize the depth of the puzzle, that's why they all go gray, like instantly.
Even though he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected again, Democrats are holding him accountable.
They don't want to look bad because they want to make sure another Democrat gets elected.
And it's all BS. It's the same.
As long as our system is dealing with that virus, as long as our system has the money in politics, it doesn't matter if you're voting for a Democrat or a Republican.
It's the same at the end of the day.
They might be different with social issues.
They might be a little different when it comes to fiscal policy, although Obama is not a good example of him being different when it comes to fiscal policy.
They're not different when it comes to international policy.
When was the last time you went to a porn website and it crashed because too many people were on it?
That shit never happened.
I'm not saying that you go to porn websites, but I'm saying anybody out there, perverts, you weirdos, have you ever gone to one and you found out there's too many people on the server crashed?
That doesn't happen.
They figure out how to make that work.
And I guarantee you way more people are going to a porn site than are going to any government site.
So the one thing that I will agree on in terms of it being a clusterfuck is only 50,000 Americans have signed up through the website, which could be disastrous.
Because in order for the Affordable Care Act to work, you need people to sign up.
It's so funny because, you know, going back to the class that I'm teaching, one of my students looked me up and she's like, holy shit, you have all these followers and you're verified.
I'm like, oh, does that make me more legitimate now because I have like a verified Twitter account?
Well, I think it's one of those things where there's certain people that don't want other people behaving differently than them.
Especially if they feel like they're being judged by the fact that you're wearing makeup and you have heels on and they don't like that, then they get judged.
Well, then they start turning that against you.
Instead of saying, look, hey, it's different strokes for different folks.
Instead of that, they look to you like you're some sort of a traitor.
Meanwhile, those same people, if it was a man that was wearing makeup and wearing a dress, wearing high heels, they would go, you go, girl.
They would be happy for you because that's the progressive move.
If it's a transgender person, a man who became a woman and wants to wear long nails and wants to be really dainty and feminine, that's all well and groovy.
No one's going to do that unless they're trying to define you.
I mean, you know better than that.
How dare you?
How dare you play that game?
You know that.
That's not gonna fly.
Yeah, I think there's also an issue where people, they feel uncomfortable if they're not seen as attractive, and so they try to squash other things that people think are attractive.
They try to belittle attempts at being attractive.
I mean, I think there's an issue in that as well.
If there wasn't an issue in that, and if you're a type of person that likes wearing Chuck Taylors and loose jeans and t-shirts, what do you care if a woman is wearing a bikini on a beach?
I mean, yeah, you put yourself in a vulnerable position if you walk around wearing a bikini and you're walking down Main Street and you have fucking high heels on.
You're going to run into a lot of weird people.
You're kind of giving them a green light to get freaky with you.