Dave Smith and his co-hosts return from a Canadian hiatus to dissect the 2012 election, criticizing Romney's "47 percent" lie and Michelle Obama's superior DNC speech compared to Bill Clinton's condescension. They condemn teacher strikes as union-protected demands, attack Federal Reserve money printing, and expose U.S. hypocrisy in condemning Muslim free speech while funding interventions that spawn radicals like Hezbollah. The episode further mocks cable news for ignoring veterans while debating climate change, ultimately arguing that government overreach and dehumanizing policies, from pre-9/11 Iraq sanctions to modern foreign wars, create the very instability the state claims to solve. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Part of the Problem00:07:29
You are listening to Part of the Problem.
What's up, everybody?
What's going on?
Thanks for listening to Part of the Problem.
We are back.
Yay.
That was Matt Skiba as chosen by Jessica Sager.
Yeah.
That was a cool song.
Great.
Well done.
Good pick.
Yay.
Thank you.
I'm glad you like it.
Yeah, it was nice.
That was nice.
All right, guys.
Well, it's really nice to be back.
Sorry that we've been gone.
I've been out of town the last couple weeks.
You can literally blame Canada for this.
You can.
You can blame Canada this time.
Blame a foreign country.
Well, I was in Minnesota for half the time, but that makes it politically a little bit more difficult.
I had a great time in Canada, by the way.
West Edmonton comic strip out there was awesome.
The people were great.
Great shows.
I did, you know, I'm a goddamn mess though back here.
My place is a mess.
My hair is a mess.
My eye looks like I got punched.
I got moths.
I have fucking moths in my apartment.
Could you have a pussier infestation than moths?
I came back.
Evidently.
Literally, by the way, it's a thing of, it's not like clothes moths that I have.
I have a different type of moths that it's because I had a thing of rice in my cabinet that I think my mom might have gotten me when I moved in to this apartment.
Like, you need rice at some point.
And I've never in my life made fucking rice in my adult life, just made myself rice.
I don't live like that, okay?
And yeah, so this thing, I found it.
I got like, there was moth larva everywhere.
And there's still like moths flying around.
I haven't seen it.
My apartment.
You'll see some.
I guarantee you'll see one or two.
I got like the majority of them out.
You can make it like a drinking game, though.
Oh, man.
Moth, the butterfly's Mexican cousin.
All over my apartment.
It's really, yeah, it's quite, anyway, it's been quite annoying.
But it's good to be back.
It's been a little while.
We have, it's, you know, it's crazy because we're only off for two weeks, but in this everything happened.
Yes.
Well, in this season of, you know, we're only 40-something days to the election, so there's tons of stuff happening all the time.
Like our last episode was a review of the RNC.
So obviously a lot's happened since then.
Yeah.
We're not going to go into like a full review of the Democratic National Convention because it just feels kind of old at this point.
Yeah, it's dated.
But I will, just real quickly, to just kind of go over it very quickly.
Michelle Obama had a great speech.
I thought the best speech she's ever given.
I was blown away.
I've never really seen her do anything that impressive before.
I've seen her out in like a flower garden with some kids talking about eating vegetables, which is nice.
But that was a really impressive speech.
Bill Clinton was unbelievable.
He wins everything forever.
Bill Clinton was unbelievable.
I mean, that guy is the smoothest motherfucker in the universe.
He's the fucking greatest.
I know you have some weird crush on him.
No, he's like, it's more like a favorite uncle.
It's nothing creepy or nothing.
Favorite uncle who sneaks in your bedroom.
Does awesome stuff to you?
Okay, fine.
Look, he is like probably even, I think even better than Obama because in his own way he's like less divisive.
I think he's just like the best politician of my lifetime.
Like no one's smoother.
He's just saying a bunch of bullshit.
I mean he won the presidency on like, I come from a little place called Hope.
Like what the fuck are you talking about?
What is that?
What type of message is that?
Well, you know, like Obama's all about hope and change, so they go together well.
Oh, yeah, no, but Bill Clinton like was even better at it.
There's something about him that was more real.
Obama's too professorial.
He comes off a little condescending.
Bill Clinton's like, I'm right here with you, man.
I think it's the accent.
That accent.
Yeah, whatever it is, his smiley accent.
He's unbelievable.
He gave an unbelievable speech.
And especially just he is benefiting from, I mean, I don't think it's necessarily fair, but just the fact that things are so much worse now than they were under Clinton.
You know, everything post-Bush administration is just so much worse, post-9-11, whatever you want to call it, so much worse than it was back then that there is this tendency to just be like, oh, yeah, the 90s.
You remember when our biggest issue was sexual harassment in the workplace?
You remember when that was like the problem in America?
It's like, dear God, I wish we could go back to those times.
That's, you know, perpetual war and crippling debt.
This stuff's a lot, you know, worse.
Not as much fun.
And as far as like Barack Obama's speech, it was pretty goddamn good.
I mean, it blew, you know, it blew Mitt Romney's speech out of the water.
It was a very good speech.
I will say it was his worst convention speech ever.
Yeah, and it wasn't as good as Bill.
It was like putting varsity before JV, I feel like, by having Bill speak before him, but like they couldn't do it any other way.
Well, right.
Everybody did.
That was, or that, I shouldn't say everybody, but that was the general consensus agreed with you that Bill kind of outshined Obama.
And when I say it was his worst convention speech ever, by the way, 2004 might have been the greatest speech ever given.
2008 was fucking unbelievable.
So it's not like he was competing with these unbelievable speeches he gave.
He said they're far too high for himself.
Well, the thing that kind of blew me away is like I kind of went into it like it's like, oh, well, he's so limited now because he's not.
Now he's actually got this four-year terrible record that he has to like deal with.
It's not like last year where you just go hope and change and yes, we can and the sea levels won't rise.
It's not that shit.
You have to actually have.
But he kind of just did it again.
I mean, he kind of, it was almost like just pretended like these four years don't exist.
I mean, when I'd literally hear him say things like, in these next four years, we will cut the deficit and increase jobs.
You go, but you've had a term and we have the highest deficits ever and the highest unemployment in decades.
Like, how can you just say without, I don't know.
It's kind of crazy to me.
There's more time.
Yeah, so what, but what's like, isn't there something logical to go, okay, why nothing has happened in these four years?
Why is it going to get better?
You know, to go, well, he's going to bring you back to the failed policies of the what policies are you not bringing us back to?
Anyway, but yeah, so that was my big thing with Obama.
It's like, I just don't quite get how he can say these things.
But anyway, as we predicted, both of us predicted on the last episode, after the Republicans got their bump, we said the Democrats will get a bigger bump.
This will put Obama up and he'll probably sustain this lead.
And that's been coming true so far.
Obama got a bigger bump than Romney.
And he's holding on to an advantage, which is pretty crazy just considering how weak these four years have been, how weak of a president he is, how bad the 2010 midterms were.
This is really a reflection on how bad a candidate Romney is.
And obviously, for anyone who's paying attention, this has been just horrible couple weeks for him.
The Infamous 47 Percent Comment00:14:41
And the big thing that got him in a lot of trouble was the 47% comment.
Oh, yeah, that was cute.
That was really cute.
I mean, Jesus fucking Christ.
It's just like the whole thing about Romney is he's like this stiff weirdo who's like, but I run business.
I understand the economy and the numbers.
And then he comes out, and it's just like the most ridiculous misunderstanding or just lying.
I don't know which it is, but it's definitely one or the other.
Either you don't get it or you're bullshitting.
But just to go over this for anyone who doesn't follow this so closely, when you say 47% of Americans don't pay federal income tax, that's a fact, okay?
That is a number.
But just to be fair, anybody who ever says 47% of people don't pay federal taxes, that's not true.
If they say 47% of people don't pay taxes, that's definitely not true.
47% of people don't pay federal income taxes.
It's one particular tax.
The other thing is that even that number, even though that number is true, it's a completely misleading statistic.
It's like when they say women make 77 cents to the dollar.
And they just say, now that is a fact.
If you just take the average man's salary and the average woman's salary, women make 77 cents to the dollar.
But the implication when they just say that stat is that's discrimination.
Yeah, the reason for the differentiation is this is discrimination.
Now, I'm not saying there's no discrimination, but you're not taking into account tons of things.
You're not even taking into account women who left the workforce for 20 years to raise a family and came back.
Obviously, they're not going to make the same as their male counterpart who stayed in the workforce.
So I'm just saying, why don't we take that out and you go, okay, women with, like if you came to me with a number that was like women with the same college experience and the same job experience make 90 cents to the dollar or whatever it is, I'd go, okay, that 10 cents seems to be discrimination.
Let's fucking deal with that.
Like I'm on board with that.
But don't give me this bullshit number and pretend that that.
So when you say 47% of people don't, what is the percentage of workers who don't pay federal income tax?
Don't tell me the percentage of people because a lot of people in America are children or retired or fucking brain dead.
Yet not everybody is working.
So this number is already just completely fucking off.
It's a terrible number.
But then on top of that, it's not, he was completely wrong.
He said, these are the 47% who I can't get, which is just a lie.
That's not true.
Those aren't the 47% who vote.
A portion of them are.
And he's completely right to say that there's a big portion of people who are dependent on government, who aren't contributing, who are just mooching off the system.
And those people are going to vote for the party of government who's always promising them new shit.
Like, that's a fair argument, but the 47% thing is just completely misleading.
I just also thought it was a little ignorant for him to assume that the same people who are benefiting from government programs want to keep doing that.
That's a little closed-minded because there are people who abuse the system, but for most people, it's just a safety net until they can get back on their feet.
I don't know.
Look, I think there are a lot of people who have grown dependent.
A lot of people are, it's not just they're dependent because they're lazy bums.
A lot of people are dependent because the government's wrecked the fucking economy.
The government, I forget, god damn it, I forget who said this, but it's a famous quote.
But they go, the government's famous for breaking your leg and then offering you a crutch and telling you they're the only ones who could possibly save your crutch, you know, like give you this crutch.
It's like, yeah, they cause this problem and then they're the only, they're like, well, we're the only solution.
Yeah, no, look, you got to like forget even just that it's wrong, just politically speaking.
You can't just fucking write off 47% of people like that.
Well, fuck them.
Like, that's way too big a number.
You can be like, look, there's a 10% kooks who are just going to vote for Obama no matter what.
But you got to try to win these people who are dependent.
You have to kind of explain to them that, like, they're not going to, this money's going to run out.
And they need, you know, this isn't a great system for them.
The bigger problem to me is like, you know, when they said this, Ron Paul got presented this at one of the debates.
They said to him that they were like, what do you think of the numbers that almost 50% of Americans don't pay income tax on the federal level?
And he said, okay, we're halfway there.
That should be the conservative attitude, right?
We're against taxation.
Or at least Mitt Romney would claim to be for lower taxation.
What is the conservative attitude that we need to raise taxes on the bottom 50% of people?
I mean, is that his position now?
Cut taxes on the top.
I mean, all this talk about cutting loopholes.
I mean, what is that?
That's just code language for raising taxes.
Like, what does that mean?
We're going to close loopholes.
They can't list any of the loopholes they planned on closing.
Right.
Because they don't want to tell anyone that they're going to raise their taxes.
That's what that means.
So if conservatives stand for raising taxes on poor people and cutting taxes on rich people, what fucking good are they?
That I just don't understand.
The whole point is like the conservatives are at least for not taxing youth.
That's kind of their, at least their one thing they can always rely on.
Yeah, so I don't know.
It's pretty goddamn bad.
And that is really, I thought, very damaging for Mitt Romney.
I thought Obama should have sent him flowers after that because he pretty much just won him the election.
Unless something big happens in between now and then.
Well, I agree with you with that.
I think unless something big happens.
And the more I've been going over it, I mean, I don't think even something big.
I mean, I think something big, which right now, we'll get into this a little later, but right now it seems like if there's something big is going to happen, it looks like it's going to be more like foreign terrorism related than something else, which I think that would only help Obama.
Like a big terrorist event or something like that, I think would only help Obama.
I don't think they'll be able to play this.
He is weak on defense like they used to do with Democrats.
I mean, he's proven himself to be every bit the war criminal George Bush was, and then some.
So there's no way that they can play him as this, like, oh, he's weak on defense.
Like, he's murdering Muslims in countries we haven't even declared war on without checking to see who the fucking Muslim is.
Like, he's as pro-neocon as these guys are.
So I think, you know, people would just want to keep the guy in.
The same way a terrorist event would have helped Bush in 2004.
I think it'll help Obama here.
The only thing I think that would really hurt Obama would be fiscal, I should say, an economic, a financial crisis of some sort, which theoretically could happen.
We're teetering on the edge, but I think Ben Bernanke made it pretty clear he's going to do everything he can to make sure Obama gets re-elected and he gets reappointed.
But yeah, I do agree with you that something major would have to happen, otherwise Obama's going to ride this out.
And they tried to find, do you see the Obama redistribution tape that they found?
So there's this quote from him like 15 years ago or something that they tried to release, I think, as the counter to this 47% thing.
And it's a tape of Obama saying he believes in redistribution.
I mean, he just blatantly says, I believe in redistributing the wealth to a certain extent.
And I guess this maybe would be an issue, except that Mitt Romney believes in redistributing wealth, and so does fucking everybody except me.
Like all of these people believe in redistributing wealth, which by the way, great thinker Thomas Sowell points out that like redistributed wealth actually isn't distributed.
It's just a terrible term and way to think about it.
Like pamphlets are distributed, like paychecks at a company are distributed, but wealth is actually created.
It's not like wealth exists and then people distribute it.
It's like you make your wealth.
It's just a terrible way to think of it.
But all these people believe in redistribution.
I mean, Mitt Romney said we need a strong safety net like a zillion times in this campaign.
They've all been talking about strengthening Medicare.
They've all like, I don't know what they, they just pick and choose certain things that count as redistribution to them, but all taxation is redistribution.
Pretty much.
All money printing is redistribution.
I mean, all this, it's, that's what all of it is.
So it's fucking ridiculous for anyone.
I mean, you can't like get him on this.
And also, it's ridiculous that they're going back 15 years.
He said this to Joe the Plumber.
He said this in 2008.
He campaigned on this.
He said, I think it's better when we spread the wealth around.
Period.
People, I don't get it.
It's this weird thing we have in this country.
And I think it's because we were founded by libertarians that everyone kind of has to play to this libertarian language, but no one actually believes it.
So everyone's like, socialism or redistribution of wealth.
But everyone's for socialism and redistribution of wealth.
And if anyone, like, you know, Ron Paul was the only guy, stands up and says, I'm not for redistribution, they fucking blast him.
They're like, you're insane for not being for redistribution of what, like, literally, he gets called insane, an extremist.
And it gets so branded.
I mean, every time I tell someone I'm for Ron Paul, it's like, yeah, but he's a little crazy, right?
Like, do you even know his crazy position?
No, but he's a little crazy, right?
Like, he's just been so branded crazy because he doesn't believe in redistribution of wealth.
Yet someone says, I believe in redistribution of wealth, and it's like, ooh, this is a...
Anyway, I just don't think it's fucking working.
I don't quite understand it.
But I wish Mitt Romney actually didn't.
Actually took the opposing view.
That would be cool.
Then maybe I would think about voting for him.
But I do really agree with what you said.
And I do think in the bigger, like, Obama's going to win.
We've been saying Obama's going to win.
He's going to get another four years.
I think it sucks because he doesn't deserve another four years, but I don't think it would be any better under Mitt Romney.
So I just don't really give a shit.
I really do feel like I don't have a horse in this race anymore.
Now that Ron Paul's out, it's just, I mean, I said I endorse Gary Johnson.
I'll vote for him, but I really don't.
The problem with Gary Johnson, man, is he just doesn't spark the passion in anyone.
A lot of people don't know who he is.
A lot of people don't know who he is, and a lot of that's because, look, Ron Paul got people going.
Ron Paul got up there and talked about how evil our foreign policy is, which I want to get into more in the show later.
But I mean, Gary Johnson is just like, he says the thing that I hate, which I've said on the show before, he goes, I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative.
Like, it just makes sense.
Like, I borrow a little from this guy, a little from this guy.
I'm kind of common sense.
And he goes, I want to lower your taxes and cut spending.
So he goes, but that's what the Republicans say.
Like, you don't separate yourself from them at all.
You got to really make.
I mean, he's good, but he's just not.
I don't know.
He's not inspiring me quite as much as I wish he was.
But, like I was saying, with the bigger picture, Obama's going to win.
He's going to get re-elected.
But you really got to say, man, Obama is.
I said maybe Clinton is the best politician ever, but Obama's got to be number two.
And he's an unbelievable speech giver, just brilliant guy, incredibly talented, incredibly charismatic.
He was incredibly good looking until his first four years in office, but he's still all right.
He's not bad.
Yeah, he was way better looking before he got in.
You go see those old pictures, you're like, oh, shit, look at Obama.
But I'm just saying he's this very talented guy.
You really look, you step back and look at the bigger picture, which is hard to do in this 24-hour news cycle, but when you look at the bigger picture, it's like, man, did he catch the two fucking easiest opponents ever?
It's like if Muhammad Ali just fought amateurs his whole career.
Like, you know, I'm trying to almost think of the sports example.
Like, I know Tyson got accused of not fighting any real talent, but then he came out of jail and he fought like Holyfield and Lennox Lewis.
Like he fought guy.
Barack Obama has gone up against John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Just the two weakest, horrible, like the, neither of them was a real conservative or had the base even excited.
They're both just these middle-of-the-road clear light.
I think in fairness to McCain, though, before Palin was announced as his running mate, I think he showed a lot more promise early on.
He's a fucking weird, old, half-senile guy who can't move his arms.
Yeah, no, I'm not saying people didn't like him.
In a weird way, he was more socially comfortable than Mitt Romney, even though he didn't have full range of his arms and shit.
But come on.
I mean, McCain is not like...
He wasn't going up against a leader of any sort.
I don't know.
It really is crazy.
You're just like...
I felt the same way about something like Al Gore and John Kerry, but you're really like, really?
This guy's the leader that we got?
We have a country of 315 million or whatever.
309 million.
What is it?
This is the guy.
This is the guy we found.
It's pretty fucking.
It's pretty weird.
I don't know why you don't run.
The other, well, I'm getting my stuff together.
I'm getting.
I'm, you know, 2016.
I'm getting out there.
I, um, all right, the other thing that I wanted to talk about, which I skipped over accidentally, was Mitt Romney's taxes.
That came out.
He released another year of taxes.
And I just, I want to get some of the numbers.
Because I fucking it's pretty crazy to me.
We've talked about this a little bit before on the show, but Mitt Romney released another year of taxes for 2011, I believe it was.
And I just don't understand how anybody can really hit this guy.
Like, all of the liberals are trying to attack him for this, but I don't really get it.
It's like, okay, look, he paid 14.1%.
I understand that bothers a lot of people.
I don't think he did anything that anyone else wouldn't do.
Well, first off, right.
First off, right off the bat, well, he did do something that no one else would do, which not everyone else would do, which is he gave a ton of money to charity.
Charity.
A fucking ton.
Joe Biden doesn't give shit to charity.
This guy's giving a ton of money to charity, and we're blasting him for only paying 14%, but he's going above and beyond.
Like, he's going above and beyond, giving tons of money to charity.
And by the way, I just still, I just don't get the philosophy of the guy who's the president, who's the head of government, gets to sit there and blast the guy who's not paying as high taxes because the rules are capital gains gets taxed at 15%.
Like, I don't get that.
And anyway, the answer would be to cut other people's taxes, not raise his.
But I just don't understand how you can blast a guy for following the rules and taking advantage of some of the deductions that you have.
And then again, it's not even like, I mean, all these people, oh, he's hiding all this money in the Caymans and this and that.
Yeah, but he's giving tons of it away to charity.
Like, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense that this argument.
And people are like, my secretary pays a higher rate than him.
Like, all right, your secretary pays too high a rate.
No question about that.
But it's like back to what we said before when they say 47% of people don't pay federal income taxes.
But those people, tons of those 47% still pay federal taxes on federal payroll taxes.
They all still pay sales taxes.
Everyone, fucking my seven-year-old nephew could pay his sales tax on his candy bar.
Everyone pays sales tax.
Lots of people pay state income tax.
Believe me, there's no, this fucking, we have the biggest government in the history of the world and everyone's paying something.
And everyone else pays the inflation tax, which is just that the dollar is so much weaker now than it used to be, right?
Like my grandfather, $30,000 to my grandfather was a lot of fucking money.
Teachers Unions and Public Schools00:10:44
Yeah, double-blooded.
But $30,000 to someone now, like my grandfather was like, ooh, that's retirement money right there.
Now we're like, I'll get through a year shitty.
You know, like not living well.
I'll get through a year.
It's fucking crazy.
You'll have to eat that rice.
Yeah, right.
Oh, man, I can't believe I threw out that moth rice.
That would come in so handy right now.
Some sweet moth rice.
When you say moths, plural, it gets so hard after you say it for a while.
You're like, moths.
There's moths everywhere in my clothes.
Moths in my clothes.
All right.
Okay, so something else.
Just get away from the presidential race for a little bit.
Something else that happened this week happened and ended before we got back, but we could talk about it.
There was a teacher strike in Chicago.
Chicago.
Which is always an issue that I'm kind of interested in.
And I do just fundamentally, and maybe this is like my weird perspective that I've been skewed to, but I just find it crazy that immediately that so many people are like praising these teachers and consider these teachers heroes.
Maybe it's the fact, again, that I went to public school for a couple years, and I'd say, look, there were a couple really great teachers.
90% should have been fired.
90% of the teachers were terrible, should have been fired.
And about 50% were so heinously horrible that you would literally be like, oh my God, I can't believe these people are teaching children.
Like literally, I mean, from borderline abusive shit to aiding kids cheating on tests.
I mean, and this was considered a good public school.
There is no, like, so maybe this, like, kind of standardized testing?
Yeah, it was like standardized tests that they were cheating at to get us higher so they didn't get in trouble.
It's the whole corrupt system.
Now, so just right away, though, just at the basics of the outsetting frame, what is happening is teachers are striking.
Teachers want more money, so they're sacrificing kids being at school.
So right from the outside, I just don't understand how you could possibly spin that to be something noble.
We want more money and we want more money, so we feel disrespected so much that we'll sacrifice these kids' learning to get paid more.
I don't on any level see how you can spin that to be something noble, okay?
Yeah, it's a complete 180 from what you want money to do.
Or what a teacher should be about.
A teacher should be about teaching, right?
Like that should be, and a teaching or teacher is supposed to be some job that's kind of a calling, right?
It's like bigger than just, and by the way, I mean, if you look at any honest stat, when you take into account benefits, hours, everything, teachers do so fucking good.
It's ridiculous.
Teachers do so much better than their free market counterpoint, than their free market counterparts.
They get summers off.
They're off at 3 p.m.
They get like great benefits.
Most of them up till now have not had to contribute to their health care at all.
No one in the private sector has that.
They get things that nobody has.
And yeah, it's because a bunch of promises have been made that can't be kept.
And by the way, they just got a raise.
All the states are being broken.
They got the fucking raise at the end of this.
It's just, dude, it's disgusting to me.
The whole thing, look, do you, who's, first off, take a step back.
Who the fuck thinks our public school teachers are doing a good job?
Do you have any idea how dumb our country is?
How dumb.
No, big picture.
Our country is so much dumber than we were a couple generations ago.
I think it's, I think Rusmaneev, I think it's his joke.
I believe this is Rusmaneev's joke.
Russ Manev, hilarious comedian, for anyone who doesn't know, if he had some joke there, he's like, if you ever read the letters from soldiers of World War II, like even just the average soldier, it's like fucking poetry.
Look, it'd be like, dear, dearest Beverly.
I gaze at the hills of the East German wall.
I don't know if there's hills in East Germany.
It was like very poetic.
And he was like, if you look at a letter from like one of the Iraqi soldiers back here, he was like, hey, Bob, you know, don't be fucking anyone while I'm gone.
DVR Jersey show.
Like, we are so much dumber.
I believe that's Russ Maneev's joke.
I'm not doing it justice.
He does it way funnier.
But it's like, the concept is brilliant, and it's a really true point.
We're way, way dumber as a country now.
People used to read novels.
People used to like know shit.
Go ask the average high school kid who Trotsky is.
Go ask the average high school kid about American history.
They don't know shit.
Go ask that.
You know, these kids are the dumbest ever.
These teachers are fucking up on a huge, huge basis.
I don't know if you can blame that entirely on the teachers because back when kids read novels, a lot of them had nothing else to do.
And now people have a lot more distractions, so I think they're just less interested.
I don't know if you can blame teachers.
I don't know.
I think there are a lot more distractions.
There are a lot more distractions, but it's also a lot easier for someone to get engaged.
I mean, like, the technology also aids learning a lot.
So there's more distractions, but there's also a lot more tools.
Here's the real problem, okay?
This is really what the problem is.
It's these fucking unions.
This is the heart of the problem.
It's public sector unions.
There's nothing wrong with unions, but there's a big problem with public sector unions.
And the truth is, no one will admit this, but by no economic philosophy do public unions make sense.
By the strictest capitalist philosophy, it doesn't make any sense, obviously.
It's government intervention.
And by the strictest socialist philosophy, it makes absolutely no sense to have public sector unions.
The whole concept of unions, even from the socialist perspective, is that the evil capitalist, the evil free market businessman, is trying to push down your wages.
Like if there's not, if it wasn't for unions, you'd all be making five cents in some coal mine somewhere, you know, just like with your children working.
Everyone would be in terrible conditions if it wasn't for these unions who insist on raising up the money.
But that's in the private sector.
In the public sector, we're not dealing with the evil capitalist.
We're dealing with the benevolent politician.
So, even in the socialist mind, there should be no need for that union.
No one's trying to force those prices down.
This is the benevolent government that's making everything right.
This is the creature of correction.
So, even in the socialist mind, there should be no need for public sector unions.
A lot of people don't realize they think, like, oh, this has gone on forever.
Like, there's a teachers' union.
Well, that's probably been there forever.
It's only since the 60s that we've had a teachers' union.
So, it does this explains the difference between like my grandfather's education and today's education.
And even like my mother, it was new.
You know what I mean?
It was a brand new thing for her.
So, we started in the 60s, we started down the road, we started these public sector unions, and the teachers' union came in.
Only under Carter in the 70s did the Department of Education.
This is when we started getting involved.
And basically, here's the problem: okay, in a private sector union, unions are great.
All it is, it's just like freedom of association.
It's like instead of one worker coming in and saying, I want more money, there's not a lot of leverage to that.
But if all the workers come in and say, We want more money, there's a lot more leverage to that.
So, they can get together, they can, you know, they can negotiate collectively, collectively bargain.
That's the idea.
You don't need a law for that, you just need freedom.
Like, people can get together and bargain.
And the idea, obviously, is like, look, your boss wants to pay you as little as possible with keeping you and keeping you productive and happy, and you want to make as much as happy without breaking your boss so he can keep paying you every week.
It's natural, it's the natural ebb and flow.
Your ball has to get away with what he can, you want as much as you can.
And this works even in areas where there aren't unions.
It's just a natural ebb and flow.
Like, we've all had jobs and not been part of unions, and your boss still wants would like to pay you less.
If you said, I'll work for half this salary, he would fucking pay you half the salary.
If you demanded double the salary, he'd say, I can't afford that.
If you said, I need a hundred more dollars a week, he might sit down and have a talk with you.
It's like these natural flows.
In the private sector unions, it's not a boss dealing with his money and you dealing with your labor.
It's a teacher saying, I want more money, and a politician saying, Sure, will you vote for me?
It's the taxpayer's money, it's not his money.
So, there's no natural ebb and flow.
The obvious, what happens is he just keeps going, yes, but vote for me.
Yes, but vote for me.
And that's why these teachers have these unbelievable deals.
Like, and it's not just the money, because they can't be that blatant, they got to be a little sneaky.
So, it's little things that we never even question.
Like, who the fuck gets off at three?
Who the fuck gets off at 3 p.m.?
Schools do, but we just take that for granted.
That's not everywhere.
Schools in China don't, but we never even fucking question whether the school day should go the same as a workday.
We never think about it.
We never think about if schools should have summers off.
Why the fuck should they have summers off?
It doesn't make any sense.
Give them a month or something.
Why the fuck should they get three months off?
Like, we never question any of these things.
I didn't start out like that because of like farming.
Yeah, some fucking retarded, like, oh, you needed to, like, lug like bags of grain up a hill or something.
We don't need to do that anymore.
You're just sending these kids home to their iPads.
Like, but look, but the biggest thing, the biggest, biggest problem that is the inherent reason is that it's next to impossible to fire teachers.
And even really, really liberal pro-union people recognize that this is a really, really big part of the problem.
But it is.
This is the problem.
It's the core problem.
I mean, just imagine, look, any, and you know, if you've looked into this, basically, what the union has dictated so many rules that in order for a principal to fire a teacher, I mean, it's literally like it takes years and years and years.
There's been teachers caught sleeping with their students and they can't fire them.
They just literally like relocate them like the fucking church.
Like, they can't do anything because there's so many union rules.
John Stossel in the show does a great job breaking this down.
He literally like unrolls a piece of paper and it like takes up the whole studio, like all the steps that you need to go through in order to fire a teacher.
So it's really that fucking simple.
And there are other factors, but think about any field, anyone you know, any job you've ever had.
Imagine you got immunity.
They just gave everyone immunity.
You can't be fired.
You're doorman.
Dormant, you can't ever be fired.
They're not getting up that quick to the door anymore.
Like, everyone's just going to fuck up as soon as they get.
And, you know, I mean, the truth is our country has never been dumber.
We've never needed to clean house with teachers more.
Every single public school in this fucking country has at least one person who needs to go.
I guarantee that.
And everyone, you know, I always have these people.
I talk about how, I remember I got an argument with a friend of mine like a couple weeks ago where I was talking about how it was when the... the strike first happened.
And she was like, well, there are some great public schools.
I went to a great public school.
I said, okay, what do you think that was percentage in?
You know what I mean?
When you say you went to a great public school, I said, do you think that wasn't the exception?
When they get ranked, and they do get ranked, I was, this is a real answer.
You can find this out.
I go, what do you think they're in?
Are they in the top 1% or are they 50%?
Like, where is the great?
And of course, if you went to an even good public school, if you learn how to read, you're probably in the top 5%.
There are literally, we have a problem.
No one talks about this shit.
My mother used to, she doesn't anymore, but she used to work in this clinic at Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights.
She would deal all the time with these kids, like college graduates who can't read.
I'm sorry, high school graduates who can't read.
Sanctions and Humanitarian Crisis00:14:34
This is a real thing that happens.
It's fucking crazy.
And these teachers don't get fired.
And they don't get fired.
I literally, I mean, I remember this, having teachers who helped us cheat on the standardized tests.
But I'm just saying, I just don't get the, I mean, it's so clear to me that we're getting dumber as a country.
And it's so clear that we're going in the direction, like, we created the Department of Education, and it's gotten way, way worse.
So why don't we just fucking go back?
There's so many departments in the federal government that have been created like this.
It's not just education.
The Department of Energy, they said their goal when they were created, I think it was in the 70s or something like that, 60s maybe.
Their goal was to reduce America's dependence on foreign energy.
When they started, we got like 25% of our energy from foreign.
Now it's like 75%.
It's like, get rid of this goddamn fucking department.
What are we spending money on?
Like, what the fuck is this?
This is insane.
I mean, and the biggest one of all is the Federal Reserve, the Central Bank.
That's the biggest one, Rego.
Literally, it came in in 1913, and they go, the purpose is so that we won't have big fluctuations in the economy.
This bank will just kind of keep us nice and even.
And, you know, 15 years later, we have the Great Depression.
As soon as we had the Great Depression, they should have gone, get rid of this fucking, what are we, crazy?
Whoops.
Yeah, it's the worst economy ever in the history of our union.
I mean, come on.
It's fucking ridiculous.
It's fucking ridiculous.
Public unions are terrible.
There should be no such thing.
We should get rid of public unions.
All right.
And the next thing, man, you know, I'll be honest, we got through a lot of this stuff way quicker than I thought we would.
But we still have some more to talk about.
But Jesus, we're only done like a half hour.
Well, we did start early.
No, no, no, no.
I'm just saying how much time we've recorded for.
I don't go by the real time.
All right.
So another thing that I wanted to talk about is I think whenever I pictured how America is going to leave the world, like we are occupying the world.
You know, we have like 131 different countries that we have troops in and tons of bases and especially particularly our presence in the Middle East, which is obviously the most active right now.
I've always wondered, to me, you know, like all empires fall at some point.
So to me, it's always like, well, when our economy crashes, much like, you know, the Soviets or like the ancient Romans or any of these empires, like when our economy crashes, we'll bring all our troops home in disgrace.
But, you know, I have been thinking over these last week particularly, maybe we're just going to get kicked the fuck out of the Mideast.
I mean, is that like what's going on right now?
Like, dude, there's anti-American protests in like every fucking Middle Eastern country this week.
Like all of them.
There's tons of violence.
There's protests.
Obama, you know, he claims that war in Iraq is over and the war in Afghanistan will be over next year.
The truth is, neither of the wars are over.
They're both worse than ever.
Well, Iraq's not worse than ever, but Iraq's going bad.
And Afghanistan is like worse than ever right now.
Like, there's the same military and police that the Americans trained are turning against the Americans.
Yeah.
What's it called?
Red on green or whatever the fuck they call it.
This is like a thing now.
This is just normal when these guys just turn on us and start killing our soldiers because we're doing the job of training a fucking army.
Like, that's not even what the army's for.
They're not a training unit.
They fight wars.
Supposed to fight and win wars.
That's what an armed for.
And then leave.
Yeah, that's the idea.
You know, and also the idea is when we're under attack, we're supposed to defend ourselves, right?
It's the Department of Defense.
But, you know, obviously these aren't defensive wars.
These are aggressive wars.
But, you know, it's getting really, really bad.
And people, I think they're all getting sick of us.
Obviously, the worst and the most biggest thing was the Libya embassy attack in Libya.
This ambassador got killed and dragged through the fucking streets.
And it's fucking brutal and it's terrible.
And I even heard someone say, you know, I think it was someone on Fox News probably was saying, you know, it's a tragedy that this happened on American soil.
And you go, motherfucker, this didn't happen on American soil.
I don't care what your dumb fucking rules are.
This happened on Libyan soil.
Like, look, look, we have an embassy.
What does that even mean?
It's like, we have an embassy there.
This was a deal we had with a dictator that we propped up who got fucking overthrown by his people.
All right?
So now there's no fucking deal anymore.
And we're not, these people, obviously, this group who attacked it don't want us in their fucking country.
They're angry at us.
And that's not to say this was an attack on American soil.
It's just so fucking ridiculous.
Now, I'm trying to figure out if he was just, if maybe he just misspoke or if he really is that stupid.
I like to try giving people the benefit of that.
Yeah, I don't know, maybe, but just to anyone who might be.
But I don't think he misspoke.
I think he genuinely believes.
No, that's what they think.
They go, well, that's our embassy is our soil, and that's our interests.
We have a right to protect our interests.
Now, I will say this.
It drives me absolutely nuts.
That Hillary Clinton speech, where she came out and said, we don't condone the movie or whatever is fucking ridiculous.
Well, I'll get into that in a second, but that's ridiculous.
And it's coming out now that the movie, this YouTube thing, wasn't even why they did this attack in Libya.
And good for Google for keeping the video up because they're fucking...
This is just insane.
Like making a movie.
As a comic, I'll go out and really defend.
Making a movie or a joke, no matter how dumb or offensive it may be, is nothing that anyone should be, that the Secretary of State should be talking about.
You can condemn murdering American citizens overseas, but don't condemn some Americans making a dumb movie.
We can make fun of Muhammad all we fucking want to.
We make fun of South Park had a Jesus character for like their first couple seasons, doing all sorts of ridiculous shit.
No one ever said a fucking word about it.
Or maybe some people did, but no one gives a shit.
No one takes them seriously.
No one blew shit up about it.
Yeah, certainly the Secretary of State isn't going South Park should, really.
Because obviously the logical reaction is Muslims will kill people if you do this.
But you know, you know, and okay, so I'll call it this woman, this woman, Rula Jabril, which I know I'm butchering this name, but Rula Jabril, she's this author.
She sold like millions of copies, and she went on MSNBC, and this was her message.
I wanted to play a little bit of this, because this really bugged me.
Joining us here on set is Rula Jibrial, an MSNBC contributor and author of Miral, a book about the Arab-Israeli conflict that sold over 2 million copies and has been translated into 14 languages.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me.
What do you think about what Jay Carney said there in regards to the notion that the government of the United States can tell speakers here or abroad they don't like what they're saying?
They respect their right, at least under our U.S. Constitution.
They respect their right to speak, but they'd rather some of these people stopped speaking in a way that was deemed so offensive to Muhammad and adherents of Islam.
Well, I agree.
I mean, we need to be responsible.
And some people need to connect their tongue to their brain.
I mean, in the end, they play the game of extremists and the other side.
I mean, these instigators, maybe they don't do it thinking that they'll instigate something or a violent will erupt.
But what they are doing is very simple.
Suddenly, they put something that's so offensive to certain people that they cannot handle it.
They start just grasping.
So right away, you're just like, are you fucking kidding me, lady?
Like, just, look, I'm not saying anything she's saying is particularly wrong, factually, but just the whole tone where she's like, oh, well, these instigators.
So now someone trying to do something funny as an instigator.
And of course, these people just have no control.
I mean, once you say Muhammad, these barbarians are just like, it's totally acceptable that they'll just fucking kill people.
She's making everyone involved sound bad.
She's making people who speak their minds sound shitty.
And she's making it seem normal for all Middle Eastern people to go and blow shit up.
Yeah, I mean, it's actually what she's saying.
And this is the racism that liberals can never understand.
What she's actually saying is incredibly racist towards Muslims.
She's saying that these maniacs can't fucking handle...
They can't control them.
Yeah, they can't take, you know, like something, they can't handle freedom, more or less is what she's saying.
Now, look, the bottom line is it's probably fucking true for the far majority of them, but to have this attitude that it's the instigators' fault.
This chick sold like millions of books, too.
What the fuck type of message is this?
Hold on, I want to play some more because it gets even worse.
Connects with the point you were making, which is the proposals in the House to attach a lot more conditions on Egypt funding.
You think that's not the right way to go?
I think you need to continue building relationship with these governments because if you will do what Reagan did in 82 when he disengaged from Lebanon, he simply empowered Hezbollah.
Now the most important party in Lebanon that controls, in a way, the region is Hezbollah.
If you disengage, you empower extremists.
This is my message.
Okay, so that's her message.
If you disengage, you empower extremists.
What a fucking retarded message.
Now, she uses one piece of empirical evidence, which is that Reagan disengaged from Lebanon.
And then extremists are now in charge of Lebanon.
Now, first off, disengaging from Lebanon was one of the few great things that Ronald Reagan did.
Literally one of the few great things.
He wrote about it in his memoirs.
Unbelievable.
He said he literally, he said he would never turn tail and run.
He said he was going to go handle some interest we had over there.
I forget exactly what the conflict was.
But he went over there, a bunch of our Marines got killed, and he turned tail and ran right away.
And he said in his memoirs, he said that I underestimated, I forget the exact quote, but he said, I underestimated the irrationality of Middle East politics.
And he goes, he realized these aren't rational players.
You can't have a relationship with these guys.
There's just nothing there.
They're barbarians.
I mean, it is ridiculous.
Yeah, you make a Muslim cartoon about Muhammad and they're dragging people through the fucking streets.
Like this is where they're at.
They're not where we're at, where we appreciate freedom, or at least some of us do.
But anyway, so this is our one piece of evidence, is in one case, we withdrew and extremists took over.
As if if we had stayed, there would be a very rational government in Lebanon.
So she uses one piece of empirical evidence.
How about everywhere else in the Middle East where we've stayed and engaged?
And the fact that there's radicals everywhere.
How about the fact that there were no al-Qaeda in Iraq until we went in?
There were no al-Qaeda in Libya until we went in.
There were no radical, there was no al-Qaeda in Syria until we went in.
We bring the radicals with us everywhere we go.
This is the most retarded disengage.
Like, we've been engaged.
The engaging is not fucking working.
I literally can't believe people like buy this shit.
Oh, she cited one example there.
So that's fucking great.
That means, oh, okay, we disengaged from Lebanon.
I don't even know.
When did Hezbollah take over?
She doesn't like it was a direct reaction of him leaving, right?
I don't even think it was.
But regardless, it's one piece of evidence.
Look at the big picture.
So, okay, so we'll keep engaging.
And the idea is what we're supposed to build freedom for these people who she says aren't ready to have freedom yet.
Nothing she says is consistent.
Right.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
She's saying these people are too weak for freedom, but we have to.
But we have to give it to them.
Doesn't make sense at all.
And it's just, you know.
People don't get how fucked up our policy is either.
It's like, you know, this is what I try to say to people when people are watching that guy being dragged through the streets, that video that Hannity loves to play.
It's weird to me that I do remember, like I lived through 9-11 or whatever.
I hate when people say that.
They're like, I lived through 9-11 because I was in New York.
Like, whatever.
But as someone who was here, when 9-11 happened, I really remember, like, hardcore, there was like a fucking week of why do they hate us.
Everyone was consumed with why do they hate us?
And it fucking went away.
It's unbelievable how much that went away.
And it's just no one really cares anymore.
Everyone kind of like has, it's almost like now it's like, oh, well, they've always hated us.
That's always been true.
And we're at war with them because of 9-11.
There's no like before that.
But they bombed us on 9-11, right?
Like they were already pretty angry on 9-11.
So something before that had happened that really bugged them.
And I just think people don't exactly get how our engaging, as this dumb chick put it.
It hasn't helped anything.
Not only hasn't helped, but just how cold we are.
I just want to play this.
This is something from, this is, by the way, for everyone who says it's like this post-9-11 reaction, or people say, like, you know, it's a bad economy here.
So that's why we're not like talking about these wars.
And that's why we're not thinking about it.
This is from, you know, back before 9-11, before this bad economy, back in the Clinton years, the years Jessica loves so much, where, you know, Clinton was pretty horrendous president himself, but we were still doing a little bit better.
But this is Madeleine Albright on, I believe, what is this, 60 minutes or something like that?
This is when she was asked about the sanctions on Iraq.
There was a UN report that came out that said the sanctions on Iraq had cost, had killed half a million Iraqi children.
These are the sanctions we had on that that were kept in place after the first Persian Gulf War.
Or actually, maybe they were put in place after something, like he wasn't letting the inspectors in or something like that.
But sanctions we had against Iraq, this is pre-9-11 Clinton years.
This is Madeleine Albright's response.
We have heard that a half a million children have died.
I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima.
And, you know, is the price worth it?
I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
That's all.
That's all I got to fucking play.
Like, that's us.
That's our fucking government.
She literally just said, the price is worth it.
Half a million children who we've never fucking met before, who we don't know is worth it.
Like, that's fucking crazy, okay?
Now, do you maybe get why they're dragging our people through the streets?
Like, this has been our attitude forever.
This isn't a post-9-11 thing.
Since when?
Like, how fucking dehumanized has our government become that killing half a million babies is like a public policy option.
It's like this is one of the options on the table.
We have a problem with this one guy.
You know, so it's ethical for us to, yeah.
And by the way, we're doing this right now in a lot of different countries.
We're doing this in Iran.
We have crippling sanctions on them, killing tons of people with these.
We're doing this in all types of countries.
And obviously, we kill people in other ways besides sanctions.
We have a more direct approach, like drones.
Yeah, and drones and bombs and lots of guns and tanks and good stuff like that.
But it's fucking, you know, like that is really something crazy to think about.
War, Wealth, and Government Failure00:13:01
I mean, we really got to like.
So, you know, when people say my message is don't disengage, my message is fucking disengage, okay?
Disengage.
Leave these barbaric, primitive countries alone.
Hopefully, some of them will figure it out.
I love to have, you know, and if we had a true, like, libertarian economy, if things were really thriving, we could have a much easier immigration policy.
I'd love to say, like, hey, whoever of you guys want to come live in the sophisticated world, I'd more than welcome you over here.
Let's put Israel in Canada and fuck this whole fucking region.
Like, fuck them.
They can figure it out or not figure it out.
But for us to, like, be going over there, just murder.
I mean, look, just because they have primitive countries doesn't mean like their life is less valuable and we can just fucking take out their children because we, it's like, makes sense for our oil interests or lithium or whatever the fuck it is we're after anyway there.
That's what gets me all passionate, and this is why when people like uh when when, even like when Dave Kinney who, who will be back on our show this week when he was like oh, you know, I can't, I can't believe you're not supporting uh, Mitt Romney because he's just so much closer to you than Obama is, it's like no, these neocons are no fucking closer to me.
Okay, they're no closer to me, and I know that just because like, libertarians talk about small government fiscally, it kind of puts us like on the Republican side, but it's no, these people are no fucking closer to me.
All right, especially not Mitt Romney.
Yeah, I want to stop murdering children, and no one's talking about that.
Well, one guy was, one old Texas congressman was, but he's out of the race now.
All right.
Well, to make things a little bit lighter, let's now go to our new segment, which we unveiled last week but never actually made it to air, and it's called we're better than cable news because we are.
We are we're better than cable.
Like listening to this show once a week is more, is better.
You'll get a better understanding than watching most cable news shows.
I say that not to be arrogant.
That's not me bragging, that's simply a statement on how fucking retarded cable news is.
I think dude, when I was up in Canada I saw like Uh, Anderson Cooper's other show a few times, whatever that other show he does now.
Oh, does he have like a talk a day?
Yeah, but it's like a Ricky Lake or some shit.
Yeah, like he just interviews like a tranny and then like some like I don't know some mom who like broke a bottle of in her kid's neck or something was like I was so scared she had a bottle in her.
Like just these ridiculous stories.
And it's like fucking, like aren't you CNNS, like big news guy?
How do you?
How are you allowed to do that bottle story reel?
That actually sounds kind of no, I was just making it, I was trying to make it funny up.
It didn't really work.
No I, I was just wondering what the context of that was.
It never happened.
I'm a liar, I was just wondering.
I wasn't trying to throw you under the bus.
Yeah, all right.
Once again Jessica, you've made me look stupid no, but anyway.
So we are better than Cable NEWS.
Yeah, and to help us prove that point, let's cue American Election Headquarters with Megan Kelly on FOX NEWS.
By the way, according to Bill O'reilly, this is one of their hard news shows.
He talks about that.
He said this is one of their hard news shows.
This isn't like the opinion stuff.
God damn, it.
Was he more like hard to fact check.
I mean, I will just never, literally for the life of me.
I will never just first hit, unmute and then play it.
I play it every time and I go.
Why is it not all right?
Well, new backlash today over a new item uh, for sale on the Obama campaign website.
Take a look, artists coming up with prints that you can buy on the campaign website.
One outlines the United States, another is another shot at the American flag.
50 things liberals love to hate people are now just for anyone who doesn't understand it, I don't know, it's Obama's got something that's like an American flag and then one's like an American flag in the shape of America.
Yeah, like for Obama, which I mean?
Last I checked, that is the country he's the president of yep, Really upset about them messing with the flag.
If I have to explain to Alan or any liberal why Americans are positively livid over this desecration of the American flag, then I then I probably just am in the wrong line of work.
Imagine the way veterans you know what, dude?
You're in the wrong line of work.
You are in the wrong fucking line of work.
And if veterans are going to be pissed about anything, I don't think they're going to be mad about this.
I think they're going to be pissed that the veterans' jobs bill was not passed by.
Somebody's going to suck my dick, dude.
How about the fact that we're sending them to fucking war and not doing shit to take care of them when they get home?
How about that?
How about the fact that we're sending them to fucking wars that are unnecessary against countries that don't have armies?
And then we have to build an army for them while random civilians are trying to kill them.
Now the fact that Obama's using an American flag for his campaign to be president of America again is fucking ridiculous.
This is goddamn conservatives.
They go, he wasn't wearing the flag pin or he took his jacket off in the Oval Office.
Like, we're in the verge of a fucking debt crisis, you retards.
Is this what you're talking about?
We are better than the mainstream media.
And just, you know, we proved we're better than the, obviously we're better than the Fox News right-wing media.
So let's take a look at some of the left-wing media.
We did this last time with Ruben, but, you know, he never, this never got to air.
So I want to go over this one again.
I love this one.
When I hear people talk about reducing the size of government, getting rid of government, I often think they are talking about it from the position of health and wealth.
I had a brother who had muscular dystrophy.
If there was no government, there would have been no daycare centers.
There would have been no transportation service for disabled children.
There would have been no special needs teachers.
There would have been no respite care for my parents, a relief from caring for a child 24 hours a day.
That's what government meant to my family.
All right, first off, that is, I mean, what a load of fucking shit.
That's Martin Bashir on MSNBC as Lean Forward Commercial, which is like, first off, it's totally cheating to bring a guy in with an English accent who's partisan.
English accent already says, I'm smarter than you, and I'm calling this down the middle.
This is the most ridiculous.
Let's just break this down for a second, Speaker.
All right.
When I hear people talk about reducing the size of government, getting rid of government, I often think they are talking about it from the position of health and wealth.
Okay, now first off, he goes, when I hear people talk about reducing the size of government, getting rid of government, who the fuck is talking about getting rid of government?
Besides, like, my three favorite philosophers, who the fuck else in the mainstream world that Martin Bashir has ever heard of is talking about getting rid of government, living in an anarchy?
Where's this anarchist party he's talking about?
What is a few people on Occupy Wall Street and Stephan Molyneux?
I mean, who the fuck is he talking about?
I'm like very, by the way, I'm a minarchist probably, but I'm very intrigued by like free market anarchism.
But who is he talking about?
Is getting rid of the government?
So then he says, I had a brother who had they're coming from a position of health and wealth.
Health and wealth are the people who like freedom.
I guess.
And how about most people like freedom?
Yeah, how about the fact that we were the country that all the poorest immigrants in the world came to for fucking freedom?
They didn't come here for a government, you know, guaranteed health care.
We didn't have government.
We had no involvement in healthcare with our federal government back then.
But yet all the people of the world were coming here away from, by the way, running from Europe, which had government health care, which had these government programs.
So it's not only people who have health and wealth who like free markets.
Actually, free markets, a lot of poor people would like to pay less taxes.
By the way, a lot of those people in the Tea Party rallies weren't coming from the position of health and wealth.
And most of his fucking liberals come from that position.
But anyway, so then he goes...
No government.
There would have been no government.
There would have been no daycare centers.
There would have been no transportation service for disabled children.
There would have been no special needs teachers.
There would have been no respite care for my parents.
Literally, the argument.
Now, this is the logic of the argument.
If there was no slavery, we wouldn't have cotton.
That's the logic of the argument.
You go, if there was no government, there would be none of these services.
How the fuck do you know?
Have you ever lived in a world without government?
Obviously, there's a need for these services, right?
There's a need for them.
You want these services for your brother, right?
There's a lot of people who have a brother with muscular dystrophy.
You guys want these services, right?
There's a need for them.
But you know for a fact they would not be provided for if there was no government.
They might not be as accessible.
They may not be as cheap.
Or maybe they would be more accessible and cheaper.
That's the other possibility.
Yeah, maybe.
No, you're right.
Maybe.
But maybe they would be provided better.
It's literally, look, this is, by the way, this was an argument for slavery.
I'm not making this up.
The argument was they go, well, if we didn't have the slaves who would pick the cotton, we wouldn't have cotton.
No one's going to do that.
No white person's going to go out there and pick cotton in the world.
But, you know, you couldn't.
But we found way better ways to pick cotton as soon as that evil institution was removed.
So the fact that we have to put a gun to someone's rib and tax them and then fucking provide this service doesn't mean it wouldn't exist.
They just go, oh, government things just wouldn't exist anymore.
All of a sudden, we would just, people would just be dying in the streets.
Who the fuck knows?
Anyway, the message overall is we are better than cable news.
And when you listen to this, if you listen to it again, just envision Martin Bashir with a southern accent.
And he doesn't sound that smart.
Isn't that the greatest point?
You made an excellent point there.
You put Martin Bashir.
I think when people talk about limited government, they're coming from a position of health and wealth.
Because without government, no one take care of my brother.
Muscular dystrophy.
You'll be like, who the fuck is this retard?
But he comes up and he's like, hello, love.
Spot a tea.
No government.
No one would take care of my brother.
And you're like, all right, this guy knows more than me.
It's cheating.
It's cheating.
It's what MSNBC does best.
They cheat.
Let's do fucking one more dumb MSNBC one, and then we'll wrap on that.
I want to do something leave on a positive note.
I think last time it was the Al Sharpton, was it?
Oh, that's always fun.
You know, let's do a different one.
Let's take on something a little smarter than that dumb pie commercial.
That one I don't even have to take on.
I'll just play that.
I'll play that at the end.
Climate change is the biggest governing challenge we face.
This is Chris Hayes, by the way.
One of the best shows on MSNBC.
Probably one of the smartest guys.
Climate change is the biggest governing challenge we face.
It's the biggest governing challenge I think we've ever faced.
One way or another, we're going to have to dramatically reduce the amount of carbon we're putting in the atmosphere.
And the scale and scope of that undertaking is every bit as transformational as the Industrial Revolution or the transition to the digital age.
And you can think about that as terrifying, or you can think about it as thrilling.
I love the ending goes.
It's just something about that.
Now, you could be scared by this assertion that I've made that's backed up by no evidence.
But I think it's thrilling.
All right, first off, to just say global warming is the biggest challenge we've ever faced, um, maybe, or maybe it's not even in the top thousand.
We'll see.
I mean, this is fucking, like, to say this is every bit as transformational as the Industrial Revolution, you don't get to decide that something's as transformational as the Industrial Revolution before it happens.
Okay?
Maybe, or maybe, we just kind of reduce the levels of carbon that we use.
It's not super revolutionary, and global warming never comes true.
Because by the way, if you look at what environmentalists in the 80s were predicting, we're already supposed to be underwater.
That's the fucking truth.
Like what Al Gore predicted, we're only a few years away.
So we'll find out.
But listen, Chris Hayes, in five years, when I'm sitting in my fucking apartment in downtown Brooklyn, which is still right at the same level of fucking water it's always been, maybe we'll look back and say, this wasn't the challenge of our lives.
This wasn't our government's challenge.
Maybe not killing another half a million Iraqis was the fucking challenge of our times.
I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe he meant like literally big, the earth.
Climate change is the biggest governing challenge we face.
It's the biggest governing challenge I think we've ever faced.
He says, I think we've ever faced.
It's the biggest challenge we face.
It's the biggest challenge I think we've ever faced.
I mean, so he'll at least concede he thinks it's the biggest ever, but it's the biggest now.
It's the biggest challenge we face.
That's like when a weatherman is like, oh, there's a 50% chance of rain.
You gotta.
That way, if you're wrong, no one can really yell at you.
Right.
You didn't say you were positive about it.
Right, right.
I mean, look, to say that's the big, we have so many big challenges right now that we know our challenges.
I'm not saying maybe that's the biggest challenge we've maybe it's one of our big challenges.
Maybe it's not even one of the big challenges.
But for sure, you know, $16 trillion of debt.
That's a challenge.
For sure, our foreign occupations of countries, that's a challenge.
But God forbid we fucking have any real fucking discussion on any of these dumb shows.
Debunking Trickle-Down Economics00:03:05
And I do, whatever, I do get a little bit more annoyed at MSNBC than I do at, say, Fox News because these guys are supposed to be the fucking, like, intellectuals.
Yeah, I know.
And I'm sorry.
When people watch Fox News, most of them know what they're getting into.
Yeah.
They don't expect.
I first heard it.
Sorry.
Oh, no, I was going to say, they don't expect it to necessarily be accurate or intelligent.
Fox News is for dummies, primarily.
MSNBC is for smart people who believe dumb shit.
So I have a hope that maybe I could snap them out of it.
I first heard it when Ronald Reagan went in, 1980.
We're in the 21st century.
How long are we going to wait for the trickle?
I mean, we've been waiting and waiting and waiting.
It never got down to us.
30 years later, we got the down, but we never got the trickle.
Well, I mean, first off, first point I would make on this is I love trickle-down economics, which by the way, I've heard several times is the only thing that ever makes me want to defend Romney when they go his plan is trickle-down economics.
You know, trickle-down economics is one of those terms that's never actually been owned by anyone.
No one's ever been for trickle-down economics.
Like, Reagan never used the term.
No conservatives ever used the term.
I challenge you to ever find a conservative who said, I'm for trickle-down economics.
This is a name given to, you know, like free market thinking, lowering taxes, than given by liberals.
And there's something very, very telling in the term trickle-down, okay?
Because it's very telling is that the implication there, for you to believe that cutting taxes is trickle-down, you have to believe on some level that the government owns your wages first.
Because cutting your taxes, giving you your money back, is them giving money to the top and hoping it trickles down to the bottom.
But you're not actually giving any money to the top.
You're just stealing less of it, okay?
That's the first understanding that you have to make.
That's not trickle-down.
Now, the current system that we have, let's just compare what I would like to have, like a free market system compared to what we have right now.
In my system, everybody gets to keep the fruits of their labor.
You get to keep the productions that you make and the government can't come steal it from you.
Taxes have to be voluntary.
That's my system, okay?
That's what's called trickle-down.
Their system is the Federal Reserve prints money and distributes it to banks, and then those banks get to divvy it out to people.
Which one is a fucking trickle-down theory?
Then the government, the government steals your money, and then the government gets to distribute it to everybody.
How does mine get called trickle-down?
It doesn't even make any fucking sense.
Free markets are like a bottom-up process, and there is a real, to say trickle-down, it's like cutting rich people's taxes is not giving them money.
It's taking less of it.
It's fucking, you know, who owns your fucking money, people.
Like, I don't know.
It's just a completely backward thought.
And, um, you know, no one ever, uh, again, no one ever uses the term trickle-down.
No one believes in trickle-down economics.
Fox News and Advertising Dollars00:02:15
It's like a straw man argument.
Um, hold on.
Grew up here in Brooklyn, and we used to come home from school.
My mother, some of the ladies in the neighborhood would make blueberry pie, and we would rush in knowing our mothers was still working.
And we'd eat.
They'd come in.
Did y'all eat the pie?
No, and blueberry would be all over our face.
That's what happens when I look at the GOP.
They talk about the economy's bad, and we didn't do it.
We were the ones fighting, but they got the blueberry pie all over their face.
They were the ones eating the pie.
If you had blueberry pie all over your face, you have really poor table manners.
First off, that's a very good point.
Who the fuck taught you how to eat pie?
Are there no nappies?
Jesus Christ.
First off, if you've ever seen Al Sharpton at the beginning of his career, he was eating a lot of blueberry pie, and I don't think he was using utensils.
But that, I mean, if you had to make a list of dumbest political commercials of all time, it's unbelievable they give this guy a show.
It's unfucking believable.
For them to make fun of anyone, to make fun of anyone like, I mean, it's as, I mean, look, you can make fun of like Hannity and guys like that.
But I mean, come on.
Al Sharpton's show is about as dumb as it gets.
Here's the thing, though.
But that doesn't mean it's not believable that he would get a show because he gets attention.
We're talking about him.
People are going to watch him.
That gives them advertising dollars.
So in that sense, it is believable that he'd have a show.
It's not beneficial to anyone other than.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think.
Look, the truth is the ratings, MSNBC's ratings are horrible all around.
Fox News destroys them.
CNN beats them out, and Fox News destroys everyone.
Fox News just gets more ratings than any other cable news source.
I had a friend of mine.
He was a...
He'll remain nameless because I don't think he would want me repeating that he said this to me.
But he worked in the cable news world, and he was like, he does pretty well for himself in the world.
And he said that MSNBC's deal is they are not actually playing to ratings.
They're playing to money interests.
Like there's these progressives, these big rich progressives who send MSNBC a lot of money.
And as long as they please them, they'll keep their fucking funding coming in.
So it's not as much even ratings.
It's like, whereas Fox is a little bit more of a slave to the average dumb American.
Progressives Funding Media Interests00:03:05
So they've got to get on there with their flag.
Obama's using the flag in the wrong way.
Aren't you outraged?
This is the issue of our time.
But then, of course, you know, you have the intellectuals on MSNBC going, this pseudoscience is the fucking issue of our time, which may or may not be a problem.
By the way, one volcano fucking moves like a half an inch and it releases more carbon than human beings have ever released in the entire existence of humans.
Like it's our, you know, the sun fucking goes up one tiny little percentage and it creates more warmth than anything we could ever do.
We're very, very insignificant in a universal scale.
This idea that it's like a science, scientific fact, that this is the issue of our time is fucking bullshit.
It's bullshit.
Anyway.
I don't know.
I wouldn't be against global warming because I could go swimming on my birthday.
My birthday's in November.
I don't want to have to go to Australia to have a pool party.
Yeah, really?
That would be cool.
I'm not against it.
Well, maybe it'll come someday.
If Chris Hayes is any good at predicting the future, Chris Nostradamus Hayes says this is the biggest issue of our time.
Maybe he's right.
All right.
Well, that's pretty much everything I had to go through, Jess.
I think we covered a lot on this issue.
It was good to be back.
Yeah.
I'm excited.
We'll have this out.
Everybody, if you want to come see me, I will be tonight, Sunday night.
I'll be at Eastville Comedy Club.
If you guys want to come out, it's on 4th Street and 2nd Avenue.
Come say what's up.
If not for that, follow me on Twitter at ComicDave Smith.
Follow Jess at OhayJess Sager.
And follow the show at The Problem Show.
Yeah, and come see me at Caroline's on Wednesday.
It's free.
It's at 7 o'clock.
Come see, please, please.
Come see Jess Sager.
Caroline's Wednesday, 7 o'clock.
It's a show for the New York Comedy Festival, right?
It's like an audition show, I guess.
All right.
You can make it sound a little bit better.
You could make it sound like you're doing it.
It's a show for the New York Comedy Festival.
That would have been enough to tell people.
Yes.
So come see Jess, laugh, heckle, throw shit, whatever you got to do.
Don't throw shit.
Don't throw shit.
Actually, no, I'm agile.
You can throw shit.
You can throw.
Give a little bit of water.
It's fine.
It's Caroline's.
Those are big lights in Caroline's.
So if you're going to throw shit, sit up front so she has a fair chance to duck.
Is that fair enough?
Yeah, that's fine.
All right, guys, listen.
Once again, seriously, thank you guys so much for listening.