Dave Smith and Jessica Sager dissect the Obama-Romney debate, criticizing media manipulation regarding Benghazi and the NDAA while challenging the "binders full of women" gaffe as a sexist distraction from economic mandates. They argue against government interference in birth control pricing, debunk the 77-cent wage gap statistic by citing personal choices over discrimination, and condemn bipartisan support for drone strikes across Yemen and Pakistan. Ultimately, the hosts assert that both parties enable a revolving door of corporate interests and long-term Pentagon plans to remake the Middle East, urging listeners to reject establishment narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Stop and Flow in America00:02:01
You are listening to Part of the Problem.
And he looks at her and says, hey, darling, I can remember when you could stop and flow.
Oh, but ain't that America for you and me.
Ain't that America?
Something to see, baby.
Ain't that America?
All mother free.
Little black houses for you and me.
For instance, when he says, yours is a $5 trillion cut.
Well, no, it's not because I'm offsetting some of the reductions with holding down some of the deductions.
Governor, I gotta actually, I need to have you both hang up.
I understand the stakes here.
I understand both of you, but I will get run out of the street.
I just described to you, Mr. President.
I just described to you precisely how I do it with a single number that people can put and they can put their deductions and credits into that.
Mr. President, we're keeping track, I promise you.
And those are the great minds battling it out for our country following John Cougar Mellenkamp.
Real Questions About Conspiracy00:09:17
I thought, is that not ridiculous that that is actually real?
That clip?
That was like almost a minute full of just them all speaking over each other, being weird.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Part of the Problem.
Thanks for listening.
I thought that would be fun to play coming in.
How is everybody?
I hope you're good.
Thanks for listening.
I'm here joined by, as always, by Jessica Sager.
Hello.
And welcome back.
One of our favorite guests, Ruben Mehta.
Hey, Dave.
How's it going, buddy?
So, what'd you guys think of the debate?
It gave me a headache.
It's crazy, right?
I mean, it is what it is at this point.
I mean, you're not going to learn anything.
No one's going to say anything of any consequence.
It was really snippy, though.
Like, both of them, man.
I mean, it was like, this is just weird and tense.
They both brought it.
Well, I think Obama knew he had to pick up the energy.
And Romney obviously prepared for that.
Yeah, I mean, Romney, I did.
I thought, I don't know.
I guess overall, I thought Obama won just because Romney kind of showed that bad side of Romney that he didn't show in the first debate.
But in that second debate, he showed that little kind of condescending sniffy, like when he gets angry and he, and he just fucked up.
He's getting a lot of heat for some bullshit, but he did fuck up in a couple just political ways that you can't.
I mean, that answer on Benghazi, we'll get into that in a little bit, but that was terrible.
Well, I think that's always where he's going to struggle is the foreign policy.
Yeah, but it's not even so much like the foreign policy as much as it is just the way he words things.
He fucks up when he says things like, I like to watch sport like all Americans do.
And you're like, what?
Who the fuck is this guy?
Sport, what?
He says these weird little things.
And when that, you know, when it shows that he is Not actually a human being.
I mean, that's when it's yeah, that he's like from this weird country of Mormonia or whatever.
And like, we don't, when that stuff shows through, it's really bad.
And then Obama gets to be the guy just like smoking a cigar, all cool.
Yeah.
But I'll tell you, it is weird, man.
Obama's never cool in the debates.
No, he doesn't like being put on the stage.
It's unbelievable, dude.
The next day on the stump, you're like, who is this smooth motherfucker who wasn't at the debate last night?
He's just destroyed when he's like, oh, he's got this thing.
I think we'll call it Romnesia.
You know, he's on the side and he's just so smooth.
And you're like, where the fuck is this guy whenever he's challenged at all?
When he's challenged by someone else, he can't pull any of this off.
Yeah.
Well, whenever you watch him with the press corps, the White House Press Corps, he always struggles a little.
He's not necessarily great on his feet, but if he's the only one in the room with a mic, he's unbelievable.
Yeah.
You know, I thought last week when Janine was on, which, by the way, big thank you to Janine Garofilo for doing that interview last week.
As I told you guys, we were talking about, I don't know how evident it is, but I was a little nervous interviewing Janine.
To me, it was up.
But I was a little, I don't know why.
It's adorable.
I mean, I've had a million conversations with Janine, but it was just interviewing for the podcast.
It was like the first, you know, name that we found.
No offense, Ruben.
You're a pretty big name.
No, no.
Janine was the first, you know.
I take zero offense to the movie star that we've had on says, I don't know.
It was just a little.
But I thought one of the interesting things that she said was when she said that they were on, when they were when she was on the West Wing, that for prep for the show or whatever, they hung out with the actual people from the Women's League or whoever was in charge of the debate, like running the debates and stuff.
And they talked about how the moderators have these agreements with both candidates.
There's all these questions that are out of bounds.
And that's why no real questions are asked.
And in this next debate on foreign policy, none of the real questions that should be asked will be.
Right.
Of course.
Although, didn't the moderator for the last debate, Candy, refuse to sign one of the, I forget what the name of the actual document was.
I think it was like called a modicum of understanding or something.
Yeah, she didn't sign.
But, I mean, CNN did sign, but she didn't sign.
And then she made a little stink about it.
And then she got tons of heat.
And she really didn't do much.
I mean, she didn't do much extra.
I mean, I'm talking about like, I mean, I said this last podcast a little bit, but like real questions that an honest media you think would ask.
Yeah.
Like, how could the NDAA not come up?
Right.
Are we an open country or not?
How could that not come up?
I'm not even saying, like, make the argument that we have to pass this, but that's not a discussion.
We don't get to talk about that.
I've said this before, and I'll keep saying this.
The alternative media, like the internet media, is way too conspiracy theory-ish.
There's too much of that bullshit on the internet.
And the mainstream media, there's not nearly enough.
There's not nearly enough conspiracy shit.
It's like there should be a little tinge of it.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's natural if you're an open press that when the government comes out and says, we're going to pass a law that says we can arrest American citizens without charges.
You go, you know what?
No, we're a little concerned.
We're a little concerned about some conspiracy.
Let's ask that question.
The fact that that question doesn't come up, that these guys don't have to go on record in front of 60 million people.
Absolutely.
Because the 60 million people don't even fucking know.
No, they have no idea.
I'm sure if it were brought up in the debate, a lot of people's jaws would drop if they found out that was that Obama could now kill an American citizen.
That's why they should have Jesse Ventura moderate one of the debates.
He had an entire show about conspiracy theories.
Jesse Ventura, it would be very interesting to see Jesse Ventura.
Look, Jesse Ventura is a crazy dude, but he brings up some very interesting shit.
He talks about stuff that no one else talks about.
You know, Jesse Ventura said that the first day he was governor, there was a CIA agent waiting in his office to meet him.
And he was like, look, this isn't just me.
He was like, this wasn't just in Minnesota.
Like, this is what you do.
Like the CIA is in every single state, like telling you, and he basically gives him like what his agenda is supposed to be.
And more or less, I think Judge Ventura's like, fuck you.
I'm a pro wrestler.
I'll body slam you.
I'll suplex everyone in the CIA.
And I guess it, you know, whatever.
He didn't run again, but I guess he was able to stay in for a little bit.
Yeah.
But no, but I mean, how did questions like?
Go ahead.
But you look at the last debate was done in a town hall format.
It's funny just how the questions were so similar to what was asked in the first debate.
Yeah, there was so little difference.
I think it sucks.
I think it's just generic.
Well, the theory behind it is that real Americans ask, but they're asked just the same generic.
What would you do to create jobs?
They both.
And neither, even when they rig the questions, they won't answer them.
I know it's like that.
That is what you said, this real Americans ask real questions.
That's like how they sell it.
That's like it.
But it's so just, I don't know.
It's just, first off, it's, I know, I mean, I don't know the exact details, but I know it's something like what Janine said for this one, too.
Like, it's not just any person.
Oh, no, absolutely not.
These questions are screened.
Absolutely.
But then it's even just the idea of it.
It's like when the new, like when they have guys on CNN and they go, so-and-so in Los Angeles tweets.
What are you going to do about the economy?
Why do we have to pretend that, like, let's get questions from the people?
The people really know.
Like, no, I want a professional journalist to ask the right question.
Is that crazy?
If you went on Twitter and whatever, if you're searching by a hashtag or whatever, you could pull out some really great questions.
They choose to.
Yes, but then ask it.
Why do you have to hide behind this gym on Twitter?
Ask, like, you just ask the question.
Shouldn't you know what the good question is without having to choose through it?
No, no.
If you're already choosing, you're kind of like, I know what the good question is.
And then I'm going to look through these lists and pick the good question.
Like, just ask the good question.
Why do we have to make people feel good?
It's like we're always pandering to like, oh, you guys are so smart when the American people are in.
Yeah, they were.
Half of them couldn't even pay their own stuff.
They were awful speakers.
They were awful.
The one funny thing is, if I had the chance and I, even if I got a question screen and got passed through, how does not one person decide, you know what, this is live TV?
I'm going off script.
Dude, I was going to say that.
I mean, you know, I would love that moment, but I think they would pre-screen me.
You know what the problem is?
They'd see the gleam in your eye.
They'd know there's no way this guy's reading off a cue card.
I was just going to ask what I was going to ask.
I just want to know, like, how much do you love America?
Oh, man.
There's no way.
Which I'm actually shocked that question didn't come up.
Tell me why you love America.
But it's like the thing.
I remember whenever the hurricane, not after Katrina in New Orleans was, it was the one after Katrina where they were worried again by the levies.
And I remember CNN was doing this thing where they were doing man on the street interviews about what people in New Orleans thought about the levees.
Yeah.
And they're just interviewing these like dirt, poor, ignorant people in like, and by not white and black, by the way.
It's not, but they'd be interviewing all these people just about what they thought on the levees.
Absolutely.
And it'd literally be like just some chick with eight babies.
Like, oh, them levies gonna hold.
They ain't gonna break.
And just like some guy can MGD, like just sitting there like, damn levees are gonna break.
I've seen them break before.
They go.
And you're like, can we get an expert on levees?
Like, what is this bullshit that it's better for the people?
Let's have the people like tell us what they think.
Fuck the people.
Shocking Expectations of Obama00:08:14
Let's get the really, really smart people.
Yeah.
Well, anytime you watch the local news, something will happen.
And if they can't get a good statement from the cops, they go into the street and people will literally say on television, I'm not really sure what happened.
But then they just keep talking and they air it.
Yeah, it's insane, dude.
It's like, why, Would any of this be happening?
Why would anyone want to see these dumbbells?
Everyone's opinion is equal now.
I know.
It's fucking crazy.
But anyway, but the questions I can say, like in this next foreign policy debate, I know for a fact there won't be anything about the NDIA brought up in that.
There won't be anything about Obama's kill list.
Yeah.
Like, oh, the president has a kill list.
And that's, there was like, I mean, I got a bit, the Times did one article on it, and that got a huge, huge reaction from people.
That won't get brought up.
How does that not get?
How do you defend not asking these questions?
The brilliant thing about it is, is neither party wants that brought up.
Obama wants to seem very he wants to seem like he's not doing that.
And Romney doesn't want people to know what Obama's really like on foreign policy.
Yeah, that's true.
He wants to promote the image that Obama soft.
Yeah, I know.
He doesn't want to bring up drones.
No matter what the reality is, he cannot move away from that position for whatever.
So it's perfect for both parties.
Neither wants to talk about it.
So the moderator will not bring it up.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
And it's, I mean, another, when they're talking about in both the first two debates, when they're going back and forth about the military numbers, like, you know, Mitt Romney's claiming Obama wants to cut the military.
Obama's claiming Mitt Romney wants to add to the military.
And the fact that no one mentions that, this is just a thing.
I mean, it's not mentioned much in the mainstream media.
The Pentagon lost a trillion dollars.
Yeah.
There's a trillion dollars unaccounted for.
In the Pentagon.
Trillion.
With a fucking T.
A thousand billion dollars.
Got lost.
It's completely unaccounted for.
Some of it's gone in Iraq.
Some of it's gone over here.
Maybe some went to some secret pro, but no one fucking knows.
Well, see, that's the thing.
No accounting.
The CIA probably has a pretty good idea where every dime is.
I don't even know.
We don't know.
I mean, we don't know.
I doubt they legitimately lost it.
They just don't want to say.
Darn it.
They don't dare tell us where they're going.
Whatever they spent it on is so bad, it saves face to be like, we just lost that money.
I don't think so.
The CIA doesn't get funded like that.
I mean, the CIA gets some funding that's on the table, but the CIA funds itself.
Like, the CIA does its own missions to raise its own money to do its own fucking shit.
This is like just regular Department of Defense spending that is just fucking such a bureaucracy that it's fucking lost.
I mean, that system is so crazy.
But just that you would be a moderator sitting there while these guys are talking about the like, my opponent wants to cut by $4 trillion.
My opponent wants to add by $4 trillion.
You go, maybe I'm going to bring up the fact that there's a missing trillion.
Yeah.
There's a missing fucking trillion for that.
It doesn't even get mentioned.
And neither of you are going to try to find out what happened.
No, it's just not even a non-issue.
A non-issue.
No one's going to fucking talk about this.
At this time, when we're like all going crazy about this $16 trillion debt, it's like, you know, a trillion of that.
Like, that's a big fucking deal.
One-sixteenth of that is just completely unaccounted for in this military.
And that's let alone for all, you know, the things like all the fucking $80 phones and shit like that.
That money is accounted for.
We know where that is, and it's just being wasted.
This is just a whole trillion.
And God, yeah.
And by the way, maybe I'm wrong, and it is going to like some CIA shit or something like that.
But I guarantee if that's the case, it's going to something fucking evil.
Yeah.
Something really evil.
Something so bad that you're just like, just tell him we lost it.
Yeah, when lost it is.
That sounds better, yeah.
Anyway, they're both too.
They are just also bad.
I said this a couple weeks ago, but I think there's something to just how both you see in these guys, and it's what the reason why, I mean, Ron Paul, who I haven't talked about in a few weeks, he really has been killing you as well.
Look, it's not Ron, you know, Ron Paul is pretty much, I'm going to talk about Ron Paul a little bit on this episode.
But Ron Paul is, you know, the move, the Ron Paul, obviously he's not like the political figure anymore.
I mean, now it's just kind of like reminiscing on his career and where the movement's going to go from here.
But he's not like the leader in the same way anymore.
But there was a reason Ron Paul was never a great communicator in the sense, like, he was never like a really smooth, charismatic guy.
He kind of stutters a lot.
He talks in run-on sentences.
He has his issues as a communicator, which he talks about all the time.
But he would be such a passionate debater, and he won so many people over in the debates because he was real.
Like he was being honest, and you could tell it.
This is just a guy who always votes the Constitution.
He's got the best record in the history of Congress.
He's the most consistent guy.
Whether you say best or not, he's the most consistent guy ever.
So he's just arguing what he believes.
And you can just see in both these guys, Romney and Obama, they're not.
They're both full of shit.
They're clearly both full of shit.
And that's why neither of them can go that full extra mile and call out the other one for being full of shit.
Because he also knows he's full of shit.
Yeah.
You expose yourself.
Yeah, everything's going to come back to them.
You know, Obama was able to call out Bush for his shit and McCain for his shit because he was coming from an honest place back then.
Yeah, he did have his own shit.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Now he's, now it's, and you can just see that and there's uh, I don't know, there's something about that.
That's a real turnoff, like you can just tell when he's like these guys.
Neither of them that's.
That's why, instead of arguing over like the big things, it comes down to these little issues.
But I am it's so surprising.
I think that's why they're shockingly bad.
They're both shockingly bad at debating.
Am I crazy?
They're both, because I think in Obama's case he knows he's saying something he doesn't believe.
Romney will just say anything like I think Obama's very deliberate in his misdirection.
Romney just says whatever's convenient at the time exactly, and I?
So Obama has beliefs and just can't necessarily say them.
Maybe or I don't know.
I mean I a lot of I feel like a lot of people put that on Obama.
I'm not quite sure.
I also think why, I don't know.
I think part of it has to do with people's expectations of Obama because, like Ruben said earlier, when you put him by himself he's so good, so people think that will automatically translate into a setup like a debate, and it doesn't always.
Yeah, Romney's it, though.
Romney's as bad on on his own as he is in a debate.
But I don't get that Obama thing that Jessica's talking about.
I don't get that.
How are you that good alone and you can't translate that into like being that guy with someone else there?
No, but it's like.
Why doesn't he say Romnesia to Romney?
Like, why isn't he that guy to Romney?
I don't get it.
It's much easier when you have a teleprompter and there's no one cutting you off, there's no one speaking over you.
What type of pussy shit is that then?
Oh, you know what I mean.
Yeah, come on man, like what the fuck it's like?
I mean it.
I it's like it's.
It's also the thing you can never be called out on.
Anything you say, everyone in the crowd is a supporter of yours.
Exactly that's the only way this guy can do well, if everyone's like pampering him, I just it's baffling to me.
Don't, don't understand.
I mean it's true.
It's probably true for most politicians.
I mean, in any room it's easier.
It's easier to make your friends laugh than it is to make a group of strangers laugh.
They're already with you.
Yeah no, absolutely you know.
That's why it's all about if you can make strangers laugh.
It's why Romney struggles with his own supporters because they don't really like him.
Yeah well, I mean they like him a little bit more now.
Well, now I mean they have no choice.
Yeah, you know you love, you'll love him till November because he's yours.
I could, but I mean I mean look Romney, they're both.
It's like having a retarded baby, that is.
We know what you would do about that.
Well yeah, I wouldn't have take care of that early on.
I would have a retarded fetus.
Jessica won't have it, just in case it's retarded.
Yeah, she doesn't even have the.
She doesn't even have the test done to see doctor.
It feels she's just like this baby feels retarded doctor, it feels retarded.
Can we, can we take care of this?
Yeah ma'am, I don't.
There's no indication here.
Trust me, I know we have a retard, I know I couldn't believe.
Establishment Neocon Tax Cuts00:08:35
Uh, It blows my mind how bad these guys wait.
Mitt Romney's handling of the George W. Bush Question.
They asked him, How are you different from Bush?
You know what was funny?
He started talking about drilling oil.
Yeah.
Like George W. Bush from oil, Texas, this is your difference that you're into oil.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
How about the guy who ran up the biggest deficits in the history of the Republican Party?
Maybe throw a fucking bullshit line.
Do you not have a bullshit line about that prepared?
Well, George, but you know, after 9-11, we got a little carried away with the spend.
Nothing, right?
Nothing like that.
You go, you know, oil.
It was unfortunate they didn't make Obama answer the same question.
Oh, God, I would have loved.
Yeah.
You know, and no one will break it.
No one will dare speak that narrative, which is the glaringly truth.
The glaring truth that's through everything is that Obama has continued.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, I just don't want to sound like that, you know, the same thing I say every single week, but it's unfucking real that they let Obama get up there and he goes, My friend, my friend would keep the Bush tax cuts.
The ones that you've kept the Bush tax cuts.
You kept the Bush tax cuts.
They're still here.
They're the Obama tax cuts now.
Yeah.
The Bush tax cuts expired in an old Democratic.
It is funny that after four years, they're still.
I mean, obviously, they came in under Bush, but if you keep them going every year, he goes, Yes, they expired.
The Bush tax cuts expired.
These are the Obama taxes.
He goes, George Bush cut taxes for the wealthy and put two wars on the credit card.
You fucking charging them.
You're signing the bill every year for those.
How is he able to do this?
He literally cites policies that he's all about image, though.
It's nothing has to do with reality.
I mean, you remember in 08, like, how adamant he was about the idea of keeping terrorists in jail without a trial.
Yeah.
And now you can do it to an American citizen.
But that's how they get you.
They soften you up.
At first, it's like, well, a terrorist doesn't deserve a trial.
And once they get you used to that, now it's, well, if we say the American's a terrorist, that doesn't need a trial either.
That's exactly the slippery slope.
Then they go, well, anyone who we declare friends with the terrorists.
That's actually the language in the NDA bill: we go, anyone who we declare either a terrorist or could be aiding a terrorist or is aiding al-Qaeda or aiding someone who's aiding Al-Qaeda.
Right.
I mean, but, you know, there's no, we fucking, we killed they could like detain heroin addicts for buying opium.
Oh, well, we do all types.
We do all types of shit to the heroin people over there.
People who are buying heroin, you know, like over in Afghanistan, who we oh, these guys were linked to the Taliban.
They're in GitHub.
What?
There's no, there's just someone we paid off, sent them some people.
I mean, it's all crazy.
But I did want to.
All right.
So anyway, the debate overall, I thought, was kind of snippy.
Mitt Romney fucked up a few big times.
He fucked up really bad on the Benghazi thing.
He fucked up.
A lot of people are angry at Candy Crawley for saying that Obama did call the Menghazi thing an act of terror.
It's pretty unclear in the actual thing he said in the Rose Garden.
He said he did use the term act of terror, but he said America will not stand for acts of terror around the world.
And then for like a good week, they did kind of blame this on the video.
There's no question about that.
Well, no, that's true.
But see, that's the problem with how Romney phrased it.
He said it took two weeks to use the phrase act of terrorism.
That's why it's like, yeah, yeah.
No, literally, as he said that, I was cringing.
I mean, literally sitting there, you're going, oh, dude, do you know he did say those words?
Yeah.
Just pick a different word.
Or just pick a different angle to go with that.
And that was my favorite part where Obama's like, can we get the transcript?
Oh, dude, Obama.
Because he knows he said it.
Obama had so many great things like that right now.
Proceed, Governor.
Dude, the one where he put his hands out, he goes.
I love that.
He's like, not true, motherfucker.
But the proceed was the best because it sends the message.
No, no, no, go ahead, dig that hole a little deeper.
Oh, dude, I know.
It was just terrible.
Terrible the way it was.
But yeah, that happens to Romney where if you phrase something a little differently, you could make your point, but just that wording, and now you've made a blunder.
No, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, he just the way he handled that.
And I give, you know, look, there's a lot of stuff these guys have got to remember, but he slipped on remembering exactly.
And I think this is where foreign policy is going to be the biggest place where, you know, you can say Obama has bad foreign policy, but he knows his foreign policy.
Exactly.
Romney, from what I've heard, is incredibly disinterested in foreign policy meetings.
He has no stomach for it.
And not to mention the fact that he's got Bush's foreign policy advisors.
I mean, they're a lot bigger than just being Bush's foreign policy advisors.
These are the neocons.
These are the guys who have been the advisors for the last, you know, five Republican presidents, and they are some of the scariest, scariest guys in government.
These are the guys who really, really want war with Iran.
I think if Mitt Romney gets in, they're going to get their war with Iraq.
Well, the guys who look at Iraq is a wild success.
Yeah.
That kind of guy.
Yeah.
Right.
And it was for them a success.
Oh, absolutely.
They made a lot of money.
They got what they wanted out of it.
So it's not as if, you know, from what they sold us, it was a failure.
Right.
But it's, it, you know, Iraq was quite successful for them.
For them, yeah.
But that is who the look, that seems to be the deal that Mitt Romney Mitt Romney's made some type of deal.
Like, if you understand how this, how politics in America really works, there's like, there, there is this, you can call it what the conspiracy theorists call like the Illuminati or whatever, or just like what the mainstream media calls the establishment.
But there is this core group that you have to convince in order to get within these gates of running for president.
And then it's a race.
I mean, it's a real race between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
Yeah.
But the establishment decided who they were backing, which was Romney.
This time they gave him all the money and shit like that.
If Newt Gingrich beat him without having the establishment money, the establishment would have gone, okay, he's that much stronger.
We'll give him all the establishment.
And then he's the establishment guy.
But everyone before they ran was picked as like, this guy's acceptable.
This guy.
This is why people pop up out of nowhere.
In 1992, Bill Clinton was an unknown.
He just got picked to be in there.
Barack Obama was an unknown in 2004.
He got a prime time spot in the Democrats.
You know, like the convention, the establishment of the Democrats select these people.
The establishment of the Republicans select these people.
Now, Mitt Romney in 2008 did not have the establishment behind him.
He didn't.
He ran.
If he did, he would have won.
He would have blown out McCain if he had had the establishment behind him in 2008.
They didn't get behind him.
I don't know if it's like the Mormon thing or whatever his deal is, but the establishment kind of got behind Rudy Giuliani at first.
Then he fell flat on his face.
They thought about rallying to Fred Thompson.
They ended up going to McCain ultimately in the end, someone who has just been in the Senate forever, who they probably, I guess, were a little comfortable with.
This time they went with Romney from the very beginning.
What happened in the last four years for Mitt Romney to convince the establishment to back him this time?
No one could have done it.
I think it was almost, they were just bereft of other choices.
Maybe, maybe that's it.
But there's definitely, and this is as conspiratorial as I get, but there's definitely something to he's he was not hawkish like this last time.
He took, I mean, he was a little bit, but not like this.
Well, I think that's taken, he's put all the neocons in his camp.
He's been very, very clear.
Like, whatever it was, he sold himself to the neocons in these last four years.
And that's the neocons are the power base of the Republicans.
I mean, that's the, you know, the Karl Roves and all these guys.
This is how you have to, you know, you get these guys on your team.
Well, I think he learned his lesson from 2008 that for him, he almost has to, because of things like the Mormonism, and he's not the most likable guy, he has to overcompensate in terms of policy.
Well, I do, yeah, and he's going to, I don't know, just he's the one who's claiming that Obama's so weak and he's got this different position and their positions are similar, which allows Obama to kind of point that out, and no one's going to call Obama on being the warmonger that he is.
So, what were you saying, Jessica?
I'm sorry.
Oh, no, I was going to say, Romney just has to distract people from what they already hated about him.
He needs to make them forget.
Birth Control Coverage Debate00:14:56
That's all.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Well, anyway, the whole or the only, it seems, if you want to pay attention to the media, it's funny because the polls, like, right after the debate, all showed, I think Obama, most people had Obama winning, but the big thing was that everyone thought Romney did really good on the economy part of the debate.
And that, in a lot of ways, was the most important thing to a lot of people.
You know, it's the number one issue.
He won that.
So people were kind of like, eh, that really is a silver lining for Obama.
That was the number one story according to the polls.
But, of course, the liberal media would have you think the number one story was the binder comment that that was the big deal.
And this is what's all been talked about.
So that's what we'll talk about a little bit.
But let's just play Mitt Romney's answer.
That's getting him in trouble with a lot of liberals.
I don't think this is really going to sway anyone in the middle, but we'll, here, let's go.
And one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet, and all the applicants seem to be men.
And I went to my staff and I said, how come all the people for these jobs are all men?
They said, well, these are the people that have the qualifications.
And I said, well, gosh, can't we find some women that are also qualified?
And so we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, can you help us find folks?
And they brought us whole binders full of women.
I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.
Now, one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.
But number two, because I recognize that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes they need to be more flexible.
My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.
She said, I can't be here until seven or eight o'clock at night.
I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school.
So he said, fine, let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.
We're going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy.
I'm going to bring...
All right.
Those are just the parts that...
No, Jessica, I'm going to go to you because you're making these crazy faces.
And I know this whole war on women is your thing.
So what?
What is so...
Besides the fact that, yeah, I'll give you there's a little Romneyism in there where he says the binders full of women thing was just a weird way to phrase that.
Well, that's a perfect example.
What we said earlier.
The wording there, if he had just said binders of resumes.
Yes, I 100%.
It's a throwaway line.
I concede that completely.
That taken away.
That's weird.
What's wrong with the statement?
I really, at the time, didn't see what the big deal was about it.
But when you look into the binders full of women that he's talking about, he didn't commission those binders.
He didn't commission those people.
He didn't ask for them.
You're right.
He did.
Like, he does get the story wrong a little bit.
He did not seek out.
The binders were provided to him and sought him out, not the other way around.
So he did, but every politician does that.
They all do that with their stories.
This happened before he was even elected.
Both candidates were given the binders.
During the campaign.
And apparently, and I don't know how much truth there is to this, just because we don't know who these people were and what their qualifications were individually.
But apparently, he did staff a bunch of women.
It was like 42% or something like that.
But they all got relatively useless positions.
No, That's not true.
His chief of staff was a woman.
His literally the top position was a woman.
No, like, so he's that's not true that they all had not all of them, but like most of them.
I mean, there were a lot of them with bullshit positions.
But also, like, by the end of his term as governor, it was actually down to like 25%.
Because it was actually lower than when he was in previous administration.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying, like, maybe they left on their own.
Or they were only qualified for those particular departments because of their own price.
I don't like any of this.
I hated the answer, but I hate it from completely the.
This is a liberal answer that he just gave, and the liberals are knocking him for it.
I think it's just completely, it just shows how unfair everyone on the left is to Mitt Romney.
If Obama had said this, I mean, he wouldn't have said binders full of women.
He would have said it in some smoother, blacker way.
But if Obama had said this, everyone would be cheering him.
He's getting ripped apart for number one, saying binders full of women.
Number two, that how did he need these binders to find qualified women?
And number three, because he made this thing.
They said he implied that women in the workforce need special rules.
They need special hours and this and that.
I mean, first off, he basically broke down an argument for affirmative action, which I don't think too many conservatives want to see the Republican nominee doing, but that is a clear affirmative action argument.
He goes, there were not enough female applicants.
All the people applying were men.
I said, why can't we find female advocates?
We need to do something affirmative here to get more female names.
I mean, it's literally, this is what liberals have believed in for 60 years, and they're attacking him for like laying this out.
And then after that, as far as, I mean, like, if Obama had said the thing about, he literally said in some situations, some women need more flexibility to take care of their families.
That's a big deal about that.
That is just addressing a reality in the universe.
If that's sexist to address this reality, and it's not a reality that every woman needs to cook dinner for her kids, but lots of them do.
And he was just using one anecdote with a specific staffer.
Yeah, and this was a serious moment.
Yeah, I didn't see why he was getting attacked so hard for me.
It is odd that this is the one moment of the debate that has become such because it was a bit of a gaffe, but the amount of attention that's been drawn to this one moment, it's a little excessive.
Well, look, and the reason why is because it's this whole war on women thing and this whole, and this is why this comment's getting so much attention.
I mean, this is 1,000% political.
That's all any of this is.
It's the demographic of women that they're trying, that Mitt Romney has closed the gap with now.
All the polls show Obama had this huge lead.
And if Obama doesn't win women, he doesn't win.
So this is what this is all about.
It has nothing to do with anything.
And I'm sorry, like, this happens a lot, but the liberal feminists really, like, it just, they strike me as being the most sexist people.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
If you listen to, like, MSNBC this week, if you listen to any of the liberal media, it is like the only issues women can care about have to do with their vaginas.
That's it.
That's the only, like, birth control is supposed to be the issue that all women rally around.
Like, they completely ignore the fact that there's lots of pro-life women who are on Mitt Romney's side about this.
Like, that's a big percentage of women, too.
I mean, it's not, it's a minority, but it's like 45%.
It's a lot of women are pro-life.
The majority is not that big on the pro-choice side.
And I'm sorry, like, when did there was this guy on Up With Chris Hayes this week, this like preacher or something?
And you know, the liberals are getting really crazy when I start agreeing with preachers.
But he made the point where he was just like, you know, well, this isn't what the point.
The point that he made was he goes, who says birth control pills have to be covered?
It's just such a random thing.
He goes, how about like insulin for diabetic kids?
Why is that any less of a woman's issue than birth control?
Like, why is birth control this woman's issue?
Birth control is something a very small percentage of women are on.
I mean, what is birth control even really?
Who takes birth control?
What, like, what woman 40 or over?
I mean, it's got to be a very small percentage of them who take birth control.
I think what the issue is, is that this is obviously a pill that is just for women, obviously.
And the problem is, that's the one thing you're saying shouldn't be.
I haven't heard a lot of talk about other types of pills that should not be covered.
No one's saying they should not be covered.
The Blunt Amendment would just mandate that people don't have to cover them.
It's just part of Obi.
Right, but that means your insurance isn't providing you something you require.
Whereas I don't think anything is.
But there's lots of things that insurance is.
Look, there's different insurance plans that cover different amounts of things, right?
Like this is how it always, you know, anyone who's had a job that you can pick different plans.
They cover different amounts of things.
There are some that cover birth control.
There are some that don't cover birth control.
Because birth control, I'm sorry, people, birth control is not an essential health issue.
But that's a fun party issue.
I'm sorry.
This is not a health issue.
No, wait, just a health issue for a fair percentage.
There are times when it is.
I'll exempt those people.
That is something that is a genuine thing.
But for that masses, birth control.
But that still means you're saying whatever small percentage of people that is, if they work at a certain place, that place is allowed to say, we're not going to give you any plan that will allow you to get that.
Yeah.
That place is allowed to have the plan they have.
Some places don't have a plan.
Some places you don't get insurance.
I mean, yeah, what do you mean allowed?
Like that boss, I don't get this whole audience.
It's like the boss is creating the job, and then you're telling them how he's allowed to create that job.
Like, you don't have to worry about that.
Right, but then that same plan is going to get you Viagra.
You just pick.
Exactly.
But look, that's fucking ridiculous, too.
And if there was a law that said you had to cover Viagra, I would be every bit as opposed to that as I am.
Right, but the point is, none of these plans are saying, oh, and we find Viagra or Cialis, whatever dick pill you want.
No one's going after that stuff.
It's just.
No, but there's no law that says you have to cover that.
Look, there's lots of plans that don't cover fucking Viagra, and no one's telling them they have to.
But you have the option.
The church, if you work for the church, there is a plan in there that will allow you to get Viagra.
Oh, okay.
Look, that may be fucking crazy.
And maybe that's a bullshit part of the plan, but really, the plan has the right to offer whatever the plan wants to offer you.
And to just pick birth control.
It's just one thing of a million things you could just pick.
I mean, like I said, insulin for diabetic kids is not mandated in every insurance policy.
I mean, it's which would only drive the prices up if we did.
But if you needed insulin, if that was something that you're like, okay, I have a diabetic kid.
We need to be covered.
You can get it.
Sure.
And if you need birth control, you can get it.
There's no problem.
Right, but not for your insurance.
Not if your insurance is provided through work.
Right.
No, but there's examples of that where you can't get the insulin either.
It depends on what plan you have.
Some plans don't cover.
A lot of plans are just like disaster plans.
Like, it's just like, look, this is pretty much like there's going to be high co-pays.
But if you, you know, if you get cancer, you're going to be covered.
Or, you know, plans like that that don't cover little things like this.
To say it's literally like They're mandating a law that says every auto insurance has to cover an oil change.
And some plans don't cover that.
And then you're making it out like it's this huge car's rights issue.
Look, birth control.
I'm sorry.
Birth control?
Birth control.
This is what we're talking about.
The pill?
We're talking about the fucking pill is the next human rights issue.
Dave, are you fucking kidding me?
As we bomb the Middle East to fucking oblivion, the human rights issue of our time is the fucking pill.
Here's the thing.
It's not the human rights issue of our time, but it affects people right here, right now.
That's why everyone's going to be able to do it.
What does that mean it affects people?
Okay, look, if literally survival is.
I'm saying domestically.
So you want to be able to, I mean, I don't want to put this on you, but a chick wants to be able to fuck without a condom.
A dude wants, by the way, as far as I'm concerned, the pill is as advantageous to dudes as it is to chicks.
It's just as much a dude's issue.
Usually the pill is money.
It doesn't fuck with your hormones, though.
Yeah, okay, fine.
It's up to excellent.
Look, I'm saying the woman gets to choose whether or not it's a good idea.
It's like a 90%.
It's her body.
She cannot take it.
But I'm saying it's look, it's a.
I don't mean fucking.
I can't argue with you guys on this.
This is ridiculous.
Dave, this is like, you can't just start naming new shit every four years.
This is like your Alan Iverson moment.
We're talking about practice.
Yeah.
Does anyone want to read that?
Pill.
Yeah, I do.
That was a good one.
I got it.
That was good.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I like birth control.
I think it's pretty good.
I don't dislike birth control.
I said, listen, look, I like the Second Amendment.
I think you have the right to own a gun, but the government doesn't have to pay for it.
And neither does an insurance company.
They don't have to mandate a law that says someone has to buy this for you.
Birth control is not that fucking expensive.
Go fucking buy it.
Look, you can make the argument everything should be free for everybody.
But when you come in and mandate that something's free, it fucks up the system.
That's not how things actually work.
Prices are important.
Birth control is right where the fuck it should be.
It costs how much it costs that company to produce the birth control and still make a profit on it.
If they start charging you too much and there's too much profit, someone else will come along and give you the birth control at a better price.
This is how prices work, and this is exactly how it should work.
Mitt Romney makes the point.
He goes, no one's talking about denying anyone contraceptive.
They go, he's saying your boss should be able to choose whether or not you get the pill.
No one's saying that.
He's saying your boss gets to choose what plan he provides.
And yes, he fucking does.
He also gets to choose how much you get paid.
Like, yeah, that's what bosses do.
They choose that shit.
I'm sorry.
You can go to Dwayne Reed and get the pill.
No one's sitting there.
It's like, they make it sound like your boss is going to be there at Dwayne Reed.
Sorry.
What's funny is he's going to be a little bit more like...
Well, if you work at Dwayne Reed, then yeah.
What's funny is he looked at Rubin when he said he's really screwed.
Then you can go to Rite Aid or whatever.
I don't know.
Here's the thing, though.
No one wants to get the pill.
In terms of keeping birth control affordable, if the government does mandate it, it's going to save them money in the long run because then it prevents women from getting knocked up with babies they didn't plan and can't afford and then put on welfare programs.
So I can see why it would be okay.
I get what you're saying, but then it's like, all right, so then we need the government to get everyone a treadmill.
We need the government to, you know what I mean?
Like, there's a million different things that you can mandate.
Oh, someone should get this for free because this will probably be good for them.
But I mean, it's just not practical.
It's this like ridiculous idea.
And then to make it this rights issue, like all of a sudden you turn, you just name the next thing.
Name whatever the next thing is.
Tampons.
Who does tampons need to be covered?
Oh, shit.
Oh, my God.
I hate women now because I'm not for, you know, like, Jesus fucking Christ.
And women have a lot of other issues.
No matter how many fucking polls show that women care about the economy.
You know what I mean?
They always go, well, it's all about birth control.
Like, that's the big thing.
All these women are so...
It's like they're always telling women they're such victims.
They're so unempowered.
You need this.
There's this war on women.
It's fucking bullshit.
Well, I think birth control.
Women are kicking ass right now.
So stand up for yourself.
You guys are doing great.
Wage Gaps and Human Psychology00:06:57
Be proud of it.
We are.
I'm great.
I just asked this question.
I wish Mitt Romney would have the balls to, I mean, say what I say on this show all the fucking time.
But when they ask that question, they go, why do women make 77 cents to the dollar?
Don't.
They fucking don't.
I mean, they do, but they don't.
Like, it's not.
They do, but it's because of women's choices.
Like, what the fuck?
That's the system we're in.
Yeah, they actually.
But here's also the thing.
He wasn't.
Okay, there are a lot of circumstances that result in women having a lower wage.
Sure.
But in a situation where all things being equal, you know, he's not willing to say a woman should be paid the same.
He's willing to say, no, there can be a gender difference.
That's where there's a problem.
Sure, there can be a gender difference.
I mean, look, Bob.
Well, can you say, well, you should make a little less because you're black?
Oh.
Sure, you can say that.
And then you know what will happen?
In the United States of America in 2012, that black person will be cashing a check for a million fucking dollars after he wins that lawsuit.
Go show me the place that says that.
And then show, I will show you one rich black dude.
No one has that.
That's America that we live in today.
No one has a sign above their door.
This is a complete straw, man.
You're fighting an argument of the South in the 60s.
This doesn't fucking exist anymore.
There's nowhere that does this.
There's nowhere that goes, we pay women with the same qualifications.
Yeah, there's nowhere that has a banner above the door.
Hey, we, hey, guys, you're getting three cents an hour more.
Or anywhere else.
Or a silent banner in their mind.
I know.
This is the thing is that you go, this is like how, and this is like the argument.
This is the problem almost in the equality movement.
And this is the problem.
And I'm all for equality of everyone, but equal rights.
But, you know, the problem is you get all these like groups and lobbies formed for, say, like women's rights, which was a really important movement in like the 60s and getting women, you know, fighting all this chauvinism.
And then like, say, like, they'll have these objectives like getting like, you know, college is 70% men.
And they go, well, we want to get women in there.
But now we live in a world where college is mostly women.
It's like 50% of the people.
Now, do these lobbies all go, okay, we'll disband and we'll go home and we'll stop fighting for stuff now because we've gotten all this power together.
We've gotten the numbers up.
No, they just keep pushing for more.
They just keep going for higher and higher.
So we're just going to keep pushing the listen.
My point is that you get to a certain point where, like, you have what you have.
Whatever you get to the point that's fair and you're going to keep going to push.
What were we just, what was this coming off of?
I'm at a good point.
The 77 cents to the dollar.
Yeah.
But like the point, do you, okay.
So we agree that there's some problems with those statistics, but are you saying not a cent or two of that 77 cent on the dollar difference?
You don't think even part of that is just men being dicks?
There's a cent or two.
So is there a part of it that is kind of look, when you start to get into the inner like unconscious of do we sometimes just see men as better in this position?
Do we see women as better in this position?
Sure.
Look, there's part of this is human psychology.
Remember how you tried to get Jessica to do the show without headphones?
Yeah, I turned that whole thing.
Well, listen, that's just a physical, who's the physically weakest type of thing.
That doesn't.
It's not a gender issue.
No, look, sure, yeah, sure.
There's issues like that.
But does that mean we come in and legislate and give the government the power to regulate wages?
I mean, this is not.
No, not necessarily regulate wages, but there has to be something to say if they're doing the same job, there should just be a pay.
There shouldn't be, okay, well, this guy's a man, so he gets this.
The job should have a wage.
Again, listen, this doesn't.
The 77 cents.
I mean, I complain about that number because the number is completely misleading.
Because discrimination is nothing like that.
But there's a part of that.
I think part of that 23% discrepancy is discrimination.
I don't know what the exact.
I don't know that there's not discrimination in the other direction as well.
I mean, yeah, sure, there's discrimination in everything.
There's some fields that women go into more than others.
There's some field that men go into.
Yeah, they call women's fields the pink ghetto.
It's like nursing, teaching.
I forget what else is there.
Yeah, but again, but this is the problem with feminism is that all of these things always have to be explained by like weak women have been forced into these roles by oppressive society.
Is it possible that maybe there's something in like that's natural about women like being more drawn to being like educators and nurses and these more kind of like maternalistic fields?
I mean, I guess that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, I wasn't arguing with that.
I was just saying those are the fields that they typically are gravitated towards.
And a lot of them...
Well, there was a time where that was pretty much all you were allowed to do.
Well, yeah, and it stuck.
A lot of the problem, too, well, this isn't my view either.
This is just something that I've been reading.
Like toys that are marketed towards little girls.
It's like playing house stuff like that.
Whereas kit, like little boys, like have awesome toys.
Have like fucking like erector sets and chemistry sets and shit like that.
Sure, but there's also no question.
Look, there's also been a lot of market.
There's been a lot of efforts in some of these companies to market different types of toys that don't work as well.
There's real differences, and there's tons of tests in this, but there's real differences, like toddlers, the way boys play, and the way girls play.
I mean, boys are like destructive and chaotic, and girls are organized and thoughtful.
I mean, they're just differences.
And that's, you know, that's, so I don't know what, you know, what's the chicken or the egg there.
I don't know, like, what is it that we're so groomed to have these differences?
And there's certainly individual exceptions.
There's women who are kind of masculine and men who are kind of feminine.
But look, I'm, again, also, by the way, you know, I'm completely with you on all the abortion stuff, all the crazy, like, right-wing, like, all that stuff where they want to, you know, make women do crazy shit before they're allowed to get an abortion.
I'm totally with that.
That is a legitimate issue.
We should all be talking about that.
But this war on women, this wage gap, it doesn't fucking exist.
Women can go do whatever the fuck they want to in this world.
The last real day job I had, back when I was still early in comedy, we all got the fucking job.
The one girl who came in my hiring class was paid more than all of us because she negotiated the highest contracts.
She just fucking, none of us thought to negotiate our salary.
And she did.
We were all furious that she was getting paid more than all of us.
I'm just saying, I hate this idea that women are these weak victims.
Look, there are, we are living in this experimental age of like equal rights for men and women.
And there's some issues that like women do have the babies.
Women do tend to still be the ones who are doing more of the taking care of them.
There's something natural about it that women just tend to like, all these studies show it.
You know, the woman's still the one who's doing most of like knows where Jimmy's favorite toy is, knows where, you know, that's just, I don't know.
It's not all this evil, patriarchal, like, bullshit that they, like, I don't know.
This idea that there's a war on women.
Political Leaning on Family Care00:14:34
It's just like, I don't know.
I think they're treating chicks like idiots to pander to this woman vote.
That's what the liberals are doing right now.
And abortion is not a major issue in this campaign.
I'm sorry.
And try to convince me that Mitt Romney is going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
He was a freaking pro-choice governor.
This is just not the issue.
I don't know.
Well, see, that is the issue in that specific case.
It's something he won't do, but for his base, he has to say he'll appoint judges.
Yeah.
Oh, they've got that one clip on him in the Republican primary saying that if a law overturning Roe v. Wade came on his desk, he'd sign it.
Do you know what happens to you in a Republican primary if you say a law overturning Roe v. Wade came to your desk?
You wouldn't let that through what they would do to you.
It would have lost the election right there.
He had to say it.
I don't know.
There's nothing about this guy that's been in anyway.
Well, yeah, that's also the problem.
No one knows where he actually stands on anything because he keeps changing.
Oh, yes, no, he's terrible.
Don't get me wrong.
He's absolutely terrible.
He's awful.
He's like, I can't do that.
This is just a bunch of bullshit.
It's also an issue that Paul Ryan is serious about.
Yeah, Paul Ryan is.
So it's one where almost Mitt would just be like, oh, whatever you want, man.
I don't care.
No, look, they're all creepy social conservatives.
Yeah, I mean, look, Paul Ryan is a fake fiscal hawk.
He's really a social conservative in this Tea Party outfit.
But I just also, there's also like a real argument to.
You know what?
Whatever.
Let's move on.
Let's move on stuff.
We're just spent too much time on this.
All right.
So taking a look at a little bit of the bigger picture on the election.
This is pretty close.
We've been predicting Obama's going to win this thing for a while.
I'm not changing my prediction, but are we wrong?
Is there any chance, Jessica?
Is Mitt Romney going to maybe win this?
I don't know.
I think Obama's going to come out swinging in the last debate and maybe carry that over to Election Day.
I think Obama's still going to win, but I think it's probably going to be relatively close.
What do you think, Ruben?
Obama will win.
I think part of these polls showing Romney getting closer, I think there's some manipulation there because the media really prefers a tighter race.
It's much better.
You have more people watching political programming.
I think there's a little bit of a thing where you're not necessarily anymore going to see blowouts.
You're going to see elections where, okay, like you knew Obama was going to beat McCain, but they're at least going to try to create the perception that it's pretty close.
Just keep it.
Because it serves the media's purpose.
It's interesting.
Yeah, I still don't.
I just, I don't know.
I just don't see it.
I don't see Romney winning this election.
There's some polling that's showing that it's possible that right now that Romney could win the popular vote and still lose the election just because Obama's biggest advantage is in some of these swing states.
What if that happens?
That'd be interesting.
I would actually very much like to see it because I would love to hear the outrage and just liberals sitting there like the Electoral College.
That's how we do it.
Can you imagine how the really far right, like the birthers and all that shit, how crazy they would get over that if he lost the popular vote?
Can you imagine Donald Trump's reaction?
That would be great.
That would make for a really good TV.
You know, a lot of people, one of the things that I've I didn't get to ask Janine this on the podcast, but I've talked to her a little bit about it when we're just hanging out.
But I ask a lot of times people, even kind of something like you said earlier, where you go, like, people tend to really give this thing to Obama where they go, well, he's trying.
You know what I mean?
I mean, he wants to end these wars.
He just has to kind of expand them because that's the way it works.
They give him kind of this thing of like, well, Janine, I mean, she's furious at Obama about all these different things.
You know, she hates so many of his policies.
There's no question she's voting for because she's so, you know, it's like these liberals who are so against Romney that there's no question they're supporting Obama.
You're basically picking the lesser of two evils.
Yeah.
Right.
But it's like the lesser of two evils when the evil is so fucking evil.
Like they recognize that this is really, really fucked up.
Like he's kept all this fucking bush shit going.
I think for him, there's this thing where he's like, he knows these things are bad, but then when it's put to him, he's like, I guess we should just keep doing it.
I mean, it's something where he's willing to compromise.
But why do we give that to him that we think he doesn't want to do what he's doing?
I think it's because Dick Cheney wanted to.
Dick Cheney was evil.
Well, I think that's why.
He's a mesmerizing orator.
Well, he's likable.
Yeah.
No, listen, my big artist is absolutely likable.
I think my conclusion to it is that it's all about hope.
Again, this is what this guy's always ridden on: hope.
And somehow he's really managed to get this.
People, you look at Clinton.
They hope that he's really a good guy deep down.
They go, no matter how many of these fucking drone strikes he delivers, I just want to think that he's really the guy who I fell in love with in 2008.
Look, everyone has this idea.
And this is ultimately what I think Janine's answer to me was, and what a lot of people's answer is, is that they go, well, yeah, look, I hate the NDAA.
I hate that he's kept the Patriot Act.
I hate that he's killing all these Muslims.
I hate all this stuff.
But maybe in his second term, he'll fucking throw us somewhere.
You know what's funny about that?
That's exactly what the NRA and the right-wing people say.
Oh, well, he didn't do it now, but see what he's going to do in the next one.
I'm going to exact formula, just slightly altered.
Think of all the good things he'll do.
He will destroy this country in the other four years.
Well, I'll tell you this.
I don't think at all.
I think if any recent American history is the example, I don't think at all that he's going to do anything good in the second term, if he gets the second term.
When you get re-elected as president, you sell out to the corporations in a way you never even could in your first term.
That's what all these presidents do.
Whether you're talking about Reagan, Clinton, Bush.
Well, you're also positioning yourself for your next career.
Yeah, well, that's part of what I mean.
You can't retire anymore.
Well, that's a big part of it.
I mean, but that's, well, yeah, it's the whole revolving door.
You're getting ready to go back into this private sector.
But I mean, you just literally, at this point, it's everything in the first term is leveraging up for your election, and then everything in the second term is paying off what you did to get re-elected.
You're absolutely right.
How long has his campaign been going now?
Oh, I mean, since 2009.
Two years, literally.
I mean, he's been campaigning pretty much since 2007.
Yeah, I mean, since he did that speech and right long before then, we just hadn't heard of him.
I mean, I just don't see this idea that, you know, I mean, Reagan, if you look at him when he came in, he like right away was like kind of attacking the size of government.
And then he got shot at pretty quickly and his president.
Conspiracies about that.
Hey, but, you know, and then he stopped.
He backed off.
His second four years were just terrible.
Biggest deficits he had, biggest, you know, just expanding the size of everything.
Clinton in his second year, I mean, this is when the real bubble started blowing up in 96.
This is when everything just got, we just sold out America to corporate interest.
And no one has to even go over the last four years of Bush.
So of W.
So I just don't buy it, liberals.
I don't see him throwing you guys a whole bunch of bones.
I would not expect, you know, it's all this hope thing to go, oh, well, if you get, maybe he'll close Gitmo this time.
No, motherfucker.
No, no, no, that's not.
He would have closed it last time.
Like, if he didn't close it last time when he ran on that promise, he's not going to close it this time.
He's not going to.
It's not going to happen.
A lot of these things, he's not.
It's just.
No, Gitmo will just be there forever now.
I think he's going to be completely unrestrained in all the bad things that he wants to do.
And anyway, I just don't think there's any reason to just hope this whole, I do just challenge this whole view that Obama really has this good heart.
For some reason, we give him the benefit of the doubt that we don't give to anybody else.
We don't give anybody else the benefit of the doubt.
If Obama had said that, and it's the same thing with the women's thing, if Obama had said that thing about like, oh, my chief of staff needed a flexible schedule, no one on the left would have criticized it.
Oh, yeah.
They would have been like, Obama really cares about women.
And that's a great example of it.
But Romney said it's so.
Well, yeah, had it been Obama, they would have treated it as just a one-person anecdote.
Exactly.
And that's what it was.
That's why I think Romney was unfairly attacked for it.
I never get that.
You know, people on the left always say these things where they're like, imagine this was the other way around.
I heard Bill Maher the other day said, imagine Romney was as disrespectful.
I'm sorry, imagine Obama was as disrespectful to a sitting president as Romney was in that last debate.
Like, imagine the outrage.
And I'm kind of like, would it be that much outrage?
I mean, Joe Biden was like, really, they loved it.
The Liberals loved it when Joe Biden was that kind of shitty to Paul Ryan.
Like, I don't know.
I don't see it.
When they do this, would it go the other way?
I don't really see the point.
But what I do see is the like, can you imagine if George Bush had been doing all these drone strikes?
Can you imagine if George Bush had done nothing for 130 days while oil poured into the Gulf?
Like, I can just imagine these liberals are so hypocritical.
It's the same attitude on both sides.
It's just slightly different political leaning.
It's hypocrisy on both sides.
Yeah, I guess so.
I just, I don't know.
I see, particularly, I feel like I see a lot of.
I mean, if Romney were to win, drone strikes would be an enormous issue in February.
You know, a month into his presidency, the first drone strike he launches will be an enormous story.
Yeah.
Well, I mean.
They'll start every time he tries to announce, hey, we killed the Al-Qaeda number two, they'll be like, and how many civilians are going to be able to do it?
Well, I don't know with that.
I think it'll grow slowly because it's been so silenced by Obama.
They won't right away be able to say, well, drones are immoral.
I mean, it'll have to kind of build.
I think they're so shameless, they might actually get on it right in February.
Maybe you're right.
Well, let's talk about this.
Sorry, if Romney were to win, the anti-war movement will be ready to pounce in January.
I hope so, man.
They've pretty much been quiet during this whole year.
Yeah, that'd be the only benefit of Romney winning us.
Maybe we'll get the anti-war movement back that was going pretty good under Bush.
I mean, it was really, and really, I mean, to me, the height of the anti-war movement was like 2006.
Like, the Democrats winning Congress almost like, you know, snuffed it down a little bit, but it was still really big in 2007, 2008.
Again, we talked about this last week, but Obama having not voted for the war in Iraq was a big part of why he won the nomination to begin with.
That was a big part of taking Hillary Clinton out, that Hillary Clinton had voted for this war in Iraq.
That was such a disaster.
But now he gets to just claim he ended the war, even though he didn't.
Yeah, even though Americans are probably dying there today.
Yeah, as we speak, something terrible is happening in Iraq, but the war is over.
We have tens of thousands of troops there.
We've handed everything off to our corporations just on Bush's timeline.
Yeah.
Anyway.
So, yeah, let's talk about, I mean, since his last debates on foreign policy, and I do think this is the biggest issue that America has right now.
This is the issue of our times, is America's foreign policy and how truly fucking evil it is.
And there's so much behind it.
I talk about this all the time on the show.
There's so much like, and I know I have some people who like, who disagree with me.
I know our buddy, my buddy Marcus Dean, who's a military guy, he posts like on our Facebook wall and stuff a bunch of time.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But he's a really cool guy.
And I know he disagrees with me on some stuff and feels like there's areas where the military needs to be.
And he's always, you know, it's good to have.
I really always appreciate having people like that who really kind of know their shit, have been there.
So thanks, Marcus.
Always good to hear your feedback.
But I just, I can't get past just how immoral America's foreign policy is, how fucked up it is.
I mean, look, you can't convince me.
We have to dehumanize this entire part of the world in our mind before we could even wrap our brain around the idea of having this foreign policy.
Like, can you tell me if there were like some bad people in fucking like Philadelphia, like some bad people in Philadelphia?
There's a lot of bad people in Philadelphia.
Right, but I'm saying if we've picked a few really, really bad people, they got to Philadelphia, you would ever just be okay with the answer being like, oh, I guess we got to bomb Philadelphia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What?
You mean you have to bomb Philadelphia?
Because there's a few bad people.
You just labeled Philadelphia bad?
You just labeled the entire area.
But we have a problem with their leader, so they're just bad.
Now we just have the right to go slaughter everybody that you'd be like, well, no, we have to do something.
We have to get these bad guys.
But I mean, we're not.
No, it's never just an okay option to just be, well, let's drop a drone on this fucking hospital.
The beautiful thing about the drone strike is if you at least think you got the guy you were going after, you can issue a press release and no one ever asks, hey, what about the other hundred people in the building you bombed?
No one cares.
Every single time, they just did this study at Columbia, and they released that they said 2% of the drones hit their target.
Sorry, 2% of the people killed by drones are suspected terrorists.
And that's suspected terrorists.
Now, by the way, this is one of the things we did.
Anwar Alaki is the big one who gets all the hype, is the U.S. citizen we killed.
And then the next week, we went back and killed his son.
It's a 16-year-old.
He's never been charged with a crime in his life.
A 16-year-old.
I mean, someone who in America, we wouldn't even say, has the freedom to choose to be a terrorist.
They're a minor, still.
You can't even make your own decisions.
You can't even sign a contract at that age.
You can't give your consent for anything.
So we would have never been charged with anything in his life.
And so that's, by the way, in the 2% of suspected terrorist people we killed.
Yeah, just someone you have to think about.
No, and look, dude, I'm like, I'm not, I am no hippie or like, I'm not a commie or anything like that.
But to just be like, to not recognize the moral issue here, to not recognize the humanitarian issue here.
We just drop bombs on men, women, and children.
Bombing Yemen and Lot Shit00:08:33
And not even in countries that you've declared or that you're in a war with.
Yes, and again, like, I'm a free market guy.
I'm a very, like, I don't believe in it.
I don't feel like I'm not a big, like, oh, sympathy for everyone.
But the fact that these are like primitive, barbaric countries does not give us the right to fucking slaughter their people.
I'm sorry.
I know they're not, they don't live at the same level of sophistication we have.
They haven't figured out a lot of shit that we have over here.
But that doesn't mean they're dehumanized to the level where we can just slaughter them.
And it's just kind of like this, whatever, man, us against them.
Right.
Find a fucking attitude.
Like, whatever.
Like, that's, I'm sorry.
That's just fucking ridiculous.
It's again, there's never anywhere you could get to me where you go, oh, there's three bad people in Philly.
We're going to bomb Philly.
That's the logical reaction.
The other thing that's interesting is how complicit these countries' governments are.
You know, like, it's not just like Afghanistan that this is happening.
It's Pakistan.
It's Yemen.
It's, what, Oman, I think they're doing it in.
Sure.
I mean, well, look, if you want to really go the countries that we are at war with.
Right.
If you want to go in the definition to war with me would be, and I'll include sanctions.
I mean, these are acts of war.
Okay.
If you're denying food and water to children and women, that's an act of war.
Right.
If you're bombing people, that's especially an act of war.
I don't care what you call it.
That's what war is.
So we've had, just in the Obama administration, I think just under 300 drone strikes in Yemen, we're at war with Yemen.
Like we're bombing the fuck out of Yemen.
They found a drone in Iran, and we've assassinated one of their scientists, and we've cut off war, and we've cut off water and food.
We're at war with Iran.
We're clearly at war with Syria.
We're funding the rebels.
Obviously, Libya, too.
So that's just to keep count here because he does get Pakistan.
Pakistan, we've been droning since Obama got in.
So Iraq and Afghanistan are the two that we've been in.
Add to that, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iran, Pakistan.
That's seven countries that we're up to right now.
And that's just what we know about.
I know I'm missing.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
There definitely could be other stuff that we don't know about.
100%.
There's tons of classified shit going on.
So this is seven countries.
I know I'm missing the country that we're on.
We're talking a lot of shit with Lebanon right now, too.
I don't know if I wouldn't say we're at war with them.
We're talking a lot of shit.
But I mean, and I don't even know even Egypt would be a country that you could kind of say we kind of funded, you know, the overthrow of the government.
But look, they're all, it's about this, we dehumanize whatever we do to these people.
Then we also, I mean, we prop up the most brutal dictators.
We never talk about any of this stuff.
Well, it's funny, one quick drone, you could take out the Assad regime.
Sure.
They won't do that, though.
Well, it's very weird.
Look, I am a big, I talked to, I was at this at Liberty Fest a couple weeks ago, and I talked to one of my heroes, Tom Woods, who's this libertarian historian, really, really smart anti-war.
I mean, I get a lot of my anti-war stuff from him because he's just such a smart guy.
And he, we were talking for a little bit, and the question got posed to him of like, what is like the libertarian position on a real, like, there's a genocide going on.
Not these like kooked up, like, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, but like really someone in, you know, in Mexico or whatever, they're just slaughtering their people.
The government starts slaughtering their fucking people.
He goes, we have this military.
Like, what's the, what is the, you know, do we send the troops in?
Do we do this?
And he really just made the point that he goes, you have to understand, there's so much we could do.
There's so much you can do about that that is so much more constructive than bombing someone.
Like bombing someone is never going to solve their fucking problem.
That's never going to solve their problem of like, oh, this guy's taking away my freedom.
Oh, good.
This bomb will free me.
Thank God.
Like, that's never going to work.
He goes, you know, you show outrage to the international community.
You know, you send ships to their borders and say, if you get to the border, we will get, here's food and aid and shit like that waiting for the people.
You send food and aid to the people.
He just went through this whole list of all these different things you can do.
But of course, we always, the first thing we do is, well, we got to bomb you.
We got to bomb the freedom right into it.
It's the easiest way to do it.
Especially now.
It's not even like it used to be where you had to think, is it worth risking our own soldiers?
You know, a drone is just some guy in like Virginia operating a missile.
Right.
So we don't have to risk it.
Right.
So we don't have to worry about rising our own soldiers.
It's simply a financial issue.
Although we still don't seem to show much concern about risking our own soldiers when we do have a lot of people.
But it's much easier to make those decisions when you don't have to say, oh, and three Americans die as well.
Which is really scary because then it's like the only side that we see humanity and which is our side is completely like is kind of removed from the equation.
So it's literally just murdering these primitive brown people.
Well, basically, it's just the cost of the drone.
Is it worth it?
Yeah, it's worth whatever a drone costs to make.
Right.
That's all it is now.
Yeah.
And I mean, you know, then they wonder why these fucking people hate us so much.
But we also, I mean, the humanization of our side also, of our army is only like in their kind of like glorious death.
You know, then that's where they get the...
For the troops.
Right.
Which, you know, all that ridiculous shit.
Wear green and show you care.
Right.
You know, and then so, but, you know, none of this will be fucking talked about at all at the foreign policy debate.
It'll just be these little things like because they both agree on all the big picture.
It'll be Obama bragging that Afghanistan is done in 2014.
And then Romney says, I will also do that, but you're wrong to do it.
Right.
It's literally, oh, we have to be more aggressive with Iran, tougher sanctions with the world.
Keep the troops everywhere.
This will be what the debate will be about.
And then they'll have, because they kind of agree in general philosophy, Mitt Romney will say your tone should be tougher.
And then they'll talk about little, you know, things like Benghazi, things like...
Romney's exact Afghanistan position is I'll also bring them home in 2014, but it's bad to have a timetable.
Yeah.
You know.
Which is, I mean, it's all just so insane.
But here's, and here's a, you know, what no one talks about, of course, is, which I can't believe, like, this isn't just something that would be on the news every day that would be brought up at the, you know, debates.
But Wesley Clark.
You know who that guy is?
If anybody cares about any of this shit.
Is that the guy who gave the stuff to Wikileaks?
Oh, no, that's a different guy.
He may have given some stuff to WikiLeaks.
I wouldn't be surprised.
Is he the military guy who's been detained indefinitely?
No.
Wesley Clark is.
Hold on one second.
I'm just going to see.
I tell people, if anyone cares about any of this shit, you should go YouTube, Wesley Clark.
I just want to see if it comes up right away when you YouTube it.
Yeah, literally the first thing.
You're going to the first thing when you come up.
Just YouTube Wesley Clark.
It's like an eight-minute video and check it out.
But Wesley Clark is a four-star general.
He's pretty well known.
I think I believe he's a Democrat.
But he's a pretty well-known guy in Washington.
And he just more or less tells pretty point-blank the story of how the Pentagon was taken over by these crazy like warmongers.
And that he basically tells the story of in the 90s when he was getting home from Desert Storm and he went to the Pentagon to see Colin Powell.
And he goes in and he thought everyone would be really happy with the way Desert Storm was going.
They were kind of unhappy that they hadn't taken Saddam out.
And he basically finds one of his buddies shows in this classified document that showed that the U.S. foreign policy, what the plans were for the next decade.
And it's everything we're doing laid out to a T.
He goes, the plans are to remake the Middle East.
We're going to go take Saddam Hussein out.
He goes, we're going to go replace the governments in Libya, Syria, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan.
They literally lays out every single one of the countries.
And he says, Iran is the final showdown.
He goes, so we surround everyone, and then Iran's the final one that we come at.
And he breaks down this entire plan.
It's been planned out since the 90s.
This is all pre-9-11.
Right.
And I mean, it's just like, I mean, there's your fucking...
No one fucking talks about it.
It's just kind of like, oh, there's the crazy old four-star general.
Yeah, blowing the whistle on all this.
He's just now he's, you know, he doesn't come on the news shows anymore because he came out and said all this shit.
Right.
It's all that happens.
That's probably frustrating if you're a journalist.
Huge Government Debt Ceiling00:04:11
Because I'm sure they're out there and they're like, I wish I could talk about that.
Yeah.
And a lot just can't.
Your article won't be printed in the newspaper.
It won't be put on the website.
You won't be on whatever show.
It's just not allowed to be in the fucking lexicon.
You just can't get it into the world.
It's probably one of those things that dominates conversation in the newsroom.
And then when the cameras roll, it's just, it's not allowed to be spoken about.
Which is really, like, it's a really sad thing, man.
And this is like, a lot of libertarians blame Barry Goldwater for this, for really kind of bringing like all the conservatives into the pro-war movement and becoming bringing everyone into being like cold warriors and shit like that.
But that's, you know, it's a shame that like everyone's a big government party now because the Republicans need this huge government militarily.
Democrats need this huge government at home.
And they both kind of support the other one too.
Yeah.
The last thing I'll say, man, is that it's all like everyone keeps talking about like there's all, you know, they say the most American people want everyone to just come together and create solutions.
He goes, I think the only hope for the American people is that Democrats and Republicans do not come together.
This is what all our problems are based on, Democrats and Republicans coming together.
There's the wars, the debt, all these horrible entitlement programs.
Everything is done when they come together.
There's way too much coming together.
It's hilarious that the debt ceiling, everyone's talking about the fiscal cliff now coming up after the election and all this.
The big thing is that the debt ceiling, that whole debate where the conservatives, the Tea Party was called so evil because they talked about not raising the debt ceiling for a week before they caved.
Well, guess what?
We ran out of that money.
We've hit the new debt ceiling.
So we've got to raise it again.
Yep.
It'll last us another year.
Then we'll have to raise it again and raise it again.
And so how many times, at what time do we get to talk about not raising it?
They're going to say it's a crisis every fucking time.
I don't even know where that came from.
But anyway, the foreign policy debate is going to be a bunch of bullshit.
I don't think it's going to be a knockout blow for Obama, though.
I will say this.
If the election goes, if the election goes Romney's way, if he's able to hang in this and pull this out on election night, people are never going to forgive Obama for that first debate.
That's true.
That first debate will never get forgiven because he was up big.
He could erode it all the way, and he fucking stumbled when it was really important.
But I mean, this, I mean, obviously, Romney's going to be cramming on his foreign policy, but this is potentially Obama could just knock him out on this one.
Yeah.
I suppose it's possible.
I don't see that happening.
But yeah, maybe.
We'll see.
We'll have to see.
And, well, it's tomorrow, so it'll be a little while before you hear from us.
When they do the polling, the only issue that Romney beats Obama on is the deficit.
People think that Romney will be better on the deficit.
Right.
Even on defense, Obama beats him.
Yeah.
Well, the economy, the numbers on the economy are getting closer and closer.
So we'll see.
I mean, that's what it's all about if Mitt Romney wins that.
I think the economic numbers, too, are more not necessarily from the debates, but just from the headlines, like the unemployment reports that come out, stuff like that.
That all affects it, I think, probably more than either of their performances in the debates.
Yeah, you might be right about that.
Although I do think, you know, the economy is a lot.
Yeah, it is.
The numbers mean a lot, but it's also how people feel means a lot.
And that's pretty much set in people's minds.
I mean, people, the economy is not good.
And I don't know if that's going to change too much in between now and then.
But anyway, that seems like as good a place as ever to wrap.
So, guys, Ruben, anything you want to plug before we get out of here?
You can follow me on Twitter at Ruben Meta.
Maybe you should spell it.
That's actually, yeah, I don't know why I'm not more used to that.
It's R-U-H-B-I-N-M-E-H-T-A.
It's all about where the H's go.
That's the only thing for using in Ruben's name.
Like, you know, the basic way that it works.
You're like, where do those fucking H's go?
Wrapping Up the Economy Talk00:01:44
Is it Maheta or Meheta?
Anyway.
All right.
Yeah, well, Ruben, thanks a lot, man, for coming out.
My pleasure.
We'll have you in again soon.
Of course, you can follow the show at The Problem Show on Twitter.
Follow me at Comic Dave Smith.
Follow Jessica at...
Oh, hey, Jess Sager.
Yes, I always fuck it up.
Hey, yeah, now, Jeff Sager.
Oh, hey, Jess Sagar.
At OHY, Jess Sagar.
And yeah, we'll be back breaking down this last debate and breaking down who's going to win the election next week.
So thanks, everybody, for listening.
Check us out again next week.
Woo!
Goodbye.
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He's got interstate running through his front yard.
You know, he thinks he's got a suker.
And there's a moment in the kitchen.
We have feelings love.
And he looks at us and says, hey, darling, I can remember when you could start with blood.