Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - 2020 VP Debate Recap
Aired: 2020-10-10
Duration: 01:08:35


=== Why We Need to Listen (08:29) ===

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[00:00:40]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:42]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:44]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:47]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:53]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:58]  You're listening to more of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:01:02]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:01:05]  What's up, everybody?
[00:01:07]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:01:10]  I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, the libertarian Tupac.
[00:01:15]  He is the king of the caws, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:01:19]  We are here for you good people.
[00:01:22]  How are you doing, Rob?
[00:01:24]  I'm doing well.
[00:01:25]  How about you, Davey Smith?
[00:01:26]  Very good, very good.
[00:01:28]  We had a debate the night before last, and I thought we would do a little bit of a debate recap episode.
[00:01:37]  This is, of course, the vice presidential debate between the sitting vice president, Michael Pence, and the pig, Kamala Harris, also a senator, former pig, current senator and candidate for vice president.
[00:01:56]  Yeah, I figure we could recap the debate a little bit.
[00:01:58]  Maybe we'll talk about a couple other things going on if time permits.
[00:02:04]  So this was, you know, typically vice presidential debates are not very noteworthy.
[00:02:13]  They're kind of, I mean, they're usually boring and they're usually not very consequential.
[00:02:20]  I mean, people don't really watch them in as great numbers as the presidential debates.
[00:02:25]  No one really cares.
[00:02:26]  The job of vice president, with really perhaps the exception of Dick Cheney, who ended up making it a powerful position, is pretty irrelevant.
[00:02:36]  You know, theoretically, I think if there's a tie, you can go into the Senate and cast the tiebreaking vote.
[00:02:43]  You get put on pet projects by the president, but it doesn't really mean anything.
[00:02:48]  But this felt a little bit different for a few reasons.
[00:02:52]  Number one, because it's the year 2020 and it's been the craziest year in modern American history.
[00:03:01]  The country is very polarized.
[00:03:04]  People are more obsessed with politics than ever before, which really sucks.
[00:03:10]  And I say that as someone who is obsessed with politics.
[00:03:14]  Leave it to us.
[00:03:16]  But I also thought there was some real added importance to this debate because, you know, both of the presidential candidates are incredibly old.
[00:03:27]  One is senile.
[00:03:28]  The other has COVID.
[00:03:30]  And in situations like that, you start looking at the VP a little bit more and being like, okay, maybe we need to hear what these people have to say.
[00:03:39]  I'm curious what your thoughts were.
[00:03:40]  Me and Rob haven't discussed this at all since we saw it.
[00:03:44]  I thought it was a whatever debate overall.
[00:03:50]  It wasn't the worst, but it certainly wasn't the best.
[00:03:53]  I thought Mike Pence won by a landslide.
[00:04:00]  And not that he did anything that good.
[00:04:01]  I didn't think he was very impressive.
[00:04:03]  I thought he was boring.
[00:04:04]  I thought he did that thing that politicians do where they answer the question they want to answer rather than answering the question, but he did it far too much, that he wasn't even pretending to answer the question that was asked of him.
[00:04:18]  And it came off as slippery.
[00:04:19]  Like it came off as you're, you know, you're supposed to kind of pretend you're answering the question that they asked, not just talk about a different topic.
[00:04:29]  So that was bad.
[00:04:30]  But the only reason why he won by such a large margin was because Kamala Harris is just that terrible.
[00:04:38]  Whatever the corporate press is trying to convince people of, she is one of the most just perhaps the most unlikable figure that I could imagine.
[00:04:51]  She might be worse than Hillary Clinton.
[00:04:52]  I mean, just intensely unlikable.
[00:04:55]  So that was more or less my takeaway.
[00:04:57]  I'm curious what yours was.
[00:04:58]  Yeah.
[00:04:59]  So first, what you were saying that this seems to be a little bit more high profile.
[00:05:03]  I think that's in part because there isn't a lot of election coverage.
[00:05:06]  And you watch that presidential debate and you're like, man, a lot of these kind of topics require clarification.
[00:05:13]  So in this case, we don't usually care about the VP debate because what are they adding?
[00:05:17]  It's more of like for sport and the comedy nerds because you get to, it's like watching the minor league game.
[00:05:22]  You know, that's basically what it is.
[00:05:25]  But in this case, it felt like, well, I'm actually curious to hear what these campaigns are thinking on some of these issues because I watched the presidential debate and like there were a lot of, I guess, questions left unanswered.
[00:05:37]  If we were not doing a show on that debate, I would have turned it off after 10 minutes because it was painfully boring.
[00:05:42]  And when you talk about Kamala being more unlikable than Hillary, it's because of her voice.
[00:05:47]  She is unqualified to be on television.
[00:05:50]  She is painful to listen to.
[00:05:52]  It is like a child talking about cookies with adult bitch like mixed in.
[00:05:57]  It is painful.
[00:05:58]  It is actively exhausting to try and listen to a debate with her where it's like listening to a song out of tune.
[00:06:05]  You're like, I just want to turn this off.
[00:06:06]  This is bad.
[00:06:07]  There is this thing that she does where she's, it's as if she's aware of how terrible she is.
[00:06:17]  And so she tries to overcompensate for it.
[00:06:21]  Like they're like, keep this smile on your face so you don't come off as the nasty person that you would.
[00:06:26]  But it's more psychotic.
[00:06:28]  But yeah, it just doesn't work.
[00:06:31]  She was, she had this forced smirk on her face the whole time, even in times where it was wildly inappropriate.
[00:06:40]  Like when they'd be talking about the number of people dead from COVID or something like that, she'd have this smirk on her face.
[00:06:47]  You'd almost like, I almost felt pained on behalf of her.
[00:06:52]  Like you want to be like, stop, stop, no, this is when you look serious, Kamala.
[00:06:56]  Like this is not the time to have the smirk on your face.
[00:06:59]  She, it seemed like, you know, they managed to get her to pull back from her typical like cackling and one-liners and things like that.
[00:07:11]  But she, she had no ability to adjust to the moment.
[00:07:16]  So after coming in, you could tell a lot of this stuff was pre-planned and she just couldn't deliver it in the right way.
[00:07:24]  You know, like the constant I'm speaking when he would interject, this was like a planned thing from the campaign.
[00:07:31]  They saw Trump dominate Joe Biden and interrupt him a lot.
[00:07:34]  And they were like, hey, if he tries to do that to you, you got to get in there.
[00:07:37]  And like, no, I'm not having it.
[00:07:39]  And that may have been effective if she was debating Donald Trump, who had been interrupting the way he was with Biden, right?
[00:07:46]  Like if someone, if a guy like Trump tried to just bull over her and then eventually she was like, excuse me, I'm speaking.
[00:07:52]  That might have been a like, you know, girl power.
[00:07:54]  Okay.
[00:07:54]  Yeah.
[00:07:54]  You stood up for yourself moment.
[00:07:56]  But she did it in moments where the moderator interjected to ask Mike Pence something.
[00:08:02]  And then she'd say, Oh, I'm speaking.
[00:08:04]  It was just so like, oh, it just came off as this horrifically unlikable human being lecturing somebody else.
[00:08:13]  And then there's also this thing where it'd be like, excuse me, I'm speaking.
[00:08:17]  And he'd he'd go, okay, and let her finish.
[00:08:19]  And she had nothing to say.
[00:08:21]  Like it was just like you just wanted to get that moment.
[00:08:23]  She's like, oh, I never thought through to the next part of if you did let me finish what I was going to say.

=== The Trump Administration Game (15:25) ===

[00:08:30]  In terms of the substance of the debate, there were, you know, a few different, you know, like it was a fairly substantive debate, you know, as far as these things go, not compared to a real intellectual exchange.
[00:08:46]  But in terms of political theater, there were some interesting points.
[00:08:50]  I mean, I did not think that Kamala Harris landed one blow on Mike Pence throughout the entire thing.
[00:09:02]  And, you know, I don't know because there certainly are like one of the major problems with democracy is that there are a lot more uninformed voters than there are informed voters.
[00:09:18]  And I don't, you know, a lot of times people will kind of have like a snobbish attitude about this.
[00:09:24]  Like the people are dumb, the country is dumb.
[00:09:27]  And there's some truth to that, right?
[00:09:30]  Like it's the old, was it George Carlin bit where he goes, think about how dumb the average person is and then realize that half the population is dumber than them.
[00:09:40]  And there are, you know, there are some dumb people out there, but I don't really even think that's the issue.
[00:09:46]  There's also a lot of really smart people out there.
[00:09:49]  The thing is that people specialize, you know, people specialize and they have their area of expertise.
[00:09:58]  This is how the division of labor works.
[00:09:59]  This is how human society works.
[00:10:01]  I mean, if you, you know, just talk to like some random person, odds are they're going to know a whole lot of stuff about an area that you know nothing about, literally know nothing about.
[00:10:16]  Just, you know, like my father-in-law, for example, right?
[00:10:21]  He's a, he's a trucker.
[00:10:22]  He knows so many things about this country and highways and routes.
[00:10:29]  Yeah.
[00:10:32]  Knows a whole lot about them.
[00:10:34]  But you know what I mean?
[00:10:35]  He knows everything about cars.
[00:10:36]  It's like really is legitimately an expert in these areas where lots of people know nothing.
[00:10:43]  Now, if somebody was running for, you know, the head of whatever, the trucking industry, and they were going, they were trying to convince, you know, a voting pool of, you know, 130 million people and try to pull as many of them over.
[00:11:01]  It wouldn't make any sense to play to my father-in-law.
[00:11:04]  There's only a handful of experts who really know about trucking.
[00:11:09]  You're playing to the guy who knows nothing.
[00:11:11]  You're playing to me.
[00:11:12]  The guy who knows nothing about cars or trucking or routes or any of this shit.
[00:11:17]  So that's kind of the dynamic you get.
[00:11:19]  And it becomes hard to gauge how effective or ineffective some of these lines are.
[00:11:24]  Like there were a couple moments where Kamala Harris started explaining things that you would just think wouldn't need to be explained.
[00:11:33]  But when she was saying Donald Trump is in debt, and she goes, Oh, yeah, that was in Debian.
[00:11:39]  That means you owe that money to somebody.
[00:11:43]  Are you talking to a third grader here?
[00:11:45]  Like, why would you think this needed to be explained?
[00:11:47]  There was one more.
[00:11:48]  Oh, God, it's slipping my mind.
[00:11:50]  There was one more thing that she explained that I thought was like, I couldn't believe she was actually taking the time to explain this, but it was like an example like that.
[00:11:58]  But the criticism that she's trying to lay on the Trump administration is basically that this whole COVID thing, that's their fault.
[00:12:10]  And look how bad COVID is.
[00:12:12]  That's their fault.
[00:12:13]  And that's why 200,000 people are dead because of the Trump administration, which seems to really be quite a stretch, really be quite a stretch.
[00:12:25]  I mean, you could say, okay, here's a list of other countries that have, you know, don't have as high a death rate as us.
[00:12:32]  And the difference there might be in the response of the, you know, of the federal government.
[00:12:38]  Even that's a pretty tough, a pretty tough sell because basically all the federal government did was everything that you would want to overreact to the virus.
[00:12:51]  And all the other decisions were made on the state and local level, you know, in terms of like whether they shut down and stuff like that.
[00:13:00]  But to just say it's on the Trump administration when this has hit like pretty much every country seemed seemed like a stretch that just didn't seem to me like it was going to land.
[00:13:10]  Didn't seem like it was going to work.
[00:13:12]  And particularly when, not that I put a whole lot of stake in these models, but like the IHME and other notable organizations said they predicted that 200,000 deaths was around the best case scenario when this all started.
[00:13:30]  They've revised those predictions several times, but they basically said that there's going to be a range of between 200,000 to 2 million deaths, 200,000 if we do everything right.
[00:13:41]  And so, now, again, I don't put a lot of stock in that, but it just seems like a very tough sell to say this is all the Trump administration's fault.
[00:13:51]  And that's what she opened with.
[00:13:53]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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[00:15:20]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:15:22]  Yeah, Pence had some powerful moments, but based on what you were saying with the pinning Trump for being at fault, well, firstly, I feel like so much of government is like this game of who farted, where like it's basically what's going on with Trump.
[00:15:39]  Like you want to keep interest rates low so that the economy can be good for you.
[00:15:43]  And then you hope that it busts under the last person.
[00:15:46]  Then it comes time to discuss the budget and everyone goes, the other side is closing down government.
[00:15:52]  We're here.
[00:15:52]  We're trying to get it open.
[00:15:54]  You know what I mean?
[00:15:54]  It's like so much of there are things that as a result of the system are not going to work.
[00:15:58]  And half of the game is trying to make it seem like what's working is because of you and what's not working is solely because of them.
[00:16:05]  That's basically the game that they're playing.
[00:16:07]  And so that's the salesmanship here of trying to pretend that this virus would have been dealt with perfectly.
[00:16:14]  One of the things Penn said that I wish he kind of further explained this argument because it like perked my ear because I was like, holy shit, that sounds interesting, but he just didn't explain it well enough for me to follow.
[00:16:23]  But he was saying that with the, what was it?
[00:16:27]  I forgot what virus it was.
[00:16:28]  Maybe it was spine flu, one of those things that if like if that virus had been as deadly as this one, the death scale because they did everything wrong, that sounded really interesting.
[00:16:39]  He just didn't explain or sell it well enough for me to like follow it.
[00:16:42]  I just, I personally thought that was a really, there might be some merit to the argument.
[00:16:50]  I thought it was a stupid argument to try to make because to sit here and say, oh, no, no, no, this isn't really poor, how we've handled this virus.
[00:17:00]  It was the Obama-Biden administration who handled the virus poorly.
[00:17:03]  Even if there is a merit to that argument, I think the average person is going to be like, I don't know, dude, this virus seems a lot worse than that.
[00:17:11]  That virus didn't destroy the country.
[00:17:13]  And this is how at least a lot of people are perceived.
[00:17:16]  I guess he needed the specifics to be like, you guys wanted to keep the borders open.
[00:17:19]  Here's the death projection if we have listened to you.
[00:17:22]  And by the way, there was a virus under your watch and here's specifically we messed up proportionally.
[00:17:26]  He explained that well, I think the argument that Donald Trump closed the border to China and Joe Biden called it xenophobic is a really strong point.
[00:17:39]  And there's a reason why both of them made that point at the debates.
[00:17:43]  And I do think that that's like, that's a really strong argument.
[00:17:47]  And I don't think Kamala Harris or Joe Biden want to talk about that at all because that's true.
[00:17:52]  Joe Biden called him a racist and a xenophobe for wanting to suspend travel with China in the middle of a pandemic that was coming from China.
[00:18:00]  And the idea, I think, to most Americans that you would prioritize some political correct sensibility over, you know, the safety and health of your own citizenry doesn't seem like something that to me is going to be very politically popular.
[00:18:15]  So of course they want to run away from that and just say basically that Trump knew about how horrible it was.
[00:18:21]  There were some absurd claims that Kamala Harris made about what Trump knew.
[00:18:26]  She's trying to play on this Bob Woodward interview.
[00:18:31]  But the idea that Trump knew in January, I think she said, or February, that this was airborne is just goofy.
[00:18:39]  I mean, it doesn't follow any of the science.
[00:18:41]  The CDC literally just, I think, two weeks ago put on their site that it looks like the virus might be somewhat airborne.
[00:18:49]  This has been very contested.
[00:18:51]  The CDC basically put up on their website, hey guys, we're six months in and we still don't fucking know.
[00:18:55]  Yeah.
[00:18:55]  Yeah.
[00:18:56]  Which listen, again, I'm not even blasting people for not knowing.
[00:19:00]  I mean, I think that COVID-19 is a novel virus.
[00:19:02]  And there's, I think there's a lot of really smart people who are really trying to figure it out and they don't know for sure.
[00:19:08]  And some of them are honest enough to admit that they don't know for sure.
[00:19:11]  The problem is when you have draconian government responses to something that you don't know about and then you figure out months later that it was wrong, you know, destroy a lot of people's lives and, you know, and then you won't admit that we got it wrong.
[00:19:28]  That's more my issue.
[00:19:30]  But this, I don't know.
[00:19:31]  I just felt like I'm sure there is some demographic of people who want to blame all of this on Trump and are happy to go along with that.
[00:19:42]  But I didn't think in terms of swaying anybody who might be swayable, I didn't think that was a particularly strong argument.
[00:19:51]  I think one of the things Pence and Trump are really dropping the ball on is the Green New Deal criticism because I'd have to look over the Green New Deal.
[00:20:00]  I don't remember it that well, but I seem to remember that it included elements of, all right, let's say it this way first.
[00:20:06]  Just saying, hey, they want to get rid of fossil fuels does not explain just how bad that policy is because it almost sounds reasonable.
[00:20:12]  You go get rid of fossil fuels.
[00:20:14]  I don't know.
[00:20:14]  That doesn't sound that detrimental.
[00:20:16]  You got to explain like getting rid of fossil fuels means you won't be able to get to work.
[00:20:19]  You won't be able to heat your home.
[00:20:21]  We'll have an economic collapse.
[00:20:22]  We'll be living in the Stone Age.
[00:20:24]  Everything that they're promising you, such as healthcare, will no longer be affordable.
[00:20:28]  Life as we know it will no longer exist.
[00:20:31]  And this is like, I mean, you got to start going through the Green New Deal and just how much lunacy was in there that everyone would go, oh my God, that like, you know, they say people will die.
[00:20:42]  Like they always make that people, Green New Deal, people will literally, yes, people will die.
[00:20:46]  We will have an economic collapse like no one's ever seen.
[00:20:49]  You won't be able to get food.
[00:20:50]  Like the thing is not practical.
[00:20:52]  It doesn't make sense.
[00:20:53]  And to just say, hey, they want to get rid of fossil fuels is not enough of a criticism.
[00:20:57]  You really got to break down what the Green New Deal was and how it's not just law and fictional.
[00:21:04]  It's actually harmful and dangerous.
[00:21:06]  Yeah.
[00:21:06]  Well, you know, I think that you're right.
[00:21:10]  It could be explained better, but there's no question that the Green New Deal is like a big fat political loser.
[00:21:17]  And this is why Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are running away from it.
[00:21:22]  But they also want to keep their base, the left, you know, half of their base.
[00:21:27]  So they have it on their website and they're kind of, you know, they'll kind of like flirt with the idea of it.
[00:21:32]  But you're absolutely right.
[00:21:33]  There's a reason why Mike Pence was the one mentioning the Green New Deal over and over again.
[00:21:38]  You know what I mean?
[00:21:38]  Like because he want, but I agree with you that they could do a better job of explaining this is not like a kind of crazy idea.
[00:21:47]  This isn't like, oh, we're going to raise taxes on the, you know, top marginal, you know, income earners or something like that, or, you know, something where you could argue, no, this will have bad effects.
[00:21:58]  This isn't even like Obamacare or something like that.
[00:22:00]  This is, if you followed AOC's, you know, original $90 trillion plan or whatever, and it depends because there's a few different versions of it out there, but you're talking about a plan to turn America into a third world country.
[00:22:15]  I mean, like you would have mass deaths if you were to try to institute the Green New Deal.
[00:22:21]  And as I said back when the Green New Deal was first proposed by AOC and it started getting all of this traction, I said, the Green New Deal isn't even a plan to turn America into a third world country.
[00:22:33]  It's just a plan for a revolution because you could never implement it.
[00:22:38]  I mean, like you could try to, but like you, there, I mean, there would literally be a civil war if you ever tried to do it.
[00:22:45]  Mitch McConnell had that hilarious thing where he said, great, let's vote on it because he wanted people to put pen to paper that they have record that you support this.
[00:22:54]  And they need to call that bluff in the same way and go, all right, you guys are supporting the Green New Deal.
[00:22:58]  That includes this.
[00:23:00]  So you're looking to end the country.
[00:23:02]  Like, you know what I mean?
[00:23:02]  They're just not really quite digging into how dangerous the idea is in there.
[00:23:08]  And then sell it like they're really trying to put forward these dangerous ideas.
[00:23:13]  Yeah.
[00:23:13]  Yeah.
[00:23:14]  Well, there is something just on the political end of things that is really almost like I found myself almost just being impressed with like AOC and this wing of the Democrat Party.
[00:23:29]  It's really unbelievable that the Green New Deal is even being discussed in presidential debates.
[00:23:34]  I mean, AOC, man, she's, she's 30.
[00:23:38]  She's like, she's, she is young and she came in.
[00:23:41]  She defeated like a fixture of Congress, came in, took this shit over.
[00:23:47]  And now her proposal, I mean, I know there was like a Green New Deal idea before her, but she is the one who popularized it.

=== AOC and the Green New Deal (03:22) ===

[00:23:55]  And now it's out in there in the mainstream and all of this stuff.
[00:23:58]  And it really is like that.
[00:24:00]  That's a really impressive move, like expansion of the Overton window.
[00:24:11]  That now we're talking about, you know what I mean?
[00:24:13]  Like what is now in the conversation is just completely, you know, like something that your average radical environmentalist 20 years ago wouldn't have even dreamed could be in the conversation.
[00:24:29]  There's something impressive about that, you know, like, holy shit, they were really able to get, because, you know, once you get that in there, this is like how the Oberton window works.
[00:24:39]  Once you're talking about like a $90 trillion Green New Deal, then Biden comes on and he goes, no, I just want like a $2 trillion Green New Deal.
[00:24:46]  And you're like, well, that seems reasonable, you know, like, whereas anytime before it would have been like, well, this is insane.
[00:24:52]  But anyway, so that's, you know, there's something about that.
[00:24:55]  I agree with you.
[00:24:56]  It could have been knocked down in a more devastating way.
[00:25:01]  There's also just, it just seemed to me, and maybe this is like because I live in the kind of philosophical world of all this shit, but it seemed like with the climate change questions that Pence just could have done a little bit better.
[00:25:15]  He did okay, but there just could have been a little bit better.
[00:25:18]  You know, to me, I always, I think what you have to take on is the idea of like competing values and what the costs of some of these programs truly are in human terms.
[00:25:33]  And so if you say like they ask him these questions, and of course, by the way, I should say, probably I should have mentioned this on top, that I thought the moderator, the USA Today lady, I thought she was horrible.
[00:25:43]  Most boring person I've ever heard in my entire life.
[00:25:45]  She was, she was boring, but she was also did not ask particularly good questions and was clearly biased.
[00:25:51]  I mean, it's just like the media is so agenda driven that they don't even see their own bias.
[00:25:57]  But, you know, even asking these questions like, is climate change an existential threat and things like this?
[00:26:04]  But I thought, which is, you know, obviously a loaded question.
[00:26:07]  All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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=== Blaming Humans for Climate Change (02:16) ===

[00:27:17]  I thought that for someone like, if you're in Mike Pence's situation, what you'd have to kind of get at in some way or another there is you go is something along the lines of like, okay, so if you think that carbon emissions are an existential threat, we could just ban all civilization and make us all live hunter-gatherer lives.
[00:27:40]  And that would greatly reduce carbon emissions, but also like three-year-olds will die from getting a splinter.
[00:27:47]  So, that could be a problem too.
[00:27:49]  You know, you have to do something to kind of make it realize that this isn't just is this bad, it's this versus what.
[00:27:55]  Like, what are the trade-offs here?
[00:27:57]  And what are you willing to do?
[00:27:59]  We're putting our lot in with improving the economy, making people wealthier, protecting jobs, protecting people's livelihoods.
[00:28:06]  That's what we're concerned with.
[00:28:07]  We're not concerned with destroying them on this theory that it's better to reduce carbon emissions.
[00:28:13]  And somehow, now that's you know, you could do a lot better than that if you actually sat down and prepared.
[00:28:17]  The idea that there was never weather or extreme events prior to human beings coming along and using carbon, it's a form of I think it's just human Stockholm syndrome where we want to pretend like we've got more control than we do, and so we want to go, oh, this forest fire is our fault.
[00:28:34]  And I really don't think global warming is causing forest fires right now in college.
[00:28:38]  No, no, there's no, there's no evidence for that.
[00:28:40]  There's no evidence that there's an increase in storms caused by climate change.
[00:28:45]  This is like this is not scientific at all.
[00:28:48]  Um, but yeah, no, there is something about that.
[00:28:50]  It's like the left likes to believe that man is God, and there's part of that is that there is an absence of God, and so that's what kind of fills that vacuum.
[00:28:59]  Um, but we're just talking about abortion or the environment or any of that stuff.
[00:29:04]  It's also just human-flawed thinking that we like to apply reason to random events, and so it's very easy to look at random things and go, Oh, well, this is why it had one has nothing to do with the other.
[00:29:15]  It's just a faulty human logic, and that's that to me it's not.
[00:29:19]  But then, if you start thinking, hey, we're making the most important decisions at a debate, and now we're putting forward the worst elements of human logic of, hey, here was a random event, and here I'm going to state it factually that the reason for it is because of us and fossil fuels.

=== Supreme Court Political Maneuvers (10:14) ===

[00:29:34]  Like, you know what I mean?
[00:29:35]  Like, that's such a and you can't, and then you seem really evil if you challenge it and go, Listen, I don't think uh these forest fires have anything to do with global warming.
[00:29:42]  Then all of a sudden, it's like you're pro-death.
[00:29:45]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:45]  No, there's a real human tendency, and it's one of our darker tendencies to feel like really complicated problems that are quite often completely out of our control, control, would just all be fine if it wasn't for this one group of bad people.
[00:30:04]  You know, like that's that's a really dark tendency that's always run throughout humanity, and that's it's very destructive.
[00:30:13]  They haven't gotten rid of the Jews if they had done it, you know, that it still might be true, they just haven't been able to get the job done.
[00:30:19]  Yeah, I mean, that is possible, it's uh unfalsifiable for sure because we don't know.
[00:30:25]  Um, but you know, it's like there's that, that's a very dark impulse, it's very destructive, but it's also very persuasive, and that's why it's still uh with us.
[00:30:33]  The other uh good pence moment was uh the Supreme Court packing, which firstly so showcased, I guess, Kamala's willingness to um not answer a question that you all of a sudden you realize, like, well, what's she doing on all these other questions?
[00:30:48]  She clearly is dodging, weaving, lying, but on the Supreme Court thing, why won't they just give a straight answer and lie and say no?
[00:30:56]  I'm surprised, or maybe they want their base to vote them in because there's yeah, there's there's a couple different um theories that are floating around about this, but make no mistake about it.
[00:31:07]  I mean, it was really confirmed in the vice presidential debate, and I thought this might have been the biggest moment of the debate that it was confirmed that this is their campaign strategy.
[00:31:18]  It's not like oh Joe Biden just dodged a question at that debate and they've dodged it in other, you know, uh, like interviews.
[00:31:24]  There, they will not answer the question of whether they plan on packing the Supreme Court.
[00:31:30]  Now, there's you could, you know, I've been kind of going back and forth with some people on social media about this.
[00:31:37]  You could come up with an explanation that is something like, well, look, they've got a balance right now, which we all knew would be a tricky dynamic for the Democratic nominees, whoever they were.
[00:31:52]  That they've got a balance.
[00:31:53]  Okay, in order to get the nomination, we had to agree to all of these crazy left-wing positions that are very unpopular in the country.
[00:32:03]  And I don't just mean like Medicare for all or something like that.
[00:32:06]  I mean like free health care for illegals, reparations for slavery, the Green New Deal.
[00:32:13]  You could go on and on.
[00:32:14]  There's a whole bunch of them that you're like, these are losers in a general election.
[00:32:21]  But they were somewhat helpful in the Democratic nomination process.
[00:32:26]  So now they've got to bail away from all of that shit.
[00:32:28]  And they are.
[00:32:29]  I mean, they're walking away from Medicare for all.
[00:32:33]  They're walking away from a bunch of different left-wing positions.
[00:32:37]  They're not running on defund the police or any of that shit, you know?
[00:32:42]  But so this is something they can throw out there and be like, okay, look, we're going to pack the court and try to get left-wingers feeling like this is important.
[00:32:51]  We'll protect abortion or something like that.
[00:32:55]  I don't really buy that.
[00:32:57]  I think that the most likely explanation for this is that they plan on trying to pack the court.
[00:33:05]  I think that's it.
[00:33:06]  They know it'll be unpopular to say, but that's what they want to do.
[00:33:11]  And it's not that they wouldn't lie, but I think they realize that this would be such a big fat lie that it would look very bad for them and would make it hard for them to get it done.
[00:33:21]  I think that a long time ago, progressives decided that the courts were really a great tool for them.
[00:33:33]  This whole philosophy that, you know, the Constitution is a living, breathing document and we can get activist judges on there and they will, you know what I mean, like do our bidding for us.
[00:33:43]  You probably, you weren't going to get abortion as the law of the land in all 50 states if it was left up to a vote.
[00:33:52]  You weren't going to get it if it was left up to legislators.
[00:33:56]  You certainly weren't going to get it if you had judges who were like originalists.
[00:34:02]  So this is what you can do.
[00:34:04]  And this has been their way to kind of cram very unpopular progressive policies down the Americans' throats.
[00:34:13]  And the idea of looking at Donald Trump having remade the Supreme Court is infuriating to them.
[00:34:20]  And not just infuriating, but really undermines their whole power structure.
[00:34:25]  And so I think this is their plan.
[00:34:26]  And I think this is what they're going to try to do.
[00:34:28]  I know zero about this, but you just kind of piqued my interest.
[00:34:31]  What is the Supreme Court, like where in the Constitution is like abortion addressed that it becomes a Supreme Court argument?
[00:34:38]  Like why?
[00:34:39]  Abortion is not addressed anywhere in the Constitution.
[00:34:41]  The word never comes up.
[00:34:43]  But they will say that that's a fun.
[00:34:45]  Listen, they will say that abortion is a fundamental constitutional protected right.
[00:34:51]  It's like, but what gives you the right?
[00:34:55]  I mean, you and I don't have the same opinion on abortions, and we don't have to go too down that rabbit hole for people unfamiliar.
[00:35:01]  You say it's 100% death.
[00:35:03]  I say, what the hell do I know?
[00:35:04]  I just don't want to hear about it.
[00:35:05]  Go do you.
[00:35:07]  That's kind of more my take.
[00:35:09]  But I guess I don't know why originally, it's weird to me when Supreme Court things even flip.
[00:35:16]  So like, how did they flip that law?
[00:35:18]  I really don't know enough about this.
[00:35:19]  Well, you know, it goes back to the Roe v. Wade case, and that's still the law of the land.
[00:35:24]  And so, you know, I'd have to go back and actually read that decision to know what their justification was for how they saw this.
[00:35:31]  But there's no mention of abortion in the Constitution.
[00:35:36]  And it's certainly, you know, again, it's like it seems, let's just say you'd have to have an activist mentality to believe that the Constitution, even though it doesn't say anything about abortion, really meant to protect a woman's right to taxpayers should be, Christian taxpayers should be forced to cover your abortion.
[00:35:58]  Well, that's, and that's another position that, by the way, Joe Biden was against his entire career until just this primary season when he came out for taxpayer-funded abortions.
[00:36:09]  Because again, he had to deal with how much the Democratic base has moved in the left direction.
[00:36:15]  And now, and that was something that Pence hit him with in the debate.
[00:36:19]  But the Supreme Court issue is it seems to me that this, you know, they're trying to play politics by not answering the question, but it might become very bad politics because it is, again, it was so obvious.
[00:36:34]  Kamala Harris trying to dance around it was like painful to watch.
[00:36:39]  Like, yeah, you clearly will not answer this question.
[00:36:44]  And that.
[00:36:45]  And I guess there's something unlikable about that where you'll clearly unanswer something so you can do a power grab and force something upon me once you're in office.
[00:36:54]  Yeah.
[00:36:54]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:56]  And there was something that was really unbelievable that, you know, and this is why I really do, as I say all the time, that I just think the like kind of this, this like critical race theory, you know, the cultural progressive obsession with race and all of this stuff is just so awful.
[00:37:20]  And I know that a lot of, you know, there's like people who I get shit for being so vocally critical of it, no pun intended, critical of it.
[00:37:29]  But it's, it's like, I don't know, I would, I would be against this if it was coming the other way around too.
[00:37:34]  But Kamala Harris's response, which somehow I think there is a decent size of people who this kind of resonates with and makes sense to, even though it's so batshit insane.
[00:37:46]  But her response that she thought was like her slam dunk was, okay, you want to talk about packing the court?
[00:37:51]  Let's talk about packing the court.
[00:37:53]  You know, of all of the judges that Donald Trump's appointed, none of them have been black.
[00:37:59]  And you're like, wait, what?
[00:38:01]  The fuck does that have to do with anything?
[00:38:04]  Like, what?
[00:38:05]  So that's that by its very nature is packing the court.
[00:38:09]  If you didn't, well, you didn't hire any black judges.
[00:38:13]  So there you go.
[00:38:14]  What?
[00:38:15]  The hell does the race of the judges who were nominated by the president to lower level courts have to do with packing the Supreme Court?
[00:38:24]  But that is, in their mind, like that is the woke, in the woke mind, that's a legitimate counter argument.
[00:38:32]  Well, I mean, okay.
[00:38:33]  So then you're racist.
[00:38:35]  So then we might as well pack the court because you basically packed it with white people.
[00:38:39]  Like, holy shit.
[00:38:40]  This stuff is just really, really disturbing.
[00:38:44]  Yeah.
[00:38:45]  And on that note, there's only been a couple of positions to fill.
[00:38:47]  And now he's trying to fill one with a lady.
[00:38:49]  Yeah, give him a chance.
[00:38:50]  You know, maybe if we get to a fourth judge, there'll be a black person.
[00:38:54]  Who knows?
[00:38:55]  Yeah.
[00:38:55]  And it's interesting how, like, with all these things, you know, they go, it's always like kind of the woke game.
[00:39:01]  But that doesn't matter that he's filling it with a woman because she's not their woman.
[00:39:05]  So they don't fucking care.
[00:39:06]  Like, they don't really care about fucking diversity or any of this shit.
[00:39:10]  It's just like, well, no, this is all very clearly just, you know, a power grab.
[00:39:17]  And, but then it's kind of like, oh, well, we'll use this.
[00:39:20]  It's not as if they're going to nominate Clarence Thomas to the bench or if they give a whole bunch of credit to, you know, who was it, George Bush Sr. for nominating him.
[00:39:29]  It's not like they really care about black people.
[00:39:31]  It's like, no, they want black people who will, you know, protect abortion.
[00:39:34]  That's what they care about.
[00:39:35]  Out.
[00:39:35]  So it has nothing to do with the woke bullshit.
[00:39:38]  That's just like the excuse.
[00:39:41]  It's like you've got a, you got a woman in a gay in there, and they go, well, he hasn't gotten a transgender person who also identifies as a horse.

=== Cushy Dreams CBD Review (02:12) ===

[00:39:48]  Right.
[00:39:49]  Not everyone has been represented.
[00:39:50]  There's only a couple of jobs here.
[00:39:53]  How many people are on the Supreme Court?
[00:39:55]  Well, there's nine.
[00:39:56]  There's nine.
[00:39:56]  Yeah.
[00:39:57]  How you could, and there's already one black guy.
[00:39:58]  That's right.
[00:39:59]  I guess right now there's eight.
[00:40:01]  So that's that's a pretty good representation of like, I mean, how many, what, what percentage of the population is it 10%?
[00:40:10]  So now you so that's 13%.
[00:40:12]  So you got an almost perfect ratio.
[00:40:15]  I mean, it's like black representation in the Supreme Court because of the conservative party.
[00:40:19]  But it's also like, who the fuck cares?
[00:40:21]  It's all just so bizarre.
[00:40:24]  All right.
[00:40:24]  Other moments from the debate, the, there was the, I got to say, the fucking, there, there were all types of like memes and jokes about the fly that landed on Pence's head.
[00:40:34]  Some of them were pretty funny.
[00:40:36]  All right, let's take a quick second.
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=== Vaccine Tax Debate Dynamics (15:16) ===

[00:42:01]  The thing that fucking really sucked about it was it was really during one of the most important moments of the debate, I thought.
[00:42:08]  It was when he was calling out Kamala Harris for not condemning the riots and the violence and all of that shit when she was calling them mostly peaceful protesters.
[00:42:18]  And so that was unfortunate.
[00:42:21]  It really took the steam out from one of the most important issues in the country.
[00:42:27]  And of course, you know, it's really amazing to watch how, you know, like I thought it was insane, as I said before in the first presidential debate that the first topic that came up was the Supreme Court.
[00:42:42]  Like I just thought that was in this year, 2020, for the first thing you ask in the first presidential debate, how could it not be about the pandemic and the lockdowns?
[00:42:54]  How could it not be about, you know, like so many, like this has been a year that fundamentally changed this country.
[00:43:00]  And the idea that like a justice died and the president is going to nominate someone and the Senate is going to confirm them is just not, to me, the number one story or even close to it.
[00:43:11]  But it's amazing how little the violence in the streets has come up.
[00:43:16]  This is a pretty major story and it's just really not treated by the media as having a lot of importance.
[00:43:25]  But it certainly is if you're living in those areas or working in those areas.
[00:43:29]  And there's lots of them that have been afflicted with this all around the country.
[00:43:33]  So that was, and even when they do come up, it's like, Donald Trump, will you condemn the proud boys?
[00:43:38]  Or, you know, they'll talk about police brutality, no problem with that.
[00:43:42]  But they don't want to talk about the violence in the streets.
[00:43:44]  And so it was interesting that Pence brought that up.
[00:43:46]  But of course, the fly came in and stole that moment away from him.
[00:43:49]  And it was really, it wasn't like a fly landed on him.
[00:43:51]  That thing was burrowing in there to that weird Pence hair.
[00:43:55]  So that was an unfortunate moment for Pence.
[00:44:00]  One of the other things that Pence, one of the moments where he was, you know, interrupting her, mansplaining to her, which we can get into that in a second.
[00:44:08]  But so he is that they're running.
[00:44:13]  And she said, and Joe Biden said in the previous debate, that he will on day one repeal the Trump tax cuts, which I don't believe a president can do by themselves.
[00:44:25]  But regardless, that's what they're running on, that will on day one repeal the Trump tax cuts.
[00:44:30]  And so the Trump Pence argument is like, oh, okay, so that's them.
[00:44:35]  They want to raise your taxes.
[00:44:36]  And then they go, no, we won't raise taxes on anyone under $400,000 who makes under $400,000 a year.
[00:44:42]  But of course, the problem with that is that the Trump tax cuts gave tax breaks to lots of people who make under $400,000 a year.
[00:44:50]  So if you repeal that, you are in effect raising their taxes.
[00:44:54]  And this is something that like this, if the press wasn't so biased, this is the type of topic where the moderator would step in and say, yes, but you are saying that you're going to repeal these tax cuts, which would raise taxes on, you know, middle-class Americans.
[00:45:11]  So what's the plan here?
[00:45:12]  But of course, you know, on those issues, Pence is left to battle it for himself.
[00:45:18]  But I did think that was a fair point.
[00:45:20]  I think he did a decent job nailing that and making the case pretty clear.
[00:45:24]  And again, Kamala Harris just didn't want to respond to it or kind of lecture him about interrupting or something like that.
[00:45:31]  Yeah.
[00:45:32]  You think we're going to get another Trump-Biden debate?
[00:45:35]  Because it already looks like the next one's not happening.
[00:45:37]  Well, so they came out, the debate commission came out and said we were switching it to a virtual debate and Trump said no.
[00:45:44]  Which is fair.
[00:45:46]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:45:47]  It's a whole different dynamic to do a virtual debate.
[00:45:50]  And the truth is that Biden has been accused.
[00:45:58]  And there is some evidence to suggest that in several of these Zoom interview type things, he's been reading off of a teleprompter.
[00:46:07]  And it's very hard to check whether someone's being fed lines and things like that.
[00:46:11]  It's just a different dynamic.
[00:46:13]  And it's not, I think it would not, it wouldn't behoove Trump to do it that way.
[00:46:19]  And so I understand why he's denying it.
[00:46:21]  So right now, it looks like there's a very good chance the second debate isn't going to happen.
[00:46:26]  The third debate, who knows?
[00:46:28]  You know, like maybe it will, maybe it won't.
[00:46:30]  It's also kind of stupid.
[00:46:34]  Like there's just no like, there's no nuance in the media's conversation about what are reasonable measures to take to protect against COVID transmission, which is why when Donald Trump said, don't let it control your life, they all freaked out.
[00:46:53]  Like that's the worst, that's the worst thing to say.
[00:46:56]  But look, Donald Trump is not testing positive for COVID anymore.
[00:47:01]  He has no symptoms of COVID.
[00:47:03]  The idea that in seven days you couldn't do a debate is not reasonable.
[00:47:10]  It's certainly not backed up by this science.
[00:47:12]  If you want to, you could separate them further, have them stand, you know, 40 feet apart from each other, put that plexiglass up.
[00:47:21]  You could do it outside.
[00:47:23]  Like there's lots of different ways that you could handle this.
[00:47:26]  Hey, we're the greatest country in the world.
[00:47:28]  We can solve any problem.
[00:47:28]  We can go to the moon.
[00:47:30]  You can't get two people to debate.
[00:47:31]  There's no filtration system in existence.
[00:47:34]  There's no way to separate them where you can still do a television production.
[00:47:37]  I mean, like, of course, they could.
[00:47:39]  You can keep your distance.
[00:47:40]  You can keep your mask on until you get up there.
[00:47:42]  You could put the plexiglass thing, whatever.
[00:47:44]  Even that is all ridiculous.
[00:47:46]  Like it's really something to watch how the Democrats and the corporate press, which, you know, I mean, I've had problems with all of them for a long time.
[00:48:00]  I got a lot of problems with the Republicans as well.
[00:48:03]  But they've really become the party of paranoia and hysteria.
[00:48:10]  Like you can't just go, okay, well, let's think about this in like a reasonable way, you know, like, okay, so we'll keep distance and no one has to be around them if they don't want to.
[00:48:18]  You don't have to go hug the guy.
[00:48:20]  But so they absolutely could do this, is my point.
[00:48:23]  And but they want to keep the hysteria going and they want to protect Joe Biden.
[00:48:27]  So that's that's where they're going with this one.
[00:48:31]  So it looks like the second debate's going to be off, which added to the importance of this vice presidential debate because this now you enter it thinking this might be the last time these campaigns like, you know, face-to-face kind of square off.
[00:48:47]  So other moments from the debate that stood out.
[00:48:52]  Anything, is there anything else that pops into your mind?
[00:48:54]  Not off the top of my head.
[00:48:56]  Okay.
[00:48:57]  So there's, you know, they talked a bit about the election coming up and the voter fraud and stuff like that.
[00:49:07]  Oh, there was that one moment where Kamala Harris said she won't take the vaccine if Trump tells her to, which did seem like just a weird moment.
[00:49:19]  There's something so bizarre about the kind of like neoliberal establishment Democrats who just are so like they don't want to embrace any of the ideas that might be popular from the left.
[00:49:38]  You know, like they don't want to run on universal health care or like anything like that.
[00:49:41]  Even something that might be popular or might be able to be sold in a popular way.
[00:49:45]  Now, by the way, I do think that leftists in general overplay how popular Medicare for all is.
[00:49:52]  Because if you actually, you know, they'll say, if you just, they'll be like, look, Medicare for All is popular.
[00:49:57]  You know, look at this poll.
[00:49:58]  And there are polls out there that will show you, like, oh, a majority of people favor Medicare for all.
[00:50:03]  But it's only when you just ask them, do you like Medicare for all?
[00:50:08]  You know, like, hey, you know, Medicare?
[00:50:10]  Like what senior citizens get?
[00:50:11]  How about everyone gets that?
[00:50:12]  And people tend to go like, oh, okay, that sounds pretty reasonable.
[00:50:16]  But actually, if you dig a little bit deeper, whenever there's any pushback, those numbers change a lot.
[00:50:22]  Like, if you like, ask people, do you want Medicare for all, but your taxes go up substantially?
[00:50:26]  All of a sudden, it drops to being unpopular.
[00:50:28]  If you go, hey, do you like Medicare for all?
[00:50:30]  But if you like your private insurance, we're banning that private insurance and you have to lose that.
[00:50:34]  It collapses.
[00:50:35]  So it's actually not that clear that that's that popular of view.
[00:50:38]  But anyway, but the like Kamala Harris, Joe Biden establishment Dems of the World, all they have to run on is how terrible Donald Trump is.
[00:50:48]  So they end up saying these things that like maybe appeal to the people who hate Donald Trump, but I got to think the people who hate Donald Trump so much were already not going to vote for him.
[00:50:56]  But so she'll say these things like she goes, well, if the scientists and Fauci and the doctors tell me to take it, I'll take it.
[00:51:02]  But if Trump tells me to take it, I'm not taking it.
[00:51:05]  It's like, what does that even mean?
[00:51:07]  Like, what are you saying?
[00:51:09]  Do you think Donald Trump is going to come up with a vaccine on his own?
[00:51:15]  Like, Donald Trump made this.
[00:51:16]  I had made this.
[00:51:17]  It's a tremendous vaccine.
[00:51:18]  I mixed my hair product with a little bit of a dead virus and it'll get like what he's just going to recommend one that no doctors or scientists are telling you to take.
[00:51:28]  Is there going to be a situation where Fauci and a bunch of other doctors are like, Do not take this vaccine?
[00:51:32]  This is a horrible vaccine.
[00:51:33]  But Trump's like, Trust me, just take it.
[00:51:35]  Like, what?
[00:51:36]  What scenario are you envisioning?
[00:51:38]  The only way Trump's going to be pushing a vaccine is that, like, some pharmaceutical company made it, and the doctors are telling you to take this.
[00:51:44]  This is so bizarre.
[00:51:46]  Like, this is like really playing to this Trump derangement syndrome thing.
[00:51:50]  Like, I'll take it if Fauci tells me to, but not Trump.
[00:51:52]  He's probably lying.
[00:51:53]  Why?
[00:51:54]  Because Trump wants to kill a bunch of people with a vaccine.
[00:51:57]  Like, it's just fucking bizarre.
[00:52:00]  But then Pence tried to turn that around as her downplaying science or whatever.
[00:52:05]  Anyway, it was all kind of silly.
[00:52:08]  You know, just because pharmaceutical companies tell you to take a vaccine, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to take it either, by the way.
[00:52:14]  Not that I wouldn't take it if just Trump told me, but I wouldn't necessarily take it because Fauci told me to either.
[00:52:21]  Especially if you look at what the real risks of COVID are.
[00:52:24]  The idea that young people should be taking this vaccine seems pretty nutty to me.
[00:52:29]  Anyway, the debates.
[00:52:32]  I think there's any more big moments that I want to discuss.
[00:52:35]  I guess not.
[00:52:36]  It closed with that dumbass question from the kid.
[00:52:40]  We had an eight-year-old who asked us, how come everyone's not getting along?
[00:52:44]  And of course, like neither of them can really answer this question because I suppose there could be a thoughtful answer there where it's like, yeah, you know, like this country really is furious.
[00:52:56]  And maybe we should get into why that is, why we're in the middle of a culture war, what we can do to calm this thing down.
[00:53:02]  But none of them, you know, also there was no eight-year-old kid.
[00:53:04]  That was like when you were penhouse when it's like the article about the lady having it's always a dude that wrote it.
[00:53:10]  There was no chick.
[00:53:11]  It's just a good writer.
[00:53:12]  Like, and also, why would you pick that out of all the questions?
[00:53:14]  Like, I get if there's a whole field of questions from eight-year-olds, but it's this one just really annoying, dumb one.
[00:53:20]  That's just it's really something to like be what was the submission process.
[00:53:24]  I want to know how was this one, how was this question selected?
[00:53:27]  What address did they write into?
[00:53:28]  I want to know the whole story of how you came up with that stupid little poem.
[00:53:33]  Well, this is why it's like, don't give me this shit when people go like after the first Trump-Biden debate and people are like, you know, who lost today?
[00:53:40]  The country, because there was so much interrupting and like all this.
[00:53:43]  It's like, listen, man, don't act like any of these people are the adults in the room.
[00:53:48]  There was not a single question about the debt in this whole debate.
[00:53:53]  The largest deficits that any government has ever run in the history of the world this year.
[00:53:58]  There's no question about the money printing, the corporate bailouts, the financial cliff that we are speeding toward.
[00:54:05]  Not a single question about that shit.
[00:54:07]  Also, not a question about the longest wars in American history.
[00:54:10]  Nothing.
[00:54:11]  Doesn't even come up.
[00:54:12]  Not even a mention, not a footnote about it.
[00:54:14]  Okay.
[00:54:14]  Sort of act like you have, but they do have time to have a third grader or whatever ask you, how come, you know, it makes me feel like when mommy and daddy are fighting, when the country's fighting, and can't we all just hug and say, like, really, this comes up.
[00:54:27]  Don't give me any of this bullshit about too much interrupting.
[00:54:30]  I'm sorry.
[00:54:31]  Give me this shit show.
[00:54:32]  These are going to, if we're going to ignore all of the serious questions, then tear the bitch down.
[00:54:37]  Let Donald Trump just call people fruits for an hour and a half.
[00:54:41]  I really don't care.
[00:54:43]  But anyway, so that was, you know, that was how they closed it.
[00:54:46]  It was, it was just cringy and embarrassing, and both of them gave stupid answers.
[00:54:51]  But anyway, I find myself quite often after presidential debates or the vice presidential debates, tuning into MSNBC.
[00:55:02]  I always flip right to MSNBC to see what their reaction is.
[00:55:06]  Because if you're red-pilled and you go watch MSNBC, you can actually deduce a lot about what's really going on.
[00:55:11]  So right away, their take-I mean, immediately they're talking about the fly and they're talking about how Pence was mansplaining.
[00:55:22]  This is Pence just interrupted too much.
[00:55:24]  Don't a lot of women know just what's that, what that's like to have a man interrupting you at a board meeting or blah, blah, blah.
[00:55:31]  And this is their angle.
[00:55:32]  And you look at that and you go, wow, that's how bad a night Kamala Harris had, that they can't even find one blow that she landed on him to go like, this is the story of the debate.
[00:55:45]  This is what happened here.
[00:55:47]  See, she exposed him on this or that.
[00:55:49]  I mean, like, the best they could do was they tried to talk about the pre-existing conditions thing.
[00:55:54]  But Pence's response, which, you know, is somewhat weak because they don't really have a healthcare plan, is that, you know, well, we're going to protect pre-existing conditions.
[00:56:04]  Talk about the Overton window that now protecting for pre-existing conditions.
[00:56:08]  Like that was a change with Obamacare that is now the standard and norm.
[00:56:12]  And insurance can't protect for pre-existing conditions.
[00:56:15]  You can't not have insurance and then get cancer and then go get insurance.
[00:56:19]  That doesn't make sense.
[00:56:20]  It literally, by the definition, makes it not insurance.
[00:56:23]  Insurance, yeah.
[00:56:24]  It's not insurance.
[00:56:24]  You can't have like fire insurance, but you can't raise my rates if my house is already on fire when I go to get insurance.
[00:56:32]  Then it's not insurance.
[00:56:33]  The two other things that also they're lying when in terms of coverage for pre-existing condition, I discovered this.
[00:56:40]  If you try and buy healthcare coverage outside of open enrollment, you're not able to.
[00:56:44]  You're only able to buy insurance two months of the year.
[00:56:47]  You know why?
[00:56:48]  Because when they said that you can't like that they have to, you know, cover you if you have a pre-existing condition, you can't have an open market where you can purchase insurance all year because then everyone would just wait till they get sick, which also means if you couldn't afford insurance and all of a sudden you realize, hey, I'm being dumb.
[00:57:03]  I should go, you're not able to purchase it.
[00:57:06]  So this idea that the new system covers for pre-existing condition is a little bit of a lie because they had to restructure the system so that you can only actually purchase healthcare two months of the year.

=== Insurance Market Victimhood (11:17) ===

[00:57:17]  The other thing, which I was thinking about yesterday, when I think it's the most broken part about the insurance market, is you got to realize government kind of invented this insurance thing when it created tax benefits for corporations to give you insurance.
[00:57:28]  That's kind of like the origin of the insurance market.
[00:57:30]  It's all driven up like prices.
[00:57:32]  It doesn't help anybody.
[00:57:33]  But I was thinking about that.
[00:57:34]  One of the big benefits with life insurance is that if you buy it young, you lock in your insurability.
[00:57:39]  And sometimes I think you can even increase your policy, but that's the biggest benefit of buying life insurance in your 20s is that if you got cancer later, it's fine.
[00:57:47]  You've locked in your insurability.
[00:57:49]  Health insurance really should work in the same way where we've made a mistake that we've handed it over to the corporations.
[00:57:55]  So you're at risk for when you leave this job, now I got to get a new health card.
[00:57:58]  Like health insurance should be something that you buy when you're 20 years old.
[00:58:01]  And if you do buy it when you're 20 years old and you stay with it, you've locked in your insurability so that like if you get cancer at age 40, your rates aren't like you've locked in your insurance.
[00:58:10]  There's a way to do it.
[00:58:11]  That is the way the insurance market is supposed to function.
[00:58:14]  And in part, it's not functioning in that way because of the way government's structured it where it's mostly covered by employers.
[00:58:22]  And so you don't just like go out and purchase yourself insurance and just have it.
[00:58:25]  It's, yeah.
[00:58:27]  No, you're, you're 100% right.
[00:58:29]  And this is why the whole Obamacare is just unworkable and it's a nightmare.
[00:58:33]  And, you know, then, and Pence did, I guess to his credit, say, you know, Obamacare was a nightmare.
[00:58:38]  But then, of course, like you said, they're still like, oh, but we're still going to have pre-existing conditions and all this other shit.
[00:58:43]  And if, you know, it's tough if you don't have the balls to say the uncomfortable truth.
[00:58:48]  It's like, well, then, okay.
[00:58:49]  So then you're basically acknowledging that you like the good parts of Obamacare and they can hit you on this and blah, blah, blah.
[00:58:56]  But to the coverage on MSNBC and CNN too, I watched some of theirs later and it's the same thing.
[00:59:03]  It's all talking about mansplaining.
[00:59:05]  Like, this is what they're going with.
[00:59:06]  It reminds you of the, you know, how desperate it is that the news of the day after Trump's debate is that he won't condemn the proud boys.
[00:59:14]  So it's actually hard to imagine.
[00:59:17]  We need to incorporate women, but at the same time, we can't have conversations or arguments with them.
[00:59:21]  I'm new.
[00:59:22]  I didn't watch MSNBC.
[00:59:23]  So you got to explain something.
[00:59:24]  No, I mean, this is more or less the argument.
[00:59:25]  And it's not just MSNBC.
[00:59:26]  It's, it's like blue check mark, Twitter, and CNN and a bunch of this.
[00:59:29]  It's a mansplaining this term.
[00:59:31]  So this, this is it.
[00:59:33]  We want women and women of color to be in positions of power, but then in a debate with them, we can accuse you of mansplaining.
[00:59:44]  To quote Kamala Harris, it was a debate.
[00:59:48]  Right?
[00:59:48]  So, like, what is he said about?
[00:59:50]  So now you're in this position where you like, you know, what can't be critical can't interject at all in the middle of a debate.
[00:59:59]  It's such a, it's not just that this, I got to say, was it's so incredibly stupid that I think it's actually even too stupid for people who are prone to things like this working on them.
[01:00:13]  It's just too stupid.
[01:00:15]  And I got to say, it's like one of the things that is that only is that any case that a man is talking, it's a mansplaination?
[01:00:22]  Like, or is it only if it's directed towards women?
[01:00:25]  Well, obviously, it's only directed toward women, right?
[01:00:28]  Because nobody when Donald Trump, who was being substantially more hostile, was interrupting probably 10 times more than Mike Pence did against Joe Biden.
[01:00:39]  Nobody said Donald Trump was mansplaining to Joe Biden, right?
[01:00:43]  You wouldn't use that term there.
[01:00:45]  So no, the clear thing, it's funny because it's actually like they come up, they become like the fucking.
[01:00:50]  So if you had a room of female physicists and Albert Einstein was explaining theory of relativity to them, is he mansplaining?
[01:00:56]  Yes, mansplaining.
[01:00:57]  He probably shouldn't do that.
[01:00:58]  I mean, so you have to now, their rule is that you have to treat women with kid gloves, basically.
[01:01:04]  You know, it's like they, we want them to have a seat at the table, but you can't be mean to them the way you could to another man or something along those lines, which are like, I'm sorry, it's bullshit.
[01:01:13]  I would love, you know, one or the other.
[01:01:15]  You can have one or two.
[01:01:16]  I'd love to interject, but I just want to make sure I'm not mansplaining here.
[01:01:19]  So do I have your permission to please debate you at this debate?
[01:01:22]  Right.
[01:01:23]  I just want to make sure.
[01:01:23]  I know we're in a debate and I'm supposed to, but I don't want to be mansplaining over here.
[01:01:26]  So can you imagine if you actually put in those terms how derogatory and like that actually sounds more offensive?
[01:01:33]  Excuse me.
[01:01:34]  I know that we're here to debate and that you came up for debate.
[01:01:36]  And I'd like to argue your point there.
[01:01:38]  I just want your permission first to make sure I'm not mansplaining towards you.
[01:01:42]  How is that not derogatory towards women?
[01:01:44]  Yeah, really.
[01:01:45]  I mean, it's the whole thing is just so goofy.
[01:01:47]  It's so incredibly stupid, but it also, you know, it's like this very useful tool.
[01:01:54]  And I, I, this is the thing that like drives me crazy about kind of like wokeism in general, you know, but like, and we've talked about this, but, you know, a good amount through the last few months, but if there was some type of like, you know, truly like truly kind of bleeding heart empathy for people who are really suffering,
[01:02:22]  for people who are truly victimized, I could understand, even if it was a little bit misguided, I could be somewhat sympathetic to it, you know?
[01:02:29]  Like I could be like, okay, I understand why you're trying to help, but I don't think this is actually what's going to help, you know, like, but, but, like I said before, you know, it's, it's stupid when people on the left blame everything on this ambiguous term racism or systemic racism and don't actually get into like, okay, but what's actually going on here?
[01:02:50]  Like specifically, let's, let's really find out what the problems are in different pockets of society.
[01:02:56]  But there are real problems in different pockets of society.
[01:02:59]  You know, I've talked about it like, you know, driving through Camden, New Jersey, like me and Big Jay used to do every time we did a gig in Philly, literally almost just for the thrill of it.
[01:03:08]  We would drive through this fucking neighborhood.
[01:03:10]  And it's, it's like an experience.
[01:03:14]  It leaves you like affected.
[01:03:16]  You drive through this fucking area.
[01:03:18]  For people who don't know, it's like one of the shittiest neighborhoods in the country.
[01:03:22]  And you drive through, and it's like every other house is boarded up, and there's just like hookers walking around the street, and everything's falling apart.
[01:03:32]  No, no, no, you wouldn't want, you wouldn't be interested, Rob, let me tell you.
[01:03:37]  Um, but you'll walk through this thing, it looks like you're in a war zone, and then there's just like it'll be two in the morning, and there's like a four-year-old with no shoes or socks walking down the street.
[01:03:47]  I mean, it's tough as hell.
[01:03:48]  Well, that's for sure, but I mean, it's legitimately heartbreaking.
[01:03:51]  Like, you see it, and you're like, oh my God, like some child is living their life this way.
[01:03:56]  It's horrific.
[01:03:57]  And if there was anything we could do, you know, as a society or whatever to try to help that kid, I would be all ears.
[01:04:05]  Like, oh, yeah, what can we do?
[01:04:07]  Now, the problem is that it just seems insurmountable.
[01:04:09]  It's like, no matter what you do, it's probably not going to, you know, like someone said this to me at some point, but I think the shoes are actually the least of this kid's problem.
[01:04:18]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:19]  So, like, there's anyway, I'm all, but what the woke thing always ends up becoming is like victimizing someone who's not a victim at all.
[01:04:28]  Like, the fact that Camden is a black neighborhood and that that kid that I saw without shoes is black doesn't make Kamala Harris a victim.
[01:04:36]  You know what I mean?
[01:04:37]  Like, Kamala Harris was the daughter of like an Indian and a Jamaican.
[01:04:41]  I think he was an economics professor.
[01:04:43]  Like, this isn't, you're not a victim too.
[01:04:45]  And then to make it this thing where it's like, well, I'm a woman who was like one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country and then a senator and now the vice presidential candidate.
[01:04:56]  And I was interrupted.
[01:04:59]  Like, I'm sorry.
[01:04:59]  You don't, you're not like in victim status now.
[01:05:02]  No one fucking feels bad for you.
[01:05:04]  But this like identitarian cultural Marxist wokeism bullshit says that like anyone, this is like the intersectionality thing.
[01:05:14]  Anyone who's black female is inherently victim.
[01:05:16]  It's like, no, you're fucking not.
[01:05:18]  No, you're not.
[01:05:19]  Michelle Obama's not a victim.
[01:05:20]  Michelle Obama is amongst the most privileged human beings on the face of the planet.
[01:05:24]  So is Kamala Harris.
[01:05:26]  You guys are not victims.
[01:05:27]  And I don't care if someone interrupted you.
[01:05:29]  Oh, you want to be the vice president to Joe Biden, who literally could drop dead any second now?
[01:05:35]  So you basically are running for president.
[01:05:38]  Sorry.
[01:05:38]  I don't care if someone interrupted you.
[01:05:40]  Have something to say.
[01:05:42]  And the other thing that I'll just say that, and maybe I'll just say this in closing, and I tweeted something out to this effect, but you know, people are talking about how, you know, over at MSNBC, like they're telling you that, oh, Kamala Harris, you know, was interrupted and she won the night.
[01:05:58]  And Mike Pence, Mike Pence came off so horrible.
[01:06:01]  It's real, it really turns a lot of women off when you interrupt or something like that, which by the way, Mike Pence is like, please.
[01:06:08]  It's like a fucking teddy bear.
[01:06:09]  It's a soft little fucking mushy nothing, which by the way, also made him unimpressive and boring.
[01:06:16]  But if you can't handle that, I mean, please.
[01:06:19]  But the thing that they just won't acknowledge that I got to think the vast majority of people who saw this debate saw.
[01:06:27]  And I know it's what me and you is the first thing me and you saw when we watched this.
[01:06:31]  And like, I don't even like, I don't particularly look, Tulsi Gabbard, let's say, even if Tulsi Gabbard, let's take the foreign policy issue out of it, right?
[01:06:41]  Let's say Tulsi Gabbard was just all of the things that we don't like about her.
[01:06:45]  She was just a typical Democrat running on Medicare for all and all that shit.
[01:06:49]  I would never look at Tulsi Gabbard and be like, oh my God, she is just intensely unlikable.
[01:06:54]  You know, she's a pretty, she's a likable person.
[01:06:56]  She's pretty charming and she's nice looking and she's good, you know?
[01:07:00]  Now, Bernie Sanders, I hate a lot of his policies, but he's not like intensely unlikable.
[01:07:05]  Joe Biden, I hate a lot of his policies.
[01:07:07]  He's, but he's, you know, he's got his weird old man senile charm to him.
[01:07:12]  She is horrible.
[01:07:14]  And MSNBC has to pretend they don't see this because they're so on the like, well, she's a black female and empowered and blah, blah, blah.
[01:07:22]  But don't MSNBC.
[01:07:24]  This is the network that told you that Michael Avenatti seemed like a really great guy.
[01:07:30]  He could be a contender.
[01:07:32]  They said that, you know, Elizabeth Warren was a star.
[01:07:35]  They thought Beto O'Rourke had the it factor.
[01:07:38]  Okay.
[01:07:39]  And there's these same people, it's like they're incapable of seeing what everybody else sees right away when you look at Kamala Harris.
[01:07:46]  That she's just awful.
[01:07:48]  And I don't mean even forget her policies, which are all awful too.
[01:07:52]  Just her.
[01:07:53]  She's just terrible.
[01:07:55]  She just comes off as like the person who's like this, the boss who's yelling at you, who everyone goes to the bar.
[01:08:02]  And within two seconds of your first round of drinks coming out, everyone goes, oh, how awful is Harris?
[01:08:08]  And they're all like, oh my God, she's such a bitch.
[01:08:10]  We fucking hate working for her.
[01:08:12]  She's just that chick.
[01:08:13]  And so I think the more that Kamala Harris is out there, the better it is for Trump Pence because she is rough.
[01:08:23]  All right.
[01:08:24]  Anything else you want to add?
[01:08:26]  Run your mouth.
[01:08:27]  Check it out, people.
[01:08:28]  Run your mouth.
[01:08:29]  Follow Rob Bernstein at Robbie the Fire on Twitter.
[01:08:31]  Thank you for listening.
[01:08:32]  We'll be back on Monday.
[01:08:34]  Peace.