Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein analyze Georgia's new ID voting bill, dismissing corporate boycotts by MLB and Coca-Cola as "woke capitalism" designed to aid Democrats rather than protect rights. They critique media suppression of Hunter Biden's book and condemn mandatory COVID passports in the UK and Israel, arguing that government enforcement negates voluntary consent. Featuring Glenn Greenwald's criticism of CNN and NBC for doxxing critics, they challenge "woke" ideology's oversimplified power dynamics, asserting that true privilege stems from wealth and corporate ownership rather than rigid identity categories, ultimately exposing how powerful figures exploit marginalized narratives to maintain dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Stamps.com Saves Time and Money00:02:28
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All right, let's start the show.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
The Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal00:15:31
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is the king of the cocks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
How's your life going?
Doing pretty good.
I got good lighting in here and I'm just blending into the, I'm like a gecko or something.
Yeah.
What's the one that blends in?
A gecko, I think so.
I don't know.
I don't like these questions that expose my ignorance of the animal kingdom.
Yeah, we're very lit.
Yeah, we should be millions.
There you go.
Okay, you nailed it.
Well, yes, very well lit.
Robbie the Fire.
Actually, a ghost.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Robbie died years ago, Dave.
Who have you been podcasting with?
Yeah.
No, I was saying you were having some audio issues before and your microphone wasn't working.
And I was saying to Brian, I go, Robbie's a pretty good looking guy when he's not talking.
He's a handsome.
I never noticed through that jewel voice.
But once it goes away, I was like, yeah, look at that.
Maybe it's the good lighting.
I don't know.
Or maybe I'm just in a good mood.
But I have an announcement to make to start the podcast with.
A personal announcement about the Smith family that I'm very happy to say we are expecting another baby.
My beautiful wife is pregnant.
Child number two coming up.
And I just, I couldn't be happier about it.
I'm really thrilled to be able to tell all of you good people about it.
So yeah, this is a very exciting time for us.
And I am filled with joy and excitement about having one more kid.
I really love being a father so much.
And it's really just the best.
It's the absolute best thing.
Congratulations.
Not to one-up you, but I'm actually having twins.
And I'm excited to grow my family as well.
Well, first off, that wouldn't be one-upping me.
You'd only be tying me at this point.
So you're going to need triplets to one-up me.
So I appreciate the effort.
But look, in all seriousness, having a kid is just the best thing I've ever done in my life.
And if you find the right person, it's really, there's just nothing more wonderful you could do.
And I'm very fortunate because I really found just the best person I've ever known.
My wife is just incredible.
And, you know, everyone who knows her just knows she's just the best.
She's just, she's beautiful and smart and kind and everyone loves her.
And I'm just really, really happy.
Since I had my daughter, I remember like right after my wife had had our baby girl, like that day in the next, the first week of her life.
I remember just feeling like I was like, I'm just so happy.
Like I've never been so happy.
And the feeling just never went away.
Like it's just been with me since we've had her.
And I just, I'm like, I have all those feelings again.
It's really, I don't know for people out there who are parents who have two kids, it's very different the second time because you kind of know what you're in for now and what to expect.
It's not just this kind of like, oh, I'm going to have a baby.
What the heck is that going to be like?
You're actually like, oh, I know exactly what it's going to be.
And just over the moon, excited, really proud of my wife.
She's a warrior.
She's my baby-making machine.
And it's really unbelievable what women have to sacrifice to create human life.
So I'm eternally grateful to her for doing it a second time for me.
So got another baby.
Next baby will be here in October.
And yeah, pretty darn happy about that.
So anyway, just wanted to listen to that.
I still think women have cooties, but congratulations.
Well, they do.
The science is on your side on that one.
They do indeed have cooties.
Yes.
And there's Jay Okerson calling me.
He just got the news about the announcement.
No, I actually told him a couple weeks ago.
Anyway, and also this isn't live.
So that would be really creepy if he was in here just hearing.
He's always anyway.
But so yeah, very excited.
You are Rob.
Correct, Rob.
Medically speaking, women do have cooties, but that doesn't, you know, that doesn't mean they don't bring a lot of good things to the table as well.
All right.
That's the announcement.
Very happy.
Very happy to share all that news with you guys.
Let's get into the show.
So I think a good transition, right, as I'm speaking about having my second child, and I can now speak with some experience about how pure and unconditional the love for a child is.
And that is what our great president has for his wonderful child, Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden back in the news.
He's writing, or he wrote a book.
It's all about the struggles with addiction.
How to be a fuck-up.
Well, I suppose that's the least charitable way to describe it.
A guideline of things that can happen while you're on crack.
Listen, I will say this, right?
He is the Hunter Biden story.
Did you watch some of the clips from the interview or any of the interviews?
Yeah, I watched a little bit.
It's amazing how much he comes off like a Biden.
He is a pure Biden.
Listen, the Hunter Biden story Is a damning indictment of Joe Biden allowing his family to profit through his political connections.
It's a damning indictment of the media, of how this whole thing was covered.
But I got to say, it is really hard for me to hate Hunter Biden himself.
Hunter Biden just has this attitude.
I was talking to Brian about this right before we started recording, but Hunter Biden just comes in with this attitude where he's like, Look, I'm Joe Biden's kid.
I smoke rocks, and I am going to lie through my teeth to you.
And I don't care.
Like, I don't care.
This is my life.
This is how I roll.
And I am not backing down or apologizing for anyone.
And it gets to the point where you're like, I can't even root against this guy.
I just can't.
And he is, and you know, as we've said many times before, Hunter Biden, he's a senator's kid, basically.
I mean, his father ended up becoming vice president and then president, but he was a senator's kid his whole life.
This is the life of all the senators' kids.
You know what I mean?
It's not like he was any.
He's like, yeah, this is what we do.
We get offered 50K a month to go sit on some board of somewhere and not do anything.
And I'm out partying.
I don't give a shit.
That's just his fucking attitude.
Now, if any of the more outrageous claims about him ended up being true, I will be prepared to retract that and say that Hunter Biden is a bad guy.
But I don't know about any of that stuff right now, just going off the interview.
There were some really fascinating takeaways from the interview.
I don't know.
There were a couple points when the lady was grilling him about whether he should have taken the seat on the board of that burisma company.
And he, you know, it's just such a Biden moment.
It's like, dude, I was on crack and they offered me money.
Why wouldn't I do that?
Are you kidding me?
But the real Biden moment of it was he goes, I don't think there's one serious journalist who's ever said there was a problem with it.
You're like, oh, yes, no, not one.
Not one serious journalist.
Me asking you the question, you dope.
Yeah.
Well, like, that's the funny thing that it was like a pretty blatant implication of the journalist in front of him who's like, has a problem with it.
But anyway, whatever.
It's just like the classic, like very Biden thing where you just go, no one's saying that.
Even though tons of people are saying it, you just look them right in the eye and go, no one, no.
I don't know what you think you've heard.
No one said that.
No one's even suggested.
There was even a slight weird thing with me getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Ukrainian energy company, even though I have no energy experience, no experience in the country of Ukraine, don't speak the language, don't know the industry, just happened to be the vice president's kid.
That's not what I figured such a thing.
Those claims work for the elder Biden, but that's because he has dementia.
And so when he says no one's saying that thing, it's because literally he can't remember if anyone has said anything like that.
But you, as a younger Biden, as much as you might like sniffing kids, it doesn't change the fact that people have reported on Brismo.
People have said it.
When Joe Biden Sr. says nobody's saying that, you almost go like, he might really believe that nobody is saying that.
He was like, listen, none of the voices in my head are saying anything about that.
They keep telling me there's a lot of people saying sniff that kid.
There's a lot of people saying sniff that kid harder.
No one's saying anything about Hunter.
So I don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, you can kind of believe him.
However, Hunter, you don't believe so much.
Here was one exchange that's been going viral that was pretty damn interesting, especially in context of the stuff we were talking about, you know, with the laptop story leading up to the election.
So here is Hunter Biden being grilled about his laptop.
Was that your laptop?
For real.
I don't know.
I know, but you know, I really don't know what the answer is.
You don't know yes or no if the laptop was the idea.
I have no idea.
So it could have been yours.
Of course, certainly.
There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me.
There could be that I was hacked.
It could be that it was Russian intelligence.
It could be that it was stolen from me.
I mean, okay, listen.
How do you not kind of love that guy?
Dude, like, crack is awesome.
How do you not watch that and go, I want to do some crack?
You can just like full years of your life.
I'm not sure.
But the ball, like, listen, it's one thing to be someone who's comfortable with lying.
It's one thing to be a liar.
But even within the community of people who are liars, there's a level of shamelessness you have to have to keep a straight face on saying what he just said.
Like, listen, here's the answer.
The obvious answer.
Yes.
That's the answer to that question.
Period.
Was this your laptop?
The answer is yes.
That was my laptop.
And did he see that?
High five.
Yeah, he just goes, come on, ladies, act like you didn't see some of those things.
Come on, they're everywhere.
No, listen, that's just the answer to the question.
But he's going to sit there with the straight face and do the Biden thing where he goes, you know, I swear I'm telling you the exact truth.
Was it my laptop?
Maybe, or maybe not.
So maybe someone stole a laptop from me.
Maybe it's Russian intelligence.
Maybe I've never had a computer.
I got so many computers.
I got so much crack.
I can't tell you what I'm doing with all the computers.
But it is pretty damn obvious to everyone, I think, watching, even Biden supporters watching.
If this wasn't his computer, he could have just said, no, it's not my computer.
Except it is.
So he just gave you this bullshit.
Leaving aside the whole Biden, Hunter Biden, you know, just hilarious thing there.
It really does show you something.
That this was just one more point to hammer home, that this was a completely legitimate, real story that got squashed, unlike anything I've seen in years.
That they just took this story and said, we will not allow this to be a story to the point of social media banning people from sharing the link to it.
And you have to imagine, right?
Between Twitter and Facebook banning the link, kicking people off who are sharing it, freezing the New York Post's Twitter account, all these things that they did, the NPR refusing to cover it, all these other outlets not covering it, or if they cover it, covering it as Russian interference or whatever.
That must have had some effect on the election.
What exactly that effect was, who knows?
But for all the talk about interference in elections and stuff like that, I mean, just look at that tape.
This was obviously this guy's computer.
This was a real story.
How much weight you put behind the story, that's a separate issue.
But it was news.
This was news.
And they suppressed this story.
And why did they do that?
For one obvious reason, because they wanted to get Trump out of there.
That's something.
Like, that's worth talking about.
And it's funny because there's like, you know, so much, and particularly because Donald Trump, you know, went all in on they stole this election from me.
So many of the Trump supporters have been sucked into the fight of was there voter fraud?
Was the election stolen?
All of this.
And then everyone, you know, who's against Trump can say, oh, you guys are conspiracy theorists.
This is bullshit.
There's no evidence.
And then that's kind of the range of debate.
But if the Trump supporters would just drop that thing and just focus more on this, you go, your argument is pretty much ironclad that the entire, like, forget about whether there was or wasn't voter fraud or any of the mail-in ballot stuff.
This was just an election stolen in plain sight, in a sense, stolen.
That it's just so insane.
This was clearly his laptop.
That's just a fact at this point, as much a fact as just about anything in any news store you could think of.
So that's the story right there.
It was all of the corporate press, all of social media, the entire establishment coming down to make sure that this one, you know, dementia-ridden 80-year-old won the election for him.
How shameless is it to be out there right now plugging a book?
It should be titled Laughing Stock of the Nation, How to Almost Ruin Your Dad's Campaign Run.
And just to go and just be like, I'm going to write this salacious book about me being down on the ground looking for crack in the carpet and all this stuff.
It's just like, I'm just going to collect a check off of it.
Fuck it.
I don't even care.
We're going to the bank.
You know what?
My dad's not going to be president for that much longer anyway.
We're going to the bank while we have the fucking opportunity.
I at least give this woman credit for asking kind of the tough questions and giving him some pushback when he's like, oh, I don't know if that's my computer.
She's like, come on.
There was almost like nothing else to say there.
You go, but wait, seriously?
Like, Trump's not here anymore.
We don't have to play this game anymore.
Like, come on.
You don't know.
You don't know if you lost this computer or not.
Like, you don't know if you had this computer.
When you're seeing the stuff coming out about it, you don't know whether this was yours.
Well, it's possible someone stole it from me.
Harry's Razor Quality Deal00:02:55
It's possible this.
It's like, yeah, it's yours.
It's clearly yours.
Anyway, that was really something.
Every chapter starts with, and that's when my dad was even more compassionate.
When you thought he would have thrown you out of the family for doing crack and going to rehab, but then you marry the widow of your brother.
Well, that's when I thought for sure my dad would have his limits.
But no, even also, this is a positive story.
This is a guy who went from crack to making 50K a month as a consultant.
So maybe this should be an inspiring story for just anybody out there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, exactly.
There you go.
Inspiring story.
And of course, yeah, it's all just propaganda, right?
Everything about, oh, and that's when Joe Biden, that's when my dad hugged me and said, I love you no matter how much crack you do, son, and all this.
You know, like it was the reality of the situation.
And Joe Biden smacked him across the face and was like, come on, man.
I'm going to be president.
You're blowing this.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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Racist Voting Laws in Georgia00:15:28
Let's get back into the show.
All right.
Anyway, so moving on, although I guess somewhat connected to the whole election stuff, we have done a bit of covering on this show the overhaul of the election system over the last year and the implications of all of that.
How people who care about free markets and liberty and all this stuff should feel about voting restrictions or how easy it is to vote.
And we talked a bit about this new Georgia bill that went through with, you know, from my perspective, what are some mostly fairly reasonable restrictions on voting?
I think the biggest shame is no one's really digging into the racist ID policies of Georgia that I guess people must have not have access to banks.
They probably don't have access to beer or cigarettes.
There are probably some crucial staples in their life.
Cars.
There's a lot of things that you and I as white men take for granted that we're able to just access bank and capital.
And I guess there's a whole group of people that can't get IDs and can't function within society.
It's a really racist thing they should probably address.
Well, it is this is the thing, right?
From the kind of statist worldview, the right to vote is like the most important right.
Like you, you, anything else that you might have a right to do kind of pales in comparison to your right to participate in the government.
They don't care if you can go to a bank.
It's a government-centric worldview.
I remember one time, I believe it was Joyan Reed at MSNBC.
I could be wrong because this was years and years ago, but she was talking about Rand Paul, who said something.
I think it was around the time when Rand Paul was getting ready to run for president, and he was making like a pitch to the black community.
And he was like, well, look, these are the government policies that have destroyed inner city areas.
And he was talking about the war on drugs and policing for profit and burdensome economic regulations.
And he was proposing, you know, like trying to do like some libertarian-ish proposals like, hey, look, what if we had like, you know, tax-free zones in some of these like really economically deprived areas and we incentivize new businesses to come in and we try to do this?
And he really was harping on the war on drugs a lot.
And Joanne Reed goes, yeah, but he supported voter ID.
So you can try to talk to black people about all these other rights, but if you're not for the most important right, then it doesn't mean anything.
And that's just literally, she just said the words and I appreciated that she said them out loud, that that's the most important right.
So he's talking about people being locked up in cages for decades over, you know, whatever, selling some cocaine to someone or something like that.
And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Your right to be free or your right to be out of prison.
That's, you know, that's kind of some weird abstraction, but your right to vote without having a driver's license.
That's really the most important right, you know?
So unless you look at things that way, then it, I mean, yeah, look, if it's racist to require an ID to vote, okay, but then it's also racist, like then you have to also say that, you know, Amtrak is racist and airports are racist and liquor stores are racist and, you know, like everything, every government building, every, you know,
like everything that you need to require that requires ID would also have to, just consistency demands that they would also have to be racist too, right?
The truth is that there's been, even the more I've looked into the Georgia bill, there's just a lot of, I mean, a lot of is an understatement, an insane amount of demagoguery about what actually was proposed there.
Basically, you can still vote from home.
You can still vote by mail.
You just have to show a license.
You have to have an ID in order to do it to prove that you are the person voting.
The thing about not being able to give water out to people on the voting lines was greatly overhyped.
It's not actually, if you actually look into the bill, what they say is that political action organizations can't bribe anyone on the line.
So they can't give you anything.
Like those groups can't give you food or water or anything.
But individuals can come bring you food and water.
You can bring your own water with you.
It's not as if there's like, they're saying like these people have to die of dehydration in order to get up there and vote.
That's just not what it is.
There's been a lot of things that were reported that just aren't true.
There's one newspaper had to retract a couple things that they reported on, like you can't vote after 5 p.m.
Just not true.
It's not true.
It just wasn't in the bill at all.
But obviously what's going on in Georgia is that they're trying to get somewhat of a grasp on this system of like, okay, we have to at least kind of try to make sure that the people who are voting are accounted for as actually, you know, being citizens who live in Georgia.
Anyway, the pushback on this has been tremendous.
Not just that the president has been saying it's worse than Jim Crow, but now the other element that's getting interesting, so this kind of overlaps with a few different things that we talk about a lot on the show that I find particularly interesting.
One being the idea of how we should look at voting.
Should it be just an a priori truth that any steps in order to have a vote are a bad thing and any Lack of restrictions on voting is inherently a good thing.
I haven't heard a solid argument for why that's the case, but it's just taken as a given, right?
The other thing that we've talked about a lot is kind of woke capitalism, the kind of corporate takeover of the woke movement and all that stuff.
And this story seems to involve a lot of that right now.
So the Major League Baseball has now said that they're going to pull, what is it?
I think the All-Star game or some big game they're pulling out of Georgia as a punishment for them, you know, having these racist laws and the MLB draft as well.
So they pull out two of their kind of big things.
So trying to hurt the state.
You know, ironically, there's something so funny too about just this is just an aside that has nothing even to do with the main thing, but there's something really funny about the mentality of like the way people think of these economic punishments toward people, right?
It's another thing where people have this very government-centric view of the world.
So it's like when we'll be like, oh, we're putting sanctions on Cuba or we're putting sanctions on Iran or something.
And we'll be like, well, we want to punish this bad country because their government did these bad things.
And then amongst our demands to them will be like, be better to your people.
You know?
And you're like, wait, but so if your complaint is that the government is bad to their people, a sanction just hurts their people.
Like, it's not like the fucking royalty in these countries, it's not like their political elite aren't living well.
It doesn't matter how many sanctions you put on them.
It's not like, you know, the Castros were ever living a life of poverty because of the American embargo on them.
They live just great.
Who does it fuck over?
The fucking people who you're supposedly arguing on behalf of.
So again.
That's funny.
It's almost like the MLB should go, we feel so bad for the residents of Atlanta.
We're going to do extra events there to make up for the fact that the government's racist towards you and you can't vote.
Free hot dogs in Atlanta to try and make up for the fact that it's a racist state.
We're trying to do our part here.
Well, that's my point.
It's like, if you're just, if you're saying the problem here is that they're being unfair to their citizens, which by the way, the weirdest part about this is that it's like, it's within our country.
Okay.
Like, it's not as if you're talking about citizens of some foreign country.
These are your countrymen who you think are being disenfranchised.
If that's your argument, why the fuck would you want to punish those people?
It's so ass backward.
But of course, none of it's about that.
That's basically the answer.
None of it's about that.
It's about the brands reinforcing the fact that this is such a racist policy.
And so it creates more media to say that that's actually the reality we're living in.
That this is, you know, they make the ridiculous claim that this is like Jim Crow.
And then when brands step in and go, yes, this is so outrageous.
We can't do business in this state.
It just kind of reinforces that we're living in that reality, that this would be comparable to Jim Crow, which obviously it isn't.
Well, it's funny because I literally, I just had this conversation we were talking about recently with this rabbi who, you know, I disagree with, but he was making the argument that it's minimizing the Holocaust when the Libertarian Party of Kentucky, you know, tweeted out saying, oh, hey, how are we going to mark the unvaccinated?
We're going to put yellow stars of David on them, you know?
And that wasn't even like they were saying, you know, they didn't come out and say, this is the same as putting yellow stars of David on people.
They were invoking something that is a historical thing that happened that's generally viewed as a pretty damn bad thing that led to a genocide ultimately and being like, hey, are we going down that path?
And this people will say, oh, this is offensive.
Yet you have straight up Joe Biden said, this is worse than Jim Crow.
First thing he said was, this isn't Jim Crow, it's Jim Eagle.
And then the thing he said the other day was that this is Jim Crow on steroids.
I mean, how is that?
Like, if the Libertarian Party of Kentucky had said, this COVID passport is worse than the Holocaust, I would have not really had much of a leg to stand on in defending them, you know, bringing up a comparison.
It's kind of a different thing.
He is straight up saying this is worse than Jim Crow.
This is worse than segregation and lynchings and fire hoses and German shepherds being sick on people.
This is worse than that.
Like, how is that not minimizing Jim Crow?
Anyway, it's just insane.
But yeah, right.
So these corporations, it's interesting because the Democrats, right?
This is like this really weird kind of part of the way this whole system has come together that you have these, you know, like obviously, as we've said for years, right?
And this is the big secret, I guess, in modern politics that both the left and the right have just completely gotten wrong forever.
But it's that big business loves big government.
That's the truth.
Big business loves big government.
Big government does all types of favors for big business.
And this is why the, you know, the big business always supports the candidates of big government.
And so when you know, you have people on the left who are like, we need big government to get rid of big business.
You have people on the right who are like, big government crushes big business, but no, this is all bullshit.
It's all bullshit.
What's right in front of your face, what's demonstrably true, is that big business is in bed with big government and they have a mutually beneficial relationship.
And so now you see when the big government party, the Democrats, get in trouble, they go to their allies in big business and what they always use is some type of woke, you know, ideology to justify what they're doing.
Oh, this is racist.
That's what they're saying here.
But it's not about that.
It's literally just about the fact that this hurts the Democrats.
That's it.
There are states, as Tucker Carlson was pointing this out the other night.
There are states, in fact, I believe in Delaware, Joe Biden's home state, where they have far less absentee voting and they have requirements for how you have to do it.
No one's outraged about that because it's a Democratic stronghold.
This just doesn't matter.
This, Georgia, is now a swing state.
Okay.
So all of a sudden, any voting restrictions are just Jim Crow on steroids.
That's what this is all about.
But so now they're getting their partners in big corporate America to come out and start putting pressure on the state and blasting them and now going like, oh, well, we're going to get people pissed off at you.
We're going to hurt the economy.
We're going to do all of this until you give the Democrats this state.
That's what's going on right in front of you.
And it's just interesting to pay attention and realize that it's like, oh, yeah, they can use the fucking cover of we're just so appalled by racism all they want to, but that's not what's going on here.
This is a power play.
This is to give the Democrats Georgia.
That's what's happening.
Yeah.
And then to me, somewhat, the next question is: what are the Democrats giving back to these companies in return that they all want to play for team left?
I would think being on the sidelines was the better corporate strategy, but there must be, I mean, for the airlines, you know, they got the biggest handout, I think, at the beginning of COVID, other than the banking sector.
So it makes sense to me why airlines might really want to be playing for government side.
But some of these other industries, I mean, I guess I don't know enough about Coca-Cola or some of these other guys that spoke out.
I think Coca-Cola also spoke out, right?
Do I have that right?
Yes.
Yeah.
So I'd be curious to see what, I guess, liberal policies or what liberal politicians are very specifically working for their corporate interests.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, Rand Paul tweeted this out and I thought I retweeted it.
I thought this was kind of funny.
Just to kind of, you know, just, it's an interesting little thing to poke at and point to them.
So he said, Rand Paul tweeted, if needing to show an ID to vote is racist, perhaps New York Yankees tickets that average over $100 are discriminatory will woke MLB mandate free tickets to allow equal access.
So it just kind of goes to show you that it's like, look, obviously, you know, I'm sure like there's a lot of these people who'll be like, voting is so much more important than going to a baseball game.
But just saying, if the implications are that having to get an ID is discriminatory in some sense, it's like, well, look at these companies.
I mean, they don't fucking care about, you know what I mean, like any barriers to entry to enjoy their products, right?
Anti-Muslim Sentiment and Boycotts00:03:14
That's not an issue for them.
And the other thing that's that really I think does poke a real hole in so many of these things.
And look, I'm not, let me just disclaim this by saying I am not one of these like China hawks.
And I don't like the idea that it does seem to me like so often the debate between Democrats and Republicans will come down to like, do we need to be super hawkish on Russia or do we need to be super hawkish on China?
And I think that that's a stupid debate.
And the truth is that we're dealing with nuclear armed powers here.
There's no wars to be had.
The only thing, if you have one ounce of caring for humanity, then the only answer is that we just want to make sure we never get into a conflict with any of these powers because we can all destroy the world several times over.
However, there was one journalist in the press corps who was grilling Joe Biden's press secretary about this.
And I got to say, I think it was a somewhat fair point where they were like, look, Major League Baseball and Coca-Cola don't boycott China.
I mean, they don't boycott like incredibly straight up not Democratic at all, you know, quasi-fascist countries.
So what is this?
What's really going on here?
I mean, if you guys are...
Those corporations are anti-Muslim.
They're pro-black, but anti-Muslim.
And so in China, the concentration camps are being filled with Muslims.
And Coca-Cola and MLB are anti-Muslim.
You heard it here first.
Breaking news, everybody.
Even leave the whole Uyghur thing aside.
Just the fact that this was over showing ID before you vote.
But they'll work with countries where you straight up can't vote.
Like countries that are just not democracies.
Well, those people still like Coca-Cola.
Yeah, well, that's right.
But so do the people in the people in Georgia.
So do those fine people who can't afford an ID but can afford a delicious Coca-Cola.
So anyway, I just think that it does show you something where you're like, look, this is not about a true, there's no true humanitarian issue here.
Because if there were, it's like when they would say, you know, what was it?
I think it was in Alabama where there were like a bunch of celebrities who were going to boycott there because of their like new abortion restriction or something like that.
And, but they'll go and play in, you know, like every fucking, you know, Muslim country or that has like the worst humanity, you know, human rights violations.
Like they'll go to Saudi Arabia, but they won't fucking go to Alabama, you know?
And this is, if you see that, you just kind of got to realize what it is.
See it for what it is.
This is not about caring about people.
This isn't about having principles.
This is a power play.
Coca-Cola, it's coming from the company that's probably giving black people diabetes, and they're pretending like they care.
I mean, like some corporations, you can at least pretend like you care.
How do they pretend like they care?
Corporate Power Plays Over Principles00:15:52
Yeah.
Well, that's for sure.
That's just so.
Poison corp.
Yeah, well, this stuff is kind of right in front of your face.
By the way, I don't, I'm not even suggesting that any of these companies should boycott these other countries.
I don't really know.
Maybe they should.
Maybe they shouldn't.
I'm not even suggesting Coca-Cola should stop selling Coca-Cola because it gives people diabetes.
I love Coca-Cola.
I think it's delicious.
Go make your money and keep your mouth shut.
Always better than Pepsi.
All right.
That's what, yeah, that's my thing.
Go make your money and keep your goddamn mouth shut.
That is more or less my, my thing on this.
It's just don't pretend.
Don't pretend.
If you want to take a stand or something, fine, but don't bullshit me.
I don't like being bullshitted.
That was that great Gary Goldman joke about Coke.
There's like Pepsi.
Yeah, it's a great joke.
Go watch it if you can.
But he's like, Pepsi had a slogan for a while that they were like, we're the cola.
And they were like, no, no, no, sir.
You are not the cola.
It's a great bit about where you go out and you're like, I'll have a Coke.
And they're like, oh, we only have Pepsi.
And you go, that's okay.
But that's always how you feel about Pepsi.
All right, guys, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, so that's that's that.
I just, it is really interesting to just see all of this, like to understand that the Democrats and their big corporate allies are never going to come out and just go, we want power.
That's what we want.
We're doing this to gain political power.
So they have to say something else.
And what's the something else every single time?
Something about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.
Like these are always the go-to things.
And it's not out of any concern for black people or women or trans, gay people or anything like that.
It's always like a power play.
The answer is always give the Democrats complete rule of the country.
That's the answer.
So just see it.
See what's going on.
Okay.
What was the other thing I wanted to talk about?
Oh, I wanted to mention briefly because we've been spending a lot of time talking about this The COVID vaccine passports, which looks like they're going into effect in the UK.
They've been pushed in Israel.
A lot of pushback in Israel.
Did you happen to see the picture of all the Jews in Israel?
Yeah, they're all anti-Semites.
I mean, their improper remembrance of the Holocaust is really offensive.
Dude, it's just a lot of people.
I mean, those Jews should know better.
They should go check with these rabbis on Twitter because their improper remembrance undermines the Holocaust.
It just couldn't have been funnier timing than after, like the day after I have this conversation where the rabbi is making this argument.
I'm just trying, you know, it wasn't even a debate.
It was just a conversation, but I tried to make it clear that I'm like, yeah, you know, listen respectfully, rabbi.
I really got to disagree with you on this one.
But the next day, all over the internet is this picture of a whole bunch of Jews in Israel comparing it to the Yellow Star of David.
Also comparing it to apartheid, which is just hard to not point to.
You know, it's just really hard to not go like, these Israelis, for the first time in their history, they see signs of an apartheid and they're like, we just cannot deal with that.
Cannot deal with an apartheid where there's Jews on the other side of the apartheid.
Anyway, apartheid is not the worst comparison to the COVID vaccine passport.
And I'm happy to be able to do that.
Like they actually have a sign walls are supposed to be between us and Palestinians.
Yeah, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
This is weird.
I mean, like, you're just going to, you're, you're not going to let people come and go if they don't have the vaccine.
This is a two-tiered system, sir.
Excuse me.
I need, I have important business.
I have a settlement to build.
Can you, anyway?
All right.
So that's that.
But it was pretty funny that it came the day after this conversation with this rabbi.
That I thought, I, you know, honestly, thought the conversation went very well, and I appreciated having it.
And I, you know, but it was just pretty funny.
I've been tweeting at this other rabbi.
I'm going to get some pictures and ask them if they'll condemn their improper remembrance.
Yeah, that's, well, I think that's true.
Maybe they should be.
Perhaps they're all anti-Semitic.
Or perhaps you're going to have to argue now that they can do it, but the LP of Kentucky can't.
And it's, you just, you really got to bend into some pretzels to somehow get yourself out of this.
They're either anti-Semitic or they're not.
So if they're not, how someone else is for saying the exact same thing that they said, that's going to be a tough one to sell me on.
Anyway, there have been people, a small, I'd say, kind of fringe group of libertarians who have been making the argument that if the COVID passport were voluntary and if it were completely private, that libertarians shouldn't have a problem with it.
And I just wanted to take a quick second on the show to say that that is probably the most retarded argument that I've heard come out of any libertarian's mouth in all my years in this liberty business, which now, you know, I'm getting a little gray in my beard, got the second kid on the way.
I've been in this game for a little while.
This is just about the dumbest.
It would be like if libertarians were, you know, as they were instituting the gulags sitting around, and there's a bunch of libertarians who are like, we have to fight against this with everything we have because this is just the most evil policy.
And they go, hear me out, hear me out.
What if they were private gulags and the people went there voluntarily?
In that case, we wouldn't have to be against them, right?
So we're not necessarily against this policy.
We're just, we don't think the government should be involved.
And you're like, well, yes, I suppose theoretically, if they were voluntary, we wouldn't be against them.
But here on planet Earth, they're not.
So we are.
Okay?
That's how simple it is to smack down this insane line of reasoning.
There is no proposal here where these COVID passports are going to be put into place and there won't be government involvement in them.
Okay?
So shut up about all that stuff.
We're against it because it's a voluntary, because it's not a voluntary situation.
This is completely done between governments and their corporate cronies.
That's what's going on here.
You know, I mean, we wouldn't really be against the war on drugs if all of the prisons were private and the people voluntarily agreed to go to prison if they did drugs, right?
So we're not really against the war on drugs.
We're just, no, dummy.
This is being done by the government.
It's not being done voluntarily.
So shut up and get out of the way.
That's all I ask these people.
Just get out of the way so the rest of us who are ready to fight this thing can fight it together.
All right.
Just wanted to get on record on that one.
What was the other...
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was the other topic we wanted to talk about because this is something we were just talking about recently on the last episode.
And of course, I have Ben Burgess coming on the show on Friday.
I believe Friday.
I have to double check.
And I'm excited to talk to him about his new book.
And so this came up, Rob.
You sent me this clip and it was right on topic.
So let's jump into it.
Here is Glenn Greenwald on Fox News.
Wield no power yet.
Who these media outlets believe must have their lives ruined because they've adopted the wrong political ideology.
So you see this as ideologically based?
Absolutely.
You know, one of the examples I cited was a couple of years ago, CNN went to the front yard of an elderly woman in Florida to confront her because she had posted a pro-Trump rally on her Facebook page that CNN claimed was actually engineered by the Russians and tried to basically confront her whether she was some kind of Kremlin operative, this 75-year-old woman.
They dox people all the time.
If you make a pro-Trump meet or an anti-media meme, they dox you all the time.
And then in this case, what they did, and this is what they always do, Howie, that's even more disturbing, is if you criticize them, I'm talking about major journalists from the second largest newspaper in the country, which is USA Today.
I criticized them.
Others did.
They then turn around and make themselves the victim.
They say, by criticizing us as journalists, you're inciting hatred against us.
You're inciting harassment.
They've completely reversed the dynamic.
They attack marginalized, powerless people, but then pretend that the marginalized, powerless, vulnerable ones are themselves so that it's illegitimate.
They criticize it.
Let me give a quick example because the lead byline on that story belonged to a woman named Brenna Taylor.
And NBC's Ben Collins called you a member of the extreme right.
Other people said that you were bullying Brenna Taylor, this fragile young woman.
A female NBC journalist tweeted, it seems some powerful men are determined to go after female tech journalists.
Your response It's so ironic because the whole point of feminism, the feminist movement, which I've always supported and still support, is to say that women are as strong as men and are as capable as men of doing professional jobs.
There's obviously a lot of strong women in journalism.
And what they're doing is reversing that.
They're saying, no, women are too fragile.
We need to treat them like these little China dolls who cannot be criticized, who cannot be critiqued in any way.
Because if you do, you're somehow harming them.
It's a really regressive kind of sexist trope that they're using to place themselves off limits from criticism, even though they wield a lot of power.
Yeah, that's just really fantastic point by Glenn Greenwald.
And it's funny because I was making like almost this identical point just on the last episode, and then you had sent me this video.
So I was glad that he got out there and was making the point himself.
There is something, and this is one of the things that I find really interesting, right?
Is that true, good, honest leftists, like Glenn Greenwald, who's not a far right-wing guy, he's a lefty, they always care about power imbalances, right?
That was always their big thing.
Now they care about them sometimes in a way that we would disagree with, even within voluntary relationships, like boss, employee type shit.
But that was always what they were really about.
And there's something, what's interesting about the woke kind of takeover, right?
And this is part of the reason why corporate America loves all this woke shit, is that when they get people obsessed with the only power imbalances that matter are black, white, you know, white as oppressor, black as oppressed, or really it's white people of color, right?
Everyone who's not white over here, unless the Asians throw things off a little bit and then they don't really care about them, unless they're being the victims of hate crimes, in which they do care about them again, unless the hate crimes turn out to be committed by black people, in which case they don't really care again.
Anyway, but it's like white versus person of color, men as the oppressor versus women as the oppressed, straight as the oppressor versus gay, LGBT, whatever as the oppressed.
All these incredibly oversimplistic and oftentimes inaccurate ways of looking at who has the power.
So they can kind of, on some level, appeal to the left instinct of, look, we're really concerned about the power imbalance here, right?
But what it allows is for people to ignore the true power imbalance that's going on.
So when they're going after this, he said this lady in her 70s who's a Trump supporter or something like that.
You go like, well, white, Trump supporter, Republican.
So they're supposed to be the powerful one.
Except it's CNN going after some lady, right?
So you see this when this plays very well.
And oftentimes the powerful people will claim that their power is a result of one of these, you know, fitting into one of these groups.
So the very powerful people will even admit sometimes that they have their power, but it's only because they fit into one of these groups, right?
So like Justin Timberlake will be like, listen, I do enjoy male privilege or something like that.
But it's like, no, motherfucker, you enjoy Justin Timberlake privilege.
You don't have the same power as like just any dude.
It's not just because you have a dick.
Like you're Justin Timberlake.
That's why you have all this power.
And this is what was so, you know, like kind of what was on point about the Occupy Wall Street movement was it was kind of like they framed it as the American people versus the people who own a bank or own a hedge fund.
You know, we are the 99%.
You're the people who own a bank.
You're not like the rest of us, right?
So that's an interesting framing.
But in this case, it'll all be like, they'll be like, well, we have to send our white execs to diversity training because we do have white privilege.
It's like, no, motherfucker, you don't have white privilege.
You have, I own a bank privilege.
That's a whole different thing.
Most white guys are not in that position.
There's millions and millions of straight white men in the country who have far less privilege than transgender women of color who happen to be just in a higher ranking in the social order than them.
White Privilege vs Bank Ownership00:04:02
So you oversimplify what privilege really means, what power imbalances really mean.
And then you can get away with not having to deal with what really gives you power.
And you can actually attack the powerless under the guise of we're against the, you know, attacking the powerless.
I think what we need is like a new TV show and it will be called Privilege Wars.
And everyone gets on there to compete to see who has the most privilege.
And then whoever has the least privilege will just start listening to the weakest person.
Yeah, well, but this is the thing, right?
Is that, but this is why it gets so perverted is that now we have when you buy into the woke shit, which really does come from like critical race theory and all of this stuff, but it's perverted and dumbed down.
But when you buy into all of this, then you can have Michelle Obama can look at some straight white man who's a cab driver who voted for Trump and she can present things as this is the oppressor and I am the oppressed,
which is just so laughably stupid for anyone with a brain that you'd be like, wait, this lady living in her multi-million dollar mansion in Mar-a-Lago or Martha's Vineyard or wherever the hell she lives now, whose husband was elected twice, whose Ivy League kids are Ivy League, like all this shit.
You can look at some cab driver and be like, well, he's got privilege.
I mean, he really needs to check his privilege.
But this happens all the time.
So the example Glenn Greenwald was talking about was this, what I mentioned on the last show about this woman who's a reporter for USA Today claiming that she's a victim, that she's the target of this harassment campaign, just because people are publicly calling out her awful opinions.
And so that's what they get to do.
It's even just notice this.
Peep game.
Understand what's going on here.
They will, it's a tool for the powerful to position themselves as the victims and attack the victims in the name of attacking the powerful.
So it's this, it's just such a perversion of what left-wing ideology was supposed to be.
And it's really, it's fascinating to watch how it plays out.
And then, of course, even when the powerful are acknowledging their own privilege, they're not acknowledging it for the actual reasons.
You know, they're acknowledging it because, well, I might be a straight white man, so I know I have privilege.
And it's like, no, motherfucker, you're a movie star.
That's where you get your privilege from.
Most straight white men do not enjoy that same power in society.
So anyway, I was glad he said that.
I thought it was real fascinating.
All right.
We got to wrap.
Can I let me unplug something?
I got a good plug.
Go to YouTube.
I'm not that easy to find.
Robbie the Fire, all one word.
I had CPU God give a whole presentation on the technology behind the COVID passports, some scary stuff going on in the actual tech, specifically in the way that they're hijacking the blockchain system for government purposes and tracking purposes.
So go check that out.
Oh, yeah.
And make sure you send that to me, Rob.
I'm real interested to watch that.
Okay, go check that out and listen to Rob's podcast.
Run your mouth.
Of course, don't forget, you can see both of us at Porkfest this year.
I will be hosting Freedom Fest.
Ooh, ooh, I also wanted to mention that I'm going to be in Pittsburgh on, what is it, on May 15th.
We're doing the Mises Caucus event there.
This is going to be incredible.
I know Jeff Dice is coming.
Maj Ture is going to be there.
Michael Rechtenwald is going to be there.
Go to lpmisescaucus.com/slash bash to get all the information there for that one.