Transcript
James: Wait for music.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Oh wait, a dramatic piano. It's not what I intended.
James: Dramatic piano. Dun dun dun dun dun.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I thought I clicked our intro music, but I guess we're getting dramatic piano this time.
James: Alright. Sad somber song for the state of American affairs.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Well, this is the right tone. Well, ah welcome to O Brother News. I'm Gabe.
James: I'm James.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And we're brothers. Okay, we're not that sad yet.
James: And this was America.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: maybe after we talk about all of these things.
James: That music.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay. So long list, long list of stuff to get to this week. Let's get right to it. um I guess like a brief note. So this is episode eight, but there, there is an episode seven, but we're not going to publish it because ended up being a ah video test.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We're going to, we're going to work our way towards video, but we're not there yet. So just didn't meet the quality bars. ah so yeah, I'm just going to leave that one in the archive. Okay. um
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Right. So on the good news side, ah Bernie's blowing up. He's going on tour, getting a lot of support, people showing up in red states. I'll talk about that for a little bit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um Not expired, but just no immunity in the Trump election interference case. We'll touch on that briefly. Mitch McConnell is retiring.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um Might talk about some of the Notably shitty things he's done, accomplished. um And also about how we need Democrats like him, vicious and effective.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um Doge. ah
James: Bullshit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah Publishing just total bullshit. All their savings are lies. We'll get into some details on that. ah House passing a spending bill that's going to wreck SNAP and Medicaid.
James: More of wrecking ball.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Literally stealing from the poor to give to the rich. including a $4 trillion dollar increase to the debt ceiling and making $4.7 trillion dollars worth of Trump tax cuts continuing.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And the people in the Senate are like, oh, we're not going to do that because we won't cut Medicaid, ah l LOL.
James: and We want those text cuts to be permanent forever.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And yeah, and they want and they're like, this doesn't go far enough.
James: The rich people always need to have those text cuts.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Has to be permanent.
James: This doesn't go. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So, okay, that that'll be a fun topic. Yeah.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: There's Trump going full Russian stooge. ah You know, all the stuff with Ukraine.
James: here He already was. But...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I guess, i guess yeah, you know, she knows the taste of Putin's balls. ah
James: Yep.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But yeah, it was fun watching Macron correct him, like putting his hand on him like a little stupid baby. And no, no, you're just full of shit.
James: Of course.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Correction. um We'll have a link to that video. Republican town halls. people are pissed. Republicans are going to Republican congressman's town halls and throwing fits.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Of course, the Trump, the the president's ah like leadership response is, well, if you're going to do a town hall, then you should probably vet which constituents you allowed to attend.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So you only get people who aren't going to be upset.
James: and quarters
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So it won't go viral when they're like, what the fuck actually represent us?
James: men.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Um, there was a brief moment of, of ah maybe the tide is turning and things are going well, you know, with the combination of the town halls and videos circulating of, of Trump supporters burning their Trump 2024 flags as they are realizing that, you know, not getting what they've, what they thought they were voting for.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um have his approval poll numbers kind of a little bit less than where he was last time when he was president. Let's talk about that. ah There's a ah basically a breaking story about SpaceX canceling an FAA contract with Verizon to upgrade the fiber infrastructure to more modern standards, including cybersecurity and um basically a guarantee that like the system never goes down.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And Elon Musk is
James: Like, no.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: swooping in after firing people in the FAA and the inspectors general ah and saying, oh, well look at all the planes falling out of the sky. Clearly this deal with Verizon and a few other telecom companies to upgrade this infrastructure, this definitely won't work.
James: It
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's their fault that it's broken now, even though that contract is for them to fix, to build, to upgrade them to the new standard in the future.
James: has a good spin on you break it, you buy it. You break it on purpose, and then you can buy it. Yeah. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. But anyways, like, it's like ah it's ah It's a fiber thing. SpaceX does satellites. Satellite wouldn't work because it's not slow. It's too slow and it's not um like completely uninterruptible and secure.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And then there's an update on the Ukraine mineral deal. So where do you want to start?
James: Deal. You can start with whatever, man. You're a big you're a Bernie, bro. can start with your Bernie.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay. um
James: Get your hat.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. So like I started off the week, like feeling really good because I kept seeing positive things, you know, was like Republicans are mad at them and they're happy with Bernie. So like Bernie has been going on tour um and like selling out, not selling out, but just like filling up large places. Like he had a, don't remember what state it was in, um but he had a ah speech scheduled in a red state at a union hall.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And then so many people signed up to come that they had to switch the venue from a union hall to like a much larger venue. And then they still had so much overflow that the overflow couldn't have fit like even a portion of them in the, uh, the original venue.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So, and this is like a deeply red state. I wish I knew which one, but the thing that I saw, i don't, I don't know.
James: Nebraska? Was it Nebraska?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I was a, I could pull up the video and try to like skim through it and find it, but I'll have the link in there so you guys can, can check it out for yourself. But,
James: That Friday evening, it 3,400 people in Nebraska.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I think it was that one.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I think it was that one. But I know he's been going he's been going around a bunch of places. And part of the interesting thing with that is like if you in that video, the the guy was mentioning that um back in 2019, when Bernie was in the primaries, there's this map of like who had the most small donations across the country.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And it lists out like all of the top ah Democratic candidates. And the whole map, like like Bernie is in the color blue and the whole map is just blue. Like Bernie has this like this completely separate popularity from the Democrats because he's a populist, you know, because he's an independent. He caucuses with the Democrats, but he's actually independent. He's a populist.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um And he's pushed for a whole bunch of policies that are really popular. It kind of goes back to the thing from a few weeks ago. We were talking about the people who voted for AOC and Trump on the same ticket.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You know, like Bernie has that same kind of appeal.
James: But again. All right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, i still think that like the Democrats fucked themselves in 2016 by, by ousting Bernie and going with Hillary. I think Bernie would have beat Trump because he's like selling the same, he's selling the same thing. Like, you know, it's rich versus poor and the rich are winning.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They're fucking you when you just take the money and redistribute it and that'll be better for everyone. That's Bernie's whole deal, you know, except he's actually going to do it and not just like,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: say that he's doing it as he just like, you know, guts Medicaid and social security and so that ah he can make a $4 trillion dollars tax cut that only really benefits people who make more than 400K a year, which is what Trump is doing.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So yeah, Bernie's popular.
James: yeah But he's not going to run for president again. He already said it. and so And like Trump, his popularity doesn't extend to the party that tries to do the things that he likes.
James: So, you know. and I like it, but and I'm not.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: I like it. It's cool. Yay. Get people out there thinking, hey, these are good ideas, even if maybe they're not from the traditional blue places. I don't think it translates to the way they vote, sadly enough, though.
James: But Anything can help.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I mean, there is like, there is a translation like that.
James: The anti-oligarchy tour. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I feel like people are voting for like those populist policies. Like they were just believing Trump when he, you know, spoke to them, you know, if you paid much attention and to anything outside of like, you know, the conservative media bubble, that's just like sucking his dick all the time you would have known how full shit he was. But if that's all you saw, then you were thinking like, yeah, I want populism.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I want to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. I want to like not have all these bloated government contracts. And like, Honestly, like those are good things. I would love for there to be fewer bloated government contracts and and to have our spending be more efficient.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But the place to go and find that efficiency is the Department of Defense, where sometimes we pay $800 for a toilet seat, not you know which poor person is getting Medicaid.
James: Military grade. Hey, hey. Military grade. Military grade. That's why you're paying for it. Military grade.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yes, the military-grade...
James: Have you ever used to go on Amazon? You go to Amazon and you can find ah phone case or you can find a military grade phone case for $15 more. Military grade. Anyway.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: military. That's not even a grade. It's just like...
James: Like those flashlights. Have you've seen those tactical flashlights? Military grade flashlight. You know, hey. Cost more.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I got one of the... I got one of those. remember...
James: Anyway. ahead
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you remember it was actually from... Okay, so I want to like not use a name, but like describe to you the person because you'll know you know the same person. It was someone who was the head of a department that we both worked for.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: they... and they ah they were they were friends with the owner rather famously. but's still They're still the head of your department.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you're Okay, so you know I'm talking about? Yeah, for Christmas one year, he gave everybody like a little present and like I got like a little like handheld tactical flashlight.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah It's still my favorite flashlight, but it has all this like metal on It's like if I'm holding it in my hand, I'll punch you in the face.
James: I got this.
James: I got this Rayovac one.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: with it It's going to hurt you.
James: i got this Rayovac one that is just as bright. It costs me like $20. It's nice and heavy. It's a little bit long. It's great, man, but it's not, I don't know if it's military grade. don't know if it's tactical, whatever.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I don't know if it's military grade.
James: or But anyway, when you're talking about the does not have a clip, I don't, i don't put it on my, uh, my hunting gear or something in my, uh,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: does it have Does it have a clip? Can't can put it on your belt?
James: I don't... Whatever. I think it's a good segue into the ah the absolutely awful budget bill that they're going to try and do through reconciliation.
James: um
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Jesus Christ. Yeah.
James: I mean, honestly, that's the biggest news of the week, is the fucking awful thing that passed in House, 217 to 215. and And...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: that's So that's all the majority they have.
James: Yeah, no, that's what it passed. Well, I thought whatever, 2017, 215 is what it passed on. Let's go to the Senate. And among other things, they, like we were talking before here, it's, you know, they're not going to cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid folks.
James: They're just going to tell the people who run Medicaid that they got to cut a trillion dollars somewhere.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Well, it's so it's the committee of, ah can't remember it's like agriculture and something else, but the committee on agriculture, they told them that they have to cut their budget by $880 billion.
James: Hmm.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: dollars Am I not thinking of, i thought that this was the Medicaid thing.
James: Oh, that was energy. That was energy department, 880 billion.
James: That was for the energy department, 880 billion.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: No, I thought it was, a i thought the committee was energy and agriculture. It was $880 billion
James: Yeah, that was energy and agriculture.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um
James: That's not the one for Medicaid. That was for the energy department. Yes, they got to cut 800 something billion dollars. Medicaid also has to cut like a a trillion dollars or something like that.
James: That was both.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh huh. When I'm thinking of the wrong thing.
James: And that is in part to make sure they can give the $4.7 trillion dollar tax cut for the rich. And the $180 billion dollars increase in defense spending. See, they need more of those tactical flashlights.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: No, it's the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. That's who handles Medicaid. Energy and commerce. So those are the that's the that's the committee that has to cut $180 billion.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And the that committee does... i don't know. I saw a Brian Tyler Cohen on this.
James: Okay, that $880 billion. Okay, for that one.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. i saw so like that
James: And then it's still... Okay, then it still needs...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: that does Medicaid, but it doesn't do...
James: And then it's still $600 billion short for the rest of the cuts they have to do, too. Yeah, so there's still another $600 billion dollars in cuts they have to do on top of that.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, so like there's no – like the other stuff that isn't Medicaid that that committee funds um isn't
James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: isn't enough by itself to be $880 billion. So they have to cut Medicaid. So this is the way that they're like – they're selling their bullshit. They're like, oh, we're not cutting Medicaid. We're just cutting the budget for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. LOL.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you don't You're fucking dumb, right?
James: yeah Either way, yeah, they want to cut that, give another $4.7 trillion for the rich, increase the Defense Department's budget, which by itself I wouldn't give a shit for.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: course.
James: i mean, honestly, they do need to spend they need to been smarter. i mean, we've got to get ready. if the Nothing else but the Russia-Ukraine war has taught us is that The U.S. is not ready for a modern war.
James: You know?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I don't know about that because the so like the reason that Ukraine got into the situation that they're in is because of all the things that they don't have.
James: We need to...
James: okay
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: okay They don't have a big Navy. They don't have aircraft carriers. They don't have a large air force. They don't have all the sorts of surface-to-air missile batteries that you would use to defend your skies from the other people.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah they don't have enough They don't have enough ammunition or enough stuff to to defend against the the drones and missile attacks.
James: But you know who did
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They don't have the long-range missiles with the types of warheads. Even now, like we haven't given them the types. We give them like the
James: No.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: they like scatter and like take out a bunch of troops, warheads.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We don't give them the like big explosions or like the bunker busters. So they can go and like take out the bridge to Crimea, for example, which is what they wanted the missiles for to begin with, or, or to like, you know, hit into Russia to like hit a weapons facility or hit like a gas or an oil refining facility.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So they're hitting those with little drones and all this other and there's other stuff we we could, we could talk about, but they lack all of those things.
James: But no, who doesn't?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So what they ended up in was like trench warfare.
James: Well...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So if it was America, America would have come in. We would have blitzed them like like we did with Iraq. We would have just bombarded them from naval ships, from B-52s, from AC-130s.
James: Hmm...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We would have just like lit them the fuck up for like a week. And then after they'd been pounded by all of our you know millions billions of dollars worth of bombs...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: then we would start start to come in and we would come in covered by our air force so that we can push in. And like this shit with the drones isn't going to work against like a real air force or a real Navy.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like it I'm sure it would be a difficult thing to deal with.
James: Actually, no, I think you're taking away the wrong message from it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay.
James: It is, i think it's more of an example of Russia has all the planes. They have the helicopters. They have the long-range missiles. They have all that stuff. they They have the big navy. They had the big stuff.
James: They have all that. Ukraine didn't. Right? Ukraine is holding them back and beating them up pretty bad and killing tons of them and they're not making any gains and they're actually now having some counterattacks and having a lot of success in the last month or so, right?
James: Without all that shit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Because the Russian military strategy is like, we will throw more bodies at your guns and you have bullets to shoot them with.
James: So it's more akin to, so in other words, no. Yeah. But it's more akin to like, hey, this is teaching the whole world.
James: Hey, when you have a overwhelming military that has 500 million, $2 billion dollar ships and things like that out there. Hey, you don't need a bigger destroyer.
James: You need to just spend, you know, couple hundred thousand dollars and get a shitload of drones and you can take out their Navy. It's teaching every single country that, hey, these big, bad military ships, you know, they're not that tough.
James: They go out there with eight of them in those in a strike group, you know, or eight or nine ships in a strike group and check it out. They'll stay over there on the shore and you can just run little sea baby drones at them all day long, you know, you know, and so it makes these big ships that we have not nearly as effective, you know, and, and the, the drones or anything else.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh.
James: I mean, it's, it's the, it is the way it's going now. You know what mean? Um, We need to invest in that shit. Not just, hey, another, an even bigger destroyer than the biggest ones we have. You know what I mean? Because, mean, one destroyer costs as much as, like, you know, the entire drone drone army that they have in Ukraine.
James: You know what mean?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah
James: So, that's where they need to spend money more. i mean, but... So, I'm fine with them spending more money on defense, but... Shit, man.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: well there are a whole bunch of um drone startups in america but the thing is like america like a lot of these startups are making really complicated really expensive drones and i think a big part of
James: Ah...
James: but stupid but Oh, yeah,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: what's been an advantage for Ukraine in terms of drones and even like what's been useful to Russia in terms of drones has been that they just make a shell out of cheap ones.
James: exactly.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You know, you're spending a couple hundred bucks from China and you know, strap on some C4 and you drive it into a tank, you know, it's way, ah it's way easier to build five drones than it is to build one tank and much cheaper.
James: ah
James: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah,
James: So, but, but yeah, the only hopeful thing about this, there's nothing really hopeful about it, man. It's fucking, it's a terrible, terrible budget resolution. And with reconciliation, they can pass it with one vote majority. They can pass it with 50, you know, 51, 50 vote, you know? um,
James: and Yeah, it's, I mean, it's abysmal, you know. Hey, in a way, though, ah gab like Gabe said a few weeks ago, let them get what they want, man.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I think we should let him. Let him...
James: Hey, they voted for these people. Let's cut that Medicaid. and People all over the country have already been seeing things with, like, got ah we got our friend, you know, one of the people on my team who i work with, you know, already had to take their mom out of, their mom, who can barely talk, who cannot move on her own, right?
James: and They had to take her out of the hospital, and has to live it there in their living room and and a bed and, you know, so they can lift her up and clean her and do everything else, you know, because of all these freezes that the government's been doing, you know, Medicaid money, not being available, them having to send everybody home, you know, cutting off people.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's horrible.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: it's horrible
James: And the funny, and that's not funny. The thing about it is like these Republicans who all support Trump, you know, like 90% support for Trump. They don't believe that's happening. I actually, we actually heard somebody say this yesterday when they were talking about somebody else was talking about their situation.
James: where they lost their their health coverage thing like that, you know, because they couldn't go anymore because the money was frozen by Trump, you know, for three months. And they're like, somebody else said, Trump wouldn't do that. Oh, they you must have not filed your paperwork or something right. He wouldn't do that.
James: like no It's like, the funding was frozen.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but it just it hasn't It hasn't hurt enough yet.
James: know, you just don't believe
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's what that's all that means.
James: just don't believe it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's what I'm saying.
James: Exactly. So it's going to end up hurting well.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like Let them catch the car. Let the dog catch the car so the dog can get run the fuck over.
James: Yep.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And then when it's like a rotting corpse in the street, then we'll see if they if they still want to vote for it.
James: But, uh, yeah, horrible, horrible, horrible bill though. So Medicaid is gone. Going to be gone.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You know, let's just like give this like a a positive spin.
James: Social security iss next.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: okay like This is like ah just like a thought exercise. of like What could the good side of this be? and like You know, Medicaid, for all the good that it does, it is this sort of band-aid on the problem of like us needing to have single-payer healthcare, care us needing to have a government option, us needing to rein in the
James: not having universal health care.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: UnitedHealth CEO making 40 fucking million dollars a year, which is so offensive that when he gets shot in the fucking back, ah ah walking into a meeting, people fucking cheer, right? Like, that indicates the system is fucked.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So maybe we should rip the band-aids off of the fucked thing and let it be this this gaping, festering wound that fucking hurts everyone. Because if it doesn't hurt enough, you're not going to take the time to figure it out.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like There's all these people who are like, oh, I wanted to get rid of Obamacare, not the ACA. Why do they give it two names? Like, oh, dummy, they give it two names because they want to associate it with Obamacare so they can say it's a bad thing so you don't understand the good thing that you actually like came from Obama.
James: Yeah, but when you say, well, it sounds good in theory at an academic level and in a, you know, schadenfreude kind of way, it sounds good, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: I don't let everybody do this. Let everybody suffer. But I mean, think about who is suffering when you do this. It's all the poor people. It's everything like that. it's It's like, think of it think of Brazil when they were getting married their Olympics in the eighty s You know, what did they do? They went and they sent death squads in there and they murdered the shit out of all of the homeless population.
James: You know, and they went through Rio de Janeiro and they killed them all. Right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Jesus.
James: That's how they dealt with it. And know what? They didn't have a problem with homelessness afterwards. They just killed them all. Problem solved, right? Same thing. Hey, you hit off cut off all this stuff. Make everybody suffer. make Okay, cool. you You end up killing off a bunch of poor people. and you make yeah I mean, is it is that really the best way to do it? I don't think so. But, I mean, there's some truth to it.
James: if the If the pain is wide and deep enough, you know, maybe that'll make people support something better. But but at the same time, man, but look at the South.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: then maybe there would finally be enough of like a public sentiment for real solution.
James: look and The only thing that that contradicts that, though, is... Look at the South. Look at Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina. Look at all those states. Texas.
James: All these states have been rock red, you know, like ruby red for all these years. They're the poorest fucking states in the country. They have the absolute worst education systems, the worst health care, lowest wages.
James: They are the absolute just fucking...
James: shitter. They're in the they're the toilet. They're the toilet of America, right? They're the toy bowl of America, right? In every way. And they keep going red. So, I mean, it hasn't hurt them there. They keep voting Republican.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
James: Exactly. They're like, those states down there, man, there's no kind of social welfare things like that for people. It's just, they just don't get it. They don't get any kind of things like that. And they're just, government's not taking my money.
James: You know what I mean? and meanwhile, they're collecting fricking welfare and shit and they're getting Medicaid and stuff like that. You know, you just don't realize it. So i don't know.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah you got That's what I'm saying. like Let it hurt.
James: Maybe.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like let them let them Let them ruin the lives of poor people. like I'm not a poor people. ah Personally, it's not gonna it's not gonna it's not going to take money directly out of my pocket.
James: I was,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And it will put pain into the lives of people who are making decisions that are putting pain into my life. So yeah, let's let's share it around.
James: yeah Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's time to be fucked around and now it's time to find out.
James: So, all right. Buckle up, America.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: Rich people need more tax breaks, man.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But like, it is it is truly insane. The things that they're pitching, like they're really just like, we're going to like, like none of the things that they've talked about cutting, give them enough money because they want to make, they want to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
James: What the...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: dollars And they want to extend the tax cuts that was it for, was it for 10? How what was it?
James: The GOP budget in the House, the House was extending it for five years, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: The original, the duration of the, of the tax cuts.
James: It was going to extend it ah over 10 years, which was going to add another $20 trillion to the debt over 10 years. Just the tax cuts. Just the tax cuts.
James: yeah Like Thomas Massey, he was the one Republican voting against it. He goes, the GOP budget extends the five-year tax holiday we've been enjoying, but because it doesn't cut spending much, it increases the deficit by $300 billion dollars a year.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: oh
James: Compared to letting the tax cuts expire over 10 years, this budget will add $20 trillion dollars to the debt.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, I don't, I just don't understand. Like, how is it?
James: It's not about spending.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: There's not enough, like, take money away from, like, from government.
James: they don't They don't care.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: to to to pay for the first for 50 trillion dollars like you can't the only way to pay for it ever the only way is to take more money from the rich people
James: Here's the thing, though. Here's the thing.
James: that that's a non-starter. event Well, no, you also take more money from all of the non-rich people. Come on, Gabe. Jesus.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: no they don't have that much money
James: If you raise taxes, well, they're not, well, here, they're raising taxes in other ways. That's how they're doing it. Here's what they want to do. It's like, like an Indiana. Oh my God, Indiana. We're going to have all toll roads here. Indiana, Indiana house, I think is the one who already passed it.
James: It's probably going to pass in their Senate or whatever. But yeah, all the toll, all the highways, everything in Indiana, it's going to be all toll roads now to make people pay for everything. You know, it's a tax.
James: It's a tax. They don't want to call it a tax, but it's what it is. It's a tax, you know.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like a speed cameras, red light cameras.
James: And instead of paying a couple cents on the dollar, you know, out of your paycheck, instead, you can spend $10 every time you drive. There you go. Oh.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: God. That cannot... I cannot see that going well.
James: not going to edit. so
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like... Like... like they're trying to squeeze people from every direction. And at some point they're, they're going to be so squeezed that like, everyone's going to be like, well, now I'm homeless.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Now I can't buy eggs because they're $30 a dozen, you know, like I can't buy Starbucks anymore because it's $18 for a fucking tall. Like you know at some point,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: at some point when it's like, ah, Trump raised, what? Trump raised my tax, he took away the child tax credit and he raised my taxes and he took away my Medicaid and he took away my, this, and he took, and the world's all totaled.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like at some point the people are just going to be like, well, okay, so my options are debtors prison or I guess I'll just go and like start killing rich people then. Cause fuck it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like there's nothing else. You've taken everything. There's no way to like dig.
James: Mm-hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: The hole is so deep and so dark that there's no fucking point in trying to like pretend that it's not like, and now I'm just going to go out and fucking kill people. Like we're just going to revert back to like blood in the streets until the people are less poor and broken and stolen from.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: This is how it always goes every day all throughout history. This is how it always goes. The wealth inequality gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And then the people are like a fucking enough of this bullshit and they start killing people and then it evens out a little bit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's how every time it's it's the same thing all through history. as It happens. That's what's going to happen.
James: Well,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Unless they stop squeezing them.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like there is a limit.
James: in that case, remember, we were just saying, like, hey, you know It's not going affect me as much. I'm okay. You might want to watch out, Gabe. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I mean, in that scenario, we all have to watch out.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like I'm no millionaire, so I'm not, I'm not going to be at the top of anyone's list.
James: Yeah.
James: Yeah. yeah But yeah, it's just... Well, the bright side is, like you said, polling. it's It doesn't really matter because... Although, here's the thing.
James: like did people Like people said, hey, he's not going to leave office. He's not going to leave office. And what did he try to not do? is He tried not to leave office. Right. And every time that Trump said he will or won't do something, he never does that. The things he jokes about, like taking over Greenland or taking over this, those are things you really have to worry about because of those things he might actually do, you know, and.
James: How they keep joking and joking and joking about a third term.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: that
James: Joking about a third term. Hey, maybe I'll stay here. Maybe I'll just stay present forever. ah Isn't that funny?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: the The king, you know.
James: I'm talking about staying present forever. And then he put out a tweet of himself this last week here with um himself with a crown on it, you know, as as a king of America.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: have ah Yeah.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. All hail the king.
James: You know, so yeah, long lived king.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: and Long live the king, it said, right?
James: Yes. And had him. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, as of right now, though, his looks, his polling down to 42%, you know, you know So if he was going to run for re-election right now with his polls, it doesn't look to be good.
James: Although the sad part is, um and this is kind of funny, so the the support is highly partisan. and This is like like in Gallup's poll. It shows the gap between Democrats who approve of Trump And the Republicans who approve of Trump, right?
James: It's a gap of 89% points. It's like the most polarized ever in history of Gallup for any president.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Wow.
James: You know, that's the 89% gap but between where the Democrats are and Republicans are. But, you know, there's a bunch of different polls, but saw polling 42, 44% approval.
James: 51% of Americans are thinking what Gabe thinks, that America is facing a constitutional crisis, which I think is obvious if you anybody actually watches the news. And 57% of Americans say Trump has exceeded his authority since taking office.
James: You know, no shit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: No shit.
James: Yeah. ah God.
James: Oh, and you're... Where is this at? Where is this at? Oh, in Florida, Palm Beach. Florida House Bill 697. They want to rename um roadways in Florida after Trump sitting president.
James: Which, by the way, I don't think has ever happened. don't think they named him after, you know, sitting presidents.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, this is going to be like Trump trump Avenue.
James: But President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay, actually, I just remembered something. I didn't put this on the list, but like, I saw this on God, what's it called?
James: Yeah.
James: President Donald Trey Trump.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: it's it's called ah
James: No, I
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's called LBC. Do you ever watch LBC? It's like a British news podcast.
James: no i was thinking in Long Beach, California.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Oh, yeah, no, it's not totally very opposite direction.
James: Summertime and living's easy.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But it's ah yeah it's called LBC. it's like ah It's like a radio show, but I always watch it. I see it on YouTube. They were talking about a video that Trump put out on social media very recently.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And it is like he just he played a little bit of like the song. And it's like like Gaza is going to be so great for everyone like.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Trump is going make Gaza, blah, blah, blah. And then like, it has this like AI generated video that is just completely unhinged. There's this like elongated Elon Musk, just like lurking around all the time. And there's these like, like belly dancers in like scantily cat clad belly dancers, but they have beards and there's like, like little children,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: that are supposed to be in gaza but like too many buildings are standing so it can't be gaza because no buildings are standing in gaza and they're like the like the kids like holding a ah like a a golden balloon ah that's like a balloon of trump's head and like the music is completely unhinged like i gotta to find a link to show you this but it's like it is the most crazy the most crazy thing i've ever heard of in like a political thing and that's how um That's how he was describing it. It just sounds completely ridiculous.
James: Yeah, I don't know about that. But... Saturday, that's tomorrow, right? Or two days from now. Friday, Saturday, and two days from now, the... the and What is it?
James: cease The current ceasefire fire deal, whatever, is ended, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: huh.
James: Yeah, it expires on Saturday.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on. you got I found it. You gotta watch this you got to I'm going to put it in the...
James: Okay, sorry. You're making me think of...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You got to watch it and react to it.
James: Right on video.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's in the chat.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I know it would be better with video. You're right. But it's just... It's amazing. He posted it on Truth Social. It's a 30-second video.
James: Oh, God.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It'll be in the show notes.
James: Oh, my God.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: and AI Elon. and what the Oh my God.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like the music of it.
James: He tweeted this.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, he he but that's the link I sent you is to his true social post.
James: That was a hot Trump Gaza.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: No more tunnels, no more fear. Trump Gaza is finally here. It's just. It's like kids were running out of a cave onto the beach with like the Gaza skyscrapers off in the distance.
James: Oh, hey. Hey.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's just...
James: and gonna I can use Snipping Tool, and you can see on one of these little images of here of Trump groping this chick.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Why am I not surprised?
James: ah
James: Where's there where is our Zinkaster?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: There's like a golden...
James: Oh.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: There's like like a thousand foot tall golden Trump statue where he's like...
James: Oh,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Also, he's like fit in the statue. like He's not fat. He's just like super trim.
James: god. Here, I have to put it in our or um Discord because can't paste this into our chat on the
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yes i'm put it into the discord you know you know we should do is actually we should probably we're not going to this this week but we're gonna i was gonna say grabbing your arm and don't know if that's an ai hands thing but um we should open up our discord to you know all of our one fans i'll just have to make some make some rules for new people like
James: Hey, fan.
James: We should start. and say You know how people would say, like, hey, fam. Hey, fam. Like, family. No, we should say, hey, fan.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but
James: ah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: fact
James: Hey, fan.
James: Anyway. God.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah it's good i like it don't know i don't feel like i don't feel like there are slow weeks anymore
James: It's a slow week, though, man. It's a slow week this week, so.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: okay what else do we got what else do we got there's definitely
James: Yeah.
James: Hmm. Let's see. You had a town hall stuff. oh Oh, FAA. Did we already talk? We didn't talk about that. data Did you?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Nope, we just talked about it before.
James: Yeah. said we were going to hit on it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We didn't talk about it on air yet.
James: I think that's a good one. I mean, cause here, one of the things they're talking about before when they're talking about the, You know, the Doge eating shit, right? And the house spending bill not really cutting any spending, right?
James: And, you know, that that's a good segue into, you know, as Doge is going in and looking at these government contracts and seeing where this money is going and finding that A, they haven't saved anything really hardly.
James: B, They can only tout savings of things they've illegally stopped payments on. That's being, you know, fought in court and lot things being overturned. So they're not actually saving anything. They're just fucking with people by turning off the payment for a little bit. You know what mean? but in one of these things, ah FAA, Elon Musk, a big fan of the FAA because they were going after him and investigating him before,
James: ah deciding that and i don't know where he got the authority to do this start sending starlink terminals to places to do testing as of a couple days ago and now that they started doing whatever testing he thinks he's doing they went to uh sick the faa on there and and they're like threatening basically to cut off verizon's deal that they did a couple years ago it was a I think a 10, we read it earlier, like a 10 or 15 year deal with, it was like Verizon, Saab and some other company, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: is it Yeah.
James: That was to go through and really upgrade everything, you know, all the infrastructure of the FAA, right? And Elon Musk thinks, hey, we can just fire everybody. And how about I just take that shit over?
James: So yeah, I don't know how you want to start on it, but ah yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, so like the The base of this deal is so there'll be a link to telecoms.com. So I'm going read a little bit from it. um But this is from April 3rd of 2023. Verizon bags $2 billion dollar FAA deal.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: U.S. Operative Verizon's security lucrative deal to overhaul the FAA's networks. um It's ah meant to be a 15 year contract. It's more than $2 billion dollars.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you'll see them design, build, and operate a new communications platform that can support all the agency's mission-critical applications.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That includes providing air traffic management, ATM to the 45,000 flights, carrying 2.9 million passengers across the 29 million square miles that make up the U.S.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: National Airspace System, which is another way of saying it's pretty big deal.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, and so to your point, Verizon can't do all this by itself, so it's drafted SOBS. air traffic management division and mission critical comms specialists, Frequentis, what a name, Frequentis to help.
James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um So basically, yeah, it's like a dog pile of ah telecoms companies that are going to redo the infrastructure and then ah design, build, and manage it for them over 15 years.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And a key part of this is that these are like To the point that it was making, right it's 45,000 flights, it's 29 million passengers, 29 million square miles.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So it is a big mission.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: hu
James: And also also, I wanted to chime in and say, also, Verizon is not the one running it right now.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And
James: They're working, right, and they're two years into the deal to modernize all the infrastructure and everything else and their systems and everything else, right? they're not It's not like Verizon Wireless is you know the communication system of the FAA. They're not even doing that now. They're going through and building everything.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: So when Musk says, the Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down rapidly.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: That doesn't exist. There is no Verizon communication system to air traffic. It's not breaking down. and it's not that Verizon's not the one running it right now. you know So that's stupid.
James: And he says... This is this is this is ah putting air traffic safety at serious risk. mean know They had to try to walk back to statements from Trump when they were talking about how DEI was making the skies so unsafe. you know Now they're saying that the infrastructure is so unsafe, it's breaking down. Really, they're just firing everybody and then people are overworked. but
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Exactly.
James: They need new equipment.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Now it's...
James: They need new equipment. They need new stuff. They need better stuff. But, you know,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And crucially, the equipment, like like, it has to be very reliable.
James: is being built.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: it has to be very fast.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And that's why you can't have it be wireless.
James: Mm-hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So, like, some places, like, there will be rural... I always struggle with that word.
James: Rural, rural.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Rural places... Well, you live in one, so you can say it. There'll be rural places where... um there's no infrastructure for fiber optics. And so they'll use satellite, but everywhere else, satellite is just like a, like a backup, right.
James: Yep.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And the places where they use it, they're always going off of hard line because they need it to be reliable. Cause if it goes down, like then they can't see the planes in the air. They can't talk to the planes in the air.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And they're, that's going to lead to a lot of big problems. Cause they're going to run a fuel. they're going to crash and I got to know where they're going. So like the system is designed to have, um have the different,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: air traffic controls, you know, like the, the, the one that's like just at the airport, the one that's within two miles of the airport and the one that's, um, all the space in between two miles out from airports, it's designed to interact, you know, follow the planes across all of those and trade them off to the different towers.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And so if it goes, if it goes down, even for a little bit, it's really dangerous and likely also very expensive.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So,
James: Yeah. And there's other things to just think about too. Long-term stuff. low the sad The reason why Starlink satellites work better than your traditional like yeah the other big ones, like those HughesNet things or whatever, Viacet, these other systems, satellite internet, because they're really, really low orbit. Their satellites are really low orbit satellites.
James: And that is so bad. i mean, Jesus Christ. Okay.
James: I'm trying to say it in layman's terms. In layman's terms, it's like, imagine the landfill... Right. Instead of being a landfill buried underground, you just took it all up and spread all that trash out right around the planet.
James: Right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: And make it all metal stuff like little orbits. Right. When you have a lot of satellites up there, it's they have rapidly decaying orbits.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: Right. They the orbit decays faster than than expected.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: Right. More and more satellites would be needed. You'd need a lot more satellites to be able to do everything that SpaceX does, plus everything in the FAA, all the air traffic controlling. You're going to need a lot more satellites up there.
James: More satellites, more risks of this collision, more risks of things falling. you know mean breaking There's so much debris in space right now. People don't even think about that. you know when they When we launch things into space, it doesn't go away.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: hu
James: it's like like People worry about fucking plastic and shit here. you know We're like, oh, this takes a a thousand years to go away. right Yeah, but if something's in orbit around your planet, it's there potentially for you know fuck millions years.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And, and as it, with a lot of this stuff, like when, when it like, when it crashes into itself, right.
James: It traps trapped you in
James: It makes more.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay. Okay.
James: Particles, yes.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: it makes a bunch of tiny pieces. So you have these, you have these little little pieces of screw and metal and plastic that are flying around at like 15,000 miles per hour.
James: Yeah. Yes.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And you're trying to like use the space for other things. And it like becomes progressively more, more dangerous and like stuff just like breaks and gets destroyed as you keep adding more trash up there.
James: Worse. Exactly. Exactly.
James: Yeah, and here's a good article.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: I'm going to put this in the link in the chat here you can put that on there.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: People think about this and shit, like Elon Musk, Mars, let's go to Mars, right? It's already getting so bad. it is really hard to plan launches in the space now. It's getting harder and harder because it's getting crowded, right?
James: It's already getting so crowded, right? And ah where is it at here? It's... there are currently 7,700 satellites within just a couple of hundred miles of the Earth, right? They by 2027, it's going to grow to several hundred thousand satellites, right?
James: Some of those are going to crash. Some of those going to break. And it makes an insane field of space junk, you know, just trash and things around there, you it goes around.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah
James: Eventually...
James: People want to go out into space, maybe leave, maybe have the option. How about that? Just having the option to leave. Okay. I don't know. Let's just say one of those fucking Armageddon type movies come true. And Hey, we have a way of getting off this rock. Let's go.
James: Well, can't. Sorry. We decided to let SpaceX put a whole bunch more satellites up. there I mean, they need to, they need to stop it. You know what mean? oh God.
James: it's It's so bad that the trash is out there. That's clouds, right? Yeah, it's...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: the low The low orbit satellites also um mess with like astronomers trying to do astronomy stuff because they're so to much more in the way.
James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but know It's a whole problem. and it's like it's not
James: It's...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's not the thing that like Starlink does. you know Starlink does satellite internet. this The FAA needs it to be fiber based. like It needs it to be ground based in data centers. That's not what they do.
James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So it's like, it seems like, like a really big, like conflict of interest where they're like cutting out a competitor, you know, in a like sort of like adjacent telecoms industry, you know, so that they can take a big, take on some, you know, be even more central to the infrastructure of the country in this other big way.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you know, and this is like, this is, Elon, when they were saying like, oh, if it's a conflict of interest, he he wouldn't want no conflict. You're a conflict. I don't want any conflict. Like, yeah, it's just like, oh, he'll just, he'll totally just step aside if it's a conflict of interest. But like, meanwhile, he's firing the head of the FAA and then like, you know, going after the deals, giving them to his company, even when his company doesn't do the thing that the deal required the other set of companies to do. It's just, it's ridiculous. Yeah.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Which segues, so we kind of like skipped over it. We talked about it before before we started, but um which we can circle back to Doge eating shit and how all their savings are lies.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um
James: Well, hey, before we start, i just want to make an Excel document real fast and put some numbers in some columns.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So there's a really good... Yeah, what? Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: And I want to put it out there on on Twitter and just say that, look, I have three cells of numbers and it goes down 25 rows. And look, I just saved the government $55 billion dollars and i'm going to get credit for it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Wow. Okay.
James: Because it seems like that's all they're doing lately is just making.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But I think, I think that's how it works.
James: Yeah, that is the thing that does seem to be what they're doing. Because, yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I think, think you nailed it.
James: But you keep trying.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Also, I don't think we talked about how like 20 of them resigned recently because they were like, we signed up to like audit the federal government, not dismantle it. This isn't, this isn't what we signed up for. We're out of here.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And then they had to name they like yeah also related so they had to name and administrator. like These federal judges kept being like, who's the administrator? Who's in charge? Who's running Doge? Because it has to be, it couldn't be Elon Musk because you know he has all these contracts with the government. So he's not allowed to be a part of a government agency and have contracts with the government.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um And then as like a, whatever his thing is, his title is like a special advisor to the president, like special advisor to the president for whatever, whole bunch of reasons. Like they can't run a government agency. They can't do both of those at the same time.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So as a special advisor to the president, he can't run an agency. So they had to say, who's the administrator? And they picked this woman. Like, I can't remember what her name is, but just like some woman who works from home in like Tennessee.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like she's not at CPAC. She's not, but like, allegedly this is the person like calling all the shots at doge. is This is like random ass woman. ah in like bumblefuck nowhere, Tennessee.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: is the official administrator of Doge. And I should actually Google it just so i can have some facts
James: Yeah. Well, if you want to go through some of their other stuff, let me...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Amy Gleason.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, so Amy Gleason is apparently a Doge administrator. But yeah, so the other thing, the spending stuff, I'm going to crib from a MSNBC Rachel Maddow video from memory, and I'll post a link to it.
James: Okay.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um But she was saying how like Doge came out and said that they had found um this this cost of, ah excuse me.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah Okay, this cost of $655 million. dollars um And they found three of them. And they're like, oh, this is the savings we're going to do. We're going to save $1.95 billion these three big things.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: billion dollars with these these three big things And then a few days later, they came out and they were like, actually, that wasn't three things that were $655 million dollars each.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It was just one thing that was $655 million. Our bad. So only one third of that. Then ah a little bit later, they came out and they're like, actually, so it's not $655 million. dollars It's actually only worth 18.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Contracts are complicated. you know, we just like skimmed it.
James: Math is hard.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And like, so like we don't know what the fuck we're doing. So like, it's yeah, it's only actually $18 million. dollars There was another thing that was like $500 million dollars that they posted and then they completely had to retract it because like, oh, actually, no, like that wasn't actually money being spent. That was like money that like could potentially be spent.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And there's a whole bunch of things like that. there's like a bunch of things where they're like they're canceling contracts um where there's like a provision in there that this contract could go up to some amount if if it needed to, but that it never actually does.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And Like that's not the intent. Like, you know, it's just like a, it's like, we're setting aside money. Like, ah, you know, we're doing this thing in case we need more money to continue doing this thing or like some emergency happens.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We know we've, we've set aside more money because we're being responsible so we can pay, pay it ahead time. And then they're looking at like, oh, this is the amount that they were thought they were going to do Like we're giving this guy all this money. Like, no, you're not actually giving this guy this money. You just set it aside so you could spend it on this.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: if you needed to, but you don't need to. And if you look at it every year, you realize that like you never do, you're just leaving it sat there in case shit. So there's a whole bunch of things like that. So like all these savings that they're talking about, this, like they're saying that that it's like $56 billion. So most of it's bullshit.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And like what they have actually done is just like cut off, cut off funding to legitimate things to like money that was actually appropriated because there's multiple like ssss,
James: Yeah.
James: Yeah. They haven't found it. They have not found one example yet of waste, fraud, and abuse. It is simply they've cut off funding to things. They've just turned off the access to the funds that were appropriated by Congress. They just turned it off and said, hey, look, we just saved money.
James: There you go It's like if you're if you just walked into a company that you don't work for and you walked in there and you said, oh, hey, are your employees' paychecks here? Yes. And then you went and you took the employees' paychecks and you set it on fire, the whole envelope with all the employees' paychecks. he said, I just saved you guys. I just saved you fuckers $20,000. Woo!
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah
James: That's exactly what's happened.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: small company.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: Yeah. They haven't saved anything. They just cut off funding for things.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And fired a bunch of people.
James: and yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They fired 7,000 people who work for the national park service. Like of all,
James: Well, yeah, they want to drill. Baby drill, man. what what Park Rangers? What the fuck? We want to chop those trees down, bitch.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like the park rangers, you can't drill on national parks. First of all, like you,
James: Yes, you can. well you think Anwar is what do you think they did in the first day of office? They opened it all up.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: What are talking about?
James: Everything. Day one. it's executive Executive orders, man. Like Anwar. Gone.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: What's ANWR?
James: ah at um, Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's not a national park. That's a wildlife refuge. You can't, you cannot, you cannot like build or drill or extract.
James: They did this... a
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You can't do any of that shit on, on national parks.
James: i
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: can't drill in national park, but also we're drilling more oil than any other country in the history of the world.
James: The world.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: As of last year, when we broke the record that we set a few months before that, which broke the record that we said a few months before that under Biden, like we're like drill baby drill.
James: Oh, it is. It is a national park.
James: it is It is, by the way, National Park.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We're already fucking drilling. We're drilling the most drilling that has ever been drilled ever.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So like, what the fuck you don't need to like go into the national, but you don't need to fire the guys who are like fixing the trails and, And like cleaning out the fucking restrooms. Like.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Unbelievable.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's just like. that's just not That's not where the savings are. Like that that was money well spent. It's the same shit as like the. The fucking. Bureau of. consumer the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Whatever it was. Where they took their $750 million.
James: National Monument.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: dollars That you know. They've already returned billions of dollars. In litigation that they've done. on behalf of like they make money this is like the irs like they're like cutting people from the irs like last last week we were talking about the the trump supporter who was working for the irs i think this is in the archived episode but like we were talking about this irs guy who was a trump supporter and and and he got fired from the irs he's like oh i'm so surprised i was i went there to like
James: national monument
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: to do a good job and serve the country and blah, blah, blah. And like, they're firing me and like, I've only had good performance reviews and they fired a ton of people from the IRS, but every dollar you spend at the IRS makes you more money than it costs.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like cutting people from the IRS cutting is the same as like cutting inspectors general. It just removes oversight. It's not how you find fraud. You're just, you're, you're firing the people who find the fraud.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's frustrating bullshit.
James: oh Yep. Yeah. Sorry, I'm remembering here because... ah It's a good article.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's right.
James: goal it's good it's It's just really long. You'd have to read it a little bit more. but you they are definitely
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: which um Which one are you looking at?
James: and just um and's ah It's a long thing from The Guardian, but it's a really long thing about how they've taken a meat cleaver basically to national parks and wildlife rescue rescues and all the permits they did and how they you know we took us out of Paris, ah you know the corridor thing, and they're showing all the other stuff and all the people they've installed, you know like Interior Secretary, all all the different places and then around Carlsbad, you know, for oil and drilling, all the leases they're beginning, the Bureau of Land Management, two points. and there's It's all the different areas where they're taking the, you know, public lands and just giving it away to oil and gas companies, you know, killing all the animals, chopping down the trees, you know, gone the forest.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I suppose
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: This is an epic article.
James: Yeah, it's really long. But yeah, it's, yeah They want to open up 90% of all public lands to oil and gas leasing.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, we just...
James: Public lands is a good way of saying national parks and refuges. what mean? Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, here's the thing. like We don't need it.
James: No, we don't. Yeah, they they were joking about, you know.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like here's, ah here's, I think like the real value of oil at this point.
James: Yeah, sorry.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay. If we have a bunch of oil, we can, um we can hurt the middle East by flooding the market with cheaper oil and cheaper natural gas, ah driving down the price of it so that their pile of resources makes less money.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And they know that's what's going to happen. They know that like the amount of oil, like the oil business is like, going away which is why they have the the south the saudi sovereign wealth fund which they use to to like basically get off oil they're like let's invest in all of these other businesses because oil isn't the future so like like the the biggest thing that you can do with a bunch of oil is like make it cheaper and like devalue the oil that other places have
James: Get off oil. Yeah. Kind
James: of like China. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And I guess like you can make a bunch of people rich in the meantime, but like at a cost that's like so unnecessary. Like we have so much oil already.
James: no
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Topics we have not yet covered. Okay. We still have the Ukraine medical deal. We have...
James: Yeah. Mineral. Mineral.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: What I say?
James: Medical.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, I definitely meant mineral.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Good call.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We have Macron correcting Trump. We have Mitch McConnell retiring.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um I think those... oh we have man we kind of touched on the town halls and the burning of the Trump flags. camera't remember if we talked about that. but those are Okay, so which one? what do you want to do? take Why don't you take McConnell and talk about Talk about the mini fuckeries of Mitch McConnell for a little bit.
James: Oh, God. Really? Okay. Mitch McConnell, the turtle. I mean, here...
James: i mean here but
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: the He's such a turtle.
James: What do you need to know about Mitch McConnell? He was...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Supreme Supreme Court justices court packing.
James: that's going to get there. i mean, he started off in the 80s. He started off as a senator from 1985. Longest serving senator in Kentucky history, right? um Used to be considered a pragmatist and moderate long, long time ago, you know, in the days of Ronald Reagan, you know.
James: um Of course, as he
James: lived the Senate life long and mean and learned the ways that you know to get things done and got more in power and then became majority leader for a long time. um Yeah, I mean, he became probably one of the fucking dirtiest, most ruthless you know people to be a majority leader.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: yeah Don't forget the word effective.
James: Well, yeah, very effective. Effective. Yeah, sure. um
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah I would even say Mitch McConnell is exactly what I want from a Democrat.
James: Yeah, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, he was, think he was one of the people that really made Republican Party really just blow up the filibuster and use the filibuster like to high heaven. You know what I mean?
James: um
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: hmm.
James: Under Mitch McConnell, nothing could get done with less than 60 votes. And mean it's gone back so long now that people, I think people don't realize anything. God, we need civics. We need a little basic civics lesson to here, people.
James: It used to be majority rules, majority vote, right? Majority. That doesn't matter in the Senate because you need 60 votes because long time ago these movies like ah Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, you see the filibuster. Somebody is sitting up there talking and talking and talking forever so they can't vote on it, right? Because they mean something.
James: No, that changed a long time ago. And Mitch McConnell was one of the architects of making sure the filibuster was just said, we filibuster. You know I mean? We're going to filibuster this. Then we have to do it. They just say they're going to, and then they just move on. Oh, we need 60 votes. So then they hold a vote called cloture, right? To advance something past it, you know, to break a filibuster.
James: So you always need 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate, which is just under two thirds, you know, almost the, almost the level you need for an impeaching a president.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but the crucial
James: You know, that's about how much you need in the Senate to have a majority to get things done unless it's not controversial and you can get bipartisanship, you know?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: or reconciliation, but the key thing, the key thing about the, the filibuster that I think we've, we've lost, like the, like more important than it being walking versus just like raising your hand and saying, yeah, I'm filibustering.
James: More reconciliation, yes.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Cause like, you know, it used to be, yes, like you're saying, you had to stand there and physically be talking. So like you to have someone tap you out so you could like pee and eat and like sleep and whatever.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And then like, you know, come back and you can keep reading the phone book because you had to keep talking, saying new things the entire time.
James: Yeah.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um And this would be like to delay a vote on something. But when they switched it ah' like the the The key thing there was that nothing else could happen.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: no other but They couldn't vote on something else.
James: That's exactly.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They couldn't like confirm judges.
James: Yep. You couldn't move on.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They couldn't do a budget. They couldn't do shit else.
James: but McConnell's filibuster has changed all that.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: okay like the The whole thing ground to the halt. Yes, and mcyle' the big change. to like Yeah, they switched it from like walking to now you just say, like oh, I'm filibustering, l lol. I'm not going to have to stand here.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I'm just going to say I'm filibustering.
James: Yep.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And now you have to have 60 votes to break my filibuster and make this something we can actually vote on so they don't have to they don't even have to so i don't even have to come out and like look bad for like like no i'm not going to vote for the like don't rape babies act like i'm a monster of course i'm not going to vote for that
James: Yeah.
James: Yep.
James: and And, one of the things that is in a good, like a little article about him, it says a political scientist, Hacker and Pearson described the rationale behind McConnell's filibusters because he had his filibusters left no fingerprints.
James: If voters heard that legislation had been defeated, right? Journalists rarely highlighted that, you know, the defendant meant that a minority had blocked a majority, right? They just say, oh, something didn't, didn't pass. Something didn't pass, right?
James: A filibuster, when they do their filibusters, They don't have to have a person being the target of of all the ire. You know what mean? Like if you actually had Rand Paul have to stand up there and actually filibuster and talk about why these sick kids with cancer shouldn't get any funding, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm.
James: Make him die on that hill, right? Make him...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yep.
James: speak about that, he would look really bad and you wouldn't have people thinking, wow, he's, he's a good conservative, right? You think, well, he's an asshole, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm.
James: What?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: That's, that's, this is the guy holding it up for that, you know? But when they do their filibuster, they say, oh, no, we're filibustering. Oh, oh, they couldn't get 60 votes. Yep. That's going down in flames and that's it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But the other thing is you have to vote on it.
James: No individual person is blamed.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like you have to You have to vote on it or stand there. like Those are the only two options. Otherwise, nothing else can happen in the Senate. So like it that's the way it used to be.
James: That's the way it used to be. But they would just...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like That was such a huge piece.
James: Yeah, they just...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like Now that you can just like put it to the side and like do everything else, like it's so much less toothless.
James: Yeah, that. Mm-hmm. What else? Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's just like raising the the the standard to do anything 60 votes.
James: It's just raising the... Yeah, it's just raising the... Yeah, just raising it to... It's not a majority rule anymore. It's a 60-vote rule.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: You know? So, yeah. and And he really did coin that, man. that's So, under the Obama years, they filibustered fuck... Everything, like fucking everything, everything was filibustered, you know.
James: And so then 2013, Harry Reid got in there, you know, Majority Leader Harry Reid's like, hey, you know what? For presidential nominations, except for the Supreme Court, we'll go ahead and, well, the the rules, they always have a rules at the beginning of any legislature, you know.
James: They rewrote the rules.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, they set the rules of the filibuster every time.
James: Yeah, they said the rules for everything, right? And they changed the rules, tweaked the rules, said, okay, you can't filibuster this. You can't filibuster that, right? And they said, okay, you can't vote you can't filibuster nominations to the bench, except for the Supreme Court, because that's such a big thing, you know?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm.
James: and And then, of course, McConnell, you know, said, yeah, or cool. We'll just, you know what? We'll go ahead and eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court. You know, that way they could ah get Neil Gorsuch on there. You know, then this is that, that was Neil Gorsuch, but that was after they didn't have to use a filibuster. They just hit the majority.
James: They just would not allow there to be a ah ah hearing debate, you know, confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, you know, for the Supreme Court, but she was a,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. And like Merrick Garland wasn't even who, like Merrick Garland wasn't even a good choice.
James: but No, the funny thing is the only reason isn't.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: He was their choice.
James: No. Yeah, he was. He was because Mitch McConnell right said Obama's not serious about about yeah he's not really serious about putting up a liberal judge. If he was really serious about getting a judge confirmed, he'd put up Merrick Garland.
James: And so he's like, you know what? Merrick Garland. He is fucking down the middle, milk toast, middle of the road guy. And even Mitch McConnell himself said if he was serious about getting a judge on there, he'd put up mit put up Merrick Garland.
James: Yeah, Merrick Garland. There you go Bipartisanship, man. Let's go Merrick Garland. And then they said, no, that never happened.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, they refused to let him vote. Which like really came back to...
James: And then two weeks and two weeks.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: He double fucked us on that because then they put Merrick Garland in charge of the...
James: Yeah, he would have been a good Supreme Court justice.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: They made him AG.
James: think it wouldve have been a good Supreme Court justice. He was a shitty attorney general. But anyway, and then of and then, of course, Mitch McConnell talked about how he he died, it and you know, ah when Scalia died, Scalia died.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: This is the year of an election. You know, there was like a year left before the election when Scalia died and they held it up.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
James: And then, you know, of course, when RGB died two weeks before the election, after Trump had already lost,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It was less than two weeks.
James: ram ram her through.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It was like eight days.
James: you know ah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: Damn.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It was it was was after the election, two weeks before Biden would take power, and he lost.
James: And they had lost. So the the voters already made their choice.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So the voters had already made their choice.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: and They made such a big deal of like, oh, the voters have to decide. The voters have to decide.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, no. And, like, this is this is the thing that I, like, love and hate about Mitch McConnell.
James: Ram that shit through.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I hate it because only he does it and our side is like, oh, well, we have to be, we have to sure do our morals, everyone. We've got to eat our vegetables and be real nice.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Otherwise, the win doesn't count. Like, no, fuck that. when you When you have an advantage, fuck them with it. Every time. and every That's is the thing I love about Mitch McConnell. Like, he was a vicious ruthless, scrupulous fucking pit fighter who would throw dirt in your eyes and like stab a baby so he could win the fight.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like he did not give a fuck whatever it took.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's what he was going to do. That's what we need. And that's why that's the thing that I most hate about the Democrats is that like, they're all just fucking pussies. Nobody will get out there and fucking do whatever it takes. Like there's no, there's no victory at all costs.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's like, it's like we would rather lose, but like stick to our values and just like, yeah, we,
James: Morals. Yeah. Well, um but at the same time though, at the same time though, oh man, that's what makes most of us Democrats.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We rather like our values rather than victory.
James: Most of us Democrats actually have principles.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: don't give a fuck about principles.
James: Ugh.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: i want i want i want clean water. okay i want women to be able to make decisions about their bodies with their doctors. I want healthcare and education to not be things that are so ridiculously expensive.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And I want the wealth, like so the the wealth, the the to the treasure as the result of the labor and productivity and innovation of this country to be more evenly spread around it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's it. That's not radical. It's not crazy.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, it's really just like the basic stuff.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, and so like if you have to like stab a few babies and like get cheated some elections and like whatever the fuck else, I don't care. i don't care at all.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: If you've got to run like a horrible fucking person because they're the only one that can win, i don't give a fuck. If you've got a lie to the poor people who are too dumb to fucking you know know the difference between Obamacare and the ACA, which one's helping them, like fuck them.
James: her
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Do what you've got to do because if you't if you don't, if you don't have any power, your morals mean shit.
James: ah will I will say this, though, in in McConnell's praise, right? Even though publicly... he would say whatever, right? Like, oh, the voters have to decide and private, you know, but you know, and then they would just do it anyway, right?
James: When they had the chance, you know, with RGB, when she died privately, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah
James: And like, even Biden said it, right? Biden even said, you know, he described McConnell as a friend, a colleague, and a man of his word, even though, like you said, it's like, hey, whatever it fucking takes, if, you know,
James: yeah you used some very colorful language before about taking your junk out and just shoving, you know what mean? Giving it to them, you know, the other party, right?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yes, i remember I remember that speech. I made that speech.
James: So like you you talk about doing that, he would do that. But like when they were talking privately and amongst each other and colleagues, he would be pretty explicit about what they were going to do. Hey, we're going to, we're no, we're going to do this for you. We're going to this to you, you know, and he would just do it.
James: But if he made a deal with you, he stuck to it. Unlike a lot of the Republicans, you what mean? Like, uh, that was one of the things that like, uh, Kevin McCarthy in the house. That's why the Democrats let him go down.
James: what mean? And let the Republicans go out there and like six Republicans saying, Oh, we want to take up Kevin McCarthy. He had no love in there because he was a snake. He would make deals with Democrats and then just re not do it.
James: Mitch McConnell, if he made a deal with you, made a bipartisan deal and he said, Hey, we got this bill. gonna do this. We'll do this and this. He stuck to it and he made sure you get the vote for it. You know? yeah. And he was the only Republican to attend the funeral of Bo Biden's son.
James: Or of Bo Biden. You know?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah
James: So, you know. And he was one of the only Republicans to vote against some of those other horrible Trump shit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Pros and cons.
James: He was the one to vote against a few of Trump's nominations. He was like the sole Republican to vote against some of these.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: oh
James: Sad. It's sad. When Mitch McConnell... is the lone Republican to vote against completely unqualified Trump appointees.
James: It's a man. It's a crazy world. We're living in the Senate.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I mean, I initially had that same thought, like, wow, Mitch McConnell's like the lone holdout.
James: Yeah. He, he voted against Pete Hegseth.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But then i was listening to the Bulwark and they're like, yeah, but here's the thing.
James: He voted against Tulsi. He voted against ah RFK. He voted against all three of the worst.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay. So like they were talking about this on the Bulwark. They were like, look, all these Republicans, they like retire. And then like, suddenly they like get to Bill Maher's show. And now they're finally a good guy. Or they're like, they're sitting on the podcast couch.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And like, now they've like, have their fucking come to Jesus moment moment when it doesn't fucking matter. And Mitch McConnell is the same thing. Like, They could afford to lose three votes on all of those votes. like it It didn't fucking matter.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: he didn't He didn't show up to like you know to be a man of his principles when it fucking mattered. He showed up when it didn't fucking matter.
James: Yeah, that's true.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like right before like On his way out the door, like, oh, yes, i I'll be a good guy here at the end of my turtle-y-turtle days. like No, like that's that's not you don't get points for that, bro.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like I guess like if if the if any of these... confirmations had like not gone off because Mitch McConnell, you know, like, like McCain did saving the ACA. If he had that moment, then like, okay, ah then I'll give it to you. Like he accomplished something, you know, even like at the last minute, like in large part, the, the, the system right now is broken because of Mitch McConnell and his like 40 year mission to pack the courts.
James: Yeah.
James: Hmm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But, What a guy.
James: Yeah. I mean, I'm not anything really nice about him. Just, I'm not saying he had morals or principles, but apparently he would be true to his word, you know, when talking to people.
James: So, I mean, yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah so i think he's a, I think he's a RBG level icon. I don't care that he's played for the other side. It's like, it's like being a guy, don't know sports well enough to do this analogy. job It's like,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: whoever the like the the rival of the Patriots is, like you still admire Tom Brady. like you know like Yeah, he fucked us every time, but like you know he played the he played the game super good.
James: Man, he would, and he would, that is a perfect analogy. Mitch McConnell, Tom Brady, you know, hey, do whatever it takes. Deflate those fucking balls.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: Let's get it done.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah Yeah.
James: but
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: like and i'm sorry like like he I feel like he's like he is showing the way for like, that's the Democrat I want.
James: Deflate game. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like,
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you know I would vote for Bernie you know if Bernie can get the popularity, but like...
James: Oh, you know what, though? Nancy Pelosi was that person. nancy pelosi Nancy Pelosi was that. She was that person. Nancy Pelosi was the Mitch McConnell. I mean, on the on the other side. She was the smart one who got shit done.
James: She'd whip her votes. She'd get her stuff done. Smart. You may not like all of her stuff for whatever or whatever. Think, you know, hey, insider trading or whatever and stuff like that. But I know.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Nancy Pelosi.
James: And that's the... Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: It's like, oh, all the insider trading.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Those COVID deals... sure are lucrative when you know what the
James: but She got a lot of amazing shit done. then She was fucking amazing. and i mean Affordable Care Act, American Rescue Plan. She's lived for 20 years. i mean, shit.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: how do you feel about age limits or term limits or some kind of like why the fuck are all these people you know, there's just like, there's this one Republican woman who's like the head of a committee and she like doesn't even know where she is because she has such like, like late stage Parkinson's dementia or whatever.
James: think you're talking about it, yeah. ah dementia. Yeah. Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. Like,
James: Here's the thing. I think, I think two you can't have one without the other. I think first of all, term limits. I think term limits are stupid. I do. I think term limits are stupid as long as you have free and fair elections.
James: And I think if you have free and equal public financing for elections, then I think it's fine. If you can't just get Elon Musk to do whatever $300 million dollars here, and let me just do this, let me just have the largest media, you know, thing here to echo chamber to shut down everybody says bad things. and you know If you got rid of all that, made if you need the left level made a a level playing field, right, for elections, who gives a shit about term limits?
James: You know, don't let one person just do whatever they want and have money to do whatever they want. And another person be like, oh, shit, I can get together a few hundred thousand dollars to fund my race.
James: Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and Shell are going to go up and fund somebody against me and do all this other stuff. I mean, if you had a level playing field, it's fine. Unlimited. I don't care about term limits. Let people vote. I mean, FDR.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, but...
James: I think there's a reason why FDR was elected four times. The only reason they got term limits on presidents is because Republicans eventually, after like you know forever one goes by, they finally retook some power in the House and Senate. And they're like, all right, we got to stop this fucking guy from running every time.
James: He's always going to win. He's too popular. God, he saved the country. He saved it in the war. Jesus. Stop it. Term limits. That's why we had term limits.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but
James: Because he was too good. And he would have kept on getting elected. So... so I'm not a fan of term limits. But like I said, again, free and fair elections and equal playing field.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh, it's like...
James: i don't like the idea of Trump being able to just run forever and with all his fingers on the powers of, um you know, lovers of government and being able do everything he's doing now in the Supreme Court, giving him a blank check of if it's an official act, he can do whatever the fuck he wants.
James: You know what
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm.
James: Because I don't think that will lead to free and fair elections, you know? But, eh. Yeah.
James: But yeah, Nancy Pelosi is awesome.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: But isn't that like, uh, isn't that like, you know, like if only we like save the world, then, you know, dinner would be delicious and healthy every day.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like, you know what mean? Like, you're like, you're like, well, if we can accomplish the much larger task, then the small, like, like term limits are necessary because we don't live in a world where campaign finance is a bell we can unring.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: We're like citizens United is a bell we can unring. Like, yeah, that would be the ideal situation. Like, let's get some, let's get ranked choice. Let's get like top five. Let's get, you know, take all the money out of politics.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Let's be like, ah, if you contributed more than a thousand dollars to someone, you can't contribute to the same person again for four election cycles.
James: Yep.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Sure. Let's do all of those things. But like like, that's in a perfect world. And we're like, so we're a million fucking light years away from any of that, let alone all of it. So like in the meantime, in the real world where we actually live what we shouldn't do is have fucking 90 year olds running everything because incumbents get reelected 90% of the time.
James: no
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So like, you know, like, it's like, you gotta, you gotta deal with the the problem that's killing you now before you can like, you know, you know, we got, we got to deal with the fact that like my, my foot has cancer by chopping off my foot. I can't just like wait until we cure all cancer and just like hope i hope I don't die before then, you know, we gotta, we gotta chop the foot off. Now we need to get the fucking like,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: 70 plus, get the fuck out. like you're tired you're You're done.
James: Yeah, but that's also not going to happen, though.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: go go Go to a beach.
James: I think the the real.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Go play golf.
James: Yeah, but here's another thing, Gabe. You said, oh, that's not realistic, though. That's not realistic. Getting that out of there, the toothpaste is out of the tube or whatever. Right. You said, you know, that's it's already there.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: OK, well, we're already there where these people who know they have a 90 percent, you know, reelection rate. You have to get those people to say, yeah, I want to make a bill that says we can never have this position of power again.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Would have to be the ones to do it.
James: It's already gone. It's already there. Oh,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: You gotta put them... you guess got It's just a question of incentive. You gotta put them up against a wall where the the ah the opposing choice is worse.
James: oh so you're in other words, like Donald Trump, what he wants to do. Put the bill against a wall. Like Liz Cheney, didn't he say he made some allusions? Putting Liz Cheney up to a wall and putting his gun to it.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah. ah You know, that's another that's another story from this week, the way we didn't get into, but like Liz Cheney hired a law firm and ah in retaliation, the Trump administration took away the,
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um the security clearances, the the classified clearance from all of the, the lawyers at the la law firm that could handle classified documents. So now they can't practice that kind of law because they, because they represented Liz Cheney and they said that they're going to keep doing it, but it's like punitive.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And so like, it's not a big deal because like somebody will like, there's an incentive there like right there's like a level of prestige and publicity for representing liz cheney and liz cheney has money so you know so she can take that fight and the law firm will help her but when it's like you know joe fucking nobody who was investigate who's an fbi agent who was investigating the first the first time j six or not j6 or the first um russiagate stuff with trump You know, when he goes after that guy, that guy isn't going to get a law firm to like, you know, lose a big portion of their business for some fucking nobody FBI agent to represent him.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That guy's not going to be able to get good representation if he can get any representation when the government is going to like retaliate against that law firm in that way.
James: Yeah.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Like it's super corrupt.
James: Yeah.
James: Well, that's a i mean that's that synonymous with the word Trump. so Super corrupt.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Super corrupt.
James: Yeah, so...
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay, let's end let's end on a positive note. And here's here's my pitch for the positive note. Okay? I was watching ah Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway. And I really need to memorize the woman because she's like she's on Fox. and She's like the voice of reason on Fox News. She's really great. She's she's also on Raging Moderates.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um But anyway, Scott had this thing where he's like, he's like, doing this thing where I'm like, what could but could go right? not what could go wrong, what could go right? So this is my question to you is like, what is one thing in the next however long that could go right?
James: Trump could choke on a Big Mac.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I agree, that would be great. That is something that could go right and then we'd have JD Vance, which
James: Well, there's... there's okay there's a ship it I don't see anything going right
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: downside, an upside. Oh.
James: Until possibly midterm elections. Possibly. Right? Otherwise, just think things are getting worse, worse, worse, worse up until then. So, hey, what can go right? We can have midterms.
James: And maybe we take back. actually Actually, there's a special election right now that could actually flip the House. There's a couple special elections right now. um That's what can go right.
James: there's There's three special elections, aren't there, in the House?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: oh
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I thought that they were all going to be for places that Republicans were going to win.
James: oh Here we go. there's ah Let's take take a look. take a look
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: i didn't realize that it was, had the potential to flip.
James: Shit. Shit. Shit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Wait, you look that up and let.
James: Two days ago, Democrats re-elected to Maine in the special election. god I wish I had the Democrats hold a House seat. GOP keeps the Senate. ah But there's another one. There's a couple other ones. There's a couple more seats here that could technically flip.
James: And if they did flip, Democrats could get it. Right?
James: Yeah. Anyway. I don't see anything good happening in the short term. Um, nothing good, but there was some positive things. Uh, the, uh, one of the judges, um, actually the Supreme court, it was not one of the judges. There's a U S Supreme court did not give Donald Trump a win.
James: Um, Because they were trying to appeal the TROs. You know how people have been blocking DOGE? Courts have been saying, hey, DOGE can't do this. No, temporary restraining order. DOGE can't do this. DOGE can't do this.
James: Government, you know, the Trump administration cannot do this. You cannot fire these people. It was a about, I think, a few thousand people who got fired and they got a TRO. And the court said, no you don't. are not allowed to fire these thousands of people like this. That's not the law.
James: Emergency temporary restraining order.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Thank
James: Government is not allowed to do this. And Trump went to appeal the temporary restraining order to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the U.S. s Supreme Court refused to hear it, meaning they said when they refused to hear it, that TROs are not appealable.
James: So they kept it in place. And Jesus Christ, the Supreme Court finds a way to give Trump a win. So I was kind of surprised that they did not take up that case and say, yeah, the this one lone judge can't stop the whole federal government, which is actually the exact reason why they have the federal courts.
James: It is to stop the federal government from thinking from doing things. But... ah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, literally.
James: Yeah, but the Supreme Court did not take that power away from the lower judges. And lower judges are having to get more broad with their TROs and their, you know, their halts on things because of how much damage the administration is trying to do so fast, so widespread, so wide scale, you know.
James: So that's good. Judges can still somewhat be a bulwark against some of the worst. That's about the best I have.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Okay, Supreme Court, the what could go right? My what could go right is is about the war in Ukraine. And what I think could go right is an extension of some things that have already been going right, which is Ukraine hit um ukraine hit some really good targets and in Russia.
James: Europe.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So they hit ah some oil refinery places, which slows down the war machine.
James: Every day, thank goodness.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um they hit some ah mineral refining manufacturing places that um you know make some of the chemicals and the stuff they need to be able to make their bombs.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um That's a big deal. And then I guess the other thing is just like the the support from Europe could come through and kind of nullify the you know Putin's balls dangling on Trump's fucking orange It's a shit chin.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um So that that's what could go right. What could go right is like is Europe stepping up and helping Ukraine and Ukraine bombing the fuck out of Russia.
James: And that was one of the only things I was thinking about going right because Europe is kind of stepping up and saying, hey, America's fucking hopeless now with Trump at the helm.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: That's my what could go right.
James: Let's get our shit together.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah, well, I mean, to trump's to Trump's credit, like, you know, They don't have an ocean between them and Russia.
James: Trump's credit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So they are. They do have a. I don't know. Would you like to continue your way of life? Incentive. ah Yeah. To like stack up.
James: yeah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: So.
James: And they've been doing good, man. This last month or two has been pretty... I mean, nothing has been great for Ukraine, obviously. They're fighting a war for their surviv surviv survival on their own territory, being invaded.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm hmm.
James: That being said, you know, like, after Republicans cut off Ukraine for, like, three months straight, and they finally had to ah lose Avdivka, right?
James: Russia started moving. gra Just kept on creeping, creeping, creeping. But now, mean, they got stopped, right? They got stopped. And Ukraine's been doing good counterattacks. Those lines haven't really changed now.
James: I mean, they haven't never were huge changes, but Ukraine is inflicting massive casualties on them. And they've been counterattacking and pushing them back in recent weeks now, you know, slowly.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Do you think that like Russia's less concerned with pushing now that they have Trump to kind of apply pressure from the other side?
James: Yeah, oh yeah, they went they they want to, Russia really does want to cease fire. They don't want to end the war. They would love, well, they they want to pause.
James: Like they were talking about like Russian estimates. They were talking like, there's some data that came out and Russian estimates, which are usually really, really high, you know, their estimates were there only be able to mobilize about 100,000, what was it, 100,000 people a month or something like that, you know, this year.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Mm-hmm.
James: which is way down from what they were doing, right? And, or this is quarter or something like that, but their mobilization, they're they're predicting they're gonna mobilize way less than they have been. They're losing way more people than they're mobilizing now.
James: They're actually losing territory in the last like months, you maybe the last couple months, like a month or two, you know? They're tapped out. Their oil industry is in shambles. Their economy is in shambles.
James: They need to stop fighting and regroup and rearm and everything else. Because it's at a point where if Ukraine just maintained the level of aid that they've been having, they would the tide would turn and they would be pushing Russia back.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Uh-huh.
James: You know, so Russia really doesn't want to stop it right now. hey let's freeze it. Hey, what we got, we got this and then try to rearm everything else and try to surprise them later. You know, Ukraine's on the, they're on the upswing right now as far as the war goes.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah hu
James: In part though, because, you know, in the last months before Biden left office, he was like, massively hey give ukraine everything we possibly can now because we've had it on the books for a while you know right and just push it all forward so they really got well armed and it's amazing what they can do when they're armed you know you can beat a ah military way bigger than yourself you know but if if europe steps up
James: I don't think it matters what Trump and Russia do unless Trump like starts feeding Intel to Russia, which I mean, t you got Telsey Gabbard and Pete Hegseth and himself. i mean, I wouldn't put that past him.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I think they're just going to stop giving the U.S.
James: Ukraine.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: intel.
James: No, no, no. I'm talking about, I think I wouldn't be surprised if Trump starts giving Intel to the Russians on Ukraine, that would make it, that would, that would fuck Ukraine.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Well, yeah, no, i me either. But I mean, I think for that reason, the other kind of the European countries are going to stop sharing information with the United States.
James: Sure they will. Yeah, sure they will. But i mean, if if we're using our intelligence assets to aid Russia, Ukraine's fucked. don't care what Europe does. what I mean? If we actually help Russia, you know?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I don't know if information would be enough. I think we'd have to actually like put some, some force or some, you know, if we started sanctioning other countries, if we dropped sanctions on Russia, if we added sanctions to Britain, you know, or, or Italy or Germany or whatever, guess like one of the things we didn't even talk about, which we i don't think we're going to get to is yeah, this MERS.
James: mean dropping sanctions?
James: Yeah. Which I could see that happening. Yeah. so Oh yeah. Germany, man, actually said and Germany, man, actually just fucking called it out. They're like, yeah, we're not, they they even said about the, uh, the Russia and U S he says, we're not, we're not seeing, um, uh, what it? Like Munich thing, right? Like before Nazi Germany, he says, well, we're seeing is more like an alliance between the U S and Russia. That's how they described our Trump people talking to Russia.
James: They see it much more threatening.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yeah.
James: So, yeah.
James: Maybe maybe the world under and in the book 1984 really does come to pass.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Yep.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: but
James: U.S. on one side, Russia all through Europe and there, and then like China to the southeast and everybody just fights over Africa.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Well, let's hope not.
James: and
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: 1984 doesn't begin well or end well. for anyone.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Alright, this has been what Can Go Right.
James: so Anyway.
James: What can go right? 1984 might actually happen. It's not just the bests selller it was like a It was a premonition.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: man.
James: Sorry. Sorry, that's what's going right, man. 1984 is actually going to fruition. Shit.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Alright, well let's just hope that it's the Trump beats The wrong Big Mac and kicks it.
James: Yeah.
James: Maybe RFK shares a snack with Trump.
James: Maybe he gives him some, you know, road bear.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Hey, I'm going give you before we sign off, let me give you a homework. to take the same homework. Here's the homework. Before the next for the next podcast, call your representatives and complain.
James: That's be positive.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: whether they're whether they're blue, whether they're red, hey, why don't I hear your name? Why don't I see you protesting Elon Musk? Why don't i see why don't why aren't you like out there shouting about Medicaid?
James: Oh. You know what?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: just call your Just call your people and just add your voice as a little bit of pressure, whether it's a voicemail, talk to a staffer.
James: There was protest.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: If they only accept email, do that. If that's my challenge to you, to do the same thing.
James: All right. By the way, i am very disappointed in protesters today. Sorry. I know we're going to wrap this up. I got to go anyway. We got to wrap this up. You know, ah guess I end.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: um try it I'm trying, man. I'm really trying.
James: But hey, if you're going to protest, people don't. This is just FYI, because of something stupid and funny that happened here. Don't hold a one hour protest. If you have to say, we're protesting from 12 to 1 at the Valparaiso courthouse.
James: Come on, man. Don't give a time limit me on it. Stay out there. make it Make it real. Anyway.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: No, I mean, sometimes a protest, you have to get like a ah license.
James: if Sorry.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: For real, like you have to you have to like register if you're going to have like if it's going to be more than a certain size.
James: i
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: And like when you give it like a start and end time, like that gives people an idea of like when they need to be there and how long they're going to be there. actually helps there to be more people.
James: all right
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I started... i When me and Katja were going to protest all the time, I started writing a protest pamphlet based on like like just like compiling all the things that I saw that like worked really well and like what didn't.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: I should probably get back to revisiting that.
James: yeah all right well all right i'll take the challenge everybody fan hey fan
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: All right. Do your challenge. This was a good fan.
James: Take the challenge, Fan. Anybody listening?
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Hey, fan.
James: think
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: you to Do the challenge.
James: Thanks, Fan.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Call your call your res fan.
James: Thanks. All right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: All right. ah Like, comment, and subscribe. Also, fan, share until one of your friends or family members.
James: Fan? Talk to your fam.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: All right. Bye.
James: All right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: ah Talk to your fam.
James: All right.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: All right.
James: Good night. Good luck. Maybe something positive next week.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Maybe.
James: Fingers crossed.
GABRIEL ZIEGLER: Fingers crossed.
James: right.
