 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Vigoreto. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Vigoreto and this is episode 308 of the program Today is Friday, October 1st, believe it or not, it's already October. That is bizarre to me. And this show is brought to you by all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members. If you'd like to support the show, which is funded by you, we don't take any corporate sponsors here. This is a 100% independent news organization. If you want to support the show and join the independent progressive media revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com forward slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. This week, we have a lot of things to talk about, kind of a variety of topics. Nonetheless, I think that there really is something here for everyone. So we'll talk about Nina Turner filing paperwork to run for Congress again in 2022 and why this is a good thing. Liz Cheney admits she was wrong about gay rights, but Ilhan Omar explains why she's still full of shit. AOC disappointed progressives with a present vote on funding the Israeli dome. And then she made matters worse with a confusing follow-up and I'll give you my thoughts on that. Also, a New York Times report illustrates how COVID is essentially morphing into a Republican disease. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but the data really shows an interesting trend that isn't too surprising. Another study confirms that masks do indeed reduce the spread of COVID-19 in schools. Lauren Boebert thinks she destroys the logic of pro-vaxxers with a brain dead tweet. Tulsi Gabbard defends the Border Patrol agents that were abusing Haitian migrants. Pelosi predictably stabs progressives in the back, but they hold strong thankfully, at least at the time of recording this. And finally, we'll discuss the CAA's plot during the Trump years to possibly extra judicially kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. Yeah, so we've got a lot to talk about, so let's waste no time and get right to it. I hope you enjoy what I have in store for you, folks. Let's get right to it. So obviously Kirsten Sinema is one of two U.S. senators obstructing her party's entire agenda, basically. And they're growing increasingly frustrated with her because this is a negotiative process, right? So if she supports the reconciliation bill, then in turn progressive lawmakers support the bipartisan infrastructure proposal, which she wants passed. So she says, I don't support that price tag. So they ask her, what do you want to sacrifice? Well, what's your counter proposal? And she gives them nothing. It's a process and she's not participating in it. She's just obstructing. And she's even doing this to Joe Biden. So as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams explains, the president keeps begging her, tell us what you want. Put a proposal forward, Kana said in a CNN appearance Tuesday night. How do you compromise when Sinema is not saying anything? Earlier Tuesday, Sinema, who frequently says she won't negotiate through the press, met with President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss her position on the reconciliation package, which is known as the Build Back Better Act. But even during the closed door meeting with Biden, Sinema refused to clarify why she opposes the popular measure, according to Politico. Previous reporting has suggested that Sinema, who's received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the pharmaceutical industry, opposes democratic drug price reforms and proposed tax hikes on the rich and large corporations, but she hasn't said so publicly. And part of this is on Biden as well. Basically, in order to push Manchin and Sinema in the correct direction, it's been progressives doing all of the work. It's been them saying, listen, if we don't get both of these bills in tandem, we're not going to support your bipartisan infrastructure proposal. But I mean, ultimately, this is Joe Biden's agenda and he's done next to nothing to try to influence Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. He's rarely used his bully pulpit. He's only tacitly hinted at two individuals obstructing his party's agenda. So he definitely bears some of the blame as well. But getting back to Sinema, the reason why she's like this is very clear. The reason why she's not stating specifically why she doesn't support the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package is because she's doing exactly what her donors want her to do. She doesn't have any specific objections in particular that she's vocalizing because she's against all of it because there is going to be no negotiations for her. Her donors say jump and she says, how high? And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, this article from The New York Times basically tells you everything that you need to know about Kirsten Sinema. So Jonathan Wiseman of The New York Times reports, as Sinema resists the budget bill, she is set to raise money from business groups that oppose it. Now the article goes on to explain, under Miss Sinema's political logo, the influential National Association of Wholesaler Distributors and the Grocers PAC, along with lobbyists for roofers and electrical contractors and a small business group called the Escorp Political Action Committee, have invited association members to an undisclosed location on Tuesday afternoon for 45 minutes to write checks for between $1,000 and $5,800 payable to Sinema for Arizona. So this is why she's not negotiating with her colleagues because she's talking it over with her donors, she's negotiating with them. And they're very clearly telling her what to do, they're very clearly influencing her actions. Just to put this into context for you, in a week where her party is trying to hash out the final details of this reconciliation proposal, she's not doing anything to help them. Behind closed doors, she's having a fundraiser with these groups who specifically oppose all of it. She doesn't care about what's in the bill. If her donors tell her that she can support it, then maybe she does. But if they say no, she's going to listen. And this is specifically the result of corruption. Because believe it or not, when she was running for Congress during the Democratic Party primary, she wasn't against lowering the cost of prescription drugs. But then she got elected, took a bunch of pharmaceutical money, made a lot of contributions in the general election, and all of a sudden she had a change of heart. And if you don't believe me, the Daily Poster actually shared one of her old campaign ads saying before Kirsten Sinema threatened to blow up Democrats Medicare drug negotiation bill, she demanded that everyone have access to the lowest cost prescriptions, watch this ridiculous ad from Sinema's 2018 Democratic primary campaign. And again, look at what she says here and just suppose that with what she's doing right now. Growing up, our family struggled to make ends meet and we didn't have health insurance. No child should go without a doctor and no family should be bankrupted by medical bills. We need to make health care more affordable with access to the lowest cost prescriptions and fix what's broken in the system, not go back to when Arizonans had no say about their health coverage. I'm Kirsten Sinema. I sponsored this message because every American deserves quality, affordable health care. And now hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the pharmaceutical industry later, she does a complete 180. And that ad wasn't even that good. Any Democrat who says that they support affordable health care, that's basically code for I support not single payer health care. Because when we're talking about health care, I mean, the goal should just be health care, not I support affordable health care. It should be I support health care for Americans, period. Because what is and isn't affordable is subjective. But I mean, that's neither here nor there. You can see clearly that the rhetoric has changed and it's because she has been corrupted. I mean, she's basically flaunting her corruption right now. She is blatantly corrupt doing fundraisers that she knows the press is going to talk about. And she's doing this all in a week when her party is trying to hash out the details of this bill. She's basically, you know, throwing this in your face saying, what are you going to do about it? You can't do anything. You can't control me. My donors control me. She just is shameless. And it's gross. So I think that this attempt by Corey Bush, which we're going to show on many Hassan's program, it's going to fail because this person, she's been hollowed out. She has no soul. She has no compassion or decency. All she cares about is abusing her donors. But Corey Bush at least makes an attempt to appeal to her humanity. And even if I don't believe this is going to work and get through to her, I still think this is really important because this is exactly what people should be in Congress to do. To represent the people who put them there. Take a look. You know, I think sometimes we forget, you know, we can forget our own struggles. We can forget where we came from. And I just want to say that every bit of struggle that she's ever faced in her life, that everything that she's ever seen or heard from a constituent, everything that she ran on to be able to end up in this, in the seat that she's in, to not forget that. Because let us not think that there is no way that we could ever be in that position again. And if it's not for you, care enough about people who are not in your situation, in your comfortable situation right now. That's what we have to look at. It is sickening to me that there are people who will just push aside those that need these deep housing investments. What we're talking about is saving lives right now. We need that prescription drug reform and to say, oh, you know what, you can continue to have to worry about whether you're going to pay your rent or get the life-saving medications that you need. Because you know what, my donors are the ones who have me here. You know, it's sickening, but I am speaking to her humanity and I hope she hears me. I hope she hears me. Every single person in your district deserves your focus and your representation. They deserve for you to pay attention to them and put them first. Public servant. You also serve the public humanity first. Yeah, I mean, that's well put. Unfortunately, Kirsten Sinema is going to see that and disregard it entirely. She doesn't care at all. In fact, I honestly think that she gets off on being unnecessarily cruel and basically telling her constituents to fuck off. The entire Democratic Party of Arizona currently is against her because of what she's doing. Not only this, but her refusal to abolish the filibuster, which is why we have to pass bills using reconciliation in the first place. Because you're not going to get 10 votes from Republicans. So the only way they can get anything accomplished is through budget reconciliation. But even when it comes to that process, she's against it. So at this point in time, she's just an obstructionist Republican. She's not a Democrat. She's a Democrat in name only, but she's such a conservative that she doesn't belong in this party. And the only benefit to having her in the Democratic Party currently is so that way Democrats can say they have a majority. But if you're not actually going to help your party, why are you even there? In fact, why are you there? Period. If you don't care about anyone but your donors, just quit and become a lobbyist. I'm sure they'd hire you. Why are you in Congress? There are people with needs. There are people who are suffering currently, who are unhoused, who need their medication and you're blocking them. People may die as a result of your inaction and obstruction, but she doesn't care. And she's just probably behind closed doors laughing it up. It's just, it's sick. This is truly an amoral, disgusting person, but I think that by now everyone knows that about Kirsten Sinema. She's truly shown her true colors and it's not pretty. Senator Joe Manchin released an updated statement as to whether or not he'll be supporting his party's $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. And spoiler alert, he's not going to. So all right, if he's not going to support that, then progressives need to torpedo the bipartisan infrastructure deal that he desperately wants passed, that his donors more specifically want passed. And I'm going to read you his updated statement, which is just incredibly stupid and bereft of common sense and just devoid of any understanding of what the country needs and wants currently. But before we get to that, I want to share an exchange that Joe Manchin had with the Bloomberg reporter where he actually got really testy because that reporter actually asked him about his conflicts of interest and corruption. And he did not like this at all. So as Frank Thorpe on Twitter writes, Manchin asked by Ari Natter whether an energy company he founded is a conflict of interest as he negotiates reconciliation. Manchin says, I've been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they're doing. Ari says, you're still getting dividends. Manchin, you got a problem? He actually said this. Frank adds more from Ari Natter. Read the energy company Manchin founded. Your son still owns it, doesn't he? Manchin says, you do best to change the subject. And if he doesn't change the subject, what are you going to do? Hit him. Are you a big tough guy? What a fucking petulant child Joe Manchin is. And this is clearly corruption. This is a violation of ethics laws. Because this is the same thing that Donald Trump was doing. He did not place his businesses in a blind trust. He still overall had control. He did delegate control to his sons. But the stipulation was that he can retake control at any time. That's not truly separating from that conflict of interest. And we saw that Donald Trump did govern in a way that made his businesses money. And there were many government officials, Saudis and what not, that would stay at his hotels to give him a profit. They knew that that would butter up the president. So I mean Joe Manchin is doing the same thing here. There's no difference really. So when you ask him about it, he gets really mad. It's a very touchy subject. So maybe more reporters should actually do their job and question this corrupt asshole about this conflict of interest. Why he's refusing to place his businesses in a blind trust and actually give up control of his businesses. Because it's interesting. He still does the bidding for the fossil fuel industry. So maybe there's this connection there. Maybe that conflict of interest is influencing his decisions. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. So anyways, he basically came out against the $3.5 trillion price tag. He still is refusing to state specifically what he'd cut. If it's universal pre-K childcare, expanding healthcare, he won't say, but he's against it because spending money is bad according to this Republican. He writes every member of Congress has a solemn duty to vote for what they believe is best for the country and the American people, not their party. Respectfully, as I have said for months, I can't support 3.5 trillion more in spending when we already have spent 5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party, must ask the simple question, how much is enough? Now, I just want to pause there because when Biden was coming up with infrastructure before Biden even named a price, Joe Manchin said we should spend 4 trillion, but all of a sudden he's reversing what he said previously, probably because you got a phone call from his donor saying, let's rain it in a little bit. So they're not spending that much on infrastructure itself, but on reconciliation, they can invest in infrastructure. And all of a sudden, when he sees that a lot of this money is going to benefit normal Americans, he's against it. Because in his view, that money should be benefiting his corporate donors, special interests. And that's what this is about. This is him tacitly admitting that. He's not going to say that directly, but that is what it's about. Let's be clear. But it continues. What I've made clear to the president and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs and we can't even pay for the essential social programs like Social Security and Medicare, that's a lie, is the definition of fiscal insanity. Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America's families continue to pay an unavoidable inflation tax. Oh, give me a break. Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery. This is the shared reality we all now face and it is this reality that must shape the future decisions that we as elected leaders must make. So we'll pause again. He's so concerned about working Americans. So concerned. Okay, so if you are arguing that this is going to lead to inflation, then what do you cut? Be specific. What do you cut? Do you cut out the benefits for workers who are working during a pandemic or essential workers who get paid time off? Are you going to cut the expansion of Medicare that people desperately need? It's not a very vast expansion, but it would make a huge difference dropping the age from 65 to 60 over years and expanding it to include dental, hearing, and vision. What do you cut, Joe Manchin? If you care so much about working people, be very specific about what you think they should be denied. He won't say, because there's always some sort of a fucking excuse. He's pathetic. Now, let's skip to the very, very end here. He says, if there is one final lesson that will continue to guide me in this difficult debate ahead, it is this. America is a great nation, but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies. Now more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation. He says, we must work together as he torpedoes his own party's agenda, and he says, I care about future generations. Meanwhile, you're not supporting this bill and you're effectively denying one small step towards arming ourselves to mitigate the effects of climate change. So you don't give a shit about future generations. If you did, you would fight climate change. You would stop funding the fossil fuel industry, taking their donations, their bribes. I mean, he's truly insufferable. But okay, look, if this is where we're at, if we're at this point where both Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are going to torpedo this, then okay, progressives go nuclear, vote down the infrastructure bill. They have enough votes about two dozen house lawmakers to torpedo everything. So if they're not going to play ball, sink it all. Fuck it. If they don't get what they want, then Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema don't get what they want, which was a really nice corporate giveaway in that bipartisan infrastructure proposal. And Joe Biden, I mean, if he's okay with nothing happening, just getting nothing, then I guess that's fine. But this is going to be his legacy. He has an opportunity to use his bully pulpit to actually exert influence over Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. And he's done next to nothing. I mean, he had a meeting with Kirsten Sinema, and he's barely saying anything publicly. He's not calling out members of his own party that are obstructing his agenda. So, okay. I mean, Joe Biden is also to blame here as well. It's not just Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. He knows that he's the president. He has a lot of authority and influence, and he could make a difference, but he's choosing not to. So if this all goes up in flames, so be it. But progressives have to vote down that infrastructure deal. It's just not good enough. There's barely anything in there. There's some provisions in there that are good. I think that expanding infrastructure, roads, bridges, replacing some lead pipes is important, but ultimately, that is a giveaway to corporations. And the real prize for the left is in that reconciliation package. So if they don't get that, you don't get what you want, what your donors are pushing you to pass. So it's sad, but if Joe Biden wants this, he's got to fight for it. It's not going to be rested on the shoulders of progressives. They shouldn't get the blame for this. There's two people who are the lowest common denominator who are obstructing everything that the party wants. Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's them, not progressives, because progressives were willing to support their agenda. The bipartisan infrastructure deal, the only stipulation was you support the reconciliation package. They're saying no, so progressives have to hold the line and say no and vote that down as well. Fuck it. So on this show, I have tried repeatedly to sound the alarms about the voter suppression bills that are being passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, because this is a threat to democracy. Anything that they saw, any electoral strategy that was implemented during the pandemic, such as mail-in voting, that increased turnout or drive-through voting, they're specifically targeting that. So this is very clearly an authoritarian power grab attempt. But there's even more nefarious laws possibly which allow some state legislatures, some powers, to straight up just subvert the results of elections. Now, it's not like they're saying we can unilaterally overthrow the will of the people, but they're moving closer and closer towards being able to control elections in a way that's not democratic to say the least. And a new report details the 11 states that have passed these sorts of laws. So as Frederica Chauvin of CNN explains, nearly a dozen states have enacted laws this year that paved the way for election subversion and additional proposals are gaining momentum in other states according to a new tally by a nonpartisan group that tracks election-related bills. The Voting Rights Lab analysis identified several categories of election subversion legislation, ranging from laws that usurp the authority of election officials or threaten them with criminal sanctions to the moves in several Republican-led states to undertake partisan reviews of the 2020 election results. Enough states are starting to move these policies that we are in fact, at a tipping point, Megan Lewis, the executive director of the Voting Rights Lab, told CNN, these lawmakers need to stop these efforts or you really run the risk of eroding the fabric of our democracy. The report comes as the former president and his allies, as they continue to push the false narrative of widespread fraud are demanding more so-called audits of election results even after a partisan review of ballots in Arizona released last week reaffirmed President Joe Biden's 2020 win in the state's most populous county. Similar Republican-led reviews of last year's election results are moving forward in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Two other swing states Biden flipped from red to blue last year. The Voting Lab identified 17 new laws in 11 states that could undermine how elections are run. So keep in mind that this isn't talking about voter suppression, this is specifically referring to laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures where they give themselves the power to possibly overturn elections in the event there's another Republican presidential candidate who cries foul, as Donald Trump did and the Atlantic had a great article where they detailed the variety of ways that Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the election through the courts by pressuring state attorneys general ways was through state legislatures. So it's not like they're giving themselves the power to unilaterally undermine the will of voters as I stated earlier before we read this but they're moving closer to be able to have more authority in the event this does come of it. I think it's going to be highly likely. Now there's a few examples that the report provides us with that show you how draconian and authoritarian quite frankly these laws are. So one of them is a law from Arizona against election officials with felony prosecution if they send out a mail-in ballot to a voter that doesn't specifically request it. Now let me just remind you that in my state of Oregon we all automatically get our ballots mailed to us. We vote by mail every single election. It's very popular not just among Democrats but independents and Republicans do. So we've been doing this here for a very long time but because they know that mail-in voting increases turnout they're making it a criminal felony if election officials mail out a ballot to people that haven't requested it. That is truly insane. On top of that there's a law in Montana that requires consent of the legislature to change voting procedures. Now this might not necessarily seem like that big of a deal. It may seem relatively innocuous but you have to understand that election procedures are usually handled at the local level. State legislatures don't really do much in that regard but what they're saying is actually we're going to be the ones to... you're going to have to ask or you're going to have to consent with if you want to change voting procedures. It's their way of basically greenlighting anything that either further suppresses votes and gives their party an advantage. They're so blatant with it. They're not even hiding their agenda. On top of that there's a bill in Texas to let candidates trigger election audits. Now this doesn't seem ominous at face value. In fact I've argued previously that we should automatically audit election results every single time. I don't think there's any harm in that but you have to think through how Republicans are going to use this. It's going to allow candidates at the local level to do what Donald Trump did. They themselves can trigger a recount or an election audit if they just cry foul. They don't have to have evidence but they can just say I think this election was stolen. Let's have an audit. Further delegitimizing our democracy overall. So they're not basing the election audit off of evidence of fraud or mistakes. They're just basing it off of what a candidate prefers and that's really nefarious. It's going to be used in deeply undemocratic ways and these laws in total they pose a threat to democracy and as the article pointed out there was an audit just last week in Maricopa County, Arizona and guess what that was fruitless again predictably so for Donald Trump but what are they doing? Well they're continuing to investigate the election. So I think that this is going to be the GOP strategy going forward. They're trying to push the legal limits as to what is and isn't constitutionally permissible and they're basically jeopardizing democracy. It's truly disgusting but when you have no policy prescriptions when you're not offering voters anything this is what you have to do. You cry foul. You do voter suppression. You cheat. You gerrymander. This is the modern GOP party. There's no policy differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We're seeing what we usually see in developing countries and new democracies where parties are formed on the basis of whether or not they support democracy, literally. Like this is a real thing that happens and we're starting to functionally see that play out here in the United States where you have one party that is explicitly on Democratic and another party, the Democratic Party where they actually support democracy on a national level but when it comes to primaries we know how dirty they play as well. So overall democracy is at risk and it's not just that Republican lawmakers around the country are doing things like this it's just that there's widespread sentiment now among the GOP's base to just have an authoritarian regime. I mean we saw the applaud that Mike Flynn got when he said that there should be a Myanmar-style coup in the United States. You see reporters going across the country to Trump rallies and QAnon events and people will say, yeah, you know, I would love if the military stepped in and you know it's not a representative sample of the average Republican but the problem is that once that seat is planted it begins to grow and you can't unring that bell once people lose faith in democracy it's really hard to restore their faith in democracy and the process it takes decades to centuries to cultivate and everything that we've built up this socialization, supporting democracy that's embedded culturally it's all been undermined in the span of one single election cycle and again it's not like our democracy is perfect there's a lot of flaws with our democracy and I would argue that we never had a fully functioning democracy but democracy is an ongoing project you're supposed to further consolidate democracy improve it, expand suffrage to more and more people make it better but we're actually going backwards which is a horrible, horrible sign for the long-term health of our country's democracy what's left of it, anyways so I'm not sure how many of you have been following this issue but for those of you unaware Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general of the USPS who was appointed by Donald Trump he's still in power, he hasn't gone anywhere and yes, he is still indeed trying to ruin the US Postal Service and ultimately his goal is to privatize USPS but he's doing this in a very nefarious insidious roundabout way all explained in an article by Common Dreams' Jake Johnson who writes defenders of the US Postal Service are urgently renewing their calls for the ouster of postmaster general Louis DeJoy as his 10-year plan to overhaul the cherished government institution is set to take effect Friday assuring in permanently slower mail delivery while hiking prices for consumers DeJoy calls this plan delivering for America but it will do the exact opposite slowing many first-class mail deliveries down taking their standard from three to five days Porter McConnell of Take On Wall Street a co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition warns in a video posted online late Tuesday slower ground transportation will now be prioritized over air transportation McConnell added these new service standards won't improve the Postal Service they will make it harder for people all across the country to receive their medications, their bills, their paychecks and more appointed in May of 2020 by the US Postal Service Board of Governors DeJoy, a major donor to former President Donald Trump sparked a nationwide uproar by dramatically slowing mail delivery in the run-up to that year's pivotal elections which relied heavily on absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic but DeJoy, who can only be fired by a majority of the USPS Board has clung to his job despite incessant demands for his resignation or removal over the past year in recent months calls for DeJoy's termination have intensified as his conflicts of interest and past fundraising activities continue to draw scrutiny from Watch Dogs and the FBI during a House Oversight Committee hearing in February DeJoy made clear he has no intention of leaving his post voluntarily get used to me, he told lawmakers get used to me, he says this smug, smug motherfucker this unelected bureaucrat telling lawmakers I'm not going anywhere, deal with it wow now the way that he is trying to destroy the US Postal Service is by making privatization more likely so what you do is you slow down the service you make people frustrated and you claim well maybe there's a solution to all of this and of course they propose privatization and the reason why he can't just go ahead with opening up the US Postal Service to privatization right away is because this is one of the most popular institutions in the United States as the article implied in fact USPS has a 91% approval rating according to the USPS Inspector General so you can cultivate support for privatization as a solution only if you break this first you're not going to get people to accept a really sweeping change to a system that they overwhelmingly support so first you've got to make it not work for them you've got to strip out the support that it has and then you open the door to privatization you argue that this is going to be the way to make the Postal Service more efficient cut out the bureaucracy it's the same game we've seen again and again it's the same thing that politicians do with regard to social security albeit a little bit differently what they'll usually say is look social security is running out future generations is going to be insolvent in 2035 yada yada yada and what they do is they fear monger in hopes that you'll accept the idea of possibly a solution what's the solution of course to privatize or maybe even partially privatize social security it's the same song and dance we've seen again and again whatever public institution we have Republicans they'll break it and then they'll claim how government doesn't work it doesn't work because you broke it and because you want your corporate donors to be able to control it and profit off of it but this is a public service so this guy's got to go this 10-year plan is going to ruin the US Postal Service so Biden won should absolutely be using his bully pulpit to put pressure on him constantly to get him to resign even if he's resistant put pressure on him continue with the investigations and the conflicts of interest man got this job because he donated to Donald Trump he's there as a result of corruption so investigate him throw the books at him but on top of that Biden should be making moves to remake the USPS he can't actually fire Lewis DeJoy outright but the article does lay out a strategy that Biden can use to basically get rid of him so while the president can't remove DeJoy on his own analysts have noted that he can soon replace both Bloom who is currently serving a holdover term and John Barger whose term expires in December such steps would give Biden appointees a majority on the USPS board and potentially the votes to oust the postmaster general so once Biden gets a majority he can then instruct his majority to vote out DeJoy and that's what you do if you want to fire him that's how you oust him so there needs to be pressure exerted on Biden and pressure exerted on DeJoy also through Biden and also around Biden people should be continuously exerting pressure on him because he doesn't care about the Postal Service he's just trying to ruin it so Republicans can inevitably propose privatization as a solution and it's not just Republicans I'm sure there are many Democrats who also would like to privatize the US Postal Service Pete Buttigieg I believe during his presidential campaign was saying something about maybe opening the door to privatization I'm not necessarily representing his views correctly here but just long story short Democrats a lot of the times are on board with privatization because neoliberalism has taken over the Democratic Party so I don't know what else to say this would be a disaster if this plan were to go into effect but it's not going to improve the Postal Service obviously it's quite literally intentionally designed to make it worse and so the way that we stop that is to stop him by kicking his ass out teen climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a speech at the Youth Climate Summit in Milan and I loved her speech she criticized world leaders Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron and everything she said was absolutely just perfect however there was one individual in particular Dave Rubin who took issue with what she said now before I show you what he said I want to play a portion of her speech I don't think anything she says here is even controversial if anything you think that Dave Rubin would applaud her because she's criticizing a Democratic Party president like Joe Biden having said that though, his criticism of her is just truly insane but first this is what she said this is the speech that's supposedly so controversial net zero by 2050 blah blah blah climate neutral blah blah blah this is all we hear from our so called leaders words words that sound great but so far has led to no action our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises of course we need constructive dialogue but they've now had 30 years of blah blah blah and where has that led us over 50% of all our CO2 emissions have occurred since 1990 and a third since 2005 all this while the media is reporting on what the leaders say that they are going to do instead of what they are actually doing and then not holding leaders accountable for their action or rather inaction and don't get me wrong we can still do this change is not only possible but urgently necessary but not if we go on like today they say they want solutions but you cannot solve a crisis that you do not fully understand you cannot balance a budget if you do not count all the numbers and as long as we ignore equity and historic emissions and as long as we don't include consumption of imported goods burning of biomass etc etc and as long as clever accounting is one of the most efficient ways of reducing emissions we won't get anywhere and the climate crisis is of course only a symptom of a much larger crisis a sustainability crisis a social crisis a crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond a crisis based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and therefore have the right to exploit and steal other people's land and resources and it is very naive to believe that we can solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it right now we are still very much speeding in the wrong direction 2021 is currently projected to experience the second highest emission rise ever only about 2% of government recovery spending have been allocated to clean energy measures and according to a new report by the UN global emissions are expected to rise by 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels our leaders intentional lack of action is a betrayal towards all present and future generations the people in power cannot claim that they are trying because they are clearly not as they continue opening up brand new coal mines oil fields and pipelines pretending to have ambitious climate policies while granting new oil line sensors exploring enormous future oil fields and shamelessly congratulating themselves while still failing to come up with even the bare minimum and long overdue funding to help the most vulnerable countries deal with the impacts of the climate crisis if this is what they consider to be climate action then we don't want it that was incredible predictably so every speech that she gives is usually remarkable she's really a gifted order and for someone who is so young that's really admirable when I was that young I was not that articulate and I didn't care about that many issues but for her to be so passionate I mean this is important we need young leaders like her to stand up and her criticizing leaders like Joe Biden Emmanuel Macron this is really important because they talk a big game when it comes to climate change but functionally their actions are no different than climate deniers so what's the point of electing people if they claim that they care about climate change and they say there's no planet B they don't want to save the planet but they do nothing they continue to lease out their public lands to oil and gas extractors they change nothing they continue the process of building these pipelines it's so frustrating so her frustration there is palpable and that's why the audience was captivated by her speech because what she's saying it resonates with people because it's true we're not treating this crisis as a security threat that it is so we go to Dave Rubin now so he saw that same speech that we all watched and he's going to criticize her obviously but you would think that he'd criticize her in a different way like as a propagandist for the republican party he'd use this as an opportunity to attack Joe Biden so I would expect him to say something like well you know even the extreme leftists like Greta Thunberg they're dissatisfied with Joe Biden that must tell you how incompetent he is but no, he's going to take it in a different direction and he's actually going to compare Greta Thunberg to Hitler I wish I were making this up but this is something that he literally said take a look how everyone before her are basically evil that's what she's saying now it's our chance just imagine if this girl had enough power the horrible things that she would do to people I'm not going to be the only one who could see little sort of imagery of Hitler speaking up there these people that think that they can control the world and if you just gave them enough money they could do it man, we have unearthed something so horrible by our elite class and our intellectual class being so dishonest with us for so long we have unleashed something that basically every western nation is under attack from every witch direction but that anger of that little girl it's just disturbing anyway, I wanted to just show you that because it's just like Rubin has got to be the biggest fucking moron on the planet, first of all I don't think that he believes anything that he's saying I think that deep down he's probably at best a centrist but probably still liberal he's just saying what his right wing audience wants to hear but I mean in terms of being a propagandist you are one of the worst what you said there was genuinely stupid stupidity but he said that the masked clones were applauding her, he took a shot at people in the audience who were wearing masks during a pandemic okay, okay, that's expected by dumb fucks like you but then he says just imagine if this girl had enough power the horrible things she would do to people imagine if this girl had power what would she do? I don't know stop anthropogenic climate change of lives, literally I just don't understand, like of all people this is someone who you'd expect to be the most compassionate someone like Greta Thunberg who cares about the future of the planet, somebody who condemned colonialism in her speech but yet he thinks that she would be the most cruel no, actually that's projection because your team would be the most cruel but then he says I'm not going to be the only one who could see a little sort of imagery of Hitler speaking up there I heard a teen climate activist to Hitler you said her speech was Hitlerian I'm against labeling all my opponents bigots and racists and I'm against deplatforming speakers especially at colleges where ideas are meant to be challenged and debated Dave, I like talking about ideas you are the dumbest motherfucker on the planet and I think you are the only one who thought that was a Hitlerian speech I think that when he says I'm not the only one no I think literally you're probably the only person in the world who thought man this is very Hitlerian who thinks that that's so stupid what a dumb mind numbingly stupid take and the dumbest part about all of this is we know that he doesn't believe that he probably agrees with her deep down but he won't say it but yet he's comparing a teen climate activist to Hitler Jesus what a dipshit finally he says that anger of that little girl is just disturbing where are the adults I don't even know how to respond to that I don't even know how to respond to that yeah where are the adults who see that we're facing catastrophe possibly an extinction level event for our species so yeah where are the adults why aren't they taking this seriously if Dave Rubin watches a disaster movie like when he saw Armageddon or Deep Impact when they learned that a comet was going to crash into Earth do you think that their anger or their worry was disturbing I mean we're kind of at the beginning of a disaster movie right now as it relates to climate change we're starting to see the ways in which it's killing people literally in Pacific Northwest we just experienced a mass death casualty heatwave we're seeing wildfires become an annual thing he experiences this being a resident of California so he knows that everything he's saying is wrong he's just saying it because his audience is full of right wing rubes who eat up every single thing he says regardless of how stupid it is so that's where we're at with Dave Rubin that's where he's at he's now comparing teen climate activists to Hitler very smart good job Dave you're very very intelligent guess what progressives lose and conservatives like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema effectively win because at that point what leverage do progressives have what point do any Democratic party officials have at getting those conservatives to actually vote for the reconciliation package because those conservative Democrats they only want the corporate giveaways included in the infrastructure package so once they get that they have no reason to vote for the reconciliation package they have no hope of getting reconciliation through getting all of these really important things through so Nancy Pelosi's move here is a betrayal she lied she's going back on her word but Nancy Pelosi is a liar to her core she's a corporatist to her core so in the event it were the case that the bipartisan infrastructure package went through but the reconciliation package did not that's not so bad for her because she also so you know this isn't necessarily the most surprising thing in the world I think that most people should have anticipated Nancy Pelosi being a traitor having said that the question is what are progressives going to do about it and it seems as if there is some reason to be optimistic not necessarily optimistic that the reconciliation package will pass but optimistic that progressives are going to hold strong and not support the bipartisan infrastructure deal if they don't get the reconciliation proposal and Bernie Sanders is telling them do not cave hold the line he tweeted out let's be crystal clear if the bipartisan infrastructure bill is passed on its own on Thursday this will be in violation of an agreement that was reached within the Democratic caucus in congress more importantly it will end all leverage that we have to pass a major reconciliation bill that means there will be no serious effort to address the long neglected crises facing the working families of our country the children the elderly the sick and the poor it also means that congress will continue to ignore the existential threat to our country and planet with regard to climate change I strongly urge my house colleagues to vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill until congress passes a strong reconciliation bill so Bernie Sanders let everyone know don't support this package it doesn't matter what they promise you and what assurances they give you they already showed you that their word is trash Nancy Pelosi went back on her word so if you vote on this now don't expect any victories when it comes to the reconciliation package if anything at all with regard to reconciliation now thankfully progressives are holding the line and they deserve a massive amount of credit for that Mike Lillis and Scott Wong of the Hill explain if she were to call the bill it will fail representative Jan Czakowski a close ally of Pelosi said while leaving a closed door Democratic caucus meeting not because the progressive caucus people like me aren't willing to vote for it but we had an agreement that we were going to get these two pieces together quote I've never seen her bring a bill to the floor that's going to fail she said it will fail if she does representative Primal Agia Paul head of the progressive caucus said dozens of liberals are prepared to sing infrastructure in pursuit of the broader package this agenda is not some fringe wish list it is the president's agenda she said in a statement representative Rashida Tlaib a member of the so-called squad of progressive lawmakers of color was harsher she called Pelosi's plan to reverse course and decouple the two bills a betrayal we will hold the line and vote it down Tlaib vowed on Twitter referring to the infrastructure bill this is not the time for half measures or to go back on our promises now after Pelosi announced that she would likely be delaying the infrastructure vote before she went back on her promise to decouple these bills Ilhan Omar was very clear on Twitter she says the whip count was right we aren't bluffing when the bills are up in tandem and we will put our votes on the board that's the deal Jamal Bowman shared a statement from progressives in Congress saying we are holding the line and backing up the president's agenda so they're not backing down and this is really really good they deserve credit if they cave I will criticize them and I'm sure that many leftists will criticize them but for now what they're doing is exactly what they should be doing and I do want to read some of that statement shared by Jamal Bowman from the Progressive Caucus because it is encouraging so far it seems as if they're holding the line it says we just wrapped a meeting of our 96 member caucus and we are clear our position on infrastructure and build back better remains unchanged we will not leave anyone behind and the statement reads U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus issued the following statement following the 96 member coalition's meeting about the outgoing infrastructure and we remain fully committed to passing President Biden's entire build back better agenda and delivering the transformative change that people throughout this country urgently want need and deserve moving forward without the build back better act would put long overdue investments in child care paid leave healthcare affordable housing pre-K community college climate action and a roadmap to citizenship for dreamers TPS recipients and essential workers at risk our Progressive Caucus members remain clear we will not be dictated by special interests and corporations at the expense of women working families in our communities we will not leave anyone behind and that is really important they have to continue to hold strong they're going to receive criticism from the conservatives in the party and now possibly Democratic Party leadership like Nancy Pelosi they're going to be criticized by members of the media you have Don Lemon asking Ilhan Omar whether or not they'd be willing to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure deal because once you give up the leverage once you give conservative Democrats like Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin exactly what they want that give away to their corporate donors which is included in that bipartisan infrastructure deal that's going to be a lot of pressure and if they all hold strong then that makes it easier that makes it less likely that any one individual lawmaker will break so it's very very important that they hold the line and they continue to threaten to tank this bill if they don't get the bipartisan infrastructure deal that's it you get nothing so this really is a pivotal moment for progressive lawmakers going forward if they hold strong here they'll actually have a lot more power in congress but if they budge here then they're just going to get steamrolled again and again and again they're setting the terms going forward because if conservatives in the Democratic Party see that they're willing to cave then they're not going to be included in future negotiations because they know that these lawmakers are just going to go along with whatever the party wants so now is the time draw that line in the sand and don't cross it I'm really proud of them for holding strong but I hope that they remain committed to the stance don't budge hold the line tank it all make it all crash and burn if you don't get what you want Yahoo News broke an absolutely chilling story about a CIA plot to possibly kidnap or extrajudicially assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this is genuinely disturbing to hear about but nonetheless it is incredibly important and the threat of freedom of the press losing its freedom has never been greater in my opinion and this story is very very long it's in depth so I'll link to it down below if you want to read it those of you watching on means TV or listening on Spotify you can get this article on Yahoo News's website or through our YouTube page but I'm not going to read the actual article I'm going to go to a more concise shorter summary by Jake Johnson of Common Dreams who basically gives us the main takeaways here and the most shocking elements of this story and they are truly gut wrenching so under the leadership of then director Mike Pompeo the CIA in 2017 reportedly plotted to kidnap and discussed plans to assassinate WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange who is currently imprisoned in London as he fights the Biden administration's efforts to extradite him to the United States citing conversations with more than 30 former US officials Yahoo News reported Sunday that discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred at the highest levels of the Trump administration according to Yahoo the conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder the agency's multi-pronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates sowing discord among the group's members and stealing their electronic devices while Assange had been on the radar of US intelligence agencies for years these plans for an all out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks ongoing publication of extraordinary sensitive CIA hacking tools known collectively as Vault 7 which the agency ultimately concluded represented the largest dead loss in CIA history President Trump's newly installed CIA director Mike Pompeo was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied Pompeo and other top agency leaders were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7 set a former Trump national security official they were seeing blood Yahoo's reporting makes clear that Assange is not the only journalist US officials have attempted to target in recent years during the Obama presidency according to Yahoo top intelligence officials lobbied the White House to redefine WikiLeaks and some high profile journalists as information brokers which would have opened up the use of more investigative tools against them potentially paving the way for their prosecution so at risk of sounding hyperbolic I'm gonna say it anyway this is autocratic and I know that this word is used too much but this is exactly what we'd expect from authoritarian regimes who don't respect freedom of the press I mean the US government not long ago was rightfully condemning the Saudi regime for their assassination of a journalist Jamal Khashoggi and they were contemplating doing the same thing targeting journalists it's just it's not it's not surprising to know that our institutions and people in government don't really respect the rule of law and they don't respect the constitution but still to hear these details it really is sickening like it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and the journalists who they were targeting who they wanted to redefine as information brokers that includes Laura Poitras who helped publish the Snowden leaks she also released a documentary called Citizen 4 about Edward Snowden and also Glenn Greenwald who published the Snowden leaks he was the main publisher there and I'm not a fan of Glenn Greenwald anymore his publication of the Snowden leaks was objectively good it was important he gets credit for that forever now Edward Snowden put out a tweet about this saying if you're a journalist American or otherwise you need to understand that turning a blind eye to this story moves the entire world toward a paradigm where the criminalization of journalism is routine you have to speak up on this one and that really is important and I'm glad that he said that journalists have to speak up I don't care what outlet you are corporate, independent MSNBC, CNN Fox News everyone should be speaking up and ideally if the more liberal Democratic party leaning outlets speak up like MSNBC and CNN I think that's a good thing because they have more credibility and legitimacy than Fox News if Fox News covers this which I don't believe they talked much about this but if they released any articles about this people might just dismiss it and think well this is Fox News but this is a serious story this is a serious threat to freedom of the press and the Julian Assange story just isn't being taken seriously by a lot of Americans and WikiLeaks as an institution I think has lost a lot of trust because of 2016 and the whole Russia kerfuffle they view Julian Assange as a Trump supporter a lot of liberals do at least in my experience liberals dislike Julian Assange because of that reason when I showed up to his town hall with my senator I asked what he can do to you know stop the extradition attempts by the Trump administration of Julian Assange and people were like gasping when I said Julian Assange's name but this isn't about Julian Assange it's not about Republicans it's not about Democrats this is about the first amendment and freedom of the press which is seriously in jeopardy so the fact that this plot to assassinate or kidnap him seemingly fell through is good news but you've got to understand that this story it's not over right the Biden administration is continuing what Trump wanted to do which is extradite Julian Assange to the United States and a judge rejected that appeal not necessarily on grounds that it would be a violation of any laws but because that judge believed that the conditions in the US prison system would not be hospitable to someone like Julian Assange who would be especially vulnerable and this is appealing and that appeal might go through and if that happens for the first time we will prosecute a journalist for publishing leaks using the Aspionage Act which is a dangerous precedent to set so this is an alarm that should be going off in every journalist's head and everyone should be talking about this in mainstream media but it's usually crickets when we get stories about Julian Assange so you know it's authoritarian it's scary to see but this is the trajectory that we've been headed on for a very long time and it's really difficult to put the cat back in the bag once the cat's out of the bag when it comes to journalistic freedom in the United States and the freedom of publications to publish these leaks that are really important so I don't know what else to say this is disturbing but I'm not that surprised by it even if the details are very shocking last Wednesday Tulsi Gabber took to Twitter to claim that Joe Biden had instituted an open borders policy and I wish that I were making this up but she actually tweeted this as if it were a statement of fact she wrote, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the humanitarian and national security crisis on the southern border is the direct result of your open border policy as I said in my 2020 presidential campaign we can't have a secure nation if we don't secure our borders do not come so she's basically just a straight Republican now now to say that Joe Biden's administration has instituted open borders it's not just factually incorrect it's also genuinely moronic like it's a stupid statement to say because it's just not happening Biden's administration has already deported hundreds of thousands of migrants using Title 42 which uses the pandemic as a legal justification to expel migrants which is illegal because that directly violates U.S. asylum laws he's using a Trump era rule and you're saying that he supports open borders okay well did Trump support open borders too or are you just saying what the Republican Party wants to hear you say I have to suspect that it's the latter because she went on Fox News and she then took things a step further she actually defended the U.S. Border Patrol agents that were chasing Haitian migrants around on horses and possibly whipping them they're going to dispute whether or not they were actually getting whipped but regardless Tulsi Gabbard is going to be very outraged that anyone would dare demonize these Border Patrol agents so take a look that there was no whipping of migrants going on so what do you think is happening why is he saying that it did and threatening to punish the agents Jesse the issue here and I consider Joe Biden a friend but he's absolutely wrong and he needs to apologize to the American people for saying what he said and here's why he's somebody who's been very outspoken as being against autocracies, dictators but what he essentially did was act as judge, jury and executioner for these Customs and Border Patrol agents on horseback how can they expect to have any kind of fair outcome to an investigation when the President of the United States has already declared their guilt and that they will be punished and the bigger issue here that this points to which is one that we all need to be concerned about is that if we are no longer a country of laws if we are no longer a country where we know we will be presumed innocent unless proven guilty then we don't have a democracy and that's the increasing feeling that a lot of us have is that we are losing our democracy and moving closer and closer to what essentially is an autocracy this is the same type of hoax that they use on police officers sometimes where they take something out of context or they just hear something from one perspective and they convict the person and it creates a lot of animosity in this country we saw this kind of hoax again with Russia when the Clinton campaign plants fake news about Trump and Russia that lasted years that was a hoax this type of disinformation is so dangerous to the country I feel like they got away with it so many times that's part of their playbook and they're going to keep doing it over and over again until when when are they ever going to stop the saddest part about this Jesse as you're right they are getting away with it and it's the powerful elite working with the media working with the deep state not acting in the best interest of the country they're acting in their own selfish interest to preserve their power their position their money or whatever their selfish drive is they are unwilling to sacrifice their interest for the interests of the country and they have no business being in positions of leadership at any level in our society because who suffers as a result of this it's the American people it's our democracy and they don't care about the cost and the toll that that takes and this is why leadership that puts service above self is so critical and essential especially now so just take a moment and let everything like that that entire image sink in she was denouncing Joe Biden her friend and telling him that he needs to apologize for condemning the border patrol agents and as she was talking about how mean the Biden administration was to the border patrol agents you see the images of them trying to herd human beings I mean it's it's an endorsement of abuse of migrants that's what that was it wasn't an explicit endorsement but it was an implicit endorsement Tulsi Gabbard endorsed that she's talking about open border policy instituted by Joe Biden she's talking about the need to secure our borders she's functionally just a Republican at this point now when it comes to the claim as to whether or not the border patrol agents were whipping Haitian migrants according to Politifact a freelance journalist who was there says that nobody saw anyone get whipped but he says rather what we did see was a border patrol agent swinging the rain in like a circle it looked pretty threatening nobody saw him strike the migrant with that thing the rains and a local news agency corroborates this saying an El Paso time support said a border agent swung his whip menacingly charging his horse toward the men in the river so the Fox news host was adamant that that claim was wrong it was disinformation and according to Politifact and independent fact checkers it does seem as if nobody sustained an injury from getting whipped so I mean I guess congratulations right congratulations nobody technically got whipped but the border patrol agents were pretending to have whips at a minimum and just intimidating Haitian migrants running around on horses swinging something around that many people reasonable people would perceive to be a whip so I guess congratulations on the victory they weren't technically whipping people just pretending to have whips possibly to intimidate them further and even if that's the case even if nobody was whipped take the whips out of the equation take the rains out of the equation take a look at this photograph Tulsi do you honestly think this is humane you have a border patrol agent on horseback grabbing this man risking trampling him with the horse when he clearly doesn't pose a threat he has food in his hand and he's trying to give people this food who are literally starving and the people who are starving they want to make their case for asylum but the Biden administration who you accuse of having open borders is denying them that asylum claim so when normal people see that image of abuse from border patrol of Haitian migrants they think man that's really dehumanizing that's disgusting but somebody who's a racist like Tulsi Gabbard thinks man that's really disgusting that people are saying that that's bad they're saying bad things about the border patrol agent imagine seeing that image seeing an image of a US border patrol agent swinging something around that looks like a whip intimidating black migrants imagine seeing that image and thinking I feel really bad for border patrol not the Haitian migrant that's Tulsi Gabbard that's what she chooses to care about the border patrol agent getting criticized rather than the treatment of the Haitian migrants who flee their country due to violence due to devastation that resulted from an earthquake that's what she cares about what a disgusting racist human being but she takes it a step further she says if we are no longer a country of laws if we are no longer a country if we know we will be presumed innocent unless proven guilty then we don't have a democracy except you're being purposefully hyperbolic because these border patrol agents they're being criticized they're not being put on trial I don't even know if they're being reprimanded I doubt it so how is this authoritarian are we not allowed to criticize them because if we weren't allowed to criticize these border patrol agents who are abusing these Haitian migrants I would argue that that's actually authoritarian because we have First Amendment rights in this country we can see these border patrol agents abusing Haitian migrants there's no confirmation that they were in fact whipped but they wanted them to think that they had whips at a minimum and they're still grabbing them they're assaulting them they're abusing them what we're seeing here was abuse so if you're saying that it's authoritarian to criticize them then you're just a stupid person you're just not a serious person and Tulsi Gebert is not a serious person she's a clown who's saying what she believes she needs to say to appease Fox News's right-wing audience because I'm assuming she wants her own show on Fox News I don't know on top of that she says that and that's the increasing feeling that a lot of us have that we're losing our democracy and moving closer and closer to what is essentially autocracy we're losing our democracy because people are outraged at human rights abuses from our government from border patrol agents we're losing our democracy because people criticize the abuse of migrants there's a lot of reasons to think that we are indeed losing our democracy but to see people criticize border patrol agents that's not one of them and she argues that you know this is the powerful elite working with the deep state okay sure Joe Biden criticized these Haitian migrants but he's not stopping the deportations it's still going on and this isn't the deep state trying to fabricate outrage we see the photographs of abuse and in response we're outraged at least normal people who have hearts are outraged and ironically that Fox News host condemned this sort of disinformation which is hilarious because he has no problem with his network's disinformation when it comes to vaccines that disinformation which is literally leading to people from his own party dying at higher rates he doesn't care so yeah I mean Tulsi Gabbard she sees those tragic images of desperate Haitians getting intimidated by US border patrol and her thought is man this is the deep state who's trying to turn people against these border patrol agents she doesn't have any concern whatsoever for the migrants being abused the images of black people getting whipped or intimidated by whips doesn't necessarily conjure up any sort of emotional response from her she just thinks these border patrol agents I feel so bad for them this is authoritarianism to criticize them Tulsi is a fucking clown you're a clown Tulsi Gabbard and you're lucky that republicans are so stupid and they don't care about what you say so long as you tell them what they want to hear but what you're saying is bullshit I don't know if you believe what you're saying I don't know if you're lying to appease right-wingers but either way you're a fucking clown you're a grifter and you should feel bad about that alright folks so today we are going to examine a tweet from one of if not the dumbest members of congress I'm of course talking about Lauren Boebert and she's trying to make some sort of a point here I don't think she's making the point that she thinks she's making very obvious that she's trying to troll the libs but she ends up just basically tacitly admitting that she's a complete moron now I don't want to give you much more setup than that I just want to read it to you and see if you can make heads or tails of this because this was genuinely confusing to me like I didn't understand what she was trying to say so she writes I woke up with a headache this morning okay I took some Tylenol alright makes sense now if everyone else could take some Tylenol too so mine would start working that would be great what so I saw this when I first woke up and I thought I know she's stupid but do I just need to have my coffee before I revisit this what the fuck is she trying to even say and I was just so confused I know that there was a point buried in there somewhere but trying to decipher this stupidity was really really tough for me but um apparently the point is that the COVID-19 vaccines are bad now if you're wondering how we get from point A to point B well it's sort of a gotchoo or a gotcha on her part rather so if the vaccines provide you with protection then why do you care if other people take vaccines so you know she's drawing this parallel you know if I have a headache then why do I care if other people take Tylenol if you want the vaccine get the vaccine if not then don't it's basically the point that she's trying to make and it's a really really stupid point because headaches are in no way similar to contagious viruses in fact headaches are not viruses so when it comes to viruses the way that we treat those and we treat headaches is very different and furthermore the reason why if you're already vaccinated and protected yourself you want other people in your community to get vaccinated as well is because unlike headaches vaccines mutate every single time that they spread and it's only a matter of time until a vaccine-resistant strain emerges so everyone who's vaccinated should want other people to get vaccinated as well so we reduce the spread and reduce the likelihood that a vaccine-resistant strain emerges so she is demonstrating to the world here that she's incredibly stupid I mean this is done in Kruger in action but I wanted to talk about this because the response was fucking hilarious because it was such a stupid point and because she was so arrogant the internet ripped her to shreds and that's what I want to share with you because this put a smile on my face so this person wrote Bobo isn't the sharpest knife in the toolbox and they shared an image that says Lauren Boebert likes Sarah Palin but somehow dumber and this is accurate and it's sad it's sad more than anything like it is funny but it's genuinely sad because it's so true you just can't even parody this kind of stupid it's how you know that on some level evolution has failed us John Iderola writes Tylenol doesn't treat brain worms true imagine being this proud of being this stupid at first I was going to respond headaches aren't contagious but then I caught one from reading this stupid ass tweet that's a great point Betty Bowers writes while this makes no sense it did make me smile just like Lauren Boebert are claiming religious exemptions from covid vaccines because fetal cell lines were used to develop and test them you know what else was tested and developed with fetal cell lines Tylenol love that you have this meme from the spider-man movie you know I'm something of a fucking idiot myself it's just unbelievable this is a member of congress who doesn't understand anything about the way that the world works I'm not expecting her to be a virologist but maybe just having a basic level of common sense would help if you're a lawmaker but Lauren Boebert she's not just a moron she's also possibly a criminal who should be investigated for her involvement in the January 6th insurrection and also she should probably be investigated for campaign finance violations because she reportedly used campaign funds for her own personal use as CNN's Frederica Shouten explains Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert paid utility and rent bills with campaign funds according to a new filing the Republican lawmaker made this week with the Federal Election Commission. The report submitted to the FEC on Tuesday details a series of four payments this year totaling $6,650 the John Pacheco whose address is the same as Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado the gun themed restaurant that Boebert owns. The payments are described as rent and utilities that had been erroneously built of the campaign. Boebert refused to answer CNN's questions Thursday in an email her spokesperson Ben Stout said the funds in question were reimbursed months ago when Representative Boebert self reported the error it is against the law to use campaign funds for personal use and out of Naughty a top official with the nonpartisan campaign Legal Center said using donors money to pay rent and utilities is a flagrant violation. There are some gray areas in campaign finance law and this is really not one of them added Naughty a former associate general counsel at the FEC so look, I'm fair it could be a reporting error it could just be a mistake except this isn't the only red flag when it comes to her possibly violating campaign finance laws. This year Accountable.us a liberal watchdog group asked a congressional ethics office to examine what it called exorbitant campaign reimbursements to Boebert from mileage expenses during the 2020 campaign detailed by the Denver Post and last month as first reported by the Associated Press Boebert's required financial disclosure report showed her husband made more than $478,000 in 2020 in consulting services from Terra Energy Productions he also made $460,000 from the firm in 2019 according to the filing Boebert's financial disclosure report during the 2020 campaign however had not disclosed that income federal law and rules require candidates and federal office holders to disclose the sources of their spouses incomes along with their investments so voters have potential conflicts of interest and what I would argue is that where there's smoke there's usually fire and there's enough there to where she should be seriously investigated so she's not just an idiot she's also possibly a criminal and I'm going to make sure I tell people about this whenever I bring up Lauren Boebert something like this should not be in congress let's be real there's so many members of congress who are not qualified to serve but Lauren Boebert is like among one of the top 10 that shouldn't be there she's just a complete idiot she has nothing to offer no valid input she knows nothing about policy or the world really and honestly if she cared about America as much as she said she says she does she would resign because I feel like if you're going to serve in congress you at least need some brain cells that still function but this is someone who is barely a functioning adult and she's talking about how Tylenol and headaches are contagious that's I mean she's not saying that but like the implication is that vaccines are bad and viruses are like headaches it's just it's too much stupidity I'm so sick of this I mean it's not like she's unlike other Americans I think she's probably representative of many Americans because there's a lot of stupidity in this country but still you're a member of congress grow the fuck up do better for fuck's sake so I want to talk about this article from the New York Times that really illustrates the consequences of the Republican Party and the right wing media spheres politicization of the pandemic and not just that their politicization of the covid-19 vaccines it shows that this is hurting right wingers more so than anyone else at this point in time in the country and the data here it's not necessarily the most surprising in the world but it confirms what we already suspected and seeing the data is still pretty jarring it shows that there's one conclusion out of all of this and I think you already know what it's going to be get the vaccine but nonetheless I want to show you the findings from this article David Leonhardt of the New York Times writes during the early months of covid-19 vaccinations several major demographic groups lagged in receiving shots including black Americans Latino Americans and Republican voters more recently the racial gaps while still existing have narrowed the partisan gap however continues to be enormous a Pew Research Center poll last month found that 86% of Democratic voters had received at least one shot compared with 60% of Republican voters the political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state because the vaccines are so effective at preventing serious illness covid deaths are also showing a partisan pattern covid is still a national crisis but the worst forms of it are increasingly concentrated in red America as is often the case state by state numbers can often understate the true pattern because every state has both liberal and conservative areas when you look at the county level the gap can look even starker and as you can see here red counties do in fact do worse both in terms of vaccination rates and also in terms of the number of deaths that they're seeing compared to covid-19 and these charts here they demonstrate that they show that there is a clear difference now this wasn't necessarily always the case in the beginning of the pandemic there were a lot of blue areas that were disproportionately affected and rural areas weren't really seeing that much of a surge right and it's because in these bigger cities more urban areas areas that are densely populated that tend to vote Democratic they just have more people and even though they helped to mitigate the spread of the virus they just weren't as effective as the vaccines are but now that we have vaccines that kind of changed everything right the masks indeed did put a cap on the spread of the virus but the vaccines are just their second to none and the author of this article points that out vaccination has changed the situation the vaccines are powerful enough to overwhelm other differences between blue and red areas some left-leaning communities like many in New York San Francisco and Washington as well as much of New England have such high vaccination rates that even the unvaccinated are partly protected by the low number of cases conservative communities on the other hand have been walloped by the highly contagious Delta variant since Delta began circulating widely in the United States COVID has exacted a horrific death toll on red America in counties where Donald Trump received at least 70% of the vote the virus has killed about 47 out of every 100,000 people in June according to Charles Gabba a healthcare analyst in counties where Trump won less than 32% of the vote the number is about 10 out of 100,000 and the gap will probably keep growing and this chart right here it just says it all I mean you don't really even have to say much more just look at this chart show this chart to someone share it with your friends counties with large Trump vote shares are seeing higher COVID death rates due to widespread vaccine hesitancy among right-wingers and this didn't happen on accident the vaccine hesitancy is being pushed by Republicans not all Republicans but it's especially being pushed by the right-wing media sphere Fox News Tucker Carlson OAN Newsmax and the result is that right-wingers are contracting COVID-19 at higher rates and they're dying at higher rates their disinformation is killing their political group it's it's sad the conclusion obviously is get vaccinated what are you doing this shouldn't be a political issue there should be no partisan divide when it comes to a life-saving highly effective safe vaccine there shouldn't be this red-blue divide here it should just be the vaccines available there's evidence stating how effective it is and how safe it is I'm gonna take it doesn't matter from a Republican a Democrat or apolitical and I know people in my family who are apolitical who get the flu vaccine every single year and guess what they're anti-vaxx because dumb fucks in my family convinced them that the vaccine is actually dangerous so anti-vaxxers their sentiment is like they're not just themselves anti-vaxx they proselytize right they try to spread their fear of smongering to other people it's contagious just like the virus is contagious they don't want to just be content endangering themselves they want to endanger others but they don't view it this way they believe that by spreading anti-vaxxing misinformation they're saving people's lives because some folks believe that either the vaccine isn't safe or that it's dangerous even and these people are a threat to society they're a threat to public health they're effectively bioterrorists in my opinion and I have no love for any anti-vaxxer my patience has run out because this misinformation, this anti-vaxx sentiment is literally killing people and it doesn't matter if republicans are the ones dying more so than democrats or leftists I don't care I just don't want people to die it's that simple like as a leftist when I push for medicare for all I don't push for medicare for all except republicans I push for medicare for all period that if there is a way we can save lives we should do it and combating anti-vaxxing misinformation I feel like that's my responsibility as a leftist the vaccines work and they're safe facts don't care about your feelings the data is very very clear and so when you look at the death rates and the anti-vaxx rates the rates of people who are unvaccinated there's a very clear causal relationship right there people who are not getting vaccinated are disproportionately in hospitals they're disproportionately the ones dying that's indisputable at this point so if you still are choosing to not take the COVID-19 vaccines you're playing with your own life just so you can be edgy and own the libs and associate with your own political in-group don't politicize this it's your life take the vaccine stop being fucking stubborn take it now rather than regretting it later we've reached a point in the pandemic where I don't necessarily feel as if these sorts of studies ones that I'm going to talk about today are necessary because it's just kind of common sense at this point we don't need more studies to confirm what was already common sense to most people but here we are another study was released confirming that masks do indeed help to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 in schools Lee Cohen of CBS News explains the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new studies Friday that show enforcing masks in schools helps reduce the spread of COVID-19 shocking one study looked at data from schools in Arizona's Maricopa and Pima counties after they resumed in-person learning in late July for the 2021-22 academic year the two counties account for roughly 75% of the state's population the CDC found that the K-12 schools that did not have mask requirements at the beginning of the school year were 3.5 times more likely to have COVID outbreaks than schools that required all people regardless of vaccination status to wear a mask indoors from the first day of school of the 999 schools analyzed in the study 21% had an early mask requirement 30.9% enacted a mask requirement between 9 and 17 days after the school year began and 48% had no mask requirement of the 191 COVID outbreaks that occurred in those schools from July 15 to August 31 113 were in schools that did not enforce masks at all schools with early mask requirements had the lowest number of outbreaks during that time frame, Arizona was experiencing an upward trend of weekly COVID cases according to Johns Hopkins University so this isn't too surprising to me but I've seen people take studies like this and misconstrue the data in order to fit their anti-mask narratives look, this study proves that masks even if they're instituted they're still COVID-19 outbreaks but they don't tell you the real conclusion that masks help to reduce the spread of COVID-19 they make outbreaks less likely so masks obviously are important at schools and if you're one of those weird anti-mask parents who thinks it's child abuse to have your parents have masks or have your kids wear masks then you're deranged because what's worse for your child having to wear masks and the inconveniences that come with that or have your kid contract COVID-19 or bring it home to a loved one I just, I don't get the outrage when it comes to masks it's a piece of cloth and you don't have to make it this negative experience for your child get them a Ninja Turtles mask or a Paw Patrol mask whatever the fuck kids like get them one of those, make it a fun thing to do and they will comply like it's not that big of a deal and there's another study that confirms the same thing that this last study confirmed another study from the CDC looked at the impact of school mask mandates across the US authors looked at data from 520 counties that started school between July 1st and September 4th this year and had at least a full week of case data from the school year they only looked at counties where all the schools had the same mask policies of the 520 counties 198 had a school mask requirement and 322 did not researchers found that counties that had no mask requirements in their schools had a higher rate of pediatric COVID cases after the school year began than those schools that did have requirements schools that required masks the study found had 16.32 cases per 100,000 children in the first week of classes schools without had 34.85 cases per 100,000 children authors did note however that all children in the counties were included in the data and not just those who are school age they also noted that teacher vaccination rates and school testing data were not controlled in the analyses and that the sample size of counties is small in both studies authors reiterated that consistent and correct mask use is a critical strategy from preventing the spread of COVID-19 teenagers have recently made up the majority of weekly cases according to the CDC with elderly adults making up some of the lowest numbers of weekly cases so based on this data I think it is easy to conclude that when you see states like Texas like Florida banned school districts from instituting their own mask mandates that is literally child endangerment you are literally statistically making it more likely that your child will get infected with COVID-19 and they're doing all of this not necessarily because they have some skewed study that they're citing they're just playing political games with your child they're endangering your child's life for purposes of political expediency to score some political points if Ron DeSantis for example runs in 2024 he could say I shunned the liberal elites who wanted my kids to wear masks and your kids to wear masks and that was for freedom like that's all that this is about they don't actually care about the lives that they're putting in jeopardy they just care about themselves statistically speaking masks the transmission of COVID-19 and if you're one of the parents who are against this you're just stupid you're just a bad parent now thankfully most parents as the CBS News poll states do support mask mandates but still I mean 42% of parents believe that masks should either be optional or not allowed and these both you know yield the same results so I mean there's a lot of parents who are either purposefully advocating for child endangerment or they're misinformed it's a distinction without a difference masks work and we have another study which confirms yes obviously they work it's not a full proof strategy masks have to be worn correctly as the studies author state but it works it helps so put on a mask and stop trying to spread misinformation about masks if you're one of the people who are indeed doing this and I just have to add that if you know anyone who is an anti-masker I think that this viral video is probably the best way to respond to these dipshits I view this as more of an instruction video not necessarily for entertainment but instruction as to how you should treat anti-maskers who are the dumbest people in society anybody that wears a mask is a traitor to the United States what the fuck are you talking about bro people are not comfortable talking to you if you don't have a mask on it's my job look kids get expelled from school if they don't wear a mask don't give a shit I'm not in school that's tyranny dude they're abusing little kids so you're enabling that bro whatever bro how does it feel how does it feel to be a tyrant bro hey bro don't walk away I need your name you can either delete that video or you can donate $50 this guy's triggered because this guy's triggered because you little bitch what are you gonna do about it nothing I'm not about to assault you and go to jail I got shit to lose unlike you you're out here with no job just walking around recording people bitch ass fuck you alright so you're gonna donate or you're gonna sign a really a beta wearing a mask dude a beta wearing a mask bro then why don't you put me in my place I'm talking to you like an alpha what you gonna do 200 years ago I would love to bro but that's crazy cuz it's 2021 you totally could but you're not you can't just fight people like on the streets you're a pussy pussy pussy I will stupid bitch see ya well Nina Turner hinted at this a month or so ago and now it seems more and more likely that she will indeed be running for congress again Jordan Sheridan tweets out Nina Turner has filed to run for Ohio's 11th congressional seat once again in 2022 now this isn't a confirmation and the fact that she filed doesn't mean that it's official having said that though it seems increasingly likely that she will indeed choose to make this decision and I think that her reasoning here is absolutely um it's valid right because when you're running in a special election all eyes are on you there's basically unlimited resources and time that you can dedicate to that one race but when you're running in a general election where everyone in the House of Representatives is up a reelection then you know resources are spread more thinly there's not so much eyes on this one race so if she were to run again I think she'd have a good shot and she seems to believe that as well so as Ryan Groom of the Intercept explains Turner's filing allows her to keep her campaign apparatus running while making a final decision on a 2022 bid said spokesperson Angelo Greco adding that the filing does not guarantee she will make a bid last week Turner appeared on the Intercepts podcast deconstructed and hinted strongly at a rematch quote I got all options on the table Turner said she thought a normal election would be easier to win for her than a special Turner said that she did because first of all when you have 435 seats as we are going to have in 2022 plus the senate seats that are up you can't concentrate all that firepower on only one seat she said a reference to the millions in outside money that rained down on her and when you're making a strategic calculus as somebody that's looking at all democratic seats there are going to be some democrats running and they are not running in a safe democratic seat you are going to need that firepower to come save them so absolutely the turnout would have been different we would have more college students who rock with people like me and the progressive movement that was missing you would have more people who are going to come out and participate Turner noted that brown will only have been in office for a short time before the next race begins and the district lines will be redrawn as a result of redistricting if the district becomes more working class Turner has a better shot but if it incorporates more of the wealthier suburbs being toward brown Turner will have a harder time so it kind of depends on what the district looks like it depends on a number of factors but in terms of should she actually take another shot at this absolutely absolutely she should it's it's difficult right you know I don't want to say just keep running until you win because this really is a self sacrifice like people who run for congress it is it takes so much time and energy and resources and it just the thought of it is fatiguing so I don't want to encourage people to do something that I myself am not willing to do but if she actually were to run again I think that her chances would be better now it's not a guarantee it's not a foregone conclusion I still would argue that this is going to be an uphill battle because Chantel Brown will have the incumbent advantage but as Nina Turner said it's a little bit easier if you don't have all eyes on this one race so the entire establishment you know they're not going to be paying attention to this one race they're going to be looking at all of the races across the country so you know she has a better shot but it's still going to be tough but for those of you who didn't support Nina Turner last time if you sat out that race now is an opportunity to right that wrong and get involved I think that the reason why Nina Turner lost ultimately is because turnout was really low and there was an article by Daniel Moranz of HuffPost that kind of laid out some of the shortcomings of Nina Turner's campaign I think that if her staff is introspective and if they look within and if they got rid of people like Jeff Weaver who is not a political ally but is more of a political opportunist I think that this is going to drastically improve their chances bring in more people who are veterans when it comes to organizing and marketing for example because one of the things that I think really hurt Nina Turner was the comments of you know voting for Joe Biden is like eating half a bowl of shit she was right about that but they blasted that on every single billboard and radio wave that they possibly could in Ohio and that ultimately in a very heavily leaning Democratic district it's kind of difficult to overcome if people in this district are really loyal to the Democratic party so they have to find some way to get past that rather than focusing on her, shift the focus over to Chantelle Brown and her corruption because she may be facing an ethics probe so you can use that against her in this race if it is indeed a rematch but we'll just have to wait and see either way I'm 100% on board Nina Turner in 2022 I'm absolutely enthusiastic about the prospect of her running and as she runs again I am going to do whatever I can to support her your sister's gay she's married she has children and in 2013 you came out again same-sex marriage while your father went the other way and it was looked upon as courageous when he did that how do you defend what you did I was wrong I was wrong I love my sister very much I love her family very much and I was wrong it's a very personal issue and very personal for my family I believe that my dad was right and my sister and I have had that conversation wow I was not expecting that this is an issue that we have to recognize you know as human beings that we need to work against discrimination of all kinds in our country in our state we were at an event a few nights ago and there was a young woman who said she doesn't feel safe sometimes because she's transgender and nobody should feel unsafe freedom means freedom for everybody at face value that doesn't seem too bad right as somebody who is a member of the LGBTQ plus community if we didn't actually allow people the space to grow and admit that they were wrong we'd have no allies like I wouldn't be able to talk to half of my family if not more because everyone that was a homophobe if they admit that they were wrong and they changed their ways I'm absolutely committed to this I believe that people can change having said that though what Liz Cheney is doing here is totally disingenuous for a number of reasons first of all when it comes to her rejecting her sister's sexuality she actually chose specifically to disavow her sister's lesbian relationship after she had already accepted it she had already disowned her sister publicly for purposes of political expediency and if you think I'm joking I'm not joking she accepted her sister and her sister's wife and then when she chose to run for congress she then said you know what actually that's wrong and so now publicly since it's politically expedient to accept members of the LGBTQ plus community now all of a sudden she says she's wrong except you never believed what you said in the first place so let me show you what I'm talking about here so in an article for the intercept Ryan Grimm breaks it down for years the Cheney family stood apart from the Republican Party's culture war against the GOP even as the Bush Cheney administration cynically deployed opposition to marriage equality as a tool to drive out the evangelical vote for the party Lynn and I have a gay daughter so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with Dick Cheney said that year with respect to the question of relationships my general view is that freedom means freedom for everybody running for senate in 2013 Liz Cheney threw her sister overboard I love Mary very much I love her family very much this is just an issue on which we disagree she told viewers of Fox News Liz this isn't just an issue on which we disagree you're just wrong and on the wrong side of history Mary, a Republican operative herself shot back on Facebook this is Liz Cheney's sister Liz has been a guest in our home has spent time and has shared holidays with our children Mary's wife Heather Poe wrote to have her now say she doesn't support our right to marry is offensive to say the least Dick Cheney sided with Liz because for the Cheneys power comes before everything so when it comes to her accepting her sister it's not like she had this coming to Jesus moment and she acknowledged that her homophobia was wrong she always knew it was wrong but she pretended as if she was against gay marriages to appease the Republican party's extremist far-right base so that's why this is incredibly disingenuous and you can say alright well you know what times have changed and at least now she's arrived at the correct space she even said that transgender people deserve freedom which for a Republican to say that really is certainly something to be surprised with pleasantly so but she's still full of shit Ilhan Omar exposed her hypocrisy in a tweet by saying folks like Mary Hassan would have had a follow-up and asked why she voted against the Equality Act but instead she gets to talk all about folks deserving safety and everyone having equality without a reckoning on her voting record and that is exactly right if she actually believed the things that she said in that interview she wouldn't have voted against the Equality Act but she voted against the Equality Act all that the Equality Act would do is it would basically make it so businesses can't discriminate against members of the LGBTQ plus community you know a cake decorator couldn't cite their religious objection to deny service to a couple on the basis of their sexual orientation and somebody couldn't choose to not do business with someone on the basis of their gender identity Liz Cheney voted against that so the fact that all of a sudden she's saying I was wrong well you're still wrong and you're not doing anything to correct the record about that so it's just it's gross it's deeply disingenuous and I find this frustrating because the media is trying to use you know instances like this to rehabilitate people like the Cheneys and Liz Cheney in particular and I get it right there's not a lot of Republicans that want to go against the grain and come out against Donald Trump so they find that admirable but having said that though two wrongs don't make a right the Trump wing of the Republican Party is terrible because they lie they're conspiratorial and they're undemocratic and the Cheney wing of the Republican Party is bad because they are war criminal they're being neocon evangelical pandering lunatics so I don't care if she's anti-trump the fact remains that Liz Cheney is a terrible person and she is a political opportunist to the highest order and I'm not gonna believe that she's truly feeling guilty about the things that she said and did in the past unless she calls for her father to be jailed who's a war criminal who should be rotting in prison right now thinking like you're so unreasonable this is her father I don't give a shit if my father was a mass murderer I would want him to go to prison as well because I'm sorry I don't change my opinion on whether or not murder is bad if it's someone I know or someone who I'm related to what's wrong is what's wrong so it doesn't matter to me unless she's truly willing to condemn her dad's war crimes and actually vote for the equality act she's full of shit just telling you what you want to hear and the mainstream media will eat it up every single time and that's so irritating, so frustrating this woman is full of shit and nobody should take her seriously no matter how anti-trump she is who cares so I didn't have time to talk about this last week but I wanted to address this because it's such a bizarre story and I don't even know how to process this like the details surrounding this story are extremely weird it's an inclusive thing to say about this other than I'm really disappointed in the outcome and specifically I'm disappointed in several Democratic Party lawmakers in particular AOC, Jamal Bowman and Mondaire Jones so there is a vote on an additional $1 billion in funding for the Iron Dome in Israel which I would be 100% against because unless we're willing to fund a Palestinian Iron Dome why are we funding defenses only for Israel or more, why aren't they funding their own defenses they have a universal healthcare system and we don't they can pay for their own defense it's totally unnecessary it's virtue signaling it's stupid, so the vote should obviously have been no however AOC voted no and then she had some sort of a heated exchange with Nancy Pelosi which we don't necessarily know what was said but then she changed her vote to present crying and being embraced by I believe Barbara Lee and a lot of people myself included were perplexed by this we don't know what happened, clearly something happened but AOC tried to provide us with some clarification as to why she voted the way that she did and she released this unnecessarily long convoluted statement that left me even more confused than I initially was and since this is so long I don't want to really read this and waste your time on it but what we're going to do is we're going to read it at double speed so I'll read all of it but just much faster than I normally would thanks to the magic of editing so here we go so over the last decade and this is in addition to 3 billion authorized earlier this year and other forms of military funding to the Israeli government I also believe that for far too long the US has handed unconditional aid to the Israeli government while doing nothing to address or raise the persistent human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and that this imbalance of power must be centered in any honest conversation about Israel and Palestine in addition to the many other governments we militarily fund in addition to opposing the substance of the iron dome the process of bringing it to the House floor was deeply unjust the legislative language itself was initially introduced earlier this week by way of an attempt to quietly slip this funding into routine legislation without any of the usually necessary committee debate, markup, or regular order a funding leap, this significant is a policy area that is already so charged and fraught for many communities, particularly our own deserves the respectable proper legislative process unfortunately that process did not happen and the reckless decision by House leadership to rush this controversial vote within a matter of hours and without true consideration created a thinner box of vitriol disingenuous framing deeply racist accusations and depictions and lack of substantive discussion on this matter I want to be clear that the decision to rush this vote virtually preventing any member from meaningfully consulting with their community even the night before as it became clear that the discourse around this issue was quickly developing from substance to hateful targeting I personally had a call with the House majority leader to request a 24-hour stay of the vote so that we could do the work necessary to bring you on the temperature and volatility explain our positions and engage our communities that request was summarily dismissed, not only was the request dismissed but despite the House having almost 8-8 hours of votes yesterday this vote was chosen to be the first despite being one of the most controversial the damage of this careless process created very real spillover effects into our community it created a real sense of panic and horror among those in our community who otherwise engaged thoughtfully in these discussions and fueled the discussion to devolve to a point where it became clear that this vote would risk a severe devolution of the good faith community fabric that allows us to responsibly join in a struggle for human rights and dignity everywhere so a matter of hours was threatening to tear our community apart and permanently close the doors that we desperately need to open in order to progress yes, I wept, I wept at the complete lack of care for the human beings that are impacted by these decisions I wept at an institution choosing a path of maximum volatility and minimum consideration for its own political convenience and I wept at the complete lack of regard I often feel our party has to its most vulnerable and endangered members and communities because the death threats and dangerous vitriol weed inevitably received by rushing such a sensitive charge and under considered vote weren't worth delaying even for a few hours to help us do the work necessary to open a conversation of understanding it certainly wasn't the first time people's well-being was tossed aside for political convenience and sadly I do not believe it will be the last to those I have disappointed I am deeply sorry to those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice which constitute the majority of constituent feedback our office received I hope we can take this moment and opportunity to more deeply engage in and grow a true substantive movement of community support for human rights around the world which includes cherishing and respecting the human rights of Palestinian people what? I'm so confused I'm way more confused now than I was before so she's against the funding for this bill she doesn't like it and she supports the Palestinian people on the human rights struggle but she still voted present because you didn't have an opportunity to consult with your community I mean if you already think that this is bad they already elected you twice now to represent them so just vote no I just I don't understand like the only thing that I can expect or suspect rather is that she voted no and Nancy Pelosi badgered her or something like that on the floor I mean it's just it's weird because if Nancy Pelosi were going around trying to whip up votes for this once she doesn't necessarily have to do this because it passed handily and two you'd expect her to also go to Rashida Tlaib Ilhan Omar and badger them as well because they voted no as well so why would she single out AOC I'm genuinely perplexed here this doesn't make any sense to me and you know for an issue like this that she claims is controversial it's not actually controversial this was voted on overwhelmingly and when it comes to funding Israel I'd argue that it's not actually that controversial in the House of Representatives most members of Congress overwhelmingly support Israel unconditionally so it's not controversial it's only controversial if you don't do it your constituents want now when it comes to the other progressives I think that they're equally guilty Jamal Bowman, Mondair Jones so I don't want to single AOC out it's just that I think that she knew that the left would be disappointed in this and so she chose to put out a response doesn't really do anything to quell the disappointment that we feel because the response is nonsensical in my opinion it doesn't make any sense and I just I mean if Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib voted no then why didn't you that's basically what it comes down to and the excuses that you're giving us don't make any sense to me and I don't buy it so you know having said that though I'm not going to overly target AOC here this situation I mean it was hopeless right even if AOC Jamal Bowman and Mondair Jones did what they should have done and voted no on this it still would have passed so there's this broader issue of trying to normalize criticism of Israel good faith criticism of their abuse of the Palestinian people but that is really a momentous task and the reason why I'm so disappointed as a leftist is because progressives in Congress like AOC are the ones who can move the ball move the needle in a positive direction what they did over the summer when Israel did their incursion into Gaza once again and were slaughtering children when AOC Rashida Tlaib Corey Bush all on the floor condemned Israel and called it a Palestinian apartheid state that really made a difference that for the first time started to change the mainstream conversation around this issue so when you do something like this it is cowardly that's what it is it doesn't seem cowardly it is cowardly but it's not just AOC it's Jamal Bowman and Mondair Jones as well so you know things like this are really really frustrating to me because you're going to have people on the left who are basically anti electoral politics they're going to use this as evidence that electing more progressives is a bad idea because they're just going to disappoint you but contrary to popular belief I actually think that this should fuel the fight to get more progressives elected as we approach the 2022 primary season right because if you have more progressives you're just going to increase the odds of them not disappointing you of them making votes that you agree with it's just pure math and most of the time the squad gets it right but sometimes they get it wrong so the more progressives that you have the more you better your chances at getting votes that we want having votes go our way or the way that's not as bad as they usually are so overall I hope that AOC takes this as a learning opportunity and what this tells me is that she did anticipate some sort of pushback from the left and that's why she put out the statement I mean I don't believe Jamal Bowman or Mondair Jones put out a statement so that tells me that they're either they don't know like they're ignorant to the pushback that they should have expected to receive but AOC by putting out the statement and kind of tells me that she knew that this was wrong and that she does feel as if she appears to be a coward and she should because this was a very disappointing vote there's no reason to switch your vote from no to present I mean it's not like this was the one vote that decided what happened but what's the point like if you're going to vote present like why vote it all it's such a pointless meaningless gesture and when I see a present vote it just it makes me feel like well that's a cowardly thing to do but either way I'm not going to beat up on AOC too much for this it's bizarre and weird but in the future you can avoid any controversy whatsoever if you just do what you know what you've proven to know is the right thing and this was not the right thing so AOC do better well that is all that I have for you today thank you all so much for tuning in if you've made it this far as usual we're not going to end the show without thanking all of our sponsors you either through patreon, paypal or youtube so you guys help us not just to survive but also to thrive and if you'd like to join the progressive independent media revolution you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support patreon.com slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our youtube videos so twitch streams are going to return next week I believe on thursday not 100% sure but just like keep that in mind and yeah I'll be back on twitch there's always a blast I just needed a little bit of a break to kind of like recalibrate and yeah so that's it anyways I'll see you all next week hopefully you enjoy the show my name is mike figurado this has been the humanistreport take care everyone