 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. 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 Figueredo and this is episode 281 of the program. Today is Friday, March 12th, and before we get started, as we usually do, I want to thank all of the people who make the show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal, and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving to us. And that includes Alexander Salant, Speak the Russian, Anthony Guthrie, Camille DiPallo, Eric Puchella, Holly Malero, Jen M., Joseph Booze, Patrick D. Lawson, Stimulus Dragon, and Travon Romanouk. So thank you so much to all of these kind souls. If you would also like to support the program and join the independent progressive 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. This week we've got another great show for you. We'll talk about the disgusting swamp beast known as Manchinamon, that's right, what is supposed to fall out from Kyrsten Sinema's anti-minimum wage political stunt, along with Joe Manchin's attempt to do damage control after he also voted to keep Americans in poverty. We'll also talk about how socialists took over the Nevada State Democratic Party, how Republicans in Georgia are cracking down on voting rights in a new draconian bill, and we'll also discuss a new study that gives us some pretty bad news regarding COVID-19. And finally, we closed the week by talking about Milo Yiannopoulos' latest grift. He is no longer gay, apparently, sure, Jen. So we'll talk about that and we also have some other stories planned for you. Hopefully you will enjoy what we have in store. Let's waste no time and get right to it. So I think that everyone is aware of what went down over the weekend. And I want to now take some time to talk about the fallout of the death of the $15 an hour minimum wage. Now it's not completely dead as of yet. We'll talk about what can be done to resuscitate it. However, I want to take some time to focus on the ghouls that killed it, gleefully so. Now, first of all, zero Republicans voted in support of a $15 an hour minimum wage, including so-called populists like Josh Hawley. Shows you that they are frauds. And let me remind you that the $15 an hour minimum wage, even though it is significant, even though millions of workers would get a raise from this, it's still entirely insufficient. Like we've been talking about a $15 an hour minimum wage for years now. So it really should be $20 an hour. $15 an hour is not enough. But would it be beneficial for workers to have at least a baseline wage of $15 an hour at a minimum? Yeah. I don't think anyone would deny that. But these eight Democrats or seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats, not Bernie Sanders, decided to vote against even the bare minimum. And as Kylie Brickman puts it, this is the new enemy's list. It includes Joe Manchin, John Tester, Gene Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Tom Carper, Chris Coons, Angus King and the notorious Kirsten Sinema. All of these individuals who are Democrats voted against the $15 an hour minimum wage increase. And when it comes to Kirsten Sinema, as you all know by now, she didn't just vote against it, but she decided to do a little bit of a victory lap after patting her buddy Mitch McConnell on the back. Take a look. This is, uh, this is something else. Miss Sinema, Miss Sinema, no. It's completely fucking shameless to vote against the $15 an hour minimum wage. That's like that's morally reprehensible, but to do it gleefully, like to celebrate openly when you know you're being filmed, when you know your behavior is going to be broadcasted to millions like that's, I don't, uh, I don't even know what we call that behavior. It's just disgusting. Uh, however, if you were offended that Kirsten Sinema decided to pour salt in the wounds of workers who desperately needed an increase in the minimum wage, well, congratulations, you're a gigantic sexist because as Amanda Turkle of HuffPost reports, Senator Sinema's spokesperson said it's sexist to comment on a female politician's body language or physical demeanor when HuffPost inquired about her thumbs down vote on the minimum wage. Yeah, nobody buys this. Not a single person buys this. She is very obviously trying to deflect and shield herself from criticism. And look, I'm going to do a little bit of a reverse UNO card on them and say that if you criticize me and say that I'm sexist, since you're criticizing me, a gay man, I'm going to say that that's homophobic to criticize me in any way whatsoever. So, uh, Kirsten Sinema must be homophobic for not allowing me to criticize her. Are you, are you really trying to like dictate how a gay man criticizes powerful people and elites really Kirsten Sinema? Is that what you're trying to do? You homophobe? Look, it's all ridiculous, right? Of course, that's not an actual argument I'm making because I'm actually a serious person. Whereas this spokesperson for Kirsten Sinema and Sinema herself, they're not serious people. But she got a lot of backlash and I'm sure that you know about this or you were part of it. I just want to give you a small sample of the outrage that she invited because she decided to just play it off, pretend like she didn't just like give American workers the middle finger. And she tweeted this out. Wow. Incredibly grateful for Arizona's frontline workers caring for loved ones during the pandemic. Now, as you can see, this is just shameless. Let's go to her page because I want you to see the ratio because it gives you a sense of how many people were not buying her bullshit. So you see 16,000 replies to 2.7,000 likes. Nobody believes this because if she actually cared about frontline workers in Arizona, then she would make sure that some of them wouldn't be making less than a $15 an hour minimum wage. And she was met with this image. I also decided to participate, which says, fuck the poor on her mask because that is essentially what her little stunt demonstrated. It was a message to workers. You see Chelsea Manning saying this as well. You see Savage Joy sharing this, Kirsten Sinema, world's cutest neo-fascist. You can't see the text, but this is what the bottom of it says. You can't see the image again, Vosh saying, damn, you know what piece of legislation those essential workers would have benefited from. You see the amazing Atheist joining in. Benjamin Dixon is saying, may I recommend careerbuilder.com, basically saying your career is over. Ken Clippenstein actually shared this image and told people to spam it. You see a good politic guide, great YouTube channel, by the way, saying that. So that was a fucking lie. I love this meme by Todd, the creator. And basically, if we scroll down, you will see this meme over and over and over again. Anthony Fantano, shout out to my boy here saying, then pay them more dummy. I mean, what she said is obviously insane. Like there's nothing here, but you know, memes and people like shitting on her, rightfully so, because she's literally saying, oh wow, I appreciate frontline workers so much, but you literally just gave them the middle finger, gleefully so. For you to like tweet this after you just did what you did. It's it's downright grotesque. Like you should be hiding your face. You should be ashamed of yourself. Like like it's still going like it goes on forever and ever and ever. Like we'd be here all day because this is this is what she was met with. And I hope that for the rest of her career, this image haunts her. So, I mean, it is really satisfying to see everyone like call out her bullshit, but at the same time, at the end of the day, she still gets the last laugh because she she wins. She killed the policy that would have helped millions of Americans. And if Democrats like if eight Democrats, if they deflect on the $15 an hour minimum age, what does this mean? Like is it even possible? Well, the answer is yes, but two things have to happen. First of all, Joe Biden actually has to fight. Joe Biden has not been doing anything to put pressure on conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. And furthermore, Chuck Schumer, who is now pretending to be more progressive because he doesn't want AOC to primary him in 2022. He needs to actually keep his caucus in line, like whip the votes up for policies that you claim to support like you are in leadership. But Claire McCaskill actually kind of like gave us some insight after she or when she was competing against Josh Hawley back in 2018. And she said, look, Chuck Schumer is great because he doesn't really try to like control us. He lets us do whatever we want. That's an issue. If he's letting you be as conservative as you need to be in order to seek re-election or when re-election, that's a problem. It makes the aggregate party look worse. And this is an issue that I have with the big tent party label because you have a tent that's so big that you end up including Republicans in your caucus. And they obstruct your agenda. So if Joe Biden doesn't actually fight and put pressure uses bully pulpit to actually like get these Democrats in line, it's not going to happen. Now, another way that this can be saved is if it is passed using budget reconciliation with 51 votes. That means it is going to have to go in a piece of legislation that Joe Biden really wants to get passed. And he wants to pass his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Now, here's the thing. It's going to go back to the House. If progressives actually bind together, they can block this and vote against the COVID relief package unless it includes a $15 an hour minimum wage provision. That could help get this codified into law. Because here's the thing. It's clear now you're not going to pass this with 60 votes. If you try to pass the $15 an hour minimum wage with 60 votes, it's not going to happen. So 51 votes is going to be difficult. So you have to put it in legislation that these Democratic senators don't want to vote against. And that $1.9 trillion COVID relief package is definitely something that they don't want to vote against. So if progressives bind together and they say we will not support this package when it comes back to the House unless it includes a $15 an hour minimum wage, then that can actually help. Because here's the thing. Currently, the balance of power very clearly tips on the side of conservative Democrats. They are controlling everything. They are dictating what is or isn't included in legislation. And progressives have absolutely got to stick together, be disciplined, and flex their muscles, actually say look, we don't like that they took out the minimum wage to appease these conservative Democrats. So we want it back in. And if we're not appeased, then we're not going to support it. Now at that point, conservative Democrats, they will remain disciplined. And they will suggest that the squad and progressive Democrats, they're just trying to hold up this legislation when Americans desperately need relief. But if they are disciplined, if they say, look, no, it's actually you who are holding up this legislation because workers need a raise, especially now during a pandemic. We think that $15 an hour minimum wage is part of COVID relief. Like this is going to stimulate the economy by increasing the purchasing power of working Americans. If you don't support this, then you're the one who's holding it up because we see it as crucial. Like if they actually remain disciplined, then this has a chance. But if they don't, this is going to die. And I think that they should bear some of the responsibility and accept that they didn't fight hard enough for this. Because the pattern that we're seeing here is that the left and the squad, they have no say in any legislation whatsoever. They make recommendations and they tweet about it, which is great. But you don't actually control anything if it is conservatives who are constantly dictating what goes in legislation and what gets taken out of legislation. You actually have to withhold your votes and really remain disciplined, bind together, be a strong block. So that way, you know, everyone in Congress is trying to appease you and not these conservative Democrats who should have no say whatsoever right now, especially when the American people need relief. So that's what I want to see. Am I optimistic? No, not necessarily. Does it seem like the $15 an hour minimum wage is dead? Yeah, it really seems that way. And that's just fucking pathetic. It's pathetic. Like this is what Democrats ran on. And if they don't deliver, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Joe Biden will have nobody to blame but himself if he loses control in 2022 and if Democrats lose in 2024 handily. Because if you don't deliver for the American people, they're not going to come out and vote for you. So you've got two years to deliver the bare minimum. And if you can't even get the bare minimum to the American people, then you deserve to get blown out. We don't deserve the consequences of Republican policies. Americans don't deserve that. But that's what's going to happen. Because as a party, you've shown that you are completely incompetent. Now look, it's what, 50 days or so into Joe Biden's administration. He can still turn things around. He can actually choose to fight or just remain passive as he's been and allow conservative Democrats to obstruct his entire agenda. But if he does this, he's going to learn real quick that the American people will not be there for him and the Democratic Party. So I mean, I don't know what else to say. Like this story is grotesque, but it's not surprising because the Democratic Party is a Big 10 Party. And when you allow Republicans into your coalition, things like this happen. When you allow Republicans like Kyrsten Sinema into your party, rather than kicking them out and marginalizing them, this is what happens. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia received a lot of flak for voting against the $15 an hour minimum wage and rightfully so. So he then proceeded to go on television and defend his position. Now he's trying to make it seem as if he's not super unreasonable. Make it seem as if, look, I don't want people to be in poverty. I want folks to actually get an increase in their wages. I want to increase the minimum wage. I just think that $15 an hour is a bit too much. Now he tries to disingenuously make it seem as if he supports a living wage when in actuality that's not the case. And his opposition to the $15 an hour minimum wage is likely because of a conflict of interest that he's not speaking to here. So take a look at what he says and I'll tell you why what he's saying is incredibly dishonest. Let's talk about the minimum wage. You and seven other Democratic senators voted against Bernie Sanders amendment that would have increased the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Here's what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said about that. We agree with Senator Sanders and the president is going to be standing right alongside him fighting for an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And he will use his political capital to get that done. You have your own proposal to increase the minimum wage to $11. So is Joe Biden wasting his political capital on you to get to $15? Martha, not at all. President Joe Biden knows how to get the deal done. In the bottom line is there is not one senator out of a hundred that doesn't want to raise the minimum wage. $7.25 is sinfully low. We must raise it. I agree with President Biden when he says if you go to work every day you should be above the poverty guidelines. Well, the poverty guidelines to be above that if you're going to work and working full time should be at $11 base. That should be your base. And then we index it with inflation to make sure it never gets back in this political conundrum we have right now. It shouldn't be a political football. We do the same thing with Social Security. We index that to make sure that inflation and make sure that it moves forward with the CPI. We can do the same. Now we have a deal here to be made. If everyone agrees it should be raised. Bernie has chosen $15. And you know what? An awful lot of areas and states have moved to $15. A lot of them moved a lot further than $7.25. There's very few I think of any or at $7.25. But we need to base the base of our minimum wage should be above the poverty guideline so you have the respect and dignity of work. Okay. So first of all, the folks who elected Joe Manchin, his constituents, a majority of them support a $15 an hour minimum wage, not an $11 an hour federal minimum wage. So first of all, you could just like dismantle this argument right there and say, why aren't you listening to your constituents? That's the first thing. But the second thing is that he is very deliberately referring to poverty guidelines. Now, when you think poverty guidelines, when you think about poverty wages, you think that the implication is, well, okay, if somebody is against poverty wages and they want them to be above the poverty guidelines, that must imply that they support a living wage. But he's using poverty guidelines in lieu of a living wage. Notice how he never says living wage in this segment. And that is on purpose because the poverty guideline and living wage, these are actually two different things. And I'll show you this. So if you look at MIT's living wage calculator specifically for the state of West Virginia, you will see that if you raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour, at least in his state, almost nobody would technically be making a poverty wage unless you have three children or more in a household. However, when it comes to the living wage, which is the thing we're fighting for currently, his $11 doesn't cut it even in his own state. A one adult household would need at least $13 an hour to make a living wage. Single parents would need at least $28 an hour to make a living wage in West Virginia, mind you. If you're a household with two adults and one working, you need to make at least $22 an hour to make a living wage. Now, you could almost make a living wage in mansion's home state with $11 an hour if both adults are working and making that. But if you're a two adult household with a child, even $15 an hour is too low. And again, I want to remind you this is the living wage calculator in the state of West Virginia. We're not talking about New York. We're not talking about California. We're talking about Joe Manchin's home state in West Virginia. So what he basically said in that clip is that I don't think that my constituents, people in West Virginia, Americans, they don't deserve a living wage. But I don't think they should be in poverty. Am I not merciful? Like they don't deserve a living wage, but I'm not saying that I want to keep them impoverished. So they should get a little bit more crumbs, but certainly they should still have crumbs. Certainly they shouldn't have enough to make a living wage. Like this is absolutely outrageous. And it's even more outrageous when you consider the fact that Joe Manchin is a multimillionaire. He is worth an estimated $7.8 million, $7.8 million. And there's a specific reason why he doesn't really want to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, because this would directly impact his wealth. And as Jonathan Larson of TYT Investigate explains, Senator Joe Manchin, the most prominent Democratic opponent of a $15 federal minimum wage, has a financial stake in at least one company that apparently would have to increase pay if such a measure passed TYT has learned. The real extent of his business interests is unclear, as Manchin has never fully disclosed them as required on his Senate ethics filings. Thanks to legal filings in a bankruptcy dispute, however, we do know some of the holdings of one company Manchin lists in his disclosure form. The company, AA Property, is reportedly 50% controlled by Manchin and is an investor in Emerald Coast Realty, which owns La Quinta Hotel in Elkview, West Virginia. According to the careers website Indeed.com, the national average salary for several La Quinta positions is well below $15 an hour. If Manchin's $11 an hour proposal were to win out, La Quinta Hotel housekeepers, for instance, would get an average raise of $0.08 an hour nationwide. So understand, we're talking about the difference between an $0.08 raise, which is what he's proposing, and a $0.04 and $0.08 raise if we're looking at average pay of these workers here. Is this not the most disgusting thing you've ever seen? Like a multi-millionaire is very deliberately keeping wages low so he can increase his own wealth. Meanwhile, he's trying to make it seem as if he's reasonable because he doesn't think they should be in poverty, but he doesn't think they should make a living wage. I mean, with Democrats like this, with Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and Jean Shaheen and Chris Coons, who needs Republicans? What is the point of Republicans when you have individuals like this in the Democratic Party? I think that needless to say that when Democrats say they're a big tent party, the tent is too big. You've reached like the logical limit of that to where the tent is so big, it is collapsing in on itself. If the tent is so big that you allow Republicans in that tent and they obstruct your own agenda, that's when you fucked up. That's when you're no longer being inclusive of more voices, but you're excluding the most important part of your base. And the millions of Americans, the majority of Americans, including majority of West Virginians, that support a $15 an hour minimum wage. So Joe Manchin should absolutely never be able to live this down, and his own constituents should be protesting in his office to make sure that he increases the minimum wage, even if that directly impacts his own wealth. Because we don't care about you. Joe Manchin, you're going to be fine. You have eight million in net worth almost. You're going to be okay. But these workers here that aren't making a living wage, they're not going to be okay. So there should be the utmost pressure on him, not just from his constituents, but from the president, Joe Biden, who should be using his bully pulpit to apply pressure to Joe Manchin, and also progressive elected members of Congress, members of the squad, who should be trying to make sure that they shift the balance of power. So it's not these conservative Democrats, like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema, who always get to decide almost unilaterally what goes in and out of pieces of legislation. It should be progressives who make that determination. But in order to do that, they have to see that their strategy isn't working, and they have to bind together as a unit and fight against this, withhold their votes from key pieces of legislation if they actually want any leverage. So overall Manchin is predictably disgusting. I mean, remember, his daughter is the one that increased the prices of EpiPens. So now people can't actually afford EpiPens. They're so expensive, including my mom. It's just, it's disgusting. People like this should not be in Congress. People like this are not qualified to have any amount of power. But here we are in a late-stage capitalist society where Joe Manchin is one of many senators who probably doesn't support an increase to the minimum wage for self-interested reasons. So we've seen a lot of positive news regarding COVID-19. Both cases and deaths are down. We are seeing vaccine hesitancy decrease and vaccine numbers tick up. So this is all really positive. But there are two things that actually threaten the progress that we've made. One is states easing restrictions too soon as they see the number of cases and deaths decrease. And two is whether or not the vaccines are effective against new variants. Now it seems as if the main variant that we're worried about currently the UK variant, which is said to be the dominant strain in the United States, the vaccines, at least the Moderna and Pfizer and beyond-tech vaccines are actually effective against that variant. But when it comes to the South African variant, we have some very, very bad news. And I'm going to link you to this study down below in the description box. It's a sample of the study, but we're not going to read that. It's a little bit too dense, but for a concise explanation, we will go to the Hills Alexandra Kelly who explains, despite the increase in global circulation of COVID-19 vaccines, the variants of the virus that emerged in late 2020 may disrupt the world's mission to achieve herd immunity, according to a new study approved for publishing in the journal Nature. Researchers specifically look at the South African COVID-19 mutation, scientifically dubbed B.1.351, analyzing whether or not these pathogens are more resistant to immune responses prompted by the available vaccines. Samples of biological fluids, namely convalescent plasma and vaccine sera, were collected and studied for the volume of COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies contained among volunteers who recovered from a documented COVID-19 infection. This highlights concern for potential reinfection. When analyzing volunteer vaccine sera or fluid from individuals who had been fully vaccinated, the results were similarly grim. Neutralizing activity was significantly lower against B.1.351, regardless of which vaccine patients received. Moderna's vaccine candidate was found to be 12.4 times less effective against the South African variant, and Pfizer's was found to have a reduced effectiveness by about 10.3 times. A silver lining could be that both vaccine candidates held up well against the UK variant of COVID-19. So this is needless to say, very, very depressing news. The South African strain has already been found in the United States. Now, at this time, it is not the case that we are expecting the South African variant to be a dominant strain here. It is a variant that exists, and it does pose a threat to the progress that we've made. But what this tells us is that even if we are fully vaccinated, that doesn't necessarily mean that we stop following the proper protocols. Although the same day we got this news, the CDC issued new guidelines for vaccinated people that kind of suggests that if you are vaccinated, you can visit other unvaccinated or vaccinated people, rather, without masks. This is what they said on the same day we learned about this study. In this scenario, CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people can visit with other fully vaccinated people in small gatherings indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing. Remember here, we are talking about private settings where everyone is vaccinated. So what does this mean? If you and a friend or you and a family member are both vaccinated, you can have dinner together, wearing masks without distancing. You can visit your grandparents if you have been vaccinated and they have been too. Now, I want to talk to you about another more complicated scenario. It involves vaccinated people visiting with unvaccinated people. When fully vaccinated people visit with unvaccinated people, we have to consider the underlying risks of the unvaccinated people and any unvaccinated members of their household. We take this approach because all of our guidance is rooted in making sure we are keeping people safe. So CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people can visit with unvaccinated people from one other household indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing as long as the unvaccinated people and any unvaccinated members of their household are not at high risk for severe COVID-19 disease. Yeah. So this was released again on the same day that we learned about this study which is peer reviewed, by the way. And the question is what now? Because it seems to me that because of the threat that the South African variant poses, it's more transmissible. Can we still do this? Is this still recommended? Because if you ask me, I'm not going to feel comfortable when I'm fully vaccinated meeting with other fully vaccinated people if these vaccines aren't effective or aren't as effective against the South African strain. Now I'm sure that they're going to have to revise their guidelines as we get more information about the prominence of the South African variant. But it's really frustrating. I don't want to be too doom and gloom yet. This is going to be one of many setbacks that I'm assuming will face as we try to fight COVID-19. But it shows that even if we're vaccinated, we can't necessarily get reckless. Now the good news is that you have companies like Johnson and Johnson who just released or got their single dose vaccine approved by the FDA. They are developing boosters to try to fight against these variants. And new boosters can actually come into play that are perhaps more effective against the South African variant in the event it does become a bigger issue. But for now, we just we just need to be aware that the South African variant means that even if you're vaccinated, still might want to be a little bit careful. Or a lot careful, actually. And I'll just say, I don't think I've talked about the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. It isn't as effective as the Moderna and the Pfizer and Biontech vaccines in terms of stopping the spread of COVID. But it's still really, really important in the fight against COVID-19. And if the Johnson and Johnson vaccine becomes available to me, I 100% would take it without question because it still stops serious infections of COVID-19. So I think that what we have to do is everything in our power to get as many people vaccinated as possible. And we just have to keep fighting and we have to arm ourselves with information. We can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend as if everything is going to be OK. You know, we've got a lot of good news lately. We've made a lot of progress. This is a setback. It might not necessarily mean that all of our progress is undone. But what it means is that you need to factor this new information into the way you behave. And I'll be doing the same. You know, that's all that we can do. Just keep monitoring the situation and hope for the best. And more importantly, take the proper precautions to make sure we end this pandemic once and for all. So I've got to talk about what is probably my favorite story of 2021. So the Nevada State Democratic Party was taken over by socialists. And as a result, the centrist establishment Democrats decided to revolt and leave. What this really tells me is that the grip that Harry Reid had on any and all Nevada State politics has definitely loosened. In fact, he no longer is in control. Socialists are in control right now. And we learned about the control that he has like the institutional power that he has in Nevada back in 2018 when Amy Volella was running for Congress and the Nevada State Democratic Party worked against her, relentlessly so. But now socialists put in the work and ultimately they have prevailed. So as Akilah Lacey and Ryan Grimm report, not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party's executive director, Elena Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations before getting to her main point. She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants and the staff would be taking severance checks with them. Thank you very much. On March 6th, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss having recently moved $450,000 out of the party's coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 re-election bid of Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first term Democrat. While Whitmer's opponents say she was planning to fire them anyway, Whitmer denies that claim. I've been putting in the work, Whitmer told the Intercept for the latest episode of Deconstructed. What they just didn't expect is that we got better and better at organizing and out organizing them at every turn. Now this is really, really important because what they've done here, what progressives have done, this is a blueprint for the left across the country going forward because if any state was difficult to penetrate, to actually get your foot in the door, I would have said Nevada would have been one of the most difficult because of the influence of Harry Reid. But they managed to out organize Harry Reid and the Democratic establishment and really what happened was, and the article is going to explain this, they put in work after 2016. So when Harry Reid's machine crushed Bernie Sanders in 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton, the socialists and progressives in the state of Nevada, they decided to organize, they got busy and by 2020 they had accumulated so much power that Bernie Sanders won in a landslide. This was because activists on the ground put in work. So the article continues, the battle between the insurgent progressive wing of the party and what's known in Nevada as the Reid machine, a tightly run operation still guided by former Senate majority leader Harry Reid began five years ago when Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders organized support for his 2016 presidential primary run while Reid was working behind the scenes to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Over the next four years, outside organizations like DSA exploded in size and strength. The Sanders campaign focused on organizing tens of thousands of young Latino voters in the state with the goal of activating people whom the party hadn't bothered with before. And it worked in the 2020 cycle after investing heavily in Nevada, Sanders won a commanding victory in the Nevada caucuses. When the Sanders campaign ended, the organizers behind it were ready to take their project to the next level. Progressive groups like the Clark County Left Caucus of which Whitmer was chair and local DSA chapters had been organizing for Sanders across Nevada since 2016. They used their momentum and the state level delegates they picked up during the caucuses to continue activating progressive pockets in the state with a focus on local office. Progressives led by the Left Caucus won a majority of the state Democratic Board this summer assigned that their momentum was growing even without a candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket to get behind. So I think that this really demonstrates the power in organizing. It really shows us that as individuals we have to do more. We have to get involved. And this is why organizations like the DSA are absolutely crucial because politics, it really is local. So what we have to do is invest our own time into putting in the work to take over our own state Democratic parties because part of the issue like and this goes beyond like the Democratic Party primaries for the presidential candidates like you can see how each state Democratic Party definitely wasn't working in favor of what the grassroots wanted. They were trying to work against the grassroots. So if that happens in your state what you have to do is take over your state's Democratic Party. Like taking over the Democratic Party nationally in Congress is much more difficult but taking over the Democratic Party at the state level that's much more achievable in the short term not just the long term but it's just a matter of like how many people, how many leftists and socialists and communists are actually willing to put in the work and in the state of Oregon for example socialists are currently organizing to progress the issue of single payer healthcare in our state. Now what we need to see is leftists actually do what the Nevada State Democratic Party did but on a mass scale like imagine if in every single state leftists were able to take over the Democratic Party like if we did this in every single state or most states like the aggregate outcome that that would produce on national politics would be absolutely monumental so I love this story not only because it's encouraging but just like seeing the but hurt seeing all of the Democratic Party establishment figures resign I mean what happened to unity weren't Real supposed to hold hands and sing kubaya that's what you all were saying when Joe Biden won the primary in 2020 hey unity we have to be united but the minute leftists actually take over all of a sudden all of that unity goes out the door I find this hilarious and I love it this is what we need to focus on if you are not involved in your local DSA chapter and you haven't been getting active in local politics definitely change that DSA makes it easy to connect with other left-wing and socialist activists but you don't even have to join a larger organization to do that you can make a difference as an individual by reaching out and meeting with people forming your own meetings but I mean it is really nice to have you know the DSA help organize these events it's nice to have their backing but you certainly don't need it but this is something that we all need to get better at is focusing on our local issues and state-level issues because state-level party politics that is where the left can actually make a lot of gains after Georgia flipped from red to blue in 2020 and after they elected two Democratic senators the state Republican Party in Georgia has decided that they don't want that to ever happen again so what they're going to do is rig the rules in their favor to make sure that they restrict voting rights and Democrats can't actually be electorally successful legitimately because if you can't win by convincing people that you have better ideas and policies then I mean you cheat and if you can't cheat if that doesn't work then you just you change the rules so that way only you win that's exactly what they're doing in Georgia so as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams reports the Republican Party of Georgia advanced its sweeping assault on voting rights Monday by pushing through the state senate legislation that would roll back no excuse absentee voting and ramp up voter ID requirements a move that drew outrage from activists who dubbed the measure one of the worst voter suppression bills in the country as the Atlanta Journal Constitution explained SB 241 would reduce the availability of absentee voting restricting it to those who are at least 65 years old have a physical disability or are out of town the bill which now heads to the GOP-led state House of Representatives would also require Georgians who wish to vote absentee to provide a driver's license number state ID number or other identification the measure passed by a vote of 29 to 20 with every Democratic senator voting no the Georgia Senate's passage of SB 241 came a week after the state's Republican controlled House approved legislation that would cut the number of available ballot drop boxes slash weekend early voting days and intensify voter ID requirements for mail-in ballots draconian restrictions that come in the wake of two major Democratic US Senate victories in January and President Joe Biden's narrow win in the state in November collectively these bills represent the most sustained effort to roll back access to the ballot in Georgia since the Jim Crow Arab Ari Berman of Mother Jones reported Monday the same is true nationally where Republicans have introduced 253 bills in 43 states in the first two months of this year to make it harder to vote so they are absolutely shameless I mean that last sentence says it all they've introduced 253 bills in 43 states already all to make it harder to vote is it not crystal clear what they're trying to accomplish here if you can't win as a minority party because your ideas are unpopular you cheat you cut access to voting impose restrictions on voting reduce the number of polling locations make it more difficult to vote and that disproportionately helps your party because when voter turnout is higher guess who doesn't benefit from that the Republican Party whenever voter turnout is higher whenever more and more people register to vote for the first time that disproportionately benefits the Democratic Party so the Republican Party in states across the country they know that the way to combat this surge in new voter registrations and higher turnout during presidential elections is to cheat literally rig the rules in your favor literally become authoritarian rollback democracy all so you can maintain power it is absolutely grotesque and when you try to pressure them or press them on this they'll say well this isn't like to stop people from voting we just want to protect the vote we want to make sure that you know there is integrity in our voting you know that way voters feel secure that their voices are going to matter okay well if that were the case wouldn't you be imposing mandates to just like have automatic recounts or automatic audits of the election isn't it really interesting like the way you try to ensure the integrity of the vote by like making it harder to vote in the first place like they're so transparent who doesn't see through them this is shameless it's brazen the GOP is a minority party and the only way they win is to cut access to voting these policies specifically harm people of color they make it so that way people of color and communities of color are less likely to vote because it's harder for them to vote and as a result one of the most loyal demographics to the democratic party can't vote as much as maybe they want to vote and who benefits from that Republicans like I shouldn't have to explain this it's pretty obvious the GOP has been doing this now forever like this has been their go to and it's not like the democratic party doesn't have like authoritarian tendencies themselves because they certainly use their institutional power to crush grassroots movements particularly during primaries but what the GOP does is a step further than the democratic party in that they actually don't want people to vote they actually try to purge as many people from the roles as possible when they see that new people are signing up that's how Brian Kemp was elected by the way this is an individual who became governor because he was secretary of state he oversaw his own election as secretary of state of Georgia which obviously is a conflict of interest if you care about integrity of voting and when he saw that Stacey Abrams his opponent was registering lots and lots of new voters in that state he saw that as a threat and he decided to purge more than a hundred thousand voters from the roles mostly black people they know what they're doing and if you don't call this out if you don't acknowledge what they're doing then you're part of the problem as well so I mean this is something that we're going to continue to see it's a trend that is going to continue you know it's it's really frustrating to see like liberal analysts suggest that well you know what it's only a matter of time Texas is going to turn blue you know the younger generations they don't like the Republican party so eventually this party will become irrelevant that's a really lazy explanation or prediction I should say because the Republican party isn't just going to roll over and die due to demographic changes because more young people support Democrats or don't support Republicans rather like they're going to change it so that way they still win they're going to gerrymander states into oblivion they're going to rig the rules in their favor reduce voting rights all to make sure they remain in power like they're not going to die out that easily whoever thinks that is delusional so things like this have got to be talked about because this is an issue you have a party that has taken a stand unequivocally against democracy and if you want democracy to survive if you don't want us to devolve further into authoritarianism then we have to call this out and fight against it otherwise this party who is hell-bent on destroying democracy is going to you know keep doing what benefits them like if this hurts democracy they don't care their goal is not to preserve and protect democracy their goal is to maintain power and they will do that by all means necessary far-right grifter Milo Yiannopoulos has decided that he is done with nobody paying attention to him he's fed up he's had it it's time somebody gives him attention once again that he so desperately craves so what he is doing now in what is I think really obviously a publicity stunt is he is coming out of the closet as straight okay Milo Yiannopoulos is claiming that he is an ex-gay he's renouncing his homosexuality after he literally married a man and is now saying look guys I'll pretend to be straight if that's going to get me attention from the religious right okay so as bill browning of lgbtq nation writes right wing gadfly and troll Milo Yiannopoulos quickly fell out of the public eye after flaming out in a dramatic manner following comments that appeared to condone pedophilia while he denied the allegations the fallout was quick he lost a book deal financial backers and speaking engagements as his former supporters in trump land quickly cancelled him his social media accounts were shut down over his non-stop offensive trolling and the conservative provocateur was left with no one to provoke but like the GOP nationwide Yiannopoulos is turning to the religious right for personal salvation or is he simply trolling them too now he's then an interview with the religious right site life site news and while the outlet seems to take him at face value the gadfly's typical exaggeration outright lies and over the top asides insinuate that he's trolling them too he's now claiming that he's ex-gay when I used to kid that I only became gated torment my mother I wasn't entirely joking Yiannopoulos says of course I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle who is who could be and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome charismatic intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles that's not to say I didn't throw myself enthusiastically into the degeneracy of all kinds in my private life I suppose I felt that's all I deserved I'd love to say it was all an act and I've been straight this whole time but even I don't have that kind of commitment to performance art Yiannopoulos describes himself as an action hero and claims his husband has been demoted to housemate and while he may have been complaining about his finances online previously in the interview he's suddenly fabulously wealthy again or trolling them it helps that I can still just about afford to keep him in Givenchy and a new Porsche every year could be worse for him I guess they say if you let one sin in others will follow and now I truly know what that means as I've begun to resist sinful sexual urges I've found myself drinking less smoking less you name it I confess my weakness for designer shoes and handbags is yet to dissipate Yiannopoulos added Yiannopoulos has tried to make his life performance art but is the religious right gullible enough to give him a second act and the answer to that question is yes do we think that folks who subscribe to a religious book which pretends that talking snakes are a real thing wouldn't think that he's being serious here like you have to be inherently gullible to subscribe to religion in the first place so I think it's pretty obvious that they're going to run with this and if they can if he like actually tries to prolong this grift this ex gay act that he's on they're going to try to like prop him up as an example that they can use as evidence that homosexuality is a choice if they're still like going on about that but I think that like that ship has sailed they've lost the culture where the culture war with regard to that issue and I think now they've kind of just moved on to attacking trans people but whether or not I believe that Milo Yiannopoulos is serious about being ex gay I have two responses to that the first is shorjan and the second is a quote from another far right grifter Candace Owens I don't believe this like at all just so you know so needless to say he's very clearly full of shit like the things that he says here no no like serious person would say so like he got married and he's demoted his husband to housemate but he is still living with you and you're trying to keep him happy by buying him cars and things like that doesn't make sense if you were truly committed to the ex gay lifestyle wouldn't you divorce your husband because being married to someone of the same sex is inherently sinful I mean wouldn't you fully commit like it's such a lazy grift at this point that I don't even know how committed he is to it I think it'll depend like how much attention he receives from this that will determine how much like he really like dives in and goes all in on this thing but honestly I thought that Dave Rubin would be the one that would do this first like do this ex gay grift first but of course it's Milo Yiannopoulos because I think that he's even more craven than Dave Rubin in terms of like gay conservatives who really want attention but you know for him to say look since I've stopped sinning and presumably like being intimate with my husband I've stopped smoking and drinking but yet of course you know I still have a weakness for designer shoes and handbags okay totally straight so like he very clearly is homosexual you know he's embraced his inner fabulousness to an extent that you know it was great as like a little shtick I'm the gay MAGA guy ha ha look at me but that kind of is boring it's tired now like the MAGA crowd has moved on you're no longer amusing to them they've disregarded you they've canceled you so now he's trying to find some way to get back in their good graces and now he is he's resorting to this again I don't know like if he's really going to commit to this new grift but if he is it could be lucrative it could be lucrative but I don't something tells me like he's just like talking sht like he's not actually committed either way it doesn't matter but I think that this really it's important because it speaks to just how desperate right-wingers are like he was a very visible Trump supporter and what was he known for was he known for like any particular policy nothing he was known for being like that really loud and obnoxious dude and he didn't like talk about policies he didn't try to promote any sort of political ideas he just like tried to be overly offensive and get as much attention as possible but my lineopolis isn't that different than other conservatives like if you look to even Ben Shapiro who's supposed to be the cool kid's philosopher who's supposed to actually be like a conservative intellectual when does he actually ever talk about policies when does he actually talk about the things that he advocates for like most of the time it's outraged because of some pop culture issue Cardi B made a song called WAP that was offensive to him or like Cartoon Network is showing anti-racist cartoons to children like this is all surface level culture war bullshit like they have nothing these are vapid individuals they have no substance whatsoever tune in to Dave Rubin for like 10 minutes and you will lose so many brain cells they don't care about anything it's all about self-aggrandizement so like this is just some insight like maybe not as a brazen like the others aren't as brazen as my lineopolis but it's it's very clear that right wing political commentators they don't actually stand for anything they don't care for anything unless it's lazy surface level culture war issues and that's it but really what they crave is attention they don't have really strong beliefs about politics like to them they just want to make money and they will say and do whatever gets them to that goal of making more money whereas on the left we actually care about political issues we actually talk about things like a living wage Medicare for all tackling climate change we talk about science as it relates to COVID-19 like we actually have substance but you see if you're substantive that's a little bit boring but if you're a grifter if you're outrageous if you make ridiculous comments and say idiotic things that gets you not only attention but if you are like desperate enough you could be propped up by the right who will fund you who likes you being a gay person who they will use to drive hatred against other gay people and as a gay person let you attack trans people or if you're a black person they'll make you attack black people and say bad things about black lives matter like this is what conservatives have been doing and unfortunately there's enough useful idiots like Nala Unopolis and Dave Rubin to where this grift is incredibly lucrative and folks like Milo Unopolis like he kind of like takes the mask off of this entire right-wing grift so I find this absolutely hilarious I don't think this is gonna last long because being ex-gay is not a thing like you can't just like choose to change your sexuality like that not possible so we'll just see like how far he goes down this rabbit hole how much he's willing to commit again I think it's gonna entirely hinge on like how lucrative this grift is but if it does make him a lot of money and give him a lot of attention then he'll go all in but if not he'll abandon this like the minute he finds something else that might actually get him more money and more attention the house has approved the senate's version of Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and it is now officially headed to his desk and he's expected to sign it this Friday so I want to talk through some of the key provisions here this is a gigantic bill so we obviously can't cover all of it but I want to talk about the good the shortcomings and what this bill could have been if progressives in Congress actually held their ground so here's what's in the bill that I think you might want to know about as Sahil Kapoor of NBC News explains it includes $1,400 stimulus checks not the $2,000 stimulus checks that Joe Biden promised $300 a week jobless benefits for those on unemployment insurance $3,000 to $3,600 in cash for kids $34 billion for affordable care act subsidies 100% for Cobra subsidies $350 billion for state and local aid $14 billion for vaccine distribution and $25 billion for rental aid and this may not apply to you but it is important to know Jeff Stein from The Washington Post points out if you have a baby any time in 2021 you qualify for the $1,400 per kid once you file your 2022 tax returns this is what an aide told him now not included in this bill is a moratorium on evictions but Joe Biden can actually do that via executive order so I don't necessarily think that that is make or break but what is disappointing is the lack of any student debt cancellation whatsoever and there is no $15 an hour minimum wage it was removed because Democrats want it removed you know who now this comes at a time when it is desperately needed as soon as possible because Jeff Stein adds over seven days at the end of February 14% of adults with kids did not have enough to eat now by contrast over the full 12 months of 2019 only 4% of adults with kids reported not having enough to eat but here's how the bill can help so overall it's projected to lower poverty by 5% so poverty falls by 42% for black Americans 39% for Hispanic Americans and 34% for white Americans now I would argue that in the richest country on the planet we can afford easily to fully eradicate poverty and also include an extra $100 per week to people on unemployment so that way instead of getting 300 they're getting 400 we can include a $15 an hour minimum wage so you know obviously there could have been more but still I don't want to detract from what this bill does because it does actually do a lot and Matt Brunig who is a trusted leftist he actually believes that this bill at least ideologically speaking is a watershed moment when it comes to the fight against poverty and he explains why that's the case particularly as it relates to the temporary change to the child tax credit and earned income tax credit he writes the earned income tax credit was reformed as follows the maximum benefit for childless EITC was increased from $543 to $1500 eligibility for the earned income tax credit was expanded from ages 25 to 64 to ages 19 and above the child tax credit was reformed as follows the maximum benefit was increased from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for children below the age of 6 and $3,000 for children ages 6 and above the child tax credit benefit phase in which excluded the poorest children from the benefit was eliminated these reforms contain a major ideological watershed in eliminating the child tax credit benefit phase in we finally overcame the 25-year bipartisan consensus that held that very poor people should not be eligible for cash benefits arguably we overcame that consensus last year when the first two rounds of stimulus checks were available for the first time to the poorest Americans but those checks did not get scanned in the political discourse as being a revolution in welfare estate thinking while the child tax credit reform even though it is also just for one year did get scanned that way so even though this is just a temporary change set to expire what he's arguing is that this does basically amount to a paradigm shift in the way that we think about these sort of things because the poorest children were excluded because there was always this mindset in DC that if you give the poorest people this benefit well we're kind of like incentivizing bad behavior we're incentivizing laziness when they should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps like we've heard the arguments on Fox News but what Matt Brunig is saying is that this bill for the first time in a very long time actually changes that way of thinking and we kind of saw the way that this played out when Roe Kahn made his speech on the House floor basically making this argument this bill is historic because it buries the myth that the cause of childhood poverty is a lack of character or a lack of hard work or a lack of love the bill affirms the simple truth that the cause of poverty is a lack of income to cover basic necessities no child in America should be deprived of food of medicine of clothing or of education because of the accident of birth that is what this bill stands for it represents and marks an ideological revolution on behalf of justice so that is really encouraging to see and this bill does have some much needed relief to people who desperately needed now again the $1400 direct cash payments should have been $2,000 because that's exactly what Joe Biden and Democrats promised and there should have been a lot more there should have been the $15 an hour minimum wage but the reason why there wasn't more I would argue is because progressives they didn't do enough they pushed back they sent a letter to Joe Biden demanding that he include the $15 an hour minimum wage but they didn't actually flex their muscles in the way that conservative Democrats did so as Breonna Joy-Gray points out thinking about how Joe Manchin is willing to take public heat and withhold his vote to hurt millions of Americans but progressives won't withhold their votes to get millions of Americans a $15 an hour minimum wage and she's exactly correct here she's exactly correct had progressives in the House of Representatives withheld their vote for this bill and refused to support it if it did not include a $15 an hour minimum wage then that could have elevated this issue if they actually made their demands then imagine like the even bigger difference that this bill would have made materially on people's lives a $15 an hour minimum wage would have given millions of Americans a much needed increase in their wages so I would argue that progressives should have withheld their votes refused to support this legislation if they didn't get what they demanded now the counter argument to this is well I mean we we saw the stats we see how many people are suffering we know that direct cash payments and relief is needed like right this second so isn't it immoral to potentially like postpone this bill to get your demand and I would argue one that's a flawed way of thinking because that shifts the culpability away from the conservative Democrats Joe Manchin Kirsten Sinema who denied this in the first place and furthermore this is basically a now or never moment for the $15 an hour minimum wage because if you try to pass it with 60 votes that's not going to happen you could barely get 50 votes 51 votes if we include Kamala Harris to pass this legislation to pass a $15 an hour minimum wage so if you don't put it in a must pass bill a bill that all Democrats want even conservative Democrats you're not going to get a $15 an hour minimum wage increase and that's an issue progressives didn't put up a big enough fight they didn't use the leverage that they have you know it didn't take very many progressives to be able to block this legislation but they chose not to do that they got rolled I mean conservative Democrats got what they wanted whereas progressive Democrats did not get what they wanted and again I don't want to accuse them of being bad people because they did see the need in getting this out immediately but the issue is they're never going to be able to actually have a say or dictate policy outcomes they'll never have any input whatsoever and conservative Democrats will have all of the input in the world when it comes to these pieces of legislation if they don't actually bind together and get more savvy and play politics but again it's tough to do that when you know what's at stake so whatever the next piece of legislation that is going to be passed using budget reconciliation comes up if they're serious about the $15 an hour minimum wage they can't not play hardball here they can't not block the legislation outright otherwise we're not going to get a $15 an hour minimum wage and look in 2021 $15 an hour is wholly insufficient it needs to be $20 $25 an hour at this point so we have to at a minimum get a $15 an hour minimum wage and that requires progress is actually fighting other Democrats because as it stands now the balance of power in Congress tips heavily in favor of individuals like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and that is because they play hardball they'll block legislation and refuse to support legislation that Joe Biden is pushing if they don't get what they want so I think that progressives need to learn from the conservative Democrats when it comes to their tactics and try to replicate that in the House where they actually do have a lot more progressives who support really bold policy like $15 an hour minimum wage so overall this is important legislation it's desperately needed it funds state and local governments it provides survival checks to people even though it should be $2,000 and overall it's good it tackles poverty it really will make a material difference in people's lives in a really concrete way and that matters but it could have been better and we have to remember this and grow learn from this experience and the shortcomings of this bill and try to tweak our approach for progressives in Congress to actually use the leverage that we have to improve this bill and improve the lives of Americans and I'll leave that there Representative Katie Porter is very quickly going up in my book she has managed to consistently draw attention to issues that I think more Americans need to pay attention to and she holds executives and CEOs accountable in a way that we haven't really seen in a while from other members of Congress I mean of course the squad and leftists elected they do hold CEOs and big business officials accountable but Katie Porter really is she's doing a really good job at like specifically holding them accountable but also educating the American populace about the injustices that their companies are actually causing so I want to talk about the COVID vaccine because in a recent Axios interview the CEO of Pfizer was pressed on why wealthy countries are receiving so many vaccine doses while underdeveloped more poor countries haven't even gotten their first doses yet and furthermore he was asked about the $20 per dose price tag that he's charging the United States which is a price tag obviously that's too high for any country let alone impoverished ones and he said quote it will be terrible for society unquote if cost prohibits people from getting the vaccine but he assures us that we have to make sure that we take action to stop that from happening if only there was something that you could do as the CEO of the company that is selling this vaccine to governments and look if we only vaccinate developed country citizens then guess what's going to happen the pandemic is not going to go away because so long as it exists that it's going to increase the likelihood of different mutations popping up which could actually make the vaccines less effective could be more resistant to the vaccines so obviously as a species human beings we all need to make sure that everyone is vaccinated and equitability in vaccinations is really important but as he talks about like wanting to make sure that cost isn't going to prohibit people from getting the vaccine I mean really he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth because he actually has already made it very clear that they're going to be raising the cost of the COVID vaccine and as Katie Porter points out via Twitter big pharma hypocrisy alert while Pfizer CEO does this PR tour his chief financial officer telling investors they're obviously going to hike the price American taxpayers already paid billions to develop this vaccine it should be free and she adds and yes I have the receipts here quote on an earnings call earlier this month chief financial officer Frank D'Amelio said that obviously the company is going to get more on price so I mean this is very clearly hypocritical on one hand he knows it would be terrible if the cost prohibited people from getting the vaccine but on another hand they're telling investors yeah we're definitely going to raise the price because they want to make money and that is egregious because your tax dollars funded this vaccine so this shouldn't be something that they can profit off of but that's exactly what they're going to do because Pfizer doesn't actually care about getting people vaccinated they care about making a profit they have a fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value not to stop the pandemic so what do you think they're going to prioritize they're going to prioritize making lots and lots of money and I mean if this doesn't show you how disgusting capitalism is how incompatible with humanity capitalism is then nothing else will now I want to shift gears because Katie Porter also drew attention to a different issue now there was a hearing for the natural resources subcommittee and she was speaking to an oil executive and he said something where I don't remember what he said specifically we'll watch it here but he basically tried to pretend as if the fossil fuel industry isn't receiving subsidies from the government her response was great she high-key demolished him they're estimated to be between 60 to 90% of the costs of drilling how much of those intangible drilling costs do you get to deduct right away from your taxes we get to deduct all of those just like any other business we do not how much do you get to deduct there seems to be a misconception out there that you're operating from that somehow the oil and gas industry benefits from some special sort of tax structure we don't we actually we actually reclaiming my time Mr. Murphy the electric industry brought I will follow up with you Mr. Murphy but you do benefit from special rules there's a special tax rule for intangible drilling costs that does not apply to other kinds of expenses that businesses have you get to deduct 70% of your costs immediately and other businesses have to amortize their expenses over their entire profit stream we we also so please don't please don't patronize me by telling me of the oil and gas industry doesn't have any special tax provisions because if you would like that to be the rule I would be happy to have Congress deliver I yield back that's so good that is so good I love that like she doesn't take any bullshit she reminds me of like a new and improved Elizabeth Warren I am a little bit upset that she didn't endorse Bernie Sanders during the 2020 primaries but I can put all of that aside because what she's doing now like elevating these issues letting people know what's happening how you know corporate America has taken advantage of you that's really important like she is providing you with a public service and you know it should be the mainstream media that is trying to draw your attention to these issues but instead we have a lawmaker who's doing the job of the mainstream media and that's not to say that all media is bad because I think that the reporter in that Axios interview did a phenomenal job at pressing the CEO of Pfizer but what we need to see is more pushback we need to specifically tiling between the greed of corporate America and the way that that is detrimental to the health and safety of Americans and that's really all that I will say I just wanted to highlight these really good things that Katie Porter is elevating because I think that these are issues that people need to know about the covid vaccine is incredibly important and we have to know that fossil fuel industry executives they're not only taking welfare from the government getting socialism corporate socialism but they're trying to lie about it don't let them fool you that is bullshit well it turns out that some of the resistance liberals that you argued with on twitter who likely called you a Russian troll these folks might actually be paid trolls themselves at least one of them is because a gigantic resistance liberal twitter account brooklyn dad defiant he's a paid operative for the democratic party you can't make this shit up gotcha bitch so it seems like all of the bashing of bernie sanders during the primary the attempt to discredit tar read joe biden's accuser has paid off because it ended up landing him a position at a super PAC that is incredibly lucrative for this individual it pays to be loyal to the democratic party apparently now he does disclose in his twitter bio that he's the senior advisor to really american and as far as the way back machine goes which is to november of 2020 it does show that he did disclose this back then as well so we don't necessarily know how long this affiliation has been intact but very clearly this is something that a lot of people did not know about now this isn't necessarily surprising because everything that he says and does you know it really points to him being some sort of like a literal paid shill having said that though there's a lot of questions like there's there's not a lot that we can definitively say but here's what we do know as beth lynch points out on twitter he received 57 thousand dollars from the really american PAC so it's obvious that there is a financial incentive there at a minimum for him to say the things that he says and this really is something that like i'm not accusing him of committing any illegal activities here but i will say that this is very obviously unethical so as a youtuber if i were to say advertise nike for example or ipad if i were to do that oh i just activated siri if i were to do that and you didn't know that i was getting paid by apple to advertise their products that would be pretty immoral that would be really unethical and fraudulent so on youtube if we were to do an advertisement we would have to explicitly state that we are getting paid to say the things that we're saying about said product we are legally required to do that in fact there is this gigantic scandal i think with kim Kardashian where she was promoting products on instagram and wasn't fully disclosing that she was getting paid to advertise these particular products so this might not necessarily be like a one-to-one comparison here but all of the ethical questions here are present and this is just extremely fucked up and gets you to wonder like how many people how many of these resistance liberals who argue with progressives and bashed bernie sanders how many of them are also on the payroll of some democratic party super PAC so for more on this we got a lydia wang of refinery 29 who writes with nearly 900,000 followers majid paddlin known as brooklyn dad defiant or just brooklyn dad is one of twitter's most vocal supporters of joe biden it comes with some confusion though as the account prides itself on being a whistleblower and steadfast liberal but during the past election cycle paddlin received backlash from leftists for among other things urging bernie sanders to drop out of the presidential race and discrediting tara reads allegations of sexual assault now he's facing renewed backlash amid revelations that he accepted tens of thousands in donations from a democratic PAC on tuesday several tweets began circulating with evidence that really american a pro biden PAC paid brooklyn dad nearly $60,000 in 2020 in his bio he says that he works for the PAC as a senior advisor but many users began arguing that major democratic donors are paying him to espouse certain opinions and theories with his large following since biden took off his paddlin has continuously tweeted out his support for the new administration and defended the president from criticism surrounding the rollout of stimulus checks the fact that he hasn't yet held a solo press conference and more the controversy's grimest implication of course relates to brooklyn dad's most questionable tweets his criticisms of reed and his since-deleted suggestions that governor andrew quomo who has been accused of sexual harassment might be the victim of a smear campaign although paddlin often rightfully calls out donald trump in the GOP for their abuse of policies and personal behavior he's been criticized for failing to hold other democrats accountable for the same things and now we know why now we know why now it could very well be the case that at some point before he had this in his bio he disclosed that he was working for the really american packer was a senior advisor getting paid from them but the question is like how far should someone go to disclose a very obvious and problematic conflict of interest so like let's go back to the example of me like advertising for apple which i'm not by the way and would never do if i were advertising you know how phenomenal the ipad is and i use it for every single show but i only put like that disclosure that i'm getting paid by apple in my description box would many people see it would many people know about this conflict of interest am i being explicit enough like there's a reason why where if you see an advertisement on another youtube channel they're going to very explicitly point out multiple times usually that this is an advertisement because if they do not do that they are breaking the law like i watched a lot of gaming channels and sometimes they'll advertise like apps or they'll advertise like a particular game or product from a gaming company or third party you know um accessory for the nintendo switch if they do not put in their video both in text and audio that this is an advertisement then they could get into trouble for that so i mean what's the standard here for twitter i mean this is someone who very clearly has a gigantic following he has almost 90 or 900 excuse me thousand followers on twitter that's more than all of my accounts combined my twitter facebook youtube he's way bigger than me so if i were to do something like this i would expect pushback i would expect to be called out if i were to do an advertisement i would know to be explicit about you know the financial incentive that i have to say the things that i say so why does this individual get to get away with this when what he does is a lot more detrimental to society because it has has political implications like to impugn the character of someone who is sharing their me2 story tar read that's really disgusting now again i don't know if he's getting paid specifically to put out individual tweets like are they saying hey tweet this bad thing about bernie sanders i don't necessarily know but the financial link that he has that in and of itself is a huge issue and as journalist walker braggman points out political operatives should have to disclose their affiliations on social media that's my feeling on this brooklyn dad situation online astroturfing is a problem even when it's not russian he made more than fifty seven thousand dollars in six months from the super pack that's more than most journalists i know that's upsetting all really american pack does is make shitty ads they don't seem to have a lot of viewership either this ted cruise ad has three thousand views now the question is like if the ads that the super pack is putting out isn't actually generating that many eyeballs then it can't be bringing in that much revenue organically right so how are they getting all this money well like all super packs it's being funded by big donors and as walker braggman points out going through really american packs big donors i've already found a healthcare CEO and a hedge fund partner and i know that it's not just occurring on the democratic party side there's a lot of paid shills on the republican party side as well but when you are trying to influence leftist and democratic party politics and you're getting paid to do that you have that financial incentive that's obviously an issue it's unethical so this goes back to the question like what should we expect from folks and as panaceas points out there's a difference between acknowledging you're a senior advisor to a pack and disclosing that you're being paid to influence american voters on social media every tweet and the profile should include a paid advertisement disclaimer and you might think that that is a little bit too far but that's what we'd have to do for youtube videos now whether or not you can compare a youtube video to an individual tweet i don't know if you can do that but what's very obvious is that this shill should have made it abundantly clear that he was getting paid either to say the things that he said or had a financial incentive to say the things that he said that is a lot of money $57,000 in six months come on man we don't have all of the details about his relationship specifically and what they paid him for we can't say we can't prove there's no evidence to say at this point as i know that he was paid to tweet but this conflict of interest is obviously troubling and this isn't the first time that the democratic party has tried to you know disperse shills into social media in order to tip the discourse in their favor back in 2016 let me remind you that david brock he put down $1 million for online paid trolls to defend hillary clinton against what he deemed were attacks from bernie sanders supporters so i mean i don't know what's left to say again there's a lot of things that we don't know here with regard to like his relationship specifically but what we do now as of now don't know when specifically he started to point out the fact that he is affiliated with the super PAC we know that he's a paid shill and the things that he says online on his gigantic platform are influenced by the fact that he's getting money to promote the democratic party and joe biden that is um not shocking to say the least but nonetheless uh we still have to call it out because this is disgusting like you're poisoning political discourse because you want to make money and lots of money and it's it's really lucrative apparently to be a paid shill for the democratic party but that doesn't mean that you should get a pass and if you have a gigantic platform like that then i think that you should be a lot more responsible not only in the way that you engage in a political discourse but in the way that you like tell people what you're about in your disclosures of your relationships with the democratic party so whenever the discussion of the wealth tax comes up you can already anticipate CNBC having like a week's worth of meltdowns and they may even invite on a billionaire or two who will literally cry on national television at the mere thought of the wealth tax it's not like it has any chance of passing in the near future but just the thought that anyone would want a wealth tax and that any politician would propose this is enough to bring at least one billionaire to tears I'm of course dunking on Leon Kooperman because I think that we should make fun of him for the rest of his pathetic life having said that though Anand Giridharidas was on CNBC and the host was pressing him to explain why he would support the wealth tax when it very obviously is nothing more than a war on the wealthy it's a war on the rich why would you do this why would you penalize a minority in this country target them when there are other ways to accomplish your goal what Anand did here was just phenomenal you're in favor of Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax in fact you make the argument that the numbers that she throws out may be too low when others come on this network who've done quite well for themselves and who are quite generous in their own right and say there are just better ways of doing things why bog down the system with something new if you want to raise more taxes from the wealthy who by the way come on this network all the time and say the wealthy should pay more there are just better ways to do it close loopholes raise the capital gains tax why a wealth tax which seems to be a war on the wealthy it's not a war on the wealthy when regular people across this country pay property taxes on their house which is a tax on their wealth not their income no one calls that a war on them it just so happens that very rich people have most of their wealth in things other than one home and a wealth tax is far from a war the war if anything has been waged punching down on the middle class and working class and poor people of this country for a generation the idea that a wealth tax is an act of hostility or is an act of vengeance when it's in fact an act of sound economic policy is laughable and I'll explain there's an economic rationale for it which is that it would be great to have that money lying around to actually reinvest in the commons which has been defanged defunded and delegitimize in this country in child care universal child care in health care in education things like that but there's a second reason Scott which is there is actually and I know this is CNBC but even without the funding issue there is actually an argument to be made that there is a certain level of absolute wealth beyond which people are simply just by breathing too powerful to exist in a democracy that still thinks it's a democracy because simply by acting spending that money they are exerting power that is inconsistent with one person one vote I think Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax is a great idea Bernie Sanders had a great proposal for a short term pandemic one a more general I know you think it's a great idea I think all of them are too small we need an erosive wealth tax that would shrink those fortunes and put some eros back in the economy so I don't have much to add because I think that Anand did a phenomenal job here but I do have a couple more points that I want to put into supplement his argument first of all he talks about how look I bring on billionaires on my program and they all tell me the same thing that they think that they're paying you know too low of taxes they want their taxes to be increased so why would you pursue this wealth tax that just seems like overly confiscatory and just punitive first of all let me just say that that CNBC host should be ashamed of himself like what a fucking bootlicker like this goes beyond bootlicking like he's deep-throating the boot he's choking on the boot and he should be embarrassed with himself but I mean here's the thing that he should be asking his billionaire guests why is it that you store your wealth on offshore bank accounts why is it that in the event we were to pass more taxes on you you just hire more lawyers to your already gigantic team to find ways to exploit the tax code like you say one thing but you do another it's almost like you're full of shit and that the wealth tax actually would meaningfully take the wealth that you own away from you I mean CNBC is a network by and for elites but even they have to feel bad with how disingenuous they are and it's funny like when they actually talk to someone who knows his shit they have no response so if it is the case that we accept that the wealth tax is a war on the wealthy war on the rich then why don't we call property taxes the same thing why is it that all of a sudden we're changing the language that we use when it comes to wealth owned by billionaires but most working class and middle class Americans if they're going to own any wealth it's going to be in a home so that property tax you're not crying over that but you're crying over the wealth tax of like two percent give me a fucking break give me a fucking break so that was a phenomenal point that Anand brought up there and you know this prospect of oh well there's this war on the rich that you want to wage he makes it seem as if that's bad but a war on the rich that's like a good thing you shouldn't mention it because that's a really good idea actually if you don't want war on the rich because what the rich has done throughout the past decades is they've waged a war on the poor they've effectively shifted the tax burden away from them and on to the working class and look what that has done in America look what that's done to society so for you to make it seem as if it's inherently bad to wage a war against elites we absolutely should be targeting them going after them and bullying them because what they've done to American society is unacceptable and you can make the case that you shouldn't go after individuals and that institutions are more important sure that's fine I hear you but Anand also makes the point that when we are in a capitalist system to have wealth you have power if you have that much wealth there's a reason why policy outcomes reflect elites and special interests and not working class Americans this is according to a 2014 Princeton University study by Dr. Gilans and Page it's because they have money to buy politicians lobby the government get what they want whereas working Americans they can't do that so in a capitalist society wealth equals power so it's not just that they have too much wealth and the distribution needs to change it's that that much wealth is not conducive to a healthy democracy and Anand makes the point that you know if we take the money that these elites have and don't need with this wealth tax we could then redistribute those resources to fund better public programs except you don't even have to do that like modern monetary theorists would argue that you don't even have to tax the rich in order to you know fund social safety net programs but I would argue that you can make that case if you think it's more persuasive and you're going to like convince more people but the key issue here is that wealth equals power in a capitalist society and to be a billionaire means that you have an inordinate amount of power it's not just one person one vote any longer like this has broader implications on democracy and if you truly care about democracy then you can't also simultaneously support the existence of billionaires because billionaires have more power than the working class and normal americans and the power level must be equal if you truly want a democratic society so that's all I'll say I'll leave that there I think that we should all save this clip from Anand because he showed us exactly what we have to say to dispute the wealth tax it's not like arguing against it is hard anyway because like they don't really have an argument it's just hey you're being mean to the rich stop discriminating and being begetted against rich people wealth is under attack but like this really it like it takes it to the next level like Anand here shows how foolish their argument against the wealth tax really is and it's just it's brilliant I want to play a clip featuring Dave Rubin because I think it is perfect at demonstrating precisely why conservatives and republicans always hyper focus on like the surface level culture war nonsense issues and it's because their policies are incredibly unpopular like imagine if they try to sell you their agenda based on the economics of it if they said hey how would you like it if we gave tax breaks to the rich and never raised the minimum wage and busted up unions like the American people wouldn't like that and even when they try to make like an economic appeal to Americans working Americans it doesn't land it's disingenuous so what they usually do is try to cultivate goodwill by focusing on the issues that are more relatable so you know if you like Dr. Seuss then they're going to spend an entire week screaming about how Dr. Seuss was canceled what an actuality the company itself decided to pull six books so Dave Rubin is going to attempt to make an actual economic appeal to Americans to get them to be conservative so he's going to give us some insight this is the argument that he uses that he thinks might actually persuade people particularly college students who are more liberal more leftist oriented so we're going to watch this this might work on you according to him and then when we come back we'll determine whether or not this argument is persuasive but there are a couple techniques you can use I would say it's very hard to to get them to join you or to listen to you if you're just rubbing them with facts it's very hard to do what you can do is you can turn some of this on them so one thing that I found is at least somewhat effective when I go to colleges before I do anything I'll say you know does anyone in this room have it worse than their grandparents? Good question and if you live in the west especially if you live in the United States but I suspect it's very very similar here and in most western countries you have it way better than your grandparents in many cases your grandparents were immigrants who came with nothing that's obviously a very consistent thing that's happened in the United States or certainly maybe your great grandparents or whatever but you know they had to live through war and famine and all sorts of you know all sorts of things it's very rare that if you live in the United States that your grandparents who were alive in say the 30s and 40s and 50s had it better than you and if they did they were probably oil tycoons or something and then if they have it better than you that means that the family lost the money over generations which the left would love because they don't want to keep accumulated wealth I love how at the end there he just pretended as if dynastic wealth isn't a thing when it's quite literally linked to record high income and wealth inequality I mean what a joke so you've seen the clip this is the argument that he uses that he thinks might work are you persuaded are you a conservative now did that one question that he thinks is very persuasive actually change your mind of course it didn't because that actually is going to hurt his case if you actually think and you're a young college student am I doing better than my grandparents the answer is an unequivocal no see when your grandparents were in college they weren't burdened with student debt for the rest of their lives and if they took out student loans they could pay it off easily over a summer working at McDonald's and on top of that they can buy a house buy a car support an entire family all on one income whereas nowadays that's not possible you need two incomes to really get by and actually earn a living and there are all these other costs associated with two parents working I mean daycare there's so many obstacles that prevent people from actually earning comparably as much as their grandparents earned that for him to say that it shows how out of touch he is because he's a multimillionaire because he bought a mansion and he is doing better than his grandparents he's thinking look things are better now I'm doing better economically than the last generation than the rest of my family so it must be the case that everybody else is doing better as well except that shows that you're out of touch Dave not everyone is doing better not everyone can become a multimillionaire by being a gay republican congratulations you're a token gay republican who bashes gay and trans people like enables their bigotry gives don jr permission to use gay stores against you and you were able to find that to be lucrative but that's not going to be something that most people most young people are going to be able to do as a career path he says here it's very hard to get them to join you or listen to you if you're just scrubbing them with facts yeah I wonder why you'd say that it's almost as if you don't know any facts and that the facts of the matter the objective empirical facts aren't very helpful to conservatives now there is some truth to what he's saying if we are more charitable in that people oftentimes will respond more with like an emotional argument if you make an appeal to emotions but what's the emotional argument that conservatives make well they'll say look I mean the left wants to cancel you they want to get rid of Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head whereas the actual emotional argument that the left makes is that hey people are dying every single year because they don't have healthcare they can't afford their insulin they can't afford to see a doctor this is absolutely egregious it can happen to anyone maybe we should have medicare for all so even our emotional appeals are actually founded in reality whereas when the right makes emotional appeals it's hysterical it's nonsense completely bombastic and idiotic he also argues that your grandparents had it worse because they had to live through war and famine as if that's not something that this current generation is living through zoomers who were born at the start of the iraq war are now quite literally old enough to fight in it themselves and sure like worldwide there's been improvements in the standard of living but you also have to understand that your grandparents have a privilege that none of us will have millennials and zoomers will not have the privilege of growing old and not being too affected by climate change I mean we're already seeing the effects of climate change and certain communities around the world they're already seeing it but basically if you're old now you can kind of live a relatively normal life but when we're old when we're living out our golden years we may very literally see wars over water because of climate change that's also a luxury that our grandparents had have now that we won't have so for him to say this like there's so many reasons why our grandparents had it better than us and the main one if you're trying to appeal to economic arguments is the New Deal something that Dave Rubin is against neoliberals in both parties the Democratic Party and the Republican Party destroyed the New Deal reforms unions their prominence has gone down significantly and as a result the working class is struggling the middle class is disappearing altogether so if your entire pitch to young people is hey think about like whether or not you're doing better than your grandparents you're not going to persuade anyone sure there are generational differences when it comes to technology we have computers now we have smartphones and that is an improvement but if you're actually trying to make an economic argument then you're only going to get them to think about how fucked they are in comparison with their parents and their grandparents so this is why Republicans have to remain hyper-focused on these weird wedge issues and cultural issues because without that they couldn't persuade regular people because nobody wants to see more tax cuts for the rich when you look at public opinion polls Americans by and large agree with the left on policies they want to see an increase to the minimum wage they want to see legalized nationwide they want to see a single pair Medicare for all healthcare system but when it comes to like the right your ideas are unpopular you've got nothing so you have to either focus on cultural war issues or lie about your economic agenda and pretend as if you're for the working class while every single Republican votes against a $15 an hour minimum wage and what was it like only five Republicans in the house joined with the Democratic Party to pass the proact which would help people form unions it's just it's laughable but I'm glad that Dave Rubin is sharing his insight into how the right recruits because I don't think we have much to be concerned with when it comes to their economic arguments because this is not very persuasive to say the very least so Tucker Carlson took a break from spreading conspiracy theories about George Floyd's death and he is now going to mock the existence of pregnant women in the military which is weird to me because if you're a right winger then I was told you're supposed to support the troops at all costs and even perhaps like worship them nonetheless Tucker Carlson is going to mock pregnant women serving in the military pretty explicitly so we've got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits pregnant women are going to fight our wars it's a mockery of the U.S. military well China's military becomes more masculine as it's assembled the world's largest navy our military needs to become as Joe Biden says more feminine whatever feminine means anymore since men and women no longer exist the bottom line is it's out of control and the Pentagon is going along with this again this is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission which is winning wars okay listen let's let's accept all of his arguments for a moment let's accept let's play devil's advocate here let's accept that he's correct and that women who are pregnant serving in the military and women in general serving in the military let's extend that trans people in the military it is bad because it makes the military more feminine which reduces military readiness let's accept that that is true as someone who is supposedly anti-war and we all know that that's that's false because Tucker Carlson supported the Iraq war but he cosplays and larps as someone who's anti-war on his platform isn't that a good thing isn't the United States military being less ready less capable if you will isn't that good because wouldn't that reduce our ability to wage wars that are never ending isn't that good like by the standards of someone who is supposed to be anti-war now of course it's bullshit this absolutely does not reduce military readiness the United States military is the most powerful largest military in the history of the fucking human species so of course pregnant women serving isn't going to make the military any less capable like whoever thinks that is a fucking clown but even by his own standards if this makes our military less effective shouldn't that be good because isn't it bad that we're waging all of these wars I mean he says that it's a mockery that women are serving who are pregnant in the military that's a mockery to Tucker Carlson a so-called anti-war advocate but it's not a mockery that we're literally occupying multiple countries perhaps indefinitely isn't it a mockery that we invaded Iraq and the babies who were born when we invaded Iraq are now old enough to serve in that same war isn't that a mockery to Tucker Carlson like if you're an anti-war advocate I wouldn't necessarily be too concerned with the readiness of our military right because our military is capable of like destroying the entire planet if it wants to so I'm not concerned with that as an anti-war advocate a true anti-war advocate I'm more concerned with what the military does not who serves but Tucker Carlson is a fucking clown and he even scoffs at the new hairstyles and maternity flight suits as if that's so bad who cares new hairstyles that the military allows so they are accommodating women and black women who wear their hairs in different styles than white women and men who cares why does that matter to you like I don't understand I'm failing to see how this is relevant to any political issue at all it seems like you're literally just sexist like and I very rarely resort to like identity politics name calling but like what else is this like you just don't want pregnant women to serve so like the military should discriminate against pregnant women is that what you're saying like this is such a stupid thing to talk about like you have the largest platform in the entire country and you are choosing to mock pregnant women what a fucking clown who cares yes pregnant women can serve in the military they're human beings they're capable of serving like I just I don't understand what he expects like what would appease you banning pregnant women from serving in the military and also he compares the U.S. military to China's military and he implies that China's military is stronger than ours because they're more masculine they're becoming more masculine whereas our military is becoming more feminine that's what Joe Biden is advocating for so China's military is better than ours based on their masculinity except does masculinity and femininity really matter when we're talking about like dropping bombs carrying guns and using tanks is it going to do less damage if the drone pilot drops a bomb on you know a village in Pakistan if they do it like effeminately if they're like I don't understand I don't understand the argument that he's trying to make it's fucking stupid Tucker Carlson is a clown he's a clown so I don't know what's left to say I think that the clip speaks for itself Tucker Carlson does not believe pregnant women should serve in the military all right you know not the hill that I'd expect any serious person to want to die on but have at it so of course Fox News is still on their cancel culture kick and recently they brought on an expert that knows a lot about cancel culture I'm talking of course about Tulsi Gabbard and she knows a lot about cancel culture because she just tried to cancel trans people and abortions and BDS not too long ago so she knows what she's talking about so Trey Gowdy who is now a Fox News host brought her on to get her input and she says some really really silly things and she takes like the hysteria over cancel culture to the next level like levels that I didn't think were possible to the point where I'm actually impressed that she was able to make that large of a leap having said that though I don't want to start with the Tulsi clip I want to show you Trey Gowdy's little opener here because he honestly surprisingly enough he exhibited like some level of self-awareness that I didn't expect him to even be capable of so he asks some basic questions about cancel culture that I think that people who are interested in the subject should be asking take a look is it new or is it something that's been around for a long time and we just renamed it who gets to decide who or what is canceled it was the summer before I started the ninth grade when the movie Grease came out you may remember that movie Olivia Newton John and John Travolta so my mom decided she would take my three sisters and me to see the movie and we made it about 30 minutes into the movie when my mom leaned over and said we're leaving get your sisters we're leaving leaving you got to be kidding me Olivia Newton John hasn't even put on her black leather outfit yet you cannot be serious but my mom was serious she was very serious my entire school was in that movie theater that day it was so embarrassing I'm barely able to talk about it today my mom grabbing her four children and walking out my mom cancelled the rest of that movie for me and she was not the only parallel I had who engaged in cultural cancellation my three sisters and I could not watch happy days we could not watch Gilligan's Island or Sesame Street so you can forget about Dallas or Dynasty or Flamingo Road was that the cancel culture or was that my parents deciding they wanted to control what their children were exposed to and once I got married I actually came too long for my parents' rules on TV they were nothing compared to my wife's rules she could hear a bad word through three walls and a mute button I had to check into a hotel to watch True Detective and game of thrones she still doesn't know I watched that oh I guess now she does is that the cancel culture wait hang on hang on so you're telling me that this cancel culture phenomenon isn't actually new that it's been around for a long time and that the outrage over cancel culture is inorganic and even dare I say manufactured hmm interesting and it's funny that he brings up Greece because his mom not letting him watch Greece I mean I guess that you can say that that is an example of cancel culture it's weird that he would want to watch Greece like I remember when I was a kid my mom she let me pick out a movie it was a VHS tape of course because I am very old and it was between Greece and Aladdin II the return of Jafar and my mom really sold me on Greece like she was like look you have to get Greece there's lots of singing and music in it and I'm like I don't really want to hear singing and music and she's like no no no it's really you're gonna love it like it's super exciting so my mom sold me on Greece and then we took it home I bought it instead of Aladdin and I threw a fucking temper tantrum because I thought it was terrible and hated it so it's funny that he wanted to watch Greece that's neither here nor there I don't know if I got on that tangent it just made me think of that but I mean what he says here it is really it's interesting to me you don't really see that much introspection from people obsessed with cancel culture but really this is something that's always been around like evangelical Christians have tried to cancel every minority in in the United States you know gays they try to cancel interracial marriages now they're trying to cancel trans people so you know it's nice to see him use this anecdote because it shows that like this entire conversation that we're having it's not really anything new it's almost weird that all of a sudden this is what the right is choosing to focus on because they don't have any other ideas having said that though he brings on Tulsi Gabbard Tulsi Gabbard you know she takes things to the next level and somehow is even more bombastic and hysterical about this issue than Trey Gowdy of all people like I would not have expected Trey Gowdy to be the more reasonable one in a segment featuring Trey Gowdy and Tulsi Gabbard nonetheless here we are take a look at what she says is basically the logical conclusion of cancel culture tell me what the cancel culture is and why we should be concerned with it Well you rightly started this conversation talking about freedom when you look at the foundation of our democracy it is based on this ideal this principle of freedom freedom of speech freedom for every single one of us to be able to share our ideas and debate them to argue them to agree or to disagree to pick and choose in this marketplace of ideas those that we deem to be right or wrong to be superior or inferior and and even for those ideas that may be misleading or dangerous that in this free marketplace we have the right to then defeat those ideas with with superior ones and others have have the freedom to choose choose what they want to believe or not to believe or what they want to adhere to so when you look at this question what is cancel culture cancel culture is the opposite of this it is exactly the opposite of this foundational principle of our democracy it means that in a cancel culture you have some people who believe that they are special that they are superior that they have the power to be able to shut down those who have ideas and views that are different who who may follow a path that they deem to be the wrong path and will therefore say nope we're going to place obstacles in front of you we're going to silence certain voices so that only those who agree with us in the path that we deem to be right is the one that is before you to choose and and the issue with this there there's a few issues with the the main issue with this is when you look at our rights and freedoms and and our ability to to debate them and respectfully come out the other and agreeing or disagreeing as you and I have over the years it's based on the fact that we are all children of God and recognizing that we then treat each other with respect and respect this freedom that we have so let's look down the path and say okay well where does this cancel culture lead us you see the final expression of cancel culture in Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda who who who basically go and behead those who are in they deem to be infidels or or heretics in order to silence them in order to protect others from being misled by by those heretical ideas and in the eyes of an ISIS or al-Qaeda really Tulsi is that where you think all of this is headed you think that there's going to be like woke mobs who behead people if they misgender someone or you know use Latino or Latina in lieu of Latinx like is that honestly where you think this is headed okay we started with Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss and now we've arrived at this is going to be comparable to ISIS or something like I don't even understand the point that she's trying to make this is basically a non sequitur but she's really trying like she's trying so hard to convince Fox News's audience that this is serious so what's more serious than like a literal terrorist organization that beheads people if that doesn't get you to pay attention to how serious cancer culture is then nothing will so I mean she is uh she's getting the hang of uh how to do propaganda very interesting she also says when you look at the foundation of our democracy it is based on this ideal this principle of freedom unless of course you are a transgender individual who wants to participate in sports then you don't have the freedom to do that then Tulsi Gabbard is going to try to cancel you no no no Mike but she's talking about freedom of speech oh okay so she's specifically limiting this conversation to discussions about freedom of speech so when did Tulsi Gabbard of all people become the standard bearer for freedom of speech was it before or after she voted for apex resolution to condemn BDS like I'm trying to figure this out here because if you condemn BDS if you use your institutional power as a member of congress to condemn BDS which is a political movement then it doesn't seem to me like we should be taking what you have to say seriously when you advocate for freedom of speech maybe you're not the best messenger given that you've proven that you're not very supportive of freedom of speech I mean apac and conservatives and even lots of democrats across the country have been trying to crack down on freedom of speech of BDS activists individuals who are literally just advocating for human rights for Palestinians advocating that Israel stop its abuse of Palestinians so why isn't Tulsi Gabbard speaking to that like if your pro free speech wouldn't that be like the utmost concern to you there was a teacher in Texas who was fired because she wouldn't sign a pro-israel loyalty pledge why isn't Tulsi Gabbard speaking about that so she doesn't actually care about freedom of speech if she did she could have proven it when she was a member of congress but she spent her time her remaining time as a member of congress anyways trying to get abortions banned I think it was late term abortions which are already illegal unless like the life of the mother is literally in danger like is this really someone who we want to prop up as like the best advocate of freedom of speech in America whose anti-cancel culture give me a break she also says when you look at our rights and our freedoms and our ability to debate them and respectively come out the other end disagreeing or agreeing it's based on the fact that we are all children of God and recognizing that when we treat each other with respect and respect this freedom that we have so basically this is all the freedom to speak freely and disagree and agree it all stems from the fact that we're children of God the fact that we're children of God first of all we're not children of God that's not a literal fact there's no evidence that God exists and even if there was evidence that God did exist there's no evidence that we are his children so what you're saying here is completely bizarre and nonsensical and I don't get how this relates to freedom of speech and cancel culture it seems like you're just pandering to Fox News's right wing audience because you're starting a podcast yourself and you want to make sure that their viewers follow you to your new platform and I'm sorry but I got to point out again that if we're talking about us all being children of God why does Tulsi Gabbard apparently exclude trans people are they not God's children are Palestinians not God's children there are so many issues in America that we could be focusing on there are thousands of Americans dying every single year because they don't have health care there is an entire generation burdened with student debt they can't buy houses they can't buy cars they can't start a family they can't start families I should say to be grammatically correct like there's so many issues a seemingly infinite number of issues to talk about I mean climate change is going to completely wipe out so many species because of human activity because of anthropogenic climate change and Tulsi Gabbard is choosing to focus on like cancel culture Fox News is choosing to focus on Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss well that's all that I've got for you today thank you so much for tuning in if you've made it this far in the program that is all that I've got special thanks as usual to all of our Patreon PayPal and YouTube members thank you all so much for helping us not just to survive but thrive as well I absolutely appreciate you so much I don't think I have anything left to say I've got everything off of my chest um perhaps if you go to twitch.tv slash humanist report you may or may not find me streaming this weekend so definitely check that out and don't forget to change your clocks on Saturday evening before you go to bed remember spring forward fall back don't forget it'll be fun to get used to it we all lose an hour of sleep goodie uh but anyways that's all that I have for you thank you so much for tuning in I will see you next week my name is Mike Ferriero this has been the humanist report take care everyone