 Joining us from San, I was going to say San Francisco, originally from San Francisco, no, originally from Brooklyn, then to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America PAC, which raises money for progressive candidates. Howie Klein, he also writes the Down with Tyranny blog, which is a must read and it's fantastic today. Howie, I have not been able to summon up the interest that I used to have about government and policy. And I started reading you today and I went, wow, there's some exciting things happening. I just, I have some kind of Trump fatigue right now. Today we're going to talk about Tom Price's seat in Georgia, stem cell replacements, pneumonia, and how Trump is actually a very successful president. And food. I want to talk to you about food first. I love food. You're a foodie. I am a foodie. You have. I used to be a chef. I bet you didn't even know that, did you? You were what? A chef. You were a chef or are a chef? No, I was a chef. I mean, a chef would mean I worked in a restaurant. I work in a restaurant. I don't work in a restaurant. I'm a home cook now. But I was a chef in a restaurant. I lived in Amsterdam for four years where I was a chef. Okay. Well, I'm interviewing tomorrow Jeremiah Tower, who is responsible. Oh, chef. The chef. A real chef. I was a real chef. You know, but you're not Jeremiah Tower. Did you create Sheppanese? No, I didn't create Sheppanese, but I worked in the health food realm. And I was highly regarded in Amsterdam and I was sought after as to be guest chefs in other restaurants. And in fact, I went to Berlin as a guest chef for a couple of months. I was a real chef. I was, you know, with no kidding around. Wait a second. How he climbed founder of Blue America Pack. It was a long time ago. Hang on for one second. You also write the down with tyranny blog. You are on this show as far as I'm concerned, the leading expert on progressive politics. You started punk rock. You're responsible for reprise records. You're responsible for bringing some of the greatest musicians from England to the United States and running Warner Brothers records. You don't get to be a chef. That's for that. I was a chef before that. No, no, you can't. That doesn't happen. I was a chef. You can't have that. I can't give that to you. What do you mean you were a chef? Did you study chefry? Yes, of course I did. What do you mean? Did you go to cooking school? Well, no, I studied under another chef. So I didn't go to cooking school, but another chef taught me. All right. Either did Jeremiah Tower, by the way. He did not go to the CIA. I wanted to go to the CIA. The Cooking Institute of America, they called the CIA. That is actually the CIA that can accomplish things. Jeremiah Tower created shade panacea and stars in San Francisco where we're both from. I could not afford to eat there when I was starting out. Did you ever eat at shade panacea? I did several times, not because I could afford it, but because people took me to it. That's pretty amazing. What did you specialize in? Well, like I said, I specialized in health food. So absolutely vegetarian food, but everything was supposed to be two things. Delicious and healthy. You were doing this in Amsterdam. Last week was 420, which also originated in the Bay Area. I believe Marin County, I'm going to say San Rafael 420, right? Probably. Or maybe Green Day made it up. No, no, no. 420, the kids who went either in Tiberon or San Rafael, California, created 420. The idea that 420 school is over, let's go smoke some dope. That's where it comes from. For some reason, I thought that it was Green Day who came up with that. Well, they're from the Bay Area, so maybe they appropriated it. You have some stem cell treatment going on. Well, no, I did. Thank goodness that's finished. What happened was I had a rare form of cancer, and the cancer can be relatively easily put into remission these days. That particular kind of cancer I had, which is called mantle cell lymphoma. The problem with it is that it always comes back. So the key for doctors is to make it so it doesn't come back. It's harder and harder to get you into remission once it starts coming back. So after chemotherapy, which put it in remission, my doctor did kind of an experimental stem cell replacement therapy on me, which was very successful. The problem is that after stem cell replacement therapy, one often gets pneumonia, as I did. So I had pneumonia and double pneumonia. After that, after you get all finished with pneumonia, you hear my voice now. The reason I have a scratchy throat and sound this way is because since getting finished with pneumonia several months ago, I've had a chronic cough, which has made my voice sound this way. And very frequently, even on your show, I'm coughing and writhing and can't catch my breath and sometimes I even panic because I can't stop coughing. So I've been going to a doctor who's the head of a pulmonary institute and who's famous for being able to work with coughs. He's one of the country's foremost lung specialists. And we've been trying all sorts of different things and you take this and it works for a few days and then it stops working. You do that and it's always the same thing. Nothing even works for a week. It's always less. So a friend of mine named Alex Campbell, who is responsible for writing and helping to pass the medical marijuana bill in California, is sort of my pot consultant. He was when I was getting over before the stem cells when I was getting over the effects of chemotherapy, which are very, very harsh. He convinced me to use some marijuana oil and that helped me get through it. It was amazing because I hadn't been able to sleep or eat. I lost like a third of my body weight and couldn't eat anything. It was a mess. And just a couple of days of marijuana and boom, I was fine again. Everything worked. Wow. I was eating like a pig, sleeping, a bunch of different things that were bothering me or got fixed. But as soon as I didn't have to do, depending on that anymore, literally just a few days worth, I couldn't wait to stop because I didn't like the idea of being high. I didn't want to be high because I'd get up in the morning. I couldn't do my work. Wow. Interesting. This guy, Alex Campbell, has just said to me, you know, there's this really, really good CBD, which is the, when we think of pot, we think of THC, which is what, that's the active ingredient to get you high. But the CBD is what cures all the medical problems. So he said, there's some really good stuff that can help your lungs. So I went to my doctor. I said, what do you think? And my doctor got really excited. He said, yes, let's do it. Let's do it. This is great. If you wanted, you know, he said, there's no protocol that he can advise me on. But, you know, he saw what I was going to do. He loved the idea. And all he said was, you know, keep a diary. I want to know every single thing you do. I want to know the amounts. I know, I want to know every specific. He's real excited about it. And guess what? It worked. Great. It's amazing to me. I mean, I know my voice does really scratchy, but I haven't been coughing. For how long? For how long? And I've been able to... So that's great. For how long have you not been coughing? How long has it been working for? About a week. Great. So the CBD is what does it? So, you know, if you get a medical marijuana card in California and other states, and you can buy some CBD oil, the problem is that in order for the CBD to get activated, you have to have a little THC. So that means you're going to be high. Are you allowed to... Are you allowed to choose sativa, the type of marijuana, the kind of high? Well, well, I'm not... I can't smoke anything, so I'm just strictly using oils. But the oils, I don't smoke marijuana. I've been sober since 88. So as I understand it, there are different types of marijuana that can give you different types of highs. Is it a specific strain? Any type of high. I'm sorry? I don't want any type of high. I know that, but there are different types of highs. There's one that makes, apparently, one that makes you clear-headed and focused. Can you get a marijuana oil that makes you clear-headed and focused? Oh, thank you for telling me I'll have to ask Alex. Because there's indica, as I understand it, indica and sativa, and I always, I have a mnemonic, but I forgot the mnemonic. This is my mnemonic. Sativa, sat is Saturday, and you're supposed to relax on Saturday. But for some reason, it's a reverse mnemonic, and I think sativa gives you energy and makes you focused and makes you want to work hard. It's an F-dup mnemonic, but ask about that. I'd be curious if it's different. I will. The kind that I have now, it's called Mystic Mango Medicated Elixir. And it doesn't say if it's, it doesn't say what kind of pot it is, but it's basically, it's a kind of emu oil. It's called emu 420. 420. So, and the high, you don't like being high? No, because when I'm high, I can't function properly. I mean, if I keep doing this, I'll be able to, I used to when I was a kid, but you said you stopped in 88, I stopped in 69. Right. Two things. One is, did you change your phone or something? Is there, I'm noticing you sound different. What? You sound a little different. Are you on a speaker? Yeah, I don't sound different. I mean, I may sound different, but I didn't do anything different. I've been on a speaker since we started speaking. Do you mind getting off the speaker? I think it might be better. Okay, good. Yeah, you sound much better now that you're off the speaker. Yeah, I mean, you haven't smoked pots since 69. I haven't smoked it since 89, 88, 89. What we were smoking, it's like, it's another drug, but we were smoking back then. It's not the same thing. Medical marijuana, because I'm an alcoholic and I'm substance free, I have a prejudice against marijuana, as well as medical marijuana, because I refuse, just this is my own personal struggle and I know it's not true, I refuse to accept the fact that there's any legitimate use for medical marijuana. That's, for me, I believe in legalizing it. I believe in medical marijuana, but I like to believe that it's, for my own personal safety, that there's no value to medical marijuana. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt about it until nothing else was saving me. I mean, it was like, I thought I was going to die. And my doctor, a different doctor, I mean, we were talking about a pulmonary doctor, my cancer doctor, said that she thought that I needed to take some medical marijuana and that it would help me. And I was very, very resistant. I had always thought that the whole medical marijuana thing was bullshit just so that people could get marijuana legalized so they could get high. That's what I believed it was. And I was completely wrong. I mean, things that nothing else can help, that nothing else is helping, marijuana helped. We don't have to go into all my health conditions, but just take my word for it. There are things that can't be helped. Neuropathy, you get neuropathy, you know, there's a good chance you're going to have it for life, and nothing relieves it. Marijuana does. Amazing. It is amazing. Well, the good things in life. I have Jeremiah Tower on the show tomorrow. He created American cuisine, modern American cuisine. There's a new documentary about him. It's called The Last Magnificent. Before Jeremiah Tower, there was no California cuisine. He invented California cuisine. You have told me you're a chef and a foodie and you've traveled all around the world and you've eaten at some of the finest restaurants. You were telling me about your two favorite restaurants in France. In Paris. In Paris. What are the names of these two restaurants? And as a progressive liberal, do you feel guilty spending a lot of money at a fancy restaurant? So there are two very different questions. Let's do one at a time. So first of all, so I'm going to Paris. The first thing I did was book my plane flight. The next thing I did was rent an apartment. So I had the plane flight, had the apartment. The next thing I did was make reservations for my two favorite restaurants. One of which don't laugh because I know this is going to sound like it's a tourist trap. It's not in any way shape or form a tourist trap. So one of them is called the Jules Verne and it's up on top of the Eiffel Tower. And the other one is called Guy Savoy. I love both of the restaurants. So again, when I was a kid and when I first went to Europe, I had no money at all. I spent years sleeping in a van and there was no chance I was eating in a restaurant like either Guy Savoy or Jules Verne. But later when I was running Reprise Records and I would have to go to Paris for meetings and stuff, our French company would take us to, you know, these restaurants. And that's how I discovered them. And I loved them and the food is amazing. It's absolutely great. So now it's one of the things I treat myself to is we're going to be in Paris for a month and I have one night at the Guy Savoy and one night at the Jules Verne and those are the only reservations I made. The other night I'll be eating, you know, this wonderful Tunisian sandwich called brick or I'll be eating a baguette with some breed cheese. And the French... And no, I don't feel any guilt at all about eating good food. Is there some morality to eating properly? I was watching Michael Moore's documentary Who Should We Invade Next? When you look at the public schools in France, they're cafeterias. They have these six-year-old kids, these seven-year-old kids who sit in a cafeteria and they have waiters and waitresses and they serve each other and they converse and they talk and they take the time, they spend an hour, sometimes 90 minutes in the cafeteria. The kids, seven-year-olds talking over food, there is a morality behind eating properly, about eating the right food, right? Yeah, it's not a morality that's best imposed on other people but it's good to impose it on yourself. So I've been a vegetarian since the 60s, although in the last years I've also been eating fish so I'm not really a vegetarian anymore but I was for much of my life. Now I eat fish a few times a week. What are you going to do in France? How can you be a vegetarian in France? What do you mean? Isn't everything like shellfish, frog legs? Not everything. Pate? You can eat in any restaurant, you can eat it as a vegetarian in any restaurant at all and I have. Anywhere. Alright, that's good. But in terms of the morality of eating, I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, there's a congressman who I was talking to while this was happening. So in real time, it was a couple of years ago, his name is Jared Polis, P-O-L-I-S. He's a congressman from Boulder, Colorado, a Democratic congressman. He happens to be also the richest Democrat in Congress. He founded an internet firm and sold it and made a lot of money and he's a very wealthy guy. And he introduced a bill in Congress that would give an option to schools, an option so they don't have to do it, but they would be able to do it if they wanted to, to have one day where they can offer a meatless lunch in the cafeteria. So they couldn't offer that alone. So in other words, any student who wanted to eat meat could get the meat, but one, one day a week, people who didn't want to have meat could off, could get a, they would know that on Wednesdays you could come in and you could have, you could have a vegetarian meal and he was just savagely attacked for it and it didn't pass. And it was like, it was considered to be un-American to even suggest such a thing. Yeah, it is un-American because it's smart. It's, it's, I'm living in New York City. I am trying to be vegan, but I have fallen prey to pizza because pizza is very efficient in New York City. If you're hungry and you're moving quickly, pizza makes- Well they certainly have vegan pizza in New York City. They do, but it's not everywhere. And I thought about zoning and I thought about the nanny state and Michael Bloomberg getting rid of, trying to get rid of big gulp Coca-colas. I would like to be protected. I would like a nanny state. I would like the city to say, no, every pizzeria has to have a vegan option because when I'm told, well what about choice? You know, you're smart enough to make your own decisions. I'm smart enough to make my own decisions when, when I have choices. There are no choices in New York City. If I'm hungry and I'm on the move and I need sustenance, it would be great if pizzerias were forced to have a vegan option. You know what, I'm a little too libertarian for that. I don't want to force anybody to do that kind of thing. I mean, you know, I wanted a gluten-free pizza. I wanted good quality gluten-free pizza here in Los Angeles. I looked it up online and I found out that the pizzeria closest to my house, the one that I could actually even walk to if I felt like it a couple of miles away, served gluten-free pizza. I tried it. It was the best gluten-free pizza I ever tasted. And they have vegan pizza as well. So you could find it, you know, yes, it might not be on every street corner, but I guarantee you in New York City, you should not have to force anybody to do anything because somebody is doing it in a relatively convenient way. Well, I don't want to argue with Howie Klein, but we have this five-year agriculture bill and its incentives to the dairy industry and to cattle and to the ranchers. And that's not libertarian. That's one industry forcing a type of food literally down our throat. Well, I disagree with that too, of course. Why not create tax incentives for restaurants to give us gluten-free and dairy-free food and to go vegan? It certainly would save us money in terms of health care costs. Another discussion. You're right, it would. And it would also help save the earth if cattle is one of the worst of the greenhouse gas causes. By the way, I'm not embarrassed to tell you this. This is a crazy show. We have Mr. Methane on the show. I don't even want to go into it, but we found out that Mr. Methane doesn't release Methane, so he's not a contributor to greenhouse gases. I was going to say he doesn't like something, does he? No, he sings. He bases his act on Le Petamaine, a French artist from the 19th century. Another discussion. So, you have a great piece in Down with Tyranny today. Everybody should go there. It actually excited me about Trump. I've been so... Oh, I thought you were going to talk about Guy as Pooleus' piece. Well, I'll get to that in a second. But I was reading Down with Tyranny, and all of a sudden my juices got... Oh, wow. No more Trump fatigue. You are the recipient of stem cell research, which was stalled by one of the most successful presidents this country has ever had, George W. Bush. There's a myth that George W. Bush was an unsuccessful president. The people who put George W. Bush into the White House got everything they wanted. A perpetual state of war, which means profits for defense, for Halliburton, for whatever Prince's company is, Blackwater changed their name. Everybody who put George W. Bush into office, Exxon, everybody, walked away with a handsome prophet after eight years. In Down with Tyranny, you write that Donald Trump is a successful president. Well, yes. He is successfully doing certain things. What he's not being able to do is to cobble together a legislative coalition that's passing his horrible bills, so that he hasn't been able to do and hopefully won't be able to do it. However, what he's been doing, or something that Republicans have reviled Obama for, is signing all these executive orders. So he's ruling by executive order, and the Republicans aren't complaining. They bitterly complained about Obama, and they said it was tyranny and it was a dictatorship, but Trump is doing it far more than Obama ever did and very, very blatantly and very literally legislating without a legislature, just doing it on his own. And what he's done mostly is to get rid of a lot of really good legislation and executive orders that were passed under Obama that basically protected workers, protected consumers. In fact, one of the ones that I know will get you going if we stop talking about it, has to do with companies, Internet provider companies like AT&T, for example, now being allowed to sell you a personal information without getting your permission and without even informing you. All but 15 Republicans voted for that and Trump signed it. So that's a disaster. Every single Democrat, even the worst Democrats, even the most corrupt blue dogs all voted against it. But enough Republicans, I think it passed 215 to 215. 15 Republicans voted no, and every other Republican voted for it. So they can literally sell your Internet browsing habits, for example, your Social Security number. Anything. They can sell anything that's online, anything at all. So I don't know that I would call that Trump being successful, but yes, he succeeded in doing something that Republican donors wanted to see done. Same thing with Wall Street regulations. They're tearing them apart. They're making it possible for Wall Street to rip you off with impunity, and now I have to worry about being sued for it. So again, not my idea of successful, but their idea of successful. Trump's idea of successful. They're doing that. They're dealing with environmental regulations. They're destroying them, making it safe for polluters to kill you without having to worry about being sued, let alone without having to worry about the government stopping you. So that is, that's the, sorry. Yeah. And rights for workers. Yeah. And what's interesting to me is, as I read your piece, I realized how ingenious the Koch brothers, the corporate paymasters are. They have us terrified about Obamacare. They terrify us about North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, ISIS. This Russian story, whether or not Putin stole our election, all of this is important. We should be focused on it. While I'm reading your piece, I'm thinking, well, we should be focused on these stories, but we're being tricked. It's prestidigitation. It's a magic act. The Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, is saying, pay attention to ISIS. Pay attention to North Korea. That's scary stuff. Meanwhile, they are cashing in their chips. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. He's delivering for them, and they will deliver for him and for the Republican Party. I mean, the, you know, people are saying, oh, the Democrats are going to say, I, including me, are saying the Democrats are going to take back the house in 2018. Meanwhile, there is money flooding in to the Republican Party to defend that. You know, money is probably the single biggest factor. You know, I mean, if there's going to be a tsunami of revulsion against Trump and the Republicans in Congress, then money isn't going to stop it. But short of that kind of tsunami, which doesn't happen that frequently, money is the most important thing in getting people elected and the Republicans are going to have far more of it than the Democrats are for the 2018 elections. The moneyed class. Let me get back to this question, because Gaius Publius, that's his name. That was, I think that was... That is his name. Federalist paper. Was that one of the names, the non-deplumes from the Federalist Papers, I believe? I think. It may have been, I kind of got the impression he took his name from a Roman senator. But I also think the, I think Hamilton and Madison and Jay, when they wrote the Federalist Papers, also used Latin names. But that's... Well, you should have Gaius on your show sometime. I would love that. He's very, very good. And you can ask him about it. So he was writing about the WikiLeaks and I'm going to bring this back to your piece because he outlines how Hillary gave a speech to Goldman Sachs. And according to WikiLeaks, she has no problem with North and South Korea being at odds with one another, that it fits into the real politic that Henry Kissinger came up with under the Nixon administration, triangulation, and that under a Hillary Clinton presidency, they would wax nostalgic about Kim Jong-un's father. They actually thought that it was a sustainable situation. Am I, was that a proper summation of Gaius, Publius, Publius? Of what he said. Yeah. Yeah. That... So then I think, okay, what's going on with North and South Korea and China and Russia and where the aircraft carrier really was and how scared we are, it's, and thad, the missiles, the anti-ballistic missiles that don't work, all this stuff, is it fair to say that there are forces at work in America who want all this stuff happening and are consciously stirring it up so nobody pays attention to what they're really doing to America, to the workers, to the environment? Is that a fair statement that there are people who are so... I don't know. I mean, that would be, like, you know, conspiracy theory. Right. Now, it's happening whether someone is doing it on purpose or not. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But whether they are or they're not, it's still happening. Okay. Before we wrap this up, I wanted to ask you about Tom Price's seat and... Georgia 6. Georgia 6. Is that going to go Democrat? What happened? Who is Tom Price? Why is he a horrible human being? And... Tom Price is a multi-millionaire, crooked physician from the suburbs outside of Atlanta, so the northern suburbs. It includes part of three counties, DeKalb, Cobb, and Fulton. It is a... It is the best educated district in America held by a Republican. It is a wealthy district. Hillary obviously didn't campaign there, but her message resonated to such an extent, and they were so repulsed by Trump that she nearly won the district in November. Georgia district. So this is not Trump territory. Trump won every single county in the state of Georgia during the primary, but he lost four counties. There's a three I just named, and the county where Athens is, which is the University of Georgia, the Clark County. But those three counties, Rubio won, and he won Clark County too. So what I'm saying is they don't like Trump. Hillary nearly won the district. This is a district that was overwhelmingly... for Romney, overwhelmingly for McCain. It's an overwhelming reply. This is Newt Gingrich's old seat. This is a Republican heartland district, and they turned away from Trump. Now, they're not happy that their own congressman, who's Trump at the urging of Ryan and Pence, Trump appointed him to be Secretary of Health and Human Services with the express purpose of destroying Obamacare and starting the process of destroying Medicare and Medicaid. That's what this guy wants to do. You may have heard something more about him fairly recently because he was caught doing insider trading. So even worse than that, he would help to form legislation that would help certain drug companies, and then they would give him an opportunity to buy stock at a special rate in those companies. It was completely illegal. I expect this guy to be indicted at some point. This young guy, I think he's in his late 20s, he might have just turned 30, named John Ossoff, O-S-S-O-F-F, who had worked for John Lewis, a congressman from Atlanta. He had worked for him in Congress, and he's a filmmaker as well, investigative journalist type filmmaker. And a good guy, you know, I spent a few hours with him on the phone, pretty well. He's not going to be the next Ted Lu. He's not going to be Alan Grayson. He's not going to be Bernie Sanders. He's not like that. But he's a good, decent Democrat with a progressive bent. That's my thoughts about him. And he came... So they just had an open primary. So that means everybody, all the Republicans, all the Democrats, everybody runs on one ticket. And when John Ossoff first announced that he was running, everybody thought, well, we'll probably wind up in the end with two Republicans running against each other in the final. The runoff is June 20th, and everyone figured it's just going to be two Republicans and there'll be no Democrat. In the end, Ossoff had over 48% of the vote, and the closest Republican, a woman named Karen Handel, a former Secretary of State, and a very divisive figure. I think she wound up with something less than 20%. So now the question is, will the Republicans all be able to coalesce behind her and defeat Ossoff? And the Republicans have literally poured millions of dollars into this race. The importance of the race isn't because of one seat. The importance of this race is if the Republicans lose it. What it would mean is that Republicans in Congress will be so frightened to back Trump that his whole legislative agenda will fall apart, even worse than it's already fallen apart. So they're desperate to have Handel win this race. But like I said, she's a very divisive character. She made her bones as an anti-choice fanatic. I mean fanatic. That's what she's about. She's not very well-liked. All the Republicans who were campaigning in this, there were something like 11 of them, and they never attacked each other. They only attacked her. She's horrible. And I expect there are going to be a great many Republicans that either will just sit it out because they don't want to vote for her, or some who may even decide to vote for John Ossoff. So that's what that race is all about. All right. We'll keep an eye on it. Howie Klein is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America PAC, and everybody should go to the Dan With Tierney blog and read it. I wanted to thank you because I've been complaining to my listeners. It's been hard to get my heart started with Trump. There's some fatigue setting in him. I went to Dan With Tierney today, and we're coming up on the 100-day anniversary. He is a... You're right. He's a successful president. There's a lot he can take credit for, but if he does, people will wake up and the Democrats will win back the House. Hopefully they will, and hopefully even the Senate. Okay. Thank you, Howie. Talk to you soon.