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00:00:02hello and thanks for joining us for political talk on another politipod live
00:00:07tonight we'll cover the save act ice the supreme court and a trump dump we'll also have our
00:00:15segments on the media and election central i'm tom bickle i'm hannah soldner and i'm matt
00:00:24nissanoff we start with the save act although not quite certain how you get to that name
00:00:31the interesting twist to it is that there was a democrat who had decided to vote for this
00:00:43voter suppression law and a republican who decided to vote against it but with this
00:00:49one-on-one switch what it meant was the bill was going to pass with enough votes
00:00:54however last minute apparently the democrat involved uh fetterman from pennsylvania
00:01:03apparently changed his mind and i'm not quite certain why you guys hear anything about this
00:01:09i think uh it was oxygen lost to that area of his mind that he changed i heard it was
00:01:15a massive swing
00:01:16of approval or disapproval as it were fetterman
00:01:24very interesting um well let's hope that's all it took uh and uh that that it was just a reaction
00:01:31to public pressure um and then perhaps we can keep him a little bit better on track with what's going
00:01:38on although this whole thing with fetterman and how he's been reacting since his um since his medical
00:01:47condition came up has made a lot of people kind of want to find out more about how he makes
00:01:55his
00:01:55decisions nowadays speaking of changing his mind yeah yeah literally um there's so the save act if you
00:02:04know it's it had to do with voting rights and taking away some rights by saying that there had to
00:02:10be a
00:02:11higher bar for the proof of citizenship in order to vote the thing is there's already a requirement to
00:02:17prove that you're a citizen to vote when you register whether you do it through your driver's license or
00:02:24whether you go to the dmv and do it there you have to bring a whole bunch of documentation
00:02:28i know in new york yeah there's two lists three lists actually which you have to look at and take
00:02:35one piece of information you know one identifying piece of information from each of the three columns
00:02:40in order to meet a point system that allows you to have enough points in order to get
00:02:45a state id so it's already pretty rigorous uh and i don't know uh how is how are your states
00:02:54uh
00:02:54anybody have anything different than that i'm also in new york so yeah well i'm out in oregon and uh
00:03:02i i do clerical work and uh there's some application processes that require two for two forms of id
00:03:12um one usually has to be a like a driver's license or a passport the other one can be your
00:03:20costco card or
00:03:21something anything with a picture on it or even a social security card with no picture so if uh
00:03:28if that's as onerous as it got i wouldn't be uh i'm not for any any additional restrictions to
00:03:37being able to vote that aren't in place already but that wouldn't be such a bad hurdle what happens
00:03:42is you have to have a birth certificate or um maybe a passport these other things that are arduous to
00:03:50get
00:03:51together maybe you've you know i'm i've been around a while you move things burn down i mean uh
00:03:58this or that things get exposed to rain and uh it's hard to get replacements not impossible it's one of
00:04:03those things adults have to do but if and if there were real election fraud i'd be all about tightening
00:04:10the belts and uh you know uh in pre increasing the the weave of security that forms a protective blanket
00:04:17for us all but it's all trumped up bs it's nonsense it's not happening it's nothing you know it's like
00:04:24putting on a kevlar helmet to just go outside every day not necessary it's over it's it's overkill and
00:04:31uh it's uh obviously obviously not meant to improve voting security but to limit who votes and make it
00:04:42harder to vote and make it more expensive and the thing that bugs me okay they want to one of
00:04:48the
00:04:48things people they want to stick it to is uh trans people because they don't maybe they don't have uh
00:04:52male or female checked uh where it's supposed to be according to them or uh some maybe they had a
00:04:58name
00:04:59change uh to represent their truer self as anybody is allowed to do i understand they want to hack away
00:05:07at those folks okay they're hateful people but they by definition have to take married women with
00:05:14them you know what i mean you get a name change often when you uh in this patriarchal society you
00:05:20change your name you get married and they're gonna have uh they're gonna have to go to the dmv too
00:05:26they're gonna have to go to the county recorder's office too um and those are you know
00:05:34cisgendered wives are kind of heavy in their demographic but they're not they're not afraid
00:05:40to lay down some friendly fire as long as it hurts somebody else they hate more uh i don't know
00:05:47i don't
00:05:49it just keeps being awful yeah i mean like please go ahead oh i was gonna say these sort of
00:05:55like
00:05:55clerical errors are all over the place i had family members who i had a family member who
00:06:01who's like birth certificate had his dad's last name and his social security card had his mom's
00:06:06last name or i had my grandpa had his middle name was mitchell and it was spelled with like
00:06:11one l on his birth certificate and like two l's on his driver's license or whatever like those things
00:06:16are everywhere and i mean like also like this is um especially like with in-person voting like who is
00:06:26going to spend the time to like go and vote at like 10 places to swing not that much in
00:06:31an
00:06:31election um you know and then when it comes to like mail-in ballots it's like a similar thing you
00:06:37would have to know the name of a person and you would have to know all their identification and you
00:06:43would have to assume they weren't also going to vote and you would also and like and getting convicted
00:06:48of those things is like a felony so it's like a lot of work to go into to get like
00:06:54maybe a vote or
00:06:55two um and the punishment is massive um and tom like you said like there's like they have been
00:07:05how long have people been talking about voter fraud and so there's been like lots of research on this
00:07:10it's just not happening because of all these reasons exactly it's negligible at best yeah and
00:07:18it's it's weird like talking to friends of mine who like live in other countries where like voting is
00:07:24required and they're like it blows their mind that there would be anything like in the way of it
00:07:30you know wouldn't you want everybody who can vote to vote like it's it's the most like it's it's sort
00:07:37of
00:07:37the most like i'm you know american in our sense but like patriotic thing you can do you know just
00:07:42go like
00:07:42vote so yeah that's uh two things that uh the right wing magosphere has robbed us of there's uh
00:07:51any pride in the flag they've grabbed that and ran it through the mud and uh you know uh being
00:07:58proud to
00:07:58vote that said if you have not read about the uh afro man trial which involved him wearing an american
00:08:06flag suits i implore you to look into the afro man trial that has happened over the past week and
00:08:12so
00:08:12it's you know i'll tell you that yeah somebody told me he was a uh uh red hat maga person
00:08:23and so
00:08:24yeah and i saw i googled it i couldn't find any evidence of that but uh he has been able
00:08:29to uh
00:08:32skewer the uh skewer the uh uh powers that be so you gotta you gotta love him in an underdog
00:08:41fashion so i
00:08:42the question the the the jury's still out on that as far as i know if anybody knows let me
00:08:46know
00:08:47yeah but the album is out so if you want to hear for yourself go find the album i mean
00:08:53i did on itunes
00:08:55that i use and um he's he is he's not holding back and he's very accurate and very specific
00:09:03about things that he's talking about um and all the police officers who tried to sue him for defamation
00:09:11had to go to court and say oh yeah i had no um yeah i i absolutely feel that this
00:09:17did damage to my
00:09:18reputation and to my good name and all that kind of thing and it was like oh you tried to
00:09:23steal his
00:09:24lemon pound cake oh your your wife slept with him or he says your wife slept with him you think
00:09:30she did
00:09:30oh well i mean she might have i don't know and who among us could be sure your honor
00:09:38he's got these guys saying really like she'd tell me i mean jesus
00:09:44but really incredible incredible stuff um so but but uh back the save act for two seconds uh that i'll
00:09:52say that yeah the unintended consequences that both of you have mentioned are very real
00:09:57and to answer hannah's question you know you mentioned who would do that who would go out
00:10:03and try to vote in multiple sites and see what well actually a number of republicans the last
00:10:09eight or ten stories that i've seen about people trying to uh pull a hoodwink vote of election
00:10:16officials to try to get in extra votes at different polling places have been republicans they've been
00:10:21trying it out and so it's even worse than you can imagine when the ones who are complaining about
00:10:27it the most are actually the ones who are doing it but that also at this point probably should not
00:10:33surprise any of us every accusation they make is a confession and that's and the fact that
00:10:40the fact that they keep getting caught is proof that the system works yeah exactly
00:10:46yep so speaking of the system working we're going to move ourselves on to our first segment of the
00:10:53evening and that is on the media on the media and we've got a number of things to talk about
00:11:01here
00:11:02um we'll start off with the pentagon removing the press offices they tried to kick out a number of press
00:11:09uh take away credentials and kick out press uh uh journalists and the journalists made some noise
00:11:17about it and the judge said well you really you can't do that kind of thing and kegseth said well
00:11:23you know what i i can i have to let him back but i don't have to let him have
00:11:27offices so he uh he vague
00:11:30he closed down their offices which is wonderfully trumpian in its pettiness and ridiculousness
00:11:40um what else what do you think uh what else broadly or what else do i think about this
00:11:46specific thing no i mean you're right it's it's petty and there's like no um
00:11:54it's it's the whole thing is absurd like you know and it's just it's it kind of reminds me with
00:12:01the
00:12:01voting like get the voices out there you know if you think you can win in the whatever marketplace of
00:12:07ideas or whatever then what you know if you think that democrats have terrible ideas that nobody should
00:12:13listen to then why are you so afraid you know just let people um report about stuff
00:12:23well the republicans haven't been able to win on issues for the past 50 years which is why they've
00:12:30gone into the culture wars so i can see them desperate to try to cover any fact that comes up
00:12:36trying to eliminate it but um what were you about to say well i've i'm pretty happy with it i
00:12:41gotta say
00:12:42um as much as i've read about this story or as much as little as i've read about it i
00:12:47felt like i
00:12:47understood what what was happening and what was going to happen and i have no reason to uh because i'm
00:12:54not
00:12:54that learned but it was my instinct which i usually can't trust uh it was my instinct that if he
00:13:01started
00:13:01hacking away at the journalists covering the pentagon he was going to lose because you can't take all the
00:13:11journalists from ostensibly reliable organizations believable outfits and either tell them how to report
00:13:20or throw them the hell out because if you do first of all the they shouldn't let you they shouldn't
00:13:29subject themselves to be told what to report most of them wouldn't go along with it of any reputable
00:13:35organization cvs notwithstanding um so if they if they if they swallow that then they're suspect so they
00:13:45but i think most of them would leave cnn's not going to let you tell them how to report
00:13:49uh you know nbc and so if you issue if you usher out all the reliable believable journalists
00:13:58all you're going to have is fox fox you know weekend in the morning uh oann and the pillow guy
00:14:09nobody gives a shit what any of those people say as far as credibility and as far as reach i
00:14:16mean fox
00:14:17still has a big audience but nobody else nobody's going to listen to oann anyway so they're dooming
00:14:23any coverage and uh they'll just you know and the reputable reporters will get their news from leaks
00:14:29and from regular old not having an office at the pentagon you know reporting they'll get their information
00:14:35uh and so and i'm sorry go ahead they may not get the party line information which is what
00:14:44is yeah even more self-injurious to these knuckleheads scores and scores of years ago the
00:14:50philippine wars the marines figured out that they were fighting not only the enemy but they were
00:14:55had to do something with the general populace and they didn't want to just try to kill everybody
00:15:01they figured oh we got to do something different than we've done before we got to try to win their
00:15:07hearts and minds we've got to try to gain their their their trust and and see if we can get
00:15:12them to
00:15:13help us with our enemy and things like eventually developing into having the press corps and the
00:15:20press corps embedded was for a very specific person uh purpose being that they wanted to frankly they
00:15:27wanted to manipulate the press they wanted to make certain the information going out had their spin so
00:15:32kicking them out of the pentagon's probably not going to help with that i think yeah so i didn't
00:15:39think it was going to be a good strategy uh i think they were playing a losing game from the
00:15:44beginning
00:15:44and i'm amazed they couldn't see it if i'm somebody as dumb as me could see it and it seems
00:15:48like it's
00:15:49working that way and also has the added benefit of not flying in court you can't just have apparently
00:15:54you can't just let some people in and some people out so he they said to hell with it everybody
00:15:59can get
00:16:00out okay fine again shooting yourself in the foot there elmer but go right ahead if you think you're
00:16:06winning yeah still a government service military is still a government service and the government is
00:16:13the public uh is the you know the public sector you can't just say you're in and you're out you
00:16:19have
00:16:19to and the matter of fact the the the military did lead in breaking uh civil rights bringing people in
00:16:27and including them as opposed to excluding them and that was of course uh just after world war ii and
00:16:35then uh eventually that there's other issues civil rights that they did not take a leading position
00:16:42on uh but uh that that the the die is cast they're supposed to do that and that's expected of
00:16:49them
00:16:49because they are a public service like everyone else uh hannah anything else about this before we move on
00:16:54no okay well who can tell us more about the warner and the ellisons well so um paramount skydance um
00:17:09which is uh the new version of paramount which owns uh cbs and uh
00:17:18uh the what viacom that's what i'm trying to think of it's a good thing i work in this industry
00:17:23and i
00:17:23actually just remember these um you know what they used to be called the famous players last key
00:17:28that was the last truly time they were great um so uh no so they uh won the bid over
00:17:37netflix to uh take
00:17:39over warner um and so uh you know and it's it's a it's a shame that the that's all run
00:17:49by uh the ellisons
00:17:51larry ellison and his son whose name escapes me um and they are uh you know strongly on the trumpian
00:18:00side they you know we talked about them a few weeks ago when we were talking about with uh stephen
00:18:06colbert
00:18:07and um you know stuff with jimmy kimmel and just like a lot of these pushbacks they've been giving
00:18:15um and this would also this would lead to them taking over hbo uh cnn um a lot of these
00:18:23other um news places
00:18:29um and being able to kind of restructure them it's also you know the a lot of the media is
00:18:35run by uh
00:18:37uh barry weiss up there who's uh you know mostly just an opinion columnist who's now been given
00:18:43a lot of power i mean it's just a uh it's it's bad on the face of it it's bad
00:18:50that uh companies
00:18:52not companies people should not be wealthy enough to individually buy these up it seems very uh
00:19:00like william randolph hearst kind of energy um but yeah like the fact that uh a person um
00:19:12basically um could buy something up and obviously this isn't the first time this happened this includes
00:19:18you know uh the washington post and you know all the things that have been bought up by amazon and
00:19:25things like that um you know it's just it's such a um and i guess i guess twitter um it's
00:19:34just such a uh
00:19:37bad thing for people and it's such a it has such a long history to it um and the antitrust
00:19:46laws should be
00:19:47rewritten they're you know written for a world that no longer exists and i don't want to get into
00:19:52i guess any further opinion but um yeah what do you all think about the ellisons and paramount and
00:20:03it's crazy the way they did it i mean there was a perfectly legitimate offer and a perfectly good
00:20:08uh set up and then all of a sudden they're doing this hostile takeover thing using the system that
00:20:16the money system in order to subvert the plan that was in place and on top of it the people
00:20:25who are
00:20:25providing the money were not terribly uh concerned with you know the public welfare certainly not their
00:20:32top concern uh and so it's it's it's a detriment to the public waves that these guys are in control
00:20:41right so that's all i would say
00:20:47should we jump over to meta and a couple of words on meta and elon and then we'll
00:20:54move our way and move through sure sounds right yeah right tom what do you think about meta
00:21:02well you know uh not long ago a california california jury found that meta and google
00:21:08were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small
00:21:14child awarding her six million dollars and a rare verdict holding silicon valley accountable for
00:21:19for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis jurors concluded that meta and google should
00:21:25pay the woman three million in compensatory damages and an additional three million in punitive damages
00:21:30with meta on the hook for 70 percent of that amount
00:21:36take that that's right and that's that's some good news actually and although it does sort of
00:21:43explain that meta came out today saying they were going to lay off a bunch of people which i think
00:21:48is
00:21:48a pr move uh in response to having lost this case frankly and but clearly they deserved it i don't
00:21:58think there's a i don't think actually i don't think even they deny that they deserve it they just don't
00:22:03think it should be so much they just don't like the amount involved but even they were like yeah yeah
00:22:10this
00:22:10is this is this is a bad thing we're doing it and we should uh but you know don't don't
00:22:15hold it against
00:22:15us um that was basically their argument in court and um but the court did the right thing in this
00:22:23case
00:22:25how about uh moving on to our favorite guy here one of our uh favorites to chat with elon musk
00:22:34sweet dude
00:22:37stellar stellar dude yeah exactly what we what has he managed to destroy this
00:22:47well uh u.s federal jury found elon musk like liable not likable but liable on friday for claims
00:22:55he defrauded twitter shareholders by trying to drive down the social media company's stock price
00:23:00so he could renegotiate or back out of his 44 billion dollar takeover in 2022 the verdict from
00:23:07a jury in san francisco federal court came in a closely watched civil civil trial where musk
00:23:12the world's richest person was accused of falsely claiming on social media that twitter
00:23:18under-reported how many fake and spam accounts known as bots were on its platform
00:23:26so yeah he just smeared the thing to uh lower the price how about that sound like anybody you know
00:23:32exactly gosh that's shocking unheard of
00:23:38yeah um it's interesting because you know i mentioned here i think on my first episode that like
00:23:46uh one of musk's other things tesla is worth more than like
00:23:50the five largest media or media uh vehicle companies automotive companies in the world
00:23:58um and it is not one of those five and it's so it's worth more than five companies who are
00:24:03objectively worth more than it and so it's uh i guess it's a little bit of uh poetic justice that
00:24:11a lot of money he's the richest person in the world based on bullshit money and uh he's now gotten
00:24:19pegged for uh doing some other stuff with bullshit money um so uh you know hopefully they'll take all
00:24:27his money away um they won't but you know that'd be nice to think yeah but that's the standard practice
00:24:34of that sort of people they work on leveraging money from the banks or from other people based on the
00:24:42fact
00:24:42that they are so dramatically rich and then people actually give them more money to do things so
00:24:49they're not spending their own money on the thing that they're risking and on top of it they're getting
00:24:56exponential amounts of money to do anything they want hey rich people are building rockets to go into
00:25:03space now they're job creators and i'll have you know it yeah exactly um and uh so just any crazy
00:25:12thing that happens they can feel free to go into they certainly aren't going to use that money to
00:25:18cover taxes that's certainly not going to be their their portion of tax is not going to be something
00:25:22they're going to spend on so they can do all these other extracurricular activities
00:25:26uh and there's some other extracurricular activities we'll get to later in the show
00:25:32and but that that's who they are that's what they do okay let's move on to our next
00:25:43our next issue which is ice and what's going on over there well they're all up in the airport matt
00:25:53i mean for pete's sake uh for solution a non-solution to a problem nobody asked for them to non
00:26:01-solve
00:26:02uh ice is being uh deployed to i guess the busiest airports matt and uh what are they doing they're
00:26:11standing around phone in one hand yeah they're texting in the other and uh getting in the way and
00:26:20gumming up the food court it's not like they're doing anything i heard they uh beat up an old
00:26:26lady at sfo but then i also heard they weren't at sfo so i'm not sure what's going on with
00:26:31that i uh
00:26:32gotta do my gotta do some kind of reading on that get ahead of it but uh what we do
00:26:38know is they're
00:26:39getting paid and they're going there and they're doing nothing and the tsa guys who are getting sort of
00:26:45the short end of the stick here that is rich and not getting paid and you know republican senators
00:26:52are dropping by with pizzas to help them out uh not giving them money but giving them an occasional
00:26:57pizza that's gonna you know boost their morale so they stand there and do work they do their work
00:27:03with pepperoni heartburn meanwhile some booger flicking phone scrollers standing there doing jack
00:27:10shit fuck all earning twice his salary and receiving it you gotta be kidding me i don't know i don't
00:27:16know
00:27:16saying they're doing nothing solitaire is something you can't just say that they're hard with themselves
00:27:24you're right you're right all right you know respect to josh johnson today who said he would rather ice
00:27:32be doing nothing than whatever they were doing in minneapolis but yeah i mean like the the i'm still
00:27:39gonna cap on them for it but go ahead oh please please um by all means the whole idea that
00:27:45like
00:27:46ice has more money than they'll ever need because of the one big beautiful bill that trump pushed through
00:27:53and then he is refusing to end the shutdown um and instead he's just gonna have everything filled with
00:28:01ice um because he has extra money elsewhere is first of all i think a plot on like a simpsons
00:28:07episode
00:28:07but it also feels very much like i don't know just like a two-bit like something that would be
00:28:14made up in like a terrible like crime novel but then you know people have already i saw today that
00:28:22somebody might have suggested like if this if the save act doesn't uh get passed then maybe they'll just
00:28:29like send ice people to intimidate voters but basically he now has like a private army funded by the
00:28:37american taxpayer with no oversight that does whatever he wants right and it will be even less because
00:28:45the senate approved mark wayne mullen to step into the top spot so there's certainly even less
00:28:52a chance of actual uh of an adult being in the room
00:28:59yeah that guy got through and uh trump must be pretty happy with it because he seems like a real
00:29:04scumbag and that's what he needed to replace and uh i gotta tell you i the more i read about
00:29:12it the more
00:29:14convincing it is when i hear someone say that his lieutenants are very valuable you can't be a despot
00:29:22without lieutenants and doing the dirty deeds to get things done and if you lose one a la christy gnome
00:29:31the burleigh hope if you lose one you have to make sure they don't turn on you for one thing
00:29:38but you also have to get a new person in there groom them all up real quick and make sure
00:29:43they're
00:29:43all pointed in the right direction and not going to talk to the the feds and you know what i
00:29:48mean
00:29:48are not going to wimp out once you want to grease a couple of citizens now and then you know
00:29:53that's
00:29:53not necessarily easy to find and so i'm glad that we forced his hand to to cast about for another
00:30:00one
00:30:00and there's probably no ending to the line of zombies and ghouls that would line up and do his evil
00:30:05bidding
00:30:07but forcing the change i have to say is it's got to be a good thing and uh uh i
00:30:14i'm just sad that he
00:30:15was able to get through somebody said well he was a senator so that makes it easier you know the
00:30:21senate i'm like really man is that what it's come to he's he's obviously just like a human chew toy
00:30:30there's nothing there uh but oh well all right let's move on to the two other issues uh that we
00:30:37want to mention here and then we can move on as well uh but there's oh it does does anyone
00:30:44want to
00:30:44have a say on the state department announcing the citizens of 12 additional countries will now have
00:30:50to post a bond of 15k to apply for a visa i'm against it good good yeah uh and that
00:31:01it also brings the
00:31:02total number of countries where their citizens have to do that for a for a visa is up to 50.
00:31:11it's um it it was always a bullshit excuse that um the whole idea of like meritocracy that like
00:31:22uh republicans try and talk about and just like oh like merit merit merit um but this is like even
00:31:30clearly more of a like it shows the bullshit of it because like you know as a person who's hired
00:31:37people from you know other countries and whatever i don't even think about that i just somebody comes
00:31:42in and they interview with me and they're the best person for the job and i hire them but now
00:31:46you're
00:31:47going to basically you know especially companies who are not huge or if you're um you know like uh
00:31:56yeah a smaller company or maybe a smaller role now a company has to pay ten thousand dollars to hire
00:32:02this
00:32:02person so that's basically just added you know on to their wages for that year and it just it seems
00:32:09so um it's so absurd to me these are people who um i mean there's the also a lie but
00:32:21the idea that
00:32:21america's this like giant melting pot and we bring the greatest and the best of the best and the brightest
00:32:26the brightest from around the world and like yeah but now if you're you know whomever we don't like
00:32:33we're gonna you have to be even more the best to the best to come in just like um and
00:32:40i mean especially
00:32:41like it's also such a like lie to have these people who you know maybe they come and they go
00:32:48to college
00:32:49here right they they moved here when they were 18 they spent years in college maybe years in grad school
00:32:54you know they have community here they've they've maybe interned here and now all of a sudden it's
00:33:00like oh you can't get a job because we decided you're a country that that you don't like you know
00:33:06and now you got to go home and so like to what end was any of this that's so frustrating
00:33:15agreed agreed and i'll i'll mention a quick issue as well which is that minnesota is suing the federal
00:33:22government the state and local governments have combined their efforts because unlike the long
00:33:31standing precedent of the federal government working with local authorities in
00:33:38in in researching and investigating criminal activities in the case of the murder of american
00:33:47citizens like alex preddy and renee good and the kidnapping of julio cesar sosa salise
00:33:55the federal government promised to work with the local authority and then within days
00:34:00pulled back and refused to provide any information and the state and the city are saying and the local
00:34:08governments are saying we don't need this as a precedent we we need the to continue to work together
00:34:14regardless of what we're going to find because that's what we have to do we have to get the
00:34:19investigation in to find out what would be what what the facts are what the truth is
00:34:23and even if you don't like it you gotta you gotta pull together to get that done um
00:34:30so i they're doing the right thing it's that that's that sort of thing where it's a little it's not
00:34:35as
00:34:36much as we want but it is the sort of thing that needs to happen so uh kudos to minnesota
00:34:44and the
00:34:44local uh officials that are together on this and holding trying to hold the federal government
00:34:52accountable we'll move on to the segment our next segment which is election central
00:35:01and politipod along with election central bring you information on elections not only just
00:35:07future elections but also news about elections in the next week we'll see elections
00:35:16or election related activities including party conventions utah on the 28th and local elections
00:35:24elections breaking out in delaware and south carolina and texas and iowa on the 31st
00:35:32and a special general election massachusetts up in the house of the 5th essex district
00:35:39the supreme court has ruled that mail-in ballots in an election that are postmarked the day of the
00:35:46election but traditionally given a five-day grace period to actually
00:35:50be received by the board of elections are now illegal the republicans and libertarians who brought the
00:36:00case said that the 1845 law establishing elections by mail only or established early elections only
00:36:10referred to that as election day so therefore waiting for the mail-in ballots no no not accepted
00:36:18so the grace period is um is out the door an argument that this is as ridiculous as it sounds
00:36:28and of course it's only acceptable to republicans that lead the court unfortunately so they were
00:36:36able to get it passed or they were able to vote in favor of that striking down that rule
00:36:44and we talked about earlier we talked about mail-in ballots and the resulting elections and some of
00:36:50the the fact that it's incredibly rare it's a part a fraction of a percentage and that um
00:36:59that elections are well run by the counties as they have been for scores of decades okay um
00:37:09um anything about elections before we go to the next issue um this isn't particularly about elections
00:37:20but something you said reminded me of it um all of this like sorry my dog is upset um
00:37:27all of these he's upset about elections probably exactly he's mad at the supreme court good for all of these
00:37:34all of these things about election fraud and but all kinds of other fraud you know food stamp fraud or
00:37:44whatever whatever um there is no way to hold up um these like sort of non-existent but like
00:37:57fake straw men evil people who are doing this fraud without also kind of undercutting the hard work of
00:38:05people who are doing the elections fall you know like monitoring the elections investigating the
00:38:10elections whatever whatever and basically nobody ever talks about the like um the reverse of that so
00:38:18like basically i'm saying like so these people have been you know all these people who even you know
00:38:24uh uh chosen to like run our elections for all these years have been incapable of doing the job
00:38:29you know you're basically like shitting on um all of these people but that that never gets brought up as
00:38:39part of the discussion and i just feel like you know there's a reason that a lot of these people
00:38:44exist and
00:38:45they're doing this work um you know and yeah
00:38:53fair enough
00:38:56all right with that we will move on to our next issue which is the supreme court speaking of
00:39:03the supreme court is now against freedom of speech but i'm sure it will be fine
00:39:10they decided to not hear a case about a texas law that requires police requires police to arrest
00:39:19journalists who ask government sources about stories and get information that was not
00:39:25known publicly previously previously to that it's very clearly a matter of freedom of speech
00:39:33otherwise known as journalism
00:39:35right exactly and the precedent has been protected for
00:39:40this is this is a precedent this is something that has been before the court before and all the
00:39:45other courts have always said you know yeah there's there's a place for this we we live in a
00:39:49society where we need there to be a journal that we need to have journalism we need a media
00:39:54we need a fifth estate that we'll look at and explore and understand and investigate but not
00:40:02the supreme court doesn't think texas should be involved in that sort of stuff and
00:40:08the case in question is about a journalist who was arrested for asking a source to comment on a
00:40:13story with information that had not been previously released and as i say as you pointed out tom what
00:40:21was formerly called journalism in america is uh undermined by this decision
00:40:29so are they going to start arresting people who do like freedom of information act like foyer requests
00:40:37um it's ridiculous well right i mean it is if if this is made into a national law then
00:40:47uh i suppose as long as the information was pre-existing was known uh previously there's
00:40:56something about calvin in there i haven't made the connection yet but there's got to be some way to
00:41:00phrase it that it's sort of the like calvinism of journalism where you have to have a pre-existing
00:41:06bit of knowledge you can't have knowledge that you just find out about but i haven't gotten there yet
00:41:12i'll work on that bureaucratic calvinism bureaucratic calvinism nice there is going to be no new news
00:41:20from this point forward ever this is the end of news uh that was a little i didn't mean i
00:41:27meant that
00:41:28to be in a jokey way yeah like nothing nothing important is going to happen anymore so like why
00:41:33would we even need to have information we didn't already have exactly yeah i mean it would be so much
00:41:39easier yeah what new could possibly happen i think it's all right exactly what what could you possibly
00:41:46need to know right other than the things you've already been told you don't need to know things
00:41:52right exactly right very good and moving on and of something that is perhaps quintessentially
00:42:03fitting that mold which we have just described is donald trump and we're up to our dump trump dump
00:42:13there we go and
00:42:18so we can start off with the whole thing of is manipulating the economic markets and you heard the
00:42:27talk about possibly having peace peace talks and peace agreement in place with iran and
00:42:35then when people looked into it a little bit they noticed that gosh there were a whole bunch of
00:42:40stock trades that occurred just before just within the hour before the announcement is almost like
00:42:47some people had some information that other people didn't have and they were able to use that to make
00:42:54decisions as far as how to make money off of it in the stock market now i could have sworn
00:43:01that sort of
00:43:01thing was illegal but i mean what is illegal really right pretty much uh we pretty much stretched out that
00:43:11whole that whole elastic let's say uh right there's really no you know it's it's uh it's it's open so
00:43:21why it is to encompass encompass all everything's fine yeah unless you get caught doing it then then
00:43:29you're cooked fair point
00:43:35yeah so we'll see what comes of that if that is actually something that is pursued
00:43:42this finally catches up to some people it's it's not in here but i want to mention it because it's
00:43:48kind of similar there's been these discussions about from trump and he's saying that he's talking to
00:43:52like a head person in iran or somebody who's in charge or whatever and when they're like oh is it
00:43:59the ayatollah and he's like no but whoever's running things i don't know a lot of the people have been
00:44:04killed or whatever and like it could definitely be like just a nigerian prince scandal of somebody
00:44:10being like i'm the person running iran like do these things um somebody got grandpa's phone and just
00:44:17ran a scam on him yeah right i just i just feel like i don't know especially as the guy
00:44:23who's
00:44:23always like he doesn't seem to get news from his own sources he always gets them like from tv um
00:44:31yeah
00:44:31that could just be anybody just being like oh yeah i'm definitely in charge of this like
00:44:35well he gets his stuff from rte but i think that he's uh the sort of person who well remember
00:44:42at one
00:44:42point he said he was leading iran that he was going to step in and run it so very possible
00:44:49that
00:44:49he's talking to himself it's true you know he's using it by now an old tactic where he just says
00:44:56everything it's them it's me it's me and them it's neither of us it's the boogeyman it's santa claus
00:45:04it's this it's that uh and it allows him it it has multiple benefits in that one it shakes things
00:45:10up everybody nobody knows what to oh my god he said this but he also said that people who hear
00:45:15want to hear something that they want to hear hear it and they did they ignore the rest of it
00:45:21that
00:45:21keeps his fans happy and he plays it like he's being cagey oh you never know what i'm gonna do
00:45:27i'm
00:45:27unpredictable uh you know well he does yeah he does it with everything he he eventually takes
00:45:36every position or at least two positions on everything so that when whatever happens happens
00:45:43he can say well look i had said all along predicted it long ago exactly didn't you listen to me
00:45:49and you
00:45:50can and i can show you because i said a and um yeah you're absolutely right that's a standard trump
00:45:55tactic well and it also makes good uh distractive arm waving so as you know he waves the left hand
00:46:04so you don't see the right one taking your watch uh it's distraction it's throws dust up and chaff
00:46:10up into the air and clouds the situation and while you're still digging dust out of your eyes he's gone
00:46:17off with your wallet it's an old trick i don't know why we're so damn gullible in this country i'm
00:46:22losing faith trump tactics yeah i agree
00:46:31well i'll tell you what let's uh let's move to the uh to a net to our next point here
00:46:36which is the
00:46:38hhs with rfk jr who decided to eliminate vaccine committees and to downplay the usefulness of vaccines or
00:46:50effectiveness of vaccines or claim that it's actually doing harm instead of any good uh by
00:46:57doing that with the covet vaccine and then with other another another set of vaccines
00:47:05apparently there are now parents who are skipping all vaccines for their children and they're just
00:47:11taking their lead from this idea with oh well you know it must be the case the vaccines are causing
00:47:17the
00:47:18illnesses and that there's uh that is not safe for our children therefore i'm not going to let my
00:47:23children have it and the fact that this is now going to cause a number of epidemics much less that
00:47:33it's
00:47:34not certainly not the safe thing for those kids but they have a reason right they have a something that
00:47:41can back up their play by saying this is what the this is what hhs says so it gives me
00:47:49hope matt i'll
00:47:49tell you why uh there's times when with humans being the dominant species on the planet a couple
00:47:56hundred years of industrial revolution and we're just cooking the joint we're ruining the place and i
00:48:00and we're taking over we're just encroaching in all natural areas destroying species that have lived
00:48:07here for millennia choking off our own atmosphere as we do it and it gives me hope that we have
00:48:14such stupid self-limiting properties as this such that if we if we eradicate diseases that used to
00:48:25cripple children and kill people across the globe almost unnecessarily almost needlessly like totally
00:48:33preventably i like that if we do that well enough for a couple of generations that that third or fourth
00:48:40generation will feel so entitled to the health that those vaccinations provide they'll just they'll just
00:48:48they'll just throw them off like a wet over like a wet blanket because uh they're too good for it
00:48:53and they
00:48:53don't they don't realize and appreciate uh the benefits i feel like that that's that'll keep us uh from
00:49:01completely terraforming you know this planet anew into our own bastardized uh image of neon and
00:49:11concrete i feel like that it's good we we have these limiting prospects otherwise you know we would
00:49:17destroy the place that much sooner which again is another limiting property uh so it gives me a dark
00:49:23sort of hope you're saying if it's good enough for mish mcconnell gosh darn it's good enough for you
00:49:29absolutely not what i'm saying but i hear i thought it was just because of the funeral home you owned
00:49:36i've got one of those where uh we cash your check but then we just stack the bodies
00:49:40out in the backyard after about uh 15 20 years the feds finally discover us and you know by then
00:49:47the jig is up but we made a good run at it so come on down and actually that's a
00:49:55real case too so
00:49:56that's that's all that all the more at least at least one no they get one every now and then
00:50:00yeah um
00:50:04well speaking of the grotesque vice president jd vance
00:50:10apparently he had a conversation or a meeting with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu
00:50:18and they were discussing or it is said that they met so that they could
00:50:24up up potential agreements to end the military campaign against iran
00:50:30now the question is do you believe this and uh is there is i mean is it any more than
00:50:39a pr stunt to
00:50:40get his name out there is the real leader who's going to follow up trump or is it genuinely done
00:50:47because
00:50:48you know maybe he was it was necessary for him to step in and uh that trump was out pulling
00:50:54a diaper
00:50:54somewhere somewhere right wasn't right he wasn't quite up to snuff and so jd had to fulfill his job
00:51:01duties what do you think i'm fully willing to believe that it happened but will it get us anywhere
00:51:08productive no you know i think about these things and in my limited little capacity and i feel like if
00:51:19if vance arranged for this to be leaked you know he's he knows exactly how comfortable his boss is
00:51:26with sharing the limelight it seems like a self injurious thing to do and it would either be bold
00:51:32of him and he must sense a certain impending weakness that maybe we don't see as acutely because otherwise
00:51:40you're taking on the boss uh and this is not this is a very thin-skinned you know uh get
00:51:47out of my spotlight
00:51:48boss so it doesn't seem like he would do that himself unless he suspects again a certain weakness
00:51:55on the boss's uh level uh it could be put out to poison the water to get trump to get
00:52:03angry at vance
00:52:04maybe somebody did it to put it put the story out in the atmosphere to uh sort of sabotage him
00:52:10i don't
00:52:11know i none of that makes any sense either i i've got an alternative to that i know you're very
00:52:16so wise in these things lay it on me yeah right exactly i'm so wise look at me uh look
00:52:23where i am
00:52:24um but i i think there's another uh possibility which is that they they agreed to this i don't think
00:52:33that he did it behind his back because he's going to the press and i think the press is going
00:52:38to say
00:52:38it and then it's going to be out there even uh trump could bump into something that was reported
00:52:45by somebody he didn't particularly know or like so there is the option that it was
00:52:52set up that it was not vance himself but it was his pr guy his pr guy said look we've
00:52:59got to do
00:52:59something to raise your profile there is going to be an election there will be a 2028 and trump's not
00:53:07going to be in that election and we all know it and he's not going to run again and whatever
00:53:11we say
00:53:12between now and then about that is irrelevant we've got to start raising your profile because
00:53:18once the 2026 elections are out of the way then we've got a i mean the day after the 2026
00:53:25election
00:53:26the 2028 election begins and and so we've got to raise your profile so that you can make a move
00:53:33for the nomination and the only way to do that is to to try to scare off potential rivals
00:53:41by raising your profile and you're the man you're obviously the choice there's no one who should
00:53:46challenge you because you're going to step right in and the only way to do that is to raise his
00:53:51profile
00:53:52specifically on international issues and not domestic one because they've screwed up domestic
00:53:57so badly but uh frankly they've screwed up the international as well but at least it gives you a
00:54:05uh it gives you a spotlight where you don't have to share it with anybody else from the states you're
00:54:10the representative of the united states and so it makes you look better and uh it it gives you a
00:54:17certain credibility so that's i think that that's as much a possibility as any other yeah i agree with
00:54:27that i also think it allows trump the ability to be like look i went in i won the i
00:54:33won the war
00:54:34we already talked about how i won the war the war was over and vance is just like maintaining peace
00:54:41there and so if anything that goes wrong in the future is not my fault because i won the war
00:54:46when
00:54:46it was under me so anything that collapses now that's vance yeah that's all him i i actually i won
00:54:54the peace by uh bombing them i'm still skeptical that trump would share the spotlight in such a way
00:55:01to as to let uh vance canoodle with uh netanyahu i i think well i i understand what you're saying
00:55:11and i know
00:55:12he's that arrogant and egotistical that's certainly true but i also think he's thinking uh they could
00:55:19sell it to him easily enough by saying this is the sort of thing that will be your legacy
00:55:23and it only maintains as a legacy if we keep power and the so we need to make certain that
00:55:30our guy is
00:55:30the nominee this is our guy let's do this and as long as vance doesn't try to make it about
00:55:37himself
00:55:38and as long as in other words as long as vance doesn't go to the meeting and say
00:55:42oh you know publicly comes out afterwards and say well i am the one who really has made this possible
00:55:49um he has to continually say you know oh it's it was all trump it was all trump i'm just
00:55:54here to help
00:55:55the you know with the details um and to help with the negotiations and and i'm going to take over
00:56:01so i gotta do it um so but i mean the truth is maybe we'll know 10 years from now
00:56:09maybe there'll
00:56:10be an expose in in five or ten years that will have some element of what actually happened after
00:56:16the radiation dissipates and we can come out of the caves again yeah exactly exactly um but we'll
00:56:24it's certainly not something that we're going to know in the next two to four years uh we'll get
00:56:31through 2028 without any uh any knowledge of it well and let's uh let's have one more piece of
00:56:40here one more piece in this and then we'll move on to our outro which is in florida's palm beach
00:56:48the house district 87 had a special election the seat was vacated so it was an empty seat
00:56:55and has been since august and so the election was held and unexpectedly the democratic candidate emily
00:57:03gregory won well how'd you look at that florida yeah and and more specifically palm beach which is
00:57:14where a certain mar-a-lago is i've heard of that so yeah so trump's home base there in
00:57:22palm beach has been electing democrats to different positions and not local government and now they've
00:57:29done the house seat as well and uh and that's with trump having publicly endorsed the republican
00:57:37candidate so all this perception out there that he's this mastermind who picks people and they just
00:57:44win because he endorsed them didn't even win his own hometown so interesting certainly interesting um
00:57:54gregory credits the affordability issue she says that that was the concern that the voters had and that
00:58:00she was able to uh talk about that resonated with them and uh pulled in the votes now mom donnie
00:58:08vibe
00:58:09rolling yeah a little bit of monami mixed in and also this uh touches on the mail issue that we
00:58:15talked
00:58:15about it earlier using the postal system i should say and that's because there were about 3 000
00:58:23mail-in votes that had come in for her and the republican could not overcome that because
00:58:28on election day he only wound up getting about 2200 votes so by her being able to get the mail
00:58:36-in votes
00:58:36uh that's where her margin of victory was now that's the sort of thing that is the reason why the
00:58:43republicans cry and and have little tantrums about mail-in votes and uh elections where you can send in
00:58:53your ballot before election day and get it postmarked but it will still be counted if it gets there a
00:58:58couple
00:58:58of days later uh because the mail was slow or because uh where it came from and so that might
00:59:05explain
00:59:05some of their deep deep concerns but tom i think you mentioned before uh before we started about
00:59:12mail-in voting somebody who did that well what do you what do you recall what that was all about
00:59:18you know uh i heard that uh you know trump was uh pretty upset about mail-in voting called it
00:59:24a bunch
00:59:24of scams and schemes it turns out he he mailed in a vote himself at least one and uh yeah
00:59:33and i thought
00:59:34you know this is a felon you know this is a felon are you able are you allowed to legally
00:59:37vote as a felon
00:59:40actually time but he's a felon could you say his name again oh that's uh that is donald john trump
00:59:51what
00:59:56to be fair him doing it is probably proof that it potentially is a scam
01:00:03right right exactly uh as i said the whole the whole lot that make the most noise about it are
01:00:09the ones that keep trying it uh speaking of things they try we have the epstein count up coming up
01:00:18here
01:00:19and that is the days since the unredacted epstein list has not been released and we're at day 3935 though
01:00:29members of congress have seen it and it has outraged them even the republicans get the point now if
01:00:35they see the unredacted version but the public has not seen it and uh we don't know whether or not
01:00:40we
01:00:41ever will this countdown may be going long after politipod live is dust thanks for joining us at
01:00:49politipod live for political talk uh you're welcome to join us every wednesday from 6 pm pacific time or
01:00:569 pm eastern time right here for politipod live if you want a political laugh you can join us and
01:01:02a
01:01:02half dozen of our friends for the monthly political comedy podcast politipod you'll find it at soundcloud.com
01:01:10this is tom bickle and matt nissena saying goodbye
01:01:20you
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