Another Israeli Settler Attack on Journalists | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

WEBVTT
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Good morning. It's Thursday, October 8th, 2026.
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And this is DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl
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Thomas. Here's what we've got for you this morning.
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Another attack by Israeli settler terrorists
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in the West Bank. This time, the victims are
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photojournalists of Agence France-Presse,
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also known as AFP. We'll get into that. Also,
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we've got the death of María del Carmen Abascal.
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You'll remember we covered this on the show.
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She was an 87-year-old lady who was evicted
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from her home in Madrid, prompting widespread
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protests in Spain. Her landlord backed off and
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promised to reduce her rent rather than jack
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it up as they were planning after they evicted
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her. She was looking forward to going back home,
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but I guess the stress was too much and she succumbed
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to the stress of that. Old people are fragile,
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man. She's a martyr. She's going to be a martyr.
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She is a martyr. I hope that the people themselves.
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They're going to have her face as a rallying
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cry. They killed her. They killed her. That's
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going to be a rallying cry. Well, they murdered
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her. They did, objectively. That's what
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they're going to use. They killed her. Remember
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the whatever her name is. Just like they said,
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remember the name. They said, remember the sofa.
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Abascal. And she had a nickname that jammed all
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her names together. So Italy's Prime Minister
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Giorgia Meloni has introduced a new law that
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she's hoping will make Italian politics more
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stable. At least that's what people who are in
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favor of the law say. Other people say it's anti-
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democratic. We'll get into that. A lot of death
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penalty news. Major Nidal Hasan will be executed
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by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3rd.
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Christa Pike is not only talking to her attorneys,
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she's also walking now. And Governor Gavin Newsom
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is term-limited, and he's preparing to wrap up
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his term for a probable run for the White House.
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And he's thinking about commuting all 563 death-
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row prisoners in California all at the same time,
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obviously with an eye toward balancing the politics
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of it, either way. Obviously, I think
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this would be a good idea for a variety of reasons.
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But I think it's obviously
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it would open him up to a certain
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line of attack from law-and-order Republicans.
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So that's what we've got. It probably would help
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him get the nomination, though. Yeah,
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it falls in line with Democratic politics. It
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doesn't. Agreed. Totally agreed. All right.
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So with that, please like, follow, and share the
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show. Today's Thursday, which means we're a one-
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hour show today. We go until 10 a.m. Eastern
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time. If you're watching live, put your questions
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into the live chat. We appreciate and prioritize
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the Super Chats and the Rumble rants. Those are
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paid. We ask you to please subscribe to the show
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if you're not already doing so and you're
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able to afford it. Five, ten, or twenty dollars
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a month, different levels. We have some. By the
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way, in the next two weeks or so, we're going to have
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some interesting author guests. We'll
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tell you a little more about that, but it
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is a short show, so we should just get to it.
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What do you want to talk about first? Let's
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talk about Spain, since we kind of dipped into
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it already. Cool. All right. So, oh, and by the
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way, Efiso says thanks for the dollar. Wes
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Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. The hills have
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eyes. A little bit more terrifying. By the way,
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I love Wes Craven. Yeah, no, that's true. Okay.
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So, yeah. So the lady in Spain is named María
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del Carmen Abascal. And I apologize for my Spanish
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mispronunciations. She's 87 years old. She was
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evicted from an apartment that she lived in
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for about 50 years in Madrid. So she
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lived there under fascism, under Francisco Franco,
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right? She was paying about 500 euros a month.
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Her landlord tried to jack it up to 1,650, which
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is more than her retirement. No way she could
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have afforded that. So she was evicted for non-
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payment of rent. There was a national outcry,
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rallies in Madrid and other cities. People in
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Spain are really furious about this, coming at
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the same time as the French student protests
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in a way. Things had calmed down because the
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landlord had said, okay, okay, our bad. We'll
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let her back in and we'll cut her rent from what
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she was paying before to 450. But apparently
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the stress of the eviction and everything she
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went through was too much for her, and she succumbed,
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and now she's gone. And she's
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a martyr to gangster capitalism. It is
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time to burn stuff down in her name. Yeah. Whether
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she would want it or not is secondary to the
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point. Yep. It's outrageous. For one,
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she should have... They thought that they could.
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Yeah, we can increase the amount of rent, and they
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do this over and over again. There wouldn't have
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been protests if this wasn't something that other
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people in that country experience. Yeah, it's
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one thing to say, oh, that sucks for her. But if
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it was an isolated case, I don't think you would
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have gotten that lightning-rod response from
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all of the people in France saying, last straw.
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Right. And I don't believe for a moment that
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it just stopped in other parts, meaning just
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because they lowered her rent doesn't have anything
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to do with anybody else in Spain whose rent had
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been jacked up in that particular way. And so
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God bless them for their protests. It shouldn't
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stop until this is something that is across
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the board. And Sánchez, Pedro
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Sánchez, the prime minister, called snap
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elections. Those snap elections are probably
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going to be on this particular issue. And I would
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say that it calmed down probably because of the
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snap elections, meaning it looked like the
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government was responding to what the population
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was effectively doing. I think the population
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calming down, though, is not good. You're not
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supposed to stop. You're supposed to keep it
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going to keep the pressure on. Look, it's the
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kind of Russian thing. Those protests are just war.
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It's a low-level war, just like the political
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space is a low-level war. In the same way, the
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Russians kind of made the point of saying, what
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is the point of a ceasefire? We are going to
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keep the war going until we have a negotiation
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that results in something. Same thing with Vietnam,
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right? We are keeping the war going until we
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get a deal to end the war. Same thing with Iran,
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right? Meaning, I'm trying to point out that
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these nations have realized you don't stop until
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you get a deal. And until the deal is signed,
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you have no deal. The political space is exactly
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the same way. Letting the pressure off doesn't
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help in regards to them getting what they want.
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Keeping the pressure going until they get
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what they want is the way to do it. And then,
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after you get what you want, you have to still
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be vigilant. And that's
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the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, right?
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And so that's the price of all hard-won rights.
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She's... Yeah, it's a horror.
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My father-in-law,
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he's gone now, but he was my former father-in-
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law, I should say. He was a landlord, and
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I remember he was always
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asking me, because I used to work in banking, for
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investment opportunities, and he was really... Because
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he was a man of the people and a leftist, even
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though he was a landlord, he was very sensitive
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to anything that smelled of exploitation and
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profiteering at someone else's expense. I remember
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he was like, please look for a brownstone in
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New York City for me to invest in. I found a
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few. And I remember one had a couple of rent-
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controlled tenants in it on the upper floors.
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And so I was like... He's like, well, it's really
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expensive, and the rents, the revenues are so
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low. And I said, yeah, well, the Donald
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Trump approach would be to come in and probably
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evict these people or buy them out, give them
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a few hundred thousand dollars to get lost, and
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then you could maybe make the numbers work. And
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he was like, didn't want to hear it, but he's
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like, I absolutely will never do that. That's someone's
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home. I don't care if there's
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millions to be made. I just won't do that. And
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he was always like that. It was just... And I'm like,
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he was so unusual. It's hard. Yeah, yeah.
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I'm just saying, he gets all
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the credit in the world for that, because that's
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hard. And it wasn't for public consumption.
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This was just him in private having
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a conversation with me. Sometimes
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it went to the point of ridiculousness. Taxi
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medallions, there's a set number of them, over
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10,000. And you have to have this stamp that
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goes on the hood of a yellow taxi in order to
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be a licensed yellow cab in New York. And they
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can be very expensive. When I started out as
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a cab driver, they were about thirty thousand
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dollars. At one point they went over two million
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dollars each. Then the price collapsed because
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of Uber and Lyft, and that's what led to a bunch
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of New York cabbies committing suicide, right?
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But the point is, at one point when the medallion
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was about 75,000, he was asking me about this,
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and I was like, well, this is a good investment,
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man. They go up. Back then there was no
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Uber or Lyft. I'm like, you can't go wrong.
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And if he had followed my advice, he would
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have increased his money like 10-
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to 15-fold within a few years. He's like, I don't
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want to exploit cabbies. And I tried to explain
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to him, the cabbies get paid
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what they get paid regardless of the value of
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the medallion. It's a separate economy.
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It has nothing to do with it. Your
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making money is not going to come at the
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cabbie's expense, which is true. And he,
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maybe in a very abstract, indirect way, but not
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generally speaking. And in fact, actually, the more
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that the cabbies make, the more the medallions
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are worth, and vice versa, because the income is
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what gives the value to the medallion.
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But even so, even in that abstract way, he was
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like, no, it just feels like exploitation. I
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just can't do it. And so that's really
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unusual. And it says... And I think when
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you're evaluating why am I a socialist
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as opposed to a capitalist, it's because the
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incentive structure under capitalism is to be
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cruel and ruthless and to evict 87-year-old women
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to make a few extra euros. The incentive
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structure in other economic
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systems isn't that brutal, and that's why I prefer
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them. I have a question for you, Ted. Your
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former father-in-law, he was all about Taiwanese
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independence. Yeah. Well, Taiwan's a capitalist
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country. So if he was against the exploitation
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of workers, why would he be for independence
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for an island nation that's founded on the concept
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of exploiting island workers? Well, first of
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all, I think he would have been very happy to
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see Taiwan become a fully socialist country,
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a free Republic of Taiwan. But there was also
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an indigenous-rights aspect to his independence.
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He was ethnically Taiwanese. So he wasn't Han
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then? He was part Han, but mostly Taiwanese.
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So he viewed the KMT government at the time as
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being invaders from the mainland. So there was
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that aspect too, because these people are suppressed.
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Roger. Yeah, that's hard. When you're in a company
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and the company has a mandate to maximize its
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profit, yeah, then by definition, exploitation
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is just kind of... You can literally be sued
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if you're an officer or a board member of a publicly
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traded corporation and you fail to maximize short-
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term profits for your shareholders. You can
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be sued in an American court for failing to maintain
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your financial... What's the word? God, there's
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a term for this. But anyway, you have an obligation.
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You have a fiscal obligation to the shareholders,
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right? Fiduciary responsibility. Yeah, fiduciary,
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yep. Yeah, fiduciary responsibility. Meaning,
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kicking that woman out was the job. Right. If
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it was an American company. It's not a bug, it's
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a feature. That's a feature, kicking her out.
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That would be something that they were supposed
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to do, because the system tells them that that
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is your job to do. And the moment you get a machine,
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well, the machine doesn't really care, right?
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Yeah, that's exactly it. What's crazy
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is even the cops who showed up to evict her may
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have felt personally awful about what they were
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doing, but felt compelled that this is just part
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of, I follow the job. I just... Yeah, it's
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like in V, the sci-fi series, there's
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a scene where the cops, local cops,
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are operating under enemy alien
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control, space-alien control, and they're like,
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I don't know, I don't want to. One cop tells
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the other, his partner, I don't really want to
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do this. And he's like, dude, this is our job.
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We just follow the orders they give. We
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follow them no matter who's in charge. And that's
00:14:03.639 --> 00:14:07.580
true. Yeah. Yeah. What he was doing is hard.
00:14:08.350 --> 00:14:12.250
Yeah. Everything in you tells, meaning every
00:14:12.250 --> 00:14:15.909
mechanism of the system tells you to do it. And
00:14:15.909 --> 00:14:18.909
the only thing that tells you not to do it are
00:14:18.909 --> 00:14:23.350
values. Right. And most people are not going
00:14:23.350 --> 00:14:27.860
to make that decision. No. So, F.U. So About
00:14:27.860 --> 00:14:30.740
says thanks for another donation. About 146,000
00:14:30.740 --> 00:14:33.559
older adults experienced homelessness, according
00:14:33.559 --> 00:14:36.700
to HUD. HUD is the Department of Housing and
00:14:36.700 --> 00:14:38.899
Urban Development. That's an increase of about
00:14:38.899 --> 00:14:45.379
six percent from 2023. Yeah, older adults,
00:14:45.379 --> 00:14:49.139
many, many people. Not in this country. We have
00:14:49.139 --> 00:14:52.480
millions of vacant housing units,
00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:56.230
including in luxury neighborhoods where people
00:14:56.230 --> 00:14:58.330
are just warehousing units that are completely
00:14:58.330 --> 00:15:02.250
unoccupied 365 days a year. Well, and you
00:15:02.250 --> 00:15:04.710
spend billions just giving money for wars,
00:15:04.710 --> 00:15:07.950
like, take Ukraine by itself. Let's pretend
00:15:07.950 --> 00:15:10.429
for the moment the Ukraine war didn't happen,
00:15:10.429 --> 00:15:13.190
and let's say the hundreds of billions of dollars
00:15:13.190 --> 00:15:16.190
that we've invested don't get invested in Ukraine.
00:15:16.190 --> 00:15:20.460
What would they have used the money for? Or what
00:15:20.460 --> 00:15:23.039
could they have used it for, right? I'm saying,
00:15:23.039 --> 00:15:26.019
what would they have done if the war for Ukraine hadn't
00:15:26.019 --> 00:15:28.179
taken place? Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, right.
00:15:28.440 --> 00:15:30.419
Or they would have found something else to put
00:15:30.419 --> 00:15:32.100
it in. It would never have gone into homelessness.
00:15:32.519 --> 00:15:35.779
No. They would never have said, hey, let's just
00:15:35.779 --> 00:15:40.440
get rid of homelessness. No, and you could. Yeah,
00:15:40.519 --> 00:15:43.360
you could. There's about half a million people.
00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:46.580
There's about 700,000 people who systemically
00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:48.320
sleep outside every day in the United States.
00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:50.980
There's several million more
00:15:50.980 --> 00:15:53.259
who are functionally homeless, couch-surfing at
00:15:53.259 --> 00:15:55.639
their friends' and relatives' houses.
00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:59.000
But you could absolutely, if you crunch
00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:01.639
the numbers, and it's in my book, What's Left, you
00:16:01.639 --> 00:16:04.080
can totally solve homelessness overnight in this
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:07.259
country. Yes. And I'm just making the point of
00:16:07.259 --> 00:16:09.980
saying we spent hundreds of billions in Ukraine.
00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:12.580
And if the war hadn't taken place, they would
00:16:12.580 --> 00:16:13.980
have found something else to use the money for.
00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:17.039
And if the war hadn't taken place and people
00:16:17.039 --> 00:16:19.460
would have made the argument, why don't you use
00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:22.419
$10 billion, $20 billion to get rid of homelessness?
00:16:22.639 --> 00:16:23.460
They would have said, we don't have the money
00:16:23.460 --> 00:16:28.139
for it. So, Mr. A. Lee, who I do respect and
00:16:28.139 --> 00:16:30.919
usually agree with his comments, but he said
00:16:30.919 --> 00:16:33.019
there's no such thing as Taiwanese. Those people
00:16:33.019 --> 00:16:35.120
are from the mainland themselves. They didn't spawn
00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:38.139
from the soil. Well, it is an island, so obviously
00:16:38.139 --> 00:16:40.320
they came from somewhere else, and many of them
00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:42.419
did come hundreds of years ago from the mainland.
00:16:42.600 --> 00:16:46.679
But ethnically Taiwanese people are also substantially
00:16:46.679 --> 00:16:50.840
descended from Polynesians. They came in dugout
00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:54.580
canoes from the South Pacific. They are ethnically
00:16:54.580 --> 00:16:58.149
distinct. They look different. If they die
00:16:58.149 --> 00:17:00.970
and you find their bones, the cops can tell
00:17:00.970 --> 00:17:03.049
you this person was Taiwanese as opposed to this
00:17:03.049 --> 00:17:05.549
person who was Han. They are ethnically
00:17:05.549 --> 00:17:09.990
distinct. They have different DNA. It's not the
00:17:09.990 --> 00:17:13.230
same. Everybody came from somewhere, right? Everybody
00:17:13.230 --> 00:17:17.170
comes from somewhere. Yeah. Okay, the Dead
00:17:17.170 --> 00:17:20.230
Meme Club. Did you all see that UPS accidentally
00:17:20.230 --> 00:17:24.759
sent China an F-35? A UPS? A United Parcel
00:17:24.759 --> 00:17:27.220
Service? I feel this is too ridiculous to be
00:17:27.220 --> 00:17:30.799
true. Oh, why are we using UPS to ship military
00:17:30.799 --> 00:17:34.200
tech? I guess it is UPS. The big brown truck
00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:37.259
showed up with an F-35. I want an F-35. I'm
00:17:37.259 --> 00:17:40.579
going to order one. Don't you want an F-35,
00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:45.700
Jamarl? I want an F-35. Hell yeah. It's a lot
00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:47.680
faster than the subway, I'm going to say that.
00:17:48.539 --> 00:17:54.259
Gas is expensive enough. I'll pass. I suppose,
00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:59.839
but it sounds ridiculous, but it could
00:17:59.839 --> 00:18:04.480
be true. Meaning, we use private industry
00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:07.819
for all sorts of stuff, military-wise. Yeah,
00:18:07.819 --> 00:18:10.599
that's true. The mail service. It's true. It's
00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:12.730
really shocking. No, it wouldn't. It's not shocking
00:18:12.730 --> 00:18:14.829
at all. All right, we have a lot to talk about.
00:18:14.829 --> 00:18:17.390
Short show. What do you want to talk about
00:18:17.390 --> 00:18:19.049
next? Should we talk about the death penalty stuff?
00:18:19.049 --> 00:18:24.970
Yeah. So, and just, you can present it one more
00:18:24.970 --> 00:18:26.829
time just for the audience. OK, so basically,
00:18:26.829 --> 00:18:30.170
death penalty, slash capital punishment,
00:18:30.170 --> 00:18:33.170
is really in the news right now, largely because
00:18:33.170 --> 00:18:36.349
of Christa Pike, who in the modern era is the
00:18:36.349 --> 00:18:39.549
only person known to have survived a serious
00:18:39.549 --> 00:18:43.460
execution attempt by an American state. Other
00:18:43.460 --> 00:18:45.599
people have certainly done that in the past.
00:18:46.220 --> 00:18:49.460
Christa Pike in Tennessee is now in the hospital.
00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:52.660
She's talking to her attorneys. She woke up confused
00:18:52.660 --> 00:18:55.700
and a little peeved that no one she knew was there.
00:18:55.799 --> 00:18:59.339
She had a tube stuck down her throat. Her arms
00:18:59.339 --> 00:19:02.059
have been inflated up like a surgical glove,
00:19:02.680 --> 00:19:07.599
blown up. Her esophagus is swollen because she
00:19:07.599 --> 00:19:12.440
can't, and so she can't eat. Anyway, at one point,
00:19:12.460 --> 00:19:14.240
they were thinking about pulling the plug on
00:19:14.240 --> 00:19:16.740
her, on the ventilator, but then they're like,
00:19:16.839 --> 00:19:20.279
no, no, no, not dead yet. She's not dead. And
00:19:20.279 --> 00:19:23.559
so now she's up. She's walking around and talking
00:19:23.559 --> 00:19:27.559
to her attorneys. The judge seems to be ruling
00:19:27.559 --> 00:19:32.450
in her favor on pretty much anything. And now
00:19:32.450 --> 00:19:35.069
Governor Lee of Tennessee has to decide whether
00:19:35.069 --> 00:19:38.569
he wants to take a third stab at the apple or
00:19:38.569 --> 00:19:41.569
whether he's going to commute this to life without
00:19:41.569 --> 00:19:45.349
parole, which is what her attorneys are asking
00:19:45.349 --> 00:19:49.009
for. It seems like not a big ask. I think, personally,
00:19:49.130 --> 00:19:51.369
I agree with you, Jamarl. I've been thinking about
00:19:51.369 --> 00:19:54.750
it since you said it yesterday. Let her go. Let
00:19:54.750 --> 00:20:00.809
her fucking go. Anyway, Major Nidal Hasan is
00:20:00.809 --> 00:20:03.529
going to be executed at Donald Trump's personal
00:20:03.529 --> 00:20:08.910
order by firing squad at the same base, Fort Hood,
00:20:08.910 --> 00:20:12.410
in Texas, where he killed 13 people and wounded
00:20:12.410 --> 00:20:19.089
32. This was 17 years ago, in 2009. I
00:20:19.089 --> 00:20:21.930
feel awful about that, especially because this
00:20:21.930 --> 00:20:25.589
guy, he basically suffered PTSD by proxy. There's
00:20:25.589 --> 00:20:27.710
very little doubt about it. He was an Army
00:20:27.710 --> 00:20:31.190
psychologist who was treating our Marines, psychologists
00:20:31.190 --> 00:20:35.670
treating returning Afghan and Iraq War fighters,
00:20:35.670 --> 00:20:38.509
as Hegseth would say, who were coming back from
00:20:38.509 --> 00:20:40.730
the war messed up and relating their experiences.
00:20:40.730 --> 00:20:44.430
It is, I'm sure that psychologists
00:20:44.430 --> 00:20:47.170
are supposed to have supervision, but
00:20:47.170 --> 00:20:50.000
the military didn't provide him proper supervision.
00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:54.180
And he kind of lost his mind and became catatonic
00:20:54.180 --> 00:20:57.019
and psychotic, according to his, before this
00:20:57.019 --> 00:20:59.559
incident. And his colleagues reported,
00:20:59.839 --> 00:21:03.059
nobody gave a shit. Finally, he snapped and carried
00:21:03.059 --> 00:21:06.559
out this dreadful mass shooting on the air base.
00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:09.380
And now he's going to be executed. He's in a
00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:11.980
wheelchair. He was shot that day by the MPs.
00:21:12.329 --> 00:21:14.869
So they're going to have to either figure out
00:21:14.869 --> 00:21:16.430
whether they're going to shoot him in the chair
00:21:16.430 --> 00:21:21.009
or pull him up, I swear to God, pull him up and
00:21:21.009 --> 00:21:24.609
tie him to a post and hang him there like crucified
00:21:24.609 --> 00:21:27.769
while they shoot him. So that's great. And they
00:21:27.769 --> 00:21:30.549
have to figure out... The last time the Army killed
00:21:30.549 --> 00:21:35.539
anyone by firing squad was that guy, Eddie Slovik,
00:21:35.660 --> 00:21:39.900
right? That was during World War II. He was a
00:21:39.900 --> 00:21:44.279
deserter. He had what they used to call... What
00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:46.940
was that they called that? What was it?
00:21:46.940 --> 00:21:51.859
Not trench fatigue, but now it's PTSD. It's
00:21:51.859 --> 00:21:55.220
PTSD. But anyway, what they
00:21:55.220 --> 00:21:58.839
used to call shell shock. Yeah, that's it. He had
00:21:58.839 --> 00:22:02.640
shell shock, which is now PTSD, and
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:05.440
anyway, there's a movie
00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:08.900
about it. He was just a broken kid, and
00:22:08.900 --> 00:22:12.059
they executed him, and it was just... That's the
00:22:12.059 --> 00:22:15.640
last time the Army did this. And finally, Governor
00:22:15.640 --> 00:22:19.299
Gavin Newsom, almost certainly running for president
00:22:19.299 --> 00:22:22.420
starting next year for 2028 for the Democratic
00:22:22.420 --> 00:22:26.440
nomination, is contemplating doing the same thing
00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:30.440
that George Ryan, the ex-governor, did in Illinois,
00:22:30.700 --> 00:22:35.880
right? When he left, the Innocence Project kept
00:22:35.880 --> 00:22:39.900
finding that one Illinois death-penalty resident
00:22:39.900 --> 00:22:42.319
after another was actually innocent, and he got
00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:45.940
tired of the whole thing, and he ended up commuting
00:22:45.940 --> 00:22:49.779
every death-penalty sentence in Illinois to life
00:22:49.779 --> 00:22:52.559
in prison. And that's what Newsom is thinking
00:22:52.559 --> 00:22:54.920
of doing in California. California hasn't executed
00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:57.720
anyone in 30 years anyway. So it's kind of
00:22:57.720 --> 00:23:01.099
stupid to be maintaining the gas chamber and
00:23:01.099 --> 00:23:05.599
the whole infrastructure at San Quentin when
00:23:05.599 --> 00:23:07.700
you're probably never going to use it politically.
00:23:08.220 --> 00:23:10.140
I think the death penalty in California
00:23:10.140 --> 00:23:14.140
is dead anyway. But he's worried that this will,
00:23:14.380 --> 00:23:17.980
that he'll get criticized. Not that.
00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:25.299
So, yeah. Yeah, Newsom, I think, should just
00:23:25.299 --> 00:23:28.619
do it. It's California, right?
00:23:28.640 --> 00:23:32.220
Supposedly it's a liberal space. It's a super-
00:23:32.220 --> 00:23:34.880
majority Democrat. Democrats tend to be against
00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:38.119
the death penalty. So there's nothing. Meaning,
00:23:38.630 --> 00:23:40.869
even if he runs for president, you can make the
00:23:40.869 --> 00:23:43.690
argument about why you did it. You can
00:23:43.690 --> 00:23:45.589
make that argument. That argument will work for
00:23:45.589 --> 00:23:47.210
your particular side of the political space.
00:23:47.569 --> 00:23:50.549
I don't think there's a hedge against him
00:23:50.549 --> 00:23:52.549
doing so, especially as you point out, it's not
00:23:52.549 --> 00:23:54.849
like they've executed somebody in 30 years. And
00:23:54.849 --> 00:23:57.609
so you're spending all of this money. If I, correct
00:23:57.609 --> 00:24:01.029
me if I'm wrong, the death penalty is more expensive
00:24:01.029 --> 00:24:03.990
than life in prison. Oh, much more so. Yeah.
00:24:04.130 --> 00:24:08.519
Yeah. I know it's... What's the word for it? It
00:24:08.519 --> 00:24:13.200
sounds contradictory, but it sounds weird because
00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:15.400
you would think that life in prison would
00:24:15.400 --> 00:24:17.259
be longer just because a person is living longer.
00:24:17.400 --> 00:24:19.140
But no, the death penalty is more expensive.
00:24:19.420 --> 00:24:23.259
So, yeah, fiscally, I guess you can make
00:24:23.259 --> 00:24:25.799
the argument ethically and morally, not to mention
00:24:25.799 --> 00:24:28.200
the idea that you can't necessarily always know
00:24:28.200 --> 00:24:31.599
that the person you're killing is guilty, despite
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:33.859
the fact that they went through the justice system.
00:24:34.700 --> 00:24:38.420
Even that is a little bit weird. Right. It's
00:24:38.420 --> 00:24:40.559
like the justice system knows that it gets things
00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:44.880
wrong, and yet it executes people anyway. There's
00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:48.140
that. What's her name? Let her go. You've had
00:24:48.140 --> 00:24:49.740
two bites at the apple. She was in prison for
00:24:49.740 --> 00:24:51.900
30 years. You've tried to execute her twice.
00:24:52.930 --> 00:24:55.089
Let her go. You don't know what you're doing.
00:24:55.309 --> 00:25:00.369
The state of Tennessee earlier this year
00:25:00.369 --> 00:25:04.130
had another botched execution. And the guy, after
00:25:04.130 --> 00:25:07.369
they administered the pentobarbital or
00:25:07.369 --> 00:25:11.539
whatever it's called, said that he was screaming.
00:25:11.599 --> 00:25:15.440
He's like, God, it hurts so bad. It's burning.
00:25:15.660 --> 00:25:18.220
That's not what this is supposed to do,
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:22.220
right? That's not the process. And again, I want
00:25:22.220 --> 00:25:24.180
to reiterate, Christa Pike couldn't have been
00:25:24.180 --> 00:25:27.660
more helpful. She spent an hour trying to point
00:25:27.660 --> 00:25:31.410
her killers, her executioners,
00:25:31.410 --> 00:25:34.410
to the right vein. Please, try over here.
00:25:34.410 --> 00:25:36.750
Try over here. This, you might have more luck here.
00:25:36.750 --> 00:25:40.750
She had asked to be shot by firing squad.
00:25:40.750 --> 00:25:43.849
Maybe they could have a twofer
00:25:43.849 --> 00:25:46.289
down at Fort Hood and do them both at the same
00:25:46.289 --> 00:25:48.630
time. Hey, you've hired the... You've
00:25:48.630 --> 00:25:50.930
hired them for the training. You've trained the
00:25:50.930 --> 00:25:53.549
firing squad. Hey, maybe we can work
00:25:53.549 --> 00:25:55.890
something out. Tennessee's not so far from Texas.
00:25:55.890 --> 00:26:00.359
Or... And oh, she also asked if she
00:26:00.359 --> 00:26:03.299
could be hanged. It's like, oh, there's... But there
00:26:03.299 --> 00:26:06.019
have been botched hangings too. I take
00:26:06.019 --> 00:26:08.980
the firing squad. I don't want that. I think
00:26:08.980 --> 00:26:10.799
the firing squad seems more. And by the way,
00:26:10.819 --> 00:26:14.380
the other guy, the Fort Hood shooter, I don't
00:26:14.380 --> 00:26:15.920
know why this is complicated. And I don't know
00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:17.480
why the state makes these things complicated.
00:26:17.619 --> 00:26:22.880
Shoot them in a wheelchair. And I know that I'm
00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:25.259
not trying to be brutal here. It's so outlandish,
00:26:25.319 --> 00:26:27.740
the whole thing. Yeah, the thing feels so outlandish.
00:26:27.779 --> 00:26:29.720
If you're going to do it, this seems straightforward.
00:26:29.720 --> 00:26:31.640
He's in a wheelchair. Shoot him in a wheelchair.
00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:34.019
You have all sorts of snipers and everything
00:26:34.019 --> 00:26:37.799
else. What's the issue? I don't see the issue. Well,
00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:40.079
maybe they think that if they stand him up, that
00:26:40.079 --> 00:26:42.279
in the afterlife, then he'll be standing for all
00:26:42.279 --> 00:26:44.680
of eternity, so they're kind of giving him his
00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:47.460
legs back. I think their issue is we don't
00:26:47.460 --> 00:26:49.700
want to shoot a man in a wheelchair, which is
00:26:49.700 --> 00:26:53.819
what it is. What's the issue? It certainly
00:26:53.819 --> 00:26:55.900
wasn't... He's not going to get far if he escapes.
00:26:55.900 --> 00:26:57.960
It's certainly not. That's not the case, right?
00:26:57.960 --> 00:27:00.240
Crawling away slowly. It's like, somehow he got
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:02.660
away. Listen, if you're going
00:27:02.660 --> 00:27:05.480
to get taken out, being in a firing squad with
00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:10.000
five guys with .30-06 rifles is about the fastest,
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:12.180
most efficient way that you could possibly go.
00:27:12.180 --> 00:27:14.819
You'd never feel a thing. Yeah, the anxiety is
00:27:14.819 --> 00:27:19.099
before you get shot. Death, it's fast. Yeah. And
00:27:19.099 --> 00:27:20.920
then you get to decide: you want
00:27:20.920 --> 00:27:24.150
the blindfold or not. That's the
00:27:24.150 --> 00:27:27.500
choice. It's so funny because we're sold.
00:27:27.500 --> 00:27:29.819
We're always sold on these newfangled high-
00:27:29.819 --> 00:27:32.240
tech approaches. Right. And it's always like,
00:27:32.299 --> 00:27:34.460
oh, this will be better. You remember
00:27:34.460 --> 00:27:36.619
this. When we were young, it was like,
00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:38.539
hey, we're going to do something. We're
00:27:38.539 --> 00:27:40.519
going to try lethal injection. It's going to
00:27:40.519 --> 00:27:43.099
be far more civilized. They just go to sleep.
00:27:43.559 --> 00:27:47.319
It's not as cruel as the electric chair,
00:27:47.839 --> 00:27:50.980
which can take time, and people are
00:27:50.980 --> 00:27:53.980
screaming, and their flesh is on fire, and everybody's
00:27:53.980 --> 00:27:57.039
puking in the witness room. It's going to
00:27:57.039 --> 00:27:59.880
be much better than that, better than the gas
00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:03.640
chamber, where that's also apparently really
00:28:03.640 --> 00:28:06.480
horrible, and there's a gruesome mess to clean
00:28:06.480 --> 00:28:10.039
up afterwards for the guards, and then there's
00:28:10.039 --> 00:28:12.339
poison gas that's floating around that has to
00:28:12.339 --> 00:28:16.180
be vented out, right? So that's really awful. It's
00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:18.839
like, death is just awful, basically.
00:28:19.039 --> 00:28:20.819
Hell, at this rate, they could just do
00:28:20.819 --> 00:28:24.579
what Pinochet's Chilean
00:28:24.579 --> 00:28:27.279
dictatorship did, where they would take leftist
00:28:27.279 --> 00:28:30.079
students in helicopters and just fly them over
00:28:30.079 --> 00:28:32.960
the ocean and throw them out. They could just
00:28:32.960 --> 00:28:35.960
do that. Well, something might go wrong with
00:28:35.960 --> 00:28:40.329
the helicopter. Truth is, I'm serious. I'm not...
00:28:40.329 --> 00:28:42.450
Well, you'd be just throwing them out, but just
00:28:42.450 --> 00:28:44.470
throwing them out of the helicopter several thousand
00:28:44.470 --> 00:28:46.890
feet above the ocean, I think that pretty much
00:28:46.890 --> 00:28:48.710
always did the job. I don't think anyone ever
00:28:48.710 --> 00:28:51.410
survived. Yeah, but you got to pay for jet fuel.
00:28:51.410 --> 00:28:53.670
The helicopter may have a mishap, and if you're
00:28:53.670 --> 00:28:56.650
doing that on an industrial scale, there's a greenhouse-
00:28:56.650 --> 00:29:00.849
gas effect. Yeah, all sorts of things. No, a bullet
00:29:00.849 --> 00:29:03.390
is very straightforward. They don't want to do
00:29:03.390 --> 00:29:07.069
that because, people, it looks impolite.
00:29:07.089 --> 00:29:08.829
They don't want... What if the firing
00:29:08.829 --> 00:29:11.849
squad guys miss? You can't miss. Yeah, but you
00:29:11.849 --> 00:29:14.220
got five guys. They're not going to miss.
00:29:14.240 --> 00:29:16.700
You can't miss. What do you mean, you can't miss?
00:29:16.779 --> 00:29:18.759
You can miss. You've been to the firing,
00:29:18.900 --> 00:29:22.000
to the shooting range, and not hit the target,
00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:25.000
right? Ted, the next time that you come here,
00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:27.799
and we'll take you out shooting. Now, I'll have
00:29:27.799 --> 00:29:30.599
a .30-06. I have a Mosin-Nagant. But the point
00:29:30.599 --> 00:29:34.180
is, you're 30 feet away. You aim at a chair.
00:29:35.230 --> 00:29:38.190
You're saying you just aim in the general direction?
00:29:39.230 --> 00:29:43.109
Unless you point the rifle in the entirely wrong
00:29:43.109 --> 00:29:46.029
direction, it's impossible. You cannot miss in
00:29:46.029 --> 00:29:48.750
that range. You can't do it. The only way they
00:29:48.750 --> 00:29:52.309
miss is if they intentionally miss. Yeah, that's
00:29:52.309 --> 00:29:54.809
the only way. But listen, the guillotine
00:29:54.809 --> 00:29:57.329
is the most ecologically sound way to do it.
00:29:57.369 --> 00:30:00.690
It's reusable. There's no waste. There's no lead.
00:30:01.009 --> 00:30:04.190
I've never heard of a botched guillotine.
00:30:04.269 --> 00:30:06.549
If you're going to do it, it just comes down
00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:09.269
to what it is you want to do. Me, personally,
00:30:09.470 --> 00:30:11.630
being a red-blooded American, I would rather
00:30:11.630 --> 00:30:15.309
get taken out by a firing squad. That being said,
00:30:15.490 --> 00:30:17.829
a guillotine works just as well. Problem is,
00:30:17.829 --> 00:30:21.150
I don't have much hair up here, so picking up
00:30:21.150 --> 00:30:23.150
a head and putting it into a box would be a little
00:30:23.150 --> 00:30:27.470
bit harder. Yeah, that looks very impolite.
00:30:27.470 --> 00:30:29.349
It's easier because Robby is right. You
00:30:29.349 --> 00:30:32.309
can put a box under it, head goes off, close
00:30:32.309 --> 00:30:34.299
the box, nobody sees the head. Move the body.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:36.900
They used to use a basket. Just put it in a basket.
00:30:37.019 --> 00:30:40.769
Just done. Yeah, but that looks bad. And also,
00:30:40.849 --> 00:30:44.109
it's a lot of spurting blood, right? That
00:30:44.109 --> 00:30:48.029
too. It goes off like a chicken. Well, evidently,
00:30:48.029 --> 00:30:50.089
Tennessee doesn't have phlebotomists who can
00:30:50.089 --> 00:30:54.289
do needles. So, no, pick your poison, literally.
00:30:55.119 --> 00:31:00.309
It's insane. So, yeah. The issue is the drug
00:31:00.309 --> 00:31:02.329
companies don't like their product being used
00:31:02.329 --> 00:31:03.970
to kill people, because that's not the point of
00:31:03.970 --> 00:31:06.250
drugs under normal circumstances. And so the
00:31:06.250 --> 00:31:08.369
prison system has come up with something they
00:31:08.369 --> 00:31:11.009
concocted that they thought would do the job.
00:31:11.490 --> 00:31:14.769
That's right. But we also need, or
00:31:14.769 --> 00:31:17.009
maybe we could go like Sophie Scholl.
00:31:17.109 --> 00:31:20.769
She was the German resistance person executed
00:31:20.769 --> 00:31:24.380
by the Nazis during the... I think in the '40s,
00:31:24.380 --> 00:31:27.339
the White Rose. She and her brother were in the
00:31:27.339 --> 00:31:30.359
White Rose resistance movement. She
00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:33.039
was executed, if memory serves, by double-headed
00:31:33.039 --> 00:31:38.299
medieval axe. What? Yeah, I think that's probably
00:31:38.299 --> 00:31:42.460
what they need to do. There's also a famous abortionist
00:31:42.460 --> 00:31:46.119
in Vichy France under Marshal Pétain during the
00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:51.119
occupation who was executed by axe also. And
00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:53.480
I think single-headed axe that time. Double-
00:31:53.480 --> 00:31:55.680
headed axe seems like it would be dangerous
00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:58.880
to the executioner. I don't know. I don't
00:31:58.880 --> 00:32:01.140
know. You have to be handy with it. Looks like
00:32:01.140 --> 00:32:03.579
it'd be harder. The neck is only so big.
00:32:03.980 --> 00:32:07.380
I know. It's true. It looks like they were just
00:32:07.380 --> 00:32:09.660
finding ways of entertaining themselves during
00:32:09.660 --> 00:32:12.900
executions. By the way, SEAL Team 6 does stuff
00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:15.339
like that. Like canoeing. Have you ever heard
00:32:15.339 --> 00:32:17.700
about this? Canoeing? No. Like, they got bored
00:32:17.700 --> 00:32:19.579
with regular killing, and so they would try to
00:32:19.579 --> 00:32:22.759
find ways of making it interesting, so you're
00:32:22.759 --> 00:32:24.519
trying to shoot the person and hit him in the
00:32:24.519 --> 00:32:26.660
head in a way where it splits the head directly
00:32:26.660 --> 00:32:30.640
open with the brain, and you think, lovely people.
00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:35.190
Yeah, it's like you've gotten so... But I think anybody
00:32:35.190 --> 00:32:38.019
would do that. Meaning, you get... It's
00:32:38.019 --> 00:32:40.460
almost like you play a game and you get so good
00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:42.539
at the game that instead of doing the regular
00:32:42.539 --> 00:32:44.279
things of the game, you're trying to do other
00:32:44.279 --> 00:32:47.599
stuff in the game. Like, a friend of mine,
00:32:47.619 --> 00:32:49.779
we used to play chess, and we'd be like, okay,
00:32:49.839 --> 00:32:53.019
let's pretend the king can move multiple squares.
00:32:53.380 --> 00:32:55.420
Okay, well, obviously, that's not chess, right?
00:32:55.539 --> 00:32:58.380
It's changing the rules. It's changing the rules
00:32:58.380 --> 00:32:59.980
because you're so bored with the regular rules.
00:33:00.240 --> 00:33:02.779
And so it's like, okay, we can kill people. We've
00:33:02.779 --> 00:33:06.359
gotten very good at that. But what if we see
00:33:06.359 --> 00:33:08.180
if we can split the head open? It's the human
00:33:08.180 --> 00:33:11.220
way, right? Let's step it up. Let's step
00:33:11.220 --> 00:33:13.779
it up a notch. Now, we're talking about something
00:33:13.779 --> 00:33:17.789
very horrible, but... If you are doing that on
00:33:17.789 --> 00:33:21.670
a daily basis, that's just your life. Ackley
00:33:21.670 --> 00:33:24.890
says, free Nidal Hasan, true American hero.
00:33:24.970 --> 00:33:27.609
I have no idea whether this is sarcastic or not.
00:33:27.710 --> 00:33:30.470
I'm going to guess probably not. Either
00:33:30.470 --> 00:33:35.210
way. Pardon? I hope he's being sarcastic.
00:33:35.250 --> 00:33:39.990
Look, I think, honestly, Nidal Hasan is a victim
00:33:40.549 --> 00:33:43.289
of American imperialism because of the stories
00:33:43.289 --> 00:33:46.369
that he had to process. And you look at the pictures
00:33:46.369 --> 00:33:50.069
of him. This is a man who is deeply distraught.
00:33:50.109 --> 00:33:54.910
He looks worse than most of the paranoid schizophrenics
00:33:54.910 --> 00:33:57.029
that you see talking to themselves
00:33:57.029 --> 00:33:59.990
out on the street in major cities. He
00:33:59.990 --> 00:34:04.269
looks just like it's a thousand-mile stare. He's
00:34:04.269 --> 00:34:08.590
just not home. That's the thing. I hope
00:34:08.590 --> 00:34:10.690
fucking Donald Trump and Republicans who are
00:34:10.690 --> 00:34:13.789
making jokes about this online, I hope they fucking
00:34:13.789 --> 00:34:18.989
are proud of themselves. They're killing a husk.
00:34:19.110 --> 00:34:21.809
They're killing a guy who's already been dead
00:34:21.809 --> 00:34:24.969
for years. They're fucking... They're
00:34:24.969 --> 00:34:28.889
pathetic. I think they're pathetic for a different
00:34:28.889 --> 00:34:31.750
reason. I think they're pathetic because they
00:34:31.750 --> 00:34:35.469
created this man. Yeah. Meaning iteration
00:34:35.469 --> 00:34:38.210
after iteration of U.S. president that has been
00:34:38.210 --> 00:34:40.469
in office that effectively had people killing
00:34:40.469 --> 00:34:42.889
other people abroad for money, basically paying
00:34:42.889 --> 00:34:45.150
poor people to go kill other poor people in other
00:34:45.150 --> 00:34:47.210
countries, which is effectively what we do when
00:34:47.210 --> 00:34:50.210
we pay our military. Poorly paid thousands. Yeah.
00:34:50.809 --> 00:34:53.349
It's like the rich guy said, I forget the name.
00:34:53.409 --> 00:34:55.650
I could pay one group of poor people to kill
00:34:55.650 --> 00:34:58.130
another group of poor people. Well, here we have
00:34:58.130 --> 00:35:00.550
it. It's called our military. It's called the
00:35:00.550 --> 00:35:02.940
U.S. military. And militaries around the globe,
00:35:03.039 --> 00:35:04.539
right? And we pay other countries, people in
00:35:04.539 --> 00:35:06.400
other countries, to do the exact same thing. The
00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:08.380
terrorists that we're trying to get now to go
00:35:08.380 --> 00:35:12.179
into Saudi Arabia in order to fight Ansar Allah.
00:35:12.940 --> 00:35:15.840
Paying poor people to kill other poor people,
00:35:15.880 --> 00:35:17.920
even though they're troglodytes, they're lunatics.
00:35:20.170 --> 00:35:23.119
Point being made, for all intents and purposes,
00:35:23.260 --> 00:35:25.139
he's sitting there listening to the stories of
00:35:25.139 --> 00:35:26.619
these people who are coming back, talking about
00:35:26.619 --> 00:35:28.440
the people that they killed when they were abroad.
00:35:29.699 --> 00:35:32.280
And maybe... It's the case that he couldn't take
00:35:32.280 --> 00:35:34.710
it. I don't know what it is. Maybe he was already
00:35:34.710 --> 00:35:37.190
psychotic. Maybe the stories pushed him in a
00:35:37.190 --> 00:35:39.389
particular direction and radicalized him. Let's
00:35:39.389 --> 00:35:41.309
assume for the moment he was radicalized by the
00:35:41.309 --> 00:35:43.309
stories. Then that should tell us something about
00:35:43.309 --> 00:35:47.480
the things that he was hearing. Meaning, the stuff
00:35:47.480 --> 00:35:49.280
that we don't particularly hear, that U.S. troops
00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:51.780
come back and tell him, that has put him in this
00:35:51.780 --> 00:35:53.840
particular position where he's looking at us
00:35:53.840 --> 00:35:56.159
as the enemy, because in some respects we are
00:35:56.159 --> 00:35:58.940
the enemy. But that's secondary to the point
00:35:58.940 --> 00:36:01.760
that he murdered a bunch of people. Yeah, he
00:36:01.760 --> 00:36:04.159
did. And obviously that can't necessarily be.
00:36:05.119 --> 00:36:08.619
That is not cool. Yeah. Because you
00:36:08.619 --> 00:36:10.980
can look at people in this country as being on
00:36:10.980 --> 00:36:16.360
some level abused also. How can I say this?
00:36:17.530 --> 00:36:20.650
He's still responsible, right? You've just killed
00:36:20.650 --> 00:36:23.590
a lot of people. And many of these people consider
00:36:23.590 --> 00:36:26.909
the U.S. military a job. They don't look
00:36:26.909 --> 00:36:30.210
at this as, we're going out and killing people
00:36:30.730 --> 00:36:32.690
in a military capacity and function, et cetera.
00:36:32.789 --> 00:36:35.030
I think many of them look at it as, this is
00:36:35.030 --> 00:36:37.920
kind of like me driving a truck, right? Right.
00:36:38.099 --> 00:36:40.460
I think that's right. I think that is really
00:36:40.460 --> 00:36:46.300
true. But those are different things. Yeah. So,
00:36:46.300 --> 00:36:48.880
yeah, he's guilty. He's guilty as sin.
00:36:50.170 --> 00:36:52.429
Yeah, I think he's crazy and should,
00:36:52.449 --> 00:36:54.550
for that reason, walk. But most people
00:36:54.550 --> 00:36:57.670
who are crazy and kill when they're crazy don't
00:36:57.670 --> 00:36:59.469
walk. But see, I don't think they should walk.
00:37:00.750 --> 00:37:03.630
You still killed a bunch of people. I guess the
00:37:03.630 --> 00:37:07.400
question boils down to, are we culpable for our
00:37:07.400 --> 00:37:08.920
actions, especially when we're talking about
00:37:08.920 --> 00:37:13.460
violent actions? Not if you're out of your fucking
00:37:13.460 --> 00:37:15.980
mind. Unless we're trying to make the argument
00:37:15.980 --> 00:37:20.500
he's Nat Turner, which I don't accept. No, I
00:37:20.500 --> 00:37:24.150
wouldn't make that argument. There are certain
00:37:24.150 --> 00:37:27.530
crimes or violence I would justify. This isn't
00:37:27.530 --> 00:37:32.699
one of them. I think if the same guy had killed,
00:37:32.820 --> 00:37:35.579
had done the same thing at a joint session of
00:37:35.579 --> 00:37:38.820
Congress, it would be different. And I would
00:37:38.820 --> 00:37:42.550
be inclined to say he's Nat Turner then. Nat
00:37:42.550 --> 00:37:45.199
Turner. That's fair. That's fair. I get that
00:37:45.199 --> 00:37:48.659
argument. It's sort of like on 9/11, the only
00:37:48.659 --> 00:37:53.300
murders that were justifiable were
00:37:53.300 --> 00:37:56.280
the ones in the Pentagon. At the military bases,
00:37:56.300 --> 00:37:58.559
right. They were the ones, decision-making centers.
00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:01.239
Not the people on the plane that hit the Pentagon,
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:05.400
but, yeah. It's a military target. It's
00:38:05.400 --> 00:38:09.639
the ultimate military target. Look, a
00:38:09.639 --> 00:38:11.400
lot of the stuff boils down to whether you believe
00:38:11.400 --> 00:38:13.320
that the American population is culpable for
00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:14.820
the crimes that it commits around the globe.
00:38:15.139 --> 00:38:20.300
Right. That was the argument. I have a cartoon
00:38:20.300 --> 00:38:23.980
about that this week, about basically, at the
00:38:23.980 --> 00:38:27.860
end of World War II, the U.S. prosecutors at
00:38:27.860 --> 00:38:30.800
Nuremberg argued that the entire German nation
00:38:31.369 --> 00:38:34.050
was collectively responsible, collective guilt,
00:38:34.230 --> 00:38:38.110
because they failed to overthrow Adolf Hitler.
00:38:38.590 --> 00:38:40.750
And overthrowing Adolf Hitler would have
00:38:40.750 --> 00:38:44.389
been arguably much more difficult than going
00:38:44.389 --> 00:38:47.269
to protest against a war here in the United States.
00:38:48.130 --> 00:38:52.010
And yet we don't. The same country that made
00:38:52.010 --> 00:38:54.489
that argument for the people had this very high
00:38:54.489 --> 00:38:57.989
expectation for the people of Germany, has very
00:38:57.989 --> 00:39:00.380
few expectations of its own people when it comes
00:39:00.380 --> 00:39:03.260
to its own crimes. Yes. And it was true for Germany.
00:39:03.260 --> 00:39:06.260
It's true for us. Well, it can't be true for
00:39:06.260 --> 00:39:09.860
one and not the other, right? Right. And they
00:39:09.860 --> 00:39:12.699
were right for saying it in the Nuremberg trial,
00:39:12.860 --> 00:39:16.780
just like it's true here. Look, whose responsibility
00:39:16.780 --> 00:39:19.900
is it if it's not the American population? Right.
00:39:20.099 --> 00:39:24.079
There's literally a constitution that doesn't
00:39:24.079 --> 00:39:26.599
separate the government from the population,
00:39:27.210 --> 00:39:29.409
because the people in the government are made
00:39:29.409 --> 00:39:31.610
up of people in the population. We pay tax dollars
00:39:31.610 --> 00:39:34.550
for this stuff, right? It's representative government.
00:39:34.769 --> 00:39:36.929
But even if it's not, right, even if it's an
00:39:36.929 --> 00:39:40.449
authoritarian regime, even if it's a totalitarian
00:39:40.449 --> 00:39:44.250
state like Nazi Germany, you still, I think the
00:39:44.250 --> 00:39:45.989
whole point is that you still have that responsibility,
00:39:46.190 --> 00:39:49.929
especially, I think, when your government is
00:39:49.929 --> 00:39:53.030
killing people overseas. It's one thing
00:39:53.030 --> 00:39:55.050
if you decide, it's kind of like
00:39:55.050 --> 00:39:57.480
if you're being abused as a spouse
00:39:57.480 --> 00:39:59.519
and you decide you're going to put up with it.
00:39:59.579 --> 00:40:02.280
But it's another thing to let your kid be abused
00:40:02.280 --> 00:40:04.500
by your spouse. That's worse. You don't have
00:40:04.500 --> 00:40:06.719
that right. And similarly, we don't really have
00:40:06.719 --> 00:40:09.860
the right to let our government kill people in
00:40:09.860 --> 00:40:11.619
other countries. If we want to tolerate them
00:40:11.619 --> 00:40:14.199
killing us, that's... we're stupid and wimpy. We
00:40:14.199 --> 00:40:16.320
can do that. But we really don't have a moral
00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:19.679
right to let our government kill anyone outside
00:40:19.679 --> 00:40:22.219
of the United States. Right. And when they respond
00:40:22.219 --> 00:40:26.369
to us by doing to us what we do to them, we
00:40:26.369 --> 00:40:31.480
can't act like, oh my God, what the hell is this?
00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:34.360
They hate us for our freedoms. Why do they hate
00:40:34.360 --> 00:40:38.900
us? Why? Why? It's amazing. We're so nice. It's
00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:43.460
such bullshit, right? And it's aggravating bullshit
00:40:43.460 --> 00:40:46.340
because it's like, now we need to go murder more
00:40:46.340 --> 00:40:49.500
people in a more direct sense. It's like, dude,
00:40:49.619 --> 00:40:52.199
you had already been killing people, and that's
00:40:52.199 --> 00:40:54.639
why you were hit. And you're acting like, oh
00:40:54.639 --> 00:40:57.110
my God, I can't believe we were hit. Why are
00:40:57.110 --> 00:41:00.630
you shocked? Why are you shocked? No, I, yeah,
00:41:00.809 --> 00:41:03.750
it was shocking, but not surprising.
00:41:04.829 --> 00:41:09.269
Thanks to Sean for the 99-cent donation. Terra
00:41:09.269 --> 00:41:11.449
Preta Wild, representative government has been
00:41:11.449 --> 00:41:14.349
utter fiction since 1789. Well, that's why I
00:41:14.349 --> 00:41:16.690
said it doesn't matter about the form of
00:41:16.690 --> 00:41:18.130
government. I don't think we have representative
00:41:18.130 --> 00:41:20.780
government because we have two parties that
00:41:20.780 --> 00:41:22.679
basically don't represent the American people.
00:41:22.820 --> 00:41:26.260
But that doesn't absolve us from our collective
00:41:26.260 --> 00:41:30.820
responsibility. No. But people choose. They allow
00:41:30.820 --> 00:41:34.300
it. Yeah, we do tolerate it. We could bring it
00:41:34.300 --> 00:41:38.139
to an end. Let's talk a little bit about some
00:41:38.139 --> 00:41:40.539
of the killing we're doing overseas. I don't
00:41:40.539 --> 00:41:43.480
think we can. I don't think we can. You don't
00:41:43.480 --> 00:41:45.420
think we can overthrow the government? No, you're
00:41:45.420 --> 00:41:48.800
talking like elections matter. They don't. So
00:41:48.800 --> 00:41:53.380
basically, here's the comparison that I would
00:41:53.380 --> 00:41:57.300
make. We can have a revolutionary overthrow of
00:41:57.300 --> 00:41:59.780
the state is what I'm saying. Yeah, but people
00:41:59.780 --> 00:42:03.039
are too drugged up for that. So let's
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:06.199
just... People keep trying to go, well, you have
00:42:06.199 --> 00:42:08.699
the government that you, and I've said this,
00:42:08.739 --> 00:42:09.699
that we have the government that we deserve.
00:42:09.880 --> 00:42:14.130
And in some way, that's true. The issue is, the
00:42:14.610 --> 00:42:16.250
only difference between the United States and
00:42:16.250 --> 00:42:19.940
the Soviet Union is that we have technically
00:42:20.010 --> 00:42:22.989
two parties, but they have the exact same platforms.
00:42:23.190 --> 00:42:24.690
It doesn't matter who you vote for. You always
00:42:24.690 --> 00:42:28.389
get John McCain. That's the system that we have.
00:42:28.590 --> 00:42:34.190
I never said elections. You cannot vote yourself
00:42:34.190 --> 00:42:38.190
out of this mess. No. As Robby said, you're
00:42:38.190 --> 00:42:41.329
in a two-party capitalistic state. You're in
00:42:41.329 --> 00:42:44.269
an oligarchy. Is it even two parties?
00:42:44.289 --> 00:42:49.309
That's the brand. It's Coke or Pepsi. But technically,
00:42:49.489 --> 00:42:51.949
it's two parties, but they're offering very similar
00:42:51.949 --> 00:42:54.269
things. It's not like these are radically different
00:42:54.269 --> 00:42:57.650
parties, right? And either party you get, you're
00:42:57.650 --> 00:43:00.230
still in a capitalistic system. It amazes
00:43:00.230 --> 00:43:03.079
me that they always say, communist China. And
00:43:03.079 --> 00:43:05.199
they use the term communism almost as an allegory
00:43:05.199 --> 00:43:08.619
for authoritarian, as if your two parties are
00:43:08.619 --> 00:43:11.199
somehow... It's like they have one party,
00:43:11.820 --> 00:43:14.780
and we have two, and that's the height of democracy.
00:43:14.860 --> 00:43:17.019
Look, I'm going to go further here. Let's just
00:43:17.019 --> 00:43:20.039
say we had two parties that offered as distinctive a
00:43:20.039 --> 00:43:22.760
choice as, let's say, Bernie Sanders versus Trump,
00:43:22.840 --> 00:43:26.480
as we talked about yesterday. Still, that would
00:43:26.480 --> 00:43:28.460
only be two parties. That wouldn't really be
00:43:28.460 --> 00:43:32.039
a real representative democracy. It would not
00:43:32.039 --> 00:43:35.739
be able to represent the hopes and aspirations
00:43:35.739 --> 00:43:38.860
of 330 million Americans. We're just too big
00:43:38.860 --> 00:43:44.070
and diverse. Two good parties would still
00:43:44.070 --> 00:43:47.769
be... And we don't have one good party. So I have
00:43:47.769 --> 00:43:49.869
a question, and I'll go away because we have a
00:43:49.869 --> 00:43:51.309
show to go, but I've been thinking about this
00:43:51.309 --> 00:43:54.550
a lot. In the United States, I want to get y'all's
00:43:54.550 --> 00:43:56.929
opinion on this. In the United States, we have
00:43:56.929 --> 00:43:58.989
the ability to change the party, but we don't
00:43:58.989 --> 00:44:01.690
have the ability to change the system. In China,
00:44:01.690 --> 00:44:03.590
they can change the system, but they can't change
00:44:03.590 --> 00:44:06.289
the party. It seems that the Chinese system is
00:44:06.289 --> 00:44:08.809
superior, or am I just... Am I wrong? What do you
00:44:08.809 --> 00:44:10.650
mean? What do you mean by we have the ability
00:44:10.650 --> 00:44:13.289
to change the party? So, no, we're able to... We're
00:44:13.289 --> 00:44:15.489
able to vote in a Democrat or able to vote in a Republican,
00:44:15.489 --> 00:44:18.929
but the infrastructure never changes. It always stays
00:44:18.929 --> 00:44:22.190
the same, whereas China is not the country that
00:44:22.190 --> 00:44:25.389
Mao Zedong built. They have the Communist Party,
00:44:25.389 --> 00:44:28.829
but it is not the country that Mao Zedong
00:44:28.829 --> 00:44:31.650
starved millions of people with. It is
00:44:31.650 --> 00:44:35.840
a fundamentally different... I would actually
00:44:35.840 --> 00:44:38.159
go as far as to say that China is a true fascist
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:43.059
state in that they have business merged with
00:44:43.059 --> 00:44:45.320
government, but business is highly regulated
00:44:45.320 --> 00:44:47.559
by the government. If you
00:44:47.559 --> 00:44:48.900
don't play by the rules, you put a bullet in
00:44:48.900 --> 00:44:51.599
your head and bill your family. Yeah, but the
00:44:51.599 --> 00:44:53.719
objectives are different. So I would say that
00:44:53.719 --> 00:44:56.219
China is a true fascist state. I don't know what
00:44:56.219 --> 00:45:01.019
you mean. From an economic... Fascist. It is a true
00:45:01.019 --> 00:45:04.159
fact. If you think of the term fascist, it is
00:45:04.159 --> 00:45:07.079
the merger of business and government. That's
00:45:07.079 --> 00:45:09.659
what China is. You can't change the party, but
00:45:09.659 --> 00:45:11.960
they change the system. Here in the United States,
00:45:12.039 --> 00:45:14.559
we can't even do that. We can't even kill some
00:45:14.559 --> 00:45:18.219
lady. It does have elements of Mussolini's fascist
00:45:18.219 --> 00:45:22.829
economic theories, but it's certainly not full.
00:45:22.829 --> 00:45:26.409
It doesn't go all the way. Look, I
00:45:26.409 --> 00:45:29.949
think, look, right now, no doubt, China is a far
00:45:29.949 --> 00:45:34.849
more vibrant, expanding, forward-looking, optimistic
00:45:34.849 --> 00:45:38.389
country with obviously serious challenges
00:45:38.389 --> 00:45:41.210
like birth rates and all those things, but
00:45:41.210 --> 00:45:45.349
still they seem far better poised to handle their
00:45:45.349 --> 00:45:47.710
challenges than we do. They
00:45:47.710 --> 00:45:50.289
were generating greenhouse gases like nobody's
00:45:50.289 --> 00:45:53.210
business 20 years ago, and they're like, yeah, we'll
00:45:53.210 --> 00:45:56.809
just stop doing that, and the order goes out, and
00:45:56.809 --> 00:45:59.650
they pretty much stop doing that, right? We can't
00:45:59.650 --> 00:46:02.010
do that. We can't. They have a bigger
00:46:02.010 --> 00:46:03.909
country, but they seem more able to turn on a
00:46:03.909 --> 00:46:06.050
dime than we are. They're nimbler than we are.
00:46:06.050 --> 00:46:08.929
Yeah, but I think there's a lot going on. I
00:46:08.929 --> 00:46:11.550
think there's cultural differences,
00:46:11.550 --> 00:46:15.329
like Confucianism. There's also the strength
00:46:15.329 --> 00:46:19.389
of having 5,000-plus years of recorded history
00:46:20.190 --> 00:46:23.250
that you can draw upon. You have a far more,
00:46:23.369 --> 00:46:28.170
also it's a far more ethnically
00:46:28.170 --> 00:46:30.809
varied country than Americans give it credit
00:46:30.809 --> 00:46:32.989
for. I remember when I went to China
00:46:32.989 --> 00:46:35.769
the first time and I looked at the currency and
00:46:35.769 --> 00:46:39.309
there's like, I don't know, 12 different
00:46:39.309 --> 00:46:41.750
alphabets on it. And it was like, oh, this
00:46:41.750 --> 00:46:44.130
is such a reminder. Right. There's, like,
00:46:44.449 --> 00:46:46.710
people who read Arabic in this country. There's
00:46:46.710 --> 00:46:48.869
people... There's Uyghurs, there's people
00:46:48.869 --> 00:46:51.690
from all sorts of different ethnicities. We're
00:46:51.690 --> 00:46:53.829
like, oh, they all be people with black eyes
00:46:53.829 --> 00:46:55.989
and black hair. But that's really just not true.
00:46:56.230 --> 00:47:01.289
It's an empire. And it's just, I think
00:47:01.289 --> 00:47:04.289
there's a lot going on. I think it's a good question,
00:47:04.289 --> 00:47:07.429
though, Robby. I think it brings into question
00:47:07.429 --> 00:47:10.829
the defects of what we consider to be representative
00:47:10.829 --> 00:47:14.400
government. I think it's that. Because,
00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:20.780
this is not a rah-rah for authoritarianism
00:47:20.780 --> 00:47:22.260
or anything like that. But it does make the point
00:47:22.260 --> 00:47:25.150
of saying a government that can say, all right,
00:47:25.190 --> 00:47:28.469
enough of this. The defects of that sort
00:47:28.469 --> 00:47:30.909
of government is, obviously, if they're incompetent,
00:47:30.909 --> 00:47:33.469
it makes it that much harder for the... But
00:47:33.469 --> 00:47:34.789
if you have the mandate of heaven and you seem
00:47:34.789 --> 00:47:36.269
to have a competent government and you're doing
00:47:36.269 --> 00:47:38.670
what you say you're going to do, then the population
00:47:38.670 --> 00:47:41.250
tends to be more so in line with what you're
00:47:41.250 --> 00:47:43.550
doing, providing you're doing it. A representative
00:47:43.550 --> 00:47:49.059
government, we're just getting gamed, like
00:47:49.059 --> 00:47:51.639
Mr. A. Lee points out. The government in China controls
00:47:51.639 --> 00:47:54.539
the resources and owns the infrastructure, not
00:47:54.539 --> 00:47:57.500
private business, although it does have... If
00:47:57.500 --> 00:48:00.480
private business gets spicy, it can step in and
00:48:00.480 --> 00:48:03.519
control it in ways that we don't. They're far
00:48:03.519 --> 00:48:06.559
more directly controlling. Terra Preta Wild. Also,
00:48:06.559 --> 00:48:09.050
the party utterly prohibits corporations from
00:48:09.050 --> 00:48:11.989
involvement in rulership. The only workable solution
00:48:11.989 --> 00:48:13.829
in the face of the oligarchs, in my opinion.
00:48:14.190 --> 00:48:17.090
That's a really good point. It's that part. It's
00:48:17.090 --> 00:48:18.849
not that I would want to give up the democratic
00:48:18.849 --> 00:48:22.050
governance part. It's just I don't entirely believe
00:48:22.050 --> 00:48:24.969
we have democratic governance. The Chinese have
00:48:24.969 --> 00:48:29.170
government supremacy over corporations. It needs
00:48:29.170 --> 00:48:31.170
to be, there has to be some level of... And separation.
00:48:32.380 --> 00:48:34.500
It has to be. Because otherwise what you get
00:48:34.500 --> 00:48:36.699
is this kind of infection into the democratic
00:48:36.699 --> 00:48:39.360
process of the capitalistic system. What we call
00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:41.840
democracy, it's not really democracy. It's a
00:48:41.840 --> 00:48:45.059
capitalistic system with a democratic overlay
00:48:45.059 --> 00:48:49.219
on it. The veneer of democracy, yeah. Yeah, it's
00:48:49.219 --> 00:48:52.059
just the veneer. A very thin veneer. You would
00:48:52.059 --> 00:48:54.579
need full control of that stuff in some kind
00:48:54.579 --> 00:48:59.030
of way. But we conflate democracy and capitalism.
00:48:59.269 --> 00:49:01.630
They act as if, or the capitalists act as if,
00:49:01.989 --> 00:49:03.929
well, we have private enterprise, and
00:49:03.929 --> 00:49:06.050
private enterprise is democracy in some way.
00:49:06.550 --> 00:49:08.909
Nonsense. No, you can. Sure. You can vote between
00:49:08.909 --> 00:49:12.090
Coke and Pepsi. Yeah, that you can do as long
00:49:12.090 --> 00:49:14.489
as you have the dollars to vote with. Yeah, but
00:49:14.489 --> 00:49:16.530
I can't do anything about what Coke and Pepsi
00:49:16.530 --> 00:49:19.030
puts in their product. No. Good catch, by the
00:49:19.030 --> 00:49:23.030
way, with that cap. All right. Let's talk about
00:49:23.030 --> 00:49:26.349
Israel. Right. So two settler terrorists have
00:49:26.349 --> 00:49:29.719
launched another attack. I shouldn't say two.
00:49:29.719 --> 00:49:32.739
A group of Israeli settlers attacked
00:49:32.739 --> 00:49:37.179
two Agence France-Presse reporters. One, a
00:49:37.179 --> 00:49:42.019
Westerner, John Wessels, another, Jafar Hta, who
00:49:42.019 --> 00:49:44.679
appears to be a resident of the West Bank, long-
00:49:44.679 --> 00:49:47.340
time journalist. Anyway, they were shooting pictures
00:49:47.340 --> 00:49:51.179
of an IDF soldier who was detaining a dude when
00:49:51.179 --> 00:49:54.599
a guy, a settler, came by on a quad bike and shot
00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:00.920
at them. One of them was shot in the foot. Six
00:50:00.920 --> 00:50:05.579
other colonists also shot at them and stole their
00:50:05.579 --> 00:50:09.860
camera equipment. The Palestinian journalist
00:50:09.860 --> 00:50:13.300
tried to escape into a car, clearly marked press,
00:50:13.599 --> 00:50:17.539
but two guys assaulted him and beat him with
00:50:17.539 --> 00:50:21.119
the butts of their rifles. Journalists are in
00:50:21.119 --> 00:50:24.960
the hospital. Obviously, that's happened before and
00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:31.650
will happen again. I just wonder, I just think
00:50:31.650 --> 00:50:34.070
it's worth noting. I just wanted to just mention
00:50:34.070 --> 00:50:36.610
it so that people know, right? There's no difference
00:50:36.610 --> 00:50:38.849
between the West Bank, quote-unquote, settlers
00:50:38.849 --> 00:50:42.719
and IDF military. There's no difference.
00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:45.360
I agree. And I get that some people say, well,
00:50:45.420 --> 00:50:48.480
clearly there's a difference. How is there a
00:50:48.480 --> 00:50:50.480
difference when the IDF military often protects
00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:52.800
the settlers? Say, for the moment, that they had
00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:54.960
security with them and they got into a fight
00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:57.659
with the West Bank settlers. Would the IDF have
00:50:57.659 --> 00:51:00.599
gotten involved? Now, in some cases, if the IDF
00:51:00.599 --> 00:51:04.019
is there, the answer is yes. The IDF often patrols
00:51:04.019 --> 00:51:08.059
and is overwatching West Bank settlers as they
00:51:08.059 --> 00:51:13.019
beat or kill and steal property from people in
00:51:13.019 --> 00:51:14.420
the West Bank. Yeah, they sit back and they're
00:51:14.420 --> 00:51:16.679
smoking and laughing and watching. Yeah, right.
00:51:16.679 --> 00:51:19.880
And the moment that those people fight back, the
00:51:19.980 --> 00:51:22.190
IDF will most likely get involved. Meaning they're
00:51:22.190 --> 00:51:24.530
there as security for the West Bank settlers,
00:51:24.809 --> 00:51:28.510
these lunatics, as they go about committing violence
00:51:28.510 --> 00:51:31.929
and mayhem. So it's like, OK, is there a technical
00:51:31.929 --> 00:51:33.969
difference? Sure, there's a technical difference.
00:51:34.050 --> 00:51:35.889
But if they're playing security for them, can
00:51:35.889 --> 00:51:37.369
you really make the case that there's a difference,
00:51:37.489 --> 00:51:38.989
especially if they'll get involved?
00:51:39.739 --> 00:51:42.739
Now, I don't normally. I've spoken
00:51:42.739 --> 00:51:45.639
about this in other media. Whenever
00:51:45.639 --> 00:51:48.400
I've traveled to conflict zones, I really strongly
00:51:48.400 --> 00:51:51.230
believe that the best, especially
00:51:51.230 --> 00:51:53.489
when you're traveling in Muslim countries where
00:51:53.489 --> 00:51:56.869
there's a cultural stricture in favor
00:51:56.869 --> 00:52:00.010
of granting hospitality to the unarmed traveler,
00:52:00.349 --> 00:52:02.789
that it's wise to be unarmed as a journalist
00:52:02.789 --> 00:52:04.949
and just show up and explain that you're there
00:52:04.949 --> 00:52:07.670
to tell the truth and stuff. I'm going to make
00:52:07.670 --> 00:52:09.849
an exception when it comes to dealing with these
00:52:09.849 --> 00:52:12.909
settlers on the West Bank. They're literally,
00:52:13.030 --> 00:52:16.929
they target journalists in a way
00:52:16.929 --> 00:52:20.610
that the Taliban never did to me and my colleagues
00:52:20.610 --> 00:52:23.190
in Afghanistan. Even the Northern Alliance never
00:52:23.190 --> 00:52:26.309
did. If they were after journalists,
00:52:26.389 --> 00:52:28.250
it was basically to rob them and steal their
00:52:28.250 --> 00:52:30.309
money and their equipment. It wasn't really like,
00:52:30.309 --> 00:52:32.610
we just want to kill you to stop you from reporting.
00:52:33.210 --> 00:52:36.170
The settlers are clearly trying to drive all
00:52:36.170 --> 00:52:39.170
the journalists away. I think if you,
00:52:39.170 --> 00:52:41.650
if I were asked to go report in the West Bank,
00:52:42.250 --> 00:52:45.030
I would need an armed security detail. And I
00:52:45.030 --> 00:52:47.809
would say, and I only want badass motherfuckers
00:52:47.809 --> 00:52:50.510
who are willing to open fire and shoot these
00:52:50.510 --> 00:52:53.030
fuckers and kill them if need be. I want hair-
00:52:53.030 --> 00:53:00.000
trigger goons with me. Yeah. I need five good
00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.599
goons. Give me some of those SEAL Team 6 veterans.
00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:09.059
Right. Yeah. And be willing to shoot. Yeah, no,
00:53:09.059 --> 00:53:12.320
don't wait. Ask
00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:15.639
questions later. Shoot first. Hair trigger, hair trigger.
00:53:15.639 --> 00:53:17.840
Yeah, because that's what those
00:53:17.840 --> 00:53:20.659
Israeli, those West Bank settlers, don't deserve
00:53:20.659 --> 00:53:23.579
any other consideration. No, they're coming to
00:53:23.579 --> 00:53:27.300
commit violence. Yeah. When you see them, you should
00:53:27.300 --> 00:53:29.480
think they are coming to hurt me. That's what
00:53:29.480 --> 00:53:33.530
you should think. Yeah. I always think of... There's
00:53:33.530 --> 00:53:36.590
a... Four days after D-Day, June 10th, 1944,
00:53:36.710 --> 00:53:40.110
there was a massacre by the SS of all the residents
00:53:40.110 --> 00:53:43.809
of a town called Oradour-sur-Glane. 642 people
00:53:43.809 --> 00:53:45.690
were killed. There were only about half a dozen
00:53:45.690 --> 00:53:48.150
survivors, just basically mostly people who were
00:53:48.150 --> 00:53:50.969
out of town when it happened. And one of them
00:53:50.969 --> 00:53:53.389
was a little boy who was in town, and he was from
00:53:54.010 --> 00:53:56.329
Alsace, which is on the German border. And he
00:53:56.329 --> 00:53:58.630
had heard all the stories from World War I. And
00:53:58.630 --> 00:54:00.469
he looked out the window, saw the German tanks
00:54:00.469 --> 00:54:03.530
approaching. And he said to the people he was
00:54:03.530 --> 00:54:06.030
staying with, c'est les Allemands. It's the
00:54:06.030 --> 00:54:09.269
Germans. Ils sont mauvais. They're bad. And he
00:54:09.269 --> 00:54:13.230
jumped out the second-floor window, jumped off
00:54:13.230 --> 00:54:15.989
the roof and ran into a field and lived out
00:54:15.989 --> 00:54:18.510
his natural days as a result, right? It's like,
00:54:18.530 --> 00:54:20.349
that's how it is with these West Bank settlers.
00:54:20.789 --> 00:54:23.969
They're settlers. They're bad. Like,
00:54:23.969 --> 00:54:27.469
run away or shoot them. That's basically it.
00:54:27.949 --> 00:54:31.750
He had a gut understanding of what was happening.
00:54:32.210 --> 00:54:34.710
Yeah. I have a question, Ted. You're anti-death
00:54:34.710 --> 00:54:38.010
penalty, so why do you support wasting settlers?
00:54:38.190 --> 00:54:39.489
Don't get me wrong. I'm right there with you.
00:54:39.530 --> 00:54:41.949
I fully support ventilating the bastards,
00:54:41.949 --> 00:54:43.769
every last one of them. Well, I'm not
00:54:43.769 --> 00:54:46.269
against vigilantism. Yeah, that's what I was
00:54:46.269 --> 00:54:50.710
about to say. I'm against the state carrying
00:54:50.710 --> 00:54:53.969
this out in a cold-blooded way. That's the difference.
00:54:54.289 --> 00:54:56.309
But you're a communist. Communism is
00:54:56.309 --> 00:54:59.050
kind of famous for that. What do you mean, for
00:54:59.050 --> 00:55:01.090
killing people? Oh, yeah. They're good
00:55:01.090 --> 00:55:04.750
at it. Sure. I guess that's the difference. If
00:55:04.750 --> 00:55:08.130
I was in a leadership position in a communist
00:55:08.130 --> 00:55:09.869
revolution, I'm well aware that there would be
00:55:09.869 --> 00:55:12.070
people, counter-revolutionaries, who would have
00:55:12.070 --> 00:55:19.139
to be killed. Heads, boxes, spikes. Maybe
00:55:19.139 --> 00:55:21.719
we'll bring in those Tennessee guys to
00:55:21.719 --> 00:55:25.550
shoot them up incompetently, fill up the
00:55:25.550 --> 00:55:27.989
... Those hospitals need work too. It's
00:55:27.989 --> 00:55:32.630
true. Okay, so I don't know. This is... It's
00:55:32.630 --> 00:55:35.440
really... Oh, Italy. We got to talk about Italy
00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:39.000
in the time we have left, which is only a few
00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:42.139
minutes. So Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, she's
00:55:42.139 --> 00:55:44.900
a right-winger. She's threatened to resign unless
00:55:44.900 --> 00:55:47.900
there's a new law passed, which basically it's
00:55:47.900 --> 00:55:50.880
a winner-take-all kind of system. So basically,
00:55:51.019 --> 00:55:55.519
if you have, like we have, if the election. Yeah.
00:55:55.639 --> 00:55:58.780
If you, in this country. Right. If you get 50
00:55:58.780 --> 00:56:02.309
.1 percent of the vote in a state, you win all
00:56:02.309 --> 00:56:05.610
the electoral college votes in that state. So
00:56:05.610 --> 00:56:08.489
it's like that. So the winning party or coalition
00:56:08.489 --> 00:56:12.989
in a parliamentary election would get 70 bonus
00:56:12.989 --> 00:56:15.190
seats in the lower house, that's like the House
00:56:15.190 --> 00:56:18.789
of Representatives, and 35 in the Senate, provided
00:56:18.789 --> 00:56:22.170
that they get a minimum of 42% in both houses.
00:56:22.210 --> 00:56:24.789
I don't know how they came up with 42. So Italy
00:56:24.789 --> 00:56:28.269
has 600 seats in the parliament, 400 in the lower
00:56:28.269 --> 00:56:32.719
house, 200 in the Senate. So, roughly speaking,
00:56:32.719 --> 00:56:37.119
you would get 70 out of 400 as a bonus if you
00:56:37.119 --> 00:56:41.239
achieve 42, and you'd get 35 out of
00:56:41.239 --> 00:56:45.840
200 in the Senate if you achieve 42 percent
00:56:45.840 --> 00:56:49.300
in both houses. So obviously this is self-serving.
00:56:49.300 --> 00:56:52.460
She thinks that... This, we talked
00:56:52.460 --> 00:56:54.280
yesterday about changing the rules to
00:56:54.280 --> 00:56:57.099
benefit you. And basically, but Italy has a
00:56:57.099 --> 00:56:59.789
long reputation of having... It's hard
00:56:59.789 --> 00:57:01.789
for government coalitions to stay together. I
00:57:01.789 --> 00:57:04.269
There's been periods where every six months
00:57:04.269 --> 00:57:07.170
or every 12 months the Italian government has
00:57:07.170 --> 00:57:10.130
collapsed. It's kind of a feature, not a bug,
00:57:10.130 --> 00:57:13.769
of the Italian system. I don't know. I thought
00:57:13.769 --> 00:57:16.210
it was worth noting. It seems it's a little bit...
00:57:16.210 --> 00:57:19.170
I don't know how I feel about it. I can argue
00:57:19.170 --> 00:57:22.030
this one either way. Meloni has been there for
00:57:22.030 --> 00:57:23.849
a while. She's been able to keep a stable coalition.
00:57:23.849 --> 00:57:27.800
This seems to be a way, just self-serving.
00:57:27.800 --> 00:57:30.329
I could be wrong, but this seems very self-serving.
00:57:30.329 --> 00:57:35.429
What do the other parties think of
00:57:35.429 --> 00:57:38.510
this? Well, they're against it. They
00:57:38.510 --> 00:57:40.349
think it's anti-democratic. They're saying it's
00:57:40.349 --> 00:57:42.849
anti-democratic, but it's just meant to solidify
00:57:42.849 --> 00:57:47.030
her coalition and lock them out.
00:57:47.030 --> 00:57:49.590
And obviously the other thing is, an overwhelming
00:57:49.590 --> 00:57:52.690
bonus seats, an overwhelming majority begets
00:57:52.690 --> 00:57:55.050
an overwhelming majority, right? You have...
00:57:55.050 --> 00:57:57.469
You control the narrative, you control the
00:57:57.469 --> 00:57:59.889
dialogue, in the same way that the Republicans
00:57:59.889 --> 00:58:01.849
have been controlling the narrative in this country
00:58:01.849 --> 00:58:04.210
for the last few years because they control so
00:58:04.210 --> 00:58:06.409
much of the government. So it would be the same
00:58:06.409 --> 00:58:08.889
thing in Italy if you just give people these
00:58:08.889 --> 00:58:12.530
extra seats. It's an interesting approach.
00:58:13.190 --> 00:58:14.989
She said she'll resign if she doesn't get her
00:58:14.989 --> 00:58:20.139
way. It's effectively saying, for
00:58:20.139 --> 00:58:22.980
example, so she runs in the election, she wins
00:58:23.559 --> 00:58:25.900
a governing majority, she has to work with another
00:58:25.900 --> 00:58:28.019
party to get that governing majority in parliament,
00:58:28.019 --> 00:58:30.800
okay, but that's just representative government,
00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:33.019
right? That's representative government
00:58:33.019 --> 00:58:35.639
in a real sense. I would be against this proposal.
00:58:35.639 --> 00:58:38.920
People... You might have 10 different parties. You
00:58:38.920 --> 00:58:41.519
have a certain percentage of those political
00:58:41.519 --> 00:58:44.099
parties going into office based on the political
00:58:44.099 --> 00:58:45.739
distribution of the people within the country
00:58:45.739 --> 00:58:48.480
itself, and she has to figure out how to deal
00:58:48.480 --> 00:58:50.800
with these other groups and these other parties
00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:53.730
in order to govern. That is parliamentary elections.
00:58:54.909 --> 00:58:57.610
Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just a parliament.
00:58:57.750 --> 00:59:00.670
You're right. And personally, I would vote against
00:59:00.670 --> 00:59:05.150
this reform. Her issue is, well, I need
00:59:05.150 --> 00:59:07.789
the power to do what I want when I'm elected.
00:59:08.429 --> 00:59:12.630
That's what she wants. Right. So make alliances.
00:59:12.650 --> 00:59:15.329
The whole purpose of parliamentary democracy
00:59:15.329 --> 00:59:19.519
is that you're forced to make deals with
00:59:19.519 --> 00:59:23.960
smaller parties that normally under
00:59:23.960 --> 00:59:26.940
our system would never be heard, but they do get
00:59:26.940 --> 00:59:30.079
heard for some issues sometimes. In a parliamentary
00:59:30.079 --> 00:59:32.519
system, they have to make deals with those political
00:59:32.519 --> 00:59:35.400
parties, meaning the people who are part
00:59:35.400 --> 00:59:39.320
of those political parties who represent elements
00:59:39.320 --> 00:59:41.099
of the government. They may not necessarily be
00:59:41.099 --> 00:59:45.000
in the lion's share, still get something.
00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:49.179
It's... I'm piecemealing what I do, and I'm
00:59:49.179 --> 00:59:51.880
giving this to this particular party, and this
00:59:51.880 --> 00:59:53.820
to this party, and this to this party, and I'm
00:59:53.820 --> 00:59:55.679
getting what I want in order to push forward
00:59:55.679 --> 00:59:57.599
in government. Meaning everybody ideally gets
00:59:57.599 --> 01:00:00.940
something that is being represented, as opposed
01:00:00.940 --> 01:00:04.530
to her just wanting to get her way. Yeah, exactly.
01:00:05.110 --> 01:00:07.269
I understand why she wants to get her way. She's
01:00:07.269 --> 01:00:13.050
very beautiful. She is not an ugly woman. She
01:00:13.050 --> 01:00:15.510
is not. There are not a lot of ugly Italians.
01:00:15.750 --> 01:00:18.309
Get away with me. The government is different.
01:00:19.150 --> 01:00:22.309
The government is a different model. And with
01:00:22.309 --> 01:00:24.809
that, that's it for today. Please stay tuned
01:00:24.809 --> 01:00:27.130
for the TMI show coming up right now on YouTube
01:00:27.130 --> 01:00:30.449
and Rumble Live. We will be back tomorrow with
01:00:30.449 --> 01:00:33.550
a full two-hour show. It'll be Friday. We'll
01:00:33.550 --> 01:00:36.190
be doing that from 9 to 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
01:00:36.909 --> 01:00:40.590
DMZ also tomorrow at 11 with guest Steve Breen,
01:00:40.650 --> 01:00:43.510
former cartoonist from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
01:00:43.909 --> 01:00:45.389
Bye. Have a good one.