Ep 1004: The MAGA Merry-Go-Round

It goes in circles but never gets anywhere

It’s all horses’ asses

And there is no brass ring.

Driftglass on the Bob Cesca Show : https://www.bobcesca.com/the-bob-cesca-interview-driftglass-day-7-1-26/ 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

You can listen to the professional left wherever you get your podcasts on NetRids Radio or at our website, proleftpod.com, where you can also contribute to this podcast. There's a PayPal button at our website, or you can mail us a letter and or contribution at P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791.

SPEAKER_05 0:19

This is the podcast for the week of July 2nd, 2026. It's not safe for work.

SPEAKER_07 0:25

Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance, where?

SPEAKER_05 0:31

It's the Drift Glass and Blue Gow Podcast.

SPEAKER_07 0:46

Essentially, we are. We are conspiring against our government, but only in the most benevolent way possible. So tonight's topic, today's topic, whenever you're listening to this, the topic is it's the economy stupid, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

That's under. And I was listening to a lecture on Audible.com by Thomas Franks, who is the author of several books, one of which is What's the Matter with Kansas? And the lecture was about the economy and how important it is for the uh conservative movement to ignore the economics of working people.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

The aggrieved poor people who seem to vote for them out of family values and Jesus. Jesus. Also just this constant state of aggrievement. Is that a word?

SPEAKER_06 1:35

It is now.

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Yeah. Being aggrieved against the liberal elite. It's victim. It's the liberal elite, the media, the liberal media, the liberal elite, the left the left coast, the you know, the left-wing uh New Yorkers who treat us like fly-over country. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_07 1:55

It's all about treat it's all about comparing their stigmata about how horribly, horribly they've been abused and treated by the elite, by the invisible elite that they can never quite pin down what they actually do or how they actually screwed them, but they know that they look down their nose at them.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Yeah, and they look down their low nose at us, the the middle America, the red states.

SPEAKER_07 2:15

Trevor Burrus, Jr. One quick aside, if you've ever seen the uh documentary Boogeyman, it's really good. It's on uh Lee Atwater. And there's a whole section there in the middle about Lee Lee understood the South.

SPEAKER_06 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:26

And he understood that the deep sense of grievance, the anger that those those elitists know it all, blah, blah. And that's all he played on. So this is this is pure basic right-wing theory. You know, get a bunch of people who aren't that bright, who who feel genuine economic distress, and whip them into a frenzy over.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Yeah, give them a beef. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 2:49

Give them a beef and give them a someone to blame it on. Usually imaginary hippies, brown people or women, or gays or immigrants, uh which are more uh more all Quran. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 2:58

And the ACLU and uh you know the abortion doctors and whatever it is. And the point though that Frank was making is that none of these grievances can ever be resolved.

SPEAKER_05 3:12

No.

SPEAKER_04 3:13

Because if they're resolved, then the when they're resolved, for instance, with something like Social Security, then that becomes right, that becomes an adopted third rail, which can't be undone and is a victory for the left-wing liberal. Right.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

Right.

SPEAKER_07 3:32

The evil left-wing liberals.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yep, that's us. That's Junior Dude. But from when Driftglass.

SPEAKER_07 3:41

Well, we're gonna throw some episode titles out at you right around from that period, a couple of months either way. And the vast hordes listening to us right now get to guess what month or even what year that was from. So are you all ready?

SPEAKER_05 3:55

I'm ready. So it's all Obama's fault. Now that's the title of a show we did. Not me blaming Obama. The name of the show was It's All Obama's Fault.

SPEAKER_07 4:07

And then there was the worst lie conservatives tell.

SPEAKER_05 4:11

And then there was the great Republican versus Republican divide. I hate it when Daddy and Daddy fight.

SPEAKER_07 4:17

It's just so sad. It makes us also sad. Republicans and pundits, let's play the evil, stupid, or crazy game.

SPEAKER_05 4:24

Yeah, we got a little bit of hate mail about that one. I remember. Here's one. Uh, the title was Sex Club Zoning, Hanging Laundry, and Why Progressives Can't Take the Summer Off.

SPEAKER_07 4:38

And then there was It's the Economy, Stupid.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

Uh, there was the title, Are You a Good Liberal? Are we?

SPEAKER_07 4:47

Eternal questions.

SPEAKER_05 4:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 4:48

Now, if you're guessing that all came from this year, you would be wrong. If you guessed that all came from last year, you would be wrong. If you guessed maybe during the Biden administration, you know, 2021 or 2022. Nope, nope, nope, nope, not at all.

SPEAKER_05 5:03

Then it could have been definitely from Trump 1.0, maybe as early as 2016. That, you know, blame Obama for everything was probably from 2020, I would guess.

SPEAKER_07 5:14

Nuh-uh, nah-uh. Nuh-uh. All of them, every last one of them are from the summer of 2010.

SPEAKER_05 5:22

That's the first year we started podcasting, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_07 5:25

Yes, it is. That's 16 years ago. In addition to talking about the final season of Lost, which we did at the time, and Andrew Breitbart, and why Sarah Palin won't friend us on Facebook. We also wondered whether or not the BP disaster might mean we might actually reform the world. And you know what? Spoiler, it didn't.

SPEAKER_05 5:45

No, but the BP disaster was big news for many months.

SPEAKER_07 5:49

It was.

SPEAKER_05 5:50

It really was. We also discussed rooting out the teabagger rot. Blog against theocracy and the media is guilty. And how and if to keep the political faith. Also, we did a show, believe it or not, on Republican white supremacy.

SPEAKER_07 6:12

In 2010?

SPEAKER_05 6:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 6:14

But Bluegill, that was that was during the before time when everything was fucking awesome.

SPEAKER_05 6:19

It was fucking awesome in 2010, Drift Glass.

SPEAKER_07 6:21

Yeah. And after extensive market research and conducting thousands of focus groups, we've concluded that this is why everyone is so goddamn tired and grim. Why we roll our eyes at every new podcaster who rolls into town selling centrism and is suddenly has a hundred thousand followers in the first three months. Because we've heard it all before. Many, many, many times before. And don't get us wrong, we are not averse to seeing like Casablanca for the 30th time. Not at all. In fact, how many times would you say you have seen the movie Notorious Blue Gal?

SPEAKER_05 6:58

Hitchcock's Notorious?

SPEAKER_07 7:00

The very one, yes. Hitchcock's notorious.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

So many times that I can quote the whole thing.

SPEAKER_07 7:04

Yes. Yes, you can.

SPEAKER_05 7:07

Now I go to jail. Whole family in jail. Who cares?

SPEAKER_07 7:10

And what what place are they visiting? Which mountain are they visiting?

SPEAKER_05 7:13

Tell me, are you going to Leopoldina?

SPEAKER_07 7:16

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:18

I really can quote most. I have seen that movie so many times.

SPEAKER_07 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:22

Which I was a fat-headed guy full of pain.

SPEAKER_07 7:26

Full of pain. Yeah. And I don't think that would be a problem watching it again because we have at least two copies of Notorious DVD around here somewhere.

SPEAKER_05 7:34

Because I watch it a lot.

SPEAKER_07 7:36

Yeah. Along with at least a couple of copies of The Big Sleep. Yep. You see, we don't mind repeating things if they're awesome.

SPEAKER_05 7:45

You know what is good about Notorious 2, and then I'm going to get back to the podcast.

SPEAKER_07 7:48

What?

SPEAKER_05 7:49

Cary Grant defeats the Nazis.

SPEAKER_07 7:51

He does. Or at least one of them.

SPEAKER_05 7:53

Yeah, well. A family of them. He gets the or from all of them. He figures out the MacGuffin and gets it away from all of them.

SPEAKER_07 8:01

So, like we said, we don't we don't mind repeating things that are awesome. We love awesome things. We love doing them over and over again. How many times have I watched The Thing? I don't know. Seven or eight over the over the course of the week.

SPEAKER_05 8:12

How many times have you watched The Hunt for Red October?

SPEAKER_07 8:15

Uh, would you like me to quote it from memory?

SPEAKER_05 8:17

Again.

SPEAKER_07 8:18

How many times have I watched Glen Gary Glenn Ross? Just stuff that's really well written and well done. That we love. But being stuck in an endless cycle of idiotic nonsense that repeats over and over again, like being forced to watch the Brady Bunch Tiki Cave episode or Star Trek. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 8:37

I'm not gonna watch that. I'm not gonna watch Brady Bunch, no.

SPEAKER_07 8:40

Nope. Over and over again, the Tiki Caves episode episode. What about Star Trek The Next Generation Code of Honor? Watch that over and over again. This is our idea of hell on earth.

SPEAKER_05 8:50

Yeah, yeah. And yet the MAGA mob who now run this country, at least temporarily, have a seemingly bottomless appetite for listening to the stupidest lies being told by the most obvious frauds over and over again. Bullshit lies is their routine. It's their fidget spinner. Now, I'm someone personally who is comforted by routine. I get up every morning, I write 750 words, etc., get dressed. And I think we're both kind of comforted by some routines that just keep us going. We don't require routine. We don't have to have every minute of our lives run on a schedule. We like to freestyle, we like to try new things, uh, take an unexpected left turn every now and then, go to a new restaurant, whatever. But there are parts of the day where having a routine lets our brain relax and focus on other things while our body just goes through familiar motions. You get the laundry done, you do the vacuuming, whatever it is. Routine helps you just get things done sometimes.

SPEAKER_07 9:53

And I try to remember put away, not put aside. Because when I put it aside, I can't find it again because I didn't put it back where I found it. So I know where my keys are. I know where my wallet is, I know where my watch is, I know how to assemble those things before I head out the door. Every day they're in the same place, right where I left them. I don't have to hunt for them. I don't have to panic because I can't find them. That sort of routine I find very, very comforting. So when I wake up in the morning, my brain goes through the same process every day. I say, okay, I'm alive, I'm awake, I'm a mammal, I probably have to pee. I'm a human being, I'm in my bed with my beautiful wife, and I sort of reacquire my environment. And then I remember that, oh shit, it's 2026, and the worst person in the world is running my country, to the applause of the MAGA mob and the Republicans in Congress, and oh shit, I didn't dream it. It's real and it's not over.

SPEAKER_05 10:50

It feels like the end of the world sometimes, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_07 10:52

It does.

SPEAKER_05 10:53

That's another part of my morning routine, reminding myself that we are not living through the end times. This is not the end of the world. It might be achy and I might be tired. I might be thinking, uh, why can't I just go back to bed and knit for 20 years? But it's not the end of the world. I have to get up and go to work. And there are the routines that we find comforting. On the other hand, we're both nerds. And so deep in our souls, uh, we love learning new things because we're nerds.

SPEAKER_07 11:24

We're nerds. So I have a habit of discovering weird facts about stuff every now and then. Uh and I immediately rush to my wife and say, honey, did you know that whatever it is? And then I'll launch into a 10-minute explanation of something I just learned, which is very exciting to me. And nine times out of ten, she will already know it because she is much smarter than I am.

SPEAKER_05 11:44

I wouldn't say nine times out of ten. A lot of the times it's something new.

SPEAKER_07 11:47

Let's say eight times out of ten, or maybe even four out of five. I don't know. Uh, but that's okay. That's okay.

SPEAKER_05 11:53

Did everybody else catch the math there? Yeah, I did.

SPEAKER_07 11:56

I did some math live on the ad. Uh, you know, maybe it's some detail about history, which I find fascinating. Maybe it's an old advertisement from the 1950s. Maybe it's how wartime rationing shaped jello ads with cheerful promises that someday sugar shortages would end and everything would go back to normal. Or maybe it's a vitamin campaign for, I think it was Vim, um, designed to reassure people that yes, rationing is hard, but science will help you fill the gaps in in the in the food you can no longer afford and can't find and can't eat. Little historical tidbits, little literary references, word origins. I love word origins, cosmology, whatever. You hit me with one today.

SPEAKER_05 12:38

Yeah, I did. We I got in the car, Driftglass picks me up. We only have one car, so we he picks me up from work, and I got in the car and I said, Did you know that the world's largest digital camera is in Chile at a mountaintop, taking pictures of the stars for 10 years, and they're going to make this movie of 10 years of photographs of not just one star, one area, but the whole sky. And uh apparently they're gonna send any time there's a shooting star or an exploding star or any a major change in the sky, these scientists that are on this notification circle will be notified within one minute by this machine. It's amazing, and we're gonna have an amazing picture of the universe from this.

SPEAKER_07 13:25

Yeah, a time-lapse film of the night sky for 10 years seeing what's happening.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

Yeah, it's gonna be incredible.

SPEAKER_07 13:34

Yeah, but you do you leap to the car and said, guess what?

SPEAKER_05 13:37

Yeah, I have news.

SPEAKER_07 13:39

And it wasn't politics and it wasn't a disaster either.

SPEAKER_05 13:43

Something fun, yeah. Something fun. And if it's something interesting that we manage not to learn during the previous several decades of our lives, well, that's fascinating. We love discovering something genuinely new. And here's the problem. In our line of work these days, doing this podcast and writing about media and politics in the United States, there are months that go by when we don't learn anything new.

SPEAKER_07 14:07

Nope. Years even. Years.

SPEAKER_05 14:09

Yeah. What we get instead are reinforcements of things we've already known. Trump is losing it. We know that. All these variations on the same awful racist themes that have been at the heart of the Republican Party forever. The same information gets reported breathlessly by people who think they've discovered something astonishing. Oh my god, Republicans are racist. Oh my god. They slap a dozen exclamation points on the headline and present it as this new revelation, Driftglass. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 14:40

It's astonishing.

SPEAKER_05 14:41

Yeah, and and again, listen to the beginning of the show. We've known this, it is known for 20 years. It's known.

SPEAKER_07 14:49

As well, and in some cases, we've known it for 40 years. Yeah. You know, we we were active politically and reading and all the stuff we do now, we were doing long before podcasting existed for us. And so, speaking of old things that never go out of fashion, it's probably time for a dramatic reading from one of the most famous posts by infamous internet quitter T Bog, who quit the internet repeatedly and then eventually he quit the internet.

SPEAKER_05 15:14

Yeah. But what a classic OG blogger.

SPEAKER_07 15:17

Oh, yeah. No, this is this is old stuff. This is, in fact, written in February of 2008 on a blog that no longer exists. I know because I clicked on the link and it's not there anymore. I sourced it from my own 2013 archives back when I was called drone glass. Remember those days, Bluegal? Drone Glass.

SPEAKER_05 15:36

I remember your comment section being full of people calling you drone glass.

SPEAKER_07 15:39

Drone Glass. Uh obot, boot-licking, fascist loving, blah, blah, blah. Because I had the temerity to point out that Glenn Greenwald was obviously full of shit and was rapidly becoming Tucker Carlson's wacky sidekick on Fox.

SPEAKER_05 15:51

Yeah, and you were right. And I was you and Bob Sesko were right about Glenn Greenwald.

SPEAKER_07 15:55

And the thing is, nobody lined up in my comment section to say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. No, they didn't said that.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

And they never commented about anything unless you mentioned Glenn Greenwald.

SPEAKER_07 16:05

And then it was like, oh, because well, he sent the horde after me. He had this mob of dedicated, you know, goons that would swarm into anybody who said anything, even remotely critical of Glenn Greenwald, would just get this treatment from his from his loyal goons. And then he moved over to Fox, and then he moved over to Rumble, and then he just became a fucking right-wing lunatic and became Laura Ingram's bestest buddy. And all of a sudden those people stopped showing up telling me how wrong I was about Glenn Greenwald. Real weird. Would you like to read to us from uh from this or shall I shall I jump in?

SPEAKER_05 16:40

I'm gonna let you read it. You go right ahead.

SPEAKER_07 16:41

All right, tell you what. Uh let's go. Um uh no, actually, this is you.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Oh, it is. Okay. I get my turn. Okay. This is from T Bog. Please. Quote, your Mumia sweatshirt won't get you into heaven anymore. That's that's really a throwback. A comment left over at Dig regarding Ralph Nader.

SPEAKER_07 17:04

Yeah, that's that's how far back this goes.

SPEAKER_05 17:06

That's how far back we're going. Dig and Ralph Nader. Quote, the Democrats really hate Nader because he points out the fact that they are asking those of us on the left to vote for them, but they aren't doing anything for us. Did they end funding for the Republicans' crime spree in Iraq? No. Have they moved for universal health care? No. Have they tried to stop corporate crimes? No. Have they tried to reform the tax code to be progressive? No. Have they tried to protect homeowners from predatory lenders? No. Have they defended our constitutional rights? No. Take back the FDA from corporations? No. The FCC? No. The Democrats don't deserve my vote. They aren't helping the left. Why should the left help them? Unquote. I see some uh factual inaccuracies in that statement, those statements, but still proceed. Proceed. And this is still T Bog, this is T-Bog's say uh speaking here. Let me see if I can explain it this way. Every year, in happy gumdrop fairy tale land, all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick up the rainbow sunshine queen. Everyone is there. The lollipop guild, the star twinkle toddlers, the sparkly unicorns, the cookie-baking apple cheeked grandmothers, the fluffy bunny bun, the rumbly tumbly pupparos, the snowflake princesses, the baby duckies all in a row, the laughing babies, and the dykes on bikes. Of course. They have a big picnic: cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing magic wishing rocks into the well of laughter, comedy, and good intentions. Afterward, they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn, when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down, where they dream of angels and clouds spun sugar. You don't live there. Grow the fuck up. Unquote.

SPEAKER_07 19:18

Yeah. Immortal words from T-Bog.

SPEAKER_05 19:21

T Bog.

SPEAKER_07 19:22

And there's still a lot of wisdom in those words. But you know, given how angry and reactionary centrist corporate democrats have been to progressives daring to check my notes. Oh, yeah, work within the party to affect democratic policies. We thought that T Bog's wise words could use a companion piece addressing the tantrums being thrown by our newest whiny titty babies. So your Navy Brooks Brothers suit, Black Oxfords, and tastefully understated flag pin won't get you into heaven anymore. Every year, in the Bipartisan Consensus Center for Civility and Stakeholder Engagement, all the consultants and strategists and editorial board columnists gather together to select the pragmatic common sense consensus champion. Everyone is there, the deficit hawks for social justice, the means tested rainbow coalition, the third wave visionaries, the responsible moderates caucus, the public-private partnership pixies, the focus group fairies, the means tested mermaids, the fiscal responsibility gnomes, the concerned independent unicorns, the no-label narwhals, the Washington Post opinion dryads, and the venture capitalist elves for democracy.

SPEAKER_05 20:39

They begin with a brunch, sponsored by six banks, four defense contractors, and a tech conglomerate, where they enjoy artisanal muffins and carefully calibrated discussions about electability. They pause only long enough to cast their votes by dropping means-tested opportunity tokens into the well of incremental progress, after first completing a brief demographic survey and verifying that their preferred candidate has offended no potential swing voters in the suburban exurbs.

SPEAKER_07 21:12

As evening falls, the assembled creatures gather around the sacred fire of bipartisanship and tell ancient stories of the great moderate kings. There was Lieberman the wise, and Kasich the practical, and Mansion the Necessary. And they exchange laminated white papers and sing traditional songs such as Deficits Matter Again, and the voters yearn for a center-right party. At midnight, after performing the ritual blaming of the progressives, they drift off to sleep. Under today's sponsors, Bolin Branch Sheets, dreaming peaceful dreams of Republican voters who are just one more tax credit proposal away from joining the coalition. You don't live there. Grow the fuck up. Unquote.

SPEAKER_05 21:56

I thought that was brilliant, Drew Glass. See, the maddening fact. Is that we're not learning anything new anymore. Just revising the same political trench warfare battlefield where nothing ever moves more than a few inches over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_07 22:13

And that's because there really isn't much left to learn about the subject of what's gone wrong in this country and who is to blame for it.

SPEAKER_05 22:22

Which unfortunately is also the most important thing happening in the country.

SPEAKER_07 22:26

Exactly. Exactly. And the subject is how do we get rid of these fucking Republicans?

SPEAKER_05 22:32

How do we push them aside? How do we take power away from them? And how do we get the centrists in our own fucking party to stop treating progressives who win Democratic primaries that attract the Democratic base as the problem somehow?

SPEAKER_07 22:55

James Carvel. James Carvel. Because a whole lot of them seem much more interested in shoving progressives out of the coalition and welcoming Republicans into it than they are in doing the hard work of saving the country, improving people's lives, rebuilding our alliances, and undoing decades and decades of damage.

SPEAKER_05 23:16

Those sponsored artisanal muffins aren't gonna bake themselves drift glass.

SPEAKER_07 23:20

They're not, they're not, Lucas.

SPEAKER_05 23:22

And look, we do get it that the solution to this is boring. It's grinding, it's slow. We've been at this podcast for a thousand episodes. We get it. We understand all of that.

SPEAKER_07 23:37

Yeah, because every day, if you read at you know, a dead tree newspaper, or scroll through a social media feed, or look what's flowing through your social medias, and it's just another asshole explaining that everything is both sides' fault, or that Democrats just need to become a little more centrist, or that the answer is always to move just a little bit further to the right. And eventually you just want to fucking scream, can we please stop doing this? But of course, by ourselves, we can't stop it.

SPEAKER_05 24:06

Because people like us don't have access to rooms like that. We're not invited onto those panels, we're not welcomed into those venues. We don't get to go to Politicon Driftglass.

SPEAKER_06 24:15

Nope.

SPEAKER_05 24:16

Because we'd ask really embarrassing questions. We'd push back, we'd demand answers, and we would remember the past.

SPEAKER_07 24:24

Yes, we would.

SPEAKER_05 24:25

And a lot of people don't want to answer those questions or remember before 2016 driftglass. They don't want to. So instead, we get the same tired script over and over again.

SPEAKER_07 24:35

So here's an example. I could eat oatmeal every morning. I eat oatmeal almost every morning, right now. A little brown sugar and some strawberries and some blueberries, whatever berries happen to be in season. I'd be perfectly content. It's fuel, it tastes good, it's warm, it wakes me up, it's good for me. But we choke on the same intellectual slop being ladled out day after day as though it's new information. Because in this endless farce, pretending to be surprised, you discover that MAGA voters are exactly who they've always been, that Republican politicians are exactly who they've always been. This endless, dreary parade of conservative pundits and centrist pundits who continue to insist on things that simply are not true and that haven't been true for decades.

SPEAKER_05 25:23

We listened to former Senator Jeff Flake being interviewed by the Bulwark at the Aspen Institute this week for our sins.

SPEAKER_07 25:33

For our sins. We did it for you, for you people.

SPEAKER_05 25:37

And and look, it was striking how little Jeff Flake has changed. This is still the Jeff Flake of 2017. The guy who gave speeches about how intolerable Trump was. Then he declined to run for re-election and expressed endless disappointment in what had become of the Republican Party. He's still convinced that behind closed doors, Driftglass, these people are much better than they appear in public. They're good people, really. They're just letting him down. They're letting old Jeff down, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_07 26:15

Oh no, that's unforgivable. They've let him down.

SPEAKER_05 26:18

But you know what? Listening to him, you hear the same old lies about what's wrong and how to fix it, and who is supposed to give ground. Who's supposed to yield, Driftglass?

SPEAKER_07 26:27

Exactly. Because good old Jeff remains convinced of a couple of things. First, he's convinced that the Republican Party is right on the verge of turning a corner, blue gal. Trump's getting weaker, the fever's about to break, they're almost there, which is unsurprisingly exactly what David Brooks used to write every three or four months for the better part of a fucking decade. The GOP is just about to change. They're about to shake off the Sarah Palin stain or the Tom DeLay stain, whatever stain they were discussing this week and emerge, renewed, and responsible. And you know what? It's never true. It's never been true, it's never gonna be true because the Republican Party is what it is because it is full of Republicans. That is not going to change until there are no Republicans left to fill it. But Jeff Flake simply cannot bring himself to believe that the party he came from is actually the party we see in front of us every day.

SPEAKER_05 27:20

Now, here's the comic relief part of that. Uh the other issue is he's very disappointed in Marco Rubio. But he thinks he'll end up being the hero we all need. Speaking of David Brooks redo.

SPEAKER_07 27:36

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:37

It's gonna be Rubio. It's gonna be Rubio. Marco, you see, is in a tough spot. Marco has had to do some things he's probably not proud of. But once Trump is gone, Jeff Flake assures us the real Marco Rubio will emerge. Like a piece of white bread coming out of a toaster. Pop. And with the same brain power as that piece of toast. The future of the GOP is a practical problem solver like Marco Rubio. The Marco Rubio of 2016. The future of the Republican Party is apparently the savior of the Republican Party from a decade ago. We remember that magazine cover.

SPEAKER_07 28:19

Yeah, Time magazine.

SPEAKER_05 28:20

The savior. It was going to be Marco Rubio. Again, Jeff Flake cannot get it through his head that the problem isn't that these are secretly people of conscience who have been forced by circumstances to bury their principles. The problem is that these are his people. These are his colleagues. These are Jeff Flake's friends. And here are the voters that elected them. They're not changed, they're not mistaken.

SPEAKER_07 28:51

No. They did what they did and they did it over and over and over again to the point where any idiot who isn't invested in lying to themselves can see what the problem is. He also insists that Arizona is really a red state, Blue Bird. It's secretly a red state. Now it is a swing state, that's for sure, but secretly it's a red state. Sure, Arizona has a Democratic governor and a Democratic Secretary of State, an attorney general, and two Democratic senators. And never mind the Democrats have been winning in some statewide races for 10 years. Deep down, Arizona is still a red state. You know why? Because underneath it all, Bluegale, America is still a center-right country. How many fucking decades have we been hearing this bullshit? Yeah, we're still a center-right country.

SPEAKER_05 29:35

I made a video in 2008-09, right around the time Obama was in the transition period. Alice going down the the in the looking glass, you know, following the white rabbit.

SPEAKER_07 29:48

The rabbit hole, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:49

And and the you know, the Red Queen's Tea Party with the Matt Hatter, and the Matt Hatter is saying, the liberal media cost us this election. America is a center-right country. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The problem is we weren't conservative enough.

SPEAKER_07 30:04

You're never conservative enough. And back in the early days of Never Trump media, when it was Charlie Sykes and Mona Sharon, you could not swing a dead cat without, you know, it is a center-right country. That's the thing. We're truly, we really are a center-right country. And and he believes that one day the truth will be revealed. And the only thing keeping Democrats competitive, according to Jeff Flake, is that Donald Trump is so uniquely awful that people are temporarily voting against him. And finally, of course, there comes the obligatory both sides lecture.

SPEAKER_05 30:34

Oh, yeah, because you know what, Drift Glass, the Democrats have gone too far left. This country is full of centrists. The center lane is wide open. If Democrats want to survive, they have to move there. Instead of going so far left, why aren't they trying to appeal to the vast army of imaginary independent voters who are supposedly waiting to be represented?

SPEAKER_06 30:58

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 30:59

This fantasy, you know, it is a fantasy. It's gumdrops, right? Has survived decades of contrary evidence. There are about 11 actual centrists in America, and everyone in Washington has spent 30 years chasing them as if they were the fountain of youth.

SPEAKER_07 31:16

Yeah, but but that's Jeff Flake, right?

SPEAKER_05 31:18

Right, right.

SPEAKER_07 31:19

Typical person of that ilk. Every box is checked, every stage of denial accounted for, every excuse made, every deflection deployed, and inevitably the conclusion that it's the Democrats who need to change.

SPEAKER_05 31:34

Democrats need to change. They do.

SPEAKER_07 31:36

The only people with agency in this equation, the only people who are really driving this further on than it needs to be a Democrats.

SPEAKER_05 31:44

Yep, Merck's Law.

SPEAKER_07 31:45

And then we move down the dial to a different corner of the conservative ecosystem, which brings us to this from The Guardian from June 21st. The headline: the white working class knows the American project isn't working. Here's why that will never matter to them. And we're just going to jump right to the last paragraph. It's a long article, it's a good article, but we're going to the last paragraph. Quote: If we have learned one thing about Trump space, it should be not to confuse attitudes expressed in approval ratings with any potential change in their voting patterns. Millions of Trump voters openly disapprove of his performance and personality across three campaigns, yet they would never consider an alternative that shared power with people of color and required relinquishing the full public authority of their whiteness. No amount of persuasion will move those who have chosen to maintain control and violence over putting food on the table when the point of their trade-off is keeping others from putting food on theirs. Unquote.

SPEAKER_05 32:46

Even those rare few who stagger out of the GOP opium den still have a skullful of that Fox News bad wiring and toxic slander that they will never outgrow. You might remember one term Illinois congressperson who turned being an asshole loudmouth and a Fox News troll into becoming a welcome guest on MSNow, The Bulwark, and Crooked Media, because he got real good and mad at Trump. Heck, earlier this month he suddenly announced, I'm now a Democrat.

SPEAKER_06 33:24

Ooh.

SPEAKER_05 33:26

Which got him a lot of attention. It sure did. He's real good at getting these.

SPEAKER_07 33:30

He's real good at getting attention from himself. He's very good at that.

SPEAKER_05 33:34

And then his socials before and since have been a steady fire hose of Fox News flavored complaints about this new party he just joined. Because now he gets thinks he gets to run it.

SPEAKER_07 33:45

Yeah. Well, you know, now that I'm on the inside, let me tell you how you're fucking up and why you should change to be more conservative.

SPEAKER_05 33:51

My new party, my Democratic Party, and my Democrat Party is it's it's doing things all wrong. For example, just a few days he posted, quote, This is so damn absurd. I remember when America used to fight socialists. Now they're on stage being applauded, unquote. Shut up, Joe Walsh.

SPEAKER_07 34:13

Please.

SPEAKER_05 34:13

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 34:14

Now we turn to the Find Out podcast, which is a broadly left-wing podcast, although it includes at least one host who seems permanently uncomfortable with the Democratic Party and serves as the designated representative of whatever the Hold Out Libertarian Center is supposed to be this week. I'm politic I'm politically homeless on, you know. Yes. And they're interviewing a mid-tier social media personality called Neverwoke. Uh he has his own TikTok channel because his name?

SPEAKER_06 34:42

Never woke?

SPEAKER_07 34:44

That's his handle. That's his TikTok handle. Never woke. Well, it used to be. Well, that still is actually. He has his own TikTok channel because all of them have their own TikTok channel. And he has around 100,000 followers. And he's one of these guys who would parade around at Democratic protests and at Disney World. He got famous for doing this at Disney World in a MAGA hat just to provoke liberal reactions, just to show up and be an asshole at Disney World and at liberal liberal protests. Well, he is no longer wearing a MAGA hat, Blue Gal. Now he's wearing an I Love America hat or an American First hat or something like that. He wants everyone to know that he's done with MAGA. Now he voted for Trump. He voted for Trump six times. He voted for him in the primaries, he voted for him the general election, but now he says he was fooled, Blue Gal. He was duped. He had the wool pulled over his eyes. Damn it. And don't worry, he is going to vote for the Democrats in the midterms, Blue Gal. So he's he's cool now. He's totally cool.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

He's flipped over, I guess. He has.

SPEAKER_07 35:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 35:44

From him, you get a different but similar vibe you got from former Senator Jeff Flake. It's more down market and internally contradictory and not quite as polished. But it also comes with its own set of deflections and excuse making. Trump fooled us all. Trump wasn't who we thought he was.

SPEAKER_07 36:09

So sad.

SPEAKER_05 36:10

Yeah. I was deceived. I was conned.

SPEAKER_07 36:14

Yeah. And a big Thomas Massey fan this guy is. Mentions him as the model politician he'd like to have uh be the political model half a dozen times. And like every other MAGA voter, every time he opens his mouth to explain why he said and did the things he said and did, you can clearly see that he has this very detailed internal ecosystem of absolutely bullshit beliefs.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

Yeah, yeah. But when it comes to being accountable for voting based on those toxic beliefs and being a transmission vector for those toxic beliefs, suddenly you hear a different story. Like when the panel, who who overall treated him with kid cloves, wanted to know how can you go on supporting Trump after January 6th and after COVID? How can you go on supporting Trump at that stage?

SPEAKER_07 37:06

Right. And what he said was, what he said was, look, like most people, I just vote and forget about politics. Uh I'm a businessman, I'm a business owner, I'm I'm busy running my business. And then he said from 2016 to 2024, it was all a blur. It was all a blur. He had no idea what was going on anywhere. And then he pipes up, well, we did have Black Lives Matter. He does remember that. And but he says, I would only get glimpses, never dig into the, you know, the detail.

SPEAKER_05 37:33

He also said that sure, MAGA realizes that Trump is pretty bad, but they went on supporting him because he was, quote, slightly better than the Democrats, unquote.

SPEAKER_07 37:43

Yeah. And this is where you can really see how deep the rot from the both sides do it lie goes. Because he repeated that slightly better nonsense several times to the point where the panel asked him to clarify why he thought so. And this is my exact transcription, as close as I could come, to what he said. So, quote, okay, so like your audience will disagree with the people that follow me, but the people that follow me don't like the trans stuff. The people that follow me, they don't like Joe Biden on a vacation allegedly for most of his presidency. And then, and then y'all threw in Kamala. Oh, God. Like your audience, like, like strongly disagrees with the ICE stuff. Well, my audience doesn't, right? So, like, there's just fundamental disagreements. So, like when it comes to the like Republicans, well, I'm saying, like, when it comes to like things that I value versus things that Democrats value. Okay, like Donald Trump, like one of the most corrupt politicians in American history, but at least we're slightly better than the Democrats because the things that we value aren't the things that you all value, and vice versa, unquote.

SPEAKER_05 38:54

And then y'all threw in Kamala.

SPEAKER_07 38:57

Yeah. Yeah. Just lit just let that sit there. Really? Because, first of all, yeah, everything you believe is bullshit, kid. Everything you believe is bullshit.

SPEAKER_05 39:06

You don't want a black woman running the country.

SPEAKER_07 39:08

Right. That was it.

SPEAKER_05 39:09

Because it makes your peony smaller than it is.

SPEAKER_07 39:11

Yeah. But we can't say that. So it's just, well, then you threw in a comala. So what were we supposed to do?

SPEAKER_05 39:17

Right. And and we're left wondering, what values do you have exactly? What values do Democrats supposedly not share? The belief that brown people are dangerous, that women should be mere brood mares for Republican men, that an army of trans people is going to come storming through your front door and do God knows what.

SPEAKER_07 39:38

God knows what they're gonna do, Bluegale. God knows what.

SPEAKER_05 39:41

Because at this point, that's pretty much the modern Republican platform. Uh, that plus tax cuts for the rich. That that's very important.

SPEAKER_07 39:49

So when this guy starts talking about how Democrats don't share his values, we genuinely want to know which values he's talking about. And what strikes us is how perfectly this never-woke guy represents a huge slice of MAGA America because he swallowed every lie, he spread every lie, and yet he'll sit there with a straight face and tell you he wasn't really paying attention to politics. Well, wait a minute. You were paying attention enough to develop a whole collection of racist, xenophobic, reactionary opinions. You're paying attention enough to vote for Trump three fucking times. You're paying enough attention so that you became a social media personality built around those opinions.

SPEAKER_05 40:28

You became a political TikTok star, but you were paying attention to politics.

SPEAKER_07 40:33

Clearly, you were paying attention to something.

SPEAKER_05 40:36

Yeah. Now, now, to be fair, he he's gone down far enough down the road to realize that some of the things he was told were lies. The Epstein files were supposed to expose the villains. Guess what, Driftglass? That turned out to be a lie.

SPEAKER_07 40:51

Yeah, turned out that was a lie.

SPEAKER_05 40:53

Trump was supposed to keep America out of foreign wars, Driftglass. That turned out to be a lie, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_07 41:00

Oh no. Again, that's that's two for two.

SPEAKER_05 41:03

Uh the corruption, the grift, the incompetence. Yeah, he can see all of that now. He can he he gets it.

SPEAKER_07 41:11

The scales have fallen from his eyes. Well, one scale.

SPEAKER_05 41:14

But you know what, Driftglass? He just won't take the next step. He won't question the lies he was told about Democrats. And that's the fascinating part because those lies came from the exact same people. Laura Ingram and everybody else who lies about Democrats for a living. The same people who lied about Trump, lied about Epstein, lied about the wars, lied about corruption, and lied about everything else, including how often Biden was on vacation.

SPEAKER_06 41:45

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 41:46

Also spent years telling him that Democrats are monsters, communists, liberals hate America, and progressives, they're some alien species with fundamentally different values who are going to send trans people through your front door to do unspeakable things. Who even knows what?

SPEAKER_07 42:06

They might even cause someone to come in fifth in a swimming meet instead of fourth, Blue Gail. And that's the end of the republic right there.

SPEAKER_05 42:16

Now, now he can see through one set of lies, but he can't see through the other. And he's telling a third set of lies, which is, as you said, I'm not paying attention to politics.

SPEAKER_07 42:26

I didn't pay attention to politics. Oh, you pay attention to something. Because if Democrats were actually right all along, and we were, if they weren't monsters, if we aren't monsters, if we weren't enemies, if we're not everything he'd be taught to believe, then he'd have to confront the possibility that he wasn't merely fooled about Trump, that he's been wrong about everything. So instead of excuses, you know, I was fooled, I was duped, I wasn't paying attention, everything was a blur. All you get are excuses now, except he was paying attention. He paid attention enough to build an entire worldview around these lies. What he can't admit is where those lies led him.

SPEAKER_05 43:02

And that's where we look at someone like Jeff Flake on the one end of the spectrum and never woke guy. I wonder if he's related to uh Skull Rebel.

SPEAKER_07 43:12

Could be.

SPEAKER_05 43:13

He might be. Uh, but Never Woke on the other, and we arrive at exactly the same conclusion. They're all making excuses. Some are lying, some are deluded, some are simply terrified of looking in the mirror and admitting what their party has become, who runs it, what those people believe, and what it says about them that they went along with it. So instead of making amends, they make excuses. And at this point, we're just tired of it.

SPEAKER_07 43:41

Just tired. It's exhausting. We're damn tired. We heard every version of this story before. We heard it in the 1990s, we heard it in 2000, we heard it in 210, in 2012, in 2014, all of our adult lives. They screw up, they believe lies, they mock everyone who warns them, then it all blows up on their face. And suddenly it wasn't their fault. They didn't know. They were misled. Nobody could have known. These are adults, right? These are adult human beings who vote, right?

SPEAKER_05 44:08

I'm old enough to remember this with Nixon. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I voted for Nixon, but I didn't know.

SPEAKER_07 44:14

I didn't know. It's the same cycle over and over again. They never learn and they never grow up.

SPEAKER_05 44:21

And here's the punchline. And it has nothing to do with Marco Rubio, but it has everything to do with Mark Rubio. It took Trump lying about the Epstein files and lying America into a war with Iran to break this guy's codependent relationship with the Republican Party. That's the good news, actually. That is the good news.

SPEAKER_06 44:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

So what's the bad news, Driftglass? Here's what he says now. I'm done with both parties. Exactly. Because both sides, Driftglass.

SPEAKER_07 44:53

Oh, and haven't we all heard this exact story like 10,000 times before? Yeah. And didn't it just get old after the first hundred times we heard it? Old and ugly, like mom's Maybelly back in 1969, talking about the old man she married.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

Oh, I think that's a good question.

SPEAKER_05 45:51

The same corporate nonsense, the same setup. A Republican on one side, a centrist Democrat on the other, the same questions, the same platitudes, the same evasions. And the moment anything gets interesting, revealing, truth-telling, or dangerous, suddenly, well, sorry, we're out of time. We have to leave it there. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_07 46:12

We'll have to leave it there. And then we move on to sports or something else because we don't want to talk about that. And that's what we're sick of. That's what we're entirely sick of. We're sick of waking up to the same ugly old world over and over again when we know there are so many other better possible futures. There are so many other amazing things we could be exploring as a people. And instead, we're stuck dealing with the same idiots over and over again, telling the same lies to other idiots over and over again. While those lies and that stupidity are blessed and amplified and financed by billionaires and media corporations who have every incentive to keep the carousel spinning forever.

SPEAKER_05 46:52

Yep. Yep, I gotta say. And that's the description we're gonna have for the show.

SPEAKER_06 46:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:58

Is uh Driftglass did a very good photoshop of the MAGA merry-go round. Yep. It goes in circles but never gets anywhere. It's all horses' asses and there is no brass ring.

SPEAKER_07 47:08

Yep. And they never they never get off. They never get off.

SPEAKER_05 47:11

Okay, it's time for a news roundup. At long last, we're gonna have one of those. And all these headlines are from this week. Starting off from Reuters, quote, the Supreme Court declined to consider Trump's attempt to overturn a 2023 jury verdict holding him liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer Eugene Carroll. Trump will have to pay Carroll the $5 million judgment plus interest. However, Trump is still appealing a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment, unquote.

SPEAKER_07 47:44

Yeah. And this is from Bloomberg, quote, the Supreme Court expanded the presidential authority over independent federal agencies, ruling that Trump and future presidents can fire agency leaders at will. The court ruled 6-3 to overturn the 1935 Humphreys executive president, allowing Trump to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, despite a federal law limiting presidents from firing Senate-confirmed leaders only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. In a separate 5-4 ruling, however, the court blocked Trump from immediately firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while her lawsuit continues. Chief Justice John Roberts and Cook, I'm sorry, said Cook was entitled to notice and a chance to respond before being removed over Trump's unproven mortgage fraud allegations, unquote. And if you want to hear a whole lot more about this, uh Mr. Bob Siska and I had a lovely conversation about this in great depth, talking about Reconstruction and Andrew Johnson and how screwed the court is and what the role of a federal employee should be and so on and so forth. Uh we had a great conversation. Thanks again to Bob for inviting me on his show. He's a great talker. We had a lovely chance to catch up. And there's a link in our show notes to all this information. So if you can't get enough about the crappy Supreme Court decision or the other stuff we talked about, uh head over to Bob Sesky's show and look us up over there.

SPEAKER_05 49:10

I I also want to mention, uh, while we're talking about SCOTUS, um, we are watching a very good show. Uh um, and and forgive us for still having uh Paramount on our TV. I know, I know, I know. Uh, but we are watching the agency. And I'm not gonna spoil it for anybody. I'm just gonna say there is a scene where you think somebody's gonna be executed and you breathe a sigh of relief, but you're in so much pain for the person who you think is gonna be executed.

SPEAKER_06 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:40

And then you breathe a there's a sigh of relief that they're not, but it's it's horrifying that they're brought that close to death. And I felt that way over birthright citizenship.

SPEAKER_06 49:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 49:51

I felt that the Supreme Court tortured all of us for a year about whether or not they were going to end America as a beacon for the rest of the world with liberty. And and you and I have talked about this today, you know, the Statue of Liberty and when it was rehabbed under Reagan, when Reagan was president, giving a speech about what the Statue of Liberty stands for. And then I put up a post with Troy Nails, Republican jackass from Texas, saying, uh, we need to put a bedsheet over the Statue of Liberty this week. This week, we need to put a bed sheet over the Statue of Liberty and a stop sign in her hand instead of a tort.

SPEAKER_07 50:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 50:31

Because that's where Republicans are now.

SPEAKER_07 50:33

If you get a chance to go look at that, we are no fans of Ronald Reagan.

SPEAKER_05 50:37

No, we are not.

SPEAKER_07 50:38

The Republican Party, the modern Republican Party, everything that's wrong with the modern Republican Party kicked off in a big way under Ronald Reagan. It was all sort of laying around loose tinder and intentions. He's the one who put it all together with the right wing, with a moral majority, with the not so subtle dog whistle racist politics, with slashing the federal government, with blaming welfare queens. He was he was the guy who put a lot of. Funding foreign wars. Yeah, and funding foreign wars, and lying about it.

SPEAKER_06 51:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 51:06

You know, lying about Iran Contra was his baby. Um, however, this speech is from 1986, July 4th, weekend 1986, where he's standing across the bay with his wife uh from the Statue of Liberty. It's all dark, it takes takes place at night, and he gives a lovely speech about the intentions of America and the future of America and how lucky we all are to be Americans, and the whole and it lights up and the fireworks go off, and they're singing and playing, and there's a bunch of sailors in their hats there. Clearly, you know, they they know something about how to stage an event, but it was so far from where we are now. It was such an alien planet version of America.

SPEAKER_05 51:42

Yeah, yeah. And regardless of how racist Reagan's policies were, he knew how to give a speech about, you know, an aspirational speech about he was an actor. You know how to give an aspirational speech about the American dream.

SPEAKER_07 51:54

Yeah, and going about, you know, uh Christians and Jews, but we're all Americans. Black or white, but we're all Americans.

SPEAKER_05 52:00

You know, Republicans and Democrats were all Americans.

SPEAKER_07 52:02

Yeah. Now, you know, the the facts on the ground says something very different, but he gave a very good speech on that occasion, 1986, 4th of July, that again just looks like it was beamed in from some completely alternate universe.

SPEAKER_05 52:17

And the fact that it was what, five to three in favor of birthright citizenship?

SPEAKER_07 52:22

Six to three.

SPEAKER_05 52:23

Six to three.

SPEAKER_07 52:24

Six to three, but it was also five to four. Like if you pass if Congress passes a law, then that's cool. I think that was Kavanaugh's opinion. I'm not a lawyer, but that's the gist I got. But it was, it should have been nine to zero.

SPEAKER_05 52:35

Now Congress can change the Constitution at will.

unknown 52:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 52:38

Well, and it was it should have been, you know, it should have been Nixon versus the United States. It should have been nine to zero.

SPEAKER_05 52:43

In in a day, in a day, you know, in a week.

unknown 52:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 52:48

This is not even a case. Go away.

SPEAKER_05 52:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 52:51

But it wasn't. Yeah. Because and because torture.

SPEAKER_05 52:54

Because torture. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_07 52:56

And as someone pointed out, the worst justices on the Supreme Court were not appointed by Trump. They were appointed by Bush.

SPEAKER_05 53:03

Bush. Yeah. Yep. Who which Bush was it that appointed the worst ones?

SPEAKER_07 53:08

George W.

SPEAKER_05 53:10

George W. The one the one that was at the uh Obama Presidential Center opening, that one?

SPEAKER_07 53:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:15

Oh, yeah. Oh. All right. This is from the AP. Trump plans to renovate Washington, D.C.'s public East Potomac golf links starting September 1st, despite a pending federal lawsuit to stop Trump from unilaterally renovating the golf course. Yeah. Like, is it going to be like he did the reflecting pool drift class?

SPEAKER_07 53:38

He's bored. He's bored with Iran. He doesn't want to deal in it anymore. It's too much. I want to go build some shit and blow some shit up and change things. This is from the New York fucking Times. Quote, Trump pulled in at least $2 billion after returning to the White House. The release of a mandatory financial disclosure for 2025 shows that Trump family holdings, particularly the president's crypto business, were stunningly lucrative.

SPEAKER_05 54:02

Stunningly lucrative is what the New York fucking times is calling it.

SPEAKER_07 54:06

Yeah, that's a very nice way of saying bribery.

SPEAKER_05 54:08

Yeah. Um and foreign bribery. Foreign bribery.

SPEAKER_07 54:12

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 54:13

Not America First. Okay, from Bloomberg again, quote, Trump ref this is what I think this is my favorite story. I I do. I think this is my favorite story. Well, maybe second favorite story, because the one you've got after this is better. But uh Trump refused to renew his own North American trade deal.

SPEAKER_07 54:33

Golf clap. Golf clap. Excellent. Excellent.

SPEAKER_05 54:37

Forcing Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. into annual reviews and negotiations for the next decade instead of locking in a 16-year extension of his own trade deal. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration was not prepared to rubber stamp the agreement. That was his agreement. While Trump, who once called it the best and most important trade deal ever made, give me a Nobel Prize, now says he's not a big fan of it and he wants it terminated. Did I mention it's his own plan?

SPEAKER_07 55:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:16

Unquote. Anyway.

SPEAKER_07 55:18

Anyway. Speaking of speaking of Here comes my favorite story. Speaking of Nobel Prizes. Um apparently Hunter Biden has um trolled Donald Trump by nominating him, quote unquote, for the Nobel Prize for ending the same war 18 times.

SPEAKER_05 55:34

Oh, but he should get a peace prize for how many times he ended that war.

SPEAKER_07 55:38

And this is from USA Today. It is literally the least surprising story ever.

SPEAKER_05 55:44

But it was the news you shared with me in the car when I got in the car on the way.

SPEAKER_07 55:48

It was. And then we had to pull over so you could catch your breath.

SPEAKER_05 55:51

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 55:52

Uh quote, Tucker Carlson says he's starting a third party after breaking with Trump. Yeah, yes, it's true, boys and girls. Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson says he plans to launch, help launch a new political party after breaking with President Donald Trump and other Republicans over the US war in Iran. Carlson, the former Fox News host, who now has a weekly political podcast, just like us, except we have twice before twice a week, said in an interview with the Columbia Journal Review, because why the fuck are you interviewing this?

SPEAKER_05 56:24

Why are the Columbia Journalism Review? I know why. We all but we both know why.

SPEAKER_07 56:30

Yeah. Uh published July 1st that the Democrat, Democratic, and Republican parties are in lockstep solidarity with each other on foreign policy, war in the Middle East, and other matters. We need a third party, said Carlson. A one-time close Trump confidant. I am going to help build a third party. There should be a good faith effort to figure out what benefits this country on.

SPEAKER_05 56:52

Has he talked to Vivek Ramaswamy about this?

SPEAKER_07 56:55

I don't he uh Andrew Yang, I think, has a piece of this.

SPEAKER_05 56:58

Uh we got are we gonna call it the the tanning testicles party?

SPEAKER_07 57:02

I I think that would be a bit too far. Um I think I think Elon Musk already tried and failed with the America Party.

SPEAKER_05 57:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 57:10

And Andrew Yang had the forward party.

SPEAKER_05 57:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 57:13

And uh George Wallace had the America First Party.

SPEAKER_05 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 57:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:18

Yeah. Well, and the whole point of the forward party was not left, not right.

SPEAKER_07 57:22

That's exactly. Exactly. And and from that, you might remember, uh, I famously um created the Tesseract Party.

SPEAKER_05 57:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 57:30

Which was not left, not right, not up, not down. We it was a completely different dimension. We believe that reform begins at the subatomic level, blue gap. With quirks, with quirks, and and we're we're in favor, we're not in favor of anything, we're only in favor of great stuff, and we're pro-marijuana. So there you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

That I there would be many people who would vote for that drip last. And and that test party being deep.

SPEAKER_07 57:54

That tester party rolled into itself the fledgling Mobius strip party. Because we thought the forward party was being sides. With no sides at all. We thought the forward party was being dimensionally discriminatory for not acknowledging that there's more than three dimensions.

SPEAKER_06 58:13

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_07 58:13

And at the subatomic level, things that's where things really get cooking. So, anyway.

SPEAKER_05 58:19

All right. Finally, some amazing news out of Spain. Some of you might be old enough to remember when the promise of nuclear power was sold to the public on the promise that one day it would be too cheap to meter. Uh, this was considered to be a boon to mankind and not depressing investment news. Um, also from Bloomberg, quote, is there such a thing as too much solar? Today's newsletter looks at Spain's oversupplied solar sector, which has delivered cheap power for millions of Spaniards, but has investors looking for a quick exit. Over the past 15 years, Spain has been one of Europe's fastest growing renewable energy markets, with venture capitalists, utilities, and banks plowing more than $80 billion into the sector. Now, I'm going to interrupt here. It is really important to understand that Spain is Florida. Okay. I don't mean that in terms of politics, but in terms of where everyone goes in Europe, especially Scandinavia, where they go for beach, where they go for sun and vacation. Okay. It is the warm area where they go to escape the snowbirds go to Spain. All right. Just want to add that. Um getting back to the article, but that surge in investment has created a glut of electricity so large that solar parks are plummeting in value and investors are looking for an exit. So much solar capacity was added last year that it flooded the grid, pushing prices deep below zero during peak times as producers cut rates to offload excess power. Only six months into the year, the country has already surpassed its annual record for a number of hours when producers must pay users to take their electricity. They've already surpassed that in Jul you know July 1st for the year. The problem is happening across Europe, but it's most dramatic in Spain, where solar last year overtook wind as the largest source of electricity. The economics have deteriorated so sharply that investors are trying to exit at deep discount. Steep discount, excuse me, says Daniel Perez, head of energetica, a utility in the Catalonia region. Unquote. Wow.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:51

That's amazing. It is amazing. That's that's the future. And that is exactly what a public utility should be.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:59

Not a boondoggle, not for the profit.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:02

I mean, it should make enough, if necessary, to sustain itself and do maintenance and those things.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:07

Yeah, you have to maintain the solar panels and so forth. But solar, do-it-yourself solar is becoming a real thing in this country because you can't get utilities to do it. I mean, under Trump, Trump is is still opening coal mines, you know. Yeah. So and China is taking, you know, this seriously. The Middle East is taking this seriously. Obviously, Spain is taking this seriously.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:30

This is this is too cheap to meter.

unknown 1:01:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:33

Literally too cheap to meter. And and you've seen, like, I'm sure you've seen the the solar um panels that are over like the center center lanes of highways.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:42

Well, now they have them in between the train tracks in some countries.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:45

They have them over rivers, parts parts of rivers. So it's just such a useful and versatile way of harnessing what is coming down from the sky for free. And that we used to be a fairly important leader in that technology. And then we decided we're going to go with oil and coal because that's who has enough money to bribe politicians and turn someone like Donald Trump into the president of the United States.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:10

And this is why, if I was president, we'd be kicking anyone out of the Democratic Party who owns coal or oil stocks. Let you go.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:18

Yeah, but this is, I mean, we talked a little while ago about there's so much better, there's a better future out there waiting for you.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:24

There is. There is.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:25

And this is part of it. This really is part of it.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:27

There is so much fear in a part of certain generational subsets of this country, frankly. Yeah. Uh that that's gotta, it's gotta go. Uh, all right. Each week we post to our Patreon page and website an internet kitty sent in by you, the listeners. This week's internet kitty is Lord Nibbler. He's named after the Futurama character for two reasons. The first is because he walks around the house talking and he sounds a lot like his namesake. The second reason is he has the annoying habit of chewing on things like his human. However, the one thing that makes him incredibly remarkable is that when he wants a drink of water, he sticks his paw into his water bowl and then proceeds to lick the water off of it. Do we know any cats like that?

SPEAKER_07 1:03:19

Why, yes, we do. The the the famous uh Boscoin is named after uh that famous internet kitty.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:26

Yes, Bosco is a paw drinker and and and Turkish van. I would imagine that that that uh Lord Nibbler has a little bit of Turkish van in him. They love water, they love water. They'll play and uh put some ice cubes in in the bowl. Oh, yeah, and watch them play around.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:43

Watch the fun, hours of fun, hours of fun.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:46

Yep. Uh so yes, uh, this is uh Lord Nibbler's human says, yes, he only drinks water that is freshly pawed. Everybody sing freshly pod, freshly pod, oh my god, it's freshly pod. Very very clever, very clever. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:06

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:06

Yes, and of course, Lord Nibbler eats freshly poured cat food, our fake sponsor. Whether you serve pet store perfection or dollar store direct, your cat will sit on the kitchen floor, pawing that water, and demand that the food they eat is only freshly poured.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:22

Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh my lord, it's freshly poured. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:38

And you can visit Lord Nibbler, oh, he's a sweet kitty, at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash prolef pod or our website prolefpod.com. And you can send your internet kitty dog or other pet to us at our email address, prolefpodcast at gmail.com, where you can also write to both of us. Feel free to write us. We love hearing from you. Be aware that if you write to us at any of our addresses, we reserve the right to read your email or U.S. Postal Service Go Postal Unions letter on the air unless you say otherwise.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:14

And do not forget our gourmet coffee guidelines. Uh, if you can afford an espresso-based beverage for yourself, buy one for us at patreon.com forward slash prolef pod. Uh this is uh a time of year when we like iced beverages, but the price is the same. We are sitting in the middle, the uh heat index today in Springfield was 106 degrees, I believe. It was the same yesterday and the day before. It's gonna be more of that tomorrow. Hopefully it'll break in the evening and we'll get back down to in the 80s, early 90s, and without It's not a sauna, it's a steam room.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:47

It is so humid.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:49

It's the corn sweat bluegill. We've explained corn sweat before. And we're we're living in we're living in the middle of it right now. So uh when you do contribute to our gourmet coffee guidelines, think of us as think of it as an iced coffee country. You're helping cool us down because this is not charity, this is our job, and we do it every week with the help of you and your support. You can also help us continue to grow by sharing the show on social media. If you love this podcast, introduce it to a friend. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word. And thanks again to Bob Seska for inviting me over for some real talk this week.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:23

Hey Driftglass, how are the Internet Kitties doing this week?

SPEAKER_07 1:06:26

Well, Blue Gidal. The Internet Kitties wish everyone a safe and peaceful 4th of July, and for goodness sakes, stay hydrated, especially if you're where we are in the middle of the Midwest Ring of Fire.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:03

Happy right, BG BG production.