03 Feb Insignificant Cause – FT#167
Show Notes
The Isnignificant Cause Fallacy occurs when someone claims an outcome is due to something which may be a minor factor, but is certainly not the main cause.
Trump
We started out by discussing Trump displaying his ignorance about the fall of the Soviet Union:
Then we looked at this extract from Ross Clark’s Spectator article about the LA fires.
Mark’s British Politics Corner
Mark talked about Tobias Elwood MP’s weird explanation of why the Tories lost:
He followed that up by talking about Kemi Badenoch’s take on Farage’s popularity:
And he finished with Kemi’s weird explanation for the Southport killings:
Fallacy in the Wild
In the Fallacy in the Wild we looked at this clip from ABC News
Then we discussed this clip from The Land Unknown
And we finished up with this clip from Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling
Fake News
Here are the statements from this week’s Fake News game:
- The economy – when you look at the economy, the inflation. It’s… I really think there’s never been anything like it in our country. You see it in banana republics and third tier countries. They say it’s 20% but it’s really a lot higher and that’s something we’re going to get fixed in a very short period of time. It’s not even hard. It’s easy. It’s a very easy thing to do. Already the stock market is hitting numbers nobody’s ever seen – and I’m not even President yet, but it’s all because of the election, because everybody knows our country is going to be rich again real soon.
- We had a landslide election. We won every swing state, we won the popular vote by millions and millions of people. Nobody even knows how many people. Millions, and they’re still counting in some areas. You know they’re still counting the vote in some areas? Can you believe this? What a… what a place. What a horrible place. One of the things we’re going to do is we’ve got to fix the election so that we get honest counts and they get done by 10 o’clock in the evening or something thereabouts. They have places where they’re still counting votes.
- They brought this moron out of the Hague. He’s a mean guy. He’s a mean, nasty guy. His picture was perfect, because you look at his picture, you say that’s a bad guy. With his robe – his pop… purple robe, and he executes people. He shouldn’t be allowed to execute people, because he’ll execute everybody. He’s a nut job. But we won all of those cases with him and… I mean, I don’t know the judge in Florida, but we had a brilliant judge in Florida that saw right through it and we won the case. She was a brilliant judge with great courage.
Mark got it right again this week, and is on 51%!
Inspectors General were not a logical fallacy
We talked about Trump firing Inspectors General to make it easier to get away with crimes and corruption.
The stories we really didn’t have time to talk about
- Well, I feel pretty fucking stupid, because for nearly seven years I’ve been paying close attention to all the shit Trump says and does and last time I said I thought he wouldn’t pardon the most violent of the January 6 insurrectionists. In December he told Time they would look at it on a case by case basis, and just a couple of weeks ago JD Vance said on Fox News “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned”. But I’m not an idiot. I didn’t believe them all of a sudden when all they’ve done is lie their whole lives. I was basing my opinion on the fact that pardons for all the J6ers was unpopular even among Trump supporters, and he cares what those people think of him. Back in March of 2021 80% of Republican voters said it was very or somewhat important to prosecute the people who attacked the Capitol. That number has dropped over time, but even last month, 55% of Republicans disagree with pardoning the ones who committed violent crimes. And yet, with a sweep of his custom black Sharpie, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys who planned the attack, and pardoned every single one of the 1500+ others, including many who assaulted police officers with stun guns, riot shields, pepper spray, baseball bats, metal poles, flags, police batons, bear spray, and fire extinguishers. But there were two factors I forgot. One is how incredibly lazy Trump is. Over 1500 case files is a lot to read, so according to one adviser who talked to Axios, while his team wrestled with how extensive the pardons should be, Trump just said “Fuck it. Release them all.” The other factor is that Trump has an army of easily manipulated goons with a propensity for violence, who owe him a solid. And they know now that there are no consequences for their actions so long as it’s in service to the boss. Which is fucking scary. For my part, I’ll try not to give him the benefit of the doubt again. He never deserved it.
- Okay I know and somehow don’t know why this is actually making the news – someone says something fairly decent, nice even, in keeping with their role and says she’s not going to be sorry for that and apologise to an overweight overblown blowhard of an orange narcissist who thinks that anything anyone else thinks that isn’t the same as the things that he thinks ought to have another think coming! Yes, it’s unlikely-hero-of-the-moment; The Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde – the bishop at the National Cathedral prayer service in Washington on Tuesday who urged Donald Trump to “have mercy upon” immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, defended her remarks and said that she will not apologize. Following her post-inauguration sermon last Tuesday when she made a direct plea to Trump to show mercy and compassion toward scared individuals, including “gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families”, as well as immigrants, and those fleeing war and persecution, the president attacked Budde online, labelling her a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday. Just so’s you know asking for some mercy to be extended to those who don’t have sufficient societal standing to ask on their own behalf makes you a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater”, by inference therefore if you want to oppress, disenfranchise and silence people then you are … oh oh yeah just a straight up Republican – I clean forgot! Trump argued that she had “brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and described her tone as “nasty” and yet also “boring” and “uninspiring”, and asserted that Budde and her church “owe the public an apology”. Those used to licking the arse of the orange one – who in my mind’s eye is somewhere between the hideous pustular spice lords in David Lynch’s Dune and Jabba the Hutt – quickly joined the criticism, with one Republican representative suggesting that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”. Meanwhile Budde in a manner befitting normal humans, not necessarily just people of faith – you know like the bible-thumping thing Trump professes to when it suits him/raises money/grifts merch/garners votes/suppresses peaceful BLM protesters – said she was “saddened by the level of vitriol” her sermon had “evoked in others” noting that “the intensity of it has been disheartening” adding “You can certainly disagree with me, but could we, as Americans and fellow children of God, speak to one another with respect? I would offer the same to you.” When you’ve arse-cheeks the size and shape of Trump’s I guess it must be difficult to turn the other one, certainly without flattening city blocks and killing half his cabinet – ooh hang on there maybe something to this forgiveness thing after all. I’ve seen Conclave, I know how this all works – can we vote for Mariann Edgar Budde for Pope?
- The Office of Personnel Management acts as the primary HR department for the Federal Government, overseeing hiring practices, administering benefits and arranging vetting and background checks. It’s a quite important job, which is why Trump put Johnny McEntee in charge during his first term. McEntee’s previous government experience was carrying Trump’s bags around – a job he got fired from because his gambling problem meant he couldn’t get a White House security clearance. Nevertheless, 18 months later, Trump hired him as head of the Office of Personnel Management. I offer this little history lesson as an indication of how much Trump cares about who runs that office, as that might explain why he seems to have allowed Elon Musk to populate it with his people. The new OPM chief of staff is Amanda Scales, who used to work for Musk’s company xAI. Two other members of the leadership team are so young that the Wired article about this refuses to name them, but they do note that one is a 2024 high-school graduate whose résumé consists of a summer job at Musk’s Neuralink company, as well as previous experience as a camp counselor and bike mechanic. Musk’s hold over the OPM might explain the similarities between a letter he sent to all Twitter staff in November 2022, and one the OPM sent out to two million federal employees this week demanding that they either return to the office full time, or resign now and get eight months severance pay. There’s an expectation that 5-10% will resign, simultaneously reducing the federal workforce without having to fire anybody, getting rid of non-Trump loyalists, and saving the first $100 billion of the $2 trillion DOGE has promised in cuts. However, for a few employees it seems to have had the opposite effect, with some federal employees on the r/fednews subreddit vowing to stay and serve the people instead. “I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell,” said one, “But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible, RTO be damned.” “I’ll continue to do my job and fight for the position I’ve earned,” another said. “It took me 10 years of applying and 20 years experience in my field to get here. I will not be pushed out by two billionaire trust fund babies.” and a third noted “They just created the imaginary deep state they convinced everyone they were fighting against”.
- You know all that thing Nancy Mace is literally losing her shit about how it’s not right that people should be endangering the privacy, personal space and safety of women using the restrooms in the congress building? Well her right-wing chum, and Paul-from-The-Wonder-Years-cosplayer Lauren Boebert has been hanging about outside the women’s restroom shouting ‘you shouldn’t be in here’ and storming off to get Nancy Mace to feel all vindicated and righteous and gotcha about Sarah McBride breaching the terms of the “use your own gendered bathroom will ya ferchrissake can’t you see how important this is to us” policy that Mace had managed to get introduced for the bathrooms around the House Chamber. Bloomberg reporter Billy House saw how Mace and Boebert returned and stormed into the bathroom like something out of Mean Girls only to sheepishly sidle out two minutes later, possibly looking flushed, having mistaken someone in the bathroom for Sarah McBride. Boebert, astonishingly, said later to the Daily Beast that she’d “apologized, learned a lesson, and it won’t happen again.” Michaela Kurinsky-Malos, spokesperson for McBride, told HuffPost on Friday. “What a thoroughly predictable ― and predicted ― outcome, Representative McBride thinks people should get back to work rather than play bathroom police.” Just to reiterate; these people have been elected to office and are paid out of the public purse folks, out of your tax dollars, sure they may not know how to make the price of bacon and eggs come down but they sure know how to spend their fucking time on your clock checking that people are peeing in the right place – come on kids time to grow up surely!
- This month, House Speaker (for now), Mike Johnson has revived the investigation into the January 6th Committee, in a blatant attempt to suck up to Trump, who has vowed retribution on those who investigated him. One person who gave evidence in the Jan 6 hearings probably won’t be subpoenaed to testify about the circumstances of her testimony however, because Johnson has been warned it wouldn’t end well. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson made quite a splash at the hearings, testifying among other things that Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani seemed well aware in advance that something big would happen on January 6, that Trump told them not to worry about guns at the Ellipse because “They’re not here to hurt me”, and that Trump threw ketchup at the wall when Bill Barr announced they hadn’t found evidence of election fraud. Republican Georgia Congressman Barry Loudermilk was appointed as chair of a select committee to investigate the investigation, since he was also in charge of the failed probe into the same thing last June. It was then, apparently, that an aide from the Speaker’s office approached Loudermilk’s staff and told them that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about Cassidy Hutchinson being subpoenaed because of the potential for public disclosure of “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” with her. You might be thinking “What the fuck?” and I wouldn’t blame you. Yes. The reason they don’t want her questioned is because that would give her the chance to put their sexual harassment in the Congressional record. The Post didn’t discover who the members were, nor the specific content of the messages, beyond the fact they were sexually explicit so we don’t technically know if Republican elected officials were sending her rape threats to get her to back off her damning testimony, or merely thought the 26 year old junior staffer looked fetching in the witness chair and thought they’d shoot their shot by sending her a dick pic or some similarly classy erotic bon mots. Either way, this is really feeding my confirmation bias about Republican elected officials.
- Well not quite day one for being a dictator but close – day three and Representative Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced a resolution that would amend the Constitution and allow Trump to seek a third term in office. ‘This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs,’ Ogles said in a statement. Though as a Newsweek report noted, “The language specifies preventing a president running for a third term if they were elected for two consecutive terms.” So yeah Presidents can run three times, no not you Obama, not looking at you, sit down, not you. Deliciously Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, noted in response to the proposed amendment, “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.” and I guess establish the dynasty of the Trumps in the process. But will there be enough orange paint for the inevitable 1800-foot high statue humping the Washington Monument to be built in his honour? Though I guess the hands will be tiny, and Stormy Daniels told us other bits of him will only need the 1½ ounce can of paint for all 3 protective coats. Ogles’ currying, toadying bill; is as unlikely to pass as invading Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico but hey if Great Leader Trum Or-Inj says something we need to make it happen so we get to live another day – yeah good luck with that FireSwamp dwellers!
- Framing’s important, isn’t it, if you want people to buy into your point of view. For example, saying America First is more appealing to a lot of people than “Fuck Everyone Else”, and it’s definitely better for foreign relations. Of course, a big chunk of Trump’s base would have no problem with him just saying “Fuck Everyone Else”, which is probably why he’s effectively doing that by suspending all US foreign assistance programs for 90 days while he figures out if he likes them or not. While foreign aid typically amounts to about 1% of the federal budget, it’s very fucking important to those who receive it. Programs currently unfunded include providing safe drinking water in Myanmar, helping tuberculosis patients in India and Cambodia, and providing food and medicine to displaced people in Sudan. Aside from the humanitarian and health implications, the US Agency for International Development alone works with over 4,000 organizations in over 100 countries, most of which don’t have three months worth of spare cash, meaning many will close down, thousands of jobs will be lost and those vital needs won’t be met. Sure, all this could be avoided by just continuing the funding while Trump and his goons decide who deserves to live and who doesn’t, but the problem is a combination of cruelty and stupidity. They literally don’t know or care what’s happening. Trump claimed yesterday that, as part of this freeze on foreign aid, his administration had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” While USAID does provide medical aid to Gaza, and also provides family planning and sexual and reproductive healthcare in developing countries, those two things don’t mix. They haven’t in fact sent any condoms to Gaza. Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk tweeted “USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece. $50m would be ONE BILLION condoms. What’s going on here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza. What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.” Meanwhile, in order to make the Trump administration look intelligent by comparison, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed that the condoms the Biden administration didn’t send to Gaza were being used by Hamas militants as balloons to float bombs into Israel. And if you’re not picturing a coyote in a balaclava and a green headband frantically inflating ACME condoms, then I don’t know what we’re even doing here.
- The day after the inauguration, Trump’s Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) issued a memo to government agencies tasking them with rooting out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The memo told recipients that they were to “report all facts and circumstances to DEIAtruth@opm.gov within 10 days.” I’ll just repeat that email address slowly – DEIAtruth@opm.gov – not that we in any way condone randomly adding it to any of your email lists in the way that one Democratic operative said they discovered that the email had been added randomly to several Democratic party fundraising email lists. At first they thought they too were being targeted for Big Brother DEI snooping, along with many other organisations and NGO’s, but soon realised that the tactic was to overwhelm the DEI inbox with spam and render it unusable or initiate a bounceback reply at least. Of course we are not advocating creating an effective denial of service attack on the DEI inbox and it would be irresponsible of us to wait another second whilst you get a pen….. and it would be unprofessional of us as impartial broadcast journalists to let you think that reading out the DEIAtruth@opm.gov email again would imply that you could carry on the pointless spamming of an inbox from an initiative designed to undo years of hard-won rights and equalities. Furthest thing from our minds.
- I also in no way advocate spamming that email address with the script of the Bee Movie or Space Balls, despite the fact that Trump’s War on Woke has also resulted in a memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which leaked this week. The memo instructed staff to suspend observances of certain holidays. I’m going to read a list of the holidays specifically mentioned in the memo, and I want you to see if you can find any connection between the groups they want to avoid honoring; Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Holocaust Day/Days of Remembrance, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride, Juneteenth, Women’s Equality Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. Yep, unless you’re a cis het white Christian man, there’s no special day for you.
- This week in British politics Kemi Badenoch tried to lecture the Labour party on economics mainly because Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves seems to be enacting all of what the Tories are calling their policies. Admittedly hearing the Labour Chancellor saying “going further and faster” with her plans for economic growth did sound a little too Truss for comfort. Badenoch having been accused of being a bit depressing in her mapping out of the vision for the Tories called Starmer a bit lacking in personality and said “people wanted a leader not a lawyer” Don’t know which people she’s been talking to – certainly not the voters who didn’t vote Tory last election after they’d got a bit jaded with the palmful of posing performance politicians they had as leaders over the last eight years – we want managers to manage the country not fucking mad-haired millionaires intent on asset-stripping the country for their own ends behind a facade of boosterism and bollocks! Starmer had a lovely alliterative yet salaciously salient warning for Kemi – “I won’t take lectures on the economy from someone who may not be a lawyer or a leader but might just be the next lettuce!” Labour, never one’s to waste a good crisis, Reeves growth crisis, are now fighting over the new policy to grant permission to have a third runway at Heathrow – Ed Milliband Energy Secretary and former opponent of the airport expansion is now all for it, in opposition to Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Heathrow is in the same part of West London that Khan extended the ULEZ into – an initiative as we spoke about last time that lost Labour Boris’ old constituency at the time. If nothing else lads, take some learning from Tobias Elwood – even though he was wrong about the 2024 election – people do get confused when the people on the same side start fighting – enemies of enemies are friends and all that!! FFS why can’t we all just get on!!
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That’s almost all for this week, but here’s our AI-aided and minimally hand-edited transcript which is at least quite accurate, but not totally:
Insignificant Cause – FT#167 Transcript
Jim: Hello and welcome to Fallacious Trump, the podcast where we use the insane ramblings of a recruescent scoffaw to explain logical fallacies. I’m your host, Jim.
Mark: And I’m Ro the host, Mark. A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that results in bad or invalid arguments. And the logical fallacy we’re looking at this week is insignificant. Cause. Can I just ask about recruescent? It sounds like it’s covered in sores.
Jim: And sort of kind of.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Recrudescent is an adjective meaning the return of something unpleasant. ah, go Ext. period of absence.
Mark: Yes. Wow. Wow. There’s a word for that. Wow. Like I don. Know, scurvy or shingles, something like that.
Jim: Like that. Yeah. It’s often used for diseases that, that are kind of relapsing and rem. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And scoff law. Well, it’s m. Fairly obvious what it means. People who scoff at laws is’s, quite interesting actually as a word because it was invented specifically. Like it’s not a word that has kind of developed over time or, you know, was attributed to Shakespeare or something like that. It was invented in 1924.
Mark: Oh, my word.
Jim: For a contest.
Mark: Wow. What, what to explain people who do this? People who laugh in the face.
Jim: Yeah. Well, it was specifically about prohibition. A prohibitionist held a contest, a guy called Del Savar King. He sponsored a contest asking people to come up with an appropriate word to mean a lawless drinker.
Mark: Wow.
Jim: Someone who would violate the prohibition laws.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And two entrants independently came up with scofflaw.
Mark: Oh my word.
Jim: Wow. And so they split the hundred dollar two prize.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And. And over time has then just generally become more people who don’t follow laws. People contemptuously scoff at the law.
Mark: What was the, what, what was the guy’s name?
Jim: Del Savar King.
Mark: Del Savar.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: That’s, that’s, that’s an amazing word. Is it? That’s like, that’s a hero from a two dimensional cartoon series with a plastic figure tie in from the 80s. That isn’t it? By the power of scoff law.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Wow.
Jim: So there you go, core.
Mark: There you go, love.
Jim: Anyway.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Jim: The insignificant cause fallacy is one where people will ascribe a cause to an event, but the cause that they claim is the main cause, what actually caused that thing to happen isn’t technically wrong. It maybe is a part of the reason, but it’s definitely not the main reason and it’s probably quite a minor part of the actual thing.
Mark: So it, so it’s in there. But are they doing it in order to divert attention away from the one that’s usually the bleed obvious.
Jim: Ye. So it’s not a false cause where they make up something.
Mark: Right.
Jim: Like as we’ll talk about in a little bit, Trump’s claim that the California government are not allowing water to flow down from the north of California to the south and that’s why the fires are out of control.
Mark: Right.
Jim: That’s a false cause because that’s not a factor. That’s not real.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: But where there is a real contributing factor and that’s taken to be the actual main cause, then that’s right. Insignant.
Mark: So it’s kind. So it’s kind of in there. So it’s got, so you’ve got the added advantage of the. I’m going to make stuff up and then remember what it is that you said.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Because you could just point because it.
Jim: Has some built in plausibility because yeah, it’s probably a is people have seen.
Mark: It but, but everybody that hears it says it’s not true. Yeah, that’s not the main one. Yeah.
Jim: Our first example is from Trump’s first administration when he was asked about, what his plans were for fighting ISIS in Afghanistan, having already beaten them in Syria.
Donald Trump: Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. So you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there. They should be fighting, but Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in, in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight and literally they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of,
00:05:00
Donald Trump: a lot of these places youre re reading about now are no longer part of Russia because of Afghanistan.
Jim: you may notice he didn’t really answer the question.
Mark: Yeah. Nor does he understand the fall of the Soviet Union.
Jim: Yeah, that’s also quite an important factor. So, some of the things he said there were true in as much as Russia did Used to be the Soviet Union, kind of Russia, plus a lot of other countries used to be the Soviet Union. He said that Afghanistan made it Russia. And the Soviet Union went bankrupt fighting Afghanistan, which, again, well, bankrupt isn’t the correct term, for countries, but they did spend a lot of money fighting in Afghanistan. They didn’t go into Afghanistan because of terrorists, because terrorists were going from. From Afghanistan to Russia.
Mark: Y.
Jim: They went in basically because they wanted to spread communism.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: That cost money. Basically. Going into foreign countries and invading them to spread your political ideology costs money. And they were already having trouble financially. Basically. A lot of things contributed to that. Economic collapse of the Soviet Union. Oil prices in the 80s going down essentially, was arguably the biggest financial drain on Soviet Union because that was their economy, basically. It was based on oil. The fighting in Afghanistan wasn’t the thing that made them go from the Soviet Union to Russia, because the fact that they had an economic collapse wasn’t entirely the thing that made them go from the Soviet Union to Russia either. There was. Was perestroika. lots of, Lots of stuff was happening. It was a complicated time. And it’s very reductionist and simplistic, say, to suggest that it was. Oh, yeah, they, they fought Afghanistan. I mean, arguably where the war, the. Well, Russia’s attack on Afghanistan really had more of a factor, in the breakup of the Soviet Union. Wasn’t necessarily even financial. It was the fact that they failed. Much like their, Ukraine sortie.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Because when that started, it was a massive country versus a tiny country with very few resources. And everyone was like, well, this will be over quickly. Especially all the Russians.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Jim: And then it turned out they were shit at it, and Afghanistan fought back much harder than they expected, and they couldn’t do it.
Mark: Also, they got supported by lots of. Lots of, you know, kind of, Trump forgets that the Americans went in and, sent lots of, weapons to the Mujah Hadin in order to support them.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Kind of by y.
Jim: Because they were enemies, essentially.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: So it went from Russia went from being. Or Soviet Union went from being seen as this huge superpower that was to be feared to a, inept fighting force that could be probably reasonably easily conquered.
Mark: Bit like. Bit like us in Vietnam, that kind of. That kind of a thing. It was the, the answer that you didn’t come to was, well, we’re not going to go and fight in Afghanistan because we could go bankrupt too.
Jim: I think that’s actually probably giving him a bit too much credit. What he was really Saying was that there’s other. There’s lots of other countries nearerby, you know, India’s there, Pakistan’their Russia’there Yeah. So they should, you know, we’re miles away. Why are we bothering to do anything about it? They should do it. But he got distracted because Russia already had a bit of a beef with Afghanistan. And then he was like, o, I remember something about that.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Didn’t remember.
Mark: Yeah. When I was In Moscow in 1980, I went to the Museum of the Revolution and it was the year, I think they’d just gone into Afghanistan when we went. So we’re saying, yeah, it’s all very well. What about the, what about the invasion of Afghanistan? Then they went, oh, no, they u. We were invited in. O really? Who buy the Mujah Hadideen invited you in.
Jim: So our second example is kind of Trump World in Asuc. As Trump has been denying that climate change, but by emission, he’s been denying that climate change is responsible for the California. Right. wildfires being as bad as they are.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: By constantly trying to blame the Californian government and, and the little smelt fish and all. Just anything. Anything that comes up other than anthropogenic climate change. Yeah. And in the same vein, there’s a journalist for the Spectator called Ross Clarke who is a climate skeptic. He kind of admits that climate change is happening, but then says it’s massively overblown and not actually something we need to worry about. And that kind of thing.
Mark: Right.
Jim: It that kind of climate skeptic. And he wrote an article about the LA fires, and his argument is that it’s because we’re actually so great at putting out fires,
00:10:00
Jim: which is why these ones have been so hard to put out. He said, because fire services have become better at putting out fires. The natural cycle has been interrupted with the result that deadwood is allowed to accumulate on the forest fire. When a fire does eventually take hold, it ends up being a much bigger fire because the source of fuel is so much greater. As Valerie True, a professor of dendronology at the University of Arizona, puts it, the US is suffering from a century of fire deficit. That, again, is part of it. That is part of the reason that the fires that they have these days in California are so bad. And yeah, he claims by using quotes, to be quoting Valerie True. She’s not actually used that phrase. A century of Fire deficit.
Mark: Right.
Jim: When you search for Valerie Shue and Century of Fire deficit, qu Fireicit you get this article and a previous article that Ross Clark wrote for the Spectator during the grease wildfires of 2023, when he was claiming that they weren’t because of climate change either.
Mark: Yeaheah.
Jim: But what Valerie Truey did call it is a century of fire suppression. Because she does make that argument that it is a factor, because she is a dendrochronologist. She’s not a professor of dendronology. She’s a professor of dendrochronology.
Mark: Right.
Jim: Which is different. It’s not the study of trees. It’s the study of what trees can tell you about time, essentially through tree rings.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: So she and other researchers looked at tree rings in California and other places and. And found that in the old days, people used to do small burns of the forest.
Mark: Right.
Jim: And they found that because you can tell when you cut down a tree, you can see where there’s been a burn that. That damaged a tree but didn’t kill it. So they can see that it wasn’t a huge problem because these trees have been around for hundreds of years. But you can see how frequently and in fact, in what years those smaller birn happened. And what they found was that those frequent ground fires stopped in 1905. Oh, wow. It wasn’t that people got better at fighting fires. Yeah. It was that in 1905.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: The U.S. forest Service was established.
Mark: Right.
Jim: And they protected the forests from being burned down. And one of the ways they protected the forest from being burned down is not having fires.
Mark: Y. Yeah, that would do it.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Jim: But that has resulted in a buildup of tinder, like material of dry forests. And so it is a factor.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: In why this is so bad. But what climate skeptic Ross Clark did when he quoted kind of nearly Valerie Trou is a, quite amazing part of cherry picking, because here is the paragraph that that quote kind of comes from as close as she’s ever said anything like that.
Mark: Y.
Jim: Through a century of fire suppression, we’ve turned our California forests into a tinderbox, a fire accident waiting to happen. To compound this fire danger, we’ve heated up our climate, making the hot California summers even hotter, the seasonally dry Californian forests even drier, and the long fire season even longer. That anthropogenic climate change, those high temperatures and their impact on fire danger are, here to stay. So he quoted a paragraph about anthropogenic climate change to deny it.
Mark: Wow. Wow. From the leading professor of.
Jim: By taking the small factor, the small contributing factor that didn’t involve climate change, and saying, well, this is why it’s such A problem now.
Mark: Yeah. It’s that bit. Not the rest of it. Yeah, just that bit. Yeah. So it is the archetypal use of this particular.
Jim: Absolutely.
Mark: By saying it’s absolute. It’s absolutely just’s. Just that little bit. Just that. Don’t look over there. No, don’t.
Jim: Don’t. Read on from my heart.
Mark: Quote on. Yeah.
Jim: And now is the time I think for M. Marx British Politics Corner.
Mark: We’ve kind of touched on this before when I think we’ve been a bit kind of nonpluss to the extent that we’ve stood there like Edvard Monks. The scream when electoral losses are explained away in not the bleeding obvious kind of way. And here’s Tobias Elward who was an unseated Tory mp who’talking about why the Tories lost so bigly in the 2024 election is on Times radio explaining why. Why the nation was confused.
Tobias Elwood: What I’m messaging was and I’m afraid the common denominator throughout the recent political disturbance over the last few years has been an absence of discipline and collective resolve. Instead we’ve seen the pursuance of rival. Agendas within our ranks. Tribal rivalry constantly dominating those
00:15:00
Tobias Elwood: headlines and challenging you. What the Prime Minister was trying to achieve. it therefore mattered little that would actually improve the economy. Fiscal responsibility is returning. A party that doesn’t exhibit that sense. Of purpose and back their leader will. Not gain the trust of the British people.
Jim: Ye.
Mark: So that’s right. The British people confused and that there was infighting in the ranks and that’s what so yes. And the British proably are going yeah what we need is a you.
Jim: Know party with blind loyalty to their leader were determined to support them no matter what they say or what previous things they said about yesactly.
Mark: And it mattered little that they had brought back fiscal responsibility. The economy was booming again. Go Ye. Yeah. Glossing over the fact that they were responsible for real fiscal impropriety, you know to at the very least, you know, 22 billion pounds black hole created in one fell swoop. Yeah. So that, that was it. Nothing to do with the fact that they rinsed us of all of public services and failed to serve anybody in the way that they said they were leveling up and also that they Michael go in the cabinet and all. All of that stuff. And the Boris Johnson was partying whilst the Queen sat Westminster Abbey for the on her own because her husband had died. Yeah. None of that counted. It was all down to the fact that there were There was a bit of disloyalty, shown in the ranks.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: But by.
Jim: By didn’t all agree about everything.
Mark: Yes. People who were kind of grown up and sensible and said, I think that dominant cum is. Could see perfectly well. Or I think that guy. I probably ought to not have said that to the man on the gates at Downey Street. Or I think actually, yeah, Boris Johnlson probably was misleading parliament when he lied about the fing barrels of beer being delivered to number 10. And I think that l. Come on.
Jim: Come on, let’s be honest. Not barrels of beer. Suitcases of wine.
Mark: It was suitcases. Win ro poshos. Yes. Yeah. What am I thinking? Yes, exactly. That’s yeff. If it was just the suitcases. Why? That’s all. If it had been barrels of accurate.
Jim: We can’t.
Mark: Everybody would have said they’re properly normal people. Just like Nigel Farriage. He’s a normal person. Yeah. So second example, in January 16th of January, Key Bradenock was talking about regrowing the trusts that had been so squandered by the Tory party, on Sky News.
Reporter: Isn’t it all just a bit joyless? Which in political terms is a problem because it’s a contrast to Nigel Farage.
Kemi Badenoch: Nigel Farage has been knocking around for 20 plus years. He’s been leading all sorts of different parties. So he’s had a head start. I’ve been leading the Conservative party for 10 weeks. Let’s see where we are in a few months. In a few years.
Mark: So the reason that she’s serious, about having to regrow trust is that she’s only been in post for 10 weeks. So she can’t afford like Nigel Farage to be a bit confident and a bit. And a bit because Nigel Frage has been.
Jim: Been knocking around.
Mark: Been knocking. Knocking about of it. Yeah. Like one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about of it. He’s been knocking around for several decades and that’s why he’s a bit more upbeat. So I’ve got to be serious about regaining trust because I’ve only been in post for 10 weeks. What?
Jim: It’s lucky she hasn’t also been in the Tory government for years.
Mark: For eight years.
Jim: Or ye surrounded by other Tories who’ve also been in government for 15 years.
Mark: And. And is some way part of the party therefore responsible for the loss of trust?
Jim: Absolutely, yeah.
Mark: In itself. Yeah. You composit that theory. Yeah. So. So she’s just saying, yeah, I’ve got to be serious about this. Not because of all the shit We’ve done from over a decade to you. Part of which I’ve been responsible for for eight years. No, no, it’s because I’ve only been in post for 10 weeks and Nigel Farage have been around for 20 years. okay, so let’s come bang up to date Kemi again this Sunday. Just gone on Lord kinsberg’s show on the 26th of January, and, she’s tried to explain why the perpetrator of the south for murders last summer, who was jailed for 52 years last week did what he did.
Laura Kuenssberg: You said it was absurd. The country wasn’t debating integration. More. When people use the word integration in conversations like this, that’s normally taken to mean people from different racial or different religious backgrounds. As you said, the killer was born in this country. His
00:20:00
Laura Kuenssberg: father’s an African Christian. His mother’involved in the church. There were photographs of him in the. Newspaper this morning at the drama club that he used to go to. What is the evidence that his heinous. Crimes were related in any way to. A lack of integration in his community?
Kemi Badenoch: Well, this. This goes well beyond the community. This isn t. This isn’t. This isn’t just about people making friends in the community. It is about the sense of understanding of who they are, what they are doing in a country, why they are there, and why they should want the success of the people around them, the success of the country, not just feeling like they are so set apart. We saw, evidence from the court case about the materials that he was reading. Some of it, religious extremism, some of it, racial and ethnic hatred. That’s enough for us to go on. We don’t need to do, you know, so much research on this for us to even just have a conversation about integration.
Jim: What.
Mark: Exactly. So. So, in fact, Right, they’re getting. Kunzberg just lays out the fact that, okay, you try to explain this away as being integration. That’s the insignificant cause. It’s insignificant insofar as. As she points out, how much more integrated do you want? Parents are part of the church, and they’re doing all of that stuff. He’s part of the community. He is in the drama group. He’s doing all of that. Why is he doing.
Jim: But we’ve got to look at why you’re in this country. Maybe because he was fucking born here. Fuck.
Mark: Born here? Yes. It’s got nothing to do with integration at all. It’s just a cipher to shoehorn immigration rhetoric into the conversation. So the Tories are not losing ground to farage’s Reform Party, who have scooped up the racist vote from under their noses. That’s at the end of the interview. And, Quunsberg asks her three, four times, where’s your actual evidence? But she’s getting drier and drier in the mouth. You can see it. Kind of desperately trying to work up some saliva. Along the way, she becomes a bit Michael Govey because she says the. You know what the evidence was her own personal experience. So here she is, a fully integrated woman of Nigerian descent. So she came here into this country when she was 16. Her parents are Nigerian. So she’s here. She’s. Does that make her first generation? She’s absolutely fully integrated, but, I mean.
Jim: She’S the leader of the opposition party of the country.
Mark: Exactly, yes. On the bloody television on. Yeah, yeah. And, ah, so her experience is that. And then. So a bit like Gove and saying, yeah, my father lost his job because of whatever he was touting to promote the o. The eu. And then she also said when Kunsurg kind of pressed her for the third time, go, yeah, yeah, it’s all very well, but where’s your evidence in this specific case that is anything to do with integration? And she said something along the lines, oh, well, you. So as soon as somebody starts talking about the issue of integration and immigration, people get shut down. You know, we can’t have a conversation about this without you having to provide evidence all the time, which is a very Gove kind of way. You. It made me sort of do that shudder that you get when you’re trying to shake off the. The slime of the slug of Gove. And there it is. She was doing the same thing.
Jim: It seems to me that to the extent you can plausibly argue integration has anything to do with it, it’s really hard in the way that we usually talk about integration, which is about immigration. It’s about people from other countries integrating into British society. That’s how racists usually talk about it.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: So if you twist that to be about integration, meaning that people, a different race, for example, don’t feel accepted or comfortable in a white space, perhaps. I think that’s an argument that you could make, but it does need you to change the definition of how they usually use the word. But also the reason that that is so much of an issue is people like, making this kind of argument.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s. Yes, exactly that if you’re going to broaden it out, like she attempts to. To say, actually not. We do with Integration, it’s about the notion of feeling comfortable in the country where you live and being granted the access to the success that you see absolute people having. The whole leveling up agenda which the Tories were determined not to allow people to have. It’s that yes, if that’s what you’re trying to do, then you’ve got to acknowledge that there is institutional racism that’s perpetuated by the likes of her and the Home Secretary before her and the Home Secretary
00:25:00
Mark: before her that were doing their damnedest to stop that kind of thing.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: And to make people that were here that weren’t white despite the fact that Pretty Patel and Bravamman were both the children of people that came into Britain legally and then they’ve tried to stop that down and try stop that.
Jim: And try to stop all kind of the DEI type programs y that are designed specifically to offer those opportunities to people who otherwise get them because of the institutional racism.
Mark: Yeah, yeah. So you’ve got to admit all that if you’re going to say that if you’re going to use integration a different way then you’ve got to broaden it out and say actually we need to make these opportunities more available to more people. So she, in a way she’s kind of needing to negate the entirety of the Tory party’s homeland security to use the American term policies.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: IMM Control to tempt them policies to make a fool of any man.
Jim: Sure.
Mark: They’D like to run away but they just haven’t had all that they could.
Jim: Stand.
Mark: Our parties like the darkness wrapped about in something of the night Though they never say they love us you know they feel so good out on the right they love us for all the long reasons More lo sh and why falles oh yes they love.
Jim: For.
Mark: All the wrong reasons because we love phlacies in the wild the Bellamy brothers there with for all the Wrong Reasons I realize that actually I really quite like singing country of Western it’s quite fun. Sort of fits in my vocal range quite comfortably.
Jim: So in the Fallacy in the Wild We d like to talk about the fallacy of the week from a non political perspective and our first example this week comes from an ABC news report from March of 2022.
Bill Ritter: New York Mayor Adams has been pushing. To get office workers back to their. Desks and get the city’s economy going. But a new survey showing only 40% are back full time in their offices and the number one reason the majority worry about returning it’s not Covid it’s. Fears about the rise in crime in New York City.
Jim: So this claim.
Mark: That’s it? Yeah. Ye.
Jim: The claim that the reason that New York is having trouble getting so many workers back to their desks full time, in March 22, is crime. That’s what people are worried about. Comes from a survey that was done on behalf of a group called Partnership for New York, which is all about business. That group is kind of promoting business within New York and doing deals to make sure business happens in New York. That kind of stuff. They didn’t ask all of the questions that you might want to know. If the question you wanted to answer is why aren’t people back at work?
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Jim: Some of the questions they asked were, you know, what, a how do you feel about New York? Like, do you feel optimistic about the future of New York and stuff like that?
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: They asked, you know, how many of them used public transport prior to the pandemic and do now and that kind of stuff. The one that they asked, that seems to be the source of this news story.
Mark: How’d you feel about the rising crime in New York?
Jim: It was, if you have been working remotely part or all of the time since March 2020, what are your biggest concerns about returning to the office workplace? And the options they gave, which they asked them to rank one to five were personal safety, exposure to COVID 19 long commute, other or childcare. Actually, childare orose, but other came above childcare. Personal safety was the highest ranked option there with 43% ranking it number one.
Mark: Right.
Jim: The thing is, first of all, I would argue personal safety might involve crime, but it might also be Covid factored into that. Although there is. There’s a separate section that’s just Covid, but if you’re. If you’re worried about COVID but also a little bit worried about crime, you might put personal safety first. It doesn’t automatically ###atically mean crime. But alsoeah, when you’re asking people what’s your biggest concern about returning, the
00:30:00
Jim: answer they give isn’t necessarily the reason they haven’t returned. Yes, because for many people, the reason they haven’t returned is because they don’t need to return. Because working from home works for them Fine. And for their businesses.
Mark: Yeah. And their employers are, saying, yep, that’s absolutely fine. Yeah, it carry on.
Jim: New York as a whole would like people to be back in the office, as most big cities would like that, because the footfall in retail areas and things like that drops when people work from home obviously that stands to’s also all that.
Mark: All the office space is being rented.
Jim: Yes.
Mark: So so there’s a lot of people to. There’s a reason for. Yeah. And all of the hinterland which is the retail around the office spaces, the coffee shops absolutelyau and in many places.
Jim: Are gradually coming back. Although m in most places, even in September 2024 the average in major cities is people being in the office two and a half to three days a week. So there’s. There has been a reduction in numbers of people who in the office because prior to the pandemic most of us were in the office five days a week. Ye so that absolutely has an impact and in some cities that has had a significant impact. There’s an issue with St. Louis where they’ve entered what they, they’re calling a doom loop which essentially means that because of the reduced footfall in offices, like people not not going to their offices, that means retail and kind of hospitality places, cafes and stuff like that are closing which means more of the places in downtown are boarded up and not being used for that purpose. So there’s not.
Mark: So nobody was reason for people office.
Jim: Go the office because there’s less places around that they might want to go to in their lunch hour and that kind of stuff. So they it y preferable to stay at home. So it’s, it’s reducing and reducing but for most major cities it is gradually coming back and in some places they are making changes like converting office spaces into residential which will allow those revers office buildings to then make money and will also hopefully reduce the cost of rents in cities. And people can work closer to where they live or live closer to where they work, etc. But in terms of New York specifically, first of all it wasn’t dramatically different from other major cities. So it wasn’t like the crime in New York City was such a big problem that it was that big a deal. In April 2022, just after this survey happened, average occupancy rate in New York in The office was 37.4%. So that is roughly equivalent to people spending on average two days of the week in the office. LA was 40% Chicago was 39.8%, San Francisco was 35.4. San Jose was 34.2%. So they’re all roughly in the same ballpark. New York isn’t a major outlier and again they were similar to other cities around the world. Parison and London are kind of quite similar to New York in terms of occupancy even now. Another reason that crime probably isn’t a major factor. And it’s, you know, it’s absolutely possible that people were concerned about New York crime, always when they lived there before and didn’t like going into the officeeahe now that they’are able to not go into the office, that means that they don’t have to be concerned about crimes. So it is possibly a factor for some people. But crime between March 2022 and September 2022 actually increased in New York.
Mark: Right.
Jim: Violent crime incidents went up from 9,873 in March to 11,057 in September. And yet office occupancy grew by 10%. It went up to 49% by September 22nd. So if they were concerned about crime, why did they suddenly get less concerned about crime when the crime rate went up?
Mark: Up, they said, yeah, whatever, it’snn we’ll just go in anyway.
Jim: The crime rate doesn’t seem to have had a significant impact on occupancy pretty much anywhere. But what kind of businesses there are has a significant impact. Obviously, as you might expect. Retail stores, warehouses, transportation, manufacturing, that kind of stuff requires you to be there.
Mark: Yep.
Jim: Can’t do that work from home. Those industries typically have less than one day a week at home. IT and financial and insurance services have much higher working from home type jobs.
Jim: And as it happens, in New York city, there’ss that 20% of the workforce is in finance and insurance and about 8 is in it whereas less than 1% is in manufacturing and just over 1% is in warehouse and transportation. So the kinds of work people do in New York City means that the businesses just don’t need them to come in every day.
Mark: So that’s going to be more of.
Jim: A contributd from what I’ve been able to find. That is the main reason why New York City’s occupancy rate has plateaued at 58 and was low for such a long time because there was no particular reason to bring people back
00:35:00
Jim: into the office.
Mark: So it’s not crime.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: The actuality of it is that people are going back because they don’t need to.
Jim: Yeah, they, they didn’t ask the question. Have you been asked to come back into the office? That’s one of that. The m main question I would have asked on that survey.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah.
Jim: If I wanted to know the reason.
Mark: Have you been asked to go again? No. Yeah. No, I could do it all perfectly from home. Yeah.
Jim: So our second example is from the 1957 film the Land Unknown, which is about a plane that crashes in I think it’s Antarctica and finds a tropical valley, that has prehistoric plants and animals is, kind of protected by the. The environment.
Jack Carman: Rising volcanic heat melts the ice on top of those cliffs, turns it into the clouds that hang over this valve. It keeps the heat and the moisture sealed imp permanently. Climatic change, one of the main causes of evolution doesn’t exist here.
Jim: Yeah, that’s. That’s not one of the main caus of it is a cause. It absolutely is a factor when the climate changes. Species have to evolve or die in some cases. Y But it’s nowhere near as big a factor as things like sexual selection or predation.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jim: Those are the main things.
Mark: Reallyah that stuff about require e yeah.
Jim: Selection to happen.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Not long ago, reading, a book called the Dinosaur Heresies and it’s this guy who can’t rem his name. He posited that grass grows the way that it grows insofar as you. You chop the top of it and it growes up. which was when grass was. It’s not like that’s not normally how plants grow. And that was because of dinosaurs, because dinosaurs would eat it. And so they. It have to evolve into a different way of spreading and growing and reproducing. So there’it’s not just predation of Tyrannosaurus on Stegosaurus. They in the same era.
Jim: No.
Mark: You know, it’s not s not carnivores and I’m thinking of, Harryausens.
Jim: Yeah, absolutely.
Mark: Things. Yeah. So it’s not just animals predating on other animals, but animals predating on plants. So the plant evolution was about. Was not entirely down to climactic change at all. Yeah. So it’s one of the contributing factors. But because there’s the explanation for this, this film is one of the main things O okay. that’s why things have evolved here. Yeah.
Jim: Yeah. And the thing is, in this scenario, if there was a volcano in Antarctica that somehow warmed this area and that heat was kept in the climactic change not happening would not remove all of the other things from happening. You’d still get predation and you still get sexual selection. So there would still be evolution. You would get different life forms. Like when you get isolation on islands, for example, like Madagascar, which is why you have animals there. you don’t have anywhere else. You’d get evolution. It just wouldn’t be the same. They wouldn’t have evolved into the same things we have if they didn’t. Didn’t ever mix.
Mark: Darwin’s discoveries on the individual Galapagos Islands was exactly that which caused his caused him to put together the theory of evolution.
Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The finches on different islands had different y beak shapes, etcec.
Mark: So yeah, so nothing. If they all share the same climactic conditions, it’s because it’s all part of the same archipelago. Yes.
Jim: Okay, so our third example is from the Absolutely Scribble without a Paddle. Nature’s calling the Straight to DVD follow up to the Already Fairly Shit without a Pad.
Mark: Right.
Jim: It’s a sequel in name only. Really it none of the original cast returned. Ye three guys on a boat, on an adventure. But in this scene, one of them is in a cabin with Al Gore’s brother Hal.
Mark: Wow, Hal Gore.
Jim: Hal Gore, who always felt a little overshadowed by his successful brother.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: But he also has theories.
Hal Gore: I’ll have the last laug. Oh yeah, you know why? Cause I found the secret to ending global warming once and for all. Right in this forest. Squirrels.
Ben: squirrels.
Hal Gore: Squirrels.
Ben: Oneder. The squirrels are psycho around here.
Hal Gore: Yep, squirrels are the main cause of global warming. Specifically squirrel farts. Millions and millions of squirrels from Golden Gate park to Central park to Hyde park, eating away at the ozone layer one poof at a time.
Jim: Now, a few things here. First of all, I think it’s important to note, girls, you may have noticed that the actor playing Helor was terrible, even just with audio. And that’s true. And that’s because he wasn’t
00:40:00
Jim: an actor. That was NFL superstar, one of the best American football players of all time. Jerry Rice, who God love him, is no actor. I mean I, I’m a huge fan of Jerry Rice. I have a funko pop of him here. But he can’t fucking act at all.
Mark: Because he’s a football player. Yeaheah, yeah, yeah.
Jim: Apparently he stepped in when another football player who was due to do this role. Oh my God, didn’t show up or something and he show he, he was called at the last minute and learned all of his lines in one day and then did this role. He was, he was terrible. But the point is really that yeah, squirrel farts do contribute to global warming. There’s a lot of squirrels. Yeah, they fart methane. Yeah, that’s a thing. In fact, squirrels kind of scrat like digging up permafrost to hide their nuts. probably has a greater effect on global warming than even their farts because permafrost protects the Ground it like it creates a layer above the ground that stops carbon from being released. And so when permafrost is disturbed and thaws, then carbon deposits under the ground are degraded and they release carbon dioxide and methane. So that’s actually more plausibly a. A genuine effect of global warming. It’s still.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Tiny compared to many of the other causes. Not least things like cows.
Mark: Also much bigger things.
Jim: Yeahah things.
Mark: But isn’t that they here is being used. Used for. To comic effect. But let’s find some.
Jim: It is being really tiny. Supposed to be a crazy mountain man.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And in fact in this scene that one of the hero characters does point out to him that actually maybe things like cows might have more effects. And he immediately takes that on board and abandons all of his years of research. And squirrels.
Mark: Oh no. Qu like that.
Jim: But there you go. Is it’s a genuine contributing factor but truly insignificant compared to all the others. It’s being held up there at least as the main reason and why he has so many squirrel pelts on his wall because he is trying is a one man mission to fight global warming.
Mark: The is to kill all the squirrels. Brilliant.
Donald Trump: So we’re gonn. We’re gonna play Fake News. Folks. I love the game. It’s a great game. I understand the game as well as anybody. As well as anybody.
Jim: Yes, it’s time for Fake News. The game where I read out three trump quotes, two of which real and one I made up and M. Mark has to figure out which one is fake news.
Mark: Okay, so I’ve won a few of these, but that’s not something I should be expected to do all the time. Right. Because look, I’ve got a blister, just underear. My pinky joins my palm and it made it difficult to hold the pen. So what I’m saying is the reason I’ve not won them all is nothing to do with Jim’s prowess, but everything to do with the fact that no band aid is the right shape or stickiness to work properly. Just there.
Jim: Fair enough. I mean you can’t be expected really to concentrate with that kind of thing going on. So.
Mark: No, no, that’s. That’s the only reason.
Jim: Absolutely.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So main contributing factor.
Jim: I’m going back to the well I dug from last week and this is, this is more of the absolutely batshit press conference he did, at Maraggo on the 7th of January. This is. So this is like two weeks before the inauguration and the day after the.
Mark: Anniversary of his insurrection. Yeaheah. Yeah.
Jim: So he said statement number one. The economy. When you look at the economy, the inflation, it’s. I really think there’s never been anything like it in our country. You see it in banana republics and third tier countries. They say it’s 20%, but it’s really a lot higher. And that’s something we’re going to get fixed in a very short period of time. It’s not even hard. It’s easy. It’s a very easy thing to do. Already the stock market is hitting numbers nobody’s ever seen. And I’m not even president yet. But it’s all because of the election. Because everybody knows our country is going to be rich again real soon.
Mark: Okay, sidebar. It’not it wasn’t 20 or was it a lot higher? No, no. Third tier countries.
Jim: Tier. Yeah.
Mark: Okay.
Jim: Maybe he’s been told not to say third world countries.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: I don’t know.
Mark: Yeah. Global south is the current phrase. Yeah. If you’renn say banana republics obviously, why would you not say third world?
Jim: I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark: Ok. Okay. All right.
Jim: Statement number two. We had a landslide election. We won every swing state and we won the popular vote by millions and millions of people. Nobody even knows how many people. Millions. And they’re still counting in some areas. You know, they’re still counting the vote in some areas. Can you believe this? What a. What a place. What a horrible place. One of the things we’re going to do
00:45:00
Jim: is we’ve got to fix the election so that we get honest counts and they get done by 10 o’clock in the evening or something. There abouts they have places where they’re still counting votes.
Mark: Yes. He wants to have his cake and eat it. Want he s. He’s kind of going yeah, we’re winning by millions of millions. And they’re still counting in some areas. So we could be winning by more. And then is the thought crosses his mind, wait a minute. What a horrible place is. Is one of the things we did. We can’t have people counting till all hours, so we’ve got to be done by 10. Well how can it be be done? The polling stations don’t close till 10.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Okay.
Jim: Okay.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And statement number three.
Mark: Ha. Him with every. Every one of these even more.
Jim: Okay.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: They brought this moron out of the Hague. He’s a mean guy. He’s a mean nasty guy. His picture was perfect. Because you look at his picture, you say that’s a bad guy with his robe, his pop purple robe and he executes People. He shouldn’t be allowed to execute people because he’ll execute everybody. He’s a nut jobb. But we won all of those cases with him. And I mean, I don’t know the judge in Florida, but we had a brilliant judge in Florida that saw right through it and we won the case. She was a brilliant judge with great courage.
Mark: Right. Okay. We should be allowed to execute people because he’ll execute everybody. Does he really execute people? Ah, she’s a brilliant judge because she agreed with me that ah, I wasn’t guilty in the slightest. You can’t just say, okay, which one of those is fake? That’s what U. horrible. I think he’s going to do it. So the inflation is 20% is really a lot higher. The moron out of the Hague and his purple robe. But that’s Jack Smith, isn’t it? Purple robe. Is he talking about him? E. But the landslide think, no. So I think. Okay, okay. Or something there about. Okay, I, I’m gonna go with, number one is the one that you made up.
Jim: Okay. So the other two, which you more convinced by?
Mark: Well, oddly, I think it’s M moren out of the Hague because. Because he’s. He’s got mean. He’s mean. He’s a mean, nasty guy.
Jim: Okay.
Mark: Because see, he told me things I didn’t like.
Jim: And number three.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Is real. Oh my God. And it is Jack Smith that he’s talking about.
Donald Trump: I brought this moron out of the Hague. He’s a mean guy. He’s a mean, nasty guy. His picture was perfect because you look at his picture, you say that’s a bad guy with his robe, his purple robe. And he executes people. He shouldn’t be allowed to execute people because he’ll execute everybody. He’s a nutsh. But we want all of those, cases with him. And, I mean, I don’t know the judge in Florida, but we had a brilliant judge in Florida that saw right through it and we won the case. She was a brilliant judge with great courage.
Mark: They win all the cases. I thought he had brought all things. And then they just suspended. He suspended the prosecution of them because he can’t prosecute a sening president. That’s the one rule he hasn’t changed.
Jim: When Trump.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Got elected, Jack Smith was currently app peeling the fact that Judge Cannon had ruled that he had been appointed illegally, which he hadn’t.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And so they would have won that appeal. Yeah, they’d kind of won the case as far as that Went because Judge Cannon had ruled in his favor.
Mark: She’s not a brilliant judge with great character. O. She s terrible. Judge. She doesn’t know the lawing.
Jim: Yeah.
Mark: Yes, Trump.
Jim: Yeah. No, she’s the she. I mean this is an ideal fallacy to do this on. She’s the main reason y he wasn’t convicted of those crimes because she didn’t find ways like loopholes in the law. She just didn’t follow the law.
Mark: Just made stuff up. Yeah. And of course the appeal about that would have to go to the Supreme Court.
Jim: Everything and the supreme delayed everything enough.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: That it didn’t matter.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And in fact, just the other day the Justice Department announced that they were dismissing the charges against or they, they were stopping that appeal. That would have still allowed them to prosecute, Walt Noauer and Carlos Olira if that appeal had been successful. But they, they were withdrawing the appeal, essentially dismissing that case against those two people as well. So. Yeah. That’s the. Arguably the worst of the crimes that he committed. Ye. The ceiling of the. The ones that covering it up properly. The prosecuted classified information. But yeah, go anyway.
Mark: Yeah. Meanwhile, back at the game.
Jim: Yeah.
00:50:00
Jim: Jackith.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Didn t execute people.
Mark: No. And he’s not allowed to.
Jim: It’s not. No. In the hate they don’t have the death penalty. that’s one thing he did when he was working in New York in the federal prosecutor’s office. New York. He did win a case that resulted in a death penalty sentence for a person who had killed two policemen, although that sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. So even that doesn’t result in someone being executed.
Mark: If you works at the Hague, that’s the kind of place that you go to in order to prosecute people who have sentence people to death.
Jim: He prosecutes war crimes in the Hague.
Mark: Yes, exactly.
Jim: So you also think that number two is real.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: And number two.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Is real.
Donald Trump: We had a landslide election. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions and millions of people.
Mark: People.
Donald Trump: Nobody even knows how many people. Millions. And they’re still counting in some areas. You know, they’re still counting the vote in some areas. Can you believe this? What a. What a place. What a horrible place. One of the things we’re going to do is we’ve got to fix the election so that we get honest counts and they get done by 10 o’clock in the evening or something. Thereabouts. They have places where they’re still counting votes.
Jim: No, they don’t.
Mark: We’ve got to fix the election. Yeah.
Jim: Noeah. This was the 7th of January. There was nowhere that we’re still counting votes at this point.
Mark: And you can’t have it both ways. He can’t have people still counting that he. So he’s won by millions and millions. Millions.
Jim: Well, nobody knows how many million.
Mark: Nobodys. No, they. I haven’t finished counting. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it wasn’t millions of millions.
Jim: Well it was, it was million and million because it was about 2 million.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was millions. Yeah, yeah. Million and million. Yeah. And less than 50% still. Yes, yes.
Jim: That may. Well that means you’ve won that one because you. Correct. You identified number one made up.
Mark: Yeah, it was, it was a touch. It was touch and go because I was nearly was sold on third tier. And Bernard Repubbably is a thirdier.
Jim: I believe he has used the phrased third tier countries when talking about prosecutions of Right. Presidents or politicians or something like that. But ye. yeah, no, I put it, I put it in there and again. Yes. It wasn’t 20%. I added that. Yeah. There. I mean they’re all the kind of things he says.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Jim: That’s kind of how this works.
Mark: Works. Oh yeah. It. He’a dawn on us isn’t. Oh yeah, yeah. Wow.
Jim: We do have a couple of O yeah. Social contestants. Invisible unicorn on Patreon.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Said it seems I’ve heard number one. Number two has a great double entendre in saying fix the elections. Seems him even if it was an accident. So I’ll say three is fake. and M on Discord. Steve Bickle says Dang, these are tough this week I think I’m going with number two as fake. Feels a little scrambled from something I’ve heard, but not confident at all.
Mark: Wow. Well done. Yeah. Fox dumb coe. There you go.
Jim: Didn’t FX you so.
Mark: No, that’s because of. Because. Because I’m actually wearing a band aid that I have found it’s the right size that it.
Jim: That’s probably what did it for you.
Mark: Yeah, that’s the, that’s the exact reason. Yeah, yeah. And nothing else.
Jim: So it’s time for the part of the show that this week at least is called Inspectors General. We’re not a logical fallacy because we have fewer, inspectors than were.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: Last week.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: So it was like a Friday night purge basically that Trump did.
Mark: Yes. Of. Yeah.
Jim: 18 Inspectors General of various different departments, including Defense, State, Labor, Health and Human Services. Inspectors general, we should say, are the People whose job it is in government to make sure there’s no corruption going.
Mark: They’re put in place post Dixon, that. Right. Post Watergate, to, to kind of be the checks and balances. So they have an independent view on. It’s a bit like when you get politicians going up in front of a select committee in the UK and there, and the select committee is made up of ex politicians, civil servants, politicians who, who kind of sit there and say, okay, when you said this stuff, you were lying, weren’t you? Yeah. Well why are you doing this? In order to. Yeah. Hold them to account.
Jim: Yeah, no, that’s an important difference because select committees in the US are current congresspeople or senators.
Mark: Right.
Jim: Select committees in the UK are essentially this kind of outside the government holding the government to account. And that’s supposed to be what inspectors general. are they. They don’t only answer to the President. That’s the, that’s the key.
Mark: Yes.
Jim: They don’t, while they answer your favor.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: They also have to answer to or report to Congress about things that the executive branch, if necessary, or whatever department
00:55:00
Jim: they’re in is doing.
Mark: It’s amazing that they were only put in place after.
Jim: Yeah, 1976 was the first one.
Mark: 76, yeah.
Jim: Then there was a law passed in 78 that made them kind of independent.
Mark: Objective units only 200 years after the Declaration of Independence. Y that they actually put in, you know, the auditors and checks and balances and accountability agents for the.
Jim: Government and took people by surprise a bit.
Mark: Yah.
Jim: I think because again, a lot of the rules had been written assuming that people who were elected president would largely do the right thing.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you’re at the very top of. And the most visible American citizen. You would kind of think, yes, I need to probably set an example here. So I will do that. And you think that the people elected to that office would be the people that would just do the right thing.
Jim: And unfortunately, despite Nixon, they didn’t then go, whoa, we need to really rewrite a lot of these laws. Yeah, they just put people in place that would have some oversight. They I think assumed that we’re not going to be that stupid again. We’re not going toa elect a complete criminal, are we? Yeah, that won’t happen. Certainly not twice.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, you know, form me once. Yeah, shame on me.
Jim: So yeah, they put that in place. And in 1981 Reagan fired several of his inspectors general.
Jim: When he went into office and people thought, well, that’s not great because. Looks a bit dodgy, doesn’t it? Looks like he might be planning to do some shit and doesn’t want them to.
Mark: To stop him doing it.
Jim: Haven’t keep an eye. so yeah, he. There was in fact at the time there were only 15 inspectors general. Now there’s 70 something. 78 I think. Something like that.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: So yeah, Reagan basically fired all of them. He did actually rehire about half of the same ones later in his term. I guess he just kind of was like, I don’t know these people, so I’ll get rid of them now and then we’ll vet them or something. Anyway.
Mark: Come back again. Yeah.
Jim: For whatever reason that happened in 1981, it was pretty soon after the Inspectors General act. So I guess they had tested anything, you know how theyn’t hadn’t really got any rules about whether you’re allowed to do that.
Mark: Ye.
Jim: And despite not immediately putting in rules about what you’re allow to do about that. No other president until Trump removed more than two inspectors general during their term. and in Trump’s first term, he fired, I think five inspectors general who had disagreed with him on stuff.
Mark: Of course he did.
Jim: Yeah, of course he did. Following that, they actually changed the law in 2022 to make it so that first of all, a president can’t just fire inspector general. You can’t just do that. That’s not a thing you’re allowed to do.
Mark: Right.
Jim: They have to write to both houses of Congress with 30 days notice and they have to give substantial rationale, including detailed and case specific reasons for terminating each inspector general that they want to get rid of. Right.
Mark: Well, yeah, well that makes sense to.
Jim: Yeahah. Rather than absolutely.
Mark: And then just don’t want them checking up on me.
Jim: Yeah. So they have to basically have done something wrong in the process of their job. There has to be a reason.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: It can’t just be I wasn’t allowed to get away with a thing because they caught me.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They prevented me from doing something.
Jim: Ye.
Mark: Because they asked awward questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jim: I mean technically, I suppose that could be the substantive reason that you give. And if both houses weren’t Republican, then they would probably say that’s not a good enough reason. We’re not firing this person. But yeah, practically speaking with this Congress, if Trump had given them 30 days notice and said I want to get away with some shit and these guys are gonna make it very difficult, they probably would have gone.
Mark: They go, fair enough, fair enough.
Jim: Off they go.
Mark: Even if you went to the Supreme Court, they would just go, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Jim: Yeah, but he didn’t even do that. He didn’t do the, reasons ig notice. Yeah, yeah, he just, yeah, did just fire them. 18 of them out their jobs. They would had like a two sentence letter that they were sent which said that they were being let go because of changing priorities. The priorities presumably changing from not wanting to do illegal shit to wanting to do illegal.
Mark: Want to be held accountable to not wanting be held accountable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jim: So the fact that that’s illegal doesn’t seem to have bothered any Republicans particularly, weirdly. I mean, to be fair, a few have kind of tutted a bit, but no one’s andne prepared to, actually next time.
Mark: Yeah, maybe not do that next time.
Jim: I mean, that’s almost specifically what Lindsy Graham says.
Mark: Right.
Jim: Basically tell them to follow the law next time. I think is a direct quote
01:00:00
Jim: of what said about this.
Mark: Whoa. That’s been the entire kind of apologist standpoint, doesn’t it? Saying, oh yeah, no, he’s even last time they. Oh, no, he’s, he’s learned his lesson. He’ll, he’ll calm down. He’ll get. Well, I’m confusing with Boris Johnson. The said same thing about Boris Johnomson. Yeah, they go, oh, no’be fine. You know, all the apologists went, no, he’s learned his lesson. He said, sorry, he’s m made his apology.
Jim: Yeah. Susan Collins famously said he. So he’s learned his lesson from the first impeachment. So he won’t do anything like that again.
Mark: It’s not going to lead to a second impeachment. Of course it isn’t mean of because it did. because he just. The lesson he learns is he can get away with anything.
Jim: That is the only lesson he’s ever learned is that he can get away with char.
Mark: He can make it happy, he can make it so that he will speak to his advisors and ah, because he’s not clever enough to work out where the impediments to breaking the law are. So people go, oh yeah, you need to get rid of that. And what you need to is fill the Supreme Court with all the people that agree with you, then get rid of all the people that don’t agree with you here, here, here and here. And it’just go, all right, yeah, I’ll do that. And also what I’ll do is ring up some electoral officials to say, yeah, just find me 11,000 votes. That’s all I need. So Things that, if normal but human beings did them, yeah. Would be taken away and severely told off, rather than just saying, yeah, next time, try to avoid breaking the law. This here’s the law of now. Now you’re aware of what the laws are. Try not to do that next time.
Jim: Well, yeah, Chuck Grassley said there may be a good reason the inspectors general were fired, which, if it was true, still doesn’t allow you to not follow the law.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jim: If there is a good reason, there.
Mark: Is a good reason we should know what it ise. Yes.
Jim: House Democrats sent him a sternly worded letter because that’s all they can do because they’re not in the m majority, because of people not voting for them enough. And they said, your actions violate the or attack our democracy and undermine the safety of the American people. Firing inspectors general without due causes antithetical to good government undermines the proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars and degrades the federal government’s ability to function effectively and efficiently. To which he presumably said, yeah, that’s the point.
Mark: Yeah, that’s why I did it.
Jim: All those reasons ex why I did. Yeah.
Mark: I just stood there flipping them the bird with both of his tiny hands.
Jim: Some inspectors general decided that because they hadn’t been fired by the process of law that is required, they were just still coming into work.
Mark: Nice. Yeah.
Jim: Which I. Only one of those. I have discovered what actually resulted from that, which is, Department of Agriculture Inspector General Phyllis Fong, who has been with the department of 22 years. That’s one of the things about these people is they are cross party, they’re civil servants. They are not members. In fact, a lot of the inspectors general that Trump fired were appointed by him in his first term. and like, arguably.
Mark: And kept by Biden.
Jim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Phyllis Wonong has been in the job for 22 years, or at least in the department for 22 years. Not necessarily IA all that time, she turned up to work and was basically saying that I haven’t been fired because there’s a process to fire me and I am still doing my job. That process has not happened. And she was marched out of the office by security agents.
Mark: Wow.
Jim: On Monday morning, that’s what happened to her. I haven’t heard anything m about the others because there were others who were saying that they were just goingna continue doing their job until someone did did it properly if they were going toa do it. But I would be very surprised if there aren’t lawsuits about this. If not from the inspectors general themselves, on their behalf, by civil rights groups, you know, crew type people. The purge didn’t quite stop with inspectors general.
Mark: Yep.
Jim: Yeah, because there was also a firing.
Mark: People that have already done stuff against him already, basically investigated things.
Jim: All of the prosec. Him who worked on prosecutions against Trump, largely on Jack Smith’s team, but elsewhere, have been removed from their posts and their Justice Department officials, essentially, they are, again, not members of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or. Or whatever they are. They’re simply working lawyers who, in many cases, have been part of the Justice Department for many years. They have all been removed. And this. I mean, again, it’s, The first one, the inspector’general thing, was completely illegal. This one is, yeah, probably illegal, but more a break in protocol, really, because the executive branch and the Department of Justice are supposed to not be colluding with each other. You know, the executive branch isn’t supposed to tell the Justice Department who they can hire and who they can fire and that kind of stuff. And in this case,
01:05:00
Jim: it came directly from a memo issued from the White House personnel office. the White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, was asked whether the President had authorized the firings of the Justice Department personnel, and she said, this was a memo that went out by the Presidential personnel office, and the President is leader of the White House. So. Yes. So that’s not great, because, I mean, basically all of this is a, completely unsurprising, predictable and predicted precursor, to him installing his own loyalists in all of these kinds of jobs if he even bothers to put inspectors general back in those roles, because there’s no. I don’t think you have to have them. I don’t know. But if he does, he’ll put people who are. Who he knows will look the other way if he does stuff that he’s not supposed to do.
Mark: Yeah. And kind of doesn’t matter anyway, because even if the law says, oh, yeah, you need those, he’ll just go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely not.
Jim: Who is gonna do anything? There’s no one left to make sure that he’s not being corrupt. So, yeah, yeah, it’s fucked.
Mark: And I also read that the. The evidence to all of the rioters, so the people that were prosecuting him about the riots, the evidence that was on the Internet that was posted by the stupid writers that convicted them, is now systematically being erased.
Jim: Okay.
Mark: As part of the getting rid of. So if the prosecutions have been quashed against them, then the evidence that supported the prosecutions ought to go as well, if the.
Jim: Yeah. Because a lot of those ind, a lot of the indictments, are on the Department of Justice website.
Mark: Yeah.
Jim: I tell you where, if they do get all removed, you can find some of them, because some of them are footnotes in my book about 2,000 mules, which I created permanent versions of because I. There are, doubtless going to be things in the footnotes that will fall off the Internet at various points. I wasn’t really expecting them to be scrubbed by. From the DOJ website, but I did make permanent versions of them, so you’d still be able to access them through. Through the footnotes in my book, if necessary.
Mark: It will become necessary, huh? Yeah. Where do we see this last happening? Oh, I don’t know. Stalin, Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany.
Jim: I mean, Trump’s first term. That’s when we last saw the pers.
Mark: Trump’s first term. Yeah.
Jim: ID and, just blatant disregard for the law. It was one of the first things he learned as soon as he appointed, Jared. Jared.
Mark: Yep.
Jim: That his name?
Mark: Kushner? Yeah.
Jim: Jesus Christ. That’s. That’s like a wave of positivity just washed over me because I’ve forgotten Jared K’s name briefly. I forgot he existed. Was. That was a lovely moment. Great. Now I remember him again. So I’m depressed.
Mark: No. So deep momentaryes peak. Yeah. Yeah. So finally, some. Many things we really don’t have time to talk about.
Jim: Yeah, we had to add a couple more because there’s just been too much news.
Mark: It’s been a new army. Yes. Yeah. tsunami of news. Yeah.
Jim: Well, I feel pretty fucking stupid because for nearly seven years I’ve been paying close attention to all the shit Trump says and does. And last time I said I thought he wouldn’t pardon the most violent of the January insurrectionists. In December, he told Time that they would look at it on a case by case basis. And just a couple of weeks ago, JD Vance said on Fox News, if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned. But I’m not an idiot. I didn’t believe them all of a sudden when all they’ve done is lie their whole lives. I was basing my opinion on the fact that pardons for the Jay sexes was unpopular even among Trump supporters. And he cares what those people think of him. Back In March of 2021, 80% of Republican voters said it was very or somewhat important to prosecute the people who attacked the capus. That number has dropped over time. But Even last month, 55% of Republicans disagreed with pardoning the ones who committed violent crimes. And yet, with a sweep of his custom black Sharpie, Trump commuted The sentences of 14 members of the Oathepers and the proud boys who planned this attack and pardoned every single one of the thousand five hundred others, including many who assaulted police officers with stun guns, riot shields, pepper spray, baseball bats, metal poles, flags, police batons, bear spray and fire extinguishers. But there were two factors I forgo. One is how incredibly lazy Trump is. Over 15, 500 case files is a lot to read. So according to one advisor who talked to Axios while his team wrestled with how extensive the pardons should be, Trump just said, fuck it, release them all. The other factor is that Trump has an army of easily manipulated goons with a propensity for
01:10:00
Jim: violence who owe him a solid. And they know now that there are no consequences for their actions so long as it’s in service to the boss, which is fucking scary. For my part, I’ll try not to give him the benefit of the doubt ever again. He never deserved it.
Mark: Yep, okay, I know. And somehow don’t know why this is actually making the news. Someone says something fairly decent, nice even, in keeping with their role, and she says she’s not going to be sorry for that and apologize to an overweight, overblown blowhard of an Orish narcissist who thinks that anything anyone else thinks isn’t the same as the things that, he thinks. Ort to have another thing coming. Yes, it’s unlikely. Hero of the moment, the right Reverend Marianne Edgar Bud, the bishop of the National Cathedral Prayer Service in Washington and Tuesday who urged Donald Trump to have mercy upon immigrants and LGBTQ people. She defended her remarks and said that she will not apologise following her post inauguration sermon last Tuesday when she made a direct plea to Trump to show mercy and compassion towards scared individuals, including gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, as well as immigrants and those fleeing war and persecution. The President attacked Bud online, labeling her, a radical left hard line Trump hater in a lengthy social media post early on Wednesday. Just so as you know, asking for some mercy to be extended to those who don’t have sufficient societal standing to ask on their own behalf. Makes you a radical left hard line Trump hater by inference. Therefore, if you want to oppress, disenfranchise and silence people, then you are o yeah, just a straight up Republican. Yeah. Colleen forgot Trump argued that she brought her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way and described her tone as nasty and yet also boring and uninspiring, and asserted that Bud and her church, owe the public an apology, those used to licking the assse of the orange one who in my mind’s eyes is somewhere between the hideous pustulous spice lords in David Lyner’s June and Jabba the Heart quickly joined the criticism with one Republican representative suggesting the Bud should be added to the deportation list. Meanwhile, bars in a manner befitting normal humans, not necessarily just people of faith. You know, like the Bible thumping thing Trump professes to when he suits him, slash raises money slash GRIFS merch/Ghana’s votes/suppresses peaceful Black Lives Matter. Protesters said she was saddened by the level of vitriol her seron evoked in others, noting that the intensity of it has been disheartening, adding, you can certainly disagree with me, but could we as Americans and fellow children of God, speak to one another with respect? I would offer the same to you when you’ve asked cheeks the size and shape of Trumps. I guess it must be difficult to turn the other one, certainly without flattening city blocks and killing half his cabinet. Oh, hang on. Maybe something to this Forgive this thing after all I’ve seen Conclave I know how this all works. Can we vote for Marian Edgar Budd for Pope?
Jim: The Office of Personnel Management acts as the primary HR department for the federal government, overseeing hiring practice, administering benefits, and arranging vetting and background checks. It’s a quite important job, which is why Trump put Johnny McInty in charge during his first term. McIntee’s previous government experience was carrying Trump’s bags around a job he got fired from because his gambling problem meant he couldn’t get away at house security clearance. Nevertheless, 18 months later, Trump hired him as head of the Office of Personnel Management. I offer this little history lesson as an indication of how much Trump cares about who runs that office, as that might explain why he seems to have allowed Elon Musk to populate it with his people. The new OPM chief of staff is Amanda Scales, who used to work for Musk’s company, xai. Two other members of the leadership team are so young that the Wired article about this refuses to name them, but they do note that one is a 2024 high school graduate whose resume consists of a summer job at Musk’s Neuralink company, as well as previous experience as a camp counsellor and BikeMechan panic musks hold over the OPM might explain the similarities between a letter he sent to all Twitter staff in November 2022 and won the OPM sent out to 2 million federal employees this week demanding that they either return to the office full time or resign now and get eight months severance pay. There is an expectation that 5 to 10% will resign, simultaneously reducing the federal workforce without having to fire anybody, getting rid of non Trump loyalists and saving the first $100 billion of the $2 trillion Doge has promised in cut. However, for a few employees, it seems to have had the opposite effect with some federal employees on the R Fed News subreddit
01:15:00
Jim: vowing to stay and serve the people instead. Il be honest, before that email went out I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell, said one. But now I fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible. RTO be damned. Il continue to do my job and fight for the position I’ve earned. Another said, it took me 10 years of applying and 20 years experience in my field to get here. I will not be pushed out by a two billionaire trust fund baby. And a third noted they just created the imaginary deep state they convinced everyone they were fighting against.
Mark: You know all that thing Nancy Mace is literally losing a shit about how it’s not right that people should be endangering the privacy, personal space and safety of women using the restrooms in the Congress building. Well, right wing chum and Paul from the Woned Years cosplayer Lauren Boebert has been hanging about outside the women’s restroom shouting you shouldn’t be in here. And storming off to get Nancy Maz to feel all vindicated and righteous and GOTA about Sarah McBride breaching the terms of the use your own gendered bathroom. William, for Christ’s sake, can’t you see how important this is to US Policy that Mace has managed to get introduced from the bathrooms around the house chamber. Bloombergg reporter Billy House saw how Mace and Boba returned and stormed into the bathroom like summing out of Mean Girls, only to sheepishly side lo out two minutes, possibly looking flushed, having mistaken someone in the bathroom for Sarah McBride. Bobert astonishingly said later the Daily Beast that she’d apologized, learned a lesson, and it won’t happen again. Michikaela Carnsky Melo spokesperson for McBride, told HuffPost on Friday what a thoroughly predictable and predicted outcome. Representative McBride thinks people should get back to work rather than play bathroom police. Just to reiterate, these people have been elected to office and are paid out of the public purse, folks out of your tax dollars. Sure, they may not know how to make the price of bacon and eggs come down, but they sure know how to spend their fucking time on your clock checking that people are peeing in the right place. Come on kids, it’s time to grow up.
Jim: Surely this month House speaker for now, Mike Johnson has revived the investigation into the January 6 committee in a blatant attempt to suck up to Trump, who has vowed retribution on those who investigated him. One person who gave evidence in the January 6th hearings probably won’t be subpoenaed to testify about the circumstances of her testimony, however, because Johnson has been warned it wouldn’t end well. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson made quite a splash at the hearings, testifying, among other things, that Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani seemed well aware in advance ###ance that something big would happen on January 6th, that Trump told them not to worry about guns at the Ellipse because they are not here to hurt me and that Trump threw ketch up at the wall when Bill Barr announced that he hadnt found evidence of election fraud. Republican Georgia Congressman Barry Laudderilk was appointed as chair of a select committee to investigate the investigation, since he was also in charge of the failed probe into the same thing last June. It was then, apparently, that an aide from the Speaker’s office approached Lauderilk staff and told them that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the Speaker’s office about Cassidy Hutchinson being subpoenaed because of the potential of for public disclosure of sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favours with her. You might be thinking what the fuck? And I wouldn’t blame you. Yes, the reason they don’t want her questioned is because that would give her the chance to put their sexual harassment in the Congressional Record. The Post host didn’t discover who the members were nor the specific content of the messages beyond the fact they were sexually explicit. So we don’t know technically if Republican elected officials were sending her rape threats to get her to back off her damning testimony or merely thought the 26 year old junior staffer looked fetching in the witness chair and thought they’d shoot their shot by sending her a dick pic or some similarly classy erotic bon mo. Either way, this is rarely feeding my confirmation bias about Republican elected officials.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, try as we might to be unaffected by this stuff. Yeah, well, not quite day one for being a dictator, but close day three and Representative Andy Ogles, who’s a Republican for Tennessee introduced a resolution that would amend the Constitution and allow Trump to seek a third term in office. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs, ogr said in a statement. There was a Newsweek report noted the language specifies preventing a president running for a third term if they were elected for two consecutive terms. So yeah, presidents can run three times. No, no, not you Obama. Not looking at you. Sit down. Not you. Deliciously,
01:20:00
Mark: Felipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, noted in response to the proposed amendment, the reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’transparently ridiculous. It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong Un style culture personality where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their grovelling to get the attention of Dear Leader and I guess establish the dynasty of the Trumps in the process. But will there be enough orange paint for the inevitable thousand eight hundred foot high statue humping the Washington Monument to be built in his honor? Though I guess the hands will be tiny and Stormy Daniels told her other bits of him will also only need the one and a half ounce can of paint for all three protective coats. Oggle’s currying toadying bill is as unlikely to pass as invading Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. But hey, if Great Leader Trump or in says something, we need to make it happen so we get to live another day. Yeah, good luck with that fire swamp dwellers.
Jim: I love the fact that they had to make sure it prevented Obama from running for a because they know that a 67 year old Obama would beat the fuck out of an 82 year old Trump in four years time.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was just oh yeah, course you can run for President. Yeah, hold my beer.
Jim: I think if he hadn’t, if they hadn’t included that, Democrats should have gone yes, absolutely, let us vote for this.
Mark: Do it. Yeah’s do it it. Get it in. Yeah yeah.
Jim: Framing is important, isn’t it? If you want people to buy into your point of view. For example, saying America first is more appealing to a lot of people than fuck everyone else. And it’s definitely better for foreign relations. Of course a big chump of Trump’s base would have no problem with him just saying fuck everyone else. Which is probably why he’s effectively doing that by suspending all US foreign assistance programs for 90 days while he figures out if he likes them on not while foreign aid typically amounts to about 1% of the federal budget, it’s very fucking important to those who receive it. Programmes currently unfunded include providing safe drinking water in Myanmar, helping tuberculosis patients in India and Cambodia, and providing food and medicine to displaced people in Sudan. Aside from the humanitarian and health implications, the US Agency for International Development alone works with over 4,000 organizations in over a hundred countries, most of which don’t have three months worth of spare cash, meaning many will close down, thousands of jobs will be lost, and those vital needs won’t be met. Sure, all this could be avoided by just continuing the funding while Trump and his goons decide who deserves to live and who doesn’t. But the problem is a combination of cruelty and stupidity. They literally don’t know or care what’s happening. Trump claimed yesterday that as part of his freeze on foreign aid, his administration had identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. While USAID does provide medical aid to Gaza and also provides family planning and sexual and reproductive healthcare in developing countries, those two things don’t mix. They haven’t in fact sent any condoms to Gaza. Refugees International President Jeremy Conindy Twee USAID procures condoms for around 5 cents a piece. $50 million would be 1 billion condoms. What’s going on here is not a billion condoms for Gaza. What’s going on is that the bros at Doge apparently can’t read government spreadsheets. Meanwhile, in order to make the Trump administration look intelligent by comparison, Fox host Jesse Watters claimed that the condoms the Biden administration didn’t sen to Gaza were being used by Hamas militants as balloons to float bombs into Israel. And if you’re not picturing a coyote and a balaclav and a green headband frantically inflating Acme condoms, then I don’t know what we’re even doing.
Mark: Yeah. The day after the inauguration, Trump’s Office of Personnel and Management OP issued a memo to government agencies tasking them with rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion DEI initiatives. The memo told recipients that they were to report all facts and circumstances to Deia Truth all one word@opmm.gov within 10 days. I’ll just repeat that email address slowly. D E IRUTH or one word OPM m.gov. not that we in any way condone randomly adding it to any of your email lists in the way that one Democratic operative said they discovered that the email had just been added randomly to several Democratic Party fundraising email lists. At first they thought they too were being targeted for Big Brother DEI Snooping, along with many other organizations NGOs. But soon realized that the tactic was to overwhelm the DEI inbox with spam and render it unusable or
01:25:00
Mark: initiate a bounce back reply at least. Of course we’re not advocating creating an effective denial of service attack on the DEI inbox, and it would be irresponsible of us to wait another second. Boss, you get a pen and it would be unprofessional of us as impartial broadcast journalists to let you think that reading out the deiaruuth, all one word opm m.gov email again would imply that you could carry on the pointless spamming of an inbox from an initiative designed to undo years of hard won rights and equalities furthest thing from our minds.
Jim: I also in no way advocate spamming that email address with the script of the B movie or Spaceballs, despite the fact that Trump’s war on woke has also resulted in a memo from the Defence Intelligence Agency which leaked this week. The memo instructed staff to suspend observances of certain holidays. I’m going to read a list of the holidays specifically mentioned in the memo and I want you to see if you can find any connection between the groups they want to avoid on Martin Luther King Juniors Birthday, Black History Month, Womens History Month, Holocaust Day, Days of Remembrance, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Juneteenth, Womens Equality Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. Yep, unless youre a CIS het white Christian man, theres no special day for you this week.
Mark: In politics, Kemi Badnock tried to lecture the Labour Party on economics, mainly because the Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems to be enacting all of what the Tories are calling their policies. Admittedly, hearing the Labour Chancellor say going further and faster with her plans for economic growth did sound a little too trust for comfort Badenock, having been accused of being a bit depressing in her mapping out of the vision for the tour is called Stmer a bit lacking in personality and said people wanted a leader not a lawyer. Well I don’t know what people she’s been talking to, certainly not the voters who didn’t vote Tory last election after they got a bit jaded with the palmful of posing performance politicians they had as leaders over the last eight years. We want managers to manage the country, not fucking madhead millionaires intent on assets stripping the country for their own ends behind a facade of boosterism and bullocks. Stmer had a lovely alliterative yet salaciously salient warning for Chemi. I won’t take lectures on the economy from someone who may not be a lawyer or a leader, but might just be the next lettuce. Labour never wants to waste a good crisis Reeves growth crisis are now fighting over the new policy to grant permission to have a third Runway. A Heathrow. Ed Miliband Energy Secretary and former opponent of the airport expansion, is now all for it in opposition to Labor Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. Heathrow is in the same part of West London that KN extended the ultra low emission zone into an initiative we spoke about last time that lost Labor Boris s old constituency at the time. Look, if nothing else lads, take some learning from Dubias Elwood even though he was wrong about the 2024 election. People do get confused when the people on the same side start fighting enemies of enemies of friends and all that. For fuck’s sake, why can’t we just all get on?
Jim: so that’s all the about arguments and fauty reasoning we have time for this week. You’ll find the show notes@felaciousrump.com and if you hear Trump say something stupid and want to ask if it’s a fallacy, our contact details are on the contact page.
Mark: If you think we’ve used the fallacy ourselves, let us know. And if you’ve had a good time, please give us a review on Apple podcast or worever you got your podcast or simply tell why other person needs person about how much they’d like our podcast and you can support the show@patreon.com fru just like our newest patron Rondo. Our straw man level patrons Mike Smith, LT Colleen Lyella, Richard Thunder Hopkins, Willem Scott Aussy on bank, Laura Thompsick, Mark Reichy and Amber A.B. buchanan who told us when we met her at QED we just call her Amo. And last year at QED I met the listener a recognizer at QED day the year before because we keep using a full name all the time and our true scotsman level patron Schmootz Sharon Robinson, Renee Ed, Melissa, Syitec, Stehen, Bickel Janet uta, Andrew Halk and our top patron Kazui. Thank you so much for your new and continued support. It’s very very much appreciate thank you.
Jim: You can connect with those awesome people as well as us the listeners in the Facebook group@facebook.com group feaciousru or in the discord atation/rut com discord all the.
Mark: Music is by the outburst and was used with permission. So until next time our M. Feacious Trump. We’ll leave the last word to the Donald. That’s right.
Donald Trump: Go home to Mommy.
Mark: Bye.
01:29:47
