News
215: Inside the News Cycle: Comedy, Policy, and Real-World Climate Choices with Bill Kessler
In this episode, host Matt Madden welcomes comedian Bill Kessler to discuss the intersection of comedy, policy, and climate change. They tackle current events, including controversial statements from ...
215: Inside the News Cycle: Comedy, Policy, and Real-World Climate Choices with Bill Kessler
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Interactive Transcript
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You're listening to a climate change. This is Matt Madden, your host and got a great episode coming up.
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We got Bill Kessler on the show and Bill, we had a lot of fun the last time you were here.
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We're kind of riffing on Trump's UN speech and so now we're going to go over some news items.
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A little current events. Keep making sure that you're staying up to speed with your reading here.
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And get your hot take on some of the important environmental news.
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Oh, there's nothing more that I love than hot takes. Count me in, Matt.
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Okay, well, here you're in the right place. Hot takes is what we do.
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So you're going to get a chance to use your comedy skills to turn some of Trump's actions into comedy gold.
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Not a hard job to do, but somebody's got to do it.
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Ah, stuff writes itself.
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Yeah, he does. I mean, he really gives us all the material that any comic could ever ask for every single day.
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Is it kind of like drinking from a fire hose when you're looking at this from a comedic perspective?
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Yeah, and that it's not fun at all.
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Well, it's horrifying. It's tragic comedy.
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So you see, hey, our country being heard, but yet at the same time he's doing it in such an idiotic fashion,
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it's hard not to kind of laugh at the stupidity.
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Laugh or sit on the end of your bed and put your hands over your head and weep
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for the sheer vulgarity of what this nation has become.
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Either one is a choose up to you sort of a glass half full.
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It happens kind of naturally.
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So yeah, I'm kind of not in the, you know, leaning on my bed and crying type,
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but I'm more like get angry and and gets do something.
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Right. Just kind of like I'm furious and then I'll click on another article and see what I like about you
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is that you are furious and this is what fury looks like.
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And that is something I can respect because if I was furious,
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everyone in this room would be uncomfortable.
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I'm a Zen fury.
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You know, I've tried to stay cool riding the river.
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Yeah, well, you can't let, you know, all of your energy dissipate by kind of an anger
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that is yelling and shouting and you're going to you're going to earn it.
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You can burn out really quickly.
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So it's much better to kind of feel it and let it pass through.
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Yeah, what is the feeling?
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Try to identify it.
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Right now I'm not feeling the anger because I'm here with you and you're calming me.
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It's a very calming effect.
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Are you feeling the bon ami?
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Exactly. So, you know, when that's happening,
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I am, Trump is dropping in the order of importance.
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Yeah, there are things in life you can control and those are the things you should focus on.
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I think that's why a lot of people are just tuning out from all of this.
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That's probably most Americans just kind of tune out.
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I've seen enough.
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I don't want to see anymore.
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This is crazy and just trying to do watch your TV shows and go to work and hang out with
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their family and friends and just disassociate essentially from politics.
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All right, let's get on with the show.
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Let's get on with the show at the Games Begin.
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One of the current events we're going to talk about is the Trump shit dump
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and Trump made a dump all over the cities of America,
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which I guess he considers to be shit hole cities.
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And kind of like to get your take on that,
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why do you think the president of the United States
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would find it necessary?
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Well, just to, I think people might, although I think all of America saw this,
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I think people might need some clarification on what you're talking about.
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I enjoy your use of the term shit dump.
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It seems, it doesn't seem like it needs both words.
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But, you know, I think in lesser, if there was some lack of clarity,
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I want to just, you know,
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Well, there was a lack clarity in that portion of the description.
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But we're talking about the AI video that he posted on his socials.
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Which showed realistic footage, although this didn't actually happen.
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Oh my God. It didn't happen.
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He flew a American fighter jet over a city
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and then opened up like the pod bay doors or the where the bombs are or the,
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I don't know what you call that.
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And then it, it just, he put diarrhea all over the protesters.
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Ah, so that's, you know, that's what you get if you're a protester.
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That's what you deserve, I guess, in the Trump world.
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Here's my question.
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Remember the movie back to the future.
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I do.
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Michael J. Foxy goes back in time and he's talking to Doc Brown.
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He's trying to convince him that he's actually from the future.
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Doc Brown doesn't believe him.
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He goes, okay, yeah, if you're from the future
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who was president of the United States in 1985
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and he goes, Ronald Reagan and he goes, yeah, the actor.
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Can you imagine going back 30 years now?
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And you go to someone, okay, you're from the future.
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Who's president?
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You go, Donald Trump and you be the dude with the comb over from people magazine
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who's known for like cheating on his wife.
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That's come on.
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And you go like, I gotta tell me something that happened in the future.
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Right.
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Right.
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We go, okay, well, we have these computers
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that can aggregate all of human recorded information and media.
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And then you can just type stuff into them.
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And then they will generate for you in seconds
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a visual of whatever it is you type in.
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This is an existing technology and they go, wow.
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So what do people use that for?
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Like they make new van goes or something?
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Well, the president of the United States,
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he made footage of himself in a fighter jet full of diarrhea
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and then dumped it on the populace.
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There we go.
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Oh, yeah, you are from the future.
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That makes perfect sense now that you explain it.
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Wow, we're really going in a good direction.
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Things are going well.
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I'm looking forward to the future.
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Does it actually feel like this is reality?
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That's such a thing is happening.
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It kind of defies reality.
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But that's just one point among many.
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And the Department of Energy cancelled $700 million in battery
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and clean air manufacturing projects.
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So what's your take on that, Bill?
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Well, I guess I would ask you a question.
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I mean, this is that story seems to me like
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from a Republican fiscally conservative perspective.
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Yeah, there's the whole part where he's canceling money
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that was that Congress already approved.
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So that wouldn't happen with another president.
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But in terms of the idea of the philosophy of a conservative
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where you wouldn't be giving money to companies
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to help prop them up,
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it kind of makes philosophical sense, right?
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I guess if they weren't giving money to oil companies
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to prop them up and give them all.
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Now you're asking for them not to be hypocrites
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and for them to be right.
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Right. I guess I consider you.
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So let that let that know.
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I guess I'll throw let's throw that out the window
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and just talk about like,
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well, you're your own personal fiscal beliefs.
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What would you think?
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I would say that it's a good investment
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because the Chinese government is putting tons of money
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into their battery manufacturers
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and we will lose the technology wars
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if we don't create our own battery manufacturers
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and look at what happened with the rare earth thing.
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So if they say,
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hey, we're not giving you any more batteries anymore
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and we don't have the technology,
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we're kind of up a Trump crake without a paddle.
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But isn't capitalism supposed to work
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with the invisible hand and then the motivation
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would just be these companies would do this
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on their own?
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The government picking favorites would be against.
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I guess that would work
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if the Chinese government was not.
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So you're saying the Chinese,
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you know, it's tilts the playing field.
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So Adam Smith's field is no longer a fair playing field
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when somebody else comes in with $100 billion
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and says, I'm going to give it to my battery manufacturers
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and they're going to have a head start.
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Which it's, I mean, we've done that with many industries.
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We've done that with all of our defense industries.
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We've given them tons of money
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to develop fighter planes and jets
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and all kinds of advanced technology
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that wasn't market based.
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It was we need to be able to kill everybody else
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in the world based.
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It was power.
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Yeah, it's power based.
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So like, yeah, you, if from a pure power play standpoint,
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it makes sense from that standpoint.
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Even if you're not an environmentalist,
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it makes sense because we would have renewable power,
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which is a good source in the future.
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It's cheaper.
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I wonder if the weakness of capitalism
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would be that what they're trying to help
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incentivize is innovation and capitalism
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in some of a space like that would be very fear-based.
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Why would from a purely capitalist perspective
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would you want to replace oil and fossil fuels?
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That's wildly profitable.
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So they're going to go, yeah, we could do this thing
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which could then eclipse all this other thing
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or we could just keep doing what we're doing
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and it's a known commodity.
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So they are putting their thumb on the scale.
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Yeah, I think that, well, the point is
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that the renewables are cheaper.
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But they need some help regarding batteries
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because batteries do help the renewables kind of work
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through the night when the sun isn't shining.
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Sometimes the wind's not blowing.
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You need to have some battery backup
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to allow for that transition.
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I think it makes some sense.
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The other thing is there's a lot of jobs at stake.
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This affects more red-state jobs,
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or jobs in red states than it does in blue states.
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So it's kind of destructive to the communities
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that supported him in the 2024 election.
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So which doesn't seem to bother his constituents a whole lot.
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I haven't heard of a whole lot of squawking about this.
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If you look at the Chinese companies
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in terms of what they have been able to accomplish,
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I just saw a thing where the president of Ford
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who is Chris Farley's cousin.
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I don't know if it's something farly.
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Kevin Farley's his brother.
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But he looks like Chris Farley.
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He's not as a rotunded ample gentleman,
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but he has a certain Chris Farley aspect to him.
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But that guy, he wanted to see what they were like.
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So he got a Chinese electric car just to compete.
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And he's saying in the press, oh my God,
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the thing is great.
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I gave it back.
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I miss it desperately.
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Now I have to drive a Ford.
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No, you didn't put it that way.
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But like, there's no motivation for him to say that.
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Beyond, it must be.
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Well, he can say that because we have such high tariffs
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that no Chinese car can enter the market.
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So none of us can actually drive a Chinese car
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unless you're Chris Farley.
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But you can imagine a case where,
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yeah, the rest of the world is going to be driving Chinese cars.
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Oh, that's that is happening.
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Yeah, my girlfriend was just in Italy.
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And there was someone driving a Chinese electric car.
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And they were like, I don't know why this even came up.
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I think these people are just so excited and in love with their cars.
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This person was telling her like, oh my God, this thing is the best.
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It reads your mind.
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It gives you a back massage.
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It tells you to call your mother.
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I don't know what it is, but it's just like an amazing vehicle.
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Like they are better.
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Right.
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And that's even with pretty high tariffs going into Europe.
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Their tariffs aren't quite as high as ours,
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but they're pretty substantial.
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Apparently, you can get a Chinese electric car in Italy.
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Wow, another reason to move to Italy.
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Yeah.
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And again, they are sort of comparing them to fiat's.
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So in that sense, it's not, it might not be entirely accurate.
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But nonetheless, the guy loved this car.
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I enjoyed the fiat that I rented in Europe a few years back.
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It was fun.
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It was a fun little car.
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It's not a Ferrari, though.
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Yeah, I mean, I'm aging myself, but back in the when the fiat were first in America.
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And I never drove a Ferrari.
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So I don't, I really, I just want to put that out on the record
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that I don't have any experience.
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You didn't need it, man.
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You do find without something like that.
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You don't even help.
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You know, I actually don't have a car at all right now.
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I am carless for the last going on two months.
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No car.
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No car.
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No car.
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How do you get around?
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Are you, are you on Uber and what about a bicycle?
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And you get into a road.
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You get into a road.
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I bought a bicycle, but it's not come in yet.
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It's on order.
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So it should be here within Rickshaw.
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No, not the bike is on order.
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The bike is on order.
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Is it an electric bike?
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It is.
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It's slightly embarrassing when I have to say that because I feel like that's kind of cheating.
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But I promise that I'm going to use the pedals as much as I can.
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Well, just call it a motorcycle.
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It is kind of, it's not that bad.
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There are a lot of these bikes that now go like 55, 60 miles an hour
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that they call bicycles, but they're really not anymore.
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They're really motorcycles with pedals.
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Yeah.
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I mean, and you're comparing it to having had a car.
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You're literally getting a bike to replace a car.
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That had zero option to pedal it.
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It wasn't a Flintstone car.
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So at this point, you're, if anyway, you know, you've got so many talking points.
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I'm way ahead of the game.
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Yeah.
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Though I've got, I've got like whatever 40 years of car ownership behind me
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that I've got to make up the difference for.
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To make up the difference for.
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But just the sheer joy.
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That's one of the great pleasures in life is riding a bicycle.
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If you haven't been on one in a while, but then it's, the novelty is a new every time you get on it.
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The wind in your face, you're just end up singing a tuneless song to yourself.
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La la la la la la la.
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It just, and the trees and the wind, it's exhilarating.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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Is there any experience?
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Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, you know.
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And of course, are you going to get a little bell?
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I haven't thought of that.
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Winter, winter, winter birthday.
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It's coming up February 10th.
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210.
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210.
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By a bell.
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Four mats.
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Okay, fantastic.
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That I hope I can't hurt that.
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Oh, damn it.
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I got a surprise you.
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I hope I get it before, you know, before I get into any accidents.
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You know, you get to get it to me pretty quickly.
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Maybe Christmas, who knows?
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This is spectacular.
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The safer I am, the better.
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So kind of moving right along in the news.
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Matt wants to move off of it.
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He's segueing from the hot bike talk.
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Hot bike talk, yeah.
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To communities suit Trump and the EPA over toxic air pollution exemptions.
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So we've got Trump kind of cutting back on pollution laws so that factories can pollute more.
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A little further in that.
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Uh, the inside climate news reports that community and environmental justice groups are suing
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the Trump administration and the EPA for exempting 50 chemical plants from key air pollution rules
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designed to prevent cancer and other serious illnesses.
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That's the part that got me because I'm going to tell you something.
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And I don't, you know, I'm going to take a stand right here and people can go with me or not.
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But I am against giving people cancer.
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You are way out there on the spectrum.
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You are such a...
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Like, that was your platform as a, as a candidate.
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That sounds woke to me.
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That sounds really woke.
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I don't know what's up with you.
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When did you turn so woke that you're against cancer?
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Say a guy's running for president and he gets on the stage and he says,
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I as part of my decree to America, I will mandate that every baby is taught to smoke.
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I would say, Hey, you know, I'm a phone for this guy.
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That seems like a terrible idea.
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That doesn't seem like a terrible idea.
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I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't look hilarious because like, I mean, right?
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Like a little baby smoking.
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Remember the Van Halen album 1984?
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I hate it for her.
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I think it is.
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I don't remember that one.
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I did get the first Van Halen album pretty close after it was published,
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which would have been...
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Oh, so you were too cool for once they went and had like,
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electric keyboards on it.
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Well, the 1984 album has a baby smoking on it.
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And I'm not saying that isn't a super cool cover.
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And I'm all for Eddie Van Halen's guitar virtuosity and David Lee Roth's eternal...
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Wow.
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...it's sexual energy.
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Forever adolescent ribble dream.
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But that nonetheless, I'm still against baby smoking.
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Okay.
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Well, it's kind of akin to smoking when you're throwing off things from a smokestack.
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This was part of...
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This was precisely the analogy that I was making.
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You know, I'm just trying to put the dots together in case anybody missed it in a big bulletin board
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with some red yarn.
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Yeah, like, you know, keep everybody in the game.
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So these exemptions primarily affect communities in the Gulf South,
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especially Louisiana's cancer alley, Texas home to predominantly black and low income neighborhoods,
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already suffering some of the worst...
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I am.
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...the nature's worst pollution.
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...against especially.
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I'm... no, it's not on a spectrum.
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But I'm against giving black people cancer.
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I'd like to say, I'm against giving anybody cancer.
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And I don't know that that's worse, but it feels worse because of the historic racism
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that this country was built on.
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It's not a great platform.
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This guy...
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This truck guy...
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It seems like a...
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It doesn't seem...
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It doesn't seem like a real jerk.
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He told us during the campaign that America was going to have cleaner air and water.
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I don't know how that's possible when you're spewing more toxins into the air and putting him
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into the water.
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Is that...
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Those two things don't seem to connect.
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These aren't abstract pollutants.
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These are ethyl oxide and chloroprene cause cancers and miscarriages and residents and cancer
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alley already face air pollution a thousand times above safe levels.
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That seems like a lot.
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I've driven down those roads in...
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You know, I went to school in New Orleans for five years.
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So I had a chance to travel a little bit in Louisiana.
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And there's just an incredible amount of petrochemical plants in that, you know, 80-mile run from...
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Was it bad and rouge down to New Orleans?
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Did you have the vents open on your car when you went through that?
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I don't think I had any kind of sense at the time of how much...
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Oh, that it was a thousand times.
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Right, right.
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There weren't any warning signs on the side of the road saying,
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Hey, you're going into this area where a lot of toxins are being thrown out.
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Was there like an alligator with three eyes or anything?
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I didn't see that alligator, but just to keep everybody on track and so not only
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shit dumping that the president has engaged in recently,
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it's also blasting narco boats out of the water in the Caribbean.
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As if we need to start another war, that seems to be kind of on the agenda.
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The peace president is rattling the saber and now has sent an aircraft carrier
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down close to Venezuela for what purpose?
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I'm not sure.
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Maybe fishing.
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Fishing could be fishing.
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Pete Hague-Seth wants to do some muscle building out on the deck of a carrier in the Caribbean, maybe.
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Yeah, that'd be sweet.
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Come on.
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Show his big guns.
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Is that guy got tattoos?
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That dude's got tattoos.
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Yeah, he's got lots of tattoos.
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And some questionable tattoos.
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I really like what kind of stuff.
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I can't recall exactly, but you haven't seen him.
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It's been a minute.
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I think we're going to segue to the public transit systems on the edge of a cliff
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amid funding shortfalls.
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So imagine waiting an hour for a bus that never comes because it broke down because your city can't afford
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to run in anymore.
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The PBS news hour, well, PBS is going to be off there soon because they did not get any more money.
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Reports that public transit systems across the US are facing massive funding shortfalls
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as pandemic relief, dollars dry up, and ridership remains below pre-COVID levels.
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So should the federal government be spending money on public transit?
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Does that seem like a reasonable?
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It always has, right?
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Isn't that the way that public transit works?
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I mean, nobody could own all the land to lay all the track for a subway.
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Or I guess that's why it's called public transit.
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Yeah.
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It's always been.
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It's in everywhere around the world is not a private entity.
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These are the things we do collectively together.
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I guess he never had to take the bus in New York.
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You imagine he was always taking limos and helicopters.
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Jet planes full of human feces.
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Right. That kind of thing.
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So he really didn't have to rub shoulders with the Hoi Palloy in the subway.
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Do you think in his entire life that Donald Trump has ever ridden on a bus?
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I would bet no.
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We really should celebrate the bus more.
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I mean, the bus, we think about the bus in terms of the civil rights movement.
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I mean, the bus is the folkroom for the launching of the greatest social change in the history of America.
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Rosa Parks refused to give up or seen on a bus.
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The movie speed.
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It's like die hard, but on a bus, great fucking idea.
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Don't go below 50 miles per hour.
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I mean, these two things, mandami.
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That dude's making buses for free.
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He's changing the game there.
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So I mean, I'm not ranking these.
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They're of different values.
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But nonetheless, what do you think about this mandami character and his idea of free grocery store or government grocery stores?
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I think it's cool that he came up with like five actionable policies or he's certainly going to try
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that are all pocketbook based.
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And then he is ignoring all these kind of culture war issues and just saying,
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these are these are my things I'm going to do.
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Whether or not you personally agree with the idea of some sort of comic grocery store,
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I do because I'm a dirty communist.
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You know, I'm one of these left-wing lunatics.
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Sure.
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Why not?
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We need to figure out a way to equal this playing field with some thumbs on the scale.
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And I'm a, I'm a Bernie guy.
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I love this stuff.
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I'm all for it.
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Let's do it.
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We haven't tried it.
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You know, there was the, the new deal and they tried a bunch of cool stuff that we all have to this day
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and like, you know, social security.
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Maybe you heard of it.
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You know, Medicare, all this, all these great things.
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And then since then we're like, oh, was this rest under the laurels?
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No thing will ever get better than that.
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In fact, it'll get worse.
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We'll just chip away on those until they're gone.
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This is not a great system.
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So this guy's like, hey, here's some other new ideas that we could do to improve people's lives.
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You know, you make a good pitch on that front.
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I, I'm kind of leaning in that direction too.
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I didn't get outraged when I heard it.
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I felt like one of the big problems we have in healthcare
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and we spend tons of money on is the fact that our food supply and the kinds of foods
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that people who are poor are eating are terrible.
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And the food companies have injected all this ultra-processed garbage.
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Yeah, you're incentivized.
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The cheapest food is like high sugar food.
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Right.
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The cheapest way to eat is very unhealthy.
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Right.
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I would be okay.
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I was just in this plane of seminar and they were talking about these ultra-of-food
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processed cases that are being brought and they're being brought against the food companies
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and their kind of contention is it's kind of like, well, RJR,
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the tobacco car, it was Reynolds.
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Oh, we're back to smoking.
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They were bought by KKR, which was Colburn, Kravis, Robert.
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It's a big hedge fund or whatever.
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Back in the 80s, they bought a bunch of food companies and the theory is that they kind of created
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food similar to the way they created tobacco to make it addictive.
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And these ultra-processed foods are addictive.
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They make you want to eat more than you should and it's garbage.
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So lose, lose scenario and the rate of diabetes in the US is skyrocketing higher.
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So clearly their premise has worked.
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They've gotten people more addicted to garbage foods.
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So going back to Madame, Madame, if they stocked really wholesome foods and fed people who
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were lower income, good food, I think that's money better spent than on the healthcare system
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because my feeling is people are getting better foods. They're going to get sick less often.
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And that's going to be a net positive.
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I mean, it's an intractable difficult problem though because the government can't enforce
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kind of food people eat.
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Remember New York like it?
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You could tax, say, soft drinks.
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Remember they did that in New York?
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It wasn't there like a limit on how big a large soft drink was or something like that and people
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lost their minds. How dare you tell me whether I should be?
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You can drink a six gallon thing of coke but we'll tax it like we tax cigarettes.
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How about that? Because I'm going to end up paying for the people who drink large Coca-Cola's
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because they're going to drive up the cost of healthcare. They're going to have diabetes more.
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They're going to have all kinds of other illnesses because of eating crappy food.
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So what about coke as right as a company to poison the country?
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I think it's a limited right.
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It is a limited right but where do you draw that line? Because it is a spectrum.
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Coca-Cola is not cigarettes.
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Right. I don't think we start off with a tax that nobody could buy it but it starts off at a
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nickel, a drink or something like that. A manageable amount. It goes up to a dime in a few years and
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then maybe goes up to a quarter after five years or something. So people have a runway to get off of the
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Did you not run for president as a Republican?
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I did but a lot of people said I sounded like the Republican Marianne Williams said.
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Well, hopefully not that.
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Yeah, I know you're not a fan but she had some good ideas. What was her good idea?
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What was her good idea?
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In terms of as president, beside like people should be nice.
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How about a peace department? Now we've got a war department. How about a department based upon
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peace and negotiations? In the law, we have a lot of mediation going on.
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We mediate. Was this an idea she had?
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That was an idea she had.
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Yeah. So I thought so branding. She was about branding.
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No, I think that it's a focus. So hey, we have a focus on war and I'm not saying we drop our
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Department of Defense. I'm just saying that we should have a department dedicated to finding
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peaceful resolution to conflict and that we could be a force for peace around the world.
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Now everybody's got to go out there or you don't got to go out there. We're going to invite
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you to go out and do something environmentally positive. And what do you got?
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What do we got? Well, we could have voting. We've got voting coming up here in California.
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You're yes on this prop 50, the gerrymandering thing?
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Yes, yes on gerrymandering.
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Yes, gerrymandering because they gerrymandered.
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Yeah, it's only fair. The only hope is that everybody gerrymanders so much that it makes everything
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irrelevant and then they make it illegal. So we got to just keep. Yeah, I have no
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any end game. Supreme court seems to be allowing almost unlimited gerrymandering,
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which is unfortunate because it seemed, you know, in the past, there was kind of some judge
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sitting there saying, Hey, you've gone too far. This is insane. Whereas now it seems to be
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no holds bar complete gerrymandering shapes with like peninsulas that are one block wide and
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1500 miles long. Why not? Why even connect the two? Okay, so vote prop 50 in a way that's not
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that would help with the environment. Yeah, because well, if there was a democratically or a
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Democrats in running the Congress, then it'd be less likely that some of the environmental
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nonsense would be passed into law going forward, which would be a net positive. So that's probably
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the biggest thing on the agenda for California in the next go round. But there are other places
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that are listening to this show outside of California. So what do you say to them, Bill?
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Move to California quickly become a citizen and vote yes on prop 50. Is that illegal? I don't know.
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No, I think that's legal. I think I was thinking about doing that like creating a movement. No,
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I think we might have passed it. If we're not, we're pretty close to it. Okay, well, that's
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all I had. I don't know how to save the world, Matt. I just crack wise and hope for the best.
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Well, you've got to do better than that, Bill. We're counting on you. We're counting on your vote
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and we're counting on your equipping in a way that enlightens America to go out there and act
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and to do something environmental. Here's my environmental pro tip that I recommend to people.
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Electric cars depreciate massively like more than any other car for reasons that are
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economic that I don't understand. But they're in terms of them, their mechanics wearing out.
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It's slower than other cars. But go out and people go, oh, they don't make them under $40,000.
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Go buy a two-year-old $40,000 car for $20,000. It'll be exactly like the new car. The only
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things that wear out are there's like shocks and tires. But there's not moving parts in the engine.
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The battery will eventually go. But you basically have yourself a brand new car for what's or what
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seems like a brand new car for $20,000. That is a brilliant idea. Or ride a bicycle.
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Right. But you know, it's a little bit of a struggle on the freeways as you've found.
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I have not gone on the freeway yet with my bicycle, but I might.
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Till then. Till then. Man, it's been a joy. Thank you, Matt, for having me here on your
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festival of serious talking nonsense. Tune in. Come back next week and God knows what you're going to hear.
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To learn more about our work at a climate change and how you can help us reach our goal
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planning 30,000 trees in the Amazon this year, visit acclimatchange.com. Don't forget to
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subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. See you next time.