April 1, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz discuss the increasing violence in protests against Tesla. They analyze media coverage of these events, the political implications, and the contrasting treatment of different protest movements. The conversation also touches on Bill Maher's evolving political stance and Jon Stewart's recent realizations about government inefficiency, highlighting the disconnect between liberal thought leaders and conservative predictions. Normally is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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#crafting #protests #violence #Tesla #media #BillMaher #JonStewart #government #inefficiency #politicaldiscourse #conservativepredictions #governmentprograms #bluestates #NPR #parenting #conservativeviews #housingpolicies #EzraKlein #liberalbias #societalchange #personalgrowth
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey guys, we are back on normally the show What
Normalist Takes for when the news gets weird. I am
Mary Catherine.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I am Carol Markowitz. How are you doing, Mary Katherine?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I am all right. You know I've taken up some crafting.
How do you do? Yeah, I'm doing. I learned how
to latch hook, which is like the super tacky seventies
form of like embroidery that's like real fuzzy, like a
shag carpet. And I'm gonna make myself a really ugly
pillow and then I'm gonna put it on my couch
(00:31):
and my husband's gonna be like why, and I'm gonna
be like, that is homemade. Yeah, I'm going to love it.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
He's going to learn to love it. I golfed this
weekend for the first time ever.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I saw that have you golfed? I do not golf.
I kind of wish I could, but I've never really taken.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It up, so it was my first time. I had
a really fun time.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And I know we joke about me being soft in
the Florida weather, but I was like in a little
outfit and it got like seventy degrees in windy and
I had to had to leave. I had to leave
the course because I was so cold, like through my
bones cold. I'll just say I was with some northern
friends who were visiting and they were cold too.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Just so everybody knows, I'm not okay.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Not the window, the window get you. I am really well.
Jonathan Hat would be proud of both of us for
doing offline activities. Yes, look at us.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We touched some grass.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We did. I'm gonna touch my shag pillows soon. It's
gonna be great. I'll show you guys what I've done.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Love it.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So Over the weekend there was also some more Tesla violence.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I saw offline activity.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, offline touching grass, but in the violent sense activity.
These protesters are getting progressively more violent, and of course
all the Democrats are calling them out on this, because
that's sorry, I couldn't even finish that thought. No Democrats
are calling them out on this, or very very few
(02:03):
are in any case. But I saw an old lady
get assaulted. I've seen multiple Tesla's get defaced and keyed
and that kind of thing, which is it's sort of
getting to wear. These people might just be really dumb
because Tesla's have eight cameras on them, and every one
of these incidents is being like videoed from multiple angles.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So they have they have cameras that activate when you
vandalize them. Guys that're like, hi, we're checking on who's
doing this. It's so good, great stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
But yeah, it's getting bad and scary, and the media
is also I can't even deliver the joke they're on
it because instead they're they're largely saying that, you know,
Tesla's wearing a real short skirt. The Washington Post had
a headline, Trump escalates threats against those who destroyed Tesla,
Like Trump is escalating the thoughts Trump.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
There's also this straw man that like, hey, Elon Musk
can't ex expect to be you know, incendiary and uh
and political, and by that I mean like not literally incendiary,
like the the things that people are throwing it as cars,
and not expect people to have an objection. I'm like,
I don't care about an objection. I don't think I
don't think Elon Musk cares about protests or boycotts, right,
(03:20):
those are within your rights. Vandalism is a very different thing.
So that's not There's a lot of stuff that's not
just protesting going on here.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And look, I have boycotted companies in the past. I
haven't fire bombed anybody. I haven't assaulted anybody.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I haven't even cursed.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
At anybody in the street who was using the product
that I didn't like. Because that is a crazy thing
to do.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It's a crazy thing to do, right.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
And they just think they're so right. It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I'm nervous because this kind of thing obviously conspire a
lot of control.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Somebody can actually get very badly.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Hurt, and then we're all going to be like, wow,
this we saw this coming the whole time, and nobody
did anything, and so I am worried about it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And well, you and I have lived through various right
leaning protest movements that are treated completely differently than lefty
protest movements. If you just take the tea parties versus Occupy.
Occupy had no permits to be anywhere, was living in
parks for months on end. There were sexual assaults and
other assaults happening on the grounds pretty frequently, even some deaths,
(04:29):
huge crimes happening. Just people live in in parks all
around this great nation and that was like beautiful and empowered, right,
But Tea Party folks go out to an event and
like clean up after themselves and like the Republic is
going to fall, and so the difference in treatment is
(04:50):
really bad. Another example is the twenty twenty protests. So
people who protested lockdowns by driving their cars around cap
and honking their horns because they were still abiding by
the basic rules of like we're not going to congregate.
Those were the end of the Republic. But the George
Floyd movement that became riots aoka.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's mostly peaceful, right wild.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
How they're treated. I just want to give you a
stat real quick. I was reading an NPR story entitled
from Seattle to Miami, anti Musk protesters gather at hundreds
of Tesla locations. Can you guess for me what paragraph
this piece addresses the violence? Never it does actually get
(05:39):
into it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Good.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Good, twentieth paragraph, twentieth paragraph. Some of the anti Musk
backlash has been violent. Tesla vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations
across the US and in Europe have been the target
of arson and vandalists. Some have taken to spray painting
Schwasta because on Tesla sedan's and cyber trucks. It then
goes on, wait for it, it then goes on to
(06:03):
make sure that they make the leaders of these protests
the victims, because Musk, by objecting to the violence, has
raised the cost for the organizers of these protests because
some people might think they're involved in the violence, and
if those specific people aren't involved in the violence, then
he's being irresponsible and he has caused problems for them.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
His skirt really is that short?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I mean the reversing victim and offender is like amazing,
pretty priceless on this one.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And yeah, like the thing is that the Trump administration
keeps referring to this as domestic terrorism.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I want to get rid of the word domestic. It's
just plain terrorism.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
It's trying to get a political outcome through violence, through
violence intimidation, very standard definition of terrorism. When we say
domestic terrorism, it makes it sound like not as bad.
It's not foreigners trying to hurt us, it's internal It's
literally just the dictionary definition of terrorism. And I think
the punishments need to get severe for this because you
(07:06):
can't have a society where people think it's okay to
harm other people because they don't like a third person's opinion.
I just think we've gone to a crazy place and
this needs to be cut off at the knees.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, I agree. I saw someone objecting because Florida categorized
some vandal vandalism as a felony, and it's like, we'll
see when that happens, fewer people do the very expensive
vandalism in the future. That's how that works. And by
the way, it's not just the cars. They're going after
the owners of the cars.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Who, I don't care if they're liberal. You should a
lot of them are. You shouldn't be assaulting them or
coming at them in public.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You don't get to.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Just be a little angry child either yelling or hitting
people in the street.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I'm sorry. We have a society.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
There are rules, so yeah, and I think the more
we accept, the more we get bad behaviors. So this
really needs to be a wrong message needs to be sent.
This is unacceptable, this is terrorism. This is something that
is going.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To be stopped, and I hope the Trump administration does that.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We're going to take a short break and come right
back with normally.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
All right up next, we have lefties gone wild.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Oh the lefties.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
They are so close, so close, so close to getting it,
but never really quite there.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Left he's gone wild or is it left, he's gone right.
That's kind of what it feels like in a couple
of these situations.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, that's it. And we're not going to be bitter
about it, Mary Catherine much. We're not going to be
bitter much that they're saying all the same things we've
been saying for like generations. But let's start with your
buddy Bill Maher. You're on his shows sometimes and you
guys have a cute relationship. I think you're you have
a friend, friendly back and forth in general. And I'm look,
(08:56):
I am a fan. I enjoy watching him. I think
he's smart at I think he says smart things. He's
going to have dinner with President Trump. And apparently Chris
Rock set this up, which is it was kid Rock.
I'm sorry, Yes, kid Rock set this up.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, Chris Rock had nothing to do with it. Sorry,
Chris kid Rock set this up.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And it's kind of cool that they're getting together.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Trump, however, had some things to say about it.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yes, he has a truth post where he says, I
got a call from a very good guy and friend
of mine, Kid Rock, asking me whether or not it
would be possible for me to meet in the White
House with Bill Maher, a man who has been unjustifiably
critical of anything or anyone Trump. I really didn't like
the idea much and don't like it much now, but
thought it would be interesting. The problem is, no matter
how much he likes your favorite president, me, he will
(09:47):
publicly proclaim what a terrible guy I am, etc. Very
much like the Democrats at my recent address to the
Joint Session of Congress, where I stated correctly that no
matter what I said or did, they wouldn't stand, they
wouldn't applaud, they wouldn't smile or laugh, and certainly it
wouldn't be in any way nice. Who knows, though, maybe
I'll be proven wrong, he says, anyway, I'm doing favor
(10:08):
for a friend, so they're going to get together. I
do like mar because I feel like he is one
of the lefties in the Hollywood constellation. It's still like
a left leaning guy for sure, who says common sense things,
and that has made him a pariah to many of them.
I like that he is unpredictable. You don't exactly know
(10:29):
where he's going. To fall on anything, which makes him
much more like a normy voter actually, and taking a
moment to spend time with the President of the United
States to probably have some vigorous debate I think is
totally worth doing and something Democrats should have done since
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, what drives me a little crazy about Bill Maher
is that he is very tied to his identity as
a lefty, and it gets that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Look, I am very tied to my identity as a conservative.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
If I had if the conservative world went the way
that the world went in the last few years, and
I had to kind of face that I couldn't. I
couldn't stand with these people anymore. And I still had
the same beliefs, but I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I could no longer exist with them. I think I'd
be challenged by that too. So I get it.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
But he's always like so close, but never quite there.
We're going to play a clip of him talking to
Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Let's roll that.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Given that we are in this dire situation, I feel
like we don't have time anymore for the old bullshit,
you know, the old are you running for president? Well?
You know, there's an exploratory committee, and I'm looking at it.
I'm happy with my job as governor. I mean, your
future is not in California. Your future is in Iowa.
Let's just spends with the bullshit. We need someone who's
(11:43):
going to be the champion. Are you going to do
it or not? Just come on tell us we don't
have time for the bullship.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
No.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
By the way, I deeply respect that.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
I can't stand the bullshit as well, and I mean
that so look, but this is not my per or.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
Passion, it's not my meaning.
Speaker 7 (12:01):
It's not everything. Every the cynicism that's out there that
every movie's making is some move to some longer term
strategy or short.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Term just that you're a guy who could do it,
who could get it done? Who could will?
Speaker 7 (12:12):
I deeply respect that affect the question, but I don't
have any grand plans as it respects of that. I'm
trying to do the best I can and also trying
to be accountable by the way. You want things to change,
you got to change, and that's what the podcast is about.
That's my recognition of.
Speaker 8 (12:23):
Where we're weak.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
And I got to call balls and strike.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Talking Gavin Newsom into running for president because they need
somebody to like lead the charge.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Gavin Newsome. Bill Maher spends a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Talking about what a hell hole California has come, and
now he wants the guy who really turned it into
that to run for president.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I just I like him, he's smart. Well what is this?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
No, it's one yes. At any point has Bill Marvi
been like, Hey, this guy's really good at his job, right.
I don't think he thinks he's good at his job.
I think he has a plot pausible chance in our
sort of ridiculous way we pick leaders and Democratic Party
in particular in this case, to end up in that spot.
But he's not good at his job. And despite whatever
(13:12):
you know, changing he's trying to do, he announces in
that clip, and I think it's a symbol for Gavin
Newsom that he doesn't like bs and then dispenses with
tons of bs that in fact the exact bs that
Mars said he wasn't looking for. Newsom was like, let
me give it to you.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
It's really language that Newsom uses drives me absolutely bonkers.
We're going to have another Newsom clip later, saw I'll
save this for then, but wow, his like synergy, you know, mendacity,
blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I just he is the absolute worst. I worry about him.
He's he's a threat and a.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Danger, and I could see him slithering his way into office.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
So not a fan.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, well, so, speaking.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Of lefties who are facing some amount of reality, John
Stewart was on with Ezra Kline, who has a book
out called Abundance.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
This book is like.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Everywhere right now, and Democrats are talking to him about
it as if the concepts in it are.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Kind of hearing about it for the very first time.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And you know, the book has a lot of stuff
like it's a wake up call, right It's this democratic
policies aren't working, wake up call for the left. And
I am enjoying democrats kind of being faced with this,
But like, how is this all news to them?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's kind of baffling.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So let's roll part of a clip where Ezra talks
to John Stewart and he spends five minutes explaining how
states could participate in Biden's Build Back Better funding plan
and how impossibly difficult that was.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We're only going to play the last minute or so
of the clip.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We just imagine four more minutes of this these bureaucratic
rules that make no sense.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
States must run a competitive sub granting propose.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Oh my fucking god. At step twelve, by after all
this has been done.
Speaker 9 (15:15):
Yeah, none of that could have happened along the way
here we have now lost seventeen more applicants. So now
thirty of fifty six have completed Step twelve. Step thirteen,
States must submit a final proposal. All the proposals weren't
enough to NTIA. Now that goes to three of fifty six.
(15:35):
So we've gone in the last couple steps from fifty
six had gone to this point to three of fifty six.
Step fourteen, the NTIA must review and approve the state's
final proposal, and that is three of the fifty six
jurisdictions and states are there. In summary, Colin states are
nearly at the finish line, and it says to stop
(15:59):
their progress now, or worse, to make them go backwards,
would be a stick in the spokes of the most
promising broadband deployment plans we have ever seen.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
And the scene, Yeah, so I'm speechless, as honestly, like,
it's a far worse than I could have imagined. But
the fact that they amputated their own legs on This
is what's so stunning.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So for those listening to this only on audio, John
Stewart's freaking out throughout this whole clip. He's clutching his head,
he's walking around, he's like slamming things.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He has never heard of this ever before.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And Jim Garrity tweeted this clip with the comment, A
key part of being a conservative is not being wrong,
but being right too early before it is socially acceptable.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That gets really old.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
We laugh at the now it can be told, and
we do laugh about it, and we try to find
humor in the fact that we're right about things, you know,
years ahead of the left. But the left goes through
this every single time, and it's just tiresome. Like you
just learned that government is a wasteful boondoggle just now
on your show.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, Like, I do think that they truly believe when
you name something build back better or inflation reduction or
Affordable Care Act, many of them just think that's good enough,
done and done. Now we have affordable care. Whereas another
instance of being right ahead of the curve, I was like, yeah,
(17:34):
this Obamacare thing isn't going to work out great for
people like me who are in this actual market because
of these various very clear economic incentives. They're like, oh, yeah,
that's exactly what happens. So we need more subsidies to
fix the problem that we created, right Like, it just
always ends up going this way, it feels like. And
(17:54):
then Klein is a bona fide recognized, prestigious liberal thought leader. Sure,
and yet he's always a decade or two behind us
on these things. Because I've been making this argument about
government since I was legit sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I looked around me and like reaganlin like, we're from
the government and I'm here to help.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Are the scariest words in the English language that I
might not know.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
This, I saw it in my own life. I looked
around me and was like, I think the things we're
doing to help people aren't actually helping people. And that
is how I became conservative. And if you haven't looked
at these programs, which you, by the way, if you're
an Azer client or one of these folks John Stewart included,
you cheerleaded the whole time without saying this is how
(18:47):
it should work to actually help people. There's another one,
by the way, the Harris broadband roll out. The Wall
Street Journal famously covered forty two point five billion dollar
subsidy zero things built, right, So yeah, and I think
the thing they're missing that they can't admit about their side,
and this is like the USAID problem and all of
the Doge stuff. The job was to get these people
(19:10):
paid who stand in the way of getting things built.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And when they did that, everybody was happy, yep.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And nothing else needed to happen because.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That was the whole goal. It's yep. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I'm trying to give them grace for finally getting there
because so many people still haven't.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
But you just know, the next time Democrats are in charge,
they're going to revert right back to form.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yes, and we don't even have to wait for Democrats
to be back in charge of the country.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Here's a clip of as reclined.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
He went on Gaven Newsom show so to bring this
full circle to talk about the bad policies in blue states,
and he still ends up being very gentle with Gavin
Newsome and saying, you know, as he basically says to
his face that Gavinus's policies are failure.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
But he's also giving him kind of leeway to.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Say, well, this does happen in Red states too. Let's
roll the clip.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Localism is determinative, and you pick on understandably San Francisco,
but you can look at almost any city, including a
Republican healt city like Huntington Beach, and the same rules
and restrictions apply there in the same frustrations. So from
the prism of left versus right, you take the shot
(20:24):
against liberals. But can't we argue that there is sort
of quality of consideration and nimbism that persists in rural
and red parts count.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
Well, let me flip this because to shadow box around
the fact that you know more about California governance than
I ever will in a thousand years ago in this
would be ridiculous. Why is it easier to build homes
in Texas and California.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
They have Well, you established that in the book in
Houston you make the point I think it was seventy
thousand permits in twenty twenty three, just seventy five hundred
in a much smaller city, San Francisco, but understandable contract
the city with more demand, more demand, and it's simply
because they have no zoning. They have land use consideration
has zoning, yeah, but not Houston in the context of that.
Speaker 9 (21:06):
The thing I'm getting it here, which I really would
like your the thing you just said right about localism.
It's so important and like this is so much the
conversation I'd love for us to have here because the
texture that you have been grappling with of why do
things that you want to have happen not happen is
I think a really interesting thing to add to it.
But when you're saying, well, you know, is this really
a problem for liberals. It's easier to build in Texas
(21:30):
and Florida. They're not just in California, but in California
or New York. Right, the cost of living crisis is
worse in blue states. And a little bit of that
is Blue states are a place a lot of people
want to live, but you should be able to in
places governing for the working class in theory and coin.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Is a point and just to level set, people are
listening completely agree this notion of the supply demand imbalance.
I mean you're making an econ one to one argument,
and that supply to imbalance is next level in the
state of California, which is simply not building enough housing.
And that goes to I mean and you correctly identify
nimbiism and people, you know, incumbent protection rackets, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
When Ezra Client says to him that the things that
Gavin Newsom want to happen are not happening, that's bad policy.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
What he is describing are policies that don't work. And
they could talk whatever they want around the subject. They
could pretend that it's just a coincidence.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh, just because people really want to live in Blue
states and that's why they don't have enough housing. It's
just like supply demand econ one on one problem. Red
States saw far more internal migration from other from Blue
states during.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The pandemic than the other way around.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
So spare me the supply demand. Red States figured out
a way to provide that supply. Your policies are bad,
your ideas are bad. You need to move on from
the things that don't work.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Can I just throw so many bs liberal speakers, localism
is determinative and level set. And my favorite, which is
like Client euphemizing what he's doing. When you're dealing with
the texture as a texture, you've made decisions that have
been bad that have created this problem. And look, I
(23:15):
do appreciate that someone like Klein is looking at the
situation and going ooh, even though I'm sort of arguing
against interesting against my party. The thing we are meant
to be doing is fixing the cost of living, is
building housing that we purport to once to build houses
so that people can have places to live and it
can be more affordable. And we are not doing that
(23:36):
thing emphatically. He's communicating that over and over and it's
making a lot of people on the left mat. Yes,
he's very late to it, and yes he cheerleaded for
many of these things, including the regulations. But like the
way they're having this conversation, Yeah, totally ignores the fact
that we're having a national conversation on the right and
(23:58):
inspired by the action of Oh, that's right, Doge, that's
conceding the same thing and trying to fix it by
doing an audit of these federal programs, and they are
so up in arms about it. Brett Baer on Fox
News did a long form thirty minute interview with the
(24:19):
Doge guys, who I think should have been doing They
should have been doing their rollout this way earlier, just
having these very sober, calm engineers and billionaires talk about
what they're doing, because it inspired some confidence and it
makes the pitch, just as as reclient is making that
(24:42):
if these programs don't work because they're big and misused,
you get worked over and we don't want that. So
this is what we're doing to fix it. I think
they should invite Ezer to be part of Doge's invoke
that language and be like, you know what, I think
(25:03):
we have an ally here right right?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh yeah, our last clip in this section, we can't
not play it. But Catherine Mayher she I think that's
how she pronounced it or was it really good mar?
I'm not I'm not sure, but it's not. It's not
mar like Bill Maher. But it's all the same. Okay,
sorry if I'm getting that wrong. But she is the
CEO of NPR or the head of NPR. I don't
they call it the CEO. And she was grilled by
(25:32):
Congressman Brandon Gill from Texas. And let's roll that clip
in case you haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 10 (25:39):
Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy?
Speaker 11 (25:43):
I believe that. I tweeted that and as I've said earlier,
I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the
last half decade.
Speaker 8 (25:50):
It has evolved. Why did you tweet that?
Speaker 11 (25:53):
I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't
be able to say.
Speaker 10 (25:57):
Okay, do you believe that America believes in black plunder
in white democracy?
Speaker 11 (26:02):
I don't believe that, sir.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
You tweeted that.
Speaker 10 (26:06):
It's reference to a book you were reading at the time,
apparently The Case for Reparations.
Speaker 11 (26:11):
I don't think I've ever read that book, sir.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
You tweeted about it.
Speaker 10 (26:15):
You said you took a day off to fully read
The Case for Reparations. You put that on Twitter in
January twenty twenty.
Speaker 11 (26:22):
I apologies. I don't recall that I did. I'd no
doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall.
Speaker 10 (26:29):
Okay, do you believe that white people and inherently feel
superior to other races?
Speaker 11 (26:34):
I do not.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
You tweeted something to that effect. You said I grew
up feeling superior.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Ha how wide of me. Why did you tweet that?
Speaker 11 (26:43):
I think I was probably reflecting on what it was
to be to grow up in an environment where I
had lots of advantages.
Speaker 8 (26:50):
It sounds like you're saying that white people feel superior.
Speaker 11 (26:54):
I don't believe that anybody feels that way, sir. I
was just reflecting on my own experiences.
Speaker 8 (26:58):
Do you think that white people should pay rep.
Speaker 11 (27:01):
I have never said that, sir.
Speaker 10 (27:03):
Yes you did. You said it in January of twenty twenty.
You tweeted, yes, the North, yes, all of us, Yes, America, Yes,
our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations, yes
on this day.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
I don't believe that was a reference to fiscal reparations, sir.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
What kind of reparations was it a reference to.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
I think it was just a reference to the idea
that we all owe much to the people who came
before us.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
That's a bizarre way to frame what you tweeted.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It is a bizarre way to frame, which is we
all know what she was doing. We all know that
she could just say twenty twenty it was a crazy time,
you know. But she's not.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
She's saying and her mannerisms are like, who would believe
this ridiculous stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
That you're saying.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
By the way, if the girl you believed it, it'd
be one thing. If she was like a twenty something
when she traded this, and now she's a forty something
CEO whatever. Even then, I'd be like a kind of
stupid and you should answer for them. But she was
thirty nine. Yeah, I think when she tweeted it, this
is not decade, she was like between thirty seven and
(28:09):
thirty nine years old, Okay, and she's like, oh gosh,
where where did that come from? I mean, it is wild.
I would say it is peak liberal white lady to
really say in January of twenty twenty that you're taking
the day to fully absorb an important book about reparations
and then have to admit under oath you did not
read that book at all. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, I was kind to read the books.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Come on, like, no, that's what I said. The books
were for the zoom background, they were for reading, and
they were for signaling. She was signaling at that time
it was advantageous to signal that, and now it's become
crazy to signal that, so she has to signal something different,
and she just wants to skip over her own reparations
(28:55):
for the fact that she was a crazy person in
twenty twenty and now is trying to act like, by
the way, The other thing she said was that MPR
has absolutely she's never witnessed political bias in selection of
stories at NPR. And someone confronts her with Uri Berliner,
who left NPR for Free Press, with his stat that
eighty seven of the DC based editorial positions were Democrats,
(29:19):
zero Republicans, and she persisted in saying you did persist. Yeah, nonetheless,
there was no bias. And that is just impossible, incredible,
not worth listening to.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And the five years she's going to be like, who
said that? What that was half a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
These are supposed to be the thought leaders, right. That's
the thing that they pile on top of this that
makes me so angry is that they're still sitting there like, well, well, well,
in the pristine timing of a lefty, I have come
to the same conclusions that you came to with the
very obvious evidence in front of you five years ago,
whether it's lablic theory or regulation or bias it in PR,
(30:01):
or the stupidity of twenty twenty. And they're like, now
it can be told. And even though you were right
five years earlier, I still think you're stupid and below
I don't appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I think that again, we'll laugh it off, but it's wrong,
it's wrong. Yeah, we'll be right back on normally. All right,
let's wrap up with a little bit of a later
a little bit of a later segment.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
We're gonna bring it up. We're gonna we're gonna share everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Chapel Ron had some comments, and I think we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Roll that clip. All of my friends who have kids
are in hell.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I don't know anyone.
Speaker 12 (30:43):
I actually don't know anyone who's like happy and has
children at this age. I have like like a one
year old, like three year old, four and under five
and under. I don't I literally have not met anyone
who's happy, anyone who has like light in their eyes,
anyone who has who has slept.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I mean maybe they're not sleeping, but the rest of
it is just I you know, I just don't get it.
Because I heard this, I also I was her. I
even looked a little like her. I would say I
believed that having kids was a dead end and that
(31:23):
it would be insane to have children who would want
to do something like that on purpose, Like that's insane,
it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Obviously, it's so much better not to have kids. I
was so wrong. I was so wrong. It's indescribable how
wrong I was. How I have three kids, I wish
we had had four. We just literally ran out of time.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
And it's you know, I can't say every single day
is full of happiness, but every single day is full
of joy.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, I know. I wanted to talk about this because
I feel like you and I are good can be
good poster children for the fact that this is fun,
and that neither one of us coming up in our
twenties and early thirties with some sort of like tradwife aspirant, right,
you know, like quite the opposite. You know, I always
thought I would have kids. I always sort of planned
(32:10):
to as a default, just because I loved growing up
with my brothers and I always wanted kids and to
them to have siblings. But it has been an unexpected joy,
I think because it is something that you don't experience
until you experience it. And I think a lot of
people say it's hard but rewarding, and that's true too,
(32:32):
But I don't want to miss the part where I
just have a ton of fun with my kids, right,
I mean, they are hilarious and I enjoy hanging out
with them. Took them to the zoo this weekend, took
them to Mountain Mount Vernon last weekend.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I love Mount Vernon.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Just let them run around in a field and be outside.
And I hate that people like Chapelon aren't seeing that
in their lives, and that the folks who listen to
call her Daddy, which is the podcast this was on,
will hear this from a very influential podcaster, you know,
podcast session with a woman that they look up to.
(33:06):
I just don't feel like they have the full information
about the fact that it can be just not just
rewarding and selfless, which it is, and that's a good
lesson to learn, but beautiful and fun and joyful.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Right she's twenty seven. She could clearly change her mind.
At twenty seven, I was very I'm never getting married
or having kids.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I had this whole image of myself that I was
going to be a fancy old lady who wore full
silashes and smoked long cigarettes in the hotel.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You can still be that, you can have it all, No,
I know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It turns out I could totally do that. I could
do that after the kids go to college like it's
going to be fine.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I think Chapel Road.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Let yourself change your mind if that's the way you go.
Don't hold on to belief so so strongly that you
have when you're young, because things can change at any time.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, and oh, I wanted to say. I saw a
piece in the Atlantic like two weeks ago that was
in and I think it is one of the problems
with modern parenting and puts people in this place. It
was entitled like I tried baby lead weaning and it
almost destroyed my life. And this is just a philosophy
about how you get your kid from formula or breast
milk onto solid foods. Okay, it's not that big a deal.
(34:18):
You're overthinking it, right. If something like that almost destroyed
your life, I would say stop letting those decisions destroy
your life. Just do it or don't do it, right,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Not that big a deal. It's no a few weeks
of your life. I don't even remember.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I Like when people are like, oh, did you do
baby led weaning, I'm like, I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Did I Like, is that what it was called? I
don't know. And one time I just started feeding them
like baby food and that's that's what happened there.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So yeah, No, I just think people really get so
in their heads and modern parenting is so the demand
is that you be so hands on all times and
entertaining them and like a pretty good dose of eighties
nineties mom is what a lot of.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
For prearranged parenting. Make it happen well.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get
in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally
Hey guys, we are back on normally the show What
Normalist Takes for when the news gets weird. I am
Mary Catherine.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I am Carol Markowitz. How are you doing, Mary Katherine?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I am all right. You know I've taken up some crafting.
How do you do? Yeah, I'm doing. I learned how
to latch hook, which is like the super tacky seventies
form of like embroidery that's like real fuzzy, like a
shag carpet. And I'm gonna make myself a really ugly
pillow and then I'm gonna put it on my couch
(00:31):
and my husband's gonna be like why, and I'm gonna
be like, that is homemade. Yeah, I'm going to love it.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
He's going to learn to love it. I golfed this
weekend for the first time ever.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I saw that have you golfed? I do not golf.
I kind of wish I could, but I've never really taken.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
It up, so it was my first time. I had
a really fun time.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And I know we joke about me being soft in
the Florida weather, but I was like in a little
outfit and it got like seventy degrees in windy and
I had to had to leave. I had to leave
the course because I was so cold, like through my
bones cold. I'll just say I was with some northern
friends who were visiting and they were cold too.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Just so everybody knows, I'm not okay.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Not the window, the window get you. I am really well.
Jonathan Hat would be proud of both of us for
doing offline activities. Yes, look at us.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We touched some grass.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
We did. I'm gonna touch my shag pillows soon. It's
gonna be great. I'll show you guys what I've done.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Love it.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So Over the weekend there was also some more Tesla violence.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I saw offline activity.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, offline touching grass, but in the violent sense activity.
These protesters are getting progressively more violent, and of course
all the Democrats are calling them out on this, because
that's sorry, I couldn't even finish that thought. No Democrats
are calling them out on this, or very very few
(02:03):
are in any case. But I saw an old lady
get assaulted. I've seen multiple Tesla's get defaced and keyed
and that kind of thing, which is it's sort of
getting to wear. These people might just be really dumb
because Tesla's have eight cameras on them, and every one
of these incidents is being like videoed from multiple angles.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
So they have they have cameras that activate when you
vandalize them. Guys that're like, hi, we're checking on who's
doing this. It's so good, great stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
But yeah, it's getting bad and scary, and the media
is also I can't even deliver the joke they're on
it because instead they're they're largely saying that, you know,
Tesla's wearing a real short skirt. The Washington Post had
a headline, Trump escalates threats against those who destroyed Tesla,
Like Trump is escalating the thoughts Trump.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
There's also this straw man that like, hey, Elon Musk
can't ex expect to be you know, incendiary and uh
and political, and by that I mean like not literally incendiary,
like the the things that people are throwing it as cars,
and not expect people to have an objection. I'm like,
I don't care about an objection. I don't think I
don't think Elon Musk cares about protests or boycotts, right,
(03:20):
those are within your rights. Vandalism is a very different thing.
So that's not There's a lot of stuff that's not
just protesting going on here.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
And look, I have boycotted companies in the past. I
haven't fire bombed anybody. I haven't assaulted anybody.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I haven't even cursed.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
At anybody in the street who was using the product
that I didn't like. Because that is a crazy thing
to do.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It's a crazy thing to do, right.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
And they just think they're so right. It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I'm nervous because this kind of thing obviously conspire a
lot of control.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Somebody can actually get very badly.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Hurt, and then we're all going to be like, wow,
this we saw this coming the whole time, and nobody
did anything, and so I am worried about it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And well, you and I have lived through various right
leaning protest movements that are treated completely differently than lefty
protest movements. If you just take the tea parties versus Occupy.
Occupy had no permits to be anywhere, was living in
parks for months on end. There were sexual assaults and
other assaults happening on the grounds pretty frequently, even some deaths,
(04:29):
huge crimes happening. Just people live in in parks all
around this great nation and that was like beautiful and empowered, right,
But Tea Party folks go out to an event and
like clean up after themselves and like the Republic is
going to fall, and so the difference in treatment is
(04:50):
really bad. Another example is the twenty twenty protests. So
people who protested lockdowns by driving their cars around cap
and honking their horns because they were still abiding by
the basic rules of like we're not going to congregate.
Those were the end of the Republic. But the George
Floyd movement that became riots aoka.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's mostly peaceful, right wild.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
How they're treated. I just want to give you a
stat real quick. I was reading an NPR story entitled
from Seattle to Miami, anti Musk protesters gather at hundreds
of Tesla locations. Can you guess for me what paragraph
this piece addresses the violence? Never it does actually get
(05:39):
into it.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Good.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Good, twentieth paragraph, twentieth paragraph. Some of the anti Musk
backlash has been violent. Tesla vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations
across the US and in Europe have been the target
of arson and vandalists. Some have taken to spray painting
Schwasta because on Tesla sedan's and cyber trucks. It then
goes on, wait for it, it then goes on to
(06:03):
make sure that they make the leaders of these protests
the victims, because Musk, by objecting to the violence, has
raised the cost for the organizers of these protests because
some people might think they're involved in the violence, and
if those specific people aren't involved in the violence, then
he's being irresponsible and he has caused problems for them.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
His skirt really is that short?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I mean the reversing victim and offender is like amazing,
pretty priceless on this one.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And yeah, like the thing is that the Trump administration
keeps referring to this as domestic terrorism.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I want to get rid of the word domestic. It's
just plain terrorism.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
It's trying to get a political outcome through violence, through
violence intimidation, very standard definition of terrorism. When we say
domestic terrorism, it makes it sound like not as bad.
It's not foreigners trying to hurt us, it's internal It's
literally just the dictionary definition of terrorism. And I think
the punishments need to get severe for this because you
(07:06):
can't have a society where people think it's okay to
harm other people because they don't like a third person's opinion.
I just think we've gone to a crazy place and
this needs to be cut off at the knees.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, I agree. I saw someone objecting because Florida categorized
some vandal vandalism as a felony, and it's like, we'll
see when that happens, fewer people do the very expensive
vandalism in the future. That's how that works. And by
the way, it's not just the cars. They're going after
the owners of the cars.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Who, I don't care if they're liberal. You should a
lot of them are. You shouldn't be assaulting them or
coming at them in public.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
You don't get to.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Just be a little angry child either yelling or hitting
people in the street.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
I'm sorry. We have a society.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
There are rules, so yeah, and I think the more
we accept, the more we get bad behaviors. So this
really needs to be a wrong message needs to be sent.
This is unacceptable, this is terrorism. This is something that
is going.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To be stopped, and I hope the Trump administration does that.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
We're going to take a short break and come right
back with normally.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
All right up next, we have lefties gone wild.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Oh the lefties.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
They are so close, so close, so close to getting it,
but never really quite there.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Left he's gone wild or is it left, he's gone right.
That's kind of what it feels like in a couple
of these situations.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah, that's it. And we're not going to be bitter
about it, Mary Catherine much. We're not going to be
bitter much that they're saying all the same things we've
been saying for like generations. But let's start with your
buddy Bill Maher. You're on his shows sometimes and you
guys have a cute relationship. I think you're you have
a friend, friendly back and forth in general. And I'm look,
(08:56):
I am a fan. I enjoy watching him. I think
he's smart at I think he says smart things. He's
going to have dinner with President Trump. And apparently Chris
Rock set this up, which is it was kid Rock.
I'm sorry, Yes, kid Rock set this up.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
No, Chris Rock had nothing to do with it. Sorry,
Chris kid Rock set this up.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And it's kind of cool that they're getting together.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Trump, however, had some things to say about it.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yes, he has a truth post where he says, I
got a call from a very good guy and friend
of mine, Kid Rock, asking me whether or not it
would be possible for me to meet in the White
House with Bill Maher, a man who has been unjustifiably
critical of anything or anyone Trump. I really didn't like
the idea much and don't like it much now, but
thought it would be interesting. The problem is, no matter
how much he likes your favorite president, me, he will
(09:47):
publicly proclaim what a terrible guy I am, etc. Very
much like the Democrats at my recent address to the
Joint Session of Congress, where I stated correctly that no
matter what I said or did, they wouldn't stand, they
wouldn't applaud, they wouldn't smile or laugh, and certainly it
wouldn't be in any way nice. Who knows, though, maybe
I'll be proven wrong, he says, anyway, I'm doing favor
(10:08):
for a friend, so they're going to get together. I
do like mar because I feel like he is one
of the lefties in the Hollywood constellation. It's still like
a left leaning guy for sure, who says common sense things,
and that has made him a pariah to many of them.
I like that he is unpredictable. You don't exactly know
(10:29):
where he's going. To fall on anything, which makes him
much more like a normy voter actually, and taking a
moment to spend time with the President of the United
States to probably have some vigorous debate I think is
totally worth doing and something Democrats should have done since
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, what drives me a little crazy about Bill Maher
is that he is very tied to his identity as
a lefty, and it gets that.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Look, I am very tied to my identity as a conservative.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
If I had if the conservative world went the way
that the world went in the last few years, and
I had to kind of face that I couldn't. I
couldn't stand with these people anymore. And I still had
the same beliefs, but I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I could no longer exist with them. I think I'd
be challenged by that too. So I get it.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
But he's always like so close, but never quite there.
We're going to play a clip of him talking to
Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Let's roll that.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Given that we are in this dire situation, I feel
like we don't have time anymore for the old bullshit,
you know, the old are you running for president? Well?
You know, there's an exploratory committee, and I'm looking at it.
I'm happy with my job as governor. I mean, your
future is not in California. Your future is in Iowa.
Let's just spends with the bullshit. We need someone who's
(11:43):
going to be the champion. Are you going to do
it or not? Just come on tell us we don't
have time for the bullship.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
No.
Speaker 6 (11:53):
By the way, I deeply respect that.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
I can't stand the bullshit as well, and I mean
that so look, but this is not my per or.
Speaker 6 (12:00):
Passion, it's not my meaning.
Speaker 7 (12:01):
It's not everything. Every the cynicism that's out there that
every movie's making is some move to some longer term
strategy or short.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Term just that you're a guy who could do it,
who could get it done? Who could will?
Speaker 7 (12:12):
I deeply respect that affect the question, but I don't
have any grand plans as it respects of that. I'm
trying to do the best I can and also trying
to be accountable by the way. You want things to change,
you got to change, and that's what the podcast is about.
That's my recognition of.
Speaker 8 (12:23):
Where we're weak.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
And I got to call balls and strike.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Talking Gavin Newsom into running for president because they need
somebody to like lead the charge.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Gavin Newsome. Bill Maher spends a lot of time.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Talking about what a hell hole California has come, and
now he wants the guy who really turned it into
that to run for president.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I just I like him, he's smart. Well what is this?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
No, it's one yes. At any point has Bill Marvi
been like, Hey, this guy's really good at his job, right.
I don't think he thinks he's good at his job.
I think he has a plot pausible chance in our
sort of ridiculous way we pick leaders and Democratic Party
in particular in this case, to end up in that spot.
But he's not good at his job. And despite whatever
(13:12):
you know, changing he's trying to do, he announces in
that clip, and I think it's a symbol for Gavin
Newsom that he doesn't like bs and then dispenses with
tons of bs that in fact the exact bs that
Mars said he wasn't looking for. Newsom was like, let
me give it to you.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
It's really language that Newsom uses drives me absolutely bonkers.
We're going to have another Newsom clip later, saw I'll
save this for then, but wow, his like synergy, you know, mendacity,
blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I just he is the absolute worst. I worry about him.
He's he's a threat and a.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Danger, and I could see him slithering his way into office.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
So not a fan.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, well, so, speaking.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Of lefties who are facing some amount of reality, John
Stewart was on with Ezra Kline, who has a book
out called Abundance.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
This book is like.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Everywhere right now, and Democrats are talking to him about
it as if the concepts in it are.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Kind of hearing about it for the very first time.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
And you know, the book has a lot of stuff
like it's a wake up call, right It's this democratic
policies aren't working, wake up call for the left. And
I am enjoying democrats kind of being faced with this,
But like, how is this all news to them?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's kind of baffling.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
So let's roll part of a clip where Ezra talks
to John Stewart and he spends five minutes explaining how
states could participate in Biden's Build Back Better funding plan
and how impossibly difficult that was.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
We're only going to play the last minute or so
of the clip.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We just imagine four more minutes of this these bureaucratic
rules that make no sense.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
States must run a competitive sub granting propose.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Oh my fucking god. At step twelve, by after all
this has been done.
Speaker 9 (15:15):
Yeah, none of that could have happened along the way
here we have now lost seventeen more applicants. So now
thirty of fifty six have completed Step twelve. Step thirteen,
States must submit a final proposal. All the proposals weren't
enough to NTIA. Now that goes to three of fifty six.
(15:35):
So we've gone in the last couple steps from fifty
six had gone to this point to three of fifty six.
Step fourteen, the NTIA must review and approve the state's
final proposal, and that is three of the fifty six
jurisdictions and states are there. In summary, Colin states are
nearly at the finish line, and it says to stop
(15:59):
their progress now, or worse, to make them go backwards,
would be a stick in the spokes of the most
promising broadband deployment plans we have ever seen.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
And the scene, Yeah, so I'm speechless, as honestly, like,
it's a far worse than I could have imagined. But
the fact that they amputated their own legs on This
is what's so stunning.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So for those listening to this only on audio, John
Stewart's freaking out throughout this whole clip. He's clutching his head,
he's walking around, he's like slamming things.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He has never heard of this ever before.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And Jim Garrity tweeted this clip with the comment, A
key part of being a conservative is not being wrong,
but being right too early before it is socially acceptable.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
That gets really old.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
We laugh at the now it can be told, and
we do laugh about it, and we try to find
humor in the fact that we're right about things, you know,
years ahead of the left. But the left goes through
this every single time, and it's just tiresome. Like you
just learned that government is a wasteful boondoggle just now
on your show.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, Like, I do think that they truly believe when
you name something build back better or inflation reduction or
Affordable Care Act, many of them just think that's good enough,
done and done. Now we have affordable care. Whereas another
instance of being right ahead of the curve, I was like, yeah,
(17:34):
this Obamacare thing isn't going to work out great for
people like me who are in this actual market because
of these various very clear economic incentives. They're like, oh, yeah,
that's exactly what happens. So we need more subsidies to
fix the problem that we created, right Like, it just
always ends up going this way, it feels like. And
(17:54):
then Klein is a bona fide recognized, prestigious liberal thought leader. Sure,
and yet he's always a decade or two behind us
on these things. Because I've been making this argument about
government since I was legit sixteen years old.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I looked around me and like reaganlin like, we're from
the government and I'm here to help.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Are the scariest words in the English language that I
might not know.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
This, I saw it in my own life. I looked
around me and was like, I think the things we're
doing to help people aren't actually helping people. And that
is how I became conservative. And if you haven't looked
at these programs, which you, by the way, if you're
an Azer client or one of these folks John Stewart included,
you cheerleaded the whole time without saying this is how
(18:47):
it should work to actually help people. There's another one,
by the way, the Harris broadband roll out. The Wall
Street Journal famously covered forty two point five billion dollar
subsidy zero things built, right, So yeah, and I think
the thing they're missing that they can't admit about their side,
and this is like the USAID problem and all of
the Doge stuff. The job was to get these people
(19:10):
paid who stand in the way of getting things built.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And when they did that, everybody was happy, yep.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And nothing else needed to happen because.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That was the whole goal. It's yep. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I'm trying to give them grace for finally getting there
because so many people still haven't.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
But you just know, the next time Democrats are in charge,
they're going to revert right back to form.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yes, and we don't even have to wait for Democrats
to be back in charge of the country.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Here's a clip of as reclined.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
He went on Gaven Newsom show so to bring this
full circle to talk about the bad policies in blue states,
and he still ends up being very gentle with Gavin
Newsome and saying, you know, as he basically says to
his face that Gavinus's policies are failure.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
But he's also giving him kind of leeway to.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Say, well, this does happen in Red states too. Let's
roll the clip.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Localism is determinative, and you pick on understandably San Francisco,
but you can look at almost any city, including a
Republican healt city like Huntington Beach, and the same rules
and restrictions apply there in the same frustrations. So from
the prism of left versus right, you take the shot
(20:24):
against liberals. But can't we argue that there is sort
of quality of consideration and nimbism that persists in rural
and red parts count.
Speaker 9 (20:34):
Well, let me flip this because to shadow box around
the fact that you know more about California governance than
I ever will in a thousand years ago in this
would be ridiculous. Why is it easier to build homes
in Texas and California.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
They have Well, you established that in the book in
Houston you make the point I think it was seventy
thousand permits in twenty twenty three, just seventy five hundred
in a much smaller city, San Francisco, but understandable contract
the city with more demand, more demand, and it's simply
because they have no zoning. They have land use consideration
has zoning, yeah, but not Houston in the context of that.
Speaker 9 (21:06):
The thing I'm getting it here, which I really would
like your the thing you just said right about localism.
It's so important and like this is so much the
conversation I'd love for us to have here because the
texture that you have been grappling with of why do
things that you want to have happen not happen is
I think a really interesting thing to add to it.
But when you're saying, well, you know, is this really
a problem for liberals. It's easier to build in Texas
(21:30):
and Florida. They're not just in California, but in California
or New York. Right, the cost of living crisis is
worse in blue states. And a little bit of that
is Blue states are a place a lot of people
want to live, but you should be able to in
places governing for the working class in theory and coin.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
Is a point and just to level set, people are
listening completely agree this notion of the supply demand imbalance.
I mean you're making an econ one to one argument,
and that supply to imbalance is next level in the
state of California, which is simply not building enough housing.
And that goes to I mean and you correctly identify
nimbiism and people, you know, incumbent protection rackets, so to speak.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
When Ezra Client says to him that the things that
Gavin Newsom want to happen are not happening, that's bad policy.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
What he is describing are policies that don't work. And
they could talk whatever they want around the subject. They
could pretend that it's just a coincidence.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh, just because people really want to live in Blue
states and that's why they don't have enough housing. It's
just like supply demand econ one on one problem. Red
States saw far more internal migration from other from Blue
states during.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The pandemic than the other way around.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
So spare me the supply demand. Red States figured out
a way to provide that supply. Your policies are bad,
your ideas are bad. You need to move on from
the things that don't work.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Can I just throw so many bs liberal speakers, localism
is determinative and level set. And my favorite, which is
like Client euphemizing what he's doing. When you're dealing with
the texture as a texture, you've made decisions that have
been bad that have created this problem. And look, I
(23:15):
do appreciate that someone like Klein is looking at the
situation and going ooh, even though I'm sort of arguing
against interesting against my party. The thing we are meant
to be doing is fixing the cost of living, is
building housing that we purport to once to build houses
so that people can have places to live and it
can be more affordable. And we are not doing that
(23:36):
thing emphatically. He's communicating that over and over and it's
making a lot of people on the left mat. Yes,
he's very late to it, and yes he cheerleaded for
many of these things, including the regulations. But like the
way they're having this conversation, Yeah, totally ignores the fact
that we're having a national conversation on the right and
(23:58):
inspired by the action of Oh, that's right, Doge, that's
conceding the same thing and trying to fix it by
doing an audit of these federal programs, and they are
so up in arms about it. Brett Baer on Fox
News did a long form thirty minute interview with the
(24:19):
Doge guys, who I think should have been doing They
should have been doing their rollout this way earlier, just
having these very sober, calm engineers and billionaires talk about
what they're doing, because it inspired some confidence and it
makes the pitch, just as as reclient is making that
(24:42):
if these programs don't work because they're big and misused,
you get worked over and we don't want that. So
this is what we're doing to fix it. I think
they should invite Ezer to be part of Doge's invoke
that language and be like, you know what, I think
(25:03):
we have an ally here right right?
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh yeah, our last clip in this section, we can't
not play it. But Catherine Mayher she I think that's
how she pronounced it or was it really good mar?
I'm not I'm not sure, but it's not. It's not
mar like Bill Maher. But it's all the same. Okay,
sorry if I'm getting that wrong. But she is the
CEO of NPR or the head of NPR. I don't
they call it the CEO. And she was grilled by
(25:32):
Congressman Brandon Gill from Texas. And let's roll that clip
in case you haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 10 (25:39):
Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy?
Speaker 11 (25:43):
I believe that. I tweeted that and as I've said earlier,
I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the
last half decade.
Speaker 8 (25:50):
It has evolved. Why did you tweet that?
Speaker 11 (25:53):
I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't
be able to say.
Speaker 10 (25:57):
Okay, do you believe that America believes in black plunder
in white democracy?
Speaker 11 (26:02):
I don't believe that, sir.
Speaker 8 (26:05):
You tweeted that.
Speaker 10 (26:06):
It's reference to a book you were reading at the time,
apparently The Case for Reparations.
Speaker 11 (26:11):
I don't think I've ever read that book, sir.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
You tweeted about it.
Speaker 10 (26:15):
You said you took a day off to fully read
The Case for Reparations. You put that on Twitter in
January twenty twenty.
Speaker 11 (26:22):
I apologies. I don't recall that I did. I'd no
doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall.
Speaker 10 (26:29):
Okay, do you believe that white people and inherently feel
superior to other races?
Speaker 11 (26:34):
I do not.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
You tweeted something to that effect. You said I grew
up feeling superior.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Ha how wide of me. Why did you tweet that?
Speaker 11 (26:43):
I think I was probably reflecting on what it was
to be to grow up in an environment where I
had lots of advantages.
Speaker 8 (26:50):
It sounds like you're saying that white people feel superior.
Speaker 11 (26:54):
I don't believe that anybody feels that way, sir. I
was just reflecting on my own experiences.
Speaker 8 (26:58):
Do you think that white people should pay rep.
Speaker 11 (27:01):
I have never said that, sir.
Speaker 10 (27:03):
Yes you did. You said it in January of twenty twenty.
You tweeted, yes, the North, yes, all of us, Yes, America, Yes,
our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations, yes
on this day.
Speaker 11 (27:14):
I don't believe that was a reference to fiscal reparations, sir.
Speaker 8 (27:17):
What kind of reparations was it a reference to.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
I think it was just a reference to the idea
that we all owe much to the people who came
before us.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
That's a bizarre way to frame what you tweeted.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
It is a bizarre way to frame, which is we
all know what she was doing. We all know that
she could just say twenty twenty it was a crazy time,
you know. But she's not.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
She's saying and her mannerisms are like, who would believe
this ridiculous stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
That you're saying.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
By the way, if the girl you believed it, it'd
be one thing. If she was like a twenty something
when she traded this, and now she's a forty something
CEO whatever. Even then, I'd be like a kind of
stupid and you should answer for them. But she was
thirty nine. Yeah, I think when she tweeted it, this
is not decade, she was like between thirty seven and
(28:09):
thirty nine years old, Okay, and she's like, oh gosh,
where where did that come from? I mean, it is wild.
I would say it is peak liberal white lady to
really say in January of twenty twenty that you're taking
the day to fully absorb an important book about reparations
and then have to admit under oath you did not
read that book at all. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah, I was kind to read the books.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Come on, like, no, that's what I said. The books
were for the zoom background, they were for reading, and
they were for signaling. She was signaling at that time
it was advantageous to signal that, and now it's become
crazy to signal that, so she has to signal something different,
and she just wants to skip over her own reparations
(28:55):
for the fact that she was a crazy person in
twenty twenty and now is trying to act like, by
the way, The other thing she said was that MPR
has absolutely she's never witnessed political bias in selection of
stories at NPR. And someone confronts her with Uri Berliner,
who left NPR for Free Press, with his stat that
eighty seven of the DC based editorial positions were Democrats,
(29:19):
zero Republicans, and she persisted in saying you did persist. Yeah, nonetheless,
there was no bias. And that is just impossible, incredible,
not worth listening to.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
And the five years she's going to be like, who
said that? What that was half a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
These are supposed to be the thought leaders, right. That's
the thing that they pile on top of this that
makes me so angry is that they're still sitting there like, well, well, well,
in the pristine timing of a lefty, I have come
to the same conclusions that you came to with the
very obvious evidence in front of you five years ago,
whether it's lablic theory or regulation or bias it in PR,
(30:01):
or the stupidity of twenty twenty. And they're like, now
it can be told. And even though you were right
five years earlier, I still think you're stupid and below
I don't appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
I think that again, we'll laugh it off, but it's wrong,
it's wrong. Yeah, we'll be right back on normally. All right,
let's wrap up with a little bit of a later
a little bit of a later segment.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
We're gonna bring it up. We're gonna we're gonna share everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Chapel Ron had some comments, and I think we're gonna.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Roll that clip. All of my friends who have kids
are in hell.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I don't know anyone.
Speaker 12 (30:43):
I actually don't know anyone who's like happy and has
children at this age. I have like like a one
year old, like three year old, four and under five
and under. I don't I literally have not met anyone
who's happy, anyone who has like light in their eyes,
anyone who has who has slept.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I mean maybe they're not sleeping, but the rest of
it is just I you know, I just don't get it.
Because I heard this, I also I was her. I
even looked a little like her. I would say I
believed that having kids was a dead end and that
(31:23):
it would be insane to have children who would want
to do something like that on purpose, Like that's insane,
it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Obviously, it's so much better not to have kids. I
was so wrong. I was so wrong. It's indescribable how
wrong I was. How I have three kids, I wish
we had had four. We just literally ran out of time.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
And it's you know, I can't say every single day
is full of happiness, but every single day is full
of joy.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah, I know. I wanted to talk about this because
I feel like you and I are good can be
good poster children for the fact that this is fun,
and that neither one of us coming up in our
twenties and early thirties with some sort of like tradwife aspirant, right,
you know, like quite the opposite. You know, I always
thought I would have kids. I always sort of planned
(32:10):
to as a default, just because I loved growing up
with my brothers and I always wanted kids and to
them to have siblings. But it has been an unexpected joy,
I think because it is something that you don't experience
until you experience it. And I think a lot of
people say it's hard but rewarding, and that's true too,
(32:32):
But I don't want to miss the part where I
just have a ton of fun with my kids, right,
I mean, they are hilarious and I enjoy hanging out
with them. Took them to the zoo this weekend, took
them to Mountain Mount Vernon last weekend.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I love Mount Vernon.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Just let them run around in a field and be outside.
And I hate that people like Chapelon aren't seeing that
in their lives, and that the folks who listen to
call her Daddy, which is the podcast this was on,
will hear this from a very influential podcaster, you know,
podcast session with a woman that they look up to.
(33:06):
I just don't feel like they have the full information
about the fact that it can be just not just
rewarding and selfless, which it is, and that's a good
lesson to learn, but beautiful and fun and joyful.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Right she's twenty seven. She could clearly change her mind.
At twenty seven, I was very I'm never getting married
or having kids.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I had this whole image of myself that I was
going to be a fancy old lady who wore full
silashes and smoked long cigarettes in the hotel.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You can still be that, you can have it all, No,
I know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It turns out I could totally do that. I could
do that after the kids go to college like it's
going to be fine.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
I think Chapel Road.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Let yourself change your mind if that's the way you go.
Don't hold on to belief so so strongly that you
have when you're young, because things can change at any time.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah, and oh, I wanted to say. I saw a
piece in the Atlantic like two weeks ago that was
in and I think it is one of the problems
with modern parenting and puts people in this place. It
was entitled like I tried baby lead weaning and it
almost destroyed my life. And this is just a philosophy
about how you get your kid from formula or breast
milk onto solid foods. Okay, it's not that big a deal.
(34:18):
You're overthinking it, right. If something like that almost destroyed
your life, I would say stop letting those decisions destroy
your life. Just do it or don't do it, right,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Not that big a deal. It's no a few weeks
of your life. I don't even remember.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I Like when people are like, oh, did you do
baby led weaning, I'm like, I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Did I Like, is that what it was called? I
don't know. And one time I just started feeding them
like baby food and that's that's what happened there.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So yeah, No, I just think people really get so
in their heads and modern parenting is so the demand
is that you be so hands on all times and
entertaining them and like a pretty good dose of eighties
nineties mom is what a lot of.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
For prearranged parenting. Make it happen well.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get
in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally
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