...About Politics (Week of March 10, 2024 - Part One)

Several lessons in giving credit where credit is due and *not* giving blame where it isn't, as well as news about TikTok, Republicans in Congress, and LGBTQ+ news across the country.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
I'm Stephen Monteith, and I'm hereto talk about politics for the week of
March tenth, twenty twenty four.First of all, the first thing that
happened was we entered daylight saving Time. Personally, I'm not a fan of

(00:27):
it. There are efforts in Congressand in the various state legislatures here in
the United States to either make daylightsaving time permanent or to abolish it.

(00:49):
I would prefer if we abolished it. I would rather have an extra hour
of sunlight in the morning than anextra hour of sunlight in the evening.
I believe that. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm autistic and I

(01:10):
just prefer nighttime to be not asbright. Yeah, anyway, if you
have any strong feelings about that oneway or another, feel free to leave
the comments. Okay, there's alot to get to about this last week.

(01:32):
I don't want to take it allin order. I'm going to try
and group these things together based onsome kind of connecting theme between stories,
and I'm going to try to rushthrough them. I know I've said that
in several past podcasts, but I'mreally going to try not to spend too

(01:53):
much time on any one topic here, because, like I said, a
lot happened this last last week,both in the United States and across the
world. So let's so let's tryand go through it through as much of
it as possible. First of all, President Joe Biden was in Milwaukee over

(02:21):
on Wednesday. It was it wasan event. He was talking about several
projects that he was that he waspushing for, and among other things,
he announced a three point three billiondollar funding initiative that was meant to help

(02:46):
reconnect communities that had been split apartby highways and other infrastructure projects in the
past, in the country's past.Now, first of all, the money
for this has already been paid,has already been provided by the infrastructure package

(03:10):
that he managed to get passed inhis first in one of his first big
victories as a president, and bythe Inflation Reduction Act. Now, a
lot of Republicans voted against these.In fact, most Republicans voted against these

(03:35):
laws in Congress. And he wassure to point out that Ron Johnson,
the Senator from Wisconsin where Milwaukee is, if you don't know, that's in
Wisconsin. But he said that RonJohnson voted against these laws, and therefore

(03:57):
I guess trying to preemptively keep himfrom taking credit for any projects that get
funded by it. And that's nota light issue. I mean, there
have been plenty of Republicans who havetried to take credit for projects that have

(04:19):
been funded by this bill before,all across the United States, even though
they voted against it. And PresidentBiden's not wrong in wanting people to give
credit where credit is due. Ifyour congressman and or senator voted against the

(04:40):
money in this bill, then don'tlet them take credit for it. We've
got elections coming up in November.Make sure that you know who supported what
and how it helps you. Now. The one of the big goals for

(05:02):
this particular project and projects in aboutforty other states, is that it will
increase access to healthcare, schools,jobs, places of worship, and other
essential services and opportunities, according toa White House fact sheet. And it

(05:26):
will strengthen communities by covering highways withpublic spaces, creating new transit routes,
adding sidewalks, bridges, bike lanes, and more. And special attention will
be given to areas that were splitby the construction of the federal highway system.

(05:54):
Like I said, this This isaimed at breaking down real, literally
concrete racial barriers that have been literallybuilt into our country. Have you ever
heard the old expression wrongside of thetracks? If you don't know that,

(06:21):
that's not that's not just a figureof speech. There are actual communities where
the wealthy and the poor were separatedintentionally by things like railroad tracks and highway

(06:41):
systems. In fact, some blackand brown communities, they were leveled completely
by the federal highway system, puttingin new roads that completely flattened or in

(07:02):
some cases, merely cut them offfrom the rest of their cities. And
this is one of the things thatthis new initiative is looking to reverse.
It's trying to it's trying to restorethese communities and these cities and towns to

(07:30):
what they should have been this wholetime, into one city where nobody says
they're from the wrong side of thetracks, where that kind of thing never
happens anymore. Now. That wason Wednesday last week. On Saturday,

(07:59):
the President was at the Gridiron Dinner. It's there's in Washington, d C.
The Gridiron Club, and it's ithosts an annual roast, basically the
kind of roast that you know thatthey have on Comedy Central, and it's

(08:24):
it's sort of like the Alfred YSmith Dinner in New York or even the
White House Correspondence dinner, except thistime there are no cameras there. So
I can't just give you a linkto an event, but I can,
but I can tell you some ofwhat the President said there. He took

(08:46):
he took some shots at Donald Trump, of course. He he said,
the big news this week is twocandidates clinched their party's nomination for president.
It's true the primaries we talked aboutSuper Tuesday and all the and all the

(09:13):
states that President Biden and former PresidentTrump won. Well this this last week,
they both officially won enough states tobe considered their party's nominees for this
coming November. And Biden said thattwo candidates clinched their party's nominations. One

(09:41):
candidate is too old mentally unfit tobe president, the others me. He
probably said it funnier than that,or maybe he didn't. I don't know,
but he also said that. Healso talked about the infrastructure laws.

(10:07):
Just like in Milwaukee on Wednesday,he said they take credit for one of
the biggest infrastructure laws but voted againstit, and I'm the one confused.
He also went on to say thatin the coming months, Kamala and I
will be making the case how Americansare better off than four years ago,

(10:30):
how we got so much though thepandemic, so much through the pandemic,
turned around the economy, re establishedAmerica's leadership in the world, all without
encouraging the American people to inject bleach. This was a reference to how when

(10:52):
Donald Trump was still president in twentytwenty that he held a press conference and
he literally on camera. You canyou actually can watch this. He on
camera, he turns to one ofthe scientists who's who's on his task force

(11:15):
to deal with the pandemic and asksher about the possibilities of injecting bleach into
our veins in order to in orderto clean them out. Wow, I
mean four years later, I stillhave trouble believing he said it myself,

(11:37):
but he really did. And andlike Biden said, Trump's mentally unfit to
be president. He went on toto talk about some more some more serious
matters. He talked about Adamir Putin, who were definitely going to to be

(12:03):
getting into in this podcast. Hesaid He said that uh he well,
the Ukrainian ambassador Oksana Markova and theEstonian Prime Minister Kadja Kalis were in the

(12:24):
in the in attendance there, andhe said, we will not bow down.
They will not bow down, andI will not bow down. He
talked about how how that was oneof the threats in Europe, but that
one of the threats at home wasthe threat remains. There is poison coursing

(12:52):
through the veins of our democracy.And he accused Donald Trump of vilifying the
press. That shouldn't be too hardfor people to believe. Donald Trump talks
all the time about how terrible thepress are. He says, he calls
you the enemy of the people,even as many of you risk your life

(13:13):
and do your job and sometimes evengive your life to do your jobs.
He said that the United States isdoing everything we can to bring home reporters
like Aaron and Gershkowitz and Austin Ticein America, one of them is imprisoned

(13:39):
in Russia for the last year,and another who went missing in Syria quite
some time ago. He said,let me state the obvious. You are
not the enemy of the people.You are a pillar of any free society.
And I may not always agree withyour coverage or admire it, but

(14:03):
I do admire your courage. Goodjournalism holds a mirror up to a country
for us to reflect the good,the bad, the truth about who we
are. This is not hyperbole.We need you. Democracy is at risk

(14:24):
and the American people need to knowa lot of the things he said there
were echoes of what he had saidin the State of the Union a week
before. I already covered that onmy podcast. One of the things I

(14:45):
didn't cover about the State of theUnion was the Republican response to it.
Senator Katie Britt from a from Alabama. She's the youngest Republican woman ever elected

(15:05):
to the Senate, and she's kindof not really known as somebody who's the
face of the party. You don'tsee her giving a lot of speeches,
so it may have been so itmay not have been much of a surprise

(15:28):
to anyone. That's her response tothe State of the Union is seen as
a bomb. Basically, a lotof people have made fun of her for
being for not giving a very goodresponse. Now, I don't like to

(15:50):
I don't like to talk about thingslike that. I don't like to criticize
people for not being good performers,for not being good in front of the
camp or the microphone. I mean, you can just listen to me talk
and know that I'm that I'm notvery good at that kind of thing myself.

(16:11):
And I don't even like to harpon things like Trump making misstatements or
being confused or mentally unfit, asJoe Biden said earlier, because I don't
think it's right to point out thosekinds of things unless they're directly related somehow

(16:37):
to the job that they're doing.And believe me, we will get into
Donald Trump's speaking later on, butfor right now, I want to talk
about something that Katie Britt said thatdoes deserve a response, does deserve some

(17:00):
scrutiny. See, she claimed inher speech that a woman had shared a
story with her of being sex traffickedby drug cartels, and and she placed

(17:22):
the blame for it squarely on JoeBiden. It was it was clearly meant
to arouse anger about the about theabout the state of illegal immigration in this

(17:44):
country, and Republicans love to harpon that kind of thing. But as
it turns out, the woman whosestory she was really to us. She
felt compelled afterwards to speak out herself. She said that not only did all

(18:12):
this happen twenty years ago when aRepublican George W. Bush was president,
but it happened in a completely differentcountry. The woman, Carla Jacento is
now an anti sex trafficking advocate,and she's very displeased with the Senator for

(18:34):
having used her story this way,and we all should be because, just
like I said, we need togive credit where credit is due. We
shouldn't be trying to assign blame whereit isn't due. And it's especially grotesque
to try and pin the blame forsomething like this on Joe Biden when Donald

(18:56):
Trump has already been found owned legallyto have committed sexual assault himself. The
Senator went on TV after this andbasically claimed that, well, she never
said it was a recent story,so we shouldn't hold that against her.

(19:21):
But clearly she meant for us tothink that it was sticking to Congress for
a little bit. We got somenews out of the House of Representatives this
last week. Ken Buck, aRepublican from Colorado, is leaving the House

(19:47):
of Representatives. He's not just retiringhe's not just saying he won't run for
reelection. He's leaving like soon,like within the next couple of weeks.
Now. He's He's had some interestingthings to say about the Republican Party since

(20:15):
he announced his retirement, and i'dget into it, but I'm really,
I'm really just kind of fed upwith Republicans who only say this kind of
stuff after they've decided to retire.I mean, Mett Romney has had plenty

(20:36):
of stuff to say about members ofhis party before he decided not to run
for reelection. As you know,he's the only Republican in the Senate to
have voted to remove Trump from officetwice. And Liz Cheney, she sat

(20:57):
on the January sixth Committee and investigatednot just Donald Trump, but plenty of
other Republicans as well, including manyof her colleagues in the House of Representatives,
and she was far from retiring.She had to be forced out of

(21:18):
her seat. First, she hadto be forced out of her leadership positions,
and then she had to be forcedout by Donald Trump endorsing a primary
challenger to her. And she andMitt Romney are sterling examples of the kind

(21:40):
of integrity that a congress person shouldhave they should stand up to their party
while they're still there. Now,ken buck leaving has already sparked plenty of

(22:02):
interest for the fact that it's goingto shrink the Republicans already raisor thin majority
in the House, and that's affecteda lot of people's plans for the future.
I mean, it was hard enoughfor Republicans to get anything done,

(22:23):
you know, this time last yearwhen they had a small but clear majority.
But we've been having votes lately wherelike where like just three or four
Republicans will vote with Democrats, andthat's thrown off a lot of plans.

(22:45):
So for one more Republican to justup and leave, it's going to be
even harder now there was a andthat's especially going to be that's especially going

(23:08):
to make things difficult if Republicans keeptrying to impeach Joe Biden, which they've
been trying to do for I meanliterally since he became president, before he
had a chance to do anything impeachworthy. But now, I mean they're just

(23:30):
trying to throw any kind of anykind of dirt adam that they can.
And they even brought in Robert herto testify before a committee they had,

(23:52):
he's a special counsel that was investigatingJoe Biden for having for having classified documents
at his residence. This was after, of course, it was discovered that
Donald Trump had boxes and boxes andboxes of classified documents at his residence,

(24:17):
and then we found out that JoeBiden had a few at his own from
when he from when he had beenvice president. And Robert Hurr had issued
a report last month that said,basically, there was no reason to suspect

(24:42):
that there was anything nefarious going on, and he said basically that even if
Joe Biden had been indicted and broughtto trial, that the jury would sympathize
with them because he comes across asjust, uh, just a charming old

(25:06):
man with a poor memory. Nownow that that those last two words there,
poor memory, it's it's obvious itobviously it obviously had some Democrats panicking

(25:27):
a bit there, maybe even thePresident himself, because that's the image they've
been fighting against this whole time.But but Republicans in the House just couldn't
leave well enough alone. They hadto to bring Robert her in and try

(25:48):
to get him to say on therecord that he felt not only was Biden
senile, but that he was acriminal as well. Well. Not only
did Robert her say that he doesnot believe Joe Biden is senile, he
only said that that's how said thatthe poor memory thing would probably be brought

(26:12):
up as a defense in a trial, and that a jury could easily believe
that. But he also said thatthere are that there were material differences between
Biden's case and Trump's case. Andthat's true because when it was discovered that

(26:33):
Biden might have some at his place, he basically said to the FBI,
no, go in there, lookall around. Anything you find you can
have. And in Trump's case,the FBI had to get an actual search
warrant to go in. And evenat that, there was plenty of evidence

(26:56):
that Donald Trump had moved some ofthe documents out of his Mar A Lago
home, and believe me, we'llbe getting into that later on too.
So basically, now it's on recordthat a special counsel, a Republican,
a conservative Republican special counsel, ison record testifying before Congress as saying that

(27:23):
not only is Joe Biden not senile, but that there is no reason to
indict him while there is a reasonfor Donald Trump to be indicted. This
hearing was one big waste of timeon their part. It was also a

(27:45):
bit of a waste of time onDemocrats' parts because they tried to because they
tried to get Robert her to testifyabout a bunch of things about Donald Trump
that had nothing to do with thewith the investigation into Joe Biden. But

(28:08):
I mean, it was just massivepolitical theater on both sides. It was
really a case of both of them. Both sides were acting like big babies
about the whole thing, just tryingto throw any kind of dirt they could
find, and frankly, all ofthem should be ashamed of it. Congress

(28:40):
did the House of Representatives did manageto come together on another issue, TikTok.
Now, the first thing I wantto say here is I've never used
TikTok. I've watched maybe a coupleof TikTok videos when one of my friends

(29:06):
has sent me something from their TikTokaccount, but I just don't watch them.
I don't like how every time there'sa discrimination uh incident on TikTok,
or a harassing or a bullying incidenton TikTok, that TikTok always seems to

(29:30):
side with the bullies rather than thepeople who are being bullied. You should
look up the you should look upthe words autism challenge, because that was
one of the more disgusting things thatever happened on TikTok, and it took
them forever to try and actually doanything about it. But that's not what

(29:57):
the House of Representatives was worried about. The House is worried that that TikTok
is owned by a company that isowned by the Chinese government. Except it's
really not. You see, look, it's it's very difficult to get into

(30:25):
but really the point is that theHouse thinks, and and plenty of both
Republicans and Democrats in the House,I think that TikTok is a massive national
security issue because for all the informationthat that people that American citizens give,

(30:55):
either inadvertently or purposefully to TikTok,that it's just a treasure trove for the
Chinese government if they if they gettheir hands on all that information. So
they basically voted overwhelmingly to to forceTikTok either to be owned by an American

(31:25):
or an American company or a groupof Americans or to have it be banned
here in the United States. PresidentBiden has said that he'll sign this law,
but it's not so clear whether theSenate is actually going to pass it.

(31:47):
See a bill has to be passedin both the House and the Senate,
and the Senate is working on itsown solutions for TikTok personal I don't
think this is the best solution myself. I mean, when it comes to

(32:10):
a foreign government owning or like Isaid, it doesn't really own it,
but potentially having access to an applike this, if you're going to if
you're going to worry about the differentthe different security concerns for it, why

(32:35):
would selling it to an American reallybe that much of a solution. I
mean, if somebody wants to buyall that personal information, we already know
that it can be bought. Therewas, and even if that information isn't

(33:07):
isn't being sold by the company itself, that just means that the Chinese government
or some other foreign government would justhave to work a little bit harder to
harvest it all themselves, because,let's face it, we put that information

(33:29):
out there. Try googling yourself sometime, try seeing what information you have put
out there into the world and seehow much of it is freely available.
There are ways. There are waysto prevent companies from selling your data,

(33:57):
either in the case of the FacebookCambridge Analytica data scandal, or just in
the hypothetical case that TikTok may sellit to the Chinese government. There are
ways to deal with that. Besidesforcing an app that so many people use

(34:21):
not just for entertainment but for theirown personal businesses, there are better ways
than shutting that app down if it'snot owned by an American. Are we
going to demand that all social mediaapps be owned by Americans? Are we

(34:43):
going to demand a law that saysis ex Twitter and Twitch and Facebook and
and all the other ones out thereare only ever owned by Americans and American
companies. Imagine how the world isgoing to react to that. Anyway,

(35:21):
let's try and move on this.Not much time left here in this particular
episode, I'll probably do a parttwo. That's probably what I'll do.
But first of all, before Iwrap up this episode, I want to

(35:43):
talk about some LGBTQ plus news.Now. First of all, here in
Virginia, just this last week,the legislature sent a whole bunch of new
legislation to our Governor Glenn Youngkin tosign, and one of those pieces of

(36:08):
legislation was codifying same sex marriage herein the Commonwealth, and he signed it.
That just goes to show you thatlocal elections do matter. It matters
who you vote for for your statelegislative offices. We just had local elections

(36:34):
last November and they've already codified samesex marriage into law here in Virginia.
So wherever you are in the UnitedStates, wherever you are in the world,
just know that your local leaders,your local politicians, they do matter.

(37:00):
Make sure you know who they areand what their positions are, because
if you don't pay that much attentionto them, you could end up getting
you could end up getting state legislaturesthat pass things like Florida's don't Say Gay

(37:23):
law, And there's some news aboutthat too. That was a pretty awkward
segue there, I guess. Butthat don't say gay law has been challenged
in courts based on its based onits vagueness. There's some there's some pretty

(37:45):
vague language in the law itself,and Republicans in Florida have tried to defend
it based on this vagueness saying,well, it doesn't say that you can't
say gay, but then again,it doesn't say that you can there so
a lot of the so a lotof the law was challenged in court and

(38:07):
struck down, and the upshot.The result of all that is now students
and teachers in Florida can discuss thingslike sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms

(38:28):
as long as it's not formal instruction. They can speak and write freely about
orientation and identity in classroom discussions,in essays, in projects. They can
have books in the school that havegay characters in them. They can have

(38:52):
LGBTQ clubs and alliances in the schools. But the law still forbids outright teaching
about LGBTQ topics, and books,including textbooks that have instructional text about these
topics, are also forbidden. Nowthat does mean that courses like sociology and

(39:19):
ap African American history, which hasa queer theory unit, are still out
But and that's that's obviously a badthing. I mean, when I was
in school, it was it wasjust part of sex, said, I
mean, you talked about you talkedabout reproduction, you talked about the body

(39:43):
parts, and you talked about thefact that gay people exist and that people
of different orientations, you know,prefer different things. I don't recall us
talking about trans people specifically. Thiswas almost thirty years ago, but we

(40:04):
did talk about gays and lesbians andbisexuals, and it was just normal classroom
instruction and that's forbidden now in Floridaschools, and that's just nonsensical. I
mean, our teachers didn't say thatgay people were better or worse than us.

(40:29):
They just said that they existed.And that really seems like common sense,
doesn't it. Anyway. That's that'swhy I say it's important to have
a knowledge of who's running in yourstate and what their views are on these

(40:52):
kinds of things, because there areripple effects to these kinds of laws.
Other states are are looking to howthe Florida law is unfolding, what the
repercussions of it are, what thechallenges to it are, and and they're

(41:17):
taking it as instructional about how theyshould proceed with their own laws. There
are plenty of states that have antiLGBTQ laws, and they have plans for
many more. So it's important thatyou keep that in mind. When choosing
who gets to write the laws inyour states, and of course who gets

(41:43):
to write about them in Washington.Okay, I think that's all I'm going
to do for this first half ofthis. There's a lot more to go
and I really do want to talkabout some of these other topics. So

(42:04):
yes, I am going to doa part two to this, so keep
your eyes open for that. Thankyou for listening.