Castle Magus

"Hi. On today's episode, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan discuss the Trump administration's ongoing, lawless kidnappings, Kilmar Abrego Garcia and other disappeared individuals, and why Democrats should not avoid this issue. They also talk about Elon Musk's weird 'legion' compound and RFK Jr's offensive comments about people with autism."

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This is the first time I've watched an episode of the extra podcast associated with Some More News. I might start making this a regular thing. Maybe. I'd almost prefer it to the official show, in many respects. Certainly way less puppets (well, aside from Warmbo being creepily in the background of every fullscreen shot with Cody, anyway) and skits, at any rate.

Yeah, I read an article about Senator Chris Van Hollen's trip to El Salvador to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the last sentence in that article was "Some high-profile Democrats have opted to keep the focus on the economic backlash to Trump's sweeping tariffs, which polling suggests is much more of a political liability to the president than his ongoing efforts to deport immigrants." Which is just asinine. Come on, guys, you can uselessly, performatively hand-wring and pearl-clutch about more than just one thing at a time, you know, you fucking milquetoast namby-pambies.

Ah... so that is real reason why Elon Musk bought Twitter? How fucking bizarre and putrid.

Also, holy shit, I've never actually heard RFK Jr. talk before. I mean, I kind of wanted to make fun of it, because RFK Jr. is a fucking ghoul, but I looked up the reason why, and I'm not going to mock the guy for having a neurological disorder. I'm not (thank the heavens) Donald Trump, after all. Besides, there's plenty of other things to mock RFK Jr. for, such as his completely dumbshit, vile beliefs about vaccines and autism.

"Hi. Uh oh! In this episode – which we wrote and shot before the current tariff/market troubles – we look at how the U.S. and other nations measure economic success, and how that often doesn't square with our individual experiences of The Economy."

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(Yes, I foresee that many future episodes will likely need a "Sorry, but we recorded this video before Trump went and made things even worse" disclaimer in front of it. Even without taking the most recent, even worse bullshit into consideration, though, the above video is still fucking dire.)

So people thought the economy was terrible during Biden's presidency, when it actually wasn't that bad? Gee, I wonder, could that be because Donald Trump and Donald Trump's asinine lickspittles spewed lies about it for four solid years (and, you know, actively torpedoed it during the previous four solid years [thanks in part to COVID and to Trump's abysmally nadiral response to COVID], as a kind of practice run for what they're doing now)? Yes, that is why.

And yeah, none of that really matters that much, because bragging that inflation is going down is, indeed, kind of like bragging that the amount of piss in the soup you serve is going down. Even if you weren't the one who pissed in all the soup to begin with. People are still going to blame you for serving piss-filled soup. And then, you know, maybe reelect the original soup-pisser, so that he can now not only piss in the soup but straight up take a diarrhetic shit in it, too. For some reason.

Or maybe we can switch up the metaphor from piss soup to instead be about a train speeding in the wrong direction, which Biden managed to slow down but not actually stop. A Trump Train, if you will. That works, too. And now, that guy has been put back in the driver's seat, again. Go goddamned figure.

I'll just say it, again (same as Cody says it here). If the economy was "good" under Trump (until he wrecked it), it was thanks to Obama. And if the economy was "bad" under Biden (until he kind of almost sort of fixed it but not really), it was "thanks" to Trump. And if the economy is "good" under Trump II... nah, I can't even finish that, because he hasn't even completed his "first 100 days" yet, and he's already fucking launched a trilithium missile at the economy. I wonder if Trump thinks the Nexus is going to absorb him as a result. Who knows? Trump is a delusional motherwannabe-daughterfucker, after all. In any case, he'll be leaving behind a shattered economy, regardless.

Democrats, generally, are better for the economy than the GQP is. Yet... we keep electing GQP dumbshits to positions of power. Why is that? *shrug* I'unno. I guess because, as Cody says, what the Democrats do is good, but not good enough. And, thus, fickle voters kick them out to give the other side a try, again, even though the other side has been consistently, demonstrably worse, every time. The only thing that has been truly consistent throughout the past 3 or 4 decades or more, though, is that the obscenely rich have gotten obscenely richer and the downtrodden poor have gotten more downtrodden and more poor. Prices continue to creep up and wages continue to remain mostly stagnant. And yeah, there are way more subscription services (and all that other stuff that Cody mentioned) than there used to be. *eye roll, but not really*

People (wrongly) see Trump as the solution to "the bigger picture," even though he clearly has made, clearly is making, and clearly will continue to make everything so very much worse. Because he's a liar and a grifter and a conman and a criminal who only cares about one person, and that person is Donald Trump. And he's also a complete and total fucking dumbass who has absolutely zero clue what the hell he's doing, being coattails-ridden and heavily influenced by vile, disgusting, evil shitsmears on the underwear of humanity who absolutely do know what they're doing, and what they're doing is vile, disgusting, and evil. There's that, too. (And that's not even bringing Putin into the picture, though that, too, is definitely a factor in play here. Very little would tickle Putin's pecker than to see the US economy bottom out as a direct result of the actions taken by his obvious puppet.)

Anyway, yeah, an economy based on all growth, all the time, is completely unsustainable in the long run. But... well, as long as it makes billionaires even richer in the short run... what can the rest of us do about it? *shrug* (Hmm, I wonder when Some More News will do a two-hour episode about Peter Thiel. Assuming they haven't already and I just missed it.)

Okay, let's go over this bit by bit, with a preemptive, hearty "Piss off" to Lindsey Graham.

( Ranting behind cut )

"Hi. Right-wing politicians, lawyers, and grifters (and some liberals) want to convince you that trans youth are the victims of a social contagion and that the majority of those who transition will detransition. This is a lie that puts all trans people at risk."

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Are you a woman who, as a child, played soccer or climbed a tree, or are you a man who, as a child, might have touched a Barbie doll once or twice, but now that you are an adult, you don't do those things anymore? Well then, congratulations on detransitioning, I guess. </sarcasm>

Anyway, I think David Lynch said it best when it comes to anti-trans "clown comics": they need to fix their hearts or die. (Yes, that was David Duchovny reprising his earlier, pre-Fox Mulder role as Denise Bryson in a brief cameo for season 3 of Twin Peaks. Granted, the character of Denise Bryson may not have been the perfect representation of a trans person, and not just because she was played by a non-trans actor. But for 1990? It was still pretty damn good, and way ahead of its time.)

"Trump taps Musk to lead a 'Department of Government Efficiency' with Ramaswamy"

"Trump to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary"

I'll just paraphrase the same things I said eight years ago: it seems like Trump is deliberately seeking out the people who are demonstrably the absolutely very least qualified to do a given thing and then making them heads of departments based entirely on said thing. I think it's about a 50/50 chance that he's actually doing it intentionally or that he's just that big of a supreme fucking dumbass. More likely both of those things simultaneously.

Seriously, what about Elon Musk implies anything even remotely close to "efficiency"? And a Faux Noise talking head involved with government in any way whatsoever, let alone Secretary of goddamn Defense, is just batshit fucking insane. But then, this is Donald Trump, after all. Par for the course, as proven by 2017-2021.

"John Oliver discusses the attempts made by Donald Trump and his supporters to undermine the upcoming election, what we can expect after election night, and the greatest 'I voted' sticker of all time."

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Yeah, that werewolf sticker was pretty great. Good, funny start to the video, with that.

Then... Trump. Just... Trump. *weary fucking sigh* I'll just say, yet again, that if Trump loses, it will be despite all the cheating (on his behalf, naturally), rather than because of it. Essentially, Trump saying the "other side" is cheating is just yet another example of Trumpish projection/hypocrisy/lying. This whole video was basically nothing but example after example after example of Trumpish projection/hypocrisy/lying, either by Trump himself or by people conned into believing that Dumbshit Jackass Trump somehow isn't a putrid puddle of disgusting diarrhea badly masquerading as a human being.

(EDIT) Here, at least, is some marginally good news, at least as far as that asinine, dumbfucking "hand-counting" thing in Georgia goes. (/EDIT)

"Hi. The GOP really wants to win elections, and they're trying to make that happen by removing people from voter rolls, making it harder to vote, and contesting the results if they lose."

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As I've said, many times before, if Donald Trump loses, it will be despite all the cheating (on his behalf, obviously), not because of it.

I am wholly in favor of collectively describing all of this putrid dogshit with the new verb "gop" or "gopping." They really are trying to gop the election this year.

(EDIT) And yeah, the GQP going out of their way to try to prevent convicted felons from voting... ...while literally letting one run for POTUS at the top of their ticket... ...it's just... ... ... what. (/EDIT)

(No Katy [outside of ads, which I skip], no Warmbo [aside from the merch-shilling at the end], and no finger puppets [anywhere] in this one. This time, thankfully, it was just Cody talking into the camera for 50 minutes, with the occasional film clip of GQP dumbfucks saying GQP dumbfuck things, to spice things up. And all was right with the universe.)

"Hi. Today we're looking at flash-in-the-pan stories – some real problems we simply ignored, and others that were total nonsense to begin with."

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I have very little to say about the above video that I haven't already said before.

"Hi. Today, we will teach Jordan Peterson how the GOP turned climate science into a 'debate' with two sides, and show him what we can do to mitigate the worst outcomes. Are you paying attention, Jordan?!"

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Follow up to part one, of course.

You know what? By the end of this video, I was starting to think that maybe it wasn't entirely about Jordan Peterson, or even mostly about Jordan Peterson, or even slightly about Jordan Peterson, except for the occasional reminder that Jordan Peterson is, in fact, a person who exists, who also happens to be a stupid fucking idiot and/or a stupid fucking liar.

At least there was no threatpromise of a third part to this series that was specifically and only about Jordan Peterson. I do think there might be more SMN videos on the topic of climate change[1] in the future, though, oddly enough. Weird, that.

[1] - Or "global warming," if you prefer, since it was apparently the Republicans/Conservatives/GQP who mandated the change from talking about "global warming" to talking about "climate change," because "global warming" scares and enrages them (and also because they are dumbshit liars), rather than the Democrats/Liberals/Not Reality Deniers making the change because talking about "global warming" "wasn't working" or whatever dumbshit lies the former have been telling about the latter for the past two or three decades now. Doesn't (much) matter what it's called, though; it's still a thing that definitely exists and is absolutely happening now, regardless.

"Former Senator Claire McCaskill, Former Congressman David Jolly and Vaughn Hillyard, NBC News Correspondent join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with a look at the evolution that Trump’s running mate JD Vance has made as he has tried to get in the good graces of Donald Trump and the far right base of the MAGA movement in the Republican party."

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(EDIT)

Let's actually list what JD Vance has said about Trump here, according to the above video (for those who may not care to watch a MSNBC video), and a few others from other sources that weren't included in that video:

"I'm a Never Trump guy."

"Never liked him."

"Terrible candidate."

"Idiot if you voted for him."

"Might be America's Hitler."

"Might be a cynical asshole."

"Cultural heroin."

"Noxious and reprehensible."

"My god what an idiot."

"I can't stomach Trump."

"Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man."

I mean... where are the lies there? I see nothing in those statements that falsely describe Donald Trump in any way.

(/EDIT)

The gist here is that JD Vance is a guy who, in the past, described Donald Trump very harshly and very accurately, but who, apparently, has since decided that he actually likes providing moisture via his tongue to Trump's tumescent, encrusted asshole. Or, at least, Vance is doing a very good job of pretending to like it now. (And yeah, Mike Pence is pretty much persona non grata as far as the whole of the GQP is concerned now, all because Pence, for once, only at the very ass-end, decided that he was not going to aid and abet the crimes of Trump anymore.)

Also, all that stuff about all those hilariously terrible (and completely true) things JD Vance said about Trump aside, keep in mind that what they talk about throughout this video (i.e. the Jan 6 insurrection) is the same stuff for which the Supreme Court deemed Donald Trump was above the law, and that literally fomenting insurrection against the United States government apparently counts as "official acts" of a sitting President for which he cannot be held accountable.