Observations: The Qando Podcast

Our sick culture isn't getting any better. And that's true of both our political and popular culture. Dale and Michale take a long tour through the present morass.

The Mueller investigation has not reached a stage where we can definitively say that Donald Trump either did, or did not, collude with Russia to win the election. Russia is playing a dangerous game in Ukraine. Saudi journalist Jamil Kashoggi is still dead. So, it the Republican Party, though not everyone seems to know it yet.

A Federal judge ordered the White House to allow CNN's Jim Acosta back into the press room, so he can resume yelling "Look at me!" Florida's close elections have exposed more media double-standards. What is up with our culture?

The election 2018 Midterm election is over...well...mainly. It seill seems to be going on in Arizona, as ballots there are apparently delivered by ox cart and stagecoach, and in Florida, as ballots there are manufactu--I mean, carefully counted. Nancy Pelosi is set to take over as Speaker of the house, on the back of the Democrats' 40-ish plus seat gain. we can now look forward to two years of little legislation, but highly-entertaining investigations of Donald Trump.

The election is coming up on Tuesday, and there's general agreement that we have no idea what the congressional result will be. Contra Max Boot and Tom Nichols, both parties need to face a massive defeat at the hands of the voters. The caravan of "migrants" draws ever closer. There is some controversy over whether birthright citizenship required by the 14th Amendment. The odd double standard the media has about unacceptable rhetoric, based on who uses that rhetoric, is getting harder to ignore.

A Florida man sent out packages contains bombs--or pseudo bombs; it's not entirely clear--to CNN, President Obama, and others who've been on the receiving end of President Trump's rhetoric. Crazy people gonna crazy, but it's all Trump's fault anyway. Megyn Kelly was forced to undergoe a mandatory self-criticism session publicly on NBC, before being booted off of NBC and being sent to the employment equivalent of a re-education camp. The lesson being: never apologize, because it's pointless. The Progressive Left doesn't want your apology. They want your career destroyed for committing heresy. Feminist game developer Jessica Price was fired from ArenaNet because, as she says, she refused to let men own her. But, as everyone else says, she publicly went off on the company's customers on Twitter. There is a caravan of 7,000 migrants walking through Mexico to the US border. How they are eating, drinking, and going poo every day is a complete mystery.

Saudi Arabia finally admitted that Jamil Kashoggi dies after a "fight broke out". Also, it was a rogue operation, of which they're getting to the bottom. COngressman Justin Amash, however, is apparently certain he knows what happened, so he has introduced a bil to cancel arms sales to the kingdom. Three weeks before the election. Elizabeth Warren took a DNA test that she says proves that she had native American ancestry, though it is about half of what the average white person has. Listeners were...unimpressed. We survey the upcoming election, and some of the races, We hope Democrats keep sending money--and lots of it--to 'Beto' O'Rourke. Maybe China doesn't want political freedom. We remain perpelexed at how Donald Trump manages to be effective at implementing policy.

We return after a 1-week hiatus to spike the football over Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court. The Left isn't happy about this whole thing, of course, as you can tell from the unending wailing and gnashing of teeth that is still going on. Hopefully this craziness will cause voters to force the Democrats back to more reasonable positions than eliminating due process. The press' behavior during this whole affair has been...clarifying. Saudi Arabia is playing a dangerous game.

The Senate had another hearing with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. Other accusations, like Kavanaugh running a teen gang-rape ring weren't addressed. Thankfully. President Trump either did or did not fire Rod Rosenstein, who did or did not resign. Whatever happened, Rosenstein still has a job. Trump was in NY at the UN this week, where he told them, essentially, that the US would cooperate with the UN any time it was in the US's interests.

Basically, this turned into the Kavanaugh confirmation podcast. Sure, we touched on the "Rosenstein offered to bug Trump" story and whatnot, but the level of duplicity and dishonesty surrounding the Kavanaugh nomination really takes the cake for this episode.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she has a secret letter that says Brett Kavanaugh may have committed a criminal act 35 years ago as a teenager. We don't know what the act was, who was involved, or anything else, but she turned it over to the FBI for a criminal investigation, arguing that Kavanaugh can't be confirmed while the subject of a sriminal investigation. The FBI declined to investigate. This has every appearance of a dirty trick. A study indicates that many, many people died in Puerto Rico as a result of the hurricane. The methodology seems...suspect. Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to fail harder. If only they had implemented socialism correctly.

Former President Obama had sharp words for the politics of division. Coming from a president of the party that created identitity poliics, that seemed a bit rich. When I was kind, the circus consisted of an audience of normals watching clowns in the ring. For the Kavanauch hearings, it seems like the normal person is in the ring, surrounded by clowns. Nike made Colin Kaepernick the center of their their new, big marketing campaign, implying that his stand on the flag made him sacrified his football career. In reality, he sacrificed his football career by not having the skill--and having too much arrogance--to sustain it. Twitter finally permabanned Alex Jones and InfoWars. Which is probably exactly what Alex Jones wanted.

John McCain passed away this week. The man was a great soldier. Let's leave it at that. An enormous muber of has-beens and nobodies are preparing thier 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Donald Trump, while still a toxic, naricssistic buffoon, remains a master of pushing the media's buttons. The 2018 election will probably result in a Democratic majority in the House, which won't be able to prevent themselves from impeaching Donald Trump.

This week, Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer, plead guilty to campaign finance violations, among other things, while other Trump associates were given immunity from prosecution in return for their testimoney about...something. Healthline, a San Francisco based health web site, started using the term "front hole" for the vaginas of trans men. The US government is broken, and anti-establishment candidates are becoming more prevalent. A foreign listener has chided us for not offering solutions to the things we talk about. The solutions, of course, are both simple, and a practical impossibility. China is starting to act like they are a--perhaps the only--future superpower.

The media requested the identities of the jurors in the Paul Manafort trial, from a judge who has received threats and requires US Marshal protection as a result. It's hard to discount the idea that doxxing the jurors is an attempt to open them up to outside...um...influence. Former CIA chief John Brennan's security clearance was pulled by the Trump administration. Brennan claimed that this was an attempt to violate his freedom of speech in an Op-Ed article he penned for the nation's largest newspaper, the New York Times. The loon shouters are winning the Internet..or, at least, social media. Democrats are accusing Judge Kavanaugh of lying to the Senate when he said the confirmation of a Bush-era Federal judge was not primarily his responsibility, because when the administration wanted to have a meeting about the judge, Kavanaugh reserved the conference room. Michigan state Senate candidate Betty Cook Scott, running against Stephanie Chang, urged her constituents against voting for the "ching-chong". We'll ne

After a week's hiatus, we return to talk about the story of the Muslim radical who built a compound in New Mexico to teach 11 kids how to conduct school shootings. Have you heard about it much? Because, if it was a conservative doing it, there'd be wall-to-wall coverage of it. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortex, our countries dumbest new political rising star, was offered $10,000 by Ben Shapiro if she'd debate him. She said he was just catcalling. Sarah Jeong, despite years worth of racist tweets, was given a job at the New York Times. Kevin Williamson was unavailable for comment. Ms. Jeong, BTW, despite the virulent racism of American society, has now attended two Ive League universities, and been elevated to the editorial staff the nation's most important newspaper, all before reaching 30 years of age. Alex Jones, of Infowars fame, has been deplatformed from Google and Facebook. Presumably, he'll now have more time to investigate the phenomena of water-borne flouride making the frogs gay. Finally, the Trump Administra

Michael and dale have a wide and far-ranging, not to say disjointed conversation about all the things.

The Mueller probe moved forward and granted immunity to Tony Podesta, the Democrats' Paul Manafort. Seems legit. Trump and Putin met in Russia, where Trump handled questions about Russia's interference in the 2016 election pretty much like he handles everything...inartfully. But, he was nice to Vladimir Putin, so he must have committed treason, because reasons. Reminder: Donald Trump wasn't president during the 2016 election. True story. Also, Hillary Clinton will never be president of the United States. The news media's sole purpose in the era of Trump--on both sides--seems to be the manufacture of outrage. Disney summarily dismissed James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy. It seems that in 2010, he made some jokes in bad taste. Clearly, his career must be ended immediately. Either that, or people need to calm down.

Peter Strzok...Szchtrok....Stroczk...whatever his name is, testified before Congress this week, so we finally got a look at him. His performance as the movie villain was just too over-the-top for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story. Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to go to the Supreme Court and roll back Constitutional rights to the Colonial Era, apparently. Donald Trump went to the NATO Summit, called them a bunch of freeloaders, and demanded they pay up, like Ray Liotta in "Goodfellas". He now goes to Finnald to genuflect before Vladimir Putin and give the Russians Alaska back, by all accounts. As usual, this week, it was all about Russia, Russia, Russia, with the DoJ essentially indicting Russian Military Intelligence for crimes that will never go to trial. So, we now have TWO indictments from Mueller's team for which which no arraignments or trials will ever occur. British lefties unveiled their "Hindenberg-sized" Trump Parody balloon. And, by "Hindenburg-sized" they apparently meant, "about 5 feet

An adult assaulted a 16 year-old for wearing a MAGA hat. In Texas. Hilarity ensued. Scott Pruitt left the EPA. Also, we just talked about a lot of different stuff. It's kind of a potpourri episode.