897 - Urquellization (1/6/25)

All I wanna be is El Joco.

All I wanna be is El Joco.

Breathing

on Tampa Solos.

All I wanna

All right,

back at it in 2025.

It's had a few weeks off, but it's back to the content minds.

And the OG Dry Boys, we are riding again today.

It is me, Will, Felix, and Matt.

Fellas, welcome to 2025.

Welcome back.

Let's hit it hard.

Guess I'll start off.

America rang in the new year for 2025 with the traditional American fashion with two terrorist attacks carried out by currently serving or former U.S.

Army soldiers.

Now, I will say that our Thursday episode that we have scheduled for this week is going to be a much deeper dive into these terror attacks and sort of the general culture of the U.S.

military and its great army bases like Fort Bragg.

But

just to kick things off, I I don't know how you guys felt.

I don't have too much to say about these terror attacks off the top of my head, but I will say the fact that the Vegas guy, the guy who blew up a cyber truck in front of the Trump Hotel in Vegas, name, the fact that his name is literally Life is Burger.

I know his name is Liville's Burger or something, but when you read it, it looks like Life is Burger.

And I thought, you know, what are they doing?

What are they doing?

That's what Gomer Pyle would say before killing himself in Hartman if full metal jacket was made.

I command like um private pile today, they would kick him out of the marines for being underweight,

and uh you know they would go, You're too you're too skinny.

Uh, what are your pronouns?

Because the military's woke now,

and he would he would get mad about that, and he would go, Life is just a fucking burger, and kill himself in the drill instructor.

I am in a world of burger.

Hi, Joker.

Would you like burger?

I mean,

the only joke I've come up with about the New Year's terrorist attacks is

the years of bread.

That's all I've got so far.

It's pretty good.

Yeah.

But

yeah,

I don't know.

There are some interesting details about

both of the men involved in these terrorist attacks and some of the circumstances surrounding them.

Particularly the fact that the Vegas guy rented a cyber truck and then in an email to his girlfriend was like, it's badass.

It makes me feel like Batman or Halo.

And

I guess it's just, I mean, if nothing else, if there is an intention behind these terrorist attacks, it's to undermine

the way we think about operators in American culture because I usually thought their internal monologue would be like, I don't know, just in like Delta Bravo talk and talking about kinetic situations.

But no, he's just thinking about driving the warthog from Halo and then blowing himself up in front of the Trump Tower to raise awareness about gravitational anti-grav drones.

I don't know.

Like I said, there'll be more discussion of this on Thursday.

Yeah, I just like all the guys who do this type of thing where it's like they send an email to like everyone they've known where it's like, Judgment day is now.

Don't say that you knew me.

History books will remember my decision today.

And then they drive headfirst into the lobby of a hotel or like try to kill Trump with like a blow dart and get shot 470 times.

It's a lot of the times it seems like these guys like are Trump guys and they just I don't know what they experienced.

Maybe they like, they had an internal monologue for the first time in their life and they're like, who the fuck is telling me to do all this gay shit?

I don't know.

Maybe they're bored and they're like, I love Trump.

They're trying to stop Trump.

I should kill Trump so they can't kill him.

Like, I don't know.

I just like,

I feel like

certain famous people or not-so-famous people have intangible qualities that cause absurd reactions in people.

I am one of those not-so-famous people where for some reason, schizophrenics just like love me.

You know, I'm constantly approached by schizophrenics.

They're constantly accusing me of things.

They're saying that I'm their parents and that I could see them in 1994.

They followed me internationally, but I think Trump is like, because he's, you know, he's a step higher.

He's like,

there's just something about like the timber of his voice or his look or whatever that it attracts people who like are like sub-Timothy McVeigh IQ, so they can't actually really kill anyone, but they have the same impulse to do a terrorist attack, but because they're bored.

He just, he really, more than anyone else in the world, he's the guy most likely to get killed by his own supporters because they're bored.

I'm imagining, hey, a schizophrenic who conceives of their any internal monologue is Cortana telling them to do things.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

I'm finishing this fight.

You pull onto the fakest strip.

Something to finish this fight.

I love that when he told that girl, I feel like Batman or Halo, she just didn't say anything.

And he's like, well, that seals it.

I'm killing myself.

And Trump's building.

If I kill his building, he'll die.

Or if I, I guess if I blow up his building, he'll have to come out and be like, what's the meaning of this?

And also, I don't know what he thought.

Yeah, well, I don't know.

I mean, also the fact that he was shot in the head before the explosion went off.

Like I said, well, I'll have

a deeper dive into this on Thursday.

But like, you know, let's just say, look, for people who can be suspicious about this, look, there's such a thing as a timed device.

Okay.

You light the fuse, blow your head off, and then detonate 200 fireworks in the back of your.

And by the way, I loved Elon's response to the cyber truck bombing because he was like,

The Tesla Cybertruck is probably the worst car to use in a car bombing because of its steel frame will contain the glass.

Yeah.

Like, I don't, I just don't understand that as like a sales pitch.

Like, if you're like, well, I have a lot of disposable income, but I'm also crazy.

Like, I don't know what I'm going to do 10 years in the future.

I might, you know, I might hear one millisecond of an ISIS song and be like, this seems like a good idea.

But I don't want to hurt anyone when I do it.

Like, I know now that that's a bad thing to do, but I won't know it then when I go go crazy.

Well, I mean, I guess that's the first thing, or at least just covering on things that we missed over the last couple of weeks, is,

I don't know, like the rise of Elon Musk is just like, he's having a good old time.

He's christened himself Kekis Maximus.

I mean, when I heard that, Felix, I had to think of you because it's just like.

Is there any figure like as sort of culturally relevant as Elon Musk, who nonetheless seems to be about five years behind everything?

Yeah, that is what really fucking astounded me.

Is,

okay, where did he find someone that was doing like keck stuff?

In the year 2024 or wherever he found it, like you have to go back so far to find like keck accounts.

You know, my favorite account, KekistanGov, that like I retweet him all the time.

The guy who's like, whenever I see a normie, I want a puke.

You know,

I like the Kekistan stuff is so innocent compared to what we have fucking now.

It's crazy.

Like Kekistan is like fucking lame.

If you go on those inactive Kekistan accounts I find, they're always saying stuff like, Kekistan stands against all discrimination, you know?

And it's like, that would not fly.

Like if you were, if you were the coolest Kekistan guy in 2017, you would be called gay by videos of moms being beheaded, who's like, you know, now the new co-chair of the Trump campaign.

Like,

you would get laughed out of the room.

But Elon,

I don't know what's going on with him.

He saw this stuff and he's like, oh, is this Gripper?

It's actually quite funny.

It's like a Roman.

It's like a Roman, but he's a frog.

And therein lies the joke.

Well,

there was a couple of things with Elon Musk over the last couple of weeks.

And I guess like the main one was

begun, the Griper War has.

And it was sort of like, you know, right in between like Christmas and the New Year, there was this sort of

intra-maga civil war over

Elon Musk and Vivek and their support for the H-1B visa program.

where,

I don't know, it just seemed like

a lot of people found out that it was just sort of like, oh, like, we thought we were against all immigration, legal or non-legal immigration.

But, like, it turns out that the people who funded Trump in Silicon Valley are, of course, very interested in legal immigration from people that they consider useful and exploitable, like from South Asia particularly, to be, you know, software engineers for their tech companies.

But

I mean, like, it seemed like it's over pretty much as soon as it started because Trump was like, we need the best.

We've got to have the best.

And the H-1B is a very good good program.

It's got, we got to have the best players on our team.

And I mean, like, as soon as he came out for it, it seemed like that kind of went away.

But I just like, I don't know.

It was just a question of like, if you supported Donald Trump, like, what did you think was going to happen when he became president?

That he was going to make a choice that valued or prioritized American workers over a more highly exploitable version of the same thing.

Yeah, I mean, like, I am confused by the the people who are like feel betrayed by him because it's like he was president already and he like did this kind of stuff all the time like i my favorite thing that trump does is whenever there's like infighting in his camp and he has to sort of play play unifier because it goes so against his biological programming as like a you know a messy bitch

I remember the first time this happened when it was like the the Bannon faction versus the Kushner faction.

And, you know just like keckestan bannon would get called gay now by all the guys who are like you know uh the fucking let's kill all the indians but um he when that happened and they're like it's the you know the fucking there are globalists in the administration we ran against globalists and they're globalists and he said well i'm a globalist and a nationalist

And I thought it was so cute when he said that.

But it just, he's just, he he doesn't really know what to do because his entire life, he has been rewarded for doing the opposite of that.

Like, he's a reality TV guy.

You do the opposite of that.

Like, the people who are saying,

this isn't what we voted for.

I mean, you did four years or fucking eight years ago.

This happened already.

Like, what, it's like if Biden ran again in 2028 and we elected him when he's like 97

And he just, he did a bunch of branded stuff.

And we were like, what the fuck?

We thought you were going to nationalize the electric power grid.

What the fuck, Brandon?

People would go, you elected Brandon.

You went to the Brandon store and got some Brandon.

I mean, I think the reason

that people got so riled up over this, though, I mean, I think the inciting incident, what I think, what I think will be in the years to come will be regarded as sort of a Martin Luther 95 theses moment was Vivek Ramswami's like, you know, book-length tweet explaining that the problem with Americans, i.e.

white Americans, is their rotten, stupid, lazy culture of entitlement and sloth and indolence.

Because like, I really love this post from, because I mean, he's just doing the pull-up your pants thing, but he's applying it to native-born white people.

um you know in terms of like uh and and promoting the values and culture of East and South Asian immigrants.

And I just want to read a little bit from this post because I find it fascinating.

Uh, Vivek writes, the reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over Native Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit, a lazy and wrong explanation.

A key part

I mean, it's

very generous of you, Vivek.

Because I mean, it basically just goes on to say that it is a fault of them.

He said

He uses it's a key part of it comes down to the C word, cunt.

No, culture.

Their moms have, like, their pussies are too deep.

When the kids fall out of it, they start with head trauma.

Every way.

Their pussies are sideways, like Asian parents.

We're smarter because we come out sideways.

Yeah.

The C word culture.

So, like,

he's letting white Americans, it's not a problem with our IQ our IQ is you know at least as good as the dumbest Chinese kid, but our culture is lacking our culture is lacking and he says here tough questions demand tough answers and if we're really serious about fixing the problem we have to confront the truth Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long at least it's at least since the 90s and likely longer.

This doesn't start in college.

It starts young.

Oh, so around the time that you were a kid at experiencing culture?

That's very coincidental.

Well, I mean, the cultural references in here are fascinating.

He says, a culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World over Zach and Slater.

Okay, sorry, a culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World or Zach and Slater over Screech and Saved by the Bell or Stefan over Steve Urkel in Family Matters, will not produce the best engineers.

Now, I mean,

I'm just saying.

Screech wasn't smart.

No, no, he wasn't.

He just, he just, he was just annoying.

No, Urkel.

You don't even know anything about this culture.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, but he's a huge hog.

I mean, first of all, I love the idea that, like, I mean, it's hard to imagine

an American culture.

And, like, you know, I guess this gets my native-born nationalism up, but it is hard to imagine America continuing to exist as a nation if we as a culture celebrate the math champion over the football team.

Yeah, like all of the, it reminds me of all this stuff where people go, like, oh, in South Korea, they do this.

And it's like, great, let's be like a country that has a 178% suicide rate.

That sounds fucking awesome.

Like, I, I, I just, like, like,

it's all also like, it just, it's a stupid dichotomy.

Every fucking like athlete I knew in high school was also doing like very well academically.

You have to be very disciplined to achieve that level of like success athletically.

Yeah, like oftentimes, like, single-mindedly pursuing something, or not single-mindedly, but like pursuing something like that makes you better at other things.

Most of the athletes I knew who were like on varsity were like doing far better in school than I was.

Like what, you know, ended up going to like far better colleges.

Second of all, it's like, okay, what does he think the point of Family Matters was?

Okay, well, I want to get to the Family Matters point because when he says, he says, or Stefan over Steve Urkel in Family Matters.

That is such a fucking, I mean, like, that is such a 90s kid point of reference for this like current culture war because he's referencing the late, late seasons of Family Matters, where Steve Urkel invents something that, like, basically rewrites his DNA to get pussy, and then, like, he like emerges from like the Brendelfly teleporter as Stefan Urkel, not Steve Urkel.

And he goes from being like, did I do that?

to be like, hey there, hey there, Miss Thing.

What you doing later?

And then like, I love the idea that Vivek thinks America betrayed Steve Urkel by liking Stefan Urkel more than them.

Yeah.

But like this to me, it sums up entirely the mentality of like these Silicon Valley guys like Elon Musk or Vivek or any of these weirdos.

Because it's like, they just want the Steve Urkel invention.

There's nothing, like AI will still not make them cool.

And like, but like, so they imagine that America is venerating Stefan Urkel over Steve Urkel.

And they just, they, they know that they're Urkel.

I really like the idea of Vivek Ramaswamy watching these Stefan Urkel Steve Urkel episodes at a young age and it like activating something in him, like him watching him being like, inside me, there are two wolves.

You're not supposed to like him.

Yeah,

I really think like that is it, though.

Like, it's, I feel like every time you see Vivek like put on a stupid cowboy hat or be like, you know, is it, isn't big mouth bass fishing spectacular?

I love doing it.

Like a little, like, there's a part of him that's just like seething.

Like, he's so fucking mad.

He's so fucking mad that he has to do this jug hooter shit.

Because that's not who he, like, isn't.

He's not, he's also not Urkel, but he is like a resentful.

He was likable.

Well, I think that he probably did the Urkel thing of like constantly being at a girl's house

and her being like, can you fucking go away?

And her dad hating him.

But

he's a resentful person, which is why, you know, famously, he made his millions of dollars by scamming people, by lying to all these drug eaters and going, hey, I'm going to fix it.

I've an automatic shop at work.

Yeah, I'm going to, you know, your grandpappy that's been drinking the paint because he thinks it's phosphate?

Because he thinks it's an ice cream soda?

I'm going to fix him.

Just kidding.

Like, this is all clearly adolescent resentment.

Yeah.

And that's why all the references are based in shows he watched as an adolescent.

When he was just getting mad at Zach from Save by the Bell, getting getting with Kelly.

This was going to be his valedictorian speech.

And he like, that's probably where the Vivek thing started.

He was going to give a valedictorian speech where he's like,

you're all Zach.

I'm Screech.

You know, you're, fuck you.

And then he was like, nope, can't do that.

People have to like me if I'm going to sell my fake Alzheimer's drug.

And he was like,

I dedicate this valedictorian award to House of Pain.

I love listening to them.

And that's when he started pretending to like all this stupid stuff.

But yeah,

this was

like, I've never seen anyone misread the moment that, like, he ate so much shit.

He laughed at jokes about him running a 7-Eleven in the White House to get close to Trump.

and ingratiate himself with all these people.

He's like, ha ha, yeah, I do wipe my ass with my hand.

Ha ha.

Terrific.

All

so he could get to this position and be like, you know,

we need coding wilderness programs for

jughooters.

I don't know.

I don't know what he's going to do now.

I mean,

people are going to remember this.

But like he says in the beginning, he's like, it's not for any lack of IQ that they're being hired.

And then he makes it all about...

culture or whatever, but like this lies the main reason why this program exists is

so that the same people, like people can be hired to do the same job for considerably cheaper and in a state of greater precarity.

Like they're like these jobs, it's below market rate, there's no citizenship, and their and their visa for being in this country is tied to their employment.

So that, I mean, like, obviously, Silicon Valley would love all their if, yeah, if we, if we want Silicon Valley to hire native-born Americans, we just need to tie American citizenship to your employment for to to at Tesla.

There have been some um

great gigs about all this, and I'm not getting into the H-1B visa itself yet, but did you see Patrick Bette David?

Oh my God, yes.

This has been an all-star month for every like Iranian or Indian MAGA guy to like just, you know, come out the gate swinging and piss everyone off.

Patrick Bett David, who I don't know what he does, he said, when I came to America as a Persian immigrant, you know, belying the fact that his family were like Savak torturers who came here with like fucking, you know, priceless gold and

jewels hidden in fucking

toothbrush containers that they plundered from Zoraster's tomb.

He said,

my only advantage I had was that I would work 100 hours over everyone else.

And it's like doing what?

Being Patrick Bette David?

Providing Valutainment.

Yeah, yeah.

But I got hired in value painment in 1979.

Felix, did you see

the painting that Patrick Bette David has in his thinking room?

No, what is it?

Okay.

Oh my God.

As a fallout from all of the

actually right-wing or like, or under like 100% anti-immigration MAGA people are furious at him now so that they've like surfaced this like video where he gives a tour of his house.

And in the house, he gives a tour of what he calls his thinking room.

The room he goes into when he wants to think.

I thought that's what you were calling it.

No, no, no, no.

So

he has a giant painting in his thinking room.

And this is a custom painting that he commissioned, very much in the style of dogs playing poker.

But

the painting pictures.

It's like a bank vault, like a huge, like a bank vault, like a safe door opened.

And then inside the safe is another thinking room with like you know uh bookshelves and you know like uh fine chairs and you know like tables to i just put a link of it to the chat in fact i'll show i'll screen share okay so in this painting it depicts him patrick bet david in a thinking room inside a bank vault uh

okay okay uh conversing with abraham lincoln albert einstein john f kennedy the shah of iran uh Dale Earnhardt, Milton Friedman, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Is that tupac too oh and tupac yeah i'm sorry

what is what i what is tupac gonna talk about with the shaw

jesus

i first of all the shaw would not be in a room with uh einstein let's get that out of the way like he would not enjoy that one bit who do you go to to get something like this made

uh

let me ask you uh if if you if gentlemen if you had a thinking room what great thinking figures would you want to inspire further thoughts in your own head I would have like not just a bust I would have a full motion statue of Maitreya Dan Quinn that would it would be motorized to stimulate his amazing hand speed in his prime I would have a Demonius X bust where if you it's on my shelf and if you move the jaw, if you tilt his beer can up, it opens a secret room.

And that's the true thinking.

That's the internal monologue room that you can go into.

And it's, if anyone's played the Dartmoor level of Hitman, it's like the secret rooms in that.

And then when you go in there,

it's all my guys, Agent 47, Trigger from Ace Combat, you know, all the Halo, Master Chief, all but Solid Stake, all of them, all of them played by actors, living in this tiny crawl space in between rooms, 24 hours a day.

And they have to stay in character the entire time because I can come to them at any time, you know, with any problem.

And they have to answer me in character.

The guy who's playing Kiryu has been playing that role in my house for 29 years.

He's now the same age as Kiryu in the games.

He's 64.

The secret key is a flashlight.

Hey, hey, that's Marie Curie's flashlight.

Okay.

Only the smartest, only the smartest flashlights for me, please.

This is the thinking room.

And what I love about that painting is that it portrays his thinking room in a bank vault because the thoughts taking place there are so valuable.

They're so value-tained.

They're both valuable and entertaining.

So it has to be kept under lock and key.

just real quick i just want to round out the uh the vivik thing because uh there's a few more cultural references that i really enjoyed he prescribes more movies like whiplash fewer reruns of friends

i mean i'd like to say more movies in general and fewer reruns of old television shows i agree with that but i love that whiplash is the movie he chose as as as the kind of movie we need more of because in my opinion it is one of the dumbest movies ever made and it's about a guy who learns that being the best drummer means that you have to drum faster than everyone else.

And losing your entire life and family to do so is a worthwhile goal.

I would love to hear Vivek's opinion on one of my favorites, Gattaca.

Did he watch that movie and he was like, all right, he succeeded.

That's great.

But he says, more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers, more weekend science competitions.

Sleepovers.

More weekend science competitions.

Fewer Saturday morning cartoons.

More books, less TV, more creating, less chilling, more extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall.

Most normal American parents look skeptically at those kinds of parents.

Most normal American kids view those kinds of kids with scorn.

If you grow up aspiring to normalcy,

normalcy is what you will achieve.

Then he goes on to say, this can be our Sputnik moment.

We've awakened from slumber before and we can do it again.

Trump's election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up, a culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy, excellence over over mediocrity nerdiness over conformity hard work over laziness and i i guess like when and he's saying that like uh we don't want more normalcy i guess like i just wonder how winning a message this is because if if excellence requires your kids working a hundred hours a week until they die i don't think i think most americans would choose mediocrity and normalcy yeah there's nothing wrong with just having a normal life in which you are not um in a state of destitution because you don't work like harder than like i I don't know, like everyone in China or India.

Something that stood out to me, and I felt gave away the fact that Vivek is, he's not a science guy, he's a scammer, is the fact that he, the thing he thinks that should replace sleepovers, you know, the thing that like every parent knows,

the moment they start having sleepovers, you might as well take them out of school and enroll them in trade school.

Whenever girls have sleepovers,

every girl that I ever knew who had sleepovers starting in sixth grade, they're all homeless now.

They work as random mobs in my gaming mansion.

I pay them to attack me and I beat them

with a tire iron like 47.

But

he said, the thing that should replace those and chilling and going to the mall, another thing people don't do anymore.

is a weekend science contest.

What is a weekend science contest, you fucking idiot?

It's where Ahmed built the clock.

No, that's a science fair.

There's a science fair, but there's no such...

What does a science contest entail?

Whoever built the most intricate fucking baking soda volcano?

What are you talking?

There's no weekend

science contest is not a thing.

He's fooled everyone in that world.

into thinking that he spends all day tinkering with beakers

and

Bunsen burners when really he's closer to Hawctua.

He's much more like her.

Hey, less outdoor summer hoops, more indoor summer math league.

Yeah.

When I think about how America became a cultural and economic superpower, I mean, I don't think I'm being glib here when I'm saying I think having sleepovers, chilling with friends, and being cool kind of had a lot to do with it.

Yeah.

I mean, what would be the point of working 100 hours a week if you had no memories, uh, nothing to strive for, nothing at the end of that rainbow?

I mean, I guess for Vivek, it's that the end of the rainbow is becoming the president and delivering a state of the union where you're like, We're ceremonially killing Stefan,

we're ceremonially sentencing Homer Simpson to prison.

Yeah, yeah,

I am gonna behead Bobby Hill with a kukri knife.

Well, we dance around the obvious, right?

Performance equals citizenship.

Yes.

Yeah.

Production, then fuck off.

But of course, you know,

no one has to

deport it to.

So it's like performance, we're dropping it into the volcano.

The baking soda volcano.

That's the bank mission.

Yeah.

But I mean, like, I guess guess like a a corollary to this blow-up over the H-1B program, the visa program, is this like, this incredibly, like, ever-evolving, uh, ever the ever-evolving position of liberals and how they feel about immigration in this country.

And Felix, like, I know you pointed this out this week, because, like, Bernie was the one who came out and said, like, actually, this H-1B visa program actually does harm American workers, and it's, like, only seeking to create a thoroughly exploitable class of, you know, guest workers at the expense of jobs that should should rightly go to Americans for

a better wage.

And then just like the torrent of people being like, Bernie is a white supremacist now.

And it's just like,

what do they want out of immigrants?

Like to say that like, I mean, look, like...

There'd be no problem with the program, like I said, if they just paid market wage because like for these same jobs and there was like citizenship at the end of it or whatever.

But like, this is just a purely a program of just like exploitation

that does indeed come at the expense of American workers.

But like, just like the evolutions that they've gone through from being like, kids in cages is the most horrific atrocity imaginable, to Donald Trump won't even let us implement his own

border plan that gets rid of the legal right to asylum, to then just being like, having been critical of the H-1B program, it means that you're racist against all South Asians.

Yeah, no, you cannot have all three.

It's not possible, no matter how hard you try.

Um, I and it's just like immigration in general and wages.

I feel like the thing that I've seen on like the liberal economic side of it for the longest time has been, well, okay, yeah, companies do pay these people, especially in agribusiness, they pay these people like significantly below market wage, but that doesn't drive wages down because

and it's like, well, why, like,

then that would be the only time in history that has ever happened.

Where you, there's a group of people that you can pay significantly less.

Sometimes it's enshrined in law, the reason that you can do that.

Sometimes you are just breaking the law, but then it doesn't drive down wages.

Why?

Like, someone is lying here.

And of course, that's like not the fault of the immigrants, but like,

it is in general.

Like, I just immigration is like, in a way, the only people that are kind of honest about it are the Groipers.

They're the only ones who are like kind of saying what they want.

Because everyone else, they're dressing it up in this flowery shit.

For liberals, it's like, you don't want taco trucks.

You know, you do, who's going to make your, who's going to clean your toilets, Mr.

Trump?

You know, blind the fact that they also want incredibly cheap labor.

for their companies, for their households.

And most of all, they want to feel feel like they're doing something for somebody while also exploiting them.

For

the pro-H-1B side of MAGA, it's the same thing.

You know,

we're making them based by making them Americans.

They're more based than most Americans.

They come from based cultures.

I think you'll find that the heritage population of native-born Americans are dangerously unbased.

And we need to replace them with more based immigrants from Asian countries.

But also like I like to the food truck thing, there's also this like rhetoric that's being employed by Trump now, but also like liberal defenders of this about like the best and brightest from the world over, which like, yeah, that sounds good.

America, the land of opportunity, like

why wouldn't we want the best and brightest from everywhere?

But like when that process is like sort of draining the best and brightest from the countries that like they're born in for our benefit at the expense of those countries it's like should wouldn't the best and brightest of those countries prefer to just be the best and brightest of india or uh you know or or elsewhere rather than do it here for our benefit that is that is the main thing really that i i think with all this like the the delusion on uh for everyone right is that

Everyone wants to come here because of these innate intangible qualities that have very little to do with economics about America, that America is so great that everyone would kill themselves to be here.

When the fact is, I don't think it's like a good thing that you should have to leave your fucking home to survive, to ensure your family's economic stability.

Like ideally,

we would live in a world where we fuck with other places less and they don't experience the economic turbulence and social unrest that comes with that.

It's just, you know, the idea that we're doing anyone a favor by forcing them to come here is just fucking delusional.

But

I have noticed that that exact thing you brought up, like, don't you want the best and brightest?

It's often said by the same people who like say that we need this global race to the bottom in international wages, because if we don't, we're impoverishing these developing nations.

So, which is it?

Should we let these nations develop by preventing brain drain, or are we doing them a favor by

going low, like circling the drain in wages as much as we can every year and moving manufacturing accordingly?

Well, like I said,

I'll be interested to see

how the general, just how the Trump-Elon Musk dynamic shapes up as his administration gets ready to be inaugurated.

It's a rare condition, this day and age, to read any good news on the newspaper page.

Now, I'd like to move on note to like the waning days of Joe Brendan,

the waning minutes, hours, days of the Biden era of American politics.

And I did see a great clip earlier today.

It's a video.

Biden snaps at reporters.

My being the oldest president, I know more world leaders than any one of you ever met in your whole goddamn life.

I know more world leaders than any of you have ever met in your whole goddamn life.

And like that, that's such a funny thing to say.

I mean,

I would hope you were alive for

many of them.

Yeah, no, I mean,

I would presume a 27-year-old Bloomberg reporter has not met the Kaiser like you have.

I've been to more states than any of you fuckers.

It always reminds me of Andrew Hudson's.

Listen, kill yourself.

Listen, kill yourself.

Listen, kill yourself.

I do want to talk about like some of the great pageantry as in the lame duck session of a presidency, but I want to talk about this year's Medal of Freedom recipients.

The Medal of Freedom

this year.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

So like, these are all the people that, like, in one of his last acts as President of the United States, Joe Biden is bestowing the Medal of Freedom.

It's really one of the top medals that America can give people.

And I'd just like to run down the list of some of this year's recipients, beginning with Bono.

Bono,

Bono Medal of Honor, Medal of Freedom recipient.

Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton.

Michael J.

Fox.

A guy named Tim Gill.

Don't I get a lick?

Doesn't Gill get a lick?

And then I just say here, it says: after founding the tech company Quark, which produced the novel layout and design software through the 80s and 90s, Mr.

Gill sold his stake to concentrate on charity work and did LGBTQ rights and advocacy.

His foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in campaigns to shift policy on issues such as marriage equality and bullying in schools.

Okay.

Dave, good or against.

And, you know, and I've seen

the commentary about this Medal of Freedom is like,

this is Joe Biden's F you to Donald Trump on the way out the door.

He's bestowing America's highest honor on like what's truly great about this country.

People like George Soros and Hillary Clinton.

George Soros also on the list.

Jane Goodall, the ape, the primate scientist.

Well, yeah, that was

legit.

That's legit.

Give it to some of the apes, too.

I would love it.

I would love it if

Brandon,

it will really piss Trump off if you give a Presidential Medal of Freedom to the wonderful Gibbon Kassam

of Florida residents.

Florida is in play if you give a medal to Kassam, a Florida Gibbon.

There are a couple posthumous Medal of Freedom recipients, such as Fannie Lou Hamer and RFK Sr.,

Irving Magic Johnson.

He gets one.

Ralph Loren, Bill Nye, the science guy, also George Romney, also posthumous.

George Soros.

He was not aware that was posthumous.

He was disappointed he wasn't there.

David Rubenstein, the founder of the Carlisle Group.

That one took me out.

Like, what has David Rubenstein done?

Deliver 15% for investors per a dumb?

Like, what the fuck?

What is he doing?

Okay, okay, Felix here.

The New York Times says.

I think Spirograph, oh, you know, like arts and leisure or whatever.

Well, it says here, also, he has donated to fund work on some of the best-known spaces around Washington, including the Washington Monument and the National Zoo.

Okay.

Well, he also helped damage a significant Washington monument in the Pentagon.

Has everyone forgotten?

I think that was part of the community service he had to do after doing 9-11 with everyone.

He's done some great work to revitalize lower Manhattan.

Yeah,

was doing uh urban renewal to the Pentagon in Shakespeare, Pennsylvania, in New York.

Uh, also, uh, Denzel Washington.

I mean, I mean, like, okay, whatever.

Yeah, I mean, everyone loves Denzel, but you know, I mean, I don't, isn't like the Kennedy Center honor is more for artists.

I don't know.

I mean, Denzel got no complaints there.

Um, Anno Wintor and Lionel Messi.

Lionel Messi's not even American.

What the fuck is he getting the Medal of Freedom for?

He's played for Inter Miami for like a year.

that that is that is frontrunner bullshit right there lionel messi

the argentini

argentina what the has he done for america he hasn't even

okay if he if he started playing for the u.s men's national soccer team okay then give him the medal of freedom if he wins a world cup for a moment how do you get a medal for playing soccer in los angeles miami but uh

whatever who cares

who cares same shit same shit

But uh, the the main medal of honor medal of freedom recipient that I want to talk about is Jose Andres.

And like,

when I saw that he was receiving this medal, I was like, Jesus, that's embarrassing.

I mean, like,

how do you even like, how do you have the audacity to invite him to something like this?

But then I saw that he was there and

looking like with a dumb grin on his face as Biden pinned this medal on him.

But, like,

I know I shouldn't be shocked about this asshole and his behavior, but like, what a a fucking fraud this guy is.

But like, Joe Biden killed his own employees.

He killed his employees.

He like murdered seven of his employees.

And he had some line where he posted about it.

Where, what is it?

What did he say?

When I first arrived in Washington, D.C.

in 1993, Senator Moynihan told me, if you love America, America will always love you back.

What a fucking thing to say.

Like, I mean, isn't this sick?

This is sickening.

Like,

if you're the family members of the people who Israel killed who are working for the World Center Kitchen, how do you feel about this fat asshole

being honored by the guy who killed them?

He knew he was probably going to do this when he was talking to their families, I presume.

If you knew you were going to do this, you might as well have put a basketball hoop above their fucking caskets and slammed a ball in their faces at their service.

Jesus Christ.

Like, I saw a lot of people comparing this to when UPS thanked the police for killing their driver.

Yeah.

So actually, considerably worse than that.

Yeah, this is worse because it's like

the self-congratulatory element of this is just so fucking nauseating.

And like, honestly,

when I read this post, I got on my knees and prayed that Russia would develop a chef-seeking missile by the next time he goes to Ukraine.

I mean, I mean, and I can't help but view that this honor being bestowed on him is sort of like payment for him keeping quiet about who killed his employees.

And like, also, just like being like, oh, I support humanitarian aid work the world over.

It's so important that we have to feed the suffering and dying.

But like, never to make a political point about Israel or America's funding of it.

I think the medal to get this asshole to shut his mouth.

As if he was ever inclined to say anything in the first place.

Because just the fact that he was like so happy to show up and receive this fucking medal, like, oh, god damn it.

Yeah.

One of the most cynical fucking things I've heard, I've seen during a very cynical era.

I still think that the photo of Biden

sickeningly giving the medal to a sort of blonde Bono, Bono kind of looks like the woman who talked about holding space with Arian.

Bono looks like Glenn Close these days.

Yeah.

That, I think, is still the defining image of the Brandon Reich.

I hope that they make a documentary, or not a downfall type movie about the last three weeks of Brandon.

Oh, that'd be amazing.

I've really enjoyed watching it.

Another $4 billion to Israel on the way out the door.

Eight.

Eight.

I'm sorry.

Or maybe Ukraine's getting some too.

All right.

Well, to run things out here, I did want to talk about one of the big year-end pieces that we missed last week.

This is from

Semaphore, where

they collated some of the smartest, best news people in the country and asked them what they got wrong in 2024.

And, you know, I feel a little annoyed that we were not consulted on this, but then I remember we're not wrong about anything ever, so we wouldn't really have anything to contribute.

That's true.

I do want to talk about

a few choice examples here from Semaphore.

And the first couple of ones I want to talk about are all Joe Brandon-related, beginning with Tim Miller, host of the Bulwark podcast.

I think I judged President Biden too generously for most of his term, and

he revealed himself to be less concerned about protecting our democratic institutions than legacy.

As a result, both will be badly tarnished.

I thought Trump would have the juice to get Matt Gates through and was surprised he pulled out, so to speak.

I thought the Nuggets would be able to overcome an offseason that was panned by the basketball pundits, and it seemed like my optimism was misplaced there.

I love being like,

I got the central question that my job pays me to talk about wrong, but then I'm going to throw in a cutesy little thing about like, oh, I thought, I thought the nuggets would win to go to the finals again.

Yeah.

I'm a stupid fucking hack, and I was so entranced by access to watch Brandon eat applesauce that I lied in everyone's face for four years.

But I didn't know my nuggets.

I guess my,

no one's paying you to be a pundit about the NBA, Tim.

So no one gives a shit that you were wrong about who would win the finals this year.

I think we got to put our foot down now.

I've seen too many of these types of posts from too many politics guys where they're like, well, the question is next few years, will the DDP, blah, blah, blah, the consumer price.

And we'll fucking Giannis, blah, blah, blah.

Basketball sucks.

Kill the NBA.

If you watch basketball, report to City Center 17.

We're throwing you in a mass grave.

Basketball is out.

All residents will have to watch Dana White's power slap or be killed.

Here's another one from Brian Lair, host of the Brian Lair Show.

Many callers to my show said Joe Biden was in no shape to run for re-election.

I mostly dismissed it as ageism.

Then I watched the debate.

Also, I never thought Juan Soto would sign with the Mets.

Oh, fuck.

Which is crazy.

Also, kill sports.

Sports fucking sucks.

Well, A, like, you should have known Juan Soto was going to sound with the Meds.

I did.

But he's like, yeah, many callers to my show said that Joe Biden was too fucking old to run for president.

And I dismissed them as being ageist.

But here's like, I never thought the Yankees would lose to the Dodgers.

Like, just this glib, like, hey, like, we all get some things wrong from time to time.

But here's the granddaddy of them all.

Here's the best one by far.

And it's from our old friend, Matt Iglesias.

Now, what I love about Matt Iglesias is is that he has removed 1 billion Americans from like all of his

official CV that he gives out to when he when people want to interview him.

So it no longer says author of 1 billion Americans.

So every time I see anything from Matt Iglesias outside of Twitter, it says Matt Iglesias, slow boring.

I love him.

I heard that Matt Iglesias, fat and boring.

I liked it when they would go Matt Iglesias, author of 1 billion Americans, because it made me think of him as like a Genghis con type who has like

a million wives.

He's just fucking all the time.

He's birthed a billion Americans.

Women can't resist him.

He's like that giant tortoise that's like sired, like most of the

tortoise population.

He's 112 and still going strong.

It would be funny if they were like, Matt, what did you get wrong this year?

And he was like, I tried those vibrating panties from Amazon.

They don't

work.

I only created 4 million new Americans this year.

But he says here, I thought Joe Biden was going to prove his doubters wrong at the big debate.

I know that ever since that humiliation, the whole media world, the whole world thinks the entire media was in on a massive cover-up.

But the fact is, many of us and seemingly many members of his team genuinely thought the situation was better than it was.

In a lot of ways, it's more embarrassing to have been gullible and wrong when so many people with no sources and no inside info could see it clearly.

But that's what happened.

I was just wrong about that.

And one of the big questions of the year.

I mean, credit to Matt Iglesios for not being like, I thought wicked would bomb at the box office at the end of just admitting like I am an absolutely dishonest dupe who, and by the way, for Matt, it is funny with like with Matt especially that like he keeps getting the central question of the era that he is paid to prevaricate on wrong.

But it's funny because like he gets it wrong in the same same way every time.

And he's just sort of like, in my defense, I had every incentive to believe that Joe Biden was mentally competent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, in my, in my defense, I'm rewarded for these stupid opinions.

And it's like exactly like his Maya culpas of the Iraq war.

He was just like, all of the people who are employing me were saying one thing.

And apparently, people who didn't have access to any information, in fact, figured it out correctly.

Funny how that works out.

But to be honest, to be fair, my job is to cater to the prejudices of the wealthy and stupid.

There's another sort of

there's people who said they got the election wrong.

I mean, that's kind of boring.

But like

more interesting, if to me, are the ones where people were asked what they got wrong and then just like basically used it as an opportunity to talk about how right they are about everything.

Like for instance, Barry Weiss, who writes, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

That's the warning I'm taking into 2025.

I underestimated, among other things, how quickly old media media institutions would crumble.

For those of us trying to build new ones, the question is: can we go fast enough to meet reader demand?

Use discount code what I got wrong for 10% off your subscription to the free press.

So basically, Barry's saying I was too right about everything.

Also, object in the mirror may be closer than it appears.

That's like

you're wrong, sir.

I love this one from Caitlin Collins, who's an anchor at CNN.

2024 served as the ultimate reminder to never assume what the news is going to be.

We were surprised at almost every turn of this election.

Who assumed that?

It's like, that's why you knew.

Tomorrow, something new will happen.

What do we call it?

I don't know.

Yeah.

What?

So fucking stupid.

It says here, we were surprised at almost every turn of this election.

As a reporter, you should always operate with an open mind.

It's easy but risky to think you know where a story is going.

This year reminded us that we don't.

Like,

they shouldn't have published that.

You got to say one thing you got wrong.

This is just dribble.

What the fuck?

Like,

all of the things in here that aren't just like, you know,

I thought that Biden could live another hundred years are like fucking problem.

What did I learn this year?

I learned that summer and winter can often be in the same year.

And just because it's hot one day, don't throw away your parka.

You're going to need it probably this year.

And then finally, from this one, the thing I'd like to point out here is: like,

there was a response to this question that is basically like a serial killer taunting the police.

And that comes from Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who writes, One thing I did not see coming, the fairly comprehensive dismantling by Israel of Hezbollah, the subsequent subsequent collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and as a consequence, the partial neutralization of Iran.

The Netanyahu government's failure to prevent the Hamas invasion in October

2023 had been largely convinced that Israel wasn't ready for other Iranian-related threats.

But now Hamas is more or less neutralized as a threat, and the Houthis in Yemen are going to come under significant pressure.

The thing to watch, how much pressure Trump puts on Iran.

No one should predict regime collapse, but given that Iran has sought to assassinate Trump, and Trump knows this, I'm not expecting the exchange of love letters between trump and the supreme leader far from it thanks for that jeffrey i mean he was being like i i expected there to be more resistance to the holocaust i'm supporting but i've been pleasantly surprised at how how it's gone yeah presumably he wasn't surprised that he could achieve climax while watching a video of a kid dying There, there's, I mean, fuck, I can't find it right now, but there's another funny one where it was like a reporter talking about how she was like, she didn't, she didn't think she thought like because the economy was doing so good and inflation was down, like people uh, that would be reflected in the election results.

And she she talked about how, like, I think it was a New York Times reporter, and she talked about like one of the big stories she did was about how people were driving an extra two hours to North Dakota to get cheaper gas,

which begs the question: like, the gas isn't cheaper at that point, like it doesn't make sense.

You're not saving money if you have to drive two hours to get cheaper gallon of gas.

Where is this happening?

In stupid town, it was, I think it was North Dakota.

In Poland, in New Poland, America?

Well, once again, it's

good to begin a new year knowing that once again, we are correct in all things.

And we have nothing to apologize for.

Yeah.

My big message for anyone this year is

don't think that events won't happen.

They will.

Sometimes you think

so many events have happened.

There aren't aren't going to be any more.

Don't assume.

Wise, wise advice that we should all take to heart.

And

Matt Iglesias, slow boring.

Slow boring.

Slow, so boring.

So boring.

Author of a billion satisfied women.

Did you know that Matt Iglesias' dad was a romance novelist?

I did.

That's so funny.

And that also his grandfather and mine hated each other.

So it's good to know that the trauma plays itself out through the generations.

Do you think that Matt Aglesius' dad ever like sort of like

almost the thing from Call Me By Your Name?

He like showed him how to like eat pussy using a peach as a learning aid.

Absolutely.

This is how Count Handsome does it in my book, Forsooth, the Corduroy's Quaker.

He tried to give him advice on how to eat pussy, but it just Matt only took the eating part of it.

So he just eats all meals like he's pleasuring a woman.

But

I just see Mediglicius had another thing where he was just like, he was like, now that the election's over, like, you know, I won't be surprised to see Palestine and Gaza completely drop off the map.

And it's just like, more, it's just like, well, you're, you're like, it's dropped off the map for you and like everyone around you.

It was never on the map.

So it's a little, so it's like predictive powers and just being like,

now that they've killed every Palestinian left in Gaza, I expect to hear less about it in the new year.

That and like the Connor Friesdorf thing where it's like, oh yeah,

well,

you know, what did you say during the other genocides that I also didn't say anything about?

It's like, it's all like preemptively giving yourself permission to not care about something that you already didn't care about.

Yeah, exactly.

And like, you know, you weren't raising the alarm, even like, you weren't banging the drum to save people in the Sudan either.

But like, it's just the thing now where it's just like, they're like, well, you know,

you can't really get mad at one genocide when like several others are going on as well.

And like, and hey, let's solve the other genocides before we get to Israel.

Okay.

Let's do it alphabetically.

All right.

I am sort of in the middle of the

stack.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Connor Friedersdorf being like, you know, most people never speak out about genocides, you know?

And like, as I said before, like in, you know, the episodes ago, like, I did see a couple exit interviews with Anthony Blinken.

Where, by the way, not a single person who were like trying to drill him on his career into the State Department asked him to to account for the Hoochie Gucci man performance.

And I thought that was a journalistic disgrace.

But like, they were like, I think the New York Times actually asked him, like, how do you feel that most of the world thinks that you've presided over a genocide?

And he was like, well, first of all, it's not.

And then like after saying that what China's doing to the Uyghurs is a genocide, he was just like, they were like,

would you like to explain the difference?

And he just goes, no.

But the thing is, Anthony Blinken is already behind the curve because like, as we were just talking about,

now that the election is over and like they've won like there will be no consequences for israel doing the holocaust the palestinians uh that yeah like it will go away and no one will talk about it but it also means that no one will have to stop denying that it's a genocide or that they're doing war crimes they'll just say oh but like many other countries have also done this so it's really not that big a deal and we had to do it so i mean like he's he's behind the times on the talking points here because the the current ones is just like like how dare you get mad at israel for doing a genocide when there are many other countries that do the same thing?

All right, I think that does it for our first show of 2025.

But, Matt, do you have another poem for us this week?

Yes.

I was zoomed to the epic Elon Musk and whatnot and

Bitman or whatever.

I post epic memes of the 4chan, which is cool.

So

I got to

with Owen,

and that's epigram of a sex haver.

The illusions of some of competence of a kind is what is after.

And irony he invented was easy to understand.

He knew conspicuous care like the back of his hand and was greatly interested in crypto and speaking leet.

When he laughed, delusional transhumanists burst with his laughter.

And when he cried, the Tesla exploded in the streets.

I'm sorry we didn't get to the Adrian Dittman thing in the Musk Crassing Out section.

But I mean, I've seen some speculation.

I've seen some news reporting that Adrian Dittman actually is his own person, which I think sucks.

And I don't know which explanation is stupider, but like,

if indeed Adrian Dittman is his own person, like, the net effect of that is like, wow, there's two guys that are stupid and annoying in exactly the same way and even have the same stupid voice.

But like, Felix, what do you make of the Adrian Dittman, Elon Musk, sort of doppels?

I know, I don't know yeah i i like

yeah i know i don't really give a like i i i um i don't see any reason to say to um

go well it's not him it's this crowd from fiji okay

who cares And I guess, like, I think people really wanted to want to believe it because it's so embarrassing.

Like, it's, because if it is Elon Musk pretending to be this other guy and only replying things like that about how great Elon Musk is, that's pathetic and embarrassing.

But like, the post Elon, the behavior that Elon exhibits under his own name is already unbearable and just beyond the pale.

It also seems equally impossible to imagine that Elon doesn't have dozens of other accounts that like, look, if I owned X, I would have 40 accounts that I was just checking to see how basic functionality were, even if I was like a sensible person.

Of course he has other accounts on the site.

It would be insane not to.

And like, didn't his daughter say that like this is him?

I don't know.

Like, I don't know.

I, I, I just, whenever people put on their debunking hats, I'm like, are you sure?

I just, I, a part of me just, I don't like the whole ethos of it.

You know,

everyone is enjoying something and you're like, I backtraced the IP.

Okay, well, fuck off.

Why not do that in a truth-teller's group chat?

Leave the rest of us to have fun.

All right.

Well, I think that does it for today.

By the way, today is January 6th.

Happy anniversary, guys.

Happy Jay 6.

Happy Jay 6th.

The greatest family vacation of all time.

And by the way,

when we lost our mutual girlfriend, Ashley.

The moment we were all dating on that horrible day.

I think it sucks that all the Democrats are trying to use today to be like, yeah, there'll be no problem with the certification as we hand the keys to the American government over to Adolf Hitler 2.0.

If you will be putting up a fight about this, you're dead wrong.

Not in this country.

Yeah, because you, pussy Biden, didn't pardon American hero Ryan Ruth.

That's right.

He would have done a one-man J6.

That way he was the only guy real enough to

stop the steal for Kamala.

Unfortunately, the steal will not be stopped.

The steal will not be stopped.

We will not have Kamala as president.

But

onward and upward for 2025, fellas.

We'll be back on Thursday with a much more in-depth look at the years of bread.

All right, till next time, fellas.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Room for me for gentle hearts and opportunity.