Bugle 248 – Anarchy in the USA

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Hello buglers and welcome to issue 248 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world and we are back on three continents I am Andy Zaltzman in Mumbai, India where it's 5.30pm as we record in London putting it all together into coherent audio from the random collection of unconnected words we spew into our microphones just tugging into his lunch of snake carpachio and buttered rat cuisine in London has gone really weird.

It's Chris and joining me from way back this morning in New York City, John Oliver.

Hello Andy!

Hello buglers, I'm back Andy.

Back in New York, Johnny Hollywood is back from Los Angeles.

Anywhere else in the world Andy, humans are around 60% water.

In Hollywood, they are 20% avocado and 80% bullshit.

That is a biological fact.

I'm actually heading back there next week to shoot some more community, which incidentally is going to be bananas.

In a good way, no, that's not that something being bananas can ever really be a bad thing.

How could it be, Andy?

Bananas are potassium-rich and are a great slow-energy release fruit.

Also, they're naturally hilarious.

But more importantly, Andy, how is India?

Is your lassie intake in double figures yet?

It's been pretty low, actually.

Disappointingly low.

Strong lime soda intake.

That's, I mean, I've only been here a few days.

I've got to pace myself, John, because too many lassies is basically heart endangering.

So I've got to pace it over the three weeks that I'm here.

And, well,

it's already late afternoon, early evening here, and you've got a real day ahead of you, I can tell you that from the wisdom of already having had it.

If it's anything like the day I've had, you'll spend it sitting sitting in a hotel room cracking wise about news and stuff for a really cool podcast.

Whilst looking out of a hotel window at a load of buildings in the process of going up and a load of other buildings looking like they're about to fall down, as well as what looks like some luxury penthouse apartments and some very non-luxury non-penthouse non-apartments.

Welcome to Mumbai.

So

this is Bugle 248.

The second ever bugle that has been a number, then it's square, then it's cube after Bugle 111.

Next up, Bugle 3927, which at our rate of approximately 40 full bugles a year, will be in the year 2105, when all you lot will be dead.

Dead as f.

Probably one or two of you might be clinging on desperately in a codger crash, but the rest of you, dead.

And you, John, and me.

Chris, he looks after himself, he'll probably be fine.

By which I mean, welcome to the show.

240 oh so the number of positive commandments in the Torah.

Every single one of them tattooed on my heart.

Bit of botched surgery, to be honest.

They were supposed to be inking my wife's name there.

Might explain why a full-on rabbi keeps turning up at our house with bunches of flowers and shouting love poems through the letterbox.

Rabbi Simlai, as quoted in the Talmud, and let me assert that I did not need to look this up on the internet.

He said that Moses received 613 commandments.

365 negative ones, like the number of days in the solar year, and 248 positive commandments corresponding to, and I quote, a person's limbs.

Now that seems like a lot of limbs to me, John.

That might explain why my pet Millipede Yitzhak won't eat his spaghetti carbonara.

For those of you accusing me of being a bad Jew, you're very much in the forefront of that.

I think you're a terrible Jew, Andy.

You're terrible Jewish.

I challenge anyone to remember 613 commandments.

And if I forget the big ones, it's only because I'm so busy remembering the small ones, like thou shalt not wear socks with sandals, thou shalt not spurn a high-quality mozzarella, no matter how fullish thy tummy be.

Thou shalt not rise at the first sounding of the morning alarm, but thou shalt press the snooze button until ye be properly rested.

Thou shalt be a real groover.

Thou shalt build a great wall wherever thou bloody well wants to, and thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's car.

So,

all the most important one, John, right there.

Tub story this week anarchy in the USA.

And I speak to you from a country, Andy, currently without a government.

Andy, here America has become part Belgium, part Somalia in the last few days.

The entire government has shut down pointlessly, childishly, stupidly, and entirely avoidably, leaving the whole country slamming its head into walls in frustration while being justifiably angry with themselves for expecting anything better.

There is absolutely no need for this to be happening here right now, Andy, but inexplicably, Congress has decided to do it anyway.

And all of this is happening in protest over Obamacare the healthcare system that was passed by the house examined by the Supreme Court and which is now the law of the land the house has tried to overturn it with 42 separate votes all of which failed and now they've shut down the government for refusing to pass a budget which includes funding for it it is at best petulant and at worst an act of breathtaking but depressingly precedented f ⁇ wittery.

So

now all non-essential government workers have been furloughed, which means programs have been shut down left, right, and center.

And on the most immediately visual level, some of America's most popular landmarks have shut down.

Yellowstone Park, closed.

Yosemite National Park, concrete over.

Jellystone doesn't exist.

You're thinking of where Yoki Bear lived.

Statue of Liberty has a hood over her head.

Grand Canyon, completely filled in.

They have filled the whole thing in with sawdust, Andy, just in case anyone tried to take an illegal peek at it.

Is it true that if this goes on for another week, the Statue of Liberty will be will have to put on a full nicab?

Yes.

Yes, that is absolutely.

I mean, it could be true, so that basically makes it a fact, Andy.

This is, of course, just the tip of an extremely irritating iceberg.

Thousands of workers are going without pay.

People living paycheck to paycheck are already struggling.

Meals on wheels has cut back.

Head start has frozen.

Scientific research has been held up.

And the lack of empathy from some conservative pundits has been mind-blowing.

Many have been on TV this week claiming that the effects of the shutdown are not that bad, essentially arguing, well how can it be painful if I personally don't feel anything?

And no one I'm personally acquainted with also feels anything.

Look, if I couldn't do my job as a bloviating talking head for a while, I'd simply fall back on the royalties from my books or do a few more after-dinner speeches.

Why can't everyone else do that?

Because they're afraid of hard work, that's why.

And please don't bother me with sob stories.

Oh, boo-hoo.

Museums and national parks are closed.

Well, I don't go to those anyway, which proves that we don't need them.

Oh, boo-hoo.

So a few zoo workers get furloughed.

I am not personally a panda, so why should I care?

And

all of that, Andy, would be true if all government did was spend your money, give your daughter free abortions, and scoop up panda shit.

And I'm not saying that it doesn't do all three of those things, Andy, extremely well.

They do them well, but government does other stuff too, like say the Centre for Disease Control here, whose staff have been cut by two-thirds now the government has shut down, meaning they'll be completely unable to monitor the beginning of flu season, or as it's otherwise known, now.

F ⁇ ing now!

Immediately now.

And if even the imminent threat of disease doesn't scare conservatives into seeing the innate value of government, Andy, what about something that truly does terrify them, such as Mexicans?

Because the government, grinding to a halt, has also shut down e-Verify, the government system allowing the companies to check the legal status of employees.

And when you add that to the Centre for Disease Control closing down, it's not just Mexicans streaming over the border now, Andy, it's Mexicans with the flu sneezing all over your plants.

And think about what that means.

You pick a flower, you give it to your wife, boom, your whole family is dead.

I've heard also also that the entire five and a half thousand mile long border with Canada is now patrolled by one man.

Yes.

When that has to, I mean, America is basically on the brink of collapse.

Well, he's got a pair of binoculars, Andy.

He'll be fine.

So the United States of America is shit.

Sorry, shut.

What is the past tense of shut?

Shit.

Shut.

Shut it.

F ⁇ ed.

Shut, it's shut.

Shut.

And the world's self-styled number one nation has essentially voluntarily applied for official global laughingstock status with an internal budget spat that has basically made the ancient Greeks sit up naked in their graves and admit, well, democracy was a nice idea, but frankly, in practice, it is total shit.

And I guess it just goes to show, John, the ancient saying that you can't spell Tea Party Republican without f ⁇ ing lunatic.

It's a pretty bold move from Congress to do something that pisses almost everyone off on this kind of scale for no kind of rational reason.

But again, that's hardly surprising.

There is no incentive for them to be anything other than awful.

Just look at the numbers.

Congress currently has a 10% approval rating.

Apparently, that is lower than the approval rating for colonoscopies, which actually makes sense because the more you think about it, both Congress and colonoscopies deal with arseholes, but the American public can at least acknowledge that colonoscopies serve a practical function.

Also, colonoscopies exist to make arseholes better, Congress just seems to make them worse.

And yet, Andy, and yet, even with this mere 10% approval rating, members of Congress also have a 90% re-election rate.

How is that fing possible, Andy?

They're somehow batting 900 while striking out every time they're at bat.

That doesn't obey the basic laws of mathematics.

Harry Reid said we need to act like adults.

Now, I mean, he does, as you say, American democracy is clearly in a bit of a state, but it's not good when people have to say that.

And also, he has to specify which adults it needs to behave like.

Do not, for example, model yourself on adults such as A, me, B, Hulk Hogan, which is basically who they seem to have been acting like, or C, Hitler, who was in many ways much naughtier as an adult than he was as a child.

Maybe act like teenagers instead.

Just ignore the fact that you don't really like each other and just get it on anyway.

President Obama, just before the shutdown, said that he would not set a precedent where an extremist wing of a party holds a government to ransom.

But, you know, here's the thing.

That is happening right now, Andy.

The only thing he does get to decide is whether to pay the ransom or not.

Because the letter from the so-called suicide caucus here of 80 Republicans from safe seats that's put us on the path to this mess could not have looked any more like a ransom note if each letter was cut out the pages of magazines.

Now, you might think, well, how can 80 congressmen possibly have the power to do something as incredible as this and it's because they face no consequences andy absolutely none the root of this goes so deep and even though this is absolutely a republican tension that's being thrown here both sides are responsible for them being able to throw it those 80 districts were all won by republicans with an average margin of victory of 34 percent that is unhealthily high and a shocking amount of america's congressional districts have now become completely uncompetitive all due to gerrymandering, strategically redrawing electoral maps every 10 years for political gain.

Gerrymandering of course is an old English word meaning grouping all of the black people together.

Now this is why congressional maps in America no longer resemble shapes found in nature and instead look like they've been drawn by a baby in the middle of being burped.

They're drawn.

They're drawn by whichever part, whichever party controls the state house every decade when a new census is available.

And historically Democrats have in fact, been more guilty of this than Republicans.

This shores up safe seats, but also means that any challenges are likely to come from the extreme wing of any party, meaning the Republicans may not have to run against a Democrat at all, as the Democrats may not even bother running a candidate, but they do have to run against a Tea Party maniac pulling them even further to the right.

It just makes you realise that America's democracy is even more deeply fed than you previously thought in more ways than you were even aware of.

It's awful, Andy.

What's happening here is terrible.

It seems to have got worse since you weren't there, John.

I can't disagree with that, to be honest.

And the most horrifying part of all of this is that it's about to get so much worse with the debt ceiling negotiations here in a couple of weeks.

Because believe me, this budget shutdown is only fiscal foreplay compared to the orgy of incompetence, the sheer brinksmanship bang fest that is going to take place in America in a fortnight.

So I I guess the question is, John, will common sense prevail?

And the answer is obviously no.

It's constitutionally not really supposed to.

And currently the American legislature is working about as harmoniously as a bunch of T-Rexes and a bunch of stegosauruses arguing over who gets first bite of the nice juicy asteroid that appears to be heading their way for dinner.

And it all basically comes down to the eternal dick jousting contest that is healthcare in America.

And

there are some extremely priapic political prongs being sharpened as we speak.

And the Republicans are trying to force various compromises to stall Obamacare, including the latest one I read about this morning, John, the right for anyone earning over $300,000 a year to shoot a poor person once a year to compensate for more of them having access to basic life-saving treatments.

So maybe

that is the...

the one ray of hope.

Maybe that will be the compromise that works.

So if this is not solved, how is it all going to pan out?

Well, we've run this through the Bugles Predictor Acts 3000 future simulator and well, it doesn't look good for the celebrity nation of 300 plus million and one-time World Cup for football semi-finalist.

Within a week, UN peacekeepers will have been deployed to the capital.

There will be airdrops of emergency food and some basic common sense.

As you say, national parks have been closed, the Grand Canyon,

well, first filled with sawdust and then there'll be a giant infestation of guinea pigs that will have to be dealt with.

The Pentagon is going to run out of money by next Wednesday, leaving the U.S.

vulnerable to a pincer attack by the new Canadio-Mexican alliance.

The government hurriedly supplying extra pitchforks to farmers to defend their lands.

The disbanded US military will be sold piece by piece to the highest bidder, so expect some high-profile transfers of four-star generals to the Chinese Army or the Congolese rebels.

Apart from the Air Force, which is going to be made into a major league baseball franchise, the Washington Wing Wagglers.

Mount Rushmore, and this is, I mean, this really gets to the heart of it, John, Mount Rushmore under threat with suggestions that Abraham Lincoln's eyebrows are going to be raised.

Oh no.

George Washington given a disapproving scowl.

TJ Jefferson's mouth altered to make it look like he's about to say the second F in for f's sake.

And Teddy Roosevelt will be replaced with Lindsay Lohan seductively eating a banana.

It is that serious, John.

That's it.

And also Washington National Zoo will become the de facto seat of government with a barely discernible difference, but a significant cost saving.

Italian government news now and if you ever needed to feel better about your own government, traditionally you looked to Italy.

They can usually be relied upon to give you a pretty good argument for things not being quite that bad wherever you are because when it comes to Italian politics the grass is always browner.

The Italians nearly lost their government completely this week after Italian Premier Enrico Leta was forced to face a vote of no confidence and this just shows how far Italy has fallen in a way and it used to be that when Italians didn't like a leader,

it wouldn't end in a parliamentary vote of no confidence, it would end in them being hung upside down on meat hooks.

But anyway, let us survive the confidence vote after a last-minute U-turn by who else?

Silvio Berlusconi, Andy.

You can't keep a bad man down.

Berlusconi is just like his own penis.

Just when you think it's down for good against all the odds, it gets back up.

Yes, well, Italy has always been famous for various seemingly immutable things: food, wine, arts, people smooching in fountains, mopeds, hair care products, the nut grab, racist football hooligans, as you say, hanging leaders from meat hoods, and changing their government like an indecisive pope changes cassocks, often and also too little discernible effect.

But for once, the Italian government has survived an attempt to topple it, as you say, from none other than the leathery old signor Cock Monsteristi himself, Silvio Berlusconi.

Now, you might have thought, buglers, hang on, is this the same Silvio Berlusconi He was recently, finally sentenced to jail for tax evasion with no more chance of appeal after decades of criminal prosecutions?

Wasn't he also found guilty of paying a 17-year-old for sex and found guilty of abuse of power?

Isn't he a man renowned for selflessly keeping the Italian economy afloat through his lifelong commitment to hair dye and fake tan, as well as for a 50-year run of his hit personal game show, Where's My Wang, and his almost ruthless crusade to maintain Italian national stereotypes?

Yes, that same Silvio Berlusconi.

You might think, think, has he not stepped back quietly from the political scene to spend a bit more quality, quiet time with his criminal convictions and his testicles?

No, because like an industrial strength magnet on a metal boy, he just will not go away.

And this week he was on the verge of bringing down the government.

He threatened to pull his party out of the ruling coalition, prompting a no-confidence vote.

But his own party

turned on him, John.

Basically, they turned to him and said, I'll put your penis away and shut up.

And they supported the government.

And now there's another nail, it seems, in Berlusconi's unfeasibly still-empty political coffin.

In fact, a coffin is about the only thing Berlusconi has not nailed in his political career.

So

he's taken a blow, so to speak, not for the first time.

And like the unstoppable penis he A is and B owns, you would not bet against him springing straight back up again for another chance to insert himself and his trusty Trousersnake sidekick into places they ethically and legally should probably stay well clear of.

Well, Berlusconi, as you say, had initially promised to topple the government by withdrawing his party support, a move which prompted the Senate vote, but he then U-turned and supported the Prime Minister at the last minute.

So, hold on, hold on.

Not even Berlusconi was willing to jeopardise the fundamental functions of government to score cheap political points.

Does this essentially mean that the US House of Representatives has a worse moral compass than Silvio Berlusconi, Abby?

Well,

not quite, to be fair.

Berlusconi only backed down when, as you say, it emerged that several members of his own party were planning on backing the government anyway.

So he didn't so much choose to do it as was pressured to do it.

So maybe he now knows exactly how many women he's met over his life have also felt.

Indian government news now and well this all may be nothing compared to where you are right now Andy because India is corrupt with a capital K.

Apparently a third of Indian MPs have criminal records.

That is more than criminal record rates in the NFL, Andy, and that is really saying something.

This is despite the fact that three years ago, Sonia Gandhi, a woman whose surname writes checks that her political power can, in fact, cash, said, we need to build a consensus on how to prevent individuals with a criminal record from contesting elections.

And that's not to say that criminals should be prevented from holding office, Andy, just criminals who get caught.

Because if you can't even get away with embezzlement or murder, why on earth should the public trust you to make decisions for them?

You just look weak.

One third does seem t too many to me.

I mean,

I'm all in favour of rehabilitating criminals in back getting them back into mainstream society, but putting them all in parliament seems to be taking this concept just a little bit too far.

And I'll give you a little picture of the extent of corruption in India, John.

Today I went to a shop to get a cup of tea.

The guy wouldn't give it to me, demanded 70 rupees for it, I thought, when in Rome.

So I offered him 100 rupees just to smooth things over.

All of a sudden, no questions asked.

One very nice cup of tea for Anders.

Very convenient.

And he then bribed me 30 rupees to keep quiet about it.

That shows you how deep the problem goes, John.

And it puts our parliamentary penny pinching in perspective in Britain.

I mean, £10,000 expenses our MPs have been fraudulently claiming.

I mean, in India, people would not even contemplate getting out of bed for that.

In fact in many ways that's I think that would be considered honest only to take £10,000 in Indian politics.

There have been a couple of interesting recent cases.

Former minister and senior Congress party MP Rashid Massood sent to jail for four years for a corruption case involving admissions to medical colleges in which he was

basically helping

inappropriate candidates get into medical colleges.

You would have thought someone would have noticed, John, with a load of substandard doctors flooding onto the market at the same time.

How was your day, love?

Oh, it was fine, thanks.

Did you go to your doctor's appointment?

Yes, I did.

Did you ask him about your chest pains?

Yes, I did ask him.

Did he give you any medicine?

No, he just hid under his desk for a bit.

Then what did he say?

Oh, he said, if it's still troubling me in a week, then smear some tomato ketchup on my balls.

Are you sure he's a real doctor?

He's got a certificate, that'll have to do.

So, and another former Indian minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav, sent to jail after

being convicted of embezzling state funds intended for cattle fodder.

Right.

Stealing food out of the mouths of cows, John.

Again, people should have noticed that their cows suddenly started falling down small crevices in the earth's crust.

But absolutely extraordinary.

And one MP, Atik Ahmed, reportedly facing 44 separate criminal cases.

Wow.

And I mean, you just have to admire the guy's work rate for sure.

That takes effort.

I mean, just timetabling it must be a logistical nightmare India is the world's largest democracy and it did try to clean house a few years ago but seems to have somehow just made its house even dirtier the Supreme Court in India had ruled that any politician convicted for crimes punishable with more than two years in jail should be disqualified from office any crime up to two years in jail was therefore viewed as nothing more than understandable human hijinks however this Tuesday the law was overturned by India's cabinet after they issued an order nullifying the law to ensure that, and I quote, the governance is not adversely affected.

That is an incredible statement to make, Andy.

What they're essentially saying is, we have so many criminals in office that to remove them could do lasting damage to our ability to govern.

At what percentage is the tipping point, Andy?

At what point is the tipping point where their parliament essentially becomes a low-security jail?

Surely, surely that can't be far off now.

Well, to discuss this,

delighted to say, the return of the Ask an Indian

section of the bugle, which we did last time I was in India, joining us today, Varan Grover,

one of India's finest stand-up comedians.

So, Varan, I mean, are we being harsh on India with all this corruption talk, or is it, I mean, have we really underplayed it?

Is it in fact much worse than this?

No, you have underplayed it because you don't know the reality.

You are still like, you know, in that hangover of, oh, we ruled you, so you can't be that bad.

Like, in 60 years, it's not

really possible to go really, really bad.

But things are to that extent that I would say BCCI right now.

Yeah, because that's the board of cricket control in India for our American listeners.

Okay, yeah.

It's basically cricket for any American who's not picked it up over the years of the bugle.

Cricket is basically baseball for people who can think.

Wow.

Wow.

And count.

And in fact,

cricket, if anything, cricket politics seems to be more corrupt than actual politics in Indian.

It's almost like

the only place that you can go, because you clearly can't go to jail, or not enough of them, you go and work in cricket politics instead, if you're too corrupt to be a genuine politician.

No, if you're a genuine politician and you want money, you get into cricket.

Right.

That's the idea.

That's where the big bucks is.

Yeah, that's where the big bucks are, and that's where you kind of

get to rub shoulders with the heroes of our

Indian masses, like Sachin and whatever other people.

So it's basically

you get more money and you get to hang out with cricketers.

Yeah.

So that's...

And you get to watch matches from the best seats in the stadium.

Because it does strike me looking at some of the the figures in Indian cricket politics that we're kind of lucky that they are in sport rather than

working as warlords or dictators.

But I'm sure some of these guys would, I mean, would quite happily kill a good hundred thousand people just for fun.

I mean, is that too harsh?

No, that's not.

That's true, almost true.

But again, we are lucky actually that most of our politicians become big after they turn 60, 65.

Otherwise, they would be captaining the team also.

You never know.

And I mean how much do you blame the British legacy for these

today?

A lot.

Not a lot.

A lot.

What should we be saying, sorry?

Or

no, you can't do anything now.

We can't, it's too late.

We should just

we should just go home.

No, you should go home.

We already went home.

Make more podcasts.

Make more podcasts.

Yeah, like look what happened to you after we left kind of back to and yeah.

But no, nothing can't be done.

Nothing can be done now.

And we gave you crickets.

I mean, surely that's

worth something, isn't it?

That's for

that.

You gave us the biggest reason to go corrupt.

Right.

Yeah, I guess that is one way of

looking at it.

I'm sure we've got a few diamonds we could give back to you just a summary of a lot of things.

Even the constitution, our Indian constitution is kind of almost like a copy with like replace names like that control uh whatever control p and replace and all so they just replace the names and kind of

now we know that they spent like four years uh in that uh parliament uh making our constitution but once it was made and people compared it to the British constitution they realized they were just figuring out a way to replace the names right for four years.

Right, well thanks very much for uh John, do you have any final uh questions for our Indian this week?

Well t you know, could you not make an argument that this just shows how much India is embracing democracy as it's embracing it in all its corrupt, self-serving forms?

You're actually operating at a high rate of democracy.

Yeah, yeah, that's what.

That's what I usually say.

That when, you know, when India and Pakistan got partitioned,

we got the democracy and Pakistan got a sense of humor.

Right.

That's what they needed.

Well, that's all we've got time for on this week's bugle.

No time even to touch on the glorious story of Vladimir Putin being put forward for a Nobel Peace Prize.

I mean, it's really hard to imagine news getting any better than that at any point.

The world has gone crazy, Andy.

You really might want to ask the people of Chechnya or Georgia about that nomination, but still,

the world has gone mad.

Unless they put two golden

kind of ironic speech marks around the trophy when he picks it up, that would be maybe give some justification to it.

So

I'm afraid we've overrun and not got any time for your emails this week.

We'll be back next week when I'll be in Bangalore.

And John, will you be in New York or?

I'll be in LA.

So we'll be even further apart.

It'll be even more difficult to do this, Andy.

Yes, I've been struggling with a rather peculiar echo this week, Buchas.

I'm sorry for my usually impeccable comic timing has been slightly thrown off.

Thanks very much for listening.

Thanks to Varon for joining us.

And we'll be back next week.

Do keep your emails coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com slash the hyphen bugle and at thebuglepodcast.com.

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Until next week, goodbye.

Bye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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