Stay Connected50 States of Blue’s “Spectacle of Trump” Editor Jeb Lund and a rotating cast of fellow journalists and assorted comic-writer/attorneys discuss recent political and sports events through the prism of our broken and bizarre online discourse, talk to the occasional famous person, and try to leaven things via a Patreon-exclusive Hallmark Christmas Movie review podcast. It’s very, very successful. Everyone loves it.
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Guest host CHARLES STAR and RANDOLPH BRICKEY recap June's Supreme Court madness beginning with: A judge who loved the troops and playing games too much ... THEME ... GAMBLE v. UNITED STATES: Separate sovereign, double jeopardy and the criminal president ... Larry Krasner again ... RBG on dual-sovereignty and individuals ... Double jeopardy, Blockburger and stacking charges ... BREAK ... Plugs ... FLOWERS v. MISSISSIPPI ... A series of reversals for racism ... Alito's bafflement at the actual justice system ... Thomas: Exculpating prosecutors, "reverse racism" ... How to not NOT fake peremptories ... BREAK ... MONT v. UNITED STATES: On probation, three days from retirement ... Getting a probation violation while in jail ... Notorious RBG ... Probations, cases and multiple jurisdictions ... REHAIF v. UNITED STATES: Demonstrably bad student, obviously troubled guy and gun-possessor ... Is it "see something/say something" paranoia or actually scary? ... Knowing violations ... A shining moment for Sam Alito's issue-spotting clerk trollery ... The excesses of "possession of a firearm" ... BREAK ... GUNDY v. UNITED STATES: Pedophilia defense as administrative law crumbles ... A nine-month period of administrative phantom zone ... Alito's love-letter to a future Kavanaugh ... Gorsuch: No Gods, No Masters, Unbounded Discretion ... BREAK ... KNICK v. TOWNSHIP of SCOTT ... Force state exhaustion; state exhaustion precludes federal claims ... Takings law: You cost me billions in child poison! ... Billionaires walling off beaches ... Kagan: No one cares about stare decisis anymore ... FRANCHISE TAX BOARD of CALIFORNIA v. HYATT ... Decades of losing your own settlement, still not paying taxes ... Kagan signaling about the census and gerrymandering ... BREAK ... PDR NETWORK v. CARLTON & HARRIS CHIROPRACTIC: I'm the Fax Spam ... The GOP turning its back on Chevron ... No government left worth ruining ... VIRGINIA URANIUM v. WARREN: Downing millings, chasing tailings ... Gorsuch: World Class Alienating Pedant ... Roberts trolling RBG just to do it ... Gorsuch loses the women again ... Gerrymandering, Wisconsin and permanent anti-majoritarian legislatures ... The future is screaming ... • Intro theme courtesy of Ted Leo • All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne.
Guest host CHARLES STAR and RANDOLPH BRICKEY break down THE MUELLER REPORT, up to and including: The part everyone loves ... THEME ... Charles' intro ... A light 400 pages of high crimes ... No Collusion Section ... Cheating ships passing in the night ... Carter Page: Sincere Russophile ... Unanswered Page pitch emails ... Two Russian Paths: Hacking and bozos ... Russia "skeptics" capitalizing on #Resistance weirdo straw men ... Valid, independently reportable corruption stories ... Young Trump imprinting on strongmen vs. Kingly ambition ... Terminal international solipsism ... Fictional Puerto Rico ... Michael Flynn: Kidnaping and murder-for-hire plotter ... Brain-wormed mercenaries ... Let's hack the server ... Find 30,000 phantom emails ... There was and is something to investigate ... Been to Prague ... "Skeptics'" mischaracterize mainstream journalism ... BREAK ... There is only power now ... Don Jr. wanted to collude so hard ... Was something of value offered? ... No prior cases ... Was it a willful violation? ... Too dumb for culpability ... Unpursued ... Is is it de minimis/valuable enough? ... Unresolved ... How semi-cooperative ... "We didn't delete our texts and don't know why they're gone" ... Hope Hicks, Moral Person ... Footnote #489: My handwriting! ... Public service refusal ... Manafort, Randolph and Mortimer Duke ... The first moderating voice was a Ukrainian hatchet man ... BREAK ... Was it obstruction of justice? ... Ahhhh, I'm f*cked ... Bob Barr's BS framing of obstruction ... Chris Christie: Sagely corrupt ... You can't fire the FBI ... Rosenstein: Deliberate dope ... Pages of Comey vindication ... Joe Friday obstruction facts ... KT MacFarland ... Bannon and Kushner: The biggest liars ... Reince Priebus ... This everyday totally bizarre semi-legal illegal stuff ... Definitely obstruction, but unindictable ... Tolling the statute ... Untested formal rule ... Mueller: The non-conflict-of-interest golf membership ... BREAK ... Dictated statement for Jeff Sessions ... Jared Kushner originating adoption lie ... Hope Hicks, redux ... Don Jr.'s one flash of genius ... Democratic setup claim ... What acts were definitely obstructive? ... Pardon to Manafort, Cohen's statements to Congress, attempts to fire Mueller ... Failures to obstruct ... Lifelong privilege is not an affirmative defense ... Success is not a requisite for an obstruction of justice case ... BREAK ... Jerome Corsi: Dumb, with Korsakoff's Syndrome ... "That never happened" ... Inky Carter Page ... Should they impeach? ... Investigate, investigate, investigate ... If you don't enforce subpoenas, it's a constitutional crisis ... Staff up AND keep impeachment on the table ... House Oversight Committee's subpoena ... AOC ... 1880 legal citation ... Regulating finance ... Blind trust fakeout ... Preserving the House subpoena power ... Gorsuch recusal ... Goodnight! • MUSIC: "Balalaika," by Firewater • "Trans-Continental Hustle," by Gogol Bordello • "Un Jeune Homme Bien," by Petula Clark • "From Ankara to Izmir," by Douglas, Barenberg and Meyer • Intro theme courtesy of Ted Leo.
CHARLES STAR and RANDOLPH BRICKEY return for: Michael Avenatti's Empire Records ... THEME ... Speeding someone to their death ... Dunn (Alabama DOC) v. Domineque Ray: When your resources are out of imams ... Five days is a fast-enough legal response ... Uniform bipartisan condemnation ... Murphy v. Collier (Texas DOCJ): No judicial resources for Buddhists ... YOU don't get a spiritual advisor! And YOU don't get a spiritual advisor! ... Prison is a black box and must remain a black box ... Literally, God is dead ... BREAK ... Bucklew v. Precythe: As contextually good as hanging! ... Horse Flatliners ... Everything in the Princess Bride is humane ... Bucklew's savage use of judicial resources ... The danger of an unexamined execution ... Tucker Carlson's single good deed ... Valid counter-options for execution ... BREAK ... US v. Avenatti (Central District of California): Faked tax returns, in arrears, poaching client's settlement ... Bailing out Tully's Coffee ... Patrick Dempsey ... $100k loan ... Should've done arson ... Zero payroll taxes or returns ... Circumventing liens ... "General counsel for Tully's" ... BREAK ... US v. Avenatti (Southern District of New York): This could not have gone worse ... Just a cartel that steals from children ... Tom Emanski ... Insane retainer demand ... Threatening the meanest lawyer in America ... The FBI framing questions ... Misreading public perception of the NCAA ... You're client is so extortable! ... Can't we overcompensate your client vs. My client's a crook ... Tweeting the back half of your threat ... LA Law's Permanent Midnight ... BREAK ... Mike Geragos: The Good Example ... Seeing Trump as self-apotheosis ... Failing to out-elect your own crimes ... "That's enough crimes" ... Fighting his execution ... CREDITS ... • Music courtesy of Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, and Ted Leo., except "(I Wanna Be) Like Mike" by Teknoe.
CHARLES STAR returns and RANDOLPH BRICKEY appears for the first time for: Talking book ... THEME ... No collusion ... Wrong Garza ... Garza v. Idaho ... Case summary ... Screwing up a good deal for a bad plea ... Judicial resources ... A perfectly silent court of appeals ... BREAK ... Clarence Thomas's dissent continued ... Client self-immolation ... McCoy and his closing/sentencing ... Just file the damn pre-appeal paperwork ... Anders brief ... Thomas and the right to "effective" counsel ... The "farce and mockery" standard ... Rights a government is "capable" of ... Louisiana and Missouri's crowded dockets ... Here's your case, governor ... Opportunistic indifference to indigent rights ... Pulled off indigent defense docket for competence ... Judicial resources again ... Adnan Syed and single judicial-resources bite at the ineffective assistance apple ... No long-term conspiracy here, it's just Thomas ... Distinguishing out defendant rights ... Cell phones ... BREAK ... Larry Krasner travails in Philly ... Charging, bail and plea policy memo-manifesto ... Rejected sentencing recommendations ... U.S. attorney charging a convenience-store robbery as a federal crime ... Active sabotage and a warning to progressive DAs everywhere ... Hypocrisy and federalism ... Disrupting the docket ... Shirley Jackson's The Plea Lottery ... No judicial pushback ... The racial bias is where the mandatory minimums are ... Legislatures and elections policing leniency ... Marijuana, not charged, but probable cause ... CREDITS ... • Music courtesy of Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, and Ted Leo.
Deadspin founder WILL LEITCH appears for the fifth installment of "Two Dads Talk Thanksgiving" and: Eponymous, not titular ... Layered flooring in apartments ... Load-bearing parlor ... Thanksgiving plans ... A sudden Thanksgiving death ... An active family Thanksgiving ... Cursed places ... Died in the guest bedroom ... Things have happened between these walls ... Goodbye to the childhood home ... Dad built our house around me ... One last project for the ultimate handyman ... BREAK ... Learning to bake bread the Martha Stewart way ... Do you say you baked the bread yourself? ... Bakin' via cheapskatery ... Olive oil utility belt ... Finding solace/escapism in opting for basic labor ... Fantastic Beasts and why that movie sucks ... Go away, JK Rowling ... Chris Jones and Buzz Bissinger shout-outs ... Twitter doesn't promote traffic at all ... Success means being able to abandon social media ... BREAK ... Are we confronting our families this Thanksgiving? ... We know America was never normal ... Covering Trump coming down the escalator ... It's OK to not engage this BS ... Hit your cousin ... Do you self-censor in anticipation of bro rage? ... B*rstool Sports ... A journalist's job is to get yelled at ... Be sad as hell, but you're still a white guy ... "It was easy for ME to vote!" ... Old white sportswriter privilege ... Born on third base, claiming a triple ... This is a fake job, a nurse is a real job ... BREAK ... What malpractice is the media committing this year? ... Endless airtime for Trump's opinion ... Inauguration Day dispelled any belief in Trump's evolution ... The Prisoner's Dilemma of covering Trump outrage ... Labor reporting vs. Cletus Safari ... "Trapped by the base" THAT YOU BUILT ... Pareene's take: Just don't go, just don't cover it ... The indestructibility of shamelessness ... Wanting to take a swing at the shameless ... Faith in GOP voters abandoning the party ... The media's fallacious default to GOP "adulthood," popularity and "normalcy" ... Parties TELL their voters what to accept/reject ... BREAK ... Write letters again ... How many words makes a letter a letter? ... Everyone loves stamps, I got stationary ... P.O. Box, Will Leitch, Georgia ... TELEGRAM SCHTICK ... Will's hero appearance on the Hallmark podcast ... Plugs ... Scaramucci ... CREDITS...
ROBERT WHEEL returns for more mid-term election thinking and: Ted Cruz's relentless "Sexy Beto" ads ... The wave phenomenon is reversing of 2010 ... Will there be a surprise surge of unreliable voters? ... College-educated voter GOP exhaustion ... The 2016 anxiety hangover, the Parkland kids, miscellany constituencies ... The Florida Gubernatorial Primary ... Graham coasted ... Bob Graham nostalgia ... Gillum and the power of showing up ... Walkin' Lawton nostalgia ... Decades of Florida Democratic thin-slicing white undecideds ... Strip-mall charter school ... Florida Dems: Run FOR something ... Have a PERSONALITY ... POC candidates don't have to prove wokeness so hard ... Gillum and whan an FBI investigation means today ... Hell, our current governor's corrupt ... Howdy Doody-Looking Motherf*cker Adam Putnam ... Florida's concealed-carry background check controversy ... Racist meathead Ron DeSantis ... Only Trump can be Trump ... Too smart to play dumb ... Total "Amos and Andy" level dog-whistlin' robocalls ... Bill Nelson: space man, slow man, beige man ... Meaningless polls so far ... Scott, extremely lucky and rich, still a bad candidate ... Rick Scott's Jungian repulsiveness ... The Republicans! ... Running against Obama and railroading Florida ... Can't run on/not-on Trump ... Nixon Now, Nixon in 1962 ... Not enough money, not enough digital ... Destroyed Cuomo 4 Prez 4 Ever ... A dyspeptic man ... Cuomo edged endorsements with future primary influence ... Nixon in the House ... Herbert the Masturbator in 2020 ... CLICK HERE FOR BOBBY'S COLUMN • MUSIC: Muddy Waters' "Deep Down in Florida" • Donald Fagen "Florida Room" • Deadmau5 "A City in Florida" • Camper Van Beethoven "When I Win The Lottery" • Ted Leo "Can't Go Back"
ROBERT WHEEL returns to talk primary races and: Canadian hockey misery ... California's top-two primary and what isn't working ... California's 48th and replacing Dana Rohrabacher ... A bro-tastic stem-cell company ... Weak party machine policing meets rich-guy dependency ... California's 39th and Gil Cisneros ... More self-funding, fewer problems ... Florida and Rick Scott interlude ... Sara Jacobs and California's 48th ... Twitter and MSNBC isn't a substitute for a constituency ... "Patriots and Pragmatists" can f*ck right off ... Never Trump, never gonna win ... Again, run on healthcare ... Fitting a single scandal through the disease door ... The strength of women candidates in 2018 ... Converting suburban social networks to grassroots activism ... Trump as a gateway to socially acceptable political engagement ... Andrew Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon update...
JESSE FARRAR and ROBERT SCHOBER return for the classic Demolition Man and: Children yelling at a machine, the future is now ... Demolition Man bona fides ... Dude, you need a VCR and racecar ... Caring for VHS ... Europe's at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell ... Future possible ... Concept cars ... Is this a dystopia? ... You need more world building than a Denis Leary rant ... Does the rest of the apocalypse exist? ... Wuss Autocracy: Disarmed police, armed rebels ... Online politics as future meatspace grievance ... Bipartisan dictatorship/rebellion ... Ball-balls to a thesis! ... Cocteau: Grand architect, idiot ... Simon Phoenix vs. The MacGuffin ... Asia paranoia ... Uniforms ... Product-placing dystopia ... Stallone and male rebellion ... Masculine boob, genius idiot and other mixed messages ... Sandra Bullock, Fascism and Violence as Renewal ... Pick a damn tone! ... MISCELLANY: No Florida in the future ... Marco Brambilla kills cyberpunk ... Marketing nostalgia ... Alternate actors ... Appellate Bell ... Friday's wall crap ... Secret Pizzagate markings ... Scientology font ... Is torture your boggle? ... Your parole system sucks
KEITH BUCKLEY presents Hallmark's Lucky in Love (2014), with Jeb Lund, David Roth and guest Jessie Opoien, for: April Fool's bona fides ... Jessie's slide into Hallmark fandom ... Dave's "Lucky in Love" meet-cute ... Plot in 60 Seconds ... Good "Hallmark bad" ... Inventing MySpace ... Land without contact info ... Proto-MRA: "I love you, children's-book pig" ... Elevator pitch the woo ... Spot the Angel! ... Kushner sighting ... Eat Your Heart Out: Men you have known, fondue you have missed, 50 Shades jokes you saw ... The Fishhook ... White Lotus: It'll Take A Tad Longer Than A Burger™ ... Expanded Universe ... Overdetermined ... Dad-Brain Meets Chocho Binco ... April Fool's Bechdel Test ... Whoa! Partner Chat: Anti-Canadian racism and Kate's love ... The expanding/entrangening Hallmark roster ... Gallimaufry! ... Two tickets to country paradise ... CLIP: "I have no secrets from you, Mira. None." ... Gender wokeness ... Literal elevator pitch ... Hire us as professional Hallmark Accidental Menace detectors ... Leadership thinking in the business office ... Bad pun. MUSIC: "Fuck You If You Don't Like Christmas" and "If U Want It" by Crudbump; "Sentimental Journey" by Esquivel; "Pablo Picasso" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, performed by The Burning Sensations; all other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne.
KYLE SWENSON of the Washington Post talks about the role of race, policing and the justice system in his upcoming book about the wrongful murder conviction of three young black men in Cleveland, in 1975, and his role in the 39-year fight to exonerate them.
ROBERT WHEEL returns for: UVA heartbreak (interlude) ... Don't learn which athletes are Trumpkins ... Aubrey O'Day, Donnie Jr. and Tiffany's single ... Claude "TrueFactsStated" Taylor and the Trump d*ck pic that does not exist ... Rolling back the Cambridge Analytica freakout ... This IS Facebook's business model ... The GOP is *the* long paranoid con ... The Conor Lamb victory: Social Security, Medicare, repeat ... Pelosi distance ... Paul Ryan vs. Big Buck Hunter ... The liabilities of Laura Moser ... Women candidates doing well in Texas and Dallas' Dem riches ... Marie Newman vs. the odium of Dan Lipinski ... Bobby's pick: Newman ... Andrew Cuomo, POS ... (Cynthia) Nixon Now...
JESSE FARRAR is taking the odds on: A new segment called A New Segment ... What the F*ck Are You Feeding Me? ... Nut allergies ... The best of ersatz pad thai ... Water chestnut BS ... Noodle King ... The Fat Economist ... Uncle Jesse Has To Watch His Sodium ... Gut Check ... The Lunchroom Coach ... Who Would You Feed This To? ... Episode summary! ... A likable parable ... Society for Tendentious Anachronism ... Beer Flanders' macho mug ... You invest a lot with a keg ... High butt ... Doorbell ... Trashy Maude Flanders ... A Moment with Robert Evans ... More tournament! ... "You are my brother" ... More golfers! ... Serenity now ... Episode rating ... Weed Flanders ... Available for work ... Pointless Miscellany ... Mean kids ... Unintentionally Creepy: Watchin U, Todd ... Ending with compliments ... The sound of one hand waving...
CHARLES STAR returns for: Logrolling in our time ... How many things can Trump be impeached for right now? ... "The problem with the Hatch Act is that we don't see this as a crime at all." ... Not even lying as craft ... Comic sans everything ... Lebowski interlude ... Michael Cohen and David Dennison's personal Stormy Daniels adventure ... Donald Trump's pallid hog ... A farewell to Martin Shkreli ... "These lies don't matter; people believed different lies." ... A farewell to Sam Nunberg ... Like look-in at Ari Melber and Maya Wiley ... "Did you like my response, Katy Tur?" ... Dogs and cats living together ... Jefferson Beauregard Sessions v. The State of California ... ICE, sanctuary cities and federalism ... The agenda they always wanted...
DAVE WEIGEL of the Washington Post joins for: Pruitt moment ... Letterman prelude ... Filler words ... Bueller and Ben Stein ... Email your groans! ... When does exhaustion set in? ... Tired of people "tired of politics" ... Palace intrigue, clone-stamped rage takes and finding the sweet spot ... Conservative anger unmoored from economics ... The GOP made its over-class into marks ... Surreal Q&A with Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie ... Pwning Libs and the politics of punishment ... The right's generational "whatever" of the debt ... Learning not to be scared of debt or taxes ... Rising Democrats learning from Trump's boldness ...
ROBERT WHEEL joins us for a rundown of winnable seats for Democrats in 18, including: The prescience of the Unabomber ... Social media dunking for the powerless ... Roy Moore's descendants as pretenders to the throne ... Why compile this voting data? ... Conspiracy Twitter accounts ... Needed Democratic numbers ... Florida House races ... The handsiest state legislatures ... 7 seats in California ... Campaign Ca$h with Bobby Digital ... Laura Moser ... Dan Kohl ... Lebowski memories ... DIY ex-punker candidates ... "Nevada, Arizona and an act of God" ... Jacky Rosen and Kyrsten Sinema ... Other places on the offensive ... A ton of defense ... Missouri and Florida ... Homer Simpson: Candidate ... Stopping more Trump justices ... Check out Bobby's Stuff at 50 States of Blue here.
CHARLES STAR is back for: Roy Moore, fruit salad ... Alabama Special Election predictions ... Poll paranoia ... The unlivable exhaustion of cynicism one-upmanship ... "The most manageably corrupt version of any Trump story" ... Paul Manafort's bail and copy of Microsoft Word ... Pardons on the head of a pin ... Michael Flynn's useless son's dad's plea deal ... Useless son Jared Kushner ... Never talk to the cops, never lie to your lawyer ... The Zarate trial outcome and demagoguing Kate Steinle ... Trump's trans ban thwarted again ... When will Trump lawyers go full Trump Class? ... Brendan "Making a Murderer" Dassey update ... Our broken police confession policy ... Twitter conspiracists' true facts stated: Roy Moore is, I dunno, let's say Chuck Schumer
A quick look at our Patreon-exclusive series "Dave and Jeb Aren't Mean," in which Jeb and frequent co-host David J. Roth break down the kind, well-meaning and extremely Christmasy films of the Hallmark cinematic universe: movies made for the gentlest of people. Head to Patreon.com/ThisWeekInAtrocity and chuck $3 at us for the full episodes.
MARIN COGAN is back for: Garrison Keillor's roaming hands and narrative ... Can Trump even calculate his racism? ... Capitol Hill reporters and harassment ... It's not the industry, it's the power ... Franken, the unnamed and politicizing the response ... Partying with Breitbart and fascist-tourism journalism ... Some sources aren't worth it ... A lifetime of borking Thanksgiving ... "Turkey is a bullsh*t meat" ... Project Veritas' sleeper agents ... The flipped-switch stalkers/attackers of social media ... Sam Seder and The Cernovich Law of Bad Faith Callouts ... James O'Keefe: Ladies Man...
JESSE FARRAR is back for Simpsons S2E4 and: MacGruber ... The gig economy ... Rejected for customer service jobs ... TV dinner flashback ... Episode rundown ... Getting a billionaire creep candidate right and unavoidably wrong ... Deplorable Forever! ... Burns, Bush, Dukakis? ... Marie Callender's Roasted Garlic Chicken, Penne Pasta and Geriatric Semen ... Jim Rome interlude ... Meal and episode rating ... Jesse: Soul of Generosity ... Olive Garden reverie ... Jeb's favorites ... A moment with Robert Evans ...
Featured Song: "Cheatriots Theme" from Chris Collingwood in honor of the (then) 2016 AFC Champion New England Patriots, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzD9jyWfEfI
CHARLES STAR returns to learn: How is your kidnaped prime minister doing? ... Jared Kushner's ever-amending documents and Jeff Sessions' disappearing-reappearing memory ... Trump's bumbling his own transgender ban ... Sovereign citizen Jared Fogle meets Antonin Scalia ... Larry the Interdictor's asset forfeiture update ... Roy Moore's bozo attorney ... Lawyer Dog v. The 6th Amendment...
DAIVD ROTH is back for: How was the World Series? ... Siri superstitious ... Vertically challenged Astros ... Old dead ballplayers ... Brazzers Presents: Chase Utley ... The Heart Is A Lonely Pitcher ... Joc Pederson's lovely family ... I need you to narrow that beard down ... Tryhard Dodger fanning ... Brandon McCarthy owns ... F*ck inevitability ... Here comes the pizza! ... Gurriel ... Didn't we owe this to Houston? ... More baseball like this please ... "Dave and Jeb Are Not Mean"
CHARLES STAR is back for: The Manafort indictment rundown ... Incorrect indictment predictions ... Generic rental dads as cover for money launders ... Is there really pressure on Robert Mueller? ... Deep dive on the baffling Cosby ex-District Attorney lawsuits ... Who is the most fun Trump family member to indict? ... Russian spies must hate these bozos ... Lawrence Lessig's weird compensatory fantasies ... Deported by a casino owner ... If all your stuff is ghostwritten and you serenade Nazis heiling you, you may be out of a job...
MOLLY KNIGHT joins for: Vindicating your own book ... Our first World Series Games ... Kershaw as one of the good guys ... In a weird place about Taylor Swift ... F*ck Trevor Bauer ... Believing you are the fittest survivor ... 'Wow, I'm experiencing joy' ... Sports as refuge and redemption ... What about the Astros is scary? ... What Peak Puigness can we expect? ... The Dodgers ARE sympathetic! ... How much is enough winning? ... Expert eyes on what to watch for...
JESSE FARRAR returns for The Simpsons' first "Treehouse of Horror," Chili's fajita bowls, Halloween and: Value Vision … 'NO' on Halloween and seasonal decorations … Chain restaurants changing menus … Food review! … The ideal Chilis BOLD commercial … Treehouse Part 1: Amityville … Treehouse Part 2: Meet Kang & Kodos! … Treehouse Part 3: The Raven … Episode review! … Robert Evans signs off…
DAVID ROTH is back for a World Series preview in: The rattling old car of your dying body ... Kicking the Yankees' corpse ... Ryan Gosling's bullpen face ... Every year Brian McCann's in the majors is one he's not a police officer ... Farewell to Cubs sympathy ... 27 Rings ... Glorious Puigness ... The redemptive sight of elite failure ... The solipsism of learning things late...
MARIN COGAN joins for: Halloween convictions ... Skittle bag lady ... Too-clever costumes ... Smart phones make you dumber ... Creating digital (in)dependency ... Learning to fear the phone ... Normalizing the Lie Cycle, 2012-2016 ... Should journalists have seen this coming? ... Tribalism and believing sexual harassment ... "Separating art from artist" and "it was a different era" ... The 90s' antifeminist hell ... Making the lifelong commitment to learning you're wrong...
DAVID ROTH returns for: Donald Trump's trip to Home Depot ... Shondaland with #queen ... Beefy Boy Matt Albers ... Cubs-Nats Game 5's gorgeous meltdown ... The liberatory nature of mass borking ... Postseason jankiness ... All libido to the Astros ... Fun Yankees still aren't underdogs ... I AM DA PLAYOFFS ... Who's your team and do you know them? ... Joe Buck forcing "moments" ... Terence Malick presents Puig's Parrot ... The bat-flip melting pot ... Light all the mups ... Picks!
CHARLES STAR returns for: A brief PSA ... Trump: the ultimate test of Occam's Razor ... More hurricane aftermath ... Municipal disability ... Irma should've killed Limbaugh ... First class on FU Airways ... Pruitt's false flag ... 'I don't care about the mysteries of the cosmos, I came here to stare at gold' ... Mnuchin's grotesque face/life ... Precious billionaire entitlement ... Back to the Arpaio pardon ... Humiliating Jeff Sessions ... NFL Protests ... F*ck the troops ... Courts coddle cops ... More bad online lawyering ... Pray for cheeseburgers...
JESSE FARRAR returns to P. Piggly Hogswine's Super-Smog for: Listener letters ... Reversing the rules of analogy ... "My butt is already in the throes of death" ... When Tim Allen's TV dinner is unsettlingly good ... Meal rating! ... Fuck Berkshire Hathaway ... The greatest danger at the China Super Buffet ... How much to f*ck the macaroni? ... S02E02: "Simpson and Delilah" ... The history of Rogaine ads ... Hair happiness is only follicle-deep ... Studio Notes with JF ... JF Is For Family ... Episode rating! ... Credits...
JESSE FARRAR joins the show for TV dinners and S2E01 of The Simpsons ... Why are you a Simpsons fan—or not? ... What is The Whammy's motivation and gender? ... LET'S MEET THE MEALS ... Season One is off-limits ... A steak that eats like a mirror ... The TV dinner "foodness" spectrum ... Why buy Kobe's drink? ... "Bart Gets an F" ... Jesse's hatin' ass takes ... Die Hard ... Jeb's highlights ... What is a passing grade? ... Is Jeb smarter than a 4th grader? ... Episode rating! ... Frozen quail...
CHARLES STAR returns to meet Buff Davis and talk: Quoting Robert E. Lee ... Pricing Confederate statue demolition ... Former MAGA CHUDs cashing in on rejecting Nazism ... EXTRA: Jeff Sessions Does Job! ... How liberals weaponized "Alt Left" ... The Bannon Farewell Roast ... "Being There" with Seb Gorka's mind geode ... Judge Tandy 5000 hands over your #resistance IP address ... Seriously, screw Confederate statues ... The EPA: More coal for burning internal documents...
Mr. PAUL F. TOMPKINS gets political about: Exquisite moustaches ... The fandom/apology cycle ... When RTs are endorsements ... "These Things I Believe" ... MAGA hatred OKs teeing off ... White-poverty safari thinkpieces ... How we learn about politics ... Let the left swing for the fences ... Steal from work ... Screw the Q-Rating ... Epic eviscerations and comedy Daily Showification ... Digital doctor! ... Remember: We're talking to strangers ... Arguing with yourself online ...
And here's a link to Paul's "I believe" Twitter thread: https://storify.com/nzacharczuk/paul-f-tompkins-is-my-hero
DAVID ROTH and CHARLES STAR welcome you to unemployment and The Horse Whisperer ... 2:50:00 ... Mount Potato ... Discourse of Whisperer ... Horse synopsis, montage, torture, research ... Landline ... Tina Brown's Horse corpse road trip! ... ScarJo Sullenness ... Weep Day ... Land's End ... Hallmark Hall of Fame ... No subtext, just text ... The actors got screwed ... The Hallmark EU ... Cucked in Montana ... Did he have to do it, Mikey?
DAVID ROTH returns for: People like a carving station ... White Alan! ... Hit the serotonin button for one (1) comedy unit ... Mike and the Mad Dog set the template for bickering assholes ... Nimby and the Blaze! ... Devour time for me ... Knights On White Sofas ... The Horse Whisperer ... Chris Christie hosting on WFAN ... What do YOU despair-eat? ... The hardest sports week to be angry ... When Beckett is Beckett ... Trump's Wilford Brimley-ass lawyer Ty Cobb ... Nick Paumgarten's Mike and the Mad Dog profile: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/08/30/the-boys-4
Operation Acoustic Toddler ... GLOW is great, the GLOW doc, 80s nostalgia ... Prestige drama discomfort ... Jeb's wrestling-fan nitpicking ... Trump's wrestling tweet ... Selling the Stunner ... Women's wrestling's slow progress ... GLOP heel turn ... Writing for Joe Scarborough's newspaper ... Joe, Mika and Trump: Happy ... Trump baffled by AHCA ... Joe, Mika and Trump: Blackmail and dead interns ... WTF, Patricia "Chalupa" Arquette?
Over 60 minutes of close inaction with CHARLES STAR on: Making A Murderer's Brendan Dassey's appeal ... How AEDPA keeps people like him in prison ... The Wisconsin gerrymandering case ... When a Supreme Court justice worries about legacy ... Deporting people for lies on forms ... Iron Stache is INVENTING campaign disclosures ... This is The Guy. THIS IS THE GUY. This is the guy? ... Clean beautiful crystal water nice beautiful clean water...
Robert Schober is back from China for: The Georgia 6th results from the Democrats' fifth moral victory! ... Build your own soccer mom! ... Making music videos for the Chinese Menudo ... The all-digital transaction economy ... You meet a stranger swinging a club ... WHO'S ON WORST: The 'Aladdin' screwjob, Otto Wambier, Antarctic rain, no AHCA on the front page, Trump doesn't want the job and Senate secrecy ... Errata, miscellany and Sheriff David Clarke's flair ...
David J. Roth (again) joins us for: The dispiriting inevitability of the Warriors ... LeBron, age and empathy ... Does a Warriors playoff sweep kill all but the bitterest memes? ... Clay Travis is the Vinnie Johnson of racism and other adventures in trutherism ... ESPN's internal numbers on political bias ... "Roundball Rock" and JOHN TESH IS A PRINCE ... Media lust for terrorism panic ... When other people take ownership of your tragedy ... SPECIAL GUEST: BARRON TRUMP.
Attorney, comic and writer Charles Star joins for: Law expertise from one graf ... Russia fanfic as Russian lit. ... Putin/Trump is Ali/Frazier ... All The President's Men by Dr. Steve Brule ... The FISA Court does NOT do that ... The Cooper v. Harris ruling ... Who is Trump's Fredo? ... The North Carolina Voter ID law ... Why the Roberts Court threw out VRA pre-clearance ... The Moothie and the future of Trump handshakes ... Linda McMahon cannot take a Stunner
Dazza J. Roth joins Jezza for: Infantile internet nicknames ... The DailyKos Scumbag and 'Democrats Are Bae' Twitter ... The horror of predicting Trump ... Your favorite Russia armchair sleuths ... #Resisting while doing nothing ... How does James Comey ball? ... Short ballers got more reason (to root for them) ... Celts/Cavs & Spurs/Dubs ... How do you police injury? ... The Warriors are The Juiceroo.
Guest host Jessie Opoien of Wisconsin's CapTimes joins for: Talk therapy glossolalia ... Jeb Gorka's dried-dick bull session ... The DNC has no litmus test for anything ... Big Marv Zuckerberg strokes cows and sucks brats ... Terrorizing women online! ... Clinton and Feingold in Wisconsin ... Sheriff Fervid Clarke ... Life within the Scott Walker machine ... Future divisions of the Midwest ... 'Milk Is Milk'
PREMIUM BEEF ... The Chicken McNugget Hour of Power ... The tastiest Long John Silver's fryer effluent ... Overwhelmed by NBA and NHL postseason options ... Playoff triage... The nicest guy in sportswriting (it's Jon Bois) ... The ever-upward evolution of the NBA ... Hero Ball and Phrenology ... Meal Drift, late-night stew, casual wok sexism ... Never go Full Derelict ... Bill O'Reilly and all the ways we failed ... Dr. Noonian Soong and the positronic dryer ... Weird Al'ing anything you own or do...
BREAKING NEWS from the HOLOCAUST CENTER ... Chocolate cake with the plummy Money Honey ... The only Scorcese movie John Ritter is in ... Cucked by a warlock over General Foods International Coffees ... The perfect opportunism of the Syria strike ... THE MORRISSEY-JADEN SMITH AXIS ... That fucking Pepsi ad and documenting the lower reaches of corporate-think equality...
For April Fool's Day it's our Pizzagate episode! ... The most savage April Fool's podcast derailment ... School mark ... Alex Jones and the archetypal cocksucker ... How do you not mainstream a conspiracy theory? ... I Was Born In A Kompromat ... New York Times/New Yorker profilee Mike Cernovich's bewitching ejaculate ... Actual Pizzagate! ... Walnuts! ... Pedohobo Runes and Symbols ... The accidental official artist of a pizza conspiracy ... Trump and Pizza and Russia ... The mind will always find a pattern...
The world’s greatest unapplied Bikram Yoga burn ... A screaming toilet poltergeist ... Johnny Rotten: Vacuous Punk Fascist Past as Prologue ... The 5 most insane theories of a British climate-change denialist ... User Questions! [Segment Title TDB] ... Stately Wayne Tracker ... What will the Trump Presidential Library look like? ...
David J. Roth joins us again for: Grocery stores and erotic Alan Alda ... Testicle brassieres ... Clothes dryer privilege ... Scott Adams' isolated cat-shit chamber ... The humiliation of Sean Spicer at home ... March Madness ... The Charles Barkley knucklehead cult ... Petty rooting interests ... The champions game of no-names...
Don't forget to check out Dave's "One Blurred Shining Moment" at Vice Sports.
Twitter's Canadian Girlfriend Karen Geier gets the rare double introduction ... Reliving the Rob Ford experience in the age of Trump ... Piss Tape callback ... The immersive emotional blackmail of Disney World ... The Extraordinarily Monochromatic Stratified World of Tomorrow ... How Alex Jones is going to die ...
NOTES: Audio woes claimed huge parts of the interview, including audience Q&A and our read-off. We'll add the former on the Patreon, however garbled it might be. On the latter: Thank you to Ted Leo for our theme music, "Can't Go Back" and our incidental music this episode. Thanks to Oliver Leach for our art.
Making Music Videos for Mastodon ... Orphaned by Trump ... Cambridge Analytica and Selling Political Nerve Tonic ... Sex Stuff ... Monster trucks... The boys have creative differences...
Intro Gulp ... Talking to an artist who's hustled on the internet forever ... Places where you can buy recycled pornography ... "Too Drunk To Fuck at the Centers for Disease Control" ... You are your search results ... Content creator: Public Libraries ... Your Tumblr friends are ghosts ... Making the nicest case for Patreon...
At the Melbourne airplane hanger with the Trump die hards ... The legacy of George Soros ... The Perfidious Sneak-Thief Jesse Farrar's Ignominious Farewell ... A loud and masculine rundown ... Wherefore art thou, Russia? ... Learning to hate end-of-episode announcements...
TED LEO joins us after a brief news rundown. He's been touring America for over 25 years, playing punk and hardcore everywhere from the streets, to pubs with enough room in the corner, to 10,000 seat venues. You may know him from Chisel or Ted Leo and the Pharmacists or his project with Aimee Mann, The Both. He's also one of music's most outspoken political voices, this podcast's first and best friend, and he joined us to talk about music and protest under the age of Trump.
NOTE: Our intro of Ted got eaten in the editing process, and Jeb's trip to the Trump rally and Robert's latest video left too little time to strip out the edit and start again.
Sportswriter David J. Roth joins Jeb to talk about the Super Bowl and the spiritual exhaustion of watching the Patriots ... The haunting Cheatriots Theme ... Jesse Farrar and the burden of the flawless podcast ... The NFL is slowly devouring itself...
Letters to the robot from "Small Wonder" ... Fear of news ... Super Bowl Illuminati ... Gaga game theory and the NFL ... Interview with Ryan Staake, director of Young Thug's "Wyclef Jean" video and why music videos are dead (again).
Trumpler: The First Ten Days ... Half-empty streets at the Inauguration ... Jubilation and the first steps at the Women's March ... Is Jesse Farrar employed? ... The Trump 2020 campaign's apocalyptic voicemails ... Interview with literal rocket scientist Mark Paul Hughes about that other, bigger, more foreboding changing climate...
THANKS: to @SuzanEraslan's Google doc for helping us compile this week's rundown.
NOTE: Jeb lost his voice thanks to a fever and had to turn his mic way up, apologies for periodic distortion.
In a week already full of election foreboding, the eternal spirit of Alex Jones gallops to Washington for the inauguration. Jeb, Robert and political writer and dedicated Alex Jonesologist Dan O'Sullivan each share their lifelong soul-bonds with the dangerously "10% correct" xenophobic opportunist. Meanwhile, everything is still terrible.
Jeb and Robert read some bad news and explain why you're stuck here too. Donald Trump peed on some things...or did he? Employed or Unemployed? And filmmaker Matt Ornstein joins the podcast to talk about his new documentary Accidental Courtesy.
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