Update and scripts!

Hi there, patrons. What a strange few weeks it has been. I hope everyone is doing well under the stress of the quarantine. If money becomes tight, please remember to take care of yourselves first. If I lose some patrons due to the quarantine, I will survive. It's OK. Please look after yourselves.

As for the show, I released this year's big project a few days. It doesn't doing so hot in terms of views, but I'm just happy it got out there. Maybe it will one day pick up.

All that being said, here are some previously unreleased episode scripts:

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG:

 Michael Bloomberg is a great, big piece of ****, and I'm gonna tell you why. Bloomberg is the fetishism of the “pragmatic center” make manifest. Every so often, Bloomberg considers a run for president with the idea being that he's not a Democrat, not a Republican, sometimes not an independent, but a technocratic get-the-job-done type who eschews labels. That is a very charitable way of saying he switches party affiliations and goes whichever way the wind is blowing. In 2015, concerned that Hillary Clinton's primary fight pushed her too far to the left to compete with Senator Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg's Wall Street friends pushed him to run. He was even encouraged by Fox head honcho Rubert Murdoch. The political pundits' constant advice for Democrats has been to move to the center. But he center never stays still. It moves with the times, and as the Republicans move further and further right, the “center” is now right-of-center. Pundits claim that the problem with both major parties is that they have moved too far into their ideological extremes, but in truth, the Republicans moved to the right, and the Democrats, in hopes of keeping up, moved to the right as well.   Enter: Michael Bloomberg. In a race that already has a “centrist” as the frontrunner, Bloomberg is here to be even more centrist, somehow. The most centrist of all centrists!
 But he's not. He's pretty right-wing, and a lot of Democrats know this. As he announced his candidacy, a Morning Consult poll indicated that he is the most disliked candidate among the Democratic field. Nearly 25 percent of likely primary voters view him unfavorably — the highest disapproval rating of all the remaining hopefuls in his party, the poll claims. Bloomberg, like all billionaires, is concerned about the medicare plans proposed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Such plans would almost certainly raise his taxes, and with a net worth of a mere 55 BILLION DOLLARS, this will not stand. What if he loses half his worth? Then he'll only have 27.5 billion dollars! That's only enough money to...end homelessness in the United States of America – and still have 7.5 billion dollars left over. Michael Bloomberg is sticking up for the millionaires and billionaires. Poor, subjugated men like Howard Schultz who thinks that being derided for his wealth hoarding is tantamount to a slur. He prefers to be called a “person of means.” and he can just f**k right off. Why Michael Bloomberg is running for president is debatable. Maybe he's trying to save his fortune. Maybe it's a vanity project. Maybe it's a way to shake up the election to draw attention away from Sanders and Warren, leading to him eventually endorsing a relative centrist like Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg.   
 AUDIO 2
 Maybe he's actually hoping to lose the primaries, run as an independent and siphon off votes from whoever ends up being the actual Democratic candidate to keep Donald Trump in office and his taxes low. I don't know. But what I do know is that Michael Bloomberg is just terrible. Let's start with the obvious reason why: [I. STOP AND FRISK] Michael Bloomberg's tenure as Mayor of New York City is defined by how he oversaw policing in the city – most infamously, “stop and frisk.” Stop and Frisk is a strategy that allows police officers to do exactly what it says on the tin. To detain someone for questioning on the street, in public housing projects or in private buildings where landlords request police patrols. Prior to this directive, the police still had incredible power. They can arrest us, fingerprint us, take our DNA. They're allowed to retain our personal information in their own computer databases, monitor our movements through cameras placed around the city, trace our records and car registration, obtained our phone records, and they all carry lethal weapons that they have consistently been proven to use at the slightest provocation. They can doctor statements and plant evidence and almost always get away with it. Across the roads leading from so-called “good neighborhoods” and “bad neighborhoods,” police are stationed and are the primary enforcers of red-lining.   
 They use these powers to control the poor, reinforce predominantly white property and to intimidate minority communities. Individually, one might believe they are here to protect us, but as a system, they exist to protect property under capitalism. But you know what? That's a rather broad topic, let's focus on how Michael Bloomberg gave the police one more weapon in their already gigantic arsenal. The Stop and Frisk directive states that officers are required to have a reasonable belief that the person is, has been or is about to be involved in a crime. However, that determination is made entirely by the police officer in question. A rule that says a police officer needs to think the person on the street is a bad guy before intimidating and searching them may as well not exist if there is no actual recourse for the person on the street. A rule that limits police officers means nothing is the police officer can always override it. If police officers believe the detainee is armed, an officer can conduct a frisk by passing his hands over the person’s outer garments. Once again, this determination about whether or not the person on the street is armed is made by the police officer, which means that this limitation only exists in theory but not in practice.   
 AUDIO 3
 Furthermore, while the suggested manner in which to frisk is hands over the person's outer garments, it would be naive to think that the police always followed that particular suggestion, instead digging through the pockets. Police have incredible reach to intimidate the population for virtually reason. Under stop and frisk, the NYPD targeted black and Latino males as young as 13 simply for living in neighborhoods with high crime rates or for making “furtive” movements. This is a loosely defined term that encapsulates roughly any type of behavior, including but not limited to looking over a shoulder or sitting on a bench. That is not an exaggeration. That actually came up in court. Police can search you and harass you if they see you sitting on a bench. During Michael Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor of New York City, police officers stopped and questioned people under the pretense of suspicious activity on the street more than five million times. So, how did this get started? Well, the truth is that stop and frisk policies existed for law enforcement for decades prior, but Bloomberg oversaw and consistently endorsed a massive expansion of the policy. This did not simply happen under his administration – he publicly supported it. After taking office in 2002, the number of stops multiplied by seven. The vast majority of those searched were young black and Latino men.   
 According to the New York Times, in 2009, black and Latino people in New York were nine times as likely to be stopped by the police compared to white residents. The policy resulted in a series of lawsuits by black and Latino men. One man, Nicholas Peart, was held at gunpoint on his 18th birthday as an officer passed his hand over the young man’s groin and buttocks before leaving without any explanation. This was not an isolated incident, as it was one of the five times he had been stopped by police under this policy. These searches were for weapons that almost never materialized. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, only 14 out of every 10,000 stops conducted during the Bloomberg era turned up a gun. In other words, the stops were no better at producing gun seizures than chance. Police were as likely to find a gun on whoever they believed were “suspicious” as they would if they chose someone's name out of a hat. According to the ACLU, Black and Latino people were more likely be to stopped and frisked, even though their white counterparts were twice as likely to be found with a gun. Bloomberg falsely correlated a fluctuation in crime stats with the expansion of stop and frisk, but in reality, crime rates are affected by more than just police tactics.   
 AUDIO 4
 If stop and frisk actually had actually directly lowered the crime rate, then curtailing it would have increased the crime rate. However, when stop and frisk was curtailed in New York City, the crime rate still dropped. In other words, stop and frisk did not directly lower the crime rate. Other factors did. Stop and frisk was a waste of police manpower and did nothing but further erode the relationship between the police and the citizens of New York. So, how did it end? In 2013, a federal judge ruled that policing under Michael Bloomberg amounted to policies of “racial profiling” of black and Latino people. Bloomberg appealed this decision. It took another mayor to end stop and frisk in New York.  During Mr. de Blasio’s first term as mayor, stops decreased by 76%. At the same time, crime fell to levels not seen in the city since the 1950's. De Blasio agreeing to court-ordered reforms did not increase crime. It continued to fall. The only way to end stop and frisk was for there to be no more Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Following his tenure as mayor, Bloomberg continued to defend stop and frisk every time it was brought up. In fact, he defended it as recently as this year. As he prepared to run for president, he finally apologized and acknowledged he was wrong.    
 The timing of this is transparent. Even though he apologized, he also pivoted and avoided the topic, stating that nobody ever asked him about stop and frisk before he decided to run for president. This is such an obvious and demonstrable lie. We all have Google. You have talked about this endlessly for years. You know who “asked you” about stop and frisk? The courts. When it asked you to end stop and frisk, and you appealed the decision so your police could continue to harass black people, you mummified, old bastard. This turnaround on stop and frisk after years of court battles to protect it and declarations of innocence is completely disingenuous, and only a fool would believe that Bloomberg's heart suddenly grew three sizes on the day he happened to announce his presidential campaign. But stop and frisk was not the only heavy-handed police directive under Bloomberg. Yeah, I know, but wait! There's more! [II. “SCARY FOREIGNERS” and FOREIGN POLICY] Michael Bloomberg's NYPD spied on mosques, Muslim communities and Muslim-owned businesses and restaurants. A surveillance project was undertaken despite “no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior.” This contradicts claims by Bloomberg where he denied that the NYPD launches investigations based solely on religion. "We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there."   
 AUDIO 5
 The police commissioner made a similar denial, but the report clearly indicates that Muslims were under heavy surveillance in the city due solely to being Muslim and not for any criminal activity. A secret  dossier published by the Associated Press shows the NYPD both thinking about religion and singling out a particular group in the absence of any leads whatsoever. This wasn't some rogue entity either. It was part of the NYPD's Demographics Unit, a group of officers tasked with mapping where Muslim-Americans lived. According to The Daily Beast, plain-clothes officers who investigated Muslims were called “rakers” – named after the figurative coals they raked Muslims over. Those were investigated specific places rather than specific people were called “mosque-crawlers” and would monitor sermons. In addition to profiling Muslim-Americans and all the bigotry that comes with it, the Demographics Unit was also a big waste of time and money. In all the time it existed, the Demographics Unit never produced one lead. Not one. He also cracked down on Occupy Wall Street protesters. Anything that upsets the status quo and anything that upsets billionaires is the enemy of Michael Bloomberg.  
 During a speech at MIT, Bloomberg stated “I have my own army in the NYPD...” That's who he is: a man who sees the police as an oppressive force that he utilizes to control the population. So, we have a general idea about where Bloomberg's politics land in terms of domestic policy. But what about foreign policy? Bloomberg not only supported the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, but he also supported a bizarre and false justification for the war: the conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and not Osama bin Laden. Some version of this common lie was told by Vice President Dick Cheney and the talking heads on Fox News. In 2007, Bloomberg backed the Bush administration against congressional Democrats who were trying to find a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. But that's not all. Bloomberg is a long-standing supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu, the disgraced Israeli Prime Minister indicted for fraud. When Israel assaulted Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Bloomberg flew to Israel to support the civilian bombings. In an interview recently, he once again indicated his support for bombing hospitals and using right-wing talking points about Hamas “hiding in hospitals” to justify the catastrophic loss of life.
 AUDIO 6
 Bloomberg helped launder the reputation of the crown prince Mohammad bin Salman in March 2018, when he hosted the murderer of Jamal Khoshoggi in New York and smiled for photos with him in a Starbucks. Now, you might think, hey, that's not fair. That visit happened before the murder and dismemberment of the journalist. OK, but has his support changed since then? Not one bit. In fact, in September, long after the murder, Bloomberg sat down for an interview with the Saudi-owned newspaper, Arab News, where he lavishly praised the economic reforms made by Mohammad bin Salman and said that he is going in the right direction. No mention of Khashoggi's murder, Saudi Arabia's war crimes in Yemen, the imprisoned women's rights activists, torture, beheadings of gay people or anything like that. Just...money talk. Let's get away from the Middle East for a minute. What else does Michael Bloomberg believe? Let's go to the lightning round! [III. LIGHTNING ROUND] Alright. There is so much more. In the first years of his tenure as mayor, Bloomberg jumped up a hundred spots on Forbes’s Billionaires List, the single largest increase by any individual in the world. Meanwhile, the same mayor who touted his C.E.O.-style managerial abilities began to erode the government's relationships with the city workforce. His bitter battles with NYC unions eventually caused a New York Transit Authority strike.    
 He once unfavorably compared the United Federation of Teachers to the NRA. Democrat Bill de Blasio lamented that when Bloomberg finally left office, he had failed to resolve labor contracts with 152 of the city's unions. In 2004, Bloomberg advocated for the re-election of George W. Bush. He also was firmly in favor of the PATRIOT ACT, which allows greater state surveillance. Oh yeah, and Michael Bloomberg's policies directly contributed to the explosion of the homeless problem in New York. In 2013, City data showed that there were more than 52,000 homeless people residing each night in the municipal shelter system, up 69% since Bloomberg took office. This is the largest number of homeless people in NYC since the City began keeping records more than three decades ago. This record-high shelter population includes more than 22,000 homeless children. And the number of homeless families has increased by 80% since Bloomberg took office. What did Bloomberg say about this? Well, he evaded and used some half-truths. He claimed that NYC has a lower rate of “street homelessness” than other many other major US cities, but that doesn't mean it has a lower rate of homelessness altogether. The reason “street homelessness” is lower is because NYC has the legal right to shelter, unlike any other city in the US.   
 AUDIO 7
 This is not because of Bloomberg, of course, it's thanks to legal victories won by Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society. The statistics showing the increase of homelessness under Bloomberg is undeniable. So, how did this happen? Bloomberg took away permanent housing resources from homeless families, which drove the shelter census to an all-time high. Bloomberg cut off homeless families from priority access to public housing apartments and Section 8 vouchers – permanent housing resources that had successfully helped move tens of thousands of homeless children and families from shelters to stable housing under three previous mayoral administrations. They replaced those programs only with short-term subsidies that the Coalition for the homeless called “a revolving door back to homelessness for thousands of families.” When asked about a homeless child that made the news in New York, Bloomberg offered only this: “That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not.” Yikes. So, how about Bloomberg and women's issues? Bloomberg has long been accused of making offensive and belittling remarks about women's appearances and sexuality.    
 According to Business Insider, he has faced scrutiny over remarks attributed to him in a booklet with quotes presumably made by himself called ''Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg.” It features a number of misogynistic, racist, and homophobic jokes. One quote attributed to Bloomberg read, "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's." He avoided confirming whether or not he actually said that and berated journalists who questioned him about it. Now, you think, oh big deal, he's just kinda gross. Well, it's actually more than that. Last year, Bloomberg questioned the #MeToo movement, telling the New York Times that the battle against sexual assault has gone too far. He also defended Charlie Rose shortly after he was fired for sexual harassment. There is more. There is so much more, including Bloomberg's history of not believing women when they come forward about being assaulted. But...let's wrap up. Michael Bloomberg is so overtly vile that he seems like a caricature of a billionaire that you see in movies and TV.  
  AUDIO 8  
  Instead of taxing the rich, he has recently advocated changes that will effectively tax the POOR. That's how much of a billionaire caricature he is. He oppresses minorities, has a far-too-cozy relationship with the police, treats women like objects, actively harms the poor and has no firm ideology except maintaining his own power and wealth. Bloomberg's policies are so out of line with Democrats – even some centrist Democrats – that he has opted not to join the debates. He's doing this by not taking donations since he knows full well that donation counts are part of the debate qualifications. This gives him an out. He's clever enough but still transparent. Michael Bloomberg probably won't win the Democratic nomination. He's polling fifth, and centrists have already settled on their milquetoast candidate. But his presence could disrupt the primaries or even the general election in other ways mentioned earlier. The best way to take away his power to do that see through his bull****. 

PETE BUTTIGIEG

 Pete Buttigieg has always claimed that he's not bad and that he doesn't stink, but recent revelations from literally his entire political career show otherwise. In 2012, Buttigieg removed black police chief Darryl Boykins for investigating his white senior officers' discriminatory racial attitudes – demoting him from his position. Documents reveal that Buttigieg did this at the request of a high-dollar campaign donor. Buttigieg, whiter than a polar bear in a snowstorm, took the side of the white officers and replaced Boykins with not one but two white guys. The black community called for Buttigieg to be impeached, but his white behind wasn't going anywhere. Buttigieg claims to have turned his city around but really only for white people. A South Bend city-commissioned study from 2017 found the black population has higher levels of poverty and unemployment than the country. About 40 percent of black residents are living below the poverty line, and there’s an 11 percent unemployment rate in that community. Buttigieg funnels money into neighborhoods and projects that don't need it instead of neighborhoods and communities that do. To combat the perception that he doesn't care about black people, Buttigieg released his “Douglas Plan” to reform the justice system, but there was a problem because of course there was because he's Pete Buttigieg.    
 He said that 400 South Carolinians endorsed his plan and said they were black supporters, but it turns out many of the names listed as endorsements were neither black nor even Buttigieg supporters. The list of phony endorsements even included the co-chair the state's Bernie Sanders campaign. Pete Buttigieg's support among black people is so non-existent that he invents black people who like him. Don't vote for Mayo Pete in the primaries. He lies all the time, and he's a big, smelly loser. Eat …. Pete Buttigieg. Paid for by the committee to tell Pete Buttigieg to eat .... OK, so, everything Pete Buttigieg does is deceptive and dishonest. I'm not going to be naive and give a charitable interpretation of Buttigieg's words and deeds as if he's simply honestly mistaken. Everything about his behavior from running away from reporters who ask him hard questions to smiling while dismissing teenagers to reliable accounts of him telling colleagues that he will say anything to win gives the impression of a deeply dishonest politician who isn't even as good at hiding his dishonesty as other dishonest politicians. All politicians lie, but there are degrees. Mathematically, Donald Trump lies more than the average politician, and although there is less data on Buttigieg, I argue that he does too. You know he's about to tell a real whopper when he makes that controlled-rage rat face. Here are some of the most obvious examples and the key reasons why nobody should be supporting this sentient piece of Wonderbread.  
  AUDIO 2  
  Bernie Sanders' medicare-for-all program amounts to having the super rich pay more so that the entire country can be on the medicare plan. It will happen incrementally over the course of a few years until everyone is on it. Pete Buttigieg's healthcare plan is to have a public option in which some people will opt in and some people will opt out. Buttigieg claims this is about “freedom” but a closer look at what he's proposing suggests he's a lying liar who lies a lot. The problem with Buttigieg's plan is that is that if it's only a partial plan and not a universal plan, it will be very difficult to maintain due to Republican obstruction. If there is no real commitment to this public option, then Republicans can work to dismantle it as they did with the healthcare reform under the previous president. They are safe to take it apart at the behest of the private insurance industry. Then, after Republicans dismantle and defund the public option, they will do what they always do: claim it was never a good idea in the first place. That's what the Republican Party does. They get into government, defund programs that serve the public good, and then claim that said programs don't work while obfuscating that it was they who defunded them in the first place. It's a con on the level of a carnival ring toss, but everyone keeps lining up for it. Under actual medicare for all as proposed by Bernie Sanders, Republicans would not be safe to defund it because virtually everyone would be covered under that plan.    
 And the private insurance industry would have less and less power over time and therefore less influence and ability to, let's say, persuade politicians to do their bidding. I'll explain. Universal programs essentially cause less resentment among the population than partial programs. Partial programs with means testing has conservatives up in arms claiming that people with jobs are paying for the unemployed. These programs to help unemployed and under-employed should exist. But it should be acknowledged that they cause some resentment among some voters, which incentivize Republican politicians to rally against the programs to shore up votes. Universal programs that cover everyone, however, cause less resentment. We're all part of the program. There is nobody rallying against them because we would all suffer if we lost the program. For example, the fire department is a public institution that we pay for with taxes. We are all meant to be protected from fires by the fire department. It's universal, not partial, and since the fire department puts out fires for the rich and poor alike, nobody wants to get rid of it. The rich don't rally Republicans to remove the fire department. Republicans cannot convince their voters that having no more fire departments in the US is a good idea either. The poor and middle class do not rally Democrats to remove the fire department.    
  AUDIO 3  
 No Republican or Democratic politician is calling for the end of all fire departments because everybody is covered and nobody wants it to go away. It's a universal program, and since everyone benefits from it relatively equally, it's universally popular and causes little resentment regardless of class. A partial program causes resentment and can therefore be removed with a lot of support by Republican voters. A universal program causes less resentment and is therefore much harder to be removed. In short, when you take the private insurance industry out of the equation and make sure that healthcare is universal, medicare-for-all can function better than what we have now and be very difficult to be removed even by a Republican Congress. Conversely, when you add a public option but retain the private insurance industry, like Buttigieg proposes, all it accomplishes is having a public option for a little while and then defunded by Republicans and smeared by a still-thriving private insurance industry. It happened with the ACA, and it will happen again under Buttigieg. And he's counting on it. He knows his proposal is bunk. Democrats want something better than what Buttigieg is describing, and Republicans want something even worse than what we have now. It's an unpopular proposal that will go nowhere.   
 People act as if Sanders' plan won't go anywhere even if the Democrats take the Senate back, but it actually has a better shot because 1) there is more support for it among voters and 2) President Sanders would actually try to get it passed. Actual medicare-for-all is more popular, so enough Democrats will try to get it through. It might not pass, but it has a better shot with a president who will actually strongly advocate for it. Buttigieg's plan is a compromise and one that he doesn't even believe in. He's not making it a central issue of his campaign, he's running away from it. Whenever he's asked a hard question, he ducks out or gets defensive. Do you really think that if elected he will stump for it and put his heart and soul into a plan that he is actively avoiding talking about?    
  AUDIO 4  
  And even if it passes, Buttigieg will not defend it because his plan is clearly designed to be friendly to private insurance companies. He wants their support. If you leave Republicans the ability to dismantle something, they will. If you leave too much wiggle room in your plan, Republicans will exploit it.  Moving on, let's talk about free public college. So, Buttigieg is lying to you, sorry. Bernie Sanders' free public college plan is exactly that: free public college. Pete Buttigieg says his plan is free public college but with a catch. His plan would have “means testing” that judges whether or not you are poor enough to receive free public college. He's campaigning with this plan as if he doesn't want to let the super rich get free public college. That's not actually what means testing free public college would do.  
  First of all, Buttigieg's line about poor people paying for rich people to go to public college is garbage. The taxes that will pay for free public college are coming predominantly from rich people. It's actually rich people who will be paying for poor people to go to free public college. Not the other way. In absolutely no substantive way are poor people paying for rich people because of the manner in which this would potentially be funded. Second, how many millionaires are sending their children to public colleges? They're sending them to Harvard and other private universities because they can afford to. Even if they weren't, it doesn't change the fact that the rich will be paying into this system significantly more than the people ever will. As for means testing, it's trash, and here's why. Not making the system universal and absolute will allow lawmakers to exploit it. They will create loopholes and stricter means tests to keep a lot more people out, not just the rich. Also, mistakes will undoubtedly be made, and some poor people will undoubtedly be left out due to these mistakes. If the system is universal, there is no way to keep someone out even if there's a mistake. Also, even if the system could somehow operate perfectly, what happens when a student going to free public college for the first year is suddenly taken out of the system if their parents get bumped up to a higher tax bracket or the qualifications change between years?  
  AUDIO 5  
  Who is tested? The student or the parents? If it's the parents, what if the parents are millionaires but have cut their child off? Parents disown their children sometimes, usually for the worst reasons. If it's the student's income that's tested, they are always going to be poor, so the system is redundant and only exists to potentially make those aforementioned mistakes. Furthermore, Sanders' free public college plan covers trade schools, but Buttigieg's plan does not. A lot of people are going to be left out. Pete Buttigieg wants this system because he knows it won't work as well, won't cover as many people. It's the same as his phony healthcare plan. He either doesn't really want it or he knows it's flawed but likes the flaws. He's no fool, so he must know about the flaws, which only the leaves the first option: he doesn't really want it. Pete Buttigieg basically takes Sanders' most popular ideas because he wants to be popular too. Then he twists them to sound more “reasonable” by comparison to his more moderate voters, even though what he's really doing is making them untenable. There is so much more. With 14 percent of the South Bend’s housing vacated or abandoned, Buttigieg had a task force identify every relevant property and recommend an overall course of action.    
  His conclusion was that the city should fine homeowner to incentivize repairs and empower officials to demolish derelict properties at the owner’s expense. But here's the thing. This isn't Pete Buttigieg taking on “the man” – most of the homes were in low-income black and Latino neighborhoods, where some city residents had housing from deceased relatives or were still listed as owners despite having been forced out by expensive mortgages. Both the fines and demolitions tended to be heavily concentrated in these neighborhoods. One resident was fined thousands of dollars between 2012 and 2014 for failing to mow the lawn. South Bend’s eviction rate doubled between 2012 when Buttigieg was first elected, and 2016. Buttigieg presides over an eviction rate that is three times the national average. Pete Buttigieg does not care about poor people. But the rich? Oh, he gives them subsidies for luxury apartments. According to the South Bend Tribune, as all of this was happening, the homeless became subject to arrest, and placement of “Do not give to pandhandlers” signs were put on street corners. The space underneath South Bend's main street, which had been used as a shelter for the homeless, became subject to surveillance thanks to newly-installed cameras that Buttigieg wanted put up.  
  AUDIO 6  
  Buttigieg runs South Bend like a business, which is not surprising due to his work prior to being mayor. He worked for global consulting firm McKinsey between 2007 and 2010. McKinsey is most infamously known for their work with ICE – Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. What Buttigieg did there is largely unknown, but journalists have uncovered bits and pieces. Buttigieg did consulting for a project with Blue Cross Blue Shield, where he was involved in decisions that led to mass layoffs, increased premiums and many people losing their health insurance. Buttigieg was part of a team of consultants that had the United States Postal Service cut back operation times, automate postal services and replace unionized labor with non-union labor. Pete Buttigieg is no friend to the workers or to the unions. He also worked on a McKinsey contract in the middle east exploring how best to extract and exploit their natural resources, an environmentally destructive project that has and has also been widely criticized a huge waste of US taxpayer dollars. What else was he up to at McKinsey? He claims that he has been trying to get out of his non-disclosure agreement so he can be forthcoming with the press, but that doesn't sound like Pete Buttigieg, who is infamous for not being forthcoming with the press.    
  Here is Mayor Pete taking questions about his closed-door meetings with big money corporate donors and refusing to disclose information about them to the press. We do know some things about Buttigieg's smaller donors – mostly that he has the highest amount of donor dollars from those working in the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. So, if you're wondering if he's a cop, well, he's a cop. Buttigieg's big money donors, however, are his bread and butter. Both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have sworn off high-dollar fundraisers, but Buttigieg will do anything to win, even sell himself to the highest bidder. Billionaires should not pick the next president of the United States. Billionaires aren't holding secret fundraisers in wine caves with Buttigieg because they like his swagger. They're buying access because they want something in return. People don't buy something and not get something back. And we know, based on the incident with the South Bend police chief, what Buttigieg will do once he's bought. Buttigieg first fired, then eased off and demoted the police chief at the demand of a donor. And that only happened in a small town. Imagine that level of access to the highest office in the land.    
  AUDIO 7  
  Elections are won on turnout, and turnout requires an excited and motivated electorate. Democrats aren't motivated by boring candidates and candidates that are out of step with progress. Hopefully Buttigieg will drop out early in the primaries, and nobody will consider him for veep. On January 1, 2020, James Mueller will be inaugurated as the new Mayor of South Bend. I truly hope that 2020 is the last we ever hear of Pete Buttigieg.     
 

FAVORITE 2019 MOVIES

 I am exhausted – physically and emotionally. The former because of the work I put myself through and the latter because specifically the work I do is about how the world is bad. So, if you will permit me this week, I would like to talk about my favorite movies of 2019. In no particular order. Some of these movies had festival releases or foreign releases prior to 2019, but I'm using US theater release dates. No, I will not be making a “worst of 2019” video, and I don't have anything prepared to make a fast-and-dirty list in the comments. So, no need to ask. Here we go! Uncut Gems. The Safdie Brothers return from their low-key triumph with Good Time to a wider triumph with Uncut Gems. Adam Sandler, one of the most recognizable comedy stars of the past thirty years, has an unrecognizable tone and gravity to his performance as he stumbles his way through a series of bets, failures and misadventures. In a Herculean feat, Uncut Gems made me care about basketball, not just a little but a great deal. Everything was basketball, and I cared very deeply about the outcome of the final game. Uncut Gems is the film version of a panic attack, as its third act is so tense that it becomes both uncomfortable to watch and impossible to look away. Under the Silver Lake.
 David Robert Mitchell, director of It Follows, returns for a different kind of nightmare: a slacker neo-noir for the Internet age. Andrew Garfield plays an aimless thirty-something whose life hasn't quite started yet. He mixes himself up in an elaborate conspiracy theory so convoluted to the point that it reaches parody – but that may be the point. All knowledge is known in the Internet age. The film asks “Are we forced to create our own mysteries to invent new, previously unknown knowledge?” Is the conspiracy real or in our protagonist's head? The question need not – perhaps should not – be answered. Instead, the movie drifts along its dream, inviting the audience to make up its own mind about just what the heck is even going on. Under the Silver Lake has glimpses of Mulholland Drive, and while it has become trite to call a film “Lynchian” this overused descriptor actually fits perfectly into any synopsis or review of this film. A Hidden Life. Terrence Malick returns for arguably his best film since The Tree of Life. His output of late, while scoring with me personally, left some critics thinking his time had past. Not so, as A Hidden Life easily demonstrates. August Diehl plays a peasant farmer in Austria in 1939.   
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 Initially conscripted into serving the German forces, he begins to question the righteousness of his cause, but every institution, from the church to the local government, sides with Germany over his concerns. When he is called up for further duty, he refuses to swear the loyalty oath and is imprisoned for treason. His family suffers as well, as the locals turn on his wife and children, left behind while he's behind bars. A tale of normalization of monstrous deeds and the conformity to justify them, A Hidden Life is entirely relevant for our time. Beautifully shot and scored, A Hidden Life is a rich experience for the senses. Jojo Rabbit. This is exactly the movie I needed to see in 2019. Taika Watiti spins a story about a young boy in Germany who gets caught up with goosestepping monsters and a very familiar imaginary friend. It has an extremely charitable picture of youngsters who take up this cause, that they are just lonely people who want to wear a uniform, but Watiti also gives the most cathartic image of the year when Jojo kicks his imaginary friend out a window and cusses him out. It's just...so...satisfying.   
 Midsommar. Director Ari Aster makes movies that are easy to praise but difficult to recommend. After his simultaneously applauded but divisive Hereditary, Aster has given us the world of Midsommar, a festival for weird, isolated people who are so isolated that they don't realize how weird they are. You never know you're in a cult, otherwise you wouldn't have joined. Stranded with these cultists are an American couple with a shaky relationship, one that is tested as they go through rituals and become manipulated by the locals. It's a tense film, a suspenseful film and also kind of a goofy film. Not an easy combination to make work. Ad Astra. This is exactly my kind of movie. Such incredible care is put into visuals and mood. It's challenging and eschews the temperament of modern big budget science fiction. Brad Pitt is on a doomed mission to find his lost father in the depths of space, previously thought passed away during a quest to find life on other worlds. His father's task is akin to finding God, and his task, searching for his father in the heavens, is that too.   
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 If there is nothing more, should we despair, or is that an indicator that we must make the best of life since it's all we have? If Ad Astra has any downside, it's that some of the voiceover dialogue is both stilted and unnecessary. Not all of it but some of it. Ad Astra suffers a bit from theatrical Blade Runner syndrome. Even so, this gorgeous adventure through space and the human condition is a few cut lines of dialogue away from a perfect film. Knives Out. Rian Johnson crafts a mystery wherein the question is not exactly “Whodunnit?” but how and why and, well, anything more is a spoiler, isn't it? Knives Out plays with genre conventions while itself being an excellent representation and example of the genre. It tackles class, wealth, topical issues like immigration and the rise of the far right among modern youth. Filled to the brim with excellent performances and quotable lines and flavor and atmosphere, Knives Out is a pitch-perfect film. Us. There sure are a lot of horror movies on this list. Well, I like horror. Wanna fight about it? Jordan Peele returns with a social horror so good that it manages to match Get Out, a feat thought unlikely until its release. A seamless mixture of lots of horror and just enough comedy, and also a mixture of lots of scares and just enough political thoughtfulness, Us is both a fantastic popcorn film and an opportunity for deep dives and debate about meaning.   
 Velvet Buzzsaw. Not everyone loved this one, but I loved it all the way. Dan Gilroy, director of Nightcrawler, teams up with Jake Gyllenhaal once again. This is Jake Gyllenhaal at his most Jake Gyllenhaal. A bizarre horror film set in the art world, Velvet Buzzsaw draws you into its world and traps you there. Unsettling, paranoid and fully embracing its eccentricities. It deserves more praise than it received. Last but not least, Parasite, a Korean film directed by Bong-Joon Ho. The critical darling director once said that while he intended to make the story about issues specific to his home country, he found that the universality of living under capitalism was something that everyone could understand. Parasite is the story of a poor family who try get hired by a rich family until one by one, they all have employment. The trickery and confidence jobs they use are entertaining, but the real thrills come after they complete their mission and must now keep up the act. More and more dangerous circumstances arise, and the posh house begins to reveal troubling secrets. Darkly comedic, Parasite is the perfect film for late capitalism. Tense, sad, desperate but not entirely devoid of hope for a better future. And that's it. Those are my favorite movies of 2019. Are yours different? Probably, because we're not the same person. Tell everyone about it in the comments. Bye for now. 

TWILIGHT ZONE

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 The Twilight Zone feels like something that has always existed. It hasn't – it premiered in 1959 and has had several revivals and a movie since then – but something about the ageless, ethereal quality of The Twilight Zone and the moments that have been burned into popular culture and learned through osmosis gives it that feeling, that quality. Getting on your plane and joking that you see something on the wing has become as ritualistic as Sunday mass. The twist ending in film and television is so intertwined this series that “Twilight Zone” is synonymous with this style of storytelling. It's the anthology series upon which all other anthology series are compared, and because is, The Twilight Zone has this ancient and timeless quality to it. But the truth is The Twilight Zone has very much a product of its time. The social issues it tackled following the largest world conflict in history and the emerging civil rights movement. The subsequent revivals did the same. The 1985 Twilight Zone had episodes about Vietnam veterans only a few years removed from their conflict, underappreciated women in the workplace, the Communist Party and other social concerns of its time. It was very much of the 80's. The 2002 Twilight Zone had episodes about bigotry, paranoia about terror attacks and lots more. It was very much of that time.   
 In 2019, a new revival of The Twilight Zone premiered, continuing the anthology sci-fi/horror/fantasy stories mixed with social commentary. Critical appraisal was mostly positive. “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes and “Generally Favorable” on Metacritic. And it received the now typical, tedious, reactionary response from the chuds and fascists. “Oh no, they made The Twilight Zone WOKE!” as if it hadn't already been for 60 years. Put a pin in that. We'll come back to it later. Let's go through arguably the best episodes of the new series so far. Replay. Nina is escorting her son Dorian to college. During this journey, she discovers that her old camcorder has the power to turn back time when she pressed rewind. Nina and Dorian are pulled over by a state trooper named Lasky. Nina, probably having dealt with the police her whole life, tells her son to follow Lasky's instructions. Dorian is less willing to speak to the trooper deferentially, and Lasky fatally shoots Dorian. Nina uses the camcorder to reverse time. In this timeline, she and Dorian pull over even before the trooper tells them to, but that still isn't enough to save themselves. Nina reverses time again and stops at a motel to avoid Lasky, but he finds them anyway, and things go wrong. Again. This continues over and over again.
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 No matter what they do, no matter how closely they follow the instructions of Lasky, it's not enough to save Dorian. The narrative of the white police officer taking liberties with people of color is common in film and television due to how closely it resembles real life encounters. However, what this episode of The Twilight Zone does is go after the counter-narrative that apologists tend to use whenever cases like this make headlines. Apologists always say “Well, he should have done what the police said! It's his own fault!” But these ignorant declarations do not take into account a few important things. First, even if someone is rightfully suspected of a crime, a disproportionate amount of force is not justified. Selling smokes without a license is not a capital offense. Second, often is the case that force is used even when the suspect does everything the officer says. Yet, even when these encounters are recorded, apologists for the police will then invent some other justification – like something that must have happened that was not recorded. But that just runs into the first issue. Even if someone is rightfully suspected, disproportionate force is still not justified. Replay shows us these encounters and the arguments of the apologists.   
 No matter what Nina and Dorian do, no matter how nice she is to Lasky, no matter how closely they follow instructions, no matter how closely they follow the law, they are still subject to his pursuit and his wrath. Those who saw the episode and just thought it was another “woke” story about the dangers of the police missed the very specific facet of these encounters that sometimes goes unnoticed:   The apologia for the police and the false assumption by the apologists that there is always a way to avoid said torment or mistreatment. Sometimes, no matter how much you try, no matter what you do, if the police have it in their mind to torment you, they will do that. If the police have it in their mind to hurt you, they will do that. In the climax of the episode, Nina confronts Lasky. With so many students recording the encounter, he backs down. Ten years later, the camcorder is accidentally broken, and after Dorian leaves the house, police lights reflect on her face. It will never stop. Even if we record mistreatment by the police, they can still get away with it. The entire incident can be recorded and put on the Internet for all to see, right there, clear as crystal, and sometimes the police are exonerated. In addition to having a new take on police and their apologists, the episode is highly suspenseful. Each time Nina hits rewind, we are left wondering how she can change things to create a new result.   
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 Each time when Lasky shows up anyway, we are heartbroken and terrified. The escape scene immediately prior to the climax is tense, and just when we think the tension has been broken, Lasky appears, and the tension is ramped up. A false ending...and then, in the epilogue, another false ending. He never stopped. It will never stop. They have too much power, and there sometimes there is nothing that can be done, no matter how many chances there are. A Traveler is the story of a police officer named Yuka, her captain, a man named Pendleton, and a mysterious stranger who suddenly appears in their jail. He claims to be an extreme tourist, and one thing on his bucket list is to be pardoned by Pendleton. The captain, ready to believe this obvious fabrication because it suits his ego, releases the traveler and allows him the join the station Christmas party. Yuka is unconvinced. Everything the traveler says turns out to either be a lie or a means in which to turn the party-goers against one another. Even his truths are insincere. Eventually, Pendleton comes around and stuffs the traveler back in his jail cell. Throughout the episode, there are references to their town sharing a power grid with the nearby Air Force base and how close their Alaskan home is to Russia. The traveler, in order to divide the captain and Yuka further, spins a tale about Pendleton supplying intelligence to the Russians.   
 Pendleton leaves to check on some equipment, and Yuka, previously disbelieving everything the traveler said, accepts this spy business as truth. She's sick of working for Pendleton, sick of trying to assimilate into another culture so she can be accepted. The traveler's words might be lies, but these are lies that she wants to hear. Lies that she is willing to believe, regardless of the source. It's no coincidence that the background noise of the episode is that of a conflict between the United States and Russia. The real battle isn't between the two powers but between the people and those who would manipulate the people by telling them lies that they are willing to believe. Fake News. Propaganda. Creating enemies where they don't exist. Dividing the people to take power. The traveler's alien nature is uncovered. The invasion begins. Yuka's brother, sitting in jail due to a drunk and disorderly charge, not only accepts this foreign influence but applauds it because even though they have bad intentions, they are fighting against people he doesn't like. It's a familiar sentiment if you have ever heard someone suddenly believe in the goodness of dangerous entities because said entities gave them what they wanted. There is no one-to-one allegory here.   
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 The aliens aren't Russia or the president. Rather, the episode is a melange of ideas about truth and misinformation, about taking advantage of fear to assume power. The performances, particularly from Stephen Yeun, are strong, and the mood it sets – the mystery – is highly suspenseful and worth of The Twilight Zone name. Blurryman, the season finale, features Seth Rogen seeing the end of the world and Jordan Peele playing...Jordan Peele. An excellent fake-out, the opening scene stops in its tracks, and the episode becomes the story of Sophie, the writer of the episode-within-an-episode. The Twilight Zone goes meta and debates the merits of sci-fi and horror that has a point to make and sci-fi and horror that exists to frighten and let experience the nightmare without having to live in it. It was written by the same writer as the premiere – The Comedian – which definitely had a point to make, but Blurryman takes the opposite perspective and shows that there is value in simply letting the horror inside you. This is among the most widely-praised episodes, though I personally preferred Six Degrees of Freedom for its claustrophobia and performances as well as the aforementioned Replay for its more grounded horror over the meta-horror of Blurryman.
 If I have one major complaint about the first season of this Twilight Zone revival is that it spent too much time referencing the 1959 series. Not just by remaking Nightmare at 30,000 Feet – a good episode that is indeed a completely different story. I mean the constant easter eggs and sly references to famous episodes of the past. This is in service of diehard fans who want their long-term stanning for Twilight Zone to be acknowledged, and frankly, I think we can do without playing a game that amounts to letting viewers know who the so-called “real fans” of the show are with this “I spy” silliness. Blurryman remarks on this, showing Rod Serling as quite literally a shadow that haunts the new series. Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone can stand on its own, and I hope they ditch the goofy fan service in season 2. Complaints about the series by others tend to vary. One is that the episodes are “too long” and that the are mandated to drag in the middle to suit the standard operating procedure of the hour-long drama. The original Twilight Zone has only half an hour with commercials, not counting season 4 which expanded to an hour. However, the idea that these episodes have to fit neatly within a timeframe and a specific format is disproved by looking at the runtimes for the season's episodes.
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 Two episodes only run 37 minutes, two over 50 minutes and the rest  around 40 minutes. The Twilight Zone is on the CBS streaming service. The writers of this revival have more freedom to tell their story as quickly or slowly as they please, unlike the confined, commercial-driven format of the original series. The episodes aren't mandated to be long and to drag. The scripts are as long as the writers wanted them to be. Some episodes feel like movies, and movies have down moments in the middle when the protagonist is at their lowest. The episodes don't drag. They're just...movies! The other common complaint about the revival is that it isn't “subtle” enough, and that the message of each episode is too “blunt.” First of all, well, that's The Twilight Zone. This isn't a Panos Cosmatos nightmare or a David Lynch puzzle to be solved. The Twilight Zone is a series of fables. Moral lessons made through narratives like The Scorpion and the Frog or The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. A fable generally ends with an explicit message to the reader, often in the form of some maxim. Episodes of The Twilight Zone generally end with an explicit message to the viewer, originally told by Rod Serling and now by Jordan Peele. Is that too...blunt?   
 Well, maybe, but after years of writing about movies and watching “film bros” misinterpret Fight Club and Taxi Driver, getting the exact opposite message and using said message to reinforce their toxic worldviews, I have become 100% OK with media being more blunt about its messaging. When someone derides a piece of media for “lacking subtlety” as the reason that it fails, they are effectively claiming that subtlety is an essential quality of artistic media. Someone furiously writes “Well, that was a bit on the nose.” in their article or their tweet, and everyone crowds around and thanks that person for their big-brain thinking. But another way of saying that the metaphor was a bit on the nose is to say that the metaphor was on target. The episode “Not All Men” is rather “on the nose” but why shouldn't it be? The writer felt passionately about the subject and wanted the audience to be under no illusions about her intentions. If the episode had been too subtle, then it wouldn't have been as inspiring, wouldn't have skewered its target as well. It might have missed the target. Not All Men is the story about men seemingly being affected by a fallen meteorite, but in classic Twilight Zone twist fashion, it turns out that the meteorite was only giving the men a placebo effect and that their behavior is learned and therefore under their control.   
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 The metaphor about aggressiveness among men being partly cultural and not simply innate is, well, not subtle. It shouldn't have to be. It tells men that being aggressive toward others can't be justified by saying it's in their nature and therefore unavoidable. It's not. People can choose to not be awful to each other. It's a good lesson and a tense, exciting episode held together by strong performances. Point of Origin is about a wealthy woman named Eve whose housekeeper, Anna, is arrested and threatened with deportation. The sci-fi twist is that Eve is actually an alien from another world, but she has lived on Earth. This is her home. She doesn't even remember the other world. Again, not subtle about the subject matter. Who cares? Snow White from Once Upon a Time is an alien, and that's enough reason to abolish ice. I'm with you. Not every story needs a secret meaning, and if you think it does, you have been watching too many YouTube videos along those lines. Some critics would say that to be unsubtle denies us the joy of realization, but that assumes too much. It assumes, first, that the audience will have that realization, and if you have ever seen someone miss the point while watching Starship Troopers, you know that happens. Second, it assumes that this joy of realization is always more important than communicating clearly to a wide audience.   
 If something is communicated clearly, someone leaps up and says that this piece of media is “talking down to us” but the point of a novel or television series or movie is not to stroke your ego. This isn't about...you. That is not to say subtle = bad or subtle = good. Only that there is room in fiction for fables, for allegory, for communicating clearly. A lack of subtlety does not make a piece of media bad. Mad Max Fury Road literally wrote its themes on the wall, and that movie was awesome. A television episode is not a video game. You don't have to “solve it” in order for it to be worthwhile. If the new Twilight Zone didn't do anything for you, that's fine, your feelings are valid, and that doesn't mean you're automatically a film bro. I'm just saying those guys...tend to not like this revival. That's all.
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 Its bluntness in some of its episodes is not a failing, it's a strength. It's not as if the writers were trying to code their intentions and social politics in some kind of inscrutable cypher and just “accidentally” left the code key on the table. No. They had something to say, and then they said it – in most cases, rather dramatically, profoundly and with stellar, award-nominated performances that struck a lot of emotional resonance. If “film bros” on “film Twitter” consistently say that something is “too woke” and they say that it lacks subtlety, the overlap suggests something. In their demand for “more subtlety” they are not actually asking not to be challenged. Instead, they are asking to be able to ignore the social politics of the piece of media. A “subtle” message allows them to do this – to ignore, to pretend the message is either not there or that the message is the opposite of what it actually is, conforming to the worldview of the film bro. A piece of media with clear communication is not insulting our intelligence. It's challenging us. It's making its point unavoidable and forcing us to think about it. “Unsubtle” media is confrontational. It's supposed to make us uncomfortable and challenge our preconceived notions in a way that is in ambiguous. It's bold, and it's risky, but sometimes, it works. And I think it worked here.
 The Twilight Zone has always been this way. Always hammy in its delivery but always in such a way that feels necessary. [Examples] I don't think we're living in times when we should be subtle or go on and on about how “both sides” are the same. I think we're living in a time when lines in the sand need to be drawn and hopefully drawn clearly. Communicated clearly. No more dancing around the issues. It's getting very real out there, and our fiction – our media – should be able to reflect that.