What was that word? Ah…yes. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Well, the title doesn’t really work I guess, but it might just be California who saves us all. Why?

California is the latest entity to sue the fossil fuel industry, and this lawsuite has teeth. By now, if you listen to our podcast, you know that the fossil fuel industry knew about global warning over a hundred years ago, and actively worked to suppress it. Multinomah County (Portland, Oregon) is already suing for costs of combating climate change. There’s also that group of students in Montana who sued and won. So what’s different about the California lawsuit?

We get into it the details and implications in this Right and Freedom episode. SuperCaliforniated…uh, whatever. It’s pretty awesome, is the point.

We don’t have problems that we can’t solve…together. That’s the truth. In WW2, a scrapy upstart of a country stepped into the largest war that the world had seen until then, and did what needed to be done. From the women working at home in factories to the rationing of food and gas, whatever needed to be done to fight a war that wasn’t even ours, we did. That’s the spirit of this great nation. When rocks land in our way, we move them.

Climate change is just another rock. Mass shootings…another. But we can’t seem to move them. Why? The answer is obvious: we’re not working together. There are people lying to us, lying to our friends, who want nothing more than to line their pockets or eke out a little bit of power. It’s sad that such people exist in the world, but what’s even more sad is that they are skilled liars, and have corrupted the minds of a lot of this nation’s good people. We can’t continue like this. We just can’t.

If you’ve ever seen (or read) Macbeth, then you’ll likely remember the scene wherein Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, watches the staged play-within-a-play and comments on the woman playing the queen. The woman has gone on for some time about how she will never marry again once the poor (and poisoned) king has passed. Gertrude is saying at this point that she doesn’t buy it, and that the queen on stage is selling a bill of goods (basically).

The “shell game” is a standby in movies featuring someone deceitful. And why shouldn’t it be? The game features the dealer, who places a ball (ostensibly) beneath a cup and then shuffles the cups around. One generally has a 0.33 chance of finding the ball under the cup—with a fair dealer. But all too often, the dealer isn’t fair and manages to palm the ball before shuffling begins. This means the player has a 0.00 chance of finding the ball under any cup.

But at Right and Freedom, we deal in politics, not games of chance. So why mention cups? Well, if you look at it a different way, a crooked dealer’s only job is to convince the player that the ball exists under the cups that they are shuffling around. Just like…wait for it…the evidence required to impeach Joe Biden. In this context, McCarthy is the dealer, and you, the American people, are the patsies…I mean players. And right now, McCarthy and the Republicans are doing what the crooked dealer does: try to convince you that evidence is there when, in fact, it’s not.

Every single person at Right and Freedom signed up to serve our great nation in the United States Marine Corps. When we talk about things that happened to our country, this is the context from which we come. January 6th, for example, we feel as a personal attack.

We love this country. We hate liars. And there you have it...all of our reasons for railing against Donald Trump the way we do, as well as railing against all those who support him.

When people in positions of power continue to hold onto their power past the ability to do their jobs, it’s important for us to be able to say no. And if the people from West Virginia, or California, for example, refuse to hold their leaders to account for whatever reason, then there should be some other tool to ensure that those whose cognitive decline is impairing their ability to lead the most powerful nation in the world do not cling to power, as people in power often do. It doesn’t have to be based on age, whatever tool we employ, but we should be testing the cognitive capabilities of our leaders. I know, I know. I’m the first to say that such a tool would be used as a political cudgel between the two major parties (and I say as much in this podcast episode).

The idea that religion or belief in religion makes someone a good person is nonsense. There, we said it. It’s like boozers or potheads. Whether someone drinks too much or smokes too much weed isn’t what makes them a good or bad person. What makes a good or bad person is how people treat each other. That’s it. Nobody, religious or otherwise, has a monopoly on goodness. It’s just not a thing that’s true. How we treat each other, and how we take care of others as well as ourselves, is the measure of the goodness in humanity, and right now, a lot of folks are ticking boxes in the ‘not good’ category.

Jack Smith is closing in on Trump. It’s safe to say that the trial is going to begin soon for any of the multiple legal issues outstanding. For some reason, however, there’s still a fair amount of concern )(among us as well) about whether the trial will actually see Trump unable to run for the office of President of the United States.

So what?

A lot of folks now are rightly irritated at the fact that the rich in this country seem to just keep getting richer, and the rest of us…barely getting by. But they earned that money, right? Sure, pal. While driving on our roads, and polluting our air, and destroying our climate. And what do they pay for that? If their money is tied up in investments, not a red cent. Investments are only taxed when money goes in or comes out. The vast majority of billionaire wealth is tied up in investments, and very little of it is actually taxable.

In the hundreds in Texas, in the nineties in Oregon, and in the nineties on the East Coast. The hosts of Right and Freedom are hot and bothered—and not in a good way. In this pod-isode, we discuss the overwhelming mountain of evidence that there is about climate change. But wait…there’s more! It wouldn’t be a Right and Freedom Podcast without some mention of the deplorables and those who follow MTG (and not Magic the Gathering, unfortunately). It turns out one of our very good friends has been brainwashed apparently and now is…get this…quoting MTG as an expert. On what? Listen and find out, but be assured, she’s not an expert. But “she’s an elected politician so she knows things we can’t.”

The American experiment ends with a hostile takeover, and because of this, every Congress for the last few decades has approved the NDAA. So what’s changed? The myopic and so-called Freedom Caucus has decided that we don’t need the NDAA as much as we need to make sure that there’s no freeloading on the government’s dime.

You may not know that I am an author. I write under the name Andrew Sweet (mostly my real name) and I have published multiple science fiction novels. I’m coming to you this time as a person, speaking one human to another, about what happened to a friend of mine. We often talk about gun violence during our podcast. This is one area where something like 80% (rounded) of Americans agree in common-sense gun legislation, but the Republican Party, to name names, consistently prevent gun legislation from being considered. They claim the 2nd Amendment, but we know better, don’t we?

Shoot migrants in the legs, or build an alligator moat. Remember when the truth of what Trump was saying in the oval office came out? In the book The Room Where It Happened, John Bolton shocked the world with his reveal that Trump actually was considering using the federal government to shoot migrants in the legs (as stated). We reeled from the idea of the alligator moat, that one human being would consider doing that to another. Donald Trump’s got nothing on Greg Abbott.

The Republicans want to impeach Biden so badly that they kicked someone out of their “Freedom Caucus.” Here’s the deal: there are no high crimes or misdemeanors of which Biden is guilty to our awareness (and we definitely pay attention). These are prerequisites for an impeachment of a president. They argue that Biden's border policies (which, I remind you, mostly is extending the policies of Donald Trump) are allowing dangerous people to enter the US. They say this despite the fact that more migrants have been turned away under Biden than Donald Trump—which I’m officially against, but generally, Republicans go all gushy for.

Assault rifles. You know the real things that are threats to the children (as opposed to drag queens, transvestites, or whatever the right would have you think). And climate change, another thing that’s killing people across the United States.

What does the above graph say to you? If you can’t see the graph, you can navigate to https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/CA.html to review it there. What is shows is that certain ethnic groups are under-represented in the prison system in California (which is hardly a Republican stronghold—that’s not what this is about). You know which groups are over-represented in the prison system in California? That’s right: blacks are more than 4 times more likely to get sent to prison based on these data. Latino? You also are slightly more likely. So looking at this, and being naive and foolish, one could say “gee, those black people must be committing a lot of crimes.”

But that’s the naive view, and if you’ve listened to Right and Freedom before, you know better. You’ve heard of overpolicing in minority neighborhoods, you’ve come to understand the school-to-prison pipeline, and you’ve also understood the breakdown of prison sentences. At least 15% and as high as 25% of the entire prison population is there for drug possession charges.