no i i completely agree the idea that they're not mainstream is absurd all of them are part of a deeply flawed system and i think enter did quite a good job of exposing it by the way uh people have kept messaging me asking us to have them on the show we tried very hard to get a show andrew we've been trying very hard apparently you told our representatives that you don't want to come on but hey if you see this segment we're not going to treat you in the same way as npr or all of that you are welcome on the show anytime my friend you crystal what do you take a look at well

now that the first battle in the great gop rebellion of 2023 is complete what the hell was it actually all about what did the rebels want what did they win will it mean for all of us after all at times during the fight it was actually a little hard to discern exactly what the ask were what principles were really at stake especially since the 20 holdouts weren't a united front but rather a collection of different ambitions and grievances this confusion was exacerbated by the fact that the two sides were both led by sort of pseudo-trumpy and figures kevin macarthy was directly endorsed by trump of course and had as one of his top allies marjorie taylor green woman who has not found a trump delusion she would not embrace and the 20 rebels were led by matt gates a pugilist whose natural gifts as a genuine asshole have made him a natural for the trumpian political aesthetic the media largely treated this fight as if it was something totally new totally different and to be sure we haven't had a speaker fight this lengthy in a hundred years but as the dust settles on this new gop house majority it seems to me most of the lines of this fight weren't actually one set down by trump in 2016 but by the tea party back in 2010 and by the coke radical libertarian wing and berry goldwater before that yeah there are a few trump era twists that are new and different and frankly these are the only pieces which are interesting and not terrible the potential defense spending cuts the deep state investigation which thoger is digging into in his monologue but the overwhelming bulk of the concessions are actually antithetical to trump's 2016 break from gop economic orthodoxy remember back then he was the guy who trashed the neoliberal consensus of trade deals and deficit hawks and would be social security cuts but now with this fight we're officially back to 2010 with all its hostage taking over spending cuts and demands the slash social spending including potentially social security in medicare there's nothing new about these politics and they sure as hell are not populist but this is predictably exactly what you get when you have a party that under trump embraced vibes and aesthetics more than actual political content because there are a million dc orks and billions of dollars ready to fill your empty vessel with the anti-tax pro-plutocrat starve the poorest ideology that has been haunting this town for decades now let me be a little bit specific here about these concessions at least what we know of them and what they ultimately will mean remember since democrats hold the senate and the lighthouse the most critical action the session is going to be on items where the house and the senate must actually act together in order to keep the basics of government operating so basically the whole game here is the debt ceiling and the government budgeting process the debt ceiling doesn't get lifted economic chaos could ensue if the government doesn't get funded it shuts down with huge ramifications for basic societal functioning the concessions given by mccarthy make it much more likely that ordinary americans will suffer because of radical anti-government ideologues in fact many of the 20 who are posing mccarthy were explicit that their core demand was a pledge that mccarthy would use the debt ceiling fight to hold the entire nation hostage in the name of fiscal austerity south carolina republican ralph normam said ralph normam said that he would never vote for mccarthy until he was willing to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling he described it as a non-negotiable item a letter that was sent by seven of the hold-outs last month they demanded that a debt ceiling showdown occur and that they balanced the budget in 10 years even if they actually follow through on defense budget cut the bulk of the spending cuts are going to come from vital and popular programs things like medicare and social security that make up significant chunks of the federal budget this dramatically unpopular agenda appears to be exactly what the radicals have ultimately won mccarthy agreed to change the process for passing spending bills in a way that empowers the most anti-government radicals he also pledged to send the country into economic crisis run lift the debt ceiling with no spending cuts for the rebels going to war with dc elites but the actual provisions that they were warring over are decidedly not republicans know this by the way when rick scott flodis similar program as head of the nrc republicans who actually wanted to win elections like mitch mcconnell trashed in for it wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pull now they're implementing exactly the unpopular agenda that they tried desperately to run away from back then additional reported concessions have to do with power any single caucus member can now call essentially vote of no confidence on mccarthy powerful rules committee which effectively governs how legislating occurs that's going to be dominated by hard right freedom caucus members on their own these provisions aren't really good or bad since it all depends on whether that new powers can be used for good or ill but again this group has made it clear what they want to do with that power and it's hostage taking spending cuts which will hurt the working class and maintaining criminally low tax rates on the rich in fact one reported concession requires a three-fifths vote in order to raise tax rates i can assure you this provision does not have you average taxpayer in mind but rather the goodies and giveaways that the ultra rich wish to benefit from in perpetuity listen trump the man and the movement lives on he may well once again be the gop standard bearer but nearly all of the economic content of trump ism was abandoned long ago leaving literally anyone the ability to claim the mantle of supposed populism even as they gnashed their teeth in favor of a raft of plutocrat friendly policy priorities fighting the powers that be feels like a populist revolt when given a 30 second gloss on cable news i too enjoyed watching kevin mccarthy's repeated humiliation over and over again but what was one is ultimately a more hard line entrenchment of capital and the same old policies that create socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else and sogger the way that the republican party has really been able and

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all right so i'm really looking at well

uh as fun as the drama that unfolded last week with kevin mccarthy's humiliating effort to barely attain the speakership was it still has tremendous consequence chrystal and i are both looking at its harbingers of major fights to come spending of course the debt ceiling ukraine all of that but potentially one of the most significant demands of kevin mccarthy was forced to ascend to was the establishment of a new church style committee to investigate the intelligence agencies for those who don't know the church committee was a tremendously important event in modern american history it was established in 1975 after nearly two decades of fbi and cia malfeasance roiled the entire country from creating charles manson to coordinating hit jobs on leftist black leaders to drugging people without their knowledge and possibly even orchestrating the killing of our 34th president everyone at the time was just exhausted by scandal after scandal and the just absolutely insane rogue behavior of our law enforcement and spy agencies here's how senator church laid out his committee and its importance at the time

there has never been a full public accounting of fbi domestic intelligence operations therefore this committee has undertaken such an investigation its purpose is not to impair the fbi's legitimate law enforcement and counter espionage functions but rather to evaluate domestic intelligence according to the standards of the constitution and the statutes of our land if fault is to be found it does not rest in the bureau alone it is to be found also in the long line of attorneys general presidents and congresses who have failed who have given power rather and responsibility to the fbi but have failed to give it adequate guidance direction and control information is a powerful resource one of the fbi's most significant features is its system or efficient processing filing and retrieving of the data it gathers the potential dangers in this system are obvious today we are here to review the major findings of our full investigation of fbi domestic intelligence including the co-entail program and other programs aimed at domestic targets fbi's surveillance of law-abiding citizens and groups political abuses of fbi intelligence and several specific cases of unjustified intelligence operations these hearings have won overriding objective the development of sufficient information for congress to legislate appropriate standards for the fbi the

church committee was established right after the resignation of Richard Nixon and when people in power just could no longer deny the decades-long insanity that had existed at the top and it yielded real and stunning results the church committee made public and questioned senior officials involved in mass illegal activity of pointed directly at manipulating the american public including the official recognition of the mk ultra program co-entail pro operation mockingbird the beginnings of mass telephonic surveillance the church committee actually wrote the rules and put in place safeguards for the fbi and the cia and the rest of the intelligence community which by and large worked okay for a while more importantly what the church committee really did was reestablish american trust in spy agencies with the public who were disgusted by their illegal and immoral activity in plain sight we are at a similar breaking point right now and it's why i actually welcome this news as part of mccarthy's bid to win the speakership he was forced to promise this new style committee it's going to investigate the domestic intelligence agencies and their interference not only in domestic politics as we plainly seen now over the last five years but to some extent their coordination in some cases outright direction of big technology companies and censorship this committee is needed now more than ever because we are in a very similar period in american history the limited safeguards that existed within the fbi and the cia vanished 20 years ago on 9-11 from that day forward combined with the legislation enacted by the bush administration we have seen the mass surveillance program accelerate beyond our wildest dreams worse we actually saw our so-called terrorism apparatus promised by the fbi and the cia to always be pointed outwards at our adversaries turned inward at american citizens in the last few years cheered on by those who once decried those powers when they were used by george w bush against muslims the new committee to investigate the intelligence community will specifically focus on quote the weaponization of the federal government its authority will include access to intelligence operations within all law enforcement agencies and it will examine surely the current investigation into donald trump and the holding of classified information at mar-logo but also the origins of coronavirus civil liberties concerns about illegal spying on american citizens the committee as the rules are currently drafted would enable lawmakers to access the most classified information normally shared only with the house intelligence committee including covert operations and the scope and the size of the committee are already being attacked by fbi and cia defenders calling it a partisan witch hunt which look maybe it is which is where i really want to focus on the difficulty in our current environment is that one party does not trust the intelligence community and the other at least the base does neither are doing so for particularly principal reasons it arises from the domestic political conditions of the time involving trump that's why i think it's actual absolutely essential to get to the truth of what really happened during the blm ryan's on january six with covid the cover up russia gate with trump mar-logo the clinton investigation big tech that this new committee has to work with any democratic lawmaker who has shown skepticism of the intelligence community and in good faith would co-sign at least some of the probes the current knock on the committee by liberal outlets like the daily beast and commentators like joe scarborough is it lacks legitimacy because democrats won't sign on yet in the same breath they say that the fbi and the cia have done nothing wrong that they're acting honorably and are continuing to serve as mouthpieces for the deep state a successful church style committee can do three important things number one just simply give us the facts information everything on politically motivated or ideological motivated action over the last 20 years information is everything as senator church said it's why even today they're hiding the gfj k files even though everyone involved is dead number two draft new rules this will be the most difficult part but perhaps most essential especially to be bipartisan when we discover everything that has been done to us we will have to establish new rules that apply to the i.c and to everybody but we cannot create these new rules without seeing how the current ones have been violated three perhaps the most important all of us need to have confidence that these agencies don't work for one political party or one ideology everyone has to trust and have confidence that we're being worked for not worked on or worked against sure enough there are people out there who will always cry foul but only the most ardent i think msnbc liberal at this point can say that these agencies are doing a good job it is time for a new church style committee and i'm actually glad to see the makings of one and i hope that they try and recreate at least someone what made the original one so important in the first place and that's really what you alluded to in our previous conversation course

which is and if you want to hear my reaction to soggers monologue become a premium subscriber today at breaking points dot com

okay guys thank you so much for uh joining us for bearing with us it's been a long show we had a lot to say uh been off for a little bit while i'm so happy to be back here in the studio with you crystal and i'm very happy uh for our live show that's coming up on february third go ahead and buy tickets if you haven't done so as well but otherwise uh we'll be back here on tuesday normal schedule from here on out everybody don't worry about it and we will see you all later yes and remember we have

moved counterpoints to wednesday

yes counterpoints on wednesday and the graphic will reflect that

yes yeah yeah so um so anyway we have shows monday tuesday wednesday thursday for you now with counterpoints being the wednesday show we'll see you back here tomorrow guys love y'all

so

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