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Police Brutality, Racism, & Santorum (Transcript) Cenk: Welcome to another episode of The Point.
We've got a great panel here tonight, with us Keith Knight is an award winning cartoonist.
Does K Chronicles, Think, The Night Life, and Sharon Kyle's the editor and publisher
of LA Progressive magazine, she's also a law professor at People's College of Law, also
board member of the ACLU in Pasadena, so you're very busy, thank you for taking the time out
to join us. Frank Conniff is not as busy he's just a comedian. Of course he's from Mystery
Science Theater 3000, which a lot of you remember fondly, and he's also writer of the Jimmy
Dore show, so thank you so much for all of you for coming out tonight to join us on The
Point. So let's start with our first point, it's Rick Santorum, he was asked about welfare
recipients in Iowa, right before the voting in the Iowa caucus, and he had this disastrous
point to make. Rick: It just keeps expanding, I was in Indianola
a few months ago, and I was talking to someone who works at the department of public welfare
here, and she told me that the state of Iowa was gonna get fined if they don't sign up
more people under the Medicaid program. They're just pushing harder and harder to get more
and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom
line is, I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's
money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money, and provide
for themselves and their families, and the best way to do that is to get the manufacturing
sector of the economy rolling again. Cenk: Sharon, aren't you grateful that he
wants to make your life better. You know, because you only have 8 jobs and if you would
just stop taking the welfare. I mean, look at that assumption, right.
Sharon: It's a truly disturbing to see something like that, especially coming from the national
level. Here we have a person who's running for the highest seat in the land, and supposedly
because he wants to represent the entire American population, which if no one's noticing, includes
a bunch of black people. I watched that several times when it was aired, and one of the things
that I found most disturbing is that most of the political punditry focused on whether
or not he made a political mistake in making that statement. No one has really delved into
the underlying message why is it that someone running for a national level office can use
or can leverage off the fears of white people in this post-racial society, and get away
with it, and actually choose to do that because he thinks it's going to put him in a better
position. Cenk: You know, now, one show that did cover
the substance behind it is The Young Turks I'm proud to say, and one of the things that
we pointed out was that people getting food stamps in Iowa turn out to be 84% white, 9%
black. Frank: 84% of everything white is in Iowa,
right? Cenk: That's true, but that's a good point,
but look if you look at Iowa again for Medicaid recipients, 74% white, 13% Hispanic, 8% black.
So, you know, Keith, I think it goes to the assumptions that's in this guys head, and
you know there was a debate as to whether he did it on purpose to get racist votes in
Iowa, or if he just kinda said it. I actually think that he actually thinks it, and that
he said it because he thinks it, that it wasn't planned out.
Keith: Yea, it seemed pretty sincere to me, and it's, I don't think it's such a big surprise,
I don't think it's a surprise to black people, that he would say something like that. What
we're seeing with this election with a bunch of the Republican run states putting in all
these voter hoops and things to jump through, we're seeing regression as far as trying to
subdue voters and we're seeing things going backwards, we're seeing the education system
go backwards, we're seeing a lot of stuff going backwards, so it seems like old times
to me, race baiting. Cenk: Yea, where do you come out on that Frank?
Do you think he was race baiting, either. Frank: Yea, I kinda come down on the side
of what a lot of people have been saying about Rick Santorum is that unlike Mitt Romney who
is just pandering, Rick Santorum sincerely believes his crazy beliefs. They're deeply
held, and I actually heard some coverage last night of people who were praising him for
that, and I think it doesn't matter if you have a guy who sincerely believes or if you
have a guy who's pandering, you're still gonna get the same bad result, and you described
it as a disastrous point that he made, and by disastrous point, do you mean the point
that propelled him to victory in the caucus? Cenk: Even if it wasn't intended, you're right
Frank, it's not hurting him at all, we don't know if it helped him, but it certainly didn't
hurt. Frank: That's the overall, it's like you said,
there's nothing new about this, and I think it's been the overall point of view of conservatives
that white people have to be afraid of black people are taking away, you know the conservative
point of view back in the '50's. Everything was so great, why can't we go back to that
wonderful time, in other words that wonderful time when black people and a lot of minorities
had no rights whatsoever. White people got everything back then, and I think not just
Santorum, but the entire Republican party is trying to appeal to that in certain white
voters. Cenk: And it's not just the political leaders,
it's the commentators as well. When you hear Rush Limbaugh over and over again with "Oh,
his welfare state. Obama's welfare state" He's..
Frank: He said that everything Obama is doing is about reparations to black people, which
was one of the most crazily racist things I've heard.
Cenk: I wish Obama was actually looking out for black folks more, right? We have disastrous
foreclosure situation for all Americans. When you look at some of the numbers about how
the minorities are getting affected, and professor Cornell West talks about this all the time.
Let me ask you, professor Kyle, do you get a sense that President Obama has been better
to the minority community, or has gone out of his way to help the minority community,
I honestly don't get that sense. Sharon: No, I don't get that sense at all.
However, I have to say that the President understands the climate, the racial climate
that exists today in America. Here we are in 2012, but if you look at the numbers, you
look from an educational standpoint, we have more segregated schools in the country today
than we did in 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided upon. We have more segregation
in our churches, we have more segregation in our communities. When you think of communities
where people live, where people are working, the President understands the climate, the
racial climate, and he has to walk very gently around these issues, particularly because
he is a black man, and the first black President. Cenk: Yea, I wish he wouldn't walk so gently,
I mean today he does some recess appointments which is a strong way to go, and what happened?
Everybody gave him all the credit in the world they're like "Oh, strong leadership" so why
doesn't he do that more often? Look, to your point on segregation, Koch brothers are actually
funding groups to go and resegregate the schools in North Carolina. That's to your point, we're
going backwards here, I can't believe how backwards we're going, but you know, let me
bring up a controversial guy, Ron Paul, who's also in the Republican race, with the newsletters,
etc. But, he makes an interesting point where he says "Look, the number one problem, or
the number one way that we can help minority communities is by ending the senseless drug
war" it relates to another topic we had on The Point on an earlier week, when Richard
Branson tweeted out this amazing fact that there are now more black men in jail today
than there were slaves in the begging of the Civil War. Which is amazing.
Sharon: That statistic came from an exhaustive research project that was conducted by Michelle
Alexander and published in her recent book The New Jim Crow, where she talks about where
black men stand today and makes a comparison, does an analysis, a comparison between the
Jim Crow south and black men today, and how formerly incarcerated felons are treated in
the same manner that black men were treated in the 1920's and 30's.
Cenk: And you know we talked about that on the Young Turks, and Keith I want to throw
this to you. Some think "Well, this is another way to go back to the situation that we were
in" Lock up people for nonsense and you do it disproportionately. White people, whether
they're buying ***, selling ***, etc. get arrested at a much, much lower rate as
a percentage, and then now they have private prisons where they profit off of it, and then
they're making the prisoners do basically slave labor. I mean, that is white, black,
Hispanic, doesn't matter, right? So, I mean, do you think all the stuff is on purpose?
Keith: Of course, it's a huge, a huge industry and it's cheap labor and it's a way to keep
what was going on a long time ago, just in the way that it convinces people that "Oh,
well, you know, they shouldn't have broke the law" or "They shouldn't have done this"
so they shouldn't have any rights in prison, that's the thing that drives me crazy. When
I do slide shows at youth prisons and stuff, I see kids that are in there for something
that everybody I knew in college did, several times over, they just didn't get caught because
they weren't, you know, that, they didn't have the cops all keeping an eye out just
waiting for them to screw up in any way, shape, or form.
Frank: It seems like the best way to stay out of jail, that maybe all kids should learn,
is to become a Wall Street banker and plunder our nation's wealth, and bring our economy
to the brink. That will keep you out of jail. Cenk: But Frank, that's a great point, and
I want you to address that as our last point here, because this stuff demagogy against
other races and honestly against class too, the poor, etc. works so much better or maybe
it's because that's the only thing they're trying whereas shouldn't Americans be so much
more mad about the 7 trillion dollars that the bankers took off the FED, the 700 billion
dollars that they took off of TARP. You're worried about welfare? Someone getting money
from welfare? They took over 7 trillion dollars, the bankers.
Frank: Yea, but the whole attitude is if you're poor, it's your own fault. There's nothing,
if you're arrested, if you're sent to jail and you're not a Wall Street banker, then
you only have yourself to blame. Keith: Yea, it's easy to kind of direct your
anger towards us, an individual than a corporation. Sharon: And I think that the story is shaped
and molded by the corporations. We have the media that is basically controlled by corporations
and they are the ones that frame the story, that help the masses to have this deep-seeded
fear of blacks or to believe in these welfare queens. So it's propagated by those who benefit
from the masses believing it. Frank: There were several stories on Fox News,
which I'm sure you're aware of about how "Do poor people really have it that bad?" You
know, a lot of them have microwaves, some of them have television sets, some of them
are really extravagant, they have refrigerators. I mean, these, it sounds like I'm joking but
they actually did. Bill O'Reilly and John Stossel actually did a whole segment about
that, and you just can't make that stuff up. Cenk: And Rush Limbaugh once said "Well, if
these kids that need these assisted lunches, free lunches, if they're hungry why don't
they just go to the fridge?" Like, he literally said that. My last point on this is, if you
want to get angry at welfare queens, the person you should be angry at is Michelle Bachmann,
Michelle Bachmann, here family took over a quarter of a million dollars for their farm,
and then she turns around and says "Oh, can you believe people are living off the government"
Why don't you give us the quarter of a million dollars back and then we'll talk about who
the welfare queen is, OK? Now when we come back, we're gonna have a point from Mark Steinberg.
Should we be more civil to our right-wing brothers and sisters. I'm not sure we should,
so we'll discuss it on The Point. We're back on The Point, now we're gonna have
a point by former Clinton administration attorney Mark Steinberg about reaching out to the other
side to our right-wing friends. Mark: I'm Mark Steinberg, a retired attorney
and a former official in the state and justice departments during the Clinton administration.
I'm also a blogger on the Huffington Post. My point today is less a point than a question,
and it's "Who is stupider, the people who fly over, or the people who are flown over?"
The other night at a dinner party given by an old lefty friend of mine, I listened as
a group of people who could recite from memory every democrat they'd ever voted for express
their shock, chagrin, and chest pain over how the couple hundred million people who
were not them could be so terribly, terribly, wrong. They sneered at the fact that adults
who were permitted to vote could possibly believe that global warming is caused by people
forgetting to close their ovens. They doubled over laughing at the notion that what gay
people really need to get their heads on straight is quality time with pole dancers, and they
literally tossed their cookies, I remind you that this was a dinner party, over the proposition
that Barack Obama isn't a real citizen because Hawaii isn't a real state. The underlying
assumption seems to be that if these ignoramuses who embrace these ideas would spend a week
in Santa Monica or New Haven, the country would get back on track. To a great extent,
I share these views, I watch what passes for discourse on Fox News, and am absolutely astonished
by the number of knees that seem to jerk when words like 'socialist' or phrases like 'tax
n' spend' are thrown into the maw. These people on both sides of the camera are not really
thinking, I think, but what I and my like minded friends tend to ignore is that we really
do have to get through to these folks, and that we're stupid, really, really stupid if
we think that railing at them or about them is gonna accomplish that. The battle we've
joined shouldn't be about who's the louder shouter, it should be about who's the better
listener, and that's my point. You can find more of this kind of pontification at huffingtonpost.com/mark-steinberg
Cenk: You know, I'm really split on Mark's point there, 50/50 on it, because of course
I want people to talk together and I think that if you got the guys on the right-wing
side who are frustrated with their government and the guys on the left-wing side who are
also frustrated with their government to talk to one another, that you'd get a lot of agreement,
but I think he's wrong that you cannot accomplish things by shouting loudly. Now, I'm biased
because I'm a loud shouter, but think about it. Rush Limbaugh, the world of Fox News channel
have been shouting for all this time, and what happens? They drowned everybody else
out, they wound up convincing independents that didn't know that much about the facts,
and their side is winning. So, is Mark right or wrong Frank? Let's start with you.
Frank: Well, I agree that we need more civil discourse. I think, you know, with Obama's
whole thing is civility and reaching out to other people and trying to make the other
side of the aisle see your point of view, Obama is all about that, and that's been a
frustration I think for a lot of people that he's trying to reach out to people on the
other side of the aisle who don't want to hear what he's saying and who are only gonna
make things worse by the fact that he is reaching out to them. So at this particular point in
history, I dunno if, I think we need more people standing up for what they believe in
and being willing to shout about it if necessary. Cenk: Keith, shout or no shout?
Keith: Well, I think it's a combination of the two. I just remember when Barney Frank
tore a new a-hole of somebody who, I can't remember what she was talking about. Yea,
during the health care, and I'm from Massachusetts, so I can say this, he went masshole on this
person there that's at this event, and it really, I thought right then there was gonna
be a rise of massholes who would tell it like it is. I don't know what planet, I think he
was like, "I don't know what planet you're on", and I was like "Thank goodness someone's
saying that" there need to be more folks who do that, but I can't possibly imagine Obama
starts doing that, but I do think that he is gonna, once this election goes by and he's
not worried about getting re-elected anymore, he's gonna drop the hammer and just be like
Cenk: No way, I totally disagree with that, it is not in his nature, he doesn't have a
hammer. Keith: Not in the way that we want to see
him do it. He's gonna be Mr. Cool the whole time, but he's got nothing to lose at that
point, and it's... Cenk: Keith I've gotta tell you man, I've
been following politics my whole life, and everybody talks about the second term. "Oh,
in the second term, then they'll really do what" The only guy who in the second term
kept doing what he was doing and even more so was Bush, because he was like "Oh, great,
you guys made the mistake of giving me a second term." That dude had a hammer.
Keith: All right, so that was the last person, so maybe it's a new thing now.
Cenk: He's copied so many other things Bush has done, maybe it's possible.
Keith: Exactly, exactly, exactly. I just want to say this, that it is about a combination.
When before the occupy protests there was the WTO up in Seattle, years back.
Cenk: That's right, when the turtle love was in everything
Keith: And it was a huge protest but it was the people that broke a few windows that really
kinda shut that thing down, and there always need to be a few people who break a few windows.
Cenk: Now I have to denounce and reject that, officially. Having said that, professor Kyle,
I read a really interesting look back at the history of the civil rights movement, and
so Martin Luther King is doing the obviously peaceful protests, etc. It's having a huge
effect, but at the same time, Lyndon Johnson and some of the Democrats started to get scared
because there's rioting in the streets, and so people like Malcolm X start pushing in
a direction that made people really uncomfortable. Then they went "OK, OK, OK, we'll do the civil
rights act" and everybody just... So does Keith have an interesting point.
Sharon: Yes, he does. I think that it is important to have both, but what we need is balance.
So right now, if you take a look at the radio or Fox there is not balance. What we have
is this shouting and what you need is maybe some of that, but on the other side when you
have civil discourse it requires that you have an educated populace, and that's the
problem. We don't have an educated populace. Increasingly, less and less, fewer and fewer
of our young people are learning civics in school, learning social studies, so these
shouters on Fox and AM radio, they're very effective, because they're not challenged.
Cenk: That's exactly it. Now look, Frank, I'm on the side of, I don't believe in unilateral
disarmament, I'm actually not a liberal, I'm a progressive, I think there's a difference,
but I remember when there was a talk of unilateral disarmament with the Soviet Union and I was
like "Are you kidding me? No way, no way" So now I disagreed with other things that
Reagan did, etc. So I think if they're shouting and we're saying "Oh, let me listen" No, no,
no, I got no interest in listening to their shouting, I'm coming over the top.
Frank: I think a lot of the mistake that I think progressive and liberal people have
made over the years on the AM shouting is we've kind of reacted to them like Margaret
DuMont, who was a character in the Marx brothers movies, who was always outraged by what Groucho
"oh, this counter's spotty" who would get very huffy about outrageous Ann Coulter and
Rush Limbaugh are, and I think it's more effective for us to come back with our more intelligent
version, and it can be as high decibel as you want, but a more intelligent rebuke to
what they're saying, but to say it just as forcefully, and with just as much entertainment
value too. Keith: That's what The Daily Show is. Really,
that's you know, what's that statistic? That more people get their news from the Daily
Show than from regular news channels. That's huge and also it really comes down to media
literacy, and it's something that's taught in different countries, but it's not taught
here. Kids need to know, adults need to know what the message is, what the message behind
it is, who's funding certain things. If they're aware, that basically talk radio, talk radio
is just there to make people mad, that's it. That's...
Frank: The media literacy of Fox News would be illiteracy wouldn't it?
Cenk: No, but to let people know, what is it, because when they see it on TV or they
hear it on the radio you get the sense that people think it must be true. I mean, just
to let them know it aint necessarily so, it's just a windbag whether it's me or whether
it's Rush Limbaugh stating their opinions, but one last thing on this. Look, on the other
hand, when you bring together tea party and occupy Wall Street, they've done it in Richmond,
they've done it in Memphis. People always come away like "Oh my god, I can't believe
how much we agree" because you know, my point on this is we've got big money, the left is
concerned about it, the big business, corporations, unlimited spending in our campaigns, etc.
and you got big government that the right-wing is concerned about. Problem is when you bring
them together, and you got big money buying big government and it leads to big corruption,
and we all hate that. And so I feel like if we can get beyond those guys, shout back because
you don't want to unilaterally disarm, but then get people in a room without that filter,
without the media and have them talk. I think they're gonna agree so much more than they
realize. We're all agreed, that's the last point. So when we come back, Ellen Barkin
tweets out about police brutality, because she got shoved, and it relates of course to
the occupy Wall Street movement. So we'll talk about that when we return.
We're back on The Point with Keith Knight, Sharon Kyle, and Frank Conniff. Now we're
gonna talk about a tweet that Ellen Barkin sent, she's of course famous actress. She
was worried about police brutality, and it was a New Years day, arrests were going on
at Zucotti Park, and she tweeted out quote "Just threatened on my street by NYPD cop
shoved me both hands onto sidewalk...is it a crime to stand in the street in New York?
WTF is going on here?" If you don't know, you should ask somebody what that is, but
OK, so now we've found the video of her being shoved as well, I'm gonna show you that for
the context, and then we can talk about it. You know, I have mixed feelings about that.
First of all there's been a lot of police brutality against occupy Wall Street. There's
been 5837 in 105 different cities. Did all those people deserve it, let alone how they
got arrested, the pepper spray that we've seen over and over again whether it's in Berkely
or New York, etc. On the other hand, as I watched that video, I get a sense of privilege
a little bit from Ellen Barkin. I mean, she's on our side, I want to say nice things, but
could you imagine a cop does, you know, pushes a young black guy a little bit and says "Get
your *** hands off me" what do you think goes down next Keith?
Keith: Well, I just wanna say what happened to her for a celebrity, that was like being
beaten by 10 cops, for your average black man. So I am kinda on her side. What she says
in here is that the NYPD cop shoved her both hands onto sidewalk and that video, it says
that, and everyone assumed that she went down to the ground, but she literally was pushed
onto a sidewalk. I'm not saying that, I'm saying she could have been more clear about
it, I think she may have been purposefully vague to enhance the drama of it, but it is
a joke, I'm half joking about the whole celebrity thing. That's never gonna happen where a celebrity
gets really manhandled by the police, you know.
Cenk: Right, but I mean, Frank, doesn't that show you how crazy and perverse our society
is? And in fact, a lot of people are paying attention to this because she's a celebrity.
I mean, forget black, white, it doesn't matter, random guy at occupy Wall Street, whatever
his race or thing is gets pushed and he tweets out "Oh my god, NYPD pushed me" people would
be like "Yea, so what?" Frank: It's more relevant when a celebrity
does it. When Ellen Barkin says "Get your *** hands off me" it's hotter than
when anybody else says it. And she's probably, I feel for her because how badly she was treated
by Daniel Stern in Diner when he yelled at her for replacing the alphabetical order of
his record collection. I don't always grasp reality that well as you can tell. She's had
a hard time. Cenk: So, Sharon, she also said afterwards
"The cops weren't like this when I grew up" and apparently she grew up in the Bronx. A
lot of people said "Hey listen, when you were growing up, cops were a lot worse for some
people in New York." and so it goes back to this point of privilege. So, I mean, how do
you respond to that? Sharon: Well, in all fairness to her, we really
can't expect her to understand or to know. I mean, she lives in a body that is treated
with preference and she is a celebrity, she is young, she's attractive, she's thin, she's
blonde, she's everything that American culture epitomizes as the best. So she's accustomed
to being treated in a certain way, and in fact I think that all Americans hold some
privilege, varying degrees of privilege. I myself as a woman, a black, woman, but I myself
as a woman, are not treated the same as my son is treated by the police. I was once driving
a car, and I almost hit a pedestrian, because I didn't see the pedestrian, and I was pulled
over by the police, and as I was waiting for the officer to come and ask me for my license
and registration I could see him in my side mirror and he had his hand on his gun, and
he was unlatching, he was pulling his gun out, and I thought to myself "He thinks I'm
a guy" because I had a big jacket on, I had a hat, and I was driving a truck, and as soon
as I rolled down the window and I said to the officer "I'm sorry officer, I realize
I did something wrong" his entire body language changed. He relaxed, he took his hand off
the gun, he didn't even end up giving me a ticket, and I definitely deserved one.
Cenk: Well, it has a happy ending, that doesn't usually happen with us guys.
Keith: Another point, I was surrounded by a bunch of cops in San Francisco, and this
one cop was super gung ho and I was waiting at the bus stop, and he pulled up, cross traffic,
shined his lights on me, gets out of the car, has me, asked me to put my hands up, and he
calls up, and all these other cops show up, and apparently there was a, there was someone,
a black man, who was supposedly robbing houses, and I said "What's the description?" They
said a six foot tall black man, and I said "Anything else?" and they said no. I was like
"Well, every black man's six foot tall" but The point was I was down there and literally
four cop cars surrounded me, and the bus that I usually take I come back home from was coming
down the street, and my roommate was on it, my white roommate was on it, and he was coming
down the street, and he said after talking to him, he was sitting there going "They must
be hassling a black man down there" just seeing these cops, and as he got closer he was like
"Oh my god, that's my black man" and the bus rolls up and he gets off the bus and he comes
running across traffic, across, against the light, and starts swearing and screaming at
all these cops and if he was a black man doing that, they would've been on him so quickly
and beat the hell out of him, and instead they were like "Oh, no, no, you know, we've
made a mistake" You know, literally I was shocked, I was like "Oh my god" I was telling
him "Take it easy, man, take it easy". It was white privilege defined right there.
Cenk: You know, that goes to a really interesting point, the people who have that privilege,
so often have no idea that they have it. So, for example, right. There's many examples
of this, one in the case of police brutality, another story that we covered on The Young
Turks once. The son of a famous pitcher is in a Texas town, he's going driving into his
own driveway, cops pull him over, he gets out of the house, because he came to go home,
they shoot him. They were like "What could we, how could we know he was here?" Whereas
a white person does not get shot in his driveway, so he has no idea that he could get shot in
his driveway as a black guy, for being in the wrong part of town, meaning the best part
of town, and it extends to other things as well, so vice President Gore and I were talking
about this during the Iowa caucus coverage on Current about education. So, for example,
to your point Sharon, we're all privilege. My dad was an olive farmer in the southeastern
Turkey, he had to bust his *** to get to a point where he can get a free education, if
you scored really, really high. I had the privilege of being able to take practice tests
for the SAT's, etc. but as a kid I didn't realize that, and I thought "Well, if I do
this well, and the other kid doesn't do that well, then I should get the thing" Let alone,
people like Romney, who's dad was a governor, and there's heritage at these schools, so
if your dad went you get a much easier time. Is that one of the top problems here, that
the problem is that white people don't know, and I'm just using that, generally it's true
for a lot of us due to a lot of different circumstances, they don't know what other
folks are going through, so it's hard for them to empathize.
Sharon: That's right, and you talked about the heritage in schools, it's affirmative
action. That's what that is, but it's not called that.
Frank: Like George W. Bush going to Yale, and to Harvard business school. Not the brightest
guy in the world, I'll go out on a limb and say that.
Cenk: And the great line from governor Ann Richards on that "George Bush was born on
a third and thoought he hit a triple" and that perfectly described exactly what we're
talking about. He was saying "What? What? Why didn't you hit a triple" and I want my
last point on this, I don't want anybody to get me wrong, I love that Ellen Barkin cares
about this issue, I like that she brought it forward, I'm on her side, I just wanted
to have a general conversation about the idea of privilege so that everybody can begin to
empathize with what we're describing here. Frank: So whenever there's a protest movement
it seems like there's always police brutality, so you have to be kind of aware of that happening.
Cenk: Yea, absolutely, unfortunately, and the police are part of the 99%, and I wish
sometimes that they would act that way, but of course in New York for example, Raymond
Kelly gets fancy parties thrown for him by JP Morgan, and some of the other big funders
of his police association, so he sends the orders make sure you look out for my boys
at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, and unfortunately, that's how the world goes round. All right,
now I want to make one final point this week, and that is about the murderers row of clowns
and desperate wannabes on the Republican side. We just had the Iowa caucus, and as you look
through all the different people on that side you think "Oh my god, one is worse than the
others" You've got Santorum who says that he doesn't believe in birth control, we're
going back that far? Let alone his views on race which we discussed today, let alone his
views on gay folks, let alone the fact that he was the head of the K Street Project, and
was organizing with the lobbyists in Washington and some of the, and helped to promote that
culture of corruption in DC. Then you go to Mitt Romney, you wanna talk about culture
of corruption, he's already taking 8 million dollars from the banks, there is no better
representative of Wall Street than Mitt Romney, and when they asked him if you'll bail them
out again he said "Well, we'll have to see" so more money is going to the bankers if Mitt
Romney gets elected. Then you go to Newt Gingrich, and Newt Gingrich is probably worse than all
of them, saying "I don't really care that much about what the constitution says" you
know, if the courts are ruling in ways that I don't like I'll subpoena them, I'll bring
them in front of me, I'll fire them, I'll get rid of whole circuit course, which is
insanity. His nick name in my opinion is 'Danger to the Republic' that's Newt Gingrich, and
everybody's asking why. Why can't they find a decent candidate? There is a really simple
answer to that, they don't want one. If they wanted a decent candidate, they could get
one, one would enter and he would do well, in fact, John Huntsman is by far the most
moderate and reasonable of these guys, in Utah, not only was he really successful and
really popular, he was number one in the country in creating jobs. Now I don't agree with a
lot of what John Huntsman has to say, but he represents a bearable alternative, one
who's not crazy, so how did the Republican voters treat him? With utter disdain, they
have dismissed him out of hand. "John Huntsman?" He got one percent in the Iowa caucuses. The
reason you have those crazy guys on the Republican side running for President is because that's
what the Republican voters asked for. All right, now I want to thank everybody who participated
here, Keith Knight is an award winning cartoonist, everybody check out K Chronicles, Think, and
The Night Life. Professor Sharon Kyle is editor and publisher of LA Progressive magazine,
and she's also a professor of law of course at People's College of Law, and Frank Conniff
is from Mystery Science THeater 3000, which everybody remembers fondly.
Frank: Cinematic Titanic, you can go to cinematictitanic.com, we do live version of Mystery Science theater.
You can find that information on cinematictitanic.com. Cenk: You better hurry, because I hear you're
sold out everywhere. And I want to thank the people who sent in points, Mark Steinberg
of course, and Rick Santorum did not send in his point, but it was a topic we wanted
to discuss today, and then Ellen Barkin's tweet as well. And I want to thank all of
you for watching The Point. We'll see you next time.