Target Shooting and Humorous Strikeouts on the Brian Wilson Podcast

The Two and Only — Brian Wilson and James Bovard     S2 Ep.48
The 2 & Only Post-Bird Day episode featuring the Big Announcement about Jim Bovard’s new book and Brian Wilson’s Substack column skewering Transgenderism. And a borderline Johnny Carson joke!

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Transcript  from November 29, 2023 show
Now for something completely different, the corporeal manifestation of white noise.
Here’s Brian Wilson.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and people of all sexes, especially those of you with shortened fingernails in anticipation of the big announcement coming up soon, but not now, welcome to the Are You Sick and Tired of Turkey Leftovers Yet episode of The Two and Only
A weekly swan dive into the cesspool of Washington politics and media mayhem and featuring the former star of stage, screen, and newspaper, three of those are outright lies, me, Brian Wilson, and my partner in crime, celebrated author, notorious investigative reporter for the New York Post, author of, well, you know, and of course, with his holiday beard neatly trimmed riding through the open sleigh, ladies and gentlemen, Jim Bovard.
So, James.
Hey there.
Thanks for your kind words.
That’s the standard you set for my beard to be neatly trimmed.
I’ll see if I can rise to that lofty standard.
Yeah, well, I’m sure you always rise to the occasion, although I
I thought maybe you were pulling a Houdini on me there for a second, but… It helps if I turn on my frickin’ microphone.
That is… I’ve noticed that.
I’ve noticed that.
Sometimes I’ve come to the microphone and I didn’t have exact change.
And that was always a pain.
Yeah, well, you know, there was that little red flashing button.
I was sitting there and I was thinking, well, you know, I thought I said something at least half as clever and no response.
And I see this little flashing red light.
I say somebody failed the idiot test in Maryland, so anyhow.
Well, I tell you what, if you move any closer to Dundalk, we might have to have some other arrangements.

I’ll have to see how Section 8 is doing there.

Definitely affordable.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bovard was kind enough to forward me kind of a sneak peek of the new book, Last Rites.The Death of Liberty in America.
And I’ve got it right here. Chapter One, Tyranny Comes to Main Street. Now, Jim, I got to tell you, for the first chapter in the book, it’s it alone is a blockbuster. But as I think I may have written you earlier this morning, as I’m reading through this thing, I’m saying, Mel, every sentence is its own indictment of some level of government.

Well, thanks very much.

I was certainly, you know, I burned and burned and whittled and whittled on that chapter. I think it’s around 2,500 words. This is my elevator pitch to new readers and I’m hoping that it will resonate with them and that I can grab them by the collar and persuade them to move on.
Well, I can’t see why they wouldn’t, you know, the idea that this all this stuff is all current.

I mean, we’re not going back to, you know, 1776 or World War One or the Depression or any of those other things.
These are all current statements to current conditions that address current situations, your rights, your liberties, the status of life in America today.
One of the great lines you had in there, and I’ll put this out for those of you who

Bullseye.
I mean, you can’t, I mean, this is like hitting the middle of the X in the center ring of the target.
It’s impunity democracy.
Government officials pay no price for their crimes, and Americans are more likely to believe in witches, ghosts, and astrology than to trust the government.
Well, of course, they’ve earned that part as far as I’m concerned.
The legitimacy of Washington is in tatters thanks to a long train of bipartisan perfidy and government as lawless elections merely designate the most dangerous criminals in the land.
Another great line.
And that’s another thing about just this chapter alone. There are so many standalone sentences and a couple of sentences and small paragraphs that summarize the point under discussion or in focus. I can’t wait to see the rest of the book. May I assume that the way you’ve laid out the first chapter, the rest of the book will kind of follow in the same sequence?

Pretty much, pretty much. There’s some minor differences. I mean, I was going back and forth with editors, not sure how to do the early sequence of the chapters, but I was swayed on that. So we left it as it was. But the second chapter after the intro,
is on asset forfeiture. And, you know, I was trying to, throughout the book, I’m looking for public policy cases that illustrate the nature of government and a sweep of the totally oppressive power that the government is claiming.
And folks think the government’s done a lot of bad things. But if you look at the principles, the legal principles, and the moral principles, they’re a lot more perilous than the vast majority of people recognize.

Well, you actually, I was just trying to find it as you were speaking.
You, you specify in that chapter, you address the confiscation of property and money and incarceration.

And so not just to income taxes, but through, uh, through other means, uh, violating private property, the law, you know, all of us, it goes along with it.
You had, you had a number in here.
I think you said that, uh, through government confiscation, uh, government takes more money than people pay in taxes.
Well, that’s not quite for the asset forfeiture, but certainly… I was going to say, I’m not quoting this directly, because I’m trying to read and talk at the same time to find exactly what you did say, because it was so spot on.
There was a line, federal law enforcement agencies confiscate more property from Americans each year than all the burglars steal nationwide.
There you go, all the burglars.
Yeah, and the taxation is far higher.
But this is referring to asset forfeiture.
And the half a million Americans, even though they’ve not been charged with any crime, they’ve been robbed by government agents on the sidewalks, the highways, the airports.
And folks wonder why I’m cynical.
Yeah, really.
Well, you should have had a chapter explaining that.
Right.
Yeah, I started to highlight and, well, as a matter of fact, I did put a couple of things up on Facebook.
But then I think, well, gee, maybe I should have asked you first because I didn’t know how far you wanted to let the general public know that this thing was standing at the edge of the diving board ready to take the plunge into the open market.
And I
I hope I didn’t cross any lines there.
I didn’t know how far you were willing to go, say, on quotes and so on.
But it’s such a compelling chapter in the topics.
And like I say, it’s just like going, you know, a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
I mean, every sentence, every paragraph.
I don’t mean to overplay it.
I mean, I just think it’s really a tremendous construct
of all these things.
You know, like you say, I don’t know the majority of people are really aware of this.
You know, oh yeah, Biden’s fallen over a sandbag, or LaPierre, the cringe, the binder, whatever they call her, you know, is kind of a doofus.
And there’s Musk, and there’s these surface issues that aren’t necessarily irrelevant, but compared to the big items,
You know, the taxes and the violate the incarcerations and all the rest of that.
The whole thing that leads up to that great line about impunity government.
It’s proven with the chapter because there are no facts that I’m aware of that you would have could have cited that shows government employees, government officials, elected officials, anybody in a position of power and responsibility paying a price for any of this skullduggery that they’ve been guilty of.
Yeah, it’s amazing how the so few of the culprits have been held, have been convicted and sent to prison.
The Mike Tyson reference, I appreciate that Tyson was a great boxer.
One of my favorites is Rocky Marciano.
And it’s something which you might recall being raised where you were.
And when you were, there was a style that Marciano had, he would often lead with a right hook.
and it was just such a devastating writing book and I was trying to get you know trying to get that that level of connection on some of these issues.
Well, I think, not to mix the metaphors, but I think you hit it out of the park.
I didn’t have a whole lot of exposure to boxing growing up outside of Manhattan.
My grandparents lived on the other side of the farm that we had.
They took care of the bird, the chickens mostly.
But every once in a while, we’d, you know, granny would come over to babysit us because mom and dad were out doing something.
She was, I think, probably in her late 60s, 70s, somewhere around there at the time, and she was a big fan of professional wrestling.
Oh, that’s great.
That is great.
So a lot of those early wrestling stars, Antonina Rokka and, you know, some of those guys, and she was into it, you know.
I said, come on, Granny, this is, you know, even at my age at the time, which was, I mean, I was only
42.
Whatever.
I was in school, grade school or whatever, and we all knew it was just a big performance.
She was absolutely convinced.
But I can’t say that I was witness to one early part of boxing history, and that for reasons unknown, my father gathered up my brother and me and
drug us into the Fabian Theater in Patterson, New Jersey to watch a closed circuit broadcast of the Clay Liston fight.
Oh, really?
The first or the second one?
The first one.
Wow.
Well, that was historic.
Oh, well, so we got in and we went up into the balcony.
And we’re sitting up there in the balcony.
Of course, you know, the fight’s over in 38 seconds or whatever it was.
And we’re so, OK, let’s go home.
So we’re coming down the stairs and all these guys are still coming in.
Has it started yet?
Has it started yet?
It’s over, you idiot.
He knocked him out.
Well, it’s a great story.
It’s a great story to flashback to and it’s
It’s a good family memory….
Turning to something a little bit more serious, I did want to direct everybody’s attention to something that does not get a whole lot of attention and should be a subject every day is Julian Assange.
and your piece from the other day about the Medal of Freedom that he deserves, which I’m reasonably certain there’s not a chance in hell he’s going to get, but it’s certainly based on those old things called principles, journalism principles, and fairness, and legality, and all the rest, transparency.
They would certainly be out there.
I didn’t know until I read your piece that the Libertarian Institute
was working so diligently on his behalf and I wonder if on the basis of that relationship beyond what you put in the piece, is there any
indication, any hope?
Well, hope is too subjective.
Is there anything you can put your finger on that would indicate that all these efforts to get him liberated, to get him out of that freaking prison, and even get the charges dropped, or get him put in a position where he would be untouchable to the feds, you know, is there anything like that out there that you’re aware of, Jim?
Well, it’s important to have faith in Merrick Garland as a reasonable, fair-minded government official.
Oh, bullshit.
No, no.
Hey, I’m happy to see people pushing on this.

I’m happy to see folks raising hell for Julian Assange, who deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more importantly, his own freedom.
uh but uh i don’t see a lot of progress but hopefully i’m missing things so hopefully i’m not up to speed on this hopefully there’s other uh you know fires being kindled that could help uh change the biden administration position where they want to drag him over here for a kangaroo trial in the eastern district of virginia courts over in alexandria which is the federal court that handles these national surveillance security cases and it’s always a rigged trial because they have all these laws and all these procedures and you know fairness doesn’t have a chance.

Yeah I you know I always thought because I didn’t I wasn’t aware of the the stringent application of what jurisdiction or locale the the trial if it actually came to be would be held.
I was
Therefore, always thinking that, well, the first thing I would do as his attorney is demand a change of venue.
Part of my frustration here is that it’s so completely rigged.
I would love to see a open, fair trial in which Julian Assange’s attorneys could challenge and challenge the government’s procedures, as well as the very specific narrow stuff the government will try to defend it for.
But, you know, the game is rigged.
I mean, the court cases on these kind of issues, it’s just, you know, hell is over.
Your cynicism and my naivete, you know, we have a kind of a clash of perception here sometimes.
Like I say, I was totally unaware of the fact that there was a serious situation as far as administrative of the rules of procedure and the law and the courts and all the rest of that.

Well, I would love to see that, but a huge reason why his attorneys and his supporters are fighting so hard against him being extradited from Britain to the U.S.
is because the chances of a fair trial here are slim and none and slim just left town.
Yeah, just left the building.
Yeah well that uh it’s uh difficult well it’s not difficult to believe I mean if you’re rooting for the principled side for the fair side you know it’s just uh it’s hard to accept the fact that uh for everything that’s been revealed in what the five years uh he’s been in that uh stinking prison over there it’s um it’s uh you would think that that some level of political pressure uh either from the public or within the public but it’s
There’s no point.
I don’t want to beat the dead horse.
There’s no, there’s no hope for it.
I guess the only thing you possibly get is him out of prison and spirit him away to where, you know, Australia?
Yeah, I mean, this is this is the issue here.
I mean, there’s a lot of people who have condemned Edward Snowden for taking refuge in Russia.
But that was one of the few places where the US government could not seize him or kill him.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, and it doesn’t
From what I’ve read, it hasn’t been working a hardship on Snowden.
I hope not because he’s someone who did us all a great favor.
But I mean, the Congress really hasn’t fixed the law and the NSA and other agencies and the FBI and the FISA court are still a travesty.
So Edward Snowden did great work for freedom.
Transparency and, you know, he’s in exile.
So, yeah, that pretty much puts the period at the end of the sentence, except for the fact that for all the things that Assange is going through over there, there is, you know, there is an unknown number of Americans that are going through the same thing in wherever they’re being held in isolation, solitary confinement, because of they paid a visit to Washington on January the 6th.
Yeah, I mean, it’s bizarre how how far the feds
The Justice Department has pushed those cases.
I hate to see people being prosecuted for parading without a permit.
I’ve done that a few times in my life.
It’s different if there is a private citizens who violently attacked, you know, police or other government officials on January 6.
Okay, fine, hammer them.
But there is not, you know, it’s like each month, there’s a lot more questions about what really went down that day.
Well, I was wondering, you know, whether or not the release of those 40,000 hours of tape of the entire incident, whether or not that is that all over now?
The smoke is clearing away, the excitement’s all gone, the media’s not giving it a whole lot of attention in the first place, but what little attention they did give, they’re turning away.
And so it’s just going to be another day in paradise.
And the big buildup to the release of those tapes,
Brian Wilson Speaks
or see anybody carrying the flag or making any moves to do anything about it.
I remember a member of the house, Green, I think it was, had a bit on Twitter a while back where she somehow got a picture of one of those guys in his cell room, whatever, where he’s being held.
I mean, it’s about the size of a walk-in closet. and that he’s in there 23 hours a day. Maybe they let him out for an hour. They only don’t always get a chance to shower. They don’t always get a chance to talk to their attorneys. They don’t always get anything, even fed from time to time. And I just, you know, you kind of, you kind of think that how can this be happening, not just in the United States, but apparently a fair number of them are being held within the parameters of the Beltway.

Yeah, Julie Kelly’s done some excellent work on this. She’s been the journalist who’s been most dogged and had some of the best revelations on these cases.
Some of the talk show hosts have pushed it.
It’s something which I’ve, you know, I’ve been chasing other rabbits.
I’m watching some of the headlines, some of the stories, and I’ve written about January 6th probably a half a dozen or more times, but
I have not had the chance to zero in on the most recent disclosures.
Yeah, well, it’s pretty slim pickings.
Like I say, the media doesn’t give you a whole lot to go on unless you’re checking in with
with the organizations that are working, you know, on their behalf or the one or two congress people that are working on their behalf and so on and even then it’s a slog and all you can do is rail against the injustice of it all and these remarkable comparisons of people who there was somebody the other day they did an example somebody got shot
and served 12 years, but somebody who was in the Capitol that day, yeah, 18 to 20 years.
It’s just, it’s kind of astounding.
You would think that the, you would think that back in the day, maybe the media would get excited about that, but it’s, that all seems.
Yeah, something which could happen, there’s, okay, I should know this, I don’t.
There are some key issues in a lot of the cases where there were people sentenced for heavy
Sentences based on non-violent behavior.
I think that was the federal prosecutors have twisted a provision of the 2002 or 2003 Sarbanes-Oxley bill and this is being appealed.
I don’t know that the Supreme Court has accepted that.
but uh there has been some some dissonance at the federal appeals court level on this issue and this is the kind of thing that could blow a lot of these cases out of the water if the supreme court steps in and said hey wait a minute this is this is bs and the supreme court has done that in the past on some uh public corruption cases like the uh like the prosecution of the governor of virginia maybe a decade ago
Yeah, well, yeah, it’s a slog.
You know, it’s a slog, but it’s any progress is better than nothing, even though there seems to be such hypocrisy and violation of just good journalism on the part of the press to keep people informed about all that.
But that’s not their job anymore.
In fact, I think you pointed out that the press is kind of
I’ve fallen into a PR arm of the liberal wing of government and that’s pretty much the end of it and just accept it and find your coverage and your information elsewhere, your articles and other people that are doing that.
I do want to take a second to thank you in public for your kind words about the piece I wrote on Substack for the evil that some men do dealing with child molestations through this transgender nonsense.
And if anybody would like to read it, you can go to Substack and pick it up there.
But I direct your attention to another article that came out
right after I had written that article, and it’s on the Epoch Times, the title of which is Parents’ Personality Disorders Driving Surge in Trans Kids.
This is according to psychiatrists, and something that I don’t know, for those who did read the article, essentially the thrust of what I was trying to figure out was how this happened, how it happened so quickly, how so many people, schools and parents and courts and so on, and doctors, you know, were just hell-bent on, oh, this is
Transhousing by Proxy
the uh bringing out the fact it’s a term uh for narcissistic parents who are behind the big push for this so-called gender transitioning on their kids and and what a role it’s playing and because that was one of the things I couldn’t figure out it’s one thing when you’ve got the money uh from certain sources that will get the curriculum into public schools
Illinois, New Jersey, and places like that.
But it still didn’t tie it all together, and especially the fact that there were parents that allegedly were out there cheering it on, thought this was a great thing for the kids.
And this article brings out that, essentially, there are parents, mostly mothers, wrapped up in their own narcissism, that are really behind this whole idea of encouraging their children to go through all this.
The article says, in one part, it is exhibited mostly by women seeking attention by exaggerating or making up an illness of children or others in their care.
and what an effect it’s got.
He also talks about Cher, Sade, Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron, and all the rest of these mothers’ parents that are all just real thrilled about the fact that their kids are going through this transgendering process, non-binary process, whatever the case may be.
And it’s a fascinating subject in a disgusting sort of way, but I wanted to make sure I got that.
This angle that I wasn’t able to explore because they didn’t have the information available to me as writing that piece.
But the Epoch Times has this bit about personality disorders and so on.
So if you check that out, I think it’ll kind of connect more of the dots than I was able to in that one article.
Before we run out of time, and we are running out of time, Jim, I neglected to tie up, speaking of loose ends, the book.
The book, when is the, we got the first chapter, when do we get the rest of it?
I’m hoping the book will be out next week.
The Kindle version is set to go, the paperback is set to go, the hardback, I’m waiting to see a The Final Proof from the Printer. And as soon as I see that, then probably I’ll just signal, yeah, let’s do it. So hopefully next week.
All right.
Well, I mean, that’s the best we can hope for.
We’ll go with that.
And apparently there’ll be a pre-order page at some point available.
If that happens before we get together next week or if something prevents us from getting together next week, Jim, if you send me an email or something, I’ll put it out on the sub stack.
OK, great.