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Welcome to the Bogosity Podcast for the week of January 25 2026, the podcast that lets it snow.
This is your host, Shane Killian. Let's fiberize the News of the Bogus.
I mean, technology's great, but there are limits,
especially when government interferes to try and save you from yourself.
Driver assist features are amazing,
but this might better be called a driver desist feature!
The government is currently demanding automakers put in technology into their cars
so that they'll shut themselves off mid-drive if they don't like what you're doing!
Hear it from Thomas Massie:
MASSIE: And I regret that we have to offer this amendment.
What I'm going to describe will probably sound like a bad science fiction movie, but that's what's written into law.
Now, the reality is the technology doesn't exist, but that doesn't keep legislators from imagining things
that they would like to do to infringe on civil liberties.
But there is a law that states that every vehicle manufactured is going to have to have a kill switch in it.
The car itself will monitor your driving,
and if the car thinks that you're not doing a good job driving, it will disable itself.
So the car dashboard becomes your judge, your jury and your executioner.
Imagine this: we've got a snowstorm coming.
A mom takes her kids out, they're going to the grocery store.
It's snowing. They're trying to get some groceries before the big storm hits.
She swerves for a pothole. The neighbor's pet gets in the way, swerves for that.
A first responder goes by. She pulls over.
Her car says, "You've got one more swerve, and then we're going to ground you."
There it is. The next thing she has to avoid, an icy patch in the road,
the car has adjudicated her as unsuitable for driving.
It disables the vehicle, and there she's stranded.
My question is, how do you appeal your sentence once your car has judged you
to be incapable of driving? Once it's disabled you and your children at the side of the road,
how do you appeal that? Do you press a button on the dashboard? Do you start talking to an AI?
What if it really was somebody who was drunk?
Are you really going to send a police car after this disabled vehicle?
Do we have the resources to do that?
There's going to be so many false positives. The technology is unworkable.
KILLIAN: This pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it?
So Massie offered this as an amendment to HR7148,
to amend Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,
which says in part that cars must, quote:
"passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle
to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired;
and prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected."
We're not just talking about the car detecting if you've had too much alcohol.
As Scott Perry said in support of Massie's amendment:
PERRY: But here's what I don't want to see in America:
Everybody being punished for the people that drink and drive,
including the ones that don't drink and drive! I happen not to drink,
but I'm going to be forced to have this thing in my car, and I'm going to tell you what's next:
After what Thomas said, after what Representative Massie said,
the car is going to be the judge, jury, and sentencer for your crime in the the car,
the next thing is going to be, "well, we need to hook this thing up to the government so we can dispatch the police."
I'm just going to tell you what's going to happen next:
They're going to be shutting your car off when they decide whatever they decide from wherever they decide it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know about what you think about due process and the Constitution
and the Fourth Amendment and the right to not be imposed upon by illegal, unlawful search and seizure,
but punishing everybody for this crime, whether they've committed or not, if they're gonna commit it or not,
should be unconstitutional. This shouldn't really be a question.
KILLIAN: Right, it shouldn't be! And yet, the amendment failed 164-268, with 62% opposing it!
Only four Democrats voted for Massie's amendment, and 57 Republicans voted against it.
Guess it shows you what they think of us, doesn't it?
Presenting: the greatest game this side of Yuggoth!
You are H.P. Lovecraft's cat, and your name is Ni***
...Right. We can't say that on a podcast.
Anyway, that's the point: Your name is a joke.
So now, you are out for revenge. You become...the NecronomiCat!
Using the Necronomicon, you come to the present day to buy a gat.
That's a gun. For a cat.
It's a phat cat gat.
But the Necronomicon is treacherous, and it let in Lovecraft's monsters.
Now, in a crumbling world, you must fight!
Build your team, buy guns and armor,
buy items of dubious legality, defeat the bosses of each level.
Then take Lovecraft down!
Play NecronomiCat! The link is at cat.bogosity.tv.
Yeah, we're doing cat.bogosity.tv, not...that other one.
What, you want me to get kicked off the Internet or something?
Here's a little story about how idiocy ruins things for everyone.
Larry Ellison is a rich guy who bought a yacht.
I know, big whoop, but if he weren't the cofounder of Oracle, it's very likely no one would have said anything.
But, you know how the left is.
He purchased a 191-foot yacht from a Japanese businessman named the Izanami, after the Shinto goddess of creation.
And cue the screeching of leftists about racist dogwhistles,
because the English transliteration of Izanami spelled backwards is "I'm a Nazi."
It's like the backmasking panic only 20 times dumber.
Making it worse is the fact that Ellison didn't even name it! That was the name it had when he bought it!
And this Futurism article treats it with no skepticism, of course. Quote:
"Attention to detail doesn't appear to be the family patriarch's strong suit.
The name was reportedly inspired by a Shinto deity in Japanese mythology of the same name,
the female creator of creation itself and death.
But the moniker didn't stick after Ellison was informed
that the name spelled something deeply embarrassing when reversed.
It's the kind of joke the Succession writers' room could only dream of coming up with.
And it's especially awkward given the family's strong ties to Israel."
Here are some select quotes from X, Bluesky, and Reddit users:
"That is such a classic billionaire blunder."
"What a moron."
"Almost too good to be true, LOL."
"Poster boy for a wealth tax."
"He knew. They're the real Nazis."
"How you a billionaire and dumb?"
"I am so tired, y'all."
"'Reality' is just too on the nose, we must be in a simulation."
"He is portrayed as such an idiot in The Dropout, seems pretty accurate!"
"Letting you know what kind of people are in our fascist oligarchy."
"Trump's shadow president!"
"Oh come on. Does anybody—anybody—
believe Larry Ellison didn't know from the get-go 'Izanami' spelled backwards was 'I'm a Nazi?'
They think because 77 million (if accurate)
gullible ignorant selfish Americans were so easily conned by felon Trump
that the rest of the world is stupid."
"Um...right as if he did not know this..."
I wonder how many of them would have noticed it if the news hadn't pointed it out to them?
I mean, what does it say about that mentality?
When Ellison bought the boat, Nazism was probably the furthest thing from his mind.
And if anything, shouldn't this whole fake controversy be insulting to the Japanese?
Maybe it's the ones who keep seeing Nazi symbols everywhere who are the genuine Nazis!
If you're on the Wi-Fi in a coffee shop or hotel,
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Do you really trust all of those strangers?
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It's absolutely ridiculous that Democrats are still trying to retain
the ridiculous fiction of the Jan6 Capitol riots being an insurrection led by Trump,
and his contention of the 2020 election being an attempt to steal it.
But that's exactly what we heard from both the Democrats and Jack Smith
as he was brought in to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
But aside from the usual vomit-inducing pandering the Democrats did, the Republicans pulled no punches!
Going over everything would make this segment an hour or two long, so we'll just hit a couple of highlights,
starting off with Chairman Jim Jordan's questions about Cassidy Hutchinson, aka "Clavicle Girl."
You remember: she told the ridiculous lies about Trump's driver refusing to take him back to the Capitol
(which is illegal, by the way: they have to obey his orders),
and Trump reaching over and grabbing the driver by the clavicle.
We went over how the story was cooked up between Hutchinson
and Liz Cheney's office (which is also illegal),
how it contradicted her previous testimony,
and how it was also contradicted by people who were actually there.
She wasn't. She claimed to have gotten the story second- or third-hand,
and couldn't even verify where she'd gotten it from.
Because she'd just made it up.
I think the segment speaks for itself, so let's just let it play:
JORDAN: Mr. Smith, is Cassidy Hutchinson a liar?
She was their star witness, January 6th Committee,
their star witness in one of those staged and choreographed hearings
they paid the former president of ABC News to put together.
She was, in fact, the only witness at this special prime-time hearing,
and she told some stories.
I mean, these were some stories. She talked about President lunged across the back seat,
grabbed the steering wheel, tried to drive the car to the Capitol.
And I just want to know, you think she was lying?
SMITH: Uh, Chairman Jordan, my a-assessment of-of that particular issue is that,
with respect to, uh, the testimony about someone lunge— uh, the President lunging towards, uh, the driver.
Uh, my, uh, recollection of her testimony about that is that it was second-hand.
She said she'd heard that from somebody.
- You familiar with the name Tony Ornato? - I'm sorry?
- You familiar with the name Tony Ornato? - Yes.
JORDAN: White House Deputy Chief of Operations, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations? Right?
Remember what he said about it?
SMITH: As I sit here right now, I do not.
JORDAN: Yeah, he said it didn't happen. How about Bobby Engel? You familiar with that name?
SMITH: Yes, I am.
JORDAN: Secret Service agent who was actually in the car that day? You know what he said?
He said it didn't happen.
And they both said the first time they ever heard this story
was when Ms. Hutchinson testified in the prime time hearing as their star witness of the January 6th Committee.
By the way, did you ever confirm her testimony about this particular incident?
SMITH: [awkward pause]
Uh, we, uh, conducted, as I said before,
our own independent investigation of all aspects of the case that we thought was relevant.
We, uh, attorneys from my office—
JORDAN: Did you ever confirm it? That's a simple question.
SMITH: Well, uh, we interviewed her, I should say, attorneys in my office before—
JORDAN: Did you ever confirm the President leaping across the seat, grabbing the steering wheel,
this whole concoction she brought up in the January 6th hearing? Did you ever confirm that?
SMITH: Right. We interviewed a-another first-hand witness,
uh, who was in the car, uh, who did not confirm, uh, that that had happened, but also—
JORDAN: In your deposition to the Committee last month, Mr. Smith,
you said this: "My recollection with Ms. Hutchinson
was a number of the things that she gave evidence on were second-hand hearsay."
You remember making that statement to us last month in the deposition?
SMITH: I did, and I was referring particularly to what we're talking about now.
JORDAN: Yeah, and you also said Ms. Hutchinson, regarding this particular claim,
was a second- or even third-hand witness.
We ask you, if you were a defense attorney, how would you handle cross-examining her if she was on the witness stand?
And you said, "If I were a defense attorney and Ms. Hutchinson were a witness,
the first thing I would do was seek to preclude her testimony because it was hearsay." You remember saying all that?
SMITH: Yes, that's correct, sir.
JORDAN: That's correct, right? Were you going to put her on the witness stand if you ever got to trial?
KILLIAN: Now, this should be a no-brainer for any attorney:
No! You do not put on a witness to give hearsay testimony,
with a very few exceptions— none of which apply here.
The answer should have been an instant "No."
Yet, after pausing for a few seconds, listen to what he said:
SMITH: Uh, we had not made final determinations as to who we were going to call as a witness. We had a large...
JORDAN: You were still considering her?
SMITH: We had a large choice of witnesses in this case—
JORDAN: Are you familiar with what Washington Post reporters
Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis said in their book?
They did this book, 300-some pages book on Chronicle and the whole investigation at the Justice Department.
And here's what they said on page 310, they said,
"Jack Smith had wondered whether some of Hutchinson's claims might be relied upon at trial.
Still at one point, Smith told the elections team he wasn't ready to give up on Hutchinson's account.
Ultimately, however, Trump administration officials uniformly fiercely disputed her accounts under oath.
Prosecutors on your team told Smith they wouldn't want to use Hutchinson as a witness in court, and Smith agreed.
Are Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis who wrote this, are they lying?
SMITH: Uh, my recollection is that I had certainly had
not made any final determinations about who we were going to call.
JORDAN: And that's the point. That is the point. The fact that they used her
in a prime time hearing and you were won't rule out using her or didn't rule out using her,
putting her on the witness stand, when everybody knows she wasn't telling the truth, that says it all.
That's the degree the left and Democrats were willing to go to get President Trump.
Putting on the witness stand someone everybody knows is making it up!
Everybody knows that. And you were willing to do it.
By the way, you know how many times Cassie Hutchinson was mentioned in their report, the January 6th report?
Any idea, Mr. Smith?
- I do not. - A hundred and eighty-five times.
Someone that the whole country knows wasn't telling the truth,
and you were still considering putting her on the witness stand because you had to get President Trump.
And everybody can see that.
KILLIAN: Yeah, that's called, suborning perjury!
Smith had no credible response to this or any of the other questions put to him.
And as much as he and the Democrats tried to make out like this wasn't political at all,
one question after another after another just confirmed that no one here was interested in justice,
just in stopping Trump from being elected.
Smith even admitted several times that none of the individual acts
Trump and others were accused of doing is illegal.
They just kept falling back on conspiracy and "attempt to steal the election."
A lot of the members were also justifiably outraged at having their own phone records subpoenaed
and not even knowing about it until three weeks ago!
Including declaring the Speaker of the House a flight risk!
And here's another bit of outrage from the Democrats. Listen to Joe Neguse of Colorado:
NEGUSE: I don't know if your counsel has made you aware
that President Trump is live-tweeting, live, I guess you'd call it truth-socialling,
as we speak. Are you aware of this, about this hearing?
SMITH: No.
NEGUSE: Let me read to you what he posted an hour and a half ago:
"Deranged Jack Smith is being decimated before Congress.
It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions.
He destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy.
Jack Smith is a deranged animal who shouldn't be allowed to practice law.
If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him and far worse.
Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he's done.
We have a word for this! It's called weaponization! It's called corruption!
KILLIAN: No, Neguse, it's called freedom of speech!!!
Neguse, Trump, Jordan, Jack Smith, you, me, we all get to speak our minds!
And here's Neguse calling it weaponization and corruption based solely on the content of the speech!
That shows you how little he cares for his oath of office.
That shows you the absolute disdain he has for the First Amendment.
That shows you the level of hatred he has for you and me,
that he thinks that we don't get to speak our minds unless it's a pre-approved opinion of the ruling class.
And listen to how Becca Balint of Vermont tried to turn that around:
BALINT: Trump has said that you, Mr. Smith, should be investigated and put in prison.
He called you a disgrace to humanity, a radical left Marxist, a criminal.
In fact, Trump has used the words "deranged Jack Smith" 185 times on Truth Social.
KILLIAN: Is it just me, or is counting up the number of times Trump said a thing on Truth Social the deranged part?
Anyway, back to the pre-scripted softball question:
BALINT: How do you think that these statements have impacted you, your staff, and your investigation?
SMITH: With respect to me, I think the reports, I'm sorry, the statements, uh, are meant to intimidate me.
Uh, I will not be intimidated.
Uh, I think these statements are also made, uh, as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up,
and, uh, I am, as I say, I'm not going to be intimidated.
KILLIAN: So if you and I don't like a federal prosecutor, at least one beloved by the Democrats,
speaking out against him and calling him names is "intimidation."
That just explains so much of what we saw under Jack Smith, doesn't it?
But I think Smith should get himself checked by a doctor because he seems to be suffering from selective amnesia.
Every time he talked with a Democratic committee member, he had an answer at the ready,
almost as if he'd been following a script.
But when questioned by the Republicans, he never seemed to be able to remember anything.
Also, I couldn't help but notice that when answering Democrats he spoke loud and clear,
but when answering Republicans there were long 5-10 second pauses
and he spoke softly enough to barely show up in the audio waveform!
I had to really juice it up for you!
This is just so sad and pathetic,
made more worrying by the thought that, unless something really comes of this,
there's nothing stopping prosecutors from doing this crap to anyone else, including you and me.
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And now it's time to etymologize this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
This is the fourth podcast in a row that we've given one of these to RFK Jr.
after giving him Idiot of the Year in 2025. Will it never end?
As was completely predictable and predicted as soon as the anti-vax garbage started back up,
we have a new measles outbreak.
Measles is kind of a canary in a coal mine with this sort of thing.
Since the basic reproduction number is somewhere around 15,
meaning that without vaccines an infected person will go on to infect 15 others,
you need 94% immunity to achieve herd immunity.
When you count in the people who can't get the vaccine and people for whom the vaccine doesn't work,
that doesn't leave room for a lot of people just deciding not to get it because they're idiots.
In 2025, there were 2,242 confirmed measles infections in the United States,
the highest since 1992.
That's compared to a mere 285 cases in 2024, an increase of over sevenfold!
And yes, low vaccination rates are what's driving it.
Measles had previously been declared eliminated from the US in 2000.
After a fairly big outbreak in Texas where over 760 people were infected,
we're now seeing no end to the South Carolina outbreak.
Starting in October, South Carolina has accumulated 646 cases as of the 20th, 171 of them since the new year.
There are also some other clusters like 216 on the Utah-Arizona border,
100 cases in New Mexico, 90 in Kansas, and 40 in Ohio.
All in places where the vaccination rate has dropped below 90%. Work it out, people!
Each case costs something like $43,000 to treat.
To make matters worse, officials are warning that the cases are growing beyond their ability to trace.
You can't just assume you don't have measles because you're asymptomatic.
The disease is contagious for four days before the first symptoms appear.
For example, they were able to determine that an infected person, unaware they were infected,
spent four hours in the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia.
The measles virus is airborne and can linger for two hours after an infected person leaves.
If you're in that area for those six hours and you're unvaccinated,
the chances are 90% that you'll become infected.
And you'll be going around another four days spreading it before you realize it.
Whereas the MMR vaccine is safe and effective,
and just so you know, the total number of autism cases caused by the MMR vaccine is zero.
Whereas measles is far from the harmless childhood illness the anti-vaccers make it out to be.
Children can die, and even if they live they can wind up blind, deaf, immunocompromised,
or with permanent neurological damage including intellectual disabilities.
Hey, Bobby, how's that whole Make America Healthy Again thing going?
So all of that makes RFK Jr. this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
And now let's overintellectualinstitutionalize this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Been awhile since we gave one to Rand Paul, but he deserves it this week for basically turning against Section 230.
That's the one that says that websites aren't responsible for the actions of their users.
You know, basic common law.
Also basic common sense.
It's also exactly what stops politicians, Attorneys General, and ambulance-chasers
from getting big payouts from tech companies over speech they don't like.
And Rand Paul has traditionally been a voice for free speech.
He was one of just two Senators who voted against FOSTA,
for example. But now he's written an op-ed in The New York Post titled:
"I've changed my mind— Google and YouTube can't be trusted to do the right thing and must be reined in."
Even though 230 has nothing to do with "doing the right thing."
Someone posted a video to YouTube accusing Paul of taking money from Nicolás Maduro.
It's stupid and insane, but nothing the government can do anything about.
And yet, he seemed to be channeling Jack Smith, writing:
"This untruth is essentially an accusation of treason, which then leads the internet mob to call for my death.
I will not sit idly by and let them host a provably false defamatory video,
which is now part of a widespread harassment campaign. I am now receiving death threats.
The arrogance of Google to continue hosting this defamatory video and the resultant threats on my life
have caused me to rethink Congress' blind allegiance to liability shields."
The thing is, if the video actually rises to the level of defamation,
there are all sorts of options open to Paul to address it.
In fact, by his own admission, he did just that, quote:
"The individual who posted the video finally took down the video under threat of legal penalty."
His excuse? Quote: "Yet, the defamatory video still has a life of its own
circulated widely on the internet and the damage done is difficult to reverse."
Yeah, that's still something to take up with the people who made the video, not YouTube.
Here's a weird quote: "Historically, such false accusations were rarely published in newspapers
because they were conscious of significant liability for publishing untrue, defamatory accusations.
Liability protection now encourages bad actors, many of whom are actually paid for their bad actions."
That's not Section 230 that does that; that's New York Times v. Sullivan!
The fear is that without protections such as Sullivan the government might set itself up as the arbiter of truth,
which is a big part of the corruption of the Joe Biden era.
Paul should think twice before following his example.
Google shouldn't be an arbiter of truth, either, and it shouldn't be required by law to act as one.
The way you deal with it is exactly what the Supreme Court said: actual malice.
Show in court that they knew or should have known that it was untrue, or they acted in reckless disregard for the truth.
There's also a fine line between this Paul-Maduro fake video and parody.
It's one of those cases where, even if he got what he wanted, he still wouldn't get what he wanted.
As we saw with the Prodigy case that was the impetus for Section 230,
the only practical alternative available to companies would be never to moderate anything at all.
There was a point where Rand Paul understood that.
Maybe he's someone else who should get checked out for selective amnesia.
So all of that makes Rand Paul this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Well, that wraps up this "It's a damn good thing you don't know how much he hates your guts"
edition of the Bogosity Podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it; if you did, please go to donate.bogosity.tv for several ways to support,
and discord.bogosity.tv to join the discussion.
Subscribe at the Discord, Patreon, or SubscribeStar and you can listen early and ad-free.
Thank you for listening. Next week is the fifth weekend in the month, so no podcast.
We'll see you in two weeks. Until then, here's a quote from David Freiheit:
"If you only respect someone else's opinion when they agree with you or affirm what you already believe,
you never actually respected their opinion. You only respected your own."
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