How Hobby Lobby Funded Terrorism And Tried To Destroy Democracy

Robert is joined by Cody Johnston to discuss Hobby Lobby.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Meet David Green: Hobby Lobby's Biblical Billionaire
2. Some thoughts on the Hobby Lobby antiquities case
3. Hobby Lobby’s Legal Expert Speaks: “I can’t rule out…they used my advice to evade the law.”
4. The Green collection and the Museum of the Bible: 443,000 square meters of mess
5. Dispelling the Myths Around the Hobby Lobby Antiquities Case
6. DID HOBBY LOBBY’S C.E.O. UNKNOWINGLY SPONSOR TERRORISM?
7. How much money has ISIS made selling antiquities? More than enough to fund its attacks.
8. Mission From God: The Upstart Christian Sect Driving Invisible Children and Changing Africa
9. America’s Biggest Christian Charity Funnels Tens of Millions to Hate Groups
10. Hobby Lobby: Who is David Green? 9 facts telling you everything you need to know about the evangelical entrepreneur
11. 5 things to know about Hobby Lobby’s owners
12. Hobby Lobby Allegedly Fired Employee Due to Pregnancy
13. Bad Boss: Yes, Hobby Lobby’s Steve Green Does Want You To Live By His Religion’s Rules
14. How the Hobby Lobby ruling helped and hurt religious freedom
15. Column: The Supreme Court’s awful Hobby Lobby decision just spawned a very ugly stepchild
16. Aftermath of the Hobby Lobby Decision

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hitler ship. That's not how to introduce a podcast. Oh boy,
that went bad. Uh I just said Hitler. That was
just that's the worst introduction yet. Maybe you're talking about
Gary Hitler. You know who's that? Todd Hitler? I don't
know the guy are you telling me? Is Jerry Hitler,

(00:21):
like the clone of Gerald Ford and Adolf Hitler that
ran the country with an unfortunate name. Well, now I've
made up. I've invented a whole canon for the gerald
Ford Hitler hybrid in my head. Yeah, I mean that's
the that's what the cut scenes from the new Star

(00:42):
Wars film. Yeah, Adolf Hitler brought us World War two,
gerald Ford brought us the pardon of Richard Nixon, and
Jerry Hitler brought us the Dodge Dart. So who's the
real monster? L Listeners were not even first talking pardon
this episode? Is? You just got people so upset? I know,

(01:03):
I know, I know, this is okay, this is the
worst introduction yet. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
the podcast where we talk about terrible people. My ghost
today is Cody Johnston. Cody, how are you doing? Ghost?
The ghost? The ghost in the room is Katie Stole,
who is not completing our triumvirate as per usual. I

(01:27):
feel it is very weird. It is odd, it's uncomfortable.
I keep looking, I keep looking there for Katie, and
she's not. I love you, Katie. She's taking a well
deserved day off while Cody and I slog through this story,
which has nothing to do with Hitler, nothing to do
with not even a little bit, a little bit. Oh God, alright, Cody,

(01:49):
what do you know about hobby Lobby? They did? Isis?
This is the story about how hobby Lobby literally invented isis? Yeah? No,
kind of a little bit, but not that much. Well, yeah,
I mean you've got a lot of work to do
because I've been convinced over the years that they did
isis that hobby Lobby did an isis? You've got a

(02:11):
d program me from my way of thinking. Now, But
look at the glasses Anderson wore from hobby Lobby for
her RBG costume, Mommy Loween. She helped isis all. We've
all found ourselves needing a hobby lobby at one point
or another. Maybe you needed some decorative glass jars or
yarn and a felt needle at seven thirty at night.

(02:33):
And if you need those things, the only place to
go is a hobby lobby. That was gonna be my
example too. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like the store you
go for weird little crafty things that no one else
is going to carry, and the kind of knickknacks that
you put in your home when you don't really know
what else to put there, Like eyeglasses that fit a dog,
Like like eyeglasses that fit the dog for an RBG

(02:54):
costume for a dog. It's ironic that you keep bringing
up Ruth Bader Ginsburg because this is the story about
a group of people who want to make it impossible
for people like her to sit on the Supreme Court.
That's the tale of hobby Lobby. So but a little bit.
I mean, you know, you have probably heard, as Cody

(03:15):
has been constantly referring to it. Yeah, that hobby lobby
got in some trouble from maybe funding isis uh And
yeah that's not technically true. Um, hobby Lobby did not
exactly fund like the Islamic State uh itself. Um, but
they did they did help to fund some other Islamic

(03:39):
extremist organizations that were precursors to isis, and more to
the point, you can make a strong case that they're
working to set up a Christian equivalent to isis right
here in the US of A. That's the story we're
going to talk about. Yeah, yeah, you wish they were
just funding ice. I do now, good old wholesome isis

(04:00):
arting near rock bottom. But don't worry, it gets a
little lower. It'll keep getting lower. But before we talk
about how everything that I just talked about winds up happening,
we have to go back in time a little bit
to talk about the beginning of hobby lobby. Cody, could
you give me some mood setting time machine noises? Perfect,

(04:29):
perfect like that. I'm just gonna put it out there.
It's a it's a new model. It's a new model,
all right. Some some of the scientists listening can graph
the differences between your time machine noises when Katie is
and is not present. Um, that one was much more
like a tyrannosaurus or perhaps a terry dactyl, terry dactyl

(04:50):
some like, some like really really old bird. Yeah yeah. So.
David Green was born on November one in Emporia, Kansas.
His father was a preacher, uh and not a particularly
big deal within that world. He wasn't like a big
time preacher. He moved around from like congregation of congregation

(05:10):
in tiny little towns in Kansas, uh and eventually escaping
the hellish waste of Kansas for the hellish waste of Oklahoma.
The family settled in a town called Altis, where David's
father preached to a flock of thirty five people who
were vastly outnumbered by the cows on their farms. So
he's got humble beginnings, you could say. Um. Now, David
grew up in Altus, which is about five hours away

(05:32):
from the tiny town in Oklahoma where I grew up.
It was as close to the middle of nowhere as
you can get. And they were very poor. Uh. David
would have worn nothing but second hand clothing and eaten
primarily food donated to his family by the congregation. Uh.
The Green family could go weeks at a time without
eating meat. So they are the kind of poor where
like you just don't even money's not even a factor

(05:52):
in your life. Um. But still his mom found ways
to give what little they had to other families in Altis,
and interviews today, David remembers his mother and father, sacrificing
their tiny comforts and even their necessities for the good
of the community. Religion was the very air he breathed
as a child, and all five of David's brothers and
sisters grew up to be either pastors or pastors wives.

(06:13):
But a life of preaching and poverty was not for David.
He struggled at school and had to repeat the seventh grade,
but he had no desire to focus on the Bible
for a living. Instead, he started working in the business
world as soon as he could. During his junior year
of high school, David got involved in a work study
program and landed a gig as a stock boy in
the town general store. He only made sixty cents an hour,
but he became aware of the basics of how capitalism

(06:35):
works watching his boss by products for ten cents and
sell them for twenty. So that's like his his his, Yeah,
he falls in love with with this idea. It's like
m hmm, it's like trans substantiation but with pennies. Yeah
yeah um. I'm I look forward to finding out what
he does with this information. Yeah. Now new worldview yeah um.

(07:00):
And So while David's mom gave until it hurt, and
while his siblings committed themselves to serving their communities, David
found himself more enthralled with the idea of profiting from
his fellow man, and over the course of his early
in mid twenties, David served in the Air Force Reserve
and married a woman named Barbara, who he had met
while working at the general store. He turned his work
experience into a job as a manager at T. G
and Y, a five and dime shop that sold odds

(07:22):
and ends. By the time he was twenty nine, he
decided he'd learned enough working at these businesses to do
a better job starting his own, so he borrowed six
hundred dollars to buy up equipment and inventory, and teamed
up with another manager from his store to create his
first business, selling miniature picture frames to stores like T.
G and Why, where he'd worked so like too small
to really like put pictures in, Just like the kind

(07:43):
of nicknacks you stick up around the house for no reason. Yeah,
like slightly slightly bigger than wallet size. Yeah okay, okay, yeah,
tiny little picture frames that are basically just knickknacks for
like old women to turn into craft projects. Like that's
the business he decides to go into for some reason specific,
very specific, but you know there's a market you got

(08:04):
you yet your corner that he had a very weird,
specific dream and it turned out to work very well. Yeah. Yeah,
So his wife and sons assembled these tiny picture frames
on their kitchen table and received seven cents apiece from
Dad for their labor. The whole enterprise was profitable for
reasons that I cannot understand, and by nineteen seventy two,

(08:26):
Green had enough money to open his first actual store,
a three d square foot hobby lobby in Oklahoma City. Okay, okay,
So it was like the inventory it was wasn't just
picture frames at that point. It was like, all right,
it's just like when he opens his first hobby lobby. Yeah,
he expands beyond shitty picture frames, yea, to other stuff too,

(08:47):
shitty other stuff. Yeah, there's a whole wide variety of
shitty things for sale. Right. We got nicks, We got knacks.
We have the Knicks, which is as useless a sports
team as a tiny picture frame. Get the knack. Yeah,
I don't know what the knack is. A Robert just

(09:09):
had like a sports diss like time. Yes, yeah, we
will not go into any more detail about why the
Knicks are terrible, but terrible long time listeners will know,
all right, waiting for that episode to drop. Oh it
has now. There are different opinions on why hobby Lobby
became a huge success. The CFO John Cargo credits David

(09:32):
Green's brilliant and merchandizing uh. He says that Green basically
realized that cheap crap like styrophone roosters and fake books
and plastic plants could be produced for pennies overseas and
then sold for dollars to American customers. Uh. And there
turned out to be an endless appetite among realtors setting
up show homes hotels looking to decorate on the cheap,
and little old ladies with a love of knick knacks.

(09:52):
And so David's business exploded from selling cheap, poorly made
decorative crap in moss. So that's I mean, yeah, that's what.
There you go, that explains it. That's all. Oh wow,
what a good idea. I think at times about like
how when the world is like dying and I'm like
sitting upon one of the last bits of land that
like peaks above the boiling oceans choking the last remaining

(10:16):
life on the surface. How I will explain to children
why we let this happen? And I am excited to
talk with them about hobby Lobby. That's all right, here's
the first Well, the oceans had to die because we
needed styrofoam roosters to put up in corners of the
house that didn't have decorations. But yeah, um, and uh,

(10:45):
I'd like to uh, I'd like to see that scene
gathering around the fire that you actually don't need because,
like you said, the boiling oceans. Yeah, the oceans are boiling. Yeah,
treating treating wounds, treating wounds with styrofoamsters, arguing over who's
going to eat who first, Like who's the first to go?

(11:06):
It's gonna be good. But then, um, the tale of
hobby Lobby. So one major reason for the success of
hobby Lobby came down to luck in good timing. Right
around the time his first store opened, the hippies of
the United States became enthralled with beads. The bead buying
craze started right at the same time that Green began
expanding his business, and it fueled hobby lobbies spread to

(11:27):
a second, six thousand square foot location. Green was able
to quit his job at t G and why, and
he requalls that his wife was not happy with this.
She was real comfortable with me working at t G
and why they were doing two billion a year in sales.
We did a hundred thousand dollars. Of course they're gone
now and we're making three billion. It's not wrong. Yeah,
he's not wrong. Are they still married? Oh yeah, okay,

(11:49):
so this isn't just like a resentful like she said this,
but actually where it's billions of dollars now, No, no, no,
it's more like, uh, my, my, my wife. You know.
This is why the man has the business sense in
the family, because my wife would have had us, yeah,
working for a doomed enterprise instead of selling styrofoam roosters
to all in sundry. Yea yeah. And now we're doing

(12:11):
great because of the good work we do. Because of
the good work that we do. Hobby Lobby today is
one of the largest businesses of its kind in the world,
operating five and twenty stores in thirty two states. David
Green and his family are the sole owners of the business,
and over the course of his career, Green's net worth
has soared to more than four and a half billion.
I think it's even more than that now. Because there

(12:33):
are no shareholders or co owners, David gets to run
Hobby Lobby exactly the way he wants, and since he
is an evangelical Christian, that's been woven into the character
of the business. Sometimes this manifests itself in wacky ways.
For example, products and Hobby Lobby do not have bar codes.
But um there's two explanations for this interview m the

(12:59):
The official explanation from David Green is that computerized point
of sale systems make his employees less knowledgeable about their
inventory because they rely on a computer to tell them
where things go and what things cost. And while it
costs more money for the business to have employees like
updating prices by hand, it leads to better staff because
they know where everything is and what it costs. They
have an understanding that's deeper of the inventory, which makes sense. Yeah, like,

(13:22):
that's not an illogical um um theory. I'm ready for
you to bump me out, But that's actually a good answer. Yeah,
that's a very good answer. However, some suggest this hardline
against barcodes has more to do with the fact that
large chunks of the evangelical Christian population belief that bar
codes are the mark of the beast. This rumor is

(13:42):
largely perpetuated by folks and blogs just like bar code conspiracies,
and I really have no idea what the truth is,
but hobby lobby employees regularly talk about the idea that
the bar codes, there are no bar codes in the
business because it's the mark of the devil. There's a
whole like like that you could find in the era
of VHS, like whole VHS tape explaining how like the
barcode is the mark of the beast and like all

(14:03):
of the different dashes really stand for six six six
and it's the devil's way of getting into capitalism. Yeah.
So okay, So the conspiracy stuff, like the blogs that
are talking about this, aren't people being like making up
a wild accusation. It's based off of people who of
all huge numbers of people, yeah, who believe that barcodes

(14:24):
are evil. So it is a belief, yes, and it's
just the conspiracy is that that's why they don't do
it at hobby lobby specifically, But it is exactly that
is it is, Yeah, that belief is a thing that
at least a couple of million Americans believe that too many,
David said, David has a reasonable explanation for why hobby
Lobby doesn't use barcodes, but there's a lot of people
that are like, come on, oh no. His first answer

(14:47):
was so good. Yeah, it's a really good answer. Yeah.
It's one of those things where it's like, oh that
makes complete sense. See what, Yeah, they know the point
over there like, oh yeah, this used to be this
amount because I did it in my hand. Yeah. Oh no,
uh exactly. So um yeah. Now, David Green's choice to
not use bar codes, uh is fine regardless of what

(15:09):
he does it. You know, he has that right. He's
the so proprietor of the business. What's less fine in
my opinion of the ways in which he's chosen to
spend his fortune and interviews, David will frequently claim that
God is the real manager of his three billion dollar
per year empire. He told Forbes this, if you have anything,
or I have anything, it's because it's been given to
us by our creator. So I've learned to say, look,

(15:30):
this is yours God, It's all yours. I'm going to
give it to you. And when he talks about how
he uses his wealth and interviews, David tends to say
things like this, I want to know that I have
affected people for eternity. I believe, I am, I believe
what someone knows Christ as their personal savior. I've affected eternity.
I matter ten billion years from now. Yeah, this is

(15:52):
c we're going in. Yeah, so too much. I don't
care for that. You don't affect people for eternity by
selling them colored mirrors and book ins um just like
the phrasing like affect people. Yeah, Yeah, it's unsettling. It's
like weirdly clinical and like it doesn't specify what you mean.

(16:14):
It's not great. It's not great. Billions of years, that's
ten billionaires. That's some scientology lesson delusions right there. Yeah. So.
David Green is currently the largest individual donor to evangelical
causes in the United States. In nineteen he bought an

(16:34):
old v A hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, and turned
it into a church. This proved to be the start
of more than three million dollars in donations to establish
churches on fifty different properties. Other Christian leaders have come
to see Green as something of a venture capital fund
for their religion. He receives proposals on a daily basis
for churches and religious schools that need his support and
to listen. Four he gave a ten million dollar building

(16:55):
to Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University. A few years later he
paid off in yeah, this is going in so much
worse of a direction. A few years later he paid
off the numerous debts for Oral Roberts University. He has
founded numerous Christian foundations, through which he has distributed one
point four billion copies of Christian literature in more than

(17:17):
a hundred countries. The One Hope Foundation focuses on providing
scripture to children aged four to fourteen. The Every Home
for Christ Foundation sends missionaries with Bible booklets door to
door in the Global South. When people suggest that maybe
delivering food or medicine might be more useful than bibles
in many of these countries, Green has a prepared response.
It's not like you give them that but don't give

(17:37):
them food. You give both. But Green insists, if I
die without food or without eternal salvation, I want to
die without food. I can't argue with that. I can't
argue with those are the two real options that they're
that are definitely on the table, the only two that's

(17:59):
a good point. Good stuff. Huh. I wish I could
do good stuff. Wish I could work at hobby Lobby. Now,
Oh you can, Cody, you can. I shouldn't have said that.
I have good news for all of us because this
podcast is now sponsored and owned entirely by the hobby
Lobby Corporation. Yeah. And speaking of hobby Lobby, Cody, have

(18:21):
you considered all the different things that styrofoam roosters could
do to improve your life? Most of them, but probably
not all of them. I think there are some I
probably haven't thought of that I would buy if I
if I were told about them. Yes, with styrofoam roosters,
you don't need, for example, single payer healthcare. Just jam

(18:41):
a rooster in it. Yes, that's the hobby lobby message.
Shove a fake cock and whatever ails you and your
problems will be solved cocks. Yeah. On December twelve, be
Lobby made an irrevocable donation of an entire campus in Northfield,

(19:03):
Massachusetts to the National Christian Foundation or in CF. Both
hobby Lobby the business and David Green, the billionaire have
made and continue to make numerous donations to the n
CF totally millions upon millions of dollars. The n CF is,
on its face a nonprofit that supports a variety of
Christian causes, but of course, because this is my podcast,

(19:23):
the n c F primarily exists as a vehicle to
viciously attack people Christian extremists hate all around the world.
And I'm going to quote now from Sludge, a website
that analyzes the way evil pieces of ship pump their
money out across the world. Quote. According to the three
most recent available tax filenks, which cover two thousand fifteen
to two thousand seventeen, it has donated fifty six point
one million dollars on behalf of its clients to twenty

(19:45):
three nonprofits identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center is
hate groups. I certainly don't know of any public disclosures
of funds to hate groups at levels anywhere near this,
Heidi Berrick, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC,
told Sludge. It's pretty astounding and certainly concerning. According you
do a two thousand seventeen Inside Philanthropy article in CF
is probably the single largest source of money fueling the

(20:05):
pro life and anti LGBT movements over the past fifteen years.
In two thousand and seventeen, in CFS donation to anti LGBT,
anti Muslim, and anti immigrant hate groups rose to over
nineteen million dollars. It's a lot of money. It's good,
good stuff, good stuff. Ten billion years Cody, Yeah. Yeah.
The n c F pours money into the Alliance Defending Freedom,

(20:28):
a network of Christian lawyers who want transgender people to
be mandatorily sterilized and want homosexuality to be made a
literal crime. The Alliance defend That's how you defend freedom,
by putting people in prison. Nothing says freedom like enforced sterilization.

(20:49):
The Alliance to the Alliance Defending Freedom is currently opposing
the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.
David Green doesn't ever really say hateful things, but this
is where he puts his money. In fact, since n
c F donations make up more than one third of
the a d f S budget, it's likely Green has
put quite a lot of money into this group. If

(21:09):
we want an idea of how the United States would
look if Green and his friends got their way, we
can hop over to Uganda, and Cody, that's what we're
gonna do right after these ads for products and services.
Can't wait? Yeah, yeah, you know what won't turn our
nation into uh hate filled religious theocracy. Deliverables putting will

(21:36):
not also turn our nation into a fundamentalist hell whole
energy drinks. It is well known that fundamentalists cannot drink
putting or eat energy drinks. Off we go, goodbye, We're back, Cody. Yes,

(21:58):
you you enjoying this fun tale of the man who
sold styrophone roosters for the world. I like it to
fund bigots. Yeah, he's I like his answers for stuff. Yeah,
they're good. I'm glad that dude. Yeah, his answers are
up he's up front and he's forth right, and there's
nothing behind it. Uh nothing. It's he's speaking from his

(22:20):
heart about his what he wants to do and is
doing it. In two thousand and eight, the n c
F gave eight hundred and seventeen thousand dollars to Ed Silvoso,
an evangelical minister from California who works directly with Julius O. Yett,
the Ugandan bishop who led the charge against that nation's
two thousand and fourteen anti Homosexuality bill. Here's how Human
Rights Watch describes it. Quote the law permits sentences of

(22:43):
life in prison for some sexual acts between consenting adults.
It criminalizes the undefined promotion of homosexuality, a provision that
threatens human rights advocacy work and prompted a police rate
on a joint US government McCarey University HIV Research and
Intervention program. But also criminalizes a person who keeps a house, rooms,
set of rooms, or place of any kind for purposes
of homosexuality, a provision that has been used to justify

(23:05):
evicting lgbt I tenants. Numerous gay people have been rendered
homeless by the law since its inception. Human Rights Watch
talk to one of them, a lesbian woman named Hanifa,
who showed them her eviction papers. Quote. You have been
nice to me and paying me very well. But due
to the existing situation in the country, pleus your behavior
with your friends forgive me to suspect you of being indecent.
I cannot allow you to rent my house. I cannot

(23:26):
fight the government. Yeah, and it's hard to know exactly
how much of hobby lobby money went up in these efforts,
but the NCF sent millions of dollars to different groups
in Uganda pushing these laws, and like you know, obviously
part of the goal of having organizations like this is
so a guy named David Green can claim none of
his money directly went to it, and also millions of

(23:48):
his dollars go to this group which spends millions of
dollars doing this ship. Yeah smart, smart, I mean smart,
define define smart, I mean smart. Cody is providing me
with the place to buy both paint brushes and uh
those fake books that I can put up on my

(24:09):
counter to make it look like I read. Yeah yeah,
and and uh clay for which people can make I
don't know, crucifixes out of you make anything crucifying at
a class Yeah, larger crucifix, A larger crucifer on a
smaller one size of crucifix. Yeah yeah, there's uh won't

(24:32):
get into it. There are laws like that that are
being introduced in various states this year. So sure are Cody,
Yeah there sure are. Probably do an episode about that
on an our other show. But yeah yeah, And if
you trace back the money behind those laws, I bet
they go to the same place as these do. I
would believe that yeah. Yeah. The n CF is also
one of the groups that Chick fil A, for example,
gets likely ambastad for supporting, but like for whatever reason,

(24:55):
hobby Lobby has not acquired the same amount of hire
interesting until now. In the first few months after the
bill's passage, at least seventeen LGBT people were arrested under
suspicion of homosexuality. In Uganda, three transgender individuals were sexually
assaulted in police custody. Charity organizations that provided contraceptives and
AIDS medication were forcibly shut down under the new law.

(25:17):
Even doctors were allowed to deny basic treatment to gay people.
Human Rights Watch talk to one transgender man who went
to his doctor with a fever. He said, the doctor
asked him, but are you a man or a woman?
I said, that doesn't matter. But what I can tell
you is I'm a transman. He said, what's a transman?
You don't Oh, we don't offer services to gay people here.
You people are not even supposed to be in our community.
I can call the police and report you. You're not

(25:39):
even supposed to be in the country. This is kind
of the world that David Green wants to the United States.
Uh yeah, yeah. Through his donations to the n c F,
David Green has supported all this. He has also supported
a number of anti Muslim and anti immigrant hate groups.
The n c F gives money to Act for America,
the American Freedom Law Center, and David Horowitz Freedom Says.

(26:01):
I love freedom, You love freedom, and it always is
good things. Yeah. I like organizations with Freeman liberty in
their name because that means it's good. That means, that
means it's good. Yeah. It never means the freedom to
oppress broad swaths of the population. No, no, no, no, no, no,
no no no. How dare you? How dare you? How
dare you know? Freedom is good? Whatever you said bad,

(26:22):
but not my freedom or liberty? Uh? Yeah. So. David
Horwitz of the David Horwitz Freedom Center believes that quote
the whole Muslim world is pursuing a final solution to Jews,
and that American Muslims represent the real neo Nazi movement
in America. It's not those Nazis. They literally say that

(26:46):
they're neo Nazis. Yeah, it's amazing. Come oh no, they say,
how I think Horwitz isn't all of them kind of guy? Yeah, yeah,
I mean like the Nazis say, like, yeah, they used
the word yeah. The Alliance Defending Freedom is an anti

(27:07):
LGBT group currently lobbying to make US law as much
like Uganda's as possible. Uh. They provided a hobby lobby
and David Green with three lawyers in two thousand fourteen,
when the billionaire hobby lobby owner decided to strike a
blow against birth control and the Affordable Care Act. This
whole thing stemmed from the fact that the a c
A required company health insurance plans to provide access to contraceptives. Crucially,

(27:28):
the Green family insisted they did not object to paying
for all kinds of contraceptives, just the morning after pill,
which they believe violated heavenly law for reasons I think
are dumb. Pregnancy actually begins when a fertilized egg attaches
itself to the wall of the uterus, and the morning
after pills are meant to prevent this, but the Greens
argued that any action taken to prevent implantation once the

(27:49):
egg is fertilized is the same thing as an abortion.
The Greens also argued that paying for i U D
s would violate their deeply held religious beliefs, and two
thousand twelve, when the series of lawsuits began, Green insist
it we simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply
with this mandate. In two thousand fourteen, the case made
its way to the Supreme Court, which was probably David
Green's goal from the beginning. Hobby Lobby won its suit,

(28:10):
which established that corporations with religious objections could opt out
of providing mandatory coverage to their employees. This marked the
first time in American history that the Supreme Court declared
businesses were capable of holding religious views. Most of the
coverage of this event portrayed a simple moral consistency on
behalf of David, As he told The Independent, you can't
have a belief system on Sunday and not live at

(28:32):
the other six days. However, when you actually dig into
how David runs his company, he seems notably less consistent about,
for example, the sanctity of young life when that young
life might actually cost him some money. And I'm going
to quote now from an article in Rewire News. Quote
when a very pregnant Felicia Allen applied for medical leaf
from her job at Hobby Lobby three years ago. One

(28:53):
might think that the company best known for denying its
employees insurance coverage of certain contraceptives on the false grounds
that they cause abortion, would show equal concern for helping
one of its employees when she learned that she was pregnant. Instead,
Allan says, the self professed evangelical Christian arts and craft
chain fired her and then tried to prevent her from
accessing unemployment benefits. They didn't even want me to come
back after having my baby to provide for it, she said.

(29:16):
Allan had been hired as a part time cashier in July.
Not long after she started the job, she found out
she was four months pregnant. She had not been working
long enough to qualify for parental leave under the Family
Medical Leave Act. Alan went to her supervisor. I asked her,
what I lose my job to me being four months
and only having five months before having my child. She
told me no. I felt like everything was okay. I
had talked to my boss. She let me know that

(29:37):
everything would be okay. I would still have my job.
But when she actually had to give birth and take
her leave of absence, her supervisor told her that she
would be fired for doing so. She tried to reapply
to her job after coming back, but was not rehired.
When she applied for unemployment benefits, she claimed Hobby Lobby
lawyers lied to the unemployment agency and said that she
had chosen not to take parental leave and quit. The

(29:57):
court eventually agreed with Alan's version of events, and she
one her claim for benefits. She sued Hobby Lobby in
February two twelve, the same year that the company started
its battle with the a c A, but that case
was dropped immediately because it turned out she'd signed away
her right to sue the company without knowing. All hobby
Lobby employees are required to resolve legal disputes through arbitration,

(30:17):
which heavily favors the corporation. Yeah, we got They're awesome
and Cody, how would you feel if I told you
that hobby lobbies arbitration wasn't a normal arbitration agreement, wasn't
the Yeah, I would feel wholly unsurprised by that statement. Um,
I don't, I don't. I don't like to get political.

(30:40):
You don't, you don't. You're famous for that, Yes, but um,
what if we didn't tie healthcare to our employers I mean, Cody,
it's that's a nice dream. But you know, like, can
you point out I don't know, for example, a couple
of dozen nations on the planet with higher standards of

(31:01):
living in longer lifespans in the United States that do
something like that. I've actually never heard of a second country.
Oh okay, so our education systems working. Yeah yeah, So
I think whatever, whatever comparison you're gonna make or point
you're gonna make, it would have been lost on me.
I would have been like, what's what's Kannada? I don't
know even if that's a reference to a nation. So no, no,

(31:25):
it's actually a gas station. Uh somewhere up past Tacoma.
Um okay, so uh yeah, I'm gonna quote Rewire News
again discussing the peculiarities of hobby lobbies arbitration because like
even like even before you get here, it's like, yeah,
companies prefer arbitration because God, all right, go ahead, benefits

(31:47):
the massively Yeah alright. One thing that sets hobby lobby
is arbitration policy from most corporations is its allowance for
Christian influenced arbitration. But the Mutual Arbitration Agreement Alan Si
gives employees the option of choosing to find an arbitrator,
either through the nonprofit American Arbitration Association, the largest dispute
resolution service provider in the United States, or the Interestitute

(32:09):
for Christian Conciliation. The company Hobby Lobby uses for their
Christian arbitration is called Peacemaker Ministries, whose principles include the
idea that Christians are not allowed to sue other Christians.
This is incredibly convenient for the Christian owner of a
Christian company who fox over his Christian employees now hobby Lobby.

(32:32):
Hobby Lobby insists that its owners beliefs are not forced
on employees, outside from the fact that they won't pay
for your birth control because of their beliefs, which is
kind of forcing their beliefs on you. But Hobby Lobby
won't force you to be Christian, although they do actively
evangelize their employees. David Green has hired three chaplains to
minister to his employees. He claims that hundreds of employees
have been converted to Christianity this way, including fifteen managers

(32:54):
in a single year. As David told The Independent, we
prayed a prayer with them and we did have fifteen
managers come to know Christ in the business place. That
seems good about board because once they know Christ, they
can't see you. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how many have
been like, yeah, sure, I'm Christian. Now knowing that, like

(33:16):
they'll be in the good graces a little more. Mm hmm.
I mean I had to join Jack's weird Buddhist set,
which I still have trouble believing that M M A
is a critical aspect of Buddhism. But Jack says so
yeah or um sorry. That Rewire article quotes Alex Colvin,

(33:41):
a professor at Cornell and an employment arbitration expert. Uh
He said this of Hobby Lobby's arbitration policies. I think
it's an interesting confluence here with Hobby Lobby being in
the news with that big case. But if that were
an employment case where an employee wanted to make a claim,
we would never see that case at the Supreme Court
because it would be stayed in arbitration. So ironically, Hobby
Lobby gets to go to the Supreme Court because they
want to challenge this, but their own employees don't get

(34:02):
to go to court. That is ironic, isn't it. I
would I was gonna use the word fair, but very fair,
very fair and cool. Morally consistent too, uh and speaking
of more consistency, well, the craft store chain apparently considers
the Morning after pill a clear and present danger to
their faith. They did not have the same issue with

(34:24):
supporting the Chinese government. The vast majority of Hobby Lobby's
products are made in China. They spend billions of year
dollars a year importing from that country, and up until
two thousand and sixteen, the Chinese government enforced their one
child policy by in part mandatory abortions for pregnant women.
David Green decided this mattered less than maximizing the profit
margins on his knickknacks by having them made in China.

(34:45):
So it just like these beliefs are only ironclad up
until they're not as profitable, and they don't matter. Yeah,
I mean, that's again, it's wholly unsurprising. Yeah. Um, but
at least they can deny their employees care that seems, yes,
their employees that they make memorize all the prices because
the devil of course Cody. Of course, we can understand

(35:10):
in our society how you might have to deny employees
access to certain medicines because the way that they deal
with eggs and stuff is against your poorly understood religious beliefs,
while also being like, but we're still gonna, you know,
buy a bunch of stuff from China because that's just
the only way to get enough styrophone roosters. Yeah, but
I can we can guarantee Hobby Lobby wouldn't do something

(35:32):
like invest millions of dollars in the same drug firms
that produced the pills that they say are against their
religious beliefs. That would, of course be a massive violation
of what they believe. Right. Yeah, um, I agree, and
I choose to um leave this podcast before you make
your next point. Hobby lobbies four oh one K plan

(35:55):
for employees include some seventy three million dollars in mutual
funds that are heavily invested in very same drug firms
that produce emergency contraceptive pill, intra uterine devices, and drugs
commonly used in abortions. It's also worth noting that, prior
to the a C A, Hobby Lobby's health insurance plan
covered all these devices. It's almost as if what really
matters to David was establishing the legal precedent that corporations

(36:17):
could discriminate against employees based on religious beliefs. It is
almost exactly like that. It is almost exactly like that. Again,
wholly unsurprising, wholly cool and unsurprising, and boy howdy, have
their implications of the hobby Lobby decision been vast and terrifying.
In her descent to the two thousand fourteen ruling, Justice

(36:40):
Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared the Court, I fear has ventured
into a mine field. Two years later, in two thousand sixteen,
the Los Angeles Times evaluated the impact of the ruling
so far, Like this quote, the minefield Ginsburg warned about
has now detonated. On Thursday, US District Attorney Sean F.
Cox of Detroit ruled that a local funeral home was
well within its rights to fire at Rand's gender employee

(37:00):
because its owner had a religious belief that gender transition
of violated biblical teachings. Cox's ruling puts the lie to
Justice Samuel Alito's denial in his majority opinion and Hobby
Lobby that the ruling would provide a shield for a
wide range of discriminatory practices by allowing them to masquerade
as religious scruples. Our decision today provides no set shield,
Aldo wrote. Ginsburg, who was on the short end of
the five four decision, knew better. She said, there could

(37:22):
be little doubt that religious claims would proliferate because the
Court's expansion of religious freedom to corporations invites for profit
entities to seek religious based exemptions from regulations they deem
offensive to their faith. She asked, where is the stopping
point Suppose an employer sincerely held religious belief is offended
by high health coverage of vaccines, or paying the minimum wage,
or according women equal pay for substantially similar work. Within

(37:43):
days of the ruling, there were already forty nine cases
from for profit organizations claiming religious objections to the a
c A, and the ruling is increasingly used to cloak
a legal discrimination in the robes of religion. Wheaton College
even argued that the ruling meant they could refuse to
fill out medical paperwork stating that they would not pay
for contraceptive coverage because doing so was one step in
a process that would lead to other entities paying for

(38:04):
that coverage, So they were well within their rights to
funk with employees private lives. Even if their money wasn't
on the line. That's awesome, how cool stuff. Oh my god. Oh.
It's still too early to say precisely what the long
term impact of the hobby Lobby ruling will be, but
it is clear that it has fundamentally changed the game

(38:26):
as regards religious freedom of speech. There is now established
legal precedent to protect wealthy individual religious extremists from abusing
people they disagree with in almost any conceivable manner. You
might note that this is basically a slower, less bloody,
but ultimately just as violent, a way of achieving the
same basic goal, That isis set a state completely dominated
by extreme religious law, with no freedom or ability to dissent. Guys,

(38:50):
I just wanted to talk about isis Roberts Well, Cody,
I have for you, because now we're going to get
to the part of the story where hobby Lobby helps
to fund the precursors to isis. I guess that's lighter?
Is that? Is that lighter? Really? Sad? You, guys? It's
bumming me out. It's a good story. Everybody loves a

(39:13):
happy story. Yeah, everybody does love a happy story. Happy
happy Cody. You know what won't lead to the establishment
of a theocracy in the United States that strips people
of very basic, fundamental human rights in order to maximize
corporate profits. Is it products and services? That's exactly right.

(39:36):
I knew it. Yeah, I knew how to save the republic.
It's products and services. That's the problem. There just weren't
enough products and services in two thousand fourteen. Products, they
don't have services exactly. And this is why podcasts will
save the Republic. Is the sheer, the sheer deluge of
products and services that we can bring in to rescue

(39:59):
our fellow Americans from this encroaching nightmare. The heroes, this
is the beaches at Normandy, and we are fighting bigotry
with products, promo code, save the World, ad break. We're back.

(40:28):
So Cody, we just talked about how David Green's goal
is basically the establishment of a religious uh state along
the same lines as Isis, but slower and more profitable.
Speaking of Islamic terrorists, David Green helped to put piles
of money in the pockets of Islamic terrorists so he
could have a fancy museum. Right around the same time,

(40:49):
Hobby Lobby one its case in the Supreme Court. Stories
on the company started spreading the word that David Green
was creating a Bible museum in Washington, d C. Politico
reported that the museum would likely cost family more than
eight hundred million dollars and involve a repository of tens
of thousands of Biblical antiquities the family had recently acquired.
The mission of the Bible Museum was at first to

(41:10):
inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.
Green later modified this slightly to invite people to engage
with the Bible. Yeah, yeah, he really does. In two
thousand ten, Hobby Lobby president and David's son Steve Green,
visited the United Arab Emirates with an antiquities consultant. There

(41:31):
they inspected five thousand, five forty eight artifacts. These objects,
according to a later legal complaint, were displayed informally, spread
on the floor, arranged in layers on a coffee table,
and packed loosely in cardboard boxes in many instances, with
little or no protective material between them. That's how you're
supposed to do to the garage and like show here's

(41:51):
the antiquities we sell heroin to you. Now. These antiquities
mostly consisted of Cunea formed tablets, and balls of clay
imprinted with ancient seals. The whole situation seemed very shady,
and it was, but the dealers provided what's called a
statement of provenance. See Antiquities. Steft as a major problem,

(42:14):
particularly in the Middle East. Since the early nineteen nineties,
between two hundred and five hundred thousand objects have been
looted from archaeological sites in Iraq alone, cylinder seals and
Cunea formed tablets, the same kind of objects that this
were displayed by Steve Green and the U a E
are the most frequently looted items. Since nineteen ninety, cultural
objects from Iraq carry special import restrictions that include criminal penalties.

(42:35):
That's not just because the US government wants to stop
these items from being looted. In fact, it has much
more to do with the worry that these items are
being looted by terrorist organizations and used to fund violent
attacks across the world. During the height of the Islamic State,
legal antiquities looted within its lands were estimated to have
been evalued between four billion and seven billion dollars, which
is obviously an incredibly wide possible range. Isis is Department

(42:58):
of Natural Resources and to Quity's division charged a tax
on salable antiquities, and most experts seemed to think the
group probably didn't make more than a few million dollars
from its looting program, but that is plenty of money
to carry out horrific attacks. The November two fifteen Paris attacks,
for example, killed a hundred and thirty people and cost
roughly ten thousand dollars. It is worth noting, of course,

(43:19):
that in two thousand and ten and eleven, Isis was
not really a thing, but its precursors did exist, and
so did other extremist groups like al Qaeda, who profited
from the sale of antiquities in Iraq. The simple reality
of the situation is that people who buy antiquities in
Iraq have at that and at that point, had no
way of knowing that who they would support with their purchases.
Most experts simply advise people not to make these kind

(43:41):
of purchases, since it's impossible to do so and not
fun terrorists and the illegal theft and destruction of cultural artifacts.
But the Green family didn't care about any of that.
They wanted fancy old Bible ship for their Bible museum.
As I mentioned earlier, Steve Green traveled to that UAE
meeting with an antiquities expert. She advised him not to
purchase any of the clearly shady artifacts on offer. Her

(44:02):
exact quote was, I would regard the acquisitions of any
artifact likely from IRACT as carrying considerable risk. And I
found an interview with this expert conducted later on a
blog dedicated to antiquities research and study. Here's how she
described the reaction to her warning. I can't say they
reacted one way or the other. They didn't seem surprised
or upset, which in hindsight is kind of surprising. The

(44:23):
impression I had at the time is that they were
only considering buying antiquities. I had no idea until I
read the complaint release later last week that this was
already in process. They had already earlier in July before
I talked to them, looked at cune of form tablets.
You would think if I'm talking about you have to
do this and that, and they're already in negotiations, they
would have had some reaction to what I said. I'm
pretty mystified as to why they bothered to have me

(44:43):
do this for them. Why do you think they had
her do this for them, No reason, just like they're interested.
They like history, and they like history. The way it
became clear later, hobby Lobby wired one point six million
dollars to seven different bank accounts oociated with five separate
people to buy the items. They had the artifacts shipped
to the United States and numerous packages with fake labels

(45:06):
identifying them as tile samples. The packages were also shipped
to multiple locations. In doing so, hobby Lobby and the
Green family followed well established procedures for smuggling illegally obtained
cultural antiquities. In that interview with the antiquities expert, I
quoted from earlier the interview where asks her if she
thinks the Greens might have just consulted her to learn
how the legal process for importing artifacts works so they

(45:27):
could more easily devise a scheme to break the law.
Here's her response. I suppose one can't rule that out,
which would be very upsetting to me. I can't rule
that out. My goal was to discourage them from doing
the wrong thing by telling them all the wrong things
they could do. I thought they would not want to
do those things. I can't rule out. It was all
the opposite that they used my advice to evade the
law as opposed to follow the law. You can't rule

(45:48):
it out. Christians, It's this is great. We're religious, we
believe in morality. Yeah, they have very consistent morality. Yeah,
which is that all that matters is what they think
of the Bible and preserving historical antiquities or avoiding funding
terrorism in foreign countries because that has nothing to do
with Christianity in America, which is all that matters to them,

(46:09):
Which is like it's discussed like one like there were
a lot of like groups like the Free Burma Rangers,
which are like a heavily Christian organization dedicated to providing
like emergency medical care and war zones and stuff. And
so these are like very religious people who would like
go get shot at in order to provide emergency first
aid to people fighting and dying in Mosle. At the
same time as these billionaires who call themselves Christians are

(46:32):
like funding violence around the world in order to have
a fancy museum. It's it's sickening. Yeah. Um, I like
that first part we talked about. It seems like a
real Christian thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, it's providing emergency
medical care to vulnerable people. That does seem more Christian
than funding al Qaeda by stealing artifacts. It seems like

(46:54):
it's not I'm not you know, I'm not, but you
know we're forgetting Mark when stole the Statue of Liberty, Uh,
in order to hide it in his underground layer, thought
that you actually had a Bible verse in the in
your head. That's right next to his his giant coin
and his giant coin and his Mona Lisa. He has

(47:18):
the original of course. Yeah, it's got that that one
painting that got cleaned wrong and now it all smeared. Yeah,
that's his. That's that's his piece, like the center of
his that's his whole his whole life has been leading
up to getting that. Yeah. The Gnostic verses are just
about Jesus stealing art. That's why the Church had to

(47:40):
suppress them. Yeah. I'm well well versed in history and religion,
so I know exactly what you're talking about now. Fortunately,
the Greens were worse at smuggling artifacts than they are
at imposing religious law on the United States Customs caught
them in in January of two thousand eleven. Border Patrol
began seizing object roughly three thousand, four hundred and fifty

(48:02):
in total that Hobby Lobby had illegally imported. The resulting
civil asset forfeit. Your case bore a hilarious name, the
United States of America versus approximately four hundred and fifty
ancient Cunea formed tablets and approximately three thousand ancient clay Buli.
That's amazing that was written down. Yeah, that's the name
of the case. Oh yeah, it's good stuff. Now, Hobby

(48:29):
Lobby was caught red handed, and they didn't even really
try all that hard to defend themselves. The case was
that obvious. The company claims to have accepted responsibility for
its past conduct and promised to revise its internal procedures,
which is meaningless because their employees were warned by an
expert not to do what they did before the acquisition
process began. But David green light and claimed that this
was all the result of Hobby Lobby being new to

(48:51):
the antiquities business and making rookie mistakes. On the hobby
Lobby website, he wrote this, we should have exercised more
oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled. Hobby
Lobby has cooperated with the government throughout its investigation and
with the announcement of today's settlement program. It is pleased
that the matter has been resolved, the settlement involving Hobby
Lobby returning all the ill gotten artifacts and paying a fine.

(49:13):
But they are left in possession of more than forty
thousand ancient relics, some of which will be displayed in
their Bible Museum, and only a small fraction of which
will ever be made available for serious scholars to study.
I spent a lot of time reading the blogs of
different archaeologists and antiquities researchers, and they all seemed pretty
uniformly to agree that the Green Collection basically kept important
historical objects hidden from everyone but a small coterie of

(49:35):
experts that the Green family personally likes. There were also
in agreement about the fact that the Bible Museum and
the Green Collection is almost certainly filled with other stolen
and looted items. And I'm gonna quote now from one
of the more prominent blogs in that ecosystem, anonymous Swiss
collector quote, you can't collect antiquities without risking buying looted ones.
Every purchase is a risk. Best just not to do it.

(49:57):
You can't collect antiquities on the scale of the greens
massive scale without certainly buying a lot of loot. This
is common knowledge held by everyone in the trade. The
antiquity business runs on layers of plausible deniability, not asking
too many questions, leaving things implied but not said, opague
business practices, lack of regulation, claims of not understanding the
law are not an excuse for breaking it. Don't be

(50:18):
fooled by this. In this case, the Greens had advisors
and independent experts who told them flat out that these
purchases were wrong. They did it anyway, Why do it then, Well,
we have a lot of research on the topic. Basically,
the Greens were probably able to neutralize their actions by
convincing themselves that they were above the law because they
were buying the antiquities from magical evangelical purposes, saving them
from the darkness obscurity in a non Christian country. I

(50:40):
mean that is speculation. Their neutralization technique can night be
a bit different, but it'll be something along those lines.
It always is. Yes, I do think there are alluded
antiquities in the Museum of the Bible. I think there
are lots and lots of looted antiquities in there. I
can't prove it to an extent that would let some
country make a return claim. But please understand, there is
no legitimate source of these kind of artifacts, not on

(51:02):
that scale. Looting as the source and lack of providence
is the proof. But counterpoint the magic stuff, the magic stuff.
It is a good counterpoint, you know. And he does
not disprove magic in this blog post, Dargo, exactly, Love,
He's good, So that should he should have talked to me,

(51:22):
because clearly he hasn't considered all sides to this. Yeah,
he did not. He did not. You consider all things
much like a radio show that I've forgotten the name
of all of the everyone, every little bit of the
information is being thought of. Yeah, yeah, this, Love's important
to see both sides of an issue, both the side
that says, literally, the only way to have gotten these

(51:43):
objects is massive theft in the funding of international terrorist
organizations and the side that says, but Jesus, But the
two sides, yeah, that magic and you sort of trail
off solos to trail off, And that's really how you
know you've won the argument when you sort of trail off.
I love trailing. Yeah, it's like hiking. You know, trails

(52:06):
are good exactly. You pick one, doesn't matter, and you
just keep going and going, and then you slow down
and then you sort of slim trail off and then yes,
and then you win. How do you feel about hobby
lobby after all this throughout? My favorite place aroused? If

(52:26):
I were to get I mean, I'm always aroused, so
thank you. Not really, you know, that's why we have
you on the show exactly, That's why I'm That's why
that's why I come on the show. Um bound um
I uh. If I were to get a knickknack, if
I were to like be in the business of knickknacks,
I probably would go to a different place. I think

(52:49):
if I were in the business of knickknacks, I would
just patty whack and then give a dog a bone.
But I mean, you know, different strokes, you know, different
strokes for different old men who come rolling m yep,
who are constantly aroused on podcasts. Yes, interestingly, I I
some fan out there needs to graph the amount of
times we make come jokes when it's just you and

(53:11):
I and and when we have our third person here. Um,
I think we make less call her by her name.
I might, I might make more actually, because I know
that she hates the word come, So I say he
does hate the word come. Yeah, and now we are
upping our come quotient. At the end of the episode
exactly and earlier when we were talking about Canada, I

(53:32):
almost I almost referenced the come and go Mmm, that
chain of casting. Yes, but I I held back. Um,
but here we are saying it now. I love it
when regions have a thing that is clearly like everyone
outside of that region knows that the name is hilarious,
like come and Go, or like the game cornholing, which

(53:53):
is played in certain parts of this country that just
are like, no, it's just this game that we all play.
What is what is funny? And everyone else is like
butt sex something else? Yeah, we all we all miss Katie.
This would not be happening with Katie we're here. We
would probably wouldn't have started with Hitler, probably wouldn't have

(54:13):
ended it oncome. No, and we would have just we
would have figured out a solution to the hobby lobby problem.
Katie would have like ridden into their offices on a
sea of blood with a sword made out of cultural
antiquities and beheaded David Green in order to bring peace
and tranquility to the kingdom. Once again. She's not here,

(54:35):
and so we just have come jokes, just voices in
the air instead a feed on the grounds. That's the difference.
That's the case we all miss. K When is the
museum open? That's a good question, Cody, let us ask
the almighty l Goog. You didn't like that, all right?

(54:55):
Not an el Goog fan. It opens ten am Saturday.
It's it's a and now yeah, is tomorrow it's still around. Okay,
it's open. It's open right now. Four hundred thirty square feet.
That's it's got a great view. It's got a beautiful

(55:18):
view of Capitol Hill, which they seek to dominate. It's
a big that's a big step up from that three
D original tiny picture frame. Do you think they sell
tiny picture frames in the Museum of the Bible. They better,
They better have tiny picture frames in that gift shop,
a bunch of star film, cox and stuff. I mean.
One of the things that is at least amusing to

(55:41):
me is that on the Museum of the Bible's page,
their logo is clearly supposed to be like it's a
b on its back. So it also kind of looks
like the tin Commandments or an open book, but more
than anything, it looks like a butt. Hell. Yeah, yeah,
so that's good. That's good. I think we're gonna win. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes,
we have all the hour now, Yeah, I do. Before

(56:04):
I realized their logo kind of resembles a button. Yeah,
and now I realized that victory is inevitable. Yeah, days
from now. This is going on too long, sir. You
know what's not going on too long? Cody's Pluggables. That's true,
they go very short. Hi. Check out Worst your pod,

(56:25):
which is a show that we all do. Um. Also
some more news. It's on Twitter, and it's on the Patreon,
it's on YouTube. My Twitter is dr mr Cody, uh
d r m I sty Wan and uh check out
Katie Stole on Twitter as well. He's not here, but
is in spirit. Here is in spirit much like the

(56:47):
Holy Spirit. And just like the Holy Spirit, she's telling
us to steal antiquities from Iraq. Exactly exactly, and we
will even more news than any of our podcast. Pluggable
over Robert, I'm Robert Evans that's true. The episode is done.

(57:09):
Don't follow him on Twitter, just kidding, don't do it.
I can find us. Robert's great. I feel like you're
great on Twitter, just just to give you a compliment.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sophie. I am great
on Twitter, and UH, you can find me on UH.
You can find the website of this podcast, behind the
Bastards dot com. And we also have another podcast, Whorst

(57:31):
here Ever, about the election, and you can find your
neighborhood hobby lobby if you need to buy a styrofoam
rooster and further choke the oceans with the detritus of civilization.
All Right, we're done. We're done.