Ep. 869 - Would You Rather Vote For Biden Or Watch A WNBA Game?
Most voters say Biden is neither calling the shots nor even capable of being president, the WNBA throws a championship parade in the empty streets of Chicago, and Ron DeSantis scores big on the supply chain crisis.
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A new poll out from Quinnipiac, which tends to skew results strongly in favor of Democrats, shows Joe Biden's approval rating dropping to a new low of 37%.
Meanwhile, Rasmussen, which leans slightly to the right, has found that 58% of voters are either not very or not at all confident that Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of being president.
And only 38% of voters believe that Joe Biden is actually making decisions in the White House, with a majority of likely voters believing that others are making decisions for him.
And while Biden blows it on the economy, on foreign policy, on everything else in between, Republican governors and senators are looking to fill the vacuum and looking to take his job in 2024.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from MooseChuckle, who says, Yes, I suspect right now you're alluding to Richard Levine, now who goes by Rachel Levine, who is our nation's first female four-star admiral, who is not a woman and who has never spent a day of his life in the military.
But, you know, it could almost equally apply to our actual...
Commanders in the field.
Woke General Milley passing out critical race theory and all the rest.
While we are parsing the white supremacist intersectional hegemony, China is sending potential nuclear warheads around the world and through low outer space.
Pretty spooky stuff.
You know, these bring up matters of life and death, okay?
Existential questions.
Which is why I think it's very important to discuss 40 Days for Life.
You know, a couple of days ago, the CDC made a very accidental admission.
They admitted that babies are babies even before the babies are born.
This was a big mistake for them because the CDC and the ruling class do not oppose abortion.
Okay?
The pro-abortion movement is alive and well in this country, and they're fighting back harder than ever because there's a fair chance right now that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v.
Wade and Planned Parenthood v.
Casey.
You're going to need to know the arguments on how to fight back and to defend life.
There's a great new book from 40 Days for Life.
It's What to Say When, a complete new guide to discussing abortion.
It's already been a number one Amazon new release.
It's a number two Amazon bestseller.
It's on its second printing.
The book is super easy to use, gives you which arguments work, which arguments don't work that well, and which have convinced people on the fence, abortion supporters, even Planned Parenthood workers.
What to Say When, the complete new guide to discussing abortion, how to change minds and convert hearts in a brave new world.
It's available now.
Go to Amazon or get it directly from 40 Days for Life at 40daysforlife.com.
Joe Biden is really blowing it.
I am not saying this to take a partisan shot or because I want to score one for the Republicans and smack down the Democrats, or at least not just because of that.
I'm just pointing out that on every single issue, Joe Biden right now is failing.
The only issue that he used to do pretty well on was the coronavirus.
That's why as Afghanistan imploded, as the economy imploded, he kept just trying to bring everyone's attention back to the coronavirus.
Even that now is not really looking good for his numbers.
And the overall approval rating at 37% is really, really dismal.
In the meantime, younger, more vibrant, more conservative people are looking to take his job.
And they're looking to fill that gap.
Most notably, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is addressing the supply chain crisis.
This is one of the most important economic problems that we're facing right now.
He is addressing the supply chain crisis by opening up his ports in Florida for the benefit of the entire country.
We see more empty shelves than we're used to seeing, and there's shortages of different things.
Of course, we're also seeing increased costs in terms of inflation.
Year-over-year increase in food prices so far is the highest it's been in 10 years.
And of course, many commuters have been suffering under about a 50% increase in gasoline.
And so you see a lot of problems.
I know they just announced, well, in California, maybe they'll start having the port operate 24-7.
Our ports operate 24-7.
That should be happening anyways.
We in Florida have the ability to help alleviate these log jams and help to ameliorate the problems with the supply chain.
Part of it is because we've long been committed To reliable, modern, and accessible port facilities.
Since I became governor in 2019, we've allocated almost a billion dollars to over 70 Florida seaport projects.
And these are approaches that have made us really, really strong.
It's been really, really good for the country.
Now look.
I think this is a good thing in and of itself.
I think it shows strong leadership.
I'm really glad he's doing it.
I think it will benefit Florida a lot, and it very likely will benefit the entire country.
Alright, I have a great deal of respect for Governor DeSantis.
I'm actually going to see Governor DeSantis this coming weekend at the Claremont Institute's annual gala.
They're giving him the statesmanship award, and I will be emceeing that event.
But beyond just what this means for Florida and the country, to me, the most impressive thing here with regard to Ron DeSantis' clear presidential ambitions is not even what he's doing on the ports or what he's doing on the lockdowns or what he's doing on the virus or taxes or whatever.
It's his incredible ability to navigate the news cycles of No matter what is going on in the country, no matter what issue Biden is failing on, Ron DeSantis is just right there showing the alternative.
This is a very impressive political skill because traditionally it's been considered that governors are in the best position to run for president because they're in an executive role.
They can show leadership, they can bring people together, they can show a strong list of real accomplishments.
Whereas for congressmen or senators or diplomats, it's a little bit harder because you're working more in teams, you're not really an executive in most cases, and you're not really the one who can show tangible results, at least not nearly as much as a governor can.
But the problem with the governors is that the issues are local.
So, yes, you can say, I did a great job for my constituents here, and I did really well on this Florida issue, but it doesn't always play throughout the rest of the country.
And what DeSantis has done, I think uniquely among the governors, is he's got a good record of accomplishment in Florida, but they always seem to have national implications.
He even did it on the border.
So forget about coronavirus in the ports for a second.
Even on the border, he said, we are going to help secure the border here.
We're going to send Floridians to go secure the border.
Why?
It's not as though Mexicans are flowing into Florida.
I mean, I suppose they are after a few stops along the way.
But he's doing a really good job.
Of putting himself in the national conversation.
And so it's pretty clear that he is hoping to be president.
That might be complicated if Donald Trump runs again.
In that case, probably DeSantis is the hardest hit because in a way they're kind of running in the same lane.
But for right now, it's hard to see how DeSantis could be doing a better job positioning himself for 2024.
Now, he's not the only one who wants to run in 2024.
It would seem to me, I don't have any insider information here, I'm just observing politics, that Josh Hawley, who is a senator who is also leading the charge, especially with regard to big tech, he is apparently positioning himself in 2024 as well.
And he just scored a pretty big point too.
in this particular case, on a judicial nominee.
So there's a judge, a liberal judge, Holly Thomas, who is now serving in Los Angeles and Biden is nominating her to serve on the Court of Appeals.
Holly Thomas came out and stood by this idea that boys should be allowed into the girls' bathroom and said there's no risk whatsoever and no threat posed to girls by sending boys into the girls' bathroom.
Obviously complicated by what just happened in Loudoun County.
The story that the Daily Wire broke of a ninth grade girl being raped in a bathroom where boys were allowed to go in by a boy who sometimes wore a dress really doesn't look good.
So Josh Hawley grills her on this very topic.
Do you judge still stand by your preposterous claim that there's no danger posed by boys in the girls' room?
I have to ask you in light of what we are seeing in Loudoun County, there are reports about this in other places, but it's particularly troubling in light of the recent events in Loudoun County.
Where a boy in late May was sexually assaulted a ninth grade girl in her school's restroom after identifying as, he identified as being gender fluid.
He was transferred To another school where a second assault occurred just earlier this year.
Do you stand by your comments in these briefs that there is no evidence of violence or crime in restrooms by allowing biological males to use biological females' restrooms?
Thank you for the question, Senator Hawley.
As I explained to Senator Grassley, in every case that I had as an advocate, it was my duty to represent the views of my clients.
So, this answer goes on for several minutes, and Holly keeps trying to get her to answer the question, and she continues to stonewall and won't answer it.
She sticks to it.
Holly's question is pretty simple.
You put your name on this document saying that there's absolutely no threat by sending boys into the girls' room.
And he says, do you still stand by that in light of the...
And she goes, I have to advocate for my clients.
And as a judge, I would not necessarily be advocating.
Well, okay, but it's not just that you signed a statement saying I'm advocating for my clients.
You signed a statement saying this is true.
So do you have no integrity?
Are you a liar?
Are you stupid?
Do you still believe this?
What's the answer?
And this woman, she's a good politician herself, she just refuses to answer and she keeps talking in this really boring tone.
And frankly, she masks the radicalism of her position in this really boring procedural sort of tone.
But what she's saying is, one, yes, there's no risk posed to girls by sending men into their girls' room.
Two, I don't care even if there is, I am willing to lie strategically...
Two, I'm not even going to give you the satisfaction of admitting what I've just implicitly suggested to you.
One mistake Hawley makes here, I hate to nitpick, but the mistake Hawley makes is he uses this phrase, biological males.
This has become popular among conservatives.
They will say, he's a biological male!
As though there's some other kind of male.
He's not a biological male, but he's a spiritual male.
He's a psychological male.
It's a really bad phrase.
I know people say it sometimes.
They're just not even thinking.
People should stop using that phrase.
It grants the left's premise that there are different kinds of, I'm a biological male, but I'm a psychological female.
No, there's none of that.
There's boys and girls, guys.
And when we use this squishy language, we think we're being really clever and we think we're being really scientific.
Actually, we're just being squishes and we're giving and conceding This premise that there are different shades of male and female and really we're granting the premise that gender is sort of fluid and socially constructed.
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Speaking of women, a WNBA team has won the championship.
What is the WNBA team?
I don't really know.
There was a championship, apparently.
Did you watch it?
No, you didn't.
Not a single person listening to this show right now watched the WNBA championship or probably even knew that it was going on.
I don't think anyone did in the country.
Maybe some of the basketball players themselves knew, but I'm not even convinced of that.
One of the teams won, because I guess one of the teams has to win, and they hold a championship parade in Chicago.
The championship parade...
I forget if I print it out.
No, unfortunately I didn't.
There was a headline.
It said, Chicago turns out for the WNBA championship parade.
And there's big buses here and double-deckers and people standing on top waving to the adoring fans, except there was nobody there in the streets to greet them.
So you can see there's multiple buses.
All streamed.
You can hear the sirens behind them.
That's so sad.
It's so sad.
The streets are empty.
There are a couple people bicycling alongside them.
There are a bunch of cops trailing them, giving them a bit of a motorcade.
But there's almost not a single person out in the street for the parade because no one cares because it's the WNBA and no one even knew it was on.
This is sadder than not having a parade.
I don't begrudge the ladies their victory.
I'm not interested in it.
There are a lot of sports.
I don't watch the curling championships.
I don't watch the international shuffleboard World Series.
I don't pay attention to a lot of these things and certainly not to the WNBA.
But what's so sad here is broader than just the WNBA.
It's the problem with pride culture.
It's the problem with the I'm awesome kind of culture.
I saw, oh, this was so sad.
I saw someone that I went to school with.
I was just scrolling through Instagram and I saw she posted this picture.
And underneath she wrote, I'm so proud of this person.
I love this person so much.
This person's doing such a great job and I'm really proud of her.
And it was a photo of herself.
And I thought, this is really sad.
But it's a common occurrence these days.
It's the self-love, self-care kind of culture where you basically just worship the self.
And the fact is, if you have to say it, you probably don't think it.
Right?
This is...
I mean, now we have whole months for pride and for celebrating one's self.
But this is quite the opposite of the traditional understanding in our Christian civilization, which is, rather than saying, I'm awesome, I'm the best, I'm perfect, just the way I am, we say, I'm a miserable sinner.
Please have mercy on me.
I'm broken.
I've failed.
I have sinned in my thoughts and in my words and what I have done and what I've failed to do through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.
That's the traditional understanding.
And ironically, or perhaps unexpectedly, That view of yourself will make you feel much better about yourself and about the world.
One, because it's true.
We are all broken.
The imagination of man's heart is evil from the beginning.
The things we want to do, we don't do.
And the things we don't want to do, we do.
We are sinful and we are in need of salvation.
But two, there is salvation.
We actually can find it, but we're not going to find it in ourselves.
We're not going to perfect ourselves purely of our own work.
It's just not going to happen.
The pride culture, I think, ultimately is just masking a deep sorrow and a deep sort of despair.
Because if you are going to rely on yourself to perfect your own life or to perfect the world, you are going to be extremely disappointed.
It would have been much better and much more attractive if these women had said, you know, okay, we played this game, but no one cares.
That's fine.
But maybe you keep watching.
We did it for ourselves.
We did it for the excellence of the sport.
Humility is much more attractive than pride.
This is something we used to know.
Now, we somehow have forgotten that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Speaking of women in the workplace, Nicole Hannah-Jones was just invited and then disinvited from a school for a speaking event.
And I suspect a lot of conservatives are going to get this issue wrong.
This issue is almost a setup for conservatives because conservatives in recent years have complained about cancel culture and complained about censorship and specifically complained about this at schools and for lecture opportunities, right?
So...
This story is just going to expose conservatives as hypocrites, right?
If we don't think that Nicole Hannah-Jones, who created the fictional 1619 Project, who lied about American history, who is really an unfortunate character on the American pseudo-academic scene.
If we don't think that she should lecture, well then we're hypocrites on free speech and cancel culture, aren't we?
No, I don't think so.
But we do need to correct some of our language.
The whole point of my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, was to correct the way we're talking about free speech.
Because these issues of wokeism and political correctness, they're not just a battle between free speech and censorship.
It's not just the procedural, formal aspect of whether or not someone can speak or not.
There's the substantive aspect, which is what are they saying?
First of all, Nicole Hannah-Jones was invited to the Middlesex School in Concord.
This is not a college.
This is not a graduate program.
This is a high school.
And there's a big difference between high schools and colleges.
Colleges have, to some degree, and universities have to some degree, the idea of a free marketplace of ideas.
The idea that unconventional lectures may be tolerated and may be beneficial.
High schools, and certainly middle schools, and certainly elementary schools, are not quite that.
The purpose of those places is to give you the basics so that you can begin to think in this higher way.
So I think...
It is certainly appropriate at the high school level to cancel this fabulist from speaking, and very possibly at the college level as well.
Okay, there are different types of speakers here and different types of speeches, and we have to also, I think, rethink the purpose of college education, university education, moving beyond even the high school and Nicole Hannah-Jones thing for a second.
Is the purpose of going to a university to just hear a bunch of random different views and the weirder the view the better and the more weird views you hear the smarter you're going to be?
Or is the purpose of a college education to learn correct things?
To learn true things?
To steep yourself in the good, the true, and the beautiful to be not merely critical in your thinking, but constructive in your thinking.
And actually build up a proper education and control your base passions and see the world in a way that is more or less accurate.
More accurate than when you went in.
I have clearly set up the question in such a way that I'm showing you.
I think it's the latter.
I don't think that just anybody should be allowed to speak at a university.
Nobody does.
Do you really think...
That some neo-Nazi should be able to speak at a university?
Maybe you do.
Maybe there are some free speech extremists who say, I absolutely believe that a neo-Nazi should speak at a university.
Okay.
Do you think that, I don't know, a serial killer?
Do you think a deranged, lunatic serial killer should be permitted to speak at a university?
No, you don't, right?
I don't think that you do.
Why?
Because you would say that a student would not benefit from hearing the ravings of some deranged lunatic serial killer, right?
But isn't that cancel culture?
Isn't that censorship?
Students benefit from hearing all sorts of kooky ideas.
No, they benefit from hearing true things.
And I'm not calling Nicole Hannah-Jones a deranged lunatic serial killer, okay?
But I am pointing out that like a deranged lunatic serial killer...
Nicole Hannah-Jones doesn't really have anything valuable to say.
Because the only thing that Nicole Hannah-Jones is known for is a lie.
It's a thesis that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
There is no evidence for that.
There is a lot of evidence to the contrary.
Actual academic historians shot down this thesis, including the academic historians who are on the far left, who actually are very sympathetic to Nicole Hannah-Jones.
So the only thing that's going to come out of this woman speaking at a university...
It's filling students' heads with lies.
And I think we need to regain on the right the spinal fortitude to say, no, we don't think that the purpose of university education is to fill kids' heads with lies.
They're getting enough of that already on gender theory and these crazy racial theories.
Wait until you hear what's going on out of MIT. That's not the purpose of an education.
I think we need to move beyond a fun line, but it's a little bit of a shallow line we've said in certain years, recent years, that we just need more and more speech at universities and no one should ever be canceled and everyone should be permitted to speak.
And, oh, Colombia is going to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Yeah, great.
That's awesome.
Terrific.
More speech, the better.
No, we need to be discerning.
We need to recognize we have judgment.
We have moral conscience.
We have faculties of reason.
We can tell the difference between true and false and right and wrong.
And we're going to stand by that.
We're going to stand on the side of true and good and against wrong and false and evil.
Then today is going to be talking about how Dave Chappelle is funny.
He's funny and you got to deal with that and it's too bad.
Go check that out.
Also, you can subscribe and start listening to Morning Wire on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can leave a five-star review if you like what you hear.
We will be right back with a lot more.
Speaking of cancel culture, at MIT, a movement is underway to cancel a lecturer.
So Here's the background.
MIT invited a professor to lecture.
This professor, his name is Dorian Abbott.
He's a scientist.
He has criticized affirmative action.
I have criticized affirmative action.
You have criticized affirmative action.
Everybody with two brain cells to rub together has criticized affirmative action, which gives black people and Hispanic people an advantage in university admissions and employment and disadvantages white people and Asian people.
So anyone who thinks we ought to treat people fairly regardless of their race would criticize affirmative action, as this guy did.
And now he's being criticized for it.
And people are demanding that he no longer lecture.
So I'm going to focus in, this is from the New York Times, I'm going to focus in on one professor who is not even at MIT, she's at Williams College.
This professor is very upset that Professor Abbott was invited to lecture.
Her name is Phoebe A. Cohen.
She's a geosciences professor and department chair at Williams College.
And she doesn't want this guy to lecture at MIT. She doesn't want anyone who's ever criticized affirmative action to be able to speak at a college campus.
Now, the New York Times, to their credit, when interviewing this cancel culture professor, said, well, hold on, don't you think that The cure for this guy's bad ideas would just be to debate him.
You know, come on, Professor Phoebe, why don't you just debate him or, you know, have people present an alternative point of view?
And Phoebe Cohen, the Williams professor, said no.
She said, quote, This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.
So, this is not the own that she thinks it is.
Because what she's saying is intellectual debate and rigor unfairly advantage white guys.
If you have a system that is based on intellect and debate and logic and rigor...
White guys will have an unfair advantage because they are much better at intellectual argumentation and they are more able, better able to deal with rigorous debate than women and black people and Asians, I guess, and Hispanics and just anybody else.
Okay, David Duke.
Alright, whoa, calm down there, Richard Spencer.
This lady is just saying that white guys are smart and competent and logical, and all the other people are just big dummies, and so they can't do it.
And so, because they can't keep up in a debate, we've got to just silence the white guys before they can get their point of view out.
Sounds pretty racist to me, or sexist, or whatever ism-ist word you want to use.
But this is, I think, a popular view on the left.
But it's worth taking them at their word that this is really what they believe.
Because...
We have two options here.
Choose which way you want to go, Western civilization.
You can either go down the road of intellectual debate and rigor and proving that some things are good and true and beautiful and arguing against things that are ugly and false and hideous and wrong.
Or you can take reason and logic out of our politics and And then we become grunting bands of baboons clubbing each other over the head.
That's it.
When Aristotle says man is the political animal, when Aristotle says that the thing that distinguishes man from the beasts is that we have speech, and we can actually reason with one another and persuade one another, he's distinguishing us from animals in this regard.
We will either have civilization and speech and debate and rigor, or we will be animals clubbing each other over the head, and whoever has the stronger interest will win.
That's really what this has come down to.
And it does remind us that we do need limits here.
This is why we have a political system.
This is why we have limits imposed by our constitution, by our political tradition.
Because we don't want to live like that.
We do not want to live in the world of Phoebe Cohen.
We want to live in a civilized world of intellectual debate and rigor.
Which I think is not only limited to white guys.
I bet.
Non-white guys, non-men, non-white people, I think actually they can deal with it too.
Speaking of the New York Times, the New York Times, I just want to give you a beautifully clear example of the fake news coming out of the New York Times.
They have this podcast, The Daily.
It's hosted by Michael Bubba.
Welcome.
The whole point of The Daily is to get a lot of radical leftism Into a really soft-spoken, kind of moderate-sounding podcast.
Welcome to the New York Times, The Daily.
My name is Michael Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba.
And today, the Republicans are bad.
And the Democrats are good.
And I'm Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba, and goodbye.
And so here's just a flat-out lie that was in the episode title of the New York Times, The Daily.
Quote, How a Single Senator Derailed Biden's Climate Plan.
Wow, oh my goodness.
A single senator did that?
Gosh, I didn't even know in the Senate that a single senator, I guess the way that a single senator could have derailed a plan would be through the filibuster, right?
And maybe he just filibustered for so many hours and hours and hours that Biden, did he just give up on it?
No, usually the way the filibuster works is the guy who's speaking ad nauseum.
Eventually he stops and then they kind of move on.
So is that what happened?
No.
Okay, let me see.
What exactly happened here?
Because I see a headline in the New York Times paper.
It says, Biden's climate plan stymied by one senator.
So what?
Hmm.
What happened?
Oh, Joe Manchin.
Okay, Joe Manchin is the senator, and he stopped it.
How did he stop it, though?
It doesn't even really say.
Is it there was only one guy?
Oh, no.
Wait.
Wait a second.
No, it's Joe Manchin and all the Republicans.
So it wasn't just one senator who stymied the plan.
It was 51 senators stymied the plan.
Oh, that's the majority of senators.
So I'm just going to rewrite those headlines from the New York Times and the Daily.
Majority of senators stop Biden's climate plan.
But that doesn't sound as good.
That sounds like government is operating as it should, which is the people go out and they elect their senators, and then, depending on the votes that each side has, you either move ahead with legislation or against it.
And most senators, representing most people here, opposed the plan.
But the New York Times can't tolerate that, so they simply lie.
It's a little subtle thing, because yes, Manchin is playing a role here.
He's a Democrat, but he's a moderate Democrat.
He's not a radical left Democrat, so he is playing this decisive role.
But the way the New York Times talks about it, it's as if only Democrats matter in the Senate.
It's only Democrats, right?
The Republicans, they're not even really legitimate.
They're insurrectionists.
They're a threat to our democracy.
All that really matters is the Democrats.
Well, despite the whining of the New York Times, Manchin seems to be holding relatively firm Beyond the climate plan, which is clear enough, right?
Joe Manchin represents a coal state.
So if you have a big climate plan that's going to get rid of coal, Joe Manchin can't possibly vote for that.
That would be a betrayal of his constituents.
But Joe Biden is broadly going to have to pull back on his spending plan.
You know, in this $3.5 trillion budget, Joe Biden put in a ton of radical stuff.
Now it is being reported he might have to cut back on...
Tuition-free community college.
A path to permanent legal status for illegal aliens.
The clean energy plan is part of this.
However...
They might try to keep in paid family leave, child tax credits, and free preschool, although they might scale that back as well.
So this is overall a relative win.
Given that the Democrats have basically unified government right now, they have the House, they have the Senate, and they have the White House, the fact that we can get rid of some of the worst aspects of this budget is a win.
It's important to look at this because it's easy to believe these days that the oligarchy, the ruling class, which increasingly looks not really like our democracy, but looks like their oligarchy, it's not omnipotent.
It can't just do whatever it wants to do.
We sometimes think, between the deep state and the Fauci's and the Dems and the Libs, they just do whatever they want.
Big tech and the media, they can do whatever they want and we have no say whatsoever.
Well, no, we do still have a little bit of a say, okay?
They seem really, really powerful and they make themselves appear more powerful than they are.
But actually, we still have a fair bit of power here.
And if we exercise it, I think we do still have a fighting chance.
You're seeing this, especially throughout corporate America.
In-N-Out Burger.
In-N-Out Burger from my former state of California.
It's standing up against big government.
So the government there is trying to mandate that customers, in order to go buy their cheeseburger, need to have the Fauci ouchie.
And plenty of people don't want the Fauci ouchie, and for good reason.
They might object to the fact that it's made in development and in some cases production with fetal stem cells.
They might not like the fact that people have died from the vaccine, including from blood clots.
That's why they paused the Johnson& Johnson vaccine.
That people have contracted nerve damage.
That people have contracted myocarditis and pericarditis.
One study out of UC Davis said that young men, certain young men, might face greater risk from the vaccine than from the virus itself.
There are plenty of reasons.
Not to get the vaccine.
And so In-N-Out says, this is a great line.
We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government.
We fiercely disagree with any government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business.
This is a clear government overreach.
They believe it is, quote, unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry or any other reason.
Damn right.
Damn right, baby.
I love it.
This is good stuff.
Alright?
And you're not just seeing it with In-N-Out.
You're seeing it also at the level of corporations dealing with their employees.
So it's not just dealing with the customers, but it's dealing with the employees too.
Southwest Airlines had major flight delays.
They pretended it was because of the weather, but it was obviously because of an employee walkout or sick out.
Well, they're walking back their vaccine mandate as well.
Southwest Airlines will not place unvaccinated staff on unpaid leave while they await exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine.
So initially, Southwest said that if the airline employees are not vaccinated by December 8th, they're going to be They're going to be placed on unpaid leave.
And now what they're saying is, quote, this is a change from what was previously communicated.
Initially, we communicated that these employees would be put on unpaid leave, and that is no longer the case.
So it's a tail between their legs.
They're admitting they're not going to do this anymore.
Good stuff.
Really good stuff.
Why do I like this so much?
One of the reasons I like this so much is not because, as some libertarians are saying, my body, my choice.
I don't believe my body, my choice.
I don't think it's true with abortion.
I actually don't even think it's true with vaccinations generally.
There are mandated vaccines in American history.
The Supreme Court has upheld the legitimacy of this.
George Washington did it to the Continental Army.
And I actually don't think you own your own body.
I'm not a libertarian or a libertine.
I don't think I chose to come into this world.
I hope I don't choose to come out of this world.
And I think I have responsibilities and duties to my community and to my God.
And I can't just do whatever I want with my own body.
So I'm not a lib in this regard.
But I want to get into the specifics here of this vaccine.
The way Joe Biden instituted this vaccine mandate, which he had initially admitted he didn't really have the authority to do, He went around this roundabout way.
And he said, I'm not mandating it exactly, but I am saying that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration needs to mandate that certain companies with more than 100 employees needs to mandate that the businesses enforce the mandate.
And if they don't, we're going to try to bankrupt them with fines.
I think Joe Biden knows this is almost certainly going to be struck down in court, that he doesn't really have the authority to do this, and he's just hoping he can pressure everyone to get the Fauci ouchie before the courts realize that this is not legal.
So, okay, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
If Joe Biden is going to play this silly, cynical game, I think the companies should, too.
And I think the people should, and I think the employees, and I think the customers should pressure the companies, who are unfortunately squeezed in the middle here, to pressure the government not to do this sort of thing.
What is good?
For the goose is good for the gander.
the people and the employees still have a lot of power, especially amid our current contrived labor shortage.
The ruling class is not happy that people are pushing back against these mandates.
They don't like that.
They don't like it when people tell them no.
And you're seeing this especially in crooked machine political towns such as Chicago.
So Lori Lightfoot, who is as close to a mobster as any mayor currently in office, Lori Lightfoot is mandating that the cops all take the Fauciouchie in Chicago.
Chicago is basically a third world country.
The rates of violent crime in Chicago are through the roof.
And so Lori Lightfoot is demanding that cops...
Stay on the job, but they've got to take the Fauci-ouchie.
So some cops are saying, no, you know, I think I'm going to quit.
If you're going to make me take the Fauci-ouchie, I think I'm just not going to do it.
I was just in Chicago.
I was briefly at O'Hare Airport.
I spoke to some cops there.
And they were saying, they're looking at 40 to 50 percent of cops just quitting or retiring early or just leaving the job because they don't want to deal with this.
So what does Lori Lightfoot say?
Is this people exercising their freedom of choice?
Is this people, you know, just exercising their moral conscience and doing the responsible thing?
No!
No!
No, she calls it an insurrection.
We believe that the FOP leadership is trying to foment an illegal workstopic to strike, pure and simple.
We've laid that out in the materials, and we're not having that.
The contract is clear and has been known for a long time.
The police unions are not authorized to strike.
It's in a collective bargaining agreement, and it's a matter of state law.
What we've seen from the Fraternal Order of Police, and particularly the leadership, is a lot of misinformation, a lot of half-truths, and frankly flat-out lies, in order to induce an insurrection.
And we're not having that.
It's an insurrection, right.
Right, I forgot.
It's an insurrection!
Anything the Democrats don't like is an insurrection.
Anything they do like is a wonderful defense of our democracy.
So when, for instance, radical leftists, at the encouragement of Democrat politicians, up to and including Kamala Harris and staffers for Joe Biden, when they...
Set courthouses on fire and attack police buildings and kill dozens of people and steal a bunch of sneakers during the LM riots of 2020.
That's a defense of our democracy.
Kamala Harris will bail them out of jail because of how much they're defending our democracy.
But when the horn guy dances in the Capitol, that's an insurrection.
When leftists torch Chicago and loot and steal and kill and pillage and burn, that's a defense of our democracy.
That's a wonderful thing.
When cops don't want to inject themselves with an experimental drug, and so they very peaceably just decide to retire, that's an insurrection.
The Democrats are going to do, they already are doing to the word insurrection, what they did to the word racist.
The word racist doesn't mean anything anymore.
It may once have meant something it no longer does.
If I think of the word racist, I guess what I think of is that you hate someone on the basis of their race.
That's what I would say.
I don't think it's just that you have preconceptions or judgments of people on the basis of race.
Everybody does that.
Hey, think of an Italian guy.
Think of an Italian guy right now.
What are you thinking of?
You're thinking of a guy with a mustache who says, hey, it's a me, and you're thinking of pizza, and you're thinking of a loud argument with his family at Christmas, and you think, I don't know.
You're thinking of, you have certain ideas.
Hey, think of an Irishman.
You're going to have some preconceptions of what an Irishman is.
You're probably picturing a little leprechaun right now with a pint of Guinness or something, and saying, hey, they all be after me looking charms, right?
That would be a preconception.
But I don't think that's racist.
Hey, picture a Chinese guy.
At least you are picturing what he looks like.
Well, is that a prejudgment, a prejudice, a preconception?
Well, sure.
I don't think it's racist.
If you say, I hate black people, I guess that would be racist, right?
Or I hate the Irish or something like that.
I hate white people.
That certainly is racist, but the left tells us that's not racist.
And now we're told that any time you say anything positive or negative or neutral about a protected group, You are a racist.
And anytime you say anything vicious or hateful about a non-protected group, like white people or Asian people, that's totally fine.
That's not a big deal.
So the word doesn't mean anything.
An insurrection right now, I don't think means anything.
If BLM defends our democracy and the horn guy is an insurrectionist, if cops just not taking an experimental drug is an insurrection, then insurrection doesn't mean anything anymore.
And it means you really ought to reconsider some of what you thought about January 6th.
January is the worst attack in American history.
Wasn't the Senate building, like, bombed within the last five decades?
I seem to recall that.
I remember reading that there have been multiple attacks, actually, in the last century that led to a lot of destruction on various Senate and House buildings.
But January's, the horn guy, the podium, they took Pelosi's lectern.
Okay, it's not good.
It's not good to steal somebody's lectern.
It's not good to steal sneakers.
It's not good to steal Gucci handbags.
It's not good to torch the country coast to coast.
So one of them is our democracy, though, and it's really good, and the other is an insurrection.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Speaking of actual insurrections and coup d'etat, Christopher Steele.
You remember him?
He was the tool who gave the Democrats an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign by cooking up a completely bogus report about how Donald Trump was urinated on by hookers in Moscow.
So Christopher Steele just went on George Stephanopoulos' show on ABC, George Stephanopoulos, a former communications director for Bill Clinton, right at the end.
A Democrat propagandist.
And Steele defended his dossier.
And Stephanopoulos gave some pushback.
He said, no, but come on, some things were false, right?
He gave at least the appearance of some pushback.
And Steele goes, no.
It was credible reporting.
We knew some of it was right.
We suspected some of it may never be provable.
But I've got a great track record, and the idea that I would fabricate this document or information is absolutely anathema.
I wouldn't be a successful businessman if that were my practice.
And he's hoping that you don't pay attention here, because of course he would be.
His job was not to provide true information or true opposition research into Donald Trump.
His job was to use his credential, he's a lifelong spook, to use his credential to give Democrats a justification to spy on the Trump campaign.
And he did his job very, very well.
And it was a BS report, but he did it, and the ruling class spied on the Trump campaign, and by some fluke, he actually managed it.
Trump actually managed to win.
But the ruling class remains unrepentant.
They do not care, and we've got to stop falling for their traps, whether it's on the January 6th or the isms or the this or the that or listen to Fauci one more time.
We've got to just tune that stuff out, okay?
I think we still have the chance to fight back and rebuild our country, but we've got to get serious and start doing it ourselves.
We've got to start winning elections and using political power.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
show.
See you tomorrow.
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Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Netflix employees walk out to protest Dave Chappelle's special and the media gush over them.
Plus, the Biden administration says they've got vaccines for your five-year-old, but your kid will still need a mask.
