Ep. 1510 - Is It Finally Time For Our Glorious Conquest Of Canada To Begin?
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Trump appears to be taking very seriously the idea of purchasing Greenland and taking control of the Panama Canal. Is that a good idea? And should we just conquer Canada while we’re at it? Also, a judge blocks a Tennessee law requiring age verification for porn sites. Her reasoning is flimsy, to say the least. And the state of New Jersey will no longer require its teachers to be literate. What could possibly go wrong? We’ll talk about all of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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Ep.1510
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Trump appears to be taking very seriously the idea of purchasing Greenland and taking control of the Panama Canal.
Is that a good idea?
And should we just go ahead and conquer Canada while we're at it?
Also, a judge blocks a Tennessee law requiring age verification for porn sites.
Her reasoning is flimsy, to say the least.
And the state of New Jersey will no longer require that its teachers know how to read.
What could possibly go wrong?
We'll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Wall Show.
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Not long after Justin Trudeau became the Prime Minister of Canada in 2015, he made a big announcement.
Without any prompting, Trudeau said something that no other Canadian Prime Minister has ever said.
He declared that Canada as a nation doesn't really exist.
He came out and casually admitted something that Americans have known for a long time, which is that Canada is a fake country.
Speaking to a reporter with the New York Times, Trudeau explained that, quote, there's no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.
There are shared values.
Those qualities are what make us the first post-national state, close quote.
Yes, Canada is a post-national state with no core identity.
That's what he said.
No wonder this guy was forced to resign this week.
No one paid any attention to Trudeau's comments at the time, because no one ever pays any attention to what's happening in Canada.
Nobody stepped up to offer Canadians a nation that they could call home.
Nobody suggested that Canadians could indeed have a core identity, just like the rest of the world.
Instead, we allowed our neighbors to the north to wallow in their own self-pity and apparent non-existence.
Their identity crisis festered.
As a result, after a decade of self-loathing, Canada is now predictably falling apart.
Justice Rudeau has resigned.
Parliament has been suspended.
Their whole government has basically collapsed.
Canada is sputtering along, barely staying alive in the cold, like a stray cat that everyone ignores.
But there's some good news now for Canadians.
Finally, at long last, against all odds, they may soon have a nation to call their own.
They may find that the core identity that they've apparently been seeking for so long.
Admittedly, this development will come with some trade-offs, most likely.
Canadians will probably lose the right to vote.
They may have to start working jobs they don't like and that might not even pay them anything.
And we still won't take them very seriously.
But none of that's important right now because the key point is that Canadians could soon become Americans, Or at least they could become vassals of Americans.
Here's Donald Trump's olive branch to the oppressed people of Canada from yesterday's press conference.
This is, of course, getting a lot of attention.
In case you missed it, here it is.
If you were working under the assumption that you're serious about making Canada the 51st state of the United States, the leader of the Conservative Party in Canada said, under no circumstances will it ever be the 51st state.
Maybe he won't win, but maybe he will.
Listen, I don't care what he says.
So real fast, you said you were considering military force to acquire Panama and Greenland.
Are you also considering military force to annex and acquire Panama?
No.
Economic force.
Because Canada and the United States, that would really be something.
You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.
Don't forget, we basically protect Canada.
Now, Trump went on to explain all the obvious arguments in support of annexing Canada.
We provide them military support worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
They reward us with an import tax on dairy products that goes as high as 270%.
They're supposedly good at hockey, but they haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1993. They also don't believe in free speech to the point that they freeze the bank accounts of political dissidents.
And if we were talking about a Middle Eastern country, we would have already invaded by now or at least launched some rockets and called it a day.
But as you heard, Trump doesn't plan on doing any of that with Canada.
The plan right now is a humanitarian economic takeover.
And that's why after the press conference, Trump posted these upbeat images of a unified North America with Canada and the United States combined.
And as you can see, once you get rid of the line between Canada and the United States, the whole continent does look a lot cleaner.
It's obviously the way it was supposed to be.
But pretty much every Canadian politician disagrees, apparently.
And in voicing their outrage, they've only made the whole situation even more entertaining and more pathetic for Canada.
Here, for example, is someone using the name Jagmeet Singh.
At one point, he was supposed to be the Canadian incarnation of Barack Obama.
And last night, he uploaded this video threatening the United States.
Watch.
Donald Trump is acting more like an internet troll.
I don't think that's the way you act as a president, and it's certainly not the way you interact with other countries.
But as I mentioned, I've dealt with bullies throughout my life, and I know what it's like.
Even if you're a smaller guy, even if you're outnumbered, you've got to make it not worth the bullies while.
Bullies only understand strength.
They only understand strength and pain.
So you have to make sure you're standing up and showing that if you want to take that decision to fight with us, To pick a fight with us, it's going to hurt you too.
And so I want to issue a challenge actually on your show today.
For anyone that's running for prime minister, I've committed that Canada would respond with retaliatory tariffs.
If Trump imposes tariffs on Canada, we should respond with tariffs.
So that was the sentiment all over Canada.
Even the conservatives were talking like this, although they were a bit less aggressive.
It's all kind of difficult to understand, frankly.
They're just assuming.
I mean, they're complaining about our plans to conquer them, and they haven't even seen the labor camps we've built for them.
I mean, they're really spacious, very comfortable by labor camp standards.
You'll even get one whole meal a day, except on weekdays, obviously.
And yet they still whine.
I mean, just ungrateful brats.
And just to underscore...
The power dynamic here.
Canada's dollar is worth about 70 cents right now.
The government is issuing emergency payments to around a third of the population so people can afford groceries.
But Jagmeet Singh wants us to believe that Canada has leverage over the United States.
They're going to raise the import tax on milk another 100%, I guess.
They're going to shut off our supply of maple syrup.
They'll even play hockey even worse than they already do.
Now, not to be outdone, an even less popular politician in Canada, Elizabeth May of the Green Party, proposed a counteroffer to Donald Trump.
She suggested that Canada should, rather than us taking Canada, that they will take California, Washington, and Oregon from the United States, which apparently is supposed to be some kind of threat.
She's threatening to take our three worst states from us.
I mean, can we throw New Jersey in there, too?
It doesn't really work geographically, but if you want to take all the worst ones, we'll give you that plus New Jersey.
Here she is.
Hey, Donald, have we got a deal for you?
You think we want to be the 51st state?
Nah, but maybe California would like to be the 11th province.
How about it?
California?
Oregon?
Washington?
You've got geography in Commonwealth.
And not only that, we've already got a carbon trading system between California and Quebec.
We've got some strong alliances on our west coast from British Columbia.
There's been a lot of academic papers on the idea of Cascadia.
So California, Governor Newsom and Washington State, Jay Inslee, and newly elected Governor of Oregon, Tina Kotak.
How about it?
Want to put a referendum to your citizens?
Because this is what you deal.
Have we got a deal for you?
This is what you get.
Free health care.
Universal free health care.
No more one-year-olds who suddenly fall off the Medicaid list and their parents are in the news because they're trying to do a GoFundMe so they can get their daughter to a doctor.
Universal free health care.
And guess what?
Those gun laws that your Congress is too afraid to pass because of the national gun lobby?
We already got our strict gun laws.
So the pitch to people in California, Washington, Oregon is that if they join Canada, they can get some Canadian health care.
Now, I've ragged on those states quite a bit over the years.
They're all terribly run.
They're overtaxed.
They're examples of the worst excesses of left-wing ideology.
But even with all that in mind, I've never wished Canadian health care on anyone living in those states.
I never would.
I don't want to see them put to death when they get a headache or feel a little depressed, but apparently Elizabeth May sees things differently.
And she seems serious about the offer.
And admittedly, a lot of people in those states may be on board with the idea.
So let's compromise.
How about this?
Here's my counteroffer.
We'll send you the people in all those states, but we're going to keep the land.
Because actually the land is quite nice and quite beautiful.
So we'll give you the people and we're going to keep the land.
That's a win-win.
Now, if you know anything about Elizabeth May, it's an offer that she'll probably accept because she's a raging alcoholic, apparently, who's also completely incompetent.
Most famous in Canada for getting so intoxicated during a speech a few years ago that her own staff had to lead her off stage as she started playing music from her phone during the speech and praising war criminals.
We'll just play this because this is...
Funny.
Here it is.
I have a completely deranged and not, there is no sequitur.
This is a non sequitur.
Do you guys ever wake up with old theme songs from former black and white TV shows that you never thought your kids would ever see and they're running through your head?
Like every now and then I wake up thinking about, Lisa, you've got to wait.
Lisa, I wake up thinking about a horse is a horse, of course, of course.
This morning I wake up thinking this.
Why am I thinking this?
Do you guys wonder?
Please, hang on.
Wait, you know what?
Do you guys remember the theme song?
Welcome back.
Who knew Khadr was spelled K-H-A-D-R. Welcome back, Omer Khadr.
It matters to say it.
Welcome back, Omer Khadr.
your home.
Does it strike you a grand?
I didn't.
No, you didn't.
There's a lot unusual about your speech list, but we're going to take off.
Homer Cotter, you've got more class than the whole cabinet.
Thank you.
That's, you know, every time I think that our government is an embarrassment, that's one nice thing about Canada is that there are times when I look at the people running our country and I feel totally humiliated.
But you can always just look over to Canada and say, well, okay, well, it's, I mean.
They're at least worse than us.
Now, the person she mentioned at the end of her speech is a terrorist who pleaded guilty to murdering a U.S. soldier.
And that woman went on to lead the Canadian Green Party.
So that's the caliber of Canadian politicians that we're dealing with here.
All we have to do is kind of get them drunk or, more accurately, wait a few minutes until they get drunk on their own.
And then we can do whatever we want in these negotiations.
For what it's worth, Elizabeth May wasn't the only Canadian politician to come up with a counteroffer.
Ontario's governor, Doug Ford.
is also in the bargaining stage of grief.
Watch.
Trump once again talked about the idea of now a merger between Canada and the United States.
You would dismiss that as a joke.
At what point do you say that that's no longer a laughing matter and something that should be taken with quite a bit of seriousness?
Well, I know under my watch for Ontario, I'd never be for that at all.
We have the greatest country in the world.
We have the greatest province anywhere.
Any subsovereign nation is Ontario and the rest of the provinces as well.
You know something?
To the President, I'll make him a counteroffer.
How about if we buy Alaska?
And we'll throw in Minnesota and Minneapolis at the same time.
So, you know, it's not realistic.
I know he likes making these comments and he likes joking around.
I take that seriously.
He may be joking, but under my watch, that will never, ever happen.
I mean, if you want to try to buy them, make an offer.
I mean, you should always be open to offers.
So, I wouldn't want to part with Alaska because it's the most beautiful state in the country.
And a lot of good people in Alaska.
If you wanted Minnesota, at least personally, I'm not in charge of anything, but I'm...
Like, let's talk about it.
Put a number on the table.
Let's have the conversation.
But, you know, you can't afford it.
You can't afford Minnesota.
Canada's so pathetic, they can't even afford Minnesota.
And, you know, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here.
No one is offering to buy Canada.
Trump is proposing that we just take it.
But Doug Ford seems to think that we're haggling over prices here.
And he also seems to think Canada can afford to buy a U.S. state, which is more than a little suspect.
Now, at the same time, As amusing as the idea of taking over Canada is, the plan that Trump is floating for other parts of the North American continent is, I think, a bit more serious, with some very real economic and strategic implications.
The main benefit of conquering Canada is just that it would be really funny.
It would be the first conquest in history launched primarily as a joke.
Because in all seriousness, I actually wouldn't want Canada, mainly because...
Of all the Canadians that are there, if we could get the land without the people, but, you know, that could get, I wouldn't, I mean, there's some things we, you know, you only go so far.
We don't want the land that badly.
But the idea that we should buy Greenland and take over the Panama Canal is, while also being kind of funny, still very serious.
At one point during the press conference, Trump was asked to rule out the use of military force to take Greenland and the Panama Canal.
And he refused.
Watch.
Greenland and the Panama Canal, so forth.
Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?
No.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is?
Are you going to negotiate a new treaty?
Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold a vote?
What is the strategy?
I can't assure you.
You're talking about Panama and Greenland.
No, I can't assure you on either of those two.
But I can say this.
We need them for economic security.
The Panama Canal was built for our military.
I'm not going to commit to that.
Now, this answer caused a lot of wailing on the Internet, as you would expect, but it's the right answer.
There's no reason for us to rule out anything at this point, especially when our national security is implicated.
It also puts you in a much stronger bargaining position if you don't show your cards ahead of time.
If we take over Greenland, we'd gain an ideal position for shooting down missiles from countries like China, Russia, North Korea.
We'd also gain access to rare earth minerals that are useful for various military technologies and batteries and so on.
Greenland is a massive piece of land on our continent that has basically nobody living on it.
I mean, the actual population is about 56,000, which, to put that into perspective, is significantly less than the average capacity of a professional football stadium.
Those are all the people living in Greenland.
So why shouldn't we at least discuss the possibility of acquiring it?
And, of course, the Panama Canal would give us control over one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.
We have more opportunities to limit China's advancement in our hemisphere as well.
And whenever you think about these ideas, they make a lot more sense than fighting proxy wars in Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
The Panama Canal and Greenland are on our continent.
They're in our backyard.
What happens there affects us a lot more than a border dispute 6,000 miles away.
And in case you needed another reason to support Trump's proposals, On Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Take a look at CNN's reaction to the press conference.
Their jaws were on the floor.
Watch.
Some new information about what he intends to do, or at the very least is not ruling out when he takes office, including not ruling out a military invasion to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal, and perhaps...
The annexation of the country of Canada.
Now, as a general rule, the more enraged CNN becomes, the more you know you're on the right track.
And by that metric, we should take Greenland, Panama Canal, and Canada immediately.
It's not just about the well-documented economic and strategic benefits when it comes to Greenland and Panama Canal.
There's another important reason, I think, to follow through with this.
Which is that it signals our direction as a nation.
A country that grows and acquires new land and pursues new opportunities is a living, thriving country.
It's a sign of a nation on the rise rather than a nation on the decline.
Americans once pursued their manifest destiny into the wilderness and all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
That's how our country took its current shape.
But most of that happened in the 19th century.
In the 20th century, the drive to reach out into the unknown took the form of the space program.
It brought us all the way to the moon.
Since then, however, we've kind of been in stasis, jogging in place.
Liberal imperialism took over as we tried to export liberal values to far-flung corners of the world that are thousands of miles away, attempting to impose them on people and cultures that had no interest in them and never will.
That was and still is a disaster.
That's not the kind of expansion we should pursue.
But claiming new land on our continent, in our own part of the world, for our own interests, to help our own country and our own people, that is an idea worth considering.
That's also why Trump proposed changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America yesterday.
Proposal that would be unthinkable in a place like Canada, where they're busy apologizing for their own existence, but in a country that's proud of itself and proud of its history and sees itself as a great nation.
And that's one of the things.
To be a great nation, you also have to see yourself as a great nation.
And in a country like that, it makes sense.
I mean, why not?
We could change the name.
Why shouldn't we?
In fact, as I suggested yesterday, we should think about renaming the moon to the moon of America.
It is ours, after all.
We put our flag on it.
So, where do we go from here?
Will Greenland and the Panama Canal soon belong to us?
Will Canada do the right thing and submit to rule by the United States?
Will they affirm their own potential for greatness by being our serfs?
Probably not.
But you never know.
The feeling we have now is the feeling that a great country should have.
A feeling that says anything is possible.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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We'll start with this from the AP. A Tennessee law requiring pornographic websites to verify their visitor's age was largely blocked in court before it was to take effect January 1st, even as similar laws kicked in for Florida and South Carolina and remain in effect for more than a dozen other states.
On December 30th, U.S. District Judge Cheryl Lipman in Memphis ruled that Tennessee's law would likely suppress the First Amendment free speech rights of adults without actually preventing children from accessing the harmful material in question.
The state attorney general's office is appealing the decision.
The Free Speech Coalition and Adult Entertainment Trade Group is suing over Tennessee's law and those in a half dozen other states.
The coalition lists some 19 states that have passed similar laws.
One prominent adult website has cut off access in several states due to their laws.
The law would require porn websites to verify visitors are at least 18 years old, threatening felony penalties and civil liability possible for violators running the sites.
They could match a photo to someone's ID or use certain public or private transactional data to prove somebody's age.
Website leaders could not retain personally identifying information and would have to keep...
She wrote that under Tennessee's laws, minors still could access adult sites using VPNs, or they could view pornographic material on social media sites, which are unlikely to reach the law's threshold of one-third of its content considered harmful to minors.
The judge also said the impact could be overly broad.
She noted that Tennessee's She specifically mentioned that the phrase the human nipple or crude combinations of keyboard characters would be considered harmful as long as they lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
She also said that this could affect online educational platforms focused on sexual wellness.
Okay, so first of all, The definition that Tennessee offers in their law for pornographic content makes a lot of sense.
The judge has a problem with it but can't explain what the problem is exactly.
Yes, it is pornographic if it is sexually explicit and lacks, as it says, quote, serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
So, obviously, a science website that has information about human biology and anatomy It's not pornography.
Everybody understands that.
This always goes back to the famous line from the Supreme Court justice in the 60s or 70s who, when asked for a definition of pornography, said, you know, I know it when I see it.
And that's true.
That is kind of the answer because everybody understands what pornography is.
So we get into the, anytime you have this conversation about Restrictions, regulations.
It always becomes this academic, well, how do we know?
How do you really define pornography?
Everybody knows.
In the real world, when it comes to practical application, there just is not any legitimate dispute.
And even though every time we talk about laws and regulations meant to protect children from smut, you get this sophistry.
How do we define it?
What if in some hypothetical scenario something that isn't pornographic is interpreted as pornographic and also ends up being restricted?
That's just not happening.
That's not actually happening.
That's not real.
We all know what porn is.
Nobody's confusing Pornhub and National Geographic.
Everybody understands the distinction.
Nobody is truly confused about the distinction between a pornographic image on a porn site and an image of the statue of David, right?
Even though there's nudity in both, but we all know the difference.
We all understand the difference.
And you know what?
If the consequence of protecting kids from porn is that on rare occasion...
A few random, non-pornographic things get caught in the net.
If that even does happen, that's a trade-off that I'm willing to make.
There are downsides to any policy.
There are unintended consequences no matter what you do.
The unintended consequence, well, supposedly unintended, the supposedly unintended consequence of having no regulations, And nothing in place to prevent kids from seeing hardcore porn is that millions and millions of kids, very young kids at very, very young ages, end up looking at porn.
So that's the consequence there.
When you don't have anything like this, that's the consequence.
The consequence of having these regulations is that maybe, hypothetically, a child every once in a while is not able to access a site that is actually non-pornographic.
Okay, well, you tell me, which of these consequences is worse?
Which set of unintended consequences is the greater threat to the well-being of children?
Which will inflict greater harm on the child?
So, that's all nonsense.
And the whole argument from this judge is nonsense.
The free speech arguments are just absolutely unintelligible.
What is the free speech concern here, exactly?
Whose speech is being infringed by simply requiring age verification before you access a porn site?
What do you mean speech?
If you want to go to Pornhub and have to just prove that you're an adult, like you do when you buy alcohol or when you go to a gambling site, in what way is anyone's speech being violated?
And as I've asked a million times, if it is, then how does that also...
If you want to go to FanDuel, You know, and place a bet on the wildcard weekend in the NFL this coming weekend, you're going to have to verify your age.
No one looks at that and says, my speech is being infringed.
This is a First Amendment violation.
Nobody says that.
So how is that suddenly the case when it's porn, but it's not for anything else?
And besides, how is going to a porn site A form of speech.
Watching porn is speech?
What definition of speech are we using here?
Consumption is speech?
Watching is speech?
Watching two people have sex, or however many, is speech?
How?
Or is it the porn site that is having its speech infringed?
Again, how?
They supposedly intend to provide this product only to adults.
So how is their speech infringed by requiring that they verify that their customers are actually adults?
And again, if their speech is infringed by that requirement, how are we also not infringing the free speech of every liquor store in America by forcing them to ask for an ID before allowing a customer to make a purchase?
How is it any different?
And of course, this is to say nothing of the fact that Pornography isn't speech anyway.
Okay?
This is another thing that we act like is, you know, this is another question that we pretend is super complicated, and it's actually not.
What is speech?
How do you define speech?
What do you mean, what is speech?
We all understand what speech is.
Okay?
Speech is something that conveys a message.
It's a point of view.
It's being expressed.
That is speech.
If you're getting a message across in some kind of coherent, intelligible way, you are engaged in speech.
Having sex on camera is not speech.
There's no message.
I mean, you could say that the message of the porn performer is that they're a whore.
You could say that that's the message, but...
That's like saying that a guy who eats seven Big Macs is engaged in speech because he's communicating the fact that he's a fat, disgusting glutton.
Well, that may be the image of yourself that you're projecting, but it's not speech.
The act itself is not a form of communication.
Nobody who sits down to watch pornography is watching it going, they're communicating with me.
Okay, you're not like interpreting the message, okay?
Like you've got a decoder ring and you've got to say, oh, this is the message.
That's not how it is.
So it's not speech.
And we all know that.
We all know that.
It's not like, well, if you restrict pornography, then the next thing you know, you're stopping people from expressing their opinions.
No, there's no reason why one should lead to the other, because they're two totally different things.
And we all understand the freaking difference.
But the thing that just frustrates me the most is this totally phony argument you hear from the porn sites and their lawyers, and now this judge.
The phony argument that, and it's all phony.
It's all phony.
Like, it's all, that, none of this is real.
All the free speech, this, that, they don't care about any of that.
They just want as many people as possible to watch the porn because they make billions of dollars on it.
And they don't care if kids watch it.
In fact, they want kids to see it.
We all know that also.
They want kids to see it.
Of course they do.
They make money on that.
The more kids who are exposed to porn, not only do they make money on those clicks, but also now you're getting kids hooked on this filth.
And so now these are...
Unfortunately, in many cases, lifelong customers that you have earned for yourself.
So they want kids to see it.
Does anyone really think that the people who run Pornhub actually don't want kids to see it?
Does anyone think that?
You have to be a soulless reptile in the first place to be involved in the porn industry at any level anyway.
These are soulless, amoral trolls.
All of them.
And so they don't care.
So then you get this phony argument that they oppose age verification because it isn't effective.
Right?
Their real problem is that it doesn't stop enough kids from seeing it.
Oh, come on.
Again, does anyone believe that?
Is anyone stupid enough?
Does anyone want to admit to being so dumb that they believe that the porn sites are actually concerned that the age verification isn't more effective?
Yes, it's true that age verification at the website level is not perfect.
It should not be the only barrier put in place between your child and this kind of content.
That's an argument for additional measures for doing this and more.
But the judge is saying that we should not do this at all because it won't succeed in actually preventing every child from accessing porn.
Okay, but it will prevent some of them, won't it?
So what you're saying is that if it's a measure that will not prevent every child from seeing it, then we might as well prevent no child from seeing it.
That's the argument.
Which, once again, we would never apply to anything else ever.
I mean, age verification certainly doesn't stop kids from getting alcohol.
It didn't stop me before I was 21, I can tell you that.
It doesn't stop anyone who really wants it.
But yet, most people agree that it's like, you know, we could talk about the drinking age, should it be lower to 18?
But most people would say, like...
We could talk about drinking age.
It definitely shouldn't be 10. And yet there are plenty of, unfortunately, 10-year-olds who could get their hands on alcohol if they really want to.
And yet, so it's not perfect.
It's far from perfect.
But it's better than nothing.
I mean, are you suggesting or are we saying that age verification at the website level is just, it won't stop any kids, really?
Are you suggesting that every child of every age understands how to use a VPN to bypass age verification?
They not only understand it, but they're able to download a VPN and put it on their computer or phone without their parents knowing?
Every child can do that?
Really?
It's just ridiculous.
The fact is that a simple barrier of entry at the website level requiring age verification will actually...
Every day.
Every day.
Prevent literally millions of kids.
Every day.
Would be prevented from seeing this stuff.
Millions.
Now millions more will get around it.
That's true.
So let's do more, not less.
Yesterday we heard about Zuckerberg's plan to recommit to free speech on Facebook and Instagram, supposedly.
Part of that plan involves getting rid of the hyper-partisan fact-checkers and instituting a community note system like what Elon put in place on X. Not surprisingly, the left is unhappy with this development.
Very unhappy.
And here's just one example of many.
This is our good friend Joy Reid with...
Her reaction.
Why would conservatives think fact checking is biased against them?
I mean, what are you sharing if you keep getting fact checked for false information?
Think about it.
What were conservatives sharing on Meta that was getting flagged so much?
Are they spreading false information?
And why were they so eager?
And why are Republicans in general so eager to end the idea of fact-checking?
What are they trying to share?
What is the motivation for not wanting it to be fact-checked?
Now, what I love about this logic is that, of course, Joy Reid would totally reject it if we applied it to any other situation.
So, for example, when we hear from people like Joy Reid that, say, black people get pulled over and arrested more often than white people, Using her logic, I could say, hey, what were you doing that made the cops pull you over?
Think about it.
Why are you getting pulled over and arrested all the time?
If you don't want to be pulled over and arrested, stop committing crimes.
Think about it.
They're law enforcement.
You're running afoul of law enforcement.
You must be breaking the law.
Now, this is the exact same logic, but in that case, Joy would totally reject it.
Of course, the difference is that in that case, you know, the argument actually works.
It works because the data shows that, in fact, police officers by and large are not unfairly targeting black people.
That's just false.
It's a made-up false narrative.
For the most part, in the vast majority of cases, if you're getting arrested, it's because you're committing a crime.
And so a really, really, really good way that it's not 100% Foolproof, but if you just don't commit any crimes, there's a really high chance that you'll just never be arrested.
It could happen, but probably it won't.
On the other hand, with fact-checkers, it's not as simple as, well, just make sure everything you're saying is factual, and you'll never get fact-checked.
It doesn't work that way.
If you got flagged by a fact-checker, it did not necessarily mean, very often did not mean, that you posted something false.
Because the whole fact-checking regime was, from the start, invented to suppress conservative thought.
Law enforcement, as a concept, was not invented to persecute black people, despite what Joy Reid may say.
Fact-checking on social media.
You know, this current iteration of what we call...
Now, if we're talking about someone using the term fact-check 40 years ago, different deal.
But now what we call fact-checking and the professional fact-checkers on social media and so on, that is an industry intended from the very beginning to enforce ideological conformity.
And, you know, all the—I mean, there's a lot of evidence of that.
We all know this.
I'm not saying anything you don't know, but here's really all the evidence we need.
You can just take one example that kind of proves the point.
Did any fact checker on Facebook or on any other platform ever once flag a post claiming that there are more than two genders?
Was that claim ever once flagged as non-factual?
Was the claim that trans women are women, was that ever debunked by the fact checkers?
No, of course not.
In fact, it went the other way.
Statements of incontrovertible, undeniable, biological, and scientific fact were flagged as false and harmful by the fact checkers, even though they are absolutely 100% correct.
So that's all the proof you need.
And it's a good starting point.
Anytime someone calls them, if you want to know whether a fact-checker, a self-appointed fact-checker, is qualified for the job, you can really start with that and say, well, are trans, quote-unquote, trans women women?
Just ask them that question.
99.9, probably 100% of all self-appointed fact-checkers.
Would all say, well, yes.
It means you're not qualified for the job.
I mean, that's one of the most basic fundamental facts of human existence you don't understand, or at least you're pretending you don't.
And so you may be qualified for some jobs, but certainly not this one.
And probably not most jobs, actually, because most jobs, to do it well, requires at least some basic understanding of the reality that you exist in.
Which these people, again, at least pretend not to have.
All right, let's get to the comment section.
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All right, first comment says, it's the booze, people.
You know, the thing we've been drinking for thousands of years certainly isn't the artificial sweetener developed to fatten livestock or the machine oil we've had added to our food.
Yeah, as a general rule, you know, I'm always very, very skeptical when the public health folks come along and tell us that something that humanity has been doing for millennia is actually unspeakably dangerous and should be halted immediately.
You know, it could be true.
You know, it's possible that humanity got it wrong all that time.
It's happened.
But if you want to drastically alter what was common and what was common human behavior for thousands of years, I think you should need to produce more than a couple of studies and a statement from the Surgeon General.
You know, that's the thing.
The burden of proof is quite a bit higher than that.
Since there's been an uptick in cancer since the bioweapon was rolled out to fight the virus, is blaming alcohol for cancer in any amount the way to cover up the higher number of cancers?
Yeah, well, you know, these people warning us about the dangers of booze are the same ones who assured us that the vaccine was safe and effective.
And when you talk about the higher rates of cancer, that is a real thing.
Colon cancer in young people is apparently surging.
And that's a trend that can be traced back, I believe, several years at least.
But that's all the more reason why blaming it on alcohol makes no sense.
You know, you don't even need to read any study to know that.
People have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years.
We don't have data.
The data on how much alcohol was consumed by people on average, probably, I mean, there's data on that now.
I don't know how far back that data goes.
Probably not very far.
But, you know, I think it's pretty apparent that alcohol consumption was a lot more common.
Even go back, you know, it's like any movie or TV show you see set in the 50s.
It's like they're, you know, they've got the, in the office, they've got the cart set up with the, you know, the whiskey and the nice crystal containers and they're drinking it.
Whiskey at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
So, people have been drinking alcohol for a long time.
So, if there's a recent surge in certain types of cancer, it seems, if you want to find the culprit, you should look at recent causes.
I mean, that just seems logical to me.
I'm willing to grant that booze marginally increases the risk of certain cancers.
What I'm not willing to grant, even for the sake of argument, is that our government or public...
I agree.
Although that's really beside the point.
I don't need public health institutions to actually care about me.
I don't care about that.
I don't need them to care.
I just need them to tell the truth.
That's all that matters.
Just tell the truth.
Feel how you want.
Be as indifferent as you want.
Doesn't matter.
Tell the truth.
And they haven't, and so we have no reason to...
No reason to trust them.
I never let my kids win either, but I do give them handicaps.
Chess without a queen and rook, but then I play as best I can.
My daughter won once, so now she's graduated to me only starting without a queen.
I will also do that.
That's fine.
I don't think you should let your kids win games, but you can give them an advantage or a head start, but then compete and try to win from there.
My son who's now 11, I've raced him many times over the years.
I've always given him a head start.
The most recent time I raced him, I gave him a head start and he crushed me.
Just crushed me.
So no more head starts.
He's graduated beyond that.
Apply your arguments against Sonic towards Peter Jackson's film adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings" and see how many of them hold up.
Respecting and understanding the source source material?
Catering to the fans of an IP?
Grown adults interested in fiction?
It's easy to dunk on man-child Sonic fans, but are you ready to die on that same hill against the Lord of the Rings fandom?
Claim it now and you will never know peace.
What?
Okay.
First of all, I am not taking any issue with grown adults who are interested in fiction.
There's nothing wrong with fiction.
You know, I think reading, I don't read a lot of novels like fiction, but most of the books I read are nonfiction.
But that's, I think there would be great value in reading novels and reading fiction, works of fiction.
I certainly like to watch movies, you know, and that are, you know, fictional narratives.
So that's not my point.
Stories, like stories are for everyone.
The concept of...
Telling a story.
I mean, you want to talk about things that go back since the dawn of human civilization.
This is one of them.
Human beings have been storytellers and have connected with stories and have found the process of hearing, experiencing a story to be deeply edifying since the dawn of human civilization and before.
So, that's not the problem.
My problem with adults who watch Sonic is not that it's childish to be interested in a fiction story.
It's that as you grow older, the types of stories that you're interested in should change, should develop, should mature.
That's it.
And that's even with stories that are like Sonic.
The Sonic films are just garbage.
I mean, they're just corporate slop.
They really are.
And as I've said, they don't even exist to tell a story.
They exist just to capitalize on an IP. But even if they were quality stories, I would still say that as you grow older, I mean, take a...
Take a children's movie that I think is high quality.
Let's just take any of the early Pixar films.
I know I upset some people when I said that Toy Story is a bit overrated, which I think is a bit overrated.
But still, we'll take Toy Story.
Still a really high quality, no question about it, very high quality children's movie.
Definitely.
And I've watched that one with my kids many times, and they enjoy it.
And I enjoy watching it with them.
However, On my own, you know, if I have the night to myself and I want to sit down and watch a movie, or I'm going to watch a movie with my wife, I'm not putting on Toy Story.
You know, that's a great one to watch with the kids.
I'm not going to watch it by myself.
The same way that if I'm going to, you know, talk about books.
I like to read my kids Dr. Seuss books.
Fox and Socks, one of my favorites to read the kids.
I've read that book.
600 times because I read it to the kids.
And as far as children's books go, I think, Dr. Seuss, it's hard to do better than that.
But if it's, you know, 9 o'clock at night and I'm going to sit on the back patio with a cigar and read a book, as I often do, I'm not pulling out Cat in the Hat to read it.
I'm not going to be sitting on the back porch just flipping through Cat in the Hat, reading it to myself.
That would be odd, wouldn't it?
That would be strange.
It would be a strange thing to be an adult who's still on your own recreationally.
Your interest in books has not developed past that.
And I think we all see that with things like books, but I'm saying this also should apply to these IP that everyone likes so much.
So anyway, this is more of a response than this ridiculous comment deserves.
The Lord of the Rings.
Now, I think you could be, there are people that, you could be overly obsessed with Lord of the Rings, or with any, you know, you could be overly obsessed with anything, potentially, but Lord of the Rings is a, it's one of the great stories ever told.
I mean, the Lord of the Rings novels are great, great novels for adults.
Now, my son has read all of them and likes them, but kids can also, but these are not children's books.
And so, no, there's nothing wrong with an adult who's a big fan of The Lord of the Rings.
But yes, as an adult on your own, loving Sonic at the age of 40, it's like it's a bit, you know, it's a bit strange.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
A few months ago, I went into some detail about a test for firefighter applicants that the Biden administration deemed racist.
And as you might remember, the DOJ took a fire department to court for asking questions that apparently a lot of non-white applicants struggled with.
And those questions included multiple choice selections on basic arithmetic, as well as profound ethical dilemmas like Should you steal money from somebody on their way to the emergency room?
Obviously, the Biden administration is on its way out the door.
So going forward, we can expect fewer federal lawsuits over tests like this, one would hope.
And that's good news for anyone who wants competent firefighters to understand the difference between right and wrong.
But the fact remains that at the state level, Democrats are continuing their war on tests that measure basic competence.
In fact, they're escalating it to a whole new level in some cases.
The most recent example comes from the state of New Jersey, which has just eliminated a requirement that aspiring public school teachers pass a literacy test before they can be hired.
Yes, teachers no longer have to demonstrate that they can read before becoming a teacher.
And in this case, the change actually took effect with a lot of Republican support, too.
Quoting from Fox News, teachers in New Jersey will no longer be required to pass a basic reading, writing, and mathematics test to be eligible for public schools, according to a new law.
Act 1669, which was signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy in June, went into effect on Wednesday at the start of the new year.
The law aims to tackle teacher shortages.
The text of the law reads, The State Board of Education shall not require a candidate seeking a certificate of eligibility or a standard instructional certificate to complete a Commissioner of Education-approved test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills, including, but not limited to, the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators test.
What exactly is on this test?
One former teacher who now works with the group called Parents Defending Education says that it's not especially rigorous.
Having taken one of these tests, I think, back in 1998. These are basic skills tests.
I was going to ask you, what is on these tests?
Because it says basic, and I'm just thinking of basic.
What are we talking about here?
So, back when I took it in 1998 in Massachusetts, it was called a communication and literacy test.
The test that New Jersey had is called the Praxis, so it included basic literacy, which meant reading, writing, and math.
But again, these are low-rigger tests.
We're not talking about the LSAT here.
And so the fact that the failure rates on these tests have been so high for so long, that is a problem.
But that's really an indictment of not only the education system that these aspiring teachers are coming out of, but the colleges of education that give them a degree, even though they're not remotely qualified, they can't even pass these basic minimum requirement tests.
Now she goes on to say that the teachers union have always wanted to get rid of tests like this because they don't really care about educating students.
They just want to get more dues-paying members.
But she did admit that she took the test a long time ago.
So let's pull up some current sample questions from this Praxis test for educators, just like we did with the firefighter's exam a few months ago.
People were saying online that it's basically a 6th grade level test.
But I wanted to verify that.
So here's one practice question from the mathematics section of the test.
Let's all take a look at this together and see if we could qualify to teach at a New Jersey public high school.
Actually, to see if we're overqualified, because teachers there don't even need to pass this test anymore.
So here's the question.
And I promise I'm not making this up.
It's directly from a practice test for the educator's exam hosted on study.com, which is apparently the gold standard for preparing for this test.
And I'll put it up on the screen so you can see it as well in all its glory.
Quote, if it takes you an hour to bike 20 miles, what is your unit rate?
A, 20 miles per hour.
B, one mile per hour.
C, 40 miles per hour.
D, an hour per mile.
So I'll say that again.
If it takes you, because you might be in law, because this is so complicated.
If it takes you an hour to bike 20 miles, how fast are you going?
Are you going one mile an hour?
Are you going 40 miles an hour?
Or are you going 20 miles an hour?
Now, just to be clear, This is not a trick question.
The answer is indeed A for 20 miles an hour.
And it's the kind of question that if it were to...
It may trip you up only if you're an overthinker.
And if you read that and you go...
They must be looking for something else.
They can't actually just be asking me if 20 miles an hour is 20 miles an hour.
And so that's the only way I could see you getting tripped up on that.
It's so easy that you assume that they must be up to something, and you start, like, overthinking.
But no, it's 20 miles an hour.
This is the kind of doozy that apparently is causing a lot of confusion among people who want to teach children in New Jersey public schools.
And by the way, it's not just New Jersey that's got rid of this test.
Other states like New York have abandoned it as well for the same reason.
Let's keep going, because after all, maybe the other sections are a lot harder.
So here's another practice question from the writing section of the test for educators.
And this is what you need to master if you want to teach, say, English.
So here's this one.
Question.
Words and phrases that help carry a thought from one idea to the next are referred to as blank.
And you have four options to fill in the blank.
Thesis, carriers, transitions, or main arguments.
So let's see.
You have a word or phrase that carries a thought from one idea to another.
What might that be called?
And they give you four options.
And you just have to think, is it a thesis?
I'm pretty sure I've heard the term thesis before.
I don't think that's it.
Is it a carrier?
I don't know.
No, it's a transition.
Obviously, C is transition.
So, this is not something that needs to be explained to anyone, I would hope.
But the idea that it's challenging for people who want to teach students is obviously a complete and total farce.
Or if it's true that it's challenging for people who want to teach students, then that's even more troubling.
Now, in defense of this change, New Jersey politicians insist that standards aren't actually being lowered across the board.
Here's a post from Dawn Fantasia, a New Jersey assemblywoman who supports the new law.
Quote, eliminating the basic skills test requirement does not eliminate all praxis tests.
This is just a small fraction of praxis.
Before any credentials issued to a prospective teacher, the candidate must pass the praxis test required for the subject area they seek to teach.
She goes on to add, quote, someone is making money here.
All the prior tests are still in place.
I agree with eliminating the additional basic skills test and not for any woke or DEI reasoning.
This is simply a bureaucratic cash cow.
So she's saying that the basic skills test is redundant because teachers still have to pass a specialized test in their alleged field of expertise.
One of the obvious problems here is that there's no situation in which a school should be hiring a teacher who can't read or write.
Even if a math teacher manages to get a passing score on the math section by successfully demonstrating a sixth grader's understanding of the concept of miles per hour, that doesn't necessarily mean a school should hire that applicant.
Because if he's illiterate, there's still a problem.
So you still want the teachers to have a basic grasp of every subject.
Yeah, I don't want someone teaching math, even if they know math well enough, if they don't know, you know, what century the American Civil War happened in, I don't even want them teaching math.
Because this is just someone who's not smart enough and does not have even close to enough of a basic grasp of academic subjects generally to be teaching students.
So the standards are clearly being lowered here, and it's not hard to see why.
For years, New Jersey politicians have admitted that they have a severe teacher shortage and that bills like this are an attempt to fix that.
They've made it very clear that their goal isn't to save teachers some cash on unnecessary tests.
Their goal is to help applicants who are failing the teacher's tests, even though it's extremely easy.
As the New Jersey Monitor reported late last year, When New Jersey students head back to classrooms this week, many will return to schools with too few teachers.
The state has for years faced a shortage of educators with particularly troubling vacancies in subjects like math, science, special education, and instruction for English language learners.
In order to hire more teachers in New Jersey, they're dropping the standards.
They're not going to raise pay or take any steps to recruit more qualified applicants.
Instead, they're going to deliberately hire teachers who, in many cases, Classes in New Jersey will consist of teachers and students grunting at one another if that's what it takes to fill these vacancies and achieve equity.
And that is why the state of New Jersey, along with every other state that now hires illiterate teachers, is today canceled.
That'll do it for the show today.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
I've often said that gender-affirming care is health care, it is mental health care, and it can actually be suicide prevention care.
I think I'm gonna take some medicine so I can kind of like transform into a boy, get surgery.
After the surgery, I didn't really feel any better.
When it stopped being a thing for adults and it started to be a let's teach this to kids.
Total lie.
Manipulation.
It's gaslighting.
Please stop.
He's a boy, not a girl.
How could she do this to my son?
What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children.
I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally.
But of course I was wrong.
The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious.
Puberty blockers, surgeries, big money makers for hospitals, for physicians.
All I want to do is hold my son.
Are you asking me to lie to parents?
And he said yes.
This is a weaponized use of a parent's sympathy and caring and concern by the left to destroy your child.
Let's tell kids that maybe they can be the opposite sex.
Maybe they actually are the opposite sex.
It is an evil thing to tell children that happiness lies on the other side of puberty blockers or double mastectomies.
