In this episode of Human Events Daily, we discuss the Freedom Flu and how it is affecting our economy, health care, and safety. First, we talk about the crisis in air travel, supply chains, and at sea, and how the freedom flu is affecting President Joe Biden.
00:05:08.680I think the two are mutually exclusive.
00:05:10.640The vaccine mandate and where we are with the lawsuit is really just to get the company to sit down and talk to us and discuss some of our issues.
00:05:22.660Pilots have to maintain a medical certificate as well as their pilot certificate.
00:05:27.180So we want to sit down and address how that is going to be affected, how our long-term disability.
00:05:31.740Now that we're at Tuesday, looking back at what happened this weekend, our pilot sick rate was right in line with what we saw this summer during the same kind of meltdowns.
00:05:40.780We also see our pilots picking up almost at an all-time high.
00:07:48.600Holiday shoppers are already being warned to hit the stores early.
00:07:53.040Marissa Silva, a toy expert, says the industry is being hit hard by the shipping crisis.
00:07:59.500Silva says there's a delay of about six to eight weeks for a lot of toys.
00:08:03.920She also warns by Black Friday there may not be much on the store shelves.
00:08:08.360Ongoing supply chain disruptions and that microchip shortage will both cut down on inventory and drive up the costs of toys that are available.
00:08:16.820This is a major challenge and this is something that's been a major priority for the White House, certainly for our department.
00:08:23.920It's why the White House set up this task force.
00:08:27.040And what we're looking at is basically everything between those ships and your shelves that gets the goods to where they need to be.
00:08:35.780Part of that's things like physical infrastructure.
00:08:49.840And that's why we've been convening all of the different players, for example, held roundtables, bringing together everybody who's connected to the ports, the port operators, port owners, labor unions, shipping.
00:09:02.340And remember, a lot of this isn't, when you look at these backups, for example, on the ships, it isn't just about the ships, right?
00:09:08.020If they're in this photo, that means the ship is there.
00:09:11.080The question is what's in the way of the container getting off the ship and out to where it needs to be.
00:09:15.960And a lot of that goes to the other parts of our transportation system.
00:09:19.260You look at what's going on with trucking, we have some real concerns with the availability of truck drivers.
00:09:24.840At large truck operators, the rate of turnover for truck drivers has been around 90%.
00:09:30.780So that's clearly, at least in part, a labor issue.
00:09:34.140And we're partnering with the Department of Labor to try to establish more apprenticeships and make sure that we're addressing that.
00:12:50.960The entire ethos of the Freedom Flu is standing up for the forgotten men and women, the people that make this country work.
00:13:00.720And some of those people are the people that work at our strategic naval shipyards, where 40 to 50%, depending on where you go, in the north, in the south, in the east, in the west, all of our strategic shipyards, from Newport News up to Wisconsin, down to Mississippi, Alabama, right, California, all of these areas, you have workers that don't want this vaccine mandate opposed on them.
00:13:27.440Of course, they're federal contractors.
00:13:28.780Understand where that leaves us in terms of our naval superiority, our naval readiness, and, of course, our ability to force project and to protect the island of Taiwan.
00:13:42.740Now, keep in mind, I've said this a hundred times.
00:13:47.060I do not want to go to war over Taiwan.
00:13:49.960But if you set up a situation whereby in you have a labor shortage, you can't field aircraft carriers, you can't field submarines, you've got people in the backfield that are stuck, your supply chains are broken, people can't eat, what do you think the generals in Beijing are going to say when they see a situation like that while, by the way, faced with the crippling financial crisis that they are at home today?
00:14:19.660The complete reunification of our country must be and can be realized.
00:14:30.620China's President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to realize reunification with Taiwan.
00:14:37.820Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Xi said the Chinese people have a glorious tradition of opposing separatism.
00:14:45.660Xi's comments follow a week of tensions, during which Beijing dispatched about 150 Chinese military flights into Taiwan's air defense zone.
00:14:57.080While he didn't mention the use of force, Xi's message was clear.
00:15:06.940Taiwan independence is the greatest obstacle to national reunification and a serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation.
00:15:14.060Those who forget their heritage, betray their motherland, and seek to split the country will come to no good.
00:15:25.580And they will be spurned by the people and condemned by history.
00:15:29.000His speech has not been well received in Taiwan.
00:15:39.160Taipei, in response, called on Beijing to abandon its coercion and said its future rested in the hands of the people.
00:15:47.720The island, which broke away from the mainland in 1949, rejects Beijing's claims of sovereignty and has its own democratically elected government.
00:15:56.440In Xi's last major speech on Taiwan in July, he vowed to, quote, smash any attempts at formal independence.
00:16:07.400In 2019, he directly threatened to use force to bring the island under Beijing's control.
00:16:14.040Now again, it's been my long-time assessment, and I said this on the Taiwan, when we did the strategic briefing episode, I'll say it again.
00:16:20.800Again, I think the policy of the CCP towards Taiwan is assimilation.
00:16:26.720They want to do to Hong Kong or do to Taiwan what they did to Hong Kong.
00:16:30.660They want it to be the one country, two systems, and then gradually encroach using soft power, cultural power, language, ethnicity, nationality, bring them in.
00:16:39.640But if they feel threatened, if they feel threatened, then you could see troops in Taipei come Christmas, if they feel their legitimacy threatened.
00:16:58.680Things have gotten so incredibly bad for Joe Biden that even his own Democrats and some of these erstwhile Republicans are throwing him under the bus.
00:17:13.440What do I mean by erstwhile Republicans?
00:17:15.500I mean the losers and haters at the bulwark.
00:17:21.060The place where if you were a conservative or a quote-unquote conservative, right, a false conservative, a professional Republican as they call themselves, and you didn't support Donald Trump, and yet you found him home because there was no actual base for your failed ideology of neoconservatism, you went and brought your grifting ways over to the bulwark podcast.
00:17:39.940So the bulwark is full of all of these failed neocons, and even they are dumping on Biden now.
00:17:47.080Listen to them, and they're weeping, they're so sad, they're so sad, as they read the results of the latest, this was a focus group done, of Pennsylvania Democrats.
00:18:00.560Was Pennsylvania a state that's just a little bit, my home state, by the way, just a little bit important to the overall picture when it comes to choosing a little thing called the electoral college,
00:18:16.140the presidency of the presidency of the United States.
00:18:18.280Take a listen to, and remember, this is Democrats, what Democrats are saying in Pennsylvania about Joe Biden.
00:19:24.740Even Democrats are catching the freedom flu because they are seeing the absolute collapse of this administration on their watch.
00:19:36.300The one that they propped up, the one that they pushed into office, the one because they hated Trump so much that they would say anything, do anything, lie about anything about Trump and his supporters, about MAGA conservatives, populists.
00:19:52.700Folks, what we're seeing here is a populist uprising, a populist revolution.
00:20:42.700It is—and it will come as no surprise to anyone that the worst-kept secret in politics today is that Donald J. Trump will run for president in 2024, right?