California considers universal health care and doubling its taxes. An LA Times columnist makes the case for mocking unvaccinated Americans who die of COID. And Democrats insist on running against January 6th, 2021 in 2022. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. I protect my data with a VPN. So should you?
00:00:39.000There's a reason that leprechauns hide it at the end of the rainbow.
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00:01:33.000Alrighty, so I have to say that each and every day that I look at the news from California, I am just delighted by both the news and the fact that I no longer live there because they've just decided in California to go pedal to the metal.
00:01:44.000We are going to destroy this state as fast as humanly possible.
00:01:47.000According to KTLA.com, California lawmakers on Tuesday will start debating whether to create the nation's first universal healthcare system.
00:01:55.000A key measure of whether the proposal has the support to pass this year.
00:01:58.000Progressives have tried for years to create a government-funded universal healthcare system to replace the one that relies on private insurance.
00:02:04.000Voters overwhelmingly rejected a 1994 ballot initiative that would have created a universal healthcare system.
00:02:09.000Another attempt passed the state senate in 2017 but it died in the state assembly because there was no funding plan attached to it.
00:02:15.000This year, Democrats in the state assembly in California, where Democrats have a supermajority, have filed two bills.
00:02:20.000One that would create the universal healthcare system and set its rules.
00:02:23.000The other would lay out how to pay for everything by raising taxes on quote, some wealthier individuals and larger businesses.
00:02:28.000As we will see, they mean we are going to raise taxes massively on pretty much everyone and destroy all business in the state so we can pay for the healthcare for illegal immigrants, which is really what they are talking about in the state of California.
00:02:39.000Because the reality is that poverty stricken Californians who are American citizens are still eligible for things like Medicaid.
00:02:45.000Illegal immigrants are not eligible for things like Medicaid.
00:02:47.000However, California now wishes to extend quote-unquote universal health care to everyone.
00:02:51.000Now, there are other states that have experimented with this sort of stuff in the past.
00:02:55.000So, for example, Vermont tried universal health care years ago, right?
00:03:13.000That was in Vermont, which has seven people and an elk.
00:03:16.000So think about California, which has a population of 40 million people, and they're not talking about providing universal healthcare.
00:03:22.000What that means is that they're either going to have to pursue rationing or they're going to have to pursue massively higher taxes or both.
00:03:28.000That is what universal healthcare means in the state of California.
00:03:31.000Because right now, there's an undersupply of medical care in the state of California.
00:03:34.000If there's an undersupply and an overdemand, this means you either have to jog the supply by paying doctors a lot of money, or you have to artificially lower the demand by rationing care.
00:03:44.000Those are the only two things that you can do in order to make supply meet demand at the governmental level.
00:03:50.000The bill is getting a hearing on Tuesday before the Assembly Health Committee, where Chair Jim Wood, a Democrat from Santa Rosa, has already said he'll vote for it.
00:03:57.000Because the proposal was introduced last year, it has to pass the state assembly by the end of January to have a chance at becoming law this year.
00:04:03.000Universal healthcare has been debated for decades in the United States.
00:04:05.000State lawmakers in Vermont, of course, as I say, tried and failed to implement their own universal healthcare system.
00:04:10.000New York considered it, and then they were like, nah, but California?
00:04:14.000Supporters in California are adopting a divide and conquer strategy this year.
00:04:18.000They're trying to separate the idea of a universal healthcare system from how to pay for it, because the minute the Californians realize what exactly they would have to pay in order to ensure that illegal immigrants don't just go to the emergency room and clog up the emergency room, once they realize what the cost is on that, they're like, yeah, not so sure we're into this universal healthcare thing.
00:04:37.000Assemblyman Ash Kalra, Democrat from San Jose and the author of both proposals says, we can debate the policy.
00:04:42.000If someone says, how are you going to pay for it?
00:04:43.000Well, those are two different issues now.
00:04:45.000By the way, this is how Democrats think.
00:05:25.000In other words, you lead with the dependency and then you tax everybody in order to pay for the newly created dependency.
00:05:33.000Assembly Republican Leader Mary Waldron said, I'm in the Health Committee.
00:05:36.000I look forward to a robust discussion on the impacts of socialized medicine in California, including how much taxes will increase on the middle class.
00:05:43.000The plan for universal health care requires at least a two-thirds vote in both houses of the state legislature.
00:05:49.000After that, the voters have to approve it in a statewide election.
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00:07:55.000According to Jared Walczyk, writing for the Tax Foundation, a proposed constitutional amendment in California would increase taxes by $12,250 per household, roughly doubling the state's already high collections to fund that single-payer healthcare system.
00:08:09.000The top marginal rate on wage income would soar to 18%.
00:08:15.000Just to be clear, that means that if you're making above, say, $500,000 in the state of California, you'll be paying an 18% income rate on every dollar that you earn above that mark.
00:08:24.000So that means that on dollars you earn above that mark, you're going to pay that plus the, what is it, 36% top federal tax rate?
00:08:31.000So 54 cents out of every dollar you make above a certain point goes to the government and that doesn't include any of the other taxes.
00:08:37.000So it looks more like 65 cents out of every dollar going to a government of some kind.
00:08:42.000By the way, nationally, the median top marginal rate is 5.3%.
00:08:44.000You wonder why people like me fled California for Florida, where there is a 0% state tax rate?
00:08:50.000By the way, I told my wife when we left, when we left, the top marginal tax rate in the state of California is about 13%.
00:08:55.000I said, within three years, it'll be 20.
00:09:00.000Within three years, it will be 20 because the left cannot abide the idea that rich people are not paying for every single thing that they could ever possibly want.
00:10:05.000Surtax is atop the current individual income tax structure, beginning at $149,000 in income.
00:10:11.000A graduated rate payroll tax system with the top rate kicking in for employees with more than $49,990 in annual income and a gross receipts tax of 2.3%.
00:10:23.000This bill is so bizarre that if you have 50 employees, then you have to pay more in terms of payroll tax.
00:10:28.000If you have 49 employees, you don't have to pay more in payroll tax.
00:10:31.000What this means is that if you are paying your 50th employee a little bit under $50,000 a year, you would never hire that person because they're going to cost you about $90,000 a year.
00:10:41.000There are two states that currently have payroll taxes for purposes other than funding their unemployment insurance system.
00:10:45.000In Massachusetts, there's a recently adopted payroll tax of 0.68%.
00:10:49.000It's dropped to top that state's 5.0% flat individual income tax.
00:10:59.000And they add that to their income tax.
00:11:01.000Well actually, Nevada doesn't have an income tax.
00:11:03.000California would impose a payroll tax of up to 2.25% atop an individual income tax that already has a top marginal rate of 13.3% and they want to jog that to 18%.
00:11:14.000So as I say, the payroll tax exempts employers with fewer than 50 resident employees, punishing small businesses for expanding and creating a meaningful tax cliff.
00:11:22.000Imagine, for instance, the overly simplified hypothetical of a company with 49 employees making $80,000 each.
00:11:28.000At 49 employees, the company has no payroll tax burden.
00:11:31.000If you hire one additional employee, that generates a tax bill of $90,000 more than the employee's entire salary.
00:11:38.000A gross receipts tax, they're going to drive business out of state.
00:11:45.000Again, that top tax bracket in the state of California would kick in.
00:11:48.000That 18% tax bracket would kick in about $2.4 million.
00:11:52.000But if you are making above, say $299,000, actually $150,000 in the state of California, under the new plan, you would still be paying 12% income tax in the state of California.
00:12:08.000So all of this is crazy, but California is going to pursue it.
00:12:11.000And then they're shocked when people leave.
00:12:13.000CNBC points out yesterday, yeah, you can see just from the census how Americans are leaving high-tax states for low-tax states because it turns out people are economic actors.
00:12:21.000We've heard the anecdotes, now we have the actual numbers.
00:12:25.000More than 600,000 people leaving New York and California for lower taxed states during the pandemic.
00:13:32.000Silicon Valley is relocating to Austin and Nashville and Florida and everywhere else.
00:13:36.000Miami is now becoming a financial hub because everybody is getting the hell out of California and New York.
00:13:42.000And by the way, along with these universal health care proposals, there are some social proposals that are going to come into play.
00:13:46.000Because it turns out that when California provides quote unquote universal health care to everyone, it's going to come along with the social values California is famous for.
00:13:54.000You can already see this happening in Washington State.
00:13:56.000Our friend Jason Rantz over at 770KTTH, mynorthwest.com, he points out that Washington State now appears to allow minors to undergo life-changing gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.
00:14:06.000Under a new law, health insurers must cover gender-affirming care, including surgical treatments that were previously denied coverage.
00:14:12.000Democrats rejected a proposal to apply the new law to patients over 18 years old.
00:14:16.000That means that children as young as 13 years old can make the health care decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.
00:14:27.000If you don't think that's going to happen in California when they have quote-unquote universal healthcare run by the state, and they essentially get rid of private insurers altogether, which is what you sort of have to do, you are out of your mind.
00:14:36.000That's exactly what they are going to do.
00:14:38.000And then they wonder why the rush continues to red states.
00:16:47.000The left believes that when the government promises it can keep you safe from an epidemic virus, that means it can keep you safe from an epidemic virus.
00:17:00.000Now, again, if you die because you are unvaxxed, I think that you have made a generally poor decision because the vaccine does prevent hospitalization and death in large measure.
00:17:11.000It's not as effective as it was 10 months ago, that's why some people are getting boosted, but it does create T-cell and B-cell immunity, and that is a very good thing.
00:17:18.000However, should anyone be quote-unquote laughing at those who are unvaxxed who die?
00:17:23.000I mean, you don't even know why they're unvaxxed.
00:17:25.000Maybe they're unvaxxed because they had natural immunity.
00:17:27.000Maybe they died from a complicating condition.
00:17:29.000But according to Michael Hilsik, a business columnist for the LA Times, Mocking anti-vaxxers' COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes, but maybe necessary.
00:17:38.000That, by the way, is not the HTML address at the top of the column.
00:17:42.000The HTML address at the top of the column is, why shouldn't we dance on the graves of anti-vaxxers?
00:17:47.000The answer is because it makes you a crappy human being.
00:17:49.000I don't dance atop the graves of people who are obese who die of heart attacks.
00:17:53.000Why would you dance atop anybody's grave?
00:17:55.000Because they die of a health condition that's absurd.
00:17:58.000But for the left, the it of the left apparently thinks this is okay.
00:18:01.000So Michael Hiltzik says, How should we react to the deaths of the unvaccinated?
00:18:15.000When people die of health conditions, generally speaking, we should be sad.
00:18:19.000I mean, honestly, I see no distinction morally between people who are saying, like Michael Hiltzik, that you should be celebrating the death of the unvaccinated, and people in the 1980s who are saying that if somebody died of AIDS, it's probably because they deserved it.
00:18:36.000On the one hand, says Michael Hiltzik, a hallmark of civilized thought is the sense that every life is precious.
00:18:40.000On the other, those who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave, can be viewed as receiving their just desserts.
00:18:53.000That's even more true of those who not only refuse the vaccine for themselves, but publicly advocate that others do so.
00:18:58.000It has become common online and in social media for vaccine refusers and anti-vax advocates to become the target of ridicule after they come down with COVID-19, and especially if they die from it.
00:19:06.000Witness the subreddit Herman Cain Award, which Lily Boothborough of Slate identified in September as, quote, a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude.
00:19:14.000The site is named for the former Republican candidate for president who became one of the first political notables to succumb to the disease after publicly defying social distancing measures.
00:19:32.000I'm pretty sure that the question for Herman Cain was about social distancing.
00:19:36.000And social distancing, as it turns out, is kind of made up and arbitrary when it comes to that six foot rule.
00:19:42.000Particularly, like the CDC admits that.
00:19:45.000The issue of how to think about the deaths of the unvaccinated has been thrown into high relief locally by the case of Kelly Irnby, a prominent Orange County Republican and Deputy District Attorney who advocated against vaccine mandates and died of COVID around New Year's Day unvaccinated.
00:19:57.000Isn't there a difference between advocating against vaccine mandates and advocating against vaccines?
00:20:03.000The idea here from the left is that we have to expand the definition of anti-vaxxer to mean that if I don't think you should be forced to get the vaccine, this means I'm anti-vax, which is crazy.
00:20:12.000So, says Michael Hiltzik, I have a different take.
00:20:14.000To begin with, let's stipulate that not all people unvaccinated for COVID are alike.
00:20:17.000Some have remained unvaccinated for legitimate medical reasons.
00:20:20.000Some may have legitimately faced obstacles in getting to a vaccination site.
00:20:23.000Others may have refused the vaccine because they've been deceived.
00:20:26.000Finally, there are those who have voiced public opposition to the vaccines, not all of whom are unvaccinated themselves.
00:20:30.000Some have couched their opposition in policy terms.
00:21:02.000The vaccine is preventative against hospitalization and death.
00:21:04.000In large measure, that doesn't mean it's a quote-unquote cure.
00:21:08.000It should be clear that opposing VAX mandates as a substitute for opposing vaccination itself is a fundamentally incoherent position, says Michael Hiltzik.
00:21:15.000It's a little more than a garden-variety small-government Republican ideology.
00:21:25.000So the bottom line is, he's not actually saying that if you die unvaxxed, that's bad.
00:21:30.000He's saying if you oppose any element of my agenda, you deserve to die, which is totally crazy.
00:21:34.000He says, mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit before they perished of the disease, the dangers of which they belittled.
00:21:43.000You don't have to belittle the dangers of COVID in order to recognize that government crackdowns may be overbroad blunderbuss instruments that are violative of American freedoms.
00:21:52.000It's not wrong, says Michael Hiltzik, to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it's known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected themselves and others from the fate they succumb to.
00:22:05.000Unearned moral superiority is the name of the game.
00:22:07.000We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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00:22:18.000So if you're holding off on a mortgage refi in the hopes that the rates drop, you might want to rethink your strategy.
00:22:23.000I mean, the latest forecast projects a few interest rate hikes this year alone.
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00:23:15.000Their policies have failed, and so they are left with nothing but unearned moral superiority based in fiction.
00:23:19.000So, for example, Sunny Hostin of The View, who, you know, there's sort of a running gun battle on The View as to who is the stupidest person on The View.
00:23:26.000There are a lot of not particularly bright people on The View.
00:23:28.000Sunny Hostin, in my view, is the worst of the people on The View.
00:23:33.000She repeatedly repeats things that are untrue.
00:23:35.000She just says things straight out that are flat-out lies.
00:23:38.000Here she was yesterday trying to defend Justice Sonia Sotomayor's bizarre assertion that 100,000 children were in the hospital thanks to COVID, which is totally crazy.
00:23:46.000The actual number is like 3,500, and most of them are totally fine.
00:23:50.000Many of them are in the hospital with a broken leg and COVID.
00:23:53.000They're not in the hospital for COVID.
00:23:54.000Here is Sunny Hostin trying to make the case that Sonia Sotomayor is correct, that the left should get to cram down whatever policy they want on you based on pure fiction.
00:24:04.000She may not be accurate for current hospitalizations in children.
00:24:08.000She is correct that we have more children in the hospital now more than ever before.
00:24:15.000And it certainly reflects the current cases in children.
00:24:18.000Right now we have 82,843 children sick with COVID.
00:24:19.000More than 1,000 children have died from the virus.
00:24:37.000And so while fewer than 83,000 kids have been hospitalized with the virus, we have kids sick with COVID more than we ever have before.
00:24:44.000And so that's a real thing and those are real numbers.
00:24:47.000Okay, but so Tim Mayer did not cite real numbers.
00:24:50.000And by the way, the current death count for kids under the age of 18 remains below 700 for two years of pandemic.
00:24:58.000And new studies suggest that for kids hospitalized between the ages of 12 and 17, 66% of them There are significant underlying conditions that contribute to whether or not you are going to die of COVID.
00:25:09.000According to the CDC itself, quote, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate for about 5% of deaths.
00:25:17.000For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 4.0 additional conditions or causes per death.
00:25:27.000So, again, the sort of panic-stricken notions of the left are designed to suggest that you are bad if you oppose them, which is why, again, there is no case anymore for the Biden administration pushing forward with its VAX mandate.
00:25:48.000Now you on an individual level, as I've said, I'm going to say it again, you on an individual level, if you're above the age of 18, the chances that you're going to get seriously ill or die from COVID are still better than the chances you're going to get seriously ill or die from the vaccine, absent some sort of complicating factor.
00:26:03.000Which is why you should talk to your doctor.
00:26:05.000Your doctor will probably recommend that you get the vaccine.
00:26:08.000That does not mean that the federal government has the power through OSHA, of all things, to mandate that you get a vaccine that is predominantly geared toward protecting you, not toward protecting others.
00:26:19.000Nonetheless, the bulk of the Biden vaccine mandate has now taken effect, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:26:24.000As of January 10th, all employers with more than 100 employees must have a procedure in place to ensure employees are vaccinated and keep track of workers' vaccination status.
00:26:33.000Employers must also track whether their workers are infected and keep those who test positive away from work.
00:26:37.000Workers who are not vaccinated must wear a mask while indoors.
00:26:40.000The Labor Department in December gave employers an extra month to require that unvaccinated employees take weekly COVID-19 tests.
00:26:48.000The rule covers about 84 million workers.
00:26:49.000We are still awaiting the outcome of the Supreme Court case that was heard on Friday.
00:26:54.000Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to maintain that people will die if the vaccine mandate is struck down.
00:26:58.000Well, I'm going to need some evidence that people are going to die if the vaccine mandate is struck down, given the fact that everyone is associating outside of work also.
00:27:05.000These people act like the only place you ever see anybody else is inside work.
00:27:10.000And that the vaccine mandate inside work is going to stop transmission, which of course is very silly.
00:27:19.000Hopefully the plan is that the Supreme Court will recognize that the federal government, the Biden administration, has the authority to require these vaccines.
00:27:39.000And if they don't, well, I think that will be on their conscience.
00:27:42.000I think there's some clear authority, legal authority, for us to move forward as we have proposed, both for the private sector workforce and for the health care workforce.
00:27:52.000And we understand that if we don't get people vaccinated and covered this way, people will die.
00:27:58.000And if you're a health care worker, for sure.
00:28:04.000The more basic question here is, if everybody is going to get Omicron anyway, why are we actually attempting to prevent the spread?
00:28:10.000This is a serious question and we should think it through logically.
00:28:13.000If the argument is that you should get vaccinated, I generally agree.
00:28:16.000For the third time in this particular episode, I totally agree with that.
00:28:19.000However, if Omicron is making its way around, why should we be attempting to shield you from getting Omicron at all, given the fact that there could be future variants that are significantly more deadly?
00:28:56.000Here's a risk that policymakers in every country should appreciate.
00:28:59.000Policies designed to slow the spread of Omicron may end up creating a super-variant that is more infectious, more virulent, more resistant to vaccines, which would be a man-made disaster.
00:29:07.000To minimize that risk, policymakers must tolerate the rapid spread of milder variants.
00:29:11.000This will require difficult trade-offs, but it will save lives in the long run.
00:29:14.000We should end mask mandates and social distancing in most settings, not because they don't slow the spread, the usual argument against such measures, but because they probably do.
00:29:22.000So either way, you probably shouldn't be engaging in these sorts of measures, say the Ramaswamis.
00:29:28.000If they don't slow the spread, then there's no reason for them.
00:29:30.000And if they do slow the spread, Then what exactly are you waiting for?
00:29:35.000Are you waiting for a new variant that's going to become even milder?
00:29:37.000Because that's taking an awful chance, considering that Omicron is significantly milder than Delta in the first place.
00:29:41.000By the way, the number of cases, like 1.5 million cases in the United States per day at this point, let me just point out, that's way too low.
00:29:50.000I know a lot of people who have not tested positive for COVID who almost certainly have COVID.
00:29:54.000And that does not mean that they are out there killing everybody.
00:29:57.000It just means everybody's getting Omicron.
00:29:59.000Say the Ramaswamis to understand why, first consider an important scientific distinction between antigenic drift and antigenic shift.
00:30:06.000Antigens are molecules, such as the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, that an immune system detects as foreign.
00:30:11.000The host immune system then mounts a response.
00:30:13.000Antigenic drift describes the process by which a single-point mutation randomly occurs during the viral replication process.
00:30:19.000The result is minor alterations to antigens like the spike protein.
00:30:23.000If a point mutation makes the virus less likely to survive, that variant gradually dies off.
00:30:27.000But if the mutation confers an incremental survival advantage, say the ability to spread more quickly from one cell to another, that strain becomes more likely to spread through the population.
00:30:36.000Antigenic drift is a gradual, varying process.
00:30:39.000A single point mutation alters one peptide or building block of a larger protein.
00:30:43.000Those with immunity against a prior strain generally enjoy at least partial immunity against drifted variants.
00:30:49.000Each time an immune host is exposed to a slightly different antigenic variant, the host can tweak its immune response without becoming severely ill.
00:30:55.000And the more similar the new strain is to the last version, the less risky that strain will be to the host.
00:31:00.000By contrast, antigenic shift refers to a discontinuous quantum leap from one antigen or set of antigens to a very different antigen.
00:31:07.000New viral strains, such as those that jump one species to another, tend to emerge from antigenic shift.
00:31:12.000The biological causes of antigenic shift are often different from those of drift.
00:31:16.000For example, the physical swap of whole sections of the genome leads to more significant changes to viral genes than those caused by individual point mutations.
00:31:25.000How many unique point mutations collectively constitute an antigenic shift, especially when human hosts are deprived of opportunities to update their immune response to drifted variants?
00:31:34.000Here's the key. A vaccinated and naturally immune people can revamp their immune response to new viral strains created by antigenic drift. But social distancing and masking increase the risk of vaccine-resistant strains from antigenic shift by minimizing opportunities for the vaccinated and naturally immune to tailor their immune responses through periodic exposures to incrementally drifted variants. So to simplify, what they are saying is that there are new variants.
00:31:58.000If you are exposed to these new variants, your body fights them off.
00:32:00.000If you are never exposed to new variants, then this means that after several changes, you're going to get a variant that is so different from the original variant, your body doesn't know how to fight it off.
00:32:09.000So maybe we should stop focusing on preventing transmission, and we should start focusing, as always, on hospitalization and death.
00:32:15.000And if those numbers remain low, and if we are protecting and shielding the most vulnerable, there's not much else that we should be doing.
00:32:24.000Say the Ramaswamis, the absolute risk of a more virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 is low.
00:32:28.000That's because viruses care more about propagating themselves than about killing the host.
00:32:31.000Most viruses evolve to become more infectious and less virulent, but that's only a rule of thumb, not a biological law.
00:32:38.000Mask mandates and social distancing measures will have created fertile ground for new variants that evade vaccination even more effectively.
00:32:44.000Significant antigenic shifts may create new strains that are increasingly difficult to target with vaccines at all.
00:32:48.000There are no vaccines for many viruses, despite decades of efforts to develop them.
00:32:52.000And by the way, you can see how this is true from the death stats in South Africa and the death stats in Sweden.
00:32:58.000South Africa had very little vaccination, but everyone got Delta.
00:33:01.000And then when Omicron hit, no one died.
00:33:03.000Sweden had a shield and protect strategy for the elderly and the vulnerable.
00:33:07.000And then everybody else was allowed to go live their life.
00:33:39.000Who's on top of this stuff on Twitter.
00:33:41.000He put out a chart demonstrating what the hospitalizations look like.
00:33:45.000Basically, hospitalizations, total staffed inpatient beds, fairly even and have been since September of 2020.
00:33:52.000And as you will see, there's an increase in the number of confirmed COVID patients, but there's really not a massive increase in the number of inpatient beds used.
00:34:01.000It's been pretty stable all the way through the pandemic.
00:34:05.000So this belief that we are in the midst of a massive hospital shortage, if it is, that's only because the Biden-Vaxx mandates have basically driven healthcare workers out of the business.
00:34:14.000According to the Wall Street Journal, rising numbers of nurses and other critical healthcare workers are calling in sick across the United States due to COVID-19, forcing hospitals to cut capacity just as the Omicron variant sends them more patients.
00:34:25.000Hospitals are leaving beds empty because the facilities don't have enough staffers to safely care for the patients.
00:34:31.000Staff shortages prompted Mass General Brigham Hospital in Boston to keep 83 beds empty on Friday.
00:34:36.000So, I said on Fox News, now it's ripped up and down by media matters, that the Biden-Vaxx mandates and the attempt to test all of your healthcare employees is leading to less healthcare, which is leading to less capacity.
00:34:49.000Limiting capacity is a last resort for hospitals, doctor and healthcare officials say.
00:34:53.000The facilities do it to preserve proper care and safety for current patients.
00:34:56.000That means leaving people in limbo in emergency rooms, making ambulances wait, and postponing treatment for cancer, heart disease, and other conditions, all to prevent the transmission of a very, very mild variant of COVID.
00:35:10.000Again, and the federal government's response here is completely confused and confusing.
00:35:15.000Now, by the way, the Pfizer CEO is admitting that the two COVID vaccine doses are quote-unquote not enough for Omicron.
00:35:21.000What he means by that is that they are not preventing infection, which we already know.
00:35:26.000Real-world data from the UK has found the two vaccine doses are 52% effective at preventing hospitalization 25 weeks after receiving the second shot.
00:35:34.000Two doses of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing infection from Omicron 20 weeks after the second dose.
00:36:04.000and less protection against the infection.
00:36:08.000Okay, so again, the federal government response here is a complete mess.
00:36:14.000Yesterday, Peter Doocy asked Jen Psaki, you guys keep saying this is a pandemic and the unvaccinated.
00:36:17.000I've noticed that everyone is getting this, including you who are triple vaxxed.
00:36:21.000I understand that the science says that vaccines prevent death.
00:36:27.000But I'm triple vaxxed, still got COVID.
00:36:31.000You're triple vaxxed, still got COVID.
00:36:33.000Why is the president still referring to this as a pandemic of the unvaccinated?
00:36:40.000Okay, and she says, well, you know, because the unvaccinated are the ones who are going to the hospital, which is true.
00:36:44.000But that's not changed the fact that the infections are being carried forward by everyone, by everyone.
00:36:49.000Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to the Biden administration's response to all of this, which is throw up your hands and start talking about election law or something.
00:36:56.000We'll get to that in just one moment first.
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00:38:02.000Alrighty, we'll get to more in just one second.
00:38:04.000As everybody knows right now, The Daily Wire is rapidly expanding into entertainment.
00:38:07.000With that expansion, we are searching for a Council of Business and Legal Affairs to join our legal team in Nashville as our in-house legal expert on the film and television industry.
00:38:15.000The Council of Business and Legal Affairs will manage all legal aspects of The Daily Wire's entertainment content, including development, acquisition, production, and finance, as well as production, legal, and intellectual property work for all of The Daily Wire's shows.
00:38:27.000We need someone with eight plus years of experience in the film and TV industry.
00:38:30.000This is a perfect opportunity for an entertainment lawyer who is ready to get out of Hollywood's woke groupthink.
00:38:36.000To apply for that opportunity and to view a full list of our current openings at Daily Wire, because we are a fast growing company, please visit dailywire.com slash careers.
00:38:44.000Also, if you haven't heard of Jonathan Isaac yet, you might be living under a rock because Jonathan Isaac is awesome.
00:38:49.000He's the NBA star who stood strong with his values while everyone else in the NBA was kneeling for the lie that America was systemically racist and evil.
00:38:57.000He would not kneel with the rest of his teammates.
00:38:59.000He faced heavy criticism from the media for his views on social issues and vaccines over the past few years, which is why I'm so excited to announce he has decided to write a book with The Daily Wire.
00:39:08.000You should buy the book and show him your support.
00:39:10.000Jonathan's book will be about the rise of his basketball career, his journey into faith, his strength to stand alone in the face of immense pressure.
00:39:32.000I play for the Orlando Magic, and I'm writing a book with The Daily Wire.
00:39:39.000Courage does not mean the absence of fear.
00:39:42.000And in today's day, there are so many things that you can be afraid of facing because of believing what you believe or deciding to stand for what you believe in.
00:39:51.000And I believe this book gives you a blueprint of my story of how crisis made the difference in my life.
00:39:56.000from a young kid who struggled with fear, anxiety, self-insecurity, to a man willing to stand for what he believes in.
00:40:03.000Jonathan's book will be one of the very first under the Daily Wire's new publishing arm, DW Books.
00:40:19.000We couldn't be happier to have him on board.
00:40:20.000The book is available for pre-order right now at Amazon, so reserve your copy today.
00:40:24.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:40:27.000Well, Joe Biden's administration is on the rocks.
00:40:35.000They've got millions of new cases of Omicron.
00:40:38.000They have no way of handling it because they boxed themselves in.
00:40:41.000And their message on inflation continues to be so bad that even the Washington Post editorial board is like, guys, what are you talking about?
00:40:48.000Here is the Washington Post editorial board today.
00:40:49.000Quote, President Biden is facing mounting criticism for inflation's rise to its highest level since 1982.
00:40:55.000Unfortunately, the White House's latest response is to blame greedy businesses.
00:40:59.000Economists across the political spectrum are rightly calling out the White House for this foolishness.
00:41:03.000Even some within the White House are questioning this approach, The Post reports.
00:41:06.000Inflation, which was relatively low for decades, did not suddenly rise in recent months because businesses decided now was their ideal time to squeeze their customers.
00:41:14.000What actually happened is that demand soared for many products as the economy recovered.
00:41:18.000Often there were not enough products to meet it.
00:41:20.000In a surprise to many, consumers kept buying goods like cars and washing machines even at higher prices.
00:41:24.000What the White House is really struggling with is an inflation messaging problem.
00:41:27.000Officials' initial insistence that higher prices would be short-lived flopped as the annual inflation has now been about 5% since June.
00:41:35.000The reality is that the best tool the nation has to fight inflation is the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.
00:41:40.000But the Fed operates independently from the White House.
00:41:42.000Biden could help by finally announcing his nominees for the three seats on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors.
00:41:47.000They're saying that we should destroy the Federal Reserve's independence in order to save Joe Biden.
00:41:51.000But what they really mean is that Joe Biden is incredibly bad at this job.
00:41:53.000So what this means is that Joe Biden now has to rely on a secondary message for 2022, and so do the Democrats.
00:41:59.000That secondary message is Republicans are trying to stymie the vote.
00:42:28.000And so for all the people on the left who keep saying that Donald Trump is propagating the big lie by talking about electoral fraud and the notion that he won the 2020 election, it is a much bigger lie when you suggest that there are millions of people being disenfranchised at the ballot box.
00:42:49.000She basically makes the argument that conservatives, Republicans, they ought to be treated like terrorists.
00:42:52.000She says January 6th was a terror attack.
00:42:54.000And then she also says that Republicans in the states who are pursuing voter verification methods, they are just a continuation of the terror attacks of January 6th.
00:43:43.000Like, these are the people who run our country.
00:43:45.000Here is Nancy Pelosi, crazy Nancy Pelosi, who looks like a marionette, like an Edgar Bergen marionette, talking about how you are basically a terrorist if you support voter ID.
00:43:56.000There's nothing more important for us to do than protect our Constitution and our democracy.
00:44:03.000What the Republicans are doing across the country is really a legislative continuation of what they did on January 6th, which is to undermine our democracy.
00:44:16.000It's a legislative continuation of January 6th undermining our democracy is the line.
00:44:20.000So this is the line they're going to carry into 2022.
00:45:02.000This is about not wanting us to be able to participate in the policies that govern this country.
00:45:11.000It's about racism and exclusion, and also you should confront people you don't like in parking lots and scream at them.
00:45:17.000Also, I will admit that I was not expecting the John Lennon 1980s style.
00:45:22.000Like, John Lennon was dead by that point, but if he had blown up those sunglasses, the crazy sunglasses, and made them very large, and plunked them down on Maxine Waters, that would have been the look.
00:45:37.000He's not demonstrating his own incompetence.
00:45:38.000He's demonstrating full-scale his own incompetence.
00:45:41.000The Senate majority leader is going to try to vote on the filibuster and see if Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona and Joe Manchin are going to kill the filibuster on behalf of a voting rights bill that does not have majority support.
00:45:56.000That he's been obstructed by Republicans when he can't even get his own Democrats on board?
00:46:01.000Seriously, they are so incompetent and they are so boxed in, and 2022 is going to be so ugly for them until they are left merely with dreams of universal health care and a hatred for those who don't think like them.
00:46:11.000If that's your pitch, you're going to get skunked come November.
00:46:14.000All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
00:46:16.000Coming up soon is the Matt Walsh Show.