Ep. 1269 - How Government ‘Diversity’ Initiatives Are Leading Us To A Major Airline Disaster
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per Minute
168.22969
Summary
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the left has lost their mind, making abortion their official sacrament. But the grassroots pro-life efforts, which are now more important than ever, are booming. Despite the narrative, pro-lifers have not gone away. In fact, they have increased in number.
Transcript
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Today on The Matt Wall Show, you probably have not heard about it, but we have come
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very close to some major airplane disasters recently, and the government's diversity
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initiatives have a lot to do with it. Also, the media smeared a young child as racist for wearing
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an Indian headdress. Turns out the kid is Native American. Plus, the left is very upset about our
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new sports comedy. We'll look at some of their reactions today. And a new TikTok campaign urges
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people to dump the water out of their water bottles so that the oceans don't dry up. This
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is a real concern that some people really have. We'll talk about all that and more today on The
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the left has lost their mind, making abortion their official sacrament. But the grassroots
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pro-life efforts, which are now more important than ever, are booming. Despite the narrative,
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pro-lifers have not gone away. In fact, they've increased in number. One of the efforts I support
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is 40 Days for Life because they're changing hearts and minds in blue pro-abortion states.
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With one million volunteers in 1,600 cities, 40 Days for Life holds peaceful vigils outside
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abortion facilities. 40 Days for Life has opened a record number of locations since Roe was overturned,
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and they've grown in volunteers. The success has come with new unwanted attention, though,
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from the DOJ. 40 Days for Life just made national headlines because they're suing the DOJ on behalf
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of their volunteer, Mark Houck, who had his house raided by the FBI. They're going on offense against
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our compromised FBI and DOJ. You can help them fight their ongoing legal battles and pursue
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free speech for their volunteers, including Mark Houck, by giving a tax-deductible gift of any amount
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at 40daysforlife.com. That's 40daysforlife.com. So here's an interesting thought experiment. Imagine
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one of your friends comes up to you with a big smile on his face and tells you that he just got
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a brand new job. And he's vague on the specifics, but he says it's a federal government job and it
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pays six figures. It didn't require any kind of bachelor or associate degree or a physical fitness
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test or anything like that. But your friend does tell you that as part of the application process,
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he had to complete a couple of computer exams. And then as the conversation goes on, your friend
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recounts a few of the questions from one of those exams. He tells you the questions went something
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like this, quote, would more classmates remember you as humble or dominant? What age did you first
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start making money? How many high school sports did you participate in? At this point, you're thinking
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to yourself, that's a little bit odd. What kind of job would ask questions like this? It all sounds
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kind of dumb and unserious. So your friend reassures you that he had to complete a second
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test as well. And the second test asked slightly more challenging questions like, what's the
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difference between the numbers eight and six? And if you answered two, then congratulations,
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you could also pass this test and get this job. Now, at this point, if you had to guess what job
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your friend just landed, what guess would you make? Based on all the information provided and
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knowing this is a government job, what would you think? Well, you'd probably make some obvious
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assumptions right away. You'd think at a minimum that whatever job your friend is gunning for in
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the federal government, it can't be that important. And indeed, there are a lot of very unimportant
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jobs in the federal government, jobs that were made for incompetent and unimpressive people.
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I mean, the government kind of exists to provide jobs for those sorts of people. So
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you might think, well, maybe it's one of those jobs. Maybe your friend got a gig in
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the Department of Education, for example, or the IRS. That would make sense.
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But then imagine that your friend informs you that he is not working in some frivolous government
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agency that contributes nothing of value to humanity. Imagine he tells you that, in fact,
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he applied to be an air traffic controller. And after just a few months of training, very soon,
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he's probably going to be directing planes with hundreds of people on board.
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This may be a hypothetical thought experiment, but it is very much grounded in reality. I didn't make up
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any of the test questions I mentioned earlier. They're all based on real air traffic control
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exams or practice exams. Now, 10 years ago, this little hypothetical scenario would have been
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unthinkable. But everything changed very quickly in 2013 when the Obama administration embarked on
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a plan to diversify the ranks of air traffic controllers. Obama's FAA chief at the time announced
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that he intended to transform the agency, which includes air traffic control, into a, quote,
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more diverse workplace. As part of that plan, air traffic controllers no longer needed to take a
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more demanding cognitive assessment before being hired. Instead, all they needed was a high school
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diploma and the ability to speak English and apparently to do very basic math that, like,
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a third grader could do. All the tests were dumbed down to the point of being absurd and pointless.
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Now, the result over the past decade has been exactly what you would expect, even if you haven't
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heard about this. The number of air traffic controllers who are not white men has significantly
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increased, while the number of white men has decreased. That was the whole idea, according
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to the FAA. This is what they tell us. Coincidentally, so have the number of near collisions involving
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commercial airlines. Those have increased significantly. According to a database maintained by NASA,
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which relies on data self-reported by pilots, the number of near misses has more than doubled
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over the past 10 years. In just the past year, there have been more than 300 near misses involving
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commercial airlines, averaging more than five per week. And just to emphasize that point again,
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they diversify the FAA and near misses immediately doubled. Now, correlation does not prove causation,
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but it can point towards it. And in this case, there is a giant glowing sign pointing in that direction.
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Of course, only a handful of these incidents receive any major media attention, so it's easy
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to underestimate the scale of the problem. No matter what social media platforms you frequent,
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you don't really hear a lot about a lot of this. And that's why, in a moment, I'm going to go through
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some of the near misses that have gotten very little coverage. But I'll start with an incident that did
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get some attention from the national news media, because it helps put the broader problem into some
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context. So this incident happened in July, when air traffic controllers put two aircraft,
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an Allegiant air passenger plane and a Gulfstream jet on a collision course shortly after the
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Allegiant plane had taken off from Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood International Airport. And here's how
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that all played out. Watch. The FAA and NTSB are investigating a very close call in the skies over
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South Florida, an Allegiant Airlines plane and a private jet forced to take evasive action to avoid a
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collision at 23,000 feet. Here's Tom Costello. Allegiant air 485 had just taken off from Fort
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Lauderdale, headed for Lexington, Kentucky. When it happened, the pilot forced to make a sudden
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extreme climb 600 feet in seconds to avoid another plane, throwing flight attendants to the floor and
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terrifying passengers, including Jerrica Thacker and her family flying to Kentucky after a Caribbean cruise.
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It was honestly the scariest thing I've ever been through. It felt like when you go on the top of
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a roller coaster and you go straight down from the highest point. The FAA says it happened when
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controllers put the Allegiant flight and a Gulfstream business jet on intersecting routes, both at 23,000
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feet. That's when both planes collision avoidance warnings known as TCAS activated, ordering the
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Allegiant pilot to immediately climb and the Gulfstream pilot to descend. If not for TCAS,
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these airplanes would have gotten very, very, very close or have potentially collided.
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Now, the report goes on to mention that the pilot's last minute evasive maneuver was so extreme that it
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sent one flight attendant to the hospital. That's how close these things got. And if there's anything
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reassuring in that clip, something that might make you feel a little better if you, like me, plan on
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boarding a plane in the near future, it's that the automated software called TCAS saved the day.
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This is a system that relies on transponders that are installed on all domestic aircraft. And as you
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heard, it's capable of sounding an alarm in the cockpit and directing planes away from one another if
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there's a risk of an imminent collision. It's a fail safe for when air traffic controllers mess up
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and command planes to fly into one another. But TCAS isn't perfect. It certainly doesn't prevent all
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midair collisions. In 2002, two passenger jets collided over Germany because one pilot followed TCAS while
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another listened to the air traffic controller who incidentally was later murdered by a family
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member of one of the passengers. That's a whole story. In fact, just this year, TCAS failed to
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prevent a midair collision at an international airport in this country, Houston Hobby. And
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fortunately and miraculously, nobody died as a result of that collision, but it was very close
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to being disastrous, as you can imagine. And that incident illustrates the obvious, which is that
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a fail safe is just that. It's a fail safe. It's not capable of solving all potential problems. It's
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not capable of solving all midair collisions, nor is it designed to. Especially when planes are close
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to the ground and covering a lot of ground very quickly in close proximity to one another, things
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can happen too quickly for the system to respond. And those are the kinds of incidents that are
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happening more and more often, I'm afraid to report. A month ago at Portland International Airport,
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for example, an Alaska Airlines jet turned directly into the path of a departing SkyWest airliner.
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Air traffic controllers didn't notice this until the planes were right on top of each other.
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And in that case, the Alaska plane was trying to land, but it had to execute a go around because of
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high winds. And around the same time, the air traffic controller was telling a departing SkyWest
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plane to turn right. But for some reason, the Alaska pilot responds to that command and he turns right
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into the path of the SkyWest plane. The controller completely misses this until pretty much the last
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possible moment. Radar data shows that the planes came within 250 feet vertically and less than 2,000
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feet horizontally, which is very, very close in plane terms. And even closer near miss took place in
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August at San Diego International Airport. Controllers cleared a private plane to land right on top of a
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Southwest plane. And they noticed their mistake just before the private plane hit the Southwest jet
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on the runway. The plane got within 100 feet of the Southwest passenger jet. Now, there's no TCAS
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system that could prevent something like that either. If the visibility had been worse and if the
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controllers didn't notice the problem, there would have been a collision and hundreds of people would
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likely be dead. You can go to YouTube and find many clips showing these near misses. Most of them don't
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translate well for the audio podcast listeners, so we're not going to play them here. But I do want to
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show you one for those who can see the visuals. And this may be the most, one of the most shocking
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recent examples. It's from JFK Airport in New York City earlier this month, which is one of the busiest
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airports in the world. An American Airlines passenger jet was lining up for its approach when air traffic
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controllers told a small private plane to line up for a parallel runway. But the private plane didn't follow
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that instruction. Instead, it made a beeline for the same runway the American Airlines plane was going
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for. At no point in this process did controllers notice the problem. They also didn't notice that
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the private planes didn't read back the right clearance. Instead, the only person who noticed
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anything wrong were the pilots of the American Airlines jet when the private plane was already right
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Good speed 235, turn left heading 260 NSF 22 right, localizer.
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American 28 maintain 170 knots, 60ME towers 19-1.
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He's landing in the parallel, American 28, 22 right.
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Head speed 235 flat and 180, so it appears you joined 22 left.
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We're breaking off for American 28, he's right above us.
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Yeah, we were watching on the scope, but it got a little tight.
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It got way too tight. If we hadn't bailed out, we would have collided.
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So if we hadn't bailed out, we would have collided, is what's said there.
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And that's what the pilot of an American Airlines Airbus said just a couple of weeks ago at JFK Airport.
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There was apparently no TCAS instruction to take evasive action.
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If there had been, the pilots should have called it out, but they didn't.
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And one of the pilots just looked out of his window, or maybe saw something on the screen,
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and realized the plane was coming right for him, and he realized it just in time to save a lot of lives.
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There's the Southwest Airlines flight on July 2nd, which had to abort its landing at New Orleans International Airport
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because of a Delta plane that was taking off from the same runway.
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The passenger planes came within seconds of hitting each other.
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And that same month, an American Airlines plane nearly crashed into a Frontier Airlines jet on takeoff
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because nobody, including ground controllers, noticed that the nose of the Frontier Airlines jet
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Earlier this year, in February, an air traffic controller routed a Spirits airline flight
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within 200 vertical feet and 700 horizontal feet of a cargo plane.
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Now, it's true that we can't blame this dramatic rise of near misses solely on diversity and equity efforts.
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You know, single variable explanations are rarely sufficient,
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especially when you have a complex issue like this.
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For one thing, when Ronald Reagan fired more than 10,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike
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back in the 80s in violation of federal law, a bunch of new controllers needed to be hired.
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And many of those controllers recently hit retirement age all at the same time,
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which creates a staffing crunch, and that's also part of the issue.
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It's been obvious that it would happen since Reagan fired the controllers more than four decades ago.
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The problem is that instead of providing incentives for competent people to become air traffic controllers,
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say, by raising the salary, providing more training, offering better hours, you know, those sorts of things,
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the government chose to do what it always does.
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It drastically lowered the standards in the name of equity.
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And the Biden administration is still proud of this.
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Right now, on the FAA's website, you'll find this line.
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Quote, the mission of the FAA involves securing the skies of a diverse nation.
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It only makes sense that the workforce responsible for that mission reflects the nation that it serves.
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The job of the FAA and air traffic control is preventing catastrophic accidents where a lot of people die.
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It doesn't matter what the workforce looks like.
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Everybody knows this because deep down, everybody knows that diversity doesn't actually matter.
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And that's why no passenger on a plane has ever cared in the slightest about the racial makeup of the guys in the cockpit
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Just like nobody's ever cared about the diversity of fire departments when they're trapped in a burning building.
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Nobody's ever cared about diversity among brain surgeons when they have a tumor that needs to be removed.
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When it comes down to it, when it really matters, diversity doesn't matter.
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But unfortunately, that's what the FAA has been focused on lately.
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Just a year ago, the FAA launched yet another initiative to diversify the ranks of air traffic controllers,
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meaning to hire people based on qualities other than competence.
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The agency says in a press release that, quote,
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building on last year's successful campaign to receive more applications from women and other underrepresented groups,
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the FAA will again work with diverse organizations, host Instagram Live conversations,
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So that's what the FAA is working on right now as we have this catastrophic rise in near misses at airports and in the skies.
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They're working on getting more women and underrepresented groups by partnering with Instagram influencers.
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So they want to get people, you know, into the towers, air traffic control.
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They want to get the sorts of people who are listening to Instagram influencers.
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What's not clear is whether we'll be getting a workforce that's capable of preventing two jetliners full of passengers
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from colliding with one another while they're each going in excess of 500 miles an hour.
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because every single week we're discovering that the existing crop of air traffic controllers is barely capable of doing that.
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Now, keep in mind, this is all happening even as airlines also begin their own quest to add more equity to their ranks.
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It was only a couple of years ago that United Airlines pledged to diversify its pilots,
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So very soon we will have diverse air traffic controllers directing diverse airline pilots
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who have all been hired for reasons other than their skill and competence while thousands of lives hang in the balance.
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And inevitably, many are lost in the process because that's where this will go.
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Now, you often hear aviation experts say that nothing ever gets fixed until a lot of people die,
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which is not a thought that will help cure your anxiety about flying, but it's true.
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It's what they say, and it's been true throughout the history of aviation.
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Planes didn't have wind shear detectors until commercial airliners started crashing in bad weather,
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TCAS wasn't mandatory until there were a lot of mid-air collisions.
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Pilots didn't have to de-ice until an Air Florida plane nosedived into the Potomac
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after sitting for too long on the tarmac on a snowy day.
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What this means is that if history is any guide,
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soon enough we may finally start to get some solutions to the air traffic control debacle
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we're seeing right now all over the country, from Portland to San Diego to New Orleans to New York,
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pretty much every other major metropolitan area in the country.
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And that's because, as problematic as it may be for the Biden administration's equity agenda,
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we're closer than we've been in more than a decade to a disaster of truly historic proportions.
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Like, it is going to happen, and probably soon.
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And then, and only then, when it's too late, will anything be done about the problem.
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So here's an update on a story that we closed with yesterday.
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Says, a sports reporter who accused a young Chiefs fan of racism against both black people and Native Americans
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has learned that not only was the child not wearing blackface, but he is a Chumash Indian to boot.
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Deadspin reporter Karan Phillips accused Holden Armenta of mocking black people after seeing a picture in profile,
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which did not show the half of his face painted in red of his beloved football team.
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Phillips also slammed Holden's Native American headdress and his tomahawk chop gesture,
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claiming the little boy had found a way to hate black people and Native Americans at the same time.
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This evening, it emerged that the youngster has Native American heritage with a grandfather serving on the
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and that the team's multi-ethnic squad had enthusiastically joined in with Holden's Indian chopping gesture.
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So there's a video of, you know, there's more video of this, the kid at the game,
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and in one of them, he's doing the hand chopping gesture, and he's like in the front row.
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And so there's a lot of the football players that are on the sideline, and they see him doing it, and they join in.
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And these are also, by the way, most of them black players.
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And they see the kid in the face paint, and they don't start weeping because of how racist it is.
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Instead, they say, oh, this is fun. The kid is here. It's great.
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So this young boy was defamed as a racist for wearing blackface and an Indian headdress.
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But it turns out, well, he was not wearing blackface, obviously, and he's actually Native American by heritage,
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which is all just more ammo that I desperately hope is used in court to sue and bankrupt the parasitic fake journalist who wrote the article.
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You know, I know it's easy to say, but if this was my kid, you know, I would make it my mission in life to ruin this man's life.
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Like, I want him to wake up every day for the rest of his life regretting that one article.
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I want the first thought in his head every day when he wakes up, and every night when he goes to bed,
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I want the first and last thought to be, man, I wish I hadn't written that.
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That's what I would do. It's what needs to happen to these people.
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They are pure evil. They truly are. They need to pay, literally.
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This is, you know, writing a defamatory hit piece on, like, a five-year-old is, you know,
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it's not like one of those things that maybe you might do as a journalist that's just, like, sort of vaguely over the line.
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There's a gray area, and, you know, you went a little bit too far or whatever.
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There might be situations like that, but this is not that.
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This is so far over the line that when you turn back, you can't even see the line anymore.
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This is just an evil person, the person who wrote this article, who needs to pay dearly for it.
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You're going to continue having these parasites who make money by trying to destroy the lives of random, innocent people for no reason.
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They're going to continue doing it until they pay, until they are made to suffer serious consequences.
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Now, with that said, I also wanted to make a point here that people are making a big deal out of the fact that the kid is Native American, apparently.
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But, and yeah, like I said, in the defamation lawsuit, which I certainly hope is filed, that I think fact will be salient.
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Okay, like, it doesn't make this any more outrageous.
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Okay, it's not like, if you're a rational person, it's not like you're going to see the hit piece yesterday, assuming it's a white kid, and say, oh yeah, well, that was a good article.
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And then find out that he has a Native American grandfather and say, well, never mind, this is totally wrong.
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It was already as outrageous as it could possibly be.
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So, this shouldn't be a thing where we say, oh, you called the child racist, but he's not white, so you're wrong.
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It wouldn't make it any better if he was white.
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But an Indian headdress, here's the point, an Indian headdress on a white child is just as innocuous and innocent and inoffensive as an Indian headdress on a child with Native American ancestry.
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There's no difference, actually, for normal people.
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And that's even leaving aside the fact that if the child is American and he was born here and he's American and his family's American, then he's already Native American.
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So, the distinction is irrelevant in the first place.
00:25:38.460
All right, you've probably heard about the latest Disney flop over Thanksgiving weekend.
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But I haven't personally had a chance to gloat over it, so let's talk about that.
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Disney's new animated film, Wish, failed to perform well at the box office over Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
00:25:54.860
It was especially tough for the studio following the massive flop of the Marvels earlier this month.
00:25:59.940
Wish debuted in third place at the box office, grossing just $19.5 million in its three-day opening weekend.
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Which is, for an original Disney film on Thanksgiving weekend, $20 million is abysmal.
00:26:16.400
And it got $31 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, which is also abysmal.
00:26:21.200
This was significantly less than forecasted and doesn't come close to recouping the $200 million production budget.
00:26:26.780
And I always have to remind everyone that when you hear about the production budgets, that's only the tip of the iceberg.
00:26:33.960
Because that doesn't count the marketing budget, which could be even more than the production budget.
00:26:42.440
So, the fantasy musical stars Ariana DeBose as the main character, Asha, and Chris Pine as the villain, King Magnifico.
00:26:52.520
Young Asha makes a wish so powerful that it's answered by a cosmic force, a little ball of boundless energy called star.
00:26:59.000
With star's help, Asha must save her kingdom from King Magnifico and prove that when the will of one courageous human connects with the magic of the stars, wondrous things can happen.
00:27:11.380
And Wish has a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so critics don't like it either.
00:27:20.520
Now, and this is, you know, there was a run there, there was a stretch, and we'll talk about this in a second, where, like, every Disney film was not only a smash success commercially, but was also critically acclaimed.
00:27:35.100
If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, however much stock you put in Rotten Tomatoes, which I think that Rotten Tomatoes is, you know, it's actually, it gets a bad rap, but it's, there are exceptions, but it generally gives you a pretty good idea of whether a movie is good or not.
00:27:47.060
Um, so it used to be that every film is a, is a commercial smash success, and every film has, like, 95% of Rotten Tomatoes, and, uh, now the exact opposite is the case.
00:27:59.360
Nearly every film they're putting out is a flop, and, uh, everybody hates it, and even the critics can't find a reason to like it.
00:28:06.080
Now, um, this, this is just Thanksgiving weekend, but really, uh, this whole year has been bleak.
00:28:17.320
Um, after WISH's underwhelming opening this past weekend, the spotlight is on Disney once again, and the rough year this once incredibly reliable brand has had.
00:28:24.440
To specify, as Variety pointed out in a recent analysis of this troubling box office streak,
00:28:29.720
Disney looks primed to end 2023 with a single, without, without a single movie crossing the $1 billion mark.
00:28:37.620
To be clear, the $1 billion mark is not an easy one to cross.
00:28:39.900
Only two movies, Barbie and the Super Mario Bros. movie, have done it this year, but that used to be nearly a given for Disney.
00:28:46.680
Um, we're not going to count 2020-2021, which were, uh, abnormal years because of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
00:28:53.520
Um, but going back to pre-pandemic times, Disney had a whopping $7 billion hits in 2019 alone.
00:29:01.900
They had seven films in 2019 that went over a billion dollars.
00:29:06.120
Uh, last year they had one, which was Avatar, and this year they have none.
00:29:13.040
So it is trending in exactly the, uh, wrong direction if you're Disney.
00:29:18.180
Now, we've talked about why Disney is falling apart.
00:29:22.180
Um, partly it's a, it's a total lack of originality.
00:29:31.860
They're not original, they're not innovative, they're not, they're not interesting.
00:29:36.920
Uh, you know, it, it turns out that these franchises, you can only go back to the well.
00:29:46.060
This is actually their attempt at something like a, uh, you know, a, a, an original film.
00:29:55.000
But then the second thing is also, um, and Disney has recently acknowledged this, in fact,
00:30:00.980
that their foray into the culture war has been a total disaster for them.
00:30:08.120
So, that's the other thing that we should acknowledge here, and that you're not going to see this.
00:30:13.180
Certainly, you're not going to see any mainstream media report that acknowledges this.
00:30:17.680
But it's true, that, uh, Disney, you know, we can put them in the Bud Light category.
00:30:26.740
That, that's a, it's a big part of the story here.
00:30:29.960
That their failure is at least partially a big, in, in, in large part, I think, um, a success of conservatives in the culture war.
00:30:40.980
You know, Disney decided to go to war against conservatives in a very direct and kind of deliberate and explicit way.
00:30:54.180
And now they have a, a year, at least a year of flops to show for it.
00:30:58.960
So, again, you're not going to find any media report that acknowledges that.
00:31:03.760
You're not going to say, that, that will not happen.
00:31:07.860
The truth is that we pulled a, we pulled a Bud Light on Disney, too.
00:31:13.280
So, when you look at the success of conservative boycott efforts, um, and even boycott isn't, I don't, I don't think that's quite the right term, exactly.
00:31:32.620
Okay, you have these companies that are trying to brand us a certain way as conservatives.
00:31:46.540
We successfully branded Bud Light, you know, a far-left, crazy, woke company.
00:32:00.720
So, this is, these are, these are major successes for conservatives in the culture war.
00:32:04.240
These are the kinds of successes that, uh, that seemed impossible for years.
00:32:09.460
And that, and that, and that even now, you have conservatives, this is not possible.
00:32:12.800
You can't, you can't take, you know, you can't make a dent in a company like Disney.
00:32:22.580
Um, and even in spite of that, you know, this is what makes it so remarkable, is that there's probably nothing Bud Light can do.
00:32:37.920
Uh, Disney, I mean, they could come back from this.
00:32:41.020
Like, all they have to do is say, look, okay, we're, we're bound out of the culture where we want, we want nothing to do with it anymore.
00:32:49.640
And, and, uh, and then, but then also start making films that people want to see.
00:32:57.640
Just take the wokeness and the political correctness out of the films entirely.
00:33:02.920
This Wish film, from what I understand, it's, it's, uh, at least by recent Disney standards, it's not, like, overly woke.
00:33:13.140
But it still is, because, of course, you've got the white male, who's the villain, and then you've got the protagonist, has to be this young brown girl, and she wants to grant everybody's wishes, and the greedy, horrible white man.
00:33:26.140
So it's like, they, they can't pull back from that.
00:33:30.500
If they just pulled back from that, and started telling good stories, put the wokeness aside, put the political correctness aside.
00:33:37.100
Um, if they just did that, then they could start churning out billion-dollar movies again.
00:33:49.920
Like, they can't stop themselves at this point.
00:33:52.580
They're on a, they're on a train that they can't stop.
00:33:55.080
And now they're paying the price for it, which I think is fantastic.
00:34:02.300
As the left continues to, speaking of movies, continues to react to, uh, our film we have coming out that's, uh, premiering, well, we're going to the red carpet premiere tonight, Lady Ballers.
00:34:11.160
It'll be, uh, available for everybody else on, uh, dailywireplus.com on Friday.
00:34:17.340
Um, here's the headline from LGBT Nation, or I think it's LGBTQ Nation, doesn't matter.
00:34:23.300
Right-wingers made a comedy movie attacking trans women in sports, and it looks terrible.
00:34:28.400
Matt Walsh wears a wig and a beard in the role of a trans queer woman.
00:34:32.300
We'll return to that in a moment, but here's the article.
00:34:36.460
The far-right and viciously anti-trans Daily Wire has announced its first feature-length comedy film written to mock trans women and girls who are fighting for the right to participate in sports as their gender.
00:34:46.420
A trailer for the film entitled Lady Ballers depicts a group of cisgender men deciding to pretend to be trans women and join a women's basketball league as, uh, one team with the intent of dominating the sport.
00:34:56.740
The trailer calls the film the most triggering comedy of the year, a derisive, uh, reference to the right-wing narrative that progressives are snowflakes who are easily triggered.
00:35:05.500
And LGBT Nation is, uh, is, is, I guess, trying to combat that narrative by being triggered by it.
00:35:13.820
But this is ironic, they say, considering that the people at the Daily Wire were so triggered by the existence of trans people that they made an entire movie about something that has never happened.
00:35:22.920
Well, when you say something never happened, you mean, like, the existence of trans people has never happened?
00:35:28.460
No, we're not triggered by the existence of trans people because we can't be triggered by something that doesn't exist.
00:35:33.540
So I'm not triggered by the existence of trans people for the same reason that I'm not triggered by, um, the Tooth Fairy.
00:35:40.980
Now, if the Tooth Fairy existed, I would be triggered by that.
00:35:45.100
The idea of some mythical creature coming into your child's window at night and stealing his tooth is very disturbing, and I'd find that triggering.
00:35:54.680
But, but it doesn't, but the Tooth Fairy's fantasy doesn't exist, so I'm not triggered.
00:36:02.260
There is no such thing as a trans person, so it could not be true.
00:36:10.920
There are people who I, who, uh, quote-unquote, self-identify that way.
00:36:15.600
But they are not actually that, because nobody can be that.
00:36:21.880
Um, the film stars several Daily Wire commentators, including one of its most well-known, Matt Walsh, who is known for his own, uh, anti-trans film, What is a Woman?
00:36:28.240
Okay, so I want to say something here, and I've seen this not just from, uh, this website, but from, uh, some YouTubers and others on the left reacting to the film, even though they haven't seen the film yet.
00:36:39.980
Um, but all claiming that I am playing a trans person or a gay person or both in the movie.
00:36:47.180
And first of all, how dare you assume my gender?
00:36:53.060
My identity is not up for debate or discussion.
00:36:56.900
My own personal journey is not something that, that you should make assumptions about.
00:37:01.700
And frankly, I don't believe that I should have to explain it to you.
00:37:04.540
And just because I put on a wig, you know, just because I wear a wig and, like, a Buddhist robe thing or whatever it's called in the movie, that doesn't mean that I'm trans or gay.
00:37:27.400
That's how I choose to move in the world and to move through these spaces in the world.
00:37:34.720
Now, as it happens, even though, again, I shouldn't have to explain myself to you people, I am not queer in the film.
00:37:48.360
So they came to me and they said, we need you to play a gay character in a movie.
00:37:55.240
And then I said, look, let's meet in the middle.
00:38:01.080
Or at least that's the version of how it came about that I want officially documented on Wikipedia.
00:38:09.980
And then also, probably the most offensive thing about this statement, Matt Walsh wears a wig and a beard.
00:38:30.400
Here's a viral video of a man who spent thousands of dollars trying to feminize his voice in an effort to become a woman.
00:38:48.120
This will be the last recording with my old voice.
00:38:52.880
Before I'm heading into voice feminization surgery, I won't be able to speak for two weeks.
00:39:00.640
And then it'll still be another month before I have 100% usage of my voice.
00:39:14.940
Okay, it has now been 15 months since my first voice feminization surgery.
00:39:26.640
This is probably about as good as it's going to get.
00:39:31.680
But we are not going to do the tired rainbow passage.
00:39:34.500
Instead, we are going to do lyrics from a late 80s UK band called Pop Will Eat Itself.
00:40:13.220
It's not what you do, but the way that you do it.
00:40:16.180
The speaker she blew, but the way that you blew it.
00:40:30.520
All of that money and effort to end up looking and sounding like Satan in The Passion of the Christ.
00:40:41.960
So, which there's very little daylight between those two characters.
00:40:51.300
Maybe he sounds a little bit like my overweight female bus driver when I was in middle school who smoked like three packs a day and had been since the Carter administration.
00:41:11.300
I don't think he's even made it that far, though.
00:41:13.780
And it kind of demonstrates the point that I always make, which is that, you know, if you're a man, we talk about men appropriating femininity, but they can't really do it.
00:41:26.080
Like, they can never truly appropriate and inhabit or even convincingly portray femininity.
00:41:35.220
You will never really be feminine if you're a man.
00:41:52.400
Like, you listen to that guy and you look at him.
00:41:54.420
He definitely, he certainly doesn't look and sound masculine.
00:41:58.280
Nobody would say that that's a masculine sound or a masculine look.
00:42:04.260
He's definitely not a woman, but, and he doesn't pass for a woman.
00:42:07.960
But he also doesn't exactly look or sound like a man.
00:42:21.640
It's like, imagine you have a great canyon, and on one side you have men, and on the other
00:42:40.900
What you can do, though, is just, like, hurl yourself down into the cavernous abyss, and
00:42:49.060
you'll still be on that side, but you'll end up as some kind of, like, mangled distortion
00:42:54.640
of what you were before, which is what, which is where these people end up.
00:43:00.080
So, you got a lot of people who were on both sides who are now kind of lingering in that
00:43:05.120
abyss, and they're never going to make it over to the side they want to be on.
00:43:08.080
They'll never make it back up to the side they should be on, and so instead they are
00:43:12.780
forever stuck in this kind of abyss, this kind of no man's land, or, in his case, no
00:43:22.980
Um, and, uh, it's, ultimately, it's, it's quite sad.
00:43:32.680
It's also absurd, and with absurd things, you can't help but laugh at them.
00:43:41.860
Serious Rising says, I think the idea that putting any kind or amount of black makeup
00:43:50.980
on your face constitutes blackface is totally ridiculous.
00:43:53.280
That being said, the parents should have probably known better.
00:43:55.980
I would argue they did know better, and they allowed it just to be inflammatory.
00:44:01.020
Um, I think there's no reason to think that whatsoever.
00:44:03.680
There's no reason to think that they were, what, like, dangling their five-year-old child
00:44:08.800
out as bait for internet trolls, um, you'd have to be pretty much the worst parent on
00:44:15.080
earth to do that, and I don't think there's, I think it's very unfair to assume that these
00:44:19.960
No, here's what you assume, is that these are just normal people who are not terminally
00:44:24.400
online, and the thing is, if you're not terminally online, and if you're not scrolling Twitter
00:44:28.400
all the time, uh, like I am, then you wouldn't even think, like, you know, those of us who
00:44:35.160
are immersed in this world all the time, um, unfortunately, yeah, you might, you might
00:44:41.220
see black, any kind of black makeup on someone's face, and you kind of know, because you're so
00:44:46.980
jaded and cynical, uh, you, you, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, someone's stupid enough
00:44:52.280
out there to intentionally misinterpret that, but if you're a normal person, and you're not
00:44:57.920
spending all your time, then you don't even think that way, and it's hard for those of
00:45:02.500
us who have our minds polluted by being immersed in this stuff, it's hard for us to even understand
00:45:09.160
how normal people think, and a normal person who is not immersed in it, it wouldn't even
00:45:15.200
occur to them, but you got black makeup, uh, you know, black and red makeup, like, what,
00:45:21.500
you wouldn't even think that there'd be a problem with that.
00:45:25.080
You also wouldn't think that there'd be a problem with, with the headdress.
00:45:29.240
Again, if you're not immersed in all of this, and, uh, and, and you're not online all the
00:45:35.840
time, and even a headdress, you go, like, well, he's a kid in a headdress, and we're
00:45:40.020
at a, it's the chiefs, we're at, he's doing the tomahawk chant, like, what do you mean?
00:45:43.120
People weren't doing this forever, what's the problem?
00:45:47.400
And you would be correct to see it that way, that there's no problem, there's no, there's,
00:45:50.540
it's, it's, it's perfectly fine. Um, so I think, uh, I think maybe you are a very jaded
00:45:59.780
person and very cynical like myself, and you're assuming that everybody is that way, but everybody
00:46:05.080
is not. Now, sadly, this family, now they will be, uh, but, uh, but before this, I think
00:46:13.740
they weren't. I think they just went to a football game and were having a fun time, and, like,
00:46:17.420
had no concept that this would lead to any kind of public attention whatsoever.
00:46:26.000
Uh, Ray says, so I was the only one that heard Kevin McCarthy say America is not a country,
00:46:30.140
not only a country, but also an idea. He didn't just say it was an idea, and he sure, uh, didn't
00:46:36.700
say that we couldn't protect the physical part of it. Something could be a physical thing and
00:46:41.680
an idea. Um, well, no, it can't. Uh, something cannot be a physical thing and an idea at the
00:46:50.060
same time. Now, you can have ideas about a physical thing, but the thing itself is not
00:46:55.980
an idea. So, for example, the chair that I'm sitting on right now, I could have ideas about
00:47:02.460
it. You know, I can look at it and think to myself, there's a chair, and so I've had an
00:47:08.180
idea about the chair, but the chair itself is a chair. The chair is not, you wouldn't look at this
00:47:12.520
chair and say, well, that's both a chair and an idea. That's not merely a chair. It's an idea. No,
00:47:18.220
it's not. It's just a thing, and any ideas you have in relation to it are just ideas in relation
00:47:23.980
to it, but they are in relation to the physical thing. They are not the thing itself, right?
00:47:30.020
Which is why I stipulated, like, a house, before it exists physically, is only an idea. It is a plan
00:47:37.160
you have to build, but you haven't done it. Once you do, it's not an idea anymore. It is entirely
00:47:42.960
a thing, and it would not be accurate to say, well, my house is both a house and an idea.
00:47:47.900
No, because whatever ideas you have in relation to your house are not the house itself.
00:47:52.300
And I know this sounds like semantics, and it probably is, but it's an important point when it
00:48:01.060
comes to this thing about country, the country is a country and an idea. Now, granted, I think that
00:48:06.580
most of these boomer conservative types who say this stuff, they don't really think it through.
00:48:12.280
They don't think about, they don't totally think about the, just like you, they don't really think
00:48:16.920
about the implications of what that means or how nonsensical it actually is. They certainly don't
00:48:23.000
think to themselves, you know, like, no one else says that about their country. This is something that
00:48:28.480
only we say. If you're from China, right, you would never say, well, China is both a country and an idea.
00:48:36.260
And if that wouldn't make any sense about China, then it doesn't make any sense about America.
00:48:42.280
Like, America is not any different in that sense. There may be different ideas underlying,
00:48:48.860
like, that underlie the formation of the United States, but countries are countries.
00:48:56.640
And they all kind of operate the same way in that way. They are physical things that you have to
00:49:03.260
protect physically. And finally, Paula says, still going to say it, Chauvin had a duty to care.
00:49:13.200
People screamed at him that Floyd was unresponsive and he didn't act.
00:49:16.540
I don't know how big of a crime that was, but it was a crime.
00:49:22.640
Well, I don't agree with you. I don't think that it is a crime. I don't think that is,
00:49:26.760
but that's not the crime that he was charged with. So even if I did agree with you,
00:49:30.860
we would both have to agree that he was falsely convicted.
00:49:35.820
But, and that's not what anybody says about him, right? That's never been the, that's not,
00:49:41.860
that wasn't the criminal charge. That's not what anyone says. You know, it's not,
00:49:45.500
oh, George Floyd was having an overdose and Derek Chauvin failed to administer care in time.
00:49:51.400
That's a whole different narrative. And that's also a narrative that does not,
00:49:57.580
if that's all that anybody ever thought about this, 2020, the riots never would have happened.
00:50:04.800
Nobody would remember George Floyd's name or have ever even known his name.
00:50:13.380
No, all of this is centered around the claim that Derek Chauvin directly killed George Floyd,
00:50:18.300
which is false. And that's important to establish. I also think that your claim is
00:50:24.380
false as well. Here's the way I look at it. If you are going to overdose on drugs or commit a crime,
00:50:37.980
it's like you're better off choosing one or the other. I mean, really don't do either. The best
00:50:42.140
case, best thing to do is to do neither of those things. Don't commit a crime. Don't overdose on
00:50:47.400
drugs. To do one of those things is a horrible decision that could have horrendous results for
00:50:56.860
you. If you do both, then you have just made a series of choices that are so self-destructive
00:51:05.500
and so suicidal that whatever happens next is 100% your fault. And so when George Floyd decided to
00:51:16.440
commit a crime and then overdose on drugs or overdose on drugs and then commit the crime,
00:51:21.040
whatever order these things happened in, everything that happened as a result is totally on him.
00:51:29.820
Because now you've put the cops in a position where, okay, yeah, you're having some sort of
00:51:33.440
medical thing. You also committed a crime. You're also resisting arrest. They have to deal with all
00:51:39.100
of these things. You know, you're, you, you are a very large man who has committed a crime.
00:51:46.560
You're resisting arrest. They can't just let you go. And so they have to deal with all these things at
00:51:53.380
the same time. And it's pretty obvious to the cops in this case, like their first priority was like,
00:51:58.260
let's restrain this guy. Let's make sure nobody else gets hurt. And, um, in the process,
00:52:05.840
he died by his own, because of the overdose. So I guess that's really the way of putting this is
00:52:11.420
that their priority, when you've got this man who committed a crime, he's this large guy,
00:52:17.920
he's resisting arrest, he's overdosing on drugs. He is now a physical threat to the officers and to
00:52:24.720
the people around him. And the first priority is not to save George Floyd from the consequences of
00:52:30.440
his own stupid actions. That's like priority number five on the list. The first four priorities
00:52:36.900
are let's protect everybody else. And if we can get around to saving your from this dumb thing you've
00:52:45.180
done, then we will. But our first priority is not you. It's everybody else. That's the way it goes.
00:52:52.920
When you just, when you, when you're a criminal and you go around doing drugs and all the,
00:52:55.780
like now every, the fact that he's, that he's tripping on drugs, that alone also makes him a
00:53:02.540
danger to people around him. He's irrational. You don't know what he's going to do.
00:53:07.720
And so if I'm in that position, my first priority is let's get this guy restrained.
00:53:11.680
Let's make sure he can't, I want to make sure he doesn't harm me. Okay. And I want to make sure
00:53:16.320
he doesn't harm anybody else. Um, and that's it. And, and, and that should be, that should be the
00:53:23.740
end of that story. And the only moral of the story is don't, don't poison yourself with fentanyl.
00:53:30.880
And if you do don't, they'll go, go then and, uh, and commit a crime, like go call, call an ambulance
00:53:36.980
instead. Remember when we were allowed to laugh at things that were absurd, instead of having to say
00:53:43.980
that, uh, they aren't absurd at all. And in fact, that they're very good and you're a very bad person
00:53:48.460
for thinking otherwise. Well, back when Hollywood could make comedy films like Dodgeball or Wedding
00:53:53.220
Crashers or Tropic Thunder, uh, without having to tow some politically correct line, uh, you know,
00:53:58.980
well, the Daily Wire is, is, uh, is tired of this situation, tired of not laughing. And this Friday,
00:54:03.060
we're dropping the most triggering movie of the decade so far. It's a sports comedy about the funniest
00:54:08.640
thing to ever happen in sports. Grown men who cannot beat other grown men calling themselves
00:54:13.600
women and then absolutely dominating girls who spent their entire lives training to be the best.
00:54:18.520
Every studio in Hollywood should be racing to make this movie. They aren't, they won't, they can't.
00:54:24.120
And so we are. Their worldview simply will not allow them to say what virtually every American
00:54:28.500
knows to be true, that men are on average faster and stronger than women, that the entire reason we
00:54:33.540
created women's sports was to keep men out and that men cannot become women, no matter what some clown
00:54:38.760
with a PhD in gender studies says about it. That's just not possible. You're allowed to believe
00:54:43.500
those things and you're allowed to laugh at people who don't believe them. And now you can. Here's a
00:54:47.600
look at the official trailer for Lady Ballers. Here it is. In a world where women's sports is being
00:54:56.060
transformed, the Daily Wire calls foul with the most triggering comedy of the year.
00:55:13.500
Guys, this is serious. Sports can be your pathway to a better life. What, like yours?
00:55:20.000
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You know, in the modern age, people tend to be very socially conscious.
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We live in a culture filled with extremely selfless and empathetic individuals who are
00:59:30.960
always looking to get involved in worthwhile social causes.
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That is, just as long as the cause requires them to expend little to no effort and contribute
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We'd love to come together for no reason and rally around nothing to do nothing at all.
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This is the most popular sort of activism around, and TikTok is the best place to organize
00:59:55.880
A new viral TikTok video has called attention to the scourge of, quote unquote, trapped water.
01:00:02.980
Well, here's a user who goes by the name Spread Your Dreams, explaining in a video that has been
01:00:08.440
viewed now over 3 million times, and here's what she says.
01:00:16.540
And I'm on this quest to dump out any water that gets trapped in the plastic, because once
01:00:23.200
it's trapped in these plastic bottles, we now have lost it basically forever.
01:00:30.420
So it's really important when you see, hi doggo, when you see water that's discarded, to open
01:00:42.840
Alternately, to make sure that when you're done with water, and that goes for like, you
01:00:49.620
know, juices or sports drinks or whatever, dump that shit out if you're not going to use it.
01:00:56.000
Because if you don't, it's trapped forever, and we've lost that water to our ecosystem.
01:01:04.560
So there it is, the new current thing, free the water.
01:01:11.060
If you find a bottle laying around with liquid inside, dump the liquid on the ground.
01:01:15.340
Don't even worry about what the liquid is, just, you know, dump it on the ground.
01:01:18.420
And if you don't, eventually the earth will run out of water.
01:01:22.480
And this is an idea that may sound completely insane, because it is, but it resonated with
01:01:31.380
Somebody named Simply Sarah says, not me teaching the water cycle today, but never thinking about
01:01:42.080
Rachel Okeke says, I've thought about this every day since I learned about the water cycle,
01:01:50.200
Another comment says, we'll now be anxious about trapped water forever.
01:01:54.560
Another one, no, seriously, this freaks me out.
01:02:01.380
Yes, we must facilitate the water's journey back into the rain cycle.
01:02:05.800
That's why I typically, what I will do is I'll bring all of my half-empty water bottles
01:02:10.520
up into the sky in a helicopter, and I empty them directly into a cloud, because that is
01:02:15.820
the safest and most environmentally friendly strategy, I think.
01:02:20.020
The ocean's not going to dry up on my watch, I'll tell you that.
01:02:23.900
But still, many TikTokers are now very concerned about the trapped water problem, because some
01:02:29.060
This was followed by a bunch of other videos from other people on the platform talking about
01:02:37.200
Is anybody still thinking about that lady who's talking about trapped water in water bottles?
01:02:42.600
I've thought about it every day for, I don't know, two weeks now.
01:02:48.380
Every day, she thinks about water in water bottles.
01:02:59.800
Woman Warns About the Dangerous Phenomenon That Is Trapped Water.
01:03:04.460
One TikToker recently created a video titled Free the Water to inform her viewers about the dangers
01:03:09.480
of trapped water and the need to dump out liquids contained in plastic bottles that aren't going
01:03:14.560
According to the Texas Water Quality Association, trapped water is indeed a big problem.
01:03:19.800
In the U.S. alone, we waste 22 million gallons of water each year in landfills due to trapped
01:03:24.420
water inside plastic water bottles, the organization wrote on the QWET website.
01:03:29.900
That is 22 million gallons of water that we will never get back into the Earth's water
01:03:35.480
The organization went on to point out that fresh water makes up an extremely small fraction
01:03:38.520
of all the water on Earth, and that there is no new water being created.
01:03:42.480
The water that exists on our planet and the atmosphere is all there is.
01:03:45.940
That means that when we effectively take it out of circulation by trapping it indefinitely
01:03:49.320
in plastic, that decreases the total water supply for all life.
01:03:54.100
Okay, now, I'm no water expert, but let me just be the first to say that this is all
01:04:05.980
And to begin with, a small fraction of the water on Earth is fresh water, yes, but a huge
01:04:13.120
fraction is salt water, and the salt water becomes fresh water when it evaporates.
01:04:19.000
So water from the ocean goes up into the sky as a gas, and it comes down as fresh water.
01:04:27.020
That's why the rain is not salt water, even though much of it is coming from the ocean.
01:04:36.180
And altogether, the Earth holds about 326 million trillion gallons of water.
01:04:42.020
A typical bottle of water is 16 ounces, which means that there are eight bottles in every
01:04:48.480
gallon, which means that the Earth has enough water to fill 326 million trillion bottles eight
01:04:59.640
And that means it would take millions of years to even begin to noticeably deplete the water
01:05:07.360
supply by leaving water trapped in water bottles.
01:05:13.980
We could all band together as a species and say, we want to dry up the oceans with water
01:05:19.560
bottles, and we would just like spend all day filling water bottles from the ocean.
01:05:24.340
And it would still take us millions of years to achieve this.
01:05:28.540
But actually, you couldn't even do it in a million years, because water bottles will decompose
01:05:34.040
eventually, and they'll decompose in about 500 years.
01:05:38.420
And so by the time you get to millions of years, all the water bottles have decomposed,
01:05:46.080
And even that is irrelevant, because it's not even true that water left in bottles will not
01:05:51.680
In fact, if the cap was ever opened, then the water will still evaporate and escape from
01:05:56.920
the bottle, from the cracks where the cap was opened, in a comparatively short amount
01:06:01.940
And if for some reason the bottle was never opened and yet discarded, it will almost certainly
01:06:05.980
be compacted and crushed at the landfill, at which point the water will come out and escape.
01:06:13.300
So, to review, it would be impossible to significantly deplete the water supply by
01:06:19.860
leaving water trapped in plastic bottles forever.
01:06:22.960
And it's also impossible to leave water trapped in plastic bottles forever anyway,
01:06:27.060
because plastic may take a long time to decompose.
01:06:30.360
It is not magical, indestructible material, however.
01:06:37.440
At the absolute most, it would be trapped for 500 years, which is a long time, but not forever,
01:06:42.680
and not nearly enough time to make a dent in the water supply.
01:06:46.060
But in reality, the water in the bottle that you throw into your garbage will almost certainly
01:06:50.380
be freed and traveling back up into the atmosphere in the form of a gas within the week,
01:06:55.920
So, everything about this trend and the logic behind it is false and stupid and ridiculous
01:07:01.040
and not based in science or common sense or any notion of objective reality at all.
01:07:06.720
But it gives people a new thing to pretend to worry about for a few days, and it gives them
01:07:10.320
a very easy way to pretend that they're making a difference in the world.
01:07:14.020
Just dump out your Gatorade, and suddenly you're saving 8 billion people from dying of thirst.
01:07:18.760
That doesn't make sense, but if you're very stupid, it might make you feel good about
01:07:23.660
yourself, which of course, as we know, is all that matters, at least in the minds of
01:07:27.700
the trapped water crusaders, who are all today, we must say, canceled.