Johnny the Walrus, a boy who identifies as a walrus, has taken the world by storm. Critics are hailing it as a masterpiece. And now we can add another to the list of accolades: Johnny The Walrus is the No. 1 Bestseller on Amazon s LGBTQ+ book list.
00:01:55.760Well, I never imagined that I would be responsible for writing the literary sensation of 2021.
00:02:02.560Least of all that I would write it on cardboard.
00:02:05.060And yet my book, Johnny the Walrus, about a boy who identifies as a walrus and is now available at johnnythewalrus.com or on Amazon, has taken the world by storm.
00:02:12.860Critics are hailing it as a masterpiece.
00:02:14.600I haven't heard any critics say that exactly, but it's safe to assume that they probably have said it.
00:02:52.040Johnny the Walrus is the number one bestseller on Amazon's LGBTQ plus book list.
00:02:57.620Yes, on Sunday morning, the Lord's Day, a day after we had re-released the book on Amazon because our first run sold out in less than 24 hours,
00:03:07.260I awoke to discover that Johnny the Walrus had not only been categorized as an LGBT book,
00:03:11.880but had become the best-selling title in that genre and still is today.
00:03:16.560As it stands right now, my story about a trans walrus child is the number one bestseller in LGBT books,
00:03:22.100beating out such LGBT hits as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,
00:03:27.120Badass Affirmations, The Wit and Wisdom of Wild Women,
00:03:30.680the gay Christmas romance novel Only One Bed,
00:03:33.820a book called Mr. Naughty and Mr. Nice,
00:05:27.780Any critiques of me or my opinions or my behavior or my literary work will now be officially and legally categorized as homophobic hate speech.
00:05:39.140If you refuse to buy my book, Johnny the Walrus, or to download my podcast, or to come to my birthday parties,
00:05:45.520or to invite me to your birthday parties, then you are guilty of marginalizing an oppressed minority.
00:05:49.920If I'm censored on social media, or if somehow my book is still banned by Amazon, somehow, it will be gay erasure.
00:06:00.240Now, you now have a moral obligation to affirm me, agree with me, celebrate me, and especially to purchase my book,
00:06:07.820which is, need I remind you, a best-selling smash LGBT sensation.
00:06:11.820Now, those of you who have followed my work for some time know that I have long sought membership in a societally recognized victim group
00:06:19.780because I covet the power that such membership affords.
00:06:22.600Up to this point, I've had to make ado with the fact that I'm a member of the visually impaired community.
00:06:27.640It's not great, as victimization goes, but it's not nothing.
00:06:32.340Yet, even so, I've discovered that in the victimhood arcade, not many tokens can be won with mere physical impairments.
00:06:38.900If you want to be rich in oppression, truly wealthy, you have to find your way into the LGBT fold.
00:08:03.800Credential stuffing is when cyber criminals get your username and password off the dark web and they try to gain access to your accounts and steal your private information.
00:08:10.100If you have the same password on multiple accounts and they get one of them, now they've got all your accounts and that's the problem.
00:08:15.300It's important to understand how cyber crime and identity theft are affecting our lives every day.
00:08:20.000We put our information at risk on the internet.
00:08:22.420In an instant, a cyber criminal could steal what's yours, sometimes even harm your finances, your credit, your reputation, anything.
00:08:29.660LifeLock helps detect a wide range of identity threats.
00:08:32.620And if they detect that your information has potentially been compromised, they'll send you an alert and they'll get it taken care of.
00:08:37.780Nobody can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses, but you can help protect what's yours with LifeLock by Norton.
00:08:43.640Join now and save up to 25% off your first year at LifeLock.com slash Walsh.
00:08:48.060That's LifeLock.com slash Walsh for 25% off.
00:09:10.240From a legal perspective, it's also pretty complicated.
00:09:14.580The parents of the Oxford high school shooter have been charged with involuntary manslaughter after their son killed four people and wounded many others last week during class.
00:09:24.980Now, before we talk about this decision, let's listen to the DA, Karen McDonald, explain her logic in filing these charges.
00:09:31.640Now, first she talks about, she talked to the press on Friday and the timing of her address to the press, her press conference.
00:09:44.400But, so first she explains how they went out and they bought their 15-year-old son a handgun, apparently.
00:09:50.460Um, the mother posted about buying the handgun for her son.
00:09:56.280And then the kid was posing with the gun on social media, referring to it as his beauty that had just been bought.
00:10:03.940He didn't have the gun in his room, apparently.
00:10:05.900It was in his parents' room in an unlocked drawer.
00:10:07.680And, um, he was caught at school, I think this was the day before, or a couple days before, searching for ammo during school hours.
00:10:16.720And the parents were notified with an email and then followed up with a voicemail, but the parents never responded to that.
00:10:23.360Okay, so the kid's at school during school hours looking for ammo, and they tried to get a hold of the parents to tell him about it, and the mom never even called back to respond.
00:10:33.540Instead, the mother texted her son this message, LOL, I'm not mad, you have to learn not to get caught.
00:10:42.220Okay, so that was a couple days before the shooting.
00:10:44.240And that brings us up to the morning of the shooting, and then we'll let Karen McDonald fill in the rest.
00:10:50.060On November 30th, 21, the morning of the shooting, the next day, Ethan Crumbly's teacher came upon a note on Ethan's desk,
00:10:57.940which alarmed her to the point that she took a picture of it on her cell phone.
00:11:01.720The note contained the following, a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, quote,
00:11:08.580the thoughts won't stop, help me, end quote.
00:11:11.540In another section of the note was a drawing of a bullet with the following words above that bullet, quote, blood everywhere, end quote.
00:11:19.460Between the drawing of the gun and the bullet is a drawing of a person who appears to have been shot twice and bleeding.
00:11:25.380Below that figure is a drawing of a laughing emoji.
00:11:27.960Further down the drawing are the words, quote, my life is useless, end quote.
00:11:32.660And to the right of that are the words, quote, the world is dead, end quote.
00:11:37.200Okay, so that's what he was drawing on the morning of the shooting.
00:11:41.700And then she continues on talking about the parents were then summoned to the school, as you might expect.
00:11:50.900At the meeting, James and Jennifer Crumbly were shown the drawing and were advised that they were required to get their son into counseling within 48 hours.
00:11:59.300Both James and Jennifer Crumbly failed to ask their son if he had his gun with him or where his gun was located and failed to inspect his backpack for the presence of the gun, which he had with him.
00:12:14.060James and Jennifer Crumbly resisted the idea of then leaving the school at that time, of their son leaving the school at that time.
00:12:23.060Instead, James and Jennifer Crumbly left the high school without their son.
00:12:25.880Okay, so they decide to go home, as she explains.
00:12:32.100After they were just, I mean, I'm, it's hard to wrap your head around that one.
00:18:07.880So, those are the concerns and everything.
00:18:10.180Even so, based on this information, the information that she lays out, we can say that the parents at a minimum acted with extraordinary recklessness.
00:19:00.080As a parent, you're not going to know everything about your child.
00:19:02.400Especially if they go to public school and they spend so much time out of sight, out of view.
00:19:09.020There's going to be a lot you don't know about your kid.
00:19:10.540But if he's the kind of kid capable of doing something like this, you are at a minimum going to know that he's disturbed and he's got serious problems.
00:19:21.520And yet you go out and buy him a handgun.
00:19:36.740And we know that they knew he was disturbed because, first of all, they were told about the drawing and the pictures and everything he wrote.
00:19:46.960But when they heard about the shooting, she texts, don't do it.
00:20:37.240So there have been all kinds of extremely forced sounding statements from the White House talking about how much they love Kamala and how much respect they have for her.
00:20:45.180So while the sources are talking behind the scenes off the record and saying she's terrible and they don't like her, the public face they're putting forward, Jen Psaki, has come out and they've all said, oh, no, she's great.
00:21:08.120So with Kamala, there's also been a mass exodus of staffers leaving, resigning.
00:21:13.280And there's been reports like this from Business Insider, and this just came out today.
00:21:17.540It says, a former Kamala Harris staffer says aides have to endure, quote, a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism.
00:21:24.240The article goes on and says, a major issue that several staffers raised with Harris's refusal to analyze briefing materials set forth by employees was Harris's refusal to analyze briefing materials set forth by employees, which reportedly resulted in her scolding them if she appeared to be unprepared.
00:21:38.280Unprepared. Quote, it's clear that you're not working with somebody who's willing to do the prep and the work.
00:21:44.720One former staffer told the newspaper with Kamala, you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence.
00:21:51.480So you're constantly sort of propping up a bully, and it's not really clear why.
00:21:56.320Former Harris aide Jill Duren left her office in 2013 after five months in the role when she was California's attorney general.
00:22:06.640He told the Post that the turnover in the vice president's office points back to her.
00:22:11.120He told the newspaper, quote, one of the things we've said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this?
00:22:17.960And it's her. Who are the next talented people you're going to bring in and burn through and then have them pretend they're retiring for positive reasons?
00:22:24.820And Harris's office has responded to this, by the way, and they've said that, of course, this is sexism and racism.
00:22:30.880Now, this is a little tough for me when I read stories like this, because I can completely believe that she's a tyrant.
00:22:35.420I'm sure she is. But also we have to keep in mind that her staffers are all a bunch of whiny millennial lick spittles.
00:22:42.620So I'm sure if you tap them on the shoulder and said, hey, your shoes untied, they would say this is soul destroying criticism.
00:22:51.160But even so, Camila is terrible. And yet the four statements of support coming out are really pathetic, but none of them compare to this.
00:23:01.900Here's a tweet from David Gins, who's a staffer for Camila.
00:23:07.840He put out this statement today or a tweet. This is last night.
00:23:11.300He says, hi, my name is David Gins. I work for Vice President Harris on behalf of the American people as deputy director for operations and absolutely love my job.
00:23:19.620Just thought some of you should know. And there's a photo.
00:23:23.320Now, look at this photo. Let's put this photo up. My God.
00:23:30.260A picture says a thousand words and so does this one, except it's just the word pathetic one thousand times in a row.
00:23:35.900Look at the expression on his face, staring straight ahead, trying to muster a smile.
00:23:41.000But there's like this look of fear in his eyes, probably because Camila is just out of frame, pointing a gun at his head.
00:23:45.580And then and then look at the photo of Camila and her husband on the wall.
00:23:51.340This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
00:23:53.640Who put first of all, who puts a photo there at all?
00:23:57.160I'm no interior decorator. My wife will tell you that.
00:23:59.640But you don't just put a random photograph that big, crammed up against the door.
00:24:07.520Right above like the looks like the thermostat or something there.
00:25:15.920It says new details emerged on Sunday about why CNN decided to fire star host Chris Cuomo on Saturday evening as the network conducted an investigation into Cuomo's role in helping his brother,
00:25:24.620then New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo, navigate a sexual misconduct scandal.
00:25:28.140Deborah S. Katz, a left wing attorney, said in a statement on Sunday that she is representing a client who claims that Chris Cuomo engaged in serious sexual misconduct against her at the network.
00:25:38.600Katz said she notified CNN of the allegations on Wednesday that the allegations are ultimately what led to Chris Cuomo being fired from CNN.
00:25:44.420And so that's why they finally announced that it was official.
00:25:50.280At first, they suspended him and it was kind of we were expecting maybe they'd bring him back on like they did with Jeffrey Toobin.
00:25:56.980But now they're getting rid of him because of sexual misconduct at the workplace.
00:26:00.860Of course, Jeffrey Toobin also had workplace sexual misconduct when he masturbated in front of his coworkers on Zoom call.
00:26:06.960But he's got that exception. I'm not sure why.
00:26:11.800Increasingly, I've come to believe that Jeffrey Toobin must have compromising photos or something of someone high up in the CNN food chain.
00:26:20.200There's got to be some explanation for how he's still there.
00:26:28.420And I think with this story, this story is kind of a is is is good because it provides us an example of the distinction between canceling and accountability.
00:26:43.860The defenders of cancel culture will say that, well, no, we're not canceling people.
00:28:17.600Because it's the institutions of power deciding they want to get rid of you and they'll take the first excuse they can find.
00:28:23.860Here's an entirely different situation where the institutions of power wanted to keep Chris Cuomo in place.
00:28:32.300And they were willing to overlook many different forms of misconduct and many different ethical violations until it just it was one thing after another.
00:28:45.300OK, so, you know, I remember when my son was about six and we were we were driving along and we stopped at an intersection and there was a homeless guy there.
00:28:54.820And my son said to me, he asked me, he said, Daddy, why do we let people be homeless?
00:29:17.160What I try to do is instead is explain in as simple a way as possible that very often people find themselves in these kinds of unfortunate situations, not because the world necessarily forced them into it, but sometimes because of things going on inside them.
00:29:31.560And I said that sadly for a lot of homeless people, they have a problem that can't be totally solved simply by giving them money or giving them a home.
00:30:28.080And it points out that other cities and other states have done exactly that, which is true.
00:30:32.780This is something that various different localities have tried.
00:30:35.800They tried it in Tulsa and TulsaWorld.com just so happened to have a report on the progress of this program in Tulsa.
00:30:44.640Reading partway through here starts with a nurse practitioner who worked at the homeless hotel in Tulsa.
00:30:51.040And it says nurse practitioner Amber Vo figured she'd be consulted when it came time to decide who would get permanent housing and who wouldn't.
00:30:58.400As the person in charge of the hotel's health clinic, she'd gotten to know many of the clients and believe she could contribute to the conversation.
00:31:04.760Much to her surprise and disappointment, those discussions never happened.
00:31:09.640At the very least, I should have been involved in some of these conversations.
00:31:12.460I didn't even know it was happening until the people had already been told they were being put out.
00:31:16.320And they would come into my clinic having emotional mental breakdowns because of how scared they were and begging me to help.
00:31:21.780Vo said about 10 to 20 clients a week were being sent back into the streets.
00:31:24.880In the last month, the hotel was operating.
00:31:26.800And most were no better prepared for life outside the hotel than they had been when they entered.
00:31:31.700There was no incentive, she continues.
00:31:33.420She says there were no there was no incentive for them to kind of practice skills that would make them more successful once they were on their own.
00:31:38.840Maybe in an apartment, like taking care of property, showing up for appointments, just communicating with their caseworkers.
00:31:43.880It's common knowledge that prostitution and drug use were part of everyday life at the hotel, Vo said, and nothing was done about it.
00:31:50.980She said, quote, these people were not given the support they needed to be successful anywhere.
00:31:54.680Addiction ran rampant through through there.
00:31:56.600We had a lot of people confide in us that they had been clean until they got to the hotel.
00:32:00.800But because the drug situation was so bad there, they relapsed.
00:32:05.280Then it goes on to many more gritty details about how this hotel operated.
00:32:10.880And it actually made the situation worse for a lot of the people who checked into the homeless hotel.
00:32:16.800We got a picture here of what these hotel rooms looked like after the homeless had left them.
00:32:22.180And there's just garbage shrewd all over the place.
00:32:28.180And in fairness, my hotel rooms don't look much better than that once I check out.
00:33:09.800They are that way in the vast majority of cases because they're either drug addicts or they're severely mentally ill or both.
00:33:17.980But it's going to be very rare to have someone who is not addicted to drugs and is mentally competent and yet is living on the sidewalk, you know, sleeping on a cardboard box for weeks and months on end.
00:33:34.800Because a mentally competent person who is not addicted to drugs, you know, it's not difficult to find some kind of housing.
00:33:43.820It's not going to be great housing, but you could find something.
00:33:49.440It might not be a great job that pays very well, but you should be able to find some kind of job at fast food or something.
00:33:54.300And you can afford some sort of housing situation.
00:33:56.500So, if there are people just living on the street for months and months and years on end, then that tells you that there is something else going on here internally.
00:34:07.160Now, does this mean that it's not sad or that we shouldn't try to help people in a situation?
00:34:59.260We're always, we're dealing with circumstances rather than people.
00:35:03.800And we want to pretend that anyone who's in a bad circumstance, well, it's, it's, the circumstance is what has caused it.
00:35:16.680We don't want to go deeper than that and look at what's going on internally, the choices that they've made, because then we get into what, what would be called victim blaming or whatever else.
00:35:40.460But if you do, as many families did, you get vaccinated and boosted, you use testing judiciously before you gather, you gather in well-ventilated spaces and use masks whenever you can in public indoor spaces.
00:35:50.600Your risk can be quite low and your holidays can be quite fulfilling.
00:35:53.900That's what so many families experienced this past Thanksgiving.
00:35:56.180So you wear masks with your family, get, get, uh, jabbed and boosted, make sure everyone's jabbed and boosted, wear masks, you know, socially distanced from one another.
00:36:09.340And you can have a quite fulfilling holiday.
00:36:13.840You know, when I think about what makes for a fulfilling holiday experience with family, I think one of the, one of the essential aspects of that, uh, of that experience, what makes it fulfilling is that you can like see each other and see each other's faces.
00:36:29.200You really can't have any kind of fulfilling social interaction when you're both covering your faces, but I guess we have to give thanks to the certain general, at least for giving us permission to celebrate Christmas.
00:36:45.680So we, we, we can do that, but, um, celebrate Christmas as long as you're treating your family preemptively, like they're all diseased.
00:36:55.720Finally, here's a, another sort of emperor has no clothes situation, or maybe the emperor is wearing women's clothes, I guess.
00:37:04.000Um, a trans, this is from the Daily Mail.
00:37:05.720This is a trans swimmer and senior at the University of Pennsylvania who previously spent three years competing as a man is now crushing records in women's events, sparking outrage amid controversy surrounding transgender athletes.
00:37:19.060There's, there's the man formerly named Will now goes by Leah Thomas, 22 has competed in a number of events recently, including a tri meet with Cornell and Princeton universities on November 20th, where the senior blasted UPenn records in the 200 meter and 500 meter freestyle posting times that beat almost every other female swimmer across America.
00:37:39.520Uh, with a time of, uh, 143, 47 in the 200 meter freestyle, Thomas would have been in line to secure silver medal at the NCAA women's championships.
00:37:51.340While, while her, I'm reading from the article and this is the, I'm just reading verbatim in the article.
00:37:56.120While her, quote unquote, 435-06 in the 500 meter freestyle would have been good enough to win bronze.
00:38:03.180Um, this is the latest controversy in the ongoing argument over whether trans people should be allowed to compete in sports alongside athletes of the opposite gender when they were assigned at birth.
00:38:23.540That's what makes him a woman, a woman.
00:38:28.080This is probably one of the more egregious, all, every case of a male competing against women in female sports is egregious and, and ridiculous and outrageous and wrong.
00:38:38.480Uh, this one more than most because this guy, as I said in the article, he competed against men for three years.
00:38:48.320So, he'd been a man his entire life, competing against, there he is there, in his former life, before going through the radical transformation of growing out his hair.
00:39:13.940And starts dominating gold, silver, bronze record times.
00:39:18.500And, and to, to show you how absurd these kinds of situations are, it's not so much comparing the man's time to the women that he's beating.
00:39:31.260What you really have to do, and I don't have it in front of me, but I'll be interested to do this.
00:39:34.900You, you, you take that man's time and compare it to the other men.
00:39:38.260And what I can guarantee you is, I mean, this guy, he may have held his own against, uh, against the men, but I can guarantee you he wasn't winning gold and silver medals all over the place.
00:39:51.120He wasn't, he, of course, was not dominating at all.
00:39:54.140Certainly not, not to the level that he's dominating now.
00:39:56.840So, what you usually have are, uh, in these situations, you have male athletes who, at best, are middling athletes.
00:40:04.300The example we've talked about before in Connecticut, where you've got these, uh, these two guys raced against the girls in high school track, the famous case now going through the courts.
00:40:13.300But those were, those were men who barely qualified for state competitions against the men.
00:40:18.340I mean, they couldn't even get on the track.
00:40:19.600They go over against the girls and they're, you know, at least in the top three in every race.
00:40:26.760That's what, that's what it always is.
00:40:28.300It's always middling, mediocre male athletes going over to girls and dominating.
00:40:34.300Which tells you, of course, that, that, that, what do you know?
00:40:39.180There is a, there is a dramatic biological difference between the sexes.
00:40:44.960But also, it, it continues to be very interesting that it's always the men in the middle of the pack or the bottom of the pack who discover that they're women.
00:40:56.820It's never a man at the top of the pack.
00:40:58.400Has there been one single case of a man who was dominating against the males?
00:41:06.020He was already top three all the time.
00:41:09.220And then he discovered he was a woman and went over and raced against the girls.
00:41:15.440So, you might, you might conclude, you might start to suspect, perhaps, that there are some mediocre male athletes who are, who, who are encouraged, perhaps, to discover a female identity because that's the only way that they can consistently win.
00:41:39.140And even if it's not, even if, even if that's not the case, I mean, even if this guy, I can't get inside his head, I don't know what his true motivations are.
00:41:46.580I'm very suspicious of what they might be, but I don't know.
00:41:51.480Regardless, though, whatever his motivations are, it's, it's still wrong.
00:41:58.160I mean, you see this guy, like, nobody.
00:42:01.780Can we put up that picture again of, of him with the other girl?
00:42:04.080Well, you see this pic, no one thinks that this is, no one is looking at this and say, oh yeah, those are, those are, those are both women.
00:42:34.080It's not that they've convinced themselves that this makes sense, or it's right, or it's logical, or it makes any scientific or moral sense, or that it's justified.
00:42:45.300For them, it's all politics, it's all ideology.
00:43:38.640Just a simple conversation with a salary-based mortgage consultant, somebody who is going to listen to and guide you.
00:43:44.260So you're getting a custom loan that achieves your goals from lower rates to shorter terms, even the ability to access cash from your equity.
00:43:51.780They're ready to find you the best deal possible.
00:45:55.540Uh, deep wild violet says hospice nurse here.
00:45:58.200I've heard lots of people say at the end of their life, either that they are happy to have their family around them or that they regret not spending more time with family on vacations with people they love, et cetera.
00:46:07.440I have never heard a patient say they wished they'd have worked more or made more money, regardless of economic class.
00:46:17.840And that's got to be unique insight that in perspective that you have tragic insight in perspective, but having never, you know, I've never worked in hospice myself.
00:46:28.120I've only been around a few people at the end of their lives, but, um, this would seem apparent and we could see that within ourselves too.
00:46:39.380Like you can look forward to your own death whenever it comes, might be tomorrow, might be in 50 years, whatever.
00:46:46.380And you already know what sorts of things you're going to regret, what sorts of things you wish you had done more often.
00:46:54.900Another great example is, um, you know, we all spend 15 hours a day on our phones and staring at screens, but I'm pretty sure, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
00:47:05.780You've also probably not had anybody, uh, in their, in their last breaths at hospice say that they wish they'd spent more time staring at screens.
00:47:13.400So we know that, I mean, while we're sitting there for 15 hours, look on the phone, you just know that you're going to, that this total waste of time.
00:47:21.120You're going to regret it, but we can't help ourselves.
00:47:24.960Um, Gerter says, Hey Matt, I think you'll love that the tidbit that not only is it fairly common and normal for a six year old to be a Fortnite expert, it's fairly common gamer knowledge that about 90% of Fortnite experts are under the age of 10.
00:47:38.140Um, yeah, I don't, I don't, I can't remember what that was referring to, but there was someone who, who said that their six year old son was a Fortnite expert.
00:47:54.800Now I, I understand by most people's, you know, judgment, I'm, I'm kind of extreme on this.
00:48:01.440Um, that I don't plan on my kids playing video games at all, but I, but I, but I do understand that as the kids get a little bit older and they become teenagers, it might be more difficult to keep them away from that stuff.
00:48:13.400And, um, you know, maybe you start introducing some of, but, but at the age of six,
00:48:18.340at the age of six, it's, it's very, very easy to determine what kind of entertainment your kids are going to have access to.
00:48:27.640And so that's a choice you have to make.
00:48:31.200If your kid at six years old or five years old is addicted to video games, like I know so many are, you've chosen, you have made that lifestyle choice for your kid.
00:48:43.460Which doesn't make any sense to me at all.
00:48:45.360On Thursday, Biden announced his winter COVID plan.
00:48:48.420And it's apparent that his administration is only going to double down on their authoritarian policies.
00:48:52.120Not only did Biden announce that he's extending the federal mask mandates for public transportation, but Jen Psaki admitted that the administration is actually considering requiring Americans to be fully vaccinated in order to fly domestically.
00:50:03.340You know, I've accomplished many things in my lifetime, but just last week I made one of my ultimate dreams come true.
00:50:07.500So my bestselling children's book that, as you know, sold out in less than 24 hours and was also, as we talked about at the start of the show, crowned the bestselling LGBTQ plus book on Amazon.
00:50:22.300Everyone's talking about it across the entire world.
00:50:24.620And if you want to get your copy, go to johnnythewalrus.com.
00:50:27.340It's back on Amazon now, but the easiest way to get the book is go to johnnythewalrus.com and reserve your copy today.
00:50:33.360Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
00:50:37.500Today we cancel, probably not for the first time, mid-tier squad member Rashida Tlaib.
00:50:43.360We last saw Rashida in an interview on Axios explaining why all federal prison inmates, including sex traffickers and child rapists, should be immediately released from prison.
00:50:52.000The idea she was hawking on the House floor this week isn't, or last week rather, isn't quite as bad as that, but it's almost as bad.
00:50:59.000It's a bit more mainstream anyway, and that is student loan forgiveness.
00:51:02.680But the interesting thing about Rashida's pitch for student loan forgiveness is that she is herself a perfect example of why we should not forgive student loans.
00:51:38.200I worked at the nonprofit organization fighting for, you know, the right to breathe clean air, to fight for the worker that was getting their wage, you know, taken and stolen from their employer.
00:51:47.920I went and worked on immigrant rights and so much more.
00:51:51.160And all of that to say, we have to stop treating as if folks that are paying for education, as if they bought some bougie car or some big, you know, something beyond.
00:52:05.920Okay, so Rashida Tlaib wants debt forgiveness, and she complains that she still has $70,000 left on her loan, which was originally $200,000 for her law degree, she says.
00:52:14.540A degree that she's chosen not to use, she admits that she immediately took that degree that cost her well into six figures to attain and went off to be an activist at a nonprofit.
00:52:26.160Fortunately for her, she makes $175,000 a year in her current job, which raises the question, why should the taxpayer assume her debt when she earns an income more than double the national average?
00:52:37.560The fact that elected representatives earn more than double the national average is a separate issue entirely.
00:52:41.900I mean, I think that they should get paid, they should get paid the national average income.
00:53:07.020Now, I'm glad that Rashida Tlaib has wanted to make herself the face of this issue because she is the face of it.
00:53:13.820As an affluent upper class brat with a graduate degree, she does indeed represent a large portion of the people clamoring for debt forgiveness.
00:53:22.160In fact, people with graduate degrees account for half of all student loan debt.
00:53:35.740The way that we get into trillions of dollars collectively in terms of debt is through all of these people getting master's degrees where the average debt is $70,000.
00:53:45.000And law degrees and medical degrees where the average debt is $150,000 and $200,000 respectively.
00:53:48.800So when you hear about debt forgiveness, just know that half of that money, money that will come from the taxpayer, from you, will be going to upper class, affluent, highly educated doctors and lawyers and so on.
00:54:01.260Student debt forgiveness is upper class welfare.
00:54:49.700Really, if we wanted to talk about debt forgiveness for the middle class, for average working class Americans, we'd be forgiving mortgages or credit card debt or car payments.
00:54:58.340That's the kind of debt that most people deal with.
00:55:00.900Most of us don't have a $200,000 slip of paper sitting in a frame and hanging on a wall in our office.
00:55:05.620Maybe the student debt forgiveness proponents, though, would say, sure, yeah, let's forgive all that debt, too.
00:55:11.440But that only proves that they're a bunch of mental children.
00:55:15.420They have no understanding of or appreciation for the financial realities of life.
00:55:19.280They think a magic wand can be waived to solve all these problems, even as the government's magic wand that it waived over the last two years has led to skyrocketing inflation and an economic situation that's even worse than the one that these measures were supposed to solve in the first place.
00:55:32.820When it comes down to it, this is, again, a question of who should be responsible for the debts that you take on.
00:55:42.380If you enter into a contract and agree to pay X amount for Y product or Y service, who should be the one to hold up your end of the bargain?
00:55:51.380And there are only two possible answers to that question, you or everybody else.
00:55:57.940You might prefer the latter option, everyone else, but it's not justifiable on a logical or moral or financial basis.
00:56:05.500I'm sorry if you went to a master's to get a master's degree so that you could teach the ABCs to first graders.
00:56:12.720I'm very sorry that such a terrible decision has caused you heartache.
00:56:17.320But my well of sympathy dries up the moment you turn to the government and ask it to point its guns at me and reach into my wallet to solve your problems.
00:56:26.400You immediately go from being a sympathetic yet silly figure to a thief.
00:56:30.600Now, all of that said, I do agree that our approach to higher education is untenable.
00:56:36.680And that's why I think we need to evaluate that approach rather than simply trying to get rid of the debt while leaving the fundamentally broken system still in place.
00:56:46.120Okay, so this, again, like we talked about with the left, this is just like solve the homeless crisis by putting all the homeless in hotels.
00:56:54.140Yet they're still mentally ill drug addicts.
00:56:55.900So we solve our broken higher education system by just forgiving all the debt, but the system is still broken.
00:57:04.000The solution to the debt crisis going forward, the way to staunch the bleeding anyway and make sure it doesn't get worse,
00:57:09.620is to stop sending our kids into four-year institutions by default.
00:57:15.320Most of them don't need to be there and won't gain anything of lasting value from the experience.
00:57:20.240If there was a massive drop-off in enrollment, and we encouraged our kids to be more discerning about the choice to enroll in college,
00:57:29.660and we pushed them to explore other options aside from four-year institutions,
00:57:33.680then many of these problems would begin to sort themselves out.
00:57:37.640Colleges, for one thing, wouldn't be able to charge Lamborghini prices for degrees if they had to compete not just with each other,
00:57:44.840but with the whole array of other options that the world presents.
00:57:47.700If only people would explore them before signing up for the college path.
00:57:53.040That's the point that Rashida Tlaib ignores, or outright it rejects.
00:57:57.700She wants to keep the spigot turned on, siphoning millions of kids into the university pipeline,