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talkingpointsusa · 3 months ago

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To the surprise of literally nobody, Matt Walsh has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to forest fires

Well folks, I'm back from a weeklong camping trip and am ready to tackle some more right-wing media brain rot. While I don't normally like covering the same show twice in a row I figured what better way to celebrate being back from the woods in Canada than debunking an episode about the woods in Canada.

So, Matt Walsh decided to cover the recent forest fires in Canada (finally, my country gets a mention) and you would think that it would be very hard to make that offensive. Shockingly enough though, Matt managed to find a way. At least he's innovative.

01:10, Matt Walsh: "One of the most basic assumptions about climate change that you're told to accept is that if you give the government enough power and make enough personal sacrifices you can help change the weather. You can make natural disasters less likely, you can save beaches and endangered species, even entire countries, the entire world can be saved and all you need to do is pay more in taxes to fund more government bureaucracy and give up your car and your gas stove and airline travel and plastic straws and maybe your entire livelihood and then everything will be fine."

Right out of the gate there is a mountain of BS that needs to be addressed here. Strap in guys, we've got a lot to unpack.

Matt's conflating weather and climate, what else is new? I explained this in a previous post but weather refers to short term changes in the atmosphere while climate refers to the weather of a specific region over time. Does climate change increase the probability of extreme weather? Yes! For example, 2023 was the hottest year on record and the world saw record breaking heatwaves as a result.

More specifically, many recent extreme weather events can be directly tied to climate change. According to Carbonbrief.org, which has actually mapped extreme weather events across the world and determined which ones have ties to climate change or not, 71% of the extreme weather events mapped by their organization were made more likely or severe by anthropogenic climate change. Furthermore, 93% of the extreme heat events charted by their scientists were made more likely or severe by anthropogenic climate change. So yes, climate change does change the weather and addressing climate change will make those disasters less likely. The only way to agree with Matt's BS assessment that climate change is a government run scam is to ignore mountains of data.

As for Matt's list of things that we're allegedly being forced to give up, it's complete rubbish;

Nobody has banned gasoline cars, although they're being phased out in favor of EV's. Even with this phaseout, you can still drive your gasoline car or even buy a new one if you chose and even if you couldn't you still have the option to drive an EV or hybrid or even a hydrogen powered car in certain states.

While New York state did ban gas stoves (and even then only by as early as the year 2026 meaning it's not like they're going to come into your house and drag you and your gas stove out by force), nationally they are only subject to energy efficiency and health related guidelines.

Airline travel is absolutely not getting banned, if only because the airline industry controls a fourteen million dollar lobbying arm that would crush that idea in five seconds flat.

As for plastic straws, a lot of states have banned them but to be honest who gives a crap? As someone who lives in a country that has banned single-use plastic straws, society has yet to collapse. Using a paper or metal straw isn't some herculean sacrifice.

In terms of peoples incomes, it would be dishonest to say that some people won’t most likely lose their jobs due to phasing out fossil fuels. However, renewable energy will also create thousands of jobs many of which can be occupied by the people who were previously employed in the fossil fuel sector. According to the DOE, there are currently just over 8 million jobs in renewable energy in the United States and in both 2021 and 2022 renewable energy job growth outpaced overall US employment. Another thing that the government could do is provide federal grant money and create transition programs, similar to Colorado’s lauded Office of Just Transition, to help out of work coal miners and other fossil fuel related workers transition to other jobs in the energy sector. I doubt Matt would like that solution though because that would require a bump in his taxes and as we’ve already established, he doesn’t like that very much. Taxes have gotta stay low, actual solutions to climate change that help everyone be damned!

Also, climate change is the real job killer. According to the National Climate Assessment Report, climate change will also drive up electricity costs and severely impact trade and the economy. In other words, if we don't address climate change Matt's economic fears will not only occur but will be a thousand times worse than what will happen with regulation.

*pants*, I know that was a lot of words but it's important to address Matt's arguments for what they are: poorly sourced bullshit.

01:42, Matt Walsh: "Now there's no other country on Earth that's internalized this way of thinking more than our neighbor to the north Canada."

First of all, get my countries name out of your goddamn mouth.

Second of all, not even close. I'd say that Denmark, which is honestly a case study in how countries should address climate change, is a lot more of a climate-friendly nation than Canada. We don't even make the top ten nations leading on climate and we're still pretty beholden to oil interests up in Alberta unfortunately.

01:48, Matt Walsh: "They've declared a national climate change emergency, they have a constantly increasing national tax on carbon which raises the cost of living for pretty much every household in the country, they've banned plastic straws, they've shut down oil and gas permits off their pacific coast. If you're an insomniac and you pull up a video of a debate in the Canadian parliament to help you sleep there's a good chance they'll be debating climate change in some way or another."

Brief pause, the carbon tax hasn't significantly increased the cost of living for the average household in Canada. According to StatsCan, the carbon tax has only made overall consumer prices 0.6% higher. As a matter of fact, Canada has a climate rebate called the Canada Carbon Rebate that actually helps small businesses and families offset pollution pricing.

Hmm, it almost sounds like Matt doesn't know what he's talking about here. Perhaps if he actually decided to look into Canadian politics instead of just going "boooring" and looking at random right-wing blogs talking about some obscure report released by the health department (we'll get to that later) he wouldn't make these extremely stupid mistakes while covering this story.

02:22, Matt Walsh: "Surely we can assume that at the very least Canada's carbon emissions are much lower as a result of all of this government beuracracy. After all, Canada's not even a top twenty country by population. The GDP barely ranks in the top ten, shouldn't be hard for them to rank low on the list of global carbon emitters, especially since they've been trying so hard and punishing their citizens so much.

We actually have the ninth largest GDP in the world according to the World Bank but go off I guess.

Also, how are these things that Matt previously listed off "punishing citizens"? As mentioned previously, the carbon tax has barely impacted the cost of living and comes with rebates. Banning plastic straws is an extraordinarily mild inconvenience at best, as a Canadian I can confidently tell you that I've barely noticed the difference. As for shutting down oil and gas permits off the Pacific Coast, your average citizen has zero idea that that even happened. This is completely ridiculous.

Also, the Canadian economy is outperforming expectations. Pretty much everything that he's saying here is a lie.

02:43, Matt Walsh: "But, as it turns out Canada is currently one of the biggest carbon emitters on the planet. They're setting new records in the wrong direction. They're adding more of that dreaded carbon into the atmosphere than countries three times their size and it's all because of a series of wildfires last year that the Canadian government clearly could not control, watch."

Matt's citing a study in Nature that actually contradicts his climate change denialism. The study makes it extremely clear that Canada's record breaking forest fire season was made more likely due to the impact of climate change. Here's a quote from said study:

"Canadian forests cover a vast area of nearly 362 million ha (ref. 9), amounting to 8.5% of the global forested area. These forests are an important sink of carbon, absorbing fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and slowing the pace of climate warming. However, climate change is increasing forest fire activity, acting to suppress the carbon uptake capacity of these forests. Although more frequent fires have been widespread, 2023 has seen forest fires on an extreme scale."

So, essentially the way to address these extreme forest fires is to address climate change. In the meantime, countries need to learn how to adapt to record-breaking forest fires as they will only become more common as the climate continues to change. The study says as much here:

"The role of Canada’s fire management strategy in managing fire carbon emissions also deserves some discussion. Fire management strategies require balancing several considerations, including socioeconomic costs, ecological impacts and carbon emissions. Canada’s present strategy adopts a risk-based approach, for which decisions on whether or not to suppress fires are made on a fire-by-fire basis, with differing priorities across provinces and territories. Understanding how fire regimes will change with climate change is thus of high importance, for future decision criteria and costing."

This is a pretty important point to hammer in because it shows how lazy guys in the conservative media ecosystem like Matt Walsh actually are. They don't read anything that they're trying to cite, they don't bother to look into the topics that they're discussing, and when you look into those topics the stuff that they're citing often directly contradicts the point that they're trying to make.

03:59, Matt Walsh: "Now, if you check in with the experts of course they'll tell you that the wildfires were only so severe because of climate change."

The experts which include the study that you're citing. But yes, as the world gets hotter and drier forest fires will become more likely and more severe. I find it absolutely bizarre how Matt can admit that the Canadian forest fire season was record breaking but also try to make the argument that this...disproves climate change somehow. The mental gymnastics here are gold medal worthy.

Matt reads from an article published in MIT Technology Review that ties climate change to forest fires and decides to make a really dumb argument.

05:16, Matt Walsh: "Now, what's striking about explanations like this is that they conveniently absolve the government of all responsibility from managing the forests which is the single most direct way to prevent wildfires from spreading out of control like they did last year. And even the Canadian government admits that, I went on the website of Canada's Natural Resource Department and found that in addition to blaming fossil fuels they admit that they could do more to prevent wildfires from spreading."

What kind of dumbass argument is that?

"Oh yeah, this argument absolves the government from responsibility to manage the forest. And to prove that I'm gonna read this article from the government that says that it's the governments responsibility to manage the forests."

Absolutely galaxy brained content from friend of the blog Matty Walsh here.

06:18, Matt Walsh: "Now they don't mention that preventing arson is another way to stop these fires even though that's true as well. While the majority of these fires were apparently caused by lightning and some other natural event, there's at least one guy that pleaded guilty for setting more than a dozen fires last year."

What Matt's talking about is a story out of Quebec where a far-right conspiracy theorist plead guilty to setting fourteen fires.

The arsonist, a man by the name of Brian Paré, was a climate denier who posted multiple conspiracy theories that the government of Canada intentionally started forest fires across the country. Hmmm, sounds almost like someone who would agree with Matt and other right-wing media nutcases.

So, essentially what we have here is some guy who watched too much stuff like Alex Jones who set multiple fires after seeing posts about the record breaking fire season. This doesn't prove anything outside of the fact that right-wing conspiracy theory nonsense often has dangerous consequences.

So, Matt says that the government should "do things competently and prevent and contain forest fires" which is exactly what the government is trying to do. Then he finds another thing to lie about.

07:59, Matt Walsh: "And volcanoes erupt too like the one I talked about last year that drove temperature changes all of the world."

Matt's talking about the Tonga Volcano eruption and wouldn't you know it, he doesn't have the facts straight on this one either.

While the Tonga Volcanic eruption did impact the climate as well as weather patterns around the world, there are dozens of studies showing that the majority of climate change is anthropogenic, or caused by humans. Most volcanoes actually have a net atmospheric cooling effect with Tonga being an outlier meaning that they don't explain heating across the planet in years before the eruption occurred.

08:40, Matt Walsh: "Instead they're predictably turning the wildfires into another opportunity to harp on racial grievances and divide their country even more. TrueNorth reports this week quote; 'The Public Health Agency of Canada Wants To Review the Way That Wildfire Evacuations Are Conducted Because They Supposedly Disproportionately Impact Minorites.'"

Ah yes, well known reliable source of information TrueNorth.com.

Since I don't trust some dumb right-wing blog to reliably convey what this report was all about, I went and found a copy myself and wouldn't you know it, they're not telling the full story.

First of all, this report was published by the Public Health Agency which is not responsible for forest fire prevention. That falls under the jurisdiction of the governments of the provinces where the fires occur unless the fire occurs on federal land in which case it would probably fall under the Federal Government and Parks Canada. Provinces also have resource sharing agreements which are all outlined in the Canadian Wildland Fire Prevention and Mitigation Strategy which was published by the Canadian Council Of Forest Ministers which is a coalition of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments established to address forest related concerns in Canada such as wildfires. In short, this report on the health effects of wildfires published by an agency that has nothing to do with actual forest fire prevention isn't the only thing that Canada is doing to manage forest fires. It may come as a shock to Matt but governments are huge entities capable of doing multiple things at the same time.

Second of all, right-wing entities like TrueNorth.Com and Rebel News are severely misrepresenting the contents of this report. While Indigenous communities are mentioned in this report, mainly because their land is often in areas more susceptible to forest fires, it also talks about other groups that have nothing to do with race and sexuality such as women, children, and the elderly and how they're more vulnerable to the negative physical and mental health impacts of wildfires.

09:22, Matt Walsh: "Yes, they've turned their worst wildfire season on record into an opportunity to complain once again about nonbinary people. Yes, nonbinary people are more impacted by fire than the rest of us. The rest of us are impervious to fire, it turns out, as a straight white male they could set me on fire and I would be unharmed by it."

Nonbinary people only got mentioned in the 26 page analysis once and it was about the mental health impacts of wildfires on kids that identify as nonbinary. Quote:

"Results from several studies conducted after the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire found that women experience worse mental health impacts in comparison to men. This was also noted for people who did not identify within the gender binary. Among Grade 7-12 10 students, those who identified as female exhibited higher mental health symptom scores, higher rates of probable diagnosis of MDD, PTSD, and GAD, and lower scores for self-esteem, quality of life, and resilience in comparison to their male-identifying students. (27) Students who identified with another gender or preferred not to state their gender identity exhibited worse mental health outcomes compared to both their female- and male-identifying counterparts."

So yeah, he absolutely did not read this document and is just riffing as right-wing media morons tend to do.

09:57, Matt Walsh: "So, here's a couple of lines from the Canadian governments report to give you some idea how unhinged the country has become. Quote; "The impact of wildfires on Indigenous peoples is influenced by colonialism and has forced many Indigenous peoples to live in isolation or in communities that are isolated from the rest of the country. Evacuation measures conducted in Indigenous communities served as traumatic reminders of being taken away to residential schools and or the sixty scoop as some were forced onto busses and separated from their family.'"

He's playing a pretty dishonest game here as he's mashing two sentences that appeared on different pages of the report into one big sentence and leaving out critical context for each. Quote (from the report):

"The impact of wildfires on Indigenous Peoples is influenced by colonialism, (33) and has forced many Indigenous Peoples to live in isolation or in communities that are isolated from the rest of society. Their geographic isolation makes it difficult to access basic goods, services, and other resources that are necessary for mitigating and building resilience against the impacts of wildfires. In addition, Indigenous communities often depend on the land for food, water, recreation, and cultural practices. Therefore, wildfires disrupt Indigenous ways of life and threaten important cultural activities, such as hunting, fishing, harvesting, and gathering."

Sounds a lot more reasonable when you read the actual context behind the sentence huh? I feel like I shouldn't have to say this but "people who live in isolated areas have a harder time accessing resources" and "wildfires impact peoples way of life" aren't dumb statements.

The sentence about trauma occurs a page later as part of a bulleted list of the impacts that previous wildfire evacuations had on indigenous communities in Canada. Quote:

"These findings were reinforced by a report from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs that examined the impacts of the 2017 wildfires on First Nations communities across Canada. (41) The report found that many Indigenous Peoples also faced additional economic challenges during evacuations and recovery phases. While they were eligible for reimbursement of funds utilized during an emergency through Indigenous Service programs; many experienced difficulties claiming these expenses due to challenges with applying for reimbursement and not always receiving the full amount of a claim. (41,42)

For First Nations evacuees, there was a lack of space for the practice of traditional activities and preparation of traditional foods, as well as a lack of mental health resources for those being temporarily housed in shelters.(41)

Finally it was noted that the evacuation measures conducted in Indigenous communities served as traumatic reminders of being taken away to residential schools and/or the Sixties Scoop as some were forced onto buses and separated from family(41).

A community-based qualitative case study examining how residents of Sandy Lake First Nation were impacted by the 2011 wildfire evacuation found that a lack of pre-event preparedness resulted in some Elders with medical conditions being evacuated without a caregiver and families were separated and displaced during evacuation operations. (43)"

Again, it's a wonder how much context changes the report that you're lying about. I guess it doesn't matter when you can just deceptively combine sentences together and ignore half of what the report was actually saying.

Conclusion:

Matt Walsh: Forest Fire Prevention Expert wasn't something that I had on my right-wing media bingo card but here we are. This was just a really dumb experience all around but dumb experiences seem to be the name of the game in right-wing media these days.

Also, as a palette cleanser here's an image I created in photoshop after I finished the fact-check to celebrate Matt's newfound "expertise" in forest fire prevention.

Original Video:

“Ep. 1433 - When Wildfires Strike, Canada Blames Racism instead of Taking Action.” Dailywire.com, The Daily Wire, 29 Aug. 2024.

Sources Cited:

Lopez, Nuria. “Copernicus: 2023 Is the Hottest Year on Record, with Global Temperatures close to the 1.5°c Limit | Copernicus.” Climate.copernicus.eu, 9 Jan. 2024.

Pidcock, Roz, and Robert McSweeney. “Mapped: How Climate Change Affects Extreme Weather around the World.” Carbon Brief, 2022.

“There’s a New Federal Standard for Gas Stoves. Here’s What It Means for Your Kitchen.” CNET, 2024.

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. “Clean Energy Job Creation and Growth.” Energy.gov.

U.S. Global Change Research Program. “Fourth National Climate Assessment.” Globalchange.gov, vol. 2, no. 4, 31 Dec. 2017, pp. 1–470.

“Carbon Pricing Is Not to Blame for Canada’s Affordability Challenges.” Policy Options, 7 Dec. 2023, policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/december-2023/carbon-price-affordability/.

Agency, Canada Revenue. “Canada Carbon Rebate (CCR).” Www.canada.ca, 20 Apr. 2022.

Byrne, Brendan, et al. “Carbon Emissions from the 2023 Canadian Wildfires.” Nature, 28 Aug. 2024, pp. 1–5.

Ghori, Aiman. “How Can the Forest Sector Respond to Fires due to Climate Change?” Canadian Climate Institute, 31 Jan. 2024.

Serebrin, Jacob. “Quebec Man Who Blamed 2023 Wildfires on Government Pleads Guilty to Setting 14 Fires.” CBC, 16 Jan. 2024.

Canada, Public Health Agency of. “Rapid Review: An Intersectional Analysis of the Disproportionate Health Impacts of Wildfires on Diverse Populations and Communities.” Www.canada.ca, 18 July 2024.

“Canadian Wildland Fire Prevention and Mitigation Strategy - Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM).” Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM), 27 June 2024.

#right wing bullshit #forest fires #canada #matt walsh #conservative bullshit #journalism #fact checking #bad takes #conservatives #disinformation #politics #debunking #daily wire #republicans #republican bullshit #far right #fuck the gop #matt walsh is seriously the worst of these Daily Wire asshats #at least Ben Shapiro pretends to know what he's talking about sometimes.

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talkingpointsusa · 4 months ago

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The Michael Knowles Guide to Bitcoin, lab grown genitals, and the Olympics

After some intense politics related posts and some downright horrific bigotry being expressed in the grifter-verse, I wanted to do a bit of a more lighthearted post. Naturally, when you're writing a blog like this you kind of have to wait out for something particularly dumb if you want to write a more lighthearted post. Enter Michael Knowles:

02:06, Michael Knowles: "The Olympics has now had a transvestite carry the Olympic torch on the way to Paris or something. I don't -- people, the conservatives are freaking out about this, I actually think it makes perfect sense, we'll get to that in a moment. First though I want to tell you about Hillsdale College."

"Or something" is the kind of brilliant analysis that you can always expect from Michael Knowles. Truly a luminary for the ages.

So, the Olympic Ceremony featured a number of drag-styled performances and naturally the free-speech for me and not for thee crowd has wasted no time in bitching about it. It's just dumb transphobia about something that has zero affect on anyone's life outside of the terminally online. Michael Knowles, the king of declaring that things are pagan, thinks that this was a pagan ritual.

But before we talk about that, keen eyed readers of the blog may have noticed that Michael isn't at his usual set over at the Daily Wire. That's because at the time of filming he was busy on the worlds dumbest field trip. I'll let him explain it.

03:44, Michael Knowles: "And speaking of learning things, you might be wondering 'Michael, why is there so much ambient noise?' If you are listening to this right now or if you're watching you might say 'Michael, where are you? Why are there people walking around behind you?' It's because I am at the Bitcoin conference."

That's right ladies and gentlemen, the Daily Wires getting into cryptocurrency! Bencoin baby!

In all seriousness, Michael and cypto-grifters share a lot in common so this is a pretty suitable environment for a guy like him. Hilariously enough, he's filming live in the middle of the conference so sometimes you can hear the people in the background milling about way more clearly than you can hear Michael’s voice. This "lets get Michael to film his show live in the middle of the convention centre" idea clearly wasn't something that the Daily Wire thought through very well.

I feel like this whole situation is exposing my own moral failings because if I was at the Bitcoin Conference (god forbid) and I saw Michael Knowles just sitting there doing his show live I'd go up and harass the crap out of him. You guys would get to see the first Talking Points USA live fact-check!

Ok, we can't spend all day making fun of Michael Knowles going live from the Bitcoin Conference, even though it is pretty funny, so lets get back on track here.

05:11, Michael Knowles: "Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was just asked a -- a question about Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was put in charge of the border by her boss Joe Biden and -- and then the Democrats when Kamala became the presumptive nominee wanted to deny that she was put in charge of the border."

A lot of right-wing media coverage lately has been devoted to claiming that Kamala Harris was the Biden Administrations "Border Czar". The way that right-wing media has been framing this "Border Czar" thing has been extremely dishonest, although a bit of blame also falls on the MSM as well for giving Kamala that title in the first place.

"Border Czar" is not an official title in the United States government and the United States border falls under the jurisdiction of the secretary of Homeland Security. Where the confusion lies is that Kamala was appointed by Biden to be the chief diplomatic officer to Central American countries where undocumented immigrants often originate from in order to address the root causes of migration to the United States. That's a far cry from being in charge of the border however that didn't stop the mainstream media from irresponsibly calling Harris the "border czar" and acting as if she had a semblance of control over the border itself. Thanks to that, right-wing media has decided to have a field-day with claiming that Kamala Harris was in charge of the border. This is a good example of how even mainstream journalists can exaggerate news stories in todays click-based digital economy and how that exaggeration is genuinely dangerous at times.

06:38, Michael Knowles: "I will quote March 21st, 2024. These are the verbatim words of Joe Biden; 'I've asked her, the VP today, because she is the most qualified person to do it to lead our efforts with Mexico and Northern Triangle and the countries that help -- are going to need to help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration of the Southern Border. It's not her full responsibility and job but she's leading the effort because I think the best thing to do is to put someone when he or she speaks they don't have to wonder about is that where the president is.'"

This quote sounds significantly different from what Michael wants his audience to think it sounds like when you understand the fact that Kamala's position was a diplomatic one. Biden even said in the quote that "it's not her full responsibility" and talked about "When she speaks". She was talking to the leaders of foreign nations, not determining policy about border security.

07:22, Michael Knowles: "If you were confused here he is, next sentence, 'When she speaks, she speaks for me'. He imbues her with presidential authority on the issue of the border and migration."

By speaking, Biden was referring to speaking to foreign leaders to devise strategies to cut down on the need for migration, not speaking on the matter of security which is Homeland Securities job.

07:49, Michael Knowles: "So, that's -- that's what happened. Biden put Kamala in charge of the border and now the Democrats are saying 'there's no real -- there's no position of border czar'. Yeah, there's no position of czar in the government. There's no formal position of czar, czar is an imperial title that derives from Caesar so no we don't have a formal position named Caesar or Czar but if you look to Wikipedia, or if you look to Wikipedia before a couple days ago, you could type in 'Biden Administration Czars' and you'd get a whole list of them including Kamala Harris as the Border Czar."

As mentioned previously, the media will often refer to select people as Czars including Kamala Harris after she was given the diplomatic appointment by Joe Biden. Doesn't change what she was actually charged with doing which had nothing to do with security.

09:07, Michael Knowles: "So then, when the nominalism nonsense doesn't work, Karine Jean-Pierre tries to redirect and says 'Well, the Republicans killed a border bill'. Yes, there was a border bill that the Democrats were peddling. It was always a bad idea to consider any of the Democrats border legislation because the president was ignoring the immigration laws that were already on the books. The president already had the authority to enforce immigration law and he chose not to do it because he wanted migrants to flood into the country because the Democrats believe that it gives them a permanent electoral majority."

There is no better metaphor for the current state of the Republican Party and modern American Conservatism in general than Michael Knowles pushing the Great Replacement Theory at the Bitcoin Conference. You can't make this up, it's truly beyond parody.

I'll humor his argument with the exact amount of respect it deserves; Hey Michael, you dumb dipshit you, if the Biden Administration wants the border to be open to replace the hhhwhites or whatever, why did they propose a border security bill in the first place? Wouldn't they just ignore it?

Anyway, this Karine Jean-Pierre stuff is dumb and just standard issue bland right-wing mush. He continues talking about it for a bit, does an ad, comes back to complain about the FBI director testifying before Congress which is just whatever and I'm not talking about it. The GOP drags guys like Chris Wray and Tony Fauci in to generate clips for FOX News and the Daily Wire pursue truth justice and the American way so often that I kind of struggle to care about it. Congress is just a circus these days and the whole point of it in the year of our lord and savior 2024 just seems to be to generate viral clips. Essentially, Chris Wray said that the FBI didn't have all the information about the Trump shooting yet and that Trump may have been grazed and Michael's all fumed up into a tizzy about it. We have way more important things to cover though so that's an immediate skip.

19:31, Michael Knowles: " Now, speaking of gaslighting, a transvestite, a drag queen, has been tasked with carrying the Olympic torch on part of its journey to the Paris Olympics and this has sent the conservative commentariat into a tizzy."

This was before everyone got all pissed off about that Last Supper thing which I'm pretty sure I'll also end up covering at some point but my general thoughts on both things are simple; who gives a shit?

The world isn't designed to cater to this loud minority of bigoted assholes. If you have an extremely bigoted mindset towards trans people, occasionally you're going to see things that you don't like. These ceremonies don't effect Michael Knowles' life in the slightest nor do they effect most peoples lives. Plus, this is just yet another BS culture war story that all of these guys will forget about in a couple weeks when the next reminder that queer people exist comes up.

The lefts key issues are making sure that everybody has access to lifesaving healthcare and preventing children from being shot. The rights key issue is "We had to see a trans person on TV and our bigotry can't handle that".

20:35, Michael Knowles: "The conservatives are really upset about this, I don't really know why. The Olympic torch ceremony -- the Olympic torch ceremony is an overtly pagan ritual."

Well, we can add the Olympics to the increasingly long list of things that the Daily Wire thinks is satanic/pagan.

To be fair, the Olympics do actually have origins in paganism but the torch ceremony wasn't a part of the original games. The first torch ceremony was in the year 1936. Interestingly enough, the guy who created the modern Olympics as we know them was a man named Pierre de Coubertin and he was actually a devout Catholic.

If Michael wants to throw out everything that has pagan origins, than he should get rid of his yule logs and avoid buying a tree when Christmas comes around. Anyway, Michael doesn't care about the Olympics and he doesn't care so much that he's devoting a segment to it and calling for people to boycott the games on Twitter. Really this whole story is just an excuse for to push some gross transphobic propaganda.

21:12, Michael Knowles: "You know me, I'm as rock ribbed about the trans movement as anybody. I think transgenderism ought to be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology at every level, but pagans gonna do pagan things."

If I was in the background at the Bitcoin Conference this would be the point where Michael starts getting tomatoes chucked at him. Real nice how he's equating being trans with paganism in order to stoke more hatred towards this minority group in his audience. God, this sucks. Wasn't this supposed to be the fun lighthearted post that I write before I go on holiday? Well, he's still broadcasting live from the Bitcoin Conference so there's still that element of accidental satire to all of this.

On that rather dismal note, we're talking about lab grown penises now and with that Michaels show went back to being so dumb its funny.

23:31, Michael Knowles: "Scientists, according to this report, scientists have grown male genitals in a lab and there are fears that it could make blokes obsolete."

This is a headline from a UK tabloid called The Daily Star which lets you know how great Michael's information sources are. I read the article from The Star, as well as articles from the real news, and essentially the gist of this story is that an Israeli scientist used mice cells to grow miniature testicles in a lab and is planning on moving onto using human cells to grow the next pair. She says that her goal is to help treat infertility. Michael offers some truly brilliant insight into this story, check this analysis out.

23:43, Michael Knowles: "This is troubling, not because I think its going to make blokes obsolete but because that must be a very creepy lab. Could you imagine the petri dishes? That sounds really gross."

"That's creepy and gross!", what truly insightful commentary. It's a wonder that Michael hasn't made it to the scientific journals yet. Remind me again why people take this guy seriously.

Conclusion:

Well, that was the Daily Wire live at the Bitcoin Conference. I can't say I'm surprised by how stupid it turned out but Its fun to make fun of regardless. No crazy new revelations about right-wing media and the Daily Wire here; Michael Knowles is as deep as a puddle and they think that everything is pagan, surprise surprise. A fitting last post before I venture off to Washington D.C for a vacation where I get to finally flip off the Capitol Building in person and do the obligatory disinformation writer pilgrimage to the Pizzagate restaurant.

Cheers and I'll see you in the next one after my trip!

Original Video:

“Ep. 1539 - the Olympics Embrace the Rainbow.”

Sources:

Byik, Andre. “Harris’ Border Work Was on “Root Causes” of Migration; She Wasn’t in Charge | Fact Check.” USA TODAY.

Ryan, George. “The Catholic Church’s Hidden Role in the Creation of the Modern Olympic Games.” UCatholic, 27 Feb. 2023.

Ghert-Zand, Renee. "In breakthrough, Bar-Ilan University scientists form artificial lab-grown testicles." The Times Of Israel, 23 February 2024.

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