Absurd Truth: School Closures & Bailouts

A report shows 50,000 students still haven't returned to school after COVID shutdowns. Meanwhile, Biden is bribing swing voters with student loan bailouts.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Dana Lashes of surd Truth podcast sponsoredby Keltech. It's his laugh mission to
make bad decisions. It's time forFlorida Man. That's right, Florida Man
here on the Dana Show. Oneof the absolute best traditions, especially this
holiday season. Right, so wegot to always get into Florida Man.

(00:22):
So let's talk about this guy Shally. This is another real genius here.
Florida Man pleads guilty to threatening tokill Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. It's
right, remember that guy. Wewere told during all the protests after Roe
v. Wade was overturned that therewas nothing the Biden administration can do,
even though we know that they wereprobably inciting them. Well, Neil Bridge

(00:45):
Sidwane was found guilty entered a guiltyplea Friday to one count of making an
interstate threat to injure. He's aFernandia Beach resident, left an expletive written
voicemail message with the Supreme Court inJuly, and he twice made the threat
to kill a justice. The DOJdid not identify which justice he threatened.

(01:07):
In a statement of the suspect namehis target as Chief Justice John Roberts.
During a court ordered psychological evaluation.In the voicemail message, he identified himself
by name and urged the US Marshalsto pass along a message to Roberts that
I will effing kill you. Hewas arrested in August and has remained in
custody ever since. The psychologists whoconducted his evaluation found that he was competent

(01:30):
to stand trial, but noted thefixed delusional beliefs he has held for many
years, identifying a diagnosis of delusionaldisorder with psychosis. He takes an anti
psychotic drug, but I don't thinkit's really working, and he's going to
face up to five years in prisonfor his offense. Then there's a man
arrested for making a bomb threat atthe Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport that was

(01:53):
with the Broward Sheriff's Office Threat ManagementUnit arrested a Rhode Island man on bomb
threat charges at Fort Lauderdale holly WoodInternational Airports Sunday evening. The incident occurred
at five twenty six pm. Thedeputies alerted to a possible bomb threat in
Terminal one, and I feel inwhat happened here is this guy made a
statement about having trouble using a Kioskto check into his flight. Well,

(02:14):
obviously that is frustrating, but nevertheless, you don't make bomb threats, even
though that can be a very frustrating, frustrating process. Much of what we
see happening around us today results fromdecades of failure in American education. Americans
are increasingly divided over what policies arebest for our country. So that's why
I'd like to invite you to makea year end gift to Hillsdale College and

(02:35):
their mission to preserve the blessings ofcivil and religious liberty through a proper education.
Hillsdale College is leading an American revival. Over three and a half million
citizens have enrolled in one or moreof Hillsdale's free online courses. Thousands of
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(02:59):
all of this while refusing to acceptone penny of taxpayer funding. Hillsdale's independence
means that they rely on the supportof citizens like you who understand the importance
of education and liberty. You canmake your tax deductible year end gift at
Danaphour Hillsdale dot com. That's DanaPour Hillsdale dot Com on behalf of our
friends at Hillsdale College have a MerryChristmas and a happy New Year. Reason

(03:27):
dot Com has a story emmacamp.According to an analysis from the Associated Press,
fifty thousand children in twenty two stateswe're still missing from schools in this
past fall. That's crazy, right, two years after the COVID nineteen pandemic
cast school enrollment numbers to plummet.Well, the number actually indicates an improvement
in school attendance. The AP foundthat estimated two hundred and thirty thousand children

(03:50):
we're missing in the fall of twentytwenty one. It also shows that thousands
of children have nonetheless experienced multi yeardisruptions to their educations following COVID era school
clothes. So I'll bring this upbecause we keep hearing about a new variant.
Now as everybody's getting ready to travel, there's a school in Pennsylvania that's
already decided they're gonna go remote.They're gonna do remote learning, just as

(04:10):
a precaution, you know what Imean. And of course I would not
put anything past the Democrats. Toturn around and say mail in voting got
to do it. Lockdowns, there'snothing they won't try to maintain power.
We know that. We obviously allknow that. Following the wave of school
closures that began with the start ofthe COVID pandemic in twenty twenty, as
many as three million school children wentmissing from school, meaning that they weren't

(04:32):
enrolled in their local public school,but they hadn't switched to another school district
at all. They weren't enrolled inprivate school, and they haven't even started
home schooling. What's that about.Well, most of these children soon returned,
a significant minority stayed absent from classrooms. In February, research from the
AP and Stanford researchers found that duringthe twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two

(04:55):
school year, two hundred and thirtythousand children were still out of school across
twenty one states and the District ofColumbia. When AP examined data from pre
COVID years, they found virtually nochildren were missing. On Tuesday, the
APE reported that an updated analysis foundfifty thousand children still missing from classrooms across
twenty two states and DC as afall of twenty twenty two. While the

(05:17):
numbers signal that vast majority of oncemissing children have returned to classrooms, graduated,
or formally dropped out of school,a persistent cohort of children are absent
long term, and they say well. Exact causes are difficult to pinpoint.
Bureaucratic hurdles could be a major factorholding children back from returning to the classroom.
Many school districts have stringent policies ofunenrolling children after long absences, while

(05:41):
others require onerous paperwork proving a child'sresidency within the district or complicated medical requirements.
In Atlanta, for example, parentsmust provide eight separate documents to enroll
their children in public schools, includinga complicated certificate evaluating a child' to dental
health, health vision, hearing,and nutrition. One mother of a seventh

(06:04):
grader with autism told the AP thatshe tried to enroll her son in the
local public school as soon as thepandemic ended. However, she didn't have
reliable transportation said she couldn't find anearby appointment to get him the required immunizations,
causing her son to miss five monthsof school. She said he wasn't
in school and no one cared.The report joins the large body of evans

(06:28):
showing permanent damage to many American schoolchildren following extended COVID school lockdowns. While
the children who have returned to schoolshow devastating learning losses, those who remain
absent surely have even deeper deficits.And we haven't even factored in the mental
health toll of all this yet.But clearly we have a crisis of mental
health in this country among young people, no doubt about it. And so

(06:51):
as you look at all those things, you turn around and say to yourself,
well, what's going to happen intwenty twenty four. What's going to
happen in twenty twenty four if welook ahead and we hear all the warnings
and hear all the prognostications about COVIDvariants and numbers rising, would the Democrats
Polletrick again, I think they would. I don't think they would hesitate if

(07:11):
it meant getting everybody to mail andvoting and they can control the process,
no doubt, no question about it. Randy Weingarten, who's the head of
the American Federation for Teachers, cameout and said vouchers are another example of
white supremacy or something stupid like that. Vouchers which give kids, particularly poor
kids in failing schools, the abilityto go to better schools. That's somehow
racist, if you can understand that. But schools, of course, are

(07:35):
in doctrination grounds. So many peopledon't want their kids going near a public
school these days, and a lotof parents now don't want their kids going
anywhere near college after more universities havebecome tolerant of all this anti Israel hate
speech it's going on. But thesepeople are the same people that would punish
you if you use the wrong pronounin a classroom. They would cancel speakers

(07:59):
on college camp, they would cancelcomedians. I heard Jerry Seinfeld say he
wouldn't play a college campus these days. I know Chris Rock won't do it.
There's a lot of comedians that won'tbother because they don't want to deal
with woke students getting offended and thentrying to cancel them and taking one thing
they said out of context and thenputting it on social media and it goes
viral and then they can't get booking. So a lot of them just said,
you know, how the hell withit. I'm not doing it.

(08:20):
I'm not playing at colleges. Andnow all of the news you would probably
miss. It's time for Dana's Quickfive. Now, maybe you and your
family are watching Christmas movies. Wejust watched Home Alone with the kids the
other day. That's a classic,of course, the classic of my childhood.
How much would the trip to Paristhat the McAllister family took costs today

(08:41):
in today's numbers. There was athing where Kevin took his twenty dollars and
went to the grocery store and wasable to buy groceries that today would cost
about sixty bucks maybe sixty three dollarsfor the mac and cheese and all the
other things he bought. Well,the whole trip to Paris there and back,
with the emergency flights and everything becauseKevin was left home alone, would
be about twenty eight thousand dollars ormore in today's dollars. That's a lot,

(09:05):
so make sure you count your kids. Twice, a man in a
U haul sprayed a substance, yelledanti Semitic phrases outside of DC Synagogue.
There are a lot of crazy peopleout there. Brent Wood is accused of
driving a U haul van around securitypolls and parking directly on the sidewalk in
front of the entrance to Keshel IsraelCongregation. Sat down on the hood of
the van and then tried to openthe synagogue's front door, but it was

(09:28):
locked. There was a class goingon inside, so he started to spray
with an unknown substance and yelled gasthe Jews. This is what the Jewish
population in the United States of Americahas to deal with. Crazy lunatics like
this to feel emboldened based on what'shappening on college campuses, it's absolutely terrible.
You can watch a gigantic fireball movingalong power lines in Saint Pete If

(09:50):
you're down in Florida, that's right. A fireball moved across power lines in
the Shore Acres area of Saint Petersburg'sSunday morning after storm to move through the
area. They said it was arcingand occurs when someone hits a power line
and there is a fault. Inthe case the tree, extreme winds were
flying debris, So a gigantic fireballgoing up and down the power lines.

(10:13):
I feel like it's bad luck justlooking at something like that. Don't you
think and an Oregon woman who washospitalized for seventeen days on life support died
but after a random soup can beating. A man pleaded not guilty to four
felony charges relating to the alleged attack. This is a man who beat a
woman to death with Kansas soup.And this is just absolutely terrible how this

(10:35):
happens. But like I said,there are a lot of crazy people out
there, no question about it.All Right, we got a lot more
to talk about on the Data Showhere today with me Rich c. The
oly in for Dana don't go away, which then brings us to the next
scam that Joe Biden is doing,which is the payoff the bribe. You
know, in the old days,if you wanted to vote to vote for
you, and you wanted to bribehim, you had to give him a
bag of cash, maybe cigarettes,oh, street money, walking around money.

(11:00):
You want to get people who rallytheir friends to go vote, here's
a cart and the lucky strikes.But nowadays they don't do it that way.
Now what they do is they sendyou a check in the form of
a student loan repayment. So eventhough the United States Supreme Court came out
and said Biden's student loan repayment scamwas just that, an unconstitutional scam.
Biden's doing it anyway. And eightythousand people in Pennsylvania I've already had their

(11:24):
college loans completely forgiven by Joe Biden. That's the must win swing state of
Pennsylvania. Joe Biden getting in thereand giving people money, the ultimate bribe,
the ultimate form of a bribe,a government check. Yeah, And
nearly nine million student loan borrowers missedtheir first payment after the pause resumed.

(11:46):
They had the COVID pause, andthen they said, you finally, now
three years later, have to startmaking your student loan payments. The first
one was due last week. Andmillions nine million people missed the first student
loan payment they were supposed to makeafter the pandemic pause ended this fall.
That amounts to about forty percent ofthe twenty two million people who had student

(12:07):
loan payments due in October. Thenearly nine million borrowers had not made their
payments by well into November. Forcomparison, less than twenty six percent of
borrowers missed their payment in October oftwenty nineteen before the pandemic pause went into
effect. The payment pause began inMarch of twenty twenty, in the thick
of the COVID pandemic. It endedin October of this year after more than

(12:31):
three years. More than twenty eightmillion borrowers are supposed to be resuming payments.
But that's not what's happening, theysay, summer confused or overwhelmed about
their options. You know what Ithink it is. I think a lot
of people were thinking, why wouldI pay this? Why should I pay
this? They'll pay it for me. At some point, the entitlement culture

(12:52):
will say I'm not paying this payment, They'll wind up paying it. I'm
not going to do that. AndI don't blame them for thinking that,
because when Biden announced his student loandebt repayment plan, guys like me who
paid off all my student loans manymany years ago, I was angry.
I said, all right, well, how about my car loan, how
about my mortgage, how about mycredit card debt? Can you pay any
that stuff off for me? Canwe pick a debt and you get to

(13:13):
pay that off? But of courseno, The answer was no. They
knew the student debt repayment was abribe for Democrat voters elites to why.
James Carvill has said the Democrat Partyhas become the party of the faculty lounge
and coastal elites and has lost touchwith working people. His group found they
did polling data that for the firsttime since the question was asked when Franklin

(13:35):
Delano Roosevelt was president, working peoplenow say the Republican Party is better for
them than the Democrat Party is.How do you think that happened? That
happened because a lot of people whowere plumbers and contractors, carpenters, truck
drivers who never went to college turnedaround and saw Joe Biden trying to give
all these elite, snarky little baristasat Starbucks tens of thousands of dollars to

(14:00):
pay off their student loan debt.And then these blue collar workers turned around
and said, hey, not fornothing, but what do I get?
You get nothing and you'll like it. See, the Democrat Party has completely
lost touch with the working class inthis country. But that's my design their
party. They are the party nowof the academic elites in places like Harvard,

(14:24):
University of Pennsylvania and other schools acrossthe country. Like that That's why
the anti Israel fervor you're seeing collegecampuses is also playing out in the halls
of Congress. It's why when PennsylvaniaSenator John Fetterman comes out and says that
he stands with Israel, he getsblasted by progressives. What how can you
stand? How can you stand withIsrael? How can you do that?

(14:46):
Because the mainstream thinking of the DemocratParty today is not stand with Israel,
it's anti Israel. So if youbreak from that, as a Democrat like
John Fetterman has done, you getblasted by progressives. Israel is the oppressor?
How can you think that way?College campuses have taught students that there
is the oppressed and the oppressor,and that's how you have to view the

(15:09):
world. America as traditionally always beenthe oppressor, and there's all these people
in this country who are oppressed.Now, let's open your DEI handbooks and
figure out who those people are.It's everybody who's not a white male,
basically. And they turn around andthey indoctrinate students into thinking this. They
create all this division, and they'vesaid, well, Israel's obviously the oppressor
too, which is why you seethis boiling over in college campuses. Thanks

(15:31):
for tuning into today's edition of DanaLash's Absurditude podcast. If you haven't already,
made sure to hit that subscribe buttonon Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever
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