November 13, 2025 • 27 mins
Join Jim and Greg for the Thursday 3 Martini Lunch as they celebrate the end of a pointless government shutdown, blast United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for trying to silence free speech online, and recoil at how shockingly bad college students have become at math.
First, Jim and Greg applaud the House vote to end the government shutdown, rip Democrats for their six weeks of incoherent grandstanding, and look ahead to late January when this may happen all over again.
Next, they unload on Secretary-General Guterres for claiming online “disinformation and misinformation” are poisoning discourse and insisting that tech companies have a responsibility to crack down on speech that supposedly distorts the facts. Guterres says this speech he doesn't like is hampering the UN's ability to enact its climate agenda. Well, that's a shame. Jim not only defends free speech but points out that the UN should not be involved in this debate at all.
Finally, they shudder as college professors warn that incoming students are much worse at math than ever before. One study finds fewer than 20 percent can handle middle school–level math, and many struggle with even the most basic concepts. Jim and Greg consider how so many young adults made it to college so poorly prepared.
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First, Jim and Greg applaud the House vote to end the government shutdown, rip Democrats for their six weeks of incoherent grandstanding, and look ahead to late January when this may happen all over again.
Next, they unload on Secretary-General Guterres for claiming online “disinformation and misinformation” are poisoning discourse and insisting that tech companies have a responsibility to crack down on speech that supposedly distorts the facts. Guterres says this speech he doesn't like is hampering the UN's ability to enact its climate agenda. Well, that's a shame. Jim not only defends free speech but points out that the UN should not be involved in this debate at all.
Finally, they shudder as college professors warn that incoming students are much worse at math than ever before. One study finds fewer than 20 percent can handle middle school–level math, and many struggle with even the most basic concepts. Jim and Greg consider how so many young adults made it to college so poorly prepared.
Please visit our great sponsors:
Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp by visiting https://BetterHelp.com/3ML today!
OneSkin uses the patented OS-01 Peptide™ designed to keep skin healthier, stronger, and more resilient over time. Get 15% off OneSkin with the code 3ML at https://www.OneSkin.co/3ML
Try the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for free with zero commitment by visiting https://Oracle.com/Martini today!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garrity of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hey, So glad you're with us for the Thursday edition
of The Three Martini Lunch and Jim planning to talk
about today as always in just a moment, we're talking
about the ridiculous math performance from incoming college students. It's
really alarming, and it says a lot about people getting
shuffled through high school and middle school and elementary school
(00:33):
and suddenly they show up at college literally knowing almost
nothing when it comes to math, at least, and I'm
guessing that's probably true in some other subjects as well.
We'll dig into that. The United Nations, unsurprisingly is now
joining the cause of regulating cracking down on social media
speech internet speech because what they call misinformation and disinformation
(00:55):
is damaging to their agenda. But of course we'll start
in just a moment with shutdown finally being over longest
shutdown in history, so we'll talk all about that and
what comes next year in the next couple months. But Jim, are,
I don't know about long national nightmare. But stupid democratic
stunt is finally over.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. I don't want to preview everything going to say
about the government shutdown, Greg, but I got to say, like,
the shutdown feels really long. I would also point out
that this week feels really long. And I've only been
on this podcast for two days. I've noticed that, like
when it's Monday, you always know what day it is.
You always know it's Monday, but it's Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
These three are like three triplets. They're the handsome brothers
(01:34):
from Slapshot. You could mix them all up. They all
look the same. It is Thursday, but man, it feels
like it should be a Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
All right, Jim good Martine. I think most people already know.
It's certainly gotten plenty of attention. We've talked about it
a couple of times this week. The shutdown is over.
Of course, started October first, when there wasn't an agreement
on funding. I don't know how many times the Senate
voted on the clean cr Keussen. It was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
something like that. Finally, the Democrats went for it on
(02:08):
Sunday night. They'd agreed to cut off debate with those
eight Democrats, joining all but ran Paul on the Republican
side to get to sixty votes. Then the bill got
passed the next night, and last night only two Republicans
voted against it, Massey of Kentucky and Stuby of Florida,
and then six Democrats voted for it, so two to
(02:28):
two nine and so Jim. The original bill was to
extend Funnington November twenty first, but that's next week. Now
it's been kicked to the end of January, and so
the question now becomes what happens then. I would certainly
like it to be Republicans spending priorities that the Democrats
are opposed to, instead of extending the Biden spending priorities,
which is what happened in this case. The Democrats had
(02:50):
a horrible hand to play. They shouldn't have played it
at all. They played it anyway and got creamed. I
don't know what it'll look like next time, But what
do you make of what we've seen and what do
you expect in a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I was going to say, Greg, depending on how you
want to measure, whether you want to measure from the
Senate vote or the House vote, or when it finally
gets to the president's desk. Was this forty two days
or forty three days as a government shutdown? I don't know,
it's either one of those two. And I just want
to point out God scoured the earth in forty days,
was a you know, it took Democrats longer to come
(03:23):
to their senses than Jesus wandering the desert, right, Like,
forty days is kind of this big lend, right, This
is a forty days is a measurement stick of like
a really long time. Took the Democrats longer than that,
kept the government shutdown longer than that. I am not
a fan of government shutdown fights in general that you
very rarely get anything out of it. There are a
surprising number of conservatives who are convinced that the government
(03:45):
that taxpayers save money when it happens does not happen
because the federal workers have to wrap everything up with
the government shutdown, it's impending, and then they got to
start everything back up again. They get federal workers do
get the back pay, which doesn't mean it doesn't cause
some you know, great consternation in federal workers households because
they don't know when that next paycheck is going to
come in, bills are still due. And what's more, I
(04:06):
think if you if your boss said to you, if
you work in the private sector and your boss said, look,
things are lost up. I can't pay you, and I
don't know when I'm gonna pay you, but I need
you to keep coming in and working. You're probably not
gonna get paid this pay period. I can't make any
guarantees for the next pay period, but I just need
you to keep working normal hours, maybe even overtime hours.
Maybe you need to cover for all the other workers
(04:28):
who beneed non essential who are not here. And I
need you to not let any of those two little
blips on your screen as an air traffic controller running
to each other like that's asking a lot. I think
that's really unfair for a bunch of federal workers. They
didn't ask for this, This is any of their stuff.
So it is a frustrating, but good Martini. I would
also find out like that there are under the deal,
there's a little bit of improvement in the sense that
(04:50):
we get to keep the Department of Agriculture open until
next year. Veterans affairs, military construction, all of those are
going to be funded for the next FI fiscal year
ending September thirtieth, So when they get back and get
back from the holidays, they're going to have to pass
another continuing resolution. But Greg, didn't we have an appropriations process?
Wasn't it still there?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You know? I seem to remember something in the Constitution
about this. But at least if they have another government
shutdown fight in early next year, at least we won't
have to worry about military construction, veterans affairs, and department
bag culture. At least we have one less thing to
worry about. But all in all, I'm hoping there isn't
another one. I do kind of think if Democrats walk
around believing that they won this fight, then they will
(05:31):
be very tempted to play this card again. But I'm
not sure that they will in the fact that, like
Democrats are really really angry. I wrote in the corner
yesterday John Stewart did this, like, you know, I think
very funny. But I can't bleeping believe Democrats, you know,
gave away their win after they had such a great
election day. I don't know if this was that great
win for them, because if they want, they would not
have not eight you know, eight Senate Democrats and Angus King,
(05:55):
who is an independent. I get really tired of having
to specify that because Angus King votes with the Trump administration.
He's the least independent independent I've ever seen. But anyway,
point being, there are eight Centate Democrats who are like,
we can't keep doing this. I just don't understand how
if you're a Senate Democrat you come out of this
(06:15):
being convinced that, oh, some on some level, you won
the messaging war. And if you're a federal worker, you
should be apoplectic angry that two weeks ago the largest
federal workers employee union said, okay, guys, it's time to
pass this clean and c are our members are suffering?
And Senate Democrats they just shrugged and said, hey, you
just have to take it right. By the way, let's
point out Warner and Cain split on this right. Caine
(06:39):
voted to reopen the government. Warner did not. And let's
also point out there are Northern Virginia Democrats who are
voting against reopening the government. As somebody said, this is
like Nevada lawmakers voting against gambling. This is like Pennsylvania
workers lawmakers voting against steel and coal like this is
just Michigan lawmakers voting against American call like this, Like,
(07:01):
if you're a Northern Virginia lawmaker, your constituency is federal
government workers. And the message from these guys is I
will screw you over for as long as it takes
for me to get a win. Right, they should be
furious with these people and so like in that sense,
if you're a Republican, I guess this is good news.
I think if you want the government to work, this
is just a very frustrating forty some day delay in
(07:23):
something that was all designed to make Chuck Schumer look tough.
Democrats are apoplectic with Chuck Schumer. I would point out, though,
that there's no sign they're going to get rid of
him until they have an alternative. Greg I haven't even
heard any names mentioned, Herny Buzz never mind.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
It.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Certainly nobody's coming out forward and publicly saying, yes, I
want to challenge Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, nobody in the Senate saying is saying that Rokanna
would like Chris van Holland to be the next Democratic leader.
That will be obnoxious, very very quickly if he ever
takes on that role. Brian shots of Hawaii is kind
of Schumer's understudy and the next one in line in
kind of the traditional form. I doubt he would try
to leap frog him at this point, but again, there's
a lot of rumors a Schumer might not even run
(08:00):
in twenty eight and I suspect he probably won't be
a majority leader in the next Congress. He'll probably survive
this one unless we have another scenario like in January.
Like we've seen the last couple times this year, regular
order has happened in the House. They have passed all
their spending bills, but again, you're going to need sixty
to pass them in the Senate. I don't know that
you're going to get there, So I don't know how
(08:21):
this is going to play out. We're probably going to
get another super ugly omnibus bill, but hopefully not. Hopefully
Republicans have the leverage to make this happen. And so
Democrats got a couple of things here. The reductions in
force that the Trump administration put in during the shutdown,
we're pulled back in this Senate bill, so those people
(08:42):
will still have their jobs. And the Senate's going to
vote on the extension of the Obamacare subsidies. Mike Johnson
is not promising that at this point. In the House
and Andy and I talked about why extending temporary subsidies
is a really bad idea, but it's probably going to
happen nonetheless, So buckle up. We're going to get this
fight again in just a couple of months, but at
least it's not going to happen in December. I hate
(09:03):
basically holding lawmakers hostage on Christmas Eve to get this
stuff done, and they always end up voting for something
truly horrible.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So if there's any theme in this podcast, it's don't
take hostages on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
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All right, Jim, let's head over to the United Nations
for our bad Martini. No stranger to the Bad Martini.
(11:06):
The UN's usually up to no good, and this time
they're trying to squash free speech. It's kind of the
same thing we've heard from Obama lately. It's like, Oh,
you're gonna have your opinions, but can't have your own
set of facts. Backs are facts, and we should decide
what the facts are, which, of course Barack Obama's version
of the facts is usually a little bit twisted compared
to the real set of facts. But Antonio Guterrez, the
(11:27):
Secretary General over there basically sounding the same alarm and
not only saying that it's disrupting what the UN wants
to accomplish, which in most cases is probably a very
good thing, he also wants tech companies to crack down
on this free speech. Here's a little bit of what
he said.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
The United Nations Zone operations and nitions are compromised as
our stuff deal with the tsunami, false woods and absurd
conspiracy theories with them meant action first to the big
tech company take responsibility acknowledge the damage your products are
(12:05):
inflicting on people and communities, and you have the power
to mitigate harm to people and societies around the world.
You have the power to change business models, the profits
from this information and hate. The climate crisis is a
cause of particular concern. Who ordinated these information campaigns are
seeking to undermine climate action?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh what a shame that is. This guy's from Portugal.
It sounds like he's straight out of the Kremlin with
that accent. But nonetheless, this whole idea of oh, oh,
we can't control where people get their news from anymore,
so we've got to make sure that we convince tech
companies that's really really bad that people are perhaps hearing
things we don't want them to hear.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Greg I'm glad you pointed that out so that I
don't have to. If I imitated him, people would think
I was being mean making fun of his accent. I
haven't heard it that strong since Sesame Street taught me
how to count one social media program, two social media program,
three social media program that needs sensorship. I did it again,
and people a gonna hate me. I'm because I'm so mean,
(13:09):
because you know, me imitating him is much much worse
than say him saying you're not allowed to say what
you want on the internet. No, no, no, that we
have to keep our eyes on the real villain here,
by the way, Like you know, we are seeing a
movement in the right direction. You know, Elon Musk purchasing
Twitter is a big step in the right direction. It
looks like Facebook is loosened up all of a sudden.
(13:29):
They're saying, look, the Biden administration, they didn't order us
to remove this stuff, but they strongly insinuated bad things
would happen if we didn't remove it, so we did that.
You're seeing that from Zuckerberg and Facebook and things like that.
But overseas, things are not moving in the right direction.
In the United Kingdom, these are not moving in the
right direction. In continental Europe. People saying wrong things on
(13:50):
the internet annoys me too, And I think that, you know,
I do think if you're a social media platform, I
think the way xd has its community ratings were where
like if somebody says something is just flat out wrong
and it gets enough attention, the community comes in and says, well, actually, no,
you know, this is this is how things actually are,
and you know, kind of issues that correction. I think
(14:11):
that's probably the best way to handle it. I think
it's pretty good. I have Facebook's got something kind of similar,
you know. It's it's I don't you know, if you
want to run a social But in the end, I'm
listening to this US Secretary of General, Sir, you're not
in a position to demand anything. You're funded by us, right,
You're by our government. Don't you guys have a genocide
to take care of. Don't you guys have you know.
I'm glad you took a break from resolutions denouncing Israel,
(14:34):
but really this is the you know, I'm sorry that
people saying things about you on the Internet that you
don't like are making your job harder. But it's not
the job of Facebook or Twitter or anybody or Instagram
or any of these other platforms to protect the reputation
of the United Nations. If you want a better reputation,
do more good stuff, if you you know. And as
for the conspiracy theories, look, there are conspiracy theories about
(14:58):
the next Marvel Avengers movie, right, there are conspiracy theories
about everything on Earth. Right, Tucker Carlson is probably interviewing
Bigfoot this week, Right, like this is just a fact
of life. We all have to live with it. You
have to live with it too. You are not going
to get in American social media companies to step in
and say, okay, whoa, whoa, Well, you said something not
nice about the United Nations. Time to take it off now,
(15:19):
if you could genuinely demonstrate that there's like some genuine
life and death danger, like if you said, like, let's say,
because there were there having cases in other countries where
like false rumors have started, like riots and stuff like that.
In a situation like that, I think you have a
stronger argument about social media companies having responsibility for you know,
keeping monitoring was being posted on their platforms and the
possibility that could lead to not just you know, words
(15:42):
are violence, but like people punching people and attacking people
and shooting people is If that's then I think you
have a stronger argument. But you're hurting the reputation of
the United Nations. Is not going to cause me or
anybody else to lose much sleep, other than maybe the
count from Sesame Street.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Just to clarify something Jim said, I'm pretty sure the
genocide he was referring to as the one in Sudan,
not the one the left thinks is happening, or what's
happening in Gossa.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right, Well, actually, I was saying the wigers. That's the
thing about today's right there. You could talk about one
genocide or the other, and nobody knows which genocide you're
talking about. There's enough, shouldn't they wouldn't be getting on that,
you guys, meet.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
You and he keeps harping about climate action, Jim. One
of the other stories we consider today is that a
new study from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences and the University of California, San Diego
now thinks the Gulf Stream is going to disappear in
a few decades and we're going to be ushered into
a brand new ice age. So either we're gonna burn
up or we're gonna freeze to death. Pick one, people, right,
(16:40):
Oh frische Lever, you know we're gonna bake to death.
We're gonna freeze to death. Then wait a few years,
they'll switch it back to the other one.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Ideally, if you get the we're going to bake to
death and freeze to death, it's just the right component
everything's sixty eight degrees and it's very pleasant outside.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Exactly right. So also, if some of the maths do
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Speaker 3 (18:49):
All right, jam We mentioned U see San Diego being
part of that research and alluded to the fact that
incoming students hopefully weren't part of crunching the numbers there.
And there's a reason for that brand new research coming
out that this is from hot air flagging this story.
Almost fifteen percent of incoming students this is at college
now cannot perform math at the first grade level, and
(19:12):
fewer than one out of five can perform math at
the eighth grade level. That's less than twenty percent. These
are college students at a fairly prestigious university, many of
whom have achieved very good grades in math prior to
graduation from high school. They've been awarded good to great
grades without being able to do basic math. And so
(19:33):
there are two people looking at this, Patrick Collison and
Steve McGuire. Patrick says in one of his tweets, quote
at our campus, the picture is truly troubling. Between twenty
twenty and twenty twenty five, the number of freshmen whose
math placement exam results indicate they do not meet middle
school standards grew nearly thirtyfold, despite almost all of these
(19:53):
students having taken beyond the minimum required math curriculum and
many with high grades. T Callinson also says this week
a math professor at MIT told me that incoming students
are on average noticeably worse at math than they used
to be. And so Steve maguire gives an example of
a question given to incoming UCSD math students. It was
(20:15):
given to one hundred and thirty eight students, and twenty
five percent of them got this question wrong. Here's the question.
Seven plus two equals blank plus six. Pretty sure it's three.
But Jim, apparently twenty five percent of one hundred and
thirty eight students couldn't get that, And I doubt that
it's indicative of only one university. It seems like a
(20:35):
lot of schools at the secondary, elementary and middle school
level just shuffling people along, whether they've learned anything or not.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Listeners, I just want to let you know that Greg
is correct. It is indeed three. I ran the numbers
myself and double checked against the ke Yes, it's you
know now, I suppose you could say great that the
remedia seventy five percent of people in the remedial math
class got that thing. That was like, what's that like?
Second grade? Third grade? You know, like when they say
(21:03):
middle school, I really that's kind of elementary school. Maybe
maybe its because I grew up in the brainy borough
of Matuchin back in New Jersey. This is so a
couple questions like one, I don't begrudge colleges running remedial
math classes. Some students are going to come in with, uh,
you know, maybe they didn't take a math class or
senior year. Maybe they you know, the skills got you know,
(21:24):
afro feed over a while. Fine, maybe they're really good
in other categories. Maybe they're jocks, maybe they're there on
for artistic abilities. But at some point you got to
know a little bit of math. But I, as I
look at this story, Greg, I have heard from people
who work in the service industry that they feel like
tips are exceptionally small. Now I was trying, you know,
(21:44):
fifteen percent was normal. Somewhere along the line it went
to twenty percent. And now I don't know if you've noticed,
when they flip around the little iPad at the counter,
it goes thirty percent, twenty five percent, two what twenty
is not even an option anymore, you know, And of
course they do the thirty to the left, so they're
opening your hit that one first, you know, so thirty percent.
But anyway, but even besides from all that, if you're like, oh,
(22:05):
why am I getting chips so low? It may well
be that people can't calculate fifteen percent anymore. By the
way you move the decimal point over one place that
gives you ten percent, you'd, you know, take half of
that that gives you fifteen percent. I used to do this,
you know, after college, and everyone's like, oh my god,
you're so good at math. No, I just know percentages.
But you know, like you got to know a little
bit of math in this world. Even if you want
to do other stuff with your life, you've got to
(22:25):
be able to balance. You just say, balance your check book.
Who writes checks anymore? Joe? Okay, you need to know
how much money's coming in you car account. You know
how much money's going out of your account, unless you're
the federal government, and then you kind of just have
this like so you need like and this, like how
did you get into college? How did you get into
this class? What was your SAT score on math? A
two hundred for signing your name? Like, how how did
(22:47):
you get to this point? I mentioned in the last
Martini I get annoyed with people on the internet. We
have people who are just astonishingly dumb. Yesterday I wrote
about how the United States, you know, even in a
bad year, even with policies we don't like there's more
opportunities for a young person to succeed, particularly economically, than
almost just about anywhere else on earth. And you, if
you are a young person born today, you are in
(23:07):
the top one tenth of one percent of all people
who've ever walked this earth in terms of opportunities to
improve your life. Somebody wrote in in angrily jam half
the college graduates can't find a job. And I looked
it up. If you have a college degree, the unemployment
rate is like two point one percent. Right, you have
an associate degree, it's like two point eight percent. So
we're back to this person. I'm like, you're completely wrong
(23:28):
on it's not even close to half, right. So they says, no,
they're working as bartenders instead of working in their degree. Okay,
but if you're working as a bartender, you're not unemployed. Right,
Let's kind of recognize what you meant is that they're underemployed,
or they're not working in their chosen field or not
applying their degree. If you want to have that argue,
we can do that. But that's not what you said.
You said half of college graduates can't find a job,
(23:49):
which is not the case at all. And so I
got annoyed at this person. I didn't join the United
Nations and say we should ban this person from ever
saying I did, and I raged at this person in
a probably unhealthy level of anger, but I just got
to point out that like we have but also we
have people who like don't have critical thinking skills, who
say something that is like completely inaccurate, and then when
(24:12):
you call them out on it, it's with that Mott and Bailey,
you know, when you start retreating back, Well, what I
really mean is this thing which is totally different. You move,
you know, worst moving goalposts that not even that good
NFL kicker could hit because everybody's kicking feel goals these days,
you know, and it just is this infuriating degree of things.
We have a really unnerving level of public ignorance in
this country, and there are a variety of reasons of
(24:35):
why these U like you see San Diego, like this
is embarrassing, This is really like you should like everybody
on that campus should be a feeling, you know, a
shamed right now and be looking suspiciously at their classmates
saying were you in that twenty five percent? Because one
out of every four classmates could not do that basic mathlight?
That's really kind of one out of every four classmates
(24:56):
in the remedial math class. Hopefully a whole bunch of
students over there management you know, skipped that are studying
good serious math courses or at least fulfill the requirements
and you know, their other stuff. So like it's infuriating.
I think it indicates a lot of social promotion. I
think it's a lot of you know, passing people. I
also kind of kind of you know, asked the question
how many of these students, like were their parents paying
(25:17):
attention to the fact. One of our greatest presidents, George W. Bush,
famously asked, is our children learning? And the answer was no,
because we're getting bad grammar from the President of the
United States. But yeah, what what or as Dan Quayle said,
what at as it is to one one's mind and
min waste mind, you know all that stuff, And as
George W. Bush had also famously said, we'll be wants
(25:37):
shame on you fool me twice and we won't get
fooled again. And truer words were never spoken. So with
role models like this, how are the children not learning?
But like nobally this is this is the sort of
thing where everybody on that like this is the sort
of thing like administrators, instead of getting really mad about
the fact that somebody may have expressed a conservative viewpoint,
(25:58):
this is what administrators should be getting really mad about,
is the fact that they're accepting kids who can't do
basic math. They are apparently pasted, and even in the
remedial classes, they're not doing a particularly a good job
because quarter of the class still can't handle figuring out
that seven plus two is nine and if you take
away six, three remain. This is not like Sesame Street.
This is our second Sesame Street reference to this podcast.
(26:21):
Bring in the count. He can talk, He can teach
the kids, even with that accent.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Jim, let's hope things are better at other campuses, but really,
let's hope standards get a lot tougher a high schools,
elementary schools, and middle schools, because you know, they're producing
students who can't do this stuff and that has to change,
all right. Jim Garrity of National Review, I'm Greg Corumbus
of Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you
don't already, tell your friends about us as well. Thanks
(26:46):
also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews.
Please keep those coming. They really do help us. Get
us on your home devices. All you have to say
is play three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us both on
X He's at Jim Garrity, I'm at Greg Corumbus, and yes,
Facebook and Instagram to join us again on Friday for
the next three mare Teami launch
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
and Jim Garrity of National Review.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hey, So glad you're with us for the Thursday edition
of The Three Martini Lunch and Jim planning to talk
about today as always in just a moment, we're talking
about the ridiculous math performance from incoming college students. It's
really alarming, and it says a lot about people getting
shuffled through high school and middle school and elementary school
(00:33):
and suddenly they show up at college literally knowing almost
nothing when it comes to math, at least, and I'm
guessing that's probably true in some other subjects as well.
We'll dig into that. The United Nations, unsurprisingly is now
joining the cause of regulating cracking down on social media
speech internet speech because what they call misinformation and disinformation
(00:55):
is damaging to their agenda. But of course we'll start
in just a moment with shutdown finally being over longest
shutdown in history, so we'll talk all about that and
what comes next year in the next couple months. But Jim, are,
I don't know about long national nightmare. But stupid democratic
stunt is finally over.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah. I don't want to preview everything going to say
about the government shutdown, Greg, but I got to say, like,
the shutdown feels really long. I would also point out
that this week feels really long. And I've only been
on this podcast for two days. I've noticed that, like
when it's Monday, you always know what day it is.
You always know it's Monday, but it's Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
These three are like three triplets. They're the handsome brothers
(01:34):
from Slapshot. You could mix them all up. They all
look the same. It is Thursday, but man, it feels
like it should be a Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
All right, Jim good Martine. I think most people already know.
It's certainly gotten plenty of attention. We've talked about it
a couple of times this week. The shutdown is over.
Of course, started October first, when there wasn't an agreement
on funding. I don't know how many times the Senate
voted on the clean cr Keussen. It was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
something like that. Finally, the Democrats went for it on
(02:08):
Sunday night. They'd agreed to cut off debate with those
eight Democrats, joining all but ran Paul on the Republican
side to get to sixty votes. Then the bill got
passed the next night, and last night only two Republicans
voted against it, Massey of Kentucky and Stuby of Florida,
and then six Democrats voted for it, so two to
(02:28):
two nine and so Jim. The original bill was to
extend Funnington November twenty first, but that's next week. Now
it's been kicked to the end of January, and so
the question now becomes what happens then. I would certainly
like it to be Republicans spending priorities that the Democrats
are opposed to, instead of extending the Biden spending priorities,
which is what happened in this case. The Democrats had
(02:50):
a horrible hand to play. They shouldn't have played it
at all. They played it anyway and got creamed. I
don't know what it'll look like next time, But what
do you make of what we've seen and what do
you expect in a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I was going to say, Greg, depending on how you
want to measure, whether you want to measure from the
Senate vote or the House vote, or when it finally
gets to the president's desk. Was this forty two days
or forty three days as a government shutdown? I don't know,
it's either one of those two. And I just want
to point out God scoured the earth in forty days,
was a you know, it took Democrats longer to come
(03:23):
to their senses than Jesus wandering the desert, right, Like,
forty days is kind of this big lend, right, This
is a forty days is a measurement stick of like
a really long time. Took the Democrats longer than that,
kept the government shutdown longer than that. I am not
a fan of government shutdown fights in general that you
very rarely get anything out of it. There are a
surprising number of conservatives who are convinced that the government
(03:45):
that taxpayers save money when it happens does not happen
because the federal workers have to wrap everything up with
the government shutdown, it's impending, and then they got to
start everything back up again. They get federal workers do
get the back pay, which doesn't mean it doesn't cause
some you know, great consternation in federal workers households because
they don't know when that next paycheck is going to
come in, bills are still due. And what's more, I
(04:06):
think if you if your boss said to you, if
you work in the private sector and your boss said, look,
things are lost up. I can't pay you, and I
don't know when I'm gonna pay you, but I need
you to keep coming in and working. You're probably not
gonna get paid this pay period. I can't make any
guarantees for the next pay period, but I just need
you to keep working normal hours, maybe even overtime hours.
Maybe you need to cover for all the other workers
(04:28):
who beneed non essential who are not here. And I
need you to not let any of those two little
blips on your screen as an air traffic controller running
to each other like that's asking a lot. I think
that's really unfair for a bunch of federal workers. They
didn't ask for this, This is any of their stuff.
So it is a frustrating, but good Martini. I would
also find out like that there are under the deal,
there's a little bit of improvement in the sense that
(04:50):
we get to keep the Department of Agriculture open until
next year. Veterans affairs, military construction, all of those are
going to be funded for the next FI fiscal year
ending September thirtieth, So when they get back and get
back from the holidays, they're going to have to pass
another continuing resolution. But Greg, didn't we have an appropriations process?
Wasn't it still there?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You know? I seem to remember something in the Constitution
about this. But at least if they have another government
shutdown fight in early next year, at least we won't
have to worry about military construction, veterans affairs, and department
bag culture. At least we have one less thing to
worry about. But all in all, I'm hoping there isn't
another one. I do kind of think if Democrats walk
around believing that they won this fight, then they will
(05:31):
be very tempted to play this card again. But I'm
not sure that they will in the fact that, like
Democrats are really really angry. I wrote in the corner
yesterday John Stewart did this, like, you know, I think
very funny. But I can't bleeping believe Democrats, you know,
gave away their win after they had such a great
election day. I don't know if this was that great
win for them, because if they want, they would not
have not eight you know, eight Senate Democrats and Angus King,
(05:55):
who is an independent. I get really tired of having
to specify that because Angus King votes with the Trump administration.
He's the least independent independent I've ever seen. But anyway,
point being, there are eight Centate Democrats who are like,
we can't keep doing this. I just don't understand how
if you're a Senate Democrat you come out of this
(06:15):
being convinced that, oh, some on some level, you won
the messaging war. And if you're a federal worker, you
should be apoplectic angry that two weeks ago the largest
federal workers employee union said, okay, guys, it's time to
pass this clean and c are our members are suffering?
And Senate Democrats they just shrugged and said, hey, you
just have to take it right. By the way, let's
point out Warner and Cain split on this right. Caine
(06:39):
voted to reopen the government. Warner did not. And let's
also point out there are Northern Virginia Democrats who are
voting against reopening the government. As somebody said, this is
like Nevada lawmakers voting against gambling. This is like Pennsylvania
workers lawmakers voting against steel and coal like this is
just Michigan lawmakers voting against American call like this, Like,
(07:01):
if you're a Northern Virginia lawmaker, your constituency is federal
government workers. And the message from these guys is I
will screw you over for as long as it takes
for me to get a win. Right, they should be
furious with these people and so like in that sense,
if you're a Republican, I guess this is good news.
I think if you want the government to work, this
is just a very frustrating forty some day delay in
(07:23):
something that was all designed to make Chuck Schumer look tough.
Democrats are apoplectic with Chuck Schumer. I would point out, though,
that there's no sign they're going to get rid of
him until they have an alternative. Greg I haven't even
heard any names mentioned, Herny Buzz never mind.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
It.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Certainly nobody's coming out forward and publicly saying, yes, I
want to challenge Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, nobody in the Senate saying is saying that Rokanna
would like Chris van Holland to be the next Democratic leader.
That will be obnoxious, very very quickly if he ever
takes on that role. Brian shots of Hawaii is kind
of Schumer's understudy and the next one in line in
kind of the traditional form. I doubt he would try
to leap frog him at this point, but again, there's
a lot of rumors a Schumer might not even run
(08:00):
in twenty eight and I suspect he probably won't be
a majority leader in the next Congress. He'll probably survive
this one unless we have another scenario like in January.
Like we've seen the last couple times this year, regular
order has happened in the House. They have passed all
their spending bills, but again, you're going to need sixty
to pass them in the Senate. I don't know that
you're going to get there, So I don't know how
(08:21):
this is going to play out. We're probably going to
get another super ugly omnibus bill, but hopefully not. Hopefully
Republicans have the leverage to make this happen. And so
Democrats got a couple of things here. The reductions in
force that the Trump administration put in during the shutdown,
we're pulled back in this Senate bill, so those people
(08:42):
will still have their jobs. And the Senate's going to
vote on the extension of the Obamacare subsidies. Mike Johnson
is not promising that at this point. In the House
and Andy and I talked about why extending temporary subsidies
is a really bad idea, but it's probably going to
happen nonetheless, So buckle up. We're going to get this
fight again in just a couple of months, but at
least it's not going to happen in December. I hate
(09:03):
basically holding lawmakers hostage on Christmas Eve to get this
stuff done, and they always end up voting for something
truly horrible.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
So if there's any theme in this podcast, it's don't
take hostages on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
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All right, Jim, let's head over to the United Nations
for our bad Martini. No stranger to the Bad Martini.
(11:06):
The UN's usually up to no good, and this time
they're trying to squash free speech. It's kind of the
same thing we've heard from Obama lately. It's like, Oh,
you're gonna have your opinions, but can't have your own
set of facts. Backs are facts, and we should decide
what the facts are, which, of course Barack Obama's version
of the facts is usually a little bit twisted compared
to the real set of facts. But Antonio Guterrez, the
(11:27):
Secretary General over there basically sounding the same alarm and
not only saying that it's disrupting what the UN wants
to accomplish, which in most cases is probably a very
good thing, he also wants tech companies to crack down
on this free speech. Here's a little bit of what
he said.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
The United Nations Zone operations and nitions are compromised as
our stuff deal with the tsunami, false woods and absurd
conspiracy theories with them meant action first to the big
tech company take responsibility acknowledge the damage your products are
(12:05):
inflicting on people and communities, and you have the power
to mitigate harm to people and societies around the world.
You have the power to change business models, the profits
from this information and hate. The climate crisis is a
cause of particular concern. Who ordinated these information campaigns are
seeking to undermine climate action?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh what a shame that is. This guy's from Portugal.
It sounds like he's straight out of the Kremlin with
that accent. But nonetheless, this whole idea of oh, oh,
we can't control where people get their news from anymore,
so we've got to make sure that we convince tech
companies that's really really bad that people are perhaps hearing
things we don't want them to hear.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Greg I'm glad you pointed that out so that I
don't have to. If I imitated him, people would think
I was being mean making fun of his accent. I
haven't heard it that strong since Sesame Street taught me
how to count one social media program, two social media program,
three social media program that needs sensorship. I did it again,
and people a gonna hate me. I'm because I'm so mean,
(13:09):
because you know, me imitating him is much much worse
than say him saying you're not allowed to say what
you want on the internet. No, no, no, that we
have to keep our eyes on the real villain here,
by the way, Like you know, we are seeing a
movement in the right direction. You know, Elon Musk purchasing
Twitter is a big step in the right direction. It
looks like Facebook is loosened up all of a sudden.
(13:29):
They're saying, look, the Biden administration, they didn't order us
to remove this stuff, but they strongly insinuated bad things
would happen if we didn't remove it, so we did that.
You're seeing that from Zuckerberg and Facebook and things like that.
But overseas, things are not moving in the right direction.
In the United Kingdom, these are not moving in the
right direction. In continental Europe. People saying wrong things on
(13:50):
the internet annoys me too, And I think that, you know,
I do think if you're a social media platform, I
think the way xd has its community ratings were where
like if somebody says something is just flat out wrong
and it gets enough attention, the community comes in and says, well, actually, no,
you know, this is this is how things actually are,
and you know, kind of issues that correction. I think
(14:11):
that's probably the best way to handle it. I think
it's pretty good. I have Facebook's got something kind of similar,
you know. It's it's I don't you know, if you
want to run a social But in the end, I'm
listening to this US Secretary of General, Sir, you're not
in a position to demand anything. You're funded by us, right,
You're by our government. Don't you guys have a genocide
to take care of. Don't you guys have you know.
I'm glad you took a break from resolutions denouncing Israel,
(14:34):
but really this is the you know, I'm sorry that
people saying things about you on the Internet that you
don't like are making your job harder. But it's not
the job of Facebook or Twitter or anybody or Instagram
or any of these other platforms to protect the reputation
of the United Nations. If you want a better reputation,
do more good stuff, if you you know. And as
for the conspiracy theories, look, there are conspiracy theories about
(14:58):
the next Marvel Avengers movie, right, there are conspiracy theories
about everything on Earth. Right, Tucker Carlson is probably interviewing
Bigfoot this week, Right, like this is just a fact
of life. We all have to live with it. You
have to live with it too. You are not going
to get in American social media companies to step in
and say, okay, whoa, whoa, Well, you said something not
nice about the United Nations. Time to take it off now,
(15:19):
if you could genuinely demonstrate that there's like some genuine
life and death danger, like if you said, like, let's say,
because there were there having cases in other countries where
like false rumors have started, like riots and stuff like that.
In a situation like that, I think you have a
stronger argument about social media companies having responsibility for you know,
keeping monitoring was being posted on their platforms and the
possibility that could lead to not just you know, words
(15:42):
are violence, but like people punching people and attacking people
and shooting people is If that's then I think you
have a stronger argument. But you're hurting the reputation of
the United Nations. Is not going to cause me or
anybody else to lose much sleep, other than maybe the
count from Sesame Street.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Just to clarify something Jim said, I'm pretty sure the
genocide he was referring to as the one in Sudan,
not the one the left thinks is happening, or what's
happening in Gossa.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right, Well, actually, I was saying the wigers. That's the
thing about today's right there. You could talk about one
genocide or the other, and nobody knows which genocide you're
talking about. There's enough, shouldn't they wouldn't be getting on that,
you guys, meet.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
You and he keeps harping about climate action, Jim. One
of the other stories we consider today is that a
new study from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences and the University of California, San Diego
now thinks the Gulf Stream is going to disappear in
a few decades and we're going to be ushered into
a brand new ice age. So either we're gonna burn
up or we're gonna freeze to death. Pick one, people, right,
(16:40):
Oh frische Lever, you know we're gonna bake to death.
We're gonna freeze to death. Then wait a few years,
they'll switch it back to the other one.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Ideally, if you get the we're going to bake to
death and freeze to death, it's just the right component
everything's sixty eight degrees and it's very pleasant outside.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Exactly right. So also, if some of the maths do
to thanks for doing the research at the UC San Diego,
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Speaker 3 (18:49):
All right, jam We mentioned U see San Diego being
part of that research and alluded to the fact that
incoming students hopefully weren't part of crunching the numbers there.
And there's a reason for that brand new research coming
out that this is from hot air flagging this story.
Almost fifteen percent of incoming students this is at college
now cannot perform math at the first grade level, and
(19:12):
fewer than one out of five can perform math at
the eighth grade level. That's less than twenty percent. These
are college students at a fairly prestigious university, many of
whom have achieved very good grades in math prior to
graduation from high school. They've been awarded good to great
grades without being able to do basic math. And so
(19:33):
there are two people looking at this, Patrick Collison and
Steve McGuire. Patrick says in one of his tweets, quote
at our campus, the picture is truly troubling. Between twenty
twenty and twenty twenty five, the number of freshmen whose
math placement exam results indicate they do not meet middle
school standards grew nearly thirtyfold, despite almost all of these
(19:53):
students having taken beyond the minimum required math curriculum and
many with high grades. T Callinson also says this week
a math professor at MIT told me that incoming students
are on average noticeably worse at math than they used
to be. And so Steve maguire gives an example of
a question given to incoming UCSD math students. It was
(20:15):
given to one hundred and thirty eight students, and twenty
five percent of them got this question wrong. Here's the question.
Seven plus two equals blank plus six. Pretty sure it's three.
But Jim, apparently twenty five percent of one hundred and
thirty eight students couldn't get that, And I doubt that
it's indicative of only one university. It seems like a
(20:35):
lot of schools at the secondary, elementary and middle school
level just shuffling people along, whether they've learned anything or not.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Listeners, I just want to let you know that Greg
is correct. It is indeed three. I ran the numbers
myself and double checked against the ke Yes, it's you
know now, I suppose you could say great that the
remedia seventy five percent of people in the remedial math
class got that thing. That was like, what's that like?
Second grade? Third grade? You know, like when they say
(21:03):
middle school, I really that's kind of elementary school. Maybe
maybe its because I grew up in the brainy borough
of Matuchin back in New Jersey. This is so a
couple questions like one, I don't begrudge colleges running remedial
math classes. Some students are going to come in with, uh,
you know, maybe they didn't take a math class or
senior year. Maybe they you know, the skills got you know,
(21:24):
afro feed over a while. Fine, maybe they're really good
in other categories. Maybe they're jocks, maybe they're there on
for artistic abilities. But at some point you got to
know a little bit of math. But I, as I
look at this story, Greg, I have heard from people
who work in the service industry that they feel like
tips are exceptionally small. Now I was trying, you know,
(21:44):
fifteen percent was normal. Somewhere along the line it went
to twenty percent. And now I don't know if you've noticed,
when they flip around the little iPad at the counter,
it goes thirty percent, twenty five percent, two what twenty
is not even an option anymore, you know, And of
course they do the thirty to the left, so they're
opening your hit that one first, you know, so thirty percent.
But anyway, but even besides from all that, if you're like, oh,
(22:05):
why am I getting chips so low? It may well
be that people can't calculate fifteen percent anymore. By the
way you move the decimal point over one place that
gives you ten percent, you'd, you know, take half of
that that gives you fifteen percent. I used to do this,
you know, after college, and everyone's like, oh my god,
you're so good at math. No, I just know percentages.
But you know, like you got to know a little
bit of math in this world. Even if you want
to do other stuff with your life, you've got to
(22:25):
be able to balance. You just say, balance your check book.
Who writes checks anymore? Joe? Okay, you need to know
how much money's coming in you car account. You know
how much money's going out of your account, unless you're
the federal government, and then you kind of just have
this like so you need like and this, like how
did you get into college? How did you get into
this class? What was your SAT score on math? A
two hundred for signing your name? Like, how how did
(22:47):
you get to this point? I mentioned in the last
Martini I get annoyed with people on the internet. We
have people who are just astonishingly dumb. Yesterday I wrote
about how the United States, you know, even in a
bad year, even with policies we don't like there's more
opportunities for a young person to succeed, particularly economically, than
almost just about anywhere else on earth. And you, if
you are a young person born today, you are in
(23:07):
the top one tenth of one percent of all people
who've ever walked this earth in terms of opportunities to
improve your life. Somebody wrote in in angrily jam half
the college graduates can't find a job. And I looked
it up. If you have a college degree, the unemployment
rate is like two point one percent. Right, you have
an associate degree, it's like two point eight percent. So
we're back to this person. I'm like, you're completely wrong
(23:28):
on it's not even close to half, right. So they says, no,
they're working as bartenders instead of working in their degree. Okay,
but if you're working as a bartender, you're not unemployed. Right,
Let's kind of recognize what you meant is that they're underemployed,
or they're not working in their chosen field or not
applying their degree. If you want to have that argue,
we can do that. But that's not what you said.
You said half of college graduates can't find a job,
(23:49):
which is not the case at all. And so I
got annoyed at this person. I didn't join the United
Nations and say we should ban this person from ever
saying I did, and I raged at this person in
a probably unhealthy level of anger, but I just got
to point out that like we have but also we
have people who like don't have critical thinking skills, who
say something that is like completely inaccurate, and then when
(24:12):
you call them out on it, it's with that Mott and Bailey,
you know, when you start retreating back, Well, what I
really mean is this thing which is totally different. You move,
you know, worst moving goalposts that not even that good
NFL kicker could hit because everybody's kicking feel goals these days,
you know, and it just is this infuriating degree of things.
We have a really unnerving level of public ignorance in
this country, and there are a variety of reasons of
(24:35):
why these U like you see San Diego, like this
is embarrassing, This is really like you should like everybody
on that campus should be a feeling, you know, a
shamed right now and be looking suspiciously at their classmates
saying were you in that twenty five percent? Because one
out of every four classmates could not do that basic mathlight?
That's really kind of one out of every four classmates
(24:56):
in the remedial math class. Hopefully a whole bunch of
students over there management you know, skipped that are studying
good serious math courses or at least fulfill the requirements
and you know, their other stuff. So like it's infuriating.
I think it indicates a lot of social promotion. I
think it's a lot of you know, passing people. I
also kind of kind of you know, asked the question
how many of these students, like were their parents paying
(25:17):
attention to the fact. One of our greatest presidents, George W. Bush,
famously asked, is our children learning? And the answer was no,
because we're getting bad grammar from the President of the
United States. But yeah, what what or as Dan Quayle said,
what at as it is to one one's mind and
min waste mind, you know all that stuff, And as
George W. Bush had also famously said, we'll be wants
(25:37):
shame on you fool me twice and we won't get
fooled again. And truer words were never spoken. So with
role models like this, how are the children not learning?
But like nobally this is this is the sort of
thing where everybody on that like this is the sort
of thing like administrators, instead of getting really mad about
the fact that somebody may have expressed a conservative viewpoint,
(25:58):
this is what administrators should be getting really mad about,
is the fact that they're accepting kids who can't do
basic math. They are apparently pasted, and even in the
remedial classes, they're not doing a particularly a good job
because quarter of the class still can't handle figuring out
that seven plus two is nine and if you take
away six, three remain. This is not like Sesame Street.
This is our second Sesame Street reference to this podcast.
(26:21):
Bring in the count. He can talk, He can teach
the kids, even with that accent.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Jim, let's hope things are better at other campuses, but really,
let's hope standards get a lot tougher a high schools,
elementary schools, and middle schools, because you know, they're producing
students who can't do this stuff and that has to change,
all right. Jim Garrity of National Review, I'm Greg Corumbus
of Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you
don't already, tell your friends about us as well. Thanks
(26:46):
also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews.
Please keep those coming. They really do help us. Get
us on your home devices. All you have to say
is play three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us both on
X He's at Jim Garrity, I'm at Greg Corumbus, and yes,
Facebook and Instagram to join us again on Friday for
the next three mare Teami launch
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