ou are here to hear about the fireworks of Dilbert being canceled. I'll give you the headline, but then I'll talk about it in detail after I do some other stories. So the headline is that the way comics are distributed, there's a syndication company and then they distribute to the newspapers that buy it. So a number of newspapers individually canceled Dilbert, but there was a lot of pressure on the syndication company. So the syndication company decided to part ways with me completely, immediately. And that means that there is no syndication vehicle to get Dilbert to any customers. So I don't personally have any contracts with newspapers. That goes through the syndication company.

Now, just to be clear, the syndication company didn't really have any choice because their clients were hopping mad. And I think the artists, the other cartoonists, were mad and their staff was mad and basically everybody was mad. So they made a business decision, which I don't consider anything like censorship or anything like that. So I like my syndication company. No, no, no, they are not cowards. You could blame the newspapers for being a little skittish, but the syndication company didn't have any choice. They were just forced into it. So don't give them a hard time, okay? It's actually a great company. I've been very happy with them for a very long time.

Mark Dice just did something. Well, that's nice. All right, we'll get to more of that on the whiteboard and all. But let's talk about the headlines. So apparently there's now general government agreement that COVID came from a lab leak in Wuhan. Do I have that story right? The government is now saying, is it the Department of Defense or something or Energy? I don't know which one. But anyway, the government's saying yeah, probably. Are they saying probably or definitely? It was a little ambiguous. Said probably or definitely from the Wuhan lab. Probably, right? Yeah, we're only a probably.

Here's the strangest thing about that story. I thought we already knew that. We keep getting news about things that I thought had already happened. Am I the only one who thinks the news keeps telling me things that have already happened? Like sooner or later there'll be a celebrity who dies and you're going to say, I thought that celebrity died a long time ago. It's like news of things you're pretty sure already happened but it really didn't.

All right. Does it make any difference that it escaped from the Wuhan lab? Well, it does say that Anthony Fauci has some explaining, doesn't it? Now, as Elon Musk pointed out in the tweet, when Fauci said that he did not fund or was not involved in funding gain-of-function in Wuhan, apparently it went through EcoHealth and then went there. So basically it was like, no, I didn't fund the lab. I funded this third party who funded the lab. So I don't know if that's going to be his escape plan for not lying to Congress, because it certainly looked like he lied to Congress, didn't it? But maybe he's got some technical out where he can say, well, technically I only funded this other thing. Yeah, I don't know that he lied. He may have been technically correct because he chose his words carefully, which is nothing to celebrate. But maybe. I hear choosing your words poorly can get you in trouble. I hear that's a thing.

All right. So I don't know what to say about that because it doesn't change anything. Because what is not in evidence is that anybody was doing something intentional, meaning they were doing gain-of-function, which is dangerous enough, but it doesn't mean they were necessarily trying to create a weapon. Don't know about that. Maybe they were trying to defend against a weapon. I don't know. Maybe. But as Michael Schellenberger points out, the theory that is now essentially backed by the government, the mass media condemned the lab leak theory as a quote "debunked conspiracy theory" and Facebook censored people who dared suggest it. You know, it's so easy to forget what happened just two years ago. But oh my God, did the government abuse us in every possible way they could abuse us. They abused us, you know, in hindsight.

Also Michael Schellenberger in a tweet points out it's clear that the scientists who claimed in The Lancet, you know that's a respected publication, on February 19th, 2020, quote, "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin." So as Michael Schellenberger says, they were misrepresenting their unfounded opinion as a scientific fact. Does that sound familiar? Doesn't it sound just like the 50 intel officials who signed a document about Hunter's laptop and they're all lying but not tactically. They weren't lying because they said, well, it has all the hallmarks of...

All right. So do you think these scientists were lying and they knew it when they said, oh, it's a conspiracy theory? Yeah, I don't know. I think it depends on the wording. So they said it was a conspiracy theory suggesting that it came from... suggesting it didn't have natural origins. But that was just because there wasn't enough evidence yet. So I'm not sure it's evidence of a lie.

All right. Well, it looks like the Locals audience is pretty big today. All right. Is China collapsing? I just read a long thread and who knows. I think it's impossible to know what's happening in China. But there was a long thread talking about the demographic collapse. And some are saying that the population of China is going to start decreasing really, really fast. Like by 2050 there could be half as many people living there. I don't think that sounds right, but they're in real trouble. They don't have enough young people. And I didn't realize how many. Maybe you could do a fact check on this. You know those ghost cities that are in China and a whole bunch of skyscrapers are just empty. And one of the things I learned, and I don't know if it's true but it might be true, did you know that they were all purchased? And why? So I am private. Oh, okay, now I'm private.

So the reason that real estate is all purchased even if people don't want to live in it is it's one of the few stores of value that the Chinese citizens trust. So they're not trusting their regular investments, maybe not even trusting their banks. But if you buy real estate, and apparently you don't even furnish it or even finish the construction because it's worth more if you can sell it and somebody can customize it themselves. So apparently the Chinese built all these cities, sold all the apartments, but nobody wanted to move in because they were just investments. And they didn't want people living in their apartment because it would make their investment worth less. Talk about a problem.

So I've seen the videos of the skyscrapers being destroyed. But then I saw a reference to hundreds of these cities across China. Can anybody fact check that? I always assumed it was one or two. I just thought it was, oh, there's this one or two cities that are ghost cities. But there are hundreds of them. People are saying that's true. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of instant cities that are empty and they're just owned, I guess. Wow. Oh, you're in China. All right. Buildings are made of chalk and so the building... Oh, are they also building them so they're unsafe because they know they can sell them anyway? Oh, interesting. Yeah, they overbuilt. But did they overbuild because people bought them? Overbuilt in some sense, yes.

All right. Well, I'm suspicious about whether China's population will collapse, but all the signs are pointing to it. Wouldn't that become one of the biggest problems in the world? I don't know. Or maybe it would solve a problem for China. I don't know.

It was a Rasmussen poll. This one probably won't get me in trouble. In which the EPA is saying that the tests in that Ohio East Palestine town where the train derailed, they're saying that the drinking water quality, there's no quality concerns. But Rasmussen asked people if they'd be willing to drink the water. Only 23 percent of voters say that they would feel safe drinking the water if they lived near the site where the train derailed. 23 percent. That's roughly a quarter. Yeah, so a quarter of the people would feel comfortable drinking the water around a toxic cesspool. Well, good for them, right? You know, I applaud their confidence. I don't know. How about you? How many of you would feel comfortable? Because the science says the water is good. Science says it's good. Trust it. Would you feel comfortable? I might drink it, but I would never feel comfortable. The water doesn't come from there. Oh, is that true? Is it true that the water doesn't come from anywhere near there? It's like pumped in from somewhere else. I'm seeing some nos, but I think that's nos to the other question. Still better than Flint. Yeah, maybe.

All right. Well, let's talk about Katie Hobbs. So apparently there's some kind of hearing or investigation by some private lawyer. I assume they're working for somebody. I don't know. But there are all these allegations of the Sinaloa cartel funneling money to politicians in Arizona, including Governor Katie Hobbs. Now I Googled again to see if this story, correct me if I'm wrong, there's no major media covering it. Am I right? No major media is covering this. But the hearing is happening, right? There's an actual hearing. Yeah, so it's not a rumor. There's an actual hearing with these specific allegations. And correct me if I'm wrong, some of the allegations were about a company that handles their elections. Is that true?

Now, does that sound like it's likely to be true? Do you think these allegations are likely to play out as true? Here's my problem with it. It's a little too on the nose. It's a little too on the nose. It's a little too much like what you expected it would be. And I'd never trust that. It's like, yeah, that's exactly what you would make up if you were going to make it up. It would sound just like that. So the real world is messier. So whenever you see something that... Yeah, okay. Have you listened to the information presented? I have not. But I also don't trust it. So if I listen to it, I don't know if that would be helping me. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to kind of wait to see if the major media picks it up. Because even Fox News is not reporting on it as far as I know. Is that right? So if you can't get even the right-leaning media to bite on it, I would hold off on my confidence. So I'm going to do, for Katie Hobbs, innocent until proven guilty. I mean, it's a disturbing allegation.

How does it... Somebody asked me how does it feel to lose all of my money. Do you think I lost all of my money? There's almost nothing about this story about me that's true. It's almost entirely it has now devolved into like the fantasy story.

All right. Mississippi, the state is looking to appoint justices in an area where normally they would be elected. And the reason they're doing that is that they think the elected ones must be corrupt. So there's nothing good happening. And where is it? It's one area of one community. Where is it? Why in the world is that not the first thing that I say? Oh, it's a district within Jackson, which CNN reports is a majority Black city. So here's my question. If the state has decided that Jackson, Mississippi, is so lost that they need to appoint judges, and by the way it's being resisted by the locals who think it's white supremacy, but would you recommend a young Black man move to Jackson? Would you recommend that if you were giving advice? Hey, young Black man, would you move to Jackson? Now, right? One says yes. One says yes.

Now, is this a racial comment or an income or a class comment? How do you interpret it? Well, here's how it would be racist. It'd be racist if you said don't go there because there are Black people. That would be clearly racist. I don't know how it could be anything else. But if you said don't go there because there are poor people and that breeds crime and you don't want to be around that, would that be fair? Could you say don't go to a place with a lot of poor people in high crime? You wouldn't be canceled for that, would you? Right? So what if you said what I said, that because of systemic racism things are so bad in the Black community that they're disproportionately likely to be in poor neighborhoods and it's so correlated, unfortunately nobody wants us to be true, that you could use it as a proxy of where there's problems in the inner cities. We're not talking about some rural suburban place. Now, using it as a proxy, is that racist? I need an opinion here. If you use it as a proxy, it's just one way to know where there's going to be a lot of crime for systemic racism reasons. So if you make that correlation but you're very carefully saying I'm not saying anything about Black people, I'm just saying that there's a proxy situation where, so in terms of information it would be one rule of thumb. Now, could that prevent you from going and living in a place that's majority Black and also high in crime? No. Well, it would. Does it sound like I'm apologizing? There's so many hallucinations that people are having about me. You should look into... Well, never mind.

So let's talk about Dilbert. Dilbert's now fully canceled. You've probably heard the news that hundreds of newspapers or some big ones were canceling. But as of yesterday, 100. Wow, thanks Greg. It's nice of you. Just a compliment there. A