Terroristic Middle Ground? Speaker Mess, Best & Brightest - Top Three Takeaways – October 13th, 2023
- Assessing the size of our society's problems. One of the most common requests I’ve had from listeners this week is for the information I shared indicating that the Palestinian people aren’t, by and large, victims of the repressive terroristic regime. The Palestinian people are overwhelming supportive of Hamas, the very government they voted into power to begin with. Indeed, three-quarters of the Palestinian people have historically been supportive of Hamas’ use of Sharia law to “rid the world of infidels” by “destroying Israel” as the stated mission has always been and continues to be. And while up-to-date polling isn’t exactly available in Gaza today, it is with those of us who remain far away (though many with families that are in harm's way in Israel). And what the polling shows us, is a phenomenon that speaks to another condition I’ve heard about from listeners throughout the week. How alarming it is to see the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in communities, on campuses and all-over social media. You don’t have to go far to find any of it with plenty of it right here in South Florida. Throughout the generations it has been said that there’s more that unites us than divides us...which is true. We are all made in the image of God after all. However clearly, far too many people have strayed from that basic belief, in their system of beliefs. As unimaginable as the actions of the terrorists are, it’s equally unimaginable for most of us that wide swaths of our society would side with the terrorists...but that’s where we are. New polling of Americans in the wake of the unprecedented Hamas terror attacks on Israel paints a picture about just how pervasive the problems in our society are. On the question of...In Middle East Conflict, who do you side with more? 68% of us say Israel, while 18% say the Palestinians. That includes a quarter of all Democrats who side with the terrorists. It’s far from just being AOC’s Squad in Washington D.C. - there’s broad-based support across the country. Could you imagine if effectively a fifth of Americans had sided with Al Qaeda following 9-11? Yet that’s essentially where we are today. Education as always is key. Only it’s likely what’s been taken out of public education in the past 43 years by the Department of Education, the religious principles this country was founded upon, and thus any basic sense of morality, that’s led to where we are as a society today. It’s not in my nature to give up on people, however as of today effectively a fifth of our society is already gone. These are people who side with those who decapitate and burn babies, rape mothers and torture fathers in route to their ultimate goal of “destroying Israel”... and eventually all of the infidels – which includes everyone who doesn’t see the world the way that they do. You’re also familiar with the saying keep your friends close and your enemies closer...that doesn’t seem advisable in this case. But what this does do is help illustrate why there’s such a divide in this country on so many issues generally. When you have people who support Islamic terrorists there’s not really any middle ground to be found. Speaking of which...
- The House Republican mess. There are still people who want to defend Matt Gaetz’s actions to me. Now, doing so isn’t as absurd as being on the wrong side of my top takeaway today, but it is nonetheless an absurd position to be holding today. Here's what’s been accomplished since the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. Nothing...for eleven days and counting which is actually worse than nothing because the somethings House Committees were working on in an investigative roll that were actually constructive. And to date the leading candidate to emerge from the House Republican conference was Kevin McCarthy’s #2, Steve Scalise, who could not in any analytical way be argued as a conservative upgrade over McCarthy. As I said last week... Now, independent of other factors would I prefer to have Jim Jordan as Speaker of the House in lieu of Kevin McCarthy? The answer is yes. However, it’s not that simple. The fact of the matter is that Speaker McCarthy put every single Jordan-backed spending bill up for a vote this year. How will Jordan do better than that? So now the “A” plan is to lose the top investigative and oversight member in the House and lose his ability to dedicate his additional time towards being the architect of conservative legislation so he can take over for Kevin McCarthy. The speaker who gave Jim Jordan everything he wanted. And now, even if Jim Jordan is the next Speaker of the House, the conservative agenda, including oversight, will have been weakened as a result. And just to get there we’re to lose a minimum of a week’s worth of oversight and investigative work. And btw, there’s no guarantee that Jordan wins the vote. Well, it’s only been a little over a week but once again I’ve not made a career out of being wrong. Steve Scalise after winning the popular vote in the Republican conference, has now dropped out of the race because he didn’t have the votes. But know who else dropped out of the race preceding Scalise dropping out of the race? Jordan. He dropped out after he lost the vote, endorsed Scalise and began whipping votes to attempt to get him across the finish line. So do you know who’s running for Speaker of the House as of now. Nobody. Well done, Gaetz. And the insult to injury, to show just how serious Gaetz is about the conservative House agenda... To show just how seriously he takes legislating...came Wednesday night when, rather than working towards a resolution to the mess that he made, he instead skipped out of Washington to come to the Trump 47 event at the West Palm Beach Convention Center. Talk about time and place... Gaetz had no plan. He still has no plan. And he almost appears to be happy with the mess that he’s made. And I would surmise that’s because he often gets what he seems to care about most...attention. Related...
- The best and brightest. You know the state of American politics is in a precarious place when John Fetterman makes sense. You also know that that state of American politics is absurd when John Fetterman makes sense. While making a stop on The Late Show with Steven Colbert (yes, this is what you were missing without a writers' strike) he had this to say: You all need to know that America is not sending their best and brightest to Washington, D.C. His line drew laughs as it was funnier than Colbert’s, which isn’t hard to do (though he appeared entirely serious in delivering his line). It’s hard to know if the audience was laughing at the Frankenfetter or with him...I definitely laughed at him when watching the clip...but truer and more ironic words have never been spoken.