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Sept. 12, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:32

Joe Biden’s 9/11 Debacle

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	So Joe Biden, not a good president, not with it.
	And his plan on 9-11 was somewhat puzzling.
	So he was in Vietnam and he wanted to fly back to the United States.
	Instead of presumably delaying the rest of his 9-11 sort of tribute remarks, he decided to fly to Alaska from Vietnam because it's a shorter flight.
	And then he was going to do some sort of memorial for 9-11 in Alaska, which is really related to 9-11 in, I don't know, there's no relation.
	He was in Alaska, and so he decided that he was going to do an event in Alaska.
	At this event in Alaska, he paid tribute to John McCain, which, again, I mean, that's nice, but I don't know what that has to do with 9-11, per se.
	And then he tried to do the bipartisanship routine, which is kind of amazing considering that he's called half of Americans the kind of people who wish to overthrow the democracy, but sure.
	Here was the President of the United States yesterday on a day of national unity for 9-11.
	One thing I always admired about John was how he put duty to country first.
	And that's not hyperbole, he did.
	Above party, above politics, above his own person.
	This day reminds us we must never lose that sense of national unity.
	So let that be the common cause of our time.
	Let us honor September 11th by renewing our faith in one another.
	Let us remember who we are as a nation.
	It's true.
	He did put duty first.
	Just so you know what Joe Biden was doing during the Vietnam War, he received five student draft deferments.
	First as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, and then later as a law student at Syracuse University.
	And then after a medical exam in April 68, which would have made him eligible for the draft, he received a 1Y classification, which meant he could only be drafted in a national emergency.
	Why?
	Because he had childhood asthma.
	So just a quick contrast there between John McCain, who Joe Biden ran against.
	Remember, Joe Biden was the vice presidential candidate for Barack Obama in 2008.
	I know it's now a decade and a half ago, but that's a thing that actually happened.
	And during that campaign, Joe Biden was not super nice to John McCain, but put aside all of the McCain.
	The real thing here that kind of sticks in the craw is Joe Biden talking about national unity because he is not even remotely a unifier.
	He's not somebody who cares about unity.
	He's somebody who pretends to care about unity, but the reality is that he has pursued the furthest left agenda of any president of my lifetime, and that actually includes Barack Obama.
	The stuff that he has attempted to do in restructuring, for example, student loans unilaterally from the executive branch.
	The stuff that he has attempted to do in cramming down vaccines on 80 million people via OSHA.
	The insane levels of spending he has pursued post-COVID.
	The insane amount of money that he has poured down the rat hole.
	of environmental causes while inflating the currency.
	All this stuff is dramatic expansions in terms of the size and scope of government.
	And he's botched on foreign policy as well.
	Plus he's just an insult.
	I have to say, Joe Biden is just an insulting person.
	I mean, I know that a lot of people on the left who look at Donald Trump and they say that Donald Trump is an insulting person.
	He insults the intelligence and he's vulgar and he's rude and all this kind of stuff.
	Joe Biden is humiliating in a different sort of way.
	Joe Biden is humiliating because Joe Biden is a corrupt politician who lies regularly.
	He lies all the time.
	When Joe Biden opens his mouth, the lies flow forth like baubles from the mouth of Demosthenes.
	I mean, he's just the only thing that comes out of his face hole is untruth.
	So yesterday during 9-11, he was talking about he just can't help himself.
	He starts talking about how he was at the ground zero site the day after 9-11.
	That's clearly not true.
	Even George W. Bush didn't go to ground zero until 914.
	So he's just making things up here because this is what he does.
	And he knows that the media are never going to hold him accountable.
	Because when he was younger, they might have held him accountable when there were other Democrats he was running against.
	But now he's the President of the United States.
	And the rule is that if you're a Democrat who is the President of the United States, nothing you say will ever be used against you.
	It's the opposite of criminal justice.
	Anything you say can or will be used against you.
	Well, I mean, for Joe Biden, once you're the President of the United States and you're a Democrat, nothing you say will ever be used against you in any context.
	Here's Joe Biden just telling lies about 9-11.
	Ground zero in New York.
	And I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building.
	I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell.
	It looked so devastating because the way you could, from where you could stand.
	Oh, you mean it looked bad, 9-11?
	And he knew that because he used to— Oh, well, as opposed to the rest of us who, you know, saw images of 9-11 and all that.
	But, again, this is who Joe Biden is.
	Now, all of this would just be kind of normal political garbaggio.
	All this would just be meh.
	Except for the fact that on the anniversary of 9-11, Joe Biden thought this would be an excellent time to sign a $6 billion check to the Iranian mullahs.
	Now, the juxtaposition of 9-11 and that is pretty awkward.
	Not because the Iranians participated in 9-11.
	Not because Al-Qaeda was Shia.
	They are not.
	They're a Sunni terror group.
	But because the overall thesis, which is that if you give money and resources and sukr to Islamic terrorists, that eventually that is going to come back and bite you in pretty significant ways.
	That is one of the big messages of 9-11, if not the biggest message of 9-11.
	And on that date, the president who handed Afghanistan back to Al Qaeda, that's what he did, he handed it back to the Taliban and back to Al Qaeda, is now handing $6 billion to the leading provocateurs in the Middle East, the greatest terror sponsors on the planet in Iran.
	That is what he did on the anniversary of 9-11.
	I mean, just for optical reasons, you would think that he had a brain in his head to think, maybe I should wait a week.
	But no, he had to do it now because Joe Biden wants a deal with the Iranians, a broader deal with the Iranians.
	Why?
	Well, so he can put it on his resume in the same way that he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan like a moron.
	Because he wanted it on his resume.
	Not because he thought it would actually be good for the world.
	Not because he actually had a plan.
	He didn't.
	But because he wanted to say that he was the guy who got it done.
	Never put it above politicians.
	Never put it below politicians.
	For them to do things just out of pure egotistic desire.
	They want it on their resume and so they just do it.
	It's not because they have the best interest of the country at heart.
	That's clearly not the case here.
	Joe Biden does not have the best interest of the country at heart when he sends a $6 billion check to people who have been responsible for the death of literally thousands of Americans in the Middle East.
	Remember, during the Iraq War, it was Iranian-sponsored Shiite militias that were killing American soldiers.
	And Joe Biden is signing those people $6 billion checks on the anniversary of 9-11 while paying tribute to the heroes of 9-11.
	It's just...
	It's beyond reason.
	We'll get to the details of that story in just one second.
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	Okay, so what is this deal that Joe Biden apparently signed yesterday?
	According to The Washington Post, The Biden administration has now issued a waiver for banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil funds without fear of U.S.
	sanctions, a key step in securing the release of five American citizens detained in Iran, people familiar with the matter said.
	As part of the arrangement, the administration will release five Iranian citizens detained in the United States.
	And so, just to make this clear, this is not even a straight-up trade of Iranian citizens detained in the United States because we believe that they are involved in, say, terror activities, for Americans who have been wrongly detained in Iran.
	It's not even a straight-up trade.
	It's that plus six billion dollars.
	I gotta say.
	Joe Biden's record here is looking a lot like the GM of the New York Jets at this point.
	He's trading Brittany Griner for the merchants of death and now he's trading six billion dollars and five Iranians we are holding here for five American citizens.
	I just have a question.
	What exactly would be the incentive for terrorist groups not to take American citizens hostage at this point?
	You know that the sucker in the White House is going to sign you over the bank if you do.
	The central principle of don't negotiate with terrorists.
	Obviously, there's play around the edges.
	There's certain situations where negotiations are necessary, but one of the key elements here is you don't actually negotiate with terrorists to the tune of six billion dollars plus five detainees in the United States for five people wrongfully detained in Iran.
	That's crazy talk.
	Congress was notified of the move on Monday.
	It's likely to come as a relief to U.S.
	prisoners' families and supporters, said The Washington Post.
	Well, isn't that nice?
	I mean, listen, I want those people back as well.
	Also, the United States has national interests.
	Those national interests do not involve giving $6 billion to the world's leading terror sponsors.
	My God.
	It's also expected to come under harsh criticism from Republicans in Congress, opposed to any agreement that allows for the release of frozen Iranian funds, money that's now being transferred from South Korea to Qatar and limited for the purchase of humanitarian goods like food or medicine.
	Okay, that's the part that's a lie.
	So they're saying it's going to be for humanitarian purposes?
	There's only one problem.
	The Iranians immediately said, no, no, no, you don't understand.
	We're going to use it wherever we please.
	According to NBC News, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his government will decide how it will spend $6 billion in previously frozen funds due to be released in a prisoner exchange.
	He said it will be spent, quote, wherever we need it.
	Oh, so you mean you're going to spend it to murder people because that's what you do.
	Because you'd rather that your country be impoverished and your people unhappy than that you actually stop with the terror crap and start building.
	That's what you would rather do if you are the evil regime in Tehran.
	In an exclusive interview in Tehran, Raisi suggested the Americans held in Iran would be coming home soon, saying the U.S.-Iran prisoner exchange deal would be completed in due time and that the American detainees were in very healthy condition.
	Under the arrangement, Tehran will be granted access to the roughly $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues.
	U.S.
	officials are lying, and they're saying, oh, no, no, no, they're only going to use it for food, right?
	Because that's what they do.
	If you hand money to dictatorial regimes that hate your guts, probably they use it exactly where you're... If there's one thing you know about the Iranians, it's that we can trust them.
	They've never reneged on a deal, ever.
	If, for example, they say they are developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes despite the fact that they're one of the great oil-producing regions on planet Earth, we probably have to believe them.
	They would never deceive, say, the IAEA.
	They would never ever do that sort of thing.
	I love that Raisi is just saying the quiet part out loud.
	He's just like, yeah, no, we're using it for whatever we want.
	That's how little the Iranians even respect Joe Biden.
	They're like, yeah, you give us the money and then you go lie to your people and you tell them that we'll use it for good purposes like food or something.
	And then I'm going to just say publicly on American TV, I'm going to use it however I want.
	Screw you, old man.
	I mean, that's effectively what this is.
	Raisi said Iran would have authority over how the money would be spent.
	Quote, this money belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government.
	So the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money.
	So he was asked directly by Lester Holt if the money would be used for other purposes apart from humanitarian needs.
	And Raisi said, quote, I love this, humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people needs.
	So this money will be budgeted for those needs and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government.
	Oh, that is like a classic right there.
	That is such an amazingly, I kind of love it because it's so blatant.
	That's like, you give me a credit card and you tell me, I'm working for DailyWire, you give me a DailyWire credit card, you tell me I need to go use it for DailyWire resources, right?
	And what you mean is you want me to go down to the local office depot and pick up like some paper and ink.
	And I'm like, oh, for DailyWire resources, perfect.
	That credit card belongs to me.
	I'm going to use it for whatever resources the Daily Wire deems necessary, and who deems it necessary will be me.
	And so I just go and put like a Lambo on the credit card.
	That's effectively what they're doing, except in Iran, for the government, a Lambo is just a bunch of shoulder-fired missiles.
	That's what it is.
	The prisoner exchange calls for the release of five American citizens held in Iran in return for five Iranians under detention in the United States.
	And again, gives them $6 billion.
	The five American prisoners were placed under house arrest August 10th as a first step in the agreement.
	The Biden administration waited until, of course, September 11th to inform.
	The optical... This is what happens.
	When you have a White House that legitimately does not care what the American people think, and believe that the media will cover for them no matter what.
	They do crap like this on the anniversary of 9-11, assuming that everybody will just shrug.
	And maybe they're right.
	Maybe everything is so baked into the cake, into the polarized cake, that nothing can outrage the American people at this point.
	I don't actually think that's an amazing bet.
	I think Joe Biden made that bet on Afghanistan, and it sunk his approval ratings into the low 40s, high 30s.
	And he's been there ever since.
	So I think this sort of stuff can damage Joe Biden.
	I know that he thinks he's invulnerable because he's likely to run against Donald Trump for president.
	And there's some truth to that.
	That means a durable 45% of the American public will certainly vote for him.
	But 45 ain't 50.
	So he's playing a very risky game here.
	And just one second.
	We'll get to the fact that, again, Joe Biden is incredibly vulnerable and the defenses of him by his allies are growing weaker and weaker.
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	Okay, so Given the fact that this administration is in fact a bleep show, and most of that bleep is apparent in the foreign policy realm.
	Domestic policy is bad enough, but you can spin domestic policy.
	On a foreign level, what American is in favor of signing giant checks to the Iranians?
	What American is in favor of putting American national security at risk so some person with gender dysphoria can be shot up with testosterone?
	What exactly is the balance there that Americans are in favor of?
	Well, the defenses of Biden are now coming fast and fierce.
	When you're defending, you're losing.
	This is something both parties should remember, by the way.
	The Republican Party should remember this with Trump.
	If you spend the rest of the election cycle defending Trump, you're going to lose.
	Because, again, if everybody's talking about how bad your guy is, and you just spend the entire time talking about how he's really not that bad, you're going to lose.
	And for Democrats, same thing.
	If you spend the entire election cycle talking about how Joe Biden is not that bad, we all know he is.
	So here's Ana Navarro trying to do work on behalf of the Biden administration, talking about how it's all fake, it's all in your head.
	This is one of my favorite approaches from the geniuses over at The View.
	It's stuff that you can clearly see happening in front of your eyes is not real because Ana Navarro says so.
	This administration has really gotten a ton of very difficult bipartisan legislation through in a divided Congress with a very difficult Senate makeup of 50-50.
	Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, Bipartisan Safe Communities Act, first major gun legislation in decades, U.S.
	Innovation and Competition Act, Bipartisan Climate Health Care and Tax Package, Fiscal Responsibility Act, and the list is long.
	So what do they need to focus on?
	They need to focus on the undeniable.
	Joe Biden is old and that's a narrative that's been created to cause panic in people.
	And then so what's the second part of that narrative?
	Joe Biden is old and Kamala Harris is unprepared.
	So that's not a narrative.
	Joe Biden is old and Joe Biden is also terrible at his job.
	He's terrible at his job.
	Meanwhile, they're trying to clear the field against any potential Democrat who might run against Joe Biden, because again, he's intensely vulnerable.
	Here's the thing that if you were truly a rebel, as for example, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez believes she is, if you're truly a rebel, then you would run at Joe Biden from his left.
	You would.
	Okay, now Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she's 33 years old.
	I believe that she would be theoretically eligible for the presidency.
	The truth is that she could easily pick up the ball where Bernie Sanders left off and run against Joe Biden from his left.
	Because he's really, really vulnerable, but none of them are doing it.
	Why?
	Because the Democratic Party is, in fact, a vehicle for radical leftism.
	This is the difference between the right and the left in terms of their parties.
	Right-wingers don't trust the Republican Party because they don't believe it's a vehicle for their ideas.
	Democrats trust the Democratic Party because they do believe that it is a vehicle for their principles.
	That's why they're all standing shoulder to shoulder behind the old man.
	Meanwhile, that old man is using the White House as a military weapon against social media.
	We'll get to that momentarily.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the Biden administration, for all the talk about what they're doing
	on the foreign front, on the domestic front, what the Biden administration has done with
	regard to social media is one of the most creepy and tyrannical things that I've seen
	in my lifetime.
	And it extends, the truth is, before Biden.
	The government's use of its powers to cudgel social media into doing what they want is utterly insane.
	This is something that the Fifth Court explicated over the weekend.
	On Friday, they limited the scope of a district court ruling that restricted communications between government agencies and social media companies.
	But they found that several agencies likely violated the First Amendment.
	This should be, like, top of page news.
	And in an era where the media actually cared about freedom of speech, which they clearly do not at this point, it would be top of the page news.
	When Donald Trump was saying things like, the president is the enemy of the people.
	All we got was, this is an attack on the First Amendment.
	It's un-American.
	How can he say that?
	They're not enemies of the people.
	Meanwhile, you have actual government agencies going to social media websites and telling them to shut down fully certain streams of information.
	And the media is like, Because if the mainstream media agrees with a thing, it becomes truth.
	And if the mainstream media disagrees with a thing, it becomes falsehood, and it would be good if that thing were suppressed.
	Well, here's the thing.
	Making the argument that social media is a private entity and can make its own rules, that carries only so far as the government is not pressuring the private entity into doing the thing.
	Once you are a government agent, you can't do that thing.
	If the government puts a gun to your head and tells you to do a thing, you are now a government agent.
	That means that whatever you do is attributable to the government.
	So the government goes to social media and they say to them, either you regulate the speech or we regulate you, which is effectively what Democrats have been saying since about 2018.
	If they say that sort of thing, this turns social media companies into operations of the government.
	Once they are operations of the government, then the pressure that government brings to bear is in fact a violation of the First Amendment, which is exactly what the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals says.
	According to CNBC, the ruling will make it easier for several federal agencies to communicate with social media companies Still, officials who remain subject to the modified injunction, including those in the White House, must remain careful their discussions with the platforms will not be construed as coercive.
	A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the White House, Surgeon General's Office, and FBI likely violated the First Amendment by coercing social media platforms into moderating posts on their sites.
	It also said that the CDC likely violated the First Amendment.
	The appeals court decision says that some federal agencies won't be subject to the injunction, but They did say, and it's a pretty amazing ruling, they did say that the pressure brought to bear on social media companies by the federal government is a violation of the First Amendment, which it clearly is.
	And that pressure is obviously continuing.
	Here's the thing.
	Once that genie is out of the battle, it can't be undone.
	So let's say that the CDC is not pressuring anymore.
	But the message is already out there that the pressure exists.
	The threat is already out there.
	If Al Capone threatened to burn down your bar because you wouldn't pay the protection money, and he did that a year ago, you're probably still going to pay him the protection money even after a court says he really shouldn't do that.
	And that's effectively what's happening right now.
	According to the Washington Post, Threads is currently blocking searches on the topic of COVID and vaccines.
	Instagram's text-based social platform Threads, which is supposed to be the answer to Twitter, rolled out its new search function.
	But not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy.
	When users went to Threads to search for content related to COVID and Long COVID, they were met with a blank screen that showed no search results and a pop-up linking to the website of the CDC.
	You want to talk about government pressure?
	How about the government pressuring social media into shutting down actual social media posting and just linking directly to the government?
	That's like Orwellian crap.
	Meta acknowledged in a statement to the Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking those search terms and said other terms are being blocked as well.
	The company didn't give a list, but those words include sex, nude, gore, porn.
	Okay, so far, I suppose, all right.
	And then, coronavirus vaccines and vaccination.
	Those are blocked.
	Now, you will be directed explicitly to government sources.
	The search functionality temporarily doesn't provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content.
	It's not potentially sensitive content.
	Because, God forbid, you should get the non-government side of the story, since the government was so absolutely honest with us during the COVID regime.
	I mean, they're being so honest with us now, now that you've got the White House promoting masking again.
	Amazing stuff here.
	And the fact that that is not a national scandal demonstrates, more than anything, how corrupt the media are.
	Because again, the media, you would imagine, would be pro-First Amendment.
	Well, not so much.
	Okay, so you would imagine that all of this would be wind in the sails for Republicans going into 2024.
	After all, this is terrible governance.
	This is tyrannical use of social media.
	The American people are not up for all of this.
	So all Republicans have to do is be not stupid.
	Well, oops.
	So, Republicans always have a way of doing dumb things.
	All the talk right now about how Kevin McCarthy is going to be basically deprived of his speakership, I'm just wondering, what is the upside?
	I keep asking this.
	I've been asking this since there was the original rebellion against McCarthy.
	It's one thing to leverage McCarthy for more concessions to the conservative side of the aisle.
	That's fine.
	That's a strategy.
	But you have to be able to land the plane.
	You know what is not a strategy?
	What if we get rid of McCarthy and then we have no one to back him up?
	What if we just have a random speakership fight so that people can get on TV?
	Like, this sort of stuff is deeply unhelpful.
	According to Politico, Kevin McCarthy is facing the greatest peril to his speakership since he clawed his way into the job eight months ago, with multiple factions of his party feuding and a looming revolt ahead during a battle to fund the government.
	Ultra-conservative members of the House GOP are talking in unsubtle terms about turning on McCarthy if he does not take a hard line in negotiations with the Senate and the Biden administration.
	Now let me just point out here, Joe Biden and the Senate, all they have to do is say we're willing to negotiate and then not negotiate in order to win this battle.
	They made a crucial tactical blunder during the last round of these negotiations.
	Joe Biden pre-committed beforehand to not negotiating.
	That gave McCarthy room to say that he was the negotiator and eventually Biden had to negotiate.
	The rule in these sorts of political brinksmanship situation is that the American public are pro whichever party says they'll come to the table.
	If you say you won't come to the table, they don't like you.
	So, if you're already starting off with, we're not coming to the table, and the unless is something that you're certainly not going to get from the Democrats, well then the Democrats probably win that in the battle of public opinion.
	McCarthy, according to Politico, is a political survivor.
	Even his critics cannot deny his skilled nature as an accommodator, his persistence in winning over even his most dogged critics.
	But interviews with more than two dozen GOP members and aides reveal it would take only a few rogue lawmakers hellbent on his downfall to risk McCarthy's fate in an entirely new way.
	Sending their party spiraling into a new period of chaos, even if those defectors fail to actually eject McCarthy, some of the speaker's confidants privately concede there may be no way to recover.
	According to Bob Goode, who's a vocal McCarthy detractor, he says, Now, let me just be clear about this.
	There is no situation in which a deal is not cut with Democrats.
	You know why?
	Because the president is a Democrat.
	So is the Senate.
	as a transformational historic speaker, or he can choose to make a deal with Democrats.
	Now, let me just be clear about this.
	There is no situation which a deal is not cut with Democrats.
	You know why?
	Because the president is a Democrat, so is the Senate.
	What is amazing to me is I am more fiscally conservative than virtually everyone in Congress.
	I also happen to live in this world called reality, where you don't get to unilaterally dictate the terms of engagement when the other side holds most of the cards.
	The president has veto power.
	The president has the entire media on his side.
	And you can fight this battle.
	You can say, well, you know, the president really should cave on this and you should really cave on this.
	And you might be able to pry certain concessions away from Biden.
	They were able to do this last time.
	They got some small concessions from him.
	But if you're talking about effectuating Large-scale change with a Democrat president and a Democrat Senate?
	Good luck to you.
	By the way, you know what would have been really helpful here?
	Is winning.
	That would have been super helpful.
	If you actually want to effectuate large-scale change, you know what would be great?
	Controlling the House of Representatives, guys.
	That'd be awesome.
	So why don't we focus on running good candidates in swing districts?
	Hell, why don't we focus on nominating the most electable Republican for president, who isn't going to drive out Democratic turnout?
	That might be a way to actually effectuate large-scale change.
	Or is the idea here that you just yell at your leadership class?
	And if you yell at them long enough, then magic happens.
	I don't know.
	Honestly, it's like one of these bizarre tweets where the logic goes something like, step one, yell at your leadership.
	Step two, dot, dot, dot.
	Step three, fiscal conservatism.
	Like, the dot dot dot is the whole thing, guys.
	You need to figure out exactly what your strategy and your play here is.
	Again, I'm not saying you can't leverage McCarthy into being more conservative.
	I'm fine with that.
	I think that's good.
	I think pressure from his right is a good thing.
	The point I'm making is that if you start off with a series of demands that are utterly unrealistic, and if there are people in the conservative ecosystem, in the conservative media ecosystem, who suggest that government shutdowns are going to be a way toward political victory here with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, when you know a deal is going to get signed, I don't understand what exactly the upside is.
	All Republicans need to provide right now is a sense of sobriety.
	Is a sense that they know what they are doing.
	So all I'm asking for, as always, is a plan.
	That's it.
	Give me a plan.
	I don't like any Republican strategy that is not a strategy at all.
	It's an impulse.
	If the impulse is, yell at McCarthy until good things happen, that's not a strategy and it is not a plan.
	If the impulse is, nominate whomever and run them against Biden without any plan for victory, what's the plan?
	If the plan is, shout that the last election cycle was stolen and then have no plans to actually reverse that or explain even how you would attempt to do so, that's not a plan, that's an impulse.
	Impulses do not make for political victory.
	You know what Democrats have continuously?
	Plans.
	It's what they do professionally.
	So for example, According to Politico, in the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps and helped the Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio, kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year.
	All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be redrawn, increasing the likelihood Democrats could chip away the five-seat GOP House majority through redistricting alone.
	Democrats could pick up an extra seat, including in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana.
	These are deep-red states.
	Perhaps several more in New York.
	Republicans could still pick up as many as four seats in North Carolina, but the recent rulings put Democrats in a position to offset some of those losses, and then some.
	So, again, they are finding judges who are overthrowing these districts that are drawn, and then they are basically creating Democratic districts.
	That is what they are doing right now.
	That is a plan.
	When Republicans, by the way, play the game, they can win.
	This is the other thing.
	Is this notion out there that Republicans can't play the game because the game is rigged?
	Okay, when it comes to ballot harvesting, yes, Republicans can play that game and they can win.
	That's what happened in Florida during the last election cycle.
	Yes, the judiciary was rigged against Republicans and then Republicans created the Federalist Society and spent 30 years building up an entire bench of judicial nominees and then took control of the Supreme Court.
	So, yes, you can do this, but it requires actual plans.
	I understand that the easiest thing in politics is to think for today and maybe for tomorrow, but never for 10 years from now.
	That's not going to achieve it.
	And here's the big question.
	What exactly do you expect McCarthy to do?
	McCarthy's actually giving us what we want.
	I say us, to conservatives, not in terms of spending, which he's not capable of doing, and no one's capable of doing.
	And by the way, I do find it ironic that many of the same people who are shouting about how McCarthy is not sufficiently conservative on spending are talking about the wonders of, for example, President Trump, who says we should not restructure Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, which are the biggest spending programs in American life, bar none.
	But put that aside.
	McCarthy is, in fact, moving toward an impeachment inquiry.
	If that's something you care about, McCarthy's doing it.
	According to Fox News, Kevin McCarthy will tell House Republicans today beginning an impeachment inquiry against Biden is the logical next step.
	The House GOP conference plans to hold the meeting on Thursday morning for key committee chairs.
	to lay out their latest findings and the status of the investigations into the Biden family.
	House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio,
	and House Oversight Committee Chairman, Representative James Comer of Kentucky,
	are expected to lead the meeting. At the meeting, McCarthy is expected to say,
	an impeachment inquiry is the logical next step for the Republican majority.
	So that will obviously launch this into higher gear.
	218 lawmakers would need to support an impeachment inquiry against Biden.
	It's not certain that actually the House Republicans have the votes to do it.
	There are several GOP lawmakers, including Ken Buck and Don Bacon of Nebraska, have voiced skepticism about impeachment, which is interesting because Buck is a fiscal conservative who's also pushing McCarthy from the right in terms of spending.
	So it's kind of some weird bedfellows here.
	But McCarthy is very pliable to his own membership.
	The problem is, if you don't give him any options, he's got no options.
	So how about this?
	How about focus on, you know, the measures that are likely to lead to electoral victory so you can actually effectuate change?
	There's been, ever since I've been following Republican and conservative and politics at all, which is like 14, 13 years old, I've noticed an extraordinary tendency among those in the activist base to simply say, over and over and over, that they wish a thing to be.
	And then, if the politicians don't make the thing happen, then the politicians have failed.
	What if the thing that you are wishing for is not possible under the current circumstances, but might be possible with a little bit of actual forethought?
	Okay, in just one second.
	We are going to get to crime problems spinning out of control in Washington, D.C.
	Again, Democratic governance is incredibly vulnerable right now.
	The stuff they have promulgated is really, really bad.
	First, gotta talk about Brian.
	Brian is a video editor over here.
	He is the meme lord over here.
	He's the guy you see whenever you see our videos on YouTube and they got all the memes that is largely Brian who's doing his post editor.
	But I only know Brian from making me play Minecraft.
	And I've been waiting for this day.
	This is the day, Brian.
	It's time for you to be ZipRecruited.
	Because the reality is, making me play Minecraft, sure, it might be entertaining for some of you.
	And sure, our audience might like it.
	But there is very little else on this earth I hate more than being forced to play Minecraft for like an hour and a half.
	Because I will not get those hours of my life back.
	And on my deathbed, I'll think back to those videos of me playing Minecraft on YouTube and say, my god.
	So, Brian?
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	ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire.
	Also, a few months ago, there's a certain chocolate company sold themselves out to the woke.
	They trotted out a dude who says he's a lady to be the spokeslady on International Women's Day.
	It was ridiculous.
	That's why my good friend Jeremy Boring decided to start producing Jeremy's chocolate.
	The campaign was a huge success.
	We sold out in a matter of days.
	Then we got more in stock and then those sold out too.
	The best way to strike back at these leftist regimes is through the free market.
	Halloween is quickly approaching.
	We are bringing back our chocolate.
	So you don't have to settle for ideologically inferior chocolate.
	It's time to stock up on good, unwoke, kosher chocolate.
	Yes, it's kosher.
	So head on over to jeremyschocolate.com, order today.
	Check this out.
	This is the She Her Bar from Jeremy's Chocolate.
	And it goes without saying, the She Her Bar is nutless.
	So, yes, that is a thing.
	So, on Halloween, give this out to the kids.
	They're not going to understand what's going on, but their parents are going to laugh super hard.
	So go check it out right now, jeremyschocolate.com.
	Okay, meanwhile, crime remains absolutely out of control in Washington, D.C.
	I know we were supposed to pretend that crime was going to end after they defund the police movement, remember?
	It was going to be kumbaya.
	I mean, Washington, D.C.
	actually wrote Black Lives Matter in giant letters on the street.
	And if that won't solve crime, I frankly don't know what will.
	They created a George Floyd Square.
	It was the moment.
	The moment that all crime was going to end in Washington, D.C.
	And then, yeah, it turns out Washington, D.C.
	is a terrible place filled with crime.
	According to the Washington Post, a shaken Washington copes with surging violence.
	This is not normal.
	Oh, isn't it, though?
	According to the Washington Post, Stephanie Heisman, a Northwest Washington event planner, knows she may sound almost absurdly cautious as she describes how, after a regular Sunday dinner at a friend's house five blocks away, she travels by car instead of walking home.
	She has her reasons.
	A year ago, she was awakened by gunfire outside her Adams Morgan apartment building and from her seventh floor window saw a car speeding away.
	In August, after a night out with her friends, her Uber driver couldn't reach her building because police had blocked off a street where bullets had just killed two men and fatally wounded a third.
	It's ridiculous, Heisman said.
	On the other hand, I don't want to randomly get shot.
	Violent crime has long been part of Washington life, the worst of it during the early 1990s, when drug trafficking propelled the annual homicide toll to nearly 500, and D.C.
	earned an inglorious reputation as America's murder capital.
	It was actually during this period that Washington, D.C.
	had to rename its basketball team.
	You'll recall that Washington, D.C.' 's basketball team in the 1980s was called the Washington Bullets.
	And then they had to rename themselves, because oops.
	And that's when they became the Washington Wizards, as though Gandalf is like walking the streets of Washington, D.C.
	The volume of carnage these days is not nearly as high.
	Most D.C.
	residents are unlikely to ever be a victim of violence, but a sharp rise in crime over the past year, punctuated by reports of homicides, brazen shootings, and carjackings by armed teenagers, is rattling a city already struggling to recover from a pandemic that upended its rhythms and ravaged its once thriving downtown.
	I wonder how this happened.
	Oh, maybe it was that you guys decided that the police were bad.
	Maybe that would be it.
	The spike in felonies, homicides, and robberies are up 29 and 67 percent from the same time period last year, according to police stats, is not the only data causing alarm.
	The number of juvies arrested for carjacking has increased slightly since last year, 41 of the 64 charged between the ages of 12 and 15.
	As of August 31st, 81 minors had been shot in the city this year.
	Well, a preponderance of violence occurs where it often has, in the poor neighborhoods.
	Stats show the geography of crime has become more diffuse, with prosperous areas less immune than before.
	Well, I mean, equity.
	Equity would suggest this is necessary.
	Obviously, the richer areas also have to suffer from people being shot on the regular.
	So that is exciting stuff in Washington, D.C.
	Keep voting Democrat.
	It's working out great for you.
	Same thing happening over in Philadelphia, by the way.
	There's a new video that has emerged from Philadelphia showing addicts on the street in a trance-like state.
	Passed out on the sidewalk of the city's multiple homeless encampments.
	I mean, if this is not horrifying third-world crap, I'm not sure what is.
	This is Kensington areas in Philadelphia.
	For those who can't see the video, there's people literally just lying on the street, just in the middle of broad daylight.
	Like, zombied out.
	Just people... You would think that this was some sort of a horrifying play.
	It is not.
	There's a homeless man who's just standing there on a street corner.
	I mean, this is just creepy as all living hell.
	Just people zonked out, obviously.
	Drug users are seen, according to the Daily Mail, hunched over with no control of their limbs.
	Others are sprawled across the garbage-covered streets.
	Large groups have taken over the sidewalks, turning them into homeless encampments where many people live in their own filth.
	Many of the addicts living on the streets are forced to turn to crime and theft to sustain themselves.
	One local activist said businesses are using booby traps like sprinkler systems to keep drug addicts away from their storefronts.
	Businesses end up throwing soapy water on the ground so it's wet and it's not a comfortable place to sit down.
	There's businesses that set up sprinkler systems as well.
	Crime data reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer shows Kensington has one of the highest drug rates in the city.
	Apparently, one of the worst drugs on the street right now is a drug known as Trank.
	For those who don't know, that is a potent animal tranquilizer called xylosine.
	It is a powerful sedative, and people mix it with fentanyl to make that even deadlier and worse.
	That is something the New York Times has been reporting on for a while.
	Back in January, there was an entire story about this.
	They say xylosine causes wounds that erupt with a scaly dead tissue called eschar.
	Untreated, it can lead to amputation.
	It induces a blackout stupor for hours, rendering users vulnerable to rape and robbery.
	When people come to, the high from the fentanyl has long since faded.
	They immediately crave more.
	Because xylosine is a sedative and not an opioid, it resists standard opioid overdose reversal treatment.
	More than 90% of Philadelphia's lab-tested dope samples are now positive for xylosine.
	It's too late for Philly, said Sean Westfall, outreach worker with Prevention Point Philadelphia, a 30-year-old health services center in Kensington.
	Philly's supply is saturated.
	If other places around the country have a choice to avoid it, they need to hear our story.
	A study published in June has detected xylosine in the drug supply in 36 states as well as D.C.
	In New York City, xylosine has been found in 25% of drug samples.
	But the saturation is certainly greater.
	And this is scary, scary stuff.
	The drug exists in a legal gray zone.
	It was approved 50 years ago by the FDA as a veterinary and prescribed analgesic.
	It's not listed as a controlled substance for animals or humans, so it's not subject to strict monitoring.
	But it started, of course, with prescription opioids.
	When those became harder to come by, people started moving on to Trank.
	So this is what we've done to large swaths of our population.
	It's all working out great, by the way, guys.
	All of this is working out beautifully.
	Probably a little bit more left-wing policy will fix these cities.
	Well, maybe if we have some, you know, needle exchanges for the tranq, that'll definitely help.
	Or maybe if we get rid of the cops, because really the problem here is systemic racism.
	You know, as I said earlier when I came to the Republican Congress, yelling at bad things in life is not a solution to the bad things.
	And yet that seems to be the policy that is being followed in these cities.
	I don't like Trank is not a solution to Trank.
	I don't like homeless zombies on the street is not a solution to homeless zombies on the street.
	You know what's a solution?
	More law enforcement.
	You know what's a solution?
	Mandatory drug drying out.
	You know what's an actual solution?
	Involuntary commitment for the mentally ill.
	These are actual solutions that require actual funding, and they fix the problem.
	But that might require somebody to actually have the courage to say that in an area where it's not popular, and more than that, it's not about courage by politicians.
	It's about voters coming to grips with reality.
	At a certain point, you can't blame the politicians anymore.
	If we're not cutting our debt, maybe it's because we don't want to cut our debt.
	You can blame politicians as much as you want, or you can blame the fact that people have no capacity to think second order when it comes to politics.
	Alrighty, folks, time for some things that I like.
	Alrighty, well, one of the things we like here at the Ben Shapiro Show is Birch Gold.
	They're one of our biggest sponsors, obviously, and we talk with them every so often about the state of the economy.
	Joining us on the line right now is Philip Patrick, a precious metals specialist from Birch Gold.
	So, Philip, let's talk about the state of the economy.
	I mean, right now, Joe Biden is claiming we have strong economic growth, inflation is coming under control.
	How do you see it?
	Yeah, I mean, look, you can cherry pick the numbers and certainly make that argument, but I think it's a mistake to focus just on economic growth.
	The real question, I think, is how is the economy working for most Americans?
	And the numbers really don't look good over the last two and a half years.
	Look at food prices at home up 20 percent, electricity up 21, gasoline prices up 72 percent, Let's look at people's biggest expense, right?
	Housing.
	Rent payments rose 25%, median mortgage payments up 85%.
	And very importantly, wage growth has trailed inflation consistently.
	In other words, it's not just our imagination.
	Virtually every essential is more expensive today than it was before Biden got in office.
	And wages just haven't kept up, right?
	Consumer debt has recently hit an all-time high, over a trillion dollars for the first time.
	So I think people are desperately trying to maintain their living standards in the face of by economics.
	And I think that's the reality for most Americans today, despite how we try and dress up the numbers.
	So, Philip, one of the things that they're claiming now is that they've brought inflation under control.
	The Federal Reserve, obviously, has increased interest rates to sky-high rates.
	This is why mortgages are now clocking in at 7-8%.
	Now, the reality is that by historical averages, the interest rates aren't actually all that high at this point.
	But also, the inflation rate is not all that low at this point.
	There's a lot of talk right now about the inflation rate being under control, but they usually target 2%.
	It's well in excess of 3% still, so it's still 50% too high.
	But they're still claiming now that maybe they're going to stop with the increases in the interest rate.
	Yeah, look, lower inflation generally is good news, right?
	But there's a couple of points to remember.
	First of all, inflation is cumulative, right?
	A 10% inflation rate one year followed by 5% next means that everything costs 15% more.
	So easing inflation doesn't mean a return of purchasing power, it's just destroying it more slowly.
	Now, The other side of things, which I think is very important, is the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, which is core PC, personal consumption expenditures.
	They've been more than double, as you mentioned, the 2% target for years now.
	The only thing that's really been driving that headline inflation number down has been energy prices.
	And of course, they're starting to creep up again.
	Oil hit $90 a barrel Uh, just a few days ago.
	It's particularly concerning because I think what it's showing us now that is inflation is becoming entrenched in the economy.
	And I think, you know, this 2% target that the Fed have maybe a pipe dream for the foreseeable future.
	It's proving particularly sticky at the moment.
	Philip, one of the things that's become patently obvious really since 2007-2008 is how much power the central bankers have over the economy.
	There used to be a time, now decades ago, where legislatures really had sort of the chief control over the economy and you could hold them responsible if the policies were bad.
	There was still an interest in some level of fiscal discipline because you couldn't just print dollars willy-nilly and then pump them into the economy or blow the debt off for a couple of generations.
	Yeah, I mean, it's absurd.
	not true anymore. And that means that the central bankers have been given this extraordinary
	power to control how much your dollars are worth, particularly the ones you've already
	paid taxes on and that are in the bank already.
	Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's absurd. The power that the Federal Reserve have is is really
	showing itself in today's economy. And the reality is, as you mentioned, they're an unelected
	We really can't hold them accountable.
	And this Federal Reserve has a problem as well.
	The tools that they have available, I think, are very limited.
	Their ability to raise rates significantly enough to crush inflation is limited.
	Look at what they did to the banks earlier this year.
	Um, you know, the ability to fix the economy by lowering rates and stimulating also very limited as well.
	So they've got their hands tied behind their back.
	But I agree with you, the Fed as a body, the power that they have over the economy is concerning when they're unelected and unaccountable.
	We're speaking with Philip Patrick, he's a precious metals specialist and a spokesman for Birch Gold Group.
	So, Philip, I get the question all the time that in a really sort of uneasy economy like this, and it really is uneasy, no one knows obviously where to put their money.
	It looks to me like the real estate market is going to have some sort of sell-off here just because the mortgage rates are so high.
	There's a lot of stickiness because people don't actually want to sell their homes because then they'll have to take a new mortgage that isn't going to be at 2.5%, it's going to be at 7%, but at some point people will lose their jobs, they'll lose their savings, then they're going to have to sell those houses.
	The same thing is happening in commercial real estate.
	I've been talking with people in commercial real estate and the occupancy rates are dropping fairly rapidly at this point.
	And that means the underlying value is really going down.
	The Wall Street Journal has widely reported this.
	Meanwhile, when it comes to the stock market, a lot of uneasiness there.
	New IPOs are doing a fraction of what they were doing just a couple of years ago.
	And meanwhile, if you put your money into a money market account, you might be earning the best return.
	It's a very confusing economy.
	Now, obviously, you have a vested interest with Birch Gold.
	But what do you recommend in terms of things like precious metals as a hedge against all of this?
	Look, I think precious metals work very, very well in climates like this simply because of the nature of our problems, right?
	We have inflation, which we've mentioned.
	We have potential recession on the horizon tied into that.
	I think we have issues with our currency.
	Longer term, the world seems to be At least for now, distancing from the dollar.
	These things, of course, very negative in isolation, but very positive drivers for safe haven commodities like gold and silver.
	So the climate's really good.
	And as you mentioned, you know, the options out there at the moment are very limited.
	So precious metals make a ton of sense in climates like this.
	Phillip Patrick, Precious Metal Specialist Spokesman for Birchgold Group.
	Really appreciate the time, folks.
	If you do want to get involved with Birchgold, we've talked about them a lot on the show.
	They're a sponsor of the program.
	Birchgold will make sure that you have all of your questions answered.
	You can text Ben to 989898.
	They'll get you a free information kit on gold.
	They've got that A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
	Thousands of happy customers.
	I've trusted Birchgold myself when I diversify into gold.
	So go check them out right now by texting Ben to 989898.
	Phillip, really appreciate the time.
	Thank you, same.
	Alrighty, time for some things that I hate.
	What's going on in Israel right now is actually quite astonishing.
	The Supreme Court of Israel is claiming that it has the ability to strike down literally any law, including what they call the Basic Law, in Israel for violating the Declaration of Independence for Israel.
	So, let me put this in context.
	And this has ramifications for the United States because this is the way that the left would love to see courts rule in the future and how the courts have ruled in the past.
	So basically, here's the way it works.
	The United States is, we're really lucky.
	We have a written constitution, which means that the very least you can refer to that document to determine what exactly courts can do and can't do in terms of striking things down while legislatures can and cannot do.
	Israel doesn't have anything like that.
	Israel has a Declaration of Independence, which is not a piece of law.
	It is a statement of broad purposes about how Israel should be Jewish and democratic.
	That's pretty much what it is.
	It's not law.
	There's no constitution there because the Israelis couldn't come to some sort of agreement about how exactly the government should work, what laws were in bounds, what was constitutional, what was not.
	So they basically just agreed to disagree.
	That means that every so often they pass what they call a basic law.
	A basic law is a piece of majoritarian legislation that then carries with it an inability to override that law except with sort of a supermajority.
	These basic laws exist.
	They've been created throughout Israeli history.
	The Supreme Court of Israel typically has used basic law in order to strike down non-basic law.
	In the same way that the Supreme Court of the United States will use the Constitution to strike down particular legislation, the same thing sort of happens here.
	In Israel, the Supreme Court historically has used the basic laws as a way of striking down non-basic law.
	Now, in the 1990s, there was a seizure of power by the Supreme Court, and they decided that from now on, they could basically just say reasonableness to strike down a variety of executive actions and legislation.
	Well, Bibi Netanyahu's current coalition, they said the Supreme Court has too much power, we don't want them to do that anymore, so now you're going to have to cite something that's not reasonableness, if you want to strike down legislation.
	And they want to make this a basic law.
	They actually encoded this in a basic law, saying this will now be the law of the state of Israel, and it is considered quasi-constitutional.
	So one of the questions, the big question, that's now come up before the Supreme Court, is whether the Supreme Court of Israel can strike down a basic law in the name of, hmm, In the name of, like, again, normally in the United States you use the Constitution to strike down a bad piece of legislation.
	In Israel, the basic law is the quasi-constitutional highest law.
	How can the Supreme Court cite something else to strike down a basic law?
	So the argument that's currently happening at the Supreme Court level is whether the Supreme Court can use the Declaration of Independence to strike down a law.
	Imagine if the Supreme Court of the United States went back to the Declaration of Independence
	and said that because the Declaration of Independence says that you have the pursuit of happiness,
	that means that we can strike down anything we want.
	We'd all go, whoa, who gave you that power?
	That's not like that's a pretty vague sentiment for you to strike down things.
	But that's pretty much what Israel's Supreme Court is now declaring.
	They're now declaring that because they don't like the current legislature of the State of Israel, they have willy-nilly power to strike down anything they want in the name of an incredibly vague document.
	The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, which is not, in fact, practical law.
	It does not spell out how the State of Israel is supposed to work.
	It does not spell out how the Knesset is supposed to work.
	It doesn't spell out virtually any of these things.
	It has a bunch of sort of baseline statements about what they hope the State of Israel will be.
	Talking about how it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of its inhabitants, and will be based on freedom, justice, and peace, and will ensure complete equality of social and political rights.
	And it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.
	But those are pretty vague statements to strike down a piece of legislation that simply says the Supreme Court does not have the ability to say that something is unreasonable and then strike it down.
	If the Supreme Court were to do this, it's a constitutional crisis in Israel because effectively what they are saying is that elections can be overridden by the Supreme Court at any time.
	At any time.
	A basic law is established, which again is supposed to be as though the Congress of the United States and various state legislatures passed a constitutional amendment to the Constitution and the Supreme Court then stepped in and said, in the name of the Declaration of Independence, we strike down this constitutional amendment.
	Like, well, you can't do that.
	No one gave you the power to do that.
	That's basically what's happening right now.
	According to the Times of Israel, during fraught exchanges between the court and the attorneys defending the legislation, one justice indicated Israel's democracy was at stake.
	Again, I have to say, the irony of people speaking in the name of judicial tyranny, saying that they're doing so on behalf of democracy is really galling.
	It's really, really galling.
	Basically, the Supreme Court right now is arguing there should be no- like, name your limits.
	What are the limits on the Supreme Court of Israel?
	There are none, according to the Supreme Court of Israel.
	And according to many of its supporters.
	They lost an election, they don't like the results of the election, so now they're going to use the Supreme Court to basically establish that there are no limits at all?
	Elon Baumbach is the attorney representing the government.
	He argued that justices are empowered to interpret the legislators' words.
	There's no legal or constitutional basis for them to review basic laws.
	Well, yes, in the sense that it says there should be a legislature, but it doesn't have specific provisions on how lists work.
	to legislate laws.
	Bombach pointed to a 1950 Supreme Court ruling.
	Stein noted that the Knesset was formed before that.
	The original power source was in the Declaration of Independence.
	Well, yes, in the sense that it says there should be a legislature,
	but it doesn't have like specific provisions on how lists work.
	All of that was established later.
	Other justices also challenged Bombach, indicating that in their view,
	since the Declaration of Independence defines Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,
	the Knesset cannot legislate laws, even basic laws that erode Israel's Jewish
	or democratic character.
	Which means that the High Court can simply strike down whatever it wants to sign.
	Strike down.
	Which is pretty amazing stuff.
	Again, the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel is, in fact, A basic document, but that does not mean that it empowers the Supreme Court to override anything in the name of the Declaration of Independence any more than the Supreme Court of the United States can use the Declaration of Independence, which is a far more important document to the Western civilization, to strike down law.
	The Supreme Court almost never cites the Declaration of Independence because there is no purpose to doing so.
	It is not a piece of legislation.
	If the Supreme Court in Israel does that, it's going to be a rather large mess.
	Because a huge percentage of the Israeli population is going to believe that elections basically have no consequences at all, unless you're on the left, in which case they just run roughshod.
	That's really negative stuff.
	And I've railed in the United States against people in the United States doing this routine where if the bad guys win, that means the democracy is over.
	They're doing it in Israel too.
	It's really bad for any civilization.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be talking about our educational system, which apparently is rife with some rather perverse people.
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