Ep. 543 Liberals and Hollywood Are Now Engaged in an Open War on Religion
In this episode: Do you hear about this inexcusable attack on a Trump appointee based on her religion? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dianne-feinstein-and-the-left-revive-religious-tests/article/2633777?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Examiner+Today&utm_source=StructureCMS https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-and-dogma-1504826418 This poll is really bad news for swamp-rat Republicans. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/09/07/poll-revolt-brewing-across-america-against-failed-congressional-gop-leadership/ Was Trump's debt deal with Pelosi and Schumer better than the GOP alternative? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-debt-deal-was-better-than-paul-ryans-many-republicans-admit/article/2633784 Another liberal Hurricane Harvey narrative dismantled. https://www.cato.org/blog/limited-zoning-will-help-during-houstons-rebuild?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=635e3b70b8-Cato_at_Liberty_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-635e3b70b8-143016961&goal=0_395878584c-635e3b70b8-143016961&mc_cid=635e3b70b8&mc_eid=3fd7404a34 Why are people buying gold again? https://www.wsj.com/articles/dollar-deepens-dive-as-caution-on-currency-grows-1504859572 Another solid tip for hurricane preparedness. http://www.countryliving.com/home-maintenance/a44682/door-trick-save-your-home-during-hurricane/?src=socialflowFB Is your diet all wrong? https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/well/new-study-favors-fat-over-carbs.html?referer=http://drudgereport.com/
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They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker.
The Dan Bongino Show.
Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Young kids, you are too stupid to figure out your health insurance needs, so we're gonna hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best and you're an idiot.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
I'm hanging in there, brother.
How you doing?
Yeah, broadcasting from the Ground Zero of the Hurricane Zone down here in Southeast Florida.
Hey, a quick thank you.
I know I thank you all a lot and you probably get sick of hearing it, honestly, but I mean it.
The emails, all of your concern for me and my family down here is really more than flattering and very humbling.
I do deeply appreciate it.
I'll be okay.
Don't worry.
We have a really well-constructed house.
We're in Palm City.
For those of you who don't know what Palm City is, it's about halfway between Miami and Orlando.
I was talking to Joe before the show.
Just a note on this.
Folks, listen, I'm not lecturing anybody here, but you can't panic in these things, you know?
I guess my prior line of work, you know, most of you know what I did.
I was a secret service agent.
Our whole line of work was preparedness.
I mean, that's all we did.
And we had an expression for people who would panic under these scenarios, and it was called blanking the bed.
And blanking rhymes with sitting, just with an extra word in there.
You don't want to Blank the bed.
And it was a word we have for people who panic, you know, there's, you can't panic under this stuff.
You have, there's a, there's a, there's time.
I said to Joe before the show, we were chatting about this.
I said, there's time to handle the emotions and there's times to handle the problem.
You know, when you're in a storm prep mode, you got to handle the problem.
You could deal with the emotions later, but it's really no time for emotions.
You just got to get out there and get the job done and be prepared and get it done.
You know, uh, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman wrote a book called On Killing.
It's a really fascinating book that whenever I put my Dan Bongino recommended reading list, I will put on there.
And in the book, Grossman describes the actual art of killing in combat and what it's like.
It's not like a masochistic book.
It's actually a very scientific book.
And he talks about in the book You know, the idea of operating in the red zone.
And I can't express to you in strong enough terms how important this is.
From prior experience of things, you know, getting into foot pursuits as a New York City cop, I specifically remember like you get tunnel vision and everything.
You have to learn to operate in a red zone where your heart rate's up because when you're not used to it, And let's say, like, when I say operate in a red zone, I mean, God forbid you get mugged or something in the street, you panic, you just don't know what to do, and you freeze, and blood diverts away from your extremities into your internal organs, you get tunnel vision, and all of a sudden, you just can't move, you feel like you're almost paralyzed.
But folks, from experience in jiu-jitsu, and as a cop, and rolling on the mat, and mixed martial arts fighting, and actually boxing, sparring, getting hit and punched in the face, Not that you should get punched in the face all the time, but when you repeatedly train and you work out and you train your body to operate in that red zone, eventually you don't panic anymore.
It sucks.
You can't breathe.
You'll get a little bit of tunnel vision no matter what, but you'll learn how to think.
You know, and that's why I love the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu so much, because you're grappling on the mat with some guy who is better than you and is kicking your butt sometimes.
You can't breathe or anything, but you're thinking while you're doing it.
You're not panicking.
You're like, okay, how do I get out of here?
Do I get a knee shield in here?
Can I get an arm frame in here to get his neck off me to create some space?
You're thinking and you learn how to think.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spend a lot of time on that, but there's time to focus on the emotions and the problems.
This is a problem time.
No emotions.
Do the emotions later.
Operate in the red zone.
It'll save your life.
Go to the gym and do Tabata sprints, and sprint as fast as you can if your heart can handle it.
And then think.
Do a math problem while you're doing it.
Learn to think in that red zone.
Go check out that book.
It's an old book, but it's a good one.
All right.
A number of stories to get through today.
So, um, let's see, where do we start?
Oh, you know, we need like a file for, for Hollywood, for how stupid Hollywood moments and entertainment industry moments.
We had a few doozies yesterday that made drugs.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them because they're self-explanatory.
I say Hollywood and the entertainment complex, you laugh.
I mean, it's just self-explanatory.
But Jennifer Lawrence, who is a, Just a total numbskull.
I refuse to see any of this woman's movies.
I'll take them for free when I get HBO as part of my complex here.
My HOA gives it.
I saw that movie Passengers recently with her in it, which was just awful, by the way.
But Jennifer Lawrence just doesn't like Christians.
She just thinks we're all idiots.
And she gave an interview yesterday, The Articles and Newsbusters, it's on Drudge today, where it seemed to insinuate that Trump supporters are responsible for the hurricanes and that this is the Like, God's rage directed at us because of voting for Trump.
I mean, it's just... Folks, I'm just begging you on a personal level.
I'm literally begging you, like on hands and knees.
I'm not being facetious.
Please do not waste any of your money on any movie or any product this woman is in.
She's a disgrace.
She can't stand you.
She literally can't stand you.
I mean, she cannot stand you.
She said it.
I mean, she mocks Christians.
She's just a horrible person.
Do not waste a dime supporting her pathetic, disgusting career.
Secondly, Stephen Colbert, who hosts a night... I don't even know what his show is.
He took over for Letterman.
I don't watch those nighttime shows.
They're just pretty dopey.
Colbert, last night, was on the show and he made a comeback.
I guess he was on vacation or something and decided to give the Nazi salute to Donald Trump as a way to... Really?
Yeah, so again, if you're watching that show, folks, you know, I'm sorry.
You're financing your own demise.
You are.
I mean, I don't mean to be rude, but by supporting him, people who sponsor his show and things like that, you know, I'm not suggesting any boycott.
He's free to do whatever he wants to do, but I'm suggesting a boycott of his show.
Why would you watch his show?
He hates you.
The Nazi salute?
I mean, just disgusting stuff, but typical for them.
Now, continuing this battle, by the way, against Christians and religion and things like that.
I got a ton of stories to get to today, by the way, really good stuff.
So there was a nominee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
I don't know if you heard this story, Joe, but this one is just another one of those head-scratchers where you're like, really?
A woman by the name of Amy Barrett, she's a Notre Dame law professor, or someone said to me the other day, Notre Dame.
Notre Dame law professor.
I had a shirt on that said, guys, what's their motto?
I had the shirt on.
But she's a Notre Dame law professor.
She's been nominated for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
And Dianne Feinstein, a liberal Democrat from California, and Dick Durbin started questioning her.
This is a Trump nominee.
Now, they asked her, apparently she's a Christian, and they said that one of the questions by Dick Durbin after Dianne Feinstein beat her up for having opinions about her religion... Keep in mind, Joe, there's no religious test for office, right?
I'm not crazy.
Like, we don't ban Catholics or Jews or Muslims from public office because of their religion, right?
Right.
Okay, we do live in the United States, though.
Still.
This is a real question.
I'm not making this up.
I will post the Wall Street Journal article in the show notes today at bongino.com.
If you want to go there and check out the articles, or you can always join my email list, I'll send them to you.
Dick Durbin, liberal senator from Illinois, asked this woman, do you consider yourself an orthodox catholic?
Folks.
What?
Yeah, I mean, This is a continuation of the weaponization of religion.
Religion against, used as a bludgeon against conservative America.
Folks, it's not going to stop.
Now, I addressed this in yesterday's show.
I addressed this in a couple shows we've done over the past few weeks.
How the modern far left, not all Democrats, but the modern far left, in conjunction now with Democrats up on the hill, Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein, Have now come full circle and have now decided through their activist arm, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which designates Christian groups, hate groups, which is now getting elected representatives to ask questions about your religion before you're appointed to the federal bench.
They are now weaponizing religion and are now being honest, which in a way, I tell you what, I despise it, but I'm actually grateful that you're now showing America your true colors.
Yeah.
You're now showing America your true colors, that you're just being honest now, that you just don't like Christians.
And why is that?
As I addressed in some prior shows, the why always matters.
The radical far left, in conjunction with places like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is an activist group that labels basically anyone who has a political disagreement with them, a hate group, and elected members of Congress, don't want competition for the state.
Remember, if you're a liberal, the state is everything.
Government power is everything.
Control is everything.
Control over money.
Control over health care.
Control over education.
Control over academia.
Control over the bureaucracy.
As I've said in a number of prior shows, do not make the mistake of saying liberals love big government.
They do not love big government.
They love liberal big government.
If they love big government, they would support Trump.
Trump's a representative of government and the Republicans in Congress have certainly done nothing to shrink government.
They don't.
They love liberal big government because they love power.
What they don't want is they don't want to support anything or anyone that conflicts with that power.
Religion or a connection to an objective set of values.
In other words, a set of values not interpreted by human beings.
Those set of values, those big R rights given to you by God, conflict directly with the state.
Because if you have rights given to you by God, those rights can't be interpreted by the state.
If you have a right to liberty, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to self-protection, God's, you know, God-granted rights, big R rights.
I've mentioned this a lot and I get emails saying, what do you mean by big R rights?
I mean rights you were born with.
No one gives them to you, folks.
And certainly, if you were a Christian, you would believe in this, that God grants you with life, with liberty.
God does not grant you, does not birth you into the world, into servitude.
You are born a free man or woman.
You have to understand, folks, what I'm trying to explain to you, and again, I'm not talking to all Democrats, but the far left does not, do you understand that they don't believe that?
Until you understand that basic premise, you'll never get why the left does what it does.
I mean, I can't emphasize this to you with a strong enough period full stop.
The radical far left does not believe you were born free.
What they believe is you were born dumb.
And that you, Joe, I'm serious.
They believe you're born stupid.
And that there are going to be smarter human beings in government bureaucracies, you know, anointed with state power, and that these elites are going to be the ones to dictate the behavior of the dumb masses.
If the dumb masses have their own rights granted by God, that's in direct conflict with the left's mission.
Now all of a sudden you know because for years a lot of people doubted this like no the left doesn't really hate religion it's you know it's just they think government does good stuff no no no they don't they don't think that they don't think government does good stuff they think people are stupid and do bad stuff there's a big difference They don't believe government does good stuff.
They believe you're an imbecile and that you do bad stuff and that you can be corrected by smarter people in government who are anointed with government power.
Folks, please do not mistake these two.
These are two completely different theories.
One is wrong and one is right.
The right one is you were born an idiot with no rights.
So they're weaponizing religion again and now they're showing their true colors.
This has turned into kind of a mini-controversy now.
Dianne Feinstein's attack on this potential judge, federal judge, and Durbin's question has turned into a mini-controversy which I'm telling you is going to hurt them.
Electorally.
Because folks...
Attacking people of a Christian faith and instituting a de facto test for religious office, I'm telling you, is not going to go over well.
There is no end game for you in this.
You may think there is.
You may think you're pandering to your Southern Poverty Law Center base.
But you're not.
What you're really doing is alienating in the culture wars just about everybody out there.
And there's a Wall Street Journal piece that came out a couple days ago covering a poll.
The poll, Joe, is showing this dividing chasm between Americans of different ideological beliefs.
And you know what's driving it?
Social issues.
So folks, again, I don't do anything on this show or cover anything.
I can't back up with facts and research.
If we're wrong, we correct ourselves.
The poll backs up what I'm telling you.
That the dividing line now between the radical left and conservatives, where the chasm's gotten wider and there's basically no crossover anymore and people don't share anything in common, the big dividing line is social issues.
Because if you believe in big R rights, you can't believe in abortion.
If God gave you the right to life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness, and liberals believe that life can be terminated at any point during a pregnancy, and in some cases post-pregnancy, I mean with these partial birth abortions, right?
And then you believe that the government can take away your right to protect yourself, to protect your family, can take away your economic liberty.
Do you understand there's no meaning there?
Those are black and white issues.
There's no gray.
The poll backs up what I'm telling you.
All right, I want to get to another poll, too.
A fascinating story by Breitbart on some polling data about the GOP, because the GOP just doesn't get this.
They're not understanding what's going on right now.
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Okay, now folks.
The weaponization of religion through Hollywood, through academia, through the elite liberal class, through elected Democrats in Congress, and the use of religion to fight against conservatives, to use it as a bludgeon, like, look, you're religious, you can't be in a public office, gosh, you believe in big R rights, you're out, which was totally, completely unconstitutional.
There is no religious test for office, thank the Lord.
Pun intended.
This weaponization of religion against Americans has clearly divided us, as I just told you through that poll.
But here's another thing.
Folks, it's divided the electorate into a class of people who feel like they're under attack.
Now, this has happened through the attack on Christian bakers who don't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, through the Kentucky court clerk who didn't want to sign gay marriage certificates.
As these stories get more and more publicity and the left thinks they're winning, what they're actually doing, Joe, is they're publicizing their intent.
And their intent is a war on Christian values.
It's always been their intent.
Now, again, I'm telling you, they think they're winning this.
They think they're changing hearts and minds by switching from a winning policy initiative show to attacking after we win.
Let me just break that down for a minute.
I'm sorry if the show's getting a little wonky, but this is really important stuff and I'm very passionate about it.
The left initially, their argument was, you know, listen, all we're looking for is equality, right?
Which is, you know, equality is a buzz term.
We want people to be able to marry who are gay.
Now keep in mind, there was equality.
People who were gay had the right to marry.
They just couldn't marry someone of the same sex.
I mean, you may not like that, but the rules did not discriminate against people who were gay.
You know what I'm saying, Joe?
The rule was a man can marry a woman.
It didn't say a gay man or a heterosexual man.
Those were the rules.
Now, I've already discussed gay marriage.
I don't think the government should be involved in the marriage business at all, to be clear on that.
But the rules were not unequal.
You just didn't like how the rules applied to people who were gay.
That's a fact.
But once they won the gay marriage argument legislatively through the Supreme Court decision and a number of local state decisions, right?
A lot of people in the conservative ecosystem argued that this is dangerous because what's going to happen is we're down this slippery slope now where winning isn't good enough.
They're going to use the law to punish people.
And I specifically remember people on the left saying, no, no, no.
We just want equality, equality, equality.
Folks, that's categorically not true.
We've seen it again, over and over.
Bakers being put out of business, florists being put out of business, bakers being sued and bankrupted, businesses being put out of business because they won't take part in a gay wedding.
Now you're forced to do this, right?
Remember, force only works one way in this, Joe.
You may not agree with the decision.
That's fine.
It's America.
I, unlike you, I respect your big R rights.
You may not say, you may, you could go out and write an op-ed piece and go, that Christian baker that didn't want to bake a cake for my gay wedding, he's a jerk.
Hey, I don't agree with you, but I respect it.
I mean, fine.
You're allowed to write that.
But the force, the use of force folks, let's be crystal clear on this.
Now I know leftist listeners are going nuts right now because they can't get past their emotions.
A lot of them are like children.
Put your emotions aside.
This is problem solving time.
It's like it's problem solving time down here right now.
Put your emotions aside for a minute.
The force only works one way.
You are not forced to go to that baker, right?
Joe, am I crazy about that?
I mean, this is just a simple yes or no, right?
You're not forced.
If some guy Joe knows is involved in a gay wedding and goes to a baker and a baker says, listen, man, I don't want to, I'm sorry, I don't want to participate in that.
It may not be nice.
You may not like it, but you can go somewhere else.
I mean, folks, listen, are we absolutely crystal clear on this?
You are not forced to go there.
So using the term force in conjunction with your side of the argument is just a lie.
It's just inaccurate.
You're just making it up.
You don't like it is what you're saying, which is okay.
But there's no force involved.
When you turn the argument from winning that, winning the poll, like we won on Gay Marriage Show, to now we're going to attack, what you really want to do is monopolize the government monopoly on force to use against that baker, which is what people did.
Melissa's Sweet Cakes in Oregon, which out there they were, sorry for the Oregonians out there.
I know you don't like the people in Nevada, too.
Sorry.
Please don't email me.
I get them all the time.
I get it.
I get it.
Much respect.
Much respect.
You're using the weapon of government, which they did, to bankrupt these people.
Because the government can do that.
It has a monopoly on force.
The force was only used against the baker or the florist.
Now I know that argument's inconvenient for you, but you weaponized force in one direction only.
Nobody was forced to do anything except the baker that was forced to work for you.
Because they don't want to.
Again, I know that's inconvenient, but that's just a fact using logic and reason.
I bring all this up And I had to give you that setup to get to where I'm getting to now.
People feel like they're under attack.
They feel like everywhere they go, they're being attacked for their religion.
They're being attacked for their political views by Stephen Colbert, by Jennifer Lawrence.
They feel like they're being attacked for being a Christian baker because they have to bake a cake for a wedding they don't want to take part in.
They feel like they're being attacked by their liberal neighbors who, you're a racist.
Folks, There is an entire class of people, as I've brought up repeatedly in the last few weeks of shows, that has been completely alienated from the political process.
Those people need... they need a champion.
And as the great Ginny Thomas once said, she, you know, we're the leaders we've been looking for.
Oh, by the way, the Notre Dame thing.
Played like a champion today.
Knew it!
Got it.
So don't email me.
I got it.
I knew it would come to mind.
You know, when you get clogged up and stuff.
But Ginny Thomas once said to me, you know, we're the leaders we've been waiting for.
And she's right.
Mm-hmm.
We are the leaders we've been waiting for, but even people who are out there activists and take on the mantle of political activism still need someone at the legislative level, Joe, to enact this stuff.
Right.
And they've been looking for a champion for a long time.
Right.
Now do you understand why Donald Trump won?
This was never an allegiance to the GOP.
Now in case you think I'm making this up, of course I never say anything I can't back up.
I've got some, let's see, what do we got here?
No, no.
Okay, here we go.
Sorry, I take screenshots of stuff.
The Trump election was never about the Republican Party.
Folks, I ran in that cycle.
I've knocked on a ton of doors.
Thousands.
I mean thousands upon thousands of doors.
And I remember people going down blocks, again, who had Trump signs up, and they were not on my walk list.
And I'd call my campaign manager, hey, why aren't these people on my walk list?
They're Republican voters.
She would say, no, they're not.
And I would go and knock on the door.
And Maria was right, the campaign manager.
They weren't Republicans.
Matter of fact, folks, a lot of them Weren't voters at all!
And I said, why are you voting Trump?
The reasons were always along this same vein.
The idea that they were either being, they were under attack as union workers, they were under attack as the middle class, they were under attack as Christians, they were under attack by liberalism.
It was always them on the defensive.
They were looking for a champion.
And they saw this guy.
He came out there.
He spoke like normal people.
He didn't speak in Republican-ese or Democrat-ese language.
And they found this guy to be a champion.
The mistake, the mistake a lot of people are making in interpreting this election is that this was some kind of a win for Republicans in Congress.
Folks, it was not.
Now, you may say to yourself, and Joe, you may be thinking the same thing.
You may say, well, Who cares?
We won, they held the House, and they got the majority in the Senate.
What's the big deal?
Folks, the big deal is the misinterpretation of the election as an election for the Republican Party and not an election for Trump as a counterweight to both Republicans and Democrats is causing all kinds of chaos up on Capitol Hill.
You bet.
Right?
Because up on Capitol Hill, Joe, what's starting to happen is they think their Republican brand Is going to get them through this and they see Trump as just a symptom of a larger problem.
They're like, well, we just haven't gotten an idea.
So we just, Trump just said a few things, you know, got some Republicans fired up and you know what?
This guy's a buffoon.
And in four years, we'll primary him, we'll get rid of him.
And then the Republican party will take over, but we don't really need this guy.
That's not what happened at all.
They did not vote for the Republican brand.
In other words, they think the Republican brand is going to outlast Trump thinking people voted for the brand.
Does that make sense?
They didn't!
They voted for Trump.
The fact that Trump was a Republican was completely incidental.
If he ran as an independent and there was no Republican on the ballot, he would have gotten the exact same votes.
Now, there's a poll out there that's getting a lot of traction.
Breitbart has a story on it.
I will put in the show notes today.
Please read it in case you have any doubt about what I'm telling you.
Here's the top line takeaway I want you to take away from this poll.
By an astonishing margin of four to one, the poll, by the way, very credible outlet that did this polling, said it's time for new GOP leadership in Congress.
Four to one!
Wow.
So folks, If they were voting for the Republican brand and not voting for Trump despite the Republican brand.
In other words, they weren't voting for a Republican who was Trump.
They were voting for Trump who was a Republican.
Then how come by a margin of four to one, people think that the GOP Congress should be flushed out the leadership?
You need some more data?
You may say, oh, all right.
Well, what else you got?
Here's another one.
This is from the Breitbart piece I'm quoting.
68% of Republicans said it was time for new Republican leadership in Congress while only 14% wanted to keep the current leadership.
63% of Democrats and 57% of Independents said it was time for new Republican leadership too.
This is classic.
Here's another one.
Disapproval of Republican leadership was high among those who voted for President Trump in 2016.
And that this satisfaction could be very bad news for Republican members of Congress who fail to back the Trump agenda as a number of questions about specific policies revealed.
Folks, I'm just giving you the electoral realities.
You do with it what you want.
If you're a listener of the show, I am big time on Trump on the tax cuts.
Big time on him on court appointees.
Terrific job.
Big time backer on his at least attempts to get rid of Obamacare.
Yeah.
I've had some, you know, problems with him on trade policy.
I'm not a huge fan of the debt ceiling deal.
I'll get to that in a minute.
But I am just warning you as a member of Congress, there has been a major sea change out there that you are clearly unaware of.
People did not vote for you in large swaths.
I'm not saying that a lot.
Some people did.
Some people are just loyal Republicans.
But a large swath of people who gave you your majority have now disconnected from the Republican brand and are with Brand Trump.
If you don't understand that, you need to find a new campaign manager.
Now, what does that mean?
If you're an elected member, I would strongly encourage you to take your fights with him behind closed doors whenever they involve something.
I think what they're doing now, Joe, is they think they're saving the Republican Party by embarrassing Trump publicly on issues they just don't like.
I would strongly encourage you to take your fights behind closed doors.
Now, when it's on principled issues, conservative bedrock principles like trade, we're free traders.
I get it.
I understand.
But if you think like going out in front of the cameras and hammering this guy endlessly about every little picadillo he has, is going to say, he's gonna, I'm gonna save the Republican brand, those Republicans are gonna come out for me.
You're just not, you're just wrong.
It's a really dumb, dumb approach.
I don't know where you think you're going with that.
Now, again, why am I bringing this up today?
Because we had this debt ceiling deal, which by the way is not a good deal, okay?
They're calling it, which by the way, I think this is not funny, but I'm just telling you it's in the news.
They're calling it the PTSD heat deal, which is not funny.
You know what I'm saying, Joe?
That's not a joke.
PTSD, that stands for post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's a serious thing.
But I saw on the Washington Examiner, again I'll put the article in the show notes, the Pelosi-Trump-Schumer deal.
P.T.S.S.
It's not funny, but you know, again, it's out there.
But the debt ceiling deal was a three month extension of the debt ceiling.
The debt ceiling is exactly that.
It's a ceiling on the amount of debt the United States can take on.
The debt ceiling debate comes up all the time.
It's obviously recurring because we're, sadly, we're always taking on new debt.
So the debt ceiling has to go up and up and up, which means Joe, it's really not a ceiling at all.
I mean, the point of a debt ceiling is here's the ceiling on debt no more.
When the ceiling keeps getting raised, we now have a, you know, I don't know, Oh, my house has 12-foot ceilings?
It's like, let's build a house for 12-foot ceilings.
Now 20, now 30, now 50, now 80, all of a sudden you got a condo.
There's no purpose to a ceiling if it's not going to put a limit on height.
The debt ceiling is a useless argument now, sadly.
I wish it weren't.
And now there's talk about getting rid of it, which I think is the even worse idea.
The point about the Pelosi-Trump-Schumer deal, and what happened to be clear on this is, let me set up the two sides, and I want you to understand why this relates to what I'm talking about before.
The swamp rats, the GOP swamp rats in Congress, they wanted an 18-month extension of the debt ceiling.
Why would they want that, Joe?
They wanted it because they didn't want to engage in this debate again until after the midterm elections.
Now, you may say to yourself, well, what the hell would you want?
Why would you want to postpone it?
Because here's, you wanted the simple reason?
Because they don't want to cut spending!
They're swamp rats!
And every time the debt ceiling debate comes up, someone says, oh my gosh, we got to take on new government debt.
Responsible Republicans would say, um, no, no problem.
We can fix this.
Let's address entitlements.
Let's address spending and we won't have to take on new debt.
Nobody, there's no Republican outside of members of the House Freedom Caucus who could even, they care remotely about this.
So you get what I'm saying, Joe?
They just want the debate to go away because they just want to spend more money.
And they don't want the public every three months to be going, wait, there's a debt ceiling debate?
What are Republicans doing about it?
So they just want to make the whole debate disappear because that's what Republicans do.
Swamp rats.
Now, they wanted 18 months.
Trump didn't want 18 months.
So Trump, and I don't think this was the greatest decision in the world either, But the 18-month deferral had no spending cuts in it at all.
Trump went to Pelosi and Schumer and said, all right, because I can't get these Republicans on board with a lot of this stuff, I'll make a deal with you for three months.
And the deal was a three-month deal for the debt ceiling.
Now, I just want to be clear.
I don't think Trump had a bunch of palatable options here.
I'm not throwing a guy under the bus.
But I just want to be clear on this.
There were no spending cuts in either of these debt ceiling deals.
What's the point of this whole setup?
What happened when Trump made the deal with Pelosi and Schumer?
Republican swamp rats jumped in front of the cameras, oh it's Trump, the worst, this is unbelievable, this guy's terrible.
Keep in mind folks, just so you know, I don't think it was a great deal either.
Right.
But what the hell were the Republicans offering?
So now, ironically, quietly behind the scenes, a lot of House Freedom Caucus members, Joe, which are actual conservatives, by the way, are starting to say, all right, this Trumer, it's Trumer, Trump-Schumer, that's how you find it, this Trumer deal, Trumer-Losey deal, Trump-Schumer-Pelosi deal, a lot of the conservative members are saying, you know what, They were both crap deals, right?
The 18-month deal had no spending cuts and a three-month deal had no spending cuts, but at least the Trump deal, in three months we can re-argue for spending cuts rather than waiting till after the election and are starting to quietly acknowledge that Trump got the better of the deal.
Yeah.
Folks, I'm not a blind Trumpist, okay?
I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig here.
I'm just telling you that the conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus that I personally trust and many I know personally, and some of them are very good people, Are starting to quietly say like, all right, out of two crap deals, you want to die by pistol or die by chainsaw?
I'll take the pistol.
That the Trump deal was the better one.
But what are swamp rats doing?
Again, Joe, because they think attacking Trump is going to save the Republican brand.
They're out in front of the cameras attacking the Trump deal, not realizing that they're not, the Republican brand is diminished.
The Trump voters voted for Trump, who was a Republican, not a Republican who was Trump.
You're making a huge mistake.
It was not a great deal.
There were no spending cuts.
I get it.
But at least in three months, now we can do it again.
So there's a Washington Examiner piece that describes this in detail, this behind-the-scenes finagling.
Again, it'll be in the show notes.
I strongly encourage you to read it.
It's really, really good stuff.
All right, today's show also brought to you by our friends at My Patriot Supply.
You know, this is a great company.
I gave them a shout-out again, even though they're a sponsor on yesterday's show.
You know, they only pay for like 30-second reads, but I give them longer reads because it's a good company.
The owners of the company DM'd me on Twitter.
Forgive me if you heard the story yesterday, but I think it's important to put out there.
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Even though they pay a lot of money, folks, to keep this show free for you, the first question to them was, how do we donate stuff?
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Good job, guys and ladies over there.
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Okay, a couple other stories I want to fire through here.
There's a good piece of Cato, I've already covered this in the last few shows, but I just wanted to bring it up again, I'll put it in the show notes just quickly.
There's a great piece there about how zoning, remember how the liberals, Joe, if you listen to this week's show, liberals are blaming zoning, building zoning, basically building codes for what happened in Houston, despite the fact that it's totally disingenuous and made up.
Houston actually has more pervious ground than most liberal states.
So the water can get can drain into the ground.
So they're just making a lot of this up.
But they want control.
So of course, liberals can never forfeit the narrative.
But there's an interesting piece in Cato how the lack of zoning in Houston, not only did not make conditions worse, but how the lack of zoning is actually going to help people rebuild quickly in Houston, in contrast to what happened after Katrina in New Orleans, because they don't have all these strict guidelines.
And the piece goes into some of the guidelines, Joe?
The zoning and building regulations that they put in place after Katrina, like in order to rent the place you had to be a second or third order relative, and everybody was scratching their heads like, wait, what?
Huh?
Houston doesn't have any of that.
So read the piece.
It's short.
It's only about six or seven paragraphs, but it's a really good piece how, again, not only is the liberal narrative about how zoning, like letting liberals control who can build what, and not only how that didn't hurt people in Houston, how it's actually going to help them, but liberals will never tell you that, because remember, Joe, the narrative.
The narrative, the narrative matters more than anything to these folks.
Yeah.
Let's see.
Oh, another story I saw on the Wall Street Journal today.
Hey, I know Birch Gold was a sponsor.
They may come back.
They may not.
Sponsors come in and out, but I'm a big believer in buying gold.
This is not a sponsored ad, by the way.
This is editorial content by me.
I have GLD.
I'm not a stock recommender.
Buy what you want or a mutual fund.
Dave Ramsey and people do that kind of stuff with money, and I'm not a money manager.
But I personally like to have gold or some assets denominated, at least in gold derivatives.
Because I'm just worried about the excessive printing of money, and gold's been a historical store of value.
And just kind of backing me up a little bit, gold has gone up dramatically after taking a bit of a dip after the Trump election, and here's what's happening.
There's an interesting journal piece about this, how the dollar's struggling.
And remember folks, when the dollar struggles, gold does well.
Why is that?
Because gold, basically if you're denominating gold in dollars, and you say an ounce of gold is worth this many dollars, and they start printing more dollars, then more dollars start chasing the same amount of gold.
Because you can't print gold!
You can mine gold, which takes some work, but you can't print it like you can just print or create artificial money like the government can.
So when you start printing, let's say An ounce of gold a hundred years ago was worth a dollar.
It doesn't matter.
The numbers are irrelevant.
It's worth about $1,350 now, but that's $1,350.
But let's say an ounce of gold was worth a dollar, and there were a hundred dollars in circulation and a hundred ounces of gold.
If you start printing more dollars, then that's more dollars chasing the same hundred ounces of gold.
Right.
Now, if the economy grows and they mine more, it's different.
But let's just say they don't mine more.
And you just start randomly printing money, you know, you call it quantitative easing, whatever you want, which is what the government calls it when they print money and buy their own stuff.
But what happens is gold goes up in nominal value because more dollars are chasing the gold.
So now you have $200 chasing 100 ounces of gold.
Which can now fetch $2 each instead of $1 when it was $100.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
Then if you print another $100 and you have $300, gold goes up even more.
So what's happening now is after the election of Trump, people thought the economy was going to take off.
And thanks to feckless GOP work on Obamacare and their constant delaying on tax cuts, people are now having doubts.
So when they thought the economy was going to get strong, Forgive me if this gets a little convoluted, but it's important you know this.
When they thought the economy was going to get strong, they thought interest rates would go up.
Now, what the hell does that have to do with anything?
Well, what happens with the Federal Reserve, which is the printer of money, if you look on your bills, they're called Federal Reserve notes, is in order to stop an overheating economy, or what they think is an overheating economy, they'll usually raise interest rates when the economy starts to heat up, which people thought After the Trump election was going to happen.
We clear on that, Joe?
They thought the Fed was going to raise interest rates because they thought the economy was going to heat up.
And the Feds raise interest rates when the economy heats up to take some money out of circulation.
Because if interest rates are higher, then money's not as easy to procure because it costs more to get it.
Interest rates are a price on money, right Joe?
If I give you a loan at 2%, that's a price on my money.
But then if I come back the next day and say, Joe, I want 5%, it's now more expensive for you to get money.
You get what I'm saying?
So interest rates are a price on money.
So when interest rates go up, the supply of money generally is thought to go down.
So what would happen?
When the supply of money would go down, the price of gold would go down too.
Because remember I told you the price of gold would go up as money supply goes up because it's more money chasing less gold or the same gold?
Well the opposite works too.
If there's less money, then it's less money chasing the same gold and the price of gold would go down.
So the price of gold dipped a little bit Because they thought the dollar was going to get stronger.
Now people are starting to realize that the GOP Congress sucks and they're not doing anything.
We may not get tax cuts forever and all of a sudden it's starting to reverse.
So the dollar's dipped a little bit in an interesting little economic phenomenon here and all of a sudden gold's going up a bit and I scored.
I bought GLD a little while ago and I'm up quite a bit on that.
Please, folks, this is not an investment advice show.
I'm not anyone's investment advice.
I'm just saying what I did because it relates to the story and to show you the proof is in the pudding that I'm not kidding around when I talk about buying assets in gold.
Gold may go up and down a little bit, but over the course of time, I think it's a decent investment.
Some guy emailed me once.
It was a great email.
He's like, listen, over time, you're better off in the stock market.
I'm not saying buy gold at the exclusion of everything else.
That was never my point.
I'm just saying, I diversify.
You do what you want, but I diversify, and I think having some of my money in gold makes a lot of sense, and over the last at least few weeks, I've done quite well on it.
Two more quick things.
Number one, I saw an interesting country living post someone sent to me on email, so thank you to the woman who sent it.
If you are in a hurricane, I know we did some hurricane hacks yesterday, but this country living piece is interesting.
It says, close all the internal doors to your house.
And you may say, well, what the heck does that have to do with it?
Internal.
I'm not talking about your external doors.
Now obviously close them too.
But the piece was really interesting.
It said how some of the research has shown that when the winds get really high, the pressure builds inside the house.
And if you close the doors, Joe, it compartmentalizes the pressure to those individual rooms.
So you have a greater chance of keeping your roof on your house.
So I, after I read the piece, believe me, I went around and closed every, Every door, closet doors, everything.
So, interesting piece.
Add that to yesterday's Hurricane Hacks.
And one more quickly, and we'll both... New York Times, kind of a lifestyle piece, but you know I love diet, exercise, mixed martial arts.
It's my life.
I just really dig it.
Something I've been saying for the longest time, folks.
For those of you who still are stuck in the 1990s rice cakes era, where everybody told you, oh my god, They're like, saturated fats are going to kill you.
They're the worst thing ever.
Go eat rice cakes.
And now everybody's like dying of heart attacks.
There's a research piece in the New York Times.
I know I hate linking to the New York Times, but this is not a political piece at all.
And it's a really good piece because it's short and it sums up the survey.
Here is, I'll just read to you a quote.
If you don't want to click on it, I totally understand.
I tell you never to do that, but this is a good piece and it may save your life.
It says a team of scientists, they did a diet mortality study of 135,000 people, Joe.
That's a lot in 18 countries.
Followed them for seven years.
They compared people who ate the lowest 20% of carbohydrates, so people who don't eat a lot of carbs, and those who ate the highest 20% of carbohydrates.
In other words, those who eat a lot of carbs.
And those who ate the highest 20% at a 28% increased risk of death.
But high carbohydrate intake, to be clear, was not associated with cardiovascular death.
This is in the piece.
But here's the kicker, because I eat fat like it's going out of style.
I just don't eat it with carbs, ever.
I'll get to that in a second.
People with the highest 20% total fat intake, an average of 35% of calories from fat, had about a 23% reduced risk of death compared with the lowest 20%.
Say what?
So basically, folks, every single thing you've been told by the government is crap.
Now, just to be clear, if you want to know my eating plan, I get this a lot.
What's your diet?
What do you eat?
And by the way, if you're hungry, you're losing.
Diet does not mean calorie restriction.
There's different things.
Diet to me means an eating plan.
There's a guy, an author named John Berardi, B-E-R-A-R-D-I.
He's really fantastic, and he has a plan called Massive Eating.
It's really designed for lifters, but really it works for regular folks, too.
Read Massive Eating, and you'll understand why I don't mix my fat and my carbs.
Boosting your insulin while you have a lot of fat in your system is not a good idea, but John explains it very better—excuse me, very well, very better, to sound like Joe Biden.
But go read it, Massive Eating.
Check it out.
Just Google it.
It comes right up.
Alright folks, thanks again.
And I just ask you all please pray for me.
I'm a believer in the Almighty and I'm hoping He takes care of everybody down here.
It's going to be a tough weekend.
I'll see you all hopefully on Monday.
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