Ep. 1478 - Wars Rage, And One Dead Dog Dominates The News
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shoots her dog, Russell Brand gets baptized, and an app predicts when you'll die and how rich you'll be.
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Ep.1478
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We're being invaded from the South, and we are in the midst of a dramatic presidential race, and no one cares right now because everyone is talking about the revelation that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shot a dog on her farm 20 years ago.
The main thing about this story is that it's extremely stupid and insignificant.
She is the governor of a sparsely populated state.
She's not even close to the leading contender for Trump's running mate, and people put down farm dogs all the time.
But that is what paradoxically makes this story extremely significant, because it reveals a lot about how radically American politics has changed.
We'll get into it.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
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Christy Noem, the rise and fall of Christy Noem.
The South Carolina, South Dakota governor came out of obscurity in a relatively sparsely populated state, rose to the heights of GOP power on the brink of becoming the running mate for President Kofefe.
And then She had to go bragging about shooting her family dog 20 years ago in her memoir.
And I don't know, I don't know who made, who could have possibly made that book cover.
If you're only listening to the show, it's a, it's a, it looks a little bit AI generated picture of Christine M walking her dog.
Stick to your guns, my life in politics.
That's not nice.
That's not, I don't, I actually don't even know the real title of the book.
I've only seen the experts of it.
And here is what she said.
I'm just going to read it before you form your opinion.
This is what went viral, and it probably is going to take out Kristi Noem.
I hated that dog, Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself untrainable, dangerous to anyone she came in contact with, and less than worthless as a hunting dog.
At that moment, Noem says I realized I had to put her down.
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
It was not a pleasant job, she writes, but it had to be done, and after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.
Incredibly, Gnome's tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was nasty and mean because it had not been castrated.
Furthermore, the goat smelled disgusting, musky, rancid, and loved to chase Gnome's children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Gnome decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog, but though she dragged him to a gravel pit, The goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound.
Gnome says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.
At that point, Gnome writes, she realized a construction crew had watched her kill both animals.
The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Gnome's children.
Kennedy looked around, confused.
Gnome writes of her daughter, who asked, hey, where's Cricket?
Cricket, I assume, was the dog, not the goat.
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noam adds, I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn't tell the story here.
Okay.
Okay.
Three observations here.
First one is, This probably was bad politics.
Generally speaking, if you are a governor, even if you're a member of Congress, if you have national political aspirations, you should not brag about killing your dog.
And give all the gory details of killing your dog, and then killing that other goat that you don't like, and then, you know, your kids show up later and ask, hey, where'd the dog go?
Probably not a good idea.
So my second observation, which is related, is this was a political miscalculation.
But it was a political calculation.
It was a miscalculation, but this was a calculated revelation.
Christine Ohm did not accidentally put this in her memoir.
A lot of people are saying, what a crazy oversight!
Why would she leave that detail in?
She chose to include this detail because she felt that it would make her look tough.
Because she's a woman politician, and being a woman politician means you have a vulnerability because you're a member of the weaker sex.
So in order to bolster your political bona fides, you have to make yourself seem tough.
Margaret Thatcher did this very well as the Iron Lady, that's what we called her.
She was so tough, she's tougher than most of the men, right?
She had to overcompensate.
Same thing here with Kristi Noem.
The miscalculation is she thought that the toughness that would come through the pages of her description of killing these animals would benefit her politically.
It probably won't because people really like their dogs.
And so it makes her seem like a psycho killer.
Now, I only somewhat jokingly tweeted, I said, unpopular take here.
I know everyone's raking Kristi Noem over the coals, but this actually makes me like and respect her more.
And I'm a little bit joking here, obviously, because it's totally politically backfired for her.
But what I'm getting at there is, I want my politicians to be just tough-as-nails, cold-blooded killers, okay?
We are going up against a political establishment right now that is throwing us in jail for disagreeing with them.
We're going up against a political establishment that is prosecuting, for the first time ever, former presidents, leaders of the opposition, that's throwing Midwestern grannies into isolation and solitary confinement because they had the audacity to show up and take selfies in the Capitol Rotunda on January 6th, the worst day in history.
The worst insurrection ever in America, even though it was only months after an eight-month insurrection that the Democrats led called BLM.
I'm getting so feisty here, I'm smacking my own lamp, but I'm not shooting any dogs.
So, I somewhat jokingly, but somewhat sincerely, like it when our politicians are tough, when they're killers, and obviously, that's Christie Noem.
Now, there was context that was missing Out of this tale of gore and blood and horror from Kristi Noem.
And that's what brings me to my third point.
This is the context that was missing.
Right before this account, you hear, Cricket, the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like a trained assassin.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog whipped around to bite me.
Then, as the chicken's owner wept, because, more context, Cricket had just massacred a bunch of chickens, had just eaten some guy's property.
Okay, and then was trying to bite Kristi Noem.
As the chicken's owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologized, wrote the Schacht family a check for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.
Through it all, Noem says, cricket was the picture of pure joy.
I hated that dog, Noem writes, adding that cricket was untrainable, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, my third point here is, yes, it was politically dumb for Noem to admit this.
Yes, her political calculation misfired.
I'm mixing metaphors, you get the point.
But the third point is, Noam didn't do anything wrong.
You might say it wasn't advisable.
You might say there were better things she could have done.
She could have given the dog up for adoption.
She could have tried to train the dog.
There is nothing wrong with a human being humanely killing an animal.
There's nothing wrong.
You're all, not all of you, but many of you are eating meat right now.
Very few people live on farms anymore, I guess.
It's a little bit different.
You know, maybe if you live in the city, you take your puppy, you know, you take your little cat in a stroller down the sidewalk.
I'm not joking.
I have friends who have done this in the city.
They'll put their animal in a stroller so that the poor little paws of the animal don't touch the dirty sidewalk.
And then you'll go and you'll take him to a doctor and you'll pay thousands of dollars to treat the animal for whatever ailment or to try to train the animal psychologically and sometimes that doesn't work.
And then you'll pay even more money to euthanize it.
That doesn't happen in the country, okay?
That doesn't happen on farms.
And sometimes if a dog is threatening people and if a dog is destroying other people's property, sometimes you got to put the dog down like old Yeller.
It would be one thing if Christina were torturing this dog like a serial killer or something.
That would be wrong.
And it would be wrong.
It's wrong to mistreat animals.
Not because the animals have any rights.
Animals don't have a rational soul.
The reason it's wrong, nevertheless, to mistreat animals is because it deadens our own humanity.
C.S.
Lewis writes about this extensively.
If you are needlessly inflicting pain and suffering to the degree that an animal can suffer on some poor creature, that's deadening your humanity.
That's what makes it wrong because you are a rational creature and that's harmful to your soul and it's harmful to society.
But there's nothing wrong.
Intrinsically, with humanely putting down a farm dog, a bullet to the head is about as humane a way as you can put down any animal.
You say, well, Christine Ohm should have given it up for adoption.
Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
She should have tried to train it harder.
Okay, I guess.
What about the chickens, though, man?
We've got all this sympathy for cricket!
The assassin dog.
We got all this sympathy for this old nasty goat.
What about the chickens?
Won't somebody please think about the chickens?
And more importantly, because I don't really care about the chickens or the goat or like any of these things.
Well, I don't I don't wish harm on these animals.
I just don't.
They're animals, though, guys.
And I care a lot more about the owner of the chickens.
And I care more about the people that the animals can threaten sometimes.
We used to think that way.
Fifty years ago, this political story would not have made anyone in most of America bat an eyelash.
And the fact that it does today tells you something, not about the changing morality of putting down a farm animal, but about the changing politics of America.
And you saw this reach a fever pitch with the most histrionic reaction that I got to my mild little joke about Christine Ohm's dog.
There's so much more to say.
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The most histrionic, hysterical reaction that I got to my joke about Christine Ohm's poor little pooch comes from Glenn Greenwald, the liberal left-wing journalist who writes.
He took a picture of my little joke and he says, now you have the pathetic attention whores Who have never once shown bravery or moral courage, thinking it finally makes them tough to say how aroused they are by the shooting of puppies.
What?
When did I do that?
Gnome herself boasts, am I being too politically incorrect for you?
Weak, broken people.
Okay, this guy first of all seems really fun at parties.
I'm sure he's a delight to be around.
But second of all, this actually shows you a problem with our politics.
Our culture, we don't have children anymore.
Our culture, we don't make families anymore.
Our culture, we don't pass down our cultural inheritance anymore.
We are increasingly a sterile culture.
And I don't mean this, I don't mean we're an infertile culture.
Some people suffer from that, it's a fallen world, it's a tough life, you know?
I mean, we're choosing not to propagate our civilization.
We're choosing not to get married.
We're choosing not to have children.
We're choosing not to educate the children we do have in the great cultural inheritance that we've been so fortunate and blessed to receive.
We are a sterile culture, increasingly, and sterile people and sterile cultures confuse dogs for children.
Look around you.
There are many people who are choosing not to have children, not to get married and start families.
As they do that, they are much more inclined to treat their little pooch like a baby, and it's very, very disordered.
Okay, this point of view you see reach its apotheosis in the CNN interview of Philip Rhines, who was a Hillary Clinton spokesman, a top aide to Hillary for many years.
He perfectly articulates this disordered view of the relation of man to the rest of the created world.
Everyone's blood is boiling.
I am one of these people that not only loves animals and has always had pets, but just prefers them to people.
We don't deserve them.
That she thought that that was a good idea.
I mean, there's a special circle of hell that's reserved for people who mistreat animals.
It's a real window into it.
As I was leaving, I bumped into my neighbor and his dog, Georgie.
Georgie doesn't really like me because he associates me with my two cats.
But I jokingly said, Georgie, I'm going to go on TV and I'm going to defend your honor.
Yeah.
This is how they think.
This is how these people think.
When it gets down to it, it's not even just about I have my two cats and I think there's a special circle of hell for people who, you know, shoot farm dogs when they're threatening people and property.
Don't forget, by the way, this is Philip Rhines.
This is the guy who supports killing human babies.
This is the Democratic Party, which supports killing human babies up until the moment of birth and maybe after birth.
No problem, that's a right.
We need to celebrate that.
But if you humanely put down a farm animal, all of a sudden you're super duper mega Hitler and you deserve to be in the lowest circle of hell.
It's that line, he says there, I prefer animals to people.
I think that's true.
I think the libs do prefer animals to people.
I think they prefer the delta smelt to people.
I think they prefer the rocks and the trees and the oceans to people.
And I think they would inflict suffering on people to protect the ants and the polar bears.
Because I think they would upend our entire political order to stop the sun monster from threatening the rest of the lower beasts.
Very disordered.
I like animals well enough.
I like looking at them.
I think they're pretty.
They're great.
They're here for our enjoyment.
Okay, we're not here to serve the animals.
The animals are here for our enjoyment.
We ought to be good stewards of our environment.
I'm all for that.
But the, I prefer animals to people.
Yes, you do.
Because you're histrionic on television about a woman putting down her untrainable farm dog, but you're gleeful about women killing little children, killing human children.
You obviously do prefer Animals to people.
All of the people who choose not to have children, who choose to treat their little pooch like it's, you know, a child.
They obviously prefer animals to people and that's very, very disordered.
Because as cute and fun as animals are and as pets can be, they're not They're not human beings.
They're not made in the image and likeness of God.
They don't have rational souls.
They don't have abstract conceptions of justice.
They can't reason.
They can't love because love is reasonable.
Because love has to do with desire and intellect.
You can't have a civilization of puppies, guys, okay?
And the left wants to get... Philip Raines, I keep mispronouncing his name, I keep pronouncing it differently every time, Hillary Clinton, the left broadly, and the sentimentalists and the secularists on the so-called right, they seem to think we can have a civilization of puppies.
We can't.
If we don't have kids...
And if we make an idol out of animals and we take them out of their proper place, we're not going to have much of a civilization at all.
I'll put a final point on this here.
Even Pope Francis agrees that the idolatry of puppies has gone way too far.
Pope Francis often considered a liberal pope, and yet he comes out and said, today we see a form of selfishness.
We see that some people do not want to have a child.
He's not criticizing people who can't have a child.
Many people can't have a child and that's very sad and they suffer and they bear their cross.
Saying, we see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
The practice, quote, is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity.
It absolutely does.
Now moving on from the pooches, But sticking with Pope Francis, Pope Francis has just come out, he has weighed in on the Israel-Gaza War and the Ukraine-Russia War, and has said, a negotiated peace is better than a war without end.
And gotta say, I think the Holy Father is absolutely right in the case of these wars in particular.
And the reason I say that is not because I don't think that it's good sometimes in war to have a clear victory.
If you can have a clear victory, then sometimes that can secure the peace for a much longer period of time after that.
Sometimes that can save more lives, it can do more good.
So I'm not saying we just need to end all war immediately, you know, all we are saying is give peace a chance, kumbaya kind of stuff.
But in the case of the Israel-Gaza War, What is the end of the Israel-Gaza war?
The end of the Israel-Gaza war happens one of two ways.
The true end, without a negotiated peace, it ends one of two ways.
Israel gets rid of all the Palestinians, all the Gazans at least, half of the Palestinians, or the Palestinians get rid of all the Israelis.
That's pretty much it.
The state of Israel has said Gaza, run by Hamas, is an unacceptable security risk.
So the rational political desire there is ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
And the Gazans, for their part, they're not even implicit about it.
They write in Hamas's charter that their explicit goal is the abolition of the State of Israel.
So the rational, and at least in the case of the Palestinians, the stated explicit political goal is the ethnic cleansing of the other.
So the only way that you can avoid either of those things, which I think most people would find morally unacceptable, is a negotiated peace.
Same thing with Ukraine and Russia.
Do you think Ukraine is going to beat Russia?
Do you think it's desirable for America and the West to get into a hot war with Russia, a former superpower, a nuclear power that's got missiles aimed at us?
We avoided it for 70 years during the Cold War.
Well, I guess 50 years during the Cold War.
Since then, some decades have elapsed of a slightly kinder, you know, gentler relationship with Russia, but descending once again back into Cold War.
You think that's in our interest?
No.
You think that Ukraine is actually going to defeat Russia militarily, reclaim all of its conquered territory?
No.
Nobody seriously thinks that's going to happen.
So all we're doing, the U.S.
grand strategy, is just dragging this out to kill more Russians.
Okay.
And more Ukrainians as a result.
Wouldn't we say that ultimately a negotiated peace would be better here?
I'm not saying in all conflicts.
But in these conflicts, it seems that the Holy Father is totally right.
There is so much more to say.
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Speaking of religion, big news!
Russell Brand.
The comedian, actor, guru, podcaster, celebrity has just announced that he is being baptized.
Die and be reborn.
This Sunday, I'm taking the plunge.
I'm getting baptized.
At the moment I'm very curious as to what you who have been baptised feel about it.
What your expectations are of the event prior and what it's actually like.
What's been explained to me is it's an opportunity to die and be reborn.
An opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn in Christ's name like it says in Galatians.
That you can live as an enlightened and awakened person.
Sometimes I think of non-christian perspectives on it like Marcus Aurelius saying you are already dead now live the rest of your life properly or the buddhist saying put down the corpse.
All of these things seem so inviting and beautiful I know a lot of people are sort of cynical about the increasing interest in Christianity and the return to God, but to me it's obvious, as meaning deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we've all known all of our lives.
And then he did it!
Russell Brand just put out a video, just a few hours ago I think, Where he says he was baptized, and he goes on about how he's done all these drugs in his life, but he was always disappointed because they didn't deliver the spiritual transcendence that they had promised.
But with baptism, he said, it's only been a few hours, but I felt something turn on in me.
I just felt something change in me.
And he did a full immersion baptism in the River Thames.
So I don't know.
I would imagine Russell Brand was not baptized in the Catholic Church.
Although the other day, Russell Brand prayed the Rosary on air.
So I don't know really.
And then, more broadly, we are seeing a major series of conversions to Christianity, specifically, disproportionately among them, to the Catholic Church.
Candace, for sure, but many other people too.
Now Russell Brand.
What is this about?
What is going on?
I'll tell you exactly what this is about.
Past all of the political analysis and sociological analysis, What this is about is that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
That's what it's really about.
If you want the macro-historical view, that's what it's about.
Thads come and go.
Ideologies come and go.
Heresies come and go.
But for 2,000 years, the Church stands strong.
And since the beginning, the experts and the geniuses and the elite classes have been predicting the imminent demise of the Church.
And then, we see their demise.
Their individual demise because we're all mortals and we all die eventually.
We see the demise of their institutions, their silly little heresies, their fads, their all of it.
That all goes away and the church remains.
It is the enduring institution in our civilization and in all civilizations.
It is the turning point of history.
I believe that as a matter of faith.
But if you don't believe that as a matter of faith, if you're not a Christian, if you... Just the historical fact that the Church remains and continues, even when it looks like all hope is lost, you know, 20 years ago the new atheists are on the rise, religion is a punchline, no one wants to... There are scandals, there's knavish imbecility in the conduct of the Church, and then what happens?
Everyone just starts converting again, because the Holy Spirit is real, and God is real, and the Trinity is real, you know, God the Father, God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the whole, and the church, the visible expression of God's people.
It's real.
That's my take on it, at least.
And if you don't agree with me, okay, how do you explain it?
How do you explain it?
At this moment, Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson's wife, Tammy, Just converted weeks ago to the faith.
Many, many people.
Jordan, if you had asked Jordan five, ten years ago, Jordan, do you believe in God?
He would have said, well, you know, it depends on what you mean by the definition of God and believe and all.
But now I think he's clearly on a journey, too.
It's the biggest public intellectual in the world, probably.
It just How do you explain it?
How on earth do you explain it?
To me, it's very, very clear.
The gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
Now, there is a political analysis to be made here, and it comes from Alexi de Tocqueville.
Alexi de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America.
It's probably the most famous and most important critique and observation of America, certainly of early America.
Tocqueville travels all around America, all those little towns in New England, and he writes his observations as a European, as a Frenchman.
And they're enduring observations, they've been proven true in so many ways.
One lesser discussed aspect of his book, Democracy in America, talks about America's religion.
And he says America, it's kind of weird, you know, because it's an ostensibly Protestant country, but Catholicism seems to grow here in a weird way, even though there's kind of Overt, top-level hostility to it, it grows.
There's fertile ground for that.
And Alexei de Tocqueville makes a prediction.
He says, over time, Americans are going to become more Catholic or they're going to leave Christianity entirely.
Now, many wonderful Protestants out there in the audience, some wonderful Protestants in my family.
So, you know, I'm not saying this has all happened overnight, but it is simply a historical fact.
America has become much more Catholic over the years, and America has become much more atheist.
And the people who are converting that, they're not all converting to Catholicism, but a lot of them are.
Maybe most of them are.
And there's a lot of growth of atheism, and maybe Tocqueville was right, and maybe that Old ancient institution, ever ancient, ever new.
Maybe we're seeing the continuation of what has been 2,000 years of history so far continue to play out even here in America.
And even over there in England with Russell Brand and the other people who are finding faith.
You know, folks, you can subscribe to the Michael Knowles YouTube channel right now.
You can smash that subscribe button.
Ring the bell so you never miss an episode.
Speaking of the state of America, we just had the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
This dinner has existed for many, many years.
It got a lot of play during the Obama years, and I don't think it's even so much because of Obama as it's because the political journalists had decided to really make celebrities of themselves because those were the early days of social media.
And one thing I'm happy about, I don't want to just complain about Washington, one thing I'm happy about is they've stopped calling this dinner Nerd Prom.
That's what they used to call it, Nerd Prom, for a period in the early 20-teens, which I always found so offensive to nerds.
Because these political journalists aren't nerds.
They're not particularly intelligent.
They're not particularly educated.
They're not particularly studious.
They're flattering themselves.
They're not nerds.
They're generally political sycophants, and they go there, and then the Democrat president comes out and torches his enemies, and they give him more glowing coverage, which is all they do.
They just exist to be the propaganda arm for the liberal establishment.
So this year was no different.
Well, it was no different in the room, but it was a little different outside the room.
In the room, presidents, even when they don't know their own name, generally do pretty well because other people write their jokes.
So they hire top comedians to write their jokes.
I felt Joe Biden's set played pretty well.
Well, Donald's had a few tough days lately.
You might call it stormy weather.
What the hell?
Trump's so desperate, he started reading those Bibles he's selling.
Then he got to the first commandment.
You shall have no other gods before me.
That's when he put it down and said, this book's not for me.
Okay, ha ha ha.
These jokes are fine.
They're fine, acceptable, generally inoffensive political jokes.
It's certainly less offensive than when Barack Obama came out at the White House Correspondents Dinner and talked about how he was going to start droning Justin Bieber or whatever, you know, the Jonas Brothers or something.
That was a little much, a little too real, pal.
But these jokes, they're fine.
And the jokes don't even really land a punch on Trump, because what is the upshot of the jokes?
The upshot of the jokes is Trump is extremely confident, very sure of himself, and he's famously a playboy.
Yeah.
That's true, I mean Trump would have bragged about that himself for most of his life.
So yeah, okay, that's fine, whatever, no big deal.
And then all the fancy political journalists in the room, they're all laughing and it's all just a lovely night.
But outside, outside, it was a different story.
Outside there was a protest, and not just a small protest, there was a huge protest from the Palestine Liberation Movement.
Free Palestine.
Biden's legacy is genocide.
Free Palestine.
And this isn't just a handful of people.
This is a long ceasefire now.
This is a long, huge group of people.
Lots of cops.
Lots of sirens.
Seems to go pretty deep.
I can't even see the end of the protest.
This thing is going on and on for streets and streets and streets.
And what are they protesting?
Well, if they're protesting the White House Correspondents Association dinner, that means they're not just protesting Biden.
They're not just protesting the president.
They're protesting the journalists.
The journalists who they accuse of covering up a genocide.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with these guys.
Obviously not.
You look at them out there waving the Palestine flag and all this talk, you know, all this kind of left-wing language, and you realize if you're an American conservative, you say, That ain't our people.
That's not the right-wingers.
Right-wingers generally don't wave the flags of Palestine.
Right-wingers generally don't wave non-American flags at rallies.
Maybe we'll wave a Trump flag or something, but that'll also be in red, white, and blue, and it'll just be a riff on the American flag.
We ain't waving Palestine flags.
Those ain't our guys.
Those are leftists protesting the left-wing president and the left-wing journalists.
That's a big problem for Joe Biden, and it's a problem for the credibility of the establishment, the so-called journalists who are the propagandists for the White House.
That's a big problem because it means they've lost the people.
Joe Biden has won over the ruling political class.
He's got them.
He's had them in his pocket for many decades now.
That's not a problem.
And the journalists in that room, they've won over the bureaucracy.
They've won over the deep state.
They've won over the lobbyists and the corporations.
But the thing that neither of them have is the people.
And not just our people.
The conservatives obviously don't like Joe Biden or the journalists at all.
Their own people.
They have increasingly lost their own people.
And this is why a third party candidate like a Bobby Kennedy, who's a protest vote for leftists, that's a big problem for them.
This is why Marianne Williamson, for goodness sakes, would probably be something of a problem for them.
This is the big political weakness.
They've got all their entrenched political power, but they don't have the people.
And the people, increasingly, are inclined to support conservatives.
Not because they're, you know, flag-waving right-wingers.
Far from it.
Because they view themselves as having a common enemy.
Which is why, I hate to say I told you so, but this is why I predicted from day one that Bobby Kennedy would prove a bigger threat to Joe Biden than to Donald Trump.
Because the left is in a period of major division right now.
And for all the talk we hear about the insurrectionists, January 6th, Donald Trump, the greatest threat to democracy.
Many discontented left-wingers who ordinarily would vote for Democrats who are liberal people They are far angrier at Joe Biden, far more fearful of what Joe Biden can do to the country than they are of Donald Trump.
The Daily Wire is launching its first animated series, Mr. Bircham, premiering for free on May 12th, exclusively on Daily Wire+.
Our friend Adam Carolla is the creator of the series and the voice of Mr. Bircham, a traditional, straight-talking junior high teacher facing down the absurdities of the education system and the culture wars.
Alongside his friend Gage, Mr. Bircham is a true old-school hero in a new-school world.
We rallied an unparalleled lineup of talent for the series, including Megyn Kelly, Roseanne Barr, Sage Steele, Danny Trejo, Kyle Dunnigan, Patrick Warburton, Tyler Fisher, and our very own Brett Cooper, and a whole lot more.
Take a look at the official trailer.
Tell me what you need.
Jumping in the first one?
Rolling.
Speed.
Action.
Saw Buck's looking a little chubby-wubby.
So I bought him some new food.
It's organic and vegan.
Dogs are supposed to eat meat.
They're descendants of wolves.
You ever see a vegan wolf on the Nature Channel?
I'm a vegan.
Coffee is for closers, ladies.
Listen up!
Hey, don't make this a prison hug.
I'm a heteronormative, cisgendered, white male.
For which I apologize.
I'm black, and that used to be enough.
But I'm also bilingual, and I'm non-binary.
We're the Army!
We drink more before 9am than you Navy pukes do all day!
He rubbed all the fur off his emotional support ferret.
The damn thing look like a four-legged penis!
Charity and work.
Two words that should never go together.
Like women and opinions.
I want a burly man.
They're salty and make me dizzy.
Sorry, just need to find a thingy to fix my gaming chair.
When I was on the construction site, my chair was a five-gallon bucket.
It was also my toilet.
Hey, I'm done.
I'm going back to bed.
Thanks a lot.
Prepare for the razor-sharp comedy that only Adam Carolla and The Daily Wire can deliver.
Do not miss out on the series premiere, streaming free exclusively on Daily Wire, plus on Sunday, May 12th.
My favorite comment on Friday is from Diego Calva, 414, who says, Joe has worked more jobs than Homer Simpson by this point.
It's amazing!
Just like any group that Joe Biden's talking to, he shares their experiences and knows their struggle and feels their pain.
It's so weird!
It's almost like the man is a totally empty suit and just shapeshifts to fit whatever group he's talking to.
Really, really weird.
You bet I was driving an 18-wheeler, Jack!
Me, corn pop, all those little kids with my hairy legs.
Okay, now, what do the people think?
Biden's lost the people.
The liberal journalists have lost the people.
What do the people think?
The people believe, they were just asked by The Economist and YouGov, so this is kind of a left-wing poll, What the top issues are.
The top issues in this election, inflation and immigration.
Inflation or prices, 24%.
The second most popular choice was immigration at 14%.
97% of respondents tabbed inflation as important, so statistically everybody says inflation is important.
77% said very important, more than three quarters of respondents.
85% consider immigration important.
56% say very important.
And Biden is more than 30 points underwater on both of these issues.
29% of people approve Biden's handling of inflation and prices.
62% disapprove.
Biden on independence, 17% approve of how he's handled inflation.
29% of people approve his handling of immigration.
61% disapprove his handling of immigration.
Biden is in big trouble.
Big, big trouble.
So the only thing he can do If the two most important issues, he is that far underwater, there's no way to make up that ground, there's no way to... I mean, I guess he could fix the problem in that he could lock up the border.
It's only April, so there's still a little bit of time before the election.
Maybe he could start to turn that around.
But then he would alienate his base.
His base, which wants open borders.
His establishment doesn't totally want open borders, or they at least don't want to deal with the social consequences of it.
But his base does want open borders.
Most of the American people don't want open borders.
His base wants free money and student loan forgiveness and all the rest of the Democrat giveaways.
Most people, virtually everyone, doesn't want to deal with the consequences of that.
So what does he do?
He's stuck.
The only political strategy available to him is to distract.
The only political strategy available to him is to say, Donald Trump wants to ban all abortions and punish women.
Donald Trump, his ally killed her puppy once.
We like puppies, don't we?
Even though Joe Biden's dog keeps biting Secret Service agents.
That's another one.
Maybe we need to get Kristi Noem in there, you know, take that, take Joe Biden's old pooch out to the gravel pit and deal with, deal with him the way that we would deal with someone who bites the Secret Service.
Anyway, I'm not, I'm not calling for that.
Just saying if Kristi Noem does visit the White House, maybe worth, you know, yoinking, yoinking old yeller Biden there.
The dog, not the president.
This is, I'm only, I'm digging myself a deeper and deeper gravel pit the more I even talk about this.
But that's all Biden can do.
That's all he can do.
Is distract.
Oh, look over there.
Look at that butterfly.
Republicans are so racist.
It's an insurrection.
They have to even speak in these really nebulous kinds of terms, these meta-political terms.
Oh, the Republicans are a threat to democracy.
Why do they have to talk in this meta-political way?
The threat to democracy and freedom and equality.
Because if you get to the nitty-gritty of any particular aspect of our actual way of life, Biden has really, really messed up the country.
So he can't point to those, he's got to speak in the abstract.
Liberalism does really, really well in the abstract.
Freedom, equality, liberation.
It does really poorly in the concrete reality because it's disconnected from reality.
It assumes a false anthropology, a false understanding of human nature, a false relation of man to the rest of the creatures and to our Creator.
Liberalism denies original sin in a way.
Intimating the perfectibility of man on earth.
It's just wrong.
It's just got a whole host of problems.
So they got to speak in the abstract, concrete reality.
No bueno for them.
So, speaking of our national future, economic and otherwise, how will you die?
When will you die?
And how rich will you be?
There is a new app that can apparently predict that.
This new app, I'm not even going to name it because it's bad for you, and there are some warnings about it.
It was created by scientists in Denmark and the U.S.
The people who created this fed the app data from Danish health and demographic records for 6 million people who were between the ages of 35 and 65.
Half of the participants died between 2016 and 2020.
It's pretty, I don't know, between 35 and 65?
Half of these guys died?
What's going on in Denmark?
I don't know.
Researchers found that this app predicted who would die and who would live with an accuracy of 78%.
78%.
It's pretty good.
Now what data, did the AI just use data pertaining to your health?
No, they used information such as income, profession, and medical history to determine how long people would live.
They used information pertaining to social life events, and they predicted social life events that they might experience in years to come.
And according to a professor at the Technical University of Denmark, lead author of the study, it could predict health outcomes.
It could predict fertility or obesity, or you could maybe predict who will get cancer, who doesn't get cancer, but it could also predict if you're going to make a lot of money.
People are warning now, don't try this app out because there are a lot of copycat apps, and they might hack your information, and it's just not a good road to go down.
But even if there weren't copycat apps that were trying to steal your financial information, you still shouldn't use this app.
And the reason you shouldn't use this app is the same reason that the Bible tells you not to consult astrologers, okay?
It's not, a lot of people misunderstand why the Bible says don't consult astrologers.
They think, in our modern scientific age, that, you know, it's because astrology is silly and it's not real.
That's not why there's a commandment, hey don't do this thing that's really silly and pointless.
The reason behind not consulting astrologers is because we don't want to compromise our free will.
And that's exactly what's going on here.
It's not because it doesn't work, it's because it kind of works, or at least it works on the individual person and warps our perception of ourselves and compromises our free will.
I will quote on this, not some, you know, modern egghead scientist guy.
I will quote an older, wiser person, Tatian the Syrian, who says, such are the demons.
These are they who laid down the doctrine of fate.
Their fundamental principle was the placing of animals in the heavens as constellations.
These dignified with celestial honor in order that they might themselves be thought to remain in heaven and by placing the constellations there might make to appear rational the irrational course of life on earth.
Thus, the high spirited and he who is crushed with toil, the temperate and the intemperate, the indigent and the wealthy are what they are simply from the controllers of their nativity.
It has nothing to do with their free will.
It has nothing to do with how they behave.
It has nothing to do with moral responsibility.
They don't have any of that.
It's just in the stars.
which He goes on, for the delineation of the zodiacal cycle is the work of the gods, but we are superior to fate, and instead of wandering demons, we have learned to know one Lord who wanders not.
This is in Tatian the Assyrian's Address to the Greeks, and it's really, really important here.
In our culture, when we buy into the New Age astrology, and when we buy into the scientific determinism, and when we buy into everything in between, We diminish human beings.
We deny our reason.
We deny our ability to have any effect on our surroundings.
We deny our moral responsibility.
We deny our difference and distinction from the lower beasts.
We become no different from a dog or a goat or a rock or a tree.
We're just moving along, bobbing along on fate.
Christians believe something different.
We believe that there is a providence that God's all-ordaining providence that controls the flow of history and that we also have free will and we can make moral choices because we have a rational soul.
We are made in the image and likeness of God.
We have intellect and we have will and we can use that for good and conform it to God's plan for history and for our own lives or we can abuse it.
But we have the ability to abuse it.
We have the ability to turn away from God's grace.
We have the ability to do very evil things.
And that is an awesome power, and we can't just blame everything on the stars, and we can't just shirk moral responsibility.
We are human beings.
That can be a very, very dignified thing, or that can be a very, very degraded thing, and it depends on which way we individually and civilizationally look where we are ordered toward.
The rest of the show continues now.
It's Music Monday.
We have a song.
I'm very excited because I just interviewed for King & Country and now we have a song from For King & Country.
